by BJ Hanlon
Edin spotted the crillio beast seated next to a giant gray animal. It had large white horns coming out of the side of its mouth and a long snake like object for a nose. The ears were huge, like giant lily pads hanging from the side of the head.
He’d never seen it before. Not even in books. ‘An elephant…’ his guide told him in his head. ‘Extinct in the rest of Bestoria though there are a few south of the southern islands.’
“Can we talk aloud?” Edin was shocked by the unexpected reverberations in his head. It was like he’d placed a bell over it and suddenly someone took a crack at it with a hammer.
“It does take getting used to,” the monk said aloud.
“Thank you,” then Edin thought about what the man said. “There’s land south of the southern islands?”
His guide nodded. “There’s lands all over this planet. You’ve only seen Bestoria. One day, maybe you’ll visit other lands, you’ll visit other places.”
“Or I’ll be slain by the god of the underworld.” Edin whispered to himself and the monk just looked at him curiously.
Bliz whimpered.
They crossed a small stone bridge over a trickling stream that headed into the lake to the east. It had low edges that were barely an inch high and there were intricate flowers carved into it. Someone had spent a lot of time on it. That in itself spoke to the differences of this place with that of the dull and austere monastery. There were flowers planted on the sides of a pond and a small cottage sat at the edge of a forest. There was smoke from the chimney and it was made up of a cream-colored stone.
“What’s that place?”
“A retreat,” The monk said. “We don’t live in the darkness all the time.”
Edin heard laughter from inside and glasses clinking. “Do they have ale?”
“That they do,” The monk said.
Edin stopped for a moment. He was on a path to meet one of the most dangerous demons, the most dangerous demon in the world. He could stop for an ale and maybe a lie down. It wasn’t like he had a lot of sleep since the guardians.
Bliz nuzzled his head into Edin’s hand. Edin absently petted him and turned his attention forward. Arianne needed him. Suuli said, ‘follow the path, find Arianne.’
Now he was wondering if it was the dematian king’s idea to capture Arianne. Or was it Yio Volor’s.
“Do not think of him,” the monk said. “It is unwise.”
“Please don’t read my thoughts,” Edin said.
“If I can, it is possible the enemy can too. Especially if you are thinking about him.”
“So I can’t even think now because of Vestor.”
“Of the god?” The monk said. He turned back to Edin with a curious look on his face. “What do you mean the god? You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. Haven’t you?” Edin said. He stopped in his tracks and the monk did as well. The man stared at him for a long moment, his eyes appraising as if Edin were an artifact that needed a good valuing.
“No. No one has in…” He looked back up toward the monastery.
Edin followed his gaze and saw a person standing on the top step. Small figures that were clearly monks walked past him, though none acknowledged. “Who are you?” he said looking back.
“I’m Edin.”
“I know it was odd that you appeared and odder still that you are allowed to leave the valley.” His mouth opened and closed. “Are you the chosen one?”
“Chosen one?”
“Yes, chosen one, legend…” his voice lowered. “The Ecta Mastrino?”
Edin looked back up toward the top of the stairs. Vestor, or at least the figure he thought was Vestor was gone. “Yes.”
“Gods,” the monk said. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
They hiked for hours. The path was a small dirt trail with wildflowers, rose bushes, and azaleas bordering it. Trees surrounded them but they were not thick. Through them, he could see the mountains to the west and the lake to the east.
Across the lake, at least two miles to the east, he saw more land, grape vines on foothills and mountains, and even another small shack that stood on one of those hills.
Though it seemed like it should be getting late, it didn’t grow dark. They paused for some dinner. Edin offered some of the meat to Bliz who took it down happily. They sat quietly around a small hollow just off the path. One that was near a garden with large fieldstones surrounding it and manicured grass.
“I thought you didn’t get out much. This seems like a lot of upkeep,” Edin said.
“Things move slower here. Much slower. The plants grow slower, the animals get hungry less and we at The Monasterion de Vestorion do not age,” the monk said. “In the day you’ve been here, three weeks have passed in the outside world.”
Edin was shocked. His mind raced and after a while, his mouth caught up. “It’s been three weeks?” Edin said. “How? Why?” He had looked up at the sky and wondered why it wasn’t getting dark. Had it been dark at all since he’d been here? He thought he remembered the sun moving in the sky when he was in the altar room. It had and it pointed to the emerald. But had it really? His head had swum and he couldn’t be certain what he had seen at that point.
That meant that Grent and Dephina could already be in the Susot Valley, Dorset and Rihkar would already be at the Isle of Mists. They may be getting magi together to sail back. Maybe they’ve already set sail.
The world was passing without him. For every minute he stayed here, how much time passed in the real world? How many hours went by as he sat in this hollow and looked up at the unending sun? Edin abruptly stood. “We need to go,” Edin said and started to the small path. “I can’t stay in this place any longer. I cannot be in this protected vale. Not when my friends and family are out there.”
“I understand but you need your rest. No one will be waiting for you outside of the vale,” the monk said.
Edin knew that. At least no human would be waiting for him. Did he really need to rush leaving this vale for the real world? He could use the sleep, that was certain. But Arianne is in that beast’s grasp.
