The Hand We're Dealt - Chapter 11

“Seal.”

The intricate design of earth, stone, salt, wood, and a dozen other things flared with energy coaxed and stored in an array of small quartz crystals dotting the knotwork of power I'd constructed over the small hill.

Marteen van Beek watched impassively from a large rocky outcropping nearby, likely some kind of glacial deposit formed thousands of years prior.

As the energy coalesced and followed the complicated design I'd described into the soil, I reflected on what was, in some senses, my thesis project.

The Professor had, by this point, long gotten tired of seeing me bend my will towards tools to increase the quality of my life. Personally, I think it was the magical toilet and bidet that I'd made that finally broke the man. Seeing the 'higher magics' of sorcery twisted towards a device meant to deal with literal human waste was... well, beyond a waste, in his eyes. He'd outright demanded I put his lessons to better use than I was if he was going to continue teaching me.

So I had done just that.

My first 'real' act of sorcery had been a modification of the basic magical LEDs I'd placed around my room when I finally got tired of changing candles and dealing with the thick oily fumes that the slow-burning wax of this era used.

I'd created a series of leather bands to carry those spell matrixes embedded in them, placed them on my forearms, and...

Well, it worked.

The leather bands I'd created allowed me to project and control light.

It wasn't 'real' light, granted. With all of the munchkinry I'd resorted to in the end, the result was a form of magical illumination that behaved like light until someone with the right permissions told it what to do. When that happened, you could make it bend, twist, turn at right angles, or even dance.

And if you focused enough power through the arrays, you could turn mostly-harmless 'light' into a searing beam of magical laser-death.

To do that, I'd specifically omitted an upper ceiling in how much energy they could take before collapsing. It made the designs a bit less efficient and much longer, but that just meant another few layers of wrapped leather. All in all, it was a great little experiment to showcase my capabilities outside of making simple magical gadgets for everyday life.

The Professor had taken one look at it, pronounced it 'passable' and set me on another task.

And another after that.

And another after that.

Around the fifth time that happened, I finally got the hint and proposed my own project before I could get assigned one by my master.

After having my proposal for a magical ceiling fan dismissed with prejudice, I also intuited that it needed to be something that was 'worthy of the art.'

So I'd taken a year to build an intricate holographic armillary sphere for tracking the major constellations.

If nothing else, it kept the old bastard off my fucking back.

So I'd upped the ante this year.

The most advanced and powerful thing I'd ever made.

Now to see if I'd bungled everything or not.

…

The idiot child had finally stopped wasting his time.

It was one thing, Marteen reflected, to whittle away at one's own life thinking about creating little toys to amuse oneself, but that was not a fitting fate for his apprentice. At least, not while he still drew breath. The boy had it in him to be great.

He just needed to leave behind these childish delusions he clung to.

If he wanted to spend his final years playing nanny to an easily-amused magical infant, he would have simply settled for an idiot magician and let the art die with him.

Better for it to die here and now than be twisted to tawdry ends!

The boy was using it to clean toilets!

He had the power of the very Heavens and Earth at his disposal and he was using it to wipe his ass!

Marteen could tolerate much in a failure of an apprentice. Even a student of only middling talent would have sufficed, but to have one which held such potential squander it so... the old man had never thought himself much of a teacher, despite his profession of several decades. Learning was something his students did. Teaching was just the presentation of the material they needed to wrap their weak and incapable minds around whatever was being discussed.

Laziness, pure and simple, that's what it was.

As was evident with his apprentice.

A coruscating pattern of light briefly brought a second sun's brightness to the sky, the magical working Henry had undertaken straining the temporary wards erected to contain and obfuscate the energy.

Then it started to shrink.

No... compress itself.

That was impressive all on its own, a feat he'd seldom seen equaled among human practitioners. It was rare for a human to get to the point where they could comfortably handle controlling that much energy, yet young Henry seemed to do it with an almost casual ease.

Against the glare of the power that was being refined, reinforced, and structured, his apprentice wore a look of almost comically-bored focus, his hands extended and manipulating currents of raw energy as if he were dipping them into a placid stream.

Marteen may have never taught a student the arts before, but he had heard enough of his peers complain about the way those children flinched from the energy they were supposed to master. It was one of the reasons he'd held off so long on taking a student himself. Babying a neophyte was the last thing he wished to waste his time on, and there was no more simple a task than not being scared of your own capabilities than he could imagine.

