Misty Times

[Zadown]

The world of dreams sunk below him as he drifted upwards, towards the waking world. No light greeted him as he let his eyes open, still floating in the warm softness of sleep. He already dreaded the waiting night, tried to remain in the friendly realm of dreams. Shock brought him the rest of the way, the shock of smelling his own, decaying flesh. He sat up, held his stomach with his right hand to quell the heaving and lifted his left arm, if it still deserved that name, to the front of his face. It was almost black all the way to the elbow, a desiccated, dried out thing ending in sharp claws, but answering every command of his mind. He flexed the hand and studied it in silence. The long claws gleamed even in the deepening dusk and he had the strange idea they would gladly rend and cut living flesh if an opportunity should arise, as if the claws could have a mind of their own. A weary smile flashed on his face, then vanished.

 

They told me the path I was contemplating on would bring on such changes. Humanity left behind a layer at a time, like shedding the heavy clothes of winter and basking in the warmth of the summer of magic ... but the other way around, perhaps. It is a cold path and the warmth is I seek to leave behind me, to find an inhuman clarity. Ah, such irony, to become a monster like this...

 

Athar sighed and tossed his blanket aside, shivered in the cold that slashed at his barely covered flesh right afterwards. A messily laid pile of clothes on the chair nearby held his gaze for a moment as he scratched his neck, then he flexed his back, touched the ceiling briefly with the outstretched fingers of his right hand and walked softly to the wardrobe.

 

Unlikely to meet my demise quite yet, but if I do die this night, at least they can find me in the clothes I should be wearing.

 

The door creaked faintly, a sound that would have easily vanished under any ambient noise. There was none, however - the house was silent, no other living beings moving about. Athar's lips formed another mirthless smile as that thought passed through his languidly wakening mind.

 

Just me and the dead.

 

From the wardrobe he lifted out a heavy black robe, the coloured patterns that would have told his exact fields of study colourless grey in the gloom. He put it on, having slight trouble with his ruined left arm. When it finally settled on his lean body, a new smile flickered briefly on his face, this one a pleasant one if faint. Athar glanced around in an effort to throw away the last of the gossamer nets of sleep, the familiar surroundings banishing the weirdness of dreams away. The room was small, even if it was the master bedroom with a double bed far too wide for him. The wooden floor was mostly covered with a rug and an ancient bear hide, one rug hanging on the outer wall next to the bed depicting a wolf hunt. The chair and the wardrobe were both heavy and simple, made to last, though both had some ornamental patterns carved on them by a bored ancestor killing time during a winter long past. Door to the rest of the house was slightly ajar, no lock on it, just a knob. From the main room came a very faint stream of warm air, the last breaths of a cooling hearth. He wrapped his bare feet in cloth, then put on his leather boots and padded into the main room, yawning as he went.

 

"Brother?"

 

The sound startled him, even after three years. It was a hoarse whisper, barely audible if not for the almost absolute silence inside.

 

"Evening, Maella."

 

His gaze swept across the heavy oven, a reflex to check for signs of fire getting out of hand, past the bulky table next to it, finally pausing on a piece of barely darker shadow on top of the shadowy shape of chest of drawers. Athar blinked and his vision focused, cutting through the darkness that would have foiled the eyes of most of his fellow villagers. There it was, his sisters blackened skull with three runes carved on its forehead, one of her front teeth missing, the eye sockets too dark for even his corrupted vision to penetrate. As always, seeing that skull made him feel slightly sad, sad and tired.

 

"Do I look that bad, Ath? Awww..."

 

Her whisper degenerated into a soft hiss, like wind, and he did not feel like answering.

[Zadown]

It was colder outside than he had expected. His breath steamed in the chilly air and he shivered, hugged himself before leaving the lee of his house. Ahead the black forest of firs rose up towards the small red light of the gibbous moon hanging on the dark grey sky, the illumination too faint to tint the world crimson.Wind gusted, tugging at Athar's robes and making him shiver again, and for a moment he thought of going back in to get a thicker shirt or perhaps going back and staying there, leaving his task undone. Then the wind passed and it was not quite unbearably cold any more, just uncomfortable, and he strode off towards the fir trees. Soon the grey sky and dark grey earth both vanished, leaving only the inky blackness of the forest. No distractions, there, even wind stilled by the dense curtain of needles.

