Chapter 2

The Forest – Summer of 1017 BE

If you have never tried walking, you definitely should. I loved it. I had aches and pains all over; my feet hurt, my back hurt, my shoulders hurt, and it was way too hot! The sun had an unobstructed view of the top of my head. That coupled with the overly large pack on my back and the sandals that were clearly breaking was causing my aches and pains. It didn’t bother me; when one problem tried to interrupt my happy walk, I just pulled on the nothingness and that part of my body went numb. I did learn a few things; for one the nothingness was not endless in this big world – by the end of the day I felt like I needed to rest before pulling on more of it - for another, it is required to complain when marching. After internalizing this lesson and making up some complaints I was able to make lots of friends. The only thing I learned that made my mood sour was the fact that there were no heavenly beds to sleep on.

At night we complained about the rations until glasses yelled at us. I was happy he did because it meant I could enjoy the amazing meal without having to talk it down. My new friends, John and Frank, thanked me for carrying their loads and let me know I only had to do it that first day. This completely confused me, but I just nodded. Jerald took me aside and told me to stop craning my neck around to make eye contact with people behind me and to stop smiling all the time. It is apparently OK to not smile when doing work, he reminded me a lot of my escort from the other day. That was when Frank brought out what he called Vodka – I don’t fully remember the rest of that night, but Jerald took me aside the next morning and told me I absolutely needed to stop making eye contact and smiling all the time. I vaguely remembered the eyes of a woman, slightly tinged blue, but they were certainly not the smiling kind of eyes. It took too much time to learn how to numb my headache with the nothingness and it was more difficult to do than I first hoped. It was time to make a list of things not to do, Vodka was now on that list.

……….

When we reached the first tree, I decided that I liked forests; the smell of the trees, the sound of the critters, and the shade from the sun combined to make my day that much better. Glasses didn’t agree, according to him, forests were the home of bandits. “We don’t like bandits” explained glasses. He made me repeat after him,

“If you see a bandit, you kill a bandit”

“If I see a bandit, I kill a bandit”

It was odd that I was the only one who needed to do this, but it was a fun enough little game. It reminded me of something I had forgotten, it was called copy something or other. I realized he was treating me like a child and so were many of the others. I didn’t mind. Children learned through experiencing the world and that was what I was doing. In the quiet of my thoughts, I hoped I would never lose the childlike wonder that infused my every experience. I did not want to be like Glasses. I enjoyed thinking about how big this word was and how much of it was new, or forgotten, to me. Of course, not everything could be new.

There was one thing that I need no help learning, something I had been doing since before I could remember – fighting. In this place of wonder, with my mind stuck in perpetual joy, I was asked to do something I knew far too well.

The tree before our group fell, the ground shook, and Glasses yelled “bandits”.

“If I see a bandit, I kill a bandit”

The sound left me in a whisper and John looked over at me with shock. I wasn’t smiling. I knew what came next and, although it wasn’t really on purpose, I had been training my use of the nothingness as I marched and now, I pulled on it with all my might. It infused me, became me. Unlike on The Bridge, I did not appear as a ghost; the best description others would have had of me was that I became less. As if a shadow was hiding some of my features. I had no pain – no feeling at all. I pushed my body beyond what it could do, I had no limit, I couldn’t feel anything after all.

What Glasses had failed to say was that the bandits would have mages. I recognized them intensely. The enemy had always sent mages to break the seal, they were the only other beings who could exist on The Bridge in their own power, besides the Guardians. They used magic to do this, they used magic to bring many different monsters into The Bridge to kill us. Protecting them from the nothingness so they could fight and die by my hand instead. The mage raised his hand and threw raw magic at me, he should have attached the environment. He should have hit the earth before me to shake the ground and shoot rocks and dirt at me. He should have known magic would have no effect on me. I was nothing, I ran right through it.

“If I see a bandit, I kill a bandit”

For years I repeated my duty to myself to stay sane but whispering “you shall not pass” to this bandit was not as relevant here as it was on The Bridge. I knew that in this big world more would be expected of me than the narrow single-minded mission that used to be my life. But here, reminded of my life up till now, the words I repeated for Glasses felt right. Today, for this moment, I was a Guardian with a single-minded mission once more.

I repeated the phrase five more times and five more bandits fell. I stopped when they started to run. The carriage and everyone else were to my back, I had run far into the forest. There was something wrong, I had learned to trust myself even when I could not feel anything. I had a sad excuse for an ax in my hand. Picked up from the ground. I threw the ax to my right, and it was incinerated. Walking from behind the trees were five mages and they were clearly more powerful than the one I had already faced.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It took them one death before learning spells directed at me would not work. A mage in clean brown robes was struggling with a spell and I knew I need to stop him. Two others dressed in red stood in my way. The last, another mage in brown, circled me and focused on messing up my footing by changing and shaking the ground beneath my feet.

I tried to run through the two mages before me but failed. The wall of magical flame did not burn me, but the heat could still be deadly. I could not feel the heat, yet my instincts were warning me about its dangers. Even if I could not feel it, I had a body to protect.

