by Daniel Kozuh
Lawrence pushed himself to his feet and tripped his way up to the tree line. His jeans, Chucks, and Goatwhore tour t-shirt were heavy with water. He entered the forest and clutched himself, shivering in his damp clothes.
“Anybody there?” he called out. There was no response. He walked deeper into the forest, assuming he would come across hikers, or maybe a hunter, but he was totally alone in the wilderness. It only took about a half-hour of roughing it before he was sobbing on a fallen tree log. He had zero survival skills and would starve to death, long before anyone noticed he’d gone missing.
It was late in the afternoon and Lawrence had circled back on himself three times. He gave it one last try and reentered the forest. After a few hundred yards, the unkempt hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He spun around and was met with twenty pale watchers. They had soulless, silver eyes, white-gold hair, and elegantly pointed ears.
Lawrence let out a shriek and fled. He tore through the bush with such speed it seemed that the vegetation was actually reaching out to grab him.
He broke through into a wide-open field, finally, yanking leaves and vines from him as if they were insects and spider-webs. He was wheezing hard and his heart was slamming in his chest. He fell to the ground certain that a heart-attack was imminent. Then, he smelled roast chicken.
“Is that what you smell when you have a stroke? Roast chicken?” He thought.
Lawrence dragged himself up a slope and peered into a small valley. The smell came from over a glen, where an army had set up their encampment for the night. At the edge of the site, a plump chicken cooked on a spit over a large campfire.
Like a tactless sniper, Lawrence pawed his way down the hill and over to the unattended dinner. Neverminding the heat, he tore the poultry from the spoke and shoved it into his mouth, its fat quenching his aching thirst. It actually took the soldiers that had surrounded him a few pokes with a longsword to get him to notice them.
Lawrence The Coward was dragged by his arms and dumped, sniveling, before Kroü The Valiant.
Kroü, who looked much different than the Kroü that Norman had met – tone, strong and armored – gazed down upon the heap of man before him. “What manner of man is this?”
“Please!” Lawrence cried, “You gotta help me! There was this book … I said words … I fell through a table … into a lake. I got trapped in this crazy forest, and then I was attacked by this pack of David Bowie impersonators …” Lawrence looked around him. Everyone was outfitted in dazzling silver armor. They held long swords, carved wooden crossbows, and purple banners, “What are you, LARPers or something?” He snuffled the snot back into his nose.
Kroü looked down at Lawrence’s shirt. “Goat … Whore?! What crest is that?!”
“It’s just a metal band … that’s all,” Lawrence said. “I know you Renaissance Fair people stay in character but if you could just tell me where the nearest gas station is or whatever, I’ll leave.”
Gorthon leaned into his commander’s ear, “Sir, he may be a spy.”
“I’m not a spy!” Lawrence cried.
“Then tell me Lawrence of the Goat Whore clan,” Kroü said. “What is your business in Lingeria?”
“I have no business! I’m lost and …” Lawrence went quiet. “Did you say Lingeria?”
****
Lawrence was bound and dragged to the outskirts of The Red City, where the Pinnarchs lived and studied. While Pinnarchs were primarily alchemists, they were also placeholders for philosophers, judges, priests, and all-round wise-men. When something went wonky in the land, it was the Pinnarchs who were beseeched for solution.
It was for this reason that a weeping, confused Lawrence was hauled to their humble cloister and thrown at their mercy.
“We think he may be a spy, sirs,” Kroü said, to the robed figures. “If he is, though, he is a mad spy. He keeps rambling on about how Lingeria does not actually exist and that he is from another world.”
Dalgard – a spindly man, with a pointed goatee and two hooks along the bridge of his nose – was the informal Prime Minister and voice-piece for the Pinnarchs. He looked down at the lumpy man with long black hair. “Is that true?”
Lawrence kept his head bowed in reverence, and to hide his tears. “I… I’m not sure what is going on, really. All I know is that everything I’ve seen since I got here is all part of a fantasy book.”
