Things Were Looking Up

This is a tale featuring Wyndal, the original Null Crystal bearer. He is the predecessor to Zi. The events of this story happen some 1000 (or longer, we haven't quite settled the details) years before the events of our other stories. Welcome to Proto-TROUF. 

 

A sudden pounding at the door startled Wyndal Thorne out of his musings. He was an unassuming, frail looking man with neatly cropped black hair and dark circles hanging under his icy blue eyes which now shifted towards the window of his tiny cabin. Various handwritten notes cluttered the area around him, and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles hung loosely from the slender fingers of his left hand. With feet propped up and seated comfortably in his plush, if threadbare, wingback chair positioned in front of the fireplace, he had been staring into the fire in thought, a notepad open on his lap, as his smallest cup-sized cauldron bubbled over the heat when the harsh sound shocked him from his reverie. It was quite late, after midnight if he cared to take a guess, and only one thing could bring a person’s fist pounding on the door of his home at such an hour. There was some kind of emergency in the village. The pounding started again. The man stood, carefully affixed his glasses on his slender nose and adjusted his cufflinks fastidiously (it simply wouldn’t do for his sleeves to become loose). Satisfied with his appearance, he strode purposefully towards the door.

“Thank goodness,” sobbed the woman outside, upon seeing Wyndal open the door. It was the blacksmith’s wife, Mrs. Plover. She looked panicky in her muddy night clothes. She must have ran over. “I thought maybe you couldn’t hear the door.” Wyndal looked at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation. “It’s my husband,” she continued tearfully, “He’s been attacked.” Wyndal nodded, already running through lists of supplies in his mind. He would need antiseptic, his suturing tools, bandages, and specific potions for healing. Maybe he would see if he had any numbing salve left over.

“Do you know what kind of injuries he has sustained?” he asked Mrs. Plover.

“It’s bad,” she wailed. “He has a gash across his chest, and he wouldn’t respond when I found him.”

Wyndal was already inside at his workstation, grabbing his bag, and tossing in relevant items. “Do you know what attacked him?” he asked, business like. At this hour it could be anything from a displeased drunk, to a wild animal.

“I don’t know,” cried the woman. “I wasn’t there! I only found him afterwards when he didn’t come inside immediately.”

Feeling like he had more than enough supplies and information, Wyndal stuffed his head into his pointed hat, and then pushed past the woman into the evening air. “Lead the way,” Wyndal commanded of Mrs. Plover, and the pair of them rushed towards the village, Mrs. Plover sniffling all the way. Due to the hazards of potion making, Wyndal’s home was situated just outside of town. Many inside the village had begged him to move closer, but he simply couldn’t risk it. Sometimes noxious fumes were the result of many of his more potent brews, and, as a witch doctor, he couldn’t bring himself to risk these people coming to harm. He had moved to this town close to a year ago at the urging of his Great Aunt Theodora, the witch he trained under. The people were wary of him at first, but they had learned to accept his healing, and a few came to him for other potions from time to time. Why, he had sold his very first luck potion only this afternoon, although he wasn’t entirely certain it worked correctly. He had tasted it himself, and nothing seemed much different. Still, things were definitely looking up for Wyndal Thorne. Sure, people still told him witching was a girl’s profession, but he scoffed at such inaccuracies. There was no reason a man couldn’t be a witch, and Wyndal Thorne was an excellent witch. He even had aspirations for being the first person to record healing techniques and potions passed down orally by witches through the ages. Not now, of course. Right now he had to save a man’s life.

The Plovers lived in a small cabin behind the smith, next to the smith’s stables. During their walk, Mrs. Plover had blubbered out the tale of how her husband had come to harm. Something had spooked the horses, and he went to check on them. He didn’t come back in a timely enough manner, so Mrs. Plover, worried, went to check on her husband and found him slashed open and unconscious. She and her eldest child, Mary (or was it Carrie? He could never keep the children straight), managed to drag her husband back into their home before she rushed to summon the good witch doctor. Mrs. Plover pushed them through the door and through another room to where her husband was sprawled out on their bed.  The daughter was patting a towel against his head. Wyndal prattled off a list of directions for her. He would need boiled water and clean linens. The girl seemed in a trance.

