Love and Life, Reborn

A/N: Finally! The second chapter! I can’t tell you how much I’ve been wanting to write this up. X3

The first chapter didn’t do so well, so hopefully this one will. If not... Oh, well. *shrugs*

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Chapter 2

 

‘The sun’s setting...’

Garret was sitting on the ground, his forearms resting on his raised knees as he glanced up apprehensively through the trees. Leaning back against one of the invisible walls that surrounded him, Garret’s mood couldn’t help but darken with the sky. For the past several hours, he had been trying to come up with a plan. Despite having more knowledge of magic than the average swordsman, actually using magic was beyond his capabilities, leaving his options limited at best. All he could come up with was to hope that the barrier would drop eventually and run like hell for Beriva when it did. Since he couldn’t see or sense the barrier, he could only lean against one of the walls and wait for it to disappear.

At least, he hoped it would disappear. He knew that holy barriers cast by priests could ward off evil spirits, a simple ward along the roads in and out of Beriva was what made travel safe, after all. The thing was that, just because a barrier kept mortals confined, it did not mean that spirits were kept out. Garret had heard of barriers that could trap both the living and the souls of the departed, but he couldn’t be sure if the one surrounding him was one of these. If it was, it would have to come down if the toad-mage wanted the curse to reach him. If it wasn’t...

Garret shook his head to rid himself of the thought. All he could really do was wait and see.

The sun’s light faded entirely, bathing the woods in darkness. In the distance, Garret heard the call of an owl that had awoken from its slumber. As his eyes adjusted to the dim, Garret thought he saw some shadows moving oddly. He tensed, focusing on the spot as his heart began to pound in his ears, but all was still. It took a little longer than usual for his heart to resume its normal rhythm.

He hated feeling so helpless, trapped like some sort of animal. The last time he felt like this he was five years-old, hiding in the basement of his parent’s home as he listened to them being killed by bandits. He remembered how scared he was, listening to the bandit’s footfalls above his head as he hid in a special alcove beneath the floor, praying to the gods that he wouldn’t be found.

Garret shook the memories from his head, trying to refocus on the present, even though his unease remained. He kept telling himself ‘things are different.’ He was stronger now. He could take anything life threw at him, even a curse.

His sorcerer friend had mentioned that some curses drew their strength from your despair as your will to live dwindled. Keep it strong, and the curse would eventually fade. The trick was staying sane for as long as it took.

Tilting his head back to look at the stars, Garret was convinced of one thing; if his will to live faded, and tonight was his time to leave the mortal world, then he supposed he would have to accept it. The life of a mercenary was fraught with danger, after all. He just thought he’d die in the middle of a bandit’s hideout, fighting for his life or even blasted to bits by a sorcerer’s hand.

Having his mind torn apart and his life force consumed by vengeful spirits? Never saw it coming.

However, there was one thing about all of this that had been bothering him since he set foot into the forest...an almost overwhelming feeling of familiarity, as though he had visited this place before, despite the fact that he had never been this far east of his adopted parents’ home. That, and the feeling of unease that hadn’t quite gone away since he saw his first set of ruins.

Before he had the chance to muse on this, he felt the wall at his back disappear. Caught by surprise, Garret had to reach behind himself to find his balance, After steadying himself, Garret rose to his feet cautiously. Reaching forward, he checked the air before him for the barrier. He wouldn’t put it past the little toad to give him a glimmer of hope by letting the walls fall, only to put them back up in time for Garret to run into one again.

Feeling nothing, he took off at a sprint, thankful that his progress remained unhindered. He ran into the night, hoping that the strange shadows he began to see were the figment of his imagination.

                                                        

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He hadn’t been running for long when he came across more ruins. He had intended to just run right across the clearing, but stopped himself short when he saw something strange, keeping himself hidden amongst the trees.

Milling around the small clearing were half a dozen or so...somethings. They looked like men, women and a couple children draped head to toe in black bedsheets. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they didn’t cast any shadows despite the moon’s bright light, Garret would have written them off as just that. But right now, there was only one thing they could have been.

‘Spirits...’

Garret clenched a fist at his side and swallowed thickly. He really didn’t want to waste time running around the ruins all night. There were probably more in the woods that he couldn’t see, wandering about for who knew what purpose.

He’d rather take his chances in the clearing, with the spirits he could see.

Garret took a deep breath before bolting from his hiding place. As he ran past, he noticed that one of the spirits was moving more swiftly than the others.

Suddenly, that very same spirit stood still, two perfectly round lights flaring to life where its eyes should have been, the color a bright crimson. It began chase after Garret, the swordsman crashing through the brush as quickly as his legs would carry him.

He ran hard, his heart pounding in his ears, not ashamed to admit that it was more from fear than the exertion of running. Without looking back, he miraculously avoided all tree roots as he came to another clearing, not even thinking about hesitating and running right past two more red-eyed spirits.

As one reached a ghostly limb towards him and missed, Garret finally looked behind himself, and while he was relieved that his first pursuer had left him, he still had two on his tail.

