Published: 14 Oct 2024

Dorian Mode Riffs

I woke in the morning and quietly checked my wards. Nothing and no one had disturbed them overnight. Not a creature was stirring, save for birds waking up the world with their mad cacophony of twerps and cheeps. That was reassuring. The sounds of nature behaving naturally typically meant there was no imminent danger.

Ethan lay beside me, having rolled on his stomach at some time in the night and I had rolled on my back, away from him. In true little brother fashion, he had hogged the bed sheets and blanket, and now was snug as a mummy in his tomb. He’d also brought the sword I’d made for him, holding it against his chest the same way he used to hold Mr. Teddy when he was younger. I used Mind to quietly, deftly maneuver the sword out of his grasp and the tangle of my blankets, taking it to my hand. I put the sword through the passkey rote on the bracelets into the tower. Didn’t need to let mom and dad see him with that weapon, despite his “Jedi” class training with the simplified practice weapons they use.

The house remained quiet in those early hours. Not even my father was up yet, whose work schedule has him up at the butt-crack of dawn. It was summer and I wanted to be a lazy shit. But I could sense things were getting complicated. Let’s see, what did I have on the immediate agenda. So, let’s check out my bingo card, and see how I’m doing.

Magic is real and I’m good at it. Check. But I’m not allowed to profit from it for fear of revealing my powers. Fine, check.

My Mage instructor is like a million years old but trapped in the body of a perpetually horny child. Check… but don’t look.

Vile kobolds want to rip my head off and drink my neck blood. Check. Scary gross, but check.

My master keeps supernatural freaky giant underwater squid-faced bear things in his garage that aliens use as war mounts. Big squishy check.

A unicorn likes me and gave me a gift I don’t understand yet but somehow sharpens my focus for doing magic. Awkward and cool, check.

I’m being chased through the woods by nightmarish creatures that are randomly stitched together zombies. Ick, but check.

I just admitted I’m gay to my younger brother, who also admitted to me he was gay… possibly. Again, check.

My crush lied to me about his name, told me he was tortured and tried to fry me in my own sauce while falling sideways over the river. And I lied to a cop about him, a cop my family knows personally. Big, red check.

I found out my brother is some young immortal, among many starting to come out of their shell. That’s a scary check as well.

Meryl also has a couple of million year old metal scroll that talks about the various “ages” of the Earth itself as well as predicts us moving into a new, 5^th age. That’s probably two checks for the ancientness of it and the creepy factor alone.

Oh, and we were planning on breaking into the Museum of Fine Art in Boston to collect my Master’s long lost ring that is capable of working an ungodly amount of magic, which we have to steal from some bad asses with magic and possibly alien magical tech on their side. Not entirely sure I want to check that box.

Gee that’s 13 out of 25, well 14 if you count the free spot in the center. Might be a bingo in there someplace. Maybe two.

As Invader Zim would say it, I had a mighty need! So I shook off the little bit of covers my darling little shit of a brother left me with, crawled over his still snoring form and went do take care of the morning pee ritual. Didn’t have the morning wood problem to match it, so I didn’t have to do that dancing around thing to get an angle on the bowl. I closed my eyes as I let the stream flow, feeling that this would be an extra-long pee.

When I went to finish up and tap my tippy, I looked into the bowl and saw through the ripples Meryl’s face staring back at me. It startled me enough that I yelped and stepped back from the bowl. His smirk looked entirely out of place on a young boy. He giggled even as I tucked my tube back in my boxers.

“What the shit, Meryl?” I hissed in his direction. “How long have you been spying on me like this?”

“About six seconds.”

“No, I mean how long have you been spying on me in my bathroom? Months? Have you been perving on my little brother, too?”

“Don’t get your boxers in a twist!” Meryl scoffed. “I only did it today when I heard you start to pee. Geeze, if I wanted to perv on you, there’s lots of easier ways to do it. And Ethan is safe. I may have urges, but I have boundaries, too. Look, how soon can you get to my place?”

“Near instantly if I have to. As long as your wards wont incinerate me.”

