As much as I might have worried about the appearance of a demon invasion or two, the next few weeks were uneventful. No more Devil Rats were reported. Even a few late-evening excursions and Scrys had revealed nothing. In the end, it seemed the appearances of the Devil Rats had been coincidental. While uncommon, it was not unusual for the demons that inhabited the Devil Rats to sneak in via cracks in our dimension. They were small enough to do so, and if left unchecked, could eventually wear the barriers away. It was possible that an unexpected shift in the barrier had allowed a bunch of these demons to sneak in. The only thing I could do was keep an eye out for more problems and kill the Rats when they popped-up. Less of them, less damage to the barrier.
During the lull, I even had time to visit a few nice apartments and apply for two. Of course, I then ran into a rather interesting problem—proving my income. I couldn’t exactly put “supernatural troubleshooter” or “mage in training” on the application forms, and “secondhand reseller” didn’t look much better. In the end, we lost out on both apartments. I couldn’t really say for sure if Alexa’s insistence on informing the landlords that we were “in no way shape or form a couple” helped or not, but I had my suspicions.
Training continued at the plodding pace that Caleb insisted on forcing on me. I couldn’t exactly say the mage was wrong in his training methods as we continued to uncover surprising gaps in what could have been construed as “basic” knowledge. Which was why we were now spending this morning walking the city and receiving a more hands-on education about ley lines and places of power after having spent all of yesterday morning receiving an academic dissertation about them.
“This is a place of power?” I asked, shaking my head as I stared at the side of a building. The mural of a floating space cat with laser beams coming out of its eyes fighting a swarm of green space aliens in superhero costumes was quite creative but not exactly what had come to mind. Wreaths and bouquets of flowers had been laid against the wall along with a single, lonely teddy bear and a scattering of candles.
“Not all places of power are places of worship. Some form due to the deeply felt emotional connection the populace has to a place. The stronger the emotion, the deeper the links.” Caleb bent down and placed his own bouquet next to the group. He waved his hand over the candles, lighting them all with a careless gesture of power before he stood.
“So, not all places of worship, but a mural?” I asked.
“No.” Caleb shifted some flowers to reveal a picture. “A place of mourning and reflection.”
“Ah,” I said. A memory tugged at me—a briefly read article about an upcoming musician, his fan base, and a tragic fight. Too young, too dumb to back down. A punch, a bad fall, and the creation of a new legend.
“Now, do you recall why places of power are important?”
“They enhance the amount of mana you can wield. The stronger the place of power, the more mana there is available to use. That lets someone with even a moderate gift wield more mana. It’s why some of the most powerful places—the pyramids, the Forbidden City, Mount Rushmore—are always warded and guarded. Don’t want a dumb wizard calling up a greater demon,” I answered.
“Good. And that’s why a competent mage studies every place of power in their city. You never know when you might require a power increase.”
“Exactly how many are there? In the city,” I said.
“Twelve grade-three, thirty-six grade-two, and one hundred and twenty eight”—Caleb nodded to the mural—“grade-ones.”
“Nothing over grade three?” I asked, and Caleb smiled thinly.
“Nothing that you need worry about.”
Asshole. Still, as Caleb walked over to the wall, I watched as he began the process of placing wards. We’d practiced it yesterday, but practice and the actual casting were different things. The first ward wasn’t particularly complicated since it was an alarm ward. It involved the initial Ward glyph and a pair of Links. The first linked the ward to the place of power and the second to the board that Caleb kept. Of course, the difficult part was the triggers, ensuring the alarm itself would not trigger randomly or due to minor fluctuations in mana flow. While in theory it was simple, in practice, you had to understand not only the power level of that particular point of power but also its normal power fluctuations and the environment surrounding it. It required significant fine-tuning, which made it perfect as a training tool for me.
The second, more powerful and complicated, ward that Caleb cast once he was done with the first was one I had no ability to lay. It basically sealed the place of power, ensuring no one could use it. It was significantly more powerful and complicated. The first ward had taken Caleb a bare five minutes to lay. The second, nearly an hour. The wards glowed for a moment more, visible to everyone before they faded away from mundane sight. Unlike the wards I normally carved out, these were runic wards that were written in glowing mana script. It required somewhat more strength to invert the wards and hide them from mundane sight, but it certainly made things easier.
