Barry raced through the southron forests of King’s Kedwen. He was a wolven wraith, a blur that switched between the bipedal gait of man and the bolting permabulance of beast. From the branches of oaks to the underbrush of shrubbery, it mattered not.

Hands of solid shadow manifested from bodies of darkness, pulling the Sorcerer forward. He only needed to provide them with sustenance in the form of mana, and his kindred spirits would repay in double. Forging had never been so easy, so second nature to him before his transmutation of an eldritch arcanum

And when hands wrought of physical shadow ether would not do, the Sorcerer stepped from one pool of black and reappeared in another darken twin, piercing through the Veil like a kingfisher diving through the waters of a lake.

All entities were connected, Barry knew. His Sorcerous Sight lifted the scales from his eyes, letting him peer into the Grand Tapestry, the Weave of the Heavenly Loom. In between the monumental waves of transference, of kinetic force, heat, and other sorts of energy, he saw its threads.

Gossamer lines, fitting for a spider.

He peered upon the Weave like a child eyeing something in between wooden boards they should not. The thought gave him a chuckle.

Shadows were no different in regards to the connection of entities. Though they might’ve been simply the absence of light in the Prime-Material, in the Weave they possessed substance and weight. Sympathetic threads bound each and every one of them in twain. The sum of their likeness, their consanguinity, endowed them with presence.

Sympathy, be it skorromantic or any other kind, was simply the bending of entities linked to each other through likeness. A subtle sort of magicking dependent upon one’s own hubris as much as pure skill.

A sympathist bound entities through consanguinity, yet that likeness was not universal. It was tainted by subjective perspective. One with an education in alchemy or mundane chemistry would bind differently than one raised in the hinterlands without any sort of apprenticeship or study.

The Sorcerer drew deep from the nightsky inside his soul, evoking it from the depths with a line of pure will. Celestial energy of black and white, of darkness and radiance, wove around each other in a double-helix fashion.

From the base of his neck, the mana poured to and fro. The eldritch knowledge contained therein whispered to the Sorcerer, yet he heard no words. Susurration in ancient and forgotten and elder tongues brushed the edges of his awareness like ghasts in the Black.

To invoke a nixian sorcery, he had to pay in both heat and cold, in shadow and light. His spirit was wrung twain of its natal dark waters and acquired fiery essence for a single casting of the skorromantic sympathy.

Path of Shadows exploited lashings of enetheric spirit, widening the pre-existing bindings between bodies of darkness. From threads as thin as hairs, the sorcery expanded their confines until they formed into wormholes with the circumference of a finger-width.

Unstable things as they were, Barry could not dally, he had to turn himself into shadow insubstantial and then slip through them as fast as a hare dived into their burrow.

Space and darkness spun around him, warping and bending like water in a vortex. Shadows devoured him, pulling him into their depths and then spitting him back out in less than a breath.

The Dove swallowed whole by the Leviathan of the Waters.

In the space between shadows, there was no warmth and no sight beyond boundless nothing. There was only piercing cold and lack of breath—Lack of mana. Barry could not draw upon the world’s vital breath whilst he crawled underneath creation. While he threaded the Borders of the Void no different than a revenant that defied the Call and Pull.

The inky darkness of the abyss was inviting, a dull weight on the senses that lulled the mind to sleep. Yet no less insidious, for all those that slept in the Cold Below would not wake.

Not alive at least. Not unchanged. Untainted.

What should’ve taken a fortnight’s time to traverse took only three days and three nights without rest.

Barry’s spirit was ragged like a man without breath. There was no structural damage, but instead a drought of energy and sustenance.

I’ll rest when the inn’s in sight. And after I’ve talked with Raphae.

The Sorcerer arrived at the Inn at the Crossroads at the dying of noon. The skies were azure blue without a cloud to veil Solaria’s Grace.

Travelers had yet to come, the news of the slaying of the troll having not spread far. That was fine in Barry’s opinion. The more time he had to work in his lonesome, away from the throng of humanity that would inevitably flood the Crossroads, the better. He’d have to craft himself new skorromantic Bindings anyhow, and would rather not have the Inquisition breathing down his neck.

The inn itself was in better condition then when he and Randy’s family had first arrived. Planks reinforced any breaches and holes while channels for water were dug into the soil. Come the season of Dyeus, the raging monsoon months, the building would not flood.

A safe haven amidst the fell waters that could so easily drag any Kedweni underfoot and into ravines and deep crevices alike. Drowned in water that came up only to their knees. The problem came in the pull that would drag a man to the current.

And not let go until his last breath left his body together with his fleeting soul.

The Four Corners were aptly named. Kedweni denizens were trapped in its walls wrought of mountain as waters came down upon them once a full cycle of Solaria to wash away any not built up on sturdy foundations.

