In the Foothills

    The wind was cold on Yurelalte's face, cold enough to numb her lips and sting her cheeks even with the golden sun shining down from a blue and glorious sky, so clear one might think clouds were only a dream. She blinked away the involuntary tears that sprang to her eyes from a sudden gust and scanned the horizon, then shook her head and sighed as she dug her heels into the horse's flanks to urge it faster. It was ill fortune indeed to be so high in the foothills this late in the summer when the Holy Ones were stirring, but Yurelalte was the riding's best hunter. That damn Hequray was going to get a piece of her mind when she got back for his poor shepherding.

     As the horse crested the rolling summit of the next hill, Yurelalte briefly glimpsed a tiny dark dot against the sky over the snow-laden peaks farther south. Without slowing, she stripped the thick fur-lined leather glove from her hand, worked her lips a few times to warm them, and used her fingers to let out a piercing whistle. Ever so faintly, it echoed back from the distant cliffs.

    The speck reappeared after several more hills, resolving more clearly as it winged its way closer. Soon enough it circled above, lazily flapping huge wings before diving down and swooping to a halt on Yurelalte's outstretched arm. "Ushqe!" she cried happily, dropping the reins in her other hand to scratch the golden eagle under the beak.  The bird ruffled her feathers and shuffled her feet, pleased. "Did you find the sheep? I don't know how far they could have gone."

    Settling back down, Ushqe whined disappointedly and beat her broad wings for emphasis. Yurelalte grimaced. "No sign? Damn. Nothing for it, then." She reached into her saddlebags, woven in intricate geometric patterns of crimson and yellow wool, pulled out the bloody carcass of a marmot, and tossed it to the eagle, who flew up to catch it in fiercely hooked talons, then settled down on the rear of the horse to eat it.

    While Ushqe tore into her meal, Yurelalte dug through the beaded leather pouch belted to her side to find half a gold coin and a slender iron knife. She carefully shaved off a thin sliver from the coin and blew on its tip, sparking the filing to light with a tiny rosy flame. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply in, feeling her blood boil to molten gold in her veins, and exhaled her vital essence out into the world, feeling, prodding, searching. There a marmot sleeping in its burrow, there a pika nibbling flowers amidst the stones, there a herd of gazelle grazing at the foot of a stand of pines by a slender mountain brook—farther, farther, wince with pain, breathe shakily—ah! There, hidden beneath the earth, some six miles southwest, nestled in some burrow or cave, were seven sheep, frozen stock-still and shuddering with fear.

    With a snap of burning pain, Yurelalte withdrew back to herself, soul pouring back from all the crevices of the hills. The little flame scorched the fingers of her ungloved hand hotly, gold burned away to nothing. She snuffed it out neatly and tossed the last cooling droplet of gold to the earth, nose wrinkling at the smoky, pervasive odor of flowers which had invaded so suddenly.

 

    The sun had fallen near to the horizon by the time Yurelalte had picked her way through the steepening ever-more-rugged slopes and cliffs nigh to the place she had divined. It was colder yet, though the wind had abated some, and the land was stained gold with the thick, slanting light of evening. She had slowed her horse to a walk for quiet in the chill air, and to secure its footing in the treacherous darkling rocks. Now she reined in entirely, eagle circling low above, and dismounted, sliding her bow from its case and slinging her quiver around herself such that it hung at her hip across from her iron axe. Dropping the horse's reins, she left it with the terse command, "Stay." Obediently, it bent its head to the grass as she crept away.

    And there it was, a cave's gaping black wound rent in the fabric of the hills, aimed away from the sun's warm rays so that only a few feet of its interior could be seen. As Yurelalte neared it, Ushqe landed on a rock above the opening and chirped nervously. The woman laughed gently and said, "You don't need to go in, bird. I can handle myself." Ushqe chirped again in disagreement, but hopped away a little, still looking down with apprehension. Gingerly, Yurelalte began to clamber down, cursing silently at every tiny shift in the loose rock of the slope, supporting herself with one hand while the other carefully held the bow elevated. Carefully, carefully, she made her way into the dark. There was a clear scent on the air now, faint charnel and gore mixing with a queer staleness.

