El-Vador's Travels

by J. R. Karlsson

  One of the few group exercises lent credence to the existence of such a place, the destructive and gruelling lessons led by the curiously-named Brother Chlodochar.

  Sweat stung his eyes as the darkness continued to gush out of him onto a small concentrated patch of rock. Chlodochar had been impressed with his efforts thus far but had informed him in no uncertain terms that he needed focus in addition to his raw power. Apparently attaining a focal point was much harder than simply blasting out indiscriminately as he had achieved when fighting the monster in the pit of Harg's burrow. Thinking again of the Orcs almost disrupted the flow of his energies, causing them to slip away from the rock and disrupt the ground nearby.

  'Wrong!' Chlodochar suddenly barked in that gravelly inhuman voice of his. He had been walking up and down as they trained, but had now stopped right beside El-Vador. 'You have power but not the precision! You are distracted!' He reached out and seized El-Vador’s wrist, causing the Elf to relinquish his hold on the power. 'You must learn focus!' he snapped. 'There is no room for other thoughts, your mind must be on the task alone!'

  He stayed at El-Vador’s side for several seconds, watching to ensure the lesson had been properly learned, but with the Brother scrutinising every move the Elf made he could not recapture the focus of before. The creature, for he was certain that Chlodochar was neither human, Orc nor Elf, gave a disgusted bark and walked off.

  Stung by the dismissal, El-Vador repeated the task long after the other recruits had departed.

  Chlodochar had spotted a potentially fatal flaw in El-Vador’s technique. Now El-Vador was determined to fix it, even if it meant hours of practice on his own time. He was relentless in his pursuit of perfection, not just in the mastery of his power but in all his studies that he saw as just an extension of that.

  'Enough,' Chlodochar’s voice eventually called out. They were alone together, he hadn't noticed that the Brother had been watching him. 'You have improved, Elf.' he said, the words sounding strangely phrased as if the tongue were almost beyond him. 'It is time for you to be shown the pit.'

  He followed the Brother's shuffling robes in a trance as he made his way into strange and unexplored areas of the Sanctuary, finally opening up into a huge cave that housed a giant oval structure within.

  He heard the sounds of movement around him; the soft shuffle of robes as the other Brothers made their way to the arena. Chlodochar's path converged with these Brothers and he spoke with them in his guttural voice as they made their way inside.

  The giant oval was simply hewn out of rock, providing rudimentary seating for the various brothers in attendance and no other entrances or exits that he could discern. From what he had heard, any student or brother could step into the centre of this oval and issue a challenge to another. Chlodochar remained in the centre of the arena, apparently as some form of adjudicator. El-Vador had no doubts that the creature would be analysing every duel with the utmost scrutiny.

  The recruits were all sat in the front row, their crimson robes differing slightly from that of the Brothers now that El-Vador paid them closer attention. Chlodochar stepped into the middle of the arena and barked for the challenges to begin.

  El-Vador stepped into the centre before anyone else could make a move, eliciting a grunt of approval from the adjudicator.

  'I challenge Shimon.' he announced in ringing tones.

  'Accepted.' came the reply from the front row of the crowd. His fellow recruits parting with a rustle of robes to afford him space. Chlodochar gave a slight bow to each combatant and stepped to the clearing’s edge to give them room.

  Shimon was a human, looking much like Salvarius had been when the Elf had first seen him, not that he could easily distinguish one human from another. The same Salvarius who had been so taciturn about the details of his allegiance and had nearly cost El-Vador his life. It was all the motivation he needed.

  As the rest of the Brothers and recruits watched in silence, the two combatants circled each other in the ring, waiting for each to make their move. El-Vador's heightened battle senses picked up on the breathing of his opponent in the deathly silence, he could sense the nervousness of the man.

  El-Vador screamed, thrusting his hands out palm-forward even as Shimon did the same gesture. Dark energy erupted from his open palm to catch his opponent before he could summon his own, hurling him back to the edge of the crowd where he landed at Chlodochar’s feet.