The Pinnarchs carried out hushed, excited conversation, among themselves. Dalgard quieted them and looked back at Lawrence. “A book, you say?”
“Yes. In my world, Lingeria is a story in a book. Many books, actually. Somehow, a portal to Lingeria opened up, or something, in my house and I fell through.”
“The book in question. Was it about this thick?” Dalgard made a five-inch gap between his hands. “And did it contain four histories of Lingeria.”
“Yes, yes,” Lawrence exclaimed! “That’s my book!”
“It was discovered by one of our brothers months ago, on the shore of Lake Tarnow,” Dalgard explained.
“That is where I fell in,” Lawrence said. “Do you have it? Where is it?”
“We gave it to a trusted advisor, to be studied,” Dalgard said, with a guilty look. “But our advisor seems to have … absconded with it. However –” Dalgard was handed something. “We also found this.” He held up a crinkled, yellow legal pad, smudged with ink stains.
“That is my notepad!” Lawrence exclaimed. “There was another book, too, The Versa-Minor or something like that. Did you find that too?” In his excitement, Lawrence had crawled towards the Pinnarchs on his knees.
“No. That was not found,” Dalgard said. “And you claim to bring these texts to our world?”
“Not intentionally,” Lawrence explained. “Like I said, they just, sort of, fell through.”
The Pinnarchs whispered to each other, again. Lawrence could make out “from the heavens” and “divine providence.”
“And you are the author of these prophesies?” Dalgard waved the book about.
“Me? No,” Lawrence blurted. “But, I sorta work with him.”
“God’s messenger made flesh,” Dalgard heralded. The room murmured like an engine.
“No, it’s…” Lawrence paused. He felt a flush of pride and smiled. “Yes. I am his messenger.”
ELEVEN
Brass stood before the Pinnarchs, looking up at them from the stone floor of the ring. He still held the crescent blade; his chest glistening with a mixture of sweat, blood, and dirt. Beside him, all five heads of the Nar-Nar had been severed and lay sideways. All fifteen eyes were open and vacant.
The center Pinnarch stood and removed his hood, gazing down upon the warrior with grudging respect.
“You have survived the trials and, as agreed, you have won your freedom.” He then shouted, “Open the gate and let him be free!”
Before Brass the stone blockade opened with a tedious, grinding pace. The setting sun cut into the stadium like a stabbing sword. Brass stepped forward, fearing a trap but finding none. He gave one last look at the honorable men who wished him dead and headed west.
- Tales of Lingeria: The Palladium Gauntlet, Chapter 22
“How long has this guy been talking? Hours?” Norman thought.
They had wandered into a bright solarium office; shelves were half-filled with books, parchment, and scrolls. Wrence sat behind a baroque desk, in a supple leather seat. Norman sat on a stiff wooden bench, next to a fireplace.
After orating his biography, Lawrence then launched into a tale of how he had – for all intents and purposes – usurped the throne of Lingeria.
“It wasn’t too hard, actually. They took my knowledge of Lingeria’s future as prophecy and called me a wizard. They were pretty desperate for some leadership around here. Not to mention …” Lawrence stretched out his hand towards the fireplace and, effortlessly, a massive, controlled, fireball erupted from the hearth, paused only a foot from Norman’s face, and retreated back into the brick cave. “Now I can
do stuff like that.”
“Yeah, about that, Lawrence,” Norman started.
“Wrence, please.”
“No, I won’t be doing that. When did the powers start?”
“Perk of the job, I guess. I was messing with what parts of the Verisimillion I had written on my notepad and they just started showing up.” Wrence laughed. “I could just, like, feel the energy around me.” He twiddled his fingers and an ornate peacock quill danced about in the air. “These sweet tats seem to magnify the power too,” he said showing Norman the design on the back of his hands.
“And what about The Black Cloud? Did that just show up?” Norman asked.
“The what?” Wrence asked, coyly, as he traced his finger around the dust on his desk.
“The giant cloud that sucks the life from anything it passes over!”
