Eternal Beasts

Chapter 4: The Refining Fire

Winter became spring, and spring, summer, the return of good weather melting the ice and evaporating most of the water, leaving the bottom of the pit layered in cold mud. Reaching the book's end where it started recording in english yet again, Jared let himself fall back into the waking world and looked up through the grate. His eyes discovered a cloud-littered sky there, the fluffy white masses visible through the grate more familiar in a spring, or summer sky. Shivering with what little strength the necromancer's most recent resurrection had left him, the young human grimaced. 'A whole year.' He mused with not a little bitterness. 'I've been rotting in this damn hole for a whole bloody year!'

Rotting was the word; while the necromantic power that kept him alive also filled him with a strange sort of energy, it did little to restore withered flesh and shrunken muscles. The long months in the hole had reduced the once relatively fit young man into little more than a walking skeleton, flesh pulled tight over bone in near-zombie fashion. A long sigh whistled out his nostrils before he let his eyes drop onto his skeletal hands and arms. Even if he finally did have the opportunity to escape, he very much doubted he still had the strength to do so.

His only hope now came from the chapters in the book on magic. Try as he might, Jared had failed to make any of them work. Frustration had gnawed at his resolve after hundreds of failed attempts to cast spells with power enough to easily free him a thousand times over. Only after he learned magic on this world worked by channeling the very life force of the person casting it, did he finally give up. The necromantic resurrections gave him just enough energy to return to life, not cast spells.

Yet, in a rather obscure notation, the text mentioned something about being able to tap into the energy that kept the entire world of Ethaeron alive to replenish lost life force. If he could figure out how to do that, he would then discover if the spells he had attempted actually worked.

Jared was still mulling the notation over when the grate was abruptly pulled out of the way with a familiar growl of metal against stone. A heartbeat later two of the stranger's thugs dropped into the pit to unceremoniously grab the now-limp human by the arms. He remained unresisting as they bodily hauled him from his prison and across the intervening space towards the stranger's tent, his passage so frequent and regular it had worn grooves in the dirt from where his feet dragged.

Bathed in the warmth of the triple dwarf suns giving Ethaeron light and life, Jared luxuriated in the brief but intense feeling of freedom it gave him. After his time in his hole, it was all he had left in this dark place that gave him pleasure. Knowing it short lived, he couldn't help counting in his head towards its expected termination and the rough strapping into the frame that would shortly follow.

So the young human was more than a little surprised when the two men carrying him abruptly halted well short of the stranger's tent, speaking between themselves in some gutteral language just below his ability to hear. Still Jared strained; if he could just hear what they were saying, he might be able to ... Without warning he was jerked back into motion. This time, however, they took a tight turn away from the stranger's tent and Jared's eyes flickered open in time to see unfamiliar dirt pass beneath him. 'Huh? Where the hell are they taking me now?' he silently wondered.

Screeching protest assaulted his ears when his captors paused to pull at obviously rust-laden metal. Then he was flying through the air to land heavily on the ground, face down. Lacking the strength in his emaciated body to even roll over, he was forced to remain there. Thus he didn't see the approach of another until trembling hands carefully rolled him over.

"Light burn us, look at him," a man's quiet voice declared, a twisting of Jared's mind telling him he spoke a different language from that of the stranger. Its owner was well beyond the ten or twenty centimetres distance he could see in the sudden flood of light blinding his squinting eyes.