“Okay, good. Soon as you can, meet me by the perimeter wall. We’ll go from there.”

“Right, where are we going?”

“I’ll explain when you get here. Do whatever you have to in order to get free. I got something to show you.” And with that the bowl flushed itself, just as a drowsy Ethan pulled up behind me, yawning loudly.

“You done. I gotta go,” he said, tiredly twisting his missile in his boxerbriefs. I moved out of the way and let him have access to the toilet, heading back for my room.

So, I dressed in baggy khaki carpenters shorts, a loose green dry fit, packed a uniform shirt and my keys for Barnie’s along with my cell phone and some pocket money into my backpack and hit the kitchen. Made my sisters and dad lunch, packed a two sandwich sack for Ethan and told Mom I had to skip out to Barnie’s early. I made up an inventory day, which wasn’t entirely a lie, but it served to keep Ethan from being interested. It was his arts and crafts day anyways.

Down the street, turn right, into the woods and BAMF, just like Nightcrawler, all the way to Meryl’s stone hip wall. Predictably, he was laying back on the wall, one hand in his jean shorts as I arrived. He was staring up through the leaves of an elm tree, lost in something less then innocent, though, as I arrived. I made a coughing sound, glancing around to see if anyone was around, man, beast or something unnatural. But we were alone.

The sweltering heat was already picking up. Humidity was kind of high for so early in the morning. Felt like there was a storm soon. The gathering clouds on the horizon spoke to that, but overhead the sun was just beginning to beat down. We were due for rain anyways. It had been a hot, dry summer so far.

“Ah, I was beginning to wonder if you’d show at all,” he said imperiously, sitting up and removing his hand from his lower front. “I think we may have a lead on your erstwhile friend, Christopher.”

“Awesome. Where?”

He cocked a curious eye at me. “Don’t you even want to know how I tracked him? Humm?”

“I’m sure you’ll go into it, in excruciating detail, along with a lesson on the inner workings of the universe along the way. Now can we get a move on Yoda, before you burn from being in the sunlight.”

“I’m not some mogwai, you arrogant colonist!” he roared back with his little boy voice. I swear it’s like an angry kitten sometimes.

“No, I mean because you are so pale and it’s so hot out already,” I said. “Can we please get a move on.”

He paused for a second, standing on that wall of fieldstone and regarded me coolly for a moment. “Why the big rush? Did the wards on your family’s home trigger?”

“No. No, the wards are fine. They didn’t even twitch this morning. I’m just… I’m worried about my family. Okay? This guy knows where we live, where my brother goes to the Y for summer classes. He knows where I work. He could easily track my Mom or my sisters or my Dad…” I ran out of breath, feeling so frustrated. He’s scouted my whole life, and I barely knew it. I had basically told Christopher enough information in that brief conversation in the front drive and later in the kitchen that if he wanted to, he could assassinate my whole family. And he had enough of a grounding in the dark arts to do it. Plus… he had me liking him and he still hurt me, burned me.

Meryl walked over to me, across the top of the wall. Without a warning, he sat on the wall and hugged me.

All time seemed to slow down. I’d been close to him before, even had him physically touch me many times since becoming his student. But never did I get the sense of profound empathy and sadness wash over me as when he hugged me then. It was as though months of tension had built up between us, had flowered up between me and Christopher, and simply rushed over me with Ethan, and like all at once, it crested like a wave and crashed into me. And Meryl simply held around my neck, with his simple childlike arms, and let me lean on him, on his property wall, and I just let it out. The fear, the sadness, the stress…. It just all spilled out of me.

Probably less than five minutes into it and it was over. I dried up the water works, but he remained hugged on to me. And I realized, Meryl was crying too. That he somehow needed this as much as I did. Whether his child’s body missed the comfort of a mother’s touch, or the rough and tumble of simply kids playing outdoors, or even if it was that simple human, male need for skin contact of some sort to ease the stigma of loneliness, he clung desperately to me, taking as much as he was giving.

“Okay, I’m okay now. I’m okay,” I heard myself mumble into his small shoulder. He only responded with a nod and a snuffling sound from his sinuses.

