A Life's Task Diverges

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Xetes
Sojourner
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2003 10:36 am

A Life's Task Diverges

Postby Xetes » Thu Apr 28, 2005 4:48 am

Tears dripping directly from his eyes onto the dirt, making twin pools of testimony to shame.

Xetes squatted on the dirt ground at the outskirts of the village, blackened fingers clutched in his motley hair and cried, almost silently and motionless until his body grew stiff and cold. Finally the tears stopped. Unfortunately, the sadness that caused it still filled him to overflowing.

As ashes settled on his shoulders and back, he finally drew himself to a standing position to survey his day’s work. Joints popped and groaned disagreeably as they were forced into motion after long rest. He preferred their woes to the deeper ache in his heart.

“This is what must be. I must attain balance.” After hours of repetition, the words felt even hollower than when he first uttered them in the moments before his final visit to his one-time home. He had been given a directive by the force that he chose as his master, and Xetes followed the commands as best as he could interpret. The throb of an oncoming headache reminded him.

The soul of rock spoke to him one warm summer’s night after he lay shivering in a farmer’s barn, the beads of cold sweat collecting strands of hay against his body. The horrible voice visited him moments before, urging him as always into destruction and limitless consumption. Xetes hardly responded anymore, murmuring portions of the enchantments he had learned from the brief stay with his gnomish mentor. Every time, the hissing and popping voice continued its litany as if recorded, speaking over the young mage’s soft words. After the night in the forest outside Nolumakil’s cottage, the voice never commanded him again; it merely recited the deeds it promised the magic user he would eventually perform. This particular night, shortly after the horrible visitor had fallen silent, the earthen voice filled his head like an avalanche.

“You are not on the path.”

The rumbling being accentuated the word ‘path,’ in some subtle way. Xetes closed his eyes and concentrated on the words, finding as he had in the past that there was a deeper level of communication occurring. In this instance, ‘path’ suggested a particular type of path: a rocky and arduous one.

“The path you must walk is that of moderation. Your deeds pull you to the cause of mankind. Your cause must be that of the earth. Adjust your cause and make reparations; you cannot hold onto your old way of life.”

The statement was practically a treatise compared to the usual sparsity of conversation. As the presence dissipated, Xetes meditated on the implications of his master’s message. The night lengthened and became sunrise before his eyes snapped open in realization. Pale fingers of sunlight leaked through the slits in the barn like yellow flames as his mission became evident.

He left the barn, uncharacteristically without thanks or farewell to his nightly benefactors and began the walk southward to his old village. Steeling himself for the confrontation, he tried as best he could to separate his caring soul from the task at hand. His master had instructed him to destroy his old way of life, to change the course that he had been taking and to stop fighting for the good of man. He was to follow the middle path of neutrality, taking sides with neither good nor evil. However, for so long he had fought for the cause of the righteous, now he would have to perform equal acts of immorality to reestablish equilibrium.

He strode up to the small village he grew up in, saw familiar faces, people who had caused him pain, but also those who had never said him an unkind word. He closed his heart to them, raised his arms and called forth a killing swell of fire that raped the landscape toward the village. Screams of terror erupted from those closest, throwing their work and dignity to the ground and fleeing headlong away from the inexplicable wave of death. The fire scorched the ground, trees exploded before the flames touched them from the overheated moisture in their core. The few dozen humans on the outskirts of the village were dead in moments, incinerated. He began a steady walk toward the village, summoning his courage, and called forth another wave, sending it toward the remaining townsfolk. Wooden cottages burned to the ground and every living creature erupted like a torch at a distance, and exploded into superheated ash when the wave finally touched them.

Mere minutes and everything that once drew breath in the village was smoldering and lifeless. He restrained himself from searching the ruins for his family, the images of the day would already haunt him for the rest of his life without those particularly punishing ones. It took the sizzling of his leather boots on the scorched ground to force him from the blast area. He made it to the village limits, the outer edge of the blackened ground stoically and then finally collapsed, sobbing onto the ground at the horror he had unleashed. He began whispering to himself, “This is what must be. I must attain balance.”

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