As soon as the words left her mouth, something ripped us both out of the ground, not gently. It was as if the earth had suddenly gained a mind of its own and spit us out. I landed on my shoulder, my armor softening the impact as I attempted to roll with it while gingerly curling my body around the blood jars. The ringing in my ears from the ejection was making concentration impossible. “My good lad! You’re back!” The old man’s excitement would have put any two year old’s birthday jubilations to shame. “Oh hush now Granidorth, here’s a snack. Do me a favor and restrain them both, gently!”

Not so gentle hands made of constantly moving earth and rock hoisted me up, then hugged me to a wide body of even less comfortable dirt and sand. In the two seconds I had to make my eyes focus, I saw that my captor was a golem, or some kind of earth elemental. Its pale yellow crystal eyes communicated no emotion as it forcefully sank me inside of its body, only leaving my head exposed facing forward. Out of the corner of my eye, Reeanth struggled with the outstretched arm of the golem, its fist wrapped around her waist. Her kicks and punches were useless, and even the bursts of magic bleeding from the weaponized runes on her suit did nothing.

[Yup, she’s screwed. Nothing we can do to save her. But our asses on the other hand . . . ].

[What the fuck? Gungnir, where the fuck are you?]

[Hmmm, guess that hit to the head musta’ been harder than I thought. I’m stuck to the backside of your shoulder. Forget about me, your flesh sorcery will fix your head in a minute. I’m working on this hunk of rock right now. Distract the old fart.]

Lucky for me, it turns out I didn’t have to. In my haze, and the conversation with Gungnir that took all of my brainpower to focus and work through the minor head injury, I didn’t notice another old man taking up all of Flamel’s attention. This guy was old, but not in the frail kind of old that everyone fears they will be when year 80 hits. This guy was that kind of old that makes you afraid just by looking at him, like the old man in a young man’s profession. He had the physique of a powerlifter or a lumberjack from his old days, and apparently did his best to stay in the kind of shape that Vikings would drool over. Veins stood out on his massive forearms like steel cables, and his ice blue eyes crackled with anger. Loose grey pants that would not be out of sorts at a Buddhist temple clashed with a rainbow short sleeve shirt and steel shod boots. But what made this man scarier than his own visage, was the expression of fear and petulance that Flamel wore, his hands shaking as his knees began to knock together.

“But, you’re on vacation!” Flamel screeched, waving his arms and gripping extravagant vials in his hands, “You weren’t supposed to be here yet!”

The large old man stalked towards Flamel, steady and confident in his power, each step reminding the mountains how frail they are. Trees shuddered in his wake. “Another step and I’ll end them!” I almost wished he would. Flamel’s voice was grating on my ears worse than Gungnir’s early morning renditions of Bowling for Soup’s song ‘1985’.

Mountain man paused, his gaze smoothly taking in my predicament and then resting where Reeanth continued to struggle. A small smile quirked the left side of face. Raising his left hand, he snapped his fingers, light glistening off of a thick golden ring. The golem holding Reeanth and I blew away softly, like an ocean wave dragging a sand castle back to its composite parts. Falling to my knees, I used flesh sorcery to forcefully reengage my limbs that had fallen asleep so that my face wouldn’t hit the ground. A second snap rang out and the world twisted.

“Flamel is not one to be taken lightly young sorcerer.” Only the sound of Reeanth’s retching several feet away from me kept me grounded as I heard what easily could have passed as the voice of Santa himself spoke perfect English. My own stomach threatened to rebel but another flex of flesh sorcery kept it at bay even though my eyes would not agree with what my logic dictated should be true. We were back in my under-tree hideout. The stone table had food displayed in nice china dishes and a big covered pitcher wafted the thick heavenly smell of coffee towards me.

“Wait, how,” I stuttered, swiveling my head to take in the view. Reeanth was hurling her breakfast next to the chair Sally sat in not too long ago, and the huge old man whose presence felt like a burgeoning thunderstorm was leaning on the wall where the Yggdrasil sapling’s roots cut through the stone.

“Mastering wild magic has its perks.” I could hear the raised eyebrow that I knew accompanied that statement, the calm self-awareness of his power and the confidence that it gave while trying to gently explain a complex subject to a child. Reaching out with flesh sorcery, I calmed Reeanth’s ill constitution and quickly checked her for injury as I tried to wrap my mind around what just happened.

“So,” I started, taking measure of what Odin must have looked like before his bargain. “If that was Nicholas Flamel, and he’s not what I would have ever pictured, then who does that make you?”

“Merlin,” Reeanth croaked from where she sat on the ground, scooting herself away from her mess, “Supposedly the last sorcerer.” With a flick of earth sorcery, I made the rock swallow up the stinky puddle.

“Not anymore,” Merlin chuckled while setting his large frame into the stone chair I had made for the big southern man Jimmy. “Besides, letting that rat bastard get his hands on you is not something I would want to deal with down the road. He isn’t anywhere near as powerful as me, but he is far more sick.” Resting his chin in one giant hand, he leaned forward, looked into my soul and asked, “Which begs the question, why you?”

