Intergalactic Hall of Heroes - The Chalice of Souls

Down below, the figure in the dirty robes arose to his feet and walked to the bars, gesturing over to Spinson's stand-in, who was a half-bothered younger wizard, who was sitting down all to himself, not bothering anyone at all, whilst smoking a pipe and reading his book.

The wizard sat completely unperturbed, absorbed into the book he was currently reading. On closer examination, the book was a novel, one of those fiction novels about an imaginary world where in place of magic, people relied absolutely on technological gadgets that ran on different types of energy instead. This particular adventure involved escapades involving horseless carriages that were fueled by a strange type of oil. Pure fantasy for these people, but truly compelling.

The wizard was now at a point where the story reached a climactic point. In this chapter, there was now a chase involving two of these horseless carriages along a mountain road, reaching speeds of over one hundred and fourty miles an hour.

Then, from the other cell, the croaky man cried out:

“Help! Heeeelp!”
“Not again. You don't need any help.”

The croaky man's cries were ignored. He just stood there in vain, steadying himself against the bard, watching the young wizard read the apparently unputdownable fantasy book.

Later on, the old man suddenly collapsed and dropped to the floor, just like that - all of a sudden, landing onto a wooden bowl that clattered noisily out of the way, a bowl so noisy that this finally distracted the young wizard from an intriguing paragraph, where the main character was trying to get away from somewhere, but happened to be running low on the mysterious oil that fuelled the vehicle.

After putting his bookmark in place, the young man wondered over to peer down at the ungraceful pile that was Rondar.

“Old man. Can you hear me?” he asked.

But nothing happened. This flummoxed the young wizard a great deal, so much that he fumbled around with his own face, as the cold sweat began to build.

“Oh-erm-I-erm-oh dear.”
“Get a doctor!” said the other prisoner over to where he stood.
“W-what? What?”
“Get a doctor... now!”
“Oh crikey, yes! Ooh!”

The wizard, in panic mode, learning again how to use his own feet, ran, nearly tripped over his own robe in the process. Then he fell up the stairs, catching himself on the legs – which would be cheap slapstick fun if it wasn’t so serious.

“Bollocks! Ow.”

And just a few minutes later, he returned down the stairs with a man dressed in a very strange get-up indeed... covered in swirls and strange patterns in body paint, dressed in pieces of animal hides and wearing one scary mask, decorated with fangs and feathers. This man appeared to be wearing many different necklaces, one of which had a small sac attached to it. Whatever he was supposed to be, he descended down the stairs, with an air of importance, together with his skull-tipped cane.

“Where is he, then?” demanded the strange man, impatiently.
“Oh, just here. Oh, suppose I’d better unlock it. I’ll just get the keys.”

As the wizard stumbled over to the table to fetch the bunch of keys, the strangely dressed man grasped his cane by the shaft and shook it at the bars, making a shaky sound as if the skull had been filled with beans or generally dry bits of something.

Suddenly the door’s lock unlocked, and the door swung opened by itself, just as the wizard turned his head.

“Well, I wasn’t going to wait for you! Anyway, let’s look at the patient.” The man remarked.

The strange man crouched down over Rondar, pressing two fingers on his neck to check for a pulse.

“He’s out cold. A few more minutes and he’d have been a goner. I can feel his life force still there. Now, young man, here comes the fun bit.”

The strange man tore off his mask and discarded it to one side, revealing a face painted like a skull, staringly and grinning madly. He turned Rondar over onto his back, raised his hands in the air and exclaimed:

“AAAAKHTUMA!”

Instantly, a ball of lightning began to slowly grow between his clawing hands.

“CLEAR!” he roared.

He dragged the lightning down into Rondar, placing his hands either side on his chest, the left higher than the right. Then he gripped his hands into Rondar’s skin as the charge emitted a loud ‘Thump’ causing Rondar to try to arch his body upwards. Then the man pressed his lips to Rondar’s, held his nose shut between his fingers, and breathed into him.

“Come on!” he said between gritted teeth , and shouted again into the air, “AAAAKHTUMAAA!”

Again the charge grew between his hands, which he then plunged deep into Rondar’s still body.

“Grraaargh!” he roared as the charge thumped, and Rondar’s body automatically lurched up. Once more, he then breathed into Rondar’s lungs.

Rondar retched and coughed, stirring slowly from almost death, staring up in shock at this strange man’s painted visage. Rondar’s stare looked completely glazed and blank.

“Hey. You there.”

The witch doctor waved his hands frantically infront of his eyes, but Rondar didn’t appear to recognise this movement at all. The doctor turned his head to the young wizard.

