Another story from "A Day in the Life" series has been published on W.E.L.L. online blog. The story is narrated from the point of view of a character, who, within the game, opted to develop oneself in such organization as church.
Name: Ank Anafart
Race: human
Organization: church
I am a classical example of a loser. They say the first thing I did, having drawn my first breath, was reaching my arms to my father, who was standing aloof and ready to shed a tear of happiness, and falling on the floor. At five, having heard plenty of stories about the Great War, I almost chopped off my toe with my father's combat fan while imagining being a hero leading his army forward. At seven I confused a cough remedy with emulsion for dissolving paint and carried out my first journey down the spring.
Since then I have passed through the Ghostly world exactly forty times. Strictly speaking, I even had a couple of priest acquaintances, who welcomed me as one of their own when I appeared before their eyes, having arisen from the dead in the well. One of them, calling himself Talang, changed my life forever. He conveyed to me how knowledge, which the United God brought with him, was helping Talang carry out his obligations and directing his life. Stories told by the priest were nothing like dull stories of United Church, so I returned home its devoted follower. In a few days I left magician's school (maybe someone who confuses spells really shouldn't be engaged in magic) and devoted myself to church issues.
A lot of time went by since then and, despite all fears of my close ones, not only did I not destroy the temple, where I perform my work of penance, but have actually achieved some success in serving the Church: today I was supposed to meet the resurrected ones by the well for the first time! Though, I learnt it only ten minutes ago when my mentor Oshkan seized me by the scruff of the neck, ordering to stand in for him. In response to my timid attempts to avoid the responsibility, Oshkan has quickly weaved an energy thread, temporarily connecting us, and started mumbling a spell to give me his knowledge and power for some time.
...The first one to appear in the resurrection spring was a sid child.
I have to admit, I was nervous: first resurrection, which I was supposed to perform on my own, without help from a mentor. Greet a returnee, point him to his belongings, recover energy, wish luck, and, of course, remind about the will and divine grace of True God.
- Welcome back to the world, my child, - I started in a heartfelt voice.
The child looked at how I was pointing to his belongings with a trembling finger, screwed up his eyes and howled. I mumbled something about the fact that the one who revered the United God would be honored with his mercy, - sid, chocking with tears, said that his father would kill him if he found out about what had happened.
Having imagined what the situation looked like, I realized I would also pay dearly for that, if Oshkan heard what kind of disgrace was taking place near the well. Having forgotten about ceremonial intonations, I blurted out in patter that it does not befit a representative of a race, laying claim to the title of the primogenitary one in our world, to be shedding tears, having just resurrected. Surprisingly, it worked: the sid sniveled, spread tears all over his cheeks with a palm, threw his arms around the clothes and, trying to keep his back straight, walked away from the well as quickly as he could.
For some time it was quiet. I was warming my back in the sunlight, strolling along the edge of the well, and imagining how one day I would reach the heights of cognition, when all mysteries of resurrection would be revealed to me... My reflections were broken off by a low male voice:
- Fifteen! - A resurrected kelebra declared proudly, scratching his chest. I squinted my eyes to the ground, where his belongings started to appear: a belt, a beat-up heavy police armor, a spellgun... I respectfully looked at the resurrected: no doubt he suffered in line of duty - it must have been a very tough military operation!
The kelebra, continuing his dreamily scratching, was waiting for actions on my part. I moved tips of my fingers, praying to God the spell I was about to use for recovering vital forces was indeed a spell for recovering vital forces and would not turn out in the form of ice pieces or something of the sort. The shining broke loose from my hands, wrapped around the kelebra, exploded with a bright flash and crumbled to dust.
- So praise the one, who awards us with divine grace, - I began, feeling how these words were being born in the depth of my heart. But before I was able to finish the phrase, kelebra pressed himself against the altar and, not needing my prompts at all, offered up prayers to the United God. After that he quickly got dressed, grabbed his spellgun and was about to leave.
- If it's not a secret... What does "fifteen" mean? - I asked timidly, smoothing out creases on my cape flickering with light. The resurrected lovingly stroke a handle of the weapon.
- The armor sustained fifteen shots from a distance of twenty meters before I died, - boasted the kelebra. - I won the argument!
I humped shoulders, praying for Oshkan to be back as soon as possible. I would have never thought that to be a well keeper is so... exhausting. Sheer weirdness! Or am I simply this unlucky?!
Over the next several hours our spring brought back to life a weeping female cverg, a sid, reciting verses, a gloomy arrawn (if it's at all possible to tell a gloomy arrawn from an everyday arrawn) and two pangolins laying the blast on each other. I was pointing the resurrected to their belongings, recovering their vital forces, calling upon them to praise the United God, and by the end of the day I felt like I was starting to go mad. Besides, I was starting to worry about Oshkan's long absence. So mush that I even turned my back upon the well and was thinking, thus breaking all the conceivable and inconceivable rules, of leaving the spring and running to the temple to find out what had happened.
