A/N Clone: Stop reading those Stephen Kings and put down that Dan Brown. Eschew your James Pattersons, thrash your Stewarts and never touch that Osteen again. Toss those Danielle Steeles into the burning effigy of Grishams and Gladwells and enjoy the freedom from the taint of good writing forevermore! (Don’t you dare reach for that Douglas Adams! Have you no shame?)
The dilapidated old building seemed to shun light. The mooncast shadow stretched unnaturally to the substantially distant houses, especially on long winter nights such as this one, and created a feeling of an ominous presence, impregnable and aloof. Hardly anyone knew why or how the abandoned warehouse had evaded demolition for so long- It certainly wasn’t due to the lack of complaints to the sanitation department about how it was teeming with vermin or how the air around the place seemed to be contaminated. Yet there was one who was exceedingly glad that the warehouse hadn’t been taken down yet at the moment.
There slept Lord Voldemort, in a secret compartment above the wooden-plank ceiling of the storage room. Pipes jutted out every three or so square inches on the wall, forming a labyrinthine entangling that left room for almost nothing else. There was no bed. Instead Nagini was his mattress, coiling around him and providing its soft underbelly as a suitable resting place and the presence of his most favorite creature as company. Wormtail snoozed fretfully and uncomfortably in one of the cracked jagged corners of the compartment.
The Dark Lord’s eyelids began to stir, and the pace of his breath quickened. Suddenly, Voldemort sat up, screamed “Lederhosen is my friend! I wish I had gavels instead of cochleae! Quentin Tarantino is really just a silverfish in a rhino costume! The circle of geriatrics is a coral number at heart! Let them eat STIGAMTIC ALMONDS and ENDOTHERMIC PI‘ATAS!” and fell right back to sleep again, nicely alleviating the dark tone of the chapter and selflessly providing readers with insight on his internal thought processes at the same time. Needless to say, this outburst awakened Nagini. Again. And of course, being the irritable diamondback it was, it spluttered its milk in hate.
Dammit! hiss-thought the ophidian groggily. If thhhhat issssn’t thhhe thhhhhird time in a row thhhissss happened, I’ll ssssswallow a horsssse! Mmmm… horsssse… juiccccy hind legssss…. The monstrous adder shook its head and the image of scrumptious equine hindquarters away with it.
I knew letting Masssster turn all my venom into Gatorade wasss a bad idea! But how can I ssssay no to thhhossse dreamy eyesss…
Silently, the giant asp uncoiled itself and slithered towards the refrigerator----
Somebody get us off the air!
[static]
*_*_* PLEASE WAIT WHILE WE SORT OUT THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.
WE ARE VERY SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. BUT NOT REALLY. *_*_*
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[In a circular purple palace located in a volcano on top of a cloud, specifically Sector 5, Computer Room 1-B, Access code: edoc sseccA. Its master likes to think its floating above a planet in a faraway galaxy and not perennially stationed above Rechyjavic, Iceland.]
The Savant: Racecar! Racecar! Where in the hell is that servant of mine? Racecar!
[Racecar rushes in to the room, making sure to swerve around in figure-eights and say “vroom vroom!” several times before coming to attention. A gander at his face somehow always reminded casual onlookers of a fledgling stunted parasauralophus. His cloak was the color the moon will be in Chapter 14.]
Racecar: What is it, sire?
The Savant: The reel for chapter eleven is completely wrong. Do you know what happened?
Racecar: Yes, sire. At first, there was an engulfing, chaotic emptiness called the Void. Then, without explanation, a significant time-space anomaly occurred that resulted in the Big Bang, and”
The Savant: The reel, Racecar, what happened to the chapter?
Racecar: Oh, sorry sire. Well, the problem seems to be coming from Aesopbot.
The Savant: What’s wrong with my fanficmaking android? I paid top dollar for it!
Racecar: Apparently, sire, it critically malfunctioned and exploded into microscopic bits of shrapnel. The Taleweaver’s Domain is filthy now, what with all the metallic dust all over the place. Ugh… one more thing I have to do tomorrow.
The Savant: What!? Why didn’t you tell me sooner!?
Racecar: I was busy watering the lava like you told me to sire.
The Savant: Oh yes. Very well, I will spare you the traditional weeklong sentence to the Room with the Bunch of Unpleasant Things Most People Wouldn’t Want Anywhere Near Their Bodies. But how did Aesopbot malfunction? It did such a great job with every other chapter.
