A Storm of Shadows (Shatterborn Book One)

Chapter XII, The Call of Duty [Sam]

A/N: I chose this song because it really helped me get through a bad case of writer's block for this chapter. I also chose it because, although it might not be apparent yet, the lyrics have a lot of relevance to Sam - who, incidentally, is becoming a LOT more fun to write. 

 That night, Sam dreamed he was the wind.

He awoke in the dream curled in on himself. He was compressed, trapped, wrapped up in a ball. He could feel a raging power inside him, desperate to escape. But he was confined by something, something that pushed in on him and held him utterly still. He was immobile, unable to even attempt an escape.

He pushed at his prison, testing it. The confines were like stone, unbreakable against his touch. Sam pushed harder, straining against it. Yet the more he pushed, the more he was constricted. In his fury, he let out a scream at his prison. It seemed to shudder at his fury, then contract and bind him tighter.

With a gentler touch, he ran his… being… across the surface of the confines. He had no real form, no fingers to touch with. It was like he had abandoned his body and taken on a purer form.

Beneath his touch, he could sense that the place he was trapped in was at once infinite and indestructible, yet also distinctly finite and malleable. The less he pushed against his prison, the easier he found it to move.

And then at last, he found it: the exit. Sam pushed at it gingerly and found himself flow out of it with remarkable ease.

He rushed out into the air outside, rippling with vitality. He was free.

Sam soared up high, his being stretching out across all of Veritas. He became all places at once; he was the air itself. His mind raced across the cloudsea, feeling the rolling sea of water vapour as if it were a part of his body. The slightest touch of his mind stirred the clouds into a huge storm. Another brush and it was calm again. He turned his direction east, and felt the presence of a different kind of air. He surged towards it.

Land rapidly came into view. With it, Sam felt his form change. Solara stretched around him. Beneath him rose the Tower of Voices. At the peak, the Light of a Thousand Kings shone bright in the night. A part of Sam felt tugged towards the Tower, but that part of him was irrelevant. He was the wind.

Again, Sam turned his attention east and he raced across the plains to the Summersea. It stretched out for miles. In parts of it, mists formed, and he felt them as if they were a part of him too. He extended his mind out across the Summersea, following it as it flowed into the Seven Great Rivers.

He pulled his mind back together and shot northwest toward Nys. The city seemed to gleam in the moonlight, yet a dark, repulsive force pushed back at Sam. His wind-body shuddered and sent waves of air racing through the air. Skirting around the southern border of Nys, Sam flowed over the Honshitsu Mountains.

In the centre of the mountain range was a long flat plain, stretching from north to south. In the centre, the land fell away, forming a ring around an island. From it rose He Who Watches, the Great Tree. A foreign presence stemmed from it. Sam felt a chill pass through his being and the wind he was transformed from a cool summer breeze to a chill winter wind.

Sam flowed through the massive branches of the tree. The leaves whispered around him, red, gold, green, yellow – they were the colours of the seasons, for in Alethia, no one season ever gained dominance.

The raging power within him began to call out in yearning, pulling Sam toward Dominion. He rose over the mountains and raced through the Ruins of Razareth, wound past the Weeping Wyverns and over the cloudsea.