I'm writing a fictional story. I wanted to see if generative artificial intelligence could be of any particular use in this project. I thought that perhaps I could use it to take what I wrote and then extend the length and add dialogue. I'm not particularly good with dialogue. Here is the result from five different genAI systems.
Strangely, given its problems in other areas, Meta AI seems to have done the best job. I suppose that is possibly because so much of what is posted on Facebook is just flatly fictional.
I made a mistake in the original prompt. I wanted the prose to be fairly plain with a limited vocabulary; however I used the word "rustic." Rustic apparently means that about every fifth word is "ain't" and that every trailing "g" is replaced by an apostrophe.
Some of the systems generated material that I just can't use because it conflicts with content that I am going to introduce later in the story. Some introduce names of characters that I'm not certain about. (Later in the story I want to introduce the fact that longer names are an indication of higher status.) Qwen really got itself into a right muddle towards the end of this section.
ChatGPT
It ain’t rightly my place to speak on myself. That’s what I was always taught—folk like me keep their heads down and their mouths shut. But my Master says different. He says a man ought to tell his story plain, so others might understand the road he’s walked. So if I speak, it’s on his say-so, not mine.
My name is Huf.
I come from a people who never had much of anything. Truth be told, we didn’t even have a place to call our own. We drifted from here to there like dry leaves in the wind. Folks called us wanderers, and I reckon that fits, seeing as how a wanderer’s just a body without a place to stand long.
“Why don’t we stay?” I once asked my mother when I was little enough to still think questions had answers.
She just smiled a tired sort of smile and said, “Because, boy, the ground don’t want us, and the folk on it want us less.”
That was the way of it.
We lived by what we could find. Berries in the brush, nuts in the fall, roots if you knew where to dig. Sometimes a rabbit, if someone got lucky with a snare. It wasn’t much, but it was living.
I had a different part to play. They said I had a head for numbers. Didn’t seem like much to me, but it meant I got sent to market. They’d heap up what little we had—berries, herbs, bits of cloth patched and re-patched—and I’d carry it off to trade.
Old Bren, he taught me.
“Now listen close, Huf,” he’d say, tapping a dirty finger against my forehead. “Coins got weight, and they got worth. Don’t let no trader cheat you. Count twice, speak once.”
“I ain’t good at speaking,” I told him.
“Then you’ll do fine,” he said with a grunt. “Talking’s what gets a man cheated.”
So I learned to count. Copper, silver, sometimes—rare as kindness—gold. I learned to tally and reckon, to watch a man’s eyes more than his hands.
One day, I went to market same as always. Long walk, cold wind, empty belly. Trading was poor that day. Folk didn’t want what I had, or pretended they didn’t. By the time I turned back, I had near nothing to show for it.
I remember thinking, This won’t go well.
But when I got back, there wasn’t no one left to mind whether it went well or not.
The camp was gone.
Not gone like we’d moved on—no neat packing, no tracks heading off together. No. There were broken cart pieces, snapped like twigs. Cloth torn and scattered. I found a bit of red shawl that had been my mother’s.
I called out. “Ma? Bren? Anyone?”
Only the wind answered, same as always.
I stayed there till dark. Then longer. Hunger drove me off before hope did.
Later, I asked my Master about it. Took me a long while to gather the nerve.
“What happened to them?” I said.
He looked at me a long time before answering. “A washout,” he said.
“A wash… what?” I asked.
“A thing that comes sudden and takes everything with it.”
I frowned. “But… they didn’t wash much.”
He sighed then, like I’d missed something important—which I reckon I had. My Master often uses words like that. Words that mean more than they say.
So I wandered.
And that was harder alone than it had ever been with my people. Hunger bit deeper. Cold felt sharper. And there weren’t no voices at night but my own thoughts, which ain’t good company.
I don’t rightly know how long I went on that way before I came upon the castle.
It was a great thing. Stone piled high as if it meant to scrape the sky. Towers and walls and banners snapping in the wind. I’d never seen the like.
“Best keep walking,” I told myself.
But I didn’t.
Maybe it was hunger. Maybe it was something else.
I came up to the gate, and a guard looked me over like I was something dragged in on a boot.
“What d’you want?” he said.
“Work,” I answered. “Any kind.”
He spat. “Got nothing for the likes of you.”
But another voice spoke up behind him. “We might.”
Turned out, a man had died. Not a great man, not a wizard or a scholar—just someone who did the lowest work. Work no one else wanted.
“That you’ll do?” the second man asked.
“Yes,” I said, before he could change his mind.
And so I got my place.
It was the lowest place there was. I carried night soil. I hauled ashes. Filth and soot, day in and day out.
Still, it was a place.
I had a corner to sleep in. I had scraps to eat regular-like. For a wanderer, that’s near riches.
Time passed—I couldn’t say how much. Days ran into each other like rain down a wall. Work, sleep, work again.
Then came the excitement.
It started as whispers.
“You heard?” one servant said to another.
“Heard what?”
“They’re going to do it. A summoning.”
That word spread fast. From the high halls down to the lowest corners. Even to folk like me.
“What’s a summoning?” I asked a kitchen boy once.
He puffed himself up. “Means they’re calling something. Someone powerful.”
“Why?”
“To make them more powerful, of course,” he said, like it was obvious.
The wizards—those of highest place—had been planning it a long time, so it seemed. They wanted more power. More knowledge. They meant to call forth a wizard greater than themselves.
“If they grow,” one of the older servants said, “then we all grow.”
I didn’t know about that. But I listened same as the rest.
When the day came, the whole castle buzzed like a kicked hive.
No one stopped us from going near the great hall. The wizards were too busy with their doings.
“Come on,” the kitchen boy hissed to me. “We can get a look.”
“I shouldn’t—”
“You always say that,” he snapped, grabbing my sleeve.
So we went.
