Mark of the Fool

“We are gathered here today to send off a brave warrior,” Khalik said sadly, putting his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Let it be known that he fought well and hard, but now must fall to benefit others. What do we call that?”

“A Hero,” Thundar and Alex echoed.

“Oh by the elements,” Isolde rolled her eyes. “I cannot believe you called me out here for such a thing.” The young noblewoman squinted at the position of the late evening sun setting as ocean waves crashed over the Generasi beach. A small, hand-crafted boat—only large enough to contain a child’s doll—lay before them. “Just shave it off, already!”

“Shhh!” Alex clutched his beard protectively. “You’re scaaaaaaring him.”

The young noblewoman made a sound as though an invisible hand was strangling her and turned away, shaking her head.

“It’ll be alright, little one.” Alex patted his beard sadly. “A day will come when you will rise again. For as long as I live, you are immortal.”

“Please do not inflict such cruelty on Theresa,” Isolde muttered. “You have given her hope. Do not dash it away now. That is more cruel than giving no hope at all.”

“Quiet, Isolde.” Thundar lowered his horned head. “We’re grieving.”

“Yes…” Alex said, as grimly as a man condemning his brother to death. “Let us be done with it.”

He brought up the straight razor.

The operation did not take long.

With what felt like a few quick scrapes, it was over.

Alex gathered the remains of his beard with the greatest care, and laid it to rest in the small boat. “My cabal mates, we are gathered today to bid farewell to a fallen comrade.”

“Utterly ridiculous,” Isolde muttered.

“Let it be known that he was with me through thick and thin…and through many dangers. But, sometimes, we go where even our closest cannot follow,” Alex pronounced.

“Where even our closest cannot follow,” Thundar and Khalik echoed.

They turned to Isolde, who stared at them in utter incredulity.

“You cannot be serious.” She shook her head. “I shall not say it.”

“Please,” Khalik said. “For all of us.”

“...will it get us off of this beach faster?”

“Likely, yes.”

“Where even our closest cannot follow—Bla, bla, bla, put the ridiculous boat in the water and light it on fire already!” Isolde snapped.

“Father…” Claygon leaned down toward the beard. “I was not going to say anything but…this is dead hair. It has no feelings, and you likely appear disturbed to everyone around you…except for Khalik and Thundar.”

“It’s about the sentiment!” Alex cried in an overly dramatic manner. “It’s about the poetry!”

“You would never understand, either of you,” Khalik sounded pained. “Let us see it done. Your beard does not deserve to hear such disrespect.”

“Yes,” Alex said, picking up the boat gently. “Good night, sweetest of princes—”

“Put. The. Boat. In. The. Water.” Isolde growled from between clenched teeth. “Or I swear on the elements I will paste it back on your face if you miss it so much!”

“Ugh, such disrespect.” He shook his head sadly, placing the vessel in the water. “May the tides carry you to the after-world—”

“It is hair!” Isolde screamed.

“I do not think…the beard has…a soul…father…” Claygon said, the confusion clear in his voice.

“Such cruelty!” Alex cried. “May the next world be more gentle!”

He pushed the boat out to sea, watching as the tide took it deep into quiet waters.

As it drifted away, Alex raised his head, about to sing a funeral dirge but a look-that-could-kill-a-demon-lord radiated from Isolde, stopping him. Instead, he, Khalik and Thundar watched the boat drift deep into the water in respectful silence.

And so, Alexander Roth sent his first beard into a kinder place, and turned to his golem. “Claygon…in some northern funeral customs, an outgoing burial boat is set on fire by a flaming arrow to cremate the dead. If you would do the honours.”

The golem’s head darted between Alex and the boat. “Father…I am not so sure…that is a good idea.”

Alex placed a hand on his arm. “Please. For me. For the beard.”

“For the beard,” Thundar and Khalik echoed.

“Strike me down,” Isolde begged the heavens. “Strike me down. I am ready for sweet death.”

“If…that is what you want…father…” Claygon turned toward the boat.

His central fire-gem flared bright.

A lance of flame fired from his forehead.

It was beautiful: the orange light of Claygon’s flame shone across the waters, mixing with the reflection of the setting sun. Thundar and Khalik began to sing the funeral dirge. In Alex’s imagination, it was as though a hundred spirits of fire had risen to see his beard into the after-world.

And then, the beam struck the boat.

And the boat—quite predictably—exploded.

Instead of flame springing to life and igniting the vessel, burning brightly and cremating the remains of the dead…beard, a column of flame erupted, exploding boat, beard, and several unfortunate fish, sending all boiling into the air in a column of fire and steam.

Thundar and Khalik stopped singing.

Alex stared at the boiling ruins, his mouth gaping.

Isolde nodded in satisfaction. “The elements were smiling on me today.”

No sooner had she said those words than the wind shifted.

It whipped over the beach, carrying with it an…unforeseen consequence of fiery burials on the open seas.

“Oh, by the Traveller!” Alex screamed, the stench of burnt hair and fish skin assaulting his nose. “That stink!”

“By my ancestors!” Thundar’s eyes began to water. “This is worse than the hells!”

“My nose! My eyes!” Isolde screamed.

“Flee!” Prince Khalik cried. “Abandon your posts! Fleeee, flee for your lives!”

Screaming and coughing, the cabal stumbled off the beach nauseated, leaving behind a terrible stench and a very, very, very confused golem.

“...to simply burn hair…why did father use a boat?” he wondered aloud, turning to follow his screaming father.

