Damsel in Distress

  Unlike other w-bound schools of magic, wild magic is poorly understood due to its complete unpredictability. It is impossible for two identical experiments to yield the same result.

  Though most mages regard wild magic as something lowly, some archmages consider it to be a manifestation of primordial chaos, and the order of our world is, in their view, only a temporary special case of chaos. "Magic For Dummies by Collective of Authors"

  "Here is the Forest of Infinity," announced Boreas. He agreed to show the impoverished party the way. "There is only one road that leads to the Tower of the Upper One. Now give me my robe. Um, please, Mister Necromancer."

  The demonstration of the ability to summon a ghost frightened the cultists. Apparently, they didn't really want to meet the dead people of the area. Given their occupation, it's understandable why. They said that the Upper One's ir was in the nearest forest.

  The trees there looked like bck, lumpy snags that someone had decided to dig into the ground (for fun). On many of the crooked branches, on close inspection, one could see smaller branches, and on them, even smaller branches, and so on, until the eyes could no longer distinguish the next smallness.

  Gloomeye threw Boreas' clothes at him and asked:

  "Are these trees safe?"

  "If I were you, I would worry about Lord Upper One, as the entire forest is his domain," Boreas replied. Noticing the expression on the new necromancer's face, Boreas answered the question anyway: "Yes, but only if you don't touch them, and if you do, they hurt. Not like..." the boy stopped abruptly and took to his heels. I certainly hadn't expected a tearful goodbye...

  Gloomeye rode out of the trees on a bck peg. Except that Gloomeye was sitting on Grassy next to Drat and was about to enter the forest.

  The doppelganger had the same build and face as the original, but was dressed all in bck and wore a circlet on his forehead. Short dark hair, grey eyes, intense gaze - it was all not only simir, but indistinguishable.

  "Are you another illusion of Desire?" Gloomy asked him.

  The doppelganger cocked his head and repeated in the same voice:

  "Are you another illusion of Desire?"

  "I am not, at least not this morning. I am an original," Gloomeye wanted to believe.

  The copy of Gloomeye put his head back in pce and turned his circlet so that the Mourneer's veil moved over his face. Immediately, his peg jumped up.

  "That could be a problem, so it's bound to be. But now we have the more pressing problem," Gloomeye followed his second self with his eyes to the sky.

  Gloomy and Drat rode their pegs, leading Raven on a rope. The half-dead forest loomed over them, not cheering them up.

  "Squeak!" the rat said, unable to bear the silence.

  "We don't have to defeat that monster, we just have to save Splinter. If anything happens, we'll split up: You go to the top of the tower to look for her, I'll try to distract the monster, and then we'll just run away. Yes, the Upper One can fly, but we can get lost under the trees," Gloomy tried to come up with a pn.

  The road was straight and led directly to their destination - the Tower of the Upper One. It was a tall structure of hewn stone, with an open entrance and the remains of a gate nearby. The tower was torn apart in several pces, but this was less significant than one might have expected - the upper parts were simply hanging over the lower, and nearby stones were floating nearby. The monster house itself bent slightly, leaning to one side.

  But the gaze broke Desire, who emerged from behind the tower wall.

  "I've come for a girl!" the guy announced, stepping forward to block out Drat. He darted aside with such speed that he became a blur.

  Now that he was alone with the monster, knowing that it wasn't an illusion and that it was twice the size of an adult, Gloomeye felt a sense of dread. It was a reasonable feeling in this situation.

  The beast just stood there, wagging its tails. Gloomeye stood as well. He didn't dare look at Drat, who was running towards the tower so as not to give him away. Finally, tired of doing nothing, Gloomy took a step towards the entrance. A pile of meat, fruit, bread and jars of something appeared on the ground.

  "Is that for me? Thanks, but I don't eat fake food," Gloomeye took another step.

  Desire sank to the ground. Iron coins rained down all around. The guy took another step and a field of glittering, ornamented swords appeared. Another step and Splinter appeared with her old hair and clothes.

  "You've already realised that these illusions are his self-defence. He's afraid of you," she said.

  Gloomeye pced a stone in the sling and began to spin it. The beast leapt to its feet and hid behind the tower with a strange 'i' in its throat, and the false Splinter vanished into thin air. Then there was a sound like giant wings fpping, and a strong wind blew. The Upper One noticed Gloomeye.

  +++

  The rat climbed up the side of the tower, clinging to the gaps between the stones with his cws. He overcame the wall breaks by jumping on nearby flying debris.

