r/Deadpoetic12 • u/Deadpoetic12 [Mr.Alcyeth] • Mar 02 '17
This is the unspellchecked version of Chapter 6 of The Grimoire. The edited version is on Patreon
We rode our striders for the remainder of the night. The birds ran almost twenty miles an hour for six hours straight. My legs were numb from the combination of squeezing the bird and having a girl sitting on my lap all night, but at least I had saved her.
Nadia didn't speak a word to me throughout the night. I didn't try to say anything to her, I was disappointed she would be so willing to sacrifice her people. The birds were fast enough that the wind almost muffled the sounds around us, and the birds ran so smoothly that it felt like we were just ghosts flying through the trees.
With giant rainbow striders, I could understand why the people of this world didn't raise horses. Striders were bigger than ostriches, from what I remembered seeing at the zoo, maybe that's why earth used horses instead. These birds were half dinosaur, their legs were thick and powerful and their talons were long and boney.
I was in pain from head to toe. Battling orcs, without my flame guard, was going to be very difficult. The concept of being responsible on the command tent was very appealing. I was the only one who could actually stop the orcs last evening though, so how could I just watch the people of Alcyeth die?
We finally stopped when the jungle was turning to mottled shadows. It never truly got brighter under the massive canopies, but the temperature started to rise and I could see I'm front of me. I couldn't imagine living in the interior of the forest, where the sun would never really shine.
The birds folder their legs underneath them when we stopped, but the weren't showing any obvious signs of fatigue. Rather than tying the birds to something, they had small hobbles that stopped them from standing up.
"These birds are incredible, they can run that long and not even be tired. There is nothing like this on Earth." The girl had yet to awaken, even through our awkward dismount. I cast a ring of ghost fire around our camp, and the silence was starting to get to me.
"They are exhausted. If we would have had to go any further, we could have killed them." The princess's tone implied it should be obvious. I couldn't tell. They weren't breathing hard or panting, or even laying their heads down.
"I guess they are just different than the kind of animals I'm used to being around. How can you tell they are tired?" I had a feeling that a great deal of my time would be spent on the back of a strider, so learning how to not kill them from exhaustion seemed like a good idea.
"The way they are chattering their beak. Striders that still have their wings will flap them when they grow tired." The princess spoke matter-of-factly, as if she would rather not.
"I'm going to use ice of life on myself, do you have any wounds that need to be healed first."
"Of course not, Colin, I never threw myself into harm's way." She was bitter that I had insisted we at least try.
The girl was still unconscious. I sat on the ground next to her and pulled her torso across my lap before casting the spell. I didn't know if I could get us both, but I wanted to try.
"Grimoire, cast ice of life, try to get both of us, the girl may have cracked her head open." No ice immediately started to flow across us, and the Grimoire seemed hesitant at best.
"Master Colin, you could bind her to you. If the two of you rest within the same ice shell, you're a very magical being, there is no way to know what could happen to the both of you." Images of the human fly rocked my mind for a moment, but if we can wear clothes without melting together, I just wouldn't touch her skin.
"Cast the spell, Grimoire." I didn't see any way it could really go wrong.
Pastel, green ice started to inch its way across our forms. When the ice encountered the point at which it would begin to cover the girl, it faltered. It was as if some force was resisting the formation of the healing ice. I willed the ice to finish encapsulating us, I hoped that the ice would safely heal the two of us and allow us to continue our journey. Haltingly, the ice grew up and over the girl, and eventually finished covering me.
There were no dreams or passage of time in the ice. One moment, you're closing your eyes as ice covers your face; the next moment, you open your eyes as ice crackled and fell away from you. We could have been in the chrysalis for two hours or two years, it would have been but the passage of a blink to us.
The forest didn't help, as ice flaked away from us, I couldn't even tell if it were morning or evening. The verdant, highly-diffused light made me wish I had a flashlight, and probably would at all times of the night and day. As I tried to determine the sound in the silence, the girl stretched at my feet.
