5,000 PE

[Sailor Vulcan]

"Mhegedden, attack! Blood claws!"

Through augmented reality glasses, the spectators surrounding the duel at the fountain in the Weston Center outdoor mall could see a three dimensional image of a powerful, dark, spiky, and vaguely draconic demon swipe at a young girl with its claws. The images disappeared as the girl's damage points exceeded her life points.

The young girl kicked the ground. "Dang it. I lost. Again."

"Don't feel bad. The sealed demon is just that strong. He's impossible to kill, and if you don't kill him he kills you."

The young girl frowned. "There has to be some way to beat him."

"Nope!" said the boy. He's invincible! Well, not exactly invincible, but if you do beat him you won't be able to finish off his controlling mage.

The boy raised his voice to address the spectators.

"Any other challengers? I'm still raring to go!"

Harris stepped out of the crowd.

"Can I play?"

"If you can take the heat," the boy quipped. "The name's Rory."

"Nice to meet you, Rory. I'm Harris."

Round 1

Rory (Warlock)
Channeling 7
Mana 7
Damage 0
Life: 26

Harris (Wizard)
Channeling 7
Mana 10
Damage 0
Life 23

Rory got first initiative.

"I summon Mhegedden, Sealed Demon!" The same demon that had won Rory's last duel appeared, bound by golden chains.

Rory mana: 1(-6)

"When the Sealed Demon is summoned, he has 3 seal tokens on him. During each upkeep phase I move one seal token from him to me, lowering my life points by 2 each time. Your move, Harris."

Harris nodded.

"Yep. I summon Afflicted Demon!"

Harris mana: 1(-9)

Round 2
Harris mana: 8(+7)
Rory mana: 8(+7)
Rory Life: 24(-2)

A single golden chain snapped and broke off of the sealed demon, then disappeared.
"I cast a facedown enchantment on myself," said Harris, scanning the card with his yellow armored smartphone.

Harris mana: 6(-2)

"And I guard."

Harris stood in front of his afflicted demon in a protective stance. While it wasn't actually necessary because the virtual guard marker was placed by voice command and the rules for it were enforced automatically, Harris thought it looked cooler this way.

It was Rory's turn.

"I summon Sanguine Hunter!"

Rory mana: 5(-3)

"When Sanguine Hunter is summoned, he deals two damage to a friendly creature of my choice. I choose myself."

Rory damage: 2

"And I equip myself with Wychwood Ironvine. Your move."

Rory mana: 0(-5)

"Afflicted Demon will do nothing this round."

Rory's eyes narrowed. Skipping his quickcast in round 1, and then only casting a single spell on himself and guarding round 2? That Harris guy was up to something...

[Sailor Vulcan]

Round 3
Harris mana: 13(+7)
Rory mana: 7(+7)
Rory damage: 1(-1)
Rory life: 22(-2)

Another golden chain on Mhegedden snapped and disappeared. There was only one more. Come next round that seal would be broken, and the demon would be unbound.

"I cast an enchantment on my Sanguine Hunter!"

Rory mana: 5(-2)

He swept his hand out, a dramatic gesture indicating the enchantment was about to be revealed which wouldn't look so out of place on Yugioh.

"And now I reveal it! Demonic Link!"

Rory mana: 3(-2)

The augmented reality image of a thin red cord of energy emerged from the Sanguine Hunter and extended to Rory's body.

"A demon-type creature enchanted with Demonic Link gains melee +1! And the first time each round that it damages a living enemy creature, I heal 1 damage."

"Don't worry, I know what Demonic Link does," said Harris.

"Maybe you did, but a lot of the spectators probably don't," Rory pointed out.

"Oh. Right." Harris smiled sheepishly.

"Sanguine Hunter! Attack Harris! Demon Claws!"

The Sanguine Hunter leapt towards Harris....

"I reveal my enchantment, Glancing Blow. This lowers your Sanguine Hunter's attack  by 3 dice, to a minimum of 1 die until the end of its attack."

