Wind swept down the hillside, bringing a momentary reprieve from the smell of blood, bile, and burnt flesh rising from the small valley below. A man stood at the crest of the hill, looking down, his cloak billowing around bloodstained gambeson and armored skirts. He held his helmet in one hand, a broken haft in the other, gray eyes surveying the scene before him, shoulder-length hair swaying slightly in the wind.
The bodies were densely packed, like the valley was filled with rocks of black and gray and red, with the occasional flashes of tan; strips of orange and gray cloth, where officers or maybe flagbearers lay. The black roiled from time to time, as flies were disturbed. There were birds, as well, hopping around, searching for unarmored flesh to feast upon.
There was a denser piles, a line of bodies where the initial charge had met, where spears lay at haphazard angles, thickets of iron-tipped grass growing towards the sun, and his eyes paused on these.
Up the far end of the opposing hill, the bodies were more scattered, interspersed with green grass, mostly facedown, where the lines had broken and men and women had run, slaughtered in their retreat. He focused on the crest of that hill. Birds were still descending in that direction, for miles. The trail of death was both thinner, and far greater in scope than the spectacle below.
His hand tightened on the haft in his hand, and then it fell, rolling down the hill a few feet until the angle brought it perpendicular to him. The helmet was tossed after it. The man's eyes turned down to his bloodstained armor, and he pulled the gambeson free, and it joined the helmet, his bare chest a dozen shades of purple and blue. He unstrapped the skirt, and it fell noisily atop the gambeson, leaving him in what had once been a white breechcloth, now streaked with brown and red, new blood and old.
Gray eyes flicked between the gear now laying on the ground, the blue and green silk armband still tied to the gambeson, streaked in blood, wavering in the breeze, and the field of the dead. The man shook his head slowly, just standing atop the hill, watching the flies settle and swarm, and settle and swarm again, the buzzing joining the cries of birds and the wind, the sounds familiar to every battlefield, only the cries of wounded missing. He'd survived. Again.
The sun moved down the sky, behind the next hill over, one still body among many, but the last to see the light. The man turned and started walking, directly away from the battle. The croaks of birds and the buzzing of flies followed only a short distance, before disappearing behind him.
Lira Bai won her empire, unifying the seven central kingdoms of Arne. Her two sons became kings in turn; Den, the king of the North, and Anir, the king of the South. Of the other six kings and queens, Shin Are fled to the northern wastes; Dei Atwen was slain in battle, Fier Atwen was captured, Mien Atwen chose to marry Anir rather than lose everything, and Wiers Atwen left as a political refugee for the eastern isles. Lenne Bai, Lira's cousin, now ruled a city-state in the northeast, nominally independent.
Empress Lira turned from consolidation to developing trade routes with the south and west; the southern desert isthmus became a place of merchants and travel. Shiran, the western continent, already had its own empire, and the pirates of the West Sea became traders, which had suddenly become a far safer occupation.
Jonathon Eucole, once a soldier in Shin Are's employ, didn't care anymore as news filtered to him; he had seen the ideals of kings, and what was left of them on the battlefield. He had left the battles behind him, traveling to the monastic scholars of the Three Isles, on the southwestern border of the empire.
He found he didn't fit in, exactly. He was a little too old, at in his late thirties now, and his focus on rituals and artifactuary lore was somewhat outside the norm. The predominant focus of the scholars was research into invocation, which didn't interest him much, and the development of a new and modern school of magic, selenomancy, which interested him even less, save for the art of shadow walking, which he learned, albeit without much talent for it.
He made a friend while he was there, a precocious young lad with a talent for grasping invocations. They didn't share interests, but they did share enthusiasm for their respective projects, and brought interesting tidbits and new books in their respective fields of study.
Things got a bit ... odd. Jonathon guessed an invocation had gone horribly wrong and the boy got touched in the head; it wasn't uncommon. Invocation was borrowed power, and there was always a price from the person or entity which lent it. Sometimes you paid twice; some damn fool had tried out an invocation which summoned a lake, at the cost of some vitality. The vitality wasn't a terrible price, but it summoned the lake on top of the poor invocationalist, who barely survived the experience. Vitality, such as it was, was cheap; sanity was not.
