Lead Mermaids | Chapter 28
Book 1 of The Wizard Of The Dread Mountains
OUT BEYOND THE WILD VISTAS OF THE OUTER SPHERES, THE DWELLING PLACE OF GODS AND HEROES AND MONSTERS AND MYTH, IT IS SAID TO LAY AN ENDLESS SEA OF CONSCIOUSNESS FROM WHENCE HAS EMERGED ALL THAT IS AND ALL THAT ISN’T.
THOSE SUBTLE REALMS ARE THE GOAL OF EVERY WIZARD. AFTER ALL, IF YOU CAN GET THERE, YOU ARE ALREADY HALFWAY TO ANYWHERE.
Previously: As he comes to a clash with Sovereign Lord Grimeri, any chance Ezramel Wirtfrynn might have entertained of getting through to the Aviglian ruler on the matter of the lead coins and the alchemical gold just sifts through the wizard’s fingers like so much sand. Even as, in his rage, the wizard finally sees through the Lord’s bad faith.
There was never any hope for reason. For it was never an issue of ignorance — or even madness — but one of pride.
Despite having said all he did, once the sorcerer had descended the palace stairs, he could not keep himself from scowling up at the golden dome and pinnacles that crowned the Sovereign Lord’s high palace.
“Fools!” he hissed indignantly, before marching off.
He had already wasted too much of his time on this pointless quest, anyways. From the start it had been abundantly clear there was nothing to be gained by pursuing the myth of Red Sulphur any longer. The whole thing was nothing but a pit, meant to suck in the unwary. The best thing to do now was to cut his losses and turn to some other, more worthwhile pursuit.
Truly, why had he not done earlier?
Ezramel hated to admit it, but it was only because he genuinely thought he could change things for the better. Seeing the Aviglian people struggle, miserable, exchanging worthless mountains of lead coins… He thought he could help them see things for what they were. He knew he was no hero – but he himself must have lost sight of that somewhere along the way.
“Serves me right, I suppose…” he grumbled to himself.
Ultimately, it did not matter. This place was not his home, he did not belong here. Aviglia’s fate was not his to bend and twist as he saw fit. A wizard such as him should have known better than to get involved.
There seemed to be a lot more people out on the streets now. Peasants, merchants, parents with their children, damsels, nobles, students. All come to gawk at the coward who had failed them, no doubt.
“Oh! It’s him! The one who fled from Vermithrax!”
“I hear he wasn’t able to even find the thing. Can you believe that? How can someone miss a huge fire-breathing dragon?”
“My friends and I talked to him the other day, he seemed so sure of himself. But I guess he was all talk in the end, huh?”
“But… What will become of us now? What if the dragon comes and destroys the city?”
Their heckling, anguished cries fell on deaf ears. The sorcerer paid no more mind to them than he did to the vacant buildings and boarded up windows lining the street. He had done all he could, it was just not in his power to save them. All he cared about now was getting back home to his tower, to his grimoires and his summoning circles, and to the company of nonhuman intelligences – to where he was meant to be.
As he crossed an intersection, however, someone called out, and ran down the street to meet him; someone he could not just ignore.
“Oh, thank Grace!” Agrippa panted heavily, cupping her palms over her knees. Even so, her flushed face beamed a light smile up at the magician, as if a terrible weight had just been lifted from her heaving shoulders. “Everyone’s been saying you couldn’t defeat the dragon, that it had eaten your arm and… I was so worried that–”
And that, more than anything else, was what crushed Ezramel’s heart.
“——Well, as you can see, nothing of the sort happened,” he said dryly, showing her the bandaged hand that was largely still there. “There was no dragon there to eat my arm in the first place.”
He did not even bother commenting on the inconsistency of that rumour she heard – it truly did not bother him anymore.
At length, Agrippa managed to right herself up, pulling on her dishevelled, lemon yellow coat before it slipped down her arm. “W-what do you mean? What happened?” asked the winded alchemist.
For a beat, the sorcerer just stared down idly at his hand. Then he emptied out his lungs with a forced sigh.
“The dragon does not exist. It was but a small iguana,” he repeated. “I am sorry. In the end, everything I did was for nothing.”
The sorcerer turned his face from her. He looked to the city gates at the end of the street, leading under the lapis wings of the kingfisher. Only a short walk away, and he would be out of Aviglia’s claustrophobic walls of orichalcum.
