PT 1. Dance with me, Shadow Man.

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Tolza
Posts: 116
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2021 11:42 am
Location: Oregon Zoot#2101

PT 1. Dance with me, Shadow Man.

Post by Tolza » Wed Sep 01, 2021 10:09 pm

The contrast between the two men sitting across from each other was considerable.

The guest, Roscoe, smelled of the forest but it was the clean scent of grass and leaves. He had a long black beard that was shot with gray, clothes in shades of earth and green of the woods, and his build had the robust stamina of a seasoned traveler. There was a calmness about him also, like a great oak that had weathered many a storm.

Tozla's father, Lotar, was a study in contrast. He had a receding hairline, stunk of ale, and sweat-stained every garment he wore. Strange festering wounds would appear and disappear on his body similar to his moods, adding their own stanes of pus and sera.

In spite of appearances, the two men did find considerable common ground. They both refused to be in the public eye or to labor under the rule of any Lord. Lotar was homesteading in a remote part of the woods, and Roscoe was wandering the woods, both shunning civilization in their own fashion.

Roscoe would visit their isolated home once a season when the days began to shorten and the leaves fell from the trees. Tolza was always excited for the visits, Roscoe being a pleasant man who always had a sweet hard candy for her, Tabac for her father, and sewing supplies for her mother.

The two men talked of news from far-off lands, spinning predictions and speculations of the upcoming winter, hunting, farming. It was a pleasant conversation until the subject and mood changed.

Tolza's father drunkenly slammed an old wooden mug down, sloshing the foam of his sour-smelling homebrew across the table.

The woman cradling Tolza started and squeaked in the corner of the single-room hovel the family shared.

Women had no place at the table while men discussed matters, let alone any business making noise. The squeak she had made would surely earn Tolza's mother another bruise to accompany the dozens that already marred her face and body. The look her father cast promised such a reckoning.

Tolza's father turned his focus back to Roscoe sitting across the table from him. His vengeance delayed, if not forgotten, he peered thoughtfully into his mug.

'It is true.' Roscoe said calmly, regarding Lotar with his old weather-worn face.

Lotar belted a laugh followed by a burp as a response.

"Do you think some savages will scare me from my lands?" Lothar slurred.

Roscoe replied, his voice placating as if soothing a wild animal.

"The Aiel have swept across Dragonwall and are approaching Cairhien, and I hear rustles in the bushes, faint tracks on the ground. I fear even this remote part of the land will become swept up into the war. The nations are forming what they are calling the Grand Alliance. I urge you to take your family west and find a place to shelter."

'Grand Alliance, fools!' Lotar's voice dropped to a whisper. 'I serve a greater Master than Kings Nobles or Are Sedai. I have powers of my own.'

Roscoe gave Lothar a knowing look, before rising with a smile.

'I thank you for the warmth of the hearth and the cup of ale, and I will let myself out,' the woodsman declared.

He gave her father a slight bow and her mother one as well. With that, he was gone.

Lotar reached across, grabbing the un-touched mug where the woodsman sat. Muttering an oath, he drank deeply. Eyes falling to his wife when the dirty cup was empty.

"As for you..."

Tolza slipped outside to the company of the family's goat herd, who had bedded down for the night, ignoring the screaming from her dilapidated home.



Smoke drifted on the night air, the scent of it carried on the wind that rustled the leaves and it painted the moonlight sky a dark red. It had been several weeks since the woodsman visited her family, and Tolza wondered if the smoke resulted from the Aiel war that Roscoe had spoken of.

Her father described these Aiel to her and her mother. Ignorant people who lived in wastelands, eating bugs, wearing veils to hide their ugly faces, and only using spears because they were too uncivilized for a sword. It seemed to amuse him, much as the follies of the Aes Sedai and the Nobility did.


To Tolza's surprise, the finely dressed man that typically met her father when the moon waxed and the wind rustled had not appeared tonight. In his stead was a different man. Shrouded in a black cloak, this man's presence seemed to absorb the beauty of the night sky's full moon and the fall meadow he and her father shared, leaving a sense of despair and corruption in its place.

'Where is he?' Tolza's father begged.

'Does it matter who you answer to?

No….no, I serve.

Now tell me something useful." The figure hissed back. The response radiated hatred and loathing, forcing Lotar to his knees.

Having witnessed her father in a litany of moods, fear, and subordination was not a behavior she had seen from the man. As he knelt, he pressed his head to the ground and spilled out every bit of information the kind ranger passed along, hoping to protect his family.


Suddenly a pale hand pointed to her hiding spot.

The hissing voice command, 'Grab that girl.'

Tolza, petrified with fear from that hooded gaze and unsure how she was spotted, was dragged before the cloaked figure.

The figure was tall, slender, and stood as though it had no bones beyond its spine. Its face\, now revealed, lacked pigment, and the mouth was a simple sideways slit like a charcoal figure drawn by a child. Most disturbing of all was the fact that there was nothing where the eyes should have been. No brows, no sockets, simply a smooth and terrible swath of pale, pigmentless skin.

