Published at 8th of March 2024 7:43 am

Chapter Six

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I'm not an early riser at the best of times, so I wasn't surprised that I had slept through my alarm for 15 minutes before it manages to batter it's way into my awareness. I made sure that I was sitting up at the edge of my bed before turning the alarm off, because I had a stupid habit of turning off the alarm while still horizontal and then sleeping for another several hours.

I took a cold shower to help me wake up and perhaps cool parts of my anatomy that were a bit more active having spent time in proximity with a very attractive woman. I cleaned myself thoroughly, shaved, ran a comb through my hair and prepared to summon my grimoire.

Most people, when asked, will say that a warlock gets his power from his pact with whatever dark entity he/she is in contact with. This isn't necessarily accurate. It would be more accurate to say that a warlock is a magic practitioner that had entered into a pact with a greater being for more power. Not every practitioner is a warlock, but all warlocks are practitioners. Well, not even that is completely true, because I have found evidence of a couple warlocks who were contacted by entities before they developed any arcane ability themselves.

What I mean to say is that most warlocks came into their magical abilities first, and then decided study and hard work is for nerds and decided to take a shortcut. Even I fell into this category, somewhat, though there were extenuating circumstances.

Spells are incredibly complicated. I do my best to memorize them all but it'd be like memorizing the configuration of every piece of circuitry in every digital machine in your house. Possible, surely, but not probably and you'd definitely want a reference handy.

Because I am a paranoid dark wizard in the service of (or at least in commerce with) an otherworldly entity of malicious intent, I didn't like to carry around my ominous and oddly heavy book of spells around. Instead I keep it in a special cubby that only exists in a direction no one but I can perceive or access.

I assembled the spell form in my minds eye, holding its image clearly as I made the necessary utterances. (No, not Latin. It sounded more like Mongolian throat singing, except I can't sing so it was mostly grunts.) Suddenly there was a seam in reality, a little—tear would be the wrong word. Seam was also misleading, but it was closer to anything else I can think of. There was suddenly a line made of nothing in the air that gave the impression of depth. I reached inside and retrieved my spell book. I did so quickly because I have never figured out how to heat the extra-dimensional space and was well, well below zero degrees inside.

No matter the temperature surrounding it, my book was always 72 degrees Fahrenheit. I had enchanted the absolute shit out of it. The amount of work I had recorded in this thing represented a large percentage of my life and sanity, and its loss would maim me as surely as removing an arm. This book was wearing so many protections it could stop bullets without marring the cover, sit in a blast furnace comfortably, sheds water like hydrophobic glass and reacts to anyone other than myself touching it violently. Remember that part in one of the Harry Potter movies where one of the books goes apeshit and tries to bite someone? Imagine that, but far more lethal and effective.

(It had only happened once, when Murderer #6 had dislocated his thumbs to escape the manacles and had grabbed my grimoire to throw into the fireplace I had lit. It had removed his arm at the elbow with a quick snap and I had to look up first-aid videos on YouTube to save his life. I had only had two bars (we were out in the boonies) so it had been a near thing. (It had made getting him to sign the contract awkward, as my book had taken his dominant hand, and his other hand had a severely broken thumb and several torn ligaments. Fortunately all I had to do was threaten him with the book to get him to cooperate.) This was the incident that started my practice of hiding my grimoire in the extradimensional cubby, and also when I stopped using fire as a light source.)

With my grimoire in hand I placed it on the little table in the room and quickly leafed to the spell I wanted. I'm glad I decided to double check my knowledge because there was an aspect I had forgotten that would change the spell from benign to malignant to all but who possessed or cast the enacted spell, which is definitely not what I wanted. I was also pleased to confirm the spell needed no components aside from a surface to be writ upon. I quickly committed the spell forms to memory and returned the book to my hiding space.

Next I grabbed my wallet and phone and went hunting for a gift shop.

