Meadows Adsowe’aron. Far we go now, far from The Greatmount Nain’mahuin where only shamans go when in a trance, aided by salves allowing their spirits to trip out of body and mind. The mountain between worlds-all.

  ∞

  In Adsowe’aron’s fields of Spring upon the world of Ehl’yiteth, Master Shaman Gadail lay with the sun watching him, hushed over by the sway of tall reeds and weeds left to flower. His tusks dry in the sun. To most, it would appear he was sleeping. He pondered his tattooed clay armour, chiefly the dark spirit long upon his chest-coiled art, himself depicted ‘against’ that darkness, most would say. By his side a boulder lay bare without the claim of lichen or even grass, having only recently been laid there, far enough from his apprentice as to not wake her with its shade.

  “Not yet. When Tusker is a woman tall and strong, have at me then.” He whispered to The Wind and heard the huge wings of a lone vulture fly away.

  ∞

  His bliss was disrupted. He opened his weary eyes and called out to the field: “What thumps your feet make into the earth, apprentice!” he stretched into his words: “Then my salve served its purpose?”

  Serib was panting her way towards him, her lightning-patterned robes glistening in the sun. Though most striking about her was the totem-staff she strode with, its steel at once alien to the world around her and a part of it, as Human Nature must to Nature seem.

  ∞

  The salve her master had given her faded in potency when her task was fulfilled - and her body awakened nearby. By happenstance or design? Such answers are lost to us, those that look back, those that are in the midst of things, those that wish we knew the future.

  ∞

  When finally she reached him he was standing, and they shared a long embrace. Serib breathed deep his scent glad that he was smiling and well. She praised Truth that Ehl’yiteth was under no siege yet that she could see, that Iron-Chest in this lineage of the tale had not yet or ever duelled The Spring-Sworn in lands where only the winds were free.

  She saw here all was as it should be; in Spring beside Old Gadail, removed from all her sores and sorrows.

  ∞

  “Where did you go with Ithuriya?” she asked him, totem-staff in hand.

  “I see you have found the other half of her spear!” He said, and Serib’s heart with pride was still. “The civil war waged on and I found no resolution - the present angels were all too hopeless for my blessing, or I had no blessing worth giving. I was driven from Haven’s towers by force; angels loyal to a new leader I did not expect. No new Wing Marshal anointed with my guidance but an angel by the name of Silence took charge, I was told. Perched himself atop the gravestone-tall I saw, when quick I made my escape. Or did they let me go? Perhaps, perhaps. A duel in that mess and Silence gave Ithuriya’s spear half… to my old apprentice. In so doing, their intention was that Ithuriya’s age would end, The Last Ithuriya, no more to pass on the broken spear and damaged helm, instead those emblems things to be taken by those with will enough, as though the will alone measures worth. It breaks our custom that I would meet you now during your totem-trials away from apprenticeship, but in this Timelessness it seemed best to break tradition as we may be amongst new ones forming! Always exciting. If ever you see a shaman bored, then the age is well indeed.” Giggly he carried on: “Come. Down the mountain’s slopes and to its roots, where your sandy path of Fire shall begin, your climb of Earth having ended.”

  ‘Old apprentice’ - Serib hung on those words. Were she and The Spring-Sworn two possible lives interlinking, lineages overlapping, and so Gadail could recall one girl and then the next if asked? Or to him was there no clear line between the two? Where there two of himself out there as well?

  What has Timelessness made of all that once was Sense?

  ∞

  She turned and there The Greatmount Nain’mahuin towered where it should not be, over the meadows of Adsowe’aron in dimensions chewed. Climbing it upon Hadaeon, returning down she had found Ehl’yiteth; two worlds that share no stars.

  ∞

  “How was the Ancestor of Earth, my young Tusker? What name did they share?” Gadail asked, leading Serib through flowered meadows away from the Greatmount.

  She smiled when he called her Tusker, and explained she had met no ancestor:

  “There was one who could have been, I think, though he was a warrior. Not a shaman yet or ever but a novice-old: a Sentinel named Iron-Chest.”

  “I know the name well… perhaps an ancestor yet to be in these Timeless streams? Greater sense awaits in the lands below, away from this lofty place where we have tranced too long.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Serib was quick to chase the matter: “I met a dark spirit, master. Who shared my voice, face and almost my name. Tusks more like fangs. Eels writhing where my hair in locks is thick. They looked like that!” she pointed tearful at the darkness tattooed across his armour.

  He invited her over for another hug and she went gladly, for too much had been far too strange.

  ∞

  “What will I become?” She asked her master and twice he answered along their descent through Spring's fields:

  “In Time - what you could become, not will. In Timelessness - what you have become already, and are returning from.”

