The Fool 17

He woke up to his new, singular life. Wrapped in rags and tied to a stick suspended very high in the air, he realized he was flying. Or, at least, someone was flying and he was being taken along for the ride. The person sitting behind him was half laying on his back, sleeping.

Feeling him moving around, the voice of Cray behind him said, half awake, "Broom knows where it's going. Lemme catch some shut eye before we get there."

Lulled by the sense of calm complacency the archer was projecting, he tried to organize his blurred thoughts and figure out exactly who he was. Turning inward, there was a space but it was very small. The only feature and content was a tiny dot of light in the middle. He didn't feel strong enough to examine closely but he could make out that it was a ring shaped soul the size of a braces rubber band, the smallest one. It was undoubtedly his.

Flashes of memories started ordering themselves around. "I'm Orison... Well, I suppose I always have been. The name on the boy's adoption papers was a fabrication of the alien entity that the miasma came from based off the boy I was 'wanting' to adopt for my character. I should have known that Orison Cantrip wasn't a REAL Highlander family name. I mean, in theory it could be. Since Orison is Middle English filtered through French from Latin and Cantrip is Scottish... what a hell of a family backstory THEY would have!

"God, even the way the boy originally looked was twisted to fit the orphan boy I'd made up in my head! It's a miracle he didn't hate me! No wonder we never had any luck figuring out anything about his past. Nub knew something but he wouldn't tell us. I wonder if he was one of the vampires that went with Zoe.

"... Looks like when they were putting this Humpty Dumpty's soul back together again, they used Green's as a reference. There's still little bits of barely 'noticeable' gold flecks here and there... What kind of crazy a** resurrection did I get!?"

Over the next few hours, Orison continued to reconstruct his knowledge and understandings into something cohesive. The most terrifying discovery was that he only had Lock/Unlock, Find Objective and an innate healing ability for usable magic. Fortunately, the meditation technique that he had cobbled together in this world was still there along with a good portion of his magic theory and alchemy knowledge.

There were a lot of things that he understood as a disembodied soul that were fading away too. He supposed that there was some law that limited or obscured a living person's understanding of the 'great beyond'. With a decent respect for how complicated life had gotten with tidbits of that understanding, he could see why. How was a soul supposed to have novel experiences and grow with all that metaphysical crap occupying their thoughts and feelings?

Aside from some useful information along with some nature and nurture imprints on mind and spirit from Al, he pretty much was a new soul. There wasn't much to overtly complain about. He had gone from scattered cosmic dust with a few 'live' pieces left to one of the best souls on the market. Getting a fresh start with some 'fully loaded" features didn't seem so bad.

Except, he suddenly understood that it wasn't a fresh start. There was a familiar yet still unexplored 'true name' on his soul. He could feel elusive and undefinable ties with other souls, at least until his 'afterlife' understandings finished fading away. 'The boy' had figured out a way to walk out from underneath everything he didn't want to deal with and threw it on the 'artist formally known as Al'. He had a brief flash of the boy even referring to himself as Aleph until they could find their 'real' original name. In spite of forgiveness, they neither accepted nor appreciated what Al and an alien entity had twisted their form and identity into, leaving it for the newly minted Orison to 'enjoy'.

While the young... mage?... decided what to do with himself, the broom started lowering to the ground next to and then INTO a tree dotted thicket. After that, Cray was forced to wake up or fall off. Getting thoroughly brushed and scratched by two fat bushes, they were coasting to a stop in front of a ball of darkness within the barely less dark, hollowed burrow.

"What's this?" Orison asked.

Looking frustrated, Cray said, "I hoped you'd know since ya spit it out."

He could tell the archer was getting agitated because his country accent was thickening. A sudden inspiration of what it could possibly be had the young mage approaching it cautiously instead of initiating a conversation with Cray that he desperately wanted to have. The very tip of his left pinky finger served as tester and possible sacrifice as it slid in and out with no resistance.

After a few more timid tests, he walked in and the magical darkness receded to reveal a cabin barely discernible in the natural darkness of the sturdy and surprisingly large burrow. Not wasting anymore time, he reached into the front door to turn the lights on. Within the radius of the cabin's magical field, the faint scent of animal musk and ancient decay became clean, odorless air.

Turning, he noticed that Cray hadn't followed because he couldn't. The calm and easy look that the archer normally wore was quickly turning into worried panic as he pounded on an invisible field of kinetic force. No doubt, the man was still seeing nothing more than darkness still outside of it.

