Private Tales Surely You Jest, Surely You Detest

[Kazaban the Mad]

The tower stood in defiance of gravity and the trappings of structural integrity, all crooked and stumbling blocks of stone amassed in column that could hardly be called stable. The wind did threaten to bring down the entire thing in a mass exodus of cohesion at any point, yet, the tower never dared to lose it's form to release the bricks from their ghastly assembly. The wizard who called this place home paid no mind to the increasing angles to which he had to climb on supposed flat floors, made accommodation when brewing and quaffing not to spill so eagerly in one direction, and found rolling out of bed was a far easier thing than most days. His drinks spilled often, he tumbled out of bed with a swift and momentus start most days, and climbing his staircases was oft an opportunity to pitch the tower itself in precarious leans.

Most individuals might move home, or fix the condition of their abode. Yet Kazaban stamped his feet with a regularity that would be deemed suicidal by most, oblivious or outright acting in spite of his haphazard dominion. So it was in this moment as he stamped down the staircase did the tower canter upon it's moorings, leaning this way and that as if the building itself had been gifted a hula hoop.

He muttered to himself in various volumes and pitch. Spats of curses, usherings of contrivances ill received, grumblings and convictions made known only to the stonework that was audience to his chuntering. The odd jot of proclamation, the rare moment of screeching. His mind was an erratic place at the best of times, and his recent forgetfulness after drinking a vast amount of alchemical potions had left him more credulous to outlandish fancy. And more susceptible to his own flight of fancies of last week turning into bombastic and most unfamiliar circumstances.

So it was that Kazaban the Mad, known as such to the firmly sane, reached his front door, a solid thing of oak that was blackened by wild sorch marks from his gnarled and much the same hued fingernails, that when opened flung open as the hinges were loaned great pivoting motion for virtue of the towers gyration and present leanings. Slam went the door, and Kazaban did spy something that lay just about the threshold.

“A wooden box? I don't remember ordering anything? Then again, it could be from one of my friends,” Kazaban said to himself.

The wind howled as his mind, empty, could barely summon a single face to put to extensive lists of enemies that might be charitable enough to bring him gift via crate.

Kazaban huffed as he could not place time nor date nor previous intention or design on the arrival of the vast crate. He scratched his head, and scratched and scritched.

“It must be from one of my friends,” Kazaban concluded with a certainty which was as axiomatic to the truth of things, and looked for mark or make of crate, some sign of what was inside.

“A present! Is it...is it my birthday already?” Kazban declared, and grew giddy, his feet now on truly level ground that he found himself somewhat sea sick at the lack of motion and give in the firmament. He gave a short curt and violent wrapping upon the crate with gnarled fist, as if he was addressing his own door. For while Kazaban was Mad, and he was surely a fool, he enjoyed these moments of not knowing, which were frequent and often in these troubled ill balanced days of tower living, for nothing about Kazaban could be called balanced in any measure of the meaning.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

A knock knock-knock-knock rapped against the wood. A knock knock-knock-knock-knock. Answered back.

Kazaban the Mad

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Kazaban jumped back slightly at the befuddling reply with a little unwitting outburst of, "Ooo!"

Kazaban looked around as if he was now handling contraband and rubbed his hands together and hunched in conspiratorial musings.

"No ribbon, no wrapping, just a tap tap tapping! I can't stand the anticipation!"

He reached up with hands gnarled and banged an odd beat upon the box as if he was a horse frolicking upon a bongo.

"This is the authority around here, open up! Don't make me use the battering ram! Wait, that could be what this is, that's right, my last battering ram fell apart when I dropped it on someone's head. Ha ha ha ha! But then, without that battering ram how am I going to open this one? Confound it all!"

 

[Zakarias]

A boom and a crack, to fire right back, to the prattle of a beat that had been lacking in heat. A grimace that was smile, that was ire and sorrow all painted upon the same pale plane of face. Bright eyes shined from within the darkness that covered the wearer.

