An Epic Tale - 13. Connections

The goblin and I walked together in silence.

I reached out with my mind, trying to contact whatever had given me this power, but it was nowhere to be found. Had I bothered it so much with my display of independence? What if the voice never returned?

A chill ran through me. I had to test my power. I had to be sure I could fend for myself.

I reached out my hand and brushed it against a tree branch. It was an old oak, tall, strong, and powerful. Though it lay dormant, I could feel the life force inside of it, biding its time, waiting for spring.

Somewhere inside the tree a family of birds had made its home, tiny creatures huddling together for warmth, sharing what little warmth they could find. Depending on each other for survival.

And then, with a breath, they were gone. Tiny wisps of potential wafted up from the old oak's insides, only to disappear in the foggy morning.

I pulled harder. I would have to be stronger than that to survive on my own. It was not birds I was after, though their tiny frozen bodies would make a poignant addition to the hollow of the tree. As I strained against it I could feel the old oak's spirit fighting back, desperately clinging to the earth it was rooted in so deeply.

It was not enough. I ripped the tree's spirit from its body, holding it away from the forest that enfolded it. In my mind I could feel it struggling in vain against the force of my will.

And then, suddenly, a blast of fire - a physical sensation that wrenched me back inside myself. The goblin's flames were scorching my flesh. I could smell the acrid stench of burning skin.

To face the goblin I would have to let go of the tree. But the tree, I was sure, would give me great power - its ancient frame held secrets beyond imagining. Secrets that I would lose, unless I held onto its spirit until it was dead.

So I held on, though my body burned.

"So you wish to know if you can stay alive without me?" the voice whispered mockingly. "Here's your answer. Power you have, and more, but wisdom? You will need to depend on me for that."

"Unless," I replied through gritted teeth, "I can find a way to take some for myself."

In its last second of life, the oak tree's spirit released a scream of agony - so pained, so penetrating, I thought for a moment it was my own.

I had tapped into something primordial. The tree's roots ran deep into the ground, where they entwined with the rest of the forest. I had thought I was killing one individual tree, ancient and mighty though it might be. When I consumed its soul I realized my mistake.

This entire forest would die now. I had killed it.

For a moment the fire goblin stopped his attack. He had no choice - his machinery was choking, clogged by thick, dark smoke. It was everywhere, erupting in billowy waves from the ground, the trees, the air - everything I had touched, everything I had come near.

It was all dying at once, and giving up its potential all at once. Clouds of it were escaping into the air, choking and suffocating the goblin as well as his device. I suppose I was choking too. The horrible searing pain from the burns made it hard to concentrate on.

"You can't do this!" the goblin coughed. "This forest - my home! You've killed my home!"

I shook my head, sucking in the magic of nature. The magic of its end.

"And now it's time to kill you, little goblin."

"Do it, then!" the goblin snarled. "I've done my duty. I've burned you. Marked you! Now everywhere you go, they will see your hideousness. Someone will destroy you!"

"Perhaps," I said, "but not you."

And then I killed him.

An Epic Tale - 12. Conscience

"So," said the fire goblin. "We're alone now."

I turned to face him, letting the corpse of his servant fall from my hands. He still wore that infuriating smirk. I reached out to punish him for it.

"Don't." A blast of orange flame dissuaded me. I might have been filled with the eldritch power of a being that defied comprehension, but fire was still hot.

"I killed your friend," I said.

"So I see."

"I could kill you, too."

"I would ordinarily hesitate to put it so bluntly, but not if I killed you first."

"Want to try?"

"Don't." The goblin put up a hand of peace. "We seem to have gotten off to a bad start."

"That would be the one where you took me prisoner, or the one where you were about to kill me?"

"How about the one where I saved your life? Or had you forgotten? Cold can be just as deadly as heat. Speaking of which - where were you thinking of going, now that you've dispatched your tormentors? You weren't exactly getting on on your own."

I hesitated.

Kill him, Samael, the voice whispered. Kill him now. I will provide for you.

"Be quiet," I whispered back.

"Sorry?" The goblin said. He seemed to sense there was something going on. Something he was powerless to affect. I think that angered him more than the death of his fairy.

"What do you propose?" I asked the goblin. I could feel a proud anger rising from my chest, and was sure that the voice had sent it. Let it rage. I had spent enough time chained to one master or another. This voice would soon learn that Samael was slave to no one.

"I.. propose a truce." The goblin was becoming more nervous. Whatever he could see in me was frightening. Good. I forced a cold smile.

"What kind of truce?" I asked.

"I know where to find shelter. I can lead you out of these woods, never to return."

"And in exchange I spare your life?"

"I could not expect that. You've been touched by some powerful evil. Whatever it is, it's nothing I've seen before. It will never let you let me live."

"Perhaps you misunderstand whose body this is."

The goblin and the demon laughed in unison. It was the eeriest thing I had ever heard.

