Chapter 19: The Party

  Once inside the party, the group quickly dispersed. The ballroom of the Count’s castle was decked out in magically enhanced finery, the illusionists of the wizarding college, bard college, and the Count’s own court wizard having been tasked with augmenting the already ornate mundane decorations with magical ones.

  The ballroom was far in the interior of the castle, and the stone walls typical of such a fortress were forgone in favor of tall windows that started a dozen feet above the floor and extended up to the high vaulted ceiling.

  With a flourish of his cloak, Linar’s distinctive garment vanished into thin air, drawing the attention of his companions who were about to leave him.

  “New trick I discovered,” he said, and then turned to leave them.

  As he walked past a waiter holding a tray of drinks, he tapped the man on his left shoulder and while the man was looking for the guest requesting his attention, he took the tray from his other hand. When the waiter turned to see who had stolen his tray, his eyes went right past Linar, another apparent waiter, looking for the culprit.

  Linar pretend to only then notice the waiter’s befuddlement.

  “Did you see who took my tray?” he asked Linar.

  “No,” Linar said, and then with the tone of a man used to being treated less than a peer said, “But I heard one of the wizards in attendance keeps making things vanish to amuse the other guests.”

  “Of course they do,” the waiter said, rubbing his temples in frustration. “They’re almost as bad as the nobles.”

  Linar scoffed

  “Not likely, you know about Duke Reynard’s son right?”

  The waiter winced.

  “Aye, I suppose pranks aren’t so bad.”

  Across the room, Ellen stood in a circle of nobles. Her facial expression was blank with a hint of interest. One to be expected on someone’s whose time was more valuable than those around them, but who still valued the input of those lesser—if only marginally. A white mug—with “expensive crystal wine class” written on the side—floated in a spectral hand beside her and she held Newt in the form of a black cat in her arms, petting him—or now more accurately it—idly as she listened. The wine bubbled menacingly as it floated, and only after the bubbles subsided did she take a sip, the hand coming to her mouth unbidden where she downed the whole mug in a single gulp.

  This was the third such time she’d done this, never acknowledging it as anything special. As soon as that mug was empty, the hand deposited on a nearby tray and moved through the room to find another. The glasses turned to mugs as soon as her spectral hand touched them, earning her dirty looks from the wait staff.

  The noble currently talking to her was going over his latest idea he was hoping to get the wizarding college to partner in. He wanted the wizards to set up permanent enchantments to push wind around his mills, and thought the idea brilliant.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Ellen shook her head, closing her eyes as he finished. She waited for her next glass of wine to appear, turned it into a mug, downed it, and then spoke, her voice perfectly articulate, despite the apparent drinking. In reality, the bubbling of each drink was her removing the alcohol from it. She could have done so invisibly, but found the bubbling gave her an air of mystique she particularly enjoyed.

  “First question,” she said. “Do you know literally anything about magic beyond ‘wizards wiggles fingers and magic go boom boom?’”

  She said the last part in a lower pitch, spacing each word out to give a primitive impression to the statement.

  The noble took a moment to respond, not expecting such a reception.

  “Of course! I’ll have you know my court wizard—”

  “Told you exactly what you wanted to hear so he’d keep getting paid by your father,” Ellen said, interrupting.

  “What do you know of the arcane coefficient of entropy?” she asked.

  “Know of it? Of course I know of it,” he said, looking affronted at the insulation that he didn’t.

  “Great,” she said. “What does it mean?”

  “Well,” he said, growing flush and losing the confidence in his tone so present when he’d talked of his proposal. “It’s incredibly complicated—of course—and if you don’t have the proper math, its not even possible to explain it to you…”

  “Try me,” Ellen said.

  “Well—you see, there’s energy, and of course some of its arcane. And if you use it… some of it gets used up and goes… somewhere else?”

  His confidence left him with each word her spoke.

  “Wow,” Ellen said, eyes wide. “That’s almost, close to what they put in those children’s books ‘The A B Cs of Magic.’ So how does it explain how your plans is terrible?”

  “It… it…” he began, then regained his confidence. “It doesn’t”

  “Oh, so close,” she said with a wince. “But I guess it’s to be expected, that ones the first page of the book, so you probably never got much further in.”

  “Now see here—” he began, growing angry, until the sound coming out of his mouth ceased despite his continued gum flapping as Ellen shushed him, the act the physical component of a spell of silence.

  “Let me make this simple,” she said. “Why would we waste all that energy moving your stupid mechanical windmills to move shafts to move gears to spin grind stones to pulverize wheat into flour when we can do this?”

  She twisted her wrist and a dozen of the precious jewels on the men and women in the circle shattered into colorful dust.

  She poked the dust with her finger, and shattered mugs appeared on the ground. She cast a spell, and the fragments of mug reformed into a mug which read “fake glass jewelry” on it in blocky black letters.

  “Those were all fakes, by the way,” she said. “You should probably have a word with your staff.”

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