A Reward from the Portal

 

Idium was not a wizard. He had found a wizard's staff in the Dreamwood a year earlier, and it did all the work. It called itself "Branch."

Most recently Branch seemed to get more bossy than usual. Just this morning, it had said, "We need to be at the White River Castle before the full moon."

"Why? I'd like to find a nice tavern and make some coin."

"I don't need coins," Branch said. "Abusing our relationship for parlor tricks to amaze a few backward villagers is a waste of my devastating talents."

"A guy's gotta eat." The thought made his empty stomach rumble.

"I see free food all around. There, eat that mushroom," Branch said. A purple light glowed from the crystal at the staff's tip and reached out to caress a small white mushroom growing at the foot of a rotten stump.

"Is it poisonous?"

"After all we've been through, you don't trust me?" Branch seemed hurt.

"You told me it was alright to drink from that well last week," Idium snapped, remembering the explosive diarrhea it had caused.

"You probably got sick from the greasy mystery meat the tavern mistress served."

Still, he was hungry, and they were a day's walk from a tavern. Idium picked up the mushroom. "You sure?"

"It will not kill you."

Idium ate it. An hour later, the world changed colors. The staff seemed to wobble like a serpent with a glowing purple head.

"Greetings, fellow traveler," the snake/staff said, its flicking purple tongue tasting the air and sending out purple waves like a heat shimmer.

They spoke at great length on the nature of magic and the many planes of existence. They spoke of rifts and portals that let magical staffs and evil elementals roam from place to place, sometimes by accident.

The staff/snake shimmered like gold and suddenly Idium was wearing a golden cloak make of countless shiny moth wings. They tinkled like tiny chimes as he and the snake/staff drifted limbless through the forest like smoke.

The next day, Idium woke up with vomit dried in his hair. His golden cloak was again replaced with his battered woolens.

Branch was gone, but a message was somehow burned onto a nearby tree. The perfect lettering read, "I hope you enjoyed my staff. Thanks for opening the portal again so I could find it. Your reward is here." It was signed "Ezra."

Idium rose like a doddering oldster, his hands shaking, mouth dry as sand, guts churning. A basket of dried mushrooms sat at the foot of the message tree. He threw up again and staggered away.

A minute later, he stumbled back and picked up the basket. Maybe he could sell them to one of the Cunning Folk in the next village. No way he was ever eating one again.

It was a lie.

That night he ate one anyway, and he spent a lovely evening wearing his golden moth wing cloak while accompanying a turtle named Durl who was relentlessly chasing a raccoon named Almond (who had a red rag for a tail). All three of them had a tea party with a Wylderkin named Moonbeam, and the stars wheeled in glittering purple overhead.

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