Legend of Matai: Zera - Pilot

I wrote this for fun, a pilot focusing on the very first character I ever created. Likely not a serious project but just something to write on my downtime. I just wanted to share it with you all <3. Hope y'all enjoy. I've got two chapters written. See how it goes. If it gets a positive enough reaction I'll write more.

Brief info bit: This story is set in the world that the Imperious universe is based on.

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An educated person from the village would know the name of the month, ‘Plenty’ is what they might call it. The month after Memner, when the leaves finished dying. The month before Shudder, when the world fell to sleep. An educated person would say that it was a time of harvest, of gathering, of preparation and celebration before the long dark nights. The last brilliant flaring light of a candle before the shadows came. Yet before him, all there was to see was an endless blanket of white broken only by the black fragmented claws of slumbering trees reaching towards the cloudy sky. For all he knew, it was just ‘winter’.

The wind had fallen mercifully still in the moment he had stopped to appreciate his surroundings. The bite on his skin through his threadbare clothes eased just a little. His breath fogged in the air as he caught it and savored the respite. It was so easy to forget just how dangerous it was to strike out so far from home when it was so quiet. Blue-white eyes the color of northern glaciers fluttered shut for a moment as he took a deep breath of the air. Fresh, free of the stink of civilization, free of the odors of meat and fat that came with home.

It was like another world.

He pulled his cloak around himself, the thick fabric barely any protection over the tunic that had wasted away seasons ago. His fingers ached, he couldn’t afford gloves. Not in his size anyway. Though maybe he might get lucky today. Maybe his grandfather would let him keep one of his prizes. It was all he could do to hope a little. He saw the leafless branches of the trees to the north begin to bow slightly as fresh wind lazily traced its lethal path. The wind would pick up again soon, he needed to move. 

He pulled his hood up again, protecting his pinched ears from the incoming chill. A thick blue scarf, a gift from a dear friend, was pulled up over his mouth. He forced his tired legs forward again, the ache burning in his thighs and calves. Just a little bit further. He reminded himself for the hundredth time, at least he’d counted that high. He wasn’t sure how the numbers worked past that point, though a bit of thought gave him an idea. It was easier to think out here, out in the silence, easier to let his mind wander and drift away from what he was here to do. An awful thing. Yet what choice did he have? The consequences of returning empty handed were equally terrible in his mind.

He took a deep breath as he trudged through ankle deep snow, a hint of rose and sunflower catching in his nose. His friend had weaved threads soaked in scented oil through the fabric. It wouldn’t last forever, but while it did, he would be thankful for it. 

Ahead of him, he saw the snow rise up towards the sky along the slope of a hill. He knew he was close now, the clouds were darker here. Now and then he saw a tree twisted and malformed from the mana that seeped into the ground like a venom. The snow here would not even be safe to eat to stay hydrated. There was no life here. No birds, no deer hiding away in their winter slumber, not even creatures of the cold dared drift to close. Their instincts told them that approaching such a place was death. He was no exception. Yet he pressed on up the hill and to the peak where he slowed as an angry wind washed over his face.

He reached up to pull his hood forward, gritting his teeth against the cold on his fingers. A bit of blonde hair shone through. Bright and yellow like the very sunflowers woven into his scarf. He squinted against the flurries that kicked up in the snow. The icy crystals burning his eyes. There, just a hundred meters away, black shapes against the white sheet. His eyes fell and his stomach twisted, nausea burning in his throat. Bodies, dozens of them, left behind in yet another bloody and meaningless battle. Men that could have been artists or singers, fathers and sons, he lowered his hands to his sides.

And here I am to loot them. He thought bitterly, Like a vulture.

Steadying himself, he crossed the remaining distance and came to a stop at the edge of the field. Nature had not been kind to their bodies, frozen and withered beneath an even blanket of snow. Nature did not care for what happened to them, though it almost seemed to pity them in a way at the same time. He liked to imagine the snow trying to hide them from heartless scavengers like himself. Protecting the dignity of their fates from his greedy hands. Yet the snow could only do so much, and armor was hard to hide.

He swept his eyes over the battlefield. At least fifty men and women lay scattered about. Their bodies mangled, their mouths open in empty screams of anguish and misery. He knelt next to the first, a young man barely older than himself. As of yet of age to strike off on his own and start a family. He wondered again what kind of life this person would have lived if he had been given a chance to do something other than fighting for those who cared nothing for him, who wouldn’t even remember his name.

