Gregor The Cripple

It was with difficulty that Gregor transported the statue girl out of the cave, being that stone people are heavier than meat people and much more prone to breakage, additionally, she was tall. With her, he also brought out the great skull of the basilisk.

Though the head was of a vaguely serpentine aspect, the body-bones of a basilisk more closely resemble that of a lizard-dog hybrid. And indeed, its general appearance in life was that of a large, scale-covered lion.

Breathing hard from the telekinetic exertion, Gregor set the statue by his fire before sitting down on a rock beside the barrel-sized skull. Randolph scampered up his leg, squeaking happily.

He retrieved a mallet and chisel from his theoretically many pockets and set about hammering away at the rear of the skull. Under the thunk-thunk of his effort, a cranial cavity collapsed inward with a muted crunch. Into this cavity he inserted his chisel and, with much lever-work, he popped out a little grey stone.

He gathered his magical might, pressing down upon the rock and smothering it in a dense layer of thaumatons. After a few moments of pressure, he felt something snap in the ether, like a twig under the weight of a battleship.

In that instant, the girl became flesh.

She tumbled from her awkward stance with a yelp, then pushed herself up to sitting in a panic. Looking about and seeing Gregor – who was obviously a wizard – sitting calmly next to a gargantuan basilisk-like skull, she collapsed once more. Her eyes closing with a flutter and her limbs gradually going limp.

Gregor snorted. He’d found himself an actress.

She wasn’t breathing like an unconscious person should, and he had seen people de-petrified before; never had they fainted. For some reason, she hoped to deceive him.

Perhaps this was for the best. He had perspective enough to realise that he wasn’t good for other people – he seemed to accidentally kill them quite often, and he had just helped a little boy murder his father, possibly due to the madness he suspected himself to be suffering, but that was uncertain.

It would be ideal if she ran off into the night while he slept. And so, Gregor pretended not to notice her subterfuge.

“Well then.” He croaked, leaning back into his bedroll and helpfully covering his eyes with his hat. “Goodnight to you too, stone girl.”

Sleep was difficult and dreamless, and it ended far too quickly.

Looking up, he found that there were still stars out, but the sun was bucking the hold of the horizon.

The mystery lady was unfortunately still present. She held one of the basilisk’s knife-sharp fangs to his neck, exactly where he had told the boy to stab his father. The irony was not lost on Gregor.

“Good morning.” He rasped calmly, feeling the fang shake in her hand.

He was quite plainly being threatened, which was a reasonable thing for her to do. Wizards are mostly dangerous and unpleasant, after all. But he could tell that it wasn’t in earnest. It was a precautionary bluff, and she seemed quite uncomfortable with the situation.

“Hi.” She said confusedly, no doubt expecting aggression. Her dark hair was short and practical.

When he looked at her, something reminded Gregor of a cat. Not a housecat, small and lazy, but the big kind of cat that lives in a jungle and occasionally eats people. She was a creature of physicality, large and lithe. Posed. While he was tall and thin, she was taller and firm.

Gregor became aware that he would like to bump uglies with this woman. So to say, he wished to do some nether plumbing. Non-verbal socialisation, after a fashion.

Stifling a cough, he reached into his robes for a canteen of water. The headache was worse today.

“Hey, no moving! I could kill you, you know.” It was endearing, like a child threatening an adult.

“Would you? How merciful.” Gregor began greedily gulping down water, uncaring for the threat.

“Uh…”

“I find you very attractive.”

She stared at him, incredulous. “You have an odd negotiation strategy.”

Gregor snorted, then rolled over to vomit up everything he had just drank. The nausea was strong. Standing would be an ordeal.

“Are you sick?”

“Poisoned.”

“What kind of poison is it? I know a little alchemy – I might be able to help if you cooperate.” She was really very bad at maintaining the illusion of a threat, though an ailing cripple probably doesn’t give cause for such maintenance. Gregor expected himself to be quite disarming in his current state.