Racecar: I looked into the log of the word processor it was using, sire, and discovered its hard drive combusted when it couldn’t think of any names for the new OCs. You should have seen the explosion, sire. I caught a glimpse of it from where I was working on the Eruption Terrace- it was like the Hindenburg on steroids!
The Savant: That’s the last thing I’ll ever buy from Fate with a nuclear reactor in it! “It’ll run faster,” she says, “and you will no longer depend on me to clean up your little literary crises.” Like she had anything better to do. I knew I should’ve gotten the insurance!
Racecar: I did tell you to.
The Savant: But how can such advanced technology fall prey to a simple name-creating problem?
Racecar: Apparently, sire, there just aren’t any cool RPG-sounding names left anymore. They’ve all been taken.
The Savant: That’s absurd! There are billions of possible syllable combinations! I bet I can think of one right now. “Tet-ris”
Racecar: Taken.
The Savant: Alright, how about O… ro… dru… in? O-ro-dru-in. Orodruin.
Racecar: Taken.
The Savant: Yavi…maya.
Racecar: Taken.
The Savant: Maria.
Racecar: Did you honestly think “Maria” wasn’t going to be taken?
The Savant: Tampax.
Racecar: Taken, and I don’t think you’d want to give one of your characters that name anyway.
The Savant: How about Apropos?
Racecar: Taken. And it’s a word.
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“Hermione?” whispered Harry tentatively as they crossed the Hallway to double Transfig.
“Yes?”
“Do you ever want to trade in your cochleae for gavels and you just don’t know why?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
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The Savant: Voltron.
Racecar: Not taken!
The Savant: Really?
Racecar: No.
The Savant: Eowin.
Racecar: Sire, you must remember to replace ‘i’s with obligatory ‘y’s where possible! Would you buy Mist IV or Myst IV?
The Savant: Alright then, Eowyn.
Racecar: Taken.
The Savant: Argh! What about Kinkos?
Racecar: Taken.
The Savant: Caelin?
Racecar: Hold on, let me go check……………………………………………………… taken.
The Savant: The Savant.
Racecar: [sigh] That’s your name, sire.
The Savant: Really? I thought it was Ondorbgo. I always thought Ondorbgo didn’t roll off the tongue well…
Racecar: Don’t worry sire. For the longest time I thought my name was Pole Position!
The Savant: Dodaru.
Racecar: Amazing! One that isn’t taken! How did you do it sire?
The Savant: Simple. I combined a Dod- with an “aru.
Racecar: You are a mastermind, sire.
The Savant: Don’t you forget it. In fact, from now on, you will address me as “mastersire.” Well, looks like we’ve gotten that problem out of the way!
Racecar: Not quite, sire. There are at least ten minor OCs in this chapter as well.
The Savant: What are we waiting for then? Let’s get cracking! “Bellerophon”.
Racecar: [sigh] Taken…
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The ball of shadow hit Magorian around the torso area. He felt sharp recoil as he slid about three meters backwards, his back arched forwards and his lips bitten with shock. Immediately, wisps of the shadow began to wrap around Magorian and try to pull him to the ground, as if the darkness would like nothing better to rejoin its realm on the earth and leave its ethereal shape in the air. The sheer force of the attraction between ground and shadow would have immobilized the strongest biped, but the struggling centaur had the advantage of two extra appendages, so he stood firm. After a few seconds, the shade dissipated and Magorian was liberated.
There was a brief moment where the Gothmage had a pained expression of sorrow on her face, as if she wanted to apologize. It was quickly swapped with her normal expression of total, humorless indifference (indeed, one could mistake it for a look of defiance).
“Hey! Watch where you’re tossing your balls of shadow. I could have lost an eye.” called out Magorian as he approached her slowly.
She grinned, an odd grin that showed both content and annoyance. “How would the world be better off had you kept your eye?” she asked unexpectedly. Her yellow eyes then glowed a bit brighter, as if the intensity of the question rang echoes of light through her being.
Magorian grinned also, in his manic, insane sort of way. This was his kind of question. He paused to contemplate his answer.
