The old man chuckled, as Dragol nearly growled in frustration. At the same time, the Trogen was caught completely by surprise, as the old man had known the literal meaning of the Trogen warrior’s given name.
Dragol.
Spirit of the Dragon.
Few of those that learned the Trogen tongue ever learned all the meanings of names. It deepened the mystery surrounding the old man even further.
“As for myself, maybe it is time to reveal a little more to you,” the old man stated.
The man slowly raised his arms out to either side, as a tremendous brightness surged, overcoming the cloaked form of his body. At its apex, the blinding light appeared to shatter into thousands of tiny shards of white light.
The intensity was such that Dragol had to quickly raise up his shielded arm, to simply protect his eyes from the overwhelming brightness. He blinked and squinted, trying to look around the shield and behold the magnificent vision before him. The tiny light shards fragmented further, before seeming to dissipate in all directions.
When they were gone from sight, the forest was empty once again. The elderly man was nowhere to be seen.
Dragol clenched his teeth in frustration, foiled again in the attempt to identify the strange traveler. The mystery was greater, not lesser as he had hoped, due to the event that had just happened.
Letting out a muffled grunt of anger, Dragol looked around the trees with a snarl on his face. He took a couple of deep breaths, as he struggled to reestablish his sanity, or at least a semblance of it. He could barely trust his senses anymore, or at least so it seemed. He waited a little while longer, but the old man did not reemerge, and the sensation of being watched was entirely absent.
With little else to do, Dragol finally decided to take a brief respite, and enjoy the cool, soothing air given off around the small waterfall. That was something he could understand fully, requiring no solving of riddles. He walked slowly back around the rim of the pool, and sat down on the smooth, damp rock of the cave opening.
He began to collect his thoughts, though he did not take his attention away from the forest around him. Setting the shield and longblade down, both easily within arm’s reach, he untied the leather cords securing the small pouch at his waist.
Reaching in, he pulled out a few of the stored berries and put them into his mouth. The sweet, juicy bursts, tinged with a hint of sourness, filled his mouth with a pleasant flavor. He followed up the berries by cupping his hands, and drinking from the clear water near the edge of the pool.
The tensions gradually left his body and mind, as his senses appeared to align with the steady patter of the water, which fell down from above and came to rest in the pool. He felt the vapors from the cascading water blow across his face with each breeze, and very gradually he reached a feeling of serenity.
As much as Trogens were creatures of storm and fury, so were they also creatures of sunlight and tranquility. A cognizance of the order of things was just as importance as the most demanding physical challenges or tests.
The renewed sense of peace brought his thoughts back to the old man. He reflected upon what he knew of the man with a calmer, more revealing perspective.
His reflections were drawn towards the earlier exchange that he had with the old man, regarding the process of revelation. The old man had given him a simple example, likening it to the processes Dragol had undergone in learning the arts of the Trogen longblade.
The talk of unveiling realizations existing inside his heart was something that struck a familiar tone deep within Dragol. Trogens often spoke of how there were many things written into the very essence of their spirit, characteristics and inspirations that were a part of their innermost nature. They were the most basic of elements given to them by the Creator Spirit.
Every adolescent Trogen learned that there were many things that would be unlocked with the passage of time, as they passed from youth into full adulthood, and beyond. Life was a continuous process of awakenings, to the very end.
It was not that these revelations were in their fullest form from the moment that a Trogen was born, but were rather quietly growing, like crops in a field. The things that a Trogen did in life, and learned, were like the sun and rain that governed the growth in a cultivated field.
A proper focus and effort in life would tend such a crop bountifully, as it changed from a seed into a mature plant, ready for harvest. If a Trogen was wayward, or turned from a right path, the effect would be like an unrelenting drought, or flooding of a field of plants.
The difficult truth about life was that destructive processes could also be much quicker in their nature and effect. Such realities strongly echoed the truth that it was always swifter to tear something down than it was to build something up.
The process of crops had always served as a good analogy, in such a light. The hated Elven raiders had often ruined fields of rich abundance, right on the brink of harvest. In a similar way, a Trogen could rapidly become self-destructive, and destroy in moments what had taken years to cultivate. It was a daunting truth, one that always gave Dragol an impetus for self-restraint, as well as compelling periods of sober reflections, like the one that he was embracing now.
It was the process of coming to know oneself and one’s purpose in life, and of harvesting one’s inner growths. Dragol had always striven to give his own life adequate sunlight and water, even if he did not yet recognize the final form of the plant that would be his own, personal harvest. It was exactly what the old man appeared to be honing in upon. He was encouraging Dragol to know the yield of his own fields of life.
The old man was truly a mystery, to a maddening degree, but his enigmatic presence was not an entirely unwelcome development. To Dragol’s understanding, the old man must have been intimately familiar with the rites and tenets of the Trogen race, in order to have such a close understanding of the more deep-rooted, subtler aspects of their kind. The keen understanding was very strange coming from a human, as most humans took the Trogens to be little more than barbarous beast-men.
