Lost
*For Camp Nanowrimo this April, I plan on writing 10 short stories that fall into different genres & elicit different emotions. Because I’m planning on editing them as I go, I’ll be posting a whole short story every ~3 days.*
The tavern was practically shaking as the werewolf, furry ears poking through her short auburn hair, and dwarf, his facial hair twisted and braided ornately, danced a drunken jig on the bar’s stone counter. Spinning and swinging as he deftly plucked at a dented lute, the bard led a triad of tavern minstrels through a lively ballad; he wouldn’t tell anyone, but he was utilizing an enchantment so the backup band would be in tune with him. Only a well-practiced mage would recognize the sigils carved into the side of his instrument. In the far corner, beyond a veil of magical mist meant to obscure the most unsavoury of backroom deals, I could see just the sheath protecting the elf’s sword where it hung on the coatrack and the tip of the archer’s bow as it rested against the wall. Beside me, a tracker named Wren was blithering on about how she found a lost hedgehog yesterday.
To be fair, it wasn’t the most inexperienced troupe I’d been on a quest with, but they were the least congruent by a long shot. Resting my head against the edge of my cold mug of iced ginger tea, I turned to stare at my companion; she hadn’t appeared to notice that, throughout the whole evening of pre-quest revelry, I hadn’t spoken a single word to her.
“I’m heading to my chambers. Tell them I’ll see them just before sunrise at the entrance to town,” I murmured to Wren as she continued to chatter like a squirrel. Perhaps she’d admitted she was part-squirrel and I’d missed it in all the inane chatter.
When I got up to leave, resting a single bronze coin on the counter and taking my mug with me, Wren stared with big, doe eyes. “What? You can’t go yet. The celebrations are just starting,” she whined, gesturing at the drunken members of our party still engaging in the merrymaking of hired hands. Live fast, die young was the motto of these chartered questing types.
Chuckling, I touched her shoulder in the hopes of performing a nonverbal illusion charm. When it didn’t work and the awkward time staring at her grew too long, I dropped my hand and left. Lately, I’d been really struggling with my enchantments; even ritualistic, verbal ones were fizzling out, which was concerning with a big mission in the offing. I skillfully ducked behind a couple splitting a sundae so my colleagues wouldn’t spot me and left the tavern. Draining my tea as I wandered out into the chilly night air, I threw the container into a bush.
Instead of going up to the lodging I had booked for the night, I left the warm light and garbled noises of the pub for the shadowy, subdued solitude inside the town’s quaint magical sanctuary. For such a small town on the outskirts, I was mildly surprised that they had a place of worship for those of us in the magical arts; it was humble but welcomed me with a swell of comforting energy as I stepped foot inside the doors. Unlike churches, these dedicated refuges were created so anyone from any line of learning could access protection and power. Their basic shapes were specific to the township, as well as their material properties, but they all pulled from sacred geometry to create convergences of energy. Back home, we had a series of them posted all over the metropolis with various magical properties and dedications. Most of the mages I knew tended to frequent one for their entire lives, while druids and other nature-minded folk went where they felt the draw of energy at any time.
Unbuckling my cloak, I cast the heavy fabric across a hand-carved wooden chair to the side of the cathedral. In all my time as a mage, I’d found it nearly impossible to do any big casting with long sleeves hanging around my hands, so I was forever ridding myself of my cloak. In the same vein, I despised the superfluous material of flowing skirts, but found people didn’t take me seriously if I presented too manly; something about feminism that I would willfully never understand. As such, I bunched up the skirts of my dress and knelt at the alter, shutting my eyes and attempting to channel the energies housed within the building. Meditation came easily, but the gentle tinkle of power never did.
“I’ve procured us five horses,” the archer, Sirpa, explained, pointing to the row of sturdy quarter horses hitched outside the building between the town’s entrance and the bar everyone appeared to have spent all night at. His thin leather armour shifted as he opened the coin pouch given to our party by our middleman and counted out the remainder. Slipping it back into the inside pocket of his vest, he added, “As usual, they gave us a small stipend and the rest will come upon delivery of the uh, well, completion of the quest.” Seeming a man of few words, with was perfect for a leader, he let loose the first horse and skillfully swung himself onto the saddle. He adjusted the blanket under the tight leather and started towards the main road.
Looking around at the company, our bard, Ozan, asked, “Uh, not to bring up a sore spot, boss, but there are seven of us, not five. And, uh, I ain’t walkin’ to the mountain.” He was inching closer and closer to the horses with every second, prepared to commandeer one of the steeds if there was a fight.