“Did you see?” Caleb asked finally when he turned to me, weariness etched on his face.
“The first, sure. The second…” I trailed off, shaking my head.
“Obviously,” Caleb snorted. “Come, we will have you practice on the next section. And after that, you will take it as a quest of yours. Yes?”
“Yes,” I agreed. It was something we had discussed already—a simple quest, one that could be approved by Lily and paid for by the Mage Council. It worked for all of us; I got paid and trained up a spell, and the Mage Council got the places of power that they couldn’t be bothered to waste one of their own people on warded. All in all, it worked out quite well. I wasn’t entirely certain why they cared to ward places like this since they weren’t going to do more than keep watch, but that, when I asked, was none of my business. In fact, I knew Caleb normally wouldn’t have sealed this place of power except for the fact that he was here.
As we walked toward the car to head to the next location, I glanced over at Caleb, curiosity warring with my usual social awkwardness. In the end, curiosity won. “Why are you doing this?”
“Hmmm? I’m sure we discussed this.”
“Not the warding. The teaching,” I clarified.
“Ah.” Caleb paused, considering. “It is not as if your wish gave us much choice.”
“But why you?” I asked.
“My initial task had not been completed. Until the ring has been returned to the council, I will not receive another,” Caleb said.
“Doesn’t explain the teaching,” I said.
“Teaching you and raising your ‘level’ is the most optimal route. Once we are no longer constrained by your death, I will acquire that ring,” Caleb said simply.
“Acquire. As in kill me,” I said, looking at the mage’s impassive face. He nodded slightly, seemingly unconcerned with that. “And you’re okay with this.”
“Many of us have made questionable decisions to gain the power we have,” Caleb said after a long silence, his voice calm as he continued to speak. “That yours has constrained your enemies to act at a later date is almost admirable.”
“Huh.” I leaned back, shaking my head. I guess I somehow had a different idea of what a teacher-student relationship should be. Could be. But then again, my upbringing, my culture, set a higher importance on that relationship, almost valuing it at the same level as a familial relationship at times. To Caleb though, this was just a way of getting me up to speed so he could complete his task faster.
And of course, if he taught me, he’d know all my tricks, which would make dealing with me easier. After all, it was hard to surprise someone who’d taught you. I shivered when I realized that fact. Still, at least it explained the remoteness I always sensed when dealing with Caleb.
***
“You bring a girl to the nicest places,” Alexa said as she kicked an empty beer can down the concrete path. I looked up from the ward I was currently placing, considering the desolate skate park filled with empty beer cans, discarded hypodermic needles, and other waste and had to mentally agree with her. This was a shithole and not the worst one we’d seen. After all, locations which were currently occupied were often already warded—by local supernatural organizations or the city. Admittedly, the wards that a mosque or church might use would be different than mine, but they would be no less effective. In fact, most would be significantly more complex. It was thus no surprise that my quest mostly involved dealing with these places—locations that had been abandoned.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said.
“I definitely did.” Alexa continued to walk a circle around me. “My job is literally to babysit you.”
“Didn’t ask you to,” I grumped. Even as I was speaking, my fingers danced as they pulled and stretched at the fabric of reality, and a portion of my mind worked the Ward spell. The days of practice I had received had given me quite a bit of confidence at casting this spell.
“No. I was ordered to.” Alexa shook her head. “Child of fate and all that.”
“Child of fate?” I frowned, looking at Alexa. “Keep saying that, and I’ll get a big head.”
“Not you, idiot,” Alexa said with a roll of her eyes. “Me. Though how I got tied to you for the next little while, I have no idea.”
I worked in silence for a bit since the next part was actually tricky. I didn’t have a shortcut for the next part provided to me by Lily, so I actually had to manually cast the spell. While it wasn’t extremely different from the Link spell—and in fact, I considered it inferior in many ways—it did have much greater range. By the time I was done, another twenty minutes had finished, and I had begun to perspire. As I stood and wiped away the sweat, I considered the initiate while I rested for a bit. The next part would be even more difficult.