“Terri, fetch the doctor some hot water and towels please,” Mrs. Plover repeated to her daughter in a stern tone. Terri! Wyndal knew it was something like that. The girl hopped up to do as she was told, and Wyndal took her place at her father’s bedside. The man looked sickly pale, and he was drenched in sweat. Definite signs of a fever, and possibly infection. The man’s breathing was good, and his pulse was steady. He pulled up an eyelid, and noted the man’s exceedingly large pupils. Odd, that. Wyndal’s piercing blue eyes wandered towards the gash on the man’s chest. It was wide, but, other than a sticky red rubbed into the fabric of his shirt, there wasn't much sign of bleeding. That was a good sign if it was already coagulating, maybe the injury wasn't as bad as it looked. He pulled a pair of scissors from his handbag, and began to cut open the man’s shirt, to better look at the injury. Angry black veins framed the injury under the skin in a sickly tangled halo. Wyndal had never seen it’s like, but his methodical brain ran through possibilities. This could be blood poisoning, which would explain the fever, or perhaps a venom from the claws of the attacker. Judging from length of the darkening veins, he knew he had to work fast, because if this was like blood poisoning, the inky black veins would soon reach the man’s heart.

Wyndal searched his bag for his tools. Where was the girl? He needed the boiling water. He called for her. “Cherry?”

“It’s Terri, sir,” said the girl, appearing with a bowl of hot water, and some fresh white towels.

“That’s what I said,” replied Wyndal, distractedly, as he dropped his metal tools into the water to sanitize them. He methodically rolled up his sleeves and secured them snuggly. He grabbed one of the towels, and, after dabbing it into the water, worked to clean his hands and bare arms with scalding hot water and bar of soap he had brought.

“No sir, Dr. Thorne, you said Cherry,” repeated the girl. Wyndal sighed, but otherwise pointedly ignored her. No time to argue semantics. He poured some of his antiseptic on one the the small bandages, prodded the wound, and cleaned around the edges. He would need to make a small incision in order to purify and heal it. He reached for the newly sanitized scalpel, and began to make the cut. A thick black ooze pushed itself from the new incision, but was followed by blood. This was worse than he thought. He would need magic. He searched his handbag for his most powerful concoction, one of his own design. Finding the tiny yellow vial, he pulled it up to the light and examined the liquid within. It looked good. He uncorked it, and unceremoniously dumped it on the open wound, muttering an activating chant to help draw out the infection. The wound foamed and hissed, but slowly as he continued to chant, the black ooze began to bubble out of the wound. It had a putrid smell that made Wyndal nauseous, but he continued with his chanting, occasionally wiping away the black pus and the blood with a clean towel. A few minutes of this, and only blood was coming from the wound. Already the coloring around the edges had changes from the tangle of black veins to a more healthy looking red. Wyndal applied another round of antiseptic, and a little of his numbing agent. After gathering his suture supplies from the hot water, Wyndal made quick stitches to close the wound, leading his curved needle through the angry red flesh with practiced ease. He applied more antiseptic and wrapped the wound in a thick bandage, making certain he talked the daughter and Mrs. Plover through the finer points of applying a bandage to a chest wound. Through all of this, the man had remained unconscious, which was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he wasn’t awake to fight Wyndal and that was always a bonus, especially since the blacksmith was very large and muscular from working in the forge and Wyndal was, well, not; but on the other hand Wyndal wanted to hear a detailed account of how the man could have gotten such a wound so unfamiliar to the witch doctor.  He would need to check back when he woke up.

“It doesn’t look like he lost much blood,” Wyndal explained to the wife and daughter, washing his hands in the remaining hot water, “and I believe I successfully drew out most of the infection.” Wyndal began to dry his hands, and started packing up his supplies. “When he awakens, you will need to give him warm water mixed with honey.” Wyndal withdrew a special salve in a glass jar from his bag. “You need to apply this to the wound twice a day. It will keep it from getting another infection. I suggest applying new dressing when you do.” The women nodded at him in understanding. They both looked so relieved. “Your husband will be fine, Mrs. Plover,” Wyndal said with a reassuring smile. He awkwardly patted her shoulder, before turning abruptly on his heels and fleeing for the exit. He hated this part. Sometimes families cried on him for helping their loved ones, and it was not something he could handle. “I’ll stop by in the morning, but everything should be fine!” he called behind his shoulder as he made his hasty escape into the darkness.

