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Magic Awakens (The Evermores Chronicles Book 8), page 1
MAGIC AWAKENS
THE EVERMORES CHRONICLES™ BOOK 8
MARTHA CARR
MICHAEL ANDERLE
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2022 LMBPN Publishing
Cover by Fantasy Book Design
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
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LMBPN Publishing
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Version 1.00, June 2022
ebook ISBN: 979-8-88541-489-0
Print ISBN: 979-8-88541-490-6
The Oriceran Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright © 2017-22 by Martha Carr and LMBPN Publishing.
THE MAGIC AWAKENS TEAM
Thanks to our JIT Readers
Dorothy Lloyd
Christopher Gilliard
Dave Hicks
Diane L. Smith
Zacc Pelter
Editor
SkyFyre Editing Team
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
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Author Notes - Martha Carr
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Chronicles of Winland Underwood
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Connect with The Authors
CHAPTER ONE
Fran Berryman raised her wand and peered around the toy factory. The machines were silent, the whole production line switched off, and the bright lights should have made her targets obvious. Still, she caught only the briefest glimpse of movement, somewhere beyond the machines that stuffed the teddy bears.
"There," she whispered and pointed across the room.
Her team spread out and crept across the factory floor, around stacked crates and silent machinery. The gray-haired gnome Bart Trumbling had his hands raised with magic sparking around his fingertips. Gruffbar Steelstrike wore his beard unusually short for a dwarf. He had an unlit cigar clamped between his lips and carried a shotgun with ax blades at the end of the barrel. Smokey the shifter was in his usual cat form, prowling under the conveyor belts with claws bared, wearing a web harness to carry his phone and tools. Singar Twitchtail held a magitech tube connected to a reinforced backpack, a portable pest trap of the Willen's creation. And of course...
"I can't believe we're reduced to this," Elethin Tannerin hissed. "Grubbing around for pests in someone else's factory."
"We need to make money somehow," Fran reminded her.
"Still, this whole business is ghastly. I mean, look at this outfit..."
Unlike anyone else on the team, Elethin had somehow managed to turn her cheap secondhand overalls into something shapely and almost stylish, drawing in the garment and the eye with a carefully chosen belt. Still, it wasn't enough for the elf, who preferred high fashion and boutique shopping to thrift shop work wear, and was determined to let the world know it.
"It's only been a few years since you were wearing prison overalls and cleaning the bathrooms at Trevilsom," Gruffbar growled. "If any of us are suited to this work, I reckon it's you."
"How dare you!" Elethin raised her hands and magic flowed between them. "I should stick you in one of those cages not—argh, rat!"
It wasn't a rat. As far as Fran could tell, it was some sort of furry pixie. Its wings fluttered as it buzzed out from under the stitching line and flew at Elethin with magic sparking around its tiny fist. Elethin flung up a magical shield that deflected the incoming creature, and Fran hit it with a blast of sound. The stunned pixie tumbled through the air to be sucked up by Singar's machine.
"One down already," Fran said brightly. "This shouldn't be too—"
Dozens of the creatures poured out of the machines, waving tiny hammers and wrenches or fists full of stinging magic. Fran used blasts of light to blind some as they flew at her friends. One caught her from behind, hitting the back of her neck with a charge like an electric shock.
"Ow!"
Fran stumbled, turned, reached out, and used her magic to summon a weapon. A broom flew across the room to her.
"I'd hoped for something more impressive." She hefted the weighty broom with both hands. "I guess this will do."
She swung it, batting one of the pixies out of the air, then hit a second with a calculated swing that sent it flying into one of its kin. The two stunned creatures fell to the floor and were stuffed into a cage by Bart.
"I used to like working with you people." Elethin summoned an illusion of an eagle to chase a pixie into a cage. "Or tolerate it, at least. We had offices. We had budgets. We had prestige. We had magazine covers. We had coffee machines and swivel chairs and assistants to run errands."
"Yeah, well, that was before we lost our business." Gruffbar pulled the trigger on his shotgun, knocking one of the pixies out with a beanbag round. "Now someone else owns Mana Wave, so unless you want to sneak in at night and sit in someone else's swivel chair—" He caught another pixie between the flat of his ax and the side of a machine. "—you're going to have to make do with this."
"But pest control?" Elethin pulled a disgusted face. "Was this really the best we could do?"
