An ethical question now, what does a rogue wizard do to survive and where are the lines. Yes, that authorities are trying to kill me, but I can’t disagree with their logic. And if I can’t disagree with their logic, then I probably can’t bring myself to harm them, except as a last resort.
That severely limits what I can do, and I’m those limitations, my options become clearer. Obviously, l will need allies, and since the system is against me, it’ll be among those also outside that system that I should look for my allies, though this is complicated by their reasons for being outside the system. The enemy of my enemy, might be my friend, or might be a mutual enemy. After all, we all have common ground, and if we are willing to see that, then perhaps we can find comrades.
Thinking of common ground, I suppose I won’t find it floating here under the surface of a random swamp..
Aa that thought crosses my mind, another follows it. There are things that I’ll find in the swamp that have the potential to be allies, if I’m willing to put in the effort to understand them.
Legends speak of things that dwell in the swamps and the moors, things glimpsed in the fog or in the night, Some are merely explanations for existing phenomena, but often in legends there is at least some truth.
Wraiths and Wisps, the ethereal and unknown culprits behind all the deaths that happen in places like this. How much truth is behind them?
Reaching out into and through the liquid, I had a thought that was at once both wonderful and terrible. The water was still; apart from the life within it.
The idea of scrying from within a pool isn’t a new one, folks had been using sensory deprivation tanks for such purposes for years. But those were sterile and mostly used as a method of removing noise while focusing on a difficult subject.
The audacity of trying to acry with a swamp appealed to me. Rather than excluding the noise, I needed to embrace it, accept it and learn from it.
Seeing them as distractions would quickly frustrate the process, they were not. They were sources of information. Vast and overwhelming, but no more so than being within a large crowd. Less so, I realized, as their motives were often simpler.
By reaching out and listening to the noise, embracing it, recognizing the patterns, it became easier to understand how each piece fit together, how it was all collectively a part of a greater whole, and in understanding that, it also became clear that there were parts that weren’t. There were places that didn’t have the same life, or didn’t have the same harmony, and it was in those places that I would need to look, to understand why they were, and how they fit together. It wasn’t a puzzle, I wasn’t putting it together, it was a vast canvas and I was learning to appreciate it.
There. I felt something different. Something that stood out. As I reached out to it, I heard a voice. “Oy, bout time you got here. I’ve been waiting ages for you to show up.” The voice wasn’t coming through my ears, but it was clear and it had a directionality to it. It was coming from whatever it was that I’d been touching with my mind. Only one thing to do, I suppose.
Attempting to direct my own thoughts, into something that had the same weight as the words, I tried to reply. “Hey, I’m a little confused here. I’m not sure I’m who you were waiting for, can you tell me who you are and who you think I am?”
“Grim, the bloody reaper, the skinny man wit’ the scythe. That’s who I was expecting. I guess you could be someone else, here to take me away. I’ve been here a while now. I guess we don’t need to worry about that bloody river then, since I can’t even recall my own name.” The voice seemed an odd mix of exhausted and cheerful, with an edge of something else. “I know who I’m not, that’s for sure. I’m not Bob, I sank straight down.”
It took me a moment to process what he’d said. And then to process the joke. “Okay, well, that wasn’t something I was expecting to learn today,” I thought back at him, as I concentrated on what I now assumed to be his body. It had indeed sunk into the mud, so I suppose he wasn’t Bob.
“What do ye mean, what is it you learnt?”
“That there is some form of life after death?”
“Nah, ye canna call this life, this is just waiting.”
“Well, you were alive, and now you aren’t, and we’re having a conversation. So that means you are conscious, despite no longer having the place where consciousness rests.”
“I follow, but surely I can’t be the first you’ve encountered in this type of work.” There was a pause. “It can’t be your first day on the job, can it? How does one even get a job like that?”
“I mean, I guess it kinda is, but probably not in the way you think. I was taking my exams, shit went wrong, and now I’m probably on the run.”
“Well then, I suppose ifen ye ain’t here to take me away to the great beyond, I don’t suppose I could convince you to take me along on the run perhaps?”
I paused, trying to wrap my mind around the idea. If nothing else, I’m sure I could use the company. Unless I’d lost my mind, and this was just a voice in my head, brought on by the stress. Though the alternative did have some appeal to it. This was a whole area of research where as far as I knew, nobody had ever really made any progress.
“While ye are thinkin’ it over, can you tell me if all my limbs are intact?”
Reaching out with my mind, I felt the body. The limbs were there. “Yeah, you seem to be intact, and pretty well preserved.”
“Well, I guess we learnt something else then. Clearly my name isn’t Mat.”
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