Harstad was not the worst place in the world that Bob could have ended up in. It was more "exotic" than working as a Spell-Cracker in Bettendorf, Iowa, or a small town in the Dakotas. A town above the arctic circle in Northern Norway, Harstad like most of the world was in dire need of magical knowhow but similarly to most of the world lacked it. It was also "close" to one of the major magical capitals in the world, Kautokeino. The center for all studies into Sami Magic. Those had been the reasons he had applied despite not being Norwegian or having much of an interest in living in Norway.
"Pad out my resume I said, work in a better location. See the world I said."
Bob grumbled as he knelt down to examine the black Tesla that was stuck to the ground like chewing gum against the sidewalk. Lexie on her end was busying herself by standing on top of the car and preening while being watched by the local magpies. The car was parked right outside of a large suburban home in the neighborhood known as Medkila, which used to be the haunt for a lot of employees of the Norwegian state oil company Equinor.
"Why is someone who is rich enough to have a house and a car like these getting back-alley enchanting jobs!"
He complained loudly as he tried to search where the runes had been carved. The owner had been a preppy-looking fellow named Einar Kaarbø who had complained endlessly about how long it had taken Bob to arrive at his house.
"I am supposed to be in a meeting as we speak and I should have been driving 20 minutes ago."
That had been his exact complaint which Bob had mostly shrugged off before Einar got into a cab and left him alone to deal with the car. Now, that he was knelt down in the half-melted snow in the driveway, he could truly appreciate the idiocy of the man as his mini-flashlight revealed a tiny magical diagram written with some kind of white marker.
"Lexie! Lexie gets down here, you won't believe it. Whoever, did this job used fucking marker to write runes down by the tires."
Bob almost laughed as he stared down at the little cluster of three runes all connected with a spiral pattern...or at least they had been connected before the bottom end of the spiral had been scratched away. The bird flitted down and walked underneath the car to have a look as well, at which point she giggled.
"So, whatever this thing was supposed to do...how much do you want to bet that it was loose pebbles that scratched away the marker?"
"I am not taking that bet, Lexie. Gravel, ice, pebbles, just regular wear and tear from having this written right next to a car tire. It could have been a ton of shit, but that trying to set up an enchantment with something so fragile in such a high wear and tear place...well that is certainly some idea."
Bob pulled out his smartphone and took a picture of the little cluster. Even if the fault was obvious he still needed to consult with the internet to see if he could figure out how to fix it. He extracted himself from beneath the vehicle, dusted off his clothes, and then used the image with "Spell Checker Image Search".
"Norse runes, yeah I got as much. Inguz, Ehwaz, and Algiz."
He mumbled as he read the possible results that came up on the app while pacing back and forth before turning to Lexie.
"I am just spitballing, but here is my best guess. The idiot over here probably has defective brakes, but instead of paying for car repair and a legal enchantment. He looks up something online to do as a temporary patch on the problem. This enchantment is put to basically make the brakes functional, when he brakes the magic kicks in and helps slow the car down."
Lexie dips her head in a nod and gestures with her left wing when Bob stops up and goes silent for a few moments, clearly to make him continue rather than stand there in silence.
"Anyway, the enchantment marks have been chipped disconnecting the transportation rune from the rest. So the magic is channeled purely into the runes meant to represent speed and protection. Protection from speed and without a proper regulator the magic is just permanently on leaving the car utterly stuck in place. Makes sense?"
"Erm....yeah. Sounds like it. By the way, you were wrong about this guy working at City Hall!"
Lexie snapped smugly at Bob who pffted in response before turning to the car.
"Dispelling an enchantment is not going to be easy, permanence is a bitch to deal with."
Bob took out a notepad and used the car's trunk as an impromptu table. He consulted the internet to see if anyone had reported a good fix to this or at least some kind of temporary workaround. After spending ten minutes searching the internet he called up the owner.
"I can't do a permanent fix from here. The equipment and setup needed to remove an honest-to-god enchantment is not something that I thought to bring with me. But, I at least found a decent workaround. I will leave a note here with a simple leeching spell that will drain out enough of the magic from the enchantment that you can tow the car to a proper mechanic with a dedicated automobile enchanter on staff. That's all I can do...sorry."