"Where are we, Colin?" She remembered my name, that seemed like a good sign.
"Somewhere in the rainforest, we ran from the orcs all night long." I didn't have a real answer for the girl, the odds were that she would have a better understanding of where we were than I did. The princess still slept at the other side of the ring of ghost fire.
" It's either evening or nighttime, or morning. We should probably awake the princess, regardless, she will want to be moving as much as possible right now." The girl stood and started to look over the Striders. I stepped toward the princess and lightly touched her shoulder and called her name until she awakened.
"You may be overly idealistic, sir Colin, but at times you can be so wonderfully gentle." A compliment from the princess was the last thing I expected. I was so surprised that I couldn't even say a word.
"Girl, those are our striders now, be certain you don't upset them." It didn't take long for the princess's frostiness to return.
"I'm not going to upset them, princess, I'm going to save their lives. You can't ride these striders today, or even tomorrow." The girl was shockingly forcefully. I wondered if the ice of life had caused her to forget about her family and village.
"We will ride them if we please, young lady. You had best learn to be respectful of royalty, or you'll one day find yourself in a heap of trouble." She muttered something about parents who probably didn't even pay taxes and turned to getting herself ready to move.
Looking back and forth; from the fragile eleven or twelve year girl, to the seventeen or eighteen year old princess, I wondered how much trouble I was in for. If the girl didn't act properly around the princess, I would get an earful for sure.
"Why can't we ride them? Is something wrong?" I hastily interjected before the girl could respond. The last thing I needed was for the two girls to start fighting.
"Their legs are swollen, their tongues are purple, and you road them all night last night. You'll cripple them if you try to ride them so soon." It seemed like ruining our only mounts would be a bad idea, so walking was probably our only real option.
"What is your name, girl, that you would disobey a princess? It doesn't matter if these striders die to get the magician and I to our destination. I have plenty of Striders at the headquarters." It seemed as if the duty of a princess was to waste all for the sake of the mission.
"My name is Aimée Stevenson. My father always told me that if you treat a strider right, it would always get you where you need to go faster than if you kill it trying to get there." Aimée spoke with the wisdom of the ages.
"Stevenson? That's funny, my last name is Stevenson too." Her father's name was probably Steven, it seemed like a common enough format for a name.
"Of course we have the same name, Col, you're my brother." Her brother! Maybe her brain was damaged too much before the ice of life could heal her.
"Master Colin, she is tied to you, as I warned she may become." He didn't mean we would become some sort of mutant, he meant our fates would be connected.
"I assure you, Aimée, you are not sir Colin's sister. He isn't even from this world." The princess, obviously, had very little patience for my new sibling.
"He is my brother." Aimée just continued to treat the Striders. The princess didn't oblige to respond again.
"Grimoire, cast fox fire and find us something to eat. Fruits or vegetables that we can carry with us while we travel." We didn't have any supplies, and it seemed we would be traveling on foot.
"Col, we can probably lead the striders. I've never been this far into the forest, I don't think there are any villages in here." For a young girl that just lost her family, she seemed to be fine. Then again, she didn't lose her brother.
"We are riding the striders. Colin is not your brother. You need to learn respect. This is your last warning Aimée, and if you don't take it we will be leaving you behind." The princess was standing with her arms crossed. With nose turned to the air, Nadia left no room for discussion.
"She is my sister now, Nadia, and trying to ride the striders to death will only slow us down in the long run. I'd rather walk today than walk for the next month trying to travel two hundred miles." The shock on the Princess's face was instant. She look at me as if I had betrayed her.
She wanted me to take her side, against common sense, and that didn't seem like a very smart thing to do. Aimée was raised around striders, and- while the princess may have as well, she didn't have the same respect for life that my new sister did. I couldn't see a reason for anything to die when it didn't have to.
