CHAPTER 3

To Blorc or Not to Blorc

Octobre 30, 5599

 

Reilyk the Red sat at his desk perusing a pile of black magic scrolls. Although he had studied them many times, the ones on his desk were spells that he found difficult to memorize. He looked up at the two large candles that had been burning for the last four hours. They were about at the end of their lives, just stubs remaining. His eyes were heavily blood-shot, which made his red irises almost invisible. He put down a scroll he had been trying to learn, for the twelfth time, and rubbed his eyes in frustration.

For the last forty years, Reilyk the Red had been living a lie. No one could really remember life in Strudhyne when he was not standing next to the throne, whispering his advice into the king’s dirty ear. In fact, he didn’t remember what life had been like before his existence here inside the castle. He had forgotten he was not originally from Strudhyne or from anywhere in the blorc lands. Everything that he had once been, everything that originally made him who he was, no longer existed. He didn’t recollect that life used to be different, and the memories from that time were just faded wisps of dreams that he rarely had anymore. Occasionally, when he noticed his reflection in a mirror or window, he wondered what happened to the man he used to be.

Ninety years ago, he had been born in Devinshyre to a poor cobbler . . . not as a blorc, but as a human. His father and mother named him Silvilus Thlem, after his grandfather. At the age of seven, Silvilus had been apprenticed to a white mage named Igartiulist, as he showed a propensity for magic. This made him happy, for he could not use a small cobbler’s hammer if his life depended upon it, much to his father’s chagrin. During the next eighteen years, under the tutelage of Igartiulist, Silvilus studied the ins and outs of white magic. He was quick to master it and soon surpassed Igartiulist’s expectations. As the years flew by, he grew more and more powerful. By the age of twenty-five, Silvilus was the most powerful human mage in the land. This was noticed by the king of Devinshyre, Iyne Freemon, and one day, Silvilus was summoned to the palace.

King Iyne Freemon hired Silvilus to be his advisor in all things magical, a post which he held for twenty-five years. In that time, he continued to study white magic and grew stronger in the ways of the mystic arts. As with most mages, he aged very slowly, so even though he was now in his fifties, he only looked to be in his mid-twenties. As the king grew elderly, Iyne Freemon became very paranoid about the blorcs living far to the west in Strudhyne. He ordered Silvilus to disguise himself as a blorc and worm his way into the blorc king’s good graces. He wanted Silvilus to spy on the blorcs and report back to him each month with updates. The paranoid king’s true intention, although he never revealed it to anyone, was to find out if the blorcs were massing an army with the intent of attacking the last human stronghold again. After all, there had not been a blorc invasion in hundreds of years, just the usual small skirmishes in Scoria and occasionally in the Ripplepine Forest.

Silvilus spent a month perfecting his disguise, which he accomplished with a very intricate spell. The final results pleased him, and he tested it out by taking a stroll through the queen’s garden as a blorc. It did not take long before he found himself surrounded by a dozen guards, all pointing swords at his throat. He laughed and dropped the disguise, much to the relief of the anxious guards.

Realizing he needed a name to fit his new role, he spent the next week making up blorc names that he hoped sounded convincing, but none of them seemed quite right. He tried Thrash Thumpwhistle, Wielder Strongstrike, Crunch Skycrusher, D’Urbrain Drumbasher, Skylarst Stareater, Pulvertize Quisterbash, and many more. Finally, he settled on a simple name that was not too imposing. He chose Reilyk, as the name sounded powerful, but at the same time was different than any blorc name he had ever heard. He decided to just go with one name, not adding a surname, to keep it vague.

Bidding farewell to King Iyne Freemon, Silvilus traveled by horseback around Mt. Heinrich, through the Ripplepine Forest, Scoria, Knöl Pass, and finally arrived at the Febrile Desert, the wasteland surrounding Strudhyne. The journey took just over a week, and he was quite dusty and tired by the time he arrived. Silvilus slid off the horse and wacked it on its behind, sending it back in the direction of Devinshyre.

Taking a couple of deep breaths, he cast his disguise spell. His new look was not one of a big and strong blorc, but a rather small, frail, older blorc who most other blorcs would not pay any mind to. His thick curly locks were replaced with wispy, oily black hair that was tinged with gray. His strong shoulders drooped, which made his back appear to be slightly hunched, causing him to look much older than he really was. The color of his eyes changed from sky blue to a bright red.

After three days of hard travel through the dessert on foot, Silvilus, now disguised as Reilyk, approached the east gate with a small amount of trepidation, but hid it as best as he could.

“Gate guard! Gate guard! Let me in,” he called out not very loudly in a wheezing voice.

An ugly blorc head appeared in the guard tower and he stared down at the emaciated blorc below him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“My name is Reilyk, and I’ve escaped from the most fiendish of humans,” Reilyk yelled up at the guard, and then began coughing intensely. He looked up again after a minute and said, “I’ve been a prisoner for over thirty-five years and demand entrance to the city I used to call home!”

