Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story

by Kirill Klevanski

  “Run as much as you want!” He laughed, clutching the Essence in his hand. Around him, the Legion was dying, not realizing that it was killing itself. The stars continued to twinkle, seemingly indifferent to the chaos happening below them. “Run all you want, but you’re still dead!”

  By morning, the king would have learned about Ash’s betrayal. He’d then order that the mage be stripped of all regalia and awards, and that all land and coin be taken away from him. Any mention of the young man would be erased from the scrolls and chronicles. Oblivion will take not only the name of the man he had trusted as his own brother and son, but also all of those who had gone with him. The Seventh Legion will be remembered not for its deeds, but for its transgressions.

  Posters would be displayed all over the continent, offering a reward of five thousand gold pieces to whoever brought the head of the murdered whose name could no longer be spoken.

  But none of that would happen until the next morning. Until then, the stars would continue to twinkle above the forest of Mons.

  ***

  Ash staggered through the trees, pressing his hand to the wound. He knew that if he pulled out the dagger, life would begin to pour out of him faster than sand from a broken hourglass. Running, he’d sometimes stumble over roots. Tearing his hands on the bark, he kept his weak body on its feet by leaning against trees. He was aware that he wouldn’t get up if he fell. Unfortunately, sometimes, no matter how much one tried, you couldn’t go against the will of the Gods.

  Making his way through a bush, Ash realized too late that there was a cliff ahead. He managed to grab onto a branch but only experienced even greater pain when a long, deep cut reddened his palm. He fell, sliding down the slope. With each blow, the dagger sunk deeper into his wound. The agony became so intense that he began to taste metal as blood filled his mouth – he had bitten off the tip of his tongue. After that came a blow that knocked the air out of one lung and filled the other with blood. And then everything calmed down. The sky no longer played tag with the earth and the stars no longer flickered like torches.

  Ash lay in a ditch, feeling the grass under his back become wet with blood. Luckily, he didn’t break anything during the fall.

  “You’re here,” a gurgling rasp came out of his throat along with blood.

  A shadow flickered in the crown of one of the trees looming above and another figure appeared in the ditch. The stranger was a short man, dressed in blue robes and sandals made of wood and hemp rope, but his power was almost palpable. Even the wooden rosary clutched tightly between his thick fingers couldn’t detract from this.

  Without knowing why, Ash smiled wryly at the shaven head of the strange man, whose eyes were more like narrow slits and skin the color of amber.

  “How did you notice me?” the man asked in a high-pitched, somewhat squeaky voice.

  “More like… when,” the young man wheezed, staring into the dark, almost black eyes. “I noticed you… in the shadows… a couple of months ago… You’ve… been following us…”

  The man shook his head.

  “You. I’ve been following you,” he explained.

  Ash fell silent. Spitting blood, he repeated one of Racker’s favorite jokes.

  “Sorry, you’re not… my type.”

  The man just stared at him.

  “You know,” he said, somehow strangely, “I was ordered to kill you. I descended from the mountain, left my brothers and the monastery, traveled through the wildest and most terrible lands, hoping to meet a worthy opponent… I thought that there must’ve been a reason that I went through the trials written in my scroll of destiny by Liao-Feng himself. But what do I see? A brat that hasn’t even lived his twentieth winter.”

  “You know,” Ash smirked, surprising himself, “I’m kinda dying here… You better hurry up with… your speeches…”

  “I should’ve killed you immediately.” The stranger sighed. “But I changed my mind. I waited and I watched, as the heavenly sage’s commandment dictated. I longed to see the darkness in your heart, but instead I saw nothingness. I should’ve killed you, but I kept watching.”

  “You really… like talking,” Ash wheezed, feeling his legs going cold. “Just like… my teachers…”

  “Well, I was awarded for my patience,” the man continued, ignoring Ash’s dying comments. “I’ve watched you bloom like a flower. I saw how you saved the foal, how you put the comb in the girl’s hand, how you fed the children, and how you freed the prisoners. At that moment, I realized that I had no right to judge someone who hasn’t been born yet. That’s why, by the wisdom of Liao-Feng, I grant you a possibility of rebirth. Or, if you’d like, a quick death.”

