Ringwall`s Doom

by Awert, Wolf

  “Maybe there have been other sorcerers here in the past, and we just didn’t notice,” one of the boys said pertly. The eldest gave him a smack on the back of his head and the boy stumbled forward. “You wouldn’t notice the birds in the sky save for when they shit on your head,” the old man scolded.

  More to himself than to those surrounding him he grumbled on. “I was a young man, many winters ago. A sorcerer passed by one day. He was tall and thin and carried a staff that shone in the dark. He healed our oldest and our sick, blessed the children and the animals. The next day he was gone. That was the summer that refused to rain, when many of us starved. I never knew whether he was the one who took the rain in exchange for his healing. You never know with arcanists.”

  Nill’s heart was heavy as he left these people of few words yet great hospitality, who fought for life with every dawn, at nature’s mercy without the power of magic. He would have liked to stay for a few more days. If only to give back a little more for what he had received. Distance where respect and courtesy demanded, kindness as should always exist between people, and sympathy where it was needed. These things went without saying for these simple folk, but were a rare and treasured thing in Ringwall.

  His dreams drove him onward. The memory of the earthen darkness and the blinding light weighed heavy on his mood.

  It’s not right, he thought to himself as he strode onwards. Magic is to come when the mage calls for it. Not the other way around. Not for the first time Nill wondered how these powers always managed to grasp him in their clutches. What use was it to know that he never bore harm from it? The helplessness of being at the mercy of a wholly unknown force was unbearable. Nill remembered that he had fought, but had the white stone saved him from the dark earth’s magic? Could it not be possible that the cold light itself was a part of the darkness, like the sun and moon in their everlasting dance?

  Rubbish, he told himself. Light and darkness can alternate light night and day, but it’s either light or it’s dark. Anything else is nonsense.

  As determined and final as he made the words sound in his head, they could not quite cover his insecurity. His memories became hazy until he could no longer tell what he had dreamed and what had happened apart. Strange images streamed restlessly through his thoughts, tugging at peculiar feelings. And then there was the constantly increasing fear of being followed. Nill felt it more than he saw it, but there were movements at the fringes of his perception. Where the eye no longer sees color, where it can see movement but not define it; that was where it happened. The ram became infected with Nill’s unrest and began to run circles around him again. There was no doubt that something was afoot, and Nill did not at all like not knowing what it was.

  He gave the ram a clap on the rump and muttered: “Whatever it is, we haven’t managed to shake it off yet and we probably won’t at all. We should stay here where our vision is good and the sunlight aids us.”

  Nill closed his eyes and sent all his concentration to the point between his brows and the root of his nose, where the corporeal and magical worlds were easiest to join.

  His third eye did not need to search for long. It seemed his follower had also grown tired of the game. From the top left, out of the sun and barely visible, came a translucent ball, about the size of a man’s head. Nill barely managed to dodge it by twisting sideways. The ball flew past him with a hiss and stopped in mid-air, looking ominous. The next attack came even faster than the first and Nill put up a Fire shield to protect himself. The shield blocked the attack, but then faded away.

  Nill felt the panic rising in his stomach. He had never seen anything like this. Only Water magic could extinguish Fire so quickly. But Nill had not noticed any Water magic. Nill did not have the time to follow this line of thought, for now the ball followed attack with attack. Nill reacted instinctively. He activated his staff and drew up shields of Water, Wood and Metal to block the quick assault. He cursed foully and fluently under his breath.

  This isn’t working. Fire, Earth and Metal do nothing. Water gets parried by Metal, I felt it. Wood slows it down, but no more. It’s only a matter of time until this thing exhausts me. Time. That’s it. I need time.

  Nill screwed up all his courage and fled to the Other World. He feared this strange attacker more than Bucyngaphos and his legion of demons.

  As quickly as he had entered the Other World he left it again and laid a protective barrier of Wood energy upon his body, then he flitted back into the Beyond. The ball had followed each of his leaps and had stopped attacking.

