Gregor The Cripple

Old blood has a peculiar stink. The clothes of the pair had been wizard-laundered and Mildred had washed her gore-splattered parts in the little subterranean stream by the corpse of her cottage long before they’d left off down and away from the cave, but the problem, as she was now smelling, was the gore-speckled horse that she and Gregor rode upon in tandem. Brains, if her recall was correct. Brains and horse sweat. Yuck.

It was the odour of a battlefield, she supposed, imagining a hundred thousand men and horses stinking just as much or worse. This stench, then, was the price of victory, and it wasn’t so bad if she thought about it like that – still not very nice though, and so she resolved to wash the horse at the earliest convenience, or inconvenience, if necessary.

Behind them, the Shard was a black obelisk on the horizon, a grand monument to the death of her old life. Looking back, Mildred wondered if she’d ever see it again, and realised that she didn’t want to. There was no longer anything there for living eyes to see.

Expecting that life to resume had been a doomed endeavour from the outset. And now it was over. Definitively. In her mind and in reality, but that was fine.

It was fine for some things to end.

After the stress of their approach to the shard, she found this acceptance and the consequent emotional latitude to be quite refreshing, and she felt in that moment quite mature and wizened, like an old lady who bore the pride of having suffered.

Her life now existed out in the world, hidden amongst all the new things the future had birthed, and she looked forward to rifling through them to find it. There would be danger, certainly, but Mildred had managed to retain the services of a capable chaperone, one who rather enjoyed being the solution to impossible problems, and she had come to acquire an appreciation for his odd company.

Despite her situation, Gregor hadn’t been exceptionally delicate with her, which was nice and had probably helped her come to accept it, thought perhaps he just didn’t have the capacity. Pity would feel strange from him.

She looked at the wizard, into whom she was pressed awkwardly, though it wasn’t so awkward anymore, eyeing the back of his head and the side-scruff of his face as the horse tink-clopped along. No, certainly not. If he pitied someone, he’d mean it as an insult. She understood that much.

“You need to shave.”

He grunted in reply, producing a little mirror and a knife.

“Not on the horse, Gregor. You’ll cut yourself.”

He snorted and vanished them back to whatever dimension she was sure he’d conquered for the sake of convenient storage.

Gregor listened to her, and this was perhaps the greatest comfort in the world.

Carrying all the necessities of life on the road – vittles, bedrolls, and pots and things – as well as a recent addition of ancient tinkering tools gathered by Mildred from the few things in her workshop that weren’t aged to inoperability, the unreasonably sturdy horse, who presently had no name, bore them reliably eastwards. Trotting at a pace remarkable of a beast so burdened, down and away from the mountain range that the Shard called home.

Their eventual goal was the capitol of the empire in the north, wherefrom they planned to catch a train to the Republic who had ports that would carry them to the Golden Empire across the sea, which was much a much grander and greater and goldener place than these mere continental powers. But more immediately, they needed to find a train to take them to the capitol.

Mildred, who was newly estranged from the fetters of her life in the past and freshly relieved of her ill-fated hopes of reobtaining it, found herself filled with vim at the prospect of mechanical transportation.

For this, they were headed east, to places which were nice and flat and populated enough for trains to stop and collect passengers.

“Say,” she had a thought, “you mentioned that the reward for your master’s bounty was all of his possessions.”

“I did.”

“Well, I happen to know that Kaius the Exile was a baron prior to his exile.”

Gregor blinked, having not really expected Mildred to know anything about his master. “…I suppose that was fairly recent for you.”

“Barons typically have land, right? Someplace with some kind of industry that’s worth being given to someone as part of a title, right?”

“Generally.”

“Do you think a place like that might have a train, or be the kind of place a train might go?”

“The barony had a large silver mine, which is certainly the kind of place that might attract the local train population.”

“Like geese to a pond?”

“Almost exactly like geese, right down to the honking.” He felt her hands land on his shoulders as she leaned in close.

“…So YOU might own a train?”

