Chapter 2

The insanity continues...

            Friday morning is usually something I greet with contempt; that should tell you how bizarre I am. Why? I hate Fridays because they’re the beginning of the void called a weekend. No one does anything of interest during them. Sure they go to movies and date and paw each other in public as they race down each other’s throats to see who can cause whom to gag first, but that’s of no interest to me. I’m part demon. I am the original unlovable. Though there have been a few creepy people over the years who thought I was interesting or fascinating or some other such nonsense, but they saw me more as a specimen than an actual person. It took me (on average) two and half days to scare them literally shitless. True, I do get into trouble when I make someone (especially some high ranking research big-wig) defecate in his tunic at the age of forty-four, but there’s something oh-so satisfying about knowing that I can do that. Is that so wrong?

            This Friday however, is one I shouldn’t hate. I’d say I don’t, but I find that I am still paired up with the newt when he comes banging on my door at the a*s-crack of dawn dressed like a color-blind orangutan. I don’t know who dropped him on his head or when, but if I ever find out, I’m going to kill that person. Not because they’d harmed the child (they obviously had) but because they hadn’t kill him! They’d left the retarded b*****d here for me to deal with!

            He isn’t completely hopeless though, as I have taught him not to start his bumbling attempts at conversation before 10 a.m. Granted it took exposing him to many different (and fun) tortures to make him learn this, but he has learned it. The only thing he says is that the cafeteria is out of coffee. I have yet to teach him that I don’t drink coffee anyway, but I’m not going to get into an argument with him this early in the morning. I swear 6 a.m. should not be a legal time of day. It should be a dead zone: as in anyone caught awake or productive before or during this hour (who hasn’t been up all night) should be killed before they morph into something truly scary like an over-achiever.

            So I step out of the sanctity of my room into the glaring fluorescent lights of the hallway with an inaudible groan. The lights of the sorcerers’ wing are lower than those of the bladers’ but still, they hurt. I hate mornings, but I hate bright lights in the morning most of all. My eyes don’t like them. That is a direct result of the demon blood. Demons like the dark. Their eyes are made for the dark, so bright light is literally painful to those of us with any concentration of it in our veins (i.e. runers). That’s why most of us carry at least one pair of sunglasses wherever we go.

I like mine. They’re not just pitch black but they also reflect the inverted image of whatever I happen to be looking at back at the subject. It confuses the Sulfur out of most people. They spend most of the conversation trying to figure out what is being reflected and ignore the glare of my eyes for a few moments. It’s nice. They were hard to get a hold of though. The lenses are made from the translucent shell of a deep-sea creature called a caerinthe. They are big. They are mean, and they can kill you in less than thirty seconds if so much as one of the three hundred needle-fine spines protruding from their neck, spine, or eyebrows nicks you. The spines are highly prized as weapons by some, but they’re so hard to procure that most don’t even bother trying to learn to wield them. Not to mention the wee-little fact that should you accidentally mishandle them just once, game over, you’re dead.

            So how did I get these beauties on my prior meager salary? Easy, I’m good at blackjack. I’m very good at blackjack actually. Yeah, if you believe that, I have some swamp land you need to see. Just send the money, and it’s all yours. In truth, I won them from some half-drunk blader who came visiting in hopes of a transfer. I couldn’t just let the opportunity pass me by!

By the way, there are a few other schools around the world that specialize in training only bladers, but they’re small, private dumps that rarely produce anyone worthy of assigning to one of the few sorcerers in training here. Considering that, I find myself wondering yet again why this waste of flesh, blood, and air is here beside me. He should have been kicked out long ago. No point contemplating that now; he’ll be dead soon enough and maybe someone competent will replace him or maybe they’ll just learn that I work best alone. Yeah, I should be so lucky. If anything, they’ll find someone worse to assign to me. I shiver at the thought. If there is anyone worse than him, I can’t imagine the person. They just wouldn’t have the coordination to breathe! Sometimes I have to wonder if he even does.

Okay, I’ll stop complaining now, honest (for a moment anyway). I shut the door, lock it, and lead the newt out towards the school gate. We’ll be walking to town to catch the train there to a point closer to our destination (which is too freakin’ small to even have a train run directly to it!) and to pick up a few supplies. They’re cheaper in town since there isn’t as much demand for what we need by most of the townspeople. The walk isn’t long, but I have a feeling it will seem like an eternity with my current companion. Sigh. The Headmaster himself is waiting at the gate for us. It’s tradition that he see off the new graduates on their first mission. He’s yawning and slumping against the bars, his body-language telling me that he doesn’t like this time of day anymore than I do.

When we’re close enough to talk, he straightens up and pulls another envelope out of his pocket; the train passes      I assume. “You know the basics of your mission already, so we’ll keep the chit-chat to a minimum,” he tells us trying to rush this so he can run back inside and crawl back into bed. “This contains the tickets for your train and your expense money. You’ll receive your pay when you return from the completed mission tomorrow morning. Your return tickets are in here as well.”

