View Full Version : An Inner Being
Solo
(continued from profile history (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=894))
Jahl’s unhealthy obsession with loitering around Salvar’s frozen forests was finally catching up with him. After he left his tribe, the abuse of his father, and the death of his mother, his heart began to grow colder with every bitter night and receded more into his chest with every bright brisk morning. He found himself within the remnants of what seemed to be the attempts at making a nomadic tribe become non-nomadic, the only accomplishment made by his own tribe which was now long forgotten in tradition and name. Every building seemed to be made of pine, the local commodity, and fashioned into a sort of cabin, log stacked upon log into crude but homely areas. The few buildings that were erect seemed to be fashioned into a circle, some sort of defensive assortment developed by the nomadic tribes. Each of the buildings were covered in snow and had weeds growing here and there amongst the circle. Pine trees loomed all around and Jahl thought to himself, ”how could anyone defend this place, it would be easy enough to ambush through the trees, they would never see it coming.”
Wind flashed about his face and Jahl broke from his observatory daze, his interest in any further meaning of the buildings becoming less than inquisitive. Picking up his foot from the dirty snow, he took his first step after twenty minutes of pointless standing, moving towards the closest building. It was small, built like a cabin like every other building, but in no way unique, four sides, a door, no windows. He made for the door, pushing slightly to test if it was locked. It swung open slowly for about an inch or two, then began to meet resistance and creaked loudly, the noise echoing off of the periodic stillness in the air. Jahl glanced over his shoulder and took a moment to observe any reactions, and like his brain told him, nothing, the makeshift village was empty. Yet, something told him he was not alone. “It’s nothing, I’m just being paranoid,” he told himself.
He turned back around and pushed harder on the door, succeeding in pushing it off its hinges and onto the floor with a loud clap. “Damn!” He felt embarrassed for being startled but none-the-less continued his observations. He searched the hinges and found that they had been rusted to the point of being useless from sitting so long unattended in the changing seasons. Slowly he proceeded, testing the wooded floor uneasily to make sure that the woodwork wasn’t failing too. Surprisingly, nothing about the wood seemed out of place, and he continued with his curious search throughout the house.
There was nothing, literally. The building, meant to be a house obviously, was completely empty, and all hopes of Jahl finding anything useful at all in any of the buildings seemed remote and fading fast. He left the house, leaving the door how it was and made his way to the only large building in the circle. It was twice as long as the previous building, the length being about thirty feet and ten feet deep. It seemed more inviting than the rest of the houses, and maybe, since it was so large, it would have been the most important and possibly furnished. It was a long shot, and hopes were low, but what else did Jahl have to lose?
Jahl rubbed his hands together for a quick moment to bring the feeling back to them and pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. ”Damn, for old doors, they sure are sturdy.” He turned around to continue walking, then paused abruptly, turned back around and put his foot through the door, smashing it off its rusted hinges. A small smile crept across his face momentarily then disappeared shortly after his small moment of glory was over. He peeked into the darkness that held out the early morning sunshine and let his eyes adjust. This building was definitely furnished. It had a large table completely boxed around, like a box on its side, three crude stools around it, and a dirty unraveling square cut of rug randomly in the far right corner of the building. ”Hmm, wonder if I’m going to get lucky,” he thought to himself. He stepped eagerly inside and made his first goal the table against the wall. To his terrible delight, he found that the previous owners had left him a beautiful present. There in the dark, dank, cobweb infested, table stood a half empty bottle of some liquid that was surely liquor of some sort.
Just to be sure, Jahl popped the cork out of the bottle neck and wafted the bottle below his cold nose. Happy with his findings, he tipped the bottle as far back as he could and closed his eyes as the liquid, cold at first, began to burn at his throat and crawled down to his stomach. “Wow! That’s strong!” He licked his lips, wiped the excess that missed his mouth from the armor and began to tilt the bottle back again when he saw a small child standing in the light of the open doorway.
Jahl coughed and dropped the bottle in surprise, choking at the presence first, then at the broken bottle and wasted contents dismally creeping its ways to the various cracks in the floor. The child just stood there, watching and waiting for some new development. Jahl caught his breath and cleared his throat one more time to get the burning feeling from his lungs for good.
“Who the hell are you, brat?”
The child’s silhouette lifted a leg and walked inside, showing it to be a normal looking tribe-brat wearing torn cloth and no shoes or coat. It was a little boy, his eyes blank at first, then growing into hope and curiosity at the same time. It tilted its head and opened his mouth to speak.
“Hello! What are you doing here?” Jahl came back empty headed and stunned, “I…uh…”
The kid stepped up to a bar stool and sat down on the rickety piece of furniture. He put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. Without much else that he could do, Jahl began to speak to another human being for the first time in a long time. Jahl started with a joke, lightening the mood some for the both of them, then stopped abruptly. Jahl had felt ashamed of himself for breaking into the kid’s possible home and had not really looked him in the eyes until then.
“Wait a minute! You’re that same kid from the bar the other night!”
“Yup!”
The child pulled out the piece of dogwood that Jahl had given him the other night and placed it on the table in front of him, somehow balancing it upright on one end of the stick. The child placed his head back in his hands as Jahl stared at the stick in curiosity for a while before the kid spoke up again. “When are you going to tell me what happened before you left home?”
“I’m not, that’s not for you to hear.” Jahl looked at the kid in astonishment. How could this kid be that inquisitive about something so trivial as another man’s story?
