Hot Places

[Deluthan]

Del began waking up. There was a song playing in his memory, one he hadn’t heard nor remembered in ages. Just the same few lines repeating over and over again: Here I am again ... knocking at your door. Let me take your hand. I’ll make it right I’ll make it right.

It was warm. For the moment, he thought he was in his bedroom, with the curtains shuttering the windows, but enough sunlight slitting in to permeate a jaundiced glow. He was on his back, his neck stiff, his head pulsing with a dull ache. Rolling onto his side only made him more uncomfortable, as he must have been lying on the hardwood floor. Only when he turned completely over onto his stomach did he fully awake: Against his cheek he felt the cool grit of stone.

He opened his eyes to a grotto. It took him a moment to apprehend what he was seeing. The ground before him was made up mostly of the smooth volcanic rock on which he lay, but running along the edge of the cavern and its arching walls were jagged lanes of rich soil. Stretched over much of the walls was a layer of vegetation--ivy-like stems snaking their way up and into crevices near the ceiling which led outside. Along them hung an abundance of diminutive leaves and bulbous, lumpy fruit. Some twenty feet away was a hot spring, with thick steam wafting above.

Del quietly pushed himself up onto his knees, all the while darting looks around with paranoid acuteness. The cave appeared homogenous all around him, and one thing that eluded him was a potential exit. He slowly rose to his feet, and proceeded toward the spring at a snail’s pace. He felt something bump against his shoe; it was his bastard sword. He began bending down to reach it, doing so at such a ridiculous slowness so as not to make a sound. He only made it halfway.

“Halt! Stand up there! Don’t touch that, leave it be!” echoed a voice from behind. Del turned around to see a hunched fellow a good distance away, but only from the waist up. He was making his way up some sort of incline. “Don’t you dare go nowhere!”

Del rubbed the tips of his thumb and fingers together, wondering if he should risk picking up his sword after all. The approaching figure didn’t seem that threatening. He shuffled toward him with the strain and weariness of an old man, and was bogged down with a weathered, brown-fur coat and a hood a thumbnail’s distance from falling over his eyes; it was as if he had just stepped in from subzero temperatures. As he approached Del he tugged his hood from his head, revealing a bald, spotted scalp with a few disheveled strands of gray. He was already beginning to perspire.

Del took his chances with what the elderly man may do to him and stood silent. He waited for what seemed like forever.

[Deluthan]

Nothing was spoken as the man trekked across the grotto; all Del could hear was sound of boots swiping along the rock floor. As the man came within a few steps, a hand he had kept unseen behind the front slip of his overcoat drew out a blade in a sharp cut. Del flinched, shutting his eyes tight. But he felt nothing, and after a moment squinted down to see the steel tip stiffly positioned inches away from his neck. It was a short, double-edged sword, not much wider than a thumb, and about the length of a forearm.

"Why're ya here? Speak up!" The elder’s voice was gravelly; Del noticed he had very light blue eyes, with a hint of outlining green--aside from his quickness with a blade, it was the only thing that seemed youthful about him.

"I, I don't know where I am."

"How’d ya get here?" the elder immediately asked. Del now noticed his jagged, asymmetric grey-black beard, as if he had used shears to trim it down.

"I don’t know. I swear. I-- The last thing I remember was, well, I cut my arm ..." He turned over his left forearm and rolled up his jacket sleeve while the elder kept keen eyes on him. But there was no mark.

"Where's your clothes? No way you could’ve got here without no clothes."

It took Del a moment to reply, as the question didn’t make much sense to him. He had his usual afternoon-stroll attire on. "I honestly have no idea how I got here. Am I still in Rhydin?"

The elder's eyes narrowed, and he shifted the tip of this blade to the side of Del's face and touched it to his cheek, getting him to turn his head to one side. He then threw a brief glance to the floor a short distance off of Del's blind side.

