Yelric was still laughing at the look of indignation on Izzy’s face as he led Izzy into a small office behind the back counter.

  “Oh, don’t hold it against me,” Yelric said, deep, throaty chuckles rippling out. “How often does somebody set you up with something like that?”

  He burst out into harder laughter and Izzy barely understood the words “brain”, “chicken”, and “pet” as Yelric was gasping for air.

  “Yes… let me just be in good humor about somebody who jokes about turning me into a chicken.” Izzy said, marching in behind Yelric. “Yak it up when I am starting to get the feeling he can actually fucking do it. You know…” he said thoughtfully, Yelric’s mirth at his discomfort grinding against the edge of his manners, “with one sentence I can probably get you to stop laughing. If I can’t, I give you permission to turn me into a chicken for an hour. If I do, you help me learn as much magic as fast as possible.”

  Yelric sucked in a breath, biting a lip, and barely got out “Doubt it,” before chuckling again.

  “Where I come from,” Izzy said, getting serious and looking Yelric dead in the eyes, “there is not a drop of magic. Instead, we use science.”

  Yelric’s chuckling slowed down and slowly came to a halt as he looked in Izzy’s face, seeing complete sincerity and seriousness. Izzy felt some pressure in his mind, like a cotton swab gently brushing against his brain searching for information.

  “Huh,” Yelric said, “no magic? And you don’t mean just very little. By your demeanor, you literally mean none, don’t you?”

  “None.” Izzy said back confidently. “Zip. Zero. Nada.” He then grinned impishly, “and I win.”

  “Oh?” Yelric said. He sat in a giant chair and leaned forward. “I never said I agreed. Can’t pull one over on me, young man. Lucky for you,” he started as Izzy’s face started to show concern, “I was planning on teaching you at least the basics anyway. I’ve helped out a few of Rajir’s friends in the past and that’s the least I can do for somebody so new to magic. Any of the big stuff is a little beyond you right now, as should be expected. I’m going to want to hear more about this science thing someday, but there is something strange I want to dig into first. The only magic I’m getting off of you is…” he cocked his head a little, “willpower?”

  Izzy made a weird, strangled sound of disbelief.

  “You’re saying willpower is magical?” It was his turn to laugh into a serious face. It didn’t last long, as Yelric raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Willpower is… well… power?”

  “Oh yes,” Yelric said, leaning back in the chair again and crossing a leg. “You’ve already felt it. When you had a thought of something like ‘oh with no bell somebody could steal something’. You felt the pressure of my willpower. Mine has always been a little on the strong side; my parents always called it being self-righteous, but sometimes there is no gray in right and wrong. Stealing from a place like this is wrong.”

  “From your point of view,” Izzy said, quickly. “What about the people who really need this stuff? I’m sure they can really turn their lives around with just the right item.”

  Even that much was enough for the hairs on the back of his neck to start tingling. Knowing more about the feeling and what was going on really helped, and he was able to suppress the urge to run and willfully pushed back against it with his mind.

  “Good,” Yelric said. “You pushed back really well. I felt you fight my willpower off like it was nothing. Not many can say they can do that. As for the point you are making, generally you are right, but stealing is still not the way to get it. There are magical things that people don’t or can’t understand, especially in a place like this, that can end up doing more harm than good in the wrong hands. I’ve planted the seeds of philanthropy and some have sprouted. If people really need something I have, there is a way to get it through me or someone like Rajir.”

  “Another test,” Izzy grumbled. “You know, I was one of the few people that didn’t mind pop quizzes. If you know something, then you know it and when you have to use it doesn’t matter. But if we are going to work together like Rajir thinks we should, I’d like it to be a little more transparent than that? Like after we were introduced and you said ‘this is a test’. I’ve had enough with surprises that have unforeseeable consequences since I got here.”

  Yelric smirked, “That’s fair, but you DID figure out it was a test. Didn’t you…”

  Izzy rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah. But I was hoping we could move onto the actual study material instead of the cryptic wise man routine.”

  “You were the one that compared me to that Professor Xavier, I was simply trying to fill a familiar role,” Yelric said with a shrug. “Speaking of which, why is magic such a surprise to you? It appears a lot of your literature you thought about contains at least a facsimile of the reality.”

