[NuRPG][John Darkspiral #10: Recovering][Nu Wasteland]

This chapter occurs just a smidge earlier than Kimol #12, which was the battle between Kimol and the Sand King referenced here many times. Enjoy. And...maybe a few comments eh? Go ahead, shock the hell out of me and respond ^.

-***************** Recovering *****************

In the depths of the Nuian Wasteland, a nightly campfire was a rare thing. Though the infamous grueling heat of the Wasteland desert dissipated after the sun set, to be replaced with the equally infamous bone chilling cold, campfires were seen only occasionally. Chief among the reasons for this was that fire tended to attract the very ferocious, not to mention very large, predators that combed the sands of the Wasteland during the darker hours looking for prey. Packs of huge Sand Scorpions, swarms of flesh eating scarabs, and the occasional giant nocturnal lizard only began the list.

Hence, the small bands of human nomads that called the Wasteland home had learned that the comfort of a fire often brought more trouble than it was worth.

On this night however, the sands of the Wasteland sparkled and shone with the ruddy light of not merely one, or even one dozen, but over one hundred campfires. The gathering of the Duskcan Tribes, precipitated by the seizure of the ancient city of Duskca by a hostile sand-beast, had amassed such numbers that even the stupidest Sand Scorpion on Nu thought better of attacking. All around the ruined wall of the nomad's holy city, Duskcan Nomads of every Tribe and Clan enjoyed the rare luxury of a campfire. The firelight only dimly reflected off of the ancient wall, the mysterious material that composed the ruined barrier absorbing more of the illumination that it reflected back. One of these campfires, nestled within the heart of the menagerie of tents covered in Tribal and Clan markings, belonged to John Darkspiral.

John stared into the fire. The fuel he was using for the flames, dried cactus, burned much faster than the wood he had always used before, and put out less heat. Trees, however, did not exist in the very hostile environment of the Wasteland and firewood was therefore unavailable.

The shafts of Nomad spears tended to be bone. The occasional wooden spear existed, but they were imported by the allies of the Tribes in the now occupied city of Ghoryad and were hellishly expensive for an individual Nomad to obtain. And so, dried cactus it was. Cacti were not in short supply, though nothing was really plentiful in the Wasteland, and drying out anything in the Wasteland was as simple as cutting it down and leaving it alone for a mere handful of hours. But it still burned rapidly, so John had to accomplish his task quickly.

He reached beside himself, lifting several pouches made from animal hide. He dipped his fingers into each of them, pulling out the colored powders within them and placing them on several flat stones he had acquired earlier that day. He lifted up a water skin from next to the campfire and sparingly mixed in the precious water to each powder until he was satisfied with the consistency of each. He then applied the colors to his face, drawing out the proper designs to please the sprits in his ceremony. Then he reached down and opened the last of the pouches at his feet. He pulled out a pinch of the herb within, one of the holiest of all plants: tobacco. John solemnly threw the pinch of dried tobacco into the fire, enticing the spirits, the manitou, to join him and listen to his words while they enjoyed the tobacco smoke.

"Mitakuye Oyasin!" John cried out into the night sky. "All my relations! Come and join me, manitou of our Grandmother; she who is the ground we stand on and the water we drink. I give you this tobacco, I give my thanks and honor you. I am your child, Jonathan Darkspiral."

John then grabbed yet another of his herb pouches. From within he took sage, and he sprinkled this on the fire as well, though much more liberally than he had the tobacco. The aroma of the sage filled the air of the night, driving away any darker manitou that might have also been drawn by the scent of the tobacco. He then reached behind him, pulling out a pipe he had constructed many years ago from the antlers of a deer he had killed as a wolf. Back when the ability to change his shape was still a new and novel thing.

To thank the deer's spirit for giving it's mortal life so his strength would continue, he had made this pipe to be used in ceremonies such as the one he performed tonight. He stuffed the pipe full of tobacco, then used a lit piece of dry cactus to ignite the herb. He passed the lit pipe through the lingering smoke of the sage then took several strong puffs on it to keep the tobacco lit. He gave thanks to the east, then to the south, the west, to the north, then above and finally to below. Having properly shown his respect to the directions and to the manitou, John placed the pipe on the ground and allowed the tobacco to go out. He took a deep breath and held it, slowly counting to ten before exhaling and relaxing. He closed his eyes, and allowed the Hanbloglaka, the words of the spirits, to flow through him.

<We accept your thanks and your sacrifices of tobacco, John Darkspiral.> The words came from the sands below and the air around him. They reverberated through his body like a wave of sound, yet the silence of the Wasteland night was not broken. <What would you ask of us?>

Though John himself did not move, within another realm of existence he opened his eyes to a featureless plain; the spirit realm that shamans and some mystics drew their power from, and the place the spirits dwelled. "Thank you, manitou of Unchi, She who is the Earth and our Grandmother, for your help against the Sand King last night. Without you my friends and I would have gone on to meet out ancestors prematurely."