"We've got experience," Bart pointed out. He stacked one cage on top of another, then ducked as a pixie buzzed at him, stinging hands extended. "All those times we cleared out mutant rats or magical constructs from our warehouses and factories, it's coming in useful now. Aren't you glad we did that work for ourselves?"
"Not even slightly." Elethin waved, and a sheet of fake fur flew off a roll. It enveloped half a dozen of the pixies and brought them down in a tangled lump, like some sort of kicking, squirming, mutant soft toy.
One of the pixies had gotten onto Smokey's back and was riding the indignant cat shifter, clinging to clumps of fur with tiny hands. Smokey bucked and shook, but the pixie clung on like a rodeo rider. Fran pointed at it and launched a concentrated beam of sound. The pixie groaned, its eyes rolled back in its head, and it fell to the floor.
"Don't worry, Elethin," Fran said. "We'll get Mana Wave back. You'll see."
"How exactly are we going to do that?" Elethin grabbed a pixie that had gotten hold of her long blond hair, flung it on the floor, and kicked it over to Bart. "We've got no money, no legal leverage, and no reputation to speak of despite all the hours I spent carefully crafting our public image. It's been a month, and for all your optimism, we're no closer to having a plan."
"That's why the optimism's so important," Fran said. "How else are we going to keep our spirits up?"
"In the absence of shopping and celebrity parties?" Elethin shook her head. "I have no idea."
The pixies were starting to back off now. Moving like a swarm of oversized two-legged bees, they pulled back down the factory toward one of the cutting machines.
"That must be where they have their nest," Fran said. "Come on, let's get this done, then we can all go for coffee and cake."
"Or we could save our money," Bart said. "I suspect we're going to need everything we can get, whatever our plan ends up being. Business isn't cheap."
"I don't think a few muffins and cappuccinos will make the difference," Fran said. "As much as I love my company, I don't want to sacrifice every last shred of happiness to get it back." She laughed. "That gives me an idea. Hold them off for a minute."
She took off her backpack, unfastened the roller skates tied to the side, and put them on. Meanwhile, the others slowly advanced, using weapons and magic to keep driving the pixies back.
"Could we buy the company back?" Singar asked. "I mean, if we got enough money?"
"In theory?" Bart, formerly the company's accountant, nodded. "Potentially, yes, if the current owners agreed to sell, but given that Talthin Crane arranged the whole thing as an act of vengeance, I don't see him doing that." He caught one of the pixies in a bubble of levitational magic and steered it in
"Besides, there's a big gap between that theoretical concept and what we can afford. It would be hard to attract investors for a project like this, especially with the questions the court case raised about our reputation, and there's no way a bank would loan us enough funds. Short of a royal-scale inheritance, I don't see how we'd manage it."
"Back to court then?" Smokey asked, then pounced and pinned a pixie beneath his paws. "Get the case overturned?"
"I'd like to," Gruffbar said. "After all, I'm a lawyer, not a rat catcher. But it's not straightforward to get an appeal into court, never mind to win one, and the Mana Valley judiciary's been awful defensive lately, less in the mood to undo each other's judgments, in case they get challenged themselves."
"You're making it sound so hopeless," Elethin said. "Please don't tell me we'll be stuck with work like this for the rest of our lives."
Fran smiled. Elethin was a lot less inclined to talk about her future these days and more inclined to talk about where they were all going. Despite her complaints, the PR elf wasn't going anywhere. The team would stick together. Even if Fran never got her company back, she had built something great with this group of colleagues and friends.
Of course, she would get her company back. She just hadn't worked out how yet.
"We'll get Mana Wave back," she said. "Once we work out the right plan. Speaking of which, my plan for today is now ready."
She got up, broom in hands, and skated down the factory, picking up speed. As she approached the machine holding the pixie nest, she set the broom's bristles to the floor and let her Evermore power flow through her hands, through the broom, and into the concrete surface. It created a low, discordant noise that followed her as she circled the nest. Any pixie getting close to that noise clamped their hands to their head and reeled back.
Fran looped around once, twice, then carried on, creating a wall of magical sound that kept the pixies in. With each circuit she skated a little closer to the nest, squeezing them into an ever-tighter space.
The others approached.
"Now what?" Smokey winced as he stuck his head too close to the wall of sound. "I don't want to go through that into a swarm of angry pixies."
"No need." Singar pushed the tube of her device through the sound. It trembled but didn't take any real damage from the noise. "You guys bring the cages over. My pack's going to fill up pretty fast."
