This is the next episode of my sword and sorcery series...
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay
So here I am in the tower hey? The story dropped in my lap so to speak. Master Foeg wanted to get in on the adventure, be a part of the action. Well, I think I can give him that and maybe even more than he bargained for. They all think me the poor helpless wench powerless in the clutches of Coffe Stark. The story has been handed to me and I expect they think I’m going to write it by their rules.
Are there any rules?
There was Teresa who was the alter ego of Zen and now they seem to be their own persona. But Teresa seems to have got lost to this story. Strange. How can this be? And who are they?
They of course being anyone who supposes this story now to progress along the lines it has. I don’t see eye to eye with the mind or minds that so far have got us all into this fine mess. So I think it’s up to me to start sorting it all out. The hero has been established as Kelek with his sidekick George. But we don’t really know much about anyone so far do we, just a vague idea, some glimpses that have been shown here and there.
I’m going to enlighten you. Let’s start with Kelek. Why he’s so stuck on me I don’t know, we only knew each other for a short while and nothing happened. I’d had a few drinks in an Inn beforehand and he of course had a lot of drink. We talked and I can’t possibly remember of what. I like Kelek so don’t get me wrong but I couldn’t possibly love him for I already have a lover.
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay
But even if I hadn’t I still wouldn’t go for Kelek because I’m not really into men. I love Gresha you see and there’s no room in my heart for anyone else.
Gresha, she is beautiful and far away and I wish I was there with her making good loving and trying out new spells and walking in the fields with her on a bed of flowers that caress our feet and tickle our toes. It’s hard sometimes being a woman but it has its good side.
After me and Kelek left the Inn a mist came from nowhere and plucked me up into its heart and took me away to here in this castle. But let me go back a bit further in the story.
After Kelek and George and Zen were plucked away from their lives in The Rebilous Exchange, the next thing they knew was being in a fancy dress party. Kelek and George were dressed strangely, as was Zen.
They went in this room that filled up with people and it was all so crazy. Then Gresha came and led them out, not into a city but into a countryside that shouldn’t have been there. Then she was gone. But Zen had fallen in love with her.
Most of them wandered off and Zen was thinking of going along with Gresha, but the mist came down again and they found themselves on board a ship that brought them all here to Dongor.
I’ve been here too long now. He keeps giving me potions but when they work on me, Gresha, my other half, uses her powers and comes to the fore, and vice versa, so Coffe Stark never has us under his spell.
When one of us is under the influence of Coffe Stark’s potion, the other personality is dreaming, and always of Gresha’s palace. It is the only way not to be under the spell of the potion. At first I used a knife, but that only works once.
Let me tell you about Gresha. She is an ageless witch with the body of a twenty five year old, an enchantress with many powers, and pets: dragons, glimmerings, flying foxes to name a few. She lives in the north west of Dongor in a palace built with a substance that looks and feels like opaque crystal yet is as hard as granite. There are no doors or windows and it is impossible to enter unless bidden by Gresha.
Only friends get in for the place is finely linked and in tune with Gresha and knows your heart and will not let you pass if it feels any perfidy emanating from you, so once you are in the whole place becomes a dream or a reality of the mind for it is a magical place and constantly changes to suit its inhabitants. For instance, let’s say if you were in one part of the palace and feel to see Gresha who is in another part of the palace and if she is so inclined then there will be a gateway, or a walkway, perhaps a glittering bridge created for Gresha to come to you and as she proceeds, flower petals may drop as snow and music might mood her coming. Under the bridge may be many coloured fish lazily swimming, and you may be reclining on a cloud bed as Gresha approaches. You could even find yourself in a desert.
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay
The palace is called Gresha’s palace by the few people that are let to live nearby. No one can come near the place unless Gresha lets them and peace reigns in that part of Dongor. Her powers are benign as is she.
Travellers come, with her help, through the fog, from far and long away, for there is nothing left of the world now except Dongor and a few other islands, and the only way to get here is by travelling through time. They bring her gifts which she treasures and stores. Some come for her powers of prophesy; and some to ask her to right a wrong. They come for they have heard she that can grant any wish. Few come to discover something in themselves that only she can show; but those that do bless her.
