Work Text:
15th of Severe Winter, 1992
Cowdenbeath, Kingdom of Dundee
Planet Earth, Solar System
A623433
“I can’t believe you lied to me!”
“Lied? I never told you it was sentient.”
“You never said it wasn’t! You never said it was you who had moved it in front of my door, as if wanting me to trip on it! I hadn’t expected such a thing from you !”
Ralathor sighed to himself as he sat on his bed in the early hours of dawn in his dimly-lit room and thought back to the shitshow that had been yesterday’s dinner conversation. The past few days had been relatively peaceful; with Zargothrax busy investigating the origins of the mysterious “sentient” and “self-moving” table, the ex-Dark Wizard apparently had very little time to come up with horrible ideas for how to “help” mortals. Ralathor had been more than fine with that, not minding the extra time it gave him to work on his own projects and in general to just rest from the hecticness that his life had become ever since he had taken Zargothrax into his home.
Somewhere in between all of that, though, he had forgotten that Zargothrax’s distraction wouldn’t be eternal, and perhaps he really should have mitigated the situation before it had blown up in his face and ended with Zargothrax angrily storming out from dinner and refusing to talk to him since. Was Zargothrax blowing this out of proportion and acting more like an upset mortal toddler than an ancient wizard with enough power to annihilate a planet? Yes, yes he was, as far as Ralathor was concerned. Yet no matter how many times Ralathor told himself that it was not his fault Zargothrax had reacted so explosively to a minor inconvenience, his own mind would remind him that he had long known Zargothrax was like this, that it was a not uncommon behavior among those who suffered from various degrees of madness and insanity.
Even if it wasn’t his fault, it was his responsibility.
Ralathor was not one for apologies. However, sometimes – just sometimes! – they were necessary to diffuse a situation, and when it came to dealing with madmen, extreme measures had to be taken more often than Ralathor would like. Also, the crux of the matter was that the apology had to sound sincere; insulting Zargothrax more would risk more violence, and as exhausting as his houseguest was (with horrid ideas like “arrows of healing”), this was still a better arrangement than the events of ten centuries ago. Ralathor would prefer to avoid dealing with more mortals than strictly necessary, and unfortunately the second rise of an intergalactic terrorizing wizard would certainly lead to far too many meetings with bickering mortal leaders who had no respect for his valuable time or presence.
So, apologizing it was, then. Ralathor checked the clock he had in his room: 06:01. Excellent. That gave him a little under two hours to work out his apology before breakfast (Zargothrax was a far cry from an early riser most days). He raised a hand towards his desk and called an ebook and stylus to hand, then had the electronic tablet float in the air and the stylus write his thoughts as he tried to decide what to say. At the same time, the lights in the room brightened to a level more promoting of activity and less promoting of snoozing.
I’m sorry for trying to get you to read–
I’m sorry I tried to trip you with a table–
I’m sorry I didn’t correct you–
Why was this so much harder than he had expected? He didn’t even know what to apologize for!
After about five pages of a document of failed attempts, Ralathor leaned his head back against the wall with a thunk. The dull pain from the back of his head did not help the headache he was getting from this futile endeavor.
He kept trying… and finally, just a few minutes before the clock display reached 08:00, he had something he was satisfied with.
I’m sorry for having purposefully led you into thinking that the table was sentient and making you lose a lot of your valuable time trying to research its actually-nonexistent sentience.
He researched that in his mind a few times before getting up off of his bed. He brushed his hair and got changed before heading out of his room to get breakfast, the lights in the room turning off behind him. (He may have ended up needing to return to his room a moment later due to having forgotten to wear shoes that aren’t his bedroom-only fluffy slippers, but that was beside the point.)
He arrived at the kitchen doorway precisely at 08:00, standing straight and ready to give an apology–
Except there was a distinct lack of a former Dark Wizard at the table. And a distinct lack of breakfast as well. Ralathor couldn’t exactly apologize when there was no one to apologize to.
It certainly caught him off-guard; after all, the formerly evil wizard had been stubborn about having regular meals, including forcing Ralathor to join for such meals. Even after their past smaller spats, when Zargothrax had taken insult to some of Ralathor’s explanations about why Zargothrax’s plans were flawed, things usually returned to normal by the time of the next meal.
Perhaps he truly had underestimated how far he had pushed this time.
With a frown, Ralathor turned and left the kitchen, heading down the hall and stopping outside the door to Zargothrax’s room. He paused for a moment, hesitant, but then shook off that hesitation and knocked against the door, evenly and loudly.
No answer.
He cleared his throat and called while knocking again, “Zargothrax?”
No answer.
Ralathor’s frown deepened as he weighed his options. He could enter the room and force a confrontation, assuming Zargothrax was even inside to begin with. That sounded like a horrible idea, of course, especially since further confrontation was not the goal of his apology. He could check whether Zargothrax was inside with a spell, though there was a high likelihood that Zargothrax would be able to sense that such a spell had been cast, which could lead to confrontation. He could wait and see if Zargothrax showed his face later; after all, hermits were good at waiting. Alas, that did run the risk of Zargothrax not being in his room, which would mean that Zargothrax was elsewhere and potentially terrorizing mortals.
Decisions, decisions.
