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The Lay of the Grandmasters Way
by Pyewacket
INTRO
Scream into the Twilight, Act I
The Watcher was always a bright lad. He knew of every bird's nest for a mile radius from the village square. Every patch of edible fungi and the time of year it would sprout forth from the fetid earthen floor of the woods surrounding the small settlement of humans that sprawled and leeched its living from the docks of White Stone. He even knew of the berries and edible fauna from the docks themselves, to the fringes of the foreboding giant trees of Tirnwood Vale.
Coupled with well learned hunting skills, the Watcher had learned to seek out more than a miserable existence and had thrived quite well, even to the point of making a small living from his woodcraft and hunting.
But what set him apart was his knowledge of things that were not meant to be known.
For instance, when the local smithy's apprentice left suddenly and inexplicably in the night, the Watcher was one of the only three who knew what had happened. One of the only three alive, to be precise. The unfortunate apprentice himself was not included, and perhaps it would have been wiser if the youth had taken the word of the girls father a little more seriously.
The Watcher also knew the identity of the smuggler who regularly crept off the tall inbound ships in the night and met up with Trik, the local Arms merchant. This was remarkable only in the fact that even Trik himself did not know the smugglers name, nor indeed how important that name was.
As to the various other secrets, conspiracies and general goings-on of the other inhabitants of the Watchers homestead, all too often the Watcher found out the very hub of the intrigue and discovered things that were thought to be kept in the dark.
It was his prying heart that awoke Ilias one fateful night as he lay restless in his cot of straw. The Watcher was a name he had given himself, in the privacy of his mind, and he felt it fit him closer than the coming of age name granted him by his stern eyed father. The name Ilias always seemed to him to be sickly sounding.
Dressing quietly and slipping out into the late night air, he padded quickly and silently into the wooded undergrowth, there to earn his hearts name and watch.
Precisely what drove him to do this was beyond Ilias's understanding, but then, as bright as he was, it never concerned him overmuch in the past and so he felt no fear of discovery, no adrenaline rush of nervous excitement at the possibility of being caught prying into the affairs of others. The excitement only came whenever he was back home safe with the knowledge that he had uncovered yet another hidden facet of the people around him.
This night however, he felt an intangible urge to wander around a little further than usual. Following his instincts, he crept as quietly as a woodland floor could allow and went in search of mystery. Most of the villagers, if hearing his footfall crunching a random piece of bark skin underfoot, would attribute the sound to the background noise of the woods themselves, which were never wholly quiet. The woods at night are alive with the sounds of nocturnal creatures, routinely foraging and preying upon each other. It was Ilias' knowledge that this was so, that filled him with ever greater confidence in his own abilities to remain undetected as he watched.
It was just such confidence that comforted him as he crept through the woodland towards a faint sound in the distance. Ahead of him, amidst trees and large standing stones the locals referred to as "old mens rocks", Ilias saw a group of figures.
Creeping slowly forward, he watched.
The four figures were all strangely garbed, he noticed, and were definitely not locals therefore. No one in the village owned such finery as these people were adorned in. Brightest blue silk, white cotton, and what appeared to be fine suede of a quality only merchants usually could afford.
The flickering light of four torches gave the Watcher enough illumination to glean such details about the group ahead of him, and it was his interest in them themselves that had distracted him from noticing the nature of the torchlight itself.
He flicked his eyes back to the torches now as his brain registered that something out of the ordinary had been picked up in his first cursory glance. His eyes widened as he realized the torchlight was of different colors.
One was the usually fiery orange and had nothing to distinguish itself as out of the ordinary. But the other three...one was an eye watering aqua, iridescent hues throwing out blues and greens in shimmering patterns, one a swirling white of light but no discernible flames, moving in endless fury, and the last torch set forth a burnt brown smoky light, like some ancient taproom lantern, well past its prime.
Now the Watcher caught the sounds of the four people within the torchlight.
Murmurs and chants.
So, this was something magical, Ilias thought to himself. And where there's magic, there's money.
Easing forward for a better view, Ilias noticed that the...mages he decided...the mages were talking amongst themselves excitedly as they performed whatever magicks they were engaged in. Two of the four were very obviously males, and one of the others a female, her willowy elven figure unmistakable even at a greater distance. The fourth figure however, who seemed mostly silent, was huge in comparison to the others and built like a blacksmith, yet the clothing and hair suggested a female where the build and size suggested otherwise.
Near enough now for better detail, the Watcher noted that this large figure was, alarmingly, of Orchan origin. Was this magick in preparation for an invasion?
And that one...he is a dragon halfbreed! Ilias thought quickly to himself, trying to weigh up the chances of gleaning further information and therefore value from Watching, against the now very real possibility that there was some element of danger here.
As he continued to Watch, his greed overcoming his instincts for the first time, he saw that each of them carried in their hands mortars and pestles of some black shiny mineral, which they were constantly working and grinding as they chanted and shouted above the ...where did that wind spring up from? Was this more magick? Surely no natural wind is this strong so late into the summer months?
His mind racing now, Ilias eased forward slightly more, his curiosity overcoming his caution.
Out of the mortars, eerie smoke spewed forth, dancing and weaving in the howling winds, racing in and out of the four figures as their chants reached crescendo after crescendo of unimaginable power. The smoke from each coalesced around the torches, and from the light of each, into the smoke, seemed to grow creatures of fantastic imaginings.
Fire sprites, earthen golems, water nymphs and air djinns, things not of this world, Ilias you fool you are staying too long!
Nevertheless, despite these thoughts, Ilias stayed longer.
Now the Watcher was close enough to be able to hear the individual words.
"It's taking too much! I can't keep this up Osreng!"
That was the human, he was obviously speaking to the draegoni beside him, although shrieking would be a better description at this point.
