Zorko’s Arcane Appraisals
The Page as Battlefield
“Welcome,” Zorko intoned, hand raised like a conductor halting noise. “To the scriptorium where ink outlives memory, and every quill bleeds opinion.”
He stood in a chamber shaped like a sentence: curved shelves, comma-spine scrolls, candlelight flickering with indecision. The air smelled of vellum and arrogant punctuation. Scrolls dangled like abandoned thoughts. Three raven-quills pecked at a dry inkwell still pretending it mattered. One hissed as Zorko passed.
He ignored it. His robes whispered across the stone.
“This is where truth is sharpened,” he said, “then edited for tone.”
A blot shaped like a screaming face stained the floor—residue from the footnote incident. The orb pulsed, wary. Zorko placed a gloved hand on the scorched pedestal.
“There is an artifact,” he whispered. “So steeped in exaggeration it stains the margins. A vessel of volatile verbiage. A font of fraudulent flourishes.”
The candlelight bent. A paragraph slid off the wall.
Zorko’s eyes flared blue.
“Summon the memoirist.”
He raised his arms.
“Bring the wizard who rewrote a duel into a dance, a burglary into a blessing, and rhymed ‘tavern’ with ‘dragon’ fourteen times in a row.”
The orb flickered. Possibly in protest.
Zorko paused. “Let David of the Veil approach.”
Silence.
Then, a footstep. Another.
“Aha!”
A swirl of cloak and charisma burst through the scroll-curtain, followed by a creature in a top hat and a mood.
“Zorko, my scribe of secrets!” David boomed, arms wide. “We meet again—this time in prose!”
He strode in as if the room were applauding. At his hip hung a travel-worn satchel. From it, he produced a small brass inkwell, raising it like a relic, a threat, or both.
“This is the wellspring of my literary legacy. The font of the Chronicles. The inkwell that wrote my memoirs.”
He set it gently on the pedestal. It hummed faintly. The orb blinked.
Behind him, Leroy waddled in with a croak and a sip from a flask. No one acknowledged it.
Zorko circled the inkwell. Brass. Dented. It shimmered when not observed directly. He sniffed.
“It smells of wet parchment and misplaced confidence.”
David beamed. “She wrote every page. Volume One through... we’re calling it Three point Five.”
Zorko leaned in. The inkwell pulsed once. A distant page curled with anticipation.
“There’s something wrong with it.”
David’s grin widened. “That’s what the Djinn said. Right before I beat him in a flute duel.”
Zorko straightened. “You dueled a Djinn. With a flute.”
“Traditional silver. Enchanted with suggestive harmonies.”
The orb pulsed, louder now.
Zorko stared at the inkwell. “The quill is not guided by truth. This vessel bleeds narrative. It drinks detail. It compels confidence. You wrote your memoirs with this?”
“Every tale. Even the part where I die heroically.”
“You’re still alive.”
“Yes, but it tests better.”
Zorko’s eyes narrowed. “This is no mere inkwell. This is the Throat of the Word-Eater. The Font of the First Fabulist. The Archivist’s Undoing.”
David gently patted the rim. The inkwell sighed. Possibly in iambic pentameter.
“I just called it Scribbles,” he said.
The orb pulsed again. A small crack appeared on the pedestal.
Zorko turned, robe swirling like punctuation in a storm. “The appraisal begins.”
He reached toward the inkwell with reverence usually reserved for relics and rare cheeses.
“Do not look directly into the ink,” he said. “It writes back.”
He drew a quill—not his phoenix feather, just a molting crow plume—and dipped it gently.
A warm gust swept the room. A shelf rearranged itself by ego.
Zorko lifted the quill. The ink clung to it like gossip.
He wrote:
“Zorko, upon wielding the enchanted quill, was declared Handsomest Wizard of the Third Era, and was knighted by a sentient fog.”
The words shimmered with self-regard.
David squinted. “Bit derivative.”
Zorko growled and wrote again:
“His voice, a choir of longing. His hands, sculpted by prophecy. He wept once, and from those tears sprang three minor deities and a sandal.”
The orb pulsed. The ink quivered.
Zorko dropped the quill.
“It’s worse than I feared,” he muttered. “The ink doesn’t lie. It indulges.”
David was polishing a plaque labeled Author & Subject.