Ralathor placed a hand against the handle of the door and focused, glowing electric-blue lines forming on his hand and spreading to the door. There was a small buzz, then a click, then the door slowly swung open on its hinges. Ralathor pulled his hand away from the door and quickly ensured that the spellwork in his cloak was properly powered up before taking a step into the room.
“Zargothrax?”
The empty rooms offered him no answer; if anything, they only raised more questions.
Had Zargothrax decided that he had had enough of trying to be “good”?
If so… Ralathor should do something about it. Probably.
He sighed to himself and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind himself. He headed back to his own rooms, going over a mental checklist and trying to predict where Zargothrax may have gone. Dundee? No, even if Zargothrax was an impulsive fool surely not even he would be stupid enough to try storming the Capital of the local intergalactic kingdom head-on. The moon Triton, where his old prison had been? Unlikely. The knights of Crail were in too sorry a state in these times for Zargothrax to get much enjoyment out of defeating them. The dwarven colony on Mars? Maybe, but Zargothrax never had much against the dwarves in the first place, not any more than he had with anyone else who got in the way of his plans.
Inverness. That sounded like the most likely point of attack. He’d go there first.
With a plan in mind, he went to his rooms to quickly get ready for what no doubt would be a mad scramble across the galaxy.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
One entire day’s worth of a mad cross-galaxy scramble later, Ralathor was tired. He had searched everywhere – and he really meant everywhere, from Inverness to Darkstorm to several neighboring dimensions – but had found no trace of Zargothrax, as if the other wizard had simply vanished. The only things he hadn’t checked were alternate timelines, and frankly, if Zargothrax had figured out how to travel across those, then he’d have worse problems than he had imagined.
That was something to check on tomorrow. First, Ralathor needed a nap. An on-off nap for ten centuries hadn’t been enough to prepare him to deal with this level of bullshit.
But then, when he arrived at his home, a home created by his own hand long ago in the caves deep beneath Cowdenbeath, he noticed something unusual. There was an odd smell in the air. It was unexpected, and unexpected things within his own home were seldom good. He took off through the passageways to find the source, the corridors morphing to his will to allow him to reach his destination quicker–
He arrived in his own room, where there was a small table placed in the middle of the room. The table had a plate on that table, one that had a warm and rather delicious-looking omelet. There was also a note beside the plate, and he’d recognize Zargothrax’s horribly-overcomplicated handwriting anywhere. (As if the glowing, sparkling red ink hadn’t been enough of a giveaway.)
~ Peace offering ~
(Figured you’d want a snack after all that running around)
There was a certain temptation that Ralathor felt, one to throw the plate with its omelet at a wall. Zargothrax had known; this had probably been his plan all along. This had been Zargothrax’s revenge for the previous evening, and Ralathor had walked right into it.
And to think he had considered apologizing!
There was one cruel irony to all of this, though; despite the high likelihood of Zargothrax having caused him all of this additional work purposefully and maliciously, Zargothrax wasn’t wrong to assume that he’d be hungry upon returning. And it was all the crueler that Zargothrax had made exactly the sort of omelet that Ralathor himself would have eaten had he actually bothered to make “human” food for himself more often (that wasn’t a high-nutrition mixture from his own lab).
Ralathor picked up the plate of food (which included a fork, which was a surprisingly caring touch) and examined the omelet. It looked edible. It smelled edible, certainly. It didn’t look poisoned or cursed, and a quick few spells revealed that it probably wasn’t. Cautiously, he tried a bite.
It was good.
“Peace offering accepted,” Ralathor muttered to no one in particular with a small sigh. Certainly, this entire topic would require a lengthy chat with Zargothrax come morning, most likely over breakfast. But that was a problem for later; first, Ralathor had a rather good omelet to eat and some time to sleep. He had to restore enough strength to hopefully make it through whatever chaos the next day brought.
He turned and carried the plate of food in his hand as he walked over to his desk so he could sit down and comfortably eat. It was unusually delicious. Perhaps he should consider having Zargothrax learn to help mortals using this apparent skill. Food deserts were an eternal problem in any large governance, after all, and an intergalactic kingdom such as Fife tended to be especially vulnerable to having pockets of poverty that didn’t have proper access to food. Long as he could ensure that none of Zargothrax’s foods contained anything dangerous, it could help alleviate some of the kingdom’s issues and keep the wizard busy doing productive non-evil things for quite a while to come, long as Zargothrax decided he enjoyed the task enough to keep doing it repeatedly.
Ralathor thought the matter over more as he finished his meal. Still lost in thought, he rose from his seat at his desk, picking up his now-empty plate to carry it to the kitchen to let the automated dish-cleaning arrays work their powers.
Then he tripped.
He landed ungracefully (face-first) on the floor, caught unaware, plate flung out of his grip and shattering somewhere. He pushed himself up on his arms, on high alert now, trying to figure out what could have attacked him in his moment of distraction. He looked behind him to see what his feet had collided against…
He saw a table.
The same table that the peace offering had been left on.
Except he certainly hadn’t moved it to that new spot himself (else he would have known it was there and not tripped on it), which meant…
Ralathor didn’t bother getting up from the floor; he just brought his arm in a bit closer and rested his forehead against his arm, sighing as he closed his eyes.
He really needed a nap.