...and swiped at him with two huge, blue, hands, each with three spindly talons ending in sharp black claws. The claws glanced off of Harris, doing much less damage than they normally would.

Harris damage: 2(+2)

Then as soon as the damage was applied, Harris struck back at the demon, punching it in the face for 3 normal damage. Sanguine Hunter had 1 armor though, so only 2 damage was applied.

Sanguine Hunter damage: 2(+2)

[Sailor Vulcan]

It was Harris's turn.

"I summon Sailfin Hydra!" Harris scanned the card with his yellow armored smart phone and the virtual image of a huge two headed, two-legged biped appeared, letting loose a roar which wasn't anywhere near as loud or high quality as a real Sailfin Hydra's. Not to mention the sound of the roar was coming from Harris's and his opponent's smart phones, not the image of the hydra itself. Nevertheless it was still enough to impress the spectators, whose excited chatter was showing them to be more interested in the game than Harris would have expected. He didn't expect the rumors about the Gen Con Mage Wars Academy finals to have spread this far.
------
"That was an awesome duel!" said Rory, grinning.

"Thanks!" said Harris, also smiling. "I've played against a rather similar spellbook to yours before. I was surprised when you started using Mhegeddon to guard instead of attack. And then you started spamming unholy blood rituals! Ingenious..."

"Well, Grandma helped me think of the idea. Mhegedden is so powerful with 5 dice attack and elusive for only 6 mana. But you can't use him right away, you have to wait for three rounds. And when you combine that with his sheer bulk at 3 armor and 13 life, you realize that he's meant to be able to last into the late game and protect his allies. Kinda strange for a demon, to be honest."

The crowd was starting to disperse at this point.

Not to mention that once he's been weakened he's much less of a threat, especially since the incantation "cure" costs him triple spell points to include in his spellbook, Harris thought. Mhegedden was clearly meant to be a big threat when it is first summoned, but then once his controlling Mage has more lower level creatures to attack with Mhegedden can switch into guarding them if necessary. Harris's afflicted demons had really come in handy.

"It may be strange, but it's not impossible," said Harris. "Personally I suspect it has something to do with why he was sealed in the first place. Those golden chains may seem like holy seals, but why would warlocks summon an avatar of a powerful demon with holy seals on it? When you summon a legendary creature, you are summoning an avatar of it, not the real thing. Why would the holy seals that bind the real Mhegedden also bind a summoned avatar of him? The warlocks wouldn't do that if they had any choice about it, would they? Therefore, they hadn't had a choice. Likely those seals are made from Mhegedden's own spirit, so that any summoned avatar of him would be incomplete without being able to represent the part of him that's in the seals."

"You sound like you've seen Mhegedden for real," Rory said, a note of heavy skepticism in his voice.

Harris had, in fact. Mhegedden was part of the reason that he believed that the demons of Infernia could be reformed in the first place. The goddess Asyra was known to have the power to purify corruption and evil from sapient beings. That power was known to work on beings of almost all intelligent races. Demons were an exception to that. Asyra's light could not purify them. Or so everyone thought.

Eons of existence in a realm starved of natural resources which was on fire all the time had made the demons of Infernia into horrible monsters that ate each other to survive. In the burning darkness of Infernia, they did not know that there was any other way to live.

Asyra would likely have been able to heal the minds of demons if she had had any mind training whatsoever. But instead she just flashed her holy light on them, saw that it didn't work and gave them up as a lost cause. Navee was one of the youngest demons to ever escape from Infernia, so he hadn't suffered as long as most of them had. That was why he had been able to rehabilitate himself and learn to care for other people in the first place. It had taken him a long time, and he had done some pretty terrible things before he had started to come to his senses. He never talked about his crimes to Harris in detail, and when he had mentioned them at all there was always a haunted look in his eyes.

"No, it's just a fan theory," Harris said quickly. "I like to come up with ideas like that."

