Thursday, February 28, 2013

Just Another Magical Day, Sitting Around in the Dark.


"Feel the light within you."

The old man monotoned in the center of the room.  Better close my eyes and play along.  Just some old darkness in here as usual.

"Hold it in your hands, play with it."

Yeah, that's not gonna happen, I still can't see whatever you're talking about, but I can't say that out loud, they'd kick me out.  Better fake it, maybe with a bit of this dark stuff that's in here. Might just be my glowy aura shit or whatever is defective.

"Embrace it and let it flow out of you onto the floor, filling the room."

Lets see, it's a bit liquidy, like putty.  Squishy enough I s'pose.  Think about it flowing, got it. Flow, goo, flow.

"Feel the ripples where your peers are meditating, let the light flow around them as well."

Well, there's definitely glowy aura in her, doesn't look like any of the other kids are faking it like me.  Hope the instructor doesn't notice.  Anyway, maybe if I don't spread it out too far.  He's got his eyes closed anyway.  Well, we've all got our eyes closed, I guess the black goo stuff are kinda like hands then?

"Feel their own light flow out of them, feel it mingle with your light.  Deep breaths."

Okay, I'm feeling bits of it, not gonna go touch their glowy stuff on purpose, and not them, just gonna maybe make a pool, yeah.  Swirl it around here, let it flow in circles.

"Now let it start building up, getting deeper, growing taller."

I wonder if I can build some walls, don't want the light to splash over this.  I dunno why, but I don't like the idea of it getting on me, gives me a bad feeling.  Sweet, walls raising.  I could build a whole castle, maybe.  The way it's growing a dome might work better though.

"It's up to your waist, feel the light flowing around your legs, flowing through your legs."

Looking good on the inside, maybe I can start adding detail.  Do the rock textures, put a few little guards around.  Maybe some building around.  I might have made my dome too big though.  I took up the whole mat that I'm sitting on, so I shouldn't get into other kids space, but it's not easy, this is taking a lot of effort.

"Through your chest, through your arms"

Okay concentrate.  This isn't the hardest you've concentrated.  Okay, it is, but you're good at this, yes you are. You, self, are a darn genius.  That's why they let you in here, right?  That and being able to smell out that wizard that was traveling in disguise.

"Now it's up to your head.  Breath it in, let in fill you."

The pressure is getting higher.  Didn't know light was this heavy.  Might not be able to hold it for too long.  Some of it's covering the dome now, good thing I put the top on. . .

"Slowly, slowly, absorb it all back in, let it trickle in through your skin, call it back into your being"

Maybe I can. . .yes, shrinking works, I'll just pull  it back skin tight and then absorb it like he's saying.  Slowly though.  Meditation training is weird, I hope all my classes aren't like this.

"Once you have collected your aura, you are free to leave, except for Thomas.  I'd like a word with you."

Crap.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Something Rough that's also Dialogue

So you know me from the future, or something, is that it? I'm not even really sure what this has to do with the interview I'm supposed to have today.

Well, it's not exactly the future if you look at it, your future, yes, but not mine, and if I have a handle on it, not the absolute future either.

That makes absolutely no sense, if time travel were real there'd be all sorts of shenanigans going on, like in the movies. You can't expect me to believe that in the past future or whatever

local past

yeah, whatever, that I showed up out of nowhere in your bathroom to deliver a package dressed up as a delivery girl and said I traveled through time.

No, but I do do want to be able to say I told you so about a year ago when we ran into each other in New Denver. From the look you gave me I'd say that you remembered.

Sure crazy man. Buy me another slushie before I have to go over for the interview?

Might as well, my appointment isn't 'till 3:30 anyway. Glenda would just make me wait around reading the same boring magazines if I show up now anyway. That's your interview for the desk job at Sliplutions, right?

Mhmm.

Figured as much, hiring is a breeze though, and like I said, you'll get the job, they just have to make sure that you showed up at the right point in time and that you're actually going to have been part of the company.

My cousins told me that they do some sort of pre-hiring background check before you come in and already know before the interview or something. Said it was creepy that they looked me up during the thing. Weird thing was that they said that the lady at the desk told them to ask me about it next week, like the week after today.

