Julie entered the dim greeting room. The wood creaked underneath her weight. The air was thick and warm, a faint scent of vanilla tobacco curled through the air. A red and gold rug covered the center, muffling her footfalls and obscuring half-rotted wood. Padding deeper into the building, she worked around the corner to the left and spotted the fireplace ablaze.
Old furniture graced the sitting room, a long chair of forest green color, and two high-back chairs sheathed in brown, tan, and forest green cloth. The latter had high backs facing her, and the fabric was ripped and torn from years of use. The room appeared void of occupants. She went to the fire and knelt, warming her hands against the dancing flames.
The sound of a book closing behind her made her jump, her hands struggling into the folds of her robes to grasp her wand. She withdrew it in haste and almost lost her grip. An elderly man sat in one of the chairs. Although he sat, Julie surmised his towering height. His head, bald on top, had shaggy hair around the sides and reached his shoulders. The white hair held streaks of its original black and brown shot through it. A potbelly bulged beneath his robes, showing he had weight to him, but wasn’t overly fat.
His relaxed composure with his wide chin and broad nose gave kindness to his face. Warm, deep-set eyes were inviting, despite their chilly, pale blue-gray. With legs crossed, right heel to left knee, a huge book propped against the leg as an impromptu desk. His left hand rested on the book’s thick, worn, cover; in his right was the pipe she detected earlier. A faint, expectant smile graced his face, waiting for her to break the silence.
“Sorry,” Julie stammered, feeling embarrassed. “I saw the place outside and the sign, The Enchanted Allure Guild. I was hoping you had something to teach me,” she said meekly. With each passing heartbeat, she withered in her foolishness, waiting for the elderly man to speak. Lowering her wand, she tucked it away in her robes.
He’s about Judas’s age, perhaps a little older. Maybe six ages?
The man stirred in his seat but remained silent.
“I’m interested in learning anything about magic,” she continued. “I have a condition, and I forgot everything … well, everything before I woke up. I only remember my name and the past few days or weeks. It’s kind of a blur, to be honest. There are other, various things I can remember, but not much.”
The old man rose slowly and walked away with a hobble, favoring his left leg. Perplexed, Julie followed as he worked his way behind the counter in the main foyer and opened a door into a huge room with hundreds of books lining the extensive shelving. From the doorway, she watched him gingerly climb a ladder. From the eighth shelf, he tugged on a massive book. Tome in hand, he returned to the dusty counter, and Julie retreated to the other side.
Doubtless he was as strong as a bull in his youth, she mused to herself, noting his height and broad shoulders.
The book clattered on the counter top with a loud thud; the weighty tome sat between them. Julie considered the dust-ridden volume and frayed cover, then the silent man.
“What’s this?” she queried, fingering the book’s binding. It seemed worse than the building, ready to fall apart if the breeze blew too hard. “I’m not sure I can read it. My condition—”
“You don’t have a condition,” the man purred with a soft, deep voice. “It’s normal that you can’t remember how to read this language. One of the side effects.”
Surprised he finally spoke, yet perplexed at his declaration, Julie took a few moments to collect herself. “What are you talking about?”
“Harold,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Harold,” he repeated, extending his large, meaty hand.
Julie blushed, then reached out to grasp his hand. “Hello, Harold, I’m Julie.”
“How is it, Julie, that you remember a greeting, but you can’t remember anything else?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“No. A curious thought, though, isn’t it? You say you don’t remember anything, yet something as simple as a greeting you remember.” He smiled more to himself than to her. “This is what you want.” He pointed to the book.
“What is it?”
“Everything you’d want to know about the realm, and probably many things you don’t,” he explained. “But, to be fair, this only covers from Ralloc to the Melodic Mountains, the upper part of the continent Ernrul. But the southern continent or any of the three continents across the Golden Sea isn’t within, things like the Kran Empire and the Ebbins.” He waved it away. “You can read up on that stuff at your leisure. This,” he articulated, tapping the book for emphasis, “is for what’s right outside the door.”
She nodded to him and thumbed through the book for a few moments before closing it again. “Wouldn’t it be quicker if I just asked you what I want to learn?”
