Alexander Ferrick's Blog, page 2

The Other Side – III

“Damnit, Zed,” I shouted at the dumbfounded zombie standing before me, “what are you doing here??”

“Will,” he managed, stunned, “I don’t know. I was in the grove where you saw me, and then I was here, and that thing… It was like you, but it was very noisy, and then it ran away. It smelled terrible though, what was that?”

I almost laughed, but I was still too upset that he was here. “That’s what women look like in the Middle… And that’s what they smell like. It smells good to other humans. It’s called Chanel Number 5.”

“Disgusting…”

I decided not to tell him what he smelled like to us. I had a serious problem here. First the portal to The Other Side acting weird and disappearing, and then both Zed and myself being dropped here without explanation. I needed to get in touch with the other mediums in a hurry, and I needed to make sure no one else saw Zed.

“Come on, buddy,” I said as reassuringly as I could. I placed a hand on his grey shoulder and the flesh gave way easier than I expected. “Sorry,” I muttered while herding him ahead of me a little more gently.

“For what?” Zed asked, casually reshaping his decaying shoulder to the proper shape.

“Never mind,” I shook my head, “let’s get you back to my place and hide you. I need to figure out what’s going on so that we can get you back home.”

“What’s that?” Zed asked, pointing up and shielding his face with a hand.

“That’s the Sun Zed. It keeps us warm.” I explained, but I already saw that his pallid skin was beginning to singe under the direct light. It had never occurred to me that Othersiders would be that poorly adapted to our world. Before I had much more time to dwell on it, though, I had gotten Zed back into my house, and out of the Sun.

“I’m sorry to do this, man, but I need you to hide in the basement. We can’t have anybody else seeing you. It’ll make it harder to get you home.” I shut the door behind Zed, and cursed under my breath. There was still broken glass and blood on the floor of my house, and somehow a shard had worked its way through the sole of my shoe to poke me in the foot. I took a minute to clean up my mess properly.

I had barely finished sweeping up the glass when my cell phone rang. I looked at it impatiently, and then breathed a sigh of relief. It was Jennifer: the Medium for the Dark Side. If anyone could help me sort this mess out it would be her.

“Jen,” I answered excitedly, but she cut me off before I could say another word.

“What in the seven sides is wrong with you?” her voice exploded through the phone. I actually had to hold it away from my ear in order to make out what she was saying, which was something like: “Are you daft? Have you suddenly forgotten every aspect of your job? Did one of those damned things from the Other Side take a swipe at you and eat your brain, or were you actually born this stupid?”

“Jen, what are you talking about,” I managed, “I was just about to call you to say something weird happened.”

“Something weird?” she snapped, “That’s how you would characterize this?” she hesitated, “Damn it all to the Bad Side, you have no idea what’s happening out there, do you?”

“What’s happening out where?” I wondered, “Talk to me Jen, I have been a bit tied up for the last half-hour with an emergency of my own, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Turn on your television,” Jen ordered.

“What station?” I asked as I flipped past an infomercial for The Greatest Hits of The Doors.

“Any station, you idiot,” she hissed. I flipped for a few seconds without understanding. CNN – Static. Fox news – Static. Something must have been wrong with my cable… BBC – Holy shit.

“Holy shit,” I whispered into the phone.

“There it is,” Jen answered. On the screen, there was a crowd of Othersiders marching across Trafalgar Square, tearing police officers apart. “All of a sudden,” Jen explained, “A few hundred-thousand zombies just up and appeared all over the damn world. People know what to do when they see zombies, Will. They freak out and SHOOT them. I am sure you can more or less fill in the blanks from there. The damned, disgusting things fought back, and I’ll be damned if one of them didn’t figure out that inside of the humans heads were nice juicy brains, and then one thing led to another, and now civilization as we know it is on the brink of annihilation, because you dropped the ball, but please, please Will, tell me what happened that seemed weird to you. I am all freaking ears.”

“The portal,” I explained quickly, “looked normal, but flickered red, when I looked away. It seemed like someone was messing with it. I went over to the Other Side to check things out, and everything seemed fine, but then I was back here, without using the portal, and when I went to look, the portal was gone. I didn’t do this, Jen, I swear.”

“How long was the portal acting weird?” Jen asked, more calmly.

“I don’t know maybe fifteen minutes,” I said, “why?”

“It sounds like somebody screwed with the boundary, and ended up tearing the whole thing down. Now the whole Other Side is in the Middle… Lucky for you, you are too stupid to have done this much damage, even by accident, so you aren’t a suspect, but we will need to bring all of the Mediums together to try to get to the bottom of this. Even I can’t fix this by myself.”

“Alright,” I said, “well where should we meet, I doubt we can do it safely here in the Middle, with things going South this fast.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was growing softer. “I’m gonna need to make some calls and get back to you. I can’t risk calling you again, by now the NSA and God knows who else is gonna be scanning phone traffic trying to figure out what’s going on, and if we have natural authorities messing with us, we may not be able to fix this at all. I will come to your house to pick you up for the meeting.”

Click.

My heart was pounding. Not just because of the damned apocalypse that was at least partially my fault, but also because Jen was coming. I hadn’t seen her since my initiation, and the memory of her porcelain skin against the sleek black dress she had worn that day was almost enough to make me forget about the disaster outside. Almost.

I sat down and watched the TV in horror. There was a field reporter trying to describe the scene as a mob of Othersiders met police and vigilante humans in the streets of every major city on Earth. This was bad. The Othersiders weren’t violent by nature, but a hundred years of zombie movies had taught humanity that anything with grey skin and rotting flesh was evil and needed to be destroyed decisively, and no creature will sit quietly if you set out to destroy it. It didn’t help that Othersiders were, for all practical purposes, indestructible. Zombie fiction gives the impression that if you destroy their head, they die, and that is the end of it. Hardly. We are talking about a creature that literally sustains itself by eating brains. Every body part can operate autonomously. The camera zoomed in on a man standing triumphantly over a headless Othersider’s body. Then the body moved, dragging the man down, and then it lurched toward the reporter… Static.

Aetherstorm – VIII

Two disheveled humans and an elf adorned with shining golden armor made an odd party, but nonetheless, that is the group that found themselves marching into Galgol two days after their encounter with the Gal’Areau. In that time, Luca had learned that not all elves were stuck up, entitled brats, at least their prince wasn’t. Luca genuinely liked Maronir. He regretted that they never did find the horses, but there was little that could be done about it now.

