Gregor The Cripple

The wood had turned back to stone, but now coarse and ancient. They were in an old part of the tower.

The walls were stacked blocks. Cut, placed, and mortared by hand, not by magic. At regular intervals were wrought-iron sconces, which still held unknowably ancient tar-dipped torches.

These were mundane torches in a hallway of mundane construction. Perhaps the tower began its life in non-magical hands, and these were the last vestiges of that embryonic state.

Gregor shuffled along with these observations bouncing around in the corners of his mind with the little emerald pendant floating before him in an impossibly steady grip.

Upon discovery of the jar and further consideration, it had turned out to be far more useful than he had initially determined. It was now being put to work. First, it would serve as a diagnostic tool, then, if everything was as Gregor suspected, it would become a Kaius Killer.

He worked at the chain meticulously with a tiny shard of milky corundum, scratching away telekinetically on account of the rough-hewn ground. Mistakes were not to be permitted.

Maneuvering it side to side before his critical eye, Gregor found that the underside of each little golden link had been satisfactorily etched with a very tiny rune.

It was fine work – Kaius would find it in compliance with his exacting standards if he were to ever see it, which he never would. Hopefully.

After digging around in his oddly numerous pockets for a moment, Gregor produced a vial of powder which conspicuously had no discernible colour. It was about half empty.

He uncorked the vial and, magically grabbing minuscule pinches of the stuff, pressed it into the many shallow pits and grooves of the runework.

The powder, previously nothing-colored and quite confusing to observe, adopted the dull gold of the chain. Under some light pressure it became almost liquid and conformed perfectly to the channels Gregor had carved, concealing all evidence of adulteration.

The work complete, he put away the vial and the pendant, and began his modifications to the lid of the soon-to-be head-jar.

For his plan, perfection was a necessity. The fact that he possessed the telekinetic dexterity and accuracy to attain such perfection while walking was a rare kind of ego fellation that few had ever been potent enough to experience.

Work of this precision was usually the product of painstaking hours and much fore-planning.

This, in addition to possessing the requisite arcane knowledge, which was itself quite esoteric and quasi-theoretical, did much to support Gregor’s frequent assertion that he was a fairly good wizard.

He revelled in the vindication, for it was what he craved, it was the obsession he pursued. Though he hardly realised it himself, this feeling of ego-assurance was the quiet motivation for near everything that he did, as was the case for most arrogant people.

Once more, he had found a positive side to his exile and amputation. For surely his telekinesis would not have grown to be so superior if he still had the luxury of two hands. Similarly, he would lack the knowledge if not for his master’s excellent instruction.

Reluctantly, he found himself hating Kaius just a little less, though only a little.

The stone changed from ancient grey to white marble shot with veins of black, and the bald floor abruptly sprouted a rug of deep red.

After the turn of a corner, the still-working Gregor almost ruined his perfection by bumping into a chair.

It took a moment, but the wheels of recognition surmounted the bulwark of distraction. “I’ve been here before.” He stated with mild surprise. “Probably a decade ago.”

Here the passage ballooned into something like a sitting room. Comfortable-looking chairs and little tables were recessed in twin nooks flanking the carpeted thoroughfare of the hallway.

“I always wondered where this place got off to.” He traced his finger along the shoulder of a chair he once knew, magically dust-free despite its age like the rest of the tower.

Back then, Gregor had only been a scamp in ill-fitting robes, yet to even make his own hat. The place hadn’t been anything special, just a spot for idle reading between lessons. It was only notable for having disappeared at some point.

“Gregor,” began Briar, who was notable for never calling him ‘Greg’, “we’ve been walkin’ all day. The kids are tired.”

“Hey!” Squawked Greta, who certainly didn’t consider herself a kid, though she did not dispute the claim that she was tired.

The wizard realised that he should probably be tired himself, given his infirmity, but that opium made these things difficult to notice. He responded by being the first to plonk himself into a chair, thereby acceding the to tacit request to halt and recuperate.

