The Woodward Academy, Year 6

Chapter 10: March

"Now, you all must focus," the instructor said.  "These spells are difficult, and if you get them wrong, bad things can happen."

"Don't we want bad things to happen?" one of the students asked.

"Fine, let me rephrase.  If you do them wrong, bad things can happen to you.  The least of which is being called before a magistrate to explain what you were doing performing illegal magic."

"And the worst of which?" David asked, hoping like hell that his divinatory recorder was getting all this, hidden, as it was, in his book bag.

"Your rather untimely death," the instructor said bluntly.  "Now then, what we're going to work on today is the Spell of Living Death.  You'll note I refer to it simply as a spell.  Charm, Hex, Enchantment, Curse... they all imply some sense of moral code that has no place in scientific magic.  The fact is that you will always be doing magic that benefits you, and that's really all that matters.  As such, we will simply refer to them all as spells.  It should be obvious to you, since you are all licensed wizards, which spells rely on your energy, and which rely on the magic field itself.

"Moving on, the Spell of Living Death will not kill your target, though they may wish it had.  In this state, the target cannot sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, become sexually aroused physically, or any other action that requires their bodily functions.  They will be kept alive magically.  This is a long-term spell, as initially, it won't seem to have done very much.  However, as time wears on, the lack of sleep especially will start to wear on their mental processes.  This spell is designed for mental torment, not physical harm.  When the spell ends - which is dictated by the caster - the target will be perfectly healthy, physically.  Mentally, depending on the time involved, they may be completely insane."

"Say, Mr. Grushka," David started.

"That's Professor, Mr. Anderson."

"Uh... yeah, anyway, is there a way to stop the spell?"

"Why would you want to do that?" the instructor asked.

"Um... well, okay, let's say his family members paid you some money to 'fix' him.  Can you do that?"

"Ah, I see.  You're thinking of a nice blackmail scenario.  Yes, it is possible to reverse the spell.  We'll go over that, in fact, as we can't leave your victim spelled, because it would interfere with other lessons.

The instructor opened a door and motioned, and several people walked in.  They each shuffled over to stand next to one of the students.  They all looked as if they were under the influence of something.

"Here is your target.  This is the person you will be practicing on while you are here.  Don't worry, no one will miss them for a while.

"Also, don't worry about the fact that they are currently sedated.  We didn't want to chance that one of them might get belligerent.  It won't affect the spell at all.  Now, on page 7 of your book, you'll find the spell.  I want you to memorize it over the next few minutes."

There was a period of mostly silence as the students endeavored to memorize the curse.

"All right," Mr. Grushka said after a few minutes.  "Mr. Anderson, why don't you try it first?"

David frowned, but realized that the person wouldn't be under the effect of the spell for all that long.  This spell alone was enough to close down the school.  The Curse of Living Death had been outlawed for centuries.

David chanted the spell, and a set of black anti-sparkles surrounded the victim.  There wasn't much of a change, except that his face took on an even less awake expression.

"Good, good!" Mr. Grushka enthused.  "Of course we don't see much happen, but you can tell from his vacant expression that the spell has worked.  Now then, to clear it out, should you ever wish to do that, you merely wave your wand thusly, and order, Awaken!"

David mimicked the instructor's moves, and the victim was surrounded by a set of blue sparkles, his expression returning to the slightly more aware gaze it had held before.

David sat back, watching the other seven students go through the curse.  Each of them was in serious trouble at this point, as they had not been in any way coerced to do the spell, and they knew it was illegal.

"All right, good job, good job.  Now then, let's move on to something a little more visually entertaining, shall we?"

The students around David chuckled in anticipation.  David just looked on in concern for what he might be forced to do to his victim.

In an effort to protect the location of the school, they had confiscated mirrors from everybody, and cellphones from those who had them.  This, they figured, would keep people from contacting the outside world.

What they had not taken into consideration - and David wasn't about to educate them on the matter - was that one of their students might be proficient with creating divinatory objects.

As soon as David was alone in his room, he conjured two talismans from his Conjuring Room.  He set them on his dresser, right in front of the mirror that was attached to it.  A short enchantment later, and the mirror was now a magical communication device.

This only solved half the problem, however.  David could now tell someone where he was... except that he didn't actually know where he was.  He knew that they had taken a flight to Pittsburgh, but they had traveled for almost an hour after leaving the airport, and that left a huge area to search through.  Thankfully, he'd had an answer for that problem in his bag.

David pulled out a small device from his backpack.  It looked a bit like a compass, with a pointer around its edge, and two numbers in the middle.  He was surprised that it functioned at this distance; he'd expected Joe to have to do a little hunting to find them.

David reached out and touched the mirror, dialing.  Very quietly, he said, "Joseph Garibaldi, Boston."

Shortly, a face filled the dresser mirror.  "Oh, hey, Dave.  What's going on?" Joe asked.

David continued to speak quietly.  "Not much.  Just wanted to check in, see how the project was coming along."

Joe got the idea, and lowered his voice.  "Fine, fine.  How are things there?"

"I'm certainly getting my money's worth," David said.  "I'll be here for a while more."

"That's good," Joe said.

"Hey, that little gizmo I gave you... what numbers does it have on it now?"

Joe read off the numbers.  The distance it gave was the same as the one at David's end, and the direction was 180 degrees off, as it should be.  It was a verification that they did, in fact, seem to be still communicating with each other.

"Okay, great, that seems to have fixed your problem with it, then.  On that project... when do you think you'll have it finished?"

"Oh, tomorrow, next day at the latest."

"Great.  Can't wait to see it when I get back."

"It'll be here."

"All right, I'll let you get back to work.  Take it easy,"

Joe nodded, and then fogged off.  The conversation had been intentionally obscure, just in case anyone was eavesdropping on the room.  David removed the mirror's enchantment, so that no one could discover that, either, and then put away all the objects he'd been working with.

 David lay down on his bed and looked up at the ceiling.  He smiled, knowing that, thanks to this act of fate, he was going to get revenge on someone who had caused him no end of grief.

So, Miss Sherry Padman... you didn't learn a damned thing from your time in jail.  But this time, just stealing from people isn't enough?  You have to force people to physically and mentally harm others?  And how did you meet these instructors?  I'd think you met them through your brother, but there were no older people in The Clan.  So who were you in contact with that got you access to these dark wizards?

David knew that it was mere coincidence that the investigation of the school would end up being his case.  Still, to get even with the bitch who had convinced Jim to try to frame him for theft was an opportunity to be savored.

I'm gonna enjoy busting your ass.

 "All right, now we're going to cover a fun little spell for causing your target sharp pains throughout the body's joints.  Every movement will become hurtful, and even when they're still, it will ache and aggravate.  The spell is bolestis artritidu.  The wand motion is like this."  The man moved his hand in a triangular motion.  "Now you try it."

"Sorry, dude," David said, keeping in his character as much as he could.  It was hard for him to intentionally hurt someone like this with no reason to do so.  David performed the spell, and the guy before him cringed in obvious pain.  David consoled himself with the knowledge that he knew exactly how to end this spell as, being an ongoing hex, it could be stopped with 'peractus'.

Just as the instructor was about to carry on, the door burst open and several people rushed in.

"Rimohrs!  Everyone drop your wands!" Agent Keef shouted.

"How dare you!" Mr. Grushka snarled, and raised his hand to cast a hex.

David flicked his wand in Grushka's direction, and the instructor went flying into a nearby cabinet.

"How dare you attack a professor!" Grushka snarled at David, forgetting the Rimohrs for a moment.

"You're no professor, you piece of shit," David said.  He then waved his hand at his victim, who collapsed in obvious relief from the pain.  David ended the glamour he'd been hiding behind, and morphed his clothes into his Rimohr uniform.

"Take them, or they will arrest you!" Grushka screamed.

"The first person to raise their wand gets to spend the next few months in the infirmary," David said coldly.  "And I won't need to use an illegal spell to do it.  I am a seventh-year student at Woodward Academy.  You are not a threat to me.  Now drop your motherfucking wands."

Every student present dropped their wands all the way to the floor.  None of them had more than three years of schooling, and none of them had ever set foot on Woodward Academy grounds.  They knew better than to think they could match against David.

David turned to the instructor.  "Put your hands out."

"I will not!" Grushka snarled.

"Fine," David said.  "Reteni pida!"

Tendrils shot out of David's wand, encircling the instructor from just below his chin, all the way to his ankles.  Grushka fell to the floor, completely immobile.

"You release me this instant!" he screamed.

"I will not," David replied, mocking the instructor with his own words.  "You're about to be under arrest, and so you need to be restrained."

Vivian came over and did exactly that.  David picked up his backpack and walked over to Agent Keef.

"I have a recording of his instruction in here.  Have you busted the 'headmistress' yet?"

"No, we wanted to make sure to get the students, so we came here first."

"Oh, good," David said with a smirk of glee.  "Let's go get her, then."

"You look like you just got a Christmas present," Joe said to David.

"I think you'll understand when you see her," David replied.

As they walked down the hall toward the headmistress' office, David just waved his hand.  The door before him disintegrated, and they simply walked through the opening.

"What is this... YOU!" Sherry Padman shouted.  She grabbed for her wand, but David flicked his hand, and his wand shot out a bright light.  Sherry was sent flying across the room and landed on her couch, tipping it backwards and dumping her onto the floor behind it.

Sherry came up snarling, her wand in her hand.

"If you don't stop right now," David said, "your life will be over very shortly.  It took six Rimohrs to keep me from killing your brother when we busted him.  How many do you think it's going to take to stop me from killing you?  And there are only four of them here."

Sherry paused, then lowered her wand.

"Drop it," David ordered.

She did.

"Gee, you're not really as dumb as you look," David said snidely.

"Fuck you!" Sherry spat.

"Sorry, I'd still rather fuck a lamia," he said to her, reiterating a point he'd made to her after she and Jim had been arrested.  "Hands out."

Sherry jabbed her hands out in front of her, unable to control her fury.  David enacted the newest handcuff hex, and Sherry's hands were quickly immobilized.  Joe came over, arrested her officially, and escorted her out.

"I gather you and she have a history," Keef said.  "Another ex-girlfriend?"

David snorted.  "No.  That is Rob Beckel's sister."

"Ah, so she was part of that whole Clan business?"

"Not that I know of.  But she convinced my best friend and roommate to try to frame me for a series of thefts he was committing up at the school.  Needless to say, I don't like her much."

"Right.  Funny how things work out... her running this school, you being tasked with the investigation."

"Yeah... I guess the universe likes me this week."

Keef chuckled at that.  "Come on, let's get out of here."

"Gladly."

"What've we got?" David asked as he entered the office to see several of the officers waiting for him.

"A griffin loose on Boston Common," Joe said.  "Whatever the hell a Boston Common is."

David chuckled.  "It's a park.  Why are we all going?  It's a griffin, not a dragon..."

"You ever tried catching a griffin?" Joe asked.

"No... have you?"

"No," he admitted.  "But I'm thinking we're going to have a hell of a time of it.  Let's get going."

It didn't take them too long to make their way to Boston.  When they got to the Common, people were taking pictures, and running away, terrified.

"Okay, let's fan out.  The law requires us to try to take it alive, so stun spells only.  And try not to hit any of the bystanders."

David was going to say something, but before he could even start a sentence, Joe and the others had moved off.

The Rimohrs all moved into the park, trying to surround the griffin.  It was a very rare snowy owl/snow leopard griffin, fast and nimble.  As one officer tried to zap it, it merely hopped sideways.  It then jumped and zoomed toward the officer, who dove to the ground.  The griffin screeched as it passed over him, and then it circled around, landing back where it had been.

David stood back, leaning against the truck and watching, as his fellow Rimohrs tried time and again to capture or stun the creature.  He was trying very hard not to laugh at them.  After about ten minutes, when Dikko was accidentally stunned by a spell, he wasn't able to control himself, and burst out laughing full force.

"What the fuck is so goddamned funny?" Joe demanded.

"Not a one of you attended a Woodward Magical Creatures Familiarization Seminar, did you?"

They all looked at him shaking their heads.

"We don't need to know what it is," Joe snarled.  "We need to catch it."

"And if you had taken the seminar, you'd know how to catch it."

David walked over to a nearby vendor in the park.

"I need a half-dozen hot dogs and... oh... four hamburger patties.  I want just the meat, you can keep all the rest."

The man handed over the food, and David paid him.  The man was having trouble focusing; he kept staring over at the griffin, which was now just bouncing back and forth, switching its position to look at each of the Rimohrs surrounding it.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Joe demanded.

"You still don't get it, do you?" David asked.

"Get what?"

"Joe, he's playing with you.  He's not trying to attack anybody.  He's just having fun!  Look at him, he's just standing there, waiting for you to jump at him again.  It's just a damned game of chase to him.  He's no real threat to anyone."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Tom said.  "That's a griffin!  He could rip off someone's hand!"

David sighed.  "Like I said, if you'd gone to the seminar..."

David just waved everyone to stay in place, and then he walked toward the griffin.  He wasn't being particularly cautious, but he also wasn't being aggressive.  The griffin's beak started to twitch as David got closer; it could clearly smell the food he was carrying.

About ten feet from the griffin, David stopped and knelt.  He dropped the food on the ground.  It was only a few seconds before the griffin trotted over and started to munch on the food.  David petted it while it ate, and then waved the others in.  They came, but slowly.

"What the hell?" Vivian said, confused.

"Griffins aren't dangerous.  With the exception of a tiger griffin, most griffins are quite friendly.  At the seminar, I petted a lion griffin, and so did several other students.  People keep griffins this size as pets.  I'm thinking this one has been raised to be a pet, given how quickly he recognized hot dogs."

"You're telling me we just spent ten minutes..."

"Making yourselves look like fools, yes," David confirmed with a huge grin.

Joe growled, "And you didn't say anything because?"

"You didn't ask," David said.  "You went ahead and gave out your battle plan.  You never asked if anyone had a good way to catch a griffin.  You all charged into the park before I could tell you that it wasn't necessary.  After that, I just figured you deserved what you got."

Joe grumbled at him, but he couldn't argue, as David was right.

Vivian asked, "So, what do we do with him?  Obviously we can't leave him here..."

Joe said, "First things first.  We have to use Incognizance on these people."

"That's going to be pointless, Joe," David said.  "I'm sure video of this guy has already hit the Internet.  It'll probably be on the six o'clock news tonight."