Towns were built near rivers and sources of water, which only made them so much more so dangerous. The higher-echelons, merchants and nobility and registered commoners found themselves nestled upon hillocks and high-ground. The poor were left to be washed-away in the “cleansing” waters of Dyeus.

No different than filth.

Barry knocked his knuckles against the wooden door, the rough-hewn texture causing him to wince ever so slightly. His body had been tempered yet the mind was yet to fully turn to callous. And that was fine. The Sorcerer needed balm to his standing, to his power.

He wanted to feel human again. Feel common and mundane. To not let his mind fester on what he truly was beneath the varnish of stolen skin and flesh and blood.

The door was opened by a man with dark scarlet hair. A grin was plastered on his face from ear to ear with a tilt to the left.

I missed that smirk.

Barry responded with a smile of his own, his wheat-blonde beard parting to the command of his lips.

Sorcerer met rogue with a clasping of forearms, a common enough warrior or mercenary greeting.

“Thought ye’d run off on us!” Randy said with some exclaim and jest. “And seems ye found some heat for those bones of yours. Got some practice with them illusions, didn’t ya?”

“I… learned some things, yes.” Barry responded with his characteristic mystique. Just enough information to promise future talk.

The Sorcerer’s face turned serious, his brows furrowing as he remembered.

“Did a girl of sixteen show up at the inn? Dark-blonde hair the color of blackbough wheat ripe for the harvest.”

Randy elevated a brow in inquisition, his own eyes narrowing.

“Sorcerer wasn’t enough, you’ve become a soothsayer too.

“Aye. Raphae, that’s her name, showed up two turns ago. Five days back in the night. Bloodied and clothes ripped ragged by shrubbery and thorn.

“She escaped some gang of rapists and robbers, but her pa didnae make it. She’s been begging me and Gendry alike to follow her back to give the body a proper burial.”

Barry nodded.

“I dealt with them and put her father’s spirit to rest. Can you bring her to the taproom? And the whole lot as well.”

“Sure thing, mysir.” Randy said with a mock salute.

Barry kicked him in at the knee without much effort, and the rogue dodged back and ran into the confines of the inn.

The Sorcerer followed, unease tensing his shoulders.

Forget the dead and leave them to their ash and grave.

Or let their roving hands hang onto the Coil, for better.

Or worse.

Barry grabbed some spare clothes from his room and then went outside to tidy up as he waited for his lot to assemble properly. He didn’t run into anyone whilst he did so, or more aptly, such was the reverse.

His aura was now a tangible thing, able to manifest not just physically, but mentally. If he willed his spirit that he did not want to meet any one, it would respond in kind. It was a suggestive and coercive sort of quality that lightly steered minds and souls in other directions so they would avoid him.

The Sorcerer washed himself in the brook behind the inn. He could’ve done so faster with some magicking, but he was spent. He wanted to just lay down and sleep a dreamless sleep.

The Tide felt sluggish and unbending as physical water was. One could make splashes, and manipulate it to a certain degree, but it was not an extension. It was wholly separate. The Ethereal Sea in which spirits dwelt was naturally heavy and hard to move as it possessed inertia not unlike physical matter. But now, the force required to bring it to heel was much higher. Or, at least, it felt as much.

A strained spirit is no different than a muscle. It can’t function. It can’t bear weight. Proper rest, that’s what I need.

Barry sniffed his pits.

Well, first I need to finish this bath. Flesh and bone bodies are so… filthy. When I was simply blacken bone and aether-fire, I had no need for cleaning. I simply was. Any grime would burn away, no wound would ever go sour. No smell would cling unto my frame.

And though fleeting, the memories are burned into my mind.

I died. And yet, I was alive.

I had no flesh besides the gelatinous mess inside my skull. I lost my heart, my skin, my muscles, my hair. I lost my bowels, my nails, my tongue.

Even lost me prick.

Barry chuckled darkly as he looked down at himself, not outwardly different than before he set off to Charliestead. He still had his prick, just how he remembered it. His muscles and scars and hair were all there.

But it wasn’t his. Not really. It was someone else’s body and flesh warped to his own design, to his own image.

Forged divinity.

For all that Barry detested and hated monsters in human skin, he had become one himself. The only difference was that this was not a metaphorical thing. It was concrete and physical and real.

I’m wearing a dead man’s skin and flesh and blood. The heart that beats in my chest is not my own.

I am dead.

A wraith of bone and flame that don’s the hides of others.

After he was done with the washing, he left his armor to dry out naturally. The coat-turned-brigandine cuirass was a heavy thing, he felt the lessening of weight upon him like a gust of wind. Without the layers, he wore the Inquisitor’s boots and breeches with a simple green tunic over his chest.

The summer heat was unbearable to his spirit as the fire built within. The fiery essence ate away at him from the inside out like maggots upon a carcass. His wanton use of Path of Shadows had exhausted his shadowy reserves. Without them to balance the blistering Power of Solaria, the flame ran wild with abandon.

