On a dock, by the sea, a young boy wishes for a seafaring storm to make landfall and this storm, hearing him, alters its course. Sitting next to the boy, I find this considerably peculiar, as most younglings possessed of such powers are usually at least aware of their gifts. Yet Elam has not a shadow’s notion regarding the wonder within himself. He is, perhaps, wrought of a magic too grand for proper noticing or beyond anything one might expect to see.
Contemplating my observations of the boy, I peer over to him.
He was not always a boy, of course. Indeed, he was a baby once—a rather unusual baby. Of most note and probably somewhat predictably, Elam did not cry during storms, even in the most tempestuous among them. No, when it rained, he never cried at all, even when he was hungry.
Oh, indeed, when he had grown older and was no longer restrained by the babyish inability to move about, he would toddle over to the one window in his house set low enough for him to reach and stare out on the rain until it stopped. As he grew older and taller, he looked through higher and larger windows until, when Dara finally thought him old and responsible enough, Elam was permitted to sit outside. And so he would, beneath the overhang, body wrapped in a warm, soft blanket and eyes rapt in the windy, watery storm.
As is the case with childish fascinations, such a thing defined him.
So much so that presently, having grown older, Elam snuck past his guardians in order to sit on the dock and watch the storm, even when the mightiest of men had taken shelter; this was, of course, many more parts childish indiscretion than heroic fearlessness, but, all matters considered, he does love storms and love often leads one to do unusual things.
Oh, but what is a story without its context?
As you would no doubt like to know, this tale takes place in Promicia, a most familiar place to most, if only in name. Yet this takes place more than three hundred annuals after the events of the Forth Khaa. The town—no longer a city, much less the bustling seaside capital it once was—is small now, barely two hundred people calling it their home. Those walls and fortifications that were razed during the now ancient war have yet to be rebuilt, such things a priority only of dreamers and historians. No, it is a sleepy seaside village and, despite its grand history, the people living there quite enjoy the calm, thank you very much.
Yet, as of late, this place has endured a rather unduly frequent deluge of rainstorms, specifically, and very much not coincidentally, during the time Elam has lived. This has much puzzled the townspeople, as the weather had always been most reasonable in the past. Even so, the storms compound in ferocity and frequency like a spited noble’s stewing wrath.
Yet, even in their confusion, the villagers adapted their lives around such weather.
The mayor, for one, had purchased an expensive vile of Vishnari Yareyall, a liquid extracted from the liver of sharks and then enchanted to perform a most specific task: darken when foretelling an oncoming storm. In recent times, it has grown dark quite often.
The townsfolk had also begun to store the more valuable and cumbersome of their possessions in the nearest of what they called the great Promincian lighthouses. Each is a colossal cylinder of stone some ten times higher than the tallest building in the village and an immortal vestiges of an age beyond even the memory of old Promicia. Yet for them, it is a now constant haven from storms.
Furthermore, the storms had become so vicious as of late that all new houses and building projects had begun to use Ironok stone as their primary element and base, rather than the much cheaper and less durable wood found in the surrounding forests.
Oh, but I’ve lost myself. I suppose you would like to know what this has to do with Elam now, yes?
Well, looking over to Elam, I can see these matters have easily evaded his mind, the boy just too young to regard such adult affairs. Certainly he knows the liquid in the mayor’s necklace was nearest to black as it had ever been in the advent of this particular squall, and, though he knows this to mean an unusually forceful tempest, there is no fear, but only excitement. The boy also knows the villagers are presently transferring the contents of their homes to the nearest Promincian lighthouse, though this this just means he can sit on the dock, as Balder and Dara are otherwise too occupied to see Elam has been overlooked. The fact that houses had begun to be made of stone, though… well, that has not been realized by Elam at all.
Elam next to me shivers and I am drawn back to the moment, following his gaze.
He looks out on the waters.
