Daniel fiddled with the small vial in his pocket as he walked past the cubicles. It was kind of fun to take on a job as easy as this. No secrets to steal. No complicated wish to grant. All he had to do was kill one person. He didn't even need to dress up for it, since a simple illusion was more than enough to make everyone think he belonged. All he had to do was keep walking along the path the spell had laid out for him until he reached that perfect moment with the target's coffee right in front of him and everyone's eyes pointed elsewhere.
He saw the cup being put down a few yards ahead, and the wizard pulled the potion from his pocket. It wouldn't even show up on an autopsy. The mundane chemistry of the substance had nothing to do with its effect upon the target. It was almost funny it was so easy.
And then someone bumped into Daniel, knocking him over. And something sharp jabbed into the back of his shoulder. It hurt for a second, but then it just went numb. By the time he was back on his feet, his whole body was feeling numb.
"Come along now," said the man who had crashed into him. "It's no small thing to capture a wizard, so we poured everything we had into that nail. Trust me, unless you came here ready for a freaking ragnarok, there is nothing in your bag of tricks that can thwart that much overkill."
Daniel spotted a tattoo on the man's wrist before his vision started to go blurry. It depicted a scythe and a battle axe crossed diagonally. Beneath them were the Avalonian words “Belthenkelng tra Mishernsra” and in the middle of the crossed weapons there was a torch. "Helsing, huh?" he said. "Aren't you supposed to be extinct? I thought you were all tossed in a ditch way back when."
"In most places, maybe," said the interloper, apparently unfazed by the taunt. "But this is Fresno."
* * * * *
Daniel wasn’t sure when he passed out, but he woke chained to a chair in a dark, stone room. Across from him sat the man who had taken him in, an older, lean, blonde-haired fellow. He looked up from the magazine he had been reading (Jack recognized it as a major Netherworld title) and said, “Oh good, you’re up. For a second I thought that spike had put you in a coma.”
The boy let out a groan as he became aware of a dull ache in the back of his head. Which was odd since he had been jabbed in the shoulder. “Well then you could have just not shoved even more nails in me,” he said. “How many are there? Five?”
“Just three,” said the blonde man. “It’s not easy to bring in a wizard, but fortunately our order has dealt with that problem before and left us with enough knowledge to keep you in your place.” He offered a tired smile and added, “The pain should go away soon. We know you can withstand just about any physical injury as long as it isn’t delivered in some particular way, so we’re not worried about brain damage. In a little while your body will adjust to the problem and everything will be back in order, except of course for those magical talents which could make you very troublesome.”
Daniel tried to reach up and rub his head, but then he was reminded of the chains around his arms. “After this is over,” he said in a tired, pained voice. “I’m gonna rend the flesh from your bones.” He looked around the room and added, “What’s this about, anyway? I didn’t think that dude had any Netherworld ties.”
“Mr. Freebird,” said the old man. “I am Dante Jensen. I survived the Scourge. Ever since venturing outside became considerably more dangerous, I have participated in over thirty field operations. Being more disposed to clerical work, I have met with nearly every prisoner brought into this dungeon during my time as a knight. I have sat down with wendigos, shinigami, and nosferatu. Even if I believed that you had any solid chance of carrying out your threat, I would still find it boring and cliche.” Dante took a moment to let that sink in, and when Daniel didn’t react he continued by saying, “As for what this is about, it’s about your company. It’s about the reckless use of arcane power for the sake of profit. It’s about the sorrows born from Rosmarus. We’ve been tracking them for a very long time now, and we want to bring them down for good, an end for which you are extremely useful.”
That took Daniel by surprise. He knew plenty of people didn’t like Rosmarus, but he’d never thought any of the grumblers would actually take action against them. After all, the vast majority of their activities were professional services that they would be perfectly happy to do for anyone who paid well enough. Justice wasn’t something Daniel had ever had much interest in, but it seemed to him that for anyone who was pursuing that goal it would only make sense to go after the guild if they were significantly easier to take down than the people who hired them, and that was definitely not the case. Besides, the guild was his home. Everyone he even remotely cared about was there, and it was stupid to think he was going to turn on them.
“No,” said the wizard.
Dante Jensen raised an eyebrow and said, “You know, I didn’t actually make a request.”
“I don’t care,” said Daniel. “Whatever questions you want me to answer, whatever tasks you want me to do, whatever deal you want me to make, the answer is no.” He leaned back in the chair and tried to fix his expression into one of confident derision. He couldn’t tell if Dante’s bored stare meant that he had failed, that the knight was immune to derisive expressions, or that he was trying to hide his fear. He decided to reiterate his resolve, and so he added, “I don’t give a monkey’s stinking turd about politics or anything like that, I’m sticking with my guild.”