Hmmm… the significance of my eyes on the world. What else has eyes? Gnats have lots of eyes. Gnats are cool. Especially when they come in swarms. Wouldn’t it be really ironic if gnats turned out to have great attention spans? Whoa, Magorian, stay on topic now... Er, my eyes are brown and, um... eye-like... and they can see stuff… What would happen if Samurai Pizza Cats, Big Bad Beetle Borgs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the original Power Rangers and Biker Mice from Mars had a melee death brawl? I’d say Leornado has a good chance of becoming the top dog, but Throttle may give him a run for his money. Then again, Kimberley would probably be the last one alive- no one attacks pink things! On second thought, or eleventh I guess, a Decepticon could crash the fight and start pick everyone off with its giant mech feet. Then again, they might call out the Zords and force the Decepticon to--Hold on, wasn’t I supposed to be doing something?
Impulsively, he asked the Gothmage for her name.
“I have many names, none of which I will waste breath to divulge to anyone.” She stood up and leered at him for some fifteen seconds or so, then sat down in her chair again. Even Magorian was beginning to find her a little strange.
“C’mon, I already know that it’s Dodaru.”
Instantly she became infuriated, and her eyes seemed to seethe as she crushed her armrests with an inhuman grip and yelled in a booming (though still quite feminine) voice, “Wendigo, how did it know? How can it have found out!? How does it know my name? Wendigo!” Her stentorian words made the lounge quake and tremble and the pastoral paintings of the English countryside alongside the walls rattle and turn into pictures of blighted craggy wastelands.
A miniscule white fox appeared floating above her left shoulder, seemingly trying to recover from the shock of such an abrupt summoning. It carried an herb in its mouth and holly bells tied to sashes around each of its two bushy tails. Magorian had heard of these creatures before- they came in many shapes and guises, but familiars were all alike in that they came to the aid of the wizard or witch they’re bound to when summoned. According to legend, only the most devout mages could earn familiars. Investigation on the Catalysts of Magic had been rumored to have recently started inside the Ministry.
Wendigo had its tails wound up in fear and it began to falter in its floating. One of those anime sweat beads could be seen on its tiny head. Magorian felt sorry for Dodaru’s guardian sprite, which had done nothing wrong. So he chose to intervene.
“I am sorry if knowing your name disturbs you, but it isn’t”Wendigo, is it?”it isn’t Wendigo’s fault. I simply read your name on page 3. Well, I guess you’d have to have Microsoft Word to understand.”
Her eyes’ fire left her and she calmed down, dismissing her familiar with a snap of her pale fingers (which was really quite impressive). “I come from a weary world.” was her only explanation for her fit of sporadic rage, decreed in a wavering and solemn monotone.
“What do you mean?” he goaded.
“I’m a Gothmage.” she said.
Magorian pretended to be surprised. “A Gothmage? What are you doing here in the Ministry of Magic?”
“Revenge.” she said simply.
Magorian started to get scared. Did she mean she was going to attack everyone in the Ministry? Then he realized he was being silly; she wouldn’t wait in a lounge and do nothing when there was a perfect opportunity to stealthily down every employee in the building. Magorian didn’t know whether to inquire further or to just wait for 3:34. Luckily, the decision was wrested from him when Dodaru spoke again.
“Bright as the sea and twice as dark
Unlike the desert but just as stark
About the reeds scream voices of death
So shriek the men of Andaeneth
Hammer and axe they dared not forge
Yet all the same did they fall to the gorge
Even if they’d done it, even if they did
Their strikes would not faze the Caivorid
For in the sludge it doth wait in and prey
Ever scouting for food astray
For centuries past did men try to slay it
But all they could muster was the will to obey it
And one by one the swamp kings did perish
But they did not die, instead they did relish
The Caivorid’s enchantment that kept them alive
Its slaves were happy, and the great ghost did thrive
One day it departed in search of new fare
It traveled through oceans to the land of Aer
It pillaged and wrecked, enprisoned and vexed
The livestock murdered and cottages decked
With scores of zombies, new and old
So the tale of Andaeneth’s told”
she recited.
It took a while for the chieftain’s mind to register what he’d heard. (He feared asking her to tell it again.) Bits and pieces of the poem that Magorian remembered clicked, and he was able to understand the gist of it. “So you came to get revenge on the Caivorid.” He stated.
Her yellow eyes glimmered, as if to show assent.
“What is it? And where? Is it the thing that keeps stealing socks?”