The other side he'd heard – and seen more than a bit of – was the type of casual arrogance only a child could possess when toying with the fabric of the world itself. Without knowledge of the dangers, something that only seemed able to come from being burned by the energy itself. Not enough to maim or cripple, but enough to disabuse a student of their superiority.

Breathtakingly few practitioners went into the study of the art with a disregard for the danger they were in while simultaneously maintaining a respect for the power they were using.

Truthfully, Marteen knew of no real way to actually train that level of awareness and understanding of acceptable risk that was found in the most skilled and insightful magicians, sorcerers, and wizards...

Thankfully, something seemed to have finally gone right in his life after having been forced to flee to this godforsaken land after the fool's errand of supporting that Theresa bitch. Speaking up against madness, he'd learned, did little to affect the course of events when one was surrounded by the very lunatics themselves!

And then there was his Sacred Gear.

The Encyclopedia.

Marteen would be hard-pressed to imagine a more mundane name for such an incredible supernatural tool. It was precisely the kind of name that Henry Bell would give a blessing from God Himself, though. The boy who bent the firmament of the world and the echo of Creation Itself to common daily tasks... yes, Henry was precisely the kind of person to do something like that.

Today was not the Summer Solstice for Henry Bell.

No, it was a Tuesday.

And that was it.

Marteen did not believe, deep down, that he would be able to engender the kind of reverence that practitioners should have for the art. Perhaps with another decade or two, but even then...

He was tired.

He'd lived a long life, lost almost everything important to him, and been forced to rebuild from the scraps left more than once. Henry Bell was, in most ways, everything he could wish for in an apprentice. If he took to the ancient mystic art of sorcery like a carpenter took to working a block wood, then so be it. There was little enough time to teach the boy everything he could anyway. Some lessons would come with time, or not at all.

Standing up, Marteen cursed the weakness in his body as he pulled out a handkerchief and coughed into it.

At least the cloth came away clean today.

“The curse is getting stronger,” he sighed, leveraging his walking stick as he made his way down the large stone he'd taken for a seat before limping up the hill his apprentice was finishing the ritual on.

The great mass of magic which he'd summoned up and pulled together was no simply a terribly bright star of light hovering above the center of the diagram. Eventually, he made his way up towards the the peak of the hill where Henry was carefully discharging the remaining magical energies clinging to the array, as he'd made sure the boy knew to do. Casting his own metaphysical senses over the hilltop, he frowned.

Methodical as usual.

Irritating boy.

“Well, let's see it,” Marteen demanded, hobbling towards the center, a century of habit forcing him to step neatly over each of the ritual lines.

The day he disturbed a still-warm pattern like that was the day he'd take poison and put himself out of his doddering misery.

“Here, Master,” Henry offered obediently, holding up the tiny silver locket.

Silver, a good choice for the metal, even if it was a bit expensive. Still, the too-cunning boy knew well what he'd think of this project and he'd had little reason to turn it down. It was, superficially, even simpler than the boy's previous projects. Almost a waste of time, if looked at from a certain angle given that there was nothing new in the calculations.

But...

Marteen narrowed his gaze at the polished oval on the face of the locket.

There's something to be said for the fundamentals applied to mastery.

“I'm thinking of calling it a 'Second Heart,'” the Bell boy offered, then dipped his head at Marteen's gaze.

“The basics of sorcery are learning which materials respond in which ways when used together,” Marteen lectured softly, his senses poking and prodding. “Our magic works with the design we implement in our surroundings to give it form and function. Thus it could be said that the highest demonstration of mastery in the basic components of our art is to create a method by which that very resonance can be controlled or eliminated entirely.”

Marteen's eyes flicked towards the boy's blank gaze, almost wishing for some of that hungry youthful hope so he could dash it.

But no, Henry was smarter than that.

“This is not that,” Marteen stated, holding out the locket for his student to take. “But it is the first step on a path towards that goal, should you wish to aim for it.”

He paused again as he dropped the silver mirror-locket into the boy's hand.

'Second Heart,' was a good name for what he'd crafted. It was, as he'd thought earlier, a simple thing, but that did not stop the implementation from being difficult. Constructing a magical item that would take the place of your own mind, body, and soul for a single conceptual blow was no small feat. The mere fact that the boy could do so after only four years of study was a testament to his talent, though.

Yes, Marteen could ask for a better student in some ways.

But as long as the boy's own simple naivete didn't kill him or he grew a big head over his abilities, Henry Bell was a worthwhile successor.

As long as they boy would stop obsessing over the most inane and childish of things!

…

Ah, now that that's done I should be able to beg off starting a new project for a month before he gets irritable again. What should I focus on in the meantime?

