Mage Bane: A Wizards of Apex Valley Tale

MAGE BANE
A Wizards of Apex Valley Tale

By

Brian E. Ritenbaugh

Ted Schuyler dropped the box of tumbled malachite on the floor. The stones made a hailstone beat on the tile floor.

“You okay there, Ted? Ted?” Mr. Clevis tapped the college student on his shoulder. Ted turned his gaze to his boss at “Stones and Stuff.”

“Sorry, Mr. Clevis.” The lanky youth bent to pick up the spilled stones. His brown fell across his matching eyes.

“I’ve never seen you distracted like that. Something buggin’ you?”

“No, just kind of in a daze today,” As Ted finished picking up the stones, his eyes didn’t leave the box Mr. Clevis was placing on the store shelf. “That a new mineral, Mr. Clevis? I don’t remember seeing it here before.”

Mr. Clevis tapped the box of dark flaky lumps. The shelf talker read “Magebanite.” Ted knew it as Mage Bane. The label was a cute play on the name, Ted thought. But who is playing the game?

“Yeah, the fella I order from sent me a batch. He said it was a new discovery. He said it has real unique property. Seems it’ll scatter electricity. They say lightning struck it and bounced right off.”

“Really,” Ted’s voice was flat. It also does a hell of a number on magic too. Any wizard who touches it would be sick for a week. And because it’s soft and flaky, it’ll break down into a powder. One wiff of that would be excruciatingly painful. If the wizard was lucky he’d end up in a coma. If not…well…his magic would be disrupted and kill him and probably anyone within a six mile radius.

“That’s pretty fascinating,” Ted fought to keep the frown off his face.

“Isn’t it?” Mr. Clevis returned. “I’m trying to figure out a way to show that off. I was thinking about a glass fish tank and a Jacob’s Ladder. Hey, you’re a Physics major, aren’t ya? Maybe you could come up with something?”

“I’ll….um…see what I can do.” To get rid of that stone before it kills me.

“Hey, that’d be great.” Mr. Clevis looked at his watch. “Well, I think I’m going to get something to eat before we get busy with the evening crowd. Hold down the fort.”

After Mr. Clevis left the mineral and artifact store for the mall’s food court, Ted picked up the phone and punched a number.

“History Department, this is Professor Schuyler.”

“Dad, it’s me. You’re not going to believe this, but we got something in the store you better come and see.”




A few hours later, Jon Schuyler met his son at work. “I don’t believe it.”

The History professor stood as close as he could bring himself to the shelf that held the Mage Bane. His gray eyes were riveted to the box labeled “Magebanite.”

Jon shook his head again.

”I don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t at first either, Dad, but there it is. What do we do about it?”

Jon considered the question. Though they were not among the most powerful wizards on Earth, like their friends Ben Avery and Adriana Solomon, neither he nor his son could touch it. Even a small amount could be deadly to them.

Nor could they cast a spell on it to levitate it or teleport it out of the store. Like the bolt of lightning that attracted the attention of scientists, magic, too would be disrupted and dispersed, but with far more deadly consequences. So how do they move it?

“Hello, Professor Schuyler. What brings you to the mall today?” Mr. Clevis’ cotton ball head poked around the browser shelves.

Maybe there was another way.

“Hello, Mr. Clevis. Ted called me about the new mineral you got in.”

Might as well begin with the truth even if that wasn’t where they would end up.

“Did he now?” Mr. Clevis began. “It is an interesting stone. Newly discovered, ya know.”

“Not as new as you think, Mr. Clevis.”

“What’s that now?”

Jon adjusted his tweed jacket and his silk tie, a habit he had when beginning a lecture.

“Well, um, speaking historically, mage..um…mag-eb-ah-nite, is known to be a severe allergen to a small portion of people.”

Jon waved his hand toward the mineral.

“In fact, it can be deadly to them. I’m afraid Ted and I share that allergy.”

“Well do ya now? How very interesting.” Mr. Clevis eyes narrowed for a brief moment.

