Side Story: Nutrek Odysseus

~ Evil in a Nutshell ~

❝ Very Mysterious Narrator ❞

In a forsaken kingdom where festering corpses roam unimpeded, in decayed marshes miles away from the mad genius improvising himself healer of the mind currently fighting for the control of his bladder in the face of plausible dismemberment at the hand of the one once called Frozen Nightmare, in the depth of Erwyn’s eternal night, the screams of an abhorrent procession were echoing through the darkness.

Skeletal wolfs, headless chickens, foaming puppies scattering their innards, expired mussels flapping mismatched wings, overcooked frog legs hopping jaggedly, peeled shrimps floating across the air, squashed beetles, parcelled snakes, hovering tortoise shells hosting disembodied spirits, stabbed porcupines, mouldy kittens stumbling on their own dangling eyes, putrid foxes drooling blood and teeth, bunny ghouls, halved beavers, disembowelled flamingos… The macabre cortege stumbled forwards, filled with all manners of absurd abominations vomited by the depraved imagination of a necrophiliac zoologist under mushroom.

Preceding the demented cacophony of disgusting gargles and growls… although not by much… a fleshless rodent was darting on all fours, fleeing for his unlife and cursing a detested foe whose name he knew not.

“Damn you, Light Sword! Damn you. Damn you. Damn yoooooouuuuuu!! Just wait! Beware!! Take heed! For I shall get my revenge! Yes-yes-yesyesyesyesyes-YEEESSSSS! My revenge! IIIIIIIIIIIH!! And then you shall know the wrath of NUTREK ACORNAZIETH THE FOU–”

“RRRRRAAAAARRRRRRGLE!!!”

“SQIEEEEK!! Shit! Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit-shit-shit….”

Increasing his speed, Nutrek Acornazieth “the Great” dashed further away from the rebellious army he himself had summoned. A pathetic sight indeed.

✶ ✶ ✶

“COME BACK HEEEEEEEEERE!!”

“Oh, for My sake!”

The small pixie dodged a fireball large enough to engulf a small country and dived into a pond, exiting immediately from a cloud of purple smoke in the middle of frozen tundra. A wave and the smoke dissipated. The flying book glanced around in every direction and see nothing except for a herd of bouncing eyeballs in the distance.

“Insane girl… What were we thinking when– Oh. Right. I wasn’t. Anyway. Where was I? Oh. Right. The chase…”

✶ ✶ ✶

The chase continued for hours, a gruesome game of hide-and-seek between the trice centenarian trees growing from the muck. Eventually the undead pursuers lost track of their fleeing creator. Showing a surprising level of intellect for a gathering of animated corpses, they immediately spread to cover more ground and locate the recipient of their undying hatred.

Amongst the loud ruffling resounding in the usually silent forest, annoyed murmurs floated unnoticed. “…Damned. Do they never relent? Although We are proud of the tenacity and smarts of Our creation, We would appreciate if their persistence were not this way misused… Alright… Let Us leave quietly… silent… discreet like the wind… unseen like the–”

*crack*

“Uh-oh.”

“SCHWREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

“IIIIIIH!!”  Dropping back on all fours, the little dark mage began running again, shouting curses through his gritted fangs. “DAMNED!! Curse you, small dry twig!! Who gave you the permission to lay under my mighty toes?! Bastard! Your father was firewood and your mother had mildew! Curse you, curse you to the seventeenth generat– WAA–”

*PLOP* 

“SCHWREEEEEEEEEE-HEEEEEE!!!” A huge bear-sized three-legged boar missing its ribcage shrieked charge and started rushing unsteadily in the direction the noise and squeals had risen from. All the surrounding monsters stopped their haphazard rummaging and followed the boar’s lead.

*rollroll* *trbbbbblle* *bombom* *skrrrrrrrrrruuutch* *kaplof* *pong-pong-pong* *datadatadata* …and other colourful onomatopoeias.

Soon the area was freed from the presence of the stinking mob. Although its stench remained behind, no one was there to be inconvenience by it.

“…”

No one?

