by Jacob Spadt
Memories spilled into my conscious thoughts. My arrival here in this world opened my eyes to so much. Earth and Heaven were no longer mysteries to me. I thought back to my early lessons and how badly Malnuras defeated me, with almost effortless ease. It was more like getting your ass kicked by a single finger that kept poking holes in your body and actually causing wounds. Never did I think that such grace and skill could exist in such a dichotomy of a creature. I knew now he was not fully man. He neither moved nor behaved like any human. Nothing could be proven one way or another. At this moment, his secrets did not matter. Saving his life was all I had. With each passing moment, I felt is life force waning.
The blood on my hands mixed with layers of mud and grime. While the dirt was just a coating on the outside, but my failure was too much to carry. Why did the pursuing horde target him? I had to find a way to exonerate myself. Even though keeping my teacher alive was not my mandate, letting him die would be detrimental. His absence would do far more damage. It did not even matter that I made a small dent in the siege works anymore, or that I had first-hand intelligence of Heaven’s plight. It would all be for nothing if Malnuras fell.
He stirred.
“Teacher, can you hear me?” I put my hand on his face to clear away more of the grime. A moan followed by a cough. I watched his body tremble. Was this a ray of hope?
“Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix you. I do not know how.” I noticed one of his eyes creep open and the pupil itself rolled back up in his head. He tried to focus on me but to no avail. My frustration grew, turning to anger again. Why did he send me away? Why did he not let me stand with him even if it meant my end?
My hand cleaned more dirt and blood away from his face when I felt an irritation on my skin in the area of one of my runes. It pulsed for several times before I noticed the sensation originated at a specific rune. The itch turned to pain, and it felt like another rune carving itself into my skin. Energy flowed from my core and rolled out to my hands in waves.
Bright light almost blinded me as my hand began to glow. A searing sensation on my healing rune spread over the entire area. Pain intensified. Energy continued to flow. Heat emanated from my hands like the heat rolling off the campfire; my skin began to burn. The light turned from white to blue. A void started in my abdomen and began to pull from my other extremities as it headed toward my glowing hand. Pins and needles hit me everywhere. I cried out. The pain got worse. Everything blurred.
Balance failed. My knees buckled. Cold sweat poured from my skin. Energy siphoned from me, much like the creatures I just met. Pain gave way to numbness. My senses reeled. Serenity took over; my surroundings spun.
The urge to vomit hit me but I kept my food down, probably because there was little to nothing in my stomach. I had to hold onto my core strength. My eyelids felt heavy. They crept down, trying to cover my eyes while I fought to remain conscious. Limbs shook. Reality felt like it shifted and becoming something else.
The battle to hold myself up was lost. My strength failed. Face down in the dirt I fell.
Blackness.
* * *
Dirt tastes different from all over the realm. My unique perspective on this qualified as an opinion in my eyes. When I was younger, dirt got in my mouth often. It had a unique taste that you cannot identify…although not something that I would recommend personally. This mud, ripe with the spilled blood of daemons, tasted disgusting.
The very taint of daemon that was saturating the ground got deep inside. It was just like rotten food mixed in with food that was not rotten. You can tell it is there and even taste the foulness or the mold, but you cannot see it directly. I gagged and tried to breathe without getting more of the vile dirt in my mouth. My motor functions were not working thus raising my head away from the nastiness was not possible. I just lay there, trying to minimize my exposure.
Moments passed. Beyond that, it became difficult to maintain consciousness. My strength was still gone and showed no signs of returning. At one point, sleep took me. When my eyes opened, disorientation made the ground spin beneath me. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach repeatedly. Suddenly I remembered Malnuras and fought to roll myself over. It took everything to muster enough to force my muscles to cooperate as I dug my hands into the foul earth and forced myself to rise. Gravity gave me the final boost I needed as my vision cleared.
Malnuras’s was gone!