The city of Galgol was a fortress, built by the dwarves long before the elves expelled the demons and unified Sarin under a single crown. The older part of the city was underground, built into Mt. Gauseng itself. The mines there had been churning out gold and iron alike for longer than History cared to remember, and from there the Dwarves had built a series of walls and fortifications around the south side of the mountain to keep the demons away from their precious horde. In the centuries since the demon threat was removed, those many ramparts and bulwarks had served as a foundation, on which a monstrous city had been built. Its factories belched smoke into the air constantly, burying the area for over a mile around in a cloud of fumes. The once white mountain stone of the city was now as black as the coal the dwarves burned in their furnaces day and night.

With the rise of the elven monarchy, however, came a new influx of elven settlers to the city, who lived among the dwarves in peace. Even after a thousand years of cohabitation, it was still illegal to mix races. The elves were, after all, the relatives of Mar’Or who had dispelled Sybilis. No human or dwarf could be worthy in the eyes of the law. That wasn’t always enough to stop stop the city-dwellers, though, so from time to time, a particularly stocky, red-haired elf might walk by. The dwarves shunned them completely, but the elves mocked them openly, using the slur: Leprechaun, which is the elven word for mongrel. That said, neither race bred with humans, as that sort of dishonor was grounds to be killed by one’s family long before the child saw the light of day.

One thing that always amazed Luca about the other races was their uniformity. Where there were humans of all different shape, size, and coloration, the other races were almost monolithic. Dwarves were short, with hair in shades of red and rich golden skin. Elves were about a head taller than a human on average, with greenish skin and bright white hair. Garron had once suggested to Luca that all of them were descended from ancient humans, with a thin, lithe, magically inclined tribe isolating itself in the valleys to the west and becoming elves, while a shorter, red-haired clan had begun burrowing into the mountain and had become the dwarves, and the remaining human tribes had remained on the plains south of the mountain, and in the desert to the north, and remained diverse by continuing to comingle. Luca looked around at how different the races seemed now as he entered the gates of Galgol, and concluded that Garron spent too much time thinking. Clearly these races had always been separate, he concluded.

The outermost, and newest, gate to Galgol was built out of metal, and could be closed in seconds by a system of gears and pulleys the dwarves had devised. Luca did not know or care how it worked, but when Micah had brought him here in his youth, he had seen the gate open one morning, and it was the most magnificent thing he had ever witnessed. Within the first gate were short buildings, no more than two stories, and aimed at catering to brief visitors. Inns and brothels lined the broad thoroughfare Luca and his companions trekked along as they made their way deeper into the city, toward the second gate.

The second gate was older. This one was called the Legend Gate, as it was this profound slab of granite that had held Sybilis himself at bay while Mar’Or ventured off to find the Aetheroot and save Sarin from the scourge once and for all. Within this second gate were massive structures built jointly from steel and stone by some miracle of the Dwarven architects building on top of the old city. Luca could scarcely make out where these building ended. Surely, they must pierce the clouds.

These buildings were factories, and they produced all manner of things, from simple weapons, to enormous walking machines, which carried the short-legged dwarves further and faster than a horse at full gallop. Within the second gate, a significant share of the traffic on the stone street was composed of those monstrosities, and ordinary pedestrians had to take care they weren’t crushed. The largest of the walking machines stood as tall as two grown men, with a small cockpit for the Dwarf pilot, three powerful metal legs that propelled it along, and in some cases, an attachment for carrying cargo.

The machines were a recent development, and occasionally suffered from balance issues. Right before Luca’s eyes as they approached the third gate, one of the machines took a corner too sharply and tipped over, nearly crushing a street vendor selling apples, and giving the cows the machine was carrying quite the scare. It took two other walking machines with claw attachments close to fifteen minutes to set the poor thing upright again, and another ten minutes passed after that wherein the pilot was cursed at length by the two older dwarves who had saved him.

Finally, once that spectacle had concluded, the city guards allowed traffic to resume normally on the main street, and Luca, Garron, and Maronir approached the third gate, which was, in fact, hewn from the face of the mountain itself. Within the stone behemoth before them lay not only the tunnel through which they would pass to reach the desert, but also leagues of mining caverns, and the artisan district, which was home to the finest smiths in all of Sarin. The dwarves had little magical ability, but they were ardently superstitious, and they believed that metal worked into shape before it left the mountain would be harder and stronger than metal worked out in the open air. It seemed silly, but no other blade could rival the ones forged in this mountain, so the rest of Sarin accepted the Dwarven eccentricity as fact, and paid immense fortunes for the weapons forged here.

The outer city had the appearance of a Dwarven stronghold that begrudgingly tolerated the elves, but within the mountain, the oldest and wealthiest sections of the city were the most willing to accept the elven influence, or at least, their magic. Gone were the days when these caverns stank of soot from oily torches burning every few feet. Maronir’s grandfather had made a gift of magical light to the dwarves two centuries earlier, and the dwarves had used it to renovate their underground network. Vines hung from the ceilings of the passages, with their shallow roots sunk hard into the stone above. These vines were a species enchanted and cultivated by the most powerful elven mages to glow brighter than a flame and guide elven long ships up river at night. They cast a majestic golden glow throughout the inner workings of Galgol, a permanent reminder to the most elite dwarves of the benefits of remaining in the elves’ good graces. Politically, the gift had proven to be a masterstroke. The previously reclusive dwarves had responded by coming out in force to help the elves crush the next several human rebellions, and it was the combined might of the two superior races that had since driven the humans near extinction.

Maronir paid these glowing vines no mind. They were ubiquitous in the capital. However Luca and even the normally stoic Garron were amazed.

“How do they work?” Garron wondered aloud.

Maronir smiled at his childlike curiosity and repeated the same lines his tutors had heaped upon him in his youth. “A mage takes the seeds and weaves a spell over them that tinkers with the plant’s Aether. Instead of absorbing sunlight, as normal plants do, these emit light. It is a damn good thing the dwarves have their mines so well ventilated, as these vines can quickly turn the air bitter in a confined space.”

“Bitter?” Luca repeated.