“…”

Silence had fallen on the woods once again after the heterogeneous nightmarish horde had left. A small geranium shivered in relief in the middle of an inconspicuous muddy pond. Strangely, the shivers didn’t seem to stop and instead intensified until…

*shruuui-plop*

With a loud suction noise, a slimy pile of muck emerged from the puddle, topped by the swaying flower. Ungainly it sled to the shore and extirpated itself from the filthy stalled waters. Trembling like some sludgy pudding, the heap of mire slowly shed itself away, revealing a soiled bony rodent shivering in rage.

“RRRRRRRRRRAAAH!!! Humiliating! Disgraceful! Vulgar! Ignoble! Opprobrious!” The irate overlord spat as it wiped away the muck from its bones. “Tripping–… I mean… Being reduced to skilfully hide in such a shameful manner from a herd of low-unlifes! Unbelievable! MORTIFYING!!”

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Raising briefly his paws to the sky in anger, the Squirrel of Darkness began walking fast in the direction opposite his unfaithful horde, furiously voicing his hatred for the one who he held, admittedly not without reason, responsible for his shameful predicament.

“Curse you Light Sword! Cu-cu-cu-cu-CURSE YOUUU!! Even father never treated me that way! …Well, father did try to destroy me… BUT THAT HAPPENED ONLY ONCE!! …before I fled from home… BUT… But… Ahhhhhh…”

Despite his lack of lungs, Nutrek did his best impression of a long sigh as he ducked under a low branch.

“What did I do to deserve this? I was quiet, calm, retired, didn’t kill too many humans, just enough. I stayed in my corner, destroyed very little, no more than a farm or two... maybe three… and that one town… once… One little, little, tiny, tiny, tiny town in seven hundred years! It can’t be even considered a bad action. Those ruffians had terrible table manners! We should be thanked for cleansing the world for such filthy individuals!”

His mood, matching the weather, kept darkening. The critter overlord walked around a large boulder and spotted a stray [Skeleton Swordsman]. Not one of his own. The sack of bones raised its weapon, but Nutrek nonchalantly incinerated the foolish creature before it even had the time to step closer. If countless critters posed an actual threat, a lone undead was less than a fly for the powerful short necromancer.

“Sot! Impudent! All of them. All those newbies still risen after the cursed power wave,” he snorted in disdain, dispersing his victim’s ashes with a sweep of his bony feet and continuing his rant. “Mindless imbeciles incapable of recognising greatness when it appears before them. And their eating habits! Ah! Deplorable. Quantity. Quantity. Quantity! No concern for who they ingest as long as it’s alive. Those uncivilised buffoon are a shame to the name of the undead! What would poor father say if he saw this? Ah. I know.”

The bony critter stopped in his tracks. He adopted a regal but scholarly posture, one berating phalanx pointed to the sky, and enunciated in a lower and more gravelly voice: “Nutrek, son, remember, that kind of binge eating is for lower beings. Not for noble liches such as ourselves. Do not forget! Be careful what you eat! And brush your teeth.”

He dropped the pose and continued his way and his mumblings, but in his own high-pitched squeaky voice.

“Yeah. Mortals should grovel with gratitude that I didn’t join the fray three hundred years ago. Right! Yes! Indeed! Indeeeeed!! We’ve been a model of righteousness and mercifulness! We didn’t even lift a single claw, not a single! Not even against that stupid trio that decided to picnic in the middle of a zombie swarm! A shame too, their dog would have made a good minion, he seemed quite the loyal type. …Right. Why didn’t I attack them again?”

Puzzled, Nutrek scratched the side of his skull with the aforementioned claw, until the memory hit him. “AH! That old freak! I don’t know why, but his aura reminded me of father when he–”

Suddenly, the rodent froze and clasped his skull in both his paws, shaking wildly back and forth. “No. No. No-no-no-no-no-no. Don’t think about father! Don’t think! DOOOON’T! No. No. NO! You know how it always ends up. You know how you always get depressed when it happens! You know it! YOU KNOW!! Yes, you know. Father hates you. Yes, he hates you! Because you’re flawed! You’re broken! A mistake! TRASH!! RUBBISH!! AAAAAAAAAH!!”

