20220611-Sidequest-Aconitum
http://www.ruggenberg.nl/titels.html
Stripped Ashes, The Rough Luck, Nobody of Son, The Scent's Time, The Snow of the Shards, Gift in the Hunter
(1, 4)
1 Stripped Ashes
By the time you read this I’ll have already healed from a terrible battle.
The grass was tall from the late springtime and dry the day before it would rain, in the setting sun, gray and brushing the air like paper chimes a hundred miles with tides of breeze with distant clouds darkly edged and radiant glow, the static of time reached thru the air from a forgotten star striking away the last moisture from the prairie, before the rains came the thunder, before the clouds came the fire struck by lightning.
Past noticing the blaze a hundred running steps, thinking of horses and hearts and telling them both to keep quick, the sweat puts shame to rains fading into fog lowered and boiling in tumbling swirls of smoke in lines that move if as snakes were flying, and witout turning I am bit between the shoulders, turning to see an archer turning to shoot again, struck in the heart by a great hunter, shooting two arrows as one next, glancing my face and pinning my hand beside my head to a tree of birch or beech, it would not matter which stood with me as both were burned in the wildfire.
My open wounds covered with ashes, my blood mixing with it to become simple soap as if to wash away my sins, I lie with the lye, the small lizard people called Kobolds come to gather charred wood and ashes for their needs and find a broken body, pouring more water, packing more ashes, starting small campfires around the body they’ve found, chanting superstitious syllables of forgotten meaning and renewed intentions to summon life from the scars of near oblivion. Something has come in shadow form with one hundred arms for its outline, perhaps a centipede, rattling with bones and reeds, perhaps a snake, forcing venom and opiate into the wounds, sealing them into darkness.
2 The Rough Luck
In the caves of the kobolds opening eyes find only the nether dwelling creatures almost in grasp without reach of my arm, an unsettling taste and texture better of the two, the feel of scars becomes a pride of willpower adjusting to the dark light until sight returns where interesting black lines become my many jagged scars a molting skin halted and sealed, healed and seared shut, in pain my bones mend starving and crawling like a shedding snake with many grasps at the scurrying food until the days pass until sitting up, days again until trying to stand for plates of varmint delicacies sometimes even cooked, days again and when I wake there is a kobold shaman, with many sharp bones tied to himself, shaking a rattling stick.
It shouts pain into my mind, a hangover would be jealous as am I, perhaps struck at least with hunger I sink asleep. It shouts me awake, chatty and hissing, clicks and lisping without any chance of understanding, so I beg for water and food, which only causes it to attack me, hit in the head I fall asleep, awake the next time readily striking the shaman he turns to dust and glitter and smoke drifting down, a great and pure laughter behind me it turns and leaves, as I follow.
A beautiful hall lined with wood smooth as tables covered with engravings no less than masterful art, stopping to admire and then sit only being pushed, quite rudely, without scratching the floor and dirtying the chairs, where I would not want to sit without cushions despite being a throne room. Then, into a cavern of scaffolding and weapons like crafty rats the collection of catapults and bows with flat carts and barrels stops me to wonder what side of the surface was this world, nevertheless. The upward tunnel breathes fresh air into my soured starving lungs, but they stop in front of me, forced to show my swordsmanship slowed by deep scarring, spellcraft slowed by deep headache and only presto gunpowder, but by the words of the summoning spell they made, if not let me, fireside broth and soup of unfortunate meat and common root, bringing me a book, not of spells, but of described pictures, a day for the letters, a day for the words, a day for sentences too difficult to remember, giving means for safe passage in their tunnels, subtle symbols for spotting their territory.
3 Nobody of Son
Great luminous sky high noon bringing gold to the blue heavens, my travels take me to a tavern while my journey continues for two days before seeing a town of average people and worthy size, at the public house the entry unnoticed by the many not the publican, I drink as if it were food to pour it into my stomach after days without delights and wait for it to wash the taste from my mind. A hunter buys a cider, but doesn’t drink it, I am perturbed and shout at him and by sentence end honorably drinks to my hurrah and crowd huzzah.
I tell a joke and the man doesn’t drink and letting such go I ask for work in the way of filth and unsightly things, the man shuns and retains indignance and letting such things go I do magic of small forms with coin and card and crafty lies and the man walks himself and a knife to my back and doesn’t breath and not letting such things go I grab him by the neck and take his knife and make my demands to know what it is that he knows about me I never did.
Tell me what the wicked knows and do not bet against it.
You’re supposed to be dead, in the fires that feasted on you, by the arrows I put thru you, you were never alive at that point.
Many points you put in me…did you start the fire?
I look around at the new audience, they do not move but to look at the man.
