Pieces of the Past, Friends for the Future

In a forest quite far from where you and I are standing, a mage in long red robes was making his way through the trees and bushes, since the trail he had been following seemed to vanish not too long ago. He had been on the move for about a week at this point, on the northern edge of Ristoria, nearing the border of the dreaded Skjál. The Skjál is the “barrier” of sorts between the civilized lands of the United Territories and the violent and treacherous North. The North, known as Jördraal to its people, is a hopeless land that the Elves forced the insubordinate rebels that refused to accept their rule into as a final nail in the coffin for those clinging to the past and the old ways of Man.

The mage had come to this forest for something in particular. He had heard rumors of an ancient temple lost to the rest of the world for ages, and in this temple, supposedly, there was great treasure. He had heard many different guesses as to what lied in the chambers of that old and cursed place; some said it held forbidden knowledge, others said there was enough gold and trinkets to last someone a lifetime, but the mage was sure it was something else. Something much more depraved in origin…

       At that moment he heard a yell. A gravely yell that rooted him in place. A berserker. A Northman. He was sure of it. The mage crouched down and began to sulk closer and closer to the origin of the noise. Through the bushes, he saw a great mass of a man, covered in furs and hairs (it was impossible to tell what was clothing and what was body hair), with a metal beartrap wrapped up on his ankle. The rusted teeth were pushing into his leg, digging into the bone. The man huffed and groaned, with his head hanging low. He would begin to pull the trap apart, but then give up after he realized that his brute strength wouldn’t break him out of this alone.

The mage stood back and contemplated his choices. He could just leave the savage here, where he couldn’t hurt anyone. But that idea didn’t sit well with the mage. He understood the difference between right and wrong, and out here in the wilderness there are no sides, simply man against Nature and all the hurdles Nature will throw to crush you into dirt and compost for the grass and fungi that populated this lush habitat. The mage shook his head and emerged from the bushes. The savage shifted his gaze up at the wizard and began to swing his hand axe crazily in front of him.

“Sorcerer! Devil! Leave me to my fate and let my corpse rest! I die today for the Skjál!”

“For the Skjál.” That’s all Northmen talked about. If you were to believe them, the Skjál would be an entity capable of changing and shifting to the will of the Northerners. A beacon of hope, as well as their doom. A concept similar to our Manifest Destiny, but more subjective and personal to the savage Northerners. Some say the Skjál is what keeps them in Jördraal. Others say it’s what guides them on their crusade against the Elves from overseas, and someday the Skjál will be pushed all the way across the United Territories until all foreigners are purged and pushed out. It’s a dangerous concept, one built by love and desperation. And out of hate.

“Relax,” said the mage. “I have no wish to harm you. In fact, if you would be willing, I would be happy to take a look at that trap around your leg.”

“How can I trust the words of a caster? Who’s to say you’re not casting a spell on me right now?”

Northmen hardly listened to reason. It’s emotion the mage would have to argue with in order to get anywhere.

“How are you servicing your precious Skjál here? In the middle of the woods, dying slowly? Put our differences aside Berserker, and think not of yourself, but of your Skjál.”

The savage seemed to contemplate the mage’s words, and after a short while, he nodded affirmatively, and submissively.

“I’m Damen,” said the wizard, cautiously walking over to the beastly man.

He did not answer.

Damen crouched down when he got to the trap, “Let’s take a look then.” He reached into his satchel and pulled out a long probe tool. “Is that your wand, wizard?” the barbarian looked down at Damen. “No,” he replied, “This is for alchemy, that’s all. The staff is for magic.”

He winked.

The barbarian scoffed.

Using the tool, Damen pushed down on the release lever. “Alright, go ahead and pry the teeth out now.”

With a jerking motion, the Northerner reached down and skeptically pulled at the trap, and was able to pry the teeth out with no issue.

“There we go, now for the real work. This needs to be patched up. I have some salve and bandages in my pouch I can use, but it’ll be a while before you’re able to walk again. We’ll have to make camp for the night.”

“We?”

“Yes, we.” Damen stood up. “I’m going to need to monitor you, make sure you recover completely. Do not fret, you have nothing I desire, there is no reason to kill and rob you, at least not for me.”

The barbarian looked around frantically, it seemed as if he was arguing with himself. Finally, he sighed, and looked off to the west. “I saw a clearing in the woods not too far from here, looked like a reliable spot to camp. I can make it there, if you’re willing to assist.”

Damen smiled. “Very well.” He approached the injured man and lifted him up by the arm and shoulder.

