Diary of a Wizard [ Original Short Story ]

Diary of a Wizard
by Blair Renaud

Here I rot... the passing moons my only reference of time. Locked in this tower like a senile old king... How many years has it been? This life...
Was it my life, or his?

My beard almost to my waist, white and thin.

I must look like him now. Though I haven’t seen a mirror in...
How long has it been?

I wear his clothes. I use his symbols... His words... his magic... his name...

Mirlin.

...So much death in the name of ignorance.

They call me a hero...
“The great wizard” “destroyer of ghouls“
Murderer... Monster...

Too much power to be wielded by a man... Death with the flick of a wrist.
Saltpetre... sulphur...
Like the finger of god. I smote my enemies with a mere gesture.
With this wand.

Everything smells of it now, like some vile apothecary. My clothes...my life...

I remember when I first smelled it...

I thought he was a woman as I ran through the field toward him. His strange dance in slow motion. His sleeves hung from his limbs like moss draped from a willow tree.
The wolf at my heels kept me from realizing its beauty until much later.

There was crack of thunder, closer than I had ever heard, and with a yelp of terror, the wolf darted back into the forest. Face down in the grass crying into my arms, I felt his hand on my shoulder. “Ok now boy. You get up.”
I raised my head a little. What strange shoes, I remember thinking.

“Ok boy. Come now.”

He helped me to my feet.

Blue smoke...that now too familiar smell...

He was a traveler from a land to the far-east.
I was a traveler now as well... a lost boy. My mother died to bring me life. My father, a scribe by trade, killed fighting off a ghoul who was stealing our sheep weeks before.

We would travel together, Mirlin and I.
I asked him later what music he was dancing to that day. He told me I would know when I heard it... I never did.
We wandered for years.

He pulled a cart twice his size like a two legged ox. It was filed with the artefacts of his travels, curiosities that boggled the mind. “Magic” is what most people called it.

I asked so many questions of him, but he always seemed able to answer everything to some satisfaction, even in his broken tongue.

“What of Dragons?” I would ask. “Only the bones of stone.” He explained. “Same as here.”
His people believed dragons were gods of the heavens rather than beasts of the skies, to be revered rather than slain.
He said the robes he wore were spun from the silk of worms.
Magic...

I asked him about the thunder powder... the blue smoke that fills my nostrils even now, the black sand that has consumes me.

I had to watch him carefully to learn its secrets. He would not tell me how it was made and the recipe was written in his runes. I could not read them. They looked like little houses. Saltpetre...sulphur...
Too much power even for a king.
The old man would die eventually. Like everything my life has touched.
It was my turn to pull the cart.
I stopped in the great city and opened a small shop filled with the collection of magics from far-away lands. Mirlin’s Magic Shoppe... It was meant to be in his honour, but by now I had taken his name. I had been called “boy” for so long, I didn’t even remember my own name.

At night I tinkered with the powder. Adding to the mixture, taking away... White, Orange, Yellow as bright as the sun. Flashes from my top floor window soon drew the attention of neighbours.

Eventually I understood enough to show them the power I had harnessed.

That first night in the square truly was magic.
Many in the crowd ran when I lit the first charge and by the time I had lit the final one, some were laughing and smiling...others wept. I now find the latter response the more appropriate of the two.

My fame as a great wizard grew with each demonstration, eventually reaching the king himself. He sent 3 great knights to request my audience. Growing reports of monsters in the countryside’s were creeping into the cities. There were rumours that the dwarves had been all but wiped out by goblins in the mines, though no one had seen them. Wild giants from the north had ransacked cities on the coast.

And the ghouls... those vile nightmares...
Pale faces... like ghosts. Hair as white as crisp snow... even the young.
...Those cold red eyes.

I still remember it’s face that night...
The door swung open and my father stumbled back in terror. The ghoul was holding a dead sheep in his hands, an almost sad and desperate gaze of hunger on his face.

“Fetch my blade boy!” Father shouted. I stood in shock, mouth gaped, almost mimicking the look on the ghoul’s face.

Father lunged at the door with his fist raised. The ghoul dropped the dead sheep at his feet. In a blink father was thrown to the floor. I remember hearing two thuds. The ghoul had run back into the darkness from whence it came before I noticed that father was dead. His skull cracked on table beside the door.

I know the face I made then... I saw it on the young ghoul’s faces whose fathers were felled by my magic... with a flick of this wrist. With a wave of this wand, the last ghoul fell.

They were not monsters. They were the moon to the sun of mankind.

The sun has destroyed the moon... and here I rot.