Private Tales Welcome to the Wild Hunt

[Duresh]

Duresh had allowed Nina that small moment to time to scrutinize the surroundings for that suspected spot of magic. The general area, the necklace itself, perhaps the sword the necklace dangled off of, any of these things.

What he did not suspect, or even consider, was that the spot had already taken root in him.

But this did not seem to be so. A tightening of her hand on his shoulder, a closing of her free fist, and a brief trance of concentration allowed Nina to examine him for this potential spot of magic. This examination did not require her to look at him, but magic did not necessarily need the aid of the physical senses to function.

It feels too…elegant for wild magic.

At this, what Nina was saying made far more sense. Her examination had seen something in his eyes, and at the aforementioned noting of elegance, Duresh knew with a high degree of certainty of what she was referring to: his nightvision enchantment. That which stained his eyes yellow. That which he definitely did not acquire here.

And there’s something even deeper inside you, but…Evasive.

Also made sense, and he knew of what she was referring to here as well: his Invisibility. It was good to know that he'd not fallen victim to some form of--as Nina called it--wild magic, that what she detected were magical qualities of which he was already aware.

"It does not," he said, confirming that such was no surprise. A brief wondering, if Nina's examination allowed for her to gain some sense of what his magical gifts were used for. Well. Mundane intuition could be used to make accurate assumptions in that regard.

The necklace isn't magical.

No, it wasn't. Just an heirloom, given to Loakina from her mother.

He asked Nina his question, and as she took a moment to answer, he crouched down and picked up the necklace from the hilt of the old sword and lifted it up by a finger and gazed at it.

Doubt. That same doubt crept back into his thoughts once more, when first his mother brought up the idea of fighting against the fire giants of Molthal. The doubt which had prompted her to leave in the night, to start toward Molthal by herself, knowing full well that Duresh would follow and thus be drawn in to the fight.

He understood the tenets of the old way that Loakina had taught him; those of the warrior's spirit especially. But his doubt, his reluctance to adhere completely to these tenets: of what good would they be if they led him inevitably to death? Was there a chance for victory, for the liberation of his fellow orcs from the fire giants and the avenging of Loakina's fallen tribe? Yes. Was this chance extremely narrow? Yes. A single warrior on his own did not win his war.

The duality which plagued Duresh: He knew his warrior's spirit would languish in avoiding this fight, but he also knew that he yearned to live life, to perform honest work, to raise a family of his own.

Was he going to Molthal to battle the fire giants? Or to simply extract his mother and escape with her? He was torn, feeling as if he were doing both, one goal at times overpowering the other. It was as if he stood at a fork in a road, with one foot planting on each branching path.

But it’s not about me, is it?

Duresh stood. Clutched the necklace in his palm. Said, "Your own experience may yet provide me with guidance that I have not considered."

A look over to her, and a gesture of his head which conveyed: Yes, let's head further in.

Duresh walked carefully into the field, stepping over rough patches of ground and protrusions of ancient battle relics, those bits of bone and metal of weapons and armor.

"This work that you do for the fire giant," Duresh said. "It isn't what you truly want to do, is it."

 

[Nina]

“The army pays a pretty penny.” Nina replied. A cloud cut off the sun. Dried grass rolled like waves. “Not always in money. Clemency. I made a deal.” So many people died then. She remembered the fog, the sickly fog soaking her to the bone. Nina walked after Duresh. She remembered her hand holding a poker, stabbing through the jelly-like flesh of an eyeball. “That deal was upheld.”

So many people died. But it wasn’t the Son of Menalus who was responsible.

She skipped on stones above the unseen river, and felt magic ripple under her soles. A gust of wind dropped the sun back onto them.

“He is not cruel.” Nina mused after a few moments. Shook her head. “Not kind, either. Practical.” In her mouth, it sounded almost like an invective. “Blight Orcs worship strength; it is what they value in their leaders. But he is already strong in the way that your skin is green. So strength is…” She snorted, and twisted one hand around its wrist, although Duresh wouldn’t see. “…to him.” Some days, Nina suspected that it wasn’t her questionable magic that got the warlord’s attention, but rather the impudence of negotiating in the first place. “A miser of words. Can’t read him. But…practical.” She repeated. To the warlord, it seemed to matter not that she could not fight, as long as her words and magic brought him resources. Her thoughts lingered, and a whisper echoed between her teeth. “If I make myself valuable, perhaps I could make more deals.”

A dangerous game. Soon enough, they’ll figure out that her hedge magic is worthless, and feed her to the dire wolves.

She walked among the graveyard of a battle that had ended ages ago and yet, in a way, it occurred to Nina, it never did. She looked at a shoe sticking out of the ground – leather, with little wooden nails keeping the sole in place – and thought back at the soldiers in the camp.

“They take so much pride in it, you know. In following him.” Nina continued. It was as if their conversation had rubbed off a scab, and pus poured out. “I’ve heard some other orcs refer to the blightborn as cripples, twisted spawn of cowards who bent the knee to Menalus rather than die an honest death in battle.” The more she cared about something, the more detached her voice grew. “The Blight Orcs see their ancestors as heroes. They endured the unendurable, and were forged into steel. All that was weak was burnt off, all that was brittle cracked away.” There was a moment of silence. Then her voice cracked a little. It was people that she was talking of. Even if those who shared those legends around the campfire didn’t see her as a person. “I might find it laughable that their idea of government is less equitable than a pirate fleet, but they are proud of having a government. They’re proud of Molthal being designed by orcish minds and built by orcish hands, even if its foundations creak with orcish bones.” She gazed at the hedgerows of arrows and swords they passed by, and thought of systemic inequality, of stolen lands, of vanishing traditions. She kicked away a pebble. “They’re proud of being a nation, one that no empire, human or otherwise, would dare invade.”

And they were right, even as they were wrong.

“The Fire Giants...they’re not everyone’s favorite persons.” Nina whispered. Even here, even now, she was careful of how she spoke. “Including themselves, I presume.” She thought of infighting, of how the little that she knew of Menalus himself painted the giant as having little love for his sons. “Kill them, and nothing might change. All it would do is create a power vacuum.” Nina folded her hands together, and opened her palms to see…“A thousand warring nations vying for power. Would that be better? I don’t know. I really don’t.” Her voice had the musicality of a sigh. “Perhaps you are strong enough to fill that vacuum. Then you have to start cutting heads, because orcs of the New Way may not agree with you.” Perhaps chaos would be better than the state-sponsored genocide, the slavery, but how could one really judge? “And then…what separates you from Menalus himself?”

It all felt so hopeless, that Nina felt the urge to laugh.

“I guess people like me are a danger too. We talk too much, do too little, and when the going gets tough, we slip safely into the darkness.”

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Nina had quite the way of talking around an answer. She spoke at length about the deal she had made, for currency, clemency, or both. Justified what she was doing by speaking of the fire giant's character, of how the Blight Orcs had fallen in line with this giant she'd dealt with, the pragmatic virtues of making herself more valuable in the hope that she could make further deals. Even a (remarkably Vel Anirian) rationalization of the status quo by appeal to the possible futility if said status quo were to be disrupted.

All this to--so it seemed to Duresh--avoid saying, No, this is not what I truly want to do.

Though it was hardly Duresh's place to fault her for this. Had he not spent seven years of his own life in Vel Anir stubbornly avoiding the self-evident answer to the implicit question he'd asked? Seven years wasted in his refusal to acknowledge that Garron Banick, his father, did not--and would never--love him as a son.

No, he could not fault Nina for avoiding the simple answer. Sometimes the simple answer--that which held within it the stark and undeniable truth--was the sharpest blade, and it cut straight into the heart.

He could not fault her, because he had done this before...and perhaps he was doing it again now.

Duresh stopped. Stood in the ancient battlefield as one of two living souls among the long lost dead. Appropriate, that he should stand as such: what better visual representation of all the people he had killed in Vel Anir, the consequence of blatantly turning a sightless eye to the truth.

He did know one thing: he was going to Molthal. Whether it was to extract his mother or fight alongside her, he was going there. He could only hope that she yet lived. Maybe the necklace, left dangling here in this battlefield in so particular a way, was a sign from her to him that it was so.

He glanced over to Nina. Mused, "It may yet be that neither of us will change any of the things you've described." A pause. "But I wish find contentment for my spirit. As should you. It is all that we have a true chance of achieving."

Maybe Nina should slip safely into the darkness. Maybe Duresh should extract his mother from the Blight Orc capital and vanish. Maybe, in forgoing certain battles, a greater war could be won; combat alone was not the sole way.

Duresh crouched down, his knee in the dirt and the rough grass. Looked down at a broken bone jutting up from the earth, the bone of an ancient orcish warrior.

Had the old way brought him to this? And did such a death fulfill his spirit?

 

[Nina]

There was something in the barren wastelands of this country that Nina could never capture in her paintings.

A sound like a squeaky door floated over the battlefield. It oscillated faster and faster, as if the door was about to shut. Nina clenched a fist at her chest, and was startled to realize that the sound was coming from her. A sob was breathlessly fighting its way out.

Duresh had spoken simply. He had spoken like a shaman.

He’d listened.

