Gregor The Cripple

The sky was black, and a great sun and moon danced in tandem, slow-swirling in time with each other around a point in the star sea above. Beneath Gregor’s feet, an endless field of golden grass stretched from horizon to horizon, and before him, just a little ways away, was a familiar-feeling cottage, though he couldn’t place it in his memory.

The structure seemed to slouch slightly, like it was tired of weathering the world. It seemed then unfair to Gregor that houses didn’t themselves have houses, for surely they must also need places to sleep and be at rest.

The air here was magic, and the earth and sky as well. It made him feel inexhaustible, and even more supremely powerful than normal. He knew that he must be dreaming, though this felt rather atypical for a dream.

Upon noticing that he hadn’t blinked for a while, or been breathing, for that matter, he blinked and found himself standing at the door of the saddened little home. The door was pained a deep red, not blood red, but a prettier and more wholesome shade of apple.

Frowning, Gregor noticed that the paint around the lock was all scraped and the wood was chipped, as if someone had tried to pry their way in.

A characteristic rat-squeak sounded and Randolph’s fuzzy face peaked down from the brim of Gregor’s hat, first peering upside-down into the wizard’s eye, then looking to the injured door.

He squeaked again – an obvious remark about the damage – and then Gregor found himself knock-knocking.

Blinking once more, he was inside, and he found the place to be exactly the kind of cottage a grandmother would inhabit.

Bric-a-brac lived on the shelves and walls among quaint paintings and little art curios and potted plants atop doilies. All of this felt intensely familiar, though he was certain that he had never been here. He remembered then that he was in a dream, and continued on, supposing that dreams were meant to be a little strange.

“You’re right on time.”

And then he was in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea in his hand, and Randolph was in his lap with a plate of cheeses.

Sitting across from him was the most grandmotherly looking grandmother he could imagine, and he thought that perhaps this was The Grandmother, the prototype after which all other grandmothers had been modelled. She was little and old with her grey hair in a bun and she wore a knitted shawl across her shoulders, with ancient wire-framed half-moon spectacles across the bridge of her nose.

“How are you getting on out there? It hasn’t gotten too bad, I hope.” She knitted as she spoke, working the final weaves into a woollen scarf with fabric that seemed somehow to appear from a shimmering haze as the product of reverse evaporation. Curiously, he had no clue what colour the wool was. It might conceivably be any colour, though it certainly wasn’t every colour.

“…Who are you?”

“I’m Nancy, dear. We’ve met.”

Gregor knew that. How did he know that?

“This is a dream.” He stated.

“Could be. A lot of people would call it that, and a lot of them would be right.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it dear, knowing’s half the problem. You haven’t the soul for it.”

Gregor sipped his tea, which he could only describe as ‘tea-flavoured’, and determined that this wasn’t just a dream.

“I suppose you’re going to worry about it anyway.”

What might be called a dream, but which could also be correctly called something else, and which you needed a special sort of soul to know about? Dreams, Gregor knew, occur when the soul slips off to the astral plane.

Something massaged the back of his mind, and he began thinking of astral existences which could know things too large for minds which lived in flesh containers.

Hmm.

Was that what this was? Was he speaking to one of those definitely non-mortal things?

Then, the precise nature of the problem isn’t in the knowing, but in the remembering, though those both ultimately amounted to the same thing.

Was this a proper dream, or was this more like a meeting of the minds between him and this ‘Nancy’? And if so, was she actually some astral entity who had called him here for an unknown purpose, or if she was merely a figment of himself that he was dreaming into imaginary existence in some unconscious act of oneiromancy? The latter wasn’t impossible, and was in fact far more likely than encountering one of the supreme things uncommon enough to dwell here.

This was all very odd.

“Are you real?” For some reason, he felt like he shouldn’t ask, so he very deliberately asked anyway.

“You’re a clever young man. You know the answer to that question is always going to be a matter of opinion.”

“Your kind aren’t fond of straight answers, I suppose.” Mused Gregor, sipping from his floral cup.

“My kind?” Nancy asked, not unplayfully.

“Whatever you happen to be.”

“No dear, I suppose we aren’t.”

Randolph then squeaked in interjection, stating the obvious.

“Well… yes.” She affirmed.

Looking down at the rat and shifting his large blindspot very slightly, Gregor became aware that there was a not-man standing in the corner of the room.

His skin was silver, or perhaps steel, and he stood statue-still with two unblinking eyes of onyx piercing into the depths of Gregor’s lone ocular organ.

Now that Gregor had noticed him, the presence was singular and alarming, like a great flaming beacon in his mind, demanding attention.

The wizard, who often found great enjoyment in depriving impressive others of the notice that they probably warranted, merely glanced at the imposing figure in brief appraisal, then turned to the grandmother with a raised brow. He did not stop feeling the burning presence in the corner of the room.

“Oh, him? That’s War. Taciturn sort, but a nice man. He and his sisters have been looking after little old me. Can’t be too careful with all the hooligans about. Horrible brutes.”

