7. Fenric
Fenric had to get out of the house. After a week of watching his companions drop like flies because they couldn’t keep Maxie’s cooking out of their mouths, he practically jumped at the chance to do some hunting.
Of course, he was quite used to shenanigans happening the second he turned his back.
Those in his group were fairly strong men, all opinionated, with their own beliefs, et cetera, et cetera.
Which really translated to Hapi not thinking twice about carving into inn floors to do blood rituals or Rain walking around without pants on and accidentally adding another exposure charge to his growing list of crimes.
The recent string of deaths was the main reason why Fenric had also taken Hapi with him. The necromancer kept threatening to leave them dead if they weren’t smart enough to not eat poison. Fenric also hoped the others would wise up if the guy who could bring them back to life wasn’t in the house.
Hapi seemed in a good mood as they walked side by side, which was strange.
They’d stepped out today to hunt down an elk and had failed, so if anything, his friend should have been disappointed.
The sun was shining overhead in a bright blue, cloudless sky.
A gentle breeze rustled the leaves, pushing away the worst of the day’s heat and ruffling their hair.
Even the forest had been quiet. They hadn’t spent their afternoon tripping over other hunters from Pomor looking to snag dinner.
It was a nice day away from the insanity claiming their home ever since Maxie had come to live with them.
“Happy, Hapi?”
Hapi groaned and gave him a sideways glare. “That joke never gets old, does it?”
“It does not,” Fenric said with a shit-eating grin. “But seriously, I expected you to be disappointed since we didn’t find an elk. But you’re almost smiling?”
Which was a weird expression on Hapi’s face. The man had the worst resting bitch face Fenric had ever seen. It wasn’t that he was a melodramatic, gloomy soul, he just didn’t look happy most of the time.
“Puppy is…tolerable. He’s not nearly as annoying as some people,” Hapi admitted, which in Hapi speak meant pretty much every living creature in existence.
Fenric also inwardly chuckled over how everyone had taken to using his nickname for their newest member.
“It has been a long, long time since anyone treated my profession with respect and good-natured curiosity.”
“Ahhh.” Well, yeah, it made sense. Hapi normally faced scorn, even from other villains, but Fenric had always guessed it was fear based.
They were worried Hapi might turn them into skeletons next, and there was very little they could do to stop him.
Not that Hapi would, necessarily, without severe provocation. But the fear was there.
Hapi completely surprised him by tacking on, “I know this has been something of a trial period with him, regardless of what Malfas claims Ezlan says and his usefulness with poisons, but I think we should keep him.”
“Uh…okay?” Fenric couldn’t help his double take.
Seriously, Hapi was not a people person, so him voluntarily saying this was something.
Hapi didn’t trust anyone. While it usually felt like Hapi trusted Fenric more than most, even their relationship was strained at times.
The elf had known Maxie just over a week, and Hapi was already arguing to make him a permanent member of E.V.I.L.
That just seemed too strange. “You seriously like the kid that much?”
“It’s not only about liking him. I fear for him. He is too trusting.”
“Oh. Yeah, agreed. One hundred percent. I don’t believe for a second he can truly be a villain, he’s just too good natured for it, but…”
“But, indeed.”
“Well, he wants to stay with us, and everyone else seems to be on board.”
“Yes, well, as was pointed out recently, the boy already has a body count, and even if he isn’t actively trying to poison someone, his poisoned food could be a very lucrative business. Anyone who brings him a customer wouldn’t be out of line asking for a small finder’s fee.”
And there it was. Protect sweet Maxie from the world—and maybe protect the world from Maxie, at times—while making a bit of money on the side.
Now things made more sense. It wasn’t that Hapi had suddenly developed a soft spot for the boy—he enjoyed being appreciated and possibly having a chance to make money.
Hapi’s lips twitched back into their usual annoyed frown. “Judging by what’s going on in the house right now, I imagine we’ll keep him so long as I can keep raising those idiots from the dead.”
