The salt from the tears of the fallen, sugar from the joy of the victors, tang from the fruits of providence, coalescing, swimming, materializing in the Aether. The raucous expression of unfettered joy and hopeless abandonment into the void of ecstasy, the fires of victory burn on, flickering at the edges and keeping away the darkness for a moment. Above all, time stands over the celebrations of the victorious, knowing that the fruit will turn bitter, and the salt will intensify, and this hard one victory will begin to shear off from the present and eventually fester into the shear fecundity of expanse of time. Moving onwards, forever ingesting all in its path, victor and defeated alike. Time takes it all.
Braided wheat. Shallow wind blowing from the northeast. Foetid smells of rotting grain. Pale sun shone through pallid clouds that rolled on past the horizon. An uncomfortable heat that sat over everything.
It was early July. Kansas.
Steps crackling on the broken wheat like thunder in the far distance. A sweater accomplishing its task with hyper-efficiency. Unpronounceable terror hanging in the air as heavy as the rain threatening, that would never come.
Footsteps ran hollow. Unnaturally echoing in a space that should hold no echo. A room with no ceiling, yet felt like an old drop ceiling in a musky shallow basement.
I drew a deep breath of the air. Uncomfortable, like taking a deep sip of salt water. Something was not right. I heard my own footsteps, like a predator creeping up on its prey in the dead of night.
I drew near an opening in the field.
My mind was racing, and dulled. Every thought felt like a hammer on my skull. The land reflected my pain, as if my mind was a totem for the world. The pangs of thought, echoed out across the land as if the earth and my mind were simultaneously ripping open like a new-born infant screaming in to the world.
I stumbled and fell into the clearing. I looked up to the sky, and saw nothing but the endless clouds blanketing the plains. I screamed, a wordless scream of pure horror. The world faded, my vision drew dark. I slept a dreamless slumber.
A lonely country road, rural Massachusetts. A normal day, a normal sky, a normal life. Jack was walking home from work at the local AMC it was 5:03PM. Jack hadn't eaten since 11:00 o'clock that morning his stomach was growing. He felt the pangs move through his body and thought of his mother's homemade mac and cheese that was waiting for him just a fifteen-minute walk away.
There was a cool summer breeze that blew over the wheat fields, milling the heads of grain through invisible hands. This was the third week that Jack was back home from college. He was getting a degree in history at The University of Rhode Island. But when he hadn't told his parents was that he had dropped out almost three months before. It was a combination of anxiety, stress, and depression that drove Jack to this decision. Jack had told himself he hadn't been happy for the entire three years he had been in school. It was nothing but cursory friendships, brief acquaintances, and random hookups. Jack thought that moving back home for the summer would clear his mind and he'd finally be able to find that place that his heart yearned for, but mind didn't know where to find it. Somewhere he could be at peace and find relationships that meant something and weren't just the casual human connections that dotted his life, like tiny little holes in a drop ceiling.
Jack's hunger began to ruminate with his existential dread that had he been carrying around for the past month and change. He thought, "Why the hell am I doing this? I could have just continued on for another year or two and got the fucking degree and moved on with my life and had a career." A career in what? Jack had no idea. He had seen shows on the Discovery Channel or CNN who had interviews with "experts", who had the title "History Expert" under their name. Jack thought, fuck it, that's a good enough reason to get a degree. Or at least that's what he had thought 4 years ago when he was in high school and was considering what to do after he graduated. At this point, three weeks into his job at the local AMC, he was reconsidering his decision he made when he was a naive teenager.
More than anything Jack longed for something in his life, a connection, a relationship, meaning. He wanted to wake up on some fine morning and the solution to be there, sitting at the end of his bed looking into his eyes telling him, "Everything is going to be okay".
He knew that's not how things really work out. But god, oh god... he wished it worked like that.
