The Warlock's Shadow
Chapter 1 - Wyvern Glade Academy

Wyvern Glade Academy

The world I know is far from what you would call ordinary; it’s a place where magic and modernity meet. Where fae beings like Faeries, Elves, dragons and other amazing creatures coexist together. It wasn’t always like this though, a thousand years ago a Warlock had opened a portal that merged parts of the Faewild and Earth, letting in all kinds of creatures and fae. People ended up calling this, The Convergence. The opening of the portal ended up being a regular event, happening every seventeen years. Wars broke out over the next couple hundred years after the first convergence until there was a peace signing in the location where it all started, some region that used to be called Kansas.

Sure, every so often some nutjob warlock tried to use this regular occurrence to start some problems after the Peace Accords took place but they were always stopped by the fearless, venerable, and powerful warriors called Knights. Just like my Dad. He died fifteen years ago from one of those nutjob Warlocks that tried to use the convergence portal for nefarious purposes, just a few months after I was born.

Oh, I should probably introduce myself: I’m Alex Umbra. I’m a perfectly average boy, living a perfectly average life with huge dreams of following in my father’s footsteps in being a Knight. I had average grades, average height, my brown hair was a mop and my eyes were a very unexciting color of brown. You really couldn’t get more average.

“Alex,” my Mom shouted from the kitchen, “You’re going to be late.” I looked over at my alarm clock. It was already 7:30, I really was going to be late for my first day at the Wyvern Glade Academy if I didn’t hurry up. I finished getting dressed and rushed out to the kitchen to grab some fast breakfast.

The familiar smell of bacon and eggs and the chirp of my late Dad’s dragon filled the air. Dragons here aren’t the colossal things you hear about in old story books. These dragons were a breed called wyverns. They’re small, about the size of a large cat. Dad’s dragon is white with soft blue spines down its back similar to an iguana’s. And like all dragons it’s forelimbs were also its wings, kind of like a bat’s but rather than just a dewclaw, they had a small three fingered claw, but were wide enough to wrap around their person’s shoulders like a shawl while the dragon perched itself on their human’s shoulder. Their long neck was usually laid behind the person’s neck resting on the opposite shoulder they perched on and their tail just dangled down the person’s back.

“Morning, Mom,” I said as I passed by. The dragon trilled in my direction, clearly upset that I didn’t greet him too. “Yes, good morning to you too, Glace,” I sat down as Mom placed a plate full of food in front of me. Glace reached out and grabbed a piece of bacon off of it before the plate left her hand. Mom was a nice looking woman for her age. She was nearing middle age, had long, thick, brown hair, blue eyes. Despite her age and job schedule she kept up on her physical fitness.

“Glace,” Mom scolded. “Naughty dragon,” Glace didn’t seem to care as he happily gulped down the bacon and trilled pleased with himself. I rolled my eyes at the dragon’s haughty actions and ate as fast as I could before he could get more bacon. This was usually the only time I got to see my Mom, usually she worked late and didn’t get back home until after I was asleep.

With a snap of Mom’s fingers she turned on the TV sitting nearby which showed the local news, “...this past weekend,” the elvish news anchor said. “If you’re just joining us, a cult calling themselves Worshipers of Blight were shut down recently just outside of town by The Knights. They were arrested on charges of black magic as well as attempts of subverting nature. The Knights have more leads to look into which they are planning to lead into more arrests soon.”

“Ugh, more Blight cults,” Mom sneered at the screen before snapping again to turn it off. “The man’s dead,” she said. “Just leave him to rot.” Mom hated hearing anything related to Blight. You know how I told you about nutjob warlocks popping up around almost every convergence? He was the latest one. He was also the one who killed Dad.

Just as I was finishing my breakfast, I heard a strange fluttering sound. “Do you hear that?” I asked. Glace obviously did. His head was on a swivel as he listened and hunted.

“Yes, I hear it. I wonder if a bug got inside.”

We looked around for a moment before Glace glided from place to place around the kitchen and living room. The cabinets, chairs, couch. “Oh no, not again,” Mom moaned. Oh no, was right. Glace had finally seen his prey a second before we did. We looked up and saw a small light with wings flutter around.

“Not another pixie,” I said, annoyed. Pixies were a horrible nuisance. Tiny, and annoying. Kind of like flies or moths but worse, they usually end up stealing something small. But this time Glace was on it like white on rice. Unfortunately, when pursued, pixies are fast.

