This is the third chapter of "Liquid", Book 2 of the Wyvern Trilogy. It's an introduction to a young man named Jolen and an artifact of great power and importance to the Blue Wyvern Mercenary Group. Please note that this is a first draft.
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| Copyright 2013 John H. Carroll/Rachael Schiller - All Rights Reserved. |
A firm knock at the door startled Jolen from his
reading. He jumped up, set his book, The Study of Atypical Magical Gestures,
upside down over the arm of his favorite cushioned chair and rubbed his tired
eyes. After a moment of wondering what
he was supposed to be doing, another knock sounded on the door. Jolen realized who it probably was and hollered
up the stairs. “Father, I think the Blue
Wyverns are here.”
The elderly wizard’s words spilled down the stairs in their
typical rush. “I’ll be down shortly. Entertain them.” Professor Klunjun did everything quick and
efficiently unlike his son who believed life should be sauntered through in as
casual a manner as possible.
Jolen scratched his chin through his untrimmed beard and
surveyed the large main-level room of the tower that he was supposed to be
cleaning that morning. Books magical and
mundane were scattered around worn furniture in the living area. He hadn’t put them away because all the
bookshelves were already full along with a few stacks sitting on crates. Dust covered the fireplace mantel, the unlit
lanterns and drifted in the light that filtered through filthy windows. Nearly every dish in the kitchen along the
far, rounded wall was dirty and stacked just as haphazardly as the books.
He ran long fingers through greasy brown hair and mumbled a
half-hearted curse upon hitting a snag. It
was Jolen’s job as his father’s apprentice to clean the tower, but he had no
desire to do so. Professor Klunjun had
eventually decided not to come down to the main level until Jolen couldn’t stand
living in the mess and got around to taking care of it. That was a year ago. The situation had devolved into a battle of
wills.
Pounding on the door startled Jolen once more. Looking down, he remembered that he had
forgotten to change into his good robe, though it was nearly as dirty as the
once-orange garb he wore now. For the
umpteenth time, he mumbled that his father should have put a self-cleaning
enchantment within the runes that dotted the garment.
The hammering at the door had a metallic tone to it as
though someone was using the hilt of a sword to knock. Jolen ambled over to answer, not willing to
take the chance that they might use the pointy end of the sword to knock next.
Heat and city noise burst through as he swung the door
open. Jolen squinted as he peered at
four figures standing under the awning that protected them from the late
morning sun. A few people made their way
along the cramped street beyond, paying no attention to the squat tower at the
end of a poor orphanage.
Irritation showed narrow face of the officer who held the
hilt of her sword up as though to pound on the door once more. She lowered the weapon slowly as though
debating whether to put it away or use it on the young man in front of
her. Green eyes with a heavy dose of
brown looked Jolen up and down in clear disgust at his disheveled state. Her harsh voice knocked Jolen back a step
with its intensity. “I am Captain
Emaate, White Talon Company, Blue Wyverns.
This is Lieutenant Koanee, Sergeant Donda and Practitioner Melise. I was told this is where Professor Klunjun
resides.”
“Yeah, this is it,” Jolen admitted. He didn’t like dealing with people and the
Blue Wyverns didn’t strike him as friendly company. “Come on in.”
He left the door open and gestured carelessly for them to enter behind
him.
Captain Emaate marched into the room and halted before
running into the dawdling wizard. Lieutenant
Koanee was a whip of a woman with her hand unconsciously hovering near a thin
sword at her hip, Sergeant Donda was a burly woman with fist meaty enough to
make a man proud. Behind them was
Practitioner Melise in a blue wizard’s robes and cowl. She held a multi-crystal topped staff in her
hand that bespoke of power and experience.
Jolen could tell by the palpable aura surrounding her that she was not
to be messed with, certainly not by an apprentice like him. Even his father would hesitate to challenge
her, though he wasn’t the sort to engage in wizard’s duels. The four surveyed the messy room with obvious
distaste.
Jolen started to clean a stack of books off the couch, but
thought better of it when realizing that it would take a long time to clear off
enough for anyone to sit. He would
probably work up a sweat doing so.
The officer’s eyebrow raised expectantly when he turned to
face her.
He gestured at the couch.
“There’s really nowhere to put any of the books. You can just stand I guess.” Jolen headed to the kitchen to see if there
was anything for him to eat. In doing
so, he missed the captain being restrained by her soldiers when she attempted
to lunge at him.
