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matociquala has double dog dared us to post the awfullest, grottiest, ancientest piece of juvenilia you still have a word processor that will open for International embarass yourself as an artist day.
And well hell. Why not?
Suffering Sappho, i'll tell you why not. It's AWFUL. dear Eris. I was trying to tag it for the digusting over-use of italics and I had to flee.
It's got it all! purple prose, awful dialogue, hyphenated names, only 2% of the worldbuilding on the page, and what did make it there didn't get explained... and an incredibly arrogant heroine with a distinct adoration of the pretentious! best of all, it's Sword and Sorcery!
Oh, and final warning - I wrote this firmly in my I wanna write JUST LIKE TANITH LEE fangirl fangirl fangirl phase. I love Tanith, don't get me wrong. but wow what was I thinking.
5000 words of PAIN. and I'll use the first sentence as my Lj-cut so you know better than to click it. ain't I kind?
The third day after Az-Arila's Ordeal dawned scarlet and salmon, and the aftertaste of exile still stung. Her legs were stiff and swollen, unused to the rigors of walking all day. Her hair loved its bits of moss and twigs so well that her wooden comb could not dismiss them completely. The plain linen of her gown held the damp that had abandoned her now stale rations.
She ran out of water before breakfast, and the power of the waves and rain rose inside her, questing for its like. She followed the sense to fresh water and knelt in the rocky ground to fill her waterskin. A rustle of leaves failed to warn her, but the reflection of a bit of brass in the morning sun caught her eye. A man stood there, wearing his wealth in brass studs on his boiled leather cuirass, stained with sweat and scarred by blades. Silver finger rings strung on a braided leather cord outnumbered the gold in his collection.
"Did you think to take my water?" he asked.
"Yours?"
"From the stream," he said, pointing at her skin.
"Would a missing draught harm you, then?"
"Most sorely. A draught taken is gone."
"Until the rains. But no doubt you intend to claim ownership of the weather as well."
His brows came together at the insult. "You dare," the man said, and pointed. The bandit’s henchmen boiled out of the brush, rushing at her. Rough hands grasped Az-Arila on all sides.
The skin fell from her grasp and sighed out its water at her feet before a grimy bootheel ground it into the dirt. Rough hands grasped her arms, too tightly. Someone grabbed her by her long hair. She was wrestled to her feet, bathed in the stink of rotten meat breath and beer sweat from the men all around her.
The flame of sorcery rose with her anger as a grubby hand groped at her breast.
"That is enough," said Az-Arila, and the men fell away, howling and sobbing. One fell in the stream and saw fit to remain there, hands in the soothing current. His fellows joined him, bathing their hands and whimpering at their blisters.
The leader of the band scowled at his minions, flailing in the stream. "My distress at your doubt of me was enough to move them, alas," and the leader smiled again, full of charm and courtesy. "They could not know that we are all powerless against your gifts."
Az-Arila nodded, and bent to retrieve her waterskin.
The bandit leader moved forward. "You must let me replace--"
Her sharply upraised hand quelled him, but he did not flinch. Arila felt the winds rise in her until they scoured the dirt away from the sides of the bag.
"I shall have to go a ways upstream, so I may take more of your water."
"Take as much as you like," said the leader.
"I did not ask," replied the magicianess.
#
Darus the bandit, now gallant as a prince, begged to be allowed to accompany her safely to the city to erase his earlier discourtesy. He offered her the use of a fine yellow horse, slender in the leg, with an arching neck and tassels of blue on her tack. The bandit crew yelped as they scrambled into their soft saddles, but rode as well without hands on reins as most did with. Arila did not forgive enough to soothe their hurts.
One did not suffer burns and gripped the reins of his gelding in one hand, riding less well than his bandit brothers. A youth with pale hair, his arms burnt from the sun, adjusted the leather loops these bandits used to hold their feet. Four finger rings graced the cord on his neck—meager, for a robber’s fortune--and the boiled leathers he wore were drab and unscarred compared to the gaudy, damaged examples of the rest. He caught her eyes on him and looked away quickly, but drew his eyes back to see if she was still looking.
She was. The flame in his breast drew her eyes first--meager and unheeded, but there.
“It is fine land in these parts,” the bandit leader said. “Good soil, regular rain, a bountiful crop. Do you travel on an errand, with no attendants?”
“I need attendants?”
Darus did not look at her hair. “A road traveled alone . . .”
“Means no one chooses where I go.” Arila bent to grasp a leather loop, too long for her legs. She fussed with adjusting the length until she could raise herself out of the padded cushion of the saddle.
“A fine thing, to see the world and adventure. A fine life. But the time comes when you must settle down,” the bandit observed.
“And you have ambitions to become a farmer, when you forsake the glory of the road? She shall miss you.”
Darus missed Arila’s scowl and laughed, showing off even, yellowed teeth.
Arila looked for the youth.
“Part of me envies you, fresh on an adventure. You will see so much of the world in—a year?”
“Ten.” The bandit prince Darus did not hear the steely anger in her reply.
“So long as all that?”
“Yes.”
