The Malicarn
The killer did not look threatening under the fluorescent lights of the infirmary. Partly because he was dead, but also because the lights made his skin look pale and waxy, washed out. The body lay on a metal gurney. Glenn and Jules stood over it, Jules prodding the arm.
“He was implemented six months ago,” Jules said. “Totally normal, QA controls checked out.”
“Did Lilly implement him?”
“No, one of the other techs. Valerie, I think? It wasn’t a scanning thing, far as we could tell. Guy just wanted to kill.”
The character had spent most of the previous week wandering the countryside, murdering.
He killed six people with an axe. He didn’t steal anything, didn’t even threaten anyone.
But he proved elusive, disappearing into the woods between killings.
Glenn had asked to make the killing spree into a subplot for Gregorian.
“Detective Wizard,” Glenn jokingly—but also sincerely—proposed. “Could pull in some true-crime fans.”
Jules overruled him, and they tracked the killer down using the camera feeds. A pair of cops from Funchal cornered him in a church and shot him dead.
“Who was he, before?” Glenn asked, trying not to look at the bullet holes in the dead body’s chest.
“Oh, just some volunteer. Former teamster. Guy didn’t have a criminal record, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Are you going to tell his family that he was a murderer?”
“Uh, no. Worksite accident, like anyone else who’s died here.” Jules prodded the body again. “Would be nice to have some idea what was going through his head, though. You know, for storytelling purposes.”
Jules smirked, and Glenn already knew what he was thinking.
“There’s no way,” Glenn said.
“You can ask her?”
“She’s going to say no.”
“I just want to use one for a little while. Off the books.”
But Glenn wasn’t even going to try to ask Lilly. He could imagine her reaction perfectly.
“You want to borrow a neuroscanner?” she’d say. “For Jules to do what, download memories of murder? That sounds like a productive use of creative energies.”
Lilly was only ever sarcastic and mean when talking to Glenn now. He hardly saw her unless her team was at a meeting that Glenn also happened to be at. He didn’t eat at the Citadel cafeteria often, and more and more avoided sitting near her when he did.
It had been this way ever since the premiere. They hadn’t broken up, at least not technically, but of course if you don’t see somebody and you don’t talk to them and then they make fun of you when you do see them, it’s probably not the case that you are in an active relationship.
Glenn never asked her about borrowing the neuroscanner. Jules brought it up again during a video call the next week. “I’m not sure she’ll want to talk to me,” Glenn said.
“Well, she’s a bitch,” Jules said. Jules never did date anyone for very long.
The meeting was full of detail but dominated by Jules’s monologues.
There were currently plenty of little subplots that the characters were in the middle of: brigands that the Council fought, threats of foreign invasion that King Prion dealt with in meetings.
They were still building up to showing the Necromancer onscreen, but so far neither Jules nor anyone else had worked out how best to introduce him, where he came from, what he wanted.
Jules was obsessed with crafting something more spectacular for the next film.
“There should be sacrifice, there should be tears. Something that really changes the balance of power. People have to see that this isn’t a controlled environment.
Stuff happens, you can’t do anything about it.
Just like real life. You gotta push the envelope, make them see the chaos of it all.
Props is working on a new device. You won’t believe it.
When it’s ready, it will blow your mind. Story is chaos.”
He spoke quickly, rocking in his chair, gesticulating and drawing invisible diagrams with his fingers in the air.
The depleted writing staff consisted of only half a dozen people now, many of them fairly new, all lorded over by Jules, who made most of the decisions and always had final say.
Even Glenn’s ideas were shot down most of the time.
There didn’t seem to be a way to stop him.
The Return of the Council had been such a financial success—indeed, a genuine cultural event, given the amount of discourse generated about it by everyone from heads of state down to the loneliest internet troll—that Jules essentially had free rein over the set.
Larry still found him annoying, but Larry was in Los Angeles. Jules ruled the Malicarn.
Glenn decided to spend more time on set itself, where he could avoid both Jules and Lilly for a while.
But Jules’s influence was everywhere. After the meeting Glenn traveled to Kingstown and visited the king’s court, where an advisor was reading a missive about the threat of the Necromancer.
Obviously Jules was trying to push this new storyline forward.
