A Song of Shadow Read online

  The last chords sounded, I lowered my trembling hand and inhaled the fresh forest air, tinged with a hint of smoke. Some people really know how to compose...To invest an entire world and an entire destiny into four couplets...

  The epiphany came with a bright flash. A forest? Smoke? I looked up from the eid and around in astonishment. The milky white nauseating ether was gone. I was surrounded by a warm, summer night; a full moon filled the meadow with a silvery light and the fading embers of a bonfire pulsed at my feet.

  Where had all this come from? How?

  “Beautiful...” said a voice behind my back blissfully.

  I jumped from surprise and managed to turn while in midair in violation of all the laws of physics, which I guess isn’t surprising considering how they’d just been violated anyway. Before me stood a knight decked in heavy plate armor which glowed dimly in the moonlight. A long white cape draped over the stranger’s shoulders revealed a sword in its scabbard and a shield’s rim peeking from his back. His helm’s beaver was down, covering the knight’s face.

  “Who are you?” I blurted out, a bit shocked at what was going on.

  “Me?” The knight seemed surprised at my question. “I am Eid. Or rather, I am the spirit of the eid.”

  I suppose my astonished expression led him to the conclusion that I was a bit dumb because the knight pointed at the instrument in my hands.

  “The great master craftsmen channel a part of their souls into their best works,” the knight explained languidly, clearly relishing the chance to chat. “Thus, I am a part of my luthier’s soul in addition to my own unique soul—and still the largest part of me is determined by the musician who makes me sing. My nature is transitory and I change in order to better represent whatever image the bard expresses through me with her music. Today you have created me in this form. I find it pleasing. Both myself and this place. It is beautiful.”

  I shook my head, crudely trying to clear my thoughts. It didn’t work very well. I remembered only that I was in a game where anything was possible and that helped me calm down. I had merely found my way into a unique scenario—and it looks like I’m making progress. Here’s that Eid. I need to tame him. Only, he doesn’t look untamed. He is calm, courteous and quite pleased with life.

  For curiosity’s sake, I tried to look at the soul’s attributes.

  Eid. Attributes hidden.

  Who could’ve guessed?

  “This place,” I asked. “Where did he come from?”

  “You don’t know?”

  The knight seemed surprised yet again, and so sincerely that I involuntarily felt like a student who had forgotten the answer to two plus two.

  “This is the Intermundis. The place between worlds, if that helps you understand. There are many worlds and planes, which exist side by side without intersecting. The space between them is called the Intermundis. Although, this is more of a state of being than a place. A potential. An unrealized idea, containing all possibilities within itself. Through your music, you have temporarily given structure to a part of the Intermundis. You have in effect selected one of its possible forms and brought it to life through your power. You don’t have much of it, so this place will soon vanish. But there were beings in the past who had the power to create entire worlds. You call them gods.”

  I took a fresh look at the world around me. The song had barely described it, but I could see the familiar characteristics: The oaks rustling in the breeze, the black shadows of birds flitting in the moonlight, the four roads leading in the cardinal directions. Even Eid’s cape bore a Templar cross. Neither blind fate nor death was anywhere to be seen, but perhaps the song wasn’t recreated literally?

  “Why am I here then?” I had many questions, but this one seemed the most relevant. “To meet you?”

  “Among other things,” the ghostly head nodded its heavy helm. “But above all you are here for your trial.”

  “Trial of what?”

  “Your ability to summon the requisite soul from the Gray Lands—without letting the others out.”

  I hiked my eyebrows, giving my face a shocked-idiotic expression. This seemed enough to apprise Eid about my knowledge in this area.

  “Come with me. You have already created a suitable road. Along the way I will tell you about what happens to Barliona’s creatures after they die.”

  I didn’t say no to this and we set out along one of the roads that wound its way into the oaks’ dense shadows.

  “Every creature,” Eid began, “essentially consists of three parts. The body, the spirit and the soul.”

  “What’s the difference between the spirit and the soul?” I interrupted.

  “The soul is your bodiless essence. It is something akin to your unconscious and conscious memory of the world and at the same time, the world’s memory of you. Your spirit, or your ‘vitus,’ as it is called, is that which generates your vital force or vitality. It’s a bit like an animal spirit. The vitus fills your body with life, allows it to breathe, move and perform various actions without your input. More importantly, the vitus does so by generating vitality. Thus it is your vitus that regenerates your health and magic. In most languages, the concepts of soul and spirit have blended, becoming synonymous, so for the sake of clarity, I will simply refer to the spirit as the vitus. It is the vitus that allows living creatures to derive energy from the world through alimentation and a series of other less obvious actions. This makes creatures that are full of vitality desirable prey for those who lack vitus or whose vitus is distorted. Vampires and the majority of the undead are the examples here.”

  As I listened to Eid, I contemplated the ensuing conception of Barliona’s world. No doubt all of this is self-evident to some necromancer that spends his time manipulating souls, vituses and other non-material forms of being, but for me it was entirely new.

