The Haunts

Levy pointed his sword at the Last Lord of the Light. Volodislav tried to reason with him, but clearly the man was being irrational, and it took some considerable coaxing on the mage’s part to find out what was going on in the man’s head.

“All this time you’ve been travelling along with demons shrouded in human guise, and all you can say is that you didn’t know? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t end your life for being a damn fool.”

“But,” Volodislav stammered, “after you revealed it to me, it was then that I took your side. How else can I prove myself to you and further gain your trust?”

Levy kept his sword up. His silence was unnerving.

“Spare me, please! I beg you!” Volodislav fell to his knees to beg and grovel. “You revealed to me the truth, and it changed my life! Surely, participating on your side is proof enough of my loyalty!”

“Stand up, you buffoon!” Levy brought his sword up and started kicking the man to get him to stand back up. “Stop grovelling like a coward.”

“How else can I prove myself to you?” Despite the volley of kicks to the side, the mage struggled to stand back up. "Your presence is a blessing to me." The Lord of the Light kept stepping back again and again until he stumbled against a fallen foe. Glancing down, he spotted a disembodied head beside his foot. The demon's head was angled upward, staring blankly at him, and then, unexpectedly, it gave him a little wink. Volodislav swore under his breath. “Please! Believe me when I say that I am no monster.”

“You were the last human among them,” Levy bared his teeth, “surely there were enough clues for you to see or tell that something was amiss?”

“Well, first off, the Lords of the Light had different races from all over, each with different rites and cultural differences. Even our skills in warfare and magical practice were rarely the same. Now, looking back, I can see the error of my ways. My gullibility got the better of me.”

“Do you know what? You’re right about that. So take this moment to thank the stars, or whatever God or Goddess you pray to, that I don’t thrust my blade into you. That is, unless you do something stupid that would have me convinced that you’re still on their side. At which point, I shall strike you down right where you stand.”

“I assure you, I’m no threat to you!”

“Don’t you think that I know that?” Levy gave the mage a cold smile.

Levy brought his blade down. He was sore and tired, and he hated the fact that he had changed so much over the years of being in this realm. All he wanted to do was go back home. He had enough of this savage, backward world. He missed all the things he left behind. He looked up at the terrified mage and motioned for the man to lower his arms.

“I just have one last question for you.” Levy changed his tone and turned to walk towards his horse. His sword changed back into a dagger before he went to sheath it. “Did you—or did you not—take part in executing the farmer and his daughters?”

Thankfully, no, that happened long before I joined up with them. I came all the way from the northern peninsula to join in what they had called a holy Cleansing.”

“Sorry again, but I must know: are there other factions of Lords of the Light throughout the realms?”

“No, there was only one group, and we just decimated them.” The mage kicked the demon's head aside, squatted on the ground, and proceeded to rummage through his belt for his tobacco pouch and pipe. “I came to join them after my hometown was overrun by bloodsuckers, and I was forced to leave. I had hoped that by joining the Lords of the Light, I could return there someday and finally wipe them all out. I tried on my own, but I was too weak.”

“You mean your cowardice got the better of you?”

Volodislav reacted angrily to the cross-examination by saying, "That's a harsh condemnation for someone who wasn't there." “I’ll let you know that I’ve killed plenty of bloodsuckers. And that I had lost good people, many family members, and close friends.”

“But only you, somehow, managed to survive.” Levy angled his head. “Tell me, what skills do you have? What are your strengths? Everyone and anyone that I’ve crusaded with has mastered something. So tell me, What’s this power that you have taken from something else, like maybe an amulet?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Volodislav was flustered. “I was culled at a young age in both spells and combat. I know archery, swordsmanship, and a smattering of cleric necromancy.”

“So far, my hand has revealed to me that your source of power is from a gemstone that is on that staff you carry with you.” Levy crossed his arms.

“Possibly, after all, it was left to me by my master. He died before ever revealing to me its full potential.”

“I’ve seen you using it during battle.”

“Still questioning my loyalty and honour?" The mage started to smile. “Or do you plan to test my patience, too?”

“You changed sides pretty quickly when I revealed the demons that you had worked with.”

“Like I said, I wasn’t with them for very long,” the mage added pointedly. “I can’t be held accountable for what they did before I joined them.”

“Fair enough,” Levy added, “But you changed sides so quickly. That greatly concerns me.”

“Okay, why do you think I did it?” Volodislav arched his eyebrow. “You seem to be so full of answers.”

“You had to be on the winning side.”

“Maybe so,” the mage said, taking a long drag from his pipe and blowing the sweet aroma in the air. “But I do not and will not serve evil. Sure, I’ll look out for myself first, and you know why? Because I learned the hard way a long time ago that no one’s going to save you. That you have to do it all on your own.”