There was something in the Blightlands that was intangible yet eternal, stretching like a cobweb from the Spine to the northern sea. In Molthal it carpeted the walls, floated out of the watch-towers like dandelions and drowned the dungeons in its strangling embrace. Here, on an ancient battlefield that few dared cross, it thinned and frayed enough that Nina could see it for what it was. It was the fear. It was the fear carried in her chest, constraining her every breath, for long enough that she had stopped seeing it. The fear of the Warlord setting her on fire. The fear of the cooks spitting in her bowl. The fear of Grishka ripping off her arm. It became the new normal. It was not normal. There was a phrase that the travelling painter had glimpsed in one of Gray’s books, alongside a sketch of deer and wolves:

Landscape of fear.

It was the first time Nina truly understood the phrase. The moment when fear grew thick enough to warp the landscape. It was the same moment when, alone but for a man she owed her safety to, she had been unable to speak freely. Instead, what poured out of her was the fear.

But Duresh had listened. Fear poured out, and what was left behind was a strange sense of safety. Nina whispered:

“I think what I meant to say is, I want to be your man on the inside.” She snorted to pull back a tendril of snot, then wiped her face on her sleeve. “Just don’t get yourself killed.”

For they both wanted the same things, didn’t they? Rights and peace and equality and kindness and all the deliciously illegal things. Perhaps she was just touched in the head for thinking that she could achieve her goals by playing the sycophant. ‘A Fool.’ But their enemies were strong enough that no one approach, direct or otherwise, would suffice.

Nina shuddered, as one would when stepping into a river that proved deeper than expected. She’d avoided walking right in the middle of the leyline, but the magic was building up in rivulets to the point one could hardly not step on it. A mosaic box and a patch of ivory chainmail inscribed with runes were added to the treasure stash. Even a non-magician might glimpse strange happenings by now, a patch of grass the color of sapphires, a dragonfly that scattered into mites and then gathered themselves back, a few shards of metal weaving between them a rainbow.

“Say, how old were the tracks? It might be safer to go around-“ Nina started.

Nina stumbled. She fell face-down, and bruised her jaw against a wooden pillar. Her fingers brushed over cracks, some of them deep crevices that had been filled with dirt and plants. As she picked herself up, she came to realize that the pole was not part of some catapult, as she’d thought, but a totem. It had fallen over, and its features had been eaten away by time, but she could still make out a spiral and a long beak protruding from the part that used to be its bottom. That was what she had fallen on. The bottom of a totem pole, Nina knew, tended to be the host the figures most powerful, the most revered. The Ancestors. A tear flew from her cheek into the cracked eye of the statue.

It glowed.

Lightning struck the totem pole that Nina had fallen on. Wood splintered and charred, pushing her aside. When the lightning jumped back in the cloudless skies, it became evident that something terrible had happened.

There were no shadows. Vertical objects like swords stuck in the ground looked eerie and misplaced, as if someone had badly painted them over. Nina found it difficult to judge distances.

A flying axe whizzed from nowhere towards the adventurers. In the distance, a couple of orcs dressed in tribal garb pointed at them and shouted. Nina would find their language incomprehensible, and even Duresh might be hard pressed to make sense of it.

It was a language that hadn’t been spoken in these lands in a very long time.

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Duresh looked over his shoulder as he crouched, having heard that sound. It was what he thought. Nina, sobbing. He regarded her in much the same way as a father might his daughter, his child having come to some heavy realization and the outpouring of emotion resulting from that; which was to say, with a quiet and (outwardly attempted) stoic understanding.

He wasn't too surprised on account of her weeping. The mind had the astounding capacity to deceive itself, but the body was always honest.

It was true of Duresh too. He had killed many people in Vel Anir--a number of them human girls of Nina's age, caught in some political machination likely beyond their understanding--and many of them had wept in his presence. He could act stoic. Impassive. Do what needed to be done in the moment with a precision and decisiveness that was purely callous, and move on. But he was not immune to the sight, to the sound, of sorrow. It always found him in the still lateness of night. Intruded vigorously on his meditations. Grew like a tumor behind his heart. Yes, his mind deceived itself grievously in Vel Anir, but his body told him the truth in his most quiet moments.

He would have gotten up and went to her and used his cloak to clean her face, but Nina took care of it herself before he could so much as stand.

"On the inside," Duresh repeated. Hm. He had come to this old battlefield to perhaps find some trinket or lost item that could aid him in some way on his journey. He hadn't considered that Nina would offer herself as an asset.

Just don’t get yourself killed.

"Advice we could both take to heart," he said, standing up then and dusting off his pants. They both walked perilous paths here in the Blightlands. Perhaps all strangers who entered here did.

Nina picked up a few more items of note, asked him about the tracks left by his mother, and then tripped. Fell. And...something rather unexpected followed soon after.

Duresh drew his falchion with a reflexive quickness that came from his years operating in the bloody machine of Vel Anir. Shot a glance to the totem pole and then up at the sky as the lightning, oddly, jumped up from the totem and into the blue above. Shot an even faster and sharper glance in the direction the flying axe had come, once the weapon spiraled past him and Nina.

Orcs. Two of them. Aware of his presence, but no armor. Flesh and the arteries beneath exposed for clean cuts. Easy kills.

If they were real. He had not seen their approach, but that didn't rule out some manner of concealed ambush. He didn't understand their language, but his Orcish was not very good to begin with, and was likely a dialect thereof.

Duresh went to Nina and knelt down beside her and laid a hard hand down on her shoulder and, without taking his eyes off of the orcs in the distance, asked her quickly, "Nina, are these spirits? Yes or no."

If they were real, he could take them. If they were spirits, any such efforts with his steel might well be vain.

Questions about who they were and their intentions were unimportant. The only matter of importance was that they were hostile, and that Duresh would (if he in fact could) end them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

 

[Nina]

“Kau ka lā i ka lolo.” Nina whispered. The hiss of the axe repeated in her mind, and a cold sweat bead dripped down her collarbone.

The sun rests on the brains. The still, dry air parched her lips. It was a word from a distant island, one that the girl had visited while still on her mother’s pirate ship. Once a year, there, the sun would be directly overhead, and shadows vanished. The elders said that it was a moment of great spiritual power, when one’s mana aligned with Arethil.

Apparently her mana was not strong enough to answer a simple question.

“Too far.” Nina said after a moment’s hesitation. Her sense worked more like a magnifying glass, not a looking glass. ‘Worthless,’ Nina thought. She picked herself up, crouching to as stay half-hidden. She strained her eyes. Were the orcs spirits? “I don’t know.” Normally she’d look for shadows, but right now nothing had shadows, including themselves. It gave her an uncomfortable feeling.

“Oi, the warriors!” Nina shouted, in the mangled Blight Orc dialect she’d picked up in the camp. She stood up. The travelling painter clenched her hands, and starting counting on her fingers.

“Hello. Aloha. Ya bloody bastards! Welcome!” Every figment of language she remembered, the painter threw it at them. Not surprisingly, sometimes all she knew was curses. “Camel-thief! Bonjour!” Sometimes she didn’t know they were curses. Sometimes she hoped her friendly waving would suffice. She kept an eye out for anything sharp and flying that might risk slicing off her fingers. Her fingertips traced elaborate spinning gestures through the dusty air. “Starlight guides our paths, the weaver of fates smiles.” That was High Elvish; the rhyming declamation was something she’d picked up from a play. She coughed and gasped for air – that was Graveling language.

The two orcs, muttering to each other under their breaths, slowly approached. One had their hand on another throwing axe. She fiddled with her fingers. What was left? Ah, right…

“Close the door behind you, you sleepyhead!” Nina declared, in a language like rolling boulders.

For a moment, one of the orcs hesitated. Their eyes opened in almost recognition. Recognition that the speaker seemed utterly harmless and pitifully insane, maybe.

The other just waved a spear.

Nina whispered to Duresh:

“Do you know any more? Dwarvish seemed like a good bet.”

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Duresh heard her whisper something. And, momentarily, he thought that she had perhaps suffered from an onset of madness, or the great and numbing stress of those who were wholly unaccustomed to battle or even the faintest hint of blood. The realization of what she was doing came later, but until it did come what she had said amounted to nothing more than gibberish to him.

Then she made some sense. Said that the orcs were too far for her to sense them, leaving the nature of their being uncertain. Could be spirits, could be flesh and blood. Duresh did not like it--being at the mercy of the unknown. But one thing was clear: this pair of orcs were hostile. And in Duresh's experience, violence could only be met with violence.

Nina tried some other languages, and the realization of what she was doing came then as Duresh slowly figured this out. What she meant to accomplish, he could not say. What words could stay the hand of an aggressor who had come to them and, without warning, attempted to injure or kill them?

Do you know any more? Dwarvish seemed like a good bet.

"There is one language that I am terribly fluent in," Duresh said calmly as he stood.

And his body, from his head down to his feet and even the falchion he held in his hand and the clothes he wore on his back, faded from sight. Vanished, as if turned to liquid and the liquid itself thus disappearing before hitting the ground.

He was invisible. He did not know if the orcs could see through his magic or not, but he had no choice. Violence could only be met with violence. Even during his flirtation with pacifism, this remained true, for he aided his mother against the bandits assailing them with his fists--this the only difference from his days in Vel Anir, the lack of a weapon.

Duresh crossed the distance between where he had been standing beside Nina and with a killer's silent and careful footsteps made his way unseen by the naked eye toward the orcs.

And, once close, he slashed at the neck of one.

It would be seen if they were of flesh or of spirit. If blood coated his blade (and in turn appearing to float of its own accord while splattered on the invisible weapon), then he would have his answer.