Arila resumed gazing at the palomino boy. Darus saw where her sight lay. The sun shone plots and revenge into Darus’s eyes.
#
“This is the way to the city,” Darus proclaimed, waving his arm to the northern road. The sun cast long shadows behind them, and Az-Arila could hear the jingling tack and shuffling of hooves, an occasional groan from a bandit after a day of hard riding. She did not groan. She wished she could cry.
“I understand that our roads part here,” she said.
“Alas, yes. But perhaps we shall meet again, on another road. We are sometimes in the business of trade, and travel far.” Darus’s smile was wide, golden, false.
Arila nodded and slid off her horse, biting her tongue against the urge to cry out. Every ounce of her will kept her walking straight and true, ignoring the complaints of her legs and back. She did not raise a hand in farewell as she walked away from the bandit and his band, leaving Darus to fidget on his horse.
Finally she heard the cacophony of their departure to the east, and she allowed herself a rest in the long shadows by a clump of bushes. They held unripe berries, promising a feast to the travelers of a few weeks from now, but providing only a mocking decoration for Arila.
She doubted she would make it to the city in the hour’s walk the bandit prince had promised. She doubted she could even get to her feet. She would sit near the bushes while her body finished turning to shrieking, agonized stone. If she could make it to the city, she could seek the Ivory Court and gain healing and rest for three nights, and then they would spit her back to the road and her Adeptus Ordeal.
Her Ordeal? How amusing. The Truthspeaker must have harbored a secret hate to punish her so. Or...a secret envy festering in the heart of a Master magus would not be different from the open envy of the Apprentices, Journeymen and Adepts she had lived with. She could not bring herself to believe that any Master would be petty enough for jealousy, that the Truthspeaker in particular wanted to force Arila to ten years of homeless wandering.
Self-pity was the impetus for action. She scrambled to her feet and limped up the road, determined to at least sleep in a bed that night. The frogs sang as the sun fell.
#
There was no city on that road. Az-Arila, Journeyman magicianess of the Ivory City, that most ancient and revered stronghold of the Shadowed Masters, had been duped by a brigand with dung on his boots.
There were no farms, no villages, no travelers. She had been alone for hours and never emerged far enough from her bitterness to see it until she had to strain her eyes looking for a place to camp. Now her boots were soaked with the brackish water that sogged the ground as she tried to find a dry place. She could starve on the road before reaching any city. She could drown in a mud puddle. She could trip over a root and fall headlong over a cliff.
“Enough,” she said, and called the flame from within her, letting it grow and swell into light from her hand. She turned in a full circle and surveyed her surroundings. Long tendrils of moss hung from the gnarled fingers of trees, strangling them, dragging them down into poisonous looking green-skimmed water. Miserable clumps of bushes held fast along hummocks of higher ground. She had come too far from the road. The trail of her footsteps led back, and she growled in disgust as she turned to follow them.
A sharp, lancing pain in her neck made her gasp. She clapped her hand to the spot, screamed as she felt the moist death of the insect that had stung her, then brought her hand forth to examine the grisly remains in her palm. She choked and gagged, and scrabbled to pull the stinger out of her neck. More forms came, swarming within her sphere of light, as long as her thumb, seeking their prey.
Arila extinguished her light and ran, picking up the hem of her muddied robe. She forced the flame within her to shrink down, smaller, and smaller, invisible. The swarm roared behind her. Tendrils of moss lashed at her with clammy fingers. She had to get back to the road and out of the bog . . . buzzing next to her ear. She slapped, felt the wet crunch of the bloodwasp’s crushed carapace against the side of her face. The flame leaped up in response to blast the swarm out of existence.
Which would bring more. Stumbling wildly, biting her lips to keep from screaming, Az-Arila tripped on a tree root and fell. She remained there, pushing the flame down to its tiniest, barest existence, gnawing on the grass to stop her revolted, terrified shrieks. The swarm circled, bubbling with curiosity and frustration at the disappearance of their feast, then finally flew away.
#
Arila had time to think about her death. Every bloodwasp in the region would know she was there--the message transmitted by their hive intelligence would put all of them on the alert, searching for particularly rich prey, for they feasted on those with the flame of sorcery.
The worst thing about bloodwasps was that they were merely the minions of a worse evil--they could not exist without a ghast. She would have to hold fast to her mind if she hoped to survive the night. The first thing she must do and keep doing was find the road and flee far from here, run and keep running until the sun rose. She got up and looked for a path out.
The agonized cry of a child sent her running toward its source, tearing through thin branches. She burst into an ankle-deep pool of mud, and found a mass of bloodwasps, crawling and swarming on a human shape. The shape moved feebly while bloodwasps attempted to land and find a place to dine. Then, beneath the evil mass, the child's eye shone in the meager light. The child wailed again, and a bloodwasp crawled into its mouth. Arila stepped forward into the sea of mud, and felt a shaking in her legs. She let the flame inside her rise from nothing, mingling it with the winds. She would scour the beasts off, and take the child with her.
