Iamblichos' Journey, Part III: The Saga Concludes
Iamblichos cursed as he struggled through the thick underbrush, waving away the swarming gnats. His stomach rumbled uncertainly from the blazing late afternoon sun; each sunbeam felt like a spike driving through his eyes into his skull. If only the surface weren't so... exposed, he thought sourly. This is disgusting. Sticks cracked beneath his feet and the omnipresent thorns caught at the thick fabric of his woolen trousers. The stumps of old trees were a constant danger to the casual walker, reflecting past clearcuts to feed the insatiable furnaces of Doomforests. Now tangled thornbushes and scrub brush occupied the area that used to be old growth forest. Nature was constantly pushing to reclaim the land for itself.
It had not been a good few days. Really, upon reflection, he sighed mentally, it hasn't been a good decade. The less said of the return to Sanctumcoal from the ruins, the better. One of his recent discoveries was that researchers like his ancestor and the old dwarf's apprentice don't get poison ivy; the same cannot be said of the living. The ruins of Terrorsplashed were buried beneath a sea of the stuff. The constant itching, blisters and irritation were yet another source of unpleasantness in a life that was already brimming over with misery. Once back in Doomforests he went immediately to the 'tomb of Iamblichos' to fetch his original body. Empty, of course. Too much to ask that it be otherwise, he thought. Though I would dearly love to give a good kicking to whoever put that crundle skeleton in my empty tomb. All the time since had been spent retracing the steps of the last days of his first life, hoping against hope to find his body somewhere.
Iamblichos looked around, reasonably sure that this is where the skirmish happened. Things looked quite different. The trees were gone; the ground had been reconfigured by means both natural and artificial. This was where the battle happened, I think. He walked over to look at a boulder nearby. I remember this. Osp came from... there. And he killed everything. Iamblichos watched the scene over again in his memory - goblins shrieking, running in all directions, and the old dwarf walking almost peacefully, shredding them like wet paper as he went. He didn't even seem to be walking that fast. He just always seemed to be standing where they were heading. And then they died. All of them. He remembered the smells of that day; the pollen on the breeze, the coppery tang of blood, the sewage reek of the ripped-open goblins, their intestines scattered across the forest loam. Most of all, he remembered being tired. So tired.
At that precise moment, he banged his right shin painfully on yet another stump. He was too tired even to curse; he just sat down wearily on the stump and looked out at the horrible sunlit scrub. That tiredness wasn't just in memory. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Sleep was the only way to escape the light, the bugs, the incessant itching and thousand pains of this body. For the thousandth time he thought to himself, if I had only known how much trouble possessing this body would cause, I would never have done it. He was so tired. Exhausted. The air seemed heavy and thick; the constant birdsong seemed hypnotic somehow. Maybe if he just closed his eyes for a moment...
The sound of a body tumbling off a stump made almost no noise. It didn't even interrupt the birds singing in the underbrush.
* * *
Iamblichos looked around. He was right where he grew up, back in Chamberautumns. This was the fountain in front of the hospital, down on the 25th deep. He vaguely remembered being somewhere else, but where else would he be? Hearing laughter, he saw a group of children run past shrieking with joy. Each of them carried a fresh syrup roast from the surly old vendor around the corner. Tagging along behind them was an old woman, grinning good-naturedly. She smiled over at Iamblichos.
"Good morning, mother." He said politely. She didn't respond, but nodded and continued on after the children. Iamblichos was sure there was somewhere he was supposed to be, something he was supposed to be doing but... why was his mind so fuzzy? He wandered down the old street, stopping at the familiar door of his house. Going in, he didn't see anyone, but the place looked exactly like it always did. The chipped, stained surface of the old schist table was as familiar to him as his own teeth; the chairs under it were right where they should be. The childrens' beds were all made, ready for the night to come. Why did everything feel so strange? Was something missing? Sudden movement caught his eye.
A strange dwarf was standing at the door to his parents' room. He was dressed as a hammerer, steel breastplate and leggings, with the haft of a giant silver hammer stuck up behind his back. Iamblichos felt shocked; surely his parents weren't in trouble, weren't under the law...? The burly dwarf spoke. "Someone wishes to speak with you." Looking more closely at the lawdwarf, Iamblichos thought he looked off somehow.
The hammerer spoke again. "I am the truing hammer. I am correcting imbalance." This was the proper speech of the hammerer, but there was no charge, no explanation. "You must enter this room. The Law commands it." Upon closer examination, Iamblichos realized... the dwarf's eyes weren't eyes. They were just shining white holes in his face. Looking directly at them caused pain. He nodded dumbly, and walked towards the door. The burly dwarf stepped out of the way and opened the door; as Iamblichos passed through, it closed behind him. Instead of his parent's room, there was a study there, like the most elaborate office he had ever seen. A very gentle-faced, kindly dwarf looked up and smiled, beckoning him in. He realized, finally, that he was dreaming.