"What what," came a voice like cracked ice, and hiss of wind through the coldness. "Is all this, birthday, battering ram," he sprung up, bolt straight, and a long limb pointed a long finger at the green robed wizard.

"Tell me then, Wizard," he climbed out of the box with a spidery leg, planted his foot and snapped out of the confines, let his toes spread across the only now even floor of the tower. A sound of disgust came from the back of his throat as he dusted off his shoulders and sleeves, the little bells upon his head ringa-ting-tingling. "What would you even do, with a battering ram?" A grin on his voice.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Without missing a beat Kazaban screeched, "Drop it on your thick head, you tomfoolering block head! Kazaban would batter any door he pleases, from any height, from any vantage! Why the other day I hefted my battering ram into hot air balloon and dropped it upon an idiot fish man who deserved to be have his gate of a mouth smashed. And so it was! And did I do! Do not question me on what I might do with a battering ram. I have already done it!"

 

[Zakarias]

His eyes squinted, quite pleased. "Battered a fish with your mighty ram, I so see," his eyes went wide and he mimed the choking of a thin neck with one hand, and grabbed up a hammer of air and gave it a little thwack. "Congratulations are in order, and to be granted," another flick of the wrist around the invisible fish's throat, and a toss of the hammer that was not there. "You've mustered the mastery of a fishmonger, sir, come help the fishers ready his stock," a slight bow from the hinge of the he hip, gloved hands stretched forward, to grant the smallest applause. "Bravo,"

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Blustering rage erupted into the wizard's frame as his face did sneer as if greeted by the smell of dead fish that he was insinuated to stock. The gall of it.

"I do not stock fish, I do not stock fish you great mass of bells, you pantomiming rhombus of ruinous prattle! I stock terror and in wild abundance! From this tower I have blasted the land, from my balloon I have scoured the forests, and from my cart I have shifted exotic immoral dog into mealy mouths of the moral, now tainted by delicious evil treat!" He cackled at his own memory of victory.

He threw his hands up as if dismissing his mirth, his rage remembered.

"A wizard doesn't have to stand for this. I didn't invite you into my home! Get back into your box and begone, you...you....jack in the crate, you pain in my craw, you great galute of prancing fanciful shuckery of my time and energies! You babbling brook of bastarding bristling bombastic, be banished and begone begone begone!"

 

[Zakarias]

Every lash of tongue, every dart of chatter but made the Red Jester smile the brighter. His eyes so squinted like the crescent moons, and the purple scar of smile and frown stayed twisted all the same. Fixed as it was in its expression. "Babbling brook!" he echoed in excited exclamation.

His legs kicked up, high knees and dainty toes that tap-tap-tapped against the stone, giddy as the bells chimed bright and brassy in their mockery. He clapped, excited little claps, tucked close to his chest as he spun about his little prance.

"Yes!" he screeched, as his turn stopped and his painted face pointed at the Wizard enraged. "Yes," the word came hot with breath. "Begone, begone, the wizard doth chant," he said, as he leaned one way, then the other, like a tall tree, made to sway with the wind's bluster. "Undone, undone, the tethers and fetters, when the twisted mans flesh, turns out that..." he came to his center, hands neatly folded as he leaned toward the wizard, his eyes burned bright, and narrowed to points. "It can't"

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Kazaban drew up the sleeves of his robes, which slipped down immediately after the gesture. His eyebrows twitched, his face contorted, his eyes became narrow.

"There is little I cannot do once I set my mind to it, there is nothing I can't do! Why I can turn the heavens to hells and the hells to oblivions! From this very tower have I done many a thing to spite the good cheer of the universe, and I have done it alone, and alone I wish to be! Out of my way! You bungler of words, were you sent to me via box to pound my ears with nonsense? Or are you just a charity case! I hate charity! And I hate you I've decided!"

Kazaban barged by with wide arms as he began to stamp awkwardly up the stairs. The tower did lean for his stampings. He made quick step to a quarter of the way up the tower before placing hand upon the wall and screaming.