“The poison is hubris.” Gregor continued retching, though there was nothing more to vomit up. “For me, there is no cure but death.”

“Uh… I see.” She was still holding the fang toward him in what she assumed to be a threatening manner. “That was a basilisk, right? It petrified me.”

Huffing, he rolled over to his back. “Correct.”

“Did my father send you, or was it someone else?”

“I have no such engagements, I happened upon you by chance. You’re quite lucky that a madman like me came by and decided to explore the nest of a basilisk. A few decades more and the egg would have hatched.”

“…Decades?”

“Ah.” She didn’t know. “My condolences.” The sun had broken free of its fetters, and they were now in that little sliver of twilight when the whole world seemed to go from blue to grey. A fitting time to deliver bad news.

“Basilisks petrify prey for two primary reasons. The first; to keep a stock of food for hibernation. The second; so that their young have something to feed on when they hatch.” Gregor pointed to the skull. “Basilisks die after laying – you were to be food for its offspring.”

“But… decades?”

“One century is the average incubation period for a basilisk egg. Judging by the state of the mother and the shell, you were petrified for upwards of seventy years.”

***

Mildred had cried a little.

While she was busy with that, Gregor had re-started the fire to warm the morning, and they sat by it as a rabbit roasted.

“I was chased.” Mildred announced, feeling the need to speak.

“Into the cave?”

“Not into the cave. I knew I was being pursued, so I went in there to hide. It was night, so I couldn’t see the statues.” She proceeded, voice hollow, “How could I have known?” And after a pause, “Are they all dead?”

Gregor nodded. “All of them. Basilisks de-petrify their victims, eat a little, then re-petrify the rest so that it doesn’t spoil. That’s why they’re all in pieces.”

She looked about as nauseous as he did.

“How does it work, the petrification?”

Gregor recognised this sudden interest in superfluous topics as Mildred’s attempt to find distraction from the thoughts that must be plaguing her mind – namely the knowledge that everyone she had ever known was likely dead. Honestly, she was holding up fairly well.

Probably in shock, he assumed.

Given the circumstances, not even Gregor was so heartless as to refuse her request.

“The petrification is a curse.” He began his lecture. “A magically enforced relationship between the qualities of two or more objects – some call it a binding cantrip, though that is technically incorrect.”

As is the case with most experts and their respective fields, Gregor enjoyed explaining these niche magical curiosities, and so he had no problem humouring Mildred even if she didn’t particularly care about what he was saying. It was a confirmation of his competence – succour for his shattered pride.

“Basilisks each grow a small osteolith in a cavity beneath the occipital spur.” Gregor tossed her the small grey object in question, gesturing with his stump to his work on the skull. “The osteolith’s proximity to the visual cortex affords the basilisk an ocular vector through which it can create a connection between the flesh of its prey and the stone, thereby causing petrification.”

“Wait,” she said, holding up her hand as if to ask a question, “you’re saying that it can cast a spell just by looking at things.”

“A curse is not a spell, but yes, the eyes can generally work as a vector for magic. They are windows to the soul in a very real way.”

“You can just go around looking magic into people? That’s terrifying.”

“This is why wild animals have such an aversion to direct eye-contact. It’s a rather primitive method for exerting influence will over another by indirectly interfacing souls.”

“…There are wolves and things out there mind-controlling each other?” She asked, incredulous.

“Nothing so overt as mind-control. It’s more like giving someone a very convincing suggestion.”

“Someone? You mean people?”

“Yes, it works with people too. Of course, a sufficiently impressive soul and much practice are both required.”

“Can you do it?”

“Naturally.” Said Gregor, looking Mildred dead in the eyes, though he only had one.

She calmly met his gaze with a raised brow. “You know, most people would be trying to comfort me at a time like this.”

“I am insane and dangerous, you should leave as quickly as possible.”

She seemed to be considering something. “My father told me about wizards. He said that you’re all dangerous murderers who’ll do anything for money.”

“I am a dangerous murderer and I do things for money.”

