Thursday, September 29, 2005

   Chapter 9: Gerrit (part 3)
The two boys had just kicked off their muddy shoes and changed into clean, dry clothes when there was a knock at the door. Lucifer, with Sasheeta on his shoulder, opened it.
Neither of them was surprised when Panda and Gerrit entered the room. “Is this a good time?” Panda asked lightly, meeting eyes with Pen, who was sitting on his bed.
“Sure,” he answered.
“Would you like to sit down?” Lucifer offered, gesturing to his own bed while sitting down beside Pen. Sasheeta automatically clambered down his arm and took a seat on his lap.
“Thanks,” the Havoc graduate said, sitting down, also. Gerrit remained standing, leaning on his huge battle-axe. “You two probably know why we’re here, right?” he started, taking on a more serious tone.
“Yes,” Pen answered, focusing his eyes on the floor. It was because of him, of course. Lucifer shot him a sideways glance.
“You’re searching for wild magic,” the black-winged angel said, his voice having only a touch of force behind it. His dark brown eyes, unlike Pen’s black ones, fearlessly met the gaze of the adults.
“Yes,” Gerrit said. “I’ve been looking for the source of wild magic for as long as I can remember.”
“The source?” Pen asked, feeling less self-conscious.
“We believe that there is only one mind behind wild magic,” he explained. “Elf-wizards do not just go wild by their own free will. They are more intelligent than to do that. There must be something—or someone—who is forcing them.”
“But what does this have to do with us?” questioned Lucifer. “We don’t have wild magic.”
“This mastermind,” Panda continued, “seems to be looking for something. Powerful magic-users, angel, elf, or dragon alike, have come up missing. Some of them never return; others become wild, spreading their contaminated magic into artifacts and even people.
“Over the years we have been hunting wild magic, we’ve become familiar with the energy-shaping ways of the wildness. The magic works with the binding and the breaking apart of life-energy.”
“It is the only magic that could have made you the way you are, Pen,” Gerrit said, repeating what he had mentioned before. “We thought that we had finally discovered the mystery of the boy with the shadow eyes! We all believed that!”
“You were disappointed,” Lucifer filled in.
“Yes,” Gerrit said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t understand it, but I would know if Pen had wild magic. I don’t even sense a spark of any kind of magic in him.”
“I know,” Pen said. He had heard it often. “I have no magic.”
“No, you do not. Your sword, however, is a different matter.”
Almost automatically, Pen drew Lucaya and looked over her blade. There were no symbols depicting angelic magic, and none of the energy that elvish magic gave off. She was unmarked in any way—only her makeup made her a vessel for magic—except for the two words that were her name.
Gerrit took a step back, his eyes starting to sparkle with an odd green light. “That sword holds a strange magic,” he said.
“May I see her?” Panda questioned. The boy reluctantly handed his beloved sword over, knowing that he had little choice but to obey. He was also curious; was her strange name connected to the magic that Gerrit was picking up?
“It’s wild magic, but it’s not like what we’re familiar with,” Gerrit continued. “It feels uncompleted, like an unfinished thought. And it traces back into angelic magic, as if it was only an experimental addition to the code, like an enforcer. I don’t think that this wild magic was made by the wizard we are hunting.”
“An enforcer?” Pen asked, surprised by this news. “Of what?”
Gerrit closed his eyes for a minute, and they waited in silence until he opened them again. “The code is incomplete, as of yet, but the sword will let you know when it finds the symbols that rouse its power. When it is complete, the sword will give up itself…” his gaze met Pen’s and did not look away. “… And there will awaken something of far greater creation.”
His words echoed inside the minds of the listeners. Panda examined the sword again, this time in awe, before he handed it back to Pen. “Here,” he said. “She is your sword. I don’t doubt that she was given to you for a purpose.” He got to his feet, adding: “Take good care of her, Penumbra.”
As they left the room, Pen pulled himself out of his thought-filled daze. “Wait!” he yelled, jumping after them. They stopped in the hall, looking back to see him. “You don’t know what the symbols are, do you?” he asked hopefully, wondering how deep Gerrit’s senses went.
“No,” said the man. “This sword is very old, older even than any wild magic I have ever felt, and yet it is more familiar. I cannot tell you the few words I know of the sword. I can’t speak them; I don’t dare speak them.”
“Why not?” Pen blurted out, which was very unlike him, but his drive to discover the hidden power of Lucaya was greater than any restraint he possessed.
Gerrit examined the boy from head to toe with his eyes, before he spoke again. “I am like you in many ways.” He turned his back to him, starting to leave after Panda, who had already disappeared down the stairs. “And yet, I am very unlike you. My body is made of stone, a puppet that I sculpted and control with the power of the magic that my spirit still possesses. I am not alive, in the conventional sense.” He turned to look over his shoulder at the boy one more time. “My soul and life-energy were torn from my body and harbored inside a stone. It was wild magic did this to me. That is why I must hunt it until I find the wild wizard. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Gerrit sighed heavily and made his way to the stairs. “We will meet again,” he said as he walked. “Penumbra of the shadow eyes.”
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