PROLOGUE: I was staring into a green field from a high place and down in the field is just tons of grass. I saw a girl and first thing that cuaght my eye was her gown. It was really familiar but also couldnt think of why it was so familiar. It was red silk with like a shimmering coat of diamonds over it. Her hair was braided down her back and whens he turned around her face was also the same sort of familiar but strange. Smoke was coming from the other side of the valley like dust from a heard of horses or something. She didn't turn to look at it even as the rumble of the herd started to sound like constant thunder. I watched as the horsemen came into view over the crest of the hill across the river and there were probably 40 or 50 of them. Or maybe 20ish but i cant really remember how many i just know it was a big group. They stopped near her and started speaking to her but the sound was lost on the wind to where i could barely understand any of it, only sounding like grunts and sighs. She nodded never looking away from me and got drug up onto a horse and htey rode away. The grass blew really hard and the time seemed to speed up so that the light shifted and darkness creeped over one horizon while the sun escaped across the other.
Chapter 1:
I was laying on my back and there was a lot of cold sensation. You were staring down at me wearing furs and a huge sword grip stuck out over your shoulder. i tried to raise my head and you put your hand on my shoulder shaking your own head and pulled my arm up to show a snakebite mark. you reached behind you and pulled up a dagger that had been sitting in a fire for a long time i guess, because it was red hot and glowing and you put one hand over my face to block me from making noise while you pressed the hot blade into the hole of the snakebite, one at a time shaking your head slowly as i squirmed
after it was over i tried to scream at you when you removed your hand but i couldnt make any noise. you shrugged me up over your shoulder and carried me to the fire setting me on a pile of frozen hay. the field we are in is like a valley, between two gentle but steep hills with a river running through the middle, but everything was frosted and the river was frozen over at the surface. i glared at you wondering why i couldnt make any noises and you started to look around leaving me by the fire even though i was unable to really feel its warmth.
Over time something uneasy in my tummy yet familiar started to bother me and when you came back and started kicking snow on the fire i realized it wasnt just me. You tapped your ear looking at me and i shook my head, trying to show you i didnt able to speak. You narrowed your eyes and shrugged saying "folowing" but i couldnt hear you only barely tell what you were saying because you spoke slowly with your lips. The uneasy feeling slowly got stronger and stronger as you drudged through the stiff frozen grass, up the hill away from the river, shoving me between my shoulderblades to keep me ahead of you.
when we got to the top of the hill, it flattened out to a plateu...(sp?) and went on for as far as the eyes can see curving gently over the horizon. you kept prodding me as the uneasiness kept growing, until i was throwing up and stumbling and you picked me up and slung me to your back with a sword sheathe as a seat and i looked over your shoulder with my chin on it while we kept going. slowly i began to notice this weird feeling was not just nausea as the sounds of the world began to return to me and there was this strange constant rumble. i looked at my hand as i held onto your wrist and tried to speak into your ear again, but i still couldnt make any sound. My hand was covered in markings like tattoos, and scars from burning. It continued down my arm up into my clothes the burns a lot less frequent but the tattoos getting thicker in design.
There is a growing cloud of dust across the valley on the other side of the plateu and the noise confirms that its some kinda horses. The sun is right above us and we are moving really slow because you are being careful not to make the trail to obvious even though we cant leave no trail in the frozen grass because it breaks sometimes when you just touch it to push it aside. After a while though, you put two fingers in the edge of your mouth and let out a loud whistle that sounds like it would be lost on the wind if there was any wind blowing. a nother one comes from somewhere in the grass and then a few moments later a young boy shows up with 4 horses. 1 big black horse and 1 small redhorse and two white pack ponies. You plop me on a white pack pony and then whistle again and the horses bolt in the grass towards the slowly starting to set sun.
we ride like that for hours without any comunication, and now the thundering of the hooves across the valley is getting lighter and lighter as background noise and suddenly we are out of the grass, and on a road made of stone. the horses speed up even more with yours in the behind while the boy and the other pack horse are in the front until i fall asleep in the saddle leaning into the horses mane. when i wake up we are approaching slowly a huge red gate. It is installed in a wall that goes to the left as far as the eye can see and to the right as far as the eye can see. you pull me from the pack horse onto your own horse and ride up to the gate calling up saying "I am back with the girl. Open so I can recieve payment."
a man peers over with a deep frown and shakes his head slowly. "Don't trust ya, she looks like any other of them, dont she! Wait past the night and ill give you a chance as the sun rises to come in." He nods sharply as if you had agreed with him and starts to turn around and you call again "if you come and show your face after the night has passed ill shove a blade in your eye and make myself a shiny bald mans ash tray skull"
he glares at you resentfully and says "put her on the ground and let her though alone and ill throw your money down, and then you can ponder where to spend it when you never get through the gate at all?" You grunt and push me off the horse and i fall onto my butt, not able to make any noise protesting or crying so i just watch you talk to him with a hard look in your eye.
