The Chosen Two

I wanted to write the most cliché fantasy story possible as a writing exercise. The characters felt like they caught on a paragraph in. This actually has potential. 

            “The Vyrax have infiltrated four outposts at our southern border, my King.”

            The only sound in the room was the king’s heavy breathing and the sound of rattling swords here and there and the odd spell getting shot off in the wizard’s tower on the far side of the castle. The messenger stood for a moment before the mad king, waiting for his response. The throne room stood deathly silent, like a crypt or a church or a brothel on a Sunday.

            “How many knights remain in my employ?” The king rasped.

            “Only three, your highness,” the master at arms said. “Silver, Rhesus, and Mander.”

            “The rest?”

            The master-at-arms was quiet. “You had them executed for treason.”

            “I did no such thing!” The king leaped to his feet, face purple.

            “You said they were conspiring with the wizards to tame dragons and lay waste to your kingdom.”

            “That’s an absurd impossibility.” The king sat back down.

            “That’s what Vargas said when you had him executed.” The master-at-arms felt a little peevish. This was the third time someone—

            Without warning, there was a flash of light and the king’s head detonated, splattering gore across the throne room. The haggard courtiers, who had seen some pretty terrible things recently, reacted with amusement and boredom.

            “Well, this doesn’t solve our endemic problems,” the messenger said hesitantly.

            “Shut up, this isn’t all bad.” The Vizier was cleaning his nails, which were long and yellow and probably couldn’t be cleaned.

            “You shut up, you’re probably behind his assassination.”

            “I can’t do magic, you git.” The Vizier stood in a grand flourish of dark robes.

            “As if,” the master-at-arms scoffed, then suddenly looked terrified.

            “Well, we have only one choice for king.”

            “The chosen one!” The messenger looked proud.

            “Of course, the chosen one.” The master-at-arms was carefully trying to camouflage himself against a giant brocade tapestry with a female courtier’s wimple.

            “But there is a major problem,” the Vizier sneered. He really didn’t need to sneer, he thought. There’s really no major point in the character development to be sneering all the time. Perhaps he could smile next time? Wait, teeth. Sharp, rotten teeth are such a hassle to maintain. He satisfied himself by winking, which still felt predatory. “There are two possible chosen ones.”

            “Chosen two.”

            They all looked at who spoke. The Grand Wizard was mostly senile. He was thirty-two and had set off too many spells next to his head. Something about the thaumatic energy had melted something important in there. They didn’t know what, don’t ask. They aren’t brain surgeons; bones of Christ you’re inquisitive. Read the book. He spent most of his time rolling his wheelchair down spiral staircases on accident and telling people his name was Toe, so that’s what they called him.

            “Chosen two?”

            “We must send them on a quest. Possibly together.”

            The Vizier, master-at-arms, and messenger glanced at each other, questioning his sudden lucidity.

            “A quest?”

            “If they can stop the Vyrax threat, then we will have a real winner.”

            “Wait, won’t we have to have two kings if they stop it together?” The master-at-arms was having trouble processing all this. He glanced at the steaming stump of the king’s neck.

            “We could vote…” the messenger suggested.

            “Democracy.” The Vizier shuddered.

            “But then we wouldn’t have the benefit of a fantasy buddy-comedy,” Toe said.

            “Who are the chosen two?” the messenger asked.

            “The first is Mander, the knight.” The throne room visibly relaxed. Mander was sexy, strong, capable, well-rounded.

            “The second?” The Vizier was leaning forward.

            “His name is Jack the Petard.”

            “Jack the Retard?”

            “The Petard,” Toe said forcefully.

            “He blows stuff up,” the master-at-arms said, checking the king’s wrist for a pulse.

            “Well, why bother with the quest then?” the messenger asked. “Mander is our man.”

            “Rules are rules,” Toe said, before emitting a streamer of drool and lapsing back into silence.

            “Well,” sighed the Vizier. “Those Vyrax aren’t going to vanquish themselves.”

Touch

I don't really know where I was going with this, but my prose was on point for this excerpt. This is all I have. 

            Ulfric watched as they dragged the gambler to the stocks. The sky was slate grey over Edgewick, and leaves tumbled by like a dry tide as the wind tugged at the edge of his ragged overjacket, chilling him. He stuffed his hands into the large pockets and watched them force the man to his knees, shoving his throat against the rough wood. The blacksmith’s sons dropped the heavy elm yoke across his shoulders, dropping the corroded iron pins into it. The wind whipped the drying trees, tearing leaves from them as the invisible sunlight faded the charcoal sky, and the indigo feather in the gambler’s broad hat leapt from the band and danced a pirouette.

            The magistrate left in a swirl of purple robes, and the blacksmiths followed him, leaving only Ulfric and the gambler, staring at each other. With a trapped hand, he beckoned Ulfric closer. Ulfric walked closer, standing in front of the crude platform.

