Helsing Chronicles: The Bastard of Rosmarus; Chapter 3

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Intro
First Chapter
Second Chapter

    Daniel woke to the thump of perhaps sixty or seventy pounds of lithe flesh suddenly landing on his stomach. The surprise forced an exhale out of him, and when the captive opened his eyes he found them matched with those of a bobcat whose face was so close to his that he could feel its breath. When Daniel’s heart stopped racing, he tried to put on an air of nonchalance and said, “Hey, Troy.”

    The zealot neither spoke nor growled, but simply dropped down to the floor, strode to the door, and turned to look patiently back at Daniel. With a sigh, he got out of bed, smoothed out his clothes, and followed Troy Menjares out into the hall. Almost immediately, the wizard realized that the other residents had already started on their chores as the sounds of cleaning streamed into his awareness. He also realized that scrubbing the floors would probably not be on his own to-do list. At the moment, that particular task was being taken care of by Margaret Jensen, and the sight of the stout, military woman on her knees attending to the destruction of a stain was quite possibly the most unnerving thing Daniel had seen in a very long time. He continued walking towards the stairs as fast as he could, the whole time fearing to lock eyes with the captain of the keep.

    The Fresno keep was a large building, but it was not a broad one. When Daniel had seen it on his way back with Ephraim the night before, he had thought at first that he was seeing some kind of highly extravagant monument to abstract art. The first three floors looked like either a medieval style watchtower which had been remodeled into the form of a house, or a house that had been built to resemble a watchtower. Then there was what appeared to be an entirely ordinary wooden house dropped on top of that, followed by a bookstore from the twenties, half a bar, a cabin that looked like it came from the mountains to the east, and several chunks of various hotels. Some of them were dumped one on top of another like layers on a cake, but other parts were grafted in at odd angles like the beginnings of branches on a tree. The relative narrowness of the keep in comparison to it’s total volume meant that it always had plenty of room while still managing to feel cramped. It was a fact that Daniel became personally acquainted with as he followed Troy down the stairs from his quarters on the fourth floor to the kitchen on the first floor.

    As he entered the kitchen he immediately saw Dante spraying down the stoves and a grill (the room was home to a fully industrial operation like what you might find at a small diner) while humming what sounded like Sweeney Todd. The knight turned around when he heard Daniel come in and told him to a take a seat over at the table in the middle of the kitchen.

    The boy stared at the bubbling surfaces for a few moments before saying, “So...Should I be grabbing a sponge or something?”

    Dante shook his head and said, “Not yet. Later I’ll have you help Rachel, but for now I just want to know how far your education has come.” He turned around after he finished spraying everything down. “Let’s start with the basic theory of spellwork. Tell me about the schools of magic.”

    The wizard sighed with mild relief at finding himself back in his own area of expertise, and commenced the elaboration. “There are technically five major schools of magic, but originally there were only four,” he said. “Each one had its own overall theory of magic and how it was done. The school of alchemy saw everything in terms of the elemental powers of Oranos, Gaia, Krenus, Oceanus, and Helios, which were supposed to be semi-divine entities which manifested in both physical and arcane forms. It also held that there were lesser elements which were each subordinate to one of the greater ones. The mystical school was mostly popular among the mages of the Germanic tribes and other barbarians, and believed everything came down to certain archetypes. There were many different kinds of archetypes, but the human ones, the ones they considered most important, were the Hunter, the Artisan, the Virgin, the Fool, the Sage, the Warrior, and the Farmer. Then there was the poetic school, which didn’t have archetypes like the earlier two, but instead believed that power and wisdom were to be found in stories. Those belonging to the poetic school would collect and memorize stories and they would base their spells off of passages from their collections. The fourth school came mainly out of the Far East, and it was called the ethereal school. That one was all about magical energy, almost like some kind of supernatural physics, although it did believe that there was raw magical energy called ‘qi’ in the East and ‘ether’ in the West, and there was also energy that was bound to some kind of archetype very much like the elements of the alchemical school. Then under Alexander the Great the documentation of all four schools began, which led to the archival school. The archival school’s emergence wasn’t completed until the rise of the Roman Empire, but it became the modern theory of magic in most of the world. It accepts the knowledge of all the old schools but it doesn’t treat any of them as comprehensive, and it focuses more on the words of power than on anything else, although it has room for many different perspectives.