A discordance in the obscene harmony of the buzzing bloodwasps made her shut the door to wind and fire. She backed away from the wailing child quietly. The screams redoubled as the child struggled to stand, to come at her in lurching steps. Blank terror shone in the child’s eyes as it thrashed and stumbled toward her, and she turned and ran again, until its wails and screams faded to nothing.
One sting of a bloodwasp carried enough venom to affect her. That child was so real, so terrifying--but it hadn’t really been there. This was the worst danger of the stalking terror--the visions that drew the hapless victim into the trap of the ghast, and she was infected. And she was lost.
#
The road, being dry, had to be uphill. She traced her steps, following the incline out of the muck and bracken to high ground. The moon finally emerged from clouds, shedding its meager light. It was waning, thin as an awl. Arila stood up and tried to see a break in the bushes or a clear trail. But there was nothing. She shoved through more bushes, managed a few steps before she noticed that she was heading downhill, and that there was no road. She was headed back into the swamps.
“Arila! Az-Arila!” she heard a voice call. “Where are you? Shout to me!”
She stayed mute. She didn’t know that voice. It was another phantom--none of Darus’s bandit horde would come looking for her in a pang of conscience. Except--
No. Soon there should be another apparition to come and torment her, herding her into the arms of the ghast.
A breaking chorus of limbs from downslope. She turned her head in its direction, watching for the next phantasm. She could make out head and shoulders, tearing through the brush.
“Arila,” the voice said--High Master! No! But there he was, his traveling clothes filthy with slimy mud to the knees, bearing the orb of amber Arila had played with as a child. She had made lights with it at six. High Master had been proud of her. No!
“What do you want, phantom?”
“So the bloodwasps did get you. Arila, you must listen to me, and believe. We came after you. We had discussed the word of the Truthspeaker, and it was too harsh--the Adeptus Ordeal is supposed to forge and shape you, not break you like a clay doll.” High Master shook his head, and long white hair flowed around his shoulders. He still wore the jade and lapis hearing charm she had made for him, tied behind his ear.
“The ghast--"
“Yes, we know. We found you just in time. You would have never been able to defeat it on your own--it takes a complex relay of Masters to destroy a ghast.”
“But--"
“Listen, Arila-shen. We’re here to take you home; this was all a terrible mistake. What the Truthspeaker was thinking when she set you this task. Really!” He took her hand. Real! But--
High Master’s hand was warm and dry, and smaller than she remembered. She had become too old to trail behind High Master, holding his hand, sitting on his knee, and sleeping in his lap. She had to give up the familiar, fatherly closeness of High Master when she became an Apprentice. She had been seven, and the undisputed baby of the troop of Apprentices, all at the sage years of eleven.
“You thought it was too harsh, High Master?”
“Too harsh? You lived in the tower all your life, child. You know nothing of the world outside of what you read in books. To send you out like that was absurd. And look--not even a week out and we could have lost you. You’ll come home, to stay.” High Master led them down the hill, moving slowly and cautiously.
“I can come home?” Az-Arila’s heart leapt.
“Yes, you can come home. Some of the other Journeymen will be put out, having to compete against you while we get a new trial ready, something you can handle. But they’ve lived with your outstanding talent before, they’ll have to do it again. Envy isn’t a favorable aspect for a Master, and you will be an object lesson.”
“I wondered if Truthspeaker was--“ she gasped as they plunged into sickening water, sank into soupy mud. High Master kept on, bringing his feet up high, splashing as he walked.
“--Jealous? I hadn’t thought of that. We’ll have to examine Truthspeaker, see if she can hold her position with honor.”
“Arila! Shout if you can hear me! Az-Arila!” the unfamiliar voice called.
“Who is that?” Arila asked.
“One of the Masters who is searching for you. He’ll see that I’ve found you when we get back to the rendezvous.”
“Which Master?” Arila persisted.
“One of the Masters from the City of the Vine, nearby. We enlisted all the help we could find for you.” High Master halted in the midst of the water and caught her in a tight embrace. “When I think how close we came to losing you . . .it was a very near thing, my dear.”
Arila hugged High Master fiercely. “I hoped you would come. I hoped it with all my heart--"
“You knew I would come. I couldn’t allow you to be wasted like that, just for the thoughtlessness of one Truthspeaker.”
Arila the Journeyman tried pulling away, but High Master held her tightly. “Let go.”
“Let go? Oh, never. Not when I have found you at last. How lovely you have grown through the years, Az-Arila. You’re a young woman, and I never saw--“
“You don’t have a heartbeat! Let go!”
“--Those lush young lips, the clear pale skin, the liquid eyes, ah yes, lovely Arila, a delicate morsel. Couldn’t endure what could be endured, but so talented, the fire in you so bright, so succulent, why I could--"
“Let GO!” Arila shrieked, and shoved the ghast into the sucking mud. She ran, thrashing through the water. “I’m here! I’m HERE!” she screamed. “Hail, the seeker! HAIL! I’m here! Shout for me! Shout!”
#
Sometimes she could hear the stranger’s voice calling to her, nearby, then far. She knew the voice now, so her mind could turn it against her, throwing off the trail of her unknown savior. If she could risk a light, she could send a beam through the trees to lead the way, but she could not risk a light. The bloodwasps were thick.
