Dresden Files/SWTOR 1 (Patreon)

My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I'm Chicago's sole professional wizard. Mostly that means I help people find lost trinkets, an occasional potion (except love/lust potions, even if I didn't already refuse to sell what amounted to magical date-rape drugs, after what happened last week I'm not going to make them ever again), stuff like that. My most regular work comes from consulting with the Special Investigations division of the Chicago PD. Finished with a hell of a mess with a case involving another wizard making a potion in bulk and selling it as a drug a few days ago.

In any event, I was at my office doing some repairs after a giant scorpion tore it up (long story, don't ask) when my phone rang. Setting down the roll of painter's tape, I walked over to the desk and answered, "Dresden."

"Um… I'm talking to Harry Dresden, Wizard, right?" The voice on the other side of the line was male, and sounded off somehow, nervous or nauseous maybe.

"You are, may I ask what this is about?"

"Right, right… can you make items that can hold a spell? I need a pretty specific item and I have no idea how else I'd be able to get it."

I hummed thoughtfully, as I sat in my chair. Already this was different than most calls I got, normally calls were just to ask if I was serious. Curiosity piqued, I answered, "Depends on the spell in question, I'd need more details. Why don't you come by my office, we can discuss the details in person. If I can't help you I can probably point you to someone else who can."

I have very good ears, which is how I heard the man on the other side of the line mutter, "Easier said than done." Louder, he said, “Alright… gimme an hour, I’ll be wearing… something that hides all skin. I’ll explain why when I’m there.”

The man on the other line hung up, and I set the phone on the cradle. That was a lot more unusual than I’d been expecting, not many magical creatures would completely cover their skin, the most obvious would be vampires. The only local vampires I knew of were Bianca St. Claire and her coven, but given how my meeting the other day with her went, I don’t see a Red Court vampire coming to me to have some trinket made.

Nothing else came to me off the top of my head, I’d need to ask Bob. To do that, I’d have to head home, wake up the Knowledge Spirit, get the information, then get back here in time to meet this prospective client. Not physically possible in the time frame I’d been given. Making sure I had my new shield bracelet, and my blasting rod, I went back to work on the repairs. I’d find out what this prospective client’s deal was when he got here.

As the deadline approached, I set aside the repair work, and sat at my desk. My blasting rod was leaning against the side of my desk, out of view from the door and the chairs for clients. I saw a shape through the plastic covering up the shattered window in my door, moments before the door opened and I got a look at my prospective client. Like he’d said over the phone, he was completely covered from head to toe, mostly in clothes that looked like he’d gotten them from a Good Will bargain bin or off some of the countless homeless living in Chicago’s back alleys. They certainly smelled like the latter.

“Harry Dresden?” he asked as he shut the door.

“That’s me. You said you needed a specific item?” I asked, keeping one hand on my blasting rod. The last few days had been extremely tense, so I was still a little jumpy, so sue me.

“Yeah… forgive me for the oncoming rant, but there’s so much I need to explain in order for it to make sense…”

I raised an eyebrow as he took a deep breath, before reaching up and removing the hat on top of his head, showing dark red, almost crimson, hair. Next he pulled off his sunglasses, showing eyes like molten gold, but what was far more interesting was the skin around them. More specifically the fact that it was red.

My back straightened, the only things I could think of with skin that color were some demons, but those typically had visibly inhuman body plans. He unwrapped the scarf he’d been wearing to hide the rest of his face, and I got a good look. Red skin, like I’d noticed, sharp, angular features, but also two fleshy hooks protruding from his lower jaw on either side, the bottom ones framing his chin, almost like an oddly styled beard.

“Okay… last night, I went to bed in my house, in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere California. I woke up in a back alley a few hours ago, on the opposite side of the country, more than twenty years in the past, on an Earth that’s not my own, in a body that’s not my own, with memories that aren’t my own. Those memories detail horrible atrocities that made me spend the first hour after I woke up puking my guts out. The main thing I want is something to keep those memories away,” he had a look of nausea on his face as he spoke, and by the end was all but begging.

“I’m sorry, but what do you mean by atrocities?” I asked. If what he said was true, and he wasn’t a crazy hedge mage that made a potion that went wrong, then I was way out of my depth.

He didn’t respond verbally, instead he held up one hand while reaching into his coat with the other. The upraised hand began to crackle with small arcs of electricity, dancing from one finger to the next or between them like a miniature Jacob’s Ladder. The hand that reached into his coat pulled out a bone engraved with strange, harsh looking runes inlaid with gold. On either end, there were hollow metal… no, it couldn’t be. There was an iconic snap-hiss, as a red beam shot out of the top of the bone lightsaber.

“The kind of atrocities that one of the most powerful members of an entire empire of Sith would commit.”