Perzey remains motionless in my leaden arms, her breathing so shallow I can barely feel it. Without help, she will not see this or any other sun rise.
The half-moon and the stars blur in and out of focus, as I look up at the sky. Burning pain throbs throughout my body, cresting and receding in time to my ragged breathing. I am an imbecile. I have pushed myself too hard, used too much ki for far too long. I am not a Half-Dvergar anymore. I am merely human.
Around three miles, can I stably control the massive amount of ki I will need long enough to cross the delta? My steps are already unsteady, as I begin to run across the surface of the delta waters. Pain darkens my already blurred vision, and my teeth are tightly clenched to keep from screaming. Growling, like an enraged animal's, echoes weirdly in the night, the volume rising as I exhale and falling as I inhale. Time blurs, and the water sucks at my feet like viscous mud. I do not know how far I have come, or how far I still need to go.
As my foot strikes something solid, and I begin to fall, I instinctively twist in midair to shield Perzey from the impact. A hard corner of stone drives the air from my lungs, and I lie here, panting like an animal.
“Who goes there? Stand and identify!”
Following the tramping of multiple sets of boots, a pool of light dimly illuminates the stone around me. I am laying at the bottom of one of the flights of stairs leading from the low stone wharves to the main level of the riverside docks.
Forcing myself to stand, I unsteadily ascend the steps. The watch patrol, six watchmen and the sergeant, back away. Their eyes and faces showing the fear in their hearts. I do not know what is so intimidating about me, that it would put this much fear into veteran watchmen.
“The best healer. Who? Where?” My voice sounds more like the snarling of a beast, than the voice of a human.
The sergeant swallows reflexively. “G-Garion the Humble. On Meadowlark Street. Chad show him the way!”
“M-M-M-Me?” The watchman's voice is more of a squeak than anything, as he stumbles out of the formation.
“You! Do it now!”
Chad looks at me, nearly trembling. “This way. Follow me.”
With Chad leading the way, I compel my legs to move in a straight line.
“Sarge, that power, who is … what was that?”
“A Master Adept, and with that aura, he's a destroyer. Pray that Garion keeps him happy, or we're fucked. There aren't five men in this town that can stand toe-to-toe with a Master Adept, and none of them are on the watch.”
The voices disappear behind me, as Chad leads me through the twists and turns of Bogwater's nighttime streets. After a few minutes, he stops outside a small stone building, and pounds on the doors.
“Deacon! Deacon Garion! Open the door! Deacon! Hurry, there's a badly wounded woman out here!”
The sound of a bolt sliding is audible through the door, and then, it opens. Standing in the doorway, a grey haired man in a grey robe stares at me.
“Lady's Grace. Bring her in! Quickly, this way!”
Inside, a small chapel is dimly lit by a pair of candles, next to an alter. Leading the way to a door in the middle of the right side wall, Garion opens it. Entering the room, he begins to light the myriad lamps around the periphery.
“Put her on the table.” He points to a block of white marble. Grooves are carved along the edges, to channel blood to the drain hole in one end of the table.
After laying Perzey on her side, I lean against the wall, near the door.
“Go wait in the chapel.”
When I do not move, Garion stares at me.
“Go wait in the chapel. You are in my way.”
“If Perzey dies, you'll follow her.”
“If do not sit down and rest, you will not live long enough to know if I save her. You have pushed yourself so far that you are closer to death than the woman.” Garion's voice is soft and calm, as he stares at me.
I am reluctant, without being able to discern the reason, but I move into the chapel and sit on one of the pews.
Garion does not close the door, as he turns back to work on Perzey. Flickering light, a mixture of rich earthy brown and dark forest green, surrounds his hands, as he lays one her chest and one on her head.
“Warrior. Warrior!”
I sit up, with a start, and look around.
Garion is standing in the doorway of the surgery, his hands and robe stained with blood. Behind him, Perzey lies on the stone table, her chest wrapped with white linen bandages.
