Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse

by Christian Winter

  “He’s afraid to talk to her!” Robyn protested. “I’m here for mirth and song, but I’m also here to verify the manuscript for the client, since none of you none-do-wells can be trusted.”

  “Yes I’m afraid to talk to her,” I admitted. “Because I’m not sure if I am awake or in a dream when I stand next to her.” I paused and looked up at the cloudy night sky. “But more importantly, she loves another.”

  “All the more reason to pursue her!” Robyn said leaning in towards me. “Girls will grow bored.”

  “Don’t take advice from a half-elf bastard,” Tiberius shot across the open grassless lawn. “He’s just mixed up.”

  “I know the love of two races,” the bard said in sly refutation. “That makes me twice as important to heed.”

  “Humans don’t count,” I shot back.

  “And never will!” scoffed Tiberius.

  I smiled. “And since you’re only half an elf, you’ve only got half as much knowledge about love as I do.”

  “Perhaps, but I wholly use half on behalf of the whole of love. So maybe humans don’t count, but neither do elves, at least not properly; and if you don’t count, who’s to say that I am more, since my two halves are greater than your one whole?”

  “Poets,” I sighed.

  The minstrel grinned. “Besides, I would never know you care the slightest for her. Any time she is around you ignore her, or act aloof and hardly speak to her.”

  “This one doesn’t act aloof,” said Tiberius, moving in front of the bard and pointing to me.

  “He’s a ridiculous playwright, he thinks everything’s an act,” I said to Tiberius.

  “I think you’re an amazing actor Scammander,” Robyn said softly. “I only wish you would join my plays.”

  Tiberius snarled. “Show some deference you contemptible string-plucking bastard. That’s Scammander you’re talking to—”

  “Yes I hear he’s recently down from the Academy,” the bard quipped.

  Robyn didn’t notice but Tiberius readied a murderous hex on the edge of his lip, awaiting my command.

  “It’s alright Tiberius,” I chuckled. “He plays your strings this evening, my strings all day long, and hopefully his lute strings in the morning when we discover this book.”

  Robyn puckishly plucked the string of his lute as I finished speaking.

  I turned away from the bard and noticed the entire coven of witches staring at me. Most men would be flattered to hold the attention of so many women at once, until they realized that their spells could kill him; or that witches were more interested in what they could do with your body parts after you were no longer alive.

  “You’re wearing slippers,” one said. “I thought you were supposed to have some famous, enchanted platemail legs that bent and moved like silk.”

  “I do, they were a gift of marriage.” Or at least the promise of one.

  “You were betrothed?”

  “To the daughter of the May Queen.”

  “Someone could actually put up with you besides your mother?” another witch retorted.

  “It was probably his mother who put someone up to it in the first place,” yet another said.

  I hesitated. Then I decided to tell them, since I didn’t think we would all be alive by the time the sun rose tomorrow. “I gave her a love potion I made by plucking a single petal from every flower on this earth.” I grinned, remembering the huge journey I had undertaken to gather all those petals. It was actually one of the things I was most proud of.

  “If you spent as much time actually creating spells as you do manufacturing lies you would actually be one of the greatest wizards to ever live,” Robyn chimed back in for an easy insult.

  “If I didn’t own the pants, how would I know that they throb with a glow-worm green glow, and that etched down the side of each leg are poppies and wildflowers?”

  That seemed to stifle their prying. “I only wear them for duels.”

  “If you were betrothed to the daughter of the Queen of May, then have you also been to the fairy court?”

  I nodded. “It is where spring and summer go when they leave these skies.”

  “And they say my tales are outrageous,” Robyn chuckled.

  The stares of the gathered witches seemed to be intensifying. They had been quiet most of the journey, and most of the time here, which meant they knew all they needed to know. I started staring back at them.

  The second most common crime on these sorts of ventures was kidnapping for ransom. I knew that because I had started it. With so much academic money and so many sons and daughters of the nobility involved in this dark pastime, if you couldn’t get the book you could at least get somebody worth paying for. A few times I had been fortunate enough to start a bidding war.

  So, if the opportunity arose they were going to try and kidnap me.

  Which was fine, because at some point this evening I was going to have to kill them.

  Demonax pulled two dwarves away from the witches and shoved them to the ground. He whipped the hoods off the captives and threw each of them a shovel. “Just to be clear: you’re not digging to save your lives. You’re digging for a quick death.”

  “We’re royal engineers, we don’t dig.”

  “Your entire race knows how to dig,” he shot back.

  “Gnomes are better at digging,” the engineer insisted.

  Demonax turned to the witches. “Pull the bones from their skin.”

  “That’s beyond what we are getting paid for,” one of the witches snapped. “And don’t command me to do your bidding, I’m not your wife.”

  For a moment, I thought Demonax was going to kill all of them. The wimpy jibe about his wife had really stung him.

  Bottling his anger, Demonax retrieved the shovels and stood in front of the dwarves. “Well since you won’t dig and they won’t kill you, I have no need of you. Both of you are free to go.”

  The dwarf who had been talking stood up. He looked confused and worried. “But we’ll starve,” he said looking around the barren plane.