Memory came flooding back; Doomforests, Sanctumcoal, the search for his body, all of it. In the past, realizing he was dreaming would have awoken him immediately. This time, though, it didn't seem to make any difference. Not again, he winced, remembering his ancestor's first visit. What now?
"Hello, Iamblichos." The old dwarf was slight-built, a bit hunched and bookish looking. His clothes were lovely and well-worn. The shelves around him and the table in front of him were full of scrolls and books, records and tablets. He looked eerily familiar, but at the same time, Iamblichos knew instinctively this was nobody he had ever met.
"Who are you?" Iamblichos asked. "If this is another recruitment effort, I've had enough recruitments, thanks."
The old dwarf laughed delightedly. "No, no, nothing like that. Excellent response, though! I daresay I would feel the same if I were in your shoes!" Still chuckling, he poured wine from a flask on the table into a beautiful decorated goblet. "I would offer you some, but it wouldn't stick with you. You are, as you just realized, dreaming."
"Yes, I'm dreaming. Good for me. Make your pitch, then; what do you want? Again I ask... who are you? And why are you sending me dreams? You're yet another necromancer? Some bloody demon? Wait, let me guess," Iamblichos' voice raised to a sarcastic shout, "You're the god of the forgotten beasts, come to negotiate a pact with me for my increasingly overpromised and tattered soul in exchange for cut-rate servants, no extra charge for fire, poison dust and webs!" He stopped because the old dwarf in front of him was rocking back and forth with laughter, wiping his eyes with one hand and waving the other hand feebly.
"Stop, stop!" he wheezed. "No need to shout... but oh, that's rich! 'God of forgotten beasts', I love it!" He took a deep swig of wine from the gold-chased cup. "You missed your calling, you should have been an entertainer." Eyes twinkling, the old dwarf said, "Nothing so exciting, I'm afraid. But you know me, don't you? You recognize me, you just don't know why."
The anger fled as quickly as it had come. Iamblichos slumped down exhaustedly onto the chair set out for him. "Yes," he said wearily, "you do look familiar. Not that 'familiar' means anything in dreams; anyone can look like anything as you well know."
"True. Very true... and a very wise observation. I should know wisdom when I hear it if anyone should. Think back to when you were a child. You went to the temples. You always paid the proper respects to all the gods, Emuth and Nadak, Tunur and Stegeth... you even went once a year and made offerings to Iltang, though he hasn't been very kind to you for a long time. Most of all, though, you would go and whisper all your secrets to..."
"Are you bloody serious?" Iamblichos shook his head in dismay. Now he recognized the face in front of him - it looked different as a living dwarf than as a statue of pure adamantine, but the features were exactly the same. "You expect me to believe that you are Olnen Focuslesson himself?" He laughed bitterly. "Bored managing the world's wisdom and knowledge, are we? Town of Stroking operating godless so you can come to help out a poor dwarf in his time of need?" Iamblichos shook his head disgustedly. "This is even more ridiculous than my grandfather's sending. At least make it believable. I know you don't care about wasting my time, but you're wasting your own as well, whoever you are."
"No," the aged dwarf said, and for the first time his cheerful face grew sad and pensive. "I'm not wasting anything. Remember when you were about to turn ten? You were about to go through the adulthood ceremony. You snuck out of your house without anyone knowing and you ran to the temple in the middle of the day. You told me that you wanted more than anything else to know everything. You asked me three times to allow you to be a recordkeeper when tasks where chosen. You offered me not only the syrup roast you bought down the street for that very purpose, you also offered me this." Iamblichos heard his own youthful voice from long ago, a piping little voice cracking with emotion, saying 'I promise I will always pray to you, I promise I will always do what you say, just please please pleeease let me be a knowledge-keeper.' "I couldn't grant that prayer," the little god said, "but I heard it. And I tried to help you where I could. I've always watched out for you where I could."
"O-Olnen?" Iamblichos felt like the room was spinning. All the misery of the past ten years rushed back on him. He remembered being that young dwarf, wide-eyed and optimistic that he would help the world through knowledge. in spite of himself, he started to cry. "Why... why didn't you help me? It's all turned out to be such a pile of shit." Tears streamed down his face into his beard.
"Things are... not wonderful, I'll give you that much." Olnen looked over with eyes full of compassion and concern. "I know there's a lot going on. I know about Sanctumcoal's plans, and the whole pointless feud with Gogol and Nifih, and this ridiculous three way war in the basements of Doomforests."
"You... you know about all that?"
