I had not felt good that day, the previous day, or the day before that. A gnaw inside me had blossomed, indeed over the course of two weeks. A great river of thoughts had swept me away, none righteous or even decipherable. All good or ill action was prohibited by none other than myself. A coward’s sense perception clouded my eyes and thus I was relegated to mere paralysis.
Indeed, where I had been standing, my legs and feet had failed me and I was bound to simply sit against a tall rock between a pair of great oak trees within the depths of the grand forest. Little rays of light barely managed to burst their way through the dense canopy above me. But somehow, a small lucky fraction of the sun rays, which managed to pierce the canopy, had landed directly upon me. I was bathing in the sunlight as I sat, paralyzed by inaction. A fantastic sign it was no doubt as a portion of the omen managed to slip into my stream of thoughts. Yet, it was merely a drop, a tiny fragment of a realization quickly obscured by a host of other suppositions.
Just down from where I sat was a cave, at the bottom of a tiny gorge, so small that one probably had to crouch to enter and narrow enough one could touch either side at the same time. For a month I had searched for it in the forest, laboriously investigating under every rock and behind every tree. A tremendous undertaking since I am not a naturalist in that way nor am I an urbanite. My origins lie in low nobility by blood but true life by choice. Thinking and gracious solitude suit me best, which I had discovered through self imposed exile. A hermit, if one ought to say, but a peaceful one and one encumbered by a thick layer of consciousness.
Yet, a fight no doubt lay in that cave occupied by a necromancer! Wickedness was in that cave, that I was sure of! Oh by God, I had seen them. With my own two eyes, two people entered that tiny gorge and disappeared just after, burrowed like rats underneath the ground. Such a sight sent me reeling and I remember diving to the ground, with a tremendous blow to my stomach, behind a boulder to conceal myself. For an hour I had lingered, face down in the dirt comprehending what I had seen and what was finally put in motion. My body contorted and my face convulsed violently, the humiliation was so overpowering that I was left to writhe in it. The retreat back home was painful in all senses of the word.
They had turned their backs to civilization and God for indecent power. I turned my back to civilization and indecency for God and I dare not let rumors lump me with them! They harness the wickedness of dark magic while I partake in the miracles of free will, damn those bastards who dare even to hold a candle against me! Word travel from village to village, ship to ship, and man to man, which my status, my status as an enlightened self-conversationalist was becoming tainted and rotten. My own perception of my own self was even cursed, my mind poisoned by their misdeeds.
But alas I was too weak right then and there. Even with a sword at my hip (even though it was rustier than my sword arm in a literal sense) I could not even push myself to confront them and perhaps slay them or even persuade them and convert them. Any self-action against them was not simply hindered but utterly blocked. For a long while, I just stood in pure anguish, just as before, cursing at myself and stomping my bare feet into the dirt which only exacerbated my uselessness. My hands found themselves clutching my hair, in between deep bites against my fingernails. Oh, how I wished I could just simply march on in, like a heroic knight against the devil, and take the fight right to them and feel, yes feel, the tremendous sentiment of triumph!
But I could not. As a man burdened with a momentous amount of consciousness, whose thoughts ran deep, I could not act. My limbs were bogged down in mental mud. I simply could not! A tremendous amount of shame washed over me. My confidence collapsed like a bridge with a cannon shot through it. I began to storm away from the gorge of the necromancers and back to my isolated abode between the river deltas. For the fifteenth time, it had happened again! I deserved, without a shadow of a doubt, my sense of destitution and to be eclipsed by better, braver men, even men of noble houses whom I had run from, many of whom were brave knights. A slew of self-inflicted curses flew from my mouth which drove wounds deeper than any whip against my back would have.
So I began my depressing march back to my abode with storm clouds above my head. After crossing countless roots and shrubs and boulders and a river (which mattered little as I had no shoes and tattered trousers, a benefit of selective impoverishment haha!) I stumbled upon the sight of two legs sticking out behind a giant tree trunk. The sight made me stop dead in my tracks. An avalanche worth of possibilities stormed into the forefront of my mind.