Coffe Stark and Kelek are twins but they are so different to look at. Kelek is big and tall with a rugged face. Coffe Stark is a few inches smaller and thinner than Kelek’s broad muscular frame, with an incredibly handsome face and always smiling except his smile is full of malice. Coffe’s hair is long and silvery down past his shoulders and so fine and smooth not like Kelek’s hair that is shorter, very red and mostly in a pony-tail. Kelek has this peculiar habit of jumping up when you least expect him to, whereas Coffe is graceful and flows everywhere and his clothes are the finest silk. Kelek’s clothes are coarse and simple and don’t hide his big muscles.
Coffe keeps giving me one of the wizard’s potions to make me love him. He has taken a fancy to me and wants to possess my body, heart and soul and one of the wizard’s potions will certainly do that except as I’ve said: when I have the potion in me the other of us comes to the fore so that when one is under the potion, the other is not; it’s good to have two sides to my personality.
Lots of women love Kelek but Kelek has fallen for me. But I love Gresha. Coffe loves me too or rather lusts after possessing me.
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay
George has fallen in love with my beauty and everyone likes George for he’s such a funny little dwarf. Teresa loves Kelek, but Kelek doesn’t know. Zen loves Gresha too, and so here we may have a problem. Teresa is Zen’s alter ego, her other side of the split personality, but so far in this story Teresa has been silent.
Dongor, where we all live is an island. No one comes here for it is not a place that can be entered easily. It is surrounded by fog and monsters and only a wizard can find his way through. Also if you try to leave you would be as likely to end up wandering forever in that same fog as to find a way out. Not many so far who have left here have come back to tell.
Once, a very long time ago this land was joined to a much larger land and people walked free and lived in big beautiful cities that were full of strange and wonderful inventions, so it has been written. But no one really knows for sure any more. Except me of course, and Kelek and George, and Zen, and Gresha, and one or two other people, but we don’t say anything because no one asks.
The land is ruled by Coffe Stark from his castle. He is helped by the wizard.
Self-sustaining machines hum in the city at night supplying light and power. The machines have always been here. They are a part of everyone’s life and are everywhere, some flying back and for repairing things. Others are out of sight, all humming. If you break one, another one comes along to replace it.
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay
Anything can happen here and does. Time plays tricks and you have to be strong sometimes to stay in one place for sometimes your head feels like busting and your vision becomes blurred and it is not uncommon to find yourself somewhere else for a while. You could be going for a walk in a garden and find yourself coming back from the walk, and you meet and say hello and talk of how can this be, then go your separate ways then meet again somewhere else. Time is a strange thing here.
The machines are blamed but no one has learned yet how to turn them off. The wizard has said it is something inside of ourselves that causes the movement. He said it is possible to control it if your will is strong enough and you don’t succumb to the madness.
There are many mad ones about.
I suspect Coffe has tried to time-shift, many years ago. I don’t think he succeeded and maybe that’s why he turned bad, for, once, he was a good person, a man of character. Perhaps he felt the madness the wizard talked of. But Coffe is a strong person, inside, and out, and if he did experience it he now controls it well. But he is not pleasant to be with anymore.
His first wife told his mother, just before she disappeared, and many people do disappear here, she told her that when she first knew him she could let herself go to him and they would laugh together and have fun for he was a lovely man, but a short while after his change she let herself go to him for the last time for she felt herself sinking into a morass of darkness. She was on the edge of a precipice and it took all of her will power to bring herself back. Soon after this she disappeared. My mother disappeared too. That was when I went in search of her and met Gresha who took me in as her apprentice and said to wait until I was strong enough before I went in search any more for my mother.
I could free myself from this tower. I could make the wizard a loving and kind man. I could dispel all of the darkness in the land and make it light again, if it ever was, with a few strokes of my pen, but then I would be as bad as Coffe who would use any means to obtain what he wants. I cannot use my power that way. So I will let events happen as they will.
Each person has a purpose, a reason for being here and it is best if they progress and unfold as they will rather than me forcing the story to be what I would have instead of what the mysterious future will bring. I think it is more exciting that way. How boring it all would be if you knew everything that was going to happen.
I wonder if god knows everything. I say god for I feel there is only one and not the many as is popularly purported to be. I haven’t met anyone else yet who believes as I do, even the wizard bows before his many deities, his potions, his power, his knowledge. I also believe what I believe in is personal and shouldn’t be forced or expounded onto others for how can you share perfection? Perfection can’t be divided and if you have the smallest piece of perfection you have it all.