I’ll have to fix that.

With a few quick uses of Path of Shadows, the Sorcerer stood amidst a clearing. He looked up at the stark blue sky, his eyes unused to such light. His pupils constricted, slits more fitting for a viper than a man.

The light no longer burned.

Yet he still closed his eyes, for the world without had to be shut off.

The black of the mind spread out from his form of night and starlight. The Twin Aspects of Lux and Astra coalesced from his soul into his mind. They ebbed above a dark lake reflecting stars that did not exist. One bifrostian as the Heavenly Bridge itself and the other the color of dandelions, reflecting the radiance of Sola.

He closed his hands around each, taking the reins from his eternal soul. The Heart of Stone hung heavy upon his mind, easing his use of eldritch arcany.

The Sorcerer opened his eyes, seeing double and half. The sight of his Natal Palace and the outside world were strung atop each other, overlapping in his vision.

He opened his mouth and poured the festering fire from his spirit, spitting a gout of flame like a dragon. The torrent roared with solar wind as echoes from its source came unbidden into the spiritry. Arcs of fulgur danced between tongues of sol, crackling with chaotic energy.

The sound was a queer sort of thing, like the call of an unknown creature likely found in some faen forest.

With the blissful emptiness in his spirit, Barry laid down where he stood. His body felt colder than before, no longer a sun entrapped in human flesh. His breath was ragged as he pulled in ambient mana as well as mundane gas like a drowned man.

Eldritch arcana floated inside his Natal Palace, the dark lake of his mind. The wisps were the purest sort of light he had ever seen in the Prime. The same sheen and incandescence as the radiance imprisoned inside his soul.

With a tired mental voice, Barry recited an elder sonnet in words foreign to his tongue. Yet, still he understood them nevertheless.

Balance the Scales,

Thread upon the Knife’s Edge.

Lift the Veil for Price Equivalent,

Draw from the Beyond Eld Knowledge.

Exchange of Enlightenment.

The residual, fulminating eld transmuted into cold darkness, from the Aspects of Lux and Astra to the singular Arcana of Nix. From the death of radiance came the newborn growth of darken seed, viscous and binding like oil yet expanding like smoke from a smothered flame.

A luminous pinprick had died in the celestial tapestry of his mind, and in its place thrummed a black star. The tiny, miniscule point of void pulsed with an unnatural heart that bent the fabric of the psychic firmament in waves.

The mana was a balm to Barry’s weary spirit. His Inner Shadow drank the primal darkness with abandon, gulping with the desperation of a half-dead man dying of thirst. The abyssian liquid filled the channels of his spirit, reinforcing them with arcana of a higher-degree.

Exchange of Enlightenment transmuted residual and free-floating arcana into usable mana of any aspect contained within the Sorcerer’s arcanums. An equivalent price was paid in doing so, fraying the soul and mind and thus incurring increased energy cost of any spell cast afterwards. The sorcery could stave-off arcane influence and produce any needed magickal resource, but caused structural damage in the basins of the spirit and drew heavily upon a body’s life-force as well as the soul’s noetic essence.

Eld knowledge was no acid like the sorcerer’s sulfur or the collective’s vitriol, but instead a heavy element.

Eldritch mana was arsenic. A chemical element, a poisonous metalloid that caused encephalopathies of all kinds—diseases and maladies of the mind and brain. The eld did not disturb the body as readily as arcana, but instead warped the psyche, plunging it into delirium and insanity.

A transfigured body came in twain as the mind of an elden magicker could no longer safely draw upon arcana. Instead of purposeful drops of noesis, a flood came from the depths of the dark soul.

They were no cleansing waters of Dyeus, but instead the frothing taint of Berronath, the Beast Beneath Creation—The Father of Monsters.

Eld was arsenic. A hard to purge toxin that festered in the body, slowly causing cancers to form as it bent the mind ever-closing to the brink of rationality.

With a less-weary spirit yet sore mind, the Sorcerer breathed out a slow and languid breath. A dull-headache throbbed inside his skull like a pickaxe had been rummaging around his brains.

Barry stood with some effort and walked back to the inn proper. With a half-league distance from the forest clearing to the inn, Barry simply pondered, his thoughts nothing specific.

The festering self-doubt was half-vanished, seemingly gone with the flame.

He stopped at the door that led inside the inn. His forehead rested on the wooden surface as his posture slumped.

Barry, feeling more like a tired man than powerful sorcerer, entered the inn without much pomp or theatrics.

The inhabitants of the inn surrounded the main room with the taps and bar-counter and tables. Randy and his family, Gendry the father, Joan the mother, and finally Elina his twin sister sat at a table. Rel, Ana, and Sasha sat at another table with the new arrival: Raphae.