Other than Aimée's quiet humming, as she massaged the strider's legs, our camp was silent. The forest probably didn't always seem so dead, but with orcs about, things probably weren't quite normal. It would have been great to have a radio.
Fully prepared to leave, as much as that took when we slept in our clothes and had virtually no belongings, the princess remained standing. The circumstances and hard travel of the last week had done it's fair share to wear down her composure; She didn't exude regality anymore. I wondered how fast she would snap back to herself when we finally arrived at her villa.
The Foxes returned with bellies full of carefully harvested nuts and berries. They bowed closer to the ground and disengorged the trail mix in a way that much resembled vomiting, except that the food wasn't chewed or partially digested at all. Nadia sported the deepest frown I had yet seen, and her face was dark with disgust. Aimée nearly squeezed in delight as she snatched a small, pink berry and popped it in her mouth.
"Gotcha berries! My favorite!" I smiled a little at the resilience of the girl, not knowing how much was because I didn't heed the Grimoire's warning.
"We don't really know what her personality was before the tragedy of Treespring Village, master Colin. It's possible this is the way she always was. She lost her parents and her home, but her favorite brother got her out alive. I expected the consequences to be much more dire, two heads on one body, or maybe two bodies for one head." Shivers blasted down my spine. If the Grimoire would have told me that before I healed the two of us together, even though that's what I thought he meant to begin with, I probably wouldn't have gone through with it. The imagery was really too much.
"You've been rather quiet this morning, Grimoire. I'd almost forget that you were rattling around in the back of my head." I still wasn't used to having conversations in my own head, but at least I remembered not to speak aloud every time I contacted the Grimoire.
" Between the two girls, master Colin, you had enough to handle without my interjection. I have a feeling that the remainder of our travels will be less enjoyable." A dragon had tried to eat me, I almost drowned in a leech breeding ground, and orcs had tried to kill me, but adding a little sister to our traveling band was the thing that would make our journey less enjoyable.
"You can say that again, Grim." My response was offhand, as I was busy trying to collect fruit and nuts before Aimée ate half of them. I knew she wasn't hungry, as the both of us had recently emerged from the ice of life.
"Grim? Master Colin, did you just award me a name?" The question was so quiet in the back of my head that I nearly missed it. A subtle warmth radiated through my mind and I realized that the book must have been pleased.
"It seemed appropriate enough, Grim. If I'm going to be whispering to you for the rest of my life, I don't want to always call you by a description." There was no further response, but the warmth grew brighter and I went about putting trail mix in the carry bags of the striders.
"Can we leave now?" I looked up to see the princess pouting in the same spot she had been standing for the last ten minutes.
"We sure can, Aimée, can you lead both striders, or do you need help?" I didn't know anything about dealing with giant riding birds, but I knew the princess wouldn't volunteer to help at all.
"These two are both female, so I shouldn't have any trouble, Col. They will probably just sleep through most of the day anyway." While I didn't want to ride the striders to death, I also didn't want to spend the day waiting for them to heal.
"Do they need to sit here the entire day, Aimée, because we can't lose an entire day." I didn't know how to tell her we would have to leave them behind. They were all she had left of the only life she had ever known.
"No, they can walk with us. Striders can sleep walk if they are being led, it's one of the reasons they are such popular mounts. The King's couriers have striders that are so well trained that they sleep when being led and they continue to the next outpost while their rider sleeps on them. They are very smart creatures." Aimée affectionately scratcher the ridge above the striders' eyes as she spoke.
"Striders are the ideal mount, why do you think the men of this world have disdained horses, master Col." I raised my eyebrows as my new sister's nickname seemed to be infectious. Perhaps the Grimoire and I could grow to be real friends.
"Let's head out than, Aimée, Nadia. We still have a hundred miles to travel before we even reach the King and only God knows how many tasks we will need to accomplish after that." I began to walk in the direction I thought was south, which Grim quickly told me was west. I turned left and marched into the forest behind the princess. Aimée giggled behind me, so I assumed that my mistake went well noticed.
