Midulla’Nuwerr Baby

Berel the Magnificent, the Greatest Wizard of All Time, was not always so well-known and celebrated across the lands in tavern songs and great ballads of legend.

I know, I know - it is hard to comprehend. But believe it or not! He was once a far humbler being, who had no idea of his destiny to come...

Our hero’s story begins in a long-forgotten part of the world called Midulla’Nuwerr, a place of such great insignificance that just thinking of a description for its muddy brown buildings, dirt packed streets and endless fields of manure and cabbages and… well it always *yawn* puts me.. to.. slee……………p …

[ASLKMIMPoplmplPSLDlmplmmdddd…mmm?!

What?!

AHEM!

So sorry. Where was I?]

Ah yes... our “hero”.

Yes, it’s true - no duller place could be found anywhere, no land less mediocre or uninteresting. It was the kind of town where marrying your cousin was commonplace, and if you weren’t careful, marrying your sibling a potential option. Even goblin raiding parties, who infested the surrounding mountains and were notorious for attacking anything, ignored Midulla’Nuwerr without a second glance! But to the local populace, there was no better place to live, and mindbogglingly boring was just the way they liked it.

And in this village, down their most famously dullest of lanes, out the back of a nondescript vegetable patch, in a tiny wooden shed with barely any space to stand or sleep, there lived a young “Disposer of Internal Affairs,” or what others may derogatorily term a “shoveler of shit,” with extraordinarily little ambition, who had only just passed his 25th Summer – can you guess his soon to be famous name?

Standing as tall as a draft horse’s ass was our hero, a spindly fellow with hairy legs that he liked to show off. He had a wild growth of fiery hair that he rarely bothered to comb, causing it to shoot out in all directions, tied back from his face only with a head band of platted straw twine. His eyes were a wet summer tree’s green, his nose rather long yet dignified, his chin not particularly strong. He would have been relatively handsome were it not for his most annoying feature – which was that of his face. His eyes were always opened to their fullest, giving him a look of unstable madness, and he regularly sported a sudden half grin accompanied by a raised, bushy eyebrow whenever he spoke in dramatic tones - which was as often as he could, giving him an air of either exuberant confidence, or irritating stupidity.

To some, he looked like the town lunatic, to others he was their eccentric doer of good who would emphatically announce his arrival to clean out their bogs with such pride, puffing out his chest and upturning his wooden-peg pinched nostrils while he got to work, that the villagers couldn’t help but think “that young man is going places!”

As it so happens, internally Berel, the soon to be Magnificent, had also begun to question his future, for although he took pride in his work, he noticed the snickering and smarminess of those in the village who took 99% of his earnings, and he had become quite depressed with his station when he saw all his childhood peers rising in the ranks of their various respectable professions through luck or privilege. Juhn Drongo became Marketing Director of Dirt Enterprises, Derp Dogegunt won Cabbage Patch Manager of the year, Blingo Bongo was suddenly promoted to the Chief Executive Officer of Manure Investments, even though he was completely useless, and Berel’s new boss (and childhood rival) Bazza somehow inherited the most envious of positions – the President of Shit Shovelers Inc – and he hadn’t even shovelled anything a day in his life! He probably didn’t even know which end of a shovel was which! Or what a shovel even was! And with their rising in the ranks of course came the glamour and glory of bigger and better housing and healthcare and riches to buy potatoes – the most popular of Midulla’Nuwerr’s vegetables – one Berel, in his poverty, had yet to taste unrotten.

That is, until Berel happened upon the book. That most holy of relics that would change his life, and that of the world, forever.

***

Wandering through the forests bordering the fields of his village, after a particularly busy day of shovelling (there was a huge town feast the night before, featuring a popular curry concoction of apparently colon cleansing proportions), Berel came upon his favourite watering hole for bathing.