  Nill and the ball leapt at lightning speed between the Here and the Beyond, and it was difficult to see who was hunting who. Nill could feel that the ball had even more substance and strength in the Other World than in Pentamuria, and so he made a desperate decision. He had been stuck in the strange in-between that bridges the Here and the Beyond once before, and he decided to try and get there again to observe his opponent from the safety of the mid-realm. It was dangerous – for a moment body and soul would be parted. The soul led, the body followed. Would his body follow to the mid-realm or stay corporeal and unprotected? He did not know, but he decided to risk it.

  He leapt.

  He felt the resistance and searched for his body. It had not followed him and Nill prayed it would remain safe out there. The mid-realm was small and separated from the Here and the Beyond with nigh impenetrable magical walls. It offered a view into both worlds and was an unwelcome afterlife to the dead, and something that had left the world to the living. Nill remembered far too late that he had once before tried and failed to leave the mid-realm of his own accord.

  Too late!

  Frantically he attempted to return to the world of the living as the mysterious orb appeared before him. Nill stared in disbelief at the gray flicker. In the Other World the ball was substantially larger than he was. Taller than a man, there was a magical field that distorted his view, and in its middle stood an imposing figure, dressed in a misty-gray robe.

  “Who are you?” Nill asked.

  “I am magon. So my brothers call me. I am the first of the same. The first and the lord of Ringwall,” the figure answered.

  “You,” Nill struggled to find his words, “you are Amargreisfing?”

  “I had that name once.”

  “You were the one who put the falundron on the lock to the Walk of Weakness.”

  Amargreisfing seemed surprised. “Walk of Weakness? What an odd name. In my time we hadn’t named it. So you met the falundron? Then there is hope. Yes, hope.”

  The last word sounded oddly hollow and anemic behind the walls of mid-realm. Nill waited expectantly for an explanation, but the magon said nothing.

  “Why do you follow me?” Nill broke the silence.

  “To kill you.”

  “But why? Why do you want me dead?”

  “I do not know. I know only that I must.”

  Nill considered this for a moment.

  “You are banished, correct? Tell me how other forces could come to banish a mage as mighty as you were.”

  “In the Other World there are different laws than in the world we came from,” Amargreisfing replied. “Whatever we once were, any power we had, is meaningless here. No more than a faint memory.”

  “Can I free you from your banishment?”

  “You could. You’d have to destroy me though. Here in the Other World you would not succeed; who could, given that you would have to rid the world of my very memory. In your world, you would not kill memories, but break a mere spell.”

  A mere spell, Nill thought desperately. He had fled to the mid-realm because the strange magic was superior to his own out there. And now his only chance was to succeed where he already considered himself beaten.

  “I do not mean to kill you. I would never wish to destroy the first master of Ringwall, the paragon of all mages. And even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I have neither the strength nor the knowledge,” Nill admitted quietly.

  Amargreisfing laughed
, and Nill noted with some surprise that memories had some sense of humor.

  “Memories do not simply die. They follow people for generations. But some arcanists know how to reach the memories of others. As long as there are people who remember us, as long as legends are told about us, as long as our names exist on dusty parchments or weathered stones, some who know how can reach us and ask for our counsel. And some can banish us.”

  I want to know everything about the founding of Ringwall, Nill thought. But first I have to return to my world and stay alive.

  “I cannot stay long,” Amargreisfing called. “You were not the one to call upon me. When the mid-realm releases you and you enter the Other World, nothing but my death can save you from me.”

  Heavens and earth! Nill thought despairingly. How am I to defeat a creature from the Other World whose magic I neither know nor understand?

  The walls of the mid-realm began to dissolve as Amargreisfing disappeared.

  “Back!” shouted Nill and he felt Amargreisfing’s pull. The walls broke and Nill found himself under a merciless hot sun. A last sliver of the Other World ran after him.

  Remember the Falundron, a toneless voice cut through his thoughts.

