Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands
Chapter Twenty-One

In the early morning hours the sorcerer shuffled into a ghost town miles away from the air force base. Long abandoned and lying in the shadow of Mount Marcy, Tahawus was the perfect place to hide magical artifacts; unfortunately it was also just the sort of craphole town mythics tended to haunt.

With care bordering on paranoia, he trod through the dead town without making a sound, searching for the McIntyre House, where he’d stashed the mirror.

A lonely stretch of road was his easiest path. Over the decades, however, the encroaching forest had reclaimed much of the asphalt lane, forcing the sorcerer to duck and weave and occasionally cut his way through. Eventually he reached a fork. The old green street sign was covered in foliage and vines, and when he’d finally managed to clear it using his biollene, it was not to the sight of a street name but to the old warlock warning: BEWARE MYTHIC NESTS.

Following a deep prolonged sigh, the sorcerer expanded his senses, sending his inner eye outwards. The astral scan didn’t take long; a ley line coursing beneath the town aided in his endeavor, showing him the way.

He turned right and marched on through even thicker undergrowth. A quarter mile down this road he could no longer see pavement, the tree roots and underbrush having completely retaken its former domain. When he could no longer penetrate the foliage, he assumed a meditative standing pose, called on the earth elemental, and latched onto the ley line. With little effort, he forced his will over the growth, rapidly spreading his arms in an almost violent gesture of domination.

Vines and branches and all manner of animal life was instantly torn asunder, swiftly wilted, and died, leaving a three-foot wide swath for the sorcerer to pass through, its edges being dry and crumbly leaf corpses and animal carcasses. The cost of sorcery.

He inhaled. “Invigorating.”

Every few hundred feet he was forced to repeat this bit of magic, until finally he reached a large decrepit building falling in on itself. The McIntyre House possessed no obvious color as the clapboard siding had long ago shed its paint, and the sections of cedar roofing that remained were so faded as to match the surrounding forest.

The sorcerer knew he should tread carefully here. He was chasing sleep and was deeply fatigued from his spirit walk back at the base; his mind was not firing on all cylinders.

He crossed the front lawn, rode the half-broken steps up to the porch door, and shoved. The door didn’t budge. The second floor wall and the roof had sunk over time, crushing the door header onto the door itself. It would not be opened through sheer brute force.

So the sorcerer grabbed a luscious vine that was already at work annoyingly swaying at his head, and summoned a sylph. Small eddies gusted in the yard, forming into a gale force wind. With a supreme effort of will, the sorcerer concentrated the wind into a two-foot diameter concussive force; barely restraining the sylph, he directed it towards the door with one hurricane burst. The door exploded inward, its crash landing disturbing decades of dust and mold and initiating a grand clatter that echoed too long and loud through the surrounding forest. On his first step through the doorway, the sorcerer tripped over a cracked floorboard and fell forward onto the door.

Though he caught himself in time to prevent any real damage, he was not quick enough or sufficiently alert to avoid being smacked in the back of his head by the flat of a trolls’ khopesh.

When he awoke later in the day the sorcerer discovered he was locked in a small cage composed of stout carved branches and troll rope. He rubbed the back of his head. Cages were the only things trolls built; they preferred to requisition buildings others had constructed. Unfortunately this did not mean they sucked at building cages.

A scuttling sound to his left made the sorcerer turn swiftly.

“Hello,” he said to the leprechaun hunkered down in another cage a dozen feet away. It did not respond, and he did not ask why it didn’t simply trek away. Leprechauns possessed the unique gift of trekking, a sort of mythic version of teleportation, but once they’d been captured, they couldn’t trek within a hundred or so feet of their captor.

“If I break us out of here,” the sorcerer whispered, “promise me you’ll trek us to another town once I’ve gotten what I came for.”

“How you break us out, spellslinger?” the leprechaun demanded. Its green hair stuck up haphazardly, and it spoke with a distinctive cockney accent, much stronger than the leps at Camp Sagamore. This was a wild leprechaun, treacherous and deceptive.

By way of answer the sorcerer closed his eyes and astral projected, searching both for their captors and for the nearest squirrel. Ah yes, a troll sentinel stood guard back at the broken door, another pair tussling a few dozen yards away in the forest, fighting over the last leprechaun leg from the meal over the fire.

