Magic Born (3 page)

“If it doesn’t matter to you, then leave. You’ve been nothing but trouble since I laid eyes on you.” I knew it wasn’t exactly fair, but the truth remained that my life was a whole lot simpler before he came knocking on my door.

“You really want me to leave?”

“Yes. You’ve done what you came here to do. I’m releasing you from any further obligation you may feel. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. I’m certainly not running off with you tonight.”

“I can’t stick around here and wait for you to change your mind.”

“Good. I don’t want you to. I’ll figure out how to get the necklace off myself.”

“What if the person who killed your mother comes looking for you?”

“And how do I know you’re not the one who killed her?” It sounded obstinate and petty even to me. I hadn’t even decided what I was doing after graduation—I wasn’t about to take on a whole new world at a moment’s notice. Magic? A fantasy world? That wasn’t for me. I was just an ordinary girl trying to get through life on my own as best I could. I finally had a little bit of normalcy in my life; I couldn’t give that up now.

“I see. Obviously, if you still think I’m the type of person capable of doing something like that, then clearly we would not make good traveling companions. I wish you the best of luck, Kat, and even though you didn’t know her, you have my condolences for your mother’s death. I can see myself out.”

True to his word, he nodded and left the apartment. I secured the deadbolt as soon as the door closed. I didn’t trust him not to try to come back in after I’d gone to bed. When I turned back around to face my living room, the furniture still sat askew with an empty space where the panther had taken everything I thought I knew about myself and obliterated it. Yeah, that was one man I could do with never seeing again.

I lifted the pendant from my chest. It appeared innocuous, peaceful even. The amber gave no hint to the trouble it had caused. If what Alex said was true, this was the last relic of the woman who had given birth to me and abandoned me. Had she really done it for my safety? The overwhelming comfort of the possibility that I hadn’t been abandoned after all, that a woman existed who had simply loved me enough to do what was best for me, brought a light mist to my eyes.

I closed my fist around the stone and brought it to my lips. Power seemed to suffuse me, radiating out from the stone, and filling every cell in my body. Not so ordinary after all.

T
he next morning
, I decided to skip class to take a three-day weekend. Lectures wouldn’t be enough to distract me from this new reality I found myself in, and it would do no good to attend. After Alex had left, I logged into the game and told GreyMist that the date had gone well but I was too tired to stay up and promptly logged out. Farming pixie wings had actually sounded like a good distraction, but I knew if I stayed online with her, there was a good chance I’d tell her everything that had happened. After hearing such a wild tale, she’d probably have me committed. I knew I would.

By that time, it really had been late, so I changed my top into a tank and hung up the outfit I’d worn to the interview. It was the one nice bit of clothing I had, and more than that, it had been a present from my mom. My usual clothes got swept off the bed into the pile on the floor, but not that outfit.

When I had settled into bed, in the stillness of night, I noticed a slight hum of energy from the pendant. The whole story sounded so remarkable, so separate from me and my life, yet there was the one tangible item connecting me to the story Alex had told.

My dreams had been filled with distortions of Alex, mages, a magical world, and my mother’s talisman. I didn’t even know how to begin to make sense of it all. This early on a Friday, GreyMist wouldn’t be online yet. That meant I could immerse myself in the game, get lost in it without worry of accidentally revealing that I was most probably going crazy. If I left my headset off and didn’t join the chat, there’d be no reason for anyone in the guild to question me.

The first thing I did was check my in-game mail for the daily quest. Best to get that out of the way first so I didn’t forget. I may have turned down the opportunity to go to a parallel dimension, but I certainly wasn’t going to give up my daily quest streak.

The enormity of my lameness descended on me. What was so wonderful about my life that I’d been hesitant to give it up last night? I had no plans for the future beyond making sure I didn’t break this stupid streak. Wow, I must have descended to some subterranean level of lameness to have passed up that opportunity. It had been insane, right? I mean, no one in their right mind just up and leaves their life like that, no matter how depressing that life may be.

