O; Birth of the Flame

  As we broke through the narrow crevice of two mountains, my eyes fell upon a sight of pure woe. Malignant despair. I knew, then and there in my heart of hearts, that I would never go home.

  Down in the valley below, atop a belly of swaying hills rolling along the outskirts of Sandel Village, a dreadful flame hurled itself at the night. Against the backdrop of a thousand bubbling stars. With each breath, fiery tendrils of red death clawed at the sky, desperate to take hold of that which it could not have. They sought to pierce the very heavens.

  Beside and before the flames, shadowed figures danced in some dark, maleficent ritual of sorts. And close by, the village of Sandel, silent against the roar of the fire, bathed in the safety of darkness. Neither torch nor light could be seen.

  Even here, as far away as we were, the taste of ash and smoke stained my lips and tightened my throat. My bones had begun to chill, shirk, stiffen. What manner of foul magic was this, to make even me feel… fear?

  By my side, atop his black stallion, Mikael growled. “How is he still alive?”

  I did not know, and I could not answer. That alone shamed me. Worried me.

  A day and so past, a boy messenger had come sprinting into the black walls of Sigel screaming of fire. Fire! We’d shaken our heads at that, mourning the potential lost. ‘It was too late’ we told ourselves. Sandel was a day's ride in the very best of conditions. By the time we would’ve got there, the boy’s body would have been whittled away. Bones and ash. Yet the headmaster sent us anyway.

  “Save the boy,” he commanded me. His golden eyes beamed then with wonder, as it so very often did in the most undeserving of circumstances. “Save this ‘Gram’, so we might right our wrongs, years past…”

  But there’s no righting such a sin.

  “This is no ordinary magic,” I said, stroking my goatee. “Of the Fire, by the looks of it, but you can feel it? Right? This… this—”

  “Terror,” Mikael finished as he tightened a grey cloth around his face. “Aye, I can. And I do not like it—it reeks of… Cel.”

  I snarled at him. “Banish the name!”

  “Would-be rules matter little now,” he replied. “Do you really think you can stop this without killing the boy?”

  Sighing, I wrapped the reins of my horse around my hands, withered and wrinkled. “I do not know. But it doesn’t matter: I’ve been ordered to do so. Come!”

  We galloped down the trident of the twin mountains, crossing onto a path of cobblestone wet and slimy with green moss. Through the needle of fields of wheat and barley, eerily silent and terribly loud in its solace, the two of us rode over a small, paltry bridge crafted of brittle planks and large nails. The right half had sunken into the stream underneath, a time ago by the looks of it, as the river had set still. Finally, we stopped as the first huts of thatch and daub came into view.

  Neither of us, I believe, could say why we stopped. Or why, even, our horses trembled and shook. We only knew that something was wrong. Horribly wrong. Mikael drew his sword, a long, slender blade of black steel, and looked left to right.

  The entire village of Sandel was dark. No souls could be seen, the forked-road our steeds stood upon was clean and without dirt nor grime, as if man had never stepped foot upon it, and the barriers of the farms we’d passed were too far away to possibly lend themselves to some… avenue of attack—yet we felt fear all the same. Something was watching us. Waiting for us. It… feels the same as that day. Is it already awake?

  “Will…” Mikael began, steadying his horse. He caught his throat in its terror and his green eyes stared straight into my own. “Will a revelation work?”

  “I’m doubtful. The realm of magic is too powerful for even the headmaster to dispel, and the boy is channeling it without limit.”

  “There’s something off about this place. We can’t—”

  I clicked my tongue. “We won’t.” From the saddle of my horse, I drew a twirled stave of grey oldwood. Upon its shaft, half-a-dozen words of the old tongue were writ both large and small in an ethereal, blue tone. “We’ll go around, end the ritual, then sort out the village.”

