The genesis of Mana was the soul that could not pass. Souls adrift, souls corporeal, souls that in their finality would turn in a ceaseless gyre. It became a hateful cycle, more reviled than the feast of maggots upon the dead. Yet, oft it was more beautiful than the whole of the cosmos and ever great beyond all law, no matter the depths of its utter depravity.
A reactionary stasis followed the passing of Helm's arrow through the mana-veil and into His body, a vessel seething with roused acrimony. This begat a ceaseless
deceleration of countless spirits against the surrounding Mana, striking against the whispers of the pure soul. It birthed a chilling void, a hollow through which the coalesced spirit of the ancient, maddened warrior might gather, merging and vanishing within the rift. This aperture appeared precisely upon the vanishing of Willes, the ancient Sage, who acted as if to deliberately forge a crucible, a trial—for both the warrior and Him.
"Fret not, Phrosohnk. The comrade who delivered thee from the debased dynasty shall yet endure." A voice arose within the priest Phrosohnk's mind, though he was still bewildered by the sudden shift. Yet the Sage's words, a promise that none would fade, offered a measure of succor. Relieved in that one regard, he continued along the narrow track provided, bound to leave the wood alone. He trod solitary, seeking the elder Sage whose recent acts were too arcane, too far beyond the grasp of men to be understood save by a mind of that same, elevated stature.
"Whoa!!! Damn it, you—" Helm's cry was rent mid-air. He found himself upon a great height, a precipice at the furthest edge, yet one that was near and achingly familiar to his distant memory. The warrior, who had once lived by the name of the Hunter, had been here before. He had stood upon this very ground, at the point known as the Overlapping Territory—a place from which he must find egress. Its most common, simplest name was the Land Between.
"Vionne! Vionne!! Can you hear me?!" The tall archer had fallen from the heights above, yet the descent was as indistinct as a dream. He simply awakened, gazing upon his surroundings, which had shifted from the Forest of the Stone Markers to a wood once more. But this was an other-realm,
superimposed upon the land they had just left. This familiarity clung to him, as though it lay upon every single path of every single lifetime.
"O Archer, is that truly thee? Noble Archer, is it truly thee? Where might you be?" A sparkling voice, akin to the chime of a hundred jewel-carvings, lured past his ear with every step he took. Helm surveyed the vicinity, yet found neither the glint of a white, rainbow-hued wing-tip nor the smallest gaze that he had known in the distant past—a vision that had never been clear since... that time.
"Can you just hold your tongues for a moment? My ears are aching! Damn and blast it all! You toothless old codger! I was just a few paces from getting through that other mountain pass! Goddammit! Nothing but bloody nuisances!" He spoke,
thoroughly incensed, after his body struck the ground, though he felt no pain
whatsoever. His form lay upon the earth in that dreamlike state. His return to a place he had abandoned marked a life he, Helm, had never intended to reclaim. He had merely forgotten it, or chosen to forget.
Clang! The ringing of a blade echoed across the clearing, though woods and trees from the realm they had departed still superimposed themselves. Sniffort had not gone anywhere. They had simply arrived in an other-realm, one that no traveler of meager ability could ever stumble into at random.
"Kill them! They hurt us!" The Knight's cry reverberated across the open ground, the sound echoing off the contorted, chthonic earth. A hatred sought to slaughter the enemy with a cruelty that was wretched, evil, and foul. The young men and women had become the quarry of a demon wearing the skin of a "Man."
The tall archer stood motionless, listening to all the sounds around him. He heard no breath from his two companions. He continued through the overgrown clearing. His long legs stepped forward with but a single question: Why must such an incomprehensible thing have come to pass?
"O Archer…" A voice cried out near his ear. He clapped his hands over his head, refusing to listen, as though he feared a certain memory might return. "You have not been to this realm in so long, before time began… You once held the small form of the little sprite before all of us. Even now, the sprites—"
"Silence your mouths at once! I! I…"
The matter grew ever more difficult for Helm. He could not even force a complete utterance from his throat. He followed the path, searching for the two who had vanished into the drag of the pure spirit, while a thousand cries drew closer than ever before. What, truly, was the warrior of the giant bow fleeing? "Helm! Helm! You bow-mad fool! Where are you? Can you hear me, Helm! Hey!" The voice of the Blood-Woman broke through, threaded with the whispers of the coalesced Mana—a sound woven so densely with souls it was almost impossible to discern the path. Helm fought the urge to follow her voice.
"O Archer… O Archer, for how long have you left me waiting at the gate? I have never been absent from my vigil, yet you have never returned to me." The sprite's voice, or perhaps the whisper, was accompanied by a bell that chimed with a shattered, brittle sound every time it shook. Helm covered his ears and strained to find a way out—a way out of the current that would wash him back to the original land.
"Has everything you abandoned come back to haunt you once more?" A voice rang clear through the hands he pressed over his ears. Helm ignored it. He walked on, his eyes adjusting to the strange realm in the wake of the arcane power of Willes the Sage.
"Die!" The Knight's scream came from outside the wood. The sound of tearing flesh surrounded him. Any ordinary man who entered here would lose his wits and cease to question, or perhaps not even dare to question it at all. Helm dropped his hands from his ears. He saw many armored figures in the clearing. This time, as he looked up, they were Knights—those who would be transmuted into vengeful, primeval spirits. Helm drew his bow. Around him, a light of blood-red, mixed with a deep azure-blue, flared before he released the shaft, driving it into the bodies of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Knights, felling them one by one until only their armor remained.