"Ya been trespassing in other people's gardens? That why someone bash your brains in and leave ya for dead?" He didn't give Del a chance to answer as he slid back a step and used his blade to gesture to Del's feet. "Pick up your sword and hand it over."

Del did so cautiously. He pinched the steel between his fingers and presented the handle, which the elder accepted with his free hand before backing away further. "Pick up your mess 'n' get yourself cleaned up." The elder vaguely gestured to what had caught his attention a moment ago, which Del now had the chance to see was a disarray of shattered glass. "I want ya sittin’ on that rock there when I get back." This he pointed to, which was located in the middle of the grotto not too far from the spring.

Del nodded. "Okay." The elder started back the way he came, carrying Del’s bastard sword with him and returning his own sword to wherever he kept it beneath his overcoat. Del looked to the glass on the floor and wondered how he was going to sweep it up. It was then he recognized a bottleneck still in one piece, still with its label, and he squatted down beside it to investigate.

"... Vodka?"

[Deluthan]

Del was spending some time trying to piece things together.

He had scooped up the glass from the cavern floor with some fancy rigging of his hooded jacket, and was trying to find a place to discard it. At first he tried to go outside, but when he moved down the steps where the elder had disappeared to, the temperature dropped with severity, down into the single digits. With his jacket bagging the glass, Del’s t-shirt wouldn’t cut it. So back inside he found an obscure nook with loose soil and buried the glass about nine inches down.

The spring water seemed near boiling, hot enough to scald. There was a wooden pail with a wire handle that someone--the elder, most likely--had left by the "sitting" rock, and Del used it to scoop up some of the water and give it some time to cool off. He tried running his fingers through his hair, but it was matted on one side so that his fingers got stuck. The light in the grotto was too dim for him to get a clear reflection of himself from the surface of the spring. Nor could he really see his face. When the water in the pail was cool enough, he used it to rinse his hair and saw it quickly begin turning a murky red.

As he sat bent over allowing his hair to drain over the pail, he pondered: A broken bottle, a busted scalp--it must have happened ... when? When did he get busted over the head with a vodka bottle? Did he get amnesia for the past what, week or so that it took him to find his way here? Was he really left for dead? Was he even who he thought he was? He was going to have to wait until he got hold of a mirror to confirm he was indeed Deluthan Ev’rt, that his psyche wasn’t transplanted into someone else’s body. If this was some newly created medium to enjoy a story, he wanted his paperbacks back.

It took about two hours, but the elder finally returned. He was carrying a burlap bag with something inside. He must have approved of Del’s sitting on the rock, because he didn’t mention anything of the fact when he arrived near him and dropped the bag down beside.

"Ya got there a coat and boots. Ya can wear 'em if ya fill that bag up with paplo. And carry it back to m' house." Del turned and leaned forward to empty the bag. "Only the ripe ones," the elder added. "That's the real orange ones if ya didn't know."

Del went about the chore without complaint or much struggle; a so-called paplo weighed only about three pounds--although toting a whole bag full of them was a monumental hassle, especially through the snow dusted, uneven terrain he discovered outside. But the strenuous physical labor did help to keep him warm through the blistering wind chills as they made that long journey back to the old man’s house.

[Deluthan]

I finally found something to write on. Just some old yellow paper and this really annoying quill and ink vial. I have to dip it between every word or two. I almost feel like I’m desecrating a history exhibit, only there’s no ancient text of a master scrivener.

Why I’m writing this, I don’t know. I guess I’m just trying remind myself who I am, or was, and to make sense of my situation. I’m in some stone cabin, in the middle of nowhere. No wait, let me start from the beginning. I woke up in … well, a garden, though it’s actually a cave, but because the climate is so cold here, people have to grow things underground, where it’s actually warmer because there’s all sorts of geothermic activity going on. There’s a dormant volcano about a day’s walk from here.

