Chapter 4 – Facades
26th of Sooawden
With a hiss through the hair and a hollow thud to follow suit, Navin winced as he threw both hands to the top of his head, covering the spot of impact. As the pain quickly fades and Navin turns, he is abruptly met with a wall of maroon cloth, swaying ever so slightly to reveal the hooded man’s face above.
“Time to play out in the woods alone, have you?” The figure looms over Navin. “You seem to be in good spirits enough, come, with me!”
The man bellows more phrases of “come along!” and “along with me!” through a trodden forest path, back to the shack and into the aroma of stew.
“Gerjuk stew again?” Navin pleads with the old spellcaster.
Ending his ramblings and turning to the little boy at the entrance to the shack, he cracks a feigned smile and states, “Food for thought, if you will.” The man opens the shack door and fades into the darkness with Navin in tail.
As the glow of the campfire in the pit of the run-down abode draws their eyes, Navin and the man loom over the pot of re-heated stew, crowding around the crackling embers and shifting their eyes between the spots of sunlight piercing through the small, eroded apertures above.
“The once-divine smell of gerjuk stew now finds itself stale, but that bowl dribbling over the sides is proof of your appetite, isn’t it little Navin?” jokes the old man.
Navin shrinks his full bowl of stew back towards his body possessively, as if the man were going to steal it.
“At-ease, and eat it all, for I have another story for those ears of yours.”
Navin hurriedly stuffs himself, eager to sate mind as well as body.
“That trinket you carry, what do you know of it?” says the man.
Navin looks down at the silver stallion gently dangling from his neck, gently bringing his hand upward to hold it in a slim ray of light. “My father-“ Navin hesitates, “I don’t know.”
The old man cocks his eyebrow for a second at the mention of his father, but recognizes the tenderness of the boy at present, not prodding. After collecting himself, the man begins speaking after a deep breath through his nostrils, “My power, what do you think it is?”
Navin, either through innocence or ignorance simply squints his eyes for a moment and shrugs in confusion.
The figure holds his hand out, palm upward and steady as if clasping an invisible object, and after a flicker and spark, a screeching flame, sharp yet beautiful is conjured from seemingly nothing. The flame holds steady, not dancing around like the campfire below, but piercing the air above it. After a short period of admiration from Navin, the old fellow whisks the flame away with a quick gesture of the hand holding it and leans toward Navin.
“Power, as you now know it, is not something that I, a human, is born with. In fact, there are very few higher beings like you, or I that possess this talent from birth. This sweltering heat, this controlled destruction is not something that I have lived with for even half of my life. You see, for a human like me to connect with this power, I must possess a catalyst within my body.”
Navin’s head shifts in confusion, but nods as he begins to understand that this old man put something into his body, or was subjected to something.
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The old man shifts around in his rickety stool, continuing his tale, “I was a spoke on the wheel that is the Cult of Ornar, an organization within the Empire that prides itself on the elimination of wicked objects of power so that they may not bring ruin. It is every acolyte of Ornar’s dream to become one of Ornar’s Heralds, and each of us acolytes are tasked with retrieval of these wicked objects of power in order to reach that goal. One day, during my daily routine within the cult as I was aiming to inhabit one such position, I was tasked with a mission to resolve the appearance of a dangerous artifact, in those very same ruins I found you.”
Navin lowers his brow in concentration, he is fixated on this man’s story.
“We set out as a party of six, one herald, a local hunter who knew the area, and four acolytes including myself. The journey was nothing of note, but upon arrival I could feel a stirring, unlike anything I’d experienced before. As we drew closer to the ruins, I could feel my chest pulsating like clockwork, as if a blacksmith was striking my ribcage with his gentlest blows steeling my insides, the others could as well, we all knew that this was the reported location after that feeling.”
The man lets out a long sigh, “We dissected everything at the ruins site, turned over every stone until we nearly lost our minds from the sensation within ourselves, then, as if by miracle, one of the acolytes mistakenly reclined on a pressure plate, revealing a circular staircase below the phoenix sigil of the ruins, so we descended. It was only a floor or so, but we were met with an odd-shaped room after a long hallway procession, almost circular, with a pedestal in the center holding an orb, no larger than my head, resembling the flows of magma, with shifting black plates and a crackling red-orange glow between them.”