 

There they are, again. Little motes of bright life slowly trudging through the thick forest. With no ...

 

A slow frown spread on his face, the slow crawl of worry creeping over his features making him seem like a retard. Athar returned to his body and to the real world in a rush that left him confused. They had ... paused to stare at him? Sensed his ethereal presence, somehow? He discarded the spell he had been maintaining and swung his gaze to the direction of the intruders. Black, immobile trees, the forest humming to the bass tune of the autumn wind. Soft, wet moss under his sturdy boots, faint clouds drifting from his mouth, cold nipping at his bare fingers and clawing at his exposed face with dull talons that'd be sharpened ere winter. Crisp and clear reality, ordinary and boring, a wall between him and his real powers. Then, a sudden shift in perception as he altered his vision in the way they had taught to him, there far away in the warm land of mages and occultists, Chaman. Techniques and teachings that felt like dreams, now and here, soft and sunny dreams where people bent the nature to their will and ruled reality with a delicate fist glowing with arcane energies. Real enough a dream, of course - the things he remembered did work, the monochrome night was gone, glowing lines pulsing in his view over the grim trees and the wet moss.

 

He was not an expert of the meta-magic theories, never even considered studying that field any more than was necessary. Tools, not goals, even if they were useful from time to time. Thus, it took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing, what the twisting, shimmering laylines meant.

 

A shaman! Now, what did they tell us of them, again.

 

Athar could feel his pulse quickening, in fear or in excitement, he was not sure. His left eye blinked shut for a short moment, fading out his second vision from that side. A fast shake of his head, a focusing mantra muttered a few times, and he managed to adjust himself to the new field of vision. Laylines and the skein that marked the shaman glowed only faintly now, dancing jerkily over the canvas of tree boles.

[Zadown]

They were close, now, and the bitter coldness that had threatened to numb his fingers and thoughts while he had waited was now receding again, giving way to palpable terror. It was always like this for him, though the first time had been the worst so far, fear nearly paralysing him.

 

Marchello told us so many times how many occultists die during their first fight, some old bit of trivia he had inherited from his own teacher. I've survived my baptism of fire, so I will survive this skirmish, also.

 

Faulty logic, but it worked on some level, easing off the shackles that had almost rooted him to one spot a moment ago. Ignoring the chill, dipping under the surface of reality, Athar started muttering while drawing the words stolen from the gods in the air. Just before letting go of most of his senses he could smell a whiff of corruption, a sickening stench tainting the pure, cold autumn air. His slack face twisted in disgust, then it was utterly still.

 

All around him, mist started seeping from the ground like flood water, the topmost layer of the rising tide faint and transparent. As it raised higher, it thickened at ground level and turned to a colour of cream or honey, swirling in a confusing, unsettling manner. Athar fell silent and finished drawing the last glyph in the foggy air, then lifted both of his arms and his face towards the heavens. The moment of rapture did not last long, and nobody was there to see it - when he came out of the trance he was standing normally, his arms slack on his side, left arm aching like a distant, dead thing. He opened his eyes. They snapped wide, bulging in his face like he had just ingested a dose of strong kcha'vra, pupils dilated. This forest was now his, for a while.

 

What the attackers had lost in their visibility he had gained - he could see through the fog the patrol huddling against each other, the shaman in the middle, their mouths opening and closing in heated argument of what to do. A few of them had fallen down because of the disorienting effect of the Kirouu fog, one puking his guts out a little away from the main group. Even riding the wave of dark magic it gave him little pleasure to see his enemies reduced to the state of drunken louts - rather, he felt a sour, bitter taste in his mouth, an irrational wish that all this was just a bad dream and that the orcs would stay on the mountains. The thought flitted around his crowded head like a lost butterfly but did not stop him, of course. Wishful thinking had never stopped him.

