He then assessed his physicality—elbows, knees—the adequate joints. Scraps here and there, charred chest marred now with brown scars. A horrendous sight. His clothes were more of a suggestion, sleeves gone, an empty patch on the left side—an observable fact, not an important one.
A breath.
He surveyed for the final count, leaned. Relaxed, and spewed out the notions his mind had gone through during the half-trance. For sure, he knew this. The witnesses had survived. Yoid had done so, Catelyn, too. Unavoidable evidence. He allowed this acceptance to flow in, calming nerves.
This left the beasts—the three-eyed things. Dangerous. Creatures, the witnesses, in reality, bore no means against. This spoke of a need for urgency. Merrin glanced at the sleeping duo. I can't leave them.
Only one option was left. Merrin allowed his mentation to run through various patterns—and returned with the one conclusion. His ardents. Again, he outsearched the area, saw not once the threat, closed his eyes, and recalled that sensation. Such control he had over his mind. A thing done with the simplest motions.
His senses blurred, pushed away as though drowned in a tidal wave. Those familiar sensations.
He awoke, floating in that gray, sparked world. The looming brittle gates, the horizon of churning winds, ash-scented, and excited lightning. Below, he noted, was the dream castle. A lonely, dark thing amidst the sea of beads.
"Where are you?"
"Where else would I be?" A lampoon.
Merrin turned. Floating, meters away, the large bird, shrunk now to the size of normalcy. Dark wings like those of metal plates. The memory of its form bearing down on the fallen flashed freshly. Dismissed in swiftness, Merrin said, "My Ardents?"
"How quickly you forget you can call them."
"I need to see something."
"Then do."
Merrin felt a shrug from the bird.
"Where are my witnesses?" A question posed to no one—He closed his eyes and drove into that distant presence. The one rimmed with burning light, but on a shadowed form—the Ardent. And so, he saw as the creature did.
A cave space, broad, wider at the end. Wall marred with that standard roughness known in the mines. Within, Light spewed from kindlings. Tended by battered men and women. Blood-stained. Some cried, hurdled as one in small groups. They anguished.
A man, broad, dressed in a tattered shirt of night black, sameness for his trousers. In his hand, Pierce Stone gripped. He moved past the collection of men—women, scowling. They trembled at his proximity. An air of brutality, palpable.
He wrenched one—a woman. Screaming, she wailed in loud tones. "Please, please!"
"Leave her!" A man surged from the group. Defiance. A fist drilled him down. Another. A different man, younger, laughed.
"What do you wanna do, witnesses?" He said, sat back on his feet. "What do you want to do, eh?"
Blood dripped, steaming. Passing a cold, frenzied gaze, the older witness opened to speak, but did not.
"I thought so." The man looked to the other—the one with the woman. "What do you want to do with her?"
"The pleasure heat."
A smile. "Be fast, the leader will soon return."
"I know." He rasped. "Mother, one would think a giant would keep a man busy."
"He's not a giant. Just big"
"Yeah, twice your size."
"An exaggeration."
He chuckled, turned, following a side pathway into a deeper tunnel. "Yeah, you can say that after his hands wrap around your head." His voice grew faint, hollow as he ventured deeper.
The other stayed. A moment. Then a glare at the hurdled ones. The bloodied witness looked up, defiance burning again. "You don't stay down, do you!"
A woman jerked from the crowd and cried. "It was by the means of our sunBringer that you are alive!" She was of an older breed. "Don't squander that, son, with this thing. We are darkCrowns—don't—"
Stone hurled into her cheek, her head slapping back from the collision. A muffled thud. She fell, hands covering her mouth, blood spilling.
"What was all that mistsense?" He laughed, walked over the man—to the older woman. Eyes, from all sides, stared at him. In the center of the crowd, he stood now. "Tell me, what was all that?"
She looked up to him, said, "You're still young, don't become this thing—filth."
Oh, this trickled the ardent rage. He yanked her by the arm, and she wailed in pain. "Filth? Me? Filth. Look, here you all are, protected by us and the leader, and I'm the filth? No, where is your lightBringer or whatever?"
There was silence to the question. This inflicted a burst of laughter upon him. Idiots. He turned, roamed the bunch, and laughed again. "Bunch of idiots," he tossed her.