“Now, that’s more like it! You aren’t lazy, just efficient. Efficiency is severely underrated in my opinion.” He smiled and limped back to his chair in the sitting room. Julie followed on his heels and seated herself in the chair beside him, the table holding his pipe and book between them. Snatching up the former, he stuffed tobacco in the bowl, and pulling his wand from the tabletop, a small flame flared, and a curl of smoke rose into the air.
“You can do spells without the use of words, too?” she asked, intrigued.
“Is that one of your questions about the realm you intended to ask?” he countered.
“No, not really, I was told once by my … this man, that most people can’t do spells without the use of words or incantations.”
“A valid assessment that’s not completely accurate,” he said after a long draw. “Some people can do small and simple spells which require no special incantations, but … for the majority of the time, I can’t. So, yes, he was right and wrong.”
With a nod, she filed that information away for later. She posed her next question. “Who are you?”
“I already told you.”
“No, you told me your name, Harold, but not who you are.”
“One begets another,” he assured quietly. “I’m a shut-in, recluse, antisocial, whatever you wish to call me. I have lived here for the four ages. You’re the first person I’ve talked to in three. Quite a long time, eh?”
“Yes,” Julie said, thinking about what it’d be like to not talk to someone in three thousand years. “Very long time.”
“Which brings me to my next question, how did you see it?” Harold inquired, his brow arched in interest.
“See what?”
“The building, of course. Did you consider why the people skirt past? I put up an illusion of a graveyard. But a normal graveyard will bring curious people to investigate the interred. No, no, not mine. This cemetery is for the cursed and the damned. No one dares set foot here, which is how I’ve lived for several ages.”
“Don’t you ever go out to the town?” asked Julie, almost horrified by this man’s life style.
“Yes, once a month during the full moon.”
“You mean the day of the full moon, right?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. He puffed his embers back to life. “At night.”
“Why at night?”
“Part of my bargain for being here. Please, no more questions about me. What do you wish to learn about the realm?”
Julie was silent for a while, contemplating this new mystery. Mysteries, to her, were meant to be solved, and quickly. She switched directions. “Do you know anything about a man name Fife Doole?” It was a safe question; one that could be passed off from a book, and it wouldn’t lead to where she’d been or who sent her.
“Fife Doole, yes, I recognize the name. But he’s no man.”
“What do you mean he’s no man?”
“He’s dead for starters. Surely you read a history book where you got his name from. He died three ages and an era ago. You just missed him, huh?” he chortled, finding humor in it. Julie, at best guess, was about two ages old, missing Fife by fifteen-hundred years.
Julie, stumped on the answer, posed another question. “What do you know about Xilor?”
Harold stopped in mid-puff, and his voice grew low and grating. “I don’t talk about that monster, not here, not anywhere. He’s an abomination and shouldn’t exist!”
Julie nodded and thought of another question. “What can you tell me about the Sleight of Hand Society and the Conjurer’s Accord?”
“Both are nonsense,” he dispelled her allusion, waving his right hand, the pipe still cradled. “The Sleight of Hand is a Thieves Guild that uses magic to amplify their skills. The Conjurer’s Accord is a band of scholar-like minds, the childhood weirdo’s you would’ve grown up with at school. They get together and think of new illusions to perform or spirits to summon or souls to torment because they were harassed when they were young. Bah! What a waste of space.”
Julie leaned forward, pondering Harold’s words on Fife. “You said Fife Doole was no man, which implies that he was something else, regardless if he’s dead. Can you elaborate?”
Harold eyed her over his pipe. “You’re a bright one, more than I gave you credit for. You’re right; Fife was not a man. Man implies wizardkind when, in fact, he wasn’t. He was the son of a halfling, and his mother was a gnome. What would you call that? A half-gnome? Maybe a gnomling?” He chuckled at his joke. His gray-blue eyes flickered back to Julie again and saw the joke was either not funny or lost on her completely.
