The Simple Cost of Prophecy

The two men spent a harrowing two days on the side of the Sarengal mountains. Amon found Bargain left for dead. Bargain lost his town to the hands of shadow wraith soldiers. Then the two ventured to Ice Home.

It was now that the two realized the army followed them here. The wraiths didn’t destroy Bargain’s home out of happenstance, but needed him for reasons he could only imagine.

Bargain was a child of destiny, doomed, or perhaps blessed, to see the world through the prism of prophecy. Amon Till, a stalwart warrior of Krill, a monk made by way of his own hand. He knew when the gates of death were to open or close. He came to hone his techniques of war in this monastery of monks who embodied the extreme cold temperatures they lived in.

The two now stood at the precipice of a great decision this starry night before the master monk Youeron Po, a pugilist who had given his will to the element of cold, his entire body was formed of ice, but this was not his story to be told.

In the confines of this temple formed completely of ice, in the zen meditation garden lay a passage that was known only as the heart of Ice Home. It was a place that the monks used to reflect and venture inside of themselves for the deepest moments of contemplation.

Though Bargain hadn’t a monk’s training, he had been able to read the stars and intuit the meaning all the days of his life. He had shown promise and something of a ‘celestial’ significance, so he was given the option to see into himself without the years of intense training that earned the privilege.

The head master willed the ice and snow with his hand and showed Bargain the way. Steps of ice revealed themselves under the zen garden. Bargain stepped forward eagerly, in a way most men might not. He lived his life by following the way of the stars. By living his life in a perpetual state of knowing, it gave him insight on life that made death hard to conceive of, and by extension fear. Bargain regarded his traveling companion Amon with great respect before traversing downward to face his destiny.

Amon Till nodded his head approvingly as if he should go and fulfill his purpose in life, a thing so very few ever managed to unlock the truth of.

Bargain ventured down the cold dry steps then came to an icy blue door. He glanced at the door as one might an enemy. He knocked on it, and there was nothing but the solid pack of his bones. He turned and looked back to the passage in the snow that led him, but the way was now shut, replaced with a bright silver glow that came from nowhere.

A twinge of panic overtook the boy. It was a rare occurrence when he could not see the way ahead, and could not consult with the stars to confirm or deny any doubt he may possess. He scratched his head in thought, which was a thing he had never done.

Bargain sat at the door pondering, using his own thoughts, his own deductions. It was a scary and new experience to rely on his own thoughts over prophecy.

He stared at the bubbles of water in the ice and after while he began to see something in it. He realized now, everything in the world in some way was born of stars.

He stared into the ice of the door and unfocused his eyes. He saw the spaces in between and to the elements that bound the universe. He reached out with his finger and touched, not the ice, not the water, but the star dust that it was made.

He traced runes of light in the air. Bargain drew words speaking to the stars, this being the only way he had ever communicated in the past.

“Are you there?” asked Bargain. He connected the dots that were held captive and still in the ice. The words were always there, predestined, the question he asked had already been asked at the beginning of time, answered, and written. All Bargain had to do was find it.

“I am here,” the universe spoke in the language of prophecy. Bargain wrote in celestial ink. “So you weren’t only in the sky?” “No, I was not, “ I replied.

“I was supposed to find out a truth about myself, the reason why I am being sought out?” “Yet and still you don’t ask me the proper questions.” “Why am I sought out by an army of shadow wraiths?” “I’d think it obvious, you have the power of prophecy. What army would not covet such a thing?” spoke I, the infinite.

The boy showed signs of frustration, but he endured. “I have seen you and you have shown me the world, why have you chosen me to see?”

These were the questions that garnered answers, but the answers were a threshold into madness. The fate of all is written and known. Never seeing your fate was what created bliss… the suspension of disbelief.

“I could tell you your mother touched prophecy and when you were born you could see, but in the end, it had to be someone.” “So my fate is untethered from the weave of the world?” “Absolutely not, you absolutely have a destiny… as does everyone else. The only difference between you and them is that you can see your own fate. No one’s story is greater than any other’s, in the end all that matters is the teller and the told.”

“What is my destiny? What am I to do with my life?”

For I am not prone to random acts of kindness, but I chose to give this boy one.

“I could tell you, I could answer every question you have. I can tell you what you will do, when you or anyone you wish will die, and how, but if you were to know it would diminish you. How would you find joy in your own life? You will no longer be a mortal but a character in a story that has been told. Your life would only be of interest to those that hear it. It is now the story of the universe… “ Bargain hesitated, it was a grand question, the last question he’d ever ask.

The boy spoke again…

Amon Till watched his traveling companion disappear under the snow. "Come, we must leave your friend to do his work, so that we may do ours,” said the monk who was living ice. Amon Till needed very little explanation or encouragement.

He was not a monk of this order but you’d never tell, with how easily he fell into step. Amon may not have been classically trained, but he was more tested than most. All the skills he had were pieced together through the years and tested in the heat of battle against the demonic forces that breached this world as a warrior of Krill. His hope was to take the knowledge that he gained in the wider world back to the wall to aid in the battle versus what lay beyond the rift.