  “I, for example,” Eid went on in the meantime, “have a soul and a body incarnate, but I have no vitus. Thus my body generates no vitality. Some animals have a body and have a vitus but lack a soul. Non-sentient zombies have a body and a perverted vitus but lack a soul. Sentient zombies have a soul and a body but their vitus is absent or perverted. The overwhelming majority of beings are triune. Death violates this unity. Stripped of its vitus, the body ossifies and dies. When that happens, the soul sets off for the Gray Lands, where Erebus calls it to itself. If a soul lacks the strength to resist the call—it will eventually make its way to the gates of Erebus where Chaos will consume it.”

  We came around a bend in the road and discovered that the road ended. In the most literal sense possible. The concrete, pleasant world ended like an etching that had been ripped out of a book. The milky haze moiled beyond the precipice, gradating into a gray fog towards the horizon. The gust of wind that struck our backs tore off onwards, reached the fog and scattered it momentarily, and I beheld countless streams of ashen shades plodding along thousands upon thousands of cobblestone paths. No doubt the magical nature of the place, or perhaps Eid’s assistance, allowed me to perfectly make out the tiny figures at this great distance.

  Several seconds passed and the leaden fog and the milky haze refilled the vista.

  “That is Erebus, the border region of the Gray Lands. Never approach it. You risk losing your vitus.”

  Hm. Aren’t I player? What could happen to me? Character deletion? Or would my race change to ‘zombie’ or ‘bodiless spirit?’

  My companion touched my shoulder and nodded in the other direction, suggesting we return. I had expected something special from his touch, but it turned out entirely ordinary. Neither goosebumps nor shaking in my knees—a simple touch. I was even a little miffed.

  Casting a farewell glance at where the milky haze had occluded Erebus, I followed after Eid.

  “In the absence of a vitus, the soul grows weak and begins to evaporate, vanishing forever,” he went on. “But there are others as well. Souls that have been preserved in the memories of the living. The more frequently that the living remember
them, the more vivid the emotions that come with the recollections, the more energy the souls receive in the Gray Lands. Some barely have enough to resist the call and delay their last journey to the gates of Erebus. But others accumulate quite a bit of power. And all of them want to return. Not for long, but return all the same.”

  He fell silent and I suddenly began to consider what had happened to the instrument’s soul while he was gathering dust in Astilba’s coffers. Was he in the Gray Lands? Did he languish in the Intermundis? Or was he dispersed and unconscious? I’ll have to make sure to ask him about it.

  “Through their songs, bards preserve the memory of the souls,” Eid began again. “Frequently, this is the strongest memory there is. Songs of heroic deeds and passionate love are sung for centuries. Thousands upon thousands of the living preserve the memories through songs. A famous song can become a substantial and direct path between the Gray Lands and the world of the living. I was created by my luthier in order to help one bard summon such souls. And I know the perils that lie along the way well. Rare is a hero’s feat that doesn’t involve some villain. And as a result, the songs also involuntarily preserve the memories of great villains, traitors and scoundrels. They too are nourished by the memories of the living, they too seek to see the world again and the bard’s songs pave their way for them.”

  Listening to this, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the inventiveness of the game designers. They had arranged things quite neatly. This lore worked well with the natural human tendency to preserve the memories of their ancestors, as well as be remembered in song and thus leave a trace in history. This was just the souls’ desire to survive death. Yet the thought that I could summon some villain of yore instead of the hero I needed, worried me.

  “And how does one avoid this outcome?” I asked.

  “There are several ways, but at the moment you have access to only two of them. The first is to perform or compose songs which mention the villain as little as possible. Songs that mention no names and only a general outline, as a rule, leave the villain out of people’s memory.”

  “And the second?”

  “You can return from the Gray Lands and therefore can go there on your own and bring back the soul you need to the world of the living. With time you will learn how to properly direct energy at the Mindful, those who remember. You will learn to close the way to evil but this knowledge won’t come right away.”

  Should I go to the Gray Lands and retrieve a soul? It’d be cool to roleplay Orpheus, who went down to Hades to retrieve Eurydice. But how does this work in the game? Do I have to die for each summons? Doesn’t sound very enticing.

  In the course of our conversation we reached the place we had first met. With the steel toe of his boot, Eid nudged the ash, uncovering the glowing embers in the fire pit, and sending scarlet flashes coursing along his armor. The knight raised his helm’s beaver and I saw the same milky white haze where his face was supposed to be. The sight forced me to start and Eid, noticing my reaction, spread his arms akimbo.

  “When you sang your song, you didn’t imagine my face. My corporeality is an expression of your will and fantasy. Just as pretty much everything that you see around us. The Intermundis is infinite possibility, an idea awaiting embodiment.”

  I now saw the white haze, the constituent matter of this place, differently. If I recall my physics correctly, sunlight contains all the colors. A potential rainbow as long as you know how to select the colors of the world. An infinity of possibilities...I couldn’t help but recall the classic series of novels by Roger Zelazny. The will that created a world from the magical primordial soup. That or tiny fragments of various worlds, ephemeral day flies when compared to real worlds. I’d be ready to give quite a bit for such an experience, even if it was only in-game. I mean, this was awesome after all! A form of creation that literally and immediately changed the world!