A few questions and a short walk later and I discovered that while the ship doesn't have a dedicated gift shop, it does have a “Ship Store” that has a gifts and doodads area. I was pleasantly surprised to find it open at this our. The entire store is about the size of my cabin with four “isles” created by two standing shelves and the west and east (port and starboard, I guess. Wait, we're heading west, so I guess the walls are south and north. Whatever.) walls. The “gift shop” portion of the store was a single corner of the shop, which mostly held mugs, snow globes and key chain ornaments.

Sadly I didn't see any rabbits feet, which would do nothing for the spell I was preparing but would give me an excuse to give Alice something before the tournament. I noticed a lot of Hawaiian themed gifts and pulled out my phone, quickly Googling what Hawaiian's consider good luck. The answer turned out to be turtles, and I smiled at that. I grew up with a couple of red-eared fresh water turtles named Bert and Ernie as my only pets and I had a fondness for turtles in general. That will do nicely. I picked out a wooden sea turtle key chain ornament that was a bit bigger than the others and made my purchase at the comically small counter, just big enough for the register and a splayed hand on the space next to it.

Back in my room I checked the time, five minutes past seven. I winced, thinking of my options. If only I had thought to bring some powdered ruby. I could imbue the spell directly into the ornament with the powder, the only side effect being turning the turtle a bright red. It would also cut down the time I needed to alter the turtle itself. I pushed the thought to the side and began to dig in my bag for my tools.

I hadn't left all my spellcraft tools behind. I had a series of pens and markers in a case, starting with incredibly fine to thick as my pinkie. Next I pulled out a case filled with various surfaces to draw my spells, from simple lined paper, to card stock and finally arriving at vellum. My studies indicate that human skin is the best surface to draw semi-permanent spells, as it conducts the magic the best, but I'd rather lose a bit of efficiency so I don't have to, you know, skin people.

Next is a little etching tool of my own make. It looks like a steel rod covered in arcane script and eye-catching symbols, but aside from that nothing out of the ordinary. That is until you notice the cut diamond at one end that was held a centimeter in the air at one of the rods by nothing.

I had grown tired of needing to sharpen or replace my engraving tools repeatedly so I had spent some time investing in my first enchanted item, the tool now in my hand. It had two modes, etching and drilling. Etching spun the diamond rapidly so that the sharp end dug easily into most surfaces. Setting the tool to drilling flipped the diamond and instead of seeing the flat part of a diamond one would typically see on a ring, you would instead see a small spiked surface. It's not the best for drilling—there's a reason drill bits are shaped the way they are—but for the minute holes I prefer to hide my spells in, it's perfect.

I turned on the drill and began to carve a space into the turtle, holding myself back from rushing and making sure I did not damage my little gift. After ten minutes I had an inch deep cylinder embedded in the ornament. I blew the dust off the desk and set the turtle aside.

For the spell I pulled out one of the very fine pens from my pen case and a slip of paper exactly an inch thick and twelve long. The paper was a slightly glossy substance that I had found over the years withstood the ravages of time better than other types and had started to prefer it for my smaller spells. And when I mean smaller, I mean as in surface area.

Technically, all you need to cast a spell is sufficiently strong will and a power source. Typically, that power source is what one may call their spirit, or mana, or chi, or ki, or élan vital, etc. The first step towards a career in magic (or a hobby, I guess) is a series of exercises that allows one to take ones living essence and enhance it. The typical magic user is a singularly exceptional individual because of these exercises, because it forces them to be more. The exercises can be anything from deep introspective meditation to extreme workouts to putting their lives in danger. In fact, from what little evidence I have access to, I would hazard a guess that the majority of people who accidentally stumble onto magic (like myself) do so after a near-death experience.

In order to pull magic from yourself, you have to stretch. Oops, forgive me—you have to stretch. You have to take your being, the thing that makes you you, and you have to make it more. You have to make it bigger. You have to take it in your metaphorical hands and mold it, sharpen it, stretch it and fill it to bursting. The more you do this the more magic you can use.

And unlike our flimsy, filthy bodies, whatever it is that allows us to cast magic has no limit. The more we stretch it, the more you use it, the more it grows, solidifies, sharpens. I haven't met any other magic users than myself, but the old monsters I read about in the many magical tomes I read over the years lead me to believe that the older a magician gets, the more terrifying they become.

