Chapter Six: Fire and Flight

Leogun can no longer rest easy.

Cold sweat ran down the young monk’s face as he woke, for the third night in the row, in the middle of the night. Leogun gasped, as he had every time. For the last week, nightmares of burning Asmund to death had plagued him. The man was still in the infirmary, though the brothers working there promised he would be able to leave soon. It did nothing to alleviate Leogun’s conscience. For the first time in nearly a month, Kaj had returned to the Monastery to try his own hand at healing his friend. Asmund was hardly in critical condition, and the burns would leave no more than a mark once they had healed, but he still grumbled incessantly about his inability to return to his duties. Never to Leogun, though. Always to Kaj, or one of the brothers tending to him. Never even in Leogun’s presence. He didn’t know whether the Iron Arm was trying to reassure him or to keep him away. Nevertheless, Leogun spent nearly every moment he could at the man’s side, much like the old man had for him when he had come to the Monastery. By now, a sizeable pile of books had accumulated by Asmund’s bedside. Still, they had no common topic or purpose. Nothing yet spoke to the young man in terms of something to do with his life, but they served to distract from what had happened. Several of the higher Flameweavers had come to try and test him, but he had turned them all away, from Brother Hudil to High Brother Erik. He preferred to avoid thinking about it entirely, but every once in a while, perhaps once an hour, he remembered hearing a voice in his head the moment before it had happened. No. It had said. No. Strong, but not loud; not a shout, not a cry, but a statement of fact. No harm would come to this man, it had said. Not even in training. So instead it had hurt Asmund.
Never do that again. Leogun said to the mass of voices babbling in his head. They still made no sense to him, but they got loud enough sometimes to distract him. It seemed to get worse by the day, and sometimes a voice would break through. A familiar one, but he couldn’t quite place in his memory.
Enough wasting time. It insisted. Go! Leogun strained to ignore it, but it was difficult.
Leogun found himself shrugging on his robe as he exited the small room that served as his home, wandering towards the healing hall. He leaned lightly on his staff, not that he needed to. It was just nice to not have to rely on his legs, still shaky from sleep. He came to the doors of the infirmary, and rapped on it three times. The door opened slightly, and a healing brother peeked out.
“You again, Brother Asmundvard?” He groaned. “Get some sleep, why don’t you.” Leogun shook his head.
“I can’t. Please just let me in, just for a bit.” He pleaded. The brother glanced inside, still hesitant until another voice, gruff like the mountain but still quiet, broke the momentary silence.
“Let the boy in, for High One’s sake.” Asmund growled. The doors opened, and Leogun pushed inside. He left his staff at the door and shook the snow off his boots before going to his mentor’s bedside. The man was sitting upright, his back on the oaken headboard and swigging from a leather bladder. He eyed Leogun warily, grey orbs peering out over the brown sack as he drank.
“Is that really a good idea?” Leogun asked with a faint smile. Swallowing, Asmund put the bladder down on the bedside table, and he chuckled.
“I’m bedridden because I have to be, boy. If they wanted to keep me from my drink, I’d be up in a second.” He grinned, bushy beard splitting to reveal a shining smile. Leogun returned it. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Asmund asked quietly. Leogun started.
“What?” He asked in disbelief. Asmund took another swig from the bladder, chuckling to himself. He looked the young monk straight in the eyes, his own piercing into Leogun’s soul.
“You might not even know it yet, but you are. You want to. There’s something inside you that’s aching to break free. So go. You’re a grown man.” He smiled. “Boy.” Leogun gulped. “Something”? That could be him, or it could be whatever was currently driving him mad. Either way, the more he thought about it, the more he realized the old monk was right. It was like there was something pulling him towards the mighty gates of the Great Monastery, yearning to be free of its walls. Leogun shook his head.
“My place is here. Leave the adventuring to old Hroggar.” He said with a smile. Asmund shrugged and drained the last of the bladder, slamming it down onto the bedside table.
“More mead!” He shouted.

The next week was more normal. Asmund was released from the infirmary, Leogun got back to scouring the library for anything that spoke to him, and Kaj returned to the village at the foot of the mountain. Things settled back into normalcy, but Leogun still found himself slapping at invisible insects, earning him a few queer looks and the occasional cruel jape.
Then he began sleepwalking.
It was harmless at first, roaming around the compound and courtyards as any normal sleepwalker might, sometimes even taking his staff. Inevitably, someone would return him to his bed, guiding him slowly to the monks’ barracks and he would settle back to sleep. It never lasted.
He began walking about with his eyes open next. His eyes were dark brown, and hard to see in the night, but the man who returned him to bed that night, Brother Geif, swore he could see the young man stare straight at him before the eyelids snapped shut.
The worst came nearly three weeks after Asmund’s burning.

