Quendalon/Session27ThorwaldInterlude

Sitting next to the fire, Thorvald brooded. The night was warm, clear and dry, but that did little to assuage his mood. His companions kept their distance, giving him time to compose himself. The black mood had only just passed from him and they knew he would need time.

It came suddenly and lasted a long time, during which he had pushed himself beyond endurance, almost killing his horse and tiring out his companions in the process. Only one impulse crossed his mind: DESTROY. Destroy my enemies.

The details were a blur. But he remembered Forty-Four Devil Blossoms most of all. Once again she had tried to kill one of his brethren, and once again she fled before he could but get his hands on her. He remembered chasing her and the foul gremlins that fled into the mountain, but he remembered other things.

“You have not slept well, Thorvald.” Calm, patient and motionless, Li stood before him.

“I... am fine.” Thorvald whispered, but when he tried to look at her, he could not. All he could think of was the unthinkable, what he did not wanted think of… a thick disgusting bile rose in his throat and he did his best to conceal it.

“Are you all right?”

He tried to look at her again, but a wave of nausea gripped him. Li moved to steady him, and before he could stop, he found himself recoiling from her touch. Instantly, she noticed something amiss, perhaps even guessed at what he was trying to hide. Yet if it caused her any pain or anger, Thorvald could not tell. As ever, her face was a mask of calm. She inclined her head slightly as she left him to his thoughts.

He tried his best to control the panic inside of him, but could not.

“Your father was born of this earth,” the sage had said to Li. “But your mother came from outside Creation.”

And he could not forget those words. Once again he tried to force himself to look at her, and the urge to vomit gripped him. He bent his head and beat his fist into the ground as his mind raced.

“It means nothing. NOTHING,” he whispered. But his thoughts spoke differently.

She is one of the Fair Folk!!! FAIR FOLK!!! You traveled with her, ate with her, fought with her and she is one of them!!!

And you are a demon. You are both demons!!

We are not!!!

You are both anathema. What of it? It means nothing what you were or she was.

He caught Zera Thisse looking over at him with a look of concerned understanding. Ashamed, he averted his eyes.

Sometime later, as always, Zera came to him, put a firm hand on his shoulder, and waited for some time before speaking.

“Are you all right?”

There was quiet for a time before Thorvald spoke.

“I am fine,” he said simply.

“You know you almost drove your horse into the ground.”

Thorvald remembered it well. He felt badly about it, and felt even worse when Zera had tried to stop him by grabbing the reins not once, but twice.

“If you touch my reins again. I will kill you.”

That is what he had said. And he felt shame burning within him. He looked at Zera Thisse and felt his temper flare.

“I am fine, Zera Thisse!” he snapped, turning away from his friend. “Go away already. I am no cripple or child, or a woman who needs his wounds mended or his heart tended to! I am fine! Now leave me be, by all the Dead Gods!!!”

Instantly he regretted his irritability. It was his intention to apologize, but somehow only anger came.

Zera Thisse’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment he studied his companion. Finally, at length he nodded, rose and walked away. Thorvald raised his head to say something but could not find the words. He growled irritably and kicked at the ground at his feet and continued to stare into the fire.

* * * * *

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Kuro asked, grabbing the whip from his hands.

Annoyed, he looked down at Kuro the Raven. She was staring up at him, her determined eyes like twin flecks of steel and ice. At his feet, the thunder spirit lay whimpering, its translucent flesh marred, torn and bleeding from the blows he had savagely rained down upon it.

“Get out of my way, woman!!” He exclaimed. “This thing will pay for what it has done to this village!!!”

“He has paid enough!” Kuro returned. “A few flooded ditches, ruined crops and blown-down huts are no justification for killing him! He’s just a young thunder spirit! He knows no better!”

“Then I will teach it better!” With a grunt he batted Kuro aside and aimed a kick at the terrified wind spirit. No larger than a youth of ten winters, it huddled in ball at his feet and flinched as his foot exploded into its midsection. Where an ordinary man would have cried out as bones broke, the spirit only made the sound of a thin light wind blowing through a crack in a window, and he heard a rumbling sound and the wetness of rain on his foot.

“Stop it. What are you doing??”

“Get out of my way, Kuro!!” He kicked at it again, and both of them were splashed by cool rainwater.

“Stop it, you big fool!!” she cried out, grabbing his arm. “You are killing him!”

“Get off me!!” he roared, and with a fierce push he sent her hurtling roughly to the ground. “I WILL TEACH HIM! I WILL TEACH HIM NOT TO LAUGH AT ME!!! I WILL TEACH HIM TO OBEY ME WHEN I TELL HIM TO STOP!!”

