The Drifter of Aria

            The old man threw up his hand and a torrent of sharp winds whipped jagged rocks at me and my poor struggling flower.

            A cold dumbstruck shock radiated out from my heart and caused my muscles to tense.  I threw myself over the flower to shield it from the blast, but left my back wide open to the assault.  How did he wield such power in a world long devoid of magic, I wondered as the rocks bruised my body and tore through my already ragged tunic.  "Stop!  Stop!  I'll listen!"

            As quickly as the winds had risen they died down.  Rocks and dirt fell to the ground.  Their clicks and clacks echoed as they skittered down the steep cliff face.  The old man cleared his throat and spoke with a commanding tone only an eternal could muster, "Stand boy."

            Hot rage bubbled up from the pit of my stomach and acid burned my throat.  How dare he speak to me in such a way.  At just shy of ten thousand years old I was no boy.  I stood alright.  I rose to my feet and with one long firmly planted step I put myself in his face.  My nails dug into the flesh of my palms as I squeezed my hands into tight fists.  His pale seemingly colorless eyes locked on mine and I saw a flicker of eternity that quelled the fury flooding over me in an instant.  Good job, I thought, here is one of the oldest beings in known existence, so old that not even I had the faintest clue how old he or it was, and I had just thrown myself in his face like a petulant teenager looking for a fight.  He watched me, waiting for me to back down, but I'd already committed to my course of action no matter how fool hearty it might have been.  "Well,” I said.  "I'm listening."

            The old man peered into my eyes for a lifetime.  He gazed so deeply I could have sworn I felt my very soul wrap its arms around itself and huddle into a corner for warmth, but as I prepared myself for one of the worst beatings I undoubtedly would ever receive, he smiled.  His lips curled up into a toothy grin and the endless number of wrinkles on his sagging face curled up as well.  He clapped me on the shoulder with a hearty, "Ha!", and then he stepped past me and took a seat on the big rock I'd drug to the edge of the garden to serve as a bench.  "Come, have a seat!"  His voice wasn't harsh or threatening, but jovial and good spirited.

            A blast of soothing relief overtook me.  My body trembled and I released the breath I'd sucked in when I'd thrown myself in his face.  I closed my eyes and took several deep calming breaths as I listened to the soft chirping of the birds who loved to hang around my garden and pick it clean when I wasn't looking.  I understand that mortals live their lives with the threat of death constantly looming over them, but I was immortal, and the sensation was new to me.  Though I couldn't fully understand it at the time, I sure was glad to hear those thieving little chirppers chirp. 

            Before I was ready to continue I heard the old man clear his throat and the calm I was building flittered away.  All I had wanted to do when I woke up was get that flower to bloom.  Now if I ever wanted that flower to bloom I had to play nice with the deity sitting at the edge of my garden.  I don't know if you've ever had a God stop by for a visit or not, but trust me when I say that it is more than ample motivation to put your plans on the back burner.  I took one more deep breath then I walked over and sat down by the old man.

            Awkwardness, awkwardness is what settled on my shoulders as I sat down.  It wasn’t the heaviest thing I’d ever felt, but it sure wasn’t light either.  The old man reminded me of being a little boy who had stepped out of line and then received the disappointed glare of his father.  I sat stiff, with my hands clasped in my lap, sweaty palms and all, and looked ahead at nothing in particular.  I sat in a way that made my cheeks flush as soon as I realized what I was doing, so I altered it.  I cocked one leg out, pulled my hands a part, tilted my head, and let one arm rest lazily against my inner thigh.  So sue me, we all act silly when we’re trying to save face.  “So, to what do I owe the visit?” I choked out and instantly felt a hot flush of blood in my cheeks again.

            “Do you remember the first time we met?”

            My chest ached.  The ache spread into my limbs.  My fingers and toes tingled and the pit of my throat froze.  The old man readjusted his position to look at me when he no doubt felt my body go limp.  I drew in a sharp breath as a tear escaped my eye.  Damn traitor, I thought as I watched the tear splash onto my grass stained trousers.  I sat up straight and held my head high.  I drew back any tears that threatened to escape my burning eyes and cleared my throat, “I remember.”

            “Do you remember what I told you as we sat in the dying sun?”

            The ache was gone but it had left emptiness in its wake.  I nodded my head several times as though I were trying to shake the words lose.  My eyes burned hotter than the center of the sun and I knew the tears would come if I so much as opened my mouth.  I looked away from him and peered over the horizon so he couldn’t see the wet tears that streamed down my face.  “You told me that I’d done the right thing.”  I was utterly shocked that my voice hadn’t broken as I spoke, but instead it had flowed from my lips calm and solid.  A little cold, but that was to be expected.  “What are you getting at old man?”

            “The time has come,” the old man said as he dug into his faded orange robes.  When I’d first met him they shone with a majestic brilliance, and when the wind blew they flickered like flames.  “The time has come for the right man, to do the right thing, again.”  I heard him liberate something from his robes.  It tore loose with a brittle ripping sound.  “Look,” he said and I did.

