Speculative Chaos

The Peculiar Adventures of Pipaluk and How He Saved the World (Maybe)

Round 1 – Part 1 for the Fabulous Spec-Fic Smackdown 2024: Write a speculative fiction story that features a newly written book, and a character named Pipaluk.

Word count = 1379

"Pipaluk!" bellowed a deep baritone voice across the great hall and into the lecture room, reverberating off the smooth stone walls. Absent of mirth, the voice belonging to Master Blackforge shot jagged malice toward a particularly mischievous mage apprentice, and not for the first time.

Pipaluk gulped as four-dozen plus one eyes turned toward him, all fellow apprentices-in-training seated at desks before an empty polished wooden lectern. They represented the breadth of sentient creatures occupying the Lands — human, elven, gnome, fairy, goblin, and a single cyclops.

Blackforge stomped into the lecture hall, slamming shut the wide oaken door behind him with a boom. The stoat gnome was well known for sour disposition, but the current seething rage contorting his rounded face was not, cowering every student, yet leaving all but one thankful that his rage was not directed at them. Most definitely gnomish, Blackforge sported bushy eyebrows and a tangled beard thick enough to conceal a sparrow's nest. But presently, his most distinguishing feature was the glowing green hue that completely encased him from pointy hat to piked shoes. Emerging hushed chuckles enraged the gnome all the more.

"Where are you, Pipaluk, you pointy-eared hobgoblin menace!"

Pipaluk slid down in his chair until only yellowish-amber eyes, gray forehead, and red mop of hair could be seen over the wooden desktop. Fearing guilt by association, his younger girl-cousin Nocki, sitting in a desk beside him, followed suit, showing brown eyes and curly auburn hair.

"We are goblins. Not those vile hobgoblins," Nocki whispered indignantly. "What have you done, cousin?"

"Perhaps in hindsight," said Pipaluk, ducking completely out of sight and sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor, "I should not have altered the chromatic potion."

"Good judgement is a sign of wisdom," quoted Nocki from last week's lesson. "Did you not remember?"

"Yes, I recall such, my dear little cousin," retorted Pipaluk. "But is it not also true that good judgement comes from experience?"

"I suppose so..."

"And where, then, does experience come from?" As Nocki wrinkled her gray brow, Pipaluk answered his own question. "From poor judgement, of course!"

Nocki slapped her forehead and clamped closed her eyes. "If that be true, then you, dear Pipaluk, are the wisest mage in all the Lands."

"Exactly!"

"That's not what I meant," she groaned.

Having suffered many of Pipaluk's misdeeds, the other students within the lecture hall readily pointed him out, hiding in the back row.

"There you are!" Blackforge spat, hauling up Pipaluk by his red-plaid shirt collar. "A thorough thrashing you shall receive for this."

"There shall be no such thing," came another voice from the reopened door, belonging to none other than the Headmaster of the Grimmsworth Academy of Magic. A wizard of the highest order, Magus Orvious wore his usual white robe, which matched his long beard and wavy hair.

His lined brow wrinkled further upon observation, and a hand shot up to stifle a chortle. "Why are you so, umm, green, Master Blackforge?"

Blackforge seethed, and lost for words, pointed a stubby accusing finger at Pipaluk.

"Well, Mr. Pipaluk?" Orvious asked, lifting a white eyebrow. "What have you done?"

"You see, Magus, sir," Pipaluk hawed, rocking back and forth, "it was an experiment of sorts during the chromatic potion training. I thought to combine an emo energy spark, and, well, it seems Master Brackforge's grouchiness then set it off."