Olga McArrow - Cold obsidian

“It reminds me of snow,” said Vlada with a careless smile. She even stopped her charga to take a better look at the ancient oak crowned with white gloom. “An oak silvered by snow! Very poetic.” She turned her face to Kan. “Alas, things are going to get real ugly, real soon… Let’s camp here. And since we have some extra time on our hands, how about a little swordplay? I promised to teach you, remember?”

The lesson was long… It reminded Kangassk of his training with an old Wanderer who had stopped in Aren-Castell once and spared some time for a certain boy-freak too persistent to ignore, too useless to take as an apprentice…

Vlada was way more gentle with Kangassk than that Wanderer, old Osaro, had been. She still smacked him with her wooden sword whenever he failed to dodge or parry but did her best not to hurt him too much. Kan wasn’t even sore by the end of the lesson yet that experience was enough to prove once again that him surviving back then, in the fight with the caravan raiders, was pure luck. Every gentle nudge, every careful smack of Vlada’s wooden sword would have been fatal if they fought for real and he missed dozens of them.

Later, when they were washing the dust and sweat off their faces by the icy cold stream, Kangassk tried to crack a joke.

“I feel like a little green tomato now,” he said. “Someone tuck me into a felt boot and put me out of sight until I cease being a greenie!”

To his surprise, Vlada laughed, giving him that wonderful silver laughter again, the one he had always enjoyed so much.

“Do tomatoes grow in Kuldagan?” she asked.

“Suuuure,” Kan drawled, nostalgic. “With so much sun, everything can grow there if you just shelter it properly and give it enough water. Once I didn’t and the sun fried my tomatoes. Then I became so protective of my little indoor garden that my tomatoes often turned out green. Evergreen. That’s where an old felt boot came handy…”

They kept sharing silly memories and making jokes all the way back to the camp, all bitterness between them erased, everything made well once again. The chargas who had been guarding the camp in their absence went hunting as soon as they had returned, leaving the humans alone with the cold cauldron and unlit bonfire. Kangassk waved his dragonlighter above the dry firewood and kindled a fire without accidents this time. Having been warmed up by swordplay, chilled by the icy cold water, then warmed up again by the fire felt amazing.

The darkness of the young evening thickened around the little camp with a fiery heart where wayfarer soup quietly bubbled in the cauldron and two tired but happy people enjoyed their rest. Kangassk stretched on his woollen cloak beside the fire and asked Vlada to “entertain the tired warrior with a story”. He made his voice sound so overly hoarse and solemn to imitate a classic fairy tale hero that it earned him another moment of Vlada's laughter.

"Oh which story does your noble heart desire, my lord?" she played along.

"Tell me the tale of the White Region, my lady," he replied with all proper dignity.

"There is no tale, only dull scientific reports." Vlada shrugged. Her voice was her own, casual again. Obviously, their make-believe game was over. "You read the summary of them yourself, as I recall. Do you have questions?"

"Yes. You said no one goes there? Really? No one at all?"

"Nowadays, no one at all. Many explorers lost their lives there. The Region was marked as impassable and then almost forgotten. There is nothing valuable in the white gloom. Why risk your life for nothing?"

"Why didn't the explorers return? What killed them?"

"Most likely, falling from a great height did. White Region is as full of holes as ripe cheese. Nobody knows where the holes end or whether they end at all. The further you go the thicker the white gloom becomes. It's dead easy to fall into one of those holes when you can't see anything. Mapping the holes is impossible because they shift from time to time as the anomaly in the centre pulses."

"Well, I hope you have a really good plan on your mind because otherwise going there looks like a suicide."

"Of course."

"Maybe you'll even tell me about it, huh?" Kangassk felt very, very uneasy again.

Vlada took the little cauldron off the fire, placed it on the ground between her and Kangassk and handed him a spoon.

"We have the chargas with us, Kan," she explained, "that's why we'll be perfectly safe in the white gloom. I'll tell you a bit about them so you'd understand. Chargas are sentient creatures with a culture of their own. We didn't buy them for our journey, we hired them. They promised to keep us safe but as soon as we reach our destination they will go back to Border, to their human foster father. As to the white gloom, chargas don't see it the same way we do. They can still feel the effect of the anomaly but it doesn't blind them. So this is the plan: the chargas will carry us through the white gloom. They may even scare most of the sylphs away."

"Ugh, sylphs…" Kangassk shivered, bonfire and hot soup notwithstanding. “I read a lot of things about sylphs, none of them good. At least they’re herbivores… right?”

“Yes, adult sylphs are,” Vlada nodded, “but they still need a host to lay their eggs into so their carnivorous larvae would have food and shelter. Stay in the white gloom for too long and… you get the idea. That’s why you should never camp close to their territory. You wouldn’t die, of course, but being a sylph host,” she raised her hand in a meaningful gesture, “would be quite unpleasant.”