As I made several steps, something hollowly hit the ground behind me, a quiet hiss was heard, and the air was lit with a flash of a recovery spell. Very slowly, feeling how the hair on the back of my head started to move, I turned around to face the well. Beside it, meaningfully dusting off the spell from his fingers and not hurrying to get dressed, stood a high exhausted sid.
- Let us praise the United God, - I began mechanically, trying to understand what was disturbing me in the appearance of the resurrected so much, that I wanted to very quickly dig myself into the ground and pretend to be mold.
Despite the fact that the sid had just resurrected, not only did he not look exhausted or in pain, but was effortlessly weaving spells, recovering all his vital forces on his own.
The sid twitched in my direction and I think I even noticed how the spell of flickering dust windingly flashed and hid in his palm.
- Novice at a spring, - scornful susurrus phrase, escaping sid's sparkling lips, sounded like a slap in the face.
The sid hemmed, turned away and went on putting spells of protection and recovery on himself.
My cheeks flared up with anger, head starting pumping, and I felt like the power, passed on to me by Oshkan, cried out to be released. I shut my eyes, concentrating, and when I opened them I clearly saw fog wrapping around the sid. Dark, cold, angry and live, pulsating like heart in a chest. The resurrected was connected to the forces, which have no place in our world: the spells, used by him, were like ways of Wild magic, which I had only read about in books.
The sid quickly looked around.
- Temple of the United one, - he winced. - You, novice, are foolish like many, many others.
- Who are you? - I breathed out hoarsely, moving backwards from the resurrected.
- You don't want to see anything, you don't want to know or realize anything, - the sid continued, staring before him with an empty insane look, ignoring my question. - Temples, novices, priests...
- The priests protect, teach and direct, you traitor, - a powerful voice was heard somewhere from the well and the next moment the sid fell down to the ground, saving himself from a flash of a spell, unknown to me, flying over his head.
I believe I screamed. Two new figures in the spring appeared as if from the air. One of them - tall, skinny and very old. The second one - young, a bit shorter, broad-shouldered, with a wide scar across half of his face. For a moment I thought it was a priest of the highest level, but then I realized I had never seen a priest wearing such garments and not a single priest had ever filled me with such instinctive, all-absorbing horror. And certainly none of the priests I knew mastered a spellgun this well: the haunted sid had just enough time to put up a defensive sphere, purple flashes hit against it and scattered in the form of bright splashes.
- Block him! - The old man shouted, throwing his weapon aside and grabbing an energy halberd from behind. - Put up the screen!
- Don't you spare ancestral weaponry? - The sid through a lighting at the skinny figure with all his might.
- A traitor should not worry about ancestral valuables and their safety, - the lighting went into the ground at the old man's feet, not hurting him in any way.
Sid fell down on one knee, crossed arms on his chest and very quickly started mumbling clumsy, awkward words, clinging to one another.
- The essences! - shouted the young one. - Cut them off, quickly!
Indeed, behind the sid's back two fuzzy figures, looking like gray smoke, were being woven out of the reality linen. I heard about them before: they said their habitat was the Ghostly world, and only the ones who learnt to penetrate into it with meditation were able to see them. But to evoke them in reality and to control them... All my doubts fell away: before me was the one who used Wild magic, monstrous and forbidden.
The old man drove a wedge into the sid's spells, cut the air with his palm, and the threads, connecting the sid with the essences being evoked, broke and fell on the ground in scraps. Figures behind the sid's back instantly vanished. That very moment a thin pulsating net, thrown by the old man's assistant, fell on the sid from above. The sid started twitching like a caught fish, though still desperately trying to weave new spells. However, it seemed like the net was not simply suppressing any attempts of the caught one to use magic, but responded to them, turning spells against him. The sid looked as if they were trying to turn him inside out by tugging in different directions and also pulling on his vertebrae. Not having been able to keep looking at such a scene, I closed my eyes and turned away. A second passed, then another one, and finally everything around me quacked, rattled and came down on me with hot air, sand and stones. Something flatly hit the ground, started hissing, somewhere not far away a cry was heard, I felt tremor from a powerful spell thrown into the world, and then it became quiet.
Desperately coughing and gasping for fresh air, I started running in the direction of the temple, screaming out the name of Oshkan, and almost immediately tripped over something. Squinting from the dusty haze filling the air, I looked at the obstacle that emerged under my feet and felt a wave of horror pouring over me: at my feet lay the old man, or rather what was left of him, mutilated by fire and magic. His assistant and the sid were nowhere to be seen.
Someone's hurried steps, cries, frightened and angry exclamations could be heard from the temple. I got up, turned around and froze, looking at the ground as if it was blown up from the inside, at the area by the spring covered with sand and stones, at the corpse, at the left spellgun and broken halberd. Those running towards me were getting closer, I saw Oshkan and other mentors, several novices and three policemen. All of a sudden I felt absolute indifference to what was going on around me and absence of any strength, turn away from the group moving in my direction, stepped closer to the well, fell down on my knees and started praying to God with unseen fervor, asking him for help and strength.