“But you admit that there’s more, right?”
“Trust me, kid, you don’t want to hear about the rest of my story.” Jahl was becoming perturbed, he had almost enough crap from this kid to wring his neck and throw him across the room. “You don’t understand, I’m tired of you endlessly pestering me about my past.” Jahl’s voice was calm and clear, just enough so to get the point across without seeming to lose control, “Just go away and mind your own damn business.”
The child’s face twisted and the hairs on his head curled slightly, his eyes grew darker and bags developed under them. His fingers tightened around his face and dug into his skin, blood beading up and dripping slowly down his face. Veins began to pop up all round his body, the whole time his position remaining the same, his head held within his hands, leaning on the table. Then, a terrible and demonic voice erupted from the child, ”So, you think you can just come into my hard earned dwelling and toss out bad-mannered suggestions like they’re nothing?!” He leapt from the stool with demonic speed and landed with a crash next to his ‘giraffe,’ the balls of his feet against the table as well as his hands, in a crouching position.
Jahl retracted his body and stood stunned against the wall with utter disbelief. “No, Jahl, I think it is you who doesn’t understand the severity of this situation.” The dialect in the child’s voice was much different, like a new person, with new intelligence and a new objective.
Jahl's face scrunched up in confusion, his first thought wondering what was happening, the second wondering how the child knew his name.
"How..."
"How do I know your name? Don't bother with silly unnecessary questions, for now, just obey me."
Slowly, Jahl’s hand met the hilt of his mahogany sword and began to pull it out of its steel sheath while charging forward, but the demon-child was too quick and leapt in the air, planting its bare feet on Jahl’s chest and knocking him back hard against the wall, blasting the wind from his lungs and sending him crippling to the floor.
”What were you going to do with that, give me a splinter?” The short-lived smile of mock left the demon’s mouth as he pinned Jahl to the floor. ”You see, I think you may have something of mine.” Jahl struggled fruitlessly under the hold of the demon, then relaxed, trying a different approach. “I don’t have anything of anyone’s but mine own.”
”Liar!” The demon child hissed and his breath pulsed against Jahl’s face, the heat too much to stand.
“Get off!” Jahl managed to wheeze under the squelching breath of the demon. ”Ha! Very funny; no, you see I made something, but I had to get rid of it, quickly, might I add, so I gave it to a pathetic and most unfortunate child, but after I gave it to him, he disappeared, and I’ve been looking for it ever since. So… Give it to me now you pathetic weakling or I’ll rip your throat out!”
“I don’t have anything of yours!” Jahl was frantically searching his memory, hurriedly trying to find out what this thing wanted and how he could possibly help in finding it.
”Hmm, I have a feeling that I’m going to have to do this the hard way, aren’t I, Jahl?” It raised an eyebrow and pulled its face closer to Jahl’s, to the point that their noses were almost touching, and the foul, decayed breath of the demon child was pulsing on Jahl’s cheeks even more. “Now, I guess since you don’t want to enlighten me willingly, I’ll just have to take it from you.” The child smiled, his ugly marble teeth glinting in the dim sunlight before he opened his jaws. His tongue slowly raised to the roof of his mouth and from the tendon underneath sprouted two tendrils, each blood red and dripping with some unknown substance which sizzled when it dropped onto Jahl’s skin. “Nighty, night, Jahl.” The voice rang even more demonic than before. Then without any further notice, the tentacles shot through Jahl’s nostrils. Jahl screamed with sheer terror as he felt the organic wires prod through his gray-matter, searching for some section that was unknown to him. There, they finally found it, and Jahl was released from the physical world. The demon had found the section of brain that sent Jahl into a comatose state, allowing the demon to freely search his memories in the form of dreams.
Most of the place that Jahl had ended up in was black, some of it seemed to be shaking with shimmers of silver, each shimmer seeming to move across the black for a short while before it disappeared. From the corner of his eye, Jahl caught a glimpse of movement. He turned, carefully watching in the direction before he caught another movement in another direction. There he saw the demon, running across the black, then diving into a silver ripple and disappearing.
“Crap, I’ve got to stop him.”
Jahl sent himself into a sprint, his muscles seeming to work at full force, yet not sending him any faster than a slow walk across the black towards the child, who seemed to be moving at a demonic speed. He dived at the child, but while in the air, a shimmer materialized in front of him, catching his body and sending him somewhere else, somewhere unknown.
“Wait… I know this place.” His voice seemed to bounce off of everything, echoing back in multiple waves of fading sound. There, in front of Jahl, was the same tree, the very same dogwood that he used to sit under whenever he snuck out to carve during the middle of the night. “What the hell is going on here?” Jahl tried to see past the ground that surrounded the tree, but it seemed to be blank, as if the tree itself was the only part of the world that he was in. Beyond the tree, Jahl noticed that every now and then there was a ripple of silver, but just one. Slowly, he approached the ripple and walked through, not staying long enough to reminisce, only worried about what damages the demon could do to him in this odd world.
“There, I’m back. I must have freedom to move between places too, memories, if that‘s what they are.” He leapt through the next ripple that shimmered in front of him.
There seemed to be only one source of light in the room, it was an eerie red glow that filled the room. It was only moments before physical and mental memories collided and flushed Jahl with a wave of intense heat, catching his breath and taking it away for a bit, but only for a while. Like a brush fire, flame was beaten with flame and the burning hatred in his heart stifled the choking heat of the age old furnace. He approached the forge furnace, looked inside, and found orange metal, it hadn’t been in long, otherwise it would have been red. Yet, there was something already inscribed on the metal. “I can’t read it, what could it be?”