After you make your power source usable, you have to use it. How? You will it. You shape that power with your minds eye, and you give it focus and direction. The more you can visualize the power and the effect in the world, the more effective the power will be and the less power is needed.

Of course, in practice it is much more complicated. If magic were easy it would be far more prevalent and I wouldn't have to trawl through thousands upon thousands of old books and diaries in order to find actual techniques. So, lets say you have the power and the will, and yet your spells are still no more effective at creating real-world change than your average politician. What do you do? You cheat! You prop up your magic with the eldritch equivalent of shortcuts, stopgaps, training wheels and good old fashioned practice.

Symbols, basically.

Symbols are the crutch for an unfamiliar will. Symbols have been used for millennia to convey concepts, since the first alphabet—hell, since the first cave painting—and will continue to do so as long as humans need to communicate. Something about the communal recognition or symbols adds the weight of ages to your spells. I have a theory that it is the ghostly will of those who have understood or used the symbols previous that adds the focus that ones own will lacks. This theory is substantiated by the fact that some languages lend themselves more to magic than others. Latin, Old Norse and Greek are particularly effective, though I prefer Old Norse for the runic alphabet, particularly Elder Futhark. I like the way it looks.

Unfortunately, borrowing meaning or will from ancient symbols can have some unforeseen consequences. Such as, if you spell a word with runic symbols but the word has no direct translation Old Norse, because the word you are using is an English word, whatever meaning you are deriving from the old language gets lost and the spell burns a hole in your desk as soon as you use it and you have to explain to your landlord why your apartment smells like you had a bonfire in the living room.

Luckily, the spell I am drawing is one I have used before and am familiar with. Not so familiar that I can cast it without symbols, but enough that I am reasonably confident in my ability to get it down in the time frame I have. The trick will be to get the spell that usually is applied as a rough square onto a strip of paper one inch wide and twelve long. It will take some geometry and some calculating of pi to reorganize, which is where the majority of the time will be used.

I work silently, pausing only to crunch some numbers on my phones calculator. I ignore the growing discomfort in my shoulders and back as I hunch over the small desk and try to not check the time every few minutes.

In the end I finish the spell with twenty minutes to spare. I grin, feeling the tingle of the spell run up my arm as it aligns the energies of the room. I quickly roll it up and place it inside the turtle, covering it with a small bit of resin I brought for such occasions, casting another spell (a much simpler one) that makes it cure instantly.

I snatched my phone off the desk and rushed out the door, hoping I can find Alice before the tournament starts.

The tournament is held in a banquette hall type area on the main deck. Luckily I am easily the tallest person here and have no trouble looking over the heads of those present and find Alice near one of the tables of the tournament, not sitting yet. As I approach she spots me and gives me a big grin.

“Coming to wish me luck?” She asks. Today she's wearing a big grey T-shirt, the collar so big it exposes her right shoulder and a pair of black yoga pants I am doing my best to ignore. Even so I sneak a couple glances as the pants are doing wonderful things to her legs and she has a great pair. Her hair is up in a tail today. I assume she wants to be comfortable as possible so she can focus on the game. Her room key hangs from a lanyard around her neck.

“Even better,” I say, handing her the turtle. She takes it, frowning slightly as her fingers come in contact with it. Her expression melts into smile as she examines it.

“Some kid yelled in the hallway outside my cabin and woke me up early, so I decided to get you a good luck charm,” I lie lightly. “Unfortunately they didn't have rabbits foot—rabbits feet? Rabbit feet? Anyway, they didn't have any so I got you a turtle, which is cool because turtles are cool, and are also good luck where we're going.”

“Thank you,” she says, holding it to her chest and batting her eyelashes at me, pouting at me expressively. “I shall treasure it always!” She calms and her expression becomes more thoughtful. “Seriously, this is thoughtful. Thank you.”

I wave away her comment. “Thoughtful, nothing. If you win I demand a cut, because obviously it was due to the Luck of the Turtle.”

“Obviously,” she deadpans.

I see people taking their seats at the many tables. It isn't time for the tournament to start but it's getting close.

