Birthday Bedlam: Adventures of Benjamin Baxter Book 1

Birthday Bedlam

Unusually bright, an early October full moon hung in the Las Vegas sky cutting light through the darkness of Meadows Towing sprawling junkyard. Benjamin Baxter edged to an intersection and placed a careful hand on the jagged kinks of flattened cars stacked twenty high and hoped his car hadn’t already met the same fate.

He peered around the corner.

A light desert breeze worked down the long row of vehicles squashed and stacked like large Legos. The dry air pressed against Ben’s face, bringing the heavy smell of rust and neglected plastic. Bathed only in moonlight, the true colors of the cars turned into muted tones. Shadows did most of the coloring here.

Doing his best not to break the silence that lay over the scrapyard like a warm blanket. Ben hurried down the row.

Movement at the far edge of the row caught his eye. He sucked in a quick gulp of air and froze.

This boar, like the one before, had long tusks, stood waist-high and looked thoroughly pissed off as it crossed between rows of compacted cars thirty feet ahead. Ben eyed the spiked leather collar as it snorted and stalked.

He pulled out his new Anvilsmith tablet—a birthday gift from the Archon Primary Academy—and a spell card he’d crafted and programmed for a situation like this, and lined the SD card up with the slot on his device.

Ben kept the surprised gulp locked in his lungs. Like before, he hoped the boar would continue on.

According to the scry he had bought from Crystal, this was supposed to be a moonlit stroll through a vacant scrapyard to recover his stolen car. This guard animal, the second he had come across, signaled otherwise. Why’d they take his car in the first place? Better yet, what kind of lunatic would use ravished boars as guard animals.

He frowned. Worst sixteenth birthday ever.

If the operators of this lot were crafty enough to conceal the beasts from Crystal’s divination, they were, at the least, starwise and, at the worst, well-practiced in the arts.

Ben let his breath ease out as the animal began to go around the corner.

His device gave a small tick. Ben’s robotic companion—Tex—also searched Meadows Towing for his car and had just unsilenced his Anvilsmith. Unable to slide his finger to lower the volume and keep the spellcard ready, Ben pressed the tablet into his gut and prayed to muffled the speakers enough.

Loud and proud, Tex’s synthesized voice blared, “Found it!”

The boar turned with a sharp snort and bristled.

Ben slid the spellcard the rest of the way in and pressed “activate.”

The SD card shot from the Anvilsmith like a miniature black comet with a snapping green energy tail. It pulsed strongly with the same energy when it struck the ground.

His school tie and trench coat started to react to the pull from the sudden vacuum before the crackling energy shattered the card. It released a gust of wind, whipping Ben’s coat and hair back when Orion, a large gorilla made of sparkling green energy, appeared from the destroyed spellcard. The magical glow faded as his conjured protector materialized.

Focused on Ben, its original target, the boar lowered its menacing tusks and charged. It tried to plow through the gorilla.

Orion dropped its center of gravity. Strong arms caught the boar and redirected on a tangent to slam into wall of smashed wrecks.

Ben was saved.

Orion fought on.

Ben felt the familiar tingling sensation at the center of his brain when the conjurer’s link formed.

A rush of adrenaline surged through him as he piggybacked on Orion’s awareness and the gorilla’s senses became his own.

Together, they rolled with the force from the boar’s charge. They had one of the beast’s tusks in hand and beat at it with the other.

The boar got its feet beneath it and jerked its neck back to break free.

With a focused thought, Ben made Orion grab the other tusk. Before he could issue a follow-up command, the gorilla acted on instinct. A mighty yank ripped one tusk away from the creature’s snout with a sickening crack.

Ben recoiled from the link and regained his own senses.

The boar’s squeals of pain were cut short as Orion stabbed it repeatedly with its own tusk.

A chill ran up Ben’s spine. His throat constricted.

Ben had summoned conjurations in the past to perform tasks around the Archon Private Academy. He had used this same gorilla to move Master Reynolds’s heavy black cauldrons. There were joys in controlling creatures to do chores, but having conjured one who had killed filled him with disgust.

Orion thumped its chest in victory and sidled next to Ben, offering the bloody tusk to show it had completed the task set to it. Further, it tried to give Ben the mental reins to embody it again.

Ben shook his head at both the tusk and control. Appreciative of the gesture, he pet-patted the gorilla’s massive hairy arm, but looked away in disgust. Between the rows of the compressed cars, his gaze went to the boar. He didn’t want to see the dead creature, but his attention floated to the area.

Orion stood in the way, and Ben was glad his conjuration blocked the view.

“I said, found it.” Tex reminded him, its light metallic voice carrying through the Anvilsmith. “It is...” A ping sounded as Tex plotted coordinates. “Right here.” That and a couple of deep breaths of the steel-laden air helped remind Ben of why he had come.