Instead of the daily quest, an Aquanight gem waited for me in my mailbox. My heart rate increased and all thoughts about Alex and last night and my massive stupidity fled. I had begun to think these Aquanight gems were a myth. No one I knew had gotten one yet. Magical Games, Inc., the company that created
Wizards and Fae
, had a promotion where players were selected at random to receive these gems that started an epic quest line. Complete the quest line and you could win some actual real-life prizes, like a trip to the Magical Games, Inc. headquarters in Canada, convention tickets, or exclusive art. There couldn’t be a more perfect way for me to spend the day as I tried to ignore what had happened last night.

But before getting started, I needed supplies. I got my box of toaster pastries, popped some popcorn, and grabbed a few cans of soda. That should do me for an all-day binge session. Munchies covered, I curled up in my chair and took a deep breath as I started the quest line.

* * *

M
y eyes darted
to the clock. I’d been at this more than six hours and hadn’t even realized it. I put on my headset and started a private voice chat with her. “Sorry about that. You weren’t on earlier, and I don’t want to talk with anyone else. You’re never going to believe what happened.”

“What? Did your hot date come back over last night? Or did he never leave and you were lying to me?”

Great, I’d successfully driven Alex from my thoughts for several hours and here she brought him right to the forefront. “No, nothing like that. I got the quest, the Aquanight gem.”

“Oh my god, are you serious?”

“Yep, I’ve been working on it for a little over six hours now.”

“Do you need any help?”

“No, it’s all in individual instances, so you can’t help.”

“That’s brutal. How are you doing?”

“Better than I thought. I should be able to crack this tonight.”

“That fast?”

“There’s not a lot of farming or grinding involved. It’s mainly just skilled battle. When you got the skills, you got the skills. What can I say?” That’s right, I was bragging that my lack of an actual life meant that I’d spent hours a day, every day, honing my skills in this game that wouldn’t serve me anywhere else in life. I may not have a career plan or any future prospects, but damn, I could one-shot more baddies and defeat more bosses than most people in-game.

“Have you told anyone else in the guild?”

“No, I don’t really want anyone knowing. It’s too much pressure, and I feel enough as it is.”

“Well let me know if there’s anything I can do. I’ll leave you to it. I don’t want to distract you. You tell me the moment you finish, okay?”

“You got it. We’ll chat later.” I took off my headset and focused my attention back on the quest. I was determined to finish tonight. Call me superstitious, but everything was lining up just right. My spells were hitting while I was dodging and keeping my armor up. Every time the game had to make a decision, it came down in my favor. Lucky streaks like this were rare, and I wouldn’t risk losing it by leaving and logging back in later. I may not be able to control my mother’s actual mage power, but I was Serafina, Dark Sorceress, and I would complete this quest.

Two hours later, I stood before the demon Hades, just me, him, and two dozen of his minions. This quest line was randomized, so no two people got the same encounter. That meant no website had a guide for this fight that I could study like I would before entering battle with my guild. I’d have to be alert and on top of my skills, cool downs, and buffs. I took a deep breath, and fully entered the chamber where he waited for me. The usual trash talking commenced, a good twenty seconds of him telling me how he was about to eviscerate me, dismember me, and curse me to eternal darkness.

Not if I had anything to say about it.

As soon as he finished his little monologue, he hit me before my spells had even unlocked. My entire body tensed: I couldn’t afford to be a millisecond off my timing. I hit him with everything I had, taking potions at all the right times, eliminating his minions en masse before focusing all my attention on him. For a good twenty minutes we battled, my health bar getting dangerously low several times before I could heal up. Just when I got him down to five percent health, the dude healed all the way up. Dammit, I refused to lose this fight. This one thing had to go right for me.

Ten minutes later, I feared my finger cramping. I had him down to one percent health, but he had me down too. At this point I’d used up all of my magic, and it wasn’t regenerating fast enough. That left me with my lame wand. His hands conjured a giant ball of dark magic that would definitely kill me, but it had a cast time of at least a few seconds. If I could hit him with my wand enough times, I just might be able to kill him before he could finish his spell. I mashed the button for my wand as fast as I could, leaning toward the screen.

“Come on, come on.” His health bar diminished. The big ball of dark magic was half a second away from hitting me. His hands drew back to cast, and I willed my finger to move faster. His hands dropped to his side, and I held my breath, waiting for the killing blow, but it didn’t come. He teetered from side to side and fell to the floor, dead. I’d killed him.