Hapi was more sensitive than most, so it wasn’t a surprise he could detect what was going on in the rental house despite the fact they were still a good five hundred feet away.
“Shit.” Fenric sighed, already resigned to walking into chaos. “What are they even doing—”
The rental house visibly rattled on its foundation, dust poofing out from the eaves.
A thunderous roar rolled out from the structure, leaving Fenric wondering how it was still standing.
Several people in the nearby houses scurried outside and looked up at the cloudless sky, probably thinking the world was cracking apart.
No, seriously, what were they doing?!
Truly worried now, Fenric ran the rest of the distance, intending to burst through the front door, only to be checked as the door was locked from the inside. And no, a locked door couldn’t stop him, but it was easier to just get someone inside to open it.
“—you either explain how you did that or I will get naked right now!” Malfas declared, voice rising.
“Malfas!” Fenric demanded, banging on the door. “Stop what you’re doing and let me in!”
“What’s the magic word~” he sing-songed.
Shit, there was a magic word? No, wait, this was Malfas, so— “Pumpernickel.”
There was a digestive pause. “How the hell did you know?”
“You think with your stomach, so it’s always a food word, and we had pumpernickel bread last night. Now open the fucking door!”
He heard some grumbling and the unlocking of the door, then Malfas allowed it to swing open. Fenric stepped right in and then paused, looking around the room with growing dismay.
In the four hours he’d been gone, the long dining room table had been destroyed—literally cracked right down the middle—the chairs were now kindling unless someone was willing to use an arsenal of mending spells, and there were black marks across the floor in a sunburst pattern, with matching black sooty marks on the walls.
Maxie stood in the middle of the chaos, his face heavily smudged with soot and the whites of his eyes vivid against the mess. His curls had been blown back and looked frozen, as if he were still caught in a powerful wind.
An open grimoire lay in Maxie’s hands.
Which pretty much explained everything.
Malfas waved Hapi in, as happy as a trash panda with a whole array of trash cans to dig through. “Hapi, come, come.”
“Why? Why do I need to be here?” There was a tinge of annoyance to his voice, but Fenric didn’t miss the curious thread of excitement as well.
“To watch! To see, see!”
“Your kinks are showing again,” Fenric muttered, already exhausted and he hadn’t even learned what the fuck had been happening while they were gone.
Malfas stuck his tongue out. “Excuse you, we were doing a very important experiment, and I want Hapi’s take on this—”
“It didn’t occur to you to do the very important experiment outside so you didn’t have to use several days’ worth of mending spells to undo this mess?”
Malfas stared at him, realization blooming over his face. “Ah. Oops.”
“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Hapi said, then sighed. “Puppy, you are not hurt, correct?”
“What?” Maxie held up a hand to stave off his concern.
“Oh, no. No, I am unharmed. The damage is all my doing, in fact. I do apologize. Um, so Mal suggested that perhaps my magic was not limited to cooking. Since we decided to not make food while you were out of the house, we thought this might be an opportunity to try one of the other forms of magic. Malfas generously loaned me this grimoire and had me read off spells at random to see if anything else sparked. Um. Well, none of the spells have worked as intended.”
“Hence the damage?” Hapi tapped a finger to his chin before he maneuvered around a destroyed chair and gestured for the grimoire. “What all have you tried?”
Interesting how nothing else worked, though.
Was Maxie’s magic confined to cooking? Fenric hadn’t considered his magical limitations.
This would give Maxie a very narrow magical skill set, but in the right hands, with the right timing, his specialty could be incredibly lethal.
Fenric could think of two or three jobs offhand that would have gone a lot smoother if Maxie had been with them.
Seeing the club propped up in the corner, safely out of the way, Fenric grumbled to it, “Seriously, Ezlan, can’t you talk common sense into your follower?”
Malfas sniffed, chin at a haughty angle. “Show some respect to my god’s most ardent follower. Or my god will eat you.”
“Is he gentle?”