Now Dante looked like he was about to burst out laughing. Instead, he allowed his face to convulse for a few seconds until he seemed to have swallowed the impulse and he said, “Mr. Freebird, you are fourteen years old. I understand that you are trying to impress me with this melodrama, but you simply haven’t lived long enough to either know what you’re talking about or to make your attempts at resolve sound like anything but a joke. Now, there are questions I want you to answer, and there is an easy way and a hard way to go about getting them answered. I’m going to give you five minutes to decide which way it will be.”
With that, the knight turned his attention to a digital wristwatch, set a timer on the device, and returned his gaze to the young prisoner. The wizard turned red with embarrassment and anger at the remark about his age, and a swarm of sharp retorts struggled for control of his tongue. However, he couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t sound futile and childish in that presence of that indifferent visage, so he let the words fight until they had all killed each other off. Instead of arguing, he tried to think of ways to kill Dante. Unfortunately, each plan required some spell the nails and manacles wouldn’t let him cast. He decided to work out an escape plan instead. It turned out that wasn’t much easier. In theory, there were a few things he could do, like tap the floor loud enough and in such a pattern that he might attract something with very good hearing. He might get a faerie that way, but it would take a lot of luck and there would still be the matter of convincing the creature to help him. He was still working out that second part when the three minutes ran out.
“All right,” said Dante Jensen as he silenced the alarm. Then he turned toward a camera by the door and said, “Come in, Ephraim.”
Daniel started putting together boasts about the uselessness of torture as a stout, dark-skinned knight that didn’t look more than three or four years older than himself entered the cell. But the remarks all evaporated when he saw Ephraim manifest. Gleaming symbols appeared over the lad’s arms and face, his hair went from curly and black to loosely flowing and platinum blonde, and his eyes changed so that the pupils and irises turned white while the rest turned black. He was a sin-eater.
“Hold on,” sputtered the wizard. “You don’t want to do this. There’s, um, there’s got to be some laws or something. Besides, digging around in there, that’s a bad idea. I’ve got some nasty stuff in my head, and you never know what happens when you do something like that to someone like me.”
Dante got up to offer his seat to the empath, and in spite of all Daniel’s objections, Ephraim smoothly and swiftly sat down, grabbed the prisoner by the wrists, and began to feed. There was a flood of visions, sounds, tastes, moods, and thrills. They all came bursting through Daniel’s mind and into Ephraim, and each of the sins felt like they had been cut from his heart with a rusty bonesaw and then slowly dragged out with a barbed fishing hook. The process also threw his whole being out of order, disorienting him and taking away all sense of time. When he finally came out of the nightmare, he wasn’t sure if it had been five second or five hours.
“That could have been a lot easier, you know,” said Ephraim. “It’s all about repentance. If you hold on to the sins you get torn up trying to resist; if you repent then it still hurts, but it’s not as bad and you also get relief at the end.” He wasn’t looking at the prisoner. Instead he was very intently writing in a notebook. “I understand holding on to the little stuff, but I’m always surprised at how stubborn people are about the murders and other big ones.”
The wizard tried to say something stubborn, but instead all he managed was an angry groan. His face was laying on the table like a mound of mashed potatoes, and he thought he felt a bit of drool sliding out of his mouth. He decided to give up on the response and focused instead on pulling his body back into some vaguely dignified shape. Apparently, this was not a day for clever comebacks.
“Sleep well, Mr. Freebird?” asked a woman with short, blonde hair who looked about the same age as Dante. “My name is Margaret Jensen, and I am the captain of this keep. I have other matters today so I’ll be brief. We have everything we need from you, but I still don’t feel comfortable with letting you go so I’d like to make a deal with you. You’ll swear not to willfully take action against us directly or indirectly while you remain with us, not to make any attempt to contact Rosmarus while you’re with us, and not to divulge any of our secrets after your release. That release will be earned through twenty-one distinct tasks, none of which will involve taking action against Rosmarus. Finally, you will be under the management of Ephraim here until such time as your release. I think these terms are more than generous for someone was captured in the middle of an assassination attempt.”
