A small arc of a pale and weak sun sat at horizon. As it always did in the twilight realm. The air was cold. Icy wind picked at Hilario’s ragged clothing. His belly–much, much, much smaller in those days–rumbled and twisted with hunger.
Hunger was his constant companion. Always at the edge of his perception. He’d been hungry his entire life.
Mostly because he couldn’t bear to eat what the bad places considered food.
A hunched and ancient crone had let Hilario in the falling-down castle and shown him to a cold and drafty stone room at the top of a long, spiraling line of stairs. Hilario had followed the ancient crone up the stairs, afraid that any second the creature would drop dead.
And that he would be blamed.
That would have been just the way his luck ran.
But, somehow, the crone survived the climb and left Hilario alone in the room. A cage of fire sprites hung from the ceiling, giving the room a flickering orange glow. Near the far wall there was a desk, roughly carved from what looked like a single piece of bloodwood. The dark red, finely grained wood disturbed him more than the icy wind that whistled through the gaps in the poorly built stone walls.
Bloodwood was an excellent medium for imprisoning the spirits of magical beings. To see an entire desk carved from it…
Behind the desk was an ornate, throne-like chair carved from less disturbing ebony wood.
In front of the desk was a rickety chair that looked like it had been hastily assembled from spare parts by a blind, one handed carpenter.
Obviously any guest of the wizard would know his place right away.
Hilario sighed and stood behind the rickety chair. He was used to being at the bottom of the org chart. Had been his entire existence.
And really didn’t expect it to change.
He patiently waited an hour for the great wizard to appear.
Then he waited another hour.
And another.
His stomach growled and rumbled. He ignored it and concentrated on not thinking about anything. Especially about rude wizards who summoned beings to his posterior cursed castle and left them standing there for hours without any expression of hospitality.
After the fourth hour, something changed in the room.
Hilario shivered. Not from the icy air. Or the wind moaning through the gaps in the stones.
No, there was a presence in the room.
Hilario stilled his body and mind even further. He didn’t let any tendrils of consciousness escape. Not only was it rude to probe a wizard’s space, it could prove to be quite deadly. Wizards were quite jealous of their personal space.
Honestly, it had surprised him that the old wizard wanted to meet him here.
Hilario stared down at his shoeless feet. The nails on his toes were twisted and dirty. He’d tried to clean up before the journey. But clean water and bathing were novel concepts in the unseen world. In some places they were actually illegal.
A loud SNAP filled the room. He jerked his head up.
Behind the desk, wreathed in curling blue smoke that stank of sulfur and decay, stood the old wizard.
Ebentov.
Tall and spindly, like one of the bone folk sheathed with a thin veneer of flesh, the old wizard lowered his bushy white eyebrows at Hilario. The wizard didn’t wear the traditional flowing black robes. Instead his insubstantial frame was covered with a loose fitting, long sleeved tunic and pants made from some kind of light brown leather. The wizard’s long white hair was tied behind his head.
The old wizard’s black eyes sat above high planed cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut the wrinkled flesh that covered them.
Hilario quickly averted his eyes.
He felt the wizard’s gaze roam over him. Tried not to think about what the wizard was seeing. The dirty, ragged clothes. The filthy flesh. The ugly creature that dared to aspire to something more that the bad places.
Then he felt the wizard’s mind reach out to him. Tendrils of Ebentov’s consciousness floated around his own mind.
He had expected this and did not try to resist the wizard’s probes. To do so would have likely meant a horrible, painful death and a return to the lowest parts of the bad places.
It didn’t mean he had to like it, though.
The wizard’s tendrils drove forcefully into his consciousness. Hilario held his self in stillness. He did not try to hide any of his self, any of his memories. He did not make armored compartments for his terrible deeds and try to bury them deep in his psyche.
There was no point. His entire life had been terrible deeds. There wasn’t a graveyard big enough to bury them all. Not in the limited space in his mind.
He felt his mind being ransacked. Every door opened, every memory shuffled through. A lifetime. Several lifetimes.
Tears ran down Hilario’s cheeks as the memories fast forwarded past his consciousness. Terrible things he’d tried to forget.
But never could.
At last, Ebentov withdrew.
Silence stretched out between them. Hilario’s tears plop, plop, plopped on the rough stone floor. Splashed on his dirty feet that he still stared at.
“Sit,” Ebentov said.
Hilario gave the rickety chair a dubious look. It didn’t look strong enough to hold a feather. But one did not disobey a wizard. He gingerly put his posterior on it. The chair gave an alarming squeak. But it held.
Ebentov took to his elaborately carved throne. He put an elbow on the arm of the throne and propped his chin on the knuckles of his hand. For a long moment he stared at Hilario over the roughly carved bloodwood desk.
Finally he spoke. His voice was deep and rough. There was nothing fluid or melodious about his speech.
“I had to see this for myself,” the wizard
