'Damnit. Damnit!'
It's the first thing I hear, the first sound. One moment I'm crossing the street, the next I'm elsewhere. No flash, no flame, a mere transition. Cold stone beneath me, a stink of sulphur, something fleeting like ozone, an electrical buzz setting a rhythm into the calcium of my bones. Warm golden lights, torch sconces on walls, flame burning above the metal, no obvious source.
'Azarlia, you prostitute,' a man says, voice gnarled and rough, dusty, ancient. 'Goddess of magic my bunghole, filthy fucking shit-show of a deity.'
I push against the stone with my hands, sitting myself upright. The chamber is round, floor a series of flagstones. One side has a staircase, rising both upwards and downwards, concealed by a length of wall. Surrounding me is a heptacle, a seven-pointed shape. A man, bald but for wisps of grey hair around his liver-spotted scalp, ruffles through the pages of a great tome upon a desk between two floating golden flames. His robe is black, forming rolls around his sandalled feet.
'Mugwort...tannic essence...nymph milk...set of words...'
He snarls, angrily slides the book to the floor. A pair of amber eyes set upon me, nestled beneath two great bushy eyebrows, grey and curling wildly. The ancient man, skinny but for a noticeable pot-belly, growls at me. His thin lips pull taut against yellowing teeth, stubble on his jaw meeting descending hairs born of two wide nostrils set in a crooked nose. Large ears sit either side of his mostly-hairless head, tufts of thick grey protruding like declarations of exasperation from each ear.
'You,' he says, bitter and aged. 'A boy. You hiding your shape? This a trick, demon-whore?'
'Wha--'
'Azarlia be damned.' He hangs his head, sighs. 'Whole realm of sex-demons, and I get one who thinks the most attractive form is a skinny bearded fella.'
'Sex-demons?' I manage, in a single motion, to get to my feet. There are windows to this chamber, high and small, but the world beyond the glass is black. 'Where?'
The old man chuckles. 'Heh. You and me both, boy. Suppose you'll do.'
He gestures, dispensing with his robe; it goes somewhere, somehow. Out comes a pale body, saggy and wrinkled, with a hairy belly and chest, overflowing armpits, a jungle of pubic hair. Between his legs hangs a pair of billiard-ball nuts, sagging halfway down his thighs. Before them droops a flaccid penis, a wizened wrinkled thing topped with a fat bulge in a hood of foreskin. I immediately avert my eyes, passingly aware of how large his cock is.
'Suck it,' he says.
'No. What the fuck, man?'
The old man wets his thin lips, and points down. 'Suck. It. That's a command.'
'A command? Who the hell are you? Where am I? I want to go back home!'
He bores into me with his eyes, a kind of madness shimmering across them. The old man seizes his flaccid cock, flopping it about, jutting it towards me. 'Knees. Cock. Mouth. Go.'
'What? The fuck is this?'
At last he sighs, and hangs his head. 'That ritual took two damned years.' A gesture returns his robe, another creates a stool, and the old man drops back onto it. 'You're not a demon, are ya boy? That's why the commands don't work. You ain't bound.'
'No...I'm not,' I say, scratching behind my head, flicking my ponytail in the process. 'I'm...I'm Max. From Earth. From England. Do you...do you know anything about that?'
He shakes his head. 'Think we both got conned, boyo. Some sneaky slut musta fiddled me. You came here, she went to your word.' The old man rises, strong despite his apparent age. He dusts his hands together. 'Well, boy. Suppose this is your new home. I'm Archaelaus, former greatest magician of the Nine Realms of Gauhn.'
'My...magician...can't I go back?'
'Tonight? No. Eventually? Maybe, but I'd have to look into that and I'm a notorious procrastinator.' He gestures wide. 'Make yourself at home, I guess. Good to have company, at least. You eaten yet?'
'What? But...'
Earth, gone. I pinch myself, remain here. No dream. The sulphur smell, the ozone, the electricity, has faded. What remains is the mustiness of books, the faint herbaceous glamour of dried ingredients. Warm, despite the cold stone. I shudder, making sense, slowly but surely, of what will likely take a long while yet to accept.
'Come on, boy. Let's feed ya.'
*
The tower has seven stories, basement excluded. He takes me past two libraries, a cosy sitting room, ultimately ending in the kitchen and dining room. Archaelaus prepares a small feast of fruits, cheeses, meats, breads. I eat, because I'm hungry, because there's nothing else to do. It all seems so real.
He talks, and talks, and talks. His first company in ages. 'Had a servant girl, 'til I got handsy,' he says, with no apparent remorse or self-reflection. 'Had to move the tower, then. Musta been sixty years back.'
'How old were you?'
Archelaus shrugs, gestures uncertainly. 'Oh, two-ninety?'
'Two-hundred-and-ninety?!'
He smiles, nods. 'Former greatest magician, didn't I say? Well, see, that was because back at the Neihmalt Academy, some snotty little bitch went and tattled when I managed to knock up her and her--'
'Is everything about you somehow tied to your inability to keep it in your pants?'
Archaelaus waves dismissively. 'Pfft. They love it.'
'Sounds like they don't.'
He lifts a wild eyebrow to me. 'Boyo, you know how easy is it is get girls when you're the greatest mage in the world? Penny a dozen.' He leans towards me, conspiratorially. 'See, that servant girl? Wanted to be my wife. Archaelaus the Magnificent? He don't do wives. He does booty-calls. Got no time to settle down, see?'
I can't help but smile at his brashness. 'And the academy girls?'
'Well-known fact that consuming my semen accelerates the development of magical abilities. So girls -- and more than the occasional boy -- tended to be willing to work for, let's say, "extra credit".' He makes a suggestive motion of those ancient brows, smirking all the while. 'Only these two girls, they wanted my kids. Sure, can do, but when I refused to pay my share -- not a legal requirement, y'see -- they got parents involved and it all came out that I was feeding students loads and well' -- he gestures widely -- 'here we are today.'
I put down my fork. 'Eating your sperm really gave them greater powers? Why weren't you bottling and selling the stuff, man? You'd be minted.'
A dark, somewhat mischievous grin prevails. 'So...sperm, half of a new life, male half...it carries the man's lineage, his essence. You follow. In a man like me, it's...well, my essence is magic, the raw shit. But...while every one of my loads carries my lineage...I may or may not have held back the magical essence.'