Kellehendros
Eternal Wanderer
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Like many days - especially of late - the day had begun with a fight.
If only it had been the Theos she was fighting.
“We’ve been over this plan sixteen times, Damascus. It’s perfect. It’ll work, and I don’t want to hear it again.” The young woman stalked along the edges of the tent, her movements constrained by the planning table that dominated its center, and the lanky man seated at its head, scrutinizing the map which lay atop it. The pacer was likewise slender, with raven dark hair bound in a ponytail that reached to the small of her back, and a pair of oddly mismatched eyes. Those orbs - one blue and one green - roved the heavy canvas of the pavilion’s walls, searching restlessly for something - searching for a way out. Her hands, quick and darting as little birds, smoothed along the sash of red silk bound over her waist; it was a rather distinctive accessory, and new in comparison to the faded blue of her arming jacket and the dingy no-color of the pants tucked into her battered boots.
Her companion sighed, recognizing the gesture and doing his best to ignore it. He ran a hand through his own short-trimmed locks, black as the woman’s above a face even younger than hers. She was hardly cognizant of her own motion, that furtive check of the cloth-wrapped stones about her waist, but the man knew it well. He had seen it countless times and appreciated the tell for what it was. After all, the two had grown up together, and he was well aware by now of what his sister looked like when she was spoiling for a fight. Scrubbing at his face with a hand, he leaned back in the camp chair, carefully settling both palms on the gouged and dinted table surface, and even more consciously resisting the urge to let his blue eyes track his sibling’s path. “Three times, Ebriva. In the last week. This is important. We have to pre-”
“Prepare for every eventuality.” The woman interjected woodenly, stopping mid-turn and cutting her gaze over to her brother. His own outfit was little better off than hers: leather armor with more than its fair share of tale-telling scars, a helm with a notched visor that rested on the table nearby, a fresh wooden shield awaiting painting that was clipped to a longsword in its worn sheath. Her teeth closed on her lip as she sucked in a sharp breath, clamping off the words that had been about to come flooding out next. Their father’s hair had been wheat blonde, and his eyes had been mismatched - Ebriva had gotten that strange quirk from him - but sometimes Damascus looked so much like the man that seeing her brother was like a knife in the young woman’s guts. “I,” she stammered, forcing her thoughts away from that pain, “I g-get it. I get it. It’s just… I can’t…”
Damascus stood, eyes slanting to the tent flap a moment before returning to his sister. “Ebriva, I need you, okay? We need you. We need you to focus. The timing has to be perfect or else-”
“Stop. Just… Stop.” She lifted her hands, pushing against the empty air in front of her in helpless frustration, as if the gesture itself could deny his words. “I can’t do this now. I need to… I have to…”
“Have to… what, Ebriva? We need to be in position in two hours. Now isn’t the time to go gallivanting off in search of-”
“Don’t,” the young woman bristled, slashing a hand through the air to interrupt Damascus’ words. “Please, just… don’t.”
“You’re a Stormcaller, Ebriva.” His voice wavered a moment as his own grief welled up. “The… the only Stormcaller since mom… since mom…”
“Don’t put this on me. Don’t you dare put this on me!” She snapped, jabbing a finger at the table and its map. “The Theos did this. I didn’t ask for… for any of it. I did not ask to be a ‘hero’.” Her throat burned from the venom of that word, falling like bile from her lips. “They killed them, both of them. And I will see every last one of them charred to cinders for it. Do you understand me?”
Damascus held very still, struggling with his own desire to agree. “We’re better than that.”
“Are we?” Ebriva’s hands curled into fists, impacting the table as she leaned towards her brother, eyes sparking. “Better yet, do we have to be?”
He looked away. “Yes, we do..”
“That’s what dad said. And they put a knife in his back.”
Wood groaned in protest as the young man slammed a hand against it. “Do you think I don’t remember that? I was there, Ebriva! I watched those zealots carve their verses into our mother’s skin! I would kill them, every one, and each more painfully than the last. But it. Is. Not. The. Way.”
“The way. The way?” She thundered, seething as the words tumbled out one after another, a torrent of fury bearing her along. “And who gets to decide what the way is, with the continent soaked in blood, the Crown lost, and for all we know another egg waiting to hatch?”
Damascus looked up at his sister, cold and steady in the face of her wrath. “Cerrai would have told us if there was another egg.”
“Cerrai,” the Stormcaller scoffed, “Cerrai hasn’t said a word since mother died. Nor Grathim, nor Vestes, nor any of them. Don’t trouble me with gods, little brother. The Theos have given me more than enough of that, thank you.”