  “Facsimile of reality?” Izzy responded. “All of that literature I was thinking of is fiction where I come from. Fake. Made up fun stuff for people to have a glimpse of something that isn’t in the real world.”

  “Huh…” Yelric said, ruminating on this. “Well then, I suppose it is time that you became familiar with your new reality. I can tell you are still pretty reticent about talking about where you’re from and I won’t pry. We all have our secrets to hold. I am quite interested, but I can wait. In the meantime, let’s get started. ”

  Yelric heaved his enormous bulk off of the hulking chair and beckoned Izzy to come further into the shop. Apparently the creature didn’t believe in stairs, because there was a much longer hallway out the back of the office than in Rajir’s place next door. Izzy made a mental note to check how deep the outside of the building was. They went through the first door on the left and went into something of a workshop. Izzy gasped as he took it all in and saw the other occupants.

  There were a few heavy wooden work benches along the back wall and several racks for weapons and jewelry storage along the other walls. Flashes of light broke out from behind several large, vaguely Yelric-shaped creatures working on the benches with their backs turned.

  The ones not at the work benches were sitting at a few small desks similar to the all-in-one children’s desks Izzy had used in elementary school. These desks were just sized up for somebody the size of Shaquille O’Neal and dressed up with all manner of evaluation equipment; an assortment of scales, magnifying glasses, and what looked like glowing chopsticks were set up identically on the desks.

  When Yelric and Izzy walked in, all of the creatures stopped what they were doing and looked up. All six of them looked exactly like Yelric.

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  “Ummm… Yelric,” Izzy started saying, trailing off.

  A chorus of “Yes” flooded back at Izzy from the six Yelric copies and the one standing next to him.

  “Okay…” Izzy started, trying and failing to keep his reaction in check. “Well, nice to meet you all! Looks like you are all busy, I’m just going to need to borrow Yelric. Uh…” he paused, and pointed at the Yelric that he walked in with, “this Yelric, for but a moment.”

  Izzy backed up a few steps so the first Yelric had to turn around to keep looking at him. In the background there was a flurry of identical shrugs and the others went back to work. Izzy’s heart was pounding in his chest, but not from fear he realized. Izzy was getting excited.

  “All right Yelric, I’m going to do my best to not overreact to every little thing you show me.” Izzy said, trying to find the right words to hide behind. “So I’m just going to ask two questions, is that okay?”

  “Just two?” Yelric said, raising an eyebrow and smirking. “Feel free, these must be very good questions for there to be only two.”

  “Mmm…” Izzy grunted, trying to only pay attention to the Yelric in front of him. One of them at a desk had the same multi-colored monocle and crystal that Titus had used on Izzy and was shaking his head at a necklace he was examining.

  “First question… Are you septuplets?”

  Then it hit him that he had no idea what nature of creature Yelric was. He could have been laid from an egg for all he knew.

  “Oh… sorry, was that racist? Or… species-ist?” He said, trying to recover. “I’m afraid I don’t know what manner of person you are or how your species procreates.”

  Yelric chuckled, “That was the kindest version of ‘what in S’or Voril are you’ that I’ve ever heard. I’m a firbolg. We have children in a similar fashion to humans and more than one or two at a time is uncommon. To answer your question, no. Next question, if you please. We have a lot to cover tonight.”

  “Yes, sorry,” Izzy fumbled out. “Second question. How does one procure six identical copies of oneself without cloning or some other equally immoral genetic manipulation?”

  “I’m afraid,” Yelric said, beginning to frown, “that I barely caught about half of that. Jenn-e-tic?”

  “Oh man, this is probably going to be a long night.” Izzy said, wiping his hands on his face in frustration.

  He was usually better at watching his words, but his mind was going hundreds of kilometers an hour.

  “How?” He finally landed on in his exasperation. “I want to know how. How are there seven of you without doing something absolutely terrible with babies?”

  Yelric’s face creased back into his smirk and Izzy heard one of the copies behind him chuckle.

  “Izzy, they are Scintillae. Magical manifestations created by making a copy of a small part of myself. I imprint a specific part of myself onto enough raw materials and give it purpose. They are not the best conversationalists and they aren’t technically alive, but they do good work depending on what I give to them.”

