SEALS

Chapter 6: Grandfather's Tales

The world was a blur and his heart was empty.

The architecture around him was familiar in style, but strange in composition. It was as if he'd awoken in Dormin's Tower after having slept a non-night there and everything had changed. He was definitely in a fortress of some kind. Wander hoped he hadn't accidentally taken his rest at some random ruin.

He looked down at his legs and then at his arms. He had a shadow over him, like what had fallen over the slain Colossi. No… he was shadow, composed entirely of it as if shadow were a substance. He smelled blood all around him – he stank of blood.

Had he died? He was clearly a smoke-man, a black ghost. He could move swiftly, phasing through and over the stone floor, but his heart felt weighted. He felt hollow and incomplete.

Where was Mono? He saw not her body and felt not her soul. Instead, he saw two children running on the edge of his vision. They were most unusual. There was a gray-white girl and a boy with horns like a wild ox. The boy approached him, wielding a large stick. Wander felt himself dissipate as the stick struck him.

He awoke with a snort.

Wander picked himself up off the floor at the base of the small shrine on the outside of Dormin's Tower. He'd slept sitting up, holding his sword again – his "at the ready" position. He had no idea if or when his countrymen were going to show up to try to stop the ritual. He assumed he'd be followed as soon as Lord Emon found the sacred sword gone. This place is the only place anyone would take it, logically. He knew that Emon's men wouldn't hesitate to kill him in his sleep. If they could celebrate the killing of an innocent maiden, dispatching a sinner like him would be a small matter, nothing that would plague their minds.

Wander had heard the full tale of the Forbidden Land from Emon, just as he'd heard tales of the smoke-men from his grandfather. When he was a child, Wander had heard many tales from the man with his long, plush beard. He, his father and his brother would sit around campfires in the field as the elder would stroke his beard and speak about the beasts of the field and their habits. Wander's father would laugh with his grandfather, recounting hunting stories.

Grandfather also liked to tell tales of mythic beasts. A favorite of Wander's was the story of the Minotaur, a vicious bull-headed man who had been locked away in a labyrinth by ancient gods. Maidens were sacrificed to him to keep him from breaking free and terrorizing the outside world. The monster had been slain by a great hero.

Wander thought that the first Colossus he'd faced resembled the beast from that story. It had been stomping and tromping out in the open, however, and had only appeared when he'd awoken it. He'd been no sacrifice or hero thrown into a maze. He'd been an invader onto an open territory. The great beast had acted as any strong animal would that could not flee – it fought. Wander was certain that he'd faced an honorable warrior.

When he found himself in the confines of an ancient temple, he'd found the Minotaur of the kind described in his grandfather's tales. It moved through the temple basement, destroying walls and fixtures. It had a big, fluffy beard that swayed as it moved its head. Wander observed this. The beard reminded him of his grandfather's. While his father had kept his beard trimmed and Wander kept the clean-shaven look of a youth, a long beard was the pride of aged men in his country. Few men's beards were as proud as the one his grandfather wore.

The old man had died a few years ago. He had not been afraid of death. "It's funny," he'd said to his grandson as he lay sick in bed in the family home, "It's something you fight and fear all your life, and when it's approaching you, you give up, give in and accept it. It's not so bad. It really isn't so bad at all. I am at peace."

The rumble of the Colossus' hooves echoed through the temple as Wander hid behind a pillar like a mouse in a hole. He wasn't like his late grandfather. Wander was afraid of death and intended to fight it. He wasn't afraid of it in the typical way: It was something he was willing to face for that which he believed in… and for the person he loved. He wasn't afraid to go out a warrior, yet he remained deeply afraid. A healthy fear of mortality was what kept a warrior alive, alert to the deadly moves of his enemy.

The young man was pretty sure he had experienced death or something like it. Every time he'd felled a Colossus for Dormin, he saw what old and sick people on their deathbeds reported seeing – light, a tunnel or circle of light. He could have sworn he'd heard Mono's voice again, too, but it came as through water, the words indecipherable and incomplete. For him, that twilight was not a place of peace or surrender. Death really was as bad as he'd feared. He'd felt himself disappearing, dissipating, dissolving. He did not wish to become one with the "light," nor with any darkness or gray-world that might have followed it. Even if the Land of the Dead was a better world, he could not stop himself from fearing it. He would claw and fight with everything in his soul to come back to the place of physical life – the only life he'd ever known. For him, death really was something to be terrified of, the surrender to it not as pleasant as old men told. That tale reeked of a lie to him.

Five times he'd awakened from this state to hear and feel the voices of the Dormin echoing through him, giving him some vague description of his next adversary, pushing him to get on task. He'd get up and get to it. That is why he found himself presently in the maze of the Minotaur.

The young hunter found himself swinging from a shaggy beard. Wander remembered how he'd grab at his grandfather's whiskers when his hands were small. They had never been enough, however, to carry his entire body. The seal upon the head was an easy butchering-job. Wander tumbled as the creature lurched and bellowed until he found the greater seal upon the beast's back. It was a pity to slice up such impressive muscles, but muscles were only meat, after all…

… or animate stone enlivened by black blood.

Sometime later, Wander came back to the location of the underground temple. He stood outside it, watching the resident turtles snuffle themselves along. He'd been hunting the black lizards here and enjoying a good ride. Despite the loneliness, this ancient land was very beautiful, desolate and lush at the same time.

Wander did not venture into the depths of the temple. He remembered it as something of an underground maze and he remembered what he'd fought there. The legend of the Minotaur was one of many old stories he'd kept close to his heart. He had no idea where he'd heard the legend or any number of tales he'd felt a strong emotional attachment to for one reason or another. He knew that there was a key element missing from them all.

He wished he could remember who had told him the stories