“Yes,” Maronir answered, “something about them going backwards, shining light instead of absorbing it, they also consume air rather than restore it. What they release is not good to breathe, like the breath coming out of a man, it is stale and will leave you weak if you take too much of it in.”

Luca was still confused, but Garron nodded his understanding. All magic has the same central limitation. If you create something, you have to consume something else, and your Aether just fuels the change, so if the mage reversed the natural behavior of the plant, it would reverse everything. Garron remained amazed by the ingenuity of it.

After a few more minutes of walking, the narrow cavern opened up into a massive hall, with smaller sections notched out of the sides. It looked to Luca as if every army in Sarin could fit within this cave with room for all of the men to lie down if they wished.

“Gentlemen,” Maronir announced, “welcome to the Artisan District.”

Aetherstorm – VII

Scora had been Maronir’s guardian from the moment he was born. Not a minute had passed in the prince’s life where the massive veteran was more than a few yards away. Now the man had sacrificed himself for a mission that he had not even agreed with. He had given his life out of pure loyalty to Maronir, and the young elven monarch had a hard time not blaming himself for the man’s death.

From the beginning his tutors had taught him that he was the prince, that he would be king, and that any and all should be glad for the opportunity to sacrifice themselves for him. It never sank in, though. Maronir always felt he owed his subjects loyalty in return for the loyalty they gave him. Honor for honor, and respect for respect. Accordingly, he did not know how to repay the men who had now given him their lives. For that matter, he certainly did not know how to repay the men who had in fact saved his life.

They called themselves Luca and Garron, and even for humans, they looked rough. Maronir’s tutors had also instructed him to be weary of those nomadic human tribes that survived in the forests to the South. They explained the logic of Elven dominance, since they had more powerful magic, and the logic of Dwarven industry, since they were skilled with machines. The humans, by contrast, had no advantage. They were not nearly the mages the elves were, and not nearly the engineers the dwarves were. Their only strength was a primal determination, an ingenuity, which could not be quantified or explained, and thus could not be predicted or defended against. There were stories of individual humans, wounded and driven near mad with bloodlust, slaughtering entire companies of elves with their bare hands.

Maronir had always dismissed such legends as exaggeration at best, and fabrication at worst, but looking at the carnage in the road, and the two unscathed humans before him, he wondered if he had misjudged them.

“You two saved my life,” the monarch said once he was composed enough to speak, “I cannot thank you enough.”

The mage answered him, he was taller than his comrade, but thinner and more wiry, with short dark hair and deeply bronzed skin, “You might start to thank us by telling us who you are, and why these people were trying to kill you.”

The prince had to decide whether or not he trusted these mysterious nomads. Whatever he was going to do, he would need help, and if he lied to them about his identity now, there would be no turning back. “I am Maronir, Prince of Sarin, son of King Rimoar. These rouges are members of a group known as the Gal’Areau, which in my language means ‘Free Elves’ they are opposed to the monarchy, and believe that killing me will pave the way for a world where all elves are equal.”

“All elves equal,” Luca laughed, “humans and dwarves can sit out and rot, I suppose?”

A sad smile spread across Maronir’s face. “There are differing opinions on how best to deal with the other races among all elves, including the rebels.”

“Where do you come down on the issue,” Garron asked, eyebrows raised.

Maronir looked at him carefully. “The first two humans I ever met saved my life from a group of my own kind, who would have killed me without a thought, so I guess your race can’t be as bad as they say.”

“Well show me who said we’re bad,” Luca grinned, “and I’ll kill him without a thought.” Garron and Maronir both laughed cynically, Luca spoke in jest, but his words still had some truth.

“I thought the royal family never left the capital,” Garron wondered, “where were you headed?”

Scora’s advice from days earlier rang loud in Maronir’s mind. No one must learn that the demons were masquerading as elves. “I am on my way to a fighting tournament, called the Aetherstorm. My father organized it, and I intend to participate and prove my mettle along with the rest.” Both humans looked up sharply when he said the word “Aetherstorm”.

“We’re heading that way, too,” Luca said suspiciously, “somebody killed a good friend of ours and left an invitation to the fights beside his body. Not sure if it was one of your messengers or a participant, but either way, we aim to go up there and set things right.”

Maronir stared at them for a moment, stunned. Their friend had almost certainly been killed by a demon. He already regretted lying to his new companions, but the integrity of the throne couldn’t be undermined by the demon’s activities. It was imperative that all of his subjects believe in their ability to maintain order, or even the dwarves might turn against him, and he would soon find himself without a kingdom to protect.

“Well,” the prince offered, “you two certainly seem to be able to handle yourselves, but in a test of the finest warriors in Sarin, I don’t think your gear will quite hold up. Since I seem to be in need of new bodyguards, why don’t you accompany me to the Aetherstorm? In exchange I will see to it that you are outfitted properly as soon as we reach Galgol. What say you?”

The humans looked down at their shabby attire, then at each other. They turned to the monarch and nodded as one, “you got yourself a deal, mister.”

“It’s your…” the monarch started, but thought better of it. These men were ignorant of palace custom, and frankly he didn’t care much for it either. “Please,” he said at last, “just call me Maronir.”

Sane

It was a fateful day, but it passed like any other. It was September 27th, 2084, and it was the day human kind eradicated mental illness. Nobody quite noticed when it happened, since it had felt inevitable for so long. The panacea, the elixir, the spectacular herculean draught that cured this centuries-old scourge was something we were all familiar with by then: Tolerance.

Tolerance, they told us was the cure to all things. The resolution of all conflict. If only we foolish people could learn this secret of tolerance, then we would be without worry. And learn it we did. Everything must be tolerated, they said, except, of course, for intolerance. Intolerance could not be tolerated. Intolerance was intolerable. Soon, though, that wasn’t enough. Soon, even the toleration of intolerance was intolerable. By 2080, legal scholars were debating whether tolerating the toleration of the tolerance of intolerance was tolerable or not. No one quite knew. It was good to not know, they told us. Because to know, to be certain, was itself an act of intolerance.

I laughed a bit at that when I was a child. The teacher didn’t like the laugh; she believed it was intolerant of me to laugh at her while she was trying to teach me about tolerance. She took me to the principal, but the principal wasn’t sure that my laugh qualified as intolerance, and she suggested that she should probably reprimand the teacher for not tolerating me laughing at her. I laughed at that, too, and the principal didn’t like it when I laughed at her, so they decided it was best to drop the whole thing and not try to find out which of us was being intolerant.

