Conduit- The Prologue

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.” She whispered with wonder in her raspy voice. “The dragons aren’t from the Valley?”

Her large purple eyes frozen, transfixed by the small wooden whittled head she held in her dirty little hands. The head could have been a dragon or it could have been a dog. Or a rat. It wasn’t a quality piece of work but with the story the older boy had told it might well have been the finest recreation of the great dragon Tullana the world had seen.

The question came sometime after the older boy had finished his story. He was now standing as far from the girl as he could. It wasn’t very far. The cell they shared was three meters by three meters with just a single bed pushed into the corner.

“Aye,” he answered absently as he pushed his face against the bars to better look about the room. His eyes strained to see what the other cells held. He could see only vague outlines. Each unit had a bed but there was more than that.

Days spent calling out into the darkness eliminated the chance that the outlines were people as they hadn’t moved or reacted to the calling and crying of the prepubescent girl or her male cell mate, a boy just a few years short from being considered a man.

He saw nothing he hadn’t seen in his previous attempts to discern what the other cells contained, which was still nothing. The glowstones embedded in the walls were weak, uncharged for months probably.

“Where did they come from?” The little girl asked with a voice that was becoming increasingly difficult to hear.

The young duo had been locked up without food or water and her mouth and throat had to be bone dry. He’d given in and licked moisture from the walls which provided some relief. She hadn’t been willing to yet.

The young man hoped that she would cave at some point the next few hours. She needed something soon. The city guard that had pulled them from the orphanage had given them no reason why they had been put in the cell and no information on how long they might be held.

“The dragons? Some say the dragons came down from the north pushed out by frost giants. Do you think the mighty Tullana would let some pesky little frost giant chase her out of her home?” He turned and smiled at her conspiratorially.

Her eyes met his as she smiled wide shaking her head. Her lips were so dry that they stuck to her teeth.

The boys smile faltered at that but he pushed on, “No of course not. The great Tullana would eat frost giants for breakfast and need another snack before lunch! Perhaps stone giants.” He placed his finger on his chin thoughtfully. “Though they aren’t too appetizing. They’re made from a stinky rock that smells like…” He leaned toward her and smiled through a false grimace “…farts.”

She giggled.

“I believe dragons come from where all otherworldly things both wondrous and frightening come from,” he pitched his voice and gave it a little warble to imitate his old teacher Ponto Atradeis, “The Eleventh Realm.”

The memory pulled to the surface stung with unwarranted cruelty.

She squeezed the wooden dragons head and squeaked, “The Eleventh Realm! I have never heard of such a place!”

“Oh no m’lady! That’s a travesty.”

“Tell me more of it. Tell me more of it now!”

With his emotions surging he failed to hear her innocent eagerness with the plea and instead heard her noble birth in that demand and it soured him.

Before he could censor himself he spoke, “I can’t know much more about it, after all I’m just a simple,” he paused, “what was it you called me back at the orphanage?”

Her head drooped and there was silence. He looked away his face painted with a mixture of anger and sadness.

Uncomfortable in the quiet she spoke, “A low born burner boy.”

Shame coated her every word and she quickly followed the repeated jibe an earnest apology, “But I did not mean it! I know you cannot be or you would have been in the streets. I was-I am awfully sorry. I was scared. I am sorry. Ple-“

Immediately he regretted bringing up their first encounter and interrupted her, “Stow those sorry’s young miss.” The fact was that he was a low born burner boy.

His parents died out working as burners on the one highway in and out of Marselance. They were burning out some vines that were getting to close to the road when some beast from the living jungle snatched his father and his mother gave chase into the trees.

Neither had been seen since and per the cities agreement with the Burners Guild their eldest child was allowed to live at the orphanage. The boy was fortunate that he hadn’t been forced out into the streets. The city-state was brutally unkind to homeless orphans.

His guilt pushed him to close the distance between them and in two steps he was kneeling in front of her. She wasn’t more than three years his junior but her soft upbringing did her no favors.

Slowly he enclosed the girls hands in his, up past her wrists disappeared beneath his gentle grip and they locked eyes, “We were all frightened when we first arrived into the care of Madam Franz. The food they served us doesn’t help a persons disposition either.” The corner of his mouth pulled up into a half grin.