Joe just shook his head.  "We do what we can, then we hand it over to the Magic Obfuscation Squad.  They have a lot of different techniques they use to discredit and remove stuff like this."

"So why aren't they here?" David asked.

"The MOS isn't composed of field officers.  They're strictly office personnel," Joe explained.  "Now we need to get to work."

"This is going to take forever," Tom moaned.

"Has to be done.  I'll call for more help.  First, though, spell them all so no one leaves."  He looked down at the griffin.  "David... since you 'caught' him, you get to stay here and keep him under control."

David snorted.  "Tough job, but I'll manage."  At the moment, the griffin was finishing off the last hamburger.  He then let out a squeaky chirp, stretched, and trotted over to a grassy spot and lay down, quickly nodding off to sleep.

David went and sat at a nearby table.  He was sure he was going to be quite bored.

Four hours later, and David had been proven right; he was bored out of his mind.  The griffin had spent almost all of that time asleep.  When he had woken back up, David borrowed a Frisbee from someone, and spent the time playing with the griffin, who happily caught the flying disk when it was twenty feet up, and then zoomed back to David's side so he could throw it again.

"Having fun?" Joe asked snidely, coming up to him.

"Yes, actually.  This is a very nice way to spend my day, thank you," David said with a big grin.

Joe just shook his head.  "We've got the people under control, but what do we do with him?"

"Pets aren't tagged in any way, are they?"

"If it was raised to be a pet, it will have a special kind of trace on it, to denote its owner."

"Do you know the spell to check for the trace?"

"No."

"Joy."  David pulled out his mirror, and dialed.  "Prof. Josiah Schmidt, Woodward Academy."

A brief conversation with the professor, and a check of the spell, revealed that the creature had a tag, but that the tag was incomplete.  It didn't have an identity attached, only a number.

"Well, shit," Joe said.  "That makes this more complicated."

"Because we can't take it back to its owner?"

"Because it means it was smuggled in."

"What do you mean?"

"Law requires owners of magical creatures living in Earth to mark their pets with this tag.  Owning a griffin in Earth is a very hard thing to do.  There are a whole boatload of rules you have to follow, so that the creature isn't seen by technos.  For this animal to be here, without the proper, complete, tag, can only mean he was smuggled in.  He either escaped from his new owner, or the smuggler.  No way to know which."

"So we have a new case," David said.

"Yeah."

"So... what do we do with our 'evidence'?"

"Hell, I don't know.  We could take it to the animal shelter, I suppose."

"I don't think he'd like that much... and I'm not sure the guys at the shelter would like it, either.  They're not exactly used to griffins."

Joe chuckled.  "Yeah, even in Dugerra, it's not common to see something like that in an animal shelter.  Hell, I didn't even realize these things were pet-capable."

"Even in Dugerra, where people really should know better, everyone pays attention to appearance to judge behavior," David said with a frown.

"Yeah... human nature, I guess."

David harrumphed, then sighed.

"Well, let's head back home.  Maybe Agent Keef knows what we're supposed to do with him.  C'mon, Buddy," David said to the griffin, who happily trotted along beside David as they made their way back to the van they had rented.  Vivian drove so David could sit in back and keep the griffin quiet.

Once back in the office, Keef was of no help.

"There's not really a policy on 'storing' live evidence.  Generally we do whatever we have to to keep it alive, and in a known location, so that the chain of evidence isn't broken.  You're right, though, about the animal shelter.  They aren't set up for something like that... even though he does seem to be pretty friendly."

"What about the Animal Annex, up at the school?" David suggested.

"That's a bit tricky... he'd have to be in basically constant attendance of someone else.  If he was left alone, then it kind of breaks the chain of evidence."

"Why don't you take him home?" Vivian asked David.  "He seems to like you..."

The griffin confirmed this by the fact that he was sitting right next to David, looking up at him.

"I have work to do," David objected.

"He doesn't seem to be getting in your way," Keef said.  "Besides, it is your case..."

"I don't have cases, I'm-" David started to say.

The other three present said in unison, "-just an intern!"  With that, they all chuckled.

Keef said, "Intern or not, it's your case.  And he's your responsibility.  Either keep an eye on him, or find someone who can.  But remember, he needs to be attended at all times."

"You realize that I live with a dragon, right?  I'm not at all sure they will get along."

"You'll figure it out," Keef said confidently.

"Gee, thanks."

 "Welcome home, Master," Olissa said, then gave him a welcome kiss.  She jumped when something nudged her leg.  "Oh!  Who is this, Master?"

"He's evidence," David said with a smirk.  Olissa looked up at him curiously.  "Someone smuggled him into Earth.  Until the case is wrapped up, he has to be kept in custody."

"So he has to be with you all the time?" Olissa asked.

"Actually, I was hoping that you would be able to take care of him.  But that depends on whether or not he and Bispy get along.  Where is Bispy?"

"In the back yard sunning himself."

"In March?  It's cold out there."

"He's a dragon, what does he care?" Olissa said with a grin.

"Right," David said.  "Come on," he said to the griffin.

"What's his name?"

"I don't know.  I don't even know if he has one.  That's why I've not given him one.  I don't want to confuse him if he does."

"Oh, Master... he's probably smart enough to figure that out, don't you think?"

David shrugged.  "I also haven't thought of a good name for him, either.  I've been calling him 'Buddy', but that's just to say something instead of 'hey, you.'"

Olissa nodded.

The trio walked out into the backyard, and saw Bisperion lying on the snow-covered grass, stretched out to catch as much of the sun as he could.  Bisperion had reached a size where it wasn't entirely comfortable for him indoors anymore, and so he tended to spend as much time outside as he could.

Upon seeing the dragon, the griffin's head perked up.  He jumped  and zoomed over top of Bispy, landing well on the other side of him.

Bispy lifted his head and looked at the griffin, then turned to look at the other two.

"Is he staying?" Bispy asked.

"That's what I was going to ask you," David said.  "He's part of a case I'm working on.  I'd like to leave him here, but I won't, if he's going to annoy you too much."

The griffin was nudging its way closer to Bispy.  He took his wings and fluttered them, showering the dragon with snowflakes.  He chirped in obvious amusement.

Bispy rose and said to the little griffin, "So that's how it is, is it?"  Bispy gave his wings one good stroke, blowing a torrent of snow, nearly burying the little griffin.  David worried for a second, but the griffin popped out of the snow, shook itself off, and chirped again, then zoomed around Bispy and out across the lawn.

Bispy looked back at David.  "He can stay... for now."

David nodded.  Olissa fought the giggles until Bispy winged off, chasing after the griffin.

Olissa said between her giggles, "I think Bispy just found a new playmate."

David chuckled.  "I just hope he doesn't kill his new playmate."

Turning to Olissa, David said, "Now, you need to understand that either you, or Bispy, need to have the griffin in sight at all times.  That means 24/7.  We'll figure out what to do about when we're sleeping.  I may have to make him a crate of some kind."

"You could use the bondage field..."

"That would contain you, not the griffin," David said with a grin.

Olissa blushed.  "I meant on him."

"Kinky... and gross..." David said.

"Eww.  No, I meant you can use it as just a containment field.  Just put a big pillow down for him to lay on or something, and enact the bondage field when he's inside.  It can be set to just limit movement, can't it?  I know most of them can..."

"I think so.  It's not a bad idea.  Might piss the griffin off a little, but so would a crate."

"And the bondage field would prevent him from hurting himself on the sides," Olissa said.

David nodded.

"Master, are you sure that Bispy qualifies as a custodian, for legal purposes?"

"He's a sentient being capable of being punished for lying to the court.  That's pretty much all that's required."

"Um... then do you qualify as a custodian?  I mean, they can't really punish you..."

David smirked.  "There are things they can do to me.  If I was of a mind to be trouble, they'd have a difficult time catching me, but once caught, I can be punished.  I couldn't escape from Barnard Hill any more than anyone else can.  It has ghost prevention fields around it."

"Oh.  I didn't know that."

"Anyway, as you can see, our little friend isn't going to be much trouble.  I have no idea what they're supposed to eat, but he had a load of hot dogs and hamburgers earlier, so he's probably not gonna be hungry for a while."

"I'll find out what we should feed him, Master.  Probably something like chicken or turkey."

David nodded.  "Tomorrow, when I take you up to the school so Annie can look you over, we'll take him with us, let Ellen look him over, maybe take him to Prof. Schmidt and see what he can tell us about them."

"And take him flying with you and Cupcake?" Olissa asked knowingly.

"Well... it's been more than a week..."

"Uh-huh," Olissa said.

"Don't you get smart with me, Little One.  I might have to 'punish' you later..." David said with a grin.

"Ooh.  Sounds like fun.  Um, I mean, yes, Master, of course."

David laughed.

"Good afternoon, Professor," David said.  "What are you doing here on a weekend?  I thought for sure I'd need to mirror you..."

"Hello, David.  I'm preparing for another magical creatures seminar."

"Already?  It's not until May, is it?"

"We're considering pushing it up a bit, given... circumstances."

"Oh.  Maybe not a bad idea."

"Right.  So what can I do for you today?"

"I have something outside that I'd like you to take a look at for me."

"Oh?  All right, I could use a break, anyway."

David led the professor out to the animal annex, where Olissa was entertaining their guest.

"My word," Prof. Schmidt said, enthralled.  "I have never actually seen a snow griffin before.  It's beautiful.  Is it yours?"

"Not exactly, no.  He's part of a magical creatures smuggling case.  I'm having to look after him until we conclude the investigation."

"I see.  Well, he seems friendly enough... energetic... have you taken him to Madame Abernathy?"

"Yeah, she just gave him a clean bill of health."

"I'd believe it.  Well, I'd think you knew all about griffins.  You were at the seminar..."

"Yes, but there's one thing you didn't really cover."

"And that is?"

"What do you feed a pet griffin?"

Prof. Schmidt chuckled.  "Yes, I did sort of omit that.  It's somewhat gruesome.  They really do prefer live food, you see.  Oh, they'll eat almost any kind of meat you throw in front of them, though they're not fond of wolperdinger, and they won't touch dragon at all.  But mostly they will hunt and kill... well, for this size, it's small game.  Rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks and the like.  They've also been known to take down birds."

"Oh?" David said in concern.  He looked at the griffin.  "You leave Jailla alone," he said sternly.

The griffin winced slightly, but only for a second.  He then picked up the stick he'd been playing with and carried it to Olissa for her to throw again.

"You know, David... as you have him, I could perhaps use him in the next seminar..."

"I don't expect to have him that long, Professor, sorry."

"Oh?"

"As I said, he's in my custody for the length of the investigation.  After that, I don't know what will happen to him.  I imagine it depends on the outcome of the investigation.

"Come to that, maybe you could help me.  Not that I expect you ever would, but if one wanted to get their hands on a magical creature illegally, how would they go about it?"

"Unfortunately, I'm a bit too familiar with that process.  My older brother was a smuggler.  Our entire family has been involved with Animperium for a long time, you see.  I use it to teach.  My father used it to work as an animal caregiver.  My brother used it to be a crook."

"Sorry about that.  So, any idea where I should look to find a smuggler?"

"My brother used to advertise in Earth, on something called the Internet, whatever that is.  You'd have to ask him more about that, as I have no understanding of Earth things."

"Where is he?"

"In Barnard Hill, where he belongs," Prof. Schmidt said contemptuously. 

"Okay, thank you, Professor.  Hmm.  Looks like another long trip for me.  I wonder if Cupcake would like to do some traveling..."

Olissa snorted.  "Master, you know the answer to that."

David just grinned.

"Back again?" the guard asked.

David shrugged.  "If you want to know about criminals, you've got to talk to criminals."

"I guess.  I couldn't do your job.  In here, I make an effort not to know what they've done.  I don't think I could collar some of these bastards without killing them."

"Believe me, I fully understand the problem," David said with a frown.

"So.  Wilhelm Schmidt.  Here we go.  When you're ready, oh... today let's just make it one-pause-two."

David nodded.

The guard unlocked the cell, and then motioned David inside.

Wilhelm Schmidt looked harried, harassed, and tormented.  He had been in Barnard Hill for quite a while, and the punishment had fully settled in.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Officer David Stroud.  Working out of the Bolmont Division."

"What do you want?"

"Some information."

"I've already confessed everything about my crimes," Wilhelm objected.  "I've got nothing more to say."

"I don't really want to talk about your crimes," David said.  "Just smuggling in general."

"And why should I help you?"

David held up a piece of paper.  "Because I can either help you, or hurt you."

"What is that?" he asked.

David explained, "I spoke with a magistrate before coming here.  I will file a report when I leave here.  Depending on what I put in that report, you could get your sentence reduced by up to two years.  Given that you've only got seven more to go, that's a pretty significant chunk..."

"And if I tell you nothing?"

"Well, if you tell me nothing, then nothing happens.  I leave, you finish out your seven years.  If, however, you lie to me, I also have the ability to extend your sentence by up to five years."

"No mere Rimohr can change a sentence."

David nodded.  "You're absolutely right.  I was speaking in shorthand.  I will make a recommendation.  The magistrate assured me that recommendation would be followed.  So, yes, the magistrate would be the one adjusting your sentence.  I'm just the one making the decision."

Wilhelm sat for a brief moment, then said, "So what is it you want to know?"

"I want to know, in detail, how you found your customers.  I am from Earth, so I understand computers and the Internet, though I am not particularly familiar with the deep web, so if that's what you used..."

"I used Craigslist."

"What?  But they banned any sale of pets."

"We didn't exactly refer to them as pets.  Besides, the ad on Craigslist merely made the connection.  To get any real info, they had to log into my website.  The Craigslist ad got them to purchase the login."

David nodded.  "So, no person-to-person contact."

"Not until delivery was happening."

"And... I'm making an assumption here that you'd know... is this the way other smugglers operate?"

"Some.  Others use eBay.  The real trick, of course, is getting the word out that the product - whatever it is - is available.  That is done very carefully through message boards and even things such as Google Groups."

David nodded.  "And... how do they get from, say, a message board post to the Craigslist ad?  I'll assume a direct link is out of the question."

"That would be too dangerous for us.  No, we word the message board posts very carefully to lead them to the right terms to use in a web search."

"What 'term' did you use?"

"Exotic animal menagerie."

"And what message boards would you target?"