The boy disappeared, a year after ... well, John wasn't entirely dissatisfied that the poor lad had probably died. Some things shouldn't be survived, and the kinds of things invocation could do to a person fell into that category.
Damned fools. John stayed another couple of years after the boy's disappearance, before a series of deaths changed his mind on the matter, and he departed. They just wouldn't stop opening old books and speaking words of power to see what happened, and he didn't want to see any more of it. The little bit of research into artifice and arcana he got done in the last couple of months didn't offset what he saw happening.
He traveled north from the Three Isles, with some moderate talent for bending space, which permitted him to evade the local creatures.
And when flight finally failed him, he used his hands. That had been an interesting fight; his rusty medical skills helped him to bandage his wounds after, as it had gone rather badly for him. He wasn't entirely dissatisfied with the results, however. Nothing on what he once had been able to do with a halberd, but he didn't actually have a halberd on him, and he was never without his fists and feet.
He had stripped away all his dependencies, and while he would never be a match to the warrior he had been before, he was now without the baggage, both literal and figurative, that had come with that life. No halberd, no heavy plate weighing him down. He was, in fact, surprised to discover he enjoyed walking, without the burden of his old kit, and a newfound attitude lightening him on his feet.
He kept moving, journeying east, into the great southern forests of Arne. Empress Lira died; war spread, and ended again, as Emperor Shy rose to power. It made little difference to John, the wars never reached this far from the capital. He worked odd jobs to feed himself, the passion and ambition of youth left behind in a battle that nobody remembered, between two kings who nobody followed.
His aimlessness ended in those forests.
"Turn it over and we'll leave you in peace, else you'll end in pieces!" Three men and four women, armed and armored in a motley assortment, confronted a single man dressed in spun silver, wielding a staff of silver capped in glimmering crystal; opal, if John didn't miss his guess.
The singular man confronting them was tall, and powerfully built; he didn't respond, only slowly spun the staff, retreating before the seven confronting him. Long gray hair fell loosely from the cowl hiding the upper portion of his face; his mouth was pressed into a firm line, displeased.
"I'll do nothing of the sort. Depart, rogues, or you shall - " without finishing his sentence, the man released the staff with one hand, his other gesturing towards the nearest opponent, a woman wielding two daggers; she jerked, red fire racing across her body. Arcs of black lightning immediately followed. She jerked, falling to a knee.
John moved more completely behind the tree he was observing from, until only one eye observed the arrows flashing towards the man, embedding themselves into his chest. He barely reacted, turning instead to the next closest person, who collapsed screaming, the red flames and black lightning enveloping her in turn.
Three more arrows struck the man, and he showed as little reaction to these. The woman struck first fell to the ground in turn, the smell of burned flesh rising from her. A man raced forward, raising a sword; the gray-haired man touched him, and stepped backwards as the sword fell where his shoulder had been.
The second target of the red and black stopped twitching, and the black lightning faded, although the flames continued burning. Three more arrows struck, and the man with the sword jerked, started to take another step forward, and then collapsed to the ground, eyes staring blankly.
The staff of the man in silver swung in a wide arc, hitting a woman in the chest; a flash of purple light sprayed forward, and her chest was gone, as well as half the head of the archer standing next to her. Two more arrows struck the man, his chest now a field of feathers and wood. His next swing missed as he staggered, falling to a knee; two more arrows struck him.
John moved forward, then, with a sudden inspiration that the strange man shouldn't die here. The world went gray as he stepped through shadow, moving through the tree directly towards the nearest archer, dashing back into reality with a punch that caught the woman in the square of the back. Bones broke beneath his fist, and she slumped wordlessly forward. A splash of gray, and he spun into the last archer, the few feet turning into momentum that brought his elbow crashing into the man's temple with a crunch and a spray of blood.
John surveyed the skirmish quickly; two bodies, no longer burning, clearly dead. The woman with the missing torso was also dead, transparently so, as was the man whose head has been splashed with the violet light. The man with the sword, John wasn't certain of, but the two he had struck would never be getting up again. Right. John checked the man with the sword first; no pulse. He then moved to the silver-garbed man, who was kneeling, panting heavily with a liquid sound, blood dribbling from the arrows pincushioning his chest.