“Oh, right – you mean, The Thick Shadow,” Wrence said. He suddenly burst into tears, his voice cracking. “I don’t know what happened! It did! It just showed up. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to hurt anyone! I was just trying to summon you.”
“You … sent for me?”
“Of course, man! Lemme show you!” Wrence jumped up and led Norman out of the room.
****
The two humans entered into an expansive hall, lined with hundreds of doorways. Norman, no matter how annoyed he was, couldn’t help but be impressed.
“As soon as I got the tower built, I started working on a spell to bring you here,” Wrence explained. “Somehow, one of my spells must have missed the mark and landed in that Whittle’s stove. It’s an art not a science, apparently. The point is, you are here now, and you can help me rule Lingeria! Be the god that these people think you are!”
“I don’t want to be worshipped,” Norman said.
“Why not? It’s fantastic! We brought Lingeria into existence and we deserve to be rewarded for that.”
“Rewarded?” Norman spat. “You think you should be rewarded for plagiarizing my work?”
“Legally it wasn’t plagiarism,” Lawrence corrected. “We checked.”
“You don’t get to rule the world just because you know a lot about it.”
“I had a really shitty childhood,” Lawrence said.
“Oh, join the club! What does that have to do with anything?”
“I spent my youth taking care of my demented grandmother! I never complained,” Lawrence complained. “When was it going to be my turn? Huh? When was I going to get a chance to chase my dreams?”
“So, you were granted an ounce of power and you took over the world.”
“C’mon, man, tell me you don’t want this,” Wrence said, gesturing around at his opulence. “I’ve read your Wikipedia bio, I know about your life. Don’t you want to show up all those people in your life? Your ex-wife? You’re dad and his secret family? The doctor that gave your mom those pills? Your genius brother? …”
“Knock it off,” Norman shouted. He suddenly wanted to drain a bottle of bourbon and crack the empty over Wrence’s skull. It felt like someone cinched a belt tight around his chest, he was having trouble taking a breath. He grabbed his bag, unzipped it, and dug through it looking for a Xanax.
“You don’t need that stuff here,” Lawrence said.
“Maybe you don’t,” Norman said as he found an orange bottle and gave it a reassuring shake.
“What is there to be anxious about? I created Lingeria as a utopia for guys like us.”
“I created all of this, not you,” Norman’s ego corrected, palming a pill into his mouth.
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” Lawrence said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who knows if this realm even existed before I opened the portal? I brought The Volumes, I introduced magic to Lingeria – even the cloud, which I admit was a mistake, was my doing. This may have been your world, but we share the universe now. It is as much mine as yours.”
“You moronic, megalomaniac … fanboy!”
Norman slammed into one of the doors on the opposite side of the room, before he knew he was even aloft. The wind was knocked out of his lungs and his legs went numb.
The fat wizard lowered his hand and approached the injured writer. “I just knew it was going go this way, Norman! You were such an asshole when we met, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. There is enough adoration and praise in this world for the both of us. I was going to let you be their god, obviously. We could have united Lingeria. I just wanted the perks. I wanted to serve at the right hand of my hero. But you just had to be so damn selfish.”
“Just because you think you suffered doesn’t give you the right to seize power,” Norman coughed. “You are the cause of The Black Cloud. Your mere presence is destroying the world.”
“What do you care? You hate this place, anyway. You don’t think your fans noticed the animosity for Lingeria creeping into your books? Your blatant disregard for canon and timeline? Did you even do a second draft of The Shattered Capstone? You don’t keep Lingeria alive. The fans do. This is my world now.”
Norman had nothing left inside of him. Exhausted, he rested his head on the cold marble floor. Wrence telepathically ripped open a door on the floor, made Norman’s body slide towards to its vacant darkness, and dumped the body in. Norman fell, and fell, and fell …
****
The floor was still hard and cold when Norman awoke, but it was also wet and slick. Norman was pretty certain he knew where he was. There aren’t many places that look like a dungeon other than a dungeon. Everything was made of steel and limestone. Small, slatted windows were cut seven feet towards the ceiling. Piles of hay were scattered across the floor. Like the dungeon in a cartoon: rats scurried along, dates were carved into the bick by previous tenants, and rusty shackles were theatrically mounted in the wall – luckily, no one hung from them.
