Etta glanced away, the somber shadow in her gray eyes caught Khloe’s attention.
“What’s wrong, Etta?” the woman blinked.
“Oh miss, it’s just the day. I’m sure you understand.” But she didn’t.
“Please tell me what’s on your mind.” Khloe waited for Etta to look up. When the older woman met her eyes she blinked back tears.
“My son-” her voice cut off in a whisper and Etta placed her hand on her chest to steady her breath. “He never came back from his harrowing all those years ago. Trained for it all his life, and when the moment finally came he-” her voice cut off again and she closed her eyes, gathering her apron in her hands she dotted away her tears with its edges. She took a deep breath and let it out slow. “One day there was a letter- Oh this has all brought up bad memories.” She hiccupped. “I’m sorry m’lady. I promise I won’t shirk my duties, not one.” Khloe’s face softened.
“Oh Etta.” She reached for the older woman and pulled her into an embrace. Etta part of her life for as long as she could remember in all that time never mentioned her son. “Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”
“It was a long time ago. I couldn’t burden you with such a story.”
“I’m willing to listen.” Khloe said.
“I’ll take the little one out for a walk in the front yard, m’lady, Etta. I’m certain she could use the air.” Khloe started as the forgotten servant piped up.
“Yes please do.” Khloe nodded. When coaxed Adalie left the table and clasped the servant’s hand. The two went out the door together.
“Please, tell me about your son.”
The Mindscape
The gravity in his head pulled at him as though he floated upside down in water. Anaiah’s mind fogged over giving him a sense of half-sleep. He peeled open his eyes one heavy lid at a time, cognizant of his shallow breath. He scanned his surroundings and found blackness. He tilted his head and in doing so his weightless body rolled to the side uncontrolled. He opened his mouth to speak but in his lethargy he croaked instead.
“Am I to be made a fool, or are you doing this purposefully?” a voice, clear as a silver bell clanged through the emptiness. Anaiah’s heart felt plucked like a string at the timbre of the stranger’s voice as it rattled in his chest. He choked, drawing in a full breath for the first time since he’d come to this purgatory. “Aha, there it is. I confess you had me confused at first. It isn’t a sound tactic to sequester yourself here if you’re trying to stock pile your magic.”
Anaiah tried to manage a ‘what’ in response instead making breathy ‘wuh’ noises with his mouth. “Time is up.”
Anaiah’s body jerked downward and slammed into something solid, his breath went out of him again and he couldn’t process what’d happened.
“Oh come now, what is this sad little tactic? I’ve had many false starts but this is insulting, even to me.” The voice cawed again. Anaiah clenched his eyes shut, his mind reaching out in all directions to find any purchase it could grasp. Heat bloomed in his chest as he centered himself, an orange light bursting forth. His eyes fluttered and he felt a yank to his arm before his body weightless again. Pressure whooshed over him as if riding a runaway horse. His squinted eyes managed focus and his breath caught in his throat.
“L-Lopsy?” he stammered. An ephemeral orange rabbit size comparable to a dray horse pulled him away from the voice shouting at him from the dark.
Nothing but black ahead and behind, Anaiah’s eyes watered as his heart surged with fear. I have to protect myself first, assess the situation his scrambled thoughts interrupted by another blinding explosion. Anaiah, thrown clean away from his swift savior, curled himself up and put all of his power into a shield. A luminous sphere encapsulated him, bismuth tracings whirling about the surface like rainbow swirls on a soap bubble. It bounced off the black surface with him inside, rattling him to a halt. Anaiah, already exhausted, struggled to catch his breath against his rampant thudding heart.
“Is that all? What, were you drummed out of training and fed to me as some joke? Did they think I was bored and needed a brief distraction?” the voice clanged from everywhere while the pressure in the air compressed on Anaiah’s flimsy shield. He felt the weakness start in his feet and his knees knocked as he tried to sustain his defense and stand at the same time.
Anaiah couldn’t shake his terror, his panic got the better of him and his magic lashed out in every direction at once. All around him the darkness shred into smoky ribbons spiraling apart; a cathedral once cloaked now solidified around him. Large stained glass windows cast red light down from above onto a long crimson carpet stretching from the entry to a single stone altar. No pews, no images of gods, and no writing; in their stead fiery effigies were hewn into the tall stained glass windows. A lone figure swathed in black loomed over the altar and the stretching carpet’s end. Anaiah, still within his shield, turned to rush the door, a solid wall of stone behind him.
“Well, that is interesting. How’d you unravel my void? Not that I can’t guess but, it’s always nice to hear the answer from the source.” The voice rung throughout the stony room, glass in the windows vibrating at its cadence. Anaiah’s eyes went to the figure at the altar. It pulled back its black hood and revealed a grey skinned face with bald pate and long sharp ears.
