The Glass Wizard - The tale of a somewhat depressed wizard

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It made sense. But when he looked back at the door with its slit of glass, the words inside him sounded thin, with the syllables about to collapse under the weight of their meaning. To strengthen them, the mask attached its whispering assurances: This is what matters. To serve is how we secure our place – respect, and favour, and trust – from guards and from guests. But the two half faces beneath knew better. They knew the unsaid underneath, the unspoken truth behind the mask. They were staring right at its backside. The mask no longer served only for the guards and guests. It existed for Yu. It was there to pretend in front of him as well — he had set it against himself; in front of himself.

In this, the two halves were united. Both wanted to tear it off. The mask reasoned for patience; to plan, to prepare, and to wait for the right moment to flee, while the screaming part raved to risk everything now. The wanting part refused both. It saw no purpose in other places or people. They only lived for the Queen.

Yu touched his neck with the stump end of his left wing. Then he raised the other and rubbed over both his earholes. Nothing changed. The world remained mute. He could not even hear the silence. From within, the mask's voice commanded motion. It forced him forward. To the pot. To the task. To the lie of normality.

He searched the shelves for a tray, then for bowls. There were several kinds. One cupboard held twenty wide and shallow ones that were more plate than anything. Another one below kept as many tall ones, narrow and deep. All of them were neatly stacked and perfectly aligned. Apart from these, Yu spotted several individual an non-matching pieces randomly strewn about the other shelves. He could not recall which ones Bubs had used earlier for dinner. He decided for the tall ones, mainly because they were made from some sort of horn, while the flat ones were made of stone, and right now, he really did not need that extra weight on top of all the other burdens he carried.

He meddled out the first bowl. Everything was mercifully within reach, at a height well suited to his wings, probably because Bubs was shorter still and equally sick of getting on stools for everything. One after the other, Yu placed four horn bowls on the tray, which he had set own on the centre workbench. More would not fit.

So now he had a tray with four empty bowls.

Four steps away stood the hearth, with its two post. The left one was already scraped clean. From the other, steam curled upwards in slow, ghostly threads. Yu remembered how intense the smell had been when he had first entered the kitchen that afternoon, rich with wapa fat and softened roots. He had already smelled it though the common room, the air heavy with its oily sweetness and rich spices. He needed both the memory and focus to register it now, even when walking right up to the pot. It was not that he had grown used to it. Rather, his ability to smell, like all his other senses, had extremely dulled. Standing discerningly close, Yu leaned over the cauldron. The surface glistened, thick with orange-brown broth. Large chunks of meat floated half-submerged, pale fat collecting in murky circles on top. Yu focused on the smell. He forced it to come back to him. At first, it was only food — the dense, blunt scent of flesh and the earth-sunken heaviness of boiled roots. He sought for more. It should be a smell of comfort. It should be enticing. But the longer he drew it in, the more it thickened and cloyed, and then it became vicious. The sweetness soured. The fat split and turned rancid in his nares. And underneath it lay something sharper still. A trace like singed feathers and tincture. The tang of metal and alcohol. The roots became marrow boiled open, pieces of bone —

Yu's gaze flicked to the saws on the wall. Then to the surgery door. Then away again. Over the steaming pot, to the bare twin beside it. That pot had been full when he was here last. Now, nothing remained. The guests had eaten an entire cauldron. Well, they had begun before the travellers arrived, and carried on all throughout, while Yu had dealt with his burns.

Now staring at the empty bowls, it struck him that he did not even know for whom he was preparing food. For the borman and the krynn, surely — but for how many more? How did any of this work? Did people … order? Should he go outside and … ask? But that would mean he had to talk to them. To the guards. To the guests. To all those who hid their ulterior motives and criminal intentions. Even if they did not suspect him in return, if they thought him just some feather-brained servant, Harrow's group would surely press him with all sorts of questions about the witch encounter and the injured travellers. It would be all of them against him, and with that, it would only be a matter of time until Yu slipped up. He would spill his suspicions before even messing up with the first bowl of food. The thought alone was pure stress.

Run now. They will know. Ignore them. Go to HER.
Keep pretending.
Pretend, pretend, pretend.