  “No you won’t,” Demonax retorted. “The stronger of the two of you will kill and eat the other.”

  The dwarf began yet another rebuttal when the warlock smashed the front of his face with the shovel, then threw it down next to the dwarf’s corpse.

  “Dig,” he snarled.

  No sooner had he finished the phrase than he murdered the other dwarf with the remaining shovel and tossed it in front of the body.

  “Dig,” he snarled, again.

  The skin stretched and twisted as the gooey skeleton pushed itself out of the body and grabbed the shovel. His companion’s skeleton did the same, and both stood ready.

  Demonax shot a minatory glance at the witches, like they could expect the same treatment if they didn’t fulfill their part of the pact.

  Next he reached into his pockets and tossed me two sacks of fairy blood contained in tarantula fur. “Draw the pentagram now. Keep your wrists steady and lines precise.”

  I nodded and turned to go, but he grabbed my shoulder. “I mean it. This isn’t an academic exercise.”

  I nodded again. The furry sacks were warm and slick. They wobbled and bulged and slipped in my hands as I spread the phosphorescent blood. Usually this was the work for a wizard’s familiar, but no one brought them along on expeditions of this black nature. You risked being identified later by your familiar—at a very inconvenient time.

  After I had finished the circle, the witches spread out around it, each a careful distance from the next sister in the coven. The blood began to boil and pop. All spit three times in the glowing, bubbling blood, then each took out a slender phial of shimmering dust which they emptied into the bloody mark. As the witches increased the speed of their chanting, the blood began to boil and glow even brighter and mix with the moonbeams which seemed like they were being pulled from the sky.

  “It is the dust of dreams,” Robyn said to me. “There is very old magic being used this night.”


  Suddenly the entire circle hissed and cracked and sank like splitting ice. The two skeletons standing in the center fell into the chasm of splintered ebony-sheened earth.

  Robyn rushed forward to the warlock. “What did you even need the dwarfs for?”

  “To dig,” Demonax said.

  And so they began. When they finally emerged from the rubble below, they were jet black and covered in ebony soot. Demonax sent them back down almost as soon as they emerged.

  “Scammander will go first and remove any lingering traps.”

  This would at least give me the opportunity to swipe a few choice books before the rest came down and began carelessly plundering.

  “He will not take anything from the shelves,” the other wizard shouted.

  I turned and sighed.

  Let’s see who’s on the same side.

  I turned back to the gathering. “I’m not going down until you bring your skeletons back up here.” Lingering traps indeed.

  “No,” Demonax replied.

  I shrugged. “Then I’m not going down.”

  Demonax rushed over to me. “Our time is short. You’ll go down now or you won’t receive any commission for your efforts.”

  “Why don’t just you and me go down,” I said squaring off and pressing into his face. “I’ll spring whatever ill-conceived and insufficient trap you’ve set and add your skeleton to the two already down there.”

  He was quivering with fury and magic—tumultuous and feral, unlike any I had ever seen.

  “You have no idea…” he whispered.

  Push him off the ledge, no one can wield that much wild mana with any skill.

  I squeezed even closer into his face. “Everyone out here knows who I am. Everyone out here knows what I’ve done. You’re too scared to do deeds with your own name, so I don’t need ideas about you. You’re just another common outlaw, afraid to let the world know you cast and hurl magic, afraid that the Academy is going to come after you. We don’t have to go down there, we can sort this out right now and I’ll do it in under six casts.”

  “Dueling rules,” he chuckled.

  “Demonax, I think you should kill Scammander, but I know he’s bluffing,” I heard Robyn’s calm voice from my left. “He’s too scared to even openly pursue the young girl Meredith without a love potion, so I doubt murdering him will bolster your reputation.” The half-elf paused. “It will also make our coming labor much more toilsome, so please recall your skeletons and let’s move forward.”

  “Of course he’s bluffing,” Demonax growled. “He doesn’t even have a spell ready.”

  Yes, but how quickly I could.

  “Well then that settles it,” Robyn said.

  My eyes were still locked with Demonax’s when he stepped back and the two dwarven skeletons sauntered up on either side of him.

  My flush had worked.

  The bard and Demonax were working together.

  “You should keep them close when you get down there,” I said coolly. “You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  I didn’t give him time to reply; I turned and focused and descended.

  I traveled down the crude stone chute the dwarves had dug and entered the library from behind a collapsed wall. Underneath the scattered rubble and rocks was the back of a great tapestry that must have been hanging on the wall when the skeletons broke through. I paused for a moment and simply stood in one of the oldest and most secret libraries in the world.

  Light.

  I remembered the company I was with.

  No Light.

  After all, I had been dueling in the dark for some time now and only one or two of us were going to leave here alive.

  Preferably me.

  I looked into the subterranean shade and stillness of the ancient shadows.

  A shadow is soft and pliant and sticky. It is also taciturn and inscrutable and cool. A shadow will stick with you through thick and thin, and even in the hardest battles will remain by your side. Shadows are nimble and clever; they can sit on any ceiling, climb up any wall and even the steepest, most unscalabe mountain. How can they do this? Reflection. And because they are so reflective, they are so loved by the philosophers.