 

His next spell did not push him under or taint the very world itself. At worst, speaking aloud the crunching, tinkling words made Athar shiver, something he barely noticed now that the fight was about to start for real. A faint blue glow sprang into existence in his right, healthy hand, dancing there a fleeting moment before he flung it forward. In the air it turned into an arrow of ice and winter's chill, tunnelling its way through the turbulent, heavy fog. The shaman sensed it, too late - but he had not been the target in the first place, the screen of orc warriors blocking the line of sight between the two real adversaries. It smashed against one warrior's chest, the ice piercing its way through the haphazard protection of rusty mail and worn leather, the chill freezing the orc's very blood. The warrior toppled, snarling something that the blanket of fog quickly devoured. Before he hit the soft, wet moss, Athar was already running, leaving the orcs to aim their spears and bows at swirling fog and empty forest.

[Zadown]

Mist continued to hold the forest under its heavy blanket, but it had lost its keenest, most disorienting edge now that it had lingered here in the real, dull world so long, so far from Kirouu isles. It made the boring trees look majestic, like masts of some green ship, sails whispering snatches of a song he had heard since he had been a little child. That sound, wind against the needles, mixed with the loud bass beat of his own heart were the only two sounds Athar could hear. His left hand lifted itself to touch his newest servant. The fingertips barely had any feeling left, but he could hear the faint scraping sound as his withered claws brushed against the armour of the orc corpse. The creature, or creation, had a vacant stare and stood utterly still, blood and ice staining its chain mail. It had greyish skin, not because of decay but because that was the normal skin tone of the local orcs, but its knuckles were white as it held on to its weapon and shield with the single-mindedness of a zombie.

 

Athar could not hear the patrol, but he could see them - even the trees were slightly transparent to him as long as the forest was under his spell, and he had been careful not to run too far. It had taken patience and stealth to be able to animate the fallen orc without blundering into the slowly moving patrol, but he had managed the feat. Now he could feel like the ivory dice of Lady Luck were slowing down and tipping over to his favour. The orcs were scared, that much was obvious. They had formed a formation that looked like a hedgehog, weapons bared to every direction, the shaman and the senior warriors standing in the middle. He glared at the shaman, felt a low wave of unease wash through him.

 

What is he waiting? He hasn't done anything yet, has he? I'd notice an invisibility spell right away, the brilliant glow it burns with on any occultist's second vision makes it pointless to use. What else is there, what else ...

 

He gnawed on his right hand's thumb, looking even younger than his few years for a moment, even when standing there with his withered arm sacrificed to magic, even with the fell companion he had. He swallowed, once, whispered "go" to the zombie and begun another spell. The words it required felt hard and cold in his mouth, their shape and form so crude and demanding he had to put force into their pronunciation. Air around him chilled, a few snowflakes whirling around his gesturing form. Over the dreamy landscape mellowed with creamy fog a vision of winter superimposed itself, his right hand's fingers trailing bright blue sparks, the fingers of his left, corrupted hand disappearing under globes of light the colour of dirty snow. Athar was half here, half in some other, gelid world made of crushing layers of ice and of bitter cold. At the focal point where his two halves met he was blazing with ice-aspected mana with such fierceness even a mere village shaman was forced to see him. His icy smile was half determination, half desperation.

 

Let there be enough time!

 

Smiling, he roared aloud the last words of the incantation, words so powerful they demanded whatever his mortal lungs could give - and Lady Luck smiled back. The first arrow flew straight and true but hit the orc zombie with a noise that would've seemed loud a few moments before. Now it drowned under the shouts of the living orcs, the roared words of ice and the harsh guttural pact the shaman was making with the local spirits. A spear hit a tree, another arrow flew too high, the first charging orc was intercepted by the faithful undead and received an incapacitating wound. Athar breathed out, his breath so dry and cold it destroyed whatever mist it touched, then breathed in, a crackling globe of ice orbiting his healthy hand. The pact was formed and the globe flung, first real blow struck against the dead orc. Icy explosion erupted where the shaman had stood, sounding like a thousand angry mountains releasing their snowy burdens at the same time, the cacophony fighting the tearing, organic sound of a nearby tree releasing itself from the ground as it was possessed by whatever spirit the orc had commanded. Large shards of clear ice whirled around, their sound a short frightening hum followed by solid thuds of wood and flesh, short and long screams following depending on the gravity of injuries inflicted, then silence.

 

A billowing cloud grew towards the sky, ice and snow covering the point of impact. The cold air and Athar's lapse in concentration were last straws for the mist and it gave up, vanished slowly like a bad dream.

 

Somewhere, not all that far away, a bird cried to welcome the impending dawn.