For a time there was no answer. Then the Hanbloglaka sang through him again. <The Sand King will no longer be of worry to you, John Darkspiral. Prepare yourself for yet a greater challenge.>

John sat up straighter in surprise. "What is this challenge to be?"

Sighing, John refocused his mind on the original task. "One of my companions, Mitail of the Shadowbane Tribe, was gravely injured. The human wizard Faromelious has done what he can to help her, but he spent much power in our defense against the Sand King, and as I said, her injuries were great."

<Yes, we can see that.>

"I would ask for the help of the manitou in her healing."

"I am a shaman."

John's eyes snapped open, once again perceiving the physical world around him. He rose, quickly gathered the materials he would need, lifted his tent's door covering up, and stepped outside into the night. Walking through the maze of the different Clan tents he made his way to the massive tent where Shara and Ghoryad had taken Mitail. Inside he found Shara sitting beside the unconscious Mitail, tears unashamedly flowing down her face. She looked up as he entered.

"John. Faromelious has told me that he can do nothing else."

"I know Shara. I've spoken to the manitou tonight. They'll help."

She shook here head. "John, I have spoke to the priests of Olodumare already. They say their power cannot help her either."

"With all respect to your gods Shara, they are not all there is when it comes to the other worlds. Faromelious and your priests are two aspects, wizardry and faith, of something that no person can ever fully comprehend. I am another. I told you yesterday that I wasn't a warrior, despite the Wolf Medicine, and I meant that. I am shaman, and the shaman aren't priests. We are healers, servants to the manitou of the living world, and translators between the Invisible World and our people. Tonight I spoke to the manitou and they agreed to help me in my ceremonies."

Shara looked at John silently for a moment, searching his face. "Do you think you can help where both my gods and the magic of Faromelious could not?"

"I know that I can't hurt her further by trying."

Shara briefly closed her eyes, turning her head to look again at Mitail. "I will not stop you from trying then. Do you need solitude?"

John nodded wordlessly. As Shara got up to leave he laid a hand on her shoulder. "We musn't ever lose hope, Shara."

The look she gave him conveyed a lifetime of watching death. "Here in the Wasteland of Nu, John, we have learned that death comes for everyone eventually. I have watched many that I love die in the short time I have lived. Hope never helped them." She shook her shoulder out from his hand, then walked out of the tent.

Sighing, John set about the preparations for his ceremony.

Outside the tent she had just left, Shara bit her lower lip, holding back tears she had freely shed inside the tent now that she was visible to the rest of the Tribes. As a leader in the Council, she must remain strong in the eyes of her people. Behind her she heard John's voice begin a chant in a language she could not recognize. His voice grew in volume and tempo, then suddenly dropped down so softly she could only barely hear it through the wall of the tent. She began to walk away as the chant grew again into a high pitched call to whatever powers John prayed to, woodenly making her way through the tents of the collected Tribes to her own. Inside she arranged her sleeping area to her satisfaction and lay down to rest. In a few moments, despite the worry in her mind over Mitail's condition, she fell into a deep slumber.

Shara abruptly awoke later in the night. So abruptly that for just a moment she stared up into the blackness of her tent's interior, unaware of where she was. When she came back to herself, Shara sat up and stretched to bring feeling back to her muscles. After a moment, she stood and walked back into the night to make her way back to the tent Mitail was being kept. It was quiet. Slowly she pushed up the flap, peering in to the tent. Shara could see the smoldering remains of a small fire, presumably lit by John. To one side of the fire she saw a large figure, which she assumed was John asleep, and on the other Mitail lay on her sleeping mat. Hearing no noise from either of them, Shara moved inside the tent, noticing the smoky smell in the air of unfamiliar herbs that had been burned. Almost timidly, though a Warder was never truly timid, Shara reached out and placed her hand on John's shoulder, giving it a small shake to wake him. Nothing happened. Shara frowned, giving John a much rougher push which rolled him over, but still he lay on the floor of the tent like a dead man. With a growing sense of urgency Shara placed her ear to John's mouth, searching for a sign of breathing. When she found it, it was weak and much to rapid. Swearing under her breath Shara felt beneath John's chin for his pulse, and found it to be shallow. She rose and spun on her heel, marching out of the tent and breaking into a run towards the tent Ghoryad and Faromelious were using. Without a warning to those inside, Shara jerked the tent flap open to reveal a shocked Faromelious and Ghoryad, who was groping for the sword he had dropped in the ruins of Duskca during the battle with the Sand King the previous night.