“Ethan is a very lucky younger brother,” Meryl said, leaning back. “You give good hug. Now, let’s get going.”

“Which way?”

“If we follow along the river path, we’ll come to the local animal rescue, east towards the town of Groveland.”

“Source of the skronks, ya think?”

“It would be only logical,” he said, walking along the top of the wall. “And as one of the last places Christopher was seen at, it is as likely a place to start.”

I nodded and when he reached the end of the wall, I offered him my back.

“What’s this now?” he asked.

“I need to practice doing physical things while using magic, and your Far Senses are better than mine. Makes sense to get in a light workout while taking advantage of your greater sensing range.”

“Now,” he said, “you’re thinking like a Mage.” He hopped on. I started off down the trail, feeling a bit more centered, logical. Mage-like.

“So how’d you track Christopher?” I asked about a quarter mile down the path eastward.

“I went back to the scene of your Moebius strip and cast a tapestry with the wand.”

“Wish I’d thought of that.”

“Your homework for after this is to build your own tapestry wand. I’m surprised you haven’t asked me how yet. Anyways, when I went back, I found when he shredded the loop, and then plummeted to the river. He survived the fall.”

“Ouch. Heck of a belly flop. Fall from that high up should have turned him into tomato paste.”

“Normally, yes. But even a poorly trained Mage is still a Mage.”

“Okay. So let me guess. Antigrav rote? Forces, Matter and Prime?”

“Full marks,” Meryl said, resting his hands up on my cranium. “On his shoes, apparently. But clumsily done, as one would expect. Probably thinks his magic is one use only. Or maybe he wasn’t instructed on how to form enchantments on objects. Either way, the spell quickly wore out, but not without leaving a trail.”

“You can track that?”

He giggled, and tried to sit higher up on my back, pushing down with his thighs. “Normally, no, not easily. I mean, I could, but it’s not a simple matter to track someone using antigravity rote through the air. No, he made it easy for me. Remember how I said he isn’t really good at enchantments?”

“Yeah.”

“So what happens to poorly laid enchantments? How does the magic energy dissipate when the pattern isn’t set up properly?”

“Well, usually that energy has to dissipate down. A paradox effect. But if it’s in an object, and done quickly or desperately… it converts to some other form of energy. Usually heat.” We passed through a trail part between two largish stones and rejoined the main trail.

“Cor-rect!” he responded. “So as I followed the most likely way point out of the water and looked a bit deeper, I saw exactly what I was looking for. And voila!” He gestured and I looked down. There were clearly foot prints marked into the loose sand and trampled leaves, easily detectable by the slight crusting of glass and the clearly burnt grasses and leaves. The foot prints were far enough apart that whoever made the trail was running. Running due east along the river.

“Gotcha,” I said, unconsciously rubbing the middle metacarpals of my right hand. A memory flash of the pain from that explosion filtered across my mind. Meryl must have guessed it. He tapped my shoulder, just two taps.

“Mark the two boulders we just passed,” he advised. “Use them as a touch stone. A place you can co-locate to without thinking about. That way we can teleport out quickly if we find something that tries to eat us.”

“You anticipating he has a pet?”

“Remember the skronks?” I nodded. “Sloppy construction, right?”

“But no understanding of Life sphere,” I said. “You think he just sort of forced them together? That’s why they weren’t really alive, but were all chopped up?” I asked, starting eastward again. I shifted into using my own “Light Foot” rote, a subtle version of the Antigrav rote, same as above, but with more finesse. I made really graceful, light steps, that made me look like I was an astronaut on the moon. I bounced and bounded forward, barely leaving a trace of my passing.

“I think he is experimenting with his powers. But he’s got very little understanding of what he can truly do. I’m not going to lie to you, Marco. This kid is strong. Maybe as strong as you are.”

“That’s good. I got him beat on skill.”

