Chapter 1 – The First Element

The old man was dreaming again. At the back of his mind was the urge that he had to do something. But the insistence was faint and unclear; foggy as his senses. He swam out of the darkness of sleep and reached out with his mind.

The first sense to come to his dream self was the cold, a crisp, clean cold. A cold that that made him think of purity and clarity and blue eyes. It was cold, but it wasn't the cold of menace. It began at his toes and rose to his thighs, lapping gently at his fingertips as he moved his arms. He concentrated hard on the sensation, his fingers moving gently in the dream world. Gradually, smell and sound came to his dream self as well. His ears detected the sound of flowing water and he wrinkled his nose at the sudden smell of moss and damp. The old man blinked and sight immediately flooded him. He looked round him and found the river.

The river ran smooth and straight in both directions. Tiny ripples and eddies that flowed round him were the only disturbance in its calm surface. Canyon walls of clay rose on either side of him to the sky. Above, a summer sun shone fiercely, pressing down on his shoulders with urgent warmth. Underneath his feet, river stones gleamed smooth and bright and clean. Small fish nibbled at his toes with curious mouths. All around him he saw only the clear, clean water.

For a moment he enjoyed the sensation of the dream, the peace of the flowing water, and the warmth of the sun. He cupped his hands and drank of the clear coldness. In his mouth, the water flowed past a tongue long unused, filling his taste buds with sweetness. He raised his hands to his face and found them just the same as he had seen it when he had last been awake. The tiny veins were blue and quiet and he sighed. Not yet. It would be a little while yet. But the insistence in the back of his mind tickled at him, urged him to move.

He moved in the water deliberately, one foot in front of the other, feeling the resistance against him and the sudden release as the water realized it could not fight. The fish scattered to explore other corners. He could not stay here long. He had a purpose. He was looking for something.

For the life of him he could not remember what it was. He knew that it was here in the canyon. Something old and beyond time. Something that would only be found here and now. Something that had been waiting for him for hundreds of years.

He walked and walked, feeling now the river stones, the mosses underfoot. He stumbled at the sudden drops beneath his feet but kept walking. Upriver, he realized. The water was flowing towards him and behind him to the sea. Upriver and uphill. He realized this with a sudden tickling at the back of his mind and for a moment he knew what it was he was looking for before it was gone again, draining like water in a cupped hand.

"Wake up Dreamer," he said to himself and was surprised at the words. Foolish old man, he thought. What are you doing in this dream? But the question seemed to not have come from him but from another and he shivered with chills not from the cold.

The river suddenly opened out into a small lagoon and an open sandy space. The canyon walls had given way at this point, forming a natural cave into the rock. He moved towards the lagoon and felt the stones changed, becoming smaller, becoming sand. He collapsed onto the sand wearily turning over on his back. Crickets chirped sleepily, echoing in the high ceiling over his head. Grains of gypsum and other crystals glittered like small stars in the half gloom. The sand beneath his back was warm and comfortable after the coldness of the river. He wanted to rest. "Not yet," he murmured. But he felt the insistence at the back of his mind again, stronger this time.

With sudden shock he remembered what he was seeking. It was here, hidden in the canyon. He got up and ran to the walls with a small cry, his hands searching among the whorls in the natural rock, picking out the patterns that were piercingly now clear in his head.

In the very back of the cave were five small symbols etched into the stone. To other eyes they would have seemed merely whirls of time, the water wearing away at the rock, haphazard grains trapped in the stone; other eyes would have slid over them without a hint of what they were. The old man's old eyes were sharp still. He ran his fingers over the symbols delicately, hesitating for a moment. He traced them out, naming each one in his mind, recognizing the one that was his and his alone. "Aperio," he murmured in the ancient language, surprised and yet unsurprised at what he had uttered. There was silence in the cave. And then the symbols glowed, a mixture of colors that constantly blended and separated and blended again. They were coming to life. And then they blinked. The old man leapt backward, knowing what would happen but still unknowing, fuzzy in the recollection. The symbols blinked again. And again. A slow pulse gaining strength and speed. The old man put his hand to his chest and realized that the pulse matched the beating of his heart.

Then as a snake's back undulates in water, the symbols rippled. There was no other description for it. They seemed to move and from each, another line of symbols repeating the five appeared, moving outward and forward, fanning into lines of bright fragmented colors; running over the walls and the floor and the ceiling of the cave.

