Worldbinder

A VISION

Time had no meaning in Areth’s cell. Seconds seemed to draw out into hours, hours into centuries. As his unseen Dedicates endured unimaginable tortures, only Areth felt their pain.

Several times he lost consciousness, then rose again to the surface, like a drowning man. From time to time, voices came to him, hallucinations caused by the extremity of his torture.

Other times, he heard groaning deep in the earth, as if rocks were colliding and rubbing together, struggling to form new hills. It was almost as if the earth had a voice, and if he listened hard enough, he could hear it.

“Pain. I am in pain,” the earth said. That is all that he could discern in the noise, that and a sound like groaning.

Areth whispered, “I would help if I could.”

Areth heard his wife’s voice.

“Areth, awake,” she said softly.

He looked up and saw that he was in a meadow.

I am dreaming, he realized, but only stared at his wife. She had been dead for sixteen years. Areth knew that she could not be here, and he peered into her face not because he loved it, but because he had not been able to recall what she had looked like now for nearly a decade.

A dream such as this, it was rare and precious, and he hoped to recall it when he woke.

Her skin was dark, beautiful, as it had been in life. Her eyes sparkled like stars reflected in a pool at midnight.

But there was something wrong. Her face was mottled and of different colors. He peered hard. White sand, pebbles, twigs, leaves and mud all seemed to be pressed together, forming her face.

A vague worry took him. Areth feared that he was mad. He knew that this was a dream, but the meadow somehow seemed too real, too lush. He could smell the sweet scent of rye and the bitter tang of the dandelions in the grass. Bluebells rose up at the roots of the aspen trees at the edge of the glade. There was too much detail in the grass. He could see old blades lying on the ground, the new grass rising up from them. He could smell worms upon the ground.

He listened to the bickering of wrens and calls of cicadas deeper in the woods, and he felt sure that it was not a dream.

“Who are you?” Areth asked the woman, for he suddenly realized that she could not be his wife. She was a stranger.

“I am the Spirit of the Earth,” the woman whispered, smiling down at him. “I have come to beg your help. The world is a wasteland, and soon will succumb. The very rocks and stones cry out in agony. Soon, mankind will pass away, like a dream.”

Sooner than you know, Areth thought. He could not say why, but he believed the wyrmling torturers this time. They were attacking Luciare and would slaughter the last vestiges of mankind. Perhaps a few might escape, but only a few, and they would be hunted.

“I can grant you the power to save them,” the Earth Spirit whispered. “If you will accept the gift, you can save the seeds of mankind. But it comes with a great price-all that you are, all that you ever will be. All of your hopes and dreams must be relinquished, and you must serve me above all.”

Areth felt as if his knuckles had grown thick with arthritis. Pain blossomed in them, as if they had been crushed. He laughed in pain.

If this is a dream, then I must not be sleeping very soundly, he thought. The torturers are still at me.

“Do you accept?” the woman asked.

“Why not? Sure, I accept.”

The woman faded without another word.

Areth opened his eyes, found himself lying upon the greasy floor of his cell. There were no lights nearby to let him see. The stone floor was covered with his sweat and stank of rotting skin. A corner in the back was reserved for his waste, and bore an appropriate odor.

He was wracked in pain. It felt as if one of his lungs had collapsed, and his right arm had been pulled from his shoulder joint.

But as he peered into the darkness, groaning in pain, he could not help but remember for the first time in years the scent of sweet rye grass bursting from ground swollen by spring rain.