FICTION |FANTASY |MASHUP RESPONSE
Gilda and the Soul Transfer Elixir
The 3rd and final installment to a TKL Mashup Trilogy
This story is the final part of an earlier Mashup response and my humble submission for Monday Mash-Up #32. Check out the first part, Sorcerer’s Daycare, here.
Gilda Flamebrew had been backed into a corner as the wolf-mounted knights were suppressing her magic and closing in all around her.
She only had an enchanted dagger in hand to defend herself in the forest clearing under a full moon.
But her homunculus cat familiar, possessed by the spirit of her former magic teacher Bruce, was standing defiantly between her and the knight that had hunted her down.
“Try casting a spell, Lady Gilda,” Cat meowed, “and I will try to amplify it with my own magic.”
The knight pointed his sword at Bruce’s tiny frame. “I am suppressing all of your magic. It’s useless to resist.”
Gilda summoned her strength and began casting the most powerful spell she could think of. Her chanting entered her into a trance-like state, and she must have lost consciousness.
She awoke to Cat tugging on her sleeve. “Lady Gilda, we have to go right meow!” The urgency in Bruce’s voice shook her out of her daze. She looked around and gasped.
Her spell had gone off, and erupted the entire forest into a blazing inferno! Burning embers floated down like confetti. Its flames licked at the moon above, and the smoke was blinding.
Gilda glanced around. “The knight?”
“Ran off with the others when the fireball went off. Let’s get meow-t of here, Lady Gilda!”
With that, Gilda stumbled to her feet, scooped Cat into her arms and dashed out of the forest.
The next day, the smoke still hung heavy in the air, stinging Gilda’s eyes as she stumbled along the trail tiredly. Bruce was exhausted from the casting of the fire spell he had empowered, and slept silently in Gilda’s pack.
The sun was just beginning to peek above the horizon as Gilda’s tired and scorched feet reached a calm lake. She waded in up to her ankles and breathed a sigh at the water’s calming touch.
She swirled the icy calm surface with a sooty toe, whispering a scrying spell as she fought to concentrate on her memories of Diego.
What was he up to these days? Why had he killed the man she loved? How could she get revenge on him? She imagined the hundreds of different ways to make him pay.
Cat snored loudly in her leather pack, which she had placed at the water’s edge. Her thoughts shifted to finding the location of Bruce’s corpse. She would still need to find it if she had any hope of returning him to his body.
Glancing at her reflection in the water’s smooth surface, her scrying attempt conjured an image of Diego digging a grave in the pouring rain. After he finished digging, she observed him remove something from the corpse before he rolled it into the soggy mud.
The image in the water faded back to her reflection, so she tried scrying again. What had he done?
She targeted Bruce’s buried corpse this time, focusing on its whereabouts from before. She channeled her emotions into her spell until, finally, she could see through the water what it was Diego had done.
He had severed the corpse’s head!
She couldn’t well revive a headless Bruce! She kicked the water in frustration, sending a splash onto the shore, drenching Cat asleep in her bag.
“Meowzers!” Bruce jumped out of the bag, shaking his legs and tail, trying to remove the water. “What’d you do that for?”
But Gilda didn’t have the words to explain to him what she had seen in her vision.
Bruce opened his feline mouth to speak, but instead jumped into Gilda’s arms, immediately nuzzling and purring. When she hesitated quizzically, his only response was “You looked like you needed it.”
She took in a deep breath to calm herself, then looked down into Bruce’s whiskered face. “I can’t bring back your corpse,” she confessed sadly, on the verge of tears at the mere thought.
Suddenly an idea struck her, and she dropped Bruce unceremoniously into the water at her feet. He cried out and pounced to the shore.
Gilda ran back to her bag, and reached inside, grabbing a spoon and an empty vial. She immediately began chanting arcane phrases as she poured a bit of water into the vial, the potion-in-progress already glowing with arcane power.
“W-what are you up to, Lady Gilda?” Bruce asked, but it was too late. Gilda was entranced by her spellcasting and couldn’t hear him.
Watching her work with the potion made Bruce realize the giant leaps and bounds she had crossed since her early days in Sorcerer’s Daycare. She had possessed raw talents that needed to be shaped and molded into skill and competency, and so six long weeks as her instructor had blossomed into a five-year friendship.
But it had been more than a friendship for Gilda, hadn’t it? Bruce considered. From the first day in class that had a gifted Gilda blasting magic balls of paint at some human bullies to chase them away, Bruce had guided and mentored her into the true genius she was today.
Then he had died, and instead of moving on, Gilda gave up on her childhood and her studies to find a way to bring him back! Did he even deserve an admiration like that?
He turned back to her bag’s contents. He perused the notes she had scribbled down, trying to ignore the maelstrom that was beginning to form on the once-calm lake. He found an innocuous jewelry box that looked like it could burst, several locks of his hair — slightly creepy! — and her notebook.
Opening it was difficult without opposable thumbs, but after a couple tries the pages flew open, landing on a page that instantly filled Bruce’s zombie cat heart with dread.
The maelstrom around him was intensifying, pelting the shoreline with rain and hail.
Still, Gilda kept chanting. She poured the contents of the potion into her mouth…
“Gilda, wait!”
The waterworks abruptly stopped as the spell went off. The storm dispersed and Gilda collapsed to the sand in a crumpled heap, exhausted.
Bruce ran over to her, licking her face affectionately. “What have you done?”
The halfling jumped up suddenly, wielding the spoon defensively. “What the…”
Bruce checked himself all over with his hands — his hands! They were awfully small but they had fingers, too! He now wore robes, and he could feel two small round…
“Gilda Flamebrew!” he yelled, and he finally registered that it was not his voice that was doing the talking.
Gilda giggled affectionately. “Isn’t it better this way?” she asked rhetorically.
She knew it was.
❤
My Score: 14/14 An old enemy returns - Diego (He's a macguffin tho!) 2 points Embers falling like confetti: +1 point An improvised weapon - a spoon: +1 point Guess Mom's age - I use the word "hundreds" LOL: +1 point Gilda has a leather bag: +1 point Innocuous jewelry box (doesn't explode, but we all know Gilda... it would've eventually, am I right?!) +2 points Hero's Journey: Departure (Gilda in the woods) Initiation (Gilda's trials and rituals) Return (Gilda and Bruce are now one!) +5 points This sexy tally box: +1 point
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