Turpenwile looked at the smiling faces around the breakfast table. “So…um,” he began “don’t get a lot of dwarves around here?”

The mayor piped up. “Not currently!” he said. “But Cobpleton is a growing center for diversity! We have a few gnomes, some bolgmen,” he paused. “A tribe of Behemoths out in the Kelpiewood,” he mumbled.

“And a corvey!” said one of the mayor’s sons.

“Ah yes our messenger corvey of course, paid quite well I assure you.”

In less than an hour of arriving to Cobpleton, Turpenwile had been whisked away to breakfast with the mayor and his sons with the town priestess at the Ye Olde Roadhouse. The mayor and his sons smiled in that polite, ‘you're practically a sideshow to us but we’ll never say it kind of way. Turpenwile was used to the staring. He looked perfectly average for a dwarf, except for a bit of a tactically retreating hairline. But he was well aware that humans took one look at a dwarf and thought ‘ape in human clothing’.

Dwarves got their name from being on average four to five feet tall, which wasn’t much shorter than the average human, but dwarf was the most polite descriptor. They did in fact look like the perfect middle between apes and humans. Like their ancestors stuck to the lower branches of the evolutionary tree. Which was fine by them, humans could have the upper branches, less footing up there.

Dwarves seldom ventured out of their forests. Turpenwile was considered a people dwarfson, which meant that he could tolerate conversation for up to five whole minutes. He thought he was doing well so far.

He looked at the mayor and his twin sons. They were short, bulky, and overall square shaped. The mayor was bald while his sons had matching rectangular hairstyles. Shaved on the sides and flat on top. It suited their heads well.

“I’m sorry mayor, but I don’t believe I got your sons’ names,” Turpenwile ventured.

The mayor pointed to the one with a scraggly beard. “My eldest by eight minutes, Arnathan,” and pointed to the one with an equally scraggly beard but with an added pencil mustache. “and Germinate.”

Turpenwile was taken aback for a moment. “Germinate?”

“My wife picked it out! It’s an old word meaning something like ‘to grow and prosper’.” said the mayor proudly.

Turpenwhile, who had a gift for languages simply said “...Something like that.” Turpenwhile sighed inwardly. Well at least the mayor didn’t try alliteration or rhyming with his twins’ names. In Turpenwile’s experience, parents who named their twins with matching first letters wanted them to get bullied.

“Most call me Arnie, sir,” said Arnie between mouthfuls of eggs and bacon.

“Mmmmhmmffate,” said Germinate, not bothering with the between part.

“He means Nate, sir,” clarified Arnie.

“Charmed. But I really should ask, where is Cornsilk now?” asked Turpenwile.

“Still in his tower. We draped a cloth over him,”

“And his belongings?” the wizard asked.

“Safely secured in the bank vaults,”

Turpenwile was surprised. “Really? I thought, and I mean no offense, that you wouldn’t touch the stuff? What with their powerful enchantments and curses,”

“Oh we didn’t at first,” answered the mayor. “We had Sister Eerie here check for curses. She gave us the all clear,”

Turpenwile turned his attention to the priestess sitting next to him. She was a surprisingly young woman, dressed in a dark blue robe. Her brown skin was freckled, a shade slightly darker than the regular Cobpleton citizen. A white cloth draped over her head, but Turpenwile could see barely contained blonde curls out of the corners. She had introduced herself as Eerie Song, and had said nothing else until now.

“I touched each item with a curse detector after cataloging them,” she said. A traditional curse detector wasn’t anything particularly special. It was a foot and a half long human effigy carved from wood and dressed in doll’s clothing. No magic was necessary. Curses attached to objects couldn’t usually tell a wooden person from a flesh person. So the idea was to simply touch the cursed object and hope it jumped into the doll.

Turpenwile thought about this for a moment. “Nothing cursed at all? Not even a minor enchantment?”

She shook her head. “My detector is very potent, even a subtle curse would have been caught,”

Turpenwile was wary of that. You didn’t often see small town holy folk with that kind of equipment or knowledge. “Who did you say you were a priestess for?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” she said flatly. When she didn't continue, the mayor spoke up.

