The Adept – Day 15
It was a blink. That was the experience. It was as though Reader had blinked. Darkness had settled for the tiniest of moments. Maybe there were other sensations. For just that briefest of possible times he may have felt cold. He may have detected strange and unpleasant odors suggesting themselves. Then he was simply somewhere else. Medley was gone, and he was looking at an island in the white, was standing on an island in the white.
Sandy barren ground lay beneath his feet. A large pool of water before him. Beyond, well beyond the edge of the water, palm trees sprouted. They grew dense and tall, but their leaves were frayed and ragged. He could barely see the white beyond.
His captor dropped him immediately. The large strong figure within the robes bunched over slightly, groaning and wheezing.
Reader was trying to gather his thoughts, desperately trying to assemble the racing threads of notion into understanding, into a plan, into something he could say to this ominous stranger.
Instead, all of his thoughts were replaced by new ones. A high shrieking call rang out across the clearing. It was instantly answered by more hideous shrieks and deep alien chirping.
Reader’s eyes settled on the source of the noises and, even as his stomach fell and his blood chilled, he heard himself utter, “Are those… velociraptors?”
The three beasts raced towards them. One came from where it may have been drinking at the opposite side of the water. The other two converging on them from the obscuring trees. They came so terribly fast. Big, constructed of impossibly dense muscle and equipped with nature’s own arsenal of cutting, rending and slicing weapons, Reader started to scrabble back, his staff feeling utterly useless in his hand.
The solo raptor, the one coming from the other side of the water, leapt. Sigils winked on a clay band on its wrist, Reader could see nothing but the terrible hooked claw at the end of its suddenly coiled legs.
The robed figure sighed. It wasn’t a sigh of any particular emotion beyond deep weariness. Metal flashed, Reader had to reassemble the impression the motion was so quick. The spiked ball of a mace and chain snapped through the air, meeting the leaping raptor in the air. Its chest collapsed like brittle straw, the crunch of so many bones popping at the same moment, blood coming from everywhere. The creature crumpled like an old drinks can, its form tumbling through the air to land on the sand, ruined, gory and immobile.
Reader was still in a state of not quite processing what had just happened to the first raptor, when the other two were ended. With a nearly casual wave of its hand, the figure brought two orbs of fire into existence. They flared from nothingness, their light blinding in their suddenness, their heat washing across his skin. Then they streaked across the open place. The first raptor was simply consumed, running headlong into the projectile. The ball seemed to detonate, a kinetic slap that knocked it aside even as its limbs collapsed, flesh ruined, smoke rising to carry the odor of burned keratin.
The one behind it had time enough to skid, attempt to stop or divert itself. That was all it had. Then it too was a burned corpse.
Reader was breathing heavily. It had taken the robed figure maybe three seconds to kill the three terrifying monsters and seemed to have cost it no effort.
There was silence in the clearing, just the crackling of the flesh that burned and the faint wheezing of his captor.
Eventually, when he had gathered himself, Reader said, “That was… impressive…”
The robed figure turned its deep hooded head towards him, but gave no response. From the folds of its cloak it produced a very short staff, maybe two feet long, topped with a glass orb. Reader recognized it as a scepter, halfway between wand and staff. A weaving tool.
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He saw the future he aspired to. The figure almost seemed to flick the end of the scepter in a single movement, though in truth it performed a series of quick weaving motions. Reader’s weaving sigil allowed him to just glimpse the flowing lights of the threads forming. Then, so fast, ropes materialized from the weave, snapping towards him like snakes. A heartbeat later he was bound tight.
His heartrate did nothing but climb. “Hey, listen, I think you’ve made a mistake. I’m nobody. Seriously, I couldn’t be less of a somebody. I—”
The rasping voice, “You’re human.”
Reader wondered for a moment if it was too late to change that admission. He could be a… an auricularly challenged elf maybe?
The figure dragged him to a palm tree and tied the loose ends of the rope around the trunk. Reader said, “I’m just a human. I can barely weave an illumination spell. If you’re looking for a human, I’m pretty sure you got the wrong one.”