The gaze of corruption, despair, terror, and insanity.

She wanted to run to scream to end her existence to escape that gaze, and at that moment, Tolza knew the true meaning of fear.

As the lipless mouth opened to speak, a spear whistle by Tolza's head impacted the creature in its throat. The thing staggered and a blow sent her sprawling to the ground atop her father. Four figures seemed to materialize in the clearing, tall and lean with veils that covered their faces. Aiel, as her father had described them.

“Dance with me, Shadow Man,” one said.

“No dance with me,” called the next. The four Aiel took up the chant, ‘Dance with me, Dance with me,’ calling through their veils with spears held in low deadly grips. They circled the Shadowman like dancers, moonlight glinting red on their spear points.

Showing no sign of pain or emotions, the Shadow Man threw back its cloak, reached up, and tore the spear from its neck, black blood spilling down its chin and onto its chest, now revealed to be wrapped in an armor of black scales. It tossed the spear aside with acidic contempt.

The Shadow Man drew a pair of black swords as the Aiel darted in.

What followed could only be described somewhere between a dance and a blur, with the Aiel managing to keep their opponent on the defensive and keen spears splashing the loam with dark blood.

As Tolza watched the battle, she felt a great anger kindle inside of her, thinking to herself: 'My father would slander these people who stand against true evil, my father who would beat my mother, my father who would trust this thing with the protection of his family... Deep within her, something was awakening.

'Dance with me,' and the sound of twin black blades ringing on spears filled the meadow. The song of death seemed to fuel Tolza what was spreading within her.

As Tolza's fear faded to anger, the battle turned. The Shadow Man’s notice seemed to fall to Tolza for some reason, and one of the Aiel struck, severing the arm from its left shoulder with a scything blow of the spear, black sword and pale flesh falling to the ground. In response, the Shadow Walker's other arm lashed out like liquid darkness. One of the aiel reached to its neck and examined its bloody hands before the head fell from its shoulders. It struck the clearing floor with a wet thud, grey lifeless eyes staring from a handsome face.

As though unconcerned by the loss of its arm, the pale man's lipless mouth turned up into a taunting smile. The battle seemed to redouble in intensity, black steel flicking like lightning against bright spear points in showers of sparks. The surviving Aiel worked in unison, darting in, striking, parrying, retreating. Occasionally they struck home barely avoiding the slashing cuts of the black blade reaching for their lives.

The remaining Aiel, in unison, broke off their attack. 'May we see the sunrise together.' One said in a masculine voice.

With that, he lunged at the Shadowwalker, screaming. 'Raise spears!' Removing the eyeless head and receiving the blackened blade in the chest.

The remaining two Aiel charged in and began separating the Shadowman as a butcher might joint a hog, removing the offending sword arm and releasing their now-dead companion.

Only when the Shadow Walker was completely dismembered did they turn to regard Lotar.

'It seems we have found a Shadowrunner,” one said in a masculine voice.

‘They call them Darkfriends in the wetlands, ' responded the other survivor, this one a woman.

'What do they call that?' asked the male, gesturing to the twitching body parts with the tip of a bloody spear.

'A Fade,' Responded the female, tongue turning over the unfamiliar word.

'Ship, bridge, city, Fade, Darkfriend.' the man stumbled over the words and grunted. A soft land with strange words.

Lotar, now coming to his senses, managed to stand.

'What have you done!'

Suddenly the male Aiel was engulfed in red flames, leaving only the smell of charred flesh and ash where he once stood.

Tolza's father laughing madly, flames wreathing his hands as he strolled towards the final Aiel.

Step by step, the gap between the two closed, but the aiel blood-soaked aiel did not retreat from the menacing hands or the eyes filled with rage and madness. She lifted her spear to him and whispered. 'Dance with me, Shadowrunner.'

The air crackled with flames as a figure flashed by Tolza, deftly snatched a spear from the headless Aiel's body and plunged it into her father’s back.

Lotar looked down at the spear protruding from his chest and turned, confusion filled his face.

'You?.' he said, sounding perplexed.

'I'm sorry.' Was the last thing Tolza's mother said to her, the older woman clutching the shaft of a spear that dripped with her father's blood.

Thank you Erulisse Sedai for editing and Catisune Sedai for the feedback.
Last edited by Tolza on Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:03 am, edited 2 times in total.

Asandra
Posts: 748
Joined: Mon May 13, 2019 11:30 am

Re: PT 1. Dance with me, Shadow Man.

Post by Asandra » Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:03 am

:shock: subscribed

Tolza
Posts: 116
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2021 11:42 am
Location: Oregon Zoot#2101

Re: PT 1. Dance with me, Shadow Man.

Post by Tolza » Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:06 am

Admin, please move me to viewforum.php?f=102

Nevirha
Posts: 764
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2017 8:24 pm

Re: PT 1. Dance with me, Shadow Man.

Post by Nevirha » Sun Nov 28, 2021 3:59 pm

Awarded 4 qps for RP story

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