She no longer cared about finding the road; she needed the high ground away from the death laced water. She flailed and thrashed through darkness, calling out to the voice. Perhaps she could not follow the source, but her rescuer might. Then they could run until the sun rose, and get away from here. Far, far away . . .
“Arila! Shout for me! I can’t find you! I can’t . . .”
Very near. Arila broke left, stumbling through more mud and shadows. The moon was long since gone. The meager lights of the stars cast everything in coal and gray.
She burst through to a clearing and into a nightmare. There was the bandit youth, scratched, torn, and struggling in the embrace of--
Herself. Clean and silver in her nakedness, she stood, holding the pale haired boy, kissing him into death, stealing the meager flame of the sorcery he never knew he had. Bloodwasps flew in a frenzied circle around them, waiting to drain the blood from the empty shell that the ghast would leave behind.
She ran forward, swooping down to grab the sword fallen from the boy’s grasp. Real, notched from abuse, probably stolen, but real! She held it awkwardly and chopped at the ghast’s back as if felling a tree.
Her own face, contorted in fury. The ghast dropped the boy, who rolled away, moaning. Fire burned from the ghast's hands, and she dropped the burning hot sword. The ghast grabbed her, pulled her close, and bit her lips in a kiss.
Forcing, overpowering, the ghast tugged at her control of the flame and made it dance high, drawing it out of her. The bloodwasps swarmed around them, a tornado attracted by it. The death bog taste filled her mouth as the ghast drank.
Arila struggled, tried to scratch and bite at the ghast. It giggled with her own voice, pulling away for one last obscene look at its victim, to savor a successful chase. Arila called forth the waters and flame, whipped them with the forces of wind.
“Too late, sweetling,” the ghast said, then hissed in pain, flinching. Thunder rolled overhead, lightning flashed through the sky and the heavens broke open with rain.
The bloodwasps descended on Arila, stinging, sucking deeply of her blood, draining her. The ghast turned to run, but Arila lunged and grappled it, holding it tightly under the deluge, calling up more flame and rain and wind. Pure water destroyed the Undead. She would hold it with the last of her strength. She would feast the bloodwasps, but they would wither and die without the controlling mind of the ghast.
“Let go!” the ghast shrieked with her own voice.
“Let go!” the boy cried. She could not. The bloodwasps were draining her, but she could hold on long enough to destroy the ghast. She could hold on.
“Let go!” the ghast howled, struggling and kicking.
“Arila, let go!” the boy shouted. “Let go now!”
Arila spared a glance and saw him, unsteady on his feet but still standing. Rain and wind whipped his hair, and the mud was rinsing off with the force of it. He held the sword in burning flesh. . .
Arila let go, falling on the ground. The ghast turned to flee for cover, and the sword met flesh and exited through its back, already withering and crumpling in the pure water. The illusion of Arila crumbled away, revealing gray, mottled skin, stray strands of hair, shredded rags of costly velvet. Hands flailed, the rotten flesh falling off in gobbets, pummeled by the force of the rains. The body fell, twitching and scrabbling, unwilling to admit its death.
The boy rushed to Arila and plucked bloodwasps from her skin, stomping on their backs, rolling her to get them all. The ghast lay transfixed by pure iron, burned by water, unmoving and truly dead.
Arila lay back and knew no more.
#
The fourth day of Az-Arila’s Ordeal dawned in gray, the light coming gradually brighter through the overcast sky. She opened her eyes, thirsty and weak. Hunger gnawed at her insides. She propped herself up on an elbow and her head swam, threatening to black out her vision.
The boy lay next to her, sleeping or dead. She touched him, and his eyes came open at once. He recognized her.
“Why did you follow me?” she asked.
“Knew there wasn’t a city on this road. Darus set you up.”
“For THIS?”
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t think he’d send anybody into--That,” the boy said. “How do you feel?”
Arila laughed, gasped and then croaked, “How should I feel?”
“Weak from blood loss at least. There were dozens of those things on you. I feel--odd.”
“Weak from loss of the flame,” Az-Arila said.
“What flame?”
“The flame of a sorcerer. You didn’t know. I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes, dizzy again.
“Sorcery,” the boy said.
They said nothing for a long while, until finally, she said, “What’s your name?”
“Halen.”
“Thank you for saving my life, Halen.”
Halen shrugged. “You saved mine.”
Arila opened her eyes and looked around. A few ragged bits of velvet remained, and the mud caked everything. She was covered in it, and it had dried into clay on her skin. “We’re filthy,” she said.
“We need food.”
“I have nothing. A few cakes, trampled and lost somewhere in this kingdom of muck.”
“I’ll get us some. Rest here. You have to get your strength back. Just close your eyes, I’ll take care of it.”
Arila closed her eyes. There was nothing in the law of her Ordeal that said she couldn’t have a companion.