“I have to agree on that.” Levy went over to his horse and started to strip its gear off. “Well, I guess you and I aren’t so different after all.”

Volodislav grew silent (but not for long), watching Levy dotting on his steed. “What are you doing now? Why are you stripping your horse of its gear?”

“I plan on leaving shortly, and I promised that once I was done, I’d set it free.”

“You can talk to horses?”

“Can’t you?” Levy turned away and smiled.

The mage looked at his flea-ridden mule standing in the middle of the battlefield, grazing. Who would even want to talk to a dumb beast?

All around the silent battlefield, a business of flies blanketed the dead, feeding, breeding, and laying their eggs on any infected wound they could find. Rats slinked closer to their bountiful and meaty meal as scavenger birds circled the evening sky. Sooner or later, something bigger and meaner would arrive for a free meal or two. Then, it would be harder to strip the bodies of their gear and stave off the larger packs of carnivores that picked up on the smell of rancid decay.

“So why are you in such a hurry to leave?” Volodislav asked. “Aren’t you going to salvage something from the bodies? You know, by the law of the land, you get your first pick.”

“Na, I’m good.” Levy finished removing the reins from his horse and then slapped the horse’s rear to get her into a gallop. In a flash of light, she became three dryad maidens that fled deep into the nearby forest, but not before they turned in unison, giggling, and then blew him a kiss of goodbye.

Volodislav gasped as three naked beauties disappeared from sight. He looked at Levy in wonderment: Who was this man—really? “Who…what?” was all Volodislav mustered to say.

“Oh, those three, you ask? Those dryads owed me after I killed a nasty troll that was cutting down their forest. So after I agreed to slay the fiend, they swore to serve me in payment. I had no horse to get around on, so they became one for me.”

“Wow...” the mage blinked, coughed, and then crossed his arms. “Most of the stories I’ve ever heard about the wee folk are that they are mostly bound to children... or to virgins.”

“Children or virgins?” Levy chuckled, “It’s been a long time since I was ever a child, and as for being a virgin—that sounds about right. Some people have said that has been the real source of my power. That I didn’t taint it by losing my virginity.”

The mage stood up and said, "You haven’t bedded a woman?”

“I am not like other men who worship women enough to pursue them for courtship.”

“So you’re into—what then?” Volodislav wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

Levy tsked as he looked annoyed and said, "No, of course not. What part of virgin don’t you get?”

“So what are you attracted to, then?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing, you say?”

“Is that such a surprise? Some monks purge their thoughts of all physical pleasures as a way of staying pure.”

“But you are no monk.”

“No, but I did need a horse, so the three dryads obliged.”

“But why?” Volodislav prompted, “Why not just use a real horse?”

“I weigh a lot in this cursed armour, so much that a normal horse cannot carry me. But where I’m going, I don’t need them, so I just released them. I don’t think they’d like my world, anyway. There’s too much pollution there, and I imagine that they’d suffer greatly because of it. As much as I hate to say it, they’re much better off just living in the surrounding forest.”

“So...” Volodislav asked, “Where is it that you are heading—exactly?”

“There is a spot where I made an incision with my blade. You see this blade in my hand? It’s made from an ancient dragon tooth that enables me to slash through all time and space, among other things, but that goes without saying. Once it had allowed a friend and I to slip in and out of a realm called the Haunts, and by accident I must’ve slashed too deep, it allowed me to escape into your realm.”

“So you really are not of this world,” the mage snorted. “Well, that was a lucky guess on my part.”

“Correct,” Levy said, starting to walk around. For many minutes, he stared at the ground, looking for a y-shaped stick, and once he had one in his hand, he held it out in front so that the v-shape was facing towards him.

All the while, the mage was going through the bodies, taking as much as he could carry. After he got as much as his pockets and his mule could hold, he stopped to see Levy with a stick in his hands walking through the corpse-covered battlefield.

“Now, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to locate where I came through and make it wide enough so I can return.”

“What are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

Thanks, but no,” Levy said, holding out his hand. “I’m looking for a faint seam line that is in the middle of the air. I tried to seal it up, but back then I did a piss poor job of it, so I thought that finding it would be a bit easier. But it’s getting dark soon, so...”

“Sounds like a lot of work to me.”

“This is coming from a mage that is currently scavenging off his dead comrades.”

“They’re not my friends.” The mage stood higher; he was finely dressed in someone else’s clothes, and a big turban sat on his head. He looked even more like a wealthy merchant than a simple mage.

“Whatever,” Levy said, keeping his eye on the stick as it began to vibrate as he walked deeper into the battlefield.

The stick vibrated and curled upward.

“That’s it?” Volodislav stumbled over the bodies to get to Levy.