When I was a teenager, tolerance became the law… Well… not law, per se… There was just tolerance and intolerance, which were tolerable and intolerable, respectively. A law, they told us, was absolute, written. It could be known, and obviously that was intolerant, so it was intolerable. All absolutes were intolerable. They had a hard time convincing the mathematicians and scientists of this, so instead of convincing them, they branded them as intolerant and threw them in prison.

With that new, enlightened, system in place, there was only one crime: intolerance, and there was only one defense for that crime; that really it was an intolerance you were not tolerating, so your intolerance was tolerable. It became commonplace for petty disputes to escalate into homicide. A man might play his music too loud, and his neighbor would ask him to turn it down, and he would refuse. Then the neighbor would kill the man for playing his music, and the prosecutor would charge that he had been intolerant of the man’s music, and his defense attorney would plead that it was the victim who had been intolerant of the killer’s need for silence, and the jury, not knowing who to believe, would turn to the judge, and the judge would instruct the jury to err on the side of tolerance, so the jury would let the man go.

And so all of the old labels that divided us were wiped away. Gender pronouns of any kind were branded as intolerant, so everyone just called each other by name. Terms like friend were intolerant because they implied the possibility of an enemy. Terms like right were intolerant because they implied the possibility of wrong. There was but one virtue: tolerance, and one fault: intolerance.

So it was little surprise to us in 2084 when they announced that mental illness was just another sort of intolerance. We knew full well by then that there was no such thing as gender dysphoria, and that there was no such thing as pedophilia. People were just people, and they could do whatever they pleased as long as they were being tolerant, except of intolerance. The term bestiality was called intolerant next. If someone loved an animal, and they were being tolerant, then what harm was it to anyone else.

By 2084, there was only one mental illness left for them to destroy: depression. And they did. On September 27, 2084, they told us that we were all perfectly sane. If we wanted to die, they said, then we should find a way to kill ourselves that wouldn’t leave too terrible of a mess, and they began dispensing pills to those who weren’t creative enough to come up with their own means.

Some people were creative, though, and flung themselves from rooftops. They did leave a mess, which was very intolerant of them. And here I sit, on my ledge, after dedicating a lifetime to psychology, and I can’t help but wonder, if I am really as sane as they say, or if the insanity was them all along. I think about my teacher and my principal, and how they tolerated me laughing at them, and I wonder if I have been wrong for all these years to think it absurd. Since I have nothing left to do here, I will leave you with a paradox, which came to me in a dream some nights ago.

To be truly tolerant, you must also tolerate intolerance, for as soon as you attempt to force another to believe as you do, you have become the intolerant one.

OBITUARY: Dr. Joseph Sorensen died September 28, 2084. Cause of death: Suicide. The doctor chose to end his life in a most intolerant way, which is fitting, as he was a most intolerant man.

Aetherstorm – VI

Luca and Garron lived in the heart of the old human stronghold, south and east of the capital. To the North lie the great Dwarven mines within Mt. Gauseng, and at the base of that mighty mountain was Galgol, the center of all commerce in Sarin. Galgol was the most heavily populated city in the continent, and its many wares were shipped everywhere.

The arena where the Aetherstorm was to be held was located in the Shizo desert, north of Gauseng and the range that held it. The only way to cross the mountains into the harsh desert in the north was through the tunnel the dwarves had constructed at Galgol, so that is where Luca and Garron were heading.

Micah had taken them to Galgol once in their youth, so that they would know the way, but he warned them that humans were often not welcome in the great city, especially since the last rebellion. The dwarves did not bother to dispute the rule of the elves over Sarin anymore; they were far happier to profit by trading under the protection of the royal family. Accordingly, the numerous insurrections by the humans over the last century had drawn the ire of the dwarves and elves jointly, and between the magic of the elves, and the war machines of the dwarves, it was little wonder that the humans were now a scarce and persecuted minority in Sarin.

Luca and Garron had been safe in the forests to the south, hunting enough to live on, and rarely encountering the other races, but in the city, they would be a target for robbery or worse, just because of the shade of their skin and the shape of their ears.

It had been three days since they got clear of the forests and into the hill country. This region looked peaceful now, but that was only because the farms that once dotted these hills had been burned to the ground in the war. No one had rebuilt, because there was no one left to do any rebuilding. The countryside was now devoid of any sign of civilization except for the scars the war had left on the land itself. As Luca and Garron made their way across the fields and over the hills, they took care not to fall into one of the craters or trenches that had been torn from the earth by the dwarves as they marched against the humans.

When they stood at the crest of the tall hills here, they could see the mountains in the distance, and just make out the plume of acrid smoke that billowed perpetually from Galgol’s many factories and furnaces. To the West, they could now see the main road that connected Galgol to the capital, Cirroar. It wound through the hills rather than over them, and in this region was little more than a dirt path. Closer to either metropolis, one would find it paved ornately with fine cobblestones.

Luca squinted his eyes against the Sun, and saw a carriage rolling along the path, pulled by a team of four horses. Luca hadn’t seen a horse in person since before his father died. They were a scarce commodity in the human territories even before the war.

“Looks like a big shot rolling through,” Luca called out.

Garron was crouched down, skimming his spell book for something that would parch his thirst. He looked up sharply, “Everyone is a big shot compared to us, you dumb clod.” The insult lacked its normal good humor, as did Garron himself. He was still distraught over the loss of his mentor.

“Come on, bookworm,” Luca offered, extending his hand, “let’s get down to the road. It’s shady down there, and if you sit in the Sun any longer, I think you’ll dry up and blow away.”

Garron grunted a little as he stood and followed Luca down the hill, toward the road. After a few minutes, they were preparing to cross the trench that formed the barrier between the road and the fields on either side of it, when they nearly stepped on a group of elves.

“Halt!” One of them shouted, drawing an arrow back on his bow and aiming at Luca’s heart. Luca and Garron looked and saw that the trench was filled with elves, covered head to toe in green and black cloth. No wonder they had not seen them; they were camouflaging themselves. One of the elves turned and looked at them. Their faces were covered as well. These must have been bandits, Luca reasoned.

