Syphon: Guardians of the Fractured Realms (23 page)

“What the hell is that thing,” she asked, pointing to the jar.

“I’m not entirely sure. It’s either a brownie or a pixie, possibly even a fairy. I’ve never been able to isolate it since all the old legends stated they all flew through the use of magic, not wings. The wings actually makes it difficult to classify, I’m afraid.”

Cora kept staring at the jar in Frank’s hands as the professor finished unwrapping the second object.

“This object is most impressive,” he said, catching Cora’s attention. In his hand was a wickedly-sharp looking dagger, encrusted with jewels. She instinctively started reaching for her gun, but he held his hands up in a gesture of surrender before he gently laid it down on the table. He slowly slid across the desk toward her before gesturing for her to pick it up. As she grabbed it, she felt a slight thrum of power flow up her arm. She glanced back up as he slowly reached into a drawer, pulling out a short length of what appeared to be a metal rod. He handed the rod to Frank with a gesture to examine it while he turned back to Cora.

“What you hold in your hands was affectionately known as a vorpal blade. I know there was a movie recently that talked about a vorpal bunny, and surprising enough, there’s a lot of truth to that skit. Now if you would please, hold that blade out before you carefully, cutting edge facing upward.”

As Cora positioned the blade, he looked at Frank.

“I know this is going to sound like a silly question, but humor an old man. What exactly are you holding in your hand, detective.”

Frank smirked as he replied, “well, using my amazing level of investigative and deductive skills, I have determined it to be a piece of structural rebar…”

The professor chuckled before continuing, “would you say there’s anything special, or odd about that piece of metal rod?”

Frank turned it over in his hands, trying to flex it for good measure.

“Nope, plain old piece of rebar, satisfied?” he asked as he made a motion to hand it back, but the professor stopped him.

“Alright, since you’re fully satisfied in the fact that that,” he said as he gestured toward the metal bar, “is a ‘plain old piece of rebar’, what I would like for you to do is carefully hold it by each end, then gently bring the center of it down until it touches the edge of the blade.”

Frank shrugged as he did what the professor requested.

“Are you sure about this? I’d hate to damage a priceless artifact and have you blame us for it.”

“It’s quite all right, just press down with the rebar and see if you can move your partner’s hand. Slowly though.”

Frank shrugged again and slowly pressed down. Cora braced her arm to resist the downward pressure, but the rebar parted around the blade like water, almost causing her partner to drop the two sections of rod in surprise.

“What the…?”

“How’s that possible! I didn’t even feel it touch the blade…”

“That’s just it…” he said, gesturing with the sheath in Cora’s direction, “scientifically speaking, it isn’t possible.”

“Come on,” Frank said, rolling his eyes, “are you trying to tell me that’s a magical knife.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Professor Waide said as he handed Cora the sheath before unwrapping the final item, “use your senses. I’m showing you things that don’t conform to what science allows for.”

As he finished unwrapping the item, a smile broke across his face as a glimmering light started emanating from the item in his hands.

“So far, I’ve been slowly easing you into the world that Samuel exists in. For example, you’ve experienced my unusual strength, agility, and reflexes. While unusual, one could explain it away by science if you really worked at it, things like genetics, adrenaline, and so forth. Next I showed you a life-form that, without the benefit of opening the jar, could be argued that it was a prop or some form of doll. Harder to explain away is a knife that cuts through metal without resistance.”

Professor Waide gestured toward them and the items laid out on his desk.

“Even with all this, you’re still struggling with the idea that there’s magic in our world. That’s why I left this for last…”

As he said it, professor Waide dropped the silk away from the item in his hands. Cora saw that the object was some type of ring or hoop. As she looked at it, she thought she saw something, a shimmering effect like what comes off the surface of hot asphalt, coming from inside the loop.

Frank lifted an eyebrow as he gestured toward the ring.

“And what, exactly, is ‘that’?”

Professor Waide looked at Frank with a mischievous sparkle in his eye.

“This, dear boy, is a fairy ring…” he said, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Cora said suspiciously, “what exactly is a fairy ring.”