Maxie overheard that and busted up laughing.
Fenric shot him a wink, which made the kid laugh even harder.
This was another pro for adopting Maxie into the fold.
The kid’s sense of humor aligned pretty well with their own.
A point in their favor, considering their humor was a mix of raunchy, deadpan, and dry.
Over the past week, Maxie had come out of his shell.
The little sneak still wasn’t sharing anything about his past, which was understandable, but he was relaxing and making more comments.
He laughed more and teased his new housemates.
Hapi even smiled at the byplay, although he was focused on flipping through the grimoire.
Finally, he stopped and stared at Maxie thoughtfully for a full second.
“I believe, after seeing the results of your cooking experiments with Malfas, these spells all backfired because you are an alchemist-type magic user.”
“Oh!” Maxie lit up, eyes bright and shining. “Is that what I am? But I don’t know exactly what that is? Is it different from Malfas? Does that mean I can make potions and such?”
“I believe so. At first, we thought you might be a sorcerer. They have an innate magic ability, usually passed down through the bloodline. It was always possible you maybe had a sorcerer somewhere in your family history you didn’t know about.
However, their magic, when it first manifests, tends to appear in odd and unexpected ways.
It’s almost never focused on a single medium and on a single result, so after many experiments, we were forced to chuck that idea out the window. ”
“We also knew you couldn’t be a wizard,” Malfas chimed in. “All their magic is taught, and through the experiments, we couldn’t see any evidence that what you were doing was learned from another.”
“Also, there are warlocks, which are a type of magic user who derives the bulk, if not all, of their powers from a source, like a demon or a god. In the case of Malfas, his powers come from his club—”
“They come from Ezlan, the constellation who has chosen to possess my club and has graciously offered me a bit of his power so I can help do his bidding,” Malfas cut in sharply.
Hapi rolled his eyes and continued as if the warlock hadn’t spoken.
“On the other hand, alchemists fall in line with artificers in a way, as they turn a natural magical ability within them to make other magical things. Where artificers make magical technology, alchemists often make magical potions, pills, and in your case, food. The reason your ability works so well with cooking is because it’s the correct medium to manifest. I do not understand why your cooking attempt ended in poison, however. You had no intention of poisoning us—”
Maxie lifted both hands, alarm written all over his mobile face. “Perish the thought! I’d never!”
“I know,” Hapi assured him gently. “As I was saying, I do not know why your magic turned it into poison, as that was not your intent. Unless all your ability can do is create poison. It’s rare alchemists are confined to a singular ability, but it’s not unheard of.”
This was all news to Fenric, since he didn’t know the ins and outs of all the magical beings in the world, whether it was warlocks, sorcerers, paladins, or alchemists.
He had a couple of magic tricks up his sleeve, but he was limited to those two tricks.
Not like Hapi, who read books on the stuff for fun. “So…what does this mean?”
“It means we must continue to conduct more experiments to get a better understanding of Puppy’s abilities and limitations. I will say, Puppy, that having a very specific focus is not a bad thing. Those who do are generally quite powerful.”
Maxie’s expression was torn between excitement and nervousness.
Malfas spoke up. “Uh, I’d suggest taking a break from experimenting for the time being, mostly because we need to clean the place up, not like we can try to cook anything with the house a disaster like this anyway.
Plus, after the way those spells flew about, it’s likely that all the food in the house is pretty much poison or trash at this point. Fen, can you go to the market—”
“Fen would rather not,” Fenric denied mock-pleasantly. “My last trip might have included cheating at cards with the grocer, and I’m sure he remembers my face.”
“Ah. Right.”
“I will go to the market.” Hapi closed the book and handed it back to Maxie. “You two clean up.”
Probably for the best, yeah. And while this wasn’t Fenric’s mess by any means, he chose to pitch in and help. For one thing, he wanted to eat dinner on time, which would not happen unless he helped. For another, he obviously couldn’t trust Malfas and Maxie alone together.