“I need to go anyways,” Edin said as he started back down the trail.
The monk was after him a few moments later, his sandaled feet clapping on the trail. They kept going for more hours. Six, maybe seven in the gigantic valley which he still didn’t see the end of.
There had to be some magic. Some spell that made the place invisible to the outside world. Maybe most of the mountain range was the same. The Susot Valley was unknown as was Arianne’s keep and both were in the north. Edin would’ve thought that miners and explorers would try and search for ore or relics of days past in these mountains.
But no one ever found anything. Or maybe they had and never come out.
The road began to turn slightly to the west. Then it began a slighter, but still noticeable rise. The trees grew thicker and some turned more tropical.
He heard before he saw great hoots and howls coming from above them.
Bliz looked up and whined painfully. Wild vines hung from the canopy but he didn’t see the source of the sound until the monk whispered in his head, ‘there’ and pointed to a small open patch backlit by the sunshine. Between a large branch and three wide leaves was a huge animal.
A great reddish orange ape. Its face was gray but looked almost black in the shadows. The mouth was open and it was hooting at them as if they were intruders.
‘They’re very territorial,’ the monk said in his head. ‘They’ve never attacked in the valley, but no one has ever provoked them either.’
Edin nodded and said nothing as Bliz barked loudly. Soon, he saw more apes and monkeys in the canopy, some were the howling ones, others were smaller but with big glowing yellow eyes and long fingers and tails.
Finally, the sun began to go down over the far side of the ridge when they reached the crest of a hill and the end of the forest. Edin stood at the top of it and looked down to the other side. Before him, he saw wide flat la
nds to the north and south. To the west there were open fields with animals in them. All of the animals seemed small from there. Then he spotted a fence and a man standing on it yelling something at a beast in a pen.
“The real world I suppose,” Edin said.
The monk said nothing. He stared out at the land before him with a thoughtful expression; then he reached out a hand as if to feel for an invisible wall. “I will go no further,” the monk said. “This is where we part.”
Edin turned toward him so the setting sun was at his back and he looked out onto the primeval valley behind the man. “It is beautiful,” Edin said. “Maybe I’ll return one day.” Maybe he and Arianne could find a cottage on the lake here.
“The way back is difficult, but if you continue forward, you may find it.” He said in a prophetic type tone.
“Very confusing,” Edin said but then something caught his eye and he shut up. Something that didn’t make sense. The light of the fading sun was catching something far to the north. In the direction of the monastery.
It looked pinkish-red mixed with a yellowish hue and it was rising. Edin blinked. “What is that?” Edin said.
The monk didn’t answer. He was gape mouthed and staring as if he’d never seen anything like it before.
That wasn’t natural.
The fog began to move toward them across the lake. It was very slow, much like the rest of the world when Edin moved like a terrin.
Then he heard voices in his head. Muddled ones, fearful ones, and confused ones. He could tell where they were. Their exact locations and their fears. Some were at the monastery, others were in the cottages, and yet more were on banks of the lake next to the serene animals. There were loud cries from men and beast. Birds began to leap from the lake as the fog rolled on.
Edin watched as a bird that looked almost black in the light started to fly. It had a long needle-like beak. The fog began to rise and the bird flew slowly into it.
Then he could only see the shadow of it in the mist. And the shadow dropped. From below it, Edin could see sparks of red.
He heard other voices, one possibly the abbot’s cry out. ‘What is happening?’
Answers came in, monsters, fog, death.
He felt the fear in them, a wicked, leg-locking, pants wetting fear in them and could not move. Then he felt like he was choking for a moment. He saw a stampede of large mammals, elephants, across the lake headed south toward an unknown.
His head began to pound with all the cries of panic and the muffled prayers. “They’re dying,” the monk said next to Edin. “My family.” He wasn’t using the wave. Maybe the lines of communication were too crowded.
It sort of took Edin away from the sight and the feelings and he had a clear thought of what monsters? Edin saw the monk next to him was staring, gaping still. He opened his mouth to speak and then they heard it. A giant piercing sound like a knife on a shield, but only if it had been Vestor’s knife on Losilin’s shield. The largest and loudest screech of all.
Edin’s knees nearly gave. Nearer to them in the water that was slowly being shrouded, something leapt from the serene surface.
Edin guessed they were maybe a hundred feet above the lake’s surface but what he saw leap from that water dwarfed them.
It was giant and segmented like a worm. Fifty feet in diameter with its mouth taking up the end. Inside that mouth, Edin saw giant teeth.
But he only saw them for a moment because suddenly, more fog began spilling out; spewing like it was an avalanche coming down the mountain. The worm turned left and right for a moment and dove back under the fog line and into the water.
Its spew did not. It held in the air above before dropping. He saw the fog rolling further over the lake and valley. Edin saw man and beast fleeing but the fog was too fast.
Many of the screams of man and animal grew softer. Then they were silenced.
An eerie, complete silence came over the world, it was as if the wind and the water too had been snuffed out.
The monk was shaking next to him, his mouth trembling. Then he said, almost as an aside, “I have to go.”