"You should see my grandmother play this game! She's amazing! I can never win against her."

"Really?" asked Harris intrigued.

[Sailor Vulcan]

The wicked tycoon sat behind his desk, reading reports about a planned Mage Wars Academy tournament on an island in the pacific that basically no one cared about. Some of the higher ups in the CIA were not beyond bribing, and his investments were about to start paying off.

Everyone had a price. That was because everyone had something they wanted. Even the Gods of Etheria themselves could not be immune. Their prices would merely be higher.

The wicked Tycoon chuckled. He would meet those prices...and in exchange, he would be granted power...


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[Sailor Vulcan]

The door of the Paladin's Prize game shop jangled shut behind Harris and Rory as they entered.

"Grandma, I'm home!" Rory called out.

"Welcome back, Rory! I'm in the back, teaching a foolish youngster a lesson. Come watch! You might learn a trick or two!"

Rory grinned. Harris followed him into the back gaming room.

There was an old woman who was presumably Rory's grandmother, with a priestess spellbook in her lap, sitting across a round wooden table from...

"You!" said Vincent Black. "What are YOU doing here?"

"Rory invited me after I beat him in a duel," said Harris, defensively.

Vincent looked Rory up and down, looking for signs of physical injury.

"What are you staring at me like that for? I don't swing that way dude!"

"I was checking to make sure you aren't hurt," said Vincent.

Rory's grandmother narrowed her eyes and addressed Harris. "What reason would you have to hurt my grandson?"

"I didn't hurt him!" Harris burst out right as Rory flexed his muscles and said, "Oh yeah, he trounced me big time, that scrawny little man. Beat me one on one, mano a mano. That's exactly what happened."

To Rory's grandmother, the split second look of absolute horror on Harris's face before he realized that Rory was only joking said a lot about what kind of person Harris was. And yet, the chosen hero of Malakai seemed to hate him, for some reason...

"Well, it looks like you have a rival, young man," she said to Vincent. "Maybe he'll be an extra motivator for you to excel in your lessons."

"Oh boy, this should be fun," said Rory.

"Which you will not be a part of," Rory's grandmother snapped. She turned to Harris. You however, I will allow. The lessons are not meant for you, but perhaps you might learn something nevertheless."

She turned and walked towards a hidden trap door in the floor, and opened it, then descended the staircase.

Vincent and Harris followed her.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Once Harris, Vincent and Rory's grandmother were all in the basement, where there was exercise equipment, a television, and a table, Rory's grandmother turned back around to face Vincent. "My name is Tanya. In Etheria, I am a priestess of Malakai. You who Maakai chose as his champion. What do you know of Malakai's teachings?"

Vincent scratched the back of his head. "Not much. I grew up in an Asyran household."

Harris raised his eyebrows at that. Malakai's champion and adopted son didn't know Malakai's teachings?

"It is as I feared. Asyra is trying to shelter you from your role for as long as possible. Or worse, change your role entirely."

"What do you mean?" asked Vincent.

"You are a champion of the archangel Malakai, who serves the goddess Asyra. You were chosen by Malakai, not by Asyra. Tell me the significance of this."

"I...um... I don't know," said Vincent.

Harris spoke up then. "Malakai and Asyra disagree about a lot of things. For him to be the chosen one of an archangel rather than of the goddess that archangel serves, could likely mean that the choice was not originally approved by that goddess."

Tanya nodded. "Correct." she turned back to Vincent. "Why did Malakai choose you, Zaccharias Shortel, of all people, to represent him?"

"I...um...because he saw potential in me, I guess?"

"What kind of potential?"

"I don't know."

"Well, better to show you than to just tell you." Tanya's face turned serious. "There is a magical explosive hidden somewhere in this room. Only I have the key to deactivate it, which can be used remotely." she held up a small device that looked like the kind of device one would use to unlock their car from afar without using a key.

