Ringwall's Doom. Wolf Awert

Ringwall had made him take food and drink for granted.

      How quickly one forgets, he thought as he said his goodbyes to continue towards the Fire. The eldest gazed after him for a long time.

      “That was a sorcerer, maybe even higher than that. No smooth-hand can work as hard as us,” he said finally. “And he carries a heavy burden. The air around him flickers and the earth trembles. Nobody could sleep like he did. He probably thought it was best not to show us his true self.”

      “Maybe there have been other sorcerers here in the past, and we just didn’t notice,” one of the boys said pertly. The eldest gave him a smack on the back of his head and the boy stumbled forward. “You wouldn’t notice the birds in the sky save for when they shit on your head,” the old man scolded.

      More to himself than to those surrounding him he grumbled on. “I was a young man, many winters ago. A sorcerer passed by one day. He was tall and thin and carried a staff that shone in the dark. He healed our oldest and our sick, blessed the children and the animals. The next day he was gone. That was the summer that refused to rain, when many of us starved. I never knew whether he was the one who took the rain in exchange for his healing. You never know with arcanists.”

      Nill’s heart was heavy as he left these people of few words yet great hospitality, who fought for life with every dawn, at nature’s mercy without the power of magic. He would have liked to stay for a few more days. If only to give back a little more for what he had received. Distance where respect and courtesy demanded, kindness as should always exist between people, and sympathy where it was needed. These things went without saying for these simple folk, but were a rare and treasured thing in Ringwall.

      His dreams drove him onward. The memory of the earthen darkness and the blinding light weighed heavy on his mood.

      It’s not right, he thought to himself as he strode onwards. Magic is to come when the mage calls for it. Not the other way around. Not for the first time Nill wondered how these powers always managed to grasp him in their clutches. What use was it to know that he never bore harm from it? The helplessness of being at the mercy of a wholly unknown force was unbearable. Nill remembered that he had fought, but had the white stone saved him from the dark earth’s magic? Could it not be possible that the cold light itself was a part of the darkness, like the sun and moon in their everlasting dance?

      Rubbish, he told himself. Light and darkness can alternate light night and day, but it’s either light or it’s dark. Anything else is nonsense.

      As determined and final as he made the words sound in his head, they could not quite cover his insecurity. His memories became hazy until he could no longer tell what he had dreamed and what had happened apart. Strange images streamed restlessly through his thoughts, tugging at peculiar feelings. And then there was the constantly increasing fear of being followed. Nill felt it more than he saw it, but there were movements at the fringes of his perception. Where the eye no longer sees color, where it can see movement but not define it; that was where it happened. The ram became infected with Nill’s unrest and began to run circles around him again. There was no doubt that something was afoot, and Nill did not at all like not knowing what it was.

      He gave the ram a clap on the rump and muttered: “Whatever it is, we haven’t managed to shake it off yet and we probably won’t at all. We should stay here where our vision is good and the sunlight aids us.”

      Nill closed his eyes and sent all his concentration to the point between his brows and the root of his nose, where the corporeal and magical worlds were easiest to join.

      His third eye did not need to search for long. It seemed his follower had also grown tired of the game. From the top left, out of the sun and barely visible, came a translucent ball, about the size of a man’s head. Nill barely managed to dodge it by twisting sideways. The ball flew past him with a hiss and stopped in mid-air, looking ominous. The next attack came even faster than the first and Nill put up a Fire shield to protect himself. The shield blocked the attack, but then faded away.

      Nill felt the panic rising in his stomach. He had never seen anything like this. Only Water magic could extinguish Fire so quickly. But Nill had not noticed any Water magic. Nill did not have the time to follow this line of thought, for now the ball followed attack with attack. Nill reacted instinctively. He activated his staff and drew up shields of Water, Wood and Metal to block the quick assault. He cursed foully and fluently under his breath.

      This isn’t working. Fire, Earth and Metal do nothing. Water gets parried by Metal, I felt it. Wood slows it down, but no more. It’s only a matter of time until this thing exhausts me. Time. That’s it. I need time.

      Nill screwed up all his courage and fled to the Other World. He feared this strange attacker more than Bucyngaphos and his legion of demons.

      As quickly as he had entered the Other World he left it again and laid a protective barrier of Wood energy upon his body, then he flitted back into the Beyond. The ball had followed each of his leaps and had stopped attacking.

      Nill and the ball leapt at lightning speed between the Here and the Beyond, and it was difficult to see who was hunting who. Nill could feel that the ball had even more substance and strength in the Other World than in Pentamuria, and so he made a desperate decision. He had been stuck in the strange in-between that bridges the Here and the Beyond once before, and he decided to try and get there again to observe his opponent from the safety of the mid-realm. It was dangerous – for a moment body and soul would be parted. The soul led, the body followed. Would his body follow to the mid-realm or stay corporeal and unprotected? He did not know, but he decided to risk it.

      He leapt.

      He felt the resistance and searched for his body. It had not followed him and Nill prayed it would remain safe out there. The mid-realm was small and separated from the Here and the Beyond with nigh impenetrable magical walls. It offered a view into both worlds and was an unwelcome afterlife to the dead, and something that had left the world to the living. Nill remembered far too late that he had once before tried and failed to leave the mid-realm of his own accord.

      Too late!

      Frantically he attempted to return to the world of the living as the mysterious orb appeared before him. Nill stared in disbelief at the gray flicker. In the Other World the ball was substantially larger than he was. Taller than a man, there was a magical field that distorted his view, and in its middle stood an imposing figure, dressed in a misty-gray robe.

      “Who are you?” Nill asked.

      “I am magon. So my brothers call me. I am the first of the same. The first and the lord of Ringwall,” the figure answered.

      “You,” Nill struggled to find his words, “you are Amargreisfing?”

      “I had that name once.”

      “You were the one who put the falundron on the lock to the Walk of Weakness.”

      Amargreisfing seemed surprised. “Walk of Weakness? What an odd name. In my time we hadn’t named it. So you met the falundron? Then there is hope. Yes, hope.”

      The last word sounded oddly hollow and anemic behind the walls of mid-realm. Nill waited expectantly for an explanation, but the magon said nothing.

      “Why do you follow me?” Nill broke the silence.

      “To kill you.”

      “But why? Why do you want me dead?”

      “I do not know. I know only that I must.”

      Nill considered this for a moment.

      “You are banished, correct? Tell me how other forces could come to banish a mage as mighty as you were.”

      “In the Other World there are different laws than in the world we came from,” Amargreisfing replied. “Whatever we once were, any power we had, is meaningless here. No more than a faint memory.”

      “Can I free you from your banishment?”

      “You