  The stranger leaned down, placing a sinewy hand on the young man’s chest. He uttered something Ash didn’t understand and stared into his eyes.

  “If you don’t feel pain, I’ll kill you. If you survive what’s to follow, you just may be able to live. Prepare.”

  A soft, white light enveloped his palm.

  “The Art of Mok-Pu: Resonance!”

  Chapter 35

  22nd day of the month of Zund, 322 A.D., Age of the Drunken Monk, Forest of Shadows

  “I t’s sure taking a while,” Blackbeard muttered, watching Ash raise a shield over their campsite.

  For half an hour, the young mage had been drawing a circle on the ground around their camp with his staff. All this time, the rest of the squad was on guard, covering him in case something happened. They had to remain huddled inside the circle, however, as Ash needed a reference point of its center. If he made a mistake by a couple of degrees, he’d have to do everything all over again. Mary couldn’t take that risk – it was already way too late in the evening, so she did her best to make sure everything went smoothly. The rest of the squad expressed their dissatisfaction by mumbling under their breaths.

  They all wanted to finally go to bed. The last few days had passed without incidents, but the Forest wasn’t a place for a picnic. People who found themselves here would often begin to think and do things that would normally seem impossible to them. This was often blamed on the oppressive atmosphere, eternal darkness, and the dancing shadows, which wasn’t far from the truth, but there was far more to it.

  Ash joined the lines and stood in the center, smiling as he squeezed himself between Lari and Tul. He then closed his eyes and began to speak in a hushed voice. His friends couldn’t hear the Words he spoke, just watch as his lips moved silently. Sometimes, Ash would tap the staff on the ground, making the circle glow and then become silent again.

  Lari still couldn’t forgive him for what he had done. Despite the fact that Ash had started to grow on him, he still considered the mage a charlatan unable to pull a rabbit out of a hat, let alone use a spell as complex as this one.

  Ash watched him out of the corner of his eye, remembering the Archmage’s lessons. The old man had taught him well, telling him about the secrets of magic. He liked to say that this art was a very complicated and confusing thing. Then again, that was how it was meant to be. As he explained it, magic was divided into two forms, both of which Ash was already familiar with: Words and spells.

  The latter were available to any mage, be they a master who knew the secrets of the oldest scrolls, or novices, who had nothing more than a spark of magic in them. In their essence, spells were just a string of specific Words. This was why a mage’s worth was determined not by the type but by the number of Words they knew.

  According to rumors, the most esteemed of mages could come up with about a hundred and twenty spell combinations, and the notorious Ash, about six hundred. Of course, not all spells were as simple as, say, levitation. Some of them required knowledge of many obscure Words as well as control over them. After all, it wasn’t enough to just say the Words, you also needed to put energy into them. However, more on that later.

  The Archmage, who liked to keep everything orderly, used to repeat the following: “In this world, there are several types of spells: ‘ordinary’ – ava
ilable even to novices, ‘complex’ – only for experienced mages, ‘serious’ – for those who had begun to look deeper into the workings of magic, and ‘great.’ ”

  These ‘great’ spells were often tales of bards and drunken babblers, but it was rumored that some mages were able to use them by combining more than three dozen Words and using an incredible amount of energy. The Circle of the Elements, being a great spell, according to reliable information, combined thirty-six Words.

  There was only one person in the Stumps who decided to count the number of Words Ash had used for his spell. By the time the red dome appeared above the clearing, the mage had already used twice the number he had claimed to know back in the tavern. Ash had used more than a hundred words in less than a month and a half of their campaign – an astonishing, almost impossible number. There were no more than a thousand magicians in the world who could boast of such knowledge.

  “Tul,” Mary called.

  The hunter nodded and walked over to the edge of the circle. However, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break through the barrier. He then nodded and went back to his sleeping bag – they had decided not to put up tents.

