Continuing adventures of Alex (Patreon)

Alex frowned as a man that looked suspiciously like Devon strolled out of the gates on the other side of the arena with his hands leisurely clasped behind his back. She felt a shiver run down her spine as the man almost lazily made his way across the sand as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She noticed Cael conjure a shield so she pushed a touch more magic into her own armor spell. As he got closer she noticed that he was closer to her own height than Devon’s height. She wasn’t sure because of the flickering torchlight that gave his features a sinister cast but she thought he was a couple of years older as well. Other than that and his neatly trimmed goatee and slicked back hair he looked like some dark reflection or evil twin of her new friend or at least he would have if Devon had dressed in a midnight black three piece suit. She glanced over at Devon who was trembling. “Something we should know?”

Ivy conjured a shield around her left arm. “Watch out for his gauntlet.”

The evil looking Devon strolled into the middle of the arena and smiled coldly at the group of teens as he brought his hands out in front of him. His left hand was encased in a black metal gauntlet that disappeared under his sleeve. “Greetings and salutations brave adventurers, some of you may have heard of me, for those of you who have not my name is Lord Devon otherwise know as the Lord of Magic. I have come for Devon, fight me and die! Run away and I‘ll not kill you today, maybe tomorrow. Feel free to discuss it between yourselves.”

Abby frowned as she listened to the ridiculous speech. “Is he serious?”

Devon gulped as his face went white as a sheet as he saw the gauntlet the man was wearing, “Oh fuck… is there an exit to this place?”

Cael scowled as he looked back at the sealed secondary gate. “We could fly out…”

Abby shook her head. “That would just unleash the monster.”

Ivy gulped as she stared at the man nervously. “This is going to suck.”

Alex frowned as she tried to figure out why her new friends were reacting with such fear. “Something you want to tell us about your doppelganger?”

Devon took a step back as he summoned his strongest shield in front of the group, “Ivy said it already, watch out for his gauntlet.”

Abby scowled as she summoned a ball of dark energy in the palm of her hand. “I do believe our answer is no, you can’t have him.”

The evil Devon smiled as he looked the group over. “I’ve been waiting years for this, a bit early but never mind that. Prepare to die!” He raised his gauntlet and unleashed a blast of black lightning at the group.

Ivy dove to the ground as she conjured her own shield as lightning ripped Devon’s shield apart. She rolled to the side and anchored her shield to the sand. “I hope you have a plan!”

Abby smiled as she tossed her ball of energy, “Yeah fry him.” Her smile slipped off her face as her ball of energy washed over his armor spell without effect. “Well shit.”

Cael scowled. “I blame you for this Devon.” He reached out with his magic and unleashed a wave of force at the man.

The man smiled as he brought the gauntlet up and blocked the spell. “It’s useless to attack me, I’m stronger than you and I’ve got the gauntlet of Morgan Le Fay, you’ve got no chance.” He unleashed a bolt of lightning at Cael that ate at his shield but failed to cut all the way through.

Cael forced more magic into his shield, “Liar! Her work was a thousand times better than that piece of crap you have!” He dodged out of the way as the man sent another three bolts of energy at him. He tossed a bolt of his own lightning at the man though it washed over him without affecting him. He muttered, “I should have stayed in bed.”

Abby drew her dagger, tapped into her magic and dove into Devon’s shadow and out of the evil man’s shadow. Spinning around she drove her dagger up to the hilt in his back. “Take that… shit.” She flew backwards as he struck her with a wave of force that tossed her like a rag doll.

Alex shouted as Abby was sent flying, “Abby!” She conjured a sword and charged the man.

Ivy gestured at the evil man’s feet and poured energy into the ground to heat it as fast as she could.

The evil Devon staggered as his feet caught fire from the girl‘s attack. “This is nothing, nothing I tell you!” His expression twisted into a look of bestial rage as he gestured with his gauntlet and froze the sand. “I will not be defeated by parlor tricks!”

Alex slammed her conjured sword into the man’s gauntlet as he brought it up to block her slash. She had a second to stare in shock as her sword broke on the gauntlet with a brilliant flash of light and an explosion that tossed her backwards like a ragdoll.

Devon scowled as he summoned as much power as he could and tossed everything he had at his evil clone. “Die!”

Ivy watched the man shrug off Devon’s attack with ease. “Crap! I guess I don’t have a choice.” She turned to look at her brother. “Cover me for a minute we need some backup.” She pulled a piece of canvas with runes on it out of her pocket.

Cael gulped as he moved forward to cover his sister. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Of course it’s not safe! But it’s probably safer than dealing with an evil Devon that has the Black Gauntlet.” She muttered, “Probably…”

Cael sighed as he tapped into his pool of magic and wove two shields, one over himself and one over Alex. He glared at the evil Devon. “You’re going to lose, you do know that right?”