Numb fingers reached for his gambeson, undamaged and whole, the open head wound made it clear what had brought his death. He opened the clasp and slid his fingers around cold skin, tracing down to a small chain around his neck. He found the clasp and released it, slipping it out and holding the circular token up to the light. A copper coin, pressed flat and engraved with a name. He looked at the letters for a while, mouthing them a few times, “A-ar-ar-” He tried, “Arno- Arnold,” He murmured, “Your name was Arnold,” He said and slipped the token into his pocket.

“I’m not a priest,” He said, his heart in his throat, “But I can at least say that you were real, you were alive, I’m sorry, I hope Memna finds you.”

He finished removing the gambeson from the corpse and folded it before setting it aside. His grandfather would be pleased with the acquisition. Arnold’s belt was chewn and torn, worthless unfortunately. His britches and boots were in similar condition. He wore no gloves, but his pale fingers were wrapped tightly around the hilt of an iron sword. It was whole, and painfully valuable. He loosed it from the dead man’s grip and set it next to the gambeson before moving on to the next body, searching first for their token and giving them the only send-off he could before taking what little they had brought with them to their final moments.

One body at a time, each corpse bore a token that seemed to weigh like a whetstone in his pocket as he added them to his collection. More to be kept secreted away until he could pass them off when that old priest arrived in the village. A small mercy, but it was the least he could do to make amends for what he was doing to survive. He alighted on a big man, powerful and muscular, a hole the size of a fist where his neck met his shoulder. Most of the other wounds were mundane, but this one gave him pause.

“Aelves?” He murmured to himself before sitting up a little and looking north to the distant black shape of the northern woods. “So far south?”

He shuddered at the thought, the stories his grandfather had told him of the ruthless ways of the aelven warriors during the last war. Their arrows that could strike a man and release the force of a cannonball. Sticks mounted with steel and feathers that would turn a man to naught but mist and the boots he left behind. The child down his spine snaked back up and he swallowed hard. He had no way of knowing if they would be back to check on this place. He should move faster. He looked down again at the big man. 

He was more than a little large for his age, something his grandfather reminded him of every chance he had. He was not blind to the stares he got from the locals as he lumbered about, his head low, his eyes to the ground. He could hear their words in his mind as he wrapped his hands around the man’s thick gloves. Brute. Giantblood. Monster. There was nothing he could say in his defense. He had little learning, little knowledge of the world, and even less knowledge of his heritage. He knew that his mother, his grandfather’s daughter, had been a holy woman of some kind. His father? No one knew. So his grandfather had chosen him to blame for his daughter’s illness that followed childbirth, blaming him for her passing.

He took a shuddering breath and pushed the thoughts aside, pulling again at the glove and slipping it off the dead fingers of the big man. They were still frozen, blessedly free of any foulness. He slipped his hand inside and the biting chill of frozen lining itched at his skin as his body heat provided warmth to the glove. It fit well. He sighed and removed the other glove and slipped it on. He flexed his fingers and got back to work, looting what else the man had and bringing it over to the growing pile. He reached for his shoulder and checked the rope he had brought along. One of the tattered outfits he’d found would have to serve as a sleigh to transport the rest across the snow.

Half-way there, He reminded himself. Just a little more and I can go home.

He turned back to the field of bodies and froze. His breath caught in his throat. There, not but a stone’s throw away, stood a figure amongst the bodies. They were small. At first he thought they might be one of the smallfolk for their stature. He’d seen plenty of them. Yet this one did not have those ears or the tell-tale hair on their knuckles. No. They were just a child. A boy from the looks of it. As pale as death itself and in nothing but torn rags. The child tilted his head to the sky, his eyes shut, his arms opened as if in prayer. 

“Hello?” He called, “Boy?”

The figure did not move or respond, merely stood there amongst the bodies. The boy opened his mouth and let out a small sigh, it could have been sadness or satisfaction. His mind was too muddled by cold and exhaustion to tell the two apart. All he did know was this was a child. 

“You shouldn’t be here!” He called out, walking towards the youth. Hypocrite, he accosted himself. “It isn’t safe!”

Again, the boy did not respond, lost in whatever he was doing. His body did not show the tell-tale twitch of acknowledging that words were even spoken in his direction.