“Expense money?” I query. “I’m shocked. I usually have to shell out my own dough for whatever I need.”

He looks at me strangely for a moment before his eyes sharpen again, “I guess your body guards liked you less than I thought.” So the b******s had been given the money and just kept it for themselves. Figures. I hate people. “Your train leaves at 8 a.m. You’ll disembark at 10:30 a.m. That leaves you an hour and a half to get to your city of destination. I told the mayor that you would arrive around noon. Try to be punctual. You should have the mission completed by nightfall. The mayor will arrange your lodgings for the night. You’ll return by the same methods only in reverse. You’re scheduled to catch the 10:45 a.m. return train. If you miss it, the money for your tickets home will come out of your own pockets since the tickets are nonrefundable. Any questions?”

I expect the newt to start waving his arms around at any moment to ask stupid questions, but miraculously, he stays semi-still. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s been mesmerized by the design of the rune I’d carved in the back of my jacket. He’s trying to follow it with his eyes, and it’s making him dizzy. I sigh and turn slightly so that he can’t see it anymore. This is going to be a very long trip! At least he hadn’t stood directly behind me. That would have been bad.

“Wonderful!” the Headmaster exclaims as he turns to scurry back to his plush suite on the top floor of the bladers’ wing. Must be nice, I think to myself as I turn towards the long road to town.

The walk would normally take less than an hour, but I think it might just grow today. I need to stop complaining so much. This could be fun! I could feed him to the grazing beasts we pass along the way and just tell the Headmaster he got lost somewhere on the train! Or I could use him as bait to draw out the caedes and kill a couple. Their horns are very valuable to apothecaries. And if I don’t let the little buggers kill him, I can use him again and again, and since he has no intelligence to speak of, he’d never catch on or remember to complain to the Headmaster about it! Things are looking up.

I must be smiling when I glance at him this time because he looks slightly scared and backs away a little. “What are you going to do to me?” he asked in a tiny voice that resembles a cornered mouse’s whine. That’s the first intelligent question he’s asked. Maybe there’s hope for him after all.

“That depends,” I reply vaguely. Maybe if he’s scared, he’ll be more cooperative or at least less annoying. I can hope.

“Why are you so mean to me?” he asks as we walk. Gods, does he have to talk all the time?

“Because you aggravate me,” I reply increasing the length of my stride. The sooner we get to town, the sooner he can find someone else to pester and the sooner I can be less tempted to kill him and thus less likely to go to jail or worse, suffer a dock in pay. If crying gets me docked five percent, his death would probably cost me….fifty percent? Ouch. Note to self: keep the b*****d alive until you can ditch him somewhere safely.

“I haven’t done anything to you.”

I’m about to give some scathing, soul-scalding reply when I realize he isn’t being his normal over-active self. He actually sounds semi-sensible: a little slow maybe, but he’s actually making sense. So I stuff my prior retort, (I can always use it later) and give him an honest answer. “Because you never seem serious or even aware half the time. It’s like you live on another planet! It almost seems like you’re trying to bother me!”

“I’m not!” he retorts vehemently. “It’s not my fault I got the last pancake this morning! You’re just slow and grouchy!”

And there is the hair-brained newt I know and despise. I cover my face with my palm and sigh audibly. This is going to be a very long trip. I decide then and there that maybe I can outrun him. He’s a blader, right? So he should be able to take care of himself on highly traversed roads where few actual monsters roam. I mean for the gods’ own sake, children walk this path with slings and make it safely back and forth from the Institute to town! Surely he’s not that inept, right?

I’ll take my chances because at this point, I’m willing to pay half my check to just see him writhing in agony, and I’d even give all of it (at least three-quarters) to know that I would never have to see him again! This really is unfair treatment! I can appreciate a good joke, but damn, I’m cursed, isn’t that enough? Do I really need a migraine on legs following me everywhere?

I walk as quickly as I can without actually breaking into a run only to discover that his legs are just as long as mine and in his childlike mind set, he sees this as a race. I almost stop to thrash him before thinking better of it: fine, this is a race. I’ll let him win and not have to deal with him until we get to town where there will be other distractions to keep his minute attention span occupied. The plan works for the most part. He stops at random intervals to yell something over his shoulder which I pay no attention to.

I just want the mission to be over. I can’t ask for a different partner until I can provide proof that the one I have is inadequate. Hmm, let’s see that should be hard. Right. So after he bumbles this mission and I pull his a*s out of the fire, I can get someone better. That should provide me with some comfort, so why do I find myself hounded by a mammoth-sized wad a doubt that has taken a not-so-comfortable perch in my gut? Something just isn’t sitting right about all this. But I can’t worry of that now. It’s probably just first mission jitters. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been through all this a hundred times easily, this is the first time the responsibility falls almost solely on my shoulders. I’m just nervous, that’s all.

