The Desires I'm Ashamed to Admit

Springtime… The river flowing past the farm… The chorus of songbirds… I was genuinely surprised to find I could still remember what such things even sounded like. The smell of fresh trimmed grass… It had just rained… Rain? What even was that? No rain had fallen on this land for fifteen years, not since the gods abandoned this world.

But I could not see anything. I needed to paint a picture of the world with my mind, using my nose, my ears, my hands. The grass… I reached out to touch it. Yes… Yes. Something about that just felt right.

I ventured out further, crawling on my hands and knees to get a better idea of my direction of travel. Definitely home. I refused to believe grass that felt so clean, so fresh, could be found anywhere else in the realm. The truth could be felt deep within my heart.

I began to hear the faint mooing of livestock, indicating to me that I was close to the farmhouse.

Closer still, and the voice of a woman shouted, “You fool! What are you doing crawling around like that?”

I knew at once the voice belonged to my beloved wife, Parawa.

I remembered the day it happened as if it only happened yesterday. My mind never allowed me to forget. It even counted the days since it happened. It was the 22nd day of the sixth month, in the third year of King Hattu the Red's reign. Fifteen years, nine months, and twelve days ago. That day, the Endless Summer began and the Children of Fire, the demon armies, invaded our lands.

At the time, I lived not far from the capital city of Luwas, so I really should not have been surprised to see the King arrive at the farm shortly afterwards, adorned with all his fancy robes and his golden crown and his long blonde hair. The exact words he said to me, I have lost to time, but he said something to the effect of begging me to take up the sword once again for my country. I told him I had already retired from the path of the warrior once before, and that surely they could find someone younger to fill the role of the “chosen hero”. The King, that young fool, said that I had already been chosen by the Council. Saying no was not an option, he told me, lest I face the wrath of gods and men.

A series of rapid flashes of memories followed. Swords clashing with maces and spears in battle. Vast fields on fire, though I could not remember whether it was because of the demons or the Endless Summer. That tower again, standing alone amidst the Southern Hills. The city walls of Luwas.

•

I woke up pondering what had happened to my beloved wife and our son, Rikkos, having never seen either since leaving the farm to go fight in some war against my will. And yet, prior to today, I never thought about how much I missed them, how much I truly wanted things to go back to the way they were, before that war. No matter how many times I wanted to tell myself otherwise, deep down in my soul, I wanted it. I wanted it. I wanted it more than riches or jewels. Oh, how I wanted to see their smiling faces again, especially my beloved Parawa. I missed her most of all, her lovely silvery hair, golden eyes, and that sweet, succulent kiss of hers. I was sure if they were alive, they would welcome me home with open arms. But… But what would they think of the hero who failed to defeat the Demon Lord? Would they really smile upon the return of the one who lost the war? Or would they -

“Are you okay, Halliyah?” Giorg asked me, breaking me out of my deeper thoughts. “Or are you thinking of running away again?”

“Oh, no. No…” was my answer. “I just had that dream again.”

“Ah, the one about the day the war began,” Giorg replied. “You had that dream many times while we fought together. I remember it well.”

Only the three of us set off on this journey. The remaining ogres stayed behind to help the survivors of the demon onslaught rebuild Andawas. An entire company of ogres may have drawn too much attention to us anyways.

The first night of the journey proved itself too much of a hassle for us to handle. My eyes were not made to handle the night, especially without any flame or light to guide my way. Complicating matters even more was Giorg's choice of paths to take. Instead of taking the well-known, well-trodden, and well-lit walking paths, Giorg opted for more difficult paths that the demons saw as unimportant. Ipas insisted that we travel by night due to her nocturnal nature and sleep by day. I supposed she had forgotten that we live in a giant bowl of sand and rocks surrounded by hills and whatnot on all sides. Sleeping by day outside, in some of the most inhospitable terrain known to life, was simply not feasible. I insisted on traveling by day; it would have helped us see through these treacherous cliffside passes. She argued the heat of the daytime could kill a man if we weren't careful; nighttime would be relatively cooler.

So Giorg offered a compromise: Whoever needed to sleep would cast a sleep spell and a levitating spell on themselves. Those among us who remained awake would then drag the sleeping along behind us like a makeshift sled. We would take turns trekking and sleeping, hopefully covering twice as much ground as we would otherwise have done by traveling all at once, turning a five-day journey into (we hoped) a three-day one.

Of course, Giorg and I needed to learn said spells first.

It was now well into the second day, and indeed we had made tremendous progress since agreeing to that compromise. Already, the midday heat blasted at us with great intensity and power. I saw why Ipas insisted on traveling by night, but I much preferred using that relatively cool period to rest, not that the night was of much help at chasing the heat off to begin with.

“You said it would take three days to get to Freehold at this rate, yeah?” I asked as the levitation spell began to wear off, leaving me half-dangling in mid-air, my right sandal scraping along the sand.

“Yeah,” Giorg replied. “Turns out pulling the two of you was less of a hassle than I expected, especially you, what with all your emotional baggage.”

“I'm sure Ipas will be glad to hear that when she wakes up.” I did not expect Giorg to forgive me any time soon. He really had no reason to.

The levitation spell wore off a bit faster than I planned, forcing me to the ground with a very rough impact. The sand, strangely, was much deeper here. Granted, I never did venture very far into the Dorns for any reason. Still, it felt quite odd to be mildly sinking into the sand anywhere around these parts.

“There is a place I want to stop by on the way to Freehold, though,” Giorg told me. “It's a bit… off the map, if you know what I mean.”

It didn't take a master wizard to know what Giorg meant by off the map. The Dorns served as a very good natural barrier between our nations. It was not very well-mapped. In fact, most maps of the region only showed one long, seemingly impenetrable wall of hills and cliffs. The reality shown before our eyes told the other half of the truth: the rocky terrain was split up in many directions by sand-covered trails. Some back at the village even spread rumors that the hills and cliffs hid oases, freshwater paradises that were left unharmed by the endless march of the desert.

“So Giorg…”

“Yeah?”

“Have you seen an old woman wandering through the Dorns while the ogres were scouting the place?” I asked him. “She's about seventy, seventy-five, I forget however many years old she is.”

“I can't say that I have,” was his immediate answer. “This old woman must be very important to you for you to bring her up again. Is she your new lover?”

“Gods, no. She was the one who rescued me from the Battle of Luwas,” I explained. “She gave me work and a place to c- to stay. I owe a lot to her.”

“So you do love her,” Giorg joked again. “But not many old women venture out into the Dorns like that. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“She may have done the mardolh shla,” he explained, “the forlorn march. Humans don't do that very often, though, which would make it odd. It's mostly a thing the elves and whatnot do.”

“I don't think so,” I shrugged off his theory entirely. “She left me a note saying she was looking for some kind of treasure.” I looked down at the necklace, still dangling there around my neck. “Giorg, have you any idea what this is?”

Your sword is in the back, by the way…

He turned to see the necklace. “It's pretty. Never took you as one who enjoyed that sort of thing, but you got good taste. Other than that, if it's supposed to be special, I wouldn't know either way. Never was into jewelry all that much.”

I should have known he wouldn't be of much help in that regard. It was so unusual. Nobody other than Hilami herself had any clue what the necklace was or what it did. Hilami, being missing, wouldn't have been able to answer my questions either.

“We're here,” Giorg told me, though what here was remained hidden to me behind the cliffs for the moment.