Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God by Scott Duff Page B

I’ve been
gone? What does a hydrogenated soy plant look like?”
    I laughed. It came out like a bark, really,
sending the now-tasteless gum I was chewing into the back of the
refrigerator somewhere. I explained about food preservatives and
other additives while I hunted through the back for the lost wad.
That led to a discussion of various food allergies that I didn’t
know enough about to offer an opinion on. By that time, the gum was
in the garbage and I was sliding two pizzas in the oven and setting
a timer.
    Kieran and I made our way into the den were
the shopping bags were piled up. I grabbed the stereo remote off
the coffee table and started some light jazz playing. Not my normal
choice, but I needed something calming and anthem rock wasn’t gonna
fit the bill. Ethan had the elven weapons laid out in front of him
in the floor neatly. He was kneeling with the rock almost touching
his knees, staring intently at it. The pixie sat on the coffee
table, watching. I couldn’t tell he was doing anything at all, even
with my newly enhanced vision. The ward, though, showed him more
sharply than I’d seen him in a miasma of colorful power. This was
the first hint of the Fires of Creation he was named for. And the
weapons and the rock glowed an unearthly pink. They hadn’t done
that in the garage earlier.
    I started unloading the bags and removing
tags from clothes and sorting them into piles to wash. Kieran
helped, but a few moments into the task, there was a small pop in
the room that felt like an air pressure change. I looked up to see
Ethan picking up the rock with a small smile on his face.
    “Seth, catch,” he said and tossed the rock to
me. Dropping the clothes I held, I caught the rock with both hands
without thinking. It wasn’t until the pixie’s scream of “No!” did
it occur to me that this was supposed to kill me if I touched it.
Instead, my hands closed and I felt its weight and texture. Then it
was gone. Just “phpht” gone. I stared at my empty hands while the
pixie flew figure eight’s around them and my head, squealing with
concern.
    “Good,” Kieran said smiling and continued to
unload the bags.
    “What just happened?” I asked, confused.
    “Ethan is changing the enchantment on the
weapons so that you can have the protection and use of them,”
Kieran said, as if this happened every day. I suppose it could in
his world. I wouldn’t know an enchantment if it kissed me on the
mouth and bought dinner. “We will show you how to use them later,
when he is done.”
    Great, he was gonna show me how to throw
rocks at somebody. I picked up a pile of clothes and made way to
the washer through the kitchen. The timer chimed as I came back
through, so I pulled plates out of the cupboard and yelled for
help. I felt another air pressure pop then Ethan appeared with the
gold and silver sword in one hand, the scabbard in the other.
    He shoved the sword into my right hand and,
just like the rock, it disappeared. I watched this time knowing
what to expect. Well, thinking I knew what to expect. The sword
seemed to fold itself up lengthwise into a line and then a point
and I felt its weight move up my arm into my head. Ethan did the
same with the scabbard and I watched again as it folded itself up
and traveled up my arm. This time I saw where it went in my head:
it shined brightly with its own light in that cavern to the right
side of the Pact sigil. Below it underneath the sigil sat the rock.
And it had changed. Before it was just an everyday looking rock
about the size of my fist. Here, it looked like a huge slab of cut
marble with flowing script emblazoned on the sides in burnt amber.
The Pact and sigil sat on top of it like it was its foundation and
always had been. The gold and silver sword tilted slightly to the
right of the marble slab in its scabbard, its colors accentuated in
the Pact above it.
    Ethan grabbed the plates off the counter and
some napkins and left me alone in the kitchen with a chuckle.