“It’s not worth it, Captain,” one of them said.
Jolen turned. “Hmm?”
Fierce eyes bulged from the captain’s ruddy face as the
woman struggled against the hold of the others.
If the burly soldier hadn’t been so strong, the captain might have
broken free.
Jolen noticed that the pinkie on the captain’s left hand was
only a scarred stub. He wondered what
had happened to it. It occurred to him
that if he wanted to ask, he should at least attempt a bit of courtesy. “Would you like something to drink?”
Captain Emaate relaxed and tugged on the bottom of her tunic
to straighten it while the other two let her go. They stayed ready just to be on the safe side
though. “What do you have?” She glanced dubiously at the kitchen.
Jolen frowned.
“Nothing really. I usually just
have water. It’s not very good though.”
The sergeant grabbed Captain Emaate’s arm even though the
captain hadn’t lunged again. She let go
when the captain slowly turned a glare on her.
“Captain Emaate . . . I’ve heard your name before.” Jolen tapped his chin in thought. “A bard friend of mine told me that you saved
your company by riding up the gangplank of a beached pirate ship and beheading
the captain with a single blow. He said
it was an incredible act of bravery.”
Captain Leacy took a deep breath and recollected
herself. “I have found that bravery is
one of two things. Either you do what
you have to even at great danger to yourself, or you do what you do something without
realizing how stupid and perilous it is.”
“Which one fits you?”
Jolen asked.
Lieutenant Koanee answered for the Captain. “I’ve known her to be guilty of both on more
than one occasion. We’d like to speak
with the professor now.”
“Here I am.” Jolen’s
diminutive white-haired father jogged down the steps, still spry with wiry
muscles lining his short frame from underneath a short-sleeved shirt and
vest. Unlike nearly every other wizard
in the world of Ryallon, Professor Klunjun forwent traditional robes for
comfortable pants and sturdy clothing.
He wore a bejeweled set of golden necklace, earrings, eyebrow piercings,
nose piercings, bracelets, rings and a belt that held the protections and
amplifiers commonly found in wizard’s robes like Jolen’s and Practitioner
Melise’s.
Covering the professor’s aged skin were a slew of runic
tattoos that also amplified his abilities.
They lined his face, traveling down his neck and arms and over the rest
of his body, though most was covered by the clothes. Tattoos were popular among people in the
Kingdom of Swelth, but few people realized the exact nature of the professor’s
ink.
In his arms was a silver-banded maple chest that he carried
with surprising ease. He strode forward
with it. “Captain Emaate, I presume?”
The captain, clearly grateful to be done with Jolen, stepped
toward him. “Yes, we haven’t had the
fortune of meeting, but it’s an honor to meet a man of such accomplishments.”
“Hardly an honor, Captain,” Professor Klunjun said
deprecatingly. “For all my
accomplishments, I can’t even get my own son to clean up after himself.” He gestured at the filthy room. “If I’d been smart, I would have traded him
in for one of the orphans. At least they
appreciate having a clean place to live.”
Jolen gritted and smiled, but didn’t let his feelings
show. His father always gave the
expected speech on the rare occasions they had company.
The professor looked for a place to set the chest. Seeing that there wasn’t a clear table or
chair, he grunted and set the chest on the floor. “Well there is the Liquid Wyvern. Your company wizard should have the
enchantment to unlock the chest. If she
doesn’t, you won’t be leaving here alive.”
The threat was made without malice, but there was no doubting the
sincerity of it.
Practitioner Melise had to push through the soldiers in the
cramped space to get to the chest. Her
voice spun through the air like whispering silk. “Liquid Wyverns are too vital to risk and
death is appropriate for any who would try to steal it through force or
trickery. I know the enchantment.”
The professor gestured for her to proceed. Jolen took a few steps back and mentally
planned his escape route should he even suspect that the practitioner did it
wrong. He didn’t know the enchantment, his
father wouldn’t trust him with such important things, but he did have a sense
for when spells were going wrong.
Words of power slid from the practitioner’s mouth. Mystical breezes of magic that accompanied
all spells swirled around her, rustling her robes and strands of hair that
slipped loose of the cowl. The oddity of
the wind was that it only affected the caster.
Jolen had read numerous books on the effect, most in disagreement with
the others.
Runes along the silver bindings of the wooden chest glowed
amber and moved around each other in an intricate dance until the latch clicked
and the lid slowly opened of its own volition.