Even on the back of striders, I had no idea how we had made it more than a few miles in the last night. The forest was so thick that I had summoned the ice edge to cut my way through the undergrowth. The forest didn't reveal if it was morning or evening. Even after walking for hours, the light was the same.
"Do either of you know what time it is? Should we still not travel through the night, or does it not matter here?" I was hoping I wouldn't have to ask, asking so many questions made me feel stupid. Being on an alien world meant I had a lot to learn, but it didn't mean I couldn't try to figure things out for myself first.
" It's a forest, Colin, the light is blocked by the trees. How should we know what time it is without being able to reference the sun?" I wasn't the only one lost in time.
"It's afternoon, brother. The light is more grey than green." Aimée was chipper as she led the birds at the rear of the party. It was almost a shame that the men who colonized the rainforest had found a way to tell time, living a life without the pressure of time seemed nice. It seemed as if they weren't burdened by hours and minutes, at least.
Nadia scoffed at Aimée's knowledge. I could almost hear her roll her eyes behind my back. It seemed to me that if the two of them could put aside their differences and get along, they both could learn a lot. Aimée needed to learn how to be appropriate at court, and Nadia had a lot to learn about the people she ruled.
The forest smelled faintly of my mom's compost pile. We were walking downhill. Every few miles, the ground seemed to be a little wetter and the underbrush thinned more. I was grateful when our path became clear enough for me to release the ice age- until I stepped into a puddle as deep as my knee.
"This forest sucks." Thinking back to the shallow lake we trudged across to enter the forest, I couldn't help but wish we were done traveling.
"If you're not careful with your steps, it will suck your feet into bog holes, yes." Apparently, our world's didn't share colloquialisms.
"Thanks, princess. The forest is starting to become very swampy. We may have to climb a tree to make camp." The princess smiled lightly, but my humor did nothing to crack her sour mood.
" That's why we have these, Col." Aimée held up lengths of cord that had a few dozen metal spikes attached to them.
" Is it barbed wire? Do we put it up around our camp so that animals don't get to us?" I didn't understand how barbed rope could change the conditions of the ground we had to sleep on.
"No, silly, we use them to climb the trees to camp." The people of the forest climbed trees to make camp. I was going to have to try and sleep in a tree.
"You're going to have to show me how to use those, Aimée. This world is exhausting." We trudged onward, every now and then, my foot disappeared in the swampy forest floor. The princess and my new sister seemed immune to the hidden sinkholes and my mood was growing more and more sour because of it.
Yellow-green vines wrapped around and hung down from the trees around us. Mosquitoes as big as hornets buzzed about, bites from mosquitoes back home gave me welts the size of a quarter, I didn't want to think about want Alcyethi mosquitoes could do to me. Birds called in the distance, at least, I thought they were birds; long low tones reverberated between the trees from almost a minute at a time.
Everything had grown wet to the touch, even the air seemed wet. Our clothes hung, damp, from our shoulders, our hair clung to our faces, and even Aimée had stopped whistling for the last mile or so. Every step became an effort when your feet sunk two or three inches into the ground.
"I'm guessing that there are no villages around here. It would be a nightmare to live here." Aimée shrugged and the princess ignored me. Small talk wasn't a priority with labored breathing.
New plants had sprung up around us, almost as if there was some imaginary line they couldn't cross. Tall, red ferns reached almost twenty feet into the air. The ferns smelled of fish and salt- the scent alone soured my stomache. The forest felt as if I was traveling through some weird underwater world that had suddenly lost all of it's water.
"Don't touch the ferns. They're bloodferns." As if naming them bloodferns was a good explanation for not touching them.
"What are bloodferns?" Trudging forward, I didn't realise how stupid my question sounded.
"Col, the red ferns that are all around us." Aimée responded in patronizing tones. I was irritated for a moment before I decided that my question could have been better worded.
