Showdown at the Sorcery Skills Center

Parodic short fiction (3 of 3)

THE STORY SO FAR

Local yokel Rykart has infiltrated the prestigious academy Sorcery Skills Center. In search of occult knowledge, he sneaks away from the main hall in the company of Juk the Thrallpixie, his assigned serf. But he unearths the Dark Entity Lord No-Face, his eternal nemesis…

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Showdown at the Sorcery Skills Center

Showdown at the Sorcery Skills Center

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'I should have annihilated you as you lay there bawling in your crib, with your parents smouldering on the floor of your squalid shack, little master Rykart' said the dark lord. He stood there in the ghostly sheen suffused throughout the elemental chamber, which it was apparent now was some kind of prison cell Rykart had unsealed - perhaps unwittingly, or, as it now appeared, willingly, so that this encounter would take place. 'But I was still laboring under the handicap of a small remnant of moral scruple and durst not snuff out a baby. I curse my merciful impulse that day!'

'We all have off days, your wickedness,' replied Rykart with all the nonchalance at his disposal. 'Especially when one is a demented goon such as yourself, with all due respect.'

Lord No-Face continued with his harangue, determined not to let this oaf's bumptiousness ruin his stride, shaking his fist in the lad's face. 'Now, however, I see my opportunity to be rid of you once and for all!'

He stepped forward from the chamber into the cavern, his voice now echoing from the walls, though never once issuing from the void space where a mouth should be. 'I was thinking about letting you get through the full course of instruction at the Sorcery Learning Center, so that you would be something like a worthy opponent to me, but decided in the end that we could do without all that tedious mucking about. Too much whimsy and not enough real skill growth, you ask me.'

Rykart looked at him with open scorn. 'So you're saying you lured me here, with your... what?'
'Why, with my beguilements and enticements, of course.'
'Didn't.'
'Did.'
'Didn't too.'

'Look, varlet,' growled the words of the faceless man which lay hanging in the hollow cavern, 'I care not to dispute with you so fruitlessly. You've served your purpose: you've released me from my captivity, and now it's time for you to face my dark arts.'

Now the boy's expression changed from scorn to delight. 'So are you challenging me to...?'
'Yes, lad?'
'You're challenging me to a...?'

The sound of frustration hung in the air. 'I am indeed, boy, I'm challenging you to a...'

'...A MAGIC DUEL!' both said at once.
'Jinx,' said Rykart. 'You lost the battle. A jinxed wizard can't do duelling.'

Though he couldn't breathe, Lord No-Face seemed to release a heartfelt sigh, and raised his fist in frustration.

'You're letting the seams of our confrontation show, young man. Try to show a little discretion; be not so on-the-nose.'
'Fine one to talk about noses...'
'Is that how you were brought up, oaf? To mock another's appearance?'
'I wasn't brought up at all, thanks to you. But I apologize in any case.'

If he'd had teeth, the dark lord would have been grinding them about now. He let out a gasp which came from everywhere. 'Fine... let's get down to it.'

---

Rykart whipped out his magic wand, a crude thing he had carved himself from an offshoot of a sacred larch in a grove struck by lightning. It was not as pretty as the elaborate talismans that the magemasters commissioned from craftsmen in the city, but it had some elemental power and had been consecrated by his mentor, the witch Honeysuckle Ghastley.

The main thing that Rykart had learned at the knee of his witchy schoolmistress was that charms are much more effective when they are cast on one's self rather than on some third party, a victim or an adversary. If you could target the weakness of your opponent, so much the better. So Rykart worked his magic upon himself, first casting a simple deflection ward, the Ferrous Dome of Doom, which was guaranteed to ward off most magic attacks, especially if they were insincere.