 

[Nina]

The magic filled the air, so heavy that to Nina it felt like being drawn underwater. Her chest tensed in anticipation of the moment she’d need to breathe. When Duresh spoke and vanished, energy rippled through her, leaving her unsettled and choking with unformed questions.

Nina tried to look stern, as she clenched her fists and watched the orcs, rummaging her mind for any scrap of diplomatic magic that might halt their approach. They walked slowly, eying her surroundings. Talked animatedly. Nina took a step back. The girl had felt Duresh’s ripple of magic fade as it moved in their direction, but as seconds passed she started to doubt herself.

Now she could hear their steps on the dry ground.

She took another step back. She thought of some of the orcs she’d seen, who hunted deer by chasing it until the animal fell of exhaustion, and of her own damaged knee. She heard, or thought she heard, something eerie about, but it wasn’t until later that the travelling painter realized it was the way the orcs’ steps didn’t seem to hit the ground or the debris scattered about, but rather rustled softly as if walking through unseen grass.

Minutes passed. In the time measured by hear heartbeat, even if not also the time outside. In the fraction of a second, Nina acknowledged that she’d been abandoned and nodded, once, in acceptance.

She reached for her backpack, and loosened the strings around a side pocket.

In the meantime, unaware of the crackling magic filling the air, Duresh proceeded on his mission. Silent and focused, the former assassin might nevertheless notice, in the corners of his eyes, strange things. Here, the flap of a tent waved in the breeze, a tent the color of cherries, that hadn’t been there before. There, an array of pots and pans and tinkering tools were neatly spread out. In front of him, for an instant he would clearly see a wide path, carved by countless feet, before it faded back into wild ruin. There was a buzzing of distant voices that got louder the closer Duresh got to his targets, or perhaps insects or the wind. Everything was similar to how one could see in the sky, another sky than this one, whales or books or flowers by just glancing differently at the clouds.

Then he would get closer, close enough to notice the orcs narrowing their eyes as they looked at Nina. The one with the throwing axe put it back, and reached for his longsword.

Duresh struck.

Looking in his victim’s eyes, he would realize.

The orcs could see him perfectly.

The longsword rose in an arch that would parry, a gesture that if completed would send Duresh’s falchion flying from the elbow down. Behind him, there was an irrelevant sound like a heavy object falling five times in succession, faster and faster each time but without hitting the ground.

Duresh might feel a burning strike on the back of his legs, as if they’d been cut at the knee, just before collapsing forward onto the enemy and both of them falling to the ground. Tangling around their knees, there’d be the three-sided rope and weights of Nina’s bolas.

There was no apology or acknowledgement that the weapon she’d swung and thrown, with its two equal and weighted ropes, meant for tripping one’s opponent, or the third and longer rope, meant to spin around and entangle legs, had not been meant for an ally. There was simply a pause, and then the sound of feet running.

Nine was running towards them.

The remaining orc picked up his spear, and for a moment it looked like he might stab Duresh between his shoulder-blades. But the thrashing and rolling of his companion trying to get on top his enemy made aiming difficult; the spearhead stabbed the dirt, and instead scrawled something, while the entangled orc ordered:

“Th’ other!”, in a voice that might strangely make sense to Duresh, in the same way that ripples in a stream sometimes form familiar faces.

Runes flew, still dripping dust, from the speartip to Nina, above the hellish scuffle. The other orc’s long blade was unwieldy in such close quarters; instead, he tried putting a hand around Duresh’s neck, and crush it.

If Duresh had been less busy, he might notice the way the shaman-figure narrowed his eyes to see the girl, as if to them she wasn’t fully there.

If he had been less busy, he might’ve noticed that it had become difficult to stop being invisible. Or he might’ve noticed the army camp coming to life around him, an anvil there, a dice game here, the wooden totem standing and strange flags on poles in front of tents. The flags’ cloth was sewn in a cone, with the wider end attached and painted with the head of a wolf, a flag that would howl when carried in battle.

The runes kept flying, by the looks on the shaman-orc’s face, Nina putting up quite some resistance. Blood might fly too; but even in his precarious position Duresh would notice. There was too little blood, and the way blade sunk into flesh, whether his or the enemies’, was wrong, as if neither of them was fully there.

Some way away, Nina spoke. Her face was lit up by a bramble-wall of runes that kept growing just as she drew her fingers over it, re-writing a serif there, neutralizing a poison symbol here, almost too focused to speak.

“I think…They think we’re the ghosts.”

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Small glimpses of those ephemeral illusions, those brief manifestations of tents and tools and defined paths, tugged at Duresh's attention. He did not give it. These things he considered nonessential details, noted in summary but placed in low priority below the situation currently commanding his focus. The cold efficiency of Vel Anir dictated his actions, this particular and metaphorical muscle--in complete spite of his attempted pacifism--easily flexed once again.

Two orcs. Hostile foes. Who needed to be taken down as quickly as possible. And there was nothing save that.

Only, the usual efficiency afforded by his Invisibility could not be attained--they saw through it. And this would lead to a parry and a disarming as his falchion flew from his unprepared hand and--

A strike Duresh did not and could not see coming. Something hitting and wrapping about his legs and bringing him down to the ground along with the Longsword Orc, and here a grappling and vying for the superior position began. It was never advisable to be in this sort of situation when in a fight--struggling mightily against a single foe, let alone when this foe had an available ally--but it was done and the only thing Duresh could do now was, indeed, struggle mightily to end this foe and move on to the next. This fight had found him, and he would end it, or die in the attempt.

Duresh's Invisibility had since faded, willingly, before he went down to the ground with the Longsword Orc, his gift useless and thus dispensed with. The Longsword Orc instructed his comrade to focus on Nina--a mistake Duresh hoped to capitalize on--and found Duresh's neck with his hands as Duresh's own hands likewise found the Longsword Orc's neck. Duresh, held at bay in this manner, couldn't lean in to bite off the other Orc's ear or nose or cheek and cause immediate, permanent injury to weaken him. All he could do was try to strangle the Orc harder than the Orc was trying to strangle him.

Duresh did not notice the queer look from the Shaman Orc with regard to Nina.

He did not notice the manifestation of the army camp and all its associated details.

He pushed aside any peculiarities felt while in contact with the Longsword Orc.

I think...They think we're the ghosts.

A statement of very little consequence to Duresh. It did not matter to him what these Orcs thought. They had made their stance toward himself and Nina very clear, as far as Duresh was concerned.

The only thing that mattered to Duresh was killing the Longsword Orc before he, himself, was killed. So he clenched his teeth and squeezed his hands around his foe's neck harder and tried not to think about the lack of air in his lungs.

 

[Nina]

The orc died. His grip on Duresh’s throat loosened, his face turned green-violet like young eggplant, and as his head fell limp his body turned to dust that was scattered around the assassin by an untouchable wind. Perhaps he should have fallen unconscious first, but the man was a story, he was something that lived at the edge of life. He had been something woven at the edge of time out of strings of conscious, unconscious and magic. Stories are fragile.

His story broke, and just as it did so a spear whizzed through the air. For a moment Duresh would feel its cold iron tip sinking deep into his spine, severing it. But then pain vanished, and so did the spear, and the rune-crafter who threw it, as if they’d never been.

Thunder struck. Vision and hearing and scent all turned to white.

A life had been sacrificed. Life is energy, and a life is one of the most powerful ways of fueling magic. There was no necromancer waiting in the bushes for the chance to jump out and claim it, but the land had been soaked in wild magic since before they were born, just like one of those bushlands where plants drip with strongly scented oils, waiting for the spark to set it all on fire and let life start anew.

“Too far. I don’t know.” Someone said. Nina realized it was her. She felt her fingers tingling, and her right arm hurt with the poison that snuck into her veins when the runes bit her skin, but that sensation was quickly fading. In the distance, two warrior figures trotted in their direction on a wide dirt path, bordered by tents. One pointed at them, shouting something. Another reached for the throwing axe at their belt. “I-I do. I do.” She corrected herself, hyperventilating slightly. It was as if time had turned back.

“More ghosts? Didn’t we just bloody deal with one,” One of them asked. They were exactly the same orcs. There were exactly the same words spoken, the only difference being that now Nina could just about understand them, as if hearing them through water.

“Too fleshy for ghosts. Spies for the Father of Cinders, me thinks.”

The land around them had changed. Nina couldn’t put her finger exactly on how. They were in a war camp, with tents and a smithy with zinging of hammers and longer, reverberating echoes, with the scent of sweat and dust and fried oil drifting around and a hawker selling spiced rats on sticks, with a repeating, lilting call, with people around, living their lives, although most of the ones that happened to be around Duresh and Nina hastily retreated, letting the shaman and his apprentice to deal with what they saw as strange, ghostly figures. The warriors and their homes faded when you looked into the distance, with only the shamans being clearly outlined, as they were walking between two worlds. Only the distafact that Nina and Duresh were no longer together, but rather some distance apart, as well as the tangled bolas at the latter’s feet betrayed what had happened, the fact that this repetition was not fully a game of time, but one of the mind. Nina narrowed her eyes, focused really hard, and under green grass could just about make out ‘reality’. She touched it.

“We’re not spies!” Nina shouted.

“What is the small one yapping about?”

“No bloody clue.”