"If you think I'm going to kill you," I said, "then why help me leave?"

The goblin smiled. "I think you're going to try. But maybe - just maybe - if I pick my moment, I can kill you first."

"Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship."

An Epic Tale - 11. Power

I was in pain. Such pain as I had never known. My mind, my very soul was on fire.

I must have screamed; I must have fallen. All I knew was the pain. It blinded me. It pushed me. I was a guest in my own body. The pain was in control.

And then the voice, cool as an autumn breeze, whispering into my consciousness.

"The pain is necessary," it said. "Some parts of your soul must be killed, in order for new ones to grow."

"You never told me that!" I screamed. "You never told me the cost!"

"It was necessary," the voice said.

I was on the ground. The snow was red, sticky with blood flowing from a gash in my head. Had I hit a rock?

Belinda was next to me. "Are you all right?" she asked. She tried to lift my arms. She tried to see where I had fallen.

"Get away from me!" I snarled. I raised my hand to strike her, and in that moment, I saw the horror on her face. Belinda was the first to know what I was.

She tried to escape but I was faster. It was easy - even in my weakened state, newly born as I was, it was a tiny leap to grab her, the merest gesture to wave away her magical attacks.

"Please," she said. "Have mercy."

I took her in my hands and snapped her body in half.

I had killed before. Jerek the cowherd had, at any rate. Predators would threaten the herd, and Jerek would kill them with rocks and a sling. Sometimes a cow would need to be slaughtered before it could be taken by the butcher. Like most jobs on the farm, that was Jerek's.

This was different. When Belinda's life ended I felt something - a wispy tangle of energy. It floated out of her and disappeared into the air. I wondered what it was.

"That's her potential," the voice said. "When you kill a person, you kill a thousand people that first one might have become. You will get used to it in time."

I shook my head. The pain was beginning to fade.

"I don't want this," I said. "I didn't know what it meant. I don't want to be a killer."

I could swear the voice was laughing at me.

"Yet a killer is what you are. I have made you and I have named you - you shall be called Samael, and by your will, the world will be created anew."

"Samael," I repeated. I could feel it binding me, restricting my potential as surely as I had destroyed Belinda's. "It is a good name."

"It is yours."

An Epic Tale - 10. Escape

Who was I?

I had been Jerek, the cowherd. I had lived and I had loved and I had died as Jerek. My resurrection had altered me, but I had still come from Jerek, reborn from him like a phoenix. Would a phoenix change when it was reborn? Would it suffer a crisis of identity?

I had nearly died a second time, when the fire goblin rescued me. And now that same goblin planned to kill me. I needed to change the game.

That's when I heard the first whisper.

"This is a harsh world, youngling. Would you rather not be killed after all?"

From deep in my chest I felt a sudden screaming panic - a terror unlike any I had ever felt. And then, an instant later, it was gone. Not dulled - gone. A part of myself peeled off and left me. I felt a clarity that had been missing since my fall in the river.

"What did you do?" I whispered.

"I killed," the voice whispered back. "That river spirit was needless baggage. He thought to use you for his own short-sighted ends."

"And what do you seek to use me for?" I asked.

"I am older than the river and its petty games. I don't want to adjust the balance of power. I want to overturn it. I want to remake the world."

"And with my help you can do it?"

"On the contrary," the voice whispered. "With my help, you will do it. And the new world will be born in your image. All you must do is accept my power. Become my proxy, and wreak my vengeance upon the world."

"I would have to kill?" I said. For the first time, Belinda seemed to notice my whispering to myself. She flew to the goblin's ear and began conversing with him, urgently, in hushed tones.

"Of course you would kill," the voice said. "You will kill a whole world. An entire existence will wither under your touch. Men will amass themselves to fight you, and women will scream and hide their children at your approach. That is the price."

I considered. The fire goblin was waving Belinda away as he would a mosquito. Try as he would, she could not attract his attention.

I thought of Amanda. What would she say if I turned into a killer? Could I have saved her from the butcher, with this kind of power?

"Of course you could," the voice whispered. "This is your world. You can destroy what you like, and save the rest. You may find little enough worth saving, however."

I looked at the trees, dark and laden with snow. I looked at the goblin, face full of hate, swatting at his most faithful companion. I thought of my parents.

"I accept," I whispered.

An Epic Tale - 9. The Edge of the World

"The world is smaller than you might imagine," Belinda told me. She seemed apologetic, at least.

I had tried to run away - somehow, the thought that I might actually die had triggered a panic in me. So I ran, as hard and as fast as I could.

It wasn't fast enough. Belinda had made a sound, like the faraway ringing of a thousand tiny bells, and I had fallen.

Now I was trudging through the snow, bound to the goblin by a rope of light. Belinda had begun to tell me stories as we walked. I appreciated the gesture, even as I partly blamed her for my current predicament.

