Three weirdos stood outside of Azuche, The Enchanted City. After days upon days of climbing and suffering from torrents of snow, the made it.
Azazel's boots were wet. His toes were curling from the sensation of cold, wet socks. He thought to himself he may end up with frost bite if they had to be out in the cold any longer.
It's too cold.
Even though he had his new ridiculously stylish vampire cape, courtesy of Oliver's fine work while being whipped by Felix, he was still cold.
Azazel hated the cold, but Emma? Well, the cold never bothered her anyway. As for George, well, he was mute, so who knew?
Azazel glanced at George, who was covered in a thick, fur coat. The extra volume made him seem like a Viking on the prowl.
His mind wandered, as it tended to do. Azazel thought there must be a reason for George's mute status.
Maybe he is actually the protagonist. The mute, silent hero. Perhaps it is why we share a name. George: The player-named Hero.
Azazel chucked when he had that thought, which got Emma's attention. "What's so funny?"
Azazel shook his head. "Ah, nothing, kitten."
The three walked up to the gate, where a tall, blonde female elf stood. Azazel was intrigued, as on Earth, there were many fantasy stories which featured tall, beautiful elf women, but this elf woman was tall, but not beautiful. In fact, she had the face of a seasoned male wrestler, with sharp, masculine features.
"Who are you?" The elf asked, as she spit on the ground.
Oh, very feminine, too.
Emma ran forward. She performed a deep bow to the elf woman. "I am one of Blumbledore's disciples. We came here to visit him."
The elf looked at Emma, her tiny, green eyes narrowing as she looked at Emma. However, she didn't say anything else. Perhaps she recognized Emma from the time she had spent in Azuche years prior. The elf woman simply opened the gate, allowing the three access to the town.
When they walked inside, Azazel noticed a stark contrast from the world outside the gates from the town itself. There was zero snow cover on the ground. Instead, it looked as if the city was washed over with the weather of spring. "Interesting," he muttered, as his eyes scanned his surroundings.
Emma looked over to Azazel with a soft smile spread over her lips. "Blumbledore and the other wizards have a spell cast over the city, so the weather here is always perfect."
Azazel nod. He was feeling spell casting was seemingly useful for all types of things, not just for killing.
"Seems rather useful," Azazel mused.
The three walked down a red-brick path. Azazel's eyes were fixated on the different foliage lining the city. He particularly was impressed with the cherry-blossom like trees, which were in full bloom, scattered throughout the city. If the city was in a perpetual spring, perhaps the blossoms were often in bloom.
The city also seemed huge. It could perhaps rival the capital in size. Along with shops of all types, there were many buildings for different schools of magic. He never knew there were so many different types.
Outside of the various schools, wizards of all types were practicing magic. He stopped when he saw one wizard summoning a water-type creature. The creature was cute and small, with a transparent blue body and beady little eyes. It looked like an adorable slime from a video game.
Emma noticed Azazel's gaze fixated on the creature. "That's a water sprite."
Azazel was even more intrigued. "Are there sprites of all elements?"
Emma nodded. "Yes, the sprites keep the world in balance. Usually, they are invisible to the naked eye, but if the right magic is cast, one can be manifested into our dimension."
This seems complicated.
Emma could sense Azazel's confusion from the look on his face. With a swift swing of her hand, a red light emitted from her hand. A small, transparent red blob appeared on the ground, with the same beady eyes as the blue sprite. The only difference was this sprite had a spike of fiery flames burning from the top of its body.
Azazel put his hand over his mouth. I will not admit this thing is cute. That would not be very demon-like of me.
"You think it's cute, right?" Emma smirked.
Azazel blushed, becoming flustered he would be forced to admit his thoughts. He didn't answer. He quickly gazed at a tree in the distance. But he couldn't help it - his eyes wandered back to the fiery little sprite.
Emma leaned in close to Azazel, with her hands behind her back. She looked up at his face with a devious grin.
