Captain on the Wind
05-02-12, 10:04 PM
The long road stretched out to the horizon before the exhausted drifter. He tried to focus his vision but it just blurred. He wobbled with each step and his body swayed from side to side. The drifter's every step kicked up clouds of dust that were sent sailing by the low breeze that did not cool the tired man.
The sun burned high above the cloudless sky and the young drifter had been walking for what felt like days. The Jack-of-all-Trades had not felt the passing hours, instead every second felt like an eternity.
The wanderer walked as he began to mumble.
"Why did I listen to him?" he said in a grizzled, parched, voice.
"I bet that whole thing about the rum oasis was a lie... You sleep with a warlock's sister and your whole world falls apart... I don't see what the big deal was... Not like I slept with his wife t-" The drifter stopped mumbling and looked up from the ground.
"Never mind... I deserve this..." he said continuing his slow march.
Gale stopped lifting his feet from the ground, instead letting them drag as he walked. His head hung low, his eyes closed, hoping for his torment to end. But before he realized what happened, the drifter fell fast and hit his head on the hard ground.
A twig jutted out beneath his foot and the drifter used the little energy he had left to be angry.
Fucking twig... Why is there a twig on this shitty road... he thought to himself.
"Why is there a road this shitty and this pointless?" Gale asked the sky, rolling over to his back, "I hate this damn road!"
Before the drifter finished yelling the words, the twig that peeked from the ground rushed out into the sky, revealing the powerful, thick roots it connected to. The root hung over the wide-eyed drifter for a moment, before soaring at him with alarming speed.
The drifter barely managed to dodge the root as it crashed into the ground, leaving a small crater where the wanderer had been. Gale scrambled to his feet, trying to locate the source of the magic, but could not.
"What!?" He yelled, as the root rose once more, looming ominously above the drifter's head, "What does this retarded, stupid, mother-fucking, shitty road have against me!? Did I sleep with your wife and sister too?!" he yelled, as three more twigs burst from the ground, sending rocks and dirt flying in all directions.
"I hate this road..." the drifter said with a blank expression.
As the Jack-of-all-Trades muttered another insult, the roots all retreated underground. The drifter stood in place, too scared to move and unsure what to expect.
Gale took one step back and a roar resonated from below his feet. The road beneath him moved and writhed in anger. The ground around him seemed to try to enclose the wanderer as he struggled desperately to escape it.
The earth shook and a final, gargantuan root emerged from the ground.
I. HATE. YOU. a sinister voice echoed.
Gale's jaw dropped and the shadow of the giant root fell above him. He scrambled out of its path of destruction just in time, rolling to the side and jumping to his feet.
The drifter was used to combat in the sand, though never against such a foe...
"Can a shitty piece of plant be a foe?" Gale mumbled to himself as he scratched his head looking at the root.
When the root began to rise, another bone shacking roar echoed from below and the root grew two times the size. The massive plant charged towards the wanderer as he ran hopelessly away from it. The root carved a path of destruction as it chased after the drifter, digging into the ground with ear-splitting noise as it went.
Gale changed his path drastically, thinking the tremendous plant could not follow him easily. As the thought crossed the drifter's mind, he looked back to see how much distance he had gained only to realize the root was not only closer but gaining in speed.
The drifter yelped and began to scream as he ran. He knew he could not run for much longer so decided to make a final stand. Gale drew his hidden dagger and looked back at the enormous root. He screamed again, dropping his blade as he ran.
"Please! Stop! I'll give you three gold!" He begged the root, "I'll paint your house! I'll find a good man for your troubled elder daughter! I'll feed your dog! Anything!! I'll love you forever!!"
The drifter continued to run, but the thunderous sound of the root chasing him subsided. The drifter turned to look at the root which hovered in place, as though confused by the drifter's words.
"I'll..." Gale spoke, unsure that something so simple could be the answer, "I love you." he said definitively.
The monstrous root shrunk, as its tip turned red.
Blushing? he thought, Ehh, whatever, stranger things have happened...
The root bent low and Gale pet its tip which turned a brighter shade of red. The root retreated back into the ground as the earth shook once more. Gale looked around and felt a sudden surge of relief. He began to walk away when another quake came from below.
