Podcast Episode Listing
Story #9: Rewarded By a Curse
When the leader of a small group of wizards discovers the existence of an ancient ritual said to grant vast amounts of power, greed and darkness seem to follow in the wake of its discovery. Roger Gardwhin, a middle-aged man trying to maintain a normal life outside of this magical group, is forced to take part against his will. As the day of the ritual approaches, he's realizing just what he is getting himself into.
Current Episode: Part 1
Part One, February 1, 2011
I didn't want any part of the ritual. It was beyond our Circle to try something like this. It's no wonder that it all went wrong.
Things weren't always so bad for us, you know. I mean, come on, how many people can say they do magic, and really mean it? We could, and it was fun.
Wizards, believe it or not, tend to cause their own demise. It's because most of us rarely have a clue what we are doing. Magic is a lost art, and finding a true book of spells or lessons is rare.
You may not care about this information, but I'm telling you for a reason. That you are talking to me means you, too, are a Wizard. Now, now, there is no need to argue. We haven't time for that, at least, I don't have time for that.
As I was saying, I didn't even want to participate in the ritual. Our Circle was a close group. Buddy ran it, and he found the rest of us. Jennifer and I didn't know any more than you do now when he found us.
We did little things mostly. Sometimes we'd try simple things: making someone float, repair tools we'd broken, things like that. Life isn't always like the books though. You don't need wands, and it doesn't matter what language you speak to use magic. It's more about the intent of the Wizard than what language a spell was spoken in.
We had a lot of fun getting together twice a month. Buddy did a lot of research on the subject. He didn't have a family and his job was one of those desk jobs that gives you a lot of free time on the internet. He would show up with all kinds of new tricks to try. Sometimes they would even work.
It was all innocent until Mathew Shaw joined the group. None of us realized it, but a Circle can't reach its full potential until you have at least four members. Mathew knew all kinds of things that we didn't. He never specifically asked to take over the group, but he certainly had Buddy eating out of his hand. To the end I don't think Buddy ever realized just how much he was being played. Jennifer and I saw it happening, but only when it was too late.
It was Mathew that brought up the idea of performing Ataylan's ritual. He said it was named after one of the most powerful Wizard's in history. I never did figure out how he learned that. There aren't exactly reliable history books in this area. He seemed to have connections to finding things that none of us had any clue about. That was the start to his power over Buddy.
This ritual of his promised all of us great power. The problem was that only Buddy really cared about power. Still, Mathew needed four and that meant he had to convince the two of us to participate. When somebody like Mathew Shaw can't convince a person easily, they tend to turn toward coercion.
That was how I ended up having to make a choice: break the heart of the woman I love, or watch her die a slow, agonizing death. Some things from books aren't made up, magic may do great things but it can do terrible things with equal power. I thought we could just escape and leave the Circle or even leave town if we had to. I thought everything would work out until I came home one night to find him in my house. He had found some of my wife's hair on her brush. That was all the power he needed over me. I knew what he could do with that.
Rest assured, I didn't choose death for the woman I love. The last I checked she was still happily married to a good man. I'm glad for that. It's hard to live with yourself after purposefully hurting the love of your life. And she truly was.
To perform the ritual all four of us were given an assignment. A task we were forced to obey. Buddy had it easy. He needed the tooth of an ancient ancestor. Digging up a long-dead corpse may sound a bit morose, but it was nothing to the rest of us. Jennifer's task was the worst of all of us. To get the blood of a first born she had to purposefully hurt her child. Like with me, Shaw left her little choice in the matter. I know she never saw her family again after that day. She simply couldn't bring herself to do it.
My task was to collect the tears of a lost love. It's actually a pretty easy trick, beyond the whole getting someone to cry part. A trick of the air held her tears in a pocket under her chin. Can you imagine how she would have felt if she'd seen that hanging there?
I lied as well as I could. I told her I didn't love her anymore, said I didn't want to be with her. She couldn't understand what had happened, but then, how could she? Things were great between us.
I remember that night so vividly. It was raining as I left her and drove to meet up with the Circle. The tears rolling down the windshield matched the ones on my face.
I saw Jennifer first. She was in her car still and hadn't noticed me. She was crying too. I sat in my own car for a few minutes, watching her cry as I tried to get hold of my own emotions. Seeing her suffer helped to give me strength I think. It reminded me that I wasn't alone in my misery. She was just as trapped.
I decided to approach her car from a direction she could see me coming. There was nothing Jennifer loved more than her children. She had screamed and lashed out against Shaw for what he was doing to us, but she couldn't really hurt him. He was stronger than any of us and he knew it even better than we did.
When she saw me approach she got out of her car. The rain had mostly stopped. Maybe it was my expression that must have matched her own, or maybe she just needed to hold someone, but Jennifer wrapped her arms around me and held tight. I didn't stop her but it made me feel guilty holding another woman after what I'd done. I had no interest in Jennifer, but it still felt a little like betrayal.
