Flame of the Heavens (Part Two)

Trackless hills of snowy white extended around Alderin in every direction. His footprints in the snow stretched in a seemingly endless trail behind him. He tried not to dwell on the frigid eternity he had already spent in the wintery wastes, or on the same eternity that must still wait in front of him. “No choice but to keep going,” he thought wearily, trying to focus on warmer climates and happier times as he trudged ever onward.

The zombie’s cryptic words had been his only clue since departing the ancient kingdom. He had journeyed to the Northlands once before, and could think of no better description than “the heart of ice.” Already he was having difficulty remembered what his toes felt like. The thought that it was only turning autumn here made him appreciate the bitter cold the Northmen must endure during the winter. Perhaps, somewhere in the Northern Kingdom, he might find someone who knew where to find “the Flame of the Heavens.”

Alderin stopped momentarily, lifting his hood to check his direction against the sun. Then, a cry echoed through the air. It seemed ethereal, almost haunting, and spoke a sorrow that chilled Alderin’s heart deeper than the wastelands around him ever could. Without realizing how he knew or why, he sensed that a dear friend was despairing. “Va’kellius,” Alderin whispered into the wastes. “I’m sorry.”

With a heavy heart, Alderin pressed on. He tried his best not to think what could have caused his friend’s stalwart soul so much pain, but could not deny the conclusion that Evandria, princess of Elendor and beloved wife of Va’Kellius, must now be dead. Life in Lohathlehan would never be the same, if indeed he ever made it back. As he walked, the cold no longer seemed to bother, locked as he was in his own silent mourning.

As the sun drew low on the horizon, Alderin decided it would be best to stop for the night. He set up his tent in the shadow of one of the larger hills, hoping it might afford him some protection against the biting winds. “Cr… creo ignem,” he incanted through chattering teeth, conjuring a ball of magical flame to warm his hands. “How do the Northmen do it?” he muttered to himself, drawing a strip of icy-cold jerky from his pack and sticking it over the flame to thaw.

All that Alderin had heard for the past few weeks were the sounds of the empty wastes. In the frozen tundra, nothing but wind and ice broke the silence. Thus, Alderin jumped when he heard voices whispering nearby. He wasted no time, grabbing his staff and dousing the flame. He was immediately plunged into darkness.

He rose out of his tent, trying his best to be stealthy even while his boots crunched the snow. He stopped, listening hard. The voices had grown silent when the light of his flame had gone out. “Whoever they are, they’re either curious,” Alderin thought seriously, “or dangerous. I shouldn’t take any chances.”

“Salio sursum,” he incanted as quietly as possible, but his spell cut through the silence like a knife. He felt his legs tense and, with a great heave, he leapt higher into the air than humanly possible. He landed a moment later atop the hill, immediately swinging around to look for his foes. His position offered him some view of the surroundings and, as his eyes adjusted, he spied three hulking, shadowy figures crouched several feet from his tent.

“Who goes there?” Alderin said loudly. They had surely seen him already, so revealing his position was no longer a concern. The figures rose slowly, seeming to whisper uncertainly to one another, but gave no answer.

“Show yourself,” Alderin demanded, drawing a stone from his component pouch. “Creo lucem,” he incanted before they could offer up a response, tossing the stone to the bottom of the hill as it began to glow with magical light.

All three of the Northmen were taken aback to be revealed so suddenly. Alderin knew at once that he was in grave peril. The three wore black furs and necklaces laced with bone. The sharpened edges of their axes gleamed in the light. Admittedly, Alderin would have felt intimidated if he didn’t already know by their dress that they were Vulf. The tribe was notorious for its cruelty. “Oh how happy Aridreki would be to be here right now,” Alderin thought with grim joviality as the three raised their axes, devilish grins playing across their faces.

Without further hesitation, they charged. “Ferio fulmine!” Alderin yelled, casting a bolt of magical energy at the first. His shot landed true, knocking the Northman off his feet and sending him tumbling back down the hill. As his body rolled to the bottom, he lay motionless.

His companions, however, barely noted the loss, roaring battle cries as they rapidly ascended the hill. Axes cleaved out at Alderin, one catching his staff with a resounding, metallic clang. The other, however, caught him cleanly in the arm. Alderin yelled out in agony as pain shot through his entire body.

“Evanesco confestim!” he forced the spell through gritted teeth, knowing that any break in his concentration would mean death. Before the next strikes could connect, he vanished in a flash of light.

The two remaining Vulf looked around in confusion, talking frantically in a language Alderin didn’t understand. He had appeared a moment later only a few feet away, crouching low in the shadow of his own light spell. He knew the ruse wouldn’t last long, though.

