Chasing Eight Dragons

I held my breath. One wrong sound could mean my gruesome end. I stared forward. I could see a wall of ice illuminated by the angry orange of hellfire.

It is hard to know where one may end up from one day to the next, who will be your mortal enemy, and who your dearest friend.

To my left, a man I just met, a refugee from a settlement recently razed to the ground. He is young, perhaps not out of his teen years, and I can say without question, the most bizarre man I’ve ever met. To my right, a woman hellbent on our destruction, held hostage behind the same huge wall of melting ice. Never would I have guessed my life would have brought me here.

I, like most children grew up in awe of Monks, especially the eight astral monks that saved the world. Like most children I wanted to be a monk purely because of them, but unlike most children, I didn’t turn away from it the moment that I realized the sheer amount of discipline and focus it took to be such a thing.

There were no monks in Winters End unfortunately so for many years I practiced alone, and without proper training. The only thing I had was a tome of maneuvers written down from the half remembered musings of a fiction writer.

When I was 10 and the warriors of Krill came to our village under the proclamation of the king to conscript 2 people to guard the wall I volunteered willingly even before my parents could protest. Nobody in the village spoke up, for none wanted to lose their children to the endless defense from the forces of darkness.

Defense of the wall was said to be one of the highest callings of the land. All nations in the area committed to send so many people to aid in Solaris’s defense. It wasn’t uncommon for some to just volunteer, it was better to die from something than live for nothing, as someone who had enlisted once told me. I wasn’t doing it for any of those reasons at that age. I was chasing the ways of the eight dragons and going to the wall provided the highest chance of succeeding. I was hardly old enough to make an informed decision. None the less I was taken, more than likely never to return.

I learned quite a great deal about combat, the ways of undead, and fiends on that wall. When eight dragon monks saved the planet from disaster the dimensional rip they made in reality caused a lasting weakness that made the land of Solaris a way station for demonic crossing. The wall was built on the biggest concentration of activity.

Because of the unexpected, but rather constant demonic incursions, not many warriors of Krill lived long and fruitful lives. After a year, at the age of 11 I got my first taste of combat. Many of our numbers died from a full on assault. I was sent out on a routine scouting mission with several veteran brothers. We weren’t supposed to see any action, but of course things of that nature were rarely something you could guarantee.

Our party was ambushed by hidden forces of high powered demons. I and three other heroes fell to the powerful death-throe explosion of a Balor, one of if not the highest ranking demon in the armies of the abyss.

This is when my life as I know it truly started. Nehayma, happened to be a cleric of Seha, god of the mountain and sky, in high standing. He didn’t want me to come on this mission at all, so I know his guilt made him truly consider using his god’s will to bring me back.

It isn’t impossible or even forbidden to bring people back from the dead, that being said most choose not to do it, and those that are slated for resurrection tend not to return to their bodies. Ever since the dimensional tear the veil between life and death has been…skewed. A cleric, ‘can’, coax a soul back from beyond, but in doing so no one comes back completely as they left. A part of our soul is transformed forever.

Most people come back with aspects of undeath, perhaps you keep the same deathly pallor you had when your light left you, or you feel the compulsion to consume things you never did before, blood, brain, or flesh. The manifestation of what happens to you when you come back is never quite the same, and the more you are brought back the worse the affliction. Some choose not to return than become a mockery of the people they once were.

I suppose Nehayma thought that I was young enough that my affliction would be mild, or at the very least I’d be strong enough to weather it, and he was not incorrect. When I was brought back there was no outward difference to me, nothing one might see with the naked eye, but I soon found that death had not released me from his icy grasp without cost.

When I learned the techniques from random monks of different orders the one thing that stayed the same in all the disciplines was the channeling of one’s inner focus. Monks are pugilistic fighters that channel their life force into every feat of great skill. I could not find the inner light inside that all men of discipline could.

When I turned 14 I was put back into rotation. It was then I realized the toll death made me pay to ferry me back to the land of the living. I could feel when someone was not long for this world. It manifested initially as a strong fascination with people I otherwise had no interest in common with. Shortly after they would die. I could feel their soul flutter away into where it was they went before their passing. I leaned into this occurrence until death was just another form of energy the same as life.

After ten years as a warrior of Krill, even at 18 years old, I was considered a veteran by any and every sense that it mattered. It’s not as if you can retire from your watch, but after a time you can tend to dictate the parameters of what your service to Krill is. I had plateaued in my skill and no random monk that I encountered tended to be more skilled than I. So I told the order I intended to step away, find suitable masters, then return to the wall in 5 years time. The higher ups agreed, because at this time I was as stately as any of them.

I started my quest, bouncing from temple to temple seeking master after master, picking up what I could from them. In all my travels I had not heard of a monk order that specialized in harnessing death and the strength of the in between.

Three years in I caught wind of Frost eater monks that operate out of the Sarengal mountains in a place called Ice home. In my perilous traversal of the unforgiving tundra my third eye opened wide. I felt the kingdom of death opening its door to welcome new souls.

Sure enough, from a high perch I saw fires erupt in a small settlement. I slid down the mountain to see if there was anything I could do. From a distance I saw that the town was overrun by the shadowy followers of Cyteara.

They came in waves slaughtering civilizations with the indifference of a plague. I knew I had no chance against such a force, so I decided to hover around the perimeter and wait for something I could do.

I sensed the presence of death moving further up the mountain. It was far enough away that I deemed it safe enough to investigate.

There is when I found the most curious man I had ever met. He was young, unremarkable in look, as if he hadn’t quite been marred by the perils of life. In his eyes was a weariness, as if he held the weight of hidden secrets that crushed him inside.

He lay in the snow, dead.

I felt the energy of the in between take him, but inexplicably he reached for the sky babbling incoherently.

