We exchanged looks with an awkward pause gathering. I broke the tension, “I only have one bed. I am afraid that you, even as a guest, are going to have to make do with sleeping on a chair… Or perhaps, indeed, I may be able to fetch a spare pelt or blanket of something of the sort.”

“A, perhaps in a moment!” he smiled, hoping to dispel the rising sense that he was an intruder and not a guest. “Please, please do take your time! I am merely content to sit and converse.” He motioned to the opposing chair and jeered, “Well, at least you had the luck to have two chairs in your home!”

The air soured in an instant and continued to be, even as the terror of the storm raged more outside. Suddenly, a downpour of rain came rushing down from above. Rain slapped furiously against the windows and roof, destroying any sense of silence that could have persisted. The wind tried to breach between glass and wood but failed yet managed to howl and whistle.

I took a seat opposing him, but not before grabbing the bucket of water and taking another gulp, before setting it down again. Another silence ensued but unlike previously, lasted a long while.

Another pensive mood fell upon me, even in the presence of another being before me. My eyes were locked to the floor off to the side. How puzzling it was, for if my glance was away toward something else and if my mind wandered to another realm, the angler did not exist. I understood that it was remarkably rude, irredeemably so, but it mattered not in the slightest to me.

“How long have you been hidden around these swamps,” he asked.

I was snapped out of thought and back into the present moment. The proof lay in that my glare swung back at him. “Nearly a decade, if but perhaps a touch over. But to tell you, in all honesty, and with every sense of the word, it has only felt like a few months.”

“A few months?” he guffawed. “You look as haggard as haggard can be! Your clothes are torn and around your hips is a sword, even though it’s as rusted as your lock, it provides a function, if you can call it that. And so, for a touch over a decade, you have been, what, doing what exactly?”

Another roar from the clouds rang.

“I have been thinking. Indeed, I have been thinking, but perhaps a good bit too much. But thinking nobly, by my estimation,” I replied. “But perhaps, I must say, that it will not always be this way. But I have been worried about many things, all of which do not concern you in the slightest.”

“When do you imagine you’ll quit being a hermit?”

“One day, but not today.”

“Maybe, tomorrow then, surely!” he sneered.

“Maybe tomorrow then,” I murmured while nodding.

Somehow, the response satisfied him because his stature was broad and slackened. He wore a content smile with a hint of smug satisfaction. Alarm bells began to frantically ring the moment I let out that admission. A wave of rain pounded against the windows and door, for a moment I feared the door would cave inwards and the glass would shatter from the pressure. Yet, they remained firm. All the while, the room darkened rapidly as the sun became blocked from all the rain clouds bombarding the landscape. Suddenly, my meeting with Norvin and my crisis with the necromancers felt a lifetime away. It was unfathomable that the angler and Norvin had indeed met me on the same day. I wondered if Norvin ever met the angler but then I had the realization that we never exchanged names or where he lived. It dawned on me fully that the man who sat, just opposing me, was not in any manner like Norvin.

“Would you like something to eat?” I asked with a slow voice.

“Oh, that would be very much appreciated, if you do not mind.”

“I’m afraid I do not have fish or anything aquatic of the sort to eat,” I said whilst getting up. My back was turned to him as I rummaged through my barrel of foodstuffs. From behind, I heard him rise from his seat and travel a bit further away. The light from the lantern quivered, if but for a moment then returned just a bit stronger, as if he had moved it closer. All the while, I was rummaging for what I could make out, the freshest and least saltiest pork within the barrel. “I only have bread and salted pork as it remains the easiest to preserve and most fulfilling to the stomach. I’m no fisherman, I’m sad to say, that my rod remains drier than bone. As I am more of a landman, in the truest sense of the word. I ford rivers and cross forests but have little interest in throwing bait into a river, I’m afraid.”

A chuckle echoed from behind, “Ah, don’t you worry about it in the least! Salted fish does not travel all that well, especially when having to deal with necromancers and the sort.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

At that moment, a tremendous rumble of thunder shook my abode. My head craned toward him as I dropped all the bread and pork in my hands. I felt naked as could be and utterly crushed, like a massive boulder had fallen upon me as every bone in my body cracked and broke. His glare was unyielding in every sense of the word, with his head titled ever so slightly downward but his eyes piercing my very soul. The dim light from the lantern, now near the center of the table, failed to illuminate the pupils of his eyes. I could not pierce a tenth of an inch beyond the veil.

“From where… how? How do you know?” I muttered feebly.

“Ah, perhaps it would have been wise to have the inclination or even an inkling that indeed, I know of things that I ought not to know.”