The hall was vast, bigger than any place I’d ever seen. The high folk stood close, near the center. The rest of us climbed where we could—balconies, ledges, railings.
I found a place high up, clinging to cold stone, looking down.
“What do you see?” someone whispered beside me.
“Not much yet,” I said.
Then it began.
I don’t know what they did. Not truly. There were words—strange words that twisted in the air. There was fire, but not like any fire I’d known. It burned without smoke, then with too much smoke. Lights flashed that had no flame to them.
I covered my eyes at one point. “I can’t see!”
“Look!” someone cried. “Look!”
So I did.
And then—
A sound. Not loud, but deep. Like the earth itself shifting.
Then a shout went up from the wizards. “It is done!”
They surged forward, crowding around whatever they had brought.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I can’t see,” came the answer.
I leaned, strained, nearly fell.
For just a moment, I glimpsed a shape. A man, I thought—but not like any I’d seen. Still, quiet, as if the world had no hold on him yet.
“Is he dead?” someone whispered.
“No,” said another. “No… I don’t think so.”
The wizards spoke in hurried tones.
“Take him—quickly.”
“He must be stabilized.”
“To the infirmary.”
And just like that, they bore him away.
I watched him go, not knowing then that this man—this summoned stranger—would come to be my Master.
And that my place, at last, would be with him.
Claude
It ain't my place to go speaking of myself, no sir. My place is to speak of my Master. But my Master, he tells me different. He says I got to tell of myself first, so folks can understand how things come to be. So I reckon I'll do as he says, though it don't sit natural with me.
I am Huf. That's all the name I ever had, just Huf. I had me a very small place in this world. My people, they had a very little place too, and we wandered. We was always wandering, never settling nowhere for long. Those who are wanderers, well, they got no place, you see. That's the whole of it. That's why they're called wanderers in the first place.
It's hard like a pain to think on these things. Hurts me deep inside to recall it. Now I got me a place. My place is with my Master, and that's a good place, a real place. But it seems like a pain to me, a actual ache in my chest, to recall the time when I had no place at all. When I was just drifting like a leaf on the wind with no spot to call my own.
My people, we would scavenge. That's what we did to keep body and soul together. My people could gather berries when the season was right, nuts in the fall, and other foods that grew wild in the woods and bushes along the roads we traveled. Mushrooms sometimes, if we knew which ones wouldn't poison us. Roots and such. Whatever we could scavenge and collect, they gave to me. All of it come to me, and I took it to markets in the towns we passed.
I was taught how to count, you see. Not reading, no, but counting and valuing coins. My old granther, before he died, he showed me how to note the values and to total them up in my head. He'd make me practice over and over, adding this and that, making sure I wouldn't get cheated. "You got to know your numbers, boy," he'd say to me. "You got to know what's fair and what ain't, or they'll take advantage every time." So I learned it, learned it good.
And on one trip to a market—I remember it was late summer, warm still but with that edge in the air that says autumn's coming—when I returned from selling what little we'd gathered, with very little coin jangling in my pouch for my effort that day, my people were gone. Just gone.
Not just wandered away to a new camp, no sir. I could see it plain as day. There was broken pieces of what had been some of their carts, splintered wood scattered about. Some pieces of cloth that I recognised from clothing of those that I knew—my cousin's blue shawl, old Marta's red kerchief. Just pieces, torn and muddy. I searched and I called out, but there weren't no answer.
I do not know why they are gone. I don't know what happened to them. When I asked my Master one time, after I come to know him, he spoke of a "wash out." Said it like it should explain everything. But I do not know what that means because my people seldom washed. We didn't have much truck with water except for drinking. Very often my Master says words that I know he means to explain things to me, but they don't. They just make me more confused, if I'm being honest about it.
And so I wandered myself, which was very hard. Harder than I can rightly say. When you're with your people, even wandering folk, you got someone. You got a fire at night and voices around you. Alone, though? That's different. That's a cold kind of lonely.
I don't know how many days I walked. Maybe a week, maybe more. I ate what I could find, slept in ditches and under trees. And then I came to the castle. The great castle. The castle of the wizards, rising up out of the land like a mountain made by man.
I stood there staring up at it, my mouth hanging open like a fool. I'd never seen nothing like it. The towers reached up to the sky, and the walls was so thick and high I couldn't imagine how men had built such a thing.
I was fortunate that, at that time, one had died who had done menial tasks. An old man who'd carried and cleaned and done the lowest work. There was a place for me, the most menial place in the whole castle, but for one who wandered with no place at all, it was better than it had been before. It was a place. An actual place where I belonged.
The head of the servants, a stern woman named Mistress Gerta, she looked me up and down when I come begging at the kitchen door. "You're a scrawny thing," she said. "But I suppose you'll do. Can you carry heavy loads?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I'm stronger than I look."
"You'd have to be," she said with a sniff. "Very well. You'll have your food and a place to sleep in the servants' quarters. Your work will be the lowest work—carrying the night soil and the ashes from all the fireplaces. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said again. "Thank you, ma'am."
And so I had my work. Every morning before dawn, I'd go round collecting the chamber pots and the ash buckets. Carrying the night soil out to the pits beyond the castle walls, dumping the ashes in their heap. It was dirty work, smelly work, work that nobody else wanted to do. But it was my work, and I was grateful for it.
I do not know how long I did this before there was the great excitement. Months, maybe. Could've been near a year. Time gets fuzzy when every day is much the same as the one before.
But then things changed. The wizards, they had planned something. They'd been planning it for a time, and those of us in the castle, we learned of it bit by bit. The higher servants, the ones who served the wizards their meals and cleaned their chambers, they learned of it from listening to the wizards and the students talk amongst themselves. Those of lower place, like me, we learned of it from those of higher place who spoke of it in their hearing, not caring if we overheard.
Place by place, servant to servant, the whole castle knew of it eventually. It spread like fire through dry grass.