Did he die? He was gone. I could see the print in the dirt where his body used to be. The camp was silent. Light ash fell like snow from the clouds. The sky looked gray. The land wore it like a blanket. Unease came over me. My eyes panned the countryside to see if there was some sign of my teacher. The thought of something or someone wandering into camp and stealing his body seemed unbearable. Perhaps his body vanished. My lessons had shown me this was possible with some creatures of myth. Looking about at the ashen landscape, I saw no immediate clues. I tried to imagine what the life of such and individual would have been truly like. Sure, I had seen the campfire runes that showed me a lot of Malnuras’s involvement. It did seem odd to me that I did not find him in bear form. Perhaps he only used that form with the humans he did not wish to frighten. Maybe he did not have to change into the bear. Maybe he could not cast magic in that form. My mind raced in too many directions at once.
I closed my eyes and focused on finding my center. Failure weighed heavily still. My mind relaxed, clearing itself of uncertainty. There had to be something I could have done differently. It was the typical guilt that a warrior feels when his honor is tainted. Although this had happened to countless warriors, it did not make it any easier to deal with.
One deep breath…then another…what to do? Malnuras and my master Mathias were everything to me here. We had only visited one village. No one really knew me. I had no ability to go anywhere other than where my feet cou…
I caught myself mid-sentence. It hit me sideways like a sledgehammer swung by a drunken Minotaur. Somehow, I had teleported myself to this campsite. Two new runes adorned my body. One of them brought me here. My body had somehow created it. The runic network was adapting..
"Find your master." How my swords always seemed to speak the obvious as if reading my mind was taking some getting used to. As if they could read my mind. Yes, we had a telepathic link, but how is it that my swords gave me logistical advice? Realization came to me that my swords were not just an extension of my body, but also an extension of my mind. They could think on their own. I would never be alone again.
“Do you know what happened?” I asked aloud, obviously angry at their silence during the loss of my teacher.
“We also have an unconscious state like you, when our energies are depleted. We shared in your plight to save you from further harm,” they responded. “We know nothing of what has befallen the teacher. Find your master.”
“Then I thank you for your efforts in this. I apologize if I snapped at you both.”
“Nothing needed.” said the lower voice. “We share your concern.”
I had to get to Mathias.
Meditation was a skill I had learned early on. The ability to focus my energy on a singular task, object, or skill had been the aim of much of my training. It was difficult at first: trying to calm myself and find my center. Many failures had happened, before I learned to block out the ambient noises of myself. The smallest sound could derail meditation.
Once I learned to get past myself, the ability to block out the sounds while remaining aware of them was the last step. No warrior wants to be surprised. Sneaking up on me was bad for one’s health. Well in truth, I never really could hurt Malnuras, even if I wanted to. It was almost like a trigger in my mind. Even when he found a way past my defenses, it was never as bad as it could have been.
In return, I just could not hurt him. He made it a point to try to sneak up on me. When he was successful, I still acted, for its better to act then to react. My action was to tap him with a hand, not to strike him hard. This had been our game f
or years, and I had finally mastered it.
I had learned to control pain using meditation and focus, and every injury was another opportunity to practice this technique. Malnuras taught me that being able to focus the healing energy while hurt made the healing happen stronger and faster. I used this focus to execute my next move.
I sat with my eyes closed, drinking in the surrounding landscape of sounds. My thoughts came into focus on each individual noise around me and then added it to the list of safe noises that I could ignore. No creatures moved here as the scorched earth scared them away. The predominant noise was the fractured earth still shifted due to the amount of magic fired off in the immediate area. Everything settled. When destructive magic happens, the soil can heave in protest. Magic may be normal, but it is still not natural. Most that wielded it had an affinity for nature magic as well as the true arcane…both equally deadly.
