Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay
Shizam drifted stealthily towards the portal, there were no more rites left to perform. The future would tell that he had served his people well, and no one would blame him for taking this course of action, or at least no one could.
The Denag race had to survive one way or another, actually he Shizam, had to, and this was the only place where the rituals had decreed they could breed anew...
As he approached the gateway, his thoughts went to the Denags who had sired the seeds still hatching in his large insides. Not a good way to die, he thought. But he was their wizard, who else but him to lead their offspring to safety. For a moment his thoughts went to Xara, and he smiled with monstrous satisfaction at his imminent success...
...
It had all started when Zulu, the Denag King, had desecrated the realm. At least that was what Shizam had divined to the rest of the Denags. The truth was, Zulu had had nothing whatsoever to do with the corruption of the realm. Indeed it was Shizam who had desecrated the realm by mating with Zulu's about-to-be sixteenth bride. Worse still, he had carried out the crime in the guise of performing his duties as wizard of the realm. The moment the forbidden act was carried out, the end of the realm had begun.
Shizam had initially rode the deceit; all the Denags had called for the soul of Zulu to be sacrificed, and a new Denag king installed. But Shizam knew better, for if an innocent king is killed by a wizard, such a wizard shall pay the ultimate due, the punishment for wrongful divination - death.
So Shizam had proposed the only other solution he could think of; send Zulu's soul to the outzone, to be dealt with by the ancestors themselves. This plan had initially worked, and all had seemed well, but only for a short while. Shizam had thought well, but he had forgotten about Xara, and the deed of inheritance...
Xara was the bride with whom Shizam had committed the abominable act. She was however, not much of a co-conspirator. Indeed, she had been under the influence of a powerful spell of ignorance at the time the deed was done. But the special nature of the parties involved proved to be the final nail on the coffin of the Denag realm.
For as the wizard of the realm, the deed of inheritance decreed that part of Shizam's powers would be passed to whomever he deemed fit to be a mating partner. This was the law, and Xara had not only mated with Shizam, she had also in the process taken in with child...
This tiny little detail had somehow managed to skip the plotting mind of Shizam. Thus it had rocked not just the wizard's circle, but the entire realm, when Xara had come out to challenge Shizam.
Armed now, not just with the true nature of events as to what had transpired, but also with wizard powers boosted by her still undying love for the unjustly banished king, Xara had come out with a determination never witnessed before in the Denag realm.
The battle that followed was better told than experienced. Malicious spells were cast and sent out indiscriminately, and if the realm was previously only desecrated, this time it was rocked to its very core...
It was in the midst of this battle that Shizam had plotted his final mischief. He had known from the moment Xara had opposed him, that his game was up. The only escape he knew then, would be to leave the realm. But with no Denags to divine for, his powers would be stripped off him by the ancient ones, and ultimately he would die.
So instead, he had concocted his most lethal spell yet, and had gathered all the items necessary for the rites of passage between realms...
Xara had failed to see this plan, though she could have, if she had totally mastered her newly acquired wizardry. But she hadn't. And so when Shizam's strike did come, it was as effective as it was deadly. It snuffed out the life from every living Denag, and for those heavy with seeds, it exhumed them from their insides and planted their souls in the belly of Shizam to be hatched and vomited alive when ready.
Shizam had then proceeded to escape the now putrid atmosphere of the Denag realm, and had begun the rites of passage once fully clear of the home of his malicious acts. One by one the rites had been done, on realm after realm, with no success. And when Shizam had begun to worry that he would forever drift in the world of the in-between, the last realm had showed an opening, another portal to life...
But again, Shizam overlooked something... He did not envisage entering a realm already occupied by living creatures...
...
Shizam looked around him as much as his vision could cover. He had been stuck here, at this spot for centuries since he was captured and conquered. He hated his captors; these creatures that seemed to crawl around every time.
He also hated the fact that they considered his captured head a special figure of some sort to smile and point at. He had borne it for all these centuries, only because he could do nothing about it, his powers were as useful here as a Denag's fart, and all his seeds had been burnt when he was captured.
So here he was, alongside a thousand, probably more, of his image's look alike, sprouted on structures by these creatures, the liquid substance they call water made to flow through his mouth now and then. Humans these creatures called themselves, and what a terribly meek name it was.
But what annoyed Shizam the most, was the name these creatures bequeathed on him. The way it rolled off their tongue whenever they mentioned it was horrible, and it proved a constant menace to his ears.
"I, Shizam, Wizard of the Realms..." he thought for the gazillionth time, "a Gargoyle..."
....
But as Shizam wallowed in self torment, somewhere in a faraway realm, Zulu floated out of the outzone, and opened his eyes...
Shizam had forgotten another tiny detail again...
THE END?
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