“I’m more frightened here.” She croaked quietly while blinking at him. He imagined that if she had any moisture to spare she’d have tears in her eyes.

“We’ll be ok. You’ll see.” He gave her hands a squeeze, “Now, about the Eleventh Realm.”

He stood, taking a step back opening his arms wide and drawing in a deep breath.

Before he could say anything the room burst into light.

Fixed into the wall evenly spaced around the room two meters from the ground all of the nearly depleted glowstones now throbbed and buzzed with an invasive luminescence.

The very stones he stood on somehow emitted brightness without losing their grey stone texture or color. The light assaulted them from every angle and grew more dazzling in waves.

Everything seemed to glow pushing the brightness in the dungeon up and up and after just a few seconds the pair in the cell went from surprise to squinting to clamping their hands tightly over their eyes to keep the escalating radiance from doing permanent damage.

The buzzing of energy reached a crescendo before unceremoniously cutting out with a fizzle.

The young man peeked through his fingers and saw that luminosity flooded the room with such intensity that no shadows were cast. The girl had dropped to the ground and rolled under the bed, curling into a ball. Her arms covered her head and she faced the wall. All he could see of her was her rounded back and he saw that it trembled with every breath.

Still protecting his vision he peered through his fingers with squinted eyes as he looked about the formerly poorly lit room.

The door that they had walked through when they were first imprisoned was not there. The door was just gone and all around him the walls were made up of interlocking grey stones with odd symbols carved into them, no two symbols alike. Five cells with the exact some configuration as theirs were spaced through out the room with a pathway bisecting them all uniformly.

He finally learned what the dim figures he had been unable to identify were. At first the boy thought they were piles of clothing or random debris and junk but as his eyes became more acclimated to the light he saw what they were. Dry husks. Mummified bodies each curled up and covered in dust.

Slap slap slap. The sound of footsteps. The boy dropped his hands and looked the room over again with one eye squeezed closed and the other half open. Had he missed something? A window? A door? An entire live person?

Slap slap slap. He saw no movement.

Slap slap slap. He looked down at the girl hidden by the bed and was certain the sound wasn’t her as the only movement she made was the involuntary movement that comes with breathing.

Clink. Something metal. Thunk. Something wooden. Thud. The something wooden being dropped onto something stone. Splashing. Glugging. The sound of a wooden bucket being filled with water.

With nowhere else to look in the room the boy tilted his head back and looked up to the ceiling. There was no ceiling. The rooms extended above him as far as he could see. An iron banister marked each floor and after twenty it became to blurry for him to count. There was no building of this height in Marselance so they had either been brought to a different city or they were in a mages tower.

They had traveled just hours blindfolded so they weren’t in another city.

A mages tower. Atradeis had told him of buildings that looked like simple homes but when you stepped inside their vastness wasn’t confined to the structure as viewed from the exterior but instead it was restricted only to the power of the mage that had constructed or conjured it.

Slap slap slap. The footsteps returned. Thud. Splashing. Glugging.

Slap slap slap. Finally he saw the originator of the feet that had been doing all of the stone slapping and bucket filling.

A man rounded the banister to his left and came fully into the young man’s view. The man was pale and tall with thinning black hair and the shadow of a beard. He wore a plain but well made dark green robe. It took a moment for the boy to realize that the green was probably made darker by water. The man was wet, he looked like he’d been drying for sometime though but still had a ways to go.

“Sir!” The boy shouted.

“Sir!” He shouted again.

“Sir!” He called out a third time.

“Sir! Why are we here?”

The girl worked her way out from under the bed. She recoiled at the light but still looked up at the man and back to the boy electing to keep her thoughts to herself and remained silent.

“Sir! I don’t know what we did but it can’t have been so grave to have earned us a dungeon.”

The man on the floor above them continued his work which could not be seen by the youths in the cell but by sound it mostly seemed to be pouring water into buckets.

“Sir! If you will answer no questions and are content to ignore us please do us the favor of not ignoring our basic needs, we haven’t had water for quite some time.”