The guard’s left eyebrow rose upward at Reilyk’s story. He turned and shouted down to another guard. A few moments later, the gate began to open with a loud creaking groan. Reilyk smiled to himself and shuffled into the blorc city.

Inside the walls of the city, the blorc guard had climbed down from his tower and stood a short distance away, giving Reilyk the once-over.

“So, a prisoner, hmm,” the blorc guard said, looking Reilyk up and down. “They must not have fed you much. You look to be all skin and bones.”

“I was never as big and strong as you are,” Reilyk said, complimenting the guard.

The guard grinned back at him.

“Decades ago, I was looking for a specific mushroom that only grows on the sides of active volcanoes in Scoria when I was captured. The human that snuck up behind me was a mage named Igartiulist, and he cast a spell on me that prevented me from escaping. He took me back to his home, which was hidden deep in a cave underneath a volcano. Every time I tried to escape, my body would freeze and I couldn’t move for a full day. You see, I was bound by his magic,” Reilyk said patting his chest softly, sending small puffs of dust floating away with each pat. “Not being able to blink my eyes, sit down, or even pee for a full day was enough incentive against trying to escape again.”

The guard laughed at this.

“After about a year of this, I finally gave up on the idea of escaping. Then, and only then, Igartiulist took me under his wing, as he felt he needed to pass his knowledge on to someone, since he didn’t have a human apprentice. He trained me to be able to use magic, and over the years, I became quite an accomplished mage. Lucky for me, he died eventually, as he was almost one thousand years old. Because of this, the spell he’d cast upon me decades before no longer had any potency. I was finally able to leave wretched Scoria behind and make my way home. It’s taken me many weeks to walk the entire way.”

The guard scratched his hairy chin and said to himself, “That was quite a story. It’s hard to believe that it is true. Now, what am I going to do with you? Everyone you know here is probably dead. Should I just drop you in a cell and forget about you?”

The guard, being fairly stupid, probably did not realize he was talking out loud. Being locked in a prison cell was not part of Reilyk’s plan, so he knew he had to act quickly.

Reilyk straightened to his full height and said in a booming voice, “I demand to speak with the king, as I am a mage!” he shouted.

“You said that before, but I don’t believe you. Blorcs don’t have magic.”

Reilyk cast a small spell and sparks flew from his fingertips.

The guard fell back in astonishment.

Twenty minutes later, Reilyk was on one knee before the blorc king, trying to look impressive, but knowing that his disguise made him look anything but.

King Slackjaw Zogstomp had never heard of a blorc mage, since there had never been one before, so he was thrilled to find one in his kingdom.

“A mage, you say?” the king asked, rubbing his chin with an extremely dirty finger.

“Yes, sire,” Reilyk replied. He stood up and held out his left hand. Suddenly, a blue orb of fire appeared, hovering inches above his outstretched palm.

The king gasped at the sight, and then he smiled.

Reilyk knew he was in.

Slackjaw and Reilyk soon became fast friends; at least that is what the king thought. For ten years, Reilyk gathered intelligence about the blorcs and sent that information to King Iyne Freemon in Devinshyre. Every month, he used magic to create a byrd that carried messages to the human city. The byrds would arrive in Devinshyre, land on the king’s arm, and then begin to speak in Silvilus Thlem’s voice. After a byrd completed its message, and the spell ended, the byrd would dissipate, leaving the human king to ponder what he had learned.

Then thirty years ago, something happened that would change Reilyk forever. While sifting through a large pile of discarded scrolls in the lowest level of the blorc castle, all of which had been stolen from other races, as most blorcs could not read or write, he stumbled upon a crate that had never been opened. When he pried the lid off, he found something that he had never dreamed of finding. Inside the crate were hundreds of scrolls tied with black ribbons. He picked up one of the scrolls from the top of the pile, removed the ribbon, unrolled the parchment, and gasped in surprise. The scroll contained a spell of raw power, one so powerful that Reilyk knew that he must learn the spell at any cost. What he did not realize at the time was that the spell was not one of white magic, but of black magic, which he knew nothing about, as Igartiulist had never thought to mention it to him.

After having the crate brought up to his room, Reilyk began to study and memorize the spells. Although he did not know it, with each spell learned, a layer of his humanity was stripped away. After he had learned many of the spells, his white robe began to disgust him. Something about seeing the color white turned his stomach. He did not know it, but he was no longer a white mage. That night, he used his black magic to call forth a new robe, a robe that was the color of human blood.

During the many years it took to memorize the black magic scrolls, every ounce of Reilyk’s humanity was sucked out of his being, and all that was left was a powerful and totally evil man, disguised as a blorc. No goodness remained of his former human self, and he had forgotten all about his mission to gather information about the blorcs for King Iyne Freemon. From that moment on, Silvilus Thlem was dead and gone. All that remained was Reilyk the Red, a purely evil black mage.

