Master of the Loop

Chapter 167

Adrift in Snow

Av and Vanessa stared strangely at the sight in front of them. While they had to endow themselves with several layers of clothing just to maintain bearable temperature, the man who called himself Sylas heaved on top of the black horse still wholly topless and barefoot. In fact, he seemed like he was enjoying the chilly breeze after being stuck in a stuffy cell for a whole night.

It must have been well, well into freezing temperatures, yet he seemed entirely immune to the chill of the Cold Snap. No wonder, Av mused inwardly. He could bound lands from so afar…

“Hop on,” he called out suddenly. “The journey, I have a feeling, will be fairly long.”

They decided to ride horses to the forest beyond the village, where they would resume their journey on foot. Neither Av nor Vanessa had ever gone further north than their station, partly because there was no need, but mostly because of the monster that the village was hiding. Av was still doubtful that the monster was even dead, yet, a part of his heart… believed it.

The journey wasn't particularly quick; despite them riding the best breed of horses for the snow-laden lands, even they weren't exactly trained for the winters of the Cold Snap. They couldn't gallop through the four-five feet of snow, which forced them to mostly strut or outright walk. Additionally, they were forced to stop just before nightfall, barely crossing halfway to the village, as it became too cold to ride the horse—the winds were so sharp and cold they cut through their clothes. At the same time, Sylas still remained entirely indifferent to it, it seemed.

They luckily found a small dent in the hillside that offered some protection against the wind, started a fire, and roasted some meat for the dinner. They hadn't spoken much all day long, and hundreds of questions were burning, first of which Vanessa asked at last, unable to hold back

“Seriously, who the hell are you?” the question was directed at Sylas who was nibbling away at some bread and downing it with a gourd of wine. He looked away from the fire and toward the pair of curious and guarded eyes, smiling faintly.

“Didn’t Av inform you?” he asked. “I’m the Prince’s fellow follower. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Bull,” she fired off immediately. “You are immune to cold. Immune. There’s no record, any record, of any human ever achieving that. Even His Majesty cannot just walk around topless in these parts. Nobody can. Hell, even the Ghouls dig down during the Cold Snap. But you—you're walking around like it's a casual summer day. So, again I ask—who the hell are you?"

“… there’s no good answer, I’m afraid,” Sylas danced around the question. “I am as much part what you think I am as I am what you do not.”

“… what?”

“The long-winded way of saying ‘stop asking the question you won’t get an answer to,” Av joined in with a sigh. “Very well. Your personal identity aside, what can you tell us?”

“I can tell you that Ethwar Castle had been a center of several invasions in the last year,” Sylas replied. “Some were minor, composed of some few dozen Ghouls. Others had trolls and thralls, and the castle found its walls breached many times.”

“Thralls?” both Vanessa and Av exclaimed at the same time. “Impossible! If a Thrall came, you would all be dead!”

“You would think,” Sylas shrugged. “But our dear Prince, turns out, is quite special. Anyway, I know who is responsible for the attacks—though, ultimately, not who is the head of the anti-Kingdom beast. Could be anyone, really. Most seem to surmise it is the Queen, as have I at one point. I’ve grown fondly suspicious of that theory, though.”

“How are the castle’s provisions?” Av asked.

“The stock will last through the winter,” Sylas said. “I only fear that, in my absence, the castle found itself besieged again. It’s a funny pattern like that, really, that each time I leave for a little while longer, I come back to the fire and smoke and the lines of both lying and walking dead everywhere.”

“Sounds like a mountain of responsibility to bear,” Av said, probing.

“… it has its moments,” Sylas smirked faintly. “It’s an exciting life, after all.”

“I imagine it is…”

They stayed the night and, once again, rode at dawn. Luckily, the day was much better than the one before—it was warmer and the closer they came to the village, the lower the piles of snow were. Though they never fell below two feet, there was a distinct difference between two and five still that made their journey quite a few ways better.

Just a few hours past midday, Av recognized the shadow of the mountain looming to the west. It was a landmark that his predecessor taught him—in the mountain's shade, he said, lay dormant a monster that could swallow the world.