Jack was deep into his own thoughts. He glanced up at the lone country road in front of him, he was getting close to his house at this point. Just one more hill and he would be there. But as his eyes focused and took in the reality around him, he saw something out of the ordinary. Flashing blue and red lights just over the next hill. There was an old stone hedge following the road and the wind whistling through the Maples above him, all leading to the cusp of a hilltop in front of him. His mind started racing. Thinking, "I don't hear sirens", his mind naturally going towards the police, first responders, or firefighters. He was reminded of something he saw on Tik Tok, that first responders don't turn on their sirens when dealing with heart attack victims. He felt his stomach drop. His parents had been the only thing constant in his life at this point. They were kind of a pain in the ass most of the time, but his mom had always was there for him, and his father was to a far more distant manner. He then started thinking of a life without his parents, without support, and he felt a heavy burden fall over his heart. He hadn't realized how much he had been leaning on his parents in the past three months. Calling them to talk about random life events, calling just to talk, calling because he felt they understood him. He then imagined a world without that, and his heart dropped. He knew we couldn't stay with his parents forever, but they had been such a support column recently when everything had felt like a building collapsing around him. His pace started to quicken, and his heart started to beat heavier. He was already making excuses in his head of what it could be. But in the back of his head there is little voice that always said, "It's always this shit that happens to you. Suck it up, kid."
His thoughts starting back to college of the previous fall. He had asked out a new girl in his class, her name was Simone. She was cute, funny, and thoughtful. Jack had asked her out in the least committal possible way. After Simone had left a notebook and the library previous night, Jack had handed back to her after class, and in four words asked her out for coffee.
Jack remembered back to the spring of his freshman year. He was new, like everyone else, and terrified of seeming like a kid. He had started growing out a mustache that really didn't suit him at all. Later he would describe it as a weasel had crawled up onto his face and died. He said that joke to his friend Jacques, a month after they had met in his intro freshman course.
He remembered back to Simone and him sitting in Simone's apartment. He knew it wouldn't have lasted forever; they hadn't been talking to each other for the past few weeks. But as Simone sat him down and passed him a cup of coffee that warmed his hands, like warm gloves in the cool winter chill, he knew what was coming. That was just three months ago. Before he dropped out.
Jack blinked. Returned to the moment. He was running up the hill. Running to the lights that had scared the shit out of him. Already in the back of his mind, somewhere he was not conscious of, his heart was repairing itself. He had made those connections in school that weren't just cursory bullshit. Simone breaking up with him had been the final straw in a camel that made up the mental health crises of the past three years. It had pushed him over the edge, and he broke. The broken things and life don't stay broken usually, Jack knew that. Jack had been through worse. Not much worse. Maybe like a sliver worse. But the love and compassion and friendships and connections and beauty that he had seen throughout his life had prepared him well for this dark moment. His live was crashing down around him, but underneath him he had columns that were supporting him. All he had to do was ask. Asking is always the hardest part.
As Jack crested that hill, he saw something that confused him deeply. There were no police sirens, no first responders. It was a convenience store, right smack dap next to his house. Literal feet from the eastern side of his parent's house. The house he had grown up in. That his parents lived in and still did. Somehow, over the course of eight hours, his parents house had acquired a neighbor. A convenient store with a red and blue flashing light out in the front proclaiming its name, "Hart's Own".
The dread and terror and anxiety that had welded up in Jack died away. In its place came a flood of questions, confusion, and deep existential problems. That Jack would have to deal with. But right now, at this moment, on top of that hill, somewhere in Jack's brain, healing had begun.
A single lone body awakes in a land of pure white the likes of which gives no respite, no rest. Save for the fact that along the borders of this room there is blackness that is the absence of light. On one side of this room there is a mirror perfectly reflecting the austerity of the whites and the dim of the dark borders that line this room. In the mirror it becomes clear that the whites are not austere or absent but rather are a void, a void of absolute nothingness. It's as if material existence itself reflects off this surface. The black borders reflect this whiteness and in some imperceivable manner enhance the void. It is as if the bounds of reality are defined here at these edges of black that line this room padded in white, mirrored on one side.