The humiliation was hotter than a pan above a raging fire. Rain continued to batter the walls and roof in a tremendously violent manner. “Why should I not, perhaps, take manners into my own hands against those who are insincere? You and those necromancers must be in the same league, perhaps of the very same faction or movement of sorts. But why… why have you sought to deceive me even as I was sincere, as much as I could be, barring my personality and personal circumstances against now a man who has been insincere from the moment we traded looks?”

“Do not be so haughty!” he guffawed with an evil smile that rose to his lips. “Be careful! Oh I must say, do be careful in deciding who is insincere and sincere, as from where you stand, those circumstances can be altered quicker than you can even think. Would you like me to demonstrate? Then perhaps, you can exercise judgment in a less fortuitous fashion.”

“You desire to wisen me? But why?” I cried. “Look at you! My God, if I had a mirror I ought to raise it up right before your face. You are in league with those wicked necromancers!” I drew my sword. Tension in the room burst into its highest crescendo. “You defiler, yes you are a defiler! My soul, yes my very soul depends not only on what happens tomorrow, which I fully intend on carrying out by the way, but of this very moment!”

“That much is not entirely true! But I must fully concede something quite important if you wish to hear.”

I tempered my inner flame as well as I could. Just a few yards from me lay someone I truly had hated. My exile had never proven a chance, nothing of the sort, nothing that could have thrust a circumstance of unfiltered loathing akin to what I faced. “Well, what is it then? Why should I cease, perhaps stow away my sword back into its sheath, and give you a thorough listen?”

“If you wish, take a seat and I shall tell you. I will be true to my word, for this very concession.”

That damned smile was still on his face. How proud and arrogant it was! Even his composure, the way he formed his words were caked in arrogance and superiority. For all my thinking and all my self-led debates and deliberation, it had led me to be beaten. Worst, beaten in my very abode where I had tried, in vain as of that very moment, to flee from defeat. My heart sank to my stomach and my high shoulders slumped over. I wanted to weep but stopped myself in that very moment for fear of further disgrace. Before even I could comprehend, my sword was shoved back into its sheath, and I brought myself back into my seat. Despite the utter humiliation that I had inflicted on myself, the glare from which my wild eyes continued to persist. That was all that I could truly muster, a completely pathetic display of capitulation.

As I stared, a voice rang in my ears but his mouth did not move, the grin remained constant. A whisper caressed my ears which was swift like the wind and ran faster than I could perceive time in the realm I existed in. “My existence is nothing akin to yours. From the depths, I am bound to places few travel to and watch over, with my careful eyes, dissidents that worship the circumstances that I may bring upon them.”

The whisper was the same as the one I heard in the ruins. Yet every word was tangible as if they were objects I could grip with my very hands. He’s the spirit of those ruins and had I not stumbled upon him, then my presence would have been utterly clandestine. Complete terror possessed me, from the top of my head to the end of my feet. All my agency, which I had worked strenuously for a decade, vanished like smoke in the air.

The whispering continued, “I feel your horror which pleases me greatly. You understand better than most. Many souls had sequestered themselves in my ruins. Do you know how long I have guarded that windy, desolate place? Yet, many barge into my abode and seek to occupy it. Soldiers from realms stretching back to the first collapse have tried and all have failed. The most recent tried to build their rudimentary quarters and failed. Though, the most recent, are the very same ones that you wish to vanquish, how very convenient!

“And so, I part you with this: It would be wiser to let me solve the matter. But if you should so take such action into your own hands, you will not stop. All I wish is to warn you, and a man such as yourself craves warnings and omens. You feast upon them like a starving man because every little speck of information, of possibilities that can be foreseen, that can be digested by your mind, you seize upon with vigor to then feel satisfied. But… perhaps, this action would be best, could it not? Perhaps a man, such as yourself, ought not to be destined to exile and deterioration. This opportunity will send you to troubles beyond your very own understanding. This is an omen and will become true if acted upon instead of merely thought upon.”

Then, without a word, and with me still rooted into my seat, he lifted himself off the seat to the door and opened it. Wind filled the room and its cry clogged my ears. Its shriek forced me to lift my hands to cover my ears but I could not shut it out. Only when the door closed behind him, did the wind cease.

The rain still continued to pour, but at a far less rigorous rate which allowed a great silence to finally fill the air which had been dominated by constant precipitation. When I had finally managed to regain my sense of agency, I flew out of my chair and outside. I looked all around, from left to right for any sign of that being. But it was fruitless as too much time had passed and the possibilities of his retreat near limitless.

So I stood there, in the dying rain, humiliated and left with a sense of despair and confusion about having been visited by something far beyond me.