“A shapeshifting ghost that can kill, resurrect and enslave. It lives in the Duirop Marshes of America. No.” she answered methodically.
“Duirop Marshes? Oh no… that’s where I’m going…” Magorian looked at his official-looking paper with the seal, just to be sure. He was sure. “And this great ghost lives there? MV didn’t say anything about any great ghosts!” He was unaware that it said so on the contract in microscopic print that said- (you weren’t expecting to read microscopic writing, were you?)
“I’ve come to eradicate the Caivorid.” she added with no hint of fear in her voice.
“I can see how powerful a witch you are. But how do you plan on killing a spirit? You must know that it’s impossible to--”
“I was born in the Gothville of Andaeneth.” she interrupted. She didn’t need to be told that she couldn’t do it for the seven hundredth time, and besides, now that the strange creature in front of her knew her name, she figured she could tell him about the rest of her life. It would be nice to let it all out, she surmised.
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Severus Snape was in his study when he felt it. A great scorching in his left arm. Once it had been impulse to grasp the part of his arm where the Mark was and bitter luck to break out in a bit of hives each time it happened. Now he simply sighed in resignation, sorry that he had to leave his office to go out on yet another spying mission. Quickly he donned his Invisibility Cloak and Disapparated, glad he had already drank one of his Odorlessness Potions and cast a charm on himself to aid in his Occlumency that morning.
A quiet gasp of almost entirely suppressed surprise issued from Snape’s lips when he found himself on the porch of a grey old Pennsylvanian house. When had Voldemort changed the Apparation point? He was rocking on a weatherbeaten wicker chair (not a throne, but it would do) with his supplicants surrounding him, making a ring of Death Eaters. Snape was a little late; Voldemort had already begun speaking.
“…years making the film, spent months trying to get my movie on public broadcast, only to find it replaced with some stupid “fanfiction” made by some stupid Muggle child! How dare they think of mocking me so!? Even Nagini wept a little- he always dreamed of being a big movie star. And now that dream has been stripped away by some insolent magicless mortal! Well, I intend to preserve my reputation as ruthless iron-fisted demagogue. There is only one course of action we can take. We must storm all the homes and dwellings in the world and have them watch Voldemort and the Great Refrigerator under duress! Leave no stone or shrubbery unturned! They’ll be happy: I’ve just made twenty thousand copies of the special extended DVD. Then, we’ll annex MagiVision headquarters and coerce them to make three, no, eight channels that show nothing but my movie at all times, and make them have really terrible shows on all the other channels so that everyone that’s anyone will be watching Channels 1-8! It’s totally foolproof! No one shall endure ME!” He waved his wand and an animated GIF of him doing the Mexican hat dance around a crying and caged Dumbledore appeared in the air like a neon sign of smoke and vapor.
After a pregnant pause, Lucius was the first and bravest to speak. “My liege,” he started, “your film is truly the greatest and most incorrigibly evil of all, and everyone would be privileged in the utmost way to even catch a glorious fleeting second of it. But we cannot yet risk open war!”
Snape used his Legilimency.
Silly Malfoy, thought Voldemort, doesn’t he know by now that there is absolutely nothing he can say to change my mind?
“Besides, O Most Sinister of the Sixteen Scourges, we could always stop by Alfonso’s for some of his special bacon donuts first.” said Rodolphus, trying to buy time.
Snape did not fail to note the irony as Voldemort agreed to postpone his evil plot for a quick bite to eat. This reminded Severus of his own hunger. He decided to follow them before reporting to the Order. Just as he had with the gasp, he couldn’t quite altogether suppress the idea of him dancing around Dumbledore.
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“I am the daughter of Halcos and Polhir, greatest of all Healers at the time. You could say that from the moment I was born I had a lot to live up to. I never exactly liked my parents, but I did admire them. They truly were awesome Healers, and I desired to be at least better than them. To make a long, long story short, as soon as I became the indisputable master Healer of the ville, I desired more power. I wanted to disregard edict and tap into the power of the other castes.
