Wizards on a Rampage: A Tale of Two Realms (Mayr Stories Book 1)
Page 5
“No, never!” I shouted as I jumped into the hole.
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HANGING GARDENS
Percy Sunsword's criminal activities had reached their peak. He'd caused incredible harm to humans with the use of magic and he faced the consequences of his relentless actions. Caught in the act by the most beautiful and impeccable prosecutor there was – Agatha Pietta.
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I ARRIVED IN Ecklewood with the hope that Agatha Pietta was lying about the other side. I hoped there were no orcs waiting for me on the other side. I could hope, but my hopes were to be dashed by the waiting patrol.
“Guards, seize the villain,” commanded Paulo with a cold look in his eyes. His newly found career had reached its peak so early on. Catching someone like me was neither here nor there but catching someone like me red-handed and returning from the human realm where Agatha Pietta had seen me was the catalyst. Paulo was on probation but this, surely, would have given him the permanent position of prosecutor.
The orcs surrounded and the rest of The Wizards on a Rampage were nowhere to be seen. I was on my own and at that moment, I didn't know whether to confess all and face my punishment with the hope the others would save me or to deny all until I found out where they were. I decided to hold my tongue and say absolutely nothing.
I was thrown into the back of a van, banging my head on the way in. Two orcs handcuffed me to themselves and sat next to me in the back of the old, rusty white van. The smell from inside the van choked the oxygen from the air.
Eventually, the van arrived at the large police station in the centre of Ecklewood and the orcs placed me, ever so gently, into a dark and dingy cell to await questioning. I didn't want to be faced with Agatha again. This time, she had proof that I was in the realm of humans and this time she knew that I had committed crimes against humanity. I waited in the cell for some time before Agatha came and took me to the same interrogation room as the last time. I knew what was to come of me.
“So, Percy Sunsword. I found you within the human realm, your second visit there, wasn't it?”
I kept my silence.
“Percy, your punishment will be great. You committed crimes which not only broke laws of this realm – notably Section Fourteen, but you also broke the laws of the human realm. You then proceeded in breaking paragraph two of Section Fourteen point eight, paragraph two. I could throw the book at you. Do you have anything to say?”
“There's a paragraph two?” I asked.
“Yes, Percy,” replied Agatha. “Section Fourteen: 'under no circumstances shall anyone from the magical realm enter the human realm without prior consent from the authorities.'”
“And the next bit?” I asked.
“It says, 'upon entering the human realm, one must refrain from bringing harm to the humans, regardless of how tempting it can be at times'. So, you see, there really is no getting away from this one,” she recited like a poet.
“Aren't I supposed to have a lawyer?” I asked.
“Before making contact with a lawyer for you, I would like to offer you a get out clause. I don't want to send you to Hanging Gardens but if you don't comply, I struggle to see what other options I'll have,” said Agatha. “There were also other crimes committed but we haven't caught the culprit so I'll have to pin these on you as well.”
“What other crimes?” I asked.
“It doesn't matter at this moment,” she replied.
She had a slight grin when saying this. She had no proof of what we had done last time but this time I was at her mercy and she knew it. I couldn't deny anything, not that I would have wanted to because what I did, I meant to do. Other than the guy whose car had run over me, I only tried to help the humans and kept my magic a secret for the most part.
“What kind of deal?” I sighed.
“Well, we have been chasing Melody Rangalf for some time, as you already know. We want to know exactly what her plans are, what she's done and what she's done in her time there while you've been here. We need her, not you,” said Agatha.
“I don't know where she is and she never told any of us about what she had done. I only met her for the first time last Thursday,” I said.
“The crimes you committed on Earth are serious, Percy. It really is advisable for you to cooperate with us,” replied Agatha with a face straighter than an ironing board.
“Honestly, I have no idea,” I repeated.
“Very well,” Agatha said before leaving the room.
I was now in the room on my own with a one-way mirror opposite me. I knew there were people watching me as I just sat there. My nerves were a mess with thoughts of my inevitable fate.
When Agatha returned, she confirmed my fears. I was to be tried by a magical committee the very next week and they would ultimately send me to Hanging Garden where I would serve my punishment.
During the trial, I pleaded guilty because I was guilty. I meant to commit all of the so-called crimes I was convicted of.
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Hanging Gardens beckoned me and I was transferred with immediate effect – sentenced to spend one hundred and nineteen years there, a sentence that seemed a little on the harsh side.
As Hanging Gardens was a floating island in the sky, there was no escaping. There was also a limit in place for Hanging Gardens – one hundred criminals at any one time and I was now one of them. I arrived via a hot air balloon, handcuffed to an orc and dropped on the island to look after myself. I'd often pondered what Hanging Gardens looked like close-up as a child. The floating island hovered over the whole of Mayr and travelled around the skies randomly. As a child, I believed it was an exciting place with pirates and bank robbers of the friendly kind. I was about to find out for myself what really lay on Hanging Gardens.
