For Kelc, there existed only one escape from his father, his home and Symea. He didn’t know if he could manage it as riled up and afraid as he felt, but he kept his eyes closed and did his best to fall into the darkness.
Kelc’s eyes snapped open as his ethereal form washed through the wood and slate roof of the cleanhouse, blasting through the near-infinite number of minute openings in the stone and oak as he hurtled skyward, his soul splintered into particles so small that the very fabric of the real world seemed nothing but open space.
Once beyond the roof, he vaulted into the night sky, his energy alive and agile, able to twist and contort as it flew, dodging each of the oncoming snowflakes as they dropped through the air to the surface below.
No word could describe how alive and in control Kelc felt. He sensed every mote of his being, could feel it and move it without the cumbersome constraints of his body or the physics of the world. Oerhe itself, so massive and static below him, seemed like nothing more than his point of origin now.
He did not need it. Oerhe, Symea, the people there… Free, he thought. Free from all of it! The thought, if thought it was, did not simply arrive in his mind, but poured through him, filling him, radiating within him like an echo, exhilarating him each time it rebounded. I am…limitless. The concept stunned him.
Kelc suddenly felt and understood that he could compress himself into a sphere no larger than a pinhead or stretch himself into a haze that could enshroud the entire world below, all of Oerhe itself. His body still lay on the body board, controlled by the physics of the real world, while somehow Kelc had freed his soul, his spirit, to fly amongst the clouds.
Am I dead? He considered this for mere moments before discarding the possibility. I am finally alive! More alive than I’ve ever been before.
Kelc marveled at his ability to simultaneously sense zillions of snowflakes around him, his essence roiling amongst them, keeping clear of the delicate crystals of ice as he rocketed ever faster upward.
In the space of a single thought Kelc burst up out of the snow and into warmer air. Heavy clouds still surrounded him. He wondered how it could be possible to have warmer air above such a fierce snow storm and, as if simply willing the answer brought it into being, he understood.
He could see, as if through the eyes of others, many others it seemed, the rise of water as it evaporated up out of the ocean and into the heavy air. It gathered in grey clouds over the sea and followed forceful winds that constantly battered the coast, driving the humidity into Symea. As if he drifted with the fattening rain clouds, Kelc saw Skurgaard below, the capital of Symea that lay far to the south. The clouds continued north beyond the large city into the expansive brown grasslands of middle Symea, picking up speed as torrents of freezing northern air began to wash beneath them, making the winds more violent. He marveled at his awareness; Kelc could see every hill and animal path below him as the storm built.
He watched the moisture-laden grey clouds compress as the warm air around them rose up over the growing stronger cold air currents below, forcing the water they held into closer and closer confines until some of the vapor actually formed droplets that descended into the frigid winds.
The more the cold air pressed into the warm, the more and bigger droplets resulted. Soon, it rained furiously into the wintery air, where the drops instantly froze and rode the furious wind to the surface below, burying the land in snow and ice.
Had he possessed the ability to do so, Kelc would have laughed. In the barest moment he came to understand something that likely eluded consideration of nearly everyone else throughout their entire lifetimes.
He reveled in the feel of existing as he did, far beyond the reach of his abysmal life, beyond the reach of his father and his daily abuses. Beyond Symea. He settled into himself and simply existed there, outside of his corporeal body, hovering above the clouds. Free.
Off to the east, a lightning bolt crackled through the air, climbing up out of a billowing cloud it illuminated from within only to bend back to it, filling it with blue-white light.
Thunder rolled away from it, high-pitched at first as the sound tore through the air, followed by a deeper echo that rebounded off of the face of Oerhe below.
But Kelc hardly noticed. He focused on a different facet of the storm: it’s mood.
In the area of the lightning, he could feel them. They boiled within the worst of the clouds, seemingly eddying within, their anger palpable. Spirits.
Hells, Kelc thought. This storm, which had intimidated him-- More than that! It had spoken to him, threatened him. The storm did not only seem ominous and cross, it was. Spirits gave it…a feel. Personality.
