The Burning
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Rydeniak, the great chosen of the skarren, the fiercest of all their tribes, the one who promised his people an age of undreamed harmony with nature, who promised the greatest of battles, wept.
He wept upon his knees, naked as the day he was brought forth unto Avadnu. His sobs sent ripples of tension through his massive frame, muscles tightening and loosening in a chaotic pattern beneath his crimson skin. An arrangement of primitive candles sent light glistening off the blood of at least a dozen self-inflicted wounds. He was alone, for no skarren would dare to let another, save perhaps their mate, witness such a moment of weakness.
His only company was the meticulously arranged pile of skulls before him. They numbered well over one hundred, and were set at varying heights, some upon upturned clay pots, some upon crude shelves, some upon each other. Each race, humanoid and bestial, was represented, a few more often than others. Some were fresher than others, a pink or crimson tint still staining the bone, while many bore horrific gashes and cracks, betraying the violent nature of their previous owner’s demise. These marks could find their maker in one of the many daggers strewn about the dirt floor of Rydeniak’s tent. Thick, heavy daggers stained now with the skarren leader’s own blood.
“Silence yourself,” he whispered through clenched teeth, the salt of his tears making bitter the words as he spoke them. Then he slowly rose to his full height, trembling as he did, his feet unsure of their ability to hold him. He closed his eyes and steadied himself, breathing deeply into his massive lungs, filling them and emptying them with absolute awareness. He was calm again. He spoke.
“Great way of nature, I know better than to pray to you. You are no weakling god, no simple mind or power. I can feel you within me and around me. I can feel those I have slain spinning in your eternal pattern, therefore I ask them, their faces sitting before me, of the burning I feel in my spirit, of a fire which even my people seem to lack, yet consumes my being ceaselessly. I understand the gifts it has given me, and I well understand the pain in my soul that it also brings, but I must know why it is there. Why is it within my destiny? I have neglected my body for three days and nights! Wounded myself to draw out the answer! Why does this fire burn ever before me as I walk upon my path?”
He spoke the words evenly and eloquently, few skarren had his gift with speech. He then stood in the silence of the night, the others of his kulvrak long since asleep. Only a few scouts remained awake, and they stood guard far away from the rest of the encampment. He stood for what may have been an hour, but for him time had lost meaning, a moment or a day was the same. He had neither eaten nor slept in several days. His mind was now still and his body fading.
The skulls before him gave him only looks of terror, as if the moments of their deaths were lingering where faces once were. No answer to his plea.
Rydeniak was empty, he could feel the muscles in his neck give out, dropping his head abruptly. He knew the rest of him would follow. The kulvrak would find him, he thought. They would find him empty and dead.
“But none of this,” he whispered, banishing the useless fantasies. He let his mind find its peace, its silence. He let go.
Visions filled him. The first was one he had seen many times before. A multitude of skarren, numbering in the thousands, marched as one, with one great voice and mind. They were in a battle, fighting horrific foes worthy of their blades, killing and dying as true warriors. The next vision came rushing in like a wave to shore, fading out the great battle as it did. This one too, was a scene that Rydeniak had visited many times in meditation. He could see the great land, all of Avadnu, as if he were a hawk soaring far above the ground. As he watched he could hear the planet cry in low and tortured moans. Dark spots began to form and spread across its surface like plague lesions. This vision also faded, and once again to reveal a familiar sight. An amber eyed zeidian, a warrior of immense prowess, walking across the Wasteland, a light shining from each hand. The next sight came in suddenly, and it was most unfamiliar to the skarren lord. He saw himself lying on the ground, having lost a battle, a duel. It was a fight he would lose, a fight he must lose. The disturbing vision brought him back to his physical form. He was troubled, he could feel his life force wanting to flee from his body, and he had little energy to stop it.
One last vision sprang up before him, ambushed him like a crouched foe. He felt not his body, but saw it lying on the ground beneath him, naked and eviscerated before the heaped skulls. Like an insect trapped in the tent, he watched as a human girl entered, a secret light shining behind her eyes, and a fire in her hand. She moved to him, and waved the flame before his still face.
A soft voice behind him whispered, “Go.”
He was falling now.
Rydeniak awoke to the girl’s furrowed brow, her delicate face creased in worry. When she realized that his eyes were on her she leapt back, head down in shame.
“L…Lord Rydeniak…I beg pardon.”
He was lying on his back, his head slumped to the side, facing her. His lips moved slightly in inaudible speech. She carefully came close to him, putting her ear to his mouth.
“What do you see?” He managed.
“Here, lord?”
He nodded weakly, his head trembling.
“I see… I see my lord dying,” she replied coldly, her voice gaining strength. The girl could not have been much older than fourteen. “Are you leaving us? Do you go to battle the gods? Was it weak of me to revive you with the waking root?”
