Take it...

Ha ha ha… I suppose it is one of humanity's greatest allegories, that in search of innovation, greater truth and invariably, desire outright, we are doomed to behold a path taken behind us, littered with decaying, simpler times long since abandoned, razed by a future set the moment we shut our eyes. Before we knew it, we blind dreamers led the blind knowingly in a desperate attempt to break out of our own endless cycles, yet seeing the same ahead of us regardless of what we did, we realized these wretched experiments and this accursed tower will destroy us all.

For the Lord...

...But is it so selfish of us -for me to want to...

Kill him...

look back on those times with fondness? Is it too shallow of us to remember those days? As the charlatans we styled ourselves to be, do we deserve to?

Give it back...

Before yet another cacophony of grisly whispers, holloing frenzied imaginations known only to demons, devours us -me. Before we -I am taken by the amalgamated nightmares emerged from every darkened corner to stare down our -my last bastion -nay, a coward's corner, of who we -I am...

Oh gods, our gazes... are filled with nothing but venom.

So please, listen to how it came to be. It won't take long.

SSS

"Well, it went somethin' like this lad..."

A young boy, the first son of a reaper and a girl half his years. Born five seasons following a perilous engagement where, if not for their daring escape from the daughter's parents, would have lost my father his head. That's what my father would tell me whenever a high sort of mood hit him. He brushed it with such a cavalier attitude that it came off more like tavern swill most times -not that we could afford that kind of talk.

"Your mother's family didn't take too kindly to us eloping, you see..."

"Reid'ot..."

"Ahaha, yes dear?"

As I came of age that didn't change. He would spin the same old yarn harvest after harvest to my brother and sister, something that had for me became a silent taboo, as it would for them too. Anything more than that little tale went dismissed by father with jovial grin that reeked of diversion, or blasted from our cuffed ears by mother's more on-the-nose scolding which, more often then not, led to heated arguments lasting well into the night between them.

We lived on the southern side -or what Sothfolk'ers called the Sunnyside of Sothfolk, a phrase quoted more often than the verses old man Brennan drawled at the temple. Not that it saw anymore sunshine than the rest of the county, it just seemed right that it should. Rolling plains, endless grids of wheat, and clear skies that never seemed to end; just like the labor.

If I wasn't helping father with cutting wood in the evening, I followed behind him in the fields to bundle the shocks. A week could pass by and we'd still be out there alongside a dozen other men, sopping smocks rung around our necks, woven brims tipped low and scythes held taut as the summer sun set in furrowed brows.

"Pack it in, y'bastards! Three reapin's full!"

At the foreman's surly call, we'd finish bundling the shocks for the next day, then drag ourselves to the wagon we'd make the hour-long ride back home. None of us weary fielders had much to say to one another at day's end. Look around, if anything, the darkened grimaces we shared said enough.

"Three reapin's before sunset. That's all I ask from you lot, and whady' I get? None of it!"

Our foreman's fury met little resistance, and he thundered high and mighty because he could. Oh, he wanted little more than the skin off our backs and the souls in our hearts, and if he found any dignity left, I'm sure he'd take that too.

On the Sunnyside of Sothfolk, few didn't know of Caine Switchus. When out of earshot he's Leathercap, a man who lived enough of his life bald that the sun thought it best, for a laugh, to turn his scalp into a saggy wyvern's pelt. Gods have mercy on anyone who mentioned that name to his face. He's big enough to grind a grown man's bones to mortar.

If there was a field he'd be there to make sure every grain of it was taken, whether it was night or day, or on the backs of a dozen half-dead men.

"Curse me if I didn't see a grammy cut chaff better than ya'. Especially you, Ganz!"

My eyes darted from Caine to my father, rose dipped hair draped over his weariness while he sat hunched beside me. A week ago I wouldn't have believed he really was... my father. In hindsight, it made sense why my fifteenth birthday felt so dreary.

A meek smile flickered across his face. "My bad, boss. Looks like I forgot to sharpen the blade up. Was like skinning a pig with a spoon."

Across from him, Caine's eyes widened, "A'h spoon? Well let me tell you here and now ye bloody Jinnah, when I see y'jerkin the blades again like ye have been, it'll be more than just seed ye'll be worryin' about."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Several of the men half-heartedly snickered at his miserable joke.

"Laughing are y'a? The same goes for the lot of y'a. Don't think Lord Brisle won't be hearin' about it. An' when it starts rainin' shit-" He cut himself off to spit a rancid, waxy gob into the corner of the wagon, "it won't be just m'self out there." He then returned his gaping jaws back at us again, and tossed back another ball of stuff from a hip pouch.

The air hung heavily with the sweat of nearly a dozen anxious men, and not a word more was said. The last thing any one of us desired was to have the county's knights shoved down our throats. I wasn't aware of it then, and looking back now, yes, I would say I am of the same mind as the cowed men crouched in the back of that wagon. It's a terrible thing for them to come seeking retribution. The me from then? Well, I looked at the cowards around me with a frightful indignation, the kind that would get a man killed just for thinking it. I'm ashamed to say it; I looked down on my father, and those that took the abuse without complaint.

"Why don't we do anything?" I pressed father another day around dusk, the same time the wagon dropped us off outside the granary barns north of town.

He gave me one of those knowing looks, "Do? What is there to do?"

"There's more of us, more than of Caine. We all hate him, so why don't we just... do something about him."