"you dont have the kind of coin in a years sallary to pay for her. She's going to the tower and if you stand in my way, ill put you and your bloody gate to shame." you start to reach into a saddlebag at the neck of your horse and the boy calls up "now youve gone and pissed off a battlemage." he started to turn his horse away shaking his head as if witnessing what was about to happen would not be worth the years of heavy drinking it would force him to endure to get to sleep afterwards.
The bald gate manager sighs and makes a gesture of defeat throwing his hands in the air and saying "only a test to confirm who he is, isnt it? no need to get any rash behaviors going, is there?" he turns "open the gate you fools, hes a circle member here! Half-wits!" trying to make sure everyone thinks he knew all along.
you grab me by my neck and tug me up onto your saddle again, pushing me face down into the neck of the horse as you guide it through the gate, the boy and the other horses following and on the other side of the wall im dismayed to find another seemingly endless track of road going over the distance with no civilization in site besides the house and inn just near this edge of the gate.
"Are we going to stop, sir?" the boy asks you and you shake your head, looking at the inn as if stopping in it would pickle you sour. Another long ride, this time with me occasionally rising up only to be pushed back down onto your horses mane passed the night away until just before dawn lights appeared over the horizon where the sun had set hours ago. A city was coming into view, and if i had been able to pay much attention to anything but horse hair, i would have realized we had been passing farms for a while now the road getting less well made as we pass over areas of it that see more use.
finally the buildings of the city are visible from my spot on the horse and they were shabby. You still wouldnt let me sit up and people stared a lot as we passed, and i really wished i had a big cloak of fur like you did because people seemed to stare a lot longer at me and my tattooed body than you or the horse. eventually you got off the horse and approached a new set of guards, these nothing like the country bumpkin from the gate the night before. They were wearing shiny blue army with blue cloaks and silver masks hiding their faces behind the shape of eagles as they saluted you and stepped to either side. I took the opportunity to sit up in the horse feeling pretty darn important as i rode through the gate into what was the largest tower or building period i had ever seen wider than most city blocks.
You lead me and the horse to the center of the tower where holes in the cieling go up to show the night sky far far above with no telling how many levels the tower had in it. An old man who is so old he cant even carry a sword is standing in the centre of the opening looking up, and he speaks in a surprisingly clear voice saying "there is something. you returned and shes not dead."
You get on one knee and then as if realizing that i was still on the horse looking at the old man curiously you grab my ankle and tug me off the horse shoving me to my knees and bowing me before the old man. i look at his shoes made of silk and curled a tthe toe like a chinese house corner while he reaches a ringed hand out and you kiss the big red jewel on one of the rings before speaking to him. "i achieved my objective, and the nomads are of course furious. What am I supposed to do with her no-" but the old man waved his hand and you shut up and i felt his hand grab my chin and force me to look up at his face, and in it there was no eyes, no nose, only a very large mouth that stretched from the top of his cheekbones to his chin with sharp teeth in it and empty hollow sockets and he smiled.
"You managed to get the correct girl even. This is a rare event. You'll take her to the top of the tower. You'll find the door is unlocked. there you will properly adorn her, and wait for further instruction. The necessities are in the room." the mouth faced man turned away and i trembled looking down at my knees wondering why he was so scary looking but you grabbed me by the waist and began walking to the edge of the tower again, and up the stairs as you throwed me over your shoulder so i could only see behind you the huge sword handle bumping the side of my head every time you had to step over a busted stair in the unending spiral.
but of course it ended and you opened a door and threw me into the room closing the door behind us and pointed to the other side of the room where a closet was and lots of clothes that looked more expensive than most of this cities houses probably cost.