“It says, die! Demon child!”
Jahl twisted around sideways and tipped over to barely dodge a steel hammer, the brute muscles of his father brushing his face as the follow through was never completed. As a matter of fact, the next attack that came from the memory of his father was the same as the last, the hammer swinging through at head level and never coming back for a second attack, it was like he was repeating the same thing over and over again. “Wait… if these are all memories, then, if I’ve never experienced something, it couldn’t possibly hurt, right?” another attempt at smashing Jahl missed as he dodged the repeated attack with ease. His father had always only needed to hit once and Jahl would be out for a while, so the blow was always the same, something all too familiar in Jahl’s brain, yet, he had never once grabbed red metal work.
Jahl reached into the pit of steel melting coals and picked up the metal, ramming it into the stomach of his father, “I’ve killed you once you son-of-a-bitch, and I’d do it again for all eternity if I could.” The face never changed, the burly and anger twisted face stayed the same, surprise never having occurred once in the time that Jahl had ever known his father. Jahl got a moment to look at his father, the plump solidity of his muscles and the largeness of his general body, the charred apron and the leather breeches that his mother had sewn for him, everything was the same as the night before all the horrible deeds were committed. Sharply and abruptly the vision of his father vanished, and the heated metal began to sizzle in his hand, “Shit!” He dropped the metal, and grabbed his wrist, full of some unknown pain, some terror that he had never felt before. The pain forced his knees to buckle and his body to sink onto the floor, torment causing his body to tighten up in shock.
“Oh… that wouldn’t be too wise of a thing to do there, Jahl. Fire is hot.” Jahl looked down at his hand, the metal had been turned fiery by the demonic child, and his hand seemed to be melted in some places, charred in others.
“I’ve searched every memory of your past, save this one, and it seems to have been altered a little bit by yourself in the present, as in now, but I’m sure I can find what I’m looking for. I only need you.” The child walked into the heavy red glow of the memory and pointed at Jahl curling its finger to symbolize a movement. “UP!” Jahl’s body forced itself up unto his feet. He found himself walking over to the coals, his face being pushed slowly down into the heat.
“Find what I’m looking for, Jahl, I want it now.” Jahl’s face expected severe heat, but the demon removed the false memory of pain, and the scrunched face of Jahl relaxed. There in the furnace, the coals seemed to dance within, each looking like fiery eggs that held within some golden secret of rare value. Everything changed when the coals gave way to some unknown passenger, some item emerging from the coals, at first it looked like black wood, burnt wood, then as more appeared, Jahl began to realize exactly what the thing was. It was the black mask that he carved as a child.
“Oh no!” cried Jahl as he began to see what the demon was looking for.
“OH YES!” howled the demon aloud with supreme joy, “it’s finally mine again! Here!” he called with an ultimate power within his tone. The mask levitated into the air, righted itself as if to imitate a face, and stopped, even with the demon beckoning desperately with hand signals and demonic language. It turned to face Jahl and to his horror began to speak.
“You must never let him have this mask, the only way for anyone to obtain possession of it is for you to willingly give it to them.” The mask floated down to Jahl’s left knee cap and disappeared into his onyx globe.
“What the…”
“What! How could this be!” The demon twisted it’s face into horrid agony and let loose a horrifying scream of utter frustration. “Fine, I can see the game my father wants to play. I just want you to know, father,” the demon looked upward and spread his arms to speak with some unknown entity, “I will get this mask!”
A flash of light blared in Jahl’s eyes and he awoke to the demon slowly and grudgingly pulling its tentacles out of Jahl’s nostrils, some surplus liquid dropping the the floor and smoking into nothing. “Bugh-uh” Jahl cried as he rolled over onto his stomach and began to stick his fingers up his nose to try and flush the burning liquid from his nostrils. After minutes of recovering and holding down his bile, Jahl turned over to see the child squatting on a stool nearby, chuckling to itself about Jahl’s misfortune.
“Get the hell away from me, I don’t have what you want, you saw it disappear into thin air, besides I burned that mask a long time ago. So just leave me and don’t ever think about doing that brain probing crap again.”
“Oh, don’t worry, mister, I won’t do a thing to hurt you. And by the way, just because everything we just did in your mind was mental, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.” The voice of the child had returned and the demonic presence seemed to have disappeared altogether. Jahl took the words to heart and took a moment to look at his hand, which was now numb. His skin was melted, scarred and charred. The burn was all too real, his left hand useless for now.
“So, does that mean…” Jahl reached down to the armor covering his left knee, the Onyx globe pulsating with some new power. Yet, instead of his hand gliding over the cool crystalline mixture, his fingers dipped into some liquid in its place. Something was buried in that amorphous solid, something painfully real and solid, he grasped it and pulled out the black mask.
“The Mask of Death itself. I should know; I created it.” the child seemed to be sure of himself, exactly what the mask did and what it was meant for, he continued, “And from the memories that I went through of yours, I would imagine that you have some knowledge of what it can do too.” It seemed like the child had a split personality, the demonic side having a twisted and cruel dialect and the child having an and semi-uneducated accent. ”I saw what your father did to you, and what you did back to him, you enjoyed it. That point was evident then, and is so now, by what you said in that shimmer…” This time, the demon performed a different kind of magic, his hands seemed to wave more than point and gesture, and the magic was not so abrupt and demonic, but more neutral and balanced.
