Chapter 4: Warrior-Shaman

Caden wandered between the spires, his boots sinking into the red sand as he trudged along, sweat stinging his eyes. He had set out in what he knew was an Easterly direction that morning, marching towards the sunrise, but he had a far less accurate idea of where he was going now that it was hanging directly above his head. All that he could do was keep heading straight, but the lay of the land meant that he couldn’t help but take a twisting, winding path through the reefs.

The reptiles hadn’t resurfaced since he had avoided their blockade the day before, but he knew that they were regrouping, trying to find some way to get to him. Maybe he was becoming paranoid, but he imagined them lurking behind every reef, and he kept his perception spell constantly renewed.

As he navigated around a large outcrop of rock that was covered in table corals, he saw the now-familiar glow of magical energy in the distance. It was his pursuers, had to be, they were arranged in a uniform semi-circle ahead of him at the limits of his vision. They were trying the same trick again, hoping to block off his advance so that he would walk right into them.

He turned to the right, intending to take another long detour, but stopped when he saw that there were more of them in that direction. When he looked to the left, they were there too, slowly closing in as they made their way towards him. Fine, he would have to double back. As he turned about, his heart skipped a beat, Caden seeing that he was surrounded on all sides. There must have been two dozen of them, the reptiles encircling him, slowly closing their net around him.

Trying to suppress his panic, he reasoned that they still had no real idea of where he was. They could follow his tracks in the sand, figure out what direction he was traveling in and get a vague idea of his location, but they had no way to pinpoint it exactly.

If he couldn’t escape, he would have to hide.

With little time to spare, Caden found a suitable crevice in the rocks, lifting his staff and beginning to recite one of the incantations that he had memorized. Energy poured into it, the wood seeming to vibrate in his hands, light curving as he bent it around himself. After that spell was complete, he proceeded directly to the next one in his repertoire, whispering to the wind as he commanded the air currents to sweep away as many of his footprints as possible. Confident that he had done all he could to conceal his presence, Caden waited, watching those glowing figures draw ever nearer.

Like the tightening of a noose, they closed in around him, two of them finally coming into view around the corner. Just like before, they were following his tracks in the sand, their tongues darting forth as they sought out his scent. These were not the same lizards who he had encountered previously, these were both males, long spears clutched in their hands as they hunted him. They would occasionally raise their heads, loosing warbling cries that carried across the desert, calling their companions to them.

Before long, more of them came leaping over the corals, a small army of the creatures grouping up where his tracks ended. They pointed to the sand, chittering and hissing to one another, the parasol-like frills on their necks rising to frame their heads in the same way that a man might gesture with his hands while speaking. They huddled for a moment, then began to spread out. Caden let slip a sigh of relief, assuming that they were giving up, but his breath caught in his throat as he watched them turn their attention to the surrounding rocks. They were searching intently, their yellow eyes scanning the corals.

He tried to calm himself, sinking a little deeper into his crevice. As long as his invisibility spell was active, it was impossible for them to find him. Unless they started jabbing every man-sized opening with their spears, he would be safe.

One of the creatures passed by his hiding spot, pausing to glance around. He felt its eyes lock onto him, watching them narrow, its pupils slitted like those of a snake. He gripped his staff tighter, reminding himself that it couldn’t see him.

The creature lifted its head and called out to its fellows, raising its spear, pointing the obsidian tip directly at him. Caden loosed a wail of alarm as it jabbed at him, his reflexes kicking in, the crack of wood on wood echoing between the spires as he batted it aside. The tip of the spear sparked against the rock as it was deflected, Caden abandoning his cover, following up with a vicious swipe to the lizard’s head that sent it reeling. He landed on the sand, turning to see a whole army of the things hissing and gesturing at him, the frills around their necks flushed red with blood to reveal frightening eyespots.

The time for fear had passed, he had to act now, he had to trust his instincts.