“Are you trying to scare me away?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“If I kill you, I’ll never get to have sex with you.”

Huh? She blinked her big blinkers. “You might be insane.”

Gregor nodded in sage agreement. She was beginning to understand.

“…Can you fight?”

“There is a special term for wizards who cannot fight. They are called corpses.”

“You look about half way there,” was her drawn-out response. Mildred deflated slightly and muttered something under her breath. “How about I pay you not to kill me?”

Gregor tilted his head in confusion. “You don’t need to do that. Running away from me is free.”

“In addition to paying you not to kill me,” she paused in thought, “-or to do anything else to me, I would like to hire you as an escort.”

Gregor held up his hand, one finger tucked away. “I have killed four of my previous employers. Yesterday I told a small child how to best kill his sleeping father, and some time prior I decapitated my master and put his head into a jar so that I could claim his bounty.”

“Okay.” She replied, which was odd. He was quite certain that these were all bad things in the eyes of regular people.

“North is the only direction I will go.”

“I need to go north.”

“I really might kill you. This isn’t a joke.”

“You’re still better than nothing.”

“I disagree.”

“If you can get me back to my father, he’ll give you anything you want.”

Gregor was beginning to consider that she might be insane. “Not to be blunt, but seventy years have passed.”

“…That doesn’t matter. He’ll be there, and he’ll give you anything you want.”

“I want access to a healer.”

“Alright.” She said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

***

He walked behind, because he was slow and feeble, and became aware for the very first time that Mildred was wearing trousers.

Women occasionally wore trousers, Gregor obviously knew this, but never before had he realised just what a good idea form-fitting womenswear was. Although, perhaps it was just a matter of which form was being fit, and that without being supplied with the optimal form, he had never had cause to consider the fitment. The form before him was being fit rather well, he thought.

“You’re staring.” She stated without turning.

“Are you clairvoyant?”

“No, but you’re staring.”

“A baseless accusation, then.”

“Hmpf. Don’t get any funny ideas, mister. Your balls might vanish mysteriously. Even big bad wizards need to sleep occasionally.”

Once again, Gregor was struck by a sense of irony. Was this coincidence, or the influence of the Norn, chastising him for his handling of the boy? He still wasn’t sold on her existence, but things like this made him wonder.

“My father was very protective. It was for a good reason, though I didn’t know it until I left. We lived near a village, which he… tolerated, and they enjoyed his protection.”

Like the relationship between Schlechtegegend and the tower, Gregor concluded. Mildred’s father was probably some variety of sorcerer. If that was the case, it was entirely possible that he was still alive.

“I was allowed to roam the village, but no further. Apparently it was ‘dangerous’. Well, I went further, and you know what? It really was dangerous. I wish I never left.”

He silently looked at her back and her legs, she was striding smoothly with grace, head held high.

“There have been times when I’ve had to kill people. I know that probably doesn’t mean much to you, but I hated it.” There was a silence, which Gregor chose not to break. “I need someone who is good at doing bad things.”

“I can do horrible things for you.” He spoke, finally.

Tall, straight-backed, Mildred peered over her shoulder to look at the curious wizard she had recruited.

He was deathly pale and walked with a limp, shivering occasionally as if with a palsy, and he definitely wasn’t right in the head. It was as if a young man had been stricken with all the ailments of old age.

She really wasn’t sure about this, but she needed a killer. He didn’t look like much, not at the moment, but something about the way he carried himself screamed ability and experience. She had honestly found his nonchalant calmness in the face of her threat quite unsettling.

He was off; fundamentally different from her in some way. She couldn’t understand it, and that scared her, just a little. However, despite his frequent insistence of evil habits, he had yet to actually do anything to her, even though he could have, and even though he might want to, given the regions to which his eye had wandered.

Rather, he told her to run away before something terrible happened. This led her to believe that a tiny glimmer of good might hide inside the allegedly evil wizard.

Gregor the Cripple was pitiable in his bizarre, terrifying way, and Mildred dared to wonder if she might be able to help him while he helped her.