Gregor The Cripple

Broken things lay scattered about the workshop as hole-punched testaments to Gregor’s genius. Above them, at a table he’d dragged to the centre of the room, the wizard sat brooding with academic intensity. There, a pen floated above several leaves of much-written-upon paper, ready to work, though all of the work was already done.

This is why Kaius had forced him out into the world. Without encounters like the kopfbiest and the pricolici, he’d have no real need to innovate his own spells, and very little inspiration for whatever token efforts toward creation Kaius would have forced him to make had he remained at the tower like some mage.

Through his suffering, he had grown. Stagnation had been avoided, for now.

The spell was drafted and functional, and he’d even drawn some very nice graphs, but Gregor wasn’t satisfied.

Really, now that it was all laid out neatly in his mind and on paper, he found that the concept behind it wasn’t overly profound or complex at all, and so it bothered him that it was actually new and novel and that it had taken such a winding chain of events to spur him to create it.

He felt it absurd that nobody else had ever been inclined or induced or inspired into happening upon this idea before him, and he’d know if there was, because Gregor kept his ear to the ground when it came to death-dealing and people-braking, and useful things had a habit of becoming popular.

If this idea had previously been developed into a functional form, it would have certainly become well-known, and not just among sorcerers. As Mildred had insightfully remarked during the experimentation, this slightly clever application of explosives could certainly be replicated by mundane methods and with mundane materials.

It was quite something that this ended up being his invention, and he couldn’t help but wonder at the actual pathology of this strange circumstance.

The world is a remarkable machine, and everything which exists within it is both successor and progenitor to intractable sequences of cause and effect. This state of affairs is usually called ‘fate’, and Gregor found its workings in this instance to be quite bizarre. Incidentally, the art of magically predicting the paths that coming sequences will take and of tracing the relations of a given lineage of sequences is called divination, and it is one of the few things which Gregor cannot do, though he understands theory of it.

And so, thinking all this and feeling exceedingly cerebral and self-assured in the wake of his brilliant fight and his success in spellcraft, Gregor’s attention was captured by his curiosity about the secret true workings of the world and the budding need to decipher them. He felt within his mind the burning little ember-beginnings of an academic exploration into the true nature of the phenomenon of inspiration, which, he realised, was itself a product of inspiration.

This circular kind of causality bothered him for some reason.

He figured that there had to be some kind of actual catalyst for the crystallisation of contributing events into pearls of intention in the mind of the inspiree – the so-called muse, which must exist, else some other genius would have found the spell before he was born – and that if one could learn to recognise the traces of this muse, or to manipulate events such that it is created, one would be able to deterministically induce inspiration in themselves or others, and people can be inspired to do a great many things. Any thing, perhaps.

Wait… Was that how the Norn did it? Had he stumbled upon her secret mechanism for the manipulation of fate?

Gregor knew then that he was thinking dangerous thoughts, but he also knew that he had been inspired to think them.

With the Norn and her meddling in mind, he supposed that things can only ever eventuate as their anteceding circumstances determine, and people will only ever think and act as their circumstances incline them to think and act. Thus-

“Gregor?” Mildred was nearby, cleaning the mechanisms of all of her guns.

“If everything is a result of circumstances which are the results of circumstances which resulted from circumstances which are the necessary results of chains of circumstances and their results and causes, how is it even possible for fate to be malleable? How can she do that? Or-”

“Gregor.”

“-Is she not changing anything? Were her changes simply things that were always going to happen? That must be it. Events are simply proceeding as they always would have, probably. She is a cog in her own machine, building it and being used by it as both a consequence and mechanism of the nature of its architecture in an uncomfortably circular relationship of cause and effect.”

“Who? Gregor, what?” For the first time, Mildred was unable to find any solid bits of reason in Gregor’s episode of madness to use as a handle to pull the breach in his mind shut and stop the weird from spilling out.

“I’m not quite sure. It’s too big of a thing to keep in my brain for long enough to comprehend more than superficially.”

“…” What to do? If she didn’t plug the leak, Terrible Things might happen, or come out, as the case may be. She didn’t know why, but she was sure that Gregor had Terrible Things stored somewhere in his head. Perhaps for safekeeping, or perhaps just for fun. Either was likely.

“There are thoughts too big for your brain?” She remarked, hoping to distract him with his own ego. “I didn’t know they got that big.”

“This is too big for any brain, any of the flesh ones, at least.”

“There are non-flesh brains?”

“Real people aren’t the only people.”

She pursed her lips. It clearly hadn’t worked.

“And your father, of course. His brain probably isn’t flesh either, thought I don’t really know what dragon brains are, to be honest. I suppose I’ll need to ask. Maybe he’ll let me use it to think a few big things.”

At this, Mildred’s whole body tensed, even her mind. Relief welled up and threatened to spill out of her eyes.