John fell to his ass and sat back against his arms, feeling a little dazed, watching the man cough, blood splattering the ground. Well. Shit. John, of course, had survived. He couldn't say the same about the man.
"I'm Jonathon. Sorry about your situation, doesn't look like I can do anything about it." The man spat out another mouthful of blood, and looked up, grimacing.
"Well met," the man coughed and spat again, "Jonathon. Worse than it looks, the arrows were both barbed and poisoned. Leonard." Leonard looked over the seven bodies, scowling slightly. "Not their poison, they're shit. Somebody made it for them. Should've taken viviomancy, I guess." His half-obscured face turned back to John, and he struggled for a moment to raise a hand. "Enchanter."
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John took the hand. "Initiate." The enchanter laughed at that, pulling himself back to a seated position.
"Pity, could have used a good alchemist." John smiled at the man, who was now alternating between coughing and laughing, the tones somewhat bitter.
"Alas, but I used to be a soldier."
"Man of peace now, are you?" Leonard glanced over at the two archers. "Well, maybe not, although can't say I'm not grateful. I'd rather that lot be dead." He pulled back the spun silver cowl, letting it fall over his shoulders; his eyes were nearly the same shade as the metal. "For spite if nothing else. Kill me, will you, you damned thieving bastards!" The last was raised in a near-shout, and he fell into another coughing fit. John simply watched him.
"Any last wishes? Messages I can deliver? I'm not going to lug your carcass across the country, but would you prefer a fire or a burial here?" Leonard's mouth pulled into a scowl, which turned into another bitter chuckle.
"Fire's fine. No next of kin, not that I care about. Huh. Initiate." The man looked up to the sun filtering through the branches above. "Veteran, though. You have anywhere to be for the next decade?"
John blinked at that. "Decade? I ... well. I suppose not. Not going to promise anything about that, though, that's a long time." Leonard just smiled.
"In that case, just take my gear, and follow the map." The man spat. "Ah. Lord Tenash take my soul, praise the Pantheon."
Eight bodies burned, lighting up the darkness of the forest, shadows dancing. John didn't pay them much mind, looking at the small pile of equipment in front of him.
A spun silver cowl; the fabric, fine silver threads, as smooth as silk; it was not armor, the threads too fine to offer any protection. The Grim Mark it was enchanted with improved the ability to hide, which wasn't of much use to John. He set it aside.
A spun silver cloak; a Spirit Mark on this, which offered some protection against spellwork. Somewhat more useful, although perhaps a few years too late. This joined the cowl.
A sword, a cudgel, a dozen knives, and four bows were placed in another pile. Two packs full of an assortment of basic gear and rations joined the cowl and cloak. The poisons joined the weapons. The map, from Leonard's pack, he set aside from everything else.
A silver ring. Leonard was fond of silver. It had a Glow enchantment; a useful bit of gear, it offered light in the darkness. Like the others, it was a permanent enchantment, which was rather unusual for Glow; few would spend their soul for such an effect. This joined the silver pile.
The staff, also silver; it was capped in grown opal, not altogether that unusual a choice. The Energy Sigil it was enchanted with wasn't, either, the effect which had killed two of the thieves. John hesitated on this weapon - he had no expertise with a staff, and his well-instilled training with a halberd might get him killed if he forgot what he was holding in the heat of a fight - but the enchantment was quite potent. Ultimately it joined the rest of the silver, in indecision.
And finally a ... now that was interesting. Mythril? An unusual choice for a collar. Maybe a gorget? He lifted it up, examining it. No, a collar, although it would offer some protection. Enchanted with a Mage's Mark, and a powerful one. This, with reluctance, joined the pile of silver; he could melt it down if nothing else. The Mage's Mark was concerning, if it wasn't Leonard's, for he had been wearing it - somebody might be tracking it. And it was powerful to his limited mana senses.
Leonard had been wearing some other spun silver, but it was unenchanted, and his clothing, besides; not quite valuable enough to temp John to wear a dead man's clothes. The garments had gone into the pyre with the man, as had the bandits' clothing, including the spares that had been in their two packs.