The letter was hastily and sloppily written, and it wasn’t having the desired effect.
“And so at once,” read the advisor, “the king must surrender his crown to the Necromancer or else face the consequences.”
“Ha!” Prion bellowed. “Why would I ever treat with such a fool? Send no response. If the Necromancer wishes to parley, let him come himself.”
“But, Your Majesty, should we not—”
“No! This Necromancer is all bluster. He will do nothing. Come, let us enjoy our feast.”
Tables were laid out, plates of food were brought forth, and a band of minstrels began playing harp and lute.
The chefs prepared a delicious array of roasted chickens and vegetables.
It was Malicarn-raised chicken, not factory-farmed birds plumped up with hormones and flown in to the island.
Glenn found it gamey. The court—which now included Evangeline, members of the Council of Heroes, various ladies-in-waiting, and a number of new royal characters—sat down to eat.
Gregorian took a seat across from the king.
“So is there any truth in these matters, Gregorian?” Prion wore a long-sleeved cloak, despite the warm weather that day.
He wore long sleeves all the time now, because Marvin Powell had decided to get a Buffalo Bills tattoo on his upper arm during his California vacation.
He hadn’t told the producers, and when Prion reemerged on set with a blue-and-red buffalo on his arm, Jules threw a computer across the room and threatened to kill the king himself.
“The Necromancer is a real threat,” Glenn said, “but I do not believe he has any immediate plans to strike.” Glenn had been given very little detailed information about Jules’s story plans for this arc, so he hoped it was true.
“Good, good. I thought not. We have enough to concern ourselves with in the realm.”
As Prion ate, he passed cuts of meat to Evangeline, sitting across from him and next to Glenn.
She sat in her chair, hands resting on her belly.
Glenn had only recently realized she was pregnant when, embarrassingly, it was brought up at a production meeting.
Of course Jules was enraged at this unplanned development, just as he was when Prion and Evangeline were married soon after the Council’s return.
Prion had spent much time ensuring Evangeline comfort and preparing for the new child, whom he hoped would be a son.
He cared very little about all these vague threats from what he assumed was far beyond the Malicarn.
The minstrels performed in the middle of the hall. “I hear you once were an actor,” Evangeline whispered into Glenn’s ear as they ate. It was an odd rumor to have somehow gotten out into the Malicarn, and Glenn suspected Jules planted it on purpose as a prank.
“Only a little, in my youth,” said Glenn. “Before I was a wizard.”
“I am so happy you could join us tonight, Gregorian,” she said. “Prion will not ask you, but is there some sort of spell? To protect our child?”
Glenn got such requests often. He had a standard little act he did, which seemed to put most people at ease. He leaned toward Evangeline.
“Of course, my lady. Do you mind if I—” He gestured toward her belly, and she moved her hand.
He softly placed both of his hands on her, closed his eyes, and whispered, “Yivarechecha Adonai v’yishmerecha.
” Glenn didn’t know Hebrew, but had searched online one night for something that soundly faintly mystical, and had used it a few times on set.
He thought about asking Lilly how to pronounce it, but figured that would annoy her.
Only Jacob the cobbler ever noticed it. He had once laughed under his breath when he heard Glenn giving the blessing to another woman in town.
“You’re pronouncing it wrong,” he told Glenn afterward.
“You’re saying the last syllable like the ch in child, but the sound is in the back of the throat.
Believe me, my bar mitzvah tutor used to yell at me for the same reason. ”
Glenn still couldn’t pronounce it right, but figured there was no way Jules would use it in a final scene so it didn’t matter. Evangeline was happy all the same. “What does it mean?” she asked.
“It means I hope your child is blessed.”
“Do you know if it will be a boy? I would like to give Prion a son.”
“I cannot tell that.”
“Ah, I thought wizards could.”
“Perhaps some wizards. But it is beyond my powers.”
“I hope this Necromancer business will not be so dire. Some peace and quiet around here will be nice. No more adventures, no more fighting.”
“Well, I am sure Prion will do his utmost duty.”
“Oh, of course, Gregorian! I do not mean to take him from the important work of leading the Malicarn. My husband is a just man, I know. He will reign as a peaceful king.”