“Shut up, you fool,” the one who had looked at them said. The voice was delicate and very definitely female, but it spoke with authority. “Can’t you see they are humans? They are as much your ally as your foe. Turn your attention to the road, and leave these men alone.” The elf with the bow hesitated for a moment, but a glare from the lady saw him immediately turn his bow back toward the road. He was scared of her; that much was apparent to Garron and Luca as they stood, unsure whether or not they were free to go.

Before they had time to make up their minds, the sound of trotting hooves on the dirt interrupted them all. In a flash, the big shot carriage was before them, and the man with the bow had shot one of the horses, sending a red stain across the beast’s chest, and a flurry of alarmed curses from the driver of the carriage.

Suddenly a battle was under way right in front of Garron and Luca, between the elves in the trench and the elves now springing from the carriage. The horses were spooked and running, but not before one of the bandits from the trench had severed their connection to the carriage, leaving it stranded as the scared animals sprinted away.

Luca wondered who was in the carriage. He wondered what the woman meant when she called them allies. He did know one thing for sure: he loved horses. He always had, and anyone who shot an innocent animal was no ally of his.

As quickly as the battle had begun, Luca glanced at Garron, who nodded his understanding immediately. Garron began to murmur words that were foreign to Luca, and for his part, Luca leapt the trench and buried his sword in the back of the nearest bandit. He kicked the dead elf off of his blade, and turned his attention to a group of his allies, who were trying to pry open the door of the carriage. It appeared the elves who had sprung out to fight had locked something or someone inside behind them before they came out and met their demise. There were three living bandits left, all focused on the door. A ball of fire hit one of them square in the rump, courtesy of Garron. It sent him leaping and screaming away from the carriage for just a moment before Luca put him out of his misery.

Of the last two, one had the good sense to flee, but one drew a rapier and charged at Luca. Faced with the stronger, faster elf, Luca did the only sensible thing, as he saw it. He threw his sword straight into the charging bandit while he was still a ways off. The elf stopped in his tracks, spit a bit of blood out of his mouth, and then fell dead in the road.

“Ay!” Luca called as he wiped the blood from his word, “if there’s anyone in there, it is safe to come out, now. The bandits are dead, and we will do you no harm!”

A couple of minutes passed wherein Luca and Garron took a few gold pieces from the pockets of the bandits, and Luca added a couple of daggers to his collection. At about the time that they were ready to head toward the city and leave the carriage for someone else to find, a sharp click stole their attention. Whoever was in the carriage had unlatched the door. Both men stood still and waited for whoever was inside to reveal themself. The tension was so great that when the door finally swung open, Luca flinched a little.

From within the carriage came a voice with an odd accent, “If you shoot me, may there be a curse on your house worse than on the spawn of Sybilis himself.” The voice was definitely that of an elf, probably from the capital, Garron thought.

Suddenly an Elf sprang out of the carriage with two daggers raised at the air.

“I told you we weren’t going to hurt you, damnit. Stop acting like an idiot.” Luca chastised the elf, “Who are you? Why were these people after you?”

The elf didn’t answer Luca. Instead he turned his slender frame toward one of the fallen elves in the road. “Scora!” the elf cried. He fell to his knees beside the body, weeping, “Damn it all, Scora.”

Aetherstorm – V

“What the hell do you mean I can’t go?” Maronir shouted. Scora shook his head in exasperation at his young master.

“There are a dozen reasons, your Highness,” The seasoned old soldier said, “most seriously being that when a demon invites you to an event it is not typically a good idea to attend. To say nothing of the Gal’Areau! If those filthy rebels get their hands on you it could spell the end of the monarchy. You cannot put your life at risk. All of Sarin is depending on you, and it is still so early in your reign.”

“My reign hasn’t started yet, damnit. If I go, I can discover what they are about, and stop them,” the prince snapped.

“Yes, but it could begin any day, my friend,” Scora whispered. Maronir glared at him like he had sprouted wings.

“How can you possibly know that?” Maronir demanded.

“Maronir, my liege,” Scora soothed, “I stood beside your father and made war when I was a young man. I watched you play in your crib with little toys. Now you stand tall and proud like he did all those years ago. Your father may perish any day. I know it because you wear the grief on your face as if he were already gone. When he passes, you will be needed here.”

Maronir knew that his bodyguard was right, but he still couldn’t accept it. He didn’t like the tone the demon had used. He hated that the creature thought there was nothing more to his family than the power of that “little tree” as he had called it. More than that though, he feared the demon was right, and he needed to prove to himself, and Sarin that he was a true warrior without the Aetheroot, so that if he must inherit it, he could at least carry it with the respect of his subjects.

“Scora,” Maronir whispered, “if my father passes, I will be the first to know, and if it happens, I will return and do my duty, as I must, but I am going to this Aetherstorm, and I will seek to learn what mischief the demons have planned, and stop it if I can. You may join me or you may stay if you wish. I owe you that much after everything you have done for me, and for my father.”

“Then we will go,” Scora answered, “and we will stop them. It may not be wise to make your identity known, once we arrive there, but if you must, then you will have to pretend the tournament is being conducted with out blessing. If the people learn demons are claiming to speak for us, the panic might be worse than whatever the demons have planned.”

Maronir nodded solemnly, and the two men gathered a couple of men to join them on the journey, and prepared to leave at once. They left before dawn, and told no one where they were going.

Aetherstorm – IV

It was a three day hike from where Luca had found the boar to the little clearing where Luca, Garron, and their mentor, Micah lived. In those three days, the young men had eaten about a third of the boar, and dried the rest to preserve it.

As they approached the clearing, Garron slowed and stopped amid the thinning trees. Luca stopped too. He knew that Garron was more sensitive to the Aether than he was. It was hard to say if Garron had chosen magic because of his sensitivity, or if the sensitivity grew as a result of his practice bending Aether to his will. Luca suspected that both were true.

“What is it, Garron?” Luca asked. His friend’s face was contorted with the effort of probing the area with his own energy to learn what lay ahead of them.

“It feels as if there was a tremendous battle here,” Garron answered slowly, “The energy expended is unlike anything I have ever seen”

“Is someone still fighting?” Luca asked, drawing his sword as he spoke.