  At the very end of the vertical path, something rge flew down. The top of the tower hadn't been designed to be a top - someone strong had just torn off the roof and probably a few floors, leaving only fragments of the walls that gave away the original design of the tower.

  Once inside, Drat saw a pile of gold, consisting of coins, figurines, candlesticks, ptes, teeth and other excesses. Next to it was a pile of corpses in various stages of decomposition, all wearing white robes.

  A gooey Splinter looked down from the far edge.

  "Squeak!" Drat announced his presence.

  "Drat? Are you saving me?" the girl looked back at him. "But do you understand that I don't understand you? If only Gloomeye were here..."

  Drat showed Splinter that their friend was diverting attention.

  "Yeah, I'm gd to see you too, but we'll dance ter, okay? How do we get down?"

  Drat showed a scramble down the wall.

  "And it's not time to scratch your back," Splinter walked to the edge next to the rat and looked down. "Going down isn't an option. You can't trust my hands and feet any more than you can trust me. We can't go into the tower either, I've looked in there, it's madness," the girl looked back at the corpses. "But I have an idea."

  ***

  As the Upper One nded, the ground shook beneath Gloomy's feet. The monster stood on all fours. Its wings, spread over its body, were so rge that it could completely wrap itself in them. Alms usually have one type of skin: either feathers, scales or fur, but this alm had all three: long silver hair hanging from his snout, a greenish-scaled body and white feathers wings. He was also huge, much bigger than Desire, and his size was comparable to the size of Gloomeye's house in Capital.

  The Upper One arched his long neck and looked to the left, then to the right, but left a transparent vision of his first pose, so he was now looking at this afterimage.

  "I SEE HE'S NOT WEARING ARMOUR. WHY ISN'T THE KNIGHT WEARING ARMOUR?” the Upper One moved his mouth, and his voice was simir to Regent's, but slightly softer. There was also an almost childish resentment in it. "I HAVE DONE MY PART HONESTLY: AND THE GOLD, AND THE TOWER, AND THE MAIDEN."

  "Sir Upper One, I am not a knight. I only came for my friend," Gloomeye ventured. He would have run if it hadn't been for Northman's training: "The surest way to lose is to panic." It was only through the experience of his entire conscious life that Gloomy was able to throw off (or rather, kick it a few metres away from him) the fear .

  The monster looked directly at the guy, leaving another image, the first one slowly fading away. Gloomeye noticed that the monster's eyes were different: one with many dark pupils embedded in each other, and the other with just a single bck dot.

  "IS THIS A HUMAN TRICK OF YOURS? YOU ARE CUNNING CREATURES. WHERE HAVE YOU HIDDEN YOUR SWORD AND ARMOUR, KNIGHT? AND WHY HAVE YOU DISGUISED YOUR HORSE AS THIS FROG-WORM? HOW WILL YOU FIGHT ME?"

  "Are you a dragon?" Gloomeye sounded more enthusiastic than he should have. "Why do you follow racial stereotypes? Surely we can agree as an intelligent species."

  The dragon looked at the fading vision of his head:

  "THE KNIGHT IS STILL TALKING. YES? TELL HIM? THAT'S WHAT SWORN ENEMIES DO." The dragon looked back at the guy. "WHEN THE THREADS OF REALITY WERE BROKEN BY YOU, HUMANLINGS, AND THE AIR BECAME ALIEN, WE LOST OURSELVES. FORTUNATELY, WE FOUND A FRIEND, A TRUE, TRUE FRIEND - THE THIRTEENTH DESIRE, AND HE EXPLAINED EVERYTHING TO US."

  Gloomeye saw Desire peering cautiously over the side of the tower. It was not clear why he was doing this, for he had no eyes. Or perhaps the eyes were small and hidden, like the peg's.

  "That's not your friend," Gloomeye said, stepping forward. "This is a demon. A numbered demon. And he has driven you mad."

  Richly decorated armour began to appear on the guy's body, and an intricate sword appeared in his hand (not even clenched into a fist). Another illusion of Desire. The dragon jumped up and down on his forelegs with joy.

  "KNIGHT!" he roared. "KNIGHT! I WILL EAT YOU, AND THEN - YOUR SQUIRE, WHO DISHONESTLY SAVES YOUR LADY BEHIND MY BACK, KNIGHT."

  The new knight (how many professions did he manage to try out that day?) rushed into the tower. The monster opened his mouth and twitched his lower jaw with loud clicks. The smell of decay and death filled the air.

  Gloomeye managed to run into the tower and jump as the wall of fire entered the passage. Even without touching the fme, he felt an incredible heat that turned into pain. His illusory armour was completely useless, and the sword wouldn't drop no matter how hard he shook his hand.