“There’s a chance that the dream, story, ends once you get far enough from it.” She hissed at Duresh. “There’s a chance it might not. It’s like a tinder box, I’m not sure what can trigger it.” Nina spoke breathlessly. “I’ll talk to them. You, get behind me. And tell me.”

“What do you see? What do you see?”

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Done.

Duresh never felt a rush of victory, a swell of pride, nor a churning of revulsion when he took a life. It was simply another task done. Like bringing a pot of water to boil for a cup of tea, or hanging his clothes up to dry after a wash. Strangling a fellow orc to death: another task done.

But the job was not. There was one more. Duresh cared not for the manner of the Longsword Orc's passing, the turning to dust and being lost in the wind. His magic had not saved him from this, and thus was rendered useless in the end.

Duresh would have stood. Would have moved on to the Shaman Orc. Would have tried to do the same to him. Only he was interrupted before then. A deathstroke to his spine, the callous finality of steel piercing the body; he had not been fast enough, been overwhelmed after his Invisibility had failed, and this would be it. A fitting end, he could admit. Therein a kind of poetic balance to how he had lived in Vel Anir.

But as soon as the pain of the spear came, it ended. As if it were a figment of his imagination. He was left with his back arched for a reason that had simply vanished as suddenly as it came.

Duresh closed his eyes and blinked fiercely after the thunder and its ensuing blindness, deafness. Sight and sound swam back to him gradually in the subsequent moments. He stood, Nina having caught up to him then, and looked around at his new and wholly unexpected surroundings.

Magic. In Vel Anir, this primordial force had been hammered out into a thing of intuitive sense, forged into tools with a singular purpose: to wage war. It was easy to understand the ball of fire, the bolt of lightning, even the torrent of raw arcane energy unleashed by the Dreadlords that had nearly killed him and Erën in the Crentor Estate. For they were all variations of the same thing. Weapons.

This. This Duresh did not understand. This, Duresh harbored a feeling somewhere between suspicion and fear with regard to. He understood ever more clearly now why the Blight orcs held their superstitions (the word now seeming hardly appropriate). Where once there had been the shrub grassland remains of a battlefield, now there was a living, inhabited camp. And Duresh and Nina were in the middle of it (the latter, somehow, a distance apart from him when next he noticed).

Nina attempted being diplomatic with them--the spirits, illusions, ghosts, whatever they truly were. Duresh made for his fallen falchion. Spared a moment to cut himself loose of the bola, the tangled string of which made easy for the cutting with the Longsword Orc and his once-wrapped leg now gone.

Duresh stood. Listened to Nina's thoughts on the matter while eyeing warily the two orcs (the Longsword and the Shaman Orc, the exact same, even though he had "killed" the former). Listened, and he did not like a word of what he heard.

And he likewise did not like getting behind Nina; his knee-jerk perception of such an action was that it was cowardly. But this was not his area of knowledge, of expertise, this strange "dream" or "story" or magical environs that they had found themselves within.

So he did it anyway. Backed up from the two orcs without taking his eyes off of them and got behind Nina, his falchion still raised and ready all the way. He looked around. Spared a glance over one shoulder and a glance over the other.

Said, "I see what you see. I think. Do you see that we are in some kind of war camp?"

If it were at all possible, Duresh would have preferred to run. It was not at all shameful to abandon a battle or position if it was disadvantageous, if indeed one could abandon it in favor of a fighting on one's own terms. But he feared that this would not be so. That the chance for the magic to end if they got far enough would be a chance too slim.

 

[Nina]

Nina spit into her palm. It felt viscous – her mouth was dry – and darker than black lines sprouted on a blank page as she wetted her pigments with a paintbrush and drew faster than she had ever thought possible.

“Can you get this close?” A shaking finger. A breathless voice that forgot words in its hurry. ‘Closer, to them.’ “Throwing, or-“ She flicked her wrist, and a droplet of black paint flew onto the illusionary grass. She wiped her hand on her trousers. She imagined something like a throwing knife through the page, but wouldn’t that cut through the already fragile peace?

One way or another, sooner or later, the message would make its way to the orcs. The older of them, the rune-smith, immediately pinned it to the ground with the tip of his spear. One arcane symbol stood out to him, and he was cautious. Confused – there was a rune, but he didn’t feel the slightest spark of magic. Instead, there were drawings. The message was laughable in its simplicity.

In the center, a totem pole, smooth black lines, of shapes unrecognizable apart from the bird-like figure at the bottom. It had large eyes. An inverted lightning that stemmed from it and crisscrossed the sky.

‘This is how we got here.’

Underneath, there was a runic modifier. It was something that the shaman had used to try kill Nina mere moments ago – in a time that hadn’t been. The script was slightly different to what she had known, but the novice had sensed its purpose. It was meant to bind other runes together – sometimes her handbook suggested similar symbols for binding spells – but when curved slightly that way and wrapping itself in spirals, like this, it would be use to transfer information between different runes in an array without also transferring their energies.

‘We wish to communicate.’

In the corner, as if cowering, there was a square figure, cartoonish in its sharp-toothed anger, rising flaming fists as if against the still-glistening ‘X’ which imprisoned it on the page. At his heel, a humanoid stick figure looked curiously upwards for scale.

‘We are not with Menalus.’ Whether the ‘father of cinders’ they mentioned was Menalus, or whether the inverted lightning would make them believe she wished to destroy their totem, Nina didn’t know…

The older orc’s wrinkles tensed for a moment. Then he laughed. He laughed so hard that he had to rest against his spear, and his companion looked alarmed. Then he gripped his weapon more tightly, and sketched some runes in the dirt. Nina gritted her teeth.

But the runes which floated towards her were harmless, soft as feathers under her touch. There was barely enough magic in them to keep them afloat, barely enough glow for her to distinguish all the details without having to tease them out with her fingertips. In, Sight (insight?), runes normally used in investigating the nature of objects, a directionality modifier (that one might use to shoot things at people), modifier for a local area, and the feeling that the last rune had been left unfinished. A question, Nina understood.

‘What in the name of Urogosh’s copper-studded fangs are you doing here?’ She translated.

Movement, modifier applicable to a person, doubled. Nina used the magic in the orc’s runes to finger-paint her reply in the air. She replicated the Sight rune, but shifted the diacritics, so now it leaned more towards ‘Seek’. Another person-modifier. ‘We are looking for someone.’ A circle enveloped the symbols, sort of the runic equivalent of parentheses, and connecting the circle with the question’s location-modifier (‘here’), was a tap in the air.

“How can we express the concept of ‘randomness’?” Nina mused. “Of ‘accident’.”

The runic exchange became longer. More complex. Nina’s hands started slipping, her fingers becoming cold and painful. In breaks between exchanges, she clenched them at her chest. There was something more than the normal magic exhaustion, she felt. She was getting dangerously entangled with this world. The shaman’s magic felt earthy, not in itself threatening, but also hollow in a way. Just like air bubbles, mostly harmless, potentially deadly when they are in your blood and you are deep under the sea trying to get to the surface.

In truth, their communication was slow. Frustrating. Every now and then, either of the speakers might shake their head over an unfamiliar symbol, or a familiar symbol used in unfamiliar ways. Sometimes she drew, or mimed, the more human (personal?) aspects that the abstract runes couldn’t get across.

“They don’t trust me.” Nina winced. The frowns on both sides had made this pretty clear for a while. The travelling painter hadn’t told Duresh about the runes that carried slightly more magic – the ones that tried to probe at her nature. “I think…They say that if the ancestors sent us, then they’ll know what to do with us. There is a…leap? Challenge? Jigsaw?” The runes shimmered in front of her eyes, and she had to sit down not to fall. “Trial? Ordeal? I don’t know anymore.”

She feared that, in her own way, she had fed the illusion. For complexity is also something that empowers magic.

The shaman gestured for them to follow, and he was using his hand, not the spear. He led them to a small square, where the totem that Nina had stumbled stood up tall and new. The wood was the color of butter and just as smooth, its carvings clear, not the cracked, decaying log she remembered. Nina looked the carved bird in its painted eyes. The shaman shooed chickens and kids out of the square, and wrote runes around it.

More discussions followed. “He says the runes make the one within them only speak the truth.”

“There are five main figures on their totem.” Nina summarized. Mostly they could both hear what the shaman was saying, but it was hard to lose focus on the meaning of words. “I think we’re supposed to choose one to guide us. Judge us? Protect us?” She mused. Enumerated:

“The bird of thunder, who carries the storm. Wings as wide as the sky. The most powerful.
The wolf with three metal tongues and a snake body, keeper of secrets.
The Copper Spider, protects those it cherishes, and is merciless with those it considers enemies. Weaves paths.
The Green Woman, who defied the thunder bird and planted the world.

Nina slipped behind the totem, following a curl in the carving, and discovered that it was the tail of another beast carved curling in a hollow in the wood. She asked the shaman about it. He looked displeased.

“The…Swimming cat?” Nina attempted to translate. “Counterpart of the bird. Master of the underground. Underwater? I’m not sure if it’s evil, but they sure don’t look happy about it.”

And there was the last figure, right at the top of a carved spiral that encompassed all the others, like the folds of a fabric. He wore a helmet and looked quiet and stern.

“The Warrior- is that a blanket? The Warrior wrapped in a blanket? I honestly can’t figure out what he does.” Nina shook her head.

More conversation.

“Ah. We can’t choose one of them. They want you to do it.” Nina’s tone dropped.