Leogun walked slowly across the courtyard, free of the staff. The cold, winter winds swirled through the air as he strolled across the courtyard leisurely. One of the still-woken monks approached slowly, laughing quietly to one of his friends behind him, wary not to wake the young man. Leogun’s head snapped to the side.
His eyes were a radiant gold, shining through the night like a Sempetian lightstone. No pupil, and no sclera, just a pool of molten gold. They lit up his face like a lantern, shading his sharp features and highlighting the forsaken expression on his face.
“Leogun?” Gosta whimpered when the still half-asleep man caught sight of him, if it could be called sight. “Are you alright, boy?” Leogun stretched out a hand, and Gosta leaped back in fear of the fire of the pit. Leogun turned again, and clenched both his fists. Fires erupted all around, streaming from the fists and melting the snows and scorching the dead grasses beneath. A seemingly ancient roar, waiting to be released, burst from his open mouth. The terrible sound echoed through the courtyard.
“Get Asmund!” Gosta cried to his friend as he scrambled back from the carnage. Wheeling about, the fires had almost completely melted the snow on the ground of the yard, though not a single lick touched the barracks. Spurts of flame filled the air for no more than a second at a time, and screams began to fill the air alongside the chaos of the fires.
Leogun lurched, his vision returning, and he found nearly thirty monks shrieking as they rushed through the courtyard nonsensically in various states of undress.
“By the High One, what happened?” He asked the nearest monk. The man was cowering in the shadow and flinched when Leogun’s sight fell on him. The man scrambled further into the shadows, and Leogun reached out to help him. “Oh no.” He whispered as he looked around. He realized where he was. Once again, he was out of his bed. Once again, there was fire all around. Small blazes burned across the yard, igniting the dead grass.
No.

He bolted out the gates of the Monastery, running as fast as he could down the mountain path. No one was manning the gate then, most likely having been sent to quell the fires he had started. He had his staff strapped to his back, and a small pack hanging from his shoulder. It would have to be enough. Enough to last him, for now, until he could find a village. Not Kaj. He couldn’t ask Kaj. He’d have to tell him what happened, and the old man would think he was going mad. Which was hardly seeming like an impossibility at that moment.
Snow crunched under his shin-high hide boots as he loped down the mountain. By now, he couldn’t hear the screams of his brothers, and only the sounds of night and his own feet could be heard. Owls hooed and foxes ran about the snowy slopes, all unaware of the man in the night. The robe was a pain, keeping his feet from moving freely and making him stumble every few steps or so. It took nearly four hours of almost non-stop running to reach a spot worth stopping at. He collapsed into the snow, flakes settling on his clothes and face and turning to drops of near freezing water within seconds. His chest heaved as he lay there in the dark, no light to expose him. Only the waxing moon kept the night from being completely black. As he closed his eyes, even that disappeared.

The suns in the North were warm, even in the winter months, their light reflecting off the shining white snows that covered the rolling plains. Leogun walked across a wide swath of land next to a deep chasm, his staff crunching through the snow a second out of sync with his own footsteps. Where he was going, he had no idea. He just couldn't stay. It was too close to Aghi, and too close to the Monastery. He'd been away from the Monastery for around three days now, setting a course for some far off landmark into the distance. He felt a pull inside him. Perhaps it was wanderlust, leading him south. He remembered little from his life before the Monastery, but he doubted he'd ever been past the border. Of course, the Deharlean border would be less than the ideal destination. The selae tended to still dislike the High One's servants. More likely, Ntir would be the destination of choice, followed by a visit to Brym and its cities of sandy stone. He'd always wanted to visit them, but the isolation of the monks in their monasteries led to few well-travelled monks. The High One's preachers, or the Ordspeakers, ventured further out, but still few beyond Ntir. Long ago the North had been part of the Empire of Brym's domain, but no longer, and the almost duelling faiths of the Three and that of He, the One, were not allies.
Leogun's stomach growled. Breakfast had been hours ago, before the suns had risen into the air. It had been a small hare, cooked over a fire. Not with the golden fire that burned from his hands. He'd made sure not to use that, not that it had been easy to resist the temptation. Struggling with the few matches he had left in the dark was hard in the cold snows that had fallen from the sky that night.
He had caught the hare after nearly an hour of chasing it. It was fast, as was its nature, and the tall monk was considerably slower in his heavy robe, trampling through the deep forest snows. Finally, however, he had gotten the drop on it, swinging around a tree and striking it soundly with the butt of his staff. The mammal had died on the spot, and Leogun had muttered a prayer in its honour. The lack of ceremony in its death hadn't made it any less delicious to the hungry monk's mouth. He stared off into the distance. Small spirals of smoke floated away on the wind from a city far off on the horizon.
“Something to work for, I suppose.” He said to himself.