The root burst out of another hole behind the Jack-of-all-Trades, who shut his eyes tight, thinking he was about to die. When he realized he was still breathing, Gale turned to see the root facing him once more, only this time it had a flask around the tip.
Gale took the flask and smelled the contents. His face immediately lit up in jubilation and the thirsty drifter drank in long gulps with his head tilted back and the flask at his lips. The drifter finishes drinking with a long sigh.
"I LOVE you," he laughed, patting the root, "you great rum loving thing you!"
The root danced happily in place and bid Gale to get on top. The Jack-of-all-Trades jumped onto the root as he would a horse and the plant made its way to the edge of the magical area, where the enchantment lost its effect.
On a cliff overlooking the enchanted field, a befuddled warlock stood scratching the bald spot on his head.
"My sister... My wife... My enchanted road..." Cydney Oliver sighed to himself, "I guess sometimes man's voice is a weapon, a shield, a lover and a source of wonder... Everything ends up falling for this guy... It must be the voice and the hair..." he lamented as his hand squeaked on his shinning head.
absentwizard
05-03-12, 12:36 PM
In the great garden of the magistrate, a supplicant walked down the green-shale path. This man had snuck in during the cloudy night; he sought an audience to air grievances. This vast garden was built with secret ways, some are for viewing and some are for traps. That is why the magistrate's home had no guards; any burglar would sooner reach heaven.
The peasant came to a beautiful pond. The hazy moon shone on the flat waters. On the shores beneath the weeping willows, water-lillies hung their buds bashfully. The many gold-fishes sleep unaware, hiding their heads under the lilly-pads. The man's eyes skimmed over the scene unseeing; his upright thoughts are bent upon justice.
Across the wooden bridge over the pond, two red paper lanterns burned on pillars. Around them midges danced in the still air, their wings glimmering in the crimson light. The peasant stopped to look at the candles. He marvelled at how they did not burn down. "Such wonders the magistrate has," he thought, "a great and merciful man he must be."
In the bamboo grove, lantern light doesn't reach. The ground was covered in murky shadows. Countless leaves above speckled the moon-light; the light-rays shift slowly in a light wind. As the peasant walked down the green-shale path, he tripped over a hidden shoot and fell. "The gardener is lazy and blind," he thought, "It is dangerous to leave bamboo there."
When he stood, a raindrop fell on his nose; water music now played on bamboo leaves. Soon, he was soaked through like a drowned chicken; his wet tunic chilled bone-deep in the wind. The path in the grove wound turn after turn. In every direction were endless green stalks. Rain-water pooled upon the green-shale path; the man's cloth shoes became damp and cold.
Shivering, the man walked on for an hour. His fire of hope and purpose guttered. "Is there no end to this wretched green grove? I could have circled the city by now." The sound of his cursing had just faded when a bamboo shoot got under his foot. The peasant lifted his head from thin mud. He saw the shoot growing up in the rain.
Stones were turned aside as myriad shoots grew; the green-shale path now filled with young bamboo. The peasant fled stumbling back up the path. He slowly found his way blocked by new stalks. When he tried to squeeze between in the gaps, he got nine steps before he became stuck. The heavy rain pounded down on his head, inside of which now lacked thoughts of justice.
"Oh merciful gods, what is happening? What green-shale path disappears in one rain?"
"Oh merciful gods, I beg of you now! Rescue me from this frightful, deathly place!"
"Oh merciful gods, if you smile at me, I promise to offer incense daily!"
"Oh merciful gods, I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"
The supplicant's spirit rose from his corpse; he had suffered in the grove for four days. The black rain-clouds vanished immediately. The green-shale path was again unbroken, meandering between the sunlit stalks. The new spirit drifted along this path; in thirty paces he had left the grove. He looked up and saw a richly-clothed girl, who said "I am Iila, this grove's reaper."
"You have trespassed in the magistrate's home. For that crime, you deserve a burglar's fate. You spoke ill and called me lazy and blind. For that, you deserve a blasphemer's fate. You were caught with the Circled Path Method. You were held with the Wood-Nourishing Rain. I gave you four days to apologize. In the end you were stupid and stubborn."
The man protested that this was unjust, that he was given no indication. "Unjust?" the small girl asked, looking wretched. She raised her hands and the chains that bound them. "Was it just when I was bound by the grove, to serve as its mastiff, its reaper-girl? Is it just that I am starved at all times, forced unwillingly to slay people for my life?"