She looked down and held her temples.

“I’m sorry. I got you into this. I…I need more time.”

Ooc: I am currently mixing and matching aspects of various First Nations (and other) cultures, which is rather unoriginal and shameful. I thought at the very least I’d mention my sources for the figures. In order, there’s the Thunderbird from multiple Native American cultures, the Dacian Draco, creatures inspired from the Spider Woman and Copper Woman of Native American legends, as well as the Underwater Pather. The Warrior wearing a blanket was inspired by a totem pole in the Squamish & Lil'wat Cultural Centre in British Columbia, Canada (and yes, the original totem was represented with a blanket. See not the rightmost totem, but the one after that https://slcc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/6-slcc-whistler-wedding-samantharob-print-9157.jpg )

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Duresh understood only the very basics of what was going on. He was like a man transplanted not merely from one culture to another upon Arethil, but from any culture upon Arethil to--should such a fanciful thing exist--one upon the surface of the moon Pneria.

What he did readily understand: No one was attempting to ambush them from behind (yet), for he with his back to Nina kept watch. Occasional glances over her shoulder saw another two things he understood. Both of the orcs were held at bay. Held at bay not by force, but by Nina's attempts to communicate with them, through a means more complicated than the tongue--but perhaps necessary, for all Duresh knew.

It was taking a long time, this translating. Was there more merit in trying to outdistance this font of wild magic? His pragmatic mind searched for the most efficient solution, and the simplicity of running away held the most obvious appeal--no magic encompassed the world.

This appeal made even more so when Nina appeared to be at the end of her capabilities. She said of the ghostly orcs that they didn't trust her, spoke of their ancestors knowing what to do with them, and then failed to translate the crucial word thereafter.

The Shaman Orc gestured for them to follow.

And Nina just...did it. As if she could trust them.

"Nina, no. Don't--"

Duresh grimaced, but started backing up after her--he refused to turn his back and face the way she was facing; such would leave them vulnerable in a place that raised Duresh's hackles. The next spear to his spine might well be one that had more tangibility to it.

He almost bumped into her when they arrived in the small square. Stopped before he had, after one of his glances over his shoulder. Then, after yet another glance over his shoulder and seeing Nina investigating the back of the totem, Duresh whirled around slowly with his falchion extended as he walked over. Maintaining that hard vigilance of his surroundings in the magical war camp as best he could.

Ah. We can’t choose one of them. They want you to do it.

Duresh grimaced again. Said, "Nina, do you think this is wise? To play into this?"

Her apology would be of little value if both of them did not live long enough for such value to accrue. But Duresh was of a world were actions had known and rigid consequences. And he could not say which was greater: the merit of (as Nina said) getting far enough away from the story, or the merit of playing into it and choosing one of those icons. Perhaps no apology would be necessary if her talent for the arcane was keen, and she deduced for the both of them the correct option.

 

[Nina]

‘Tell me what you see.’

The memory came unbidden, violent. She remembered the darkness. The wonder. The cold sheen of the table under her fingertips. That’s how it often started. ‘Put your hands on the table,’ Gray said. A calm phrase. ‘Close your eyes. Tell me what you see.’ Except that the first time she’d heard him say it, Nina had seen the assassin drive a needle under someone’s nail. He’d said, ‘Keep your eyes open.’

‘Strings of silver and glass, weaving into cobwebs. They vibrate as if in a song.’ In the memory, her voice lost its hesitation. Magic enveloped her as she sunk her mind in the unknown artifact in front of her. Away from Gray. The assassin’s voice reached her as if from far away.

‘Look closer.’

‘The strings become filigreed arches. I’m flying alongside one. The dewdrops caught at the intersections become lakes. Immense, suspended lakes. The tremor is now a drumming. I can feel it in my veins. It feels…like I’m close to breaking into dance, or…’ Nina trembled, ‘to breaking apart.’ It didn’t worry her.

‘Closer.’

‘A mosaic of light and shadows. The light is sharp shards; the darkness is overlapping scales. Ah! Tch.’ Her hands twitch, but her fingertips stay glued to the table. ‘Nearly cut myself.’ Physically impossible; it was all in the mind. ‘Everything is shaking…so…blurry. I- I don’t think I am feeling so well-‘ Her hands clench. Her shoulders slump. ‘Gray, I-‘

‘Turn back. Nina, listen to me, turn back.’

What the memory didn’t include was Nina opening her eyes without seeing.

A small, whimpering voice escaped the small figure on one side of the table.

‘I don’t know how-‘

‘I’m sorry.’ She later said.

‘I’ve dealt with worse.’ Gray said. ‘Go back to your room and rest. I’ll clean up here and bring you some soup.’

Nina looked at the door. She sighed. She looked down.

‘If you’re going to kill me, I’d rather stay here and not deal with all the stairs.’ She said in a small voice.

‘I’m not saying I won’t.’ He said. ‘It’s sort of my job. But it would be a shame to kill your potential just yet. That ability to see magic in detail – few people can do it. Once you get some experience, start connecting the patterns and flow of aura with their effects…I’d love to see what you can come up with.’

Nina looked at the object across the table.

‘A musicbox? Is this what I…?’

If she’d stayed with Gray, would she have learned how to escape bubbles made of time? Or would she be another person, with the relevant experience, without a heart? Did she have a heart now, Nina wondered.

She was a fraud.

Her magic had never really helped anyone. Apart from the times it had, but Nina’s mind wouldn’t let a thing as feeble as the truth stand in its way. For her, magic was inextricably bound to fear and Gray’s teaching. Duresh asked if what was suggested was wise, and she turned to stare at him.

“No, I don’t.” She burst into chuckles. Her eyes were slightly too wide. “But I don’t have a choice.”

She was good with disappearing in a crowd, the travelling painter was. Bit hard to do that when you’re the only person ‘round not green, and everyone is looking at you. All the traveler could rely on right now were skills that travelling had beat into her: to communicate with people you might not share a language with, look harmless, and reach out with the very magic you hate.

“I won’t blame you if you run for it. I’ll cause a distraction, if you ask me to.” Nina quietly added. “But I can’t follow.” She looked down. Her knee. It wouldn’t cope. It was already tiring from the chase. But Duresh was right, it was a bad idea advancing blindly. Words escaped barely-moving lips. “I’ll just try to get…more time.”

More discussion followed. The travelers could just about make out their hosts’ voices, but to speak, Nina had to use her pidgin of runes. The shaman looked displeased. Nina’s face was pale.

“They’ve agreed to give us some time.” She turned towards Duresh, her arms moving as if to steady herself. “But they said the moment the Father of Cinders’ army attacks this camp, we’re the first to die.”

Fair enough.

Nina sat down in the dust, in front of the totem. Crossed her ankles, holding one knee at her chest. Closed her eyes.

‘Tell me what do you see.’ The memory beckoned.

Energy. So much energy that it was like being inside a lightning strike, Nina felt. Her shoulders shook. It drenched the landscape as far as the eye could see. The totem was its core, or at least one of them. A heart. Without reason, Nina understood that the flicker at which time wound up on itself had been a heartbeat.

‘Look closer.’

It was wild. With magic items and runic circles, Nina could get a vague idea of the purpose its creator had meant it for. Here, there seemed to be no purpose. There were flows of magic that seemed to go nowhere, that spun in circles, like the blood in her veins.

She saw the ancestor-gods. The bird of thunder in the sky, a sky that was like blue crepe paper, folded to shape wings that touched the horizons. She saw the dragon with a wolf head crawling down the flagpole, its fanged grin reflecting from the tips of arrows and spears. She saw the strange cat-like being hiding behind the totem. Nina couldn’t sense things in the distance, but in this illusionary world, the ancestors were almost close enough to touch.

‘Closer.’

Belief. That is what fueled them, Nina understood, what got this makeshift world log ago. Nina was familiar with the concept – her grandmother crafted gods. Her grandmother’s were small gods of the home, for sweeping and weaving, and these weren’t, but she looked at that seed of an idea buried deep in the magic and wondered… Perhaps the immense magical forces in the battle that followed – the battle that must’ve followed – kept that hope alive. The belief that Everything Would Be All Right, We Will Survive, We Will Defeat them. And the first thing that must have bound the magic to that hope was people’s death.

Tears streaked down her face.

But belief was not the only part of it. Not anymore. Just like the strange creatures of the battlefield, the plants of glass and butterfly-flowers, the story had been twisted, had grown more complex with time and magic. With a shiver, Nina started to suspect that the story was alive. The bones had stayed the same – that denial of death, which had turned back the pages – or was it simply
Which made the situation…unpredictable. The rules that bound it now were not fully the rules of sentients anymore. Would her magic-sense understand it?

Nina opened her eyes, and shared her findings.

“What you did before. Can you do it again?” Nina asked Duresh, gnawing on an idea. “To disappear.” She brushed her fingertips against the air as if it were a wall. “This world feels paper-thin in places; a reflection, of sorts. I’m wondering if your ability can help you see through the mirror.”

She traced the runic circle with her gaze, the one the shaman had sketched around the square, and grinned like a madwoman.

“It’s part of the story. This!” Her face lit up. “Doesn’t only obligate us to tell the truth. Runes are abstract, and this place is powerful.” The realization hit her harder as she spoke it. “It makes the world tell the truth. We simply have to ask the right questions.”

