It was the clicking that woke Jones. But it was coming closer like a stampede of tiny little feet in high heels. It had been growing steadily closer and louder on the street outside then stopped suddenly. So, when the slumbering mage had finally forced himself awake enough to focus after an exhausting day, he wasn’t sure why he’d woken since it was now so quiet. Ugh. That was a nightmare. He stirred briefly before settling down into deeper sleep.

Kyle had left the herd of prisms on the street when he entered the locked building his apartment was located in. There weren’t a lot of buildings inside the grounds of Central Park, but the employee housing for the museum was one of them. His apartment was nice, and he dreaded ever leaving his job and needing to move. As he was currently an intern and not a regular employee, moving was probably more likely than not in the next few years.

Not only was the apartment close to the museum, but it was also surrounded by natural beauty and central to everything good about Manhattan. His best friend lived down the hall so late night hang out sessions didn’t require sleeping over somewhere or getting a cab home. The best part was that he was close to school, and his parents, and could help out with Anna still when they needed him to.

What was he going to do about Anna?

Mulling the question over, Kyle closed his apartment door behind him and headed to the kitchen. As the employee housing had been built by the museum it had magically powered emergency lighting crystals that cast a soft bluish-purple glow about the room. The blue was reassuring since the color of the emergency lights were Prometheus scale indicators and reflected the magic level outside.

Blue was the next level down from purple. If the ambient magic level was going down it meant that Sam and the F.B.I. had managed to secure the two magic emitting corpses. That was good. Dragon remains stuck around for centuries emitting high levels of magic the entire time. That property had made dragon parts a critical component in so many schools of magic. Enchanting, potions, technomancy, one dragon corpse was worth millions – no, billions – of dollars.

The same features that made dragons such coveted ingredients also made them dangerous to have around. Living dragons, not a problem. Heck, their bodies acted almost like natural magic collectors when they were alive, absorbing arcanes out of their environment. But once they died? All that magic started to release.

And that was the problem.

Their magic started to release upon death. Yeah, their corpses would up the local ambient magic levels, a lot. But it shouldn’t have been enough to overload a major city’s magic collectors. Strained the system, sure. Increased the local ambient levels. Absolutely.

The way it happened, though? No. That didn’t track with how dragons worked. It was almost as if magic had been sucked out of the dragon instantaneously. Enough magic to overload the magic collectors. Dragons needed a certain level of ambient magic to survive. The amount each dragon needed varied depending on different factors like age, variety, size, and whether they were in their natural form or shifted to a lower maintenance shape.

Old dragons, the ones with enough magic saturating their bodies to overload a city-sized magic collector wouldn’t be able to just wander around New York in their true form. Not without some kind of external magic source to feed on. Kyle mused as he puttered around the kitchen finding things to fix himself something to eat.

The power was still out but the backup runes in the refrigerator were functioning perfectly, and cool air greeted him as he opened the door. The glowing rune didn’t cast quite enough light for him to see everything he wanted, so he held up the glowing tip of his wand as he pulled out some leftover pasta, butter, eggs, and sliced mixed vegetables.

Kyle was afraid to try lighting the stove. It was gas and he didn’t know if there were any problems with the lines anywhere. At the moment he felt it was safer to avoid that because the last thing he needed was for his kitchen to blow up in his face. Instead, he went into his laboratory and grabbed the hot-cold stone he used in potions and enchanting work.

A soft glow came from the Daedalus Industries logo on the side as he activated the stone’s heating enchantment. He set it on top of his kitchen counter and adjusted the heat before placing a sauté pan on it to heat. Once it was up to temperature, Kyle began tossing ingredients into the pan and pondered the question of the dragon corpse.

It had been in its natural dragon form. That form had been too big to fit in the truck without damaging it. Which meant that the dragon had died in the back of the Mountain King Movers truck while in a smaller form and reverted back to its full size after death. Something in that truck had killed a dragon.

Or someone?

He was making a carbonara, stirring the pasta with a silicone spoon and drinking milk out of the carton like a heathen. He smiled as he caught himself doing it. There wasn’t much milk left, and he was planning on adding most of it to the carbonara anyways. No, that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be done, but desperate times, eh.

Something killed the dragon in the truck. Something sucked so much magic out of a dragon while it was in a truck that it wiped out the city’s magic collectors. Something triggered the dragon corpse to discharge magic at a much faster rate than normal. Whatever it was, Kyle was certain it would be found in the truck.

Was it a device? Or was it an artifact? If it was an artifact, it might be in the archive. Kyle glanced at his pact item on the counter. Just seeing it there was reassuring and helped calm some of the stirring anxiety he felt at the implications of his thoughts.