The pair of feet did not move as I stared from beside a massive rock with a bush covering the front side of me. Minutes passed uneventfully. Neither the pair of feet nor myself dared to move. Nature seemed to care little, as birds continued to chirp and faint gusts of wind brushed my unkempt hair. In the middle of a standoff which I perceived to be alternating in every sense of the word, the world carried on. Strangers I typically avoid, not out of pride, at least not completely, and not out of fear most definitely but for personal preference. The temptation to steer myself around the pair of legs, avoiding the possible encounter, was nearly overpowering. I could only stare. Then suddenly through the canopy of the trees, a ray of light burst through. The sun shone directly onto the owner of the legs. Such a sight entranced me. For many, they would perceive it as a stroke of luck or coincidence yet for me, it was a loud and clear message.
The bush swayed as I plodded my way through it and toward the stranger. I then rounded the tree he lay against, coming from his right side. The man was looking at the ground, very much awake but when I came into view, he looked up at me without a hint of concern. I saw a humble face which helped shine what I saw as a humble mind. Quite friendly physiognomy he had. Thin cheeks lay on either side with thin but distinct eyebrows. Both lips were thin too and nearly identical. He had short brown hair. His eyes were brown but wide yet narrowed out of reflex as he took in my state. Yet the narrowing of his eyes could not hide what I had already seen. It was then I noticed he had the uniform of a hunter, as he wore leather armor, and had a bow with a quiver full of arrows beside him but beside one of his hands was a nearly empty bottle of brandy.
“Afternoon,” he said with a lively voice.
Before him in full was a man in quite squalid condition. Again, I had no shoes, tattered pants, and a tunic that was not only riddled with holes but with dirt and stains. Most describe my eyes as wild but bright green and perceiving. My hair was greasy and unkempt which accompanied a tattered and short beard. At my hip was a rusty sword, more brown and grey. His utter confusion as to who I was and what I wanted was painted all over his face, from eyes to lips.
“Afternoon,” I replied. “You a huntsman?”
“Indeed I am.” The man paused and continued to glare at me. Once more he looked me up and down and continued, “I don’t take you for a huntsman, dear sir. You’ve got an odd look about you…” Then a realization dawned upon him. “Well my goodness, you ought to be the owner of this forest! I suppose you ought to have a shack here! I’ve hunted here for months and months and never quite had the chance to run into any single soul here. I’d wager it would be right and proper for me to leave you to your own duties.”
I cried out, “No, no, absolutely not! Don’t you worry, not a little, now! I am not from these woods. You see, I am not an ‘owner’ of these woods but a hermit! My God, how good it feels to have told someone that! I should add that I do not live among these sets of trees! No, I do not, not for a second! I live in a cabin between the river deltas, southwest of here. I have, though, found something disturbing in these woods.” My temperament swung from euphoria to suspicion at the drop of a hat. I felt myself slip further into a pensive mood. “Yes indeed, I have discovered something quite disturbing, even for a true man such as myself. I can not begin to be-”
“Oh, you are that hermit!” he smiled and leaped to his feet, cutting me off. His quick lending of such concern about my condition blindsided me. He had caught me in between two rooms of thought akin to a doorway and somehow yanked me up to the ceiling. “Your oddities are indeed the talk of the tavern. My goodness, how could have I mistaken you! Laremsten is the village I hail from which is also west of this forest. Come now, friend, my name’s Norvin, you look haggard, please now take a drink of brandy if you wish. You ought to have acquired quite the thirst having roamed between odd paths for so long.”
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“I do not wish to drink! No, absolutely not, drinking does no good for me! How bitter it tastes and how slow, both limb and mind, it makes me. I’d rather not indulge in such pointless excess. Drinks such as brandy are not of my taste you see for both mind and body...” I lingered for a moment and decisively swung the conversation to what I saw as more pressing. “You see, I fret about what I’ve found in the forest, yes this forest here! Do you frequent this forest? Bah, you look like you do! You even have the comfort of drinking and lazing about the place! I do not know the local geography as well as I should, my goodness yes now that I realize it, I haven’t looked at a map in a decade! Perhaps longer, yes a good bit longer! Is Laremsten close to this forest? My abode is not, it’s about a quarter a day’s walk but I know it by heart. Bah! I am distracting myself, you seem like a huntsman who traverses the trees around here often, I presume?”