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out of my life and into someone else's tower!" Kazaban screamed, like a jilted lover ready to throw plates and burn clothes.

 

[Zakarias]

The Red Jester righted up, as the tower shift beneath his feet. Unsightly thing. And so, he tip toed through the clutter behind the wizard. One long leg for every two or three scuttles of the human's feet. "If you yell it all the louder," he said sing song, and sweet. "Does it make it more true?"

Up, and up they went. The bent green crab, shadowed by the tall red star behind it. Be-horned and tentacular as languid limbs wobbled and waved tendrilled menace and delight.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

"Spoken like someone without a shred of understanding about shriekomancy! Prepare to ride the green lightning as I demonstrate I reveal the true nature of your reality! Become as dust, become sizzled in my frying pan of magic! Gyah!"

Kazaban whirled upon the spot as he reached the threshold of his private chambers, his fingertips crackling with purple electricity that did course out and bound down the staircase as he threw out his fingertips in splayed display of might. His eyes flashed with that same energy as his barely contained rage illustrated arcane might from his fingertips down the staircase.

 

[Zakarias]

A whiplash of kick sent the red shape cartwheeling down each tumble step. A spring of his heels and a twist of his hips, saw him tuck and flip and spin in a glitter of brass sparkled red.

The bolt of lightning struck. But there was not but the faze sizzle and zap of purple against rock.

A flash.

A scorch.

A trail of smoke.

All as if to mark the stage. The very spot upon which the Jester stayed standing. One hand to his heart, one hand out like proud wing to present. A slight bow to the wizard. "Ta-da!" he sang. Rose up, bowed again and again to a crowd who laughed and cheered and was very not there. "Thank you, thank you," he said between floppy eared dips.

The bright chimes of his bells there with each tip and hinge of hip.

He rose up straight and tall and most dastardly red. His eyes came open as the air about him sizzled. Squint their happy squints. "Shriekomancy," he said in hot hush. "How disastrously delightful," his eyes came wide with glee. "How hopelessly horrid!"

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Kazaban blinked three times in disbelief. His rage was spent in small part by his expulsion of magic, his breathed a ragged breath in as he summoned the will to continue the diatribe. His head began to pound, his fingernails now cracked from the expulsion.

"You," Kazaban hissed and looked at his hands as they shook in a mixture of shock and vitroil.

"Never have I been so enraged as to render my green lightning purple! Unacceptable! Unthinkable! I have oft missed, but to turn my trademark and highly sought after recipe into a mockery of the label, this won't do! You won't do, I won't have it!"

He drew tall upon himself and huffed and huffed for a moment. He turned around and slapped the door open with a telekinetic hand of magic that boomed. The tower creaked and kiltered.

The room itself was filled with trinkets of magic, oddities of his strange life, and while it wasn't the only room in the tower, it was the central hub to his diabolical living.

He paced around the room, giving scathing shots of his eyes as he contemplated what to do with his most recent infestation. His tone became defeatist.

"Oh make yourself at home, why not! Why not indeed as you rake me upon the coals. Pull up a seat, I don't often have guests, much less jesters who can dodge my magic."

He flopped upon his bed and kicked upon the mattress. He splayed himself for a moment, huffing. No sooner had he found temporary despair as he had another compulsion of irritation.

"What do you WANT man? What's your operodus mandi, what's your function, why are you even...alive?" Kazaban wailed from the foot of the slanted bed.

 

[Zakarias]

Slow and easy, the long legged clown marched up the steps. Dainty with delight as each tap of toe and splay of heel took him up to the frame of the wizard's Chamber. He leaned against the stone walls with a soft chime of brass, and smiled 'neath the darkness of his mask.

"I ask myself that question every day," he sat in the thought. "What do I want," the word came like smoke, a swirl of letters, a cloud of cackling darkness. "A laugh, more oft than not,"

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

The postulation from the jester placed the wizard into bolt right position, rising as the animated dead, as if his spine had been electrified and jerked upright. He pointed finger at his guest and lifted his head back as he brought scathing word to bear.

