Nicholas Greyer, the Anti-Hero
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
The Strangers Through the Sixth Tube
As they arrived through to another dome through another tube, the sixth in fact, Nicholas noted that he had not fainted this time. He noted this aloud quite proud of himself, as the bubble around them disappeared with a wet pop.
"Any infant could do that, Nicholas, do not make a fuss over it," Reginald Luther III laughed. "Oh, pardon me."
Nicholas was still unaware of his surroundings due to a very mint-scented blindfold. Nicholas was quite sure it was the very distinct smell of peppermint Altoids. He was also sure someone had just shushed Reginald Luther III.
He noted that their footsteps were a shuffle on marble floors, with their very distinct hollow clacking of heels. Also, he noted, that he no longer heard the sounds of outside that had been manufactured in the first few domes to help with the cabin fever.
This dome, however, could care less about cabin fever, and, in fact, encouraged it.
The Wizard Council of Arguld held their court hearings in this dome, and prisoners had to stay in this dome until it was determined they were innocent, and returned to their homes, or guilty, and moved to Zartakla Prison for the Criminally Wizard Scoundrels. No one cared to change the name, as time went by, and they even created another prison on the surface with a emordnilap for a name. It seems several humans made it to those cells, unaware that they would be housed with several extremely powerful and extremely mad wizards. They did not remain unaware or alive very long.
Nicholas was unaware of Zartlaka Prison being within a short 12 second tube ride, or even the existence of it at all. Grynivold was aware of it, as well as Reginald, and both felt the anxiousness to leave and get as far away as possible. They did, however, continue walking forward, as running away from the council would land them exactly there.
Had he not been blindfolded, Nicholas would be be able to see the gist of it through the murky waters only by the lights outside the tunnels, as they extended to the darkest part of the ocean, and still descended.
However, Nicholas knew one things. This place was serious business. The only sound other than the clearing of throats were the sounds of hard soled shoes hitting marble floors, and the rubber squeak from Nicholas' Converse. There was a loud noise as someone obviously large cleared their throat, entirely too loudly to be purely coincidental that he happened to be in their immediate vicinity. They stopped, and Nicholas knew to stop with them.
"Right, right. Well, dearest father, seems the ride is over. I do hope you fellows have the necessary forethought to prepare the old fellow a decent set of robes or a fine suit, and not the friar look you lot sport. Hm?" Reginald said to someone, and Nicholas could only assume it to be Mr. Mittens, as strange as it sounded to him at the time. He had already assumed Reginald Luther III to be rather mad.
The large throat-clearing man grunted, and a scuffle of small feet came rushing towards them.
"My dears, you've arrived! Grynivold! Dear, you've aged so much you've ascended to become, a cat?! Hahahaha!"
The small woman's voice was far from light and airy, and sounded more like the voice of a highly seasoned smoker. It also laughed far too long at it's own jokes, whereas Grynivold nor Reginald broke the silence for even a chuckle. Very few people could find time for laughter in this dome. Those who could either did it out of nervous sarcasm, or were simply so evil they couldn't feel the weight of the silent air trying to smother the laughter out.
Clearly upset that no one laughed, the small lady's voice changed in tone.
"What has he got a blindfold for? Go on now, take it off. And you! Mortal form! Now! No time wasters! Vaktra La Grande doesn't do with time wasters."
Reginald Luther III quietly cleared his throat as he grabbed Nicholas' shoulder to pull him closer. He removed the blindfold and Nicholas' eyes were caught not at the gray and black marble floor, great white pillars lining the hall before them, the bridge that they stood on above black murky oil substances, or the large purple flames mounting the torches atop each pillar. His eyes did not stop at the behemoth to his left or the minuscule woman to his south-left. No, his eyes were caught, instead, at the great cast iron doors that mounted the ghostly white marble building that towered above them like a sky scraper.
There, engraved into the heavy metal, was a mural depicting some sort of medieval court procedure. At the top were images of a great massacre, to the right were images of a court scene with about one hundred cloaked figures with a large symbol on their chest and bowl haircuts arguing heatedly over the leader of the massacre who was at the center of the crowd in chains. To the left the man was depicted as being stoned by the council. At the bottom was simply the word Zartakla, not at all ornate as the rest of the mural, but no less imposing.