The reptile that he had hit recovered, coming at him again, its frill flaring with rage as it drove its spear towards his chest. Caden let the magic flow through him, giving in to its seductive power, feeling his blood begin to boil with energy. It felt like electricity was coursing through his veins, what could only be described as a desire to dominate driving away his terror. The Master had warned against surrendering to these impulses, but right now, fighting like the battlemages of yore was his only chance to survive.

With reflexes that surprised even himself, Caden swiped at the spear, pouring his will into the strike. Like hitting a dry twig with an iron bar, the wooden haft splintered, a loud snap ringing out as his staff whistled through the air. The reptile’s alarm made it falter, Caden gritting his teeth as he stepped in, delivering an equally powerful blow to its sinewy midsection. He was acutely aware of the mass of his weapon, of its weight in his hands, of its momentum. With all the force of a swinging war hammer, the staff made contact, the reptile doubling over as it was lifted clear off the sand. It sailed through the air, slamming into the coral with enough force to send fragments of rock and dust showering.

The rest of its party, who had been rushing in to join the fray, skidded to a halt as they stared at the bizarre scene. Caden gave them no time to react, turning to face them, planting his staff in the sand as he began to chant an incantation. The wind obeyed his command, whipping at his cloak as it surged towards them, raising a wall of airborne sand. They shielded their eyes as the gale tore at them, stumbling as they were buffeted.

That alone wasn’t going to deter them. Caden closed the gap between him and the group of reptiles, taking advantage of their disorientation. Yells of pain and surprise rang out as he knocked their feet out from under them, moving through the cloud of obscuring sand like a ghost. One of them swung an axe at him, but he blocked it, the stone blade bouncing off his staff as though it were made of tempered steel. The creature’s surprise gave him an opening, Caden increasing the mass at the end of his stave, swinging up to catch the reptile beneath its chin. It was lifted off its feet, collapsing back to the sand in a listless heap.

One of them seemed to have recovered its faculties enough to mount an attack, the screeching female whirling an axe as she charged him, ignoring the sand that pounded against her scales. Caden was ready for her, muttering another incantation under his breath, static electricity making the bronze carving on the end of his staff crackle as it coalesced around it. When the reptile came into range, he aimed the figurehead, releasing the charge. There was a bright flash like a miniature bolt of lighting, the sound of it making his ears ring, the charging female going as stiff as a board. The monster fell to the ground face-first, still twitching as electricity arced across her prone form.

Those that Caden had not dispatched were getting their bearings, the cloud of dust beginning to clear. It was time to make his exit. He resumed his chanting, waving his hand over the tip of his staff, raising it towards the sky. His whispering became a loud verse, the nearby reptiles faltering. They stepped back, eyeing him cautiously, not knowing what he was going to conjure next. As he slammed his stave into the ground, a wind like a small tornado surrounded him, sending a wall of sand swirling into the air. His aggressors were driven back, protecting their faces with their arms, knocked off-balance by the force of the howling gale.

Caden took the opportunity to escape, scrambling up a nearby reef to avoid leaving any footprints, gripping the clasp on his cloak with one hand to save it from being torn loose by the wind. He winced as he cut his calf on a piece of jagged coral, feeling its sting as it cut deep, blood wetting his trousers. No matter, he would heal later. Right now, he needed to get as far from the reptiles as possible while they were still distracted.

Kadal watched from her vantage point atop one of the spires as the intruder disappeared in a vortex of swirling sand, the hunting party left defeated and scattered. She could see the glow of its life force through the obscuring, sepia haze, but it vanished from view as the man fled beyond her sight. As the sand began to rain back to the ground, the unnatural winds abating, her warriors struggled to their feet. They shook themselves, dislodging the red dust from their scales, some of them nursing their injuries.

The hunter who was clinging to the rock beside her hurried to give chase, but Kadal stayed him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Not yet,” she warned, the hunter turning to cock his head at her. “We are here to learn,” she explained, “to observe. We cannot hunt that which we do not yet understand.”