“It looks like it,” he said. He looked up, and at eye level, he could almost make out the partial seam. He grew close, and everything on the other side appeared dark.

“Well?”

“It could be nighttime on the other side.”

“What’s it like there?” He adjusted his turban and asked, "Is it nice over there?”

Levy went for his blade, saying, “It has its moments. I miss the food mostly and the television shows I liked watching.” Just then, he was thinking about everything he left behind and wondered if he could go through with his original plan. Of course, he could just stay here, and if he really wanted to, he could probably become a good king or a wandering warlord in contrast to the Lords of the Light, who had fallen prey to evil. Or he could just keep travelling from place to place, playing the lone hero role, until someone or something stronger finally defeated him. He looked at Volodislav and realized that he had been rambling about something that the guy had no idea what he was thinking about.

“What’s your stage name, Volodislav?” He asked as he brought his sword up in front, and the tip was reduced to a dagger blade.

“It was Volodislav the Great,” He blinked, “how did you know?”

“You have the kind of luck many wish they had.” Levy nodded and then shrugged. “But you are one lucky performer, I must say, but I’ll tell you what, Volodislav—I’m going to leave this realm soon, so I need you to do your part as a real mage. Learn how to take care of this place while I’m gone, or I swear I shall return, and the first neck that my blade greets will be yours.”

Volodislav didn’t know how to respond.

Levy, from his perspective, saw the tear between realms tearing wider. His blade was like a pair of scissors ripping through a thick canvas that kept moving and flowing around as he cut. This time, he’d make the tear wider for himself so that he could walk right in. Not like the last time, where he quite literally had to struggle through the small opening so close to the blood-soaked ground.

Meanwhile, Volodislav stood across from him and just saw a faint, thin line dissect where Levy had dragged his blade. Where the line was (which had wavered in and out of focus, mostly because it was getting dark), it showed the world behind the great man like he wasn’t even there.

Then Levy pushed into the open seam as Volodislav rushed closer to see. But by the time the man reached where Levy had stood, the thin black seam was already being sealed up from the other side.

“Farewell!” Volodislav saluted, “Thank you for not killing me! I won’t let you down.”

Levy pushed through the thin black seam and felt as if he were being born again. When he got to his world, he was back in the house that he had escaped from. This time, it was pitch black, abandoned, and long neglected by the local hooligans that had made it their personalized toilet and a place for profane messages to be sprayed on every remaining wall. As he walked around the living room, he felt the floor dip, and he fell to the bottom floor, unhurt but shaken up by the experience. Dusting off the debris and grime, he noticed that his magical aura had started to fade away and that he was naked. He still wore a belt, a bag of coins, and a sheath for his dagger, but not a stitch of clothing. He looked out the broken window and saw from the distant street lights that it wasn’t winter but the autumn season. The rustling sound of the red and yellow leaves and the occasional gust of wind made him cringe and shiver.

He held out his hand and tried to get the magic armour to appear, but nothing happened. Does this mean that I’m cured of that cursed Hell tree? The dagger was still in his hand. At least that didn’t change, he thought gratefully. But how was he going to venture out if he were barefoot? Hopefully, the neighbourhood police would apprehend him and seize his weapon. The last place he wanted to be was imprisoned or thrown in a looney bin after trying to explain his situation. As far as he knew, he was still a murder suspect and a wanted man. Levy looked around to see if he should make a fire to keep warm. There wasn’t much to use as firewood, and besides, whoever had been here previously had a drug addiction, evidenced by scattered drug paraphernalia all over the place, making it a dangerous place to be confined in. He felt a lot of anxiety because the last thing he needed was to prick himself with a used needle and end up with a whole new set of issues.

He cleared an area to sit down, his bare ass pressing on the icy, filthy floor. He closed his eyes to think. The old memories started flooding back, along with the feelings of being an abandoned teenager again, homeless, and without a friend to confide in. Somehow, he would have to locate his two comrades, if they were still alive after all this time. Something that bothered him the most was whether he was all alone in this final quest or whether Cailleach Bhéarach had found them and then dealt with them. He had to know—but how? Trapped in a godforsaken old house, haunted by the past events that kept him in the shadows.

Levy knew one thing was certain, and that was that if he stayed where he was, he’d die of hypothermia, but if he went back to the realm he had come from...

No.

That was not an option either. There, he’d have to move through the land and determine where he’d appear on this side. The only way he was going to find his comrades was to slip into the Haunts. But even that was a significant risk because he’d risk more time to move away, and he wasn’t getting any younger taking these trips between worlds. He looked at his hands. They were aged, gnarled with old scars, and full of calluses.

He gripped the dagger in both of his hands, and the blade glowed blue as he made a new incision in the air and peeled back time and space so that he could pass into the Haunts.