"Did you hear?" one of the kitchen girls whispered to another as I was dumping ashes near where they worked. "They're going to do a great summoning."
"A summoning?" the other girl said, her eyes going wide. "What kind of summoning?"
"A wizard," the first one said. "A powerful wizard from another place. More powerful than any here."
I listened as I worked, though I tried not to show I was listening. That's something you learn when you got a low place—you keep your head down and your ears open.
The wizards of highest place, they had talked of this for some time amongst themselves. They wished to increase their power, you see. They wished to increase what they could do as wizards. Magic and such. They had studied their spells and their powers and determined to summon from some place more powerful—some other world or realm, I gathered—a wizard who would be able to demonstrate new powers to them and possibly teach them new spells. The summoning was planned down to the smallest detail.
And while the summoning was planned and prepared, the wizards spoke of it more and more. They couldn't help themselves, I reckon. They was excited, proud of what they was about to do. And the words drifted from place to place, from high to low, until there weren't nobody in the whole castle who didn't know.
All grew excited, not just the wizards. Even us lowly servants felt it. "If the power of the wizards is increased," old Jakob the stable master said one evening, "then the place of the wizards is increased. And if the place of the wizards is increased, then the place of all of us would increase too. We'd be servants to the most powerful wizards in the land. Maybe in the whole world."
We all wanted to believe that. We all wanted our place to be greater.
And the day of the summoning came at last. It was to be in the evening, after the sun had set. The wizards, they was too intent on their preparations and their plans to forbid those of lesser place from attending the great hall where the summoning was to take place. They didn't think about us at all, I reckon. We was beneath their notice.
Therefore, all of us, of any place, we crept as close as we could to the great hall when the time come. Those of highest place among the servants, they got spots on the floor of the hall itself, standing along the walls where they wouldn't be in the way. But those of us of lower place, we climbed to places high on the walls, up to the balconies and railings of the great hall where we could look down and see.
I found me a spot on a high balcony, squeezing in between two other servants. My heart was pounding something fierce. I'd never seen magic before, not real magic. Just tricks and such at market fairs.
Down below, the wizards in their robes gathered in a great circle. They'd drawn symbols on the floor in chalk and salt, symbols I couldn't read or understand. There was candles everywhere, hundreds of them, and the smell of incense thick in the air.
I do not, of course, know what powers, or elementals, or spells were used in the summoning. I ain't educated in such things. But I saw what I saw, and I'll tell it as best I can.
There was smoke. Thick smoke that rose up from nowhere, from nothing, just appearing in the center of their circle. There was flame—not regular fire from the candles, but flame that burned green and blue and colors that ain't natural. There were lights that had nothing to do with flame at all, dancing in the air like living things, bright enough to make me squint and look away.
The wizards was chanting, all of them together, their voices rising and falling in words I didn't understand. The sound of it made my bones vibrate, made my teeth ache. The air itself felt wrong, felt thick and heavy like before a storm.
And then there was a sound like thunder, and a flash so bright I couldn't see nothing for a moment. I could not see what had appeared, but there was a great cry of exultation and success from the wizards. They'd done it. They'd actually done it.
"It worked!" one of them shouted. "By the old powers, it worked!"
The wizards crowded around whatever it was they'd summoned, pushing and jostling to get a closer look. I couldn't see nothing from where I was, just robes and heads blocking my view.
And then the crowd parted a bit, and I caught a glimpse. A man. Just a man, it looked like to me. But he was dressed strange, in clothes I'd never seen before, and he was laying on the floor. Not standing proud and powerful like I'd expected. Just laying there.
My Master, as he later came to be, was taken away almost immediately. They picked him up—he seemed unconscious or nearly so—and carried him off to the place where those who were sick were held. The infirmary, they called it.
The excitement died down quick after that. The wizards was confused, talking amongst themselves in worried voices. This wasn't what they'd expected. This wasn't what they'd planned for.
And I stood there on that balcony, not knowing that my whole life had just changed. Not knowing that the man they'd summoned would become my Master, and I would find my true place at last.
Meta AI
Well now, this here tale ain't truly mine to spin, not in the way folks usually tell stories 'bout themselves. No, this here's 'bout my Master. But my Master, bless his peculiar heart, he done looked at me with them eyes that see more than a body's willing to show and said plain as day, "Huf, lad, folk need to hear from you. They need to know your beginnings, so's they can truly see where you are now." And when the Master speaks, Huf listens. Always.
So, alright then. I'm Huf. That's my name. Just Huf. Not Huf of this, or Huf son of that, or Huf from some grand place. Just Huf. And for a long, long time, I had myself a mighty small place in this wide world. Truth be told, my people, they had an even littler place. They didn't really have a place at all, not like a hearth or a patch of land you could call your own. They wandered. And that's why they were called wanderers, see? 'Cause if you ain't got a spot to put your feet down for good, a spot where you know you'll be tomorrow and the day after, well, then you're just passin' through.
It's a hard thing, that. It gnaws at a man, like a stone in your gut, to think on them times. Makes my breath catch sometimes, even now, with the Master's good food in my belly and a roof over my head. 'Cause now, I got a place. My place, it's with my Master. It's a solid place, even if it ain't got walls or a proper bed. It's in his shadow, by his side, wherever he might be. But thinkin' back to when there was no place, when the wind was your only companion and the hard ground your only bed, that feels like a pain still, sharp as a splinter under the skin.
My people, they were scavengers. Not in a bad way, mind you. Just... resourceful. They'd pick over what others left behind, what nature offered up for free. They were good at it, too. Better than most. They could gather berries, plump and sweet from the thickets, and nuts that grew fat on the trees, and all manner of good things from the woods and the wild bushes. Whatever they found, whatever they collected, they'd bring it to me. And I, I was the one who'd take it to the markets.
"Huf," my uncle – or maybe he was my cousin, truth be told, with wanderers, kin lines get blurred like tracks in the mud – he'd say, "You got the eye for it, boy. Watch them coin-handlers. Don't let 'em cheat you."