The only thing in this room, besides the lone body, is a single chair, three steel threads going down the high back, with a bucket seat that looked as uncomfortable as it felt. Sat in this chair was the lone body. In a moment that felt like the Big Bang in this void of action, void of matter, void of existence... that body arose to its feet.
That body pushed away from the ground as a Titan in the beginning of the world pushing away the stars from the earth. With an austerity in the movement that reflected the austerity in the hollowed void of this room that body moved towards the mirror.
With a gaze from black eyes that reflected the void of the blackness of the borders, that body looked into the mirror and spoke, " I know you're watching me." The words themselves seemed to appear out of nowhere. The words hung like a copse of dead trees waiting for the embrace of winter. In this nothingness, it was beautiful.
A memory hung in the air of a lonely country road in a nameless country in a nameless world where the sky rolled on for years and fields looked as if they encompassed the world. Fields of familiar grains, a postcard picture of a world held in stasis. Pollen drifted in the air as chandeliers decorating a sky as blue as the azure mountain lakes that punctuated the far horizon. One could look into this sky and see eternity and feel welcomed.
Suddenly a crack in the sky deep and bloody red. Initially, it seemed far away as if it would never reach this spot, this hill, this road. But as the fragments of time progressed that crack grew bigger, and it drew across the sky a bloody path of fire and hell.
The world and the universe beckoned a cry that shrieked of the murder that was being perpetrated.
The memory was gone.
All that was left was the blank room with the black borders that screamed of the absence and the void that now made up this new reality. And with it the ends of a world... an end of a universe that never was.
Like all thing's, death is not the final word. In this room, a void, an absence, a nothingness and everything, there emerged a crack in the mirror. A crack that had not appeared there before but had made itself manifest as if the will of this room and the universe and entropy and all things brought to happen.
The Observer looked through the crack and what it perceived was a black void that was darker than all of the borders that surrounded this room, that surrounded the existence of this room. And it smiled.
Stories tale of a beast with a thousand mouths. Each greedier and hungrier than the next. At least that's how the tale's used to go. Nowadays, they're called the under-folk. In the early 90's scientists discovered that under the right conditions a wormhole would temporarily breach the surface of reality under children's beds. The exact conditions are still under investigation, but generally, they were consisted of low-light environments, concrete housing foundations, and the most important ingredient of all fear of young children. The wormhole would last no longer than 5 minutes, typically about three-and-a-quarter minutes, but in that time the under-folk would cause mischief such as stealing laundry, causing bumps in the night, and generally terrifying children to extract the terror from the youths' hearts. Generally, the scientists studying this phenomenon thought the process was never harmful to the children, hence the dozens and dozens of test subjects that had involuntarily been the subject of a dozen government-funded research programs. Unfortunately, that all changed with the 13th experiment.
Experiment 13 consisted of a standard observing period in a small commuter town outside of Boston. The child in question was 8 years old, and had a tendency to sneaking into the family living room after his parents had gone to sleep to watch scary movies on Netflix. The subjects were typically randomly selected, based on a geographical region, in this case a 50-mile radius around Boston, MA was selected. This was to prevent bias in the experimental data. The experiment started off normally, the setting up of monitoring equipment during a routine house inspection, the monitoring of the feeds outside in an unmarked van. What they didn't expect was the scream at 2:12am -- a scream that shattered windows, the current scientific understanding of the under-things, and their grant funding...
It was 9pm on a Thursday, Emilia was in a car on her way to another late-night show interview.
Blood spatter on the counter, a pen knife on the floor, sirens in the distance.
This marked the 5th one she had done in the past month. Tomorrow, she had a morning show and Saturday she had a meeting with a publisher on a book opportunity.
The person behind in her line was dead, the contents of their head now spilt along a neat line in front of her. She vomited in her mouth and swallowed it out of fear for her life.