Nicholas quickly looked down to see the small woman, black bowl cut in gray friar robes and a cast iron symbol hanging from her neck. She fussed over Mr. Mittens, the cat, yelling at him for some council matter he was breaking by being a cat.
"I swear, dear, that I will bring Orange down her to sort you out, Grynivold. 600 years old or not!"
The woman wore a large cauliflower of a nose on her face with wild pink glasses to frame her beady blue eyes and outshine her darkest purple lipstick. She was bizarre from the size of her minuscule hands to the clip-clopping of her doll house high-heels.
Bizarre as she was, Nicholas could no longer watch her as Mr. Mittens grew twenty sizes larger into a very large, pink and wrinkly man. He was stark naked beside a 12-foot tall man with the same bowl haircut as Vaktra la Grande and the courtmen in the mural. He did not, however, sport that same lipstick, glasses, or malformed nose as Vaktra, and was quite lovely, in fact, with stark features that, with a different haircut and wardrobe, could be defined as handsome.
Grynivold was far from handsome and though a Wizard of the Council as he was in his earlier years, there was no longer enough hair atop his head to form a bowl haircut. It all seemed to fall to his eyebrows and beard. The man, Nicholas knew he should recall, but couldn't place finger on it.
However, when he did, his confusion only grew.
"Mr. Mittens?!" Nicholas exclaimed at the naked wizard, and then he glanced to the wrinkliest most malformed part of Grynivold, and vomitted. "—the fuck? –THE FUCK? My GOD, What the fuck?!"
"Hahaha! 'God'?! Hahahaha!" Vaktra cackled in her rough voice, amused again. "This one's a peach, I swear! Where did you manage to find a wizard who says words like that?"
She flapped her tiny hand about in front of her nose, as if batting away a very vulgar odor.
“‘Find’ is a very relative word,” Grynivold muttered in a deep old voice, suitable for a wizened wizard, as he. He tossed on a gray robe, to which Reginald rolled his clear green eyes. “‘Find’ implies that we hadn’t already been—”
“Enough now, Grynivold! Not too much too soon! Can’t you see that you alone have reduced the boy to vomiting on the floor our ancestors built? My dear, I don’t blame you, but that’s just what age will do to yours, too.”
Nicholas glanced up as Grynivold hastily closed the gray robes to cover his calcified jewels. Even the second glance caused another great heave, causing Vaktra to scurry back a few steps to avoid the mess.
“Well then, dears, proceed on, then?” Vaktra asked, while already tapping ahead with her tiny footfalls.
Nicholas thought to himself that he had seen enough already, and, though he had rooted his feet in place, the floor launched forward—vomit and all—and carried them to the slowly opening iron doors. Then, he thought it out loud to everyone else.
“I think I’ve seen enough, already. I’ll forget it all if you make me, right? Wizards, and all… I think I’ll choose that option.” He glanced around frantically, as the pulled closer to the entrance, hoping to appeal to at least one wizard in the group.
Grynivold would not make eye contact with him. Reginald Luther III smirked, bemused. The 12-foot tall beautiful giant stared intently forward, as if above the whole situation. Which he was, literally speaking. Nicholas wondered if he could even hear him, as he made no visible motion to imply that he did. Vaktra waved her tiny hand over her shoulder at him, when she decided no one else was going to give an answer.
“Oh, you’ve had 26 long years of that option. That option is beyond the likes of you, now. Your future, from this point forward, is no longer yours to decide of control. Now, smile, dear. The council’s press awaits your arrival.”
As she cackled after her last words, the cast iron doors closed behind them and left no room for light.
All was dark, and wondered if this was his future, now. He wondered if he were going to be locked in a dark room for the rest of his life. Stuck in the blackest of rooms, kidnapped by bizarre strangers in some magical place that he wasn’t allowed to see the better parts of.
“Then, lights were blasting from all sides at different intervals. Heavy spotlights were dangling above, and flashes of light blinded him. The room was filled with the council’s press, that meaning several camera-toting statues that appeared like 1950’s paparazzi. The cameras were the source of the continuous flashes, and Nicholas did not smile as Vaktra suggested because he was simply too overwhelmed.
Grynivold did not smile. Beautiful giant did not smile. Vaktra grinned enough for them all, and Reginald caught a glimpse of purple lipstick covering Vaktra’s front teeth and chuckled silently to himself.
“What are they?” Nicholas asked, his voice a loud booming noise over the quiet snapping of photos and his acquaintances’ silences.
