“Homegirl, what the fuck is that?” June asked when the final squeal was silenced.

She was out of breath, holding a bloody dagger limp in her right hand as she stared at Anne.

The homegirl in question—the woman, Neil frowned—looked dazedly from the white star burning in the palm of her hands. “A miracle.”

Tired was her smile; wild and dirty was her hair. Her eyes shone like twin diamonds, stark against the grime on her face. Something in her tone sounded of labored satisfaction, and Neil had the sneaking suspicion that she meant ‘miracle’ literally.

He asked if this was the case.

“I think so,” she smiled. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It’s friggin’ awesome is what it is,” said Thomas, stepping carefully towards them, balancing over a mountain of giant rodent carcasses. “How are you doing that?”

Her voice was soft and laden with wonder. “I don’t know. It just feels… right.”

“How long can you keep it up?” Asked Jackie, brow furrowed.

“A while?” Anne shrugged. “Maybe if I…”

She frowned at her little miracle, and it pulsed in response, brightening intensely, before fading into a comfortable glow, no brighter than her former torch.

“It comes with a dimmer switch,” Neil noted, voice distant. “Cool.”

Adrenaline was fading fast, leaving him hollow, sore, and in desperate want of a bath. As much as he wanted to gush over the flagrantly impossible orb of light, he was ready to keel over then and there.

“I could keep it up like this forever, if I needed to,” Anne informed Jackie.

“Good,” The muscular woman nodded in return. “Then we should get back. I’ve got a feeling that Argus is going to want to see this.”

But to get there, they had to go through Phineus.

…

…

The caretaker’s eyes were hawkish as he studied the blond woman.

“The first of the Heroes awakens at last, in the face of dire peril,” he said in a dry voice. He paused, glancing at Jackie with a small frown. “How did the creatures fair?”

“We took them down,” smiled Thomas, triumphant.

“Of course you did,” Phineus side-eyed the young man. “With nary a scratch, I perceive.”

Thomas was, in fact, scratched to hell. His plain cotton clothes were ruined and shredded, and the cuts underneath shone pink with unspilled blood. The damage was entirely superficial, apart from a few deeper bites in his thigh. Thomas wore his wounds proudly, even going so far as to show them the worst of his bites, far too high in his pasty white thigh for Neil to be comfortable.

It still didn’t quite qualify as a wound, in Neil’s opinion, though it was bleeding. Thomas claimed that it didn’t hurt—and really—a band-aid would be enough to cover it. Neil knew what Thomas was like when he was in pain, and so took him at his word when he said he was fine.

“We took care of them,” said Jackie. “They were big, but not really dangerous. One of them had some kind of shadow power, though.”

“Shadow power?” Phineus blinked, before giving his head a slight shake. “Some sort of mutation, I would think. Beast magic. What a marvelous coincidence that one of you should awaken powers of Light in the face of such a creature.”

The man did not—Neil noted, still dazed on his feet—sound all that happy for them. His voice was flat, bored, and filled with the mildest tones of derision.

“It’s a miracle.” declared Anne, with more confidence than Neil had ever seen from her.

“Quite.” said Phineus, voice like a bone-saw—slow and cutting.

He waved a dismissive hand. “For now, this is all that you are capable of, yes?”

The light glowed soft and crisp in the mousy woman’s grasp, illuminating his office.

“I can make it brighter?” Offered Anne in an earnest voice, raising the miracle towards the caretaker.

“No,” The specter of a man took a half step back, scowling. “I do not wish to be blinded, thank you.”

“Then, err— yes, this is all I can do.”

Phineus worked his jaw side to side. “And your name has not been revealed to you, has it?”

“Um,” Anne blinked. “Marianne Singer?”

The caretaker’s dark eyes rolled. “Clearly not. It would be folly to guess what shape your powers will take without knowing your name or patron. Some manner of cleric, I would think. Tell me, girl, if you had to choose between smiting the wicked and healing the innocent, which do you feel drawn to?”

There was a beat of silence before Anne opened her mouth, confusion written across her face. Before she could speak, Phineus raised a hand to stop her.

“Never mind, girl,” he interrupted. “Sheer folly, as I said. The blessing you’ve awoken today is likely the foundation of a greater blessing, and I would sooner hold my tongue than give you a flawed prediction. Train your powers well, girl.”