"There were several," Wilhelm said.  He listed about a dozen of them.  "Those were the ones I found most effective."

"Were there others like you on those boards?"

"Of course."

"What efforts did you go to, to check out your buyers, to make sure they weren't Rimohrs or cops?"

"There was little I could do.  I tried using divination.  Obviously, I'm not very good at it," he said, waving his hands at the walls of his cell.

David nodded.  "Do you know if others have tried taking steps?"

"Some have elaborate schemes.  They force truth potions on their buyers, or they follow them around for a week or two.  I didn't have that ability, as I worked alone, and I don't know potions."

"Okay.  Thank you for your cooperation.  Oh, one more thing.  Where did you get the animals you smuggled?"

"I'm an animpericist.  Capturing animals was no struggle."

"You sold wild animals?"

"No.  That would have been too noticeable.  I used the animals I captured as breeding stock.  I sold their offspring."

"Sounds expensive."

"So is buying a magical creature."

David grunted at that.  "One last question.  What animal did you specialize in?"

"Tanuki.  They're one of the safest creatures a normal can own.  They're friendly, they never do any harm to people, and they handle enclosed spaces well."

"Is that where your brother got Nook?"

"Nook was one of those left over when I was arrested."

"Hey, wait, you said using wild animals would be too noticeable.  But Prof. Schmidt said that the tanuki is highly friendly, even in the wild."

"Yes, but they're not that numerous.  Selling them off would reduce that number further.  In my defense, I did take the step of raising two tanuki for the purpose of re-release into the wild.  I did not decrease the wild population for my own gain."

"Uh-huh," David said.  "Well, okay, that's all I have for now.  It is possible I may be back later."

"I'll be here," Wilhelm said, clearly distressed.

David nodded, then banged on the door.

 David was returning to the school from the Mystic Wolf Pub.  He'd spent a pleasant late evening with Bridget, and it was now four o'clock in the morning.

Nearing a corner, David heard a crash from the side street.  He pulled his wand and dashed to the corner, then peered around it.  Seeing what was going on, David grunted in annoyance.

David stepped out from around the corner just as another crash was heard.  The window which had just been shattered rained down shards of glass into the street.  The four boys who were responsible for it jumped back, to stay clear of the falling debris.

"Your turn.  I bet you can't hit that second window," one said.

The challenged one retorted, "Oh, come on!  That window's half the size of the one you hit!"

"Can't do it?" the challenger taunted.

"Watch this!" the other said.  He raised his wand, and a rock levitated into the air.  It hovered for a second, then it zipped straight at the window.

And bounced off harmlessly.

"What the fuck?" one of the other two boys said.  He bent down and picked up the rock.  "It's just a normal rock..."

"Maybe it's not a normal glass window," the fourth one said.

"Maybe it was protected by a spell," a voice said from behind them.

"How the fuck would you know?" one of them demanded, with little more than a cursory glance in the direction of the voice.

"Because I'm the one who cast the spell," David said.

"Who the... aw, man!" the one who'd cast the stone said, finally recognizing David.  "Come on, we were just having some fun!"

"And did you make sure that this building was empty?"

"Uh..."

"No, obviously not, as there are lights on.  So, did you make sure that no one was in the rooms you were targeting?"

"Well..."

"No, clearly you didn't, as that would have required looking in them, and they are on the third floor.  So you just decided to magically launch a projectile into a possibly occupied room, throwing not just the rock, but sharp pieces of glass everywhere."

"Hey, no one got hurt..."

"How would you know?  Have you asked?"

"No one yelled..." he offered.

"And if they were knocked unconscious by the rock, they wouldn't.  You were being reckless, and now you're being unrepentant.  What rank are you four in?"

"We're all apprentices," the one said, his face downcast.

"The dean is not going to like this.  All right, hands out."

"And if we don't?" one of them challenged.

"Then something very bad will happen to you that you really don't want to contemplate."

David let that comment hang, and the four quickly stuck their hands out.  He enacted a handcuff hex on the four of them, and then also shackled them together.  He then went over and knocked on the door of the home they had been vandalizing.

The door whipped open, a wand pointed at David's face.

"I wouldn't advise that," David said calmly.  "Rimohr Officer, lower your wand."

The man at the door did just that, heaving a sigh of relief.  "I figured it was one of those bastards."

"Yes, sir.  They'll be dealt with.  I just wanted to know if anyone had been hurt."

"No, the glass missed my daughter."

David nodded.  "Okay, thank you.  Have a good night."

The man grunted and closed the door.  David stepped back, then looked up at the window.  He raised his wand and cast a spell, which repaired the window back to a solid state.

"Well, I mean, come on.  If you can fix it that easy, what's the harm?" one of the boys complained.  "Why do we have to bother the dean with it?"

"It's not what you did, it's what you could have done.  And it's also your attitude," David said.  "Now walk."  David flicked his wand, and the magical bond holding them together lengthened enough for them to walk single file back toward the school.

"You're not going to call Dean Lengel now, are you?" one of them asked.

"Do you think I want to be in trouble with her?" David asked with a grin.  "No, you will sit in detention housing until the office opens.  Then we will all go have a talk with her."

"Great," one of them opined.

 "You're coming in kind of late, aren't you?" Nancy asked David when he stopped in her office.

"Had a disciplinary meeting with the dean," he explained.

"You still get in trouble on campus?" Nancy asked in shock.

"Not my disciplinary meeting, just a disciplinary meeting," David said with a grin.  "Caught some students vandalizing a building in town last night."

"Oh, I see.  Well, anyway, that file you wanted is in."

"About damned time.  What took so long?"

"I honestly have no idea.  They should have had it to you days ago."  She handed over the folder, and David flipped it open.  He looked at what was in it, then looked up.

"Have you read this?"

"Officer Stroud," Nancy said in a teasingly chiding voice, "if I read every document that you officers ask for, you'd still be waiting for folders from a year ago."

David grunted.  "There's nothing in here.  Name, date of birth, licensures... that's it.  This file doesn't even have an address for him.  I waited over a week for this?"

Nancy shrugged.  "Sorry.  That's how it goes sometimes."

David grumbled, then nodded.  "Thanks, anyway," he told her.

"Oh, also, you have a meeting at the courthouse at one o'clock."

"Huh?  What's that about?"

"I'm not sure.  The meeting was requested by Magistrate Stone."

David nodded.  "Okay, well, I guess I'll be gone this afternoon, then."

 "Cheer up.  The only case you have open is that Dailey character."

"Right.  About whom I have zilch in the way of information," David said, waving the nearly empty folder.  "I'll talk to you later."

"Surely."

"Sentencing hearing for Wyatt Earp is now underway.  Magistrate Harold T. Stone, presiding," the bailiff intoned.

"The offender has been adjudged guilty of the following crimes," the bailiff continued.  "Six counts of kidnapping.  Two counts of magical battery.  One count of unintentional murder.  Six counts of willful disruption.  One compounded count of misuse of magic.  Six counts of selling sentient beings.  One compounded count of coercive rape.  Six counts of exposing technos to Dugerra.  One compounded count of illegal distribution of the knowledge of magic.  One compounded count of conspiracy to commit an illegal act."

"That is... a lot of compounded counts in there.  What's the reason, Robin?" he asked the court clerk.

"Your Honor, the defendant kidnapped six different individuals, used magic on them to remove their memories, and then sold them off as slaves.  In many cases, it is simply unknown how many times those laws were broken."

"Even rape?" the magistrate asked.

"Your Honor, in this case, the 'rape' was committed by having sex with a person who had been rendered incapable of declining the act.  Neither the offender, nor the victims, have any count of how many times sexual activity happened."

"Okay, I get it.  Now, the offender is requesting an unorthodox sentencing.  It says here that he wishes to have done to him exactly what he did to his victims.  Mr. Earp, care to explain?"

Earp rose as he addressed the magistrate.  "Your Honor, the work I was doing, the reason for the commission of these crimes, was to lessen the need for prisons, and to make productive citizens out of those individuals who had committed heinous acts.  I don't think anyone hearing the list of crimes I have committed could deny the seriousness of my crimes.  That I was attempting to find a better future is not an excuse, I am fully aware of that.

"However, in hopes that my technique might be able to be better studied and perhaps adapted... or even adopted... I would like to request that I undergo the same 'punishment', in an effort to demonstrate the ways in which it is a hopefully better option.  I also freely admit that, by undergoing the procedure, I will forego all of the unpleasantness not just of prison, but of remembering what I have done."

"I see.  Officer Stroud, could you step forward?"

David stepped up to the podium, and Earp stepped aside.

"As the actual investigating officer of record, even though you are not listed as the official officer on the case, I would like for you to explain to me exactly what Mr. Earp's victims have gone through."

"Your Honor, the victims have undergone a series of spells to remove all of their personal memories.  They only remember their names because Mr. Earp continued to refer to them by those names.  Had he chosen to give them different names during the process, it would have completely severed their link with their previous identity.  A brief study by several level 2 spellcasters - a level 1 was not available for the procedure - has revealed no reversal of this process is possible.

"After their memories were removed, the victims were then groomed to be slaves.  They were taught that their master's wishes were their only concerns.  These people are not currently capable of living independently.  Without someone to tell them what to do, they would flounder.  They might be able to hold menial jobs, but they would never have what one would call a career.  Until such time as they can be given a set of memories sufficient to function in Earth, they will necessarily remain in protective custody.  The Callamandian Office of Assistance is currently looking into options.  Because they are technos, they are technically not supposed to remain within Dugerra.  On the other hand, sending them to Earth means finding custodians for them."

"You were responsible for interviewing the offender?" the magistrate asked.

"Yes, Your Honor.  I handled all interrogation, including the directed exposition of his confession."

"During those interviews, what was your sense of the man?  Is he a hardened criminal?"

"No, Your Honor.  Not in the way the term is usually meant.  The offender is a man who put his research ahead of the legal consequences of that research.  He did what he could to not physically harm his victims."

"Committing rape is hardly what I'd call not physically harming someone," the magistrate objected.

"Your Honor, while the act is, on its face, reprehensible, it bears mentioning that the women involved not only were not forced, but currently do not regret the act.  The crime stems from the fact that the women did not possess the ability to say no to the offender.  At the time, they were willing partners."

"I see.  You've seen the results of this treatment.  Would you consider it humane?"

"That is an extremely tough call to make, Your Honor.  The people in question are not in distress, so long as they are told what to do.  The problem, if one can call it that, is that this is a prison without walls, so it is one that can never be left behind.  These men and women will never return to what they were.

"Having said that, if we are talking about using this technique on the offender, he would also not be what he is now by the time he left prison, decades from now, at least.  I'm not really sure how one would measure whether or not this is humane.  I would suggest that the biggest grievance from this procedure would probably come from the victims' families."

"How so?"

"Many family members would draw comfort from the notion that the person who hurt their loved one was in jail, suffering for their crimes.  In this case, not only is the person not suffering, they aren't even aware of their crimes.  None of Mr. Earp's victims are aware that they have done things that people consider worse than what Mr. Earp has done to them."

"I see.  So, if we proceeded with this, Mr. Earp would have no memory of ever having kidnapped anyone?"

"Correct.  He wouldn't even remember inventing the spells he used."

"That raises a question.  Would he still be a functional licensed wizard?"

"I would think retesting would be wise, but as he explained it to me, Your Honor, one of his spells protects what he calls 'knowledge memories', things that don't deal with personality or life experience, but just straightforward facts, such as what is needed for passing a wizard license exam."

The magistrate nodded.  "Would you approve this procedure, if you were sitting in my chair?" he asked.

"Your Honor, all I can say to that is that I am very glad that I'm not sitting in your chair."

The magistrate chuckled.

David said, "Mr. Earp has been the most cooperative, downright helpful, criminal I've ever dealt with.  He has at no time sought to deny, deflect, or discount his actions.  He has taken full responsibility for what he's done from the very start.  He has shown legitimate remorse for the one accidental death he has caused, and in truth, has even shown remorse for having to turn the people into slaves.  If personality and post-arrest behavior is meant to be taken into account during sentencing, then I would suggest that the man has earned some leniency... but that is, of course, the court's choice to make."

"Of course.  Very well, Officer.  Thank you for your time.  You are dismissed."

David stepped back and sat down in one of the seats.  The magistrate looked over all the notes he'd made, then looked up.

"First off, I want to state that, pending the approval of the king, the six victims of Mr. Earp are hereby granted special residency privileges within the confines of Callamandia.  They are allowed to take up residency under the guardianship of a full citizen of the realm.

"Now then, Mr. Earp.  Your actions... were bad.  You have admitted that, and you have refreshingly not tried to excuse your actions with your testimony, only to explain them.  I appreciate your forthrightness and your ability to take responsibility.

"I am hesitant to permit you to choose this form of punishment, only because the details of it have not yet been worked out, and there are quite a few questions left to be answered, not the least of which is, what would we do with you once the treatment was completed?

"Therefore, it is the order of the court that, for the time being, you will be remanded to the Wachiweeki Prison.  I am directing the Office of Outlawed Magic to investigate the technique you have invented, to measure its usefulness, to hopefully answer the questions that have been raised, and to make their recommendation as to the use of this method.  They will have six months to complete their research.  At that time, you will be brought before this court again, to receive final sentencing.

"Do you have any questions?"

"No, Your Honor.  Thank you," Mr. Earp said.

"Very well.  Take him into custody.  This court is adjourned."

As the bailiffs took hold of Mr. Earp, David rose from his seat and left the room.

"Officer Stroud," a voice said from his left.  David turned to see who it was.

"Commissioner Hurst," David said in surprise.  "What are you doing here?"

"Performing a review.  Come with me."

"Yes, sir," David said.

 David followed the commissioner into a side room.  Inside, the entire Academy Commission waited, including Commandant Lasard, who had not been party to his last review.  David stepped in front of the table of seated officials and came to attention while Commissioner Hurst moved around the table and took his seat in the center.

"Stand at ease," the commissioner told him, and so David relaxed slightly.

"This will be Intern Stroud's second review, and shall cover all his activities from the time of his previous review until present," the commissioner stated. 

To David, he said, "Your previous review focused solely on the opinions of your training officers, and we will get to them in a moment, but another aspect of being a Rimohr was overlooked.  Now that you have been acting more independently from your training officers, we're going to focus more heavily on it in your review process.

