There was, for a time, nothing else.
The next several days passed in much the same fashion. I woke, walked, and practiced. Along the way, I slept and ate.
Though I might have thought this repetition would be monotonous just a few days before, I found that the blade work was anything but.
My mind and body were linked with the Loer’allon in one continuous refrain. Instead of growing tired from the exertion, I felt more alive and refreshed than I could remember.
Even more surprising, I looked forward to doing more.
“Keep this up and one day you might be able to call yourself a swordsman.” I could feel the approving warmth of Alric’s inner smile as he spoke in my mind.
He had been largely quiet while I worked, letting me explore and exert myself on my own. For my part, I used his nightly lessons as inspiration to experiment with, play upon, and create my own solutions.
I was just as thankful for the freedom as I was for the lessons that got me there.
I knew I was reaching Silvaeron’s end when the trees began to thin and the firmament above began to grow more and more visible. The mighty giants of the forest’s heart were shrinking around me, just as the variety of vegetation and magical mutualisms dropped steadily.
To someone untrained or inexperienced in the wood, the transition might have gone unnoticed, but to me it was profound. Not only were the colors becoming more and more muted but the living vibrancy of the forest dimmed and diluted as seen through my inner vision.
Walking slowly out of the wood felt like gradually watching the color fade from the world. What had been rich and full progressively became dim and subdued.
Saddened, I carried on.
As if to distract me from my sorrows, Alric asked, “Have you ever given consideration to how or why your inner vision developed?”
I really had not. What I thought of as my soul sight had just seemed to come to the fore over time, much like the subtle—and not so subtle—changes of puberty mounted until the differences were too acute to miss or ignore.
The only recent drastic change in my life had been associated with the manifestation of my abilities as a Djen’toth, and I had not been able to explore the ramifications of that change in any real detail.
They were just now beginning to sink in.
“Not too much. My inner sight developed gradually until I could no longer ignore its presence.”
“Have you ever thought that its expression might be one of many things about yourself you never noticed but that provided hints about what you truly were, about your true nature as a Djen’toth?”
Now that he mentioned it, Alric had a point.
I had just chalked up my ability as an innate talent in a world rich and full of magic. After all, mages, wizards, sorcerers, witches, and the like were in abundance.
Or they used to be.
Why not magical practitioners of lesser ability, with talents they were born with or later expressed?
However, despite all the risk, and with little guidance or expertise, I had managed to handle and expose myself to more fungal species than many a royal mycologist would ever dare or imagine.
Never once had I become sick or poisoned.
Maybe Alric was on to something.
Perhaps being as sheltered as I had been in the woods, seldom killing anything or physically touching what I killed aside from the mushrooms I harvested, had left me relatively insulated from my own abilities.
Or maybe they were only expressed fully in a true crisis in a time of stress.
I did not know.
But I was sure to find out.
After some time in silence, I said, “I think you may have a point. A very good one indeed.”
In the next few days I only hoped I would not need to learn more about what I could and could not do.
I was never so blessed.
Of Storms and Ruin
The old farmhouse looked like it had not seen human habitation in years.
Its thatched roof was decaying and partially charred, though whether from a lightning strike that was quenched during a rain or some other less fortunate event I could not say. The broken front door yawned open onto darkness with the finality of a missing tooth knocked off a drunkard’s face. A covered porch made of splintered, sagging gray wood missing its steps offered a warm welcome to the many visitors that were not lined up eagerly out front. Completing the scene with dramatic finality, a pair of large skeletal oaks loomed over the whole structure—cadaverous arms surging up from the earth in a last struggle for life.
All in all, the homestead was my kind of place.
Despite its apparent decay, the croft’s stone walls appeared sturdy and unbroken.
With the gray storm clouds looming overhead, threatening a deluge at any moment, I thought it looked like a better place to sleep than in the mud.
Plus it was significantly nicer than my home.
There was that.
But really, what wasn’t?
As I trudged cautiously toward the house, Alric made his presence known. “You really must raise your standards, Saedeus. They are a reflection of who you are, what you expect, and what you think is possible for yourself.
“You are capable of more than you believe.”
Where was this voice years ago when I needed it?
Surely the outcast orphan could have used such sage advice.
“I hear what you’re selling, Alric.
“And I’m not buying.”
The closer I got, the worse the place looked.
And I was not talking about its state of repair.
People had been killed here.
Lots of people.
I could sense death’s pall like an open wound.
Painful, burning, and refusing to heal.
Getting stuck in the rain was starting to look better and better.
Perhaps I should just turn around and head back toward the surety of the road and the rain to come.
“There is a job for you to do here, Saedeus.
“You cannot walk away.”
Like the Abyss I couldn’t.
I turned around and began walking back the way I had come.
“Saedeus, if you do not act, others will suffer. This place will grow yet darker.”