Chuckling, Sirpa growled, “Well, if I say you will, you will, bard.” Clearly, they knew each other in a negative capacity.
“Me and Pippi are gonna go it on foot,” replied the werewolf as she elbowed the dwarf in the shoulder and adjusted her canvas backpack. When she glanced at the horses, their eyes widened and she chuckled, “It’ll be faster that way, anyhow.” Conall was a well-known and generous pack leader around my own township, but we’d never actually crossed paths. Even in fully human form, she had a wild look in her eyes and her hair was scruffy and matted. But the most intriguing part of her, to a lot of people, was that she could shift at a moment’s notice; she was the only natural werewolf anyone knew of with that gene. One of my apprentices had even created a talisman using her blood that completely irradicated involuntary transformations. It had done wonders for the werewolf populations the kingdom over. Though still defined as a curse and ridiculed widely, it was easier for them to hide their affliction if they so chose.
Fiore, an elven warrior I was sure I’d met on several occasions, got on the next horse gracefully; she draped herself over the back and appeared to fall asleep as her mount followed Sirpa’s.
As the others took their horses, I hung back, focusing on the knot tied tightly around the hitching post. Glaring at the rope, I held my hand out and willed it to loosen. I wasn’t even trying to convince it to fall off, just to slacken the knot a little.
“Are you coming, Nua?” Wren asked excitedly as she held her horse back from joining the group. No one else had noticed my lagging behind, which suited me just fine. Our tracker couldn’t spend all her time at the back of the pack, though, or we’d never get where we needed to go. I was about to point this out when she whispered, “Sorry, Nua, but I really have to get going,” and hurried on down the dirt road, bouncing in the saddle like a child on their first ride.
I groaned, tore the rope from the post, and slid my boot into the stirrup. As I swung up into the saddle, I pulled half of my dress and cloak around so they weren’t hanging off the side; normally, I used a simple reduction charm to temporarily slice off the ends of my clothing to make riding easier. Nudging the horse, I followed far enough behind the group that no one felt the need to drop to my speed so I could be alone with my thoughts, dark as they were.
For several hours, we went along the main thoroughfare, trudging through the occasional swampland or weaving through mazes of grass. Wren led the way, dropping to the ground and wandering in concentric circles when we needed to make a decision about direction. Strumming his lute, Ozan sang long ballads about great warriors and epic quests; he danced like a fool in his saddle during Wren’s impromptu breaks. Whenever I caught a glimpse of Fiore, she appeared to be sleeping. From what I knew of elves, that didn’t mean she couldn’t kill someone without a second’s thought, so I decided to keep my distance. Honestly, Conall and Pippi could have been eaten by a bear and I would have seen them the same amount over the first stretch of the journey.
When we finally stopped on the first night, the sun had been gone for about ten minutes and the creatures hiding in the woods around us were making their presence well known. Beyond the ditch was a flat spot where we lashed the horses to a few trees and Pippi looked expectantly at me. “Can you get the fire going while I cut a tree for kindling, Grand Mage?” he asked, addressing me respectfully.
Biting my lip, I croaked, “Uh, I’m preserving my energy in case we’re attacked. I could use my knife to start one, though.” I’d been afraid of them requesting a spell for hours.
“Oh, of course, Grand Mage,” he replied, smiling at me. Clearly, Pippi’s clan of dwarves had a better relationship with the magical community than the one in our kingdom did; they would never have addressed me like that or taken my word for anything. “I offer you my flintstone and freshly-sharpened blade,” he added, bowing as he passed the materials over before hefting his axe over his shoulder and examining the nearby trees. When he’d hewn a large tree into small enough pieces, the dwarf sat beside the firepit and waited to be fed as the rest of us tried to cobble together a campsite. It took me a couple of minutes to manage a spark, but he said nothing of my wretched analog skills. While I got the fire going, Wren took Fiore to hunt game and gather herbs for dinner. Lying on his back looking up at the stars as he plucked a sombre tune, Ozan glanced at me sideways.
Conall and Sirpa were dragging logs into the light to form a protective barrier around us when Ozan asked, “So, what’s a Grand Mage doing on a for-hire quest? Is it more important than it seems? Is there a plot happening? I mean, this is hardly the kind of place someone of your caste should find herself?” Thankfully, he didn’t question why I hadn’t offered to magic a fire or cast any protections around our troupe. Perhaps he thought I was doing everything I needed to, but still.
