(Rising Tension)
The shaking in the hands of Leo would not cease. It was a good, steady vibration, as though his own nerves were complaining of the insult they had suffered. He was lying on the floor and his back was against the chilled wall of his bedroom and the usual familiar glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling were not helping him. The quietness in the room was a falsehood. It was the most silent silence he had ever known, which was made up of the phantom odour of blood and ozone, the chill of the Warden and his presence in his thoughts, and the floating, shimmering specter of the UI which hovered at the fringes of his vision.
He had anticipated the Warden to speak - to reprove him because of the failure of the spell, to require him to repeat it, to give him the explanation of the dreadful vision. But there was nothing. A mere watching, old-fashioned presence, a dead stone into the well of his consciousness. Its absence of commentary was more frightening than its orders, in its own right.
What was that? Leo wondered, screaming in the silence of his own skull. Whose memory was that?
Your own, the voice of the Warden was flat and without the urgency or the anger it had had. It was a mere declaration of fact.
It was not mine, Leo replied, the psychological words lashing across with panic. I've never held a sword. I have never seen a… a place like that. It was hell.
It was the Fields of Perdition. The last struggle with the Gnawing Dark. A pivotal engagement. Your observation, though partial, is true.
The name itself did not mean anything to Leo, yet he got a new chill. The Gnawing Dark. It was as though out of some sort of cheap fantasy novel, not an actual memory. Yet the sense - the fatigue of the bones and the ugliness of purpose and the chill and coldness of fear - which had been so horribly real.
You're lying. You put that in my head.
I am an illusionist, not a Warden. My role is to preserve and guide not to create. It is a latent imprint in the memory, and is prompted by your endeavor to tap the underlying mana streams. It is you, Master, whether you like it, or not.
A part of him. The concept was nauseating. He was Leo, a boy who cared about grades and his father being disappointed and whether Maya at his history class knew that he was around. He was not a reincarnation of a warrior in an obscured war. He couldn't be.
He was now lifting himself out of the floor, and his legs were still shaky. He had to do something commonplace. Something mundane. Something that would bring him back to his real life. He fumbled his way to his desk, where his physics book was open, with a chapter on kinetic energy. The irony was bitter. He looked at the formulas, the figures and characters darting around his eyes, lost in the dimly luminous characters of the UI.
"Primitive force quantification," the Warden said, with a trace of an academic scorn. "Your civilization tries to cut the universe in a coarse manner."
Shut up, Leo thought, slamming the book shut. Just… shut up.
He needed to see a human being. He must have heard something besides cold echo through his head. He walked out of his room and to the kitchen through the short corridor. His father was present, standing above the stove, the cracking of the garlic and onions fills the air with a homely, familiar smell.
Hey, dad, Leo said, it sounded so strange and small.
His father looked over his shoulder and faintly smiled. "Hey, Leo. Homework done?"
I need to work on it, Leo mumbled, and sat down on a stool at the kitchen island. He could see his father performing the actions he had always done - how he tapped the spoon on the rim of the pan, how he could turn the flame on or off with the slightest possible movement of the wrist. This was real. This was his life.
You alright, GABA? his father said inquiring of Leo a little longer. "You look pale."
"I'm fine. Just… tired."
He concentrated on his father, on his wrinkles, on the gray scalp of his hair, on the smudge of iron on his collar. He made attempts to lose the self in the sameness of it. But the UI was still there. And looking forth there came an additional line of writing, in the same beautiful, foreign character, overwriting the image of his father.
Biometric Scan: Nominal. Stress markers elevated. Paternal concern detected.
Leo's blood ran cold. It was profiling his father himself. Reading him as an item of information.
Halt it, halt it, he thought to himself.
His father glared, his face screwed up. "Stop what? The sizzling? It's called cooking, Leo."
Nothing, nothing, no, I said, sorry, I forced out meek smile, sorry.
The micro-expressions of the subject showed a likelihood of 78 percent of a follow-up question concerning the subject about his or her well-being, the Warden said in a professional manner.
He's not a 'subject'! He's my dad! Get out of his head!
"I am not in his head. I am in yours. I am merely explaining the information that your senses alone give. To know how the people around you feel is a strategic benefit.
It was not a tactical situation. This was his kitchen. This was his life. The Warden was not a voice but a filter, distorting all the interactions, all the relationships. It was reducing his father to a series of biometric measurements. The infraction was increasing, more insidious.
He was unable to sit there any longer. He was now beginning to feel sick because of the odor of food. I am not particularly hungry, I said and rose. I guess I would go to bed early.
The father became as grim as ever. "You sure? It's your favorite. Penne alla vodka."
"Yeah. Just… really tired." He ran away before his father could ask of him any other questions, and the stress of his worry was another burden on Leo.
The quietness was even more oppressive back in his room. The presence of the Warden was like a second heart beat in his head. He sat in his bed and gazed at the ceiling, with the phantom UI giving a light golden glow to his dark room. He lived in his own skull of a prisoner.
It is quite unproductive of you to distress, the Warden said after a very long time. The memory fragment though intense is innocent. It is a tool. A lesson from a past life."
A lesson in what? What will I do to die somewhere in some battlefield? Leo thought, bitter-tasting in his mind.
"A lesson in resolve. In duty. The burden of power was known to the man that you was. He accepted it."
Maybe he was an idiot. Perhaps he did not even have an option, too.
"There is always a choice. To accept his purpose, or to lose. He did not fail."
Well, he's dead, isn't he? Leo shot back. But how did that purpose go on with him?
