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“Eye of newt and breath of dog
Lichen scraped from a century log
Whisker of cat and squeak of mouse
A pinch of sea salt and leg of louse.”
Fabian squints at the instructions listed in his grimoire. “Eye of newt? That’s… that’s just cruel!” he mutters under his breath. “Surely a tear will do just fine; it’s essentially the same thing, just… more refined. …So obviously you’d want less anyway. Yeah.” The fledgling wizard reaches for a vial and adds a single drop of a pale green liquid to his table-top cauldron and continues with his spell. He adds the lichen from his plentiful stores and gropes around his shelves looking for his dog breath, but when the bottle is at last found, it’s empty (how one can tell, only a wizard knows). He sighs and scratches the back of his neck, wondering what he’s going to do. He could send a servant down to Dread, Wrath & Beyond to pick up some more, but it’s late and he doesn't want to wait up for them to come back; he’s got a strict beauty sleep regimen and needs his nine hours. No, best to just use the closest thing on hand, so he heads down to the garage where The Hangman sits idling. Sure, The Hangman is in his motorcycle form, but underneath that form he’s a hellhound, and that’s essentially a dog, so this should be fine, right?
Master, what is it that brings you down here so late at night? his steed grumbles telepathically.
“I need some of your breath.”
I… er… Master? I do not breathe in this form.
“Sure you do! You emit exhaust! That’ll do just fine,” Fabian replies, uncorking the bottle and shoving the opening into the motorcycle’s exhaust pipe. “Just rev your engine a couple times, would you?”
If a motorcycle could look embarrassed, The Hangman would (what with a bottle shoved up his rear end), but he dutifully revs his engine as his master had requested, filling the bottle with his ‘breath.’
When Fabian determines that the bottle is full, he corks it before patting the motorcycle’s seat. “Good boy,” he praises him, and then he heads back upstairs to his wizarding tower that he had specially constructed once he decided to pursue the wizarding arts.
It was his freshman year in high school and he had recently made friends with a ragtag group of kids when they all had earned detention on the first day of school. He was preparing secret gifts for all of them – most purchased with his money, of course – but for Riz, the rogue of their group (whom he had found particularly endearing if not also a bit too eager and pesky), he had decided to put his burgeoning wizard skills to use by charming the briefcase he had purchased for him. His plan was to turn the briefcase into a bag of holding, but because he was developing a soft spot for the goblin, he had decided to try his own hand at improving the luggage, which was what brings us to find him high up in his tower late this Sunday night.
“Alright, I add in the breath of a dog,” he says, continuing with the spell, dumping the contents of the bottle into his cauldron. In goes the whisker, sea salt, and a tiny louse leg, leaving only the squeak of a mouse left. He opens a small drawer in his apothecary chest and pulls out an even smaller, stoppered bottle and removes the lid. He pulls out an eyedropper and plunges it into the bottle before holding the dropper over his cauldron and gently squeezing the bulb. A miniscule squeak falls away, growing fainter as it drops into the vessel, and, satisfied that it’s a large enough portion, Fabian places the stopper back in and puts away the bottle.
With his cauldron full of all ingredients, he turns back to his spellbook.
“With spoon of copper stir it thrice
Think of elephants and not of mice
Rap the cauldron, four, five, six
And lastly add two willow sticks.”
“OK, seems easy enough; think of elephants, not of mice… of course, because we want this to be roomy, not cramped!” He pulls out a bespoke copper spoon, engraved in the most mythic of runes and places it in the cauldron, stirring it clockwise three times while picturing elephants, and then raps the spoon against the side of the cauldron six times.
“Perfect! Now I just need some willow sticks!” He looks in his jar of sticks and fishes out two willow ones. “Hmm… these are pretty puny. They’re more like twigs than sticks… I’d better double this just to make sure there’s enough. I’d hate for this to not hold enough.” In go four sticks and all at once a puff of vivid, lemon-yellow smoke erupts from the cauldron.
“With ochre smoke thine spell is done
Pour into vessel, but only one.”
“Hmm, I don’t know if I’d call this smoke ‘ochre,’ but... yellow is yellow!” he says happily, and he pours the contents of the cauldron into the briefcase. He then latches it close and gives it a shake to coat both sides, just for good measure.
“Done!” he beams. “One briefcase of holding, courtesy of the world’s best wizard!” With that, he sets the briefcase and other gifts aside and heads to bed.
