Original Fiction by Anu Kumar
Take a Break: Flash Fiction about a Former Kingsguard Working in a Tavern, a Trashed Beer Cellar, and a Suspicious Enchanter
“What in the king’s name are you doing!” the warrior spat, “Can’t you read the sign outside? We’re closed. Also, you’ll have to pay for all the beer you just wasted.”
Rajamegnon had faced many things in the king’s guard, but his experience didn’t include a trashed beer cellar with a passed out enchanter in the middle of it.
When he was younger, he’d always dreamt of being in the king’s guard. Seeing his uncles and cousins put on the lustrous red and gold uniform had caused envy, the magical armor glamouring their muscles and filling their facial hair. The guards were only second to the king’s enchanter’s council. So when the coup happened, he was ready to defend his king. Only he had been too late, and when the palace finally established the guards had been dismissed, all of them returning to civilian life and taking up jobs in local places.
Rajamegnon had thought of working in a brewery, and today was the day to check up on the deliveries and take stock.
Only his stock had been completely emptied, the barrels’ contents completely on the floor. And there was an unconscious, presumably drunk, enchanter on the floor. Well, he thought smugly, that’s new.
The brewery was closed, so he couldn’t go and get his boss. But even so, he wasn’t sure if his boss would be equipped to handle this sort of thing. A lovely, yet astonishing fearsome older woman, Miss Kalari could break up bar fights and out-drink everyone in the brewery. One thing she was not known for, however, was helping lanky enchanters off the floor from their drunken stupor.
Rajamegnon walked carefully over to the young man, getting a closer look. His face was slack, his cropped hair had a frosty white-yellow hue to it. His frame was lithe, and was twisted on the floor as if he’d suddenly fallen either by the alcohol or by an unsightly punch to his face. And from the bluish bruise marks on his ivory face, Rajamegnon assumed the latter.
The air shifted, once smelling of spilled alcohol and now smelling of eucalyptus and citrus, and Rajamegnon saw the young man’s eyes flutter open. His back arched and eyes widened as gasped loudly, inhumanely loudly, and his chest heaved as if he’d just come up for air under the water. Rajamegnon stepped back as he realized he didn’t see the enchanter breathing before.
Rajamegnon’s skin hardened as his hand flew for the hilt of the sword. When he pulled out a bottle wrench, one used to open bottles of mead, he realized he wasn’t in his guard uniform.
“What in the king’s name are you doing!” the warrior spat, “Can’t you read the sign outside? We’re closed. Also, you’ll have to pay for all the beer you just wasted.”
The enchanter coughed a few times before holding up a finger, signaling to Rajamegnon to wait.
This ridiculous son of a bitch. He forced himself to breathe through his nose and sheathed the bottle wrench.
After a few moments, the enchanter sat up, their fine white clothes now soiled so much they looked like it’d been through a yellow river.
“Where am I?” they finally said, voice warbling. They sniffed the arm of their coat and recoiled in disgust.
“At Kalari’s, specifically the cellar in Kalari’s.” Rajamegnon furrowed his eyebrows, “Who are you? How did you get here?”
The enchanter stood up, shaking off their boots. “I’m Kushi–”
“That’s not a real name.”
“Yes it is!” Kushi huffed, straightening the lapels of their long coat. Something shiny glinted on their hands. “Why does everyone keep saying that?” they added quietly.
“How did you get in here?” Rajamegnon added, hand on his bottle wrench again, cursing that he didn’t have a sword and wasn’t wearing a faded “Kalari’s Krew!” work apron with a heart on the “i.” Rajamegnon noted their bejeweled hands when the enchanter tried to squeeze some of the beer out of the coat. He saw the unmistakable insignia of the king’s crest inlaid with rubies.
When the coup happened, no one saw it coming. It was said that it was orchestrated by the king’s inner coven of enchanters. Every royal court had a group of enchanters, but this king had brought in a coven family from a foreign land up north. Savages, the guard and council had warned the king, they don’t know of our people and our cultures. They only know the harshness of the snowy lands, not the richness of ours. They are jealous. They will turn against you.
No one had ever seen them before. In Rajamegnon’s land, all the people were the beautiful shades of the earth. These enchanters–witches–were ghost-skinned and ghost-haired with eyes like glass. They had been responsible for killing Rajamegnon’s dearest king and throwing the palace into anarchy. They were the reason Rajamegnon had lost his station and was in a brewery instead of protecting the royal family.