Alex hated to admit it, but the absence of itching was nice.

Rubbing his now smooth cheeks, he reclined in a long divan on his rooftop garden, with the spell-guide for Planar Doorway floating before him, held up by a pair of crimson-glowing Wizard’s Hands.

Along with the moon, they provided enough light for him to read by.

It was late into the night in Generasi, and the muted sounds from still busy taverns reached him from the distance, but all was quiet on Alex’s street except for the occasional hums, thuds and clattering from Shale’s workshop. The rest of his family was long asleep, Claygon stood nearby, watching the street below, his head tracking night travellers going about their business.

Altogether, it was a quiet night, one perfect for deep study, which was a very good thing: the spell array for Planar Doorway was intensely complex.

In some ways, it was similar to other teleportation and summoning spells he had already learned: Like Call through Ice—and other spells that sent smallitems through tiny gateways in elemental planes—but of a level of complexity he’d never encountered before.

The magic circuit had to account for a host of variables.

Planar Doorway would cast an object from the material plane—briefly taking it through another plane of existence—and back to the material world in less than a heartbeat. Except, with this spell, the ‘object’ was the living caster themselves, providing the wizard with the ability to instantaneously move from one place to another, though the spell had a relatively short range of up to a thousand feet.

It also allowed the caster to transport an equivalent weight of matter with them, including other living beings.

And that was where things got a bit tricky.

Sending a small inanimate object across the planes for instant movement was one thing, but living beings were complex: at the same time, both durable yet fragile, often in unexpected ways.

Alex had read of cases where average folk had survived a fall from a hundred feet or more. But, he’d also read about cases where a fall from three feet had killed a grown man instantly.

When using teleportation spells, the shock of passing through two or more planes instantaneously was far more dangerous than a fall; it had to be carefully managed by the spell. Magic Circuits had to control the caster’s movement across the planes, or it might send them into a wall of ice, an astral vortex, a powerful inferno, or some other life-ending hazard.

Naturally, that would be bad, and so the Magic Circuit had to detect hazards across the planes, ensuring that it avoided them when sending the wizard across the boundaries of reality.

Then there was an issue of orientation.

While the average person might think of the ground as static and unmoving, both a wizard and an astronomer knew better: the world was constantly moving, spinning and rushing around its sun in a never ending orbit. A teleportation spell that did not account for that movement could smash the wizard against the ground, or simply leave them catapulting endlessly through the sky.

And there were other factors the magic circuit had to account for as well.

All in all, it made for perhaps the most complex spell array Alex had faced yet.

“Okay,” he said, scrawling an entry into his notebook. “Even with that inner power helping me, this is going to take some time.”

“Why…is that…father?” Claygon’s head turned one hundred and eighty degrees, staring at Alex in a way that sent a shudder through the young wizard. Heads were not meant to turn that far. Unless one was an owl. “Is it…because…you are still…grieving?”

“Claygon,” Alex said very seriously. “We promised never to speak of the funeral again.”

“But…I have so many questions…”

“Claygon, you’re killing me.” Alex pleaded.

“Okay…for now…”

“Thank you.” The young wizard sighed in relief. “So, basically, the spell has a lot of different components to it. The Magic Circuit is complicated, and if I screw it up, then there’s a lot of ways it could turn me into a corpse. Or maybe many, many parts of a corpse.”

“...that would be sad…would I then need a funeral boat for you?” the golem asked with sincerity.

“Claygon!” Alex choked. “You promised!”

“But I wasn’t speaking of the beach—”

“Claygon!”

“Alright…no more…boats. So…if this spell is so dangerous…would…” He looked to where the aeld staff lay against the garden trellis. “...putting that magic…in your staff…be better?”

“In some ways, yes,” Alex said. “But it’d take me a bit of time to formulate the right infusion for magic that’s this complex, and it’d take even longer for the staff to absorb it and create a new bloom. I probably could pull it off in time, but—if worse comes to worse—we’d be going to Cretalikon without my staff. And that’s a risk I can’t afford to take.”

“That…makes sense…”

“Besides, if I want to learn more about whatever this power is within me, it’d be better if I learned teleportation spells myself. And if I break through to fourth-tier with this spell, it’ll help me gather more power. So, yeah, I’m stuck with this complex spell for now.”

“I…hope…you…learn it faster than you fear you could…”

“Thanks, Claygon, I hope so too. It’ll give me a lot to do while we’re making the other preparations for the trip. And speaking of that…any sign of him, yet?”

“Not yet…father…” Claygon said. “I have been watching every passerby, but have…wait…I think I see him. Small…moving very fast.”

“That’s Ripp, alright.” Alex jumped up from his divan, fetching his staff and casting flight magic over himself. “I’ll be right back, Claygon, this shouldn’t take too long.”

He reached down, picking up a heavy pouch from beside the divan. “Hold the fort for me.”

“Indeed…” the golem said. “And…father, I have one final question.”

“And I might have one final answer,” Alex replied.

“Will…Ripp also…honour your beard?”

“Claygon!” Alex choked. “Are you doing this on purpose? You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

The golem’s head cocked to the side. “Why…would I be doing anything on purpose…father? I am…learning.”

“Learning to make me suffer,” Alex muttered. “No more, alright, no more!”

“I…understand…”

With a final scandalised look, the Thameish wizard leapt from the roof, floating down to meet Ripp in the street below.

His golem watched him for a time. “Maybe…I will ask…Theresa…instead…”