"It is expected that a Rimohr will keep current on the status of his recent previous arrests.  Have you made yourself aware of the final dispositions of your cases?"

"As well as I have been able, sir," David confirmed.

The commissioner nodded.  "Very well.  We're going to go through all of the more serious ones, and if the commissioners have any questions, we will cover them.  So, let us get started.

"First case, Michael Morley, illegal distribution of potions.  Can you summarize the case for us?"

David said, "Mr. Morley was an incompetent potion maker.  He discovered that one of his potion mistakes could generate some money by selling it as a drug to the technos.  His second mistake, had it been distributed, would have caused mass death."

One commissioner said, "During the investigation of this case, you employed a spellcaster, one Endora Thropp, to craft a spell.  Why was that necessary?"

"Because I thought it was utterly idiotic that we were doing manually something that could be done through magic.  We were wasting time and potentially hurting people, and I wasn't okay with either of those things."

"You never submitted a request for reimbursement to the Rimohr office," the commissioner pointed out.

David snorted.  "Commissioner, I have more money than the Rimohrs do, collectively.  I didn't need to be reimbursed."

"And you can vouch for the quality of Endora Thropp's work?" one of the other commissioners asked.

David looked aghast at him.  "You're questioning the competence of a professor at The Woodward Academy?"

The commissioner jolted.  "Oh, it's that Thropp?"

"Why would I ask anyone else?  She was one of my instructors."

Commissioner Hurst said, "And are you aware of the disposition of Mr. Morley?"

"Serving sixty years in Barnard Hill, after which he will be exiled to Earth."

"Next, Isobel Gowdie, multiple murder.  Please explain the case."

David nodded and said, "Isobel Gowdie was born in 1502.  She is a necromancer, and has been using an outlawed spell to extend her life for the last three-hundred-fifty years or so.  In order to do so, she killed dozens of people.  The exact number eludes me, but I believe it was more than sixty."

"And the disposition of Ms. Gowdie?"

"She is serving an approximately twenty-eight-year sentence in Barnard Hill's Venom Block, where she is reliving a fictional death in her mind over and over again, about six times a day.  At the end of her sentence, she will be allowed to die in prison."

"She won't be released?" a commissioner asked.

"Barring some form of life extension magic, she will die within minutes of the end of the spell.  There would literally not be enough time to put her through the release process."

"I'd like your opinion on the punishment she was given."

"The judge sentenced Ms. Gowdie based on the notion that she was afraid of dying.  Not actually being dead, but just the fear of the process of death.  As such, he sentenced her to live through a thousand fictitious deaths for each of her victims, at a rate of one every four hours."

"Yes, I understand the sentence.  I want to know how you feel about it."

"I think she got off easy," David said.

"But this is liable to drive her completely insane," another commissioner objected.

"Probably," David conceded.  "But her actions drove sixty-some others completely dead.  And they hadn't done anything to warrant that treatment.  She, on the other hand, has."

The commissioners all murmured amongst themselves, but no further questions were raised.

"Okay, moving on.  William Burke, conspiracy to commit burglary, among other things, and associates."

David explained, "Mr. Burke illegally smuggled technos into Callamandia for the purposes of burglarizing homes in Bolmont.  The technos employed Earth-style break-in techniques, using no magical items at all.  Mr. Burke insulated himself by never participating in the actual burglaries, but instead did the research into which homes to victimize."

"And what has happened to those involved?"

"Mr. Burke was sentenced to fifteen years in Barnard Hill.  The technos were returned to Earth and are now serving sentences in Earth prisons, having had Incognizance Potion used on them to erase any knowledge of the magical nature of their crimes."

"It has come to our attention that, during this and other cases, you were put in a position of some authority over other Rimohrs, most specifically Officer Chloe Kirkland."

"That was over my own objection, sir," David pointed out.

"Oh?"

"As an intern, I never felt comfortable being put in a position over those who had completed their training.  My training officer and/or my division commander overrode my concerns."

"I see.  Yet you handled those jobs apparently well.  Those officers whom you have worked with expressed no reservations about your abilities or temperament in leadership roles," the Academy Commandant noted.

"It's easy to handle the job well when you're working with good people, sir."

The commandant nodded.

"Next case, Howard Prescott and associates, illegal sale of sentient beings."

David said, "Mr. Prescott and his colleagues had formed a slave trade in daubentonians.  They would kidnap them from Sopasante, transport them usually to Pithala, and sell them to the highest bidders.  We were made aware of the case when a daubentonian managed to escape.  We arrested the slave traders and several of their customers at an auction."

"The disposition of the perpetrators?"

"Mr. Prescott is serving seventy-three years in Barnard Hill.  His associates have sentences ranging from twelve to thirty-six years.  The customers, due to a timing issue, all received sentences of five years."

"A timing issue?"

"When we made our raid, the auction had not actually started yet.  Thus, we could only charge them with conspiracy to purchase, rather than the actual purchase of, sentient beings."

"Whose fault was that timing issue?"

"If blame must be placed, then that blame would fall on me, as Agent Keef put me in charge of the raid.  As I saw it, it was a problem with no good solution.  The only way to know what stage the auction was in would have been to have eyes inside the building.  We didn't have time to flip one of the suspects, and any magical means for seeing into the building would have been detectable.  We simply had to take our chance."

"Very well.  Next case, Kresven Meslar, illegal use of magic."

"Mr. Meslar had obtained an oilwood guitar.  He then concocted a hex in the form of a song.  The hex, amplified by the effects of the guitar, allowed him to take control of several members of the audience during each performance.  For the women, he generally committed coercive rape.  For the men, it was universally about their money."

"Disposition?"

"Meslar was somehow able to terminate his own life on the way to Barnard Hill.  Apparently he didn't wish to face a hundred fifty years in prison."

"Is that being investigated?"

"The Royal Transport Bureau is looking into it.  They're responsible for moving Callamandian prisoners from place to place.  The Rimohr who was accompanying Meslar was rendered unconscious by some means he is unclear about."

"Is it possible he actually pushed Meslar out of the carriage?"

"Anything is possible, sir.  I'm not involved with the case, so I don't have access to the details."

"All right.  Moving on, Wyatt Earp."

"He died like a hundred years ago, didn't he?" one commissioner quipped.

"Not that Wyatt Earp," Commissioner Hurst grumbled.

David said, "Mr. Earp is a wizard who was involved in private research into finding an alternative to long-term prison sentences.  To conduct his research, he would kidnap his victims, perform a series of spells on them over the course of months, and then, for lack of anything better to do with them, he sold them into slavery."

"You say for lack of anything better... why didn't he just release them?"

"Mr. Earp's technique involves wiping out an individual's memories and personality.  The victims are no longer capable of independent living."

"And the disposition of this case?"

"I just came from Mr. Earp's sentencing hearing.  Mr. Earp has been remanded to Wachiweeki Prison for six months, while his sentencing request is being looked into."

"His sentencing request?" Commandant Lasard asked.

"Mr. Earp has requested that his own process be used on him.  The court has mandated the OOM look into the procedure and make a recommendation within six months.  At that time, the magistrate will revise Mr. Earp's sentence."

"Okay.  Now, Brookhurst Academy."

"An unlicensed school of wizardry, specializing in the instruction of outlawed magic."

"Disposition?"

"Mikhail Grushka had his wizarding license revoked.  The primary conspirator, Sherry Padman, was unfortunately already a dead wand, which meant that she could not be punished, as the punishment for her crime would have been the revocation of her license."

"Nothing was done to her?"

"Correct," David said.

"And are you okay with that?" Commissioner Hurst asked.

"Not in the slightest.  However, my views concerning Sherry Padman are skewed as the perpetrator and I have a personal history, in that she convinced my roommate to frame me for burglary.  This is what led to her being a dead wand to begin with."

"I see.  Well, that wraps up the list of cases you've handled this year.  Are there any major ones I've missed?" Commissioner Hurst asked.

"Just one, sir.  Levi Dailey.  He is suspected of conspiracy and assault, in that he has either attacked directly, or caused to be attacked, seven people who are closely associated with myself."

"And you're working this case?"

"It didn't start out as a case, just an inquiry.  Once we realized there was evidence to point to a specific person, I was too deep into it for Agent Keef to want to reassign it."

"And where are you on this case?"

"Trying to track down Mr. Dailey.  His whereabouts are unknown."

"Very well.  Intern Stroud, I've got reports here from Agents Keef and Garibaldi, as well as Officers Columbo, Kirkland and Pullman.  All of them give you high marks.  In fact, to a person, they all claim you are not only ready to become a Rimohr, but you are already acting as one, with the sole exception of being able to arrest people."

"That was at your direction, sir... or that's what I was led to believe.  When Agent Keef took over the division, the nature of my training was altered to give me much greater freedom of action."

"Yes, it was at my direction.  And it seems as though it was the right thing to do.  You have certainly excelled in your duties.  Do you feel as though you are ready to complete your internship?"

"Sir, I still have another year of wizarding college.  I specifically requested a three-year internship so that I could complete my schooling before taking on a full case load."

"I understand that.  Set that aside for just a moment.  Do you feel as though you need further training to become a Rimohr?"

"Well..."

"You seem hesitant, Mr. Stroud," the commandant said.

"I don't want to seem like an arrogant ass, sir, but the truth of the matter is, sometimes it feels like I'm training my colleagues, instead of the other way around."

The commissioners chuckled at that.  Commissioner Hurst said, "That's not entirely surprising.  You were brought up under my system of operation.  Most of your colleagues were brought up under the older system, where the paperwork was paramount.  As such, you have a clearer understanding of the way we want the job done now.  So, if not for your schooling, you feel as though you would be ready to assume the full duties of a Rimohr Officer?"

"Yes, sir... but I would rather not, for the aforementioned reason.  If you ask me to choose between Woodward Academy and the Rimohrs, you may not like my choice, sir..."

The Commissioner grunted at that.  "Understood.  For now, Mr. Stroud, your internship will continue as it has.  You are doing first-rate work, and we expect you to continue to do so."

"Try my best, sir," David replied.

"Very well.  You are dismissed, Officer."

 David was looking at a message board when his phone buzzed.  He picked it up and tapped the upper left corner of the special case he'd had made for his phone.  Suddenly, Joe's face appeared.

"Oh, hey, Joe.  What's up?"

"Where are you?"

"McDonald's."

"Who's he?"

David chuckled.  "McDonald's is a restaurant, Joe.  I'm in Earth."

"What're you doing there?"

"Looking for smugglers," David said quietly.

"Oh.  Well, we need you back here in the office for a meeting."

David sighed.  "Is it important?"

"You need to be here, yes."

"Fine.  I'll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Okay."

David tapped the upper-left corner of his phone case again, and Joe's face faded from view.  The case allowed the phone to act as a mirror, so that David could carry on conversations with people in Dugerra without drawing suspicion.  Video calls were common enough that no one paid much attention anymore.

David closed down the laptop he'd been forced to buy to do the research for this case, and then packed up his trash.  He threw it away and headed out to his truck, so he could get back to the travel gate.

What the hell do we need a meeting about now?

When David entered the office, the only person in sight was Joe.

"I thought there was a meeting," David said.

"There is.  Everyone else is already in the briefing room.  Come on."

David followed Joe into the smaller room.

"Uh-oh," he muttered.  Lined up on either side of the door were the officers from the division, forming a walkway toward Agent Keef, the Academy Commandant, and someone he didn't know.

"Go on, sport," Joe said, giving him a slight shove forward.

David walked down the gauntlet of officers and stood before Agent Keef.

"Officer Intern David Stroud, reporting as ordered, sir!" David announced.

The unknown man stepped forward and said, "Intern Stroud, having completed twenty months of internship, having mastered the methods and procedures of the position, and having shown appropriate attitudes and beliefs, it is the decision of the Academy Commission that you have fulfilled all the requirements of the Rimohr Internship Program.

"You are, therefore, promoted to the position of Rimohr Officer, with the full rights and responsibilities of that office."

The man took out his wand and pointed it at David's badge.  He made a small motion, and when David looked down, he could see that his badge now contained the normal tail gem that was an integral part of the Rimohr badge.

"Congratulations, Officer Stroud," the man said.

With that, the room erupted in applause.  the man shook David's hand, followed by Keef and Commandant Lasard.  David turned around, to see that Zyla was there, as were Olissa and Dean Lengel.

Most of the officers in the room came over to congratulate David.  Others, who were less happy about his succession to officer, left without a word.

"Congratulations, Master," Olissa said.

"How long have you known about this?" he asked her.

"Only about an hour or so," she said.  "Just long enough so I could be here."

David nodded.

Dean Lengel said, "Congratulations, Officer.  Guess I'll have to watch my step now," she told him with a grin.

"That's right.  You step one foot out of line and I'll send you to detention!" David replied.

Dean Lengel laughed.

The unknown man appeared at David's side just then.  "Officer Stroud, my name is Colm Meaney.  I'm part of the Executive Minister's office.  We were made aware, by the Commissioner, that it is likely you plan to resign from the Rimohrs due to this promotion."

"What?" Dean Lengel said, aghast.  Olissa looked a bit surprised, as well.

"I warned the commission not to make me choose between the Rimohrs and my schooling at Woodward Academy.  I still have a year and two months to go."

Mr. Meaney nodded.  "You did make it quite clear at the time of your application that you intended to complete your schooling.  Our reasoning for promoting you at this time was mainly to do with manpower and resource management.  There are a lot of people unnecessarily watching over your actions, simply because you're an intern.  Freeing them from watching you gives them more time to perform other tasks.

"We don't want to lose you, however, just because of that.  You are an extremely effective investigator.

"As such, at the direction of the Executive Minister, we have opened a new precinct within the Bolmont Division.  This precinct encompasses Woodward Academy, Gorumshead, Luvad, and a couple other small villages in the area."

"Luvad?" David asked.

"The centaur village just north of the school," he explained.

"Oh.  I never knew what its name was."

The man nodded.  "In any case, you are being assigned to this Woodward Precinct for the time being."

"So I'll only handle the cases that occur within that area?"

"Correct.  But, as you will be the only officer permanently assigned to the precinct, you will have to handle all of them.  Should you need assistance, you can contact the main division office to get help."

"Where is the precinct office?"

"At the indulgence of Dean Lengel and the Board of Trustees, your current Woodward office will become the precinct office.  This way, you can remain on campus more often.

