"I'm sorry, but I can't let you in, sir." Above me, staring down with it's ruby inlaid eyes, the sound slipped out of the gargoyle's unmoving mouth with a rasp of stone grinding against stone. The sir part was almost assuredly part of its affectation and not any sort of respect for me.
"Look, I just need to get inside, drop off a package and get it signed for, and then I'll leave." Most of the truth. I could have left the brown paper sack in the gargoyle's keeping what with regulations on magical towers and their owners, but I really wanted a glimpse inside. Maybe it was a dangerous curiosity, but getting a peep inside of the most powerful of the eastern wizard's tower would be worth the lost time.
"As per my orders, I can not let anyone into the tower without express permission from my master, who does not want to be disturbed at the moment." I could probably rush the door and open it quickly enough to get inside before the gargoyle did anything. That would be incredibly stupid though. There was actually a high chance to get hurt that way, either by the gargoyle, who was watching me with a bored expression carved into its face, or by whatever was past the door with the intent to stop intruders from entering. So if brute force was out. . .
"But the fact that this is a package specifically sent to your master, ordered by him last spring in fact, he has already given permission for this to come in."
"But he has not given permission for you to come in, sir." Either it was smart enough to see through my ruse, or it was simpler than I would have thought.
"What if you open the door, and then I push it through, and then get you to sign for it?" Not exactly the visit into the tower that I wanted, but it was better than seeing nothing at all.
With a low creaking it turned its head a little, as if it were thinking. I hadn't heard that constructs could think, so maybe it was consulting something else? "Very well." Out of the alcove above the doorway the gargoyle's tail slithered down to wrap around the handle to push the door open. A long dark hallway stretched out farther than I was able to see, nothing of interest besides the closed doors on either side that were spaced every few feet. It obviously should not have been there. The hilltop the tower stood on was maybe a hundred feet across, and not all of that flat.
A grin found its way onto my face. It wasn't much, but it was something to tell the others around the table at night. "Thank you very much." It was always good to be polite. As I stepped toward the doorway flames combusted into being from torches on the walls. Okay, this was so worth taking a job out into the middle of nowhere. I moved to set the bag down inside the doorway before the gargoyle's tail swung up into view, stopping me.
"You implied that you would put the package inside. That is not inside." Okay, that's weird. I know for sure that constructs shouldn't be able to understand implications. There were stories abounding about the very troubles caused because they couldn't.
"I'm not quite sure I understand?" Entirely true. That hallway looked very much inside, if not very possibly inside, the tower. "Where am I supposed to put it then?"
"Walk down the hall to the third door on the right, knock, then when it opens, hand it over there. When you get back I will sign whatever you have regarding the package." The gargoyle had turned around, rooting around in the alcove for something. It took a moment to get my bearings and walk in. My grin had melted away first into a confused frown and now into the kind of face a little kid makes when they see their first snowfall. This place was cool, no doubt about it. The doors were all nondescript, though, just the plain wood-grain you'd see in a normal tower. They didn't even have the stylized staining that the front door did to make it look like fire and lightning engulfed it.
I knocked. Silence. Just as I was about to grab the handle a slithering sound made its way through the door. Silence. Then it opened an inch, a long black line inside with one weird looking eyeball peering out of the darkness inside. "Hi, I'm here to. . ." And then the brown bag was torn from my hand and pulled back through the door as it widened a bit to accept the package. It was grabbed by a tentacle. Both the eye and the tentacle belonged to some sort of octopus type thing inside. A grey colored octopus. A grey colored octopus with about one hundred tentacles. The door slammed shut. Okay then.
Back at the front door, by the time I returned, the gargoyle had a well of ink in his hand and his tail wrapped around a quill. "So, was it supposed to be grabbed by the octopus looking thing?"
"Yes, Hortence is there as the chief organizer of his great and majestic lord Phrex. Now if you would present the paper?" I had to dig into my brown coat-pocket to grab the folded up form I had stuffed in there on my way here. The gargoyle made a quick flourish with his quill, a low creaking accompanying his movements. It read: Peter Stonewing, Chief Executor of his Lord Phrex Gateway. Way too many words for how many movements he made. Magic quill or magic gargoyle, it was hard to tell, and it would probably be impolite to ask.
"How did you write all that so fast?" Okay, maybe I was good at asking dumb questions. In my defense, it was really cool.
He took his time to answer. Cocking his head to the side like he was thinking again. "Magic, sir." The gargoyle's features shifted into a grin, showing his stone teeth. "And since I did not need to call some other messenger through the halls to pick up that package, you may even have the benefit of figuring it out fr yourself." With that last remark, he tossed the quill through the air. I almost dropped it. Looking down at the nub, it was out of ink. "Good day, sir."
"Good day, and thank you, Mr. Stonewing." He's an alright chap, I think. Now I need to get back to town to find some ink.
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