A massive man walked in. He was dressed in modern clothing with a T-shirt and jeans, all looking fine if not for a gigantic two-handed khopesh strapped to his back. He was two ters tall, with broad shoulders, a long, braided beard, and relatively harsh features that betrayed Egyptian heritage. His body was overall stout, except for his impressive height.
“Wasn’t he supposed to be a dwarf?” I heard Ophelia ask. "Weren’t they… ummm… smaller?" she whispered.
“Oh, yes,” I whispered back. “But he suffers from a dwarf’s version of gigantism. It can happen when mixing dwarf blood with human blood. His mother is a priestess of Egyptian gods. He can’t fit in a dwarvish mine, so it’s a touchy topic—don’t ntion his size, or the underground, or mines.”
Saying that, I got up to greet the man.
“Darius,” he introduced himself in his booming voice, almost crushing Ophelia’s hand in the process. “A paladin of the goddess, Sekht, Lady of Slaughter, Mistress of Dread, and She Who Mauls. A great pleasure to et you,” he thundered, once again shaking Ophelia’s hand and her entire body with it in the process.
“And number two, when it cos to being a source of unnecessary violence,” I heard Luna whisper to Ophelia.
“And who’s number one?” Ophelia whispered back.
To which, in the corner of my eye, I could see Luna look at her like she was stupid and then point at .
Rude, but whatever.
“Yeah, he’s a great duelist—one of the best there is,” I said once introductions were over, and Darius was arguing with Myhur over swords versus fists, which was the traditional talk they needed to have.
“We are only waiting for our Van Helsing,” said the cat, looking over the group.
“Van Helsing?” Ophelia piped up. “The Van Helsing, like the vampire hunter?”
“Yes and no. It’s a tradition in noble houses: when the family was made famous by one person in particular, that person’s na can beco a title inside the family. The current heir will bear the honorary Van Helsing na. There are quite a few—Guinevere, Dratewka, Hercules. I think the Irish family still uses the Cú Chulainn for successors. William is his real na. And he’s a British aristocrat. Reeeeeal fancy.”
“I thought we didn’t get along with noble houses?” asked Ophelia, clearly confused.
“Not necessarily. And Helsings aren’t part of the noble houses as far as politics are concerned.”
“Why?” Ophelia asked.
“It’s because of our people,” it was Luna who cut in. “Helsings were vampire hunters—our mortal enemies. But after the war and without mana, vampires beca fewer and fewer. Turning soone into a vampire uses magic. We can reproduce normally, but that is hard with our unaging bodies. So we were going extinct, slowly but surely. Many a vampire hunter celebrated, but not Helsings. They hunted to keep the balance—only those of us who used people as cattle—so when we were going extinct, they started helping our side, using their extensive knowledge of vampirism to keep the balance. This didn’t go over well with others, who accused them of treason and of failing to uphold their noblesse oblige. They ended up cutting contact with the noble side and joining the Third Chamber.”
There was a bit of silence as we looked at one another.
“Aaaaand,” I broke it with a shit-eating grin, “their recent heir took that to heart reeeeal hard.”
“Saaam,” Luna turned to with a clear warning.
“The word on the streets is that he wants to reeeeeally help with the vampire population problem—you know, like boots on the ground.”
“Yeeeah, hands-on approach,” snickered Myhur, as Luna turned to him this ti.
“He’s a man of real dedication, our William. The vampires were going away, but he said, ‘Not on my watch—’” roared the massive dwarf as if he was telling a war story.
A ball of blood slamd into his forehead before he could finish the sentence, as the rest of us were doing our best not to laugh.
The doorknob started to turn as I quickly turned to Ophelia, putting on the most serious face I could. “I forgot to tell you—he’s… he’s a thing, a bizarre creature. You have to watch out.” I warned the now-concerned woman as the doors swung open.