“I will.” Anne answered in earnest.

“As for the rest of you,” The caretaker inflicted his predatory gaze upon the remaining Heroes. “I cannot say with any sincerity that it has been a pleasure to meet you—it hasn’t—but I will offer you this wisdom. The coming months will be a time of growth and wonder, but it will end—as all things do—in tragedy.

“Now,” he folded his hands, giving them all a small, magnanimous smile. “Leave.”

There was an unspoken air of ‘or else,’ attached to the end of his sentence, and the group was quick to oblige, as confused as they were.

Through sheer force of menace, Phineus swiftly shut out the possibility of retort, ushering them from his office and casting them into the hall leading to the castle proper.

The Heroes looked upon one another in solidarity and agreement, unified by a shared knowledge.

Phineus was a dick.

…

…

Argus’s study wasn’t designed to have seven people in it at once. Very quickly, the dark room became warm and cramped, with Neil sandwiched between Thomas and June.

Though, maybe it was only half unpleasant, if he was being honest with himself.

The old man was quick to congratulate Anne, but did not shower her in the same show of amazement the rest of the Heroes did. His behavior was that of a teacher, giving a student a gold star. Congratulations we’re in order, yes, but they could not interfere with the business at hand.

The ‘business at hand,’ to Neil’s great shock, was the old man gossiping about his dungeon-dwelling coworker.

“Firstly,” Argus scowled. “I would like to point out that the cellar is not a dungeon, and has not been a dungeon in nigh half a century, no matter what Phineus calls it. Its primary use is as storage for surplus farming equipment. It also functions as a storm shelter, a bunker, and occasionally as a space to craft and store my experiments as an amateur vintner.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Well, it looked like a dungeon,” Thomas muttered under his breath, audible to Neil only because of his closeness.

“Really?” Neil asked, raising his eyebrows. “It sounded kind of like he was longing for the days of yore, you know? Hot pokers, iron maidens, chaining people up by their thumbs… things like that.”

“He may well have been,” Argus frowned. “Phineus has resided here even longer than I, and the man has the moral integrity of a paper-mache outhouse.”

“I—” Neil made a face like he was hit on the nose. “He’s what?”

“Odious,” Argus’s lip curled. “Contemptible. Celery has a greater moral fiber than he.”

“No,” Neil shook his head. “I mean, yes—thank you, I agree—but it sounded like you said that he’s been here for the last fifty years.”

Argus nodded sagely. “He has indeed.”

Neurons sparked and fizzled—like a computer with water poured over it—in Neil’s brain.

“But he’s—” Neil made a wordless gesture to his own face. “He’s not actually a vampire, is he?”

“A vampire?” The old man raised a rimed eyebrow. “I should hope not, my boy. Phineus is a magician of unparalleled skill, and as such, is… merely eccentric, to use a kind word. One does not accuse one’s colleagues of being creatures of darkness, lest…”

The old shook his head, as if clearing his thoughts. “Well, suffice to say, he’s not, and you should take care not to spread rumors that he is.”

“Wait,” said Neil, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “What even is a magician? Is that like a wizard or—”

“Neil,” said Jackie, giving him a hard look from the other side of Thomas, before turning to the steward. “Argus. I don’t mean to sound short, but you said we had business to discuss?”

“Ah, yes,” the old man folded his hands together, shooting a small smirk at Neil. “Forgive my distraction, you’re quite right, my dear. Business.”

Neil opened his mouth to defend himself against the insinuation that he was the one to distract Argus, thought better of it, and shut it.

“I have a job for you. A mission, in fact.”

“Another one?” June groaned. “We haven’t even had a chance to sit down yet.”

Argus shrugged, waving a dismissive hand. “I would sooner regard the rats as an afternoon chore, for which you will be suitably rewarded later. For now…”

He splayed his hands wide, addressing the six of them as one. “I have a need for a band of Heroes.”

…

…

Argus sighed, leaning back into his heavy wooden chair as he massaged his temples. The Heroes were gone, finally, to prepare for their next adventure. It was a stroke of luck that he was able to organize one so quickly. Without the safety nets of Phineus’s rats, his Heroes were liable to become soft with inaction.

That would not do. Especially not now.

