(Flashback) Looking Death in the Eye

[Wrenmae]

Summer 13, 510 AV

Between towns was a common enough condition for Wrenmae to begin using it as a 'place of residence'. Atop his gelding, cat in tow, he had passed through the Kalea region over the past year and there was still much more for him to do ahead. The Unforgiving had not been kind to him, scars latticing his body proving the dangers of its deceptively beautiful passes. Somehow it hadn't been enough to shake his optimism, a feeling still soaring in his soul even today. The heat pressed down its dictorial rule, flattening the horse and rider toward the rocky ground with weary force. Wrenmae sighed his exhaustion, subtly directing the horse from the more dangerous paths and toward declines, seeking out a river or some shady place to lie low till the sun began to set. He'd heard there were hotter places out there...the desert being an obvious example, and not he could scarcely comprehend the difficulty inherent in trying to navigate blistering hot dunes.

No...especially not with his smartass horse.

In the time before and even now, he was growing more comfortable on Weaver's back, trying to commune with the horse over the simplicity of just keeping direction straight or his butt planted firmly on the beast at all times. Earlier, his adventures had taken a rather comical route as every time the beast broke into a canter, Wrenmae vibrated off the saddle to bounce perilously on the ground besides his horse. It was a work in progress, one tempered in needed experience.

He couldn't very well WALK through the Unforgiving now could he?

Directing his horse down a shale path of shattered stone, Wrenmae pulled Weaver toward the shade of a rock shelf perilously leaning over a sheer drop. Skirting the edge, Wrenmae stared down the rocky peak to the stout and crooked stones near the bottom. A fall from this height would be an undeniable fatality. Shivering, the image of a broken end peppering his mind with fear, he turned Weaver from the edge and slightly up the incline. They would rest here, at least until the sun had lessened its grip a bit.

Waiting was the effort of patience, an art Wrenmae had learned before but tended to forget at important times. Instead of simply enjoying the shade, the young storyteller found purpose in hypnotizing his animals, trying to feel out the boundaries of his magical art. Weaver proved the most pliable with this art and Wrenmae used it to implant simple suggestions or emotional resonances, looking for effect.

Fear widened the horse's eyes, causing it to snort its annoyed and shrill whinny across the mountain pass. He shouldn't have started with fear. Fear was a difficult emotion to work down from because without a logical point for the fear to focus on, there was only the blind sense of irrational paranoia to work with. Supplementing the feeling or attempting to work down the feeling was the effort of flooding the horse with bright suggestions of calm or happieness. Even then, the horse glared at Wrenmae suspiciously, not quite able to tear away from his eyes.

The whisper...the whisper of giving more, of going overboard, it was there as it always was, the familiar sense of a precipice. There was so much more he could do if he would simply let go...leap, fall, embrace.

Shuddering, Wrenmae wrenched his mind from Weaver's, the sudden backlash created by the disjointed tear throwing both their minds into disarray. Weaver nickered, stomped his hooves, and outright threatened (in his own wordless way) to bodily hurl Wrenmae off the cliff if he tried something like that again. His rider, now preoccupied with a splitting headache, opted to retire Hypnotism until at least his head stopped throbbing.

Turning instead to morhping.

The lesser art of his repertoire had odd meaning for the boy. Without a past to hold water of memory, or a future that was hewn of stone, Wrenmae felt that morphing defined his true nature...being cast aloof and alone in the world as a whole. What he was, who he was, all of that was the unshapeable maybe of a future with few faces, a past with less, and a present with two...Ket and Weaver.

The skin on the back of his hand twisted and curdled, melting and reforming with wavy gelding hair. Eying his horse with a pained smile, Wrenmae held the small change as a triumph, a small mastery of his own where otherwise he had little.

Of course that was before the pain started.

With shifting, one must keep in mind its inherent effects on the body. Some shifting was painless, the work of concentration only. This, however, was more a half experiment with a headache...and growing hair through his bones was nothing short of idiotic.

And immensely painful.

Hissing suddenly, eyes wide in panic, Wrenmae began smashing the back of his hand against the rock, scraping the hair from there with such fervor that he might have torn all the skin from bone had he continued. Realistically he could have just ended the effects, but there is something to be said for the sudden agony and realizing you may have completely screwed up your hand without any intention to...for something that was as meaningless as practice.

Banged up and bleeding, Wrenmae stared at the back of his hand for a full two minutes, mentally berating himself for his foolish decisions. It was in the wake of his practice in both morphing and hypnotism that he did not notice the dark clouds gathering above him, or the heat dissipating.

It was only when the first drop of rain fell, invading his concentration, that he looked up and realized he should have chosen a more defensible location from the weather.

The rain, uncaring at this point, fell harder.

