Chapter 2: The Thing That Did Not Fit
Archie did not wake up.
His body was behind the orphanage in the stable, too large to pass through any door. Fat wooden timbers groaned under his feet.
Straw had been pushed aside to make room, yet at that time his shape could hardly be accommodated by the place.
He breathed.
Slow. Heavy. Uneven.
Seven days passed.
No heavenly omen fell above him.
None of them branded anything into his body.
There was no voice whispering instructions in his head
That alone was strange
The selected children would tend to transform rapidly. Their bodies adapted. Their souls settled. Gods never left their property incomplete.
But Archie lay still.
Mrs. Grant came every day.
She brought water. She wiped the blood which still dried in the cracks of the floor. She touched him not more than she had to. She felt her hands shaking over something about his skin.
It felt wrong.
Not dangerous.
Just wrong.
The children were not allowed to approach but they were spectators. By night they talked, and quarrelled, as to what Archie was.
A blessed beast.
A cursed one.
A mistake.
None of them were correct.
The seventh night Archie had a tight feeling in his chest
His heart skipped.
Then reality flinched
The lantern was suspended on a hook and swung without a breeze. Shadows in the stable were curved weirdly. His breathing was a little slow, as though the world were loftier to reply.
Something moved in Archie.
It was not divinity.
Divinity was a stream of command. Clean. Absolute.
This was different.
It pushed. Not outward. Inward.
His cracked soul did not heal. The fractures enlarged, reforming instead of fracturing.
They never believed in the divine blood within him.
They pressed against it.
Learning its shape, it's power.
Testing its limits.
His body slowly transformed back into normal as the silver hair covering his body was retracted, his hair growing into waist length silver in color with specks of black
Archie's eyes snapped open and a terrifying wind blew out all the light as the air turned ominous, everyone in the orphanage shivered from the aura he was releasing. The aura that terrified everyone in the world of the living, the aura of a witch.
He closed his eyes and opened it again. This time the ominous wind disappeared and a silver scimitar appeared in front of him with silver blade with inscriptions all over it. A smile appeared on his lips. "Interesting" he said before walking out of the stable naked.
The cold night air kissed his unclothed skin but He did not shiver.
The ground on which he was standing when he got out of the stable was creaking.Heavy foot prints appeared in the group as it pressed inwards.
The lights flickering as he walked towards the orphanage.
A door opened.
Mrs. Grant was still standing at the entrance, with her breath held in her throat. She gazed at Archie with her eyes open to receive the silver hair, the naked body, and the composed look on his face.
"Archie…" she whispered.
Her voice was as distant to him as possible.
His then turned his head to look at her, and then at the building which was behind her. The orphanage felt strange. Not unfamiliar. Just fragile. As though a building composed of thoughts instead of marble.
Children looked through the windows. Some hid behind doors. They were all staring, and could not take their gaze off their faces. He could hear their thoughts loud and clearly.
Fear spread quietly.
Archie spotted it, but it had no impression upon him.
His hand went up unconsciously.
The scimitar trailed the movement, and glided alongside him like a shadow with a purpose. The writing on its blade moved, reposing itself in patterns which were painful to watch more than a moment.
Archie frowned.
He had not summoned it, the blade was created on its own will out of the excess energy in his body.
Something twisted in his chest when he understood that.
No voice explained it.
No instinct guided it.
It was not blessed by any heavenly being.
He simply knew that was what the blade was.
Knew as he would want it to disappear.
Knew that had he a will to have the ground open to him, it would.
He was aware that something was altered where no god had intended to alter it.
Archie dropped his hand slowly.
The scimitar melted away in the thin silver lines and became nothing.
The pressure around him then disappeared.
The knees of Mrs. Grant were weak and she clutched on the doorframe to support herself.
"Go back inside," Archie said
His voice was calm. Too calm.
The children did not argue. Doors shut. Windows closed. The orphanage drew itself up, as a living creature does, which does not want to be noticed.
Archie was left alone in the yard.
He looked up at the sky and smiled brightly.
And in the first instance since the Celestial Recruitment Fair, Archie Hunt smiled without being told by anybody what that smiling brightly. "I finally remember everything, this time the Gods shall lose"
There was a crack somewhere way above the mortal sky beyond clouds and stars.
It was loud and violent spreading all through the realm of Gods.
Godly senses aroused along deities. Strands of power waved. Laws that had remained unshaken down the ages vibrated, as though reality had gone astray.
The gods noticed.
First came confusion.
Then recognition.
A gathering was found in a place of light and law where godly thrones were suspended without any surface below them. Prehistoric people went backward, searching through books that were even older than existence.
Everywhere the effect was the same.
A witch had been born.
She was not an earthly witch, or a cultist, a caster.
A witch of godly power.
There was a silence between the gods.
Memories of what no one wanted to reminisce came back.
Merlin.
The witch that was not a part of time.
The witch whose nature would not perish.
Through the ages, through the kingdoms and crumbling worlds, Merlin came over and over. As man, sometimes, as woman, always a witch, always a bearer of knowledge that mortals must not know.
Whenever he appears he troubles the Gods with his power.s
Every time they killed it when it was still growing.
It was too much of a repetition.
There was a god of fate who said coldly, "The cycle had been restored. "The witch has returned."
"The manifestation alternates" other said, "According to the records. Male. Female. Male. Female."
"This is going to be a female this time" third god said with confidence. "Prepare the execution."
Plans formed instantly.
Godly hunters were selected, oracles were turned, destiny was altered.
A girl would be soon born in the mortal world with the essence of Merlin.
She would be discovered; she would be destroyed.
The gods did not hesitate.
Another possibility never occurred to them.
They did not see Archie Hunt.
They did not sense him. No one could have thought that the Merlin the seek has given up his life to ensure a witch of godly powers is born.
What was under the sky was not the soul of Merlin.
It was just his memories that had come back.
Without essence, without inheritance, knowledge.
The cycle was broken, the first time in as many centuries as the ancient witch had challenged the heavens to do the same.
And the divinities were getting ready to kill a ghost that was nonexistent.
As they thought over it, Archie acted.
Before daylight he had walked out of the orphanage in borrowed and ill-fitting clothes, with his silver hair hanging down the back of his head. He did not walk as a chosen, as a king, but as a person who has entered the world which he already knew. Archie Hunt had passed the world of gods and out of their divine systems, and was now in the world beyond the comprehension of mortals. Witchcraft made a step forward and at the same time the heavens were inverted.
Archie has chosen to venture into the world to explore it while building his strength for battles to come.