“Fuck, I can’t believe I’m gonna quote that movie,” he said, exasperated. “Don’t underestimate him. He may not have your training, but he’s clearly got something that makes him powerful and unpredictable. Desperation. Even without a full understanding of magical mechanics, he still managed to put that rote into his shoes and rode them safely to the ground. He is talent and undisciplined rage given Mage powers.”

“Like that talk about where our race is heading?” I said, remembering.

“And this is a perfect example for why this culture is not ready for such powers. And why we must act responsibly.” That put a thought into my head.

“Is that the only reason you choose to train me?”

“To be honest, yes. Because you discovering your talent and powers alone would be stupid and dangerous, as well as irresponsible. And because you are probably the most talented young Mage I’ve ever encountered in over 3500 years, including my own children.” That was eye opening. “But, you’ve challenged me like few students ever have. And despite everything you get wrong, you learn, you think. You’ve been a good student.”

“High praise,” I said, coming to the beginning of a large fence line. It was set into the ground, cased in concrete. There were places where grass crossed the casements, but pretty much nothing could break the clean line. Even the forest seemed to pull back. The burned in the ground footprints ended running and turned up along the fence line, virtually disappearing. A bit of slagged rubber from Christopher’s shoe seemed to hang on the edge as if proving that he turned uphill here.

We stopped and I set Meryl down, reaching out with my Far Senses. Nothing with teeth big enough to be dangerous was near us. As my senses roamed, I found a building behind the fence, broken up into three parts. One was clearly an office, and linked to that was a garage with 4 roller doors for large trucks. The last building had lots of ventilation and was made like a Quonset hut, like shaped metal bent over like half of a tunnel. That had to be the barn where they kept the animals. Oddly, it was very quiet.

Meryl stopped and pulled out his ankh shaped wand. He passed the wand along the fence and then flicked it into the air, observing the pattern it left in the air. I looked to the tapestry and couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“Okay, he hasn’t tried to put anything into the chain link. Good thing, it’s horrible for holding on to magic. Cheap metal.” I turned around and found him unzipping his shorts.

“Uhm. Master, is this a good time for you to be doing that?” I asked.

“Perfect time. This is the fence on the back of the animal impound property. And we really need a one way solution to going through.” And then… he started peeing. It drew my attention, but he openly peed on the fence. And peed. And peed. I swear it went on for ever, he even walked around the corner post and peed on the fence from two sides. Even arching the stream up to about his own head height. Quite impressive, actually, for a little guy. His eyes were closed and clearly he was enjoying his urination far more than he should. When his stream ended, he simply tucked away and looked up to me, grinning.

“Okay, impressive, yes, but was that necessary?”

“And I praised you,” he said, with a “tsk tsk tsk” and head shake. “You still haven’t realized, pupil, that on a mission I do everything for a reason.”

“You just peed all over the fence.”

“Yes, after having made a potion of my urine.”

“A what?” I asked, dumbfounded. He sighed loudly and the, to my utter astonishment, he walked through the are of the fence that he’d peed on. As if it was thin air. “What?” I said, dumbfounded in another way. “Your piss made a hole in the fence?”

“A temporary hole, and just for us. It will keep lower life forms out. A trick I learned a long time ago. You can use urine as a transport for effects you create with the spheres. Comes in handy at times.”

“Wait, you mean you can mix potions into your piss?”

“Mind blowing, huh? Just keep in mind that you may have to drink some things to boost it. In order to make this one, I had to drink garlic in dairy. About half a cup of it.”

“I’ll have to remember to stock up on Papa John’s garlic dipping cups,” I said, sarcasm dripping like the fence was. “So how long do we have.”

“The same thing that makes chain link fences horrible for enchantments also works against this particular one. Maybe three hours at best. The more garlic you drink, the better the potion. And I can only drink so much.”

I crossed through the fence, trying not to get his pee on me as I slipped through. It was weird enough feeling the chain links pass through my body, but knowing they had piss on them was weirder still. “Apparently it didn’t affect your bladder.”

“Heh, well, yeah. At least my pee doesn’t stink too much.”

“I’m not gonna have to use this trick when we tackle the museum heist?” I nearly gagged stepping through. I had to crouch to his height.

