Choose Your Own Misadventure - 4

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Lorcan reached out carefully. Senator Seafury still held the talisman in his hand, waiting patiently. The fact that he wanted the necklace so badly made Lorcan nervous. Magic was dangerous. Great Grandmother had said so at least a hundred times. And Lorcan knew absolutely nothing about magic or sorcerers. This thing could kill him in an instant. It could be part of some elaborate test or something similarly horrible. He just didn’t know.

But he wanted desperately to grab that talisman. The pattern was mesmerizing. In a strange way the necklace seemed very familiar to him. Like something he had lost a long time ago and nearly forgotten about.

“Oh well, what the hell,” Lorcan whispered. He grabbed talisman.

The world burned and froze and spun and lurched all at once.

When Lorcan opened his eyes he was lying on the floor of a different room than he received the talisman in. A beautiful mural decorated the ceiling. He sat up and looked around. Shelves from the floor to the ceiling, all packed with orderly rows of books, covered every wall. Luciana and her father were nowhere to be seen. A fire blazed in the hearth and the room was comfortably warm. Lorcan’s head was pounding the way his uncles all described after a night of particularly heavy drinking.

“About time you woke up. I was starting to think the shock had done you in.” A voice said from the other side of a massive reading chair in front of the fireplace. Lorcan had not realized the chair’s high back had been concealing another person in the room with him.

Lorcan’s throat was dry and scratchy, but he addressed the chair as best he could. “Where am I?”

“My lord,” the voice responded in a very terse tone.

“Huh?” Lorcan attempted to stand, but colors swirled in front of his eyes and he thought better of it.

“Where am I, my lord? Have you no manners where you come from?” Whoever it was sitting in that chair, he sounded very annoyed with Lorcan for some reason.

“What’s a lord?” Lorcan asked, his mind still groggy from whatever had happened.

The man tsked vexedly. “I am a lord! Am I to honestly believe that there are no lords or ladies in your realm?”

“Um…”

“Magnificent!” He growled disgustedly. “Adrianna and her damnedable notions of meritocracy must have caught on after all! Bah!” He reached over to the small table beside his chair, swirled the glass of brandy—Lorcan was fairly certain it was brandy—and then took a long drink before setting the glass back down.

Lorcan, still sitting on the lush carpet, sat and watched while a very distinguished looking old man emerged from behind the enormous chair. He had hair just on the edge of crossing from silver to white, his bright blue eyes twinkled in the firelight, and his unbelievably well groomed mustache curled up magnificently in front of his cheeks. The man had a well-defined, hooked nose and bushy eyebrows. He was tall and wiry with a disapproving air about him. Lorcan instantly knew that this gentleman was the fussy sort.

“I am Lord Cumberbatch and you will address me in such a way that befits my station, regardless of whether or not my uppity hussy of a granddaughter ruined that most noble system of governance!”

“I’m Lorcan Moon.” Lorcan finally managed to stand and extend his hand to Lord Cumberwhatever.

Lord Cumberbatch looked at Lorcan’s hand as though it were covered in cow dung. “You bow to your betters, boy! And address me as my lord, if you would be so kind as to be moderately civil.”

“Bow?” Lorcan asked, again confused.

Cumberbatch rolled his eyes irritably. “We’ll go over that later, I suppose. Ugh! I have never seen a more hopeless case!” He grabbed his brandy and took another long drink.

“Um…where exactly are we?” Lorcan watched Lord Cumberbatch’s nostrils flare before he remembered to add a belated, “my lord?”

“This is my study,” Cumberbatch gestured proudly to the walls of books.

“And where are Luciana and Senator Seafury? My lord?” Lorcan remembered to add more quickly this time.

“Senator! Bah!” Lord Cumberbatch growled. “Damn that foul Adrianna! Suffice to say that they are not here, boy.”

“Well then where did they go?” Lorcan asked. Cumberbatch arched an eyebrow. Lorcan only barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. “Where did they go, my lord?”

The older man nodded approvingly. “Where they went is not important. Let me show you what is.” He turned and strode out a door next to the fireplace that Lorcan could have sworn was not there a moment before.