I really hope you didn't read that. If you did, I'm very sorry. ag. but I'm still very pleased with my monster! I obviously missed my calling as a contributor to the Monster Manual...
matociquala has double dog dared us to post the awfullest, grottiest, ancientest piece of juvenilia you still have a word processor that will open for International embarass yourself as an artist day.And well hell. Why not?
Suffering Sappho, i'll tell you why not. It's AWFUL. dear Eris. I was trying to tag it for the digusting over-use of italics and I had to flee.
It's got it all! purple prose, awful dialogue, hyphenated names, only 2% of the worldbuilding on the page, and what did make it there didn't get explained... and an incredibly arrogant heroine with a distinct adoration of the pretentious! best of all, it's Sword and Sorcery!
Oh, and final warning - I wrote this firmly in my I wanna write JUST LIKE TANITH LEE fangirl fangirl fangirl phase. I love Tanith, don't get me wrong. but wow what was I thinking.
5000 words of PAIN. and I'll use the first sentence as my Lj-cut so you know better than to click it. ain't I kind?
The third day after Az-Arila's Ordeal dawned scarlet and salmon, and the aftertaste of exile still stung. Her legs were stiff and swollen, unused to the rigors of walking all day. Her hair loved its bits of moss and twigs so well that her wooden comb could not dismiss them completely. The plain linen of her gown held the damp that had abandoned her now stale rations.
She ran out of water before breakfast, and the power of the waves and rain rose inside her, questing for its like. She followed the sense to fresh water and knelt in the rocky ground to fill her waterskin. A rustle of leaves failed to warn her, but the reflection of a bit of brass in the morning sun caught her eye. A man stood there, wearing his wealth in brass studs on his boiled leather cuirass, stained with sweat and scarred by blades. Silver finger rings strung on a braided leather cord outnumbered the gold in his collection.
"Did you think to take my water?" he asked.
"Yours?"
"From the stream," he said, pointing at her skin.
"Would a missing draught harm you, then?"
"Most sorely. A draught taken is gone."
"Until the rains. But no doubt you intend to claim ownership of the weather as well."
His brows came together at the insult. "You dare," the man said, and pointed. The bandit’s henchmen boiled out of the brush, rushing at her. Rough hands grasped Az-Arila on all sides.
The skin fell from her grasp and sighed out its water at her feet before a grimy bootheel ground it into the dirt. Rough hands grasped her arms, too tightly. Someone grabbed her by her long hair. She was wrestled to her feet, bathed in the stink of rotten meat breath and beer sweat from the men all around her.
The flame of sorcery rose with her anger as a grubby hand groped at her breast.
"That is enough," said Az-Arila, and the men fell away, howling and sobbing. One fell in the stream and saw fit to remain there, hands in the soothing current. His fellows joined him, bathing their hands and whimpering at their blisters.
The leader of the band scowled at his minions, flailing in the stream. "My distress at your doubt of me was enough to move them, alas," and the leader smiled again, full of charm and courtesy. "They could not know that we are all powerless against your gifts."
Az-Arila nodded, and bent to retrieve her waterskin.
The bandit leader moved forward. "You must let me replace--"
Her sharply upraised hand quelled him, but he did not flinch. Arila felt the winds rise in her until they scoured the dirt away from the sides of the bag.
"I shall have to go a ways upstream, so I may take more of your water."
"Take as much as you like," said the leader.
"I did not ask," replied the magicianess.
#
Darus the bandit, now gallant as a prince, begged to be allowed to accompany her safely to the city to erase his earlier discourtesy. He offered her the use of a fine yellow horse, slender in the leg, with an arching neck and tassels of blue on her tack. The bandit crew yelped as they scrambled into their soft saddles, but rode as well without hands on reins as most did with. Arila did not forgive enough to soothe their hurts.
One did not suffer burns and gripped the reins of his gelding in one hand, riding less well than his bandit brothers. A youth with pale hair, his arms burnt from the sun, adjusted the leather loops these bandits used to hold their feet. Four finger rings graced the cord on his neck—meager, for a robber’s fortune--and the boiled leathers he wore were drab and unscarred compared to the gaudy, damaged examples of the rest. He caught her eyes on him and looked away quickly, but drew his eyes back to see if she was still looking.
She was. The flame in his breast drew her eyes first--meager and unheeded, but there.
“It is fine land in these parts,” the bandit leader said. “Good soil, regular rain, a bountiful crop. Do you travel on an errand, with no attendants?”
“I need attendants?”
Darus did not look at her hair. “A road traveled alone . . .”
“Means no one chooses where I go.” Arila bent to grasp a leather loop, too long for her legs. She fussed with adjusting the length until she could raise herself out of the padded cushion of the saddle.
“A fine thing, to see the world and adventure. A fine life. But the time comes when you must settle down,” the bandit observed.
“And you have ambitions to become a farmer, when you forsake the glory of the road? She shall miss you.”
Darus missed Arila’s scowl and laughed, showing off even, yellowed teeth.
Arila looked for the youth.
“Part of me envies you, fresh on an adventure. You will see so much of the world in—a year?”
“Ten.” The bandit prince Darus did not hear the steely anger in her reply.
“So long as all that?”
“Yes.”