Julie contemplated her next question. She sought a great answer and though seemingly knowledgeable, Harold didn’t give straight answers. In some ways, he reminded her of Judas. She desired her memories back and to know why she felt a connection to Xilor while she endured Mr. Pleasure’s tortures. What she didn’t want was a semblance of sympathy or an inkling of a connection between them, her and Xilor. The shocking thought unsettled her. She understood him, and his desire for power. He craved it, just as she did. But the most disturbing aspect, she accepted that part of him, even if she detested the rest of him. To accept herself, she had to. She compared their likeness and found what she searched for: a way they were starkly different. Xilor forged his destiny by the blood of others. What was hers?
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“What’s my destiny?” she pondered.
“Destiny?” Harold imitated after a moment of consideration. “That’s a very good question. What do you think the meaning is?”
Julie shook her head minutely and shrugged. “It’s something that you were born for.”
“No, child, that’s fate. Fate is predetermined. Destiny is something you have to choose. So, it’s what you decide. What are you going to do?” Harold let his sentence hang between them as he reclined back in his chair.
It’s a good question, Julie mused.
She knew the answer almost immediately after Harold queried: Xilor. To fulfill a prophecy, she must destroy the dark lord. She remembered Judas’s words as they echoed in her head, ‘A powerful mage coming from beyond the realm of magic … a perfect balance of light and dark.’
Their stillness was punctured only when Harold puffed on his pipe every few seconds as she dwelt on the path before her. But a part of her didn’t yearn for it.
“There’s something I wish to teach you,” Harold interrupted Julie’s thoughts. “It’ll serve you well.”
“What’s that?”
“The ability to perceive events that have either already happened, may happen, would’ve happened, or are happening. To be fair, anything you glimpse may not come to pass. The possibility of what you are seeing may change the outcome. One event begets another, and will always, unless affected by an outside source. You must be a shadow when foreseeing these events, present, yet not part of the world which you see.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense! One event begets another….” Julie’s brow frowned in contemplation.
“In other words, what’s meant to happen will happen unless you change the outcome by interfering.”
“Oh, I get that. Why didn’t you just say that?”
“I did.”
“What’s it called?”
“Shadowcasting.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
He grinned. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Harold lurched from his chair to the floor and crossed his legs with some difficulty. She mirrored him, and when he reached for her hands, she placed them in his. His hands were massive, calloused and warm. She looked into his face, but his eyes were closed, so she followed suit.
“This will require concentration and discipline, one of the hardest things you’ll ever do,” Harold instructed. ”When you first begin, with your lack of control, you only see what it wants you to observe. The Shadowcast is the coach driver while you are the passenger. Later, with practice, you’ll be able to determine the when, where, and what, at your inclination.
“It’s best to visualize time as a breeze. The present ebbs and flows: a faintest of whispers of the wind, almost not moving. The future: a gust rushing towards you, the past: a breeze moving steadily away. The flow and ebb of time change constantly—though not perceived by the inhabitants of the present. Let your mind empty of thought and stretch out, touch the flow of time.”
Julie did as instructed, but when she reached out, nothing changed. Their breathing filled her ears. At first, she thought she heard it, but the longer it dwelled, she realized she perceived it instead.
“Further,” he whispered the instructions.
She stretched her essence beyond them. She faintly detected the small life forms, insects hidden in dark recesses of the house as they skittered silently between the walls and under the floor.
“Further,” Harold muttered.
Pushing beyond, she felt other small lifeforms, mice and other insects outside the house. A bead of sweat formed on her forehead from exertion. Trees brushed the edge of her concentration, the dirt surrounding them, bedding the roots. Water and nutrients flowed the expanse of veins, nurturing the large oak. The wind tickled the leaves, slithered through the breaks in the bark.
“Good,” Harold’s warm voice approved. “The tree. Notice how the tree is different than the crickets and termites, the mice and lizards. Can you distinguish the difference?”
“Yes,” Julie breathed back. She visualized it in her mind’s eye.
“Now, feel how they are the same.” The last statement partly shocked Julie and nearly broke her concentration. She never thought of trees, crickets, and mice having anything in common. Julie searched again for the insects until she found them, then the mice, and lastly the tree. In her mind, she moved the small lights representing the different lifeforms. She manipulated them, moving them one over the other, turning and twisting them until she found the faintest trace of resemblance.
“There it is.”
Julie wasn’t sure if Harold had said anything or if she imagined it. When she found the traces of likeness, she followed them. And then, before she could pull away, she was gone in a sudden surge, lost in the tides of Shadowcasting.