That's why you looked into the position then?

Well yeah, if the ad's right they pay way more than the ports do, even the expensive ones where they let you help with 'ship maintenance.

You have no idea.

What 'choo smiling at?

Nothin' you'll get it further on down.

If weirdos like you hang around there it's not gonna be a boring job anyway. They prolly told you who I was so that you could haze me before they told me I got the job. pretty lax for business policy, but it's not like I've seen one of these places anywhere else, so it's pretty local. Now for real, stop grinning like that, it's freaking me out.

Alright then, might as well head over there though, it's almost quarter after.

I know I know, it's just across the street though, and I wanna finish this slushie real quick.

That's gonna give you a brain freeze, J.

Musta told you who I was, no way some stranger would just guess my name like that. lets go.

sure looks like it, huh?

It does, 'cause time travel doesn't exist. We've got space ships and stuff, but time travel is sci-fi, through an' through.

Have ye no faith in the tabloids, then? every other week they claim time travelers are messing with their stories.

Look, just because some scientist they found somewhere says its possible doesn't mean they're right. How would a huge organization that spans most of advanced technological time really hide itself anyway?

It doesn't have to, really, it is pretty much just destined to exist like that, stable time loops and all. It's mostly self contained. About half of the work that we do is actually from future workers to their past selves, making sure that they get into the loop.

Like that package that you said you sent to yourself, that you said I delivered?

Exactly, after you, J.

Nice of you to hold the door, Mr?

Kent, Argent Kent, and yes, I had to connect myself to the organization, plus some other stuff. I'll have told you some of it, and you were along for bits, so I won't spoil them.

Whatever you say Mr. Kent.

Main desk is off to the right, I'm off to the left where the offices are, Later J.

Later. Should be easy, signs and everthing, but you'd think there'd be a lobby. . .

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Centuries in the past, but not many.

When he was young, the boy said "tell me a tale of the dragons, a tale of adventure and magic and of great battles."  When he was young, he would run through the forest, hacking at branches and rabbits and squirrels with a stick, laughing as he went.  Now he is a man, and cannot set aside his childish dreams.  He cannot step outside of the world of wonder he dreamed up as a child.  Now he lives among dragons, fights armies, and wields powerful magic.  Well, so the tale usually goes, anyway.

Leolaf, king from the western reaches of the Wyrmteeth mountains to the rocky shores of the Mekki sea.  From the dark forests of Wilderglen in the south to the northern step and frigid coastal waters.  He was not always royalty, and this the scribes tell true.  He came out of a small house on the eastern edge of that great forest, alone but for his father in the cottage they shared.  If one ventured westward into the forest too far, one might run across things of a highly dangerous nature to a little boy, but in the few miles near the edge, nothing beyond a stray wolf or a sleepy bear might venture on accident.  That area just wasn't as wild as the forests name would normally denote.

So then he would grow into a nice young man, well built with dark brown hair and a confident stride.  Back then there was little more than a few castles and local lords who kept the peace in that cut-off country, though none would call it that for years.  The road west was not yet carved out at the base of the troll-tooth hills that stretched up out of the Wilderglen.  The most the outside world heard of was a few sailing ships that would come up the coast to trade for thick wool and elvish sculpted wood.

That was the real civilization of the land in those days, those elven trees breaking through the forest up into the sky.  Perhaps if you set foot into the forest back then you might see more than the few remaining home-trees, before they retreated back into the woods away from the touch of man.  Back then they were ever peaceful with the folk of the forest's edge, trading back and forth for bread and shiny metals.  They had their fear of the dwarven folk under the mountains, never trading with them who dwelt too close to mother nature's bosom.

Leolaf's mother was an elf maiden in fact, though the rarity of such a coupling has been exaggerated in the stories.  Back a few generations such a thing was common, though certainly not widely talked about.  Most of the stock of the country is a bit mixed, but at the time it was down to the half elven women and men who still came down to claim a mate from towns, or hold one night of passion in a fit of fey wildness.  The difference that was striking was that Leolaf's mother was the only truly full elf who had left the forest since half a century before, though most historians and bard just guess at this and include it as an afterthought.