At this the little girl joined in, her dry throat worked as an emphasis for her petition, “Sir! Would you please give us some water. I’m very thirsty.” She reached out and took the older boys hand, “We’re very thirsty.”

By the second time she said the word thirsty her voice was hardly more a whisper as she tried to force her words out of a dry throat and through her cracked lips.

The man finally acknowledged their presence by looking over the wrought iron rail at them. His mouth was a thin pink line. His nose small and upturned. His irises a mellow shade of grey, so light his pupils seemed alone in his large eyes.

“Don’t worry. I’ll have water to you soon but I need you to be quiet.”

The two children watched on as the man walked back-and-forth. Retrieving. Picking up and putting down. Pouring liquid. Picking up and putting down. Shuffling back and forth. Muttering to himself.

The young man and girl tried again to ask him questions but received no answers.

The replies they received were made with the singular purpose of silencing any and all questions and they were each made with mounting anger until one outburst frightened the two young people into a lasting and uncomfortable silence.

The prisoners looked on as the man above worked. Seconds to minutes. Minutes to hours. In time they sat on the bed and stopped watching the man work. Instead they leaned into each other and fell asleep.

The boy dreamed that a soothing red darkness was his mind and nothing else. The girl dreamed of something that was indescribable except by the description describing it as indescribable. The only bit of her dream that she could recall years later was that she was eaten by a monster and from the inside out she ate the monster too until they were each the exact some being having eaten each other.

Chaos held sway over the tower when they awoke. A disgusting squelching sound echoed through the mages tower and the man that had been working the floor above them was standing no more than six paces from a writhing fissure that floated in the air looking like a sparkling and bubbling lightening bolt. The fissure undulated and cut into the railing. It cut into the floor above and below like a solid object passing through water except when the shape changed it revealed that the railing and the stone that it had touched was no longer there. Railing and stone gone leaving no debris.

The robed man took three loud breaths in and pushed out three loud breaths accordingly before running headlong into the shimmering shaking line that cut through everything it touched. As the man disappeared he reappeared on the other side of the fissure exiting at the same speed he’d entered. Except he was older. Much older. He had no hair on his head or on his face but wrinkles marked his age as well as grey hair would have. The man slowed down and came to a stop placing two hands on the railing.

“I forgot what you had looked like.” Was all he said when he peered down at the trembling children. The portal through which he had traveled and changed stopped existing and the railing and stone that had been erased by its borders had returned as though it had never gone in the first place.

The children offered no response. Their fear sealed their lips even better than the younger version of the man above them had with his angry words.

“Now.” The man said as he pulled a knife from his green robe.

He tore off the sleeves of his robe with minimal cutting and tugging tossing the scraps at his feet.

His mouth moved but no words came out as he laid the knife against the inside of his left forearm. Pushing the knife into his arm blood began to flow and he dragged the knife from the crook of his elbow to his palm.

He moved the knife from his right hand to his left hand and mirrored the incision on his other arm. Blood poured from his shallow cuts. He began walking along the railing hoisting buckets hooked to ropes and lowering them over the side until they dangled above the cells below.

The buckets sloshed and splashed as they lowered and they bounced and scraped against the side of the wall before coming to a rest. Streaks of water traced lines down from almost every bucket to the tops of the cells that lined the room. Thirst had not left the little girl but she dared not utter a word or move toward the liquid and instead pushed herself into the side of the older boy squeezing his hand tight with one hand and in the other gripping the carving of the dragon head even tighter.

Despite the constant flow of blood from his arms the old man moved swiftly and had lowered nearly twenty buckets over the edges of the railing in a surprisingly short amount of time. The buckets were perfectly spaced and his blood was visible on each and every rope.

As the last bucket rocked to a rest the runes carved into the stones lit up a bright white and then snapping to an impossible black. The black didn’t seem to be a color as much as it was the absence of color. It was the absence of everything, really.

The old man grasped the railing and swayed unsteadily. He reached into his cloak and his bloody hand emerged with nothing in it’s tight grasp. It looked like he was holding a hand full of air or the most perfect glass sphere in his palm. Cocking his arm back he lurched forward into the railing and threw the nothing that he was holding down into the cell.