  An impatient excitement flared to life inside of me, calling me to start experimenting with this unique opportunity. Who knows whether I’ll ever be able to find my way back to this wondrous place?

  Glancing at the white haze moiling in the knight’s beaver, I touched the eid’s strings without any further doubts. I’m sure there are other ways to create here, but I like the idea of creating a world through music too much to try anything else.

  His eyes are subterranean lakes,

  Abandoned, royal chambers...

  Lev Gumilyov’s immortal verses, depicting a portrait of a man, caused the white haze within Eid’s helm to transform into a handsome, proud and somewhat melancholy male face. Hazel, almost black eyes, a light satin skin, lips pressed in a smile. He was a bit too cute for my taste, but this was entirely lost in the euphoria that filled me from the very fact of creation. I had created him! Who knows why, but I had done it!

  “Thank you. This is a little more comfortable,” Eid bowed picturesquely, removed his helm and scratched his neck. “I’ve been dreaming of doing that forever, but uh, well I didn’t have a nape before,” he explained in reply to my inquiring glance. “A nape is a pretty rare occurrence in this world.”

  “Pudding—Alice: Alice—Pudding,” I quoted another classic.

  “What?” Eid echoed, surprised.

  “Nothing, I’m just babbling,” I shrugged, considering what else I should create.

  All sorts of nonsense was popping into my head and I couldn’t help recall the alien rabbit from the ancient cartoon. He created a materializing cream and sold it to people, but they only had enough imagination to use it to create watermelons.

  The Intermundis reminded me of the White Book. A hefty, leather-bound volume issued on art paper and containing not a single letter. A tiny mirror occupied the spot where the author’s name was supposed to go and all of the pages were virgin blank. SNOW press, which published this book, had preceded the release with a large-scale ad campaign in which it advertised the countless number of stories that could occupy the White Book’s pages. Every reader could read something entirely original and unbelievable. The book immediately became extremely fashionable, taking up its position on the shelves of collectors. Several hundred people discovered their talents for writing, but the overwhelming majority saw only blank pages, in the best cases, scrawled with the expletives that one may typically find on fences and the walls of underpasses.

  “Tell me,” I turned to Eid, who had remained watching me, “since the Intermundis is like a connective tissue between worlds, then can I use it to reach any world I wish?”

  “In theory, yes,” the knight replied after a little hesitation. “But you can’t reach all of them. Some of these worlds are inaccessible to the living—and others to the dead. Many of the worlds are guarded by guards. Besides, as soon as you pave your way to some world, its inhabitants will be able to use it to get out. And not all of them are friendly.”

  This tidbit forced me to think some more. At my newbie level, any encounter with aggressive monsters would end predictably—with my premature demise. I should consider that in that case I would die and have to leave the gameworld for twelve hours. As a result, I would fail the quest. Then again how important is this quest? Especially since I still don’t understand what exactly it entails. If I can’t play Eid, I’ll wait until I get a rare instrument from Pirus and then continue the Sixth’s quest. But here...Here I can experience what it’s like to be the Creator!

  “Tell me,” I decided to iron out the details right away. “What will happen to me if I die upon meeting one of these creatures?”

  “Like everyone else, you will go to the Gray Lands and then be reborn in Barliona.”

  “Will I be able to reach the Intermundis again?”

  “Maybe one day you will find a way. I don’t know this.”

  I gathered from Eid’s vague reply that I wouldn’t get a second chance in this quest, but that I could still theoretically find another way here. And yet it wasn’t a given that I would ever succeed. And in that case—I might as well burn it all to the ground!


  As soon as I made my decision, I felt a lot better. It was as if I had sprouted wings on my back. I cracked my fingers and shifted the eid in my hands.

  “Well then, how would you like to take a stroll through some worlds?” I asked the instrument’s soul incarnate.

  “Do you realize how dangerous and reckless it could be?” the knight inquired, yet I thought I saw his eyes flash for a moment.

  “And do you realize that you’re getting the chance to relax and adventure a bit in...FSM knows how many years?” I replied to his question with my own.

  Eid hummed vaguely but didn’t offer any further objections.

  The road leading to Erebus did not appeal to me. And it wasn’t even the risk of losing my enigmatic vitus. A grim and dour place. What’s to catch there? Three more roads were left, so without hesitating I set out along the next one before me. I wonder where it’ll lead me.

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out. After several bends and turns, we reached the edge of our miniscule world. The white haze and its limits faded before me, illuminated by scarlet flashes from somewhere below. To see their source, I had to approach the very edge and look down, but here an irrational terror enveloped me. My imagination rendered a dizzying height, a long, plummeting flight and a painful stop below. The thought that this was just a game didn’t do anything for me. I’d rather climb into the maw of a terrible monster than fall. The first at least resembles reality.

  Gathering my wits, I forced myself to approach the edge and squatted down. As Eid looked on mockingly I carefully crawled up to it on my knees. Far, far away, at the very edge of the visible, I could make out a darkness cracking with fire-red thunderbolts. The sight reminded me of a video of volcanic eruption at night—a grim and terrifying beauty.

  The Fire of Tartarus burns not for mortal sight.

  None of the Dark Gods wish to protect you!

  You have been damned for your temerity!