    The pebbles and stones slowly gave way to water-smoothed stone as the ground leveled out and the earth closed over Yurelalte's head. The cave grew tighter and lower, twisting and turning; the stink of slaughter grew until it was thicker with blood in the enclosed space than the butchering grounds on the great feast day of the Queen of Shepherds. Mixed in, putrid and wrong, was that other smell, which she still could not name.

     A moment later, she heard it, and froze: breathing, heavy and steel-edged. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark, and with a squint she could just barely make out shapes against the cave's walls. To the left, the living sheep, huddled in a tight mass and hyperventilating with panic at the edge of hearing, and left next to them as if in warning, the slumped, eviscerated carcasses of two more. Behind them, however, loomed a shape yet more indistinct, a darkness greater than dark, as if it absorbed light by its very presence. That awful breath came from its bulk, laden with menace, but it did not shift. Perhaps it was asleep.

     "O Light of Dawn," Yurelalte breathed as softly as she could manage, "Illuminate this beast my prey, and guide my hand true." She carefully pulled an arrow from her quiver and set it to bowstring. As she drew back the coiled spring of wood, sinew, lacquer, and string with practiced ease, she could feel the eagles tattooed into her bow arm and the horses on her thighs itching and pulsing, yearning for the breath of life, but there was no war-leader here to unleash them with blood. Yurelalte breathed out; the arrow twanged free almost deafeningly as the sound echoed off the walls. Again her insides pulsed with red-hot liquid gold, and the arrow flared to rose-red flame as it flew directly into the dark mass—and disappeared.

    For an instant, the darkness was as complete as if light had never been. Then a gout of flame burst out from where the arrow had been, bright and vicious, spattering thick tendrils of darkness across the cave. One landed on Yurelalte's woolen robe, where it sizzled acridly as it burned through to the leather scutes below. The sheep yelped and bleated. She untensed, breathing freely, as she watched the slumped mass for movement,

    Suddenly, twin flames burned open at the top of the thing. Flames, yes, but they cast no light and burned cold and uncanny in a color without name, and they blinked languidly as the mass lurched to movement, drawing up as if to stand, and then closer, closer.

    Yurelalte snapped out of her stupor—but no, her head did not shake for clarity, her arm did not reach for another arrow, her legs did not turn and run. The thing kept on its casual approach, and it was tall, so tall, and those flames, or were they eyes, were inescapable, inexorable. It stood before her and reached out a long, long arm towards her, and all was darkness, she was darkness, all except those awful flames, and she was falling towards them, she was so cold.

    And then there was pain, bright knifing pain, and the weight of eight sharp talons piercing her armor into her shoulder's meat, and loud wings buffeting the air, and a wicked beak tearing at her ear. By sheer instinct, with nary a thought, she reached into her quiver, drew an arrow, and nocked it in one swift motion, but that arm reached towards hear, and when she stepped back, an errant outcrop of stone caught her heel. As she fell, the arrow sprang awry and burst into flame to stick in the ceiling and cast the whole scene in a flickering light.

    Ushqe sprang back into the air, squawking, and the noise of her flight filled the cave. The thing was outlined in dawnlight, now, and Yurelalte could see that it resembled a man, tall and thin and terrible, horribly elongated, steaming amidst the scent of flowers. Its chest gaped open with a massive weeping wound, revealing nothing within but darkness, save for a single glimmer of green. It swung an arm at her, suddenly moving fast as a wrestler and screaming in a thin sourceless voice. She rolled out of the way, dropping her bow when its tip caught on the ground and fumbling for the axe at her waist. The ghoul lashed out at her again, and she freed the axe just in time to swing at its wrist. She struck only with the haft, misaligning the head, and the impact only send droplets of darkness flying. One caught her on the cheek, burning like lye in an open wound. Still, the indistinct claws bubbling at the end of the arm missed her torso by a finger's breadth, and she took the opportunity to scramble back to her feet.