  Inside, the tower looked much crazier than... anything else. The nearest spiral staircase led up to infinity, and at the top was a jumble of steps leading in different directions, most of them impossible for a human being. On the walls were chairs, armour, stacks of books and a table with a cup of fruit on it, all of them oblivious to the earth's attraction.

  The mad dragon's head appeared in the passage and Gloomeye ran for the stairs. To see if it was an illusion, he held out his hand, and it stretched to infinity, following the stairs. Then the arm immediately pulled back and became normal. The dder did the same as soon as Gloomy stepped on it. There was no time to think about what was going on, and the guy rushed up.

  "WHY IS HE RUNNING AWAY? COWARDLY KNIGHTS IN THIS CENTURY," the monster grumbled, pushing his huge bulk behind Gloomeye. His body parts grew and shrank as he moved. It was the same with Gloomeye.

  The guy remembered his father's gift. What had the madman (and now Gloomy suspected he was a false god) said? Something about a name and dragons. Gloomeye took the round stone with the runes ‘Wind Cleaver’ out of his bag.

  "Wind Cleaver? Is that your name?" Gloomeye shouted at the dragon.

  "I DON'T KNOW. IT SOUNDS FAMILIAR, BUT THEY CALL ME THE UPPER ONE NOW. SO WHAT?" the dragon replied, pausing for a moment to think.

  "Nothing."

  "FIGHT ME, LITTLE KNIGHT!"

  As the monster changed sizes with the guy's hand, he turned and tried to hit the dragon (or rather the dragonling). Only the arm that flew past Gloomeye's body became normal, and when it flew towards the monster, it became smaller, almost invisible.

  "There are several spaces with different dimensionalities of reality in them," Gloomeye discovered, at the same time reinventing the existing word. But how does that help me? Not at all. It is even bad if I and the enemy are constantly changing shape.

  "THE KNIGHT RUNS AWAY! HE DOESN'T FIGHT," the dragon bellowed resentfully. "AND I'VE CARVED A VULNERABLE SPOT, JUST AS IT SHOULD BE!" the monster stopped just inside the magnifying space and puffed out his chest, revealing several broken scales and red flesh underneath.

  Gloomeye was about to unch the only metal projectile he had, but he realised just in time that he wasn't smart enough to aim, given the difference of spaces.

  He broke into a run and reached the horizontal gap of the tower. From the outside it looked small, a metre or two, but from the inside the gap was ten metres. The world outside was different too: the trees were taller, the day was brighter, and a white cloth, descending from somewhere above, trembled near the opening.

  "HE HAS NOWHERE TO RUN UNLESS HE CAN FLY, AND KNIGHTS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO FLY. BATTLE AND DEATH LIE AHEAD," the dragon announced. "MUST WE GIVE HIM THE RIGHT TO STRIKE FIRST? YES, IT WILL BE FAIR, GIVEN OUR SUPERIOR SIZE AND COURAGE," the dragon paused and looked expectantly at the "knight".

  Gloomeye saw that his opponent had returned to his true size and decided that there would be no better chance. He spun the sling and struck the enemy's vulnerable spot. The metal 'Wind Cleaver' projectile caught between the scales and the body, but it didn't have any noticeable effect.

  "YOU SHOULDN'T DECIDE TO HIT SO LIGHTLY. I'LL SHOW YOU HOW TO DO IT," the monster opened his mouth again and started clicking his jaw.

  "You were going to eat me," the guy chided.

  The dragon stopped his jaw:

  "I ALREASHY LET SHE GASH OUT, I CAN'SH GET MY SHAW BASH WISHOUT A SHPARK. YOU'LL HAVE TO BURSH."

  Splinter's chakram flew out from behind Gloomeye and stabbed into the dragon's vulnerable spot, pushing Gloomy's projectile deeper into the flesh. The monster staggered.

  "FINASHY..." the dragon whispered (retive to the volume of his normal voice) and colpsed. His body began to roll down the stairs.

  Gloomy looked back to see Splinter and Drat standing next to the outer cloth, which had stopped swaying.

  "Hero?" the girl asked uncertainly.

  "Well, there's a girl who calls me that," Gloomeye's armour began to dissipate. He took another look at the rolling dragon, who kept changing his proportions. "We should take your chakram, I've heard that dragons turn into mountains when they die."

  The girl ran up to him:

  "Gloomeye! Did it burn you? Your back is all swollen!"

  ***

  Is the dragon the special? No, it's the killing by Splinter. Gloomeye looked at the girl again (how many times already?).