And I did. I watched. They taught me the clink and the heft of the coins, how many copper pieces made a silver, how many silvers made a gold. I learned to count them out, to figure the value of a basket of wild greens against a strip of cured meat. I learned to jot down the numbers, rough as they were, on bits of bark or scraped hide, and then to total them up. It was a skill, a useful skill for a wanderer, and it made me feel... important, I suppose. Like I was holding up my end of the sky, small as it was.
One day, I remember it like yesterday, though the years have stacked up like firewood since. I was comin' back from a market, the setting sun paintin' the sky all fiery reds and purples. My pouch felt light, too light. It had been a poor day for coin, meager pickings for all my haggling. My heart was heavy, thinking of the folks waiting, hoping for more. But when I got back to the clearing where our carts usually rested, where the smoke of our small fires usually curled up to the heavens... they were gone.
Not just wandered on ahead, mind you. I knew the signs of that. This was different. My stomach clenched up somethin' fierce. There were broken pieces of wood scattered about, shards of what had been their carts, splintered and tossed. And patches of cloth, too, bits of faded blue and worn grey, that I recognized from the tunics and shawls of folks I knew. My Aunt Mara's scarf, a corner of it, snagged on a thorn bush. My cousin Kael's little wooden bird, carved by his own clumsy hands, lay shattered on the ground.
My people were just... gone. Like the mist on a summer mornin'. I didn't know why. I called out, my voice hoarse and small against the sudden silence. Nothing but the whisper of the wind through the trees answered me. I walked for hours, searching, hoping for a trail, a sign. But there was nothing. Just empty air and the ghost of their presence.
Years later, when I was with the Master, settled in a way I never thought possible, I asked him about it once. It was a quiet night, the kind where words come easier, softer.
"Master," I said, my voice low, "My people... they were gone. One day. Like that. You ever seen a whole folk just vanish?"
He looked up from his scrolls, them bright eyes of his peerin' at me. "Ah, Huf," he mumbled, rubbin' his chin. "A washout, most likely."
A washout. I just blinked at him. "A washout?" I repeated, the words feelin' strange on my tongue. "What's a washout, Master? My people, they seldom washed. Not properly, not with soap and all. Rivers, maybe, sometimes. But not... a washout."
He just sighed then, a puff of air that smelled faintly of old parchment and something sweet, like dried herbs. He went back to his scrolls. That's how it is with the Master, sometimes. He says words, big words, words I know he means to explain, means for me to understand. But they just... don't. They hang in the air, float around my head like bees, and then drift away without ever stingin' me with knowledge.
So I wandered. Truly wandered then, alone. That was the hardest part. Bein' part of a group, even a wandering one, that's one thing. Bein' just one, with no one lookin' for you, no one to share a berry or a scrap of cloth with... that's a cold, desolate kind of empty. I walked and walked, sleeping under the stars, eating what little I could find, always with that ache in my chest. The world felt too big, and I felt too small and lost within it.
Then, one weary day, I saw it. Looming out of the grey distance like a mountain carved by giants. The castle. Not just any castle, mind you. The castle. The Great Castle. The one where the wizards lived. Tales had it that magic pulsed from its stones, that strange lights danced in its highest towers. To a simple wanderer like me, it was a place of impossible power and mystery.
I don't rightly know what possessed me to walk towards it, but walk I did. Maybe it was the sheer size of it, promising something, anything, different from the endless road. And wouldn't you know, fortune smiled on me that day, in its own peculiar way. As I stood by the immense, grimy kitchens, a scullery maid, her face as worn as a dishcloth, took pity on my gaunt frame.
"You look like you ain't eaten since the last king," she said, shooing me towards a back door. "What you doin' here, boy? This ain't no place for vagrants."
"Just... lookin' for a spot," I mumbled, my voice rough from disuse. "Any spot."
She eyed me up and down. "Well," she huffed, "Old Barnaby, the chamber pot collector, he just up and died last week. Fell down the privy shaft, they say. Messy business. They need a new one. Filthy work, but it's a roof and a bowl of stew twice a day."
A place! The most menial place, yes. The lowest of the low, carrying the night soil and the ashes from the wizard's hearths. But for a boy who had wandered with no place, no kin, no fire to call his own, it was better. Better than anything I'd known since my people vanished. I had my work, my miserable, stinking work, but it was my work. And it had a purpose, even if that purpose was just to keep the castle from drowning in its own refuse.
I don't know how many moons passed like that. Days blurred into weeks, weeks into seasons. The smell of the night soil became as familiar as the smell of my own skin. My shoulders ached, my hands were calloused, but I was fed, and I was inside, out of the wind and the rain. I saw the wizards sometimes, grand figures in their robes, drifting through the halls, muttering to themselves. They seemed to live in a different world, one I couldn't even begin to imagine.
Then, one day, a whisper started. Not just a whisper, but a hum, a thrumming excitement that started deep within the castle's stones and vibrated up through every servant, every soldier, every soul within those thick walls. They had been planning somethin'. For a long time, it seemed.
The higher servants, the ones who tended to the wizards' needs directly, the ones who polished their strange artifacts and brewed their potent teas, they heard it first. They'd listen to the wizards and their students, hear snippets of talk about "grand designs" and "unfathomable power" and "the Great Conjunction."
Then, it trickled down. From the head cook to the kitchen staff. From the stable master to the grooms. From the captain of the guard to the newest recruit. Each passing of the word got a little louder, a little more excited.
"Heard Master Elara talkin' 'bout it," one of the stable boys whispered to me over a pile of fresh straw. "They gonna do somethin' big. Bigger than ever before."
"What kind of big?" I grunted, hefting my bucket of ashes.
"Don't know! But the wizards, they're all twitchy and excited like cats in a fish market. Somethin' to do with... other realms. And power."