Lord No-Face's lightning bolt or whatever just bounced away. Clearly he wasn't taking this fight very seriously yet. Rykart struck back with a transformational illusion that hit hard at his enemy. He became the flounce on a coquettish ballgown of dark soft satin, there, just there - right over the spot where the cleavage parts so invitingly, emitting a languid desire and the aura of soft erotic afternoons making love in a decadent boudoir. This was a precision stab to the weakness of Lord No-Nose, who harbored a secret yearning to be a prostitute in corset and dark black gartered stockings, and the dark lord yowled with hellish toment as he tried to resist the urge to plant a luxuriant corsage in the space between the swelling breasts.

His own salvo of tongues of dark purple flame lacked conviction as a consequence, and though it roared loud and flared savagely for a moment, it soon extinguished itself. Though Rykart felt the heat as he transformed back into himself, he was unscorched and was ready to strike back. He morphed himself into that wrinkle in the forehead, there, right between the eyebrows, which might be concern at a loved one's illness, the furrowed brow of deep concentration as you play the difficult passage of a cello concerto, or a scar opened long ago one drunken night by a broken bottle in a liminal and dismal tavern toilet smelling of sick and piss.

The dark lord was deeply troubled by this ambivalent expression, which summoned up a host of far-off moments of melancholy from his forgotten past, and fell momentarily into a deep reverie. His own intended spell, a discharge of bolts of imaginary steel, was left uncast, while Rykart followed up quickly, preparing a new and devastating enchantment.

It was the only offensive spell he knew, learned from a forbidden tome one evening in the village tavern where he worked as potboy. He'd hoisted the grimoire from a wandering mage's satchel while the wizened old wizard was getting his todger seen to by Malicious Maevis the resident sex worker. By the time the warlock had returned to his table with a staisfied fraway grin on his face, Rykart had memorized the incantation and actions required to cast this hex.

It was called Flamebrain, and very simply it fired up your brain with such excitable notions that some thing that you heard or saw fascinated you utterly, and became the only thing you cared about - for a brief moment, at least. You had the burning urge to know everything about that source of random fascination, whether it be a butterfly, a blob of cow phlegm, or a cloud formation in the shape of a cactus. Not only that, but you had the equally scorching desire to tell literally everyone you knew about that thing, endlessly and at great length. It was a devastating curse, and with Lord No-Face's prior history of mental instability, Rykart was sure it would do the trick.

Just as he was winding up, his hand-hewn wand poised in the aiming position, the dark lord fell to hois knees and raised his hand. His voice echoed from outside his head as before, but this time it was sad and defeated:

'Enough, young mageling! I no longer have the stomach for this. I concede. You may condemn me as you wish, I only ask to be allowed to suggest my own penance for wronging you so grievously.'
'Some might say the only appropriate penance for your crimes, your murder of my parents, is death.
'And what say you, Rykart?' It seemed that the faceless man was weeping, though since he had no eyes to weep with, that could not be.
'I say you could probably get off with a warning. After all, I never really knew my parents and it all turned out alright for me in the end. My mentor, the Witch Honeysuckle, enjoins us not to bear a grudge. So tell me of your suggested penance. But first - why did you yield so? I wasn't expecting such a sudden termination to our duel.'

The faceless lord looked up at Rykart, and though there was nothing there but a gray waxy blob, Rykart thought he could see the ghost of an intense gaze of entreaty there.

'Something you had me see made me to think about how I had wasted my life with this endless seeking after power! I had power over the entire world and what did it bring me. When what I really wanted was...' He trailed off, apparently embarrassed. Could gray wax blush?

'What?' asked Rykart. 'What did you want? You can speak freely. I'm your friend now that you have yielded. I probably won't laugh at whatever it is you have to say, either.'

'I want,' stammered Lord No-Face, speaking through - yes! real tears trailing down his smooth face 'I want to be a lady of easy virtue, a powerful enchantress of desires who works in the most glamorous of bordellos, a sex-queen offering the most refined and exquisite pleasures to all who visit.'

