Alchemist, Oracle, Terror Yearns

We came together in secret to watch them battle. To see the spectacle of light, of proportion, of the very nerves that make vision possible. For awhile they enjoyed this attention, and it spurned them on to greater heights, almost as a means of performance. But then one too many duel was lost in a death that simply didn't need to happen. So the wizards took their battles within. We came across a clearing once where two wizards, clothed in the greying fabrics of prophets, sat on the forest floor facing one another. For four hours they sat, one of them occasionally flinching or wincing. Finally one slumped over dead.

The other shook off stiffness, slowly making his way to his feet in an undignified fashion. "I am Warlock, Knowledge Seeker, Speaker-to-Spirits, and I am called Sraith," he said, dusting the hem of his robes. "Our battles are no longer on display for spectators, but you can be sure he gave me just as impressive a run as anything you've seen before." He paused a second, assessing the nearby path. "Seen with your eyes, that is."

And so many decades later, when my path led me to initiation, I took a period of hermitude in order to, as my mentor put it "expose the raw inner tissue of the spirit in order to progress". Isolation was favorable for such work, and I had a small woodland abode available for precisely that purpose, built by hand but finished by enchantment. There was comfort, but no distraction, and after a time the vulnerability of that work is able to become part of the natural rhythm of the day.

It was there that I was first challenged, and dueled to defend my life. I will spare you the details the workings I was wrapped up within, but while on an extended period of walking meditation, my concentration was thoroughly interrupted by the sound of four trumpets, each tuned with harsh intervals to one another and forming a sour chord that echoed over the treetops. I encountered a sage with clothing that I thought identified him with some order or another, but he was just seated with his back against a tree, hungrily gazing off into the distance. It was unclear whether or not he was awake, in a normal sense, or whether some manner of astral travel was occuring, and I thought I could avoid him simply by circumventing his gaze.

But as I approached, I felt a flurry of blows, that I registered as scrapes and stinging impacts against the surface of my arms. My response was big and ineffectual, like waving your arms against a swarm of hornets. It wasn't about the severity of the individual attacks but the sheer magnitude of them, and they continued, varying in types and intensities of pain in a rhythm that, if it existed, would only have been heard as dense and complex. How could you dodge attacks you couldn't see?

And I remembered the Warlock Sraith, feeling some resentment that even in my noble path I had still had to defend my life and my knowledge. And I found a tree of my own, and sat, and after a few deep breaths, found I could see my challenger clearly. On the other plane, he drifted about in a drunken frenzy, but his blows were easily dodged, his weight heavy and off center as he demonstrated his sheer excitement with the force at his command.

I spared my challenger that day. I cannot say now if that was a choice I would later regret. There were so many challengers, and I have survived them all.