“It’s also known to be a stone of bad luck.”

Mr. Clevis smiled was predatory for just a second. Jon thought he imagined the look.

“Here now, we don’t go for that metaphysical nonsense in this store. We’re here for the collectors. My supplier told me this was a new discovery. How does a history professor know so much more about a stone than someone who’s been in the business a long time?”

Ted interrupted, “Maybe your supplier meant its unique property was a new discovery. That, otherwise, it’s been overlooked.”

Mr. Clevis scratched his head shifting his white mane.

“Well, I don’t know. Sounds all kinds of hokey to me.” He looked at Jon and Ted, his eyes narrowed. “Do you know how many people, say in the area, that are allergic to this stuff?”


Jon frowned and considered that now might be the time to start lying.

Fortunately, he was saved the trouble. Customer traffic into the store had picked up and Ted and Mr. Clevis became busy helping them.

Before he left, Jon instructed Ted to keep away from the Mage Bane and to do his best to keep anyone from buying any, with discretion, of course. Jon returned to his classes unable to concentrate as his mind worked on a plan to get rid of that deadly ore.

Later that evening, when the mall had closed and Ted returned home, he knew what to do.

“Dad, that’s breaking and entering.” Ted wasn’t really comfortable with his father’s plan.

“Technically, we won’t be breaking. I called Jaime and Virginia Porter, they are going to send Victor and Nicolas.”

“How are we going to move the Mage Bane? None of us can touch it.”

Jon shifted his weight in the Queen Anne chair next to the darkened fireplace in his elegant cherry paneled den. His tweed jacket lay across the back of the chair. His gaze drifted towards the paned window. The light from a lamp cast a soft orb reflection that appeared to encapsulate his head.

“We’ll encase it in something.” He waved his hand absently. “Then we’ll drop it through a portal that leads to the bottom of the ocean or the Earth’s core.”

A sudden flash of light behind him stopped Ted from asking more questions. A disk, electric blue and blazing like a small sun appeared in the den. It was as tall as a man and as wide as four. Just the right size for the four people who stepped from inside it.

Two teenage boys flanked a tall man and a white haired woman. They boys were identical twins with blond hair and blue eyes. They were cargo pants, sneakers and sweatshirts. The man was over six feet tall. His shoulders were broad in his white T-shirt, his hips were narrow in his blue denim and his skin was the swarthy tone of a Hispanic. His long black hair was pulled into a ponytail that traveled down his back. Marcus Favian stood like the warrior he was; ready to react. He was a man sworn to protect the white haired woman.

It was this arrival that elicited a gasp from Jon. She was almost as tall as the warrior. Her long silver hair flowed past her shoulders and framed her gray eyes. She wore a sweatshirt, blue jeans and sneakers.

“Adriana! I wasn’t expecting you to come!”

Moving with an unconscious regality, Adriana Solomon waved away Jon’s surprise.

“I was curious, Jon. Though I’ve heard of Mage Bane, in four hundred years, I’ve never actually seen it.”

“This is going to be dangerous.”

“That’s what I told her,” Marcus’ voice was deep and full of concern.

“I’m not going to pick it up and lick it, Marcus.”

“How come no one’s worried about the danger to us?” One of the twins spoke up.

“You’re not going to get hurt, Nicolas.” Jon told him.

“I’m Victor.”

“Don’t start.”

“We should get going,” Ted interrupted. “The mall has been closed for an hour now and we need to get some supplies together.”

“Right you are, Ted.” Adriana said, “Jon, what’s your plan?”

Jon informed the group and after some discussion and adjustments the sextet of wizards went into action.



Twenty minutes later, a disk of light appeared in the darkened back room of “Stone’s and Stuff.”

Ted stumbled in the dark a moment looking for the light switch. Before he reached it, soft firelight drew back the shadows.

Adriana held her hand above her head. Fire burned from between her curled fingers.

“Forget yourself, Ted?” Her voice held a bit of chiding.

