A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 01

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Cha'Khah Dreile opened her eyes, choking in the dust left behind from the explosion. Her chest felt as though it was on fire and all things considered, she felt lucky to be still able to draw breath at all. Her ribs felt as though she'd been thrown against a boulder or, perhaps it had been the other way around. She wasn't sure anymore. With the innate ability of her kind, she looked around in the dusty darkness for her companions.

Their 'guide' was there, bent over someone who it had had been her duty to guard and report on. The mage was injured, hurt by the very blast that he'd decided to help along. The guide was administering aid of a kind that the Drow female was unfamiliar with, never having seen anything like it before.

It was said that the mysterious male was a visitor who'd journeyed to the underground Drow city to seek teaching in magic. That alone should have brought him nothing more than his own death for the impertinence of the request -- at best. At worst, it should have brought him only a lifetime in slavery -- especially if he'd been human.

But that wasn't what he was -- at least not completely, and he'd arrived looking like something else which had intrigued the matron of House Dreile enough to grant his request, assigning him to the Lesser Mage Vadren to be taught, while it had been his task to try to find out more about the stranger. It had fallen to Cha'Khah to report on them both. She was the commander of the detachment of Dreile soldiers assigned to his small mansion anyway.

But an odd thing had happened one evening. As different from him as they were, and as distrustful as they naturally were of each other, the two Drow -- the cruel and ruthless young female fighter and the youthful and secretly very proficient and powerful male mage both harbored deep disillusionment over their roles and fates in Drow society.

Cha'Khah was a blooded and proven fighter and had a bit of uncharacteristic magical ability for a female -- especially one who hadn't been chosen for clerical training due to her low birth and distant relation to the matron of the family. But she'd always been the sort to make the most of the cards that she'd been dealt and it showed. Her ability with any sort of weapon surpassed that of the house weaponmaster, but even though she was female, the role fell to a nearer relation to the high seat of the family -- and a male at that.

All that she could look forward to was a fighter's life, ready to give her last breath for rulers who didn't care a whit about her or whether she lived or died. She'd never wanted to become a fighter, but nobody had ever asked her what she wanted. You had to make your living at something, Cha'Khah had decided, and if all that she could be was a fighter, well then, she'd own that role. And she did, though quietly enough to keep any jealous daggers out of her back.

Vadren Dreile was a very distant cousin to the warrior, and as a male, he would always live at the beck and call -- and whims - of any of the house's higher females, his own sisters, most of them, and of course his aunts and his mother. His only saving grace was his ability at magic, most especially the specialization of combat casting. He was a little famous for it, but it bought him little.

He was third from the top of the heap between the mages in the house and no matter what he did, he would always be known there as the Lesser Mage Vadren. While he loved what he did, he also loved fighting and took every opportunity to learn what he could wherever he might avail himself of it. The house had many male soldiers, but few other than Cha'Khah knew that he could likely beat any of them in a fight, female or male -- including the vaunted weaponmaster.

She knew that because she'd taught him most of what he knew herself in exchange for his teaching her his own arts. As was typical for what they were, it had begun with their discovery of each other's talents and desires. That had led to a long series of bartering deals between them. It had gone on for years, but it yielded a completely unforeseen benefit.

In a society where females ruled over males very harshly, and males with any sort of talent kept it hidden to the best of their ability, the two had become fast and solid friends. They might not agree on something, in fact they seldom did, and they could argue the moon down before they settled things between themselves. But while each one threatened the other with either physical or magical harm, they never meant a word of it.

What had happened on a night when the strange male had been allowed by them to stay behind after hours was that they'd had a bit to drink -- all three of them, and it had come out that the two Drow had both expressed a hidden desire to see the world above. The trouble with that was that Drow hate sunlight, and there were always their duties to attend to.

Vadren's pupil told them of a few of his travels and it had whetted their interest even more. As far as duties, he'd said, all that it would cost them to get at least a look outside was a little of their rest. With respect to the sunshine, he'd suggested a few trips in little increments to get them acclimatized to being on the surface. He pointed out that they wouldn't be the first Drow who'd ever gone topside. There had been others before them, or he'd never have learned where to go to ask.

He took them outside often after that and the three became trusted traveling companions between them. But it came to a point one night when they knew that they had to make a decision. The day was coming when the matron would remember the visitor and want to do something about him. On top of that, their travels only made the two Drow want to leave the underground behind them forever. They both felt that another day in their rigid lives would be more than they could bear.

But it had become known that they left some nights without permission, and a trap had been set. The plot became known to Cha'Khah almost as soon as it was laid. They were to be apprehended by the gate guards as they returned, but since few ever came and went through the gate to the surface, the guards chosen were hardly worth the name.

The guards now lay dead not far off. Other than the 'crime' of killing the guards -- and that was arguable in a place where a little murder was ignored for the most part, especially if it was done quickly and above all, well, the main thing was a trap set in the mansion. The plan had been that if the trio couldn't be apprehended by the guards, they were to be caught while disoriented in the dust after the blast in the mage's home.

Well they were disoriented now, since Vadren had augmented the charge and his home was now a ruin. Their own plan had been to use the explosion to get away unnoticed.