            A vicious horror wrapped its scaly clawed hands around my lungs and rung the air out of them as though they were ringing the wash.  I rose to my feet and withdrew several steps.  I couldn’t help myself.  My mind shrieked a million impossibilities.  It doubled back on itself and filled my thoughts with every excuse it could conjure.  It wanted more than anything to discredit the glimmering object lying in the old man’s rough hand, but in the end it couldn’t.  I closed my eyes and took another deep breath.  All I wanted to do was make that flower bloom like I used to.  I opened my eyes and leveled them on the shattered infinity loop lock the old man held.  The last time I had seen it was when I snapped it into place, when I closed it into the elongated figure eight that it no longer resembled.  An entire side of it was missing, leaving nothing but a deformed s-shape.  “How?”

            “Humans.”

            There was no shock to accompany his statement only the deep exacerbation that comes with the understanding of, “Of course.  Who else.”  I let out a long sigh that I’m positive illustrated the very exacerbation I was feeling and sat back down.  For nearly eight thousand years the lock had held, and I’d never feared the arrival of this day.  It might have been a bit short sighted but I was arrogant enough to believe myself infallible.  Don’t look at me like that.  We’re all that arrogant when we’re young, and yeah I know ten thousand isn’t exactly young, but when you don’t really have an expiration date you’re always young.  The world looks different, nothing more than that, and nothing less.  “How bad is it?”

            The old man held up his hand and snapped his fingers.  A spark of flame erupted from the snap, whirled around, and then evaporated into the air.

            In the face of all that was going horribly wrong I felt a little giggle at the center of my being.  Instinctively I held up my own hand and snapped my fingers, but nothing outside of the normal friction occurred.  My little giggle faded away.  It had been a couple of millennia since my magic had faded, but I’d never forgotten how good it felt to wield the primal forces.  I knew the day I sealed the Infinitum Vorago that magic would slowly fade away and depart the world, because I’d sealed the primal forces away.  For several thousand years the remnants of their being fueled my powers but what was inevitable was simply that, inevitable.  As I came out of my own self venture, refocused on the old man’s fingers, and recalled the spark of flame that erupted from them I realized he had answered me.  The primal forces, and everything else I’d sacrificed everything for was free to roam the world of human beings.  The Infinitum Vorago had failed entirely.  “What would you have me do?  I don’t have my powers anymore.”

            “You need only remember how to use them,” The old man said as he stood and popped his back. “As for what I’d have you do…”  He smiled at me and I hated the way his crooked yet pearly white teeth gleamed in the afternoon sun.  “You’ll do it now either way, with or without your powers.”  He laughed and walked away from me.

            There were few things I hated in the world more than having someone tell me what I would or wouldn’t do as though they could read me like a book.  I happened to believe I was a bit mysterious, and in hindsight I certainly am to any old human being, but to an eternal?  “You sound so sure of yourself old man.”

            “No, not sure of myself, just sure of you.”  He leaned on his gnarled limb staff and winked at me.  “It’s in your nature.”

            There it was, someone presuming to know me better than I knew myself.  Anger wanted to erupt again.  It wanted to seep through my veins and set my blood on fire.  Goodness knows at that point I was ready to blow anyway.  There was a perfect storm of emotions brewing in the pit of my stomach.  I put it away, pressed it deep down into my soul and stored it for later.  If I did manage to access my powers again there were few things that served as better fuel than raw emotions.  I met the old man’s gaze and returned his smile.  “Why don’t you do something about it then?  You seem to already have all of your magicy explody powers in tow.”

            He laughed and shook his head at the same time, and then said, “Your mess, you clean it up.”  As he spat out the last word his entire form spun in all different directions at once.  The wind whirled around him and static crackled through the air, and then there was a pop and he was gone.

            The urge to mumble and grumble like a spoiled brat coursed through my veins, but I pulled all of that angst away and shoved it down into my growing reserve cash.  When I said there were few things I hated more than having someone presume to know me better than I knew myself, it just so happened that self-righteous angsty heroes was one of them.  I cleared my throat, knocked as much dirt off my clothes as I could, lifted my chin, and then I strutted into my little ramshackle house.

            It wasn’t much but it was home.  There were only three rooms and they all pretty much looked the same.  I’d built it out of the sturdiest trees I could find from the woods below back when I still had some wind in my sails.  I made sure to only take the trees that were old and ready to die, because obviously I had a soft spot for foliage, and it would have been a crime to snuff out the light of a young up and commer.  As I laid out the logs I spelled them so that they would withstand the end of the world if need be and even though magic had faded long ago the walls still hummed and gleamed with the raw energy I’d pushed into them.  The furnishings were sparse as I didn’t really need much and I never had guests, until today that is.  There were a couple of tables, a chair, and a bed, but the best room belonged to Ezzy.  Ezzy is my horse and by far the best company a man like me could ask for, but she was rather harsh and blunter than an ogre’s club.  Yes, I keep my horse in my house, because I didn’t see any point in building a stable when I already had a perfectly good house.  I’d spent the first few thousand years alone, but then one day she was just there, outside in my garden eating all of my hard work.  When I went outside to yell at her she let me know in no short words that I was a, “Greedy food hogging stupid face.”  It was friendship at first nay I tell ya.  As I shut the door and leaned back against it I was greeted by a very similar nay, only way more sarcastic.

