Mind Forged: Book One of the Enchanters of Xarparion (24 page)

I stood in fron
t of him, blocking him from the girls.

“
You’re going to die now, Enchanter!”

I had nothing to say to him
, so I said nothing. As soon as I could see that he was starting to summon a fireball, I closed the short distance between us, grabbed him around the neck with one hand, and lifted him off the ground.

“
Next time you try anything like this, or hurt anyone and I hear about it, I will end you.” I looked around at the rest of the now silent dining hall. “Anyone mind if I take out the trash?”

No one said no
; in fact, almost everyone begged me to do so, even a fire wizard teacher.

I
whispered so the others wouldn’t hear me, “I’ll tell you what, Naton. I’m entering the tournament coming up, so why don’t you enter when you wake up and we can settle this there. Deal?”

He
stopped struggling and nodded. “Fine,” he spat, “but why ‘when I wake up’?”

I
smiled and used my enhanced strength to throw him across the dining hall and straight into a stone pillar. The impact blew chunks off and spider webbed the huge stone column. Naton kind of splattered and then slid down the column head first into a discarded food bin. I walked over and made sure he wasn’t dead. As expected, the enchantment I placed on his robes when I was holding him worked. He wasn’t dead, but he had a few broken bones and was out cold. After removing my enchantment, I quietly returned to our table with applause echoing from nearly every table in the place.

Unlike
the rest of the dining hall, our table had continued business as normal. As I was walking back, one of the earth wizards hurriedly fixed the column that I had damaged. I even saw a few of the smaller students kicked the bully on their way out.

I
sat down as if nothing happened and, in fact, it felt kind of good. Julia was hugging Dusk, but I couldn’t tell who was comforting who. Dawn placed a hand on my forearm. “Thank you for standing up for us.”

“
I always will.”

Lin came over and wrapped an arm around me
. “Yeah, I told them that, but they have never seen your fights with Naton. Well, fight is the wrong word, more like when you kick his ass all the time.”

“
Lin could you and Julia do me a favor? Can you take them to Maya for me? I need to get to class. I would send them with Nia, but she gets protective after things like this happen. And if he ever bothers you guys again, just open a hole in the ground and crush the bastard.”

“
No problem! I am really going to enjoy doing that.”

I took
off with Nia on my shoulder and more cheers coming from the dining hall as I left. More people hated that guy than I thought. I swung by the stable to see that my horse made it back just fine and to collect my box. And on second thought, the horse should come as well. With box and warhorse in tow, I headed off to the forge to get to work. We got there a bit late, but I wasn’t worried about time for today.

“
Darroth, where are you?”

“
Right here, you blasted idiot!” He came out from behind a weapons rack. “What the hell is so damn important?”

“
We have work to do.”

He huffed,
“Tell me about it, all they have me doing right now is sharpening swords.”

“
No, I mean real work.”

His eyes brightened as though he had won a prize
. “Really? What have you got?”

“
I’m entering the wizard tournament coming up so I need a rush order - a suit of armor for myself, of my own making.”

“
That should be fun, but you would need some good steel to work with.”

“
Got that covered.” I placed my hand on the box to open it. Once it was open, his eyes gleamed with delight; the dwarf was in dwarf heaven. He ran his hands up and down the rows of blocks. I’m pretty sure he would have been delighted to climb up into the box and take a blissful nap on the bars too.

“
Where did you get these beauties?”

“
It’s a gift from my birth father.”

“
Who is your dad, the smith god?”

“
No, he doesn’t seem to get along with them.”

He stood there silently, as several conflicting emotions ran across his broad face
. “That was meant to be a joke, kid.”

“
Yes, but it is close to the truth. I need to turn this into armor. Any tips?”

He tried to pick up one of the blocks but couldn
’t with his first try. Once he used both hands, he was finally able to lift one of the small blocks out of the box. “By the gods! What is this? It must weigh two hundred pounds. How would you even move in a suit of this stuff?”

I picked up one of the blocks
and tossed it up a few inches and caught it casually. It felt like it was maybe three or four pounds and I wasn’t using my extra strength. “Um, it feels lighter than steel to me. It must only work for me and Maya.”

“
Figures. So what the hell am I supposed to do?”

I
smiled and pulled him outside. “I need you to armor our horses.”

“
You’re just full of surprises today, aren’t you?” He walked over and assessed the warhorse with a practiced eye, touching him here and there, inspecting bone structure and finally running his hand across his broad muzzle. “This is quite an animal.”

“
A gift from my mother.”

He whistled thoughtfully
. “You have some powerful family. So you want me to armor him?”

“
Yes, him and his sister.”

He stood there thinking
. “Ok, I have some ideas. But are you sure that you want me to do this? When your armor is much better?”

“
Darroth, I have no experience with armored horses - you do. Besides, I think you would have a lot of fun with a pair of horses that are trained warhorses and are at least five times as strong as normal.

He again stopped to think
. “Warhorses, five times as strong you say? That could mean five times the armor.” Stroked his beard some more. “You know what? I’ll do it! Should be fun, but I’ll need some time to plan and to test how much they can safely carry.”

“
No problem, let’s get to work then.”

We went to one of the drawing rooms to start charting out plans for our own
projects. As always, Nia was a great help, she has great drawing skills. The two of us had a design well-planned out with detail by the time we had to leave. I collected the papers, and Nia had her other roll of paper, which she had been hiding from me. After dinner, I caught her working on it a few times, but she still wouldn’t let me see it.

