Respite

The Wizard’s name was Randolph, which the young man thought was very much a wizard’s name. Of course, he had only met the one wizard. The only wizard the young man had ever met was reclining in his chair on the porch of a house in a genteel neighborhood smoking a long pipe that produced much smoke, which the young man thought was a very wizard thing to do. But of course, he had only ever met the one.

“Young man,” the Wizard said in a Wizard tone of voice, “you are quite lucky to be alive.”

The Wizard said it, so it must be true. “What about all the people I went in looking for? I couldn’t find any sign of any of them. And these bullets the Tinker gave me, why didn’t they work?”

“How do you know the bullets didn’t work, hmm? You are alive, are you not?”

“Yes, well, so is the vampire.”

“So?”

“So, if you hand me a gun with special anti-vampire bullets I think it reasonable to assume they are supposed to kill the demon, don’t you?”

Randolph chuckled. The young man thought for a split second that maybe all of this man’s mannerisms were because of his age and not his office. Maybe he was just an old man. How would one even tell the difference after all?

“What do I do now? My sister still has not turned up, and it was three days ago that the vampire said he would let everyone go.”

Randolph eyed the young man askance. “‘He’? How do you know it was a male?”

The young man started to answer, but stopped himself. The shadowy figure he had fought had had no features, and the voice he had argued with he had heard in his own head. It may have been his own voice. “I guess I just assumed.”

Randolph the wizardy Wizard’s countenance darkened. “Assuming is never a good idea in these matters young man. But the thing did not lie, its prisoners have been recovered. Stay yourself, we could not find you, and so we could not tell you. Your sister is safe, and when she and the others recover it will all seem like a fantastic dream. It will be as if it never happened.”

“Well, that’s, that’s. I don’t know what to say, I can go back, life will be like it was a week ago?”

“Yes,” the Wizard muttered as he drew on his pipe and rocked his chair.

The young man sank down on the bench next to the wizard. “What a relief. Never have to think about Tinkers and their impossible library room-dimensions, or shadow demons that hiss in your brain, or-”

“It is alright, I will not be offended if you live a life without a thought of Wizards.”

“I’m sorry, you saved me in the first place and this would not have been possible without you, it’s just, I am tired.”

The Wizard twisted in his chair to lock eyes with the young man. “These kinds of things have a way of, well, marking us, young one.” He held his gaze for a long second before twisting back to his settled position. The young man coughed a little as there was a mild burning in his chest.