            I groaned and shook my head.  She always thinks she knows best, “No, I don’t think I was rude in the least!”

            “Naaaaay.  Snort, snort, nay,” she stomped her large heavy hoof on the hard pact soil that made up the floor of her room and shook her jet black mane.  She was an odd looking horse.  White hooves, shimmery grey coat, jet black mane, and green eyes.  Don’t ask me how that’s possible, but her eyes were as green as polished emeralds.

            Normally her playful jesting lightened my mood but I had more than a lot on my mind and all it seemed to do was agitate me.  I stalked over to face her and planted my hands on my hips while I stared her down.  She wasn’t impressed.  “No, I didn’t manage to make the flower bloom today either.”

            “Snort, whiney,” she stomped her hoof twice and shook her head.

            My body tensed and a slow throb started to settle in between my temples.  I rubbed my brow absently and sighed.  “Yeah?  Well I’ve not seen you grow anything since you’ve been here.”  I stalked over to the ornate chest in the corner of my living room as Ezzy continued to ridicule me.  It was the only thing in my house that looked out of place, and for good reason.  It was the only thing I’d carried with me from the home I’d abandoned in the high land all those many years ago.  It was constructed of steel and inlaid with gold and silver, three metals the world had lost their knowledge of in the long millennia since the dark days.  The days I ended.  I flipped the latch and popped the lid.  I hated proving someone else right about me.

            “It’s in your nature,” the Old Man’s voice bounded about inside my thoughts.

            The throb settled at the center of my skull and started hammering on my brain with a thousand tiny hammers.  I wobbled and almost fell over as I hunkered down to rummage through my history.  Every object I ran my hands over filled me with a cold ache and my breath faded to shallow gasps.  I hadn’t opened the chest since I packed it, because I had intended to leave that life, and that world behind me, but as I sat there and started pulling things out I understood why I’d brought it all with me.  Deep down, I always knew that someday, I’d need it again.  I drew out the tarnished chain mail and the worn white tunic and draped them over me.  My head slide through the opening and the light mail settled over my torso.  It felt like home.  Next came an old rusted gauntlet that I slapped around my wrist and the magic it had been spelled with eons before even I had been born sealed it shut around my left forearm, the Shield of Souls, don’t ask me how it got its name, because I don’t know.  I just know it can save my tail.  The last piece I pulled free of the chest I did so with great reservation.  It was a tarnished rapier hilt, the blade broken off much like the Shield of Souls, long before I’d even been born, but it didn’t need a blade, all it needed was the will to use it.  I strapped it to the belt that was attached to the tunic and instantly felt the weight of it.  I’ve taken lives before, goodness knows that is one of the many reasons I found myself in the state I was, but it wasn’t me.  The Rapier, name unknown, was a weapon, a weapon I knew how to use, but I prayed (perhaps to the Old Man) that I’d never have the will to use it.  That kind of will terrified me, but to seal all the dark things that had escaped from the Infinitum Vorago, I’d have been a fool to not take it with me.

            Ezzy nayed and stomped the floor as I stood.  Her words brought knowledge I hadn’t paid any attention to.

            The weight of destiny settled on my shoulders, but instead of slouching I stood taller and squared my shoulders.  It was the heaviest thing I’ve ever felt.  I’d made a choice I didn’t even know I was making, my body had taken over, perhaps even my own nature when I went to the chest and donned the raiment of the past.  “Ezzy, I guess we’re going on an adventure.”

Which is Better

            I heard him come through the doors behind me.  They were simple in design; shaped from some old turn of the century oak tree, their age revealed when the old creaky hinges echoed through the room.  The church interior had been remodeled, but the doorways had escaped the carpenter’s hammer because of the rather unfortunate fate the resident preacher had met.  So the hinges were aged and rusty, overdue for an oil job. 

            A wind gust whistled by him, wrapped around me, and tugged my hair.  It might have been cold or it might not have been, I can’t tell anymore.  The storm brewed, but it would grow into a torrential downpour and blot out the moon and stars which watched over us that night.  The trees swayed and dark clouds overtook the sky.  The rain would fall and batter the ground, and the storm would come.

            He lingered for a long moment and let his eyes adjust.  All too often I forget how difficult the shapeless darkness once was, but I still wouldn’t have turned the light on for him had I remembered.  His stasis wasn’t the shadows’ fault.  I'm sure his sorrowful eyes had adjusted long before he took his first timid step.  It has been said in lunatics’ whispers and long forgotten authors’ prose that my kind give off a particular vibe; an icy chill around the edges where your blood doesn't reach all too often: at your fingertips when they turn blue and your heart jumps in your chest, or your earlobes when they turn so red you can’t touch them and the tip of your nose where Jack Frost nips on unbearable winter mornings.  I've even heard the air around us described as heavy and rancid.  It makes the taste in your mouth dry and stale, and your nostrils burn with a repugnant scent, but you are unable to describe it.  All the hairs stand up on your body and observe for themselves what traps your stomach in a vise and twists.  Your breath staggers but you can’t catch it, because it’s lost.  I'm sure he felt it every time he saw me, even in the warm sunlight.  Death.