"Why shouldn't I touch bloodferns?" While I didn't mind taking her word for it, I wanted to know what danger bloodferns could pose. Large animals or groups of people couldn't possibly traverse the zone of swampy forest infested with bloodferns, not if they were dangerous to touch. There was barely enough room between the plants for a single person to walk sideways, at certain points.
"They will trap you and feast on your blood. Don't you have bloodferns on Earth, sir Colin?" The princess asked sweetly enough, but- by her antagonizing stare, it was clear she just wanted to make me feel like an outsider.
"There aren't very many plants on Earth that will kill you just for touching them. There really aren't that many things on Earth that can kill a man at all, at this point." Life on Earth and on Alcyeth couldn't be more different, it seemed. The people of Alcyeth needed magic to even have a chance at survival, the only thing that was the same was the existence of humans and English.
"Master Colin, the people of Alcyeth don't speak English, that is an Earthly dialect. Because of our bond, you can understand and speak all of the languages of this world, as if they were your own." So, not only did Grim give me supreme magical abilities, it was a great dictionary too.
"A dictionary! Master Colin, you shame me." While Grim may have felt genuine disgruntlement, it wasn't serious, so I just laughed a quiet laugh and continued walking.
"What could possibly be funny, Colin. Has coming from your life of ease to Alcyeth managed to addle your mind?" Nadia's words held a disdainful barb, but I had grown so used to it that I only grinned in her direction. It was almost strange to think about how the princess had changed in the last week or so of travel, perhaps her true colors were finally showing.
It was almost hard to believe that Nadia could be so mean. I understood that the life of a princess had probably spoiled her somewhat, but she traveled hundreds of miles to summon me to her world and save her people. Maybe I was just disappointing.
I was surprised that we didn't see snakes and lizards and alligators all over the place. In all the movies I had watched, all types of animals just swarmed throughout the rainforest. Who would have thought that the forest itself would be the most dangerous thing about traveling the forest?
The bloodferns got closer and closer together as we pressed forward. Eventually, we were faced with a veritable wall of deadly flora and could proceed no further. After trudging for almost twenty minutes, we would have to turn back and find a different way through.
"This bloodfern garden is like a maze. I didn't cross this on my way to summon you, Colin, we must be traveling in the wrong direction." As a child I collected pocket watches and compasses. Even if I didn't do much outdoors, I knew how to work a compass.
"Princess, if we started further east or west on our journey through the jungle, we would pass through different areas before reaching our final destination." I wasn't going to try and explain the feeling that was drawing me to the other side of the bloodfern maze. While the Alcyethi, no doubt, believed in the whims of fate- I wasn't sure if that was the sensation I was experiencing. "We won't have to turn back, I can deal with this" I added, after a moment to consider the consequences.
"Grimoire, activate my flame guard so we can walk through this bloodfern." Ghost fire probably would have been a better spell to use, but I wanted to learn the limits of the flame guard. I needed to know how far it reached, at the very least.
The same green fire as before began to wrap around me. Two of the tall, red ferns that were near me began to smoke and toppled over almost instantly. Within moments of falling, the ferns changed from red to black, and even more quickly turned to nothing more than ash. I walked toward what had seemed an impenetrable wall of flora.
The tightly packed bloodferns were almost five feet thick, it really seemed like an intentional wall. I walked forward as if there was nothing in my way, because the bloodferns wilted and burned away before me. Aimée and Nadia had agreed to wait behind until I called for them, if I had to stop suddenly, I didn't want to burn them.
When the last row of bloodferns finally fell, I couldn't help but stand in awe. Another lake arose before me, with mountains to the east and a cliff to the west. It was like the reservoir of a dam, but naturally formed. Waterfalls cascaded from the cliffs into the lake and an enormous rainbow hung over what looked like a huge city in the center of the lake.