The sound of falling ash was the smallest noise of all, but because there was a lot of it coming down it had an orchestra of sounds all to its own. It sounded like rain. There was a small comfort in that realization for I enjoyed sitting in the rain to meditate when possible. It added a challenge to the aspect and the focus was more intense. Even though it was not the same, as soon as the sound association processed, I was able to cross that off my mental list as I fell into meditation. My focus was Mathias.
I started with his face. The memory of meeting him the first time and how chiseled his features were, like those of a Greek god. He had strength in ways that I did not understand at the time. His very stride was that of a man that could kill you with his mind effortlessly. He had taught me that battles began in the mind…win or lose. I began pulling in all my remembrance of him. A cohesive thought finally formed. His voice came forward for me next out of the sensory aspect that my memory recalled. My master impressed me in everything he did.
I remembered hearing his voice the first time. It did not even sound human. The harmonics that made up his words were in perfect rhythm and cadence. Even for a warrior that had seen countless battles and had seen wonders and horrors, his voice never changed tempo unless he chose for it to. He controlled his excitement and recollection of his achievements whenever he spoke. There was an authority in his voice, and you hung on every word, for it was soothing at the same time. It reached into your soul and showed you a platter of confidence, yet it made you work for everything and handed you nothing. It inspired fear and confidence at the same time. Thinking of it now brought a small twinge that I had to force back. I did not realize how much I missed him.
My focus intensified as the pieces started to come into full view. His presence saturated my senses. He towered over me in the beginning, for my growth took a while to complete. Like a giant of legend, he cast a long shadow. The fondness I felt made me want to bow as if he were royalty from some distant land. Yet he led men into war, which is something that dukes and barons do not do. I still remembered seeing him swing his blade for the first time and the ease with which it passed through the leg of his target.
My thoughts narrowed to one word. Extraordinary! He was an example to me on every level of the type of man to strive to be. I smiled and opened my eyes. The singular picture in my thoughts began to grow and my focus shifted from pain to purpose. I stood and turned around slowly. His presence was everywhere. It enveloped me, growing larger and larger. It felt as if we both occupied the same space. Something was pulling me in the opposite direction than Malnuras had thrown me.
I paused and released my thoughts of Mathias for a moment. I returned my focus to Malnuras. Memories evoked emotions, yet I did not feel the same response as before. I felt nothing. That worried me greatly. I had no sense of where to look for him and no idea where to start. It was as if he were dead. Could he be? Why would he leave me here? I could not let those thoughts creep back in.
My goal was clear.
My mind shifted back to Mathias. Within seconds, I had the feeling that my master was back. The feelings were strong. I did not know what to do next so I locked in on wanting to be where my master was. This feeling of elation built within me, and the teleport rune started to heat up. The sensation intensified to a climax, but nothing happened.
I started to despair and felt doubt grow in my mind like a throbbing sliver. The focus began to bleed off. Trying not to get angry or let my emotions control me, I concentrated on a new idea.
I had not imagined me actually going to him. No sooner did the idea form than I felt my vision blurred like before. My balance shifted and I was off. This time, however, it was instant. There was no build up from the rune, nor was there any pain or nausea. The campsite simply vanished from sight. I could see nothing. My hope grew.
Solid ground appeared under my feet. Air moved rapidly around me like in a vortex, but it did not tear at me the way a tornado would. Airflow stopped. My eyes focused and my ears adjusted to the sounds of battle. Called from their place on my back, my swords instinctively hit my hands.
My eyes panned my surroundings. I found myself atop an enormous wall. It was several hundreds of feet wide and had crenels on each side of it. In front of me, great golden buildings disappeared thousands of feet above in the clouds. The architecture was incredible as if I had stepped back in time to gothic designs that adorned every building in certain periods of history. I was in awe of such a sight, but my focus was on my mission and did not allow time for distractions. To my left and right, I heard the familiar sounds of the horde attacking. My eyes panned. Winged “men” and “women” were engaged in battle with swords all around me. They wore beautifully adorned armor and the weapons glowed with some type of energy. Combat was intense. The horde’s foot troops seemed temporarily contained to one large area. The locust daemons died by the hundreds, but the numbers were too great... In they swept like a tide.
