Gregor The Cripple

Gregor was sweating. It trickled down his back, collecting in all his nooks and crannies, giving birth to an unpleasant swampiness in his pits and ass. His stump throbbed in a way that promised worse throbbing soon. It was a feeling he knew by experience. His extant left hand shook when he pinched the bridge of his nose in agitation at the dull, mind-scattering throb between his eyes. Worse still, the usurper-king of his discomforts was a gnawing, acidic ache in the pit of his stomach that no extreme of hunger could ever measure against.

These five long hours of travel, wherein he had been forced to endure bodily discomfort and maddening company, had been a brutal experience. Troublingly, it was his own fault. Having stupidly engaged Barbara of all people in conversation, Gregor had no choice but to sit and suffer as his laudanum swiftly depleted. He had run dry during the first hour. After which, an uncharacteristic anxiousness had welled up within and he found himself checking his flask for dregs at regular intervals in idle agitation. It was deeply unsettling.

Thankfully, the end drew near.

A knocking sounded on the wood behind his head. “Mister wizard? We’ll be coming up to the city gates shortly.” And after a pause, “How should I deal with the merchants’ fee?”

Gregor’s head jerked slightly. He licked his lips, his mouth was clammy and foul. In his peculiar state of distraction, the wizard had neglected to consider the fee imposed upon visiting merchants, which his group ostensibly was.

Should they abandon the disguise?

He looked to his charge with bloodshot, rapidly blinking eyes. “Excuse me.” He muttered, before teleporting outside with a loud pop and a rush of wind.

“He could have just used the door.” Barbara complained as she attempted to fix her newly disturbed hair.

Her attending maid responded with a pitying expression, “Have you seen the state he’s in? I don’t think it even occurred to him.”

“What a poor man, that horrible medicine makes him so distant.”

“I can’t imagine being forced to do that to myself.”

They were both silent for a moment, then the maid spoke, “I wonder what’s really worse, the pain, or the medicine.”

The carriage stopped, and they could vaguely discern some conversation outside.

“Is all this secrecy really necessary? I mean, I trust Greggy to do his job and everything, but why can’t we just travel with a big group of guards? Pa-pa is way too cautious.” The girl stretched her arms up above her head, stiff from all the hours of travel. “I swear, that man would have a heart attack if he knew about half the things I’ve been up to.”

Giggling conspiratorially, the maid leaned close with a lowered voice and waggling eyebrows, “Speaking of things your father wouldn’t like you doing, that Captain Skud must be excited to have you back.”

“Mary, quiet! Someone else might die if he finds out about that.” Barbara attempted to admonish the maid in a serious tone, but was betrayed by a slight grin tugging at her lips.

Mary the maid smiled slyly. “If he finds out about what? I was just saying, you know, that since you two are such good friends he’d be happy to speak with you again.”

Giggling furiously, Barbara swatted her friend on the arm, “Stop it Mary, seriously! What would I do if Gregor heard all that?”

She waved her hand dismissively, “It’s fine. He’s not paying attention, and he barely even remembers anything you say to him normally.”

As if summoned, Gregor popped back into his seat, once more displacing air and ruining Barbara’s efforts toward fixing her appearance. He somehow looked more disheveled than when he left.

“We are to pass through the mercantile quarter – for appearances. It will be quick.”

Mary spoke up, “Wizard Gregor, is that… really necessary? We’ve already made it to Sine. Shouldn’t we be safe here?”

He fixed his heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes upon her, “I am incredibly arrogant.”

“Um…” Neither of the girls were quite sure what to make of that.

“Even being as arrogant as I am,” He continued, “I still acknowledge that there are many people in this world more capable and more powerful than I can account for.”

Randolph jumped from Gregor’s hat to his left shoulder, then scampered down to his hand and entered the loose, spacious sleeve where he liked to take his rat-naps.

“The duke told me to ensure his daughter’s safe return home. I am not so incompetent as to trust half-measures which I know may be insufficient.”

The maid nodded, finding no reasonable objection to raise, and she realized it was probably not her place to raise such objections in the first place.

“We continue. Randolph and I will remain outside. He likes the fresh air.”

“But-” started Barbara.

Gregor flashed away once more.

“-it’s raining.”

***

Peering through the gloom and inclement weather from his seat atop the carriage, the wizard spotted his objective. Making a detour through the mercantile quarter had been a convenient excuse.

A nearby night-time wanderer marveled at the sight of a cloaked, big-hatted figure sitting atop the roof of a carriage. The rain flung itself around the figure, as if afraid to touch him.

