"Tescadji," Skori said with a polite nod before he and Sedriil seated themselves in the chair across the table.
"Well, well, well, I see you two have settled into the civilian life pretty well," Tescadji remarked jovially, giving the two a brief once-over. The brothers recalled how his unusually high voice, combined with his upper crust Sakar accent made him the butt of more than a few private jokes about his masculinity -or supposed lack thereof. "So what'll you two have to drink on this fine night?"
"You called us here for business," Skori said pointedly. "And our sister's birthday was today, so …"
"Which sister?" Tescadji said.
"Mericlou," Sedrill replied.
"Oh, the cute one!" Tescadji said with a broad smile.
" … so we don't need anything to drink," Skori said with finality.
"Skori, I really do suggest that you have a drink," Tescadji insisted, his voice deepening an octave.
"I … guess I'll have a drink then, "Skori said reluctantly. He had known Tescadji long enough to understand that when he used that tone of voice, in addition to the subtle way he exposed the runes upon his forearm, it was not so much a suggestion as it was a subtle assertion of his rank.
Humans lacked the ability to cast spells … or so it was thought to be, but Skori had been privy to highly classified information held within the Android Equality Force's vast files. In the final decades before the Liberation War, the AEF had been doing R&D on questionable archaeological findings, namely documents belonging to a human alchemist named Ilrembik, who lived over one hundred thousand years ago. Supposedly he was only a legend, but the tablets and scrolls told a different story. These contained the formulas and equations to a runic script that could supposedly magnify etheric affinity in humans. Applying these runic equations would mean that instead of only using magic that was imbued in an object, any human could cast spells of their own.
Tescadji had volunteered as one of three test subjects for a dangerous experiment that involved etching a crude rendering of the runic script upon his skin, according to instructions in the Ilrebmik documents. The other two subjects died almost instantly from miscalculated equations, which poisoned them from the inside out; Tescadji survived. As a matter of fact, in his case, the experiment was a success beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Tescadji attained not only magical abilities, but not even the strongest elven spells could counter him. It was only after endless field testing, that it was discovered that only dragon magic could subdue him. Fortunately, Tescadji was devoted heart and soul to the cause of the AEF, and was apparently immune to corruption by the power he wielded. He was to be the first in a line of special extraction agents, but because of the Liberation War, the project was cut. All R&D was assimilated by the Garushnit government and mothballed. After having seen Tescadji's abilities firsthand in the field during the war, Skori knew that the man was to be respected … perhaps even feared.