Chapter 17: Processing Part 1

Two days prior, Nixen trudged along behind the group of guild leaders out of the portal into a room of stonewalls with an arcane design carved into the floor. Pellet was sitting calmly on their shoulder, observing what was going on. Ragweed was waiting by the door with a patient look on his face, though his pointed ears were twitching slightly. Master Brisco was already leaving the room with the stretcher of mobs dragging behind him as Beckle talked to an odd Mob near the door.

It was a little taller than Nixen. It had a half-black body with a white-colored front. Cut in two by the filigreed silver collar it wore, there was an almost golden coloration around its throat. It curved up around the back of its head to blend into a more orange color. A sharp line stopped the oddly beautiful coloration, transitioning into the rest of the primarily black head. A sharp-looking beak was clacking its agitation at whatever Beckle had been saying.

Its beady eyes bored into Nixen as they approached with their stretcher, and it let out a squawk of agitation at the dwarf,

“SQWONK-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-KAAAAAW!”

A long, pink, horribly spiked tongue was revealed as the creature screamed its rage at the dwarf.

Nixen blinked at the odd monster and replied,

“Sorry, I don’t speak whatever you are.”

“HOOOT!”

Pellet responded with some snark.

Beckle smirked and said,

“Clarence was just expressing his frustration that you did not complete the proper forms to submit a request before bringing a guild member in for emergency medical treatment.”

Nixen blinked again and said,

“He’s upset because I didn’t fill out the forms…to get a form before seeking time-sensitive care for an injured guild member?”

Beckle frowned and said,

“No, you didn’t submit the forms to submit the form. Filling them out doesn’t count if they aren’t submitted. The form for filling out the request after the event is also available for all paperwork required.”

“We aren’t savages. You need to pay better attention if you’re going to hold the rank of master in our guild.”

Nixen shook their head at the nonsense they were hearing and asked,

“What is Clarence, and why should I have to submit a form…to submit a form, exactly?”

The strange monster became more agitated at this question and started squawking louder and waving its limbs. Pellet complained against this raucous diatribe even though the monster could probably eat her in a bite or two. Nixen saw that the monster’s arms were flat and almost like wings, with a strange pen and clipboard in a contraption strapped to either of the monsters…

Flippers? Wings? What damned deity had this nightmare and decided to make it into reality?

Beckle raised his voice to be heard, responding over the squawkening going on between Clarence and Pellet,

“Clarence is a Clerk-guin! He is one of my top aids, and you’ve quite upset him! Accountability is necessary for our guild to keep running, and keeping a record of expenditures and resources is one of his main duties! Paperwork in the guild establishes a contract trail of accountability!”

The Knowet-all seemed quite pleased that the clerk-guin was angrily advancing towards the confused dwarf as Pellet’s flapping and hooting rose in tempo. After a few seconds of Pellet’s vocalizations reaching an ear-piercing screech, the monster stopped advancing and quieted its answering squawks. Clarence shook its head violently, clacking its beak at Pellet once more, then let out a much softer squawk of inquiry.

Pellets returning chirps and hoots were conversational and calmer if still somehow threatening. The monster shuffled backward and bobbed its head up and down before turning to Beckle and clacking its beak in a short rhythm. Ragweed muffled laughter behind one hand by the door.

Beckle’s eyebrows rose in disappointed surprise as he said,

“It seems the animal companion of your apprentice has settled the matter of Clarence’s unwillingness to see the paperwork filled out without preliminaries being required. I give Clarence more autonomy than most Mob servants in the city, but you should thank him for accepting a demerit for allowing this.”

Nixen looked at the monster standing huffily next to Beckle and then glanced at Pellet, preening on their shoulder, before responding,

“Thanks…Clarence. Is that what they were talking about? How did she manage that?”

Beckle smile oozed condescension,

“She threatened to drop Clarence’s chicks from the peak of Mount Kill-a-mob-jared, wherever that is. If her human wasn’t seen immediately.”

“In the future, I recommend you teach the flapping rat better manners. Threatening an official of my staff is normally met with stiff penalties, but under the circumstances, Clarence is willing to pass on charges. He respects violent passion to a degree, and if I backtrack his decisions, he becomes unmanageable.”