“Your powers are a gift from-”
“A gift?” Ebriva laughed, the sound harsh and trenchant. “Yes, some gift. Isn’t that what got them killed in the end, Damascus? A disagreement over gifts?”
“You… Sol, you don’t mean that.”
“Don’t call me that. We agreed, before we started down this road.” The young man shifted slightly, starting to take a step, to close the distance between them. His hand lifted and he started to say… something. The Stormcaller stopped him with her eyes. “No. No, Damascus.”
“It’s your na-”
“Not anymore!” She flared, the air around her crackling with snapping static. “Don’t you get it? Nothing has changed. Nothing!” Ebriva swept a hand over the table, a furious motion encompassing not just it, but the little camp that was nestled beyond the canvas walls. “We. Are. Losing. We are desperate, and we are failing.” She turned, snatching her staff from the stand near the tent flap. “I can’t do this.” The Stormcaller stopped, somehow, just at the exit of the pavilion, chest heaving as she fought to slow her hammering heart, to breathe through the impossible blockage of memory and heartache in her throat. “I… I’ll be back.”
And then she was gone.
Damascus sank back into his chair, leaning forward and bracing his head in his hands. Blue eyes stared down at the map before him, marked as it was with meticulous notes and lines detailing the movements of the caravan, the mountain pass, the raid plan. He saw none of it.
All he could see was the frightened gaze of a furious little girl, and a sky boiling black with an impending storm. “I… I’m sorry, Sol.”
It was cold when she woke.
Ebriva came to with a gasp, thrashing wildly up to her knees, head whipping left and right in search of threats. But there was nothing, only silent stones in contrast, dark and light.
Drawing in deep breaths and letting them slowly out, the Stormcaller tried to gather her wits. She remembered leaving the tent, storming out into the camp, and then… nothing.
No, not nothing, and not the collection of tents in their sheltered forest glade. Ebriva had stepped out of the tent… and into a void.
A void? Her mind pawed at the idea, returning a welter of confused impressions. Sunshine. Shadow. Incredible pressure. Falling. Wind whispering over open fields. Cold. The scent of lightning folded through raindrops. Grit. Fire crackling and spitting. Laughter, mad laughter.
And behind it all a slow and measured ticking.
“My head…” She muttered woozily, making the mistake of giving it a shake in an attempt to clear her mind. That produced a flash of pain far more real than… whatever she was remembering. One hand rose, fingers lightly probing, drawing a wince as they encountered the tender, swelling line of what would no doubt be a lovely bruise. That was definitely real. Ebriva searched blindly for her staff, letting her eyes continue to roam the surrounding area until at last her questing digits curled around the metal rod and she used it to lever herself to her feet.
“Where… what..?” The Stormcaller was in some manner of street, hemmed in by the facades of what must be buildings, but they were all of stone. Each structure, so far as she could tell, was graven from a single massive crag - dark or light - fit as snugly in its place as the flags making up the road. Doors had been carved into the rock, complete with hinges, knobs, and keyholes. But it took only a moment of consideration to see the falsehood for what it was. The hollows where a key might be inserted were just that, holes with no inner gearing, and a quick check revealed the hinges were nothing more than shapes chiseled out of the surrounding stone.
The windows, hewn with latches and sashes - even shutters - of their own, were just as false. Ebriva reached out, lightly touching the “pane” of the casement before her. Her fingertips traced along delicately etched lines, marveling a moment at how long it must have taken to accomplish just this bit of relief-carved illusion. It seemed she was staring into a dining room whose table was set for a fancy dinner that would never be served. There were plates, serving spoons, a soup tureen. And this… this was just one window. Half a dozen other buildings nearby had windows of their own, some more than one. A swift glance up revealed shop signs, faux tiles and shingles, even a fantastic replication of a thatched roof.
It was astonishing. The attention to detail, the time it must have taken. And… why? What was it all for?
That question was disturbing in a way she could not quite articulate. Turning from the window - and blaming the shiver coursing through her limbs on the chill in the air - the young woman looked for… anything really. A person. A dog. A carpet. Something that wasn’t more of the brooding monochromatic perfection around her. But there was nothing. Everything was discouragingly precise, as if this “city” was just one massive display, like the front window of a store. One with a particularly prim and proper clientele.
“Gloomy, wouldn't you say?”
Ebriva gasped, spinning, ozone stench searing the air as her staff hummed through a rising strike rife with crackling lightning. The bolt left the tip of the metal rod, splashing against a nearby slab carved to mimic a farrier’s shop. Thunder boomed, echoes and reechoes chasing each other down the reverberant lanes, fading slowly away. But there was no one there. Only a black, sooty splotch on the once pristine white of the marble building. “Who’s there?”