I survey the sea, gauging the storm’s approach; I can feel and see the very elements shake in excitement, charging the air. A ponderous wall of grey the storm is, like a glacier, save set to fall and roar rather than sit and creak. And fall and roar it does, though from here the far-off rain has yet to become a whisper and the thunder still speaks in low, sonorous murmurs. The lightning also has its show on occasion, jutting about in indiscriminate schisms and displaying its jagged mazes of light.
Elam observes these things in a less ordered way, however. I suppose that comes from being human. I see his senses do not order and sort the single facets of the experience as mine do, foregoing a more analytical approach.
What peculiar minds these mortals have.
The way he experiences the weather seems more akin to a disoriented rush, not unlike the euphoria felt by other mortals when they ingest certain plants, notably by means of pipe smoking. No, the boy enjoys an interwoven rapture in the storm and, I suppose, that might be why he can love the wind, rain, lightning, and thunder, while I can only understand it.
Nevertheless, this love will change. I have seen the future, have seen how this specific storm will alter the way he perceived all others. I have seen how the wind’s songs will change to ravenous howlings, the crystalline branches of lightning to a spider’s deadly webs, the laughing thunder to bellowing hate, and the refreshing rain to sharp, cold needles. I have seen how love will become fear.
Yet… yet… I have also seen what this change will awaken within him, how the darklings will try to use such things against him on the day he is destined to open The Door. I have seen how his decisions will affect the lives of generations, how his spirit will intertwine with those living before and after him, how he will declare war with his actions, how he will release an evil such that has not been seen for generation. I have seen how he will lend his soul to the weaving of The Cord.
And, even still, I yet see a boy on a dock, by the sea, calling forth a storm because nothing in Areth so pleases him as the sound of the rain and thunder.
I sit with him for several rivers of moments, listening as the aforesaid whisper in the rain becomes more talkative and the murmurs of thunder graduate from pure sound to something he feels on his skin. The wind whips his hair about, making it dance as if suspended in water, though with a force that the boy feels down to the roots and one that besets his spine with elated shivering.
Then the rain reaches him.
Elam watches the droplets bombard the choppy, grey sea, refreshing the churning body with new, cold water. He then feels the liquid on his face and soon his hair becomes too sodden for the wind’s teasing. He watches a fork of lightning strike the sea and feels the resulting thunder shake the world. He laughs aloud…
Yet… in doing so… he finds the noise of his laughter has a strange insincerity to it.
This puzzles Elam, damaging his euphoria as it does. As his thoughts become more probing and senses less distracting, he sees the world around him began to change… to darken.
Then, all at once, he realizes he is afraid.
The cold rain on his skin stings a little and the chop that had been lapping at his dangling feet now sends washes of water flowing over the edges of the dock. The wind bears the whispers of winter now, rather than its usual haunting poetry. The lighting, once lattices of light, now can be seen for the shadows they cast, and the thunder has lost all joy.
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Elam wishes in haste for the storm to depart, longed with all that makes him for its flight back to the sea, and the storm, hearing him, seeks to oblige.
Yet such a wish holds the makings of disaster.
Perhaps if Elam had bidden the storm to make haste toward the mainland and not back to the sea, the path might have been smooth. Yet his orders trouble the storm, as might be expected when such a tempest is made to fold in upon itself, compressing its full wrath to a smaller whole. It wields far too much impetus to simply reverse its course and the mass of clouds that has trailed the main body thus becomes an adversary, setting the storm against itself as one sword strikes another.
The storm above, vexed and confused, begins churning as does the sea beneath it. Wild networks of bright and persisting lightning branch over the sky, leaving inter-competing and cacophonous surges of thunder it their wake. The wind spins in upon itself, weaving cyclones from clouds that at first seem like gossamer threads, though soon grow to mighty coiling maelstroms of wind, woven silk spirals thick and tall as the Nokveird trees of Nwikwood.
Elam, terror besetting his veins with bloodfire, scrambles to leave the dock on hands and knees, but a swell overtakes the place where the dock meets the shore, enveloping the wood and iron in a grey-green bulge of seawater. He staggers, hesitantly rising to his feet and frantically surveying his surroundings, skin beset by gooseflesh and legs shaking so hard that a collapse seems imminent.