If Duresh followed Nina’s suggestion, he would see the shadow-less wasteland they’d just left, the weapons turned to shards and bones turned to dust, with plant life clinging on in the blistering drought. As if his ability to appear less material on one plane made it easier to skip across to the next, when worlds were, as they were here, as tightly packed as the pages of a book. Yet as Nina kept speaking, her voice faded, the world shifted again around him, and he’d be back where it all started, with shadows on the ground and a sun in the sky, and with Nina not there. Because there weren’t only two pages in the book.

If he’d turn around he’d see her small frame collapsed some way away, blood dripping from a cut on her forehead into the cracked surface of the collapsed totem. The blood trickled on the wood in lines resembling war-paint.

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

She seemed to have gone mad, Nina. Or, at best, the weight of the situation had frayed her nerves. Either way, her chuckles were anything but encouraging to Duresh's ear.

He hazarded another look over his shoulder, a puzzled look, before turning back to his scanning vigilance of the mystical camp's environs. What did she mean, she didn't have a choice? That she couldn't follow? Seemed to Duresh that if he could run, she could run. Then she looked down to her knee, and he remembered that slight limp she had exhibited from earlier.

He grimaced. That would be no good. Carrying her, or even assisting her, would leave them both vulnerable to the hostilities of ghostly orcs and their more-or-less tangible weapons and hands. The Longsword Orc Duresh had strangled to death returned as if time itself had made special exception and reversed for his sake, but Duresh was concerned that such would not apply to himself or Nina, the incident with the spear notwithstanding.

Nina had bought more time. A hollow victory, like a stay of execution.

Duresh glanced over his shoulder again, and saw Nina had sat down. Almost in a manner that suggested acceptance of an inevitable fate. He did not wish to leave her here, but in the dark cellar of his heart where he kept all the terrible deeds of his blood-soaked career in Vel Anir, he knew that he would if he had to. That he still perfectly retained the capacity to be that man again, and that the only thing keeping him from it was the express permission of his conscience. From a noble journeyman of the orcish old way, to a callous assassin and torturer and enforcer--the Asset--once again.

He looked over his shoulder yet again when she spoke. Asked him about his Invisibility. It seemed she had come up with a plan, a tenable means of escape from this landscape of magic and memory. The latter half of what she said, regardless of her excitement, made little sense to Duresh: her talk of truth and runes and the power of this place and "asking the right questions." None of that was actionable, at least not to him.

What was, however, was testing out her idea. To see if his Invisibility was of some use here, where it had none in actually approaching and combating the Orcs.

Duresh nodded. "Yes. I can do it again."

Some words of assurance seemed apropos. But he could only bring himself to speak the truth.

"I will try not to leave you behind."

He could not promise anything more.

And, with that, his body faded from view in that same strange manner of liquid draining out of a barrel with a hole in the bottom. His flesh and his clothes and his weapon flowing like a river from the realm of Sight.

* * * * *​

The badlands. Here, again, after brief transition. Gone was the spectral war camp and its ghostly inhabitants.

Duresh turned round, circling about and scanning his surroundings, to be certain of that location. His vision was starting to blur and fade--the first side effect of his Invisibility and its extended use--so he didn't have much time to confirm this. He quickly procured a mint leaf from the pouch on his belt, his earlier purchase proving vital now, and stuck it in his mouth. If he had to stay Invisible long enough for his sense of taste to start fading, he needed to know the moment this began.

Then Duresh saw two things:

First, Nina--the real Nina, presumably. Down on the ground. By that familiar totem. Cut on her forehead. Blood on the wood.

Second, in the distance: three human scavengers. The exact sort of men he had been worried about previously. The wind carried their voices. They hadn't spotted Nina--not yet, it seemed. Surely they would be eager to investigate once they saw her, less so if Duresh showed him, but the problem with that was clear and obvious. If Duresh dropped his Invisibility, would he not return back to the magical memory-scape of the war camp?

Duresh hurried. Crossed the distance between himself and the fallen girl. His vision blurring further and darkening until it became black and he was blind--movement taxed his senses severely while Invisible.

But he made it beside her before his sense of touch had started to fade--the next after sight was gone. He crouched down. Felt for the totem, as well as Nina's arm and shoulder. Hedging his bets seemed the play here.

So Duresh gave Nina a violent shake in an attempt to rouse her from unconsciousness. And, at the same time, with his other hand he wadded up the cloth of his cloak and wiped at the blood on the totem, to clean it from the wood.

If neither of those things proved effectual, then he surmised that he would have to wait. Wait and not tax himself further while Invisible. Wait for the scavengers to approach.

And ambush them.

 

[Nina]

Nina had known there would be trouble when Duresh disappeared. The shaman gave off enough antsy vibes that she felt her shoulders itch. Yet she’d expected to glib her way out, gesturing wildly for the few seconds that her fellow traveler would take to return- When moments stretched into nothingness and Nina was immobilized in the warm dust of the square, with her arms twisted behind her and a chicken feather floating up her nose, she was so startled that she felt her mind empty.

Where was Duresh?

Where are you where are you where are you

Had his ability enabled him to safely return to their world? Did he encounter trouble there? Or had her estimations been wrong, and he’d just sunk deeper into the dream?

Like frozen claws, her ribs tightened around her breathing. No matter the case, she had to ensure her own safety first. Yet now even her voice had been taken away from her – she couldn’t craft her runes with bound hands. There seemed no way out of this if Duresh didn’t return, except for…

Divine intervention.

“You! You dust-gathering, moss-growing figments of imagination!” Nina shouted at the Ancestors. She raised her chin, and glanced at every figure on the totem all the way to the top. “Are you just going to watch me…die?”

Her voice broke. Although she’d gotten involved in a war, Nina was still a sensitive kid.

“Let her go, brother. She’s harmless.” Another orc told the shaman. Heavy, dragging steps came closer.

The shaman’s reply shot out like a volley of arrows. Then it rang hollow, like the chord of a bow. The girl was let go, but she didn’t move. Nina shut her eyes. It was difficult to keep focusing on the meaning of words. She heard the occasional word, but mostly she relied on the tone.

“Why do you talk to her, my…? She’s not of our blood.” She heard the shaman say. Missed a word. Slowly, the girl picked herself up.

“She is not, but we are of hers.” The stranger said.

“I don’t understand.” The shaman replied.

Nina cautiously turned around. The stranger had a helmet and a heavy fur cloak, like a blanket, wrapped around his shoulders. He looked tired, and she couldn’t figure out if he looked more like a warrior or like a bum. Then she looked closer.

Mechanically, her eyes went back to the top of the totem. Then back to the stranger.

They looked nothing alike. They couldn’t have, as the totem wasn’t a realistic depiction. But the aura, the aura was the same, like a balm over a sunburn. The way his voice reverberated, it didn’t feel so much as speaking as listening, as if just by being near him your troubles were seen, acknowledged, and empathized with.

“It’s okay. Let’s go sit down.” The Ancestor-bum said, and patted a tree trunk set up as a bench. The shaman sat on one side. Nina set on the other.

For what felt like a long time, Nina struggled to phrase her words. What can you even say to someone who radiates this much peace, even though they technically didn’t exist? Duresh…Where was he? She fiddled her thumbs.

“Don’t lose this.” The Ancestor said, and placed a mote in one of her palms, covering it with the other.

“What is it?” Nina asked.

“Nothing. A seed. A flake of gold. A grain of sand. The seed of an idea. It’s dangerous.” It felt like a spark of lightning. “It could help you.” He said. “I also have something for your friend, but it is on the other side.”

“I can’t accept it. I shouldn’t stay here for long.” Nina shook her head. She pushed her gift towards the ancestor, but he just closed her fingers around it. “I’m afraid my travelling companion might’ve gotten in trouble.”

The warrior-ancestor stood up. He said nothing of it, but Nina got the impression that he wished they could’ve spoken for longer.

“Come with me.” He said.

They walked around the square with the totem, once, twice, three times, and the camp disappeared. It took more time than Nina might expect, if she ever got to compare notes with Duresh on the matter, but inside a story time might pass in strange ways.

“I can bring you halfway. I can’t go further.” The warrior said, once they were back in the wasteland with no shadows. “You need a path that connects our worlds.”

“Would this do?” Nina asked, sheepishly rising the end of her lasso after a few seconds of silence. In her culture, ropes were considered symbolic paths.

“It will do. I’ll tie it up back in the camp.” The warrior said. “Your friend can deal with the other end.” He left with one end of her rope, and it was as if the lasso faded off in the air.

In the place between worlds, Nina could hear voices, see ghostly figures approaching the fallen totem. She saw a fine outline of Duresh, more of a blur in the air, and leaned over his shoulder. She saw herself, unconscious, bloody, and saw little plantlets sprouting from the cracks in the totem.

“I’m okay.” She whispered to Duresh, partially in order to convince herself.

Were the newcomers peaceful? She didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure how well her voice would carry over. The last thing she wanted to do is betray Duresh’s location, or distract him, if there was danger about. So she decided to trick the newcomers. “I’ll trick them,” she said. Sneaking behind them, she sang the song of her people.

“Hey, did you hear that?” One of the scavengers said. The overlapping worlds gave Nina’s shanty an airy, oscillating quality. When she unwinded the rope around her waist, she appeared as a human girl, wearing dusty clothes and the beads of the Sea Gypsies in her hair. When she twirled back on her heels, she faded, leaving behind only footsteps.

