The Fallen World

Lexandria - Part 1

     Tragius glared in annoyance, but cast his spell. He muttered some more words under his breath and the spell magnified them so that they became the booming voice of the world's biggest giant. “Damn Stupid Waste Of Time.”

     The small wizard blushed in embarrassment, but turned undaunted to Elmias. “And now you too, please sir.”

     Elmias cast a simple illusion spell, and the image of a golden sun plant appeared briefly in the corridor, disappearing with an audible pop as a junior wizard came out of a doorway, blundering into it before he saw it. He hurried away with mumbled words of apology.

     “Found any clay men yet, Smiley?” Elmias asked as the small wizard, now satisfied, made to hurry off.

     “Not yet,” replied the small wizard, whose name was Armous Widgin. He adjusted the thick lensed glasses that perched precariously on his small nose and rubbed at an itch behind his ear. “Frankly, I don’t think I’m going to, they know better than to come here. They may be able to imitate our physical appearance, and even our habits and mannerisms, but the one thing they can’t do is cast spells. The only real danger is that they might imitate one of the non-wizards who work here. The cooks, carpenters, gardeners, caretakers, that sort of thing, but the strip searches and mind reading have just about taken care of that possibility as well.”

     “Well, keep up the good work,” said Elmias with a smile.

     Armous made to move away, but Tragius caught his arm. “Just a minute, Widgin,” he said. “You haven’t proved that you’re not a clay man.”

     “Oh dear,” said the small wizard unhappily. “I have to go through this with everyone I meet. I didn’t ask for this job, you know.” He cast a small nocume and half a dozen sparks of light began dancing around his head. “There, are you satisfied?”

     “Perfectly,” replied Tragius. “Now get out of here.”

     The small wizard did so, reminding the two senior wizards of a mouse as he scurried off down the corridor.

     “You were a bit hard on him, don’t you think?” frowned Elmias. “I mean, he’s only doing his job.”

     Tragius ignored the comment. “Why do you call him Smiley?” he asked.

     “Because he’s looking for clay men,” Tragius stared at him blankly. “He reminds me of a fictional character I read of in a story, on one of my extra-dimensional jaunts. It’s sort of a standing joke between us. I brought a copy of the book back with me. Would you like to read it?”

     The other wizard didn’t deign to reply, though, and went storming off down the corridor, leaving Elmias almost having to run to keep up.

     Leaving the laboratories behind, Elmias took the lead and led the way to a small storeroom where he’d left the ‘stuff’. Some of his assistants were already there, sorting through the other worldly weapons and equipment, and Tragius stared in amazement at their bizarre, alien appearance, totally different from anything he’d ever seen before. He picked up a long steel box with four round holes in its smallest side, each of which contained a white painted metal tube narrowing to a sharp point at the front. The box had various buttons and knobs along its sides and what looked almost like a sight with cross hairs, like those used for aiming crossbows. “This is a weapon?” he asked incredulously.

     “Indeed it is,” replied Elmias enthusiastically, “and a powerful one. I saw it being used, and each of these pointed pipes is fully capable of bringing down a fully grown dragon. They fly through the air, hit it and explode, blowing it to pieces.”

     “Impressive,” agreed Tragius, noting with satisfaction that the other wizard had brought back four of the boxes and two dozen of the flying pipes. “I see you’ve got plenty of them. Good. We may have to practice a bit before we work out how to successfully replicate them. The first few attempts are bound to be less than perfect. What else have you got?”

     Elmias went through it all, one item at a time. “I knew there was no point bringing back hand weapons,” he explained, “since even with duplication spells there’s no way we could outfit more than a few dozen people with what I could bring back in a single trip, and hand weapons, even the powerful ones they have over there, can only be used against individual Shads, of which there are far too many. Instead, I brought back big weapons capable of taking out their big monsters. Their dragons, giants, elementals and so on.” He sighed. “If only you could replicate a replica, you could repeatedly double the numbers of everything you’ve got, two, four, eight, and so on, and then everyone could have his own hand weapon. At one replication a week, you could have a million hand weapons in just six months!”

     “Daydreaming is a fool’s pastime,” said Tragius, irritated by the other wizard’s prattling. “What’s this?” He indicated a large, complicated looking object that had a long metal tube pointing from the front. It was mounted on wheels and had a tow bar so that it could be pulled, presumably by horses.

     “This is a beaut!” said Elmias enthusiastically. “It shoots these small metal projectiles...” He held one up to show him. It was cylindrical, about six inches long and had a sharp pointed end “...which fly through the air like the rocks thrown by a catapult, but much further and with amazing accuracy. This one explodes when it hits its target, and can reduce even the largest rock giant to a small pile of stones, or lay out a whole company of men. It also shoots two other kinds of projectiles, one of which scatters burning jelly in all directions setting fire to anything it touches. The other releases a cloud of killing gas. I brought plenty of all three so we can experiment at replicating them correctly.”

     Tragius nodded his understanding. “You brought back much more than I expected you to,” he said. “You must have almost bankrupted the University.”

     Elmias laughed in delight. “You’d be amazed!” he said. “Suppose I were to tell you that I brought nine tenths of the gold back again?”

     Tragius stared in stark disbelief. “Is that some kind of a joke?” he demanded. “Are you telling me that these devastating weapons cost no more than a common wooden catapult?”

     “These weapons are the equivalent in their world to catapults in our world,” confirmed Elmias, delighted at Tragius’s amazement, “and in terms of the amount of work you have to do to earn the money to buy them, they do indeed cost about the same, believe it or not.”

     “Ridiculous!” declared the other wizard, however. “You must have been conned. They must be defective in some way. They saw you coming and...”

     “They are not defective!” retorted Elmias indignantly. “I used a mind reading spell on the men who sold them to me.” The wizard shuddered in horror at the memory. “Did I tell you that humans are the only intelligent life on that world? They have no shae folk, no trogs, no shologs, they don’t need shologs! Those men had minds as evil, filthy and depraved as any sholog I ever met! Anyway, they definitely considered these weapons to be perfect in every way, and they were experts in their own destructive arts so I believe it completely.”

     “Incredible!” breathed Tragius. “Warfare on that world must be an amazing spectacle.”

     “I didn’t stay long enough to find out,” replied Elmias.