Why the old man was returning to find him, or even had an interest in him to begin with, Dragol could not tell. Yet there was a firm reason for the encounters, as clearly they were not random in nature. Nor did Dragol believe that the old man’s reasons for approaching him were insignificant, or even just something born from idle curiosity. The old man was revealing himself to Dragol slowly, for a definitive purpose.
Dragol suddenly fathomed that he was likely a mystery to the old man as well; even if Dragol believed that the old man had many more insights about him, than he did concerning the blue-robed man.
The old man had had an undeniable, calming presence about him that greatly intrigued Dragol. There had never been a feeling of a threat to his personal being, during any moment that he had spent in the old man’s company. There was only the brief flash of fear, when the old man’s emotions had surged with a temporal anger, though Dragol knew well that the flare of anger was not directed at himself.
The truth of the matter was that the more that Dragol pondered it, the effect had been quite the reverse. His sense of security had actually grown with each passing minute in the presence of the old man.
He could not really say why he felt an affinity for the old man, but it was there nonetheless. Perchance it was the quiet strength and confidence that emanated from the old man, radiance not unlike that from a trained, veteran Trogen warrior.
Possibly it was something else entirely. Perhaps there was even something very supernatural about the old man. At the least, the man obviously held magical abilities.
Whatever the reason was, Dragol could not be certain. Even the stranger aspects of the old man were not absolutes. Tricks of light were not conclusive, as human sorcerers, and even illusionists, could attain such knowledge and abilities. That the man moved with a fluidity and grace that did not reflect the years that his face seemed to show was also not necessarily decisive either.
Dragol had heard tales
of such men before, such as those of holy men secluded in the deserts of the Sunlands. Others involved rumors of individuals from far distant, eastern lands, brought back on the lips of caravan traders returning westwards with new stores of spices and silks. Though very uncommon, the tales spoke of men of very advanced years, who had somehow held the erosion of time at bay in the workings of their bodies.
Whether the blue-robed man was a supernatural manifestation, a Wizard, or simply a human who had gained mastery of sorcerous arts, Dragol’s instincts still told him that the old man held great power, and had to be respected.
“Who are you?” Dragol muttered, as he glanced skyward, as if that was the direction in which the old man could be found.
He silently beheld the leaves blowing about softly, on the swaying tree limbs far above him, letting the words of the question drift off into the air. A part of him almost expected that there would be some sort of audible answer. The only sounds to be heard were the gentle rustling caused by the wind, intermingled with the continuing splashes of water from the hillside waterfall. The forest seemed to be in as much of a state of repose as Dragol now found himself in.
Exposing his long, sharp teeth, Dragol rumbled with laughter that had a slightly manic edge to it. He began to wonder whether he was finally becoming crazed with the trials he was enduring, of living in a solitary state within enemy lands. He felt somewhat foolish, at seeing how consumed he was becoming with such a seemingly insignificant encounter. He could only hope that it was not an irrelveant one, as his mind drifted back along the echoes of time.
Dragol remembered one particular period in his upbringing as a Trogen of the Thunder Wolf clan. He had wished to prove himself worthy of being a full Trogen warrior, and had asked his clan’s Chieftain, an old Trogen named Curaga, to provide a challenge by which Dragol could prove himself worthy.
Most Trogens making such a request would be sent forward with forces seeking to prepare ambushes and traps for the incessant Elven incursions. Others would serve as escorts with the hunting parties making forays into the highly valuable, and oft Elven-raided, territories of the Trogens’ northwestern lands.
There were a few times when flare-ups with the Kiruvans to the south, or the Gigan clans to the east, provided other opportunities, but most of the time the young warriors risked, and proved, themselves against the deadly Elven blades.
Dragol had grown up with a constant, burning desire, to hurl the Elves out of the Trogen lands. With a state of peace holding between Trogens, Gigans, and the Kiruvan Prince of Chergrad, the Elves themselves had loomed as the primary chance that he longed for to prove himself within his clan.
Caruga had listened to the young Dragol’s request impassively, and had then proceeded to send him forth on a challenge that had been completely unexpected.
Dragol had been sent alone for the span of two weeks into the harsh wilderness near to his home village, with little more than a dagger and a hide pouch containing a little smoked meat. The ensuing two weeks had been a most arduous experience, but a lasting lesson had begun to reveal itself to Dragol during the trial. The challenges in that wilderness were as much of a mental nature as they were physical.
Caruga had sent Dragol to a place close to his home village for a reason. As the strains of survival mounted, the temptation to return home, so tantalizingly close, often called out to him. The long hours without companionship or dedicated tasks caused time itself to grind on slowly.
Fashioning shelter, protecting himself, engaging in hunting, and doing a little foraging presented some difficulties, but when he looked back on the experience, it had been the mental tests that were the most daunting. Caruga was testing the willpower and fortitude within Dragol’s mind, rather than measuring him against a physical danger.
Caruga had spoken with Dragol in private upon his return. The old Trogen chieftain had been very pleased that Dragol had both lasted for the full two weeks, and had also identified the true nature of the test.
