by Jeremy Marr
“What kind of trickery is this?” Redlew Feiht thought as he was being held motionless several feet above the floor. He remembered sprinting down the hallway in madness, running down his own reflection that he had thought to be a crazy man who had made him very angry. As accurately as he thought he saw it all happen first-hand, his now clear mind showed him that not only was he wrong, but showed him how things really took place.
He saw himself on the stair landing yelling and arguing with mirrored images, like a lunatic. He watched as he started running for the wall where the stairwell ended after that one lone step. Only instead of running into the wall, it glowed as he passed through it as if it were air and not stone. He kept running full steam down hundreds of steps that made up the spiral stairwell. He had tripped twice during the decent, during both he had fallen half a dozen steps or so before getting back up to continue his mad pursuit of who he was chasing. He tripped again as he ran out of the stairwell onto a stone landing.
He then saw the bridge he crossed, and realized that it had been crumbled and more then halfway missing. He did not run straight down the middle as he remembered, but instead leapt from one section to another and back to another in a zigzag pattern. Some of the steps he took would have made him shutter if he could move; steps he would not have taken had he been clear-headed as he was now. He never even glanced at where he was placing his foot nor where he was going to place the next, almost as if he was on autopilot. He watched as he stuck his fingers in the holes located in the floor just before shouting “Redlew Feiht commands it!” in a voice that could have made the God’s nervous.
That door opened into only what could be called a labyrinth. Door after door, hallway into hallway, through this arch then that, he had run his way through a series of endless passages and ways around. He never hesitated in his choice, being too busy in his pursuit of the taunting voice. He never saw that he was running through a maze whose ceilings, walls, and doors were made of polished, glass-like marble, carved directly from the rock itself underneath the once great city of Kessela. Each knob and door was the same, and each pair was set at just so of an angle they reflected and doubled off the walls opposite them. He did not think he would ever be able to find his way out, or in again. He was then dumped into this octagon shaped room.
He saw his reflection, the man he was hunting, trapped in the octagon shaped room. He saw his chance at vengeance. The only thing now blocking him from the one he sought was an hourglass pedestal that had been carved out of the rock everything seemed to have been. He was not going to let that stand in his way, so he did the only thing he could think of. He tried to jump it, hoping to land on the man he was after. Head long he dove over the pedestal, and that led him to his current situation. As soon as his airborne frame was over the hourglass structure, not only did his movement halt, but his head cleared of all the confusion that had held it captive until that point in time.
“A good thing, too,” he thought as he came to grasp with the truth that the room was not as whole as he first thought. A wall made out of mirrored rock cut the room in half, just behind the pedestal he was positioned over. It gave the room the appearance of it being larger than it was.
He glanced first at his left and then at his right hand, held tight in air that refused to allow him movement through it. It was as though Father Time had forgotten to wind up his own clock up. They held steady about a foot away from the mirrored end wall of the room. He looked back over to the front of him, where his own face was reflecting back not more than inches away from his eyes. He knew his forehead to be within an inch of the wall, and with his hands a foot away, there would be nothing to shield his face from the impact that should have already happened. “So much for a clear head,” Redlew thought, envisioning the pain he would soon be in.
Times were tough these days, and the roughness of life did take its toll on his body. Though he was only in his early thirties, his once jet black hair had almost fully converted to an in between of white and gray, but not quite silver. The same color transformation took place on the narrow patch of hair that grew on his chin directly under his bottom lip. It was so odd, walking down the streets got him a lot of attention from the ladies, and consequently, lots of unfriendly glares from the men. A short but distinguishing scar ran from just below where his left eye and nose were the closest together down to the corner of his mouth. By all accounts, his life should have been all over the night he received that wound, but for whatever reason it was, fate had intervened and he had managed to get the upper hand with quick wits, and even quicker feet.
“I was always a fast runner,” he almost chuckled. That night, for the first and only time in his life, he ran from a fight. “It was also the first time on the wrong side of a six on one blade fight,” he finished as he shifted his view directly into the reflection of his own baby poo, green eyes.
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He retracted the past back and tucked it away just before the cold was about to seep into his left fingers, finishing its task of consuming him. He always loved and savored the feeling of being completely enveloped within the power of the blade. It was not unlike being submerged in icy water. “Each time, it feels like I'm alive again, coming back from the dead,” he thought.
“That it does,” his voice answered back from within his head.
Every inch of him tingled in response to the numbness, and he could not help but smirk; it was now undeniably time.
