Baby Wizard was feeling suspicious. In the last week or so the world had seemed much less magical. Griffins were laying fewer eggs, giants were about three feet shorter, and bumbergrapples were barely horbostanking more than once every couple days. “Something,” he thought with his small but incredibly powerful brain, “is up.”
So he decided to crawl to the top of the nearest mountain and have a look around to see if he could see what was going on. Only, the strangest thing* happened when he went outside.
*This is far from the strangest thing. The strangest thing was the time a pegasus married itself and gave birth to the universe. The pegasus was born on Earth 2 which is very clearly part of the universe and not even that old compared to other Earths. (particularly Earth 5 which has been around the longest because it keeps getting stuck in time and nobody bothers to fix it. “It’ll unstick itself eventually,” they** all say, which is technically true, but every time it seems to take a little longer and nowadays it’s stuck more often than it’s unstuck. It’s honestly kind of fun to go there and grab a bird in the sky and turn it around the other direction so it flies into some kid’s head when things start back up again. You have to wait like a billion years sometimes, but the look on both their faces is totally worth it.) But I was being hyperbolic.
**The people who oversee the multiverse***. They get paid way less than you probably think, so you can’t really blame them for not being on top of every little thing.
***There are also multiple multiverses, but there’s only like five of those, so it’s not really worth thinking too much about them.
To be a bit more accurate, the strange thing had happened early that day, but Baby Wizard was just now noticing it because he had been inside up until now. The thing was that the mountain was gone. Instead of the mountain, there was a big hole in the ground. Some kids were already down there riding their bikes around and making dirt ramps.
“Hey!” shouted Baby Wizard. “What happened to the mountain that was here before?”
“Oh hey Baby Wizard!” shouted the kids. “You’re looking cute today!”
“Thanks!” said Baby Wizard. “I made a spell that makes the stars on my diaper match the stars on my hat because I thought it would look cool.”
“It does!” said all the kids.
“Thanks again!” said Baby Wizard.
“Anyway,” said the kids, “about the mountain, we don’t know.”
“That’s okay,” said Baby Wizard. “Have fun.”
“Okay, thanks Baby Wizard,” said the kids.
The kids did have fun just as Baby Wizard commanded, but he was still worried about where the mountain might have gone.
“Maybe,” he thought, “I should crawl up a different mountain and then I might be able to see the first mountain from there.”
So, he crawled over to this other mountain he knew about. Only when he got there, THAT mountain was gone too! Instead, there were some dragons hanging around looking really sad. But when they saw Baby Wizard, they stopped looking sad and started looking mad instead.
“A wizard!” yelled this one dragon who was blue. “What have you guys done this time?! Why are you always fucking stuff up and being jerks!”
“Chill out,” said another dragon who was red but ironically less short-tempered. “That’s Baby Wizard. He’s the one nice wizard that us dragons think is cool.”
“Oh sorry,” said the blue dragon, “I only saw your pointy hat, and I overreacted because it has been such a shitty day.”
“It’s okay,” said Baby Wizard. “I understand. Things have been kind of weird and shitty today. Anyway, any idea what happened to your home, or as we call it, a mountain?”
“No!” yelled the blue dragon. “I was just sitting on top of my gold and eating a leftover knight, and suddenly everything disappeared! I was sitting here thinking ‘what the fuck?’ when Sophie and Eric flew by and said the same thing happened to them.”
The two dragons named Sophie and Eric nodded their heads.
“What the fuck indeed?” thought Baby Wizard wisely.
“Hey, would one of you mind flying me around the kingdom, so I can check and see if all the other mountains are gone?” asked Baby Wizard. “I have a hunch they might be.”
All the dragons started arguing over who got to fly Baby Wizard around because they all liked him so much and also he was really lightweight. Finally, they agreed Sophie could do it because she put her hand up first.
Sophie and B.W. spent the day flying all over the kingdom and got to know each other pretty well. And guess what? All the mountains were gone! Even the mountain that the king’s castle had been on was gone, and the king and all the lords and ladies were just sitting around in the dirt crying.
“Wow,” said Sophie, “this sucks. Now all the dragons will have to live on the ground and Dwarves will come and take all our gold and gems!”
“That does suck,” said Baby Wizard sympathetically. “Especially for you, since you’re already dealing with all the stuff with your dad right now.”
Sophie didn’t say anything, but you could tell she was touched by her friend’s thoughtful words.
“Also,” continued the Baby Wizard, “mountains are where wizards get most of their potion ingredients and go snowboarding. It will no doubt affect various people in various ways, and most of them will be bad.”
Baby Wizard’s tiny, but super smart, mind was really working overtime now. Steam came out of his ears as he thought, and thought, and THOUGHT! Suddenly, one of the thoughts he had was really good.
“Hey,” he said, “why don’t we fly over to the giant valley on the edge of the kingdom?”
“But we’re looking for mountains!” said Sophie, all confused. “Those are the opposite of valleys!”
“Trust me!” said Baby Wizard, and Sophie knew that was a good idea.
Sophie was pretty tired from flying all day, so they went back to the castle so she could eat a few of the lords and ladies. (Baby Wizard had a salad.) The king, who was pretty wise, understood it was for the greater good and even gave Baby Wizard a magic sword he had laying around.
“Good luck!” he called afterwards as they flew into the sunset. It took them several weeks to fly all the way to the edge of the kingdom, and they pretty much became best friends and had lots of cool adventures that I’ll tell you about some other time if you want. But anyway, here’s what happened next during this one:
Baby Wizard and Sophie crested the rim of the valley after what seemed like an eternity but was actually just a very small percentage of it.
“HOLY SHIT!” cried Sophie.
“HOLY SHIT!” cried Baby Wizard.
Even though it was exactly what he had suspected all along, it still blew his incredibly hard to blow little (but super strong) mind.
There, in the bottom of the valley, were all the mountains in the world stacked up in an untidy heap.
“This. Is. Nuts.” said Baby Wizard.
“HOLY SHIT!” Sophie said again.
“Oh,” said an evil looking wizard emerging from a cave in one of the mountains, “do you like my mountains? I own them all now because I stole them and put them here. Now all their magic is mine!” Then he laughed like this: “MUHAHAHAHA!”
“Oh no!” said Sophie. “Anyone who starts their laugh with an ‘M’ and ‘U’ is evil!”
“I know!” said Baby Wizard. “But that’s the least of our worries. Look!”
Sophie looked just as Baby Wizard commanded, and she did NOT like what she looked at. All the mountains started glowing with all their magic right at the same time. Then, each of the trillion mountains sent a beam into the air that headed straight towards the two best friends.
“OH NO!” screamed Sophie.
“Don’t worry!” shouted Baby Wizard. “I got this!”
But like… did he?
To be continued…
Stories About Wizards 