Jolen joined the soldiers leaning forward in
anticipation. The head of the Liquid
Wyvern peered above the chest, seeming to look back at its audience. The silver-scaled liquid alloy that gave the
statue its substance glimmered in the dim light of the room as gentle waves
ebbed along its body. The sapphire eyes
glowed with an even brighter light. Jolen
knew better, but found himself staring deeply into the raw power of those
sapphires. After a moment, he shook off
the sensation and noticed that only Professor Klunjun was unaffected by the
dazzling artifact.
The professor tapped the lid. It closed as slowly as it had opened and then
the runes moved along the silver bands to their original positions before
disappearing. “It is very easy to become
soul lost in one of these, especially one that hasn’t received its final
tuning. You’ll be safe from it as long
as the lid is closed.
Jolen knew that magical traps had also been set all over the
chest. No one would be able to steal it
from a full company of Blue Wyverns, but even if they did, they would pay in
the opening of it.
Captain Emaate and her companions breathed, not realizing
that they had stopped for a moment while enraptured. Rueful expressions crossed their features and
they chuckled in the process of regaining their composure. “That’s easily one of the most beautiful
things I’ve seen in my life,” Sergeant Donda proclaimed.
Practitioner Melise rubbed her face with both hands. “I’ve been working with them for years now,
but never has one taken my senses from me like that.”
“I tried some new techniques,” Professor Klunjun said. “But the fact that it hasn’t been tuned
contributes to the rapture it creates.
Tuning it to the other Liquid Wyverns and giving it a home will make it
so that it can be looked at for a short while without that effect.”
Practitioner Melise knelt before the chest and grabbed the
handles on each end. “Until we can do
that, it’ll be locked securely in this chest.”
She grunted as she tried to lift it, but it only came an inch off the
ground before falling back with a thud.
Professor Klunjun laughed.
“Thought it would be light just because a short old man carried it, did
you? Ha! I’ll
leave you to it. Hopefully you’ll find
your way out of this mess of a room, because I hardly believe my son will
remember to let you out any more than he remembered to feed his bird.” The professor pointed at a cage near the cold
fireplace and then headed up the stairs back to his lab.
Jolen clenched his fists in irritation. His father was always quick to point out
Jolen’s shortcomings.
Lieutenant Koanee maneuvered her way through stacks of books
topped by dirty dishes to the cage. “By
the gods! The poor creature is still at
the bottom of the cage!” She spun on a
heel to face Jolen with an expression that was both outrage and dismay.
“I thought for sure that I had emptied the cage.” Jolen rubbed his chin in thought. A rumble in his stomach interrupted the
thought and he wondered whether or not he had eaten breakfast that morning . .
. or dinner the night before.
“It’s half skeleton, half zombie,” the lieutenant
proclaimed, looking at the cage again.
She shook her head and moved away, her face decidedly green. “Get the chest Sergeant and let’s get out of
here now!”
The sergeant squatted next to the chest and grabbed the
handles. She tried to make it look as
effortless as Professor Klunjun had, but there was obvious strain in her neck
muscles as she lifted.
The four Wyverns left Jolen with varying looks of contempt
and disgust. Captain Emaate stopped at
the door, shot him a glare of accusation and slammed it shut behind her.
He briefly considered whether to be offended or possibly
ashamed, but another rumble from his stomach interrupted him. The plates nearby were all dirty, but one
wasn’t too bad. He rubbed it off with
his sleeve and set it down on a pile of books.
The sleeves of Jolen’s robe slid down his arms as he raised
them and flexed his fingers to cast his favorite type of spell. A grin of anticipation lit his face as guttural
noises erupted from his throat and his body began to sway with hypnotic
motions.
Jolen was using Throuala Magic learned from exotic books
rather than the dull teachings of his father.
It was primal magic created by primitive people, perpetuated by reclusive
tribes and written about by the most adventurous of scholars. The three books he had were extraordinarily
rare and they were one of the few things he took care of properly.
A whistling sound rose above the deep notes, manipulated by
the curvature of his tongue.
Supernatural winds had little effect on his matted hair, but they tugged
at the hems of his robe. The magic gave
him physical pleasure as it came from his body instead of the environment.
With a thrust of clawed hands and a shout that came from his
gut, he completed the spell. A juicy,
cooked steak as thick as any of the books in the room appeared on the plate. Next to it was a glob of steaming mashed
tubers and rich gravy.
