Role

Chapter 2

For weeks, Iskrith roamed the K'sra Village like a ghost, unseen and unheard.
Even his touch was met with confusion, as though the recipients of his touches
were under threat by some invisible assailant.

His heart beat once in harmony with the Village and the swamp. His breath was
his own motif in Ysigrath's deafening symphony of life.

Now, it all seemed discordant. The ravenous vines and serpents of the swamp
haunted his dreams. He saw them rending the elf. Their own movements, powerful
and desperate and hungry.

Screams pierced the swamp's dark and thick air from time to time, each more
alluring and repulsive than the last. He tried to ignore them at first. And
then he went to un-see them. To stare at the corpses until they no longer
emerged from the maelstrom of life in the swamp to reach his notice. He tried
this many times, but he was still not seen.

A new idea occurred to him as he gazed out into the swamp. He caught a small,
live crocodile and, with a claw, slit its belly open, and placed the bleeding
creature over his head.

He rushed to his mother, brother and sisters and called out to them as the
crocodile still thrashed.

"Do you see me now?" he shouted. "I have returned!"

They stared at the crocodile. His sister gently pulled the crocodile to her
chest. "This must be seen by Jhel'nra," she said.

Iskrith followed her to the hallowed home of the village shaman. She placed
the creature on the ground and Jhel'nra uttered a blessing over it. Iskrith's
sister knelt beside it and watched its final thrashes. When it ceased to move,
her trance seemed immediately broken and she stood up and thanked Jhel'nra.
The shaman suddenly stiffened up, his black eyes darting about.

"Someone is here," he said.

"Yes! Me! I am here!" Iskrith cried. "Please, help me!"

"Someone... something..." Jhel'nra continued. "Something that does not belong.
Whatever you are, leave now or be purged!"

Carnivorous vines rose up from the swamp to surround Jhel'nra and began to
slither toward Iskrith. In his mind, Iskrith saw the elven squire, torn and
devoured as he screamed.

Iskrith left the village, and then the swamp. He crossed a sea he would later
learn was named Despair.

It seemed a fitting name.