Blood Across The Ages
I.v
The valley, hidden away by mountains on two sides with only two openings as narrow as thirty men with outstretched arms touching, became a hideaway from the world. What initially started out as a handful of men and women practicing the art of magic blossomed into a village and then a city, with as many as several hundred eventually taking up semi-permanent residence. Its inhabitants mapped out every inch of the place, and then went to work turning the place into a hospitable community. N-ta spent most of her time teaching magic, but also being taught by the people that came from far and wide. Every so often, those that mastered their craft left to explore the world at large, and when they returned, they brought with them news and the spoils of the world.
In the far east, fledgling kingdoms formed, and as soon as they rose, they went to war with each other. Mages on their pilgrimages shared what wisdom they could, and used their spells carefully, saving lives and reducing barbarism where possible. The lore and legends that came with them provided more teachings, and when natives returned with them, N-ta had more magic to add to her repertoire, and soon everyone benefited.
However, not all were so kind and willing to cooperate. On the occasion, a psychopathic individual had to be forcibly removed. When this happened, everyone would hold a ceremony of vigilance where they refocused their senses, so as not to be tricked again.
A century and a half after N-ta got her first visitors, the first death took place.
“Isn’t there any way to save him?”
N-ta looked to the student’s question and shook her head. “If we tried to make Wa-ven like me,” she advised, “he would likely die. The magic in my blood gains potency too fast. Most people simply burn to death.”
The magician and warrior smiled as his breathing became ragged. “It’s..okay,” he said, his strength failing. “I’ve lived much longer than a person should. I was already grown before I got here.”
His ability to slow his aging was remarkable, N-ta agreed, brushing his white hair out of his eyes. “You’ve been a wonderful person,” she said, “selflessly protecting others and teaching wisdom.”
He brushed a tear away from his eyes. “Please,” he pleaded N-ta, “remember me all your days.”
She blinked tears away. “I couldn’t forget you if I tried,” she said.
She held his hand as the light went out of his eyes and he stilled for the last time.
They buried him in the mountains like he wanted.
After the ceremony, N-ta packed her belongings.
“Where are you going?” Wei-ulan asked, her age beginning to really show.
“I have more journeys to make,” she replied. “Besides, I’ll be back by the time this season returns.”
The tall woman accepted this, if with a forlorn expression. She placed her hand over her chest and bowed. “Eh-tah,” she replied, “I wish you the best of luck.”
“You too,” N-ta replied.
“You know,” Wei-ulan said, a thought occurring to her, “we’ve never given this place a name.”
N-ta stopped to think about it. “Our Home,” she said, in her long-gone parents’ tongue.
“Bo-sham-ta?” Wei-ulan pronounced.
“Close enough,” N-ta said, a half-grin on her face, as she turned and stepped out into the world.
And thus, the legendary secret land of Bo-Sham-ta got its name.
A matter of months later, N-ta arrived in a land of disparate lands that would eventually become known as China. At the moment, though, unbeknownst to the magician, there was still tens of thousands of years to go before the history of said people would become written down. She changed shape once again, taking on the form of an elegant, robed woman, blending in as one of the middle upper crust when in population centers. Her skin and facial features radically shifted once more, and she became shorter in order to avoid attracting attention.
She found a remote part of the land where she could set up a living space all her own. Here, her home surrounded by woods on all sides, she practiced with the wooden swords they had made. Having shorter arms proved to be a challenge, but she learned, nonetheless. With her magic, natives eventually came to her for healing, and word became legend that spread around.
Late one night, as she took centuries of learning in magic, and focused them, the full moon shone down on the Earth. She sat cross-legged on the floor, and as mystical energy swirled around her, she levitated off the ground, and a point of green light appeared in the middle of the room. With her eyes closed, she poured her spirit into it. The dot became a ball, and lightning sparked off it.
Out in the cool night air, a starving child was running from the law.
“Stop!” Men wielding long clubs and garbed in the robes of the local law commanded.
A boy of no more than eight ran for his life. With each patter of his small feet on the grassy plains, he threw a handful of sweat into the air. Giant gulps of breath came and went as his lungs pumped to provide his burning legs with what little fuel they could get. Attached to his belt was a small pouch. In it was the only food he could manage to get. He had to make it to the woods. He could lose the law, if only he could get to the trees.
Mere steps from the forest’s edge, a powerful arm wrapped around him like a tentacle, and scooped him up. “Got you, you bastard!” a man half-growled.
The boy swore, and bit down hard, almost separating the man’s thumb from his hand. The man squealed in pain and dropped the boy, as blood poured from the wound.