“Well yes,” he said as he bent down, grabbed his drink, and rose once more. And to my dismay (I only showed it in my face not by words) he took a great, big gulp and continued before the brandy likely hit the bottom of his stomach, “When I can escape farm duties, I enjoy the breeze that weaves in between great old trunks. Nothing quite better than a drink in nature! No sir! Any man prefers the calm sereneness of the woods to the constant grumbles of their wives or their family. I take that you are perhaps a more extreme version-”
I gave him a wild stare, one that I could not control. It was then I nearly shouted, “Oh dear, you don’t know who lurks in these areas, don’t you?”
“No. And keep your voice down,” he said with a rapidly hushing tone. It was then in that instant, that he realized that indeed, his voice too had risen far too loud. Yet it was only my cries that he sought tempered, a blind spot created by that brandy sitting in his stomach. “You’re gonna go on and scare off any game for miles ‘round! And no one lives here, besides I suppose another hermit that I have not taken notice of yet. But I assure you, stranger, that beasts make up the most of living beings in these woods, with legs at least.”
It was then I hunched ever so slightly, taken aback by his inference and my soul crushed. So much nearly overtook me that my head became lighter than a feather, if a grand gust of wind broke through, I surely would have fallen over and taken it by it. Once more I stared at him and said, with as much composure as I could muster, “Necromancers. They’re in these woods, I have seen them and I have found their cove! Yes, a hermit such as myself has found these bastards. I know of it! I swear to it! You are the first and only man I have stumbled upon in a very, very long time. No one else knows of their presence besides me, and now you!”
A sheer look of astonishment spread all across his face. It was quite the revelation, to be fair, to hear from a man with such an appearance as myself when I told him. He quickly followed up, “Here? In these woods? My God, I must alert the town guards, it must be them causing the disappearances! Oh God, it’s probably them! Come with me, quick now!”
Norvin nearly flew away or rather almost tumbled over, the drink inhibiting all sense of stable balance. Immediately, he tried to break off our conversation by stuffing the brandy, which he had finished by the swig earlier, into his pocket. The quiver was slung over his shoulder and then he took an arrow out and primed it into his bow, just in case a necromancer somehow revealed itself, he’d take a merry old shot but likely strike true right into my person rather than a ravaging necromancer.
Before the situation truly spiraled, I put a hand on his shoulder the moment before he ran, “No, please do not alert the town guard! I shall get rid of them, and me alone!” The look he gave me shot lightning through my body, there was such perplexion and then fear and right back to disbelief. “Please do not alert the town guard,” I reiterated slowly, just in case he had somehow gone deaf from confusion.
“Well, why not? Do you truly think you can get rid of them? You?”
It was then I regained my composure. What was once a hasty mind, slowed. A long silence followed as I stared down at the ground and let a hand hold my chin. Soon after, my eyes rose to his once more. “I must do it, my life depends on it.”
“Madness has overran your senses.”
“Perhaps but a little, but most definitely no. I am quite in a sound state of mind, more sound than anybody I feel. In fact, I am most definitely in a sounder state of mind than any being in the whole kingdom. I have concluded that I am the last normal man. But I have been thinking. Curses! I have been thinking! For far too long and such, it has whittled me down to how I am today.”
At that point, I could not contain it for a second longer. All at once, like a beaver’s dam bursting from too much water, I broke out into a rant, “You see, Norvin, they give me a bad name, those necromancers I mean. They pervert what I am and twist it. They are outcasts from normalcy because of their deviance. I am an outcast because of my hunger and thirst for normalcy. I have no dark magic, nor powers or anything of the like, as I have sold nothing for it. I owe nothing to no man or animal alive. I owe God, yes, perhaps I do, but so does everybody, no? Such as, I have imposed my exile for the sake of my quest for normalcy and I have not an ounce of shame for it. But those bastards ought to have a tremendous amount of shame for it! Yet they likely have none and as such, I seek to rectify that notion.