"Your corpse feeds the grove that is my prison. So long as it lives, I shall stand guard here. I must remember that I was once human. I must not slay people without just cause. Contrived crimes are all that I have left these days. Please, don't take this last sanity away. You are now dead and hell soon comes for you, let your spirit's last act be good and kind."
A hell's envoy came and chained the spirit. They passed the red lanterns that burned always. They skirted the pond where the lillies bloomed. They passed the gate where the man's wife sat crying. Later, the lecherous landlord claimed her. The man arrived in the Blasphemer's Hell. He spends odd days in the Hell of Burglars. This story of justice is now ended.
The lesson today: Always be polite.
Etheryn
05-10-12, 06:04 AM
“Evil road? Fools! I’ll show ye all the truth!”
“Oh Dan, thy arrogance! Naivety of youth!"
Their warnings ignored, our hero took off
Boldly, proud, fate to be lost and forgot
"I walked a day plus half and ‘tis here I stand?”
At the very start of the road stood Dan
Doomed forever to walk that endless path
Knew he not that the road could laugh
On and on he tread ‘til no longer he could
Day one hundred marked by notch in wood
Starved and thirsty, he fell before the tree
“Mark hundreds more, Dan! Cursed are ye!”
***
Thump.
The loser fell flat on his back. Sprawled and truly drank under the table, Dan had no choice but to concede. “You—hic—you win! Jerk!”
“Ha! Shall I fetch a saucer of milk for ye to lap up, ye overgrown pussy cat?” heckled Alfonse. The stout dwarf knew the limits of his iron gut, where poor Dan, well… He often confused capability with ambition.
The ale chugging competition was the opener, and with inhibitions lowered by litres of lager, they found no problem with besting the other in true tests of skill. Who could make the biggest stack of chairs? And then stand on it? The two laughed and cheered and continued their tournament of challenges, of dares, and silly games.
They rolled around the Old Horn Tavern of Radasanth, the watering hole for all kinds of adventurers and traders and weary soldiers. The place was tolerant of rowdy men but today business was slow and sure enough the duo of Dan and Alfonse was beginning to test the publican’s patience.
“Oi! Simmer down, you pair of twits!” he snapped, barely lifting his eyes from the terry towel and empty steins he mopped clean.
“Hear that, Alfonse?” Dan mumbled, rolling onto his belly and swaggering upright.
“That I did!” Alfonse said, pulling his blade-laden bracers tighter.
“He told me to sit down! Funny, huh? Can barely—
Ka-thwump. Dan tackled the table which they’d drank on and shattered it to splinters and firewood, having been offended by its presence. That was what it looked like, at least.
“Stand up? I get it! Ha! Hahaha!” Alfonse joined in, slopping half the contents of his drink all over the timber floorboards, adding a fresh stain like hundreds of others.
That just about done it.
“Alright, children. Time out,” the publican barked with a glare, slamming both hands to the bar and rattling glasses and bottles. “Your coin isn’t worth your presence. Leave!”
Alfonse narrowed his brow. Dan giggled and picked an inch long splinter from his cheek, then rolled around some more amidst the wreckage of the publican’s furniture. He saw the tavern in double vision, all rustic lacquered stools and rickety tables on a floor too small to fit a weekend of drinking men.
“Ye would raise yer voice at me, sir?” Alfonse dared. The publican should’ve known better.
“Here we go,” Dan said, stifling his own laughter to realise what came next.
“That I would you stinking dwarf! You won’t be the first drunken lout I’ve had to toss out! Go!” the publican shouted. He stood out from behind the bar, untied his apron and threw it over a chair, unbuttoned his vest, and rolled the sleeves up on his starched white tunic.
Dan rolled over to get another look at the publican. Even through his blurry, ale-fogged eyes, Dan took good measure of how hard the publican was. A needle-thin moustache, a granite jaw, and forearms bristling with wiry black hair and military tattoos.
Now is probably the time to figure out how to stand again, Dan thought. Alfonse always gets in fights when he drinks. Except…this time, he might lose.
“Stinking dwarf, eh? Stinking!? That’s a challenge if I ever heard one!” Alfonse roared, tossing the half-empty stein at the wall. It clattered and sprayed over the crackling fire place, coming to rest above the mantle, on the tip of the tavern’s namesake; a single great tusk-like horn of some long dead beast.
