The Line in the Snow

The pain shot through his body and Melkor screamed. For a moment, a sense of fear held him. It was something he had not felt in many years. Pain, however, was not something new to the old shaman, and that moment was all it took to marshal his mind to the task at hand.

In a remarkable act of will he summoned the Power and sent a wall of force emanating from himself, throwing back Cruvik, several of his men, and the crossbow bolts still flying towards him.

He made his way over to Katia, now huddled behind a wooden post. The battle was not turning out as he had hoped. He shielded her from the incoming fire, batting aside incoming missiles, as they made their way to the nearest house, and Katia ran inside.

Quick as he was with the Power flowing through his limbs, he barely managed to block the projectiles now heading towards him. Finally a bolt slipped past his defences and speared through Melkor's left shoulder, bringing him to the ground momentarily.

Their confidence renewed after seeing the wizard bleed, the remaining raiders moved to converge on Melkor and overwhelm him. He was fading fast, the blood running down his back and from his shoulder taking both life and the Power with it. He had to end this quickly.

He had hoped it wouldn't come to this, he wasn't sure he would survive doing this again. The Power flowed within him, and he held it there, letting it build to a crescendo he could barely contain.

Melkor managed to rise to one knee and, grasping his staff in his right hand, swung it in a horizontal arc before him. Speaking an arcane tongue, the tip of the staff spouted a plume of fire at the encroaching bandits, engulfing several of them and lashing across several more.

Caught off guard and panicked, the raiders screamed, ran, and fell about thrashing. Their advance was halted. That is except for their leader who appeared to be all the more determined for now being on fire. The pain in his screams could not quell the rage he still felt, as he continued to stagger towards Melkor.

A solid thrust with his staff and Melkor sent Cruvik flying several meters through the air, all the way past the edge of the village.

The remaining bandits -- those still alive - fell to the ground and floundered about in the snow, trying desperately to extinguish the magical flames. Only seven survived their ordeal, and immediately fled the village, screaming for mercy. They would never return.

Cruvik, on the other hand, had to be dealt with permanently. Melkor knew that he would never give up his designs on Jinnsfjur, not so long as he lived.

With barely any strength left in him -- the arcane fire sapping the little energy he had left - Melkor stood and used his staff to as a crutch as he limped towards where Cruvik had fallen. He had to see his body and make sure he was dead.

There was no body to be found.

Melkor cursed this turn of events. That evil son of a bitch had somehow survived everything he had thrown at him. Arcane fire was exceedingly difficult to put out, had Melkor's aim not been impaired from being wounded, none of them would have survived.

Now, as it was, their enemy was alive and doubtless already plotting his return.

And Melkor was wounded. Tired. Old.

He made his way back to the village, the blood dripping from his shoulder and down his back once again painted the snow of Jinnsfjur red.

Milena had realised Katia was missing, and had rushed back to find her. They now stood together, watching Melkor struggle to walk, and looking at him hopefully.

"I'm sorry, Milena. He's still alive." Melkor struggled to get out.

A range of emotions flitted across Milena's face, chief amongst them desperation. "Maybe you scared him off for good... Maybe he'll stay away..."

She wished it could be true, but the grave expression on Melkor's face gave the lie to her hopes. She sent Katia to get the other villagers and helped Melkor home.

***

An hour later Melkor was once again in his tower, his shoulder and back spelled with a healing charm -- it would not mend soon, he simply didn't have the strength in him for that -- and with the weight of the entire village crushing him.

He had failed. He knew he was no longer the warrior he once was, yet at the beginning of this day he believed he could save these people, now he wasn't so sure.

Cruvik would return. He knew he would, and with more men than ever before. Milena said he had told them that all the raider gangs in the Mehann Mountains were his to command. He could have been lying, but Melkor doubted it.

He would return, with all of them, eventually.

Melkor needed to think of a way to save Jinnsfjur, but eventually, sometime around midnight, he begrudgingly had to accept that he would not be able to do so tonight. A potion from his satchel numbed the pain of his wounds, and gave him a pleasant feeling of euphoria, allowing sleep to take him.

