John Tudor
I'd like you to take a minute to contemplate, nay, chew on, or better yet, seriously gnaw to the bone on what had happened to me over the last few days I had been awake. Now, I'm going to skip the flowery descriptions as they simply serve to show my suffering in a more poetic light, but when it came down to it, my story went as follows:
Meet the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Die in agony barely a handful of minutes later. Wake up confused, imprisoned and still hurting like a motherfucker. See a speck of light, somehow get there, pain intensifies. Thrash around blindly and barely cognisant, same girl shows up. Get turned into a fucking rotisserie chicken. Pass out. Wake up again in a passable condition. Try to forget the nightmare and spend some quality time with my brother. Same girl shows up. Now, was it me, or did that bitch really have it our for me? Even if she didn't, experience showed that it wasn't in my best interest to stay in her vicinity, so I did the most manly thing I could come up with. First I tried to ward her off like a demon and when that didn't work I hid behind my infinitely larger and much more shortsighted brother. The gormless blighter even treated her like a friend.
"You weren't that shy the last time around," the kitsune said while she eyed me curiously around my brother's large, meaty arms. "Come on, it couldn't have been that bad. And I have to know what you've seen. Which means we will have a proper conversation, one way or the other."
"That a threat," I tried to rumble like thunder, but truth be told it sounded more like a squawking chick. What was it with the poultry similes anyways? She titled her head and her eyes glowed ominously.
"No. Those were facts. A threat would be me, reminding you that I haven't forgotten whom you crawled into bed with. Metaphorically. Literally, I won't even hazard a guess." A big hand the size of a medium ham closed around my shoulder like a vice and pulled me from my cozy shelter. Richard apparently wasn't overly thrilled with shielding me from that eight tailed, silver-eyed witch. Which should serve as an indication of how messed up the gal actually was, because my burly bro never slunk away from a fight.
As if guided by fate the music, one of the few good things that had come of a foreign world, switched to Djali Zwan's number of the beast as I was thrust within arm's reach of a face that almost made me forget my grievances and start slobbering like a mastiff. Almost, but not quite. "I ain't talking to you, nothing good comes of it," I spat and ground my jaws while I, as much as it shames me to admit it, turned my head away like a pouting schoolgirl. I really had to, though. If I'd have stared at her longer, my ironclad, adamantine will might just have crumbled like tinfoil.
"Aww, don't be like that," she cooed, her ears twitching in amusement. "And just for the record, I think you got the better end of the stick. Want to know what happened to me every time I met you?"
"Not really," I grumbled and folded my arms over my chest, even though I was slightly curious. The same way people were curious about vivisections or public executions. I mean, I wasn't an idiot. Despite my antics I knew, or rather suspect very strongly, that she wasn't a bad person. Plus, she was powerful, that I knew for a fact. Anything that had her hurt couldn't be good for us and me in particular. Thus the rather dark comparison.
"Too bad," she replied with a bright smile while her eyes darted to my dear brother and he finally relinquished his ungodly hold on my arm. I rubbed my offended shoulder with a theatrical wince, but then I immediately straightened and pushed out my chest. The vixen hadn't come alone and the four apparitions she had brought along were quite the sight for sore eyes. One of them might even have worked at the "Dream" back in the day, but my mind had always been befuddled so I couldn't be sure. I still thought I recognised her impressive, memorable… eyes, though.
With a galant bow I chose to utterly ignore the self proclaimed angel and the traitor I had to call brother. "Hello, ladies. I'm sure you must have already heard the thrilling tales of my heroic exploits, but please, allow me to introduce myself. John's the name. I've returned from the dead and I've travelled between worlds. I've seen legends come to life and I've faced nightmares far too cruel to be named. I'm also a decent cook and roguishly handsome." Through a charming smile I added: "I'd be more than happy to share my stories with you, if you were willing to give me a chance and spend the day or maybe even the night with me." I glanced around, searching for a grin or maybe an amused snort, but silence was my only reply. The four graces stared at me, their eyes wide with astonishment, but it was the angel's unrestrained laughter that made me nervous.
"Go on, Alassara," she chuckled, "show him that beautiful smile of yours. Let's see how much of a spine he's got to back up that oversized mouth of his."