  The Brother watched with an intrigued but wary expression. El-Vador slowly clenched his fist and began walking over, that first blast had completely incapacitated the human. On the ground before him, Shimon was writhing in agony, clutching at his throat and gasping for breath.

  El-Vador had nothing to say to his helpless opponent. He squeezed his fist harder, feeling the energies swirl about him and impact upon Shimon once more in an intoxicating manner as they slowly devoured the life of his foe. Shimon's heels pounded out a strange rhythm on the arena's stone floor as his body convulsed.

  'Enough, El-Vador,' Chlodochar said in a cold, croaking voice. Though he stood so close to the death throes of his student, his eyes were fixed on the application of power from the one still standing.

  A final surge of power roared up in the core of El-Vador’s being and exploded out into the world. In response, Shimon’s body went stiff and his eyes rolled back in his head before being devoured entirely by the darkness to leave nothing but smoke. El-Vador finally released his energies and faced Chlodochar. 'Now it is enough,' he said, proceeding to turn his back on the creature and walk toward the exit of the arena. He didn’t need to look back to know that Chlodochar was watching him with great interest.

  LI

  The brothers nurtured my powers, augmented my lethal capabilities with their knowledge. It would become their undoing in the end.

  El-Vador woke to the sound of a small note being passed under his door. Apparently Brother Manilus wanted to speak with him, interesting.

  He strode through the virtually empty halls of the Sanctuary toward the meeting, his outward appearance calm and confident. Inside his mind wondered at the potential repercussions for his outright killing of Shimon.

  He knew that the duels were supposed to test the recruits, to test their resolve and mastery of the power against each other rather than inanimate objects. He also knew that it certainly wasn't meant to be fatal. The Brotherhood were at war against an unknown other, they couldn't afford to destroy each other.

  In killing Shimon, El-Vador had destroyed a potential Brother. In his own way he had dealt a direct blow to the war effort, even if there was no way of calculating to what degree the damage said blow had caused it. He suspected he would be punished severely, and more than ever before he wished he knew a way out of this accursed place.

  He felt no guilt in his actions and no great fear of Brother Manilus, who knew of the Elf's potential and would not sacrifice it due to disobedience, even of this magnitude.

  He knocked sharply at the door, then opened it when the command to enter came from within. Manilus was kneeling in the centre of the chamber, deep in meditation.

  'Chlodochar told me what happened yesterday,' he said, not opening his eyes. 'He tells me you are responsible for Shimon’s death.' the tone of his voice was indiscernible.

  'I am.' El-Vador answered calmly. 'Shimon was weaker than I expected, I dealt with him accordingly.'

  'Chlodochar told you to cease,' Manilus countered. 'He says you paid him no heed. It is one thing to defeat an opponent in the arena. You killed him in cold blood and directly disobeyed the orders of your better.'

  El-Vador shrugged insolently. 'Chlodochar should have stopped me then.'

  Manilus rose to his feet and eyed the Elf with an unreadable expression on his face. 'Brother Chlodochar wanted to see what would happen. He wanted to see how you would act in that situation.'

  'And now that I have acted, are you going to punish me for doing so?' El-Vador asked.

  Manilus shook his head. 'The Brother infor
med me that yours is a power unlike any he has seen.'

  The words were punctuated with a faint chuckling of the voice in the Elf's head, if only Manilus knew the truth.

  'Shimon’s death may turn out to be a minor loss if it helps you to achieve your full potential. You may well be the key to our war effort against the others, as a result you shall not be disciplined.'

  Manilus gave a dismissive wave of his hand, then settled back onto his meditation mat as El-Vador turned to go. He had been absolved of his crime, given a pardon because of his power and potential.

  'No!' Chlodochar growled at him disdainfully later that day. 'You are holding back, that is not the power I witnessed yesterday!'

