A howl of pain burst from young Ruby’s lips, a cacophony of anguish. Her parents glanced at each other, before another crack of the cane, and another growl-screech-yell-roar.
The Rubys thought again: ‘I am normal, I am normal, I am normal.’
The young girl sobbed and pleaded with her parents.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t do it again. I’m not sure I can-.’
Ruby’s spectral form begged for this memory to end, and soon enough it did. She watched as the little girl’s body instantly tripled in size and elongated. The fur that coated her body was striped. Tooth and nail lengthened and sharpened, reaching for the humans in front of her. A flash-flurry of claws and blood, and it was over.
The white mists stirred once more and the ancient machine gave another adventurer a choice.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
--
The mists billowed around Rangrim and then parted. Hadn’t he just been elsewhere? His spectral presence now hovered over Hero’s Point, the grassy mound that overlooked his mountain village. This memory was only a few years’ old, so he still remembered it clearly. Head in a fug, eyes bagged and crusty, a younger version of Rangrim was gradually becoming aware of a heavy shoe kicking his rear.
‘Wh-,’ the younger Rangrim tried to form the words, but his mouth felt glued together.
‘Wake up, you lump.’
Rangrim cringed at himself. He looked disgustingly hungover, faltering as he tried to open his eyes against the too-bright sun. Rangrim surveyed the crowd of people that had come to watch this pathetic spectacle. They all looked so disappointed, and was that a surprise? They had every right to have expected more.
‘Wh-what’s going on?’
‘Get up you stupid oaf and look at what you’ve done.’
Grimbald, the village elder, chastised the young dwarf. With an effort, Rangrim raised himself up, rocked unsteadily, and stumbled back onto one knee. The world span wildly around him and, after a brief pause, he vomited onto the elder’s shoes.
‘Oh, Rangrim.’
It was his mother’s voice that really sucker-punched him. Whenever this memory plagued his dreams, this was the moment that lingered throughout the following day.
He had had a pleasant childhood. The mountain life was frugal, but he had wanted for nothing. Rangrim had always felt that his parents adored him, and he was particularly close with his mother.
The memory-Rangrim was yanked to his feet by the village elder.
‘Anything missing?’
The elder shook him and shouted into his ear.
‘Do you see anything missing?’
It hadn’t been unusual for his clan to be teetotal and proud of it. When he was younger, he hadn’t even heard of ale or alcohol. It was only once he was a teenager that he had discovered it.
Looking on, Rangrim watched himself struggling to focus, and shook his head. He knew he had never been the sharpest knife in the box, but this interrogation made him look stupid.
‘Th-the sword! It’s been lifted out of the-’
‘Yes. Yes it has, hasn’t it.’
Grimbald thrust him forward and he fell to his knees once more. Slǣpan Gigas lay flat on the ground in front of an ancient stone block.
When he turned eighteen, he travelled to his cousin’s clan, who lived on another mountain within the same range. There were no puritan notions in this clan, and all would drink heavily every day. Rangrim had his first sip of ale and was instantly hooked.
‘Rollo and Khanan’s stores were both raided last night, the sword was lifted, and here you are. Do you think that’s a coincidence?’
‘But the legend?’
The legend. That was something else his cousin had set him right on. ‘Why would your village be protected by an ancient, legendary sword that could only be wielded by its one true hero?’ he’d said. And Rangrim had no answer. They had all laughed about it, taking it in turns to tell stories about the ever more ridiculous heroes coming to claim the sword.
‘I’d rather the sword lay dormant for twelve more centuries than for you to be the hero,’ thundered Grimbald.
Memory-Rangrim bowed in shame. He glanced up to look for his parents, but they had already begun to walk away, shaking their heads in disappointment, mortified that their son had brought such dishonour to the clan.
He’d had no idea what he was doing when he drunkenly raised the sword from its block the night before. He was just trying to clear a space on the block to rest his head, and had pushed aside what he’d thought was a tree branch or an old shepherd’s crook. Slǣpan Gigas had somehow chosen him, Rangrim, as its hero, and he couldn’t have felt less up to the job title.
The white mists billowed around the memory, wiping it and surrounding Rangrim. Once they’d cleared, he saw that he was still sitting on Hero’s Point. It was nighttime and Slǣpan Gigas stood erect, back in its ancient, immovable stone block. The barrel of ale he had brought with him stood untapped.
A loud clunking sound. The churning of metal. An ancient language thought dead to the world.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
--
Corinne heard the mist whooshing past her, fizzing in her ears. Its touch felt cold on her upper lip.
‘Due to your long-standing service to this island, the quality of your work here, and the account you gave in your defence, we have agreed to lessen your punishment.’
‘Ah,’ Corinne murmured into the ether.
She instantly recognised the voice that sentenced her, though it didn’t anger her anymore. Corinne listened to the slight shuffling of people on seats, and remembered how the heavy chair had felt to sit in.
‘This vision must be a kind of conjuration,’ she said, thinking the situation through.
‘Please stand to hear our verdict,’ the junior judge said.