Since the event Emilia had more money than she knew what to do with. She had quit her job, hired a publicist and financial manager. Life on paper was going very well for Emilia.
Emilia's phone rang. Their immediately came a bark to throw the phone towards the man with the gun. She complied.
Emilia's phone rang, it was her publicist. Calling about a UK morning talk show on Monday. They had already booked her a Sunday night red eye, first class. The opportunity paid well it was $10k booking fee, room-and-board at a 5-star hotel in the middle of downtown London.
The phone call was likely a debt collector, Emilia had come to the bank to cash out the remainder of her savings account to pay rent this month. Emilia had pissed herself in the commotion of everything. The gun shots, the blood, the bits of human skull that littered that dusted her shirt.
The green room had about a dozen deviled eggs for Emilia, a condition in her rider. She liked deviled eggs, her grandma always used to make the best deviled eggs for holidays and family gatherings.
The gunman had bent over to check the pockets of the corpse now in front of Emilia. A pen knife had fallen out of the man's pocket.
She picked up the knife, on the counter and gave the egg a quick poke and right into her mouth.
Jim was working as a waitress at cocktail bar, at least that's what he was imagining at the moment, that much was true. "Don't you Want Me" playing in the background on another Thursday night at Arnold's Aromatic Launders. There was a rotation of exactly 16 songs that played on loop, the loop lasted about 1 hour. Meaning that for the 5 years Jim had been working at Arnold's, he had listened to that same loop of 16 songs over 5000 times. The next song was "Roxanne" by the Police. The red light outside read "Arnold's Aromatic Launders". The 'o' in Arnold and the 'a' Aromatic were completely out, and the 'L' was starting to flicker. The 5 years at Arnold's was Jim's meal-ticket while we worked himself through college. He was entering his 5th year at the local community college, studying computer science among the three other majors that Jim had accumulated during his tenure there. Arnold was pretty flexible with hours and the work was easy. Overall, not a bad gig.
More often than not, Jim would work the midnight shift. Arnold prided himself in the fact that his laundromat was open 24 hours. Meaning that somebody had to be there in the wee hours of the morning. That somebody was Jim tonight. The clock struck 3am. Jim was sipping a sugar-free Red Bull, while absent-mindedly working on homework. His mind came awake as a customer walked up to the counter. He hadn't seen him come in. "Dry cleaning for pickup", said the stranger, as he handed over a ticket. Jim looked at the ticket, got up and walked to the back with only a polite smirk and nod acknowledging the stranger's request. Jim quickly found the item, in the back. It was a small pride for Jim that he could find dry-clean tickets faster than most. It was a suit jacket, with a brown plaid pattern, shoulder pads and a leather rim to the coat. Jim grabbed the jacket by the hanger. The plastic of the dry-cleaning bag crinkling overpowering the sound of "Roxanne" from the over-head speakers. A small metallic clang sound emerged. Jim looked down to investigate. At first, Jim was confused, he knitted his eyebrows puzzling what it was as he bent over to pick up the item. It was a bullet. A bullet with a silver casing. A silver casing that had the name "James Dormer" inscribed on it in cursive lettering. He was James Dormer. What the hell? The lights in the drop ceiling flickered and died. A sharp crack pierced the darkness. The clattering of a door coming off its hinges. Fast, rapid footsteps. A dull sickening thud. Grunts and growls of a struggle. Punctuated by a bang and a sliver of light illuminating the scene. Blood.
The lights raised. Jim groaned and sighed and looked down at his blood-soaked clothes and the mass of ineffective mass at his feet that used to be another human being, "son of a bitch, not again."