"What sort of god of knowledge would I be if I didn't know things like that?" Olnen laughed again, his face reverting to its previous smile. "There's not much I don't know, it's why I laugh so much! Things are so simple, and people like to make them so complicated... It's the best show in the cosmos, the things people think up to do to themselves and each other!" He took another pensive sip of wine. "Here's the secret, though." His voice grew quieter. "I am a god of knowledge... and a god of wisdom. Two sides of the same coin. Knowledge is knowing what steps can be taken. Wisdom is a lot harder. Wisdom is knowing when to take those steps... and when NOT to take them. Knowledge can be taught, but wisdom can only be shown - it requires the other person to pick it up, to learn, to grow. Knowledge is like stone, it's just there; wisdom guides the chisel. I'm trying to put these ideas in terms you can grasp. Is any of this making sense to you?"
"I... I think so." Iamblichos stuttered. "You want me to give up my search for my body, then."
"Pfaugh!" the old dwarf shook his head disgustedly, then laughed again. "You took a critical general concept that dwarves have labored to understand for centuries, and rendered it down into an almost ridiculously specific assertion. Is that how they teach you to think these days?" He pointed his finger directly at Iamblichos where he sat. "I have an opinion of Ezum's plans, of course; I have an opinion about all of it. But that's not why I'm here. I'm not here for Ezum. I'm certainly not here for Nifih and Gogol! I'm not here to choose sides or enforce some agenda of my own or anything else. Child, I'm here for you." Olnen sipped at his wine again. "I actually came to ask you what you wanted to do."
"What... what I want?" Iamblichos could scarcely imagine the concept. "I don't... I can't... uh."
"How long has it been?" Olnen's face was still cheerful, but his eyes pierced Iamblichos' soul. "How long have you just been reacting, following orders, doing what everyone else wanted you to do?" He tapped the desk for emphasis. "You feel like a pawn, don't you? You should. Ezum thinks of others only as tools to be used or obstacles to be removed; all of that sort do. They have to think that way, to be able to do what they do. So," Olnen leaned forward, "I have come to ask that little dwarf that honored me so much. What do you truly want? Do you want to be a necromancer? If so, you can be one; I don't think you would like it, but that path is open to you. I'll even tell you where they hid your body. Do you want to be really dead, like you never took that body? I can arrange that too. Death is highly underrated, just ask the nice boy who escorted you in here! Do you want to make a new path, go out into the world and start over? What do you want?"
"Olnen..." Iamblichos looked down at the floor between his shoes. "I don't..." He looked around at the shelves, so laden with knowledge that at one point he would have loved more than anything else to possess. Now it just looked like more work; more to read, more to know, more burdens to take up. He realized that he had changed at some fundamental level. Knowledge wasn't everything any more. He had spent his lifetime chasing a chimera. "Wait. I think I see. Being... like Ezum... is all about knowledge, isn't it? That's what you meant. He gave up wisdom for the sake of knowledge alone?"
"Exactly! Well done!" Olnen leaned over and clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you were ready to understand! I could tell. I can always tell." His eyes sparkled merrily. "Being a god helps, you know."
"So..." Iamblichos looked worriedly over at the old dwarf in front of him. "How do I know? How do I know which choice would be best? Sometimes I think I would be better off dead. Sometimes I think life as a resea... as a necromancer wouldn't be so bad. Sometimes I just want to run. How do I know which one to choose?"
Olnen shook his head sadly. "You don't. That's the real pain of life. You don't ever know. You just choose one and hope for the best." He laughed. "You don't even get to find out what would have happened if you had chosen differently! Causality is a bitch that way. Occasionally you can suspect but you never really know for sure."
"Any guidance? Hints? Things to consider?" Iamblichos asked, smiling. For the first time in forever, he actually felt a bit hopeful.
"Only this." Olnen leaned over conspiratorially. "You've spent a lot of time with Tikes and Ezum and the rest of Sanctumcoal." Iamblichos nodded. "Have you ever seen any of them look happy?" Iamblichos cast his memory back. Dead, cruel faces surrounded him, arrogant as the princes of Hell, grimacing, cursing, laughing only with bitter laughter. "Is that what you want to be? Is that as high as you can reach?"
"I've chosen." Olnen sat up and picked up a pen, dipping it in a handy inkwell and opening a book to write. The old dwarf cocked an eyebrow. "I want to..."
* * *
"Hold on, lad. Hang in there." Iamblichos felt himself being bumped along on a stretcher. "You were outside far too long. We're trying to get you inside to the hospital, just hang on!" The pain was incredible.
"... start over." he whispered softly. A cool breeze felt like it blew through his bones. With a short gasp, his final breath left his body. Iamblichos was dead.
"What did he say?" said one of the stretcher-bearers. "Did you hear him?"
"No idea." the other one replied. "Poor bastard. Wonder what made him wander off out there?"
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Topic: The Hastening of Doomforests (Read 452597 times)