“Last chance, fool!” the publican warned, stepping slowly towards Alfonse until he towered over him.
“Men! Settle! Ya see…hic, burrrp…this is actually quite unfair. The burly owner of this fine establishment—” Dan started.
“Quit yer yap boy-o!” Alfonse snapped, waving a hand to quiet his friend. His bushy ginger brows and triple braided forest of red beard shook with rage, as he glared up at the publican.
“—Is actually quite a bit taller than you, quite a bit less drunk than you, and quite a bit more likely to stomp your face and mine both,” Dan finished. “He even rolled his sleeves up. Let’s go and play games somewhere else!”
“Listen to your baldy friend here, dwarf,” the publican warned, now gripping a sharply fractured lump of the table Dan broke earlier. He walloped it menacingly against the palm of his calloused hand.
“Pfft,” Alfonse spat, and turned away from the publican. With a cranky shove of his foot, he cleared some debris and made for the double saloon doors. “Let’s play somewhere else, Dan. Where the ale doesn’t taste like piss.”
Out into the balmy Radasanthian night went Dan and Alfonse, and they staggered about weaved about their festivities in the street. Their games went on mostly undisturbed, until when seeing who could walk for the longest with their eyes closed through the busiest part of town—The Bazaar, where hundreds shopped and traded by torch and starlight in far too cramped quarters—it all went wrong.
“Fool! You fool! Look what you’ve done!”
“I’m not supposed to look! That’s the whole point!” Dan pleaded, showing the palm of his hands and waving a refusal.
Something extraordinary happened. The entire Bazaar went quiet. All of its autonomous noise and chittering din and hawkers’ cries, each sound independent of the other, yet each contributing to a tide of noise no more stoppable than the ocean itself. Silence. Oppressive, weighty, awkward silence.
“Oh…my,” he breathed, looking down at his boot, which just crushed something he didn’t quite understand.
A black cowled figure, solid and wide of shoulder, was prostrate before Dan. White gloved hands shook and trembled over the flattened remains of a flower wreath. Roses, tulips, petunias, all woven together and now a wilting mess. Dan pulled his boot up and pried a piece of paper wedged in the cracked soles of his boot.
“Don’t read it, boy-o,” Alfonse warned. In an instant he’d snapped to sobriety. “Don’t dare read it. Give it back to the man.”
“I’m…sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to—
“Cursed! Cursed! You are cursed!” howled the figure, as it remained fixated upon the trampled wreath. Quite obviously, the man beneath the robe was in tears.
“I’ll pay for another! I swear it, I’ll pay for ten more!” Dan offered, now feeling horribly guilty and somewhat sick at the finish of their innocent game. “I’m sorry!”
“Your words mean nothing! Nothing, you cursed thing!”
Now on the defensive, Dan turned his attention from the robed figure and wreath, to the assembly of onlookers. It was getting beyond intimidating and the oddity of so many strangers gawking was unexplainable.
"Anyone wanna tell me what the Hell they're lookin' at?" he snapped, rolling a challenging stare over the crowd like a wave.
Tumbleweed would've been appropriate. A cricket chirped in its absence.
"Anyone at all? Any takers?" Dan pushed, with a warning wink to anyone who dared meet his eye. The booze in his belly made him more belligerent than usual.
"Settle, Dan," Alfonse said. "We're going."
"Rubbish. You had your turn for a dummy spit less than an hour ago in Old Horn," Dan said. "I'm gonna have my turn right now."
Alfonse sighed and turned around. He shook his head, tightened his bracers and fidgeted with his leather vest. It looked like he was simply adjusting his clothes, but really, the dwarf was priming each hidden, spring-loaded blade in the folds beneath. "Carry on then," he muttered in resignation.
Dan swayed a little on the spot. "Well? Look away, ya sticky-beaks. My business isn't yours!"
Just like that the crowd turned away and resumed their bustle. "Heh. How's that for a tantrum, eh, Alfonse?"
"They just got bored," Alfonse countered, one arm folded and the hand of the over covering his face in mock embarassment.
"Pfft," Dan said, rolling his eyes. "As if."
"Give it back to him," Alfonse reminded.
