Invisible Obstacles

Far up in the putrid air there is a bird. A heron, a fisherfolk, a silhouette of black against the incendiary sky. With him was an eagle, and a pair of ghostly beasts- a flying fish, truly flying, and a bee eater bird. And in the black heron’s chest gnashed a mouth.

High, high above the troubles of the burning world, between the pillars of churning smoke, away from the grasp of lurid life and whispering plagues, Duskprancer felt almost at peace, but very alone. Which was how he belonged. Never quite at ease. Far from the tantrums of civilization.

In his bird form, he peered down at the devastation below, and the tumult of lightning lashed smoke that roiled and broiled up from the calamity of the Pyre of the North. The tumult of the glowing beast tattoos upon his body, impossibly twisting of their own accord, echoed that below- a cyan battlescape of strife and pain with nothing to be done by an observer. In a great eddy, the smoke briefly parted to reveal the great vermillion wings of fire stretching from the flame shrouded skeletal shoulders of the titanic blackened beast. To the south was Faline, the city that he hated. It was safe from the present cataclysm. The wilds were not. Not the woods, not the plains. But his woods were protected by the river. The would be fine.

A stupid world of mage’s stupid problems. There would be death, misery, destruction, pain, and terror. It wasn’t fair. Such was nature.

And yet.

He knew that far below trembled the Order Mage, Uwe, who had come to give him trouble. Well, no. To investigate trouble. The trouble wasn’t him. This time. It was that plague. But now there was a greater dread, the Pyre, that needed addressing. He was still trying to decide whether to focus on the Whispering Plague or divert his attention to this calamitous colossus. He was pretty sure Uwe was deciding, too.

The Plague was sleeping. This monster was not.

He felt no heroism stir his soul, no empathy fling detachment from its cold and stony thrown. No determination, not enthusiasm, whatever his grandfather might want. No camaraderie with the mages fighting below or working to put out the wildfires. Only emptiness.

Was this to be his eternal destiny? Bitter isolation? An absence of feeling right up until the day he Corrupted too?

Not an absence. There was plenty of anger and hatred. And…disappointment. In what? The world?

Life. Destiny. His own choices. And most of all his own inertia. He wanted out. He wanted out so badly. And yet here he was. Isolated. When he himself could change his fate.

He was his own obstacle.

Far up in the putrid air there is a bird who really is a centuries old fawn. Echoing in his mind is the animal whisperword of another bird from long ago who really was a bird. “I don’t like who you’ve become.” This form reminds him of her, and he misses that bird. And ringing through his mind is a question.

Can I become again?

The mage with the wings of a fisherfolk dove into the clouds below to give his aerial report to Uwe, and he did not turn from his task.