No, no never, your enemy called you evil, having cheated death you could let me live and disprove the rumor.
Who is my enemy? Who sent you?
The man raises his arm and I raise his weapon, only pausing him pointing to the outside, honesty without question everyone is only moments from the exit, my grip undone to see which way the man departs, stepping in reverse and turning to run out the back, leaving me to grab a bottle and walk into the street.
4 The Scent’s Time
A white sky over faaded rooftops I can hear a bird fly, from the foe in the lane, a werewolf warlock in skeleton armor and sharp gauntlets over his hands with long claws at each finger.
Your body wasn’t in the ashes, it should’ve been so.
Pity that. Who are you?
Never send a man to do a monster’s work, wouldn’t you agree?
Tell it to someone who cares.
The werewolf warlock reaches into a bag of grain and tosses them onto the ground and laughs like a child at play.
Your end will mean a new beginning, for your crimes against the syndicate of the page-turner. With your death I will be made man again.
How does that work, fleabag, praytell.
I will trade your bones in exchange for my freedom.
Meaning I can’t kill you and find out who sent you.
It seems to me, you don’t want to talk about it.
(loading sequence)
I charge at the werelocke, he shouts “Kresik” and the grains in the street flash and grow to burning wheat like vines and fire trying to consume me, wrested and wrought jumping back I see the mangey fucker on a rooftop, without cape three meters high launching the sharp end of a gatepost thru my chest half a second too slow, just as I turn I hear it flying thru the air, off guard imbaanced and falling into another unholy vines of fire trap and now I must disgard my cape.
I reach for the blade of the sharplight, where there isn’t one after the fire, lost or found, leaping into fire, heavy is the werelocke landing on the ground and onto the same spear thrown at me, howling terrible into the sky bellicose roaring shakes thought to darkness before throwing the spear aside and me with it, into the wagon of wheat, as it heals with magic one clawed paw cover its wound, the other claw reaching at me the entire payload of seeds grown to black fire spines and whips as could seem the ropes of hell and there unable to escape I punch out of the overturned wagon.
There is a moment, seconds before the werelocke will look, to scan the area and find what prey remains for what is still a three meter werewolf whose powers have gone from its eyes, only song of wolf and eyes of hate with my sent, facing the enemy with choice to run or jump, we’re left inside a ring of fire as it begins to rain.
5 The Snow of the Shards
The ashes begin falling and as I breathe smoke my scars begin to revive me, cherishable energy each breath my scars begin to glow as I summon rain whose water revives the werelocke, he blows across water in his hand and deep cold blinds me until only the fire in my veins warms me, but reveals me in the clamoring mist, it becomes difficult to see how the rains become snow around the beast, mud freezing around my feet as I am torn with every claw on his hand and lifted off the ground, while he punches a wall with me pierced and flain I use my magic to burn my veins and scars bright nerves burning until released, showing his hand coated in snowy shards of strange mineral, both mirror and fire now reaching my throat, hitting his spear wound does nothing and escape begets panic until there is ten paces between us.
I was expecting this to be easier.
Tired, slow, pathetic lumbering clown.
Hard, careful, immutable, sounds like me. Give up?
The piece of his snow shard glove is like perhaps like the inside of sharplight, if not the same, I remember the future of my salvation reaching out my hand holding it, like a nightmare the reflection in his eye is slower than my strike against it, animal instincts are vicious and effective quickly throwing me before setting another trap of immutable vines from the ground, I lead the dance and simply move just before the beast can leap onto the spear and his own trap.
You have your wish, old friend.
As long as we have.
No one is going to help a lost wizard.
You are lost as all are, stay down.
If they find you, this is my curse, we are no more than old trails of your blood.
6 Gift in the Hunter
The rain stops and becomes ashes for eleven seconds then it stops.
The bones of the werewolve begin to shrink and break like cork trees in the desert, returning to form the fallen and lost creature whose mane and mask dry and break away from sullied and dirtied skin, revealing the face of his oldest if not one of my best friends, I’d seen him not but a year ago when the summer became the silent winter, fit for an autopsy laying in shadows of the afternoon as the sun and onlooking survivors return. The curse of his size leaving him in the rags of a drunken animal at a festival the publican drapes the cape over him, putting a hand on my back, giving pause my curiosity at the crystals as a clue, a terrible fate to make someone suffer, a great lesson it comes with great surprise like a storm of lies or petals, as looking at me there is an eye in the glass frozen and unnatural with an extra ring around curious fire, quickly taking the rest of the silver glass with the pieces sharp and sinewed stuck to the spear with drying blood intent on solving this puzzle, and hoping the reflection isn’t mine.
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