Prologue - A Rotary Telephone

“Mom, I’m going to see the festival!” Fenn called, his right foot already crossing the threshold.

“Okay, just be careful!” his mom replied, though he barely heard her, taking off down the street as he was.

Fenn barrelled down the street towards town square, where the townspeople were celebrating the eve of Dusk’s Bane. As he got closer he started to see carts and stalls selling food and masks in bright colors, some with games and prizes. A broad grin spread across Fenn’s face as the infectious cheer of the festival took him in.

A few short minutes later he had used some of his sparse allowance to purchase a brightly colored Fox-bear Mask and a piece of honey candy. He stood to the side of a small area and watched the older boys playing heroes and bandits, they wouldn’t let him play because he was too young. Suddenly something caught his eye from around the corner of a building, a strange looking cart. He made his way over to the cart to see what it was. He rounded the corner to see a gnarled crooked cart full of trinkets and odd jewelry, manned by a similarly gnarled crooked old man wearing long robes and a tattered pointed hat.

“Excuse me mister, what is it that you sell?” Fenn intoned, perched up on his tiptoes in order to see the vendor behind his cart.

“Oh, why hello young customer. I am a purveyor of fine magics and enchantments. Could I, perhaps, interest you in a luck-stone bracelet or ring?” the old man answered, a broad smile joining his face. “Or perhaps a band of iron to ward away wicked sprites and wild spirits?”

“What is magic, mister?” Fenn inquired, more or less ignoring the man’s sales pitch.

“Ah, I am so terribly glad you asked!” the man said, as he perked up his salesman’s smile seeming to become more genuine. “Magic is wonder, it is whimsy, every tree in a forest, every stone in a mountain, it is every beast, and every grain of sand. Magic, my dear customer, is everything, but it is also how we change everything!” He punctuated his words with a brilliant flash of light at his fingertips, a spray of stars cast outward before fading from view.

“Wow! Amazing!” Fenn cried, jumping up and down, “How did you do that, mister?”

The man smirked and said, “Why, dear customer, with a little bit of magic anything is possible.” Fenn stood and stared with awe and wonder apparent in his eyes as his mind began racing with possibilities. His excitement boiled over into a broad smile splitting his face in half, followed shortly by a question.

“Can you teach me!?” he squealed, expectation clear in his voice. It would unfortunately not be met with satisfaction.

“Sorry kid, there are rules regarding these things. I can’t teach you. You’ll have to go to one of the colleges if you want to learn magic.” the vendor lamented, a sour mood overtaking his face and Fenn’s. “Tell you what I can do though, I have many magical trinkets and baubles for sale. Perhaps you could get one to begin your collection!”

“Okay.” Fenn answered, thoroughly subdued. “What can I get with this much?” he asked, dumping the remaining 3 coins of his festival allowance.

“Oh,” the vendor’s brow creased in thought, “Uhmm, oh! How about this pendant of Liquid Light! An alchemical solution to light your way even when the sun cannot.” he offered.

“Yeah, yeah! Wow, so cool!” Fenn cheered, claiming his new amulet with gusto and placing it about his neck triumphantly. “I’m gonna go to a super, incredible college and learn really amazing magic, and do a bunch of super wonderful and magical things!” He shouted and hollered about all the things he would do with his great cosmic power the whole way home, a dusty old wizard’s sigh far behind him.

=====

“I’m really sorry Fenn, we just don’t have the money to pay for tuition.” Fenn’s mother remarked, apologetically. “Magic just isn’t meant for people like us.”

“But Mom, I wanna learn magic!” Fenn complained, face contorted into a failed attempt at twisted rage.

“There’s nothing I can do about it, Fenn.” she sighed.

Angry and pouting, Fenn stomped off towards the forest slamming the front door behind him. By the time he made it to the treeline by the edge of town his face had noticeably relaxed as he tired of holding his frown in place. He continued on into the forest, he wasn’t supposed to go into the forest alone, but right now he didn’t care. He pressed on through the undergrowth slowly growing more and more tired until eventually, he realised he may have made a mistake in going to the woods alone. He was lost, tired, hungry, alone, and the colors of dusk tainted the sky teasing the coming of night. 

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Night brings with it monsters of all kinds, such as malicious spirits, and wicked goblins. Fenn knew this, but it was only now sinking in that he would soon be confirming this knowledge firsthand, something he very much did not want to do. 

“I just wanted to learn magic.” he muttered under his breath, letting his words drop quietly upon the deaf ears of the many plants around him. There was one creature, however, which heard him despite his lack of volume. A small fairy flew from above, dropping right in front of his face quicker than he could see.

“Poor thing, you can’t do magic?” they intoned in a small high squeak of a voice, “That is truly a tragedy of grand proportions!” The boy flinched, and pulled back once his brain caught up to what was going on.

