Stone in the Tide

[The Whisperer]

Salutations, denizens of Aabahran.

What follows is a short story, potentially one of several concerning the lives of some of your world's notable personalities. It is adapted from an encounter Practor had with a mysterious figure. While there is much yet to learn, those who are astute and inquisitive could uncover a great deal by these whispers. Enjoy.

 

Ω

Jevokai stepped out of the tent, wiping his hands clean on a strip of clothing. The still night air hung over him like a blanket, thick and comforting in its totality. The only light in this area were the embers of torches by the tent entrance which were slowly faded into nothing.

Checking to make sure his sword was safely housed in its sheath, Jevokai made his way toward the light of a campfire some distance away. The smell of burning cedar was a pleasant one he could smell from here, and the dark figures huddled around the fire for warmth seemed inviting. Gravel crunched beneath his booted feet, muted by the moist, cold air.

The war had stretched for many months. He knew his men were tired and needed motivation. The last few days Jevokai had heard rumors of desertion, men who were disgruntled by hungry and a lack of progress. It wasn’t impacting their fighting capabilities yet but that was just a matter of time. Jevokai wanted to get ahead of that before it became a problem.

Lounging soldiers snapped to attention when they saw their commanding officer approach. His features looked especially stern in the undulating fire light. He motioned for them to relax before throwing a blood-stained rag onto the flames. “At ease gentlemen,” he muttered.

They obliged, settling back into place. One of them handed Jevokai a canteen of liquor, which he accepted gratefully.

Jevokai took a swig, staring into the flames. “It’s been a long campaign. You boys have worked hard. I imagine you’re eager to get back to your families.

The soldier shared a quiet glance, unsure of how to respond. Likely they were trying to determine whether he was testing their mettle. The general was known to do that, from time to time. Eventually one was brave enough to shrug and speak up.

“Is what it is. Just that when war goes on for so long it’s about all you know anymore. All that madness on the battlefield becomes your world. It’s just the way things are. I’m not sure I even remember what home is like, or how I’d survive if I wasn’t stabbin’ somethin’. I guess we’ll know when these truce negotiations are done.”

Surprisingly astute, Jevokai mused. He nodded thoughtfully as he stared into the fires. In a strange way this chaotic war had become their new order. Funny how extremes shifted from one to the other like that. As he stared at the tongues of flame Jevokai became lost in their hypnotic dance. Something about it drew him in. The sound of the crackling fire drowned out the rest of the world as he stared deep into the embers.

The snap of a twig.

Jevokai gasped, the sound wrenching back to the present. Staggering backward he reached for his weapon to face the source of the sudden noise. What he saw instead was something altogether unexpected.

“Wha…”

Instead of the bonfire and countrymen he expected to see, Jevokai found himself in a weed-strewn pathway near a cave entrance. Peaking over the eerie canopy in the distance he spied pillars of unfamiliar black rock. Nothing about this was recognizable.

“Hello.”

Jevokai’s spine straightened and his hand tightens around his sword. His eyes snapped toward the sound.

He searched the stranger’s expression; an average, unremarkable human with blond hair pulled up in a ponytail and blue eyes. He bore a friendly smile.

Jevokai remained wary. “Where… ?”

“Myran Dammel?” The man furrowed his brow and looked searchingly at Jevokai, who had appeared from the ether.

“Rrrrggghh!” A sudden, agonizing pain seared through Jevokai’s brain. It wracked his mind like a hot poker shoved through his skull. He doubled over and pressed his hands to his temples, desperate to alleviate this torture.

A menagerie of thoughts, images and emotions whipped through him like a tempest. In the space of an instant he lived a lifetime. Not his own, however. This man’s, this stranger’s life – but Practor was not a stranger any longer. As Jevokai straightened, he looked back at the warrior with new eyes.

He reached out at delivered a stinging slap across Practor’s face!

“You’ll please forgive me, have we met bef- ouch!”

“What Praccy,” Jevokai said, his voice no longer his own. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Jevokai slapped him again.

“What… what was that for?” Practor complained. The voice was somehow familiar to him.

Jevokai sneered. “Are you gonna cry? Huh, you little wuss? You worthless punk!”

Another slap punctuated the insults. “Mom and dad think you’re a gods-damned waste of air. Did you know that?”

Practor reeled backward but tried to retain his composure. “'Here now. I am usually polite and willing to talk. But I will not stand for someone I have never met insulting my-“

Family. When the thought crossed his mind he suddenly realized why the voice sounded so familiar. This stranger sounded just like his brother did when they were young.

