Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 10

Good morning, gentle reader(s). It's always morning somewhere in the world, just as it's always 16:38 somewhere, and evening somewhere. The salutation is the point, not the time.

This is the last "free" chapter of this series... everything that follows will be truncated or redacted in some fashion. Likely also with more time between posts (because that kind of editing takes time, too).

Hold onto whatever you've been holding onto for the previous 9 chapters - this is a massive undertaking! It gets tedious in places. It gets boring. It gets fed-up with all my bullshit and just goes home. Then, at the end - the chapter concludes. When you get to the end of the chapter, I'd be interested to know whether you suspected Matta was the "hero" during Chapter 1 & 2. Was I just head-faking?

It's a long chapter, but you can get through it! Don't cheat yourself by skipping to the end (not that I'll know), and I'll see you at the end of the chapter! HERE WE GO!

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Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"

CHAPTER TEN: Memories in Ashes

The curse of undeath is not so simple as most folk might think. Among the learned, it is widely accepted that undeath is like most other disease -- if magical in nature -- and can be remedied in like fashion. Often, the result is the final death of the body -- releasing whatever trapped spirit or soul (lore tends to conflate the two and hold them separate by turns) into the ether and forcing it through the boundary separating the material plane with those planes more suited to such entities.

An ordinary zombie is no abomination inhabited by the restless dead -- but a magically-animated corpse under the command of a Sorcerer or Wizard. This, too, can be said of animated skeletons which, in no small manner, are held together solely by the magical force of their necromantic conjuring. Severing the ties of magic to body or magic to mage will end such constructs entirely -- though their remains could just as easily be reanimated by another skilled mage.

The true horrors and wonders of undeath are in those forms inextricably bound to the original soul or a possessing entity. Such revenants are assumed to be at least as capable as their living counterparts; reported stories, legends, and things of nightmare often include undead Wizards -- sometimes called Liche, depending on the social or academic circle of discussion -- and are among the most rare of undead monstrosity. With good reason, these creatures are hounded-out by every church of every faith, save that of the ever-patient Maiden of Bones... She who waits at the end of all things... and She will not suffer her faithful to rush needlessly into death, for their work in her realm is endless.

While the halls of knowledge continue to expand, many academics weigh the manifold causes of such undead beings. From the nebulous "unfinished business" to incredibly specific alchemical and magical genesis: the ethereal ties that can hold a spirit or soul into a corpse of any measure are dangerously difficult to study. Though most Wizards might hesitate to call such intelligent undead "anathema", it is often times easier to destroy them rather than capture and study them to discern their innermost arcane workings. Couple this with the secretive study surrounding necromancy (even in the much-lauded preservation and embalming of corpses), and it is small wonder that necromancers are often held to blame whenever some shambling thing erupts from the ground and begins clawing its way through town in a murderous spree.

That's precisely the sensation one's fear might give, when confronted with the decayed husk of a former life, memories of days past flayed to the bone and devoured by the mangled jaws of the undead that has become the waking world.

Standing on the far bank of the stream, Damon looked over the smaller fields with a detached wonder. He could see his home, a streamer of smoke rising from the low coals in its hearth, and he knew at least his father had survived. Abhilash had said as much, that morning: she had delivered the man to South-wold, herself.

He couldn't weep, though he wanted to, and his feet stuck fast to the ground. Shadows of memory raced around the houses or stood in effigy of the houses that were gone. Voices now silent whistled through him, before he saw the outlines of people -- men, women, and children -- going about a broken reflection of life. They moved with all the semblance of the living -- but with too much space between them, and too little laughter or conversation. At any moment, he expected them to vanish like the trails of smoke above his father's home.

His feet ached from the long trek through the Willow Wood... blisters covering several toes, and one had burst on his heel... though it hurt to stand, he dared not move. He dare not break this spell of uncertainty. Perhaps, if he waited, more of his kin-folk would emerge unharmed -- the familiar gait and cadence of voice revealing that those cherished memories were still housed in human form and not already cold ashes in a hundred pyres.

When one head turned and stared at him, then another... even as joy and terror took arms within his chest and beat against his lungs and stabbed behind his eyes, they gathered with loved and favored voices -- though always too few.