[Wrenmae]

One thinks many things when pelted from the heavens. Thoughts winged back and forth through his mind like wild bats, never two coinciding together correctly. Part of him wanted to find shelter, wait out the storm in some cleft of rock. Another part wanted him to wait in the rain, let it wash the day from his back and body, simply to enjoy nature's makeshift shower. Idly the thought of continuing his practice, forays into magic, scuttled through his waking conciousness bit by bit, but Wrenmae tried to let such thoughts lie still. The rain poured down harder, flattening Weaver's flaxen mane against his neck. The horse looked irate, rightly so, and with a sheepish smile, Wrenmae picked himself up and began searching. Larger branches, torn down from other storms through the tempestuous Unforgiving, lay in the sog and the soak, heavy things of mute integrity.

Wrenmae dragged them, straining his muscles to accommodate most of their heavy bulk. The storm showed no sign of letting up, continuing its watery tirade across the stone. Wrenmae was soaked, removing his shirt to throw wetly over Weaver's saddle, the fabric only slowing him down. Ket burrowed deeper into the saddlebag, trying to outlast the downpour that swept the warmth from her makeshift bedding. Working fast, the storyteller strained to raise the logs up against the vertical rockface, working to build a makeshift shelter of leaves and sticks to last out the thunder above. With each muted boom, lightning scissored briefly in the gray heavens. Sighing, soaked to his bones, Wrenmae pushed the last log above Weaver, straining every bit of adrenaline and raw muscle mass to shift the heavy thing in place. The boy was slight, never owing much of his body to muscle mass. The task was harder than he had given it credit for. Pushing against it, realistically, he wasn't thinking about the ground beneath his feet, nor the possibility the years had accumulated dust and mud atop the rock.

Nor that mud grew slippery when wet.

Sliding the last log to its place with a dull thud, Wrenmae skirted the edge of the gorge, seeking to find some leaves to fill the holes between his makeshift hut. Luck was not with him, nor any being of describable power and his foot made the mistake of landing just slightly slanted.

His foot sliding out from under him, Wrenmae pitched forward. For a moment he hung in the air, eyes wide as he looked to the misty bottom of the cliff, to the horizon and mountains beyond. Beauty was simplest at this point, here at the wake of death.

His body fell, and perhaps by only the miracle of unconscious instinct did he manage to save himself. His body passed beyond the lip of the edge, his right arm shooting out to grasp the stone.

Contact.

Touch.

Reality.

The dream of falling was not one he was aquainted with, the sense of death merely being the matter of time rather than chance was curiously surreal. So there was no panic when he fell, rather the briefest hint of confusion. His stomach road high in his throat, his body grew wings, molted, floated, caught fire, and drifted all at once.

And then his hand touched stone, and he was hurled screaming to reality once more. Now, hanging here, one arm almost dislocated with the strain of catching himself, Wrenmae hung over a sheer precipice. He was dead and alive at once, hanging at the edge of both realms. Above him, the storm howled like the entrance to some unimaginable gate. Here he dangled, his feet gently scraping the doorway to death...he could see its eyes, the cavernous skull that watched him with impossible patience.

Lightning danced the sky into a boiling inferno.

His muscles already burned from creating the shelter, and all his rope and assistance lay but feet above him and across the muddy ground. Weaver and Ket, relatively safe from the onslaught of rain in there little hovel, were completely oblivious to their owner facing utter peril but yards from their location.

And so he hung, his arm aching numbly and his fingers slipping.

It was curious, that all was to end on this lonely peak, the Unforgiving (So aptly named, now that his life hung in the balance) looked on in stoic indifference. Rain continued to fall and life went on.

In every scheme of thought, he was unimportant. His life was a meaningless afterthought on the wind, some small spark lost in a sea of thousands. His contributions, minimal at best, had given him nothing but the feeling of complacency. Travel, tale weaving, practice...there was no point to it now, hanging over certain demise. He had left nothing for himself and the little one would know of him would be the contents of his saddlepacks.

If they were ever found.

Despair fogged his veins, lulled his fingers into slipping, set him further away from safety.

What was life? What was point? What was existence? Each day hundreds died in the horrors of the harsh climate...still more died to battle, war, or strife. What was he? Why did he deserve to live over all those others?

The answer was that he didn't.

And did.

Perception was truth.

Quietly he prayed, already accepting deep in his own heart that there would be no answers, no reprieve save what he could dredge up on his own.

He allowed himself a breath, a strangled one, but one all the same. Purging his mind of thought, he tried to put himself into a state of pure concentration. His right arm was injured, twisted in the fall. It held him so far, his left now supporting it...but with his current weak fingers he could never hurl himself out of this predicament. The rain would make the rocks slick so every move must be important. With such drained strength, wasted efforts could not be spared.

He focused on his hands.

