Devil's tale

Devil's tale chapter 13

Avarice stood atop a green hill, on a sunny day, next to a lone oak-tree. About a kilometre in the distance, there was a small village. Somehow, the minstrel knew he was somewhere in the south of the kingdom. He looked down at his hand and saw his form was translucent. His soul had left his body and was now on the astral plane. He looked around and noticed that time around him seemed to be frozen, or no, it wasn't frozen, it was simply passing extremely slowly. He supposed that time moved differently on other planes of existence. He walked down towards the town, past the nearly completely still forms of birds in flight and rabbits hopping around in the grass. He wondered if he'd even be able to return to his body and felt a sort of invisible thread tug at his chest. He looked to the north and sensed a connection to something heavy, far, far away. That must be his body, he thought to himself. He walked into the town as a wraith, out of time, and out of body. It was a strange and not unpleasant experience, for Avarice to walk the astral world. He wondered if he should try and write a short story about it when he got back to the physical realm. The town around him was picturesque and beautiful. Houses had wooden walls and straw-roofs. Children, frozen in time, were running in the streets with smiling parents looking on them from their homes and men and women had been speaking to each other with polite and genuine smiles. Trading goods and swapping stories, Avarice guessed. He walked on through the town, as he began to sense something wasn't quite right. Something about the astral-air around this place was wrong and didn't suit the cozy image of the village. As the minstrel approached the back of the town he saw, just before the wooden fence that formed a boarder around the settlement, a single home, half-collapsed and completely decrepit. An eerie fog hung around the house, a fog that moved as Avarice walked through it, indicating it was something that existed on the astral plane. The fog, as it was stirred by the devil's spirt, moved and shaped into wispy hands and faces that swarmed around him. Avarice didn't know what was going on, but it felt eerie enough that he quickly moved on. He saw in the middle of the house, the charred remains of a skeleton. He knelt beside it, it seemed to be the source of the mist in the home. He hesitantly touched the ashen remains of what had once been the skull. Suddenly, he stood in the same house, but the mist was gone. He saw a woman with eyes similar to Mormir's, albeit brown instead of yellow, cradling a child. The woman's clothes were stained with blood and her face was completely emaciated. It was clear that she had just given birth, and Avarice could tell at a glance that she hadn't had any assistance. The fact that she was still alive was a miracle, or no, when the devil took a closer look, he saw an astral fire around the woman, emanating from her heart. She'd survived the childbirth through sheer force of will, and in her eyes, he saw a light which he recognised as love, as she looked down at the green-skinned, horned, tailed child in her arms. The baby Mormir cried and she weakly did her best to hush him and make him feel better. Avarice reached out to try and help but his hands fell through the image without any effect. He tried to sing a lullaby to help soothe the child but his music fell on deaf ears. Mormir's mother whispered to her child.

"It's okay. You're okay. I'm here. I'll always be here with you, no matter what."

Her words seemed to finally calm Mormir down and he stopped crying. Closing his eyes and letting his mother embrace him lovingly. The woman then lost consciousness and Avarice feared she was about to die, but after hours of agonising waiting, she sat back up again, that astral fire of determination still emanating from her soul. The minstrel clenched his fist, thinking that this woman must have screamed while giving birth, and no one had bothered to come help.

Avarice watched through blinks in time as Mormir slowly grew up alongside his mother. It seemed she'd never fully recovered from the physical trauma of giving birth to him. It didn't help that Mormir was a devil of poison, and his birth seemed to have poisoned his mother to a degree. Despite this, Mormir rarely seemed to ever get mad at his mother. Even at a young age, he displayed a remarkable understanding of how hard things were for her. Mormir's mother rarely went outside her home, always looking out her windows with a worried expression on her face, she also warned Mormir.