The Glass Wizard - The tale of a somewhat depressed wizard

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He could see into the case, from where he stood.

"Have you not … done this already?" Yu's eyes clung to her fingers, as she removed the singular needle in there. He believed it was the same as the two she had used on the borman and the krynn. "The witchmark test?"

"I did indeed." Her body smiled.

"This is … something different?"

"Slightly different, yes."

With a motion as graceful as it was unhurried, she set the point to the selder's back. It slid right in. This time she did not just hold it. She guided it, tracing the line of one of the symbols. As it moved, the needle shifted in hue; first an ashen pallor, then a deep, drowned blue, like stones that you could barely make out in deep water. Yu braced for the voice, for the HUNGER that had risen before, but nothing came.

She studied the colour in silence. And as she did, the scales across her chest stirred, shifted and folded back. Yu saw it clearly this time, and he heard it as well; the ripple that ran across her body, like the surge of a conscious wave. She sat in plain view, with no more than three steps between them. The orblight revealed everything. First, the seam, a thin line across her blackened collarbone. Then, the maw. It opened without teeth, exposing layered folds of flesh that glistened with moisture and twitched like tongues. They grew inward, curling up into her throat and down into her chest. A slow pulse rippled through them as they closed around the needle, careful, tight. The sound was not a sound, but Yu felt it echo in his ears: a wet pressure, a contraction, as though the thing inside was tasting. It did not swallow, yet when the shaman withdrew the needle, the shaft was blank, leeched of all colour. Without pause, the seam closed, her shoulders adjusted themselves, and the petal-scales swept back across her collarbone. Already her left hand was moving. Once again, the shaman set the emptied needle into the selder's skin.

Yu's ears filled with pressure, a sharp ringing that would not break. "What are you doing? Bubs told you to use potions."

"We administered potions," she said evenly. "For vitality. For sombre sleep. For strength restored. These touch his body. I may assess their effect. I may take what should not remain."

The ringing swelled. It pierced, from the inside. Still, through the stinging, Yu caught the word. The word of soothing lies. May. She spoke of what she may do. Not what she would. Not what she did. It was witch talk. It bound her to nothing. For all Yu knew, she was feeding. For all he knew, the thing inside was drawing out essence, devouring the selder needly by needle.

But what could he do? What even was he doing right now — calling her out like this, pushing his voice against hers as if there was weight behind his words, pressing, challenging, escalating? He needed to stop. He needed to get out.

"You would like to ask more," she said.

"I, well …" Yu scraped the words together. "No. I mean, not now." He could not let her speak for him. And if she did, he had to twist it back, wrench her words into his own beak. "I know this is important. But I should go now. To the dinner. As Bubs said. As you also said."

"Your interest is valid. You should learn. As a guard, you will encounter selder."

Yu felt his talons freeze to the stone. A tide of ice poured through them, into his legs, pressing into the marrow of his bones. It was like the weight of a mountain forced into his joints; all of him would break if he but swayed or shivered. Without touch, without a flicker of movement, the shaman held him where he stood. She bound him to the mask he had put upon himself, this façade of a diligent and caring guard, the obedient servant. She forced him to act it, to continue the play; to be engaged and incompetent and harmless and oh so compliant. It was a suicide game.

Through the mask, his words sought for an escape: "Then … are these spells?"

"They are sevrants," the shaman said. "The result of sevarran branding. Selders of the Pathfinder Clan carry them."

Her shoulders shifted, slow as breath. The scales along her chest drew back with deliberate grace.

"In the language of the mountain, they are called the Werisian. It is an ancient clan, the purest among them. Direct descendants of those who came from the Albweiss peaks. Their bloodline has not thinned. They still carry mountain blood in their veins."

The seam across her collarbone surfaced. It did not open. The maw remained closed as she spoke. Yet Yu could not silence the sounds that rose from within; the slow agitation of wet flesh straining against itself in quiet unrest, the dripping eagerness coiled inside the patience. The restraint was so thin it felt like trembling, civil on the surface and nothing civil beneath.

