Suburban Warlock: A Slice of Life Fantasy, page 4
‘Basically, if you find anything relating to the Elderax founders the town, or any information relating to the location of such artifacts on your property, you just have to inform the High Council.’
‘Sounds fine by me,’ I nodded, making my way through the rest of the contract before signing on the dotted line.
‘Umm…’ Jessica said, skeptically taking the papers from me. ‘Thank you…’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, I just didn’t anticipate that I would ever be able to shift this place.’
‘Well, you’re welcome.’
‘Usually this whole thank you, you’re welcome thing is the other way around.’
‘Forget it,’ I smiled. ‘So when can I get the keys?’
‘As soon as your payment clears. I’ll fetch the transfer details for you.’
‘You don’t take gold? I thought all magical communities still took it.’
‘Oh,’ she smiled, a little taken aback, ‘we do, but it’s been a time since I’ve had a buyer actually use gold to make a purchase.’
‘But you still take it?’
‘We do.’
I retrieved my chest, reached inside and fished out a collection of gold bars. I stacked them up on the kitchen counter one after the other, receiving an impressed frown from Jessica that grew with each bar presented.
‘Current gold value is $60,000 per kilo, right?’
‘Mmhmm,’ she nodded, gulping at the sight of the gold.
‘So, $800,000… Let me just see…’ I rooted around in the bag and returned with the right amount of bars and extra coins, counting them all out. ‘That should do it.’
‘I think you’re a little over.’
‘Take $5000 for yourself,’ I nodded politely. ‘Just don’t tell your boss.’
‘Thank you so much,’ she spoke with happy surprise. ‘I’ll consider it confidential between realtor and client.’
I helped Jessica carry the gold to her car and set it down in the trunk. She retrieved the house keys and set them into my palm with a gentle graze of her fingers.
‘Do I need to say thank you again?’ She smiled.
‘Nope. Thank you.’
‘Right,’ she smiled, lingering a moment longer. I would have put it down to the realtor act, but then she reached into the stretched silk of the blouse covering her breasts and retrieved a business card which she handed to me. ‘Take this. Call me if you have any troubles.’
She gave me another warm smile and got back into her car. I watched it take off down the street.
The beautiful fox-eared realtor might have been the first person wearing a suit that I had ever trusted in my life.
I looked about the warm, colorful street. The large, well-kept houses stood comfortably, lining both sides of the road. Perfectly-manicured lawns were fed and tended to by perpetual water spells, while the fronts of houses practically shone in the warm sunshine.
I turned and looked up at the cozy, spacious house and smiled to myself.
No more dungeon clearing. Time to relax.
Chapter 6
A Hot Shower
I unloaded my possessions from the trailer outside and set them down in the living room. I was going to need to furnish my new house to make it a little cozier, but for the time being that could wait.
I checked through my supplies and found a few loose provisions. The water in the house worked fine, but water wasn’t what I was hankering for right now.
I fetched my cup from its chest. The cast-iron cup had taken a thousand dents from my travels and served a thousand drinks to keep me alive, and it was still going strong.
I poured two fingers of whisky, headed to the back porch and looked out at the wall of shrubbery and thick, nine-foot-tall grass directly ahead. The presence of a rogue wood-nymph had scared away any potential buyers, but it didn’t bother me all that much. With how many monsters I had dealt with in the past, I was confident that I would be able to find a way to peacefully live alongside her.
After finishing off the whisky I headed upstairs to the bathroom with my towel, pulled off my clothes and turned on the water. I moved beneath the pouring stream and tipped my head back, feeling weeks of walking and years of dirt washing off of me.
‘Hot damn, that’s glorious…’
Water raced across every line of my lean, muscular body. Still, at twenty-eight, I really shouldn’t have been this stiff.
Maybe I needed to try running. Or yoga.
I reached for my caster’s journal – no ink, so as waterproof as the day was long – and flicked through the pages beyond my stats. There were close to 100 spells across its many pages, and with the journal bound to me, each listed itself automatically whenever I learned something new.
It had been a while since something new had come my way seeing as I had maxed out everything I could over the years. These days there were five spells that formed the bread and butter of my arsenal:
Arcane Blast. A run-of-the-mill ranged blast. Powerful, versatile, and effective against most foes that came my way.
Arcane Beam. A ranged attack similar to Arcane Blast, this was much more powerful, and could be maintained over a long period of time to create a barrage of damage.
Summon: Spell Blade. I vastly preferred ranged to melee, but sometimes the occasion called for it. Spell Blade possessed nine different variations and enchantments for dealing with anything that might come my way.
Captured Crush. An outlier, but a personal favorite of mine that I leaned on heavily from my Destruction spec. When it came to the more nefarious beasts that needed to be done away with promptly, this nifty little number created a tough, translucent sphere around a foe. The optional, secondary aspect of the spell permitted the orb to quickly obliterate whatever was inside, ending monsters instantly.
Arcane Sprawl. A cone AoE attack, I liked Arcane Sprawl above plenty of other popular AoE options because of its capacity for additional stinging damage, and the sheer chaos it caused for my foes in the form of disorientation damage.