In walked William. As always, in a full suit, his black hair falling flat against his scalp, of course, in a faultless, combed hairstyle. He wore a fine, deep-blue coat over the suit, with a fancy, silver-decorated dagger sticking out from the inside. His face was handso, bringing to mind English aristocrats from TV dramas.
“Don’t move,” I whispered to the now slightly panicked Ophelia, as all of us froze in place—aside from Luna and Q’Shar, who just sighed, rolling their eyes.
“What’s going on?” Ophelia whispered.
“Can you idiots stop?” William asked with a groan. “It’s unbecoming of a grown man.”
We still sat without moving.
“It’s kinda fucked up, but he’s… he’s—” I said, as if struggling. “He’s… British.” I let the silence hang. “I heard they react to movent,” I whispered to Ophelia.
She took a while to process my words and then turned to with a mixture of disbelief and disapproval.
“Every ti the sa. Why do I even et with you?” said William as he slapped the frozen Darius on the back of his head. “Can you stop telling others that I'm so kind of strange creature?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Oi, bruv, no need fo’ violence,” answered Darius.
“Yeah, jus’ a bit of banter, mate,” I echoed with the worst British accent I could muster.
After getting our laughs, we all finally greeted him. I got up to hug the man and then sat myself in the chair he tried to sit in, leaving the only open seat next to the vampire.
“Are you twelve?” Will asked.
“How long have you known ?” I asked back.
He just sighed and sat down next to Luna, as we snickered at the slight blush.
“Theee cycle awaits your child,” said Myhur, and dodged a ball of blood.
“All right,” Q’Shar broke the clown show. “Now that all of you idiots are here, let’s get to business.”
We all relaxed back into our chairs and put on more serious expressions.
“We know that the noble houses are scheming with the Church. And for now, we don’t have anything concrete, but as leaders of a new generation, you can all expect pressure once the Sabbath begins. I already talked with the current heads of other organizations, but it will be obvious that it’s your generation that will have to deal with this chaos—those in their pri now will have the most say,” Q’Shar said, looking at us, checking if everyone got it.
We all wore serious looks as we listened to the cat.
“There are a couple of key points that we need to deal with,” he continued. “But the most important one is how we want to deal with lifting the law separating our world from the mundane one.”
“What’s the fuss? It had to be lifted either way,” I said, frowning.
“Yes, but how it will be lifted will matter—and, most of all, what we do with the mundane world. The Shadow Gallery is gone. We don’t have our claws in the current power structure.”
“Umm, is it such a big deal?” Ophelia asked, as we all turned to her. “Look, I know you lived a certain way—I get that—but I wasn’t raised in your world, and I kinda… fail to understand the law? Sure, many will be afraid, but at the sa ti, many will want to learn magic and join its world. It’s sothing that almost every other teenager dread of. And I can tell you, getting introduced to that world is life-changing. But all of you discuss it as if it were a tragedy in the making. Why?”
We looked at one another, and then the rest finally looked to to explain.
“Do you rember the history of the war? How, after Clentus introduced the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil law, the warlocks were losing.”
“Yes. But what does it have to do—”
“Let speak,” I interrupted. “There were five ninth-circle people at the ti: the head of the Satanists, Lucien, the leader of the island of Atlas, the queen of the elves, the Heavenly Demon of Asia, and my grandfather, Abdul Alhazred. The only reason the Church didn’t take an easy win was that they didn’t have a thrice-ascended mage, so Lucien was still a threat. But he was losing on the battlefields where he didn’t participate. At the ti, part of my family lived in Arica as well, not taking sides in the war.”
“Yeah, they thought politics were beneath them even then,” Q’Shar added.
“More or less. So the leader of the Satanists went to my grandfather and tried to persuade him. That didn’t work. With the mounting pressure, he finally did sothing stupid. He threatened my family. To that, they picked up their stuff, moved back to where we originated from in Damascus, and joined the Church—if you can call it that—out of spite. My grandfather was an… original man. It was said he drove the leader of the Satanists mad.”