“I studied. And I studied. I studied both forbidden texts and the most common children’s tales to the letter day and night. I put the written word before meals or rest. Then I practiced. And practiced. I soon became the master of every caste, and nobody knew what I was doing. I did all this in secret; I was a bit of a recluse. To practice the arts of castes other than your own is outlawed, so I was careful not to be found out- I always put aside everything to answer house calls for healing. And then I studied and practiced more, always in secret. Sometimes I held ancient rituals and offerings to the Trifecta that no one else knew to increase my power by folds. I gained a familiar. I transcended any mortal achievement and became one with the elements and one with power. Soon I found it necessary to reveal my power, and to do something with it. I announced to the town I would go overseas and kill the Caivorid, the monstrous ghost that had once plagued Andaeneth. They scoffed and shunned. I showed them my power. They exiled me. I didn’t care. I left my daughter Eluth with Wendigo and set off for the Western Lands, away from Aer.
“On my way to the piers to steal a boat, I was ambushed by a man with a contract. I listened to the man’s babble, and found out for myself that outsiders really were evil and self-righteous. The spell I used to cast him away had the word ‘yes’ in it. He shielded the spell off with the contract. I was forced into the show. As luck would have it, the swamp the man was talking about was--”
“Duirop Marshes, where the Caivorid lies.” Magorian ended her monologue with a pained groan. The young television station obviously thought this monster was going to boost their ratings. On the other hand, Magorian was glad this lengthy bit of plot was over. All that was left was for Magorian to tell her his name.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you take down the swamp beast.” assured Magorian as though she weren’t impeccably confident she could do it herself. “My name is Magorian, of Styjikuhler Forest. My second name is Zhohio Korcellos, but that really doesn’t matter.” His entire life story was laid out to her, much like that section in chapter 2, except there was a lot more stuff at the end and it wasn’t a flashback.
She was impressed. Could he be as powerful as I? she secretly thought. This Magorian is a friend worth making. He isn’t a wizard, he has an affinity for rulebreaking, and he knows my first name.
She held out her hand, a gesture she had never made before. Magorian grasped it and they shook hands. They were now officially friends. Dodaru couldn’t hide her excitement- before now, she had always considered everyone around her to be the vilest of enemies. The paintings returned to normal, the armrests repaired. In addition, the light fixtures around the room doubled in intensity, showing she was happier now than she was angry before.
It was a good thing too, for at that exact moment more people started coming in to the lounge, usually in twos and threes. Magorian could see that they came from all walks in life, and from many parts of the globe. In fact, the only thing he could find that the contestants had in common was that they could speak English, that they were breathing and that they were wearing clothes. Some of them were extremely conspicuous- for example, the goblin with no less than four cigars in its mouth who was apparently named Obsidianlungs (Obsid for short); the cool Aragornish falconer named Nast; the oddly beautiful hag named Hereklofkil; the kelp-fishing Polynesian mariner mage called Laszlo whose head was wreathed with a crown of entwined crab claws, and the chubby Irish lumberjack in plaid robes named Locky. Who knew where Jasper managed to find these freaks? Magorian supposed he had an inside source somewhere.
Magorian and Dodaru were easily the most conspicuous people in the room, so talk eventually degenerated from “what they would do with the ten million galleons” to “who are those two?” Apart from the occasional frightening glower Dodaru gave the minglers, though, the pair took no note of it, and they were only finishing their spirited discussion on the merits of natural selection when the minute hand of the pleasant clock above the lounge chairs finally struck 3:34.
The door opened. Out of the hall and into the lounge came three MV employees, two of them manning floating cameras. Dismay filled Magorian as he recognized the tallest one was Jasper Johns, and he quickly thought of running through them and getting the hell out of there. Jasper vainly struggled to make his posture more uptight than usual as he started to speak.
“Welcome, friends, to The Mire! You’ve all met me before. I’m the man who’s brought all of you a step closer to wealth beyond comprehension.”
Some people became even more excited. Others continued to show signs of hostility towards him (probably those who were there against their will).
“You all know the rules, so I’m not going to delay your experience by explaining them again! I’ve just come to ask you a very important question before we set off to Duirop. You can only bring one thing with you. What will it be?”
