The Guardian's Grimoire (47 page)

“Ite nomanai. Tetaka ni yotaga…” he pointed back at the
door. “… go jiseki tomkatsua.” He slammed his fist into his leg.

His father made him late. His father didn’t sound
like a very nice person.

I’ve often wondered who my father was and what it
would have been like with him around. But then I figured he would be like
Mother. I also considered that he could have the same luck as me, in which case
it would be a horrible idea to meet. Seeing other people with abusive parents
enforced my gratitude for having only one.

Being a little scrawny because he was young, I
expected Mordon to dress warm. The thick coat and snow boots, as if he were
preparing for a blizzard, was a little excessive. Maybe I wasn’t the weirdest
person here.

Mordon had a large leather bag that made a suspicious
clang as he dropped it beside me. He plopped down on the other side of the bag
and started ruffling through it before pulling out a small brass pot and a
small sack. He emptied the sack of something that looked like dirt and set it
in front of us. I watched with interests as he snapped his finger at the pot.
Fire burst bright from within it. While I was focused on his display of fire,
he was pulling out small glass bottles, cloth sacks, and a mortar and pestle.

Though he was younger than me and didn’t have as high
of a title, he was much better at magic. It struck me as unfair that a parent
could keep his child from even having a last name. Mordon started filling the
mortar with different amounts of the strange ingredients.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. I didn’t need
to sign out my question.

As he answered me, he pointed to his eyes and then to
the door. He wanted me to be a lookout, which was fortunate as I had been
hoping he wouldn’t ask me to do magic I didn’t know how to do.

I watched the door as much as possible, but couldn’t
help peeking at Mordon to see what he was doing more often than not. My eyes
must have been the size of golf balls as he reached deep into the flames and
pulled out a pinch of blazing sand to toss into the mortar. This guy had
amazing control over fire.

He set the mortar inside the flaming pot and
continued to add strange ingredients; everything from plants, to orange goo. 

“Why do you need all this?” I asked, trying my best
to sign it out.

“Eda mura kinteku…” he said, pointing to the jar.
“…masunda…” He held up one finger, then two more.

Not understanding a word, I stared at him blankly.

He slowly reached out his hand to my forehead. The
instant he touched me, I became exhausted. Instinctually, I tried to push his
arm away, but it was already gone. The fatigue evaporated as quickly as it had
come on and the first thing I could push out of my mouth was, “Teach me.”

“How?” he asked, understanding.

“I don’t know. Show me.” I pointed to my eyes and
then myself.

We both sat there, unsure how to communicate
something so dangerous. It wasn’t fair that I could understand a god, with his
god language and all, and not be able to talk to one of the three friends I had
on Duran.

The book had the power of Tiamat, and caused me to
understand Vretial when it thought I need to.
So… maybe I can make it
translate between me and Mordon.
I closed my eyes and focused really hard
on the book. I could feel it all the time, so I simply had to bring it to the
front of my mind. Of course, I didn’t know how to use it, but I was a Guardian,
so I knew it was possible.

I wasn’t sure what to imagine, so instead I just
wished really hard that I could understand him and he could understand me.

“Dylan?” he asked, concerned.

“Do you understand me?” I asked.

He blinked. “Perfectly… Are you… using magic?”

His accent was the same as when he was trying to
speak English, but he was obviously speaking Sudo. I could feel that I was
hearing something different than what he was saying, and his lips were moving
to foreign words, but it sounded like English.

“I think so. I mean I know so, but I’m not sure how
it works.”

“You are not using energy. Or more like you are
producing the energy you are using. This is weird.”

His words caused a little irritation in my head,
assuring me that I would have a headache later. I could understand his
confusion; the magic was coming directly from the book, which I didn’t even
have on me.

“Weirder than a guy who doesn’t speak one of the
three languages on Duran?”

“Okay, you are weird. Are you really a wizard?” He
spoke softly as if afraid his loud voice would hurt me.

“What do you mean?”