She slowly climbed back down the rocky spire, making her way to the sand below, joining her warriors as they brushed themselves off. Fortunately, their egos had suffered more bruises than their bodies, and nobody was seriously hurt. Odd, the intruder had completely overpowered them, killing them would have been trivial. Why had it not finished them off?

Kadal helped one of the hunters to his feet, glancing at the rocks where their quarry had fled. She made her way over to the reef, climbing through the corals, her tongue tasting iron on the air as it darted between her lips. Scattered droplets of crimson caught her eye, and she crouched, running her fingers through the still-wet blood. It seemed that the intruder had cut itself deep on one of the jagged corals during its escape.

“Should we not pursue?” one of the warriors asked, joining her on the rock. She touched a finger against the blood and brought it to her lips, sampling it. “It is wounded, weakened.”

“If we engage the intruder again without proper preparation, the result will be the same,” Kadal replied. “It seems that this creature has no interest in fighting, it fought only as a means to cover its retreat. Why is it so intent on reaching the ruined city? What evil does it intend to unleash there?”

“Then, how should we proceed?” the hunter added. Kadal was not their leader, but her status as the most accomplished warrior of her tribe afforded her a great deal of respect, and they would not act in such a sensitive matter without her guidance.

“Follow it,” she replied, “but keep your distance. I want to know where it is, but I don’t want anyone to attack it. My belief is that it will not harm you unless provoked. In the meantime, I will return to the settlement to visit the Shaman. We are ill-equipped for this task.”

“Understood,” the warrior replied, Kadal giving her an encouraging pat on the back. She turned, making her way back to the village.

“It is a battlemage that you face,” the Shaman said, her croaking voice echoing in the dome-shaped chamber of coral. Kadal sat at the low table, her eyes following the old woman as she shambled about the room, her listless tail dragging in the red sand. She paused at one of her shelves, sorting through her collection of clay pots as she told her tale. “The kingdoms of the West practice a very different kind of magic than we do. Our connection to nature is strong, we borrow from its power during our shamanistic rites. We eat of the substances that it provides to us, expanding our minds, and fortifying our bodies in the process.”

“What makes their power so different?” Kadal asked.

“They call themselves civilized,” the Shaman scoffed, “yet they know only how to take. They harness magic, wielding it like a cudgel, interpreting the currents and energies of the world in the most literal and bone-headed of ways. They lack all intuition and understanding, but that does not mean to say that their methods are not effective. According to the oral histories passed down by my predecessor, and her predecessor before her, we have warred with them in the past. The battlemages were their vanguard, the equivalent of a warrior-shaman, a conjurer who wields magic as a weapon in battle. Their power was only rivaled by their cruelty and their lust for bloodshed.”

“A warrior-shaman?” Kadal replied, her frill fluttering with concern. She had never heard of such a thing before.

“Have you never wondered why our people were chosen to guard the sacred city above all others?” the Shaman replied. “How we have kept it safe for so many generations? We are strong of body and pure of heart, yes, but there is more to our legacy. A warrior-shaman, much like a battlemage, is a warrior who has been imbued with magical powers that they wield against their foes in combat. Their order dates back to the founding of the sacred city itself, so the legends tell, when the Gods entrusted us with protecting these lands.”

“Where would we find such a person?” Kadal wondered. “Should we send word to the other tribes?”

“We have not needed to call upon a warrior-shaman for a generation,” the old woman replied, turning her head to glance at Kadal as she rummaged through her shelves. “But the rites and rituals that can forge a hunter into a magic-bearer are not lost to us. That, too, was passed down by our ancestors.”

“Then ... a warrior-shaman can be ‘made’?” Kadal asked.

The Shaman began to set some of the containers on the table, then opened a large, wooden chest on the far side of the room. Kadal couldn’t see what was inside it, but the Shaman soon retrieved a large box, also made from aged wood. Kadal began to rise, intending to help her carry it, but the Shaman waved her away.