The wizard had just managed to get himself sitting properly upright, and he worked his jaw a little to make sure it would behave properly this time. When he was satisfied that he could speak clearly and that he had absorbed everything that the woman had said, he addressed his captor and said, “No. Negative. Never. Request denied. Screw you. Aint gonna happen. If you think that I am going to lift one finger to help you lot after you jabbed me with nails, locked me up, and ran my spirit through a meat grinder, then you have another friggin hades of a thing coming.”
* * * * *
“This is going to be fun!” declared Ephraim as he led Daniel out of the dungeons and up the stairs. His charge simply glowered at him.
“Oh come on,” said the sin-eater. “You’re bound to us until the tasks run out; you can’t change that, but you can enjoy it a bit if you’ll just stop with the tantrum. You even got the nails taken out.”
Daniel grunted his annoyance and remained sullen, but then they entered the living room and his mood immediately changed. The large room was adorned with all manner of enchanted artifacts, there was a large technomagic television that looked like it might be homemade as well as a matching radio, and then there were the portraits. Right over by a hallway that looked like it led out to the front door there was a picture of three young women in their late teens and right next to that was a picture of two similarly young men. The girl on the left had a bright smile, a particularly bright outfit, a wand dangling from her right hand, a finger knife on her other hand, and hair that was mostly pink with a single neon green lock across her face; the girl in the middle was a few inches taller than the rest, she had reddish brown hair, she wore mostly simple and casual clothes except for a blue suit that looked rather nice, and she was hoisting an old musket that had undergone a plethora of magical and mechanical modifications over the centuries; and the girl on the right looked Asian, she wore a completely gothic outfit, her face bore the beginning of smile that was either very cute or very frightening, and she carried a parasol which had the handle pulled out away from the rest of the umbrella just enough to reveal the shining blade within. The girls also happened to be (in the same left-to-right order) a changeling of pixy origin, a harpy, and a shinigami. They weren’t manifesting, so it wasn’t something you could tell from the portrait, but Daniel was already familiar with the trio. They were the Weird Sisters, they had killed one of the guild’s clients, and the young wizard had read all five magazine articles that had covered them since the trio emerged a few years back.
The two young men in the other portrait were similarly well known. The one on the left was a tall, nonchalant lad of Arabic origins with a red jacket and two large guns hanging from his belt. And he was a draconic gorgonite, a descendent of the gorgons with arcane powers to produce and manipulate fire. The fellow on the right looked like a typical country boy except for the large, silver crucifix hanging from his neck and the ancient, barbaric-looking battleaxe that he gripped in his right hand. And he was a werewolf. Unlike the Weird Sisters those two had developed their reputations before joining up, so they hadn’t gotten any clever group title but were instead known individually as the Red Barrel Dragon and the Knight of the Silver Cross.
“They’re Helsing?” demanded the wizard. “All five of them are friggin’ Helsing??”
“Well what else would they be?” said the empath casually. Then he looked his charge up and and down with a sly grin and said, “You’re a fanboy, aren’t you?”
“No,” said Daniel tersely, trying very hard to shove any giddiness out of his mind. He was a prisoner, not some tourist. Prisoners of war aren’t supposed to turn into flustered schoolgirls at the sight of enemy soldiers.
“Oh I think you are. In fact, I think you might even be nursing a crush over at least one of the Sisters,” said Ephraim with a gleam in his eye. “I think I’ve got an even better carrot than freedom to keep you pulling the cart. Maybe if you’re good I’ll ask Melody to blow you a kiss. Sound good?”
The voice in Daniel’s head said, “That’s the most wonderful offer anyone has ever made me.” The voice in his throat said, “Shut up, you twat.”
Someone let out a feminine giggle, and Daniel turned around to see a short, dark-haired girl closer to his own age holding a stack of books and a jar of peanut butter. On being discovered, the girl blushed and headed up the stairs, although she ventured another three glances before getting out of view. Daniel waited until he heard a door close shut before raising an eyebrow at Ephraim.
“That was Rachel,” said Ephraim. “She’s just a zealot now, but she’s a quick learner in combat training and she’s been a godsend when it comes to technomancy.”
The prisoner nodded. “Yeah. Gnomish changelings tend to be good at those kinds of things. Why was she all giggly?”
“For the same reason you could tell she was a gnomish changeling,” answered the empath. “Enemy or not, wizards are a pretty big deal.”
