Dead Rainbow

Opportunity Knocks

The years rolled by and the children became adults. After so many experiences together, it became clear to Redwing he would need the Cursed Gauntlets to surpass his father, to move past his appointed position in life; that of his father's apprentice. 

To make matters worse, Melock was for all intents and purposed immortal. He was centuries old, potentially millennia, and deliberately mysterious about his Miltonian past. A year could go by with only minor conversations at all. Everyone in the tower fell into a routine of study, practice, then some mindless journey to test new skills. Melock handed out his teachings slowly over long periods of time. 

Redwing grew more and more testy with everyone. He had flown past 50 years of life and would be damned if he would wait for another half-century. Not for an ageless father who wouldn't die and wouldn't pass down knowledge. Not to mention the annoying fact that he lived like an ascetic monk in utter poverty. He'd been wearing the same robe since Redwing met him as a child! 

Redwing rained down abuses both verbal and magical on his adopted siblings. Melock had long since stopped intervening, they were grown and could stand up for themselves. Redwing became the authoritarian of the house, the force of law under his aloof father. He imposed his iron will on everything around him. A will that would be turned useless time and time again by his father's surreal interventions. 

"Two plus two equals butterfly," was a house saying that drove Redwing into raging indignation.

He sat in his room rolling the fate stones over and over again looking for a sign, a glimmer of hope, anything that could end his time in purgatory. And then, as if out of nowhere, the unimaginable happened, an unbelievable opportunity arose; a true miracle.

"I need to send you back to my room to get the Horn of Asuli Lendu. It's on the second shelf of my bookcase, you can't miss it. Take it to the laboratory and place it on my table mirror and tap three times." 

Redwing was in the middle of the Sisyphusian task of holding a stark raving mad stone giant at bay. He couldn't believe his ears and looked at his father dumbfounded. The giant broke free and hurled a boulder across the valley turned epic battlefield. 

The boulder sailed through the air, passed Hex in Raven form, who easily dodged the massive ordnance, and smashed into the ice wall Diggs created to hold back the fire giants from the volcano across the valley. 

Mevner was a strong young man and not a bad wizard in his own right. Redwing found him annoying, good-natured, and repulsively kind-hearted in a way only his father could have nurtured in a pupil. Redwing viewed it as an imbecilic waste of raw talent. 

Mevner's ice wall came crashing down on him and three glowing red fire giants stormed onto the battlefield, setting the grassland ablaze with every massive step. 

"Redwing, did you hear me?" yelled Melock from his position at the center of his failed negotiations with the warring factions. 

"Yes, I was there when you acquired the Horn, remember?" 

"Right, you are, son. Go fetch it for me. It's the only thing that will end this pointless fighting I'm afraid." 

Melock, who was hovering in the air between the two quarreling chieftains of the fire and stone giant tribes respectively, reached down and touched his pendant of teleportation. With a wink and a nod, Redwing vanished from the battlefield. He disappeared with a look of envy on his face toward his father. 

"How he must want to take the role of command in these matters," Melock thought to himself. 

Melock had grown to truly love his troubled son over the past decades and had repeatedly failed to break through his hard exterior. He felt Redwing somehow blamed him for the loss of his mother. 

Redwing appeared out of thin air inside Melock's bedroom with a look of devilish delight across his face. 

"Twenty years I've waited for this!" 

He could wait no longer. He went right over to the old charred box and opened it. He was prepared for anything that might happen when he did. He was ready to pay whatever the price might be but nothing happened.

Inside the old wooden box were a set of two brass forearm bracers that left the hands free for spell casting. Two colors of iron swirled in simple but elegantly designed patterns along the sides. He touched them and nothing happened. He reached inside his shirt and took out his amulet. It was glowing a bright purple. These were indeed the Necromancer's Cursed Gauntlets. 

He slid his right arm into one and put the other on his left. The moment he did he felt a surge of power rush through his body like nothing he'd experienced before. His brain was flooded with thoughts of cruelty, sadism, and a set of thirteen curses that would render any opponent helpless in their wake. 

He heard the instructive voice of the Necromancer describe the curses: 

"Dim the vision (for instant blindness)
Knot the tongue (to remove of ability to speak or eat)
Dizzy the soul (shatter the inner ear for loss of balance)
Invert knuckles (flip inner skeletal and tendon structure around)
Scoliosis (inflict extreme spine bending)
Break bones (zero in on specific bones or break them all)
Bent feet (bend appendages at the halfway point to a permanent 45-degree angle)
Boil the blood (to a bubbling explosion)
Twisted mind (destroy the memory)
Break the heart (to inflict sadness)
Confuse reality (to cause hallucinatory schizophrenia)
Despair (to remove the will to act)
Suicide solution (motivate a victim to rid you of themselves)"

Redwing swooned to the ruthless possibilities. 

He blacked out.