Both men ran very rapidly to the front line. The walls were solid blocks of ice which monks collapsed and reforged with the strength of their will. “Is it our intent to drive them back, or to destroy them?” Till asked. “Kill if you must, drive them back anyway you can,” said head master Po.

Amon Till traversed the mountain a day before yet there were different elevations of walls where the entrance of the monastery was. He noticed acolytes doing complex martial arts forms to entice the snow to bar entrance to intruders.

Lurking out in the distance on the edge of perception the threat was there, those that languished in shadow. “These walls will not stop them, for they can move through shadow,” said Amon Till. “That may be so but they fight on the battlefield of our choosing” said the elder.

Perched in the distance the assassin, Petty, waited for her chance to redeem herself in the eyes of her commander. She once had the target in her sights and opted to let the unforgiving tundra do the work for her, instead of driving her sword through his heart.

Her commander loomed over their forces like a dark cloud. He was cloaked in shadows that had no business on his body with the height of a tree. He had four stalk like arms, each holding weapons. The shadow wraith’s forces did not wait long before they were spurred into battle.

The battle commenced.

Shadow wraiths waded into battle. They dipped in and out of anyone or things shadows that got them closer to their objective. Petty folded down her hood and pressed forward. Combat began. Frost eater monks rose the ice like the tides, and crashed them down whenever their enemies numbers bunched too tightly.

Amon Till stood at the bottleneck of the entrance prepared to do his part in the defense of Ice Home.

When the shadow wraith’s got in close the monks put their skills on display. With bare hands, or weapons formed of ice they engaged. The wraiths appeared and disappeared in and out of the dark of any shadows. The monks faced opponents as slippery and nimble as they. What the monks lacked in numbers they absolutely made up for in skill.

The shadow wraiths breached the walls effortlessly, each shadow they found lead them to the next which made it appear as if they were rolling over the walls like a dark fog. Amon Till held his ground when the hordes came for him.

A shadow wraith animated Amon’s own shadow, which he met with a backfist and several chest caving blows.

Petty noticed Amon barring the way and decided if anyone were to fall by her hand it should be him. Killing him could bring glory to her god and repair the slight damage he had done to her reputation.

Amon punched a shadow wraith in his heart as they expired the remnants of its life flowed into the monk creating a surge of death energy through his black veins.

Petty leap from a shadow and swiped at Amon Till when his attentions were elsewhere. He received the pain with gritted teeth as she rolled past him. As Amon turned he threw a spinning back kick. Petty flipped into him, but as soon as his kick was about to connect she disappeared, slipped into his shadow like diving into a pool, and emerged behind him.

The Shadow Wraith General himself positioned in the center of the action on an elevated pillar of ice. He conducted the battlefield like a symphony, pointing to different soldiers with his different limbs.

Amon saw Master Youeron Po slide on a rising rail of ice until he stood before the shadow wraith general. The two faced off in combat. It seemed as if these two warriors wills unintentionally decided the ultimate tone of how the battle would swing.

The general landed two powerful blows which sent Master Po off balanced and tumbling to the snow below. “Bring me the child of prophecy and you may keep your temple,” bellowed the commander. “We do not submit to the will of tyrants,” said Po.

The commander smirked behind his black armor of living shadow. There was little chance he would have shown him mercy anyway. He hopped from the pillar of ice, landed as a wispy shadow, sank under the ground… then rose up slowly behind master Po. The head abbot kip-upped to his feet without using his hands.

Suddenly the ice broke and two ominous beams of light erupted out of the floor. Bargain rose directly up. His eye sockets blazed with white starlight that grazed the sky. He swept his burning gaze here and there.

The commander pointed at Bargain and had all shadow wraiths that were not currently engaged in battle to retrieve him. With each shadow wraith that turned up Bargain burned them down with such intensity it split the warriors into two sizzling halves.

Bargain twiddled his fingers and thick white runes spelling the geometry of prophecy appeared.

He asked me to turn the tide, and for this once… I did. All the stars in the sky became brighter and brighter until they blazed so bright it turned the night into day.

The shadows melted away, the wraiths could neither attack from the darkness or retreat into them. The smell of fear rose high in the hearts of the shadow wraith warriors.

The commander salvaged what he could of those soldiers who were now manually climbing over ice blocks, and called for retreat.

The monks of Ice Home rejoiced as the shadows slinked away. Bargain’s eyes relented and relaxed returning to normal.

Amon Till pat his friend on the back. “Do you know what you are to do, why you are so important?” asked the almond eyed Monk. “No,” Bargain said with a smile. “For me to know my purpose damns me to no longer be a participant in life. The cost of knowing is my humanity. I instead asked the universe for guidance…” “And it answered,” said Amon Till. “… Yes, and it answered.”

For to know what is written makes you a character in a tale being told. If your fate is written pray you never know.