    “Below the schools of magic there are also the crafts and the arts, both of which go into the makeup of any spell. The craft of any given spell is determined by its method, the way that it’s cast. The major crafts are the craft of brewing (which is all about potions), the craft of wielding (which uses magical items and is most commonly applied as wandwork), the craft of thalmaturgy (a craft that uses runes and circles and symbolic items to perform ritual spells), the craft of questing (which is when you have to do certains tasks like winning the treasure of some creature in order for the spell to be fulfilled), the craft of theurgy (which calls upon or summons a magical being and then appeals to them either for power or for the full effect of the spell), and the craft of incanting (which relies upon archaic languages, the words of power, and body movements). Typically, spells will be performed through at least two crafts, and the selection depends on the skills of the mage in question and the situation in which it’s cast.

    “Finally, spells are classified according to their art, which is based on their effect. The major arts are evocation, transfiguration, enchanting, divination, conjuration, illusion, healing, and charms. However, there are scores of subcategories for arts, and many of the subcategories fit into more than one of the major arts. Do you want me to get into the minor categories like pyromancy and scrying and all that?”

    Dante waved a hand and said, “No, that’s good enough. I’ll quiz you on particulars later, but for now I just want to see if you know the general concepts.” He began scrubbing furiously at the accumulations of grease that the cleaning chemicals had softened up for him. “What about languages? The art of incanting is, after all, the most commonly used. Tell me what you know of that.”

    “Well, it’s possible to use a modern language for an incantation, but usually you want something older,” said the wizard. “A lot of spells take at least one word of power, but for the rest of it the incantation should be made up of an archaic dialect of a mundane language or else one of the arcane tongues.”

    The veteran knight nodded and said, “And the two arcane tongues of the West are?”

    “Avalonian and Atlantean,” answered Daniel. “Avalonian was originally developed by the shaman and mages of Northern Europe, and it became adopted as a sort of secret tongue by many of the races of the Netherworld that considered their homeland to be within that region. Atlantean was developed by the magical scholars of the Mediterranean--meaning that it has roots in Latin, Greek, and Egyptian--and it was taken on by the Roman Empire and later the Catholic Church. There’s also D’varxi, from the region of Mesopotamia, and Ileyahi, which is a sort of arcane dialect of Hebrew. I know you only asked for the first two, but the other pair does appear in Western magic sometimes.”

    Dante nodded again and said, “So tell me one more thing. What is the difference between magic and technology? When you take away the methods and the effectiveness and you simply look at each one as a way of exerting power, what is the difference?”

    Daniel struggled with that. Everything else had been easy, had been basic knowledge, but this was something far more challenging. He could barely even discern the meaning of the question, much less the answer. He stood there in silence except for a few hesitant noises rising from his throat for nearly a minute before he meekly said, “It’s about what they...what they act on, I guess.” He paused to stare at Dante, but the man only continued his cleaning without offering the slightest indication of whether he thought the boy on the right or wrong track. “Technology and science, from what I understand, are all about atoms and movement and reactions. It’s all about what things are made of, but magic is about what they are. It’s about their...character. You can say the words and do the motions for a spell to freeze a pond but if you don’t have some idea of what a pond is and what it means for it to freeze the spell won’t work.”

    There was a sigh of relief from Dante as he turned around to look at the wizard, a tired smile on his face. “Thank goodness,” he said. “For a moment I thought you really were as stupid as you like to act.” Before Daniel could figure out how to respond to that, the knight went on. “Magic is about wisdom and the nature of things. To touch anything through magic is an extremely intimate act, and whether you’re dealing with living beings or pebbles on the riverside it demands respect.” Then he flipped a thumb toward the two refrigerators and said, “Now go through those and take out anything in tupperware or anything that looks like it might expire soon. I want to get rid of all the leftovers tonight.”

    Daniel grumbled a bit, rather unsure how to react to all the knight had just said, as he went about the task. It turned out to be not so much tedious as confusing as he struggled to pass judgement over a vast amount of stored food in accordance with the domestic system of a household he had never heard of until about two days ago. Not only was it difficult to decide which packaged foods seemed near expiration, but it turned out that not all tupperware items were so within his jurisdiction as he had been led to believe. Some of the containers held not the remains of communal dishes, but rather the private delights of particular residents, and very few of them were labeled. Others contained treats for the pets of the keep, some held materials for brewing or spellwork that for some reason were not suited to the cabinet, and one container that was clearly packed with fungi turned out to be “an experiment” about which Dante refused to elaborate. The huge, twin refrigerators had some bizarre order to them of the kind that one forgets to explain to visitors, and not a minute passed in which Daniel was not forced to question his captor about some item or other. After the first few exchanges, Dante decided to make a game of it and established that for each question from the wizard another would be pressed upon him.