The walk alone back to his home always felt longer than when he walked with a villager. Especially at night. Wyndal was not particularly courageous, and every sound he heard during his walk made him jumpy and foolish. It didn’t help that his mind kept wandering back to thinking of the strange black infection, the likes of which he had never seen before. Wyndal was a capable witch, and an even more capable healer. He had seen blood poisoning many times with his great aunt back home, and had assisted on purifying many wounds, but none had seemed quite this dark or fast acting. What kind of creature could have done that to a man? He felt himself shiver uncontrollably, despite the mild night. He needed to go to bed. He had stayed up far too late this evening.

A twig snapped behind him, and Wyndal stiffened. “You are being ridiculous,” he whispered to himself under his breath, but he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder. A towering black form was lumbering some distance away. It looked like some combination of man and beast, thick black hair visible under the light of the moon, and shoulders heaving in deep breaths. It didn’t walk quite correctly, and kind of stumble dragged its way towards him. Wyndal was petrified. His fear had taken hold and he could not even think to take an action.

“MOOOVE!” came a high-pitched screaming voice, as a tiny child’s form pushed towards him from the out of nowhere. It slammed into his body, and his mind was suddenly working again. He felt his legs pumping, as the child basically dragged him onward along the path to his home. Child? It was the wee hours of the morning, what was this child doing awake? “Step faster, witch boy,” came the child’s harsh voice, and Wyndal picked up his pace, too stunned to argue. The pair of them rounded the curve in the path and would have run into another of those strange monstrous beasts, if the child hadn’t decided for the pair of them to cut through the forest. Wyndal couldn’t see how the kid could have seen the beast. Maybe it was blind luck. They pushed onward, nearly missing another beast which was simply too slow for the pace the child was setting.

Wyndal’s lungs were burning when they finally reached his home, pushed inside and fastened the locks. He leaned against the heavy door, chest heaving with the exertion, and finally got a chance to look at his savior in the low firelight. It was a little girl, no older than twelve, with cheery braided pigtails and a spattering of freckles on her nose. She looked very pleased at herself, which Wyndal found to be quite annoying given they had nearly died. He would have told her so, if he could manage to catch his breath. “Explain yourself,” he heaved.

“I think you should explain what you were doing out so late,” retorted the girl in a haughty voice. She leaned her head back, attempting to look down her nose at the taller adult.

“I was,” Wyndal breathed, “helping a patient who,” another heave, “was attacked.” He scowled, a realization dawning. “Now see here, I am the adult,” he started, finally letting his frustration show, “and what you did was very dangerous, even if it very well might have saved my life.” The girl’s lip twitched in a barely controlled smile. Wyndal was struck with the thought that she startlingly resembled a girl he knew as a child. She had had strawberry blonde hair, always worn in cheery pigtails. They would sneak out of his great aunt’s herb garden to go on adventures in the woods. She had had a wonderful imagination, and the pair of them would live out whatever fantasies they could think up. It had been a nice distraction after his parents died of the sickness. A sickness he had fought and won, though it left him a little weak.

“You’re realizing who I am,” said the girl with an all-too-familiar cackle.

Wyndal shook his head in disbelief. “Jilly?” he asked, and if the door hadn’t been propping him up, he would have fallen in shock. “I don’t understand.” He shook his head, and took a few steps forward. “I must have hit my head,” he started muttering, turning towards his workbench, “all of this is a hallucination.”

“I’m afraid not, Wynnie, ol’ boy,” came the girl Jilly’s retort. She had crossed her legs, and sat on the floor with a triumphant look. This didn’t make any sense. How could a ghost from his past appear here, completely unchanged.

“You left when we were thirteen,” Wyndal accused, suddenly turning on her. Hallucination or not, this had bothered him for nearly two decades. “You promised you would write after you got settled in your new village. Why didn’t you?”

Jilly crumpled her nose in disgust. “You were growing up! A teenager! I had to leave. The letters thing was a convenient lie to get you to stop blubbering about never seeing me again.”