“Barry!” Sasha, Ana, and Elina exclaimed, getting up from their seats.

Sasha had a five-month-old babe in her hands. A seedling born in hopeless turns, yet now newly contextualized in the comfort of community. A sproutling growing tall and proud amidst family.

“You’ve been gone so long that Little Bare’s grown up a good twenee span.” Sasha said in exaggerated jest.

The women hugged him like family, like a long-lost brother. Barry returned the gesture as best as he could. Though he was a bit uncomfortable with so much attention, he relished in the feeling of acceptance and familiarity.

The world was a strange place where man could as easily cut another’s throat as accept them into their midst as blood and kin. Barry got lucky, his cast lot and die settling on blessed seven instead of cursed nine.

I wonder who’ll sell me for thirty talents?

Already killed Elias, so he won’t have the chance.

Will Randy?

“He’s grown up so much.” Barry said in surprise and a bit of wonder. He’d battled holy aerendghasts, and yet this mundane being before him stole his attention away in droves.

The baby had Sasha’s brown hair.

And his father’s hazel eyes.

Barry still remembered the look of hopeless acceptance of death as he brought down an axe bathed in the fiery blood of stars. The quiet despair contained within the rictus of a man’s brow, of a man that knew he would die, was an ugly sort of thing.

Not easily forgotten, but neither did it trouble too much. Rapists and black-hearts did not deserve much in the way of pity.

Barry smiled as he ruffled the thin mop of hair atop the tyke’s large head.

“Aye that he did.” Said Joan, Randy’s mother. “We’d have made ye something to munch on if we’d known you’d be returning so soon.

“I’ll go and get some of the stew from the aetpot.”

Barry shook his head.

“I’m fine. My body needs not food, at least any longer. My spirit provides for me. I shall be fine.”

“Tell us ‘bout the troll!” Rel shouted with two hands forming a cup around her lips.

Seems Raphae and her pa came this way after hearing ‘bout the—

Rel’s past nervousness and unease just gone. She acted and looked like a woman of twenty-three of any village or hamlet, not the frightened thing of before.

Not the battered animal backed into a corner, cringing away at a simple look.

She’d recuperated from the scars in a single full turn of the Twins. In a month, she had taken back her mind from the clutches of trauma, and though she still bore sequela, she had her vigor and standing once more.

Her recuperation was incredible, practically miraculous. And Barry had seen his fair share of miracle and magick.

The sight made Barry tear up, even though he had no tear-ducts. Even though the only internal organs he possessed were arteries, veins and lungs. He had no glands for either sweat or tear. He knew as much, no matter how much he exerted himself, he did not naturally exude excreta.

The arcana of war and the vessels of spirit had smoothed out his body, turning it into perfected and forever moldable clay. Most specialized organs and organelles were subsumed into the soma, and yet here he was, shedding a tear wrought of ether.

A body may lose its flesh, but the Shadow does not.

Barry smiled as he surreptitiously swiped a tear from his right eye. He did so not by hand, but by spirit and will alone, unraveling the physical ether back into its place in the Tide.

He sat down on a chair and narrated his battle.

Barry did not speak of the two Inquisitors, only focusing on his battle with the mossback troll. He summoned Moonsblood in its various forms as he barded his tale.

If only he still had his lute, he’d add along some folk music with a Shadow Double.

“…sometimes, man puts too much weight upon a weapon. They fear it for its power. Yet power does not corrupt, instead it lifts back the layers that are piled upon us.

“I had to break that very same self-imposed restriction. I had to wield my magicks as they truly were—mine and mine alone. No matter how dark they seemed.

“Where fear of death or violence would bind us in self-inflicted fetters, power rends away at the links. When one has the ability to do as they wish and impart their own design, that is when a man shows his true nature.

“When he has power.”

“The problem lies in that not all are pure at their core. Not all have compassion, their hearts instead cold and dead rock. And when the time comes for them to rend away at the layers imposed upon them…

“That is when evil is borne.”

Elina had a pensive look on her face, an ember of a question.

Barry stoked the cinder. He kindled the remnant of curiosity into a questing flame.

“If you’ve a question, you may air it. Fear no reprisal from me. I am a simple man, no authority to say that you must stay silent. In my eyes, you are all equal.

“All family.”

Elina’s held-back and reserved nature melted away as she saw the sincerity and lack of judgment on the Sorcerer’s face.

In some regions of King’s Kedwen, specifically the Highlands to the Northwest and the Southeastern coast, women were not allowed to question their perceived betters. Small towns like Berrowden and Charliestead were not so astringent as to the freedom of the fairer sex, as when it came to tilling fields and planting crop, every hand counted.

Yet still, some amount of it bled into the culture, no matter how far away from the sea or royalty. Barry himself was surprised at the blatant mistreatment in some settlements after he joined the Sparrows. Back in his hamlet, there wasn’t this sort of thing. The petty plays of status and “superiority” were practically non-existent.