He then promptly hung up the call as he stuck the paper note, with the spell he copied down from the internet, to the window of the car. Lexie flapped onto Bob's shoulder and the duo then went back to their car and drove off.
"One down, two more to go."
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"Wow."
Bob whistled and winced as he saw the problem at hand. After the car issue, the next one was at a local elementary and middle school near the largest shopping mall in the municipality. The problem was obvious and he couldn't help but smirk as he looked at the school building.
"Some little fucker has decided to go big with a prank this time."
Lexie remarked as she canted her head to follow the undulating layers of paint on the building. Bob coudln't disagree with that as he saw the entire wall of the building shift and spell out various insults and unflattering images towards who he suspected were the faculty at the school.
"Are you gonna brute force it?"
"No. Or at least not yet, in the message I received it was explained to me that they tried a standard dispellation wand before putting out the call. Something tells me we are dealing with a homebrew rather than something cobbled down from the internet. Or at least something more sophisticated than what we see on average."
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Bob started stepping towards the building while pulling on a pair of glasses with unusually shining lenses. The silver frame supported a pair of mirror lenses that had been treated in various alchemical mixtures. With them on the world shifted to allow Bob to more clearly see magical energies. He could see the crisscrossing of energy radiating through the paint layers on the wall, practically coating the entire building and forcing the paint to shift in composition.
"Welp, at least the prankster didn't put on a cloaking effect. That makes my job much easier."
He muttered to himself while pointedly ignoring some of the teachers approaching him from the entrance to the school. All the lines of energy led away from the building and he would just have to follow them. It did not take long to find where they spell originated from.
"The sandbox? Really?"
"Well if you think about it Bob, it is actually rather clever. Hide the spell there cuz the sand is too frozen for the young children to play with, and yet nobody would expect anyone to put down spellwork in sand."
Lexie pointed out sanguinely as they stood in front of the sandbox. Bob withdrew a small brush from his tool bag and began searching through the sandbox, brushing away the light coating of snow and loose sand until he found the diagram written on the ground. He kept himself from whistling this time.
"Interesting, our little delinquent here must have carved the spell diagram into the frozen sand."
"What I find more interesting is how you are going to fix this one. The entire set up must have been made with a compass and a tonne of numbers, and you Bob...you suck at math."
"I do not suck at math...I am just more of a humanities man! Anyway, this set up is interesting."
What the two had discovered was a perfectly symmetrical circle drawn in the sand with a series of numbers surrounding it and within the circle several geometric shapes were linked together to form the letters: F U.
"Yeah...I am going to need some pondering time here. But I can help you find the guilty child."
Bob turned from the complex circle to smile at the teachers as he pulled out a little jar from his bag. The jar contained several small frogs floating in pickle juice and he grimaced as he uncorked the lid and the rancid smell hit him along with the assembled school staff like a punch to the gut.
"Ugh...elrgh I forgot how badly these smelled."
He groaned as he pulled out a frog from the liquid, put on the lid again and then pressed the frog against his lips. Before putting the little creature down in the center of the spell circle.
"Erm...Bob...what are you doing with that frog exactly?"
One of the older teachers who looked to be in her mid 50s asked him and he grimaced as he replied.
"This here is a frog homunculus. Mostly useless and totally harmless but it has one quite neat function..."
Before he could finish his explanation to the audience the frog seemingly came to as it stood up and ribbted loudly once before standing stock still. Several of the teachers gasped in response and Bob couldn't help but roll his eyes behind his glasses before continuing.
"It tracks magical signatures back to their source if they are in the nearby area. Which I think it is safe to assume that they are. So you just have to take this little fellow here with you, it will start croaking when it is getting near the source. It will expire in about fifteen minutes, so I recommend being quick about it."
The teacher who had asked Bob about the frogs stepped over and gingerly took the frog into her hands before stepping back towards the school building.
"The rest of you can also go, it is going to take me a while to solve this."
Bob explained to the remaining teachers who hesitated for a bit before leaving him to his work. He turned back towards the assembled numbers and shapes and cracked his fingers.
"Now then. Lets try to find the off-switch on this thing shall we."