“So that’s true…” Kangassk shook his head.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the camp didn’t seem so nice and cosy anymore, imagination filled the darkness beyond the oaks with all kinds of horrors. With chargas still being away hunting the scenery looked even more threatening. No wonder Kan had such trouble to fall asleep that night. It was windless and therefore so quiet that he could hear every acorn the oaks dropped as it bumped noisily into the leaves on its way to the ground. Some animal howled in the distance? Here you go: falling asleep is cancelled again.

Eventually, Kangassk got several moments of peace that were enough for the sleep to claim him. When a late acorn fell right onto his head giving him a loud flick Kan didn’t even feel it. By this time his sleep was as deep as a Kuldaganian well.

It was so terribly early! It would be so not just for a traveller but even for a mad sunrise-drawing artist. No way waking up that early was normal! The pale pink line of light at the horizon was so thin the stars above didn’t care, they shone, bright and clear. The night, dark and cold, still reigned in the sky.

The chargas were the ones who woke Kangassk up with their soft paws and rough tongues. Vladislava was already wide awake and by then and was busy packing. She offered Kan her flask to help him brush the last remnants of dreams off. The fiery drink made him instantly imagine what being a fire breathing dragon might feel like. The stuff was that strong. Eating something with such a fire burning in his throat and stomach was out of question. Kan started the journey as he was: dishevelled, hungry, and only half awake. The world around him was a blur of colours. Blue made way to green and yellow as the sun rose but white gradually engulfed everything as they went deeper and deeper into the sylph territory. Finally, Kangassk fell asleep in his saddle, his head leaned against his charga’s furry neck.

The strange potion Kangassk had so trustingly drunk from Vlada’s flask got in his head in the most unexpected manner. He woke up with a start, feeling so brisk and full of energy it seemed he would never need to sleep again. The discoloured forest around him resembled a living pencil sketch slowly drowning in skimmed milk. The sky turned grey, the horizon burned white. Kan quickly glanced back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the colourful world they left behind. There was none. The anomaly affected his ability to see, he remembered, it didn't change the world.

Vlada rode beside him, looking like a living sketch herself, or like a celestial, mystical being. Both chargas lost their spots and stripes. Kangassk himself no longer was chocolaty brown. The white gloom thickened by the minute, eating the very contours of things away. But that wasn't the worst. The worst thing was them no longer being alone: the sylphs had arrived.

Colourless and silent, they looked like jellyfish with their headless bodies and restless tentacles. They kept their distance for now. A direct look made them flinch and hide in the trees. The sylphs were clearly afraid of the creatures that could see them. But as the white gloom approached the travellers, so did they. Kangassk remembered his bow carried away by Fervida. It had probably already reached Gileda by now and maybe even found a new master. A pity. It might have been useful here.

Two hours had passed, judging by the alien-looking white sun slowly crawling up. Kangassk was already almost blind, most of the world replaced in his mind by the white gloom. There were no more oak leaves, branches, and acorns, just an amorphous rustling mass above. There were no more grass blades, just a shapeless shaggy carpet on the ground. There were no more pretty “jellyfish” at the fringe of vision, just a squirming, wriggling mass resembling a huge hungry monster. And it moved even closer to the travellers.

Soon after Kan had lost Vlada to the white gloom his field of vision shrank so much it ended at the arm’s length, just where his charga’s head with angrily folded ears was. Several more steps toward the heart of the White Region – and the world went white, swallowed whole by the reversed darkness. That’s when Kangassk felt the presence of the sylphs. They swarmed him, not biting yet but actively seeking something: a pulsing vein maybe or a softer place on the skin, who knows… The sylphs chirped and screeched, their little bodies were all over Kan. One heartbeat, two, three… he clenched his teeth… two more – and he cracked up.

“Take them away from me!!!” he bellowed swinging his invisible hands in the air. “Help!!!”

“Stop it, silly!” Vlada’s voice came somewhere from the left. “Get yourself together! You don’t want to fall from the saddle here, believe me.”

Well, that was sobering. Kan stopped yelling and started thinking. He couldn’t do much to keep the sylphs away but he could do at least something, so he wrapped his cloak around him tightly, hid his face and hands and leaned against the charga’s neck, face down. That was a very good idea. Chargas could see in the white gloom just fine. From time to time Kangassk heard a loud crunch when one of them crushed a sylph or two with her jaws. After a while, most of the sylphs learned to stay away from the chargas’ heads, but only the heads. They still crawled everywhere else. And there were so many of them! Finally, even the chargas lost their nerves and ran.

Kangassk whimpered miserably with every step, his face buried in his charga’s fur. The world before his closed eyes was dark, with dancing colourful spots, which was way nicer than the unnatural, spotless whiteness of the real world he didn’t dare to look at again.

“You can get up now, Kan,” Vlada addressed him after a while.

He straightened in his saddle and beamed: the world was grey! Lovely, lovely grey! There were shadows in it and contours, still patchy, but quite readable. Kangassk could tell there were trees and ruins around.

The sylphs began their slow, reluctant retreat into the white gloom. Kan resolutely shook the most stubborn ones off his clothes and put to the sword several bloodthirsty specimens which kept pestering him and his charga no matter what. Vlada did the same with her own bunch of pursuers. The rest of the sylphs learned the lesson and kept their distance.