Of everything that hurt, Norman’s sinuses were bothering him the most. The carpet of mold was the only soft spot in the prison and it was driving his allergies wild. To make matters worse, Wrence had seized the bag with his meds. “Maybe there’s a Lingerian apothecary that know how to create generic Zyrtec,” Norman thought, wishing he’d written one into the story. On the bright side, with his nostrils clamped shut, he wasn’t able to smell the putrid stench of the jail.
Norman left his head on the ground, the coldness being his only comfort, against his flaming face. A small pair of shoes shuffled into his eye-line.
“Ah, you’re awake. Finally,” Roe said, squatting down.
Norman sat up very slowly, letting his balance return, at its own pace. He stayed seated and leaned back against brick. Pain swept through his body, the result of being supernaturally slammed into a wall and then dropped from a magically elevated height. He rubbed at his back and pictured the bruise running the length of his spine.
Tahra sat on the floor on the opposite side of the cell, her muscular legs bent; arms resting on her knees. Her jaw tensed into tight balls as she chewed on a stem of hay. Something about her seemed almost naked. It took Norman a moment to realize that it was her sword that was missing.
Calamity Jane was indifferent to her surroundings, having found an ample pile of hay near the door to the cell. Just outside that door, a bored goblin sentry leaned against a wall.
“How long have you guys been in here?” Norman asked.
“About an hour longer than you,” Tahra answered. “Whatever you did really angered the Wizard.”
Roe added, “Yeah, one minute we were stuffing our faces with beef-cheek pies and the next a bunch of goblins grabbed us and threw us in here.”
“People really don’t like you, do they?” Tahra said.
“It’s Wrence’s fault. He’s the reason The Volumes are here. He’s responsible for the split in the timeline, The Black Cloud, the famine and the death. Everything. It’s his fault.”
“So, if it wasn’t for Wrence,” Roe deduced, “I would … actually be dead?”
This gave Norman pause. “I mean, technica
lly, yes.”
“Then I’m on his side,” Roe decided. “Excuse me, guard! I’ve changed sides.”
“Roe, come on! The guy has gone mad. Look what he did to those people on Larrowton.”
“He never bothered me none.”
“Have you forgotten what The Black Cloud did to your town? He is only going to want more. More land, more food, more power.”
“How do you propose we stop him?” Tahra asked. “You’re The Author and you don’t even have his powers.”
“I just woke up from a coma,” Norman barked. “What do you want from me? First thing is we have to get out of here.”
The brass blat of trumpets killed the conversation and awoke the sleeping guard. The sound came from outside but blasted all around them.
Norman ran to below the barred window and leapt up to see outside, missing by several feet with each attempt.
“Hey, Roe …” Norman was about to ask but abandoned the idea. Then, he looked to Tahra. “Tahra, give me a boost. I want to see what’s going on.”
Tahra grunted, tossed the hay from her mouth, and walked over to Norman.
“Okay,” Norman said. “I guess, just, um, kneel down and I’ll put my legs over your shoulders?”
Tahra knelt to the ground and Norman clumsily climbed on her back, as he had seen many a Journey fan do on their “Escape” tour in 1983. Tahra swung one of her legs in front of her and lifted the writer with ease. The land outside the cell walls appeared to him.
The window was just above the waterline of the moat. When it rained, the dungeon would surely flood – which accounted for all the mold and slime. They were to the right side of the drawbridge, which meant Wrence’s balcony was directly above them. The goblin militia was still camped out, just past the market. Business had halted at the market and a crowd of a few hundred gathered at the moat’s edge, beckoned by the call of the trumpets.
“A proclamation,” came the voice of the goblin butler, from hundreds of feet in the air. “From his lordship, Wrence the Wizard, sworn protector and devotee of Lingeria.” A few in the mass felt the need to clap, but it didn’t take and died.