Both the pixie and Glace flew around knocking down and breaking everything in their path. Trinkets, cups, dishes, pictures. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pixie wanted everything it flew by to be broken. The small white dragon gave a defiant trill that he was not about to be out maneuvered and chomped down on the pixie midair with a sickening crunch. He sat on the living room floor as he munched his prey happily. Splattering drops of blueish, silvery, glittery blood all over his maw, fragments of moth-like wings stuck out of his mouth. He took his claw tip and pushed the small bits into its mouth.

Mom went over to clean up the mess. Glace looked up at her and blinked and tilted his head. “Yes, I’m aware you needed to kill it on principle. Just be more careful next time. Fixing all this isn’t easy,”

Once hatched dragons form an immediate telepathic bond with their partner. However, since Glace was my Dad’s dragon, the bond took much longer with him and Mom. Mom never did go into detail as far as what happened to her dragon.

Mom extended a finger and drew an arm’s length circle in the air, a trail of gold light followed. She placed the same hand, fingers spread, in the center of the circle and immediately all the broken and fallen items around the house corrected and repaired themselves.

“There, much better,” she said. Glace licked his mouth clean and once satisfied climbed up Mom’s leg and went back to his perch on her shoulder. A twinge of envy sparked momentarily in the back of my mind. Even before Mom inherited Dad’s dragon and fully bonded, family friends told me she was already a gifted mage. Dad apparently was as well when he was my age.

I shook the thoughts from my head and saw the time. I cleaned up and gathered my things and bag for school and bid Mom farewell for the day, and she countered with her well wishes for me to have a good day.

As I opened the door I was greeted with a familiar face I had known most of my life. “Hey, Alex,” They said.

“Hey, Sasha,” I shouted in pleasant surprise. Sasha always had a habit of showing up unexpectedly.

“Is that Sasha?” Mom shouted from the kitchen hearing the familiar voice.

“Yeah, it’s me Mrs. Umbra,” Sasha yelled back.

“Do you need some honey bread to-go, dear? I know you don’t always have time to eat.” Mom was always making sure to keep on their family’s good side, even if it was a bit unnecessary. Sasha’s Mom was a Fae and with Fae it is wise to not tick them off as they can hold grudges pretty aggressively. Though you almost never hear of any Fae families cursing anyone anymore.

Almost.

“Thanks, but I’m okay,” Sasha said, “You ready, Alex? We gotta go,” Sasha was just as excited to start at the Wyvern Glade Academy.

“Bye, Mom,” I said one final time, as I grabbed my backpack and walked out the door. Sasha and I began our short trek to the school.

The city we lived in was called Elyisa. It was a large city that was built on top of a leyline intersection hundreds of years ago. Due to this we had a huge population of wizards and sorcerers who studied magic and what one can and cannot or should and should not do with it. Their towers littered the landscape here and there, shooting high into the air having once been small houses. The more magic that was concentrated in an enclosed area the more and more it warped the space around it, hence the towers. They were usually pretty cool to look at when they gained a new floor.

The sky around town was often littered with dragons flying around doing small errands for their human partners, small faeries, as well as streams of magic streaking across the sky looking like a permanent aurora in daytime and night.

Otherwise, though the town was quite large, you could say it was one with nature. Buildings and plants seemed to almost coexist together in a delicate harmony. Rather than the old stories of huge, colossal concrete towers, which supposedly a thousand years or so ago, made up the majority of similar sized cities that dotted the whole of the world and which attempted to stamp out nature rather than work with it. We learned long ago that finally creating an equilibrium with nature we could live easier with all the fae creatures and beings.

This included technology. The initial convergence over a thousand years ago wiped out most technology of the time, but over the decades and centuries, we managed to reinvent things like automobiles, television, and even figured out how to telecommunicate using crystal balls. Everything was powered by the magic not only surrounding us, but from the layline intersection, or in cases of portable items and cars, by ourselves.

“I wasn’t expecting you to come by today,” I said as we walked leisurely.

“Why wouldn’t I want to walk to school with my best friend?” They said with a fanged smile. Sasha was taller than me, but not by much and being half-fae attributed not only to their full and complete androgyny, but also to their stark white hair and slightly pointed ears and fanged teeth. Full and half fae beings could control what they looked like based on how they felt they identified. Sasha, in this case, felt they were fully androgynous. The only difference between half-Fae and full Fae were the wings. Full Fae had beautiful nearly invisible dragonfly-like wings that they typically kept folded close to their bodies and didn’t use them much nowadays, but they all had varying patterns on them.