“I doubt I’ll get the title or the land as part of my reward, but if I do, and if there is a train, I promise to let you take a ride.” This was certainly a statement that could have been worded in a dirty way, but he managed to refrain, knowing that such statements are only impactful when used sparingly.

Thinking of Kaius and his mine and of Mildred, Gregor’s mind inevitably wandered to the ruby, and then inspiration, which Gregor now considered with some suspicion to be a rather external phenomenon, stuck fate-changingly again.

Extracting Kaius’s grimoire from his hat, he began flipping through it, searching for a few pages that he’d only glanced at briefly before succumbing to disinterest.

Watching over his shoulder, Mildred looked on with curiosity as he leafed past several odd entries. There were things odd things like ‘Phonetic variations between bean-sídhe screeches and klagmutte wails’, ‘Parasitic emotions’, and ‘The many possible locations of Maltorian’s undertower’. These and various others went by before he settled on ‘The thaumaturgic conductivity of corundum’.

Rubies are crystalline corundum, as most people know.

“The ruby you gave me, Mildred’s Cherry.”

“Don’t call it that.”

“I’m going to cut it into an orb and stick it in my eyehole.”

“You have a wonderful talent for putting words in horrible arrangements.”

Gregor had decided to enchant himself a prosthetic eye. And why stop there? Perhaps there was a new hand in his future too.

***

As the road became busier and the shadow of a town grew in the distance, clouds rolled in above. Not the omen-clouds of Gregor’s storms, but the regular clouds of an overcast sky, and as the place grew near, little flakes of winter’s first snow fell down to dust Gregor’s hat.

He reflected that he hadn’t really seen snow since Sine, or been anywhere actually cold, either, and that it would keep getting colder and snowier as they moved northward and the winter matured.

He’d be fine in his temperature-enchanted cloak, but Mildred would struggle. Gregor would need to purchase her some heavier clothes. Perhaps a hat too. Everyone needed a hat.

It was intensely strange to become aware that he was considering the comfort of another person without monetary encouragement or motive for personal gain. That wasn’t really a thing that Gregor ever did, as far as he was concerned, and so he quickly dismissed this new and odd behaviour as nothing more than a clever strategy to ingratiate himself to Mildred such that entry to her underparts became possible, and moved on to thinking about more normal things.

Namely, how to cut a ruby so that it would fit comfortably inside the void in his head. It was an interesting problem, because eyes weren’t perfect spheres and he still had little remnants of cauterised muscle in there, as well as the stub of the optic nerve. For comfort, the ruby would need to be shaped quite particularly.

As he considered this (the answer was magic), the overburdened horse trotted stoic and brisk into town.

The enchantment would also be difficult. He’d need to cut runes into the gem, but the surface couldn’t be rough, lest the inside of his eyesocket be scraped every time he blinked or swivelled the eye to look at something. He supposed that he could carve the runes on the inside of the gem, but that wasn’t something he could do freehand, or without the employ of a large circle and magical resources he didn’t currently possess.

This issue was the reason wizards and mages both built towers; complex magic isn’t something possible for the vagrant sorcerer. Big spells simply require too many resources and too much preparation. Gregor’s talent could mitigate this need to a degree, but creating an artificial organ was rather complex, to say the least. He conceded that even he would need the proper facilities for work of this kind.

Gregor frowned at the thought. These facilities existed nearby, in the university at Harsdorf, but that would mean mingling with mages. A thoroughly unpleasant thing to contemplate.

Mildred agreed to the detour under the precondition that he shave himself properly for the foreseeable future, which he was forced to agree would be a positive development.

The town around them boasted a cobble road and old buildings, and the crumbling ruins of a castle sat shambolic atop a nearby hill. It was an established place, quaint of aspect and comfortable of population. This gave the pair hope that there might be a train line, but a quick inquiry informed them that no, the nearest railway was at least a day upcountry.

To appease Mildred’s disappointment, Gregor gave her a purse of silver and accompanied her on a hunt for things she might need.

