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Recar Dragonlance -> RE: The Cries of the Wind (8/2/2008 15:34:53)
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Chapter 1: Blinded and Buried
Don’t cry, Jason…everything will sort itself out. Just wait. Things have a way of fixing themselves.
“Didn’t I tell you that?”
Darn, I didn’t think you’d notice. Well, you know, it’s still good advice, even if you did give it.
“What do you mean by that? Anyway, I’m not crying!”
You ask too many questions. I’m leaving now. Promise me you’ll wake up.
“Sophia… Sophia...! I’m… I’m…”
Wake up!
“Sophia!” I shot up from underneath the cloth that draped over my body, immediately feeling the consequences of such an action. Three places in my chest echoed with a blistering pain that caused me to lay back down on the bed, cradling them in my arms. “Sophia…”
A soft giggle swiftly turned into a hearty laugh as the woman next to me approached. She placed a freezing hand on my forehead before smirking at me, her odd yellow eyes looking at something else.
“Sophia… We all wanna know where she is, kid,” she said, stepping on the bed so her heels dug into the mattress and, ripping the blanket from underneath me, she gave an almost pleasant smile. Almost. “But what I want to know is, what happened to Cohah?”
I grabbed the light red bed frame and pulled myself up. The woman standing on my bed was called Scarlet. The decorations and the colours of them all seemed to indicate that this was her dwelling. I looked around the room, eyeing what must have been a spare room in the mansion she lived in since this was the least decorated. Scarlet curtains, scarlet walls and even she wore a scarlet dress. There were one or two paintings, yet the main tones in these were, of course, light red. The carpet along the floor trailed up to a painted statue of a bird, the same shade as everything else in the room. I remember her calling that bird the Scarlet Ibis, though I never questioned her on why it was there. On the far right of the room, long windows showed the dark village.
“How am I supposed to know? I was unconscious in Cohah’s right-hand-man’s dining hall…Why aren’t I dead?” My hand shot straight to the amulet, sighing in relief once I felt the bumpy texture of the Gryphon’s talon under my fingers.
She ran a hand through her ginger hair before shrugging her shoulders. “We found you… The scouting party detected his power and went after you. Luckily I was there and made sure you were alright.” She jumped off the bed and started walking towards the tall windows. “You were out for three days.”
“I… I actually Called my Guardian Beast,” I stammered, causing her to spin around. A grin grew on her face. “The Gryphon… Like Crimson said… It was the Gryphon.”
She giggled - a light, almost girly laugh. “Crimson is chasing after Cohah himself. If you can give me any information, he might not die on his way. So, how did Cohah escape? The big lightning bolt thingy?” She turned back around and continued to walk towards the window. I looked past her, looking out to the field like she was. I could see myself reflected in the glass, so I nodded, knowing she could see me, too. “Good. I have a job for you in the meantime. Go into the village below; some Yayolite nut jobs are causing trouble…”
I started to laugh, but a pulse of pain told me to stop. “I can’t fight.” Pointing to my wounds, I shook my head.
“Don’t be so negative. You’re a fully fledged Caller now, so go do battle like you were made to do.” Her hand pointed to the door. “I left a handgun and a sword for you. Have fun, kid.”
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A boy, about the age of ten, scrambled across the floor, his eyes wide and his breathing faster than a marathon runner’s at the end of a race. Nobody was in the street so no one was here to witness what was going on – of course, if anyone had seen it, then no one would do a thing. Blue eyed and blonde-haired, he was a perfect Yayolite. Except a loaf of bread laid beside him, which the pair of Yayolites seemed pretty annoyed at.
The two Yayolites wore long, azure coats that trailed down their body and stopped at their ankles. On the bottom half, they wore black trousers. A blade was gripped in one of their hands: a long sword, with the words ‘The Heaven’s Will is in this Blade’. At the bottom of the hilt, a cerulean gem was embedded into them. Only one of the Yayolites pointed their blades at the young boy, though both of them frowned with condemning, judgemental eyes.
“I said boy,” the man holding the blade, with bleached blonde hair that waved in the bitter autumn wind, said in a stern, harsh voice, “Stand up. You are coming with us.”