Arila resumed gazing at the palomino boy. Darus saw where her sight lay. The sun shone plots and revenge into Darus’s eyes.
#
“This is the way to the city,” Darus proclaimed, waving his arm to the northern road. The sun cast long shadows behind them, and Az-Arila could hear the jingling tack and shuffling of hooves, an occasional groan from a bandit after a day of hard riding. She did not groan. She wished she could cry.
“I understand that our roads part here,” she said.
“Alas, yes. But perhaps we shall meet again, on another road. We are sometimes in the business of trade, and travel far.” Darus’s smile was wide, golden, false.
Arila nodded and slid off her horse, biting her tongue against the urge to cry out. Every ounce of her will kept her walking straight and true, ignoring the complaints of her legs and back. She did not raise a hand in farewell as she walked away from the bandit and his band, leaving Darus to fidget on his horse.
Finally she heard the cacophony of their departure to the east, and she allowed herself a rest in the long shadows by a clump of bushes. They held unripe berries, promising a feast to the travelers of a few weeks from now, but providing only a mocking decoration for Arila.
She doubted she would make it to the city in the hour’s walk the bandit prince had promised. She doubted she could even get to her feet. She would sit near the bushes while her body finished turning to shrieking, agonized stone. If she could make it to the city, she could seek the Ivory Court and gain healing and rest for three nights, and then they would spit her back to the road and her Adeptus Ordeal.
Her Ordeal? How amusing. The Truthspeaker must have harbored a secret hate to punish her so. Or...a secret envy festering in the heart of a Master magus would not be different from the open envy of the Apprentices, Journeymen and Adepts she had lived with. She could not bring herself to believe that any Master would be petty enough for jealousy, that the Truthspeaker in particular wanted to force Arila to ten years of homeless wandering.
Self-pity was the impetus for action. She scrambled to her feet and limped up the road, determined to at least sleep in a bed that night. The frogs sang as the sun fell.
#
There was no city on that road. Az-Arila, Journeyman magicianess of the Ivory City, that most ancient and revered stronghold of the Shadowed Masters, had been duped by a brigand with dung on his boots.
There were no farms, no villages, no travelers. She had been alone for hours and never emerged far enough from her bitterness to see it until she had to strain her eyes looking for a place to camp. Now her boots were soaked with the brackish water that sogged the ground as she tried to find a dry place. She could starve on the road before reaching any city. She could drown in a mud puddle. She could trip over a root and fall headlong over a cliff.
“Enough,” she said, and called the flame from within her, letting it grow and swell into light from her hand. She turned in a full circle and surveyed her surroundings. Long tendrils of moss hung from the gnarled fingers of trees, strangling them, dragging them down into poisonous looking green-skimmed water. Miserable clumps of bushes held fast along hummocks of higher ground. She had come too far from the road. The trail of her footsteps led back, and she growled in disgust as she turned to follow them.
A sharp, lancing pain in her neck made her gasp. She clapped her hand to the spot, screamed as she felt the moist death of the insect that had stung her, then brought her hand forth to examine the grisly remains in her palm. She choked and gagged, and scrabbled to pull the stinger out of her neck. More forms came, swarming within her sphere of light, as long as her thumb, seeking their prey.
Arila extinguished her light and ran, picking up the hem of her muddied robe. She forced the flame within her to shrink down, smaller, and smaller, invisible. The swarm roared behind her. Tendrils of moss lashed at her with clammy fingers. She had to get back to the road and out of the bog . . . buzzing next to her ear. She slapped, felt the wet crunch of the bloodwasp’s crushed carapace against the side of her face. The flame leaped up in response to blast the swarm out of existence.
Which would bring more. Stumbling wildly, biting her lips to keep from screaming, Az-Arila tripped on a tree root and fell. She remained there, pushing the flame down to its tiniest, barest existence, gnawing on the grass to stop her revolted, terrified shrieks. The swarm circled, bubbling with curiosity and frustration at the disappearance of their feast, then finally flew away.
#
Arila had time to think about her death. Every bloodwasp in the region would know she was there--the message transmitted by their hive intelligence would put all of them on the alert, searching for particularly rich prey, for they feasted on those with the flame of sorcery.
The worst thing about bloodwasps was that they were merely the minions of a worse evil--they could not exist without a ghast. She would have to hold fast to her mind if she hoped to survive the night. The first thing she must do and keep doing was find the road and flee far from here, run and keep running until the sun rose. She got up and looked for a path out.
The agonized cry of a child sent her running toward its source, tearing through thin branches. She burst into an ankle-deep pool of mud, and found a mass of bloodwasps, crawling and swarming on a human shape. The shape moved feebly while bloodwasps attempted to land and find a place to dine. Then, beneath the evil mass, the child's eye shone in the meager light. The child wailed again, and a bloodwasp crawled into its mouth. Arila stepped forward into the sea of mud, and felt a shaking in her legs. She let the flame inside her rise from nothing, mingling it with the winds. She would scour the beasts off, and take the child with her.