“Well, according to the myths, it’s usually a perfectly circular ring of mushrooms that act as a portal to the fairy realms.”

Frank waved in the ring’s direction.

“That doesn’t look like a fungus…”

“Quite right, this is something more rare…” he said as he moved the ring around, “this is a portable one.”

“So what does a portable fairy rin—” Cora started to ask, but trailed off as Professor Waide stuck his hand, then his arm through the ring, finally stopping just short of his shoulder. From their side of the ring, it appeared that his arm had been severed at the ring. Cora could make out all the muscle, blood vessels, and even the marrow in the center of his arm bone. The sight of it all flexing and pulsing started to make her queasy.

“Holy shit!”

Cora looked over at Frank. His eyes went wide in shock while his mouth hung open. Without warning, his hand shot out, reaching toward the area where it appeared the Professor’s arm stopped. As his fingers reached the point where it should have touched the bloodless stump, his fingers vanished. Inhaling sharply, he yanked his hand back as the Professor did the same thing.

“Well… That was an interesting sensation…” Professor Waide said as he shook his arm out. “I’ve never thought to try and have something enter from both sides of the ring at the same time…”

The professor trailed off, appearing to be in deep thought. Frank’s reaction was a little more animated.

“Interesting sensation?” he exclaimed, shaking his hand out, “It felt like I just shoved my hand into an electrified bucket of ice water! Damn that hurt!”

The professor came out of his ruminations with a start.

“Oh, sorry about that… My body seems to react differently to the energies that power the ring. More importantly, now you realize that this isn’t some type of parlor trick. Unless you’re going to be bull-headed about it, you’ll have to allow for the possibility that there really is something called magic that we know very little about. I’m pretty sure it’s related to quantum mechanics and string theory somehow, but since there’s very few people I can discuss this with, the research needed to advance my working knowledge of it is very difficult to arrange without looking like a shyster. Just look what happened with the first public report of cold fusion…”

Cora vaguely remembered overhearing some of the science nerds in CSI discussing it once a while back, but didn’t really understand it. Waving her hands at all the items on the table, she looked back at the professor.

“So what does all this have to do with Samuel?”

Taking a long sip from his tumbler, he met both their eyes before continuing.

“Why detective,” he said as he gestured toward the items on his desk again, “everything…”

Samuel ducked into an alleyway. He’d been sprinting for the past fifteen minutes to put some distance between himself and the cops. As he slowed to a jog, he marveled again that he wasn’t out of breath.

I wonder how long I could keep that pace up before I got tired…

>That’s a silly question.<

The sudden pain lanced through his mind, causing him to stagger into the wall before completely losing his balance and falling on the ground.

>What’s wrong with you?<

“Amitiel, talk out loud! I told you before that he’d been injured. Mind talking to him is causing him pain.”

“But I can hear him fine!”

“Whatever the damage is, it only appears to be a one-way issue. We can hear his thoughts, but when we project, it’s hurting him.”

As Samuel’s thoughts cleared again, he glanced back down at the blue dragon on his left arm.

“You’re Raguel, right?”

Samuel felt a little uneasiness as the blue dragon’s head swung around to look up at him.

“Yes, I’m glad you’re starting to get your memories back. The surge of energy from the bonding must have helped you heal more.”

“Bonding?”

“Yes, that surge of energy you felt when Amitiel here,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the other dragon, “was caused by your life energies joining together. It would take a long time to explain, but the short answer is, without the bonding, you would slowly weaken her over time and you wouldn’t benefit from the symbiotic link.”

Samuel scratched the back of his head, trying to make sense of what Raguel was telling him.

“I don’t understand… Why would she get weaker? And what’s a symbiotic link?”

Samuel almost smiled as the little dragon gave an exasperated sigh.

“Okay, since the short answer won’t work, let’s try a slightly expanded version. You are a Syphon. That means you absorb and are sustained by Aether. In layman’s terms, magical energies. That’s why you’re always hungry no matter how much you eat. There’s not a lot of energy left in cooked food. Your body has to convert it into Aether before your body can use it. What your digestive system does… it’s technically classified as a form of alchemy.”