She knows.
"Fine. It's adorable," Azazel admitted.
Emma felt victorious.
Meanwhile, George had tried to pick up the sprite, but he quickly backed away when he burnt his fingers on the blaze emitting from the little critter. He was waving his arm in the air, trying to ease the pain from the burn.
"Be careful, George," Emma laughed. "You should know not to touch that."
Azazel was becoming even more curious about the types of magic Emma could cast. It seemed she was able to form a lot more magic than he initially thought she could.
"What do these... sprites even do?" Azazel asked, his tone laced with curiosity.
"They keep all elements in balance," Emma responded. "Without the spirits, we wouldn't have the ability to use magic. Blumbledore also told me the world may go dark and be unable to support life, so we'd all just die."
Things little things sound important.
"There's one for each element?" Azazel asked her, scratching his chin.
"Yes," Emma nodded enthusiastically. "Water, fire, wind, earth, light and dark. They're all super cute, too."
"Do they do anything else? Can they kill a person?" Azazel was hoping they were secretly vicious creatures which could devour the souls of their enemy.
"No," Emma laughed. "They just keep everything in balance. They aren't going to attack anyone. I mean, look at them."
Emma pointed toward the little fire sprite, with a smile spread across her face.
He watched as the fire sprite bounced around, innocently burning blades of grass as it bounced across a hill.
Yeah, no. It's definitely not going to hurt anyone.
"Anyway, are you ready to go see
Blumbledore?" Emma asked as she glanced to the east.
"Lead the way, my kitten," Azazel responded.
Azazel was actually really excited to go see Blumbledore, though he finally realized his name was oddly familiar. He remembered a series of children's fantasy novels, which may have had a wise wizard with a similar name. Hopefully, Blumbledore was half as cool as they wizard he almost shared a name with. Though, he had never actually read those books. He always thought they seemed a tad over-hyped.
Emma led the trio to a large mansion toward the outer edge of the city. The mansion was surrounded by bushes full of lush flowers. She took a deep breath and performed a series of knocks, which seemed to by a secret code. Before she finished the last step of the overly drawn-out knock, the door opened.
A tall orc woman, with purple hair and impressive biceps, opened the door. A smile spread across her lips as she looked down to see Emma standing there. "Oh, dear Emma. Come in."
Emma leaned forward to hug the woman. The two of them stood there in the hug for an ungodly amount of time. The hug continued. It continued. It just kept continuing.
Azazel cleared his throat.
The two glanced toward him, noticing he was waiting for the hug to finish. "Sorry," Emma mumbled.
"It seems the two of you are familiar," Azazel said, pointing out the obvious.
"Yes!" Emma smiled while clasping her hands together. "This is Gertrude, Blumbledore's sixth wife."
Sixth wife? He has six wives?
Azazel bowed. "I am Azazel."
Emma point toward George. "This is George. Don't try to talk to him."
What a rather matter-of-fact introduction with absolutely no utterance of the reason why she should not talk to him. I'm sure he's not at all confused.
Gertrude led the party into the mansion. It was... interesting, to say the least. It reminded him of Celine's cat boy cave shrine, but instead of scantly clad cat men in lewd positions and varying states of dress, there were walls filled with paintings of very naked women. Not just any naked women, but naked women from Earth. Very familiar naked women.
How the hell does he have pictures of adult film actresses on his walls? What the hell even is this? What even is Terra? This place just keeps getting more bizarre, and I am here for it.
As they walked down an expansive hall, Azazel took note of several other orc women. These women were presumably also his wives, but there were far more than six orc woman spotted in the mansion. In fact, there were at least two dozen orc women performing various tasks throughout the mansion.
Does this man have a massive orc fetish? He has an entire army's worth of orc women. What a massive harem.
Eventually, Gertrude led them to shut double-door at the end of a long hall. She knocked on the door and waited for a response.
"Come in," a haggard old voice could be heard from beyond the doors.