“Take her to a bed in the back room. Then, remove your armor and clothing, before lying on the table.”
“I don't need any treatments.”
I pick up Perzey, and she moans softly. Seeing the open door in the back wall of the room, I take into the room and put her on one of the three cots inside.
“Even though you are no longer abusing your body with too much ki, you could still die. Do you understand how much damage you have done to yourself? Most of your organs are ready give out, from the abuse.”
Removing my armor and clothes, I lay on my back on the cold marble. Garion places his glowing hands on my chest, and a green and brown mist spreads out over my body. A tingling, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, slowly fills my chest, before radiating outward into my limbs.
As the minutes turn into an hour and an hour into two, sweat beads on Garion's forehead, before running down his cheeks and neck. With labored breathing and deeply flushed features, he keeps pouring Power into my damaged body.
The burning pain fades, until only a dull ache subsumes my entire body.
Finally releasing his Power, Garion steps back and sits on a stool against the wall. He takes a jug of wine and a goblet from the cabinet next to his stool. Filling the goblet tot the brim, he takes a few sips, before upending the goblet and swallowing the wine in huge gulps. Shivering, he sets the goblet aside.
“I am curious, what burned those scars into your patterns?”
“What do you mean?”
“You are aware of what patterns are, and the nature of existence, three patterns conjoined, correct?”
“Yes.”
“I am able to heal scars, even old ones. As long as the damage does not change all three patterns, even the loss of a limb can be healed, but I cannot heal your scars. They have been etched into your patterns, all three, body, mind and soul. What type of Power or creature did that to you?”
My scars are burned into my patterns? I do not know what to make of that. Patterns are not easily changed from what I understand.
“I was in an accident as a child. I was trapped with a fire under me and burned alive for I don't know how long. There were no Powers involved. When I woke up in the hospital, I had these scars and the healers couldn't do anything about them.”
Garion frowns slightly. “Tell me the circumstances surrounding this accident.”
“My family was travelling in a sort of a wagon, with a mechanical device that moves it instead of animals. A similar wagon, only one ten time as big, lost control, and we were forced off the road and down a mountain side. My parents died in the crash, and I was trapped with burning fluids beneath me.”
Garion sighs. “I see. Sometimes, an individual's pattern can suffer damage from the individual's own beliefs. Whether body, mind or soul, if one believes that the damage should exist, he may force changes into the pattern to match the supposed damage.”
After staring at Garion for a few moments, I start to laugh. The decidedly insane noise fills the small church. My scars are self-inflicted. It sounds like some twisted form of my own survivor's guilt permanently damaged my patterns. That is just too fucking funny. It is too fucking apt, as well. I have always been my own worst enemy.
“That fucking figures. It just fucking figures.”
Garion stands up. “You should rest. The damage to your body will heal, and you will probably be several times stronger than you were before. Though, I do not recommend torturing your body like that again. If you were unable to fi
nd a healer as gifted as I am, you would almost certainly have died.”
“Yeah.” I look toward the room, where Perzey lies sleeping.
Battle in Bogwater
*** Swamp of the Lost - Battleground of the Damned ***
Return: Day 14
Even though I am circulating ki through my body, mind and soul, I am not meditating. My attention is focused on Perzey's sleeping form, on the bed next to mine. To give his healing magic time to work, Garion has kept her sedated the entire time we have been here.
With the sun long set, Garion's little recovery ward is lit by candles. Their flickering light blurs the edges of the shadows in the room, but accentuates the gauntness in Perzey's features. Injuries and a lack of solid food have taken their tool on her. If it were not for the deep tan of her skin, she would look like a corpse.
“When are you going to stop doing that?” Standing in the doorway, Garion sighs.
I shrug. “I don't feel any pain.”
“Your body needs time to heal just like your woman's. If you keep playing with ki that way, you still might kill yourself. Why don't you try practicing with mana or psi instead?”
I raise my eyes to Garion. “What do you mean?”
