The Seekers

Norg raised his gnarled old hand, pointing west towards the rambling mountains. His wordless gesture made him no less a traitor to his kind.

Retribution would be swift and soundless, but not unexpected. A wisdom-keeper who loses his grip would lose his tongue as surely. Norg knew this, his unseen watchers knew this, but these witnesses did not.

Some things, which had long held no form within the mists of neither here nor there, stirred now… assembled parts newly dreamed into reality.. and the mountains sighed and rumbled with birth of raw life.

Norg the Betrayer. His name and scent rose from the paths he had trodden, as far back as time could recall. His hunt was an abberation of all that had been before. The beasts being birthed shuddered and gnashed at the necessity of it, even as they hungered for it.

The group gazed at the blue-hued mountain range, a strange unfamiliarity prickling their skin.

“We are indebted to you, my Lord,” Grath Rhueber said. His words were carefully placed. There were no secrets to be kept from the likes of Norg, and Grath knew this.

He was also keenly aware that age for Wisdom Keepers was an advantage, and that few realms were closed to them.

These words he spoke, would most certainly be weighed. He knew too, if he failed, the units would be in blood.

No elders could counsel Grath – every one of them was dead. None alive recalled such a meeting been between outlanders and a Lord of the Silent Alliance.

Talk there ceased when the group left. It was many moons ago now, The dreamer among them had muttered madly, wiping crimson blossoms from all their steeds long after the last blossom was actually thrown.

Today, the dreamer was stone solemn. He refused to look at Norg.

Even Grath was as taut as a wild cat beneath his dark robe, steeling himself against the unimaginable.

“There is no way to prepare for a foe you cannot fathom.”

The words seemed to have no source. All eyes turned to Norg in astonishment.

Only he knew the words were never his.

His narrowed eyes were fixed on the purple-blue hue of the west ranges.

“So. It has begun,” he wheezed. Norg felt a shift, the pre-avalanche sigh of mortality. “At last..” he thought.

The dreamer surreptiously brushed away another blossom, watching it splatter against the blinding white ground.

Norg faded lazily from sight, disquietingly, from his feet up. It was a while before the group of travellers breathed normally again. Although physically gone his presence lingered, listening, in the glade, in the depth of the shadowed grasses and in the tendrils of unfurled ferns.

Such, rumour had it, was the way of his kind.

The Seekers shivered. The Hunt would soon be upon the land, the light was already turning, the beasts of land and air felt it in their every fibre. The seasons had turned, the fires had been stoked. The purification was due.

This could not be avoided.

The Dreamer wiped his mouth, whined softly. Grath tasted the air currents, the wild in him drawn by an ancient, but new scent. He moved like the fading light, and his followers filed in behind him.

It would be three days until the turn, until the Veil turned gossamer. They had but three days – this band of five. Grath, his Dreamer, the twins, the Vessel. Three days to do the impossible.

As he walked, Grath released his Warrior’s feet, sang to hidden stars, whispered to the water elements in every plant. Panting, he beseeched the branches and bark to lift him, to hide him, he cried to the feathered ones to give him their wings, the crawling ones for their legs.

For days, the Dreamer moaned and whined, Grath grunted to the beasts of the forests, he sunk into the soil and called to the roots of the forest floor, to the depth of the ancient stones. He spoke shadows, breathed with Beings untold, danced the impeccable dance, between the teeth and fangs of death, in search of life.

In the end, both came to them.

On the edge of the last day the Seekers were shaken from a hypnotic reverie of creeping ferns, breath on their backs and shuffling in the air around them by the nightmare they sought.

On Sacred land, surrounded by the rank gnashing of things unrecognisable, of beasts clawed winged and unidentifiable, The Wisest One, waited.

The Dreamer wiped his mouth.

It was terrible, how the Twins screamed. It was more awful still, how She fed on them, draining them of their blood’s innocence and trust, gorging on their unsuspecting eyes, pulling the marrow from their bones, licking their stricken pale still faces with two tongues. Hers pink, and Norg’s, strangely grey and alive in her mouth.

The Dreamer whined. The beasts sank to their bellies, shadows and glints of blood, ears cocked at the Dreamer’s whining, eyes on his flickering figure.

Carefully, the vortex of mayhem stepped, puppet-like, from her protection. The Twins glittered in her eyes like flames. She drifted drunkenly forward, falling to her knees at Grath’s feet, speechlessly drunk on the Twin’s schizophrenic sorcery.

Grath pulled a pliable hollow pipe from his pouch, heart twisted with the task at hand.

With a shudder, he prised it into the centre of the child’s smooth forehead.

Snow.

The Vessel shuffled up beside him, gibbering, her emptiness a burning thirst.

“Drink,” he gasped. “Save us! Take back our people’s knowledge.”

The whining grew. This time, Grath’s tone was added to the Dreamer’s, and the beasts.

The Vessel paused, the pipe still on the child’s etheric body as the Veil lifted.

For an unknowable time, they held their places. Then unbidden, the Vessel removed the pipe with an expert twist.

And plunged it into the child’s still beating heart.

“For what is knowledge, without love?” The Vessel pondered.

• Favorite
• Report Concern
• Share This
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Add your comment

You need to login or signup to add your comment to this work.