“That might not be a bad idea. Stack the deck. That is if you can stand the garlic.”

The back side of the animal impound facility was down hill a bit, as most things were in the valley. This fence line was about ten feet downhill from a more level area. Looking back, the fence was quite formidable. Even using Light Foot, it would be a heck of a leap from the hillock. Even worse if I had to do it from the border of the fence itself. Must have been 12 or 15 feet up, topped with three strings of barbed wire, leaning outwards. Not impossible, but enough that most animals wouldn’t try to get through it.

For an instant, I wondered what Madeline the Murgal would handle being behind such a fence. Probably not too well with the river just 100 yards off. Took a mental picture of it and quickly refocused my mind on the task ahead. I turned my attention on the building ahead.

“Okay, three buildings, triangle set up. Office, garage and barn,” Meryl said, his little boy’s voice and New England accent making the last word sound like he’d said “baahn” instead of “barn.”

“Got it. Barn’s probably that one on the left, with all the fenced in areas around it. Whatcha think? The barn or the garage.”

“Let’s split up,” Meryl said. “He doesn’t know me, so I’m just a kid looking for his pet. If you find him, signal me and we’ll take him on together, hopefully away from the office building.” He put his hand on my forearm. “We must avoid all contact with normal people. No civilian casualties, get me?”

“I understand, Master,” I said. “Just investigate and wait.”

“Good boy,” Meryl replied. “I’ll search the garage area. You got the barn.”

“Okay.” We moved up the hill to another flat area surrounded by another fence. Apparently that was a yard to let stray dogs and such run free. Well, mostly free. Currently, though, it was empty. Which meant all the animals had to be inside. I used Light Foot and performed a deep, knee bending leap, high over the fence and a good ways into the exercise zone. I landed about halfway across the back zone and added some Life sphere to my legs, pushing much stronger than my own legs normally could. I lost site of Meryl as he approached the garage, a screen of ancient elm trees and a few evergreens covering him from the sky. Light as a cat, I landed on the roof of the barn. I took a moment to make sure no one was looking my way and analyzed my surroundings.

There were open sky lights, probably for the smells that the animals must make. There were two turbans on the roof, and I could clearly hear a fan or fans inside moving air. No one moved from the office block or the garage, save Meryl, who came cruising up slowly, hands deep in his pockets. He was pulling all the little kid moves. I wasn’t sure, but I think he was using a facial disguise glamour. I keep forgetting that he is still on every cop and public officials radar as the missing Ralphy Kurak. But my teacher was a wily lil fucker. He knew every trick in quite a few books.

I sneaked a peek into a skylight. They were the kind that pushed open from inside, lifted up on hydraulic motors. They opened out, from the lower part of the arched wall/roof, so that rain would run down the sides instead of in. I tucked my head and poked it into the skylight, keeping a hand on the lift motor, in case someone inside started to close it while I was looking in.

Inside, nothing moved. No lights were on. The cages, open to the top, seemed to be barren of all life. But not completely empty. Two cages down from the skylight, there was something laying there, but not moving. A big something not moving. In that “can’t keep flies off it,” dead sort of way. I risked a whiff and even from thirty feet away the smell was overpowering.

I had to get closer, despite the smell. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the barn moving about, so I risked it. Used Light Foot and wiggled my narrow self through the sky light, dropping gently to the floor of the cage beneath me, light as a baby duck’s feathers. I landed with a soft crunch on the loose straw that they used for bedding material in the pound. I could see other bales of the hay piled in a loose pyramid towards the large double doors at one end. It was nothing to hop the fence, using my arms to pivot over the top of the cage and then bounce lightly to the cell where the big pile of clearly dead stuff was.