The cave was now brightly lit, shimmers of light catching in the crystals in the walls and spreading outward into tiny prisms that shivered and exhaled in expectation of something.

The old man felt the quickening in his blood again, the pulsing in his heart. There was eagerness in his fingers that he had not felt for a very long time. He moved forward, the fingers of one hand spread. In the middle of the cave, the lines of light met and coalesced into a bright point. The light in the symbols was pulsing strongly, steadily with the beat of his heart. And the strongest pulse of all was in the shining concentration in the middle of the cave. He stared at the point, squinting at the light and found to his astonishment that they did not meet after all. The symbols were rotating in a circle, repeating over and over again, a thick ordered tangle. His hand touched the outer edge and warmth tingled at his fingertips. Another word came to his mind. "Exsuscito," he whispered, now half afraid. Awaken.

The symbols blazed, the light rose and became solid, became a pure white so bright that it hurt his eyes to look at it and he had to turn away, shielding his face. And in another ripple of pulsing light, the lines of symbols winked out. The cave was momentarily, completely plunged in darkness. He blinked, clearing the specks floating in his eyes and there in the middle of the cave, standing on a pillow of light, a tall, smooth, white staff was standing.

The staff was unadorned and quite plain. It was topped simply by a knot of ivory, carved to look like gnarled wood. He could not tell where wood ended and ivory met, so smooth had been its making. In unexpected wonder his eyes dropped to the sandy floor, looking again for the glowing symbols as if for explanation. Indirectly seen the staff pulsed, a steady beat that was all colors of a rainbow yet none at all. He looked up and stared at its length and found the staff plain wood and bone. He frowned, surprised at himself for doubting. This too should have been familiar. The staff was calling. He reached forward and grasped the staff and the secret colors within it flared, spreading warmth to his palm. The last of the symbols blinked out. And then he remembered.

There was blood and water and earthquakes and storm and wind and fire raged, burning, burning everything. The smell of ash was overpowering; the smell of death everywhere. Dead bodies: charred, bloated, buried, drowning. There were screams all around, filling his ears like madness. And he was there, fierce and angry, swinging the staff, chanting words. And there was dark and so much death and he wanted to sob with the despair of it all. But there was hope too. He saw the faces, grim and determined and powerful. And one of them smiled at him and laughed, though the laugh was hollow. He remembered.

The memory was a blow. He staggered backwards in the cave, the staff gripped white-knuckled in his hands. He could hear his own harsh breathing echoing. The staff was erratically pulsing light to the thunder of his heart. He swallowed great mouthfuls of air and the pulsing slowed, calmed and then was no more. The golden gleaming light dissipated and the cave retreated into gloomy half shadows. He remembered.

The old man knew now what he had to do.

He stood tall with the staff in his hand and strode to the river. Once more he felt the calm, clear coolness as he walked to its center, feeling the water, feeling the stones and the moss underfoot. There were no more fish mouthing his toes. There was nothing left in the water alive that had not taken the chance to swim or scuttle away. Even the moss was afraid. He felt that in this dream-self and felt sorry for them, the only thing alive besides him and he had the choice to stay. The stillness was everywhere.

He waited.

The Enemy was here as well. He could feel the force of it gathering strength. In the dream-world it had come to seek what he held in his hand, tried to wrench away his body from this place. But he was yet stronger than They. Once more the words came, not from him but from somewhere outside him. Wake up Dreamer.

No, he thought.

Subtly, the water shifted. It became still and colder; a savage warning.

The old man set his feet resolutely, plunged the staff into the water, and waited.

The first thing he saw was the blood. There was so much of it and he thought he should be afraid but was not. It was a huge cresting wave of red, gleaming like liquid rubies, wet and sickly and oozing; coming at him with slow deliberate speed. Then as if sound had waited for its moment, he heard suddenly the rumbling roar of the wave as it rushed down the canyon, funneled by the cliff walls. It was an angry roar of water and matter and screeching inhuman speech. Between his toes, he felt the river water turning to blood. It was a thick cold, colder even than the river water, colder than the coldest ice and winter he had known.

Wake up, Dreamer. The whisper was harsh and echoing. You have no business here.

