Sachihiro

In a nightmare the Draug snatches me from my sleep bringing me right back into the hellhole I tried so hard to escape next to him in the Underworld. Everything is unbearably the same, the same darkness the same heat the same vastness the same everything to the young man grabbing me by the throat with claws in my spine.

The feeling completely disgusts me and I show it fully in my aura, the utter disgust I have for this creature for its disrespect sharpening it with spirit so he feels it projected onto him. So he feels and understands what I think about him as the only retaliation I have against this creature that thinks it can run my life this way. Disgust.

It grins a heatedly human grin, ‘’you will be my herald to #%##& Creature, announce my coming. Go.’’

I find myself in on a field of bones stretching as far as the eyes can see under a pink tinged sky. I am blazing in a heavy purple fire that has me aroused with bloodlust. The breath I take bristles through my nostrils alive with fragrance. The hunger I have is glorious in its sweet bite of longing, I could eat anything. My teeth are sharper my tongue now tells me, mhmm whatever is happening isn’t unpleasant.

I look around.

Most of the bones are massive white-bleached monstrosities towering into the sky like jagged fingers splayed wide apart. Other bones small and yellow all about and under my feet as far as the horizon.

I am not where I should be. The sky shifts into an unfamiliar twilit purple with strange constellations, the air dry and putrid with the stench of death sweetly stale about the place.

Ahh, I know what this feeling is, this lust for blood that has my appetite aroused in primal hunger. This is what the Draug feels like to himself when he is being. This is the presence of the Draug and I like it. Breath rumbles out of my chest. I feel myself; I’m the shit. I’m amazing and just straight out in a league of my own, I make the game I play. I’m the sovereign of all I get into.

I know which way to go so I start walking, there is no point in raving against what is. This is my life now and I don’t have full control of where I end up being with the responsibilities I have to account for. I agreed to this, that’s what annoys me the most right now. I agreed to be Herald of the Draug and here I am heralding but could it have chosen a worst time for my first time? We are going to have to work out a schedule of some sort ‘cause I won’t be waiting around to get snatch away at any random time.

I walk and walk watching the mountain that is a pavilion that is a tree that is a woman that is a monster getting closer and closer but otherwise I can’t tell how much time passes. The sky stays the same, the light barely shifts, those stars are starting to look more like hanging lanterns than cosmic bodies but I trust nothing I see here anyways.

I have a son with Erena, how crazy is that? A beautiful boy too. I’m happy to have seen him yet I find myself terrified at the same time, terrified by the added responsibility. Terrified about where else I may have scattered my seed.

Fuck.

My family, my real family is out there dying piece-meal and I have to get there and get them safe before anything else. Nothing else matters. How will I know where I end up though, what if I’ve bred hundreds of little bastards and I’ll be doing this crazy search for the rest of my life?

Fuck!

The mountain that is a pavilion that is a tree that is a woman is also a spider and a bird and a mutated ball of flesh and it gets closer and closer but the monotony of this graveyard of bones is getting heavily depressing even for the bloodlust in the presence of the Draug to get chipped away. I drink fresh water as much as I want from the canteen I just bought. I’m happy I had the accidental foresight of having all my shit on me when I went to sleep this time around. Had I had to be here doing this without supplies after all the shit I just bought I’d cry, that’d just be the universe snubbing my nose.

I get to the foot of the mountain eventually and something about it just speaks to me. Everything about it speaks to me in fact, I just don’t know what to make of everything I’m experiencing about it. Could it? Surely not. What if? Mhmmm...

Why not. I step into the hole.

I meet a Whirlwind in a perpetual storm in an endless sky though I don’t know how I immediately know I am here to herald to the Whirlwind. It is a large and powerful thing to experience, to be near it is to be taken in the hands of Mother Nature and realise your mortality. A powerful exhilarating experience that inspires a warm fear of the unknown that excites the spirit.

‘’Come closer, let me have a better look at you,’’ a voice says from the coiling whirlwind.

I come closer after a moment’s hesitation, a being of twisting storm and shadow congealing into a humanoid shape gesturing me closer walking to me on two legs as I myself am suddenly in a white-tiled pavilion witnessing the storm woman walk. I study my host as carefully as I can questioning everything I see, taste, hear or feel as I take everything in. Small twisted horns, red, black and white luminous skin gives me pause as I take in the athletic being that has manifested from the shadowy whirlwind.

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I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. I could watch this creature for a lifetime and still not be to half of the puzzle/gift/art/scary thing that this woman is.

‘’I bring word of the Draug’s coming,’’ I say not getting any closer.

The thing, #%##& Creature freezes me with its attention.

*

#%##& Creature

I can see the thief’s presence shrouded about the thing, ‘’you bring word of his coming you say?’’ I’m not sure whether to let loose the Stored Spell smiting his stupid pet for the gall or be amused, the utter audacity of sending a mouse in his place!

‘’Yes, I bring word of his coming,’’ the human says. Young, pink with youth and vitality. Its own presence clear even with the Draug’s presence shrouded on top dominatingly.

‘’Interesting,’’ I say voice rasping out. ‘’When is he to come exactly?’’ The human doesn’t realise how close it came to annihilation coming here wearing that presence about. Most that know the Draug attack before asking questions.

‘’He didn’t specify, soon I’d think.’’

‘’ 'Soon...’ it says.’’ I disperse myself circling the human to reform standing much closer to its left side, I feel its nerves alert, its body shifting readying for movement before arresting itself.

