Having established that Phillpot was once again trying to screw me over, despite Nyal apparently screaming in his mind and threatening unimaginable astral punishments the next time he slept as he did so, I was now cheerfully expecting five million in the morning. I’d extracted the directions to the Mages Guild’s Academy from him and had made my way there with a spring in my step.

  The badge got me a few funny looks on the way from passersby, but I didn’t run into the authorities. I found myself standing in front of the Academy and wondering: why?

  The Adventurers Guild was a shitty mid-terrace, just like Phillpot’s place, that had undergone an impressive interior conversion to turn the insides into something that rivaled the Forbidden Palace from back home. The actual magic users of Helstat had decided to flex in an entirely different way.

  From outside, it was a gloomy, gothic structure with high towers sprouting from half a dozen interconnected main buildings set in drab-looking gardens. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, the austere vibe disappeared, and it looked like a fairytale castle dreamed up by Disney imagineers on a really bad acid trip. The towers bent, spun, and moved in a way I assumed would induce motion sickness for anyone inside. Rainbow bridges arched from the ground to large windows a hundred feet above, and the gardens looked like something from the scary parts of Alice in Wonderland. I would not be surprised to run into a giant caterpillar stoned out of its tree.

  I stopped moving in and out of the threshold and making myself dizzy, then strode confidently towards some kind of guest house set halfway down the winding drive of purple and pink gravel. As I drew close, a mountain of a man stepped out and moved towards me.

  “What’s your business with the Academy, sir? Term doesn’t start for another week.” His voice was soft and gentle, a surprise from such a large, hairy man. He was seven feet tall at least, and leaned on a closed umbrella decorated with what looked like rubber ducks hanging from the spines.

  “I’m Baronet Bob of Fidler’s Mill. I need to get my magic registered.”

  “You ain't no wizard,” he sniffed at me. “What element?”

  “Eh?”

  “What’s your element. Your flavour of magic, please?” He blew out his moustache at me.

  “Oh, arcane.” I shuffled back slightly. It felt wrong to have a mammal peering down at me.

  “Really? Well, we’ll soon find out if you're fibbing. You know what happens to fibbers around here?”

  “We get a lollipop and are escorted off the property?”

  “That’s right. But only after we geld you. You sure about this?” He raised an eyebrow that would take Mordechai days to trim, even with his special scissors.

  “I’m required by law to report to this place and get some paperwork filled out, mate.” I pointed at the badge, and the big man pulled out some pince-nez glasses and clipped them to the bridge of his nose before peering down to examine my shirt. He started to chuckle, slowly at first, which built into an impressive rumble.

  “You’re the idiot who triggered the Web. Bloody provincial nobles. Come on then, lad.” He led me into the guest house. It was a well-appointed room, with comfortable-looking couches lining the walls, and a table strewn with magazines sitting in the middle. “I’ll go call the faculty, milord. Someone will be down to see you soon. Help yourself to hot drinks.”

  I examined the water heater and the array of jars and bags that may have contained tea. I flicked out my tongue and concluded I could wait for a beer at the Horn later. I glanced at the magazines. Wizard’s Weekly. Summoning for Idiots. Dreamhomes in the Tantric Tundra. I sat on a sofa, my head rolled against the backrest, and stared at the ceiling.

  “I know that, sir… Yes, he’s that idiot… Alright, I’ll see you soon.” There was a click that I recognised as a communication globe disconnecting. “Prick,” he muttered quietly.

  “Well, sir… You don’t like tea?” The fact I hadn’t gotten a drink seemed ot mortally offend this giant.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Humph. Professor Luckdire will be down to see you shortly. I need to feed the leeches. Care to accompany me?”

  From what I understood about how leeches fed, this would probably involve him sticking his arm into murky water and then carefully persuading the little bastards to let go after they’d drunk their fill. I shrugged.

  “Sounds like fun. What about the prof?”

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  “He knows my schedule. He’ll come find us. This way, sir, you’ll find this fascinating, I’m sure.” I was not convinced. I wasn’t here to see this guy let tiny parasites feast on his flesh–

  “What the fuck are they?” I yelled as I jumped backwards.

  Right next to the room I had been expected to sup tea in, and browse shitty magazines while I waited, was a long hall lined on either side by tank-bound horrors. The tanks were seven feet tall and capped with some kind of screw on metal lids. Swirling in the murky liquids they contained were… things. Some had swarms of head-sized blobs of flesh, shaped vaguely like leaves, that swam up and down, occasionally bumping their mouths against the glass facing us and scratching at it audibly with the glittering fangs that lined their maws. These were bad enough, but several of them were single-occupancy.

  Giant slugs flapped and floated in the water; the biggest was nearly four feet long. It didn’t swim, it oozed. Threateningly.

  “Just one moment while I get the feed, sir. Do you see the Honiston Greys? Such beauties! They’ve grown so much since they left their cocoons!”