Nixen rubbed the side of their head against Pellet, who started screeching at Beckle. Their hands were full of the stretcher handles,

“There, there, Pellet, way to look out for Winnie. But be nice to the mean ol’ bureaucrat, for now.”

Seeing Buckle’s smile stiffen, they added with a smile pushing out of their beard,

“That red tape you love will strangle you one day.”

Beckle straightened his robes unnecessarily and said,

“Doubtful, Master Nixen. I have been doing this for far too long to allow a slip-up on my part. Then again, I suppose it is possible to make no mistakes and still fail.”

The large man with a massive beard tugged thoughtfully at his whiskers as he thought about this wisdom. Glancing to Winnie’s stretcher during his musing, he startled himself out of his reverie and continued,

“Shall we see Winnie to Master Ragweed’s mages? Those roots growing out the bottom of the stretcher don’t seem to be a good sign.”

Ragweed mastered his composure, getting his chuckles under control, and quickly strode behind Nixen and looked under the stretcher at the blue-tinted roots that had started to grow from the back of Winnie’s unconscious form and rip through the fabric of the makeshift stretcher.

Ragweed spoke in a quick, calm voice,

“We need to get her to the recovery sanctum now.”

Nixen set their jaw as determination reacquainted itself with their expression and said,

“Lead the way, I’ll keep up.”

Pellet let out a hoot and winged off of Nixen’s shoulder as the elf ran out the door, following the mage. Nixen hurried after, with Clarence and Beckle sauntering behind them.

The elf pelted down a few corridors, turning occasionally, and to a stairwell. Next to the stairwell was a large dumbwaiter set into the base of the wall next to it. Looking at the dwarf, who didn’t seem to be panting at all despite their burden or their armor, Ragweed said,

“Admirable stamina, Master Nixen, but the stairs are a bit more of a challenge with her on that travesty of a stretcher, allow me.”

With a mumbled phrase and three sharp gestures, the stretcher slipped from Nixen’s grasp and floated into the air. Pellet hooted in surprise as she wasn’t accustomed to her mistress flying. Settling onto the stretcher near Winnie’s head, she nestled close, softly rustling the leaves growing out of her head. The stretcher settled neatly into the overlarge dumbwaiter, and its gates slid closed. A soft whirring could be heard.

Nixen nodded and said,

“Nice mumbo jumbo, let’s go.”

The elf’s mouth twisted at the description of arcane manipulation, but his reply was simple for time’s sake,

“Paladins…”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The elf quickly led the way up the stairs, Nixen following closely. As they pounded up the steps, Beckle and Clarence reached the last turn of the corridors and continued at a measured pace to the stairs. At their approach, the gates to the dumbwaiter sprang back open.

At the steps, Beckle looked at Clarence and stated,

“We will meet you at the sanctum, Clarence. We will need you to document everything for record keeping. I will annotate anything you miss before you arrive. We will discuss your breach of protocol later.”

Beckle gestured to the dumbwaiter, and Clarence clacked its beak once in acknowledgment before waddling into the container and squawking once sharply. The gate snapped shut, and Clarence ascended as Beckle ascended the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, after Ragweed retrieved Winnie’s stretcher from the conveyance with more magic, Nixen and Ragweed sprinted down the long corridor with rooms to either side of them. The now floating stretcher had slowly creeping tendrils of plant roots reaching for the walls and floor as they passed. Nixen used their axe to trim the roots when they got too close to a surface.

Beckle reached the top of the stairs and continued his unhurried saunter after the pair.

The dumbwaiter far behind the procession of stately guild masters started to ascend once more as its gates snapped shut on a now empty box. A few moments later, the gates opened to reveal Clarence, who clacked his beak loudly before waddling down the hall in all his nightmarish flightless glory.

At the end of the corridor, the elf, floating stretcher, and armored dwarf paladin took a sharp left into a room crowded with other mages in various colors and styles of robes. What looked like random supplies were scattered around an arcane circle carved into the floor.

The mages were startled at the sudden entry of the panting Guild master, a floating stretcher with what looked like a bedraggled shrubbery, and a dwarf in full plate.