    “What,” asked Dante. “Are the seven magical races?”

    “Grendelkin, yokai, olympiads, kami, fae, undead, and lostlings,” answered Daniel. “So what’s this?”

    “That’s ram’s heart marinated in vodka,” said Dante. “Hassan sets it on fire and then draws the nutrients out through the flames, so aside from the smell it doesn’t matter if it rots a little first. Leave it in.”

    Daniel put the container back, but within half a minute he had found another enigma, and this time he was quizzed about the War of Oak and Bone which had been part of a series of conflicts around the rise of the Church as the leading magical authority in Europe and Northern Africa. Even after all the leftovers had been sorted out Dante still found plenty of tasks around the kitchen for him to take care of, and when some of them required less questions on the part of the mageling he found other excuses for his extended quiz. The questions covered magical subcategories, varying styles of spellwork, particular types of arcane items, history, Netherworld law, physical and psychological details of various species, and anything else Dante could think of. As it turned out, Daniel had plenty of street knowledge and an extensive understanding of spellwork, but he had only the most basic grip of the social aspects of the Netherworld. He was an exceptionally fast learner, but he had only started getting a serious education about three years earlier. Finally, when the kitchen was looking genuinely tidy and Dante had lunch and dinner getting started, they started on exercises.

    The knight set a large spoon on the counter and said, “Enchant it to float a foot above the surface.”

    The wizard nodded, focused on the utensil, and uttered a brief incantation. It didn’t move. He glared at the object and roused his arcane senses. He didn’t detect any enchantments around the spoon, but there was a sense of extreme density or inertia hanging about the thing. Without looking to see Dante’s reaction, Daniel closed his eyes, imagined the utensil hanging in the air, and spoke a longer incantation in a slower and more solemn tone as his hands moved to conduct the spell. When he opened them again, it lay in the air exactly as he had pictured it.

    “Good,” said Dante mildly. “Very good. Now for evocation; try bending it.”

    The wizard sighed, turned his mind again toward the stubborn block of metal, disenchanted it, and began his second exercise. This time, he began with a sort of telekinetic charm to take hold of the spoon and focus the actual spell. Most evocation was about sudden, flashy bursts of power such as fireballs and blasts of ether, but when it came to spells of breaking, cutting, or bending which went straight for the enemy it helped to have some kind of mystical grip on the target first. So Daniel envisioned a silvery blue ribbon extending from his right hand--his inferior hand--to reach out and wrap around the spoon. Telekinesis doesn’t really work very well with unfamiliar objects, so it was a struggle just to get it up at a forty-five or so degree angle, but once it was propped up enough he was ready for the actual task. He imagined the spoon being bent, mentally recited as many words for bending in as many languages as he knew, and uttered an Atlantean incantation that roughly translated to “As the sapling doth bow to the storm, so shalt thou yield to mine power.”

    “Also good,” said Dante as the bent spoon dropped from its upright position and Daniel wiped sweat from his brow. With barely a twitch of a finger, the knight straightened the utensil back out. “We’re halfway there. This time I want you to tell me where the spoon was at this time yesterday. And no, it wasn’t the same drawer it was just in. This really does get used for cooking and everyone seems to have a different idea of where things belong.”

    Daniel’s mind found several curious avenues sprouting from his instructor’s tangent, but after a moment he reined in his disparate thoughts enough to glare at the unrelenting taskmaster and begin the exercise. This time it was divination, and looking into the past was about in the middle of the difficulty spectrum of that art’s subcategories. He started with a simple spell of revealing this time, which happened to have a particularly musical incantation. He let the notes out slowly, coaxing the truth out of his surroundings, until he saw smudged fingerprints and other dim traces of the past emerging from the spoon. Then he fixed his attention firmly on the spoon and tried to divine where it had been twenty minutes ago. It took a couple tries, but once Daniel had extracted that bit of information it gave him enough of a foothold to search out the true prize. This time it clicked almost immediately, and the wizard felt triumphant satisfaction as he pointed to a drawer on the other side of the kitchen.

    Dante simply nodded and said, “Very last one, and then you’re off to assist Rachel. This time, I want you to turn it to wood.”