The jeweled armor was rusted over, or sometimes it was merely crude iron plating made only to send them to their doom. They had become things that died without value, without honor, and in utter folly. Their souls would condense until they could never truly die, existing only as a form of raw energy. They would be used, endlessly cycling through the veils of the realm, yet never truly finding passage anywhere.
"Come then, all of you! This is what I call exciting!" A great group of Knights lunged forward like a swarm of zombies. They were hollow within, but the stench of carrion was so pervasive it was beyond becoming acclimated to. Their bodies were struck by the tall archer's blood-red arrows, causing them to cave in. The memory of being a reckless, crazed warrior made Helm, fighting alone against these nameless Knights, feel more exhilarated than any ale he had ever drunk.
At the last, a warrior is a warrior; they never change. They are remembered in the names of the terrifying, dying without worth, being endlessly resurrected until there is no ground left for them to stand upon. Helm stood there, one hand gripping the bow tight, the other holding an arrow stained with his own blood, the medium passing through his body. The eyes of the Barbarian were being used this time.
"I must find those two. Otherwise, we'll certainly be separated. A bloody waste of time! It's driving me mad!" Helm spoke aloud over the shattered fragments of armor in the amber clearing.
"You sprites could try to be more useful! Stop flying around like you haven't a care in the world, buzzing my ears! I don't want to hear it! At least draw the Mana from my path and use it to find those two. You're just flying around the grass hollows—utterly useless!" The many sprites, shapeless to ordinary eyes, appeared like butterflies, yet when viewed directly, they seemed like very small wasps or bees flying about. Helm followed a blue light, leaving the wreckage of the armor behind him.
"O Archer, do you not remember us? We have never forgotten you. You have stepped into our presence… We thought—" The sprites, those voices of the whispering ether, were cut short by the archer's shout.
"Be silent! I don't want to be caught in a place that's only here to trick me into dying! I'm going back to kick that Sage's ass! And as for you lot, I'll take you and stew you into a pale fish-head soup, then mix you with the Southland's special liquor! You'll know true Hell, and I'll drink it all down to my heart's content!" Nothing replied. The small voices of the sprites could not shake the soul of the forgetting archer.
This land was vast beyond all others, yet it held the same frame as the Forest of the Engraved Stones, where whispers were driven in, roots run deep, recording history as it ought to be. But the strange deviation was this: instead of the native woods of Sniffort, it was a desolate clearing.
"Die! You must die!" The bodiless Knights, clad only in their armor, emerged ceaselessly. Wave after wave, they would not be deterred by the endless arrows of Helm, the one who was crazed in the hunt, who was wordy when silent or bored. He tore some of them apart with his bare hands. His tall form, cloaked, eclipsed the three sun-moons hanging in the sky. For this brief moment, he had simply reverted to the warrior whom all men reviled.
High mountains encircled the place, met by a carpet of earth, interwoven with slabs of stone older than any man. The trees had all been erased when his eyes focused better, seeing more clearly than ever before. The curtain of mist on the peaks offered no obstruction. The rice fields or grasses—or perhaps merely a field of dead, spiritless green flowers—were all too long dead to be truly remembered
"The lesson of the warrior is to die and be resurrected. Is the lesson of the Sage to test everything he sees without doubt, without question for his actions? What part of your bloody brain do you people use to think with!" As Helm released the arrow, every word that burst from him was pure rage, purely incensed by what he was forced to do now.
"Vionne! I know you're near here!" Helm ran, speeding through the swarming, crowding mass of Knights. He stumbled but shot back at them. His body was covered in wounds from fighting since he arrived in this realm. He fought, he killed, he tore some apart until only their remains were left, but they would not stop.
And when the small sprite led the way, separating itself from him by a great distance, it encountered a bright, white light, triangular in shape, yet seething with the crimson stench of blood. Helm had to scramble, utterly destitute of aid. The small sprite rang its bell to call him over.
The gate before Helm—was it the passage out of this realm, or merely another deception? Who could answer him, save for his own self now, still battering the enemy with his giant spine-bow, or even crushing them with his bare hands, shooting their forms with arrows that pulverized the surrounding area? He was insane. This was the warrior. Was the answer of the warrior simply to accept everything and care for naught but war?
Whoosh~ A soft breeze knocked him down as he stood between the gateway. Grass scattered. The gate had not closed. He rose once more. The stench of blood and the sharp, high laughter of a woman, coupled with the sound of wings tearing at the body of a huge, ugly-faced monster.
"I am the Warrior! I am the Blood-Woman! Come forth, and I will slaughter you all until nothing remains! I will draw out your blood until not even the soul within your body shall ever return!" The voice of his partner, the female warrior, fighting a creature that was huge, cruel, with a long, dog-like face, no ears, and eyes upon its chest. Yet, no matter the size of the beast, it could not evade her devouring blade. Vionne had transformed into a thousand birds since arriving here, a place utterly different from Helm's location. The two of them faced each other across a battlefield without end. No one had
welcomed them. This was the warrior. This was the field of war, behind the Sage who had appeared before them, the one who spoke of war to the dark general. This was the doing of no one directly; it was only they themselves who had dragged themselves here from the very beginning. From the moment they were revived—that was them. They… would be warriors forever.
And one thing that, after this, none would ever forget or dare to forget: He, the man who was cursed, or perhaps blessed with sin, by the millions of souls buried within him that would not pass. He was silent. No one sought him out, for no matter what, He would survive, even if his entire body were reduced to naught but bone.