"Will this arrangement allow us to avoid your resignation?"

"So long as I'm not transferred before the end of the next school year."

"Well, of course, we can make no absolute guarantees, but it is not our intention to change your Rimohr post before then."

"Okay."

"Good!  Now, I'll leave you to celebrate with your colleagues."  The man shook David's hand and walked out, while David turned and saw Zyla standing before him.

"Congratulations, 'Mr. Stroud'," she said, grinning.  It was a joke about how David used to address Joe, and he chuckled, then gave her a hug.

"Where's Grace?"

"At the babysitter.  I thought she was a bit too young for this."

David nodded.

"And you're invited over for a celebratory dinner, since I'll probably see you less often now."

"I still have a home down here."

"And how often will you use it, if you don't need to spend your days here in Bolmont?" she asked astutely.

"Um..."

"That's what I thought.  I don't like not seeing you," she told him.  "You're like a part of the family."

"Yeah, that creepy cousin that no one wants to be around, but everyone invites to stuff," Joe said, sneaking in to the conversation.

"Joe!" Zyla scolded, and smacked him on the arm.

"Do I really need to point out that, even without trying, I still beat you by four months making it to full officer?" David said with a raised eyebrow.

Joe blushed crimson, and Zyla laughed.

 "Master, will you get in trouble for having been gone so long from your post?  You're the only officer covering the area now..."

David rested his hand on her back and said, "No.  I officially applied for a few days off.  Besides, just because I'm gone doesn't mean the area's uncovered.  Any trouble will just be handled by the main office, like it would have been before.  Besides, it's not like a whole lot of cases crop up in that narrow little area I'm covering.  Most of what happens, happens at the school.  Since it's Spring Break, there's no one there to cause trouble."

"Shouldn't you be trying to find the magical creatures smugglers, though?" she asked.

"That's no longer my case.  In fact, I'm not sure it's anybody's case.  I was unable to find any links in the places that Prof. Schmidt's brother led me to, and we have no idea where else to look.  There's no way to track them down through Eirwyn back there, because the tag gives no information," David said, motioning to the snow griffin sleeping in the back seat.

"So they're just going to get away with it?" Olissa asked.

"For now.  Sometimes, there is just not enough information to even investigate with.  We just have to wait for more info to come along."

"And what about Eirwyn?"

"Eirwyn's been turned over to us, since I live in Dugerra, where it is much easier to own a griffin without problem."

"Oh.  Well, that's nice.  I like him."

"Uh-huh.  Like you've met an animal you didn't like," David said, teasing her.  Olissa blushed.  "Now, weren't you in the middle of something?" David asked, sliding his hand from her back up to the back of her head.

"Yes, Master," she said with a big grin, and then lowered her mouth back into his lap, taking his cock between her lips and returning to sucking him.

David sighed in contentment, and continued to drive them back toward the school.  They had gone for another trip to Mirelia, but this time, they were seeking seeds for the festival.  Olissa had found a colorful plant that had leaves that were so fine, they resembled fur, and were all the hues of the rainbow.  David had collected a seed from a plant called SeeWeed.  It was a divinatory plant, which could help with both crystallomancy and hydromancy.  It was, however, extremely rare and hard to find.  David had come across it purely by chance, but knew that it was definitely his choice for the year.

With their plants collected, and with it coming close to the end of the week, they were heading back to the school.  It had been good to get away, with just Olissa and the countryside.  He'd needed a bit of a break from all the stress of his job, his schoolwork, and worrying about the upcoming war.  While they'd been out in the country, he'd even been able to forget about that for a while.

Now that they were heading back into it all, David was very grateful for Olissa's talents.  Her lips were helping keep the return of his stress at bay.

Too bad I know that can't last...  Thinking such, he grunted and came in her mouth.  She swallowed, then cleaned off his dick before sitting back up and snuggling next to him.

"I love you, Olissa," David said.

Olissa pushed herself closer to him.  "I love you, too, Master."

 "Good morning, Officer Stroud," Carol said to him with a grin.

"Keep that up and I'll arrest you for harassing an officer," David said in good-natured grumpiness.  Carol chuckled.

"You're here for your mail?"

"Yep."

"But it's not Friday," Carol objected teasingly.

"I'm supposedly important now.  I have to check it more frequently in case they send me something."  David rolled his eyes.  Keef had told him to check his mail daily, now that he was in charge of an entire precinct.

Yeah, in charge... of one person.  Whee!

Carol handed over David's mail.  As he flicked through it, he asked, "How's your son doing?"

"Struggling, now that he's got to really try to learn.  He kind of coasted through ad school, focusing on his sports."

"Is he here at Woodward now?"

Carol snorted.  "He didn't have the grades to make it into Woodward."

"Where's he going?"

"Madchen Hall, over in Erle."

David nodded.  "Well, I'm sure he'll still get a good education."

"Only if he applies himself," Carol said.

"There is that," David agreed.  "Well, you have a good day.  I have paperwork and schoolwork to do."

"Have fun," she said.

"Right," he replied sarcastically.

David walked down the hall to his office, and dumped the mail on the desk.  He stepped into the back room to see what Olissa was up to.  He could see she was deep into her studies, so he just gave her a kiss on the cheek and left her to it.

Sitting down at his desk, he pulled out a small package which had been in his mail.  It had no return name or address on it.  He pulled it open, and a small crystal slipped out.  It was long and pointed, stuck into a wooden base at one end.  He stood it up on his desk, but it didn't do anything.  He turned it around, and there he saw the words, "Tap Me" etched into the wood.  He did so.

Suddenly, above the crystal, an image appeared.  The face in the image was blacked out, and the voice was magically altered, as well.

"David Stroud," it said, "it is time for us to meet.  I will know when this crystal is played.  You are to meet me tomorrow at the Demonic Chapel in Modokaya, the Temple of Fire, in Mirelia."

As the voice continued to speak, the field of view in the image widened.  "If you do not show up, it is likely that these two will not survive the stress of visiting that place.  They will remain there until you arrive, starting tomorrow at sunrise."

The two people in question, David could tell quite easily, were his parents.  They both looked terrified.

"Tomorrow, Stroud," the voice said.  "Or they will die.  And I don't think I need to say, come alone, or they will die much faster."

With that, the image faded.  The crystal then burst in a flash of light, disintegrating right before David's eyes.

Doesn't want to leave behind any evidence, David thought to himself.

The only way to get there fast enough to protect them from that place is to take a plane.  Before I do that, though, I need to find out where the nearest travel gate to Modokaya is... and I think I need something from the bank.

David called Agent Keef, to fill him in.  This was almost certainly related to the Dailey case, which was still David's responsibility.  Keef said that he would have Vivian accompany him to the area.  That done, David informed Olissa of the issue.  She offered to go with him, but he rejected that.  He didn't want her anywhere near what was going on.

After a trip to the bank to get something, he went to his potions lab in Alton Hall, and retrieved one of his potions.  He considered what else he should take, but nothing else came immediately to mind.  He told Olissa to let the school know what was going on, gave her a kiss, then headed out for Boston.  He would pick up Vivian on the way.

 David and Vivian walked up to the entrance to Modokaya.  As usual for Modokaya, there wasn't a line to get in.  This time, however, there was a different reason.  An acolyte stood, blocking the entrance.

"I'm sorry, but the temple is closed today," the acolyte said politely.

"How come?" Vivian asked her.

"One of our demon worshipers has enacted some rather bizarre and dangerous things, and it isn't safe for people to visit."

"Does this happen often?" Vivian asked.

"No, not often.  We don't get many demon worshipers.  When we do, however, they do tend to cause mischief."

David said, "Well, this particular demon worshiper is causing mischief in order to get me in there, so I'm going to have to go in there."

The acolyte frowned.  "It isn't safe."

"Nothing about my existence has been safe lately.  Why should this be any different?  Besides, I'm a Rimohr.  The man needs to be arrested."

"Very well.  May the tivaru protect you."  The acolyte stood aside to let him pass.

David turned to Vivian.  "Give me two hours.  If I'm not out by then, come in to find out what's going on.  Do not get involved in any fight that's going on.  But it's possible that I may be incapacitated, and someone has to rescue my parents, or they'll die from the heat."

Vivian nodded.  On impulse, she leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the lips.  "For luck," she said, blushing.

David said, "Geez, that's all the luck you want me to have?  I thought you liked me..."  He arched his eyebrows at her and grinned.

Vivian took up the challenge by grabbing his head and plastering her lips to his, giving him a long, hard kiss.

"Good luck," she said.

"I might even win, now," David said to her with a smile.  He put his hand on her arm, then turned and entered the temple.

As David walked down the first tunnel, which led to the temple's rotunda, he tried to prepare himself for what was coming.  The problem was, he had no idea what to expect.  He was fairly confident that he was about to face off with Levi Dailey, but he wasn't even completely sure of that, and so it was nearly impossible for him to plan out any strategy.

One thing David knew, however, was that he needed to remove his one weakness.  He stopped and pulled out a vial from his pocket.  It contained his Morphex potion.  He took off the stopper and swallowed the sweet concoction.  He felt its effect as it tingled slightly throughout his body, then settled.  Now he would be safe from any morph attempts for the next several hours.  With that, he carried on down the tunnel.

As soon as David stepped foot into the rotunda, he heard a scrabbling sound coming from all around.  Emerging from each of the tunnels that led out of the room were dozens of small creatures, like bugs, only the size of chihuahuas.  They had eight legs and sharp fangs in front of their mouths.

Shit, fire mites, David thought to himself.  He quickly pulled his sword as the first ones neared.  He slashed at them as they jumped toward him.  He took down a dozen, but it seemed that more and more kept coming.  A bunch of them leaped at once, covering him.  He was able to shake off most of them, but two sank their fangs deep into him, one in his arm, the other in a leg.  He screamed in pain; the fire mite's bite was tinged with acid, and it burned.  David blasted the two of them into oblivion, but he had no time to focus on his wounds, as there were still dozens of the creatures surrounding him.

These things are burning hot, but I'm not feeling it, why not?  Even the bites... there should be blisters around them, but there aren't.  What sort of protection is it I have against these things?

He didn't have much time to consider as he continually had to slash and dodge.  The bodies of dead fire mites were littering the floor, but there were more living than dead.

Finally, David realized that there was no chance of him killing them all this way.  He considered what he knew about fire mites, and recalled that extreme cold would kill them.

David moved to a wall, so that all the mites were in front of him.  With that, he leveled his sword at them and screamed, "Friej fraxis!"

A blast of icy blue light shot out of the tip of his sword.  David used his concentration to sweep the beam back and forth across the ground, freezing the mites solid.  It took half a dozen sweeps of the spell before he'd finally gotten all of them, but now they lay, cold and dead on the ground.

David stepped carefully through the pile of bugs, and moved into the center of the rotunda.  He didn't put his sword away, however; he had a feeling he might need it.  He faded, briefly, to ghost form and back, hoping it would heal the bite wounds, but they were magical in nature, and would require much longer than that to heal.  He would simply have to deal with it.

David was about to start toward the tunnel which led down to the temple's main worship area when a low, growling kind of moan reached his ears.  He slipped his one foot back and held his sword in front of him, and waited.

The moan repeated twice more before the cause of it came into view.  The beast was eight feet tall and looked as if it was melting.  Its body glowed a deep, dull red.

Fuck, a lava monster.  How the hell am I supposed to beat this thing?

The creature lumbered toward David until it was standing just inside the rotunda, thus blocking the way down to the worship area.

David tried friej fraxis, but it had no effect on the creature, which was simply too hot to be affected by such a spell.  David didn't know a stronger freezing spell, so he was out of luck as far as that was concerned.

What do I do against this thing?  Cooling it down was the only way I knew to really combat it.  There's no water here, or I could use that... I'm sure there's not even enough water in the atmosphere for me to try to pull it out... not that I've got the time to do that, it would take me forever to get any amount of water that way...

Why didn't the fire mites' heat affect me?  I'm not immune to high temperature...

Just then, David happened to glance down at his arm.  The glint of silver and gold on his left arm reminded him.

Kalagasakalayo!  Drema said it would protect me from heat up to three thousand degrees!  So that's why the mites weren't affecting me.  Which means I can attack this monster head on... but I still have to find a way to get past him.

David looked back at the lava monster, which was growling lowly, but not attacking.  The problem was, he was so big, there was no easy way past him.

What about using terramandy on him?  He is made of rock, after all... but how would I do it?  And would I be able to control something that can move under its own power, anyway?  I'm not exactly the best terramander in the world...  No, that's not going to work.  Not by itself, anyway.  I've got to think of something more.

David then realized he was being rather stupid.  He ran head-first at the creature, which reached out its arms, waiting for David to arrive so that it could crush him.

When David got a few feet away, he simply faded to insubstantiality and passed right through the monster.  The heat was strong, but not overpowering.

Now that David was behind the creature, he turned around and shoved outward with his hand.  His terramandy was able to shove the creature forward, and it stumbled, falling to the ground.  With that, David focused all his concentration, and he started to pull the lava monster apart at the edges.  The monster fought back, but in doing so, it ended up melding itself into the floor, and it could no longer move.

I hope it stays that way until I get this finished, David thought to himself.  I don't want to have to fight it again on the way back out.

Turning, David walked down into the sanctuary of the temple.  He knew the entrance to the Demonic Chapel was on the far side of the room.

Unfortunately, standing on either side of the entrance was a large wolf-like creature with red eyes.  Unlike the hellhound, this monster shimmered and glinted in the fire light.

Rockhounds, David thought to himself.  The beasts were guards, and had been placed at the chapel entrance for the express purpose of making David fight his way into the chapel.

Enough of this crap, David said.

"Razpadat!" he snapped, using the correct arm motion.  In a matter of seconds, the two rockhounds were turned into dusthounds, which drifted off on the roiling air in the room.

David stopped at the entrance to the tunnel which led to the Demonic Chapel.  He didn't know what to expect beyond this point.  He took a moment and pulled the Emmig Amulet out of his pocket.  He knew that, whoever was down there, if they'd managed to craft rockhounds and a lava monster, they were very strong.  The Emmig Amulet might make the difference between winning and losing.  He slipped it around his neck, tucked it into his shirt, and then entered the tunnel.

As David descended toward the chapel, the heat increased by at least twenty degrees.  He finally stepped out of the tunnel into a huge cavern, at least thirty feet tall.  In front of him was a bridge that spanned a crevasse that was at least two hundred feet deep.  At the bottom was a pool of magma, glowing bright orange.