            However, he was always a brave man no matter the events set before him or left behind him, so he took the fated step.  It was a timid and rigid step, but determined. 

OR...

 

 

            The rusty hinges cried as he parted the heavy oak doors and entered the church.  I winced, but I didn't move and I gave no acknowledgement of his presence. 

            An insistent wind funneled through the open doors and filled the small interior.  The air had no effect on me.  Neither goose bumps rose from my dead flesh, nor did sweat grace my brow.  Thunder rumbled through the night sky.  Half a second passed, and then the stark blue lightening washed the room in a ghostly pale blue.  I yearned for the days when a storm could unsettle my being and set my nerves on edge.   I looked up as if I could see through the ceiling and gaze upon the violent storm that blotted out the moon and stars, "The storm is coming."

            He lingered in the door way, heart racing.  The sweet thumping in his chest was music to my ears, and an urge seized me as it so often did in the presence of humans.  I licked my upper lip and sighed.  

            The new floorboards groaned as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.  I stifled a laugh.  All too often I forgot how much difficulty the shapeless darkness posed to mortals, but I still wouldn't have turned the lights on for him in any case.

            He remained still.  However, his stasis came as no shock to me.  I sat in the front pew, eyes forward, and matched his stillness.  It has been said in lunatics' whispers and long forgotten authors' prose that my kind ooze a particular vibe; an icy chill around the edges where your blood doesn't reach as often: your fingertips and toes, your nose and your earlobes when Jack Frost nips on those unbearable winter mornings.  A heavy and rancid air that dulls your taste and burns your nostrils with its repugnant scent, settles around us.  All the hairs on your body stand on end and observe for themselves what traps your stomach in a vise and twists.  I knew he felt it, the constant companion of a vampire.  Death.

            The heavy thud of a determined footstep echoed through the humble church.  My heart sank at the sound of the fated step and a pained smile crept onto my sullen face.  He always was a brave man, no matter the events set before him, or left behind him.

 

 