“Sporting the skirt and leather biker jacket today, huh?” I asked, looking over their outfit.

“Yeah,” They said. Sasha’s voice wasn’t quite feminine, but not masculine either. “I thought it looked pretty good,” They said as they gave a bit of a twirl. Their knee length pleated plaid skirt expanded a bit as they spun. Sasha often wore odd combinations between completely masculine attire or things that were typically very girly, or in some cases like this, a little bit of both.

“You definitely pull it off,” I said. Sasha and I had been friends for as long as I could remember.

“Hey, check out what I learned last night,” Sasha said as they waved their hand as orange sparks began to form and suddenly their hand was on fire. “Pretty cool, right?” Being part fae they had an innate gift of magic. Being naturally attuned to the magic within and around the earth.

“Whoa,” I said, looking in awe. “You were able to figure out fire magic?” I had to admit I was jealous. Fire magic was notoriously difficult to master, much less being able to learn on your own. I always had trouble with it myself. The reason I had trouble with magic was because of an illness I had when I was a child. It was a Faewild-type flu that not many humans contracted, it was mostly caught and transferred between other fae and I ended up in the hospital. It wasn’t something rare but not totally unheard of. But because of that flu it blocked my body’s ability to absorb the mana from the leylines like everyone else so magic did not come as easy to me as it should have. But it wasn’t all bad, that was how I met Sasha. We were in the same hospital room and we became fast friends.

It was surprising that I was able to get into the Wyvern Glade Academy despite my medical ineptitude with it. Just to get in you had to have learned two types of magic prior to coming to the school. I was just able to levitate a basketball sized rock an inch and barely able to make a plant to grow a single tiny leaf. It took everything I had to channel the magic and push it through my body just to make it do what I wanted it to do.

Sasha shook their hand to put out the flame. “See, not even hot,” Sasha grabbed my hand. They were right. It was like it never happened. No scorch marks, no blisters, nothing.

“That’s amazing, Sash,” I said. I let go of their hand and felt a bit dejected. “Meanwhile, I can barely handle a simple earth-based spell.” I bent down and picked up a rock and held it in my open palm. I focused hard and it raised up a couple inches, shaking in the air before it fell back into my hand.

“Hey, it’s alright. You’ll get it,” Sasha said, wrapping their arm around my shoulders. “I heard, once we get our dragons in a couple days, that they help amplify whatever magic you’re struggling with. If that’s true then that means that you’ll be able to do just about anything,” They said.

I smiled at that thought. “Yeah, I hope you’re right.” I looked up. As we walked along the sidewalk we saw recruitment posters for the cult that I saw on the news before I left. It seemed pretty sketchy from the poster. ‘Join the fight and learn real magic. Serve our dark lord Blight and replace true power’.

“Look at this trash,” Sasha said and ripped off the poster and threw it in the trash. “Can you believe they actually get members from this crap?”

“I know it’s so weird, who would want to practice black magic and get the Knights called on you?”

“Right? Plus I have much more fun on my own rather than wanting to serve under a dead warlock. Why do they like him so much anyway?”

“Who knows?” We were still about half a mile from the school when I saw something new across the street. “Hey, Sash has that weird bookstore always been there?” I pointed to an old looking store but could have sworn that I’d never seen it before.

“No,” they said. “No it hasn’t. Wanna check it out? Maybe they have some cool old stuff,”

“Yeah, alright,” I said as we both jogged over against better judgment. The storefront was painted a faded black, as if it was weathered from several years. The door itself looked decades old and not well taken care of. The windows were dirty and covered with dust. The store sign that hung above was barely legible. Crowley’s Tomes, Oddities and Bookends was scrawled in old script. We struggled to push open the door, being stuck in its frame for a moment. The brass bell attached to the door rang as we opened then closed the door. No one seemed to be around.

“Is this place even open?” Sasha said as they looked around. “Oh cool, check this out,” They made a beeline for some strange looking medallion on a table. It looked like an eye that had some eye liner and other makeup around it. “Tag says ‘Eye of Ra’. Wonder who that was.” They put it down walking everywhere touching almost anything shiney.