Shadows and echoes were all that emerged from the demon’s spell before Jahl was found listening…
“Boy! Get up now!” That was it, that was the call for Jahl to meet his doom. He knew that his father had found the mask, as a matter of fact, Jahl had mistakenly left the floor board uncovered and the tip of the mask was hanging out. “I swear I shut you…” murmured Jahl.
“What’s that boy! Ya hexing me now?!” The giant of a man reached down and chucked the mask at Jahl. “Here! Put it on, and then I can throw ya outside so they can burn ya as a witch, you demon!” Of course, Jahl left the mask on the floor, but his father stomped up to Jahl, picked him up by his throat, and slammed the wood into Jahl’s face, smashing his nose and bruising his eye.
“I don’t want to wear it,” cried Jahl.
“Tough!”
His father reached around for some rope from the wall. While holding Jahl, he pressed the mask violently against his face and proceeded to tightly tie the rope around Jahl’s face, the chord ripping into his flesh and burning his senses. Knots followed and when he let go of Jahl, the child collapsed half from fear and half from pain, but he did not stay down. The mask began to glow with light, a black light, a terrible and demonic light. The mask tore through the rope and released Jahl from the pain, now nothing but sheer rage built up inside the juvenile Jahl. His body filled with black hatred, his mouth foaming under the mask, and it seemed like the wood burrowed into his skin, taking over.
The spell ended and Jahl sat with his head in his hands, shaking gently, “screams of horror escaped from my room that morning,” said Jahl softly. “I don’t remember much, just random visions every now and then of blood spraying and skin being ripped from the bone, but I do know that I did it, and I know that I’m not sorry, not one bit.” Yet, Jahl wasn’t completely sure about that part, as a matter of fact he wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
The demon sat and stared at Jahl for a while, his mouth partly open and his head ed sideways, a twisted look upon his face. “Why didn’t you just tell him you didn’t like him?”
“It’s not that simple, you see--” Jahl was cut off by the little boy, “I told my daddy that one time and I haven’t seen him since, if it worked for me, it should have worked for you.”
Jahl’s attitude changed quickly from nostalgia to suspicion. “Listen you little demon, don’t try to cuddle up to me, your not getting that mask, I know something bad will happen if you get it.”
“Don’t be so quick to hand out titles like ‘demon,’ that’s what your father did, and look where it got him.” The demon child raised his hand in the air, causing Jahl to flinch, and after chuckling, the child wrote in the air some symbols. They hovered and became a brilliant green before they broke apart into hundreds of tiny pieces and spelled out some name. “Mahil. Call me by this, and lose the attitude about this ‘oh you foul demon’ accusation, you almost seem to have mistaken me for a follower of N’Jal, and if that were so, you wouldn’t be getting off so easily”
“Who’s N’Jal?” Jahl was curious because the name sent chills down his spine for some odd reason.
”None of importance, the only important thing we need to acknowledge is that mask of yours, and how much you should give it to me.” Mahil shifted his eyes left then right, blatantly suspicious and almost as if he didn’t want to succeed, or maybe doubted that he would sway Jahl. Jahl’s hand found his mahogany sword and smacked Mahil in the back of the head with the blunt end.
“Owies, that hurt!”
“That’s for sticking those things in my nose and for starting up the conversation that reminded me of you sticking those things up my nostrils.” Mahil stared at Jahl for a second in confusion. “I think you just unnecessarily repeated yourself…” Wood found Mahil’s head again.
“I think the word you were looking for is redundant, friend,”
Jahl smiled. He was having fun with this, and as long as he held the mask and the power to give it away, there was no way that Mahil would harm him in any way. “This looks to be like the beginning of my debt to you.”
“What debt?”
“The one I owe you for trespassing on very private property.” Jahl placed the mahogany blade upon his shoulder and proceeded to kick his things that were nocked loose during the sprawl around until they were in a messy pile. Then he sheathed his sword and picked up his things with the one hand that wasn’t injured, but it started to become a bother and Jahl became frustrated. “Do you mind giving me a hand there buddy?”
“Buddy now is it, I’ll give you a hand alright.” More magic, this time the demonic pointing, and after a few incantations, a severed human hand, decayed for the most part, plopped onto the ground next to Jahl’s left foot. “Very funny.”
”I thought so too.” Mahil began to wave his hands quickly in the air, and Jahl watched in amazement as his belongings floated into his pack, neatly and nicely.
“Thanks… I guess, but you’re not getting it that easily.” Jahl lifted his pack and strapped it onto his shoulder. Alright, since I’ve already gotten my so called liquor for the day, I’m ready to go.”
The mountains of Salvar couldn’t be that far off, or so a man once told him in his old village. Yet, he was supposed to have found another town before he hit any kind of cold in Salvar. The lack of a skyline was already telling him that he had made a mistake or that he had been told a lie.
“It seems silly to me, I think we would have lots more fun in…” The child stopped speaking, paused for thought then began again, “Mahil? What’s that place with all the fun thingys again?”
“Haidia.” Called the voice of Mahil. It was becoming awkward for Jahl to be able to tell the distinct differences between the two voices and not pause to think that the child that was following him was not schizophrenic.