  'I am trying.' El-Vador replied through gritted teeth.

  'Trying?' the creature repeated, his voice cutting into El-Vador's hearing as incisively as any blade would his flesh. 'You did not try against Shimon, why try now?'

  'I must learn control, to do so requires a great degree of concentration.'

  Chlodochar spat on the ground. 'Forget that! It matters little now with one such as you. You cannot control this force any more than you can the raging tides battering this Sanctuary!'

  El-Vador knew not what tides were, but the analogy made sense to him because of the attributed words.

  'You are not one for surgical incision. Instead you must call upon the power to destroy your enemies and it shall! Much like it did to Shimon.'

  He clenched his jaw to prevent himself from biting off a remark, El-Vador did not know whether the constant references to the dead recruit were goading or instructional and thus could only remain silent.

  'Return only when you stop holding back.' Chlodochar muttered, abandoning the Elf and focusing on others.

  El-Vador shuffled slowly down the corridor, though his measured pace was one of choice rather than necessity. He trudged on through these various halls, head down, making his way to the archives located in the depths of the Sanctuary.

  Not surprisingly, the massive room was empty save for the rows of shelves stacked with manuscripts haphazardly arranged and then forgotten. Few recruits bothered to come here. Why waste time contemplating the wisdom of the ancients when you could study at the feet of an actual Brother in the here and now?

  It wasn’t permissible for recruits to remove records from the archive room, so El-Vador did all his reading there. Even in the dustiest of tomes he had found small kernels of deeper wisdom he had claimed for his own.

  He walked slowly up and down the rows, glancing at titles and authors, hoping to find something useful. He was so intent on his search that he failed to notice the dark, hooded figure that entered the archives and stood silently in the doorway watching him.

  El-Vador carefully opened the pages of the ancient volume he had taken down from the archive shelves.

  He had barely begun to read the first page when he heard someone approaching. It was a woman, and she was smiling at him.

  'You are the one they call El-Vador.' she spoke softly, even though there was no one else in the archives to be disturbed by their conversation. 'Do you remember me?'

  Her statement caught him by surprise. 'Remember you?'

  He stared at her in earnest then, and the familiarity of her features seemed to harken back to something that seemed ancient already to his mind. 'You were in the mountains, I rescued you from Sarvacts.'

  'I in turn rescued you from the explosion of energy that would have taken your life.' the Pixie reminded him.

  'Why are you here? What do you want with me?'

  She had leaned in closer, and he found himself staring right into her eyes. 'I want to escape.'

  He closed the book and turned slightly in his chair to face her.

  'I am known as Aliana,' she began. 'I know what it is that this Brotherhood fight, I know that we are nothing but slaves to their cause. I want to break free.'

  'Like many of the others here, I saw what you did to Shimon. Unlike them I have also seen what you did to the Orcs in the mountains that were once your home, I have seen first hand the true extent of your power. I know what it is that you are capable of and I have seen your potential.' She paused. Her gaze was intense. 'I can sense the power inside you. I can feel it. You can destroy them all, you can destroy the Brotherhood.'

  El-Vador shook his head. 'The Brothers all have power, as does every recruit in this Sanctuary, were I to strike against them they would take me down through force of numbers.'

  'I don't believe that,' she said, her voice gentle in its hope. 'Do you really believe it either?'

  'All my life I’ve been driven by my anger,' he explained, speaking slowly and staring down at the surface of the table, unable to look her in the eye. 'But if I cannot control the power and simply give in to its whims it will be the power that controls me.'

  'And is that such a bad thing?' she asked.

  'I don’t know.' he replied, wrestling with the thought and wondering why the voice offered him nothing. 'All I know is that if I were to give in entirely I may never come back out, or I may lose all perception of self-preservation and be swiftly dealt with.'

  'Give me your hand.' her voice was stern, and El-Vador hesitated only an instant before reaching out. She clasped his palm with both her hands. 'Close your eyes,' she ordered, even as she shut her own.

