Reunion

I’m fast asleep, face down on my living room couch, drooling onto the pillow. I’d assumed this position mere moments after I arrived back home after meeting that… Armageddon guy. A momentary reprieve, an evening nap. The day’s events had thoroughly worn me out. My firearm rests on the coffee table in front of the couch.

On the back of my head, I felt a “whup”. And another one. And yet another. Someone was smacking me with a pillow.

“Not now, honey.” I grumble, half-asleep, covering my head.

Leia is trying to wake me up. When I grumble this, she stops for a moment, blushing. “He just called me ‘honey’”, she thinks to herself. “How sweet. Does he see me that way?” The tips of her pointy ears turn red.

Back to smacking me with a pillow.

“Wake up!”, she demands, jabbing me in the back. She’s actively shaking me. I just groan, still half asleep.

“WAKE UP!”

A tremendous whack of a pillow lands on my head. Ouch!

I turn my head and glare up at her. Her fiery red hair and bright blue eyes are so pretty. It’s not such a bad thing to be forcefully awoken by her.

“Your son is back!”

Huh? I blink a few times.

“What?” Still sleepy.

“I said, your son came back. You’re to link up with him and go to Uragas’s hideout. Get up!”

I roll over onto my back. Did I hear that right?

“David’s here again?”

“Yes, stupid, get up.”

With a tremendous sigh, I haul myself upright and wipe my face.

“Where is he?”

“He’s outside, waiting on you. Seriously, you were only asleep for an hour, what’s with you humans?”

I decide to ignore this slight on my people.

With a belated, gloomy shuffle, I walked out into my yard. The evening sun lent a beautiful orange glow on the cherry tree feature out front, though most of the leaves had fallen already. I love this place.

At my front gate was a carriage. Standing outside of it was the Butler, from Alexander’s retinue, Calyx, the demihuman girl, and my son. He was holding two strange, black rods in his hand. As I cross the threshold onto the sidewalk, I see three more carriages lined up behind. They’re filled to the brim with my men; a carriage of orcs, dark elves, and dwarves, respectively. They give me a hearty greeting when they see me.

“What’s going on?”, I ask, drearily.

“No time to explain. Get in.”, Calyx announces, bitterly.

Regretting my choices, I hauled myself up into the carriage to find none other than Kalth sitting there. My son awkwardly climbs in and looks down at his feet, with those strange magical implements in hand.

“Well, is anyone going to tell me what’s going on here? David, are you alright?”

He doesn’t look at me or say a word. Kalth speaks up.

“Your son made friends with the infernal being that tore a hole in the sky earlier today, somehow. Those rods he’s holding supposedly control Slimes. If we can believe him, that is.”

Control Slimes? Like mind control?

“Have you tried them out yet?”

“No, that’s what we’re going to do right now.”

My head is spinning. I had a sudden realization. Wait, I can arrest Uragas for that murder now. Again, wait, if those rods work like he says, would that taint evidence in court? Hold on a second.

“You made friends with that guy?”, I ask, incredulously.

David looks up at me.

“He’s not a bad person.”

The entire carriage is now glaring at him. Leia, Kalth, and I.

“I met his mom.”

Eeeeeh?

What is this, one of your neighborhood buddies? What the hell am I hearing right now?

“David, you saw him. He oozes evil. As in, if I had to imagine what the Devil looks like, if he showed up, I’d go ‘yeah, that makes perfect sense.’ He’s not a bad guy? Are you joking?”

“He seemed fine to me. He said the Slimes were just an experiment that failed. He seemed to care more about magic ability than anything else.”

We’re all just sort of looking at eachother in shock. Of everyone, I’m the most confused.

Kalth leans in and grabs David by the shoulder.

“Do you have any idea how many people that monster has murdered?”

David shakes his head.

“Twenty million. Twenty. Million. I have personally had to redraw world maps twice because of him showing up.”

“Why?”, David asks, about the twenty million part, not the redrawing.

“If we knew why, we wouldn’t be so scared of him! Why did he take a liking to you? What the hell does that make you?”