Was this the sound of my conscience speaking?
I had stopped listening to its sad refrain years ago.
“If you do not act soon, the evil in this place may grow strong enough to move northward.
“Toward your home.”
I had left my home behind.
But not all the people in it.
Releasing a heavy sigh, I said, “Let’s get this over with so I can get some rest.”
Alric’s words were exactly what I did not want to hear. “There’s a good lad.”
“For the record, I hate you.” I could not muster the necessary sarcasm to make my curse have the appropriate venom.
“I know, son.”
I could feel Alric’s jovial patronage as he spoke.
I snarled.
“It’s in the basement, isn’t it?”
I could feel evil radiating from beneath the house like heat from a stove.
Why couldn’t it be in the sitting room or waiting neighborly on the front porch?
Why did evil choose the most inconvenient places to lie in wait?
Where was its sense of courtesy?
Hospitality?
Chivalry?
I’m sure the demon sensed my approach. It could at least have had the decency to try to sneak up on me or boldly attack hoping to overwhelm my opposition.
But no.
It chose to lurk.
To lie in wait.
Really, I was not worth waiting for.
“Let’s get this over with. I have some tasty dried beans to gum.”
“Truer words have never been spoken.”
There it was again. That dry wit.
I was going to have to get Alric s
ome water.
I really did not want to step onto the porch.
The homestead had looked so much more bucolic when it was just a haunted, derelict farmstead viewed across fallow, weed-infested fields.
The skeletons and artfully arranged human skins spread tautly over profane wooden frames marked with vile sigils in dried blood did not exactly scream Welcome! Or Come on in!
I came on in.
I never really was good at knocking.
“Ready or not, here I come!”
I could be really obnoxious.
Especially when my partner wasn’t playing nicely.
I just wished I had a door to kick in.
Of course, unless it was like my failed door at home, I would probably end up planted on my behind for the effort, the door unmoved.
In this case, I needn’t worry.
I stepped over the threshold, wary of traps but seeing no magical haze indicative of fell enchantments intended to snare the unwary.
The overwhelming gloom of the place evaporated before Loer’allon’s radiance as I strode forward. I was fortunate the demon did not ambush me as I walked into the house because I was acting much more confident than I felt.
At least my knees were not shaking.
And I didn’t soil myself.
I was sure that would happen soon enough.
A goal for another day…
The primary level was one large open room. Sagging stairs with no handrail led upward to a second floor held overhead by crudely finished planks and stout beams. A cooking area next to a stacked stone fireplace took up the side of the room opposite the stairs. What furniture there was lay smashed and broken, strewn across the floor like last fall’s leaves.
Decoration was late demonic with abstract blood smears and minimalist tokens of supernatural habitation.
All in all, the place was rather tastefully done for a lesser denizen of the lower Abyss.
“I sense its presence below. It does not appear to be readying arcana.”
Like a spider waiting to snare a fly.
Alric’s words told me nothing I did not know.
They were there to steady me and help me maintain my resolve.
Nice chap, Alric.
I really wished he was not dead.
Of course, if that were the case, I would not be on this fool mission in the first place.
And, even if I were, I could send him first.
Oh, dreams of dreams, how I wish you were true!
“Focus, Saedeus. Just because the demon is not preparing any spells does not mean it can’t explode up through the floor to entrap you even as we speak.”
“Don’t worry, Alric. This is my type of demon.
“Lazy.
“Willing to wait.
“Why work yourself up in a lather going after prey when you have an eternity to let it come to you?”
Yeah…my kind of demon. That was saying something.
The stairs to the basement were beneath the stairs to the second floor.
I really did not want to take them.
Here’s a thought experiment.
Imagine you have to walk down some stairs. Not just any stairs, mind you, but stairs open to the side entering into darkness. In the darkness lurks something terrible. You don’t know what but, in truth, terrible is an understatement. Your eyes are, sadly, accustomed to the light of day. You have to walk down those stairs feet first, exposing your legs as you go with little opportunity to maneuver or protect yourself as you proceed down.
What do you do?
Do you dive down head first, dual crossbows firing as you flip through the air and land agilely on your feet, bolts blazing?
Do you drop a fireball ahead of you, the magical detonation blowing up the stairs and anything near them, shielding yourself with a coruscating magical tapestry?
Do you walk down casually like you own the place, your only fear whether you’ll miss a step and spoil your entrance?
Or do you run away?
I certainly can tell you what I wanted to do.
Especially since I could not yet cast a fireball, or any spell that would do more than perhaps offend a demon, I knew that there was no one I would impress with or without tripping, and I did not own any crossbows. And, if I did, the last thing I would be able to do with them was shoot accurately while diving headlong into darkness at a supernatural entity hellbent on eating my soul.
I’m just saying.