            “Can you help me?”

            “Why?”

            He seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

            “What did I do wrong?”

            “It isn’t obvious by now?” Ulfric asked.

            “No, I mean, why is it illegal to gamble?”

            “It isn’t illegal to gamble,” Ulfric said. “It’s just illegal to win.”

            “Who was I playing?”

            “The magistrate’s son.”

            The gambler let out a sigh. A trickle of blood inched down his throat where a splinter had stabbed him, making a scarlet rivulet on his neck. “I have the worst luck with opponents.” He gave Ulfric a sharp look. “Well? Can you let me out?”

            “Why should I do that?”

            “I have something that could make you one of the most powerful men in the world.”

            “Why should I believe you?”

            “What do you have to lose? Look at yourself.”

            Ulfric had heard that more times than he cared to remember, but coming from the mouth of a complete stranger was like getting punched with a lead club.

            He wasn’t much to look at, that much he knew. A skinny, scraggly orphan, maybe fifteen, with fingers quick enough to get him into trouble; filthy hair knotted with dirt and over his old servant’s shift a once-colorful captain’s jacket, flowing sleeves a glory of torn and yellowed lace and cracked epaulets over the blue and red and gold. His eyes were the only thing that could trap one’s attention: green as an oak leaf, sparkling like a forest stream and deep as a well.

            “What can you give me?”

            “I can give you the ability to never fail.”

            “I can see it worked for you.”

            “It doesn’t work like that.” The man was getting exasperated. “I have a book in my pack. The pack is stored underneath this platform because your magistrate is stupid enough to not recognize it for what it is; he thought that it was a journal. Get it out for me.”

            Ulfric got on his knees in the icy mud and crawled underneath the girders of the stocks. Caterpillars and glowfairies fled before him as he grasped the hardened leather bag and pulled it free.

            “Open it and pull out the book.”

            The heavy volume was bound in leather, with an ivory plate on the front. An indigo sigil was painted on the white bone.

            “This book contains the secrets of Touch, the ability to finish any task, do anything successfully, and it’s all written in a language that only I can understand.”

            “Where did you get it?”

            The man winked. “I’ll tell that story when you let me out.”

            Ulfric thought for a moment, and then dropped the book back into the bag. “I like my life just fine right now, thanks.”

            Rather than getting angry, the man seemed to deflate.

            “Then go. Leave me to contemplate.”

            Ulfric turned and started to walk away. A few feet away, he paused and turned. “What do you call yourself?”

            “Stag.” The man said. “Now go.”

The Dreamer

This is an idea I had for a dark, eerie short story. While the execution may be a bit rough the plot is one that is both classic and expansive. It may have potential. I was going for a Lovecraft or Shelley feel in the prose, almost romantic sort of baroque feel, an agelessness that defies strictures of horror or fantasy, like a supernatural Dickens. There is an intended scene with the Dreamer later on in the story, if I ever finish. 

Update: I added some stuff. 

            The old man gestured towards Edward. “You like books?”

            Edward didn’t. He liked book stores. The smell, the look, the feel of gnarled and worn leather against his hand. Thick, tarnished bosses on the spines like taxidermied creatures of eras bygone.  He never read them, curiously enough. What had started as a harmless walk and browse an evening after work had become near obsession. He chose books purely on aesthetic appeal. The more beautiful or different the book the greater the draw it exerted on him.

            “No.” Edward said simply. The man smiled, teeth gapped and angled like broken sidewalk tiles.

            “I have a book you’ll like.”

            Edward hadn’t been to this store before. It was off Burbank and Chancellor street in Grand Braxton, England. The door had been broken off a lorry and hung in a frame of some sort, and Edward had found it by taking a wrong turn and ending up in front of it, staring at the curious sort of place.

            “What does it look like?”

            The wrinkled little man brought out a very plain book from behind his teetering counter. Edward liked it. It was as though someone had sat down and very carefully thought of how to possibly make the plainest book imaginable, except the cover was wood. There was no ornamentation, and the cover was a sort of blackish, stained, gouged out wood. The pages were yellowed but cut perfectly even. The pages were so thin that the whole think resembled a block of layered wood or clay, not a book at all. Edward touched it and nearly recoiled. The cover was like ice, so cold it burned for a moment.

            He opened it. Every page was blank, but with the faintest suggestions of words like ink had once stood like marching soldiers on the cream pages before fading like ghosts. The harder he tried to make out the words the less the words seemed to matter or exist.

            He bought the book and left, taking a right turn and a left and finding himself once again in the familiar streets.