“I am not yet so old,” she chuckled, heaving the box onto the table with some difficulty. She opened the lid with a creak, Kadal craning her long neck to peer inside. It was full of charms and fetishes. There were necklaces made from colorful beads that were adorned with precious stones and pieces of carved bone, small tokens, and sculptures. She began to remove some of them, setting them down on the table beside the clay vessels.

“Jewelry?” Kadal asked, cocking her head curiously.

“Not quite,” the Shaman replied. “These are blessed objects, each one the product of a ritual designed to imbue it with power. By wearing them, one can become stronger, swifter, a fiercer opponent in battle.”

“It is your wish that ‘I’ become a warrior-shaman?” Kadal asked, her frill flaring in disbelief. “B-but I am no shaman! I’ve never been on a vision quest, I’ve never taken part in any rituals. What do I know of such things?”

“You do not need to know anything that I cannot teach you,” the Shaman replied. She reached out and took Kadal’s hand, placing one of the necklaces in her palm. It was made from woven rope, decorated with colorful glass beads and ancient shells that must have been unearthed in the Coral Sea. There was a large pendant made from a piece of carved bone, ivory from one of the whale graveyards, no doubt. The Shaman closed her fingers around it, Kadal taking in a deep breath, feeling a strange sensation wash over her. It almost seemed to vibrate in her grasp, resonating with her being like a kind of strange music.

“Do you feel it?” the Shaman whispered, Kadal glancing up at her.

“Yes.”

“Are you ready to wield nature itself as a shield?”

She nodded, the Shaman smiling.

Kadal stood in the center of the room as the Shaman walked around her, dipping her fingers into different clay pots, and painting their contents onto her scales. They were viscous pastes made from sacred herbs and plants that were found in the Coral Sea, staining her hide with shades of blue, red, and white. The tribe used body paints for ceremonial purposes, and as decoration, but these were different. As the Shaman applied them, she could feel their power starting to flow through her, as though the substances were seeping through her skin. Her heartbeat quickened, her pupils dilating, the coral walls of the chamber seeming to shift and move in the light of the fire.

“Do not fight it,” the Shaman whispered, “this is but the beginning of your spiritual journey.”

She dipped her hand into another clay vessel, tossing some kind of powder into the fire. The flames erupted suddenly, rising up to lick at the ceiling, their orange glow taking on an ethereal, green hue. Kadal recoiled in alarm, feeling its heat on her scales, but found herself transfixed by the sight all the same.

The Shaman thrust a cup into her hands, encouraging her to raise it to her lips, the bitter taste making her gag.

“Drink deeply,” the Shaman insisted, “and prepare yourself. You are about to walk the path of a shaman. You will commune with spirits, the world as it truly exists will unfold before your eyes. Do not be afraid. You are a warrior, and fear has no place in this chamber.”

Kadal began to feel dizzy, the room seeming to spin around her, but she focused on the fire. The green flames appeared to sparkle as she watched them dance, as though a myriad of tiny stars had taken the place of its floating embers. The walls were melting, running together like colored pigments, her perception of time slowing such that every second lasted for what felt like minutes.

The Shaman walked in front of her, raising a hand filled with some kind of fine, white powder. She blew it into Kadal’s face, then stepped clear, the hunter’s perception of the world around her warping even further as she inhaled. It was as though the everyday world as she knew it was being peeled away before her eyes, replaced by a realm of ever-shifting, rainbow-colored shards of glass. At its epicenter was the fire, beating like a heart, its roaring flames seeming to pulse in time with the rhythm of the Universe.

She looked down at her own hands, feeling a sense of disconnect, as though they were no longer her own. Her sense of self was dissolving, her nerves seeming to extend beyond the limits of her own body, interweaving with the living world that she was becoming immersed in. There was no barrier between her and the roiling, magical energies of nature, not anymore. She was exposed, naked before its power, but she could not help but welcome the feeling of oneness.