"This key is enchanted to have some of the same properties as harshforge, which is how it is able to disarm a magical explosive. It is not detectable by normal or magical means. If a police officer came to investigate he would not find anything. I must also warn you that I am much more athletic than I appear. If you try to chase me and wrest the remote key from my hands, you will be unable to do so."

She grinned.

"So, champion of Malakai, what will you do?"


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[Sailor Vulcan]

Harris thought quickly. Had this crazy woman come up with some way to bypass the Nameless one's restrictions on magic in the simulation? All magic in the simulation was supposed to be tied only to the cards and the passwords. How did she make an enchanted key that emulated the properties of harshforge? There was no Mage Wars card in existence that could do something like that. It had to be just a test for Zacharias Shortel. It had to be! But there was a chance that he was wrong. A small chance, but a chance nonetheless.

"I must warn you, that the explosive has a radius of about a couple miles, and if it is not disarmed in five minutes, it will go off, destroying the whole town."

Vincent's face screwed up in betrayal.

"Why are you doing this? Your grandson is still in the house!" Vincent shouted.

"You are the chosen one of Malakai! If you cannot sacrifice even a single innocent person for the sake of all, then you are not worthy of that choice!"

Vincent froze in shock. Almost as if on automatic, his hand slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out a Mage Wars card. It was a creature, White Cloaked Knight. With his horror, determination and shock in his eyes, he scanned the card with his white armored smartphone, which now was glowing with red stripes. The White Cloaked Knight appeared.

"White Cloaked Knight," said Vincent. He hesitated. But then his resolve firmed. If he didn't do this, the entire town would be destroyed, taking the lives of everyone living there with it. "White Cloaked Knight," said Vincent. "Attack Tanya."

The White Cloaked Knight obeyed, and ran towards Tanya, it's sword pointed at her and ready to impale her.

"I'm sorry," Vincent whispered.

"I reveal my enchantment! Block!" said Tanya. In her right hand was a white-armored smartphone with silver stripes. She had drawn it from a holster at her waist so fast that if Vincent had blinked he might have missed it.

A magical barrier appeared around Tanya, and White Cloak Knight's sword bounced harmlessly off it.

She tossed the remote key to Vincent, who caught it, confusion in his eyes as he dismissed his summoned knight.

"I am sorry for having lied to you," she said. "There is no explosive. That's just what I use to open my car. Make sure you give it back when you're done inspecting it."

Vincent's mouth was gaping open, and Harris couldn't stop laughing, both from relief at the fact that they weren't in any danger after all, and from the humor of the situation.

When Harris stopped laughing and Vincent stopped gaping like a fish, Tanya spoke.

"What, you didn't really think I'd engineer a magical explosive to go off in my own home, especially not while my grandson is here!" Tanya said admonishingly. She continued.

"Today you have learned that, as a champion of Malakai, you must do not what is easy, nor what is purely moral, but rather...what is necessary."

Vincent nodded, reluctantly.

"Malakai is a consequentialist..." Harris breathed, suddenly having newfound respect for the archangel.

"Well, that brings me to the end of the lesson. Any questions?"

"Yes," said Vincent. "Your lesson was...useful, and I'm going to have some things to think about for a while. But, please don't pull something like that on me again."

"Alright. Though I encourage you to seek out other teachers who will likely do something like that," said Tanya seriously. "How else can you learn?"


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[Sailor Vulcan]

Vincent walked towards the stairs. Harris made to follow him, but Tanya gestured for him to stay.

She got straight to the point.

"What exactly does the champion of Malakai have against you? You seem like quite an upstanding young man."

"It's because I killed his birth parents on Etheria," Harris admitted with a sigh.

Tanya raised her eyebrows. "Why did you do that?"

"They were trying to murder children."

Tanya's eyebrows rose even higher.

"They were demon children, we--Navee and I, were trying to reeducate them. But then the Asyran church found out and sent those two Knights, Lady Ray and Sir Alan Shortel to slay the children under our care."