Getting close to it was not a good idea. The smell above was like a soft breeze compared to the scent up close. I covered my nostrils, but that only helped so much. After witnessing the skronks up close in Meryl’s work room, it was pretty clear this as the source. The pile had at least seven or eight animals of at least four or five different combinations, all mashed together, mixed up and discarded, like tissues lining a 13 year-old boys waste basket once he discovers himself. Only less clean. The flies were thick on the remains, mostly in the wetter areas of the mismatched bodies, of which there were a lot of ruddy wet and oozing areas. It had a sub-smell like old grease from the french fry and onion ring fryer at Barnie’s when we clean it out. Only not so refined. It was an oily, burnt smell kind of mixed with the smell of a skinned knee bandage, two days after. Like dried blood. It’s kind of what I imagine bleeding ulcers or cancer smells like. Took a virtual act of will to keep from puking.

Well at least we now knew the source of he animals. We could piece out with a tapestry what was done to them, toughly, but it didn’t make it any easier to figure out the why or through what medium. I saw nothing int that barn that spoke of eldritch arts in practice, but the lack of magical gear didn’t mean the attempt to mash these poor creatures into something vile hadn’t been done here. I looked for the signs that Meryl had taught me. There was no pattern laid on the floor, nor the magical residue of such ritual magic. No cauldron from a potion making tradition. No wand or ritual knife in sight. But the stink of necromancy hung in the air. Some kind of blood magic was at play here. I was briefly reminded of the rimbor kobold that tried to digest my blood. The comparison was not soothing my sense of unease, not my revulsion for what had happened in here.

I bounced on Light feet back up to the skylight and wiggled back through. The change in the air was a blessing. I crept to the edge of the roof closest to the other two buildings and looked into the paved area between. The trees lining the buildings cast plenty of shade and the few cars in the parking lot took advantage of that. No sign of Meryl, but no sigh of anyone else either. I cast about with my Far Senses and determined there was no threat in sight. I took three steps to gather momentum and leapt off the roof of the barn, angling for the garage. Mad it with one bound. Beat that, Superman!

I cleared the top of the garage by enough that I landed in the middle. The roof of the garage was a metal affair, like the garage building itself. There were skylights carved into the roof itself here too, but these were more the type just for light to pass into the building. I found one and looked inside. Several cube looking vans were in there, with city markings on the side. One looked like it could hold multiple small animals in cages accessible from the sides of the truck. Mobile dog prison, as my brother might say.

Thinking of Ethan, I hoped he was safe at his arts and crafts class. I don’t think that Christopher would do anything against a little kid like Ethan, but then again, I wouldn’t have thought him capable of that monstrous mass of decaying flesh in the barn. For anyone able to do that, Innocence would not be a defense for any victims.

While I looked, I could see Meryl, holding the ankh wand up and peering through it, detecting magic as he went. He was masked by a glamour, I noticed, his skin a darker brown color, his body seeming chubbier. He looked a bit like a boy of Indian or middle eastern decent, with close cropped hair and a prominent nose. Kind of cute, actually.

Something in the garage moved, and I could tell that Meryl wasn’t doing it. A shadow stretched from a door inside the garage building itself. A bathroom or office, I guessed. I strained to find the source of the shadow. It dominated one side of the garage, slinking as shadows do, over three vehicles, moving Meryl’s way. I tapped into Mind sphere and and sent Meryl a mental warning, and an impression of from where the shadow was moving.

Suddenly the shadow stopped . I had the feeling that somehow my warning wasn’t so silent. I fell back on my training and concentrated on Mind sphere and Entropy sphere, cloaking my presence from far senses. Meryl stiffened, swaping the ankh wand into this back pocket and pulling his ritual dagger. It seemed almost obscenely large in his small hand, and I knew that the weapon had enchantments laid upon it for the work that mages do. Still, the fact that it was a tool did nothing to negate it’s effectiveness as a weapon.

I slipped over the side of the building, seeking a way in. there was a doorway between the garage and the paved area, as well as the roll up doors. If necessary I could brute force a breach into the roll ups, but a simple pass through the human sized door might be more sneaky. I Light Footed it to the ground in the shade of a spreading elm tree and made for the door. As I walked, I waved the Unicorn’s gift on my left hand through a quick activation pattern. I had a spell for unlocking doors hanging and it was easy to fuel and implement. Part of my training for the much debated mission into the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I passed into the building with no troubles, the lock easily yielding to my spell.