Make it! The boy thought, exuding his will into the night air in a vain attempt to survive.
His leg caught on a tree root, and he fell into a rolling tumble, falling head over feet down a short hill. After righting himself and shaking the cobwebs out of his senses, he resumed running.
“Down there!” a man shouted. “You’ll survive! Just get him!”
The boy did not hesitate as he continued. The forest thinned to a small open clearing.
“Wow…”
For a moment, the boy found himself struck dumb, staring in disbelief at the palace carved out of wood he saw in front of him. Not since stealing from the merchants outside the lord’s palace had he seen such a wondrous sight. It had a pool of water out in front beside the entrance.
Lights.
He snapped out of it.
The light of the moon reflected off the water, revealing a pair of men running behind him.
“You can’t run!” the uninjured pursuer insisted, as the boy ducked and tumbled just out of his grasp.
An unearthly green glow came from inside the forest palace, and he decided the monster he didn’t know was less scary than the monster he did.
“What…”
His question came a moment early.
A woman hovered half a man’s height off the floor of the large center room. A ball of green light, half an arm’s length in width, glowed in the center of the room.
The woman snapped her gaze around. “Who are you?”
Her question snapped him out of his reverie. “They’re after me!” he insisted.
She flipped attention back and forth between the boy and the ball of light. “Damn!” She turned away from him and shoved her arms forward.
This time four arms clasped themselves around his torso. “Nowhere to escape now, boy!”
He batted and kicked at his captors, but to no avail. “Help me!” he shouted.
Just then, the ball exploded, expanding into a circle as tall as two men. In the middle, he could see a forest, lit up in late afternoon sunlight.
“What in the gods!”
From one of his captors, the shout came.
The next instant, the woman turned, stuck out a palm, and gave a shout he’d never heard before.
A wave of air passed him by but struck his captors like a falling log, knocking them clear out of the building.
“By gods…”
She clapped her hands together, a thunder that awoke him from his stupor. “Come!” she shouted.
He was not one who needed to be told twice. She stepped through the hole in the air with one smooth movement. He bounded forward. In a moment, his body passed through, and he stepped onto grass greener and more vibrant than he’d ever felt. The hole collapsed into nothing behind him. A wave of cool air passed over him, and his lungs tasted the sweetness of the nearby forest.
“En-tah!”
The woman draped her arms around Po-roha. “It’s been almost a full year!” N-ta cried.
“Who is this one?”
N-ta turned. “Forgive me, I never got your name,” she told him.
He blinked. “Uh,” he said, “name’s Hwu-Kon.”
Po-roha gave him a once over. “Wukong?” she mispronounced.
The boy nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Name’s Wukong.”
“He came barging into my house,” N-ta explained. “Two armed men chasing him.”
Po-roha nodded, patting the boy on the head. “That’s something,” she agreed. “But how did you get here? I didn’t see you coming.”
N-ta brightened like the sun. “I’ve always thought it was possible to open a doorway between two places far apart,” she explained, “and I figured out how!”
“That’s amazing!” she cried. “You’ve been practicing it for what, two years now?”
“Where am I?” Wukong asked.
“Boshamta,” Po-roha said.
The boy batted the word about in his brain. After a few seconds, he looked around. There were men and women about, levitating things with magic, people performing work with tools he’d never seen before, and mountains on two sides. “I…” he struggled to piece it together. Finally, it clicked. “I’m in the legendary City of Boshamta!”
He'd heard the tales. His grandmother had spoken of a hidden valley between mountain ranges that had only two entrances narrow enough to prevent armies from entering. His grandfather had said of how his father told him of mages from a far away land casting away devils and healing the sick with a touch filled with light. Now he was there.
“Why weren’t you with your family, Wukong?” N-ta asked, though she felt she could predict the answer.
“Killed,” he simply stated. “Famines.”
“Those have been bad this season,” N-ta said. “I’ve summoned the rain in hundreds of villages, but there are still entire rivers running dry.”
“Can I get some food?” Wukong asked.
“Sure,” Po-roha said, and led the boy to a communal dining area.
The boy sat in wonder as a plate of meat and vegetables he’d never seen got placed in front of him. The aroma of spices he’d never tasted wafted into his nose, stirring his hunger. He reached for the meat with his bare hands, before a man stopped him, and handed him utensils made of stone.
He stared. “What do I do with these?” he asked.
The man took the boy’s wrists and motioned for him. “Like this,” he spoke.
“Thanks,” Wukong said.