"My pleasure," the tallest of them purred and her glowing, red eyes focused on me. Oh boy, something told me that I might have made a mistake. Her luscious lips parted and the shadow of pearly white canines shimmered through, just before fangs the size of my thumb broke through her gums.
"Bite my nuts and call me Skippy," I wheezed while a decidedly cold shiver raced down my spine.
"Would yah shut yer mouth, yah gormless halfwit, before yah dig us a hole ah can't get us out of," my dear brother scolded before he amicably punched my shoulder, hard enough for the limb to go, well, limp. "Keep yer dangling parts under control, would yah?" Much more warmly he added: "'s always a pleasure, but yah didn't come here by chance, did yah?" Cassandra shook her head slowly.
"Heard the music, but I honestly have to talk to your brother. Nothing as bad as last time, but I gotta know what he's seen."
"Figured as much. Thought the dimwit was lyin', or at least exaggeratin', but apparently not." Without so much as a backward glance Richard took me by the hand and pulled me forward like a gods damned child. "All yours," he began, but this time I couldn't stay quiet:
"Oi, I'm your brother, not some trinket to be given away. Where's the loyalty you always preach?"
"Went down the sewer when I had to hire a servant to wake me up at dawn every single fucking day. Only because yah had ter run after the ugliest motherfucker with the most money. Yah realise I'm serving a 9 to 5 penance because yah pulled me into that quagmire yah love to wallow in?"
And that was that. With a gentle shove that sent me flying he pushed me towards the vixen, who, of course, couldn't resist and caught me in a princess carry.
"Would you look at that," she purred, while her eyes, framed by hair as dark as ebony, sparkled not even a handspan away from my face. "Haven't we been here before? Now then, would you prefer to drop your trousers here or should we go somewhere private?" I stared for a moment, lost in an epiphany about beauty and divinity, before I shook my head like a wet dog.
"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you," I grunted as I scrambled to my own two feet and rotated my hip to make some space in my pants. Maybe Richard was right and I did have a problem. But even without the terrifying angel, the other ladies were still agonisingly beautiful and the cursed vampire wasn't even wearing any undergarments. Idiot that I was I had peeked while I had wriggled my way out of Cassandra's arms. Hence my current predicament. Well, the minor one. The other was still staring at me expectantly, waiting for a reply.
"Can as well get it over with," I mumbled and lumbered over to the bottles I had brought. Cold beer would have been more to my liking than warm rum, but neither Richard nor I were mages. With a grunt I slid to the warm ground and rested my back against one of the ramrod straight branches that formed the roof. Then I closed my eyes and took a deep gulp. "What exactly do you want from me," I asked as the brown, sweet nectar ran down my throat.
"Just a story," the angel replied as I heard her soft footfalls drawing nearer. "Everything you can remember from the moment you opened your eyes again after Amon burned your soul to the second you woke up at home. What did you see?" Oh boy, not exactly my favourite story. Then again, maybe she was the one to tell. Not that I had much of a choice in the matter. The last time I had tried to weasel my way out of a conversation with her my bloody soul had been turned into fuel.
"If you want to know what I've seen we'll be done quickly enough. Nothing. Nothing that makes sense, anyways. If I had to come up with a description, I'd say I saw… sensations... emotions… maybe memories. The heat of a lover's touch, the cold of death, the promise of oblivion… I don't know, maybe I'm rambling. Bottom line I've got nothing to tell you if you're looking for directions or a description. What I can give you are… you can read my thoughts, I assume?" She nodded.
"I can, but I didn't expect you to appreciate me… violating your privacy like that." I shrugged.
"Violate away. If it's you I might even enjoy it," I added lamely in a vain attempt to dislodge the fangs of fear I felt digging into my stomach. I was decently convinced that I'd have to relive the entire shit show once again and that, my friends, wasn't something I'd have wished on my worst enemy. Considering I thought of myself as a decently calloused asshole on my better days that said quite a lot. A soft touch, almost like the wings of a butterfly, fluttered against my temples and my eyes shot open, but I didn't see the azure sky and verdant greens anymore. Instead I was again drowning, drowning in a sea of pain that wasn't my own.
