"Are you mad!" The familiar voice chimed, and Merrin avoided the thing before and stared to the side. There, Catelyn, stood, eyes wide. "You killed an Excubitor!"
"I…I…I" Merrin looked at what he had done and yelped. The man—the once mighty guardsman, knelt, head slouched. Blood spewing from his shoulders. No hand. His left arm was gone, sliced clean with blood pooling beneath. But that couldn't have killed him. The cut stretched from stomach to shoulder. Half gone.
A brutality.
"I had to save them!" He forced the words.
"Now, they die!" Catelyn said.
"What?"
A sudden wave slammed into him—wind. How? The world tumbled, a swirl of spinning colors—brown, dirt, black, white. He collided with the ground, wincing. How terrible was the pain…That thought lasted a moment, then fear. Great, horrible fear. He looked up through the half-state of his mind and saw, walking the peak—a man, middle-aged, dressed in a black coat so blue it seemed black. His black hair was stranded with trails of gray-white—and his eyes, that one seemed a void—a pool of deep blackness. A caster. Danger had come.
Merrin strained to stand, an action that caught the sight of the caster. The cold gaze fell upon him, bringing a state of bradyphrenia. He knew this his own doing—a self-imposed limit brought by the sight present. The caster had come. He had killed an Excubitor, and the caster had come.
The slow moving man was guarded by two mighty looking Guardsmen. Taller, far more imposing than the dead one. This ones, seemed similar to the ones witnessed when he had arrived in the mines. What would happen now?
The caster scanned the peak. And in true clarity, Merrin saw the brief startlement over the man's eyes as he saw the Excubitor. Dead, half-bodied. What would happen now?
He said, "To kill an Excubitor?" he looked down—where? Merrin froze—the caster was looking at Moeash.
No!
"I suppose it was for him you killed the guardsmen!" The two excubitors growled. A powerful booming of sound. Death heralding. "To have killed an Excubitor. My Excubitor for a darkCrown cannot be allowed. What would the other casters think of me? Ah, no."
Merrin ran—wind whistling past, world flashing back. He had to do it now. As he did before. Again. This caster. This man wanted Moeash, too.
He heard a voice. "Do not think me the same as an excubitor!"
Wind slapped him, throwing him off the ground. The sky knew him now. In passings of measured moments, he was high above, the roof fangs mere meters away. What was happening?
He fell. And the ground rushed up in greeting. Then, pain followed. More pain. A weirdly subtle addition to the mad fervour of agony that filled him. But he had to endure. He was to know pain, not them.
He looked up and saw the dismissive glance of the Caster. Those eyes said things. Nothing. He was nothing to them—even the Excubitors outside the livid growls made no motions. This brought startling awareness. If he were nothing, even after killing an Excubitor, what hope did he have to force freedom for the slaves?
The dead slav—the thought broke as Merrin took to his feet, shoulders trembling, breath burning in absorption. "Please," he could only beg. "Take me, not them." Now, those words admitted to a fruitless pattern. He had done the same with the excubitor, yet…
"That I cannot do." The man said, body turning fully towards Moeash.
A notion sprang into Merrin. Casters took time. Casters pushed symbols!
The world turned gray. It was a flooding of dull colors over varied themes. Everything paled and in them, shapes, skulls burning with fire pressed closely to the Excubitors. Their rage. Dots of light flowed around as though surfing the queer illusory grayness.
Merrin abandoned the distractions and peered at the caster. He was doing something. Merrin saw then, the Caster, strange streams of blackness flowed before him. Threads of darkness, it seemed. Swirling, entangling, drawing from the ground—from distant pools of shadow and darkness.
veilCounsel! The thought boomed, but no further conception admitted itself. Merrin reached in, flowing the sure tides of his own force—he would push it away. Whatever symbol that was, whatever it did. He would gentle it. However, suddenly, the Caster turned. His eyes, those pools of darkness, looked forward. He said,
"You can already see? What a waste."
