Saddling a Pale Horse

[TheBrogueadier]

Alex glanced around at the forest around him, it seemed as quiet with human eyes as it had a few moments before. He stepped over the still steaming gnoll corpse, one of a number who lay burnt or torn ragged around him, and on into the small clearing ahead.


He wasn't quite sure what had possessed him earlier in the day, summoning a Nightmare in the most inappropriate setting, then having to flee in mock fear for his life before beating his own summon with a shovel in an attempt to hide his intent.


He had little doubt that the reputation he'd worked so hard to forge had been shattered; first for having the gall to summon a creature from the abyss and secondly for seemingly not having the ability to control it. Still, words were harmless enough, unless backed up with steel or as part of a spell.


Here though, deep in the woods and hopefully far from prying eyes, he could finish what he'd started.


He ran through the spells he needed, his hands working to pull and manipulate the the weave around him, chanting the words that shaped what he pulled, protecting himself against intent and elements, and beginning to shape both a gate and a lock.


That was the trouble with some people, quick to judge and condemn a man merely for using a tool, who cared if that tool happened to be a flaming cadaverous horse? Good and Evil had their place, as did the occasional dash of anarchy or the firmness of the law, but taken to extremes they were dangerous ideals, all as risky a route as each other.


The gate was complete, the lock waiting for its key. Alex pricked his finger and squeezed out a small drop of blood out. The key, that little part of him that would bind the beast to his will for a day.


The world in front of him shimmered slightly, the forest beyond the gate moved as if viewed through a puddle or badly made mirror. He flicked the blood drop into the shimmer, for a moment it hung as if caught in a spiders web, before the lock opened.


Alex had learnt in previous summons not to close his eyes, while the view through the gate that tore open from his drop of blood was distressing it was nothing compared to the impression that was made behind closed eyelids. It was as if the eyes allowed the brain to filter, block and rationalise what it saw; without the filtering of the eyes the raw horror of what was beyond that gate was allowed to flood into the brain with results resembling a hammer to a bag of kittens. Out of the gap rent between the planes cantered a Nightmare, a twisted mockery of a horse, flesh flayed away to glistening pale muscle and sinew that burnt with a consuming hell fire.


Alex straightened his clothes, retrieved a few small items from a pocket and walked towards the creature.


Good and evil were just views, the law just a tool, anarchy just an exercise in ego. All that mattered were invention, creation, knowledge... Love. Everything else was just a route to obtaining these things.


He held the items up in front of the hellish steed; a worn drawing of a smiling girl, a lock of hair and a phial containing a rust like substance that may once have been blood.


“Her name is Emily Le'Fayne”


Tools. Nothing but tools to be used by a craftsman.


“I want you to bring me her soul”

[TheBrogueadier]

To build a better person

Alexander’s pen skitted over the paper, calculations, doodles and diagrams were dotted around the page. A caricature of Chani loomed over thoughts on gem cutting; drawings of anatomy, both human and mechanical, were crossed through or amended with notes.

Would it work?

Was it worth the cost?

He’d spoken to a few people about the project, although not the whole of it. A human shaped construct, not like those of the Exigo; those brutish machines built for labour and war, but something refined. Human. A construct built to match a face he new well, but gilded as if always attending a masked ball or party. Not built as a suit of armour or machine for war, but tailored like a fine suit, adorned in silver and gems.

The idea wasn’t new, he’d heard of distant mages creating constructs that could nearly pass for human. But it was new territory for him. Helping maintain the ancient family constructs was one thing but calculating the structure and tolerances of a new machine was taxing his abilities, and the materials he would need would tax his pocket harder.

Bones of Adamantine, a chassis and skin of Mithral overlaid with alchemical silver, bone, ivory, mother of pearl, gold and gems to soften the mechanical lines and render the form into an elaborate and delicate tribute to Emily.

But mechanics and cost were only two of the issues that needed to be addressed, while he talked of it being a mere construct it was intended to be more than that.

Emily’s family had strictly forbidden resurrection, believing it to be an affront the fates that the gods laid out. Merely taking the phial of blood and lock of hair from her corpse had meant running the risk of further offending her family, which would have meant death rather than his current and hopefully temporary exile.

