The Magic Company - Part 3

Davorian had come a long way from the public school playing fields where he had first bargained away his soul to being the founder and chairman of the Magic Company and, through his efforts, the capitalists had risen to become the true heirs to the evil barons and dark wizards of ages past.

It had been his masterstroke to seize control of magic and turn it into a tradable commodity and now he had the whole world in the palm of his hand.

“Let them try and stop me”, he thought, “For I shall achieve, through the power of capitalism, what no dark ruler has ever achieved, to plunge this entire world into hell”.

Then, smiling to himself, he dipped his right hand into a bag marked ‘human resources’ filled with honey-coated, screaming, terrified paupers whom he’d had specially miniaturized by means of a shrinking spell and, gripping hold of a young man who was on his knees pleading for mercy and praying to god, he dangled the poor individual, who started to frantically wriggle between his thumb and fore-finger, over the ivory edged abyss of his gaping mouth and crunched the young man’s screaming head from his shoulders.

“You should try some of these poor people”, he told his board of directors, “They’re really rather moreish”.

“Shall we vote upon whether to accept the report of the audit committee now?”, grunted his porcine Chief Financial Officer, Lord Avarice.

“No. Not yet.”, said Davorian, “First, I want to hear from our Chief Visionary Officer. What news regarding the ancient prophecy, Charles?”.

Lord Evil-Eye, the CVO for the company, pressed his fingers against his temples and threw his head back, closing his left and then his right eye before opening the third glaring, red eye at the centre of his forehead through which he had the uncanny power to see into the far distant future .

“As it has been prophesied”, said Lord Evil-Eye in the distant, booming tones of a spiritual medium, “The old wizard and his friends will come, riding upon four white horses with the first rays of the rising sun behind them, but the rest, I’m afraid, is too cloudy. Their destiny and ours, is unclear”.

“Well then, let’s give destiny a hand”, said the Chairman of the board, “I want my chief strategy officer to get to work on this; see to it that they are stopped by force and at the same time I want my chief creative director to see what he can do with the powers of illusion and persuasion”.

The armour suited strategy officer General Motus and the glamorous ad-man Mr Glister both rose from their swivel chairs then and bowed subserviantly.

“And just remember this gentlemen”, he said, determinedly as he bit the head off of another screaming pauper, “This is business and in business there is no room for losers”.