“Enemy attack! Carriages, move now!” cried a human sitting atop the first carriage.

The driver lashed the horses, and the first carriage rumbled forward.

“Shit,” I said, summoning the flame into my right hand and creating a spear. I threw the spear down. It hit the driver of the first carriage in the head and bored straight through.

Without a driver, the horses did not stop but continued to run forward. Unsure what to do, I fired another spear at the front left carriage wheel. It exploded, and the carriage crashed to the ground. The torque from the movement caused the horses to fly to the side. The carriage, pushed by momentum, continued on. When the dust settled, the carriage was blocking off the street enough that the other carriages would be unable to get past.

Shadows were moving below me, but I ignored them, instead turning my attention to the other carriage. I started summoning another spear when an arrow flew out of the night sky and struck me in the chest. I fell backward, coughing. I looked down, and the fear left me when I saw that the arrow hadn’t pierced through the magic-blessed clothing Uncle Finneus had given me. I reached up and rubbed the bruise that was already starting to form. I crawled forward and peered over the lip of the window. An archer stood on top of the second carriage, scanning the environment for any movement. The human must have thought his shot had killed me. His head jerked to the side, and a small black cat leaped from the alleyway and walked up to the carriage. While he was distracted, I stood up and drew in fire, hurling a massive ball of fire at the archer.

At the last second, the archer sensed the fire magic heading his way and leaped off the carriage. The fireball exploded on top of the carriage and caught it on fire. “Shit, which can’t be good,” I muttered, tracking the man as he rolled to his feet and drew another arrow.

I snarled under my breath and threw two more spears, which he dodged with ease, before firing arrows back at me. I ducked beneath the windowsill as the arrow flew past, embedding itself into the wall behind me. Annoyed, I crawled to the window adjacent to mine and looked out. The man appeared to be waiting for my head to pop up to fill me like a pincushion, as he held his bow taut, arrow aimed at the other window. Pulling from an idea I had read in ‘The Magic of the Codex,’ I took a breath and began to spit out small embers of fire. It took a second to fill the room with embers, and I had to make sure I had firm control over the magic so as not to burn down the building I was in. Such concentration made me dizzy, but the archer had to die, so I did not have much choice. I separated the embers into three distinct spells, then directed their destination point around the archer, one to the left, one to the right, and one to the point in space where he was standing. Pushing through the difficulty in concentrating, I released the spells. They swirled in response and flew out the windows, breaking the glass as they went. It looked like a crowd of fireflies dancing in the wind. The archer tried to dodge but rolled into the path of the second spell. The embers tore holes through his body as they tried to reach the set point, I had created for them.

I let out an exhausted sigh and leaned against the wall. An explosion on the stairs right outside the door of the room I was in, rocked the building. The inferno trap I had placed there must have exploded. I dragged myself to my feet and, gathering my strength, leaped out of the window. I landed and rolled, displacing the impact, and moved to find cover along the road.

“The fire mage is on the street! The fire mage is on the street!” came a cry to my right.

Right before I rounded the corner, I sent a blast of flame in the direction of the voice. Inside the alleyway, I hid behind a stack of crates and drew my dagger, trying to regain my composure. The magic to kill the bowman had taken far more out of me than I had expected, and the future use of my gift was questionable at best. I hugged the stack of boxes, holding my dagger at the ready. There was the sound of footsteps, then a dwarf appeared holding a whip. I brought my left hand up and threw a bit of fire into his eyes. He cursed as his hair caught fire. I tackled him and started stabbing.

A club crashed into my right side and sent me crashing down the alleyway. I groaned and rolled to my feet, stabbing blindly in front of me. I struck nothing but air. Raising my head, I saw three dwarves standing a few paces in front of me.

"It appears you are all out of magic, mage," chuckled the dwarf in the middle.

"Why don’t you put down the knife and come quietly?" said the one on the right.

"Having a mage to sell would make up for all the damage you have caused," muttered the one on the left.

The dwarf in the middle raised his crossbow to show how little control I had in the situation. "There’s no reason for us to put you down here, lad. Let us take you, and you’ll live to see another day. If you don’t put down that knife, we'll put so many holes in you, even a god wouldn’t be able to save you from death."

I tried to calm myself by breathing, but I just couldn’t bring my frazzled lungs to bear. I reached for the fire, but all I got was a lancing pain shooting into my head. Frustrated, I pulled my arm back and threw the knife at the dwarf. There was a twang as the crossbow fired, and a burning pain shot up my right arm. My knife spun end over end and stuck into the stack of boxes I had been hiding behind earlier.

The dwarf on the right laughed, while I groaned at the pain from the arrow in my shoulder. My clothes should have protected me, but it appeared that they had been exhausted of magic. "Balor, he dropped the knife like you said," said the dwarf to the right.

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The dwarf in the middle grinned. "I believe we will have to beat him a bit until he learns how to follow directions. We can’t sell such a poorly educated product, after all."

The dwarf stepped forward, then stopped as the blade of a rapier appeared to grow out of his chest and then disappeared just as quickly. Uncle Finneus spun, cutting into the neck of the dwarf on the right. Moving faster than any elf should, he jumped and pushed off the side wall of the alley, flipping up and behind the last dwarf, whom he then stabbed through. The blade disappeared back into the cane, and humming a merry tune, Uncle Finneus, still in his disguised form, walked over to check on me, as I had collapsed after seeing my rescue, exhausted.

"You alive, Nephew?" he asked.

