Gregor The Cripple

“We ran away from our homes.” Greta stated abruptly. She was standing beside the wizard, watching Dieter dig up a thick root that could let people see the dead. “And our parents weren’t very happy about it. Uh, that’s why we need to to get to the other side of the forest with some cash in our pockets.”

The boy began to add his own helpful details. “Her dad walked in on us-” She kicked him in the back and he wisely shut his mouth.

“Uh, well, neither of our families were supportive of anything we did, so we decided that it was best if we did it away from them.” She paused, expecting Gregor to say something. When he did not, she continued, “What about you? Why do you need to travel through this shitty place?”

Was this... socialization? Were they speaking to him recreationally?

Gregor realized that he had never actually interacted with people even close to his own age, aside from receiving a few words of rivalry from the apprentices of wizards who had amounted to less than his current self.

Were the young pair trying to find common ground with him, or perhaps seek sympathy? Gregor honestly didn’t know, he was alien to these kinds of things, but he supposed that it wouldn’t disadvantage him to share a little.

He pointed with his stump to his ruined right eye. “I am in great pain, so I’m on my way to the Golden Empire to find a healer who can mend me.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to sail around the coast?”

“I need to visit my former master before I can leave. I’m in a hurry, so I opted to travel there as directly as possible.”

She nodded, probably assuming that he meant to bid Kaius farewell or something outlandish. Normal people were odd like that.

Dieter stood up with the tuber in his hand. Gregor offered the boy a jar from his hat – he really shouldn’t be touching that thing with bare skin – and off they went.

“I thought that they don’t let people from the mainland into the Empire?” Asked Briar of Gregor.

“My master lived there, and I have a bounty to collect. If neither of those facts are enough to permit me entry, I’m certain that I can find a smuggler to take me over the border.”

“A smuggler? Y’know, that’s a fine idea.” Briar the bandit started nodding to himself with his hand to his chin. “I’ve heard that there’s no hunger over there, no crime, and no wars neither. The perfect place for a peace-loving, law-abiding bard like myself. Perhaps I should see about getting myself illegally into the Empire.”

“There certainly is crime,” Kaius was definite evidence of that fact, and the Queen wouldn’t maintain such a robust force of inquisitors if they weren’t needed, “But you’re mostly correct.”

“I don’t really know if I can believe that.” Interjected Greta. “If they could pull that off, surely the rest of the would be able to do a lot better as well.”

Briar retorted, “Something possible for the Empire isn’t necessarily something that’s possible for other places. When you factor their immortal Queen into the equation, the definition of impossible changes.”

“There’s no way she’s actually immortal.” Opposed Greta.

The bandit just shrugged.

Gregor weighed in, “I don’t know if she’s immortal, but it is true that she’s been around for the entire thousand-and-a-half-year history of her empire. Their situation is the product of her well-laid plans for the future being executed diligently over centuries.”

“Is that really possible, like, with magic?”

Gregor simply nodded, leaving a lot unsaid – this was the wrong place to discuss Kaius’s theories. “I have personally read a transcript of a lecture she gave 600 years ago on the topic of gaseous phase-state transmutation.”

BANG. The whole group was startled by the report of Greta’s revolver. Once again, she had been the first to spot the danger.

A leathery dog-sized body fell to he ground behind them with a thwump.

“A Toothbat.” Identified the wizard.

“Why’re they called that?”

“They have a fondness for teeth.”

“… Right.”

Gregor could feel the disturbance far below. They were near the middle of the forest, soon to be right on top of it. Theoretically, this should be the most dangerous stretch of their trek through Der Hexenwald. “We should continue in silence.” He strongly suggested. The others agreed, quite keen to keep their lives.

***

They continued on into the deepest region of the wood, slinking about like death was hiding behind the trunk of every twisted and terrifying tree. Which it quite frequently was.

The young couple, who prior to this expedition hadn’t killed anything more dangerous than a frog, rode the waves of their own foolish bravado – and the encouraging presence of Gregor and Briar – to become uncomfortably covered in gore and guts.

They made considerable profits, both in terms of personal growth and personal wealth. Gregor’s keen eye filled their bags with so many herbs and roots and mushrooms that they ran out of space, and had to rely on the wizard’s seemingly bottomless hat to carry it all.

Briar had asked in a hushed tone “How much does a hat like that cost?”

Gregor had responded by telling him that any wizard who caught wind of a magical hat being treated like mere merchandise would go out of their way to kill everyone involved.

