D'Spayr: A Knight in the Withered Land

D'Spayr: A Knight in the Withered Land, 2

TWO

As Derivan and D'Spayr, resigned to their sudden and unexpected partnership as wanderers through the Wastes, began to move towards the wall of fog that bisected the horizon, Tuolenne turned her attention to the sudden feeling of something electric in the air, like the scent of an approaching summer storm. A subtle coppery ozone scent, like electricity expended through the open air, tickled her nose and a sudden build up of a static charge made her skin tingle and the ends of her long gray hair dance against the breeze. She could not suppress a feeling that something was moving behind her.

She turned... Images and memory played at the edges of her consciousness, one overlaying the other, as if her perceptions were being manipulated and they were resisting, attempting to again right themselves.

Something was coming...

(Not so long ago, as a younger woman though still matronly, she once attended a small ceremony, outside a village she'd adopted as a temporary home, where the local shaman had invoked something he'd called "the Rites of the Machine". It was mostly silliness, with a lot of magician's sleight-of-hand accompanying a recitation of a meaningless series of words in the Elder Language, the speak of academicians before the Emperium outlawed books. She'd felt embarrassed for the thin, ragtag charlatan and was about to leave the ceremony just as the air quivered and several attendees sank to their knees, eyes and ears bleeding, as the shaman tapped their bio-encephalic energy, the energy of their very thoughts, to make appear a strange apparition – a shadow wrapped in scarlet flames.

Tuolenne had been frozen in place, paralyzed with fear and dread, as she'd realized that this uneducated and untrained, reckless little man had opened a doorway to Elsewhere and was on the verge of allowing something from Outside to move into his own world.

It had been the first time that she'd realized that there were others abroad the Land like herself, that she was one of a small select group, each disconnected from the others, most unaware of the importance and the danger inherent in using their strange abilities, and that perhaps the Emperium was not so arbitrary nor evil after all in hunting them down and rounding them up so that they could be controlled.

She'd known they weren't supposed to flaunt their powers like that. She'd known they were supposed to try to live their lives in secret, hiding their unique abilities from family and friends, and especially from the Emperium. She'd known that even a drink-addled, prideful half-simpleton like the prancing little magician knew better than to make use of the real magick at their command.

Magick was forbidden. She'd known that they weren't supposed to make the magick happen...

The rag-draped rodent of a man was incredibly irresponsible in performing the ceremony he'd begun, in invoking the appearance of a creature he knew nothing about and setting it loose amongst his own kind...

Tuolenne remembered watching the Thing-in-Flames erupt from out of a hole in the twilight air and screaming as it brutally and cheerfully killed every living being in that small clearing, outside the village. It bit, it tore, it dismembered, it stabbed and it cackled with unrestrained glee. Nine men, four women, and three children. Murdered inside a dozen heartbeats. Then it turned its vile attention on the shaman. It embraced him in a clutch that was all scorpion stings and mulberry thorns, and it beheaded him, literally ripping his head from off its neck, tearing, twisting and pulling until the head separated with a splash of blood and the pop of split tissues, and it then calmly walked back over to the rent in space from which it had emerged. It stopped long enough to look back at her, though it was only a silhouette in flames and possessed no facial features, and nod, as if recognizing another of its own kind. Then it vanished, the rent closing, and it took the shaman's head with it.