It was the season of Solomonari, when the tribes engage in ritual cleansing and teach the cleansing rituals to their children. Cleansing was on my mind for more reasons than the holy day though. I was lost deep in the Salt Wastes of the Foglands, and I was not enjoying myself. My legs were caked with alternating layers of mud and salt from the terrain. My vest and jacket were dusted in the salt that had been carried on the winds. My undershirt was yellow with dried sweat and grime. I had escaped from the Ribcage Castle, but I was still trapped in the Foglands. I needed a Waypoint Shrine in order to escape the Foglands. But I didn’t know the Salt Wastes at all, and had been wandering for far too long for my comfort.
“Well this is what you get for drifting across the great canyon in a magic bubble without a map.” I wheezed as I dragged my legs through the ice encrusted mud of the saltmarsh.
“At least I haven’t encountered any giants.”
A keening howl echoed in the distance.
“You know. Someday I am going to learn not to give the story any ideas. But it’s clearly not today.”
I walked on, ignoring the roars and howls of the giants in the distance. I was nowhere near a visible standing stone so, in theory I was safe from the Giants. The Giants, or Gregorim, are a mystery of the Foglands. Enormous bipedal creatures of unknown origin, the giants were unknown in the Mirrored City. When the Mirrored City fell and the fog rolled in, the giants simply walked out of the fog and made their home around the equally mysterious standing stones. They were dangerous and best left alone. And I intended to leave them alone. So in theory I was safe.
In theory.
“This is a useful opportunity.”
I was ruminating as I walked, not a wise idea really. And so when I heard a voice behind me, I nearly drew Bloody Grin as I spun around. There was nothing unusual behind me. The wind whipped around me, and only me.
“You are doing well, student,” still nobody materialized before me.
“Hello teacher,” I answered, “Is it too much to hope that you’re about to evacuate me? You know, since I managed to complete your mission and escape from the Ribcage Castle.”
“You have made excellent progress. But there are few better places to meet the Whisperer than the Salt Wastes. And so, I am tasking you with seeking out the Elder of the Salt Wastes, of the land itself, and obtaining its guidance. Then you can reach the Borderlands Bazaar. The bazaar has a waypoint shrine. And there you can escape.”
“So, I’m on my own again?”
“You are never on your own student. I am always watching. And the story walks on your left side.”
“The story isn’t always a welcome companion,” I answered.
After a moment of silence, I spoke again, “Teacher? Are you still there?”
Silence.
“So that’s it. A homework assignment while I’m hypothermic and caked in salt and mud. Brilliant.”
The fog was starting to roll in and dusk was approaching, so I pushed onwards. If I was going to make contact with an aspect of the Whisperer, the spirit of the land, I wanted a landmark of symbolic significance. Otherwise it would be hard to get the entity’s attention. But with the fog rolling in and the light fading, I couldn’t see very far into the distance. And I didn’t know the terrain in any event. So I trekked on. Although I now worried that I might be going in circles.
The howls of the giants echoed around me in the gathering darkness. I couldn’t tell where the were coming from any longer.
My foot caught a submerged stone, and I tipped forward straight into the frigid mud. My face went under and I came up for air, sputtering and wiping salty mud from my beard.
And then I saw them. Giants. Maybe fifty paces ahead of me in the darkness, half a dozen colossus giants were crouched around a collection of nearly black standing stones. The stones seemed to be made of dark granite and blended into the darkness. The giants stood as tall King Kong. They crouched on digitigrade theropod legs. They were applying what looked like war paint to their skeletal equine faces, taloned fingers trailing pigment across spiraling horns.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself, “The standing stones will be a perfect place to connect to the Whisperer. But of course, the giants. The story walking on my left side again. Thanks teacher.”
I sighed. This was going to be cold, dangerous, and probably undignified. I pulled myself out of the mud and began plotting my path to the base of the standing stones.
I slopped my way towards the standing stones, caked in mud. I was counting on the layer of mud providing a measure of camouflage, rather like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. I stooped down and moved slowly with my hands on bent knees. I watched the giants intently as a moved. Colossus Giants are the least aggressive of the Giants. Troll Giants are smaller but have a petty streak that means they will harass and pursue people for miles and then torment them like a cat playing with a mouse. The winged giants known at the Watchers hunted smaller creatures like a hawk hunting field mice. Colossus Giants merely drove smaller beings away from the standing stones they considered sacred.
But I was sneaking straight towards the standing stones, so that didn’t help me.
As I drew within ten paces of the stones, my foot again hit on a submerged rock. But this time the rock was not large, and I accidentally kicked it into another with an audible clack. I froze.
The five giants turned as one to look at me. I stayed motionless, hoping the mud would disguise my presence. I counted to ten. And then as one the giants howled and began to thunder towards me.
“Well, crap.” I muttered and broke into a sloshing run towards the stones.