Practor gasped in astonishment.

Jevokai delivers another slap, even harder than before.

Practor’s eyes went wide. “You!”

“All these years of training, and you haven’t learned shit,” Jevokai spat.

“I… where…” Practor fumbled to grasp the situation. But Jevokai gave him no opportunity to.

“Look at you! A damn disgrace!”

Slap!

“Now wait a minute.” Practor tried again. “A disgrace?”

“You think you’re worth something? Huh?” Jevokai practically spat the words.

“I am! I DO!”

“What the hell have you done? Anything useful?”

“I’m not that little boy any longer.” No. It’d been many years since the day his brothers used to hold him down and beat him. Practor wasn’t the same person – but Jevokai didn’t see that. In his brief glance of Practor’s existence he saw that he was that little boy. Still holding on to that poison core, needing his family’s approval.

He punched the Warmaster square in the jaw!

Practor had been in the middle of a calming breath when the sucker punch caught him off guard.

“You’re that same little shit,” Jevokai snarled. “Just the same. Useless. Worthless. Not even worth the gods-damned food we feed you.”

Suddenly a change overcame Jevokai’s face and the petulant expression melted away. Instead he drew himself up and fixed Practor with a somber, authoritative stare.

Practor shook his head incredulously then tightened his fist. “You have no right. None! You want to roll in the yard for old-time’s sake, fine!”

“We sent you to learn. To improve.” The voice that came from Jevokai’s throat was different now. More mature, and deeply disappointed.

Practor’s objections died in his throat. “F… fa… what is happening?”

Practor looked around, questioning whether any of this was really happening.

Jevokai looked down at Practor, every inch the disapproving father. “We thought you could learn, but look at you. Still willing to fight at the drop of a hat. You haven’t learned anything. You’re such a disappointment to me and your mother…”

“But… that is all I know.” Practor hung his head, suddenly ashamed. “Please, no… don’t say that,” he said in almost a whisper.

“All you know? Have we failed so terribly in raising you?”

“No! You gave me nothing but love. But fighting is in my blood!” Practor looked back at the stranger in desperation, trying to explain. “I have trained and trained, and tried.”

But Jevokai was unmoved. “Where’s your pride, son… Where’s your sense of self-worth? Is fighting all you’re good for?”

“Pride! I am proud of what I have accomplished Daddy. And I want more…”

“Your brothers have made something of themselves. But all I see in you is… anger.”

Practor pressed on through the verbal barbs. “…But worth… I do not know what I am worth. Only that I am not the same boy who left home. You…” Practor looked up, fixing Jevokai with a hard look. “You sent me away anyway!”

In a fit of frustration Practor threw back his head and screamed! “You made me go to the guildmaster! WHAT DID YOU THINK HE WOULD DO?!”

“For your own GOOD!” Jevokai hollered back. “But it didn’t seem to help one damn BIT!”

Prator growled dangerously. “Yes it did!

Jevokai curled his fist, an action which the well-trained Warmaster saw right away. “Don’t do it,” he warned, before dropping into a combat stance.

Jevokai’s infinitely cold eyes pinned him in place. “What are you going to do, son? Beat me? Like you beat your brothers? Like some sort of animal?”

“I…” the cruel words took the fight out of Practor in an instant. “Father…. No, never. But… but it is so hard to control.”

Jevokai glared down his nose at him in disdain. “We sent you away so you could be a man your mother and I could be proud of.”

Practor deflated and sniffled. Jevokai shook his head at the pathetic display.

“I… I don’t see such a man.” Jevokai’s words were heavy with condemnation.

“You… you aren’t?” Practor fought with the words.

“All I see is someone who is still weak. A slave to their urges.”

“Wh..what… how… DAD!”

“DON’T call me dad! Not until you earn it.”

The words struck Practor like a haymaker. He fall back on his rump and hugged his knees to his chest.

All of a sudden the threads of the past Jevokai had been channeling were severed. He didn’t know how or why, but for that instant he had lived Practor’s life as though he were the Warmaster. He’d felt the emotions, the disappointments, the lack of control. With a gasp he felt it all fade away like a distant memory.

Practor looked up through teary eyes. “How… What do I have to do then? Come back home and farm?”

Defeated, Practor hung his head between his knees. Jevokai did not provide an answer right away, instead looking down at the pitiful wreck of a man.

“Listen to me…” he began. Jevokai’s voice was his own again.

Sniffling, Practor looked up obediently.