Inside the air was chilled but not by the air conditioner. There was a foul odor hanging in the air, and something else. Not really a smell I could readily identify. And after what I found in the barn, I was kind of loathe to test scents of any kind. It was flowery, herby, like incense, with that same cloying quality that seemed to stain clear air. Even the lighting seemed somehow darkened, as if the light was pushing through some kind of filter. Some cloud.

I found the door that led into the garage itself. I had been right in thinking that there was some kind of office to the side, as the two desks and rows of lockers in this glorified hallway bore out. No one was stirring in here, but I knew that the shadow guy was moving about in the garage, stalking Meryl. Quietly, I pushed open the door and cast my eyes around, raising my heightened senses. Everything inside the garage was murky. I was instantly worried. I was about to send out my Far Senses when…

“Gotcha!” a voice called out, and I heard a smaller voice squeak in protest and surprise.

“Ma-master!” the second voice called out, in that sort of strangled way. Still having Light Foot engaged, I tip-toed across the floor to the first vehicle. I bent over, and looked tried to peer through the vehicles. Yes, heightened senses can do that. And it was a good thing, because I almost made the mistake of calling out to warn Meryl.

In the row beyond the vesicle I hunkered down behind, a man in a crisp black suit held his hand out, clearly manipulating shadows to grasp a younger person who I had a hard time seeing. The shadows snaked up and wrapped around the younger persons neck. The river of darkness seemed to dim lights in the area. I mean I actually looked up to see light almost tugging away from the fluorescent tubes overhead, towards the shadow wielder.

And while I could perceive that the shadows were writhing around Meryl’s neck, the outward glamour that Meryl projected made him look like Christopher. “Master! Please!” he struggled to say. I looked around, for any advantage I could have. Anything that might break the guys concentration. Because while it was clear that Meryl was holding his own with that glamour, it was also pretty clear that the sharp dressed dude literally had his shadows tightening around Meryl’s throat. He was clearly caught, and barely able to resist. I had to act soon.

“You arrogant little prick,” the sharp dressed guy growled, low and quiet-like. “Did you think you could hide from me… Christopher?”

“I … gah… I …”

“And then you stole the alien darklight! Monkeyed around with MY creations! Did you think I wouldn’t realize it was you who released them onto poor Merlyn’s apprentice?” Okay, that got my eyebrows to stretch some. “I was saving those creatures for our assault on his Node! You stupid fool! I should kill you now!” he said and the shadows flared angrily with his emotions, seeming to ripple like fire. Meryl/Christopher howled and writhed on the ground, only part of it was an act. The shadow grip surged and lifted Meryl’s little form across the ground, up to the wall and lifted him off the ground. Fully three feet off the ground.

This was bad. I had no plans to battle a powerful Mage like this, that could give Meryl a run for his money. I needed to act quickly before Meryl’s gambit was up. Or before he realized that Meryl was vulnerable as a child and not his powerful adult masterful self. He dropped his ritual knife and put both his hands to the shadows at this throat, clawing and half screaming as the dark suited dude tried to choke him out.

“You are going to learn the painful way not to steal from me, not to disobey me. In folklore, it cost Oden an eye to gain such wisdom. I think I’ll take that as a course to follow, don’t you think? You will learn as Odin learned, my weapon.” And he flicked his wrist, summoning a knife to his hand. This was getting serious. It was time to act!

I didn’t have much of a plan, but as quick plans went, this one wasn’t bad. The Unicorn’s Gift pulsed at my wrist, ready to assist me. With a shift of my weight, I prepared to move. The first step was my use of Forces and Matter, aimed at the smooth, acrylic topped concrete floor of the garage. Sticking with my strengths, I used ice, coating the floor slowly, pushing the sheet of ice under the vehicles. Meryl gurgled. I had to work quick. As soon as I had most of the floor covered, I was ready to strike. I only hoped that the enemy mage wasn’t doing anything permanent. I heard him whine in pain and whisper out a “master, please” so pathetically.