Redlew’s gaze shifted from the saliva droplets, frozen in front of the thug boss’ mouth, to the man a few paces to the right of him. He saw the man’s eyes had finally started to move up, not that it mattered at all now. Redlew turned and walked over to the man, free of the time constraints that had been draped all around him; he was the holder of the blade, the master of its power. Feiht’s feet made no sound on the dirt alley street, nor were foot prints made by his advance. He knew that after the cold left, and things returned to normal, footprints may appear, but for now, and even then, it simply would not matter. Nothing would, really, except for the fact that the Guild Leader’s words for punishment would have been carried out.
“I'll even be able to pay myself the reward,” he spoke in his mind.
He had all the time he needed here, in the timeless void of the cold, so he got up close to the brute and studied his face. He recognized him as a silent observer who had been brought in to witness both the asking permission for, and the denying of that permission to hunt this section of town. The actual alley sought in that interview was three more up on the left, where he was headed to start his search after hearing someone was illegally hunting this area. Him as a witness meant that he was not just some “too-dumb-to-know-better”, and the punishment would certainly be fitting the crime.
“Consider your debt paid in full,” the black clad figure of Redlew Feiht thought as he used the blade to collect the life that was owed. Rent was due when you disobeyed the Thieves Guild Leader. He then stepped back one pace and out of nowhere, Redlew’s right foot shot up and kicked the blade-for-hire in the chest. The man, still frozen in time, did not move or make a sound as the deal was done. The man would not even know what happened until Redlew exited the cold. And by then it would be too late for him; what was done was done.
Feiht then looked over at the obese man who was a little further up in the back corner of the alley. The very sight of the man made him want to scream, but letting out his breath would released the cold, and that was nothing he was ready for just yet. Instead of taking in his distasteful appearance again, Redlew’s eyes settled on the small knife suspended between the man’s fat hands. His eyes narrowed as a satisfactory feeling settled in the base of his neck, causing his mouth to elongate into an evil grin. A plan had been formulated, and it was a plan he liked. Instead of a quick ending, like the cutthroat he just disposed of, he wanted this one to suffer as he slowly counted what was due for the rent on his life. He did not know
why he felt this way, but he did, and he was a man willing to act on those thoughts. He made the punishment for offenses like this very quick, with or without the help of the cold from his dagger. But the man did curdle his stomach with both his outward appearance and the stupidity he was showing and tossing the only weapon he had from hand to hand.
“Gives honest thieves a bad rep,” he thought. “Not to mention, he did, as well, forgo the denial to operate on this street.” Whether the fat man knew he was not supposed to be hunting here or not, did not matter to Feiht. These streets needed to be free from the members of the Thieves Guild for particular reasons only he knew. “Time is time,” he finished, as he started to walk towards the object of his disgust. During his walk, his thoughts floated back to where he had left them, deep under the once great city of Kessela.
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As his dark green eyes met the mirror image of the same, he felt drawn into them. The outer fringes of his sight swirled around in black and gray. His saw movement deeper in the reflection, so he concentrated harder at looking at it. His sight became narrow, as though he was inside a long tube, looking out from the far end. He then felt as though he was sliding headfirst into the green eyes that were not even inches from his own. The movement he noticed moments before became more distinct, and he realized that his vision was indeed not only tunneled, but also moving toward where the action was. Like smoke being drawn up the chimney, he cascaded through the tunnel vision, and at the end, broke out into the real world, free of his constricted sight.
He immediately knew where he was, though he did not understand how he could have been below the Kesselian Ruins one moment and then hundreds of leagues the North and to the East at the base of the Tuscan Mountain Range the next. There was no other mountain shaped like Tuscan’s cloak, so it had to be. A clash of metal on metal erupted its way into his head as closer to the mountain he flew. He never really even questioned the facts that he was flying over the treetops that dotted Kessela’s Beard and the grasslands leading up to the base of Tuscan’s Cloak. All around him on the ground were people and creatures of every shape and size. They seemed to be in a conflict with darker beings, which continued to pour out of the mountain region even though there was not much room left in the great expanse of grasslands surrounding it. The fighting below him became a blur as he sped up faster and faster, approaching the mountain itself. His eyes seemed locked on a target, off in the distance where he could not see anything yet. Still he looked and sped constantly forward. When he got a glimpse of a man wearing a black robe, he knew it was he that his eyes were looking for. The closer he got, the more distinct and clear the person became, and the more horrified and disgusted he felt inside. With less than one-hundred yards separating the two, the world seemed to stop turning.