“I never asked,” I said, gesturing at the room. “Are you any good? What are your chances?”

She shrugs. “This is my first tournament with more than 20 people. I think it'll depend mostly on the cards I get, as the tourney is designed to be over within a certain amount of time. The blinds are going to be doubled every hour.”

“My only knowledge of poker is from Rounders and I've only seen it twice,” I said. “So my advice is to channel your inner Matt Damon.”

She snorts. “Will do, coach.”

There's a bit of awkwardness as I can tell she wants to reach out to me. I get the feeling she's a very tactile person while I very much am not. Instead I hold out my hand. “Knock 'em dead,” I say.

She takes my hand with a smile. “We'll see.”

***

Alice wins the tournament.

At first she doesn't do too well. The cards she gets aren't great and she has to play conservatively. After the first hour, however, she catches my eye and holds up the turtle, which had remained on the table next to her chips, untouched until that point. And wouldn't you know it, the next hand is favorable toward her. Soon, she begins to touch the turtle for “good luck” before every hand. And indeed, her luck starts to turn.

As you probably guessed, the spell I gave her is a luck spell. Basically the spell just gently nudges probabilities in a way similar to what people think of Feng Shui does. It makes the good energies hang around Alice and shoves the bad energies away. The usefulness of the spell isn't all that applicable in most situations. It doesn't change peoples decisions nor can it change things that are set in their ways, but in a situation that is supposed to be random, like how cards are shuffled, it excels.

After her first run of good cards, Alice clipped the turtle to the lanyard around her neck, touching it every now and again “for luck.” From there her luck subtly improves. To be honest, even to my non-expert eyes Alice isn't the best player in the tournament. I can tell that some of the people she is playing against have been playing all their lives and know the odds and percentages. Even so, there's only so much you can do against a person who just keeps getting better cards than you.

If I'm being honest, I feel a little guilty. Even if she doesn't know it, she's technically cheating, though no one could ever prove it and only I know. However, my misgivings are blown out of the water as she rushes over to me with her five hundred dollar winnings.

“AAH!” She yells rushing over to me, arms held out. “Hug me dammit I'm excited!”

I laugh and step into her arms, giving her a hug. She squeezes me and dances us side to side. “I've never won a tournament before!” She says as she releases me, clutching her prize to her chest. “I've never had a run of cards like that!”

I spend the next several minutes with a smile on my face, listening to her recount the events of the day. The sun has set and we're walking along the balcony of Deck 2, which surrounds the ship.

“And he has this smug look on his face as he thinks he's won since the flop,” she says, her hands gesticulating. “I didn't know then but I know now he has a full house. Pocket aces? The flop is two kings and yet another ace? Any other day he would be 100% right, the odds are so incredibly in his favor I would have done the exact same in his shoes. Only I,” she pauses for dramatic effect. “Have pocket kings.”

I open my mouth to suggest we go grab dinner when a scream cuts through the night. My head snaps up towards the back of the ship, and I see a middle-aged woman pointing off into the distance. Before I know what I'm doing I was running, arriving to see a struggling form in the water.

“My son!” The woman sobs. “H-H-He fell off the side!”

I turn and see some crew have arrived, squinting into the darkness. One is talking quickly into a walkie-talkie and another has a life jacket clutched uselessly in his hand. I turn back to the form in the water and see the tell tail signs of a poor swimmer. I also realize that my eyes, specially suited for darkness, are the only ones that can make out the kid right now.

Alice arrives and her comment is cut off as I shove my phone and wallet in her hands. I walk over to the crewman with the life jacket, see that it has a glow stick attached to it as well as a whistle. I snatch it from his hands, kick off my crocs and before anyone can react, run and leap off the ship.

I have a brief moment of pure terror as I hope to God and every other deity I can think of that I am not sucked into the propellers or whatever you call them and get turned into Warlock brand chum. Those thoughts are mashed out of my head as I crash feet first into the water, the life jacket clutched to my chest as the cold Pacific waters slam into me. Luckily this far west the water isn't freezing, and is quite a bit warmer than the water you'd find off the coast of California. Still cold, though.