“Shhh!” Those clad in gray robes mimed to him. Reginald was still regaining his composure from his silent laughing fit.
The floors quickly jerked them out of the room and to another. It appeared to be an empty hall, or a waiting room, as that moving floor stopped and there were airport style seats to each side of the strip of floor that moved them.
As soon as the doors shut behind them, the tall model of a man spoke.
“No one talks to the Council Press,” he said sternly in his velvet voice.
“But why?” Nicholas asked.
“No one talks to that Council Press,” he repeated.
Grynivold dusted his clothes, and Vaktra glared at Reginald Luther as he pointed to her teeth, again.
“Don’t you say anything else?” Nicholas growled.
“No one—”he began again.
“Okay, I’ve got it. For fuck’s sake!”
“And that, Nicholas Greyer, is a shining example of how we all learned that rule,” Reginald Luther III said, finally finished mocking Vaktra. “You’ll find there are several long-standing traditions whose reason for implementation we do not fully understand, yet we blindly follow. As, I’ve found, is tradition amongst men itself.”
Nicholas felt that Reginald meant the best by telling him this, but felt also that some hidden meaning was layered in there.
“Why?” Nicholas asked, hoping for more of an answer than the giant had given him.
“Now, now,” Vaktra scolded. “Don’t act like a petulant child! No more ‘why’s—”
“Yes, Nicholas, just blindly follow like the rest of us,” Reginald quipped.
Vaktra shot him a glare full of venom and malice, but he didn’t even flinch.
Grynivold remained stoic and silent, though Nicholas fondly recalled Mr. Mittens and the days of stroking that friendly cat’s belly and felt the urge to vomit once again. As he imagined that wrinkled creature laying on his chest every night, shitting in the litter box, and licking left over maple syrup from his plates he decided to follow suit and give Mr. Mittens, a.k.a. Grynivold, the cold shoulder, potentially for life.
He didn’t have much time to think on it, thankfully, as the doors opened on the opposite wall, and the ground lurched forward. Nicholas had no idea why, but he gained an intense anxiety before they even entered the next room. When the doors closed, a hundred candles and torches lit for them the room. Then he saw them. The Wizarding Council of Arguld.
The Strangers Through the Sixth Tube
As they arrived through to another dome through another tube, the sixth in fact, Nicholas noted that he had not fainted this time. He noted this aloud quite proud of himself, as the bubble around them disappeared with a wet pop.
"Any infant could do that, Nicholas, do not make a fuss over it," Reginald Luther III laughed. "Oh, pardon me."
Nicholas was still unaware of his surroundings due to a very mint-scented blindfold. Nicholas was quite sure it was the very distinct smell of peppermint Altoids. He was also sure someone had just shushed Reginald Luther III.
He noted that their footsteps were a shuffle on marble floors, with their very distinct hollow clacking of heels. Also, he noted, that he no longer heard the sounds of outside that had been manufactured in the first few domes to help with the cabin fever.
This dome, however, could care less about cabin fever, and, in fact, encouraged it.
The Wizard Council of Arguld held their court hearings in this dome, and prisoners had to stay in this dome until it was determined they were innocent, and returned to their homes, or guilty, and moved to Zartakla Prison for the Criminally Wizard Scoundrels. No one cared to change the name, as time went by, and they even created another prison on the surface with a emordnilap for a name. It seems several humans made it to those cells, unaware that they would be housed with several extremely powerful and extremely mad wizards. They did not remain unaware or alive very long.
Nicholas was unaware of Zartlaka Prison being within a short 12 second tube ride, or even the existence of it at all. Grynivold was aware of it, as well as Reginald, and both felt the anxiousness to leave and get as far away as possible. They did, however, continue walking forward, as running away from the council would land them exactly there.
Had he not been blindfolded, Nicholas would be be able to see the gist of it through the murky waters only by the lights outside the tunnels, as they extended to the darkest part of the ocean, and still descended.
However, Nicholas knew one things. This place was serious business. The only sound other than the clearing of throats were the sounds of hard soled shoes hitting marble floors, and the rubber squeak from Nicholas' Converse. There was a loud noise as someone obviously large cleared their throat, entirely too loudly to be purely coincidental that he happened to be in their immediate vicinity. They stopped, and Nicholas knew to stop with them.