“Care to explain?”
“About the child of fate? It’s a term the Church uses to signify people whose presence or lack of it will alter the course of the future,” Alexa said. “Telling the future is complicated. Mostly, seers can only see the major events in a person’s life—the ones that have the greatest impact on others and places where numerous individuals are affected by an event. A child of fate is someone whose presence occurs numerous times in their visions and whose presence then affects those futures.”
“Huh. So, you’re not necessarily the agent but a catalyst? Or potentially both?”
“Yes. In fact, I’m not even supposed to know about it. It was only chance that I overheard the abbess arguing with the knights about it when I was a teenager. My choice to become a healer was not taken well.”
“Chance or fate?” I said, a slight smile on my face.
Alexa snorted but did not correct me. After all, who knew? In either case, I was kind of glad Alexa had chosen to learn some healing arts. It actually made me feel safer to be with her than if she had been a typical knight.
“Time to get back to it,” I said. Within moments, I had extracted the enchanted rods and placed them around the point of power. After that, I began the slow process of linking each rod and activating it. Once the rods were finally linked, the enchantment activated and proceeded to lay out the sealing ward. This was the difficult part since the rods required an external power source—namely me. I grunted as I felt the rods drawing on my gift, pulling mana from me in a steady flow.
An hour later, I finally sighed and relaxed as the rods shut down, the place of power finally sealed. Packing up after that was a simple enough matter, and when I finished, I dusted my hands off and waited for Alexa to fall into step with me. As we exited, I asked, “I have been wondering—what is it with the spear? Why not a gun?”
“A few reasons. Legality to start.” Alexa smiled slightly. “You can’t walk around with a gun everywhere. Here, I can just say we’re part of a medieval renaissance group.”
“But it’s sharp!”
“Is it?” Alexa offered me the spear tip. I frowned and stared at it, then realized there was a light shimmer to the spearhead. I unfocused my eyes and saw it actually looked to be capped and blunted under the glamour. Huh. Smart.
“You said a few reasons?” I asked, more curious now.
“Effectiveness. Bullets don’t hold blessings or enchantments well,” Alexa said. “When you have to fight werewolves, wights, or vampires, you really want your weapons blessed. You can’t even really use silver alloys. The silver content is so low it doesn’t really work.”
“And swords?”
“Initiates are not taught the sword till they are formally accepted as apprentices,” Alexa said. “Well, not much. We’re given the basics, but most of our focus is on the spear till then.”
Now that Alexa was talking, I took the opportunity to question her a little more about her life before we’d met. I soon learned Alexa had grown up in one of the many orphanages supported by the Templars. These orphanages were both acts of compassion as well are recruiting grounds where gifted children were drawn into the fold. Once she started reminiscing about her time in the orphanages, the normally quiet blonde started gushing, content to relive happier memories.
In time, our conversation turned into more of a trade. Alexa was definitely curious about my life as an only child in the outside world.
“After that, pets were banned in our house,” I said, finishing my story of poor Tut, the turtle. I was still sore about it so many years later. We had arrived at our next and last destination for the day. Thus far, I could only complete three a day at best, often less. “So, what’s your guess?”
Alexa frowned as she surveyed the empty parking lot, a single car the only other source of company for us. A short distance away, a twenty-four-hour convenience store was the sole occupant of a strip mall. Once more, Alexa looked around, trying to discern a clue about why a place of power would be located here. However, the empty parking lot gave few clues.
“Must be a ley line thing,” Alexa said eventually.
“Mmm…” was my only answer. I frowned and focused my sight. Over time, I had learned I could actually sharpen my mystical sight, allowing me to “see” more of the supernatural world. Spirits, ghosts, ley lines—all those appeared. Of course, there was a price. Within seconds, a throbbing headache made its presence known, but I was able to verify Alexa’s guess. The ley line was weird, floating just about twelve feet off the ground before dipping to the earth and pooling at the place of power before sweeping upward again, its shimmering illumination a reminder of pictures of the aurora borealis. As I considered the best way to ward this rather large place of power, a shout interrupted my thoughts.
“Hey, you! What are you doing here?”