“But Norvin, you know nothing about me. All the rumors you may have heard about me are rubbish and rubbish alone! I am a Great Man, that I know! But from the line I come from are nobles, yes low nobles but knightly nobles and nobles nonetheless. But despite my perceived greatness, I am in danger of being eclipsed and long forgotten. Perhaps it is too late. But eek! I must stave that fret away! There are damned relatives of mine, many of whom share my last name, that ride into battle with glistening armor and lances. They rule and keep their names in records to be recalled by generations long after us. But what about me? Why is it I, who has lived truest by any sense of the word, cast aside and forgotten? While they get to live amongst themselves, fully engrossed in their own greatness? Don’t I, as an obligation to myself, strive for my own greatest, in the eyes of others and my own? What shall my life be if faced with obsolescence?”
For a moment, I could not utter another word. So much had washed over me. Yet, before I let the moment slip me by, I urged myself on, “I am a Great Man. I am an impoverished man. I am a man of no opportunity besides this very conflict before me. I know that if someone else were to rob this of me, I would die. This death would not be by my heart ceasing to beat or my brain not casting another thought but by my soul having given up and stopped seeking what it means to be solely me, a man who lived between the river deltas.”
I stopped but continued to pierce his eyes. At that very moment, life was at its fullest for me without having to put myself in direct danger. Every word that I had expelled had come right from my mind without any barrier of the sort. Those necromancers were in terrible trouble at that point in time. I found that my knees were ready to spring me into a sprint back to the cove for quite a fight. If one were to pop up before me, my sword would have been plunged deep into their gut before another second could even slip by.
“Well, alright then,” he said, his stare breaking off from mine. “The town guard shall remain ignorant of those demonic folk. But perhaps today is not the wisest of decisions, as it’s getting into the afternoon now. Perhaps another day, like tomorrow morning. Yes, tomorrow morning would be the best fit, don’t you think? Best not to delay, for the innocent are in danger the longer we linger. We, er perhaps you, have to deal with them tomorrow morning, no later, I decree. I’m no thinking man but what I say ought to go. Fret not, Delta Man, if you do not wish to fight for some reason, then I most certainly can alert the town guard, and they will signal to a higher authority on how to drag the necromancers into the light. That outcome should not cost you an ounce of pride, so don’t go on agonizing about it.”
Joy completely smothered me. Nothing that I could do could restrain the relief I was feeling right then and there. A single portion of my struggle had been resolved and what took its place was another struggle but coated with nobility. I was shaking his hand up and down, which nearly tipped him over. For a fraction of a second, I wanted to embrace him but decided against it. I cried, “Splendid! Oh yes, how perfect! We shall meet right here! Yes, right here to-morrow a-morning! Thank you, Norvin. Tomorrow, those wicked bastards will meet their end, with a humble villager as a witness to flaunt the rumors that no doubt plague my reputation. My God, it is perfect! So see you to-morrow!”
He seemed quite jovial at my bidding of a farewell. My joy was no doubt infectious and the shared relief was a connection formed between our two souls, that I have no doubt about. The fate of my soul rested on the presumed good word of a rather slothful huntsman, but that did not deter my well-deserved elated feeling. Norvin even bid me a warm goodbye and offered to lead me out of the forest if I were somehow lost. Of course, I had memorized that particular section of the forest quite handily and was in no need of assistance, not in the slightest. It was a thoughtful gesture, but an overzealous one (kindness toward a man such as myself is indeed quite rare).
Instead, we said another farewell to which he responded, and went our separate ways for the day, finally having fully parted. As the distance between us grew, my mood tampered to which most of the jubilation flattened and what remained was an ever-burgeoning feeling of anticipation.