“Horgan,” the Northman said with a pained grunt. “My name is Horgan.”

They made it back to the site Horgan had mentioned, and Damen sat Horgan down and went to start a fire. For almost an hour, the two did not speak to one another. Horgan, too afraid and suspicious to give anything away, simply sat propped up against a tree staring solemnly into the fire. After getting the fire started, Damen sat down and began to write notes in his journal. The wizard had done nothing to agitate or to upset Horgan, but he still felt a strange dark presence deep inside Damen. There was something there in the center of this mage that was dark and ancient, a suffering that was not exclusive to practitioners of the arcane. Horgan knew that suffering all too well.

“What compelled you to traverse these wilds, mage? Be it knowledge you seek? Or power?”

Damen hardly looked up. “Close. There’s one sure way of achieving both knowledge and power in one fell swoop. Secrets. Secrets is what I’m after.

“Secrets?” Horgan looked around at the gnarled trees and bloated mushrooms. “Druidry? You’ve come to learn from the dryads and the spriggans I take it?”

Damen couldn’t help but laugh at the Northman’s tales. “Not quite. You see, it is said that there is a temple in these woods, not too far from the border of Jördraal.”

“The Skjál,” Horgan corrected Damen.

“Yes, the Skjál,” Damen said with a smile. “This temple is too far from the coast to be of Elvish making. Hidden deep in these woods, I take it to be the remnants of ancient man.” As those last words left his mouth, Damen shifted his eyes up at the figure across from him. A bowl of stew was covering his face, broth and carrots running down his beard. Damen chuckled. “There’s a society of scholars who believe that ancient man, our common ancestor, had in their possession technology that we could hardly begin to comprehend. Seeing how technology is already such a broad and barbaric tool for us now, I wish to see what it is that we have lost, and if it deserves to be found.”

“What is it you hope to find?”

“What do I hope to find? Some machine capable of turning air to bread, or perhaps some vaccine for the plagues that swarm us from the jungles of the south. What do I believe I’ll find, however? The same thing humanity has always engineered and reveled in. Weapons. Some ironically inhuman device capable turning flesh into charcoal, or perhaps a reactor to some great cannon or bomb. That’s all we ever find in these tombs. Attempts at destruction left in total disarray. Thankfully so much time has past that hardly any of them are capable of being used, but it still doesn’t get rid of that question that eats at you every night you’re toiling over scrolls and books full of history.”

“What question is that?” Horgan looked horrified.

Damen looked into Horgan’s eyes. “What were we trying to defeat? What was so deadly in our past that we needed such firepower?” He shook his head. “Maybe it was just ourselves, hatred has the power to take over any soul, it seems. But the weapons and the vehicles we have found, it points to something greater. That’s what I’m here to find.”

Horgan looked dreadfully confused and troubled at the conclusions Damen were drawing. If he were to believe the words of his sages, his elders, any of the people he knew back home, they’d say that man is not capable of such evil, only elf. It was the elves who came over with their sticks of fire and their gleaming, shiny armored suits. But then again, these were the same people that had accused him of such a heinous crime, when the true culprit, was the one who sent him away…

“What about you? What is a Northerner doing past the border? Nothing good, I imagine.”

Horgan paused for a moment, just long enough for Damen to look up from his notes. “It wasn’t my choice,” he mumbled, “It wasn’t my fault.”

Damen put his book away, “What do you mean Horgan?”

Horgan darted his eyes towards the fire. “Never mind me. I’m going to get some rest, wake me when it’s time to head out.”

“Let me check your leg first.” Damen walked over to Horgan and unwrapped the bandages. The salve he had put on it had worked wonders, the wound was almost fully closed, and looked to be very clean. “Yeah, you’ll be good to walk in the morning. But you should still stay with me for a day or two, just in case you show an adverse effect to the salve. It’s a cure-all, but sometimes a rash will break out.” Damen waved his hand and a gust of wind put the fire out. With that, they both laid out their bedrolls, and went to bed for the night.

Damen awoke in the morning with a dull throbbing in the back of his head. His entire body felt sore and irritated, like he had been put through a sieve. The ground beneath him was cool and smooth, and when he went to roll over onto the grass, he fell off of the table he was laying on and onto the sleek metal floor. The room around him was dark and cold. Using a night eye spell, he was able to illuminate the room for him, and he saw Horgan stirring restlessly on a slab not too far from him. Damen crawled to Horgan, shaking him awake. Horgan responded by wrapping his arm around Damen’s throat, and then loosening him when he realized where they were. “What the Hell? Where in the Pits are we?”

