The Totem Curse- Chapter 6: Half Man, Half Machine (Mordred’s Story Part 2)

It all started one sunny day. Mordred was once again going to the castle’s library, where he was going to get yet another book about astronomy. But, when he got there, he noticed something strange. Right where the book he was looking for was supposed to be, there was a dusty old book instead. It was called “The Dark Magic of the Totems.” Mordred got a weird feeling about it, but checked it out anyway, and went back to his house. He spent all night reading about the darkest secrets of the mysterious Villain Totems, not realizing that one of them, the astrolabe, was right next to him the whole time. No one other than the author of the book and Mordred knew what evil, terrible stuff was written in it. Maybe that’s a good thing.

The next morning, Mordred returned to the library and borrowed even more books about the Dark Sciences. The more he read, the more he wanted to know. He started to want to know so much that he barely got any sleep at night, his mind too awake thinking about what he was learning. Mordred also started writing secret letters to Princess Elyana about his studies. She was one of the only people who knew what he was doing.

This new hobby started getting worse. By now, Mordred was not only becoming obsessed with the Dark Sciences, but he also started experimenting on them, with his trusty owl Merlin at his side. Yet, he still couldn’t figure out how to fix the stopwatch.

Then the worst happened. One day at 4:00 in the morning when Mordred was finally going to bed, the astrolabe next to his bed started to glow and shake around. Mordred didn’t notice, he was too tired to care. But the moment he fell asleep, the astrolabe flew of the table, and right into Mordred’s forehead.

When he woke up, Mordred felt different. He felt, evil. He did even more dangerous experiments on the Dark Sciences, without even realizing that his precious astrolabe was missing. He stopped caring about helping the Kingdom and improving technology. He got even more obsessed with time, yet he never wanted to go back to being that guy spying at the N.I.S.S. He wanted to forget everything.

A few days later, the King and Queen found out what he was doing. They arrested him for real this time. Since Mordred still did not find a way to replace the stopwatch’s battery, he could not escape.

However, he dug a tunnel out of the dungeon and made a new lab underground. He returned to his experiments, even making himself a high tech computer and finally fixing the stopwatch. He also worked on making a rocket. But he couldn’t use the stopwatch to go back to his house, as it would only freeze time temporarily. This is when he officially went crazy, ripping pictures of himself in half.

After about 3 weeks of being stuck down there, the King once again found Mordred.This time, however, was BAD. If Mordred didn’t escape he could be killed. So he froze time, ran back to the spaceship he never finished, and escaped into outer space, the one place he was happy. But, the ship broke and Mordred landed on a distant planet. Half his face was ripped apart. He almost died.

Mordred didn’t die, though. He used what he read in the books to repair his body, and he became a cyborg. He became the Binary Bard.

Chapter 7 Comes Out on Wednesday, March 9th!

Tall Cactus