"Oh if it's a laugh you want, I'll grant you some gallows humour! You see, another crate arrived today, smaller, yet better," Kazaban said as he scrambled to a chest of drawers, throwing each drawer out, scrabbling through the various artifacts and ingredients for that which he sought before slamming each in turn back into the chest. The noise was absolutely eclectic.

"Better because it contained something actually useful and worthy of my time instead of your whistles and bells! I haven't had the time to test it, but you'll do fine, oh you'll do fine! A sensible chuckle you're after? I'll tickle you pink! I'll split your sides! I'll- I'll. There! Ah ha! Yes!"

He held aloft a perfect glass orb the size of one of his own fists.

"Now let me see if I remember how to use one of these things. And I hope I did paid for shriekomancy contingency protection, if there's one thing I detest, it's one a shriekomancer overpowers your orb action with a power shriek. Ruins the fun! Speaking of fun, yes, you, Jester!"

He with considerable dexterity danced the orb between hand and hand, the surface of which began to glow.

"I have a little joke for you! What will the orb do to the guest?"

Kazaban gave a single beat of time before exploding into shrieking,

"Because I haven't a clue what it's going to do to you! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!"

And with it, the device known as the Orb of Many Features began to cycle through various colours as the whimsical fates would decide what effect it would produce. Random is as random does, yet the orb understood one thing as it shuffled through possibility as the wizard and orb attuned to one another.

It's new master was an idiot.

 

[Zakarias]

For all the bluster and timbre, roll and wave, the Red Jester but stood and smiled all the same. "I'm positively, shaking in my long boots," he said with a shake and shiver of his shoulders, his long fingers hugged tight about his shoulders, as his bell did ringaling.

The orb. Magical. Mystical. And Many Featured as it was, shift, from green to purple to yellow then red.

"Oh ho," the clown laughed aloud, and he crowded toward the small green wizard, large and horned, and gleefully mad. "Red, means dead," he hissed with excitement.

The orb crackled, and popped, sizzled and snapped amidst the green wizard's hands.

And Zakaria's blue gem, did spark bright. A swirl of hypnotic ley turn staring vortex at its core.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

"Yes, red means dead! Red means dead! How observant you are! You have eyes to see your doom! And a gem to uh, whatever, doesn't matter, red means dead!" Kazaban said, flittering eyes between his own orb and the blue gem swirling with far more power than Kazaban's own recent bargain buy.

The glowing orb gave out spats of fire as the transmuter compelled the power beyond it's holding. First it simply fell the ground, scorching the ground in angry spats, and then swirling forward in wild abandon. Second, it struck out at a mirror which smashed at the force of the magic.

"Seven years good luck!" Kazaban laughed, and thrust out the orb ever higher, like a conductor bidding an opera singer to sustain, sustain, sustain.

The orb began to spin within his palm, which started to cause friction burns. Half laughing, half wincing, Kazaban did bid the flames out, which snaked out towards the clown in duel headed dragon form.

The tower began to teeter.

Zakarias

 

[Zakarias]

Teeter totter, all the hotter, did the twisting twin dragons burn, and turn and dance about the clown, so set to prance around the room.

"A zap! A zing!" he cried out, clear with joy, as long limbs struck thither, and red horns flopped yonder.

"A buzz, and a crack!" he laughed, and laughed as long steps saw him over the fires, nimble and quick.

Stone blasted. Bricks fell off. And one last step saw the Jester set to spin on the tippy top of his toes across the floor, in shimmer and shaking pirouette.

Blue gem, weird and strange, as its twisted lines turned to spiraling bend of ley and magick.

Kazaban the Mad

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

The friction grew too muchly for palm now near glass smooth for the spinning top bargain bin ball of bluster. With a pained scree and a shaking of the hand did the orb spiral from flesh contact into the air, and fell to the ground with a dull and heavy thud-tha-thud-thud.

Kazaban continued to shake his hand, which spat out tendrils of static electricity for being so burrowed by bauble and looked on in relief as the ball remained in one piece on the floor.