Rykart almost giggled, but felt in a sudden insight that it was his own work that had wrought this effect, and that a mature mage would be able to handle all this unexpected adult content without faltering or getting uncomfortable.

'So it was my own enchantment that did it: the coquettish ballgown, and the absorbing shadowy mystery of the cleavage.'
'Yes, Rykart, it awakened something in me that cannot be denied.'
’YESSS!’ Rykart raised a fist of triumph. ‘Knew that would work, somehow'.

---

A soft rumbling sounded far in the distance. Rykart had started to discuss the details of Lord No-Face’s journey into sexual and personal satisfaction, taking an unexpected pleasure in being the process’s progenitor. He felt he’d birthed something special and understood more of why his old teacher, witch Ghastley, admonished him to think of love as the most powerful of magics.

'Well, there's a lot of work still to be done, but I feel that we can do it. First up would be to fashion for you a kind of face that might allure others, and not creep everybody the fuck out. But we can do that.'
'You would do that for me?'
'Sure, why the fuck not?' Rykart shrugged in his habitual surly indifferent way, but there was an undertone of grace to his indifference now. 'I reckon the headmistress at this dumb-ass college might be able to help out with the other stuff. If not, my witchy friend would know someone.'

Lord No-Face rose and embraced his erstwhile adversary, now his only friend. Something rumbled deep and far within the depths of the keep's tunnels. Juk the thrallpixie was returning with a new torch, surprised to see both mages whole and unharmed. Rykart spoke: 'What then would be your proposed penance?'

'I thought I might do the sex work gratis, you know, pro-bono kind of thing. Until my cosmic balance was restored, free hand shandies and blowies will be the order of the day. That's not nothing, my lad.'

'It would take a whole lot of freebies to rebalance your ethical scales after all the mayhem and murder you've committed,' said Rykart. Something rumbled louder and closer in the caverns nearby.
'Well, then, there's no time to be lost,' said Lord No-Face. 'How do you fancy being my first client?'

'What, now?’ The faceless one nodded. ‘Maybe later on in the process,' said Rykart. 'I think you need to get yourself a face first, otherwise how does the blowie even work? Besides, I don't really go for... uh... whatever it is you are right now. Be happy to reconsider later on, though,' he added encouragingly. He felt he was growing by the moment. Too bad some people never get to grow beyond what they started from, he thought…

The rumble continued increasing in volume. Just then, Juk caught up to them in the center of the cavern. He was visibly trembling.

'Whatever is that noise, Juk?' asked Rykart.
'It's the Proctoress,' wailed Juk, now beginning to sob. 'The founder. She's coming for you both.'
'What?' exclaimed Rykart.
'The Proctoress, Jorkas Rolando Kindling,' said Lord No-Face. This time the words seemed to come from him, not float ghostly in the air. The distinct shadow of a mouth was beginning to form on his shapeless visage, the signs of two eyes and nose also suggested in the flicker of the torchlight. 'She's been angered and broken out of the crypt.'

'That undead lady from olden times?' said Rykart. 'What's irked her, then?'
'She hates... all this,' said No-Face. 'What I want, how I plan to redeem myself, my desires that I've revealed to you here. She hates ladyboys so much that she's broken the unbreakable chains that kept her in the pit and she's coming for me.'

The thunk of shuddering masonry resounded through the cavern. The thing was approaching step by step. Juk looked set to drop his torch again, so Rykart took it and the thrallpixie scuttled away. 'Don't worry,' said Rykart. 'Whatever it is, however ugly her anger may make her, no matter how powerful her rage against you, I'll stand with you until she's defeated.'

He took Lord No-Face by the hand and they each held out their wizarding wands. The thing, the raging undead monster, rounded the corner. Its face was made unspeakable by hate, its form was twisted into something unhuman and undead. Together the living stood to face the thing that wanted only to snuff out a new life.

[ ======== SHOWDOWN AT SORCERY SKILLS CENTER // END ======= ]

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