Two days later
, I started the actual construction of the armor. The metal that my Father gave me was very surprising to work with. It seemed to mold itself into the shape I wanted without really any hammer strikes. Which was fortunate since the hottest fire we could summon in the forge wouldn’t even begin to soften it. All I really had to do was pattern it in my mind and will it to take that shape. I was making great time. Enchanting was easy too, every piece seemed to know what enchantment it wanted and no other. Needless to say, some were getting rather odd.

By this time
, Nia must have finished her secret project. She’s been spending most of her time on my shoulder again.

“
So, done with your secret project?”

She sighed
unhappily, “No, I just don’t know how to get the measurements I need.”

“
Well, I can help you if you need.”

She thought it over for a minute
. “Fine, but I’m not showing you what it is yet. I need Maya’s measurements and don’t know how to get them.”

“
That’s easy. All we have to do is have Rosa get them for you for some other reason, like another dress. Then when you’re in there helping, Rosa can give them to you without Maya knowing.”

She
smiled. “Well, that should be fun!”

Several hours later…

“Rosa, I don’t need any more damn dresses! And you two, I can’t believe you two are helping her! This is no way to treat a queen!”

Rosa, Dawn, and Dusk were holding Maya down so Nia could take all the measurements she needed
. I estimated that it would be best for my health if I wasn’t involved. Thankfully for everyone, Nia was very fast and efficient, and all figures were recorded and double checked in a few minutes. Once she was finished, Rosa had Dawn and Dusk released her and they wisely dove for cover.

“
Ok, Alex, come calm her down for us.”

I knew exactly what to do
, but I don’t think that’s what she meant. I signaled for Nia to do her thing and suddenly the room was filled with music. Maya looked at me strangely, confused about both my presence there and the music. I smiled and showed her the glass of wine I had hidden behind my back.

“
Alex, what’s all this?”

“
It’s a celebration! Some of the staff gave all this to us for a thank you. Somehow they feel that burning down the barracks was a good thing, because of the beautiful gardens the Earth Tower is putting in where the wood structures used to stand. They obviously weren’t the ones having to live underground because of it.”

Maya
was still confused, but Rosa wrapped her arm around us and gave us a hug. But apparently that hug was not really for us…I looked at my hand and I was no longer holding my drink. By the time I turned around, she had already drained the glass. “Thanks, Rosa.”

She
smiled at me. “My pleasure!” And all of us burst out laughing.

I
grabbed the crate I had stashed outside the door and brought it in. Inside were ten more bottles of different kinds of wine and ale. “Well, I guess it’s party time then!”

Everyone let out a
cheer and joined me, well everyone but Nia who just stayed with water. But, either way, we all had a blast. The twins were great to watch, they have never had alcohol before and the effects on them were hilarious.

Apparently
, in addition to loving bright, shiny objects, dragons are also very fond of good wine. Unfortunately, the more they drink, the more they lose control of their shape shifting abilities. For the rest of the evening, it wasn’t unusual to see a couple of bat/wolf/zebra/human/dragon hybrids greedily upending the last of a bottle down their throats.

After every bottle was empty
, the twins and Rosa were out cold and Maya wasn’t too far behind them.

“
Why are you not tipsy with the rest of us?” she slurred slightly.

“
Because I planned ahead and only had two glasses.”

She
groaned. “Why? What nefarious scheme are you cooking up now? By the way, I am so going to hate you in the morning.”

“
No, you won’t. I made sure you won’t have a hangover.”

She
smiled and snuggled deeper into the chair she was in. “Ok, Magic Boy, thanks, but I think I’ll take a nap now.”

S
he was out in seconds, leaving me and Nia to do the clean up. We got all of them into Rosa’s huge bed and cleaned up after the party.

O
nly Nia and I were left awake so we decided to have a little fun of our own. We ended up in the kitchen whipping up a sweet tasting nectar tart thing that Nia loved. But since she never bothered to learn how to make them, only what they look and taste like, this turned out to be a fun adventure of taste testing. Our first few were nasty, but as we went along, they got better.

After a few hours
, we finally got it right, having gone through all our baking ingredients. In truth, they were very tasty, but it was getting late and we were both covered in flour. So we wrapped up the rest for later, cleaned up and got ready for bed. On our way, we swung by Rosa’s room to check in on everyone. All four of them were in a big pile on her huge bed, tangled in a mess of limbs. Nia and I had to leave before we woke them with our laughing. We weren’t going to risk one of them waking up before morning. So we threw a blanket over them and went to bed.

Morning was even better
than the two of us could ever have hoped. We got up a few minutes early to get ready. After getting dressed, we silently slipped into Rosa’s room so we had prime seats for the show. As if on cue, both Rosa and Maya woke up. It took them a few seconds to realize that they were tangled up with two dragons…as dragons. Dawn’s left wing was twitching causing a nice breeze to flow across everyone. Maya had her arms and legs wrapped around Dusk as though she was a pillow. Rosa seemed to be in the most uncomfortable position of being on the bottom of the pile with a tail in her face.

Nia and I
burst out laughing; the sight of them trying to work their way out from under two dead-to-the-world dragons was hilarious. What made things even funnier was when Maya finally got free, she started to help Rosa until Dawn rolled over on top of her, leaving them both unable to get free. Rosa was still able to move her upper body so she could talk to us.