A wizard’s hat is his home, and a symbol of his practice. One must either create their own, or have it bequeathed by another. Anything else would be an insult, and wizards respond poorly to insults.

They made good progress, but a troubling circumstance arose before long; the horned rider Greta had seen the previous day made several more appearances. It silently stalked though the distant fog, sometimes ahead of them, sometimes behind. And they knew it was observing them.

Its black, beady eyes shined piercingly through the gloom of the obscured afternoon sun. Watching, waiting. The malevolent thing was hunting.

Gregor considered having the party push through the night so that it wouldn’t be able to attack while some of their number slept, but the certain exhaustion promised an unacceptable risk.

Naturally, a preemptive strike was his preferred solution, but it never gave them the chance. It proved to be an exceedingly competent hunter, to such a degree that he actually grew to respect it in the few hours it spent stalking about in the distance.

Before Gregor could contrive another solution to the problem, a supremely troubling second circumstance reared its hideous heads.

The incoherent screaming of a thousand frenzied goats burned its way into their ears, and something distant began rumbling toward the group.

“Run.” Was the only advice Gregor could give them, but it proved insufficient when the trees moved to block their escape.

In the space of only a few seconds, the clearing behind them had become a solid wall of living timber. The not-faces on the trees seemed to mock and leer, finding glee in their misfortune. They were all trapped except for Gregor, who could probably still teleport out at great risk. He no longer had any certainty of what was behind the wall, so he’d be gambling against the possibility of materializing with a branch through his chest.

The rumbling grew thunderous, and it arrived before them.

Huffing, frothing, rabid and ravenous, a thousand horned heads smashed their way through the few trees too stupid to move. It was a gargantuan conglomerate of matted black fur and scarred flesh, covered all over in enraged, gnashing heads. Legions of hooves churned the ground beneath it, sending the thing ceaselessly forward – till its many eyes spied Gregor’s little group.

Giving a cacophonous bleat of victory, one central head with blazing eyes and a forked tongue exerted its will to tame the fury of the uncountable others. The monstrosity slowed to a stop before them, with the still-agitated slave heads idly biting and butting at each other.

This was perhaps the only time in Gregor’s life when he had hated being correct. His suspicions about the tracks they discovered in the morning were now confirmed. A Kopfbiest had somehow pierced the veil.

It faintly radiated the foul taint of the bog that Gregor had previously noticed, but that was a mere afterthought compared to the great radiance of its own fetid presence. The magic of the world curdled on contact with the beast’s emanations. The thing was a blight. A malign, destructive force that had squeezed though the cracks in the word from the impossibly infinite realms beyond.

Gregor was confident in his ability to kill almost anything, but this was an outlier. He had no idea where to even begin.

To horror of everyone, it began to speak as a choir, each of its repulsive heads howling a separate tone to form discordant, halting words. “Your soul is untainted- Pristine. You are not of Him, yet- you have brought sacrifice to the WE in- the place of another. You will become- sacrifice too.”

Desperate to buy more time to find a solution, Gregor did something that he he had wanted to do since he was five – he engaged in conversation the terror from beyond knowable reality.

“Even with the local walls being as weak as they are, you shouldn’t have been able to force your way in. You’re too significant. The world should harden against the weight of your soul. How is it possible that you are here?”

“This- form is merely a- foothold. Native souls are brought to WE – WE consume them, they become WE, and then more- of the great WE can enter.”

It was incomplete. They had a chance.

“Greta.” Began the wizard quietly, tuning his head so that his monocular peripheral vision encompassed his companions. “I need you to aim very carefully and bury every single one of your bullets between that thing’s glowing eyes. If we’re still alive after that, keep going with your arrows.” She looked about ready to piss herself, Dieter too. Unfortunately, that probably wouldn’t do them any good.

“Strategy is useless- WE feed.”

Gregor knew that he’d need something special to get out of this, so he decided to combine the three most powerful things his murder-specialized skills could produce. Speed, power, and fire.

Taking off his hat as Greta began to pound the thing with lead, he withdrew from it something far too long to reasonably fit inside – the poleaxe he’d picked up on the night of his opium rampage. A fine staff for a fine wizard, indeed.

He’d been keeping it for a rainy day, because he noticed that rain seemed to accompany him in moments of hardship, but a Kopfbiest was more than good enough.

Though had had never expected to meet one outside of some ancient scrolls, he knew the nature of the abomination in a general sense.