It was brilliant and dull; it was sensation and memory; it was a deluge of colors and an outpouring of soul. It was a vest. Simple and complex. The vest was made of a material that appeared to be something similar to a soft frilly blanket with feathers and tendrils of soft cotton. The vest came up to a V-neck opening that was rimmed with crinkly wax paper, that you'd find at the bottom of a box of fresh brownies. The texture was that of a slime mold, left out in the rain and cold for a winter in the pacific northwest. The shoulders of the vest came to a ridge with material that looked like tinfoil, but inexplicably felt like cinnamon; like a box of snickerdoodles fresh out of an oven, being devoured by effusive friends and family. The vest represented the life story of this being. This vest represented the memories, textures, and sensations that guided this being to this moment, recalling the punctuations in this being's life up till this moment. Beautiful and complete in its retelling of a mortal life.
The party began to wind down for the night, each attending to their routines, a normal day. The Folmir was prepping the stew and hardtack for the nightly meal, Aromir was sharpening his bow and arrow for the morrow, Anduin was reading from his tome, I was accounting for the day's expense and making sure ledgers were in order. Our party had not been together long. It started with a contract to take a bundle of valuables to the shores of the Kelmer, in the southern regions of Loren, and to deliver the bundle to the client's contact in Aqre. We were now on our fifth day of travel from Falomire. I think it had been five days, something felt slightly off about that though... It had been a hard day on the road, rain had plagued our party since the previous day, but in the late afternoon had begun to let up. As such we were all soaked and miserable.
As the steward and lead of this party, it was my responsibility that we fulfill the contract and do so in a way that meant that I had money to pay the party, and the Josera's company cut. Typically for contracts like this, the party's cut was 20%, I took 20%, and Josera took 50%, with the remaining 10% going to incidentals along the journey, room & board, stable costs, food, etc. With a group of 3 party and myself, that meant... wait the ledger says a party of 2. I must have miscounted, hmmm. The 10% coming from the fronted contract payout of 15% of the final payment. The remaining 5% were for "un-foreseen circumstances". On these routine contracts, in "safe" zones, these "un-foreseen circumstances" didn't usually come up. Worst-case, this was the fund that would go to bribes for guards as they passed along the road. Any extra was split among me and the party. That meant keeping these "un-foreseen circumstances" to "seen circumstances" as much as possible. That left us on a tight budget. And my endless duty as steward was to keep the purse string tightened, and make sure that we got ours at the end of the day.
So, my nightly ritual of bookkeeping and accounting was an exercise in daydreaming. Daydreaming of what that extra 2.5%, after split, would be spent on. Tonight, that was saving for a voyage to Sarkola, where it was said that a person could enjoy the finest foods and wines that the Northern hemisphere had to offer outside of the Forbidden City. I quite enjoyed this daydream, it consisted of me strolling through the avenues of Sarkola, ducking into an alley way here, a side street there, and eventually finding myself in a beautiful cozy cafe, where I enjoyed the finest coffee, I had tasted in my life. All while watching a beautiful sunset. In the corner of my eye, I saw a dark figure pass along those golden streets. Someone familiar? Anyway, back to work...
I went through the roles and found that my clerical error was more widespread than I liked to admit. I found that not only had I miscounted the party role at 2 instead of 3, but I had only bought enough food for 2 party and myself. Something was starting to feel off. In the distance, I heard an Owl hooting. Then half-through it stopped. Regardless, this meant that we would have to cut into the "un-foreseen circumstances" fund to buy food at the next town, which was another 2 days out.
That feeling of unease kept curdling in my stomach, like I had just eaten a soup with sour milk. It then hit me that I do distinctly remember there were only Anduin, Aromir back at the start... or was that Folmir and Aromir... This kept gnawing at me. So, I went to check the company's contract, I kept a copy signed by myself and the party members in the travel trunk to reference later, and so we could confirm bill of sale with the client and the next Josera office I could find. I rummaged through the stack of documents that I kept in the trunk. Old contracts, bills of sale, receipts from inns and stables, the random detritus you pick up from working with Josera for five years. Something happened then that had never happened to me before. I couldn't find the contract. Worse, I couldn't find the receipts from the past five days. This was now getting weird, way past comfort weird. I always saved my receipts, always. It was compulsory for me at this point. The contract might have been misplaced, but the receipts. I wouldn't get my full cut if I didn't have the receipts, it was standard company policy. It was proof that the delivery didn't just magically appear to the client, and you had fulfilled your end of the contract. And they were all gone. I distinctly remembered staying at an inn on the second night, because of storm, we were waylaid for a day until the rain eased up, but no receipt. I then back at the rest of the camp. I don't remember Folmir being at the inn with us... Or was it Aromir?