It was in this time, this land, that a king needed to rise, for unbeknownst to all, a very terrible force would soon awaken in the west and wing its way over to the coast.  The elves would hide in their forest, growing back the burned swaths with no problem, but the dragon, settled in in a coastal cave soon found that men made tasty snacks.  The local lords, those left after stone burned and melted in their proud strongholds would unite, but against a force of magic so great, armies just set out great buffets for the beast.  Life so close to the forest was more peaceful, but the refugees streaming inland from the destruction told tales to spark the adventurous urge in any young man's heart, though the burns and the ruined castles on the north-east roads took back many boy's courage almost as soon as he had obtained it.

Not so with Leolaf.  He set about to find the beast and see if any strength from his arm might kill it, or at least send it back from whence it came.  It was in this spirit that he ventured westwards into the Wilderglen first, seeking his mother's people about whom his father had told him stories.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

An Anti-hero of sorts:Prologue to a Monster's Tale

Down from the foothills of the troll teeth range flows the ygdril river.  Northward it runs, through the whole Wilderglen, those miles and miles of emerald topped land-sea that holds many a wondrous sight under its treetop coverage, small ray of light illuminating patches of forest floor.  Quite near the beginning of the river's course, it hits what is called in these days the dwarven tower, a giant spire of solid stone that pierces the green waves and splits the water the main river continuing northwest while a small section meanders of to the northeast, descending into a vale of darkness.

Near where the river begins a series of waterfalls, each descending into the darker forest and caves below, the spider Azlock makes her nest.  An old lineage is hers, proud and noble in some respect, but her kind is feared by those who love the light.  An old wizard in his castle once listed back generations of her kind, from Gogleth the snatcher, daughter of Rekzim the impenatrable, to Nethalkhan, father of 1000 brood, the only male of their kind to have survived a mating.

Farther on down the vale, hidden deeper, more and more webs wrapped trees, covered caves, and hung in open air to catch any who wandered down into the depths.  Even for all the silken masking, Azlock could make out the massive structure of Silanon, the great tree.  Standing at the center of the vale, the river wound its way down to Silanon's great roots, feeding the tree and then diving deep down into the ground.  None have ever found an exit for that river, and few have returned to tell of the dark corridors, swamped with water that rush around with a fury.  Inside the tree itself the elves and the fey are said to have carved out a great city, cut off from all else and only reached through the treetop boughs that rise far above the rest, even from its depth in the vale.

None of this concerned Azlock much however as she sat in her web day by day, hunting the for food in the night.  This was until the meteor came.  Under the canopy of forest the burning light across the sky could not warn of anything new and terrible coming to pass, but the howl it made as it descended raised the whole of those in the land-sea from their slumber.  Azlock, young then, and still today by her kind's reckoning climbed up to peer at the sky that night.  A red streak trailing black smoke, seeming to glitter as pieces of glittering rock flew off into the night, raining down.  Surely such a force would level the forest, surely such a great terror descended from on high.  Yet off in the distance another light shined through the night, white and blue, building in intensity.  From atop his mountain, solitary as an island in the sea, a great ray of light reached out to greet this new and terrible visitor, reached out to stab and to break and to sunder.  The fury of sound from that meeting rivaled its force as the rock broke and scattered pieces throughout the forest.

Only on the following morning would Azlock find the strange riders who came flying down on that rock, red of skin, though painfully burnt to a dark grey in the scorching sunlight, some fled down into the caves in the ground, some were rallied and marched on that mountain they had come to destroy, and others were far flung to the west, but theirs is a different tale to tell.