The thought hung for a moment as I scrolled through my indexed project list.

Oooh! Magical dishwasher! Yes!

Then the crush of demonic power was in the air and the Professor was pulling me behind him, his cane out threateningly in one hand and his own power unfurling like a cloud.

I followed my mentor's gaze upwards, finding not one, but two figures floating in the air with black bat-wings extended, though motionless. Distantly, I felt the flicker of another pair of powers ignite and then rapidly fade into the distance, but nearly the whole of my mind was taken up by the focus on the devils in the sky above me.

One was slightly tanned, a skin tone even closer to caucasian than my own. He wore a fairly elaborate outfit of red and black leather with dull yellow trim stretched over a muscular body that left some of his chest and most of his abdomen uncovered. At a glance, I'd put him on the younger side of a human's appearance... likely in his very early thirties if past his twenties at all, but that meant almost nothing to a species that counted its lifespan in millennia. He could be anywhere from the twenty-five he looked to five or six hundred years old.

The Four Satanas, if I remembered correctly, weren't even that old and were already the powerhouses of their faction.

Staring up at the figure in the sky, I had to wonder...

Was this even close to that? Was what I was feeling right now the average power level of a devil?

It made the frustration of the Hero Faction a little clearer if it was.

So this is what it's like to feel insignificant.

“Marteen van Beek?” The elder of the two devils in the sky asked, blinking, then smiled. “I'd thought you dead decades ago!”

The figure at my side did not particularly relax, even if there was no threat in the words. “As I'd hoped most of my enemies would! If you have sated your curiosity, hellspawn, be gone with you!”

Proving that the devil knew my master, the supernatural being chuckled instead of taking offense, reaching out to take the hand of the younger and, with only the subtlest flap of their wings, lowered themselves to the ground before us.

I slipped my newly-made magic item into my pocket and made sure the folds of my outer jacket hid my Sacred Gear from view. Even if it could only be truly sensed upon activation when changing subjects, I didn't want to risk it.

“Cleria, this old bitter fellow is a contact of mine among the human magical societies,” the elder of the two introduced, nodding towards the younger girl.

She was thin, slight, and wore a dress that ended in ruffles at the upper thigh with stockings that left Absolute Territory between the two. It was something that probably would have had heads turning and sermons blistering the moment they stepped anywhere near a current-day American settlement, even if it was nothing too remarkable to the sensibilities of my old life.

It actually made me a bit homesick, to tell the truth.

“I am Cleria Belial,” the young devil stated, moving into a small bow. “Branch House of the Belial Clan of the 72 Pillars.”

“Marteen van Beek, Sorcerer,” my mentor bit out, glaring at the elder of the two. “And my apprentice. Boy! Introduce yourself!”

I cleared my throat and stepped around my master. “Henry Bell, Master Marteen van Beek's Apprentice in the Mystic Arts. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“You actually took an apprentice,” the elder of the two muttered, smiling as he shook his head. “Humans have always surprised me, I suppose. Very well, Apprentice Bell. My name is Deihauser Belial, Barony House of the 72 Pillar Families.”

“If you expect me to offer refreshments, I'm afraid those outfits of yours aren't anything I'd be able to show off around these parts,” the Professor snorted.

“Oh, if that's the case it's a problem easily remedied,” Diehauser stated with a snap of his fingers. A moment later he was wearing something far more modest that covered a great deal more skin.

His... cousin? Relation? The younger member of his family took a moment longer to ignite a Magician's magic circle that, likewise, made her body glow before it resolved into a new outfit that was much more appropriate for early nineteenth-century New England.

“Well, may I take you up on those refreshments now? We do have a great deal to catch up on!” Diehauser smiled.

The Professor bit off a particularly nasty curse and turned to stomp off in the direction of our house. My shoulder slumped and I sighed as I gave our soon-to-be guests a bow. “Please, this way.”

“Oh, how delightful! It seems the old man hasn't quite burned the politeness out of you yet!” Daihauser chuckled as he walked along. “Cleria, do keep young... Henry, wasn't it? Keep him company while I catch up with an old friend!”

With that, the elder of the two practically skipped off to walk with my mentor.

Cleria and I exchanged glances.

“I'm sorry for my brother,” she murmured with a tilt of her head. “He's quite impressive in the Rating Games, but his attitude often... leaves something to be desired of.”

“Apology accepted. I suppose... I should apologize for my Master,” I sighed. “I'd make the excuse that this was a bad day, but... he's like this with everyone.”