“This isn’t an inkwell,” Zorko continued. “It’s a recursive myth trap. A loop of lived exaggeration. The origin of the Self-Fulfilling Saga.”
The orb let out a low hum.
“The more you write, the more the world aligns with your version. Not because it’s true—but because it’s marketable.”
David smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Zorko staggered back.
“This is a threat to objective reality. And grammar.”
The inkwell shimmered. Leroy belched.
David rubbed the rim fondly. “Used it just last week. Turned a tavern brawl into a sword-dance duel. Got me free drinks and a medal.”
Zorko blinked. “What medal?”
David pulled a medallion from his robes: Champion of Interpretive Violence.
Zorko glared, then scrawled:
“Zorko was, at once, the inventor of salsa, the savior of bees, and the recipient of the Order of Narrative Integrity.”
The words sizzled. The orb sparked.
A faint voice rose from the inkwell.
“Chapter Seventeen: The Lustful Yeti Returns.”
Zorko froze. “You wrote a sequel?”
David grinned. “Working on the trilogy.”
The inkwell giggled.
Zorko dropped to one knee, feather trembling in his grip.
“This is the Font of False Histories. The Prophecy Pen. The Retcon Chalice.”
A sound followed—like a contract rewriting itself.
From the shadows, a paper rustle. A figure.
Uvlius stepped in, parchment in hand, quill behind his ear like a dagger in disguise.
He moved as though he’d wandered into a paragraph mid-edit. His robes, dusted with ink ash, made no sound. The orb flickered cooler.
Uvlius approached the pedestal and looked down.
“Scribbles. Third-tier Storywell. Djinn-manufactured during the Tall Tale Treaty. Standard issue for carnival hucksters, memoirists, and political advisors.”
David folded his arms. “I’m a memoirist.”
“Exactly.”
Zorko opened his mouth. Closed it.
Uvlius adjusted his parchment.
“They weren’t built to deceive. Just to... soften. The ink writes what the author feels most. Not what’s true. Not what’s false. What’s believed.”
David squinted. “That sounds like writing.”
“It is. Just with fewer witnesses.”
Zorko blinked. “But the illusions. The narrative loops. The yeti.”
“It has no magic,” Uvlius said. “Only influence. It aligns perception with conviction. For someone like David, whose belief in his own legend is both sincere and catastrophic, the results are vivid.”
The orb dimmed. A scroll sighed in understanding.
David frowned. “Are you saying I’m delusional?”
“No. Just confident. The inkwell agrees with you.”
David rubbed the back of his neck. “So the Djinn wasn’t trying to trap me?”
“He was offloading defective stock. You danced and played the flute. He let you leave because he ran out of patience.”
David looked genuinely disappointed.
Leroy patted his leg. It was unclear if it was comfort or judgment.
Zorko stared at the inkwell. “Then... what is it for?”
Uvlius tapped his parchment. “Memoirs.”
Zorko turned to David. “So the stories. The volumes. They’re not lies?”
“They’re mine. Every embellished goblin, every seductive kobold queen, every improbable explosion—they happened the way I remember them.”
Uvlius folded his paper. “That doesn’t make them true.”
David’s eyes sharpened. “No. But it makes them real enough to matter.”
A pause settled.
The orb pulsed once. Warmly.
Zorko stood, hands behind his back, feather forgotten at his hip. He looked at the vessel, its brass sides catching the light. The ink shimmered. Waiting.
“It doesn’t lie,” he said. “It remembers. Dramatically.”
Uvlius was already retreating to the shadows.
Leroy adjusted his monocle.
David lifted the inkwell gently, as if it might slosh out a revelation.
Zorko turned to the orb. His voice was soft now.
“This is not a weapon. Not a relic. Not even, strictly speaking, magical.”
He paced the pedestal once, robes whispering.
“This is a lens. A myth-lens. A story-forge. A confidence trap.”
David grinned. “Flattering.”
Zorko faced the orb. Its glow steady.
“Final appraisal,” he said.
He held out one hand. The ink rippled like a held breath.
“Seventy gold in narrative density. Twelve in practical use. Infinite in the hands of someone too sincere to know better.”
David bowed. “I’ll take that as a glowing endorsement.”
Zorko nodded. “And a warning.”
Uvlius passed him without pause. “Noted in the catalog. Subsection: Biographical.”