“Our Sister Eerie serves on behalf of all the Old Gods. She collects their relics and holds multi-god services in her cellar,”

Turpenwile narrowed his eyes slightly. Cobpleton was a part of Nursing county. It got its name from ‘nursery of the gods’. More than five-hundred years ago, New Gods snuck into the world, and like everything new and young, sought to depose their elders. They were very efficient too. The Old Gods were deposed so quickly that hardly any of the priests noticed when they stopped answering their calls. A few decades went by and the priests got antsy. By the time they figured out what happened, the New Gods were already rearranging the proverbial furniture.

But some, like Sister Eerie, held the opinion that the Old Gods never truly died, but lived on the rocks and trees. Turpenwile thought he may have to watch his step lest he tread on a god’s sacred head. He grimaced, he really had to work on his sarcastic thoughts.

“Every god, huh?” Turpenwile observed. “Must get a little loud and overcrowded in that cellar, spiritually speaking of course. Is it hard to separate your thoughts from theirs?”

She met his stare with her own. Her eyes were an electric blue, and pierced deep into his soul. She dared him to look into hers. Turpenwile knew all too well what kind of things made their home in temples, and he suspected she did too.

The kitchen door swung open and broke their gaze. A woman stood in the doorway, a hot kettle in hand.

“Coffee anyone?” she asked. She was an older woman. Thick, curly brown hair fell around her shoulders. Her skin was a bit weather worn, but her wrinkles accentuated her warm and pleasant smile.

“Some for me Thistle,” said the priestess. If there was a hint of that previous animosity towards himself, Turpenwile couldn’t detect it.

“Ahh,” said the mayor. He seemed to like to start sentences like he was making a proclamation. “The owner of this fine establishment, Mrs. Nightwarren.” He swung a meaty arm up to briefly clasp her thin hand. “I don’t believe you’ve met our-er, your guest!”

“Harkimus Turpenwile, wizard of the eighteenth level,” said Turpenwile, giving a quick nod.

“Charmed to make your acquaintance! Thistle Nightwarren at your service m’lord,” she answered. Nightwarren, the wizard mulled over this name. It vaguely rang a bell. As she poured the wizard his coffee, her hand shook. She was determined not to look directly at him.

Turpenwile pretended not to notice. “I didn’t know you could get coffee all the way out here,” he stated.

“Specially ordered,” said the mayor with a smile and a tap on the nose. “Born and bred in the south myself. ‘Course when the order came down that Cobpleton needed a new mayor I says, ‘Minnie’,-er my wife. I says "Minnie, that town needs us! We’ve got to share a bit of our culture and privilege’ I says! Then our boys were born and we’ve been here ever since! Spending our middle years making Cobpleton a better place.”

Eerie let out a barely audible snort.

“Oh!” the mayor started. “Nearly slipped my mind. We’re dining here because Mrs. Nightwarren was the one who found the body!”

Thistle stiffened and shot the mayor a dirty look. “He had a name I’ll remind you, sir,” said Thistle cooly.

“Yes, yes. Um, Corncob was it?”

“Cornsilk,” said Thistle and Turpenwile in unison. They shot each other a look. Turpenwile wondered to himself what exactly was her relationship with the recently deceased.

“Right Cornsilk. Right, right,” the mayor sputtered. “Jolly old fellow if I recall. Mostly kept to himself. Seldom took visitors.” The mayor’s face contorted in concentration, wracking the empty library of his brain for more information. “Threw pretty good Winterkiss parties,”

“Pretty good?!” Thistle spun to face the mayor. “They were breathtaking! He could fit everyone from Cobpleton and Stoverhill and Dewney in his house and still have enough room for fireworks,”

“I’m sorry Mrs. Nightwarren,” interrupted Turpenwile. “But how did you know Cornsilk?”

Thistle’s hands fumbled in her apron nervously. “Well after my husband passed on, I went to him for some soothsaying. He told me it would be alright, that I wouldn’t have to worry about money. I gave him some sweets as payment. Eventually we started talking more, he told me my fortunes, I brought him more sweets, and it just…sort of turned into daily visits.”

Turpenwile thought about this for a moment. “Were bringing sweets up when you found him?” he asked. She looked down and nodded.

“Well,” he said as he stood up. “Perhaps we should bring him some, one last time.”