“Excuse me?” He called again, drawing even closer. Where did he come from? He thought, glancing around and scanning the horizon. There were no towns or camps for miles. There was no sign that the boy was of aelven blood either. So he couldn’t have come from the north. Yet here he stood, as real as the butchery around them. He leaned over to try to look at the boy’s face. Small, worn, bags under his eyes and a single smear of blood across his cheek. An orphan perhaps? His clothes were certainly simple, if more whole than even his own.

When the boy did not answer him yet again, he resolved himself. Something’s wrong. He thought. What if he’s sick? He’s small, did the mana get to him? He knew that Mana Sickness did things to the mind, confused one’s thoughts, muddled one’s sense of time. He glanced back at the pile of things he had prepared to take back with him and then at the boy. He closed his eyes. His grandfather would be furious but he couldn’t just leave a child out in the cold like this in such an awful place. He looked back at his haul. If I take half, I could drag it and carry him. 

He let out a breath and looked at the bodies. So many tokens he hadn’t taken yet. They’d understand, right? Life is precious.

“Come on, I’ll take you back to Benhurst, it isn’t far,” He said and knelt down, placing a hand on the child’s shoulder. “Let’s get away from-”

A feeling unlike anything he’d ever felt before raced up his arm. It was like fire and ice put together. It was cold and hot, it numbed his flesh and soothed it the next moment. In what was a fragment of a second a wave of pain that eclipsed every beating from his grandfather crashed into him and broke against his very soul. Every bone in his body was set alight, every muscle frozen solid, every drop of blood like acid, pain, deep and endless. He felt the boy move beneath his hand as he collapsed to his knees, his head thrown back in a scream that he could not feel through the anguish.

The boy let out a cry of alarm, of anger and confusion, rage, hatred, disbelief, it felt as if for a moment the entire world shook for him. He saw stars, saw swirling vortexes of light and clouded matter, he saw armies fighting, bloodshed, mayhem, the wailing of those left behind in the wake of battle. He saw life end, the last flower wilting on a hilltop. He saw bones. He saw a sea of corpses as far as the eye could see. 

Please make it stop. No more! He pleaded, but it came without mercy or acknowledgement of him. Something terrible that weighed down on his soul and pressed against his spirit like a tumor. The visions of nightmares and bloodshed drifted into other things. He saw a woman looking down at him, her blue eyes warm and filled with tears. He couldn’t make anything else out, the blinding light pouring through a window obscured the rest. 

“My little bird,” She whispered before she dispersed like the others. Leaving him feeling hollow as he fell to his knees, the visions having passed as suddenly as they had come. He knelt there, looking down at the wretched form of a fragile child on the ground. Still breathing. Still alive. What was that? Magic? How deep does his mana sickness go? Could a doctor even save him? The child trembled before him and he swallowed the terror in his throat, even as his dry mouth cracked in protest. Every muscle in his body railed against the pain as he scooped the child up in his arms.

I have to try, he told himself and pulled himself to his feet. I have to get back. His head hurt. Everything felt fuzzy and distant. The ground beneath him seemed to rise up towards him before sinking back down. He turned and took a step and his throat filled with bile. He took another step and nearly slipped forward. I have to get back. He thought again, numb, as he trudged over to the pile. He looked it over, his heart in his throat. There were a few gambesons there that were made of thick enough fabric and big enough to wrap the youth up entirely. He kicked one open and set the boy inside, pulling the cloth up and around him. Hang in there, please. He thought as he hurried over to one of the largest corpses he could find and pulled its tattered and worn gambeson off. He dragged it across the ground, his vision swimming again.

Focus, he berated himself, Come on now, he set it down and tied the end of one sleeve with his rope before wrapping it around his waist. He tied the other end to the other sleeve and began piling everything he’d gathered onto it. Hurry, hurry! 

It took him a matter of seconds to finish the work and he quickly scooped the boy back up into his arms, pulling his cloak around himself and the shivering child. “It’s going to be okay,” He whispered, “I’ll get you somewhere safe,” He said more for his own benefit than the unconscious youth. He took a heavy step forward, forcing the trembling out of his knees as he pulled the impromptu sled behind him. The wind howled, the snow picked up again. Something rumbled in the clouds and a gale nearly knocked him from his feet.

For the first time in his life, he wondered if maybe the gods really did hate him. If what his grandfather said to him every day was a terrible truth and not just the needless cruelty of a bitter old man. He squeezed his eyes shut against the biting flakes of snow and pressed forward.

I have to get home.