***

Days passed. Melkor used the time to heal and meditate. He spent long hours staring into a roughly hewn crystal he had found on his journeys.

That seer in Solan Nor, the one he had told Katia about -- the one who had given him the colour-changing twine, who had seemed to carry the wisdom of ages with her, had also directed him to curiosity he now held in his hand.

She had given him a curious look after he had inquired about a similarly rough-hewn crystal he had seen in her parlour. He could feel the Power emanating from it, something he had never encountered before. Magic sprung from the earth itself, and only those who could wield the Power gave off any sense of it themselves.

She told him of a cave far to the northwest where he would find a chamber in which the stalactites were composed of just such crystals. His curiosity peaked, Melkor had travelled there immediately, crossing a harsh and lifeless plain in order to reach it.

Inside the cave was an otherworldly experience for the centuries-old mage. Bright luminescent crystals lit the entire cavern, and at the centre was the largest crystal he had ever seen. It was rounded, perfectly formed, and emanated the Power more intensely than Melkor had ever felt in his long life.

He was awash in the energies of the place, his mind almost overwhelmed by the pure, burning brightness of the magic he felt, and there he found a profound sense of peace.

After carefully hewing a chunk of crystal from one of the stalactites, using a blade as the seer had instructed, Melkor knew it was time to return to what would be his final home.

He had found his tranquility, and had no need to search for it anymore.

During his journey back to Jinnsfjur he had studied the chunk of rough crystal extensively, he had channelled his Power through it attempting to probe its secrets. He had even spoken to it, the isolation of his travels leaving him in want of company.

Then one night, while again attempting to learn what made this particular crystal so peculiar, he saw himself reflected in its depths. Only it was wasn't mirroring him as he was, he was seeing and - most peculiarly -- hearing the conversation he had had with the crystal just the previous night.

He had been astounded, this curious mineral could somehow store the image and voice of whoever looked into its depths! Most curious. Eventually, with further experimentation, he had determined that one needed to pass magical energies through the crystal in order to activate this ability.

Curious what other properties it held, Melkor carved a small portion of it off of the main body and experimented further. He attempted to change its form, tried to transmute it, even did his utmost to destroy it. Yet despite his best attempts, both magical and mundane, the fragment remained unchanged and unmarred. It seemed the only response it had to magic of any sort was to absorb it.

Suddenly Melkor knew how the seer in Solan'Nor had possessed such vast wisdom -- it had not all been hers! Her crystal was old, perhaps older than she herself, old enough to have been passed to her by another with her gifts.

These crystals could provide an everlasting store of knowledge and experiences, ones which could be passed from generation to generation. While knowledge may not be valued in some places in the world, Melkor knew its power.

He knew it could help his homeland -- his people had no written tradition. Melkor had not learned to write until he was already over a century old. Having taught the one who would replace him as shaman all he knew, he ventured into the larger world, just as Zanbor -- his own mentor -- had done before him. It was there he first learned of books and scrolls.

But people -- even shamans -- were flawed, and memory was a fleeting thing. Despite all the skills Zanbor had taught him, Melkor always knew there was much that had been lost to time from the minds of the shamans.

But with this simple little thing, his people could have the combined knowledge of his own life, what he could remember of Zanbor's, and of all those who would come after him.

The nights of his journey became the highlights of it from that point on. He recorded all that he knew about the Power, about the skills of a shaman, about the ancient Songspeak.

He transcribed every spell he had ever created and all those Zanbor had taught him into the crystal's infinite facets.

When he finally saw Jinnsfjur on the horizon, he was excited to get back to his tower where countless tomes of magical teachings were contained. He would gleefully spend what time he had left committing as much knowledge to the crystal as it could hold -- which could very well be more than there was knowledge he had to offer.

And finally, he would give Pavel a hefty sum to travel to the farthest northern reaches and deliver the priceless bounty to his people. It had been a perfect plan.

Of course, his plans that day had not gone as expected.

