Tour

On her final day within the grendel's lair, I tour the laboratory of sorcerer-engineer.

Beyond the entrance, a sacrifice upon the wall in an illuminated style reminds me we have entered another religious enclave. In a simple cell, she exchanges her armor for a rough-spun robe, her weapons and equipment guarded under lock and key.

A choir monk, a sorcerer-technician, walks me through the checklist of spells he prepares while training a novice and replacement. A heavy metal door leads to a lead-lined vault sealed against legions of tiny, conjured demons, nines of millions in number, who can know no escape for the havoc they would wreak upon this world. She is positioned at the center of the armillary sphere that fills this room. It lifts and tilts on ponderous, whirring gears as they align it under mirrors reflecting calibrated shafts of light. A template is fitted to focus the fiendish magic. Numbers and symbols scroll through the air above her head, glowing, scarlet and angry. We retreat to safety before hoards of evil gremlins become unleashed.

The control room is carved to resemble a Norse rune called the Gateway, a thorn upon a rose marking Thor's domain where giants and demons stagger under his hammer blows. Each station faces a different chamber, one for penetrating demons, another for the superficial. Sorcerer-technicians scry upon her through crystal balls to monitor her progress, possessing no wards powerful enough to allow anyone to stand beside her. The demons have eaten through two apparatus with their vitriolic dispositions. Both will be replaced before the moon has turned.

The chamber is darkened, a button pushed, the magical accelerator uncovered and unchained. Its beam is set into motion, its ray invisible to our eyes. No torches dim, no candles flicker. Only a red lantern is raised above the threshold to remind us not to enter. The monks and sisters observe a moment of silent contemplation for the instants that the witching lasts.

And she is free.

She rearmors quickly before we depart. At the gate the lay sister who greeted her every morning from the tollhouse assigns an angel to perch upon her shoulder, a golden reminder of an ordeal now both judged and passed.

On the journey home, concentric rings spread across glassy pools of water with each drop of rain falling from a leaden sky like unshed tears of joy.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

The Lair

We enter the final battle having tracked the grendel to its lair. Fetid air wafts from the entrance, bleached bones litter the darkened grotto beyond like an ossuary.

Before she proceeds, the sorcerer-engineer measures her to ensure she can squeeze through the cleft in the rock, remarking her in woad to reinforce the magic symbols already upon her side. I step back as he floods the cave with the final bursts of his scintillating ray, knowing it is too dangerous for me to accompany her any farther. Only she may enter the cave before us. Only she may slay the beast within. This battle will be settled in the old way, hero against hero, leader against leader. Mano a mano, or literally, hand to hand.

Throughout this adventure, we have been fortunate in our encounters. We pray our luck perseveres until the battle ends. Fortune favors the bold though not always the brave. But, the dice are hot and continue to roll our way.

Many believe their God does not play dice with the world. There was a time when the gods openly diced with men, a time before they retreated into deed restricted communities behind abalone gates where security stations turn away any who might intrude. Then, the gods walked among us, gathering in the agora for a quick game where the stakes could wager a life against immortal fame for no more than entertainment. Now, they skulk the back-allies of the keep, weaving drunkenly between the arsenal and the data mine like homeless addicts searching for a cure.

Perhaps others roam beyond the shadow of the wall, much reduced and mumbling though just as capricious when they throw the bones. I wonder if one watches over her, protecting her like Athena or Apollo shielding their heroes during the ten year siege at Troy. I don't remember doing one a favor, don't remember asking one to load the dice. Just another debt accrued, another payment due, one no dwarven lord with bear.

As she crawls inside and disappears, the dice go into motion, tumbling off the woodwork before they hit the cloth. Time stops. The cubes hang above the table, circling, spinning, deciding.