Anyway, there I was. My hair was stiff with my own dry blood, and there was a broken bottle by me. I couldn’t place it. The last thing I remembered was being in a ring in the Arena, testing the infamous Ward. I felt like I had some pretty strange dreams before waking. There were a lot of people in one of them. I recognized a few. Rory, and Nick Tyme, I think it was. And that Panther guy that’s always hanging around. We were in some war, maybe. I don’t know. It was strange, not just that but what I was feeling, or whatever. A kind of unsettling.

The cabin I’ve been staying in the past week belongs to an old man who, I guess, has taken me in. We don’t really talk unless he’s telling me to do something. Which is to say room, board and meals don’t come free. I have to take care of all the heavy labor chores, which includes mostly venturing the half-hour trail to the paplo cave, bagging up some fruit, and taking most of it to the nearby town, where I trade it in for various necessities, be it bread, wood, meat. Today I had to make a side trip for a bottle of wine.

The town is called Nydir, I think it’s spelled. I’d say a few thousand people live there. I’ve talked with a few of the merchants, and one of them was actually the one to tell me the name of my cabinmate. He shares the same name of the sleeping volcano. Mt. Otik. The Ott, as a few charmingly refer to him as, or the herm-Ott. Although nobody seemed absolutely confident that was his name. I can’t help but wonder whether the volcano was named after him, or vice versa. The town people apparently don’t really see him much, or have any contact with him. I recall the first couple days when he accompanied me to Nydir, showing me the ropes as it would turn out, how in awe everyone seemed to be when they recognized him, or unsure of how to treat him when he approached them.

Some of them ask me what happened to the guy who used to do my job. The guy at the lumber stack said he had seen him just a couple days before I arrived, or whatever you want to call it. It’s a bit unnerving, because I’m fairly certain this is his room I’m staying in. It’s small, only big enough to fit a twin-sized mattress and a small table, which must have worked as his desk. There are some books and papers scattered about on it that I haven’t been able to make much sense of yet. What’s unnerving is that it doesn’t look like he moved out, but that he just up and vanished. Does that mean he’ll be coming back, and if so, where will that leave me?

[Deluthan]

It’s so quiet around here. Just the occasional sound of the wind outside. What I wouldn’t give for a guitar or something. Something to pass the time with.

I don’t know what I’m doing here.

...

Something odd happened today in the old man’s garden. I was on the sitting rock, just thinking or whatever, and I smelled what I thought was a burning candle. And then I thought I heard Rhiannon’s voice. She said she missed me.

You know, it would make sense if I were going crazy. I’m cooped up in this strange place with someone who most of the time seems not to want anything to do with me, and no sign of hope that I’ll wake up one day back at home. I wouldn’t put it past anyone else in this situation. But it seemed so real at the time. I know it was her voice. Maybe I was just hearing things. There’s something strange about that cave.

Anything’s possible, though. Anything’s possible when you wake up one day out of the blue in hell frozen over. It could’ve been her.

I know I took Rhi for granted. She was pretty awesome to me. She was beautiful too, not in a typical sense, but in her own way. She wouldn’t steal everyone’s attention just by walking into a room. Her beauty took some getting used to, some more involved exploring and investigating. Like a good story. I think she’d appreciate that.

She was a rock, her own person. She liked me, and I kept my distance. I wanted to get to know her, just like anyone else. If she was going to like me, she needed to know me. But she did know me.

...

Each day when I visit the cave, I hope to hear Rhi’s voice again.

It’s lonely around here, and lately I haven’t been sure what’s going on half the time. People in town seem more hesitant to talk to me, or more suspicious of me, maybe now that they’re more familiar with me as the guy who lives with the Ott.

But there’s other things going on. About a week ago a couple of the villas in Nydir burned down, and one person died in the fire from what I hear. I also I hear it wasn’t an accident, that houses just don’t burn down. And late last night, someone was in our cabin snooping around. I woke up to hear the old man storming out of the stairwell from his private suite downstairs. He shouted something that was muffled by my bedroom door, and then pursued the trespasser outside. I guess he scared him off. And when I woke up this morning, I couldn’t find my sword or my hooded jacket.