Pretending that they were perfectly normal guests, and that he was a perfectly normal novice guard amongst real guards, and that all of this would go just how it should — Did people pay? Surely all of this was not for free, was it? Was there a set price per meal, or some sort of tally, or was it all bound up in the board? When they arrived, everyone had simply eaten. At least Yu had not paid. Then again, he had not paid attention either. It might well be that the others regular Albweiss travellers would have settled their dues with their rooms, or would do so when leaving. Though, there was one thing Yu did remember: when they had arrived, Harrow and several others had given Bubs parcels of rations. Was he supposed to believe these were for safekeeping until their departure, or for the guild to use? Was this a pretend delivery or a trade? Did guilds work on some sort of give-some-to-get-some system? Had Tria ever mentioned something like this? Yu tried to remember, but found nothing to retrieve, not even the echo of her tone. He had never bothered to listen to her talks of trading or to be present when she discussed the Harbour Guild's dealings with other officials. He had never cared to learn how it all worked.

Whatever the system, Yu suspected he had been left out on purpose. Officially, he was to live and work here, not to buy or bargain. Upon arrival, he had been too tired to notice any agreements or exchanges of coin for food. And since then, he had neither eaten, nor been present when the others had gotten their meals.

All of Yu's speculations stopped at once as the thought struck him again; he had not eaten.

He had slept past breakfast.

There had been no lunch.

He had spent the whole day hunger-sick.

He should not put it off any longer.

He should eat.

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But then … he was not hungry.

Not at all.

Not anymore.

Or was he?

For a while, Yu just stood and stared. His eyes drifted across the kitchen, searching for his hunger among the pots and plates and knives and saws.

Before coming to the guild, he had never in his life gone without food for so much as a day, or even half a day. Back home, he had basically eaten whenever he wanted. Something had always been ready, and he had snacked as he pleased in between. He did not even have to leave his room. Lib and Url had just brought him stuff. Tria had forbidden it, but Yu had still made them do it.

This now was not normal. To go a full day without food and then feel no hunger was not natural.

Yu rubbed at his neck with his wing.

It was not like him.

The sight and scent of warm food should be a relief. He should be starving. We need to be. The body needs it. We walked the trail for hours yesterday, like every day before. That proves we can survive on the trail. It proves we can survive without this place. We need to leave. It isn't safe here. It is not safe there. Remember the orks. Remember the wapa after the orks — the only real meal. Everything else has been compressed rations, barely food, never enough. It will never be enough. Only she can give us enough. And more. She will give us everything. Yesterday, no, early this morning, was the only guild meal, and it was dough. In, out, gone. The food here isn't safe. We cannot trust Bubs. He wants to poison us. He will. We need to be concerned about this. We must feel hunger. We should be starving. And we were starving. We were. But we are not now. We are. Where is all the pain from before? We feel something stronger now. Where is the hunger? It's still here. It's just that we want something else more —

Yu lashed out. His talon struck the stool beside the pot of stew, too hard. The stool toppled and clattered across the stones. He stared until all motion ceased. Then he stepped forward to set it back upright. And then he placed one of the bowls from the workbench on top.

Now, to fill it.

On the counter between the hearth and the surgery door lay … a ladle.

Of course it did.

Yu tried to think this through. He could wedge the handle between his wings and probably get it into the pot all right, yes — but once it was full … no way. A brimming ladle was impossible to angle without spilling half of it, if not dropping the whole thing outright. He had already fucked up with the one in the bathroom. Cold soap water was one thing. Boiling stew, another. Looking down at his bandaged wing, Yu needed no lecture on that.

So he went for a different approach. He fetched another stool, climbed onto it, and then – looking straight down into the massive pot, with the fire glaring up at him from below, and the hot damp air curling into his feathers and stinging his eyes – regretted his decision immediately.

After an appropriate amount of staring and regretting, he reached out with his right talon, clamped the ladle, and forced himself through. It took three half-scoops; each one a trembling rush. With every measure of stew came an overflowing scoop of panic. Every back and forth demanded that he bent his left leg low so his right could reach. Every shift was a stagger of balance, with his talon clenching on the stool and his whole weight straining not to pitch headlong into the pot.

But the stew made it into the bowl.

And Yu made it down.