It was a self-augmenting chimera, as old and powerful as it cared to become. Theoretically, it should have some kind of nucleus about which it arranged itself. As a matter of convenience, this was likely to be the part which was most difficult to exchange for something better. Something vital. Maybe. Would that be the original brain? Obviously not. That was far too easy to reach, and it possessed more spares he could ever remove.

The heart, then. Gregor supposed. This line of reasoning was guesswork that built on top of guesswork, but it was all he had. “Fuck.” Gregor swore as he teleported the poleaxe up higher and higher, until it was just a shining speck in the open, tree-free sky.

Multi-tasking as best as he was able, Gregor began gathering and compressing gasses from the air, carefully separating the hydrogen and nitrogen.

The beast’s primary head had been pulverized by Greta’s continuing bombardment, which seemed to confuse it enough that hadn’t yet charged forward. The surrounding heads whipped around and snapped in agitation. Perhaps the loss of the primary head hindered the rest somewhat, or perhaps it had just never encountered guns before.

Both inspired hope.

Feeling that he was ready, Gregor set about enacting his improvised plan for killing interdimensional horrors.

He grasped the poleaxe up high in a tight telekinetic grip, then brought it hurtling down as hard and fast as he could, using both gravity and magical might to pile on the speed.

Kept on target by his careful aim, it accelerated downwards faster and faster, shooting past the canopy of the tree-enclosure that held them, then a fraction of a second later – THUNK. It struck home, right into the hole bored by Greta’s bullets, burying half the weapon’s length inside the body of the beast. A thousand knees buckled under the force of the blow.

Wasting no time, Gregor teleported his staff away again, leaving a gaping, yawning hole. He planned to fill this hole with the mother of all fireballs. It would be the single most destructive spell he had yet cast.

With a mental flick, a conjured orb of fire shot in at great speed – flame filling the contours of the cavity. Once it was completely inside, he grinned. Graciously, Gregor bound the outside of the poor beast’s wound with the strongest barrier he had the capacity to manifest. At the same time, he dispelled his nitrogen and hydrogen containing barriers inside the wound.

It produced an utterly unique sound, like the muffled eruption of an undersea volcano combined with the visceral ripping of a man being drawn and quartered.

Reeling from the impact to his barrier, Gregor collapsed, vomiting immediately. His addled body simply couldn’t bear the strain.

The wizard looked up from the new puddle before him and was horrified by what he saw. The Kopfbiest still stood proud. Flames were spreading to every greasy hair on its body, smoke billowed from all its countless orifices, and its sides and chest had been flayed open from the inside out, but it still stood.

However, the beast was not what made him truly frightened.

The pale figure who had pursued them so doggedly was standing mere yards away, and now that Gregor saw it up close, he knew it for what it truly was.

Great, thick horns coiled about the sides of its head, and it leered down at him from atop its boar-mount with a face of bone, bearing only a crooked, cracked mouth-slit and those two dead eyes. Clutched at its side in a too-long grasp was a spear of bronze.

He shuddered, every muscle in his body went taut and his balls retracted back up into his stomach. It was a warden of the Wild Hunt – the promise of sure death. If he were to compare it with the demon who took his arm, or the Kopfbiest which had endured so much, it would be an awfully unfair competition.

Gregor had never before felt such fear. It was rather exciting. “Jäger, I hope you’ll consider killing that thing first,” He pointed to the beast, “Instead of us.”

Whether this hope had any bearing on the warden is unknown, but it turned its full attention toward the injured beast.

Somehow compelling the boar to move, the pair casually trotted up to the listing behemoth, which apparently also knew that this frail figure was the harbinger of death. It lashed out with its many hooves, flinging them about on disgustingly extended limbs.

It missed and toppled, having lost far too much bodily integrity to be moving so energetically. The warden continued on as if nothing had happened, seeming to have expected this outcome.

Calmly, it hefted its spear and lobbed it though the beast’s exposed ribcage. With a shudder, the lower half of its body went still, after which the warden was able to make its way around the colossal mass unmolested. It stabbed and slashed at things until finally, with an ear-piercing shriek, the Kopfbiest fell to pieces. Slab after slab of meat sloughed off to the ground in a disgusting pile of bloody flesh, hooves, and heads.

The warden then turned, nodded its thanks, and trotted off.

***

That night was oddly peaceful, but they could not relax. Two stood watch, while two struggled to sleep.

In the morning, they broke camp as quickly as possible and set off once more before dawn, fully intending to never spend another night anywhere near Der Hexenwald.

The three others kept looking at Gregor strangely. He had probably saved their lives, but something was bothering them.

