Then, there's times when I just sit down, and write. Blindly. Not even thinking. And I just type the first things that come to mind. I almost prefer this sometimes; the results, while a little convuluted, are always interesting, and can usually be tampered with and improved.
This is one of those peices. I sat down, and, having no idea what I was going to write, typed up this piece. It's wierd, if nothing else, but I like it. And, best of all, it spawned a plethora of ideas (the first kind) in my head that have been developing and growing ever since.
This scene, reworked quite a bit, is going to show up in a later work of mine. But just for fun, check out the original.
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The Haze.
It was everywhere; it was Tik’s entire world. Writhing around him with a shuddering sentiency, snaking its way through his nostrils, infesting every crevice of his body with its damp presence. It was all he could do to breathe, every lungful of the frigid murk that he forced into his body took him one step closer to losing himself. Spots started to appear in his eyes, their blackness appearing foreign against the faded green of the haze. There’s more to the world then green, Tik thought distantly, fighting to stay conscious.
The spots grew larger. The small corner of Tik’s consciousness that remained his own steeled itself. He forced the stale Haze out of his lungs, and, with a ferocious intensity, sucked in another cloudful of the oily green smoke. He had a sliver of a moment to cringe; the barest second to prepare himself for what came next. Please, he thought, let me come back this time.
Then, the fresh Haze entered him.
Everything disappeared. Who he was. Why he was here. What the Haze was. His thoughts emptied, and everything, slowly, started to become green…slowly, he was joining the storm…soon, just another Hazecloud..
It came crawling back up, staggering relentlessly against the emerald hurricane in his mind. The Hazecloud recoiled at the foreign presence; there was something inherently threatening about it. More Haze started to gather, preparing to force the intruder away…
And Tik broke through, fighting against the impulse to gasp as his body once again became his. They said it would be hard, he remembered, as feeling flowed back into his limbs. They said that I would fail, that the Haze would take me.
As it had taken everybody. Everybody who had tried to fight it. Everybody who had simply tried to discover what it was. Everybody who had the misfortune to wander through it on a dark night.
The Haze did not discriminate; that was one thing they’d learned about it.
The clammy fog launched a renewed attack on Tik’s regained senses. He gritted his teeth. It was so hard to fight. Everything about it felt intrusive; it invaded both body and mind with equal discrimation. Tik found it hard to believe he’d held out against it so far. It was so powerful.
It’s going to take me, he thought. Already, almost, he needed to take another breath. Soon, I won’t fight my way back. And it will take me. Steal me away, Erase me. And I’ll just become part of the cloud. For a moment of excruciating clarity, Tik saw the futility of everything. It would take him, and it would take anybody else who decided to foolishly invade its realm. And the fools would come, more and more, until the Haze grew too large, and it took everything, made everything apart of it, and there was nothing left of the world but a mindless, writhing cloud of green.
It was time to breathe. He had to. Mentally Tik shook his head. Not this time. His fight was over. Any more struggling was simply putting off the inevitable. He would let himself fade, let himself forget. Green hands sludged across his face. I’ll fade into the haze.
Or.
The word hung suspended in Tik’s mind, a faint iridescent orb hanging moonlike in the middle of an ocean of green. Not quite. Through his fading consciousness, he still somehow knew. That wasn’t quite it.
Or?
The pearl swelled, brightened. That’s it. The question hung in his mind, calmly poised. His last thought; waiting for the swarm of Haze to close in. An answer, he forced himself to think, it needs an answer. He couldn’t disappear like this, not with such an important question unanswered.
Or? He thought again, hardly recognizing the word. Or? The sinister haze crept forward, grinning insanely, assured of its victory. His mind lay submissive before its advance, a wasted battlefield. The question… But it, too was, fading. Floating away through the endless pools of Haze. Or…. Green flooded across his vision, drowned his thoughts, strangled his will to endure….
The arrow seared through his mind like a fiery comet, howling with an arcane fury. The Haze shrieked and recoiled, drawing back sharply as the missile whistled across Tik’s mind. An answer, he thought, struggling to recover his senses, it’s an answer…
And then he understood.
Or I could fight. Stalwartly, he took in a fresh lungful of the heavy mist, heedless of the danger. Or I could resist, I could refuse to give in. He felt a savage pain as the fresh breath of Haze launched its power against him. Or I could stand strong, refuse to let it take me. This time, he reeled, but his mind stayed his own. And, for the first time, he felt something besides mindless oppression from the Haze.
Or, he thought, grimly resolute, I could fight. Viciously, he pushed against the Haze, fighting the Haze itself, not simply against it.
He felt something give. Another breath, another brutal blow to his consciousness. Another victory. Again he lashed out against the Haze, and again, he felt it give.
Confidence surged through Tik, dispelling more of the Haze’s taint from its body. “You will not take me,” he roared, speaking aloud for the first time. “You will not Erase me.”
The Haze recoiled even more; there was actually a small pocket of air separating Tik from the Haze now. Taking advantage of the envelope, he took in a fresh lungful of…
Of air. It flowed through him, pure and weightless, washing away the now-stagnant pockets of Haze still lurking in his body. The sensation felt so wholly clean that Tik nearly laughed at the feel of it.