"Narvane take you Shara! You scared me out of 5 years of life!" Ghoryad's face betrayed no small amount of irritation. "What is so important that you charge in here with no announcement?"

"John Darkspiral has collapsed inside Mitail's recovery tent. His breathing is shallow and I can barely feel the beating of his heart." Shara kept the tone of her voice even, determined she would NOT allow the worry over her oldest friend and her newest ally to show.

There was a moments pause, then Ghoryad rolled off of his sleeping mat with an explosive oath and Faromelious rose to his feet with a pained look. "Shara," the old wizard said, "What was John doing in the tent?"

She gestured for them to follow her. "He was attempting to use his powers to heal her."

Faromelious' voice came from behind her. "Didn't he know that both your priests and myself have already tried?"

Shara stopped walking. "Yes," she said. She could feel her shoulders shaking, and despised herself for the lack of control. "He said that he was going to try something else. When I asked him if he truly thought he could do a better job, all he could say is that he was sure he couldn't make things worse for Mitail."

Ghoryad sighed. "Apparently he forgot to worry about making things worse for himself."

John stood by a cold river of liquid light. As he watched, the colors of the river shifted like living things. John knew where he was. This river had many names on his homeworld, and came in many forms. His own people didn't give it a name, few shamans spoke of it at all, but all of them knew about the river of souls. He leaned down and dipped his hand into the light, thinking of Mitail. Something in the flowing radiance caught in his fingers, and when he lifted his hand back out a single silver strand came up in his grasp. John examined it, noting that the strand was wire thin. It was like it had been pulled to nearly the breaking point, and that worried John a great deal. He looked off to the left and then to right. On either side the strand vanished back into the river, with no sign of which direction was the way he needed to go. John sighed, and bowed his head, listening to the sounds of the spirits that had traveled with him to this place.

John nodded, and looked up. "The sun rests after it sets in the west." At his feet the river wavered into nothing, leaving only the single silver cord in his hand. Above and off in the horizon, a ball of yellow fire flashed into existence. John turned his back on the rising sun and walked west, following the path that Mitail's silver cord laid out for him.

John walked for many hours. The sun rose, reached it's zenith, and set in the direction John walked. He walked through the night of the spirit world until morning when the sun rose, and then eventually set again. Finally John came to a place full of mist, vast, white, and featureless, where the silver cord ended abruptly. The light of the sun above him seemed flat, like light that was dying, and it only barely illuminated the ground. John stood at the edge between the land of the spirit, and the realm of the dead, and it was here that he was sure Mitail's soul was waiting. A wind sprouted up from nowhere, swirling the mists around. Looking around himself , he spotted a small dark cave that opened into a large rocky cliff, both of which John was sure had not been there moments ago.

John moved over to the cave, peering inside. Predictably, the interior was pitch black. For just a moment, John considered venturing into the interior on two legs, but he quickly discarded the idea, and reached within to find the wolf. Here on the spiritual plane the change happened immediately. John's "body" was nothing more than a reflection of his own self image, and so all he had to do in order to change his shape was to change his perspective. He lowered his muzzle to the ground, clenched the silver cord in his teeth and inhaled to find Mitail's scent. Then he moved into the cave with a rapid trot.

Inside the cave John's ears were assailed by the moans and wails of hundreds of people; souls vainly waiting for entrance to the realm of the dead. The lost dead, those that died in circumstances that prevented or confused them so that they did not reach their final resting place, eventually lost connection to their lives and memories, slowly losing identity. When that happened, they came here. The millions of wraiths that crowded this cave wailed at the loss of something they couldn't even name anymore. Finding Mitail was easy. If he had been a man, essentially blind and deaf in the darkness and the noise of this place, locating one person would have been nearly impossible. But Mitail's scent led John straight to her. She was staring at the wall, almost one of the colorless masses that had forgotten their lives and now could only wait forever to enter land of the dead. John stopped at her heels, and was suddenly a man again. A dim light came in from the entrance, just enough to see her by. Mitail turned, an uncomprehending look on her face. Backlit as John was by the light from outside the cave, Mitail couldn't see his face even if she could have recognized it.

"Hello Mitail." John spoke softly. Around them the noise of the lost dead had dimmed down and John knew she heard him.

"Do I know you?" she looked confused now.

"Not very well, not yet. But I brought you something you lost." He held out the length of the silver cord, stretched to the edge of the breaking point. "Would you like it back?"

She hesitantly reached out an arm bleached of almost all color. "This is mine." It was not a question.

"Yes, that's right. It is. Go ahead and take it."