***

The fifth night after Cruvik had escaped his wrath, Melkor dreamed of a day long ago, when he had been but Zanbor's errant pupil. The day when a roaming pack of lionesses had attacked his tribe.

This was not too unusual in itself, however this time, the hunters were away and Zanbor was nowhere to be found. Melkor, eager to prove himself, decided to drive them away himself.

He had been brave, but not much more, and certainly not up to driving away a pack of hungry predators. He was about to become the lionesses' first meal when Zanbor finally appeared.

Using his own staff, he carved a line through the air -- glowing blue light appearing in its path; he chanted the Songspeak, and a magical barrier appeared between Melkor and the results of his hubris. The lionesses gnashed and clawed at the invisible wall, when they tried to move around the obstruction Zanbor chanted again, and the barrier shifted to block their ingress once more. The lionesses eventually grew tired, and left to hunt for easier prey.

It was a spell Zanbor eventually taught him -- a way to protect those close to him with an impenetrable barrier that could shift and move at the shaman's command.

Melkor's eyes shot open. That was it!

A barrier around Jinnsfjur could protect the villagers from Cruvik's band no matter how many they numbered. Should they return he could simply summon it once again. Eventually, like the lionesses from his youth, the raiders would tire of trying.

But not Cruvik. Melkor knew that monster would never stop in his pursuit of Jinnsfjur and its people. He would have to be dealt with, permanently.

Except such barriers required the shaman to maintain concentration in order to last.

Damn it! He could not maintain the barrier and engage Cruvik at the same time!

The crystal! It could hold magical energies in ways he had never seen. Could it hold a spell?

Melkor immediately set to finding out. Time was short and his need was great. He spent every waking moment of the next few days experimenting with the crystal and its strange properties.

***

A week passed and Melkor had succeeded in making the crystal chunk hold simple spells active, and he was confident he could make it hold a barrier, he just was not certain for how long.

He had briefly toyed with the idea of modifying the spell further, and adding new properties to the barrier, but that would surely have decreased the time it could remain active.

And whatever length of time that was, it would have to do. That night Melkor saw torchlight on the horizon moving towards Jinnsfjur. An enormous number of torches, meaning an enormous number of marauders -- at least a hundred.

As Melkor strode through the village, with his staff in hand and the crystal within his robes, he saw Pavel loading everything he could into his wagon, and Freja ferrying her children and others to him to travel by horse. The rest of the villagers would head for Nirna on foot.

Milena was nowhere to be seen. Unknown to Melkor, Katia was adamantly refusing to leave, and Milena was at her wits end trying to pry the small child from their home.

He reached the edge of Jinnsfjur, the place where less than a fortnight ago, he had sent that mad animal Cruvik cowering away. Tonight he would not leave at all, Melkor resolved.

The bandit horde arrived. Melkor could see that there would be no parlay this time, they would run roughshod through the village burning everything in their path.

He chanted the Songspeak, a particular spell he had learned long ago, and more recently modified to function through a conduit. The Power flowed through Melkor, reverberating off of the buildings around him, off of the trees in the distance, off of the ground under his feet.

It was a beautiful symphony of sound that all but he were deaf to. Only other wielders of magic could hear his Song.

He directed the flow of energies into the crystal in the pocket of his robes, and felt the barrier come to life as he stood motionless, chanting. The marauding horde rode into it, not knowing until it was too late.

Rider upon rider crashed into a wall they could not see, each and every one collapsing into an ever-growing heap of flailing limbs, frantic whinnies... and dropped torches. Cruvik was among them, preferring as he did, to lead from the front. Whether he was caught in one of the many small conflagrations that erupted from the fallen torches, Melkor couldn't tell.

A full third of the advancing horde had struck against the barrier before their remainder realised something was wrong and halted their advance.

Melkor saw him then. Cruvik once more rose from where he had fallen. Their previous encounter still evident as the already scarred giant now bore burn marks covering his face and neck. Melkor hadn't thought he could get any uglier, and he returned Cruvik's malice-filled glare with a grim smile of his own.