    Daniel laughed at first, but the sound died in his throat when he realized Dante wasn’t kidding. He stammered a bit as he tried to think of some objection that wouldn’t make him sound whiny or stupid, but eventually he just shut up and turned again to the spoon. He sat staring at it, just staring, for about a minute before he started on the final exercise. He started by making a sort of three-way mental venn diagram comparing the spoon to a tree and a wooden ladle. He considered the properties they had in common and the ones which divided them. Then, after he felt the diagram was as near to complete as it was likely to get, the wizard imagined the spoon turning to wood and then back to metal. He imagined a huge, ancient oak tree, and after he had the picture finished he imagined it being chipped away, slowly at first and then faster, until all that was left was a single wooden spoon. He started to rub at it until it had precisely the same shape as the one on the counter before him. Finally, he raised his hands, filled his tone with power, and began the incantation. It was a long one this time, particularly poetic in style, and he recited it three different times with a different word of power preceding each recitation. He shouted the last line, sweat dripping again from his brow and his heart racing from the strain of the spell, and the material of the object slowly changed with a steady groan. It trembled and moaned for several moments before it finished transforming into a wooden ladle.

    Dante waited a few breaths to see how the spell held. In most cases, transfiguration spells are very temporary. The essence of anything or anyone typically resists such changes, and the magic has to constantly hold it back from reverting to it’s natural form. After the knight had been satisfied he said, “That’s good. You can let it go now.”

    Daniel sighed with relief as the spoon reversed to its normal state and dropped down into the nearest seat. “What’s that made of anyway?” he panted as he tried to recover from the tests.

    “It’s called kheldenshtal,” said the knight. “It’s an alchemical amalgam made mostly from iron that, according to tradition, was first developed by Merlin. It’s listed in the fourth book of the Grimoire Prima, the book that serves as our charter, along with steorwyn, isendur, and gweydra. Of course, what you were playing with was diluted with mercury and had been used for magical training for centuries, making it significantly more agreeable than a proper specimen.”

    “Oh,” said Daniel flatly. “Neat.”

    Dante chuckled and said, “Yeah. Sorry, but I wasn’t sure what it would take to challenge you.” He began taking out pots and pans and added, “Now I have more work to do, and you need to go assist Rachel. Just feel around a bit and you should find her easily enough.”

    The wizard groaned in exhausted frustration, and Dante replied, “Oh, shush. You’ll feel better soon and to be honest Rachel probably doesn’t need much help. My guess is that you’ll just be adding little embellishments on top of her work.”

    Daniel slowly grabbed a snack from the abundant leftovers, consumed the scraps, and idly strode out toward to the living room. He could hear the sounds of work throughout the keep, and for a moment he just stood there trying discern all the tasks clamoring about. Then he was interrupted by a young woman clad all in black and carrying herself with the confidence of one who knew she could kill anything that threatened her.

    “You must be the wizard,” said Shiori Kirihara as she looked him up and down.

    “You must be the hot, super-awesome, gothic shinigami I’ve been nerding out over for the past two years,” said the voice in Daniel’s head. The voice that came out said, “Uh-huh.” Then he gave himself an imaginary slap in the face and added, “What’re you up to?”

    The second weird sister stared straight into his eyes, looking as if she would not turn away until she had extracted some secret knowledge from them, and said, “I’m off to the armory. The master armourer is out of town and so it’s my job to keep everything sharp and thriving.”

    Daniel nodded stiffly, unable to break the gaze. Magical weapons pretty much all had some rough element of life to them, like beasts of some kind, and the only way they worked properly was if they shared a bit of that life with the wielder. Thus, in addition to the normal polishing and sharpening, arcane weapons also needed to be practiced with in order to nurture and maintain that inner life.

    “That’s awesome,” said the voice in his head. “It takes a lot of talent to maintain a whole armoury like that and it just shows that you really know your stuff. You rock.” The voice that came out said, “Neat.”

    “You’re going to be in combat soon,” said the girl calmly. “The survival of my friends might just depend on you at some point in the near future. Do you think you can handle that? Do you think you’ll really even try?”

    Daniel stammered for a bit before he manage to blurt out, “Yes. Yeah, I’ll do everything I can.”

    It came out louder than he had meant it too, and it had all the sound of someone who had no idea what he was talking about. He held his mouth shut, waiting to see her reaction. She simply looked him over once more, turned away, and muttered, “Whatever,” as she headed out in the direction of the armory.

