He was a thing from the unknown heavens—a creature that sowed doubt and deception in the highlords of the Orvalen. He was a malicious breed. The great deceiver. One split by the mighty Shaedoran. Yet he still lingers. There, here. A smile. He lingers—author unknown—first age.
MERRIN found himself in a world of pervasive pain. Stunned. The darkness, too, ruled all senses, an affliction that came strangely innately. It was not. If uncertainty was the norm, this truth was one he clung to. That, and the will. To live. To survive. To wake up.
Yet the pain. It resisted. Stand. Move. Anything. Any sign that he still lived. The pain refused all experiments. Merrin was left, within, locked in that internal awareness of pain, fear, and the dark. Alone. How long will this last? How long has it been?
Questions. Questions. The sole means to starve the heat and ache. He pondered certain notions—felt them as voices whispering around. Some spoke, some refused. Some expressed. The pain still, in the end, lorded them all: just him and the pain. Pain, pain. Merrin felt the cold streaking of water over his cheeks. His tears. They, of course, steamed away, leaving the sure itching and sting.
This, however, assured him of something. He still lived. Not dead. Not in the bosom of the Rav'zul. No, he lived. The pain came again as it always did. More on more. Pressing, burning into his skin with some self-imposed desire to pierce it. Would it? Perhaps it should. Everything else was speared by the pain.
In that silence, however, soft skittering flowed into his eyes. Senses perked, and the noise gave form. Something small, tiny was crawling.
Over stone—hard rocks it moved. Merrin admitted the distraction and listened. The sound came like the steepings of micro feet. Surely dismissible to the lowlander senses. But enjoyable to his native one. He listened then to the motions, deriving terrestrial awareness from the scattered motility. That proved a thing of adequate leisure—a diversion from the soreness.
A diversion, not an absolution.
He managed, however, to probe knowledge from this. Likely, he rested within a chamber. Big, based on the often distant scurryings. Rocks—in chaotic placement, filled the space. No light, no external sound. Nothing. By sense, the room was trammelled from the externity. That was bad. That was of great terribleness. Merrin felt that empty state—stomach hollow—heart, a capsule of unnerving coldness.
That, as it often did, drained the striving will. What if the casting failed? What if his witnesses fell then to a hard death? The concurrent question. The mind plague from which all desires are drained. The thing that turned life to death-wishing…It suggested great resistance as a means of starving it away. And Merrin, with the passing of moments, knew himself drained.
I need to stand…The first thought in the darkness. The first hope of sentience. I need to wake up. Stand. The witnesses are still alive. I need to save them. Save them!
He remained in that negative serenity—the pain, the heat, the further sounds. Less distant now, yet, the unintelligence of it pushed the mind to sound desertion. He heard, but didn't. No point came, just the reminder of the shape of the chamber. Oval. An odd form when superimposed with the known ones of Night. Square, not oval. This beckoned further ponderings.
No distractions…Wake up! He called to that innermost self—no response.
The heat overlayed his skin. Ever present. The froststone worked at an intense level, he imagined. The heat did win in the end. In slowness, his state became that of the swelter. How long before the burned became the currentness? He prayed to the Savior. None written—things of the innerspeech.
That, he hoped, served a purpose in the eyes of the Almighty. Again, the mental silence—the physical pain. In it, he stayed, writhing. "Wake up!" The words came out, heard as discordant sounds. But it did. "Wake up!' Clarity came from it. "Wake up!" He roared the words.
Eyes sprang open, a gasp freeing from his lips. Jerked from the pain, Merrin rolled into kneeling, panting. The pain came upon him as an aftermath of great intensity. Wincing, face hardened on the brows and jaws. Such maddening severity. But endurable. It had to be—defeat from it would mean worse. He freed his hands from the earth, casting air over it. Warming air as the heat persisted.
Where am I? The thought forced from the wrenching, answered only by the blackness and scufflings. No words. No noise. A chamber of unnerving silence. Sweat beaded down his chin. He felt it and recognized an internal startlement to the darkness. Unseen, it remained to him.