The evil Devon turned to glare at Cael, “Why is that? Because you’re the plucky heroes and I‘m the evil villain?”

Cael shook his head. “Well that and Abby put a thermal nuclear grenade in your pocket.” He chuckled as the man spent a frantic moment checking his pocket before unleashing lightning at him as he realized that no one had stuck anything in his pockets. Cael winced slightly as he poured more magic into holding his shield against the attack. He whispered, “You should hurry…”

Ivy gestured and finished forming her beast. “Eat the evil man, not my brother.”

Cael gulped as a creature shaped vaguely like a large cat made out of a thousand human hands jumped over his head and charged the evil Devon. “That’s hideous.”

She smiled as she picked up her canvas spell diagram and put it back in her pocket. “I think it’s sort of cute.”

Evil Devon stepped back as the glowing purple eyes of the beast stared at him, “What the hell is that?”

Ivy shouted, “That is a lord of the gates of chaos, a devourer of souls and your personal executioner! Die!”

Abby frowned as she watched the creature advance toward the Evil Devon. ‘Huh... oh I see.’ She wrapped her magic around her feet to keep them quiet as she conjured another blade and ran at the evil Devon’s back.

Evil Devon blasted through the creature with his lightning. “I’ll…” He stopped in surprise as the creature didn’t even react to his lightning. “What the hell?” He gurgled as Abby’s blade sliced his throat open.

Abby poured as much magic as she could into her armor as she was sent flying by a wave of force.

Alex pulled herself off the ground enough so that she could see the evil Devon. His throat was gushing blood like a broken water main. Even with that he was still tossing out lightning bolts with wild enthusiasm. She staggered to her feet and ran a few steps so that no one was behind the evil clone from where she was now standing. “Enough!” She tapped into her mana pool and poured as much as she use at once into a ball of raging energy then tossed it at him. “Die!”

Devon gulped as Alex’s energy ball ripped through his clone’s armor spell and burned a basketball sized hole through the middle of his the clone's chest. “Holy hell…”

Alex frowned as she watched the evil clone start crawling toward her, “Seriously? What the hell does it take to kill him?”

Ivy grinned as she conjured a spinning saw blade and used magic to toss it at the evil clone’s arm. “Not sure.”

Alex was relieved when the blade cut the evil Devon’s arm off and he turned to dust along with the armor and the black gauntlet. “The challenge wasn’t supposed to be that hard…” She turned to glare at Devon. "What the heck was that? Start explaining.”

Devon looked warily around at the rest of the arena then over at Ivy’s cat creature. “Can we get out of here first and what the hell is that beast?”

Ivy dismissed her illusionary cat beast made out of human hands. “That would be one of my pets.”

He shivered as he stared at the spot where Ivy's 'pet' had vanished. “How did you summon it so fast?”

She smirked at Devon. “I’m just that good.” She actually needed about five minutes to pull off even a basic summons which was why she had settled on an illusion instead.

Cael was fairly sure that the cat had just been an illusion but he wasn’t completely sure that she hadn’t unleashed the creature from a summoner’s prison or something of that nature. The only reason he was fairly sure that it wasn’t something like that was that he hadn’t seen the creature before and Ivy liked showing off her creations. “Where to?”

Alex stretched her arms over her head. “Next time we fight someone with an evil artifact, remind me to avoid hitting it with a conjured blade.”

Ivy frowned slightly as she looked Alex over and didn't notice any injuries. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m rather durable...” Alex trailed off as she noticed the cut on Abby’s arm. “How are you doing?” It was only the second time she’d ever seen Abby hurt, the first being when she’d accidentally given her a bloody nose when they’d first started sparring in martial arts.

“You should see the other guy.” Abby smirked as she walked over to the group. “Hopefully that unlocked the doctor’s office like it was supposed to.”

Cael shivered as he took one last look at where the evil clone had turned to dust. “Let’s go.” He turned and headed toward the exit.

0o0o0

Alex was pleasantly surprised to see that defeating Devon’s clone had unlocked most of the doctor’s office rather than just some of the building or at least it had an open sign in the window. She was glad that the office was close to both the castle and the arena. “Shall we investigate?”

Devon headed toward the doctor‘s office, “We might as well, anything to keep from having to explain my evil twin.”

Abby grinned as they walked in and she spotted a beautiful dark haired woman with the same pale white skin as the rest of the residents of the town. She looked in her early twenties. Her hair was pulled back in a long ponytail which showed off her pointed ears. She was wearing a bright white short sleeved doctor’s coat over a black silk dress that came down to her knees. “Hellooo nurse…”

The woman snickered as she shook her head. “No, I believe the words you’re looking for are Hellooo Doctor.” She pointed to her nametag that read, ‘Dr. Jinn.’ and smiled to show that she wasn‘t overly offended by the greeting. “My nurse is on her lunch break. What can I do for you?”

