A Colder Moment

There was no stall of Tinkers at the marketplace, just an empty spot where they had set up. Neither were there signs of struggle or combat, nor was the crowded marketplace in any state of upset. I frowned, before remembering - They will have probably returned to the Caravan where Marjorie was waiting.

 

I spun on my heel and began to move towards the eastern wall of the city. The people of Mericella still flocked through the streets on their daily business. Several merchants and well-to-do aristocrats rode on horses " normally the small beasts common to the Verich coast.

 

There was one animal, however, that caught my eye. Black and sleek, it was willful beneath the mustachioed gaze of its aristocratic rider.

 

I needed to get to the tinkers fast.

 

I tapped the heel of the black horse’s rider. “Excuse me sir?”

 

He scowled down at me.

“What, tinker?” I’d almost forgotten I was still wearing the clothes Marjorie had lent me.

 

My fingertips formed Force with a Direction third harmonic, and I pulled him off his saddle and put a foot in the vacated stirrup.

 

“Stop him!” screamed the red-faced Aristocrat, his salt-and-pepper mustache standing on end. I leapt into the saddle, and slapped the rump of the horse.

 

I galloped down the center of the street, my russet tinker’s cloak billowing out behind me. People separated in front of me hurriedly, eager to get out of the way.

 

I was beginning to learn, I think, that very rarely is the world fair or logical. It was due to this, more than anything - this entropy, this opportunity for coincidence and human misunderstanding - that I was not stopped, even as I galloped out the front gate and nodded to the guards.

 

It took a few minutes to arrive at the hill where the tinkers had planned to stay. As I rounded the crest of the hill, my mouth dried, and I felt my gorge rise.

 

The caravans were scattered around the hill, many of them torn apart into planks and shards of wood.

 

The bodies were scattered around the hill as well. Men, women…and tiny little bodies of the children I had taught.

 

One body, a splintered plank in it’s side, moved a little, exposing it’s face to me.

 

Marjorie’s face.

 

And then time was still, and the whole world was that crumpled heap, pierced with an oversized splinter. My lip trembled.

“M…Marjorie?”

 

I rushed to the ground next to her, dropping to my knees. I tore the wood out of her body, weaving runes with my left hand - patterning runes to seal flesh whole, as though it had never been torn.

 

The runes failed, crumbling into dust. At the time, I thought it was a result of my own panic and carelessness.

 

The blood just trickled from the wound in her side. If she had been alive, the blood would have moved as the heart propelled it. Even in my panic, the analytical part of me, the part that did the mathematics and the runic formulae, recognized the medical symptoms for what they were. My breathing began coming faster and faster. I tried again to form runes of Patterning and repair, but my panic overcame me and they crumbled once again.

 

The familiar images began to flash through my head: My son, another red-painted package on the ground, just like Marjorie was now; the stump of my brother’s hand as he shoved it in my face, the wrinkles of distress around my father’s eyes when last we talked.

 

Finally, the last image - one I had imagined, sown together out of my other memories. I saw my brother, beating my son to death with his fleshy lump, the blood staining his forearm as he grinned; while Wyla huddled in the corner.

 

And now, I had another moment to to add to my repertoire of brokenness - a colder moment, perhaps, than any of the others.

 

Marjorie lay there, a parcel both utterly broken and horribly complete. The world would never again be graced with her voice late at night, or the delicate sound as she sipped her tea, or the warmth of her honest smile.

 

I had saved the Tinkers once, but the second time I had been too slow. Some of Marjorie’s words came back to me - after I had wished her a good morning, she had thanked me for letting her be there to see it.

 

I felt my throat close, but I choked out a whisper regardless.

 

“I wish I could have given you all the sunrises in the world.” I pressed my forehead against hers. Her skin was cold, and I shivered.

 

There was a click behind me.

 

I hurled myself to the side; and a whip crack-like noise, deafening, echoed around the hill.

 

I landed on my side, and reached to grab my staff from its spot on my back " before remembering that I’d thrown it away in the flight from the Academy. I cursed my lack of foresight and rolled to my feet, fast as I had ever been.

 

A tall man dressed all in black stood twenty feet from me, arm held out, an eerily calm expression on his face. The fingers of his outstretched hand were wrapped around a metal object, smoke rising from said object’s pipe-like barrel.