Corinne had stood in this room once before, on her first day in the job. She’d been allowed to touch some of the statues on the walls, and to trace her fingers along the gold lining of the chairs. Afterwards, she’d rushed to read about its history, the rules that were passed in that chamber and she’d glowed with enthusiasm about her country.
The memory-Corinne rose to face the three judges as her spectral form looked on.
‘The court of Regularis finds the defendant guilty.’
‘Should I have predicted this would happen?’ she thought. It was only recently that the Separation had happened, it didn’t seem possible that the rule of law could be abused so quickly. Corinne had expected the longstanding history of rules and regulations to be upheld, whatever happened, but maybe this was too much to hope for.
‘We therefore decree that you are expelled from office immediately, with an additional six month ban on magic.’
The shock of those words burned through Corinne once again as she watched the scene unfold. Her dreams of one day standing in the chamber making speeches on regulations as head of the civil service had been crushed. Any expulsion from office made it almost impossible to ever get a job within the civil service again.
Corinne listened to her past self desperately trying to comprehend the ramifications of the decision.
‘What about the Gondromma Convention? Is this not an infringement of my rights?’
The Gondromma Convention was intended to universalise a basic set of rights. Whether you were Elvish or Dwarvish, no matter your creed or your status, these rights were supposed to protect you. After the Separation, the government of Regularis had replaced these rights with a set of their own. This made no sense. The rights were universal for a reason.
‘You forget, ever since the Separation, we set our own rules.’
The gavel slammed against the brass gong, ringing out across the chamber.
Corinne felt the cold mist subsuming her senses once again. The sound of a great storm erupted and startled her. Rain battered against boarded-up houses. The wind sounded so ferocious that she al
most felt it from beyond the mist that enveloped her. And she heard a faint voice amidst the thunder.
‘Will you help me?’ it said, weakly.
She remembered pulling the poor soul into a shelter round the corner, and waiting with him. Feeling his arm, Corinne could tell he was malnourished. This was all completely against protocol, but there was no way he’d survive the storm if he didn’t eat. She had no food in her possession, but her book of spells would soon see to that.
‘Ah,’ Corinne murmured again.
The metallic, rasping voice spoke once again.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
--
Osrik sank to the floor. He had spent years shielding himself from his past, and prided himself on his mental fortitude. Back in Spearca, he’d let his guard down for a moment and Alla’fyr had seized upon it. But this, what was happening to him now, was unlike anything he’d experienced before. The ancient magic running the device was more powerful than he could have imagined. It prised into his head and clutched hold of a life full of regrets.
The mists whirled around the old dwarf. He grabbed hold of his head and shut his eyes. When he opened them, he saw himself as a young child. Heir to the Ironforge dynasty, though this meant nothing to him at the time. Boy Osrik heard his parents shouting at one another yet again. He set aside his toys and ran past the walled gardens, disappearing into the vast acres of land on their estate. The young boy returned as Elra began to dip, just in time to see a carriage pulling away from the manor. He caught a glimpse inside and saw his mother, avoiding his gaze, a solitary tear running along her cheek.
Osrik jerked his head.
‘Stop this.’
A flurry of mist. Osrik’s father did not beat him, nor did he show him any affection. Drabik Ironforge had spent the year since his wife’s departure withdrawing into himself, drinking, and making promises he couldn’t keep.
The mists blew in again, revealing faces and figures that Osrik had tried so hard to forget. An ogre and another dwarf. Debtors, seeking payment. They stood over Drabik as he signed a piece of parchment, and turned to look at the boy. There was now a deep sadness in his eyes. The debtors turned to face the boy Osrik, who stood there awkwardly.
‘Run, you fool. Run!’ Osrik shouted, as he watched the men march his younger self out of the manor, debt settled.
Osrik roared, swishing and swaying his arms around him. He was aware of his corporeal body for a moment, before his vision was once more obscured by the mists.
They whisked him to another moment in his youth, a teenager this time. He watched himself sit in the back of a wagon. Human slavers brought him to one of the mines that used to belong to his father. They relished the irony as they set him to work.
Osrik tried to slap himself in the face, but his hand passed through his spectral form. He roared again and brought his fist hard against the side of his physical head, in vain.
The ancient device clunked and whirred, and the mists thickened, swirling more furiously now about Osrik’s head. They cleared and he saw himself, a young adult now, cleaving rocks in a wide open pit. There were many other slaves around him: hunger in their eyes, apathy in their spirits. The image changed again. The younger Osrik was kept in a cage. A goblin and a human cackled as they fed him scraps, whipping him now and then as the mood took them.
‘Get out of my head!’
The old dwarf screamed and bashed the ground with his fists. The mists receded back and the cave was clear around him once more. His breath quickened. Slowly looking up, he saw the machine once again. He reached back and unstrapped his battle-axe, raised it ready to strike, but the ancient device had not finished its assault.
It began to clunk and whir faster. Osrik saw the pistons on the machine firing, cogs and wheels spinning. He didn’t understand what was happening, but his fear was justified. The creamy mists returned with renewed vigour. They span, swirled, swished all around Osrik. As he gasped, a torrent of mist forced itself inside his throat and he was lost to the visions again.