Tears dripped down the boy’s young face, his body shaking all at once. His eyes shot from one Yayolite to the other, his heartbeat growing stronger with each glance.
“He said stand up,” the woman standing next to him bent down and reached for the boy in a rapid movement. The boy only had to blink before seeing the pale-faced woman on top of him. However, before the hand reached the trembling young boy, a bullet tore through the air, slamming into the gauntlet of the woman. Both of them turned in unison to see the mysterious attacker, their blades pointed in my direction. “You are under arrest by the Order of Yayole, place the gun down heathen!”
I shook my head, taking a few steps forward while casually waving my gun through the air. “No.”
They both seemed taken aback by this statement, but the man stepped forward. “Then we shall remove it!”
The man was the first off his feet, leaping towards me and swinging the long sword with great, unnatural force. I jumped backwards myself, raising my gun and firing a few bullets at him. With great ease, he destroyed them with simple swipes. I took a moment to gaze into his eyes, to see the overconfidence glow in the blue irises. My left foot slammed behind me and I raised my hands that were shaped as if I was holding a sphere.
At first, he raised an eyebrow. But soon he realised what exactly was going on and started to panic. His grip on the blade grew tighter causing a strange aurora to flow from his hands and up the blade. The words engraved onto the sword started to light up in the azure glow before the entire blade became this light. He pulled the blade back and swung the blade. An azure shockwave the size of a house grinded through the ground, tearing it apart on its pathway towards myself.
I took a few deep breathes, blocking out the world around me for just a few seconds. Concentrating on the space in-between my hands, the flow of my spiritual energy pushed through my body. It moved fast, like a rush of horses scrambling away from its home when someone let it out. Goosebumps appeared on all the skin it flowed passed, causing a tingling sensation to spark throughout me. This was until it reached their gateway: the palms. In the void between my hands, the energy began to swirl in every random direction. It twisted and turned, going in every direction before fading away. However, some of the energy stayed behind. The energy that was left formed some weird shape, resembling that of a scimitar sword trapped inside a circular bond.
The shape just materialised when the shockwave struck me. It felt like running headfirst into a wall, except when you run into the wall, it explodes. I flew backwards, tumbling across the floor of the dusty dirt-track road of the village. The identical houses around me seemed to twirl around me as pain throbbed from the three scars on my body.
Get up Jason! I need you to protect the boy…I need you to do that for me. Don’t ask questions, just do it.
“A Caller... Lucien does not want him living,” The man said, panting.
“Step away from the boy,” I ordered, getting to my feet and moving my hands upwards into the sphere shape position again. “Move away from him now.”
The woman standing over him with her point of the blade touching his face began to crack a smile, though she swiftly got a hold of herself. The man merely gripped hold of his blade again, causing the azure energy to flow upwards from the hilt again.
“Let us see if you can Call quicker than I can kill you.” He moved his blade so that he held it in the air, allowing him to perform the strike strong enough to attack me.
I smiled, keeping my hands in that position without stirring. The man waved his sword, creating the giant shockwave to grind through the earth towards me. I channelled the energy, immediately causing the image that appeared before to form again. In a flash of light, there was another explosion. This time, a Beast stood guard over me.
The Beast had the stature of a slender human. Over its face, a blank, rusted iron mask blocked out any features that it might have had. From the mask, strange mauve hair seemed to be stained in blood due to the cloudy sky, though this wouldn’t be that strange considering they appeared to be like long blades. Iron rings wrapped around the body of the Beast as if it were a mummy, with bits of decaying flesh showing through the gaps in the armour. The strangest thing about this Beast was that in place of arms and legs were blades. Two curved blades replaced its feet, which it used to skate across the battlefield whereas two scimitar blades replaced its forearms.
“Erikna,” I panted while wiping sweat from my brow, “meet Yayolite. Yayolite, meet Erikna, the Beast of Blades. I thought you were taught about Callers? The energy pattern was already made; I could Call Erikna whenever I wanted after that.”
