Authors: Stephen Zimmer
The man smiled again, with a slight air of joviality. “I am not in these woods because of you, and the tasks that I am on take me away from you … but you have quickly become of great interest to me.”
Dragol frowned, as his eyes narrowed, and he was confounded as to how he was going to get any answers out of the lone, highly confusing man. There simply had to be much more to the man than what he saw before him.
An old man with one eye, seemingly unarmed, would not fare very well in such dangerous forests. Dragol’s own survival was not guaranteed, no matter how strong he was, and despite the fact that he was armed with a great shield and well-crafted Trogen longblade.
He asked the old man slowly, “What … are your tasks then?”
“I am a seeker now. I have been seeking for some that I know, and others that have come from a faraway place. I have found the ones from afar, and done what I could for them … but I cannot find the ones that I have known for many ages,” the old man answered.
This time, the pleasant expression on the old man’s face faded, replaced by a mien that was decidedly melancholy in nature.
“The ones that I know should have been aiding the fight against the invasion that brought you along with it,” the old man continued.
Dragol did not miss that the man had not hesitated to imply that the forces that the Trogen had arrived with were in the wrong. Dragol could not help but respect the steadfast, direct manner of the old man in that regard.
After another moment, the old man’s face darkened further, and a simmering anger pulsed just under the surface of his pale skin. For some unknown reason, Dragol felt the slightest tinge of fear. Quickly, be batted the feeling down, and inwardly admonished himself for feeling any intimidation from a very aged human.
“As we all have enemies, so I believe one of mine has something to do with the absence of the ones I seek,” the old man finished, in a lower, tense voice.
“And why would I be of interest to you at all?” Dragol asked, after a few moments of uneasy silence had passed. He had no idea what the old man was talking about.
The old man’s features then relaxed, and like the sun breaking free of storm clouds, a white smile came to his face. “If I gave you a direct answer, it would be too easy for you, Spirit of the Dragon.”
The old man chuckled, as Dragol nearly growled in frustration.At the same time, the Trogen was caught completely by surprise, as the old man had known the literal meaning of the Trogen warrior’s given name.
Dragol.
Spirit of the Dragon.
Few of those that learned the Trogen tongue ever learned all the meanings of names. It deepened the mystery surrounding the old man even further.
“As for myself, maybe it is time to reveal a little more to you,” the old man stated.
The man slowly raised his arms out to either side, as a tremendous brightness surged, overcoming the cloaked form of his body. At its apex, the blinding light appeared to shatter into thousands of tiny shards of white light.
The intensity was such that Dragol had to quickly raise up his shielded arm, to simply protect his eyes from the overwhelming brightness. He blinked and squinted, trying to look around the shield and behold the magnificent vision before him. The tiny light shards fragmented further, before seeming to dissipate in all directions.
When they were gone from sight, the forest was empty once again. The elderly man was nowhere to be seen.
Dragol clenched his teeth in frustration, foiled again in the attempt to identify the strange traveler. The mystery was greater, not lesser as he had hoped, due to the event that had just happened.
Letting out a muffled grunt of anger, Dragol looked around the trees with a snarl on his face. He took a couple of deep breaths, as he struggled to reestablish his sanity, or at least a semblance of it. He could barely trust his senses anymore, or at least so it seemed. He waited a little while longer, but the old man did not reemerge, and the sensation of being watched was entirely absent.
With little else to do, Dragol finally decided to take a brief respite, and enjoy the cool, soothing air given off around the small waterfall. That was something he could understand fully, requiring no solving of riddles. He walked slowly back around the rim of the pool, and sat down on the smooth, damp rock of the cave opening.
He began to collect his thoughts, though he did not take his attention away from the forest around him. Setting the shield and longblade down, both easily within arm’s reach, he untied the leather cords securing the small pouch at his waist.
Reaching in, he pulled out a few of the stored berries and put them into his mouth. The sweet, juicy bursts, tinged with a hint of sourness, filled his mouth with a pleasant flavor. He followed up the berries by cupping his hands, and drinking from the clear water near the edge of the pool.