He reached across the sky with a tendril of himself and tried to feel or observe the specters that dove through the center of the storm. It seemed to him that while they may have spent a minimal effort to note his presence, the souls in the storm simply raged, occasionally scouring the surface below, noting whatever life forms existed there and disregarding them as quickly as they discovered them.
Until they found one that resonated to them. Someone below feared the storm. Kelc could feel it. And that is what these apparitions sought. As soon as the spirits that drove the storm found what they hunted, they exploded into action, their focus singular: grow fear.
Lightning erupted, reaching down to the ground, illuminating the clouds and filling the air with horrific noise. The air twisted and turned at their whim, pounding the dwellings of those that huddled against the storm.
Bawling voices lent their aspect to the blasting wind, screaming across the grasslands, making all that heard them cower before a might they could not comprehend.
Hells. Kelc couldn’t believe what he witnessed. How could such spirits exist in a land that rent them to Reman. Or did they? And who or what are they? He had so many questions that begged for answers, and unlike his desire to understand how a snowstorm formed, these did not yield instant answers. Did every storm originate with these sorts of spirits? No. He suddenly knew that to be true. Who were they? Why exist this way?
Four bolts of lightning shot past him, repeating quicker than thought along the exact same path, causing the very air to vibrate around him as white light blazed so brightly that he felt he couldn’t stand it.
Run! He felt it in the storm, just as he had when he’d fought the storm to get to the cleanhouse earlier. Fear. All these spirits wanted was to cause more fear. It did not affect him as it had before. Now, he simply understood.
Kelc, the storm screamed. We know you are a dark practitioner! Kelc withdrew the coil of energy he’d extended into the heart of the blizzard, a sensation of alarm buzzing through him. We will kill you, screeched the voices. We know!
In the span of time shorter than he could have imagined, Kelc pulled his essence together and dropped.
He plummeted back through the clouds, careening to the surface far below, falling far faster than the snow that rode the fierce winter wind. He plunged through the roof of the cleanhouse and crashed into his body.
Cold! His eyes shot open.
“Kelc! Damn it all, open this greeching door before I freeze to death, fool!” His father’s voice sounded both desperate and angry. The door shuddered beneath the older man’s pounding fists. “Now, damn you! Open it.”
Kelc lurched to his feet, finding his body to be clumsy and confining. His fingers resisted doing what he asked of them as he all but collapsed into the door. He fumbled to lift the bar from its position as he slid down to the floor, unable to maintain his feet.
Varrl forced the unlocked door in, the wood digging into Kelc’s side where he lay on the floor. “Hells,” his father growled, reaching out over his son with a lantern. “What are you doing in here, fool?”
“Father,” Kelc whimpered, his eyes losing focus momentarily. “Something is wrong. Very wrong.”
“You’ve courted death, fool.” Kelc’s head rocked to a side as his father’s hand slapped him hard. “Look at me, boy. Kelc,” he snapped, again slapping
his son. “Fight!”
Kelc slid towards darkness and death. So free, he thought. His body no longer mattered.
“Fight, boy!” Varrl’s voice seemed so angry, Kelc thought. Why stay for this? Again, his father found a reason to pound on him. “Kelc,” Varrl said, shaking his head as he gripped his son’s collar, lifting him from the floor. What was that, wondered the young man, looking into his father’s eyes. Concern? Kelc smiled as he dropped into blackness. Free.
Kelc oozed from his body, sinking through his straw-filled mattress, falling through the planked wood floor and landing on the frozen ground below.
It struck him as somewhat odd that the ground would be so solid to his spiritual essence while nearly everything else that should be solid felt as if it were nothing, his ethereal soul able to pour through.
But the ground resisted. It possessed some sort of power of its own and Kelc could feel a bit of spirit buried within it, a resonance of spirit that seemed to shiver within Oerhe beyond his ability to truly examine.