“No, I’ve only managed to summon wind so far, and a little water. I’m still working on fire and earth.” Ted’s eyes fell to the floor, his cheek colored slightly.

Adriana’s eyes and tone softened. “Mastery comes to everyone in it’s own time, Ted. You’ll manage it soon enough.”

The group left the back room for the sales floor. Adriana’s light cast deep shadows across the various displays of fossils, geodes, wood carvings and stone statuary. Faint light spilled in from the mall through the closed grill of the store’s gate, adding to the eerie feeling of the closed exotic store.

“It’s right up this aisle,” Ted began. “We should probably put on…”

Ted was interrupted by a series of skritches and angry chittering.

“Isn’t this place too new to have rats?” Nicolas asked.

“That wasn’t rats.” Adriana informed them. She circled the hand that held the fire around her head. The flames became a large ring illuminating almost all of the sales floor.

Standing at the edge of the light was a creature just over a foot tall. It had black saucer shaped eyes, slits for nostrils and huge bat-like ears. Its line of a mouth was full of tiny dagger-like teeth. It hands had three fingers and its feet had three toes. All of them ended with sharp claws. Its hide looked like stone. If it hadn’t been breathing and drooling, it could have easily mistaken for one of the statues.

“It’s only an imp,” Victor said.

“Imps never travel alone,” Jon told him.

Marcus stepped in front of the group. He moved one well muscled arm. There was a ring of steel. Adriana’s fire glinted off the curved blade of Marcus’ berdishe. He held the pole axe firmly in both hands.

“Get the Mage Bane. I’ll hold them off.”

The imp hissed wetly. There was more scritching and chittering in the darkness. A horde of imps appeared in the light.

“Ted! Jon! Go!” Adriana ordered, taking a position near Marcus.

Reaching into the knapsack he carried, Ted pulled out surgical masks and rubber gloves and a large garbage bag.

As Ted and his father raced down the aisle towards the deadly stone, the imps attacked. They leaped at Marcus and Adriana like an avalanche of claws and fangs. Marcus’ berdishe hummed through the air. Tiny bodies were sliced into pieces. One of the more agile demons eluded the pole axe and leaped high above Marcus’ head. Its sharp claws were poised to tear his eyes from their sockets. It reached the zenith of its arc. Its claws gleamed in the firelight. It reached for Marcus, hissing and drooling.

It exploded in a shower of ash as Adriana’s fire ball smacked into its face.

Still the demons kept coming.

“There’s more here than we thought.” Marcus told Adriana as he sliced open four more imps.

“I think I know why.” She responded. “ Victor! Nicolas!” She called to the twins, who were also fighting of the diminutive demons with fireballs. They blocked the aisle Ted and Jon had taken.

“There must be a portal from the demon plane somewhere in the store! Find it!” Adriana called to them.

The brothers clasped hands and vanished.

Adriana and Marcus did their best to close up the holes in their defenses. But until that portal was closed there was little they could do but continue to fight the imps.

While their friends fought on, Ted had Jon reached the Mage Bane. They put on the surgical masks and rubber gloves. Jon held the garbage bag open, while Ted reached, with trembling hands, for the cardboard carton that held the lethal ore.

A small clawed hand darted out from the other side of the shelves. Ted gasped as talons dug into his hand, drawing blood. The imp climbed on top of the Mage Bane and hissed wetly before it relieved itself.

“Great!” Ted muttered.

“We better find a way to get that imp off of there before that mess dries out and becomes more Mage Bane.”

“I know, Dad.”

They couldn’t throw a fire ball at the imp. The ore’s properties would scatter the fire and cause more problems. Water would turn it into a deadly sludge and earth magic had no affect on it at all. That only left one option.

Ted raised his hand, palm out and pushed towards the imp. A gust of air shot the imp off the shelf to crash into the store’s metal grate. Jon gestured and air near the gate ionized sending electricity through the tiny demon.

“Nicely done, Dad.”