We wandered around the store. Finding all sorts of aisles and shelves with papers, scrolls and tomes with the leaf lettering long worn away by time. It had the familiar smell bookstores had, of paper, magic, of knowledge long forgotten. The ceiling was unusually high, looking like it went on forever. Evidently there was an enchantment on the store to fit this massive amount of space inside a tiny setting. A thick layer of dust covered most of the books and glass cases, but all the amulets that were openly on display were shiny as if they had just been cleaned. Some were clearly new and reproductions of well known old medallions. Others, though they looked fairly well taken care of, were clearly old with shapes and configurations of unknown origin.

Time seemed to stand still while we wandered. No sign of the owner no matter how long we were there or how loud we were. We went further back in the seemingly never ending shelves upon shelves of grimoires, bottles, jars and stranger and stranger items. At some point Sasha had disappeared in the labyrinth of shelves and aisles.

“Sasha?” I called out. But my voice seemed to fall flat just inches after my mouth. “Sasha, where are you?” I wandered further, the store started to get darker and more medieval. Wooden desks stood next to the ends of shelves, candles lit the spaces between stacks. Old candles stood on the desks clearly being used to study by. I got an uneasy feeling the further down I went and opted to go back to the front of the store and see if Sasha happened to wander back there as well. I was nearly back to the front when I felt a presence loom up from behind me.

“Good morning,” said a male voice with the smoothness of black velvet but with the welcoming feeling of broken glass. “Can I help you both replace something?” I turned. The man was tall, dark and looked to be into his seventies and smelled of some strange cologne I couldn’t place. It reminded me of stale coffee, mint and used cooking oil. He wore a black suit jacket over a black button-up shirt, black slacks, old black leather shoes and black necktie. He held his hands behind his back giving himself a large presence. The wisps of silver hair he had left were slicked back and close to his scalp. His very striking blue eyes looked down his hooked nose at me, looking right through me. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d say he was Death himself come for me.

“Yeah, are you the Mr. Crowley from the sign out front?. What kinda stuff do you sell here?” Sasha said coming from behind the corner covered in a random assortment of amulets, rings and armfulls of tarot decks and books.

The man looked at Sasha with mild disgust as he waved a gnarled and arthritic, knotted hand causing all the items Sasha was holding to go back to their proper places. “Just ‘Crowley’ is sufficient,” he said slowly with all the pleasantness of an angry baboon.

“Sorry for my friend, they’re…fae,” I said, giving a pathetic excuse. “We just kinda wandered in. We’ve never seen this store before. It looks amazing,” I looked and marveled at all the old books and trinkets. Just like the amulets and medallions, from what I could see some of the tomes looked ancient, some looked new. Same with the odds and ends around the store. It was a strange hodgepodge of items throughout time.

“I just moved in here last night,” Crowley said. Crowley’s dragon gave a loud trill and flew over from somewhere deep in the store and dropped a small figurine made of stone in his hand which he quickly pocketed. His dragon sat on his shoulder like a parrot, which was weird. The dragon itself was a deep blood red. Its scales were matte and looked at us the same as Crowley did. Its yellow eyes burned holes into our skulls.

“And to answer your friend’s question,” he gestured to Sasha, who had begun to walk around again and check out more of the store, “I cater to the curious, those who thirst for knowledge. To those who are not afraid of what is often misunderstood. Curate what was once long forgotten to time itself and–,”

“Isn’t this just a normal, common, boring, non-magical, puzzle cube, though?” Sasha said, holding up the colorful puzzle totally destroying the mysticism Crowely had presented.

“Yes…,” Crowley growled. “As well as a plethora of, ugh, modern,” he hung on that word as if it was poison to him, “miscellaneous curios.”

“Well, what about this?” I said, plucking a worn book from a random spot on a random shelf. Not sure why I picked that particular book. I just had a feeling about it.

“Curious, you should pick that one,” the old man said, taking the book gingerly from my hands. “This is a rather old book from a time long forgotten,” he dusted off the cover with care and made a visual note of its age. “’La Magique Diabolique’ it is called. It outlines all manner of strange and unusual magic. Things that could be considered forbidden and unnatural.”

“Whoa,” Sasha and I said in unison once more. “Are you going to give it to us?” I said.

“What, no,” he exclaimed. “This book is much too dangerous. I’m surprised it’s even down here on the shelf. What kind of person would I be if I let a child not only have this book but read it?” He waved his hand again and the book flew away somewhere deep into the store.