Reluctantly, Lorcan followed Lord Cumberbatch. Once they stepped through the door the library disappeared and the two of them stood on a snowy hill surrounded by rolling hills covered in snow for as far as Lorcan could see.

“That was…odd,” Lorcan commented as he looked around.

“Never mind it being odd, boy. You are here to learn. Have you ever seen a Legionary?”

“No. What’s a Legionary? My lord.” Lorcan was still scanning the hills for signs of anything besides snow.

“You’re about to find out.” Cumberbatch chucked and when Lorcan turned around the lord was gone.

Spinning frantically, Lorcan saw no footprints to show which direction Lord Cumberbatch had gone. “Oh shit,” he muttered to himself. His feet were freezing in the more than a foot thick layer of snow.

At first Lorcan thought that nothing was happening. Then he saw the movement on the horizon. At the very furthest set of hills he could see, something was moving towards him. A lot of somethings, actually. Thousands upon thousands of them.

Lorcan watched as the first row of them dipped behind the next group of hills, but the tide behind them just kept coming. A sick feeling rose in his stomach. When the first whatever-they-weres reached the top of the next hill he saw that they vaguely resembled people. Vaguely being the operative word. They were covered in frost and the way they ran looked unnatural. They reminded Lorcan of wolves at the end of winter, starving and mad, with no thought other than bringing down their next meal regardless of the danger involved.

Lorcan turned and ran. He had no idea where he was running to, but he knew how much he wanted to get away from those Legionaries or whatever they were.

“What the hell are you doing, boy?” Lorcan heard Lord Cumberbatch’s voice ask inside his head.

“Running!” Lorcan shouted without bothering to worry about hearing another man’s voice as though it were his own thought. He was having a great deal of trouble moving quickly through the snow, especially as it got deeper in the valley between hills.

“A sorcerer does not flee, idiot! He fights, especially when facing Legionaries! On rare occasions he makes a tactical withdrawal, but he never turns tail and bolts like a coward!”

“He does if he wants to be a live coward!” Lorcan was scrambling up the next hill now. He turned and looked over his shoulder. The Legionaries were gaining on him quickly.

“Of all the worthless apprentices to be stuck with!” Cumberbatch muttered angrily. “You wield the raw, primal, destructive half of magic! Stop floundering in the snow and use the high ground rip those Legionaries to shreds!”

“I don’t know how!” Lorcan continued running down into the next valley.

“You have always known how! Stop letting your moronic peasant mind keep you from doing what you were born to do!”

Lorcan reached the top of the next hill and did a quick check over his shoulder. He could see what the Legionaries looked like now. Their eyes glowed silver without pupil, iris, or whites. Their skin and hair looked similar to the corpse that Lorcan had found in the woods after two weeks of heavy rain last year. Their clothing was in tatters. They bounded like animals through the snow, they even howled and snarled like feral creatures. These were the reanimated corpses that had made up the bulk of Death’s Legion.

It was quite obvious that Lorcan would not reach the next hilltop. He was going to die, so he figured he might as well try what that lunatic Cumberbatch was telling him to do. “Oh well, what the hell.” Lorcan held out his hands, did his best to shut out the rest of his thoughts, and imagined fire shooting out of his hands and burning the oncoming Legionaries. He closed his eyes, bit his lip, and concentrated with all his might.

Nothing happened.

He felt the first wave of Legionaries tackle him to the ground and tear chunks of his flesh from his limbs with their teeth. Lorcan screamed as one of them tore open his stomach with its fingernails. He tried to thrash and fight, but the sheer weight of the dozen or more Legionaries on top of him held him in place while they devoured his body.

Lorcan screamed until one of them took a big bite out of his throat. Finally, blessedly, as the pain reached its crescendo, darkness began to creep in from the edges of his vision. Lorcan was dying. He waited in agony while the darkness took him.

Lorcan let out a blood curdling scream and his whole body spasmed so violently that he was lifted off the lush carpet he was lying on. When he thudded back to the floor he was staring up at a familiar looking mural.

He was back in Lord Cumberbatch’s study.

“No need to be overly dramatic, boy,” Cumberbatch chided from his chair in front of the fire.

“I died! They ate me!” Lorcan shouted.