Piece by piece, like fitting together a broken pot, the whole castle came to know. The wizards of the highest place, the ones with the most wrinkles and the longest beards and the brightest eyes, they'd been talkin' of this for years, it turned out. In hushed tones, in secret chambers, poring over ancient texts written in ink that glowed faintly in the dark.
They wanted more. More power. More magic. They weren't content with just what they knew, what they could already do. They had studied their spells, analyzed their powers, drawn their circles, and they'd come to a grand, audacious decision: they were gonna summon a wizard. A wizard from some place even more powerful than their own. A grand, ancient wizard, one who could demonstrate new powers, new ways of bending reality to their will. A wizard who could, perhaps, teach them spells beyond their wildest dreams. The summoning was planned, meticulous and perilous.
And as the day grew closer, the wizards spoke of it more openly, their voices booming in the great halls, their excitement bubbling like a potion in a cauldron. And their words, like smoke, drifted from place to place. And with every word, the excitement in the castle grew.
"If the power of the wizards is increased," a maid gossiped to a guard, her eyes wide, "then the place of the wizards, it increases too! Think of it!"
"Aye," the guard nodded, his hand on the hilt of his sword. "And if their place increases, then... our place. All of us. We'll all be lifted up! More respect! More riches! Better food, maybe!"
The idea took root, bloomed like a strange flower in the castle's heart. Everyone, from the highest-ranking mage to the lowest chamber pot cleaner, felt a surge of hope, a shared anticipation. If the wizards became more powerful, then perhaps, just perhaps, life for all of them would get a little bit better. A little bit easier. A little bit more secure.
And then, the day of the summoning came. The castle buzzed like a disturbed beehive. The air itself felt thick with anticipation. The wizards, bless their self-important hearts, were too consumed with their intricate plans, their careful preparations, to think of forbidding us, the lesser folk, from witnessing the grand event. Their minds were on ancient incantations and arcane symbols, not on the curious gazes of their servants.
So, on that fateful day, all of us, every single soul of any station, crept as close as we dared to the great hall where the summoning was to take place. The most important servants, the ones who waited directly on the senior mages, they were allowed onto the very floor of the hall, standing respectfully, but avidly, at the edges of the enormous summoning circle.
But us, the lowliest, the ones who cleaned the latrines and scrubbed the floors... we found our own vantage points. We climbed high onto the walls, clinging to ancient tapestries. We peered down from the shadowy balconies that overlooked the hall. We squeezed onto precarious railings, craning our necks, our eyes wide with wonder and a healthy dose of fear. I found a tiny ledge high above, tucked away in the shadows, where I could see almost everything. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I can't rightly say what powers, or what elementals, or what strange, twisted spells they used in that summoning. It was beyond my understanding, a whirlwind of things I could never grasp. But I remember the sights, the sounds, the sheer force of it.
First, there was smoke. Thick, acrid smoke, pouring from the center of the circle, coiling up to the high ceilings like a hungry serpent. Then, through the smoke, came flame. Not just a crackling fire, but hungry, impossible flames, blues and greens and purples, licking at the air, dancing with a life of their own. And then came lights, blinding lights that had nothing to do with flame. They pulsed, they flared, they shifted colors like a painter's palette gone mad. They pierced through the smoke and the fire, making shadows leap and dance in impossible shapes.
The air grew heavy, charged with an unseen energy that prickled my skin and made my teeth ache. The wizards, their faces taut with concentration, chanted in a language I'd never heard, their voices rising and falling in a rhythmic, terrifying chorus. The entire hall trembled, the very stones groaning under the strain of whatever immense power they were calling forth.
And then, at the height of it all, piercing through the din and the light and the smoke, there was a sound. A cry. Not a cry of pain, not a cry of terror, but a great, booming shout of exultation. Of triumph. Of success.
"It works! It works!" I heard one of the junior wizards shriek, his voice almost cracking with glee.
The lights flared one last, blinding time, then slowly, hesitantly, began to recede. The smoke thinned. And as it cleared, the wizards crowded forward, a great surge of robed figures, all eager to see what they had pulled from the other realms.
I couldn't see past them, not from my perch. But then, through the gaps in their bodies, I saw a flash of movement. Something... small. And then a groan. A pained, rasping sound.
And then I saw him. My Master, though I didn't know him as such then. He wasn't the grand, ancient wizard they'd sought. He was hunched, his robes torn, his face pale and contorted, not with power, but with sickness. He looked like he'd been dragged through a knot-hole backwards.
The triumphant shouts died down, replaced by murmurs of confusion, then alarm.
"What in the blazes have we done?" I heard a wizard hiss, his voice laced with disgust and fear.
"He's... ailing," another muttered. "Severely."
"This is not the power we sought!" yet another cried out, his voice sharp with disappointment.
And before I knew it, the same powerful wizards who had been so desperate to summon him were now hustling him away, almost dragging him from the circle. Not to a place of honor, not to a grand chamber, but towards the castle infirmary. The place where those who were sick, those who were broken, were held.
And that, my friends, is how my Master, as he later came to be, arrived. Not in a blaze of glory, but in a haze of sickness, an unexpected, unwanted outcome of the wizards' grand ambitions. And that, in turn, is how I first truly saw him. A broken man, cast aside by those who had summoned him, and soon to be found by the lowest of the low, Huf. And my life, and his, would never be the same again.
DeepSeek
It ain't my place to speak of myself. A body in my station, well, he keeps his mouth shut and his eyes open, and that's the way of things. But my Master, he tells me I got to tell of myself. And what the Master says, that's what gets done. So I'll do my best, though it sits uneasy with me, like a stone in a boot.
I am Huf. That's my name. Huf. Ain't much of a name, I reckon, but it's what I got.
Before I come to the castle, I had a very small place in the world. My people—my clan, you might call 'em—they had a very little place too. We wandered. That's what we done. We never stayed put. And them that wanders, they got no place at all. That's why they call 'em wanderers. Seems simple when you say it, but it ain't simple to live it.