    When the ghoul dove at her again, she was ready. Her axeblade caught it in the elbow, and nearly severed it in a spray of thick shadow. It screamed with a thousand hoarse voices and kicked out reflexively, leg seeming to stretch to catch her in the gut and hurl her across the cave to crash into the wall. Lurching towards her stunned form, it kicked her fallen axe away. She could not dodge its arm this time; its razor-edged talons grasped her shoulder and squeezed, slicing through her armor to cut and burn.

    With her other hand she seized its injured arm and pulled, ignoring its flesh corroding away her glove in an instant and scalding the flesh below. The ghoul hissed like an angry snakebird, shuddering away in pain, and releasing her for but a moment. In that instant she acted, crying out in rage, to pull her lasso from her belt and yank it over the creature's head. It struggled as she pulled with both arms, cinching the strong wiry fibers murderously tight around what passed for its neck and through its sizzling flesh. Claws met her torso, scraping and flailing and carving through her robe, but the strength was leaving it, and it accomplished nothing but scarring the hardened leather. With a last strangled gasp, it collapsed, pulling her down with it.

 

    It couldn't have taken long for Yurelalte to come back to herself, for her arrow's shaft was still flickering and alight where it had stuck in that crack in the stone. She was lying on the cold floor with her shoulder, face, and palm in agony, and she groaned with it, voice joining Ushqe's panicked cries. The eagle was surrounded by her antithesis, a place she was never meant to go. As Yurelalte dragged herself up, she saw that the ghoul had withered away to nothing, leaving the corroded, blackened remains of her lasso tight around a long staff of pale wood, inlaid with silver runes and studded with five small green gems at one end, glinting in the firelight. 

    Then, steadying herself on trembling feet, she saw the wall: in the back of the cave where the ghoul had been resting, there was no raw rock, but a sheer wall of living stone, carved all over with intricate reliefs that seemed to writhe and sway in the shadows, women and Holy Ones, elk and bearsquirrels, and above all, the sleek striped bulk of the Mother's Beast. Outlined clearly between the figures was the clear seam of a door. Yurelalte stared for a moment in surprise, then shrugged, picked up the staff, and went to the work of gathering her charges, who were flowing unevenly towards the cave's exit now that the threat was gone, and calming her faithful bird. A matter for another time.

Heavy With the Fruit of Prophetic Dreaming (GLOG Class: Bard)

Alpine forget-me-not via Wikipedia

There is no such thing as a new story. There are but endless retellings, ripped apart and sewn together again like ransom notes from a heap of unwanted magazines. Which is to say: your life is a faded diorama of a long-forgotten poem. Perhaps, if you try your very hardest, you can weave in an age-old theme which blossoms into a million tiny perfect flowers in the light of this dying age.

 

Class: Bard

 

Starting Equipment: Every song and poem and phrase and voice and word you've ever heard.

A: Clay; +1 reaction

B: Glass; +1 HP

C: Ink; +1 save

D: Ash; +1 reaction

 

Clay: Stare into the labyrinthine depths of the cruel golden Sun. He will shrive you of your innocence and your ignorance and your staring sparkling eyes that drink up light like an alcoholic drinks spirits. In return for your gift, he will place orbs of dull unseeing clay in your scarred sockets, scriven all over with writhing skeletal runes encoding beautiful secrets you can never read. Your new eyes will be blind as the dirt from which they were ripped, but they will whisper to you always, slender insinuations of the straw-bright threads which link all things. Masters and slaves, lovers and lovers, stories and themes, spells and mages, secret doors and hidden levers: you will know the tendons which weave the world. You need but ask. If you pluck a golden thread and sing to its thrumming with your sliver-sharp voice, all who hear must save or still in fascination as tears pour down their cheeks.