On the island itself, the first thing I noticed was the windmill centre-piece. A tall, red-and-white-striped building with rotor blades turning at a slow pace. This windmill was the power hub of the entire island. The island floated above Mayr at a speed of just over travel-sickness-inducing speed. It was a steady speed for some time before speeding up to bring about the sickness. When I arrived, it was at a slow, steady pace.
The rest of the island was covered in green grass, trees, and little huts within which the criminals lived. At first glimpse, the floating island came across as rather tranquil considering the company there. It was a peaceful place and one which wouldn't look out of place in a holiday brochure. The reality, however, was a little different. The huts were made of wood and had no heating, no cooking facilities, and little room for a bed.
Each criminal was given one book to read per week. Books which had been thrown out by the humans came to Mayr. If the book wasn't good enough for the humans, it was destined for Mayr. If in Mayr, it wasn't good enough for the law-abiding people then it was only good enough for the monsters in Hanging Gardens. Worse still was the fact that each week, we had a meeting with a librarian and had to review the book we'd read that week. Apparently, this was a way of keeping us from going insane.
One orc escorted me to my hut which was exactly the same as every other hut – cramped and ugly and cold, but they all had thatched roofs designed to make them feel nice and cosy. I was now amongst the rest of the criminals of the realm and needed to make some friends.
I spent the first few days minding my own business and remaining mostly in my hut except going for a walk when the island sped up and floated above Mayr. The induced sickness was made all the worse by the ever increases and decreases in both speed and altitude. It was impossible to sleep for any longer than a couple of hours at a time due to the sickness.
I kept a tally chart for each of my days on the inner wall of my hut without thinking in advance that one hundred and nineteen years was quite a lot of days and the hut was small. After carving a line to mark my fourth day in my new home, I went for a walk to avoid vomiting inside the hut.
On the walk, I met another wizard.
“What brings you here?” the wizard asked.r />
“Oh, you know, just fancied a little holiday,” I joked.
“You're Sunsword, aren't you?”
“Nope,” I answered. “Never heard of any Sunsword.”
“Percy Sunsword,” he replied with a fond grin. “I've heard a lot about you.”
I let out a nervous chuckle at the fact a stranger criminal, resident in Hanging Gardens not only knew my name but had also heard a lot about me.
“You don't know me, do you?” he asked and I shook my head. “My name is one you are familiar with but I am nothing but a stranger to you,” the stranger said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“You will come to learn my name as our days pass by here,” he replied.
The skinny-looking and tired old wizard with a small hunch in his back walked off into the distance and into his own hut located on the other side of Hanging Gardens from me and I watched as he walked with the sun setting in the distance, the speed of the island increasing but this man didn't care. It had no effect on him. The man had been there for so long that he had grown accustomed to the speed and elevation of Hanging Gardens and kept his upright and his legs appeared stable as the island shook and threw me into a bush to my left.
I vomited in the bush before climbing out and heading for my own hut as the island slowed. The man I had met that day played on my mind all night. I was tossing and turning and trying to think of who he was without success. I wasn't familiar with the criminal celebrities of our realm but he told me that I would learn his name in time and, for some reason, I had no doubt about that.
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With little sleep and another carving on my hut's inner wall, I left the hut to go for a walk. There were many other prisoners walking around, some in their little cliques and some on their own looking mightily sorry for themselves. Everyone just walked around with nowhere to go; akin to the humans. The orcs in the towers looked down at us all, taking it in turns to stand up and watch while the other orcs played cards with one another.
There was nowhere to go on the island and as I was feeling rather brave, I decided to go and have a look over the edge. In any normal circumstances, I wouldn't have dared to do such a thing due to my fear of heights but here, on Hanging Gardens, what else was there to fear other than death from boredom. Treading carefully, I looked over the edge and looked down at the rolling hills and fields and fields of farmland throughout Mayr. I saw The Big Mountains on the horizon and just before them was the dwarf town of Raggar. The golden forests whose leaves had turned into the typical colours of autumn on the first day. I looked to my left and saw the skyline of Ecklewood. Once my home, now a distant memory; a place I knew so well. The great tower – now a ruin but once an extravagant palace for our late royal family, ever-present above the tall and not-quite-straight houses in Ecklewood. The smoke from the chimneys rose and gathered above the town mixing in with the clouds and no doubt falling back down in the form of rain on Ecklewood. During the autumn months, it always rained down on Ecklewood – it was the start of the new school year.
During my school days, there was one wizard who didn't want to go to school. He cast a spell of rain clouds above the town and created a torrential rainfall which had never been seen before. It flooded the entire town and caused the school, and everything else, to close. The wizard was never caught but will be forever in my memory as my hero. He got me out of a lesson of herbal magic. The worst kind of magic and the worst kind of lessons.