It hurts me, thinking back on them days. It's hard like a pain, deep in the gut, like hunger but worse. Now I got a place. My place is with my Master. And that's a good place, a solid place. But when I recall the time I had no place... well, it makes me want to look away, same as you'd look away from a wound what ain't finished healing.
Back then, my people would scavenge. That's what we done. We'd walk through the woods and the brush, and we'd pick berries, dig up roots, crack open nuts. Whatever the land give us, we took. And we was good at it too. The women and the older children, they done the gathering. The men, they'd sometimes hunt, but huntin's a chancy thing. You can't always count on it. Berries and nuts, now, they don't run away.
What they gathered, they brought to me. That was my job. I took what they give me and I carried it to the markets. I was taught how to count and value coins. That was my special skill. The others, they could count a little, but me? I could count good. I could look at a pile of copper and silver and tell you right off what it was worth. I could add it up in my head, keep the totals straight. That's why they sent me. That was my place among the wanderers.
One day, I went to market like always. I had a sack of goods—nuts mostly, some dried berries, a few roots what the town folk liked to boil up for stews. I walked the whole morning to get to the market town. Sold my goods slow. The market was crowded that day, and folks was haggling hard. By the time I sold the last of it, the sun was already leaning toward the west.
I didn't get much coin that day. Not near what I'd hoped. I stuffed the few coppers into my belt pouch and started the walk back. My feet was sore. My back ached from carrying that empty sack. And I was worried. The clan was counting on me. They needed what coin I brought back, to buy the things we couldn't scavenge—salt, mostly, and sometimes a bit of flour or dried fish if we was lucky.
When I got back to the place where we'd made camp, they was gone.
I stood there at the edge of the clearing, just staring. At first I thought maybe they'd wandered off. That's what we done, after all. Wanderers wander. But then I saw it. Broken pieces of carts. Splintered wood and cracked wheels. And scraps of cloth—torn bits of fabric what I recognized. That was Sela's shawl, the one with the blue fringe. And over yonder, that was Old Barna's coat, the one he never took off, even in summer. It was tore in half, like something had grabbed it and ripped it right down the middle.
I called out. "Hallo! Hallo, is anybody here?"
Nobody answered. Just the wind in the trees and a bird somewhere, scolding me for making noise.
I walked through the camp, slow. The ground was all tore up. Big gouges in the dirt, like something heavy had been dragged. Or like water had come through, a fast rush of it. But there hadn't been no rain. I didn't understand it. I still don't, not really.
Later, after I come to the castle and found my Master, I asked him about it one time. Just once. I said, "Master, what happened to my people? Why'd they vanish like that?"
He looked at me with them pale eyes of his, and he said, "Likely a wash out, Huf. Flash flood, maybe. Or a mud slide. The ground can give way sudden in them parts."
I didn't ask him no more after that. Because my people, they seldom washed. They wasn't dirty, not exactly, but they didn't go out of their way to get wet. So a "wash out" didn't make much sense to me. But my Master, he says words sometimes what he means to explain things, only they don't. They just sit there in my head, heavy and confusing, like a knot what won't come loose.
So I stopped asking. Some things ain't meant to be understood. Some things you just got to carry.
After I found my people gone, I wandered myself. And that was hard. Harder than anything I'd ever done. Because when you wander with a clan, at least you got company. You got voices around you, and hands to help, and faces what you know. But when you wander alone, there ain't none of that. Just you and the road and the hunger and the dark.
I walked for days. Maybe weeks. I lost count. I ate what I could find—berries again, and sometimes I caught a fish with my bare hands in a shallow creek. I slept in ditches and under bridges. I got thin. I got ragged. I got to where I didn't even feel like a person no more. Just a thing what moved and breathed and kept going for no good reason.
And then I come to the castle.
The great castle. The castle of the wizards.
I'd heard tell of it, even when I was with my people. Folks in the markets would speak it in hushed voices. "The wizards' castle," they'd say, and then they'd look over their shoulders like they expected something to grab 'em. I never thought I'd see it with my own eyes. But there it was, rising up out of the mist one morning, all gray stone and tall towers and windows what glittered like they was watching me.
I was lucky. That's what I tell myself. I was fortunate. Because when I got there, dragging my sorry self up to the gate, one of the menial servants had just died. I don't know what he died of. Nobody told me, and I didn't ask. But he'd done the low work, the dirty work, the kind what nobody wants to do. And now there was a place for me.
The steward looked me over. He was a thin man with a thin mouth and eyes like a fish. He said, "You look strong enough. Can you lift?"
I said, "Yes, sir. I can lift."
"Can you carry?"
"Yes, sir. I can carry."
"Can you keep your mouth shut and do what you're told?"
I said, "Yes, sir. That's all I ever done."
He grunted. He didn't like me, I could tell. But he needed somebody. So he give me the lowest place, the most menial place. But to a wanderer with no place at all, it was better than anything I'd ever had. I had a corner to sleep in. I had a bowl of porridge morning and night. And I had my work.
The work was this. Every morning, before the sun was up, I'd go to the chambers and collect the night soil—the pots what folks used in the night. I'd carry 'em down to the pits behind the castle and empty 'em. Then I'd clean the pots and bring 'em back. And after that, I'd collect the ashes from the hearths and the braziers. I'd haul 'em out in a big sack and dump 'em in the ash pit. That was my day. Night soil and ashes. Night soil and ashes.
I didn't mind it. It was honest work. And it give me a place.
I don't know how long I done that. Time moves different when you're low. Days blur together. Weeks pass like water through your fingers. I just kept doing my work, keeping my head down, staying out of the way.
Then come the great excitement.
The wizards had been planning something for a long while. That's what we heard. The higher servants, they found out about it first. They'd listen at doors and keyholes, catch scraps of talk between the wizards and the students. Then they'd whisper it to the servants below 'em. And them servants would whisper it to the ones below them. And so it went, place by place, until the whole castle knew.