All sound deadened and movement no longer existed. Even from this distance, he could make out the man’s appearance perfectly. A tan, baldhead sat confidently upon wide shoulders with cold black eyes gazing the battle being waged below him. He was standing on a large rock outcropping about half the distance up on the mountain. The man was somehow not tied to the same thread of reality as everything else that stood motionless around him. Redlew could see the man's mouth moving as he spat words out. Then the man turned slightly and cocked his head to the side.
Redlew first felt the blood in his veins go cold as the man's darkened eyes settled on him. Then the stranger’s mouth spread into a wide grin, and Redlew felt his body go numb as his blood congealed. Redlew Feiht then blinked. When his eyes opened, he found the distance between the two of them had shrunken into less than twenty feet. Fear and hopelessness dug into Redlew's mind. They seemed to be radiating off the other man’s body. He felt the feelings heightened further, when the bald man spoke.
“Ahhhhhh,” he began. His voice was almost heavenly-like as it glided from his lips, “My old friend, how wonderful to see you again.”
Redlew tried to speak. He mouthed the words, “Who are you and how do you know me?” but found he was still unable to move, as he was while he was suspended in the mirrored octagon shaped room.
The bald man chuckled and said, “What's the matter? Is it a bad time to talk?” He then slowly walked up to Redlew Feiht and placed his face inches away from him. All hints of playful banter had erased itself, though the bright, gleeful smile remained. “Something is missing from you. You are not as powerful as you once were, Feiht. I can sense that about you, even from here, where I wait for my own Coming. I cannot tell exactly why that is, but it is the truth, as is what we are both seeing,” he said as he motioned to the battle at the base of the mountain and beyond, below them. “You're not going to stand in my way, this time, for as you have grown weaker, I have grown stronger. I will be there when you expel your last breath, just like before, and I will happily inhale it as I look down upon you while you are being sent into the Eternal Darkness; a gift to my father.”
Redlew did not really know what this man was talking about. He did believe, however, beyond any doubt that his threats should not be taken lightly.
“As a matter of fact,” he said to Redlew, as the smile vanished from his face, “I have been wanting to try out a little magic I've learned since our last meeting. I haven't a clue how it will work from here to there,” he continued, while gesturing to where he was standing and then to the general location of where Redlew was. “Since I haven't been reborn yet, I guess I have nothing to lose. What does not kill you makes you stronger. And as I have said, I am not reborn, so could I really die?”
The figure then started laughing as he glided back about thirty paces. Redlew noticed that during the backward slide, the man’s legs did not move at all. The bald man then began moving his arms in a circular motion. The laughing died down as he spread his arms wide. The air all around the strangers started to shimmer and crackle.
“Get away, get moving!” Redlew's mind screamed. He tried to turn and flee, but movement was still not permitted. He knew something bad was going to happen and this was the last place in the world he wished to be when it did. His eyes started frantically searching for something to aid him. He knew it was hopeless though, because even if he saw something he could somehow use, he lacked the ability to move his body except for his eyes.
“The blade, for Bal’Derick’s sake, the blade!” he heard his own voice shout within his head. It may have been his own voice, and though it may have come from within his own head, he had no clue what the words meant.
A murmur, in some language that he had never heard before, drifted over to his ears. His eyes migrated back to the bald man in the black robe, where there was now a greenish haze swirling in-between his outstretched hands. His eyes were nothing more than little slits of black, and his forehead was wrinkled and sweaty. It was unsure to Redlew as to if the effects were from the greenish mist, or from whatever it was he was to doing to produce the unnatural cloud above of him. The man’s mouth stopped moving and a pleased looked spread over his face, which relaxed both his eyes and the skin that covered his forehead. The man then started to chuckle.
“Reach for the blade, man! Reach for the blade!” Redlew heard again from within his head, even more insistent this time. The stark terror in the voice that rode on those words was like a sharpened knife edge that ripped into his soul, deep enough that to wonder what they meant was no longer at the forethought, simply doing what they said was.
Redlew once again started combing the area for any blade or weapon that maybe just out-and-about and found none. He knew he was running out of time in his search when he heard the man's chuckle become almost child-like with glee at whatever it was he was doing.
“Find something,” he said to himself, “find something I don't see and use it without being able to move.” He started to feel confused as the laughter started to change its pitch to a low, full of throat, growling cackle.
“GET IT!!” blasted in Redlew’s skull.
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He was just about to protest to the voice still ringing in his head, when that thought was replaced by anger, which once again began to creep out of his mind.