In the depths of the fire, she saw moving shapes, gradually becoming more defined as she concentrated on them. She saw the battlemage, the power that he commanded. She felt his determination as he trekked into the unknown as though his emotions were her own. A pang of dread disturbed the peaceful ocean of sensation that was washing through her, her perspective shifting. Kadal suddenly beheld the sun as she had never seen it, a burning ball of roiling flame that seemed to occupy the entire sky, the land beneath it scorched barren by its unforgiving heat. On the horizon, she saw ruined spires made from glass and stone, far larger and grander than those of the Coral Sea. They twisted towards the sky like beautiful, glittering corkscrews, catching the glare of the sun in their many windows. Could this be the sacred city? She had spent her entire life protecting it, but she had never gazed upon its magnificence with her own eyes.

There was something nestled at its center, buried deep within its hallowed halls, an orb that was blacker than black. It almost seemed to absorb light, bending reality around itself, Kadal unable to tear her eyes away from it. She understood what it was intuitively, as though the void had answered her question before the thought to ask it had even entered her mind. It was a piece of a dead star, the corpse of a God.

Overwhelmed, she dropped to her knees, digging her fingers into the sand as she panted. She was vaguely aware of something being forced into her mouth, her eyes opening after a few moments more to see that reality was mending itself like a wound. The Shaman knelt at her side, a now-empty clay vessel in her hand.

“What did you see?” she whispered.

“I saw ... the city,” Kadal gasped. “The world was burning. There was ... a black orb ... like a ball hewn from the darkest obsidian. The mage seeks it, he is so determined to possess it...”

“I saw the same dark vision,” the Shaman replied. “The Gods have spoken to you, Kadal, they have given you their blessing. Rise as a warrior-shaman. Don the charms, wear the paint, and stop your enemy before he can lay a hand on that orb.”

Caden rolled up the leg of his pants, wincing as he exposed the jagged tear in his calf. It went deep enough that the sight of it made him light-headed, dark blood still seeping from it. It hadn’t hurt at first, but the longer he had walked, the more it had begun to ache. He kept reminding himself that he could fix it, trying not to look at the wound for too long as he raised his staff, beginning to recite the incantation.

It had taken some time to find a place where he felt safe, and where there was enough plant life to heal himself. A nearby cactus and a few desert flowers began to wilt as he drew upon their energy, those silver strands coalescing around his injury, his flesh knitting back together before his eyes. This was a greater task than a few blisters, the flowers beginning to shed their dead petals, the cactus seeming to deflate. When it was done, he washed away the blood with his waterskin, allowing himself a moment of relief.

He glanced back in the direction that he had come, sensing that the reptiles were still tracking him. They had to know where he was, but they were only following him, never getting close enough that he could see them. They were persistent, they wouldn’t hold back forever. It wouldn’t be long before they figured out some new angle of attack.

How had they seen through his invisibility spell? Was he a worse magician than he had assumed, or did they have magic of their own? They were shamans, that much he knew, but he had no idea what form their primitive magic might take.

In any case, he couldn’t hide anymore. If they attacked him again, he might have to kill some of them. The idea didn’t appeal to him. Even as a young child living on his parent’s farm, years before he had joined the Sorcerer’s Guild, the slaughter of livestock had always upset him. He vividly recalled his father thrusting an axe into his hands, and demanding that he kill a sheep, the animal cocking its head at him and blinking stupidly. His tears had made his father relent, and that might have been one of the reasons that his family had given him up to the guild so readily. He didn’t have the temperament of a farmer, let alone that of a killer...

Remembering the previous fight frightened him. He had given in to the violent impulses that the magic inspired in him, and it had felt ... good, liberating. It was a feeling akin to running at full tilt, feeling the pounding of one’s heart, the wind in one’s hair, the sense of freedom. As much as he wanted to tell himself that it had been necessary, he would be lying if he said that he hadn’t enjoyed it. It had come so naturally to him, like something that he was ‘supposed’ to do. Was it coming from the staff, or was it awakening something that had always been lurking inside him?