The next morning, there is a hubbub at the lockers as six students discover personalized gifts awaiting them inside their lockers (Fabian sneaks a tin of special car wax into his own locker to throw off suspicions that the mysterious gift-giver is himself). He keeps an eye out and smiles as Riz is floored by the gift, which replaces the ratty briefcase that he had broken only recently.
“Good for you, The Ball!” cheers Fabian, slapping the rogue on the back. “Whoever gave us these gifts knew you could use a new one!”
“Yes…” he says cautiously, eyeing up each of his new friends as he wonders who could have paid such a steep price for these incredible gifts; and who might choose to engrave the briefcase with ‘T.B.’ Just then the bell rings and the teenagers all split off heading towards their respective classes.
“Class,” trills Miss Runestaff, the wizardry teacher, “Today we shall discuss the dangers of substitutions when it comes to materials. Mr. Hakinvar,” she continues, calling on a hapless student. “Could you please tell us why it is detrimental to not use the precise materials called for in spells?”
A blue bespectacled dragonborn nervously stands up. “Yes, ma’am!” he shouts, voice louder than necessary. “Component and direction substitutions can cause unintended and disastrous effects in spells, even when the rest of the spell is followed down to the letter.”
“Good. For example, say a spell calls for the branch of a blooming plum tree, but you find that the branch you have procured is too large for your cauldron. What do you do? Mr. Seacaster?”
Fabian jerks his head up, his heart thrumming in his chest from being called upon. “Er… break it in half?”
“Wrong!” shouts Ms. Runestaff, slapping the chalkboard with her arcane focus (a ruler). “You get a bigger cauldron! If you break that branch in half and put both pieces into your cauldron, you’ve added two branches, not one! Spells are very precise about numbers and you must! Remember! This!”She punctuates her final sentences by banging her ruler over and over against the unfortunate blackboard.
She spins around on her heel and storms over to another unfortunate student. “And Miss Peevesly, what do you suppose you should do if your spell calls for the dewdrop from a red rose collected on the morning of a full moon?”
A halfling girl looks up at her with wide, scared eyes. “...Use a dewdrop from a red rose collected on the morning of a full moon?” she quavers.
“Precisely! Not a pink rose, not a red carnation, not in the evening, and not during a waxing gibbous!”
A shiver runs down Fabian’s spine.
“And another thing! You’d better damn well know your colors! If your resulting liquid should be chartreuse but looks more of a lime green, you’ve done something wrong!”
A trickle of sweat runs down Fabian’s forehead. What hue of yellow is ochre? he wonders. Something tells me it’s not similar to lemon! He scrambles out from behind his desk, backpack in hand, and hurries towards the classroom door.
“Mr. Seacaster, where do you think you’re going?!” thunders the teacher.
“Bathroom! Water! Um, Principal’s office! Anywhere! I need to go!” he shouts, running out the door.
What did I do to The Ball’s briefcase?? And am I too late?? He rushes through the empty hallways of the school, searching for the rogue classroom. A commotion down the hall to his right draws his attention and he skids around a corner towards the noise.
“The Ball!” he cries out as he throws open the door to the classroom. Inside he is treated to a scene of the utmost chaos; desks strewn about, blood spattered across the chalkboard, torn curtains, and papers scattered higgledy-piggledy across the floor. He’s pretty certain that one of the desks has a large bite taken out of it. Among the mess he cannot see a single rogue, but he does see the briefcase, sitting out in the open in the middle of the room, pincushioned by crossbow bolts. Cautiously, he takes a step towards it but then he hears Riz hiss, “Fabian! Don’t!”
Unfortunately this causes him to move to look for his friend, turning his back to the briefcase. A bad idea: the briefcase strikes.
“Fabian!!” Riz calls out, training his gun at the ravenous luggage and shooting it squarely in the hinge, causing the briefcase to howl and distracting it enough that Fabian can dodge behind the overturned teacher’s desk. “Get out of here! Something’s wrong with your briefcase!”
“I know, that’s why I came! I screwed up the spell!”
Suddenly Riz is at Fabian’s elbow, concern on his face. “You’ll have to explain later. I think it can smell us.”
Indeed, as Fabian glances over the desk, the briefcase opens its lid and a wide, pink tongue slides out, as if it were tasting the air like a snake. Fabian can spot the jagged row of teeth lining both sides of the opening; there’s blood on them.
Riz follows Fabian’s line of sight. “It bit Miles and Natasha; thankfully they were able to get out of the room… hopefully they made it to the nurse’s office. Or at least the cleric classroom. It’s eaten so much, too! How!?”