“Like mind magic?” asked Ophelia.
“No. Every ti he showed up to a battlefield, my grandfather would also co, then fight him to a standstill, and then just fuck off—to repeat again and again. With my grandfather blocking the warlocks’ leader, the Church started advancing. And then, finally, the third escalation took place.”
Everyone looked a bit sad. This was the nail in the coffin of the arcane world.
“The Satanists were now matched in the powerhouse departnt. It was the foot soldiers who were losing ground. Wars between mages weren’t that deadly. Mages at high levels were hard to kill and would shatter their rings to get out of deadly situations, so most fights ended in crippling one’s magic rather than death. So, the Satanists were losing with their low-level soldiers, usually not treated very well by the power-based hierarchy. With low training and morale, they stood no chance against the paladins of the Church. But they had one more trick up their sleeve. The Satanists figured out that even if a third-circle paladin can light up their sword with holy fla and cut down a tree with a single swing, that will be nothing if he’s outnumbered, let’s say, a thousand to one.”
“The mundane world,” Ophelia whispered.
“Yes. For the first ti in history, human-wave tactics were used. It was a shock. The paladins weren’t trained to cut down normal people whipped into attacking them. They collapsed easily. Thousands died in a single battle—but one thing was proven: it was effective. Lucien was desperate and cornered, so he involved the mundane world. Human-wave tactics not only turned the tide, but this ti changed war forever.”
“Plaaague magic, disease, starvation,” Myhur said, staring ahead.
“Yes,” I confird. “Casualties went from a few to hundreds and thousands. Mages began reorganizing the mundane world, promising kings riches, magic, and immortality, or sotis simply usurping them, raising armies to be sent to slaughter. In that process, it also turned out that there was a lot of potential for magic among normal people. Those with talent were given basic training and joined the war. New branches of magic ant for mass-killing weak opponents were developed in an arms race. The Alliance refused to use the mortal world like that, so they developed weapons to counteract it. Normal people were much easier to kill with disease and starvation, so magic that destroyed the crops, plague spells, and other weapons of war were researched.”
“But it was two thousand years ago,” protested Ophelia.
“It’s not about that. The world of mages was always based on power, and seeing that you can topple a much stronger opponent by simply promising trinkets to kings or scaring them with spells, gave ideas to many. Wars using humans broke out all over the world, especially among cultivators, where this love for strength was a big part of their society already. With young masters running around, many who were humiliated one too many tis ca up with sches. And all that death and destruction was reflected in mana. The magic, almost all over the world, started taking on death attunents, with the atrocities committed spawning singularities. Then the first generation, fully raised during war—knowing the other side as nothing but the enemy—ca to power, and it beca even worse. The magic itself started dying. Plagues and starvation killed thousands. Those thousands turned mana into poison to the living, which only sped up the death in a vicious cycle, and then THE disease showed up. It was said that if the Miracle Bringers didn’t shatter the veins, mana would have killed much of humanity anyway.”
Ophelia sat there quietly, a frown on her face. “So they wanted to save everyone?”
“No. They had different goals entirely. But it was decided after that: the world of the mundane can never mix in our conflicts. Normal people were thought to be fragile, and that many deaths can have horrible consequences on magic. Although by now they are capable of dealing death on that scale themselves.”
Silence descended over the room.
“But mana wasn’t around for a long ti. It couldn’t have repeated itself, so why keep the law in place? Why cling to it? It still doesn’t make sense.”
“Don’t repeat what I’ll say to any mage outside the room. But the truth is, at first, the law was set to protect normal humans from us. We were afraid of another war like that. But later, with the Inquisition, our world lost much of its power, and the mundane one only sped up, leaving us behind. The scale of war between normal people showed we no longer had a monopoly on violence. And the law was upheld to protect us from the mundane people. It was simply kept out of fear.”
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