“You control the energy so smoothly, yet you act as
if you just entered the craft, because you do not seem to know a lot of magic.
You do not know Sudo, and only know a language I have never heard of. And now
you are using a spell right now that is far more advanced than even my father
could do, yet you do not know what you are doing. Are you a demon?”

My eyes would have popped out if they weren’t
attached. The itch in the back of my mind was forgotten. “A demon?”

“It is okay if you are, I would never turn you in or
ask anything of you. But if you are a demon, from another world, I want to
know. I am not a religious man, nor an easily frightened one. You seem more
like a traveler than a threat. And Edward is certainly weirder to me than you.”

“Edward? How is a man named Edward anything weird?
Weirder than a demon?”

“You said his name is Yatunus? My great grandfather
was a Yatunus, and I have a painting of him that looks exactly like Edward.”

That wasn’t surprising to me, because it seemed
perfectly plausible.

“I’m no weirder than Edward, I’m just a little
younger. I’m not a demon… but…” I sighed. “If you repeat this I swear I’ll deny
it. You can’t even tell Divina and Edward I’ve told you this. I’m from a world
called Earth. I’ve come here to learn from Edward, and I really know very
little. It’s important for me to learn magic in order to protect something from
the bad guys.”

“Protect what?” he asked.

“It’s complicated. The point is… no; that is the
point. I’m here to learn and Edward is protecting me until I can.”

“How do you know I am not the bad guy?”

“Because if you were the bad guy, you would have
acted all shocked when you found me not able to speak Sudo. And this is a much
easier way to talk.” Except for the brain irritation. But it was only my brain.

“So will you tell me about your world?”

“Yeah, but will you teach me that spell first? When I
get into electricity, fast-food, cartoons, and pizza, there will be no stopping
me. And why are you making a potion when you can make your father sleep without
it?”

He looked a little ashamed as he stirred his
concoction. “My father is a very powerful man whose disappointment in me knows
no bounds. I have not gotten close enough to touch him in days, and if I did,
he could easily counteract any magic I could do. I could certainly slip
something in his drink, though, and he would be too distracted to counteract
it.”

“Will you teach me the spell? It would be a great
defense.”

“You will not succeed tonight. This spell has taken
me years to learn, and I only recently did, but you can practice it. Be careful
doing so. Because nominal energy is by far more powerful than physical, it can
convert physical energy into nominal. This is extremely dangerous to practice
because your victim could be drained of physical energy until dead.”

“How did you practice?”

“Servants. My father made me practice it on the
servants over and over until I got it right. Anyway, the two energies naturally
coexist, which makes this even more difficult. Edward can probably teach this
to you better. Is there anything you can think of that converts something into
itself?”

“Like a virus? I can imagine some alien virus that
does that.”

“Good; tiny particles. Imagine whatever you need to…
like that the nominal energy is a virus converting the physical. Pour nominal
energy into your victim, and as you do, imagine the magic energy converting the
physical energy, then remove nominal energy as it is created. You must do this,
and as you imagine the energy converting, you also have to imagine the person
becoming tired. If you are not gentle or you draw too much, the person can be
injured. Are you sure you want to attempt this?”

“Like I said, I have something very important to
protect, but I also want to be of any help to Edward and Divina that I can be.
I won’t take it lightly; I’ll be careful.”

He nodded. “When you are done, do not suddenly stop.
If you end it quickly, the person may wake, but be too exhausted to think
straight, so you must slow down before you are finished. Keep in mind that this
is a spell that exhausts a person; they may not fall asleep, or they may pass
out. There are ways to make them want to lie down and sleep, but that is not
this spell. Does it sound like something you can handle?”

“I don’t know. It sounds like something worth
trying.”

He sighed. “Try it on me. I know you will try really
hard not to hurt me. Do not wear yourself out or get discouraged; like I said,
you will not get it right the first time.”

“I thought it won’t work if you don’t believe it
will.”