Av would hear many stories before his predecessor departed the world—stories of how the monster would come to stalk his lands at night, stealing equal parts people and animals. They would fight, though the monster wouldn't fight himself—he would send out shapeless shadows to devour and consume. All manner of stories that all seemed exaggerated. However, the terror in the man's eyes was real. And Av… trusted it.

Breaking past the fog, a vast clearing void of woods and mountains and even many hills entered their sight—and with it all manner of confusion. For starters, there was no village. There were no structures, no fences, no roofs, no plowed or snowed-in fields. Nothing. In fact, there wasn't even any snow—it would melt as soon as it touched the ground. For miles in all directions, the brown mud stretched. And then their eyes came upon it—the canyon.

It stretched long and semi-wide, and it was clearly not natural. It hadn't been here, not ever, Av knew. And looking about, bit by bit, he saw them—the remnants of a battle. The battle that neither he nor Vanessa nor likely anyone but a select few people in the entire Kingdom could understand.

Av was strong—of that he was confident. He had begun training in his Way when he was eight years old and was a genius among geniuses when it came to making strides in it. But the moment he stepped the foot further into the zone, he felt his lungs begin to collapse. The sheer, residual energy was so dense and powerful that it caused his mind to reel in alarms that blew his body backward on instinct. He was immediately covered in sweat, breathing heavily, eyes widened like saucers, staring at that which could not be seen.

He veered his gaze to the side where he saw Sylas looking at him; the man’s gaze was… emotionless. He wasn’t judging or mocking or pitying him—he was simply looking. But the terror in Av’s soul grew, realizing he had shaken hands with someone he most certainly should not have.

“… it’s no good, then,” Sylas said. “We’ll have to go around. It will add a few days to our journey.”

“V-Vanessa? Vanessa?” Av called out, looking around until he saw a still body in the snow.

“Don’t worry, she just passed out,” Sylas said. “We’ll camp back a bit until dawn, and then start the roundabout journey.”

Av fell silent, carefully digging Vanessa out of the snow and wrapping her in another layer of blankets. Sylas started the fire near the wooded area behind them, slowly roasting a snow rabbit they had lucked upon earlier in the day. The man was impossible to read, draped in silence that was indistinguishable from an unknowable void.

“There is a story wrapped in the layer of lies,” Sylas broke the silence suddenly as the two men looked at each other. “And, unbeknownst to you, you’ve become part of it, Av. I don’t know your role, to be honest. I hardly know my own, after all. But you do have one. All of us do. The masterminds, the architects of it all, are still seated in darkness and silence. When it all comes to an end, I am hoping for a sweet release of death, at least. I imagine, for most others, though, they will desire glory.”

“…” though Av thought it sounded a whole lot like the ramblings of a madman, considering what the madman was capable of, he listened to it all very carefully.

“Valen will be the King, and if my gut is to be believed, Ryne will be his Queen,” he continued. “Derrek will be his right hand, and you might yet become the left. From the ashes that this Kingdom will likely turn into, a new one will spring, alive and strong. When the capital falls, so will the last Cairn. If my suspicion is correct… that day will mark the last day these lands, at least, will know of magic. Ways will falter, and Prophets and Exorcists and the Exalted Ones will all suddenly find themselves breathless. The last link to the Gods and their realm will have been severed.”

“…”

“But where do I fit, then, in that world?” the man continued. “I don’t. Not in the abstracts, at least. And so, I hope, they let me die, at least. But there is also a part of me that doesn’t want to die,” he rambled on. “Though I have lived a long, long life Av, it was a life of misery. One full of pain, death, agony, and terror. Few moments of joy sprinkled in the centuries of absolute catastrophe hardly make up a life worth living." The man looked up and faced him, eyes glazed with anger and sorrow. "The world always forgets. I hope, one day, I'll get to forget too. Alas, who the fuck knows at this point? Who the fuck knows?"

Sylas turned silent after, leaving Av confused and reeling. They did sound like ramblings of a madman, yet, eerily, there was a consistency to them, internal logic, flow that no maddened mind could ever conjure. At least, Av thought so. There was a method to the man's lunacy, but whether that method was fabricated by the man's broken mind, or whether it was real… Av liked to play dice as much as the next man, but no soul would confidently gamble on anything when it came to the enigma sitting silently in front of him, nibbling away at the rabbit's roasted meat.