David tucked the inkwell under his arm. Leroy hopped to his shoulder with a final croak and a bureaucratic salute.
At the curtain, David turned.
“Truth is flexible. But a good story? That’s eternal.”
Zorko raised an eyebrow. “Flexible truth is how we get tragic poetry and romantic tax fraud.”
David smiled. “Aha.”
He vanished.
The orb pulsed, then settled.
Zorko stood alone.
He turned to the parchment. The words still shimmered:
“Zorko was, at once, the inventor of salsa, the savior of bees...”
He frowned.
Then added, quietly:
“...and an uncredited editor of someone else’s truth.”
The orb flickered. Just once.
Soft. Sincere.
Darkness returned to the ink.
Entered by: 0x6424…79B4
Zorko’s Arcane Appraisals
The Hall Where Flames Betray
The lamps guttered. One by one, their flames bent sideways, as if unwilling to burn in this room. Smoke curled low, thick enough to stain the air.
“Welcome,” Zorko intoned, solemnly. “To a hall where shadows outnumber the living, where every flame remembers its betrayals.”
He swept one scorched sleeve wide. The orb hovered near his shoulder, humming faintly. Its glow washed his red robes in wan blue.
“Here,” he continued, pacing the central pedestal, “fire was not worshiped for warmth, but for what it concealed. Every blaze, a mask. Every spark, a treasonous oath.”
Above, the soot-heavy ceiling sagged. Black streaks scarred the chamber like old wounds.
Zorko stopped, gaze fixed on the waiting pedestal.
“It is said,” he murmured, “a flame exists so false it burns without heat. A fire that devours light, and in doing so, breeds fortune from fear. It consumes not wood, nor wick, nor oil, but certainty itself.”
The orb flickered, slow and uneasy.
Zorko raised both hands, robes spilling like charred banners.
“And tonight, in this hall of perfidy, we welcome its bearer.”
The smoke thickened. Silence settled.
“Evil Arcanist Black Goat of the Wood,” Zorko whispered, voice reverent and afraid, “enter... and present your relic of riddled flame.”
The orb dimmed. The lamps struggled. Somewhere in the stone, a crack echoed.
Then from the smoke came the sound of heavy steps.
They grew louder until a figure emerged.
Black Goat of the Wood moved like a verdict. His robes were the color of coal quenched in blood, hems dripping shadow. A headdress of antlers crowned him, their tips glowing faintly with emberlight. His presence pressed the air flat, as if every candle remembered its own extinction.
He stopped at the pedestal. Without word or flourish, he drew a small object from his robes, held in both hands.
The orb dimmed.
He placed the Black Flame Heart on the pedestal with the silence of stone sinking into water.
It pulsed.
Not with fire. Not with light. A black flame flickered across its crystal surface. Smoke without heat, shadow without source. Each flicker cast silhouettes on the walls: skeletal trees, forgotten faces, things that did not belong here.
Zorko staggered back, clutching his feather like a blade.
“Egads,” he hissed. “A funeral ember, stolen from the lungs of dying gods!”
The flame leapt once, then stilled, as if amused.
Black Goat’s voice was a dirge wrapped in words.
“This heart carries no warmth, no comfort. Only release. In its burning, the chains of false order are undone. What it touches, it consumes. What it consumes, it frees.”
The orb pulsed, slow and sympathetic.
Zorko circled the pedestal, his robes dragging soot. He dared not touch it.
“This is no relic,” he muttered. “This is the undoing of hearth and home. A betrayal of every candle ever lit, every torch ever trusted.”
Black Goat remained still, antlers haloed in emberlight.
Zorko raised his eyes to the orb, voice sharp and trembling.
“The appraisal… proceeds.”
He leaned close, robes smoldering in the Heart’s shadowlight.
“It moves,” he whispered. “No, it remembers. Every flicker a betrayal. Every spark, a confession.”
The Black Flame pulsed. The shadows thickened, weaving into the shape of a gallows tree. Beneath it, three faceless silhouettes swung gently. Their ropes creaked, though no wind stirred.
Zorko reeled back. “It ignites regret into ash!”
He fumbled for parchment, drew a quill not meant for this task, and dipped it into the flame. The tip blackened with a hiss.
On the page, one jagged word wrote itself:
AGAIN.