  In the darkness he became acutely aware of how tightly she had clenched his hand, squeezing the flesh so hard he could feel the beating of her heart through her palms.

  He felt a tingling in his fingers, something beyond mere physical contact. She was reaching out to him somehow.

  'I will give you control, El-Vador,' she whispered to him.

  Suddenly he felt as if he were falling. Swooping down into a great abyss, the black nothingness inside his very being where the voice once lived. The chill darkness numbed his body; he lost all sensation in his extremities. He could no longer feel Aliana’s hands wrapped about his own.

  'My power will give you control, El-Vador.' her words came to him from a great distance, resonating inside his head endlessly. 'You have within you a greater potential than all this Sanctuary combined, use your power and claim it.'

  He opened his eyes warily, like a man waking from a dream he was afraid to forget. From the expression on Aliana’s face, he knew she must have felt something, too.

  'How did you do that?' he asked, trying and failing to keep the desperation out of his voice.

  'The Brotherhood have intentionally been withholding this information from you out of fear that they could not control the result.' she replied. 'They fear you, they fear what you could do to them and yet they covet your power also.'

  El-Vador nodded, remaining fervently silent so she could continue.

  'You will be able to control your power now, but you must attack them in a way they cannot recover from, you must destroy them utterly rather than simply kill them.'

  'How do I do that?'

  'There is a place within this Sanctuary that no recruits may enter.' Aliana answered, as if it was obvious. 'Their source of power must lie within there, destroy that and you will cripple them.'

  'Why should I trust that any of what you say is true?' he asked. 'You could be here to test my loyalty.'

  She gave him a sly smile. 'A good question. I suggest you attempt to use your power and truly let go and then you shall discover the truth in my words.'

  El-Vador knew there was only one place he could do that.

  He knocked once softly, careful not to wake the others. Before he could knock a second time, the door swung open to reveal the creature.

  Before El-Vador even realized what was happening, the door was closed and locked behind him, sealing the two of them together in the small, dark room. His host lit a small candle on a stand by the bed and turned to glare at his uninvited guest.

  'What are you doing here?' he hissed, keeping his voice low.

  'I want you to train me again.' El-Vador whispered. 'I want you to teach me all you know about power
.'

  Chlodochar shook his head in response, but El-Vador thought he sensed a brief hesitation before he did so.

  'I have wasted enough of my time on the likes of you. You held back just as you were beginning to make progress. Why should I do this?'

  'You know my potential,' El-Vador pressed. 'I will not hold back any further, give me one opportunity to show that.'

  'And if you hold back again, you will have wasted my time,' the other replied.

  'Then prepare yourself,' he finally said, deciding that only desperate measures would convince the brother.

  Chlodochar nodded. 'I stand ready. Do not hold back.'

  El-Vador knew this was the final test. Chlodochar's talent and skill were reserved for those who would one day rise up and join the Brothers in battle. He wanted practical proof that El-Vador was truly ready for this. He wanted proof that El-Vador was worthy.

  Without further thought as to the consequences, he finally let go.

  LII

  Death comes to all men, be wary of those who seek it eagerly.

  El-Vador made his way down the hall with careful, measured steps. But though his pace was sombre and subdued, his mood was one of elated triumph. Chlodochar had almost been forced to yield in private to the relentless nature of his power, and more importantly he had been able to stop when the Brother had finally called for secession. He had control over the awesome force that the voice had provided him, thanks to Aliana he need not fear letting go any more.

  His days were now filled with study and training. In the darkest hours before morning’s first light he would meet Chlodochar early to practice before the other recruits even woke. He would meet with Aliana in the archives and pour over texts about the Sanctuary in the hopes of determining an escape upon destroying the Brotherhood. In addition to this they continued to search the tomes for information about the area not permitted for recruits to enter, but without any luck.