He put on the equipment, including after some hesitation the collar - it offered some protection, and the Mage's Mark didn't care if it was in his pack or not. The staff he picked up, and the rest of the equipment joined the pyre. He pulled the map out of the pocket sewn into the cloak, and examined it in the light of the fire. The destination was clear, a slightly lighter shade of ink. East.
John folded the map, looked up at the stars - found them hidden behind the canopy. Right. Forest. Shaking his head, he sat back down, watching the fire slowly fade. Morning, then.
The ground wasn't comfortable, but at least it was early summer, and the night didn't bite deeply. He made a pillow of his pack, and closed his eyes, drifting off.
Morning was unpleasant, as he was awoken by a sharp pain in his foot. He sat up, examining the small jade hunter gnawing on his left shoe. He kicked the small green boar off of his foot, looking to the pair that were chewing on the bones of the pyre.
John briefly debated killing the trio, but skinning and dressing sounded like more effort than he cared to invest. Sighing, he finished standing, checked the direction of the sun, and set off to the east. He felt a slight mental strain - not quite a headache, not quite pain indeed, more like pieces of his mind weren't quite attached anymore, a sense of fragmentation. He started walking; it had been a while since he'd felt Potential settle on him like that.
The map was familiar. The forests of Arde through which he traveled formed a cross shape across the land mass of the north, with mountains forming a crescent to the north, and marshes filling the southwest. The southeast was plains and farms, dotted with villages. Arde itself sat nearly in the middle. The isthmus connecting to the south was barely represented, with a handful of cities dotting the hills and mountains which bordered the great isthmus desert. The northeast was the independent city-state of Reln, floodlands where the great Arde river met the ocean. It had been Empress Lira's home province.
He was headed to the province of Errile, and his destination was a small village just south of the city of Errile, circled in a lighter shade of ink, the slight difference in the ink's reflectivity less visible in daylight than firelight. It wasn't far, as he was in the eastern edge of the province of Jorga, central to the southern cross of the forests; Errile straddled the forests and the plains, the city itself situated at the border.
John guessed it would be a week's travel, at least if he could find the damned road. He had avoided the road, both because he hadn't been going anywhere in particular and roads tended to go somewhere particular, and also because of the risk of bandits. He practiced moving through the gray world of the shadows as he moved, but didn't get much better at the art; it was useful for short distances, but not a lot else.
On the second day he encountered a herd of elk, their blue pelt glinting in the sunlight. They stood out in the forest, but he knew from personal experience they had something like shadow walking themselves, vanishing from one place and appearing in another, when fully grown. They had other defenses, as well.
He heard the screech before he saw the beast, halting, hand tightening on the staff, quickly scanning the forest floor. Nothing. Only after checking the ground did he scan the trees - some pack ambushers would climb a tree and make a sound, distracting from the rest of the pack. There. Fifty yards southeast, halfway up a tree.
The wyvern was one of the smaller sorts, in total about the size of a human torso, its wings looking like a tattered cotton sheet. Clothwing. Shit. He kept scanning for the rest of the pack. Two more held onto other trees, looking his way. Maybe more he couldn't see. They knew he was here.
He moved to a tree, placing it behind him, watching the wyverns; he didn't want to get behind it, as they might have more of their pack behind him, attacking while he was distracted. They didn't move yet. He leaned to the left, scanning behind him and up. Nothing. He repeated the motion to his right. Yep. Two more, one hanging to the side of a tree trunk, the other on a large branch, their gray scales glittering as wind swayed the leaves above them, moving the light across.
Five. That was ... too many, really. John breathed out, relaxing into a fighting posture. Breathe in. Breathe out. One of the wyverns dropped from its perch on a trunk ahead of him, tattered wings spreading and swinging it from a drop into a dive straight at him. Breathe in. Breathe out. Smoke poured out of its pointed snout, followed by fire. The staff fell from his hands.
Swing. Crunch. Breathe in. Breathe out. The staff hit the ground an instant before the wyvern did, flames licking over John's torso for an instant, a hot breeze. Breathe in, breathe out; a sound from the side, a pivot, forearm shoving the wyvern's flight straight into the tree next to him with a meaty noise. Another wave of fire. He moved through it quickly, holding his breath.