    When it was clear the confrontation had ended, Daniel allowed himself to breathe again. He looked around the living room, remembering his original purpose, and muttered a short spell to find active technomancy. The divination led him downstairs, and he only hesitated for a moment before he made off in the direction of the room in which he had been interrogated. He went down one floor, and then another, and another. The spell drew him down seven floors beneath the surface of the earth until he was delivered into the furnace room. Perhaps that was an inappropriate term to use. There was a furnace, but there was also a large tank of water, an arcane pillar of a machine that seemed to be the driving force behind the ventilation system, a dark obelisk made of stone and inscribed with ancient runes, and a gnarled tree that practically radiated power. The five elements of the alchemical school.

    “Hey,” said Rachel as she popped out from behind the furnace. She was decked out in a leather apron, a matching coat, a pair of welding goggles, and an abundance of tools. It was the kind of getup that might be just as effective in combat as it undoubtedly was in technomantic engineering. “Dante said you’d be here to help.”

    “Yeah,” said Daniel. He looked around the large room at a variety of machines that had been erected. There were old radios, lots of cables, and several large clockwork devices whose precise nature he couldn’t guess at with a mere glance. “He didn’t think you needed it, though.”

    The girl snorted. “Like hell,” she said. “I’ve been upgrading this keep for months, and I need you in order to stick in the last little piece.” She produced a mechanism about the size and shape of a laptop from where she had been working behind the furnace. It probably had been exactly as it looked once, but it had been modified with a few gadgets of various shapes, and there were several pages of mystical runes and symbols carved into its surface. “Basically,” she said, “I just need everything to come together for a moment so I can hook this in, so to speak.”

    “Okay,” said the wizard hesitantly. He turned his attention to the flow of arcane powers through the room and selected a few at random. He silently named each one, uttered an incantation, and pulled them together. “Like this?”

    The girl frowned, lowered her goggles back over her eyes, and allowed her jaw to drop. “Grouagh nourst! Yeah, exactly like that!” She gaped and stared for a few moments longer before she turned back to Daniel and said, “So seeing as that was so easy for you, do you think you could do it on a bigger scale? I need a confluence of all the major currents in here.”

    “Define ‘major’,” said Daniel.

    “Basically, the more connections you can make, the better. I just want you to start on the big stuff first,” answered Rachel.

    “Okay,” said Daniel with a shrug. “I can probably handle just short of half the mystical power in this room. Will that do?”

     “Uh...” said Rachel. “I was actually expecting a quarter at the most. If you can really bind together that much of the flow of power...well it’d be kind of awesome.”

    The girl blushed, and Daniel suppressed a satisfied grin. He’d had a pretty good idea of what she was expecting from him, and he really liked to show off his talents. It was very fortunate that Ephraim wasn’t present to sniff out his vainglory.

    The technomancer laid the computer into the hands of a draconic statue sticking out of the furnace and waved a hand to some of the cables sprawled around the room. They moved like snakes over to the girl and then into any openings they could find in the former laptop. As she stroked the cables she murmured in a way that sounded vaguely like compliments and reassurances offered to a favorite pet. “I’m ready whenever you are,” she said in a somewhat louder tone.

    “Right,” said Daniel. He opened his mind again to the power of the room, and slowly took note of each individual current. He needed to isolate them in his mind before he could do anything else. Then he went about trying to understand each one, beginning with those attached directly to the elemental totems. There was a lot of depth to those things, but at the same time that getting a detailed understanding of them was more difficult it was also easier get a general idea of their nature. As he meditated on the currents, he mouthed out each new revelation in silent Atlantean, and a few times in Avalonian, in practice for the incantations. He couldn’t afford to start on the real thing until he had mentally grasped each ribbon of arcane energy since each incantation had to be compatible with each other incantation. It took him about half an hour just to get everything clear in his head. Then he started the incantation.

    There’s a lot of style involved in magic. When you get into a duel against a stranger, you watch out for the first spell they throw in the hopes that it’ll tell you about all the ones they’re likely to throw after it. And when a mage is skilled enough to adopt a variety of styles instead of sticking with one particular manner of spellwork then the mage in question will start addressing any arcane problem by seeking out precisely the right style with which to cast. These incantations needed to be sung. Daniel opened up with an Atlantean melody with words of power embedded like nonsense words in each line. It was seven lines long, and he went through it twice before he started in on the main current bound to the furnace. When he finished that verse he repeated the melody and went on to the next elemental power in clockwise formation, and he could hear the Helios verse echoing through the room, its repetition driven by the power of the spell. There were a total of twenty-eight currents of power that Daniel took hold of by the end of the spell, and as the casting went on they each of the them throbbed, hummed, and twisted about through the space. The room moaned and murmured in time with the music, and for an instant Daniel was sure the entire keep was whispering together. Then, as all twenty-eight currents came together in a beautiful and terrible confluence, he focused his will on the hub of energy and slowly bound it to the computer.