“Why me what?” I asked back, trying to make sense of this damn confusing day. “Blood jars, Centauri soldiers, a legendary Alchemist who turns out to be real, the last Ripple, me being a sorcerer? Where the hell do you want me to begin, or even how much should I even be telling you?!” My voice got louder and louder as my list went on, but not loud enough to be considered actual yelling. Reeanth’s wide eyes and slightly shaking head were my warning signs that maybe I was going a bit too far, to which Gungnir stridently agreed telepathically.

“How about you tell me all of it?” he asked calmly. My silence spoke volumes. “Seriously,” Merlin said, “If I wanted to kill you, I would have just left you with that lunatic. And I don’t want anything from you, trust me on that one.”

“Let’s say that I do, just for a moment,” I began.

“Can I speak with you for a moment my lord?” Reeanth asked, conveying with her eyes that I was about to make some kind of idiotic blunder. It was the look that wives give their husbands who meet their sensitive friends for the first time, the ‘shut the hell up and be polite’ look. I had barely gotten my excusal out and Reeanth had whipped me into the adjacent room, slammed the door and began berating me with all the frantic energy of a starving pitbull, but quietly. “What are you doing? This is Merlin, THE MERLIN, the last sorcerer, the first sorcerer for that matter! This man, this demi-god, is not someone you want to piss off!”

“I uh, hold on . . “

A light slap cut me off. “Do not hem and haw right now. Merlin is the barely mortal sorcerer/mage king of wild magic. He is the only reason humanity as a whole still exists. He travels at the whim of his magic to wherever it takes him and works miracles, ends wars, diverts disasters, saves the lives of commoners and royalty alike. Flamel is the most insane individual you will meet outside of the gods, and Merlin scares him!”

Mental whiplash all over again, which lead to my usual eloquence. “Huh?”

Reeanth’s eyes bored into my own as every word she said hit with the force of a sludgehammer. “Treat him like a god!”

Even though my flesh sorcery had fixed my ails by now, finding myself back in the main room, sitting in a chair in front of Merlin who was calmly sipping coffee prompted me do another scan of my brain just to make sure that this wasn’t some crazy hallucination. Reeanth was standing behind me just off to the left a bit, her hand on my shoulder. “Mr. Merlin sir,” I started, not really knowing where to begin as Reeanth’s grip tightened on my armor, making it creak audibly. “Before I tell you anything, just tell me why you even ask.”

I saw him suppress a small chuckle. “Truly, not knowing is ecstasy,” he said.

“Uhm, ignorance is bliss?”

“Yes! That’s the one!” he roared with laughter. “Ah, how I love idioms. The English language is so stuffed of them.”

“Full of them?”

Laughing way too hard for this situation, Merlin hit the table hard enough with one bear-sized hand to put a few cracks while his other hand was wiping away tears.

“Not to spoil the mood, Merlin sir,” I carefully interjected, making sure to chew over each word slowly, “But are you maybe a little bit crazy too, or is that just a normal side-effect of immortality?”

I noticed the magical strain on my armor as Reeanth was putting out an incredible amount of force in gripping my shoulder.

“A fair question, several fair questions in fact,” Merlin said, downing the rest of his coffee in one pull. “The first, I simply want to know. What was it like to suddenly have sorcery, to meet deities when they’ve been myths to your culture for so long? And as for the second . . .” He said as he leaned in, small strands of green lightning crackling in his eyes, “We’re all mad here.”

As the pucker factor shot through the roof, I quickly began to tell this imposing mountain of a yoked Santa my tale, leaving nothing out. Gungnir illustrated my autobiography holographically in the middle of the table, often portraying me as a bumbling idiot, victoriously stumbling blindly in such a way that Lady Luck herself must have had both hands on the wheel.

“I had no idea,” Reeanth said as show and tell ended. “What pain you must be . “

“Fuck off,” I said, stopping her short. Turning to face her, I stood up and stuck a finger in her face, “I don’t need your pity. I don’t need your sympathy. I don’t even need this fucking oath you gave me. All I need is knowledge right now, and I have a copy of your brain.” Ouch. That came off a little harsh, but reliving the past brought a little too much up right now for me to be kind.

“And you!” I said, whirling around to give Merlin the same treatment. “Over seven billion humans were on this planet before the Ripple, and now most of us are gone, kidnapped by freaking aliens and weird-ass futuristic humans that might as well be aliens. Where were you?! And then, you come to visit like some long lost uncle, just bouncing in here with your belly full of jelly? What are we, related?”

“Well . . .” he started.

“Oh fuck no,” I said, “Bullshit! Out of everyone, I’m the descendant of the great Merlin?! What are you trying to pull?”

“It’s not as you imagine young sorcerer . . . “

“Then ‘de-imagine’ it for me!”

Nervously looking between Reeanth and I, he spoke slowly. “I’ve watched humanity through the seal since the Divide. Your capacity for stories is as unmatched as your tendency towards distortion. The one you call Zeus, he is real, but the Greeks attributed some stories to him that were really about me.”

“Uh huh, and which stories would those be?”

“My lord, I believe he is referring to the accounts of randy encounter.”

My surprise took a while to catch up to my face, but as it did, Merlin continued, “In fact, a large portion of your population is actually related to me in some regard. Arthur was one of mine in fact, but the best example is from your own history. Ghengis Khan, a significant percentage of humanity has some of his genetic markers due to him procreating with so many women in his time. Well, my appetites of old make him look like the humble Taoists.”