  The falundron. What about the falundron? Nill’s thoughts began to chase each other as he tried to remember and keep an eye on all directions at once, as he anticipated a new attack from the dead magon.

  What use was his knowledge of the falundron? He was not fighting a being from the Other World. Neither did he oppose a magon of ancient times as his pursuer wanted him to believe. And it certainly was not a demon, a creature he feared above all others. No, behind the figure of the first magon stood a mage or sorcerer of this world. This did not comfort Nill; he was no match for such an enemy.

  And yet he felt a certain curiosity. Whoever was hunting him had to be powerful enough to summon a shade, and must also revel in the humiliation of others. Why else would he have picked Amargreisfing as the victim of his magic – the First, of whom even Gwynmasidon only spoke with reverence? That meant that his invisible foe cared nothing for the traditions of Ringwall. Bar Helis was certainly not behind the attempt on his life, and Nill wondered whether it was actually an archmage at all.

  I am fighting against the power and strength and magic of the Other World as commanded by an Arcanist of the Here. Whoever summoned the dead magon will try to touch me with his magic and will stop at nothing to tear my life force from me. Just as Mah Bu once did. And he will not be stopped by elemental magic.

  Or he will bite, sting and poison me like the falundron, and attempt to destroy my aura. In any case, he will have to use Amargreisfing as a conduit. But why does me meeting the falundron mean there is hope?

  Nill observed his surroundings. He was prepared to dodge away at the first sign of Amargreisfing. The falundron had touched him. The resulting poison had nearly killed him. At the same time, it had built a bridge between him and the ancient magic. Darkness and light, hard and soft, august and docile.

  The only way to find out if I’m right is to let Amargreisfing reach me. And the best defense against the Other World is a strong presence in this one, Nill thought, so he held out his arms and yelled:

  “I am! I am! I am!”

  Out of nowhere the flickering orb reappeared, once again shrunken down to head-size. For a heartbeat it took on human features and Nill saw the fleeting image of a contorted grimace. It bore little resemblance to the old magon he had encountered in the mid-realm. The image faded, first the eyes and nose, and finally the gaping mouth.

  Now I know what you intend, Nill thought, but then he was hit by the force of the translucent ball. He stumbled back a few paces under the might of the blow and felt the pull again, then he held tight to the orb with both arms. He made his aura grow denser, yet he could not stop Amargreisfing from tearing it apart.

  The Mage behind the shade must be so powerful, Nill thought. Amargreisfing’s bite cut deep into his innermost self. A spot right beneath his breastbone felt suddenly cold and then blew apart, making space for a lance-tip that froze all around it. The cold spread through his body and made his muscles rigid and his blood clot. His veins filled with ice and his tendons snapped, bones splintered, and above it all loomed the grasp for his self, the most central part of his consciousness. Nill knew the devouring cold. It was the Falundron’s poison that had changed him and his magic. It had robbed his aura of the five elemental colors and left the strange, opaque, milky-white wreath that had so scared Tiriwi.

  Nill took the cold of the Other World inside himself, as he had done before. He had not fought it. How could he? He still lacked the necessary strength. But something had changed. He had learned that the cold was not just cold. It was also a part of the ancient magic. When darkness storms toward you, covering and devouring all, there is a moment when a new light is born. Nill waited for that one decisive moment.

  “I AM!” Nill screamed with every fiber of his being. I stand, I stand in the light! his bones screamed back. Nill took ever more of the dark energy on and noticed that he had begun to falter. Time is not on my side. I can wait no longer. Nill buried his head in his opponent’s aura and now began to drain it into himself. A feeling of bursting fullness heralded the reversal. The magic of light and day, of height and hardness, of giving and speaking started anew with a tiny spark. It mended his bones and made the blood course through his veins and flow from his body, pushed by all the dark magic he had absorbed and that now transformed into light. A thunderbolt split the earth and a shining light tore apart the sphere before him, and Nill left behind an empty shell. He saw nothing, heard nothing and felt nothing. The last feeling of gratitude from a fading memory did not reach him. The slammed door of the Other World remained unheard. Nill stood lifeless under a sun that could not warm him. Then he crumpled. The darkness that now enveloped him had nothing in common with the dark magic. It was the thin veil of mercy that now lay across him and hid him from the world.