“Pin him down Char, and I will keep him off balance. We only need to buy time”

“What do you think I’m doing? Maybe if Chelsea would help it would be easier”

I stopped for a moment, where had the other red mage gone? I had seen her move off but thought it was to circle around. It did not make a difference I knew I had lost this round. Turning towards the brown mage causing the ground to shake and shift, I charged. Fire lanced at my back, and I took it. The heated air would burn my body, but not too much, and that was an issue for after the fight. I knew it would not cause enough damage to hinder me now.

The mage must have expected me to dodge or stumble but he had never faced someone infused with nothingness. Erecting a wall of dirt, the brown mage tried to turtle into the earth. Breaking my hand, I forced it through his wall and grabbed him. The next ball of fire didn’t hit me but hit my new shield. The mage I knew as Char was red with anger, but no more fire came. He swayed on his feet struggling to stay standing. Yet, I was too slow, finishing his long spell the brown mage behind Char smiled.

“Done,” he said with such finality it was as if he thought it would solve all his problems.

“Don’t worry Char we have him now”

Walking around in front of the mage was a stone golem. I disliked stone golems, you had to hack and hack at them until the magic they were made of could no longer hold the stone together. Another mage might be able to dispel it, but I was not a mage. Some Guardians were able to project the nothingness outside of themselves and disrupt golems, I could not. I was the best at infusing myself with the nothingness, not at using it outside of myself. So, I usually just held them off until the nothingness all around them drained them dry.

This wasn’t The Bridge; nothingness was not all around, and my usual tactic would not work. I picked up the only part left of the ax, its metal head. The two mages looked to be out of magic, they stood back and watched as I ran at the golem.

I dodged under its arm and knocked some of the loose stone free. I dodged again. It pulled at the ground and stones filled the gap. We repeated.

It finally hit me half an hour later. I know my ribs broke and my skin was scraped raw. I didn’t feel it and we continued our dance. My ax head was chipped and dented but the stone golem was pulling stone back slower and slower, it would be enough.

It took a little over an hour for it to crumble into dust. I looked over to where the two mages had started to crawl away and followed their clear trail. That was the danger of using all your magic it sapped you of even your normal strength. The red mage shot a crossbow bolt at me. When that missed, he pulled on his nonexistent magic in a final burst of flame killing himself in the process. He probably pulled on his own life to cause and fuel the fire. The brown mage crawled to the crossbow and started reloading it.

“If I see a bandit, I kill a bandit” I whispered.

……….

I walked back to the carriage keeping myself infused with the nothingness. If I let go of the infusion, I knew I would not be able to walk. I had gained too many injuries that I was frankly unsure of how to deal with. I never had to heal myself on the Bridge, probably because I barely had a body there and was always infused with nothingness.

Coming onto the path I saw two slightly blue eyes of an angry person. Unliked my limited memory of the time with vodka, the eyes were not looking at me. An older woman with black hair and the finest traveling clothes I had ever seen – my only other point of reference being the soldiers around me – was angrily staring at a younger woman. Brown hair reaching behind her shoulders and wearing red robes similar to the other mages the younger woman standing before Lady White was only a little shorter than me.

“And why should I do as you ask Mage Chelsea?”

Lady White pronounced Mage Chelsea with a snap her eyes glinting dangerously. I stopped walking forward. There was no way that I wanted to draw attention to myself and have those eyes on me.

“I will tell you everything I know about the contract we had on you, and I will accompany you as added protection for the rest of your trip.”

“And what makes you think I would ever trust you.”

“Because I didn’t attack you, and I can’t buy what I want with the gold from the contract.”

Frankly, I was confused. Was this Chelsea a bandit or not. Were the other bandits not bandits. No, Glasses definitely called them bandits. It was hard for me to think about something changing, after all, I was used to nothing ever-changing. But things changed all the time in this bigger more complex world. It must be that bandits could change to be not bandits. I listened as the two women talked back and forth, negotiating what the Mage Chelsea would give Lady White in order to join our group. I just couldn’t figure out why she would want to. It was clear that something had been discussed before I arrived, it took all my willpower not to interrupt and ask what I had missed.

The problem was, I was having difficulty keeping up my infusion with the nothingness. My time was running out and I did not know what I was going to do. I knew nothing about how to heal my body. Was this how the quartermaster who obviously knew nothing about clothing felt when issuing uniforms? I suddenly felt great pity for him and regretted looking down on his shortcomings.

I found myself unable to move. It was all I could do to keep pulling on the nothingness. Any loss of focus would end my infusion. I noticed that the conversation had ended at some point but was too internally focused to understand the outcome. What I did know was that I would not hold on much longer. Then I felt everything, it came at me all at once and I knew I couldn’t keep quiet, I knew I couldn’t stay standing. I was not used to pain and a body that did not work properly. All I could do was follow the progress of my own fall as the ground welcomed me with sharp rocks and packed dirt.

It was a few moments before hands rolled me over and I could follow the red robe-covered arms up to a face with brown hair falling around it. The soft brown eyes were apologetic set in a face that was so beautiful. I felt the heat from her hands, then it entered my body and burned. I tried to fight back, to call upon the nothingness, but I had no strength left.

Fire raced through my body; I painfully felt my bones shift. The muscles I had pushed beyond their limit started to fuse back together. Was I healing or burning? My rational mind could not think straight I only knew one thing for certain, I was in pain. I could hear the screams of my voice until I lost conciseness.