So he lay there on the ground, sensing everything around him. His father stood on the front porch, still as stone, staring off to the east, his face expressionless, his arms crossed and his fists clenched. As he watched, his father’s chin rose as if he saw something in the distance, but then he turned and looked into the house, perhaps speaking with or listening to Adda where she worked in the kitchen.
She prepared salves of some kind and smeared them on strips of cloth. They looked like bandages. She then folded each one in half and carefully arranged them in a basket before walking through the house.
Shaia knelt on the floor next to Kelc’s bed, her nimble fingers caressing Kelc’s cheek and running through his hair. Over and again she caressed her brother with one hand while the other rested on his arm. She made sound, but Kelc could not understand it, almost as if he lay under water.
But he didn’t need to hear her. He could see her. Her eyes, riveted on her brother, spoke of love and fear. The way she touched him conveyed caring beyond measure. Shy, he thought, extending himself to her.
She turned her head abruptly, now looking to the floor, and she smiled as her hand stopped moving. She said something in a whisper, but again Kelc could not understand it. She then dropped her hand from his arm and put it nearly on the floor where she gestured.
It seemed as if she knew he watched from below the floor. Her fingers moved as if to beckon him to come up.
Of course she knows, he realized. She can feel me.
He willed himself up, rising up off of the ground and back into his body, pouring his spirit into the limiting shell as if he filled a barrel with silvering. All at once, he woke.
“Kelc,” Shaia said, cooing his name, but he couldn’t focus on that.
His flesh felt aflame. His face, particularly his nose and lips seemed to be as exposed as fresh blisters. Even the air seemed to scald them as it moved across. But that pain kept his attention for only a moment.
“My foot!” he tried to say, but his throat rasped and choked him off.
“We know,” Shaia said soothingly. “Shhhhhh.
Kelc’s right foot felt as if it struggled to wake from a winter slumber. It buzzed with pain; infinite prickles rose through it, beginning at his toes and carrying backward through the bone and ending in the more substantial meat of his lower leg, spawning ripples of pain through all the other prickles as if they collided with one another along the way, their sole purpose to torture him.
“Foot,” he spluttered before his throat again closed on him, forcing him to struggle for breath rather than worry about the uncounted assaults on his flesh. So closed was his throat that he could feel his breath as he drew it into his body, the air coming cold into him as if even the skin inside his throat had been ravaged.
“Here they are,” his mother announced, coming into the room with a basket loaded with bandages. She handed the small load to Shaia where she knelt on the floor and then leaned over her youngest son. “Kelc,” she said, “this is going to hurt.” She pursed her lips, looking right into his narrowed eyes. “Stand strong.”
She drew a short, slightly curved knife from her apron. The surgical knife, he knew. He closed his eyes as his heartbeat roared within him, the sound and pressure bounding through his body, filling his ears, drumming in his neck and emphasizing the pain in his face and foot.
He vaguely felt the strap that Shaia tightened over his leg, holding fixed against the bed, immobilizing it. One of her hands reached up and cradled Kelc’s head, her fingers slipping under the base of his skull, her thumb gently kneading him.
“It’s good?” Adda asked, her voice as tight as the strap.
“Yes, mother.”
The first cut. At first it seemed okay. It felt sort of cool amidst a great heat, the release of some pressure. But Adda had to remove the flesh that had been ruined. She pared his foot as if she were peeling a pear, cutting away the darkened skin and corrupted sinew beneath, adeptly slicing it away to see how deep it went.
The pain exceeded Kelc’s imagination. He couldn’t scream. The sound he desired to make seemed paralyzed itself, trapped in lungs that lacked the strength or ability to move. Instead, he could only focus on the pain and hope that it would drive him from his mind, overwhelm him and knock him back into the comfortable blackness.
But long years of enduring pain in every form left him tolerant of his mother’s knife and the resulting assault on his body. Kelc could endure. Tears streamed freely from his eyes and even their passing resulted in a dull burn.
