“We’d all like to welcome our visiting guests from our brother guilds far and wide to the first Numeracy conference,” Master Crawford said from the front of the banquet hall. He’d been asked to cast ‘comprehend languages’ on himself before the speech, just to take the edge off of his Mecond accent and to make himself comprehensible to anyone who didn’t speak Mecondian.

“We’ve made great strides in Numeracy over the last year here in Hopedale. You’ll hear me talking about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division over the rest of the week. We might even get into some exponents, calculus, and integration.” Some of the Hopedale Numeracy students chuckled at this.

“Before we get into the meat of the matter, I just wanted to take this opportunity to express how grateful I am to the entire Hopedale Wizard’s Guild, led by the Masters. Where I come from, there’s a tradition of ‘clapping’ to celebrate something particularly noteworthy. This just involves bringing your hands together repeatedly to make noise when they slap together.”

“I’d like a round of applause for the Hopedale Wizard’s guild,” said Stephen. Clapping his hands together repeatedly, he held them up, so the rest of the room could see what he was doing and eventually joined in. Once the awkward clapping ended, he continued, with the assembled wizards giving him strange looks.

“I had a rough introduction to Hopedale, and the Wizards’ Guild was a salvation to me at a time when I was close to giving up hope. Besides providing me with a first-rate education, I’ve been excited to learn everything I can about every part of the guild. The Hopedale Wizards’ Guild has my lifelong gratitude and appreciation,” said the man from Earth, as he raised his glass in toast and wiped away a tear, the banquet hall and building of the guild suddenly disappeared.

Looking around at one another in confusion, the various guild members and visiting wizards started to stand up and wander off. In his mind, Stephen felt a new card that embodied the concept of the Wizard’s Guild. No, no, no, not again, he thought. Stopping Master Elore who was wandering by, he asked, “Master Elore, what’s happened to the guild?”

“‘Master’ Elore?” asked Elore. “Enough of your jests, Stephen. What guild are you talking about?”

“The Hopedale Wizard’s Guild. It just vanished,” said Stephen.

“Hopedale doesn’t have a wizard’s guild,” Elore said. Looking at Stephen with faint irritation, he continued, “Enough of this nonsense,” and walked off.

Walking over to some visiting wizards, Stephen quickly established that none of them had any knowledge of a Hopedale Wizard’s Guild and that they’d come to visit Stephen, the Numeracy wonderkid. They eventually admitted that they’d hoped to recruit him for their own guilds and everyone thought starting a wizard’s guild in Hopedale was a good idea. Most cities its size had one.

A vacant lot stood where the Wizard’s Guild had previously been.

Stephen looked at the site and sobbed.

***

In his room that he’d taken at The Bloody Bugbear, Stephen closed the door after making sure that a couple of (former) students from the Wizard’s Guild were standing guard. They’d been happy to do so, in exchange for sitting in on future Numeracy discussions. Stephen hadn’t been able to feel secure anywhere in Hopedale since losing his chambers at the guild.

After casting ‘identify’ and taking out a hand mirror to look at himself, Stephen first saw that one line had changed and now read, “Profession: Master wizard and Neophyte Dimensional Traveler”. The “at Hopedale Wizard’s Guild” part was gone. He then examined the new card that had been created. At the top, it said, “Hopedale Wizard’s Guild” and had a striking illustration of the building he had grown so fond of. Underneath the illustration, it said, “Urban Building Battery”.

In the written description it said, “Provides orange, yellow, or green power”. In place of the color’s names, it had a filled circle of each color. It didn’t have the feeling of being capable of being unleashed like the other two cards, and didn’t feel energized or exhausted.

“How do you provide power?” Stephen asked himself. Thinking about the new card and orange power, he saw that the orange circle begin to draw power. He sat thinking about the card and after a minute or so it seemed that the orange circle was fully powered.

Thinking about Rurth’s card and the Wizard’s Guild battery, he suddenly felt the orange power from the Wizard’s Guild jump to the Apprentice Wizard’s card and provide the orange power for it. Returning his attention to the battery card, he focused on the green circle and felt it also begin to gather power. After another minute, he moved the green power to the Champion card and, with both its colored dots filled, it became energized again. Unleashing the card, Rurth appeared in front of him once more.

“What can I do for you, boss?” asked his friend.

“Rurth!” said Stephen. “I’m so sorry I released you.”

“Did you? What does ‘release’ mean?” the apprentice asked. “The last thing I remember was us talking in your room.”

“You don’t remember Master Elore and me summoning you to his office?” asked Stephen.

“I don’t, sorry,” admitted the apprentice.

“Do you remember the Hopedale Wizard’s Guild?” asked the graduate student.

“Of course,” said Rurth. “Why wouldn’t I remember it? Are you ok, boss?”

