Solomon Ch. 2

Solomon: Chapter 2

Jacob opened the door to the house he shared with his mentor and walked in. His clothes were ruined from all the blood Andras had been responsible for. Oh well, at least it wasn't one of his favorite outfits. Jacob's mentor was sitting in his study, located just off of the foyer to the right. He was dressed in black slacks and a loose fitting gray sweater. His feet were covered by fuzzy pink bunny slippers. His salt-and-pepper hair was disheveled, as if it hadn't seen a comb for a few days. Which, of course, it probably hadn't. He was intently studying a large book which was laid out in front of him.
He spoke to Jacob without looking up. "You're back. Good."
Well, thought Jacob, it was good to see that he had been missed.
"Yes, Master. I'm back. Glad to see you were worried about me."
The older man shrugged still without looking up from his book. "You're still alive, right? Let's not get bogged down in details."
Jacob was indignant. "But I was--"
His mentor held up one hand in a "stop" motion and used the other one to turn a page, eyes still focused on the enormous book. "I said let's not get bogged down in the details. Now go change out of those clothes and get cleaned up."
Jacob shook his head as he walked from the foyer into his room and then into the attached bathroom. He removed his clothes and placed them directly into a garbage bag. There was no point in even pretending he'd be able to wear them again. He would burn them after he was done showering and changing.
Jacob stepped into the shower and let the warm water carry away the filth of battle. Jacob was surprised at how drained he had felt after summoning Andras. Granted he was one of the more difficult demons to control, but three years ago he could have summoned that demon along with his mount and not have broken a sweat.
Am I slowing down already? I'm not quite twenty two yet; I'm still supposed to be young!
But that was how it went. Magical power flared during adolescence then cooled and leveled off to more reasonable levels as the magician left his or her teens. Jacob had known, at least academically, that this was going to happen. Knowing something would happen and having it happen to you were two very different things. At least he wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing again. While magic could be and was physically taxing, no noticeable drop in power level would be expected to happen again. And the physical exertion of his magics would keep him in good shape and sound of mind and body. Well, body, at least.
Jacob shut off the water, climbed out of the shower, and dried himself off. He left the trash bag of clothes in the bathroom for the time being as he moved back into his room to get dressed.
Jacob dressed himself in an outfit similar to most of his others. Slate gray slacks, a white button down shirt. He decided to leave the dark gray silk top hat on its hat-stand, along with the black tie around the neck of that foam head. He put on a pair of black socks and slipped his feet into a pair of well worn, comfortable dress shoes which had started out as black but had since faded with time to become a dark gray color closer to that of his pants and hat.
He briefly stopped back in the bathroom and grabbed the garbage bag containing his soiled clothes. He tied off the bag and made his way to the door. He called out to his mentor before stepping out. "I'm going to go get rid of these clothes."
"Whatever you need to do, Jacob," said the older man, his eyes still glued to the book. "You've been doing this long enough that I trust you to know what to do and act on that knowledge."
Well, thought Jacob, that was interesting. Had the old man just shown some actual faith in him? Jacob discreetly pinched himself as he shut the door behind him, just to make sure he was awake. He was. Jacob made his way to the fire pit in the backyard and tossed the bag in. He held his hand over the bag, palm facing downward, fingers spread. He muttered a few syllables in his split voice mode and flames shot up, quickly engulfing the bag.
The magical nature of the flames ensured that the whole mess burned both quickly and completely. Within ten minutes, Jacob was ready to head back inside.
He was still reading. Jacob's curiosity was finally too great to ignore. "Master, what are you reading?" he asked, as he began to make his way over to the desk.
"I was wondering when you would finally ask that, Jacob." He gestured to his right side, still without taking his eyes off the book.
Jacob walked over to his mentor's side and peeked at the book. "Master, that book is blank." Jacob leaned in closer to see if he was missing something. "Why would you just sit here staring at a blank book?"
Jacob heard a clicking sound from close behind him. He slowly raised and turned his head to find himself staring directly into the barrel of a revolver.
"To teach you a lesson, Jacob," his master explained patiently. "Don't go for the ring. I know you can speak the incantations quickly, but trust me, it won't be quicker than this trigger. Now just be quiet and listen."
Jacob was quiet and still. And confused. Had his own master, the man who had been like a father to him for almost 6 years really betrayed him? It seemed impossible.
"First of all, you have never been quite suspicious enough, Jacob. I read a lot, but rarely with the level of single-mindedness you saw from me on a consistent basis today. You should have suspected something and discreetly investigated the book much, much sooner."
Jacob attempted to swallow without moving his throat. He'd never been so nervous in his life. His mouth was completely dry.