I was down at the bottom, so I heard it last. But I heard it.
One evening, I was in the kitchen, fetching my bowl of porridge. The cook's boy, a skinny lad named Pip, grabbed my sleeve and pulled me close. His eyes was big as saucers.
"Huf," he says, all breathless, "you heard what's happening?"
I says, "I ain't heard nothing. What's happening?"
"The wizards," he says. "They're gonna summon something. Something big. Something from far away. A wizard what's more powerful than any of 'em."
I says, "Summon? What's that mean?"
Pip shakes his head. "I don't rightly know. But it's a big deal. The biggest. They been planning it for months."
I ate my porridge and thought about it. Summoning. I didn't know the word. But I knew that when the wizards got excited, everybody got excited. Because if the wizards' power increased, then the castle's place increased. And if the castle's place increased, then all our places increased. Even mine. Even a night-soil carrier.
The talk spread. Grew. Swelled up like bread rising. Everywhere you went in the castle, folks was whispering about it. The students was practicing their spells louder than usual. The wizards was holed up in their towers, muttering and scribbling and arguing. And the servants, from the highest to the lowest, was buzzing like a hive of bees.
The day of the summoning finally come.
I remember it clear. It was a gray day, like most days. But there was a feeling in the air. A tightness. Like before a storm, when the sky goes still and the animals get quiet.
The wizards was too busy with their plans to think about us low folk. They didn't forbid nobody from watching. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they didn't care. All I know is, when the time come, everybody crept as close as they could to the great hall.
The high servants—the butler, the head cook, the steward—they got down to the floor of the hall. They stood against the walls, quiet as mice. The lower servants, like the scullions and the stable boys and the maids, they found places on the balconies and the railings up high. And us at the very bottom, we climbed up to the highest places of all. The narrow walkways what run along the ceiling. The ledges what nobody used. We perched up there like birds, looking down.
I found a spot on a stone ledge, way up near the roof. I could see the whole hall spread out below me. The wizards was gathered in a circle at the center. They had robes of every color—blue and green and red and gray. Some had staffs. Some had crystals hanging from their necks. Some had their arms bare, covered in tattoos what glowed faintly, like coals in a fire.
In the middle of the circle, there was a big stone slab. And on the slab, there was markings. Lines and circles and symbols what hurt my eyes to look at. I had to look away sometimes, then look back.
The head wizard—tall, bald, with a voice like grinding stones—raised his arms. The other wizards fell silent.
"Brothers and sisters of the craft," he says, "today we reach beyond. Today we summon one who walks in deeper currents than we have ever known. Let no heart falter. Let no hand tremble. We do this for power. We do this for knowledge. We do this for the glory of this castle and all who dwell within it."
Some of the wizards cheered, low and serious. Then they begun.
I don't know what powers they used. I don't know what elementals they called on. I don't know the spells. I'm just Huf. I carry night soil and ashes. But I can tell you what I saw.
There was smoke. Thick, black smoke what come up from the stone slab, boiling and twisting like it was alive. There was flame—not red or orange, but blue and white, so bright it hurt my eyes. And there was lights what had nothing to do with flame. Lights what shimmered and danced and changed colors, like oil on water but brighter, so much brighter.
The air got heavy. My ears popped. The whole hall shook, just a little, like a giant had bumped into it from outside.
I couldn't see good after a while. The smoke got thick. The lights got blinding. I had to squint and cover my face with my arm. But I heard it. A great cry. A cry of exultation and success. The wizards shouting and cheering and laughing all at once.
"It worked!" somebody yelled. "By the old powers, it worked!"
"He's here! He's come!"
"Look at him! Look at the power rolling off him!"
I peeked through my fingers. The smoke was clearing. The lights was fading. And in the middle of the circle, on the stone slab, there was a figure. A man. Tall and pale, with eyes what seemed to glow from inside. He stood there, calm as you please, looking around at the wizards like they was children what had done something cute.
The wizards crowded around him. They was all talking at once, asking questions, reaching out to touch his robe. But he didn't pay them no mind. He just stood there, looking.
And then—I don't know how to explain this—he looked up. Straight up. Straight at me, perched on my stone ledge way up near the roof. His eyes found mine, and he smiled. Just a little. Just a curve at the corner of his mouth.
My Master, as he later come to be, was took away after that. The wizards, they seen he was weak—or maybe not weak, but tired, used up from the summoning. They took him to the place where them that was sick was held. The infirmary, they call it. I watched 'em carry him out, and I watched his head loll to the side, and I watched his eyes close.
But before they closed, he looked at me again. And I knew. I didn't know how or why, but I knew. That man was my Master. And my place was with him.
And that's how it begun.
Qwen
It is not my place to speak of myself. A servant's tongue should tell of the hand that feeds him, not of his own empty belly. But my Master, he sits in his chair of dark wood, and he looks at me with eyes that see too much, and he says, "Huf, write it. Put it on the paper. If you are to serve me, I must know the shape of the vessel I am pouring into."
So, because he tells me, I must tell. I must speak of Huf.
I am Huf. I had a very small place once. A spot by the fire, maybe. A corner of a wagon. But my people, we had a very little place in the world. We wandered. We did not stay. Those who are wanderers, they have no place to put their feet down and say, "This is mine." They keep moving. This is why they are called wanderers. The ground does not know them, and they do not know the ground.
It is hard like a pain in the chest to think of these things. It sits heavy on the breath. Now I have a place. My place is here, with my Master. It is a solid place. But it seems like a pain to me to recall the time when I had no place, when the wind could blow me over like a dry leaf.
My people, we did not farm. The earth was too hard for us, or we were too soft for the earth. So we would scavenge. We walked the edges of the woods. My people could gather berries that turned the fingers purple, and nuts that hid inside prickly shells, and other foods that grew in the woods and bushes without asking permission. Roots, too. Things that lived under the dirt.