The energy field was right in front of me, changing colors like a rainbow. I had just seen this very same field not long ago. This time I was on the inside. I glanced around and saw the towers on the wall also disappeared into the cloud miles above me. I gasped as the magnitude of this structure assaulted my senses.
I stood on the fortified walls of the City of Heaven. Daemons killed angels by the hundreds every moment. My mind stopped. Everything inside me froze. Hell invaded. Heaven buckled beneath the onslaught. Impossible!
The horde had broken through the protective shield.
XIII
The Wall
With flaming blades in motion, I scythed the first of my attackers clean in half. Three more met a similar fate in the next few strokes. All died in a bloody mess faster than they could turn to engage me. The bodies burned from the holiness in my blades. Even the blood burned away.
I was just getting started. Daemons were getting a foothold on the wall, like a beachhead when a country invades the shores of another. They held a small section of the wall. That was all they needed to allow the fliers to get into the air. The blood lust took me to a place of controlled rage. Vengeance drove a righteous spike of fury into my heart. They had taken Malnuras and now Heaven was wide open. Nothing could make things even. Tens of thousands of them needed to die today to begin to cover the debt. My swords could not move fast enough. There were a few surprised looks from the winged beings when I strode up next to them and stole their kills.
I fought alongside angels!
They bore a strong resemblance to pictures I had seen as a child. The Grecian physique chiseled to perfection adorned with wings, ornate golden armor, and a beautiful weapon wreathed in flames. They were almost as tall as I was with little variation in height. Long lochs of braided hair of all shades, very Norse-like, fell upon the back their plate of armor. Most had great helms that also had a winged pattern on them. Several sported shields while others had two-handed weapons, like axes, spears, and mighty swords. All were amazingly graceful and warrior-like as they threw themselves methodically at the horde.
Sporadic glances around me revealed I was the only dual wielder. My weapons sang
a deadly dance. Dozens more daemons died and I was catching them two and three at a time. The controlled rage turned to strategy. Hundreds of daemons fell by my hand in the first minutes. Cheers erupted as the masses fell. The momentum carried me. Faster and faster my hands went. The horde was not thinning by any means.
I hoped there were some wizards working on that shield. Someone had to repair it while the combatants dealt with the insurgents. “Why was God not defending the city?” I thought. Perhaps something happened to distract him, or maybe the horde finally hit the walls of Heaven with enough force to punch through. I knew the answer to that question was not relevant right now, but it mattered. The question occupied my thoughts for several minutes while I cut swaths of death through the nasty creatures closing in all around me.
I had not even turned my own protections on. In my rage, all I wanted was for them to perish, and I did not care what happened to me in the process. It took several hits on me and some major blood to flow and fill my boot before the realization hit home. My stubbornness hurt me more at times then the enemy did. There were allies around me to protect. Training was over. Today counted.
Bodies of angels littered the wall and started to pile up.
Medium sized fliers formed the core, but mainly ground runners of the small to medium variety were swarming. The Defenders appeared to stand strong. Hundreds of the flyers flew out into the city and disappeared every moment, but I was not paying attention to them. My foes all around died by the thousands as the forces of Heaven marshaled and we advanced. I could see the breach now in the distance; it was far away and very, very big.
It took several hours of fighting before I got close enough to the breach to realize that it was not what it appeared to be. The horde weakened the shield enough to allow magic to do more than simply creating an opening; it allowed the hordes to enter. It was a true portal and it was bigger than I imagined it could be. Siege weapons continued to pound and weaken the city’s shield. Small openings, the size of my fist, were fluxing open and closed. Occasionally a stone projectile from outside would pass through. It was getting dire. With the horde pouring through and the projectiles smashing away at Heaven, I had all but forgotten my reason for being there. Mathias had to be somewhere close.