Immediately the boy stiffened like a board and the girl moved away from him. She looked on him with fear as he emitted a clicking sound from his throat. His head turned toward her slightly. His brown eyes found her purple eyes and she watched as his bare feet first then the visible parts of his hands and arms then his neck and his face and finally his eyes grew tight and brown and dry. The kind older boy that had kept her feeling safe over the last few days as they awaited their fate was transmuted into a dried out husk in two beats of her heart. He fell away from her and landed with the sound of a light bundled rug dropped to the floor. With the same soft bounce as one too.

She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came. Instead she found herself unable to breath and clutched at her chest. The little girl looked up and the old man had already cocked his hand back, before she could think of a word to protest he had thrown an invisible ball at her.

A cold void opened within her and she felt connected to the symbols and the wall. Then she felt chained by them. She did not feel herself stiffen as the older boy had but she did not have freedom of movement. The girl could shift to the left and right a few inches and move her limbs and head about the same amount but nothing more.

“Ha! I’ve done it. You’re mine you beast of nothing!” Came the triumphant voice from above.

The girl turned her eyes up and saw the back of the old man, his bloody arms twitched about and his body spasmed. He was dancing. He moved with the energy and ease of a much younger man. His voice cracked as his cackled.

She pushed her adolescent mind to find some understanding of what was happening but fear kept her from producing any meaningful insight.

In her mind a voice rumbled.

We have formed our pact, conduit.

Understanding permeated her every fiber. The universe twisted inside out and all of the small bits that made up everything were inverted and she could see and feel all of the matter that made up nothing. She could feel it. There was more nothing than there was of what was. Nothing was not nothing to her any longer.

Moisture. Give me moisture.

Instinctually she felt her… soul? She felt what she described as, “The warmth that lived deep within her leaning toward the sound of the voice.” Her legs cramped as she gave over to the voice and she crumbled to the ground but did not cry out.

Somewhere above her the man shouted in anger. She could hear him scuffling with someone else. The anger turned to fear and she heard a strangled cry and someone gurgling.

From the floor she looked up toward the voice. She saw the form of the old man, he was grey all over and he had no features, he was just a grey old man shaped silhouette against all of the nothing that made up the world. The blood pouring from his neck was grey.

Beside the old man stood a young lithe man who was as taller even that the old man had been in his younger form. He was not greyed out and silhouetted against the nothingness of everything as the old man was. He stood strong and tall and she could see every bit of him. In his right hand was a short sword covered in blood and in his left hand was the notched sword breaker of a thief-taker.

He didn’t look down at the girl. He moved to the nearest bucket of water and sheathed his sword breaker. In his left hand he seized one of the ropes from which a bucket dangled and he cut the rope hauling up the bucket.

He looked down at the girl and his face was steel and betrayed no emotions. He tossed the water at her and it splashed across her. He moved to the next nearest bucket.

She rolled onto her side and slurped the water off of the floor.

There was a rumbling her in head.

More.

The man moved to the next bucket and repeated his toss.

Water splashed across her and she sucked it up off of the ground.

From one bucket to the next he tossed water and she drank and drank and drank. Her thirst was slaked and the grumbling of the thing in her head was at a steady hum.

She drank until she could drink no more. She thought she might vomit.

Mmmmmm. Conduit. Give me the moisture and I will allow you to move nothing.

The girl understood and allowed the being to draw water from her and her warmth leaned toward it. The urge to vomit went away. She rolled onto her back and stretched her legs. She looked to the man that had given her the gift and mercy of water and he looked back for several seconds before he burst into a cloud of black ash and in his place a bird took flight up toward the top of the mages tower. The bird ascended until it was gone from her sight.

Standing up she looked to where the door had been and could see that a spell had been used to build stones over it. She gave moisture to the other and pushed the nothingness in the stones outwards and the crumbled away. She gave moisture to the other and pushed at the nothingness in the bars of her cell and they fell, the pieces that weren’t turned to dust clanked on the ground.

“What are you?” She asked the voiced in her head.

What are you? It queried back.