Then, as an egg might, it cracked down the middle and parted from itself.

A wail eminated from the sphere as all magical effects it had produced became arrested.

"The instructions said wear gloves, you second rate sorcerer!"

A collective groan from the magical power produced by the orb. Then Kazaban. Then the tower, the latter louder than the rest.

"No gloves fit me, you omelette!" Kazaban slandered, and began to fry what remained of the orb with jolts of purple electricity.

"Purple again!" Kazaban bemoaned, shaking his hands as if to remedy the situation.

It did not.

Instead, purple crackles were sent spiralling about, inflicting further tilt into the tower, further lean forward and beckoning backwards towards the ground in turn.

Kazaban blinked a few times as a wardrobe fell flat on the ground and began to slide into the ruins of the sphere, which bubbled from the recent frying.

"You, Jester!" Kazaban said, the crackling purple energies still spiralling out, as if it were an oven that Kazaban left on while his mind wandered, "Pull the lever or we're all coming down! The lever! Pull it so we can straighten out this place!"

Three levers, all three with green handles, identical in position, awaited the jester's flip as Kazaban continued to make matters worse via thrice cracked blackened nails that continued to eject lightning against the back walls as if he were hosing down a cart with the colour purple.

 

[Zakarias]

So. With the trace of red gloved fingers, Zakarias traced one lever, then the other, and the third. "Three levers?" He asked, coy as coy could be. A twinkle in his eye. Purple fried and zapped about his curl toed booties. "One," he pulled down with a shunk. "Tawhooo," he brought down with a clank. "THAREEE!" he lept up and slammed with utter glee.

The levers locked into place.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Memory failed to serve as levers did their toil, through clanking cog and whirling arcane component set to spinning did they do the Jester's random whim. The cabinet smashed against the wall, and became aflame for virtue of the remains of the bauble. Heavy clanks and rumbles emanated from the heart of the tower, a thing devised by idiot mind to serve idiot causes. And Kazaban stood, aghast, mouth agape, hands upon head at the locking of levers so.

"You...bungling blockhead! I don't even know what that'll do! I've...I've never pulled all three!"

Kazaban was arrested by apoleptic rage at the direct defiance of the singular command, his body shaking with fury as the tower quickly caught up with such vibrations. He was held in place by the fear of the firmly forgotten outcome of all three levers being pulled as it began to play out. Although Kazaban's hands went to wringing an imaginary baby's neck in the Jester's direction.

The doors to the tower began to open and close of their own volition, slamming as if by a scorned lover's exit. The base of the tower began to turn to white hot stone as tumultuous energy was ejecting into the lower core of the construction. The tower, it seemed, wanted to be free of this farce of being in one place with anyone involved.

And began to made motion to lift off the ground.

"Oh, I remember! All three means the tower's free!" Kazaban said in a shot of realisation.

"Tower's free?" Kazaban said in realisation.

And then descended into full blown panic.

"Tower's free! Tower's free! Free fall soon after blast and zoom!" Kazaban howled, as the tower tilted from it's moorings as arcane fuel powered the lower base to ejecting itself from the ground. A terrible grinding and blasting sound could be heard from deep in the bowels of the tower that was struggling with the three lever demand made of it.

"It's official! This is the worst birthday ever!" Kazaban bemoaned as he reached into the burning cabinet for a few particular robes, all identical, before lurching towards the window as the tower made what progress it could to lean with deliberate angle towards the rough direction of the Elder Tree. He opened it and the panes immediately smashed against the wall from virtue of the tower's angle.

He hesitated, his hands upon the window frame as he looked down at his home burning bright at the base as it gained something a tower should never have.

Lift.

"Out of the window! I'll save me, I promise!" Kazaban said, and tried to think of the spell required to make a fall less harmful, his mind afluster at the sight of the tower slowly lurching away from the ground

 

[Zakarias]

Zakariaus laughed, and bent, and swung his tall self too and fro, cartwheeled to the window, and slapped the wizard across the back, hard enough to knock him out the window, but quick digits grabbed the scruff of his robes.