Alex glanced around the waiting room and noticed that there were a couple of empty spots in the room where more stuff would probably appear after they killed more monsters but for the most part it looked like any other doctor’s waiting room complete with out of date magazines or it would have if you ignored the metal sconces carefully arranged around the room‘s walls that gave a comfortable amount of light. Each one held a glass orb with a flickering flame captured in the glass. “I wanted to stop by and welcome you to town.”

“Thanks, it's taking a while but I got most of the equipment set up and ready to go. I‘m still waiting on about a third of the supplies though.” She noticed the cut on Abby’s arm, “Do you want me to fix that?”

Abby held out her arm so that the doctor could see the cut on her arm. “That would be great. I sort of stabbed myself when I got tossed in the arena.”

“Ouch. Let me grab something to clean that up with. Might take me a couple of minutes to find the supplies.”

Alex smiled as she watched the doctor head into the back room. “She’s nice.”

Abby nodded. “And cute. I feel a bit better about fighting in the arena now,” she glanced at Devon, “or at least I would if it hadn‘t been for Devon‘s evil clone.”

Alex turned to look at Devon and Cael. “What’s up with that anyways?”

Cael looked at Devon. “It’s your story.”

Devon shifted uncomfortably. “If I had known that was going to be the form my monster took I wouldn’t have helped…” He took a deep breath then exhaled. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this but most of it is public record if you know where to look…” He shifted uncomfortably as he thought the monster they'd just fought. “And I sort of owe you for almost getting you killed. Long story short, my family has been with a couple of exceptions evil for the last thousand plus years.”

Abby sighed as she recognized the gauntlet and connected the dots. “Oh, that explains it.”

Alex scowled in annoyance. “Okay, for those of us that are first generation magic users and haven’t taken an advanced magical history class yet, what does that mean?”

Ivy shrugged. “According to rumor and bedtime stories, my great, great and a bunch more grandmother Morgana le Fay got mixed up with Merlin and spawned Cael’s and my line.”

Alex stared at Ivy in surprise. “For real? I mean the teachers said that they were real… but wow, Merlin?”

Cael laughed. “I’ve met him a couple of times, nice guy if a bit odd.”

Abby asked, “What about Morgana?”

Ivy smirked. “Yeah, I’ve seen her before at family reunions, she’s actually pretty nice once you get over her being a shameless flirt.”

Cael complained, “The worst part is that she can look like anyone, that cute waitress, that girl on the swings…”

Ivy snickered.

Alex asked, “How does Devon’s family fit in?”

Ivy said, “He’s descended from Morgana’s nephew Mordred… nasty business that. Every few hundred years the blood runs blacker than normal and they get an evil nut job.”

Devon sighed. “She’s right, except that when my family casts someone out for being evil... yeah, anyways somewhere along the line some nutcase thought it was a great idea to slaughter everyone at a clan meeting and forge the Black Gauntlet.”

Alex frowned. “What’s it do?”

“It has a nasty habit of killing a lot of people every time it’s unleashed.”

Alex glanced between her rather grim friends. “Wouldn’t people have noticed something like that?”

Cael shifted uncomfortably. “They did, according to record the gauntlet was created in 1345. The first wielder came after my family for the title of Lord of Magic and they banished him to the ends of the Earth which at that point in history happened to be China… sadly it didn‘t take, he cut a swath of death and destruction all the way back.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “Wait, 1345 or 1346, death and destruction, are you telling me he started the Black Plague?”

Devon sighed in frustration. “In many different places and in many different lands over the years.”

“That’s insane…” Alex trailed off as she realized that magic had been responsible for one of the worst plagues in history.

“Yeah...” Devon trailed off as the doctor came back in.

Jinn smiled as she walked over to Abby with a disinfectant swab. “Sorry, I put these in the wrong place earlier today and my nurse put them away in the ‘correct’ spot, took me a bit to find them.”

Abby smiled at the doctor. “That’s fine, you’re still settling in.”

She wiped the area around Abby’s cut then waved her hand over the cut and healed it with magic. “All better.”

“Thanks. What do I owe you?” Abby poked at the perfectly healed skin where her cut used to be.

Jinn shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, the arena pays my salary.”

“Sweet, hopefully we’ll see you around though maybe not here.”

“Don’t worry, I understand what you mean.” Jinn glanced at the pile of boxes then looked back at the group. “If there is nothing else I should get back to organizing things.”

Abby smiled a the doctor. “I think we’re good.”

“In that case, take care,” Jinn replied as she went back to sorting through her boxes.

Devon looked at the door. “Let’s get to the inn and finish the story.”

“Sure.” Alex was curious how many other legends would prove true the next couple of years. She headed outside then down the black stone path as the rest of the group trailed behind her. She waved to the doorman on her way past the arena’s entrance on her left as she headed past the empty building on her right. She smiled slightly as she noticed the five story black stone and glass building that included a restaurant on the first floor which was what they called the inn though it was more properly a hotel. She entered through the front doors and headed toward the private lounge.