  To the right, we kicked our heels and galloped around the outskirts of the village. Immediately after leaving the road, our horses grew a touch slower, bogged down in thick and fierce mud. We rode and rode until, at the corner of the village, we broke past a large building. A tavern, perhaps. In the sky, the flickering frenzy became clearer, lighting up one side of the village like some fell omen—a scent of hell and evil come.

  Pressing on, our horses kicking up rivers of mud, we neared the flame—and the figures surrounding it. Yet as my eyes became clear, focused and unbridled, as they began to see, the world began to blur. And then it glitched. Flicked, like a spark.

  Now we rode upon a dark road, lightly lit by a far-off flame. Mikael’s horse immediately buckled, neighing in fear as its limbs broke back and forth and Mikael himself crashed to the ground.

  Mine simply fell. Like it was sleeping. It slumped upon the ground, nearly trapping my right leg in the process, and when I checked its pulse… it was gone.

  Scrambling across the ground as his horse sunk into the dirt, Mikael lifted himself with a weary mark. “What the…”

  Around us, the fields of mud and corn were gone. Instead, dozens of huts and houses with no doors circled us. In perfect synchronisation. Like a painting. Rain was beginning to fall now, ever so lightly, and a bit away, the flame we were once so close to grew in height and fury.

  This isn’t good. In all my years, I have never seen such as this. Teleportation? Never before has it been done. By anyone, be they magi or inquisitor. It’s impossible. It had to be an illusion. Yet we rode without guides along the outskirts? Surely… surely we must’ve hit a house, a fence… anything? Nothing?

  “We’ve… we’ve got to—”

  In one ear and out the other, like a spike, the wretched scream of a woman throttled through our beings, cutting me off.

  With a limp, Mikael ran with all his might towards the source. “Come on!”

  I followed suit, readying my stave with a guiding hand over its tip, as we ran to a house the same as all the others. All around the dirt, shards of shattered wood and rusted nails pierced in and out of the forming mud. The door had been ripped and torn, and I presume the same had happened to all the manses of this sad village.

  Mikael turned to stone as he reached the door and looked inside. Gods be good, I wished I stopped. But I didn’t, and I saw as he did: a naked, white corpse, pale as milk and covered in unfurled spurts of rose and crimson. Ghoulish men, similarly naked, with withered skin and without trace of humanity, huddled around her corpse. One was gorging himself on her thigh, just below her flower. Another slumped like a demented, jagged mountain of gooey flesh beside her chest, licking his fingers as he swirled an eyeball about his gaping jaw. The last hunched atop her… face… what was left of her face. Red. Lined. He was holding something in his hand. He was holding her face. Eating it. Like candy.

  Without thought, Mikael leapt towards them and slashed at the closet—the one eating her face. With one fell stroke, his head rolled across the floor, painting a streak of scarlet dotted with spurts of blood from the neck and head. Another strike, and the slumped one was forever slumped. Another. And another! He didn’t stop. He butchered them. Cut them up. Desecrated their corpses, as they had done hers.

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  When the hut had become a garden of red, Mikael, his breath haggard, short and without rhythm, looked at me. He was shaking. “What… what is this, Hil? I… I can’t… I couldn’t stop…” His black armour had turned red.

  Silent, captured, enraptured by it all—shameful as that was, for I knew not why—I turned away and left the hut. “Come on. We’ve…” Mikael stumbled out to my side, his mouth and eyes a moment away from weeping. “Come on, we’ve got to get to the boy.”

  Trying as well as we could to banish the scene from our minds, we continued through the village. Ever chasing that boastful flame, so far away. It never got closer. And the village never changed, only cycled. One minute we’d be wandering a labyrinth of patchwork bridges and roads, over and under, beneath crumbled walls, atop makeshift ledges, and the next we’d be back in the spiral, with houses around.

  And every time we returned, we’d hear the scream again. Louder and louder. Mikael tried again and again to make it in time, to save her, but it was all for nought. The girl was dead. She was dead long before we came here. That scream was only an echo, a pitiful cry, raging through the eternities of this wretched place.