She laid her hand across his, touching the silver cord. Instantly the silver line flashed with light and grew to a healthy thickness. Mitail's mouth opened in an "O" of shock as the color flooded back into her figure. Her body became less distinct, gaining solidity and definition as Mitail reconnected to her identity. She looked back up from John's hand, now empty of the silver cord, and looked into his face. "John Darkspiral?" she said, just as she vanished from sight.

John sighed, and turned around to look at the entrance to the cave. He walked to it, passing lost souls that were unable to cross the threshold of the cave, and walked out into the light of the spirit world. "Time to go home."

John spun around in surprise. An ephemeral creature floated at his height. As he watched, its form flowed from an amorphous cloud into a vaguely humanoid shape, then into a blob of liquid smoke. "You have another task for me, manitou?"

<Not a task shaman. A warning. Behold.> The cloud expanded, taking on a cubical form that grew opaque around the edges and transparent in the face that John looked at. Images took form out of the mist. They were as unclear and indistinct as the misty cube that John viewed them in, but slowly he began to make sense of them. A few faces became clear. His own, Shara and Mitail's, and then Ghoryad's and the wizened face of Faromelious. Figures shot past them all, members of the Duskcan nomads running towards something. He saw swords bared, faces locked into silent shouts and battle cries at an enemy John could not see.

The scene was enveloped in mist and a new one replaced it. John caught his breath as the figures in the scene became clear to him. "What is that?"

<Fiends, John Darkspiral. Those are fiends.>

John swallowed hard as he watched a horde of creatures out of Hell itself pour over the dunes of the Wasteland, charging directly at the amassed forces of the Duskcan Nomads.

****************

Two days had passed in the Wasteland since John had collapsed in the recovery tent. He now lay side by side next to Mitail, neither of them moving. A young nomad woman watched over both of the prone figures, her face set in an expression of neutrality. That neutrality vanished and the woman stumbled back in shock when Mitail sat bolt upright, quickly looking about her with the eyes of a predator expecting an enemy. Her expression grew confused at the sight of the tent, and the dumbfounded nomad woman.

"Where is this? What happened to the demon?" Mitail paused for a moment, staring at the still silent woman. "Say something, Olodumare sear you! Where is the Councilwoman Shara?"

The nomad, whose ritual tribal markings identified her as a Shadowbane like Mitail, worked her mouth and finally spoke. "I...I will get the Councilwoman." She rushed out of the tent, loudly calling for someone to fetch Councilwoman Shara immediately. Mitail sank back down to the mat, suddenly feeling how weak she was. In no time the tent flap was nearly ripped off of its ties and Shara rushed inside. The look of sick worry on her face was replaced by shock and then joy when she saw Mitail looking back at her. She crouched down by the side of her old friend, taking one hand in hers and gripping it firmly.

"We...I feared you would never awaken Mitail."

"Shara, what is going on? Why am I so weak, and what is wrong with the outlander?"

"You have been unconscious for two days and three nights Mitail. Your wounds from the demon were grave, and despite the healing power of Faromelious and the priests you did not awaken. John Darkspiral," Shara stressed the use of John's name rather than the more derisive 'outlander' term, "Was the one that brought you back to the camps after we retreated from the sand demon. He followed you into sleep saying he would try to help you. Is it because of him that you are finally awake?"

Mitail frowned in thought. Images of a dark cave and the maddening sound of wails floated through her mind, and then like a dream they vanished. "I cannot say for certain. Perhaps it is. But why is he not awake as well?"

"I do not know Mitail. I will worry about it soon. For now, rest here. I will obtain food and some water for you."

Shara left the tent and Mitail lay back on the mat again. Soon Shara returned with another nomad, who helped carry in some meat of a recently killed giant sand scorpion, and a small skin of warm water. Mitail gratefully swallowed a mouthful of the water, then set about to satisfy her enormous appetite. She and Shara exchanged few words as she began to eat. Together they worked on the scorpion meat for close to five minutes, when a loud sigh attracted their attention to John. Slowly the shaman opened his eyes and looked at them both, then closed them again and carefully sat up. When he looked at Mitail again she wordlessly passed him some of the meat, which he took in his hand, sampled it's scent, and then took a large mouthful of. After he swallowed he also took a quick swig of the water Shara offered.

"John Darkspiral?" Mitail asked.

"Yes?"

"Is it because of your efforts that I am healed?"

"No. I didn't heal you Mitail. Faromelious and your priests did that. I just showed you the way back home."

Shara laid a hand on his shoulder. "You have my thanks John."

"And mine." Mitail added.

John looked between them. A shadow passed across his face, the expression out of place with the friendly remarks. "You are welcome. But now we have to get ready."

Shara sat up straighter, confused at John's words. "Ready? Get ready for what?"

"War, Shara. We need to get the Tribes ready to fight a war."

******** FINIS ********

--Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.