Magic

I awoke with a start. Cold sweat. Itchy. My back hurts again. This straw mattress covered in cloth, if it can even be called a mattress, did me no favors. It’s daylight outside. No alarm clock. I pan my eyes around the upstairs loft. This is real. Not a dream, this is really happening. As I sit up and collect myself, a small glowing orb floats up from the ladder used to reach the loft.

“Good morning, John!” It’s Leia. “Please get ready and meet me by the road.” Well, that’s that. I climb down the ladder and glance around. The old folks are out of the house. The goblins are staring at me, their eyes completely empty, thoughtless. Creepy. One of them jumps up and gets the door for me. Thoughtful! I’m faced with an overcast, muggy day. No wind, hot and humid. So much for yesterday’s breeze. As I stand and take in the view, my hand naturally comes to rest on my sidearm. The fleeting thoughts of how useful it might be pass me by, before walking along the beautiful flower-studded dirt path to the road at the end of the property. As I crest a small hill, I see Leia floating in the air beneath a tree, reading some sort of tome.

“Took you long enough!” She smiles. “Your carriage will be here in a few days. One of my first tasks is to test your magical ability.” Magical ability? “I’m going to run you through a very basic course of tests. If you succeed at any of them, I’ll be very surprised. Give it your best shot!”.

I say, “Wait, I don’t even have a clue what magic looks like, let alone how to do it”, at which point she cuts me off and says “You don’t have to know how to do it. That’s what the test is for.” At this point, the tome she was reading floats up out of her hands mid-air. “Stand still!”

I stand there, jaw agape, watching this book flip through pages by itself, as a brightly coloured ring of magical aura expands and envelops both of us. A beam of light shoots from the book directly into my chest. I double over, as an intense feeling of nausea and fear overtakes me. Leia stands there, arms crossed, with a disappointed expression on her face. “No… No… Nope… No…” The experience is extremely uncomfortable and seems like it will never end. Suddenly, the beam disappears, and I collapse to the ground.

“You’re totally useless!” she says, with more glee than should be expected. “This is entirely typical for humans. The one affinity you do have is for gravity magic, and you’ll never possess the mana needed to use it. So, you will never be a mage.”

As I collect myself, still reeling from the violent magical probing of my deepest self, an icy, terrifying thought crosses my mind. Gravity magic? Mana? Wait a god-damned minute. If humans can use magic, and humans aren’t the only race of intelligent life in this world, who else can? And if they can use magic, how the hell am I supposed to stop a criminal if he’s a freaking mage? Belatedly, I ask Leia, “Hey… which people have the most affinity for magic in this world?”

“Elfs, of course!” She says, with not even an attempt to hide her pride.

“How many elves are there?”

“Only about 12,000 in the entire nation. But we’re very long-lived, so those who do live here stick around.”, she quips.

I feel sick. She clearly notices my turning pale and I find myself suddenly lifted off the ground – that levitation magic she was using earlier. “I expected it would be taxing on you; let’s go home.” With us both floating in mid-air, we picked up a tremendous amount of speed and returned to the front doorstep of the farm. Before I knew it, I was fast asleep in my makeshift bed, in a steamy, sickly delusional state.

The next two days were a blur. Feverish moments of seeing the old folks standing over me, the farmers’ wife holding a cold compress cloth on my forehead, the goblins trying to pry my badge off of my belt. I was so out of it that I slept the entire time with my holster on. I’m glad it has a safety release mechanism, or else those little gremlins would have taken it off of me.

The next thing I knew, a strange woman was standing over me, casting a bright green magical light over my chest and muttering to herself. Wearing a black robe, and not particularly pretty, the few words I caught were “weak”, “why is this not working”, “these people” and “he stinks”. Classy. As I regained consciousness, I saw her hood had two pointy protrusions on top of her head. Clearly not for style. A closer look… ears? A tail, swishing behind her as her visible frustration mounts because I’m wide awake?

She relents from her healing magic. “You should be fine.” She quickly turns away and heads back down the ladder, glaring at me. Her orange and white striped tail swished in the air as she flipped around and disappeared from my view. My head was pounding. Did that magical test almost kill me? What a mess.

Upon gathering my senses, I find Leia standing in the foyer with a disappointed look on her face.

“You really are weak. Most humans recover within 12 hours.” I can think of nothing else but a weak “Sorry”. Arms crossed, she tells me my carriage is here. The old couple is standing just outside the door, profusely thank me for “blessing their home” and wish me the best. In front of me stands not just a “carriage”, but a royal conveyance. Trimmed in gold, painted the brightest white, with bronze colored spoked wheels and some sort of strange horse-like creature at the front, with an iron spring suspension underneath, it oozed money. A butler jumps down and bows.

“Your carriage, sir. Please forgive the delay.”

I opened it up to discover a plush, velvet red interior with carpeting and a deeply-cushioned couch. Through the frosted front window of the cabin, I see two figures; the butler, and a hood with pointy ears. Ah, that must be her. Leia and I settle in for the ride. She decides to sit right next to me, and asks pointed questions about my previous life. Did I have a wife, was I happy, what kind of life did I live, any children, what do I think about elves… Her intentions were brazen, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling she was unaware of the implications of her behavior. Elves.

Once evening came, we set up camp and enjoyed quite a nice dinner of fresh bread and some sort of large, canned fish stored in the rear of the carriage. Despite being whole, there were no bones. Delicious. The butler required Leia and I to sleep in the cabin of the carriage during the night. She insisted on sleeping ON me, for “warmth”, which quickly became a burden. Thankfully, we were awoken shortly after by the guards’ alarm.

I peeked my head out of the carriage door, my pistol at the ready. What I witnessed shook me to my very core. Both the butler, in his fancy suit, and the demi-human healer girl were mowing down a horde of black, red-eyed creatures like weeds. Hundreds of bright-blue shards of magic erupted in a circle around him and pierced each advancing foe through the chest. The healer girl was constantly chanting and apparently feeding him magical energy. Like a stack of cards, I watched these little gremlins in the dark get wiped out, advancing thoughtlessly to their deaths.

Once it was over, I asked if I could take a look. Leia cast an illumination orb spell over the carriage. What I saw, I couldn’t believe. At least 600, freakish, rotten-looking deformed goblin-like bodies strewn across the ground. Their blood stank, their bodies piled upon eachother in a large circle surrounding the carriage.

“What are these things?” I asked.

“Kobolds. Goblins corrupted by demons’ magic. The corruption erases their soul and turns them violent.”, the butler said, demurely.

“Should we go?”

“No”, the butler replied, “I believe this is every kobold within about 20 miles. We should be more than safe.”

Having been given my introduction to the forests of the countryside, I decided it was better to stay in the carriage. The rest of the night proceeded uneventfully, and we packed up the next morning to set off for Laios, the capitol. At this point, the niggling question of “How do you police these people?” gnawed away at me, giving me little sleep. Well, that, and Leia deciding I am a living heating pad, despite my being completely bundled up in a blanket to prevent any misunderstandings. I found myself too taken aback by this situation to wonder if it were a dream, but too deep into it to do anything but persist.