Ginga appeared from the further fields, her scarf whipping around her face. Damon's breath at last caught in his throat and his legs found the will to move. All at once, the world filled with swirling, freezing water, and the barking laughter of stones and orks as he plunged forward into the stream near its deepest point.

He didn't care.

His hands clawed through the mud, ignoring the painful cold as he scrabbled forward blindly. His body knew the larger stones well, and these braced his hands and feet in spite of the slimy, slippery algae coating them. Before Abhilash could follow and drag him up from the water, he was clear of the inner bank and running. Naked flesh shining in the midday sun, hair flopping a sodden, tangled braid behind him, he ran on bleeding feet across the field -- trampling sprouts and creeping gourd-vines with newly-fleshed thorns -- toward Gina.

She could not likewise say she recognized him, at first. He had looked the part of a ghost, though the delighted cries of children and cousins had called her name before even daring to say his, and she had run to them -- heart racing -- to be confronted with a specter that wore the flesh of her lover she had thought dead until the day before. It had been a cruel joke, then, to learn he lived; the nymph's soothing presence giving no comfort in that moment to her wounded spirit. On this day, as she was sharpening her hatchet just past one of the corrals, the call for her had stirred her feet with an urgency she'd not anticipated.

"Ginga! Ginga! Hurry! He's back, Ginga!" So many voices, and yet too few.

It was a most human hunger they felt -- each wounded and needing... all of them desperate for some happiness outside the knowledge of their own survival. While this could not call the dead back to them -- this one lost son returning home fed them in ways a nymph's power could not.

Shrieks of joy and relief, praise to heavens and gods stumblingly uncertain of where credit might be due. Ginga and Damon's bodies clapped together, spinning as they were swarmed by others. Both blinded by their grip on each other, tucked together and clinging tightly and feeling about to be sure that this was real.

"You were dead."

"I thought I'd never see you again."

"Am I dreaming? Is this real?"

"I missed you so much."

Every conceivable formulation their tongues could muster spilt out or broke apart as they said it. Then laughter. Then weeping. Then they dared to look each other in the eye. All the while, they were pressed by cousins and friends -- many wanting to find an end of their own grief and secretly knowing they would not.

Dozens of hands touched Damon's shoulders, back, and sides.

"Is he real?"

"How can this be?"

"It's a miracle."

Ginga met Damon's eyes and they smiled at each other, seeing one another at last in brief stillness as they caught a breath between them. Then kissing.

...

"Well, he is safe from himself a while." Abhilash grumbled, crouched low in the rushes by the stream.

"Good. Let's see what food we can..." Kamakshi shifted sideways upstream, looking to use the crowd's focus as a distraction to sneak into the village.

"No." Abhilash shook her head and pointed, the luminous figure of the nymph entering her view. "You do not want to test that one."

Kamakshi moved closer, following the low angle to the slight female fae. The ork gnawed her lip and growled.

"Best we wait here." Kamakshi snarled.

Abhilash nodded, frowning.

Mutely they watched as South-wold converged on Damon, the slender moment of peace he found in Ginga's arms wrested from him as his father crushed him and kissed his face among tears and swearing laughter. The humans spoke too quickly and over each other for them to hear anything clearly, but it was obvious that the subject of two she-orks lurking by the water had not yet risen. The whole mass of villagers at last turned itself and began to shuffle back towards the houses, giving Abhilash and Kamakshi time to pass in silent contemplation... or, in more orkish fashion: fuming with impatience.

"Shit."

"What?" Kamakshi was basking as best she could without flattening too many reeds.

"Wait here." Abhilash forded the stream to retrieve the magical sword and returned to the village-side of the water.

"Why?" Kamakshi sat up. "What's happening?"

"I don't know yet." Abhilash twisted her neck and jaw with a loud pop as she limbered her shoulders, blood just beginning to ooze from a nostril. "So wait."

"How long?" Kamakshi hissed, tempted to follow anyway.

"Until you or the nymph are dead." Abhilash grunted over her shoulder, breaking into a near-silent lope.

In her mind, the jailer was laughing at her and battering the bars... or was she the jailer, now? In any case -- she could feel the wrongness, the danger closing-in. Something in the air had changed, and blood would flow... then doom. Perhaps for the best, but the needling flames did not let her wait for oblivion to come. So, she went to meet it.

