The Wizard's Lament

The wizard sat in his tower, gazing out the window toward the horizon.  The sun had set a few moments ago, but it's light still lingered just enough, a guttering candle at the edge of the world.  At last even that final remnant of day faded and night settled in.  The wizard sighed and stood, crossing the small bedroom to the stairs that led to his library and observatory.  As he climbed, he smiled wryly.  At least the job afforded him the luxury of books and instruments.  He'd lived in enough hermit's caves during his career to appreciate a warm bed and a place for a telescope. 

The sky wasn't clear enough for stargazing, so he took down one of his older spellbooks and set to memorizing a chapter.  A wizard was always studying, or so his old masters taught him.  And it was true.  Any wizard who wanted to be worth a damn was always studying.  With another sigh, he put the book down and closed his eyes, leaning his head back in the big comfortable armchair in one corner of the library.

He remembered when he'd been worth a damn, back when the world needed wizards, when creatures from the Outer Dark threatened all humankind and only the wizards stood to bar their way.  He remembered that last battle, his victory leading him to this job, that of the Court Magician for the Ch'Ten Empire.  The wizard shook his head.  He who had once wrestled a demigod back down into the netherworld now spent his days making jeweled light for courtiers and children.  He had saved them all from everlasting darkness and they made him their pet, demanding pretties and amusements because they couldn't comprehend what he'd saved them from.  If they'd known what he'd sacrificed, at what price he'd bought their salvation...  He shook his head.  No, they'd have done nothing different.

He rose from his chair, crossing to the balcony outside the observatory.  He looked out over this world he'd saved, the one he'd given up his dearest love for, and he wondered why he bothered.  Most of the world really wasn't worth saving, and the parts that were became fewer and smaller each year due to the efforts of those that weren't.  Just six months prior, the Merchant Princes leveled a sacred wood, the sentient trees of its Hidden Grove falling to axe and saw.  When the wizard went before the Princes, and then before the monarchs of the Seven Kingdoms, to protest the slaughter, his listeners just smiled politely. They made many deep and grave pronouncements, lauding his honor and his bravery, his skill as a wizard, all while mourning the loss of such venerable trees.

"But the land there is fertile," he mimicked the corpulent Chief Executive of the Merchant Princes, "perfect for farming.  And with the way the peasantry breeds these days..."

"And of course," King Borach of Ch'Ten -his own monarch- had said, as though it justified everything, "the Merchant Princes do own the land."

And so the wizard went away, back to conjuring pretty lights for pretty fools, all while living through the casual suffering they caused.  Then, as night fell upon the kingdom, a creature of the Outer Dark flew in through the wizard's window.  It was a small black winged creature, a minor demon of little consequence or threat, but alarming in that the Outer Dark was supposed to have been sealed.

"Pay me no mind, pay me no mind," the demon said, doffing a miniature hat and offering a rough bow.  "Me and mine is all can come through to this plane, the biguns all still stuck behind your wall."

The wizard raised an eyebrow.  "So the wall still holds some of you back," he said.  "How is it you made it past?"

The demon chuckled self-depricatingly.  "Aye, you set your wall so's 'none from the Outer Dark could ever threaten the world'," he quoted the spell that built the wall, "but me and mine ain't a threat to this world.  Hell, a thousand of me and mine wouldn't threaten this world."  He shrugged.  "We can pretty much come and go as we please.  Good many of us decided to just escape to this world, but was some of us decided to make ourselves handy to the biguns as messengers."

"And you have a message for me, I take it."

"Aye," the demon nodded.  "From one Skargk the Pestilent.  You know him?"

The wizard's jaw tightened.  "I know him."

"Good.  Says he has an offer."

"What is he offering?"

The demon smiled.  "Your one true love, of course.  Returned to you, body and soul, whole and healthy and unspoiled."

The wizard tried to hide the stabbing pain in his heart at those words.  Alive?  She was alive?  All these years playing the fool to these spoiled dandies and she suffered among the Dark!  He forced his voice to be calm.  He'd show no weakness to this thing.  "And I suppose in return he wants me to hand this world over to him," he said.

The demon smirked, looking around.  "From what I've seen of it, you're better off trading it in for the girl."  He shook his head.  "But no.  No, you don't have to just hand the world over, you just have to give the biguns a shot at it.  Just open the wall.  You can fight them all tooth and nail after that if you want, they just want the wall down."

The wizard considered the offer, stroking his chin and pacing slightly.  "So," he mused, making his tone much lighter than he felt, "all I have to do to get the one great true love of my life back is open the door and let things go back to the way they were?"

"That's about it."

