In the past, Venger had seen the children scatter as he approached, spreading out so that Venger could not hurt all of them at once.  He expected it again this time.  It didn’t happen.  Even the unicorn stood by the children as they huddled together around Bobby.

Hank took one step toward Venger.  “Taking the wild magick won’t be so easy, Venger.  Or didn’t you see what we just did to your master?”

“I saw foolish children, who still have not realized the extent of the power they play with.  Nor do you know how foolish it was for DungeonMaster to divide it among you.  I only need destroy one of you, and your wild magick becomes useless.  Who shall it be; the Ranger?  The Acrobat?  The blind little Barbarian?”

Sheila’s hands tried instinctively to clench into fists when he threatened Bobby.  But her palms were charred, ghastly slabs of flesh that would not bend to her will.  Still, if looks could kill, she would have succeeded where Hank had failed in the Dragons’ Graveyard.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Hank whispered over his shoulder to the others.  “He’s just trying to rattle us.”

“Tell him he’s doing a great job,” Eric whispered back.

Aloud, Hank said to Venger, “You know we can’t let you hurt any of us.”

“And how would you stop me?  Would you use the wild magick to destroy only one man, Ranger?  You tried to destroy me before, with far weaker magic, and you could not.  Now you command a power that destroyed a thousand Orcs, destroyed whole worlds, and even destroyed the Nameless One himself, yet you could not stop being hurt by your own power.  A power which you could easily take back to your world, to use as you see fit.”

“Are we supposed to be interested in this, Venger?” Sheila spoke up.

“You should be, for I speak the truth.”  His face bore a smirk that was almost a smile; his manner was almost gracious.  “Your old weapons were powerless when you escaped to your world with them, for they were tied to the life of the Realm.  But the wild magick knows no such limitations.  Like the Nameless One, it was born beyond the stars, and it carries unimaginable power.  Do you wish to settle the wars on your puny little planet forever?  The wild magick can make it so.  Do you wish to be the absolute rulers of your world?  The wild magick can make it so.  You could turn gardens into deserts, or deserts into gardens.  Take it back to your world, and you will be able to do what your greatest scientists have only dreamt of until now.”

“Let me guess,” Hank interrupted; “there’s a price for leaving here with the wild magick.  First we have to use it to get rid of DungeonMaster for you, right?  Forget it.”

Anger flared up in Venger’s gray face like a brush fire.  “Enough talk!  Either use the wild magick against me, or surrender it.  There is no third choice!”

“Oh, yes, there is,” Bobby piped up.  Presto took Bobby’s arm and helped him stand.  “That last fight made me remember my part of the wild magick.”  He reached out toward Presto, who grabbed his hand and held it aloft.  With his free hand Bobby took the horned helmet from his head and threw it straight up into the air, as he and Presto both cried out the word they had not known that they knew until that moment:

“BALSE!”

As if they were in a trance, as if Venger simply wasn’t there, the others turned their backs on the demonic wizard and once again formed the circle.

The helmet stayed aloft, spinning horn over horn, like a top defying time, gravity and logic.  Again a ball of energy grew in the center of the circle formed by the children.  Only this time, the glow was brighter; fully as bright as the message in the Box of Balefire.  If the children had been in possession of their senses, their eyes would have been blinded, and they would have smelled burning flesh.  As it is, Venger’s mount smelled something, and pawed the air skittishly.  Venger tried several times to hit the children with bursts of his own power, to stop whatever they were doing, but the glare and the nervousness of his horse kept ruining his aim.

Then he understood.  He realized exactly what was happening.  Venger could only watch, his own mind frozen by what was to him the ultimate horror unfolding before him.  “No!  This cannot be!  They cannot—”

With the suddenness of a gunshot the ball of light raced straight up and surrounded the helmet.  The helmet, in an impossibility of physics, began to collapse in on itself.

Uni had given up trying to get Bobby’s attention.  Terrified by the imploding helmet, she turned and ran across the open plain.  She had only gotten five yards away when—

the ball of light and the helmet vanished.

At once there was the noise of a dozen thunderclaps.  There was a tremor, felt to one degree or another all around the Realm, as a magical vacuum was created and other forces rushed to fill it.  Venger was thrown from his mount onto the ground.  His steed panicked and galloped into the sky, but faded like mist before it had gone more than a few yards.

The children were scattered in all directions, landing in a rough circle twenty feet across.  Uni had been blown another five yards, and lay barely conscious under a sheltering rock.

It was fully ten minutes before any of them moved, and even that movement was tentative and slow.  One by one they awakened as if from a coma to look to each other.