But even that felt like a terrible struggle; his feet were like two slabs of stone, and his heart like a ball of lead pulling down on his chest.
“W-what? That’s…” She trailed off. “Then, what are we going to do?” Only to find the strength to grasp at something again.
Truly, the wizard did envy that about her…
“Me? Nothing. I am going back to my tower.”
But it did not change the fact that there was nothing to grasp at but thin air.
“You can try telling whomever you will about the bad money, like you did the other day. But they won’t listen. The Sovereign Lord knows, anyway, he just does not care so long as he gets to preserve his own image.” The least he could do now was warn her about the treachery he had inadvertently stumbled upon.
Agrippa listened on, the relief she had expressed just a moment ago already all but gone. Her hand clung limply to the lemon yellow coat that enveloped her unsure form. And, in her lost, dark eyes was beginning to manifest that same loneliness he had seen before. In her old teacher, count De Ragiora.
“Wait.. so you are just going to give up? And let the city fall apart?” she asked, as if doubting her own words.
“Well, the damned fools have brought it upon themselves – perhaps they deserve it, after all…” the wizard said, finally gathering enough willpower to start walking away.
“——D-don’t talk about my people like that, you – you charlatan!” Agrippa blurted out at his back in an unsteady, shaky voice.
At that last word, the wizard halted midstep and turned, incredulous. “Charlatan!? What, so you would also turn on me, like everyone else?”
Instantly, there was a flicker of regret in the girl’s eyes.
But, in that moment, the wizard could not see that – he could not see anything at all. Despite having never meant to, Agrippa had accidentally cracked open the fragile lid that not even Ezramel had realised was keeping his emotions in check.
And now, with the procession in full swing, he found himself drowning in its cacophony.
“Then know this, ignorant fool!! Know this, and despair! That I have wielded such terrible, terrible powers! the likes of which you could not even dream of! Journeyed farther beyond this pinprick you call a universe than you could ever understand! Learned such cosmic secrets as would uproot your feeble sanity——like a sapling in the throes of a hurricane! You would never dare doubt my dark arts, had you been there!”
He threw his arms out, gesticulating wildly. And with each ominous word that poured out like venom from his mouth, the sorcerer’s semblance twisted more and more. Until he became so ugly in his blind rage he could not even be recognized anymore.
“Why, had there been any dragon in that blasted cave, I would have annihilated it completely! Down to every last atom!! And tossed it’s bedevilled soul screaming into the blackest reaches of–”
But he had not been the only one whom those words had wrought change upon.
“I don’t care! I don’t care about the stupid fucking dragon!!!”
In the face of his sudden vitriol, any regret or hesitation Agrippa might have felt was completely swept away. She squared her shoulders and squeezed her balled up fists until their knuckles turned white. Her whole frame shaking, a crucible barely able to contain an indignant, fiery wrath.
As her eyes transfixed his, blazing indomitable, the wizard faltered. The alchemist’s defiant rebuke had caught him off-guard.
Then, as he tried and failed to understand what she had meant, it was as if the fog suddenly cleared from his mind. And he was able to see the tears welling up in the corners of her eyes for the first time.
“I thought we were in this together! That we were——f-friends…” Even as riled up as she was, Agrippa still struggled to say that last word, and was unable to keep eye contact.
Yet soon those burning eyes shot up at him again, their conviction redoubled. Causing the wizard to reel back all over again.
“But then you go and abandon everything the instant there is a setback!! Did all that mean nothing to you? How can you call yourself anything other than a charlatan, then!?!?” she yelled out, erupting with the smouldering fury of a volcano.
In the silence that followed, however, a gaping rift widened between the two. One which Ezramel could not see a way to transpose. The wizard looked on to her distant, small, but nevertheless valiant form. Then he hung his head in shame.
“——Well… What else would you have me do?” he asked, but his voice was hollow.
“You could…” One of the teardrops finally grew too heavy, it rolled soundlessly down her cheek.
She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat and sniffled, then gathered the last of her rage, and threw it all out in a final burst, “you could go disappear into a puff of smoke for all I care!”
Then she turned on her heel and ran off.
Without him even realising it, the wizard’s hand had lunged forward after her. Yet, as she turned behind a corner and disappeared, it grasped at nothing but thin air.