“Ahh!” he yelled, tripping over a root and falling backward onto the ground and scrambling to drag himself further. “A f-fairy!”

“What an incredible feat of perception.” they deadpanned sardonically. “What else would I be, boy.”

Fenn stilled, taking the moment to inspect the entity before him. The fairy hovered in the air before him, a bare few inches tall with thin limbs, sharp ears, and wings like a dragonfly. The finer details of their face and form were obscured by a shroud of faint opalescent light, mirrored in the fairy’s brightly glowing eyes. 

“I don't know…” he replied, fear and suspicion dripping from his voice. “Who are you?”

“My name is Lem!” they answered excitedly, “What is yours?” they asked, all of the disdain from mere seconds ago entirely absent from their voice.

“Um, I’m Fenn” he mumbled, fear apparent in his tone. Lem’s ever present smirk widened ever so slightly in anticipation, the corners turned down once they realized he was done with his introduction.

“Well Fenn, it is quite fortuitous that we met today!” Lem exclaimed, “For I may just have the solution to your little problem!”

Fenn sat still for a long moment before his eyes widened at the realization of what it was that the fairy meant to imply. “Can you teach me magic!” he shouted, the bright eyed wonder chasing the boy’s fears away from his mind.

“No.” the fairy declined, stamping out his excitement before it could grow too grand. “There are quite a few rules that prevent such things, I’m afraid. I do, however, know of a way to contact beings from beyond, such that one might implore to be given some fraction of their  understanding of the arcane secrets of the universe.”

“So… if I ask one of them they might teach me magic?” he asked, daring to be hopeful one more time.

“They might…” Lem said cautiously, “Or they might take offense to your asking and send unimaginable terrors to rend you limb from limb! I will make no assertions as to the temperament of such creatures.” They warned, a mischievous grin stretched across their face. “You will need to unveil the true name of the creature you wish to invoke, if you are to use the artifact that I had in mind. Under NO circumstances are you to invoke a name whose owner you do not know.”

The fairy’s countenance had turned cold with its final warning. The vibrant glow of their entire being gone icy blue, a chilling aura pressing down upon Fenn where he sat. The boy froze chilled to the bone, all levity and excitement gone from the air. The fairy’s demeanor shifted back to joyous in an instant, the chill and stillness gone from the air once more.

“Shall I take you to it?” they asked.

“What is it?” he wondered, “What kind of artifact can do something so incredible?!”

“I’ll show you!” they said, and then they took off into the woods. Fenn scrambled to his feet to chase after them. They bobbed and weaved in and out of bushes and brambles. Fenn struggled to keep up with the brisk pace in the waning light of dusk. He tripped on a root and stumbled to the ground dirt caked into his palms, as he lost track of the fairy through a dense thicket of trees. 

“Wait!” he cried, scrambling to stand. “Lem! Wait for me!” He finally made it back to his feet and stumbled through the gaps in between the trees ahead. A branch found his face with a light ‘thwack’, blinding him to the line of fungal growths he stepped across. The air warmed with the advent of a calm breeze. Impossible sunlight dappled the stony brook intersecting a broad clearing under a dense canopy of deep greens and golds. Lem waited at the center of the clearing, tapping their foot impatiently upon nothing but air.

“Sure took your time, Fenn.” they remarked, annoyance clear in their tone. “Come on, just in here!” They twirled in the air and flew towards a small dip in the ground, which extended into a cave grander than the space it should have sat within. Inside the underground expanse, resting within a beam of sunlight through a hole in the cavern ceiling, sat a pedestal ornately carved from brilliant white stone in filigrees and reliefs of arcane sigils. Upon the pedestal was an artifact of great curiosity, a bright red glossy shelled rotary telephone.

=====

Julia was wearing thin. Her son, Fenn, had stormed out after being told he wouldn’t be able to learn magic and hadn’t come back. The baker Thomas’ daughter had seen him storm off into the forest west of the village that evening. Several of the village's strongest fighters took a skilled tracker into the woods to brave the fearsome dark and track his trail. Much to Julia’s and everyone’s horror they discovered that his path stopped dead without a trace a half-hours walk from the village. Her son had been spirited away into the dark of night. 

Julia did not stop looking, combing every tree and bush along his trail for five days until her eldest son Gren finally convinced her to rest, to accept that Fenn was gone. She broke then, to lose her husband to the dark of the night took nearly all she had, now to lose her youngest son as well took what little she had left. She slept for days, barely able to leave her bed most days.

Three weeks to the day after he had vanished, Fenn walked back into town, completely unharmed if caked in mud. The boy told of a conversation with a spirit, a magical grove in the forest, and swore that only a few hours at most had passed since he had left.