The stairs creaked as I took them.
My heart stopped.
For several beats.
When my heart finally started back up, the beats were so loud I thought someone was playing a drum solo inside my chest.
Despite my fears, at least the supernatural interloper did not attack me on the stairway. I would have seen it coming but I probably would not have had much time to do anything about it.
Aside from making more racket than a pack of wolves howling at a new moon, I made it down uneventfully.
The basement was larger than I had expected.
Although our supernatural friend had yet to make an appearance, I could certainly see its handiwork.
The room looked like an abattoir for the insane.
Body parts in various states of decay lay scattered everywhere.
Motley pieces were joined together in haphazard arrangements that resembled nothing human…or worth further study.
The smell was not spring fresh.
I suppressed the urge to vomit.
There was a round stone well tucked in the room’s far corner located beneath the cooking area upstairs. A low stone wall encircled its hidden depths. A wooden bucket suspended from a rusty hinge by a gnarled, fraying rope hung welcomingly over the waiting darkness.
The scene was so inviting I really wanted a drink.
I could sense the demon’s presence down the shaft, coiled expectantly within.
To my mind’s eye, a putrescent, greenish brown miasma of revolting energies frothed about the well’s rim.
Delicious.
I felt deep remorse that my waterskin was already full.
Loer’allon’s divine halo pushed the vile demonic exudation back down into the well.
I felt better already.
At least until the demon exploded upward out of the well in a frothing spume of putrid water that did little to clean anything it touched.
I could see why the thing had been experimenting with rearranging and connecting all the random body parts.
That’s what it was.
The demon charged across the room toward me, a vaguely humanoid corpulent patchwork of indiscriminate body parts scavenged together from all its many victims…keepsakes for its fond remembrances of deaths past.
Impossibly large, the thing moved faster than I would have thought possible.
That’s what I got for thinking generally.
Being wrong.
Consistently.
And often.
Thankfully Loer’allon was already out and, in my moment of indecision, took matters in her own pommel.
Before I could register what was happening, the holy sword lashed out diagonally, cutting the demon in twain from left shoulder to right hip.
That quickly, the flesh demon fell.
Unfortunately, presaged by a cloud of blood and offal, the thing fell on me.
I fell with it.
Sadly, the destiny I had hoped to avoid, the sordid legacy of the Djen’toth, consumed me.
In all honesty, it could have been much worse.
At least the demon’s vile soul was counterbalanced by the hundreds it had consumed that made up its patchwork essence.
Which, come to think of it, was not exactly positive either.
I just had to incorporate a small hamlet into myself.
Alric saved me.
“Embrace Loer’allon!
“Hold to her essence!”
Hundreds of lives rushed in on me, an avalanche of hopes and dreams, fears and failure
s, triumphs and tragedies, and knowledge and experience. Looming over them all, binding them in an unholy web, a vacuous cloud of evil raged insanely, filled with insatiable hunger—the nightmare that held all these poor souls in thrall.
I held on as best I could.
Loer’allon’s light buoyed me in the ravages of the claustrophobic storm, her light orienting my world within.
When it finally ended, I opened my eyes, exhaled a ragged breath, and was my self.
Mostly.
New lives with their associated memories bounced around inside my skull, stray boulders ricocheting off the avalanche’s main mass.
But I had not lost who I was.
So far.
Better yet, the demon had not gained purchase on my soul.
I hoped.
The basement’s dirt floor was cool underneath my back where I had collapsed to the ground. I did not want to get up.
In fact, I couldn’t.
Several hundred pounds of putrid dead flesh held me pinned to floor.
I was some hero.
Whenever I got lucky enough to slay the vile nasty threatening the populace, all I ever consistently succeeded in doing was falling down.
Ignominiously.
Lying prone and defenseless was not exactly the best way to comport one’s self in combat.
Or most anywhere else, for that matter.
“Burn the demon’s essence, Saedeus!
“Cleanse its presence from your soul!
“Use its might as your own and break free!”
More words of advice?
Wasn’t saving me once good enough for this guy?
Wasn’t I done?
Visualizing cleansing fires, bonfires licking to the heavens, I burned.
Power flooded through me, surging outward like an eruption, and I exploded upward, throwing the demon’s body off me with authority.
And ease.
I felt energy flowing within me in ways I had never thought possible.
I felt ready to climb mountains.
By the Abyss, I felt ready to knock down mountains and walk through the rubble without climbing.
So this was what it felt like to be a Djen’toth!
I could get used to this!
I sprinted over to the stairs in two mighty bounds and leapt to the top without touching any steps. From the middle of the room, I jumped up to the ceiling, grabbed a beam, and pulled the whole post downward with a monumental crash! Broken planks and pieces of wood fell all around me like the rain that was now falling outside, barely worth noting.
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 6