“So what’s this ‘solution’ of yours?” Posed Briar, adopting a posture of laziness in the chair opposite Gregor. “And why do we need it? Not to offend or anything, but you’re pretty fucking scary. Regular old murder machine, in my experience.” Gregor had no idea how he could manage to be offended by such a glowing endorsement. “Why can’t we just kill him the normal way?”

His work on the lid complete, the wizard lightened his laudanum flask by a few mouthfuls and found himself to still be in a loquacious mood, or rather, he found that he had been perpetuating his loquacious mood, which was rather irresponsible. It would be better if I stopped, he thought, then took another sip before settling into an explanation of the significance of his master.

“Bar none, Kaius the Cadaver is the most dangerous person any of us have ever met. To contextualise this, I once saw him mount a dragon in flight, kill it with a single blow and magically pilot its corpse down to the ground for salvage. This man could raze a city in minutes, if only there were someone with enough money to pay him for it. Further, the Golden Queen has been after his head for over a century, with only a pile of dead inquisitors to show for her effort.”

Gregor licked his lips, which were dry again, somehow. “He is not someone that you plan to kill, he is someone that you struggle to survive.”

Briar was slack-jawed for a moment. “Well, shit.” He finally said.

“His most terrifying aspect, and most relevant to our current situation,” Gregor continued, “is that you might never know if he were right in front of you, which is why it would be incredibly incompetent for me to share my plan to kill him.”

“What, he can go invisible?”

Close enough. Gregor nodded.

“Y’know, I seem to recall you saying that this would be safe.”

Gregor shrugged. “I killed him six months ago. I never would have come back if I knew he were still around.”

“You managed to kill someone like that?”

“It wasn’t a fair fight, I assure you.”

Briar began to mentally re-trace his steps, wondering is he could get back to the exit somehow. “…Could you do it again?”

“I’d have already run if it were impossible. Someone like Kaius would never raise an apprentice so incompetent as to be unable to kill him.”

“Well… Good.” Briar nodded, uneasy. In his experience, monsters begat monsters, so if anyone could do it, it’d be Gregor. Regardless, these circumstances were quite undesirable and he would rather be elsewhere.

Although, he considered unbidden, the potential profit was quite alluring.

“Just for future reference, all of that invisibility and dragon-slaying isn’t common for wizards, is it? If it is, I might need to stay a responsible, no-nonsense bard for the rest of my life.”

“No. The dragons haven’t reproduced for aeons, so they like to make examples of dragon-killers. They assemble dozen-strong hunting parties and go about making their point clear. In Kaius’s case, they came to demand an answer. In order to avoid unnecessary casualties, he forced them to settle for the king who had hired him.”

“He made a dozen dragons compromise!?”

“Impaling a whole royal family on the highest spire of their palace and burning them alive sends quite a message, and they got to avoid a fight with Kaius the Elderly, so the hunting coalition thought it was a fairly good deal. This is abnormal, even for wizards. And in the case of invisibility, few in the world are capable. Old money and old magic, all of them. As far as I know, Kaius is unique in innovating upon it. He can be as nothing. Intangible and unseeable – nonexistence at will. This spell is the reason for his notoriety. He keeps the mages awake at night, worried that Kaius the Elderly might be standing over their shoulders, perusing their papers as they are written and stealing the outcomes of their research without paying to read about them in some quarterly publication or somesuch.”

Gregor blinked out of his ramble. “Or at least, that’s what I imagine academics worry about.”

“The more you talk about this guy, the less confident I become.”

“Point being, he could be in the room with us right now. We might have even walked though him at some point. The arboretum was unknown to Kaius, I am sure of that, and the surrounding chambers are also likely beyond his ken. But he knows of this place, and possibly others that we have visited, and if we are in a place known to him, he can peer through the eyes of the tower and discover us. We’d never know if he were to join us here – not unless he decided to show himself.” Gregor paused, looking about expectantly. Kaius was no lover of theatrics, but not many would refuse such a perfect invitation.