The old man of course didn’t say anything to me today, nothing about his encounter or anything else for that matter. He accompanied me to the cave, which isn’t typical of him, but I guess he sensed something, because it was obvious someone had been there. In a few spots the paplo trees had been hacked up, with most of the paplo chopped into uneven chunks. But there were a couple places where it looked like someone had burned a large circle, as if they heaved a boulder-sized fireball against the wall, leaving a black residue on the rock, charred plant bits on the ground, and dangling tree trunks. The old man muttered something incoherent before he left, and I was alone again to fill up my bag and resume my usual routine.

I didn’t find my sword or jacket anywhere today.

[Deluthan]

Hano the breadmaker gave Del a suspicious look. He had dipped his floury hands into the wash sink and now was wiping them off on a thin towel. Del had just asked him if he knew where Rhydin was.

“This is Rhydin.”

Del blanked.

“Unless you mean the city of Rhydin …”

“Yeah--”

“… Where strange fellows and things pop in and out of thin air and rob and maim each other.”

“Yes! Do you know how to get there?” Del leaned his weight into his hands, which were pressed against the edge of the counter. Hano hung up the towel on the oven handrail to dry.

“That’s about a five-thousand mile swim southwest of here.” Hano turned and slit his eyes at Del as he propped the palms of his hands against his hips. “Why you ask?”

Del sighed. “I’m just trying to get back there.” Hano’s breast shook with a dry chuckle.

“You’re a long way from home, son. Heck, all we know of ‘Rhydin’ around here is myth.”

[Deluthan]

Del was walking back to the cabin with a loaf of bread in his knapsack. It was approaching dusk. Any Nydiran fool could tell that traveling at night without the warmth and light of the sun was a death wish, and Del had waited until the last possible minute to head back, wandering around the town roads, thinking.

He had decided some nights ago, as he lay on his mattress attempting to quell his now chronic restlessness, that he had to leave. No matter how slim a chance he had of finding home again, at least in leaving there was a chance. So he had spent recent weeks probing the natives, seeking the path he would take--and with little luck. Nydir was a tomb, a stiff cold sarcophagus with a warm-blooded heart trapped inside. Here you were buried alive. No one survived outside--unless you were a hunter.

The hunters. They arrived in Nydir every couple of weeks. Without them there would be no meat market in Nydir, as the town lacked the fertile grounds to keep any significant amounts of livestock. And the Nydirans, in turn, provided the hunters with their very subsistence--alcohol--for there was nothing liked the wine of fermented paplo to keep a person warm in a frigid climate. Nydirans were always good at finding ways to keep warm; they’ve had no other option.

The hunters were a burly kind, recognizable by the tight fitting masks they were always seen wearing, which only allowed you to see their eyes. They were rarely seen alone, and typically traveled in groups of three or four when they visited Nydir. The hunter way of life was it’s own; they depended on one another immensely, and developing the skills to survive nomadic trials among subzero temperatures, and to tackle the beasts of the tundra, was a lifelong endeavor. This made them extremely insular, and ultimately elitist--

There was a rumor going around Nydir that the old man was somehow in cahoots with the hunters, although Del never saw anything like that, but then the old man tended to disappear from the cabin regularly. It was in this that Del held out hope.

Not too far from the cabin now, the wind was picking up; pockets of air were cooling and shifting with the imminent night. Del drew himself into his dense coat.

As he approached the front entranceway, he found the heavy door ajar. Through the crack shown an erratically flickering light, like that of a candle, only much brighter. Smoke was seeping out. He dropped his knapsack to the ground and tugged the door open.

Inside there was a line of small fires circling the periphery of the den. Much of the thick clutter that had overtaken that main room some eons ago was gone. A short, rectangular table that used to be the room’s centerpiece--one with a wooden slab and a pair of U-shaped metal beams as legs--too was gone, except for one of the beams, half of which had been warped, mollified into a sluggish shape, and stunted, as if melted away.