"I see. And you believe that demons can be reeducated?" asked Tanya, skeptically.

"Yes. There's no reason to assume they are all innately evil. If any entire race of beings had been trapped in Infernia for as long as the demons, I would expect them to turn out exactly the same way. How could someone NOT become a monster after spending their whole life being burned alive? Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation that fits the facts, that fits one's observations I should say, is the most likely. We observe that almost all demons are evil. We observe that Infernia is a burning wasteland with little to no useful or tradable natural resources, such as food or water. Why postulate an inherent propensity for evil when there is already a simpler and more obvious cause for their evil?"

There was a pause as Tanya absorbed this information.

"I see," she said. And these demon children you were teaching. Were they dangerous?"

Harris nodded. "Yes, but we had them under control. At least as long as they were not exposed to other people."

"You realize that you were unlikely to be able to protect them if the Asyran church was hunting them. You would not have been able to keep them contained in one location."

Harris nodded. "I was banking on making more progress with them before we were found out, so that the Asyrans could see that the demons had the potential to become good. And we had made a little bit of progress. But then Sir and Lady Shortel arrived. They didn't stop to listen. They just attacked, and I had to stop them. I didn't mean to kill them. I tried to explain things to them. I told them to leave us alone. They wouldn't listen."

"You are wondering whether you did the right thing, protecting those demon children," Tanya guessed.

"Yes," said Harris, helplessly. "I mean, they were still really hostile to other people. When other Westlockian officials arrived, the kids fought tooth and nail against them– not only to survive themselves, but also to hurt and kill those Westlockian officials. We had been found out too soon, and all of the progress we'd made was lost in the heat of the moment in a life or death situation. Those kids killed a lot more people before they were all killed themselves. It was not a pretty sight. The fact that more people died as a result of my actions than lived... doesn't that mean that I made the wrong choice? And yet, the demons of Infernia are suffering constantly every day! I can't just do nothing."

"I see. You took a risk, and you underestimated the severity of that risk."

"Even Navee had told me it was a bad idea! And I didn't listen to him. And he went along with it anyways in the end, partially because he was having trouble convincing me otherwise, and partially because he wondered if maybe I was right and that maybe we could succeed."

"I cannot say for certain whether it was the best choice you could've made given what you knew at the time," said Tanya. "I can say, however, that any follower of Malakai would've considered your endeavor quite foolish. And the actual consequences… were not good."

---
Vincent emerged from the staircase, having overheard the entire conversation. Demons could be good? Nonsense. Either Fiennix was lying to Tanya, or he had been lied to himself.

The man who killed my parents...

Vincent wasn't sure what to think anymore. He wasn't sure what was right anymore. He needed time to sort things out.

"So, how was your lesson?" asked Rory.

"Awful," said Vincent as he walked past Rory towards the front of the shop. "But necessary."




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[Sailor Vulcan]

"Well," Tanya muttered to herself. "The champion of Malakai is quicker on the uptake than he first appears. A little gullible though. But I thought that lesson would take a lot longer for him to learn, given Asyra's interference. I underestimated him, it seems."


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[Sailor Vulcan]

Fixed a typo earlier where it said Harris had to go to work after his not-date with Dan. It was supposed to say class.

Also edited an earlier part where Vincent used pillars of light and heal spells in the prison to show that he's magically exhausted afterwards and therefore not sure he can defend himself from the warden if she were to try anything funny. Arena spells tend to be more powerful and take more effort for an academy level mage to cast. Where "heal" is a level 2 incantation for fully trained graduate level mages, in the hands of an academy mage its level might be effectively doubled. The fact that Vincent cast it twice means he is exhausted afterwards, since he is down by about 12 spell points worth of physical energy if you include the pillars of light.


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[Sailor Vulcan]

"Oh, I almost forgot!" said Harris, rushing back downstairs to the basement of the Paladin's Prize gameshop. "Arcane Wonders is hosting a Mage Wars Academy tournament starting a couple days after Christmas this year. Here's your invitation." Harris handed the invitation card to Tanya.