    There was a flash of spellwork as Rachel hooked the machine up to the confluence. Daniel dropped down to the floor, leaned back on his hands, and took several deep breaths as the girl stared nervously at their work. Then, without warning, the young technomancer let out a shriek, jumped up and down, and clapped her hands gleefully. She continued to giggle and make other incoherent sounds, some of which vaguely resembled speech, for about a minute before she forced herself to calm down and let out one last squeal.

    “I’m fine,” said Rachel, still caught in a gleeful smile. “These are good sounds. Very good sounds. I’m not crazy.”

     “Uh-huh,” said Daniel numbly. He looked over at the machine, which was now humming melodiously in imitation of the spell he had just cast. He tried not to look exhausted as he asked, “Anything else?”

    “Sure,” said the technomancer. “We’ve got circuits, pipes, and mechanisms all over the keep to check on and tune up.” She went and plugged in a handheld device to the new hub. “But first I need to do a scan from here so I can tell afterwards whether how reliable Jerry is.”

    “Jerry?” asked Daniel. “Is that supposed to be an acronym or something?”

    “Nope,” said Rachel. She offered no further explanation.

    The rest of the work was about as much trouble as Dante had predicted. Rachel was extremely talented in her care of her home, and as a result any maintenance they had to do was easily handled and required little to no help from the wizard. He volunteered a few adjustments--which the territorial technomancer reacted to in a variety of ways--but not nearly as many as he would have if he hadn’t been as tired. They finished at around three in the afternoon, and Daniel headed at once back to his room to crash until it was time to head out.

    Ephraim had other plans. The sin-eater banged on the door about half an hour after his charge had settled down.

    “What do you want?” shouted Daniel through the door after a few failed minutes of trying to ignore the intrusion upon his solitude.

    “I want you down in front of the television,” replied Ephraim. “This is the part where we unwind.”

    “I am unwinding,” said Daniel. “You can tell by how I’m alone instead of around other people. Not to mention people who are holding me prisoner.”

    “Yeah, but you’re supposed to do the unwinding communally.”

    “Why?”

    “I have absolutely no idea,” said the sin-eater. “It makes no sense to me, but as the unofficial counselor of the group I have to be there to participate and observe and bond and all that junk. And misery loves company, so as your handler I’m mandating that you join us for anime at least this once.”

    Daniel Freebird nearly sat up. “Anime?” he asked. “You’re blatantly disregarding my privacy in order to make me watch some cartoons?”

    The next time Ephraim spoke, his voice had dropped down from loud and boisterous to soft and cold. “Excuse me?”

    “Uh, well, I mean,” stammered Daniel. “Isn’t that kid stuff?”

    “Tell you what,” said Ephraim with that same gentle menace. “Why don’t you watch one episode of Fullmetal Alchemist? After that, if you still think anime is ‘kids stuff’, I’ll leave you alone until it’s time to head out.”

    Daniel turned toward the door and asked, “Seriously? You’ll really back off?”

    “Only if you come down right now, watch the episode, and decide that it’s an immature story,” answered the sin-eater.

    Before Ephraim even finished the sentence, the door opened up and Daniel was heading down to win the bet. Everyone else was still only beginning to settle in when the two lads entered the living room and Ephraim declared that they were watching Fullmetal Alchemist and that public opinion was not going to change the decision in the least. Fortunately, public opinion wasn’t feeling like testing that claim, and everyone agreed that it was a good choice of shows. There were a few minutes of gathering up food from the kitchen, which Dante had by then prepared and laid out in a buffet style for both dinner and spontaneous snacking throughout the afternoon and evening. The whole episode took about forty minutes, and for most of the first half Daniel felt confident that he was going to win the bet. And then his stomach began to turn, and it didn’t stop until well after the episode was over.

    “Well?” asked Ephraim cheerfully. “What did you think?”

    “I don’t know what this is, exactly,” said Daniel in a slow, trembling voice. “But I think it’s called ‘emotional trauma.’”

    Ephraim clapped his hands together in joyful victory. “Okay, we’ve still got about three or four hours until it’s time to head out,” he said. “Since we’re introducing our resident wizard to anime, does anyone have any objections to Death Note?”