"What? Give what?" Dan asked. He'd almost forgotten the sniffs and cries of the robed figure and turned back to it. Dan took a deep breath and relaxed his fists. He'd barely noticed the tension wracking his body and popping white of his knuckles.
"The paper!" Alfonse said.
Dan took a knee and stared at a lump in the dirt which he felt was probably worth a whole lot more than him right now. "I'm sorry, Mister. I didn't mean to." He still didn't know what he'd done and offered up the tiny ball of parchment. Dan made out some scribbled ink upon it.
The robed man gasped at the crumple Dan made of the parchment and snatched it away. He considered it awhile, rolling it in his hands, and the lamentations continue. The robed figure put the paper to the dirt and soiled the pristine white cotton of his gloves while smoothing it out. He drew up in realisation. "I...I can't read it. You...it's gone!"
Dan quit his knee and stepped back. He was growing tired of the melodramatics but not out of insensitivity. The sorry tank just ran dry of friendly juice and there was nothing left to say.
I'm done, he reasoned. Well, maybe not. He'd caught glimpse of an anchor and chain tattoo, wiry forearm hair, and a pencilled moustache.
The robed figure reached for Dan and grasped air as if practicing how to best go about strangulation. Dan's eyes narrowed to wary slits, his mouth drawn tight in a defensive sneer. The publican looked up from his grovel before Dan, upper lip quaking bloodshot eyes all puffy with grief.
"You see that?" Dan asked Alfonse.
"Aye," Alfonse replied. "I did. Apologies from me and the lad, Mister."
Dan and Alfonse tossed coin to the crumpled heap beneath the robe. They'd had enough of a killjoy for one night and didn't need to discuss their agreement on starting no more fights or arguements. Groups of boisterously loud traders fell silent as they passed and resumed their business once the pair passed, like even speaking within earshot of them was a bad omen.
"Of all people," Dan said in disbelief. He waved his arms about with exasperation.
"Of all people," Alfonse repeated.
"What the Hell did I just do?" Dan puzzled as they wandered to an dingy old inn. Working girls, stray cats, garbage piled in the streets; all that kind of class. They'd been slumming it to lose heat from recent adventures.
"He's a grievin' man," Alfonse explained in a sombre tone. "Ye don't know?"
"Clearly I don't. I told about a thousand jerks who don't know their own business that I don't know," Dan said. "I told him I don't know!"
Alfonse grabbed Dan's forearm and whirled him round. "Remember yer funny little robe ye wore a while back? All black with yer beads and not so good in the heat?"
Dan thought back to the disguise he'd used when sneaking about months ago to rendezvous with Alfonse and rearm. He'd been told somewhere it was the traditional garb of some long forgotten, obscure, unknown and unnamed religion. Or cult.
"Yeah," Dan nodded. He pulled up a seat on an empty wine barrel and watched two vagrants slug it out across the way. "I get it."
"Not quite, boy-o," Alfonse continued. He stuffed a tobacco pipe, struck a match, and shook an ember from his beard. Still drunk, it seemed, as Alfonse could usually light a pipe on horseback at full gallop.
"What isn't there to get? I trod on some church flowers," Dan said and shrugged his shoulders. He wasn't inconsiderate of others and their beliefs, but this was all so blown out of proportion and such a rotten damper on an otherwise joyous night.
"I said he was a grievin' man," Alfonse said. "He's there in his cloak every night, without fail, and has been for years, boy-o."
"And?" Dan asked, getting impatient.
"He's grievin' for someone he loved. Someone who died in that same spot where he sits in the dirt every bloody night," Alfonse explained, stoking his pipe and blowing great billows to the wind.
An Empire guardsman trundled past on horseback and Alfonse raised his pipe in a faux salute. The guardsman offered a curt nod and cantered on, blind of the bounty on the heads of the men he'd just ignored. Dan, who usually freaked at the approach of anyone with the potential to jail him, didn't even notice. He examined the palms of his hands and lived for a moment in his mind alone, miles away from everything.
"We gonna go?" Alfonse asked after finishing the last puff.
"And what do the flowers and paper mean?" Dan continued as if he'd just paused a phrase to catch breath.
Alfonse quirked an eyebrow. "Rumour is the flowers are like the headstone and the mourner carries it everywhere. Maybe even think of 'em as ashes. The paper, well, that's their last record of name..."
"And I crushed the Hell out of it while I was getting pissy at all those jerks staring at me," Dan said. "He said I'm cursed."