During this excursion, inside a combination haberdasher-cobbler and coat shop, Gregor was addressed by a familiar voice.

“Wizard!” It called from outside.

Turning away from Mildred trying on some kind of felt smock-thing which didn’t fit her because she was far too tall, Gregor saw a uniformed man walk into the store, three soldiers at his heel.

With a red plumed helmet in the crook of his arm and new gold-tasselled epaulettes atop his shoulders, Major Zimmer von Brandt approached with a hand outstretched in greeting.

It was the wrong hand, but Gregor didn’t really mind.

“You seem to have been promoted.”

“I have indeed been promoted, thanks to you.” Zimmer affirmed, offering the other hand, which Gregor then shook.

“I assume then that you investigated according to my advice.”

“I certainly did.”

“And you know who attacked Wurmburg?”

“No clue.”

“…Promotions usually indicate success, not failure.”

“I haven’t failed yet, and apparently my investigative efforts were sufficient to earn me the positive attention of the people upstairs, however fruitless. I have been relieved of my previous post and transferred to the direct command of the General Staff, with orders to redouble my efforts.”

“Your career seems to be in good health.”

“It is. And on the topic of the health of my career, I would be a fool if I squandered the fortune of having chanced upon you again, mister wizard. Might you furnish me with some more advice? I’ll owe you a very substantial favour.” Before Gregor could answer, Zimmer continued. “We know that it wasn’t the Republic, because their alchemy factories were hit too. And we know that whoever it is, they have a lot of manpower, because most of the towns bordering the witchwood were sacked on the same night a few weeks ago.”

Gregor rubbed his stump. “Looks like war.”

“…That’s the prevailing opinion. Somebody’s building an alchemical stockpile while weaning the rest of the continent.”

“I assume that you have some kind of liaison with the Golden Queen’s Inquisition.”

“I assume we do.”

“Ask them for help. They have agents in most of the ports on the continent, if your enemies were moving people and goods by sea, they’d have some awareness of it.”

“…Do they really?”

“Additionally, I happen to be aware that they currently have their own investigation into strangeness on the continent.”

“…The Golden Empire are on our list of potential culprits.”

“All the more reason for you to talk to them.”

The inquisition were interested in powerful people of strange new allegiance, and Zimmer was interested in strange powerful people collecting resources for war, and Gregor had himself encountered a few bizarrely powerful enemies with a rather singular association.

Little links of relevance were assembling into a chain in his mind, and it seemed to mean much conflict in the future.

“This advice is not free. Expect me to collect that favour.” Gregor stated, ending the conversation when he spotted Mildred strutting over in a big ulster coat which suited her rather well, though it had probably been tailored for a man. What in the world was an ulster, anyway?

***

Night found them at camp in a copse of snow-dusted pine, having opted for the expedience of sleeping en route over the comfort of sleeping in the town, partially because of Mildred’s enthusiasm for trainkind, and partially because of Gregor’s prudence – he naturally didn’t expect their enemies to have given up.

He didn’t know when, but they would come again and their efforts would not be light. It was a certainty.

Clearly, the Worldeater had pawns all over the continent, great ones and little lowly ones both, and so Mildred would never really be safe here, even with Gregor by her side. But their destination was different. The empire across the sea was the safest place in the world, without exaggeration.

He didn’t know the actual state of things, but Gregor felt it safe to assume that the Queen who Kaius had needed to flee would be entirely capable of detecting and curbing the Worldeater’s intrusion into her golden domain. At the very least, there should exist some conflict between these two titans of the world, and so she and her inquisition should be ready allies in denying the Worldeater Mildred, even in absence of whatever influence her ancient aunt happened to possess.

Wait. Gregor had a thought. An ancient aunt? One who happens to be significant enough to have some sort of association with an elder dragon? There can’t be many of those.

“Does your aunt have a name?” He asked.

Mildred looked up from a recently purchased book about shipboard electricity, the generation of which could also helpfully produce drinkable water.

“She’s called Auria.”

“Mhm.”

Gregor was right. There was only one of those.