To be a Wizard

To prove that scowling was not solely Apricot’s territory Spike indulged in a spot of it himself. A private reading room came free and Spike, seizing ‘Ensorclements’ slunk into it feeling pretty down about the mouth.

Spike enjoyed a five mile run in chain mail and arms as much as anyone. Which is to say, not very much. He’d spent about a quarter of it thinking thoughts along the lines of ‘I wonder if I could learn a spell to make this stuff a bit lighter’. About a quarter on Apricot, and a solid two and a half miles jingling along cursing the name of whoever had installed insufficient padding around the collar of his mail (probably him which made the chafing no better at all). They’d been carrying pikes on this one, on the grounds that a more mobile infantry unit was a better infantry unit, and Spike had finished fifth due to absent mindedly trying to run between two trees that were altogether too close together for a man carrying a fifteen foot stick across his shoulders. Everyone was returning their pikes to the armoury in the sort of jolly mood that comes from completing such an ordeal and looking at all the other idiots with grease around their necks because of the chafing they’d suffered. There was a general time-for-dinner-and-drinks-then-ing, when there was a loud scream from the directions of the wizards’ laboratories.

‘Help!’ came a stern sounding voice, and then developing into a sort of sobbing wail of somebody who was genuinely terrified.

‘Help!’

There was general confusion amongst the young men. Some ran for a more authoritative help, some ran back and forth, some of the guys had lined up and were presenting their pikes as though expecting to be charged, and some just stood about gaping, hoping someone would tell them what to do. Spike was already leading the to-the-rescue! group, for he had recognised the terrified screamer as Apricot.

A sturdy (although unnecessary, the door wasn’t locked) kick carried Spike through the door of the wizarding lab that contained the screaming Apricot. And scream she might for the usually resourceful young object of Spike’s affections was cowering behind an overturned table and a terrible creature, undaunted by the chair throwing in which Apricot was engaged, was advancing on her. The creature looked a lot like a lion, with six legs and the head of some sort of giant bird of prey, its beak dripped a viscous goo. In the shafts of light from the tall windows it could clearly be seen to be releasing some sort of greenish steam into the air. As Spike burst in the creature turned, lashed its tail, and shrieked a challenge. It was only mid shriek when Spike buried his pike, with a mighty swing, in the centre of its back, thanking as he did so whichever clever architect it had been that gave these wizarding labs such nice high ceilings. The thing shook and shuddered, and began to slowly turn red from the gash in its back. It made a lunge and chewed a table in two. Spike danced in and stabbed it a few times with his sword for good measure, he failed to hit anything vital, but with all the bleeding and writhing the monster lost animation and slumped wetly to the floor. There was general cheering from Spikes friends at the door, and somehow Apricot was in his arms in an extremely pleasant and exciting sort of way. She felt as though she was melting, which was surprising as Spike was notably frozen. There were a couple of reasons for this.