Fourteen Years Ago…

    During the summer of his ninth year Cyrus Gabriel Christian had awoken every night at precisely three AM sweating profusely and screaming his throat raw.  His brother had panicked the first few times and rushed to his aid, but after a week of doing so, he lost interest and patience.  Cyrus sat in the dark room, alone.  He clenched his sheets to his chest and struggled to capture his runaway breath.  The dream haunted him.
    During the course of his short life he’d had many dreams, but none so vibrant, or any so viciously painful.  He recalled hearing once that if you experienced pain in a dream you would wake up and realize everything was fine.  The dream, which consistently wrecked his peaceful nights rest, had apparently never been informed of those facts.  He looked to his brother out of pure childish instinct and sighed through a quivering lip.  Luke eyed him, shook his head, rolled over with a grumble, and buried his face in his pillow.  Sorry, Cyrus thought.  I can’t help it.
    He laid back and stared at the ceiling.  The pale light his father had hung on a nearby tree to serve as a make shift street light sifted through the drawn curtains.  A cross stitch pattern and tree shadows danced along the walls.  He thought their dance looked sad.  When he swallowed, the spit hung in the center of his throat and he had to force it down.  He gnawed his bottom lip and avoided closing his eyes.  Even blinking took an act of shaky courage.  The rest of the night would be an exercise in futility.  He’d lay there and watch the shadows dance their somber dance and try to figure out where his vile nightmare came from.  Why me, he wondered.  What did I do to deserve this?
    In his dream he stood on a high mountain peak that rose higher than he thought possible.  He could see no bottom to the lands that surely surrounded the mountain, only an endless sky decorated with softly adrift clouds.  Snow flurries skittered through the sky and a strong wind howled around him.  He was himself, but he felt different, somehow older.  There were no mirrors or reflective surfaces for him to verify that tidbit, but he believed it was so.  The frigid air stung the tip of his nose and when he rubbed it with the back of his hand it reminded him of a cat’s nose.  The dream always began harmless enough, just a playful dream of being a mountain climber.
    Once he got his bearings he’d start forward.  He had no idea where he was going, but the way his heart raced alongside his overactive mind, he knew it was someplace important.  The dream quickly turned into an act of desperation.  When he awoke from the nightmarish finale his body was always sore and tense, even for a nine year old he clearly understood the tension of his dream tightened his muscles as he slept soundly in his safe bed, but those weren’t the only aches and pains left over. 
    Shortly after he resumed his ascent along the ever jutting face of the jagged mountainside, he arrived at a gap that was impassable.  For a long time he hung on the cliff face held by nothing more than his bare, numb, frost bitten fingertips.  When he turned his head into the wide open sky he saw nothing but sky and clouds, clouds that floated around the mountain twenty or thirty feet below him.  The knowledge that he had no support line to catch him should he fall dangled ever present in his mind.  He shuffled his feet and felt the slick icy rock beneath them give and crumble, for a brief instant his heart stopped.  His feet fell into the open sky.  One minute they had treacherous but solid rock beneath and the next, nothing but piercing shrill air.  He listened to the dislodged ice and rock clatter down.  The sounds went on forever growing fainter and fainter with each passing second, until he realized the sound he heard was his own skipping heartbeat.  He had been quick to resign himself to a long fall and a quick death, but his fingers, so numb he’d forgotten he had them, held the rock wall tight.  He kicked his feet around feverishly until he found a solid place to put them, or as solid a place as was available on a sheer mountain peak.  Once he felt safer he pressed himself into the hard rough surface almost as if he was hugging it, and in a way he was.
    The next thing he knew, he was standing on the mountain peak.  He didn’t question how he made it, because it was a dream, and dreams usually behaved as such.  What he did question was why he couldn’t move.  The mountain peak was a hard frozen snowcap with little more than a few feet in either direction to walk, but he couldn’t will his limbs to move.  Gale force winds whipped his messy hair hard enough it felt as though someone was pulling it mercilessly.  Visibility was non existent, as snow whipped through the sky in frantic circles, he’d never seen a tornado, but he believed it looked very similar.  His chest rose and fell in quick succession, but only the thinnest offerings of air graced his lungs.  Every breath brought with it a sharp pain.  Once he had played with his father’s skill saw while he wasn’t looking and sliced open the pad of his thumb.  The pain that each breath brought with it felt oddly a kin to that.  If feeling pain could wake you from a dream he’d have awoken ten times over.
    The pain, however, was not the part of the dream that made it so terrible, at least not yet.  It was the paralysis.  His mind screamed for him to move but he couldn’t.  He’d never been much for tight spaces, and though the entire wide open sky surrounded him he felt the walls close in.  Not long ago he’d been the subject of some bullying at school and the way he felt brought his mind around to that moment.  A group of boys who claimed they were, “Just play’n around,” had thrown him to the grown and piled on top of him in the coat room.  They held him down and punched him.  In that moment of his dream, held in stasis atop the frozen mountain peak that experience summed it up the best.  He could feel their combined weight bearing down on his back, crunching him into a tiny ball, bending him farther than he was meant to be bent.  His stomach contracted and pressed his lungs together, hardly any air could get in and his faced burn red, begging for oxygen.  Like the force that kept him put atop the mountain those boys hadn’t cared what he was going through.  They continued to pile on.  They poked and prodded, laughed and hollered, but Cyrus only struggled to breathe and grasped helplessly with tiny feeble hands.  He couldn’t even get enough air to beg them to get off of him.  Luckily their teacher had walked in on them and broke it up, but for a long perilous moment, nine year old Cyrus Gabriel Christian was sure he was going to go to sleep for a long time, just like his late dog Boomer.