Wyndal sniffed dramatically, jutting his chin out. “I would never deem myself to blubber.”

“Oh please,” said Jilly with a snort. “You were a blubbery kid!”

“I was not,” whined Wyndal. For a moment he considered sticking his tongue out at her as he would have done when they were children. Er, well, when he was a child at least.

“I could never understand it,” Jilly continued, waving away his retort. “I mean, yeah, your parents were dead and that sucks, but you were training to be a kick-ass witch and your best friend in the whole world was a goddess.” Wyndal’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Oh,” said Jilly, feigning shock, “Did I forget to mention that I’m a goddess?”

“It must have slipped your mind,” muttered Wyndal, turning back to his stockpile of potions to look for something to treat this insanity.

“WYNDAL THORNE YOU WILL LOOK UPON MY GREATNESS WHEN I AM SPEAKING,” howled the child goddess, her voice layered with different aged voices all speaking at once. Wyndal felt his body turn towards her of it’s own volition. It was a curious feeling, doing an action without willing it. He looked upon the little girl so familiar from his youth. She was standing now, no, hovering off the floor. Her bangs were swept up in a nonexistent breeze as her skirts swirled around her, and her face was crunched up in fury. His eyes widened in momentary terror. As immediately as that mood had come upon her, it visibly fell away and she was back to the happy child she was moments ago. “Thank you,” she said sweetly, and patted the floor in front of where she decided to sit. Wyndal sighed, and sat on there on the floor like a small child with his apparently never aging childhood friend who just so happened to be a god. She beamed at him, clearly pleased that he had followed her directive, not that he probably had a choice.

“So, you’re Jilna and not Jilly at all,” he guessed, and the girl nodded solemnly. “And when I prayed at your shrine at Aunty Dora’s, you decided the best way to help me get over my parent’s death was to show up to be my friend?” She nodded again, and he raised a skeptical eyebrow at her.

“Well, mostly,” she conceded. “There’s also the matter that you are my Chosen One and I wanted to train you myself.”

Wyndal nodded along with her, pleased that he had ferreted out this information, when the words hit him. “What?” he stammered.

“Really, Wyndal,” complained Jilna, “It’s a simple concept.”

“And I’m a simple man,” said Wyndal, “Spell it out for me.”

Jilna rolled her eyes, and blew a raspberry. “Fine,” she allowed, before going through what sounded like a practiced script in a very bored tone, “Six of us selected six mortals to save the entire realm from the great adversary and forces of evil.”

Wyndal sputtered. “And you selected me?”

“Of course I did,” said Jilna proudly, “You’ve a good head on you!”

“I’m a coward!” Wyndal complained, loudly.

“Yes,” agreed Jilna, with a knowing grin, “but that just makes you intelligent.” Wyndal pushed his glasses up onto his head so her could rub his face. “Oh, don’t start blubbering now, Wynnie,” Jilna criticised.

“I do not blubber, Jilly,” said a frustrated Wyndal from between the palms of his hands, “and for the love of gods please refer to me as Wyndal or Thorne. No more of this Wynnie nonsense.”

“How do you feel about Thorny?” asked the girl, clearly enjoying tormenting her friend. Wyndal moaned in protest. “I have to admit,” laughed the child-goddess, “it’s a fitting epithet!” She rocked back, throwing her feet out and balancing on her bum before giggling in triumph.

“Why are you even here?” groaned Wyndal, and the girl cackled.

“Saving your ass, of course!” she exclaimed, slumping forward to sit like normal again. “Or did you forget those horrible corrupted monsters outside?”

“Corrupted?” repeated Wyndal, craning his neck to look out the window. His glasses snapped back onto his nose. He wondered if they had anything to do with the injury the blacksmith sustained.

“Yes, corrupted,” returned Jilna, “or didn’t you notice their movements were off? They’re completely mindless, controlled by the enigma, and they are after you.”

“M-me?” asked Wyndal, and Jilna glared at him.

“Yes, y-you,” she said mockingly, jabbing a finger at his chest. “They’ve been hanging around your village for the last couple of nights. I hoped you would be smart enough to stay inside safe, but it must have realized you’re a healer so it sent them after a villager to draw you out.” The goddess seemed pleased with her logic. “You will have to leave town.”