The mud was up to my knees and I couldn’t move quickly. I tried to stay close to the boulders and standing stones to make it hard for the giants to reach down and grab me. As they closed in, I found a small crack just large enough for my body and squeezed myself in. Enormous cracked and split claws dragged across the stone behind me, and I wormed my way deeper into the crack.
“The story is sadistic!” I gasped as I popped out into a space where three standing stones met.
The giants clawed at the opening, pausing occasionally to bellow. My popped as the air filled with the sound of protesting stones cracking and groaning. I think I screamed in pain from the sheer level of noise. But if I did, I couldn’t hear it. The stones shuddered, and rock dust pelted me. I lay curled in a fetal position, praying that the stones would hold together under the onslaught.
And then, mercifully, the shaking and crashing stopped. The giants withdrew. And I was left in silence with a ringing in my ears. I exhaled and took stock of my situation. I was wedged inside a crack in the stone just barely big enough for my body. I had little room to move. I wasn’t even sure I had enough room to get back out. I considered my options.
And then the giants began howling again, but more rhythmically this time. They howled in unison and to some sort of beat. They were doing something. I didn’t have room to turn around in my little crevice. Which means that if I wanted to see what was happening, I would have to reverse back out feet first. I had no intention of emerging butt first into the unknown. And on top of that I was fairly sure that the giants were enacting some sort of ritual. That’s probably what they had been doing earlier, before I interrupted them. So, had they resumed the ritual? Or had they started another ritual?
Had they decided to ignore me. Or had they decided to deal with me?
And then the ground crumbled beneath me and I fell. The darkness became crowded with hands and arms. As I fell, hands reached out and clasped me. I struggled and flailed. And then the first bucket of water hit me. I sputtered in shock. And then I shouted in alarm as a scrub brush began to grind against my shin. And then another brush began to scrub my left forearm. A multitude of brushes scrubs and brushed and burnished me and the hands dragged me down into the void.
“You have a dirty soul!”
“We shall clean it!”
“You shall be cleansed!”
“But will anything be left when we are done?”
Soap coated him and the voices continued to talk of cleansing my soul. I had stopped struggling. Instead I was trying to determine what was happening. Something had me. And it wasn’t simply hostile. It had a motive. I wasn’t dinner. I was being tested. So what was the test?
And then the hands retracted, and again I was falling. I crashed into a hot spring of some sort and submerged. The pool was not deep and I stood up as the sulfurous vents bubbled away. My eyes adjusted. Some dim twilight had returned. The pool seemed to be sitting in the center of a massive hedge maze. As I looked around I saw wooden pictures of colossus giants. They stood like old carnival signs, only they stood several stories tall. Behind them I noticed pathways leading into the maze. All the exits had these carnival signs. And as my eyes adjusted, I noticed that they had writing on them saying “You must be this tall to ride” and showing the height marker up at giant height.
I snorted, “Apparently I am too small to enter the maze.”
And then I heard a familiar roar. I froze first. And then turned slowly to see the looming silhouettes of several colossus giants.
“Where did they come from?”
A giant stepped over the hedge into the clearing, and I bolted for the nearest entrance to the maze.
“Nevermind, I’ll figure that out later!”
I ran blindly, turning without any reason or purpose beyond trying to stay ahead of the earthshaking footsteps behind me. The vibrations ran through me, often shaking me to my knees. Each time I fell and struggled back to my feet, the booming footsteps sounded closer than the last time. Running through the maze, I saw something in my peripheral vision. I glanced to the side, and saw something human like pass through an open corridor to my left.
I froze for a moment, and cursed, “Now two things are hunting me.”
I began to run again, but the figure appeared directly before me- blocking my way. I turned and bolted through the passage to my left where I had just seen the shadow pass. I heard human sized footsteps behind me as well know. And I continued to twist and weave through the corridors.
The next giant footfall shook me straight to the ground. I crashed into sitting position on the ground, my tailbone sparking in pain. The giants were too close. I looked at the hedges, and made a decision. I pushed into the hedge walls and curled into a ball. As I did so, a massive foot landed where I had been standing. The vibration rattled my teeth. I felt the shockwave of the footfall in the pit of my stomach.
I waited. And the foot raised, and the giant moved on. The foot falls moved into the distance, slowly and rhythmically. I waited in silence. As I waited, the shadow passed my hiding spot. And still I waited.
The footfalls grew distant. I had decided to move, when the shadow re-entered my view and stopped. The shadow looked left and right, and as it did I was able to get a better view. It was not a shadow, but merely in shadow. And with my eyes now acclimated to the twilight of the maze, I recognized my pursuer. It was me.
As i was trying to decide what to do, my doppelganger spied me. I tried to push further back into the hedge, but I bumped against the trunk of one of the hedges and stopped dead. My doppelganger grabbed my collar and dragged him out from the hedge.
“Why are you doing this?” My doppelganger demanded.
I blinked, “Why am I doing what?”
My doppelganger shook me, ” Why do you continue to fight? Why bother?”
I furrowed my brow, confused at the whole situation. “I continue because this is my purpose.”