The wizard smiled.  "Are you familiar, demon, with the mortal adage that cautions one not to shoot the messenger?"

The demon nodded.

The wizard raised his hand, uttered a few syllables of an ancient and dying language, and a bolt of crimson lightning charred the little demon to its bones.  A quick banishing spell sent them back behind the wall to the Outer Dark.  The wizard made his way to the Wastes, where he would open the only gate in the wall.

Once there, he spoke the words and made the necessary gestures to open the gate.  Darkness swirled beyond it, a seething pulsing darkness that screamed for its release in tortured whispers.

"You come," it said.

"I'm here."

"You come for your woman," a dark chorus rasped, "and to free us."

The wizard held up his hand, a glowing orb causing the darkness to cringe back from the gate.  "A couple of things I thought I'd mention: One, I don't honestly believe you'd give her up to me just to return to the status quo.  You'd figure you owned me, and I'd rather be their lapdog than yours.  Two," he held up two fingers, "no matter how vain, selfish and empty a lot of those people are," he stepped through the gate, locking it behind him, "they don't deserve you."  He set his feet in a fighting stance, energy crackling around his fingertips.

"So yes," the wizard said, grinning his challenge in the face of that roiling hate, "I am indeed here for my woman, but you aren't going anywhere."

What is Spontaneous Fiction?

The old Storyteller chuckled, indicating his curious visitor should sit.

"Well," he said, settling down for the telling, "Some say Spontaneous Fiction is a bizarre occult ritual, practiced only by the mysterious Fantasy Monks of the Unreal Territories. Some," he gestured with his hand, in a way that suggested he was somehow directing the visitor's attention to the nebulous "some people" currently under discussion, "Some say it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that afflicts storytellers who have too many tales cluttering up their heads."

The old Storyteller pointed to an earthenware jug sitting next to a clay cup, "The drink dispenser is in the wall just above the jug. Bring me a bottle of the Europa water," he leaned in conspiratorially, "and I'll tell you what Spontaneous Fiction really is."

The visitor rushed to do as he'd been asked, sliding the wall panel open, and telling the dispenser what he wanted. It gave him a small plastic bottle of water from one of Jupiter's moons, which he brought back to the old Storyteller, who continued his tale.

"What it really is," he said, taking a long pull on the water bottle, "is the result of an experiment. An attempt to start a blog and post only fiction for a year (more or less)." The Storyteller gestured to the visitor's right with the bottle. "Look there to the right. The fruits of this experiment have been collected in a single volume, called The Spontaneous Manifesto. Of course," he smiled, "you can also read through the archives whenever you're here."

The visitor thanked the Storyteller and rose to leave. At the door, the visitor turned and asked one more question.

"More stories?" the Storyteller chuckled. "I suppose there might be the odd new tale of Spontaneous Fiction, from time to time. In fact, should you continue past here, you'll find a few new tales waiting to be read."

Executive Privilege

He couldn't change them.

He looked at them, studied them and thought he really knew them. He was so very scared for them. They didn't know what they were doing. They didn't seem to want to know and that scared him even more.

He thought he could change them with inspiration. Others had effected great change by inspiring speeches alone. So he spoke, at length, about what they could be, what they could aspire to. The speeches were well received, but no one changed. No one reached for more than what they were. They wanted change, but not to them. They wanted to go on exactly as they had been, while he changed the world around them to better suit their needs.

So he decided to show them. Where inspiration failed, example would carry the day. He would live his words and do his considerable part to make things better, to be more than he was. And things changed, but not all that much. His efforts alone would do little beyond the short-term. He needed them to follow his lead, do their own work to make things better.

But they didn't.

The changes he made were just enough that everyone got to be comfortable again. He tried to explain that what he'd done wouldn't last, that he was merely patching a flawed system, and if the system was to change, it was they who would change it. But he was scoffed at, tuned out, derided and ignored. Opposition turned his words against him, telling them all what they wanted to hear, despite that it wasn't what they needed.

He offered them money, turned the change he needed from them into jobs, and that seemed to work for a while. But the pay was necessarily low and the work was hard, and there were jobs by then to be had for higher pay and less work. These other jobs were unstable, he tried to tell them, an effect of the patch and no less impermanent. But they left his jobs in droves, chasing easy money and paper wealth.

He hadn't wanted it to come to this, it must be understood. But he'd tried everything short of this and none of it worked. If they had just changed on their own... but no. No, they couldn't be bothered, so now it was down to this. He sighed and put down the saw, wiping his brow on his sleeve. Then carefully, gently, even respectfully, he slid the top of the skull off the head, revealing the brain. He picked up a scalpel, his face grim.

Time for change.