“Leave town?” he repeated, in complete shock.

“I swear, have you lost your ability to speak for yourself? Or can you only repeat my words now?”

“N-no.”

“Well, good. If you don’t want everyone in this village to die, you will need to leave. You are drawing the corrupted here to you.”

“Then the blacksmith,” he started, thoughts forming in his awed mind.

“Yes,” agreed Jilna, “He got hurt because of you.” Wyndal swallowed hard. He never wanted to be the reason anyone got sick or hurt. He wanted to heal them. He wanted to help. He rushed to his feet and began packing various medicines and poultices into his large black leather handbag. Jilna was up too, nodding at him as he grabbed stuff. She was bragging on herself, repeating that she knew he was the right choice and that his training would come in handy. He had no idea what she was talking about, and honestly he felt numb. He had carved a life out here for himself these past couple of years, and now because of something outside of his control he would have to spirit away in the middle of the night. “Don’t worry,” he vaguely heard Jilna say, “The corrupted are stupid. They won’t be able to keep up with you if you stay on the move. Besides, you’re blessed with incredible luck!” He didn’t feel very lucky. He felt cursed.

Once his healing bag was packed, he searched for the traveling pack he had used to move to this village. He would pack that too with all the necessary clothing and whatever food stuff he had. Wyndal hated travel, it made him incredibly anxious and sleeping in the dirt made him worry about unseen diseases and sanitary concerns, but he would stay on the move to protect other people. Maybe he could be a traveling witch doctor. That might work out. “You will have to leave at dawn,” hissed Jilna, as she followed him about the tiny cabin. Occasionally, she would sling a log on the fire for him, or help him fold his clothes. She had done excellent work tying his dried herbs together into little bags to place into his supplies. He had problems, though! There was no way he was leaving his year of painstaking research and writing behind. He would take every single page, though who knew where he would put it all. He would also need to carry a large cauldron with him! He didn’t even know how he would manage carrying all this junk around.

“Where did you get this?” asked Jilna, eying the tiny cauldron he had bubbled over the fire only hours earlier. The potion in it was dead by now, not that it mattered.

“It came with the house,” explained Wyndal, distractedly. “I sometimes use it for single-batch potions.”

“Did you know this was dwarven-made?” asked the goddess with a glimmer in her eye.

“That’s interesting,” said Wyndal, though he didn’t really care. He had way too much on his mind to discuss some useless tiny cauldron.

“Interesting, yes,” agreed the goddess, walking straight up to the cauldron, “and dwarven enchanted.” She brushed along a line of symbols across the bottom that Wyndal had never noticed before. The cauldron changed sizes between small, medium and large before returning back to tiny. “How lucky that you found it!”

“Yes,” agreed Wyndal, who had paused when he saw her change the sizes of the cauldron. “How very lucky.”

-------------------

As the sky began lightening with the rising sun, Jilna waved her friend goodbye. He looked ridiculous in his pointed wide-brimmed hat, carrying a bundle of paper covered in his neat scrawl, and way too much baggage. She had managed to stash the Null Crystal among the herbs that they packed. She had also drenched him in a bit of excess good fortune so that his first day on the road would go well. Her friend appeared worried and anxious just like he did when they played at pretend behind his great aunt’s herb garden as children. Only it wasn’t really playing, it was training. Jilna had no doubt her Chosen One would do well. She waved at him until she couldn’t see him, then the little girl winked out of existence and the home of the local witch was good and truly abandoned.

Wyndal for his part, did run into an excessive streak of good fortune. That very morning he managed to run into a traveling band of tinkers and dwarf traders who were in need of the services of a good witch, and managed to trade into a rickety old wagon carriage drawn by a mellow gelding for his trouble. The tinkers even helped him paint the side of it to advertise his wares. He couldn’t thank them enough, but they swore it was a good trade because they had been in need of his services. All he had really done had been a few healing spells and given a few potions from his stock. But now he had his very own covered wagon to travel in like the traveling witch doctors of old. Sure, maybe he was the chosen one, destined to meet five others and save the world, but at least things were looking up for Wyndal Thorne.