"Right, right. Well, dearest father, seems the ride is over. I do hope you fellows have the necessary forethought to prepare the old fellow a decent set of robes or a fine suit, and not the friar look you lot sport. Hm?" Reginald said to someone, and Nicholas could only assume it to be Mr. Mittens, as strange as it sounded to him at the time. He had already assumed Reginald Luther III to be rather mad.
The large throat-clearing man grunted, and a scuffle of small feet came rushing towards them.
"My dears, you've arrived! Grynivold! Dear, you've aged so much you've ascended to become, a cat?! Hahahaha!"
The small woman's voice was far from light and airy, and sounded more like the voice of a highly seasoned smoker. It also laughed far too long at it's own jokes, whereas Grynivold nor Reginald broke the silence for even a chuckle. Very few people could find time for laughter in this dome. Those who could either did it out of nervous sarcasm, or were simply so evil they couldn't feel the weight of the silent air trying to smother the laughter out.
Clearly upset that no one laughed, the small lady's voice changed in tone.
"What has he got a blindfold for? Go on now, take it off. And you! Mortal form! Now! No time wasters! Vaktra La Grande doesn't do with time wasters."
Reginald Luther III quietly cleared his throat as he grabbed Nicholas' shoulder to pull him closer. He removed the blindfold and Nicholas' eyes were caught not at the gray and black marble floor, great white pillars lining the hall before them, the bridge that they stood on above black murky oil substances, or the large purple flames mounting the torches atop each pillar. His eyes did not stop at the behemoth to his left or the minuscule woman to his south-left. No, his eyes were caught, instead, at the great cast iron doors that mounted the ghostly white marble building that towered above them like a sky scraper.
There, engraved into the heavy metal, was a mural depicting some sort of medieval court procedure. At the top were images of a great massacre, to the right were images of a court scene with about one hundred cloaked figures with a large symbol on their chest and bowl haircuts arguing heatedly over the leader of the massacre who was at the center of the crowd in chains. To the left the man was depicted as being stoned by the council. At the bottom was simply the word Zartakla, not at all ornate as the rest of the mural, but no less imposing.
Nicholas quickly looked down to see the small woman, black bowl cut in gray friar robes and a cast iron symbol hanging from her neck. She fussed over Mr. Mittens, the cat, yelling at him for some council matter he was breaking by being a cat.
"I swear, dear, that I will bring Orange down her to sort you out, Grynivold. 600 years old or not!"
The woman wore a large cauliflower of a nose on her face with wild pink glasses to frame her beady blue eyes and outshine her darkest purple lipstick. She was bizarre from the size of her minuscule hands to the clip-clopping of her doll house high-heels.
Bizarre as she was, Nicholas could no longer watch her as Mr. Mittens grew twenty sizes larger into a very large, pink and wrinkly man. He was stark naked beside a 12-foot tall man with the same bowl haircut as Vaktra la Grande and the courtmen in the mural. He did not, however, sport that same lipstick, glasses, or malformed nose as Vaktra, and was quite lovely, in fact, with stark features that, with a different haircut and wardrobe, could be defined as handsome.
Grynivold was far from handsome and though a Wizard of the Council as he was in his earlier years, there was no longer enough hair atop his head to form a bowl haircut. It all seemed to fall to his eyebrows and beard. The man, Nicholas knew he should recall, but couldn't place finger on it.
However, when he did, his confusion only grew.
"Mr. Mittens?!" Nicholas exclaimed at the naked wizard, and then he glanced to the wrinkliest most malformed part of Grynivold, and vomitted. "—the fuck? –THE FUCK? My GOD, What the fuck?!"
"Hahaha! 'God'?! Hahahaha!" Vaktra cackled in her rough voice, amused again. "This one's a peach, I swear! Where did you manage to find a wizard who says words like that?"
She flapped her tiny hand about in front of her nose, as if batting away a very vulgar odor.
“‘Find’ is a very relative word,” Grynivold muttered in a deep old voice, suitable for a wizened wizard, as he. He tossed on a gray robe, to which Reginald rolled his clear green eyes. “‘Find’ implies that we hadn’t already been—”
“Enough now, Grynivold! Not too much too soon! Can’t you see that you alone have reduced the boy to vomiting on the floor our ancestors built? My dear, I don’t blame you, but that’s just what age will do to yours, too.”