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The commander’s voice pealed through the night, signaling the attack. Trolls came over the rise, flooding down on the unsuspecting village with clubs, claymores, spears, and knives. It’d fall easily without a giant wall surrounding it like in Dlad City or Ralloc, or an encompassing channel to ford.
Towering trolls surged forward, descending on the sleeping town. But wizardkind emerged from all over: behind houses, stables, wagons, and old rum barrels. A plethora of diverse spells rent the darkness, light radiating over the invaders. Silhouettes perched on the roofs rained a hail of arrows, piercing the incursive band. Oauk watched those under his charge burn, stumble from paralysis, explode, or riddled with arrows and swords. Some trolls turned on each other, driving clubs and edges through their comrades.
But in war, while strategy played a part, so did numbers. The mass overran the initial line of small resistance. Clubs and dirks caught combatants in the heads or neck, driving them into the ground.
The command boomed from the hill where he stood, guiding his troops through the battle. The next swell of personnel gushed over the rise just as the first started to pillage the town, ferreting out those in hiding. With torches, they set fire to the huts and outlying shacks. The first and second waves commenced their destruction; the third awaited their opportunity.
His warriors swarmed through, a near flawless attack. They came from the northeast, skirting the swampland. To the south lay leagues of rolling plains; any attack would be seen from that direction. To the west, a narrow, mountainous trail leading to the Unicorn Valley, impossible to navigate in numbers or speed.
“We can’ wait much lon’er, Judas, or th’ figh’ will be over, and th’ legions of trolls will return ta’ th’ commander on th’ hill,” T’son whispered harshly.
From the edge of the swamp, T’son witness the destruction of the hamlet. He, Judas, and a large band of wizards crept the inside of the swampland to flank the trolls from the left. They remained undetected, using the outcroppings of the rocks, trees, and the slope to shield their approach.
All these years of rebuilding from the Wizard’s War, T’son thought to himself. What a waste.
Disgust boiled in his stomach. Waiting galled him. He cast Judas a withering glance, silently urging him to commence. The commander gave another order, and a third influx pullulated the village.
“Yes, I know,” the warlock replied. “But if the children are doing their job and running for the river, they’ll draw the infantry away from the commander, and we can take him with ease.” They’d gone over this before, but T’son didn’t like that part of the plan.
Houses burned, heads cleaved from shoulders, screams curled through the night. The trolls rushed forward like a disease, flies swarming over spoiled food. Relentless in their murderous ways, no man or woman was safe as they slit throats and ran swords through chests. His men and women were dying, but the trolls didn’t stop there; they went after the children who ran as fast as they could to the river on the far west side of the town. If they could make it, there they’d be safe; trolls hated water and wouldn’t venture in after them.
“Ah, ta’ th’ abyss with this. I’m attackin’ now,” T’son declared. He stood from his crouching position and yelled, “CHARGE!”
“Not yet,” Judas tried to warn him, but it was too late. Their location revealed, half of the men rushed past the edge and out of concealment.
The commander turned to the noise, caught off guard. He pointed his sword at the incoming attackers and grunted, the remainder of his soldiers attacked. Trolls and wizards clashed. Spells flew as clubs and swords rang out, blood spewing.
Judas ducked underneath an incoming sword and—while crouching—sent a bolt of fire piercing through three charging trolls, melting them from head to foot. He stood, blasting the nearest troll off its feet, the force of impact shattered his spine. In silence, Judas weaved, cutting a swath through the invaders. Severed arms clattered to the ground, missing legs toppled adversaries. He called fire and lightning, churned the earth to devour those above. With a practiced hand, he invoked one potential attacker to turn his sword upon himself.
An order boomed and numerous trolls turned in his direction, running him down. He pushed out with his hand, a wave of invisible energy lashing out, trampling the inbound, mowing down ranks of soldiers.
Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Slowly, the tide of battle turned.