As he ate, the first taste of the meat touched his tongue and his senses lit up with flavors he could scarcely have imagined. A wooden cup sat on the table, and a woman poured fresh water into it. He finished his meal in record time, then pressed the cup to his lips. Even the water drew wonder from him. He’d never drank water that didn’t have either the silt of the river in it, or the vague taste of cattle farmers upstream dumping their waste into the river.
“You’ll sleep over there,” N-ta said, pointing to a wooden hut.
His eyes went wide. “I’ve got my own bed?” She nodded at his question. “Thank you!” He hugged her.
“You’re safe,” N-ta told him. “Now that you’re away from danger, what do you want to do?”
“I…” He paused. Never before had he been completely out of danger. Safe had always been a concept that was alien to him. Now, his life was his and he had a choice.
He turned to her, his eyes serious. “I want to learn magic.”
Wukong proved to be just one of the many outsiders that would come to stay in Boshamta, either for a year or two, or semi-permanently. It proved to be a place where the magic flowed. As time progressed, the expansive valley became crowded. In time, it became necessary to use magic to expand the territory. After many decades, the area inside the valley became larger than the physical dimensions the mountains imposed. The inhabitants imposed rules upon themselves, so the outside world didn’t become too crowded with magic wielders. N-ta watched people come and go, she trained with and learned from people all over the world. For the first time in her life, the woman who’d originally been meant to live and die on a savannah hunting with spears until her teeth gave out or a predator ate her, found her true calling.
Wukong often returned to his homeland, a place that would eventually be called China. He fought against tyrants and local lords, bringing peace to areas and feeding the starving.
N-ta herself used her ability to open portals between places to journey the world. The hard part was getting somewhere. As time progressed, the world’s population increased. It became easier to find cities and connected communities. On her journeys, she came across knowledge and progress like she’d never seen before.
Stone and wood tools made boats sturdier than before, and she made several treacherous journeys to islands far from the mainland. The land stretched from the frozen far north where the ice and snow never melted, to the hot southern regions where she’d been born centuries before. One of these islands had fair-skinned people with eyes similar to those from where Wukong hailed. They’d taken to carving their stories into wood and stone. Dozens of them would eventually come to Boshamto and spread their teachings back to their home.
Another island N-ta journeyed to had dark-skinned natives, similar to how she originally looked. Their ground often had a texture like clay, and it was very dry most of the time.
Wukong and N-ta often responded to attacks by ghouls, goblins, and other nasty creatures that fed on human lives. One such battle took place in the forests in what would eventually become Eastern Europe.
“Hold on,” N-ta said, stepping slowly into the brush, “this is unusual.”
Wukong focused his senses. “I got ‘em,” he said. In his mind, he could clearly tell what she meant. There were six ghouls in an area, where normally they fought individually.
“Look out!” N-ta shouted.
Wukong felt the energy pop into his mind a moment before a claw swiped past where his head would’ve been.
He whipped his hand to his side, yanked out his staff and smacked it into the creature, knocking it back.
N-ta summoned a spear, impaled one, and launched it into the clearing. Then she pulled back and let fly, and it impaled the creature through the skull and separated it. The head stuck to the wall, impaled by the spear, while the body, headless, fell to the ground.
“They weren’t supposed to be this clever or strong,” Wukong pointed out.
N-ta saw the creature’s skin darken from ash pale to a human color. Her expression darkened as the beasts gathered at the cry of their deceased comrade. “These aren’t the natural ghouls,” she told him.
As the tall, gangly, pale creatures gathered, their unnaturally long jaws agape in anticipation of tearing someone apart, she clenched her fist around another summoned spear. He shot a look between the monsters and her, and his eyes widened. “No.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she replied. “Someone’s been turning people into ghouls on purpose.”
Wukong dashed forward, anger in his heart. “Grow, nyoi-bo!” With his spell, the wooden staff extended, bashing into ghouls left and right, scattering them. A flurry of punches shattered bone and sprayed blood over the rocks.
N-ta drove her spear into skulls and ripped flesh from bone. With the ghouls scattered, it became simple for Wukong to launch them at N-ta, whose fists and feet separated heads from bodies.
In the time it took to start a fire, the fight was over. They both poured over the corpses with their magic enhanced senses. “This has the feel of…more than one kind of magic,” Wukong pointed out.
N-ta sifted through the centuries of memories she had on types of magic. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Everything from the stuff you brought with you to the stuff my grandmother was talking about in her legends.”
“Who do you think is doing this?”
She looked at her best student. “I wish I knew,” she replied. A twinge appeared in her mind, followed by a few others. “But…” She clenched her fists. “I think we have an idea.”