  “Good job, Ash,” Mary smiled, smacking the dazed young man on the shoulder.

  As far as he recalled, this was the first time that she had ever complimented him. His joy knew no bounds. Perhaps that was why he began to tug on the edge of Alice’s cloak, asking her to share a sleeping bag with him. Lari turned red with anger, but the young girl only laughed, not taking Ash seriously. He responded with a smile and a laugh, saying that he was only kidding.

  “All of you, to bed!” Mary ordered loudly. She was sure there was no way that anyone or anything would come through that barrier. “We get up at the crack of dawn!”

  The Stumps nodded and crawled into their bags, putting their weapons and armor next to them, just in case. The barrier was good, there was no denying it, but a little caution couldn’t hurt. Alice, noticing that Ash wasn’t sleeping, but smoking a pipe, crept up to him and wished him a good night.

  “Good night to you, too.” He nodded thoughtfully.

  Thinking that she was being ignored, Alice snorted resentfully and turned back. Burying her nose into the warm, cozy wool, she continued to watch with interest as Ash made the smoke take different shapes. Sometimes, they were ships floating over the grass, sometimes birds circling their heads, but more often than not, they were flowers playing in the thickets.

  Ash smoked his favorite tobacco from the southern plantations, listening to the nighttime song of cicadas and crickets. In this world of eternal gloom, the melody might’ve seemed out of place, but still they sang. During his stay in the mountain, he missed these musical crackles and creaks.

  Now, eight years after leaving the monastery, he couldn’t forget the evening and morning gong that announced the rise and set of Irmaril.

  Ash smiled at the memory, but didn’t dare lie down. Tonight, there would be an eclipse. Night would fall over the thirteen kingdoms, during which neither Myristal nor the moon would shine in the sky. During these nine hours of darkness, the most terrible creatures and monsters would come to visit their world with Helmer, the Lord of Nightmares, marching proudly at the head of this terrible parade.

  Helmer was an ancient demon who couldn’t be defeated even through the combined efforts of the ten Wandered Guilds. According to legend, the First Master had managed to seal a piece of the demon’s power in an artifact, which he was forced to constantly carry with him.

  Minutes passed, followed by hours. At one point, Ash put the pipe away and let out a sigh of relief. Perhaps the fairies had made a mistake and Helmer wasn’t really going after them, but somewhere on his own, demonic business.

  Unfortunately, this was not the case.

  Ash, before he even realized what had happened, gasped, feeling the weight of the abyss itself fall on the dome.

  It was dark before, but it seemed to get even darker now, as if the shadows themselves came alive, breathing, undulating, and devouring every ray that accidentally wandered into the dead, cursed woods. It crept closer and closer until it was basically stuck to the Circle.

  Ash retrieved a wooden rosary from under his shirt and placed it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He raised it to his chin and began to whisper a spell. To anyone else, it might’ve looked like he was praying, when in fact, he was embedding the Circle with his most powerful warding charms. Alas, he had never fully understood them, so they weren’t as strong as they could’ve been.

  The black fog spreading across the ground suddenly began to split into hundreds of tiny spheres – dark fairies, the filthy creatures. They came to the sleeping children, conjuring the most terrible nightmares in their innocent little minds. Individually, they weren’t particularly dangerous, but there were at least a thousand of them now. There was an entire army of these vile, fanged creatures with leathery wings. They resembled bats more than they did their forest cousins, with which they shared only common history and ancestors.

  “Ah, so there you are,” said a melodious, mesmerizing voice. “I expected a more… impressive-looking fellow, I’ll admit.”

  An unnaturally tall man stepped out of the darkness. Eight feet tall and as thin as a spear, he looked like an inept drawing of a novice apprentice. Who was drunk. And working in pitch darkness.

  On his head was a gray, wide-brimmed hat that hid his face, only occasionally allowing his left eye to twinkle with a crimson glow. His long hair flowed as if it was resting on water, but Ash felt no wind, only a dead calm.