“If power does not corrupt, if magick ‘arcana’ is not vile at its core, why is unsanctioned magicking heretical? Why do the Inquisitors hunt down warlocks and magickers alike?”

Barry took the question with good faith. He did not condemn nor judge. Elina was no bandit nor beast for him to lay arbitration upon with the Blacken Blade.

“Man fears two things: what he does not understand. And what he does not control. The Inquisition is no different. Backed by Divinity or not, man is still man.

“Humanity is flawed. The Inquisition hunts down unsanctioned magicking for two reasons. To not let it be wielded by unknown hands and to amass power for the nobility.

“If you go more eastbound, towards Haggaren or Sunforst, you’ll find lordlings with their schemes as common as lice on dirty bedding. Thankfully, Charliestead is more insulated from their games, from their amassing of power and hoarding of resources. It’s all a big game of politicking that I can’t say much more on.

“But, returning to your question. From my time as an apprentice under a Priestess of the Heavenly Crone, I’ve learned a great deal of history and philosophy, be it natural or preteric. That very same doubt, that line of curiosity, I’ve had as well during my studies.

“Emilia, my mentor, answered it to me well-enough. Simply put, power in the wrong hands can’t be left unchecked.

“You see, magicking comes in a multitude of colors, from the purest of white, to the darkest of black. These colors may be best categorized as either Faire or Fell. Faire magicks are those whose nature is righteous and just. Fell magicks are those whose origin is dark as sin, and inherently unholy or simply too dangerous left unchecked.

“But even then, the lines are blurred. When does white turn to black in the sea of grey? One can discern the starkest contrasts, but it’s not always so easy to divine when the degree of difference is negligible to the eye.

“Even faire magicks are not to be considered “good.” What matters if it's a bolt of holy flame or one drawn from the bowels of the Void? In the end, both burn a man alive and cause him pain and horrid death.

“The line between Black and White is arbitrary. They are fabrications of man. The same thing as telling a tyke not to mess with something dangerous like a flame or to enter a brook come the season of Dyeus. Fell magicks are not even banned from sanctioned mages. As long as they possess the proper credentials, they may practice any sort of dark Art.

“As long as the result is righteous, and they do not endanger innocents.”

The answer seemed to appease Elina a little, mollifying her flaming curiosity with a drop of knowledge. Yet, she still had her questions. She did not understand everything. And so they went back and forth. Barry distilled his answers to simpler and simpler things so that she could understand. He broke them down no different than an alchemist did to aggregate component elements.

But, even his mind had its limits of patience.

“I think I’ll have to stop my explanations for now. My mind is fatigued from the flood of questions that’ve come my way. Tomorrow I can instruct you more. I have something else pertinent to discuss.”

Barry stood up, pacing a bit before he settled back down. His face was troubled as his brows knit and unkit, tossing a bundle of dilemma between each other.

“Raphae.” The Sorcerer said. “I must speak with you. The rest may stay if you wish or they may leave. You may choose whichever and whomever.”

Raphae sat in between Elina and Sasha, the two women like guardian hounds hovering just above the lass. Their looks foretold fury and browbeating should Barry be too caustic or bring unwanted conflict.

“They can stay.” She said quietly, a bit scared and apprehensive.

Barry nodded.

“I have killed three of the men that murdered your father. They suffered fitting deaths for their crimes. They have paid their price.

“Two of them I spared. For they did not directly spill his blood. They turned blind eyes, yes. They helped three black-hearts, yes. But their sin was middling, borne of hunger.

“I present you two choices. You must choose one over the other, and there has to be a choice.

“This choice is yours and yours alone.”

Barry pulled a red-tinged walking stick from the shadows and creases of his tunic. It could not physically fit in such a place and its summoning was evidently magickal in nature.

Raphae’s eyes lit in recognition and surprise.

“With this very cane, I could forge you a weapon fit to take power in your own hands. So that you may change King’s Kedwen for the better. After that I shall take you to both of the young men I spared. Whether you kill them or not, is up to you.

“The other choice is that I burn this cane to ash as I did for your father, a burial by flame.”

Raphae lashed out from beneath the wings of her guardians, her face a sneer of disdain and defiance. Her eyes were wide with rage, with purpose.

“First, you tell me you spared those needle-cock bug fuckers. And now you tell me that you burned me pa like a plague-ridden corpse?”

Her words were spat with a cadence of trembling constraint, barely held back wrath bulging at the seams between growl and shout. Elina and Sasha had to use all their strength to not let her tackle Barry to the ground.

Barry shook his head, hiding a grin trying to assert itself upon his face.

A fire like hers. A spirit to go against a sorcerer with power and magicking untold.

Foolhardy, yes. Yet, the difference between the blind fool and the courageous hero is not so great.