"those are yours to choose from. Select quickly and wash yourself or I'll wash you myself." I look at my feet wondering why on earth i would need to bathe not remembering ever bathing before at any time in my life. I look back up at you and blink a few times before turning towards the closet and starting to run my fingers through the clothes, feeling the fabrics and tugging on them to see their texture and quality. You stood by the door, seemingly determined not to be interested in me at all, so i started to stall even though I had chosen a outfit, not sure what to do about this bathing thing. The outfit was a red silk garment, shimmering allover as if it was coated by crystals and when you grunted impatiently at me i grabbed it up and shoved it into the air trying to immitate your attitude of refusing to care about anything.
"Get bathed." You looked at me for a moment and pointed to the closet again, and i peeked in to see a fountain running with water. I blink a few times and start to step into the water sinking down. I gasp silently at the coldness of the water as i dip my head under the stream and sigh as i sit down into the pool pushing the wet bangs out of my eyes. You stay out of the closet and after several minutes of sitting in the water letting it run over me i step out and peek around the doorway looking at you curiously.
"What do you need?" You say eyes narrowing and i blush and pull my head back out of your view and get back in the water, starting to scrub my arms where the tattoos and abrasions are. You start moving things around in the other room, but I don't know what you're doing as I focus on cleaning the pale skin of dirt and grime. The markings now that I look close are little cyrillic leters, like russian writing. They alternate between blue and green every other letter. Running in geometric shapes, following the line of veins and bones, all across my skin, as well as several scars mounding out of the skin like permanant welts and after a few minutes of scrubbing my arms, you get impatient and come in to see I'm still wearing the rags that I had woken up in a day ago.
i look at you patiently as you push my shoulders so the water pours right on my face, scrubbing it a few times with the washcloth and then you tear my shirt off my shoulders and shove me so that im leaning under the water as you focus your eyes straight ahead of you only glancing down every few minutes to make sure your scrubbing me clean. Eventually the front and shoulders and arms are apparenlty clean enough so you jerk me by my shoulder until im facing away from you and standing and you scrub my back down, but stop after you swipe across a very sensitive area in my back running down mys pine. You're looking at jewel encrusted bumps running down my spine where all of the writen tattoos spiral out of across my body. the top of my neck jsut at the base under my hair is a pure white one and it lightly glows as you stare into it.
I shudder when you put a finger to it, and you press not too gently and it makes the jewel absorb your thumb like shoving a finger into jello. It's white hot inside, and you pull your thumb out shoving me inadvertently so that i fall forward and as you recover you start scrubbing my lower back thighs and legs, while i still have the raggy skirt and underwear covering me and then you stand and inspecting your thumb you turn and go to the doorway of the closet. "Change now, we're not going through with this until I understand just what the hell is going on here." you step briskly away from the doorway into the other room and i hear you picking things up as i throw my bottoms off and get into the red shimmering outfit. As I'm pulling the long wide scarf around my shoulders you reach in and pull my hair into your fingers braiding it down my back and tucking it into the string of a heavy medallion you hang over my neck, shoving it into my dress.
"You look a lot weirder somehow without the dirt and grime. I feel like I'm staring at a whitewashed rabid animal." You say disdainfully and i look up at you with a hurt look but you are smiling so I nervously smile back, my teeth fine and white even though I was basically feral. You grab me and pull me onto your shoulder and we start towards the door but right as you're about a step away from reaching it it swings open and the old mouth-faced man is standing there with a large filed to points smile and there are two shiney tower guards behind him with sword hilts gripped in their hands.
"I always knew you wouldn't be able to go through the joining, apostate. So much for the sphere of the void for you. Aetherius will welcome your soul for a snack!" He pointed accusingly and the sword at your shoulder was sliding out of its sheath before he finished speaking, and his smile broke into a grimace as you cut his hand off at the wrist.
"There something wrong here, Crassis! Ever since Trajan's death there has been something fowl about you!" You say as you kick him square in the chest and he plumets down the stairs screaming in shock as he holds his wrist spurting blood onto the stairway. You stand ready with your blade humming through the air as the two soldiers watch and begin to draw their weapons, hesitantly stepping out of the stairway entrance and spreading themselves apart so that one is on each side of the room slowly circling you.
"What are you doing, Erin?! The circle gave you everything... Crassis is the grand templar!" You shrug your shoulders.