"Control, Jerun, bring it forth from within and use your powers to focus into the rift. It cannot get out or all is lost"
Despite the draconic origins, this mage seemed unperturbed by the forces battering the group of figures, although his face clearly showed signs of strain, as if some great pressure were being held at bay by mere force of willpower alone. As he stood, the very air around him boiled and hissed, as would a torrent of water at a cliff base.
"What is this thing anyway? Nerala hasn't spoken more than a word about it and you two have been as equally forthcoming as to its nature! I know only that this is pushing me beyond endurance! Never have I felt such power as this, that needs all four of us to use all our arts to keep it from our plane!"
The human, obviously quick tempered, seemed to struggle in his frantic motions, beckoning and weaving his hands in quick succession as more and more of the wind drew into the clearing and funneled into the center of the mages.
Now the elf spoke, bringing the Watchers' attention around to her.
"Is it not enough to know that Nerala called us forth to this place? You know her ways Jerun and she would not do this on a whim. If she believes this thing is a danger to this world, would you really wish to put that to the test?"
As the elf herself performed her spells, the ground trembled beneath Ilias. Gargoyle and golem, earthen creatures of origins unknown to the Watcher, spewed out from the torchlight and drew together into the swirling winds, becoming blurred as they were sucked into the vortex at the center, mingling with those minions the other mages brought forth. Wave after wave of power shook through the vicinity, as the very elements themselves rent the air apart.
Easing yet further, the Watcher fetched up against a boulder to get a better view of the fourth, as yet silent, mage. The orchan one. Ilias decided firmly that the orchan was female, the manner of clothing and the hair made it more obvious now he was closer. She stood with her back to the boulder that hid the Watcher, swaying in the elemental rage of fire and heat that cracked the very stones around her. Only the side of her face was visible to Ilias, but he could clearly see that she was crying as she wove alongside the other mages. Not from effort, it appeared, but as if from grief.
"I think it's working!" Jerun now more frantically gesturing his conjurations shouted to his companions, "yes I can feel it shifting!"
At the sound of his voice, the Watcher observed the elven woman Rivena glance over at Jerun, seemingly preoccupied with thoughts other than that for which they were gathered here.
"Now, we need to push it back or it will destroy everything in its path!"
Leaning further still, Ilias tried to see around the huge bulk of the orchan Nerala, and see into the center of the swirling mass of elements and magicks. As he did so, his hand rested on a small dried twig, blown around from the woodland undergrowth. Pure chance had placed it there perhaps, or a force unseen.
The screaming winds howled and rose to a feverish crescendo and beyond, as the sound of the elements went beyond the pain threshold of mortal ears and out into a white noise that was felt rather than heard.
It was in this sudden silence that Ilias's hand broke the twig, the sound sneaking out across the clearing. Of the four mages who still were struggling to control the flow of elemental magicks, Rivena was the one to look around at the noise it made as it snapped.
It was enough of a lapse to break her concentration from the center.
Now the sound returned in its full intensity, as the elements poured into the vortex were pushed back again, and out. Flame and steam, earth and wind, the Watcher could no longer make out the four figures as they were engulfed in the confused mass of power.
Still struggling to regain their control, the mages now, with unspoken agreement, shifted the focus of their power, ready to combat the surge that was to come. And come it did, forcing them to take several steps back as it struggled for freedom. It had felt the weakening of Rivena's will, and forced its way past her and through her and outward again.
Ilias rose in horror as he saw a dark crackling cloud, lit with a purple sparking corona form within, speeding towards him. Too late he turned to flee, as his instincts had told him to not so long before when he first came here, but seemingly a lifetime ago. Enveloped in the cloud, he struggled for breath, as if it were his first and his last combined. His legs gave way under him as if they had never before been used to his own weight. His horrified eyes fixed on his hands as they changed before him, first withering away into frailty then shrinking with bone cracking pain into smaller versions, as if a child's hands were in their place. This unbearable pain coursed though his whole being and Ilias staggered forth towards the mages, hands raised in supplication, begging for help but unable to ask, nay to speak at all. Old age had withered away the memories from his newborn mind, where no memories yet existed.
It was at this point that the shifting of the power from the mages took place, as they closed the rift and sent their power instead at the Watcher, blowing him back from them with wave after wave of furious elemental force. Ilias's battered body fell then, back hidden behind the very boulder that had been his last safe refuge, as the power dwindled and the storms of fire and earth and water and air subsided at last.
"Is it over?" Jeruns face a mask of pain and exertion at the horrors they had all just endured, he stepped out from the group and towards the boulder. His fast eyes flitted everywhere, as if searching restlessly for an answer he knew didn't exist, and his manner amplifying the notion that he was as restless as the moorland air.
"I hope so," Rivena following close, spoke with an undertone that echoed the feelings of them all, as they gathered to gaze down on the broken body of the Watcher, her voice resounding like the fall of deep rock into still waters, far below the reach of the sun.
"The poor fool, meddling in matters beyond his reckoning, are all our mortal races to be thus doomed?", Osreng spoke with quiet intensity, his outward calm apparently unsettled by this turn of events, as a river is unsettled by autumn rainstorms.
They each turned to look at Nerala, the silent mage who now gently but firmly pushed them back and away from the body with her powerful arms. Shaking her head in answer to the unspoken question on their faces as they looked askance at her actions, they turned back again to the body as it rose to its feet and dusted itself off.
"He lived? How is that possible? IS it?"
Nerala ignored Jeruns question as she stepped forward again to stand between the three companions and the body of the Watcher in front of her, almost as if guarding them.
At last she spoke, her voice as flat as her eyes, her weeping now stopping, as she announced the doom of Ilias, Watcher of Whitestone:
"No. It is Time."
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