“Yes!” I jumped to my feet for a little victory dance. I had done it. The rarest quest in the game and I’d beaten it. At that point, I didn’t even care what kind of prize I got. Immediately the title “Hades Killer” showed up below my name. Everyone in the game would know what I had done.

When I calmed down enough to sit relatively still, I put my headset on to tell GreyMist. “I did it! I beat it.”

“For reals? Are you kidding me?”

“No,” I said with a smug grin on my face that I’m sure she heard.

“Oh my god, how was it?”

“It got pretty tense at the end. He was literally casting the spell that would’ve killed me when I took him down with, get this, my wand.”

“Your wand?”

“Yeah, my magic was depleted.”

“You are the luckiest girl in the world.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it. It was all my skill.”

“Uh-huh. So what happened next?”

While luck had played a major role in the entire quest line, I wasn’t about to admit that, not when this gave me massive bragging rights. “I got the title ‘Hades Killer,’ but other than that, not much else happened. Oh wait, I have some new in-game mail.”

When I opened the letter, fireworks went off in the background.

“I won! I actually won the trip to headquarters!”

“Awesome! Do you get to bring a friend?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Hmm, who will I bring?”

“Don’t even joke about that. I’ve been helping you out since you were a level one collecting magic beans on your first quest.”

Oh the memories of those first exciting days in-game. “Of course I’m going to bring you along. Who else would I bring?”

“Hold on, a game admin is messaging me.”

An invite to a private audio chat appeared on my screen. I almost knocked over the soda sitting on my desk in my haste to click “accept.”

“That’s better. Congratulations! I’m the creator of the game.”

“Of course I know who you are, Casper. I mean, Mr. Rothian.”

A soft chuckle sounded in my ear. “No, Casper’s fine. According to our records, your name is Kat Thomas?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re the first one to beat Hades in quite a while.” His voice sounded exactly the same as it did in the interviews I’d seen with him.

“I didn’t realize you actually spent any time in-game.”

“Not as much as I’d like. Unfortunately, a lot of business stuff comes up once you move out of your garage. But I got a notification that someone had beaten the quest line, so I thought I’d jump in-game and congratulate you personally.”

Fans, myself included, loved Casper for precisely this reason. “Thank you so much. I’ve been a fan of the game for a really long time.”

“I can see that. As you know, you’ve won the prize to come visit us at our headquarters here in Canada. I actually wanted to chat with you to see if you could come this weekend.”

“This weekend? That’s a little soon, isn’t it?” Did no one plan things in advance anymore?

“Do you have any plans that can’t be changed? The thing is, I really like to be the one to meet the winners myself, give you a nice tour of the campus, show you some exclusive work we’ve been doing on the new expansion pack. The weekends tend to work out well for these things because I’m able to pull some people in to give you a nice show without taking them away from their work.”

“That sounds amazing. I don’t know if I can. I have a lot of work for school. I’m already really far behind.” True, but I had also just spent all day on a quest, so the excuse didn’t hold much weight.

“That’s a shame. I’m traveling a lot and my schedule won’t work for several months. I was really hoping to meet you before I left.”

“A few months from now may actually work better for me, after graduation.”

The silence thickened in my headphones. Another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I was bailing on because I was just that lame. I had no plans for the weekend. Maybe it was time to start seeing a counselor.

“Kat, I didn’t want to have to tell you this way, but I know who you are. I knew your mother.”

My entire body froze. How could he possibly have that information when I didn’t even have it twenty-four hours ago? Did Alex tell him somehow? Weakness seeped into my entire body. The entire situation was surreal. Nothing in my life made sense anymore. Maybe he meant my mom. “My mother?”

“Yes, I knew Meglana. I think it’s important that we meet.”

I tried to brush off the strangeness. “I don’t know why. I never knew her.”

“I think you may be in danger.”

My mind reeled. How had my life gotten so crazy in the space of just a couple of days? “I really can’t meet you this weekend.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sending you an in-game message now. If you change your mind, reply to it. I really do hope to meet you soon. And congratulations again on winning the quest.”

Casper disconnected from the chat, leaving me hollow and confused. His message appeared in my mail.