“No,” Garron grimaced, “there is no one in the clearing at all. It feels like the battle happened very quickly, no more than two days ago.”

“Let’s check it out, then,” Luca said. He began marching, sword at the ready, toward the clearing. Garron followed close behind him. At first nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but near their mentor’s tent was a figure on the ground. They approached it wearily, and soon discovered that it was Micah’s body.

“Micah,” Luca gasped, falling to his knees beside the old man’s remains. The grass all around them was dead and scorched, as if there had been a fire, but Micah was not burned. He lay peacefully, almost as if he might rise, but the ground around him was sticky with congealed blood. In Micah’s hand was a parchment scroll. Luca didn’t see it through his tears, but Garron was composed enough to take it and read it. It seemed to be an invitation to a fighting tournament.

In the last human rebellion against the elves, both Luca and Garron had been orphaned by the swift counterattack of the royal forces against all of the human regions. There had been so much collateral damage that the survivors weren’t sure who to hate more, the elves who had slaughtered their families, or the handful of humans who had started the fighting in the first place. Most found they had hate enough for all of them.

Micah had taken the two in as boys, and taught them to defend themselves, to hunt, and most importantly, to forgive. They bore no grudge against the elves any longer, but as Garron consoled Luca for the loss of their mentor, he felt quite sure that this offense would not be forgiven. They would find whoever was responsible for this, and their justice would be decisive.

“What do we do now?” Luca asked once he had recovered.

Garron handed him the scroll. “We will go there, to the Aetherstorm, and we will find the man responsible for this. He will pay.” Luca took the scroll and read it quickly. He nodded his agreement, and the two set out to bury the man who had raised them. Once their work was finished, they began to walk north, following the instructions on the scroll, and they didn’t look back.

In the trees nearby, a figure sat and watched two young humans bury the man it had killed a day earlier. The demon, Shane, had forgotten the invitation in his haste to leave after the battle, so naturally enough he returned to claim it, and move on to his next target, but when he felt the bitter anguish of these men at the loss of the old one, he stopped to enjoy the show, and was delighted by what he saw. These two would be fine for the Aetherstorm, he concluded. So he sat for a while and watched them mourn, and when they left the clearing, he vanished from his hiding space in a plume of black smoke, and the last thing to disappear was his grin.

Aetherstorm – III

Cirroar, the capital of Sarin, has been home to the Elven royal family since the Demons fell. It is constructed in the shape of a spiral, extending out from the palace. Under the palace, in a chamber nestled at the absolute center of the city, is the Aetheroot, the artifact whose power banished the demons from the natural plane.

In that chamber stood Maronir, the prince of Sarin, and heir apparent to the throne. He stared at what would be an unassuming piece of wood, if it weren’t glowing pale blue, dying the chamber in the light of its aura. No one knew how old it was. Some theorized it had been planted even before the foundations of the world, and that it was the source of all life. Soon, Maronir would inherit access to its might. It was his birthright as a descendant of Mar’Or, the man who made the covenant with the Aetheroot all those centuries ago. Many men of all races envied Maronir for this privilege, but as he stood there, bathed in its majestic light, all Maronir could think was how eagerly he would dispense with it if only he could.

“Your Highness,” a voice roused Maronir from his self-pity. It was Scora, his bodyguard. Maronir dismissed the burly elf’s bow absent-mindedly, still fixated on the cruel burden of the Aetheroot’s power on his bloodline. “Your father has requested your presence in the throne room.”

“Of course,” Maronir muttered. What more fitting way to end his visit with the Aetheroot than to see what it had done to his family first hand. As he took his leave of the chamber he stopped to take one last look at the ancient wood, growing up from mid-air into the ceiling, leading to the throne room, where his father waited.

Maronir and Scora climbed an ornate staircase up one level of the palace, hardly noticing the gold and jewels embedded in the walls at infinite expense to whatever ancient carpenter had built the palace. Maronir resolved himself to check the archives for the name of the man. It was not fitting, he thought, that the craftsmen be forgotten while their tribute to his family live on.

Scora stopped outside the massive gilded doors at the head of the staircase. He was one of the few commoners who were allowed in the Aetheroot’s chamber, but only royals were allowed in the throne room. It was the last guard in place to ensure no one discovered the secret cost of the Aetheroot, and no one learned the price Maronir’s family paid for their power.

The doors glided open before Maronir, and as he entered the massive dome under which the throne room sat, a familiar sight greeted him. Lined up along the left side of the room, extending away from the entrance were 7 thrones, with what appeared to be exquisite wooden statues seated in them. To a commoner, these would appear to be statues of the kings of Sarin beginning with Mar’Or. Maronir knew better, however. As he looked at the images of his forefathers, some sitting peacefully, others seemingly in the act of rising from their seat and shouting, he knew that these men were still very much alive, but transfixed in an eternal prison by the power of the Aetheroot. That was the price of its magic, the cost of ridding the world of demonic rule. The seventh throne was vacant, waiting for him to take his place in this glorious prison. An eight would spring up from the ground as soon as Maronir produced an heir, and in the sixth throne, sat his father, who was from the waist down, completely changed from flesh to wood. It had been months since he had been able to leave the throne room, and over a week since he was able to stand. His face looked pained, but he swore to Maronir that the process did not hurt. Maronir did not believe him.

“You summoned me, father,” the prince managed. The combined auras of the royal line and the Aetheroot itself gave the room a noxious green light, and in it, his father looked pallid and frail. It would not be long before the king’s body was completely transfigured. He would be, by all common measure, dead, but he would live on inside the husk that had once been his body. Once the transformation was complete, the power would transfer to Maronir, and soon after that, his own change would begin. The more power a king used, the faster he was changed. It was said that when Mar’Or banished Sybilis, he was transfigured instantly, and brought here by his son, who now sat beside him. Some of the latter kings ruled in peace for hundreds of years before their change began, but Maronir had seen in his brief fifty years of life that it was the anticipation that was the hardest. The working, and the ruling, and the waiting for the day, when suddenly you were rooted where you stood, and needed to quickly break free and hide yourself away on your throne, lest the commoners discover your fate and inadvertently disturb the covenant out of pity for you.

The covenant was clear. If the Aetheroot did not have its tribute, the power would withdraw, and everything that had been built with it would be destroyed, including the barrier that separated the demon king, Sybilis, from this world.