Seemingly in the precise instant between blinking and ublinking, the imposing figure of Kaius was among them. He did not appear, per se, but he was there nonetheless. It was as if they somehow hadn’t noticed the wizened obelisk of a man standing between them.

To Gregor’s single eye, Kaius was far more dead-looking up close. He was husk devoid of colour and moisture. It was very probable that his blood had long ago been replaced with some necromantic fluid at the intersection of science and magic. This was good. It would aid in Gregor’s preservation efforts.

The younger wizard sat up straight in his chair, adopting a proud posture which he had been lax in maintaining before his companions. “You look better than you have in years.” He said, once again face-to-face with Kaius, whom he had killed.

“You are not nearly so clever as you think, boy.” Summoning his own chair – a great, dark throneish thing upholstered with still-tattooed, self-repairing Ork leather – Kaius sat, his joints issuing audible creaks. “I never knew you to enjoy palaver.”

“It passes the time.”

Former master and former apprentice observed each other silently, quietly cataloguing the changes of their counterpart. “…Nor did I know you to be a cyclops, Gregor. You have suffered well in our time spent separate.”

The outsiders in the chamber had no way of knowing, but that statement was dangerously close to being a compliment.

“I suppose that my suffering must please you.”

“Not in the way that you imagine. I have already told you that ill-will is beyond me – I do not possess the capacity for resentment. Even if I did, there would be nothing to resent. To suffer is to grow, and your growth is my purpose.”

“Once again, your words conflict with your prior actions. How can my benefit be your goal when you have worked toward my significant detriment? Please elucidate this matter, former master of mine.”

“You should be able to figure it for yourself, but we are short on time and your radiant hatred for me blinds you to the truth, all the more because it is justified. Considering this, I shall allow you an epistemological shortcut, just this once.” This was Kaius’s way of saying that he would graciously offer an explanation.

“This might shock you,” the corpse began, “but I once had a friend.” Kaius paused to let this information sink in. “During my search for a successor, she came to me with a bargain. She would point me toward the ideal apprentice, in exchange, I was to make of him a wizard greater than myself.”

“It doesn’t seem that your ‘friend’ stood to gain from this bargain.” The whole scenario appeared rather imaginary to Gregor, but Kaius – the Kaius that he knew, at least – looked down upon subterfuge and trickery, so he let the story continue.

“That is because you don’t know her. She was profiting disproportionately, so I haggled up to creating the greatest wizard that the world had ever seen, which would give her some trouble and even the scales of the bargain in my favour.”

Even ignoring the nonsensical backwards deal-making, this was rather absurd. “I flatly do not believe this. Unpleasant as it is to admit, I don’t seem to be on track to become the greatest wizard ever. And even if it were true, it just further complicates the matter of you trying steal my body.”

“Gregor, you have yet to live for twenty years, but you’re already more formidable than me at thirty-five. My efforts were provisionally successful, but incomplete. Wizards are forged by hardship, not by tutelage in towers; for you to become truly phenomenal, you needed to leave the nest, as they say. But kicking you out would not do. I could not merely order you to go out on you own and weather the weight of the world. That would be ruinous to my goal.”

He steepled his skeletal fingers before him, the very image of a somewhat-evil wizard who liked to darkly brood in his tower. “If I did that, you would not suffer the consequences of your hubris and the cruelty of fate, and thereby become a true wizard through your hardship. Rather, you would be a mere proxy of my intentions, languishing in stagnation, waiting for me to send word and call you back. All of your suffering under those conditions would be a direct consequence of complying with my command, and the fault of me, not you. You could never become a real wizard under those circumstances, your compliance would make you a pitiful slave, and nothing but your hate would grow. You would be glad to eventually return to the tower. Willpower and potent arrogance would be diminished by subservience, and my great work would be ruined.”

It seemed that not needing to suffer the inconvenience of manual breathing had turned Kaius into a wordy sort. “I needed you to become independent by your own determination. You were made to hate me fairly easily, but I could not get you to leave. I thus devised the ritual scheme so that you would be given a reason to adopt the proper mindset of a wizard.”