This I believe in, in this darkness that surrounds me. Sometimes when I am very quiet I feel inside of me at my centre a peace and tranquillity I can’t explain. But mostly all is turmoil and noise and desires. Would that I could be in a place far from here so I could explore my inner depths where machines don’t be with their humming, and people feel to their being to experience something more than their emptiness and sweat. And what tale this to fit upon that flaming turn where sorrow is alight its space to burn?
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay
Emptiness and sweat are all the people of this land know. All they have ever known. They cannot find for themselves that certain existence. They need someone to show them the way as all peoples have sure needed someone with vision or maybe a vision to lead them from their darkness. Would I recognise someone with that vision? He must needs be a powerful person, probably a man. He must be one of the people, yet apart, and strong.
Look, I was given this story to tell so don’t go on at me for putting how I feel and what I think and what I see needs to be. So far this story is all about darkness in dark places, Maya and illusion, pettiness and poverty of spirit, except for the heroes.
Come on, let’s go somewhere, that’s what stories are all about aren’t they, an escape, perhaps to fantasy, perhaps to a realm of reality in fantasy. What might have been or what might be. something extraordinary to take us out of ourselves and fly away to another world, another place where we can sympathise and become one for a while with a hero or heroine and travel with them to battle through adversity to that final goal where the resolution makes us sigh and wish for more, and in that world far removed from our ordinary lives isn’t there always more that we wish for? And don’t we always want to stay there and fight another dragon, do justice in another situation, travel one more magical mystical road?
So, we have a hero called Kelek and his antithesis called Coffe Stark and we have me the damsel in the tower, prisoner. By the way I’m blonde, beautiful and sexy and a terrific catch but I’ve already been caught so keep it in mind if you get to feeling horny.
Who’s left? Zen: she’s all woman. You don’t want to tangle with her, cut you in two soon as look at you. Knock you silly with a back swipe of her hand. Out drink you. Out love you. Push you in a river for the fun of it and then throw stones at you for being a fool to let her. She can carry you on her back until you get tired of holding on. She can out shout you, out scream you. She will love you until you fall asleep then wake you up again and keep you awake with her restless spirit that spits fire, tirelessly pacing to and fro like a tiger restless to be off on the hunt. Zen, a free spirit, a wanderer, adventuress. Maybe she should have been born a man. She needs a battle to fight, an antihero to put down. I’m running out of explanations. Let’s just say she’s one tough woman and pity the man who tangles with her if he’s not tougher. Zen, asleep on the plain, under the stars, a sword in her grasp, and far from anything.
Let’s leave her sleeping for a while and pick on someone else to do something. There’s loads of people in this story. Who will it be that we see with our minds eye? Who is getting ragged at the edges with exertion? Who is it that has a small part, an insignificant role in this story? There must be someone who can shoot us down in flames with their rise to fame. Someone must have hidden depths to explore. Master Foeg the ex-story teller? Vell, his student? George the dwarf? One of the ghosts?
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay
How about the naked girl from the cellar? Women are so naked whether they wear clothes or not and there is one who is lost and lonely in a big hall that is empty except for her. She is crying, upon her knees, hands to her face remembering one who showed her a kindness.
Sarah is her name with light hair, slight build, lovely to behold and fair of complexion. What am I saying here, all these clichés, but she is a nice young girl, twenty one years old with laughing eyes, full of tears now, trying to understand a kindness and where it fits in her world that is so harsh and cold and uncompromising.
So far in her life she is still a maiden. So far she had gone unnoticed by the eyes of lust of her masters. All the other lusty wenches oozing sex and seduction have caught the roving eyes of those in absolute power and dominion over the slave girls. So far she had escaped that foul fate.
But she cannot hide forever, sooner or later she will scream from the depths of her soul with their violation of her, their penetration of her body, her keep, her purity. Abused and then discarded by those who hold nothing sacred, their black lusts will pound into her being and degrade her with their avarice. She will be a plaything while her innocence lasts but eventually she will become as warped as they and she will try to please them but they will have moved on to subjugate some other young cherub more interesting to satiate their unfulfilment.
Yes, Sarah, filling the echoic hall with the sound of her sobbing. Has she fallen for Kelek, the drunken swine; maybe.
She is miserable and needs cheering up but our hero is lost somewhere in the bowels of the castle perhaps forever if he doesn’t escape before the oil in the lantern runs out.
Images from Pixabay
Link to the post before: https://steemit.com/powerhousecreatives/@wales/an-adventure-from-the-deeps