Four on the Floor: Part Twenty-Two

[image error]

First||Previous

Part Twenty-Two

I’m sitting at a diner booth somewhere in Beckettsville. Shan got us here, I was mostly putting one foot in front of the other. A car might’ve been involved. Probably, considering the distance. I’m rocking back and forth, trying to rebel against the urge in my brain telling me to just relax, that nothing’s as weird as I think it us, because I can’t swallow that logic anymore.

I can accept that magic and dragons and Fae are real, but I refuse to believe that none of this is weird, nothing to worry about.

My foot is nudged by Shan, seated across from me, bringing me out of it for a moment. Damn, these booths look old.

“Hm? What?” I look around, see a woman only a couple years older than me standing next to the table, holding an order pad. She’s wearing a ballcap for the Gryphons, local football team, which I know a bit about thanks to Tasha’s podcast, and recognize from the colors, because my vision is a little blurred, my face hot. Was I crying?

“Do you need anything?” She offers me a few napkins, in a way that suggests that I was crying. “I’ll get you some water. Take your time, okay?”

I take them, dry my eyes, and I can see most of her attention is on Shan, who’s stoic, currently. Once she leaves, I glance to him before folding and crumpling the remaining napkins to give my fingers something to do. “Did you fly me here?”

“No.”

“So, how did we-“

“I called in a favor, which I don’t like doing. This place is regarded as off-limits for many. We can’t take sanctuary, but we can take a moment’s respite.”

With that, I take in the diner once again. It looks like any other local diner with booths, a lunch counter, a pass-through to the kitchen where…

Another dragon is working the grill.

“Is that-“

“Davinicus, yes. Do not speak his name, or any clever sobriquets you devise. Ignore him, he serves another Keth, though he’ll insist their relationship is based on…” He rolls his eyes. “Friendship and mutual respect.”

“It’s not?”

He smirks at me. “Not with one of yours, no. Platonic ideals cannot survive exposure to the solipsistic and megalomaniacal paradigm that defines a sorcerer.”

I shrug. “Or a dragon, apparently.”

He leans back in the booth, folds his arms. “I doubt you even know what those words mean.”

“Platonic? Based on the ideas of love regarding family and friends, but not romantic. I told you I’m aro and ace, so to think I wouldn’t know that is insulting. Solipsistic? The idea that nothing exists, that everything, and I mean everything is happening in your head, that all of existence revolves only around you. Be aware of current events, that just describes affluent white heterosexual cisgender male privilege. Megalomania? Deranged self-love and self-aggrandizement to the point of unwitting self-destruction? That’s every dictator in history, even if you only made it to junior high.”

I flip Shan off, of course, right as the server comes back to our table in time to assume I meant it for her. The glass is put down heavily, and the table’s left alone. Guess I won’t be ordering food.

Shan shakes his head, keeping that smirk. “Fate abhors a sorcerer, I would grow accustomed to such malevolent kismet.”

“If you insinuate I don’t know the meaning of those words, Shan, I’m throwing this water in your face and very publicly breaking up with you for sleeping with my best friend.” I meet his eyes, and the staring contest persists for several seconds.”

“I don’t blink. At least, not for another several minutes.”

I break, and his smirk grows to a grin.

“Why are you so nice to me and such a dick at the same time?”

“Because I’d rather you and the other killed each other.”

“So why don’t you just leave, then?” I snap back.

He narrows his golden eyes at me. “Because you are a sorcerer, and I am a dragon, and I owe you my life. I despise debt, and I owe you one I can never repay.”

“You saved me how many times? I think we’re even.”

“I am expected to!” He slams his fists on the table, which cracks, and silences the diner. “I would prefer anything than being tied to a Keth.” He spits out the last word, and the table fizzes where the acid splashes. “I hate the other for having the gall to command me, and you for-“

“Don’t you give me shit for commanding you, you were diving at me to do to me what you just did to this table.” My shoulders sag as I sigh. “They’re all going to think we’re crazy now.” I gesture meekly to the rest of the diner.

Shan takes one of the paper placemats and turns it over, picking up a pencil that’s been left on the table for kids to do the maze on the front, and then writing a string of letters and numbers. “I’ll compensate the owner.”

I glance at the figures, and he instinctively covers them with his hand.

“Afraid for your account in Switzerland?”

He makes a disgusted grumble. “My horde will never be stored in one place, especially near my enemies.”

“Shan, honest question?”

The dragon responds with the slightest of nods.

“Do you have any friends? I mean, all I have are zombies and a ghost in a plastic skull but-“ I look around. Eh. They all think I’m crazy anyway. “At least I have people who don’t clench at the sight of me.”

He blinks, and chuckles, shaking his head. “You command magic, words of power, you truck with the dead and call the shadows. You just don’t see them ‘clenching’.”

“Spoken like a true misanthrope.”

“Sorcerers created us to be their slaves, religions contorted us into symbols of evil, humans view us as causes for fear and avarice and abuse of power. What’s there to like about any of you?”

“You were nicer before the lake.”

“I didn’t have a life debt to you before the lake.”

“So I was supposed to let you drown?”

“You’re a necromancer, even death wouldn’t have freed me from you.”

I get up from the table, and head out to the street. I have a good idea where I am, I can head back to Tasha’s and pick up Pumpkin, find out where the other necromancer is and put an end to all of this and get back on with my small little life helping zombies move on.

“Sorcerer!”

And he’s following me. Fucking life debt, you know a guy had to have come up with that. I should just let people die and talk to their spirits instead. Easier to work with.

I find myself on the pavement, head blurry. Val is a few feet away, Shan between us. And Val has his sword drawn.

And pointed at me.