The moment his foot crossed over the threshold of the cave mouth, he was assailed by the putrid scent of decayed flesh and rotten fruit, mixed in with the staleness of old urine and a festering of human excrement. Almost as soon as he entered, the blackness that had faced him mere moments ago now characterized the exit of the cave, as if nothing but an empty night’s sky lay beyond it. As soon as he made this distinction, all light disappeared from his eyes and he was stranded within an abyss of blackness.
Slowing for a second time, he summoned a small ball of fire and directed it to float in front of him like a living torch, at which point he finally saw the unknown speaker.
If the man weren’t struggling to crawl towards him, Alistar would have thought him a long-dead corpse. Even in Crystellum where the weaker slaves had regularly been forced into starvation by their fellow captives in the constant fight for additional food, he had never seen such an emaciated person before, alive or dead. The man’s naked body was little more than a shrivelled cloak of skin that clung to his skeleton in a nightmarish way, a few strands of loose, blond hair poking out of his liver-spotted head at random locations. And the eyes. With sockets so sunken that it seemed as if they contained nothing at all but a deep, festering shadow, Alistar could barely make out two little specks that seemed like nothing more than white raisins tied at the back with thin strands of dehydrated, fleshy string.
As Alistar stood there in the quiet of the cave, the man gradually stopped moving. Amidst the flickering ambience of the firelight, Alistar watched the still form for several minutes, observing no further changes.
Is he dead?
There was only one way to find out.
“H—hello?”
There was no response. He stood there for several moments, too nervous to approach any further. Soon enough, however, the man took a deep breath in the same manner as somebody that had just surfaced from the depths of a body of water after nearly drowning.
“Are you okay?”
The man began to stir.
“Is someone there? You…come back to torture me again? Or are you here to steal what little I have left? You tell your wretched master that I’m still here, that I haven’t—”
“I’m not who you think. My name is Alistar. I was…I accidently wandered in here.”
The man’s head snapped up with unexpected force, to the extent that Alistar thought that his neck ran the risk of snapping.
Suddenly coherent, the man screamed out in desperation. “Quickly! Kill me! Kill me while I’m aware! Before I forget…before I…”
Alistar acted without thinking. Drawing close to the unknown man, he reached out with his left hand and cast a basic mending spell.
“Ah…Argh!”
The spell seemed to hurt the man rather than help him, though Alistar continued on with good intentions. Never would he have expected that the moment the man’s limbs seemed to regain a bit of strength, he'd place a trembling palm atop his chin and snap his own neck with a sudden jerk.
What the…?
Deactivating his mending spell as he stared at the lifeless body, Alistar was at a complete loss. This wasn’t the end of the unexpected developments, for a minute later the man’s head suddenly snapped back into place, hundreds of blond hairs growing out of his scalp like lingering grass within a once-fertile field. As he began to twitch and writhe in a violent manner, his body filled out into a semi-healthy state, to the point that by the end of the bizarre spasms he looked like a starving beggar on the streets of a big city. Not only that, but his eyes grew back to their normal dimensions, a remarkable sight despite the fact that they remained glazed over with blindness.
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“Who are you?” said the man, voice level and suddenly sane. “How did you get in here?”
“As I said, my name is Alistar. I accidently stumbled upon this cave.”
“One doesn’t simply stumble upon an independent space, boy. Who sent you here?”
“I’m telling the truth. I really wandered in here by accident. You…are you okay?”
The man pushed himself up and stared him in the eye, making Alistar wonder if he was truly blind. “Do I look okay?”
“Shall I heal you again?”
“Again? How long have you been here?”
“Just a few minutes.”
“Did you kill me?”
“You asked me to, but I…”
“If I ask that of you again, do it quickly. Sanity is a fickle thing, and I’d like to make sure I possess it the next time I revive. That’s not possible unless I’m sane in my dying moments.”
“What do you mean, revive? You can’t mean that you were really dead just now?”
“Tsk, these blasted curses…” After a moment’s silence, the man pointed at one of the four decayed, dusty barrels that lined the left side of the cave wall and said, “Fetch me an apple, will you?”
Alistar strode past the man and peered into the barrels to find that they contained nothing but deflated, rotten fruit. He could barely sense a lingering amount of energy upon them, which told him that they had been enchanted for some reason or other.
“They’re all rotten.”
Pinching at his chin, the man mumbled to himself. “How long has it been since I last had my sanity? How…how many times have I died since last they came?”
“Who are you?”
The man snickered. “A good question.” After taking stock of his body with curious, wandering fingers, he barked, “Boy. What year is it?”
“Year? It’s year 512 of the New Era.”
“New Era? What era came before that?”
“The Old Era.”
“Old Era, is it? What, is this a time when they’ve forgotten how to give proper names to things? Surely the world has gone to hell with that madman at the helm.” After a brief quiet, he asked, “What calendar preceded this Old Era that you mentioned?”
“That…nothing.” Even flustered as he was, Alistar reconsidered. “That I know of, at least.”
The man sat there as if in a daze, a terrible string of grumbles leaving his stomach that didn’t seem to faze him in the least. “Tell me, boy. Do the words Inverted Wars mean anything to you?”
Recalling what he’d learned from both his personal studies as well as his conversations with Mr. Herst, Alistar said, “The supposed great war for humanity’s survival? Yes, it took place in the final years of the Old Era.”
The man sagged ever so slightly, sighing to himself as if hearing reassurance about a long-time source of anxiety. “At least it’s known.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “So it’s been 512 years. That means that everybody…” He crossed his legs and arms. “I don’t suppose you have any food?”
Alistar handed him the leather bag that was tied to his belt, which contained enough food to feed two people for just as many days so long as they were conscious of their consumption. Fumbling with it, the man began to help himself with voracious fervour, ignoring Alistar for well over five minutes as he devoured the entire stock. Once he’d finished, he vomited most of the food up, wiped a lone tear from his left eye and said, “I feel a faint heat. Don’t tell me you’re using magic?”
“A bit of fire to light the cave.”
“Interesting…but how? The principals of this space forbid magic. It should only be possible for a few people.” A hint of hope touched upon his tone. “You said you tried to heal me earlier. Can you do it again?”
This time around, the mending spell gave the man’s body more substance and the amount of hair on his head nearly doubled, though it still gave the impression of a willow tree in the weeks before winter. Once Alistar realized that his spell was no longer having any effect, he cancelled it out. Before he could retract his hand, however, the man grasped his wrist as if it were perfectly visible to his foggy eyes, which widened significantly upon contact.
Alistar, on the other hand, pulled his arm away and jumped back in alarm.
“You. Are your eyes blue?”
“They’re not.”
“Hmm, silver then? Or gold?”
“Both…”
“Hah! What fate is this? After everything, I was betrayed by my best friend as well? Or maybe… You’re part of the Silver clan, no?” When Alistar hesitated out of uncertainty, the man continued on in a gruff voice that held far more substance than it had when he’d been in his emaciated state. “Do you know who your ancestors are?”