Becoming

Galcous gaped as S'zuklif's gaze held him in place. Fear nearly made him soil his britches but he preserved, steadfastly clenching his cheeks as tightly as humanly possible. He wanted to run and common sense dictated he do so. However, he steeled himself and met the warlord's gaze evenly.

'Going on a little trip?' S'zuklif mewed playfully, his grotesque face stretched into a rictus. The warlord leaned in close, and Galcous stifled a gag. He forced himself to meet S'zuklif's eyes. Innumerable flecks of dried blood dotted the warlord's pale and pallid skin, no doubt belonging to his most recent victim. His smile revealed rotten teeth, and the fetid breath behind them spoke of worst hygiene.

S'zuklif slowly cast his eyes to the sack of items slung over Galcous's shoulder.

'Somewhere far perhaps? Far away from me?', S'zuklif said with a slight tremor. All pretence of humour and good nature had evaporated from the Warlord. His eyes were blazing, his muscled body tense and ready to strike, withholding barely repressed rage. The rictus grin that still remained etched on his face now took an even more menacing tenure.

Galcous knew he was in deep shit. Could he take them all out, his eyes darted from S'zuklif to the henchmen lurking behind him. He could possibly knock about two or three out, but the remaining bandits would be on him before he could even invoke the next spell. He had to talk his way out.

'Milord, I would nev-'

Galcous saw stars. The bandit lord punched him squarely on his nose, and the connecting blow had sent him flying a couple of feet backwards. His nose felt broken, and judging by the stream of blood emanating from it, probably was. The cave floor did not cushion his floor and had contributed to the mild concussion he was currently suffering. He groggily tried to prop himself up and was rewarded with a sharp kick to his stomach.

The kick winded him and forced what was left of his lunch to come out, the bile stinging his throat on its exit. He tried to crawl away. The armoured boot of S'zuklif descended upon his fingers and crushed his digits, the sickening crunch of bone and flesh echoing throughout the cave. Galcous screamed a wretched scream, as the shock of his crushed fingers cut through his grogginess.

He was turned over, and looming over him was the bandit lord unhinged, all semblance of humanity gone. His were eyes bulging from their sockets, blood shot and psychopathic. The sheer pressure of his innate rage strained against its fleshy vessel, and the bandit lord resembled more demon than man. With great laborious breathing, he grabbed Galcous's face within his massive paw of a hand and clenched tight, his nails piercing and breaking skin.

'P-p-please. M-mer-m-mercy.' The words barely bubbled from Galcous's mouth, squashed against the rough calloused palm of the bandit lord, each syllable burst through the phlegm and blood that covered and streamed from his face. S'zuklif let out a short bark of laughter. He brought Galcous to face him at eye level, bestial strength lifting him well above the ground and then flung him into his equipment and apparatus. Galcous was sent hurtling through his equipment, breaking his work desk as he landed. The henchmen cheered and hooted as S'zuklif let out a triumphant roar.

'Poor little he-witch!,' he guffawed with malicious glee. 'Did you really think that you could brew one potion let alone a full cauldron?' S'zuklif sauntered up to Galcous. He lay motionless in a heap of broken glass and wood. He was in so much pain that he did not know where his body started and the pain ended. He saw that his leg was splayed out at an odd angle, and he could feel warm red blood trickling freely from a deep gnash above his right eye. S'zuklif drew a wicked dagger which sang with malice as it left the sheath.

S'zuklif sighed, as he squatted over Galcous's broken form, twirling the dagger in his hand. Around him, the henchmen were ransacking his cave. Hairy Eyebrows and Goblin Face were lugging away grandmama's cauldron. His life, was slowly being destroyed and dismantled before his eyes.

'All I needed was an excuse to move into this area and you, my darling, helped me!'

Galcous stiffened. He cocked an incredulous eyebrow at S'zuklif. S'zuklif tutted mockingly, stroking the blood matted hair on the he-witch's head with his free hand, the other hand still toying with the dagger.

'Oh yes, you were! You were the perfect little pawn I needed! Such a frail ego, so eager to prove himself! And very, very greedy!' he giggled. 'Just a little push was all it took. Now, I can take this cave, because, well, you did owe me thirty-seven invisibility potions. I don't think Theus would mind, or even could complain, given the circumstances!'

Galcous was aghast. He was just a chess piece in S'zuklif's game against a rival bandit lord in the area. Despite their cruel and debauched ways, the bandits adhered to a warped sense of honour amongst themselves, chief amongst them was that the taking of another lord's area was strictly forbidden. However, there were ways to circumvent these rules. Such as the situation that Galcous found himself in currently.

'What's the point of having rules if you were going to break them?' Galcous mused to himself, through the haze of pain. The business end of the dagger brought him back into the present as S'zuklif dragged the serrated tip along his chest, carving a fresh line of blood across Galcous. Galcous screamed and jerked but this further aggravated his pain.