“And that does not give you an excuse to be rude. You will address me as my lord.”

“I don’t give a damn, my lord! I want to know what the hell is going on, my lord! Where the hell am I, my God-damned lord?” Lorcan stumbled to his feet and searched his body for bite marks. He found none, but there was a long, ugly scar running down his side that had not been there before.

“A temper? Well, that’s encouraging. I was beginning to suspect you had no fire in you, boy,” Lord Cumberbatch mused.

“Call me boy again!” Lorcan screamed. He had had it with Cumberbatch and his lunacy. One way or another, he was going to end this madness.

All he saw was Cumberbatch’s hand flick out to the side with casual disdain. A gust of wind hit Lorcan in the chest and threw him off his feet to slam into the bookshelf behind him. He bounced off the rows of books and crashed back down to the carpet.

Lorcan groaned. He felt certain that every inch of his torso was going to be covered in bruises after that.

“Now listen carefully, boy. We are going to try that again and I expect you to do better. A completely untrained sorcerer such as yourself isn’t expected to master the crucible on their first run and you are, in fact, to be commended for deciding to take a stand rather than flee the entire time. I would have bet my best stallion that you would not have had the courage to do that on your first run. Do you understand me, boy?”

Lorcan nodded, not caring whether Cumberbatch could see him or not.

“Good. Now out the door with you. It will be different this time. I will be in your mind the entire time. Try to listen to me sooner this time.”

A door appeared in front of Lorcan. He crawled painfully to his feet and stepped through.

Lorcan found himself on a large boat. Waves tossed the ship about as though it were a raft. Sailors ran screaming in every direction. Lorcan felt his jaw drop. The water went on forever in every direction. He had never seen such a thing. Lake Wanderer back home had always seemed enormous, tucked away on the far side of Weyrd Mountain, but that seemed like a drop in the bucket of this lake!

“Dear God, you don’t know what an ocean is. How have you survived for so long while being so painfully ignorant?”

“Hey!” Lorcan protested.

“Never mind your idiocy now. Open your mind and face the beast.”

“Beast?”

As though in answer to Lorcan’s question, an impossibly gargantuan tentacle shot up from the turbulent sea and wrapped around the ship. Apparently, it had not been the waves tossing their boat around after all.

Lorcan closed his eyes and did his best to concentrate while the deck thrashed and cracked beneath his feet.

“You have used magic before, but always unintentionally. Focus, boy. Your body knows what to do. Just let it.”

Lorcan took a deep breath then exhaled slowly. He felt just on the cusp of something happening when the ship broke in half and he was thrown overboard. A tentacle wrapped around his waist and he tried to scream. Water poured into his mouth and he began to drown.

Luckily—as much as anything could be considered lucky in this strange place—the tentacle brought him to the beast’s great beak of a mouth and he was crushed to death almost instantly.

Lorcan shuddered. He was staring up at the mural again. He was really starting to hate that mural. Feeling under his shirt he could tell that he had another new scar.

“Where are these scars coming from, my lord?” Lorcan asked as he stood. His second death had not been nearly as traumatic as the first.

“The crucible is in many ways real. Though you can die there without really dying, each run leaves its mark on you,” Lord Cumberbatch explained without getting up from his chair.

“Will I die there again, my lord?”

“Oh yes. Many times, boy. Many times.”

Lorcan had lost count of all the scenarios he faced in the crucible. He had died each time without being able to access magic. If he had to guess, he would have said he was in the mid-twenties.

This time he was in the town square of a village he did not recognize. Horrible scaly monsters were attacking the townspeople and ripping them to bits. Lorcan did what he could to mentally block out their screams of terror.

“Remember, boy, it’s not about getting angry. You must very calmly and collectedly reach inside yourself. Some sorcerers need emotion, but you are not that kind of man. You are cold inside.”

Eyes closed and breathing evenly, Lorcan smirked to himself. Lord Cumberbatch had called him a man rather than a boy. He took the crotchety lord’s words to heart and pictured an icy cave deep within himself. He traveled down the frozen corridors of his mind to the entrance of his cave. A family of strange, fat little birds slid around on the ice on their bellies.