With gravity and sincerity he fixed Practor with his gaze. “This is the moment. This is how you grow. Let go of what you’ve built yourself on and embrace the chaos. You know your worth when everything has been taken from you.”

Jevokai saw himself in the sniveling mess cowering beneath him. He remembered what it felt like when his mother died – the first time his identity shattered. Then again when his brother left. Then his sister… each time the world he’d built was broken and he had to fight his way back out from oblivion. It’s what taught him to be strong. Life had taught him that even the strongest rock shattered before the tide. The only way to survive was to build yourself on that ebb and flow.

Practor squinted his eyes. “Embrace the chaos?”

Jevokai continued. “You can sit here and sob like a child or you can rise like a man. You determine what you are. You decide what you’re worth. And if you decide to sit here and hug your knees then you aren’t worth shit. Do you understand?”

“I’ve been trying to act like a man since I left home,” Practor objected. “Then you show up and berate me! How did you think I would act?!”

“Trying to act like a man based on your family’s expectations,” Jevokai corrected. “You aren’t being true to yourself. You’re doing what you think you should.”

Practor’s eyes were fervent pools, hardly seeing the man before him. “I love you, you and mom! And you say I’m nothing. Pfft! I don’t have to prove anything to you anymore. I am my own person. I am in another home now!”

Practor’s angry rebuke caused a grin to pull at the corners of Jevokai’s lips. The air shimmers strangely around him. “Now you’re getting it.”

“One that won’t kick me out for fighting in anger, uncontrolled!” Practor hardly even heard him. “So here is what’s going to happen –“

“One mentioned of daddy and you burst into tears.” Jevokai interjected.

Practor stopped again, took a breath, and continued. “Father. I have been your little boy for all my life. That won’t change. Do you think I would fight you? Never. Slit my throat, break my neck, anything you want – none of that would hurt half as much as your words. Maybe I haven’t grown in the way you wanted, but I have grown.”

“I’m not your damn dad,” Jevokai snarled in frustration. “I have no idea who you are, but your co-dependence I can read like a book. You need to rely on your own damn self.”

“But I’ll always be your damn son,” Practor retorted with a scream. “Disown me then! We’ll just see. The cook at the camp always smiles when I take a plate of food. They love me, they care about me. Take care of me. Mend my wounds. Train and watch over me.”

Through the passionate diatribe Practor began to realize the truth, that this stranger wasn’t his father. The air around him continued to undulate strangely, and his dusky frame was growing more translucent. But Jevokai’s dark eyes forever remained fixed on the warmaster.

“They are my family now,” he said, trailing off.

Jevokai shook his head. “You’re replacing one need for another. You will never learn until you understand that the only person you can rely on is yourself.”

Practor shook his head incredulously.

“…That when everything crumbled around you, that’s where you’re real grit means something. Grow the hell up.”

“That is all I rely on,” Practor replied. “What are you talking about! You think a little camaraderie is a bad thing? I’ve been fighting alone for years!”

“Crutches,” Jevokai said dismissively. “It means nothing. It only makes you soft.”

“I never begged for help. Never asked for anything. Never turned down an offer, either. I’m not stupid!”

Jevokai snorted. “I’m done trying to instruct you, kid. Accept what I’ve shown you or keep living a lie. Doesn’t matter to me.”

“… Never declined an opportunity to fight. To learn!” Practor felt himself getting worked up again and rambled over the stranger. “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!”

Jevokai eventually faded into nothing, but the memory of his arrogance hung in the air like a poison fog.

Practor shook his head and muttered to himself. “Telling me to grow up… pfft. Of course I am doing what I think I should! WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!”

Practor screamed into the air. “WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!”

He then sat down, out of breath, and shook his head. “Damnit, damnit, damnit...”

 

**

 

Jevokai blinked his dry eyes. The firelight had burned afterimages into his vision that persisted even hen he tried to rub them away. The other soldiers were giving him strange looks.

“General? You got lost there for a minute. Is everything alright?”

He looked around to confirm that he was back in the plains. Wriggling his toes he felt the gravel move again beneath his feet, not the weeded path from the vision. Those strange black pillars were gone, replaced by the starry night and blood-soaked expanse he’d expected.

Vision… Jevokai looked at the soldiers who were trying not to let their concern show. As he looked from one to the other he remembered…

“General!” A grunt came tearing across the field, eyes wild. “Someone stole into Officer Ghadren’s tent and murdered him, sir!”

The soldiers jumped to their feet and tore their weapons free, racing toward the nearby tent. Jevokai, however, did not react. His eyes narrowed as he watched them burst into action – alive, incensed.

He remembered.