The Warden went silent. It was the first victory Leo had been able to get a point, however insignificant, and the absence of a retort was a small hollow triumph. However, this was not a long-lasting victory. The ensuing silence was thoughtful, and somehow more dangerous.
Whist your recalcitrance takes its origin in ignorance. You perceive this power as an alien power, an intrusion. You have not yet come to know that it is part and parcel of you as your very heartbeat. The male who was in the battleground was not a different being. He was you. And his power is yourst to recapture.
I don't want his strength. I want my life back.
"That is no longer an option."
The ending in its distinctness smothered the last glimmer of hope in the heart of Leo. He flung himself over, and wrapping the covers around his head as a child would his, a hopeless effort to shut the world out. He spent hours in a circle of fear and anger, in a state of mind that seems like hours, the vision of the armored hand, the cold command being repeated behind his eyelids.
When at length sleep came it was not an escape.
He was at the battle field again. The Fields of Perdition. The name fit. It was mud and ash on the ground, and a coppery mist in the air. He stood in armor, and huge, and his body was vibrating with a power that was both strange and familiar. It was not merely a sword that he held in his hand, but a kind of continuation of his will, the cutting-edge of which was a lightning-filled tune.
In his advance the Gnawing Dark ranks were in progress. They were not monsters in the classical meaning. They were spaces, distortions of reality, forms of human shapes of moving shadow and cutting, unattainable geometry. They did not make any noise, and their coming was accompanied by a kind of intellectual pressure, a whisper, which promised oblivion.
Hold the line! Hear me out - the voice of the Paladin--was booming, and with magic and belief enhanced. "Not one step back!"
The presence of the soldiers, on his flanks, he could touch, their fear being an actual object, which was restrained but by their trust in him. His sword was drawn, and the light came out of the blade, a white-gold light, and a pure one, a radiance, pushing against the darkness as it came. The shadows screamed and screamed, withdrawing in all directions.
For a moment, they held. They were a tower of light upon a sea of darkness.
Then, he saw it. Deeper dark was gathered at the very center of the enemy. It was an entropy animal, a walking sore in the world. It stared at him, and he seemed to feel its gaze as a bodily shock, as cold as enough to give numbness to the magic itself in his veins.
It extended a limb - a tendril of solidified shadow - and was pointing right at him.
The order which came next was not heard, but felt, a compelling down to the very soul. It was one, disastrous command.
Kneel.
The pressure was immense. It was the gravitational force of a mountain. He felt his armor groan. The glare of the sword he held fluttered. His knees were weak and he went in the mud with the pushing force. He struggled with it, and all his muscles were aflame, his will a flaming brand against the creeping cold. He would not kneel. He would not…
Leo awoke with a shudder, covered with a cold sweat. He was bound in his sheets, his heart was beating to escape out of his chest. A cold band had been the phantom pressure of that command, still around his soul. He scrambled to the lamp, which stood beside his bed, which was fumbling at the switch. The room was filled with light, which chased the shadows, though not the terror.
It was just a dream. A memory. But this seemed to him more real than his bedroom.
The conflict with the Herald, the voice of the Warden was soft, virtually, reverential. An ordeal of great stress. You defied its order 7.3 seconds longer than any other Paladin ever known. It was a kind of testament to your will.
Leo did not take the testament seriously. He continued to shake, the sensation of such great, soul-destroying pressure still strong. It made me kneel.
"It broke your body. It did not break your spirit. You rose again."
I died. It was an absolute realization. He knew even though it was not reflected in the memory. The man he was meant to have been, the Paladin, had failed on that field.
"All men die. What defines them is the way one lives, and how one dies. Your death bought time. It enabled the end seals to be installed. It was a victory."
A triumph that was really defeat. Leo sat on his bed edge and he had his head in his hands. The fact that the memory had a conclusion made the horror even more horrible. It was not just another life, but a dead life. A violent and hopeless death in a war with which he had nothing in common.
This was the heart of the mystery, and the heart that was being answered was still more horrible than he could imagine. This strength was a curse and the past belonged to him - a legacy of failure and sacrifice. The fate of the Warden was to walk straight down to a muddy grave in an unknown battlefield.
Something fresh, cold, settled in him like ice in its place where Fear had been. He was unable to tear Warden out of his head. He was not able to revert to being normal. He did not need to go voluntarily to that field. He did not need to be that man once again.
The Warden wanted a weapon. It wanted its Master back.
But Leo was just a teenager. And he had now proclaimed a silent, inner war. He would not be a tool. He would not be a vessel. He would resist this step by step. Were he to have this power thrust on his hands, he would learn to employ it not in the war of the Warden, but in his own survival. He would master the use of the tool, not to be able to accomplish the legacy but to destroy it.
He gazed upon his hand, on the hand which had been wreathed in kinetic energy, had been wreathed in lightning, in another world.
"Alright," he whispered aloud, his voice raw but steady. "The lumen spell. Show me again."
The Warden said nothing at all; he seemed to be evaluating his momentary change of mood. The simple glyph of the spell of generating light was then repeated in his UI, but brighter and more detailed.
"The somatic component is slight flexion of the third metacarpal. The core and not extremities should be the source of the mana. Do not think of the glyph as a symbol, dwell on the glyph as a symbol, but imagine the glyph as a key turning in a lock within yourself."
Leo nodded, a grimmer determination coming to his face. He put up his hand, and did not think of the light, or of the fate of the Warden, but rather of the lock. He would learn to pick it. And when he had the key, it was he who would determine which doors to be opened, and which to be closed forever. The struggle of his soul was on, and the first, silent conflict was soon to be fought in the gray light of his bedroom.