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I am Berel, THE MAGNIFICENT!

Berel the Magnificent (the Greatest Wizard of All Time) stumbles upon what just may be the single greatest mistake of all time.

By J R RajornePublished 3 years ago 10 min read
1

Berel’s eyes fluttered open.

As his vision focused, he noticed a most unnaturally bulbous, humanoid face staring back down at him with eyes as large as saucers.

“Mr Wuvsocks at your service” he said with a gap-toothed grin, shoving his four-fingered paw into Berel’s and shaking it vigorously.

“Errr…” Berel tried to get the words out, unsure of who or what this thing was, for this ‘Mr Wuvsocks’ as he calls himself, was a being unlike any Berel had ever seen or heard of before, resembling a cross between a fat koala and a small child, with lavender purple fur all over except around its face and belly.

Wuvsocks casually sat back on a nearby stone and lit a cigarette, taking a long drag.

“I wager you’ve had quite a bit of a shock?” he said, smoke billowing from his ears in various shapes and bursts.

Berel’s brow furrowed as he struggled to come up with words “You could… say that.”

Remembering vaguely what horrors he thinks he saw, Berel pulled his eyes away from this unusual creature to tentatively scan his eyes over the grounds around him.

There was nothing there.

“I took care of the old man, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“The old… hang on...”

“The magister. You know – old insy-outsy.”

Berel suddenly felt very nauseous as his mind flashed to the gruesome corpse he’d fallen atop of earlier, guts and organs on show in abundance, before passing out from the shock. He turned to his side and hurled up his lunch.

“Better out than in I always say! …The food, that is.”

Berel hurled again.

“Please stop saying… hurghh” he gagged, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, trying to forget what had just been cupping his nether region.

“Oh right.” Said Wuvsocks with a smirk, “I forgot you humans are squeamish about death.”

“Wha... what are you?”

“Mr Wuvsocks. A thousand-thousand millennium and I still haven’t figured out the what or the who or the why’s of myself – does anybody ever really? But I’m usually invisible to anyone but my master... Guess that means it worked! Hah! The crazy old bastard did it.” Mr Wuvsocks let out a sigh, then he looked at Berel and followed the sigh with an elongated groan as if he was immeasurably bored. It went on for some time.

Berel was highly confused “Erm… WHAT worked? Did what? What are you talking about?!”

“Why his magic of course!” As if the whole situation was blatantly obvious. “You know? In case of sudden death, the old geezer’s essence would pass on to the nearest soul blah blah blah. It’s all terribly boring.”

“Hang on just a moment!? There’s a man inside me!?” cried Berel in growing hysterics.

“Well yes, but no, but aren’t you lucky either way!”

Berel’s right eye twitched so much he had to grab a hold of it, and with this, caught a momentary glance downwards, and now realised he had suddenly grown a beard out down to his belly. That, and he seemed to have become dressed again, but in attire that wasn’t entirely his own.

Noticing this, Mr Wuvsocks burst into such raucous laughter that he fell off his seat.

Berel was now wearing his usual kilt and belongings, but covering his torso was what can only be described as a vibrant green cotton bathrobe, complete with golden stars and scattered crescent moons, worn open to show his bare chest. It looked like a child’s version of a haphazard mages costume, rather than the sophisticated garments he had seen on the corpse earlier. Off his shoulders hung a musty fur cloak of some unknown animal, and atop his head was an interesting multi-coloured turban-hat with strange, patterned runes, loose flaps hanging over his ears down to his chest, and a button at the front of it hovering over his forehead in what looked very much like an ever-watchful blue eye. Lastly on his side, bound in hard, weathered, sad looking old leather swung a very average journal, with stained and torn pages clinging on for dear life.

“What’s this?”

“Oh my, excuse me.” Said Wuvsocks, wiping joyful tears from his eyes at what must have seemed to him like the funniest joke of the century, “My masters magic… manifests itself to match the brilliance of your mind… and what a brilliant mind you must have!” He tutted mockingly as he eyed Berel’s destitute appearance. “My master’s was far more magnificent. Even your book looks like it moonlights as bog paper.”

Berel blinked at this extremely rude and unhelpful magical beast.

“Now you listen here creature!” Yelled Berel, standing to his feet in all his ‘glorious’ new attire. “Mr... whatever you are... you devil! You... you Jinn!”

“Mr Wuvsocks, if you please.”

“I don’t know what’s going on – but who is this master I think I saw, and… and how did he die so… horribly... blekh… if he actually ever even existed?”

Mr Wuvsocks narrowed his eyes and sucked air through his enormous teeth “Oh yes, he was real alright. As really real as you or I. He was the great Archmagi Byern’dars! Defender of the common man! Rightful heir to the Orange throne!” he said theatrically, “And err... he seems to have died from The Big Sneeze.”

Berel blinked even harder, utterly more confused, for being from Midulla’Nuwerr, he had never heard of any such mages or thrones or sneezes that could turn a man inside-out.

“Ah! I almost forgot” said Mr Wuvsocks, walking over to a nearby oak tree. Snapping off a branch, he whittled and fashioned it down in seconds with mysterious magics to a majestic looking staff and presented it to Berel.