Crashing through the brush, Garret thought he heard faint wails of frustration echoing through the woods, as though voices from another plane had barely managed to reach his mortal ears. Looking back once more, Garret could still see the eyes of his pursuers, but found them to be mere pinpricks in the dark. He wondered why they weren’t following him anymore, but he had no time to ponder as he felt himself falling forward.

Unbeknownst to him, he had run right over a small precipice, sending the swordsman rolling down a steep hill. Covering his head as best he could, he continued to roll as small rocks and twigs hidden in the underbrush scratched the exposed skin on his forearms. When he finally came to a stop, he was laying face-down on the forest floor, waiting patiently for the world to stop spinning. After a couple minutes, he rose to his feet slowly, pushing the hair that had been freed from its tie out of his face. Blearily, he looked around, getting his bearings as he retied his hair.

Even in the moonlight dappled by the trees above, he could see the boulders on the cliff he had missed somehow. The cliff and hill combined to create a sort on bowl all around him that had sunken into the earth. ‘What could have done this,’ he wondered. What could have caused the very earth itself to bend in such a way, like a square piece of cloth held loosely between four people? Did it happen during the old war? And was this the work of human, or rather Elven, hands?

So many questions, yet no time to search for answers. Garret turned away to look for some way out of the “bowl.” Luckily, it seemed to be rather lopsided, the grade on the other side not nearly as steep as the side he had rolled down. He made his way forward, putting the odd place behind him and out of his mind for the time being. Once he got back to level ground, he broke out into another sprint.

Dashing around trees and dodging more red-eyed spirits as he ran, Garret couldn’t help but feel that something was wrong. The sense of unease he’d had since the first set of ruins just kept getting worse. He knew that his sixth sense was trying to warn him of something, but he didn’t think he had the time to figure out what it was. He burst into another clearing, only to stop dead in his tracks at the sight of the biggest ruin he had yet to see.

It was what remained of a huge tower. The surrounding trees had to be about five stories tall, the top of the broken tower coming just below that. Though it still stood elegantly, time and the elements had undoubtedly take their toll on what must have been a magnificent structure in its time. Dark vines had snaked their way around it, contrasting greatly against the off-white walls. The moonlight shone unhindered into the clearing, allowing Garret to see the rubble scattered about the clearing. Walking towards the tower in a daze, Garret couldn’t imagine how tall it had been in the past, or how it survived war and time to still stand so tall when the other structures he had seen were lucky to have three walls remaining. Passing by the rubble, Garret moved until he stood at the base of the tower. He placed a hand against it, marveling at how smooth it felt beneath his calloused fingertips. It wasn’t until then that he noticed something was odd. Turning away, he stood still and listened to his surroundings.

His unease remained, but it had lessened. The wails of the spirits that had been growing in clarity through the night had been silenced somehow. All he could hear were the nocturnal birds and insects calling, as well as the wind rustling the treetops. His brow knit in confusion until he spied something glittering out the corner of his eye. Focusing on it, he saw that it was on the ground. As he walked towards it, the glimmer faded and he saw that it was just another rock on the ground, as big as his palm, but he went and picked it up anyway.

He turned it this way and that, trying to see if he could get the stone to shine again. If his suspicions were correct, then what caused the glimmer was why the spirits avoided this place, and possibly why the tower survived the “leveling” of the old kingdom. He was about to give up when the stone caught the light again, revealing small and intricate Elven script made of some silver metal, a metal Garret suspected was orihalcon.

Orihalcon, the legendary metal that could dampen, or even negate the effects of magic. A metal so rare in this era, mere alloy was worth enough to buy a castle, furniture and servants included. Two castles, depending on how much of the alloy was orihalcon.

Garret paused and looked at the tower. Even the possibility that it was covered in the precious metal... It was amazing that thieves hadn’t at least taken the rubble on the ground to somehow extract the orihalcon, but after a little more thought he supposed that they wouldn’t have even noticed, seeing as how it was luck that made the piece in his hand catch the light just right.

Looking back at the rock in his hand, Garret wondered about the meaning of the writing. He wondered if the metal alone was why no spirits had followed him, or if the intricate script was a ward of some kind. But if orihalcon canceled out magic, wouldn’t be writing a ward with it be pointless?

Garret sighed to himself. Here he was, standing in the middle of a cursed forest, pondering the doings of mysterious beings long since gone when he should have been running for his life. Kneeling, he placed the stone back onto the ground. Then, a thought occurred to him.

‘Do I have to leave?’

Standing once more, he looked around him, thinking. He took in the general peace of the place, compared to what he had seen elsewhere. There were still no spirits present, either, even though he had spent a good amount of time in the area. Besides, it looked like he only had to worry about the red-eyed spirits, who appeared to be disinclined to leave their respective haunts.

The tower was the safest place to be, at least to Garret’s eyes.

Walking back to the tower, Garret planned on bedding down for the rest of the night, leaving for Beriva at first light. Reaching the base, he turned his back tho the wall, unstrapping his sword and placing it within easy reach. He then took out a wool traveling blanket out of his pack, laying down on the ground and wrapping it around himself, curling an arm to use as a pillow. It wasn’t exactly comfy, sleeping in his armor with a wall at his back, but he had done it before and there was no way he as going to take it off when the toady mage and his friends were still in the same forest as he.