Merrin saw a symbol…A Z. He staggered—the grayness pressing into diffusion as the world tints grew apparent. He fell to his knees, eyes a wanting wall desiring the darkness. Sleep. Sleep. I'm tired. Sleep Sleep Sleep.
That now plagued him. His body became a watery thing—unmoving. There was no strength, even the mind, a once active thing had waned. Thought shattered, notion blurred. Cogitation ended.
Almighty….He could not think further—yet…Desire probed him. He looked up and surged the grayness for a moment. And saw in flash moments, the solid darkness in form of a sword hardening before the Caster. Knowledge for the intent came, but mentation could not resist the sleep.
Merrin crawled. Swelling his force in determined moments. He could not sustain a constant sight, so this presented the alternative. One by one, he saw the gradual hardening of the darkness. When formed, he knew, it would come down. And Moeash. Oh, gentle Moeash would lose his life.
Merrin crept on, but froze then, as he waved the force again. Now, their was pure solidness, and the symbol, in a strange phenomenon turned blurry. A vibrating state of perceptibility that brought a headache to inquisitive attempts. It ached to see.
What is…Cogitation failed, and he felt the sure coming of danger. Not to him, but to Moeash.
Protect Protect.
The grayness blinked, and Merrin saw the fall of the sword. Darkness piercing—descending on the motionless body of Moeash.
No!
In that moment, there was no other thought. Same as when the awareness took him and he killed the Guardsmen, Merrin dove into his innerself, and was swallowed whole in the tyrant tides of force. He could not see. Sense. Nothing. Only will remained. Protect protect.
Protect Moeash.
And so, in the following moments, as the sword dark came upon Moeash, it shattered. A violent burst of invisble power tore it down and Merrin, now, he glowed. Radiant. White. Powerful. He ran, cradled Moeash into his hands and closed his eyes.
The brilliance expanded, swirling round like threads of untold luminosity. White. Divine.
The caster looked upon this scene and sighed. "What a wasted talent."
The guardsman to his right, rayed white by the intensity, asked. "What happens now?"
"He has encased himself in force—a mighty amount. But it would run out eventually. When he does, take both of them to the bigger mines."
"What?" The other rasped. "We won't kill them?"
"No!" the caster said.
"WHY!" He roared now—
A cold glance issued from the Caster, and the Guardsmen was fired, slamming hard into the earth. "He is a caster. He has risked his life for this. A shame, but this is where my power ends. Morgan would arrive in five days to judge what he had done, and whether they were to be killed." He turned, "Take also the so-called witnesses to the pit and whatever slave supported or was present there."
The guardsmen nodded. The Caster, however, passed a glance to the figure standing at the peak. Catelyn. "Come, you i have questions for."
She trembled.
Energy as law cannot be destroyed nor created—only changed, it moves from a source to a point. In this manner, casters are often referred to as the contained. And this propagates the theory that the number of casters are measured—forever to be that. For another to be born, one must die—Drunk ravings of a Scholae.
Merrin felt the rain slide down his head, past the nose, and down the chin. Cold, sweet, liberating. He stood at a peak, darkness above swirling with foamy clouds, crackling lightning, and the howls of storm winds. He looked out and saw the sprawls of mountains—dark, massive, small, countless. Like hurls of scattered stone. On all sides were the mountains, stretching farther than perception allowed. Even his. All covered in a layer of black soot, resistant to the ever-rain. He smiled, turned to the others, and said, "I think a fur back is in saitan."
Five..Young Ashmen. Two female eidan and three male saiden. Merrin observed this and smiled, "So just do exactly as I say and we will hunt the fur back."
A chuckle. Merrin spotted the one—a figure, dark-haired, less ashy as saiden's often were. He, too, was once like that, that was, before the shamans taught him the dance. Now, he had more ash on his skin than they did. He was different from them. Special.
The speaker wore a tight shirt, long-sleeved. Tattered black shorts, reaching to his knees. No protection. A thing he compensated for by the straw formed paddings on his knees, arms, and heels. Merrin observed this with mental passivity—this person didn't matter. Only he did.
"What?" He asked.