TIME

I am not one creature.

Then be mystical.

I am air and water and sunlight and darkness. I am song and dirge and laughter and tears. I am here and there, tomorrow and yesterday. I am wet and dry and harsh and soft. I feel, I see, I taste, I hear, I touch, yet I have no form but every form. I am wind and doldrums, depth of an ocean, highest peak. I speak, I think, yet no one hears or knows. Like you, I am animated. Unlike you I know where I begin and end. I am not Elixir of Life, but I am linked to that kind of reality.

Like Time.

You are the link. Chaos and Time. You bind them, separate them, mix them up, stir them together. You are the stirrer. The Alchemist. You are Time’s Alchemist.

Unicorn

Myth and Legend


It was a unicorn. A creature of myth and magic, one with the ability to walk in two realities simultaneously. A creature of great beauty, inspiring great awe, one tireless in every endeavour, be it a walk through a wood or a gallop between legend and truth. No one had yet seen one and still every culture knew it instantly, and even a child could scratch out a basic likeness in the dirt. Many tales surrounded it- silver blood that gifted everlasting life; to see one was to know good fortune all the days left to one; to kill one was to know eternal damnation; it stood guard over the innocent and the lost; it could outrun the wind; it could save one’s soul from evil…and so on. All one had to do was believe.

Conjuring

Kismet had commenced the process of discovery. Samuel had to conjure as he had for Lucan, beginning with small items, gradually progressing to larger. Kismet supplied requirements that ruled out the likelihood of chance success. Asking for a stone was to conjure a stone, nothing else. Samuel brought forth that stone, a pot, a bag of potatoes, a framed mirror, and was then asked to explain from where these objects heralded. He didn’t know. Kismet proceeded to enlighten him. Either objects were summoned from a known location, or they were transported out of the ether, and Samuel, in fact, achieved both. The lifeless objects, always abiotic, the stone, the pot, the mirror, were called from sites on Valaris. He asked Samuel to bring forth an item from his home, something unique to him, and Samuel sent for his diamond cutter, knowing it was engraved with his name, and it came, proving the theory of known, existing sites and objects. That, apparently, was the easier mode of conjuring. He held the cutter in his hands, bemused. He was a jeweller by trade, and here he was dabbling in magic.
The potatoes, Kismet revealed, a biological object, were summoned from the ether, for nowhere on Valaris presently was such a mundane thing in existence. Potatoes had recently been ferried in by Beacon…by the barrel. He added that it didn’t necessarily follow abiotic was local and biotic from elsewhere; he merely employed the difference to prove the two locations. It was an unconscious force, he explained, unless you were specific in your creation, something the Enchanter had mastered a long time ago.
Samuel then had to banish what he brought forth and did so, asking whether the items returned to their original places. The stone, yes, Kismet agreed, it being part of natural magic, but the rest went to a place for banished things, a kind of realm for unwanted goods. Samuel balked at that, saying it had to be impossible, and how? He mourned the loss of his cutter, then. Kismet merely smiled, saying the realm was a treasure trove, if one knew how to access it. The pocket of potatoes, for instance, would never spoil.

In Brief - Animated Spirit

Book Six – Animated Spirit

Place: Valaris, Luvanor, Grinwallin

Characters:

Protagonists: Torrullin, Teighlar, Saska, Lowen, Quilla, Margus

Antagonists: Tymall, Agnimus, Digilan’s creatures- the Mor Feru
(or draithen)

Magical tools: Sword of Light, Warlock accruements, Valleur Throne

In brief: The realm of dreams is a place for the Hounding. Torrullin needs divest himself of his past in order to function in his future. To become Elixir, the Animated Spirit, this must be done. As Elixir he has greater power than his Warlock son. At his side in this is Lowen Dalrish. The sentient entity of Grinwallin rises up, and in the end Tymall is the one who must choose as he and his father come head-to-head.

Lead into Sacred Space: Torrullin has chosen Lowen over Saska, and is filled with guilt. He enters the Dome as Kaval leader and begins that journey.