The tensions gradually left his body and mind, as his senses appeared to align with the steady patter of the water, which fell down from above and came to rest in the pool. He felt the vapors from the cascading water blow across his face with each breeze, and very gradually he reached a feeling of serenity.
As much as Trogens were creatures of storm and fury, so were they also creatures of sunlight and tranquility. A cognizance of the order of things was just as importance as the most demanding physical challenges or tests.
The renewed sense of peace brought his thoughts back to the old man. He reflected upon what he knew of the man with a calmer, more revealing perspective.
His reflections were drawn towards the earlier exchange that he had with the old man, regarding the process of revelation. The old man had given him a simple example, likening it to the processes Dragol had undergone in learning the arts of the Trogen longblade.
The talk of unveiling realizations existing inside his heart was something that struck a familiar tone deep within Dragol. Trogens often spoke of how there were many things written into the very essence of their spirit, characteristics and inspirations that were a part of their innermost nature. They were the most basic of elements given to them by the Creator Spirit.
Every adolescent Trogen learned that there were many things that would be unlocked with the passage of time, as they passed from youth into full adulthood, and beyond. Life was a continuous process of awakenings, to the very end.
It was not that these revelations were in their fullest form from the moment that a Trogen was born, but were rather quietly growing, like crops in a field. The things that a Trogen did in life, and learned, were like the sun and rain that governed the growth in a cultivated field.
A proper focus and effort in life would tend such a crop bountifully, as it changed from a seed into a mature plant, ready for harvest. If a Trogen was wayward, or turned from a right path, the effect would be like an unrelenting drought, or flooding of a field of plants.
The difficult truth about life was that destructive processes could also be much quicker in their nature and effect. Such realities strongly echoed the truth that it was always swifter to tear something down than it was to build something up.
The process of crops had always served as a good analogy, in such a light. The hated Elven raiders had often ruined fields of rich abundance, right on the brink of harvest. In a similar way, a Trogen could rapidly become self-destructive, and destroy in moments what had taken years to cultivate. It was a daunting truth, one that always gave Dragol an impetus for self-restraint, as well as compelling periods of sober reflections, like the one that he was embracing now.
It was the process of coming to know oneself and one’s purpose in life, and of harvesting one’s inner growths. Dragol had always striven to give his own life adequate sunlight and water, even if he did not yet recognize the final form of the plant that would be his own, personal harvest. It was exactly what the old man appeared to be honing in upon. He was encouraging Dragol to know the yield of his own fields of life.
The old man was truly a mystery, to a maddening degree, but his enigmatic presence was not an entirely unwelcome development. To Dragol’s understanding, the old man must have been intimately familiar with the rites and tenets of the Trogen race, in order to have such a close understanding of the more deep-rooted, subtler aspects of their kind. The keen understanding was very strange coming from a human, as most humans took the Trogens to be little more than barbarous beast-men.
Why the old man was returning to find him, or even had an interest in him to begin with, Dragol could not tell. Yet there was a firm reason for the encounters, as clearly they were not random in nature. Nor did Dragol believe that the old man’s reasons for approaching him were insignificant, or even just something born from idle curiosity. The old man was revealing himself to Dragol slowly, for a definitive purpose.
Dragol suddenly fathomed that he was likely a mystery to the old man as well; even if Dragol believed that the old man had many more insights about him, than he did concerning the blue-robed man.
The old man had had an undeniable, calming presence about him that greatly intrigued Dragol. There had never been a feeling of a threat to his personal being, during any moment that he had spent in the old man’s company. There was only the brief flash of fear, when the old man’s emotions had surged with a temporal anger, though Dragol knew well that the flare of anger was not directed at himself.
The truth of the matter was that the more that Dragol pondered it, the effect had been quite the reverse. His sense of security had actually grown with each passing minute in the presence of the old man.