Cleria smiled at me, sweeping her white hair over an ear. “Apology accepted. Escort me to your residence, Mr. Bell?”

I shook my head, smiling back. “Please, call me Henry. It's just this way.”

“Then I insist you call me Cleria,” she replied, and we began walking.

The one-sided chatter in front of us, though, apparently demanded we make up our own conversation, as the silence between us began to linger into awkwardness. “If it isn't rude, may I ask what brought you and your brother out this far? I'm given to understand that the Americas aren't very popular with devils.”

Left unsaid was that there was a particular reason behind the Professor's move here.

“Diehauser heard about a new promising human practitioner in the human city of Toronto. North of here,” Cleria confessed. “He's been looking for a new contradicted mage ever since your Master fell out of touch some decades prior.”

I blinked.

Marteen van Beek? Dealing with devils?

My face must have shown something of my disbelief, as Cleria giggled and shook her head. “From what my brother says, he was the point of contact between his organization and Diehauser, who served as the most genial of our clan and is often sent to negotiate should the need arise.”

“I suppose that explains some things,” I hummed. “Though it raises other questions. My master is not one to talk about his life previous to my apprenticeship. I've heard bits and pieces from his scholarly acquaintances, but nothing of substance.”

“Ah... you don't know he was one of the most skilled of the Netherlands' College of Sorcery, then,” she informed me with a secretive grin.

I let that fact resonate with what I knew of the older man and, more importantly, of what I knew about history.

Contrary to what most people of my time might know of the Low Countries – Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg – weren't just pathways for the Germans to invade France. In fact, for most of European history, the idea that a German army would make it into France proper would be laughable. The sole exception to that claim being the Austrians who had, through their royal family's holdings, once controlled the Netherlands as a Hapsburg possession.

Truthfully, I didn't know all that much about those particular wars. Dutch names were difficult to pronounce.

What I did know was that the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs had fought a number of wars between themselves, France, and England and that the Netherlands were invaded almost every single time. So, given my Master's age... the last significant pre-Napoleon fuckery around the Netherlands was probably...

“The War of Austrian Succession,” I concluded, really only notable for being yet another European war that resolved nothing and set the stage for a bigger one a few years later. In this instance, it was the Seven Years' War, which had much more significant and far-reaching consequences.

“I think it was that, yes,” Cleria nodded, her face scrunching up. “You humans have so many wars I can never keep track of them. Anyway, the College voted to remain loyal to the Austrian Empress and got shelled by France when they were invaded. I don't think your Master's old friends thought much of gunpowder or canons.”

I hummed thoughtfully, nodding. “I suppose that would explain things. Cannons have really come into their own in the past hundred years or so. If the College were full of people who focused on the effectiveness of magic...”

Well, they'd probably set up shop in the sixteen hundreds or earlier. Effective artillery pieces did exist during that time, but they weren't fielded en masse like they would be starting in the seventeen hundreds. A sorcery sitting in their stronghold... or even a particularly talented magician could simply throw out a lightning bolt or a fireball and silence the guns fairly easily. Especially if the cannoneers weren’t well trained or experienced.  Gunners could take several shots to properly align their aim.

“It's a shame, really,” Cleria sighed, her head dipping. “My brother says it was the last great gathering of sorcerers in Europe and that our family had a lot of dealings with them to help refine important reagents.”

“He hasn't looked for a magician to do the same with?” I asked, half curious and half simply making conversation.

She shrugged lightly. “Diehauser can be silly about some things. He says that magicians don't do as good work as sorcerers do. Something about attention to detail or something.”

“There's some truth to that,” I stated with a shrug of my own. “Magicians rely on the spell itself to do most of the heavy lifting during a ritual or whatever. So they tend to be sloppier with the setup and force power through the matrix they're using to make things come out alright.”

“Huh... I guess big brother knows what he was talking about, then,” Cleria muttered, her green gaze snapping up to meet my own blue.

I blinked.

“Will you be my contracted magi-er, I mean, sorcerer?” Cleria asked, leaning forward. Then she grinned even wider. “Or, better yet! Join my peerage! I just got my pieces! You can be one of my bishops!”

I snorted, chuckling. “Ah... that's an honor. However... I haven't finished my training yet, and my Master would be very angry if I engaged in any agreements without his oversight. He's very strict.”

Cleria's enthusiasm dimmed. “Hmm... you're right. I suppose having a fully-trained bishop would be better than one only-” She cut herself off and turned back to me. “How much longer do you have in your apprenticeship?”