  Shadows are most happy by firelight, most pensive by candlelight, and most friendly in sunlight. Shadows are the wisest of all things, for the shadows have seen it all.

  But most of all, shadows love darkness, for in the darkness shadows gather.

  The plants and trees have shadows, the animals have shadows, and even the stones have shadows. Generals have shadows, poets have shadows, and philosophers have shadows that stretch across hundreds and thousands of years, eclipsing those who are not flat and draw breath. Thus while a life may be bound by time, a shadow is not. Even though everything has a shadow, there are more shadows than there are things, which will forever puzzle philosophers and delight poets.

  My shadow is the closest thing to me in the world, and has always been my friend.

  Perhaps the only one I will ever have.

  I sighed and narrowed my eyes.

  Now it was time to steal some books.

  I walked through the blue gloom and began memorizing titles and plucking texts as I swept through the bookcases. Mounted on the shelf at the end of each row was a crouching stone demon with a grotesque grinning face and sparkling blue gems for eyes. Written under it on a wooden plaque was the familiar’s name. I took a moment to admire a sorcerer who was wise and powerful enough to have multiple thralls pulling books for his research throughout the night, while he composed and refined his black spells.

  As I continued through the dukedom of learning I came across many strange artifacts. There was a globe with ancient continents that long ago sank into the waves, and the name of cities whose names had changed, and then changed again, and are no longer visited by modern sandals.

  As I moved through the undisturbed shadows I came upon a black desk with a spell half-written. I squinted and strained my eyes until I could see that it was written in an elegant, though esoteric script. This was the work of an old wizard, one who had crafted many spells by candlelight, summoned many demons, banished even more, and had not one but two books of spells. I slipped it softly into my pocket and examined the desk.

  There was a sextant resting on a sketch of a map of a soul and a tract “On Shuddering” by Merrival next to a stack of ancient learning. My eyes slipped down titles unknown to students and professors of modernity until they landed on a volume titled An Algebra of a Sunset, which was odd, since there was supposed to be only one copy of this book in the entire world. I knew some airy island city was rumored to be seeking it, and since I had thought that Simon was the only creature in this world who owned a copy I had often considered stealing it.

  Opening a book is one of the most dangerous things one can do with one’s life, especially an old book that belongs to a user of magic. Slowly, I extended my arm and slid my fingers onto the ancient text, clenching every muscle in my body. I tightened my grip and took a deep breath.

  I picked the book up and dusted the cover off, being careful to feel for any wards or runes.

  Nothing.

  I tilted my head back and exhaled.

  Put the book down and let someone else succumb to its traps, then steal it. I shook my head. I must keep this, I thought. Do the right thing and let Simon inspect it. Who knows what kind of snares and baleful enchantments have been laid within.

  Another breath slipped past my lips as I gazed at the book. The others would be coming down shortly. I stiffened again, and held the text out in front of me. My breathing quickened as I admonished myself with the only vow I had ever vowed to keep.

  Risk your life, every time.

  Risk your life, every time.

  Risk.

  Your.

  Life.

  “Knowledge enormous makes a god of me,” I smote the air with bright wisdomy words and tore open the ancient book.

  A folded parchment sli
pped out and floated down onto the desk. When I unfolded it I saw a drawing of a lunar cycle circling a cemetery with scientific shapes penciled in each moon phase. As the moon waxed corpses in the corresponding phases shifted in their tombs, finally breaking the earth and crawling out of their graves. As it waned they slumped and returned to their burial plots.

  I folded the charcoal drawing and slipped it back in the text. Whether my fingers had actually grasped one of the rarest first editions of this world I would have to figure out later. For now I just wanted to avoid getting too much blood spattered on it.

  I returned to my exploration of the desk. Another scroll sealed with black wax I broke and read the visionary rhyme with trembling hands, then swore to never speak its contents, such was the way its perspicuity spoke in my mind. Next to scattered rubies and thick sapphires was a golden ring with the strange word “Gyges” carved into it. I didn’t feel like losing a finger so I passed over the ring and began carefully looking for any magic talismans, wands, or old potions that I could use to assassinate my fellow thieves this evening.

  And then I heard a thud and knew it had begun.

  I began slinking through the shadows.

  Ah, the familiar sound of crime. Every villain knows the sound of a body hitting the floor. Those who wouldn’t survive this night would mistake the thuds for books dropping from the shelves.

  I came upon the corpse of a witch, and realized I had not been as alone as I had imagined. I cursed, and then was about to curse again for cursing out loud when I realized my mouth had made no sound.

  Clever.

  I pulled my eyes away from the body and froze. I was staring directly at the desk, where I had been just a few moments ago.

  Very clever.

  I closed my eyes and focused. You should be dead. From a simple hex in the back.

  Just a few more bookcases down I came upon another corpse with hacked up legs. This was one of the better-lain traps I had ever walked into, and it was clear I had lost any sort of advantage I thought I might have had. I had learned, from a life time of villainy, of throwing weighted dice, of double-crossing, of oath breaking, of wearing black and bannerless robes, that in situations like this there was really only one thing you could do.