“Every wizard needs a wizard’s staff” he sniffed casually.

“Wait, what’s the Big Sne... hang on, I’m NOT a wizard?!” cried Berel, his brain failing to wrap around this whole situation, as you can imagine.

“Not my problem!” snorted Mr Wuvsocks, sounding slightly annoyed. “It was Byern’dars fault, should anything happen to him, that I be summoned and find the nearest soul my master wanted to fertilise with his magical essence, and YOU just happened to be the closest! Lucky you! Congratulations! …Byern’dars never specified it had to be anybody of… significance, or clearly of any real standards... SOOO job done on my part! Now I can die. Goodbye!”

With a sudden movement, Mr Wuvsocks sharply twisted his own neck with a great CRACK! and POOFED out of existence in a flash of green light, leaving behind a small cloud of smoke that smelt like sweaty armpits.

After a few shouts in shocked disbelief, Berel cried out into the empty space where Mr Wuvsocks had just been, waving his arms through the air in front of him in case it was a trick, unsure of what to do or whether any of this was really real.

“I must be going mad. Am I dead?” He slapped his face, pinched his arm for good measure, then looked down at himself. “Still wizardly...”

He slapped himself again, over and over till his cheeks were raw and red, ran back to the forest pool and splashed his face in the water until he could splash no more, rubbing his eyes as hard as he could and yelling like a wild man at the top of his lungs for all the forest to hear, to try and wake up.

“This couldn’t be real! Could it?” He thought.

Peering into the water, he waited for the ripples to subside with great anticipation of his reflection.

There, staring back at him, was Berel the Wizard, wild eyed and eyebrows bouncing in confusion.

He slumped back on his buttocks, staring at his bathrobe and beard in disbelief for quite a long time, trying to understand what any of this meant or if he was in a very strange hallucination from something he ate. Perhaps the mushrooms had turned.

But what if…?

He had an idea.

With one motion, he raised both his arms out in front of him, trying to make something, anything magical happen. He strained his whole body, unsure of exactly what to do, concentrating and tightening every fibre with all his might, so much so that he thought he’d pop a blood vessel or poop his pants.

But Nothing happened.

“Ah. I know!” Reaching over to the staff Mr Wuvsocks gave him, he examined it closely, turning it over in his hands, looking for any secret compartments, smacking it on rocks, sniffing it, giving it a chew, listening to the wood.

Nothing.

“Just a bloody branch... A Wizards staff? Hah! But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to…”

He slowly stood to his feet this time, planted his firmest stance with the staff clasped in both hands, and concentrated with all his might.

He felt the forest grow quiet, perhaps feeling the palpable tension in the air that he also felt.

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, imagining powerful energies flowing through him.

He imagined the fame and the fortune, the love and admiration of all those people once they discovered he was now an important wizard.

He felt a thrill pumping through him, his heart racing, his breathing rapid from the elation and the energy filling every ounce of his being!

He suddenly raised his arms high to the sky, staff in hand, cackling with glee and bellowed,

“BEHOLD!

I

AM

BEREL!

THE MAGNIFICENT!”

And then he opened his eyes to witness his powerful magics.

Only, nothing had changed.

The colour rushed from his face as he realised his crushing failure and he slumped back to his knees in exhaustion and defeat.

“Bulls’ dung…” he thought, tricked by some strange forest fey in some sick practical joke “AND BOLLOCKS TO YOU!” he yelled to the emptiness.

All at once, Berel felt quite devastated, as if he’d lost some great promise of potential or opportunity he’d wished for his whole entire life.

“Who am I kidding… a wizard… me? I can’t even get promoted to Senior Shoveler…You’ve had your fun now demon! Ha - Ha. Very funny...” Though Berel did not find this funny in the least. He felt crushed at the realisation of just how miserable his life really was.

Staring down, his eyes finally settled on the strange, worn red book at his side.

Wincing in anticipation of a potential prank by Mr Wuvsocks, he hesitantly cracked open its dishevelled looking pages to see just what was inside.

Flipping through the fragile paper, many were filled with diagrams and hand-drawn images of various flora, fauna and unimaginable beasts, strange symbols, recipes, and languages Berel mostly didn’t understand or recognise. The pages eventually became blank but seemed to somehow go on forever, as if there was an endless number of pages this book could contain or create from thin air. “IMPOSSIBLE!” Berel’s eyes widened in excitement as he realised this strange book was, in fact, actual magic!

He went on to entertain himself by flipping the book pages further and further, chuckling all the while as he tried to see just how long he could keep flipping until the book ran out of pages. After an embarrassingly long time at this, he turned his attention to some entries written in Common.

It appeared as if there was a whole section dedicated to the reflections of the author concerning certain world events Berel had never heard of before. Skimming through, he suddenly stopped when a phrase that looked sickeningly familiar caught his eye...

The Big Sneeze.

Fantasy
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About the Creator

J R Rajorne

Lover of heroic fantasy, RPG's and delightful storytelling.

Creator of Berel the Magnificent (the Greatest Wizard of All Time!), Granny the Barbarian, Usso "Old Grizzly" Abdullah and Rajorne the Wildling.

I hope you enjoy my works.

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