"A passover." Merrin smiled. "A new change from the way things used to be. No. I suppose it's not really a change, but rather an advancement. Deepening the lore of it all." Behind him, the tunnel pulsed with firelight—small kindlings burning beside the metal walls, flames gold and restless, casting shadows like dancers with broken limbs.
A sigh left him, then, without sound, it changed. The flames didn't dim, they faded—bleeding from gold to copper, to a tired, sick orange. Shadow became impotent. The smoke dropping into a heavy gray, like thread cut from the spindle.
Even the sleeping witnesses lost their flesh vibrancy, all in a moment.
"Ah." Ron noticed. "Something wron—"
"Forget about it," Merrin said, with vivacity, returning to the dulled hallway. "It's nothing to worry about."
"Mmm." Ron rumbled, "We break through?" He meant the wall.
"I break through." Merrin corrected, "I will do this with my own means."
"You might unallowed there."
"I should be welcomed." Merrin looked to the side, a black bug, skittering into a rock side.
"If you go as you now. You be rejected."
So he, too, had become a creature of fanaticism. "Not once have they ever done it."
"But they been without you." Ron said, "And you yet truly speak your truth to them. Who meets them? sunBringer, ashman? Savior? Who?"
"Who do you think I must be?"
"It is written." Ron said, "God rise from the 8 clans. They know. This what you make them see."
"So I am god?"
"I see signs." Ron said, "From light, prophecies, words. I see."
"Prophecies?" Merrin muttered. "So I fulfill prophecies? And here I thought my actions were the products of a frenetic will. Chaos, but my chaos."
"The prophecies written because they happen."
"A wheel." Merrin smiled, turned to Ron. "Thank the father above that we stand now in Nightfell." He leaned closer. "One of the 8 clans."
"Ah…Kael'Thureon!" Ron exclaimed, eyes wide—a certain fire burning within.
It was done.
Merrin saw it in this man—the new growth. Outside the unknown changes experienced, Ron had undergone another. Like Yeimen, like….Moeash.
His change was complete.
I own him now.
"Let me do these things." Merrin said, "Maybe you will tell them someday in the future." A soft chuckle. "Or someone else…But let me take the predetermined path." It always brought me back to these moments. Regardless of my reservations, refusal, the world wanted to make me into this man.
So
I accept its hands, just for now, just for today. For them. Let me accept and see what it prepares for me.
"So the martyr is no more." A soft pitch, flowing into the awareness. A glance, and he saw the beautiful Catelyn. A woman, despite the pains, smudges, radiated an uncanny elegance. He wondered what she looked like cleansed of the filth.
The thought vanished as she lumbered forward. "So what happens now, god?"
Merrin offered a smile, she declined with a scowl. "Something."
She scoffed. "Who in damnation are you to choose this? To say this and do this? What gives a mere caster that right?"
Ron stirred, Merrin calmed him with a wave. Instantly, like a piloted beast, he stopped. "What do you think I am?"
"A simple caster. A marauder."
She was taller than he was, so he looked up.
"How sure of that are you? You are an intelligent woman." He said, "Ponder. Consider Merrin Ashman as a case. Do I not break the very rules and restrictions known for casters? Stronger. Faster. Better than they ever could. That says something. Listen to it. You believe yourself smarter than I am…Study it."
She was silenced, and he strolled past her, stopping three steps away, flame casting his shoulders like a darkened giant across the walls. "Remember this. You cannot truly know an endless wheel. A paradox." He said. "Catelyn, believe this as sure as the very winds and storms. I am what I am, and that is what I will forever be."
The greatest threat to any organism often comes from its own species. As members of a species compete for the same vital resources, growth becomes limited—not by what is most abundant, but by what is most scarce. According to the Law of the Fewest, it is the least available essential factor that ultimately governs the rate of growth. In other words, the weakest link sets the limit—Author Unknown.
Merrin sat, right leg rotted still on the darkened floor, slanting him to the side. No high stone, just the relatively chilled earth warming by the passing second. There, he pondered Ivory's words. Truth. Who was it that gave him such rights? He could claim the previsions did, whatever they were. Not many in Eastos knew more than one line of the prophecy:
God will be born in one of the 8 clans. They then will shatter the darkness and bring luminance back to enor. It registered for Ron to see the signs in him; however, he was not the saviour. He, was a man, one with a hard, yet truthful desire.
To save his people.
Not the world…his people.
The witnesses did something. Pacing about, shadows flickering long blacks against the walls. Fabrics torn, shredded, and reworked in fervent celerity. Who knew an axe played such roles in needlecraft? The tool used to slice into soft fiber easily. The needle itself was provided by the giant Ron. Odd that even without his robe, things found their way off him. Near magically. Merrin allowed the quip to simmer within. Ron, once a cloaked man, now this….
Catelyn had presented the thread. The last necessity and the witnesses made garments for themselves.
He knew what happened now, saw the inevitable arc of it, yet he permitted its results. He knew the consequences, the bitter draught he was destined to drink, and still, he drowned with it. This was the only way—the imperative, the sole way.
Therefore, he would not lose heart even though the inward man was perishing, that core of him being consumed, the outward self was being renewed, moment by moment, for he would stand as light, not for a fleeting moment, but for a far exceeding length of time. For them.
Merrin hid his face and sighed. They must never see him weakened, and he stood, strolling within their midst. Many bowed at his presence, heads slamming into rock in that audible snapping sound. It startled. And he wondered whether to command them against it….Command. Not ask.
He stopped before Davos, the stone-handed sat, slumped on the walls, eyes staring at the outside nothing. Just a grim, hollow visage of a face. Did he regret what he had done? The woman, crushed under a stone, fitted back into present awareness. Did he feel pity, fear, or anxiety? Which was it?
Even now, the obvious combatant had not registered his presence. Was he not, or was the giant Ron more sensitive to such things? It was a question, a crucial one. No matter the reservation, the truth screamed like thunder.
He needed a warrior.
Warriors.
Today could be the day of safety, he knew that, or it could not. Something of unity had grown within the witnesses: a family. Unbreakable. Mirth-laced voices shuddered through the hallway—men, women, conversing as one familiar to the other. Pain had forged them as one. Togetherness. Without him, they would remain as such. This prompted the need for a constant protector.
A proxy they would always see.
This he must do for them. The question was…who? Not many of these new witnesses had their names imprinted in his memory. Truthfully, none had their names in his mind. Not good. So he divided his awareness, one listening, the other observing.
It was a requisite that they must survive. Hence, Davos, here, resisting the very truth that he bore, must break out of that shell.
I need a warrior.
"Davos!" He called hard, the man trembling for a moment, recognition flashing in his eyes.
"sunBringer." There was no condensation in the tones.
He has seen me control the winds. He has seen me battle the fire demon. He fears me now.
"Come with me, Davos." Merrin gave no moment for declination, walking on towards a corner of the hallway. A smaller path used by the witnesses in the discovery of this one. There he waited, slanted on the side of the red rusted wall, and darkness here was like an oily veil. Walls, too, bore more severe heat than the other. Seemed like the symbols did not reach this one.
Regardless, he waited, playing with the stoneknife. A brown, red hilt, a dark, and slightly red metal. Crown of the Talemir. He thought to peer into its symbols, wondered then if his force was enough for it.
Force, as it turned out, defined how deeply he saw the unseen world. This was a discomforting thought. To know, even now, he had not seen much of the obscure reality.
More symbols. More bizarreness yet existed. He chuckled more than he wanted to, swinging the knife between fingers, adapting to the weight. This weapon wasn't like his—the metal weighed more, stone, a rude thing of shoddy carving. His carving.