"Ye bloody are cursed," Alfonse scoffed. "Not once can ye get through a day without stuffin' up!"
"It's hard not to be a little depressed by that," Dan admitted. "I made a grown man cry. That's gotta be bad luck, right?"
"Don't be toppin' your night off with thoughts so sour, boy-o. Add this bit o' bad luck on top of all yer other bad luck already. Good times! Happy days!"
"I'm going to sleep, Alfonse," Dan said. "Gettin' tired. Night's over."
"Ha! I win again boy-o!" Alfonse whooped. "Out drink ye any day of the week. See ya another day, eh?"
"Count on it," Dan said.
They shook hands and parted ways. Alfonse zigged and zagged down a misty, dark alleyway, tripping over refuse and empty milk crates, all the while whistling a sombre tune that sounded like the soundtrack to a ghost story or a funeral. Dan trudged up the frail stairway to his room, kicked open the door, and flopped face down on the lumpy mattress to snored an innocent, dreamless sleep.
***
"You," the publican said with calm, calculated malice. "Get. Out."
Dan raised his hands in surrender, bowed his head, and stepped to the bar of Old Horn Tavern.
"I'm sober and I'm sorry. Thought you deserved to hear some sincerity, y'know...when I don't have a skinful of booze," Dan said.
The publican raised an eyebrow while he finished the head of a black ale, and slid it down the counter to a dishevelled figure at the far end. Someone hacked up phlegm and spit into a bucket.
Dan pulled up a seat, still supplicant and looking where the publican's feet ought to be, not out of fear but out of respect. He plonked a purse of coin on the counter when the publican turned around to reach for rye whiskey from the top shelf.
"For your furniture and flowers," Dan said.
"My flowers?" the publican said, busying himself over pouring drinks.
"Your furniture too," Dan added.
The publican chuckled with disdain. He served the drinks, and leaned his elbows on the bar, coming in close so Dan could see the sneer on his lips and smell the stink of his breath.
"Think this insult of a tip makes up for it? You trash my bar, follow me into the street, and stomp the last living memory I got of my daughter into nothing? And get away with it?"
The locals turned on their stools to look and barely batted an eyelid. Either the publican was prone to blow-ups or they just were too busy with their own baggage to care. Dan raised an eyebrow and ran a palm over his head. It squeaked awkwardly.
Dan choked on his words. "I..."
"You're sorry. I get it. You know what else you are?" the publican continued on.
"What?" Dan said passively. He understood the publican's need for tirade. He was mad. Dan copped it on the chin.
"Cursed. Told you before and I'll tell ya again. I swear it by the memory you crumbled with your careless boot," the publican spat. "Someday, when you're alone and least expecting it, the road you walk on will never end. You'll walk and walk until your feet grind into stumps."
"Whoa now, buddy," Dan said. He shot upright and returned the publican's ire.
"Your skin will shrivel on your skull and you'll waste to a shadow and die. The very fuckin' road will loathe you to be near you. I'd be surprised if it doesn't open up and consume you just to be rid of your fuckin’ presence for a moment."
Dan tapped a rhythm on his thigh and whistled. "Really?"
"Really," the publican said. "And then, when you're finally marched to death, you'll wake up to find yourself still walking. Then you'll die again. Then you'll walk. And die. Forever. You are fuckin' cursed."
Dan turned on his heel and walked for the door. He stopped, holding it halfway open, and voiced a second thought. He pointed to a quiet suit sitting alone at a table near the unlit fireplace, nose down, contemplating an empty spirit bottle.
"You think I'm cursed?" Dan asked.
"Pretty much," the suit nodded. He didn't bother to see who asked the question.
"What about you?" Dan asked of a sick looking man who was busy coughing into a rag between sips. "What do you think, huh?"
"Cursed."
More and more Dan surveyed the patrons of Old Horn Tavern with the publican as witness. It was unanimous.
Dan shook his head and clicked his tongue in disapproval. "Right-o then."
Dan slammed the pair of saloon doors against their hinges as hard as he could on the way out, and one came loose and crashed to the floor. He had no intention of making apologies now.
"How'd it go?" Alfonse asked, shimmying off the stoop and hurrying his stumpy legs to keep up with Dan's determined walk. "Shite, eh?"