 

A firearm. I had heard of the things, of course. Jaari, the huge country across the Vient Sea, used them in place of the squadrons of crossbowmen used in Empirical Candor. The Candorians found firearms too expensive to utilize effectively - more so in terms of the price of ammunition than the price of the weapons themselves - and as such, they were a mostly theoretical concept within the bounds of my country. Moreover, the Verich Coast had never seen any large-scale combat in modern times. The only weaponry to be found was of a simpler kind - swords and woodsman’s axes, and the occasional crossbow from Candor proper. A firearm would be worth a fortune.

 

The cold metal in the tall man’s hand was anything but a theoretical concept. He flicked brass a lever with his thumb, and the firearm clicked. I stood, frozen, my heartbeat playing in my ears.

 

Jaari did not just use firearms because they were cheaper there  (due, of course, to the high levels of minable explosive minerals they possessed) but also as a counter to the military magi of other countries. After all, a mage would never finish casting a spell before the lead shot, propelled by saltpeter and sulfur, found his chest.

 

I wouldn’t have had time to cast a spell, and now that the tall man had reloaded (which is what I assumed the clicking sound indicated) I decided that I wouldn’t have time to avoid the shot.

 

In saying I wouldn’t have had time to cast a spell, I once again tell a lie. Most times I Weave the Runes in order to cast a spell, I coax the runes into existence with my fingertips. This is the second-easiest method for the casting of spells. The easiest is to use runes that are already in existence, like those carved on my staff. Such a casting is as fast as thought, and, in fact, I had several runes caved on my staff for situations such as these. Since I’d thrown my staff away, I had no pre-existing runes to utilize, so…

 

So instead I used the third method for casting a spell - I brought the runes into existence with the touch of my mind and self, with my thoughts and my exhaled breath. As the air whooshed between my teeth, I molded it into the runes I so desperately needed. I had never before attempted such a technique, and it honestly frightened me, but caught out as I was, I did it anyway.

 

I build Sound spliced into Force from a Progression base. I added a second harmonic of Direction to the Force rune, and then released my hold of the spell.

 

The tall man’s finger depressed the trigger mechanism.

 

My spell caught.

 

In an instant, the very air between us rippled, sound made near solid tore at the grass in front of me and threw it into the air. The lead shot encountered the wall of vibrating air and ricocheted off at an angle, pulled by the force of the explosive wind.

 

The tall man, too, was affected be my spell. Thrown away from me by the shockwave, he landed on his back and bounced, almost comically.

 

Even before the spell had completely faded, I was charging at the tall man’s prone form " but somehow, before I even got there, he was already back on his feet.

 

We crashed into one another and went down, a tangle of limbs and fury.

 

Once again, there was a part of me analyzing, formulating, gathering information. Look at his eyes " there is a faint blur about the left pupil. Perhaps that is a sign of a cataract or other ocular frailty? That is quite unusual in someone his age. I should try to stay on his left to exploit that.

 

We grappled over the firearm. The man twisted under me, his longish hair flying into my eyes. I received a sharp punch to the side of the face, and my sight failed me for a moment.

 

I blinked twice and swung at the man’s face, but he twisted again and I just grazed his chin. I moved towards his left, trying to take advantage of his blurred eye. His leg flicked up at my sternum from his prone position, but I curved my body away from the clumsy attack. I swung my knuckles into the left side of his face, finally taking advantage of the weaker sight. His eyes went out of focus.

 

My analytical side, given a moment to focus, moved on to the next item on the itinerary: One man, whether or not he had a firearm, could hardly have caused all that damage.

 

Following my instinct, I ducked, pressing myself against the tall man. A weapon of some sort whooshed over my head. I rolled off the tall man and leapt to my feet. I couldn’t fight two people straight up.

 

The moment I finished rolling, my eyes refocused on my new opponent. At that exact second, he just happened to be swinging at me with his wooden club.

 

Oh, I thought.

 

There was a crack, and darkness enveloped everything.

 

 

Reviews

[DBKaine]

Very deep and insightful. Is this already published?
Keep up the good work. There were a few errors, but we all make them. I could feel the sadness as he saw marjories face, very sad.
Good luck for the future of your work.
DBKaine

[Taal Vastal]

No, not already published, though thank you for the flattery inherent in the question!

As no one was reveiwing my work past the second chapter, I figured that uploading more chapters would be a waste of time, but since you did review this, I might as well upload more often. (I put up another chapter just before posing this comment.)