“Burial by flame in Cornered Kedwen is seen as… an insult. A product of the various plagues that ravage the land from time to time. Where poor and pauper are thrown into ditches without much in the way of rites or respect.

“But it is not so everywhere. Strosunian warriors and kings alike are buried at sea with their ships doused in fire. In the Akaen Isles, it is an honor so that the spirit may freely leave into the beyond faster.

“But, I did not burn him entirely out of respect, but necessity.”

Barry let the statement hang in the air like the smell of smoke from a freshly smothered flame.

Yet Raphae’s flame would not come undone, a wild fire once kindled would rage until an equal or greater rampaging inferno burned it to ash.

“He became a wraith of sorts, a specter. I could not leave him to suffer eternal. To unbind a spirit, a ghast, one must burn its tethers. One must scour the body for the remnant to truly be put to rest…

“Your father would not rest and go through the Veil. He did not heed the Call of the Grave nor Pull of the Pale. He was worried, even in death, for his daughter.

“He has entrusted me with your protection. For how else would I come upon this cane? Ask Randy, how did I know you’d appear here at the inn?”

Barry waited a spell before he added, in soft words, a small appeasement.

“I mean no disrespect with how I buried him. But it was proper, and the only effective manner to give him rest and peace. To return him to the earth.”

Raphae’s fire went out like an ember thrown into icy cold waters. It was practically instantaneous, and to her credit, she did not fall to her knees. She shook her head and went back to the arms of Elina and Sasha.

She was built of sturdier stuff, not some prancing bairn that would fall to the ground, paralyzed with fear when the wolves came upon them. She was a ram that would crack wolven skull and shatter bone.

“This cane is a foci or nexus of negative energy. Think of all the feelings that make one want to destroy and usher in ruin, those are what makes up the essence that binds itself to this object. And they are heavy and many, like plaque on a farmer’s teeth.

“This is fell magick. But it need not be evil.

“No, this cane can be forged into a tool for good. But it cannot stay a cane. Either a weapon or ash, lest I leave behind an object with magickal power that could be so easily abused.

“A corpse-charmer could raze fifteen villages and twice over as many hamlets and not possess this much power so easily. So readily.”

Barry approached Raphae, and beckoned her forward with a twist of his arm. She came, Elina and Sasha grudgingly letting her go, and he came close in twain. Barry whispered, his voice a grave thing.

“This is forged divinity. A drop of ubound potential like the cursed clay from which man was wrought and molded.

“This is heresy and blasphemy against the gods, for Power is their domain. But why should you stay content beneath the heel of beings that play and prod with your life like some shitty puppet show?

“Where was Oriath with His iron when you needed blade? Where was Dyeus the Father of Law and Oath in those lawless woods?

“Where was Solaria with Her warmth and Lumenari with Their vigilance when you ran through the cold of night?

“Where was the Ashen God to ease your pa into the Thereafter?

“Where were any of Them when you needed Them the most?

“You can strike back at all that you detest. You can make it so that none suffer as your pa did.

“But is it worth it?

“You will not find happiness down this path. Contentment and peace will come if you forget and leave the dead as they are and should be:

“Ash and grave.”

Barry stepped back and let Raphae mull over his words. He continued to pace as her brows knit in thought.

The Sorcerer sat back down from his pacing, his lethargy and fatigue having caught up with him. His drawing upon the Eld had weakened his mind considerably, dulling the sharp edge of damascene steel into something more akin to porous wrought-iron.

His stature when he talked, when he looked at a person seemed imposing and beyond his middling years. When he spoke, he was a sage and a warrior. Yet when he sat down and didn’t draw upon his authority, the Sorcerer was no magicker at all.

He was a lad of twenty winters. As lost as them all. As wont to ruminate on whether his decisions were wise and correct or not. As frail and weak and limited in mind.

For now.

“You have until tomorrow’s noon. And no later. I don’t mean to impose upon you, but the magicks that bind to this cane are fleeting as the eventide. They will not last any longer should you choose the path of weapon.

“And thus the choice will be made for you should I not be answered in time.

“This is an unfair burden to thrust upon the shoulders of a lass of sixteen. But it is one that I think, in its own twisted way, liberating. You shall get a choice, you shall get agency to do as you wish within reason.

“I… hope that, somehow, It helps.”

Barry took his leave from the inn, venturing to the shade of a tree. He laid down under the boughs of an oak more ancient than the Crossroads. The cool breeze lulled him to dreamless sleep. He heard no voices of either inquisitor or beast. He pondered no mystery of eld or arcane knowledge.

A presence woke him up gently. Warmth, Barry realized. A comforting sense of belonging washed over him along with a gust of dying summer breath. The earth had sucked him dry of his vital heat in turn with the air.

Both sky and ground had done as mosquitos and gnats, taking what was not theirs to take.

