"I hope this letter finds you Well."

Yurik Stafferson, Department Head of Formerly Great Civilizations, wishes the illest possible future upon his former colleague.

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted. The month of October turned out to be a bit of a personal gong-show with the Edmonton Unlimited Startup week conference I was attending, and some personal projects.

Plus hard Photo-crastinating. I learned how to use Lightroom at a higher level and got lost in graphical editing for a bit there. Fun stuff. But now I have some really pretty photos that I’ve plastered all over social media till people eventually said, “Hey bud, nice photos.”

Oh sweet sweet social validation.

Anyways, I’m going to do my best to catch up to my goal of 1 story per week, so there will be a couple more delivered in short order once I’ve picked out and cleaned up the stories for publishing.

Hope you enjoy.

Robin

---

The man scribbled away on parchment, the ravenous fury of his quill scratching so deep into the pages it was as though he could stab his feelings through ink and parchment. If words could kill — which technically they can but rarely do, at least when in the paper-and-ink format— these words would be like a legion of spears thrust at the heart of his enemy with literary precision.

The letter read as follows:

Sir, I hope this letter finds you Well. And by Well, I mean it in the deepest and most material sense of the word. At the bottom of a damp slippery hole that is impossible to climb out of. Drowning. I hope this letter finds you drowning in a dark wet hole. 

Which would be small comfort, because under such circumstances you wouldn’t be able to read these words, as this letter would be illegible to you in the darkness of your prison. Much as I doubt these words will be comprehensible to you due to the darkness of your mind, heart and soul.

There was a blot here on the page where he had angrily stabbed the word “soul”, like he could ram the quill through the paper and stab the reader on the other side of it. He was one angry scribe, the kind that weaponizes semicolons and flings exclamation marks like Molotovs.

The reason my letter comes to you laden with such rage and indignation is due to YOUR decision to pilfer my hard work uncovering the history and location of the ancient Aes Lufalfar civilization. You then had the audacity to plan an expedition to find them—without me! As if I were some tiny footnote in your grand thesis of treachery! And then, to create further indignity, you seduced my research assistant into going with you! 

She was brilliant and as dazzling as a newly discovered gemstone. Young, with a long bright future ahead of her. And impressionable! Which you no doubt counted upon! You took advantage of her! And led her into what was inevitably a death sentence! 

I do NOT understand what she saw in you, you over-brawned, sack of putrid meat… head!

So when the august Regional Divinations department sends me a note that my poor Rani HAS IN FACT DIED somewhere in the vicinity of your expedition, it is now up to me to tell her family that you have wasted her brilliant career and life on your stupid and ill-conceived expedition. As it is DOUBTFUL that you will return to tell them of her fate yourself.  

You are a selfish, malevolent toad, the kind that even witches would refuse to use in their potions. I hope that whatever fate befalls you is one thousand and eighty times worse than whatever terrible death you brought upon my dear Rani. 

Yours in Unquenchable Fury and Bottomless Scorn,
Yurik Stafferson
Department Head of Formerly Great Civilizations
Giranian Arcaneum

And again, another stab through the final letter. A postscript following this furious puncture.

P.S. - If you’re wondering why I’m writing you, it’s because that same RD dispatch informed me that YOU were still alive. I am writing you to condemn you for not doing the decent thing and dying WITH HER. And! To tell you that the Arcaneum will NOT come rescue your idiotic and selfish ass. You’re on your own!

Again, a stab through the parchment at the end of the exclamation mark.

The man, still seething, stood up and folded the parchment into equal threes, poured wax from a candle nearly burned away onto the crossed edges of the letter, and then spoke three sharp words into the air as he pressed his thumb into the wax. There was a flash of light, and the wax glowed like a miniature sun before reshaping itself into a twisted runic symbol, as if the wax had taken calligraphy lessons from an elder demon.

On the other side of this room, a menagerie of mystical mumbo-jumbo, a small winged and horned creature trapped inside of a pentagram wrapped in a circle. Candles were burning with fixed intensity at each of the five corners of the pentagram, and carved stone runes laid in and around the circle with obvious but unclear intent. 

“You will deliver this letter to Leopold Thornsbridge, wherever he may currently be hiding. He may not send a return letter or ask you for help in any way. Should he ask for help, you are permitted to take any action against him that you see fit to harm him. Burn his hair or something. I don’t care. So long as it hurts.” Yurik said, still visibly seething. 

The tiny red and blue demonic imp in the centre of the pentagram visibly brightened by these instructions, and saluted. “It would be my pleasure, Sir Yurik!”

“…and my payment?” the imp said with an innocent grin.

Yurik snorted, “In the old days, I would have tortured you for asking for payment.” 

With a grumble, he fished out a ruby from his pocket that glowed like a firefly with an ego problem, handing it, along with the comparatively colossal letter, to the foot-tall imp. The letter was nearly the same size as the little creature.

“Thank goodness we have a contract for employment standards then!” The little imp said with a grin. “Better that than another wa… I mean ‘strike’ with Hel, am I right?” The imp’s grin shifted to something far more… insidious. 

Yurik coughed at the reminder. Those had been difficult times, many wizards had died in the inter-realm incursions from the daemonic planes. “Yes. Probably so. Now go, do your job, Imp.” Yurik said in dismissal. 

The Imp saluted again, and vanished with the flair of an overly dramatic stage actor, leaving behind a puff of sulfuric smoke that smelled like last week’s egg salad left in the sun.

Yurik sighed, coughed, and muttered aloud, “I can’t believe we missed including a clause against that ghastly nose-assaulting dematerialization smog.” Shaking his head as he left his study to return to his duties.

—

In a dark hole, damp and musty, smelling like the unholy offspring of moss and forgotten gym socks, a man in torn clothes and weeks old scars barely healed lay wheezing with a cough that sounded… moist. 

A puff of acrid sulfuric smoke appeared in the jail cell, and the man immediately started coughing from the intense smoke pollution that filled up the space, too small to contain that volume of stench. 

“Mail delivery for… Leopold Thornsbridge?” Said the tiny figure holding up an absurdly large piece of paper for his body size. The man continued to cough, the chains fixing him to the wall clanging from his tortuous body movements.

“You look like you’re in rough shape there buddy. Do you maybe… want to ask me for help?” Said the Imp with a grin that the man couldn’t see. 

Leopold continued to cough and waved his hands back and forth trying to dissipate the smoke. 

“Definitely not.” He said, after a few moments. He held out his hand for the letter. 

Disappointed, the Imp placed the letter in his hands, looked around the place a bit, and then laughed. “The old man was right about you.” 

It then vanished again in another puff of smoke.

Leopold cursed and tried to cover his mouth with his sleeve to prevent the vile smoke from getting into his nostrils. He was too late. Several minutes of coughing ensued. He was deep underground, and the ventilation here was not great. The only window a tiny hole in the stone slab of a door. 

Turned out the “former capital of the Aes Lufalfar nation” wasn’t as “abandoned” as everyone had thought. 

Leopold looked at the letter in his hands. The only light the tiniest glimmer from the window in the door. And him, chained to the wall.

He said with frustration, “By Odin’s rotting eye, how the Hel am I supposed to read this?”