Damen finally got his bearings, and stood up. He looked up above him and saw the soft soil that had composed the ground they had slept on last night. He looked around and saw a room full of different bodies, some decomposed, some preserved, all of them cut open and mutilated however. He grabbed Horgan by the hand, knowing he could not see anything in the pitch blackness, and ran to the sliding door on the other side of the room.

The door opened into a hallway with green pulsating lights hung on the walls. He turned left and began sprinting, still holding onto Horgan. The corridor seemed to wrap around, but in the center, there was a set of doors that would not budge. “Horgan!” Damen yelled, “Grab on to that side of the door, and pull!”

They managed to pry the doors open, and in the amphitheater of the temple they saw a podium with a great burning red orb, shifting and crackling. Then, figures with bleeding red eyes crawled out of the orb, and from out of the floors and out of the ceiling and began to lumber towards the two captives. Horgan saw a strange dissecting tool attached to the ceiling, fitted with a saw and a bone hammer, and tore it out from the device it was attached to. Sparks flew and shimmered in the light. Damen began to make signs and shapes in the air with his hands, a great burning yellow emitting from his palms. The infernal figures shifted towards them. Horgan lunged at one and drove the saw head through the tendons in its neck. The creature screamed and hissed and convulsed on the ground, before dissolving into a thick red paste. The paste began to inch its way towards Horgan, and he let out a childish yelp.

Damen, nearing the end of his cast, screamed for Horgan to jump back. Horgan leaped behind an operating table, and Damen unleashed a field of yellow pulsating light. It engulfed the room in an aura that tickled Horgan, but filled the demons with a horrid pain. The demons began to swell and seize and their mouths ripped open into a gaping maw filled with goop and teeth made of sulfur.

       The demons dissolved into a paste just like the first, and Damen remained the only one standing, huffing and heaving, exhausted. Horgan looked up at the orb that still sat in the center of the room, pulsating and shifting faster then before. The paste puddles all around the room began to travel up the podium and into the orb, making a horrendous sloshing sound.

       “Horgan!” Damen turned towards the savage who was now hunkered down like a scared child. “I need you now, more than ever!”

       Horgan seemed to be inconsolable. “It was my fault! This is my punishment! All of time has been leading up to this, for me to give myself to the Infernal King and revel in fiery ecstasy!” His eyes were wide and wild. “Marta! Jon! It is time to be freed! I shall take your place!

       “Horgan! Goddammit man steady yourself!”

       It was no use; Horgan was in a state of delirium. He would have banish the evil himself. In the academy where Damen studied demonology, they taught you a few banishment spells for your own safety. Damen was lucky enough to have memorized a banishment spell made for Hellspheres just like this one, but he would only have one shot at it. Praying to every divine entity he knew of, Damen began frantically waving his hands and casting signs, speaking in a dead Verdilian tongue. The yellow light he had begun with turned a pure white hue, and Damen could feel his veins and nervous system burn and pulsate with the divine energy of beings beyond his comprehension. He saw the inside of the orb he was trying to get rid of. A landscape of rotten carrion and thick magma. Then he saw his wife and child he lost so long ago. Then, the orb began to crack and the brightest light that ever graced this lab shone through, shattering the orb like glass. Damen caught his breath, and then collapsed to the floor.

(Eight Months Later)

“I’m beginning to think it’s a cockatrice. If not that, then maybe a terror bird, or another large bird.” Horgan fingered a long colorful feather he had found in the grass.

“A cockatrice would make sense, but a basilisk would be more likely. Remember, we are very close to the Wompam Swamps, and the bodies were frozen when we found them. Pure stone.” Damen squatted down next to Horgan, using his staff to steady himself

“Can basilisks turn people to stone?” Horgan handed the feather to his partner.

“Some can, mostly these ones down south.” Damen stood back up, his left arm shooting a bolt of pain down his body.

Horgan looked around the hot and humid landscape. “How does it feel to be back home, my wizard compatriot?”

Damen looked to the coast. He could almost make out a woman in flowing clothes with a small boy following close behind her. He turned to Horgan and then turned back. There was no one there.

“Well Horgan, I once saw myself as an exile of this land, on my own accord. But there is nothing that makes you feel more like a foreigner than the return home.”

Damen pocketed the feather they had found, and began to walk ahead. “Only a few more hours till the next village, come. I’ll buy you a pint.”

“Make it two, my friend, and you’ve got a deal.”