Daniel’s scowl finally slipped a bit. In the Topside, he was about average looking, not very strong, and, worst of all, a kid. But the Netherworld was something different. As far as anyone could tell, there had never been any more than thirty-six wizards living in the world at any one time, wizards had a deeply intuitive understanding of magic, they were very hard to kill, they all had a decent (not incredible, but definitely decent) measure of arcane strength, they were born with every one of the words power stamped right there into their minds, and they were mature enough to participate in the larger world by the time other kids were wallowing in the hell commonly known as middle school. Daniel’s powers were the whole reason Rosmarus had noticed him. He liked being noticed.
The rest of the tension slowly dissipated as Ephraim gave him a basic tour of the kitchen, library, living room, and the bedroom that he would be staying in. Not that any part of the tour made Daniel forget he was a prisoner; it was the potions that did that. The sin-eater mentioned almost immediately that Dante had a list of substances for him to prepare for the next day, and that particular craft happened to one of his favorite subjects.
Daniel looked down at the list that he’d been given as he stepped into the chamber. He was expected to produce eleven bottles of potion by the next morning, two of healing, three for hexes, one of concealment, one of befuddlement, one for scrying, two antidotes, and one draught of vanishing.
“Tall order,” said the wizard. “Especially with less than twenty-four hours to brew.”
Ephraim glanced down at the list and replied, “It’s not my specialty, but Dante you should be able to do it with our supplies.” He jerked a thumb toward a door and added, “The cabinet’s over there.”
Still annoyed with the whole prisoner situation, Daniel approached the door and pulled it open, expecting as he did so to find cheap collection of garage sale junk. What he found was a room twice as large as the actual workshop with a collection of ingredients that Rosmarus would have sold an entire branch to buy up.
“Where...How…?” stammered the prisoner.
“Most of the keeps only fell partway,” said Ephraim with a note of smugness. “Places like this, places where we held out, got both the survivors and the supplies from them. Plus, it helps to have an expert sorcerer managing the books. There’s hardly anyone who knows the actual value of magical substances as well as Dante, and so he’s been able to cut some pretty sweet deals over the years.”
Daniel strode up and down the cabinet, his eyes darting up and down the shelves as he tried to absorb all that was up there. Down on the floor there were barrels of morning dew, summer rainwater, tears, and a myriad of other liquids, most of them some sort of water. The next three rows of shelves contained snail shells, rose petals, honey, locks of hair, and a variety of other parts and products of flora and fauna. There were even odd trinkets such as pennies and paperclips. Above those were jars of stones, both precious and common, and metal shavings. The next row was populated with glowing jars of zauberstaub, a substance made when the essence of a thing was magically extracted and distilled. Above them all, the very top row of shelves contained items rich with mystical power. Bones of dragons. Seeds from a sacred grove. Basilisk venom. Each of the substances seemed to stir as the young wizard went in among them, and many gave off an almost inaudible hum as he ran his fingers along their containers. He turned around when he reached the end of the room, which was marked by an impressive display of tools, cauldrons, and books, and took another look at the list.
“Yeah,” said Daniel. “I think I can do this. Help me get the cauldrons ready.”
“Cauldrons?” asked the sin eater. “As in, plural?”
“Of course,” replied the wizard as he bundled supplies up into his arms. “You didn’t think I would do this one at a time did you?”
“I didn’t really think you could do it any other way,” said Ephraim as he lugged the cauldrons into the workroom. “I’m pretty sure that’s how Dante always does it.”
“Well, you have to be particularly sensitive to the mood of each brew,” said the wizard. “Really sensitive. Fortunately, it comes with the powers.”
“I see,” said Ephraim. “So you acted like it was obvious in order to brag.”
“Maybe.”
There were nine potions to make, with the healing elixir and the antidote to be double portions. The two young men set out an appropriate number of cauldrons and placed under each of them a small, fat cylinder filled with some flammable materials, much like those used in catering events. Then they poured the appropriate amounts of liquid--morning dew for the medical brews, bee venom for the hexes, summer rainwater for befuddlement, water taken from an ocean mist for concealment, and a very particular wine for scrying--into the cauldrons. Then Daniel gave the list another read to make sure he had the names right before running back into the cabinet and getting those ingredients he hadn’t had room for the first time around.
“So how exactly does this go?” shouted Ephraim after him.
“Well, there are four elements to every potion, which are intent, medium, tonic, and catalyst,” answered the wizard as he darted from shelf to shelf. “The intent is the manifestation of the mage’s will, which is to say the stirring, the heating, and any incantations uttered; the medium is the liquid in which the other ingredients meet; the tonic is all the ingredients with relatively little magic to them; and the catalyst is the arcane component, the ingredient which was full of power and which starts the reaction. The medium’s already been accounted for in each potion, the intent has been partially provided, and the other two elements are what I’m getting right now.”