I don’t take kindly to Kalth berating my son like this, but it’s probably justified.

“He was nothing but nice to me. I showed off a combination spell to him and he said he had an elf long ago who could do the same thing.”

Kalth’s expression changed in a matter of seconds. What was once disgust now turned to abject, personal interest.

“What spell?”, he asked, his tone of voice having completely changed.

“A four-part combination of earth, fire, water and wind, condensed into a beam and launched at maximum power.”

Kalth slumps back into his seat. He’s staring up at the roof of the carriage, emotionless.

David is looking around now. He looks at me for answers. I give him my best, nonverbal look of “How the hell should I know what this is about?”

Leia also has a deep look of worry on her face.

“That was my father.”, Kalth croaks.

The carriage falls silent.

“My father was an apprentice under Montgomery, the de-facto founder of the College. He was the first to develop that combination spell, and taught it to graduate students as a gift for completion of their studies.”

David’s eyebrows furl.

“Montgomery?”, he asks.

“Yes, Montgomery. He’s long dead by now.”

David pauses for a moment. Surely, it can’t be. There’s no way. Well, then again, he did say he’d been imprisoned for 1,500 years, but still, that can’t be.

“No, he’s still alive.”

A chilling silence fills the air.

“What did you say?”, Kalth asks, incredulously.

“He’s still alive. I met him. In fact, I saved his life.”

Kalth turns and glares at me. Woah, buddy, don’t look at me. I raise both my hands as if to show I’m not involved with this.

“I came here on a ship. I’m not sure at what point I got transported off of it, but that ship was headed here. Montgomery and about a hundred Elven villagers should be onboard.”

The carriage comes to an abrupt halt. Kalth vanishes from his seat; he’d teleported away. Leia is staring at my son with a thinly veiled look of amazement.

“You met Montgomery?”, she asks him, prying for more info.

It seems it’s no big deal to him.

“Yeah, he’s really nice. He protected the ship while I fought this freakish-looking elf mage named… Karo-kame? Ka-row-kamee? Super strong guy.”

Now we’re both looking at him with our jaws to the floor.

“You fought Karaokami?”, she asks, with an even more urgent sense of bewilderment.

“I kicked his ass, actually.” He seems quite proud. I can’t help but chuckle.

“He’s dead?”

“Oh yeah. He had some kind of funky tattoo on his face.”

Leia has turned a pale white color. It seems she’s having trouble processing this.

In the port district, at the beginning of the Grand Canal, Kalth flashes into view, peering down a long line of wooden sailing ships, barges, and tugs. Dock workers and civilians fill the area, carrying boxes of fresh fish and knapsack bags.

Slowly motoring into view is a strange, Western-style sailing ship. It sticks out from the others, cruising directly down the center of the canal. It has no sail, and its mast had been cleaved off midway up. Kalth teleports himself onboard the bow.

He spies three elves who had tied themselves to the center mast; they’re fast asleep, standing up. Peering up at the helm, he sees a tall, cloaked figure. Long, frizzled, grey hair. A hood that only Elves can wear. Pointy ears. The boat groans to a halt. The figure takes up a staff and slowly makes his way down to the center deck.

The boat comes to rest under a large street lamp, illuminating the darkened waist deck, and shining light on this old figure. He peers up at Kalth.

“Come here, young man”, he shouts. Kalth obliges and steps down, standing beside the gyro crew, who had been awoken by the noise. As he nears him, tears well up in his eyes. It’s him. It really is him.

A big grin envelopes Montgomery’s face. He stretches out his arms. It’s his favorite apprentice; the student he never could finish his lessons with; the student he left behind when he was transformed and imprisoned all those years ago.

They share a sobbing, woeful embrace. It had been so long. For the first time in a thousand years, Kalth let loose cries of anguish. His favorite teacher, the man he’d looked to after his father’s death, was still alive. The elves tied to the main mast are stuck watching this soap-opera moment, realizing they still can’t move. One of them wants to interrupt to ask to be freed, but they let them have their moment.