Jahl took a clumsy step towards the door and began to hope that maybe all of this was some day dream given from the possibly decades old beer, but a quick glace behind him told that it was real. There in the abandoned pub, Mahil was peeling back the rug and lifting a secret door.
“What are you doing?”
Mahil was tossing up pieces of human carcass and bone, searching endlessly in the pit of decaying corpses for some unknown item. There, he stopped, and pulled something out of his ‘hole’ and placed it in some pocket hidden in the scraps of clothing. Jahl had already started to walk away when the kid caught up to him and trailed behind.
“Oh!”
Jahl looked back to see the child running back at demonic speed and disappear into the building one more time. ”Now’s my chance to be rid of him forever!” Jahl thought to himself, so he put his worn body into high gear and dashed about the thick pine forest. Cold air rushed into his lungs sharply as he wheezed the wind in and out of his chest. He eventually slowed to a jog about a quarter of a mile away from the dwelling before he stopped for a quick breath. Looking around he saw trees everywhere. “Exactly the way it should be, the trees being my only companion." He turned back to look for any signs of the demon, saw nothing, then turned back around to continue.
“I had to get my giraffe!”
“Holy…” The child stood about three feet in front of him, hands behind his head and his feet shuffling in the air above the snow, he was levitating.
The cold was finally getting to Jahl, and his body began to feel weak and fragile at the same time. He started to say something, noticing that Mahil was floating in thin air and not a bit tired. Jahl sat his exhausted rump on the cold earth, sinking in as the snow gave way and stayed there. “My hand still hurts.” Jahl said as he put the torn palm into the snow. The cold seemed to numb his body and his senses as well.
”You’re shivering.” Mahil said, monotonously as possible. He flicked his hands around in an odd gesture and pointed to the snow next to Jahl instantly igniting the ground into flame. Jahl began to feel his body rejuvenating, and before long, his senses returned, notifying him of his need to wrap and keep warm. Despite all the warmth and wrappings, Jahl refused to remove his hand from the snow.
“You seem to want to help me out a lot, and I can’t quite figure out whether or not you are just trying to get the mask, or if you are trying to be genuinely nice.” Jahl looked at the fire for a minute, awaiting no real reply, the question was more or less a rhetorical one. Curiously, he wondered how the fire stayed lit without any kindling or substance to burn, just the cold hard earth and nothing more.
”It’s magical, emanating heat, but it does not burn or devour things like real fire does.” Mahil landed from floating and approached the fire, changed body language, then reached into the fire.
“Ha ha! Looky!” The child grasped a handful of fire and proceeded to launch the fire at Jahl, the flames glancing off of Jahl’s skin and armor. Jahl was too tired to flinch, or even speak much for that matter and he soon curled up and fell off into a dreamless sleep, the kind of sleep that makes you think that you’d never wake from.
It must have been hours before Jahl woke up, his mouth dry and his lips cracked. His joints were stiff almost as if frozen by the cold and his head hurt excruciatingly. The sun had long been set and Mahil still sat by the fire, the childish face looking amused by the flame. Jahl sat up slowly and with much effort, shaking the snow off of his frost crusted body and crossed his legs underneath him, some of the snow penetrating the bottom of his pants legs. Not caring, he looked to his hand, which was now puffy and red all around the edges of the burn and still hurt so much that he wanted to go back to sleep.
He needed something to take the pain off his mind, and started with the idea of trying to go back to sleep, but he was sure that it was impossible. He wet his lips with his almost dry tongue and began to speak to the kid.
“So, I’ve got a good grasp on who Mahil is and what he wants, but what do you want, kid?” Jahl stared at the child, watched its face change from innocent back to demonic and then he spoke.
”He has supreme innocence in every way. He doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong, no feeling of pain. He can only feel remorse or happiness. He was my first choice to give the mask to, I knew he wasn’t going anywhere, not in the state he was in, yet, I thought that maybe you would be better off to have it, but I guess I was wrong.”
Jahl looked confused for a moment, then spoke up again, “So, if I were to have stuck around and not left then I would have been like him now?” He felt a ridiculous urge to be like that child, to feel nothing but happiness and to have the most simple life in the whole universe, but his mind retaliated and reminded him that freedom was the most beautiful thing of all. He had learned that when he left home so long ago.
“Yes, you would have been like him.”
Jahl began to think again, noticing first that the holes in the child’s face from his own nails had diminished and his skin was pure again. “But that doesn’t make sense at all, he’s so much younger than I am, how could he have possibly been your first choice if he wasn’t even born when you chose me?” It was true, the child had to have been around five and it had been nearly four years since that night.
“Poor Jahl, he doesn’t even know how possession works. Tsk tsk tsk. Mahil’s face changed back to innocent and spoke again, “Yeah! Stupy poopy doesn’t even know that I live for a long time!”
“Eternal life…” Jahl tilted his head down and wished that he could live forever, no end to his search around the world to find some place to belong.
“You know, it would be easy for you to have eternal life as well. All you’d have to do would be to let me-“
Mahil was cut off abruptly, “Never, I know you want this mask, and besides,” Jahl had begun to think once again and realized that death was the calling to paradise and to never have the chance to reach it would be dismal, “I don’t even want him to live forever, he should have the freedom to die when his time comes.”
“He was already dead when I found him.”
“Oh…” Jahl shifted uneasily where he sat, the snow in his pants reminding him of where he was at the moment, “So, he’s like a zombie or something?”