  A chill went down Izzy’s spine.

  “Raw? Material?” he said, gulping.

  A flash of all the worst horror movie scenes went through his mind; body parts on butcher tables, limbs hanging from meat hooks, unspeakable things filling up rows of refrigerators.

  “No!” Yelric roared, waving his big arms in front of Izzy’s face.

  The images left Izzy’s mind as he looked up into the wild eyes of Yelric. Each of the copies went rigid for a moment. The wave of intensity left nearly as soon as it came on.

  “No, Izzy,” Yelric said, his face looking sad. “Nothing like that… Earth magic mixed with a bit of Space magic. They are more or less just me-shaped lumps of mud. What horrors have befallen you child?”

  “Oh man, oops. The mind reading.” Izzy said, holding a hand over his mouth. “No Yelric, I haven’t actually seen those things. Well… I have, but not in person, for real. Look, you have plays and bardic stories, yeah? Where I come from, they make them much more…” Izzy fought for the right word, “vivid.”

  “Indeed…” Yelric said, clearly not entirely convinced but willing to move on. “Well, why don’t we get on with what I wanted to show you, if you’re ready.”

  After the tension and adrenaline, Izzy was vibrating with anticipation. At least that was what he would have told himself.

  “Yup,” was his succinct reply.

  Yelric moved into the room and shuffled the others out of the way. He took a small leather backpack off a rack on the right side of the room and walked it over to one of the work benches. He waved Izzy over as he assembled a set of eight coins in an octagon around the backpack.

  These coins appeared similar to the spell coins with which Izzy had gotten intimately familiar, but he couldn’t see any special pictograms; each one was adorned with the upside down “V” with the lines like on the ISC in Izzy’s pouch. He also saw that each of them had their numbers showing. There were three ones, two twos, and one each of a three, four, and five. Izzy blanched, thinking about the amount of magic that was laying on the table in front of him.

  Izzy watched in amazement as Yelric started moving his body and making complicated gestures with his hands. It looked like an interesting mix of Tai Chi and finger tutting. After just a few gestures, all eight coins started glowing and rose off the table. After a few moments, the coins marked with ones appeared to melt and then turn into sparkling silver dust and embedded themselves onto the straps of the back pack.

  These were then followed by the twos which disintegrated in a similar fashion and swirled around the bottom of the backpack near where it touched the table. This dust flowed beneath the backpack and the same silver light sparked out from the bottom.

  In a similar way, the Grade 3, 4, and 5 coins flowed into the main pouch of the back pack. The silver light grew and Izzy noticed that Yelric was actually putting in some effort. His mostly purple face was getting tinged with red and his face was contorted in concentration. As his movements eventually slowed, he made a wide circle with his arms and then clapped his hands together over the backpack. The light faded and Yelric looked a little wobbly on his feet for a moment. He shook his head for a moment, and then turned to look at Izzy.

  Izzy looked back and forth between Yelric and the bag, not getting it.

  “So, clearly what you did was impressive,” Izzy said tentatively. “I haven’t even seen a Grade 5 coin yet, never mind one being used, so the fact you’re on your feet is incredible to me. But what exactly did you do?”

  Yelric grabbed the bag, put it on the floor, opened the top as wide as it would go, and then jumped inside.

  Izzy blinked. Izzy blinked again, wiping his eyes with his hands. He looked down at the pouch on his belt, fingering the opening as he looked back at the bag on the ground. Izzy started laughing as Yelric’s head popped up comically out of the backpack on the ground.

  “Now that is some magic,” Izzy exclaimed between breaths, giving Yelric a short slow clap. “We really are going to have a few interesting days, aren’t we?”

  “Yes we are,” Yelric said, clambering his way out of the backpack.

  He stepped out, reached down to grab it, and handed it one of the Scintillae. It took the bag over to the left side of the room where it appeared finished products were placed. Yelric led Izzy out of the room of waving copies; Izzy waved back as he followed Yelric across the hall into a small study.

  Izzy’s eyes lit up at the amount of information in the small room.

  “But first,” Yelric said, grabbing a handful of books off the shelves and dropping them so heavily onto the desk that it shifted a few centimeters.

  There were five books, each about the size of the average “S” book of an encyclopedia set.

  “You need to do some light reading.”