"The last grand templar was Trajan. Crassis is something, but grand templar he is not. You were not in the void during the last cataclysm. You only have your oaths, but no meaning behind them." As they stare at your words in disbelief you disarm both of them twisting your heavy blade around theris so that it slams into the ground and then you slowly spin manipulating their eyes so that they each head the same direction and you hold out your hand saying something in a foreign language. "Been nice boys, but I've got to go someplace where I can find answers." Then a blast comes out of your hand and they are blown as if by an explosion through the wall, creating a huge opening which you jump through, falling all the way to the next lowest level of the tower, startling the people in it. This area was a library and most of the people here where just initiates studying for exams but a few of the more ornately dressed members gathered around you one of them checking the two unconscious slumping bodies of the guards you blew out of the chamber above.
":Erin? What is the meaning of this? What is that thing doing here?!" The one on the left says pointing to me with extreme disgust, and you hold your blade ready but lowered in a sign of passiveness.
"Let me pass, and I will not show you how little your rank means severus." You look to the man who was leaning over the two bodies as he stands, his armor made of pure shimmering gold and he stares hard at your face. "You have no quarrel with me Gaius. Give me leave and we can avoid kiling hundreds of people this day. If you feel you are duty bound to stop me, then allow me to escape and then pursue me out of the city." He looked at you as if what you were saying was considerable for a moment before shrugging his shoulders back, his eyes rolling back into his head and wings made of fiery shaddow exploding out of the shoulderblades of his armor, his hands being covered in a shadowy layer of scales with long demonic claws at the ends shaking his head.
"I'm afraid that thousands upon thousands of mortal lives are worth less than the two journeymen's lives you have just sent into aetherius. Allow me to kill you without a fight and you can indeed have many spared."
The rest of the people were bolting except the man you called severus who stood back and held his hands out on either side clearly of higher rank than both of you, but seemingly in a scholarly sort of position without much real authority. "Nonsense! No one has to die today! Let us have an explaination before you turn on the horror show Gaius. Think of your nephew, the boy is right there." Gaius looked at him and severus shrank back towards the edge of the bookshelf adorned rooms as Gaius turned back to you your sword was starting to hum again and I was clinging hard to your shoulders a funny feeling in my stomach as if someone had knocked all the air out of me. And then I realized we were not in the same spot we had just been in, but across the library, a trail of crushing footprints in the floor and facing Gaius's back, one of his wings folding wounded as he screamed and turned around opening his mouth but instead of words, a jet of cruel blue flame shot out scortching thousands of books as they reached for you his clawed arms digging into the stone of the ground and launching him towards us, but you slammed your sword pommel into the ground and crashed through this floor to the floor below as Gaius smashed into the outer wall of the tower, going into the air outside and falling all the way down in a flaming spiral as one wing was cripled unable to extend.
You ran through this room, a living quarters with no one seeming to be in it, bursting into the staircaise and going downwards your blade humming as I pushed my mouth to your shoulder sucking nervously on my thumb. when you got to the bottom of the stairs Crassis was standing there with his mouth gaping looking up into the sky through the opening at the center of the tower, one wrist spurting blood as he talked madly up at the hole in the cieling, whining as if explaining to his parents how he didnt mean to let things get so out of hand. You paused for a moment to watch as I tugged on yoru hair, dragging you out of your concentration on him to point out that Gaius was bursting through the door, the signs of a massive fire in the city outside showing that he really was a walking catastrophe, jumping towards you in a fit of rage he was just fast enough to hit you this time since your concentration had been on Crassis's strange raving to the sky.
Gaius's scaley claws whispered through your armor leaving a deep gash under your clothing, and setting it on fire his good wing batting down onto you like a tarp trapping you there as he unleased another breath of blue flame directly onto you, you hissing in pain as it seared your flesh some, but you were not a field operative for nothing. Your blade begain to work dancing across Gaius's body, shattering scale after smokey scale humming louder and louder until it pierced him in the abdomen just under the ribs going up into his heart and you pushed your raw scroched free hand into his face, gouging out his eyes knowing you couldnt really kill him without expending much more effort and maybe even losing your own life in the process, but the serious wounds were enough as he tried spitting fire again only to have it jet out of the hole your sword had made putting him in intense agony as you dug his eyes out of his face and kicked him away rolling under his flailing claws and taking off in a sprint with me on your shoulder still, but barely conscious as the flaming wings had smacked my head pretty severely.