“I don’t know. I guess I was just tired of doing easy stuff. I mean, being a Grand Mage is great and I get to teach all kinds of people all houses of magic, but it’s gotten boring,” I mused, standing at the edge of the firepit. I wasn’t lying, exactly, but that wasn’t the whole truth and the bard seemed to realize that. Sighing, I added, “I am six-hundred and eighty-nine years old. I’ve had centuries to learn and grow and now, I don’t know. I’m just really tired. I guess I just wanted to have some fun.”
He grinned toothily, whistled, and murmured, “Wow, that’s some kind of spell to keep you alive that long.” Chuckling, he raised his eyebrow and glanced around to make sure no one was listening; the dwarf was snoring, and the lumberjacks were out of earshot. “Is it true that immortality spells like that require virgin sacrifices all the time?” he asked pointedly. In all my years, I’d met a lot of people who’d do anything for a taste of immortality. At least this one would be easy to vanquish, if the need arose, even without my powers.
“Well, it isn’t exactly an immortality spell,” I replied, shifting the conversation slightly, “But, yeah, the common ones require a lot of life energy and they’re really messy; hardly worth the few years you can manage to scrape out. You have to be very committed if you want to last more than a decade and make it worth it.” I had many friends who lacked the stomach to perform those kinds of rituals more than a few times in a lifetime.
“Wow. Guess that’s why you don’t have magicians like you living for centuries all the time, huh?” he joked, lying back and staring into the sky. As I thought I’d gotten out of explaining the whole truth, he turned over again and demanded, “So, if your spell isn’t like that, how was it done?”
Not many people knew the answer to that; not many who’d been alive in the last five centuries, anyway. Sighing, I started, “I spent decades trying to create a spell of immortality to cure my sister.” As I spoke, everyone arrived back at camp carrying heavy logs, bloodied rabbits, and piles of leaves. “Guess it’s rabbit for dinner, huh?” I changed the subject, happy for the distraction.
After a surprisingly great dinner of roasted rabbit and wilted greens cooked by Wren, we all took our corners of the campsite and tried to get comfortable under the heavy woollen saddle blankets. Ozan had the first watch and had been instructed not to fall asleep; his solution to this was to have a bucket of cold water beside him to throw on himself if he so much as yawned. It took a while, but everyone fell asleep eventually and even the fire drew quieter.
“Nua?” he asked, his tone polite and calm. Sniffing, I rolled over and tried to see him through the fire and smoke. He cleared his throat and asked, “Can you continue telling me about your immortality? My brother is a Fourth-Level Wizard and he’s been trying to crack that nut for longer than he’d like me to tell you. You don’t have to give me any of the gory details; I’d just like to be able to tell him it’s possible.”
I liked to keep my story to myself, but this experience was supposed to push me. Nodding, I pulled myself up and sat down on one of the logs, careful not to rouse any of the others. “My sister had a blood disease and I had to continually save her life. I thought that if I could create that spell, she could live and be happy,” I started again, thinking back to those painful years. The way she degraded and her eyes hollowed, the moments when she smiled, and when we danced in the field behind our house; they nearly took my breath away to recall. “I spent years learning magic and trying out spells and creating powerful enchantments and then, just like that, she died,” I continued as the bard stared at me.
Taking a sip from the bucket of water beside him, the bard inquired, “How long did you, you know, manage with her condition?”
For a moment, I struggled to remember that far back. It was centuries ago, and my memory wasn’t what it used to be. Nodding to myself, I replied, “Thirty-two years.” It seemed like a blink to me now, but three decades was a long time. “I kept at it after her passing. I just needed to prove that it couldn’t be done; I had to know absolutely that there was nothing more we could have tried,” I added, smiling sadly at the minstrel with his fingers just brushing the strings of his instrument; he appeared to have forgotten about it being there, swept up in my tragic tale.
“I’m really sorry,” he murmured quietly as the flames crackled between us.
Chuckling, I sighed, “It’s been centuries.” The pain could still be raw sometimes, but my wounds would heal one day.
“Obviously, you didn’t prove immortality was impossible,” Ozan commented, rolling onto his back again. He plucked a quiet lullaby as he hummed in a way a mother does to soothe her child in the deep, dark night.