  The shockwave of light and the shattered summoning shook great parts of the magical world and followed Amargreisfing into the Beyond. Bucyngaphos the Goat-Legged and Serp the Mighty paused their incomprehensible dealings and raised their ears. Urumir the shaman shook earth onto his fire and could not extinguish it, and in Ringwall a mage stared into the distance and realized for the first time that fear and anger could coalesce. The meeting chamber of the High Council was empty, but lights shot unseen across the Onyx and threw crackling sparks, and the old cracks were joined by new ones. Countless thin lines made the once-smooth surface look like the face of an old woman. But there was no hand there to feel it. Gnarlhand, Archmage of Earth, would have ever more difficulty in holding the stone together.

  The sun rose slowly, reached its peak and continued its journey to the place beyond the horizon where it hid its light and refreshed its strength. Nill lay on the ground, hunched over and motionless. The ram circled around the lifeless body and eyed its surroundings warily. It grew restless, for it had a biting smell in its nose that came not from magic, but wild predators. A pack of leonpedons slunk around nearby, attracted by the thought of easy prey, but held off by the smell of burnt earth. Still they hesitated.

  Their first attacks came as playful feints. They ran off and leapt in, then returned to the safety of the pack. With each feint they seemed to gain more confidence and nothing stood between them and Nill except the old ram, himself an easy target.

  The ram had stopped circling and now stared into the falling sun. A mighty male roared and made a half-hearted lunge forward. It still hesitated, but this time it did not turn tail. It was only a few leaps away from the ram now. The next attack would strike true. The maned beast seemed to deliberate his next action when the ram stormed off. Its hooves beat the earth and its horned blow would have shattered the leonpedon’s shoulder had it not rolled to the side in the last second. The rest of the pack trembled. The burnt smell in the air, the scent of something foreign to them, and now their prey attacked their lead
hunter. It was too much chaos for their world and they retreated hissing. Only their hunger stopped them from giving up.

  The ram trotted back as though it knew no dangers in the world. It threw a contemptuous glance back at the leonpedons over its shoulder before returning to its combat stance and considering the male that now strode back and forth, its eyes on the ram. It was not prepared to run away.

  Nill opened his eyes, perhaps just in time. Perhaps not – his ram did not look as though it felt inferior to the predators in any way. Which of the two unequal fighters would have kept the other hand would stay a mystery, for Nill raised an arm and threw a bolt of Metal at the leonpedons.

  There was a slight hiss and a crackling noise. Several pathetic sparks bounced across the earth and flickered out. As weak as the spell was, it was enough to turn the beasts off their prey for good, and so they ran away as quickly as they had come. The only sound was the sporadic, disappointed roar of the male, until they were too far away. At last it was calm.

  Burnt out and hollow, was Nill’s last thought before he fell back into the heavy sleep of exhaustion.

  Only the next morning did Nill see the full extent of the havoc he had wrought. Starting from the point where he had fought Amargreisfing there was a gash in the land as far as the eye could see; the grass was burnt and the earth fractured. The neighboring hill had split. One half had sunk deep into the ground, the other had risen. The scar in the land had not yet come to rest. As he watched, stones and mud fell from the higher side into the hole, which slowly ran full of water.

  Many generations later the folk would tell of two lovers who could not find each other. The legend says that the Lord of Light sought the Keeper of Darkness whom he had only seen fleetingly in the distance, and had sworn never to rest until he found her. Here he kept watch over the world as a cliff and never noticed that his beloved was always at his feet. Nothing is harder than taking the blindness from one who already sees, and no one is blinder than one in love. And so it took a special spell to bring the two together – but that is another story.