The Court Wizard's Duties, Chapter 1
Sometimes even Wizards are late to the King's birthday.
The Court Wizard’s Duties
Chapter 1
More coming soon.
I burst from the door of some royal chamber’s bathroom. My robe still falling over my shoulders as I erupted forth in a flurry. I was blind to the space before me and ran right into that servant boy who had been yapping at me through the mahogany door.
Dimiterius was his name; if I were to recall.
I pulled the robe down past my waist and peered at him.
He didn’t seem to care. But, the agitation in his posture was clear despite the haze. My eyes were adjusting to the clarity of what felt like midday light intruding from beyond the slit windows.
Looking back towards the bathroom, a haze of purple smoke was drifting out and sliding towards the nearest gap.
“It’s real high level shit,” I squawked at the boy indicating my pipe and the remaining purple crystals before I tucked them into a fold in my robe.
He looked back at me with his ever present, ever locked, frown.
That was why they sent him to wrangle me from my magical duties. The very duties assigned to me by his king. He never found my scientific endeavors stimulating! There was no spark of mana within his balls. No wonder in his person at all. Just a short, angry, little man that stood cross armed before me with an hour glass hanging from a loose cord around his neck.
“You are 10 minutes behind,” he said in his stupid, measured syllables.
Each one was precise. Each trimmed and washed like a good downstairs hedge. Each mocking the fluidity of the magics I performed in their precision!
I froze. My arms paused in the action of brushing my robe.
“What?,” I stumbled out.
I leaned forward to the man like a crane over a fish, “What day is it?”
My eyes began to dart around the bedroom. Dimiterius’ bore into me with that furrowed caterpillar napping above them.
It wasn’t the most lavish room in the castle. A large double bed was planted in the center of the outer wall. Made of wood, but carved with care. There were sheets. And some clothes, a woman’s, folded in a neat cube on the nightstand. A pair of panties in bright blue hung from the small candle chandler in the middle of the room. So, I knew at least the resident was modest.
“Come to think of it,” I said waving my hands around, “Who’s bedroom is this anyway?”
“Titania’s,” stated Dimiterius, “She has already gone to the reception.”
“As you should have,” he added with a twitch.
“That elf servant girl?” I exclaimed and pointed to the chandler, “Ha! The fey lady-in-waiting! Marvelous!”
I paused and glanced around again. My hands flaring to the air around me for support as I expressed a condensed jig.
Dimiterius spoke the truth. No one else was to be found in the confines of this nest. And come to think of it, a quiet permeated the very stones of this castle I warded with such fervent faith.
My gaze shot back to Dimiterius like a ballista.
He was wearing the nice robe.
The one with Tyrian purple stripes and gold impregnated tassels. The very fibers I was tricked into binding with the threads of the Grand Thistle Tree. The one that they told me would ward away magic from the King on his jovial trips to harass the bikini-armor-clad harpies that inhabited the local Hootress Tavern chain location.
I stood a moment before the realization of how time had progressed slid across my mind like shit down an orc on “bath” day.
“MY GODS!” I exclaimed as my pointed hat shot upwards off my head, spun in a circle, and landed with grace upon my full head of black hair.
“IT’S THE KING’S BIRTHDAY!” I shouted at Dimiterius leaning in towards him, “Isn’t it?“
“Our illustrious wizard has regained his sense of time,” he stated, measured as always, “A miracle.”
I brushed my fingers through a stash of quartz speckled ash in a fold in my robe and whispered, “Ignis.”
I thrust my hand forward and a mote of flame launched from my extended fingers towards that little prick of a man. It burst against his robe and fizzled out like Durandal’s paltry fireworks in the rain.
He frowned back at me. His arms could only be so crossed.
“Have you had enough?” he asked.
“I’m never making one of those robes again,” I said crossing my arms in reflection.
“Will you be performing the show as requested by our gracious lord and King?” asked Dimiterius holding the hour glass up before my eyes.
I looked down at him and the glass of sand. Grains trickled through the eyelet at the center one after another. Each drop, drop, dropping as time goose-stepped past us. A magic beyond my purview of expertise.
A shame.
I said nothing. Instead, I turned and began to jog towards the door.
I pushed it open into that cold hallway with Dimiterius in tow. He would not allow himself to lose me from his sight now; if he could help it.
To the right I could hear the click and clatter of cast iron. A rush of thought popped through the fog of mana that permeated the winding corridors my brain: Titania’s room was the near kitchen.
Fortuitous.
I jogged for the door and felt the cold of the stone beneath me. My feet were exposed to the wretched chill of the expert masonry.
I snapped my fingers, skipped up in a small hop, and squawked, “Caliga!”
My boots popped onto my feet with little more fuss than backhanding a lone goblin. I came back to the ground and looked for Dimiterious. He was still there, jogging alongside me.
“A new one,” I grinned back at him.
He stared back at me. The caterpillar remained furrowed.
I scoffed at his non-response.
And then the double door to the kitchen was before us. It’s left leaf already ajar into the way we approached. I reached out and pulled the thing towards me. The weight only a pheasant’s.
We crossed the threshold into the kitchen like children stumbling into a dwarfen market after an Execution Day. A collection of people and elves ran about in their aprons from station to station. There, between it all, a hog on a spit was being hoisted up and onto a rack above the large central fire. To the right, a woman with a red beret above her uniform was berating a young man with a stain running from the top of his apron to the pot on the cobblestone floor. And over it all, the smell of bread straight from the oven drifted like a miasma.
Ah, and there was Titania.
I caught her eye and waved. A few tiny motes of fire wisped up from my fingers as I twiddled them.
She let a small grin through, before turning to taste the contents of a pot on the cast iron stove beside another, lower cast, of her elven kind. The swirling black makeup around Titania’s eyes drew me in like magic. The golden tassels hanging from her knife ears jingled like a wind chime even through the clank and clatter of the kitchen.
I broke my gaze away and winked at Dimiterius, “I’m in.”
He held up the hour glass for me to see. Even in the bustle of the kitchen, he remained resolute.
“It’s but steps away,” I shrugged.
“You’re but minutes from me suggesting another wizard should reside at this castle,” he replied.
“Harsh!” I shouted back and spun on my toe to face the other exit.
Bursting through the next door, I hung a fast right and took in our Grand Hall in stride.