Beginning his chant anew, Melkor modulated the barrier to allow Cruvik to enter -- a moment of surprise registering on the bandit's face as he stumbled through, his frenzied wailing on the invisible wall up to that point having met no success.

They stood a mere stone's throw apart, staring each other down, each waiting for the other's nerves to give.

At almost the same moment they broke towards each other, both screaming inarticulate war cries meant to frighten. Cruvik's rage and determination strengthened his resolve, Melkor saw the fiery fruit of his labours before him and strengthened his. The Power flowing through him once more.

Staff struck sword with thunderous blows, Melkor's plan had worked, and he could devote his energies to the fight. He would make quick work of this monster standing before him.

As it had previously, their fight was close, but ultimately one-sided. Melkor's skill, strength, and speed had been honed over a multitude of battles spanning centuries of conflict -- much more than any mortal man could have gone through.

Even without the Power he would win, but there was no need for him to fight fairly.

He struck Cruvik with magically enhanced blows again and again, until he barely had to move to evade the defeated giant's exhausted swings.

He swept Cruvik's legs out from under him, just as he had the first time they met, and held his staff aloft with both hands, ready to deliver the killing blow.

Then Melkor's heart dropped, as he felt the Power emanating from the crystal in his robes sputter and die. He watched, horrified, as the barrier fell and the piled heap of burning men and horses abutted against it fell forward.

If he held any hope that the invading bandits were as stupid as they looked, it was quickly dashed when those who had remained safe behind the barrier realised that there was nothing to impede them anymore, and began a mad dash towards him.

Melkor's mind raced. Even if he struck Cruvik down, he couldn't engage all these enemies himself. Many would get passed him into Jinnsfjur, and burn it to cinders.

A look of exhausted desperation came over his face. Cruvik noticed this and looked up to see his riders approaching. The sadistic joy in his laugh sent raw fury racing through Melkor's veins.

Then he decided. He looked down at Cruvik and, feeling only contempt, struck down with the butt of his staff and crushed the man's windpipe. He would be dead soon, but Melkor didn't stay to watch.

He calmly walked to the centre of the road, and waited for the oncoming horde. He had decided. The barrier was the only thing that would keep them out. But it wasn't enough to just halt their way, he would have to make sure they would never come back.

Calling upon the knowledge of his ages, he began the Songspeak, and formed the modified barrier he had conceived of the day before.

It would make sure that none would ever threaten his haven again, and any who dared would pay the price for their hubris. The crystal wouldn't be enough, though. It clearly could not maintain such a complex spell long enough. It would have to be him who held the enormous amount of Power it would take.

Dark clouds gathered above, blocking out the little moonlight there was, and most of Jinnsfjur fell into darkness, only the bandit's torches offering any illumination.

The arcane chant came to an end and the spell was ready. The Power within him felt like it could burst forth at any moment. All that was left to do was to define the barrier.

Then Melkor took his staff, and drew a line in the snow. A glowing blue light followed its path, arcing around the shaman into a perfect circle. He felt the edges of the barrier grow and grow, until it encircled all of Jinnsfjur.

He could feel the Power pulling at him with tremendous force, his arms outstretched by the strength of it, the enormous barrier straining him from every direction.

More energy than he had ever felt flowed through him. This was how it had to be, he knew. Whatever the cost, they would NOT have this place, they would NOT have these people.

The Power coursing through him was deafening to Melkor, what had once been a symphony of sounds now sounded like he was amidst a roaring hurricane. So great was the strength of the magic that the nearby houses, the trees beyond the village, even the ground beneath his feet shook with its might.

Everyone in the vicinity of Jinnsfjur could feel it. It echoed off of the nearby hills and through the forest, sending all manner of critters scurrying in fright.

When the first bandit was encompassed by the growing barrier, a bright, glowing orb of light shot from Melkor's chest and headed directly for the one offending the spell. The raider and his horse were enveloped by the light and reduced to ashes in an instant, as were the many that followed mere moments after him.

Rider after rider fell before Melkor's Power, and even after the mage's own body had been consumed by the strength of the spell, any of them who attempted to breach Jinnsfjur's border met the same fate.