“No, you twit, it was metaphorical!” Mahil lifted one eyebrow and buried the other under his eye socket, “Anyway, that’s not important, you know what is important, I have no need to remind you.”
“Yeah, I know what you want, I also know that you’re not getting it because-“
”Because some unknown entity spoke to you from the mask? Like that’s any grounds for a sane assumption. For all you know, I could have been the one who made the mask talk!” The possessed child’s face was mixed with anger and disbelief.
“That would be pointless, if you wanted the mask in the first place, and that was the case, then you would have just taken the mask right then and left. It would be pointless for you to do that.”
“It’s not unheard of. The gods are found toying with the likes of men all throughout history.”
“So you’re a god then?”
“I never claimed to be…”
“Then what are you?”
“You tell me.”
Jahl had enough of the confusing chat that was going nowhere, he simply whipped his mahogany sword from its sheath and swung it at Mahil.
“Ha! You missed!” Exclaimed Mahil. The blade circled around again in the same swift motion as before and collided with the back of Mahil’s head.
“Owies!” Jahl stopped before the third attempt, noticing that the ‘owies’ came from the child’s voice and not Mahil’s. “I thought you said that he couldn’t feel pain?”
The demonic voice returned for the explanation. “He can not feel pain when I am present, however, he does retain his normal human qualities when he is his own self. Whenever I have control, it’s like I put a halt to all time for his body and it resumes every time he returns.”
“So you lied. You told me he had eternal life.”
“I said no such thing, you assumed from what the child said that he meant eternal life. That is your mistake and no one else’s.”
Jahl felt ashamed at the truth in the Demon’s statement. He looked down at the white powder under his body. The ice was still against his legs, the feeling gone for the most part, succumbing to the numbness. “I guess I should do something to keep warm.”
“I guess so.”
Jahl knew that friction caused heat, and what he really needed, instead of the odd fire that burnt in front of him and the cold heat that it emanated, was good old-fashioned work to warm him up. He searched slightly through his small satchel attached to his waist. After a few seconds of determined seeking through the meager sack of few valuables, he found what he was looking for. He pulled out he old carving knife, rusted a bit from all his travels of late.
“Your real blade is as pathetic as your wooden one.” Mahil whipped his hands around in a circular motion and pulled from the air a wicked looking black steel knife. “You should use this one.”
“No.”
Maybe Jahl would someday exchange his blade in for a new one, but if he did it would be a nice normal knife without any possible traps hidden within, besides the knife that Mahil held seemed to be evil. He had no clue why, but it just seemed to be no good at all. Either way, Jahl pulled out one of the already carved generic masks that he had carved before leaving.
He had left plenty of space on the wood to make revisions and fashion a nice mask out of the generic one. He decided that he would make this mask resemble what he most desired, heat and flame of true sustenance. His marks were swift and true, each score placed along the grain like a true expert. First, he carved out the space around the outer sides of the eyes, these leapt up like flames that followed the side of the face until they reached the top, where they seemed to envelope the small horns that he crafted. He gouged out lines that resembled primitive flame and traced it all around the rest of the wood, then made negative cuts in the bottom to continue the flame onwards.
Mahil watched secretly across from the magical flame. He raised one eyebrow and moved his hands around to some unknown goal. In the end, his hands were clasped together, seeming to have done nothing but rearranged into a more comfortable position. Only he knew what he had done.
Jahl looked over the finished project, work indeed had heated his muscles, but for some odd reason his hands were much more warm than work could accompany for. He soon found that he had to alternate the wood from one hand to the other. It was becoming quite hot.
“I’m curious to see what happens when you put it on.”
Jahl paused and looked the demon in the eyes for a second before he had to resume tossing the mask between hands. “You must have done something as a joke! Why is it so damn hot!”
“I didn’t do anything, mister Jahl, sir! Honest!”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t.”
He placed the mask into his satchel, grateful to be relieved of the heat, but enjoying also the amount of heat it emanated from the pouch. It was warming his body quickly, the heat traveling through his limbs like a warm glow. It was nice to feel his legs again and he soon lifted his body from the snow.
“I think that we should get a move on, I’m feeling great right now and I can’t wait to find a place to settle down.”
“It’s the middle of the night…”
“So?”
They found themselves wandering in the darkness and despite Mahil’s warnings of nightly beasts and wandering marauders, Jahl pressed on in the same unknown direction as before. The trees traveled in the opposite path, each one slowly making their way past Jahl as he walked on towards the mountain peaks. He really didn’t care for the desolate plains that he came from and really wanted to experience the lands beyond the mountains.
What seemed to be an eternity passed before the sun started to come up from the crests of the mountains in front of him. The trees began to thin out and the roots of the mountains took their place in the great earth below. Early morning fog began to engulf the passengers. The mist rose from the cold ground and turned the air around Jahl thick and white over a short amount of time. The traveling became slower, but Jahl kept on going, despite the twenty-foot vision allowance. Mahil had nothing further to say about anything at all, but the child ran behind Jahl, disappearing into the forest every now and then and running back into the open giggling madly as if some unknown force was tickling him. The child burst into song as he began to run circles around Jahl.
~ “Where the mountains grow cold,
and the stories of old
whisper truths of the past
of a greed with no gold”~
He laughed out loud even louder than before and ran out of sight ahead of Jahl.