The tale of Azlock goes on through the seasons her eight legs growing ever longer, her great ornamented webs growing thicker and more elaborate, and her eyes turning a deeper and deeper red.  Hers is a tale of much death, much hunger, and as with all of her kind, a tale of deadly romance.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

A Chance Meeting of Some Sort

So I'm sitting in one of those kinda alright outdoor cafe's right?  The kind where you have to actually know one of the waiters before they actually notice you, or at least look rich enough that the help cares.  It was a nice day, warm for the area, and sunny.  I was huddled under the umbrella trying to read the last of the Sunday paper.  The advantage to these cafe's is that while they won't get around to talking to you unless you make it very clear that they have to, they will ignore most anything that you are doing so long as they have tables free.

Quite a few of these places litter the streets in this city, and I could wager that it might be a facet unique to the area, though I can't say for certain.  I lived here all of my life, and then some on top of that.  So I'm under this umbrella, waiting for a cloud, and the wind starts picking up.  This is generally pretty good, all things considered; it moves along the upper atmosphere traffic a little faster, and I couldn't be waiting here all day, I might have to actually order some coffee if the weather didn't start cooperating.

It had been all my fault for ending up in this position, and I was none to happy about that.  Normally I go out in the morning with my duster on and a nice wide brimmed hat, not perfect, mind you, but it's enough to cover the skin, and with a pair of sunglasses I can manage the rays.  I wanted a place to sit down and read the newspaper on account of the hornets game last night that I missed.  Then that article caught my eye.  "Lady detective goes missing:police baffled".  I had an inkling that it may or may not have anything to do with my case at the moment, but either way, it was nice hearing about the mess ups of our men in blue.

It was right about then that the kid came by.  I'd taken off my duster while I was under the umbrella.  I mentioned it was a hot day, correct?  And so as I'm sitting there, t-shirt on, hat on the table, sunglasses in the pocket, this kid goes by and nabs it right off the back of my chair.  Now, I could have caught him easily, I always was one of the quicker ones, but it had gotten just sunny enough to make that a problem.  How is one of the undead supposed to make a living when things conspire against him like this all the time?  Not all zombies have the sunlight allergy, most of them just shamble around trying to gnaw on people's heads, but I have kind of a condition.

I guess I've got a while to wait, so I can probably telly you how it all played out, but you're buying the coffee this time.  I'll finish up the bit about my day under the umbrella first, and then we can go back to origin stories.  Now I'd been sitting under that umbrella for a while, and thankfully I had my wallet in my pants pocket, or I really would have been up a creek when the waitress came up to me and pointedly asked me if I was going to order something.  Coffee and a scone, like any normal gentleman, and then I was back to the waiting.  Either I was going to get a cloud at some point, or I was going home with a rather bad sunrash, and it takes ages to fix sunrash.

This was when you came along, I believe.  Tables being full and all, that was when I was happy enough to let you share my umbrella.  We talked, if you remember, about that very same missing persons case that was in the paper that week, and I eventually got around to asking you about using your cell.  You might already be able to guess about what it all means in retrospect, but I'll tell it how it went anyway.  See, I'm not some lone hidden fantastical creature bound to roam the streets at night and sip coffee under umbrellas.  There is a small root of us in these parts, one might go so far as to say an organization if one wanted to be sinister, but I'd be more of a mind to use the word club.

Now I went on to talk about my coat being stolen and not having my car keys to drive myself home, and if she would be a dear and pick me up in a turn or two.  Obviously, the car keys bit was a fabrication, never owned one, don't plan on it, but it got the message across that I was unsuitably dressed to go running around outdoors, and gave me a place to get picked up with a new duster.  We chatted  bit longer, then my ride showed up and we happened to part on those friendly circumstances, you back to your office and me off to dig up some clues on a certain detective who may or may not have anything to do with the grand story I can unfold next.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

An Hour in a Land of Empty Boxes.


"Look, I'm not saying you can't do it, just that you shouldn't."
I could practically feel the disapproval in her eyes through the bathroom door.  "You could get killed out there you know, or worse."
Slipping on the skinsuit, letting the nanoweave zip itself up around me, I could even understand the fear that she went through when I went out on nights like these.  It's not as if I was some sort of monster about it.
"Are you even Listening to me?"

"Just to the lovely inflections of your voice, Claire."

"You Know that doesn't work anymore, right?"