Gregor’s job had been to escort her safely home, and now she was here, however empty the place may be.

She’d tried desperately not to think about it, but really, his job was complete, and given the danger inherent to the task and the simple fact that he had already been injured protecting her, it seemed very unlikely that he would accept the job of taking her to wherever else it was that she now needed to go.

Mildred had avoided broaching the subject of reemployment because he’d probably stick around for a little while if things were ambiguous, but now it seemed that her worries were for nothing. Gregor planned to take her to her father.

Guilt then began to creep up beside the relief, because it simply wasn’t fair to Gregor. He’d been shot for her sake, and she’d given him a rock instead of a healer. He had performed his task, but her end of the bargain was yet unfulfilled. And now he was going to keep doing it anyway.

She turned away so that he couldn’t see her misty eyes.

“…Are you sure you want to keep helping me? Your leg…”

Gregor was a little confused, having never considered his job complete. “The leg is fine.”

“No. Gregor, you were just shot. Aren’t you in pain?”

“Of course I am.”

“Then-”

“It’s only pain.” He said, as if that sufficiently addressed her concerns.

“Gregor- pwa-” Words failed her then, and she stuttered and blustered as her train of thought fell off the tracks and into the great semantic void below. She then made one of those sounds which aren’t words but which express confusion better than any word ever could. "Dwahh-what?” she quickly appended, having restored herself to full conversational capacity. “Gregor, pain isn’t nice, and it’s my fault that you were shot. I don’t want you to suffer more for my sake.” She pointed to herself. “I worry about it because it’s my fault.”

He shrugged. “I can just ignore the pain, and you must remember that I am a very arrogant wizard. For that reason, violence is half of my profession and I enjoy it very much.”

She seemed a little dumbfounded and her expression was pure guilt. Gregor knew Mildred was feeling bad because of him, though he didn’t understand why. He was to protect her, yet now she was hurt. This reminded him of the past and stank of failure. He couldn’t abide it.

Ironically, they both thought themselves guilty of the same sin.

Knowing that his statement did not lend itself to intuitive comprehension, Gregor began to explain.

“Violence is the best food for the ego. It is the only sport of consequence, where your every brush with another athlete is a true test of superiority. It is therefore the most enjoyable form of competition. If there weren’t dire consequences for failure, people wouldn't try their hardest to win, and thus victory over them would be worth significantly less. Consequently, consequences give significance to victory. So it isn’t your fault that I have a hole in my leg. It is mine. I choose to fight wanting there to be suffering for somebody at the end because it makes the exercise so much more satisfying and arrogance-affirming, and if there were no chance of me being the one to suffer, violence would be worth nothing. Practicing magic without consequence is the practice of the mage, and I am not a mage.”

He held up his stump. “This hurts all the time.” He then pointed to his empty eye. “This too. And I have cracked ribs which won’t heal for months. I have become adept at ignoring pain, and am unbothered by this new hole in my leg.” It was only partly a lie. You can ignore pain, but it will never stop bothering you, and getting shot really hurts.

But, by this point, he had been suffering for almost a full year. The pain was still constant, though not so bad in the absence of opium as he had thought it would become. He couldn’t ignore it, not really, but through this year of unwilling practice, it was no longer such a thief of attention, ever-present in the front of his mind.

He still felt it, but he wasn’t forced to think about it.

So, as Gregor said, it was only pain. He was far too egotistical to accept that mere unbelievable agony was enough to incapacitate him, and so it wasn’t. A sensation would not rule him, though he’d like very much for it to go away.

Mildred, who now knew why Gregor wanted a healer, felt all the worse for not having one to give.

“On this topic,” he continued, attempting to change the topic quite dishonestly, “Your father is out there, and we need only find him. I don’t suppose you know where else he might be?”

Mildred shook her head.

“Did he have any abnormal associates? Friends? Did he keep in touch with any ‘people’ of the kind that might still be around to ask for information?”

If Mildred were honest with herself, she’d know that she was scared to think about what the future might hold, because thoughts like that were an emotional investment, and she now knew those to be a risk.

Recently, she had learnt that hoping and wanting desperately for something is a gamble against unknown odds, and the price of loss is pain proportional to your hopes. Hope makes you vulnerable, and the more you want something, the more it hurts when you lose the bet.

Mildred had felt this, and now she feared feeling it again. She almost wanted to stay there in that empty cave and never again risk the pain of having her hopes draw to nothing.

She wet her dry lips. “I have an aunt. I think I’ve mentioned her before. In the Golden Empire. She’d still- well, she might know where he is. And…” Mildred’s voice got small. “…I’d like to see her anyway.”

“Brilliant.” Gregor shuffled together the papers of his manuscript and rose on unsteady legs. “The Empire happens to be offering a large amount of money for my master’s head, and I happen to be in a position to collect. You shall still see me healed at the end of this.”