"The practice of sevarran branding is kept even from lesser selder. Werisian sevrants are bestowed for many reasons. Pathfinder elders may grant them. Rulers also. In theory, any selder may exchange sevrants with another. They are inscribed through carving and rune-etching, and through the burning of substances into the flesh. The selder who receive them do not suffer from the branding. Not once the strain has passed, and the pain has ebbed. Unless, of course, the branding is interrupted."

The shaman's hand rose. She drew out the darkened needle and turned it inward, toward herself.

The ice surged through Yu's limbs, rushing up from his legs to his chest. It pushed and tore inwards, until it bit into his throat. Yu could not speak and he could not swallow. His neck went rigid. He could not look away. The seam across her collarbone rippled and the flesh trembled as it took the needle. When the shaman drew it free, the shaft was hollow again, void of all substance. She slid it back into the selder's back.

"When born, Pathfinder selder gain their first sevrant. The Almara. You see it here." She traced the faint circular sigil on the unconscious body. The elegance of her gesture was filled with reverence, but there was no tenderness in it. "It is the first of them, for some the only one. A mountain-binding. A ritual sealed in the Albweiss caves, to mark them as heirs to their ancestor's passages."

The last of her scales fell back over the maw. The stinging in Yu's ears reached a fever pitch; sharp, insistent, absolute.

"The Almara allows them to be seen by the spirits and beasts of the mountain. To remain untouched, even by the most ravenous. But it is also an obligation to the mountain itself. Those who carry it must devote their lives to the mountain's will, to ensure they do not lose their way, nor lead others astray. Pathfinders guide. Not merely across stone and ice, as the ignorant believe."

Her scales rippled again, much slower than before. The soft rustle of it seemed to steal the sting from Yu's ears. With each rise and fall of her chest, the soothing whisper swelled. His eyes filled with the rhythm of it. In its ebb and flow, the horror was hypnotic.

"The true duty runs deeper. They guide not for the people, but for the mountain. To see that those who do not belong will not remain. To see that those who pass will not despoil."

The dark scales on her shoulders and chest still whispered, as the maw opened again, just ever so slightly. It drank from the needle without haste, the slick sheen of inner flesh barely visible as it tightened around it. The shaman's body smiled where her mask could not. The smile lingered, even as the scales closed around her again, and still, as she returned the needle to the selder. The whisper remained, curling itself deeper into the air.

"The Almara is only the first. A selder may gather many sevrants across their lifetime. Some heighten the senses, sharpening awareness until even the faintest shift of stone beneath snow may be felt, or the most subtle of trailing presences. Others grant temporary powers. See here."

Her fingers guided the needle along the fine lines within the fur, tracing with a patience so deliberate it was mesmerising. Like that, she waited. She kept waiting until Yu felt the frozen pressure on his shoulders tilting towards her, threatening to throw him off. He surrendered and shifted forward, stumbling just to stay upright.

The shaman's fingers hovered above a dark servant, which consisted of two circles bound by a single line. "This one is rather common. It grants the Phantom Flame, a fire not of matter. It gives warmth from within."

It sounded like magic, yet her tone offered no sense of wonder.

"Some sevrants are pacts. Not only ties to clan, but bonds sealed with mountain beasts, with resin and blood, sometimes essence. They may be of gratitude, when a selder has aided. Or debt, when the beast demands return."

She lifted the needle. Its length held more red.

"All pacts are bound by consequence. Consider the Flame. It is a fire of the most delicate mercy. It does not burn on the body alone, but on the very essence of the selder's being. The longer it blazes, the more it consumes its own light, until little remains but the ember of existence. Others may draw from the Albweiss itself when their strength falters. Such debt must be repaid with care before the selder leaves the mountains. Should they refuse to return what has been given, the mountain will exact its claim. It will take it all, the moment they attempt to depart. Those who live on borrowed life are mountain-bound."

Her scales never ceased their soothing rustle. Even now, as they shifted and folded back once more, the rhythmic whisper remained undisturbed. It was calm, comforting, almost entrancing, and yet, all of Yu's feather stood on end, every one of them dishevelled, as though a terrible wind had swept through him. It was as if he was caught in the middle of a storm that he could not see.