A discordance in the obscene harmony of the buzzing bloodwasps made her shut the door to wind and fire. She backed away from the wailing child quietly. The screams redoubled as the child struggled to stand, to come at her in lurching steps. Blank terror shone in the child’s eyes as it thrashed and stumbled toward her, and she turned and ran again, until its wails and screams faded to nothing.
One sting of a bloodwasp carried enough venom to affect her. That child was so real, so terrifying--but it hadn’t really been there. This was the worst danger of the stalking terror--the visions that drew the hapless victim into the trap of the ghast, and she was infected. And she was lost.
#
The road, being dry, had to be uphill. She traced her steps, following the incline out of the muck and bracken to high ground. The moon finally emerged from clouds, shedding its meager light. It was waning, thin as an awl. Arila stood up and tried to see a break in the bushes or a clear trail. But there was nothing. She shoved through more bushes, managed a few steps before she noticed that she was heading downhill, and that there was no road. She was headed back into the swamps.
“Arila! Az-Arila!” she heard a voice call. “Where are you? Shout to me!”
She stayed mute. She didn’t know that voice. It was another phantom--none of Darus’s bandit horde would come looking for her in a pang of conscience. Except--
No. Soon there should be another apparition to come and torment her, herding her into the arms of the ghast.
A breaking chorus of limbs from downslope. She turned her head in its direction, watching for the next phantasm. She could make out head and shoulders, tearing through the brush.
“Arila,” the voice said--High Master! No! But there he was, his traveling clothes filthy with slimy mud to the knees, bearing the orb of amber Arila had played with as a child. She had made lights with it at six. High Master had been proud of her. No!
“What do you want, phantom?”
“So the bloodwasps did get you. Arila, you must listen to me, and believe. We came after you. We had discussed the word of the Truthspeaker, and it was too harsh--the Adeptus Ordeal is supposed to forge and shape you, not break you like a clay doll.” High Master shook his head, and long white hair flowed around his shoulders. He still wore the jade and lapis hearing charm she had made for him, tied behind his ear.
“The ghast--"
“Yes, we know. We found you just in time. You would have never been able to defeat it on your own--it takes a complex relay of Masters to destroy a ghast.”
“But--"
“Listen, Arila-shen. We’re here to take you home; this was all a terrible mistake. What the Truthspeaker was thinking when she set you this task. Really!” He took her hand. Real! But--
High Master’s hand was warm and dry, and smaller than she remembered. She had become too old to trail behind High Master, holding his hand, sitting on his knee, and sleeping in his lap. She had to give up the familiar, fatherly closeness of High Master when she became an Apprentice. She had been seven, and the undisputed baby of the troop of Apprentices, all at the sage years of eleven.
“You thought it was too harsh, High Master?”
“Too harsh? You lived in the tower all your life, child. You know nothing of the world outside of what you read in books. To send you out like that was absurd. And look--not even a week out and we could have lost you. You’ll come home, to stay.” High Master led them down the hill, moving slowly and cautiously.
“I can come home?” Az-Arila’s heart leapt.
“Yes, you can come home. Some of the other Journeymen will be put out, having to compete against you while we get a new trial ready, something you can handle. But they’ve lived with your outstanding talent before, they’ll have to do it again. Envy isn’t a favorable aspect for a Master, and you will be an object lesson.”
“I wondered if Truthspeaker was--“ she gasped as they plunged into sickening water, sank into soupy mud. High Master kept on, bringing his feet up high, splashing as he walked.
“--Jealous? I hadn’t thought of that. We’ll have to examine Truthspeaker, see if she can hold her position with honor.”
“Arila! Shout if you can hear me! Az-Arila!” the unfamiliar voice called.
“Who is that?” Arila asked.
“One of the Masters who is searching for you. He’ll see that I’ve found you when we get back to the rendezvous.”
“Which Master?” Arila persisted.
“One of the Masters from the City of the Vine, nearby. We enlisted all the help we could find for you.” High Master halted in the midst of the water and caught her in a tight embrace. “When I think how close we came to losing you . . .it was a very near thing, my dear.”
Arila hugged High Master fiercely. “I hoped you would come. I hoped it with all my heart--"
“You knew I would come. I couldn’t allow you to be wasted like that, just for the thoughtlessness of one Truthspeaker.”
Arila the Journeyman tried pulling away, but High Master held her tightly. “Let go.”
“Let go? Oh, never. Not when I have found you at last. How lovely you have grown through the years, Az-Arila. You’re a young woman, and I never saw--“
“You don’t have a heartbeat! Let go!”
“--Those lush young lips, the clear pale skin, the liquid eyes, ah yes, lovely Arila, a delicate morsel. Couldn’t endure what could be endured, but so talented, the fire in you so bright, so succulent, why I could--"
“Let GO!” Arila shrieked, and shoved the ghast into the sucking mud. She ran, thrashing through the water. “I’m here! I’m HERE!” she screamed. “Hail, the seeker! HAIL! I’m here! Shout for me! Shout!”
#
Sometimes she could hear the stranger’s voice calling to her, nearby, then far. She knew the voice now, so her mind could turn it against her, throwing off the trail of her unknown savior. If she could risk a light, she could send a beam through the trees to lead the way, but she could not risk a light. The bloodwasps were thick.