Standing with him, I long to help—to wisp him away. Nevertheless, such is not my role and, though the boy’s heart beats rapidly, though the blacks in his eyes have blotted out the blue, and though his thoughts cycle through an endless rhythm of senselessness, I know I can do nothing. All this has purpose woven within.
“Elam!” comes a scream from the top of the promontory, near the great Promincian lighthouse; despite the squall, Elam catches a faint hint of the call and looks around. “Elam!” she screams again and this time he catches the source, locking his eyes on her.
He sees Dara and, though she is far away, he perceives her terror; this causes an even greater fear to stir within him. He then notices Balder sprinting down the promontory, followed shortly by his friend Dom Rurren and more tentatively by two others. He watches their progress, petrified, though warmed by the palest glimmer of hope.
But then a loud crack like the breaking of bones catches Elan’s ear, and he feels the wood beneath his feet begin to shift. The dock writhes beneath him, long brown fangs of splintering wood set in the mouth of the sea swallowing him alive. He plunges into the water, feeling splits of hardened wood pierce his thigh and back; he screams and cries, though the sea does not heed him. The liquid burns him and freezes him and throws him around and scorches his eyes and forces itself into his nose and mouth; he will die! He knows it!
He hates himself for sneaking past Doms Grimm and Jarrek at the front of the lighthouse, for coming down to the docks when all had said it was dangerous. What had he done? Why had he forfeited his life?
The water throws him against one of the dock’s splintered supports and the air from his lungs escapes in a cluster of bubbles, bursting out from inside him. He swallows a mouthful of saltwater and begins coughing as he drifts further seaward. He bobs to the top and can see figures by the splintered dock, far further off than they had been. He tries to breathe, yet does so as a wave swells and catches another mouthful of water. He wretches and spurts, feeling a watery hand pull him beneath the surface.
Unable to fight the need to breath, he draws in another breath of water, gagging. Twinkles dance before his eyes and a blackness moves in from the peripheries of his vision. The entire underwater world turns murky and he peers toward the sky from beneath the waves; lightning casts haunting glows through the water, illuminating the hazy, silt-strewn sea as the moons do evening fog. Then the glow turns red and he finds comfort, the world made soft and warm again. He closes his eyes… calm… quiet…
But no, this glow is not lightning.
It… remains.
He opens his eyes and stares at his hands; they show a brilliant crimson with strands of light that streak upward in watery ribbons. He feels a force above him drawing him up—O! a force to oppose the pulling sea with ferocity! He coughs, spitting up what water he can, a will burning within him to live and ride the lifting fire. The scarlet streaks pulse upward, setting the entire water world ablaze with murky flame, and Elam, with all his might, embraces the fire. Magic surrounding him responding to the magic within, the fusion of power burns white and with a far more potent force.
He explodes through the surface and streaks into the air.
Looking toward the shore, he sees Dom Rurren, outstretched hand engulfed in flames and scarlet weaves called lacarian blazing on his skin. Dom Rurren has removed his black glove; Elam has never seen the man without it. As Elam observes the shore, he sees strangeness in the rain about him and all that along the way to Dom Rurren; it glows white and ascends within the air, rather than fall. Elam watches as the shore nears—as he floats toward the man. Feeling a tingle in his leg, he looks to the place where the wood had pieced his thigh, seeing the shaft turn to ash and catch on the wind. When Elam nears the shore, he watches in awe as the water around Dom Rurren turns to steam, fire boiling from the man’s eyes in ferocious torches.
Despite his own gratitude, such a sight frightens Elam; the boy has never seen a wordspeaker making magic, after all, no less one flirting with the limits of his or her power.
Yet Elam did not know—could not know—that Rurren’s struggle is only due to Elan’s own gifts. Wielding magic, while a difficult endeavor, complicates when waged for or against another and becomes harder still based on that person’s level of blessing. And therefore Rurren, standing on the beach and exerting all the power within him, can hardly perform the simplest of levitation charms on Elam because the boy possesses more Breath of Ahrah than anyone in living memory.