The voice hissed. “Eight.”
“Sorry, I don’t…”
“Eight humans. Five males. Five females. Two of the females are long dead. Only eight remain.”
Reader stuttered, “Even so… I guess I am rare but, I’m not worth anything.”
The hooded head swung close to him. Close enough for him to see a face that was nothing but a skull with deep glowing orbs set in the dark caverns of its sockets.
The voice was intense and focused, “My Master is interested in you. We have the instruction. The standing instruction. Bring them back. Bring them to me, he’s told us. Told us all. He wants you… for the… syntras.”
Reader was cold and scared, but he couldn’t stop the questions while this creature was answering them. “The syntras have something to do with humans?”
The creature coughed, its head nodding slightly, as it turned and staggered to slump at the base of the nearest tree. “The males… a syntra for each…”
“Not the females?”
“Apparitions… You can find the blue… I think… yes… the blue… I will be rewarded… Need to survive… we travel tonight…”
“You’re wounded…”
The gasping sighs, “Clarrock bitch. Cracked me… Lord Eater will make me right… Lord Eater will reward…”
Reader gathered his thoughts. “Listen, maybe this is a misunderstanding. I know what Lord Eater is up to. I’m not a fan. I wouldn’t help out or anything. But at the same time, it’s not exactly like I’m a danger to the whole operation. I do want to figure things out and it sounds like your Lord Eater knows a lot. Sounds like he has answers to my questions. Maybe we don’t need to be so hostile. You’re clearly hurt and weakened. Do you really want to be dragging my bound body all the way to the Edge, it must be so far away…”
Wheezing, a hint of a chuckle. “Getting closer… all the time…”
Reader shivered, “Still, it’s half a world away almost. We could make a deal. I could go with you… we could work something out… the Shopkeeper offered me a way home in exchange for the syntra, maybe Lord Eater could make an offer like that. Especially if he could help me out by telling me what the hell a syntra is, and where I find one!”
The figure made a dry spitting sound, though no spit emerged. “Shopkeeper, phht. You don’t make deals with Lord Eater. You… obey…”
Reader swallowed hard. “Why… why do you guys want to, like, destroy everything?”
The figure gasped. “So there can be no more.”
Reader said, “You want to die… there are other ways…”
Sudden passion, anger maybe. “No! There must be no more!”
Reader recoiled in his bindings at the outburst. Still, his curiosity drove him. “But… why… why must there be no more? You’re killing people, deleting everything. It’s too comically evil. Is that what this is? Cartoon villainy?”
The hooded head shook. “No… there must be no more!”
Reader said, “Why? Dammit, why would you do this?”
Dry rattling laughter. It was so mirthless and so pained that it was almost just coughing. “Because we know…”
Reader said, “What? What do you know?”
“Because we are the ones who… know… We are the ones who know… not the ones who tell…”
“Who tells?”
“The Lord Eater tells.”
Reader swallowed hard. He was actively trying not to imagine a fate where he was delivered to the Finality. Despite a latent curiosity, he did not want to see this “Edge”. The thought of the Edge terrified him and saddened him. Still, answers tugged at the corners of his mind. “Will… will Eater tell me?”
Rage. “LORD Eater.”
“Sorry, sorry. Will Lord Eater tell me?”
“Lord Eater does as he needs. I cannot say. I… rest now. You, be silent…”
The hooded shape slumped further where it sat and Reader watched it, eager for the solitude that would come if it slept. And sleep it did, a few minutes later Reader saw the rhythm of its chest rising and falling settle into something that must have been sleep.
Reader sat alone, with nothing but his thoughts and a silence barely broken by the rasping breaths of his captor. He stared into nothingness, unaware of the impending danger that Cutter and company would put themselves in to attempt his rescue.
Reader hissed, “What? Cutter?”
READER SAT ALONE—
“Holy shit, why would he risk… they’ll be killed, this thing… shit, there must be something I can do…”
