SEALS
Chapter 11: The Warmth of a Fire
People who lived tough lives enjoyed simple pleasures. The smell of pine-smoke from a fire in the open field or beneath an opening in the trees in some dark forest would lead Wander's spirit away to days in the wilds with his father and to the frosts of autumn. He'd always tried to limit his hunting of winter-game, though there were some animals that were best hunted in the snows. Winter was the time when his city closed up and people kept indoors by their hearths to wait out the bleak months telling stories, repairing tools and doing like things.
There was a pair of winter festivals with bonfires before the temple. They were, perhaps, the only festivals in the year that the priests did not sacrifice anything. Livestock tended to give birth in the spring and that was the time when the blood of chosen young lambs and kid-goats were to be given to the gods. The winter festivals were more of a time of merriment and getting drunk off the stores of the last of the summer ales and fall ciders as the winter lagers were being brewed. The great ceremonial bonfires were held for the citizens, to stave off the despair inherent in short days of bitter cold.
The best way Wander found to stave off despair in the frigid and boring winter days was to pay a visit to Mono's household. He'd bring a thick wool blanket and she provided the fire. They'd cuddle before the warmth of the fire wrapped in the blanket together and not do much else with Mono's father watching over them and her little siblings sharing the hearth-area. There were always stories, memories and plans for the future to share, as well as hot drinks that put a blush in their cheeks and laughter in their voices.
The warmth of her against him was what Wander longed to feel again more than anything, even as he'd noticed his own skin going numb and cold. He paused in his riding across the cursed country to find the next sacrificial beast he was to fell. He ate a thick-skinned yellow fruit and gazed at his reflection in a still pool. He was not himself. His hair had darkened and his skin was taking on a gray look.
He looked deader than Mono did. He wondered if the magic of this land and the contract he was under was causing him to take upon the decay that rightfully belonged to her.
As it was, he had voices in his head and feelings in his heart that he knew were not his. The Dormin bade him to seek a "guardian of flame." The shadows within Wander that communed with Dormin and made up a growing portion of its earthly essence shared in the young man's human memories of warm fires and bygone days.
It hast been long aeons since we hath felt warmth… the shadows spoke, This warrior's body feels the warmth we miss…
Wander did not want to share. He struggled to keep parts of his being fully his. If he tried too hard to lock the doors of his mind, they would inevitably be unlocked. It seemed that when he did not think too much about anything other than the mission before him, the voices and foreign feelings stopped bothering him.
The hunter doubted these lands ever saw winter. He found himself riding through sands in a baked area beneath the Great Bridge. Even the green and shadowed areas of this place seemed to enjoy a perpetual stasis in the weather. He'd ridden through an autumn forest and an umbral glade. He came across a beautiful green cape in the south on his expeditions of exploration and silver-tailed lizard-hunting. Wander had no idea if Lord Emon and the other priests even knew who'd taken the sword and where the thief had gone to. If they were headed here, they were sure taking their time – unless Time was at a true standstill here. Perhaps they were unable to enter. In any case, Wander had taken his time to know the land and to get strong.
He left his horse behind to move down the canyon path he found to the ancient cavern with the altars bearing censers of flame. He awoke a being that struck him as being like a lion with boar's tusks. It was the size of ancient beasts in certain legends, the bones of which could be found embedded in rock, or about the size of a siege-wagon. For a Colossus, however, it struck Wander as small. This beast could have been the beloved child of the towering bull he slew at the seaside, or the pet "cat" of the Earthen Truth that had wielded a bridge-like sword.
It was quick, too. It moved like a cat and struck like lightening. Even as Wander ducked behind one of the altars, blood ran down his calf from where a sizable portion of skin had been sheered off by an armored claw. He climbed to the top of the stone to the censer and held on for dear life as the Colossus rammed into it, knocking down a flaming stick. Wander noticed how the creature backed away from it.
Dormin helpfully told him that it feared the flames…
So began a mad scramble and shouts of "Back! Back!" as Wander waved the flaming stick in front of the guardian of the flames. He wondered, for a moment, why a Colossus that feared fire would reside among ever-burning censers. The answer came to Wander's spirit – in shadow-knowledge he could not have possibly guessed on his own – that these fires had been lit long ago in hopes to guide spirits and that the Colossus had protected the originators of the flames. The living statues had all been magic-bound creatures, one way or another.
Wander wondered whether it was the Colossus itself that feared the warmth of a fire or if the black blood within it caused the fear. Either way – after making a running dive for one of the other altars when his fire went out and resuming his ploy – Wander sent the pathetically-whimpering Colossus off a cliff.
The armor on the sacrificial lion's back cracked and Wander had hoped to jump right down on it. He regretted missing that jump more than he regretted anything in the entire world save for his inability to protect Mono. The young man felt the wind knocked out of him as the Colossus batted him to the ground and treated him like he'd seen many a farm cat treat a wounded mouse. All Wander could do for moments that stretched out forever was to play dead. He felt dead. The only thing that kept him in a desire to remain alive was the thought of completing his mission.
When the Colossus turned, he made a run for it. He was butted to the ground again and rolled. His nose was broken and his ribs didn't feel right. Drawing in even the smallest breath hurt his chest, but miraculously, he could still feel his limbs working. A dark thought came to Wander: What if he was surviving this beating simply because he was half-dead already and a nearly completed vessel for a god of Death? From what he saw in the still pool of water earlier, he looked more like a corpse than a living man. If he was mostly "corpse," it may take a lot more than the normal damage to kill him. He still had enough of a mortal shell to worry about dying and enough of one to be in pain.
When he got up again, Wander dashed for the deep pond at the base of the canyon wall. Oh, thank all powers that the creature apparently could not swim! The water both stung and cooled his cuts and scrapes. He climbed up onto the trail that had brought him down to the canyon floor in the first place. The Colossus paced and growled at the pond's edge, unable to reach him. It roared in consternation and absolute rage when Wander sent an arrow into the seal upon its newly-exposed back. The hunter smiled to himself as a little spurt of black blood issued from the wound.
He kept pumping arrows into it from his safe vantage-point until it became clear he was getting nowhere. He was much too weak at this point to try to find somewhere he could jump onto its back. Wander ascended the trail, greeted his dear horse and rode to the nearest shrine. He'd rested at them before, but this was, perhaps, the first time that his prayers for healing were sincere.
As he made the journey back to the Colossus' cavern, Wander wished he could sit beside a gently crackling fire letting the warmth soak into and soothe his jangled bones. The beast had found its way back to its original guarding-area and Wander found his way, once again, atop an altar. Leaping onto the Colossus from it and grabbing tight was like riding a bull. The young man's bones were jostled again.
Getting soaked slick with black blood, all the young man wanted was a cold day beside a warm hearth with Mono. As the slain Colossus imparted him its strength, Wander forgot how wonderfully warm a fire could be.