Alone for the moment, I focus on my surroundings: a shallow bowl, carved from the hillside by some long dead giant's hand, blocked in by a pool both green and stagnant. A narrow path leads around and in with a craggy wall behind like a rising gray crescent moon. A stream trickles from a stone encased well with an adjacent cell for meditation, perhaps a blessing or a baptism, or just rest and refreshment before our hero delves into the fissure by its side. The site is ancient and holy, its floor unexpectedly vibrant and alive. Orchids, white with blushing tips, cling to rough and tumbled walls. I wonder how they survive on only rocks and air, but that is what life does, in expected places, in unexpected ways.

I climb the rude stair that leads to the top of the hill where I can see across the straights to the caers and eyries and snowcapped mountains where griffins dwell. Up here lie the cairns of unnamed heroes shrouded with drooping bluebells that silently toll their forgotten deeds with each passing breeze lifted from the sea. Perhaps a benevolent god pauses to listen as it wanders this headland as it has since time began.

Part of the grendel's magic is induced amnesia. When she emerges from its lair, she will not remember where the dice have settled, whether she has slain the dragon or wounded it into sleeping, passing the years within it own contented dream. Either way, I will show her to this place before we depart for home. From here, we can watch the sun rise and set over water, passing the day in beauty and the peace that stillness brings.

Behind the veil, the dice clatter to a rest beyond our sight. The battle now has been won or lost, and we eagerly await the outcome.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

The Boost

----- Original Message -----

Today was Karen's setup for "the boost," the last week of radiation where they target the tumor sight specifically with direct radiation. They took more measurements and marked another place around the scar, though this time drawn with only purple, permanent marker.

This one goes a little different. Up to now, they have been using protons at a glancing angle for radiation. Now they switch to electrons with a straight on shot. The electrons don't penetrate like the protons, maybe 1/2 inch into her ribs, but not into the vital organs.

Other than that, things are still going well. Not as much redness as the doctor expected, though it could continue to develop for a week after treatment stops. The boost will likely increase that. Her fatigue has lessened after the red cell booster last week.

The techs seem to like the radio-oncologist. They say he is one of the most on-time doctors they have ever worked with and generally a nice guy (of course, he's a sci-fi fan. How could it be otherwise?)

On a logistical note, I'll probably only send out 2 or 3 more updates. One next week after radiation is over (next Thursday, yeah!). I'll be going with Karen that day and she may take it off so we can celebrate after. Possibly one each following after the follow-ups with the radio-oncologist (8/8) and the medical oncologist (8/13) though I may combine the two.

For those who have been receiving the creative messages, there are three or four of those still in the queue, which should go out over the same period. If anyone wants the full compliment of creative chronicles, either Karen or I can handle the request. At some point I will do something more with them, though I'm not sure what quite yet. At some point they may appear on a website, though I'm not sure when that will happen.

Thanks for bearing with my sometimes chatty updates (like this one), especially those of you who don't know me that well. I know for those who work with Karen, it may have been strange hearing from me with her back at work. It has given me something to do during all of this other than focus on the negatives. I've found some peace in the creative messages even if it may not seem so.

That's it for this week. One more week to go and the day to day of this adventure is done.

----- End Original Message -----

Fractions

The sorcerer-engineer works in fractions, one of twenty-eight, one of five, one of thirty-three. Each day dawns with a three-percent solution until his magic reaches effulgence. He watches through his crystal ball as shaft of lights whittle at the grendel like wood from a carving or clay upon the wheel until nothing is left but a pile of dross to be buried beyond the wall.

No monument will mark the grendel's standing save the scars across her side. She will never see its body, never touch it, never know it is well and truly dead. Though its arm was nailed to the central pillar of her hall, she will always wonder how the monster could survive such a grievous wound and still drag itself toward home. She remains uncertain whether scattered kin will rise to demand a wergeld, whether its mother will swear vengeance before raising a retributive army of her own.

High in his tower, the sorcerer-engineer drops clear, cold marbles into a boiling cauldron to reflect on the patterns that emerge. Most shatter internally with a resounding crack but do not come apart. The sudden change brings beauty in the imperfections, a spiderweb of fractures refracted through the glass. He reads the sparkling veins like the lines of love and life etched into her palm.