This construct could be used to house her soul, if it could be recovered from where it currently resided, and giver her life again. Albeit life inside a machine.

There were worries, the moral issues for one; was it right to pull a soul back and place it in a machine?

Would it work? Would her soul take to the machine? Could a soul reside inside a cold construct, unable to feel the world around and seeing life through well-cut faceted gems?

Perhaps a trial run was in order. He’d seen the wounded and dying in the Ilmatarian temple, victims of circumstance, poverty or war. Perhaps if he could offer one of those poor souls a chance at a few more days of life, a few days as the living heart of a construct. A chance for them to get their affairs in order, look after the ones they would leave behind and for him to show proof of concept.

[TheBrogueadier]

Alex sighed and pushed himself away from his desk, stalking across the room he leant against a book case peering intently at items scattered across the desks surface as if distance and a glare might somehow solve the problems that had dogged him these past weeks.

The idea had been simple enough to start with, a human-esque mechanoid, light and feminine. Something that could work as a servant for most of it's functioning life rather than as a weapon.. Yet, with each revision he drew or part he made the construct became more of a weapon..

A mockup of the constructs hand and forearm lay amongst the assorted detritus on the desk, the hand with it’s long delicate fingers and slim wrist had seemed simple enough, but what had seemed harmless and simple had shifted, beneath each nail a fountain pen nib and thin tube led to a small reservoir bulb beneath the first knuckle.

It was as if the machine itself cried out to become a weapon.

He sighed and returned to his seat, plucked a long thin shard of crystal from his desk and began tapping it against his cheek.

[TheBrogueadier]

The portal tore the thin fabric of reality open with a sound like the screams of countless suffering souls, and through the brutal tear galloped a burning black horse. Wreathed in flame, it eyed the surrounding countryside with a malevolent gaze.

“Aagh! Damn it!” Despite the fact he’d been expecting the nightmare to return, the portal had still taken him by surprise - he’d jumped, and spilt ink across a rough sketch of the surrounding landscape. He tried to rub the ink away, achieving nothing more than creating a big smear on the page. Setting the paper down with a mutter, he stood, and strolled to the nightmare.

“Empty handed again.” He ran his hands over the flank of the creature, his wards protecting him against the pressing sense of horror and despair, and the seering heat. The Nightmare fixed him with a hate filled stare as he casually scratched at its withers.

“Your work is appreciated. Now go, you are dismissed from this plane.” He worked a few words, and with a brief shriek the nightmare returned to the hells. He sighed and stared out over the landscape, adjusting his gloves and cloak. She was out there, he knew it. Even death couldn’t stop the love they’d had.

“Ooooh, look at me! Ooh, I’m a dark and tormented soul!” A light, mocking voice sounded behind him. “Oooh, I’m so repressed and misunderstood, my arcane powers allow me to explore and poke the nooks and crannies of my own depressingly predictable mind without having to worry about things like morality.”

Alex turned to face the speaker, a figure no more than a couple of hand spans high, standing where he had previously sat. It was studying his ruined drawing.

“I don’t seem to remember summoning you.”

“You didn’t.” The sylph shot him a broad smile, fluttered her gossamer wings and poked a tiny finger at the picture “Nice landscape, I assume the big black cloud is your brooding wangst?”

“That was an accident; a portal took me by surprise. Now, if I didn’t summon you, why are you here?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb. Every day you play the same boring game.” The sylph pulled a serious face, mocking his “Summon horsey, brood, demand it find her. Summon me, brood, demand I find her!”

“Not every day” It was a childish reply, but being berated by something so small had caught him off guard.

“Not every day?” The Slyph rolled her eyes and fluttered into the air, humming towards him with her arms crossed and a frown on her face. “As close as, dammit, it’s a running joke that you’re more accurate than the sun and moon when it comes to requesting useless aid.”

“Useless aid?” He frowned, pointing a finger at the sylph “I’ll have you know my requests are not useless! Would you call wanting to reunite true love a useless aim?”