“Hold here for a moment.” Gregor instructed the driver, an impatient edge in his voice. Without waiting for the convoy to be halted, or even for the driver to respond, he was away.

With a flash, he reappeared two streets to the west. He was in an alley. Dank walls of unplastered brick rose up to looming tin gutters on either side of him, clad in graffiti and grime. Or grimy graffiti. Or perhaps some of the grime was graffiti? Gregor couldn’t be sure. His perceptions were muddled.

The wizard shook his head and slapped his cheek hard, attempting to retrieve himself from mind-numbing disquietude and agitation. It was a state that he now recognized, disturbingly, as something that was quite a bit more than the mere unbearable pain he had expected his lack of opium to produce.

The pain was there, an unpleasant specter gnawing constantly at the edge of his mind. But there was something else, something extra. He was not just in pain, he was in distress. Every part of his body was crying out, gasping, as if deprived of some vital sustenance – some missing component required for normal function.

Even the dimmest, dullest fool could guess what was missing, and Gregor was no fool.

A tight feeling manifested in his chest and he shivered, instantly becoming eminently aware, all at once, of every thumping ache, every twitchy, spamming muscle, every sweaty, clammy discomfort. It was horrible.

It was then that Gregor came to know the true nature of his once-salvation. Opium had delivered upon him a worse affliction than it had cured, and his present situation was made all the worse by his careless magical exertion. Teleportation was expensive, but it couldn’t be helped; he was becoming impatient.

Slinking quietly around a bend in the alley, Gregor found the ugly dwarf’s ugly backdoor. He’d never actually seen it, but he intuited that she must have a backdoor. Everyone did. The aperture was wide and muck-covered. She must take a lot of big deliveries through here, he reasoned. It was different from the opening at the front, which was neat and narrow and not suited to big loads. The apothecary was ugly enough, if her front door was ugly too, she’d get no business at all.

Focusing himself as much as possible, Gregor stepped toward it, eyes set on the fat padlock which secured the latch. He could just blast through it, or rip it off its hinges, but he did not. Instead, he chose to pursue a far less Kaius-like course of action.

Gregor raised his counter-wards and stretched out with his sixth sense, searching for magical protections. The act produced a sensation somewhere between sniffing and listening. He found none, which was unusual.

People in magic-adjacent professions often knew all too well that if they did not take advantage of sorcery, it would take advantage of them.

Making sure to cause no noise, Gregor grasped the lock so that it would not fall to the ground. He applied gentle pressure to the shackle while telekinetically raising and lowering the tumblers at random. A hollow click sounded after a few seconds of work and the shackle pulled away.

Leaving it hanging on the latch, Gregor stepped inside. He was greeted by the astringent scent of densely packed chemical, herbal, mineral, or otherwise alchemical supplies. The atmosphere in the storeroom escaped the realm of mere odor, it was aggressive, repulsive, almost overpowering. A less accustomed man might have begun coughing uncontrollably.

Gregor was no slouch alchemist – Kaius wouldn’t allow it – but even for him, it was almost too much.

Eyes watering, he hurried into the fumigated room, which was a long rectangular space, filled with all the things an alchemist might need. To his right was a door, no doubt leading to the main body of the shop. Gregor inspected it, and found that there was no light shining underneath from the other side.

Assured that he had no company, he went to work rummaging through the dwarf’s stock. Going from box to box with violent expedience, Gregor lifted the lids as quietly and carefully as his delirium would allow. He was hunting a particular case of small wax-paper parcels which he had once seen the dwarf extract from a larger crate.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice ridiculed him, “You are unhinged. Your mind is frayed and your body is frail. You are but a slave to your fleshly dependencies. It is pathetic.”

The voice was chillingly familiar. Its succinct castigations were still fresh in his memory. It sounded so real, yet he knew it could not be, for he had killed the speaker.

A prickling fear seized him and the cold sweats returned. “Am I going mad?” Gregor murmured to himself, half expecting the voice of Kaius to respond.

The detriments of opium were freshly terrifying, because Gregor knew of no way to live without it.

How could this have happened? How could such a powerful infirmity creep into his body without warning? No, thought Gregor. Even if there were warnings, he wouldn’t have noticed them, blinded by bliss as he was. And if he did notice, what could he do?

In exchange for relief under the effects of opium, he would be ruined when without it. Like building up a wall using stone from its foundation; it would be sure to collapse when the work was done and the scaffolds were removed.

Which didn’t matter, he supposed. There would be no problem so long as he had opium. He needed only to maintain his scaffolding, but it troubled him to no end that he had developed such a weakness. He was pathetic indeed.