Skin twisted, spinning and darkening till bony claws poked jaggedly from the ends of his fingers His arms swelled, forcing the muscle mass to increase as he had seen in a Jamoura visiting Alvadas long ago. The dimensions were wrong, one arm larger than the other and both awkward to use...but the surge of strength was enough for his thin body and hand by hand, he carefully pulled himself toward the lip of the ravine. Each grasp was careful, firmly testing each jutting stone to support his weight even as his legs and feet stabbed the sheer wall for toeholds. The journey up was slow, almost torturingly slow...but when a black clawed hand bit deeply into the ground and pulled his exhausted body over the lip of the cliff, Wrenmae could allow himself a gasp in relief. Soaked, exhausted, his skin and bones aching with the force of his change and already shifting back to what they were, Wrenmae barely had the ability to roll into the shelter he had made.

He didn't bother getting onto Weaver, instead simply laying on the ground in a fetid pile. Tears collected at the corners of his eyes, no different from the rain already glistening on his skin. He was alive. Without a past, without a future, he was alive.

He was alive

He was alive

And yet...he had yet to truly live.

That thought in mind, Wrenmae drifted into sleep, shivering beside his horse who, predictably, couldn't care less at what had happened.

[Wrenmae]

Morning found him cold, shivering beside Weaver like a newborn pup. He felt stiff and tired, as though his muscles did not belong to him, were not made for him, and instead owed their origin to reeds and sticks. He wasn't sick, even the most squalid of conditions couldn't seed his body with illness. Vayt had seen to that. Even now, Wrenmae could smell the hint of his cigar smoke, feel the brush of his expensive furs on his face. No mark, but with certainty Vayt had claimed him.

Sitting up, Wrenmae pushed out of the shelter and gazed down the gorge he had almost given his life to. Cold mists clutched it now, choked the danger from its drop. Wrenmae looked down upon clouds of vapor, obscuring deadly distance with a gentle guise. He took a seat on the edge, letting his feet dangle from the abyss, kick lazy beats along the rock. He was alone in the most certain of senses, ostracized from home by Vayt and himself. Years ago he might have died out here, caught in the Unforgiving with a brother and sister. His father was gone, likely dead, and his sister and brother were also dead...couldn't have survived out here in the cold of a winter.

Even years ago down a line of broken history, the guilt of what he'd done burned in him. Unpunished, he lived his life in accordance to how he wanted it. Vayt worked through him, the fell God touching life and stealing vitality, killing even as Wrenmae grew stronger, healthier. He pressed both shivering arms around himself, looking down the mist and jagged spine of the Unforgiving.

"VAYT!" he yelled, suddenly, all the frustration of near death, the guilt his life was forced to bare, everything. Shifting his knees up on the rock and standing again, the boy took a stone and hurled it into the abyss. Tears, or perhaps mist droplets, clustered on his face. He had lived, but he would never be as he wanted. Everyone close to him would die, the day he had dealt with the God had not been for two lives but for every life he met, every life he held dear.

"VAAAAAYT!"

No answer.

Of course not...Vayt rarely came to the Unforgiving, his business far more potent in more populated areas...the places Wrenmae wanted to be. He was dogged by reality, knowing well he would be doing Vayt's work to enter another town or city, but to live out in the wilderness was impossible. He hadn't the skills, the patience...he wasn't that kind of person.

The option to hurl himself into the abyss was possible, to end it all dashed at the bottom of some unnamed gorge. Even as he thought about it, Wrenmae abandoned the idea. It was no use, really. The gorge was infinitely an impossible route for someone who had sold his life to live. It would make the deal with Vayt pointless and above all, Wrenmae could not turn his back on survival.

Deep within him, inside some insideous part of his brain, a voice asked him why not? Why not embrace your gift, embrace Vayt?

It was small, easily ignored, not quite as pressing as the cold or the wind. Shrugging off the notion, Wrenmae turned from the gorge and back to the makeshift shelter, pushing the logs aside and taking Weaver out. He fed the horse quietly, saying nothing as the gray sky above him promised rain, and continued his wordless musing as he threw himself atop Weaver and trotted from the shadow of the rock shelf above him...the gorge below.

Above all, his life lacked purpose, direction, meaning.

He would seek it out in Lhavit...and then journey to Syliras.

Vayt or not, he could not hide himself for a mistake he'd made long ago. Life was about the improving of ones conditions, learning, hearing, experiencing. Even with the mark the way it was, it had not yet progressed to dangerous levels...he still had hope.

Years since he'd heard from Vayt, Wrenmae could only hope he had seen the last of the God.

[Tabarnac]

XP Award! Wrenmae XP Award: Riding + 2; Land Navigation +1; Mountaineering +2; Hypnotism +1; Horsemanship +1; Morphing +2; Wilderness Survival +2; Climbing +2; Philosophy +2 Additional Notes: Interesting stuff! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or concerns. Keep writing!