Though, by then, he was sweating so profusely he could have filled the empty pot again with just the runoff. He needed a moment to do some rush-over preening. The filled bowl stood waiting. Yu left it there, on the first stool turned table, and eventually nudged the second suicidal stunting stool around it. He kept close to the first, though as far away from the fireplace as possible. And then he sat in the leftover warmth. It rolled from the hearth and the pot like breath.

He could eat now.

Right there.

One bowl of wapa stew.

Redily served.

Enjoy your meal, and all that.

Yu stared at it. Then at the door to the surgery. Then at the one to the common room, and lastly, back at the pot and the metal rack that glimmered faintly beneath it.

He swallowed, throat tight. He swallowed all the thoughts that pressed into his beak, the ones he did not want to keep there long enough to recognise their taste. And even though that did nothing to rouse his appetite, he finally tipped his beak into the bowl. The stew burned his tongue. He forced it down. One mouthful. Then another.

It should warm him, ease him.

It should do good.

It should feel good.

Yu understood all that, but felt none of it. Not with the third mouthful. Not with the fourth. The logic was there, but the feeling refused to follow. Still he went on, beak to bowl, until he had to lift and tilt it with his wings against his face to scarpe the rest. Like that, he finished the whole portion. It was too much, and at the same time, it gave him nothing. The stew sat heavy inside him; a stone of fat and broth dragging at his gut, stretching it to sickness. And yet, the hollowness remained. The food did not fill it. It only pressed against it. It only unsettled. And as Yu sat on the stool and wallowed in his stomach ache, staring from the bowl into the dead fire, warm and cold, full and empty, sick and wanting more, he felt the mask slipping. Underneath, one part was fighting harder than the other to take over.

Yu pressed his wings against his face.

This new, wanting part of him was dangerous. It was strange. It was alien. It was in him, yes, just like the other, but at the same time, it was not … of him. It was not … in his body. The screaming part was all fear and pain. It was distorted, displaced, and exaggerated to the hysterical, but still, despite all that, Yu could understand where the terror came from. He had felt all those things before, in one form or another. But this new thing, this wanting, shared none of what the screaming part or the mask expressed. It did not register the aching in his back or the tremors in his legs. It did not acknowledge the burns along his wings, or the twisting of his gut. It was detached and displaced, unbound from nerve and pulse, and yet it was overwhelming. It felt just so strong. Yu felt it push. He felt it ripple behind the mask like murmurs in a flooded ear. It pressed upward through him, swelling with every breath.

Yu got off the stool. He stumbled, caught himself, and kept moving. Suddenly, everything had to happen very fast. He felt sick, but he could not sit still. His body shook violently, yet he still pushed himself to move — walking, pacing, circling the centre workbench in frantic loops.

There was pain, but not from injury. It had no wound to claim it, yet his whole body suffered, as if flayed from within by something that had left no mark. There was aching, but not from work or want of rest, not from something the body had been denied, but from something it was desperate to surrender. And within this ache, the HUNGER festered. It was not the hunger to fill. Not the hunger to sustain life. No, Yu was starving to be hollowed out and flooded again by the same voice of vastness that had drowned him not one hour ago. The wanting rose like fever; rushing, surging, swelling, cresting, throwing itself against the mask again and again. He craved to suffer and to suffocate, if only to relive the moment his self had split — not the shock before, not the agony after, but that one perfect instant in between, when Yu, 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"/> had torn him open and poured through. The HUNGER rippled through him like a million memory insects burrowing through his flesh and biting through the mask.

Yu threw his wings against his face, bent over the centre workbench, pressed his forehead into the wood and kicked his trembling knees against the table legs.

This is insane! This is madness! Madness! To give in will give us nothing — Wrong! Before her, we had nothing! Our life was nothing! We were nothing! This is something. Something special. We have never felt like this before. In one moment, she gave us more than all the years before combined. She is everything we ever wanted. We have never felt better than in that one moment she touched us. We should never have. We are not well. We have never felt better! Never! Admit it. We should never have found her out. And yet we did! Because this is what the hearing is for. It had always been for her. To bring us to her. To hear her voice. She wanted it. She saw us. She chose us. She wants us to hear her again. We should never have listened. But to hear her again —

"It must be witchcraft!" His voice came hoarse through the mask, muffled against his wings. He fought to still his legs, and to control his breathing. "It must be something that makes me mad. This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not right. This is not real. This is not me."

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