'YES, YES, YES!!! AHAHAHAHA!' S'zuklif screeched with childlike pleasure. Galcous turned a baleful eye towards the warlord, he fought hard to prevent tears from welling up.

'Oh, is the little he-witch upset that he was being used?' S'zuklif mocked. 'Don't worry, all your equipment will be put to good use. More use then you ever had for them!'

This stung Galcous deeply. Even in his broken state and mere steps away from Mourru's hallowed halls, he felt a pain that he had suppressed his entire life, and hurt him more than a thousand wounds could inflict. The pain of failure gnawing at him throughout his short existence now crashed into him, unrelenting and unabated. The thin threads of self-worth that held his frail ego in place for so long unravelled at the bandit lord's hurtful words and Galcous could not hold it in anymore. He started crying.

'W-what?' S'zuklif immediately dropped his mocking demeanour, genuinely taken aback by Galcous. But Galcous did not care, a torrent of tears continued to stream down his face, cutting a line through the blood, and he bawled like a nursing baby torn away from his mother's teat. It was painfully pathetic.

'Uh milord, I feel kinda bad now' Hairy Eyebrows said guiltily.

'Yeah, boss man. This is pretty sad. Can we just kill him already?' Goblin Face chimed in. The rest of the henchman had stopped their ransacking when Galcous started crying, and begun to murmur in assent. Soon, a chorus of voices were calling for the bandit lord to humanely put Galcous out of his misery.

Echoes of 'its nawt right milord!' resounded through the cave, as the henchman begun to loudly jeer at their leader for mistreating Galcous.

'SHUT THE FUCK UP!' S'zuklif screamed at his men. The men immediately stopped their tirades, their protests forever lost on their tongues. 'Now, the next person to speak will get their innards pulled out and shoved into their mouths, got it?'

'But, bos-'

With frighteningly inhuman speed, S'zuklif pounced on Goblin Face, letting out a guttural cry of rage as he proceeded to disembowel his minion. The shrieks of pain only served to embolden the bandit lord as he tore into his henchman's with unbridled gusto and savagery. The remaining henchmen gave their leader and their colleague a wide berth, as a widening pool of dark maroon spread from Goblin Face. After what seemed like an eternity, S'zuklif finally ceased, the entire mid section of the unfortunate bandit had been eviscerated into gory chunks of flesh and innards, a look of pain and shock permanently etched into his face. The warlord was completely drenched in blood and gore.

'Now, anyone has anything else to say?'

The surviving henchmen shook their heads vehemently, keen on avoiding a similar fate as their erstwhile comrade. 'Now then, back to you!' the warlord crooned wiping Goblin Face's blood and giblets from his face as he eyed Galcous with renewed fury and madness. The bandit lord stalked towards Galcous, readying the dagger to plunge into his heart. The torches in the cave bounced off the metal of the blade, its silvery light seeming to emanate from the dagger.

Galcous was not ready to die. At least not while he was lying in the broken remnants of his equipment surrounded by unwashed bandits whilst their maniacal leader was poised to stab him. He had so much more to do, so many more things to see. His entire life had been nothing but a series of mishaps. Was the culmination of his life's effort to be merely a pawn for some local bandit lord in his power play for land? He could not accept that.

He raged against his helplessness. He raged at his uselessness. He raged at the injustice of his impending death. For the first time in his life he truly desired something; not to die. But it all came to naught. This was it, this was the end. Anger swelled inside him as he eyed the warlord looming over him, a monstrous figure of death and blood, priming the blade over Galcous with great theatrical flourish.

'Any last words?'

'Fuck. You,' Galcous spat, a goblet of phlegm and blood landing neatly on S'zuklif's boot.

'Famous last words,' the bandit lord chuckled.

He plunged the blade downwards. Galcous screamed defiantly for the last time.

...................................

Borid was bored. Like any teenager his age living in the Hinterlands, that was not much to do for fun. His days were a repetition of helping Papa in the fields, tending to crops and then herding the livestock to graze in the surrounding hills, just north of the farm. There were no schools and even if there were, Papa did not have the dragoons to send him there. Education was a luxury that was available to him. The last school that was set up by the local chapter of Fyr devotees had been ransacked and torn down by Theus. Since then, the local royalty had forsaken this area, leaving their residents to the ills of the local banditry. He swatted a fly that was straying too close to his nose. The sheep were particularly stubborn today, almost restless and fidgety, a characteristic that he had not observed before. He whacked one straying away from the herd with his stick, and it bleated its annoyance at his watcher's cruel hand. He whacked it again, and it acquiesced to his tough love, trotting back to the herd. Herding the sheep was boring and mindless. He wished he were one of them, mindless heaps that only lived for the day, grazing and wandering around, not knowing ennui from the daily monotony of life.