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Out of body, she soared above a battle in progress. She touched down in their midst; animalistic beings fought wizards and common folk with swords and axes. The battle moved faster than physically possible, the events flashing through her mind. In horror, she watched bodies litter the ground in fractions of a second, within blinks of the eye. Children ran screaming, slaughtered by the animals that hunted them. Men were cleaved and flung to the ground. The screams curled her blood. Beasts burned, crushed by an unseen force.
The carnage ground to a halt as Judas stood alone in the field. A man lay at his feet. Her former master wept openly, unashamed tears streaked his face. Seeing him like this shook Julie to the core, having never seen this range of emotion from him.
She stepped closer, coming to a stop just behind him and to his right. “He fought courageously. I saw. It was amazing … his strength to carry on,” Julie murmured. It was the truth; she did witness his last courageous act, a spectator to everything that had happened or would happen.
“Yes, a magnificent display of dedication … honor … desire,” Judas agreed.
“How many years have you known each other?”
“Since before the Wizard’s War, so long ago. Time slipped by. I sometimes find myself wondering, where did all the time go?” Judas spoke more to himself than her. “You know what he said?” Judas both chuckled and cried tears of sorrow. “I reached him just before he died. I told him I was here for him, and that I’d heal him. He smiled and said, ‘I see my first mate, my love, I’ve sailed to you.’” Silence followed as Judas wept, grieving.
“How long since you two last visited each other?”
He rubbed away the tears and took a deep breath. “About two epochs ago. It’s a long time when you’re going through it, but a short time when you reflect.” She stood quietly for a moment. “A tragedy,” Judas spoke up after a brief moment of silence. “A tragedy that will only amplify as the time goes on.”
“So much death and violence, I don’t think I can stomach a war!”
Judas’s voice hardened, full of turmoil, righteous anger, and restlessness. “You better get used to seeing it,” he barked, his voice stern. “There’s no reason for Xilor’s madness. I tried to predict him in the last war, but with no way to—” At that moment, Judas spun around, his eyes widened and recognition came to his face. “Julie?” he whispered, recognizing the voice at last.
What he perceived made him doubt his sanity. The faintest image of her stood before him, but he peered through her like an apparition. Shock spread across his face, and he turned visibly whiter.
“A ghost,” he gawked.
He reached for her, but she faded before he touched her incorporeal image.
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Both Harold and Julie exhaled together, their eyes opened. The fire had dwindled down to red embers and cold claimed the space where heat once occupied. Harold stirred, his back, knees, and hips popped audibly as he rose from the floor to his chair. He reached for his pipe and relit the tobacco, drawing quick, deep puffs. Julie shifted, a slight spasm rolled from the base of her spine to her neck. The pain raced through her, and she, too, moved to a chair, rubbing her neck.
“That was intense.”
“Yes, as is each time you Shadowcast, in their own way, of course. But the events you saw will change now.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, uncertain.
“Because you interfered, if the event still happens, an altered outcome will manifest.”
“What will change? Will Judas die?”
“Possibly, but I’ve never heard of events changing so drastically. Usually, it’s small things. Small events, words, items. To inflict death, you’d have to interfere a great deal more than you did, or so experience has told me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind in the future,” she vowed.
“Also, this ability is quite advanced. I don’t know of anyone able to do it besides us. But to be honest, I’m not acquainted with that many people. There are others who can do variations of it, but to actually Shadowcast…” he shook his head.
“What others? What variations?”
“To each his own, but Warlock Lakayre, your former master, can do something similar.”
Alarm spread across Julie’s face. “How did you work out he was my master? I never told you.”
“I’m knowledgeable of many things, child.” He paused a moment before continuing. “There’s another warning I must give you before you go. What we just did is something that the archangels do. They live like this, in a perpetual state of casting.”
“Are you well-versed with archangels?”
A pause. “I’m knowledgeable of many things, child,” Harold repeated. He sighed and stirred in his chair. “It’s getting late, and a long journey awaits you in your near future. Get your rest. You’ll find what you’re looking for,” he said with a knowing smile. “But heed this: you may not like what you find, or you may like it too much. You may find that you already found what you sought. Sweet dreams,” he bade her, pulling on his pipe. He turned his gaze to the book and pulled it back in his lap.
As she was exiting, he called to her. “Don’t bother to say goodbye; you’ll be back.”
Silently, she closed the door behind her.