“Yell at me, will he?” he mentally asked, as he was filling up with burning madness that radiated off the anger. “Is that going to make anything better, yelling like that?” he continued. His thoughts were getting louder and louder. “You can't do this to me, I will not allow it! ‘Get the blade, get the blade’. You are ranting like a madman, acting as if the blade were directly below my nose.” Redlew Feiht then drove his eyes straight down below himself as proof of that nonsense. The anger faded, replaced with wonder and hope. Directly underneath his forward pitched torso, a foot or two down, he saw a knife resting in a bowl of some kind. It was the granddaddy of any sort of knife he'd ever seen, and because of his line of work, he had seen many to compare it with. It was about forearm size in length, from the bottom of the hilt to the tip of the blade.
Before he could start to look more closely at the details of it, the annoying voice bellowed in, “Don't just look at it, lad. You need to reach out and pick it up. If you waste anymore time we are going to die, right here, right now.”
His voice that he heard in his head was loud, but was relatively calm. Redlew heard an inhale of air, and all traces of calmness exploded with the words, “PICK UP THE BLADE, NOW!!!”
“What are you doing, my little test puppet?” It was the robed figure’s voice. Redlew brought his eyes up for a quick assessment of what was happening with the bald man, and then wished he had not. The figure, standing where he was, had a watermelon-sized, green swirling orb suspended between his two hands, which were held above his head, spread out shoulder width. The man continued speaking. “You look as though you don't care to be here,” he said with a mock look of disappointment in his face.
Redlew looked back down to where the knife was, “Either he doesn't see it, or doesn't care about,” he thought. Some of his confusion was chased away at that moment by his backstreet upbringing. “Best use it to my advantage while I can,” he finished as he cleared his mind of the robed figure, and whatever unknown threat against him that was in store. It felt good to let go of the entire subject of the danger he was thrust into. He could not help but smile. His eyes locked on the silver dyed leather hilt of the large dagger. He did not allow himself to actually look at it. He feared he would be more caught up in admiring it than trying to figure a way to somehow reach out and grab it, so he relaxed his eyes, blurring the image out while still concentrating on it. He tried to move his arm and found it still stubborn to any movement he wanted.
“I need you,” he thought, as if he were actually talking to the weapon. He felt a small tickle somewhere in his mind. “You are my only hope, if I could command you to rise to my hand, I would, but I'm not sure that would do anything for me, even if it worked.” The more he talked to it, the harder the tingling in his head became. He could not explain it, now, but something was happening. He just did not know what.
“It is stimulated by your thoughts,” he heard in his head.
“If it is true,” Redlew mentally added, “then let's see how stimulated it can really get.” He was hoping, still, that it was somehow going to jump up and do his bidding for him, where he was incapable of doing it for himself. He cleared his head of every thought he could. Bundling up everything that was Redlew Feiht, he tried to push the thoughts out to the dagger and found that it did not work that way. He then tried to force it out of his eyes, still locked on the hilt, but again, nothing happened. He was becoming desperate in his need, and was no closer now than he was moments ago in obtaining his goal. In what would probably end up being his last attempt at saving his life, Redlew imagined a road from his mind’s cavity down to his right hand. The tingling in his head as it flowed out and followed the created path to his hands.
“That’s it lad, hurry up though,” he barely made out, because at that point he was trying to send out all his thoughts on the same highway to his hand. He was pushing and pushing, as hard as he could, but nothing was happening. It seemed his whole brain was bottlenecked somewhere in the base of his skull. “Sorry, this looks like the end of the road for me,” he thought sadly, as he gave up and stopped trying to push his thoughts where they have no right to be. He relaxed his mind and was ready to give up his life. In-between relaxing and giving up, he heard a loud popping sound, and felt something in his head shift. It must have opened up some kind of door within his mind, he figured, as he felt his thoughts swiftly race down his arm, to join the tingling feeling in his hand.
“That one door swings inward, boy, not outwards. When you relaxed the outward pressure, you allowed the door to open. It would be best to remember that,” the all-too-familiar voice in his head said.
Redlew ignored it this time. More important things were going on so he did not waste time asking why he was not told about how to connect with the weapon before learning on his own. His hand felt funny; strangely numb. He realized that he was now looking at his hand, and not the knife, but did not recall shifting his gaze. It was not until he tried to look back down to the blade that he discovered his eyes had not moved, rather his hand did.
A numbing cold encased Redlew’s hand as he gripped the hilt of the knife. As quick as that, the cold was up to his shoulder, and spreading through his entire body.
