Wise Men, Unwise Ways (Open) [Archive]

Oliver

12-08-13, 06:04 PM

The weather was strange. For some reason, it compelled one Oliver Midwinter to madness. Though cold, dark, and wet, he trudged through the puddles and lanes determined. Voices gibbered in the wind. Eyes stared in the shadows. Wings beat in the heavens above, veiled by storm and subterfuge. Somebody, somewhere, did not want the sorcerer to sleep.

“Are you okay kid?” a merchant shouted across the road.

Oliver looked up from the sanctuary of his hood, beamed a half-arsed smile, and nodded. He moved on, quick to leave company behind, quick to find peace and quiet. By the time he turned the third corner, he found it. By the time he turned a fourth, civilisation found him right back.

“Going somewhere, kid?” The large, bulbous eyes of a frog…thing, undid all Oliver’s secrets. Oliver nodded slowly. He pulled back his hood, unable to resist the man’s charm. “Come to the market…it’s…wondrous.”

Behind the man, and his strange, partisan bedfellows, Oliver saw lights. They cast strange, almost-fire glows across the street’s shop fronts. Lanterns danced, without strings, and with gusto overhead. Birds fluttered to and from gaping sleeves, and fire breathers gouged flames of every colour imaginable over wooed crowds.

“Yes.” The man with the skull’s tone was so dry Oliver felt moisture dredge from his bones. “Come.”

The party of five all made to turn. Clad in robes richer than governments and prettier than maidens, they crossed the threshold of mundane and magical. The barrier surrounding the market weakened when they did, and the sound of the carnival washed over Oliver. It was a wave of brief, intense nausea. It was what bottled happiness would feel like, if ever somebody cracked that particular mystery.

“Okay,” he said softly. He followed the group hands limp by his side. His white hair danced in a breeze as he too entered the market.

Corone’s drab landscape vanished immediately. The street came to life. Dank stone became jade lined edifice to architecture’s secrets. Above every door, a glowing number backlit by souls called customers inside. Oliver could have studied each of the hundred portals for an age, but it all entered his mind at once. He did what came naturally to everyone first crossing the market: he dropped his jaw, and stared.

“He is young. Young is he. Come with us. Us with come.” The third member of the party had a maddening mask. Its eyes swirled, its strange top purposeless. He twitched as he spoke, and swung a censer that burnt with cinnamon and cordovan incense. Its black, hellish framework reminded Oliver of a warlock’s brazier.

“What…what is this place?” The young sorcerer managed to ask. The sway the place held over him weakened as his doubt took hold. He should not be here. The market should not be there. He held out a hand, as though he could pull away an illusion and be back in the dark midnight air.

“This, child, is the Molyneux Market.” The fourth member of the party, a man with many hands, and a pallid, porcelain face boomed. His voice was thunderous. He gestured wide with four arms, and tried to smile. It came across as a grimace. “Magical practitioner’ world over come. People sell. People buy. Spells are flung.”

“Quite often, but not too often enough, people die.” The final member was a hooded man, tall, dark, and brooding. Oliver did not need to ask him his profession, because he smelt of it. He reeked of it so strongly he wondered how the others could stomach it.

“How do you buy things?” It was a natural question, but Oliver felt foolish asking it.

The party moved on, and Oliver followed. The crowd began to thicken as they encroached on the main hub of trade. Like a bazaar in any town, stalls, corner vendors, and match stick girls teethed with temptation. Artefacts that buzzed, wands that hummed, and creatures that cawed piled high on every worktop. Every type of wizard imaginable and every type beyond milled back and forth around Oliver as he wandered blind through the unknown.

“That…,” the frog said eerily, “is up to the buyer.”

In the blink of an eye, the party vanished. Oliver blinked. He could not be sure, if they had simply vanished into the swirl of people, or if they had literally vanished from the face of Althanas. He pouted.

“Well, that’s not very helpful.” He rested his hands on his hips and tapped his hobnail on the glistening cobble. It was pristine. It was devoid of shit, shame, and slime.

He now stood at the centre of the market, a crossroad leading in all four directions of the compass. On the four corners, tall, waif like spirits stood vigil. Oliver recognised them from his lessons with Patel, his mentor. He derived a conclusion, and finally realised what he was doing here, what the voices he heard were, and what he had to do.

“This is the Carnival of Souls…,” he said aloud, to clarify in his mind. “This is where a wizard both comes of age,” he trailed off to smile maddeningly. “This is where a sorcerer finds his centre.”

Unbeknownst to Oliver Midwinter, as he dove into the crowd to explore, bargain, and bounce through an adventure, there were several other unwitting members to his ascension into adulthood.