    Then his dream jumped ahead again, it always did.  He was still on the mountain peak, but he could move and that relieved him, but he wasn’t alone, and that unnerved him.  Before him stood a tall dark figure with large feathery wings and a black blade clasped in its hands.  Cyrus tried to back away, but he stopped when his retreating foot landed on nothing.  He stumbled and nearly fell backwards off the tip of a mountain he already knew was taller than any mountain ever could be.  The fall flashed before his eyes.  He saw himself burst through clouds that dissipated and puffed away as he gained speed.  A large bird, perhaps a hawk soared past him and he fell so fast that the image faded from his view before he could even think about it.  He threw himself forward to avoid that fall and landed on his hands and knees at the feet of the shadow.
    He gazed up at it and swallowed hard.  His heart didn’t race as it did on the cliff face, but instead it slowed to a hypnotic thrum.  Every thump echoed through his ears as if some was throwing stones into a deep cave.  The way it moved caused him to bat his eyes.  One second it was a solid black form and the next it wafted like smoke from an overstocked campfire.  He could see straight through it.  The wind caught it within the tornado and swirled it around the peak, but it’d fuse back into a solid form right where it had been at the start.  Once again he couldn’t move, but not because some force held him at bay, but simply because fear had won over him.  The dark figured terrified him, but it was the hollow feeling that signaled the coming of the horrific finale that stilled his heart, and prickled goose flesh across the nape of his neck.  He blinked and the dream jumped forward again.
    The dark figure was wounded.  He didn’t know how, or if he’d been the one to do it, but the dark figure staggered backwards and drop its sword.  The black blade impaled the snowy surface with ease, and the sound it made reminded Cyrus of cutting into a fresh watermelon.  He watched as the dark figure stumbled back, its right foot slammed into the air hoping for solid ground, and it tumbled backwards off the cliff.  As it fell it spoke, and the howling wind carried the words to his ears.  They swirled around and repeated with every gust that wrapped around him.  Their ominous tone and meaning pounded on his fragile soul like a heavy metal drummer laying down an endless succession of blast beats.  “You’re the last…”  Is what the voice had said, what the voice had said to him every night for an entire summer.  The last what?  He could hear the unfinished portion of the statement, and yearned to know the rest, but feared it.  Even in the dream he begged for the resolution of that statement, but the transformation always came and stole away his senses, and his wonder.  The transformation is what caused him to jolt up and scream.
    As dreams do, it jumped forward one last time.  Cyrus found himself falling through the sky, the same sky that surrounded the mountain he’d scaled.  The wind rushed past him and fluttered over his ears.  It sounded like an old car struggling to start but the ignition refused to turn over.  The wind burned his eyes.  He had bad allergies and was accustom to having red burning eyes during the spring, when the flowers bloomed, but the sensation of the wind’s fine edge slicing his eyes was easily one hundred times that feeling.  Once again, if pain can wake you from a dream, he’d have awoken a thousand times over.  His pulse had quickened to the point that his entire body was hot as burning embers and his throat had closed, so the wind’s dagger couldn’t shred it.  The same place he’d heard that pain would wake you from a dream had also said that if you’re falling in a dream, you’ll die if you don’t wake up.  In a small way he began to pray after a while that he would die, so he wouldn’t have to go through another day knowing that the dream waited for him at night.  But his dad had told him when Boomer died, that death was like going to sleep for a very long time, and he couldn’t bear sleeping for a very long time, because he already knew what he’d dream about, so he struggled to wake up.  He wanted to wake up before the talons came, and the burning red feathers, but he didn’t.
    He never could tell which came first, or if it all came at once, but he could tell how much it hurt.  His bones cracked and snapped.  He watched his arms bend in ways they weren’t meant to and felt every searing snap as it rushed up his nervous system and slammed into his brain.  He opened his mouth to scream, but his throat had closed up shop and not a sound came out, but that was okay, because there were plenty of other sounds.  The rustle of feathers, the loud pops as his bones broke and dislocated, so they could slither into a new position and reform with just as much agony as when they’d left their previous station.  His messy brown hair released itself from his scalp and float away in the strong up current as burning red and gold feathers took its place.  He felt his eyes narrow as if he were squinting but it was more like someone pushed the skin back from his face.  His entire body caught fire and his stomach rolled.  Acid seared the back of his throat and he wanted to belch, but his throat had closed up shop.  Most of all he wanted to get away, he wanted to wake up, but it wasn’t time to wake up yet, because he hadn’t seen it yet, but he would soon.
    The talon.  He watched his hand intently and tried to ignore all the strange feelings rushing through his beaten and battered body, which was as hard as going to sleep at night had become.  When he saw the talons the dream would be over.  He prayed they’d come quicker, and so they did.  His fingers spread apart the way they do when you draw a turkey in school for Thanksgiving, but that was where the idyllic holiday memory ended, and the horror began.  With every other event racking his body he could barely see it, his bones snapping, rearranging, the feathers appearing, and so on.  He was aware of the changes but he didn’t have to the see them occur, but the talons, he always saw them.  The skin peeled away as easily as peeling a banana, and revealed the red raw bloody flesh beneath.  Thin blue veins ran through the exposed tissue like a fine spider web.  Blood didn’t gush out.  It seeped through the fibers, welled up, and floated away in the violent up current.  His finger nails pulled back much the same way you pull a soda can tab back to open it, and ripped free.  The raw flesh beneath tore and ripped as long curled golden talons jutted out like a push pop.  Tears welled in his eyes as the excruciating pain rolled over him in a wave, but he couldn’t close his eyes, he had to watch.  Then the dream ended.