King Iyne Freemon wondered why the messages from Silvilus Thlem stopped arriving. This only added more fuel to his suspicions that the blorcs were getting ready for another attack on Devinshyre. But before the paranoid king could gather an army, he died of old age, leaving the throne to his eldest son, Prestius Freemon, who had just barely turned twenty years old, and knew nothing of Silvilus Thlem.

As the years passed, Reilyk the Red memorized even more of the black spells. Once he had learned all of the spells in the crate, he became obsessed with finding more of the scrolls and spent years searching through every dark corner in the castle. He discovered rooms no one had been in for decades, but it was rare that he found any more of the scrolls he longed for.

Then, a decade ago, he stumbled upon some items that had been pillaged from St. Randall’s Sanctuary, a former place of worship on Kexy Island. He picked through a pile of rusty chainmail and weapons, frowning with each item he tossed carelessly aside. He did not care about chainmail, as he preferred the light and loose-fitting robe he wore, knowing he could stop any weapon from harming him with a wave of his hand. Frustrated by having his hopes dashed again, he was not paying attention as he backed away from another pile of weapons.

Reilyk the Red tripped over the edge of a tarp and nearly fell. With a flick of his index finger, he threw the tarp to the side and discovered a small metal box with the symbols of an horaft tree and a lightning bolt engraved into the sides. He turned the box over and over, checking it from all angles, but could not find a way to open it. He became intrigued with the mystery of what was inside the secure box and vowed to find out what it contained.

Taking the box back to his room, Reilyk the Red spent a week trying to open it, but it was sealed with a type of magic that he had never before run across. Becoming frustrated with being defeated by a small metal box, he began throwing black magic spells at it. That did not seem to work either. Every time he entered or left his room, he would cast another spell at the box. Nothing seemed to work, and the box remained sitting on the table unharmed and unopened, seemingly mocking him. After a week of bombarding the box with black magic, he suddenly felt the strange magic emanating from the box begin to weaken. Taking this as a positive sign, he began casting spell after spell. Finally, the magic protecting the box was destroyed. A yellowish-orange explosion of energy burst outward from the box, and the top popped open with a hiss of escaping air. Inside the box was a single scroll tied with an amber-colored ribbon and a ring with an amber jewel embedded in it.

He tried to slide the ring on his fourth finger, but it didn’t fit. In fact, it didn’t fit any of his fingers. I almost felt like the ring was tightening as he tried to slip it on. Frustrated, the evil mage threw the ring back into the box and slammed the lid shut. Then he placed the box on the mantle of his fireplace and promptly forgot about it.

With a shaking hand, Reilyk the Red gingerly picked up the scroll, slid the ribbon off, and unrolled the parchment. He frowned when he saw the text, for it seemed to be gibberish. He could not understand a single word on the ancient scroll. In disgust and anger, he threw it down onto the floor and stomped his right foot in frustration. It was not a black magic scroll like he had hoped. He had no need for a scroll that could not make him stronger. He retrieved the scroll and placed it on the table.

As the weeks passed, he occasionally picked up the scroll and studied it, to no avail. After five years of doing this once a week, and after having discovered more black magic spell scrolls, something clicked inside of him. He was now so powerful that the amber magic could no longer stand up to his black magic. Reilyk the Red found that he was able to start piecing together what was written on the scroll. He studied it for months and discovered that it seemed to be a prophecy about a boy being born that would lead to the end of the races not trusting each other. It was foretold that this leader would reunite all races, and peace would settle over the land.

It stirred something inside him, which he did not like the feeling of at all.

Reilyk the Red studied the spell that would be required to bring this prophecy to life and was shocked by the power of it. When he discovered that the date of the prophecy was eleven years passed, he threw the scroll into the fireplace in a fit of anger and watched it burn. He had no need of something that he could no longer prevent.

 

Exhausted from studying black magic scrolls most of the day and late into the night, Reilyk the Red blew out the two candles and shuffled over toward his bed. He drew his robe over his head and dropped it on the floor. He kicked off his slippers and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I need . . . I need more power,” he whispered to himself. “More power for me. Just for me. No one else needs it. No one else wants it. Just me. I need it. It’s all mine. Mine, I tell you. Just for me. Just for me.”

Sighing, he leaned to his side, his head landing on his thin pillow. He swung his legs up into bed, dragging a line of dirt across the filthy sheets. He reached down and drew the sheet over his bony form.

Laying in bed, his mind wandered. For just a moment, he thought of the power that he had seen on the amber scroll, but then his mind snapped back to thinking about lost black magic scrolls and where they might be located.

Reilyk the Red’s eyelids slowly closed and soon the sound of snoring was heard outside of his door by the single guard that was posted there. Ten minutes later, the guard’s snoring intermingled with the sound that emanated from inside the room.