One-Shots: 6

He eyed them.  One was a young little blonde girl, barely out of puberty.  She wore tight clothes, accentuating her curves, but she did it in all the wrong ways.  The other was a thin man all elbows and knees.  Spots covered his face, and it looks like he had picked at them habitually.  These weren’t adults, these were kids.

“No.”

“But why not!?”  She leaned forward, baring her breasts over the table.

He mentally steeled himself.  She really didn’t know what the hell she was doing.  He focused his attention on her eyes instead.  “Listen, kid,” he emphasized, “I ain’t teachin’ a bunch of kids something this dangerous.”

“I’m not a kid!”  She pouted.

“What she… What Allie means is that we are well aware of the dangers.”  The boy spoke.  While he looked like a kid fresh out of the womb, he actually spoke well.

“Taming isn’t something for kids like yourselves.”  He warned again.  “I’ve lost plenty to the beasts over the years.”  He pointed to a long white scar on his forearm, and another trio of scars that scored his face from chin to eye.  “Got these from a wild bear back in the day.  I got a bite mark across me chest from a wolf, and me leg don’t work well from when I shattered me knee back when.  This ain’t a job for weak lil’ lasses.”

“I… but please!”  Allie pleaded.  “I’ve got a good reason, I do!  I need to!”

“Ye don’t need to.  Ye want to.  Big difference.”

“We were told to ask you,” the boy said.  “You’re the best teacher this side of the Great Rift, are you not?”

“Not me words, lad.”  He looked at him.  “I’m a simple man.  I work hard, and do me job.  I don’t claim to be the best at anything.”

“That’s what we were told too.  We need a teacher, one that can teach her taming.”

“I told ye already, no.”

“We have the coin.”

“It’s not a matter of coin, lad.  It’s a matter of life.  I’m not about to let some lass go up against a wild beast, much less a monster.  I ain’t havin’ a kid’s life on me head ‘cause I was foolish enough to let a lass play with a beastie.”

“And you aren’t the judge of that!”  She protested.  “I’m old enough to decide what I want to do.  And I want to do this!  I need to do this.”

“Allie…”

“Now don’t you ‘Allie,’ me!”  She rounded on the boy.  “You said you’d be on my side!  Why aren’t you helping me!”

“Look at it from his point of view.”  The boy said softly.  He certainly looked tired and frustrated now, but his voice was level and calm.  He had to give the boy some credit.  He certainly acted far older than what he looked.  “He has a conscious, just like you and I.  He doesn’t want something to happen to you, and for you to get hurt.  It just wouldn’t look good for you and I and our family, but it will also look bad on him.”

“But it wouldn’t be his fault!”

“It would be, if he was the teacher.  If you became his pupil, how could he live with himself if you got hurt?”

“Ye got it right, lad.”  He said, nodding.  “I may be a heartless old man, but I ain’t lettin’ kids get themselves hurt on me watch.”

“But what about my own feelings, huh?”  She looked between the both of them.  “Isn’t this something that we worked for for so long?  Isn’t this what we wanted?  I… James…”

“Sh, Allie, I know.”  He wrapped one skinny arm around her shoulder as she leaned in to cry.  “I want it too, but not bad enough to lose you in the process.  He’s right, let’s call it quits.”

He gave them a moment for the girl to cry into the boy’s shoulder.  He then spoke softly.  “So what gave the pair of ye a hair-brained idea to do somethin’ like this?”

James looked up at him, his eyes fighting back the sympathetic tears.  It made his blue eyes look more like water than they already were.  “I’m a wizard, well, a wizard apprentice, Tamer.”

“Ah, that explains it.”

Allie looked at him with red eyes, her nose dripping two long lines of snot.  “How do you know anything?  You don’t know us, you don’t know anything.”

“I know a great deal, lass.”  He fought his urge to snark at the child.  “One of a wizard’s primary spells is to summon a familiar.  They’re formed from the natural magic and the strength of the caster or some fairy tripe like that.”  He glanced at the boy.

“Something like that.”  The boy nodded.

“It’s a powerful bond that only wizards can do,” he continued, “a powerful spell that no normal person can cast.  But some people like to have a familiar themselves, pretend they are wizards of one degree or another.  Or even as pets or some sort of companion.  But not everyone can tame a wild animal or one of the more magical and dangerous monsters out there.  That’s why Tamers exist.  We do the things that normal people can’t.”

“I know it’s dangerous.  I just…”

He sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with his thumbs.   “Ye ain’t goin’ to give me much a choice, now are ye lass?”

Allie nodded her head vigorously, her mop of blonde peaking around his palms as she did so.  “Of course!  I want to learn, and I want you to teach me!”

A movement over her shoulder cause him to lower his hands.  “Oi, Rex!”

A small man built like old stump popped his head around the door frame.  His dark hair fell over his eyes as tilted his head to the side.  “What’s up, Hoss?”

“Get yourself and Robbie over to Cage Three, I’ll be there in a second.”

“Aye.”