“Aw, man,” Sasha said. “I was hoping this was going to be one of those Moments where you were reluctant to give us the book but give it to us anyway because we look like a couple of trustworthy kids.”

Crowley gave Sasha a curious look, “Why would I think you were trustworthy when you went through my store replaceing anything that was shiny and wearing it around like a lunatic?”

Sasha gave a shrug, “I dunno. ’Cause we’re cute?” they said and gave a toothy smile.

Crowley tilted his head, looking confused and turned to me, “is that one always like that?”

“Unfortunately, yes. They get way too into TV, movies and books,” I explained.

“Yes, indeed,” he said as he rolled his eyes and glared daggers at Sasha. “Look, if I give you both something interesting will you leave? You’re upsetting the delicate magical balances within my store.”

“Yes,” Sasha jumped up shouting.

“Ugh, fine,” Crowley gave another disgusted look and retreated to the deep recesses of his store.

“Sash, you really made him mad I think,” I said walking up to them. “What if he gives us something cursed?”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Sasha said, hands on their skirted hips.

Moments later Crowley returned with a similar looking book to the one I happened to pick from the shelf. Only it looked older.

“Here,” he said as he began to hand it to Sasha but paused, and turned to hand it to me instead. “This ought to keep you both entertained.”

The book had an odd feeling, similar to the first, but stronger. It was hard to say exactly what the feeling was. We flipped through the book replaceing all sorts of formulae, magic circles, runes and spells. “Wow, thanks,” I said, not wanting to express any ungratefulness. Never know what background or heritage he was a part of.

“Indeed,” he said. “Now, leave.” He snapped his fingers and suddenly found ourselves outside.

“What the-?” I said, astonished. I turned around and looked at the storefront. It looked closed now. Darker than when we saw it initially. Giving off an aura that visitors were unwelcome.

“Wow, that was so cool,” Sasha said, dripping with enthusiasm. “Let me see the book,” I handed the book to them so they could flip through it. As they took a more careful look through the book their sharp fanged smile began to fade.

“Sasha?” I asked, trying to get their attention. “Everything alright?”

“Alex, this book has a lot of Fae language in it,” they said.

“So?” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I’m sure a lot of old spell books have a lot of different languages written in them.”

“No you don’t understand,” they said. “Only the most important things were written down in the Fae language long ago. Most of what was passed down was by word of mouth because we never forget stories and history or what we are told by others. So to write something down was something truly extraordinary.” Huh, I guess that’s why they were such a good friend, they literally never forgot anything I told them.

“Can you read it?”

“No, I don’t think there are a lot that still can,” he looked harder at the strange scratchy writing scrawled across pages and pages. “Which means…,”

“Which means?”

“That this book,” they began, pausing. They looked me dead in the eye, their green eyes looking deep into mine, “is literally the coolest thing I have ever seen,” They were bouncing on their feet, the skirt flowing with their bounds. They were so excited they could barely contain themselves.

I smiled and shook my head and took the book back from them. “Well, we will see what we can figure out later,” I said.

Ding. Dong. Ding.

The bells on the nearby magic temples began to ring signifying the top of the hour. I looked around and saw the time on the nearby marquee for a bank. “Crap, we gotta book it,” I said.

“Let’s go,” We ran and talked the rest of the distance to school. Sasha was right, this was the most interesting and cool thing either of us have ever seen before. Many of the old books were usually lost to time or deemed by the majority of people of all races to be too dangerous to be left around to fall into the wrong hands. So they were locked away somewhere secret a long time ago. Before we knew it we were at the front door to an enormous school.

The roof of the entrance way was held up by massive ornate columns with dragons carved all along their length. The sign on top read simply, “Wyvern Glade Academy”. Showing dragons in relief flying around the words. The rest was built like your typical school, rectangular building with other wings jutting on either side to fit more rooms. Gardens of various flowers from Earth and the Faewild populated the grounds giving the feeling the building itself was part of it. The roof of the main building was topped with an extremely ornate dome of oxidized copper which held the dragon roost, for students and staff who have already gotten their dragon, and where we would be choosing our own eventually.

“Whoa…,” we both said in unison. I was becoming very aware of exactly how many times Sasha and I were in sync to have the same verbal reaction at the same time. We were taken aback at the majesty of the institution. It was here that we would finally become what we wanted to be since we were little. We heard the bell ring signaling the start of school and rushed in and to our respective classes.