The third wyvern struck him from the side, talons raking across his shoulders and back. A flash of pain. Another shadow passed above him, his scalp stinging. His fist caught the fifth, boiling-hot blood and fire combining in a spray across his face, forcing his eyes shut. Pain and darkness.
Another sharp pain, now in his side; a cry from his left. John took a single step through gray shadow to the side, a momentary respite before reality returned, the sparks on his clothing suffocated before it could begin. Sight; he searched quickly for the two remaining wyverns. He saw one, but not the other, almost as soon as it saw him, the flutter of wind over cloth rising as it dove again. A spin to the side, the back of his hand narrowly missing, a fluttering as the second wyvern flashed past where he had been, the two crossing in the air.
John moved back against the trunk of a tree, eyes flicking to either side as his foes swooped around for another dive, one from the left, and one from the right. A second passed, and then he ducked forward, the heel of his foot rising as he fell forward onto his hands, shoving the flight of one wyvern into another. A crack, as they collided, and he stood up again, his foot smashing down into the entangled pair with all his weight with an unpleasant grinding, snapping sound.
A huff, a snarling whine, and then silence. And then blood reached his left eye from his torn scalp, forcing it shut. John took a few steps, and then collapsed heavily against a tree, surveying the scene with one eye. At least it was too wet for the wyvern flames to catch. His hands started shaking, the adrenaline losing its outlet, and he pressed them to his knees, bowing his head forward to rest on them. He'd survived again.
It was only as he sat there that he remembered that he knew the use of simple magical projectiles, aether arrows. He had yet to use the damned things in a fight, and they were not instinctual. John broke out in something between cursing and laughter.
He followed the terrain down a slight slope until he encountered a stream, and used his ladle to fill his stew pot, which he set over a quickly-started fire using supplies from his pack, mainly a log of compressed kindling which would burn for a couple of hours. When the water was brought to a boil, he pulled it off, and wet some cloth, beginning the process of cleaning the wounds, a deliberate, slow, and painful process. No deep burns, thankfully, but he'd have some new scars.
Strictly speaking, he had some immunity to poisons and diseases, which meant he didn't need to be so thorough, but he didn't entirely trust the devotions of the pantheon. His years as a soldier had instilled in him a distrust of wounds; more men died in the week or two after a battle than during it. Usually.
His medical equipment contained some broad leaves with antiseptic properties, packed in bladders full of brine to keep them moist and fresh, which he bound over the wounds with more strips of cloth. A sharp pain flared as the salty water met flesh, and then subsided to a low ache.
His attention turned to the cowl and cloak, both of which now sported a few tears. John washed the blood out in the still hot water of his stew pot - it washed out of the metal quite easily, to his surprise - and hung them from a branch to dry.
His robes, gray silk, were somewhat harder to clean, and would probably bear a stain. He hung them up as well, and leaned against the tree to wait, the wind cool as it blew over his flesh. John remembered a day when he would have been embarrassed to be naked outside, for fear that somebody might spy upon him - years of campaigning had erased that. There were far worse things than to be seen nude, and the weather was pleasant, at least. He looked up to the canopy above, admiring the brilliant shades of green, like a field of sparkling emeralds in the light.
The sparkling light faded to a darker green, and then darkness. His robes were still wet, but the cloak and cowl had dried; he put these on, pushed leaves together into a pile, and, wrapping the silver cloak about himself to form a barrier against the scratchy leaves, knelt and laid upon the pile.
He slept.
He dressed himself in the morning, changed the bandage out for a fresh set of the brined leaves, and, collecting his stew pot and ladle back into his pack, set off again towards the rising sun. It was an hour later that a shout caught his attention.
The man was dressed in - well, spun silver, again. This man wore a shirt and coat, and long pleated skirts in the Errile fashion, all of the elegant material. He walked with a slight limp, helped by a silver cane tipped in grown opal, which glittered in the light.
The man was older, perhaps in his late sixties, with thin gray hair cropped short, a mustache of a lighter shade of gray. His cheeks were shaven, but a beard descended his chin down to his chest. Bushy silver eyebrows rose when he caught sight of John, and he halted.
"Where is Leonard?" A baritone voice, scratched with age.