***

Rurth and Stephen sat at their usual table in the main room at The Bloody Bugbear, talking over the situation while eating their dinner. Local and visiting scholars sat at most of the other tables, hoping for an impromptu Numeracy discussion with Master Crawford.

“Why do we stay here if you hate the innkeeper so much?” asked Rurth.

“I don’t know,” admitted Stephen with a chuckle. “I’m a hater, I guess. It’s kind of become an obsession for me. I keep learning about him, and everything I learn makes me despise him more. He’s a foul creature. I was angry at him for how he treated me when I first arrived in Hopedale, but I’ve started to believe that he’s the most miserable, despicable creature I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across. Being around him is like picking at a scab, you know you shouldn’t do it, but you can’t resist.”

“Well, you’re making him rich by holding court at his inn,” observed Rurth dryly.

The innkeeper, who Stephen had learned was named Blargh, approached the table, wiping his hands on a filthy towel with an insincere, ingratiating leer.

“I hope everything is to your liking, Master Crawford,” he began. Rurth glanced past the man with the inattention born of a lifetime spent around servants. Stephen felt the rush of anger that accompanied every interaction with the sleazy inn keep and bartender.

Unaware of, or unconcerned with, their reactions, Blargh continued. “I do hope your dinner was to your satisfaction. Can I get you anything else? An ale? A cup of tea? A digestive liquor?”

“A celestia would just the thing, my good man,” Rurth agreed. “Excellent suggestion.”

“I despise you so much,” said Stephen, looking at the bartender thoughtfully. “I’m not sure when I’ve felt such loathing for another person. Every time you open your mouth, I fantasize about someone punching you in the face.”

“There now, there’s no cause for that,” said Blargh with an offhand manner. “Any past misunderstandings are over and done with, my lord. You’re obviously comfortable in my establishment, since you haven’t moved on elsewhere.”

“I stick with the devils I know,” said Stephen. “Who knows how the next innkeeper will try to screw me. At least you’re too dim witted to try something new. And you’re too greedy to turn away all the business you’re getting because I’m here.”

“Ah, you’ll hurt my feelings if you keep on that way, sir,” said the innkeeper insincerely. “So, two celestia?”

“Yes,” agreed Stephen. “And please find a belt or whip or something else I can use to give you a good thrashing.”

“Right away, sir,” the bartender replied in a cartoonishly obsequious manner. As he turned to leave and Stephen Crawford kept glaring after him angrily, the man suddenly vanished. No one in the room reacted except for Rurth, who sat bolt upright.

“Now, that’s something,” he said, craning to inspect the floor and surroundings where the innkeeper had previously stood. “Did you disintegrate him?”

“I’ve just captured him,” Stephen said, shocked. “I have a new card.”

“Couldn’t you have let him get our drinks first?” asked the apprentice.

“I don’t know how I did it and I didn’t do it on purpose,” Stephen replied indignantly. “I was just staring at him with loathing, and he vanished. I need to stop this.”

“Try identifying the new card?” Rurth suggested. Stephen began casting the ‘identify’ spell.

Stephen then examined the new card. Below the “Disreputable Innkeeper” title was a painting of Blargh leaning over his bar with a nasty expression on his face. After the image, it said, “Human Merchant Champion”.

Below that was text that had a dull orange dot, followed by a colon, then text that read “Summons a disreputable innkeeper with 1 wound capacity. Champion’s attacks have ‘dirty fighting’.”

Stephen described the new card to Rurth, then said, “Why don’t you cast ‘identify’ on me and examine the new card. Maybe you’ll get more information than I did.”

“I don’t know how to cast ‘identify’,” said Rurth. “Sorry boss.”

“Of course, you’re right,” said Stephen, rubbing his temples with exhaustion. “I got used to you keeping ahead of me in studies, I forgot that I learned that after I ‘captured’ you. I still have no idea how I could free you.”

“Don’t worry boss, it seems like a decent deal that I can’t die and if anything happens to me, you can bring me back,” Rurth reassured Stephen. “That was a strange story to hear that you’d previously summoned me, and I was run over by a carriage accidentally in the street, but you were then able to summon me again.”

“Yes, that was a scare when it happened,” agreed Stephen. “You’d learned ‘identify’ before you died, but forgot it again and everything else back to when I first captured you when I summoned you again. You’re more understanding than I would be. I suppose there’s no reason to summon Blargh back. None of the other customers, his workers, or friends or family would remember him.”

“The workers will stop serving drinks or making food if there isn’t anyone in charge. Let’s either put a journeyman in charge of running the inn so that things don’t grind to a halt or summon Blargh back to keep things going,” suggested the apprentice. “We’ve had some of them copy the Numeracy textbook you wrote and sell them to the local and visiting wizards. Apparently you’re making fairly good money. You could invest it in this inn.”