“So you didn’t actually plan to rip my soul from my body, then barter my body to scam a demon whose soul you also planned to steal.”

“I fully intended to do all of that. It had to appear real to fool both yourself and the demon, so it was real. However, I left you an avenue of escape. The binding circle was faulty. You were to find the motivation break free and take flight. If you didn't act out, then I would have simply proceeded with the scam plan and returned your soul to your body afterwards, then I would have tried something else. Faking my death was next on the list.”

Gregor sat in silence. Kaius was unpleasant enough that he could almost believe that half of this was true, but there were the commands of lich to consider – or the lack thereof. Gregor still didn’t know if it even existed. In all of this, he had only the claims of Kaius with which to judge the situation. Had death changed his former master? Could he still trust his perceptions of a man that might no longer exist?

“But that wouldn't have worked.” Gregor challenged. “The demon had no soul.”

“An oversight. My scheme was broken, so I left things to you. Everything turned out well enough.”

Gregor was quite incredulous, was Kaius trying to save face? “I killed you.” He stated simply.

“Many paths lead to the same destination.” Kaius shrugged. “You chose to become a wizard that day. I am vindicated.”

Again there was silence.

If this were all a lie, Kaius had to be scheming something truly obtuse. Try as he might, the younger wizard could only conclude that lying here was pointless, though he still didn’t believe it. Kaius could very conceivably have a goal unknowable or unthinkable to a living mind.

The wall of silence fell with violence as Kaius began once more. “I suspect that you have already met Labourd.” Gregor mutely regarded him in growing unease. That name coming from his former master’s mouth could mean a great many unpleasant things.

“Don’t be so surprised, boy. How else could they know to seek you out? I was instructed to furnish my controller with an accounting of worthwhile assets in the area. Your every aspect was designed to match the wizardly ideal. With that in mind, and with respect to both my compulsion to comply and both my sincere wishes that they be destroyed and that you be furnished with opportunities for growth, how could your name not be at the top of that list?”

“So the lich here is the eminent ‘Master’ that Labourd mentioned.”

“You misunderstand. Both Labourd and the lich willingly placed themselves under the thrall of something with the ambitions of a Worldeater. They were comrades.”

Gregor was becoming numb to the revelations at this point, and truth be told, he cared quite a bit less about Labourd’s corpse club than he did about the happenings between his master and himself. But an aspirant Worldeater?

Lives are valuable – souls and flesh are power. For those with the perspective sufficient to consider such a thing, the bounty of life held by an entire world was a significant attraction. One might be tempted to take it all. It was a dizzying thing to consider.

But so what? Gregor was Gregor. “It makes little difference. I plan to kill them all.”

“I hope so. As my apprentice, now graduated, you have an obligation to avenge all of your dear master’s indignities.”

Kaius was certainly not his ‘dear master’, but Gregor’s pride agreed with the statement in principle. An assault against the dignity of Kaius was practically an attack against Gregor. Violent retaliation was a necessity. Having thought this, Gregor also wisely kept in mind the fact that Kaius was unable to do or to reveal anything which might harm the interests of the lich.

“To that end, I managed to weasel my way into the backdoor of a favourable afterlife. A kindly old woman I knew a while ago waits for me there, so I hope you’ve come up with a clever way to send me back.”

What? This was perhaps the most shocking thing Gregor had ever heard. Kaius and a woman. Huh? It was a cancerous thought. Sickening. Gregor hardened his mind so that he might never again consider it.

Reaching into one pocket among many, he took the emerald pendant in hand and proffered it to the dead man, who frowned after a glance. “First, put this on.” If Kaius refused, it indicated that the immediately obvious original function of the pendant would actually have an effect. If he complied, he lost his head.

“Gregor, this is a feeble attempt. I am slave to a lich, this trinket will do nothing.” To demonstrate his point, Kaius complied. He unclasped the chain, slipped it around his neck, and re-fastened it.