He could not really say why he felt an affinity for the old man, but it was there nonetheless. Perchance it was the quiet strength and confidence that emanated from the old man, radiance not unlike that from a trained, veteran Trogen warrior.
Possibly it was something else entirely. Perhaps there was even something very supernatural about the old man. At the least, the man obviously held magical abilities.
Whatever the reason was, Dragol could not be certain. Even the stranger aspects of the old man were not absolutes. Tricks of light were not conclusive, as human sorcerers, and even illusionists, could attain such knowledge and abilities. That the man moved with a fluidity and grace that did not reflect the years that his face seemed to show was also not necessarily decisive either.
Dragol had heard tales of such men before, such as those of holy men secluded in the deserts of the Sunlands. Others involved rumors of individuals from far distant, eastern lands, brought back on the lips of caravan traders returning westwards with new stores of spices and silks. Though very uncommon, the tales spoke of men of very advanced years, who had somehow held the erosion of time at bay in the workings of their bodies.
Whether the blue-robed man was a supernatural manifestation, a Wizard, or simply a human who had gained mastery of sorcerous arts, Dragol’s instincts still told him that the old man held great power, and had to be respected.
“Who are you?” Dragol muttered, as he glanced skyward, as if that was the direction in which the old man could be found.
He silently beheld the leaves blowing about softly, on the swaying tree limbs far above him, letting the words of the question drift off into the air. A part of him almost expected that there would be some sort of audible answer. The only sounds to be heard were the gentle rustling caused by the wind, intermingled with the continuing splashes of water from the hillside waterfall. The forest seemed to be in as much of a state of repose as Dragol now found himself in.
Exposing his long, sharp teeth, Dragol rumbled with laughter that had a slightly manic edge to it. He began to wonder whether he was finally becoming crazed with the trials he was enduring, of living in a solitary state within enemy lands. He felt somewhat foolish, at seeing how consumed he was becoming with such a seemingly insignificant encounter. He could only hope that it was not an irrelveant one, as his mind drifted back along the echoes of time.
Dragol remembered one particular period in his upbringing as a Trogen of the Thunder Wolf clan. He had wished to prove himself worthy of being a full Trogen warrior, and had asked his clan’s Chieftain, an old Trogen named Curaga, to provide a challenge by which Dragol could prove himself worthy.
Most Trogens making such a request would be sent forward with forces seeking to prepare ambushes and traps for the incessant Elven incursions. Others would serve as escorts with the hunting parties making forays into the highly valuable, and oft Elven-raided, territories of the Trogens’ northwestern lands.
There were a few times when flare-ups with the Kiruvans to the south, or the Gigan clans to the east, provided other opportunities, but most of the time the young warriors risked, and proved, themselves against the deadly Elven blades.
Dragol had grown up with a constant, burning desire, to hurl the Elves out of the Trogen lands. With a state of peace holding between Trogens, Gigans, and the Kiruvan Prince of Chergrad, the Elves themselves had loomed as the primary chance that he longed for to prove himself within his clan.
Caruga had listened to the young Dragol’s request impassively, and had then proceeded to send him forth on a challenge that had been completely unexpected.
Dragol had been sent alone for the span of two weeks into the harsh wilderness near to his home village, with little more than a dagger and a hide pouch containing a little smoked meat. The ensuing two weeks had been a most arduous experience, but a lasting lesson had begun to reveal itself to Dragol during the trial. The challenges in that wilderness were as much of a mental nature as they were physical.
Caruga had sent Dragol to a place close to his home village for a reason. As the strains of survival mounted, the temptation to return home, so tantalizingly close, often called out to him. The long hours without companionship or dedicated tasks caused time itself to grind on slowly.
Fashioning shelter, protecting himself, engaging in hunting, and doing a little foraging presented some difficulties, but when he looked back on the experience, it had been the mental tests that were the most daunting. Caruga was testing the willpower and fortitude within Dragol’s mind, rather than measuring him against a physical danger.