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The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

Wistfully dabbing at a bit of mustard on myself

Ozymandias

By Ozymandias
in Cabaret Room Archives

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Ozymandias

Ozymandias

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Ozymandias looked out of his tower room window, and sighed. He wondered what he'd missed in the months he'd been gone - wondered about all except the lovely blanket of pure white snow that lay across the Pen keep and its lands as far as his eyes could see. That was most likely the product of some sentimental mage or other such magician resident's weathermaking, as it was more often than not on this particular day every year (though there was always the chance that the weather had had its turn this time, he thought with a smile).

 

It was the first time he'd been in these poor, dust-laden rooms of his in days he'd lost count of. A bitter sadness gripped his heart much deeper than the freezing temperatures could ever hope to. As much as the battle-weary and unassuming mystic had long deplored the word 'founder' when applied to himself, and moreso all the credit that implied in the creation of this place, one of the one-time king's thinly veiled secrets was how very much kinship and responsibility he felt for all those within the grand and everchanging walls of this place and all of its residents abroad. It happened less and less as the years passed that Ozymandias reproached himself for thinking of all the writers of the Mighty Pen as 'his people'.

 

Like so many others in his and the Elders' charge, he held no small training in the art of wizardry. The Loremaster's school of study had been the strange and fearsome art of the Phantasm Mage; a school that taught its acolytes the ways of reading minds, and hearts, and sundry ways of controlling them.

 

However, though Ozymandias had before, unaided felled men, wizards, and more through his craft, he had long ago come to an unpleasant realization. The magic he had been taught was centered around taking. This is a useful proficiency for assassins, thieves, liars... but not leaders. Not good ones.

 

Thus he had sat the seat of Loremaster of the Mighty Pen uneasily since he had been appointed to it. For the ancient Egyptian had known for many years now that all the skills he needed he had no formal schooling in - at least, none that he had retained well enough. This made it very easy indeed to feel himself a failure in cases like this present time; when he had been called away from his charges abruptly and left as quickly as the need came.

 

 

He set down his quill on the still-blank piece of paper in front of him, at the intended note of sorrow, apology, gratefulness, and love he had meant for the Pen as a whole and went to the window.

 

 

Ozymandias stared quietly out at the snow for a long while. He had still not alerted any to his prescence, for the time being preferring it that way. The sun set slowly as he watched. The clouds came into sharper relief as the play of light shifted across them. When the the winter-dulled sun came within a hair's breadth of the horizon, its rays spilled out now across the snow, even as the clouds grew dim. It left one with the impression of dust of the purest gold having been scattered upon the land for miles and miles around.

 

The scent of incense wafted up to his nostrils from some unknown corner of the castle. He smiled wider and lighter now, nodding assent.

 

With it had come slowly but stubbornly the reminder and reassurance that not only had all of the people called The Pen is Mightier been left in very, very good and trusty hands, but that all folk in these lands, from visitors all the way up to his beloved Elders would be, were, and will be well with or without him. For they as well as he had a kind of security, safety, and hope that he could never offer with his finite mortal powers -had that security no matter what.

 

It lifted his heart and his voice (quietly, for he still wished stealth), and he sat slowly, leisurely, happily down at his desk again. Retrieving his quill, dipping it back into the ink, he began to write even as he sang:

 

"God rest ye merry gentlemen, may nothing you dismay..."

 

 

 

I've missed each and every one of you very much. Merry Christmas. :>)

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