Reality needs structure, structure gives birth to chaos and from chaos emerges life. It had always been like that. When Gaya had been nothing but a burning orb of molten slag we had ruled. Fire. Water. Earth. Air. We had warred and we had grown, we had fought to reshape our world in our image until our lifeblood, shed across the wasted, barren plains, had quenched her hunger for magic. Then she had risen. A spirit in name, a mother at heart. Gaya.
Life. Life and pain and fear and love had effervesced from the burned-out husks of our corpses, while our essence had thrived in the primordial chaos we had taken to our new home. A new home. A new realm. The first of many. The cornerstone from where our power pulsed through the world and breathed life into its rigid, cold bones.
Between what was and what could have been there was a chasm, a deep rift that severed the past from the future and dreams from reality. Living creatures crawled on one side, blind and bound, while the vast expanse of unfettered possibility beckoned from beyond. There we stood in silent vigil, whispering in Gaya's ears of a future that would never come to be, of a past that had long since been forgotten. From the bones of our cousins we had risen, wisps of memories that tied the soul to life and life to reality. Ethereal and fleeting, adamant and enduring we existed as the glue that held creation together.
Invisible and silent we had always been there, ever since our mother had opened her eyes. In balance we had existed, but the stronger life had become, the more the people of our world had evolved and honed their skills, the more life had desired. Mana serves life and the soul is what makes it real, he had reckoned, but its essence, its purpose is mine.
Unrestrained his ambition had grown and with it came the calamities of old. The giants and their ravenous hunger, the leviathans and their unchecked power, the gods and their blinding vanity. For years… for aeons the world had suffered until our mother had finally seen enough. She banished our brother, she sealed his dreams behind an enduring wall. On one side creation could develop in peace, on the other life could run rampant. Thus he had been dead to us and without him we couldn't stay. Our fulcrum was gone, our balance broken and we had to leave. The second and third realm were born, keeping us apart, but still connected to the world we had tried to invigorate.
Without us, our brother withered, his purpose gone, his illusions shattered. Time passed and he broke, alone and abandoned, shattering his essence, shattering his realm. To keep the world safe mother, Gaya, intervened again, even though it cost her much of what she was. The remnants of our brother's pain, his anger and his failure became a part of our home while the innocent, the pure purpose of his being fuelled the creation of something new. A new heart, beating with the strength of the elements and our very own essence, sat at the centre. Two realms from which our power flowed kept the world alive while a mirror image of Gaya grew, containing all she had wanted us to be. The immortal lands they would be called, once the first brave soul was going to cross the boundary.
Time passed, civilisations rose and fell and with them came their dreams, their aspirations, their nightmares. They grew until the world couldn't contain them anymore. They grew until the confines of reality became a suffocating shackle, a choking vice that threatened to extinguish their flames long before their time. And then the world changed again to encompass all that had been built, everything that had felt the soft touch of light's caress. A place for dreams and nightmares to exist without crushing, without poisoning the very thing that had birthed them. Silence followed when the lifeblood of the past had hardened into something tangible, into places of myths and memories where dreams and nightmares could live on their own.
For a small eternity life went on. Behemoths roamed the oceans, storms of wings tore through the skies and the song of metal and stone filled the lands. Cities rose and crumbled, crowns were forged and shattered until one day a girl with pointed ears stumbled across a remnant of the past as she fled from yet another war. A dark red crystal, glowing with an otherworldly light, would change her life forever.
A tiny drop, a minuscule trace of life's own blood had survived. Spilled long before his descent into madness, long before he had been banished, it contained all of what life once had been and all the memories of his siblings. Souls and magic, the ethereal forces that bound the world together, they were all there, right in her grasp, churning with a forgotten strength that wasn't meant to exist anymore.
She took her treasure and forged it into the only thing that could compare, an instrument. Ever since she had been a little girl music had been her magic, her way to reach beyond the veil, and now her songs contained the power to make her desires real. Her lyre became a beacon, a single spark in the night that illuminated the way for everyone brave enough to follow. Amongst the twisted fringes of the realms her magic forged the final haven, a place where the unwanted sons and daughters of the elves could find their peace.
The last realm, the fey wilds, came into existence and Gaya flourished. The elements, mana, the transcendent soul and even life itself were finally in harmony. A sturdy construct protected the balance and the world was safe, but then a shadow was cast upon her future. Beyond the machinations of reality something stirred and its cruel gaze fell upon her like eternity made real.