The Yayolite took a few steps backwards, though his sword stayed steady in his hands. “I will have to kill your Beast…”
Erikna immediately started skating forward, slicing its twin blades as it reached the man. He blocked one strike yet the other cut him with ease. The iron blades cut the armour; even if it didn’t go all the way through, at least Erikna was able to hit him. The Beast stopped in its place to twirl back round, moving in for a second assault. After a quick glance to inspect his armour, the man jumped into the air, creating the azure energy that flowed up the blade.
Erikna darted towards the man, using all the power in its skinny, rotten legs to push itself forward. Like a bullet, it managed to launch itself into the sky. However, it was unable to reach the lengths the Yayolite did. Instead, it aimed the blade-arm up at the man preparing to attack. The blade launched from its arm, keeping attached to the body through an extremely long and – again – rusted chain. The words on the blade were not even illuminated before the blade struck the Yayolite. It rammed itself inside the armour, cutting the flesh only a little bit. He fell to the ground, plummeting with great speed due to the anchor attached to him by the Beast. Once he struck the ground, he was out cold.
“Your-” I turned to the woman, but she disappeared, leaving the boy who was drenched in his own sweat. “Damn, gone.”
I moved my hands into the sphere position, causing Erikna to evaporate into loads of tiny little sparks. They flew into the space between the hands before the symbol faded away.
“Your not a Yayolite…so that means you’re an Earthican,” a woman’s voice said in a relaxed tone, causing me to spin round and aim the handgun at her.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, eyeing the large automatic rifle that she rested across her shoulders so she could lay her hands on it.
“No one in particular…not a Caller, not an Earthican and definitely not a Yayolite.” She removed her hand from the rifle and straightened out the straw hat on her head. “This is Earthican territory, so why are Yayolites coming here? In fact, how did they even get in? I was told I was safe in this village…You Earthican’s are getting sloppy…”
I shook my head violently, wincing my eyes as I did so. “Stop siding them with me! I’m with no one…” I began to trail off, looking off into the distance. From the corner of my eye, I could see the boy starting to pick himself up. “You, boy, stay there.”
The boy froze completely, his eyes as wide as they were when the Yayolite pointed her blade at him. My attention then moved to the girl, since I was satisfied that the boy was so scared that if a kitten told him to stay in his place, he would. She wore dark blue, mini-short jeans, revealing her long, quite muscular legs. On her top half was a chequered shirt of red and white, with the buttons done up and the sleeves rolled up. She wore leather boots. Also, long brown hair flowed from underneath the hat.
“Are you a cowgirl?” I said, smirking.
“Are you into certain strange things that girls like me should stay away from?” She giggled and pointed to my clothing.
Black leather trousers and a black leather coat that was done up was wrapped around my body. “It’s easy to move in and it’s comfy.” I rolled my eyes, turning to the boy and started walking over to him. “Why didn’t you help me with that big gun of yours if you aren’t a Yayolite?”
She shrugged her shoulders and started to follow me. “More fun. And you probably would have sent that ugly Beast after me.”
I brushed off her comments, ignoring them as I walked to the boy. He raised his arms in defence but I merely placed a hand on his shoulder. At first he flinched, but then he relaxed and looked up at me.
“Hey mate, are you ok?” I said, trying to use the friendliest tone I could conjure up. Unfortunately, I only sounded like a middle-aged man greeting someone in a pub: too jolly and too rough to be comforting. His hands moved back down to his sides, revealing a face drenched in beads of sweat and tear drops. I looked into his eyes and jumped backwards in surprise. There, in the pupils of the young boys eyes, were clouds swirling round as if a deadly storm was brewing in some forgotten part of the sea. “You’re a Caller! How hasn’t anyone noticed that? You must be like ten…”
He sniffed, smiling at my jolt of surprise. “When…” his voice was high and shaky, “when I was five, they tried to take me away…but I…got away.”
“I’ve got to go back now, do you-?”
“Don’t leave me! Please, she’ll come back!” He leapt forward and wrapped his arms around me.
I patted his back before pushing him from around my waist. “Shh, don’t worry; I’ve got a safe place for you. It’s a mansion, that’s pretty cool isn’t it?”
He looked up with teary eyes with the cuteness of a kitten, making even me think ‘awww’, “Will you be there?”
“Of course,” I nodded. “Let’s go.”
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