Randolph leaned over the brim of Gregor’s hat and squeaked in his ear. With a jolt, he realized that he’d been standing still, lost in his worries. He had a need, an uncontrollable urge. All considerations of the problem would need to wait until he was lucid. Thankfully, the cause of his problem was also the solution.

Gregor resumed his search, and happened upon his prize after working through a third of the crates in the room.

It was a small box, roughly book-sized, hiding under a bushel sack of dehydrated cubeb.

He snatched the whole thing. All of it. The entirety of the dwarf’s new stock – now his. Licking his lips, the wizard tore away the hinged wooden lid, which was unsecured and didn’t need to be torn at all. He grabbed one of little parcels, removed the paper, and put it in his mouth. The taste was horrible, like biting into a gooey, tar-dipped teabag, except without the flavor of tea, just bitterness. It was the most bitter thing in the world. He swallowed immediately.

A mistake, he realized, that he could now do nothing to fix. That was far too much opium, far too quickly. He would soon turn from a jittery, strung-out, pain-stricken mess into a very cheerful one.

Well, shit. He froze. Fuck.

Kaius’s voice sounded once again from some small, dark corner of his tormented mind. “This weakness will break you. It will wash away all of your arrogance and confidence. You will become less and less the wizard called Gregor until there is nothing left but what I made, what I gave you. It will take over. You will become cold, powerful. Me.” He intoned with a dark, menacing severity, utterly without emotion and permitting no reproach. “You will become ME.”

Gregor straightened up, a calmness replacing his earlier fevered distress. “What a disappointing hallucination.”

After some thought, Gregor realized that taking so much opium at once probably wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it might be just what he needed.

“Excuse me, Randolph.” He lifted his hat with the flat of his stump and reached up inside, groping around for a second. “Ah.” His single remaining hand returned from within carrying a purse. He upturned it, emptying the whole thing into the space where the opium box formerly rested.

“I don’t have much in the way of morals, really, but I do care about paying what I owe. Kaius the Corpse would not have done that.”

***

“We continue!” Announced Gregor, pointing with both stump and hand down the empty road. The rain, now much lighter, was graciously permitted to fall upon his wide hat and cloak (Randolph was inside). Gregor liked the pitter-patter.

“What’s the holdup Mister Wizard, something happen?”

“Uhhh, that- uh… Something…” He stared at the driver for an uncomfortable five full seconds of silence. “No. Don’t ask me about it again.”

“...Right. We can be at the fort in under ten minutes.”

“Good man. You and the guards can split the turnips when we’re done.” Unsure of how to react at being surreptitiously awarded a fifth of their faux-cargo of week-old turnips, the man simply nodded.

“Excellent.” Gregor waved his hand in front of his face a few times, observing the motion of his fingers through the air with interest. He nodded, satisfied.

With a flourish, he opened the carriage door and trust Randolph inside, held in the direction of the maid. “He would like you to pet him, please.”

“I… Okay?” Mary reached out a finger to scratch him between his tiny ears.

“Squeak squeak.” Squeaked Randolph contentedly.

Mary tilted her head. “What did he say?” She asked Gregor, assuming like most people that he could somehow understand his pet rat.

“Don’t be silly, rats can’t speak.”

With that, he turned to Barbara and muttered something like, ‘I’ll have you home shortly’ before closing the door and climbing onto the roof.

“I should stop being so rude.” He said aloud, then asked the driver politely to “Get going, please.”

Finding the temperature of the wet wood beneath him to be pleasant, he lay down upon it and marveled at the stars above.

“This opium stuff isn’t so bad, really.” He popped another little parcel into his mouth, forgetting to remove the paper. He began awkwardly taking it off with his teeth and tongue, but then realized that he didn’t often eat paper and that a balanced diet is a good thing, so he swallowed it all.

The problems only start when I don’t have any, so it could be said that rather than opium itself being bad, not taking opium is the truly detrimental thing. I’ll simply have to make sure that I never run out again.

The driver knocked on the wood of his seat at the front of the carriage, attempting to attract Gregor’s attention, “Wizard Gregor? We’re here.”

“Oh? What, already?

“Uh… yes.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m wonderful, just wonderful.”

Gregor rolled off the roof and fell to the ground. Just before he slammed into the gravel below, he disappeared with a flash and reappeared a few feet above, somehow having magically rotated himself ninety degrees. He landed with his knees bent, because teleportation preserved momentum.

“I have defeated gravity, that bitch.”

Glancing about, Gregor found himself in the driveway of the duke’s manor house, which had been built as if it were a very pretty tumor growing from the back of the ugly fort. There were several guards and servants staring at him oddly, which was fair. It was not every day that you saw someone defeat gravity.