The Followers, A Drifter of Aria Tale.

    A winding road cut through a frozen land and a lone rider traveled in silence.  His faithful old horse was the shade of sand. The faded clothes on his back were timeless.  A slender rapier hung upon his hip, and dark circles hung beneath his still eyes.  He held the leather reigns loose in his grip, because the nag refused to move otherwise.  Snowflakes clung to the stubble on his face, and the frigid wind stirred his coal black hair as the slick rocky road crippled his pace.  However, the warm morning sun felt fair.  He left the long damning night behind him and fled into the day from his great sin.
    The previous night had left him dismayed by visions that disturbed his troubled sleep.  As the night drew long his fires heat did fade and the curse of sight rose from his misdeed.  Always the events revealed failed to match the hard memories dredged up by his pain., but the guilt of consequence was the catch.  His flight forced the hand of those who remain.  “Destiny,” he grumbled as he awoke.  A cold sweat had formed on his ageless brow.  His pale grey eyes were burnt dry by the smoke and drawn wide by the sight he won’t allow.  In the dark people cowered as rocks fell and a reflection freed demons from hell.
    As he rounded a steep bend in the road he caught a glimpse of a stranded wagon.  One wheel had gone stray and sunk in the snow and the single driver seemed uncertain.  She stomped from front to back several times, then placed her hands on her full hips, and sighed.  She kicked the big rock guilty of the crime and instantly grabbed her big toe and whined.  The Drifter smiled as he observed the girl.  Fox fur red locks cascaded down her back, and her fair skin was as white as a pearl.  She looked his way and was taken aback.
    Instead of running away she yelled, “Hey!”
    The stubborn old horse halted and said, “Nay.”
    “Yes I know this will get us in trouble,” The Drifter whispered as he spurred the horse.  She shook her head and whined a faint grumble, but she moved forward resigned to her chore.
    “Thank those on high for a strangers kindness,” she said with a huge smile as he drew close.
    “It seems to me that you have a crisis,” he dismounted.  “Why travel in the snows?”
    “My father normally takes the shipment, but he’s been stricken by the frozen touch.”
    “I thought it odd to find one so dear cut, stranded on a road as barren as such.”
    “Dear cut?” She squinted at him. “Are you lost?”
    “Are we not all lost when the world cares naught?”
    “Some are more lost than others I‘d reckon,” she regarded him with a wary gaze, but he detected no apprehension. “Do tell what brings you to this horrid place.”
    “Just passing through,” he said without a care.  “Where would you take a shipment around here?”
    His horse huffed and the warm breath stirred his hair.  “Of course I know that!  Does she look unreal?” 
    He spoke to the nag through a heavy sigh.
    “Does your horse talk?” Her light green eyes narrowed.
    “Of course she does, does yours never reply?” he spoke with such fervor his voice echoed.
    “Well no, she‘s never said a word before,” she said as the mare released a sad snort.
    “Mildred claims you just don’t listen to her,” the Drifter frowned as he approached the mare.