Burden

‘As a boy, restricted by my mother’s agelessness, and ruled by the need to find my father, leading to Immortality, in itself is a prison, given the cycles of death and rebirth. I had to avoid detection- not only were there no Vallor in the Universe, but no expectation of it changing. Worse was the fact nobody remembered my people, when I remembered so well. Everyday was a cage, of the mind, of heritage, of loneliness. Then came Rain and another damn cage, in the form of prophecy. Everything I did had been foretold. I was half-blood, son to Tanos, grandson to Vannis, the One, Enchanter, the duality of a terribly prophetic naming, but where was Torrullin? My sons imprisoned me and they still do. Both of them. I thought I was breaking out when I orchestrated the destruction of Torrke, but to my horror prophecy awaited me in the flatlands. I had not escaped. Now here I am, following the road I myself predicted, and still dealing with my sons. Do I feel caged? Damn right I do.’

Hounded

‘The night of my Immortality Ritual, just over six thousand years ago, this particular dream started. It came only in times of great tension or turmoil, so wasn’t nightly or even regular. It stopped around fifteen hundred years back, and began again the day after I returned from the Plane, and thereafter every time I closed my eyes.’
Torrullin sighed and leaned back. His eyes were calm as he related the actual images to Krikian. ‘I am running across a dry dead plain, totally flat, hard stones I trip over as I run. I am holding something very precious, I must not drop or lose it or I shall be lost, and not only I, but also everyone I care about. As I run I have flashbacks of a time I was held caged like an animal, taunted with the sharpness of spears, spat on, ridiculed, starved near to death, big men with no faces climbing into the cage wielding viciously spiked maces, my bones crushing, knitting together painfully…I think I am cripple for the initial flight across the plain. They taunt in the common tongue- pig, murderer, whoreson, human waste, devil…and many other insults. I look up and I see a hill, or a mountain, maybe a heap of bones, it’s the only different thing and I must go to it. There are horsemen behind me, I do not see them, but I feel them and they are getting closer and they want the bundle I carry, they will kill for it. And then I am on the path on the hill and I have to get to the top, I must sacrifice the precious bundle to save myself- it is my redemption. I am climbing old, worn steps of stone winding up the hillside and carrying something, something light and alive. I look down to check what I hold is still safe and warm. A tiny pink face peeks at me through the gap in the swaddling and little black eyes blink. An innocent babe, by all gods. I concentrate on placing my feet properly on the smooth steps, slick and dangerous in encroaching mist. As I climb, mist arises and soon it will envelope all, block out sight and sound. White blindness, wet on my skin, in my lungs. I hurry up cautiously, mindful of my cargo. I have to reach a stone temple perching precariously on the summit of this lone hill before my pursuers discern my purpose, and I thank the Goddess for sending the mist to obscure my trail through the ever-present dust below. It’s a tribute, a sacrifice I carry and to live beyond the day I am dreaming of, it has to die. I look down again, but now the white swirls are so dense the little face is indistinct and I am glad I can no longer see her; what I have to do is hard enough. I am weary of running from this, always looking over my shoulder, wondering when they will find me and snare me for the beast they think me, cage me anew until they have enough sport. I stand poised on the final step, lost in a world of choking white and the shortest side step will plummet us to sharp rocks far below. The rocks, the hill, the only landmarks in a featureless dust plain that literally has no beginning and no end. Before me is the slight shadow of a shrouded temple and I step forward and the baby squirms. I hear them coming for me, but don’t actually see them, and I know it is not just the babe- they hunt me. I have overcome and they don’t like that. The fog thickens; a saviour, a haven, the coolness a blessing, and I begin to hope- my life, my very soul dependent on my success. One misstep and all will be lost…but she is beautiful, so tiny, and so perfect, my heart breaks, my resolve crumbles and I cannot do it. My salvation lies before me and I cannot do it. I stand within the doorway of the temple and I clutch the warm bundle and I cannot move…and behind me the unseen men with their war clubs clamber up the hillside, cursing, in a hurry…and I force myself to wake up.’

Otherworldly

The Hounding of Torrullin- another realm