“What the…”
Jahl looked on in horror as he took notice of a great mass rising forty feet high from the ground in a straight wall. First he thought it was some great and unknown beast, but he soon came to find out that instead of a great beast, there loomed a great gate of pine and iron bars. Leading on from the gate, Jahl could see the beginning of the stone slab wall that gave way to the gate. ”Great, this huge thing is in my way.” Jahl thought to himself as he wondered what he should do.
The air seemed too calm to shout anything and feel comfortable, so he simply walked up to the gate and pushed slightly on it, hoping that it wouldn’t follow suit of the doors in the abandoned village from before. If there were people inside, a huge forty-foot gate falling over would be alarming enough to wake the dead. He laughed inside his head for thinking of such an improbable event and gave a small nudge to the right door of the gate. To his surprise, it was unlocked and it budged a few inches. “Hmm…”
He pushed a little harder, and with no sound at all, the gate opened enough to let him in. It disheartened him when he looked inside and began to realize that just looking wouldn’t be enough. The fog enveloped in here as well and all Jahl could see was empty ground around him. He looked around for Mahil, but the demon-child was nowhere to be found.
“Ow,” Jahl whispered softly. He began to look for the source of the extreme heat that he felt upon the side of his thigh and realized that it was the blasted mask that he carved earlier. He took it out and placed it on the ground next to him. Yet, instead of it staying put, it simply vibrated and flew swiftly and silently into the ruby globe upon his left arm.
“What the hell is going on around here?” Indeed strange things were happening since he left home and he began to wonder if this was how the real world was to everyone.
From somewhere out in front of him there came a small noise, soft enough not to startle Jahl, but loud enough to make him realize that he wasn’t alone.
Slowly, Jahl crouched down low, then made a check on his elbow blades, making sure that the short and only real blades that he had were intact and ready to go. He also drew his mahogany sword, which could always do bludgeoning damage to knock out any unsuspecting foe. He knew that the fog was a hindering to him, but that also meant that it was his strongest ally as well.
He began to sneak out to the right side, hoping that he wouldn’t bump into anyone or any thing. Slowly, dark shapes began to appear in the whirling fog ahead. One shape appeared to be human, the other more like an inanimate mass, like a box or something similar. The humanoid mass began to walk around the box slowly, reaching down and eventually bending over to grab something from the bottom of the box.
Jahl snuck closer, realizing that the humanoid was really human and that the box was a keg of ale, the user just taking another pint for his enjoyment. Then, Jahl began to understand that because he could see the other man, the other man could see him, and realized that he had just been seen.
“Oiy there Kevin? What are you doin’ up so early? Your watch doesn’t start for another few hours?”
Jahl’s eyebrows rose in fear. What if these people were hostile, his only chance at escaping would be to play it off as he being Kevin.
“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come and keep you company.”
“What? Who’s that!”
“Uh…It’s me, Kevin!”
The guard stood straight up and grasped his halberd from the pole that lay beside him. “Kevin’s mute you bloke!” The guard charged at Jahl, his halberd in full swing, ready to lop off Jahl’s head. His swing went wide though, Jahl rolling backwards in sheer surprise of the bum-rush. The guard was definitely drunk however, and very clumsy. Jahl’s mahogany blade swung quickly into the back of the guard’s unprotected head, connecting with a loud crack. He fell out, stone cold.
“Hey! Who goes there?”
There was obviously someone else there. More than one guard meant that it was a relatively large place. Yet, Jahl could see nothing at all. Footsteps were heard and Jahl glanced frantically from side to side, wondering where the steps were falling. Obviously, there was a great echo, for the footsteps could be heard all around him. Then, without a warning, a great biting wind whipped up and took away a majority of the fog around him.
There, situated all around him were guards of all shapes and sizes, each one covered in furs and wearing oddly dark glasses. Each of them had their weapons drawn, most of them wielding spears, the others having halberds.
“Uh oh…”
The body of the other guard was lying next to him and it definitely looked like he murdered him, despite the fact hat he only lay unconscious on the cold earth.
“Drop your weapon!” Jahl had no choice but to obey and soon he heard his wooden blade hit the ground with a clatter.
“Lillian, strip him of his armor and bring him to the master quarters, we’ll let Kev’nok decide what to do with him and the child."
The child? They must have gotten Mahil too. Jahl could only think that Mahil would have a brilliant plan of getting them out of their fray.
Jahl was clipped in the back of the head by one of the guards, sending him out of consciousness. While he was out, they stripped him of all of his armor, leaving him in a small amount of clothing in the freezing cell that they threw him in. He would be out for at least an hour.
Time passed and soon Jahl awoke to the steady thud of human muscle colliding with unwilling skin. He let his eyes focus before he moved and then began to look around, slowly bringing his torso off the ground from his prone position, but not sitting up. He noticed that he was in a sturdy cell, with brick on all sides. Each of the four walls had a small window that was filled with bars, each window no bigger than two feet wide. One window seemed to lead into blackness, a room with no light, another lead to another cell, empty for the most part, save some rats and a small empty bowl. The last two windows opened up unto a larger room, obviously a torture chamber or some other area for investigation.
The heavy thud came again, this time followed by a shout, “No! Please not again, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jahl raised himself to his feet and took a look out of the window facing the investigational area. There, surrounded by three guards, was a small child. Yet, this child was not Mahil, it was a little girl, pale and red headed. ”What the… Jahl was definitely confused. The land that they were in was bare and had no residents, how could this little girl be a prisoner? She would obviously be close to home so she must live in the fort. Logic, as Jahl was noticing, didn’t seem to matter in the real world at all.