He winced in pain, holding back a cry of anguish as he clasped the wound on his right arm. It was deep, too deep. With his limited understanding of the healing arts, he could stop the bleeding, but more potent spells would be required to restore movement and feeling. “Damn,” he thought desperately to himself, lamenting the fact that he hadn’t thoroughly practiced off-hand spellcasting. It would be difficult to hit one of them with a spell now, and impossible to take them both down at once.

“No choice,” he whispered to himself as one of the Northmen finally turned to search in his direction. “Ferio fulmine!” he repeated the spell, popping out of concealment and blasting the Vulf at close range. Luck, it seemed, was with him as the Northman’s body flew backward, knocking his companion off balance.

It was only a momentary advantage, but it was all Alderin needed. “Teneo corporem,” he incanted, emanating waves of debilitating blue energy from his outstretched hand. As the Northman rose, his body came to a stop as if he were frozen in an invisible block of ice.

Alderin slumped to the ground, overwhelmed by the pain of combat. Fresh blood trickled down his right forearm, which lay limply at his side. “Reficio corporem,” he whispered, holding the wound and concentrating. The pain subsided, and he breathed a sigh of relief. As he expected, however, the damage was too extensive; try as he might, the arm would not move.

Alderin rose, surveying the results of his handiwork. Eldritch Bolts were meant to kill their targets, and they had done the trick against two of the Northmen. The third, however, was still very much alive. Alderin walked over to him slowly and looked him in the eye. The expression he saw there, however, was far from the look of rage he had expected. In fact, the Northman seemed elated as he stared unblinkingly back at Alderin, as if amused by a private joke.

“The necklaces!” Alderin screamed, whirling about at the two corpses to see them rising to their feet. The bone-laden necklaces about their necks glowed with the black radiance of Necromancy. In the back of his mind, Alderin heard the words of his teacher Ignatious. “A wizard must have attention to detail.”

The undead Northmen grabbed their axes and began lumbering toward Alderin. Though slow and mindless, Alderin doubted his ability to take them down for a second time. “I need a distraction and a quick escape,” he thought frantically, inadvertently backing into the third, immobile Northman.

Alderin smiled at his own ingenuity as he ducked behind the motionless brute. With his uninjured arm, he shook the man from behind, making it appear, however crudely, that he were still moving. Predictably, his undead companions moved in for the kill. He would have three roving zombies to deal with in a moment, but that’s all the time he needed to make an escape.

As the Northmen murdered their own defenseless compatriot, Alderin made a mad dash for his tent. He’d have to leave a few things behind in his haste, but it was a small price to pay for his life. He hefted his pack onto the shoulder of his good arm and, grabbing up his staff, fled the scene.

After perhaps an hour of brisk jogging, Alderin stopped. If they had been accomplished trackers in life, his pursuers were little more than animated corpses now, no more able to follow him than a tree. He was sure they would wander the wastelands aimlessly for a time until the enchantment faded and they became ordinary dead bodies again. Still, the attack had taken its toll. He was now crippled, tentless, and lacking many of his supplies. If journeying the arctic had been difficult before, he wondered how he would make due now.

That night was the harshest Alderin had yet experienced. He dared not create another fire for fear that other Northmen might be about and, without any shelter from the wind, the cold bit deep. He huddled in a tight ball, attempting to conserve as much warmth as possible, and eventually drifted off to sleep.

The morning light brought little solace from the chill. Alderin struggled at first to stand, exhausted as he was from shivering all night. His extremities were pale and numb. Even gripping his staff with his working hand was a feat. “No choice but to keep going,” he repeated the mantra, though he knew his situation had become bleak. He would need to find shelter soon, or the night would surely kill him. Even his magic wouldn’t be able to protect him.

So he trekked onward, heading north as he had been the whole time. He had no idea where he was or what might lie ahead, so it was just as good a choice as any. As the day stretched on, however, and the strain of his weakened state began to take its toll, nothing but featureless tundra could be seen. Desperation began to set in as Alderin pressed his worn body forward, knowing that it could not endure much longer.

As the sun fell and night came, Alderin stood defeated, unable to take another step. The chill wind roared past him, as if it were the voice of the tundra itself celebrating its victory. The wastes would swallow him whole, leaving nothing behind but a frozen corpse buried in the snow. He watched as the sun disappeared on the horizon and felt a bitter determination well up within him.

He swayed slightly in the wind, his vision swimming, knowing that he would soon pass out. “The Light has abandoned me,” he said aloud, gazing at where the sun had been moments before. “It cannot keep back the darkness.”