She relies on his assessment. Like the captain-general, she works with her hands and does not practice magic, unless in the way that farmers do as they encourage the earth to grow. Or the Buddhist mage who transplants rather than terminates life, whether newly sprouted, green and out of place or many-legged and wandering astray. Perhaps in these simple actions, she has been buying back her own life one fraction at a time.

Fractions descend like fragments from a shattered ornament. Broken shards tumble from our eyes like the scales of a translucent dragon. Alternating days of war and peace, of mirth and woe, gift and loss flash and circle in the falling light. One by one, they trickle into our hands where we piece them back together to create a whole, a new beginning.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Routine of Days

She circles back to where she started, the grendel retreating toward its cave, elusive.

Each morning, she enters the enchanted wood alone and unarmored, her red hood just coming back pale and baby fine. Armed only with a basket scented of butter and fresh custard, she appears defenseless, naked bait hinging the release of the sorcerer-engineer's trap each time the grendel's jaws snap beside her ear while she struggles against its cruel embrace.

From high within his tower, the sorcerer-engineer traces her progress through the simulacrum's crystal eyes, now his familiar, his black cat stalking her shadow on silent paws, his eyes upon the night. Locked outside, housecarls listen intently as each report drifts down. Should the horns sound, we ride with axes shouldered to quickly render aid.

But grendels are cautious, and cunning by nature. It will not approach should it scent sorcery upon the wind. She becomes the lure, the apple, the forbidden fruit whose temptation is too powerful to resist, the betrayal waiting at the end of each day in a sudden blaze of fiery pain that only it will feel.

Like a moth drawn to the flame that devours it, instinct compels it to return. Like the wax of that votive, to provide the light she, too, must prepare to burn. Transformed from fuel to smoke a little more each day, she lights her own way in the darkness, seeking out the path to her redemption and release.

Each morning finds her slightly more sunburned and sore from the previous in the field as her searching slowly spirals toward an end.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Simulacrum

Reborn in a baptism of chemicals and steel, she now exchanges art for applied science, alchemy for wizardry, an artillerist for a technologist. For the final phase of this battle, the mage-general is replaced by a sorcerer-engineer.

Part thaumaturgist, part diviner, his is a science of precision and calculation, of sortilege and scrying, of orphic formulae. Arcane instruments crowd his laboratory, an abacus, a tellurion, an armillary sphere. A clockwork orrery guides him in focusing the power of the sun and stars into a deadly, coruscating ray.

These are his tools in the fight against the grendel. Unlike the mage-general's, his is a push-button magic operated remotely from the safety of his tower. Specializing in the tactics of ambush, he seeks to grind the grendel down through a series of encounters. He preys upon its warring instincts, not dissimilar from our own, to seek its lair when injured but rarely to pass an exposed enemy without a strike.

Numbers dance across Napier's bones while a secret algorithm clicks and whirs through a difference engine until a pattern emerges, a solution. No matter how exacting his calculations, he cannot avoid her with his ray. His magic is lethal, to her as well as the grendel.

In preparation he places his mark upon her, tattooing her with esoteric runes inscribed in woad. Measure by measure, he records her dimensions, slowly crafting a homunculus, a golem shaped from blood-dampened clay, a miniature woman upon which he performs his sibylline rites and computations.

He binds his creation with powerful words and wardings. His ray could spark life within, though it cannot imbue a spirit. Unchained, the soulless construct would rampage within the wall, easily tearing down all she has bled to defend.

Completed with cast-off bits of nails and hair, with crystal orbs for eyes, the simulacrum stands ready to serve in her stead, absorbing what damage it may from the brilliant flash of each attack morning after morning.

The routine of days will bring more fatigue and depredation as the strain of each encounter depletes her reserves and leaves her increasingly short of breath.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III