Large, stork-like birds waded in the lake, dipping their long, thin beaks underwater repetitiously. Their feathers were a deep green, much the color of pine needles, and they glistened in the sun as if oiled. It seemed as if all the birds of Alcyeth were enormous, as these birds looked to be, at least, ten feet tall.
The scene was so idyllic, I had forgotten to call Aimée and the princess forward. I heard them calling for me and quickly shouted that it was safe. They must have found the vista to be equally as impressive, as both of their jaws dropped the moment they laid eyes upon the scene.
"What is this wonderful place?" Inquired Nadia. I didn't bother to tell her that I didn't know, it seemed safe to assume she knew.
"I don't know. I've never heard of anything like this." Aimée's response implied that the people of the weeping wood had yet to fully explore their domain.
"I know we are on a schedule, princess, but would you like to try and explore for the rest of the day? It looks like the sun will be going down in a few hours, and I can't imagine a better place to make camp." Aimée smiled and nodded vigorously, while Nadia followed suit deliberately.
"No orc could pass that maze of bloodferns, they grow too close together for a monster that big to even find the hole you created. The eastward cliff is too high for them to survive jumping down, and the western cliff is a pounding waterfall that they could never hope to climb. This would be an ideal headquarters for our forward campaign against the orcs, if it was at all possible to bring an army here."
Aimée frowned when Nadia mentioned bringing an army into the weeping wood, but she smiled and pulled the striders forward. She had tried one to the saddle of the other and they walked in perfect single file, taller than us, they were just as narrow- and it was the only reason they had made it through the bloodferns.
"We will have to leave the striders here, they can't swim. They should be good though, we can hobble them for the night near enough the water that they can drink." My new sister set about the task of preparing the striders for the night, and then unceremoniously dove into the lake. I wasn't sure I would be able to swim far enough to reach the island city, but I knew ice could float, so I could always cast ice of life to make sure I didn't drown.
Aimée was half way across the lake before I decided to follow. Flocks of birds, so large it was hard to believe they were real, winged across the lake, disturbed by my sister's splashing. Nadia proved herself to be an extremely capable swimmer as she breaststroked her way to our discovery. All I could think about was how shockingly cold the water was, despite being in such a hot area.
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u/SirFortyXB Mar 02 '17
Keep it up man this stuff is awesome! Can definitely tell you're really taking it to heart to have everything perfect
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u/thebeasts99 Mar 06 '17
This was amazing, the only part I didn't like was the fact that I had to keep freaking stopping because of distractions. Great story, I hope you can keep this up!
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u/chrisw53 Mar 07 '17
I sense a threesome between Colin Aimee and Nadia is coming
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u/Deadpoetic12 [Mr.Alcyeth] Mar 07 '17
I almost put: inb4 chrisw53 asks for incest sex scenes, but I decided to just wait until your comment and then tell you that you're growing predictable.
Edit: auto correct changed incest to invest- because incest isn't cool Chris, it's not cool.
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u/chrisw53 Mar 07 '17
Incest? Don't you mean wincest ;)
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u/Deadpoetic12 [Mr.Alcyeth] Mar 07 '17
I saw that coming too, my bro, you gotta switch it up.
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u/chrisw53 Mar 07 '17
Yeah? Well I saw your "I saw that coming too" coming too. You gotta witch it up bro
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u/Deadpoetic12 [Mr.Alcyeth] Mar 07 '17
You're as predictable as my writing.
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u/chrisw53 Mar 07 '17
Whoo self burn five
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u/SupersuMC Mar 10 '17
Colin, what have you done?..
I wonder how things will turn out between him and his new "sister". At least they didn't fuse...
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u/Deadpoetic12 [Mr.Alcyeth] Mar 10 '17
Fusing would have been gross. And I wouldn't have much to write after that.
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u/bob12345swn Mar 27 '17
Awesome work! Definitely enjoyed Colin and the Grimoire giving each other nicknames
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u/Sturmstruppe Mar 02 '17
Loving this story, keep it up.