Confrontation/Chapter 10

My first sense of the new world was the terrible smell, a horrid gut-churning stench that pricked at the edges of my being in ways that caused me great revulsion. I had heard a term for such a thing before: noisome, meaning foul to the point of being noxious and toxic. Before coming to that world, I could scarce imagine such an odor, but here it was in full glory.

"It only smells that way here," the stranger remarked dispassionately, "because we are near the gateway. Things are warmed here; bacteria have the opportunity for more putrefaction. The rest of this place has the decidedly more wholesome smell of an ancient crypt."

The incongruity of these words did not even occur to me at that time; I knew only that I had to be free of the stench quickly. At this point, I had not even begun to ponder what the source of the stench might be. I followed the stranger blindly, for I could not conceive of any worse place then the one in which I now found myself and, true to his word, the smell lessened in intensity, though a sense of disease and decay clung to me even then like the last stubborn tendrils of fog refusing to burn off even in the harsh early morning sunlight.

"It does wash off eventually.....In a year or so, you will hardly detect a trace...."

Was this last said with humor? I could not tell, and even were humor intended I could hardly find the humor in the situation.

"What is this place?"

The stranger gestured out across a landscape torn and broken and I could recognize in it the signs of many battles. All around, however, there were no signs of life, only that malingering scent, and then I caught my first sight of them. Creatures milling about in the valley below, considerably distant from my own location, only they were not living beings; even at this distance, I could tell the source of the great odor was before me.... A massive army of the living dead moved beneath that sickly orb that passed for this place's sun, an orb that gave off not light but some parody of light that my eyes nevertheless seemed able to perceive. I did not know how this might be so, nor did I know what this world's nature may have once been, but what it was not was clear....

"This was once a world as alive as your own. Here The'Galin won...." the stranger said simply, and gestured again at what lay beyond...

A war-ravaged wasteland populated by none save the undead... but wait... Even as I formulated this opinion, I saw the first signs of them: their brilliant glow and their lavender wings. It was these creatures of light and not the sickly sun that provided my eyes with the illumination I needed to see.... They were singularly and ethereally beautiful.....

"And also some of the most evil and deadly creatures you shall ever encounter." The stranger responded to my unspoken thought as if we had been engaged in a conversation the entire time, and I again felt that odd chill.

"Who are you....?" I finally asked aloud, giving voice to what I had been long thinking as before, though this question remained unanswered. The stranger pretended as if it were never even voiced; rather, he continued speaking about the creatures I saw.

"Those are the Brilhado, the ones with the more intensely purple wings are their necromancers. They are the greater light demons, from which all light demonkind descend. It is they who betrayed the forces of Light to your master....."

The way he said "Your Master" was so matter-of-fact and so certain that it chilled me. Had I truly given up my individuality, my freedom, in accepting the aid of that strange voice against the Vandarians....?

"Perhaps, perhaps not," the stranger answered my unvoiced question again, dispelling all doubt that he was simply choosing to not answer my question about his identity.... "Your fate remains to be seen... but make no mistake.. you will pay for the aid you accepted one way or the other."

"Who are you?!" I repeated, anger rising in me, but I realized in dread that it was for nothing; somehow in the space between one blink and the next, the stranger had gone and I was left alone...