The downcast day did not help his mood. The clouds had been thick and dark which was also unusual for this time of the year. He let out a sigh at his predicament. Life was boring. He was not even old enough to visit Weya and certainly not in possession of enough dragoons to spend. He could possibly go to the bathhouse and peep at the local women but even that had lost its appeal. Seeing Hilda's naked body had lost its lustre after the fiftieth time. Another stray sheep, this one looking more petulant than the previous, edged away from the group.

'Oi, fucker! Get back here!' He whacked it on its rump, and it bleated in pain. Stupid creatures, he thought. He was going to kill this one come harvest for this particular slight. The sheep did not move back to the herd, instead it started throttling away from the dirt road towards a hill to the west. That was where the local village spook lived in his cave. Weird that one was. He suspected that the spook was also pervving at the local bathhouse.

'OI, COME BACK!'

Borid chased after the errant sheep. Before he knew it, a wave of manic bleating chorused from the herd, and they all followed their straying sibling. 'What the fuck?' Borid tried to whack them but they ignored him, continuing their path towards the hill. This was unprecedented and Borid was forced to follow them.

Just over the ridge, the sheep stopped but continued their inane bleating.

'What is wrong with you assholes today? Come back here before I skin the lot of ya!' cried Borid as he climbed the steep incline. And then he saw it. Birds flew in a circle around the cave where the spook lived and all manners of local wildlife had surrounded it. Borid was equal parts terrified and fascinated, his small village brain not comprehending the sight. The sheep had renewed their bleating with feverish intensity and he also saw that the other wildlife were doing the same. He had to run back to the village and tell Papa about this.

A large crack echoed out of nowhere, shaking the ground with a slight tremor as it rolled along the distance hills. Borid stopped in his tracks and turned to face the caves. Just as he did, a bright ray of lightning of indescribable colours parted the clouds and arched its wave to the cave, striking it. For a split second, deafening silence reigned as though the world had collectively ceased to make any sound. Borid felt a drop in his stomach akin to weightlessness. Then, a great roiling blast surged forth from the contact point, splitting and spewing earth, destroying the land in a massive wave. The wildlife surrounding the cave were instantaneously evaporated, as the energy roiling forth seemed to burn and churn its surroundings. Borid turned to run, but it was pointless. The great wave of debris and flaming energy caught him and he was flung over the crest of the ridge. The last thought before he landed on the hard earth some distance away was that he regretted not going to the bathhouse last night.

.....................

All around the world of Miedenfiem, the impact of the strange bolt of energy was felt. In the College of Ss'rar, classes were momentarily disrupted as all magicks went awry, a student accidentally immolating her teacher when casting magelight. Across the Crystal Seas, the mage kingdom of the Western Eye was collectively shocked as its denizens felt a disturbance unlike any other. The Faloukatoum Crystal, the focal point which connected all the citizens mentally had cracked, and myriads of fel energies spilled and caused the deaths of hundreds through a psychic backlash. Those were the lucky ones. The not so lucky ones had their minds wiped and the Western Eye was in disarray. Closer to home in the Kingdom of Evernes, the Temple Eyeless and the Clergy cried out in horror as they felt the energy wash over them. Some took their own lives and leaped from the gargantuan tower. Others were reduced to simpering messes, chanting litanies of protection against the assault on their minds.

.........................

A lone figure laid atop of the chewed earth and destroyed land. He was naked, clean and unharmed, in sharp contrast to the environment. He awoke with a start, sitting up straight.

Galcous felt disoriented and groggy. A skull splitting headache ebbed unrelentingly, and his body felt abuzz with weird tingling energy. The last thing he remembered before waking up from his dream was lying on a floor as S'zulkif stabbed him in his chest and there was terrible sound of doom and blindi-

He jolted awake. Through blurred vision and a pounding headache, he inspected the surroundings. It was total destruction. The land had been incinerated and chewed up, and not a single patch of land was unaffected. Charred patches of earth was still smoking. In some places, the rock was molten. Galcous stood up warily, and found out he was very naked, the wind cooly caressing his body. He realised that his injuries were gone, not even the slightest scar in sight. It was an eerie sight to behold, being unharmed in the aftermath of great destruction. He wracked his brains for an answer but this seemed to aggravate his headache. Then the slow realisation hit him like a hammer; he was standing on the remnants of his cave. Whatever had happened, some sort of energy blast presumably, had torn the surrounding hills up and now he could see Weya and the surrounding villages some thirty miles away. The surrounding land was flat, as though the hills were scoured from existence. Of S'zuklif and his bandits there was no sign. Did this blast kill everyone?, he thought. He needed answers and he needed them quick. He started for Weya, stumbling on the loose earth and uneven ground, the sheer insanity of what he was observing lending him speed. He had to contact the College or even Grandmama. They would know what to do.