“Mmm.. Don’t mind if I do” The sylph took a seat on his outstretched hand, wiggling around to get comfortable “Ooh! Warm. Yes, I’d call it a fairly useless aim, from what you’ve moaned on about previously she’s been dead for quite some time. Very dead in fact. Have you really thought this through?”

“Of course I have, I’m not...”

“Bzzzt! Rhetorical.” With a great deal of over-exaggerated effort, and in Alex’s opinion a great deal too much bottom wiggling, the sylph pushed herself off into the air, tapping at her chin as she fluttered back and forth. “I mean, her body, or what’s left of it, is in Sembia, half the world away probably festering in a tomb, or incinerated”

She paused, swinging around and placing her hands on her hips.

“You know, as a species you lot really could do with a lot more common sense when it comes to funeral rights, I mean how many zombie invasions, vampire plagues and deranged necromancers will it take before you finally grasp the idea that everyone’s happier and safer when the dead are reduced to ashes before they have a chance to rise up?”

“Umm…”

“Shh… Still speaking.” She resumed her fluttery airborne pacing “You do realise quite how many dead people there are out there don’t you? You know how hard it can be to find one person in a big party? Imagine how hard it is to find one soul amongst the souls of every person in every party that’s ever existed ever, and that’s before we start counting the types of people who don’t go to parties. We’re talking a number that’s gone beyond numbers and into the realm of squiggly symbols and silly letters! It’d be easier to calculate the exact number of infinity and then remove five, than it would be to list the number of souls that exist. There’s a reason clerics have to have their god intervene directly to provide resurrections and so on. Now...”

“You really know quite a lot, don’t you...”

“Hush, I do… But no more interruptions. Now, just supposing, thanks to some highly improbable series of events, your little equine arsonist somehow manages to get access to everywhere, and after scouring every single beach that exists in every single plane and dimension of reality and finds that one exact single grain of sand that you’ve asked for, and manages to drag it away from whatever beachy afterlife it had until that point been enjoying… What’ll you do then?”

“Nice metaphor, I’ve been working on some drawings for…”

“Drawings!” The sylph clapped her hands to her face in mock horror “Oh! Won’t that be nice for her, dragged out of whatever pleasant and fun afterlife she’s living it up in, by a giant flaming pony, hauled back to you as some dispossessed spirit, then crammed into whatever selection of arcane jiggery pokery you’ve bolted together. No, that simply won’t do. You don’t need a girl with nuts, you need something more corporeal, and squishier”

The sylph made an attempt at simultaneously flapping her wings and jiggling her chest to emphasise the point, and almost crashed into a tree as she slewed off balance.

“Classy.”

“Thank you. Just be glad I’m a sylph, not a dryad.”

“I’ve always wondered about that, think of the splinters.”

“Ooooh!” They both winced.

“Anyway” The sylph still looked a little disconcerted “You need to get over this obsession, it’s not healthy, girlfriends, wives, fiancés… They all come and go; sometimes they go with death, sometimes with your neighbour. Stop getting so hung up on the past, it distracts from the now.”

“What a charming sentiment.”

“Thank you, now I’m sure that once someone digs past your disturbingly creepy obsession with your dead ex, and magnifies whatever shreds of personality that they can find, they’ll see that you’re a reasonably nice, if a little dull, guy.”

“Your flattery is merciless.”

“Better believe it. Now, you need to find yourself some new friends, preferably ones that have a pulse, and aren’t demonic. And ditch that bodyguard.”

“Chani? What’s wrong with her?”

“All she does is loom and kill. Dress up a beef carcass in armour and paint a smile on it; it’d have more to say than that monosyllabic chunk.”

“Hang on, how’d you know about Chani?”

“Ssh. Stop with the questions. All you need to know is that from now on you’re going to change your life, find a new squeeze, and stop moping about in black.”

“And why should I even be listening to you?”

“Because…” The sylph proudly thrust out her chin and chest in what might be considered a heroic pose “I’m your new bestest friend.”

“Ah. I see” Alex rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“Definitely. It’s a side effect of being alive.”