It was in a lush clearing drenched in the light of the twin suns', surrounded by great trees in autumn colours, brimming with singing birds of many kinds. A small, fresh waterfall gently flowed down into a deep azure blue pool, surrounded by small, age weathered boulders and soft white sands. It was a tranquil place that allowed Berel to escape the rigours of daily life and where he could imagine himself being more than what he was.

After undressing with a twist and a jig, he sloshed down into the water with vigour, diving to the pool’s floor, and swimming freely in twists and turns under the surface like a fish, before bursting up for air and floating lazily on his back, the suns’ rays warming his skin. With a relaxed sigh, he dreamed and dreamed and dreamed some more, talking to himself as he usually did.

One day, I’ll be respected, he thought. One day, I’ll be revered. One day, I’ll be remembered and surrounded by all the cheers!

Yes, that was more like it. Like in the legends of old that his grandfather Stiffy, a grouchy recluse who was Berel’s only family, would tell him as a boy. Tales of Rajorne the Conqueror, the great uniter of the Freemen, who took down the oppressor Lord Toady of Amrael with his great silver bow - which they said could hit a fly’s testicles from 600ft! Or of Willhelm the Great Bull of the Fey Forests, who fought single-handedly against an invading siege of ten thousand men and beasts atop the great battlements of Tynturren, and who was so ferocious in battle that his famous bronze horns would become permanently soaked red with the blood of his enemies! The bards still tell the tales with such passionate mooing, snorting and bucking that onlookers cannot help but to crave some beef burgers. Even Merchant Street have gone so far as to hoist a grand, bronze bullhead above their headquarters in the Orange Kingdom.

With glee, Berel wished of one day being famous too, wished more than anything of having something more than nothing, of becoming a legend, a hero.

More miserably, Berel thought to himself, “One day… One day, I’ll show them.. one day I’ll show them all.”

“Show us all what, Hmmm?” came an amused musical voice from nearby.

With a start and a splutter, Berel righted himself with a great big splash of shock. He quickly looked around to find the owner of the voice but couldn’t see anyone.

“Hello?” he called to the emptiness.

No answer. He began thinking it was all in his head - then he noticed his clothes were gone.

“Hey! I need those!”

Silence.

“This isn’t funny! Last time, I nearly gave Grandma Falluus a heart attack! Hello?”

More silence.

“Damn it all!” He splashed.

With as much speed as he could, he rushed to dry land sopping wet, poking his head this way and that, trying to figure out just who stole his belongings and which way they went. There was a faint stench in the air that smelled of armpits. Sniffing with all his might, Berel followed his nose as best he could, trying to cover his privates with his hands as he ran through the forest grove, causing birds and wildlife to scatter in embarrassment.

Sniff “Come!” Sniff Sniff “BACK!” Sniff “HEEEEERE!” Sniiiiiiff.

Crashing through the trees, Berel stumbled over something in his path. With a yell and a crash, he fell face first on top of that something.

As soon as he realised what that something was, he screamed.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

For underneath him was an old man in wizardly robes, pressed up against Berel’s privates.

And this old man was dead.

Shoving himself backwards away from the lidless, glassy eyed and slack jawed corpse, Berel continued to scream, for this was the first dead anything he’d ever seen.

And this old man was inside-out.

“AAAAAAAHHHHH!

AAAAAAHHHH!

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

“Calm down old boy, it’s just a corpse” casually drawled some unseen voice.

But Berel saw no more as he struggled to breathe, he felt a little funny, then the world turned black and he collapsed.

-----

Hey there! Thank you for reading this little snippet from the world of Berel the Magnificent, The Greatest Wizard of All Time – a book series I have in the works. If you like my content, I love you and want to have your babies. Click the heart-shaped button ❤️ to let me know just how awesome you are. Want to read more Berel the Magnificent short stories? Click on my profile! I'm having fun writing stuff for the Vocal challenges as part of the series.

I’ll create and add my new social pages soon to all my works, so you can continue to follow the latest dastardly adventures of my various characters. AND once my book is ready and published, I’ll leave a link for you to check it out!

Many thanks and much love.

J R Rathborne.