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Thirty minutes later the duo drove through the rain towards the town center in stony silence.
"Bob, you didn't have to blast the thing just because you couldn't figure out the math."
"It was not because of math!"
He angrily hit the dashboard of his car in anger while glancing over the Clarke's Nutcracker standing beside him in the car.
"That little shit had encrypted the spell and I couldn't figure out the key that would let me circumvent the defenses. It resisted conventional disspellation magic and it even was self modifying. What fucking twelve year old puts down self modifying magic as a childish prank?"
"Smart ones?"
Bob could practically feel the grin radiating through his familiar bond with Lexie as he turned his attention back to the road. It had been a nightmare trying to figure out how to fix the spell issue. First, he had tried to find the "off-switch", but that had not worked out due to the spell having a complex encryption that made it hard to pin point a flaw in the spell. Then, he had attempted to dispel it with both his gloves and then when those failed he tried a ritual to do it instead.
Dispelling it had failed as the setup had clearly involved some kind of countermeasure to make it safe from basic attempts at removing the magic. When those attempts had failed he then pulled out a flexible plate made out of an aluminium-lead alloy that was made specifically to isolate magical sites from their effects. He had draped the plate over the little spell circle like a dome and to his astonishment the magical tendrils had dug through the earth under the dome to get to the paint rather than being hindered by the anti-magic dome.
So, he had blasted the site with a high-pressured water house that he loaned from the school janitor and he had stood there for a good five minutes just pumping water at the frozen sand until the entire thing was shattered and the magic was thus broken. Thankfully, without any kind of magical backlash hitting him as a result.
"The last of our outcalls are close to city hall at least. It is a "haunting" at the new local office of the Green Party."
Bob remarked as he checked his phone after they had driven into the town proper.
"Don't be an ass Bob, it could be a ghost."
"We have no conclusive evidence of actual ghosts being real. Temporary magical manifestations that look like the spirits of the deceased, yes, the actual spirits of deceased people? No."
"Tonnes of different mages believe in the existence of spirits and such. I am a bird who borrows sapience from you through a magical contract, you can't exactly say that was normal before the great unveiling."
"Lots of people believe in lots of things that does not automatically make those beliefs valid."
"Don't be a douchebag Bob."
The two verbally sparred as they got closer to the office building where the Green Party rented locales. Lexie in a chiding manner while Bob was more visibly annoyed in his responses. Outside of the entrance stood a tall woman with her orange hair tied up in a ponytail and a huge pair of glasses.
"Are you Amanda?"
Bob asked as he stepped out of his car after parking it, the woman blanched for a second before offering an uncertain smile and a nod.
"Oh you are the American one..."
"Yes. Anyway, can you tell me about the thing going on in there."
He pointed to the window where he could see an office with the furniture and various paraphernalia scattered throughout the room. The party representative grimaced and looked back.
"Well, whenever we enter the office the temperature drops and stuff is tossed at us. Furniture rattles, the curtains are janked back and forth. To mention a few things. One of our own tried to deal with the problem, but it didn't work out."
Bob took up his notepad and carefully scribbled down as he listened to her before he began to walk towards the entrance door into the building. Amanda unlocked and door and led him through to the corridor adjacent to the office. They stopped at the door leading into the office and Lexie jumped off his shoulder.
"I'm not getting into it with a haunting spectre. I am too adorable to be pelted with office supplies."
She chirped vainly at him and Bob rolled his eyes before putting his silver glasses on again.
"Welp, here goes nothing. Unlock the door, Amanda."
Amanda slipped a key into the door and quickly pushed it open. Bob took a deep breath and stepped into the office, while glancing about to see if he saw anything useful. At which point he got a binder flying right into his forehead that sent him stumbling backwards. The light in the room dimmed unnaturally as the desks and chairs began to vibrate, howling shrieks filled the air and office supplies flew at him like a swarm of attack sparrows.
"What the f-"
Bob yelped and practically dove out of the room before he could be hit by one of the lighter chairs and Amanda helpfully closed the door behind him.
"Okay...that was worse than expected."
Lexie chirped in amusement as Bob panted that out and he glared at his little familiar.