"Help me get him outside again," the visitor said to the fighter, "then you'll both need to make a decision. I'm not going back inside after that."

It was still dark when they emerged out onto the surface. The two dark elves looked at their friend, "What now, Azrael?" Cha'Khah asked, "What is this decision?"

"I can get you both far away from here. You'll have to live with me, at least to begin with," he said, "I live underground too -- sort of, anyway. So they'll never find our bodies among the others back there, and you'll have your chance at a different life. Decide now -- or soon, before the rest of the house soldiers think to come here to look."

"How far can we get with Vadren in this shape?" the female asked, wanting to kick the mage for this.

"Never mind," their companion replied, "you both decide and we're gone far from here in an instant."

They both knew that their lives were worthless in the city now, and so they nodded their assent. After a few words from their friend, they stared around themselves in wonder while they stood in the darkness of another place altogether.

"Let's get Vadren over here where he can lie down and rest a little," their host said.

"What is this place?" Vadren groaned.

"My home -- such as it is," Azrael smiled, "strictly speaking, we aren't underground as far as the surface is concerned. We're inside a mountain."

"I feel this," Cha'Khah said looking around, "I do not know what all of this is around us, but the structure, the cave looks as though it has the marks of the dwarves to it -- yet it does not carry any of their stink."

"There were never any dwarves here," Azrael said, smiling, "and though you are now faced with all manner of choices in your lives, there is at least one that you've made.

You're free," he smiled.

"I wish to say one thing," the female said as she looked at Vadren.

"Imbecile!" she exclaimed as she slapped his face, "I am only lightly injured, but I am still hurt. I wore my armor, Vadren. Where is yours, and why didn't you wear it?"

Vadren looked at her and took it for what it was. Cha'Khah was upset because he'd been injured, cracking a few of his ribs. "I took it off, dear cousin," he smiled, "you know how I love a challenge."

She looked as though she was about to beat him to death, even though she was relieved to see that his sense of humor was unaffected.

"It's here," Azrael said grinning, "He left it outside and I took it along when I brought us all here."

"And just how did you manage all of that?" Cha'Khah wanted to know, "I thought that you came to the Drow to learn magic."

"I did," he laughed, "and I learned much, for which I am very grateful. But I never said anything to indicate that I had none of my own to begin with. Let's see to Vadren, Cha'Khah. Then we'll see about a meal. We have a lot more to talk about now. You both need new occupations to carry you thought this new life of yours. As it happens, I do have a few suggestions."

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The former province of British Columbia, two years later

He walked up the wooded slope -- as he'd been walking up this and others much like it for the past day and a half. It had been eight long years, but he'd decided finally to go back home, mostly to see if there was any home left to go to, really.

As he walked, he thought back, deciding that it was time to move on past all of the hard feelings and find out what or who might be left of his strange family -- and the important word here was strange.

He thought about her again. This journey was giving him far too much time for it, the pointless emotion-stirring and the way that it raised feelings in his heart which shouldn't have grown there in the first place. But they had nonetheless, and when every molecule of your being desires something and it turns into a need after a time, it's bad enough, but when it's found to have been mutual for so long, and then it turns into a requited thing, ...

He shook his head again as he walked. It should never have happened and that's all that there was to say. But it did, no matter what they'd said they wanted or didn't, and it tore them apart in the end. Not that he'd looked all that much, but he'd never found anyone to take her place in his heart. After that one final terrible day, she left, and he hadn't seen her since. He left the next week and this was the first time that he'd even been anywhere near the place. Maybe it wasn't even standing anymore, he thought, and if that were the case, then he was in for one long uncomfortable night before he walked a long road back.

After Rachel, he hadn't ever really wanted anyone. It had been almost eight years and he still hurt for her.

He was headed home to the place where he'd been born and raised. Throughout her pregnancy his mother had seen visions. They suggested a life of struggle for her unborn child, and though he would often brush up against evil, he would remain untouched by it, sometimes dispersing it in the process. It was how she came to choose his name, having read a lot of the bible that she'd found one day.

Azrael was the name that he'd been given on the day of his birth nearly thirty years ago. Tall and muscular, he wore his white-blonde hair in a long braid when he traveled, which was often. Perhaps it had been too often, he thought, but he knew that it couldn't be helped.

He often smirked when he thought about it. It was hard to pin down what he was -- even to himself. From the one that he'd always thought of as his father, he'd learned a lot of how to live off the land and the ways of the nature spirits. But he'd been born with something else, coming to him from his mother, or so he'd been told. He possessed a great deal of ability to use what many today would term magic. His mind was just the sort of inquisitive and thoughtful bundle of nerves and synapses to make use of it all, and his parents had seen it in him early on, just as they'd seen it in his sister.

He wondered if his father still lived there in the large log cabin far from anything and about as protected at anything can be, from a magical point of view. If it were almost anywhere else on Earth, he could have been there in only a matter of moments, but this place -- these woods for miles around the range of mountains here had been warded and made purposely indefinite to the seeking sort of mind of one like him by his mother. A sorcerer or cleric could never feel this place enough to just show up. If they wanted to be there, they had to walk the ground like anyone else.