“Do you not know?”
The voice was behind her again, and the Stormcaller whirled, her weapon whistling its sharp-toned song as it flew. But there was no one there. Darting glances left and right, the young woman edged slowly down the street. She had no idea where she was going, but right now she had no desire to remain where she was. “Show yourself.”
“You don’t recognize me.” It was a man’s voice, smooth, calm. There was something else to it though, something… resonant, distantly remembered, and flavored with the faintest hint of disappointment. “It has not been so very long as all that, So-”
Thunder snarled overhead as she slammed the butt of her rod against the ebon flag at her feet. “That is not my name!”
“But it could be again.”
Ebriva twisted, rod humming through scything, useless arcs as she turned and turned, trying to locate the speaker. “Who are you? Answer me!”
But there was no one there. Only the voice at her back. “I am the one between, child.”
Nearly howling in fury she pivoted again, to find that where before there had been a maze of streets, enigmatic “buildings” nestled each in their places, now there was a plaza. At its center was a circular platform, and on that low footing… a statue. A finger of gelid fear traced its way down her spine; the Stormcaller moved forward reluctantly over the paving stones - laid here in unrelieved dark pavers that contrasted the alabaster display at the square’s heart.
The style was almost abstract in its simplicity: A man garbed in a cleric’s robes stood, his shoulders broad, his bearing proud, with strength writ into every line of him. Before him he held a sword, straight as justice, sharp as truth, and his expression - such as it was rendered - conveyed some mixture of resolve and sadness. In his hand the blade was angled - just so - to slip beneath the chin of a woman kneeling before him, resting in the tender hollow of her throat. She was clothed in fragments, in scraps, huddled in defeat, and yet her face, turned up to meet the gaze of the man above, was filled with jealousy, anger, and the subtlest tint of fear.
It was called Triumph, or the Rise of the Grand Theogenist. But on the streets it had other names. They called it Retribution, and Earlon's Verse. There was another epithet though, one that she knew very well. After all, Menlo Pre, self-proclaimed greatest Indaraan sculptor of his age, had hurled it at her, just before she had blasted him through the wall of the workshop where he had carved it.
"The Fall of the Sea-Witch," she whispered. Ebriva stared at the statue, hands clenched with white-knuckle intensity around the metal rod as she struggled to draw breath. For an instant she was there again, a child watching the man who called himself Kenal's Hammer as he drove five handspans of sharpened steel through her mother's neck. There was a pressure in her chest, and - without entirely willing it - the Stormcaller stepped forward, as if to mount the platform. For a moment she was frozen that way, caught in an instant of indecision, her foot just above the surface of the pale dais, ears filled with the sound of distant thunder.
But it was only for a second.
The young woman stepped up, and the weapon in her hands whistled, crashing against the underside of Earlon’s alabaster arm. There was no hesitation now as Ebriva pivoted, turning and smashing her staff down into the statue’s leg, and then whirling to hammer it across the back. Distantly, the Stormcaller was aware that she was screaming, a banshee’s shriek of incandescent hate as she rained blows down upon the unresisting stone. Cracks spiderwebbed across the sculpted Theogenist; chips whickered off in the hum of her stave’s flight, growing under the young woman’s onslaught until chunks of pale stone bashed away from the abhorrent memorial.
She felt the shock through her body as she fell to her knees, heaving for breath, choking on sobs. “It isn’t fair.” Her weapon rang to the footing below, clattering away as the Stormcaller clenched one hand into a fist, beating it against the unyielding stone with bruising intensity. “It isn’t right!” Tears tracked down her cheeks as she shuddered, rocking back and hugging herself tightly, trying and failing to regain some semblance of control. “He’s… He… He is a monster. A beast! She didn’t… We didn’t…”
There was no answer, not even from the voice - whoever it had been - that had spoken before. Ebriva wept alone, like so many times before, and when at last she had shed all the tears she had she felt… empty, hollow, brittle, as if her bones were made of glass. It was not a new sensation, and she focused on her breathing; taking slow, deep breaths, the Stormcaller held them for several seconds before releasing them. Let it flow. Let it ebb. Let it flow. Let it ebb…
Time seemed to mean little in this place, but long or short, the young woman managed, eventually, to calm herself.