With a mental word given to the cabin's power source, he watched as the archer all but fell, stumbling towards him. With a startled realization, Orison recognized the last time he had looked at Cray from the same height advantage point. From the time he had first met the archer til his misadventure to the underwater miasma source, he had been relatively short and for a very specific, age related reason.

"F***! I've been shrunk to pre-teen short fry again!?" Orison lamented as he made his way to the bathroom. Wavy sandy blonde hair flopped over slightly obscured, large and deceptively innocent looking aquamarine eyes that only a close examination would reveal to be heterochromatic. With thoughtless abandon, he stripped off the rags and checked himself all over, wanting to cry for more than one reason.

Since he was already prepped for it, he jumped in the shower and took a couple of hot, steamy minutes to get his emotional feet under him again. Once he was out, Cray all but begged with watery eyes to have a turn, pushing their conversation off some more. While the archer was washing away some of his own troubles, Orison checked the self cleaning closet. At the bottom was two fancy books, a mirror and a triangle shaped item he didn't immediately recognize the purpose of.

Not completely ready to deal with that, he slid open a secret panel to reveal a biometric locked liquor cabinet. It stunned him to discover that the previous inhabitants had never found it because nothing was missing as far as the fuzzy memory Orison could tell. After taking a few out that he clearly remembered the effects of, he took the basket of items and put them in the cabinet, closing everything back up.

Coming out wrapped in the towel, Cray looked and saw that the rags he'd been wearing were still dirty. "Uh, hope this don't come across the wrong way but why aren't they clean?"

The young mage shrugged and said, "I don't remember Presto but the closet there has it enchanted in. Since I was the one to put that one in this place, I should be able to reverse engineer the spell."

Eyes wide, Cray looked around the cabin and said, "You made this!?"

"Nope. I did help though," Orison said.

A half minute of wandering observation later, Cray's eyes focused on the bottles and glasses sitting on the table. "Please tell me some of that's Grandpa's sweet, sweet nerve medicine."

Chuckling, the young mage said, "If you're asking me if this stuff is booze, the answer is yes but it's not just for fun and some of it can be scary if you don't know what it does first... Let me ask you. Hypothetically, how old would you want to be before you stopped aging?...

"Wait. Let's come back to that. I've got two really important questions. What happened after I squeezed the last of my magic juice out? Oh, and where is Hunter and Cole?"

The archer looked at the bottles like they were beautiful women as he said, "What happened? I'm not too clear on that muddy water myself. We found that bear cave and after that, I know that you turned into a crystal man when a big white light went off. That one came after a 'black light' blocked the whole night sky from view for a skipped heart beat. I nearly needed a clean pair right then and there, let me tell you, but that's when a broom and cellphone popped out of ya. That and a big black ball which turned out to be this fancy shack here.

"I know that they came from where you put that circle in the dirt that put me and Cole back in working order again. I kinda remember Hunter saying that he bet there was some good loot and we could maybe fix you or some such. The last thing I remember good and proper, before waking in that holding cell, was Hunter and Cole going to check it out.

"I don't think we were there that long but I'm pretty sure some nasty dead buggers got their filthy paws on us and took a few sips off the top. It made things downright miserable confusing. I think one of the b*****ds watching us took a chunk or two off of ya while I was sleeping too. That's it for that.

"About Hunter and Cole, I was hoping you could maybe make sense of what I done saw. When we were taking our underground vacation, there was another of them big black flashes that made everything a glowing black. Not too terribly long after that, there was another big white flash that turned you into a right big hill of that crystal stuff.

"If that doesn't beat all, there was all this golden light coming down on you. Then, there you were, not looking a notch different than the first day I met you at the post, except maybe a smidgen younger. The crystal you was, poked a hole in the wall. And when I looked around, I didn't see nobody.

"I think it was a little dustier than when I came in but other than that, I just saw where they put the broom and I took us out of there. I knew it was special but how. That was when I saw Hunter and Cole running like the abyss itself was behind them. They had all kinds of bags and stuff on them and there were all sorts of dead things chasing them but both of them were laughing like they were a sandwich shy of a picnic.

"When Hunter looked over, he pulled out a scroll as he kept running from the dead slowpokes behind him. After using it, there was a tingle in my hand that was holding the broom and then he asked what I was waiting for. He told me to fly away with you before they teleported. So, that's what I did. Well, it did after I told it to take us back to where it popped out of you.