"Furthermore, Jacob, you've got to keep your guard up at all times, even around me. Especially around me. We're demonologists, son. Even as long as I've been doing this it's very possible that you could come home one day to find me possessed. If I've been in that state for an appreciable time before you encounter me, the demon may well have time to study my memories enough to do a passable imitation of my personality. Furthermore, our particular paradigm oftentimes makes us feared and hated, even among other magicians. I would have thought your little run-in with the Holy Order of the Purifying Flame of the One True God earlier today would have taught you that."
Was that seriously their name? Jacob was impressed. They had turned out to be even more ridiculous than he previously thought possible. Occurring to him immediately after that thought was another.
"Wait you knew about that?"
"Of course I did. How did you think they managed to subdue and capture you in the first place? You saw how incompetent those idiots were."
Jacob had been wondering how they'd managed to get him unconscious and how they'd gotten his magic bound even for the short amount of time required to take him prisoner. Jacob chose his next words very carefully.
"I understand. In the future, I will be more careful. I will trust no one."
"No, Jacob. You must find those you can trust. But never let that trust become absolute."
Jacob was beginning to get a little upset. "Okay, okay, I get it! Now will you just either shoot me or put that gun away, Adam? This whole situation is making me intensely uncomfortable."
Adam chuckled and pulled the gun away from Jacob's head. "Sorry about the extremity of this demonstration, but the point needed to be made in a very real and vivid way."
Jacob rolled his eyes. "Whatever you old coot. Now isn't this the part where you pop out the cylinder and show me that the thing was never loaded?"
Adam pointed the gun at the wall and squeezed off three shots.
*BAM BAM BAM*
"JESUS CHRIST!" exclaimed Jacob. "What the Hell are you doing? Let's ignore that you, until recently, had a loaded god-damn gun pointed at my head and just focus on something far more mundane and reasonable: What if the neighbors call the cops?"
Adam casually holstered the gun in a shoulder harness concealed under his sweater and shrugged. "Relax, Jacob. I set up a soundproofing enchantment on this house a long, long time ago. I've never really mentioned it because it's the sort of thing that rarely comes up, you know? Anyway, any sound above a conversational level originating within this house is muffled and prevented from being heard outside of it. No one's going to call the cops."
Jacob stared at Adam in wide wonder as he casually walked back to his desk and closed the oversized blank book. The older man placed the book back on the shelf and retrieved something smaller and more reasonable. Adam proceeded to walk over to his comfortable recliner, turn on a lamp, and start reading his paperback.
Jacob shook his head. "Master, you're absolutely insane. I mean that. Completely batty."
Adam glanced up from his book and shrugged. "You would not be the first person to champion that hypothesis. Probably won't be the last either."
"You had me murder an entire organization to make a point!"
"They needed to be dealt with one way or another. You would have just been killing individuals as they came after you, never removing the source of the problem, if I hadn't decided to move things along."
Jacob was livid. "That's not the point! It makes us no different from them! They were incompetent to the point of being harmless to any real magician!"
Adam sighed and placed his book face down on his lap. "Did you hear what you just said?"
"What?" Jacob was genuinely confused. "Which part? That they're harmless?"
Adam shook his head. "You said they were harmless to a real magician. What makes you think that despite how they are otherwise incompetent in every other way, they only would capture and try full fledged practitioners of so-called 'satanic' magics? What makes you think that everyone they had somehow successfully captured and killed was a magician who was simply too weak to escape his fate? What about normal people mistaken for something more by these people? What about innocents executed for the crimes of our kind?"
Jacob frowned. "But." He couldn't think of anything else to add to that.
"Exactly," Adam picked his book back up and adjusted his reading glasses. "Now why don't you go take a walk or something. Get out of the house under your own power for a while. And while you're out, give some thought to what I said."
"Which part?" Jacob asked, only half-sarcastic.
"All of it," responded Adam, fully serious.
Jacob slipped back into his room. He put on his tie and a slate gray suit coat. The silk top hat completed the ensemble. He walked over to his bedside table and swapped out the Goetic summoning ring for a more generic one. Now, he decided, he was ready to head out for a while. He had some friends he'd been meaning to visit for a while anyway, so a nice trip out of the house wasn't a bad suggestion at all.
"I'm leaving, Adam," Jacob informed his mentor as he opened the door. "If I'm not back by tomorrow morning, feel free to scry on me."
"I scry on you whenever I feel like it anyway, Jacob. I see no real reason for that to stop anytime soon. But do try not to die. I know the general magician creed is one of survival of the most fit, but I like you well enough to hope that you're pretty fit at this point."
Jacob smiled at this as he closed the door behind him. He started walking rather briskly down the road.
He had some house calls to make.

Word Counts
-This chapter: 2065
-Total: 3391

Still a little behind as 2 chapters should me 4k words according to my self-schedule. Will keep trying to make up for the losses slowly in the upcoming chapters.