The King spoke in gasps, “There have been whispers of a tournament organized by the royal family; they are calling it the Aetherstorm.” His strength was being sapped by the transformation. He could hardly breathe anymore. The cursed wood was beginning to take his lungs.

“Tournament? Of what sort?” Maronir wondered, “I’ve not been informed of any tournament.”

The king sighed patiently, and spoke in gasps “We have not organized any, my son. Of that I am certain. It seems someone is staging a brawl and trying to give it credibility by using our names. Our men captured one of the ones circulating invitations to the tournament, and are holding him. He was cloaked as an elf, but by the feel of his aura, I would say he is actually a demon. He is being held in the dungeon. I would like you to go interrogate him and try to see what mischief the demons are up to. There is little I can do from here, but soon enough you will have the might required to put a stop to their endeavors.”

“Yes, father. I will go right away,” Maronir said. He bowed and began to exit. As soon as he was nearing the door, his father let out a groan. The transformation was quite painful indeed. Maronir allowed his father to believe that he had not heard it, and made haste to the dungeon.

Maronir and Scora entered the dungeon to find an elf chained to the floor in the midst of being flogged by the interrogator. The man stopped in mid stroke and dropped his flail in his haste to bow to the prince. His victim laughed heartily at his tormentor’s show of reverence, and was punished for the insolence promptly.

Maronir had stopped briefly to arm himself before entering the dungeon, and he rested his hand on the pommel of his dagger as the creature before him was brought to submission. His father had been right, as always. This did appear to be an elf, but it stank of the wickedness of demonic magic.

“Show yourself, demon,” Maronir commanded, “your pitiful mask is of now value here.”

The creature laughed again, and its face contorted into a sick caricature of Maronir, before melting away into the familiar pale countenance of a demon.

“What is the purpose of this… Aetherstorm you have arranged?” Maronir asked. The demon turned its head to one side and regarded him with a look of curiosity,

“Is it true,” the demon hissed, “that rather than face the might of Sybilis on your own, you instead allow a silly old tree to seal you -” the demon stopped mid sentence as Maronir hurled his dagger at it. The blade buried itself two-inches deep in the stone behind where the demon’s head had been, but the demon was gone, and a plume of black smoke billowed in his place.

“Damn it all,” Maronir bellowed, “Don’t breathe it in!”

He and his subjects quickly covered their mouths and turned away from the cloud. Then, a voice came from the cloud, saying, “I could have escaped from your buffoon anytime I wished, prince, but I stayed because my mission was not to invite just anyone to the Aetherstorm, but you yourself. If you really believe the elves have the right to protect Sarin from us, then you have a chance to do so without the help of your little tree.” Once it had finished, the cloud seeped through the walls of the dungeon and was gone. A scroll sat where the demon had been, bearing instructions to reach the Aetherstorm.

Aetherstorm – II

Fire is by far the most unruly of elements. As earth sits, and water flows, and the wind blows, fire refuses to be controlled. It refuses to be predicted. As though it, unique among the forces of nature, stands above the rules of matter and substance, for it, fire, needs nothing. Yet it, fire, is the one element that cannot stand alone. It consumes the earth and the air for it’s very sustenance. It is the prime parasite, the first creation to abuse its brothers. Micah was old now: very old. In his youth he had wielded the magic of fire, as well as blades of steel. He had been oblivious to the terrible destructive power of each in its own right, and of the harm both would deal in his lifetime.

In a clearing in a forest that many inhabitants of Sarin had forgotten in their lust for wealth and power, Micah sat now, old and frail compared to what he had once been, and he watched the fire consume the air and the earth of the clearing. He was grateful for the fire, because it kept his bones warm enough so that they did not ache, but now, for perhaps the first time in his long life, Micah appreciated the fire’s cost. He would have to remember to speak to his pupils on the subject.

A single snapping branch beyond the clearing roused Micah from his meditation, and the small silver hairs on the back of Micah’s neck rustled. Someone was attempting a cloaking spell in the clearing. Micah knew a trick that would take care of that. He opened his eyes and looked down at his wrinkled hand. What a mighty hand it had once been, now it was withered and scarred. He reached into the deepest depths of his soul, where the Aether stirred within him still, and he plunged the withered hand into the fire, and the fire changed from red to blue, and it bent to the will of the master. It flew in the direction of the foreign magic, and Micah watched with an amused grin as the fire rose and wrapped around him, reaching toward the invisible foe behind him.

Blue flames licked around Micah as he spun around to see who had approached him. He was startled to see that his fire had stopped short of the mark. Standing in a circle of scorched grass was an elf, holding a parchment scroll. Behind the pale greenish skin and shockingly white hair, though, Micah knew that anything could be lurking. The cloaking magic was still active. Someone had chosen to present themself as an elf, and was expending a lot of Aether in their effort to hide the spell.

“That was a rather neat trick,” the elf remarked. The voice sounded amused, but it wasn’t quite right. Elves were rare in this part of the continent, but Micah was one of the few from these parts who had dealt with them. He knew what an elven accent sounded like, and what he was listening to was almost a decent counterfeit.

“So is that,” the old warrior goaded, pointing at the man before him as he spoke “when I cloak myself, I always have trouble with the lips not matching my speech, but yours look almost natural.”

The elf laughed heartily, “Who said I was under a cloaking spell?”

“I did,” Micah grunted, “What do you want?”

“I have come on behalf of the royal family to invite you to a tournament of the mightiest warriors in Sarin. It is to be called the Aetherstorm, and its champion will surely be remembered in the minstrels’ songs for centuries to come,” the elf seemed to smirk a little. Micah wondered whether that was a deliberate piece of the illusion, or if this messenger had betrayed a bit of his true self through the mask. “What say you, warrior? Will you prove your mettle, or have you passed your prime?”

Micah chuckled at the insolence, “I say this… You are no elf, and there are few other races that can wield Aether as well as you have here. Show yourself, demon.”

The voice laughed again, this time wickedly, but the elf’s face was not laughing. Slowly, like a mirage forming on the horizon, the face melted away to reveal the unmistakable countenance of a demon. He could almost have passed for human, but his pale face was too perfect, and both eyes were blood red.

“I warned my superiors that we should only approach young, stupid warriors,” the demon shook its head.