Ragweed started gasping and yelled orders to the mages waiting in the room around the circle of arcane symbols. The mages of various races scrambled to obey his shouted orders, most of them retrieving tools from the edges of the room placed on shelves and tables.

One mage hurried to a corner of the room and lifted the end of a wheelbarrow filled with dirt as another fetched a pair of lopping shears. A third was filling a watering can from the spigot of a large sink in another corner.

The Master mage gestured the floating stretcher into the circle’s center with the mage bearing the shears, trimming any roots that came too close to the floor. An indignant hoot was heard as a whip of energy shot from Ragweed’s extended palm, snatching the owl from its perch near Winnie’s head and tossing it to Nixen.

Nixen caught the indignant bird and tried to calm it. Beckle came into the room, raising his eyebrows at the sight that greeted him.

Saying nothing, he stepped to one side of the doorway and pulled a notebook and pen from his pouch. Watching the events unfold, he started to take notes.

More tendrils of energy uncoiled from Ragweed. The stretcher was ripped asunder as he parted it from Winnie’s body, the roots breaking in spots they had grown around the poles. It was an ignominious end to a questionably made piece of gear.

Elsewhere, a god of the crafted works of the world nodded in satisfaction at the end of an abomination. They thought that even in a rush, the form should match function as there was already enough ugliness in the world.

Winnie floated in the center of the circle, supported by and connected to the tendrils of energy from Ragweed. The other mages scrambled to their places, quickly starting a soft chant and sending energy from their feet into the circle on the floor. A soft glow started from the edges of the circle, leading inward, lighting up runes as it spread.

Nixen looked on, impressed by the coordination and worried by how practiced it seemed. He asked Ragweed,

“What do you need me to do?”

The elf was wearing a strained expression and had a stream of muttering issuing forth from his lips. The other mages had taken up the chant in support and lent more of their mana to the process. Several strands of energy streaming forth from Ragweed connected with the flows of magic now streaming up from different patches of lighted runes throughout the circle.

Sweat started to stream down his face as he interrupted his chant briefly to gasp out,

“Release your spell. We have her.”

Nixen replied waspishly,

“It’s not my spell, elf!”

Ragweed shouted back with fear in his voice,

“Do it! Or we lose everything now!”

As Ragweed went back to his chanting, Nixen angrily knelt on the floor outside the circle and began to pray,

“Oh, Jeph, the time has come for this bread to be made. Please guide her refreshing to be favorable.”

One of the junior mages rolled his eyes at the pomposity of the stupid prayer. Every piece of baked good present went stale in that elf's home.

At the dwarf’s words, a yellow glow covered the floating woman, starting at the skin and bark of her forehead and slowly covering her body. The progress was steady and did not flicker as the strands of energy from Ragweed started to. The head mage called out again in a panicked voice,

“Nixen! Now!”

The dwarf looked up at his apprentice and said calmly,

“Refresh…”

The yellow glow snapped off, and Ragweed rallied to the timing, amplifying his chant to a shouted litany of triumph,

“UCK-FEY UOY-AY, OD-AY ATWH-AY I-AY AYS-AY!”

With these profound shouted words of power, all of the streams of power connecting the elf to the circle and Nixen’s apprentice thickened and tensed. Winnie’s eye snapped open, and she let loose a scream of pain and rage that was otherworldly.

The magic attached directly to her had formed into clawed hands that pulled savagely at her body, drawing forth a white mist tinged with green from her. It flowed from the parts of her being supported and clawed as she screamed louder.

At this shriek of pain, Clarence waddled into the room and looked at the screaming woman being accosted while floating in the center of a circle surrounded by chanting mages. It rolled its eyes at Nixen’s horrified look and clacked its beak once.

Waddling over to Beckle, it gently placed a flipper on the taller man’s side to let him know it had arrived and started scribbling on its clipboard.

Portions of whatever Ragweed was pulling from Winnie’s tortured body were shaded a darker green, and the mage focused the magic there. Using the magic streams, the light green shaded mist was released as Ragweed let the portions sink back into Winnie’s body and diverted his efforts to the darker green sections.

The clawed tendrils freed from the lesser task moved swiftly to assist the others. The extended mist grew thicker and a darker green. A threshold was crossed, and Winnie’s screams cut off as she started to convulse in the grip of the magic. The magic within the circle started to shake with an ominous rumbling noise.