"Do you want me to keep an eye out for anything in particular tonight?"
Just have to attach the goggles and put the backpack on, then I'll be off to the surface.

"And don't try to change the subject.  Why can't you just get used to living down here, safe, where they don't patrol?"
Onwards, out of the bathroom and towards the door.

"I'll be back tomorrow morning, Don't wait up."
She's not moving, leaning on the frame and glaring at me with those icy green eyes.

"Just don't take any risks, more than you already are that is."
Her face has softened up a bit, this is the worst part of it all, really.  Having that sad, worried look as the last thing I see of her while I'm gone is really distracting, and distraction is not safe.

"Ok, I promise"
Out the door, past her.  The route up to the surface is pretty simple, just patched on to the sides of old tunnels that got built down here before the collapse.  Not that many people are still living in this one, but over a few the whole area is packed full.  Nobody without a bit of spunk survived the time a rogue cyborg from the core managed to get down into here, and nobody moved in afterwards.  Up the stairs and out, black sky above trickling wet tears on this forsaken landscape.  It looks like a perfect night, but you can never tell for sure.  The little slit of the sky that I see isn't the greatest of pictures, but that's soon to be amended.

The usual route up the building to the front has been feeling a bit overplayed these days, might as well check one down.  Gotta weigh the benefits of switching it up versus staying out on the street for too long.  Just because I'm playing it safe doesn't mean this isn't a risky business.  At least the core is way down the lane, can't even see its glow from down here.  Lets see, glass doorway, not locked, and the entryway seems empty.  The goggles help with the darkness, light is a killer these days.

Finding them on that trip two weeks ago was really handy.  Personal electronics of the non-deadly, non-sentient, non-rigged variety are at the top of my list these days.  Claire has some things hooked up to deal with food and water.  They work really well, even if they taste like crap.  The only thing that really merits a space in the backpack for the trip back is utilitarian, and most trips there's nothing really at all that fits the bill, but the rush brings me out all the same.

Ha, found the stairwell, hiding behind that corner I see.  Obviously the elevator shafts were meant to be used primarily, but if any power were still on, I still wouldn't get in those deathtraps.  Thankfully, most of the buildings in this area have the same continuous stairwell system, so I only have to find it once.  Back in the other direction I wasted a day looking around each floor of a building for the way up.  Whoever designed that thing was really trying to mess with your brain.  Anyway, about a quarter of the way up should do for now, don't wanna be caught out of breath.  Too bad these things never have windows, the view is nice for a rest.  More risk though, so I guess its not the worst setup.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Rambling to an Evolution of Tone