When Lorcan opened his eyes he could finally feel the force inside him that he had only been able to grope at clumsily and unsuccessfully before. He very nearly lost his calm center when he saw that one of the lizard creatures was barreling down on him. Instinctively, Lorcan raised his hands to defend himself. He expected fire or lightning to fly from his fingertips, but instead twin icicles shot from his palms and skewered the monster through its chest. The beast collapsed, dead at Lorcan’s feet.

Grinning triumphantly, Lorcan fired icicle after icicle until the square was monster-free.

The sound of a man clapping made Lorcan turn around. Lord Cumberbatch stood in the village square with him. “Twenty-seven. Not a bad number. Not particularly good either, but still. Now off you go!”

Lorcan tried to ask where he was going, but the world took care of that for him. Everything melted and fell away into dust around him before a crackling energy lifted him up and let him drop down into nothingness.

Lorcan’s eyes shot open. He was staring up into Luciana’s pale green eyes.

“See? I told you he would wake up eventually,” Luciana said evenly.

“What do you know of magic, girl? Sometimes magic can make a man sleep forever!” Great Grandmother grumbled irritably. “Now get back so I can take a look at my fool great-grandson!”

Luciana arched an eyebrow at the blind woman for asking her to move so she could see, but she said nothing. When she moved Lorcan saw that he was in his bed back home on Weyrd Mountain. “What happened?”

“You took a magic necklace from a stranger, you blithering idiot!” Great Grandmother raged. “Have I taught you nothing about magic?”

“Well…” The truth was she had taught him almost nothing at all.

“Shut up, Lorcan! You ought to have known better! That thing could have killed you! Dammit, boy, you’re practically the only relative that doesn’t annoy the crap out of me!” Great Grandmother raged.

“I’m sorry, Great Grandmother. It called to me.”

“Of course it did! All evil artifacts do! Idiot!” She shook her head. “We couldn’t even pry it out of your hand.”

Lorcan looked down. His right hand was still clenched around the talisman. When he opened his fingers and removed the talisman he was dismayed to see that the intricate pattern of the talisman was burned into the skin of his palm. Quickly feeling under his shirt, Lorcan found that he also had numerous scars on his torso—twenty-seven of them, no doubt.

“Interesting,” Luciana murmured.

“What is? I don’t like anything that this girl finds interesting! Tell me what’s going on!” Great Grandmother demanded.

Lorcan never got to answer her though. His other family members burst through the door, Mandy leading them. His sister threw her arms around Lorcan in a big bear hug.

“You’re alive!” She shouted happily.

Lorcan’s brothers were right behind her. As were his parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, and everyone else who could squeeze into the tiny room or peer in from the hallway.

“I knew he’d wake up in time for the festival!” Julian declared haughtily.

“How close are we to the badger festival? Isn’t it still days away?” Lorcan asked.

“It was. You’ve been asleep for three days! The festival is tomorrow,” Thomas told him.

“You’re coming with me, right?” Julian asked hopefully. “I know just how I can use you waking up from a coma to finally woo Tresita Green!”

Great Grandmother smacked Julian upside the head with her cane. “Who gives a good God-damn about the badger festival right now?”

“Ooh, I do!” Thomas gushed. “Please go, Lorcan! Usually only Julian goes and his stories aren’t at all the type of romantic adventures that they should be! He’s a pig-headed dummy-face!”

“Hey!” Julian complained. Some of Lorcan’s other cousins snickered.

Thomas ignored him. “Come on! Go to the festival and actually be nice to the girls instead of teasing all of them! I want a good romance story!” he whined.

Lorcan looked around for someone to come to his defense and tell him that it was ridiculous to even think of going to a festival after being in a coma for three days. He was not surprised that no one came to his rescue. They didn’t even have the decency to hide their smirks. “You people have no shame, do you?”

Mandy tousled his hair. “Not a lick of it.” She grinned, far too delighted by Lorcan’s bemusement.

Lorcan has been coerced by his family into going to the badger festival, what is his plan?

1)      The same as all the other times he’s been dragged along to one of these stupid things: hide in the corner and sneak away at the earliest possible opportunity.

2)      Actually try to find a girl to court foronce, what’s the worst that could happen?