The Thrumming of the Drums

Behold the enslaved soul of a man lost
To a furious desperate desire.
Clutching his frozen life at any cost
To rekindle a soul of love and fire.

Nay does the light fall upon his kind face
As his darkness swells to endless reaches.
His timorous soul cries out for loves grace
but the lips he wields are rendered speechless.

So does he misreckonize the visage
reflected back upon his bereft soul.
Eyes of ebon stone glare from the image
deformed by life's long indifferent toll

Upon that face he saw a hearts malaise
Creeping forward then, ever insistent.
He cowered from the reflections dead gaze
and prayed "Dear God end this voids existence."

Alone he sat within darkness and doubt
"Who am I!" To the heavens he did shout.
Who am I?  What am I?  Why am I here?
Who am I?  What am I?  Why am I here?

Now listen to the thrumming of the drums.
Thrum Thrum, Thrum Thrum, Thrum Thrum, Thrum Thrum, Thrum Thrum.

The world of 'The Dark Throne'

Prologue to Next Book

I know I don't post often and for that I am sorry, but I swear I rarely have much to say.  Either way, here is the prologue for my next book.  Enjoy.

PROLOGUE

    In the early days of the world’s youth ‘Those who sat on High’ still cared about it.  They stood their vigil and watched the infant humanity crawl out of the muck and build lives.  Man (and woman for that matter) had a rough go of things at first.  The lands they had inherited were littered with pit falls and older beings than them with empty stomachs.
 The High Ones, (as man called them, because their true name was either lost or never known,) observed mankind’s will and perseverance.  Many died in their youth of a broken leg far from their friends, ore were devoured by the great old beasts when the light fell behind the horizon and the veil of night fell upon the world.  In the end it was always loneliness that did the real killing.
    The Great One, the first of the High Ones took pity on the babies before them and delivered them fire on the tip of a lightening bolt.  The first people shied away from the brilliant flame at first and that angered the High Ones.  “How dare they scoff at our generous gift,” their voices boomed through the heavens and the first people were no more.
    For a time the High Ones enjoyed their reign of solitude, but once again (not long after the fate of the first people) they witnessed the rebirth of the human race crawling out of the same muck.  The High Ones forsook them and turned their heads, but their curiosity drew their eyes back.  You see, when you are powerful enough to wipe out an entire people within the bat of an eye, and infinite, you’ll take your entertainment where you can get it.
    They watched but nothing more, because they swore an oath that the second people would stand or fall on their own.  And so it came to pass that the second people stood.  Their early years mirrored those of the first people, but it was as if they had been there before and knew all of the pitfalls.  For instance, they traveled in packs so none could fall alone, and their tight groups proved too powerful for the great old beasts.  Slowly, the prey became the predator.  This amused and terrified the High Ones, but they stayed their hands.  A mistake they would live to regret.
    They watched as the second people spread and thrived.  Villages arose along the edges of great rivers as if the second people instinctively knew the life sustaining advantages of water.  The High Ones themselves required it to maintain their strength, which was why they built their High Lands around the great endless pool that let rain fall to the Below Lands when its tide came in.  Mankind’s pension for doing things as they had done them amused them, and they developed hope for the fledgling species.  They never realized how dangerous such similarities were to them until it was too late.
    The second people discovered fire on their own and harnessed its wild forces.  When the High Ones looked down upon them that night they saw the great old beasts held at bay by torches and their own fear blossomed in their ancient hearts.  Fire was a primal element and they believed only they could hold sway over it.  They opened their mouths to level the second people, but the very world rose up to stop them.  Existence’s allegiance had divided among them and the Low Ones.  Their fear spread through them as if it were suffocating Ivy clinging and climbing the walls of a crumbling ruin.
    Time passed quickly then.  The Low Ones learned to make tools, work the land, and build stronger shelter.  The world seemed to favor them and the High ones were forgotten.  They sat in their majestic lands and grew old as they witnessed Mankind thrive.  Their world grew dark and dull and they could all feel the winds of fate seeping into their bones to blow them away as if they were dry desert sand.
    Then a miracle occurred, or at least it was disguised as such.  The Low Ones learned the way of war.  Elements they’d tamed for their survival were turned into weapons.  Stone and iron were fashioned into swords, axes, and shields.  They very earth they stood upon turned manifest into tools of death.  They realized how destructive the fire that gave them sanctuary against the dark could be when unleashed, and left uncontrolled.
    The world’s favor for the young race waned.
    As war spread across the lands and scared the soul of existence the High Ones felt vitality flow into their bodies.  The world needed them to save it, but they were spiteful.  They took the energy and turned their backs.  Spite toward the world won out against vengeance toward the Low Ones.  The world groaned and in that terrible echo sound as shrill as nails on a chalkboard the High Ones heard the curse hurled at them.  Their eyes bled, but they held to their conviction.  The Low Ones would destroy themselves, and the world will heal, but more importantly it would learn a dear lesson.  Oh how wrong they were.
    A thousand years passed, but the war of the Low Ones never ceased.  They High Ones knew not what caused the war, but they understood the cause no longer mattered.  Humanities thirst for blood had removed all need for cause, but the High Ones wouldn’t spend long considering this, because a war came to them.  For the first time in time immeasurable a new High One was born, but it didn’t share the light they had been born from.  It thrived on darkness.
    Over the course of their own great war they discovered the Dark One’s origin.  After a thousand years of war, hate, anger, and destruction the Low Ones negative energy had coalesced and from that womb of blackness the Dark One was born.  At first they barely acknowledged the Dark One, because they believed one could not stand against millions, but they had decreed their own fall with spite.  The moment they turned their back on the world the darkness wiggled into their souls, and so it came to pass that the Dark One swayed many to his cause.
    The war of the Low Ones lasted a thousand years.  The war of the High Ones took no longer than a week.  In the end no more than a dozen were left, and though they had managed to seal the Dark One, their own power was fading.  One by one they fell until on the Great One stood peering into the Dark Throne at the twisted soul of the Dark One.  The seat of all darkness appeared dull and lifeless, but it throbbed with a consciousness that sent shivers into the Great One.  The tall stone back curved into the carved faces of helpless souls screaming in agony and violent mouths hung open in blood thirsty battle cries.  The seats were cushiony blue velvet but though the throne was new the seats were worn, faded and tattered.  Cobwebs draped from arm to arm, and between the cracks left from the carving.  The Great One could barely keep its eyes on the monstrosity.
    The Great One had been the first and believed it proper it should be the last.  It had been the one that gave the first people fire, and the one who lamented their eradication.  It tore its eyes from the hideous Dark Throne and wondered why the prison had taken that form, but it had greater worries to address.  On the edge of the High lands it looked into the blood thirsty eyes of the Low Ones and cried.
    The one that had given the gift of fire decided to give the gift of serenity even though it broke the oath its people had made, it did not care anymore.  It held its hands out, closed its ethereal blue eyes and summoned the last of its strength.  Through its frail and war battered body it drew the darkness and evil of the Low Ones and hurled it into the Dark Throne, and then it laid dying.
    In the Low lands the war ceased and the Low Ones lost their direction.  They looked at each other with slacked jaws and hazy eyes.  Their voices rose in disoriented mumbles, and they had no understanding of what they were, what they were doing, or where they were.
    In the High Lands the seat of the High Ones crumbled.  Their endless white marble home blew away as nothing more than dust in the wind.  The Great One cried tears of luminescent light and as those tears fell upon its skin the light spread.  A brilliant blinding flash filled the heavens and when it cleared the Light Throne faced the Dark Throne for the first and only time, for the briefest of moments before the last of the High lands crumbled and they both fell to the Low lands.
    In the weeks that followed the Low Ones meandered about, mindless.  The world refused to heal and a horrific tremble became a constant threat that robbed the mindless Low Ones of their balance and their remaining sanity.  They weren’t so much mindless as they were lost, but in that time the difference in the two was so small it hardly mattered.
    The Dark Throne sat nestled in a dark icy wasteland and it flowed with a bluish black fury.
    The Light Throne sat nestled in light and warm sand shimmering with a desperate golden need.
    Their combined force was tearing the world asunder.
The world sent out a weary cry and drew the Low Ones toward them.  It made sure to draw good people to the Dark Throne, and bad people to the Light Throne.  It understood a balance needed to be established and one could neither do too much good, nor too much evil, and hope to maintain balance.  And so it was that the first Lord of Light and the first Lord of Darkness were born into a broken world and the Low Ones regained their direction, and became the Only Ones.  So it has been ever since.  A constant balance was required, an endless equation, always balancing out.