She leapt to the side just as a constricting spell snapped shut where she’d been standing. A quick pull of magical energy and she sent a lightning bolt back at the assailant and heard a shout of surprise. Trees exploded as the bolt missed and hit behind the target. Wukong spun around and twirled his nyoi-bo, detonating a fireball spell before it could hit him.
Out of the brush, stepped a figure. Behind him came five wearing similar patterns to his.
“Rethif?”
Wukong shot her a look. “You know this man?” he asked.
There were lots of words that came to mind, but none of them seemed sufficient. “How,” she simply asked, gesturing at the corpses.
He gave her a strange look. “You gave me just enough knowledge to get off the ground,” he said, gesturing at the birds overhead, “but not to fly. I had to do something.” He gestured at his disciples. “So, I found some people who had basic magic, and we taught each other, and we…” a proud look appeared on his face, “we tested the limits of our powers.”
Her eyes went wide. “Unbelievable,” she uttered. “Turning people into ghouls?” Her fists shook. “The…the very thing I was worried about?”
He shrugged. “I’ll give you a hint,” he offered. “The trick is to keep fed. They turn into ghouls when their hunger overwhelms their healing.”
“I know.” She blinked moisture out of her eyes.
“Testing your magic on innocent people?” Wukong demanded.
“Innocent?” Rethif demanded. “You know how many villages attacked ours since you left?” He pointed. “Of course not. You left.”
She pooled fire in her palms. “How many of our friends did you kill?”
“Does it matter?” he asked. “You were going to outlive all of them.”
“HOW MANY!”
Wukong recoiled. He’d never seen her angry before.
“Only a few,” Rethif replied. “Some of them went willingly.”
A thunderclap sounded throughout the area as she launched herself forward with impossible speed and clocked a fire-engulfed fist into his face. With her other hand, she launched Wukong through a portal back to Boshamto. It snapped shut with a crack. Immediately the assault began. Rocks lifted into the air and flew towards her, spears were summoned and thrown, and fists & feet swung around her. With the expertise of hundreds of years of fighting training, she parried and returned blows.
Fireballs scorched her skin and blades of ice tore into her from all sides as she returned fire with whatever she could muster. These disciples of his had training. It was clear he’d spent every waking moment he could to either training himself or finding those who could work with him. His lack of concern for others, though, that she could not tolerate. On one hand, she got it; in the jungle, it was kill or be killed. Animals could come out of the woods at any time and pick off most people. But they weren’t most people. So, to her, it seemed as though a different kind of morals had to apply to the long-lived and magic enhanced.
She blew the last of his disciples away. They lay on the ground, in agony, or kept their distance. Her bleeding wounds healed quickly and in moments she looked no worse for wear. Only her clothes were marred. “Are you going to show me what you’ve got,” she challenged, “or are you a coward?”
“You left us to protect yourself,” he challenged, “and now you talk down to me?”
He snapped off a fireball much stronger than the ones from his disciples. “I’m not going to argue.” Her statement cut off conversation and she shoved a palm forward, throwing him into a rock, then she yanked her fist back, summoning an invisible force to pull him back. She swung her fist out and slammed it into his chest, then drove forward and planted him in the dirt.
He launched himself backward and into an upright position, then delivered a rock-covered fist into her chest. She pushed it aside and with her other arm elbowed him in the side of the head. He countered with a pushback strike, and she recovered just in time to dodge a sharp rock flung by magic. She saw magic tendrils about to form, and she dropped to the ground and launched forward to evade. He jumped over her, and she rolled and shot to her feet. Before he could fully turn around, she drove a standing side kick to his gut and sent him flying.
In midair, he summoned a portal and drew his disciples into it.
She cursed and returned home.
“You mean we have enemies now?”
The question came from a woman to Wukong’s left. She nodded. “We do,” she simply stated. With magic, she summoned stone tablets and engraved their enemies’ faces on them.
“Goblin blood,” one of them swore. “They’re gonna kill a lot of people before they make another one like you.”
“And,” N-ta pointed out, “they’re going to make a lot of ghouls in the process.” She came to a conclusion.
Wukong said it first. “We need to cut off their supply of goblins,” he said. “We need to kill all the monsters they use.”
A chorus of voices agreed with her.
“Alright,” she said, deciding. “We’re going to have to fight them eventually, but for now, let’s travel the world and destroy all the ghouls and goblins they use for power.”
She sat on a stone and contemplated. This was precisely what she wanted to avoid.
Now she had a war on her hands.