"Out the window, out the window!" he mocked, and laughed and shook the wizard by the wrinkles in the crusty green fabric betwixt knuckles and grip. "What will you find, I wonder, what will you see, come the fast ground to meet you?" he shoved the wizard out, lacks-a-daisy, laugh and glee and murderous.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

Air rushing, robes a flutter, hands outspread as if to increase drag, hair streaming as a screaming Kazaban was ejected prematurely out of the now aloft tower by Jester direction.

The tower itself was a blazing yet spluttering thing, the angle far too low to gain true altitude, yet the speed that was developing was a thrilling thing as the base glowed white hot. It lumbered with developing momentum, portentous and dreadful. Yet preparations had not been made, reinforcements of the structure not implemented, and the stones began to shuck away from the missile which sent the thing to spinning as it vied for it's place in the skies.

A collection of sparrows in flight moved in formation away from the tower which seemed undecided on if it should reach the heavens or crash into the ground. The glowing base flickered as if leeched of thrust.

Kazaban looked wildly in the direction of the tower, the ground, the tower, and with a curse he decided to multitask at the singular moment he should be focused on his self preservation. For while he was motivated to save his own skin, but, inevitably, plots against the knights he scorned had to be respected.

Left hand thrust out towards the tower, right hand shot out towards the ground, and as the robes did leave his grasp as he did so, lightning streamed out in wild abandon.

Green this time, which only encouraged Kazaban in this reckless moment of auspicious success.

The lightning slowed his descent as he blasted below as he tried to implement his arcane will with unusual precision at flames that were erupting from the tower. It raced and touched the arcane laylines at the base of the tower, further instruction all too hastily delivered as Kazaban descended to the ground as his magic slowed his fall.

"Full power to smite the tree, my tower must fly powerfully!" Kazaban said through gritted teeth as he made the attempt to infuse just a bit more power to the propulsion so it might make the flight true to the Elder Tree.

Such optimism could only be attained by the firmly insane and deluded.

The tower was now surging with additional power....

But such an infusion could only one possible outcome.

Not to shoot gracefully through the sky like comet across night sky, but to tremble, disassemble, shock and crumble, the roof cone exploding out, the doors flying from their hinges, and stones raining down and thudding into the ground.

Kazaban's eyes lit up from the flash of green energy from his home as his feet touched the ground, mouth agape, yet a slight smile creeping upon them, hands now smothered of their arcing lightning as he witnessed the carnage in the skies.

"A beautiful green!" he crooned as he watched the tower produce a plume of green, sending stones, furniture, and quite possibly a Jester back to firmament with a stunning display of Kazaban's hallmark colour.

 

[Zakarias]

"A green, yes," Zakarias said lazily as he sat, his long legs crossed as his pointy toed boot bounced this way and that while rubble and ruin rained down around him, and a curious charred skull was there in the palm of his hands.

His head lilt to one side, and the bells upon his horns rang bright.

"Beautiful?" he asked with a full measure of doubt. A little laugh came from his throat. Gleeful as it was sharp. "As a drunkard's mess, perhaps," he tossed the skull over his shoulder, and the thing cracked against a tree to roll away into the brush. The Red Jester stood tall, dusted off his pants, his shirt, and his shoulders.

A stillness fell upon the Jester as he locked eyes on the wizard. Malice bright in the silver stars that were his gaze. "Well, that was fun, wasn't it?" he asked with a squint in his eye, and a lilt in his voice as curved as a scythe.

 

[Kazaban the Mad]

"Well as birthday presents go, that was a kick to see my abode explode, but no cake? I'll have to give you a firm B minus," Kazaban said, perfectly conversational despite the recent circumstances.

"Now, to find the next tower to take over," Kazaban said, stroking their beard as if that might aid the process. He upturned a hand in Zakarias' direction.

"Wouldn't know anywhere I can make spacious of owners?"