Page 59 of Office of the Lost

Crispin roared again, quite capably.“What did you do to him?”His voice had reached a volume Leopold never would have expected from a well-behaved desk fae.

“Nothing bad, don’t worry.It’s an immobilization spell combined with a damper hex so he can’t do anything… unwise.”

“He didn’t mean to blow up your bathroom!”

“He blew up your bathroom?”Qylzryd started laughing, and Leopold found that, yes, he could hate him even more than he had initially.Then Minkis dropped down from a branch, bit Qylzryd hard in the shin, and darted away.Although it didn’t make Qylzryd drop his guard, his laughter turned into a muttering growl as his expensive suit pants were marred by a growing bloodstain, which Leopold found gratifying.

Juzir had his three-fingered hands up.“This isn’t about the bathroom, Crispin.Your employers called and asked for some help.You can’t have something dangerous like that”—he pointed at Leopold—“just running around!”Leopold very much wished he could at least call Juzir some choice names.He couldn’t even scowl properly.

Crispin was still furious.“He’s ahe, not athat.And I love him.”

“That’s not even a real person, buddy.That’s Chaos Incarnate, and the damage it could cause….The damage it’salreadycaused!I’ve heard a couple of reports about your mother’s court, and they don’t sound good.”

At this point Leopold was ready to turn everyone but Crispin and Minkis into the stuff you scrape off your shoes after walking through a cow pasture.But he couldn’t, and when he strained his hardest to use his powers, ithurtas if someone had dumped ground glass into his chest cavity.

“You can’t do this!”Crispin’s face was bright red with anger.“I thought you were my friend.”

Juzir might have blushed, but how could you tell with a dinosaur?Anyway, he should have blushed.“I am.But this situation’s just too dangerous.I’m sorry.”

A small chaotic scene followed, unfortunately none of it induced by Leopold’s now-deactivated powers.Qylzryd hoisted him up and over his shoulder as if Leopold were a length of tree trunk.Crispin surged forward in an attempt to stop him, but Juzir threw a rubber ball athimthis time, and then Crispin was frozen in midair, his face fixed in an expression of horror and rage.

Minkis bit Qylzryd again—this time on the other leg—and then Juzir froze him too.

Crispin made desperate grunting noises, which Leopold knew from personal experience were the equivalent of trying to bodily throw himself at Juzir to claw his neck out.He’d never loved his fae more.

“Don’t worry,” Juzir said to Crispin.“The spell will wear off soon.”He marched out the door with Qylzryd hard at his heels.

Leopold caught one last glimpse of the Crispin-statue suspended some feet above the floor before Leopold was hauled through the door.

23

Crispin

Crispin’s rage burned white-hot—stronger than the sun that peeked through the windows as it settled toward the edge of the world—but to no avail.He was trapped in Juzir’s spell, and there was no way out until the abominable thing wore itself out.

It gave him time to think.And to stew in his anger.

He’d given his whole life to service at the OotL.He’d done everything they asked, and done it exceptionally well.His former perfecality score said as much.So what if he’d had his mother’s help getting the job?He’d made it his own, and he was proud of that.

And this was the thanks he got.They’d sent someone into his home to take away the one person he cared for.His anger surged anew, molten lava on the shores of an acid lake.He’d been to Hellvin once to collect an incendiary fungus, and the visit hadn’t been pleasant.

Think, Crispin.Think.If only there was a way to free himself from this spell sooner.Every second counted.

All magic is based on Chaos.

It was something his mother and tutors had pounded into him as a child.And yet he’d never been able to draw on it like the others.Instead, he had an almost pathological sense of order, a trait he’d shown early in life, being nearly obsessed with keeping things in place.In a human, Leo might have described it as OCD.In a fae, it was just strange.

His obsession with Order was part of the reason his brother had always hated him, he was sure, and why his mother had sent him away.

It was also why he was so good at his job.

Sometimes he could manifest it in the real world, as he had done at the Pond of Disappointment on Vlotho, saving them both—so he’d thought—from the attack of the Chaos Cloud.

Order was the natural enemy of Chaos.So where does my power come from?

Maybe if he imagined himself imposing Order on the spell that confined him….

He pictured himself drawing perfectly square boxes in the air, one after another.They were all exactly the same size, each one a replica of the first, gradually creating a circular cage on all sides of him.

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