“Thanks, Son.”

Unfortunately, Ted’s wind gust had also sent the box of Mage Bane to the floor, crumbling the soft ore and creating a deadly cloud of dust and waste.

“Damn.”

“It’s all right, Son. We’ll just…”

“I have an idea,” Ted interrupted his father. He pointed a hand towards the spill and dust cloud and made a circling gesture. A small cyclone formed, spinning the dust and rocking the upended box. Sparks ignited along the funnel as the magic controlling the wind came into contact with Mage Bane particles. Ted had seconds to move the funnel and its contents into the bag before the spell destabilized and killed his family and friends.

Slowly the box rose into the air.

“Easy, Son. You can do this.”

Meanwhile, about ten feet outside the light cast by Adriana’s ring of fire and inside the store’s employee restroom, Victor and Nicolas found a battle of their own.

A small circle of light hovered above the sink. Imps poured out from the demon plane. They hopped onto the floor to join the fight with the human wizards and to die with the rest of their kin.

When two of the humans were foolish enough to appear beside the portal, they swarmed to attack.

“Next year, I’m going out for the baseball team!” Victor told his brother as he threw fire ball after fire ball with both hands.

“But, dude, your batting totally sucks.” Nicolas replied summoning his own fire balls.

“Harsh, dude, Harsh.” Victor frowned. “I have an idea. It’s a small portal, it only needs one of us to close it. I’ll hold off the imps, you close it.”

“All right. Ready?”

“Ready!”

Nicolas stopped throwing fireballs and reached out with both hands towards the glowing portal. Victor changed from throwing fireballs to arcs of flame. The arcs were slower to form but cut a wider swath through the swarm.

Nicolas made a squeezing motion with his hands. The portal flared causing spots before his eyes. He gathered the power within himself and squeezed again. In a blinding flash the small portal vanished. The front half of an imp traveling out of the portal fell to the floor with a liquid slosh.

“Awesome, Dude!” Victor complimented his brother.

Angry chittering erupted from the swarm of imps left behind. A large group turned and leaped onto the twins.

Tiny claws dug into flesh and pulled blond hair. The boys yelled as swore. They stumbled toward each other and managed a high five interlocking of their fingers. The imps began to vanish as they were pulled into portals.

“Damn,” the twins swore, wiping blood from their eyes.

They left the bathroom sending fireballs into the rear of the imps’ swarm as they followed them out to Adriana and Marcus’ position.

With the source of the imps cut off the four wizards were able to destroy the rest within minutes. They burned away the tiny corpses leaving behind only ash and scorch marks.

Sweat beaded from Adriana’s forehead making her silver hair cling to her face. She ignored that as she applied the power of the four elements to her magical specialty. Her hands caressed Victor and Nicolas’ faces and arms like a mother. Their wounds and bruises closed and disappeared. They thanked her with a quick hug. She then applied the same magical healing to Marcus, though the warrior had fewer wounds to heal.

The quartet turned down Jon and Ted’s aisle just in time to see Ted’s cyclone, sparking wildly, settle the Mage Bane, dust cloud and demon waste safely in the garbage bag. Jon quickly tied it closed and threw it towards Victor and Nicolas.

Without hesitation the twins interlocked their fingers, forming a hoop with their arms. Within the hoop another portal appeared. Unlike the others, this one was red and black and spoke of death and chaos. As soon as the bag fell through it, the twins broke contact and the portal vanished.

Jon and Ted removed their masks and gloves. Jon quickly burned them to ash.

The group of wizards took a moment for a collective sigh of relief.

“Well that part is over with,” Nicolas stated.

“Now it’s time for the hard part.” Victor continued.

“Who opened the portal and who sent the Mage Bane?” Adriana spoke the obvious questions as the others nodded.

“I did, you meddling hag!”

Everyone but Ted (and Marcus) startled at the sound of the voice. From the shadows of the store and into the firelight stepped Ted’s boss, Mr. Clevis.