“I didn’t like him, but it doesn’t feel right to remove him from reality,” said Stephen. “To then take his inn and tavern seems like adding insult to injury. I’m also not sure sticking around in Hopedale is what we want to do. Let’s leave some of the former masters of the Hopedale Wizard’s Guild in charge of the inn and the textbook and have them use the proceeds to start building a new wizard’s guild,” Stephen said, thinking aloud. “The two of us can move on.”

“I have four of these cards now, and they’ve all been created from something that I had intense feelings about and things I knew a lot about. My thesis was the focus of my life for years, you were the first real friend I’ve ever had, the Wizard’s Guild was the first place I felt like I belonged and was valued, and Blargh might have been the first person I genuinely hated. The commonality seems to be strong feelings about and deep knowledge of. I was in the presence of each thing I captured, so that might be part of it too.”

“Why doesn’t this happen to other people? Everyone has strong feelings about people, places, and things without capturing them as cards like I’ve been doing.”

“I can create orange, yellow, and green power from the Wizard’s Guild battery that I have. If I can find sources of red, blue, indigo, and violet power, I could power dimensional travel and that might let me return to my own world. I’m not sure whether that’s what I want to do yet, but I think that might be a better use of our time than hanging out here.”

“I don’t really know anything about these colors,” admitted Rurth.

Stephen replied, “They’re from a game I used to play on my home world. The original game was called ‘Domains of Danger’, people would just call it DoD. It’s what’s called a tabletop role-playing game. People would sit around playing pretend with one another, using a complicated set of rules and dice to determine the outcomes in the world. My favorite setting, ‘Lands of Legends’ was your world. People and places here would be part of the game I played.”

“Weird,” said Rurth.

“Yeah,” Stephen agreed. “There was a collective card games, or CCG, based on DoD which was somewhat popular when I was in high school. It had been discontinued, but I still have an almost complete collection of DoD CCG cards at my mom’s house. That game uses the same colors as those that show up on the cards I’ve captured.”

“Well,” said Rurth. “The ‘identify’ spell presents information in a manner that’s meaningful to the person who casts it. The cards you’re ‘capturing’ must be somewhat similar to this game you used to play. How did the different colors work in the game?”

“It wasn’t precisely described, but they’d generally be associated with different types of cards. Dragons would almost always involve ‘red’ power, for example. When one of the masters cast ‘identify’ on me, the cards’ powers were interpreted by him as fundamental thaumaturgical concepts,” said Stephen.

“Yeah, we hadn’t gotten into those much as apprentices, but once we became journeymen we would have studied those extensively,” Rurth said.

“Yeah, that’s my understanding too. Red, which seems to correspond with the concept of fire, tended to be about energy, while orange corresponded with prana, which is reality,” Stephen said.

“So yellow would correspond with air?” suggested Rurth.

“Exactly,” master Crawford agreed. “And that would be the domain of sustenance. Green is earth, which is life. Blue is water, which is growth, Indigo is aether, which is extra terrestrial. And violet is quintessence, which is about the heavens.”

“What’s extra terrestrial mean? I haven’t studied aether at all,” asked Rurth.

“Anything off of the planet,” Stephen explained. “Above the skies.”

“Above the sky?” asked Rurth. “Isn’t that the same as the heavens?”

“Heavens are supernatural, gods and angels,” Stephen clarified. “Extra terrestrial is things like the sun, the moon, and stars.”

Rurth looked confused. “So, are metals that fall from the sky extra terrestrial or heavenly?”

“Extra terrestrial,” Stephen said.

“My family has an ancestral sword that was forged from metal that fell from the sky centuries ago,” Rurth said.

“Hmm, would they give it to us?” Stephen asked.

“Maybe,” said Rurth doubtfully. “You’d have to offer them something irresistible.”

“I don’t know if that would be a battery or not. The only battery I’ve collected so far is the Wizard’s Guild,” Stephen replied. “It’d be worth looking into. The Wizard’s guild provides orange, yellow, and green power. Assuming the sword provides indigo, we’d still need to find sources of red, blue, and violet.”

“There’s a sacred grove about three days journey, north-east from Hopedale,” said Rurth. “I guess that might be related to earth, but it might also be related to the heavens. Maybe even orange and blue.”

“Yes,” Stephen said. “A forge or a water wheel might be a source of red.”

“What’s a water wheel?” asked Rurth.

“A big wheel that’s dipped into a river, which moves another wheel inside that can be used to mill grain. Like a windmill, but powered by a river,” explained Stephen.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Rurth. “Windmills are everywhere, though. My father owns a bunch of them.”

“I suppose a temple to a god might be violet and other color, depending on the god,” Stephen speculated.

“Where to first?” asked Rurth.

“Let’s go visit your family,” decided Stephen.