Batshit Mages - 1. Batshit Mages

"So, tell me all the details!"

"No." You're insane. "I know you."

"Come on, so it was felspar and malachite, and I know the pattern you used -"

"No, I changed it." He swiftly brushed the red notebook into his lap and her hand slapped the empty tabletop. "And it's not even in there, so don't bother."

"Then why are you hiding it?" Mala said with a challenging nod and leaned forward over the table. The typical glare of hers had a whole new quality of menacing viciousness to it.

"Because it's mine," Teague said with a calm shrug. Never, no way ever in the nine hells would he allow this maniac to repeat his mistake. No, wait. It wouldn't be a mistake. She would do it on purpose.

He slid the notebook into his wide coatsleeve and took a lazy swig from his pint mug. Mala kept glaring at him, but sat back and sipped her own drink, with her angry stare never leaving his face. Teague decided not to care this time. Whatever evil and painful prank Mala could plot in that rotten, hellish imagination of hers could never be as harmful as what she could do with a creature like that under her command. Teague wasn't exactly 'good' himself, but Mala took their 'dark and evil' fancy elsewhere, somewhere it couldn't be controlled by them anymore. And a fifth grade demon was uncontrolable for them.

He himself had only got rid of that thing because of the timely arrival of one of the archmages. And he had only not been killed for his little stunt because the woman had been so impressed with his ambition and success at summoning it. And because he agreed to a rather unsavoury deal.

At least, it was almost reassuring to know that a fifth grader could be expelled at all. The powerful presence of it alone had been so oppressive and paralysing that he wasn't sure he could gain the necessary power and experience in his lifetime. But that wasn't even the part that worried him anymore.

In fact, mused Teague, it would probably be more devastating to all of us if she were able to control it. He knew there was something fundamentally wrong with Mala's head, but he wasn't a psychologist and he didn't really care for soulsearching and deep conversations about anyone's mental health, so he chose not to try to talk her off her destructive behaviour. If they were all lucky, she would go and get herself killed and completely annihilated very soon. If not, well... he recalled a certain skinless face screeching at him from out of a dark box under his bed, a month of sleepless nights thanks to incessant scratching and moaning through the wall separating their dorm rooms, the charred, skeletal black shapes of people jerking through the ruined marketplace of a forgotten village... And the archmages didn't care.

The demon would like it, though. Mala may not be able to control it, but maybe she wouldn't have to. Maybe the thing had a sense of humour and would humour her with its voluntary collaboration. For a while. A day or three. At some point, it would get bored, even with her.

It would only have to grunt and everyone in the vicinity would piss their pants in terror.

She was still staring.

"Why did you do it?" she asked.

"It was an accident."

"You summoned a demon by accident." Mala snorted. Of course. That sounded rather improbable.

"Well, I did want to summon a demon. But I didn't know it was going to be... that one." Fifth grade. He shuddered.

"What one?" Mala asked innocently.

Nice try. Teague smirked. If he slipped and gave her the demon's name, she had everything she would need to cook up her own summoning.

"That ugly, powerful one," he said with a sweet smile.

Mala smiled back.

His face fell.

Mala smirked.

"You bitch." His empty left hand gripped his sleeve. The book was gone.

No, not gone. It was in her hand.

"My humble thanks," she said and started flipping through the pages. "Your handwriting is horrible. Oh, is that it? That star here? Interesting. Looks very basic."

"That's not it. I told you, it's not in there," he lied. She wasn't listening.

"Baett- what? Is that a -" She squinted at Teague's tiny scrawl. "Baettmaen?"

Teague blanched.

The name.

He had written down the fucking name.