Abby trailed behind Alex wondering how long it would take her friend to catch up with the rest of them in magical history. She wasn’t sure what it would be like to find out that magic existed then to find out after eleven years of practicing that you had really only scratched the surface of what you could do with it. She knew it frustrated her friend but she also understood that some types of magic were dangerous and required supervision while you learned how to not blow yourself up. She followed Alex through the door that lead into the lounge and across the decent sized private lounge. She flopped down on a comfortable leather chair next to Alex, “I have to say this place is nice.”

Devon was rather impressed at the quality as it avoided looking too gaudy while keeping an elegance that surprised him. He wondered what the building was based on or if it had been created from bits and pieces. “I like it.”

The door opened to reveal an attractive pale skinned elf girl in a black silk skirt and white blouse that had a stack of menus in her hand. She walked over and set the menus on the table near the group. “Can I get you something to drink good sirs and ladies?”

Cael smiled at the attractive waitress. “I’ll have a root beer.”

Ivy smiled at the waitress, “I’ll have a chocolate shake.”

The waitress looked at Alex and Abby. “And the ladies?”

Alex blushed as she realized that the waitress was talking to her and that she had been staring rather than paying attention, “Ah, I’ll have a root beer float.”

Devon muttered, “Beer.”

The waitress’s tone was amused as she asked Devon. “Do you have any ID for that?”

Devon pulled his eyes off her busty chest and looked at her face, “Seriously?”

The elf smirked at Devon. “Well you look underage and we do have rules about that.”

He held up his hands in surrender as Ivy glared at him. “Fine, I’ll have a coke.”

Abby looked through the drink selection on the menu for a couple of seconds before coming to her decision. “I’ll take a glass of strawberry lemonade.”

The waitress smiled. “I’ll be back with your drinks shortly.”

Alex watched the waitress leave then turned to look at Devon, “So…”

He frowned then turned to look at Abby. “Before I get back to the story, how come we can’t have a beer in a pocket dimension?”

Ivy scrunched up her face. “Because beer is nasty.”

Abby snickered. “What she said, I didn’t want any reason for the school to not allow people to come here.”

Personally Devon thought that they would care more about the very real chance of death in the arena than the fact that the restaurant served beer but he didn’t feel like pressing the issue. He considered how much to share, some of it was public knowledge or at least known to a fair number of people the rest wasn’t as widely known, a lot of what was known about his family wasn‘t connected to him publicly though he had already said enough that Alex could just look the rest up at school. He figured that it was better to have her hear it from his point of view than to look it up first. “Basically a hundred and some years ago Cael’s family managed to curse the Black Gauntlet in such a way as to keep it out of the hands of my family.”

Alex glanced between Cael and Devon. “I sense a but here.”

“Yeah, basically the curse said that the gauntlet would be locked away until such time as a male descendant of Mordred was naturally born under the cover of darkness on the day when the barrier between worlds was the weakest. In other words if a boy was born on October 31st under a new moon he unleashed the cursed thing.”

Alex snorted. “I’m guessing you’ve got an October birthday?”

He sighed. “Yeah, every year it tries to eat my soul on Halloween. It gets worse every year.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah…” Devon trailed off as the door opened and their waitress walked back in with a tray filled with drinks.

The waitress smiled as she passed out everyone's drinks, “Have you had a chance to go over the menu?”

Abby raised her hand slightly. “I want a medium rare steak with a baked potato, sour cream on the side.”

Ivy folded her menu up. “Same for me.”

Cael folded the menu he had only glanced at a little bit. “Same.”

Devon gave his menu a quick look then spoke up, “Chicken Salad, ranch on the side.”

Alex glanced at the menu in her hand that she hadn’t looked at then shrugged, “I guess I’ll just go with the steak and potato, medium rare as well.”

The waitress smiled at the group. “Pack of meat eaters here. I’ll bring the food when it’s ready.”

“Thanks.” Alex watched the waitress leave then turned to look at Devon. “That’s rotten luck.”

He sighed as he thought about the cursed gauntlet. “Yeah, I figure I’ve got a couple more years before it eats my soul and tries to destroy the world.”

“You seem rather blasé about this.”

Devon muttered, “Lots of practice.”

“So for a change of pace how about we talk about something else,” Abby suggested.

Ivy grinned at Abby’s attempt to change the topic, “Like what?”

“Like interests or hobbies.”

“I like summoning monsters and creating freakish pets.” Ivy stuck her tongue out at Cael.

Cael sighed as he noticed Alex’s smile. “Oh great, I blame you for this Devon.”

Devon asked incredulously, “How is this my fault?”

Alex ignored the boys as she asked Ivy for details on her various projects.