The dwarf was now much older and had begun to take on his battleworn look. He was riding a horse at the front of a wagon alongside a man named Joseph. They stopped in the middle of a dirt path and got off. The curtain covering the wagon blew in the wind and Osrik glanced inside. Groups of families clutching each other looked fearfully at the dwarf. His stomach turned. This was not the cargo he had thought they were transporting.
A man and a woman on horses arrived. They shook Osrik and Joseph’s hands, before handing over a bag of money. They rode off with the wagon and Joseph slapped Osrik on the back, grinning.
‘Another successful job,’ he said.
Osrik’s stomach swirled around. He doubled over and threw up over the cave floor. The mists, momentarily flushed out, now rushed back inside the dwarf.
Osrik now saw a mirror image: a white-haired, haggard, old dwarf, ready for battle. He stood on top of a mound with the small mercenary outfit he had joined the previous year. They looked out over a burning field, freshly made corpses strewn in uncanny positions.
‘I was very impressed with how you worked,’ Alla’fyr said.
‘We weren’t too shabby,’ Francesco said with a smirk.
‘We make a good team,’ Mauro added.
Osrik grunted in acknowledgement.
‘However,’ Alla’fyr raised her finger, ‘the job specifically stated we’d only get the money if there were no survivors. That was the deal.’
They looked to the group of orcs cowering beside them. It hadn’t taken them long to surrender. The dwarf supposed they may have even been coerced into fighting in the first place. What did it matter now? He sighed and raised his battle-axe.
Osrik threw up once more. The mists now span all about him, sending him flashing through his life of regrets, and the scraping metal sound of the ancient language spoke to Osrik in its impossibly deep voice.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
His mother’s face in the carriage.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
The families holding each other in the wagon.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
The scared, surrendering orcs.
‘I-I think I-’
Tears rolled down the old dwarf’s cheeks.
‘I’m not sure, I think I-’
‘Don’t answer that question,’ Sawwse Bohge bellowed through the chamber.
--
The machine whirred into life, activated by the presence in its chamber. As it sent the mists after the other members of her guild, so too did the mists approach Sawwse. It covered her vision in a blanket of white. But… it came up empty.
The mists furied around her head, diving inside her mouth and ears. The device’s wispy tendrils tried to latch onto remorse and regret, but the little gnome had none. It rifled through her memories of being teased and pranked within the Blue Forest, but Sawwse believed this had made her stronger. It tried to remind Sawwse of when she fled her home, but she thought it was the best decision she’d ever made. It pushed her to imagine Marius finding the Gnomeopedia’s nasty depiction of ogres, but Sawwse merely chuckled - there’d be another chance to explain the misunderstanding. True friends never lost sight of each other for long.
After a moment, the mists withdrew and Sawwse was able to see the cave again.
‘Well, that was unpleasant.’
She made a show of wiping clean her tongue with her fingers. The machine paused while it initiated its backup protocol. Sawwse turned to look at the others. From her perspective, each of them stood still or crouched on the floor of the cave, occasionally crying out or whimpering.
A loud clunk took Sawwse’s attention. Another clunk and a noisy groan issued from the ancient machine.
A patterned circle of light formed on the cave floor around Sawwse. She could see that the patterns were some kind of script, but she had no idea how to read it. Sawwse tried to move in order to get a better view and re
alised that her feet were stuck in place. She could move, but incredibly slowly, as though she were moving through treacle.
The machine stared silently at her from the wall, cold and impassive.
Sawwse, panicked, looked around the room at the others. They looked upset, confused, serious, angry. She was worried about the vulnerability that was showing on most of their faces. The pattern of light began to spin, and Sawwse’s legs started to sink down into the floor.
The machine clunked again. It scraped its metal parts together and spoke in an awful ancient tongue, that sent a chill through her body.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
The ground had swallowed her up to her waist. Sawwse looked to the others. She couldn’t know the internal struggles they were dealing with, all she saw was a group of vulnerable people, clearly not in their right minds.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
Vadania and Rangrim began to nod. Corinne and Ruby held their heads in their hands. The ground began to constrict her breathing. She turned to Osrik.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
‘I-I think I-’
Tears rolled down the old dwarf’s cheeks.
‘I’m not sure, I think I-’
Sawwse breathed in as deeply as the ground would allow. She focused her mind on gaining attention, and roared with her loudest voice.
‘Don’t answer that question.’
The others stood, still in a stupor. She drew breath again, but now the ground was up to her neck.
‘Don’t answer,’ she yelled.
Corinne was the first to react. She felt Sawwse’s voice through the cave floor and ran towards the sound. Kneeling beside the gnome, she felt the ground, but was lost. This ancient magic was foreign to her.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how-’
‘Step aside, novice,’ snarled Larn. He appeared behind the mage. Sawwse could only see his boots, as her head was now half submerged by the cave. He placed his hand on the ancient script and incanted a spell unheard for centuries.
Sawwse felt the ground slide away from her as Larn lifted her up and out of the floor. She was about to throw her arms around him, but for the aghast look in his eyes, and for the roar behind them.
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