“Hells,” she breathed, “they have to come off.”
More than the cut that lopped his three smallest toes from his right foot, the pain of his mother working the knife in behind the knuckle bones to make the cut drove him toward madness. The polished steel raking against the rough bone, the edge driven between the knuckle and whatever bone lay behind it, the edge filing against the tendons the bone is built to protect: This hurt.
It took only a few moments for Adda to position the knife but to Kelc, they drew out long enough to motivate his impotent body into action.
He struggled to raise his arms, but found that both of them remained secure against his bed, tied down by straps. His hands clenched into fists, splitting the wrecked skin on his knuckles as he did. His lungs seemed to suddenly function, driving his breath so that he could issue a gurgling scream, his need to be heard washing through his constricted throat and piercing the air.
Adda drove down on the knife as her son shrieked, needing to pound the knife three times with her full strength to force it through the tough tissue that held her son together. It crushed his foot downward into the hard mattress before the toes suddenly fell free of the rest of the foot.
“There,” she announced between deep breaths, “now we can bandage this up and work on his face.”
Kelc hardly heard her, his body still issuing its complaint to the work his mother performed. But he had heard, and he could not imagine what it meant. Terror gripped him fully and his body responded as he’d hoped it would before, dumping him into oblivion.
“Drink this,” Adda commanded, proffering yet another mug of the musty tasting potion. Spores, mustard root, willow bark: the list ran long regarding what was in the warm mixture that held infection at bay. “Kelc,” she said insistently, “drink it.”
He carefully took the mug with both hands, the skin on his fingers finally healing save for a few spots on his knuckles where the splits had been more severe.
“Where’s father?” Kelc asked after forcing two swallows of the bitter drink, wincing with each one.
“He rode into town to get supplies.” Adda sighed, letting her breath wash through her teeth. “What were you thinking, youngest? Anyone with any sense of things could feel you. And to abandon your body to such harsh weather?” She shook her head, her green eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t plan it,” he mumbled, “and I didn’t even know I could do that. How could I have known?” he asked, a
little heat in his voice.
“I don’t know,” his mother answered. “I can’t do what you did. To just leave your body like that…” Her eyes gathered intensity. “How did it feel?”
“Uhgh,” Kelc answered having just sipped more medicine. “It felt,” he began before recovering himself. “It felt incredible. I felt…alive.”
Shaia walked into the room and sat down on the end of Kelc’s bed, careful to avoid his injured foot. “Alive?” she asked as she settled.
“Yes. I could feel everything. I felt the storm, the clouds. I could see the ocean and Skurgaard.” He smiled in remembrance, feeling the tension of his chapped skin as it hung stiff around his eyes and mouth. “I could feel spirits,” he told them. “Angry spirits that drove the storm, directing it.”
“Not here in Symea, youngest.”
“Here, mother,” he responded immediately. “I wondered the same thing. We rend each body and the wardens chase those that persist, but that storm held spirits at its center and they scoured the land for any that feared the storm.” He breathed in, taking a pull from the mug, his face reflecting its bitterness. “When they found someone fearful, they grew the storm and threw it upon them, trying to make them even more afraid.”
“Spirits,” Adda breathed in awe. “Here.”
“And they threw lightning at me,” Kelc said, frowning as he recalled. “Even though I existed much as they do, I still became scared and ran away, back to my body.” He quieted for a time, held the mug in his lap, letting his eyes wander over his hands, where bandages covered his frostbitten flesh. “Father was pounding on the door, yelling and screaming. Cursing me.”
“He plucked you off that cleanhouse floor and had you back in this house so quickly,” Adda said, nodding to herself. “He came through that door,” she said. But she stopped and bit her bottom lip, her eyes falling to the floor. “We worked on you all night. He didn’t understand how you’d been so badly affected by the cold, locked as you were in the cleanhouse. He didn’t know you’d abandoned your body…taken so much of your heat…” She glanced to the ceiling, to the sky she could not see.
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 19