“What’s this guy’s name?”
“R-Rondar.”

The witch doctor switched his wide eyed grinning stare back to the old man.

“Rondar? I’m a doctor. I’m putting you to sleep and we’re going to go upstairs. If you can hear me in there, there’s no need to worry.”
“Is he going to be ok?” the young wizard asked.
“Who knows? Time will indeed tell!”

The witch doctor now grabbed his stick with his two hands and raised it above his head, and stared at the ceiling. Then he began to chant warbling gibberish, as he shaked the staff at random intervals. For a moment, it is if the witch doctor had entered into a trance.

Within a minute, Rondar’s eyes closed and the witch doctor shifted his piercing gaze back to the wizard, who was already uneasy with him.

“You. You can move him upstairs.”
“What, you mean pick him up?”
“No? Use some of that wizard stuff!”
“What? Oh... yeah. Not thinking. Sorry!”

The witch doctor shook his head in despair, then went to get his mask. The young wizard unleashed a straight walnut wand (which looked as if it hadn’t been used a lot) and pointed it at the sleeping Rondar.

“Tarupa!” he attempted to bellow, as he whisked the wand in a careful-ish through the air.

“Tarupa!” he repeated.

“Tarupa! Oh bloody hell. Oop-“

Rondar suddenly accelerated from the floor upwards, his head hitting the frame of the jail cell door quite hard. Understandably, the young wizard cringed and felt as if the best place for him was a quiet corner to shrink into.

“What the hell are you doing?” inquired the witch doctor.
“Trying to levitate.”
“Don’t they teach this in first year wizard school anymore?”
“Sorry. I’m re- I’m really sorry.”
“Come on, let’s go.”

Rondar left the prison like a helium balloon tied to a string, the two of them trying their best not to injure him any further. Or accidentally let him out of a window. Because that would be quite an experience to wake up from that.

Into the infirmary they went, and they pulled poor Rondar down to strap to the bed. The witch doctor then reached over to checked his pulse again.

“He’s stable. “
“W-what do you think’s happened.”
“Well, medical opinion says heart attack, maybe stroke. Tell me about the patient.”
“I don’t really know a lot. Tell you what, I’ll get Spinson.”
“Who the hell is Spinson?”
“H-Head Gaoler, I think he’s got records of all the prisoners we ever have here, somewhere.”

The witch doctor stood there with his arms folded.

“Well, I’d like to meet this... Spinson then.”
“I’ll erm- go and fetch him then.”

As the young wizard left, the witch doctor tutted and shook his head.

“I don’t know, anyone is becoming wizards these days.”

The witch doctor turned towards the sleeping Rondar and clapped his hands together to rub them, and by doing so, energy warmly crackled between his palms. The doctor’s eyes closed and he breathed deeply, centring himself.

He held his palms an inch over Rondar’s body for a few seconds, then began to sweep them up and down, sensing if there was anything untoward in there. The doctor’s face looked relaxed.

As his hands hovered over Rondar’s cranium, they stopped there.

“Oh my.”

A few minutes later, Spinson arrived with the young wizard, who at this point in time was still feeling the after-effects of much alcohol. Though, this little emergency’s sobering effects muchly negated this.

“Who are you and what’s going on?” Spinson asked.
“Me? I’m the renowned Doctor Julius Wolagnub, WD. Your prisoner has had what we would call a myocardial infarction-“
“A what?” replied the astonished Spinson.
“Oh yeah, for people like you, he’s had a heart attack.”

Spinson considered for a moment what this meant.

“Bloody hell. Is he dead?”
“I managed to save him, oh, and he’s had a stroke at roundabout the same time too. I want to keep him here for now.”
“Well, that’s fine by me, you can keep him.”
“Before you go, can you just tell me a little about the patient?”
“Well, erm, his name is Rondar, and we locked him up for a series of robberies years ago, escaping justice and all that. Age-wise, he’s about mid seventies, yeah?”
“Is there anything... medical we need to know?”
“He’s got arthritis and, oh yeah, his short term memory’s going.”
“I scanned his body and there was something there I couldn’t put my finger on. An unusual level of blood clotting, all at the same time.”
“What does that mean?”
“When the blood clots, it blocks arteries. In older men, particularly if they’ve been smoking or,” he sniffed the air, looked down and pointed at Spinson, staring down at him, “Drinking too much, they can get narrowed. Makes blood clots more easy to form. You don’t know any family history?”
“No, nothing. What can you do for him?”
“At the moment, I’m just keeping him stable. Though tell me, where’s your Lord Pommenby?”

Spinson slapped his own forehead.

“Oh shit.”

© Luke O'Sullivan, 2009