  They rode the pegs slowly, so as not to hurt the injured guy. The cloth on his back was torn and had to be knotted around his neck. Desire was nowhere to be seen, and the group gathered up the gold Splinter had thrown down (before descending on the bound robes) and set off for their destination.

  The girl kept shaking her head, trying to get her non-existent hair back on her face. She now had bangs falling to her eyes, and her open face embarrassed Gloomeye at first, as if his friend had forgotten to put on an important piece of clothing. But all her clothes were on Splinter (the cultists put sacrificial clothes on top of her). Why they didn't take the chakram hanging from her belt is unknown, but perhaps they didn't realise it was a weapon.

  "Can we get back to those bloody hair-stealers? You should have seen the pile of bodies. We'll wag our finger at them, tell them it's not the way things are done, and then we'll burn them all and scatter the ashes," Splinter suggested.

  She twirled a crown and gold chains in her hands, trying to create a shield from the looks in her face. But sighed and put them back in her saddlebag. Obviously to avoid misunderstandings with everyone in the world, especially robbers.

  "Yar already knows, he will tell the Mourneers. We'll leave the destruction of vilges to the professionals. Besides, you robbed them of the murder weapon," Gloomeye said, taking the opportunity to look at her again.

  Splinter looked confused:

  "Why don't we put this murder on your account? You did all the work, you sted so long, and I just threw my chakram where you did. I just feel like I stole a feat from you."

  "What was that, Splinter the Dragonsyer? I couldn't hear you, and I'm still trying to figure out how to tell all the bards in the world about you, so that they can sing your praises, Splinter the Dragonsyer, for centuries to come. You still killed the dragon, and I only prepared it for sacrifice. (Killing and preparing a victim for sacrifice are the same root words in the Gloomeye nguage - transtor's note)

  "I shall then go down in history as Splinter the Bardsyer. Or as Splinter the Stop Singing About Me. Wait a minute. Did I hear you right? Are you stooping to puns, Gloomeye the Stooped to Puns?" the girl tried to squeeze in as many jokes as she could, apparently she endured for a long time, but then she got serious. "That was pretty lucky, don't you think? Anything could have gone wrong, but the opposite happened. You have a ball with the name of the dragon you met. And it turns out that if you put it under the skin of a dragon, you can defeat it."

  "It was that madman, remember? He told us about the cache, the gift to the outgoing person, and dragons. And it is logical to assume that in the same area as the dragon, there will be weapons against him. And most importantly, the Upper One wanted to die," Gloomeye expined. "Why are you so concerned about our luck?"

  "Slizvert asked me to pay attention to it," the girl said.

  Oh.

  ***

  They came to a rge rock with many pnts growing in its shade. A log house stood in a hollow in the rock. The house had a smoking chimney that ran along the roof of the cave to look out. Next to the house, a muscur old man with a naked torso was chopping wood with an axe. His long grey hair was tied back in a knot at the back of his neck, and there were many metal rings in his beard. He made firewood from wood that looked unsafe: its branches were smooth, long needles.

  "Excuse me, can we buy food, water and some burn medicine from you?" Gloomeye asked him.

  "What do you want, wanderers? Do you bring pgue, robbery, or new ideas that corrupt the young?" the old man asked as he continued to beat the trees.

  Gloomy didn't know what to say, but Splinter did:

  "And what do you specialise in, wilderness dweller? Cannibalism? A hidden community that knows nothing of the Break? Demon worship? Please note that I was sacrificed in the previous vilge, I hope you have something new?"

  The old man stopped and looked at the travellers:

  "Such insolence towards elders should be punished. Go inside and my old woman will feed you. This will be a lesson to you," he said, and went back to his woodcutting.

  Inside, the house was filled with many small things of unknown purpose. The air space was occupied by all sorts of dried pnts. As the group entered the house, an old woman in a dark dress was distracted from stirring the brew in a rge cauldron.

  "You're here, which means you survived a conversation with my bodyguard. What willpower you have!" the old woman put down her rge spoon, dusted off her hands and looked carefully at the guests.

  "Is he your bodyguard?" the guy chose the question.

  "Well, of course! I live alone in the wilderness, it's very dangerous. I wonder why other hermits don't hire bodyguards," the old woman noticed Drat. "If you're looking for a great healer, I hate to disappoint you, but I have to. I do not know how to perform reverse metamorphoses, especially incomplete ones."

  "Do you treat burns?" Gloomeye turned and untied the knot, revealing his back.

  "You had a fight with a dragon?" the old woman joked, coming closer.