"We should go inside, they'll be waiting." I told her.
She let go of me and nodded. She wiped the tears from her face and we both took a few breaths to compose ourselves. As bad as I felt, I wasn't going to give Shaw the satisfaction of seeing me suffer. I think Jennifer felt the same way.
Our circle met in a part of town littered with old, run-down factories and warehouses. People rarely ventured to the outskirts of the city. It was quiet, and it was perfect for a small group of Wizards playing with forces much greater than them. Of course, I didn't see it that way at the time.
Buddy and Shaw were already inside the warehouse toward the back of the abandoned property. They already had a fire roaring in the center of the building. Tonight they had chosen a building with at least part of its roof remaining. The area directly by the fire was dry and symbols had been drawn all around it. Hanging from a thick metal brace built over the fire was our cauldron. Like I said, some things from stories are true. After all, where else would stories come from?
Jennifer and I both slipped on our robes before entering the room with the others. Rituals were important to us back then, but they aren't overly important to the spells you are casting. It was just fun for us to dress up and then after awhile it became something we always did.
I could tell Buddy was nervous about the ritual from the start but he was caught up in a lust for power and wasn't acting like himself. This whole experience had changed him more than any of us. But it did change all of us I suppose, in one way or another.
"Good, you're finally here." Shaw told us with a scowl. The way the man looked at Buddy behind his back made me shiver a little. There was hatred in that gaze that I'd never seen before. "We can get started."
Buddy turned sharply around and snapped at Shaw. "This is still my Circle, Mathew. I won't have you deciding when this ritual will get under way." Buddy had taken to calling the man by his first name more and more over the last few days. He even managed to make the name itself sound very derogatory. The two locked eyes and it was Shaw that broke it and stalked off to one corner. Buddy did the same in the other direction.
Eventually all was prepared and we gathered around the boiling cauldron. Around us the symbols that Shaw had drawn seemed now to sprout from beneath our feet. I couldn't help but admire the work as perfection as much as I hated the artist. Shaw had considerable talent.
You may wonder why I never mentioned what his little sacrifice was when I mentioned the rest of us. Shaw's task was tied to the ritual itself. The final part of the ceremony was to offer the bleeding finger of a wizard. It didn't seem like him to have the nerve to do it himself, but he'd volunteered.
As magic began to fill the air and we all were chanting in unison, Shaw took a knife and cleanly sliced through his pinky, letting it fall into the cauldron. The liquid inside instantly turned to a red that matched the blood soaking the cloth Shaw was tying to his hand.
Thick tendrils of smoke shot out from the boiling liquid. They danced around as our chanting grew louder and louder. I knew that I'd never accomplished anything so great in my life. Everything I'd been through was forgotten while caught up in the spell. Our Circle had never been in such unity, such perfect alignment with one another, as we were that night.
At the crescendo of our chanting the smoke that had been moving all around us shot back toward the cauldron and rose into the form a large man with arms crossed. The figure turned slowly around and he seemed to study each of us as he went.
It was everything I could do to keep up the chanting under the gaze of that smoky apparition. I'm not even a little ashamed to admit that the thing terrified me. I knew somehow that this was a test. If we had stopped our chanting I do think we would have avoided our terrible fate, but perhaps we would have simply died right there.
We did not stop though, or slow down in any way. The apparition turned around and around watching us before falling upon our leader, Buddy. The form knocked him off his feet and finally broke our ritual.
At once Shaw let out a primal screech, breaking the silence of the room. Jennifer and I backed away at the same time and I moved in front of her as if I could save her in some way. It's funny what you do when fear takes you in its grips.
"This wasn't supposed to happen! I am the talented one! It was my blood that was offered! How could you choose him?"
I understood, then, why Shaw had been so eager to offer a finger to this ritual. The man assumed it would guarantee that he would be chosen because of his sacrifice. I understood how we had all been played. Shaw would have ditched us the minute this was over. I shuddered to think that maybe other Circles had been manipulated before ours, had other Wizards died attempting this same ritual?
My so-called heroics were of no use anyway. Buddy was getting to his feet and Shaw's attention was only on him. Shaw held up the knife he'd used to take his own finger and ran for Buddy with a grotesque snarl on his face.
It felt like everything slowed down then. What I remember most is Buddy's expression. There was no fear or surprise. There was nothing except for cold calculation. He looked at Shaw and his lips began moving in a quiet whisper. What spell he cast was beyond me but Shaw moved slower and slower until he was frozen in place, his eyes darting around terrified.
Buddy turned toward Jennifer and I and we both took an involuntary step backward. Buddy's hands shot up and he said. "No, don't be afraid of me. I will not hurt you. You couldn't possibly believe how I feel right now." The coldness was gone and a large smile filled his face. That was the last time I got my hopes up that this would all turn out alright.
| 