What terrible absence this was.
Merrin moved, his hands tracing the hard surfaces of hot stones—high ones, many low ones, all shrouded in that deep darkness. Where am I? The unanswered question echoed. Where are the others? No response found means to him.
He'd wrapped them in the wind, a protective measure. Yet, around him, there was no sign of sentient life. Where were they? The fall had likely estranged them. Likely. If so, Merrin thought, I must find them.
He breathed, his posture slumping as was the way in the darkness. Moving slowly, fingers gleaned knowledge from the warm surfaces. He'd quickly circled the chamber, confirming its initial impression of an oval shape. The sleek walls seemed common in the Night Lands. Was this night then? Possibility remained in flux.
Tired, he moved to what he perceived as the center. The air filled with the skittering of wall bugs. Eltium was nearby. Normally, an intriguing prospect, but it held little consequence now.
He now knew it was a large room. Nearby, a shattered slab stood—harder than stone, yet more delicate. Like Eltium. Was it? He dismissed the question, searching for an exit. If this were a chamber, reality dictated a way out.
A way he now had to find. Wood lay here, once at least, now charred. It seemed like a bed billet. Someone had clearly lived here. Who? He felt through it, an action performed to pass the time until his force was regained. Not long now, he knew, but still too long. Waiting, his mind drifted to the explosion—the unforeseen event. Moeash. Why did you do that? A persistent question.
Tired, he transferred to a high, warm stone, staring into the darkness. A forced patience. Several notions shifted then through his mind, and he found his strength still minuscule. Too weak for the desired ponderings. He sensed a lesson in that: wait, or panic. Merrin felt himself teetering on the precipice of the latter.
The sheer blackness almost ensured it. A strange sensation came over him—the absence. His eyes opened not to visual input, but to the dark. An abnormality for him. Merrin always saw in the dark. What caused the sudden change? Was it force depletion? He wondered at the likelihood and, by some means, felt the potential. It was the only difference. What else could it be?
This led to a startling thought: Was everything about him tied to the force? Were his eyes a product of it, too? The caster's power remained as much a mystery as before; no knowledge, he guessed, would ever reveal that veil. He sighed away the distress and channeled the tiniest amount of force—a test for clarity.
His eyes widened, the darkness brightening into that familiar ashenness by which he saw in the dark. He gasped. It was as he'd thought. The force was tied to his eyes. From the beginning, his uniqueness was in relation to the caster. For how long? What did this mean?
Did all veilCounsels share the same? He clicked his tongue. Standing, scanned the chamber, seeing now the space with clarity. The walls were rusty, sleek as imagined. The room was a collection of ruins and decay. Stones lay shattered on crude floors, some piled into metal high pillars. He stared, stepping back. The room was oval—the walls curving in a circular pattern, giving a spherical impression.
"Where is this?" His eyes soon rested on the slab he'd once felt. A three-meter-high, square object, its top left smashed, leaving it cracked. Drown rust smeared over its forms—letters turning crude in chaotic arrangement. Words were written on it, Merrin noted. Strange but familiar glyphs. Old tongue, he realized, stepped close.
On the base of the stele were rocks, high, low, scattered about as though the structure had been sunk into it. Maybe? He rounded the monolith, observing the decrepit state. It spoke of relevance, the rock. Likely, at the point of its creation, a special purpose had been assigned to it.
Merrin moved back, gaining a vaster view of the shape. Old tongue, a language he was not fluent in. No one knew much about it. However, its trails remain in everyday words. The wall's, now that required a grandness to decipher.
Later.
His eyes shifted attention, sweeping the preponderant factor. The outdoors. Where was it? A chamber surely needed one. That is, if the oldness of everything had not affected it also. Merrin held faith, moving his fingers through the sleek, often stone-walled chamber. Nothing outside the progressive heat, the negative, and the elevating force, the positive. He enjoyed the latter.