Not tonight. He’d look it up first thing in the morning. Still, a dead dragon was bad. The dragons might be fractious, but they didn’t respond well to the death of one of their own. Despite the contention between the various dragon nations, they always came together for something this serious. No one was allowed to kill dragons but other dragons.

“Well…?” Kyle paused in his stirring, “that could be exactly what happened…” But no. The facts just didn’t line up. That second magic source had been thrown into a building by extreme force. Could a dragon in a small form, presumably human to fit in, throw something that large through an industrial wall?

Probably not. Something drained that dragon in the truck which killed it and then discharged the magic it had accumulated so forcefully it threw the second magical source hundreds of feet through the air into a building. That had to be it. Kyle would stake his reputation on it.

With the food ready he activated the cooling feature on the hot-cold stone and cooled the bottom of the pan. Fatalistically, he touched a finger to the bottom of the pan to see if he was cool enough to not burn himself. Sam would shout at him for doing that every time she saw it, but he rarely burned himself. Which amused Sam anyways when it happened, and Kyle could heal himself so…

Sleepily, Kyle searched around for a fork and his wand. The fork was easy. It was where clean forks were always kept. Though, there were an oddly large number of dirty dishes in the sink that Kyle didn’t remember making that morning. He frowned at the sink and then shrugged; he was too tired to think about it right now but couldn’t remember why he wouldn’t have washed the dishes the night before.

After at least a minute of searching, he realized that his wand, with the glowing tip that was illuminating his search, was in his gosh darned hand. Well, that was… Sheepishly, Kyle ran a hand through his hair and chuckled at himself.

“Glad no one else was around to see that.” Sticking his clean fork in his pan of carbonara, Kyle headed into his living room and sat down on his couch groggily.

“Ow!” Kyle jumped up and froze, afraid to turn around. There were lumps on the couch, and they talked. “Kyle?” Why did the lumps on the couch sound familiar and just as tired as he was?”

“Who is that?” He turned slowly and pointed his wand’s glowing tip at the lumps on the couch, which were under a blanket. A hand rose out of the blankets and blocked the dim glow of the wand from as face beyond.

“It’s Jones. Could you lower your wand, Kyle? I know what you can do with it and I’m a little uncomfortable being on the business end of that thing.” Yep. That was definitely Specialist Jones’ voice. Kyle lowered his wand warily because while he knew Jones, the Magicorps soldier shouldn’t have been able to get into Kyle’s home.

“Hey, Jones.” Kyle yawned then perked up as his tired brain realized that his missing sister had been with Jones. “Is Anna okay?”

“Yeah.” The soldier yawned as well as pushing himself into a sitting position. “She’s fine. Sleeping in your guest room. We had a bit of an adventure, but her godfather came and bailed us out with…yeah…”

“Oh, yeah.” Kyle didn’t know, but he knew. There was a reason that Anna didn’t play sports or do anything competitive. And that reason was a very proud and protective Archangel and his friends in the pantheons. “Say no more. You can tell me in the morning. I’m going to go check on Anna and head to bed. Go back to sleep, Jones.”

“Yes, Sir.” He acknowledged with a habitual salute and collapsed into unconsciousness almost immediately. His snores began once again before his head even hit the pillow.

Kyle snorted his amusement and strolled into the spare bedroom in his apartment. There was Anna, like Jones had promised, a few tiny little snowflakes swirling out of her nose with each breath. It was cold in there. Not cold enough to prevent the snowflakes from evaporating into the air. But still cold, nonetheless.

Elemental magic seeped from Anna’s very pores as she slept, saturating the air. She probably raised the arcanes in the room just with her very presence. Movement in his breast pocket notified Kyle that the prism had sensed the magical currents in the room as it popped its head out. It was cute, but it was just with him for food.

“Okay, little guy or gal.” The warlock scooped the prism out of his pocket, and it eagerly climbed onto his hand. “This is my sister, and I think she is going to like you a lot.” Kyle held his hand down to the bedside table and unlike when he’d tried to return the creature to its herd earlier, the prism hopped right off his hand. “I see how it is. No loyalty.” Shaking his head, he watched as the prism clicked its way across the table and hopped across the gap between the bed and the table. It clambered onto the pillow and made itself comfortable in a nest of Anna’s long white hair.

Relived that his younger sister, at least, was safe, Kyle headed to his bedroom, eating his carbonara on his bed. He’d meant to change out of his sweaty and monster guts-stained clothing before getting into bed. It was fine. He could wash things. To mitigate the spread of grossness Kyle decided to just sleep on top of the covers. Seconds after closing his eyes, he was asleep.

Kyle the Apprentice Warlock

Chapter 61