Most notable, though, was an aggregate of holes in the stone floor where the table once stood, as if some rock-starved creature had found a ripe portion of the floor there and began eating away.

Del pulled the hood of his overcoat off his head and peered to the narrow hallway across the room, the one that led to the stairwell of the old man’s basement suite.

"Otik!" It was first time he addressed the old man with the name he only assumed was his. "Oootik!" Del yelled louder. No response.

He turned from the entranceway and looked outside, dropping his gaze to the ground where a light snow had begun accumulating. He first recognized his own footsteps to his right, leading up to the cabin from town. But to his left he spotted another set, one with longer strides.

Del squatted for a moment, a difficult thing in the stiff overcoat. The strange footprints were fresh, maybe no more than a couple hours old, but alongside them were the faint recesses of an old man’s shuffle, barely and only visible by the firelight coming from inside the cabin.

He stood, tugged his hood tight over his head, and hurried along the trail of long-strode footsteps. It was the same path to the grotto.

[Deluthan]

It felt like an out-of-body experience, or at least the closest thing to one Del knew. There he was, sprawled out on his stomach, that familiar brown hooded jacket on, the discarded bastard sword a couple feet away from where the body lay. Even the empty scabbard on his back. Only thing missing was a shattered vodka bottle.

Del had paused partway up the natural ramp leading into the grotto. He lifted his own hand in front of him just to make sure that it was still there, and that he couldn’t see through it. Ideas began to rush in like water through a collapsing dam: Is that he over there? Is he now the old man, observing his first waking moments in Nydir? Was this all a dream after all, because it’s usually when his dreams start getting really weird that he’s about to wake up--

One of the body’s arms shifted from an overhead position to a spread-eagle. No other movement; no sound but the wind outside.

Del began stepping quietly up the ramp. It was a conscious choice. He had barely made it to the entrance just as the last bit of light vanished from the sky. He couldn’t risk a trek back now, and to a devastated cabin no less. He would have to stay the night here, and to do so safely he would need his sword.

He proceeded in slow motion, so as not to wake up the sleeping trespasser. This gave him more time than perhaps he would have liked. While the warm, humid environment of the grotto was a welcome change to the weather outside, it soon became uncomfortably hot beneath his coat. His hood was still up, and he could feel the sweat beading at his hairline. Had he planned this a little better he would have taken it off and left the thing at the entrance.

The man’s head was turned away all this time. Del could only assume he was sleeping; if he was lucky the man was dead. His hair was a little long, stretching over his ears. Del noticed he was wearing typical Nydiran boots. His pants though seemed a bit thin, and Del glanced around for a clothes sack, or pile, but saw neither. He noticed the skins of a few devoured paplo and the wooden pail tipped over by the hot spring. All of this was visible due to a burning lantern positioned on the sitting rock, next to which rested a leather pouch.

A few yards away now. Del could see some of the man’s face. He had a full beard, which appeared trimmed in much the same manner as the old man’s. His cheek looked perky, as if he might be smiling….

His eye was open--

Del froze as he saw the man’s arm reach for the hilt of the sword. With it gripped he began rolling on his side away from Del, and stopped just in front of the sitting rock, where he pushed himself up to a knee. He pointed the sword at Del with one hand while he scooped up the leather pouch with the other and stood up. What smile he might have had was lost in the display, but he quickly found another reason to with his undaunted performance.

“Ah. You must be my … my fill-in.”

Del’s lips parted, then paused. He hadn’t been able to see it while the man was lying down, but a broad piece of his beard was missing from his right cheek, replaced by a scarred patch of skin.

“And I suppose old Otie sent you to get these back.” The man waved the pouch at Del, which appeared half full of heavy, round objects.

Del carefully lowered the hood from his head, as he looked from the bag to the man. “To get what back?”

The man belted a laugh as if Del were trying to fool him, but it tapered off as he recognized the innocence in Del’s demeanor. “He didn’t tell you.” And he chuckled. “You bust your hide day in and day out, and he doesn’t tell you why you waste your time! Ha ha!”