"You heard," Dan said. "I'll show 'em."
"I doubt ye should try," the dwarf warned. "Simmer yer temper. Sure, ye got chewed out by an angry bar tender. So what?"
"Bloke said I was cursed! So did that harem of losers," Dan said, taking lefts and rights over cobblestones and dirt tracks that meandered between patchy shanties of corrugated iron and scrap wood. They came to a forking intersection of two cobblestone roads.
"I call ye cursed every other day," Alfonse reminded.
"You don't count. Look, man. I wouldn't give a toss usually," Dan said, pausing to tap his chin and think. He felt an unstoppable urge to go left again. "But no one throws my sincerity back in my face when I've done all I could to make up for a little accident."
"And what do you plan to do?" Alfonse said. The dwarf slowed down, stopped and hesitated.
"I'll prove 'em wrong," Dan said with gusto. "You coming?"
Alfonse shook his head, folded his arms stubbornly, and turned around. "Not a chance."
"Superstitious, eh?" Dan scoffed with amusement. "I'm not gonna wait here all day. It's getting busy."
He stepped aside for a breaking stream of busy looking people setting about their work for the day. Mothers corralled hordes of unruly children, lazy guardsmen shot craps on the side of the road, and bakers set out of the first loaves of the day to cool.
"See this bit o' land, right here? Right now?" Alfonse asked. His stubby sausage finger pointed at an imagined mark on the ground.
"I see it," Dan said.
"Go satisfy yer bloody naive young self, boy-o," Alfonse grumbled. "If ye prove 'em wrong I'll see ya here come sunrise."
"Shake on it," Dan said, grinning wryly. Another challenge. "You're not gonna win this one."
They shook. Dan knew what he was looking for now.
***
Dan sat in a sagged heap and rattled his last breaths. His knife, once a featherweight in his powerful hand, now required the other just to scrape a final notch in the bark of a towering oak. Feebly, shaking, groaning with frustration, he made a hundredth mark and tossed his blade aside.
Dan, in his deliriously exhausted, absolutely fragile state, swam with memories of how he'd come here. He remembered gambling his life with Alfonse at the fork in the road. He should've gone right and tagged along with that damnably wise dwarf. Instead, too cocky to know better, Dan fatally chose the opposite. He left the city limits and walked the highway east. He wandered from the shoulder of the main road, trudged on a while, and after a quick detour found the tree.
This tree, for some reason, stood out from all others. Dan knew it was the eldest. A sentinel. It was the authority above its peers that would judge if the road before it would be the catalyst of Dan's curse or his absolvement from it. Something in his young mind of minds told him that it had to be this road, before this very tree, that would bring the truth. Dan followed the urge.
The tree was some indeterminate distance along a paved shortcut through to the highlands. It was private and secret from all the cattle wagons and highway bandits, where he could test the publican's curse without interruption. Except somewhere along the way, while he arrogantly proclaimed his righteousness and his victory in the bet with Alfonse, the publican, and patrons of Old Horn Tavern...
Somewhere along the way the road closed into an endless loop. It shed its start, cannibalised its middle, and abandoned its end. Every blade of grass became static, the shapes in clouds repeated like wallpaper and it swallowed Dan up. The road vanished from Althanas like it never existed and the hillsides covered where it should've been. On that road he was forced to walk indefinitely until his boots wore out to nothing and his feet blistered and leathered. He ran out of water and it never rained enough. He starved, and the berries were too rare to nourish him.
He remembered screaming at the sky and trying to fight through the scrub and get off that damned road. Inexplainably, every path he forced by smashing through the underscrub led back to the road anyway. He could've sworn he heard someone laughing at him, in the distance, from above, from behind and sometimes all around. A phantom heckler jeering at Dan's misfortune.
Dan's vision narrowed to a black tunnel. He collapsed from a sit to a sprawl, reached his gnarled and spindly fingers to a sliver of light between the mocking limbs of that damned, ancient oak, and sighed. Death wasn't scary. He'd died after day thirty, then again at seventy four, and now his expiries came quicker. Day one hundred.
The road, the demonic and wicked thing, had a voice. "Mark hundreds more, Dan! Cursed are ye!"
Dan knew the voice was the road itself. The very pavers clattered together to make a human sound, preternatural and otherworldy. It sounded awfully like the publican.
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