Blunt Force Magic by Lawrence Davis

Author:Lawrence Davis [Davis, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WildBlue Press
Published: 2019-10-18T05:00:00+00:00

Remember earlier when I said the other side of this business was the long, tedious process of investigation or preparation? We were in the thick of that now. We managed to break bread in the form of an overcooked pizza. I learned that Grove was originally from Minnesota, a lumberjack outdoorsman who had a proud family history of military service.

By two in the morning, he was poring over some city ordinance map for our still-evolving plan and I was busy carving into the two bats I’d retrieved from Kaycee’s. Five years ago, they had been a brainchild of mine, a simple series of incantations that could deliver some real hurt even if there wasn’t much in the way of finesse to them. A lot of my own backstory had been shared, though one thing still perplexed me about Grove.

“You seriously don’t want to know anything else? I mean, you just kind of jumped right into the deep end and started swimming with sharks.”

Grove deliberated before spinning his finger over itself in a circle, a sign I’d learned that meant to repeat myself so he could catch whatever he’d missed. After I echoed my statement the guy just shrugged.

I felt like we were destined for some more shared silence when I caught his eyes lingering on the bat I’d been working on.

“Why don’t you just finish a bunch of these and hand them out? That doesn’t seem that hard, no offense.”

None was taken, and I understood the origin of the question. It was one I had asked ten years ago.

“Each sigil is different,” I said, placing a finger just above the grip of the bat’s base. That’s where it started. “And the next one above it will be unique to it, because I am trying to get it to work in concert. There’s no set order or blueprint. This wood was alive, it’s communicating with the magic, the magic is being translated through it so it’s unique. Plus, it’s exhausting.”

His dubiousness wasn’t disrespectful, though I could tell he was having a hard time believing that carving could be that taxing.

“Every time I create a sigil I am pouring focus, a piece of myself into it, to bring it to life. This sigil,” I said, moving my finger from the first one to the second, “is unique. I had to feel what it needed to connect with the first, that feeling is an effort. It’s honestly like jogging, or swimming, just the navigating and when you actually pour power into it while carving that’s like a full sprint. It’s a mental discipline, and focus, will, magic, whatever you want to call it, is born from a mix of… well, the soul, your own emotional investment and concentration.”

Self-deprecation was my go-to defense mechanism and I wrestled with making fun of my own craft, but I decided against it. This wasn’t the time to install doubt or damage whatever confidence he’d started to harbor in me. It wasn’t the time to doubt myself, either. If I was going to win, I couldn’t go in half-cocked.

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