It was my own fault, really. Everyone I had ever met had used me to their own ends. Why should this goblin be any different? I should have set out to find the Hermit on my own. To get my answers on my own.

"From here on Earth, it looks like the world is flat, but if you could fly high enough, up as high as the stars, you would see that it's actually curved upward, like a bowl."

"More like a saddle," the goblin said. "I hear tell that in the North and South, it curves downward, and rush off the edge into the underworld."

"I wouldn't know," Belinda said wistfully. "I was a child when you captured me. I have never been outside the Western Woods."

"So you're a slave of this fire goblin?" I said.

"She was willing enough when I captured her," the goblin laughed.

"You promised me adventure! You said if I only joined your service, I would see all four corners of the earth. I would dance with dragons and feel the heat of the Eastern winds. All this and more, you promised me."

The goblin smiled. "All this and more you shall have, my sweet one, as soon as the War in the Woods is ended."

"This war has lasted for three hundred years!"

"And now at last it may end," the goblin said.

I felt a chill run deep into my bones.

"This boy has a piece of the river spirit inside him. We kill him, and we destroy that piece, drying up the river."

"Would that end the war?" Belinda asked.

"Not quite," the goblin admitted, "but it would certainly make things very, very interesting."

An Epic Tale - 8.The Fire Goblin And His Fairy

"I don't know what you were expecting," the half-man said. "This is a forest. Not much around to live in but trees.

"Yes, but - " I swallowed. "Did you have to make it so high?"

"Fire goblins have enemies. There's a lot more going on in the world than your kind has the courage to face."

I looked up. The oak tree was certainly tall, and the grass hut at the top would be hard to reach and easy to defend. I didn't even know if I could make it up.

"Is there a ladder, or something?"

"Not a climber?" the goblin smirked. "Don't worry. These trees would fling you from their branches the moment you tried. You won't be coming in. We're just here to get something."

The half-man rummaged in his backpack as I stood there, wondering what such a person could possibly have to get.

My life was now utterly outside my control, I reflected. I had intended to end it all this morning. Now I was wrapped up in something I barely even understood. Did my parents know there was a world like this, so close to the village? All they ever did was tend to the cows.

"A ha!" the half-man held up a small golden whistle and gave it two sharp notes.

"Belinda!" he shouted. "I've come home!"

At first, I thought nothing had happened. Then I saw it - a tiny flash of light, flickering and fluttering around the edges of the treetop canopy. It was no bigger than a mosquito.

The light swooped down to join us, and up close it was a pinpoint, so bright I had to avert my eyes. I heard it laughing at me, a tinkle of tiny bells in the wind.

"It's so precious!" the pinpoint said. It swooped and darted around me until my head spun. "Where did you get it?"

"Pack up your things," the half-man said. "The old wars have begun again, and this one's right at the center of it."

"Pack up?" It was just a ball of light, but somehow it still looked worried. "Where are we going?"

The half-man smiled grimly. "We're going to take this boy, and throw him off the edge of the world."

Not an Update, but Something

This is me, Josh. I've been taking a break on the Tale because I have to work on something important. Nione demands it. I'm sorry.

Instead I offer this: My own inane, stream-of-consciousness babble. I hope it pleases you.

The Overture

In opera and symphony, the overture is a well-understood part of the narrative formula. It's an encapsulation of the piece as a whole, a way to set the tone, a way to establish the major themes, and a way to foreshadow. The overture does what I like story elements to do - accomplishes many things at once.

So let's think about the overture in cinema. Unlike in music, the overture is rarely explicitly branded as such. But a quick search of my mental archives suggest that there are few, if any, great movies without one. Star Wars has its opening crawl, Raiders has its first mini-treasure. Jaws has one of the simplest and coolest overtures ever. Even The Saddest Music in the World, a crazy-man movie by crazy-man Guy Maddin, has an extensive overture in the form of a strange medicine man that the main character visits.

I think it's this beat that makes circular-structure movies so popular - No idea how to start your movie? Why not give away the end! Almost by default, then, most of the functions of the overture are fulfilled - the tone is set, plot events are (heavy-handedly) foreshadowed. The only thing we lose is the innate tension of wondering what will happen next - which, unfortunately, for many is the whole point of watching a movie in the first place.

Repeat after me: Secrets must be kept. If your audience knows everything that happens before, after, and during the time the story takes place, why would they keep watching? Even at the end, when everything is resolved into a tidy package, there has to be an open question: What will happen next?

That's why those painfully obvious "setting up the sequel" moments are so annoying to me. If I don't see Freddy come back, it's an open question whether they really killed him. If I see him, and he's okay, then there's no reason to consider the movie any further. No reason to watch it again.

Anyway. Overtures. Raising a question without implying an easy answer. They're important, and scary, and hard, and I think I just found mine while I was typing.

Thank you for listening.

I'll try to reward your patience soon.

-Josh