Across the bridge was the chapel proper.  It had no walls, other than the cavern itself, but there were pews and a raised altar area.  Sitting on the altar were his parents.  A man stood off to one side, apparently fiddling with something.

David crossed the bridge and passed under the arch which denoted entry into the chapel area.  At that point, the man turned to face him.

"Ah, Mr. Stroud.  You chose to join us.  Very polite of you, though I think your parents would have liked it if you'd arrived a bit sooner."

"I didn't come for them, Dailey."

"Oh?" the man said in surprise.

"You are Levi Dailey?"

"Yes..."

"After all the spying, all the watching... and these are who you picked to try to draw me here?  Not a very smart move on your part.  Those two kicked me out of my own home almost seven years ago, at a very vulnerable point in my life.  I haven't spoken to them since.  You actually think I'd have come all this way to save them?"

"Then why are you here?" he asked.

"Because you're here.  And since tracking your home down has proven difficult, this was the easiest way to get at you."

"Not sure why you had so much trouble finding my home.  Everyone in Clarvinobs knows us quite well.  So, seven years ago, eh?  That would have been right after you were turned, then?"

"Yes... what would you know about it?" David asked shortly.

"Everything, my good man.  Everything.  You see, it was my great-grandfather that imprisoned Jacob Pendergrast.  Just as I am about to imprison you."

"I think you might find that difficult," David said, walking toward him.

"Yes... actually, that's the point.  It's not supposed to be easy.  Why do you think I put you through seven years of training?"

"What are you talking about?" David asked.

"You haven't figured it out?  Your entire life has been under my control ever since you were arrested by the Rimohrs for being a demighost.  Well, not every aspect.  Some people hated you just because they are that way.  But most things."

"I know you're responsible for The Clan... and that bitch, Lydia."

"Yes.  Very clever how you dealt with her, by the way.  She tried to contact me for help afterward.  I told her that I don't help failures.

"Oh, yes.  The attacks on your friends, those were my doing.  I needed your power to grow, you see.  I needed you at a high enough level where beating you was meaningful."

"Is this some kind of fucking game to you?" David snarled.

"Not a game, my friend.  A rite of passage.  In my family, you cannot be head of household until you imprison a demighost.  That is why our curse contains the means to create another.  It's to make sure we have demighosts for the rite."

"And being the guy in charge is this important to you?"

"You don't understand.  The Dailey family has collected many strong talismans, many fearsome spells, many potion recipes over the centuries.  Those things are only available for use by the head of the household.  What I can do with those things..." Dailey said, trailing off in thought.

David was within a few feet of the man by now.

"You seem annoyed," the man said calmly, finally coming back to the present.

"Imagine that," David said sarcastically.  "You just admitted to making my life a living hell for the last couple years.  Did you expect me to say thank you?"

"Well, I did get you into Woodward Academy... seems like you could appreciate me for that, at least..."

"Excuse me?"

"Dear man, I said that your entire life has been under my control.  That includes Dean Lengel and the staff at the school, inviting you in, taking you under their wing.  How do you think I was able to know to bring in Miss Lydia at the proper time?  By the way, I'm sure you've guessed it by now, but I am the one who told Mychel about Lydia."

"You're lying.  Dean Lengel is my friend."

"Is she?  Has she ever gotten so close to any other student?  Why you?  She is a mercenary bitch.  It cost me a pretty penny to get her to accept you and to groom you for... well, for today."

"You're lying, you motherfucking son of a bitch!" David said, and tried to swing on him.  As he stepped forward to deliver the punch, his body was repelled backward by an unseen force.  He wound up sitting on his ass on the floor.

David rose, shaking his head.  He stepped slowly forward, and reached out.  His hand was stopped by something invisible.  It wasn't a containment charm, as those were faintly visible if you looked hard enough.

"Ah, I see you've met my ghost prevention wall.  I kind of thought you might try to get violent, and I don't really want to deal with you on that level.  I'm well aware of your training, Mr. Stroud.  Your physical skills are quite impressive.  But, this little barrier makes sure that you cannot reach me."

The man stepped right up to the other side of the barrier.  David made a fist at his side.  "So you're a coward," David said.  "Taking hostages, hiding behind walls."

"The ritual will be performed according to the traditions.  Nothing I have done violates those traditions.  I will admit, you are stronger than I had intended you to be.  That's why I didn't wait for your schooling to be complete.  This is meant to be difficult, but not impossible."

"Just one thing you forgot," David said darkly.

"Oh?  Do tell."

David suddenly elongated his staff, which he had taken out of its holster without Dailey noticing.  The end of it caught Dailey in the chest and threw him five feet backward.

"I can't pass through the barrier.  Everything else, can."

Dailey slowly picked himself up off the ground and dusted himself off, then glared at David.

"So, you don't wish to be civil about this."

"Fucknuts, you struck first," David said.  "You'd best be very glad for your little wall, as it's the only thing keeping you alive."

"Yes, well, I intend to stay that way.  I expect to head home in a couple hours.  You, on the other hand, will never leave this place again."

Before David could say anything further, Dailey fired a bolt of lightning that hit David squarely in the chest.  Debra Stroud screamed as David was hurled backward halfway across the chapel.  He fell to the floor between pews, his head ringing and his body sore.

Shit, that was nasty.

David rose from his spot, ready to duck if Dailey had another attack ready.  Seeing what was coming, however, he dove out into the aisle.  A huge boulder from the roof landed where David had been, crushing the pews.

David fired his own blast of lightning at Dailey, but he was able to deflect it.  David had to end the spell, lest it hit his parents.  Though he had no attachment to them anymore, they were still innocent bystanders in this mess.

As David was trying to come up with another spell, Dailey lobbed a huge energy ball at him.  David rolled out of its way and came back to his feet, his staff in hand.  A blast of blue light lanced out and impacted Dailey, shoving him back several feet.

Fuck.  That should have done a lot more than that.  This guy's got a lot more power than me, it looks like.  The only way I'm going to come out of this ahead is to even the odds.

Dailey fired a rain of magical darts at David, which David simply jumped out of the way of.  As he came to his feet, he pulled the Emmig Amulet out of his shirt.  He held it up, aiming the crystals toward Dailey.

"GIMME!" David shouted at the top of his voice.  An orange light blasted out of the amulet and engulfed Dailey, who shuddered and twitched.  The orange light then slowly surrounded David, and pulses of energy could be seen flowing from Dailey to David.  After only a few seconds, the transfer ended.  Dailey collapsed to the floor as David stood straight, feeling rejuvenated.

Shit, this feels good!

As Dailey rose to his feet, David sent a bolt of lightning his way.  It impacted and threw Dailey five feet across the floor.

That's better, David thought to himself.

Dailey came up firing, several energy balls hurtling toward David all at once.  He was able to duck most of them, but one caught him in the shoulder, throwing him to the ground and tumbling him ten feet.

"What the hell have you done to me?" Dailey screamed.

David rose from where he lay, mostly unhurt.  "Welcome to the Emmig Amulet.  I have temporarily transferred some of your magical power to myself.  Now that whole imprisoning me thing must be looking a little shakier, hmm?"

"Not particularly," Dailey said darkly.  "You've just made this much less enjoyable.  I am technically supposed to beat you on magical skill, but no matter.  Beating you on cunning will suffice."

Suddenly, David was slammed to the floor by an invisible force hitting his right-hand side.

"What the fuck?" David asked himself.  As he rose, he didn't have much time to consider it, as he was slammed into by another invisible force on his left.  It threw him into the invisible wall on his right, and he barely kept his feet under him.

David tried to move toward Dailey, but suddenly he couldn't move forward.  In another few seconds, he felt something slam into his back, and now he was immobilized, unable to move in any direction.

"I had intended to immobilize you like this after you were already worn down, after I had shown that I could beat you.  You have, however, once again played by your own rules, and so I must improvise.  No matter.  You will be imprisoned here for all time."

"What's the point of this, Dailey?" David said, trying to find any wiggle room within his invisible prison.  "What does it prove?"

"You don't get the symmetry of it?  The immortal being, imprisoned for eternity?  Well... for as long as it matters, anyway..."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh... well... technically, you'll only be imprisoned so long as there are male members of the Dailey family alive.  But really, once that stops being the truth, who cares what happens to you?"

"So if I kill you, then all the demighosts your family has imprisoned go free?"

"Not that you could, but no.  My wife is carrying a male child in her womb right now.  But that isn't your concern, as you cannot kill me."

"Why not?" David asked, then lanced a huge blast of energy at him.  Dailey was sent flying, tumbling over a low wall and collapsing to the ground.

By the time Dailey rose, David had already formed the fiery buckler from his arm guard.  Dailey's bolt of lightning bounced off the shield, impacting the roof above and raining down small rock chips everywhere.

"Your feeble attempts at thwarting me won't work.  Now, be a good little demighost, and let me finish my preparations."

As Dailey turned back to the table on which he had his supplies, David asked, "Why the hell would I do that?"  He blasted his own lightning bolt at Dailey, but Dailey merely stepped out of the way, then fired back at David.  The energy ball impacted the buckler and bounced off, but it hit with so much force that David was thrown backward against the ghost prevention wall behind him.  That wall threw him forward into the opposite wall, which he then bounced off of again. He was bounced around several more times before collapsing to the floor, dizzy and bruised.  His buckler had evaporated, and his head was spinning.

"Caput calitatem," he muttered to himself, clearing his head.  The bruises, like the bite wounds, he would just have to tolerate for the moment.  He didn't feel steady enough, however, to rise to his feet yet.

David closed his eyes and reached into his Conjuring Room.  He pulled out his backpack, which was one of the only things inside it.  Dailey looked over at him, but was unconcerned.

David opened his pack, and pulled out one of his textbooks.  Using a spell, he levitated the book, and then accelerated it toward Dailey.  The book hit him squarely in the back.

Dailey turned just in time to duck out of the way of another book coming straight for his head.  He then blasted the remaining books that were streaking toward him.  One more energy ball blasted into David, who wasn't ready to defend against it.  He once more bounced back and forth within his force-field prison, until he was lying on the ground, his knees bent so that his feet were not penetrating the prevention walls.

As Dailey returned to his tasks, David struggled to move into a sitting position.  He looked at what Dailey was doing, and then he conjured away Dailey's notes, hoping that would prevent him from finishing the spell.

Dailey growled in anger, and then blasted a beam of magical energy at David.  David was ready for it this time, but it still pressed him back against the prevention wall.

Once Dailey stopped firing at David, he immediately chanted a conjuring prevention hex.  "That will not work again.  And you haven't bought yourself more than a couple minutes of time, Mister Stroud.  I do have the process memorized, I merely like to double-check myself on important things."  With that, Dailey returned to what he was doing.

With conjuring now out of the question, David wasn't sure what else he could try.  The heat, though not injurious to him, was very uncomfortable and distracting.

Can I do something with the magma?  It is moving earth...  But it's extremely viscous and sticky... and it's also a couple hundred feet away.  I suppose I might be able to pull up little globules of it, though... or, maybe...

David closed his eyes and concentrated.  He actually made use of the prevention walls to help him get to his feet as he reached out with his mind and plucked several small balls of magma out of the lake of it that surrounded the chapel.  The magma rose up until they were floating above the chapel floor.  David looked up at them, and then he accelerated them forward.  They began to fall apart as they flew, and so he pointed his wand at them.

Silently, David cast friej fraxis.  The spell hit the globs of magma, which had elongated as they traveled.  They were suddenly cooled, turning into flying shards of obsidian.  Dailey had only the briefest second to try to avoid being hit, and several of the shards impacted, cutting him badly in five places.

Dailey screamed in pain, and then blasted away at David.  David was expecting that, however, and he was able to deflect the blast upward, away from himself.

Dailey snarled, "Should you try that again, Mister Stroud, I will feel compelled to drop one of your parents into the lava pit behind me."

"It's magma, you dickhead, not lava... and you can only do that twice.  What are you going to do the third time I attack you?"

"You care that little for them?"

"I don't expect you to leave them alive when this is over, no matter what the outcome, so their lives are already forfeit.  The only chance any of the three of us have is for me to kill you," David pointed out bluntly, raising his wand to perform another hex.

"Gah!" Dailey growled, and then he moved his hands inward.  Suddenly, David was impacted by the invisible ghost prevention walls on either side of him.  He lost control of his wand, which went skittering across the floor.  In short order, the prevention walls in front and back soon squeezed in further, as well.  David was now pinned, and it was hard for him to move at all.  His hands were stuck down at his sides, making it difficult for him to perform any magic at all.

"Since you have no honor whatsoever, Mr. Stroud, I will have to do this the easy way.  Now be a good boy and stay there and await your fate."

David struggled back and forth, trying futilely to get his hands in a good position to cast a spell, or move the ground, or anything at all, but he was stuck so tightly at this point that he couldn't think of anything he could do.

Seeing that David was preoccupied with that struggling, Dailey turned back to the table behind him.  It contained several items that were necessary to perform the containment curse.

Dailey took to humming as he worked.  At one point, he stopped and said, "You know, you've been a very disappointing opponent.  You've cost me a lot of money, what with paying off ministers, the dean, a couple professors, then supporting The Clan and giving that Lydia twit the money she wanted... I was really hoping for a more diverting contest.  You spoiled all that by cheating."

"In this case, cheating meaning being smarter than you," David said.

"I'm not the one in the cage, Mr. Stroud."

"If you were actually better than me, Dailey, you wouldn't need the cage.  You'd have been able to render me helpless all by yourself.  What is this supposed to prove, anyway?"

"That I'm smart enough to lead the family.  That I am a master wizard, capable of beating the almighty demighost.  Demighosts are, by nature, stronger wizards than humans... but obviously not infallible.  Consider this, while you spend your eternity here:  You were beaten by a wizard who attended the second-best school of wizardry, not your precious Woodward Academy."

"I still don't see that you have beaten me, Dailey," David said, trying to make him mad enough to return to the fight.  It was the only chance he could see for getting out of the situation.  "You basically played a trick.  There was no skill in it, no strength.  It didn't even really involve much cunning, just a single piece of knowledge, which any idiot could have."

"Maybe so, Stroud, but it fulfills the family's requirements, and that's all that matters."  With that, Dailey turned back around and returned to his preparations, and his infernal humming.