Unbeknownst to the tormented necromancer, a circle of uncontrolled green flames had begun expanding around him, smouldering any living thing in its path and leaving only ashen remains of even the tallest of ancient trees. Even then, Nutrek noticed nothing, imprisoned he was in the dark spiral of his memories and madness.

“A failed experiment like your brothers! That’ what you are! That’s what he said! That’s why he tried to kill you. To dispose of you! That’s why… IIIIIIIIIIHH! Stop that!” He arched his spine and slammed his head into the ground. “You’re just hurting yourself! Stop! Stop! STOP!! Think of another emotion. Other emotion. Right. Emotion? What? Which? Happy. Curious. Confused. Sad. No, not sad. Anger. Angry? ANGRY!! LIGHT SWOOOORD!! CURSE YOU MISERABLE THIEF!!”

With his shout, the devouring flames were immediately extinguished as Nutrek the Bipolar’s demeanour made a full turnaround, back from traumatised child to wrathful hysterical warlock.

“I will find that bastard, this pig, this miscreant! And kill him! Then raise him back from the abyss, kill him again, raise him, kill him, raise him, kill him, raise him, kill him, raise him, kill him, raise him, kill him, again, and again, and again, and again, AND AGAIN!! And then bind his soul to a fried slice of potato and EAT IT!! We’ll see whose laughing then!! HIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIIIIIIHIHIHI!!”

After his laughing fit, his mood soured once again and his shoulder slumped. “And why did that bastard have to take away my precious? It took me so much effort stealing it from father in the first place… Such an irreplaceable artefact. I bet the blustering fool doesn’t even know how to use it.”

Nutrek’s baseless insight was surprisingly accurate. It was even highly probable that Elric Walker had entirely forgotten ever picking up the [Fated Acorn of Power]. Moreover, in the unlikely event that the Wandering Knight recalled ever taking possession of the artefact, it would matter little. The evil nut could only be of use to a god of death, or a highly skilled necromancer, the likes of which were more than scarce in the present Pandore.

Its former possessor, a noble man who had forsaken his kingdom, his line, his duty, his body and his soul in order to dive wholly into the study of the Daaaaaaark Aaaaaaaarts – and also the man whom the bone squirrel called Father – was one of the three most powerful necromancers to have walked the Pandore Continent in the last six thousand years.

The unremarkable seed held in truth the power to convert Nature’s energy into fuel for the Dead, amongst other ignoble abilities. By fusing two forces most considered opposite, the original owner of the artefact had created an almost inexhaustible source of dark mana, which Nutrek had managed to steal the day he fled from his own creator. In passing he had also imprinted himself as the sole master of the overpowered item… and further pissed off his “daddy”.

As for the name imparted to the [Fated Acorn of Power], it was Wheel, the goddess of Fate herself, who had cursed it. In a moment of spite, she had done so to bring misery to whoever sought it. Little was known about what exactly had been done to anger the goddess…

Though, knowing Wheel it must have been a matter of unfaithfulness. “Do not tempt Fate”, as went the idiom… because she tended to succumb to temptation. “Fate is a bitch” after all. She was also a clingy girlfriend, and a vengeful one at that. I believe adventurers referred to her kind as “yanderes”.

*shiver*

Godly drama aside…

Without the [Fated Acorn of Power], Nutrek still wielded tremendous magic. However, he couldn’t maintain spells for extended periods of time, like controlling undead would require. In that regard, the squirrel lich was truly an abnormal existence. His abilities and mana capacity were abnormally high, but the regeneration rate of his magical power was disproportionally low. Regardless of how much he tried to retain it, power just leaked away from him like water from a pierced goatskin.

Nutrek had never managed to find out why that was. All he knew was that he sometimes felt an odd discomfort in his soul, like his body and soul didn’t fit, like someone trying to wear clothes a size too small. To continue with the analogy, his magic was spilling through the rips in the clothes.

“Which is completely impossible, idiotic, illogical,” Nutrek mumbled, his thoughts circling around his mana problems. “Why would my body be unfit for my soul? This is just my imagination acting up. Must be. Has to be.”

He stopped and looked up at the dark clouds he could vaguely distinguish between the gaps of the canopy above.

“It’s just my imagination…” he whispered again, a note of uncertainty in his voice. “It is, right… father?”

* * * * *