"If you want to participate, you can register in person or online at the URL on your invitation."

"Thank you," said Tanya. "I'm not sure if I am going to participate, but it would certainly be wonderful to see."

"Yeah," said Harris. His yellow-armored smartphone began to ring.

"Sorry, I got to go, that's probably Dan or Grace calling. Bye!"

"Goodbye," said Tanya, as Harris rushed back upstairs.


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[Sailor Vulcan]

"Harris!" it was Jack, Grace's son that had picked up. "Come on, it's time to hit the road again!"

"You guys are all back at the van then?"

"Yep! So come on back and let's get going!"


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[Sailor Vulcan]

When they got to the hotel in New Jersey that had been booked for them by "Mr. Bobriel", there was a bit of a dilemma.

"Wait a moment, you mean to say there're only two rooms?" asked Grace.

"That's not a problem," said Harris. "As long as both rooms have a bathroom, no one will be nak--I mean everybody can just change in private."

Dan raised an eyebrow suggestively. Harris blushed.

"How many beds are there?" asked Grace.

"One in each room, but one of them has a couch as well," said the man behind the front desk, looking rather bored.

"Harris, would you rather we take the room with the couch or do you want it?"

"Mom, I'm sure Harris and Dan will be fine sharing a bed. But there's no way I'm sharing one with you."

"Oh my god, this is ridiculous," said Harris. "It's as if we just got caught in a bad fan fic."

Turning to Dan he said, "We are NOT doing that tonight."

Dan pouted. "But I haven't had the chance to do it in a really long time!"

"I don't care. We aren't even officially a couple yet," said Harris doing his very best to remain serious and not to laugh at the expression on Dan's face or at the silly situation they were in. "We are going to turn the lights out, get in the bed, and go to sleep, nothing else."

"Fine," said Dan, resisting the urge to sigh theatrically. He would just have to give Harris twice the action later to make up for the lack of it this time.

Grace and Jack took the room with the couch, and Harris and Dan took the room without one.

A while later, Dan was lying awake in bed next to Harris. He raised an arm as if he meant to drape it over Harris's shoulder, but then let it fall pointlessly back to the bed. Instead he quietly whispered, "Love you."

Harris didn't respond, but Dan could tell he was still awake.

After a while, as if to reassure Dan, Harris snuggled up against him.

Fiennix knew he probably felt the same way about Navee that Navee felt about him, but he wasn't entirely certain and so he didn't commit himself by saying it.

That was all that happened. Nothing else. Real life did not work like bad fanfiction, after all. In real life, when there weren't enough beds for everyone to have their own, people would just make do and they would NOT suddenly become unbearably horny for no reason.

Screw narrative convention--no sane person would care about narrative convention when making a decision like that.

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[Sailor Vulcan]

It was the second day of Harris's thanksgiving break road trip, with all expenses paid for by the US government. He even got to bring Jack and Grace along so that no one he knew would be asking him awkward questions he couldn't answer about why he was going on a road trip with someone he'd supposedly only known since August.

The goal of this trip was to find Mage Wars players who might have some real magical skills, and then invite them to the Horizon Island Mage Wars Academy tournament, which would be taking place shortly after Christmas, so that their magical skills as well as skills with the Mage Wars Academy card game could be evaluated. Everyone involved in organizing this mission agreed that since there had been no real magical training programs on Earth before, that anyone who had magical skills already must have learned them on Etheria. Therefore, those with memories of Etheria were more likely to be mages than those who didn't have such memories. In fact, only someone who had lived on Etheria could be a mage. It was possible that those with memories of Etheria (locked or unlocked) might be drawn to the Mage Wars game franchise due to its connection to their cultural heritage. That was the hope, anyway.


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[Sailor Vulcan]

Edit: changed the date of the horizon island academy tournament in the story since I didn't realize that Christmas 2016 is a Sunday.


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