My fingers ache as I weave the last glittering sigils. “You can’t. No more magic for you.” I shrug. “But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”
“Sometimes it is.” Magda hugs me. “I’ll never forget you.”
“Then there you go.” I finish weaving the new world and wrap my arms around her. “I will get my wish after all.”
We squeeze each other tight as the world spins around us. A single tear crosses my face as I cease to be, dissolving into glittering gold dust that curls skyward like a puff of smoke from a dying lamp.
RPG Reunion by Peter Orullian
I learned magic was possible the day I toured Old Ironsides in Boston Harbor.
Ten years before I get this stupid-shit invite to see the old gang. Came by courier. As if that harkened back to medieval communication or something.
I was on my graduation trip. I think mostly we were in Boston because we thought the bar for Cheers was a real damn place. That, and Salem sat just up the road a piece. Easy drive to where they hanged and pressed some nice folks because they wanted their land. No magic going on there-I did the research.
Anyway, I’m on the underside of Old Ironsides (the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy), and the tour guide tells us that the ship used to carry the wives of officers, and that when they were in battle and shooting off their cannons, the pregnant ones sometimes went into labor. Thus, “son of a gun,” as the saying goes.
At the time, I was mostly doing sessions of Traveler-a pretty good role playing game. (After it all went down with the old gang, I couldn’t even do speed sessions of D &D. Too much baggage.) But when I heard the term “son of a gun,” something got into me. Like, maybe kernels of truth live inside the old sayings. Made me think that the notion of magic was just too pervasive to be passed off as a geeky game played by pasty-faced youths when they’d finished their calculus assignments.
So I went to Rome.
Took me four years of nonstop study to ferret out the real stuff on magic. Bypassed college and all that nonsense in favor of a parking job that gave me hours to read (if no real compensation).
Turns out magic, for the most part, descends from religious things. Not in the way you’re thinking though. Not like transubstantiation to feed the masses or the regeneration of cells to wake the dead. It’s more like Lucas’s Force. Kind of sapping the inert life in things, calling forth the idea from the form. You could say Aristotle was onto something.
Point is, a group calling themselves Assinians professed to teach from texts the true method of drawing the idea from the form and using that “energy” (for want of another term) on the next guy.
They’re a cultish bunch, the Assinians. More like gypsies than ecclesiastics, roaming the dark hills some eighty miles north of Rome. Lots of lamps at night and star charting.
I spent six months with them. Cashed in my trust; gave half to the Primero (he liked to call himself that) that led the tribe, and used the rest to eat and get laid. (’Fraid I haven’t gotten better looking since the old days, either.)
But I don’t regret it.
Not a minute.
I learned real magic. God’s honest truth.
Problem was, turns out magic is mostly about offense. It’s not meditation for self-improvement, it’s not defensive bullshit like karate. It’s commanding things to inflict damage. I suppose it would require a revision of all editions of D &D.
But that’s just a game.
And then I get this invitation: “RPG Reunion” it says.
Like they’ve forgotten what the hell happened. How the Saturday Night sessions came to an end. Friggin’ idiots.
Though, to be fair, that night was what sent me on the quest for the real thing.
So, there was just one thing to do: Get my artifacts.
The reunion was being held in Cedar City, Utah. Our old dungeon master wound up doing stage combat choreography and a few creative writing work-shops out of CSU (Central Southern University), renowned for its Shakespeare festival every summer.
Just like him to make us all travel to where he lives.
And it left me just a few weeks to conceive my spells and determine what physical items I needed in order to give those spells life. You see, the whole idea of combat spells (spells without material components) is bunk; every spell requires a material component. And as I’ve said, the whole notion of innocuous spells just doesn’t exist in the real world. I think they are fanciful ideas: read languages, purify water, shield. Why bother? Really?
So, in the end, it wasn’t hard to figure out what I needed. I hit a deli, a candy shop, and the maple tree behind my house. I figured that would do it.
Gary looked the same. Opened the door with a big-ass grin tucked into his neatly trimmed beard-now spotted with silver. Still looked as though he polished his head. He took me into a bear hug, which I thought kind of weird, given how it all ended. But I could bide my time.
“Good to see you, man.” He took my coat and dropped it on the sofa beside the door. “Damn, you haven’t aged a bit.”
“I know.” I nodded, distracted already by three cardboard tables laid end to end and strewn with all the fixin’s for a night of gaming. Asshole meant to actually have us play.
I wheeled around to lay into him, when the screen pulled wide again and let in Trent and Daryl. Fine sons-a-bitches both. Fighter and thief who managed to vanish when shit started hitting fans twenty years gone now.
Everybody was hugging, and I turned to look back at the table, which (by God) had not just dice, but chits. Can you believe it? Original box chits-you pick one and turn it to get your number.
I wanted to vomit.
Last to come was Floyd. I could smell the bakery on him from the door. Loser had been working nights scrubbing pans, prepping trays, and knifing croissants for twenty years now. I hope he had a union, otherwise his career path could surely be mapped to minimum wage increases.
They all passed by, giving me firm handshakes and half-shoulder hugs. I kept the grimace off my face, I think.
That’s when Gary formally announced the reunion: “Gentleman,” he said, trying to sound cute and semi-formal, “it’s been twenty years. And I think a trip down memory lane is in order before we get to the food and beer.”
He then swept an arm at his cardboard tables, complete with a DM screen at one end.
“Aren’t we going to wait for Dave?” Floyd asked.
“He’s on his way,” Gary replied. “And if memory serves, his character was asleep for the first part of the battle anyway.”
Sage nods went around the group.
“And Brian?” I asked this one. I wanted that dick there… for sure.
Gary smiled. “In the bathroom. You know how he likes to wash his hands before handling the dice.”
Everyone laughed as if it were the fond in-joke they all remembered with teary eyes when they considered their misspent youth.
I’m not sure I kept the grimace back that time. So I pretended to cough so I could cover my face.
And then the damndest thing happened. Trent and Daryl took their seats at the table and produced character sheets, yellowed and smudged with twenty-year-old erase marks, stuffed inside protective plastic paper holders made for three-ring binders.
“You still have them?” I could feel heat rising in my cheeks.
“Yup,” they said in unison.
The characters had been drawn on legal pads. The yellow, lined paper took the hue of canary piss now, but the sheets had been well-preserved. And from the looks of it, the stats had been lovingly retraced often enough that the lead hadn’t faded.
Doesn’t surprise me.
Brian entered the room, his shoulders almost too wide for the bathroom doorjamb. “Let’s go to town first and get some wenches.”