Pointing to one servant that he vaguely recognized, the wizard said, “Go and tell your lord that I have returned with his Barbara.” The man scampered off, and the rest of the guards and servants straightened up when they saw Gregor turn back to the carriage, which was noticeably drab in contrast with the grandeur of the manor.

Wearing an uncharacteristic smile, he opened the door and announced, “We have arrived.”

***

Gregor stood in a daze, expensive wine pumped through his veins and co-mingled with the opium to great effect. The cacophony of polite society surrounded him. The tink-tink of cups and the muted murmur of substanceless conversation fascinated him deeply, and it produced in him an oddly fierce fixation.

The room was a large hall, finely decorated and well accustomed to celebration. The object of the celebration, Barbara, stood at the side of the room with her father and a gaggle of sycophants, comfortably far from the musicians.

It shocked the whole traveling group to learn that there would be a party, given that they weren’t arriving on time, but apparently Corle had ordered a banquet to be prepared every night until Barbara's return so that they’d always be ready to celebrate, short notice be damned. Such extravagances were common for Corle, who was rather extravagantly proportioned.

After the meal, there had been dances and socializing, both were avoided by Gregor. He was content to sit on the periphery and observe, quietly entertained by everything for some unknowable reason.

Vexingly, he was a rather big deal, which meant people actually wanted to talk to him.

A little weaselly looking man in ill-fitting fancywear approached, trying to look casual and composed. “Wizard Gregor, might I have a word?”

Gregor had noticed him walking around the room the whole night, pretending to be looking for someone, or to be going somewhere in particular. Every time somebody made eye-contact, he would pretend to be busy fixing his hair or his clothes or checking his timepiece. He never once initiated conversation beyond an ‘Um, excuse me...’ or, ‘Sorry, could I…’ to the servants who were milling about with trays of wine and almost-food.

Even in his addled state of distorted, heightened, utterly calm awareness, Gregor had the man pegged; he was awkwardly asocial and wished desperately for nobody to notice that he didn’t have any friends.

“Um, Mister Wizard?” Gregor had just been standing there, staring at the man.

Doing his utmost to seem normal, the young wizard replied, “I am normal.”

The man laughed very awkwardly, “W-well I sure hope not, you’re a wizard after all. If wizards were normal, what would the rest of us be?” He laughed uncomfortably again. Gregor found his lack of self-confidence repulsive. “My name is Mardo, by the way.”

“I am Gregor the Cripple.”

Mardo was completely unknown to Gregor, just as he was unknown to almost everyone else at the party. Usually, this would mean that he was a nobody, but a nobody wouldn’t have been invited. Thus, those in attendance who noticed him – which was more people than he would have liked – correctly deduced that he was here in place of somebody who couldn’t make an appearance.

“You don’t mind being called that?”

“I am a cripple, but I am not inhibited. I could murder a billion non-cripples.” He said smoothly and clearly, not slurring at all.

“Ah, R-right...”

Why was this whelp talking to him? Why was Gregor singled out as this man’s sole viable social option? Gregor had been alone all night just as he was. Could it be that Mardo somehow thought that they were the same kind of loner and was seeking sympathy, or by some absurd failure of intelligence he was actually pitying Gregor for his solitude and attempting to engage him in conversation out of magnanimity!?

Ordinarily, Gregor would be incensed and spiteful, but with circumstances being what they were, he presently was filled with his own grand sense of pity. What a poor, stupid man. I must mend him.

Reaching into one of his many pockets of nebulous depth and destination, the wizard produced a small wax-paper parcel. “You need to change. Being you doesn’t suit you.” He passed it to Mardo, who was utterly bewildered. “This is a divine medicine which can impart social ability.”

“Bwuh???”

“Mind the taste and swallow it whole.” Gregor instructed suavely as he offered the man a helpful gulp from his goblet of wine.

Mardo was very hesitant to comply, but the powerful wizard in front of him was clearly drunk and insane, so he didn’t feel like he had much choice.

No sooner had he choked down the package, paper and all, than a booming voice sounded out above the ambient din.

“Greg my boy, so this is where you’ve been hiding all night.”

“I am but a wallflower.”

The big man laughed heartily, “Ha ha! Modesty doesn’t suit a man of your caliber.” This new fellow was easily the largest in the room. He was not quite corpulent, for he enjoyed manly things like boar hunting and horse riding far too much to ever become truly fat, but he was big.

It was Corle, the Duke Corle. Mardo had somehow managed to grow the balls to speak to Gregor because it didn’t seem like much of a social step to take, but Corle? No way, Corle was terrifying. Luckily, nobody seemed to be paying attention to him.