Almost. There was still a battle to be fought.
With the Haze gone, he could feel it again; his connection to the Underlife. Dormant, and untapped. But there. Is that how the Haze destroys you? He wondered fleetingly. He hadn’t even noticed how fully he’d been cut off. Does it cut you off from the Underlife….completely? Could such a thing be done? The Underlife was the heart of the world itself; even the smallest stone existed only because of its link, however tenuous, to the Underlife.
He could worry about that later. He plunged deep into the Underlife, feeling his clothes ripple violently in reaction. So much life, he thought, plunging into it. Everything…everything is a part of this. It was as thrilling a thought as it had been the first time he’d Touched the Underlife, years ago.
Tik remembered his master’s words. It’s like a pit, he’d warned. Yes, the deeper you go, the more power you’ll find…but the harder it is to get out. Go deeper than you should, and chances are you’ll never come back. You’re just an extension of the Underlife, after all; it’ll claim you back sooner or later. Sooner, if you go too deep.
What’s at the deepest part of it? Tif had asked, At the bottom of the pit?
His master had simply given him a sad, long look, and Tik had known: Nobody had ever gone to the bottom of the Underlife. At, least nobody who’d come back out.
He touched the power around him, feeling life flow into him at its touch. So much…He was deep, far deeper than he’d ever dare go before. This deep…a single stray thought--anything to knock his focuse off balance--could be fatal.
Normally, Tif would be terrified. Normally, Tif would have never dreamed of going half that deep into the Underlife.
But, watching the Haze flee from him, watching it dissipate into nothing, any of that fear died.
Aid me, he willed, latching onto a particularly large concentration of Underlife. It felt like nothing he’d ever Touched before. Let your power become mine.
Tif had spent a lot his childhood idly wondering about questions that nobody, not even the village elders, had held the answers too. And all through his education, still he’d lost sleep over questions that were seemingly unanswerable. And as long as he could remember, one of those had always been, ‘I wonder what it feel s like to be struck by lightning?”
Channeling this concentration of the Underlife, letting it’s power flow through him, Tif thought he might have an idea. A storm burned in his veins. Thunder roared in his ears, ice frosted over his vision, and fire flared through his arms. I am power.
The thought was not his own.
The Haze around him disappeared. Completelely, and instantly. Blue flashes exploded from seemingly nowhere, and, Tik saw into the night, somehow for miles. All around, Haze shuddered and disintegrated into nothingness.
Such a pitiful, fleeting thing. And it had once troubled him. Laughter boomed from his lips. It sounded like a planet rolling on its axis. He took a step, and heard mountains groan from the impact. A lone patch of Haze flew desperately across the corner of his vision. He turned and swung his hand in its direction; with a glass shattering wail, red lines erupted from his fingers and seared their way across the ground; finding and eradicating the cloud.
Stop! The voice came from somewhere within him. Tik ignored it. He had to destroy the Haze. To cleanse the land. To remake the land. STOP!! Again, he ignored the voice. All that mattered was destroying the haze. Except…
There was no Haze. The world around him was a shattered nightmare of unearthly colors and sounds. The ground around him was shattered and split; the sky was bleeding golden lighting and crimson flames. This is Chaos. Tik realized, awestruck. I’ve found Chaos. The legendary Fifth distinction.
Somewhere underneath it all, Tik was aware of the voice. It was no longer telling him to stop. It was screaming. Chaos, he thought again, exultation mixing excruciatingly with terror, I’ve Touched Chaos. Unsure of what to do before the warring emotions, Tik simply laughed. A booming, powerful, rending laugh. Even less his laugh then before. The gods themselves would cringe before such a laugh.
The screaming grew louder. For the first time, Tif recognized the voice. It was that boy’s. The vessel.
It was his own.
If his laugh had been powerful enough to make the gods cringe, his scream would have shattered their thrones and bought them to their knees. Power surged through his body; pain surged through his body.
The Life! The voice screamed. Release it! In terror, Tik retreated to the Underlife. Let go! The voice shrieked. Let go of it! GET OUT OF THE UNDERLIFE!
With a monstrous roar that ravaged his own ears, Tik ripped himself off of the concentration of Life, out of the Underlife. Back up the Pit. To the surface, away from the Underlife.
He lay, collapsed on the ground, breathing. It was night. The ground was simply green; the night sky simply black. No fires and earthquakes and storms. No Haze.
Fighting to stay awake, Tik lifted his head a little higher. To the left, to the right. No Haze. Not far away, he could see the light of the House on the Hill. I fought it, he thought wearily, and I survived. For a moment he lacked even the energy to think. I won.
And the Underlife. Memories of the world he’d seen crept across his vision even as it started to go black. That power…that strength…it was…it was…His own strength was leaving him; his body’s demands for sleep had become unavoidably adamant. Tik let out a single, weary sigh. It was Chaos. And, looking up at the distant stars, in a clear night sky untainted by green, Tik gave in to sleep.
(even, after monthes of training, when he wielded more Life than he ever could have before, Tik never felt stronger. It wasn’t his power to wield; he was, at best, a vessel. He simply felt less likel drown in the oceans of raw power flooding through his body
Life never got any easier to Touch; you simply got better at not letting it destroy you.
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