The wave came faster and faster now, its viscous surface gleaming higher and higher. The canyon walls were stained with blood. The wave rose angry, ominous, avenging. It was about to break, rearing back to fall on him at any second, sucking him down into its frigid heart to break him into a million pieces. And an instant before its breaking he shouted "Conquiesco!" and Time stood still.

There was an angry roaring in his ears and wind whipped him all around, buffeting at the wall of blood to crash over him. It remained poised above him, quivering from the fists of air.

"Not here!" he thundered. "You will not take me here."

The roar rose to a deafening crescendo. "No," he said more strongly. "You have no power in my dream." He raised the hand with the staff angrily. "Return from that which you came, Beast. Bother the Dreamers no more."

The roaring rose, angry and impotent, and cut off as suddenly as it had come. The abrupt silence was unnerving and even more deafening.

He sighed, feeling his age again. The river was quiet and still. As before, the fish nibbled at him. There was no sign of a wall of blood; not a drop stained the pristine waters nor sullied the canyon walls. Overhead the summer sun shone in drowsy comfort. Wistfully he looked around one last time, closed his eyes, and woke.

This second time, he opened his eyes slowly, aware of the blood sluggishly moving through his veins again, beginning to wake his mind and his heart and his lungs. In his hand was the White Staff, smooth and warm from the dream cave and contrasting sharply with the cool air filtering into the cave from the wide open entrance. Outside, dawn was breaking; the first he'd seen in many hundreds of years. The glow of early sun washed into the cave weakly. He smelled the fresh scents of pine and fir and evergreens and the earthy smells of oaks. A tang of mist hung in the air. The exposure to the outside elements was not unwelcome.

He moved gingerly, feeling his bones pop, feeling his age momentarily, and gathered his cloak around him. The blood in his veins was still slow. It didn't matter. In a few moments, he would be at his prime again though his face would always remain the lined face of an old man, the hair unnaturally white as to be almost silver. He moved his limbs experimentally, ran his hands over his wrinkled face, feeling foolishly like a newborn lamb.

He had to leave soon, find those who had been chosen to aid him; those whose ancestors had helped to seal him in and awaited his return. They would have sensed his waking as if by instinct, something in them also waking when the spell hiding his presence had broken in the touching of the staff. He knew this even though his sleep had been long.

With the help of the staff, he slid out of his mossy bed and looked around. The cave was dark; the torches that had lit his slumber had since burned down to ashes. Even the moss that had wrapped him in his sleep was fraying, disintegrating and blending into the fine sand that shifted beneath his feet. Awake and the spell broken, time was beginning to catch up to his surroundings and there were new signs of decay and age. Even the air had become musty. He hobbled to the cave entrance and stopped, staring out into a new day. In his last time of Waking, the cave had opened out into a plain, the river wide and meandering. Before that it had been a slope, the river falling as much downhill as it was sideways. Long, long before that and countless ages past, the river had been inside the cave. Always, the river and the cave had been constant. And in the beginning of the world, it had been a canyon with strange fish nibbling at his feet.

Where there had been the canyon and the plain and the slope was now a valley with trees rising into the morning. A small village sprung up in the centuries of his sleep was nestling against the mountains on either side, stepping to the very edge of a slow, undulating river spanned by bridges and skirted by waterwheels. Thin curling streams of smoke rose from cottages early woken. High thin animal sounds floated to him in the morning air.

He leaned against the entrance of the cave, stealing a few moments of rest before the task set ahead of him had to be accomplished. Questing, he sent his mind out into the village, searching for the ones chosen and met another. A smith. One who had helped to place the rock covering the cave entrance with his burly arms. He could sense him in the village, slightly bemused. He smiled. It was always so before they remembered.

Setting his staff and taking a deliberate step outward, he set his body to begin the journey down into the village and abruptly drew back with a startled jerk. There on the entrance between his cave and the outside world, a thin line of blood had been spilled to span the whole entrance. It was as bright as ripened berries; straight and smooth and even. He looked around sharply and saw the discarded ewe, its throat tattered and its wool mangled. The old man frowned. Never before had the enemy attacked so openly. First the dream and then the blood on his door.

"Abigo," he spoke scornfully. Not yet. The line of blood disappeared. The ewe burned in a puff of flame. He could hold them back for now. The first Element was awake. The Last Awakening had begun. It was time to wake the Dreamers.

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The Elementals by v. kelterborn

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