“The frozen ocean waves are playing hellish games with me,
I’d rather stay in Davy Jones’ locker, unseen,
He took me by the noose and said, I’m wanted on the scene
So here I am, a humble bard, carrying the stories of the sea.

I know the legends of the pirates and the lore,
From moonstruck Barbarossa to King Theriadore,
There’s treasures and there’s rum, peel off the cobwebs if you dare
But if you’re not careful you’ll just end in hell.”

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

His sight was gone, and thus he listened carefully. His trained ear honed in the small group of scavengers, picking up their words. They were relaxed. Nonchalant. They clearly were not expecting trouble.

Duresh kept a patient grip on his falchion. An old and familiar grip. The lack of sight blurred the line between what he was doing now and what he had done in years past, for both in essence were the same: waiting for a target to approach, vulnerable, and to swiftly end them.

He waited.

And then came the whisper from the girl. Even though his eyes could not see, he turned his head partially in the direction her voice had come from. Duresh did not know if she was physically present--having escaped the bounds of the magical dreamscape by some devised means--or if she was talking to him from beyond Arethil proper.

I'll trick them.

Duresh did not speak, but he nodded in affirmation. Perhaps it was that Nina had not returned from the "story," as she called it, then. Well enough. He could not see if indeed she had a form (separate from her physical body, the shoulder of which still under his hand), but he surmised not.

Duresh maintained his position. Still and Invisible. Guarding against something going wrong, and Nina's physical body being imperiled. This he could do.

* * * * *​

The scavengers--men from a smaller town near the Elbion Portal Stone and good friends all, having taken up said scavenging as well as grave robbing and tomb raiding to bring wealth to their town after the devastation of the Pandemonium Crisis--all three of them stopped. Each glancing around when they heard a fourth voice, a female voice, in their vicinity.

"Yeah I heard that," said the Second.

"Look, look! There!" said the Third.

The First and Second follow the track of the Third's pointing finger. Saw the apparition of a girl as her haunting song reached its second verse.

"The fuck is that?" said the First.

"I thought you said this site wasn't cursed," said the Third, with a mixture of horror and anger.

The Second wasted no time. He dropped his satchel as well as the old armor piece he was holding and ran for it. The First and the Third scavengers both swore and bolted after him, the three of them all running back the way they had come, shedding their collected items for fear that they were, indeed, cursed.

 

[Nina]

“I feel a bit bad ‘bout it,” Nina said. She watched the three men trying to outrun the clouds of dust at their heels. Her hazelnut-like eyes narrowed in a wince.

There was a reason she hadn’t brought Grishka to the battlefield. Carelessness was a gamble.

She shook her head, breaking away from her thoughts, and ran towards Duresh.

“Tie this to the totem.” She said, unwrapping the rope from around her waist and handing him the end. For a moment the stray stands passed through the orc’s knuckles, along with her fingertips. Nina took a deep breath. She reached out again, trying to tease the edges between the worlds. “It’s our safety line. With it, we can go back.” She explained, as her eyes narrowed in focus. The more she reached out, Duresh just disappeared. She panicked. If she could just reach out enough, for him to catch the rope end!

Once that was done, her head turned to watch the scavengers, wondering if they’ll make it out safely.

One of her palms opened, revealing a tiny shard as if chipped from a star. The other hand was firmly locked onto the rope. Later, Nina would notice the spiraling traces left on the inside of her palm.

“You’ll see.” Nina told Duresh. “We’ve got a friend on the other side.”

It would only take for invisibility fading for Duresh to be back in the war camp. He’d be back inside the runic circle, with the figures sculpted in the totem staring down at him as an orc with a blanket-cape wrapped the other end of the rope around the pillar. It might seem strange, as Duresh had moved around but, as Nina might theorize, ideas and stories often have cores that attract passerby to them sooner or later, just as a happenstance object may tend towards the ground. The rope, like the one Nina had handed earlier, seemed to fade into nothingness.

Near him, on the ground, were a broken spear and a leather shield with a hole in it. He radiated an aura of calm.

“Is there anything I can do to help you, before you go?” The warrior asked.

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Duresh heard the alarmed voices of the scavengers and then, hardly a full moment later, their hurried footsteps pounding through the dirt and away. His surmising had been correct, it seemed, and Nina had played the part of the haunting ghost well.

He did not hear her footsteps, but he did hear the new proximity of her voice when she told him to Tie this to the totem. His blinded eyes could not see exactly what this was, but he reached toward the sound of Nina's voice regardless. A vague feeling of...something...in his hand. He didn't know how to describe it: akin perhaps to the wind, if a gentle breeze had the ability to blow through his hand, his body, instead of into it and around it. Somehow, whether it was by time or some increased effort on Nina's part, her "safety line" became tangible enough for him to actually grasp.

His stirring of Nina's body hadn't worked, nor had his wiping of her blood from the wood of the totem. But perhaps this would. If not, he still retained his sense of touch, and he might well feel the price of failure in his spine if they could not escape the wild magic that had ensnared them. Be that his fate, he resolved to die fighting, in the most effervescent throes of his warrior's spirit. He had lived a life full of cavalier dishonor, but in his moment of death perhaps he could earn one cherished instance of honor to cradle in his heart before the soil of Arethil claimed him.

Using his hand to feel it out, Duresh tied the safety line about the totem and knotted it tightly.

Nina's voice once more: We've got a friend on the other side.

"I doubt that," Duresh said. The taste of the mint leaf pervading his mouth as it moved to voice his words.

And he did. The Blight Orcs, for all their faults, were right about this, about the wild magic which pervaded these sites. To Duresh and likely to the Blight Orcs as well, this wild magic was like a force of nature, akin to a raging thunderstorm or biting blizzard: the idea of "trusting" such a thing incomprehensible.

When Nina said nothing more after a couple of minutes, Duresh assumed that she had returned to the magical landscape. And he willed his Invisibility to fade. This time, however, he could not witness the transition from one plane of the world to the next. It would take time--a half an hour, an hour--for his taxed sight to return. Such was the cost of his gift of Invisibility.

He stood. Kept his falchion gripped tightly. Listened intently, hearing those phantom sounds of the war camp. He did not know where Nina was.

But he heard the unfamiliar voice speak to him.

His answer, curt and firm: "No."

 

[Nina]

One hand in front of the other, holding on to the rope as if balancing onto the side of a cliff, Nina walked into the dream once more. Through the land without shadows she stepped, at first, and then the war camp grew around her once more, with the scaled wolf flags fluttering around her.

Then she was back where she’d started, with the totem in front of her, and a knot in her stomach from the way the world seemed to curve around.

“Thank you.” She’d heard, as if through glass, the Ancestor telling someone with their back turned to her. Duresh! “You did the right thing. She was bound so tightly to this place, that I wasn’t sure the Master of Thunder would let her go.”

She wondered what that meant. She wondered whether she would die the moment her spirit-self stepped back into reality.

“Duresh?” Nina smiled. “I thought you’d be running back by now.” She clenched her fists tighter.

A few seconds she’d hesitated, staring at her unconscious form. Surely the way back would be obvious to her companion? It felt like she couldn’t breathe, at the idea of leaving herself here, unguarded, and yet wanting to go closer to that other ‘her’ filled her with a similar dread. What if fully stepping into reality left her unable to visit the illusion? What if Duresh got in trouble? So here she was now, in the camp.

She didn’t notice it, at first. The travelling painter didn’t like looking in people’s eyes unless she had to. Yet something felt unsettling, even in these strange illusionary lands.

“Did something happen?” She asked, and there was a wrong note in her voice. “Did you do something?” She asked the Ancestor, and in her voice fought hurt and war.

“Are you going to fight me, little human?” The soft-spoken Ancestor said. He pressed a large palm onto the nape of his neck. “I’m tired of fighting. So, so tired.” He said, and looked at the sky. A sky that Nina remembered folded over with wings.

“Go!” He motioned, and Nina was startled enough to nearly let go of the rope. There was yelling further away. “The other side has started stirring. There might be a scuffle, or a battle.” The Ancestor stated. “When you reach the end, I will cut the rope here.”

“Duresh?” Nina’s voice trembled. She would reach out her hand, and guide the orc along the guide-rope anchored between worlds. She’d put her hand on his back. “Come here. Hold onto this. We should go.”

“I’m sorry.” She’d whisper as they walked. A tiny voice, crushed over by guilt.

When they reached the totem, the rope which had been stretched behind them fell down into the dust. And Nina woke up.

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Duresh said nothing to the Ancestor. Nothing and no one from this wild magic landscape could be trusted, so far as he was concerned. It was a circumstance that was utterly foreign to Duresh, being in such a place that had been shed of the physical and natural properties of Arethil. And for all he knew this Ancestor may not have retained any shred of his own will or any true consciousness at all, but rather was going through the motions of memory upon which this entire arcane deception appeared to be based, like a puppet helplessly manipulated by the strings of its master.

Duresh? I thought you'd be running back by now. Nina. She was here again, in some capacity.

"No. I'm still here. Where are we to go now?"

Still he held the safety line in one hand, his falchion in the other. She asked if something happened, to which Duresh shook his head--the thought of his current blindness not even occurring to him to mention, such was its regularity upon extended use of his gift. To Duresh, all that had happened was the previous collection of minutes: the scaring away of the scavengers, the tying of the special rope about the totem in the real world, and the dropping of his Invisibility to reappear back in the illusory world now.

