Welcome Home (solo quest)

[Lord_Byron]

Berick ran a hand across the wooden sign that read “Mantisin.” A smile crept along his face as a chilly breeze ruffled his head of short white hair. The memories that he had of this place, his home, were bittersweet. He let his mind wander to the memories of his childhood as he walked into the small wooden gates of the village. He remembered his parents taking him for walks through the woods and telling him stories of how the village was built by the hands of only half a dozen men. They put in their lives to the task. By the time it was finished, only two of them had survived. One of the two had become sickly a short time later and died of an unknown illness. Thus it was Dean Mantisin that named the village, and thus brought his family here.

Berick was ripped from his thoughts as the smell of burnt wood assaulted his nose. His eyes darted around and he could see the smoldering ruins of several houses. These were houses he knew, that gave shelter to people he had grown up with. He wondered what had happened. As his thoughts swirled around those questions, he found himself wandering towards one of the skeletal houses.

Berick looked around on the ground for any sign of what had happened here. The smell was rancid and made his eyes burn. He wondered if it was less the smell and more the emotions that were welling up inside of him fighting for control of his senses. He knelt down and ran his fingers through the ash. He brought his sooty fingers to his nose and inhaled it. His eyes grew wide. He knew what burned wood smelled like, and more so knew the smell of the ash afterwards. This had not been done with conventional fire. He brought up a fist of the ash and mashed it in his fist. He gritted his teeth as the stood up and let the ash fall to the floor. He brushed his hands on his pants as he walked away from the charred building.

The drunk found himself reaching behind for his pack; the resting place for his alcohol. He pulled out the bottle of Slack Jaw and took a long swig of the bitter liquid. He let out a cough as some of it dribbled off of his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. His pace quickened as he continued to see more of the destroyed homes around him. Even with the alcohol quickly taking its effect, he knew that he would find out the same information as he did at the first site.

“Izzat you Berick?” A scratchy voice called from one of the houses. Berick turned to the voice and saw that it was an old friend of his. The man was old and wrinkled, and his skin seemed to have a grey tone to it. Berick walked up to him, one fist clinched and the other tightly holding the bottle of alcohol.

“It is me, old man.” Berick said in a voice that sounded angrier than he intended. The old man seemed not to notice the tone. When their eyes locked, a moment of understanding passed between them. “What happened here?”

The old man took a deep breath and then went and sat in a chair that had not been totally destroyed. Berick looked around and realized that this rubble had once been the old man’s home. Somehow, fate had decided to preserve the rocking chair rather than the people of this village.

“It happened so quickly, my boy.” He wrung his hands in his lap as he nervously tried to find the right words. Berick noticed that this man looked much older now than he ever had before. When he last saw him, he had been so full of life and vitality, despite his age. But now he seemed simply old and weary. “My son and some of his friends discovered that the illness that swept our village was not a natural one. You know the same illness that killed your Meredith and your children? We found that it was a plague created by magic.”

“Magic?” Berick spat derisively. “That sort of filth never did anyone any good. I don’t understand though. Jaress, why would someone want to bring a plague to this village? We have done nothing to deserve this.”

“You sound so much like a child when you have liquor in your stomach, Berick. When will you give it up?” He asked the question with a tone that was both condescending and hopeful at the same time.

“Tell you what, old man; I will stop drinking when you stop preaching sermons to me.” This made Jaress smile. The old man made himself rock back and forth in the chair.

“I am the only one left, Berick. Everyone else is dead. The wizard that came here brought his foul magic. To make it worse, he used the magic of his to raise our dead ancestors from their graves and do the job for him.” He took a deep breath and let a mental shudder course through him before he continued. “There were a lot more buried in the ground than walking above it. We are not fighters. We had no chance. But still we fought.”

“And?” Berick demanded impatiently.

“We were able to hold of the masses for a while, but then the wizard returned and brought his fire with him. He burned our homes and commanded the creatures that he raised to target the children first. It was in this that destroyed us. The fathers, in watching their children slaughtered, became angry and unstable. They rushed headlong into the hordes and were quickly put down. They stopped thinking with their heads and let emotion kill them. They were demoralized. The wizard is wise in the tactics of battle. He knew what would happen. He destroyed us.”

The news sent a shiver down his spine. Berick looked at the bottle in his hand and debated whether or not to take another drink. He shook his head and returned the bottle to its place in his pack. The wind blew throughout the town seeming to be the only noise for miles. As much as Berick didn’t want to believe it, he knew it was true. There were no sounds, but only the smell of death.

“Why are you alive?” Berick asked in idle curiosity.