Nicholas glanced up as Grynivold hastily closed the gray robes to cover his calcified jewels. Even the second glance caused another great heave, causing Vaktra to scurry back a few steps to avoid the mess.
“Well then, dears, proceed on, then?” Vaktra asked, while already tapping ahead with her tiny footfalls.
Nicholas thought to himself that he had seen enough already, and, though he had rooted his feet in place, the floor launched forward—vomit and all—and carried them to the slowly opening iron doors. Then, he thought it out loud to everyone else.
“I think I’ve seen enough, already. I’ll forget it all if you make me, right? Wizards, and all… I think I’ll choose that option.” He glanced around frantically, as the pulled closer to the entrance, hoping to appeal to at least one wizard in the group.
Grynivold would not make eye contact with him. Reginald Luther III smirked, bemused. The 12-foot tall beautiful giant stared intently forward, as if above the whole situation. Which he was, literally speaking. Nicholas wondered if he could even hear him, as he made no visible motion to imply that he did. Vaktra waved her tiny hand over her shoulder at him, when she decided no one else was going to give an answer.
“Oh, you’ve had 26 long years of that option. That option is beyond the likes of you, now. Your future, from this point forward, is no longer yours to decide of control. Now, smile, dear. The council’s press awaits your arrival.”
As she cackled after her last words, the cast iron doors closed behind them and left no room for light.
All was dark, and wondered if this was his future, now. He wondered if he were going to be locked in a dark room for the rest of his life. Stuck in the blackest of rooms, kidnapped by bizarre strangers in some magical place that he wasn’t allowed to see the better parts of.
“Then, lights were blasting from all sides at different intervals. Heavy spotlights were dangling above, and flashes of light blinded him. The room was filled with the council’s press, that meaning several camera-toting statues that appeared like 1950’s paparazzi. The cameras were the source of the continuous flashes, and Nicholas did not smile as Vaktra suggested because he was simply too overwhelmed.
Grynivold did not smile. Beautiful giant did not smile. Vaktra grinned enough for them all, and Reginald caught a glimpse of purple lipstick covering Vaktra’s front teeth and chuckled silently to himself.
“What are they?” Nicholas asked, his voice a loud booming noise over the quiet snapping of photos and his acquaintances’ silences.
“Shhh!” Those clad in gray robes mimed to him. Reginald was still regaining his composure from his silent laughing fit.
The floors quickly jerked them out of the room and to another. It appeared to be an empty hall, or a waiting room, as that moving floor stopped and there were airport style seats to each side of the strip of floor that moved them.
As soon as the doors shut behind them, the tall model of a man spoke.
“No one talks to the Council Press,” he said sternly in his velvet voice.
“But why?” Nicholas asked.
“No one talks to that Council Press,” he repeated.
Grynivold dusted his clothes, and Vaktra glared at Reginald Luther as he pointed to her teeth, again.
“Don’t you say anything else?” Nicholas growled.
“No one—”he began again.
“Okay, I’ve got it. For fuck’s sake!”
“And that, Nicholas Greyer, is a shining example of how we all learned that rule,” Reginald Luther III said, finally finished mocking Vaktra. “You’ll find there are several long-standing traditions whose reason for implementation we do not fully understand, yet we blindly follow. As, I’ve found, is tradition amongst men itself.”
Nicholas felt that Reginald meant the best by telling him this, but felt also that some hidden meaning was layered in there.
“Why?” Nicholas asked, hoping for more of an answer than the giant had given him.
“Now, now,” Vaktra scolded. “Don’t act like a petulant child! No more ‘why’s—”
“Yes, Nicholas, just blindly follow like the rest of us,” Reginald quipped.
Vaktra shot him a glare full of venom and malice, but he didn’t even flinch.
Grynivold remained stoic and silent, though Nicholas fondly recalled Mr. Mittens and the days of stroking that friendly cat’s belly and felt the urge to vomit once again. As he imagined that wrinkled creature laying on his chest every night, shitting in the litter box, and licking left over maple syrup from his plates he decided to follow suit and give Mr. Mittens, a.k.a. Grynivold, the cold shoulder, potentially for life.
He didn’t have much time to think on it, thankfully, as the doors opened on the opposite wall, and the ground lurched forward. Nicholas had no idea why, but he gained an intense anxiety before they even entered the next room. When the doors closed, a hundred candles and torches lit for them the room. Then he saw them. The Wizarding Council of Arguld.