Above them sat a squirrel on a limb, waiting for the trolls to leave so it might enjoy their leftovers. The sorcerer borrowed easily into the critter.

Within moments the squirrel came sauntering up to their cages, having entered the house through a shattered upstairs window. When it was in his cage, the sorcerer recalled his consciousness, swiftly recovered and latched onto the stunned squirrel. While it was still struggling, he grabbed hold of the cage with his right hand, summoned the earth elemental and forced it to work its magic against the rope bonds holding the cage together. As the cage trembled violently and the ropes began to disintegrate, the squirrel stopped squirming.

It was over in seconds. The branches fell away with a clatter, and the sorcerer stood up, free. He tossed the shriveled carcass of the squirrel without thanking it for its donation of bioplasma to fuel his sorcery, and stepped up to the leprechaun’s cage.

“Well?”

The leprechaun spat into its hand. The sorcerer did the same and they shook, sealing the deal into an unbreakable vow.

“Hurry, spellslinger,” the lep ordered while the sorcerer worried at the ropes.

Soon it was done. The troll sentinel outside had apparently not heard them over the ruckus of its comrades, or else it would already be in here, breaking their bones. When he was free, the lep began to run, but the sorcerer restrained him.

“First we retrieve my mirror.”

The lep moved to help, sighing sarcastically the entire time. As quietly as possible they removed the cabinets and pallets that the sorcerer had used to conceal a closet all those years ago. Together they finished the chore and dug out a full-length mirror wrapped in tough brown canvas.

“Alright, ya have yer blasted looking glass,” the lep hissed. “Let’s be going before that gormy troll comes fer a snack.”

The sorcerer, hefting the heavy mirror, began to cross the room. In their haste the unlikely partners had placed the objects they’d moved higgledy-piggledy, and now they were forced to traverse a maze of garbage to escape.

Like most mythics, the lep possessed innate agility and balance. The sorcerer was over six feet tall and rather elderly; his left foot snagged on a busted knick-knack shelf and he stumbled to catch himself. Rotten floorboards gave under his lurching assault. Desperate to protect the mirror, he fell in a crashing heap on his back, mirror held aloft. Compelled by the vow, the lep was forced to go back and help him up.

Within seconds pounding footsteps sounded, swiftly rising in volume.

“It’s heard us!” the lep cried. “Let’s jiggy.”

They tore out of the house, knocking furniture aside, brushing old forgotten photos off the walls, and sending a pair of hideous harpies that’d been feeding on bats fleeing, terrible screams departing from their womanly faces.

Outside the sorcerer and his sidekick barreled through shrubbery so thick and tangled it could’ve been Shelob’s lair. Behind them the soldier troll burst from the house, sending timbers and splinters flying everywhere. “I can’t trek if my captor is gonna keep so fecking close to us, spellslinger!” the lep cried as it snapped its fingers at the nearest barricade of vines and branches.

The sorcerer stopped, kneeled, and after setting his mirror carefully down onto the brush, plunged his hands into the earth. The elemental responded instantly. “You better run,” the sorcerer warned the lep as he latched onto mystical correspondences in the earth. In the violence of their flight, his shades had gotten loose. Now, leaning down, preoccupied with his working, the sorcerer neglected them. The shades slid down his nose and fell from his face, revealing scarred and glowing eyes.

He was plugged in now, asserting his will over the earth. Twenty feet away, giant hands comprised of hardened dirt and stone, emerged like the appendages of some primordial giant. They stretched upwards, snatching the troll even as it sliced off one of the dirt fingers with its khopesh. The responded by squeezing with the earthen hands.

The troll, tough enough to withstand blades and hard blows, suffered the agony of having all its bones crushed to splinters before dying. Dirt hands tossed the lifeless husk aside.

A twenty foot circle of dead trees, vines, squirrels and birds surrounded the sorcerer. Thirty feet away the leprechaun stood gawking at the man with the glowing eyes.

Once he’d replaced his shades and hoisted the mirror, the sorcerer led the mythic another quarter mile into the forest. By then they could hear the peculiar howls of bargs, like hyenas.

“Are we far enough to trek now?”

The leprechaun nodded. “We coulda done it back there. That was my captor ya killed.”

Then it took the sorcerer’s hand. With flair it waived its right hand in front of its chest, and stepped forward. Together, man, leprechaun, and mirror vanished.