Letting out a last sigh, she reached out and lifted her rod, rising and turning back towards the sculpture. Mismatched eyes went wide and she hissed in dismay, finding the formerly desecrated work to be whole, as pristine as when she had first seen it. Ebriva’s gaze darted from her staff, to the statue, and back again, but both were utterly devoid of mark or sign of damage. She might have imagined the entire episode, but for the dull ache of exertion in her shoulders and arms, and the faint throbbing bruise along the side of her right hand.
Shuddering, the Stormcaller stepped back, off the platform. Shaking her head she turned resolutely away from the sculpture, letting her eyes scan the strange horizon of this unsettling place.
There, far in the distance, two towers - one ivory, one onyx - rose over this… this Chequered City. Ebriva took another deep breath and squared her shoulders. It was as good a place to start as any.
She had been walking for hours.
That was what it felt like, anyway. Turning down silent streets, cutting across empty squares, trudging along deserted boulevards, trying to reach the twin spires she could still see in the distance. But it was like a dream, walking and walking through an unchanging landscape - and getting nowhere. “An incredibly boring dream,” the Stormcaller groused to herself, pausing a moment to rub a hand over her face wearily.
Her eyes opened to the twilight.
The change was so abrupt the young woman flinched, looking around in confusion. A moment ago - less - it had been day. Now the light was dwindling rapidly away. Already the stone buildings around her had lost their hard edges; their obsessive detail work was obscured by the swift-encroaching night. Faint and fading, she could just make out the peaks of her tower guides as utter darkness seemed to settle over her in a smothering blanket.
“You must prepare.”
Ebriva’s head snapped left, mismatched orbs straining to make out the source of the voice. It was the same one she had heard before; she was certain of that much. “Who are you? What’s going on here?” It took perhaps half a second of silence in reply for her frustration to boil over. “Tell me!”
“Prepare, daughter of Asa.”
The Stormcaller inhaled sharply, fighting an instant of wrenching pain. “You… You knew my mother?”
“There is no time left for questions.”
He seemed so sure that she blindly reached down to brush at her left hip, feeling silk beneath her fingertips. A trio of stones, bound in crimson, hummed there. Swiftly, precisely, her hand moved to another triplet - inert where they lay across her stomach - and then to a third set bound along her right hip in similar stillness. Enough to defend herself with, if the voice in the shadow was right about-
The small hairs along her arms prickled, rising to attention. Chills chased each other along her skin, raising gooseflesh in their wake, and suddenly, Ebriva was very ready to believe her unseen advisor. She closed her eyes, pushing away the feeling of impending peril and focusing on breathing, on finding the quiet center where - if she was lucky - she could still hear her mother’s voice.
“There is the now. Nothing more, and nothing less. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is not promised. Breathe, flow, and let the sky flow through you.”
At her right side the onyx chunks began to hum, a faint vibration felt through the swaddling cloth. The young woman opened her eyes, opened her mouth, but in the instant before she could speak the void swallowed her up.
In her absence, the thoroughfare was as silent and still as it had ever been, but for the faintest feeling of presence, and the quiet sigh of something unseen.
“Now we will see if you do or die, Asa’s daughter…”
She was suffocating in darkness.
It was in her eyes, stuffing up her ears, pressing against her skin, gagging her voice. Unrelieved, uncaring, unabated, the stygian nothingness crushed her. Until, apparently tired of toying with her, it cast her out again.
Ebriva staggered, leaning on her rod for support as feet that had moments ago reported there was nothing at all supporting them quite suddenly informed her of the presence of ground.
She coughed, gagging as her nose related that though there had been no scent, now the earth was rank with old, stale blood and the stench of burning.
The Stormcaller winced, narrowing her eyes as they complained of the light, dim though it was, that slashed at them after the total blackness.
Her skin shivered, rippling as heat bloomed across it, for seconds ago there had been only cold emptiness.
Though if any of her had the right to truly complain it was her ears, which were assaulted by a cacophony of screams after the stifling silence. Agony, fury, desperation, fear, hate. Where else but on the battlefield could you find such a mixture?
Over the hue and cry rose a final voice, deep, authoritative voice, one that would not be ignored.
“Pawns..?” Ebriva turned, touching a hand to her chest reflexively as she cast the spell. The strength of earth flowed through her, radiating out into the tired fabric of her arming jacket. For a time the enhancement would give her more protection, a thing that might be necessary given the shocking presence - and proximity - of the motley assortment she saw around the circle close by.
“You want us… to fight?” She almost whispered the question, shifting the grip of her left hand on the staff so the weapon slanted across her body defensively. Her right hand touched the sash over her hip, confirming the right-side trio were silent again.
Whetting her lips, the Stormcaller let her gaze flash around the group, realizing the problem swiftly.
If this was a fight, then she was already at a disadvantage.
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