He pauses for a moment, and Navin begs the man with his eyes to continue.
“I heard the Herald ramble about a Phoenix and Ornar for a brief moment, and then he took his flail and bashed two of the other acolyte’s heads, and just before the hunter and the other acolyte could come to their senses after witnessing this, their throats had been slashed. Finally, I was the only one left, standing over my dead comrades and trying to understand what the hell was happening. I took no moments of hesitation after the third and fourth were killed and sprinted towards the orb. I didn’t know what the object was, but if it was anything to do with a Phoenix, it was not wicked, and it was the only reason the Herald acted out.”
Navin notices the man stop his tale, “And then?” the boy exclaims.
“I don’t know, I just know that I woke up to the entire room covered in ash and soot, the orb missing and my body burned beyond belief. All my life I had the goal of becoming a Herald, only for the illusion to be dispelled at a moment of recognition, I did not know what the Cult’s true motives were, and I would never return, I couldn’t, not after witnessing the acts of my superiors… their corruption runs deep.”
A haunting silence fills the air, wooden boards creaking and whistles of wind against the shack fill the void as the rays of sunlight begin to fade due to the invading clouds.
“I waited for the Cult to pursue me, but they never arrived, and after all these years I can’t comprehend what they truly desire, I only suspect that most missions of retrieval for Ornar do not, in fact, lead to the elimination of the artifact.”
“Navin, I say this to you, if you ever encounter the Cult of Ornar, get out of there immediately until you-“ The robed man hesitates, “No, just don’t go anywhere near their presence…” he strokes his chin and squints at Navin for a brief moment, “Yet I suppose you’re hardly safe anywhere, nod if you understand anyway.”
Navin nods frantically without hesitation.
The man speaks again, “Now… that trinket you carry with you is similar to the red orb I found that day.”
Navin shoots a fearful gaze at the trinket he now clasps firmly between his fingers, rubbing the smoothed faces of its form.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t contain such power itself, it is merely a representation of such.”
The little boy loosens his grip, as well as his gaze on the shining stallion, focusing back on the man.
“Fortunately, only those of the Cult of Ornar might recognize it at all, much less understand its true significance, and fewer still might know its history, but I was a bookworm as well as a true fighter.”
The old man stands up triumphantly as he recalls his past self, however, after a moment, his prideful pose slowly twists into one of despair as he shrinks back onto his stool, facing the floor and pressing his hand to his face, running it down to his chin, then leaning up to face the boy.
“Eons ago, there existed a pale-skinned man known for his glassy, soft-hued lavender eyes. His name is unknown, but I’m sure you recognize those traits of his, boy.”
Navin’s brow lowers, a small frown takes the place of his neutral gaze as he concentrates on the words formed by the man’s lips. The boy shows skepticism, as well as intrigue.
“Much of the history of this man is lost to time, but what remains of it is within your bloodline, and your god, oh child of Oumu.”
“Oumu?” Navin inquires.
“Oumu is known by few as the god of Alterations, Oumukaeae, and he or she remains mysterious, taking on the form of a silver-haired stallion within our world. I could count on a single hand the amount of times this ‘avatar’ has been sighted throughout history, at least what is recorded. Each time, with the appearance of Oumu, a great change always occurred soon after, without fail, earning him the name of the god of Alterations.”
As he finishes his words, the man lights his hand once again with the spear-like flame, holding it steady this time as he continues…
“As I said before, the man’s origins are shrouded in mystery but what is in texts, is that this man made his public appearance in a once-bustling city, shocking everyone with his traits on a slow, lumbering walk as if in a trance, en route to the city center. It was there he went mad and screamed a blood-curdling scream for hours. Only after being imprisoned was the city granted peace through the man’s days and nights of insanity, each hour a new hoarse tone echoing through the dungeons. He starved to death, unable to eat amidst his own silent shrieks. A terrible way to go I presume.”
The old man catches himself gazing into nothingness while recalling the events recorded on old parchment, quickly returning his focus to Navin, who is now visibly terrified and curled up on top of his stool.
While cracking a subtle smile with his eyes, the man returns to his ramblings, “I suppose I never was one for children… perhaps too much for one night, our light is fading, let us ready for tomorrow.”