The small man left, his footsteps hurrying away.  He eyed the kids in front of him, regarding him in silence.  The boy was controlling his emotions, well, pretty well actually.  Which was to be expected.  Rumor had it that wizards had to control their emotions otherwise their magic could get out of control.  And that was the last thing that anyone wanted: a Haywire Wizard.  The girl was wiping at her eyes and snot, cleaning them up a pretty, monogrammed handkerchief with some small-time noble’s crest upon it.

Not that he knew which one that was, he gave up keeping track on those prissy fools.

“What are you planning?”  James asked.

“Someone to shut her up.”  He stood up, feeling the pressure in his bad knee.  “Come with me.”

He didn’t stand.  “To Cage Three I presume?”

“If I can’t get ye kids to hear some sense, maybe seein’ it will do some better.”

He left the room, a sway in his steps as he favored his good leg as he walked.  There was a furry of whispers behind him and a pattering of feet as the kids followed him.  The Tamer’s Guild was a rundown one-story that sprawled from the edge of the River Tanning to the edge of the city limits.  Cracks and holes in the old wooden roof showed the sky above, and the wind howled through the walls thin enough that he could practically see through it in places.

“Uh, sir?  Why is this place so rundown?”  She asked.

“The beasties we deal with prefer not to be holed up in stone or brick.  And I guess ye can say that we do too.”  He stopped, and took a corner to travel further away from the city.  “We keep the cages further away from the city.  Too many complaints from the nice folk from the screams.”

They walked about five minutes before reaching a bend in the corridor.  Rex and Robbie stood there, both of them garbed in heavy leather and wearing swords with the mark of the Tamers upon the hilt.  Rex had a slab of meat with him that must have easily weighed as much as a man.

“Why are they here?”  Allie asked.

“Protection.”

“From what?”  James asked.

From around the corner a blast of fire came at them, and both kids jumped.  He laughed, and took the meat from Rex, slinging it over his shoulder.  “Around the corner here is an Infernwolf.  That beastie hasn’t been tamed properly yet.”

“Yet?”  James stepped a little away from the bend in the corridor as another jet of flame came out.

“The first step in taming is to get dominance of the beastie.  Make it known that yer the boss.  It’s how a lot of these things work out.  And we haven’t done it yet with this wolfie, so I’ll let ye watch and learn just how dangerous it can be.”

“But…that’s a monster!”  She cried out as another jet of flame came out from around the corner.

“Aye, and Tamers have to deal with monsters like this.  And this is one of them beasties we would classify as a moderate.  This isn’t anything too difficult.  Jus’ watch me from the hole in the wall, lass, and ye can see what it is that tamers doo.”

He waited for another jet of fire before rounding the corner.  At the sight of him, a challenger, the Infernwolf stopped breathing fire and eyed him cautiously.  The beast was waist high.  Red and black streaks of hair alternated in a misshaped pattern.  The eyes were red, ringed with flecks of orange and gold.  The monster growled, a low rumbling that left smoke rising from its jaw.  Pointed teeth the size of his fingers were bared in a wicked smile that had nothing to do with joy.

            This wolfie had some growing to do still.  The coloration for the fur was a bit too light for an adult male Infernwolf.  And there usually was a splattering of gray around the muzzle, where smoke and soot would eventually stain the black hair there.  For now there was a small tinge of gray, but not enough that a proper adult male would have.  This Infernwolf was also a bit on the small side.  On average, Infernwolf males were a good half foot or so taller than the one he saw in front of him.  Some of the tallest ones recorded could get up to his chest or his shoulders.

            Now those were proper monsters there.

This beastie was itching to prove itself too.  It might have been a proper contender for alpha wherever it had come from.  But it had been stripped from its home and its position.  The beastie was itching to prove itself and become the alpha for this place.  Now, he was no alpha, but he couldn’t let this pup know that.  The standard procedure was to make the beastie know that it was in fact not at the top of the food chain.  There were two ways to do so, and he hoped it wouldn’t be the hard way.

He stepped forward, eliciting a low warning growl from the Infernwolf.  He ignored it, and stepped forward.  The cage was old, but sturdy.  The Guildmaster swore by the old work, and he had to agree that the craftsmen of today couldn’t compare to the craftsmen of then.  There was just something in the way craftsmen put things together that made the work back then that much more…well, more than the things he saw today at any rate.

He unlocked the cage with the key from his belt, and opened the door.  The monster pounced at him, much like he had expected.  His foot flew out and kicked the wolf in the jaw.  The Infernwolf didn’t fly back.  It was more along the lines of flopping on its back in surprise.  He closed the door behind him as the wolf scrambled to its feet and faced him again.

The wolf lunged again, and another foot met the monster.  This time his bad knee twinged, and the winced involuntarily in pain.  The wolf came at him once more, and this time he brought his fist down hard on the monster’s skull.  The Infernwolf stepped back, dazed.

It looked like it would be the hard way.

The Infernwolf eyed him warily, and paced back and forth.  It didn’t take its eyes off of him.  He breathed in deep, feeling the dull, familiar ache that slowly settled in his knee.  It was going to be one of those days again, wasn’t it?  His knee only ached when it came to bad days: when the weather was bad or if someone he knew had died or if he had to face a terribly dangerous monster; you know, the usual.