“You see something else, girl,” he croaked out, slowly regaining his voice. “Why did you come to my tent in the night? Others have died for much less.”
“I…I saw your shadow on the tent. I saw you fall and I was frightened!” She trembled as she spoke, and tears began to well in her eyes.
Rydeniak felt energy returning to him. This human girl’s weakness enraged him now; he could smell her lie. He rose to his knees like a puppet being pulled up by its strings. Though his limbs were numb he could yet command them. One of his massive, blood-smeared hands shot out and clasped the girls throat, “You lie, slave! Why?” He lifted her half a foot from the ground. She grabbed his forearm feebly.
“I…I…have seen something…lord!” She gasped.
“I know, I know, “ said Rydeniak calmly, almost soothingly. “I have seen visions of my own. I have seen the light behind your eyes, human,” he pulled her in close to him and held her eyes to his with a piercing gaze. He sniffed her breath and casually dropped her to the ground; she struggled to her feet and swallowed hard. She did not dare to rub her neck, now red from his iron grip and bloodied hands.
“You smell of herbs and roots, girl. Your mothers?” He rose to his feet, trembling as he did, yet dwarfing the young human.
She quickly nodded a reply.
“You have been chewing the vision root. You stink of it.” He found he was walking and talking now with more ease. The girl had used a powerful herb to revive him. He grabbed and casually examined a fresh human skull as he spoke. His wounds burned like wildfire. “Did you mix that waking root by yourself?”
The girl nodded quickly, an eager look on her face.
“Your mother would not want you meddling with her components, would she?” The girl’s hopeful eyes dropped in shame. “I believe she would be most angry if she knew you took her vision root.”
The girl’s head lowered slowly. She muttered, “I am ready. She told me I would see visions when I had my first bleeding. I have had it, but no visions. I am ready now.”
“Impetuous girl,” he gave a gravely chuckle. Then suddenly, dropping the skull, he grabbed her shoulders, leaning down to look her in the face. “What was it that you saw when you took it? Did it tell you to come to me? That I was facing death?”
“I saw…I saw you lying here, and then I saw the man with the green eyes. He told me to go to your tent and not to take my mother’s herbs again, that I would not need them. But before I came here, he also showed me a gray-man with eyes like the desert sands at twilight. He comes to fight you, lord. I am frightened!” Her eyes once again glazed with tears.
“When does he come, girl?” He shook her violently. “Silence your fear! When is he to come here?”
She gradually quieted her sobs and evened her breathing. Through a whisper she replied, “Soon.”
Rydeniak smiled broadly, revealing his wicked teeth to the firelight. He hurried across his tent to a leather sack and tore from it a portion of dried meat. As he hungrily devoured it he said to the girl, “You may yet become a great seer! But now fetch me some water, girl.”
She ran from the tent to get a waterskin from the supply tent. When she returned she found him out in front of his tent, gazing up into the clear night. He had donned a loincloth and had bound his larger wounds. She saw the daggers in his hands, the daggers that had taken the lives of so many of her people. Daggers that she had herself seen performing their hideous, graceful work. She stiffened her stance, speaking with a tremble, “Are you going to kill me, lord?”
He looked slowly down at the young girl, his daggers dancing as of their own accord in his skilled hands. The broad smile reappeared, “Have you a name, human?”
“I am Thil, lord,” she said proudly, raising her eyes to meet his red face. “My mother told me you named me yourself after you slew my father.”
“Ah yes! At Callen!” His fists tightened around the hilts of his daggers, his body remembering the battle as well as his mind. “An arrogant fool he was, as I recall. And you, but a screaming babe, seemed to have gained his impetuousness.”
These words gave Thil both rage and courage, she tensed into a catlike fighting position. “Kill me if you must, but I will not die easily!” She promised.
“I warrant you will not!” Rydeniak roared, laughing loudly. “And may I see you die with such courage, but not by these hands! I go off to train for my duel with the zeidian, Thil. Go to sleep!”
The girl relaxed, confused. “But you will not win this duel, lord.” she said plainly.
“Ahhhh! Foolish human! Will you never understand?” His hands were now going through a routine with the daggers, almost unconsciously. “If I am to lose, I must fight. If I must fight, I must fight like the cornered beast. Though fate hedges me into defeat, I will see that this zeidian gets a true taste of my steel.”
“If you are off to practice, I can get you some balm for your wounds, lord. To stop the pain?” She innocently offered this, handing him the waterskin.
He grabbed it fiercely and drank deep of the precious water, then tossed it at Thil’s feet. As he walked off she heard him hiss, “Save your medicines, human. I welcome the burning.”
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