“Did you hear?” Bill asked the group as he ran to the table, giddy with excitement.

  The emotion on the large man left everyone feeling uncomfortable.

  “Hear what?” Syril asked.

  “The Members are in town!” Bill said.

  “Who?” Elen asked.

  “You know! Members!” Bill shouted, as if his enthusiasm would dislodge the information from Ellen’s mind.

  When all he got was blank stares, Bills excitement turned to disbelief.

  “How do you not know about the Members?”

  “I know plenty about members, thank you very much,” Ellen said, not looking up from her book.

  “Can you stop saying that so loudly?” Syril asked.

  “Why?” Bill asked.

  “Because it sounds a little uncouth,” Syril said.

  With a puzzled look, Bill asked, “How so?”

  Syril, Ellen, and Grom looked to each other, as if willing one of the others to explain.

  “Never mind,” Syril said. “Who are these people?”

  “They delved into the crag of the evil witch Barcella and slew her,” Bill said.

  Syril winced, “I haven’t heard of that.”

  “They killed a litch!” Bill added.

  “Good for them?” Grom said.

  “They are a prestigious organization of adventurers with multiple adventuring groups all over the continent.”

  Then, with even more excitement—which none of the other three had thought possible—he said, “They are devoted servants of Cland! Each and everyone! They all have a blessing of some caliber. Even the wizard!”

  At that statement Ellen’s face grew dark.

  “That bitch,” she said under her breath.

  “What?” Grom asked.

  “I don’t know the group,” she said. “But I have a good guess who the wizard is.”

  “And that would be?” Syril asked.

  “My cousin Elsey,” Ellen said. “She’s the worst.”

  When he realized no one else was excited about the Members as he was, Bill sat down and joined the other.

  “What did she do that’s so horrible?” Grom asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Ellen said.

  “Try me,” Grom said.

  Ellen opened her mouth to explain but then twisted her expression and stopped. She repeated this a few times, beginning to speak but not finding the words.

  She took a deep breath, gathered her thoughts and said simply, “She did everything I did, but in a way that impressed both of our parents far more.”

  “Ouch,” Grom said. “Sounds like a real bitch.”

  “Why don’t we have a team name?” Bill asked.

  Grom and Syril looked at each other uncomfortably.

  “We like to keep a low profile,” Grom finally said, and Bill accepted it as he did most things Grom said.

  Syril got up at a gesture from Grom’s girlfriend behind the bar and came back with a letter.

  “The Count sent us a summons,” Syril said, dropping it on the table.

  “Well, that can’t be good,” Grom said.

  “It might not be bad,” Syril said. “He probably doesn’t know we are investigating him.”

  “True,” Grom agreed. “But I’d like to avoid vampires whenever possible.”

  “We can’t not go,” Syril said. “That would only lead to him becoming suspicious.”

  “You don’t know that,” Grom said.

  Syril only tilted his head to look at Grom judgmentally.

  “Fine,” the dwarf relented. “But I’m wearing my armor.”

  “Oh great!” Bill shouted, “I will too!”

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  “No!” Grom yelled.

  ***

  The group sans Linar arrived at the keep finding the same guard on duty at the gate as the night of the party.

  “Ah, you seem to be short a member,” he said, recognizing them.

  Grom stifled a giggle at the word member and Syril kicked him.

  “Oh, he’s about,” Syril said. “He’s an important busy man. He can’t slum it with us all the time.”

  “Of course,” the guard said, with not a little suspicion in his voice.

  They presented the summons and were seen inside where they were made to wait in a room intended for the purpose. While the room was meant for waiting, that didn’t mean it had been set up to make those waiting comfortable. The opposite in fact.

  The room was a narrow hall free of any furniture, fireplace, or windows. Lit only with magic glowing orbs set in sconces on the walls.

  As soon as they were left alone Ellen waved her hand and a chair with a small surface attached to it appeared before her. The chair looked to be made of wood but it had a subtle golden glow. She immediately sat down, cracked open her spellbook and got to work.

  “How long have you been able to do that?” Grom asked.

  “I don’t know, since I was like eight?” Ellen said absent mindedly as she searched for the right page.

  “Why have I never seen you do it before?” Grom asked.