The crusty, stoic demeanor of the old Trogen chieftain softened to Dragol’s great surprise, as Caruga exuded a warm, and emotional, ebullience towards Dragol’s achievement. The special test had spurred Dragol onto a path of rapid ascendancy within the Thunder Wolf Clan.
His mind had continued to be steadily conditioned over the following years. He had gradually inured himself to the powerful emotions that raced through all Trogens’ blood, able to maintain a disciplined grasp on the realities around him.
He had consistently excelled in those areas, as well as in combat. With Caruga’s blessing, he had risen quickly in stature within the Thunder Wolf clan, to become one of their highest-ranking warriors.
As much as he feared getting maimed or injured, and losing the ability to wield a longblade, he now held an equal fear of incurring any kind of damage to his mental resolve. He could see now that his adamant refusal to give in to the powerful impulses to chase after Gavnar and the others was another test that he had passed successfully. His discretion in not blindly following into Tirok’s folly was bothering him far less. He was increasingly reconciled to the realization that he had indeed made the right choice.
Yet while one matter of concern eased in his mind, Dragol’s encounters with the old man were still unresolved. The old man’s presence seemed illogical, not entirely friend or foe, and with no discernible purpose. It was not impossible that everything was taking place in Dragol’s mind.
The whole experience seemed ever more like the descriptions of the solitary Healers that lived among the Trogen clans. The Healers were said to have regular hallucinations of astounding natures, during their long sojourns into the lonely wildernesses.
Such tales were not relegated only to Trogens. They were also contained within the same stories that celebrated the vitality of the old hermits in the Sunlands, where the isolated men had also encountered strange, fantastical visions during their self-imposed exiles.
If the interactions with the peculiar woodland traveler were born out of sheer illusion, then there was something for Dragol to worry about.
The other prospect was that if the encounters were grounded in iron-solid reality, then Dragol had possibly come upon a crossroads of momentous revelation.
Until he knew which of the two possibilities that it was, he knew he had to respond as best he could, to every moment as he perceived it, come whatever may.
Dragol closed his eyes slowly, taking a deep breath, and exhaling. He envisioned the old man in the long blue robes, seeing the elderly human’s gleaming blue eye as vividly as if the stranger was standing right in front of him.
‘Often, we have already learned the answers to what we seek, only we have not realized how to ask ourselves the right questions to discover them within us.’
The words of the old man echoed in Dragol’s mind over and over again. The soft strength in the voice continued to enamor Dragol. It held the gentle authority of a longtime mentor, neither domineering, nor wavering in purpose. The lesson was there for him to learn, just as it had been when he had left his home village, to accept the requested task from Caruga.
He grew very quiet, feeling the serenity reigning around him. Letting his eyes slowly open again, he took in the sight of the waterfall and trees beyond it.
The more that he listened to his heart, in the way that the Trogens tended to do, the more reassurance he found towards the strange traveler. A part of him harbored no doubts that he would be seeing the old man once again, perhaps very soon.
“I want to find the right question,” Dragol murmured out loud, as casually if he was replying to the immediate presence of the old man. “If you can help me… then help me. Just tell me who you are, and what you are about. Why do you think I am anything more than what I am?”
The light, drifting breezes carried off Dragol’s softly spoken words. Dragol could almost imagine the smooth, peaceful currents of air ushering the supplication carefully to the ears of the old traveler.
As easily and promptly as the
old man seemed to be able to depart and appear, Dragol would not have been surprised if the old man was standing just twenty feet away. There was a palpable tinge of disappointment when several moments passed and no answer was forthcoming.
It was an unusual sort of feeling to have, but he believed the old man would not have remained hidden if he were there to hear Dragol’s query. Furthermore, there was still no sensation of the kind that he had felt prior to the traveler’s other appearances. Even so, Dragol had earnestly believed that the old man could somehow hear the spoken words.
Allowing himself an ephemeral, bemused smile, an expression not all that common amongst Trogen-kind, he raised his eyes upward again. He gazed through the deep green saturating the intertwining tree branches above and around him, taking in the smooth, silken expanse of the teal-colored sky farther above. Streaked with elongated swathes of white clouds, the sight held an aesthetic, enthralling attraction for him.
It seemed much more vivid and magical than he had ever noticed before, as if he had cleared away a veil, and recaptured some of the wonder of his early youth. In a sense, it was almost like looking up at the trees, clouds, and sky for the first time. In truth, though, he was looking up at a unique instance of the sky.
Sitting up straighter, Dragol chuckled to himself. There might well be a meaning to having an entirely new manner of perception. Then again, he had to concede that maybe his mind truly was losing the scope of reality that he had known.
Still, he had not bothered yet to wonder about whether new perceptions might bring with them an altogether new awareness. A new awareness might very well clear the mists away, removing that which clouded the nature of the particular questions that he needed to ask himself.
The answers that Dragol was seeking might not be all that far away, after all.
*
AYENWATHA
*
The presence of the Midragardans within the Five Realms was soon felt intimately by the invaders, as the allies of the five tribes reached the front lines of the fighting. The course of the battle was quickly turned to the defender’s advantage, with the unexpected influx of seasoned warriors from the south.
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