“Okay, Mister Answer Man,” Eric (once he had gotten his breath back) said to Presto, “what did we just do?”

“I didn’t know until I said that word, but Bobby was right.  He did have the one last piece of the wild magick.  Remember what the rest of us were?”

Hank nodded.  “The patience to choose it.”

Presto: “The knowledge to name it.”

Sheila: “The desire to summon it.”

Diana: “The skill to shape it.”

Eric: “The cunning to aim it.”

“And Bobby had the last part,” Presto continued.  “His part was ‘the wisdom to destroy itself.’  The wild magick was so powerful and so smart, it knew that it would have to be able to destroy itself, to keep someone from using it the wrong way.”

The others pondered this in silence for a minute; the notion of a magic that was so alive that it could sacrifice itself.  The silence was broken by Bobby: “Hey, where’s Venger?”

“I don’t know, Bobby,” Sheila began.  “He—”  She caught herself.  “You can see?!  Bobby!  You can see again!!”  Not caring in the least about how it looked or whether it embarrassed him, she grabbed onto her little brother, crying with relief and joy.

All the others crowded around as well.  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Presto asked.

“Yeah, fine,” Bobby grinned.  His blue eyes sparkled again as they had before.  “I TOLD you guys!”

Sheila’s head suddenly shot up, and she looked at her hands.  “I’m…I’m okay too!  Look!”  She showed the palms of her hands, now pink and unmarked.

Hank hugged Sheila so fiercely he actually picked her up off the ground.  As he set her down again he could see Diana over Sheila’s shoulder.  Diana just smiled and gave Hank a “thumbs-up” sign.

“Wow,” said Presto, barely above a whisper.  “Look at this, you guys!  My glasses are fixed too!  I guess when the wild magick destroyed itself, it fixed up the damage it did to us when we used it.”

“Speaking of damage,” Diana said, “where is Venger?”

“Are you kidding?” Eric asked.  “He’s right over--”

Venger’s crumpled figure looked up; the children gasped.  This was not the corpselike face of the demon that had pursued them through all their nights and days in the Realm.  The batwings were gone.  The body was half its size of a few minutes ago.  And the face that looked back at them had been transformed.  The gray pallor was replaced by flesh; pale as if it had not seen daylight for years, but still flesh.  A nose had appeared where there was none.  The hood had fallen back, revealing not a horn sticking out of a misshapen skull, but hair the color of sand.  If there were still fangs growing out of those jaws, they were now hidden behind lips that pulsed slightly with each breath Venger took.  If it was Venger; this face, that of a young man perhaps Hank’s age, perhaps a bit younger, was hardly Venger’s face, yet it seemed familiar.

It was Sheila who made the connection, in a tentative whisper: “Karina?”

Venger shook his head. “She was my sister; my twin.”  He spoke in a hesitant voice, still unsure of itself after a long time away.  “She was the only family I had left.  Now there’s nothing.”

“You are wrong.”  DungeonMaster appeared out of nowhere, as he had so often, and started to walk toward the youth.  “Rise, Eldrid, my son--”

“Don’t call me that!  And don’t come near me!  None of you come near me!”  The youth was angry, but it was anger born of despair, a despair which came through his voice all too clearly.

With that, Bobby simply said, “We’ve got school tomorrow, DungeonMaster; it’s time to go home.”

“Of course, Barbarian—I mean, Bobby.  For your time here is over now.  All has worked itself out as I foresaw.”

“Are you kidding?!  You knew about all this from the beginning?!  Why didn’t you just tell us!!”

This time, it was Eldrid, still in the robes of Venger, who answered Eric.  “Because you would not have understood, or would not have believed.  I sought the wild magick before I was ready for it.  And you have seen what I became.”

Presto stepped forward.  “Does this mean that when you sent us the first time to get the Box of Balefire, and you almost killed yourself getting us to the Heart of Dawn, you KNEW that you were gonna…”

DungeonMaster nodded.  “I knew the risks to myself as well as to you, but you had to know who you would be fighting before you fought him.”

“So you put your head in the noose along with everyone else?” Eric demanded.  “Well I only have one thing to say about that--”

“ER-RIC!” The others shouted.

“I’ve gotta say this!  DungeonMaster, I—I’m sorry, about everything I called you since we got here.  Do you think you could, y’know, forgive and forget?”

“We must never forget, but we can forgive.”  DungeonMaster looked at the boy who had once been Venger.

“I will ask nothing of you, DungeonMaster,” the boy said, barely above a whisper.  “It is too much for me to hope for, even more than hoping for the wild magick.  I have brought such evil to the Realm—such destruction and death.   None can forgive me.”