Sleep was slow to come, but it came nonetheless. Garret drifted off, trusting in the power of the orihalcon, not hearing the whispers on the edge of the trees as the moon was covered by thick clouds.

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Garret shivered. He pulled the blanket closer to him as he wondered how it had gotten so cold. That was when he heard them.

Voices. The sound of many muffled voices, as though he was listening to a crowded marketplace through a closed shop door.

Garret felt as though he had swallowed a chunk of ice, cold fear chilling his innards as every muscle in his body became tense and frozen. His eyes snapped open, some deep-seated instinct telling him not to make any other move. If he hadn’t clenched his jaw shut, it would have fallen in a silent scream at what he saw.

People, at least a hundred of them, wandering around the clearing. If it hadn’t been for the fact that their otherwise solid bodies faded to nothingness from the knees down, he would have thought that the Elves had returned.

Well, maybe they had, in a way, because there was no way that these were the ghosts of humans. Each and every one of the adults he could see was tall, some as tall as himself, all with pale hair of some shade of blonde or silver, even some white scattered into the mix. And aside from their androgynous beauty, the most notable of their features were their ears, somewhat triangular in shape and framing their faces elegantly.

Garret rose slowly, not blinking as he kept his eyes trained on the ghosts surrounding him. He let the blanket slide off him, not bothering to grab it.

The sword, as big as it was, he would never leave behind.

He reached for the hilt, his hand finding it without any aid from his eyes. He rose to his feet slowly, moving to strap his sword back into place when one of the ghosts looked towards him.

It was a child, possibly around seven or eight, barely coming up to his waist in height. Boy or girl, he couldn’t tell, he just knew that the eyes holding his gaze were overflowing with tears. It was then that he noticed that the child was bleeding from a wound over his/her left eye, once pale hair being colored with a macabre dye of the child’s own blood.

Garret was shocked. He looked around, noticing that all of the ghosts still sported what had to be the remnants of injuries that had killed them. Some, like the child, were bleeding from nasty wounds that must have been painful while they still lived. Some looked like they had lost limbs, missing arms looking much like their legs, dark shadows somewhat coalescing into vague imitations . Some were missing chunks of their torsos, a disc of shadow filling a hole where an obvious magic spell had ripped through their chests where their hearts had once been. What was even worse was the fact that at least half of the ghosts were children.

Moreover, they were all crying.

Garret was devastated. He knew such things happened, many of the Lycanthrope tribes meeting a similar fate in their history, yet the sight of so many children looking for loved ones was tugging at his heart. He could hear them crying in their language, not understanding a word and yet knowing they were calling for loved ones, for comfort. Women weeping with their faces in their hands, mourning for the children and lovers they would never hold again. Men wandering, looking at the people they failed to protect and the kingdom they allowed to fall, tears staining their own faces as they shouted their heart-rending apologies to no one and everyone.

The swordsman was so caught up in the despair that surrounded him, he almost missed that the child he had locked gazes was slowly moving towards him, little arms beginning to lift in a silent plea to be comforted. Garret came to just in time to notice, moving away from the child as best he could. His hand went to the hilt of his sword reflexively, but he stalled. These people had suffered so much already, did he really want to add to that? Was it even possible to hurt them?

Either way, it probably wasn’t smart to just start randomly swinging his sword at them.

His hand fell almost reluctantly, the child still coming towards him. Jerkily, he turned his body to run away, only to find even more spirits forming a wall with themselves, none of them looking at Garret yet somehow knowing they had to block his escape. He turned back to the child, the clouds finally parting to reveal something odd.

His/her hair was snowy white and his/her eyes were ruby red.

It was odd to see white hair on an Elf child, at least from what Garret could see from the crowd in the clearing. Red eyes were odd for any race. The thought that the child was an albino crossed his mind, but an odd stirring in his heart told him this wasn’t the case. Suddenly, he felt someone looking at him from across the clearing. Lifting his gaze from the child, he looked above the snowy head only to find a figure that shone, unlike the ghosts. The stirring in his heart became more pronounced, making Garret feel like butterflies were in his chest as his stomach flipped and rolled. A small sound escaped his throat, like a shout dying on his lips as he felt his face heating. There was a name, a name Garret didn’t know yet felt like he should, like the name was important. The child... The child was important, too.

Snapping back to reality, he realized that he had taken his eyes off the young Elf for too long. He looked down in horror to find that the child was about to close his/her arms around his waist. Before Garret could push the Elf away, little arms held him fast as Garret felt like he had been stabbed through the heart. The odd familiarity with the forest was back in full force, this time even stronger within the presence of the child. The face that had buried itself in his abdomen looked up at him with wide eyes, a word tumbling from her lips. Yes, her lips. He suddenly knew what the word meant, too.

“Father.”

Blackness came then. He felt himself falling, and then no more.

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TBC.....