As he was about to go. Edin snagged his arm and squeezed as tight as he could.
The feeling of almost déjà vu came over him. Only he was in the opposite position. He was holding a man back, a man who wanted to run toward a fire to save his family. Edin swallowed. He’d die, just like Edin would have if Grent hadn’t held him back.
“Let go,” the monk cried.
“They’re gone,” Edin said. The man ripped his arm away.
Then there was crashing through trees. Ripping out of bushes and grasses and breaking of branches.
Down below, Edin saw the fog rising. It was coming up through the trees and preceding it were monkeys, deer, snakes, and birds. They were fleeing the yellow death that was coming upon them.
Edin slammed his staff into the man’s legs as he took a step. The monk collapsed.
“Do not throw your life away. Even these animals know to flee.”
Bliz whined but did not move from Edin’s side.
Edin reached down and grabbed the monk by the scruff of his collar and hauled him up. Rage came over the man’s face. Rage and fear and confusion.
Edin pulled him back down a narrow game trail toward the real world.
The monk barked incoherently, fighting back, slapping at Edin’s hands, though they were half-hearted attempts to break free again. Finally, he stopped resisting and was simply catatonic as they descended.
Edin kept waiting to see the fog crest the hilltop and come down but it didn’t, only a nimbus aura of it came from the sunlight’s reflection.
It took an hour to get to the bottom and Edin collapsed on a fallen log and Bliz laid down at his feet, still whining. Then in his head, there was words. Monk’s words. He heard the abbot and a few others from dinner. He heard ‘It has stopped rising.’
Edin glanced over to the monk who was looking back at the crest. This must’ve been what happened in the Northlands. Edin thought. The swamps of old will spread like weeds.
That part of the prophecy was right.
Then he heard, ‘no one below responds.’
Edin heard weeping in his head and in real life. Then he heard wet lapping and saw Bliz was licking the monk’s face. The man tried to block, but it too seemed half-hearted and he stopped after a moment.
“My brother was at the cottage, my real brother,” the monk said.
“I’m sorry.” Edin said remembering Berka. If it stopped rising, he should be safe. At least for now.
“His name was Irat.” He said.
Edin looked around, there were trees and he saw some animals cresting the hill still. A large orange ape and other monkeys. “I thought you forgot your names?” He said.
The monk sniffled. “No one really does. It is something we tell each other, something we’ve told people for three-thousand of your years.”
“Three thousand?” Edin balked. “What do you mean…” the man had a look of complete seriousness on his face. “How is that possible.”
The monk shrugged.
“What’s your name?”
“Just call me Monk,” he said. “It’s what I am, it’s what I’ll always be.” Edin saw him looking at his hands. “I wonder if I’ll age at the same rate as you people now, or will father time want to make up for lost time?”
Edin said nothing. He looked up toward the farmer in the distance and couldn’t see him. No more livestock, no more farmer. He was probably over some small berm.
In their location, they were covered by the hill to the east and a copse of trees to the north. It was as good a spot as any for a camp. He was out of the old, slow world and could rest now.
“You didn’t perhaps pack me a sparkstone did you?”
Monk looked up and nodded. “Front pocket of the pack,” he said.
Edin found it, a front pocket. He set the sparkstone to his sword and lit the fire in one strike, though his talent did a bit of
the work.
The flames whooshed and he sat in its warmth.
“The first time I’ve not spent a night in my own chambers in a long time,” Monk said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”
Edin thought about the fogs, the giant worm, then Yio climbing the tunnel to get to their world, to destroy their world. He didn’t know if he could either.
But he did and the dreams were not pleasant.
13
Losing to Gain
Yio Volor was close. He was behind Edin, he was all around Edin, like a giant canvas blanket in a pool of water. It felt like it was falling deeper and then he was shocked. Electrical shocks struck at his body. They seized his heart and his lungs like a giant hand reached down his throat and grabbed them. All breath, all heartbeats stopped.
He was smothered like a child beneath a pillow, like a man buried beneath the earth.
Fear wracked him as he suddenly felt rips and tears in the blanket. But whoever was doing it, wasn’t there to free him. They were there to hurt him.
Above his mouth he heard the tearing ripping sound that pulled through his body. The canvas was shredded and there was a deep wide hole ahead of him. A hole of complete darkness. A hole as if the world had been torn away. It was nothingness. An empty space.
Then something appeared before him. A humanesque face. A gruesome and horrible face. Edin shuddered and tried to scream, but there was no one to cry out to.
At that moment, he knew, the world had died. All of it, and it hadn’t simply died. It was as if everyone who’d ever lived was gone.
Their lives had been wiped out. Their souls, their memories. Everything that had ever been, everything they aspired to be… it was as if it never existed.
There were no humans, no elves, no magi, not even any dwarves. Only the dematians, the monsters and their god.
Then he was somewhere else. A landscape that looked like a sickly old man on his last legs. The sky had turned a wicked orange. There were no more trees either, but many shrubs. Though they weren’t really shrubs. The greenery had turned red. It was reddery.
The plants, all had red leaves and stems the color of blood or if it could be made into a color by the color gods, terror.