A face appeared from what seemed to be nowhere in front of Jahl’s. It was a man’s face from the other side of the bars. “He’s awake!” The other three guards dealing with the little girl threw her back in the cell next to Jahl’s, then dragged him out and set him up on the table in the middle of the room, locking his wrist in place with rope. Jahl lay on his back, his eyes closed expecting some excruciating pain to commence. None came, instead, the guards left, leaving him there on the table, alone with no one but the sniffling girl in her cell.
What seemed like days passed before Jahl noticed something moving on the ceiling fifteen feet above him. There, on the ceiling right above him, was Mahil, waving idiotically. It was a strange site to behold, the child having its hands and feet flat against the ceiling, but its stomach facing the floor, like a crab on the ceiling. Jahl looked around to make sure no one was around, then assured himself the little girl was asleep before he gestured to his bindings for Mahil to help him out. Mahil just stared at Jahl, blank faced. Jahl kept on gesturing with his head, but in the end, Mahil simply shrugged in a ‘What do you want me to do’ fashion.
”Damn he’s worthless,” thought Jahl. A few minutes went by of Mahil’s host childishly attempting to see how far he could let the drool from his mouth go down before he sucked it all back up. Jahl was more annoyed with the fear of spit landing on his face than being tied up in the cell he was in. “I’m going to kick your ass when I get out of here,” Jahl said.
“Making threats now are we?” Jahl turned his head around as far as the table would allow and noticed out of the corner of his eye, that someone was standing at the entranceway of the room. The voice was soft. “My name is Lillian, and I think it’s high time for enlightenment.”
Lillian was over Jahl now, her face close to his. He could feel her soft breath from underneath her helmet. Yet her voice was full of a metallic twang, sharp as steel itself. She was a cold warrior and no doubt about it. She removed the steel helmet and let her dark red hair fall upon Jahl’s face. Her eyes were beautiful, her skin pale. She was the pure embodiment of dangerous beauty. “I,” She began, “Am a seductress. I own this city by the power of beauty, and I wish to show you how I get things done here. Jahl found himself in a trance, dumbstruck by her words, not really understanding what she said, but knowing that she meant to please him to get what she wanted.
Then Jahl felt a wet slap upon his chest. It made no noise, but instantly, Jahl’s frustration with Mahil attempting to test gravity returned, snapping him out of his trance. He followed Mahil’s example and launched a mouthful of spit into the awaiting mouth of Lillian. She flinched, turned to empty her mouth of Jahl’s saliva, the came back into his view, wide eyed and hysteric. Her face was no longer pale, but red and terrible, he beauty replaced with rage.
“I know how to deal with men like you. You seem to not like me, so you obviously want other men. I’ll just have to send ten of my best men in here to ‘dispose’ of you.” She slammed her helmet back on her head and stormed out of the room, the door ramming shut with a sharp bang.
Jahl heard Mahil chuckling from somewhere, but couldn’t quite see from where. Then he heard another giggle, this time from the little girl presumably. He soon found that the bindings around his arms were being loosened. Jahl looked over to see rats, chewing away at the ropes that held him. The world only seemed to be getting stranger and stranger. Helping rats, demonic children, magical masks, sex as torture, it was all so odd.
When Jahl sat up, he saw Mahil gesturing with demonic magic to make the rats do his bidding. He found out why the little girl was giggling, Mahil was making the rats dance in a strange fashion, al of them in a single line, holding their partner’s shoulders and kicking their legs out as high as they would. It was quite amusing.
“This is Mary! She’s fun and like my dancin’ rats!” The children were obviously having fun watching the rats dance. “I hate to ruin your fun, but I really think we should get out of here.”
”Agreed. Although I would have no trouble at all leaving you here and escaping without a trace.”
“Yes, yes. I understand, you helped me, blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t mean you get the mask.” Jahl rubbed his wrists and got a decent look around the room. It was pretty plain, nothing but tables with rope bindings. The entrance door was about ten feet from where he sat upright on the table.
“What mask?” Came an unsuspected reply from the little girl Mary.
“Don’t worry about it, let’s just get out of here for now.”
“He’s got something my friend wants and he doesn’t wanna share it.” Mahil’s child host began to tear up and his lip began to tremble. Mary seemed to be a couple years older than Mahil, and began to comfort Mahil. Jahl simply rolled his eyes and lifted himself from the table. “Damn I’m hungry.”
Mahil stopped whimpering and spoke, ”There’s plenty of rats.” Jahl ignored the reply and tried the door. Luckily, it was unlocked, either that, or Lillian broke it when she slammed it. Jahl made his way down the dark unlit passageway that led from the entrance to some unknown location. Mahil and Mary were nowhere to be found and Jahl was beginning to worry if Mahil had really left him like he said he could.
Another door came along, Jahl not knowing until he found it the hard way. He tried it as well, and found that it too was unlocked. Obviously, these people were not to worried about their prisoners escaping. Then, Jahl heard voices. There, around the corridor in front of him, was a door, slightly cracked. There was light inside and Jahl snuck up to see in. There was Mahil and Mary, both laughing softly and some puppet that Mahil had obviously made of Jahl. It was dancing much like the rats. The doll had a strange stupid look on its face and Mahil was mimicking Jahl’s voice, saying things like, “Oh, I’m a stupid greedy-pants,’ or ‘blah, blah, blah! I’m stupid!’
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