  He left me alone in a room filled with amorphous, hungering mouths, only kept at bay by their inability to chew through what I strongly hoped was reinforced glass.

  “This is for the Brown Kerlinkists, sir. Would you mind holding this for me, please?” He was wheeling a trolley covered with chickens in little cages. The birds looked somehow world-weary and bored. He passed me his umbrella, which I took carefully, noting the irregular grooves in the wooden handle and choosing to hold it by the metal rod.

  “Which ones are they?”

  “The brown ones, sir.” He made it sound like I was the idiot for asking the question, but I couldn’t see any giant brown leeches. Before I could snap back at him, he pulled up next to a vat filled with half a dozen of the larger leeches and produced a short stepladder from some pocket dimension. He climbed up and laboriously unscrewed the lid. The viscous things in the liquid churned it into a haze of bubbles and flashing flesh that was very, very grey. Definitely not brown.

  “Pass me one of the cages up, will you? And can you hold the brolly over my head as well, please, sir?”

  I opened the unbrella, getting smacked in the face by tiny rubber ducks as I held it and passed one of the cages up with my other hand.

  “Thank you, sir.” He fiddled with the door to the cage, then snatched the bird by its neck. “This bit’s tricky. I’m gonna drop, and you need to keep the brolly over us both.” I nodded, and he held the chicken out before quickly submerging it in the water and jumping down. The water splashed around us as what was left in the tank turned red, then became clear again. Something heavy bounced off the top of the umbrella, and there was another splash of water as it landed back in the tank.

  The giant hurriedly wrestled the cap back into place at arm's length, making sure to keep his body under the brolly as much as possible. It slammed into place, and he spun it as fast as he could.

  “You do this often?” I asked, shaking the splashes off my boots.

  “Twice a day. Name’s Grahidin. Cheers.” He took the umbrella and put the handle between his teeth. That explained the grooves then. On one side of the thing was a long smear of blood. One of the leeches had made a play for my scalp.

  “Thith oneth ethier,” he mumbled around the handle. I glanced at the tank we had just fed, and sure enough, they were now very brown in colour. “Holdth the thadder?” he pointed to it, and I put a hand on either side as he climbed up a few steps. This tank contained only a single colossal leech that turned to stare at me with disturbingly intelligent eyes. I was fairly confident that leeches normally didn’t have eyes.

  As the lid came off, another chicken was passed up and dropped into the tank. This one was engulfed in rubbery flesh and consumed, feathers and all. As a being who preferred to eat whole foods, in the literal sense, I could respect this overgrown aquatic slug's tastes.

  “Oh no. This doesn’t look good. Could you fetch me the salt from the drinks tray, please, sir?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’ve been pecking at each other.” I looked at the chickens, who appeared to be perfectly fine. “No, the Banded Snaffleluggers. These beauties!” He slapped a hand against the next tank along, and within it, a bunch of grey leeches, this time with thin bands of blue around their bodies, looked to be perfectly fine as far as I could tell. They attacked the glass where his hand had rested with plenty of vigour, which I took to be a sign of good health.

  “Won’t the salt kill them?” I asked.

  “Give them a tummy ache. I’ll get it.” He kicked the ladder into position, then stomped off through the door we had entered by, leaving me alone with the monsters, some of whom were tracking me hungrily, moving through their tanks to keep me as close as possible.

  When he returned, I had edged away from a nearby tank where another giant leech had been making ‘come hither’ eyes at me. He rubbed salt onto his right arm and climbed sadly up the ladder.

  “Hold the umbrella for me?” he asked, and I obliged as he unscrewed the lid. “ Now this part is very important, you need to keep the rubber duckies between the water and my body. I’m going to lower the salted arm in slowly and let them take a quick nibble. It’ll make ‘em stop trying to drink each other. Common problem with this species.” He dipped his hand into the water, and I angled the brolly carefully as instructed.

  “Now, here… we… go…” The first leech swam up, its flukes propelling it forward smoothly, and brushed against his arm. It spun round and latched on, little pink puffs escaping into the water as Grahidin grunted in pain.

  “Have I caught you at a bad moment?” I dropped the brolly and flicked round, dropping into Nothing-Funny-From-The-Rear, a guarded Dragon Fu stance. Before me stood a twig of a man in purple robes with the largest crossbow I had ever seen slung across his back. A floppy hat with a tall point completed his ensemble.

  Grahidin yelped, and I glanced back around. Leeches were swarming out of the tank and climbing all over his upper body.

  “The rubber duckies!” he cried. I shoved the umbrella into his outstretched hand.

  “Sorry about that, Grahidin. I’m Professor Luckdire, and I’ll be performing your examination this morning. Now, have you eaten or drunk anything in the last four hours? Oh, don’t worry about him. This happens two or three times a week. It’s good practice for the healers. If you’ll follow me?”