Raguel squirmed around a bit, trying to get a better position to see Samuel before huffing again.

“This is ridiculous. Hang on a sec.”

Samuel jumped as Raguel uncoiled himself and leapt off his arm, landing silently on the pavement. He shook himself out before glancing up at Samuel.

“Going to give myself a kink in my neck at this rate,” he said before his body shimmered. Suddenly, he expanded in size, growing until he was about the size of an English mastiff.

“Ah, much better. Now I can talk to you eye-to-eye, so to speak.”

Samuel could only nod quietly as he tried to process what he’d just witnessed.

“So as I was saying, you absorb Aetheric energy. Food doesn’t have very much left in it by the time you eat it. So your body breaks down the food and converts it into magical energy. A very inefficient process I might add.”

“So what does this have to do with the bonding process?”

“I was getting to that. Since Amitiel and I are both magical creatures, if she didn’t bond with you, you would have unconsciously started feeding off her. If your memories were back, you would be able to control that urge, but you’d still feel the need constantly at the back of your mind.”

Raguel paused to scratch himself behind the ear.

“Anyway, when we bond with you, we blend our life energies together. You’ll also get a significant boost to your abilities once you remember how to access them. Hopefully the added energy boost will help you get your memories back sooner.”

“Why?”

“Really? You haven’t put two and two together yet? That bullet really did a number on you. Basically, you’re using ambient Aetheric energy to heal yourself. If you had been in a safe place, you probably would have been fine by now. As it stands, you’ve been unconsciously using your abilities to shield yourself from discovery, at least you were until you bonded with Amitiel. That takes a lot of energy to maintain. Hence why you’ve been so hungry and why your memory isn’t b—”

The weird tingling feeling coming from behind him caused Samuel to snap his head around toward the alleyway opening. Raguel’s head stretched up to look over Samuel’s shoulder at the same time. As the tingling got stronger, Samuel saw several heavily muscled guys slowing making their way down the alleyway toward them. As he stared, the weird tingling sensation continued to wash over his body. The feeling was becoming strong enough that he suspected he could determine their exact position even if he closed his eyes. He suddenly experienced the odd superimposed image effect again, seeing the men turn into hulking, eight foot tall creatures.

“Trolls.”

Samuel glanced back at Raguel before glancing back at the creatures. As they neared, he could just make out their conversation.

“Is dis da guy we were suppos’d to find? He don’t look like much.”

“He sure looks like what da boss said he’d look like.”

“Can we eat ‘im?”

“Boss didn’t say, jus said ta deal wit ‘im.”

Samuel caught a whiff of the stench rolling off them as they continued to approach.

“Uh, what do we do? Do we run for it?”

Without warning, a strange guttural hissing noise started filling the alleyway from somewhere behind him, causing the creatures to pause. As soon as the hissing started, a frigid blast of air blew past him. Turning around, Samuel almost took a step away as he saw the glint of cold blue light glowing in Raguel’s eyes. As he watched, a coating of frost and rime started forming on the dragon’s scales before slowly spreading away from his clawed feet across the alleyway floor. The dragon started clawing at the pavement, leaving deep furrows behind. As the air temperature continued to drop, fog started rolling off him, almost like steam coming off snow on the first warm spring day. Slowly, his tongue flicked across his lips as he turned toward Samuel, a wicked smile forming on his face.

“Run…? Never…”

Raguel suddenly leapt at him, causing Samuel to swing his arm up reflexively.

“We destroy.”

§§§§§§§§§§§§

As Raguel flew at him, he spit out long flowing stream of clear liquid. Samuel flinched to the side as the spray passed by his head, frost instantly forming along the side of his face. As the dragon reached him, his body rippled and contorted, shrinking down to his normal size. Latching on to Samuel’s arm, he flowed back around into position. Winking up at him, a cruel toothy smile spreading across his face, he chuckled.