I had a whole smorgasbord of other spells buried in the back pages that I had acquired over the years, but as any dungeon clearer or runner would tell you, no matter their class, a rotation of five, maybe six, moves and/or spells was typical. There were others in there that cropped up if a man needed to deal with special situations, but they were few and far between.
Not that I would need any around here, of course.
Hopefully.
Bang-bang-bang.
Beneath the pouring, steamy water I returned to the world of the living and glanced around.
‘What is that?’
No, not banging – knocking.
It was coming from the front door.
Chapter 7
The Mage Across the Street
I wiped my hand over the steamy window and looked to the front of the house. The hint of a foot and a leg was down there, but the glass steamed too fast for me to see anything else, and the porch hid the rest of the figure.
I clambered out of the shower, half-toweled myself off and hurried downstairs with the first clothes I grabbed from my trunk.
‘Just a second,’ I called out, pulling up my jeans and awkwardly fumbling into a faded t-shirt. I crossed to the door, unlocked it and pulled it wide with my t-shirt half on.
A startingly pretty blonde in her early-twenties stood on my porch. Blonde, furred ears poked out from between her soft, thick hair which cascaded over her slender shoulders, framing her beautiful features; soft, delicate lips, a perfectly-curved noise and intensely blue eyes. She wore a white baseball tee with the red sleeves rolled up, low cut over her impressively busty double-D chest and cropped at her navel, exposing her slender, lightly-toned stomach. A pair of blue denim short shorts hugged her hips, stopping at the top of her thighs and leaving her lightly-tanned legs uncovered all the way to her ankles.
‘Hi,’ the blonde smiled, her cheeks instantly blushing as our eyes met. ‘Sorry, I didn’t want to bother you so soon after you moved in, but I thought you could probably do with some fresh food?’
She held up a basket in her hands and pulled back the small blanket covering it to reveal a dozen sumptuous blueberry muffins resting inside.
‘Oh,’ I frowned, managing a smile, ‘For me?’
‘Uh huh,’ she nodded, handing them over and watching my face as she did so. ‘I know it’s not much, I’m just kind of new to this whole friendly-neighbor thing.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, taking the basket and examining the moist cakes inside.
‘I mean I only just moved in across the street, like, a few months ago. I’m kind of trying to be a good neighbor and everything, but this is the first time I’ve been in a spot of my own and I don’t want to make an ass out of myself.’ The blonde laughed lightly to herself, sweeping a lock of hair behind her ear and smiling charmingly. ‘I’m Sophie, by the way.’
‘Trent,’ I replied, shaking hands with her.
‘So what do you do?’ She asked.
‘I was a warlock,’ I replied, leaning against the doorframe. ‘Still am, come to think of it.’
‘What kind?’
‘Uhh… The working kind.’
‘Interesting,’ Sophie smiled. ‘You going to give me more details than that?’
‘For my own safety and everybody else’s, it’s best that I don’t.’
‘Well, it looks like you might have your work cut out for you around here. Heard there was some trouble at a diner in town this morning. Something to do with another warlock – sounds like he dealt with it well, though.’
‘That was only a few hours ago,’ I remarked. ‘Word sure does travel fast around here.’
‘Only when it’s of the fighting-based nature. The rest of the time folks just keep to themselves…’ Sophie trailed off before a look of realization crossed her face, ‘Wait, that was you at the diner?’
‘It might have been.’
‘You really caused a stir.’
‘Not what I intended. I just only have one way to deal with morons.’
‘You have no idea how much I sympathize. Anyway, whatever your specialty is, I’m guessing you’re, how do I put this… Capable?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Please,’ Sophie laughed, nodding around me at the house as her round, busty breasts bounced lightly beneath her t-shirt. ‘Everybody around here knows what owning this particular house entails. I didn’t live across the street at the time, but I remember hearing about all the people who flooded in to view it only to go running for their lives. The realtors show up once a month to give it a spruce, but otherwise it sits empty. I thought nobody was ever going to take it on.’
‘Guess they were just waiting for a person capable enough, like you said... Or maybe stupid enough.’
‘I doubt that,’ Sophie smiled.
‘So what do you do?’
‘I’m an assistant professor at Emberfall College. Well, technically a High Mage Candidate now.’
‘Impressive. What specialty?’
‘You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine,’ she spoke with a raised eyebrow.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Sophie smirked, her furred blonde ears twitching. ‘Anyway, it was nice to meet you, Trent. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to drop by.’
‘Think you can spare a couch?’
‘Maybe not that, but if you need any more food, just let me know. Hey, I know this might seem like a weird question, but I don’t suppose you know anything about plumbing, do you?’
‘A little, why?’
‘It’s kind of awkward,’ she laughed. ‘My pool’s got a blockage. Totally embarrassing.’
‘I’ll take a look at it,’ I offered.
‘Really? Because I promise that I didn’t just come over with those muffins as a half-payment and pretend to remember that I needed somebody’s help at the last second. I’ll totally pay you in full. Before the job.’
