"Says the man that does what must be done."
Auwale scoffed. "What nonsense." Abrupt, a vein wriggled over his features—like a worm trapped within the skull. What was that? The question, and the moment of the ponderings, an answer rose from the deeper awareness: Discord!
Now the mighty Shaedoran endured a basal contradiction. Within, the awareness of truth and accepted falsehood battled for dominance. What pain he must endure now... What pain Merrin has given this man.
Agony!
There was an instance of quietude. Auwale waved, and the trembling Brightones fumed into nothing, vanishing into a whitish steam of light. Gone. Just like that, the "men" around him were no more. A certain measure of horror existed in that suddenness.
I have unmade them!
Auwale said, "Perhaps the hunter can rest now." His tone was oddly delirious. "Two Ages, I have seen with my eyes. More likely I have spent below here. Waiting. The Hunter who waited, that is who I am. And you—" He regarded him. "As I said, your gift seems to be the thing of the tongue. The hunter who hunts with his mouth." Mockery. "And this was my undoing? This is what ends the great rider?"
Does he expect an answer from me? Merrin stilled the grief, said, "Give me what I want, Auwale... Tell me where Kharnel is."
"Oh, you want to know?" His awareness seemed to return—for a moment before the veins snaked through his features. He groaned, leaned back on the throne, said, "What glorious days those were. When 'HE' had chosen me to be one of his Shaedorans. When along with them, Auwale went to battle as me—battling the now-gone Maya. The Fallen. Ruin. Gone now."
"Rebuild," Merrin said in that unmasked timidity. He felt like a screamer in the void—bootless. The outcome was sealed now. Be strong. "Tell me where Kharnel is."
"Tell me where Kharnel is..." Auwale mocked, an utter difference from what he was once. The change was deeper now. "Hear my death cries, hunter," he said. "Remember what you did today. If you are asked what had happened. Who you were, tell them you are the Hunter of the Great Rider." "I am Auwale. I am the Avatar of the Great Rider." He waved, and a creature sparked.
The snap rocked the chamber, and beside Merrin, a creature grew from the swirling shards of white dots. Transient like glass—a beast of four legs, a snouted face with a tail like folds of queer mane.
He shuddered. It was that same beast!
Auwale roared. "Take it. It will lead you, Merrin."
"Thank you!"
"GET OUT!" Auwale screamed. "GET OUT AND LET ME FADE!"
Never hold impressions or prejudices—these things are mere limitations to the true strength of mentation—Code of the deadEyes
Merrin galloped atop the damning beast—the thing of glowing translucency. Up and down. Up and down. Through the terrain of jagged earth, the badlands, slanted pillars. The works. Always, the beast was galloping, and he sensed the slight vertigo from the recursive motions.
Endure it—he thought, sensing the bubbling grief present at the edge of his awareness. They were all dead. The White City. The Brightones. Auwale. All of them. He had seen it in the moments before sailing out of the city. The once-bright walls dimmed, the structures of solid light shattered into fading specks. Even the mighty gate had turned into but a slab of stone.
All gone.
The White City was no more. The awesome force that once permitted its halls nothing but a false sensation in the recalling mind. There was nothing. No trace. No means to point and say "Yes, there. Right there once stood the White City."
Nothing.
How horrible an outcome that was. A moment and an entire city was no more.
They were not humans—they do not exist. Again, those words sounded unimaginably idiotic to him. Who was he to judge the nature of existence? Who was he to deem what lives and what doesn't? The truth remains the same. There was once a City of White, filled with men of light and brightness. No more. He had come, and they had gone. Entropy had come for them.
A tear dripped down his cheeks, his heart slow within his breast. There was the need to mourn, to scream, to beat his body for the tragedy it had caused. But not now. He rode on, arms wrapped around the muscles of the strange beast. Auwale had called it Horse before banishing him. What a name that was: Horse! Did such a thing exist in the world? In the lowlander territories, perhaps?
Or was it yet another mystical thing lost to the ages? Like the Orvalen—Auwale. So many things lost to time. Who knew what else laid there. Omniscience—the thing he desired for the completion of his paradise.
Awareness produced the question of relevance: Did the study of History play a role in the creation of the Dream Realm? Did he need to learn the forgotten to make for the future? The beast jumped over a boulder, dipping into a slope, legs pushing dust in that rapid movement.
Eyes sealed. Nausea, like a tying of the stomach contents. Would the beast rage if its back were dirtied with sludge? He sensed a quip in that. What sludge? I have not eaten in days.
No laughter emerged from the joke, just the halting awareness of the lives taken. Again, he had caused death.
The wheel remains. Unbreakable. Unshakable. It lingers.
"My companion, eh." He chuckled now, his voice chiming in the deep darkness of the underminds. Here, he sensed how the moments looked to whoever observed externally. They would say: I saw a man atop a beast of light, riding through the darkness.
Often, these were how myths started. A caster and their casting. He became aware of the possible origins of Eastos myths. What if the great slayer, Lynor, was but another Caster? He was Ashman; the glyphs said so, and Ashmen were hardly casters.
Yet we are oddly similar to the veilCounsel order
The beast leaped into the air, crossing a chasm, landing feet-first atop the other end of the path. A broken cliff. It rode them, trembling in that back-heaving manner. Merrin stilled the growing squeamishness. Annoying. How long is this going to take? He wondered, noted then the passing of walls by the side. The distant things far beyond the stretching of his ocular prowess.
Who knew what secrets hid in this place? Other than the Shaedorans, Aelmiren, what else did the Steles have? What more could he learn?
There was always the internal curiosity—he was, in the end, a student of the Shamans! But for now, cull the interest. Someone needs me now. And in that moment, the awareness of a distant vastness fitted into his mind. Peering ahead, he saw a cliff that spewed into a pit. Still too far away to make out.
Closer!
Was that where Kharnel was?
The beast came to a sudden halt, Merrin's head snapping back from the inertia. That was the last act—he spewed contents by the side, watching the sludge steam off the earth. Tendrils of white rising to the sky. Disgusting, perhaps, but the Ashman within longed to dance in that steam.
For some reason, he felt a removed connection from the Ashman within. How long has it been, he wondered. How long has it been since he acted as the Ashman he was?
The beast quivered, and unknowingly, he felt the "We have arrived" statement laced in that action. An intelligent creature?
He hopped off the horse, crunching a soft rock underfoot. There was a need to maintain the environmental quietude. The Ashmen did these things. The act of blending with the natural sounds—just enough to accomplish the necessary hunts.
Merrin patted the creature, hesitantly, of course—the beast still frightened him by that alien nature of it. Somehow, he felt such a beast was not native to Enor.
Maybe it's a thing from those other worlds the bird likes mentioning.
He dismissed the mentation, sank into another, and analyzed the available data on the next approach. Oddly, outside the dying rants, Auwale had not revealed much about Kharnel; this he suspected was for one sole reason: The Great Rider had never been in the city.
And I come for it, as I came for his... He sighed. But one thing was known regardless; the city was laden with Aelmiren. None as the Stone titan, but stocked nonetheless.
I cannot fight my way through that. There was no need for Caster's mentation to confirm that outcome. Only the instincts gave a rough assumption.
Another way, then. What path should I take?
A sudden thud quaked the earth. He turned and saw then the Beast of an animal. There was a change in its form. Fading. Blurring away like moisture on glass. Slowly, its form shattered into specks of flowing light, drifting diffusely.
Did it alert me to its death? To bear witness?
Another thing I must mourn when this is over... He crouched, edging towards the rim of the cliff. There, he knew, was the full view of Kharnel. There, he would see the city he must now invade.
Ah, the things I must do!