Randy laid to his right, looking at him with worry in his eyes. His arm had stirred him from slumber, and now it rested on his shoulder, clenched in unease.

And something else. Something Barry had seen before but didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“You alright?” The ginger-haired man asked. “You barely moved and were as cold as the grave. Got me worried that Mortus claimed you in yer sleep.

“Fitting, since if awake, the Ashen God would have a losin’ fight out for Him.”

Barry smiled at the compliment veiled in jest.

Silence ensued and Barry did not fill it.

“What happened?” Randy asked. And the Sorcerer knew he would not stop. Best to scare him off a bit and send him off-kilter than to suffer through incessant prodding and questing.

He was so incredibly tired.

“I am… changed.” The Sorcerer said as he watched wind batter against the bulwark that was the Inn at the Crossroads. Dyeus, the Sky-Father, lost his battle against the man-made edifice.

“My fight has left me different than before. I… watch. Just watch, it’ll be easier than trying to talk with a voice that’s left me.”

The Sorcerer lifted his right hand, blond hair and scars running across his well-defined forearm. The years of sword and axe had done him wonders in physique.

Barry took the reins of his Inner Shadow. He pulled at the dark resin that bound flesh to bone, and from those enetheric lashings he drew and wrangled like a child drawing a longbow.

Flesh parted in tendrils like sinew freshly ripped from game. Like worms they writhed and twisted in silent screams of agony. Bone, white as first snow, melted away just as so. The veneer, the varnish of albine gave way to abyssian black.

Green fire, the color of noxious hellsflame danced amidst serpents of flayed-red. A sight more fitting for the Abyssal Hells than an idyllic shade of Terra.

The Sorcerer clenched the muscles of his spirit, bringing back his flesh to heel. His arm looked no different than before, blood being sucked back in like water upon dry sand. Skin mended back together like wet clay.

“That’s just the surface of my newfound gift.” Said Barry, his voice turning disdainful at the end. At the cursed gift. “I am now more wraith than man. A pile of blacken bones that dons flesh just like you’d wear a cloak.”

Barry felt himself dizzy as his sight abruptly shifted to the right.

A slap he realized. He was slapped. Again.

“How many times do I have to tell ya to stop ruminating!” Randy yelled. “You ain’t no monster, no beast.

“And don’t think I don’t know what yer tryinae to do. I know yer tryin’ to scare me off.

“Oooh look at me, the scary sorcerer, I save damsels in distress and brood afterwards. I’m such a black-hearted villain.”

Barry laughed, surprised at himself with the amount of mirth he found in the terrible jest. As Randy continued pantomiming his caricature, Barry cackled til he wheezed, his belly hurting and his face cramping.

He felt human again.

Barry swiped a tear from his cheek, this time with hands of flesh rather than of spirit.

“Thank yo—“

And then Randy kissed him, the ginger-haired man’s lips warm as soft morning sunlight. Barry felt his own flesh heaten up in response, the coldness disappearing in a flash of surprise.

Barry’s eyebrows went up like twin hares lifting in response to noise in the underbrush. His face was frozen like a deer caught in front of a carriage’s lanterns.

Randy’s lips parted from his own, smiling in defiance with that damnable smirk of his. Barry realized that the ginger-haired man had wound a hand gently behind his neck and another on his shoulder. Now both came with him.

And he felt their absence, readily with some hidden longing.

“And if I have to slap you silly every time you call yerself a monster or a freak, then that’ll be just fine.

“As long as I get to do that afterwards.”

Bold this one.

Silence ensued once more and Barry could not help but fill it.

“I… I didn’t know you felt about me that way.” He said simply, his cheeks rosy-red in a mix of excitement and embarrassment.

“I didn’t either. At least not entirely.” Said Randy. “Heat of the moment sort of thing. Wouldn’t find the courage to do so if I thought it through. Or without a bottle of something strong.”

“Aye.” Barry said, nodding. Then he quietly added, “Kedwen’s not exactly a safe place for men like us.

“Dealt the same hand as warlocks. A pyre on the town square or a cross upon a hillock.”

Randy’s face turned into a snarl, his eyes distant in the past.

“Burning people alive for no other reason than disgust. For acts that don’t hurt nobody.

“Those twin fears that you told of. They’re no justification for so much wrongness.”

Randy shook his head, dispelling whatever haunts dwelt inside.

“Forget ‘bout that.” He said. “Let’s talk ‘bout something—anything—else.”

“Alright.”

Barry fidgeted with his hands, looking at some patch of skin as if it was the most interesting thing this side of the Tredden River.

“How’d you know?” Barry asked, surprised at recovering his voice and glad he found something to fill in the gap of conversation. Randy seemed nonplussed himself, enjoying the sight of the normally stoic man squirm.

He basked in it like a cat on a window’s ledge in the morning sun.