It was a long run to the exit of the tower and when you came out into the light of day the city spread out around the tower was abuzz with activity, none of the inhabitants able to focus on you and your little rider as they fought the infernos consuming their meager homes. You ran through the smoke passing by and even stepping on some corpses lying on the ground, suffocated by the smoke pouring through the alleyways until you were at the edge of the long stone rode that wound its way all the way to the wall and on to who knows where. You let out a piercing whistle, and started to wrap your hand as the four horses and the young boy came galloping hard towards us. You could hear loud and high pitched maniacle screams as Crassis started giving furious orders to his troops to ignore the towns peoples troubles and chase after the apostate and his prize. Arrows just started to buzz over head as you climbed onto your horse sliding me forward and laying me over your saddle as your heels kicked into the sides of the horse and we were off.
We rode hard and fast, following the road only until the city was out of view over the horizon and then turning at an angle away from it until we were in a forrest, not going on any trail but just making our way much slower through the thick trees with no light in any direction but up and fading fast as the sun got too low to shine through the cracks in the trees. "You never did say what happened, Erin" the boy said furtively as we finally stopped and he pulled some cooking pans out tearing a strip of meat from a bag of salted rabbit. I glared at him as he smiled at me, and he sat down pointing his finger at the ground and whispering something until out of nowhere a small little fire was going.
"And neither should I if you knew whats best for you." you say as you pull me down onto your knee and push my head down so my chin is in my chest as you shove my hair up sticking your thumb into the white jewel at the base of my neck again.
"So they didn't pay you, did they?" The boy says as if he had halfway expected the circle to renege on the deal as soon as they got the strange girl. His mouth fell open as he watched you handle me not seeing what exactly you were doing but staring more at your feet and mine, because where my feet were resting the grass was turning black and whithering with every passing seccond the circle widening. "Bloody hell... What are you doing?!"
You look up from ignoring him and your thumb slips out of my jewel and the circle stops widening immediately and even starts to recede with the small grasses flowering. You look down just fast enough to see the grass flicker back to life and stare at my feet contemplatively. "Just fix the meal already. I am working on figureing out what exactly it is the circle could want with this child." I look up at you meekly as i squirm on your knee trying to get off as i stare across at the salted rabbit in the saddlebag of the pack horse. "She's obviously hungry as well. Make sure you fix her a portion." I glare at you over my shoulder as i walk to the saddlebag and shove my finger into its skinned flesh, breathing slowly and it begins to twitch, as if it was close to being alive for a single moment before it dies again, lacking the skin required to live. I turn around and stare hatefully at the boy and you watch slowly starting to understand how the environment reacts to my interactions.
When the rabbit is cooked and the boy offers me a plate and I stare it as if it held a human face skinned and fried on it. He shoved the plate into my chest impatiently and it shattered as i grunted the first time an actual vocal noise had come out of me that you knew of. You told him to do it again and he looked at you like you were some sort of crazy sadist wanting him to break plates on a little girls collar bone but you nodded enthusiastically and tried to do it again. Right as the cooked rabbit was about to be within touching distance I coughed out the only word I knew how to say though where I learned it I wasn't sure. "No!" i smacked the plates bottom sending the dead rabbit flinging into the boys shirt, freshly cooked and still very hot he screamed and flung the plate at the ground looking at you like you had set him up while he shook his head at the wasted meat on the ground.
You sat next to me and offered me some boiled parsley and i stared it impassively and said "no" but took it biting into it. Your eyebrows furrowed as you watched me eat it staring at the cooked meat on the ground dejectedly.
"What is your name? What are you called?" the boy said to me. I look at him with a glare and say very confidently "No!" and throw the stem of parsley at him turning away and staring at the forest as the trees set the stage for a dance of our shadows in the firelights.
"Says a lot, doesn't she." the boy says and you look sidelong at me as i start to dig my finger into the ground, plants blossoming as i do, a smile spreading across my face.
"Whatever she does or doesn't do, it's what she has the capability to be used for that I am interested in." You say coldly, hoping that you sound more convincing to the boy than you do to yourself about your intentions. The light of the fire dies down slowly that night as you lean back against an old oak tree and think hard, barely easing into a sleep, only stirring once when you notice me climbing onto your lap and pushing my head under your arm as it lays across your stomach, falling asleep as well.