"Now, don't look at me like that. I messed with it a bit first to make sure it knew what it was doing before I let it take lead. It's kinda like my pa's horse. Tavern keeper just poured my old man into the saddle and he'd bring 'em back home where Ma would beat the tar outta him... My pa, not the horse. Ma loved the horse."

Orison shook his head and said, "Best sense I can make out of all of that until we can speak to Hunter and Cole directly is that the undead that found my circle, played with it. I don't know if what happened to me was because I was tied to it or if the world will has some kind of retribution law."

A tickling sensation came over Orison for a moment as he felt a few more particles of his soul core stick and fuse into place, carrying a little more information with it that would take time to trickle down to his mind. A vision of his astral plane fairy friends flashed in his mind's eye before fading away along with the last few bits of gold in his soul's space. With a tiring working of will, he called them out.

Cray tensed until he saw who it was and made no comment as the 'knight' spoke. "That's all that we could find. The reward of spirit gold that you paid us for retrieving it proved to be quite useful. Never a more gracious master have I served."

Not wanting to ruin whatever misconception the knight was under, Orison replied. "You've retrieved enough that any more would just be a bonus. Thanks for all the hard work."

The witch frowned. "Thanks are not required and ring of falsehood. Your generosity makes for the best display of gratitude. It would sooth me to n 'er hear such a platitude again."

The knight added, "I would beg your understanding and indulgence but there is something about the phrase that is akin to burrs in the undergarments."

The young mage blankly stared at them for a moment and said, "Duly noted."

Once he got a good idea of how long they could stay out to scout around, he released them to look for Hunter and Cole. Not too long afterwards, there was an unholy screech that sounded like a demonic toddler with the world's largest megaphone. His astral friends retreated to their home with core deep fear as the young mage fired up the protection surrounding the cabin.

The ground shook and buckled. A wave of darkness, more felt than seen, was followed by a wave of light that would have blinded were they outside. A third, godlike wave of invisible essence unleashed in the distance as the blanket of magic across the land bunched and smoothed out with tears in it that minutely began repairing by the vestiges of mend and healing magics in the air. Vital water, then inert essence and finally condensed eternium chunks the size of baseballs appeared in Orison's space, threatening to rip him apart.

Sounds of tinkling broken glass could be heard only by the young mage. First, it pulled from behind the the cabin to the front. Then, the sounds bombarded the front as a vicious ripple of disjointed magical energy rolled over them. Were it not for the fractured and nullified shell of the frame of 'time' around the cabin taking the brunt, their little cabin would have been stripped and sundered of every magical property it had.

Fearing more of the same, Orison dove for the secret compartment, pouring over its treasures for benefits before something came along and destroyed them. In short order, he discovered that the fancy book was some kind of tome that boosted physical stats before disappearing. Being that the second one was the same, Orison doubted that they stacked. So, he opened it as he shoved it towards Cray's face. The archer blanched and tried to back away reflexively from the move until he realized it had added to him in ways hard to fully describe.

The mirror was a dud. Moving on, he found that the triangle was some kind of storage device he could see how to get in but figured it would be safer to wait until he could make sure what happened, wouldn't happen again. It was ridiculously stable feeling and sturdy for an extra dimensional item. So, he stored it in his space.

He was about to do the same for the rest of the bottles before some faint echo in the back of his mind made him fear putting too much trust in the reliability of his space. Frantically, the young mage tore through the cabin looking for possibly immediately useful items and after finding nothing but a few bags of gems and gold coins that he stored into the hidden cabinet, he closed the secret compartment. Cray, who had been watching Orison with peripheral vision, tore his eyes away from the window long enough to ask if he needed help before returning to his vigil.

The young mage said, "No, I'm good. I hope those two are okay. That... looked rough."

Cray picked up his and Orison's bundle of rags, grimacing as he wrapped both around him and said, "I'm going out to take a gander. I won't rest easy thinking they could be nearby and hurt when we could have helped... I won't go far. Don't start drinking without me!"

As the archer slipped out, Orison muttered, "I swear to Bob, I hope they're alright but I hope they've brought some decent stuff to wear... Well, there's always the bedding. I'll be damned if I'm going to make clothes out of dead leaves and tree bark just to go fur hunting in the outskirts of a forest with goblin kin. Sounds like the bad ending to a game I'd never want play. Hell, I'd probably burn the PC or console it was downloaded on."

In the distance, the demon baby megaphone released one last agonized and agonizing to hear wail before the young mage's space was deluged with more essence than it could contain. The strange gold essence began pouring in, trapping Orison in a loop of being ripped apart and stitched back together. He desperately desired to pass out again but couldn't.