What they scavenged and collected, they piled into my baskets. They gave it to me. I was the one with the head for numbers. I took the baskets to the markets in the stone towns. I was taught how to count. Not just one, two, three, but how to value coins. Copper is soft, silver is hard, gold is heavy like a sin. I learned to note the values and to total them up. I could look at a pile of berries and know how many coppers they should buy, and I could look at a copper and know if it was clipped or false.
I remember one trip to the market. The sun was hot, and the flies were bad. I haggled with a woman who had a face like a dried apple. I returned to our camp with very little coin for my effort that day. The sun was going down, painting the sky like a bruise. I walked into the clearing where we always stopped.
But my people were gone.
They were not just wandered away. When people wander away, they leave the fire pit clean. They leave the wheels straight. But here, I could see broken pieces of what had been some of their carts. Wood splintered like matchsticks. And some pieces of cloth that I recognised from clothing of those that I knew. A blue scrap with a stitch I made myself. A belt with a buckle of bone.
I stood there until the night came. I do not know why they are gone. Did raiders take them? Did a beast come? I called out, but only the owls answered.
When I asked my Master one time, long after I came to him, he spoke of a wash out. He said, "Huf, sometimes the world just washes out."
I do not know what that means. My people seldom washed. We wiped the dirt off, maybe, but we did not wash like the town folk. Very often my Master says words that I know he means to explain to me, but they do not. They float over my head like birds I cannot catch.
So I wandered myself. I took the baskets and the counting skills, but I had no people. That was very hard. A man alone is a target. A man alone is cold. I walked for days until the trees thinned and I saw it. The castle. The great castle, the castle of the wizards. It stuck up into the sky like a jagged tooth.
I was fortunate that, at that time, one had died who had done menial tasks. A old man named Grom. He fell down the stairs, or so they said. There was a place for me. It was the most menial place. The bottom of the barrel. But for one who wandered with no place, it was better than it had been before. I had my work. I had the lowest work. I carried the night soil. I carried the ashes from the fires. I scrubbed the floors until my knuckles bled. But I had a roof. I had a bowl of stew.
I do not know how long I did this before there was the great excitement. Time moves slow when you are scrubbing stone. But then, the air changed. It got tight, like before a storm. They had planned this for a time, and those of us in the castle learned of it.
I was in the scullery, scraping pots, when Elsi came in. Elsi was a maid for the higher students. She looked like she had seen a ghost, but a happy ghost.
"Did you hear?" she whispered, looking at the cook to make sure she wasn't listening.
"Hear what?" I asked. I kept scraping.
"The High Ones," she said. "The Wizards of the Tower. They are calling something."
"Calling who?"
"Not who. What. Or... someone else. Like them, but bigger."
The higher servants learned of it from listening to the wizards and the students. They pressed their ears to the keyholes. Those of lower place learned of it from those of higher place who spoke of it in their hearing when they thought we were just walls with ears. Place by place, the whole castle knew of it. It went down the stairs like water.
The wizards of highest place had talked of this for some time. I heard a student once, drunk on wine, talking to a guard.
"They wish to increase their power," the student slurred. "They are stuck. They are like a cart in the mud. They wished to increase what they could do as wizards. They had studied their spells and their powers and determined to summon from some place more powerful a wizard."
"A wizard?" the guard asked.
"Yes. One who would be able to demonstrate new powers to them and possibly teach them new spells. The summoning was planned. It is geometry, man. It is math."
And while the summoning was planned, the wizards spoke of it, and the words drifted from place to place. All grew excited. Even me, with my night soil. Because if the power of the wizards was increased, then the place of the wizards was increased. They would be richer. They would be safer. And if the place of the wizards was increased, then the place of all of us would increase. More food. Better clothes. Maybe even a day off.
And the day of the summoning came. The air smelled of ozone, like lightning hit the ground nearby. The wizards were too intent on their plans to forbid those of lesser place from attending the great hall where the summoning was to take place. They were busy drawing circles in chalk. They were busy lighting candles that burned blue. Therefore, all, of any place, crept as close as they could to the great hall.
Those of highest place stood on the floor of the hall. They wore robes of silk. Those of us of lower place, we climbed. We went to places high on the walls, balconies, and railings of the great hall. I found a spot near the ceiling, behind a stone gargoyle. I held on tight.
Below, the wizards stood in a circle. My Master... well, not my Master then. Just one of them. He was tall. He looked worried.
I do not, of course, know what powers, or elementals, or spells were used in the summoning. I am just Huf. I know dirt. I know ash. I do not know magic. But I saw what happened.
There was smoke. It came from nowhere, thick and white. There was flame. It jumped from the floor without burning the wood. There were lights that had nothing to do with flame. They were cold lights. Purple and green. They hurt my eyes, and I could not see for a moment.
Then, the air made a sound. Like a tear. Like a sheet ripping in the wind.
And there was a great cry of exultation and success. The wizards crowded around. They shouted in languages that twisted the tongue.
"He is here!" one cried.
"The power!" shouted another.
But then the smoke cleared, and I saw him. The one they called. He stood there. He looked tired. He looked very strong, but tired. He swayed.
"My Master, as he later came to be," Huf whispered to the paper, "was taken away to the place where those who were sick were held."
He fell down. Just like Grom fell down the stairs. The wizards panicked. They caught him before he hit the stone. They carried him out. The excitement turned to worry. The lights went out. The fire went back to being normal fire.
I stayed on the railing until everyone was gone. I looked at the spot where he stood. I did not know then that I would carry his night soil. I did not know then that I would call him Master. I only knew that the world had washed out my old people, and now this new man had fallen into the castle.
And I thought, maybe this is my place. To be the one who carries the ash for the man who fell from the sky. So I climbed down, and I went to get my bucket.