"Did that happen?" His torn-up voice cut through the whisper, and suddenly, he heard the stinging in his ears again. It was still there, dull yet insistent, swept to the unsettling recesses of his mind. "Is he exhausted from that? From a pact?"

The whispers continued, but Yu refused them. They circled and embraced him, but he held fast onto the pain instead, focussing, following. The stinging led him away from the center of the storm that he did not feel, to its very edge, where he began to hear himself again. All the words behind the mask were here. You are not supposed to do this! You are not supposed to read the pacts! Bubs told you to leave him alone!

"It remains unsaid what this band of travellers encountered on the peaks," the voice of the shaman never wavered. The maw waited for the needle, barely moving, as she finally sank it into the seam. "But surely, this state befell him with the payment of a debt. Or the breaking of a pact. Or perhaps the judgment that he was unworthy to bear it any further."

Her left hand lowered the empty needle from her chest to her lap. With her right, she traced the air above another symbol. It was a lattice of grey lines, though all of them were frayed and dim.

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"See this one fade. The burning was interrupted, or perhaps never truly kindled. Completed sevrants endure, even when the skin withers with age. But this one," her finger lingered in the broken weave, "it unravels like a wound losing its memory."

The shaman told him to see, and she traced the symbol for him, but Yu followed only for a breath before he averted his eyes. He looked from her right hand to her left, to the needle resting in her lap. He fought to keep the storm of rustling calm at bay, forcing the pain and stinging into thoughts. What are you making him lose? What are you taking? What are you hiding?

The whispering stopped.

"Unworthy recipients suffer," the shaman continued, soft words formed from splintered syllables. "Those not of true blood may die, or twist into lasting seizures, their bodies forever breaking and their spirits scattering. But this one … This one is true blood. Unlike you."

Yu's gaze darted from the needle to her mask, and then to her collarbone. He stared at the seam that was not a seam. At the maw that had long since eaten, but still lay bare. At the scales on her shoulders, that had still not shifted back.

"Nonetheless, you are a Transcender wizard," the shaman rose. The needle was still in her left hand.

Yu could not move. He could not speak.

"It is most intriguing. And of all days, you came here today."

She spoke in civil words. The maw spoke with everything else. The seam remained closed, yet Yu herd it; the breath that was no breath, the shifts beneath the skin that resonated nothing but pleasure, unrestrained and unashamed, a craving so raw it sickened him. The kind that takes, and takes, and takes. The soothing rustle of the scales had masked it, but now, there was no disguise, no distortion, nothing to distract from it. There was only the sealed scream of greed swelling in his ears, rising from the painful sting into a ravenous roar.

In his mind, Yu screamed back. I am a bastard! But at least I show myself! At least I face myself! What are you? What do you want from me?

And the maw screamed <img alt='Image: "Hunger"' height="20" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/HUNGER.png" width="86"/>.

And Yu screamed. What is underneath? What were you before?

The body turned toward him. Not the mask. Not the maw. The body. Every inner shift, everything it was and everything it contained, turned to face Yu. It presented itself. It beckoned. It dared him to cross the last boundary between them, to reach for what could not be grasped, to unravel what could not be endured.

"I have waited patiently," the shaman whispered. "Grant me an Oracle, Yu."

It was the moment the HUNGER broke open. It did not subside; it ruptured itself, tearing its own scream into shreds of sound, until another voice rose from beneath; a voice that was older than the greed, deeper than the craving, and so much more inexorable than either. It was a voice that had always been.

And now, for the first time, Yu recognised it. He had heard it on the Snowtrail, drifting across the passes, reverberating in caverns, dissolving into the wind that broke upon the peaks. He had heard it not once but endlessly. It was a voice that had never spoken to him, not to any singular listener, but to the mountain entire. It spread through frozen seams, grafted itself into ice and stone, and buried deeper than witch runes. Stranger than the delirious songs of sprites, more primal than the rage of beasts, more ancient than the alien phantom whispers that no other wanderer but Yu had perceived. And because it was ceaseless, because it was boundless, Yu had been deceived. He had thought it elemental, the residue of nature itself, something immune to containment in any single frame of mind. Because it had no beginning and no end, he had mistaken it for the Albweiss itself; the current beneath all sound, the mountain's own eternal voice.