A quick bounce towards the back wall and a use of Matter sphere and I was ready. As my feet touched the back wall, I gathered my body and my mind, springing with both of them; my feet pushing for the opposite side if the room, and my Matter sphere releasing a powerful rote, rapidly overfilling the entire room with much, much more air and water vapor than this room could contain… by like a factor of 100!

The results were that every door in the room suddenly blew outwards, even the roll up doors! I shot down the alley between two of the bigger trucks, clothes-lining the sharp dressed mage as I sailed at him from behind. He smacked face first into the ground, the shadow tether wrapped around Meryl’s throat fading as even the sky lights burst in the sudden over pressurization of the garage. My ears were ringing but I wasn’t finished yet. As the pressure shot out from the Unicorn’s Gift, I spiraled my path, propelled forward on the rapidly moving fog. I reached Meryl’s side and scooped him up, rolling on my shoulder though the ruptured doors. I tumbled, spun and regained my feet, pushing the continuing stream of fog down under us and used Light Foot to bounce out, coasting on a jet of high pressure fog.

Looking back, I might have used too much. The building looked a wreck. All the doors, front and back, roll up and simple entrance doors, even the sky lights and windows were all blown out, with ice spread out about twenty feet on all sides, fog rolling out nearly obscuring the entire building and at least one water pipe ruptured under the front lawn, spraying the whole area, already freezing into an arched fountain.

And then a burst of shadows broke out of the garage, from every opening. The shadows lashed around, one branch of them crashing through the ice fountain and shattering it with one blow. A loud bellow of anger followed, and as we shot away, the Mage screamed “Chris-to-pher!” I gathered Meryl’s small form up into my arm, him holding around my shoulders.

“Well done,” Meryl breathed out, still catching his breath. We began falling as the stream of fog ended, and I readied myself to land. As my feet struck ground, I dug into a deep crouched, picked a direction and launched again, using Light Foot for the leap. We sailed over the elms and maples and birches, heading roughly westward along the riverside.

“Who was that?”

“That was Al Card. He’s found us. And I can’t take him,” Meryl admitted. “Not like this. Not with him so powerful.”

“Sounds like he was behind the skronks. Looks like your guess about the Colours Out of Space. He said something about alien darklights. And that he was trying to regain control of Christopher.”

“Don’t leap to conclusions,” he said, rubbing at his neck as he sat in my arms. “But two things are clear. One, that he has no clue what Christopher is doing or even his present locations. Both of which work in our favor. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.” Well, Meryl seemed to be okay. His voice, at least, was still his favorite to hear. No damage there.

“And the second,” I asked, falling again. I gathered my feet and prepared for another bound off towards the north, to vary my locations.

“Second, he though he was torturing Christoper instead of me, which means he isn’t worried about a certain level of sneakiness, which he knows Christopher hasn’t learned yet. We still have that advantage, but our time is running out. I don’t think I can fool him again, especially if he really DOES find Christopher.” We cleared the tree tops and were with eyeshot of Meryl’s home, the old fieldstone church. “He’s too powerful. I… I can’t beat him.”

There was no use arguing it. “So what’s our next move.”

“I’m flat worn out. We have to take him out. I could do it if I had my stone.” He paused. I made a two-footed landing in the wide checker board courtyard under my feet. I set Meryl down and he turned away from me. “I don’t think you can handle his skill. I’m certain you aren’t ready for his savagery, Marco. If he tracks us, if he comes here… and if he gains control of the Changeling’s node, just across the street… I won’t be able to stop him.”

He turned to face me and his little boy’s expression said it all. “It’s now or never Marco, my lad. I can’t beat him without the stone. Tomorrow night, you’re going to have to break into that museum and grab my stone.”

And there it was. The big mission. I still didn’t feel completely ready for it, but this was serious. My family’s safety, Meryl’s life and any chance to save Christopher from this fiend, Card, hung in the balance. Ready or not, I was going to have to make my run into Boston, break into a heavily magically defended fortress, and steal a powerful, ancient and alien artifact. Oh, and make it out alive.

Yeah, no pressure.

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