Then like a punch to the gut, I found a company notice. It was titled "Watch for Changelings Along Your Path; Count Your Number". Oh god. I remember this. I remembered getting a lecture from the supervisor at the Ayur station about this. It was something to the effect of "blah, blah, blah, you won't even notice them until their among you, blah, blah, blah." I had heard of this happening decades ago, before the "safe" zones were established on the major throughfares, but that was old caravanners just talking at the bar, "just talking...", I whispered. The changelings were said to play tricks on your memory. They were said to insert themselves in your memory like a maggot on rotting meat. Easy enough to get off, but the damn thing you were swatting it off was dead and rotting. Changelings were said to pray on those with the taint of the whisper. They said that those who were pure of intent, wouldn't be touched. I couldn't remember the last time I met anyone who fit that bill though. It was said that if you stuck to the "safe" zones and the cities you would be safe from the whisper. That the priests and priestesses had driven out the taint with their chanting and praying. I shook my head, "back to the matter at hand", I whispered to myself.
One of these three could well be a damn changeling. "What the hell am I supposed to do about that?" I noticed I was turning at my ring on the finger, I bought this while I was in Aqre the last time, from a merchant who had said it was from Sarkola. I was grasping at my memory by the fistful, trying to think "what do you do with a changeling?" I couldn't remember, I couldn't remember... I took three deep breaths. There was something about "changelings couldn't touch gold without revealing themselves", I think... I looked down at my ring, it was brass... I thought long and hard, "where the hell is there gold in this camp?", I thought. "What the hell would I do if I revealed it?", I thought. I didn't have a good answer for either. The Josera company paid well compared to other services, but not that well. I obviously couldn't ask one of them for a gold piece...
An option floated through my brain for a fraction of a second, "what if I wait?" I could theoretically wait till we reached the next town, go to the nearest temple and have them expose the changeling. I don't have to do a thing! I just find a priesthood member, and they'll handle the whole thing. Afterall, I couldn't remember what the hell you could do with a changeling once you revealed it. Something about chanting maybe. That course of action did mean a few things though, (1) I would have to travel with a changeling for the next two days, "two days, right?", I whispered, and (2) I would be questioned and interrogated by the priest as well by revealing that a changeling has latched itself onto me, hence having the taint of the whisper. "What would happen after the interrogation?", I had no idea. I hadn't heard of anything like this occurring for decades. I couldn't remember what they had done in cases like this in the past. A cold shiver went down my spine. The night was getting colder. The moon was beginning to rise over the eastern hills.
"What's the alternative?" I asked myself. I couldn't think of anything. On the other hand, changelings are said to be quite erratic and unpredictable. Some are totally harmless, and some will kill you while you sleep and steal everything you have. On the other other hand, it's said that once a changeling is revealed that they will fly into a violent rage. Involving ripping, tearing, maiming, and claws.
So, option (A) I reveal the changeling here after somehow finding a piece of gold and try to kill this thing before it kills us, or (B) I wait till we reach the next town ("Arnem, I think it was?") and hope that the changeling doesn't kill us all in our sleep. For option (A), I didn't even have a sword on me, this was supposed to be a "safe" zone dammit! I had a letter opener, a fucking letter opener! "What was I supposed to do with that?", I thought. The only reason Aromir had a bow was to kill game along the path, and Anduin was a fucking medical wizard. Worse, either one of them could be the changeling!
I took a deep breath and closed the ledger for the night. Looks like it's option (B), shit.