...

"I don't understand." Akuji's smile was fading, dying on his lips as his son's face became a stone red mask.

"I didn't escape, Da." Damon looked him in the eyes, his face hollow and haunted; voice no more than mumbled wooden beads rolling inside a hollowed gourd.

They had retreated to their home, with many well-wishers still in tow, and Damon had deflected the offers of a heated bath. Owing to his recent crossing, he felt plenty rinsed and refreshed after his long journey. Despite the wounds on his feet, he didn't begin to limp until he started following his father into their family home. Now, the pain in his feet was wearying itch and ache seeping hotly up his legs to shiver in his spine. He had refused treatment of this, too, until his father had marked his bloody footprints near the hearth.

Damon met his gaze, searching both eyes to try and tell him without saying those words aloud.

Not one for guile but understanding the craft well, Akuji set his jaw and gave Damon a solemn nod.

"Give us peace, please." Akuji ushered his guests out. They reluctantly obeyed not only his right to his home, but as Head-Elder... and those who had huddled into his residence shuffled out dutifully and spoke in hushed voices among themselves as they looked for a new distraction from the day's work. The weather was fair pleasant, and it seemed a waste of the afternoon to go back to work after one of their own had just sprang up naked from the dead.

Ginga worried her hands, looking back and forth between Damon and Akuji; suddenly very uncomfortable being around either man. When the opportunity presented itself, she followed the crowd out and shadowed Nurcan. The eldest magical apprentice seemed the most composed at Damon's resurrection and among the last to withdraw.

...

"Nurcan?" Ginga closed, drawing alongside and tugging lightly at the older woman's sleeve.

"Mmm?" She glanced sidelong, her lips drawn into that severe, thoughtful frown she wore most times. "What is it?"

"What should I do?" Ginga looked back over her shoulder, Akuji's house ducking behind another as the two women walked away.

"A good question. Let's give that some thought." Nurcan answered blandly, but not for lack of sympathy... she was more concerned with Damon's reappearance than Ginga realized. "Perhaps the nymph will have some insight."

"You think Prende..." Ginga's voice trailed-off as her thoughts raced from shelter to shelter -- the frightened rabbit in her mind finding no respite at any one shadowed alcove as each drew promise and danger.

"The storm, now this... I ken not what to think." Nurcan grunted, her path steering back to the shallow ruin that Prende frequented as much after Matta's death as in his life.

Ginga shook-off the curiosity, memory of the storm still fresh. It had drawn up with monstrous intent, crackling with lightning and howling zephyrs as it fought against the prevailing winds to descend on South-wold just before sunset. Then, it seemed to change its mind and spent itself like so much flatulence -- wrinkling noses and frightening animals, but otherwise harmless when the clouds at last scattered to reveal the stars of evening. The rain had been scarce a drizzle, and the lightning seemed dull, muffled sparks amid the clouds that never bothered to drop from the sky.

"You." Nurcan called out across the path, Prende now in full view within the tiny ruin. The nymph had been among the last to witness Damon's arrival and the first to leave. Either she did not know the significance, or did not care -- but Nurcan was too shrewd to let the matter be.

"Yes?" Prende looked up, the pensive line of her lips turning into a shining smile when she recognized Matta's apprentice. "Nurcan... it's good to see you."

"Speak plainly, Prende." Nurcan came to a stop at the lip of the ruin. "Your stunt, yesterday, with the tooth -- what's it to do with the boy?"

"What stunt?"

"Do not play about, nymph." Nurcan bristled, wearing the mantle of a mother of many years and hardened by her own loss. "The boy should be dead from the poison, and the orks with him... is this because of you, as well? How many more bloody surprises must we suffer?"

Ginga gawped, stepping away from Nurcan for fear the woman might be struck by lightning or some terrible malady for such discourtesy. Fae folk were known for their caprices, good and ill alike.

"The tooth amplifies magic, Nurcan -- it does not conjure it." Prende shook her head, the broad smile shrinking to a wistful shaping of lips. "The poison should have worked, if her mate..."

Here, she pointed at Ginga, who shied away but had no time or place to retreat before their attention diverted from her just as swiftly.