“Hooligans? Here?” Gregor looked out window, spying nothing but a golden field that stretched into eternity.

“Yes, dear. They’re everywhere these days”

“Astral hooligans?” What an absurd concept.

“I had a break-in, you know. Dreadful sorts, those fellows. And mind you, I’m not one to speak ill, you see, but these hooligans,” she said the word as if it were profane, “-they think so little of others. They see everything in the world as theirs to take, and they have no compunctions about the harm they cause in the taking, none at all. Poor moral fibre, these fellows. No respect at all, and they don’t want any, either.”

“I’m a little like that.”

“Oh dear, no. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a little… wild, sure, but that’s part of your charm. And you’ve got principles and pride, which are like two iron bones that keep you standing up straight and proper. And,” the old lady added with a little smirk and a knowing tilt of her head, “you’ve got a reason to behave.”

“I have?”

Nancy nodded. “That little girl, if you’re too bad, she’ll run away from you and then hooligans’ll get her, you know. No telling what’ll happen after that, so you have a responsibility to stay principled and proper.”

Gregor thought about this for a moment, considering very carefully what exactly the old woman was implying. “…I think I would like to kill all of these hooligans.” He eventually said, which was certainly not the kind of thing you were meant to say in front of a grandmother.

“As it happens, dear, I mentioned the problem of these hooligans when we first met. You offered to take care of it.”

“Am I to be payed?”

“I insisted upon it.”

This disturbed Gregor more than a little. If true, it meant that he had agreed to a job that he could not remember to complete. That… was not good. Wizards shouldn’t do that. This was dangerously close to fraud.

He frowned intensely. He would not become Gregor the Fraud.

“How can I remember this?”

Scarf finally finished, Nancy began knitting some unidentifiable new thing. “Gregor, dreams are difficult to remember because they’re experienced by the soul when it has access to none of the proper infrastructure for memory. Remembering would mean changing something fundamental about yourself. Are you sure you want that?”

Nancy spoke of developing an astral presence, which was not an easy thing. Gregor had some awareness of this, though no actual knowledge of the process.

“I would become like you?”

“Not quite. Though, eventually, you might become like him.” The old woman pointed with a withered finger toward War, who was presently looking out the window.

Suddenly, the steel man spoke. “Wizard,” he began in a voice that echoed, “are you fond of battle?”

“It is sport.”

“Then rejoice, for the enemy comes to compete. You will need to be able to kill anything.”

“Coincidentally, I count that as one of my many talents.”

At this, a shrill shriek washed over the cottage from the depths of the infinitely distant nothing that presumably existed beyond the fields of gold, and a million-strong silver army existed into existence around the cottage, facing the sound. These men were giant, and were clad in shining armour that had to be thicker than their flesh, if they even had flesh at all.

Above, the sun and moon began rushing off faster than thoughts in the direction of the wail, joining a newly-appeared golden chariot whose rider was blindingly bright and wielded a hammer that Gregor could feel, even through a distance which must have amounted to the breadth of several worlds. Five darknesses emerged from nothing to meet these three heavenly lights, and a far-off cataclysm began.

Gregor realised that he was now witness to enormous, eldritch things which would be impossible in the material plane, and it irked him a little that he wasn’t one of them.

He blinked, and the cottage and grandmother were gone. Instead, he was standing at the head of the army, beside the man who was understandably called ‘War’. Randolph was in his sleeve.

Before them, an insane collection of enemies approached. There were both things he recognised as real, and things which he recognised as imaginary, as well as things he couldn’t recognise at all.

“This seems like more than just sport.” Gregor reevaluated.

“No. It is still sport.” Said War, and Gregor decided that had found a like-minded ally.

“I won’t remember this.”

“You are not like us yet. You do not need to.”

As they spoke, a few impossible-seeming things appeared on their own side of the battlefield, and more monstrosities on the other.

“What if I wanted to remember?”

“…You do not want that.”

“I seem to think that I do.”

“…It is a practical reality that the worst problems must be resolved by the most competent people. Remembering would mean becoming more like us. You would become more capable, and fate would consequently introduce you to far worse problems.”

Gregor raised his brow at mention of fate, though he didn’t comment. “I refuse to give deference to difficulty.” He said, arrogant as he could manage.

“You are very… wizardly.”

“Thank you. How do I remember?”

“This is a problem of the quality of the soul. It needs to be robust and elastic – stretchable between the body and here so that it might occupy both at once. For this, you need only wake and wait a decade. Your master made you well.” War paused, considering the supreme ego of the wizard beside him, “…Though, a decade might also be doom. Our enemy seeks the souls of others to grow his own. You can simply do the same. It is only fair. Here in the astral plane, there are no bodies – no hard tethers. We exist only as souls; theft of soul-stuff should be easy for someone so clever with murder as you. This isn’t the best way to become like us, but it is… workable.”

Thus, Gregor had his objective.

The battle began. Things taller than the sky threw themselves at each other while legions of resplendent men cut down abomination hordes between their feet, and amongst this, a dreaming wizard went hunting for souls.