  ∞

  “Minim’Syrib was your last apprentice.” Serib stated. “The one you spoke of back at The Winged Wall? She corrupted the werewolves against the angels… and has scarred infinity runes throughout reality…”

  Gadail knew she had not done it alone, that Silence, The Black Angel was at her lonely side:

  “She was… she is still my apprentice, as you are. Her totemic journey incomplete; with your first step you have gone further than she could. She still needs Wind’s imbue for her gruesome totems, having corrupted Earth, Fire and Spacious to her will, and so she is no master shaman yet! Murderer of Lords as she may be. Opportunist scavenging what shamans afraid left in their haste. Timelessness and our shamanic salves are an ill mixture, though who could have known. When the salve’s strength subsided your spirit should have returned to your body at our journey’s end, as mine did to mine. Alas your spirit has remained apart from you, the salve without Time lasting longer and shorter than it should have. Becoming Minim’Syrib she went on her own tale somewhat a parallel to yours and I have memories of more lives than I should. I cannot tell which life is real, only my wish is clear. I tried to teach her as I have tried to reach you.”

  “And so I am her greatest threat…”

  “Her greatest hope.” Gadail corrected. “Moreso than any false teaching can untrain, our minds are our own.”

  ∞

  “So it begins.” He spoke on, as the sloped meadows stretched flatter towards the mountain’s roots. “I would say you have been trained for it, though Timelessness has singed or drenched much, and all once familiar terrain is new to me. You have however taken your first shamanic step away from apprenticeship, and deserve all due praise!”

  He smiled at Serib and her totem-staff, guiding a spider away from one of the totem-hammers swinging from his belt and towards the ground, having perhaps taken residence upon him as he waited in the long grassy weeds. Serib’s wrists were bothering her, stiff as she listened:

  “Let us find old trees, good full of farbark for us to chew along the way.” He leaned slowly into his limping walk.

  “Timelessness has its favours.” Serib said, as farbark can be peeled from certain trees only in early Spring.

  Her young knees were high over the tall reeds, totem-staff proud in hand and with it parting the more stubborn growths. Lightning-robes a force in the sunlight.

  ∞

  As they went, Gadail’s old head bore all the weight of a crown. He heeded Nature as he walked, with mindful steps and deliberate posture, while Serib heard naught beyond footfalls and wind and felt earth was still to her a mystery. Her master spoke further:

  “If the dark spirit Syrib has already begun tempting you to Falsehood, young prophetess, then the things you have Farseen are soon to happen. Your duel with her is the same all of us have with ourselves. You deserve Truth above all. You deserve yourself. We are all we have.”

  A scarab and a butterfly made their entwined flight away from the mountain, and Gadail followed their bizarre helix leading a slightly different track:

  “I will help arm you with Truth, foremost the Truth of Nature, by visiting ancestral Fire next, then Spacious Water and Wind at last. Alas that I cannot join you.”

  “What does the Truth of Nature mean with Time gone? May we rest a moment?” Serib asked wisely, kneeling to place her palm between the feather-grasses that her fingers could know the cool mud underneath. “Reaching out to the earth for certainty, I feel only more confused even with my totem at last. I feel my totem’s weight though not its power; I fear I know why but not how. Master…” she began to explain. “I fought with The Spring-Sworn and escaped not in strength but chance, as the salve had done its work and would do no more.”

  "You are unkind to yourself. Our strength can be what we do with our Chance. Go on.”

  His praise made no lighter her next words: “Before I escaped, I was marked with this… what is a hex? Like a curse? Minim grabbed my wrists.”

  ∞

  Kneeling there she raised to Gadail her strong hand for comfort, holding her wrist there exposed, and the old master’s sad eyes saw two circles there painted or scarred in Serib’s skin. Bitten or suckle-bruised. One white and the other black those wounds, together an ancient symbol far moreso than Courtdom, asunder and anew. He briefly held her hand with his own, his clay gauntlets rough against her skin:

  “And your other wrist?”

  Serib held her steel staff with her other hand and showed Gadail as he had asked. He sighed, explaining that she was right:

  “A curse or belike, though of shamanic origin rather than wizardry as curses are.”

  “You have seen it before?”

  “The very same. Just as we all base our journey on that of The First Shaman, there too was a first Dark Shaman, and this hex was their strength! A rune symbolic of reversal, bitterness, deflection, hypocrisy, rejection. Alas that myth and rumour plague such beginnings - I know with a touch you have been made not powerless, but the handle of your power has been removed and a blade without a hilt you have received in return, ‘a burden only’ was your enemy’s aim. They underestimate you, a shaman in training! Burdens are ours to bear.”

  ∞

  Gadail helped Serib up from the ground through his examples. Jaded as she was, she knew:

  “Then if I use my power, it will harm me and my foe alike? That’s what this hex has done to me…” she stared vacantly at the black-white symbols.

  “That it will. Lightning cast once will strike both you and your mark, but you climbed Haven and Greatmount Nain’Mahuin not in vain! High your chin and forward your eyes with mine, Tusker. Earth knows yet your voice and will respond; the hex is maze-like to navigate. Moments are to be chosen wisely. Now, cruel as this hex may seem in youth, the wisdom of knowing when to use your power and when not to, will always be with you. And power is not power but wisdom or brute luck, if ever it impacts without consequences unforeseen. Keep up with me now!”

  ∞

  Gadail did not slow his pace for he could not, as the downhill steeper fell. With a few more steps he and Serib reached the flat expanse of steppe-land vast. For all the strength and certainty she thought the climb would earn her, she was weaker. Surrounded-deeper in Fear’s love-torn ravines, the craters she had seen went with her.