Nevertheless, woven in the blessing of Elam’s own raw power, the spell does its work. Elam looms nearer to the shore and finds his heart light with waves of overwhelming and contrasting emotions. The world feels dreamlike to him as he sees the branches of lightning striking on the horizons, accented by the droplets about him that, blazing a vicious white, levitate upward toward the sky, seemingly immune to the draw of Areth below. He sees Dom Rurren, eyes issuing red flames and the weaving bands of his lacarian glowing on his hand and arm. Yet, outshining this dull hue, the light that emanates from Elam himself floods the world about him and would seem to cast a shadow on even those flames themselves, should such a thing be possible; from Elam, who floats through the air, shines a light whiter and more fierce than that of the Greatstar on the brightest of days.
In the midst of this euphoria of body and mind, however, Elam begins to feel something, a charge about him that sets his skin to creep and hairs to dance. Then he hears it: a crackle in the air, that grows into a burr, and finally a full-on din. He looks up to see the lightning lance down toward him, though has not the time to react.
I watch the lightning strike him through the middle, instantly incinerating what youngling hair he has on his skin and turning all water upon him to mist. The thunder immediately follows with such force that Dom’s Grimm and Jarrek are thrown from their feet, though Balder remains standing out of fierce will and Rurren does so also, having engaged a shield of magic.
Elam impacts the water limply and Balder, taking no time for caution, rushes into the sea. Rurren, bringing his magic to bear, forces the water around the two to vacate and, in focusing his magic not on men, but on the elements themselves, finds it an easy task. Balder lifts the boy from the sand and makes his way toward the lighthouse; the others follow in haste.
I also fly along behind them and, while doing so, feel a familiar presence. I turn, seeing Death beside me, Life near my side. “O, dear kindred, my treasured Fate, I have not seen thee as of late. Our time apart I do regret, I trust thy path hath been well met?”
“Indeed it has been,” I answer. “Save perhaps this bit of tragedy,” I add, motioning to Elam.
“O, spur not fear, nor thoughts of strife; I have not come to take this life.”
“I know, I know,” I answer. “Though he has lost a part of himself today—or will, in time.”
Death nods; Life affirms. “A shame it is to play one’s part, whilst it rends a blameless heart.”
“Well said,” I reply, contented by the words.
We enter the lighthouse and I watch as the Balder sets Elam down on a bed. Rurren puts his hand on the boy’s chest and feels for life, while Anor, the village priest and physician, lifts prayers while assessing the boy’s condition. Presently Rurren turns and speaks, “The fire of life burns within him, I dare say. Though if you be of the same opinion, Anor, I bid you set my mind to ease with your own words.”
“I concur,” says Anor. “Should he kindle a will to live, the fire of Life will burn hot as it ever did.” At this, a great many sighs held in timid chests about the room find release, making the place a measure warmer and lighter. “Even so,” the man continues, “bear him to another bed, Balder, and one not besot with the probing stares of the concerned—though you mean well, I am sure. I say, he needs quiet, solitude, and rest, not eyes.” A light chuckle runs through the room.
At once Balder draws Elam from the bed and makes for one of the small side rooms, followed closely by Dara. Entering, he sets the boy down and the two sit with him for many tides of moments until neither of them have the strength to remain awake. Each having gone afar to the land of dreams, I turn to Death, glance to Life, and speak, “I believe it has come time for your part in the matter.”
Death nod, Life affirms, and I watch as my kin places its hand on Elam’s forehead, communing with the boy. I observe Death speak to him, Life show the weight of the decision the boy is to make. Yet I know Elam. I know he will choose Life, despite what it means, despite the pain ahead; he will delay paradise for the sake of those around him… for the world’s salvation.
Death nods; Live smiles. “Gil’deau,” it proclaims upon the unconscious Elam, which is to say: Stormson. My kin then looks at me and smiles with a warmth that shows the full light of Life; it then disappears, leaving me alone with Elam. I look at the boy; he has made a noble choice, though, upon waking, he will not remember his deliberation.
He will face the darkness in his future unknowing.