Ragweeds shouted words were lost in the rush of sound by the magic’s increasing rumble as the mage brought his hands together, sparks flying from his fingertips. The clawed magical hands scooped, shoved, and dragged the different areas together into one amorphous blob of magic at her front.

The clawed appendages snapped close to Winnie’s body, pinching the mist as it gathered, floating over her heart. The mist was drawn away from the druid’s body in a thick stream that stretched thinner as it was drawn away from the woman’s body and forced back into a semi-spherical blob. The noise diminished significantly as the trembling of the magic was concentrated into the globe. The sphere’s trembling surface caused the air surrounding it to waver and shake.

Ragweed shouted to another mage wielding an axe scrawled with symbols who rushed towards the floating, twitching woman. The mage drew the runed axe over his head as he ran, ready to strike.

Nixen took a step forward to stop the man, but Beckle’s restraining hand on their shoulder stopped the dwarf,

“Don’t interrupt, for her life and ours.”

Nixen was about to ignore the man’s words as the rushing mage brought the axe down with a cry. The blade passed just behind the grasping tendrils, cutting the colored mist away from Winnie’s floating form. At the severing of the connection, Winnie slumped in the grasp of the magic extending from the chamber floor.

The detached dark green-colored blob was frozen at the touch of the axe’s metal for a moment until its surface prickled with points as if multiple angry hedgehogs were attempting to cannonball out from the inside.

Ragweed shouted,

“Don’t move!”

The axe-wielding mage froze at the words. He trembled in position as the magic blob roiled in place, attempting to escape the clawed grasp wielded by his elven superior.

Though panting at this point and struggling to stand upright, Ragweed had started another series of gestures. The hands spread thinner as they started to cover the blob of prickly green magic. The blob didn’t seem too content to be corraled by the mage’s tendrils and flowed through the air slowly towards the axe-wielding mage standing near it in the circle.

The glowing clawed hands of white magic tried to keep up with its movements but were hampered by the shifting nature of the blob’s body. Some of the spiky protrusions orientated toward the mage standing near it. Smaller spheres with spikes grew on the extended limb, reaching toward the man who had so recently attacked it.

The mage wielding the axe paled at the sight of something gone wrong and stumbled backward from the blob. As he reached the circle’s edge, the patches of pointed, green, angry balls forming on the extended limb shot forward and speared into his body. A cough of blood came from the man’s lips as they passed entirely through his body.

Nixen was surprised at the blood coming from the man’s lips, as that was the only blood they saw. The spikes from the blob had exited from the man’s back, trailing tendrils of red-tinted white, but left his clothes intact. The man collapsed to the floor as the spiked portions struck the circle’s edge and flattened against a barrier invisible to most in the room.

From the impact points, a dome of blue-white sprang into being around the circle, protecting anyone outside. The light from the dome blanked out its contents briefly before fading back out of sight.

Nixen’s subsequent view of the circle was the remaining blob contained by the magic tendrils flowing from Ragweed. The hands of the magic flowed out to completely encapsulate the thing, and it was floating near the edge. The separate flows from the circle had lowered Winnie to within a foot or two of the floor.

A pair of mages had snagged the edge of the fallen man’s robes and started dragging him from the circle. Retrieving his unmoving form, they rushed him from the room as tendrils of green plant roots growing from his scalp entwined through the man’s hair.

Another pair of mages struggled to bring a sizeable rune-covered chest toward the circle. The mage with the watering can had joined the mage near the wheelbarrow of dirt. They both moved into position on the opposite side from where the blob was contained.

The large chest was heaved into the circle without ceremony, its runes gleaming with light as it crossed the edge. It was righted gently by the flow of magic from the circle and opened. Ragweed was a sorry sight of a tired mage covered in sweat, but he guided the contained magical blob into the chest. The magic of the circle moved to the lid. It snapped shut on his tendrils, cutting them off. The recoiling streams snapped into his hands as he cursed, rubbing at his palms,

“I fucking hate that part!”

Nixen threw up their hands at this and said,

“I am getting exhausted saying this, but what the fuck just happened?!”