Eventually, Greta asked her question. “Uh, Greg, that big goat thing-”

“The Kopfbiest.”

“Right, that. Um, what did it mean when it said that you brought it sacrifices?” In her mind, now that they were apparently sacrifices, it had become incredibly suspicious that Gregor had appeared before them, proclaimed their escort dead, then offered to take his place.

“Escorting a group through a place like this is dangerous work.” They didn’t quite see what he was getting at. “The resources here are valuable, but they aren’t nearly so valuable that someone like Labourd would be satisfied by just half of what you two could collect. We wizards might enjoy doing dangerous things, but we always charge a commensurate fee. He had another motivation for accompanying you.”

“So you’re saying that he planned to sacrifice us to the goat and take everything for himself?”

“No. He didn’t care about the herbs. The sacrifice was his sole objective. He had probably been feeding the beast a steady diet of unaware adventurers for a while now.”

“Why? And if the payment isn’t worth the trouble, why did you agree to come along for less?”

Gregor thought for a moment, before deciding that there probably wasn’t an issue with telling them what he knew.

“Labourd came to me and demanded that I join him in service to his master. He didn’t intend give me a choice, so I killed him, naturally.”

He expected them to show some surprise, but it appeared that they had already deduced as much. “I came with you because I wanted to know why Labourd had accepted the short end of such a suspiciously unbalanced stick. And now I know. He mentioned that his master had ‘unimaginable beings’ among his servants. If that Kopfbiest was any indication, he probably wasn’t exaggerating.”

Dieter spoke up with a confused look on his face. “I don’t really get it, but you’re saying that Labourd and the Goat-thing were allies.”

“Correct.”

“And you’re their enemy, which means that you never had any intention to sacrifice us.”

“Correct.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“What about the thing riding the pig?” Asked Briar. “You spoke to it.”

Gregor was silent for a while. There are some things which cannot be said. “That was a warden of the Wild Hunt – an abomination which hunts abominations. I can’t tell you much more, except that you should strive to never meet it again.”

“I don’t think there’s much I can do if it decides to keep tailing us.”

“It won’t. If you want to catch a predator, follow the prey. We were the prey, and it found the predator.” The Wild Hunt took it upon themselves to pursue and destroy that which did not belong. With the beast dead, it no longer had a reason to bother with them. “Although, I did most of the work.”

Unintentionally, Gregor had assisted its efforts. Perhaps it left them alive in thanks for his help.

As they proceeded on west-wards, the occasionally carnivorous shrubs between the trees grew sparse and the mist grew thin. The edge of the hell-forest was near, and beyond it lay the future fortunes of the group.

Briar was looking at Greta’s bow, which was now quite muddy and scratched from all the use it had endured. “I’ve been wondering.” He said. “Why do you carry that and a gun? Surely you’d only need the gun.”

She rattled the empty firearm in its holster. “Because powder is unreasonably expensive, and it’s a pain to load. I’m all out, by the way.”

Hearing this, Gregor had an idea. “In that case, perhaps I can help to reimburse you.” The mention of monetary gain earned everyone’s attention. “I believe you said you were going to Bosch?”

The young pair nodded.

“My master’s tower is on the road to Bosch.” After the fight with the Kopfbiest, Gregor had become newly confident in his ability to murder whatever placed itself before him.

The demon – if it were still present – was now well within his means to kill, and his success was all but assured if he brought help.

The girl and her gun would be useful, and Briar had proved himself a canny combatant. The boy could carry their luggage.

“It will be moderately dangerous, but I can promise a reward if you accompany me.”

Greta was slightly confused. “To say goodbye to your master?”

“To retrieve his corpse.”

She looked genuinely sad. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Gregor gathered that she might view the much-loved wizardly tradition of magistricide in a negative light, so he didn’t explain himself further.

“There might be a demon in the tower, or there might be another wizard.” Even if the fiend had long since departed, that place was too valuable to remain unoccupied. A new master of the tower was sure to have arrived by now.

As for the reward, that was a simple matter. If they wanted money, he would give them money. If they wanted powerful enchanted artefacts, he would give them artefacts. The tower lacked nothing.

He planned to come back and reclaim the place after he was healed, but there was no guarantee that everything of value would still be there, so he intended to extract everything significant and bring it all away.

Anything that he didn’t bring would likely be claimed by another wizard during the year or two that his trip was going to take, so there was no harm in promising the group some of his leftovers.

“Will it be less dangerous than what we just went though?”

“Definitely” Said Gregor with confidence.

He had never been so wrong.