She rolled and came to a stop—rag of a human.
A hand grabbed his heels. Startling. Looking down, he found the defiant man, eyes wide, teeth clenched. An eerie scene. "What?" these witnesses
"The sunBringer is always with us!" the man roared. "In our midst he resides!"
"This misting shit!" He struck down—the defiance gone as the fist connected. This boasted him. A fervent surge of masculine emotions. He rolled over the man, knelt on his chest, and punched. Again and again and again and again. Blood splattered on his fists, face, and clothes. He smiled at this.
Soon.
Below was no longer a man but a battered thing of pastel colors. Red. "Where is your sunBringer now? Where is he?" Strangely, he felt a plea in his tones. Despite all, they were all darkCrowns. Yet it was their defiance that birthed this.
A laugh. He stopped. Where? Below? He looked down. The thrashed pulp was laughing? "Eh?"
"Can't you see him?"
"What?"
"His behind you!"
Sudden fear. He whirled, scanning. Nothing. Just the crude walls lightened by orange-red kindlings—redness in its natural state. The shadows of men and women, swaying over. Nothing. No sunBringer.
"What nonsense?"
"I SEE HIM!" A witness beamed.
"What misting—"
"Praise the sunBringer!" Another.
He now jolted from the self-created mush of redness. Where? His eyes searched, staggering. Yet, nothing. "Have you people gone mad?" That came to him as the sole definition. The heat, the hysteria. That at last had broken their minds.
Somehow, he pitied them for this. That sunBringer had used them.
"Stop right no—"
He froze.
The sunWitnesses, all of them, had bowed. Coarsely, in basal motions, they had rounded, leaving a space in the center. Odd. Yet, enough for a person. A new sense pressed in. What if? He widened his eyes—a thing he believed granted further vision. Did it?
Nothing.
No sunBringer.
"They must have actually gone mad." He said, picked up stone. "Stop that now!"
They refused. "Misting —" he drew closer.
Then saw—that face of a man—no, a non-face, just blood, eyes swelled, cheeks reddened. The pulp he had created. He crawled. Towards the circle of men, he crawled. Seeking. A certain frenetic air surging from him.
"Origin, what?"
A figure looked to him. He reeled. There, in the center of the crowd, a man. A young man—dark-haired, but as though sprinkled with ash. Eyes, such as deep darkness, it seemed a pool of it. Short, yet majestic in a complex way.
"Who is?"
Rage!
Fear gripped his heart, breath aired with an excessive warmth despite the froststone. He coughed, tears streaming down, steaming of his cheeks. So hot, he felt. What was happening? That face remained, staring, cold. Wrath-filled.
The heat wrapped around him, like a dose of water—hot, it seared his skin. To the ground, he collapsed, hands pressing against the earth. Oh, the heat. He looked up to the figure, opened his mouth to speak, but found the words lacking. The air too hot to form. The warmth gripped his throat—drying.
"My froststone." The sure conclusion pressed in. A scream, he turned. Saw a man run out from the cave tunnels. Aflame. His body blazing with such furious fire, it seemed a sun of sorts.
"What?" He felt the slowness of thought, looked back at the figure within the crowd, said, "I believe in you?" It came as a question. Why? For safety, perhaps. If I confess, if I surrender, he would accept me.
The witnesses had said so.
The hardened face of fury quelled for a moment. Cheeks resting. He said, "I will always stand in their midst. This is my promise, one I will forever keep!" A corona of solid radiance flashed out from behind his head, brightening. "Protect them!" There was finality in that tone. An assured warning that told of an absolute threat upon disobedience.
The witnesses said in strange harmony. "We praise the sunBringer!"
He felt there a new surge—pain, but reverence. What was this person? Who was this thing? He fell to his chest, and the heat pressed close. Starving him of his moisture. I'm going to die? The last before the darkness neared.
Yeimen was swallowed by the blackness.
Merrin gasped and fell from the sky. Unto the sea of dark beads, he smashed in, but felt the non-pain. Many sensations went distant in this space…He breathed. The weight pressed in like a boulder. On his shoulders, suggesting a desire for crushing. Maybe it would, the weakness. How very tired he felt.