‘Before? You already trust me that much?’
‘Believe me, I know when to trust a guy. Could you come over tomorrow morning?’
‘You got it.’
‘You’re a lifesaver,’ she smiled again, giving me a brief glance up and down before turning and taking off. ‘I’ll even feed you again, if you’re hungry, that is.’
‘How’s your cooking?’
‘Try my muffins and find out.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I laughed.
Now there was an instruction.
She smiled at me once more over her shoulder.
‘Wait,’ I called after her, turning her head my way, ‘You said you lived across the street, right? Which house?’
‘I told you, the one across the street. Literally.’
She walked backwards onto the sidewalk and jerked her thumb over her shoulder before giving me a final wink and heading up the wide stone path to the front door of the house directly across the way.
The place was so pristine that it could have sat on the cover of a magazine in any light. It looked like a life-size doll’s house that some old dragonkin grandmother had spent her golden years taking care of.
How the hell does she live there?
I closed the door, dragging my mind from the beautiful blonde and looking to the chests in the center of the room.
Before I did any further settling in, I had to deal with the other baggage I had brought with me - namely the pair of demon familiars that I had been working with for the past couple years.
Chapter 8
With Friends Like These
I learned early on that familiars came and went frequently depending on how competent not just they were, but the warlock dealing with them.
If your familiar gets whacked, it’s the fault of the warlock. Don’t take them on if you can’t keep them defended in battle.
Yeah, yeah – I had only ever heard that kind of spiel from armchair idiots who had never even set foot in an actual dungeon before.
The real truth was that commanding familiars required work on behalf of both.
Like most warlocks, I went in for a Ward and an Aggressor: the former to protect, the latter to attack. Wards were where competence really mattered because of their defensive and protective capabilities, but flexibility in an Aggressor was where things got interesting.
Common logic for a ranged attacker like me was sometimes to go in for a tank who could take the brunt of the damage while I cleared mobs from the sidelines, but that wasn’t me, and it never would be. I liked to be in the mix, to move with swift agility that permitted me to keep a fight interesting after running a floor 500 times in the space of a month.
It was the only way to keep things fresh, hence working alongside an Aggressor who really knew how to piss off mobs sufficiently enough.
My familiars, Javvik and Glok, had been with me for the last two years. They were both a slight pain in the ass in their own ways, but in the combat department, I couldn’t complain.
They emerged from the small stone seals which rested on the chain around my neck and phased to life on the back porch. Side by side, they couldn’t have been more different. Javvik – pronounced Havv-ik, as he had reminded me every day for the first five weeks we had been working together - was a looming, eight-foot-tall demon who could easily be mistaken for the embodiment of Death at first glance. A heavy cloak adorned his hulking body, the lower half of his form descending into a spiraling wisp of smoke as he hovered several feet off the ground. His face was shrouded in darkness save for a pair of purple eyes that rarely looked anything other than pissed off. Beyond those, I had never seen his face.
‘How are you, Trent?’ He spoke in his deep, deadpan, husky British accent. ‘It’s been a time, hasn’t it?’
‘Sure has, but I’ve been kind of busy.’ I looked nearby at where Glok was. ‘Wait… Is he sleeping?’
‘Indeed.’
We both looked down at Javvik’s side. Glok, my other familiar, laid on his back in a starfish pose. When standing upright he was no more than two feet, taking the form of a red-skinned imp with a pair of horns spiraling out of his head. His body was adorned in a pinstripe suit reminiscent of 1930s tommy-gun-wielding Chicago gangsters, a style that he had picked up almost 100 years ago in that very same area while taking a break from dungeons to run with a squad of moonshine-brewing Lycans working magical speakeasies.
‘Glok!’ I shouted, nudging him with my foot. ‘On your feet.’
One of his eyes flicked open and he suddenly leaped to his feet, instantly awake.
‘It’s been two weeks!’ Glok shouted. ‘And I’m also pretty sure that I died. What the hell, you take a vacation or something?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I hissed, glancing around. ‘I knew I should have summoned you in the attic.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ my agile Aggressor familiar spoke, batting his hand at me, ‘Anyway, what are you talking about, voice? Don’t you mean voice-es, as in plural, as in there are two of us?’
‘Please, you’re the only one out of the two of you who’s ever had a problem with piping down.’
‘Did you hear that?’ Glok hissed, patting Javvik on the base of his cloak and pointing at me.
‘You do talk too much,’ Javvik spoke, his voice so deep that it practically resonated through my body.
‘Says the demonic fucking metronome,’ Glok scoffed. ‘Feel like changing the octave of your voice? It’s like talking to a submarine…’
‘That’s nice,’ Javvik shrugged apathetically before turning back to me. ‘But I am also interested in what happened, Trent. I am relatively confident that I also briefly died. Where are we?’
‘We’re taking a vacation,’ I replied simply.
‘Taking a vacation is not a place,’ Javvik replied dryly.
‘A vacation?’ Glok repeated, ‘Pfft, what do you mean? You haven’t taken a vacation since we started working together. Why would you start now?’