“What were your intentions?” Micah interrogated, already drawing Aether up within himself to prepare an attack. There were few mortals who had killed demons in combat, and fewer still who had survived their injuries for more than a day after. Micah was one of the latter, but he had been younger then, mightier, and foolhardy enough to dismiss the danger he was in. Now, he had all of the fear born of wisdom.

The demon smiled. “Old man, you should not worry yourself with such matters… You will not live long enough to be troubled by the things we have in store.” The grass stirred as both Micah and his adversary began to pull the Aether up from their core to their skin.

Micah moved first, murmuring phrases few remembered in this part of Sarin. His voice dripped with spiritual power as the air began to bend to his will. The demon began to speak also, but his voice was terse, and his phrases rang with the perverse origin of their power.

Magic comes from speech, empowered by the energy in the deepest depths of the caster’s soul, or Aether. There are countless languages with the capacity to give form to that energy. Most of them have been forgotten by history. The most infamous, and secret, of those languages is known as Solael, the power language preferred by the demons. Most power languages are beautiful and at times hypnotic in their own right, but Solael is grotesque.

A flash of blinding light filled the clearing as Micah’s spell began first. The air itself seemed to burn from the energy leaving him, and the grass between him and his enemy dried to a crisp instantly. The light reached the demon, and enveloped him. It was a powerful attack, and a desperate one. Micah knew that his endurance stood no chance compared to the younger, more powerful being, so he had no choice but to end this battle quickly.

Slowly, painfully, the light faded, and to the horror of one of the oldest and most storied warriors in human history, the demon still stood, slouching a bit, perhaps, but otherwise unharmed. He was still muttering the sickening syllables of his native tongue, weaving a counter-attack out of the still charged air. The puffy clouds overhead began to thicken and darken, drawn together by the wicked magic. The clouds continued to assemble in a mass over Micah, and they seemed somehow to be glowing red from within their grey depths. The old man gathered what energy he had left to form a shield against the attack to come. As soon as he had begun to form the defensive spell, black fire began to fall from the sky. Micah spent all of the energy he had to shield himself from the burning rain. He was exhausted, but safe, under his canopy of blue light. When he finally released his shield, he looked for the demon, but couldn’t see him.

Before Micah found his adversary, the demon’s blade found his back. As he died, he could just make out the demon’s scroll, discarded, beside him. “Come and prove yourself,” it said, “join the Aetherstorm.”

Aetherstorm – I

There was a time when the world of Sarin was rife with chaos. Demons, under the loose rein of their leader, Sybilis, roamed the land. They wreaked havoc on man and monster alike. For generations, the demons were thought to be unstoppable. All of the other races were at the mercy of them, until the day came that an Elven warrior named Mar’Or discovered the Aetheroot, an artifact of seemingly unlimited power. He entered into a covenant with the Aetheroot, and using its might, he sealed Sybilis away in an alternate dimension.

1000 years have passed since Sybilis was banished, and in that time, Sarin has flourished. The descendants of Mar’Or still rule over Sarin, and protect it with the power of the Aetheroot, but the demons have not forgotten their age of glory, and they are not resigned to their fate. The time for the Aetherstorm has come.

Wild boars are not very agreeable by their nature. Luca had found that they were even less agreeable when you were trying to turn them into dinner. Luca sat in the branches of an ancient tree, looking down at the boar whom he had so offended. Luca’s simple bronze sword lay useless in the bushes near the base of the tree. The choice had been simple; either drop the sword and keep climbing, or fall from the tree and be mauled by the boar. Luca had made what he believed to be the smart choice, but as he sat in the tree, cornered, he began to doubt his own wisdom.

The creature rammed the tree with its tusks, and the tree shook from the impact. Luca’s doubts were beginning to grow into real fear. The branch on which Luca sat creaked beneath him. Surely this dumb animal couldn’t knock him from this tree… Could it? The creature trudged angrily a little further away from the base of the tree this time, and then came at a dead run into it. This time Luca heard the sound of wood snapping, but it was not in the tree falling, or his branch breaking… The boar had lodged its tusk in the trunk of the tree. An enraged grunt echoed off of the short grass below. The animal was stuck.

Luca did not wait for his adversary to free itself. He reached into his pack and produced a dagger. It was not nearly as impressive to the eye as his sword, but Luca was not vain. A dead enemy is a dead enemy, no matter how he is slain. Luca adjusted his positioning on the branch ever so slightly as he prepared to descend upon the boar and slay it, but just as he was about to jump he felt a whisper of leaves crossing the forest floor in the periphery of his consciousness. There was something about the slight noise that startled Luca. The small hairs on the back of his neck stood, and goose bumps rose between them. Someone was using magic.

A ball of flame erupted from the bushes not far from where Luca’s sword lay, and buried itself in the hide of the boar, sending the sounds of the creatures suffering and the smell of singed hair and flesh wafting up to Luca where he sat. The creature was obviously weakened but not dead. Luca leapt down, landing on the beast’s back blade first. He allowed the unfortunate creature to break his fall, and then he swiftly hid behind it. Whoever had launched that spell at the boar would probably not like to share this kill.

“Luca!” a voice entreated from the bushes. It was a familiar voice.

“Is that you, Garron?” Luca called back from behind the boar.

“Of course it is you dumb clod. Who else would half cook your dinner for you, even before you’d killed it,” Garron answered. His answer removed all doubt as to his identity.

“I would have had that beast even without your help. Might have even been easier without you,” Luca chuckled as he stood.

“Aye, it may be so,” Garron answered, “but it would’ve been twice as hard for you to carry him home, and ten times as hard to cook him without a mage around to light your fire for you.” He emerged from the bushes, revealing his bronzed face, the leather cape that he seemed never to remove, and the red spell book that he seemed never to put down. On his face was a genuine smile. Luca bent down and grabbed one of the boar’s hooves. He felt the warmth of his strength amulet against his chest as he hauled the bulky beast off of the ground and over his shoulder with one arm. Garron regarded him with a look of amusement, before he opened his spell book and began to whisper.

Luca felt the weight of the boar on his shoulder lessen as the creature was lifted from his grasp. He had never seen Garron use that spell before, but nothing much the young mage did surprised him anymore. The two warriors ambled off toward Luca’s camp, laughing.