It wasn’t the funeral that Cornsilk deserved, thought Turpenwile. But it would have to do for now. The wizard’s body was sprawled out next to the grave. He lived up to his name. His hair was long and beige-blonde, with a matching beard. Cornsilk was a Fir Bolg, a slight offshoot from humans. Broader, shorter, with wide noses and sloping foreheads.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Turpenwile glances back to his tower, or what was left of it. Wizard towers naturally decayed after its wizard’s death, slowly changing back into whatever it was before he arrived. In this case, a grain silo with a caved in roof. But if the tower rotted away, why hadn’t Cornsilk? He had been dead for nearly a week now, and there was no way the summer heat and humidity would space a corpse. He didn’t even smell. He looked like he had just fallen asleep, and that worried Turpenwile the most.

The group was spread out around a cherry tree. Arnie and Nate were bailing out the grave they dug earlier, some runoff had washed into it.

“You’re splashing me!” said Arnie to his brother.

“Well you’re gettin’ mud on me,” respond Nate.

Arnie and Nate often had the dirtier jobs. The mayor liked to be seen helping out with manual labor, so long as he was seen supervising his sons. Sister Song whispered prayers over Cornsilk while clutching an amulet. Turpenwile couldn’t see what the amulet was for nor which Old God it belonged to, and he expected that was probably for the better. Many Old Gods had very sexually suggestive tokens. Perhaps she held the figurine of a goddess whose newborns wouldn’t go hungry, or a god whose pride always arrived a minute before he did. Turpenwile thought that was why religious artifacts were called fetishes.

He stood a bit away with Thistle. The tree had already dropped its cherries. He had taken off his shoes and was idly picking them up with his prehensile toes. It felt good to let them breathe.

“Has Ye Olde Roadhouse been in your family for quite a while?” he asked.

“Oh no, we just opened recently,” she clarified.

His eyebrows lifted. “Very olde indeed,” he said sarcastically and regretted immediately. His apprentice was starting to rub off on him and he didn’t care for that at all. She was back in the city, and he could only imagine the amount of eye rolling she’d be doing right now. If Thistle had detected his sarcasm she didn’t show it. He tried to think of a topic for small talk, and came up empty.

“Been to many funerals?” asked Thistle.

That talk was only small if you looked at it through the wrong end of a telescope. “A few, mostly colleagues,” he finally said.

“A few for me too. My parents, my husband, his parents, assorted relations” she rattled off.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she said genuinely. “You know Cornsilk always reminded me a bit of my husband. You do too, a little.”

This piqued his curiosity. “How so?” he asked?

“Oh, a lot of knowledge about a lot of topics. Lot o’ wisdom in certain areas, a little scatterbrained in others,” she said. She smiled weakly, the memories weren’t fresh, but still sore.

“Maybe he had a bit of magic in him?”

She scoffed a bit. “Hardly, neither of us had the gift!”

“Not all magic is gifted,” he shrugged. “Some just need a bit of brains and bravery.”

“Not especially gifted there either,” she laughed at herself. “We have a little library, Clover liked to collect textbooks. Most of it flew over our heads but he liked to look at the sciency pictures. He always said he was this close to piecing them together.” It was self-deprecating, but Thistle seemed to know what she didn’t know. Turpenwile guessed that she internalized a sense of ignorance. It was her truth that she wasn’t smart, even when Turpenwile knew it to be untrue.

“Though, maybe our kids picked up a trick or two, they were always quite clever,” she said.

“You have kids?” asked Turpenwile. He thought back to the roadhouse. He didn’t recall seeing any toys or children’s books or even child sized blankets.

“Oh yes, eight!” she beamed.

“Eight?!”

“Quit kicking!” shouted Arnie from the pit.

“Five girls and three boys,” she continued. “Quanta, Isotope, Orbital, Alkaline, Fixity, Gravity, Meiosis, and Atom.”

He looked into her face, it was glowing with pride. If she had a hint of knowing what any of those words really meant, she made no hint of it.

“I ain’t kicking it’s the tuber-lance of the water,” replied Nate.

“The girls are Quanta, Iso, Alky, Fixity, and Mei. The boys are Orbi, Grav, and Atom, ” she continued. “All left the nest. You know how teenagers and young adults are. Always chasing adventures. Iso went to the city to learn magic, and Orbi followed his big sister ever since he was little. Maybe you’ve them?”

Turpenwile flitted through the records of his mind. Hundreds of students enrolled at Aethowix Academy.