“No, I didn’t; I proved it was very possible and very terrible,” I groaned. The only people I’d spoken candidly about my immortality were other magic users and they all had their theories on my methods; Ozan was naïve to the universe and it was easier to talk to him, knowing he wouldn’t really understand. Picking up a stick and poking at the edge of the fire, I continued, “It was another decade before I made a real breakthrough. I’d started dating this girl, Fiona, and her family owned part of a massive dwarf mine. Don’t ask.” Really, they got it through a relatively fair trade of property, but no one took my word for it; I probably wouldn’t, either, given the time period.
“During that time, I had come up with a mishmash enchantment and I was just trying every ingredient I could in this blank space I couldn’t figure out. I knew it was some kind of metal or ore, or maybe viscera, but nothing I was trying worked. I’d even spent months testing the blood of different species I could get my hands on to see if it would work,” I continued as I remembered the piercing taste of tin on my tongue after ages trying known metals. Ozan was watching me with interest as I resumed, “Anyway, one day we were sitting chatting about family heirlooms when she grinned sheepishly at me and gave me this ring.” Here, I showed him the simple band; at one point I’d considered having a stone set on it, but I enjoyed the simplicity compared to my other myriad of bejewelled ornaments. “Her father had made it out of slag from the gold mine. It had no worth and it was plain, but it gave me pause,” I added, “because no one used gold in alchemy. It was the pinnacle of material and so you had no use for it, magically. But, I tried it. The ring, anyway, with almost no real gold in it.
“I was able to reanimate a squirrel momentarily. I was stunned,” I chuckled, remembering the poor creature’s short-lived return from the dead. “I took a bit of gold, melted it into a pendant, and tried my enchantment on myself. I know you’re not supposed to do that, but I was at a kind of low point, so it seemed worth it,” I explained, feeling my cheeks flush. When I’d composed myself, I continued, “It was awesome, the power that flowed through me. Just amazing. I was going to tell the other mages in my sanctuary, but when you feel that kind of power, it takes hold, kinda.” From one low point to another. “I offered it to Fiona, and she didn’t want to. I respected her decision, which was probably the right one, and I started bracing for the day I had to say goodbye to her. I always knew it would be painful, but you can’t force your lover to live forever unless they actually want to. Not if you really love them,” I murmured, sinking into a reverie.
When I pulled myself out of it, I chuckled wryly, “It wasn’t until the moment Fiona actually died that I realized just how huge a mistake I’d made.”
There was a long silence where only the distant caws of nightshade birds and the cheerful, dying crackle of the fire pierced the night. When I was thinking about turning back over and going to sleep, or at least shutting my eyes, Ozan asked, “So, what makes this enchantment so special?”
“Well,” I began quietly, “I am impervious to any kind of death, not just old age. Most of those blood sacrifice ones are only good to help you live longer if you don’t go running into burning barns; I can withstand any kind of death.” Hearing it out loud somehow made it even more real, even after all this time. “I cannot die, which is why I hid the spell and destroyed the sigils I created for it,” I whispered, barely louder than the wind.
This quiet seemed deeper, as though the true horrors of that statement were appearing to the whole world and it was trembling under the weight. Immortality, true immortality, was a curse, not a gift.
“Obviously you’ve uh, you’ve you know?” Ozan broached the uncomfortable subject in a tone I knew well, and I realized this must be the real, deep him; that the overexcited, cheerful man I’d met the day before was nothing but a mask he wore. When I didn’t respond, he cleared his throat and reiterated, this time as a statement, “Uh, you’ve tried many ways to stop living.”
Chuckling to keep from crying, I replied, “Uh, yeah, I tried. But it didn’t work. Nothing worked. Nothing has ever worked. I’ve spent the last few decades trying to die and nothing works. I can’t watch anyone else die. I will not.” I took a breath as emotion began to overwhelm me. “I am lost because I’ve done everything I wanted to do and now I don’t know what to do. I’ve lost that, that innate pull to life. I haven’t felt it in decades, but it feels worse right now,” I murmured, feeling anger seep through the gloom. As it built, I snapped, “And right now my magic isn’t even working so what use am I, anyway?”
“You don’t have magic?” Ozan asked, staring at me as though he’d been able to see it shimmering in the air around me. Sitting up straight, he set his lute down and murmured, “I’m sorry for your loss. It’s hard when the one thing you use to keep the demons at bay is suddenly gone.”
After a long minute of staring into the flames, feeling a sense of commiseration with the smiling bard, I whispered, “I’m heading to sleep. I think Sirpa’s turn is soon.” I turned over and pretended to sleep until the sun rose, shutting my eyes whenever someone was spelled off.