Ben turned his back to the boar and thumbed the volume down to 25%. He rubbed his face with vigor and tried to rid his memory of the crack and last life-ending whine.

“Need I remind you of how Master Reynolds will respond to your loss of a birthday gift on the night of its gifting?” Tex imitated Master Reynolds’s Southampton accent. “Lose one of your sixteenth’s gifts, Benjamin, and you lose them all.”

Ben clenched his fist against failure. It would be the same as when he had lost one of the three gifts he received for his thirteenth birthday.

Most annoyingly, his third gift—Tex, a small Golemcast robot—was right. If he lost his car—a sleek, APA red convertible Transcend—Master Reynolds would demand he forfeit Tex and the Anvilsmith tablet.

No one ever had to surrender a second set of gifts. He’d be the grand fool of the APA.

Ben’s brow pulled into a decisive knot. If he couldn’t recover his car, he wouldn’t return to school.

The dead boar had slipped back into his mind. Focused on the task, Ben swallowed the lump of bile trying to escape his throat. He took a steadying breath. “Tex, why do you always override my silent setting?”

“You are asking the wrong question, Junior Apprentice.”

“Am I?” Ben looked up to the moon in the clear night sky. This far from Las Vegas, the brighter stars pushed through the neon light pollution. His Master would say it was a good omen.

Tax answered, “Yes. You should be asking yourself, Why is my silent setting so easily overridden?” The robot paused in mock contemplation. “Perhaps you should have a word with your programmer...”

Even though no one would know, Ben pursed his lips to keep his amusement from showing.

Tex knew Ben programmed his own gear. The robot had taken a solid shot at him. The hallmark of the Golemcast models was to analyze the assigned student and use the best associated method to challenge them to greater heights. Apparently Tex had pegged him for humorous sarcasm.

Aware that it would only be around a short amount of time, the gorilla pushed Ben’s shoulder.

Ben nodded. “Tex, come to where I am and salvage what you can. Then, make an intercepting path to meet up with me.”

Tex replied, “Will do, Junior Apprentice, but this is a scrapyard. There is a lot to salvage.”

Ben groaned at Tex’s response and pressed his lips tight to keep his biting reply in check.

Unlike his past two companions, Tex registered when he was snide to it. Even though Ben couldn’t find the subroutine in Tex’s code to prove it, he would bet anything that the small robot spitefully performed worse until plugged back into the mainframe. “Salvage what you can from the spellcard and combat Orion had with a boar in this vicinity.”

A chime sounded. Tex noting his location. “Will do, Junior Apprentice, and will continue in stealth mode.”

Even though Orion’s time dwindled, Ben pressed Modes on his Anvilsmith and scanned the list presented. It went from Silent to Survival, and he noted his silent setting was still no longer active. He tapped it with a sigh and grumbled as he earmarked his next few programming sessions to create a Stealth mode. “Maybe that’ll keep him silent.”

Clearing the screen, Ben checked Orion’s remaining time—three minutes. He tapped the timer and set a vibration reminder for when thirty seconds remained.

He then pressed Modes and Map. The Anvilsmith went blank for half a second. A top-down view of Meadows Towing appeared. Ben had created it from various Internet maps and modified it with what Crystal had told him. A green dot lit where Tex marked his car’s location. A red dot marked where the boar’s body lay.

Ben took control of Orion. Through the gorilla’s eyes, he looked into dazed far off look of his vacant body standing there in full school uniform like he was lost simply lost in thought and not inhabiting a conjuration.

Using Orion’s strong arms, he scooped his physical body close, and continued moving through the desolate maze. Two turns and five lengths of crushed cars later, Ben came across another boar.

He released his body, relinquished control of the gorilla, and was back in his own body before hitting the ground.

Having recently dealt with a boar, Orion made short work of this one in the same fashion. This time, it did not offer Ben the detached tusk as proof of its good work.

The tablet vibrated the reminder.

Ben considered pumping more power into Orion, but the least amount of time was for another five minutes and would pull ten arcane watts from the Anvilsmith’s remaining ninety-five.

Having engineered a few devices able to store awatts from scratch and without guidance, Ben had become quite familiar with the measurement of arcane energy. A seven capacity laptop proved to be his top end.

Now he held a hundred in a tablet. Astounding.

As a matter of habit, Ben moved forward to have his hand in position to catch the small obdurium-steel strip that held Orion’s memory from this casting.

Ben patted Orion’s dense chest twice with a regretful smile. It saved him and battled for him. If it wasn’t so expensive to keep the conjuration around longer...

The gorilla disappeared.

With a practiced flick, Ben caught the strip and pressed the obdurium into the base of the Anvilsmith. Amazingly, it backed up the data in five seconds.

Ben beamed.