At that moment, a flight of dragons passed overhead.  Five dragons, of five colors, with five powers, passed over the children and the wizards, and then parted, flying on to their separate lives.

“On the contrary, my son,” DungeonMaster replied, “you are still my best pupil, as you always were.  Only now, you are free of the longing for the wild magick.  You have come to understand both the powers of the DungeonMaster, and the trials that he must face.  In so doing, you shall someday be able to heal the Realm, repairing whatever damage was done a thousand times over.  If you are still willing to be my pupil, I am still willing to have you.”

Eldrid simply stayed where he was, on his hands and knees, silent.

Eric’s voice broke the silence.  “So, DM, let us in on a little secret: how come you didn’t just get rid of the wild magick in the first place?”

“Geez, Eric, haven’t you figured it out yet?” Presto blurted out.  “If DungeonMaster did that, he couldn’t have gotten rid of No-Name.”

“He could have used it to take care of No-Name first.”

“I don’t think so,” Hank said.  “No-Name only showed up here when the Balefire summoned him.  I wouldn’t want to be the one to bring him here by myself, even if I knew I could beat him.”

“But why US?!  Why drag us into all this, and not someone else?”

“That is a fair question, Cavalier, but the answer is that I cannot answer you.”

Eric simply sat on the ground and buried his face in his hands.  Diana said, “You’ve got to admit that’s not much help, DungeonMaster.”

“I know only what I was told by my master, ages before your planet was even born.  I was warned that the Realm would pass through a time of darkness, and that only six young ones, pure of heart, would travel from a distant land to bring us healing.  None could have said that you would be the six that we needed, yet we never would have found healing without you.”

“You mean we’re like heroes?” Presto asked in amazement.  He clearly thought the word would never apply to him.

“I dare you to put this trip on your resume,” Eric smirked.

“Never mind him, Presto,” Sheila said.  “I’ve got a feeling this will all mean something when we’re older.”

DungeonMaster turned to the six from Earth.  “There is one last choice for you, my children.  I realize that it will be difficult to speak of this place to anyone else when you return home.  Before you leave, I can erase all your memories of being here, if you wish it.”

“Come on, DungeonMaster,” Hank smiled, “You know the answer to that one already.”

DungeonMaster gestured once, twice; and in the middle of empty air a ribbon of light appeared, a ribbon that expanded until it was as high and wide as the doors of a barn.

“Bobby!” Sheila said breathlessly.  “This is it!  At last!”

“Yeah.”  Bobby seemed rather unenthusiastic, and everyone realized why.  It was the question they knew all along that they had to answer about this moment: what would become of Uni?  “Are you sure she can’t come with us, DungeonMaster?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?  Perhaps she knows where she is needed.”

Uni stood about ten yards away from everyone, perhaps fearful of another explosion.  Bobby tried to call to the unicorn, but found that he couldn’t.  It was Hank who called out to her instead.  “We’re leaving it up to you, Uni.  Go to Bobby or to DungeonMaster, wherever you feel you belong.”

Uni cocked her head, mewed out a short reply, then walked.  She walked up to Bobby and stopped only long enough to lick the back of his hand and croak out the words “AANK OO”; then she walked past DungeonMaster and stopped in front of the boy who had been Venger, and licked a tear from his cheek.  The child, his lower lip trembling, looked up at Uni, who nodded her head and let out a single low bleat, as if to say, “All is forgiven.”  Eldrid threw his arms around Uni’s neck, burying his face in her pelt, and sobbing like a lost, scared child who had just found home again.  Uni kept on crooning to him, softly and soothingly.

The others watched for a moment in silence, then turned and entered the portal.  As it began to collapse around them, they could hear the voice of the DungeonMaster: “Come, Eldrid, let us begin at the beginning.”

***

The carnival roustabout who helped kids in and out of the cars on the Dungeons and Dragons ride asked every carload of kids the same question.  He’d done it every summer, hundreds of times each week.  So this time, too, he asked, “Any of you kids want to go around again?”

The blonde little boy in the front seat was the first.  He started laughing, like he couldn’t stop, like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.  Then the others picked up on it and they started laughing too.  The boy hugged the older red-haired girl next to him, and she in turn hugged the young man on her other side.  The black girl in the rear seat kissed both her companions on the cheek.  And all of them, all the while, were whooping and hollering like it was New Year’s Eve, and laughing as if they couldn’t stop.  They staggered out of the car and headed off down the midway, arm in arm, still laughing.

© 2000 by Patrick Drazen