I keep hold of the life jacket as it seemingly struggles to free itself from my grip. With its help I rise to the surface of the water and take a few moments to get my bearings. I see the ship moving away from me at a rather impressive speed. It's amazing how sedate the passage of the ship is when one is on it and how rapid it appears from down here. As I watch, I see the ship begin to turn. A horn splits the air and I can hear shouting on the deck. While it is on the small side for a cruise liner, it is a still a rather massive ship and the maneuver will take a while. I see spotlights flash on and begin to pan in my direction.

I put the ship from my mind and turn towards the likely location of the overboard boy. I start swimming, clutching the life vest to my chest and pulling the water in long strokes with my other hand, kicking with my feet with a measured rhythm. I need to get to the kid fast without exhausting myself or I'd just add another drowning victim to the disaster.

After a few minutes I am unable to find him. The waves—swells?—aren't very high but they rise well above my head. I take a deep breath and dip under the waves, holding the vest between my feet so I don't have to struggle with it too much as I look around, up-side-down.

I have slightly enlarged canines. No, I am not a vampire, nor have I ever met with or seen any. I don't even know if they exist (Though I would wager that they do. If magic and demons, why not vampires?). No, for my second bargain with Trix I had obtained the power to shape the various metabolic, endocrine, protein, crystalline and mineral composition of my body as well as, to a slightly lesser extent, general molecular structure of my body.

In the early days of experimenting with this gift, I have found it is much, much easier to grow enamel than it is to get rid of it. I had decided to grow “fangs” in a fit of boredom and it had taken me several weeks to reduce them to a size that didn't have me talking with a lisp. I now kind of like the way they look.

Other enhancements I made to my body involved realigning the cell structure of my bones, similar to some super composite materials that are being made for helicopter blades. My muscles are denser, my immune system is stronger, I heal faster (not like Wolverine or anything, but anything less than a stab wound or broken bone is fully healed in a week or two), and the process that produces lactic acid is more efficient, so I can exercise for longer and recover faster.

My most heavily used alteration however, have to be my eyes. My long distance vision isn't great, slightly below average, but I can see perfectly fine with next to no light. Also, thanks to a little double-lens I built into the surface of my eye, I don't suffer the blurriness that comes with unprotected underwater vision.

I almost wish I did.

The ocean is... deep. I never knew I was terrified of deep water until this very minute. I—I can't see the bottom. I CAN'T SEE THE BOTTOM. There's a fish. There's more. Is that a shark? IS THAT A FUCKING—no it is not a shark it's a big fuck-all fish. I CAN'T SEE THE BOTTOM!

I nearly lose myself to the panic until I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Feet. Human feet. Kicking pathetically. I let out my breath in a burst of bubbles and right myself, pushing my head into the air and taking a deep breath.

Note to self: Don't fucking look down.

I make my way to the kid and find him exhausted, as I feared. It had only been a few minutes, but a few minutes of panicked swimming can exhaust faster than running a marathon. As soon as the kid feels me grab him he latches onto me with panicked strength and nearly drowns us both. I slap his hands away from me and force him into the life vest. Once his head is in the thing and his ears above the water I try to calm him down.

“Stop! Stop panicking,” I say, sinching the ties under his arms. “Lean back, let the vest keep you afloat. There you go. Rest, rest up. Help is coming. Put your hands on the vest, hold it to your chest. Let your legs drift up. There you go.”

As I talk I bend the chemical light and shake it, bathing us in phosphorescent green. I let go and grab the whistle and blew it, hard and loud, once, twice, thrice before letting it drop. I swim gently next to the kid, one hand on his shoulder to help ease the strain on myself. I crane my neck and see the ship in the distance, still making a ponderous turn toward us. After what I measure to be a minute has past I take the whistle and blow it three more times.

“C-Can they hear us from there?” The kid asks, his voice breaking.

“Probably not,” I say. “But I assume they have a lifeboat or a rescue craft for situations like this. I wanna help them find us as they will be harder for us to spot.”

I feel the kid nod energetically next to me. After a minute, I blow the whistle again.

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