While I’m preoccupied dissecting my own thoughts, the kid gets way out in front of me. It’s kind of peaceful for a few moments before I realize that it’s too quiet. Out in the open like this, it’s never perfectly still, unless…oh Sulfur! I pull the lead out of my a*s and start running in time to see the beast pouncing out of the shadows towards the poor sap I’ve been devising death modes for. He’ll never see the thing before its tail blade is buried in his spine and his legs fall out from under him as his consciousness struggles to figure out what in Sulfur just happened before the world goes black. I guess I’ll get my wish after all. Oh goody.

I know shouting at this distance is useless, but it’s all I can do. My runes simply can’t reach that far. F**k, I am so screwed.

“Behind you, dumb a*s!” I yell, apparently even in emergency situations, the part of me that hates people is still working at the forefront of my mind. Fan-f*****g-tastic! I can insult people right up until my own death!

He turns faster than I would have believed possible bringing his sword down in an arc that makes it appear for a moment as though he’s surrounded by a halo of silver light. It’s just an optical illusion as the sun bounces off the highly polished surface of his blade, but it makes me understand why he was able to graduate with his substantially lacking brain power. Apparently bodily knowledge and intelligence are not as related as I had thought.

He cuts the grendal down in a single swing. The blade is so sharp and the path of the blade so precise that the beast doesn’t even bleed until it hits the ground. I stop just on the other side of the thing as he sheathes his sword with an innocent smile that just seems so out of place on a person that skilled with an instrument of death. He should be tainted and bitter and cold, but he’s not. It doesn’t even affect him.

I look down at the thing and remember why we have to travel in pairs at all times. Grendals are small dragon-like creatures which like to travel in packs but luckily they hunt alone. They have the characteristic tail-blade of a dragon but they lack the venom and sheer size to be as frightening. Their blades are used mainly to make daggers. They aren’t normally that dangerous as they’re skittish and stay clear of towns, but out here between establishments they sometimes bother travelers. While smaller than dragons, they’re also faster and more agile. Their hide is tough, and they’re damned accurate with that blade of theirs. They’ll hunker down near the ground to protect their bellies and snap it forward over their shoulder like a scorpion. They like to attack from behind and sever the spine or if confronted head-on, they go for the heart�"right under the rib cage since their blades are so narrow. Make no mistake; they are still scary, just not ‘dragon-scary.’ Some towns create a small team�"usually a band of people who couldn’t make it as bladers�"that hunt the things to make passage between villages safer, but not every town has them.

I take a moment to catch my breath from the sprint and decide that I will put up with the little b*****d since it seems that he does have some skill, and I don’t want to be known as the only sorceress to lose a partner on her first mission. I have my pride, you know!

“I have a name, you know?” he says sounding a little hurt. I guess he noticed the ‘dumb-a*s’ remark.

“Your point?” I ask not wanting him to know that he had actually impressed me. It could have been luck…maybe.

He sighs and continues on down the worn path towards the town. One day, they will give the place a name! I take a deep breath before catching up to him so that I can actually watch his back like I’m supposed to. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. Yeah, I’m allowed to believe that for oh….point seven seconds before the awkward silence descends. I usually like silence. I pray for the beast to come and block out my view of the world for a moment, but today, right now, it just feels weird.

“You don’t have to be so mean all the time,” he says after a few moments.

I snort. I honest-to-gods snort. “Excuse me! But I’m used to being hated, and I fully believe in giving what I get.”

“Maybe people wouldn’t hate you if you weren’t so mean.”

“Hi, did you forget that I’m a runer? People don’t need a reason to hate me. People don’t take the time to get to know me before they decide to hate me. Most people hate me before they even meet me! It’s easier on everyone if I give them a reason. I don’t have to resent their bigoted-ness and they get instant justification for their hatred. Seems to work both ways to me.”

“That’s sad.”

I look away for a moment. It really is sad; it’s pathetic even, but it’s the truth. I can’t change that, and I don’t even have the patience to try anymore. “Yeah, it is.”

He doesn’t say anything else for a while and neither do I, but some of the awkwardness is gone. And the birds start babbling again, so there aren’t anymore grendals on the prowl in the area. We’re reasonably safe. They won’t attack people in pairs anyway. They are cowards; they prefer to hunt single travelers from behind.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he offers after a while longer of silence. I had just begun to drift back into my thoughts, so it takes me a minute to reply.

“And what would that be?”

“You call me by my name from now on, and I’ll try to ignore the fact that you’re a runer.”

I laugh knowing the kid won’t remember the deal five minutes from now, “Fine. You got a deal… What in Sulfur is your name again?”
            I had honestly forgotten. I don’t usually bother keeping up with names, figures were more my forte. Numbers offered comfort while names were just another reminder of the fact that I wasn’t anything like most people.

He laughs a little wryly, “Shadroch.”

“Valencia, just call me Val.”

“Okay, Val. So where are we going to eat?” he asks as we approach the town gates and I sigh. Everything is back to normal. Gods help me.

Author's Note

All comments welcome!