One Foot Before The Other

[Duffy]

“I really need to learn when dead is dead.”

Duffy Bracken stood overlooking the Duala steppes with his hands on his hips and the weight of the world on his shoulders. Time and time again the bard had gazed out at a bleak horizon and pondered his nature, and time and time again his nature had eluded him.

“Oh come on, Duffy. For once, don’t worry about the why and just concentrate on the how.”

“How I’m going to survive the heart of a volcano, you mean?”

Bard rolled eyes at bastard, and together they burst into a harmonious and brotherly chuckle. Arden felt relief as they finally broke the awkward silence that had surrounded them for leagues. Slowly but surely they were rebuilding bridges.

“It’s your idea to draw on the Tap Duffy. I never said it was going to be easy.” Arden unfolded his arms and dropped them to his sides. His instincts told him they would soon be on the march. “I promised to support you fulfilling your dreams so I will do everything I can to help.”

Duffy had to smile and nod with thanks. For centuries, the Tantalum troupe had given their lives time and time again (and so much more) for the ‘greater good’. Today things would be different. Today, when the sun set across the demon marred plains of Tular, the bard would get everything he deserved in his infinite lives.

“Let’s get moving,” he said reluctantly as he put one foot forward.

[Duffy]

[Duffy]

They clambered down the shale slope and padded quickly out onto the plains. The rocky crags that flanked either side of the valley gave way to the miles of jet black acrid soil that stood between the duo and the indomitable sight of the Lugar Volcano in the distance.

“Are you sure it’s going to work?”

Arden had asked that question three times since they set out a month prior. Each time Duffy’s answer had become slightly clearer, though the swordsman felt no closer to understanding the bard’s true intent. As far as he could make out Duffy hoped to reignite his connection to the Aria by creating a crack in the fabric of the world – creating a new wellspring somewhere where only he could access it.

“Provided nobody gets wind of the plan and hijacks the wellspring, I should be able to reform the Aria and give this tired old body some permanency.”

Duffy knew he had little time, but he could not be sure just how long. The refugees from Raiaera that arrived in the city of Branna had done much to create a simulacrum for him to return to Althanas in, but they were tired, their arts diluted by time, and he too stubborn to fully give in to their rituals. Asking for help had never come easy to the leading man.

“And…if they do hijack it?” Arden already regretted asking.

Duffy padded on for a moment, trying to feign ignorance.

“Oh, you know…the end of days.”

[Duffy]

“That’s why I have been asking you repeatedly since we set out,” Arden said with a deflated sigh. Already pledged to the cause, the swordsman carried on and kicked aside pebbles of volcanic rock and deadwood.

“You’d have agreed had I told you in Branna?” Duffy raised a doubting eyebrow.

Arden thought to himself for a moment. A moment soon turned into a mile and then another. By the time he put his thoughts together Duffy had forgotten all about it and was whistling an ancient tune to himself. Arden gave up. He should have known a secret meeting with the bard would end up with one of them putting their lives on the line for the other. At least this time his sister was not her to be a constant thorn in his side. A conscious he may regret not having to call upon.

“Do we climb the volcano or go through it?”

Duffy smiled.

“We have to climb it and then find the entrance to the cave network somewhere near the caldera’s peak.”

Arden looked ahead, eyes focussing to see through the strange and dark opaqueness that covered the horizon. He could not be sure if it was a sand storm or Haida’s effervescent malice warping the very fabric of reality. Either way, they were at risk of becoming lost, or worst – trapped in the fiery convocations that burst into, and vanished from existence without warning.

“It looks like its active…,” Arden stated with trepidation.

“Don’t be silly.”

[Duffy]

“No.” Arden pointed to the volcano’s summit. “It really does.”

Duffy pretended to follow the gesture and examine the roil of smoke that drifted up from their destination. He knew full well the volcano was active. He was not going to let on that he had known before asking his brother to join him.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” he protested. “It’s probably been active like that for centuries.” Haida was a dangerous place, its earth as much alive as the demons that dwelt below. They were standing in the middle of a battlefield that fought on long after the soldiers had withered away to dust.

“I’m going to remember you said that, and when we’re drowning in a sea of lava and regretting getting out of bed sober you’ll be made to remember it.” Arden pulled the hem of his cloak tighter around his shoulders. Only a streak of crimson hair and a blackened nose protruded from the hood when he was done. “Painfully slowly,” he added.

Duffy let the sound of hobnails crushing volcanic rock fill the silence, rather than digging himself a deeper hole. Hopefully the risks would be swift forgotten when he found a way to revive himself. If he failed, then his worst fears would come true. He, after centuries of fighting alongside his family, would truly be dead. The thought of such an eventuality had haunted him for centuries. Here he was, most trusted sibling by his side, staring death in the face.

[Duffy]

Death stared right back by the time they reached the halfway mark. The volcano’s sides become a barrier between life and death, every jagged edifice of the landscape a threat to the simulacrum’s existence. Every few steps Arden had to reposition himself, very carefully, to make sure that when he hoisted Duffy up to the next vantage point the pair of them didn’t fall graceless to certain, tumultuous deaths.

“We have had five centuries, give or take, to master climbing.” Duffy reached for the indicated hand grip and pulled himself up to the next ledge with a heave. “Why did we spend all that time drinking, singing, and pissing off gods?” He rolled onto his back, breathless and wide-eyed.

Arden’s head appeared over the edge, equally drained, equally frustrated.

“You,” he spat, pulled himself up, and stood with the horizon ablaze over his shoulders, “suggested it.”