It became awkwardly silent as the man looked Del over. Del exhaled and managed to relax a little despite it all.

“You’re jealous of my sword, I know.”

Del straightened his posture, hoisted his chest. “Who are you?”

The man flashingly smirked, and lowered his left arm, which held the sword. With a curl of his right-hand pinky, he tugged up the left sleeve of the jacket. Cutting diagonally across his under-forearm was a laceration maybe a day fresh. “Why, I’m you of course. And soon I’ll be going home to take your place. Home … to the great hall of swords.” His eyes wandered momentarily as he began to ruminate on the prospect, but Del was too busy staring dumbfounded at his arm to notice. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but had lost his voice.

The man reset the leather pouch on the rock, and began to worm his fingers in through the opening. “And that means you will … what am I saying? You already have taken my place.”

“How are you getting back?” Del said cautiously.

From the pouch the man removed a small orb, and held it out in the palm of his hand for Del to see. The crystal sphere glowed a molten red from within, at varying intensities throughout. Almost like magma-- Heart of the earth came to Del’s mind. “There are ways,” the man answered.

He rolled it around gently in his palm, then brought it near his lips and softly blew. To Del’s amazement, it lit up as if he were blowing on embers. “This is Otik’s promise. That is, it’s his utter failure. It’s important you understand this, being who you are now.” He blew on it harder, and a small orange flame was birthed over the top half of the orb.

“He founded Nydir, led its grandparents here promising that within a few years he would turn this place into a paradise, where all would prosper, and no one would ever worry about dying from the cold. After years of waiting, this is all he has to show for it.”

At last the man turned his gaze from the orb onto Del. His mouth spread in a maniacal grin. “Since you’re taking my place, it’s important you look like me, wouldn’t you agree?” He lurched forward; over his right shoulder he brought the orb, as he primed it for a heated pitch. Del started a half-step back in what was to be a hopeless attempt to escape harm’s way, except that both men were stunned by something in the corner of their eyes.

Somewhere across the cavern a flame flared out of the darkness, as if a giant match were struck. It gave light to a figure there only briefly, before it was sent into the air at ferocious velocity. Del staggered backwards and tripped over his own feet. The fireball crashed where the other man stood, exploding around him, and he flailed and fell to the ground, rolling in desperation to extinguish the flames that had now engulfed much of his clothing. Del heard the steel of his sword clatter against the rock floor; when he finally spotted where it had landed, he pushed himself up and scurried to claim it. With both hands tight around the hilt, he lifted it before him, poised to defend against anything.

The distant figure was approaching. Del recognized the mutters echoing through the cavern, and turned his attention to the burned man, who was now on his knees, his forehead pressed to the ground. He was strangely quiet. Close to Del’s feet was the man’s orb, and Del stooped down to grab it. Where the fireball had landed was a piecemeal residue of molten ember. It marked the center of a triangle that included himself, the burned man, and the sitting rock.

Otik arrived at Del’s side, and gestured with an in-wave of his hand at the orb Del was holding. “Here, here.”

Del passed it over. “Who is that?”

Otik shook his head with disdain as he pocketed the orb. “Eh. Theron. Was my great nephew…. But. But no more.”

Theron by now was standing up on his knees. He was captivated by his charred right forearm. As he rose to his feet, he kept it up in front of him, eyes locked. Del saw what had him so curious. The blistered, split flesh there was regenerating; the wounds were diminishing. The phenomenon was all too familiar to Del, one he hadn’t seen in months. “What … ?”

Theron hurried to the sitting rock, scooped up the leather pouch there. Del threatened with his sword, but Theron didn’t miss a step. He charged, teeth clenched, head bowed. But in the split second before he would have collided with Del and Otik, he seemed to dissolve into the air. And right then they saw the lantern erupt with light and flood the ceiling and floor, filling the entire cave with it, until the world of Nydir was whitewashed from their perception.

(to be continued in live play)