Magorian picked his tiny little saddlebag. No one realized that it was enchanted to hold much more than it looked like it could. The chieftain’s entire inventory was stored inside the sack. Though Dodaru thought she was mountains above any Wizarding rules, the contract forced her to choose to keep her divining rod. (She figured clean water would be a precious commodity in a swamp.) After everyone had chosen their items, Jasper told them all in an exceptionally fast radio-advertisement voice, “Wedon’tactuallyhavetenmilliongalleonstogivebutthat’sokaybecauseyou’reallprobablygoingtodieanywayanyanadallpropertydamageisn’tourresponsibilityandwehavemadeespeciallysuretosecurediplomaticimmunityandmanymanyfriendsinhighplacesbeforehandtomakeitsothatwe’renevereverliableforanythingillegalweeverdogoodbye.” Jasper ran off to get the Portkey, which was a banner with the words “TEN MILLION GALLEONS!”
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A pale, sickly sun illuminated the sky and made for a surreal glistening reflection over the shallow marsh water. The swaying of the markedly angular reeds, the cloudy wetland climate and the background noise of scuttling insects all confirmed the setting as the Duirop Swamp, an isolated, flooded strand in Pennsylvania that had been made Unplottable and invisible to prying Muggle eyes. Residents around the area all had dark and fantastic stories to tell about their journeys into the heart of the swamp, which they called “the Black Turf”. Though they probably elaborated the tale with each telling, and tried to make it especially exciting in front of the cameras, the group decided not to stray into the Turf if they could help it. Instead, they split up into groups to search for a food source other than the disgusting skeletal-looking fish they had been forced to eat. (Nast, Magorian and Dodaru made a helluva fishing team, and Obsid was much-needed comic relief during those seemingly endless stretches of fishing. Tree branches weren’t the most refined rods, but they were pretty effective nonetheless.)
“This water reminds me of”oh, what does it remind me of? It reminds me of my mother’s chicken soup! She used to give me some to have for dinner during the weekends. Sometimes we even got some on Fridays. They tasted like bowls of happiness!”
The hyper-perky girl, whose formerly pink dress was now utterly drenched beyond repair, was splashing around in the muck, trying to find something to be happy about in the second week of the competition. Already four people had been booted, and methods of alleviating boredom were becoming more and more strained. Even the cameramen were bored, and they could go home, albeit they had to spend a lot of time editing the footage when they did.
The surly French spectator was starting to get annoyed. “This eezn’t your muzzer’s chickeen soup, idiote. It eez BRACKEN. It has always been BRACKEN. It will always be BRACKEN!”
“Don’t be such a--” she started to call out. She stopped moving, a look of surprised terror filled her eyes. “Something’s on me!!!” she told Michel in a sort of quiet urgency. “It’s going up my back! Help!” she whispered.
Instantly he started to try to help, but it was no use: he couldn’t see whatever was on her. Then he saw it in her pink hair, under the pink flowers on her ears: a big swamp bug, probably the infamous and elusive Duirop louse they’d heard about it. “Stop moving, let me try to get it off!” he yelled to the panicking Fuchsia (such was her name), who was bucking her head and shaking side to side to try to get it off. When he was finally in reach, grasping at the giant louse proved fruitless: his fingers went right through it.
“What ze…?” The intangible bug jumped off and scurried away, scampering through the tall concealing reeds. It had left as soon as it had come.
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Magorian was tired of fishing. He craved new game. Nast had shown him the ropes to hunting things other than birds, which were a very scarce commodity, and he was itching to put his skills to good use. That was why he ordered everyone to go off to look for potential sources of food. (Off-camera, he told them to follow the MV men, who seemed well-fed and nourished enough.) There were three hunting couples; as the leader of the group, Magorian reserved three of the other for himself, making a party of four. It wasn’t a terribly difficult decision, as Dodaru, Nast and Obsid were the only one with any real survival skills in the whole show; he didn’t lose a wink of sleep over it. Then again, Magorian slept standing up whereas the others had to find patches of solid ground fit to rest on. So that really wasn’t saying much.
“Y’know, Obsid, I’ve just noticed something,” said Magorian as they trotted off towards the outer edges of Duirop, Magorian literally and the others figuratively, “those cigars of yours never seem to be consumed. It’s quite amazing.”
“I never noticed that either,” said Nast. “How do you do it?”
“My secret!” said Obsid, who had learned to talk with those things in his mouth. “I invented them when I was thirty-eight. It was sometime in the spring.”
Obsidianlungs wasn’t as money-grubbing as most other goblins, but even he couldn’t overlook 10,000K pieces of gold. If one were to use four words to describe him, they would most likely be “fun-loving”, “hunchback” and of course, “incorrigible smoker”.