But it had never been the Albweiss. Never stone. Never storm. Never the mountain's breath. It had always been her.

And now he heard the cadences by which her essence declared itself.

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PRIDE.

POWER.

PURPOSE.

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Yet even these were only husks — syllabic scaffolding for unbearable concepts of existence. Her true existence lay not in words, in the same way that the true voice was not sound but pressure. It pressed not into Yu's ears but into the coherence of his thought and instinct.

And Yu realised, with the destitution of madness, that the HUNGER which had so overwhelmed and terrified him, was nothing beside this. It was no more than the faintest of echoes of the true voice, barely skimming the surface off its insurmountable depth. The true voice was not hunger, nor greed, not even will. It was strata. It was hierarchy. It was the foundation of a singular existence beyond anything he had ever heard or felt.
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PRIDE, not as emotion but as a decree.

POWER, not as possession but as a matter of course.

PURPOSE, not as choice but as principle.
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And now, the body that contained it all turned.

For this instance, the voice abandoned the mountain. It withdrew from caverns and peaks. It unwound from the seams of ice. And the core of every cry it had ever cast over the boundless ridges, of every tremor it had ever driven through the Albweiss stone, of every breath of will it had ever seeded into the world's oldest silence — this immensity that had seemed to belong to the Albweiss itself now contracted, condensed, and faced down on Yu alone.

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I am
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Yu dropped to his knees.

He was on his knees, nothing but a speck, a blemish of breath and bone before the <img alt="image" height="29" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="58"/>.

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At first, her voice and her body had seemed the catalyst of the Mountain King and his immeasurable, incomprehensible HUNGER — but now, she was so much more. She was not echo but origin, not shadow but substance; the true measure of PRIDE, the living essence of POWER, and PURPOSE that underwrote any will or fate. The instant he saw it, heard it, felt it, Yu collapsed before her, forehead bent towards her feet. And in that moment, every corner of his mind and every vein in his body cried the same: Please eat me.

He did not understand it, but at the same time he did not need to, because she understood everything and she was everything and he wanted nothing else. He wanted her to lean down and bend over him like she had done with the krynn, and he wanted her to touch and seize him, and he wanted her to look at him through her mask until he dissolved beneath her gaze. He wanted her maw to open and seal around him, to feel her hunger claim him, to be consumed by her desire and to fulfil it for just one single heartbeat, to satisfy her in that one perfect moment.

And there she was.

And she bent down.

And she reached for him.

She touched his shoulder. Her elegant claws slid between his feathers, pressing lightly into the fragile corridors of collarbone and throat. Nothing had ever felt better. Nothing had ever been more intense, and nothing would ever be again. The touch was unbearable in its perfection. He wanted the pressure to tighten. He wanted the pain, begged for it with his body, prayed for it with his mind. He wanted to be torn apart if only she would touch him one second longer, if only he could satisfy her a fraction more.

"Now, Yu," the shaman whispered, and every petal of her body whispered with her. "You are out of strength. You must be so hungry."

At the shaman's words, at the soft rustle of her scales, the echo of the <img alt="image" height="29" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="58"/>'s proclamation receded. It receded just barely, just enough that at the farthest edge of himself, Yu heard his own scream. He heard himself screaming from within. It was so faint and so forsaken that he thought he must be screaming from the farthest end of the Snowtrail, across the whole continent and every storm in between. It was the most desolate of cries, desperate to unhear the PRIDE and the POWER and the PURPOSE that brought him to his knees.

It was she who made him rise.

"Go now. Finish the dinner for our guests. Eat something yourself. We may continue our conversation afterwards. I will wait. There is still time."

Yu obeyed. He stumbled form her presence. If he had stayed even one heartbeat longer, his skull would have burst.

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