His first tablet, a refurbished Tsuku model he had modified five years ago, would have taken ten seconds for each real-life second that passed. This badass tablet copied a minute per second.

Ben nodded his approval. “Nice.”

Meadows Towing

A two-story auto shop sat at the center of the scrapyard. Across the second floor, above the six dark windows, squat fat letters spelled out Meadows Towing. Shadows filled the yawning mouth of the five work bays. Strange music, heavy on window-rattling drums and the sound of metal striking metal, screamed from the bays.

Though he’d expected something more formidable, the desolate customer waiting area—no less the maze-like columns of wrecked cars—made Ben doubt anyone ever came here, even during the day.

Like a gentle tug on his ears, the slight pull from the Inscription spell he had cast on the front fender directed his eyes.

Convertible top retracted, they had his Transcend up on a lift with the doors open. Gone was the standard, scintillating, candy red Archon Private Academy paint job. Matte black paint now covered every inch of his car.

Only a span of a hundred feet—without cover—separated him from his favorite gift.

Crouched behind the column of junked cars closest to the building, Ben pressed Spells. All the spells he had programmed during his time at the APA lay within the seven main categories of spell-type icons. He pressed the asterisk for enchantments. He tapped glowing eye icon for Soul Sight and noted options his old tablet never offered.

The old, one hundred and twenty feet max range now sat toward the left of a slider as the default position. The bar had thirty feet on the low end and topped out at six hundred. A second slider, duration, defaulted to a low of one minute, but could go out to ten minutes.

A ghostly image flashed behind his screen.

Ben fumbled the tablet and caught it. He’d forgotten about his addition of the animated background, and grabbed his chest. He made a mental note to change it to something less startling. He then slid the markers to the top end of the distance and duration bars.

The Cast button—which he had been so proud of when he designed it—looked like a burnt out neon sign. -50, the cost of the spell, lit behind it. Not part of the spell, red text appeared across the bottom of his screen. This will decrease current capacity by fifty arcane watts. You will have forty-five arcane watts left.

He smiled broadly before setting the spell back to the defaults. The note went away and usage dropped to one awatts. He’d have ninety-four left.

Ben remembered the emphasis of Master Reynolds’ annual commencement speech. “Never use more energy than you need.”

He stood and hovered his finger over Cast. His pulse quickened. His stomach tightened. He tried to shake the nerves away, but like the memory of the tusk being torn from the boar’s skull, his nervousness refused to leave.

Ben tapped the icon, and the Anvilsmith started shooting magical energy into his hand. Each mystic discharge resonated through his body, stronger and warmer than the last. The injections were at their quickest and strongest toward the end, and he realized he had forgotten to put his mouthpiece in only when his teeth chattered.

Ben preferred casting by SDs. The magic washed over and through him, but rebuilding the tiny spell cards was extremely time-consuming and quite expensive. Spells cast from tablets—as long as one doesn’t mind having magic forced into them—were effectively free of material cost.

His eyes tingled as the power settled in his irises. There were no living creatures in the spell’s range. He took another look at the windows for movement. None. He rushed across the opening.

In the garage, he felt the presence of three beings further in the building. If he could walk through walls, two were forty feet away and the other lay on the floor above him.

He looked toward the two on the ground level and focused his spell upon them.

Wall by wall, his vision penetrated the structure until he could see the shape of the two pale white outlines. Both were over six feet tall and built like professional football players. They had enlarged heads. He concentrated on their upward turned, pig-like snouts.

Involuntarily, Ben had held his breath. Since they wouldn’t hear him over the blaring music, Ben dared to quietly exhale. “Orcs...”

Having read many stories about their greedy and violent natures, Ben searched for the control to lower his car so he could get out of there.

The main panel just inside the garage had several buttons and levers, but none of them looked to be what he needed. He moved over to the stall with his car and searched there.

The spell warned him of a presence, big and powerful, coming from along the outside edge of the building.

“Shit.” Ben hustled up the lift ladder to his car and dove onto the backseat. “Shit. Shit.”

The Orc Master

The speakers blared the insane crashing music. Closer to where they rattled in their housing, Ben grimaced.

“Wha—” He lifted his hands away from the seat. The paint job didn’t bother him so much, but if someone had ripped out his leather interior and replaced it with crappy vinyl. Unable to see in the darkness, he squeezed the cushion and didn’t like what he felt or the plastic smell. “Someone’s going to pay for this.”

He shook his head. There’d be time to worry about that later.

Ben focused on the new presence closing in. It radiated power. A caster. Casters always registered stronger. His spell allowed his vision to penetrate the car door and the exterior wall to see a massive ten-foot body.

Its torso—longer and thicker than anatomically possible, even for orcs—connected to narrow hips. Its squat, powerful legs only made up a third of its height rather than half. The head sat thick on its shoulders like a short-snouted dog, and small horns rose just over its concaved ears.