I nodded and cracked a small smile, lying on the hard cobblestones. "Did we win?"

Uncle Finneus chuckled. "Of course, we won, child. Now come along; we need to get these people over to Alessandro before anyone else can get involved."

He reached down to help me up, but I stopped him. "They shot me in the arm, and I can’t feel my fingers."

Uncle Finneus reached into the small bag on his waist and pulled out a red liquid, which he poured onto the arrow. "Hold still, Bartholomew, it will be over in a second."

He was right; I didn’t even see his hands move as he snapped the arrow and pulled it through the wound. The pain that shot up my arm let me know, though, and I tried pulling away. Uncle Finneus would not let me go and held my arm in an iron grip as he poured more of the potion into the now gaping wound. "Calm yourself; the pain will disappear momentarily," he said.

He then grabbed another container from his pocket and dumped an unknown powder into the wound. Grabbing a cloth, he wrapped the wound up nice and tight, making me wince. The powder felt like it was burning my muscles, like the way whisky feels on a cold day as it coats your throat for the first time. Not allowing me any more time to recover, Uncle Finneus pulled me to my feet. "Come along, Nephew. We still have many things to do, and the night is growing late."

I sighed and followed behind my uncle, promising myself I would write a strongly worded letter to my mother about the dangers Uncle Finneus was putting me through.

End of Chapter??

We made it out of the alley, and I saw Alturo already directing the victims within the first carriage into the second and third ones. "How are we getting past the first carriage?" I asked Uncle Finneus. "Oh, and did you find Gabriela? All this chaos made me forget why we were here in the first place."

"That, nephew, is for you to figure out. As for Gabriela," he pointed to a small woman sitting in the

driver's spot of one of the carriages. "We were successful in our mission."

By the time we arrived in front of the Magic Society's front gates, the sun was already beginning to rise. Uncle Finneus turned to Gabriela, a beautiful if short woman with long black hair and sharp features. "Will you be able to handle the rest from here? I do not wish to deal with the Society's politics at the moment; I have many better things to do with my time."

The woman shrugged, then nodded. "Even if you disguise yourself, the cane gives you away. You know that, right? I understand, thank you for saving us."

Uncle Finneus smiled. "Tell your husband that he owes me."

With that, Uncle Finneus signaled for me to follow him, and off we went. We took a meandering route on our way out of the place. There were far too many right turns for us to be going anywhere directly. After about ten minutes of wandering around, we turned down a random alleyway, and Uncle Finneus stopped. He reached into his bag and pulled out a glass vial filled with a milky liquid. "Bartholomew, we need to remove that mask before we do anything else."

"What is that?" I asked, pointing to the vial.

Uncle Finneus shook the vial in his hand, swirling the liquid. The movement caused the contents to spark, shifting from white into gold, then green, then back to white. "This is a reagent that will remove that mask from your face. I’ll have to teach you how to make them both if you are going to continue helping me with my cases."

I grinned. "I mean, I don’t have anything better to do, I guess."

Uncle Finneus poured the contents of the vial on my face, and the mask melted off, falling to the ground like soggy pie crust. When I looked back up, Uncle Finneus had returned to his original form. He looked no worse for the wear. It was as if the entire night of fighting had not happened. I sighed and followed my uncle out of the alleyway. We returned, using a direct route. Once inside the house, Uncle Finneus went to his normal seat in the sitting room and immediately fell into deep thought. I, on the other hand, went straight to my room, locked the door, closed the curtains, and threw myself on the bed. I was asleep before my head landed on the pillow.

When I awoke, it was still light outside. I wanted to sleep for a few more hours but decided if I wanted to get any sleep tonight, I needed to move around for a bit. 'Maybe I could go to the bakery for a bit,' I thought to myself as I showered and dressed. When I walked into the study, I found Uncle Finneus pacing back and forth with manic energy.

"Is something the matter, Uncle Finneus?" I asked.

"Ahh, Nephew, you are awake. Yes, I appear to have hit a blockade in my thinking. I need more information to understand exactly what is going on."

It seemed like it was going to be a longer conversation, so I went ahead and took a seat in one of the more comfortable chairs that faced my pacing uncle. "Is this a new case already? Or are you still focusing on the Auction House?"

Uncle Finneus waved a hand as he turned his back to me. "How could I move on when there is still so much left to be answered? How did they manage to capture and hold a wizard that quickly? Where are the people being smuggled to? Is there a client list? Is the magic society involved in any of this, and how did they learn to keep watch over the company?" Uncle Finneus sped up his pacing and speech as he grew more excited. "Yes, yes, while I understand some of it, there are too many loose ends to understand the whole picture at the moment. There are some variable I am missing in all of this."

I started raising my hand to ask a question, then quickly pulled it down, feeling silly. "Couldn’t we just ask Alessandro or his wife those questions?"

As my words left my mouth, there was a ring at the door. Uncle Finneus grinned at me. "You speak things into reality, nephew. That should be both Alessandro and Gabriela at the door as we speak. They’ll be helping us to finish uncovering all the information we are missing in this case. We might even be able to collapse the trafficking organization. I’ll put the kettle on if you could go open the door and invite them in."

I shrugged and went over, opening the door. There stood Alessandro, with his white fluffy ears, his top hat, and his suit coat. Next to him was the short dark-haired woman we had rescued last night.

I offered a smile and a short bow “Hello Allesandro, Gabriela. Please come in, we are just making tea.”