David looked around the room, trying to find something he could do.  The room was made of rock everywhere, which was the worst material for terramandy, as it really didn't like moving at all.  Not to mention he couldn't really move his hands in the prescribed motions, which meant he'd have to try to do it on intent alone, which was unlikely to be successful.

So what the fuck am I going to do here?  I can't seem to goad him into letting me go, I have no means to attack him when I'm stuck like this... Fuck, there has to be a way!

David considered and rejected idea after idea while Dailey continued to work.  Finally, Dailey was ready with his curse.

"Are you ready to take residence in your new home, Mr. Stroud?  I should point out that you will not be imprisoned here in the chapel directly.  You will be stuck in Haven for all eternity."

Oh, joy.  I hate that fucking place.

"Now then, let's begin."

As Dailey began to work his spell, David could feel it start to close in on him.  He twitched and jerked, fighting it off as best he could.

I've got to think of something!  Goddammit, there has to be a way out of this!  I'm a potions master, a conjuring master, a diviner, a combat specialist, and an intermediate elemander, and I can't find something that will help me out of this?

Potions are out.  I have no way to administer one, to him or me, because I can't move my hands.  I have no fucking clue what I'd use, anyway.

I don't think I need to divine my future here... it's pretty fucking clear what's going to happen if I don't think of something...

Knowing how to fight is useless when you can't move...

And he put up that god-damned conjuring prevention field, so I can't conjure any of his stuff away.

Dammit, those are my skills.  I can't do elemandy without my hands, I'm not that good.  And that's fucking everything!  What the hell else do I have left?

What about...

No, that's crazy.  There's no way I'm good enough to do that.  Hell, I'm not even sure how to do that!  That's just insane...

Then again, so is being stuck here for all fucking eternity.  I don't want to end up like Jacob!

What have I got to lose by trying?  Even if it seriously damages me, I'm no worse off than I am right now.

I have to try it.

David closed his eyes, and turned his palms inward, so that they were resting on his hips.  He took three deep breaths, and then he began the process.  He had to focus intensely.  He had to ignore the slimy feel of the spell that Dailey was trying to cast, and keep his mind occupied with what he was trying to do.  It was the only chance he had to get out of this situation.  As his magic took hold, he screamed in a mix of concentration and triumph, then his body disappeared with a soft pop.  As he did, his mother gasped in shock.

Dailey, however, did not hear the pop, as he was casting his curse at the time.  He had only heard David's cry of triumph.

"...itimeri jombart tangbo...  I don't know what you're so happy about.  Fading to invisibility will not be of assistance, Mr. Stroud.  I do not have to see you for the spell to work.  Other than that I must start this section of the spell over again, as you have distracted me, this doesn't help you at all."

"How about being behind you?" A voice said in Dailey's ear.  "Will that help me?"

Dailey spun around to see David standing there, free from the trap.

"What-" Dailey tried to say, but David decked him in the face.

Dailey went tumbling to the ground, but he rose quickly, and blasted at David.  "No!  I will not let you defeat me!"

David dodged Dailey's attack and fired one of his own, causing the man to spin around until he caught himself on the table, holding himself up.

A hand suddenly grabbed the back of his collar, and then drove his face down into the table, shattering his nose and causing him to see stars.  David then yanked on him, throwing him to the floor.

Looking down at him, David snarled, "Guess you trained me just a little too well, eh, Dailey?  Didn't think I'd find a way out of your little trap, did you?"

Dailey looked up at him, dazed, confused and worried.  "How-"

"That's not something you need to worry about just yet.  What you need to concern yourself with is how long you're going to be in the infirmary."

David reached down and grabbed Dailey's coat, hauling the man back to his feet.  He then blasted him at point blank range with an energy ball, sending him flying across the stage area.  David marched over to where he lay, and then kicked him, hard, in the side.  Dailey woofed in pain as the air was driven from his lungs.

"You call me dishonorable, because I don't follow your little plan.  I'm not the one attacking innocent people, you piece of prembat shit.  You fuck with my life, you hurt my friends and family, and you think you're worthy of leading a supposedly important household?

"You couldn't lead a marching band of kazoo players."  David used a spell to lift Dailey back to his feet.  He then punched him in the face again.  Dailey staggered back, falling against one of the pillars surrounding the stage area, which was the only thing that kept him from falling down again.  While Dailey's head was still spinning, David used sem to reclaim his wand.

"This is for what you had that bitch do to Lise," David said, and zapped Dailey with a bolt of lightning, which sent him to the ground once again, twitching in pain.

David walked over to him.  "And this is for the werewolf attack on Gwen," he said, and kicked the man in the side, breaking two ribs.  He reached down and yanked the man back to his feet.

"For Zyla," David said, casting okina hono ventus, causing severe burns on Dailey's arms and torso.  Dailey dove out of the way, hiding behind the altar.  David had to stop his attack, lest he hurt his parents, who were watching in stunned horror at what their son was doing to this man.

"For my friend Ellen," David said, and zapped Dailey with valk tohuto, sending him twitching and rolling all the way back to his table of supplies.

David walked over and picked Dailey up off the ground, actually holding him in mid-air.  "I would love to shove a dozen dentrophilis worms up your ass for harming Flo, but unlike you, I don't carry them around with me, so this will have to do."  David stepped back with one foot and twisted, throwing Dailey a good five feet before he hit, hard, on the rocky ground, breaking two more ribs as he rolled down the steps that led up to the stage area.

David pulled out a vial as he walked over to Dailey.  He popped off the lid and then forced the potion down Dailey's throat.  Dailey coughed, but didn't feel anything else.

"Wha-" he tried to ask.  David hauled him back to his feet and shoved him back toward the altar.

"I don't want you bleeding to death," David said.  "You're not getting out of this that easily."  David drew his sword, and in a flash, Dailey had a half dozen deep slashes across his body.  He was bleeding profusely, and he was dizzy.  David put away his sword, and then he snarled, "Slappywag!"  Dailey was driven to his knees by the sheer force of illness that passed over him.

"That was for Sam," David growled darkly.

David walked away from Dailey.  He had time to consider his next move, as Dailey wasn't going anywhere under the effects of slappywag.

"Frankly, Dailey, I don't know what to do to you for the attack on Olissa.  The only thing that even comes close to paying you back for that, you wouldn't survive.  And I want you alive, you miserable fuck.  For attempted murder at least four separate times, oh, yes, I want you to spend your years in Barnard Hill."

Dailey turned to face him, puking and sneezing as he did so.  David was almost ignoring him.  He was speaking almost to himself.

"I'll tell you what, Dailey, if you had wanted to bring someone here to force me to join you - had that been necessary - Olissa would have been the right target.  But no... you had to send that fucking coward, who hexed her in the back.  Well, I did pay him back for what he did, and I guess that will have to suffice, because I won't kill you.  It's too quick a way out."

Dailey, in a moment where the effects of slappywag had temporarily waned, suddenly charged at David.  He grabbed David around the throat and pushed him backward.  David was caught by surprise, not having been really paying attention to Dailey.  The two fell backward and rolled sideways.

The problem was that David had been standing very close to the edge of the cliff.  Debra Stroud screamed in terror as she watched her son and his attacker roll over the edge of the cliff, down into the magma lake below. 

Vivian had waited the prescribed amount of time, and then she had entered the temple.  She saw the dead fire mites, and the stuck lava monster, but she just kept on going.  There was no sign of the rockhounds in the sanctuary, so she just continued on into the chapel.  She was already lightheaded from the heat.  She looked across the way, and she didn't see David.  She only saw two prone bodies, lying on the altar.

Quickly, Vivian crossed the bridge and ran up the aisle.  There she found Scott and Debra Stroud, lying unconscious.  She poured some water over them to revive them, and then handed them each a magically cold water bottle.

"What happened?" Vivian asked, after the two had each downed a full bottle of water.

"He, they, he went, they fell..." Debra tried.

Scott finally said, "They fell into the lava."

"Oh my god," Vivian said.  She knew of no way to get David out of where he was.  "Where did he go over?" she asked.  Scott pointed.

Vivian went to look over the edge.  She saw no sign of David, not that she could really make out details against the bright light of the magma.  She turned away in despair.

"Let's get you out of here, before you're in any worse shape," she said, trying not to cry.

Suddenly, a loud metallic clank was heard behind them.  They all jumped, and turned to look.  An arm was reaching over the edge of the cliff, holding on.

Vivian cried out in shock and ran over.  She looked down to see David clinging to the side of the cliff.  The clank had been the sound of David's arm guard hitting the rock.  Vivan hadn't seen him because he was far to the right of where he'd gone over.  She grabbed his hand and pulled.  David screamed in agony.  Vivian almost let go of him.

"Don't you dare drop me, dammit!" David shouted.  "I'm not climbing back up that fucking cliff again!  Doing it once with a broken pelvis is enough!"

Vivian restrengthened her hold on him and pulled with all her might.  David finally slid up over the edge and lay on the ground, panting and gasping in pain.

"How do we get you out of here?" Vivian asked in renewed despair.  "I can't exactly carry you."

"Levitation would be a good option," David groaned.  "Why the hell did I leave my NG in the car?"

Vivian rose to her feet, and then she pulled her wand.  A simple spell later, and David was floating about three feet off the ground.

"Come on," Vivian said to the other two, and she gently pushed David forward.

It didn't take them long to make it out of the temple.  The acolyte looked at David, stricken.

"We don't have a healer ready!  We weren't expecting this," the acolyte cried.

"He'll be okay," Vivian assured the woman.  "We have the necessary supplies in our glidecar.  There is a mess in there, though.  Sorry, we don't have the time to clean it up."

The acolyte nodded.  "We will take care of the temple, as we've always done.  Please visit again... but, please, not quite so... actively."

Vivian grinned at the acolyte, then she turned back to David and pushed him toward the glidecar.

"We need to get you back to Woodward, so you can heal."

David shook his head.  "Let's just hire a peg coach, and take them home.  By the time we finish that journey, I'll be fine."

"If you say so," Vivian said.  "Get in the car," she told the other two, who obeyed her, a little numb from the odd experiences they had been forced to witness.

Once they were on the peg-driven coach and in the air, David took a large dose of Naproxen Ghostium.  The relief on his face was manifest.

"You do drugs now?" his mother asked.

"This is a painkiller," David said bluntly.  "I'm in kind of a lot of pain."

Scott asked, "How the hell did you manage to survive that fall?"

David smirked.  "There are a dozen different smart-assed ways I could answer that question.  The simplest explanation is the one you've already been told, seven years ago.  I'm a demighost.  I am no longer a human being."

"I have trouble understanding or believing that," his mother said.

David sighed in irritation.  "Mom, you're sitting in a carriage, three hundred feet above the ground, being pulled along by a team of winged horses.  And you have trouble accepting that I'm not quite normal anymore?  You saw me fade to ghost form seven years ago.  I told you then what had happened.  You chose to freak out and throw shit at me, rather than believing your son, who was, I might point out, having a really hard time adjusting to things at that point."

"So, you really... died... that night?" his father asked.

"Not quite.  I am not actually dead.  Nor am I alive.  I am undead."

"Like a zombie?" his father asked.

"Could have at least gone for vampire," David grumped.  "But yes, zombies are also undead.  As are vampires, doppelgangers and liches."

"But I still don't get... how could you survive that fall?  That was hundreds of feet down."

"I didn't survive the fall, as such.  I wasn't living when I started the fall, and I wasn't living when I ended the fall.  The fall couldn't kill me, because I'm already 'dead'.  Trust me, I've been through much worse things than that fall over the last few years."

"I have a couple questions, though," Vivian said.

David turned to her.  "Go ahead."

"In your first year, you fell from only eighty feet into the moat at the school... that did a lot more damage than this, and you were falling into water.  This time, you fell into liquid rock.  How are you not completely burned up, and how come you're not unconscious from the pain?"

"As to the broken bones and pain, I was able to use some magic to slow my fall.  When I hit, I didn't break as many bones as I did falling off the rock lift.  Didn't know how to do that in my first year.

"As for the magma... well, you can thank the cave dragons for that one."

"I don't understand," she replied.

David held up his left arm.  "They call it Kalagasakalayo.  Among other things, it protects me from high heat and flames.  And, apparently, magma."

"You said cave dragons?" Scott asked.  "As in... dragon dragons?  Claws, horns, scales, wings, and all that?"

"Yes.  I live with one, actually.  And a griffin.  I also am partnered with my own pegasus.  Fairytale creatures are almost more common here than the regular kind, quite frankly.  At least, it sure seems that way sometimes."

At that point, Jailla flew down from his perch at the top of the carriage and chirped at David.

David rolled his eyes.  "Oh, yeah, and I also live with a smart-assed bird."

Jailla nipped him on the ear.

"Ow!  You bastard," David said to him with a grin.

"He... is your pet?" Debra asked.

"No, he is my familiar.  Before you ask, familiars are magical creatures.  Jailla can talk to me.  Wizards take on a familiar when they start college in order to help them through the rigors and stresses of school and the entrance into wizard life.  I'm not sure I'd have made it through the last seven years without him."

"So he's a counselor?"

"He's my friend.  He does all the things friends do.  Counseling is often one of them, yes."

"Why did you bring him on this trip?  He couldn't help you in the temple..."

"I brought him so he wouldn't worry.  This way, he knew as quickly as possible what the outcome of the fight was."

"You worry whether your bird worries?" Scott scoffed.

"At least he would worry about me.  And he's never thrown anything at me, either," David said pointedly.

For a long moment, an uncomfortable silence filled the carriage.  David occupied his time by scratching Jailla's head.

Finally, Scott asked, "So... what do you do here?"

"I'm still attending college.  I am also a Rimohr, part-time."

"A what?" his mother asked.

"A cop.  Actually, a bit closer to an agent of the FBI.  In any case, I investigate crimes and arrest the bad guys."

"I never thought you had an interest in law enforcement," Debra said.

David shrugged.  "A lot of things changed for me after dying."

"Do you have a wife?  Children?" Debra asked.

"I can't have children.  Demighosts are sterile.  As to a wife, that is a very complicated question.  The simple answer is that there is a woman in my life, yes."

"Where are we going?" Scott asked.

"Back to Eureka."

"Why not take a plane?  It's faster."

