A Grand Proposal

"No."

“Well, you don’t have a choice,” she said gleefully. "We go to Nivandor and we find the magistrate that killed your friend."

"And what, say ‘hello, how do you do, old chap?’" I replied, "The day I see him, somebody's gonna die; and I promise you it's not going to be me."

I knew where Priscilla was going with this, and it usually ended in a shouting match between us. I did not want to have a shouting match with her at two in the afternoon, or really any time of the day, because somehow, she always won.

I dropped the halves of the seal onto my blankets and started moving to go wash my face. Priscilla abruptly slammed the foot of my bed frame with her fist before I had even tossed my blankets away. I nearly fell onto the glass-covered floor as the entire room shook with a small earthquake.

I took a moment to stifle an involuntary scream and tried my best to hide my surprise, but Priscilla caught my look.

She laughed mercilessly.

"But that’s just it!” she said. “Once we find him, we give him the old coup de grâce!”

She waved her hand as she spoke and the air crackled dangerously as a small arc of electricity followed the path of her hand.

I breathed in sharply.

Lightning magic was fickle and notoriously difficult to control, even for a master of the branch like her. If I didn’t have extensive training in gom, magic that focused on negating the harmful effects of other magics, I would have been somewhat concerned since even a minor shock from a Seraph could easily fry a full-grown human.

“Magistrate Jephthah is probably rotting away in some ditch by now," I said.

“You're certain?"

"That's what I tell myself whenever I have trouble sleeping at night," I replied. "If there is anyone the citizens of the Gidonite Empire hate more than a mage, it is a traitor to the throne. After Magistrate Jephthah's ill-fated coup on the most powerful emperor to ever live, he became the most famous traitor to match. It would have been a miracle if he survived one week in that jail, let alone ten years.”

Priscilla made a face before grabbing the edge of my bed frame with her right hand. Then she pulled the bed a half-inch toward my bedroom door. The rickety metal frame groaned in protest, threatening to collapse entirely.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

She continued to drag the bed effortlessly toward the door until it was sitting dead in the center of the room. If it weren't for the tennis balls covering the bed frame legs, the wooden floor would have been terribly scuffed, and I would have been rather miffed.

Priscilla stepped nimbly onto the thin edge of the metal bed frame and balanced herself on it with all the grace of a tightrope walker. Her shadow loomed over me like an angel of death with a face as cold and expressionless as it was the day we met on the Rosen Bridge. I couldn’t tell what was going through her mind. Maybe this was some kind of bizarre punishment for not having my poop in a group. She usually only did something like this when she wanted to make sure I was paying attention.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I said something stupid, but can’t we talk about this after breakfast?”

Without missing a beat she cooed, “Catch me,” and let herself fall face forward toward me.

With a sigh, I created a kinetic barrier above me and Priscilla giggled maniacally as she came to a gradual halt several feet above me thanks to the barrier.

“This never gets old!” she said.

"This is beneath a mage of my talent, but what do you know, I signed a covenant that says I have to deal with your nonsense on a daily basis."

"Never should have taken out those student loans!"

"I didn't have much of a choice after mom died," I muttered.

Priscilla turned around and put her arms behind her head as she floated through the sky like a lily suspended on the face of a calm lake. There was a small opening on the back of her shirt just beneath her right scapula. On her back was a round scar that matched the size of the opening.

This was the point of origin for her Seraph wing, the place where her wing would appear when summoned. Wars were fought and treasuries emptied to win the allegiance of even a single Seraph due to the immense power they wielded. My lifelong servitude to Priscilla was but a part of my guild's extravagant ploy to keep their ridiculously powerful ally happy. Not the worst fate a mage could suffer given that Priscilla and I had nearly a decade's worth of friendship, most of which involved getting on each other's nerves and bonding over the fact that neither of us really fit in with the other mages at the guild.

After letting my liege live out her fantasy on a magic carpet for a few moments longer, I carefully set her down on the right side of my bed, away from the broken glass. When her feet were just an inch above the ground, I released the barrier altogether and Priscilla gracefully tip-toed back onto the ground.

She curtsied.

I applauded half-heartedly.

My arms were burning slightly from the magic I had used, a phenomenon known as manaburn.

Mages were a lot like cars. They needed gasoline to run and a way to keep their engine from overheating. Mana was our gasoline, and the more you had of it, the more you could do. Burning mana also produced heat, a lot of it. A good portion of magecraft was dedicated to crafting tools and methods to mitigate and treat manaburn. Our maxim was that manaburn, not mana, was the great limiter of all mages. Like ammunition, mana could be stored and prepared well in advance with no hassle But to get rid of manaburn in a combat situation in a manner that was both safe and efficient to the mage? Well, that was the holy grail of the magical world.

I looked at Priscilla.

“We go to Nivandor and make sure Magistrate Jeffrey-,” she said.

“Jepthah,” I said.

“Magi Jeff,” she insisted, “is dead. That’ll bring you some closure, I promise.”

I thought about her proposal for a moment.

"It might," I admitted. "But let's not forget, if we kill him, we're going to jail."

Priscilla knelt beside my bed and placed her elbows on top of my blankets. There was a sly look in her eyes. She already had this entire trip planned out, I could tell, down to every town we would visit and every item we would buy while we were on that hellhole called Nivandor.

"We won't go to jail," she promised. "We'll do it properly."

I sat up slowly thanks to my neck being sore from all the tossing and turning due to my nightmare. I was also a little too hungry to be thinking properly, but I was curious.

There was never a shortage of crazy ideas for adventures when I was with her, whether it was scaling the outside of the Cathedral of Eternity with our bare hands or snooping around the dark corridors of the Labyrinth of Florentine's Killer Robot Legion meant to discourage invaders from attacking the Dawn.

Between her Seraph powers and my kinetic magic, we were usually just fine with whatever we set out to do.

However, traveling to Nivandor to avenge a friend of mine was a little more serious of a misadventure than we were used to. To hear her present a serious proposal about dealing with an old problem of mine was, frankly, the best idea I've heard in a while.

“What do you have in mind?”