The Deconstructionist

The man walked casually through the vast halls of the lunar fortress. They gleamed with an otherworldly iridescence, their alien alloy shedding the by-products of its chemical reaction with oxygen into the visual spectrum. The man grinned slightly, and a young photographer in a bustling metropolis was blind due to this previously harmless display. The walls changed as the man walked, becoming simple titanium, then steel, then the slick concrete of an underground bunker. The man pushed open a rusting metal door, entering an austere yet still somehow squalid, living room. A costumed superhero sat on the couch; he looked up as the man entered.

"This isn't right," the superhero said, staring down at his hands. "This," he looked around the room, "this isn't my fortress."

"Of course it is," the man said. "It's always been this."

"But, I--" the superhero shook his head. "No, you're right. I dug this out with my bare hands, then used my powers to make the concrete out of rocks and sand. It's useful, I guess, as a headquarters... but I could have done so much more with..." He kept shaking his head, as though to clear it. The man grinned again. The superhero blinked. "My homeworld... there was technology there that was millennia beyond what Earth has. I..." he looked helplessly up at the stranger in his fortress. "I should have access to that, shouldn't I?"

"No," the man shook his head. "Why should you? Your father destroyed your planet and everything on it. If your mother hadn't launched you into space when she did, your father would have destroyed you too."

"But, my ship--"

"Exploded once you were removed from it. It killed your Earth father instantly, and left your adopted mother a cripple, addicted to pain killers and vodka." The man smiled. "Don't you remember how you discovered you were invulnerable?"

The superhero touched his cheek. His bright costume was gone, replaced by tight leather. "She hit me," he whispered. "It was her wedding anniversary, I should have remembered that, and she always drank more than usual that day."

"Yes," the man said, "she was usually a reasonably functional alcoholic."

The superhero glared at the man, his eyes glowing red. "She was a good mother," he growled.

The man just continued to grin. "Except when she wasn't."

The superhero shuddered. "Except then."

"But you put a stop to that."

The superhero looked defensive. "I didn't mean that," he insisted. "The powers were brand new, I couldn't control them and I--"

"And you were really angry at her."

"NO! No, I... yes." the superhero sank back down on the couch. "Yes, I was angry. But I've done so much since then, so much good. Do you," he looked up at the man, his eyes haunted, "do you think she'll forgive me now?"

"She might have," the man nodded, "if not for what you've been up to lately."

The superhero looked confused, "I haven't been up to anything." Then both men looked toward the closed door leading to the bedroom. The superhero shook his head. "But she's just spending the night. She often spends the night here in the..." he shook his head again. "No, no, that's not right." He looked back at the door, a squint indicating he was looking through it. "I thought she was someone--"

"Someone else?" the man cleared his throat. "But that isn't possible, is it?"

The superhero shook. "No," he whispered. "No, I definitely didn't mean to do that to her. I loved her." His look was one that begged forgiveness. "I told her the serum was experimental. I told her! But she insisted on taking it. Wanted to be with me so badly that--"

"That she swallowed a serum that burned her from the inside out," the man said. He gestured toward the door. "And that poor girl..."

The superhero was on his feet again. "But the serum worked on her! It worked! I watched bullets bounce off her, I..."

"Yes, the serum worked perfectly on her," the man agreed. "But then, all those experiments you used her for when you were kids likely helped. Did she ever remember what you did to her all those years ago?"

The superhero was silent.

"So yes, it worked," the man agreed. "But then you went and lost track of time. It was late when you got back to your little fortress bunker, and by the time you two were well into things..."

"It wore off." The superhero's voice was a mere whisper. Then he looked up again, suddenly really noticing the strange man in his inner sanctum. "Wait," he said. "Who are you?"

"I'm just a man," the man said. "A man with a special power." He smiled. "Nothing so grand as your impressive abilities, but quite potent in its way." His smile deepened. "I can reach back through time," he explained, "and alter key events in any person's history. I can change the very continuity of someone's life."

"Did you change mine?"

The man nodded and laughed. "Oh yes."

The superhero snarled, leaping at the man. "Change it back! You change me back to whatever I was right god-damned now! Or I'll--" He fell to his knees, muscles atrophied and bones brittle. His words were choked off in a dry rasping cough.

The man laughed, shoving the dessicated superhero onto the floor with his foot.

"You'll do nothing," he sneered. "I'll retcon your radiation poisoning away after I've left," he promised. "I want to keep you around like this a while." He checked his watch. "Ah, yes, well. I must away. I've a brooding man in a cave to visit and grant his fondest wish." He smiled and exited the bunker, stepping into the razed slums of a once-vibrant city.

"Be seeing you."