Let's Play Pretend

Dominoes

-It's a horrible thing when your child grows up to become an utter sodding bellend!

Marcus spoke around a mouthful of pie, spraying Aiden's shirt with spit-soaked crumbles of crust. This was his third consecutive piece, and he still shoveled it into his mouth as though he was on the brink of death from starvation.

Aiden had to agree with the man on the topic of the pies, though. They were, indeed, divine. Even Doll had taken the time to enjoy a slice, despite having been on a rant ever since she had been freed from the magical muting. She had had a lot to say to the wizards. About the sexism, about the speciesism, and most of all about the waste of time. A topic that just grew as they had been more or less banqueting for four days straight.

Marcus's remark about children and bellends came on the tail end of his apology on behalf of the entire High Council, and especially the wizard they had believed to be the leader of the lot. Marcus had assured them that the "boy isn't fit to run a lemonade stand next to the hottest pit in hell, and we know it". As it turned out, the so-called "boy" was in fact Marcus's child from his first and only marriage. It hadn't lasted very long... "She was quite miffed when she found out I was a hundred years older than her, and not even half as rich as you'd expect. Can't say I blame her, really. The times were rough enough as they were, and here she'd accidentally married a man the good book told her surely had the bloody devil in him. And he wasn't even showering her with riches to cushion the fall." In the end she had left him and their offspring, going off to seek forgiveness at a convent.

Marcus had done his best to teach his progeny right from wrong, and how to respect others. "But it's not an easy task, you know, when the little sod is born with enough magic to break villages with a little tantrum. I didn't think he'd get any, or I bloody well wouldn't have had him." There was clear disapproval in his voice, and still a kind of parental pride Aiden suspected had more to do with Marcus being a good man, than anything Theo had actually done to earn it.

Doll had pitched in once in a while throughout the story, mostly with requests that Marcus either stopped eating or stopped speaking, and once in a while pointing out that they were still on a deadline. She did not quite see how the old pals couldn't catch up later, now that they had found each other. And neither did she see how gorging themselves on food would in any way bring the case closer to being solved.

-We can eat once the bastard isn't a threat!

She said it between spoonfuls of pie, and Aiden didn't blame her. As long as they were close to these wonderful pieces of culinary art, he wouldn't be able to restrain himself from eating them either. Even though he agreed with her sentiment that they had much more important things to do, the pastries were still so incredibly moreish, resistance was futile.

They had gotten some work done, though. They found the wizards much more cooperative as long as Marcus was at their side, staring the younger ones down with a fire that was hard to misunderstand. It wasn't so much an "if looks could kill" as an "my looks can kill, and if you don't behave yourself I will prove it right here and now".

It appeared there were rumors that the two darker enclaves had started looking for apprentices. The argument for doing so was that as most wizards for one reason or another couldn't procreate, the initiation of new ones was the only way to keep their culture alive. Marcus had only scoffed at that, mumbling something about dying out not being the worst thing a culture based solely on theft could do. "What have we as a group ever done for anyone else, eh? We're only humans with god complexes and some nifty little tricks up our sleeves. It's time to end it, the way I see it."