  Yet in both the ever-same circle and the ever-changing backroads, only one thing was a true constant. Every house had their doors removed. Sometimes we found remains, other times the hinges themselves were long gone, in their place patches of blood.

  What madness had happened here? Is… happening here?

  Always, when one awakes the gift of magic, they enter a realm called the ‘Dreaming’. A ceaseless nightmare from which few awake—without the help of a trained magi. Most only lasted an hour, maybe two, before they succumbed to the dream. Before they perished, one way or another. Yet the messenger boy had come to us a day and a half past. Three days. Three days this ‘Gram’ had been in the Dreaming, and he still lived. I’ve never seen such a thing before. Even Cel… dreaded Cel, he grew amongst magi. All knew he would one day awake, and when the foul day finally came, he was out in an hour. A rarity, for most magi took minutes to end such a thing.

  Yet this boy has survived this long. How long, I wonder, will it take to free him?

  “I do not know what to do,” Mikael declared, his pale green eyes basking in the fierce rain as the now dull scream resounded again. “The fire is ever-retreating.”

  “There is always reason within rhyme,” I told him, “there is order here. Chaos in the roads ahead. Yet we always return here. Order must be made of the chaos.”

  “Have you any idea how?” he scoffed, his eyes fluttering as the visage of the far-flame danced upon them. “Or are you as lost as me, yet as stubborn and foolish as the rest of your flock?”

  Perhaps I am. There is always reason, yes, but that is reality. We deal with matters of the dream now. I… cannot truly say we are lost. And neither can I truthfully declare hope. But hope for hope? That’s… a fine thing, isn’t it?

  “Hope is fickle,” a sweet voice declared. “But a deal? That’s a fine thing, isn’t it?”

  From between the bosom of two houses, a woman stood naked. Her red hair was long and lucious, and fell past her breasts and near her groyne. In the fell rain, her black eyes smiled along with her wet, supple lips of cardinal.

  Mikael pointed his sword at her, his hand twitching with weariness. “Who are you?”

  “How did you—”

  “Be silent, wizard.” She strolled through the mud and blood, her every move like a line of poetry made form. “I come with gifts of jubilation, and you’ve a mind to sour it?”

  “I ask again,” Mikael spat. “Who are you?”

  The woman looked to the fire. “I am… a reprieve from fate. I’ve always been, don’t you find? You probably don’t, of course. You are trapped in the wayward dream of this beautiful…” Her voice grew misty, tranquil, erotic. “Beautiful… beautiful… beautiful boy. You cannot hope to escape. Nor should you, really, but I am… generous.”

  In the corner of my eye, I saw Mikael’s eyes wander. South and south, before he pulled himself back and growled. “How?”

  “For what,” she corrected, her eyes stuck on the fire, “is what I think you meant.” Her knees buckled as she fell into the mud on her back. With slow, trancing hands, she rubbed the mud over herself. “The price is simple. Protect the boy, Mik-a-el… protect him against the magi. Protect him against your own order. Protect him from…” Whilst the other, even in her prone position, stayed locked on the fire, one of the woman’s eyes turned to me. “Protect him. Accept and I shall end this dream, and allow you both the chance to save him. For now. Accept, and if you fail, I shall return you to this hell. Forever and ever. Decline, and you will stay here. Forevermore.”

  “I accept,” Mikael answered, without consideration or hesitation. A fool. A fool’s fool. She has the power to end this nightmare, and you make a devil’s bargain without so much of a thought?

  She moaned in joy, sinking into the mud. Soon her perky breasts and chiseled thighs and luscious lips all faded into the earth. Her hair’s hue of wrath faded, and only a black eye pierced out from the mud.

  “Lovely…” her voice faded away.

  Instantly, the village disappeared. Gone, like a bad thought. Now we stood in a field of mud as wide as the valley. Only the Forest of Estain to our right, the hill upon which the fire blazed before us, and the mountains to our left remained. All the while, the stars of the sky had left us, and the rain had fled. Was it even raining?