“Yes. Teach him.” Kuro snapped her eyes flaring. “Teach him everything!! Teach him whatever you want!!! BLESSED WIND!”

And when she spat his name out it struck him with the very force of thunder. In it was all the anger, admonition and outrage over his actions. And as he stared into her eyes, he saw it… her defiance, her hatred. She had always defied him!! Undermined him! Always she sought to embarrass him. Humiliate him! Like now, in front of these villagers he had saved!! Using his very name as a weapon against him! As if he was being unworthy of it!! She had always done this!! Always!! Fool!! Fool!! She called me a fool!!!!

He lifted the whip to strike at her but their eyes met. There was not the slightest shred of fear in them, no anger and no hatred. As he made to bring the whip down she did not flinch or even blink. She just sat on the ground next to the whimpering spirit and looked deep in his eyes, awaiting his fury. He stopped. He stopped, but as he did so, he stared past her, beyond her and right into her. He looked deep into her clear impenetrable eyes and there in the midst of the strange mercurial yet unfathomable calm of the woman he loved, he felt his rage pass. It flowed from him like a blood-drenched cloak that slid off his body, leaving him naked and bereft of all dignity.

And when he looked around, he saw the villagers huddled on the ground and in fear. Women desperately clutched their children to their bodies as they wailed and cried in the midst of their broken village. He saw men looking at him with confusion and carefully hidden anger. They were all kneeling and they all were terrified. All around them the ruins of the village served as testament to what he could now see around him.

The village was destroyed. If any structure of lasting importance still stood, it would not for much longer. Fences, homes, granaries and tools were smashed beyond repair. Broken barrels, buckets and vegetables, mulch and grain were littered everywhere, along with feed and dead livestock. The animals that survived fled the village and were scattered throughout the rolling hills in the distance, and those that were wounded or trapped in collapsed barns wailed fitfully. Blessed Wind looked around and saw that even the well and the bridge were destroyed - utterly ruined in the fight. Grain stored for the hard winter was lying in the street, and rats were already in it, devouring what these people had worked so hard for. Being farmers, their immediate instinct was to fight for the grain, but his presence kept them rooted to the ground.

He had come here to stop the raging spirit that was tormenting this place with flash floods and constant battering winds, but he knew that it was not the spirit who had wrecked such havoc.

How did this happen? He had asked the spirit to stop, but it did not heed him. Then he ordered it, but it laughed at him. And then he felt a blind and uncontrollable rage, and the desire to hurt the spirit for insulting him. But the fight was over before it started. If it was his goal to drive it away, he succeeded instantly. It immediately gave into his might, but he did not stop. He could not stop. He kicked, beat and hammered it and as it tried to flee. He let nothing stand in his way, not people, not the dwellings, nothing.

And as he stared down at the spirit he saw that it was dying. Numb, he stared at it as it muttered and whimpered fearfully, begging him for mercy. And through it all, as his mind tried its hardest to avoid it, the truth like an unquenchable fire became plain to see.

He looked down at Kuro and the whip fell out of his nerveless hands. She did notice what he noticed; her attention was entirely on him. She sat up, her eyes never leaving him, and when he sank down onto his hands and knees beside her, she was there, cradling his head against her neck as his tortured sobs racked his body.

“I did this,” he screamed. And as Kuro held him, she felt his body tremble as he wept uncontrollably.

“I did this, Kuro… It was me… it was me…”

“Ssshhhhhhhhh,” she whispered. “Ssssshhhhhhhhh.” He sank into her arms, helplessly, and she clutched at him tighter, barely supporting his weight.

“It’s not your fault,” she soothed, as she gently stroked his hair. “It’s not your fault.”

But if he could hear her words, she did not know. As the storm clouds began to gather, she knelt there in the wetness that was the dying spirit’s lifeblood as her lover, Blessed Wind, clutched at her like a hurt child. She held him in her arms, kissed his face and hair, and tried everything to bring comfort to him, but could not. Nothing worked. She sang, whispered soothing Charms, tried everything she knew and did not know, everything that had never ever failed to bring light and laughter to him, and it was not enough.

“What is happening to me?” he blurted, his tears running down her chest. “What… is… ha… happening to… muh… me?”

Beneath the grim stormy skies, under the fearful eyes of the villagers, Kuro the Raven clutched at her lover, Blessed Wind. She held back her own tears for the sake of the man who had been her own pillar of strength for so long, yet never realized it. She took in his sorrow and his surrender and felt a strange stabbing pain in her chest.

Together, they both shrunk like pebbles under the vast and timeless burden of inevitability.