The speaker was a rather large, rotund gentleman clad in a T-shirt that depicted a bat tearing free from chains and dripping in blood. I was not able to read the stylized name on the front but had no doubt it’d be some heavy metal band. A lanky man, who desperately needed to wash his greasy long hair, flanked his left while on the right, a short, spectacled South Asian walked.
“Uhh…” I said, feeling caught by the abrupt question.
“What’s it to you?” Alexa replied, squaring off with them and jutting out her chin aggressively.
“This is our place,” the initial speaker said as he continued to walk toward us. As he neared, his spectacled compatriot suddenly frowned and tugged on his arm, slowing him to whisper in his ear. A moment later, the leader glared at me.
Weird. I hadn’t done anything to attract his attention. Beside me, Alexa frowned at her arm where a gold bracelet rested. It had been a recent addition to her arsenal, an enchanted bracelet. When I looked at the bracelet, I noted the glow around the enchantment had increased as it activated. On instinct, I focused on the group and allowed my sight to sharpen.
Faint, so faint I had missed it in the beginning, a low glow of power shrouded each of the individuals walking toward us. I knew that glow. It was the same kind I gave off, like a beacon. Training with Caleb had reduced the glow somewhat, but still, my power overflowed my control. These guys did not suffer that same issue; their power a faint trace in the air. Unlike Caleb, I’d have had to say it was a lack of power rather than great control. I wasn’t particularly surprised to see that the glow surrounded all three of them. Those with power, no matter how little, had a tendency to clump together. In a city as large as ours, those with traces of magic had a tendency to find one another, and sometimes, they even managed to form their own baby cults. As Caleb had said, none of them really had enough power to do more than light some candles, but it sure made fooling mundanes easy. Remembering the look Specs had given me, I mentally added “the sight” to their abilities.
“Really? Your parking lot? I hadn’t realized that Lumin Parking had hired teenagers,” Alexa said.
“You—” The leader stopped, looking at the bag I was carrying over my shoulder and then back at Alexa. “You’re the ones sealing off the places, aren’t you?”
“What’s it to you?” I asked.
“Last warning. Get the hell out of here,” Greasy Hair said as the group stopped a bare ten feet from us.
Alexa continued to look bored, though I noted how she let a hand shift to touch the concealed baton in her back pocket.
“Or what?” I asked.
Without speaking further, the pair placed their hands on the rotund boy’s shoulders. Within seconds, their leader had begun chanting and moving his fingers, and in the center of his hands, floating in front of him, a small ball of fire bloomed. I had to admit I was a touch jealous. I didn’t have a Fireball spell. On the other hand, it took the combined strength of all three of them to cast it.
“Seriously?” I muttered and raised my hand. I recalled my Alter Temperature spell, quickly judged the distance to them, and then cast it.
Alter Temperature Cast
Synchronicity 83%
In a sphere that perfectly enveloped their Fireball, my Alter Temperature spell formed, and I began to forcibly lower its temperature. I watched as the trio gritted their teeth, fighting my spell, but as I had already noted, the trio possessed very little actual oomph. Hell, I doubted they individually registered on Lily’s scale of mana control. Within seconds, their Fireball fizzled and died, and the three flinched back together as one as the spell snapped apart. Having failed at spellcasting before, I knew how much it stung.
“Nice party trick. Now, scram!” I said. My fingers flicked and twisted, and a Force Bolt formed in my hand, blue-and-white streaks of power running along its edge. This was a pure affectation of course since a properly cast Force Bolt was actually nearly transparent.
“This isn’t over!” the leader shouted as his friends backed off, staring at me warily.
I stared at the group and then casually tossed the Force Bolt at them, guiding it to impact the ground near their retreating feet. That was incentive enough to send the trio scrambling away, and I sighed, shaking my head. “Idiots.”
“Yes. So, you think they’ve been coming out here to do dastardly deeds?” Alexa asked, a smile dancing on her lips. “Maybe a few black magic rituals to impress the girls?”
“If they knew any, sure,” I said, chuckling. “Keep an eye out? I’ll ward and seal this place, and then we can go home.”
“Of course,” Alexa replied as she settled down to watch.
“Sushi for dinner?”
“Sounds lovely. I’ll make the call.”