“Greggy,” Trilled Barbara from Corle’s side. “On our way back up the coast, my ship stopped in Nola for a couple of days, which was just amazing by the way, and I heard something which me and the girls don’t quite understand.” She gestured to the group of vapid young ladies trailing behind her.

Nola was a truly wealthy city. The streets were lit with gas lamps, the standard soldiery were equipped with firearms, and the Signor's palatial residence even had electricity!

“I heard some news from the north, something about inquisitors from the Golden Empire having a big fight in Staltland.”

Gregor stood a little straighter and quirked his head, the brim of his hat quivering from the movement. He could feel the thoughts moving through his gray matter like viscous sludge.

That was big news. Inquisitors, the right arm of the Empire, conducting operations on the continent? It was almost unheard of.

Barbara continued, “But I thought they didn’t send people to the mainland.”

Gregor’s natural urge to flaunt his breadth of knowledge and deep learning was one of the few things that could defeat his social aversions, he thus began explaining, “They don’t.” He moved his head from side to side, to and fro, noticing a curious delay between what he wanted to do and when it happened. Still waggling his head, the wizard continued, “They have no reason to come here. Everything the Queen wants can be found within her borders.”

Saying and doing mysterious things was a known pastime of wizards. None of whom, it was widely known, could be presumed entirely sane. Thus, the group merely waited for him to continue with no significant reactions to his odd behavior.

Bringing his right hand up to his chin in thought, Gregor realized that he didn’t have a right hand. “I am a cripple.” He pronounced. “As I should be; all great men must possess flaws.” He stopped speaking and simply stood there, staring at his stump.

“Uh, Greggy? What could they have been doing in Staltland?”

“The Golden Queen’s ultimate motivation is maintaining the stability of the civilization that she has spent countless years nurturing.”

A freakishly tall girl in a gaudy pink dress stepped forward. “So... what might they be doing up there?” She asked.

“It would be hard to say, but consider this,” Gregor raised his left forefinger to his temple, tap-tapping rhythmically. “Within the empire, Inquisitors are tasked with protecting the common people from all kinds of magical threats. They hunt down malicious sorcerers like Kaius the Killed, and expel demons and other unwelcome visitors.” Still tapping, Gregor paused, taking time to make eye-contact with everyone in the group. “Thus, knowing what we know about the Queen and her inquisition-” Gregor held aloft his finger, “We can extrapolate that there must be something magical in Staltland which threatens the stability of the Empire.”

Barbara wore an expression of puzzlement. “Why does the Golden Empire have a queen instead of an empress?”

Gregor completely ignored this question because he didn’t know the answer, proceeding instead to voice more of his own thoughts. “Really, I’ve never thought about it before, but Inquisitors are actually in the same line of work as me. Of course, while they might do the same things as wizards, they aren’t wizards. Quite unlike us, really.” He grinned intensely, his innate sense of superiority buoyed by the wonderful medicine and helpful wine that sloshed about between his ears.

“They are an organization, we are disparate group. They have a hierarchical structure, employment, training, a salary. These things make them less than us.”

Corle thumbed his beard with one hand while swirling his wine contemplatively with the other. “Wasn’t your master called Kaius?”

“Hmm? Yes, why? What does that have to do with anything?”

“… Never mind. Just clarifying a point of interest.”

Mumbling, Gregor attempted to reacquire his train of thought. “Where was I? Wait, where am I?” Gregor noticed that he was now sitting on the floor. Everyone was staring at him.

“You there, Mambo, why am I down here instead of up there?” He pointed down with his stump and up with his hand.

Mardo jolted in surprise, not at all expecting to be involved in such a high-status conversation. He glanced about the group with wide eyes, searching in vain for the correct answer. Barbara just shrugged at him.

“Well, you sat down.” He offered.

“I sat down?”

“Yes.”

“Fascinating. Interesting. Well done, Mango. You now have my friendship or endorsement or whatever it was that you wanted from me. You need someone killed? I’m your wizard, won’t tell a soul.”

Corle began coughing loudly, “That, ah… tonight was just wonderful, wasn’t it? Gregor, you’ve done so much good work today, you must be tired, right?”

“I suppose I must be?”

“Mmn, you simply must be. And you’re in luck, I’ve had a room prepared just for you!” Beckoning a servant over, he continued, “I’ll find a maid to show you the way.”

Gregor shook his head, offended at the notion that he needed help. “No need, I’ll find her myself.” He flashed away with a pop, ruining Barbara’s hair once more.