“As long as we are on the subject of things we haven’t noticed before, I’ve got a good one,” said Dodaru. Her time with the chieftain had mellowed her out a little, but she was still the formidable, slightly disquieting one. The floating cameras and viewers loved to hone in on her; most of the people watching at home had only ever heard of Gothmages, and even then only in passing. Her appeal was further accentuated by the fact that she was the only one who always refused to do those reality show close-up monologues they always have.
The expression ‘to know something like the back of one’s hand’. How well does one know the back of her hand?”
“The back of my right hand has two stitches that have never been removed,” said Nast. “Last time I go in a Muggle hospitable when Tessen slashes my hand.”
The falcon on his shoulder, still feasting on the remains of the fish the rest couldn’t bring themselves to eat, cawed and flapped its aerodynamic wings in consternation, its mouth still full. The ranger rolled his eyes and added “Accidentally.” Tessen stopped its shrieks and dived for the bits of scraps that had dropped from its sharp lethal-looking beak, apparently content with its master’s verbal concession. Nast didn’t miss a beat.
“A bit off topic, I know, but I when I was a teenager I always thought that the wart on my left cheek kinda looked like a clown poisoning a well.” They stared at him. “I had it removed,” added Nast hastily.
“My hand has a vein that forms a parabola in the third quadrant and there’s a blemish that looks remarkably like Donkey Kong’s silhouette. Barrel, tie and all.” said Magorian.
“That’s no fair; you’re looking at the back of your hand!” Obsid sloshed towards Magorian and jumped with surprising dexterity onto Magorian’s back, pulling back his hands behind him.
“Get off me! I can’t see!” The fumes coming from in back of him were both nauseating and blinding. “What does the back of your other hand look like?” insisted Obsid. Magorian, unable to balance his large frame without his arms as well as he used to and unable to see, could feel his knees buckle; Dodaru created a shadow cushion to break his sideways fall just in time, but was unable to prevent his saddlebag from slipping off and splashing into the water.
Magorian cumbersomely wringed his tail out as Nast felt for the saddlebag in the aqueous filth and brought it back out of the water, inadvertently causing it to froth. The fall had caused Dumbledore’s flute to stick out of the patch, newly grimy and waterlogged.
“Hey, Mago, what’s that?” asked Obsid.
“A flute Dumbledore gave me for saving Hogwarts.” Magorian tried to kick the water that had stuck to right side of his pelt off, but it was too sticky.
“You mean the time where you fended off three rampaging elephants from attacking the cafeteria? Or the time you drove out a faction of terrorist ghouls from the dungeons using halitosis and a standard garden rake?”
“No, I think he said it was time when he used a mixture of generic dish soap and Vicks VapoRub to defeat a pirate Ganesha that was raiding the dormitories,” Nast told the goblin.
“You’re nuts, he must be talking about the time when he salvaged forty first-year girls from a blazing inferno that happened when a classroom spontaneously generated wood and lit matches. And I think he mentioned something about hairdryers and bathtubs.”
"Wait, maybe it was the time when he disarmed a bomb stuffed in cage in the Owlery using Turpentine and a monkey wrench."
"No, I think he said it was a monkey and a wrench, not a monkey wrench."
“Uh, guys, not that I didn’t do those things or anything," said Magorian, anziously looking up at the computer screen, "but you might not want to say them out in the open to the readers like this. They’ll think I’m a lying glory hound.”
“Glory horse,” corrected Dodaru. “So what does it do?”
“What?” said Magorian.
“The flute!”
“Good question. Never tried it.”
“I guess the author is going to tell us now by having you demonstrate.” said Dodaru, using the author’s authority (haha, unintentional puns are funny) as an excuse for her curiosity.
Magorian took a deep breath and blew into the flute, not keeping his fingers on any of the holes.
A/N:
Dock is sullied, glade is shadowed
Light abated, darkness hallowed
Sorrow levied with tale’s parting
Worry not, the next chapter’s starting
Soon it will come, and it won’t be as long
If you like my stories, heed my song
I need fresh new ideas, they’re running out
So post a some good reviews, sans any doubt
For your words I shall read, rapid as steed
And incoporate them where there's truly need
A/N Clone:
About that whole name thing, an explanation: Gothmages usually refer to themselves using their second names- only family and very close friends know their real names. Dodaru’s second name is Tholiel.