Garion looks puzzled for a second. “Don't you know that you are a Trinary?”
I stare blankly at Garion, as I process his words. The Trinity consists of the body, the mind, and the soul. The Powers of the Trinity are mana, psi, and ki. A Unary can use one aspect. A Binary can use two aspects. A Trinary can use all three aspects of the Trinity.
“I can see you are not one of the Possessed, but you are from the same place as the minds and sometimes souls that are Possessing people, are you not?”
I nod. “You're right, but what do you mean by 'minds and sometimes souls?'”
Garion's eyes seem to focus inward for a moment. “Right now, this woman has the mind and soul of a Possessed, and except for fragments, the original mind and soul are gone. That is new and abnormal for a Possessed. In the past, every Possessed had a part of its original mind and either its partial or entire soul, while the Possessor's mind was sitting on top of it. That was a completely abnormal arrangement, and while I could see it, I never understood how it was achieved. Sometimes the soul would be in the same condition as the mind, with the Possessor consisting of both mind and soul, but that was very rare.”
Garion pauses staring at me. “I have see thousands of Possessed, and there was one exception. I once saw a Half-Dvergar in the crowd. He had a mind and soul that did not match his body, but they still fit it like a hand in a gauntlet. They had the signs of a Possessed's mind and soul but were not riding the original mind and soul. Like this woman, the originals did not exist, except as fragments, but in his case the fragments had been neatly severed and tied back onto themselves. It was the most abnormal thing I have ever seen done to two people. It has been nearly fifty years, but I have never forgotten that single glimpse. Until I met you, I was never quite certain he was one of the Possessed.”
“Ha. Yeah, that would have been me, but how do you know that? I met my fair share of priests, and none of them had a fucking clue about what we really were. How do you know so much about our minds and souls?”
Garion smiles, a self-mocking expression. “I may be a failure as a Medium, but I have the Gift of Sight. I can easily read your patterns, anyone's patterns, anything's patterns. Patterns are an open book to me.
“You are so gifted in all aspects of the Trinity, it is disgusting. Anyone I have ever seen, who has been called a prodigy or a genius, looks mundane in their abilities, when compared with your potential. As near as I can tell, as ki adept, you have only tapped a little more than a tenth of your potential. Once your body heals again, you will be on par with almost any Master Adept you are likely to meet.”
I snort. “How the fuck are you a failure? Your healing is better than anyone I have ever met, with one possible exception.”
His self-mocking smile returns. “That is all I am. No matter how strong my healing, it is all that I can do with the Power the Forest Lady gives me. I can never become a real priest.”
Mediums channel Power from their gods. Maybe other Powers too, but I have never had that confirmed or refuted. I am not really too clear on the specifics and know nothing about the mechanics, but I do know that all real priests are Mediums. The Paladin's of most religions are as well. Other than that, I do not know anything about Mediums.
“I see.”
From my ring, I take out the black sword.
Garion stares at it for a long time. “It is broken. The patterns are too fragmented to ascertain what they once were, but from the complexity, it was once a powerful weapon. The metal it is forged from is not mortal. The pattern is so abnormal that it cannot really be called a pattern. I have seen an item from beyond this mortal realm. I was told it was Elemental. That metal is probably Elemental in nature.”
I frown. “Thanks. I can feel some kind of Power but wasn't sure what, since I couldn't feel anything like soul link points.”
“If you were to find a smith who could reforge it, that metal would probably make an excellent base for an Item of Power.”
I put the sword away. I am not sure, when I might have the opportunity to get it reforged, but I will hang onto it. I heard tales of Elemental weapons, both when I played Taereun and after the Great Fuck Over, but I have yet to encounter one. I never met anyone who knew what they really were, either.
Garion smiles wryly. “I have even less talent in the Trinity than most mundanes, but I know a great deal about how to train it. Would you like me to teach you some basic exercises to start building your control over your mana and psi?”
“Sure …”
Fwoosh! BOOM!