When the sun finally broached the tops of the trees, our troupe was relatively quiet, packing up in near silence before setting off towards the mountains. Just before midday, we started heading up a steep trail winding around the mountain, and within a couple of hours, we were trudging through snow. Sirpa asked if I could help with the cold, to which Pippi replied that I was already protecting us all and couldn’t afford to waste energy on trivial magic; clearly, he’d been sound asleep during my conversation with Ozan.
We stopped in a cave before the path veered out and around the other side of the mountain, where our mission would end. Starting a fire to warm up and reheat some leftover rabbit, our little party shivered in the inclement weather. After I’d taken my piece of meat, I stepped out into the chill wind to stabilize my emotions before the final leg of our journey.
“So, you want to kill yourself? That’s why you’re doing this? You have no magic, so you may as well die?” a hearty female voice asked. Conall stood a step or two inside the cave, but far enough from the group to keep our conversation private; she was chewing on a legbone with abnormally large canines. “And you’re willing to take all of us along with you, what, out of spite?” she spat.
Shaking my head, I replied, “I just, I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, you need to tell us if you can’t handle this because a dragon will burn us all to a crisp before you can speak a spell. Or, I suppose, wave your hands at it?” Conall growled, whining as she sucked the marrow from the bone. Nodding at my shaking fingers, she asked, “You gonna finish the marrow?”
Again, I shook my head and passed her the bone. As she headed back inside, I steadied myself to confront Sirpa. I cleared my throat and was about to ask for a word when he turned and grinned at me.
“Ah! I wanted to give you this sword, just in case,” he stated as he handed me a heavy longsword in a gilded sheath. Looking around at the rest of our group, he asked, “Does anyone else want an extra weapon? I brought a few just in case, so, take what you want.” Wren took him up on the offer, winking at me as she hooked a small sword onto her belt beside a series of insanely sharp knives.
I decided that I would do whatever I could to protect the group, even if that meant using the energy of a spectacular death to do it. Hefting the blade in my hand, I admired the glint of the metal and smiled across at Ozan. He’d picked out an axe that had once been enchanted to cut through dragonhide, but was now almost useless; it wouldn’t do him much good in that form. Beside him, Fiore was looking at Sirpa’s once-spelled arrows that wouldn’t deal a death blow to anything with armour now.
Something came over me like a spell; energy that hadn’t flowed through me for ages rippled through my veins. I felt warm again. I’d never realized that I was cold. Cold and alone and now, now I wasn’t. Now, I had a purpose again. I had to live to protect my comrades.
“I need to respell all your weapons,” I stated as the group started back out into the blowing snow. For a moment, as I had their full attention, I added, “I’d also like to try a more dangerous strategy before we actually go after the dragon.”
We crouched along the wall, listening to the dragon’s rhythmic breathing vibrating through the mountainside. Though I had spelled the weapons in case we needed them, I was hoping I could convince the dragon we weren’t there, so I stepped out onto the ledge in front of the nest. Curled up around a clutch of eggs was a massive beast with shimmering scales, claws that could crush a large elephant, and a pair of stunning leather wings.
Motioning to Ozan, I started to chant a powerful telepathy spell towards the dragon as the bard began to play a lullaby on his lute. As the gentle melody flowed through me and into the dragon’s sleeping mind, its breathing slowed even more.
Fiore, Conall, and Pippi climbed around us as Sirpa stood with his arrow aimed at the dragon’s heart, prepared to let it loose if the beast woke up. As they searched through the piles of gold and jewels, plucking items here and there for their own pouches, I felt the dragon pulling gently on my spell. It was difficult to keep my focus on the music as I struggled to keep the creature’s mind calm and blank. My mind kept wanting to drift to the object of our quest: a huge bag of raw-hewn gems worth more than our entire kingdom put together.
Finally, Conall touched my shoulder on the way back around the bend and I slowly released the dragon’s mind. I instinctively shoved Ozan away from me and into the cover of the ice wall just in time; the great lizard opened its fiery eyes and I found myself engulfed in flames.
For a few seconds, I thought I’d died. Honestly, I wasn’t that unhappy about it. I opened my eyes to the whole troupe staring down at me.
Grinning, Ozan exclaimed, “She lives! She lives!” and broke into an impromptu ballad about my immortality. Perhaps I have a few adventures still in me. And maybe I’m not as lost as I thought.
Pretty Twisted Mirrors 