Creating food was a specialty few wizards engaged in because
there was little profit and often the meals would disappear before they could
be fully enjoyed. In worst case
scenarios, the nourishment would even disappear after the food was consumed
leaving the eater hungrier than before.
Another issue was that casting magic took extraordinary amounts of
energy and required substantial amounts of food and rest after being cast. Thus, wasting that magic creating food became
a waste of time, as few wizards were efficient enough to create enough to
balance the craving.
The primal magic Jolen cast didn’t have the same effect though
it came from the body. For some reason,
casting the spells never left him tired or hungry, at least not any hungrier
than he was naturally.
As he cut into the steak with a mildly dirty knife and fork
he found lying around, Jolen assessed his condition. There was no weakness within him. In fact, he felt stronger having cast the
spell. Another advantage was that he
didn’t have to exercise like his father and other wizards. Magic did so much damage to a body that any
wizard who cast it had to work hard to maintain their health, requiring food,
rest and exercise. Professor Klunjun
dedicated hours to his fitness between research and castings.
Most wizards found a balance between casting magic and
becoming more powerful while avoiding the casting and preventing burnout. It was a delicate dance and those who
mastered it became wizened archmages.
Jolen had grown tired of the cleaning and chores that came
with slowly learning the craft of wizardry in the first year of his
apprenticeship with his father, a fact that still upset his father to this
day. Instead, he voraciously read books
trying to learn secrets that would make him powerful without putting in the work.
It had been two years ago when he found the books on
Throuala Magic. They were fascinating to
Jolen as he voraciously read them over and over and began trying the techniques
within.
Jolen had kept the knowledge from his father, but Professor
Klunjun had finally discovered him practicing one day. Of course, the professor had forbidden Jolen
to have anything to do with the barbaric art, but that would never stop the
younger man from feeding his desire.
Jolen did what he wanted, when he wanted, and damn the consequences.
Eventually Jolen’s father just gave up on trying to have any
influence other than the occasional barb or nasty word. Any other child might have felt abandonment,
but Jolen was happy to be left alone.
He finished the last of his steak and potatoes. A sleeve across his mouth wiped away some of
the gravy and juice that had dribbled past his lips into his beard. The plate should be cleaned, so he took it
towards the kitchen, but along the way he remembered that he had started that
morning searching for a book he had once seen on how the body channeled magic
through different parts of the body.
Jolen was sure that Throuala Magic originated in the gut rather than
traveling through bones, blood and nerves like most types of magic. Why that would affect things differently was
beyond him, but he was hoping the book would hold answers. He set the plate down and headed toward a
stack of books near the fireplace.
After a good twenty minutes of surprisingly single-minded
searching, he wiped off the cover of The
Origination of Power from Areas of the Body. “Aha!
I’ve found you and I shall read you mercilessly.”
A colossal boom, as though the world of Ryallon was gulping,
erupted from outside. Everything in the
room, including Jolen and the decaying bird in its cage was propelled a foot
into the air before being slammed down to the ground.
If the living room of Professor Klunjun’s tower had been
messy before, it was an outright disaster after explosion. Jolen scrambled to his feet and looked
around, trying to understand what could have happened. His father didn’t make mistakes outside of
having Jolen as a son, so it couldn’t be a spell gone wrong. Agitated dust floated through the air, upset
at having its peace disturbed after years of being allowed to accumulate.
Screams and shouts filtered in from the orphanage and the
city outside. Jolen scrambled over the
books that had fallen out of their stacks to flow into an ocean of pages that
blocked the way.
A though occurred to him that he should check on his
father. It was shoved out of the way by
the thought that he didn’t know where The
Origination of Power from Areas of the Body had fallen. That disturbed him, but not enough to stop
him from pulling the door open enough to get through.
The shouts were louder outside. Across the street, the baker’s shop had collapsed. The baker, blood flowing from cuts in his
scalp and his arm cradled at his side, was scrambling over stones screaming the
names of his wife and children.
Smoke rose above the conical rooftops to the left. Jolen shut the door and ran at full speed in
that direction. He didn’t hear the baker’s
shout of despair upon finding the lifeless arm of his wife, nor did he hear the
countless other pleas for help as he followed his curiosity along the
rubble-strewn cobble.
***
I hope you enjoyed the sample. "Wyvern" Book 1 of the Wyvern Trilogy can be found at Smashwords and other stores.
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All my best,
John H. Carroll