            At home, he placed the book on the table that sat next to his bed. It sat there unmoving as Edward stared at it. He shook himself. It was as though he expected it to move, to jump or dance or speak like men. It remained comfortingly, or disappointingly, booklike. The evening grew chill, Edward warmed a potato in the coals of his oven and baked two rolls in a pan. A bit of cold beef came out of the icebox, and Edward drew the heavy velvet curtains to his apartment and ate his meal in a silence that was neither lonely nor comfortable. The sounds of passing trucks and carriages grew seldom, the voices of the adjacent apartments faded into the swaddled night. Up the stairs, into bed Edward went, pausing a moment to brush his fingers across the cover of the book. It was warm to the touch now. As he laid down in the bed, he pulled the curtains of the bed closed. He thought almost he heard a soft, catlike step across the floorboards, but a breathless moment passed without further sound. As Edward fell asleep he turned his back to where the book sat, and whether this was conscious or unconscious flickered through his mind a moment longer than a thought of that sort might.

            Edward awoke in a cave.

            The air was warm, like the breath of a stranger on one’s neck.

            Thinking himself in a dream Edward thought nothing of it. The passage in front of him was lit without light, and stretched away for a short distance. Edward followed the passage, feeling the walls thoughtlessly as he went. After a moment he reached an opening. He stood in a cavern so enormous a feeling of something like terror flitted over him. An ink dark pool stood as flat as a plate in the center of the enormous cavern. The pool was round like a porthole, opaque but reflective, and so large the other wall of the cavern was swallowed in darkness. Edward found himself drawn towards the pool as though not of his own volition. He reached towards the pool and awoke.

            The moon threw shafts of deathless light threw the bubbled glass of his windows, etching grids on the floor. Edward pressed his hands against the glass, reassured by the coolness of the window against his palms. The street below and away the window rested like a stone river. A faint feeling, neither hunger nor nausea but some brother of the two knotted Edward’s stomach. He took the stairs with the care of the recently awoken, standing in his silent kitchen as he poured a glass of water from the silver pitcher he kept in his icebox. The water drove needles into his teeth and swept the musty flavor from his tongue. Edward left the glass on his counter and returned to his room.

            The book lay open on his nightstand. Edward tried suddenly to remember opening it, and could neither determine that he had or had not. He closed the book. It shut with a slap that was not unlike that of a water snake sliding into a stream, a sound that ran a cool finger down his spine.

           The next morning was the chill gray that heralds bone-cracking cold. Edward sat on the edge of the bed and regained wakefulness before rising to dress. In the middle of putting his waistcoat on he remembered the book. It wasn’t on the nightstand, but instead another book had been set there. A copy of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth sat in its place. Confused and not a little unsettled, though he wouldn’t admit it to himself, Edward searched the apartment half-dressed until he came upon the volume sitting on his kitchen table. It was open and on the page was a strange symbol, filled with intricate hairlike lines and knots that so tricked and confused the eye it was hard to follow, seeming only to change position and orientation the longer you looked at it. Edward flipped quickly through the other pages, looking for new symbols but nothing was there. When he tried returning to the original page, the symbol was gone. Edward looked at the clock that sat in his foyer, cursed, and resolved to search for the symbol another time.

            He worked at the First Anglican Bank on Halifax, across from a seedy pub he took lunches in. At noon, Edward walked across the street for a bowl of fish soup and a muffin. Inside, a group of sailors had taken up residence at several of the tables Edward would normally sit at so he was forced to take a position at the bar. Not three minutes later a large Swede, stinking of rum and ocean, stumbled to the bar and sat directly next to Edward.

            “Have you heard?” His ice-blue eyes bored into Edward’s brown ones.

            “Heard what?”

            “The graffisk. They found a graffisk in morning.”

            “What’s a graffisk?”

            The Swede emanated exasperation before replying. “A white squid was found this morning on the beach near the pier. Bad omen.”

            “What does it mean?”

            “Death is coming.” The Swede hailed the bartender before turning back to Edward. “Death is going to come to Grand Braxton, mark my words. It won’t be pretty.”

            “What should I do?”

            “Leave. Go to the states, or up north, if you can. Ireland or Scotland. South, per’aps. The West Indies. Anywhere but ‘ere.”

            “Will it reach London?”

            “The last time we found a graffisk was the beginning of the Great War. Before that, the potato famine in Ireland. When it happens, it will be bad.”

            Edward nodded, shaken, and returned to his soup. The Swede drained the beer he was given, threw a coin on the counter and shambled off.

            That night, Edward went to bed with some trepidation. The book was still sitting on his kitchen table where he’d left it that morning, but with shaking hands he put it in the cabinet below his desk and locked the door. Mentally laughing at himself for his superstition, he traipsed upstairs, locked the bedroom door and after getting into his nightclothes, pulled the curtains on his bed. Sleep didn’t come at first, but deep into the night rain began to fall and somewhere in the depths of his racing thoughts, Edward fell asleep.