The parchment crumbled, falling to soot between his fingers.
Zorko gasped. “It does not write. It repeats. An eternal loop of endings. Apocalypse rehearsed, performed, and encored until the universe forgets the curtain call.”
The orb pulsed hard, then dimmed, as if unwilling to argue.
Zorko staggered around the pedestal, still clutching his feather.
“This is not a heart,” he cried. “It is a coffin carved from coal. The petrified organ of a dragon that swallowed the night and still beats in denial.”
The flame leapt again. Shadows splintered across the chamber. Skeletal forests, burning villages, scarecrows writhing in fields of fire. Faces appeared, then vanished: hollow-eyed, pleading, gone before names could form.
Zorko dropped to his knees. “Do you see it? Do you see the carnival of catastrophe it breathes? Every ember a prophecy, every shadow a soul still screaming!”
Black Goat stood unmoved, voice deep and resonant.
“The fire consumes. But in consuming, it frees. What dies is not lost. What burns is not broken. It is remade.”
Zorko spun, eyes blazing. “Remade? It devours certainty. Hearths, homes, vows, names. Nothing survives. Only the theatre of ruin.”
The orb sparked once with a sharp crack, then quieted.
Zorko gripped his robes tightly, voice shaken with awe and dread.
“This is no relic of fortune. This is the Font of Oblivion. The Lantern of Last Chances. The Pyre that burns not wood nor wick, but meaning itself.”
The shadows writhed. The Heart pulsed.
And then a new voice cut clean through the smoke.
“Five exist,” said Uvlius. “You are being dramatic.”
The smoke parted carefully, like edited memory.
Uvlius of the Belfry stepped into the hall, robe hem dusted in ink ash. He carried a slim folio under one arm, a quill behind one ear. His eyes did not rise to the shadows.
He approached the pedestal, glanced once at the Heart, and exhaled softly.
“Black Flame Heart,” he said in flat cadence. “Catalogued Athenaeum relic. Forged for the Festival of Forgotten Flames. Rarity: five known. Purpose: commemoration. Not apocalypse.”
The orb steadied.
Zorko clutched his feather. “It consumes parchment. It writes again. It births gallows on the walls.”
Uvlius turned a page. “Psychomantic residue. The flame draws silhouettes from the onlooker’s fear. Shadows of regret, not prophecy. Common to artifacts used in remembrance rituals.”
The gallows flickered. Then vanished.
Zorko stared. “Then the page?”
“Recycled,” Uvlius said. “Athenaeum parchment resists overwriting. The word you saw was your own echo.”
Black Goat inclined his head. His voice remained low, but unwavering.
“Fear is still flame. Even if harmless, it burns. In burning, it unmakes. In unmaking, it liberates.”
Uvlius didn’t look up. He closed the folio, tucked it under his arm. “Interpretation is not function.”
The orb flickered once, like a sigh.
Zorko stepped back, edges of his robes still smoking. His voice quieted, tinged with reverence.
“Then… it is not apocalypse,” he said. “It is remembrance. A candle of mourning, mistaken for a torch of ruin.”
Black Goat’s gaze didn’t waver. “Remembrance is still ruin.”
Zorko rose slowly. The soot-stained folds of his robes whispered like closing pages. His feather trembled, not with flourish, but restraint.
The Black Flame Heart pulsed once. Its shadow curled inward, like held breath.
Zorko bowed his head. His voice was quieter, but not less grand.
“This is no pyre of gods. No coffin of certainty. No engine of endless ruin.”
He circled the pedestal, eyes never leaving the crystal.
“It is a shard of sorrow, forged to outlive its mourners. A funeral ember offering no warmth, only witness. It burns not wood, nor wick, nor world, but memory. And memory, once kindled, does not die.”
The orb pulsed. Soft. Steady.
Zorko lifted his feather.
“Final appraisal: Three thousand gold in shadowplay. Twelve in resale. And one ember that will burn until all names are forgotten.”
The words settled into the smoke.
Black Goat stepped forward, lifted the Heart in both hands. The flame dimmed against his chest, as if it recognized a keeper. He turned without flourish, antlers brushing soot from the ceiling. His voice echoed as he vanished:
“Destruction is release. Rebirth is the gift.”
The orb flickered.
Once.
Twice.
And guttered to stillness.
Entered by: 0x6424…79B4