The wolf breathed fire at him.  He stepped to the side, dodging the initial blast.  The heat was strong, but it was like standing inside the armory during an afternoon rush.  It was bad, but it certainly was tolerable.  Not that he wanted to stand in the path of fire.

The wolf breathed in deep.  Before the Infernwolf could breathe more fire at him, he shouted from his gut in a deafening bark.  The Infernwolf stopped at the noise.  He barked again, forcing all the determination and the strength he could into the syllabic cry.  The wolf cried back at him, howling into the air.  Jets of fire licked the ceiling, threatening to set the roof on fire.

He roared again, bellowing his dominance.  Both man and beast howled at each other, each one vying for dominance through sound.  The wolf lunged at him, aiming for his throat.  He moved at the last second, and planted his foot on the ground.  He used the wolf’s own momentum against itself, and slammed the beast’s head into the iron bars of the cell.  He pressed hard, holding up the wolf and all of the hundreds of pounds of muscle up at his chest height.

The Infernwolf snarled, but he pressed all the tighter.  His arm threatened to shake; after all, he was holding up about two hundred pounds of meat over one shoulder and another two hundred pounds of wolf in the other.  While he may be strong, he wasn’t that strong.

He leaned into the wolf’s pelt, smelling the dusty charcoal and smoke and faint scent of blood.  He bit down on the wolf’s ear and snarled between his clenched teeth.  The wolf squirmed.  He tasted blood.  He held on, and the Infernwolf stopped struggling.

He let go a long moment later, spitting on the ground.  He let go of the wolf and it scampered off to the side.  It was looking up at him with a newfound respect.  Newfound respect and fear.  He grinned wildly, and barked again at the wolf.  The Infernwolf didn’t howl back.

Taking a knife from his belt, he cut off the choicest portion from the slab of meat over his shoulder.  He dropped the rest of it, over a good hundred and fifty pounds at least, and eyed the wolf.  It hesitated between rushing the meat and the human, but opted not to move when he illicitated a low growl from his throat.

He opened the door, turning his back on the beast.  He closed it behind him.  It was only a good couple of steps later when he heard the wolf sinking its teeth into the slab of meat.  He rounded the corner, and felt every nerve of his body respond at once.  He shook, and put his hand out against the wall to steady himself.

Damn, he wasn’t as young as he once was.

He eyed Rex and Robbie, both of them standing nonchalant as if they knew that he would be fine the whole time.  He knew both men pretty well, and he could see the small beads of sweat that dripped from their foreheads.  They had been scared for him.  And rightly so too.  That Infernwolf had put up a good fight.  If he hadn’t been as skilled and trained at Taming, he might very well be dead right now.

The two kids watched him from the wall, both of them wide eyed and pale.  The boy leaned against the wall; it seemed he was holding himself up better than the girl.  The girl was clutching onto his arm for dear life, her knees knocking together every so often as they shook.

“Ye see, lass, that’s why I don’t want ta be teachin’ ye Taming.  It’s dangerous, and not everyone is cut out for it.”

Her voice was strong, which surprised him through the pale green visage she bore.  “Teach me.”

“Are ye daft!?  I’ve been doing this for years, and ye saw how dangerous that was!”

“Teach me!”  She took a faltering step before resuming clutching the boy.  “I’m not scared.”

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with this thumbs.  “Either ye are stupider than I thought, or ye are far braver than ye look.”

“I think it’s a bit of both,” the boy said.

“Teach me!”  She declared again.  “I’m ready for it.  Promise.”

He looked her in the eyes.  While she was clearly scared and frightened and downright sick at the moment, she was also brave enough to speak up for herself.  She meant every single word that she had uttered.  Either she was a fool, or stupid.  And he knew from firsthand experience that the two went hand in hand.

He waited a long moment before speaking.  “Let me talk to the boss.  I’m not about to even consider taking on some lass without permission from the Guild Master.”

“You’re not the master?”  The boy asked as the girl jumped up and down, jerking him about as she dragged him with her.

“No, just an ol’ Tamer.”  He groaned softly.  “Come back tomorrow, and I’ll give ye an answer then.  Now get the hell outta here.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!”  She ran up and hugged him.  Whatever provocativeness she had brought to the table earlier was replaced with the giddy joy of a child.  She stepped back as the boy shook his hand.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”

“Lad,” he nodded his head at them.  “Now get.”

“Of course.”  James led the way, Allie trailing behind him.  The girl was practically skipping in excitement.

“The old man won’t be happy, Hoss.”

“I know.”

“So why’d ye do it?”

“They remind me of meself, Rex.  Young, stupid, and in love.”

“Ye were young?”

Robbie chimed in.  “Ye were in love?”

He eyed the two of them.  “Hard ta believe, I know.  But I notice neither of ye fools said anything about stupid.”

“That’s ‘cause ye still are, Hoss.”

He frowned, and both men stared blankly at him.  Then all three started laughing at the jest.

“C’mon.  We’ve got more work to do.”  And he led the other two men deeper into the complex.