  "Yes, the Upper One, but his real name is Wind Cleaver. He lived not far from here," Gloomeye admitted.

  "Lived?"

  "Yes. Splinter killed him."

  "Turned me in completely, then? To the second passerby?" the girl was indignant.

  "Well, now Splinter will have to kill the dirt on your back. Go through that door, there is a cave with a spring. Wash his wound and spread this on it," the old woman handed Splinter some ointment in a cy jar.

  "I can wash and spread myself," Gloomeye decred.

  "But I can see the length of your arms and the mobility of your joints. Men, lie at least about what is not in full view of all," the old woman turned to the girl again: "My old man is like that, too. Let yours tell him these stories. And then listen to a professional."

  The cave was very small, with a trickle coming out of the wall. Everything was covered in eyemoss and glowing blue minishrooms. The light from them filled the cave with calm and a bit of mystery.

  Gloomy sat down by the stream and Splinter began to pour water from her hands onto his back. The water was warm and pleasant, and he even thought it was a spring with healing powers.

  "These two have lived together to an old age and still don't get tired of each other's barbs," Gloomeye decided to add his voice to the murmur of the water.

  "What do you mean, 'tired of each other's barbs'? Maybe you're tired of breathing, too?" Splinter didn't understand.

  "And how do you see yourself in old age? I..." Gloomeye began, but flinched as Splinter, without warning, spped him with the ointment hand and began to rub it a little harder than if Gloomeye had done it. He immediately forgot what he was talking about.

  He returned without the girl, who had stayed to wash up. There was the old woman waiting for him, already eating Drat, a clothed old man in the corner, and a pte of food. On the pte were sweet fruits baked in bread and sweet water.

  "Thank you. How much will it cost?" the guy asked between chews.

  "What do we need the money for? To buy their skins from the animals?" the old man replied, polishing his axe.

  Then Gloomeye began mending his clothes with a borrowed needle and thread, as Sewer had taught him.

  "I'd rather tell your fortune on the cards, I don't want to lose the skill," the old woman said, pulling out a deck.

  "The ability to draw cards and remember their fuzzy meanings?" the old man snorted. "Run if you want to, d, I'm not that young, but I'll try to stop her."

  "I don't mind," Gloomy agreed, but then crified. "About the divination, not the detention."

  The fortune teller sat down at the table and drew the first card, showing a man in a cloak with a staff:

  "The Wizard. Oh, don't grimace. Yes, the cards are before the Break. And no one is going to redo them. It means you have hidden potential. Not necessarily magical.

  The fortune teller took out a second card showing a deep pit with houses on the walls. Some of them had tongues of fme flying out of them:

  "The Dungeon. A bad card that means sudden bad changes. You will face severe trials. Here I am, just to entertain you and myself".

  The fortune teller drew a third card. Gloomy couldn't believe his eyes at first. On the card was a bird alm with a female human head. She was looking down at a circle with thick wavy lines coming out of it. It was just that the card was turned upside down for Gloomy, because he was sitting across the table from the fortune teller.

  "The Star of Hope. If you have hope, you will achieve what you want," she said.

  "Now find someone who has no hidden potential, who doesn't expect bad changes, and who doesn't have much to hope for," the old man chuckled.

  "Yes, it's all nonsense. Just a stack of pictures, not a drop of magic in them," the old dy suddenly agreed. "But if you have to make a choice and you don't know which one - you don't care or you don't have enough information - why not ask for cards? They're so beautiful."

  At that moment, Splinter entered the room:

  "So, where's the Blood Altar?"

  The group sat around for a while longer, talking about their journey and exchanging rumours. Then they said their goodbyes and left. Gloomeye left two gold bracelets on their doorstep, not as payment, but as a gift.

  Unnecessary author's note: Description of the main character in chapter 13? I think it's about time.

  I don't think I should waste bytes describing the clichés I pyed with here.

  Sometimes I write "rat" with a lowercase letter. Drat is a name, and rat is his essence. As if a man's name was Man.

  By the way, in the original his name is Rat, or rather He-Rat. It sounds rather unusual, because the standard gender of rats is female. The same goes for foxes, for example. She is a vixen if the gender is not determined. Less so with cats.

  Initially, Gloomy said he was preparing a dragon, and Splinter called him Gloomeye the Cook, but I emphasised that the characters speak their own, unfamiliar nguage. A lot of fantasy writers forget that. Well, or they find excellent transtors who transte wordpy perfectly. As you can see, my transtor confined themself to a footnote. Yes, it is there in the original text too.