“What the fuck?” The sound is one I have heard hundreds of thousands of times, a fireball or meteor type spell, a fairly powerful one at that.
Fwoosh! BOOM! Fwoosh! BOOM! Fwoosh! BOOM! Fwoosh! BOOM!
Garion's face turns ashen. “Who would attack Bogwater, with such powerful casters?”
“BRING ME THE HUMAN CALLED BRAND! IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY, WE WILL RAZE YOUR PITIFUL HOVELS TO THE GROUND!” Even being distorted a bit from the amplification magic, the voice is clearly the DokkAlfar leader.
The sounds of running feet and screaming are audible, getting closer and louder.
“DokkAlfar.” I begin to equip and arm myself.
Garion puts a hand on my shoulder. “You cannot fight them. You will die.”
My laugh is sepulchral. “I've been murdered once, and I'm still here. Besides, that DokkAlfar fuck owes me, and I'm going to collect.”
“One hundred heartbeats. Do not use more than a third of your ki for more than one hundred heartbeats. Your body can survive that long.”
I cannot keep the smirk off my face. “I thought you said just circulating ki would kill me.”
Garion's frown is self-righteousness incarnate. “You are someone who does not know how to hold back. I can see it in your pattern. You have developed through pushing yourself until you break, over and over.”
I put equipment and weapons in a simple silver bracelet and hold it out to Garion.
“If I die, give this to Perzey.”
Garion takes the bracelet. “You said you were murdered once and are still here.”
I shrug. “Shit happens.”
Outside the street is filled with people running away from the delta side of town. To the east, the skyline is filled with smoke. To the north and south, raging fires are consuming the buildings near the docks, with only the middle of the town relatively untouched.
The roofs of the nearby buildings are only about twenty-five to thirty feet high. It should be an easy enough jump. Taking hold of a stronger flow of ki, I focus it into my legs and jump. When aiming to grab the edge of the roof, I clear the roofline by a good ten feet or more. Interesting, I do not think I used that much ki. So, are the muscles of legs that much stronger?
From the
peak of the roof, I have a much better view. Occasional fireballs seem to all be coming outward from the River Square. It is more or less in the middle of the docks, and the Rivermen's Guild, Stevedores' Guild, and Boatbuilders' Guild all have the headquarters there.
Using the rooftops for my road, I quickly travel to a point near the docks, one that gives a good line of sight into the River Square. Staying below the peak of the roof I am on, to not be outlined against the fires to the north, I observe the activity in the square.
Only five DokkAlfar soldiers are visible, four of them flanking one, who has to be the Captain who attacked us. At least nine more should be somewhere in the vicinity, but I cannot see them. There are also just two of the archers visible, but four DokkAlfar dressed in leather robes are with them. Those have to be the casters.
In front of the DokkAlfar Captain, a man wearing silver-washed chainmail is kneeling, with his head pressed to the cobblestones. His tabard marks him as a watch commander. It is not surprising that he is submitting to the DokkAlfar, only an idiot or a lunatic would oppose them. Behind him are another seventeen watchmen, all kneeling to the DokkAlfar
It is time to start the party. I take out Stone Feather Death, and nocking an arrow, take aim at one of the archers. There is no guarantee that I can kill the casters in a single shot, they could have a variety of mana based shields up.
As the bowstring slips from my fingers, the arrows leaps toward the archer's head. The shifting light from the blazing buildings and billowing smoke, make it nearly impossible for the archer to spot the arrow in flight. Punching completely through the archer's head, the arrow leaves a trail of blood, bone fragments, and brain matter in its wake. A shifting pattern like blue-white lighting and a shimmer give testament to the shield around the caster, when the arrow shatters against it.
One dead and an unknown number to go. Crouching low against the roof, I move out of the line of sight of the DokkAlfar in the square.
“No! Please, no! AAAARRRRGGGHH!” The screams come from the direction of the square, and more screams follow.
Path of Transcendence 1: Ultimatum of the Nameless God Page 28