“Yes, but you should not even be doing it if someone
can so easily convince you otherwise. There is a way to reverse the effects,
but I will teach that to you after you tell me about your world. Are you ready
to try?”

I nodded.

I considered asking him to come back to the room,
where the cold wouldn’t be such a problem. It wasn’t for me, actually, but he
was shivering. Maybe he came from a warmer climate. What stopped me from
inviting him was that Edward could return early.

I closed my eyes, cleared my mind, and drew in
energy. Being as careful as I could, I made a mental channel to draw energy
from me to him. I imagined not an image but the idea of him getting tired.
Holding that idea in my head, while still willing my book’s language
assistance, I imagined my energy (as a bright blue glow in his body) was some
alien, airborne virus that mutated his physical energy (as a bright red glow)
into the virus energy. It was like a zombie virus, which then left his body
like any good airborne virus. I made sure it was a slow acting virus. After
some time, I felt something new, and it took me a few moments to realize that
it was nominal energy being drawn into Mordon. I opened my eyes to see his eyes
closed and his head down. Fairly certain that I was doing something, I slowed
the virus to a stop and let him fill himself of energy.

After about five minutes, he looked up at me, wide
eyed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“How? How can you learn a spell in a few minutes that
took me years?”

“One, I had a great teacher; two, I have a good
imagination; three, I have to learn fast to do my job; and four, Edward says I’m
good at learning magic. I don’t know why I am, and it’s not my fault. I’m
careful. I may not be all that refined, but I don’t need to use so much power
that I lose control.”

“That is something my father has never learned. That
is a lesson that takes a wise man to learn. I am not sure who you are, Dylan,
but you are powerful enough that I believe you are a demon. You also smell off,
not like anyone I know, with a hint of ink.”

The religions of Duran are different than on
Earth, and so the definition of a demon may be different.
“What exactly is
a demon, according to Duran?” I asked.

He looked startled. “You do not know the demons? The
immortals? They go by many names and there are many stories about them. Some
say they are the children of the gods, some say they were once gods, but they
came down to the worlds to give us the power to travel the worlds.”

I didn’t know for sure if he was talking about the
Guardians, but I started to get that impression. “Guardians.”

“That is one of their names. You are one, right? I
have never heard of a baby demon before. You are like a newbie demon, learning
to use your power and do your job. What is your job? Do you talk to the gods?”

“I’m really not able to talk about this. I’m gonna
get skinned alive. I wouldn’t put it past Divina to be listening right now.”

He took a small sniff. “She is not close. Is she a
demon, too?”

“No. She’s much more terrifying.”

He nodded and focused on his potion. “I understand
that you cannot tell me this stuff. Still, it is great to actually know a
demon. It is fascinating to see the power of a newbie demon, and it is even
cooler to actually teach him something.”

“Demons are something different to humans, so I
prefer to be called a Guardian.”

There was a loud whacking sound in the greeting room
and, out of reflex, I got up to go and check it out. My right foot found a
slippery rock and I was suddenly falling backwards, into the cold water of the
pond. The rock floor hurt and my left knee scraped on the coarse siding,
ripping through my pants and skin. Mordon grabbed my arm and helped me out. I
climbed out of the water, shaking and bleeding.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, worried.

“I’m used to it,” I groaned. I took off my shirt and
started ringing it out into the water. The water was so cold that my fingers
went numb.

“That was unlucky,” he said.

He started laughing, so I growled and threw my shirt
at him. It was supposed to hit him, but I was shaking so badly that I missed by
a good three feet, so I flopped down next to him. After a second, I realize he
was staring at my Guardian mark. Earth’s symbol was still inked permanently
over my heart.

“Figures, I ended up with a tattoo even though I
promised Vivian I would never get one.”

“Now will you tell me about your world?”

He asked for it, so I told him about my home with one
moon, about cars and pizza and electric lights. I told him about highways and
restaurants and computers and garage sales and television sets, about credit
cards and airplanes and high rise apartments.