An awakening at last, and it was the Singer girl. He’d rather assumed that her blessing would be oriented towards the powers of faith—if she had had any at all—but to awaken this early? Worse, she wasn’t yet named.

The girl would be powerful when she came into her blessings. Just how powerful, Argus couldn’t guess. More powerful than her fellows thought, surely. He’d done his best to downplay the girl’s accomplishment, but she had a direct channel to the Light—the raw energy of miracles manifested before his very eyes.

The powerful ones were always harder to manage.

In all likelihood, she was responsible for the unusual surge of power in the summoning ritual. An overzealous god, pumping their champion with so much energy that an entire extra soul was caught in it.

This knowledge did not lessen his headache, for all that it narrowed his list of suspects. Peter and Jacquline still followed the standard warrior progression and were due to awaken sometime in the next month.

It couldn’t be Anne. Average mortal priests took years to forge a connection to the Light, and most could barely conjure a bare flicker of power.

Who did that leave? Thomas, Neil, and June. Three wildcards. If he was lucky, the two men would awaken gifts of spellcraft on their upcoming journey, and he could finally work to put an end to this farce.

Argus pinched the bridge of his nose, seeking to crush the headache lurking behind his eyes.

Hopefully, two would return as some manner of wizard.

‘Gods,’ the old man thought. ‘Hopefully. *Hopefully.*’

Having two wizards was his best-case scenario. Neither god nor fool could ever dream of conceiving a joke such as this.

Two wizards.

It might have been more efficient if he’d simply climbed the nearest tree in copper armor, and cursed all the gods as bastards.

He hated wizards. Heroing wizards, anyway. The mundane sort was mostly harmless, chasing after fairy tales and lost wisdom. The more wizards one knew, however, the more likely it was that one would be transformed into a sentient pear.

Magicians at least had the decency to incinerate their enemies, not torture them to… live for an eternity in the reflection of a silver spoon, or somesuch nonsense.

At least he would have his sixth. It wouldn’t be prudent to act in haste, however. Better to wait until all awoke their blessings, and were named according to scripture. If he accidentally killed one of the Heroes himself… He wouldn’t have to worry about retirement, to say the least.

No, this farce wouldn’t end for months, even with the indulgence of optimism.

‘And then what?’ He frowned at the thought. ‘Send them on an ill-fated ‘adventure?’ Stage a kidnapping? Poison?’

Long ago, Argus learned that poison had a lovely habit of curing most of life’s ills. Like medicine, but the trick of it was to get someone else to take it.

Bah, he would figure it out, in time.

A note slid under his office door, and the old man sighed again, shaking off the distant plans before they could corrupt his mood. There was always more work to attend to.

He raised a bony hand and pulled the message into his grasp with a bare flicker of willpower and magic.

He scowled at its contents, tossing it weakly into his desk.

…

I expect reimbursement by winter.

—Phineus.

…

The note glared up at him, written in a severe, squarish script.

The rats. Phineus was pouting because the ‘evil’ steward sent the misguided little Heroes to kill his ‘beloved’ pets. Argus scoffed, waving a dismissive hand at the note.

“Burn,” he commanded, letting blue-white fire consume every trace of its existence.

What sort of freak bred mutant rats in his spare time, Argus wondered? Even for a magician, it was a strange hobby. It was Phineus’s job to aid in the raising of monster-slayers, not breeders. This wasn’t the first time Argus used the freak’s little experiments to ease the doldrums between assignments, and every time he made a grand fuss about it.

Really, what was he to do—not send Heroes to kill the rats in the cellar? Perhaps he could also ask the gardeners to stop tending to the hedges, or forbid his cooks the use of meat.

No, Phineus was being entirely unreasonable. Unprofessional, even.

Argus smirked to himself. Perhaps the boy set him on edge with his comments of vampires and wizards? There were few better ways to insult a magician than to compare their craft to wizardry, and Phineus had a particular sensitivity to the subject of vampirism.

It was a bit like hiring a lady escort, calling her a whore to her face, then accusing her of having lupine-rot! It might have been funny if it weren’t so cruel, Argus smiled, proud of his little comparison.

It’s not like the magician didn’t deserve it, given his past. What right did he have to complain? Especially after the vindication of Anne’s awakening.

No right. None at all.

Argus folded his arms, contented with inaction. What was the worst the man could do in retaliation, anyway?