“The wizard left a dozen of us. He wanted us to bear a pain that was even more than what our children and grandchildren had to bear. The twelve of us took on the task of burying the dead. The wizard knew that we had not the strength to rebuild the town, and there was no way for us to have children. He wanted us to suffer for no more reason than to suffer. Seven of the twelve died in the task. Their bodies were just too old. Two more died of the grief. The other three went to seek help from nearby towns. A week later their heads were returned to me on a silver plate. I buried them.”

The old man’s eyes released the tears that he had been forcing away. Berick, not knowing what else to do, fell on his knees and wrapped Jaress in an embrace of equal pain. Each was desperate for a friend, and now each had one. Jaress wept harder, and so Berick wept harder. The two of them were the humanization of despair. And neither of them saw the other as any less because them.

[Lord_Byron]

Berick separated from the Jaress after they had both calmed down. He put the old man at arms length, a serious expression coming across his face. The drunk let a hand fall to the hilt of his new sword. Jaress glanced down at the weapon and raised an eyebrow over his right eye. His eyes then turned up questioningly to Berick.

“I learned to use it a short while ago. I was trounced in a bar fight against a man named Valient. The bartender was kind enough to offer me a place to stay as I recovered. I was near to death. When I recovered, he taught me to use this sword. Once I had learned to use it, he gifted it to me.”

Jaress nodded at the explanation. “It is not the sword that matters, but the heart of the wielder. Tell me, Berick; are you strong enough to wield any weapon for a purpose greater than your misery?”

A lump swelled in Berick’s throat. He had never really put any sincere thought into what he would do now that he could use a sword. Since Meredith had died from the illness that he now knew was not of nature’s hand, all he had done with himself was drink himself into endless stupors, and started fights with others, hoping they would end the pain for him.

“What else do I have?” Berick said, feeling very much alone. The drunk had many friends here, some in which he had considered surrogate family. Now they had all been killed. They had all been killed in the same manner as his own family. He had nothing left. Not even the town was in any shape to be rebuilt. There was simply nothing left. It seemed the fates wanted to be sure that there was no hope at all for him.

“You have your heart, my boy.” Berick looked up to the old man. His weathered features that included his wrinkled skin, his nearly bald head with a few strands of gray hair stubbornly hanging on, and his eyes that showed he had seen far too much than he would have liked, looked to change from sullen to intelligent very rapidly. He was fast becoming the old man he had once known. “If you wield that sword by the law of your heart, you will never fail in your task. Do not let your anger contort your emotions. That is a selfish emotion and will only end in your death. Do you know what I ask of you?”

Berick swallowed past the lump that was only proving to grow larger in his throat. “You wish me to avenge this village. You want me to find the wizard and bring justice to what he has done.”

“But not without cause!” The old man’s voice grew louder and stronger. Berick didn’t even realize the man had enough in him to raise his voice above a raspy whisper. It seemed he was wrong. “You cannot go after the wizard with hate in your heart. That will only feed his wicked power. You must find him and discover his reasons for doing what he did. Perhaps it was us that was in the wrong, and in his outrage, felt that we were undeserving of an explanation.”

Berick didn’t know what to say. His head was spinning, but for once it wasn’t from alcohol. He was no warrior, or savior for that matter. He wasn’t a man that bore the courage to confront a wizard of his causes and reasons. Berick saw himself as a simple man, one that only did for himself, now that his family was gone. He couldn’t imagine fighting for a cause beyond his own self-pity.

“I am no warrior, Jaress. I cannot do this.” His eyes studied the ground as though he thought it would suddenly move out from under his feet. In a way, he felt it was already starting to. The life he had known was collapsing about him in a world that threatened to put purpose into a void of a life.

Jaress shook his head, causing the few strands of gray hair to dance atop his otherwise bald head. “Think about it, Berick. You are the only one that was intended to be sick, but did not become sick. Your family was killed by the disease, yet you lived. There is something inside you that keeps you safe from the wizard’s taint. You need to venture out and discover what it is.”

Berick kept his eyes on the ground. He took the old man’s words to heart, but something inside of him just wanted to deny it all. The drunk took a few steps back away from Jaress. He wasn’t sure yet what he wanted to do. In one sense, it was his duty to avenge the people of his village, but at the same time, he didn’t want such responsibility.

“I am not long for this world, my boy. I have precious little time before I join our friends and family in the world beyond. But I want to pass knowing that there will be somebody strong enough to bear the burden of hope. Seek out this wizard. Discover his reasons for doing what he did. Give me a reason to rest in peace. More, though, give your family closure in their resting places.”

Berick took a deep breath. He found himself nodding without thinking about what he was committing himself to. Jaress smiled a grandfatherly smile before he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Berick watched him with sorrowful eyes. It wasn’t more than a few moments before the old man’s breath turned shallow, and soon ceased altogether. Berick knelt down in front of the old man and once again wept.