A short silence quickly cracked apart when Duffy broke into school boy laughter. Arden rolled his eyes but soon joined him.

“Hindsight.”

“Hindsight,” Arden echoed.

If any of the Tantalum troupe had more of that, before the long war with gods and monsters and the vices they shared – liquor and apathy, their trials would have been much, much shorter. Arden rested his hands on his hips.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into all this.” Duffy sounded, for the first time in decades, quite sincere.

Arden looked his brother in the eye. Acrid clouds roiled. Skies darkened. Hard as he tried, he could only forgive.

[Duffy]

“It’s a bit too late for all this, brother.”

That it was. Duffy sighed again. His chest rose and sunk, every breath painful to his temporary form. He longed to be alive again more than anything. He would have sacrificed his siblings in a heartbeat to feel. To sleep. To breathe true again. He had only been a ghost in the ghastly streets of Branna for a year, already, he grew tired of unloving.

“Do you understand why I have to at least try to do this?”

The question lingered in the air as the bard carefully arranged his limbs and pushed himself upright. On the side of a volcano the duo stared into one another’s tired, beleaguered eyes. There was knowing there, amidst the flames and the heartache.

“You’re asking me if I understand why you want to live.” Arden shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to ask.” He held out a hand, in it, a bottle of water saved by providence of the swordsman’s blood magic. He could last an age. Duffy’s fragile form, on the other hand…fleeting.

The bard drained a dram quickly, and felt its cold chill invigorate his coarse lungs. He nodded with appreciated, replaced the stopper, and handed it back.

“Keep it,” Arden protested. His palm rebuffed the bottle and Duffy reluctantly strapped it to his belt.

“If I’ve learned anything from out tribulations it’s to make sure people know just how sorry you are you failed.”

“Failed?” Arden’s eyes danced with fickle flames.

[Duffy]

A wellspring of emotions churned beneath Duffy’s stubborn exterior. He turned away to hide his teary eyes.

“Don’t pretend you hadn’t noticed.”

Arden knew all too well how difficult the last century had been for the troupe. From the tribulations he had undergone with the Greater Oni in Akashima to the endless days of anxiety and fear fighting the Forgotten One Oblivion. War was their way of life. Plays were their release. The revel at the end of a performance a momentary forgiveness from a life unrelenting in tenacity and ferocity.

“At no point, Duffy Bracken, in five centuries have you ‘failed’ us.” Arden wanted to slap his brother across the cheek with a gauntleted hand, but that would achieve nothing. “You did everything you could to protect us.”

As the volcano broiled overhead, the Bard’s eyes teared below. He realised his error too late. He had never found honesty easy. He had tried to hide the truth from his siblings, edge them towards success without the reality of what they were fighting against hanging overhead. He had taken that same weight that pressed down on his mortal form now and refused to share it.

“I always felt smothered by my own heart…” He slumped his shoulders.

Arden approached from behind, and, brotherly like, rested a caring hand on the bard’s shoulder. He squeezed just enough to convey care without hurting.

“And we felt smothered by our own inability to lift those burdens.”

Duffy sobbed. The skies cracked. Rain fell.

[Duffy]

“What am I like?”

Duffy turned. He wiped his face, though it was futile against the weather. It was a soft, cool rain that served no real end but to give haste to travellers and send husbands home to wives’ endeavours.

“A damned fool, as I’m sure Ruby would be all too happy to remind you with a kick to the balls if she knew what you were planning.” Arden did not need to apply threat to his words to wound the bard to action.

Duffy turned and made to climb. As one, the duo made short work of the final league to the summit of the volcano. Rubble cascaded in their wake. Sulphur began to creep into their nostrils, a portent of what awaited them at the summit. It mingled with the all too familiar smell of a month’s rain in an hour’s passing.

“If you feel tired,” Arden said abruptly, “let me know. I will give life in life’s stead.”

It took Duffy a moment to realise what the swordsman meant. He shook his head and began to test rocks for the next safe hold. If they were to break open the weak fabric of reality in Haida’s heart, they would need to work together.

“No, Arden. Today we will use the gifts Oblivion gave us amidst the myriad curses of our being.” He found his next hold and they clambered up to the next ledge in tandem. They pounced upright, adrenaline pumping, and faced their enemy together.

[Duffy]

“That’s…a big Dragon,” they said as one.

Ahead, atop the volcano’s peak rested a thunder lizard unlike any they had faced. It slept lingering on the knife edge between outer slope and fiery interior. It was black, even by night’s fall standard. Spikes lined its spine and its tail was as long as its body and tipped by a dual blade of dense bone. Fire didn’t need to flicker in its maw to tell the duo this was a flame born creature.

“So about that blood magic,” Duffy erred. He reached, very slowly, for the hilt of his katana.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m quite happy to lose my sanity to not die horribly.” Arden bent at the knee and unsheathed the Kerria slowly, silently, and sanctimoniously.

Fifty feet beneath the dragon the Bard and the Bastard did as they always did. They waited. They watched. They teased their audience. When finally the dragon snorted a flick of umbral flame and opened one cold, calculating eye, they broke into a sprint that made short work of the final shale ascent and brought them, burnt boot and beleaguered body to the flat at the volcanoes peak.

“Like the good old days!” Duffy cackled.

Arden barely had time to retort before a spiked claw slammed down in front of his advance and immediately made him regret offering to help.

“I’m still sober!” he roared in reply. He sliced, diced, and rolled out of harm’s way as the dragon lashed with his prehensile tail.