He dumped the ingredients in an unceremonious heap over what little space remained on the table. Daniel pulled open drawers of knives, ladles, and other instruments with the glee of a child pulling a toy out of its packaging. With everything ready and laid out, he tossed in components with his left hand while he divided up other ones, the ones that required more preparation, with his right. As he began chopping up the ginger root, he said, “It looks like your minister is a fan of Artemis Lavigne. Over half of these were developed by her.”
“Well it makes sense,” said Ephraim. “He and Margaret both had her for a grandmother. Their family tree has deep roots in the order.”
“Hold on,” said Daniel. “You mean they’re related? I thought those two were, well...married or something.”
The sin eater laughed and after a moment he replied, “No, no. Dante and Margaret are just cousins. It’s true we usually look for other knights when it comes to courtship, but I’m pretty sure incest is still more taboo than going outside the order.” He looked over at the cauldrons. “So I get the elements, but how do the supplies make a difference in how long it takes?”
“Shortcuts,” said the wizard, quickly recovering from the embarrassment of his mistake. He uncorked a container of zauberstaub and pulled out of a pinch of the material. This particular kind was a pale green that squirmed about like an anxious squid, and it was exactly what the second hex potion required. “When you come up with the formula for a potion, you usually go with the simplest version. You go for the things that are most common, most effective, and which are least likely to get spoiled somehow or other, but there are always other versions. If you can understand the way those ingredients fit into the potion, you can figure out other ways of doing it. And if you have a wide array of material, wider than the author would have expected, then you can take shortcuts, throw in extras to speed things up.”
Daniel waited for his handler to speak again, but after a fair amount of silence he realized that his handler was content with what had been already said. After observing this, Daniel decided to take the silence as permission to ramble on in any way he liked. He continued to manage the cauldrons while expounding on the nature of the art in general despite the fact that his handler showed no signs of listening. About thirty minutes after beginning the labor, Daniel finally grabbed a troll’s wand from the top shelf of the cabinet, dipped the end into the scrying potion, and solemnly uttered “tofliut” over the brew. The substance began to bubble at once, its color changing with every second, sang out loudly in dozens of distinctly human voices, and then settled down into a silver, serene pool that shimmered mildly. The wizard then found an instrument that looked like an oversized hypodermic needle which someone had covered in gears and lights in order to make it look more impressive than it was, and with the instrument he syphoned up the potion and deposited it again into an empty bottle.
Contrary to popular belief, trolls are not dumb, or at least a lot of them aren’t. They’re big, and not that pretty, and they usually talk very slowly, so it’s easy to make that mistake, but it simply isn’t the case. Most trolls are guardians over some kind of landmark, like a tree or a street, and they make their wands out of things that happen to be lying around their charge. They see things, important things, things that are deep and secret and far off where most of the fey are too impatient to look. As with all faeries, their wands and other treasures can be obtained through trade or through gambling, and if so obtained the wands held tremendous power. As for the word, it was one of the eight hundred and forty-seven words of power. Among other things, it indicated completion, things reaching their natural and bountiful end, and as such it was commonly used as part of the intent of a potion to conclude the brewing process.
“You know,” said the wizard. “There are plenty of other potions I could make for you.”
Ephraim turned from a magazine he had been browsing, shot a suspicious glance at the wizard, and asked, “What kinds?”
The knight’s suspicion reminded Daniel that he was still a prisoner and that anything he made would be used by his enemies. However, the brewing of potions was something he found genuinely fun, so his good mood pushed aside the tactical considerations and led him to say, “Well, I do know a recipe for a lure for minor fae, there’s a canned explosion I can put together, I can make an elixir to make anyone silent and unnoticeable, if I properly combine a potion to turn ordinary people into wolves with another to pacify a werewolf then I can get something to strengthen your pup without making him lose control, and there’s a sort of polish or something that would fix up his partner’s guns pretty well. Plus, once I get on those I’m sure some other recipes will come to mind.”
Ephraim considered the offer for a moment and shrugged. “It seems fine to me, but I’ll have to get Dante in here to ask about it. If he has only problems with it, it’ll probably be over the use of resources. Like I said, he’s good at knowing the value of these things.”
“You’re not worried I’ll make something to blow you all up?” asked Daniel in a voice of fained hurt. “Not even a little?”
“Nah, if you were trying to trick us, I’d smell it,” answered the sin eater. “I’ve already fed on you, which makes you pretty much an open book to me.”
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