“I had a hunch.” The ginger-haired rogue said. “You know what they say ‘bout mercenaries: ‘murderers and sodomites, the lot of them’

“A bunch of men, outcasts in civilized places of Kedwen. A miracle if at least one of them weren’t strange in their proclivities. Like attracts like more often than not.

“Besides that, you’re a tolerant man. You’d not cull me or string me up, seeing as yer a sorcerer—a hunted one yourself.”

Barry nodded.

His body didn’t feel so cold anymore. He didn’t feel so different.

Barry brought his knees to his chest and hugged them as the breeze cut through the shade, bringing with it a dying summer nip that he resisted against something fierce.

Now that he had some middling warmth in his bones, he was loath to lose it.

Where was the Sorcerer, the man whose flesh was in his full control? Whose body was nothing more than a simple tool under the heel and reign of his sagened mind?

He was gone, and in his place was a more honest person not under the lies of a heart wrought of stone.

A mage’s greatest weakness is the mind, Barry thought with dark humor. It was fitting. The mind of a magicker beheld power untold, but such was a double-edged blade.

Without proper handling, a sorcerer would cut themselves with the sharpness of their own mind. Or it could simply dull away and return to the mundane.

“Tell me a story, Randy. Anything. It can be a Gregorian play or some bard’s tale.

“I need diversion.”

Randy smiled as the gears in his head turned.

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

Barry groaned at the man’s inability to take anything seriously. And yet, he was content for it.

Barry awoke the next day nursing a headache worthy of a bard’s tale. Worthy of a Vitaen Epic, even.

I knew bringin’ up Brittanic hooch was a mistake. Damnable Haywald spirit, you’ve struck again like a thief in the night.

An apt description it was since the past night were fleeting shadows in the black. A whole evening lost in jest and stories, yet not entirely wasted.

A sense of contentment and enjoyment hung onto the fading memory of the past day.

Barry got up from his cot and conjured ether from the Tide, washing his face in ice-cold Forged water. Barry stumbled his way through the inn til he reached Randy’s room.

“It’s your damnable fault we drank so much!” He shouted through the thin door, banging on it like the unliving object owned him coin. “Now com’on out, a wee bit of swordsmanship practice will be your recompense.

“Price paid in full and all that.”

A groan and then a thump ensued as Randy fell off a bed.

How’s he got a bed in there?

With a single casting of Path of Shadows, Barry transported himself to the other side of the closed door.

“Sonuvabitch.” The Sorcerer winced. “You alright?”

Randy had fallen from a wooden trunk that he used to keep his bedding off the floor. Barry helped him up, and did not drop him. Though he wished to do so very much.

“Com’on, even if I hav’ta drag ya all the way outside…”

Barry did end up dragging Randy all the way to the backside of the inn where a nice bit of flattened ground lay.

They sparred, though Randy would’ve called it corporal punishment.

The sellsword and rogue changed through guards, a dance of forms without much in the way of clinching or strike. No different than a game of stone, parchment, flame.

“Com’on now!” Barry jeered. “You can’t stay so passive. You can’t just react, go on and prod and poke.”

Getting the ginger-haired man to do anything was a lesson in frustration. Instead of the jeer causing him to turn aggressive in his swordsmanship, Randy simply smirked, his lips parting in sultry.

“You want me to poke ya, do you?” He asked.

Barry reversed his guard from oxen to wrath and struck diagonally from right shoulder to left hip.

“If you got the time for ribald and flirting, then you got the time to strike.”

Randy parried, deflecting the strong and fast cut before carving up the side of the sword with his own, aiming to hit Barry in the chest with the tip of his dulled falchion.

Barry reversed the carving, drawing out the exchange into a clinch, getting close enough to Randy to feel the warmth of his breath.

“Gettin’ real close now.” Randy said through teeth clenched in strain.

“Aye.” Barry said, before he gave the man a quick kick to the heel.

The blow brought his posture off, and Barry capitalized on the lack of balance, shoulder checking the rogue and tackling him to the ground. He was careful to keep his sparring partener’s sword away from himself.

A dagger of black and another of glinting steel found themselves at each other's necks.

“You’ve done well.” Barry said, not masking his praise in the slightest as he dispelled the Forged ether.

“Aye. And I think I deserve a reward.”

Barry rolled his eyes.

Randy rolled them both over, him now above and Barry below. He pinned his arms down by the wrists.

“You do know I could buck you into the air, right?”

“Aye.” Randy said with a smirk tugging at his lips. “You could.

“But I know you want me just as much as I want you.”

Barry’s eyes narrowed into sharp slits, venomous as a viper.

Randy flew into the air, his eyes bulging and arms flaying before lashings of shadow caught him.

He swung like a stringed puppet without their master, limp in the air.

“Can you get me down from ‘ere?”