Slowly, the orc lady opened the door. The three stepped inside.
A man, with a long grey beard and a face full of wrinkles, glanced toward them. "Ah, Emma," he mumbled as he stood up, his back cracking as he did.
Emma's face lit up when she looked at the old wizard. "Master Blumbledore!"
Blumbledore dropped the book he was holding. It seemed to be a book about incantations on the outside, but then Azazel's eyes took note of the magazine he had hidden between the pages.
It's a damn pornographic magazine from Earth.
The magazine fell to the ground, with a page opened showing a very naked woman with her legs spread wide. Azazel diverted his gaze, but Emma just looked down and laughed. "Oh, Master, you still have these things everywhere."
Do no normal people exist on Terra?
Azazel now had a lot of questions. Sure, he wanted to know more about the wizard's knowledge of magic, but he now felt he needed to know how exactly he got his hands on pornographic 'reading' material from Earth. There was no way he could have collected these things by hand.
As he glanced around the room, he noticed stack upon stack of magazines littered across the room. Upon further investigation, each stack was nothing but dirty magazines. It seemed like the wizard had acquired quite the collection of materials in his time.
Blumbledore let out a hearty belly laugh.
"Ohohohoho, my dear. My hobbies will never change."
Hobbies?
"I'm glad you still have your hobbies, Master," Emma stated happily.
She's glad he likes dirty magazines?
"I'll have to introduce you to my new wife, Matilda," Blumbledore laughed. "I'm sure you will like her. I think she is wife number sixty-nine."
Emma introduced both Azazel and George to the wizard. The four then took a seat on a plush, velvet sofa. One of the orc wives came in and brought a kettle of tea for them to share.
"What brings you here?" Blumbledore asked as he sipped on a comically tiny cup of tea.
"Magic!" Emma said excitedly.
"Yes, of course," Blumbledore responded. "But what of said magic?"
Azazel chimed in as he pounded down a cup of tea, as if it were a shot of hard liquor. "I wanted to learn to cast magic from you."
Blumbledore scratched his head. "I don't know. Miss Emma here was the last diciple I took, many years ago. I am far too old to teach magic."
Azazel sighed. "Is there any way to convince you?"
Blumbledore narrowed his eyes at the demon. He scratched his beard and shook his head. "If you prove yourself to be cool."
"Cool?" Azazel laughed. "What does that entail?"
"Cool." Blumbledoor dryly stated.
Azazel thought about it for a moment. He dug in his pocket and and took out the MP3 player. He handed it to the wizard.
"What is this... thing?" The old man asked as he held it up.
"Here, out this in your ear," Azazel commanded as he handed him the ear bud.
Blumbledore did as instructed, but he placed it in his ear backward.
Azazel stood and adjusted the ear bud into the proper position, then he turned the MP3 player on.
Blumbledore gasped when he heard the music. "This is... interesting, but I am unsure if it is cool. Is this item... from beyond the rift?"
Azazel scratched his chin and shrugged. "It may be. Do you have any examples of an item from beyond the rift?"
Blumbledore dug in his coat and pulled out a DVD labeled Three Little Kittens Go Wild in Vegas.
The imagery on the front cover was interesting, to say the least.
Emma tilt her head as she looks at the cover. "They are called...kittens."
Azazel looked at Emma. Sweat drops were forming. "I have never seen this before in my life. I swear."
Emma seemed satisfied with the explanation.
"Yes, then I suppose it would be from beyond this so-called rift."
"Ah, then yer a wizard, Azazel."
Is that a line from a meme?
Blumbledore focused on the music playing. He began to tap his fingers on the arm of the sofa and Bob his head. Apparently, he really enjoyed the sound of Blink 182.
"Fine," the wizard said. "I will help you."
Emma clapped happily.
Meanwhile, George sat there looking through one of the magazines. "..."
"Alright, boy," Blumbledore spoke as he stood, the music still playing in his ear. "To the training ground!"