What exactly was it the charmed me away from those frozen lakes, those quaint houses set on the frosted hills that peaked out above that forest?  I couldn't tell you then, that night, but maybe now it will come a little clearer as I probe back into the past.  It may have been a week or two before the Christmas decoration went up, so pretty near the beginning of November. There I was, as usual, sitting on top of the garage roof, gazing off at that flat, snow covered emptiness, the place where the houses just stopped and the flatness took over.  one or two specks dotted the ice, cleared away some slick, snowless ground to skate on, or fish on.  Still, it was all so far away, just small colored dots moving around on a white backdrop.  The green pines, the white snow, the blue sky, it was all so peaceful.  Nothing was really happening at all.  Once, just being able to go out, to adventure in that cold wilderness, to explore nature, inevitably feeling as if one had become part of it, once that had been enough.  Now everything had a familiar coat, a seeming of perfect knowledge, no matter how ridiculous that really was.  I may not have known each tree in the forest, but I knew the great big one near the stream, the twisted old men rooted up by the old mining claim, the lone willow on the high hill, lashing about with its branches in the winter wind.  That was part of it, I guess.  Winter.  It was the season of the area.  Summer was but a brief interlude, and fall was really just winter with a tad less snow.  Spring was a mush season that you had to wear boots in or get your feet soaked.  Yes, winter was the season that really made the town work.  The decorations would go up, the old ice cream shop would close up, the view onto the lake would be marvelous.  I never really figured out how that old ice cream place stayed in business, though I guess that's another mystery to look back on.  My gaze was wandering those days closer towards the west shore of the river, the spot where the highway passed by, continuing on out into the distance to places where I wished I was, where I am now even.  I didn't have anything really tying me down after highschool.  The family has never really been close, just that insular, nuclear family that popularized itself back when our parents were growing up.  It was just me there, waiting to either ind some job out in the world or get too fed up with that beautiful view to stay there anymore.  I would have stayed for you, but you were gone too, though I know you meant to come back.  And so you did, in a few years, tanned from the sun, scarred from the war, the you that I had known as a child, but kind of melted like a snowman in the early spring, something taken out of you that was keeping you together.  I remember seeing you as you passed through on the way back there.  Maybe you need that view, those happy people, that familiar stomping ground.  As I said, I didn't know exactly why I left, but I know why I didn't stop to think of staying.  I just couldn't sit in that town longer, just waiting for something to happen.  I mean, things did happen, but nothing that really changed anything, you know?  Sure the girl down the lane was having a baby, but that was just the way it had happened with her mother, to hear them all tell it, and I'm sure it happened that way with her grandmother too.  The only thing that wasn't in that set pattern of sameness was the TV, and not the local channels, the national ones that nobody watched but me.  Nobody really cared who the president was, or who was famous on Broadway, or who was the next big Hollywood star, or what new technology came out of silicon valley.  The high schools were still teaching kids how to use a slidrule "just in case".  That might have been it, the noise of the TV I left on filtering out the window up to me.  It was a trivial thing, some pop singer kicking the bucket, or maybe it was a senator, I don't really remember the face so much as the death bit, and then they started talking about all the things he had done in his life, and I just sat there, wishing.  I wished myself a job down at the corner store that spring, I wished myself the money and the car and the gas and the ticket out of that town, perfect as it was.  Everything out here, out in the world of change, is so wrecked, so broken, so twisted, buy I can live here.  I think you probably know that better than me though, you got your ticket early.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A Sort of White Knight

The rider walked down the hewn, stone steps into the forsaken cellar, each footfall resounding throughout the stairwell, dusty though it was.  Man or beast did not venture near the cursed grove nor its cursed temple since the shadow fell upon the land.  Men had no need of curses, and so the track of roads and traffic passed far 'round the land.  Furred beasts, wandering through the woods stepped not into the shadows cast by tree or column.  Birds did not pass over it; by shaman reckoning the evil that dwelt within could pluck one out of the sky by its black, ground-bound twin, birds learn as fast as any man.  Even the insects, found many times to take up the empty homes of man or beast as their own did not stray in to burrow into woodwork or build hives in strong, gnarled trees.

Yet the rider came.  His horse shied at the place, knowing enough from the bearing the trees took and the striking silence of the wild.  No farther it whinnied, and the man relented.  Onward the rider went on foot then, skirting his way around the overgrowth, thick and unwieldy before he broke through into the clearing's center.  The trees stretched up and the columns and vaulted arches of the temple stretched up above even them.  Pure serene quite, retreating at his invasion, these sounds not felt by stone and bark in centuries.

Stopping in the entryway, the rider surveyed the gloom and gazing deep, far back into the darkness, he clapped his hands twice in a slow beat.  As the sound violated the inside of the structure, so too did light.  emanating in waves from the rider's hands, he strode forward, down the center aisle with a determination of where to go.  The silent hiss of burnt umbra led the way to the central alter.  Sword scraping 'gainst scabbard, the rider readied his blade as he approached.  Down from over his head, the blade arced to bite the twisted table, cutting through it all, releasing the moans and screams of victims ages past, escaping to the door, past his taciturn face.

Still more work awaited the rider.  This was but the entry.  Leaving the side chambers, set up for the merchants who once peddled their corrupted wares, forwards and down he tread.  Leather boots beating an address to the dwellers in the deep that the rider descended.  The forsaken cellar waited, not as empty as the forum above.  The beings of shade and blood hid behind pillars and inside offshoot tunnels, ready to pounce on the rider.  Glowing hands and shining sword led the way forward, ferreting out the maleficent beings and slicing them in twain.  Onwards always down the leather boots walked, cleansing light and purifying sword close by.