‘’Forgive my lack of courtesy lord of this place I am inexperienced at heralding.’’

Is that so, ‘’you reek of the filthy Draug. Your mere presence announces him to all with orifices to experience is irrelevant to the task. Tell me, Herald of the Draug, amongst your people what happens to the messengers of your enemies bring unwelcome news?’’

‘’They are sent back to those that sent them unmolested. Forgive me lord of this place but the sanctity of a message bearer is only void in times of war, or am I perhaps a herald of a war you are declaring on the Draug?’’

‘’Be careful whose name you hide behind.’’

‘’As you say I reek of him.’’ ‘I may as well benefit from the association’, the words are explicitly implied.

In any case, ‘’you will be my guest here until the Draug makes its presence known.’’

‘’I appreciate the hospitality but I have urgent need to be elsewhere.’’

‘’If you can leave you may do so.’’

*

Sachihiro

‘’Right.’’ Shit, how do I get back to Pangaea when I’m done heralding?

I back up and start off towards where I came but it’s no use. The pavilion shifts, its architecture, its dimensions, its setting and terrain. I walk and walk in a straight line but don’t reach the end of it. I turn about searching for nothing in a wide-open space yet end up walking from one moment to the next on a different setting large enough to graze horses in their thousands.

I watch the thousands of horses prancing, racing, eating grass in an endless field of gently rolling hills yet without a doubt I know myself to be still within the pavilion. I walk around moving from place to place experiencing vastly different terrains as frequently as moving from room to room. I get thoroughly lost quickly discovering that I can’t leave and I hadn’t finished preparing the sigil back in Atopia.

Shit, am I stuck again? What the fuck?

* *

King Sanderson's Court

‘’Tell us what you want Mister Zero and we will see if we can provide it for you.’’

‘’I want what all men want really,’’ the tall dark stranger says drinking in the eyes of his audience.

‘’To be appreciated for your efforts?’’ A beauty in the black dress says sipping at her chalice to hide her face as she watches the reaction of the man that has caused such a stir within the kingdom’s mage ranks.

‘’Yes, to be appreciated for my efforts thank you, madam,’’ the man says with a flirtatious smile and wink as he moves about the chamber like a man with ants in his shoes unable to stand still.

‘’This creature, you are sure you can be rid of it?’’ Again the balding old magister with a bent back by the king's side enquires from the off-worlder flightfully moving about touching things and tasting pastries.

‘’It is a very powerful creature but I may be able to subdue it for 100 years or so, enough time for you to make more permanent plans of dealing with it no?’’

The off-worlder stops, getting serious as Grandmaster Hyde steps forward to put a stopping hand on his shoulder. The room is suddenly silent with the threat of violence.

‘’Your fidgeting is unseemly,’’ the grandmaster says mana dense within him ready for anything.

‘’This once I will warn you, touch me again at your own risk.’’ The words are cool from Zero’s mouth, almost playful but there is a bite in them that has the minister quickly stepping away.

‘’We prefer more permanent solutions to problems concerning our safety,’’ the old magister says not distracted from his line of enquiry.

‘’I’m sure you do, and had you a permanent solution the problem would be solved by now.’’

‘’What do you want as payment?’’

Zero looks directly at the king upon his throne disregarding everyone else as he responds, ‘’power.’’

There is immediate grumbling from the Archmages present in the royal court, ‘’had we the power you seek we would have dealt with this problem ourselves no?’’ Arch-Duke Nkosi patriarch of House Nkosi says, rather confessing to weakness than sharing his well-husbanded spells.

‘’There are myriad forms of power, you will share with me your casting techniques and resources for creating your most powerful spells.’’

Everyone grumbles at this point quickly silenced as the king raises his hand as if to speak. ‘’What you ask for is the equivalent of us giving all our defences and the keys to the kingdom to you, a stranger we know nothing about,’’ the old magister by the king’s side says cutting to the meat of the issue.

‘’If I wanted your kingdom I would take it, none here could stop me, even combining your efforts none here could stop me,’’ Zero gazes at everyone in the room challenging them to refute his claim. ‘’The most powerful amongst you lot is you old man, a peak tier 4 existence and even you are so old that you could fall over at any moment.’’

‘’Let us be honest with ourselves here. I come from a world where mana evolved are looked down upon as the drags of society because frankly they are, until they complete a path at the 7th tier mana evolved will be inferior to any creature that uses chi. I’m at the peak of the 6th tier for those of you too stupid or weak to feel it. The greatest amongst you is a child to me in terms of power so let's not pretend you could stop me had I wanted to take anything here, especially had I an army to let you waste yourselves against.

‘’The reality of the matter is that you have wolves at your gates you have no idea how to deal with and absolutely nothing I need nor want for that matter. I’m sure your spells are inferior to my own, your knowledge limited by the isolation of your world as it is but at least I can do you this favour. Poor wretches that you are and the least you can do is provide your most impressive displays of power for me to choose whether or not I want to include them in my arsenal.

‘’Now, are we going to keep pretending like you don’t need me or are we going to do business?’’

The king silences the voices with a hand as they start.

‘’We require practical and effective methods to deal with these off-worlders by our own means actionable within a month, if you can provide us permanent solutions leading to that then the spell vaults of Sandersoria are open to you to peruse,’ King Magnus Sanderson declares.