“You ain’t gonna get tuber-lance from a foot a’ water,” said Arnie.

“I don't believe so, but I’ll have to look them up.” He was being honest, you didn’t often get students from Nursing.

“Sure you can,” corrected Nate. “There are these things called fractions in the earth’s crust. Can’t always feel ‘em but they’re always moving. They turn any water into wave functions.”

“I know what a wave feels like, an’ it sure don’t wrap around your ank-”

Arnie yelped. Turpenwile’s head whipped around. Nate screamed. The dwarf was already in motion. He began to slip off his cloak when Thistle booked past him. Nate had grabbed his father’s hand, scrambling out of the pit as Thistle dove in.

Turpenwile was almost to the grave when Thistle came flying up and out. She crashed into the dwarf, sending them both to the grass with a wet thud. Eerie clapped her hand over her mouth and pointed up. Arnie was clutched by a giant tentacle.

Turpenwile rolled to the edge of the grave, loose cherries dropping into the water. He saw the base of the tentacle rising out of a black, roiling pool. He pointed a leathery finger down and grunted a spell. The tentacle began to contort as its owner’s lungs burned. Salt water purified with Turpenwile’s word.

More on this later, as the mayor interrupted both the exposition and the spell. He tackled the tentacle as it let go of his son, his weight dragging both himself and slippery appendage into the depths.

“You dumb brave idiot!” screamed Turpenwile. He gulped in air and dove in after him. The back of his brain reeled in protest, it was only a foot of water right? Lucky, unlucky for him, the water opened into black depths. He searched frantically. His vision swam with bubbles and dull red cherries. A great, glowing eye opened beneath him. It had a bar shaped pupil that showed either no intelligence, or unfathomable intelligence. Turpenwile didn’t know which was worse. A shape shot past him. It was the mayor, now biting the tentacle that was quickly enveloping him. There was no move too dirty when a parent fought for their child.

Turpenwile racked his brain for solutions. He was running out of ideas and air. What was the point of being a wizard of the 18th level if all his most powerful spells would likely kill both the beast and them. His brain settled on one thought. No, he forbade himself from ever messing with minds. But it would be so easy, it was just a giant octopus, or a giant octopus as far as he could tell. Easy wasn’t the point, you did not mess with minds. Besides, this thing could have a brain so alien to your own that it could backfire. It could barge in here! Look you’re almost out of air and so is he, what's the point of all those levels if you can’t even save one idiot?

He grit his teeth and clenched his fist. That absolute idiot, he thought. And who’s the bigger idiot, his rational side asked. He looked into the beast’s eye, he’d have to use it as a lens. He spoke the words.

The first came out in a bubble shaped like a cube. Reality bent over backwards for magic. The second was a perfect octahedron, the third a decahedron, a dodecahedron, an icosahedron, until finally a perfect sphere emerged. Normal bubbles undulated, but this bubble stayed perfectly round. They all drifted towards the eye, then burst.

Angular shockwaves rippled through the water, into the beast, into the mayor, and into himself. Cherries shrank back into seeds, grew again, and shriveled until there were nothing but pits. Turpenwile saw the process in his head, just a small push on the beast’s amygdala, a firing of its synapses.

The beast reared back, releasing the mayor and spraying a thick cloud of ink. He saw it bolt through the water as he was consumed by the ink. His mind raced as he tried to swim towards the surface. The ink stung his eyes. Great, he thought, the 18th level wizard who drowned, Mace would scoff at that. Of course he drowned trying to save someone, she’d say. He lets wisdom and restraint get in the way of logihhhhhhugghhhh. His brain couldn’t even finish her scolding. His emotions took over. It wasn’t the worst place to die. Cool and dark, like going to sleep in his ancestor’s cave back home. His muscles relaxed. Just like going to sleep.

Turpenwile wretched. A fist had just come down on his chest. He sputtered up water again. He rolled over, his hands and feet gripping wet grass. The sweet petrichor taste of mud and grass. He was sorry, Nursing, he didn’t mean all those terrible thoughts he had about you honey, you could flip between hot and humid and biting cold as much as you want baby. He got to his knees, breathing in slowly and deeply.

Thistle sighed in relief. “Oh thank the gods. You scared us half to death!” She was soaked. Turpenwile did a quick head count. Eerie and the mayor were both soaked as well, Eerie panting and the mayor coughing.