She no longer cared about finding the road; she needed the high ground away from the death laced water. She flailed and thrashed through darkness, calling out to the voice. Perhaps she could not follow the source, but her rescuer might. Then they could run until the sun rose, and get away from here. Far, far away . . .
“Arila! Shout for me! I can’t find you! I can’t . . .”
Very near. Arila broke left, stumbling through more mud and shadows. The moon was long since gone. The meager lights of the stars cast everything in coal and gray.
She burst through to a clearing and into a nightmare. There was the bandit youth, scratched, torn, and struggling in the embrace of--
Herself. Clean and silver in her nakedness, she stood, holding the pale haired boy, kissing him into death, stealing the meager flame of the sorcery he never knew he had. Bloodwasps flew in a frenzied circle around them, waiting to drain the blood from the empty shell that the ghast would leave behind.
She ran forward, swooping down to grab the sword fallen from the boy’s grasp. Real, notched from abuse, probably stolen, but real! She held it awkwardly and chopped at the ghast’s back as if felling a tree.
Her own face, contorted in fury. The ghast dropped the boy, who rolled away, moaning. Fire burned from the ghast's hands, and she dropped the burning hot sword. The ghast grabbed her, pulled her close, and bit her lips in a kiss.
Forcing, overpowering, the ghast tugged at her control of the flame and made it dance high, drawing it out of her. The bloodwasps swarmed around them, a tornado attracted by it. The death bog taste filled her mouth as the ghast drank.
Arila struggled, tried to scratch and bite at the ghast. It giggled with her own voice, pulling away for one last obscene look at its victim, to savor a successful chase. Arila called forth the waters and flame, whipped them with the forces of wind.
“Too late, sweetling,” the ghast said, then hissed in pain, flinching. Thunder rolled overhead, lightning flashed through the sky and the heavens broke open with rain.
The bloodwasps descended on Arila, stinging, sucking deeply of her blood, draining her. The ghast turned to run, but Arila lunged and grappled it, holding it tightly under the deluge, calling up more flame and rain and wind. Pure water destroyed the Undead. She would hold it with the last of her strength. She would feast the bloodwasps, but they would wither and die without the controlling mind of the ghast.
“Let go!” the ghast shrieked with her own voice.
“Let go!” the boy cried. She could not. The bloodwasps were draining her, but she could hold on long enough to destroy the ghast. She could hold on.
“Let go!” the ghast howled, struggling and kicking.
“Arila, let go!” the boy shouted. “Let go now!”
Arila spared a glance and saw him, unsteady on his feet but still standing. Rain and wind whipped his hair, and the mud was rinsing off with the force of it. He held the sword in burning flesh. . .
Arila let go, falling on the ground. The ghast turned to flee for cover, and the sword met flesh and exited through its back, already withering and crumpling in the pure water. The illusion of Arila crumbled away, revealing gray, mottled skin, stray strands of hair, shredded rags of costly velvet. Hands flailed, the rotten flesh falling off in gobbets, pummeled by the force of the rains. The body fell, twitching and scrabbling, unwilling to admit its death.
The boy rushed to Arila and plucked bloodwasps from her skin, stomping on their backs, rolling her to get them all. The ghast lay transfixed by pure iron, burned by water, unmoving and truly dead.
Arila lay back and knew no more.
#
The fourth day of Az-Arila’s Ordeal dawned in gray, the light coming gradually brighter through the overcast sky. She opened her eyes, thirsty and weak. Hunger gnawed at her insides. She propped herself up on an elbow and her head swam, threatening to black out her vision.
The boy lay next to her, sleeping or dead. She touched him, and his eyes came open at once. He recognized her.
“Why did you follow me?” she asked.
“Knew there wasn’t a city on this road. Darus set you up.”
“For THIS?”
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t think he’d send anybody into--That,” the boy said. “How do you feel?”
Arila laughed, gasped and then croaked, “How should I feel?”
“Weak from blood loss at least. There were dozens of those things on you. I feel--odd.”
“Weak from loss of the flame,” Az-Arila said.
“What flame?”
“The flame of a sorcerer. You didn’t know. I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes, dizzy again.
“Sorcery,” the boy said.
They said nothing for a long while, until finally, she said, “What’s your name?”
“Halen.”
“Thank you for saving my life, Halen.”
Halen shrugged. “You saved mine.”
Arila opened her eyes and looked around. A few ragged bits of velvet remained, and the mud caked everything. She was covered in it, and it had dried into clay on her skin. “We’re filthy,” she said.
“We need food.”
“I have nothing. A few cakes, trampled and lost somewhere in this kingdom of muck.”
“I’ll get us some. Rest here. You have to get your strength back. Just close your eyes, I’ll take care of it.”
Arila closed her eyes. There was nothing in the law of her Ordeal that said she couldn’t have a companion.
I really hope you didn't read that. If you did, I'm very sorry. ag. but I'm still very pleased with my monster! I obviously missed my calling as a contributor to the Monster Manual...