The tunnels opened up to the grander of the two halls, built far beneath its surface mockery.  No windows to catch the sun, no way for those above to hear the screams that even still went on, echoing from the walls.  In the center stood two figures.  One a man-shape, robed in darkest black with darker black still hidden under onyx hood.  Behind him, almost cast as a shadow on the wall a form demonic in visage extended upwards almost cast from the first by the invasion of light into this lightless domain.

No words were wasted between the rider and these two lurkers in the deep, for nothing either side said could bridge such a gap of existence.  The enmity of the light and the dark, the hatred between one who communes with the sky and the speaker to the deeps knows a greater scope than anything a single man could ever know, more than a nation could comprehend.  The two fell upon each other, light and shadow drawing close, stark in their contest of wills.  Each finger of power like a rusting birch tree's shadow on a windy day, bathed in the sun.  Drawing a long, curved blade, jagged on the edges, the cloaked figure stalked forward to strike down the rider, and the leather boots carried that rider forth to end it first.  Blade on blade, the clash sharp in the empty stone hall, melding with the screams of the damned.  Then forward came the demon to join the fray, the great overpowering force that had taken many riders to their doom in its day, grown stronger by its steeping in darkness.  Claws of darkness ripped down around the rider, forcing him back as the two blades still sang a duet in staccato.

Back he retreated, but slowly the glow around him deepened in strength, his face the same blank slate of emotionless flesh.  Farther into the light the shadowed forms had to plunge, farther from the safety of their dark corners and shadowed lair.  their hatred drove the rider back to the door of the great hall, out the door and into the tunnels.  Cloaked in the screams and torment of the damned, they drove him up, out of their unholy darkness.  Each shadowed claw just missing the rider's form, each blow of that jagged word stopping short on the straight steel held in his lighted hands.  Finally, they reached the upper hall, and back around the broken alter they pushed him.  Boots sliding back across the flat stone floor.

The wails of the damned that followed the hearts of darkness up called out, drawing the side rooms infernal inhabitants.  Now the beasts of shade and blood closed in, aiding the sword and claws that rose so far from the depths.  More quickly the leather boots trekked back, clearing the door into the moonlight.  No solace in the sun awaited the rider.  No warm embrace to chase the darkness back down its hole.  Yet out in the faint white moonlight he stood, infernal forms of blackened night rushing on towards him.

Muttering old prayers under his breath, chants to make him stronger, he stood holding his shining sword.  Slowly his voice grew louder, the enemy upon him, blackness blotting out that faint shimmer of moon and stars above his head.  Like a flame igniting the light that glowed around him sprang up, blinding rays like a sun at high noon striking out at the shades.  The sword and the hulking demon of black claws were all that stood against him now as the light formed at his back.  Just as the demon was of pure shadow, the brilliance that attached itself to him like a skin was that of pure light, stretching out behind him like wings and covering his sword in a radiance no darkness had yet survived to know.

The terror in those two dark forms showed in their movements as they turned their backs to that warrior of the sky, that rider from on high, shading their eyes from the majesty that surrounded him.  Back to their tunnels where they might flee and disappear into the stones was their intent, but they had strayed too far from their native place, too far from the embrace of the darkness of the earth.  Forward lunged the rider, blade plunging through the cloak, scratching those shadow clutched bones, purging that receptacle of darkness.  Again he lunged, this time for the demon.  In bit the blade, plunging deep into the being's core, yet the demon was of stronger stuff than old bones.  A claw ripped back 'round, nearly catching the rider about the head.  Under the arm, then pushing with all his might, the sword ran the course, bursting out the far side, then cutting a swath out the side.  The din of voices swelled to a fearsome howl, heard throughout the forest. Then silence once again claimed the grove.

Standing there, the rider surveyed the scene, his prey dissolving into the moonlit night.  With a rasp, his sword slid home, back in its sheath as he turned to stride back to his tied up mount, letting the unearthly glow fade back out of this mortal plane.  Off he rode, toward the dawn of a new day, his business done.