“Fighting? Fighting is your purpose?”
“Not fighting. It’s what I’m fighting for that is my purpose. I’m fighting for freedom. That’s my purpose. And who are you? What are you?”
My doppelganger ignored my questions, ” If you wanted freedom, you could just run away. Why fight when you can flee? How does choosing to remain in captivity and struggle serve your freedom?”
I shook my head, “I don’t mean my own freedom. I’m not talking about freedom like escaping handcuffs. Freedom isn’t simply escaping capture. Freedom isn’t the absence of constraint, it is the presence of liberty. Who are you?”
My doppelganger shook his head, ” Isn’t that simply giving you an excuse to do as he pleases. ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law'”
Now I shook my head, “That’s not the whole quote. ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will.’ Acting as I please would deprive others of freedom. And that isn’t love, now is it? I’m not trying to free myself. I’m trying to free everyone. I’m trying to free the human mind. And not just humans. Our captivity entraps every other species. So I’m fighting for the freedom of all life.”
My doppelganger didn’t answer. Instead, he let go of my collar and stepped back. As I watched, my doppelganger cracked, and my features fell away. The thing before me grew and transformed until I was staring at a massive stone bear. I knew this thing. This was a favored form of the Whisperer.
“You’re the Whisperer,” I said, ” You aren’t me.”
“I am reflecting you. And I am trying to determine if you can handle the task you have set for yourself.”
“The task I’ve set for myself?”
“You have committed yourself to the cause of life. You have committed yourself to opposition against the Hungry Empire. And you are unready.”
“What do you mean I’m unready? And why would you care?”
“I am the Whisperer, as you said. I am the voice of the land. I speak for the nematode worms, microscopic in the soil beneath your feet. I speak for the mycelium that brings forth fruiting mushrooms. I speak for the mouse and the beetle. I speak for the minnow and the carpenter bee. All this life is reduced to objects in the eye of the Locust King. We are resources to be harvested. There is a deadly conversation between predator and prey. But it is a conversation. To the Hungry Empire, we have no voice. And so we lend our voice and our strength to your resistance. You are the last humans who remember that we have a voice. Your success is our survival. We must know that you are ready.”
“And what if I’m not?”
“Indeed. What if you are not?”
“What?”
“How can you know that you are ready? What if you aren’t?”
I paused. I never felt ready. I always felt as though I were in too deep.
I considered.
“It doesn’t matter. I carry on anyway. The empire isn’t going to stop.”
“Yes.”
“But are you the one to choose your purpose? Do you know enough? You are a rank amateur in this conflict. You are inexperienced. One might even say that you are in over your head. Are you the one who should be choosing his own purpose?”
“If not me, then who? Do you think that I should leave the decision to some authority figure? That’s the way of the Locust. Deferring to authority is not the way of freedom.”
“But deferring to wisdom and experience is not the way of the Locust.”
“But experience and wisdom don’t decide, they advise. And then you must make the final decision.”
“And if you choose wrong?”
“I don’t even know what choosing wrong would mean,” I said after a moment of silence, “Choosing the way of Locust is choosing death. Feast with the Locust and starve tomorrow, after all. The way of the Locust is choosing to devour the world. That’s choosing wrong. But beyond that? I don’t know. Is there a right decision, and are all other choices wrong? That still sounds like the Locust. The Locust claims to hold the one right way. The Free Tribes hold a multitude of ways to live. As long as I’m not choosing the Locust, how can that choice be wrong? Maybe my choice isn’t the best choice, I can live with that. As long as I am not walking the path of the Locust, I can live with uncertainty.”
The stones ground together as a smile formed on the Bear’s face.
“I accept that.”
I became aware of pain all across my body. Pain, and then a wet chill. I was soaked and my skin has been scraped raw as though I had been rolling on a cheese grater. I opened my eyes. I was in the crack in the enormous standing stone.
“Well crap,” I muttered.
I had forgotten where I was while I was vision questing through every mystic oubliette inside my mind. And now, back from the crevices in my own mind, here I was back in the crevice in a moist slab of granite.
I listened for the giants.
Wind whistled past the opening at my feet. The sharp hair chilled my ankles. The whistling filled my ears. But I could not hear any giants. I waited. I counted to three hundred just to be safe. When the silence persisted, I began the arduous process of worming my raw and swollen body out of this crack in the rock.
I think I spent a hour extricating myself from the stone. When I emerged, night had fully fallen. Night in the Foglands was unsafe. Night in the Salt Wastes was treacherous. But the giants were gone, and I had faced the Whisperer. So, having completed the task my teacher had set for me, I could continue on my way to Bazaar.
I shook my head, “You said the Whisperer would tell me the way to the bazaar, Teacher. They didn’t. So now what?”
The wind whistled past me. In the distance, I heard the howl of a giant. It was a long way off, but I still flinched.
“I guess I’m finding my own way.”
And so I went.
Professor Harbinger's School for Villains 