What was of concern was the voice of the Ancestor, the content of his reply to Nina. Duresh had not yet heard anything that hinted at another sudden explosion of violence--the drawing of weapons, the shuffling of feet--so stayed his hand. But his ear remained canted toward the Ancestor, listening intently.

He felt something on his back. A hand. Nina's. Duresh's tensing was short-lived, the slight motion of his head and shifting of his sword arm brief. And now he trusted in her, trusting that her instructions would lead both of them from this place and free of the wild magic's grasp.

I'm sorry.

Duresh, walking along with his hand on the rope, had a visible confusion cracking his face, and at last he asked, "For what?"

The opportunity for an answer dropped away, same as the very rope that Duresh had been holding. He could not see, but his ears told him that all the sounds of that bygone war camp had ceased. Had they done it? Gotten free of the haunting magic of this place?

Duresh, in a futile effort, turned about where he stood, looking with unseeing eyes. He tried listening for Nina's voice, footsteps, something, but at present heard nothing. Just the light wind of the badlands.

"Nina?" He said. Then, slightly louder, "Nina, where are you?"

 

[Nina]

It felt like her consciousness skipped a beat.

One moment she was

here

her breath brushing the back of Duresh’s neck

the next

as if her feet had found a gap where they expected solid ground

‘here’ was different.

Moments passed.

Someone called her name but, fighting to resurface through the jumble of her tangled senses, the part of Nina that could hear didn’t answer. It was the same part that made her curl and hide when there was danger about.

Senses reconnected. She was lying on the ground, face-down. Her face felt tight in places from what she assumed to be mud. There was the faint whiff of blood in the air. It was not enough for her conscious mind to grasp, but made her nerves tense. She tried to stand up. Could not.

“I’m here.” The girl’s muffled voice rose from near Duresh’s heel. “Would you mind getting off my hair?”

Standing up into a crouched posture, Nina would spend a moment looking back along the rope, towards the bubble of reality that she could no longer see. She touched the ground, the stones, the odd piece of boot sole or pottery, all to make sure that it wouldn’t go away, that her fingers wouldn’t pass through it. She looked at the sun from between her fingers, to make sure it was there. As she stood up, her fingers brushed Duresh’s sleeve.

“Duresh?” She asked. “Duresh, are you all right? You seemed…spooked, back there.” Not that she blamed him. She held herself and shuddered, the adrenaline aftershock crashing over her in waves. Under the sunny sky, it felt cold. Her teeth clattered from the chills. Relief that they’d escaped washed over her and yet, a part of her held on to the worry. “Can you hear me all right?” She fluttered her hand in front of him. “How many fingers can you see?”

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Duresh snapped his ear toward Nina's voice the moment he heard it. Which happened to be downward. By his left foot. Mildly surprised at what she had said--that he was inadvertently stepping on her hair--he lifted his foot up appropriately and set it down behind himself.

A very slight jostling of his sleeve, and Duresh as well heard the quiet sounds of clothes rustling and the planting of one's feet in the dirt: Nina had stood up. Duresh couldn't see for himself if the traversing of the rope had the intended effect of freeing them from the wild magic. It sounded like it had. Nina, though, seemed more concerned about him than their environs. Mentioned "back there." And this was a good enough confirmation for him.

Spooked. That was a word for it.

"The orcs of that memory did not greet us in a kind manner. I regarded them appropriately." With heightened vigilance and suspicion. The characteristics of trust were universal, applying in Vel Anir and here in the Blightlands: hard to gain, easy to lose, long to recover.

She caught on to him being temporarily blind. Hard not to, he supposed. The difference in actions and reactions was clear.

Duresh shook his head. Said, "I can see none of your fingers, but I can hear you well enough. It is the cost of my Invisibility, the sapping of my senses, and sight is always the first to be lost. It will return in time, but I would not stay in this volatile land longer than I must."

He swallowed the mint leaf he had in his mouth; keeping track of his sense of taste was no longer a concern. Then he sheathed his falchion and held out a hand to Nina, and, fittingly, couldn't help but to ponder on the characteristics of trust once more. Hard to gain, but she had earned it. And there was perhaps no better manifested example of trust than this.

"Will you guide me from the battlefield, Nina?"

 

[Nina]

“What else could I do?” The girl said, with forced mirth.

She looked at the ground, cheeks burning. Did it count as a failure if you’d doubted success from the start? Never before had Nina waded so deeply into the magic. There was a reason. And yet she’d dismissed her fears, because there was someone out there who was crossing these lands without perhaps knowing what they’re made of. Fists clenched. Features writhed. Duresh’s mother was in danger. Nina couldn’t help her.

Slowly, Nina exhaled and took Duresh’s hand.

Holding her other hand like an eave to shield her eyes, she studied their surroundings. The safest route was to return to the river and then walk back along its shores. Yet something bugged her. Then she remembered.

“The Ancestor said he’d left something for yo- There!” Nina exclaimed. She crouched down, almost dragging the orc with her. Among the saplings that had grown from the fallen totem, one was twisted by a large, wooden knot. It looked woven. It stood apart from the others, around the place where the warrior’s face would have been. Her fingers stopped before touching it. “I’ll need to have a closer look.”

The knot popped off easily from its hollow, and Nina put it in a pocket, with the golden seed in another. There were a couple items of significance among ones that the scavengers had left, and she asked her companion to carry them. The awareness of their presence was slowly draining her energy, along with the magic soaked into the ground. She let go of Duresh for a moment, and just rested against him, occasionally elbowing him as she took off her boots and stuffed her socks inside them. “I need to sense the currents better,” she explained.

She didn’t share her fears. The fact that if she got a rusty bit of sword in her sole, the only answer that the army might have to an infection was a red-hot poker and amputation. She needed to be able to sense, now.

She walked with Duresh, sometimes in convoluted paths and not always across the easiest route, sometimes stopping as if to dip her toes into the ocean that she felt underneath. She shuddered.

“I’ve been wondering…Do you think that – the axe – a warning throw?” Nina found it difficult to phrase her words.

There were a lot of words in-between, of course. Such as ‘careful, rock to the left’ or ‘gap, ahead’. But these ones are the ones she remembered. Once, she dug a half-rune with her large toe and redirected magic that she couldn’t avoid.

“I just thought…They seemed afraid of us.” She spoke, eventually. “That wasn’t a normal war camp. I don’t know if it had been like that from the start, but-“ Her words were heavy, somewhat breathy. “That didn’t feel like a wartime totem.” It was tall and heavy, not something you’d normally carry into battle if you had a choice. “And the kids should not have been there at all. I wonder-“ Tears, which had stopped for a minute, fell down her cheek. “They might have been the last of their kind.”

And their death had budded an idea that spun itself for a thousand years, before budding a concept that found itself in her pocket.

She read the ground, looking for loops where the river had flown in decades and centuries ago, the tell-tale silt lines and wavelike patterns. In the old riverbed the magic was mostly exhausted – apart for pools where it had gotten concentrated and pebbles had turned to glass. She warned Duresh of the slippery surface and walked on.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find your mother.” Nina whispered, at the edge of hearing.

Around them, glowing orbs floated harmlessly. That, as Nina explained, was good. Few dangerous spirits approached in an area they inhabited, and even fewer tended to not be bothered by having one thrown at their face. Nina called them Dreams.

She let out a deep breath.

“Should be fine to rest here. From magic at least. We’re back at the edge.”

Duresh

 

[Duresh]

Duresh walked along with her, guided by the hand, taking care to place his steps on the ground in a slow and cautious manner. A haphazard fall, a rolled ankle, these might not be immediately imperiling but could spell inconvenience at best or disaster at worst further down the path of his journey.

Nina spotted something, and Duresh felt her crouch to retrieve it. He could not see what it was of course, but he heard the small noises of its removal. A closer look, she said. Duresh held a mild disliking of that--assuming it to be unnecessary, and concerned more so about the triggering of more wild magic than puzzling out something this "Ancestor" might have left for him. And Nina was doing...something. She'd let go of his hand and felt an elbow here and there against his legs. Heard the rustle of boots being shed from feet, the softer still noise of their plopping down on the dirt.

"The currents," Duresh said, repeating the words in the level manner of someone who didn't quite follow.

Then, after some more walking (was she going barefoot?) she asked a question of him. Quantified it further by suggesting that the "war" camp of the illusory memory-scape was anything but. That those orcs might have been the last of their kind--much like his mother's own tribe.

Duresh shook his head. Said simply, "To engage in violence--even to make the suggestion or promise of it--is to enter into a commitment. Perhaps they were not ready for all that such a commitment entailed."

As they went further still, walking about slippery surfaces and passing by things Nina called "Dreams," she came to whisper something that Duresh, had he not trained his ears for such purposes, wouldn't have been able to make out.

He waited until they had come to the edge of the battlefield to address it. He sat down on the ground, blinked his eyes some (gradations of light and dark were starting to return and become discernible to him), and glanced toward where he last heard Nina--his unseeing gaze slightly askew.

"You need not apologize. It is difficult to say what, truly, has become of her. It is my assumption that she has gone to Molthal..."

Or has been captured and taken there or elsewhere. Or set upon by something other than Blight Orcs and their fire giant masters. Or, perhaps as Nina thought, become lost in some labyrinthine magical landscape she may have stumbled into.

He did not know, and could only work with what little knowledge he had: her stated intentions.