Double Trouble
Most days that I work at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards in my position as a Mid-Level Mage, I’m astute, focused on the job at hand, and efficient, but everyone has their off days. Sometimes the workload is slightly lighter, and your brain is slightly more spent. On days like these, sometimes I sink lower in my chair, and without any pressing work to occupy my mind, my focus drifts to the conversation around me, between co-working wizards and between mages and their clients. Its a situation like this I present to you now, but before I begin, I want to make it clear I did not realize the full implications of the things I was hearing until it was too late (I have my off days like any breathing creatures) and I forbid anyone from writing in claiming I intentionally let my colleagues continue on in this situation to drum up chaos in the office. I get enough of those accusations from my supervisors.
This story I tell you without complicity or bias, for I had nothing to do with it or the outcome, concerns first a coworker I will call Deyv. Deyv was hard at work writing up potion recipes for a couple of his repeat clients who want the exact same remedies each time they order their potions from us. Simultaneously, Deyv was in a call with a client through their magical water basin. It’s not uncommon to multitask while on a call with a client, but usually this was only done if the person on the other line was speaking particularly slowly or was taking too long while finding the defective items in question that they were calling about. In this situation, Deyv’s conversation appeared to be flowing at a consistent rate, and yet his eyes kept focus on the parchment in front of them.
From the side of the conversation I could hear, and the hushed voice emitting from the basin if I listened carefully enough, I gather that it was a king Deyv was speaking to, and this king needed help summoning demons. Demon summoning enchantments are pricy, and come with a tremendous amount of rules to make sure the demons aren’t released willy nilly, and due to having all these rules, the process of summoning them was laborious. The king said something to Deyv about how he was saying all the words, but no demons were springing forth from charred cracked earth, and his consort had been urging him to get the issue resolved before their upcoming battles. Deyv gave the king the normal spiel, about how he had to read the incantation allowed and also pause when marked on the pages. Deyv had the king perform the incantation again with him while on the call, and occasionally had him pause and start over.
It was at this point that I overheard another coworker of mine, Loie, reminding a client that demon summoning incantations often have delayed effects, but if it made the client feel better she would wait on the call with him while he recited it again, just to make sure he was pausing in the right spots. How odd, I thought to myself, another client who’d ordered demon summoning and was calling in about it now? I listened in more closely to Loie’s call, and gathered she was dealing with a situation almost identical to Deyv’s. And what were the odds that her client was a king as well, I thought to myself. It was at that moment that I remembered the details about Deyv’s client, that his kingdom was ruled by himself, the king, and by his consort, the other king.
I was about to say something when both mages began celebrating their clients for successfully completing the summoning ritual, and then all of us Mid-Level Mages learned something new. If two people complete demon summoning spells at the exact same time, the amount of demons summoned is tripled. Not sure what the logic is there, but with magic there rarely is any.
May the moon shine favorably and without hesitation upon you,
Alexan Drytus
