The Mystic's Dream

Alexander Humperdink was a man who could not abide immorality.

It left a poor taste in his mouth, a film that covered his tongue and would not let his words slip free. Alexander Humperdink was in his middling years, his face could never be said to be fair, though he grew a beard that rivaled the best. He found himself stroking this beard of his, fat fingers through wiry gray hairs, he repeated again and again as he waited in the cold. His breaths puffed out, small clouds in the frigid winter air, he shuffled his feet along the dry dirt outside the erected tent.

The king has the right of it, he thought to himself. I can finally do my business here without worry from the guards. He tugged at his beard again and recalled the parchment that was passed from person to person throughout the town. From a raven's claws to his own dry hands, he passed it to his wife for he himself was never taught his letters.

Finally, the king had taken action. Finally, the king was seeking for something greater than a begrudging truce. The wax seal made it official, a divide was driven, and here Alex stood, with his hands tightly gripped about a cloth pouch, knotted at the end.

He waited, he heard the clamor inside. A language foreign to his ear, the sound of a small pop and the sudden applause from the mass huddled together beneath the pitched tent. Ever a patient man, Alexander waited.

And when the crowd started to pool out from the flaps of the tent, he waited still. He watched them all. He saw them as they truly were, saw past what he thought to be a clever guise. He could see the darkness underneath their eyes, the way their hands shook so, he could tell that their breathing was quick, that they would be back tomorrow. That before long his little town would be corrupt, that the glamor of an easy rush would catch them all in its net.

He took to the shadows as he watched, and he saw the fake smiles and the mumbled conversation. He tuned it all out until the last of the crowd left.

He didn't shake, didn't flinch, didn't hesitate for a moment before he drew that cloth bag into hand once again -- he found a fire near at hand, and once the bag had caught, it was simple. He peeled back the entrance to that tent, heavy canvas cloth, he passed the bag deep inside and stepped away, a child playing at a game he knew not the size of.

Before long, the black smoke filled the sky. The fire caught and the cloth consumed, and he could hear the ragged breath of the one left inside. He kept his hands inside his pockets, kept his thoughts inside his head, and waited.

Where is all that power now? Alexander wondered, and he nearly laughed in his triumph. All the good that those dark gods will do you, they abandon you in the flames. He made a note of this, he drew up his courage from it, and when the tent was not but a ruined thing only standing in some small sections, he bid himself entrance within.

The thick gray air gave him pause, and he coughed aloud, but he carried on. He had to make sure his job was done, and so he walked to the head of the tent, and there his boot came on the figure on the floor. A man who was young enough to almost be a boy still, Alexander shook his head. He nudged the body over with his foot, charred and black and full of soot.

Empty eyes stared up at him, and Alexander could see the blackness that had once been there. He saw what the man had left behind, a tattered cloak, a gnarled wooden stick within his hand, a top hat hardly touched rest upon the scorched stage. A man of curiosity, Alexander stepped up to the stage, drew a hand from his own pocket to pick up this hat of his. He turned up upside down and round again, and when he reached within he felt a magician's last trick.

A taste of magic, a taste of something beyond this life, Alexander could feel a rush, a sensation that tingled up from fingertip to toes. A bolt of lightning made of all the world, and there Alexander touched the life beyond his own, and he saw the faces of the dark gods he fought, and he could swear they laughed at him.

"I was just doing the king's bidding," he'd say. His voice would echo helplessly in the blackness that enveloped him. "You've no right to be practicing these foul things any longer!"

These were the protests of a man, but he was quickly becoming less. He could feel his flesh stripping away like so many ribbons in the blackness of the hat, enveloped by a magicians trap.

Alexander Humperdink was, and then he wasn't.