Peering up the Trouser Leg of Giants
“Being The Chosen One is easy. You just womble along through life, being a normal kid – although you’re probably better at, let’s say, swimming five kilometres without coming up for air, or commanding fire, or something else gen’rally unhelpful for your high school career...
“Then one day – so long as you’re least expecting it, mind you – some old codger comes along, and tells you in a portentous-y kind of way, that you have A Destiny. And, usually shortly after this, you find an amulet in your cereal box, what sets off a chain of events: amulet unlocks something, fireballs rain down, you get a girlfriend, ek cetera.”
“Yep, being the Chosen One is easy. But choosing the Chosen One – that’s a mug’s game.”
Berthold Brick is a Magick hack. Four hundred years he’s been working in the Bureau, but does Brick even get his own car park? No sir. He got the best and brightest off to flying careers - but what recognition does he get? None, absolutely none.
Now his upstart young boss has finagled Brick into running a new casting show – The Next Top Chosen One. He’s buried under drifts of application from pushy show-biz mummies, each wanting her little darling to be an amulet-toting target for aforementioned fireballs. This on top of Brick’s “little task” of playing minder to the Magick world’s latest starlet, an insufferable four-eyes who can’t keep his wand in his trouser pocket.
All the while, Brick’s trying to avoid the officious Nymph Squad, which has him pegged for Hex Evasion, and attempting to carry on his usual job of Guardian for Avoiding Apocalyptic Happenings. It truly is a bad time to give up smoking.
And gods forbid Brick gets a moment to himself, to watch a little telly and maybe find a girlfriend, ek cetera...
“You know how people say, nice work if you can get it? Well, they don’t say that to me.”