Rajamegnon pulled out the bottle wrench again, putting it against the murder’s throat. “You were there.”
The ivory-skinned coward looked at him with bright, icy eyes. The bruises on his face seemed to deepen. “No! I wasn’t!”
He pressed the wrench deeper into his neck. “Then how do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Please!” They choked as Rajamegnon put his free hand around his throat. “I tried to save him!” That made him laugh, “If you had, you would’ve prevented the curse that killed His Majesty!” He squeezed his neck harder, backing them up against the wall. “It didn’t kill him! I broke the curse!”
Rajamegnon let go of the enchanter’s neck in surprise. “What?” He whispered in disbelief.
The king is alive?
The enchanter had slid down to the floor and was gasping again, a new purple mark already showing on his neck. Rajamegnon fleetingly noted how strange that was.
“He’s alive.” The enchanter choked. “I altered the curse. It wasn’t a killing curse anymore. It was a transformation curse.” They shifted their lapels a bit more and stood up again. “The coven just found out. They had been plotting to take over the castle from the King’s Council, and they read the residual magic signature and found out it had failed. They found mine on it and tried to kill me.” They gestured to the bruises.
Rajamegnon simply stared at the enchanter. “What?” he repeated. Magic signature? What signature? It is much simpler, he decided, to be a warrior holding a sword. At least then you knew who the enemies were. There was at least that much respect given to the warriors on the battle ground.
“Yes,” the enchanter repeated, growing visibly anxious. “My signature. Whenever an enchanter handles a spell, there is a magical residue left behind. Almost like a stamp, revealing who had cast it in the first place.” They ran their hands through their hair.
“And yours is the smell?”
They stopped and stared at the warrior. “What?” Now it was their turn to look confused.
“The smell,” Rajamegnon continued, “when you awoke, the air smelled like eucalyptus leaves and acidic fruit.” He wrinkled his nose. “Not my favorite smell, especially when mixed with all the alcohol you spilled.”
They looked around, noticing for the first time that they had landed in a beer cellar. “Oh.” they said simply, “Sorry, I’ll clean that up.”
“You better, before my patron–”
The air suddenly turned clean, a small hint of the eucalyptus and citrus lingering in the air, as if it was freshly cleaned with the expensive oil that Miss Kalari had loved using on her wooden cutting boards.
Rajamegnon looked around the room, the barrels had been reconstructed and neatly organized back on their racks. Even the enchanter’s robes were a blinding white again, not the piss color it had been just a few moments ago.
“–gets back.” he finished in disbelief. Hearing about an Enchanter’s power and then actually seeing it were two distinctly different feelings. It was disorienting. The beer had been all over the floor, the barrels completely blown apart as if something had exploded in the middle of the room and launched projectiles into them. And now there was no evidence of that.
Besides the tall, pale skinned Enchanter still standing in the room.
But Rajamegnon thought back to the Enchanter’s words. The king was alive if only transformed, whatever that had meant. If the foreign coven was actively trying to gain control over the King’s Council, that must mean that the rumor’s of them attempting to kill the king were true, and that the disbandment of the guard was further proof.
He looked at the Enchanter again skeptically. “Why did you try to save the king?”
They looked back at Rajamegnon with their own skepticism. “You’re upset I didn’t go through with the plan to kill him?”
“I’m unsure why you would want to save him in the first place.” He said flatly.
The Enchanter–Kushi–hesitated before answering. “I was excited when the king brought us on as his Enchanter’s council.” They started, “But when my own coven started plotting against him, I did nothing. I had so many opportunities to do something before — talk to other members, tip off the royal guard, anything.” They twirled one of their rings, some of them seemingly glowing in the low light of the cellar.
“And when I saw the curse, it was ready to be unleashed. I couldn’t dismantle it once it was fully formed. But I found a way to change it, ever so slightly, so that the king could be saved. I thought that once the king disappeared, no one would’ve looked into my signature, so it was safe.”
Safe. Rajamegnon huffed silently. A deed like that is never safe.
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The author originally published this story on Nu Reads under the title “A Former Kingsguard and a Frenetic Enchanter Walk Into a Bar.”