  “There’s a lot of things I can do that you haven’t seen me do. It doesn’t mean I can’t do it. Now leave me alone. This is a power move, and we are going to be waiting for a while and I’ve just about mastered this spell.”

  The three men left Ellen to her studies as they stood, idly looking around the room for anything of interest. After a short while, Grom and Bill began shifting uncomfortably, their armor making it quite audible.

  Ellen shot them a look and then sighed. She brought her finger up to her lips in a shushing gesture and made the noise until the sound of her shush was suddenly gone despite the appearance that she was still making it.

  “Did she cast silence on herself, so she didn’t have to hear us?” Syril asked.

  “Yeap,” Bill said. “She’d cast it on me at night to cancel out my snoring.”

  After five minutes more, Grom grew bored and organized a game. He threw a silver coin, and they all took turns throwing coppers at it, whoever got the closest each time got to keep the coppers. Bill was winning, by a lot.

  “You got this Syril,” Syril said to himself.

  “ Rapheal,” Grom said, “Are you using your magic to make your throw better?”

  “It’s not cheating,” he said indignantly.

  “It kinda is,” Grom said.

  “Bill has spent his life training his hand eye coordination. I spent years learning this,” Rapheal said.

  ? “It evens out.”

  “I don’t mind,” Bill said. “Beating a cheater in an honest contest is all the sweeter.”

  Syril threw his coin, and it landed between Bill’s and the silver one, making him the leader.

  Grom thought it over, and muttered a prayer to himself, the specific words inaudible to the others.

  “Whoever you are, help me out,” he said.

  The coin took on subtle glow, and Grom became suddenly more aware of the mechanics of throwing. He threw the coin, it shimmered in the air as it flew and landed in the plush carpet in the two inch section between Syril’s and the silver coin.

  “Truly Cland’s hand is in all things,” Bill said with slight reverence.

  “You come back from the dead three times and this impressed ya?” Grom asked, though he himself was surprised that it had worked.

  “All of Cland’s works are mighty, no matter how small they may be,” Bill said.

  “Aye,” Grom said, unsure what else to say.

  As he bent over to pick up his winnings, Ellen suddenly shouted, “I got it!”

  All eyes turned to her; she was standing holding her book over her head in celebration.

  “Syril,” Ellen said, “Cast a spell!”

  “ Raphael, ” Grom corrected.

  “Any spell?” Rapheal asked.

  Ellen nodded.

  “I hope you have a good laundress,” he said with a grin.

  He began casting a spell that would cover Ellen in a myriad of colors—not the smartest move just before meeting a noble—but as he was about to unleash the spell, Ellen made a cutting gesture in the air and then nothing happened.

  To say nothing happened really understates what had just occurred, but from an outside perspective that’s all it was. From Ellen’s perspective, she’d just tapped into the depths of the magical realm that is the source of all arcane power—with a little something extra from the void—to stifle Syril’s connection to that same source.

  From Syril’s perspective, it was far, far, more terrifying. While a typical counterspell simply put a barrier between the target caster and their source of power, allowing them to still possibly complete their casting if they pitted their mental acuity against their foe, this did a bit more than that. Syril had had his spell countered before, and this was nothing like his past experience.

  Along with the familiar feeling of hitting a wall, he caught a glimpse of something his brain couldn’t put into words. Something ancient yet outside of time. Something enormous yet beyond the bounds of space. Something that hungered like an infinite void, sucking in everything around it. A being so boundless, that Syril was less than nothing next to it—n amoeba under the crushing foot of a dragon, the dragon and microscopic creature at such opposite ends of the spectrum of living creatures that neither was aware of the others existence.

  Yet, in that moment he saw this being, and for just an instant, the being saw him.

  Needless to say, Syril soiled his pants, and the illusory disguise of Raphael fell away from him.

  When his wits had gathered, Syril found himself huddled in the corner of the room weeping, with Ellen, Grom and Bill looking on with concern.

  “I think it worked,” Ellen said sheepishly as she saw the recognition in Syril’s eyes.

  “You think?” Grom said, moving to help Syril up.

  Just as Syril was rising to his feet, the door to the Counts audience chamber opened and a servant walked in.

  “The Count will see you now.”

  ?

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