“You dove in after us?” he asked Thistle.

“Me and the Sister,” she said, smiling. “Though I guess she had a harder time.”

Eerie glared down at the mayor. “No more steaks?” she asked through pants. “Try no more carbs!” she shouted at him.

“Muscle an’-” the mayor coughed up more water. “Water weight. Muscle and water weight.”

“What was that thing?!” shouted Arnie.

Turpenwile had forgotten about the twins. He raised his finger in the universal gesture of ‘I almost died and/or just sprinted and really needed a minute’.

“You don’t have any salt water around here by chance?” Turpenwile asked the mayor.

He shook his head.

“Thought not,” he said. He laid down on the ground, he really needed the rest. “Then you have an interdimensional portal on your hands,” he said to the sky.

Their heads all swiveled towards him.

“Are you kidding me?!” shouted Eerie.

“Wh-what? What’s an interdimensional portal?” stammered the mayor.

“A hole in the universe,” said Eerie, angrily. She really knew her stuff, Turpenwile thought.

“Oh! I’ve seen pictures of this!” said Thistle. “You take a piece of paper and a pencil and-”

“A hole? A hole to where?” interrupted the mayor.

“Anywhere,” answered Turpenwile.

“Anywhere?” asked the mayor.

“Or anywhen, sometimes,” turpenwile vaguely gestured. “Other worlds. Water worlds, windy worlds, endless worlds.”

“Heavens and hells,” put in Eerie.

“Heavens and hells,” agreed the wizard. He got slowly to his feet. “I have a doctor barber to speak with. Thistle it was very nice meeting you. Sister Song, Mr. Mayor.” He picked up his cloak, lucky it was still dry. “Arnie and Nate.” He saw the pair whispering to each other. They stopped and found everything but the wizard interesting. Very non-suspiciously of course.

The mayor jumped up after him. “Wait what? What about the body? What about the hole?!”

“Put Cornsilk in Sister Song’s cellar.”

“Agreed,” said Eerie.

“As for the hole,” Turpenwile scratched at his chin, deep in thought. “Cover it with dirt.”

“Dirt?” said the mayor flatly. “Like…consecrated earth?”

“If you like. It doesn’t have to be,” he shrugged.

“What? Just normal dirt?”

“Yep,” Turpenwile’s heart raced while his brain was exhausted. He was too tired for formalities. “That dirt,” he said, pointing at the loose earth Arnie and Nate had dug up this morning.

“Shouldn’t you put some kind of magical sealing spell on it? You know with them circles and geographic lines and ancient runes?”

Turpenwile’s stride didn’t stop. “I could, but then every witch or wizard or rabbit-taker or even curious juggler within a hundred miles would try to break it. Best to let people think it’s a grave.” Inquisitiveness was both a magician’s strength and weakness. Their job was to poke a god with a stick to see if was dead or not.

“You’re leaving us with that monster?” asked Thistle. She had come up right beside him without his notice. She did have longer legs but it was a frightening skill to sneak up on a wizard.

He stopped and turned to face her. “Not quite yet, I still have your doctor barber to talk to. I have a few questions about the state of the body.”

“And then you’re leaving after that,” said Thistle. She was way out of her depth and he knew it. She had already lost one wizard, now she was losing another.

His jaw tightened. “I have many matters to attend to,” he admitted. That was the classic wizard line, and everyone knew it was dishonest. He learned from his master that they were the magic words for ‘I don’t really want to be here but explaining why would take too long’. He hated hearing it, much less saying it.

“I need to inform the academy and research possible solutions,” he conceded. It was true, a wizard without knowledge was like a fish without a dog. His mind was exhausted, he’d think up a better analogy later. He also had to look up the Nightwarrens. Something about that name tickled his cortex.

“I’ll send my apprentice to oversee Cornsilk's burial and belongings,” he assured her. “Then I’ll be back to seal up these portals! I promise.”

“Portals? As in…more than one?” she asked.

Turpenwile bit his tongue. A portal was rare even by wizard standards, but when they popped up, they popped up in packs. She didn’t need to know that. A wizard messing up his words was like…well…it was like…oh to hell with it.

He put his hand on her shoulder, which was a considerable reach. “I have this under control. And you’ll like Mace!” He hoped he hadn’t just lied twice to Thistle.