“Ah-I-” Anaiah squeaked, voice just over a whisper.
The creature vanished from the altar and appeared in a shock of black smoke before Anaiah’s face. Anaiah shrank back, hands clasped at his chest and hopes poured into his flimsy shield. The man stood willowy and broad of shoulder, a head taller than Lord DuPont with overlarge crocodilian eyes, burnt orange and intent. His long devilish ears framed his face such that his cheeks appeared skeletal and his shadowed deep set eyes completed the death’s visage if ever Anaiah understood it. His black cloak a solid shadow reflected no light and draped to the floor. The curious orange eyes that beset Anaiah narrowed into slits.
“I could reach into your mind and take your knowledge for myself.” The gaunt face scrunched into a snarl and a clawed grey hand stretched forth from the black garment, his claw tip caressing the sphere wherein Anaiah trembled.
“You’ve already begun to bore me. I don’t know what game they’re playing but it is over.” The silver creature flicked his wrist and rapped on the shield with the knuckle of his index finger. Anaiah felt a gravity impact him from the first knock. His hands went up in front of his face before the second, the shield hardening into a bismuth sphere. He rooted his left foot and channeled magic up from the ground into his left hand as his shield exploded from the weight of the grey skinned warlock’s power. Anaiah flew back hard into the stone wall behind him, embedded as fragments of his own shield sliced into him. He shrieked, his left eye gouged by a crystal shard, left arm and leg severed. Anaiah gagged through his compressed lungs, blood draining from his throat as the cloaked creature neared again. Anaiah fought to inhale a single ragged breath through the crushing pain in his chest and the blood in his windpipe.
A gentle hand clenched his throat and bent his neck back; Anaiah croaked his displeasure through aspirated blood.
“I’d be impressed with your willingness to sacrifice limb to save life if it weren’t expected of you to do so.” Anaiah’s eyes went back in his head, wheezing through another half breath. He heard a growl rumble in the warlock’s throat. “You’re not a battle mage, are you?” it asked. Anaiah croaked the barest ‘no’ under his agony beleaguered breath. The hand on his neck re-adjusted its grasp. A vibration emanated down Anaiah’s throat and into his chest, his lungs opened up and filled with air. The bones in his chest popped and cracked back into place and no longer compressed his airway. One step below hyperventilating he sucked in air while his blood rushed loud in his ears. The shadow, once wrapped around the silver man slithered over to Anaiah and replaced his missing limbs, though still lightless.
“I want your mind; will you give it to me? I’m afraid I don’t understand what’s going on.” The once sharp voice smoothed and a more controlled calm replaced its previous menace. Anaiah sank to his knees unable to hold himself up. Thick braids of his hair fell over his slackened shoulders and bowed head. He made a weak nod. “Much obliged.” The voice said. He felt the silver man slip behind him, the delicate caress of fingers through his hair on either side of his head worsened Anaiah’s trembling. A white light in his mind’s eye and the pressure in Anaiah’s head caused him to reel back. Silver plunged into his thoughts, traveling back over Anaiah’s life left a tickle at the base of the skull, an itch no amount of scratching could alleviate. As his mind opened up to the warlock, Anaiah found himself standing atop a battle field, bloody swaths painted over the ground and corpses littered in pieces at his feet while the sun bore down in its full golden glory.
The dark sky filled with stars and blue fire blistered over the dead like a ravenous scavenger. Anaiah stood transfixed on the blue fire, a guttural hunger roused in his gut that rattled from his pelvis to his heart. Anaiah reached out to it as the blaze slithered closer, over scorched earth and bodies alike to reach him. His fingers mingled with the hot blue tendrils but he felt no pain, no heat, nothing.
“Lord Silver?” Like a snuffed candle the vision flickered from existence. Dizzied he found himself still on his knees in the cathedral, his opponent’s hands on either side of his head.
“Your snooping aside I may owe you an apology.” He said in a gentle voice. Anaiah didn’t have the energy to respond beyond a mental agreement. The cathedral lurched again and twisted instead into an ornamented chamber with a four poster bed covered in wine colored drapery and sheets to match.
From out the spherical window the stars shown through their barest glow mixed with the dim candlelight. The walls stood adorned with tapestries depicting sedate landscapes while the stone floor mirrored the cathedral.
“It’s the best I could do on short notice.” His host said as though they were off to have brandy and hearty discussion. Anaiah didn’t have any strength in him and with little effort the grey man gathered Anaiah in his arms and lay him down on the bed. “I’ll let you take some rest, if you don’t you’ll surely die.” Anaiah, vision blurred, had the impression the man found something disagreeable in his memories. He wouldn’t be the only one… Anaiah’s last dulled thought before he sunk into unconsciousness.
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