“It was supposed to be a bag of holding,” mumbles Fabian. “But I may have taken some liberties with the spell.”
“Huh. Well, it appears to be impervious to physical weapons.”
“Then maybe I can help,” suggests Fabian. “Luckily, I’ve got a firebolt in my repertoire with this thing’s name on it.”
“You do? Excellent!”
“Leave it to me, The Ball.”
Fabian pops out from the desk, quickly chanting the spell for a firebolt and zigzagging his finger through the air as he draws the correct runes. Suddenly the tip of his finger is alight with fire as the spell forms. He aims at the back of the briefcase, but as he does so, his foot shifts on a pencil beneath him, cracking it in two and causing the monstrous luggage to turn around. Shit! Oh well, fire it anyway, Fabian! He releases the spell and an arc of red and orange fire shoots from his finger, right into the open mouth of the briefcase. It swallows down the fire with an audible gulp! and seems to grin. Quickly Fabian ducks back behind the desk.
“Uh-oh…” murmurs Fabian. “It ate the fire.”
“Fuck. We need to keep it distracted. I’m sure it’s vulnerable on the outside!”
Fabian felt around in his pocket, searching for the proper spell component for his next attack. He pulls out a small diamond. Perfect.
“I can try a chromatic orb; I bet it doesn't like acid damage.”
“Alright, let’s try again. I’ll draw its attention while you cast the spell.”
Riz sneaks around the classroom, sticking to the shadows until he’s on the opposite side of the briefcase as Fabian. “Eat lead!” he shouts, jumping out of his hiding place and shooting the briefcase squarely in the center of the lid. It screeches and charges towards him.
This time, Fabian makes sure there’s no debris beneath him as he comes out of hiding to fire off the chromatic orb. The diamond in his hand dissipates into a ball of acid and flies across the room, colliding with the back of the briefcase. It shrieks in pain as the acid eats into its leather exterior and begins to flop around on the classroom floor as the acid spreads.
Crouching, Riz hurries back to Fabian and watches the briefcase struggle and spasm until at last it stills. “...Poor thing,” he mutters.
“Yeah…”
The two watch as another student cautiously comes out of hiding and prods at the ragged luggage with their shortsword. When it doesn't move, a cheer goes up from the room and the rest of the rogue students pour out of the shadows, elated that the danger is gone. Fabian slumps down against the overturned desk and breathes a sigh of relief.
“I’m so glad you’re alright, The Ball.”
“Well, maybe next time don’t gift me a monstrous briefcase.”
“Yeah… sorry. …How did you know it was from me?”
“I figured no one else would engrave ‘T.B.’ on the briefcase, since you’re the only one who calls me that nickname.”
“Oh.”
“So what happened?”
“I got lazy and took some shortcuts when doing the spell last night,” he confesses. “But I’ve learned my lesson and won’t try that again.”
“...Why did you do the spell yourself? I know it’s not a cheap spell, but surely you could have afforded to have someone else perform such high-level magic.”
Fabian can feel his face flush. “Ah, well, you see… I just… um… since you’re, um… I just…” He clears his throat. “I wanted some practice, that’s all. It seemed easy enough to do.”
He watches as Riz’s shoulders slump slightly. “...Oh, I see.”
“Um, well, and I thought you deserved the best, since… you’re… my friend…”
Riz perks up at this and smiles. “Yeah, best friends!”
“Heh, well, don’t get too ahead of yourself, The Ball. I never said that.”
“Oh, I’m sure you meant to, though!”
Fabian turns his head, making sure not to look Riz in the eye. “Well, no matter. I’ll go get you a proper magical briefcase after school today, alright?”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes I do. You don’t have anything to hold your schoolwork and case files in. I insist.”
“Ah. Well… thank you.”
Fabian risks a glimpse over at the goblin, afraid that he’ll let on how much it means to him to have a friend, and sees that Riz is all smiles. He feels a warmth pool in his chest, and as he finds the courage to say his feelings and opens his mouth to speak them, the lunch bell sounds, interrupting the moment.
“Lunch time!” squeals Riz in delight. “Perfect, I’m famished! I wonder what Gilear has cooked up today.”
Fabian gives a weak chuckle. “Hopefully nothing we have to fight.”
“Amen to that. I never want creamed corn again so long as I live. Now come on, I’ll race you to the cafeteria!”
Fabian grins and gets to his feet. “You’re on!”
With that, the two ran out of the classroom, leaving the remnants of the dead briefcase behind for someone else to clean up.