“Treiodod?” he asked me, almost as if speaking to an unseen entity not myself. I pulled the man to his feet and he was confused in a way that someone who had taken a heavy blow might be. He was under the impression he had seen and done this before. I could not prove or disprove his claim, but could feel the tangible presence of death, I felt the fascination on him. He was doomed to die, or he did die, I could not understand where this energy led.

“Am I dead?” the young man asked. I shrugged, having no clue. I did however sense that something approached, something determined and malevolent, came for the man to make his stay in the realm of the beyond permanent.

“All I know is your fate is yet to be decided past tonight,” I said as I spurred him forward. It was my hope that we could outrun whatever came for us. Or at least have the chance of assessing it before it reached us. I didn’t tell the stranger right away that I felt death, physical death, chasing him, but after he told me about his situation it made mine rather mundane in comparison.

He spoke of a life he lived in which he knew the time of his death, as if he could read the ways of the stars and discern any and all events as if it were already written. I could not tell if he was a young man with a head full of delusion or touched by the hands of fate.

Just from our short talk I could tell he was inquisitive but untested. He operated on a level of confidence that came from his belief he was undying, not from mastery.

We moved through the tundra and death showed us their face. As I helped the stranger, whose name I found was Bargain Belost, across a chasm by holding one end of a rope and pulling him across, death struck first.

A knife streaked through the sky as if from thin air. I could not let go of the rope, but my instincts as a trained monk came to the forefront. I plucked the blade from the sky with my thumb and forefinger. I couldn’t let Bargain drop to his death, so I held him aloft. The entity could sense my dilemma and pressed the attack forcing me to betray my morals and let him drop.

Forming from my feet inside of my own shadow came a living shade, It was vaguely feminine in nature but no less aggressive. Her limbs were wispy and intangible, coming to life only fractions of a second before a strike.

I twisted and blocked with one hand. It is my belief she was not ready for my level of skill, and it was her hope to dispatch me quickly so that she could move on to the stranger in cavern below. I felt the rope slack. He must have touched ground. I no longer needed to hold back.

I sent strikes her way with my full fury. I would have connected had her shadowy body not been intangible wherever I touched. This shadow of death took a different tact. I clearly was not her intended target, so she completely abandoned her assault on me. She sank back into the dark of my shadow, and it was then that I had a dreadful idea of where she may go next.

I didn’t waste time to deliberate, though I had no one teacher, the way of those that followed the tenets of physical mastery of the body all agreed that the mind and the body had to move in sync, a soul could never achieve harmony in either discipline separately.

I slid on sheer ice using the positioning of my feet and the weight of my body to slow my descent. I saw in the corner of my eye two things of great concern. The living shadow woman stealthy appeared behind Bargain, and a slow nearly imperceptible rumble happened.

The mysterious killer formed as quietly as an idol thought inside of Bargain’s shadow and swung at her true target. Bargain was very nearly run through. I have no clue how he was not. It was so obvious that he should have been hit, I had already calculated how I would avenge him. The shadow’s long blade passed an inch away from his back and slipped under his arm. Bargain clumsily stumbled forward as the female shadow reflected off the weak moonlight, disappeared, and seeped into the cavern.

Bargain’s fighting form was incomprehensible. He was either a complete novice in the ways of combat or so skilled his talents were too unorthodox to quantify. He kicked at the shade and, she made the first sound I could hear which was a chuckle.

I stepped in her path, “Move on shadow wraith,” I said addressing her title over the woman I had no name for.

Bargain’s eyes glowed a pure white, which blazed as bright as the stars. His light came out in two concentrated beams from his sockets. He had no control of what he did. The starlit beams split the ice wherever his eyes saw. The shade and myself tactically rolled as not to be burned.

“Maybe stop doing that,” I said. “I don’t…” he started to say before the wall in back of the cavern erupted, sending chunks of ice every direction.

The rumble made itself clear, and emerging from once dormant ice was a smoking iron monstrosity. The body of the beast was a metal carriage, where one might believe someone should sit. Its legs were born of four wheels, each standing taller than a man.

It rolled over rubble powerfully grinding ice into nothing with jagged spikes on each of its tires. It roared with an unfathomable power, and in a tongue that none could ever truly speak, yet all could understand… destruction.

Flames erupted from the trunk and under its axles brightening the room. Bargain’s eyes struck the thick metal which was bolstered by hellfire. I knew this because Demons sometimes rode through the rift on these awe-inspiring vehicles. They were used to break down any mundane obstacles we might lay or the wall itself. These vehicles were not merely tools, but constructs given life so that it could autonomously destroy even when passengers were not present.

As I expected Bargain’s eyes did little to pierce the hard metal of the hellfire engine. He couldn’t look away because of fear not a tactical attempt to disable the beast. He was struck dumb with indecision.

I ran at Bargain, avoiding the lights in his eyes that he was too inept to control. Hellfire nipped at my heels. One misstep and I was dead, crushed underfoot, and spit out of the back wheel into a red paste.

I slid on ice, rolled under Bargain’s eye shot, then pointed his head away from me. I dove with him and the engine slammed into one of the ice walls, grinding it down, weakening the integrity of cavern itself.

“Calm yourself, will yourself to see, master yourself,” I whispered as I dragged him between a crevice in one of the walls. The passage was not big enough for the siege engine to pass, but not strong enough that it couldn’t break it down entirely. One problem solved itself, when Bargain’s eyes returned to their normal hue, while another arose.

At my side was the shadow wraith woman. She had taken refuge in the same crevice as we. She was tangible enough, dressed in black, pale. We stared at each other, two enemies caught in the same death trap. “When this is over…” she said as a threat, and a statement of fact. I nodded, understanding exactly what she meant. Funny where the day takes you.