"...was taken by the orks, it should have worked on him." Prende's mouth frowned, and her eyes closed in thought. "Matta's spell was true -- no mortal would have survived it."

"He's immortal?" Ginga blurted with alarm, eyes wide.

"No." Nurcan waved the remark off, shaking her head. "The spell was wrong, or something else was wrong -- but Damon is a flesh-and-blood human, like any other... his feet..."

"I could sense him, if you like." Prende bobbed her head, her eyes opening and catching Nurcan's scowl.

"What, you think he might be an immortal?" Nurcan scoffed at this, spitting what else she thought of it to the side. "Born here, to Akuji and Kaida, whose families have never boasted so much as a taste of magic?"

"You mean he could be a sorcerer?" Ginga desperate to grasp the meaning behind conversations she'd not witnessed that clearly had already transpired.

"Mayhap." Prende shrugged and gave the barest pout, her light shrinking inward as she stood up -- Nurcan gave only a non-committal snort. "Many are the intersections of mortal lives... who can say? I will sense him, and see if he carries the spark of magic."

"He would need more than a spark of magic." Nurcan argued, offering her tough, weathered hand to the dainty fae female. "If he were not already a sorcerer, he would need..."

She braced herself and lifted the nymph toward her, struggling with the words rather than the weight.

"A curse -- or a powerful boon?" Prende pressed close to Nurcan as she stepped up and out of the depressed ruin. Her eyes looked at Nurcan's mouth as they traded breath, so close that Ginga thought she could hear a low groan in Nurcan's throat. Ginga felt herself flush with arousal, not only from the sight of their contact, but her own reverie of the nymph's magical touch.

"How... would we tell?" Nurcan gave a mighty shudder and stepped away from Prende, forcing her lust to arms-length along with the fae that was stoking it.

Prende lowered her face in a show of human bashfulness, glancing up at the two women with unmasked ardor lofted by the raising of her heavy-lidded eyes.

"If it is strong enough, it can be seen." The nymph held out her hand to Nurcan. "May I have the tooth?"

"No." Nurcan shrugged and turned her whole body away, unable now to even look at Prende without her knees shaking with desire. "Sense the boy, first... we'll decide what to do with the tooth later... Later."

Nurcan could not think of a good reason to give the tooth to Prende; she had rightly guessed at its magical significance when the storm had come so fast on the heels of the nymph's outburst... Prende had protested that the storm was not her doing but, on seeing the tooth, had revealed its importance as a focusing tool for magic. With it, Prende had abated much of the fury of the storm -- that was not commonly known in South-wold. Akuji and Nurcan had not told anyone, and prepared their fellows for the worst storm they could envision... a storm that did not strike, to their collective relief.

The deceit, Nurcan had reasoned, was necessary -- if South-wold was going to suffer Prende's continued presence. They could not resolve to allow the nymph to stay and endure potential mounting catastrophes every time the nymph lost her temper, if everyone in the village knew she was the root cause of those calamities. Akuji had likewise insisted that Nurcan carry the dragon's tooth, which the apprentice grudgingly accepted. She didn't like the feel of it against her skin. Unlike Akuji, the tooth did not scald Nurcan. Instead, she said it felt more like a stone worm that was always trying to burrow into her.

"Where is he?" Prende dropped her hands to her sides and glanced away from Nurcan.

"Akuji's house." Ginga motioned. "This way."

...

"Oh, my son." Akuji held Damon to him, cradling his son's head against his shoulder in effort of lending his strength to the younger man where they stood. "Tell me..."

"I'm a sorcerer." Damon's voice was flat, droning out of him in mechanical rhythm, bereft of emotion. "I don't know how -- but I did this. I ruined everything."

"That's not..."

"I brokered a pact with Kamakshi, that night in their camp.I'm the reason you were released... why the poison didn't work... why the Sidero have been perfected..."

"What?" Akuji stepped back, holding his son away from him at the shock of it. "What the hells do you mean, 'perfected'? What could you... How could you do this?"

"I don't know, Da." Damon shook his head, brows knitting with distant confusion. Stepping back, his brow furrowed as he considered his own thoughts. "I just... I didn't want any more death... when I woke up, there... and Billsby... so much death, Da. Too much."