It was easy for her to catch the pixies with her vacuum tube, given how close together they were. The creatures gibbered and squealed as it sucked them up, and a few flung themselves at the barrier in desperation. One even broke through, but Smokey pounced and snatched the disoriented creature out of the air.
"I suppose we could start a new business." Fran was still skating in ever-smaller circles, broom against the floor. Singar drew the tube back temporarily to let her past. "I mean, it wouldn't be the same as Mana Wave, but as long as we're together, that's something, right? We've built one successful business. We could build another."
She tried to sound positive about the idea. It seemed unfair to trap her friends in this situation, chasing an impossible dream because she couldn't let go. She would rather find something they could move on to together than be the one who held them back. Still, the thought of it was a painful one. She had built Mana Wave from nothing, fulfilling a lifelong dream. She had poured her biggest hopes and her best ideas into it. How could she let that go?
"I like the devices we made." Singar sucked up more pixies. "We wouldn't get to work on refining them in a new company."
"The branding was beautiful," Elethin said. "Yes, I could make something beautiful again, but the color scheme really went with my eyes."
"I'd recruited the perfect team of accountants," Bart said. "New ones wouldn't be the same."
"That grinning turd bag Crane did this because of me," Smokey hissed. "No way I'm letting him win."
"And that's the argument that wins it." Gruffbar shut the door on a cage and snapped the lock into place, shutting away the last pixies. "Let's face it. We wouldn't have gotten to where we did if we weren't all stubborn as hell, right?" The others nodded. "Which means, no matter what we say it's about, what really matters is that none of us wants to let the people who took our business win, right?"
They all nodded. Fran, who could stop skating now that they'd got all the pixies, kept going anyway, looping around and ducking under machines. It was more fun than standing still, and her friends' attitudes were lifting her spirits, making her want to run free like this.
"So there it is." Gruffbar stuck his cigar between the bars of the cage and lit it off the magical energy from one of the pixies' hands. "We keep on fighting until we get back what's ours. We talk it through until we've got a plan, which we follow. If that plan doesn't work we try another, and another, and another, until we get there. Because I'll tell you this, I'm a lawyer, not a quitter."
He blew a smoke ring and stood back, grinning.
"Lovely." Elethin sighed and took out her phone. "In that case, we should take these cages over to the wild magicals sanctuary and get across town. We have another dirty, disgusting, unfashionable, and sadly financially necessary job booked."
"On the way, let's talk plans," Fran said. "I've been wondering if there's some way we can use all these creatures we've caught to get our company back..."
CHAPTER TWO
Josie Bullworth stood in the doorway of her apartment with a travel cup full of green tea in her hand. It was a lovely apartment, large and stylishly decorated, with sprawling sofas, a marble kitchen counter, and all the modern magitech gadgets anyone could want. It was convenient for work and all the hottest places to go in Mana Valley, the places that her rapid string of promotions had allowed her to afford. It was the sort of place that she had dreamed of when she left college but had never thought that she would get. She would have given it all up right now to be living with Fran again.
She sighed, stepped out into the stairwell, and locked the door behind her. She glanced into the shadows, looking for signs of jagged teeth and blazing, monstrous eyes, which mercifully weren't there. Then she trudged down the stairs.
In some ways, it was good that Fran wasn't around. It wasn't as if Josie could tell her what had been happening in her life, what made her feel like a terrible weight was pressing down upon her heart every moment of the day. Her employer had commanded her to secrecy, and she knew that the consequences of disobedience would be far worse than a pay cut or simply getting fired. Besides, telling Fran could have put her friend in danger. But at least if they were still living together, Josie would have had something positive to come back to at the end of the day. Some conversation to brighten her mood. The latest cartoons to watch as she let her brain switch off.
As if she had time for cartoons now. That was part of the renewed Philgard nightmare, after all, the endless hours. She rubbed the bags under her eyes, but that wouldn't make them go away, not while she averaged five hours of sleep a night, even on weekends. Tea would have to carry her through.
It was only a few minutes' walk from the front of her building to the entrance of Philgard Technologies' main office. The streets were relatively quiet, only the most enthusiastic of Mana Valley's many magitech industry workers heading for work this early. Except at Philgard, of course, where it had been crunch time every day for the past month. Employees were already trudging in, pale-faced, bleary-eyed, and miserable. The contrast couldn't have been more striking with the days when Josie's friend Julia had been in charge, transforming the company into a happy, relaxed place, somewhere job satisfaction counted. Julia was as dead as that job satisfaction. The old boss was back, and he had a plan.