Deep purple energy—Krotosian magic—emanated from the towering monstrosity.

The creature entered the work bays. It had to duck and turn sideways to squeeze into the building.

Ben caught a flash of light blue skin, a white t-shirt, and dark baggy jeans as it forced its way into the building. Voice deep and gruff, it barked.

The music shut off.

Its woofing continued.

Ben’s ear picked out inflection and structure to the barking. Since his mother had refused to teach him her native tongue, he had approached Adept Yeffaux—the Archon Private Academy’s Master Linguist—about learning Sylvan. Yeffaux’s high eyebrows arched higher at the request, before snidely stating they don’t teach that kind of language.

More than a hunch, Ben pressed Options, then Translate, and To Text. The Anvilsmith displayed Dwarven futhark. He knew Dwarven and this jumbled mess didn’t read like it.

The Anvilsmith flashed Orcish to English. A number one appeared followed by a colon as the futhark morphed into English. “Why aren’t you pigs out feeding the little pigs?”

A two followed by a colon blinked as a second deep, but not-as-gruff, voice answered, “They haven’t been back in a bit. We figured they caught an intruder and are dining on fresh flesh.”

“An intruder?” The massive teal creature asked, and the Anvilsmith italicized amusement in parenthesis. “You two better pray your pigs left remains or you’ll be honor battling tonight!” A pop-up window hovered over Honor Battle.

Honor Battle (v.) A ritual called by overlords pitting failed minions against each other in a fight to the death. The idea behind this outdated practice is to weed out the failures and grant the victor another chance to prove their mettle.

Two more white figures, more orcs, came into Ben’s spell range from deeper in the building.

The four orcs jogged into the garage. Two Colon pointed at each. “You, go north. You, south. You, east, and I’ll take west. Blow on your horn twice when you find something.”

The four orcs separated to their directions.

Giving them a little time to get far enough away, Ben laid on the backseat with the Anvilsmith on his chest. Dark streaks and splotches lay on the ceiling. How did they manage to get oil up there?

The being on the second floor stirred. He’d almost forgotten about it.

Ben focused his spell on it and felt power radiate. Great, another caster. This one smaller, human-sized—a girl—and framed with Argosian red energy.

His head shook in disbelief as his spell ended. He could have sworn the girl’s lips moved as if to say, “Help me.”

It wouldn’t be long before the orcs came across one of the dead boars. A part of him wanted to hit the button to lower the lift and peel out, but his starwise self knew he couldn’t leave an Argosian in the hands of a vile Krotosian.

Ben tapped the rust-colored GC icon on his home row and whispered orders for Tex into the Anvilsmith, “Get here, get the car down, and be ready to roll.” He then pressed Modes and Survival before Tex could reply.

Hoping, he tapped to Pop. The screen showed the effective radius of the weak teleportation spell. He grimaced. Just enough distance to get stuck between floors. No thanks.

Ben cued Soul Sight, topped the range out at six hundred, and pressed Cast.

His wattage tracker dropped to eighty-nine.

Twenty-six other life forms headed away from the building. He examined the cursory information. Searching, he wondered aloud, “Where’d the Krotosian go?”

His nervousness dissipated as he set his mind to saving the Argosian.

Ben climbed down from his car and entered the building.

They had built a kitchen into the customer service lounge and promptly neglected it. Odors of rotten cheese and rancid meat assaulted his nose before his eyes took in the slimy dishes piled in a sink. With each step something sticky pulled at the bottom of his shoes. The silver handle of a battered refrigerator, where it hadn’t been caked over by muck, shone.

In a hurry to leave the nasty kitchen, Ben turned and entered the den. The smell worsened.

A disgusting, gray slab of meat hung from a hook in front of a massive hundred-and-three-inch television. Part of it resembled a rib cage, but the rest didn’t resemble any animal Ben had ever seen. A legion of maggots worked the surface. Liquor bottles in varying stages of wholeness to shattered remnants covered the floor like mosaic tiles. Smashed glass formed sparkling mounds down the backs of the five battered sofas.

Given their relative cleanliness, Ben would bet the TV and four large concert-stage speakers mounted in the corners must’ve been new.

Two sets of stairs on opposite sides of the room led up out of the mess. Faint crunches accompanied each step as he moved to the closer one.

Buried under layers of crud and discarded wrappers, the staircase reeked with a sour tang. The center of every step had a sure, foot-wide strip of ground-in grime—except for the last two at the top.

He stopped short of them and leaned.

A business-quality wooden door stood to the left of the landing, while the right seemed to open into a hallway.

Ben considered the dirty and untrammeled stairs a moment longer.

All of these creatures’ strides were longer than his, but something felt really peculiar about those last two steps. Though he hadn’t taken anything from the Traps course offered by the school, the number of classes almost equaled the array that had to do with spells.