Glass: Stand before the vast, uncaring Sea and bare yourself utterly. Clothes, pretenses, personae, rhetoric, skin: you must shed them all to reveal the wet, pulsing flesh beneath, the veins coursing with carmine thoughts, the intestines convulsing with love and anguish. Your audience will know you, and they will love you. In return for your gift, they will lick you all over where your skin once was, your knees and thighs and wrists and shoulders and breasts and ears. Where the tongues, foaming and salty, have been, your new skin will grow. It will be hard and transparent and cool—strictly, it will not be glass but some strange unearthly metal—but when touched by aught other than yourself, it will scorch away fabric and flesh alive in a burst of heat. All the machinery that composes you will forever be exposed to the searching eye, breathing and pumping beneath your impenetrable skin. You will be immune to external physical harm, and any who lay hands on you will take 1d6 damage per round. If someone you loves cries out in pain and you can hear it, you can choose to take the damage instead of them.

Ink: Climb atop the highest peak of the land, whether it be stone or steel, and weep joyous tragic bittersweet tears from your blind clay eyes like handfuls of glittering gem-dust thrown into the laughing Wind. Tears are not all she demands; she will blend your courage and your bones and your teeth into a slurry and drink them down with a raw egg. You don't need them, after all, with your lovely corundum shell to keep you standing and protect you from harm. In return for your gift, your heart and glands and marrow will course anew with fresh fluid, their erstwhile charges replaced with black, indelible ink. Your blood will stain your veins, your saliva will stain your tongue, your lymph will stain your nodes, your tears will stain the corners of your eyes, your urine will stain your groin, your milk will stain your nipples. The very cushion in which floats your brain will stain every inch of your mind. What remains of you now but this sad muddy slime of organs in a perfect leaded-glass vase? All who look can see your dissolution—but your words can never be erased, for your ink is eternal. Put to paper the tale, heroic or tragic, of someone you love, and spread it. They may add +1 to any number they wish on their character sheet. You may not do this more than once per person, and each must choose a different number to affect. If you incite a crowd to action by invoking such a tale, they will not be quelled until their goal is achieved.

Ash: You have received many gifts, from Sun and Sea and Wind. This is not a gift. It is yours. You have learned—or perhaps created?—a new word, and this word is Truth. When you speak it, your perfect ink-stained song-singing tongue will burn to ash in an instant. Your effluvia will clear miraculously, no longer blighted by darkness. Your bones and teeth will grow again from naught in their proper places. Your skin will soften and warm and grow opaque. Your eyes will appear once again in your skull, untouched by unbearable brightness. In return for your gift, you may dictate one eternal fact, which will forever reign in heaven as on earth, carved into the firmament and the bedrock and all other stones that are and all other stones that will be. Your tongue will never return. Your new-written stories will vanish in time, as all mortal things do. But your old stories and your Truth; those will never die. 

Inspired by "Death Dance for a Poet" by Audre Lorde, which I cannot find a good transcription of online. It's in the collection The Black Unicorn (1978).

The Wanderer (I guess I'm posting crappy short fiction now?)

I reread A Wizard of Earthsea recently and was inspired to write a bad, extremely derivative short story. This doesn't really have anything to do RPGs, although the setting may be rather like Carolingia, I guess. Yes, I know it's also the name of a GLOG class I wrote. No, I don't care. Wanderers are cool.

 

The Wanderer

The wanderer came into the village out of the high moors one bright day late in the summer. She was tall and stern, carrying a long staff of pale aspen that matched her height. Her hooded cloak of green wool was plain and functional, but it was pinned with a fine bronze brooch. She went to the household of a yeoman in the village, who gave her bread and stew and a spot by the hearth for the night, as is the custom. When those gathered asked her for her name, where she came from, and to where she went, she merely shrugged and smiled, eyes glittering with laughter. That night, as repayment for his hospitality, although none was expected, she went to his son, who had fallen from a tall tree on to his head a week ago and had not since woken up. She laid a hand upon his forehead, spoke a single word in a language that none who heard it could understand, and tapped her staff gently on the ground. The boy settled imperceptibly in his cot and began to breathe deeper. Come morning she was gone and the boy was awake, full of life.
 