Sadly, it also prevented him from traveling there quickly as well.

The late morning sunlight combined with the late spring season brought the temperature up fairly quickly whenever he walked across any open areas where the wind wasn't blowing. It would cause him to sweat and attract the mosquitoes and deer flies. But as soon as he was back in the shade again, he would feel the chill in seconds.

It was getting near noon when he arrived at the stream, the place where he'd made thousands of trips up and down the slope from here hauling water for most of his childhood. He thought that he could use a little refreshment and stopped to drink and wash. At least the cold could prove to him that he was still alive, and he'd grown tired of feeling the grit of this trip on the back of his neck.

It wasn't until he was almost done that he had the thought that he'd seen footprints on the shore in just that one place, that one spot there he'd squatted to fill his water jugs all those times. They hadn't looked out of place because they looked just as his did back then. But this wasn't back then, was it?

So whose footprints had he seen?

He stopped washing himself suddenly, feeling the presence of something or someone who might be a plausible cause for the relative quietness of the birds. His whole life long, until he'd left, the birds in these woods had been his friends -- especially the chickadees. They'd been his hopeful companions on countless walks when he'd gone looking for firewood. A turned-over branch or two, and they knew that they had something to eat in the grubs and insects which he'd uncovered for them.

He thought about a possible threat to him, and decided against it. What he felt was small and had problems of its own - big problems, he knew in an instant.

He became aware that he was being watched, but a little thought told him that there wasn't a malevolent feel to it. He pulled his clothes on a little quickly anyway and looked around, sensing more than seeing. He felt youthful worry with a touch of fear, but there was also a lot of wonder in it. He felt for some sort of an idea about alignment and he noticed that there seemed to be not so much a statement as there was a seeming to want to be doing the right thing.

So, this was a child then, he thought as he closed his shirt. What was a child doing here?

"It's a little rude to watch somebody like this. If there's something that you have to say to me," he smiled, "why not just say it now since I know that you're here. If not, then I'd ask for a little privacy while I wash.

Before you get to thinking that I'm just a nutty guy who talks to the birds when he's bathing," he said to the trees, "I know roughly where you are,"

He swung his head around and looked right at a large bush nearby. "Don't I?"

He felt the confusion now and knew that this person was struggling with what they'd been told about strangers. He wondered. Unless a town had sprung up here in the middle of the mountains, this kid had to live where he was headed himself.

It wasn't until he knelt to tie his bootlaces that he knew the child had come to a decision. He looked up and saw a boy of about seven maybe, looking very nervous and standing well out of reach.

"You should back off a little more," he said with a friendly smile to the boy, "You'll feel a little less scared then."

"I'm not scared," the boy said in a slightly defensive tone which said that he was -- at least a little. "My mother's sick. She needs help. I don't know what to do."

Azrael grinned in understanding, "And she told you not to talk to strangers that you might see. She told you to go to her and tell her first, didn't she? But if she's sick, then you're stuck, since she'd be stuck herself. "

The boy watched him shrug. "I guess it all depends on what's causing the sickness, how bad it's gotten, and then there's that other thing, ... It all depends on the mom."

He wanted to laugh a little at what he saw in that face as he began to walk up the slope again. "Don't worry about it, kid. That's what my mother used to tell me too. Is she in the cabin up there?"

The boy was amazed, "How did you know about that?"

"About the cabin?" he smiled, "Trust me, I know it. That old cabin is a lot older than the two of us. What's your mother's name, my young friend?" he asked, wanting now to know who it was who had taken up residence.

"Rachel, sir," the boy replied.

The man felt something in his chest begin to free-fall. He suddenly began to accept something on the spot which swept aside the features that he'd seen. Right now, those features were telling him things in no uncertain terms.

He looked over, "Rachel Wannamaker?"

His small companion only nodded and they started to walk again without much in the way of conversation between them. The man wondered why whoever Rachel was living here with couldn't help. Then again, maybe there were any of a lot of reasons.

The boy ran ahead, saying that he had to tell his mother. If his mother was awake, he knew that she'd likely be angry at what he was doing, but he didn't think he'd had any other choice. He just knew that he had to do something while he still had a mother at all.

The man knew that he was as close to his birthplace as the next little rise of the forest floor and across the dark glade. The old log cabin was large and solid, made from huge trunks. Most of the timbers had only been roughly squared. The whole thing sat in the shelter of a thick grove of tall trees, most of them well over a hundred feet tall. Growing the way that they had, the forest floor below them was always a dark and slightly gloomy place. The site had been carefully selected long ago.

There would never be a sunbeam shining in through a window, it was true, but it would always be well-hidden and most important of all, it would be well-protected and sheltered from the weather. A side benefit was that the creatures of the forest all knew that this was here and came here themselves. Sometimes a meal was standing right outside the window, just feet away from the porch.

She opened her eyes at her son's worried touch on her shoulder. He was trying to tell her something, but she was still half-asleep; the fever kept her tossing and it never allowed her to really rest. She felt both heavy and light-headed at the same time and she could feel the infection coursing through her veins as every lymph node in her body felt as if it were swollen and on fire.