“Don't lose a hold on that cold, lad,” he heard in his mind, “That is what allows you to…”
“What is it you are doing?!” a loud voice boomed out of nowhere. So intent on what was going on to his body, Redlew had forgotten the reason this knife was so important to him. The robed man's words broke through the voice in his head. The bald figure was screaming at the top of his lungs. “You may have gotten back that which was lost to you, but you are still no match for me!” the man spat.
By this time, the cold had spread into every nook and cranny of his body. It felt good, the numbness did. It felt right.
“To escape this horrible situation Redlew, you need to release the air in your lungs. That will draw the cold out of you, and will allow things to return back to normal,” he heard from within his mind.
“Let go of the cold?” he asked himself. That was one thing he certainly was not going to do. He never felt so alive, or so free.
“OOO are now going to…” bald man continued.
“Breath,” the voice commanded again.
“DIE!” the black clothed man finished his statement while bending both his elbows and dropping his forearms and hands towards the backside of him. Redlew noticed how the shimmery green orb drew back as well, still holding steady between the man’s hands.
“I said to BREATH!!” his voice shouted.
“No!” he mentally screamed back.
“It's a pity there will not be anything left of you that your own mother would recognize,” the hairless man in dark clothes said.
“My mother,” Redlew thought. Images of his childhood and of his mother surfaced from their hiding places in his memory.
“I'll have to find her and tell her all about this,” the man said as he pitched his body towards Redlew, while his arms started to roll forward.
Thoughts of his loving mother still floated around in his mind. He could not let her fall into this man’s hand. His mind was made up; he was just hoping he did not waste too much time in changing his decision. He continued watching as the green orb was released from the man in black. Feiht really was not scared of what would happen to him, whether he lived or died did not matter much to him, or probably a lot of other people. But it would to his mother. She was the one person who loved and accepted him as he was, without judgment or criticism. He then caught a vision spring to life on the surface of the orb as it was en-route to his location.
In that vision, his sweet, dear mother opened her front door and took in a stranger on a rainy night. The stranger turned around to close the door and Redlew saw
that the stranger was the man who was killing him right now. The man seemed to look right at him and smile.
Before he had time to close the door, Redlew could not stand it anymore. “NOOOOOOO!!” he screamed as he threw his head back and shut his eyes. His breath started to taste as though he drank poison of some kind, or was expelling it from his mouth. He opened his eyes and knew for sure that he was probably less than a second away from his death, or was already in the grips of death, experiencing hysteria and hallucinations. Pouring out his mouth was what looked to be the neck and head of a really large, bluish lizard, or similar creature.
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“I really thought I was already half consumed by the orb,” he chuckled to himself. He stopped walking just shy of running into the fat man at the back of the alley.
“I could smell the fear, I know you speak the truth,” his voice echoed back
He smiled after hearing that. Redlew then looked at the small dagger still frozen in mid flight. In one graceful dance, he transferred all his weight onto his outstretched left leg, and used his right foot to push himself backwards. The foot that was holding his weight acted as a pivot point, or door hinge. As his body was turning, his left hand shot out and snatched the dagger out of the air. A flick of his wrist later, the dagger hilt was embedded in the ground, leaving the entire six inches of blade angled up towards the man. His arc continued until his one-hundred and eighty degree spin was complete. He transferred his weight to his right foot and pushed off with his left. When that arc was done, it put him behind the fat man, but off to the side. Redlew expelled the smallest amount of air from within his lungs as he gently kicked one of the frozen man's feet. That was a little trick he taught himself to be able to react with people or objects while shrouded in the cold. The man's foot slid over in front of the other one, and since Redlew stopped releasing the trace amount of breath, the man’s leg became frozen in this new position. Redlew then walked to the rear of the man and pushed him hard on his back, towards a dagger in the ground. The push did as much to this man as the kick did to the other, as he did not expel any of the cold breath that would allow time to become unfroze around them. The force behind what he did was hidden from time, behind the cold that was contained within him, and would not be set free until his own breath was released. That was how it worked.
He turned to the right and started making his way to the largest of the men, standing in the center of the alleyway. He walked past him and stood behind the brute. This one was going to wish he had listened to the thieves’ law and decision that was given to him. Because this was the section of the city where his mother refused to leave, this was the one section that was going to be free of any random based operation until he could convince her otherwise.
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“NOOOO!” the stranger in black yelled in unison to Redlew's own cry.
Redlew watched as the green ball came within a foot of his body before the strange, blue he-did not-know-what that was coming out of his mouth, curved its neck forward and down, snatching the orb out of its streaming path with its mouth.
As soon as the orb touched the lizard thing, it erupted in a flash of color and both disappeared altogether.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE TIME IS NOW