“Mr. Clevis, I quit.”

“You’ll be quitting life soon enough, foolish boy.” Mr. Clevis’ mouth curled into a sneer. “I’ve been gathering magical objects for years, using this store as a cover. My stock pile would arm my brother demons to finally march on humanity and destroy it once and for all! I thought I could slip in the Mage Bane, hoping it would spread and poison all you wizards slowly and make taking you out easier.”

He stepped closer, his hands on his hips, his breath coming faster, his chest swelling.

”I’ve been making it myself for years!”

“Ew,” expressed the twins.

“Now I’ve got to restock it, thanks to you! After I destroy you!”

Mr. Clevis’ human form fell away as his skin sloughed off like a pea from a pod. It revealed a red skinned, black eyed demon with three stubby horns, cloven hooves and larger, deadlier claws and teeth than the imps possessed. The demon tripled in size. Its stubby horns almost scraped the ceiling tiles.

With a roar the demon lunged at the wizards. Marcus’ berdishe sliced through the air and struck the arms and torso with a clang and burst of sparks, but left no damage. Adriana, Jon and the twins threw fire at the demon with the same effect.

A backhanded swipe sent Marcus crashing against a wall. Several expensive wood carvings broke as they landed on top of him. Next, the demon sent the twins crashing into a glass display case of cut and polished quartz crystal points.

Jon once again ionized the air, but the lightening, too, did nothing to slow the demon. The great claws flashed, intent on slicing open Adriana and Jon, when, suddenly, the demon was struck by an invisible wall of air and sent sprawling into another wall, this one of steel beams and plasterboard. Its rear end was embedded into the dry wall.

Adriana and Jon turned to see Ted, both hands up, palms out. Before they could speak, the demon roared again and launched itself out of the wall towards them.

Ted gestured again, his hands making the same circling motion he used to move the Mage Bane. The demon slowed, then stopped. Then it began to spin.

Jon and Adriana added to Ted’s cyclone spell. The demon spun faster and faster.

The twins pulled themselves from the shards of glass and crystal bleeding from mild cuts and slightly purple from bruises. Marcus, too, pulled himself from the pile of splintered wood carvings.

Victor and Nicolas added their magic to the spell and the demon became a spinning red blur. It tried to roar as it struggled but only managed a undulating whine.

Marcus ran his finger along the edge of the berdishe’s blade. It gleamed brighter in the firelight as his unique magic gave it a diamond edge.

He stepped as close as he could to the demonic cyclone and set the blade into the middle. After a few revolutions, the demon’s piercing cry ended and the cyclonic storm dispersed.

Red pieces of demon, covered in a black ichor, fell to the floor in a squishy, wet splat.

Once again, Victor and Nicolas silently opened a portal. The dismembered demon disappeared.

“Why didn’t we just burn it?” Ted asked.

“It would have been too big a fire,” his father told him. “Probably would have set off the sprinklers or set the mall on fire.”

“Also,” added Adriana, “This sends a message to the demon planes. The wizards of Earth are not easily defeated.”

Ted nodded his understanding.

“Not to go looking for problems, “Victor asked, “But shouldn’t mall security be all over us by now?”

“Not really,” Ted explained. “The mall is pretty cheap. They only have two guys walking around here all night. They’re probably on the other side of the mall, if they’ve even left their desks.

“Still, what do we do now? What’s the cover story? Mr. Clevis is gone. The mall is going to get involved, and the police.”

Ted looked to the others. It’s not like they could tell the truth. Yes, officer, the store was run by a demon that wanted to destroy the world, but it’s okay because three teenage boys and three senior citizens sliced it to pieces and sent its body to another dimension.

“You tell them,” Marcus explained. “That when you reported to work, you found the gate closed and locked. When you tried to contact Mr. Clevis you couldn’t reach him. After a while, it just becomes another unsolved disappearance.”

Ted nodded. “I get it.” He sighed. “Well, let’s clean up what we can and get out of here.”