  With the light of the fire, we saw the true remnants of the village clearly. Every house had been dismembered and fashioned into a strange shrine. Hundreds of them, dotted all about the field of mud in which we stood. In the hill above, shadowed figures locked arms and danced against the backdrop of the flame, like they were in a fete of sorts. They frolicked and jived and laughed like shadows laughed: without love.

  I waved a hand over my stave. The blue runes sang their own tune at my arrival, coming to life and wonder. In the pits of my blood, I felt my magic drain. Stamina had always been my weakness.

  “We should kill him,” Mikael declared. “Damn that witch’s deal. I’ll brace the punishment, but I do not like this, Hil. It’s… evil. All of it.”

  “He is not responsible for it. Nor should he be held so. And I would not have you return there, Mikael. I… cannot allow that.”

  “Yet you seek to go someplace worse.”

  I took a deep breath. The scent of blood trailed the air. “I have charged most of my runes, but I need to maintain the rest of my magic for the dreamwalk. You must keep these villagers at bay… slay them all, however many there are.”

  “Will the end of his dream not free them of this… of this blight?”

  Shaking my head, I looked to the sky, one last time. It was a moonless night. “I do not think so. This boy is like Cel—even his name, Gods, his name… we both know what is within that mind. You have heard the tales. Be sure to tell the Headmaster of this all, and have it monitored. Tell Eldric too. Especially Eldric. He’s not so… burdened by regret… and dreams of a different hue.”

  Mikael’s eyes furrowed. “What are you saying?”

  “Fifty-two magi went into Cel’s mind the second time around. When we… discovered it. Twenty didn’t come back. This one… this ‘daemon’ is already awake. I’ll have to bind it myself. I don’t have enough magic normally—I don’t think anyone does. I… I can’t blame Sig. He couldn’t have known. He must’ve thought it the same as Cel. Sleeping. We all did, I suppose.”

  “Why are you saying this?” he muttered, his mouth agape in confusion. “Why are you being a fool? This boy is not worth your life. Not worth the risk. And the risk is great, we both know it. Everyone knows it. Even Sig knows it, greatest fool of them all! We’ll kill the fucking boy and be done with this madness!”

  “There’s a dream, Mikael.” I stamped my stave into the ground and stepped forward, toward the hill. “A dream of gold.”

  Mikael grabbed me by the shoulder. “A fanciful dream! A fool’s dream! You cannot…” he paused, and for the first time since he was a little boy, I saw a tear fall from his eye. “You cannot do this. You cannot still believe in this? Some… some what? Some would-be great magi is the solution? A tainted magi? Infected by a daemon? All of us, following along, hoping, praying once again that he’ll be good this time? That he won’t fall? That he—”

  “Hope’s a beautiful thing,” I cut him off. “Good Sig hopes for a world of gold. Of magic unencumbered. I hope that my death will mean something… anything, to this boy I do not know. I hope that he will be better than he who came before. I hope, Mikael.” I grabbed his shoulder. “And I remember how you used to hope for things. Hope alone is not the only reason I do this. You signed my death the moment you took her pact, for I will never allow myself to live whilst you wallow in that rainy hell.”

  “What… what was I to do?” he wept. “She offered us a way, and I did not know it would mean this.”

  I tilted my head and smiled. “Know this, old friend. I do not blame you. I would’ve taken her deal myself, had she offered it to me. It was the only way.” I cackled. “Perhaps I might of given it more thought, though.”

  Mikael sniggered in his lamentation, his eyes straining themselves in the effort to not meet my own. “It was foolish.”

  “Aye, it was.” I sighed, turning back to the hill of flame, and my awaiting end. “We talk of fools as if they’re a bane, but to be foolish is to be human.” I took another step towards the hill, and turned back to Mikael. I… I’m scared. “There’s a dream, Mikael. A dream of gold. And it is the greatest one humanity has to offer.”