Slowly, his footing precarious, he turned around, staring in the opposite direction with a crazed clarity. “You may have driven back the Light,” he said, addressing the darkness directly, “but I will never yield.” Without warning, he tilted back his head and yelled across the expanse. “Do you hear that!? You will never defeat me!!!” His proclamation echoed through the void.

He clenched his good arm, raising it into the air. “Ferio flamine!” he incanted as a ball of flame erupted from his hand. It soared skyward, setting the tundra temporarily alight before it burst some ways off. As the darkness returned a moment later, Alderin fell backward, landing lightly in the snow. He stared up at the stars and, overwhelmed by his exertions, fell unconscious.

All sense of time vanished as Alderin slept. Distantly, he felt the world passing around him. Voices spoke in hushed tones and lights moved about, but he took little notice. Groggily, he wondered if he was dead. A sensation of wholeness and warmth rushed over him, and he opened his eyes.

“I’m… alive?” he asked aloud. He could feel his heart beating in his chest. When he breathed, he could smell the faint odor of stew cooking on a nearby fire. He sat up, inadvertently pushing several heavy pelts off of him.

His surroundings were no longer the bleak, unforgiven arctic, but rather a cozy cottage with a roaring fire. He lay on a bed of stuff furs. In a nearby corner, his gear lay piled in a neat stack. “Where am I?” he wondered aloud.

“Papa, papa!” came a young girl’s voice from behind him. “He’s awake!” Alderin turned to see a young girl with long, dark hair beaming happily at him. From her dress, he could tell that she was of Northman decent, but knew instantly that she could not be Vulf.

“Hello,” he said tentatively, returning her smile and cocking his head in mild confusion. “Can you… tell me where I am?”

The girl giggled at him, but his answer came from behind her. “You are in the village of Austwick, my friend,” said a large man with a great, black beard and weather-beaten features. “And, from the looks of it, you’re a long way from home.” At this he laughed, a chesty guffaw that Alderin could help but chuckle at himself.

Alderin rose to a stand. As he did so, he instinctively used his right arm to steady himself, and was astonished to see that he could move it. He looked at the spot of the Vulf’s strike and saw that the wound had completely healed over.

“Ah yes,” the large Northman said, taking note of Alderin’s amazement as he approached. “The village healer said you were in very bad shape even before the cold took you. I wonder what such a frail foreigner was doing getting into trouble out there.”

Alderin laughed again, almost giddy at his luck for being found by these people. “It’s a long story,” he said.

“Good,” the Northman proclaimed, beaming. He gestured towards the fire place, where the daughter was ladling soup into several bowls. “We like long stories around here. Eat and tell us about it.”

So they sat and enjoyed what Alderin could only conclude must be spiced gravy of some sort. He told them where he was from and why he had come north in search of the Flame of the Heavens. The Northman listened intently, nodding his approval. As Alderin told of his victory over the Vulf, he let out a thunderous victory roar, patting the wizard on the back vigorously. The girl, all the while, sat in rapt attention at his tale.

As he concluded, the girl could barely contain herself. “You’re a wizard?” she asked in amazement. “A real wizard?”

Alderin smiled, realizing that magery was all but unknown to the Northman tribes. With a flick of his hand and a brief word, the three empty bowls flew into a neat pile by the fireplace. The girl jumped up and down with glee while Alderin and the Northman laughed.

“You are quite skilled, and your battle with the Vulf is most impressive,” the Northman said at length after his daughter had gone to bed. “More than that, though, I feel you are a good-hearted person.” Alderin was taken aback by the clarity and seriousness of the Northman’s words. “I am glad that I found you in the snow.”

At this, Alderin couldn’t help but ask, “How did you come to find me?”

“There was a light,” he said simply. “I was hunting and saw a flash in the distance. When I went to see what it was, I found you.”

Alderin smiled, realizing that the beacon that had led to his rescue was none other than the fireball spell he had cast in a fit of madness. “Do you know anything of the Flame of the Heavens?”

The Northman pondered the question for a moment, then answered. “No, I have not heard of such a thing. There is one who would know. He is a hermit, and lives in the mountains to the north. He sees many things. They say the winds whisper secrets to him. If anyone could answer your questions, it would be him.”

Alderin nodded his gratitude and the two sat in silence for some time. He pondered the direction his quest had taken. It had almost claimed his life once already, and may well do so again. To what length was he willing to go to find a way of defeating Xuthal, and what would he give up when he reached his goal? As he drifted off to sleep, he thought, “I got lucky this time. What if the next step is my last?”

Storyblogging Carnival Live: Story Six

The next story comes from Stephen W. Doc selected the first part of this story as one of his favorites from the past year.