There was something humorous about my vitriol for our task master, that I to this day fail to see, that made my father chuckle softly, "Son, the only thing we need do is do as we have. We wake up, wash our faces, say goodbye to your mother, younger brother and sister, and then come to the fields. I've done it for as long as we've lived here, before you came along. Even before Caine."

"But he's..."

"A nuisance?"

I turned to him squarely, not yet done with my rant, "More than that. How can you let him push you so hard? Look, you're about to fall over right now!"

Without my timeliness, he might have face-planted straight into the dirt path. "Living isn't easy." He remarked, throwing the rest of his weight onto my shoulder, "it wont get any easier like that."

"Then we can leave..."

I stopped midway through that thought, subdued by the slight shudder against my side, "Leaving isn't either."

"And why is that?"

"You don't want your mother ripping a new ear open for ya?"

"..."

"Good lad. Now let's not keep her waiting or she might anyway."

With the little luck that we had, I was surprised we got back before the first Obrel bird let out it's dismal howls. Dismal, I say. I think they have a wonderfully dreadful song of hidden sorrow, compared to the dirges corrupting me from within. If only the night sounds could drown them out.

"...And let the grace given us be to the greater glory of the gods."

I opened my eyes to peer into the shallow depths of the bowl in front of me. A man would think that a whole day's labor would get them a little more than water with a bit of soup for seasoning, and bread more reminiscent of a brick than anything remotely edible. Courtesy of Caine, of course, a reward he thought fit for those who didn't possess the gods' foresight to not cast an entire season's worth of seed out to the Devil's Cloud. We're just barely hanging on with what was left from the year before.

You would have fared far better in that station, human.

My hand paused, wooden spoon halfway to my mouth, "Allow a man his last supper, demon."

Demon? When was the last time we heard that word? Just quietly yield to us, wretch! A century, if these memories are accurate... Far too long I say. Curse that bastard and his bitch with him!

Annoyed, I turned around to face the voices, to find nothing. Just the vacant stillness of the cabin behind me. It won't be long now.

"Just be patient. I said it wouldn't take long."

Casting a sideways glance at my father, oblivious to the grotesque angle my neck assumed to find the owners of those voices, I let out a slow, agonized sigh. I'm certain my behavior would've seemed a fair bit peculiar to my father and Kurt, who sat opposite our heavily worn table and to my right of it in turn.

"If they weren't the past I abandoned."

I stood up from my lonely seat, leaving behind the youth I once knew in my place, to silently grumble over an empty bowl.

"It's almost time, I better hurry."

Slopping toward the bedrooms, I could hear my mother's gentle voice.

"Careful, it's hot."

Eliza. Lizzie. The sole reason I was bestowed [Herbalism]. In happier circumstances, I would've said it was to make her proud to have an accomplished older brother who knew everything about plants. I often dreamed for that reality, even now. She was barely seven, an age where she should be skipping about the cabin, stirring up mischief in a fiery wake of curls. Run, dance, kick her legs in a childish tantrum. She deserved at least that much.

I approached to run a translucent hand over the blanket covering her stilled legs, dead and unresponsive to my touch. A very rare, very unpredictable kind of venom not seen in this stretch of country. Neurodegenerative venom from a Bowpit viper, overlooked by its keeper and let run amok the Sothfolk woodland. The bastard, who to the best knowledge of those in town at the time, fled the county the moment he returned to find the empty crates they had managed to escape. He was never seen again.

What I would sacrifice just to break every limb he had.

If refined, the snake's venom can be a potent catalyst in many arcanic studies, especially in Biological Arcanology; the study of magic's interactions with living matter. When left as is, however...

A venom that can irreversibly paralyze an adult man.

It could've happened to anyone. Even to a child playing only a dozen steps away from safety outside. I told myself that through the many years I strove to search for a cure, to pull out a miracle from the wealth of the White Tower. I never did after ten attempts.

All that effort wasted... What appalling hubris... Your failures weighing on you, human..?

Lizzie... I'm sorry. Spit out just like every other dream and passion I ever had, my efforts... they failed you. How can I look into your eyes, ones that stare far off yet blind to a family powerless to protect you.

"Every day. Like they were yesterday."

Another year streaked the timber walls around me in fades. I quietly watched my father's back, straining to lift the tithe onto his back: A Relldeer. We were lucky this time, as the bad years had emptied nearly every bit of silver and grain we had left. The meat itself is a delicacy, marble and richness surpassing even finest beef; its lustrous fur, a natural, creamy velvet, is prized among the wealthy for the natural regality it symbolized. In all, it could fetch two gold dents at the very least.

"If we sell this before noon, we'll make it just in time."

Every decade, the Liuran temple's host would make their pilgrimage to the hills of Galgorath, not two days walk from here, winding through every town in between to pray for the land. The high priest's cavalcade, consisting of the paladins and the lion's share of the county's knights, would stop at our temple to hold the Blessing Ceremony just before ascending to Liura's Rest, nestled in Galgoraths' vale. After selling our prize in the town square, it would be our next stop.

Yesterday, they arrived at Earle Brisle's estate to rest. Today was the ceremony, one I fervently dreamed would bring well-deserved fortune to us.

I blindly dreamed for Lizzie, a miracle, and a chance that day.

A dream, hmm?

Why is it then that all I see in the depths of my blindness is this world's nightmare?