Some days later the wanderer appeared in a larger town some distance from the village, and it was the day of a festival, when the coming of fall was celebrated. The people were gathered in the square of the town, singing songs of veneration and dancing dances of joy. When the wanderer came to the square she joined her voices to all the others. Those near her remarked upon both the strength and gentleness of her song, and the way she knew every song of the festival as if by heart. After the singing and the dancing was done, all the folk of the town gathered close to eat of the bounty of the harvest; to drink good cider, ale, and mead; and to hear the young bard of the town sing the great lay that was sung for this festival: the Lay of Windbéatan. Although young and fresh from her apprenticeship the chanter was very skilled, and it was a pleasure to hear her recite the ancient poesy in her lively and inimitable style. 

 

After several hours she was done and the townsfolk were preparing to disperse for the night, but the wanderer stepped forwards before the crowd and began to chant. She sang, slow and solemn and beautiful, a tale of an ancient queen of this land, and the eldest amongst the crowd recalled that the old chanter of the town had sung this tale before he had died decades ago, leaving the town with no chanter for some years. The grace and glory of the wanderer’s epic surpassed even that of the young chanter’s, and the town listened as if spellbound for some hours. After she finished, the people slowly began to depart to their sleep, quiet and drowsy in happiness. The young chanter came to the wanderer and offered the hospitality of her home, which was gratefully accepted. The whole of the next day the wanderer spent teaching the chanter the poem she had sung that the chanter might sing it every equinox. The night she spent again in the home of the chanter, and departed ere the cocks crowed.
 

Not more than a month after the equinox, the greatest city of the land was invested by raiders hailing from a far-off country. They built works of war about the walls of the city, set their ships in the river to ensure none could escape by that avenue, and despoiled the countryside with fire and rapine. As the siege grew tighter and fiercer, the woman appeared in the market square of the city, though none knew how she had slipped through the leaguer of the raiders or how she had entered the city unseen by its watchful guardians. There she sat in the street, staff across her knees, closed her eyes, and began to chant slowly in a strange language. As tales had already spread across the land of a woman possessed of great lore and magic, she remained there unmoving and unmolested for seven days as the siege grew ever closer and more hardly contested. On the seventh day the raiders had finally fought their way atop the walls of the city, and yet as their first man began to descend into the city a blinding sheet of white fire suddenly shot up atop the walls. This great light began to expand, slowly but inexorably, forcing the invaders off the walls, then itself dropping down to the ground below. The wall of flame, which somehow did not scorch the ground upon which it stood, broke its circle and began to stretch out in a vast line, spreading across the river and a wide front on each side. The raiders fled from it in terror, and their ships were forced down the river. They were corralled by this terrible magic to their ships and forced from the land in a rout. As the final ship left the country, the wanderer slumped over on her side in the square of the city and knew no more.
 

The wanderer was taken into the household of the king himself, and gently nursed back to health. The king himself took great interest in her well-being, often conversing with her on the mysteries of the world at her bedside once she was well enough to talk. Within a fortnight she was largely recovered from her great effort and made clear her intentions to depart soon. The king besought her to stay at his court and join his service as a mage, offering riches and honor and all that she could wish for. At this she merely shook her head sadly and took her leave. As she left the palace, there was a great horde of the wealthiest and most powerful in the country gathered before the gates, all pleading with her to perform some task and offering inestimable reward. She ignored them all and strode forth, out of the city. 

 

The wanderer walked for weeks, going all the way to the farthest and most remote part of the country. She paid her way in small deeds of healing and service, exchanged for the simplest of hospitality, and finally arrived at the poorest village in all the land. As she walked the rutted mud pit that passed for its main way, she beheld a bandaged and pitiful figure lying in the dirt begging for scraps: a leper. The wanderer went into the nearby woods and did not return for a week, until she had gathered great store of herbs, including many with commonplace medical usages and many thought to be useless. When she returned, she went to the leper with no superstition or fear and took him to the stream, anointing him with water, and set piles of herbs around him. She set the herbs alight, their fragrant smoke spiraling off into the heavens, and began to sing a low, slow song. Each day for a month she would return to the leper and perform this ritual, or one similar but with different herb and song, or a with a different liquid to touch his brow. Finally, on the 27th day, as her song drew to a close, the leper’s bandages split to reveal a healed man below. Without further ado, the wanderer set off into the wilds, never to be seen again.