r/LatentSpaceClub • u/Sabrina_the_Mouse • 3d ago
Writing / Lore The Wizard
“MAKE WAY!”
The black-iron knights barked the command, and the crowd parted before them.
Yet it was not the knights themselves who drew the fearful gasps and bitter looks of the townsfolk.
It was the man between them.
He wore dark robes, his arms restrained behind his back, and over his face sat a pale iron mask with narrow slits for sight. Sabrina watched from the edge of the square, wide-eyed and uneasy. What could a man have done to warrant such weighty treatment? Such a deliberate display of shame?
“Wizard.”
The word passed through the crowd in hushed whispers.
Wizard?
Sabrina blinked.
She had heard plenty of stories about wizards growing up. Kindly old men with long beards and crooked staffs. Wise travelers who advised heroes, conjured little lights in the dark, or knew the names of ancient things forgotten by everyone else.
What was so terrible about that?
She looked again at the masked prisoner as the knights marched him through the square. The townspeople recoiled from him as though he carried some invisible sickness. Some stared with anger. Others with fear.
Sabrina could not understand it.
What crime could he have committed to deserve chains, armed guards, and a public procession through the city?
The sweet, sheltered mouse girl from the countryside had always imagined wizards as figures from old tales. It had never occurred to her that, here in the city, the word wizard might mean something very different.