"Because in about three hours, I'm going to turn translucent, and I don't think that would go over well at 35,000 feet.  Just consider how well you reacted to it."

Scott and Debra both frowned.

"Now, if you don't mind, I need to take a nap."  Turning to Vivian, he said, "Have you called Joe to fill him in yet?"

"No, I'll do it while you're asleep."

"Don't want me to hear all the bad things you're going to say about me?" he teased.

Vivian snorted.  "I've never found anything bad to say about you or the way you do your job."

David smiled.  "Thanks, Viv.  See you in a few hours."

As David nodded off to sleep, Debra asked Vivian, "So, are you the girl in his life?"

Vivian blushed.  "No.  I'm his partner.  Well, used to be, anyway, until they reassigned him.  I'm also a Rimohr.  I came with him to back him up on this little problem."

Debra nodded, and then sat back, watching the countryside roll by.

"How can you be almost healed already?" Debra asked, dumbfounded.  "You couldn't even stand up yesterday."

"Demighosts heal very quickly.  I'll be using these crutches for a couple days, but after that I'll be fine."

"So... what is that?" Scott asked as they got out of the coach.

"The travel gate.  It's the way back to Earth."

"What do you mean, the way back to Earth?" Debra asked.

"Mom, you're not on Earth right now.  The planet you're currently standing on is called Dugerra.  The relationship between Earth and Dugerra is very hard to explain, so I won't go into it, but in order to get from one to the other, you have to pass through a travel gate, like this one."

"It looks like a shed."

"What were you expecting, a stargate?"

"Well..."

David rolled his eyes and moved forward, placing his hand on the wall of the shed.  Suddenly, a door appeared, opening outward automatically.  David motioned them inside.

"You want me to wait here for you?" Vivian asked.

"That's not necessary, but if you don't feel like coming, I should be fine getting back..."

"I just thought you might want to talk to them in private."

David snorted.

"Okay," she said, and stepped into the shed.  David finally followed, and the door closed, then disappeared into the wall.

"Now what?" Scott asked.

David just motioned to the regular door on the shed.  Scott opened it, and they all stepped out into the sunlight.

David was immediately accosted by his favorite hellhound, and he scratched the animal's head.  The hound was careful not to knock David over.

"Is he having some kind of fit?" Debra asked, worried.

"He's playing with a creature you can't see," Vivian said.  "It's a friend of his.  It guards this travel gate so that technos cannot enter the travel gate alone."

"Technos?" Scott said.

"People from Earth without magical ability."

"Why not just call us Earthers, Earthlings, or Terrans, then?" Scott asked.

"Because those terms would all include all of the wizards from Earth.  Many older citizens still do use the term Earthers, but that's why it was changed.  Too many wizards live in Earth for the term to actually make sense.  But wizards have much less reliance on technology than you, so we chose the term 'technos' to describe non-magical humans."

"Oh."

Once David had finished with the hellhound, they walked out to the curb.  David used his cellphone - which he'd remembered to take out of his truck when he got on the plane in Boston - to call a cab, then he leaned against the fence surrounding the travel gate's yard.

"Why can't I see what you were just... uh... playing with, she said?" Debra asked.

"Would you really want to see it?" David asked.

Debra shrugged.

David waved his hand and said, "Magivisius."

Suddenly, Scott and Debra both saw the huge black hounds with red eyes.  One standing, wagging its tail, the other lying in the tall weeds of the yard.  Debra flinched back in horror.  Scott cringed.

"Peractus," David said, ending their vision.

"What... were those?" Debra asked in fear.

"Hellhounds.  Like I said, would you really want to see them, every time you passed near a travel gate?  They're perfectly harmless unless you're trying to enter the gate without permission.  You just walked by both of them, and they didn't care at all."

"And... that thing you just said... actually, those two things you just said..."

"Magic spells.  The first allowed you to see the world as I see it.  The second simply ended the first one."

"So, you're a magician."

"We use the term wizard.  A magician is a specific skill level of wizard.  I passed that by a few years back."

"What... can you do with magic?"

"We don't have time to explore that topic.  I've spent seven years learning what can be done with magic.  I can make things change shape.  I can make things appear and disappear.  I can create fire or cold.  I can create lightning, even right now from a clear blue sky.  And, apparently, I can teleport from place to place."

"WHAT?" Vivian exclaimed.  Debra and Scott, who had seen it but not known the import, looked at her.

"That's how I got out of Dailey's trap.  Actually, I'm not sure I can do it on my own.  I had used the Emmig Amulet to steal some of his power.  I'm not sure that I could do it using only my own abilities."

"Still.  To have done it even once, under any circumstances.  What did it feel like?" Vivian asked, awestruck.

"Kind of felt like sliding down... have you ever been to the Nagyara Festival at Nagyara Falls?"

"Once," she confirmed.

"Ever been down the water tube ride?"

"Three times that day," she said with a grin.

"It felt a lot like that, only colder.  Much colder."

Vivian nodded.

"So that was... weird, that you could do that?"

"I'm only the fifth person ever to have done it," David said.  "Assuming, that is, that I can do it again.  I'm not about to try until I have recovered from my fall."

"And... shouldn't we take you to a doctor or something, for your broken leg?" Debra asked.

"There would be no point.  They would take x-rays, and want to put it in a cast, and all that crap.  My bones will be healed by the end of this weekend.  If I really felt like I needed help, I still wouldn't go to a doctor.  I'd go to a magical healer.  That's where Vivian wanted to take me in the first place.  Healer Hall, up at the school, has been taking care of my injuries for a long time now.  But she couldn't really do anything for this except what I've done myself, so there wasn't any point in wasting her time over it, either."

"And that woman you struck him over?  That Lengel woman, I forget her first name.  If he's been paying her to watch out for you, then..." Scott said.

"Yeah," David said darkly.  "I'm going to have to figure out some way to find out the truth about all of that."

"What's this, now?" Vivian asked.

"Dailey claims to have bribed Dean Lengel and the Minister of Education into promoting my education, so that I could become the good little demighost he needed for his plan."

"Oh, shit... do you think he was telling the truth?"

"I don't know.  He's right on one score.  I've never seen them treat any other student the way they've treated me.  With the exception of being a demighost created by Dailey's great-grandfather, there is no trait that is unique to me at the school.  Others have no family-"

"You have a family, David," his mother objected.

David just stared at her for a moment, unblinking, then turned back to Vivian and continued.

"-others are hardworking, interested students.  Others are good at this, that, or the other skills.  For some reason, I have been singled out as a target for special attention.  Dailey's explanation is as plausible as any other."

"And if that's true, then what?" Vivian asked.

"I don't know.  If all of the last seven years has been a lie..."

Vivian nodded.  Just then, their cab arrived.

"David... your father and I just wanted to say we're sorry.  We didn't understand what was going on when you changed, and I guess we reacted badly," Debra said.

"That's the understatement of the millennium," David replied.

"I can't say that we really understand what's going on now, either, but... we'd like to get to know you again, now that you're... well, now that we've seen you again.  Can you come visit sometime?"

"I can try, but there's a lot of crap that's coming in my near future, and I don't know whether I'll have the ability to take time away from it until it's all settled."

"You don't get summer off from college?" Scott asked.

"I'm also a Rimohr," David reminded them.

"You don't have vacation days?"

"There is also a war coming in Callamandia.  I have people there that I have to protect."

"War?  Will we be affected?" Debra asked fretfully.

"No.  You won't even hear about it from any normal source.  It has nothing to do with you, so don't worry about it."

"Okay.  But... if you do have the chance..."

"We'll see."

Debra stepped forward and gave her son a hug.  He allowed it, but he couldn't hug back in any case, as he needed to hold himself up.

Scott shook David's hand, and then they both stepped back.  David nodded to them both, and then turned and walked down the driveway, to the waiting cab.  Once he'd managed to situate himself inside, he said to Vivian, "Thanks.  Now let's get out of here."

"You're still upset with them, aren't you?" Vivian asked.

David shrugged.  "I've spent the last seven years annoyed with them.  It's going to take more than two days to clear that out of my system."

Vivian nodded, and then they continued on their journey back to Bolmont.

 "Yes, may I help you?" the woman asked brusquely when she opened the door.

David said, "Lee Dailey?"

"Yes..."

"Your husband is Levi Dailey?"

"Yes, what is it, Officer?"

"Might I come in?  We need to speak for a moment."

"Oh, very well.  But I'm expecting company in an hour, so make it brief."

"Yes, ma'am," David said, and stepped into the foyer.

Mrs. Dailey led him to the parlor, and offered him a drink out of etiquette.  He declined, to her delight.

"Now, what is it, Officer?" she repeated in a businesslike fashion.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry to have to present you with this news, but your husband has been killed while visiting the Temple of Fire in Mirelia."

Mrs. Dailey slowly sank to the couch.  "Oh my word.  Are you certain?"

"Yes, ma'am, quite certain."

"He was meeting someone there.  Do you know what happened to that... person?"

"No one else in the chapel was injured."

"The other man would not have been injured, per se," she offered.

"If you're asking if he was able to entrap the demighost, no, he was not."

"You... know?"

"Mr. Dailey explained his actions rather fully before his death."

"How... Did the demighost kill him?"

"No.  Mr. Dailey fell over the edge of the chapel's plateau, and fell into the magma below."

"Oh, lord!" she sobbed.  "What a horrid way to die!"

"Any suffering he might have felt was brief," David said.  "He would have been rendered unconscious almost immediately, from the heat."

"I sincerely hope so," she said, pulling herself together.  "How is it you know so much about what happened?"

"I was there," David said.

"But no one... I mean, my husband said he was meeting the demighost alone... I'm sorry, Officer, what is your name?"

"David Stroud," David said, looking at her quite coldly.

The color drained from Mrs. Dailey's face.  "You... you've come here to take your revenge, to kill me, I suppose?"

"No, ma'am.  There would be no point.  Killing you would only allow you to easily reunite with your husband, and that would ease whatever grief he might feel."

"Then... you've come to kill the baby.  That, I will not allow," she said, rising from the sofa.

"I have no intention of killing an innocent.  That's the sort of thing your husband would have done."

"Then why are you here?" she demanded.

"To end the Dailey family's bullshit once and for all.  Please sit down."

"What are you going to do to me?" she asked nervously, slowly lowering herself back to the couch.

"To you, nothing.  But your child cannot be allowed to father another male.  I have already visited all of your other relatives, to make sure that no other Dailey male can carry on the line."

"You said you weren't going to kill my baby!" she shouted, starting to rise again.

David held out his hand, both to calm her, and using a spell to push her back into her seat.

"The child will live.  He simply will not have the ability to father children.  Transversus vasectomus!"

A vivid green light shot out of David's wand and impacted Mrs. Dailey's stomach.  It penetrated, and she felt her baby wiggle inside of her for a moment.  The spell was soon ended, and then she felt the baby give two sharp kicks before it settled back down.

"Your family's toying with the lives of others ends now.  Be aware that, should you, your family, or your unborn child come after me, my family, or my friends, I will be back... and none of you will live through the encounter.  Is that understood?"

"Yes," Mrs. Dailey said shakily.

"Good.  Have a good day," David said, and left the house.  Mrs. Dailey remained on the couch, shaking, until her first guest arrived.

"Good afternoon, Professor," David said as Prof. Blackstone approached.

"Hello, David.  You said you had a bit of conjuring you wanted to show me... it's... unlike you to want an audience..."  Healer Hall was standing nearby, as was Olissa.

"Olissa's always with me these days.  Annie... is here for a reason."

"Oh?"

"I'm not sure that what I'm about to try is going to work.  If it doesn't work, I could get hurt somehow."

"Oh, really.  I didn't know you'd delved into the dangerous conjures."

"This one was forced upon me.  But when I did it, I had... 'borrowed' a bit of someone else's magical power, so I'm not entirely sure that I can reproduce the effect now."

"That's unlikely to matter very much.  Additional power will make some things easier, but they really won't give you the ability to do things you can't otherwise do.  So, what are we going to see?"

"Let's keep that a surprise for the moment, shall we?" David said with a grin.  If this worked, he knew they were all going to be shocked, and so he wanted to enjoy the suspense a little bit.

The others nodded, and David then looked around.  He needed to pick a spot that they could see him, so they would understand what had happened.  He saw a bench about two hundred feet away.

"Okay, keep your eye on the area near the bench," David said.

As the others watched, David turned to face the bench, and then closed his eyes.  He put his hands against his upper thighs, palms inward, and he took three deep breaths.  He opened his eyes again, focusing on the spot before him.  He continued to breathe deeply, and then he pushed his essence forward with his mind.  His concentration peaked, and his vision streaked, the world covered by brightly colored lines, until finally things snapped back into focus, but with a wholly different image.

What the others saw, as David pushed his mind outward, was a bright flash of light, and they heard a slight popping noise.  Suddenly, David was gone.  In an instant, he reappeared standing next to the bench, two hundred feet away.

"Oh my god!" Olissa gasped.

"Mother of dragons..." Annie whispered.

"Well, son of a bitch," Prof. Blackstone muttered.  As David approached them, the professor told him, "I knew you were strong, but... great griffin goats, man, there hasn't been a teleporter alive in over three hundred years."

"How do you feel?" Annie asked.

"Just slightly dizzy," David said.  He cast caput calitatem on himself, and then said, "Just fine, now."

"I'm so far beyond impressed, I don't even really know what to say to you," Prof. Blackstone said.  "Why did you attempt this the first time?  You had to know how badly you could have been hurt if you'd failed..."

David shrugged.  "Let's just say that the price of failing the attempt wasn't as high as the price of not making the attempt."

Prof. Blackstone nodded.  "Desperate measures, then?"

"Exactly."

"Adversity can bring out the best in a man.  I... I'm just flabbergasted.  If you can do this sort of thing, there are a slew of other things that we didn't cover in your apprenticeship that you should look into.  And I will be contacting the guild in the morning, to ask them to send a testing team up here.  Your rank obviously needs adjusting."

"Thanks, Professor," David said.

Prof. Blackstone shook his hand, and headed off.  Annie congratulated him and left, as well.  As they walked off, David looked after them, and remembered what Dailey had said about the school staff.

Do I believe him?  Can I believe him?  Then again, what reason did he have, at that point, to lie to me?  Has the whole thing been bullshit?  I just don't know.  All I can really say for certain is that my education wasn't bullshit.  For now, that will have to do.