I sighed a little.

Sorry Future Me, this is really going to suck for you in a few years. My bad.

“Six years,” I replied, because the Professor seemed convinced he'd be dead by that point, which would mean my apprenticeship was going to be concluded one way or another. “After that, I'll be on my own.”

“Six years then,” Cleria nodded, both to me and to herself. “In six years I'll come back and offer you my piece again.”

“I'll look forward to it,” I stated with a nod.

And... I didn't know if that was a lie, truthfully.

Becoming a devil... it was certainly a choice, though it would make me beholden to the interests of whatever devil I was 'adopted' by specifically and their house more generally. Even if the Belial were apparently only a Barony House in the Underworld, I knew enough that such a title would mean they'd have resources equivalent to most minor nations here on Earth.

And it was the resources I was most concerned about.

Well, that and the fact that the Abrahamic Factions were still in a cold war and, unless something radical changed, would be for another two centuries.

Joining the ranks of the devils meant declaring myself an enemy of Heaven and the Fallen.

I wasn't sure if I wanted that smoke.

Moreover, though, the primary benefit that most people signed on for in the case of the devils was the extended lifespan, and that simply didn't factor into the equation for me.

Oh, my experiments were still developing, but I had about five or six theoretical solutions to the problem of human mortality. It had, after all, been a pretty significant motivating factor throughout the millennia of human civilization and one that all sorts of mystics, healers, and alchemists had fought to solve before it eventually overcame them.

Some of their work was incomplete.

A few of them had been writing for centuries on the subject before they finally stopped.

One or two of them... I suspected that they were still out there, given how recently their notes tallied up to.

The problem was that each of them had a flaw in their capabilities. Or, perhaps not a 'flaw,' but exacted a price for that immortality. No such thing as a free lunch, apparently.

Some only made you immortal in the sense that you wouldn't die of old age. Others prevented death by violence, but did nothing for the ravages of time. Rare ingredients or extreme power in the manufacturing process were also common requirements. The one that needed a cup of dragon's blood each century was particularly interesting, but... probably not something I was going to rely on.

I mean, unless I got a pet dragon, and even then...

The most promising were, of course, Flamel's Philosopher's Stone and a completely unknown doctor from ancient Japan named Katsuhei were the most promising so far.

The flaw in Flamel's Elixir of Life was that you had to make the Stone first, which required both an elaborate ritual as well as enormous magical power. That would likely necessitate a Dragon Vein Nexus of some kind... and those were usually occupied by people who didn't want to rent them out for extended periods of time. That, and the Elixir was only good for a week at a time when you took it, so you had to keep taking it or it'd quit working.

Katsuhei's drug, the 'Eternal Lotus Powder,' simply required a rare flower that I'd never heard of and that probably only grew in remote places in Japan. It was, however, a one-and-done type of drug, given the person who consumed it ageless immortality in the prime of their life, curing all diseases in the process. Unlike the Elixir, though, they'd be vulnerable to mundane or magical injury, whereas Flamel's stone could produce a fluid that would actively mend any injury you possessed when you took it.

And, of course, I had no idea how the two would interact if they were taken together.

Flamel's, at least, was pretty well-documented.

Katsuhei... well, he'd done as best as he could. A lot of it was rooted in eastern folk medicine that lacked any sort of observable cause for the drug to work. If it weren't for the fact that the man himself had seemed to live over two hundred years from his notes, I'd be skeptical of his work. He was also a good man, one who sought out the poor, desperate, and unfortunate to help with his medicine instead of selling it to the highest bidder and living a life of luxury.

I’d need to test both of them before I took either, of course.

There was more than enough information that either of the men who’d invented them hadn’t had access to that might make the formula better.

“What are you thinking about?” Cleria asked suddenly, leaning into my field of view.

I blinked, taken aback momentarily before I shook my head to clear it.  “Ah… just the future, I suppose.”

“A future as a member of my peerage,” Cleria nodded authoritatively.

“That might be in the cards, it might not be,” I shrugged.

“Hey, don’t think you can back out now!”  Cleria huffed, crossing her arms.  “You already accepted!”

I simply laughed, shaking my head as the devil noble followed me to the house.

~~~

Ugh! I swear this chapter tried to kill me.

Anyway, here it is. By the time you're reading this, I'm probably already working on the next update. I'm pretty sure it's going to be either Where Your God Is or Nexus Event. I haven't been back to either of those in a while and need a change of pace.

Thanks again for your patience, I hope you've enjoyed the chapter.