  Helmer came closer, and through the slits on his torn coat, the same color as his hat, Ash saw eyes and smiles of terrible creatures. Dozens of pupils and hundreds of fangs peeked through the numerous holes. The demon walked smoothly as if he were walking on clouds instead of the ground. Empty sleeves of his coat fluttered behind him, and in his hands, folded across his chest, he held a bleeding sphere – a Demonic Essence. Little nightmares danced around his feet, flashing their toothy grins at the mage. A long piece of cloth separated from the coat, holding a small, simple burner. The flame dancing on the wick had a mystical purple glow.

  The demon sat opposite the mage. He reached out to the side, causing the fairies to stir. Soon, a bottle of expensive wine rolled down them like from some surreal conveyor belt.

  Helmer pulled a cup from the pocket of his coat and picked up the bottle by sending forth another ribbon of his coat to bring it to him.

  “Not bad,” he said, having tasted the wine. “You’re awfully rude, ignoring me like that.”

  Ash continued to move his lips soundlessly, sometimes shaking his rosary. The staff that lay on his lap flashed red every now and again, runes appearing and disappearing whenever a spell would become active. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t overcome Helmer’s power. The Circle began to weaken, cracks spreading over it like cobweb. Blood was pouring from his nose.

  “Oh, dear, I apologize about that,” Helmer drawled and waved his hand. The pressure immediately disappeared.

  Ash exhaled sharply and spat blood. He began to breathe more evenly, feeling the weight subside. The cracks instantly disappeared and the Circle shone with its faint, fiery glow once again.

  “Want some?”

  “I don’t drink wine,” Ash replied. Despite the fact that he was pale as chalk, he was smiling once again. But only a fool would be deceived by his kind, naïve smile. And Helmer was no fool.

  “Understandable.” The fairies spun again, taking the bottle away. “I’m not a big fan of strong spirits either. I prefer virgin blood, but it’s hard to come by these days.”

  “I hear the Crystal Forest is full of them.”

  The demon made a strange sound and adjusted his hat.

  “Maybe I’ll visit our long-eared friends, thanks for the tip.”

  “Oh, I’d love to hear a ballad about a demon whose jewels were adorned with arrows.”

  “Are there any more like i
t?” Helmer asked, genuinely interested. “I collect legends and poems about myself. They’re so fun.”

  “Really now? How do you do that?”

  “Simple!” the demon exclaimed with a smile. “I go to a bard’s house, cut off their head, and then take it with me. Sometimes, when the melancholy takes over, I make it sing. Sometimes, I make the heads sing in chorus.”

  Ash didn’t comment. For him, severed heads weren’t something shocking. Even singing ones.

  “You’re a fun fellow.” Helmer grinned. Instead of teeth, his mouth held the same nightmares as the holes in his cloak. “But, as they say – business before pleasure. I still have to conjure nightmares for little children, whisper sweet nothings into the ears of maidens, and make young men stray from their path, and so on and so forth, so here you go.”

  As if nothing had happened, the demon reached through the Circle and threw a black flute at the young man’s feet. At the same time, the rosary crumbled to dust and Ash began to wheeze again. Helmer abruptly pulled back his hand.

  “Pardon, I forget that the others aren’t so powerful.”

  “It’s all right.” Ash smiled, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Helmer slapped his knee. The fairies stirred and began to gradually retreat into the forest.

  “Bear in mind, help will come only once.”

  Ash looked at the flute, then back at him.

  “Why are you giving me this?”

  “Why? Well, you’re a young knight on a mission to save a princess! The daughter of king… Ga… Galahad? Gorgon? Garangan! That’s the name! I’ll help you out. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Have some trust!”

  Only a fool would think that a demon would help them out of the goodness of their heart. Ash knew very well that Helmer was doing this only because it benefited him somehow, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care what games the Order, Garangan, or this wretched demon were playing. If it was a problem, the Gods could interfere, this had nothing to do with him.