Before the wizard placed this curse of rainfall on Ecklewood, the rain came at precisely six o'clock daily because it just seemed like the sensible solution, we couldn't allow nature to have its own say on what would happen with the weather, that would have caused endless headaches and traffic chaos. The sun came up at the same time every day and set at the same time every day. The seasons were seasons and started on the right day. All the leaves would turn autumnal colours on the day autumn began; the snow would fall the day winter began and the flowers would blossom the day that spring began. During the summer, we had an intense heat. Nowadays, we still have the intense heat during the summer but it comes with rain. The rain freezes during the winter and becomes snow.
As I looked down over the realm and wishing I was down there amongst the forests and my home, I started to daydream about what could have been. My job, was it the right job for me? Could I have ever been anything more? I looked over at Raggar and pondered the lives of dwarves. I looked over the rolling hills – a place where I'd always wanted to venture but was too lazy to do so.
As I looked over the edge and my mind wondered, a voice came.
“Don't jump,” the voice shouted.
I turned to see the man I'd met from the previous night.
“Don't do that!” I said while attempted to calm my heart rate down. “You almost made me fall!”
“And I would have said there had been a terrible accident,” the stranger said. “Listen, we got off on the wrong foot last night, I'm sorry.”
“No problem,” I replied.
“I was just playing with you,” he replied. “There isn't much fun to be had these days on Hanging Gardens.”
“I can see that,” I said, looking around the island.
“I hear you went into the human realm and caused some problems for them,” he said.
“I went into the human realm,” I replied. “But it's not what you think.”
“And what is it you think I think, Sunsword?” asked the man.
“Probably the same; you think I think what you think,” I said.
“All right, this isn't going to get easier,” the man said. “Come, let me show you something.”
I asked the man's name again and he still refused to tell me.
“You'll find out when the time is right, Sunsword, I promise you,” he said as we headed towards the windmill in the centre of Hanging Gardens. We walked around the windmill and at the back sat three old wizards just staring at each other and not uttering a word. Their beards were the longest beards I had ever seen and I come from a realm of wizards where beards are the norm.
My friend sat next to them and told me to take a seat next to him. Nobody said anything about our presence but I couldn't help but think about these men's minds. They looked like they hadn't moved for a very long time.
“These men are the wisest men Mayr has ever known,” the stranger said.
“Really? I always imagined wise men to be librarians surrounded by lots of books and encyclopedias. They can't be that wise if they committed crimes and then got themselves caught,” I replied.
“These wise men don't need books or things like that,” the man said.
“Greetings newcomer,” one of the so-called wise men said without raising his head. “Percy Sunsword,” my ears piqued and I listened intently. “You are here with us today because of the life you have led,” I didn't want to listen on. I felt like these men were going to throw me off Hanging Gardens and to a certain death.
“We would like you to join our community, sir,” another one of the wise men interrupted. “You are the one.”
“The one?” I quizzed.
“Yes, the one,” my stranger friend said.
“I can assure you that I'm not the one. I haven't done anything,” being 'the one' sounded like a bit too much work for my liking.
“The one isn't what you think the one is,” the third wise man said. This one was the first one to look up at me.
“That's strange,” I said. “I thought there was only one of the one. I'm just Percy Sunsword,” I replied.
“Yes, you are indeed Perseus Sunsword but there are two of you,” replied the same wise man.
“I can assure you, sir, that there is most definitely only one of me but please call me Percy,” I begged.
“Maybe it's the drink,” my friend said. The wise man lifted his hand and looked at it.
“So it is,” he confirmed.
The wise man stood up and my friend asked, “What is the plan of action?”
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p; “Plan of action?” I asked with no response from either of the men. I looked to the other two wise men for an answer but they didn't bat an eyelid.
“The plan to escape this hellish island. We spent so many years combatting the elves and pushing them and their pathetic regime as far as we could but we were always missing something,” said the wise man.
“We didn't have 'the one',” my friend said whilst looking into the whites of my eyes.
I felt my face grow paler and my heart beat quicker. I had no idea what being 'the one' entailed and I didn't know whether or not I wanted to find out what that meant.
My friend and I left the apparent wise men and went to talk on the edge of the island as it was now at vomit speed and I figured it would be fun to see how long it took the vomit to land on the ground of Mayr.
I sat on the edge and looked down at Ecklewood. All that freedom those people had down there. The elves weren't so bad.
“One, two, three, four...”
My friend joined me at the edge and didn't say a word. He knew what I was thinking about.
“It isn't so bad, you know?” he said. “They've always said 'the one' but in fact they just wanted someone to join them who was as outraged by the treatment from the elves as them. It didn't matter who it was. Your achievements on Earth were fantastic and well-thought of up here. Especially by the three wise men.”
“Five, six, seven...”
“You're timing your sick, aren't you?” he said.
“Yes, there's not much else to do around here,” I answered.
“It wasn't all that,” I replied. “I just tried to help the humans but a couple of them were hurt in the process and then there was this one guy who hit me with his...”
“car. I know. I know more than you think,” my friend said.
“Who are you?” I asked without turning, intrigued to learn his name.