Chasing Stars

“Chasing the stars still, I see.”

The air grew cold. I looked to the door, but it was shut. The fire burned bright in the hearth.

“Just one,” I replied under my breath.

The quiet voice emanated from nowhere in particular, or perhaps everywhere at once. It surrounded me, echoing around the room and inside my head.

“You shall never find that which you seek.” A wave of heat washed over me. The words, though spoken softly, crackled with fire and hung in the air even after the sound had faded.

“Your spell has no power over me, you know that.” The energy faded from the room. No one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. A few sparks floated lazily from the fireplace as the logs settled.

I spoke quietly, but the other patrons of the tavern who sat nearest me began to take note. It was too early in the evening for young men to be talking to themselves.

“Maybe not, but we are bound together, you and I. And I will do all I can to keep you from your goal.”

“You will try.”

“I will succeed! And you will die!” The voice rose to a shout.

“You will do what you must, as will I. I would expect nothing else.”

I was beginning to get uncomfortable looks from around the room. This was no rowdy city bar. These were quiet folk, and a foreigner in strange clothes muttering to himself was a strange scene.

“We will be face-to-face soon. And then we’ll see who has power over whom,” the voice seethed.

“So be it. But until then, leave me be.”

Laughter, low at first and growing in volume, crashed around me. A cold frost filled the room. And this time I was not the only one who felt it.

The proprietor behind the bar caught my gaze, his eyes wide with fear. I could see his breath in the now-frigid air. Somewhere behind me, a mug fell to the ground and shattered.

A sharp pain split through my skull and I slammed my palms into my temples, trying desperately to hold my head together.

I cried out.

The laughter grew to a roar.

A freezing wind blew into me, knocking me out of my chair. My hands went numb, and I could no longer open my eyes. Through the pain and the cold I heard screams. Screams and laughter.

I rose to one knee and stretched a hand in front of my face. There was only one thing I could do.

My blood warmed as I summoned that ancient force from what felt like the very core of my bones, the depths of my soul. Always familiar, always terrifying. In the oldest part of my mind, locked away somewhere far down, I knew what it was.

This same force formed the earth beneath our feet, and shook it to its foundation when it quaked. It drew the tides and incited the storm. It moved the stars above and the fire below. Long before language, memory, everything we know — it was flowing, singing, creating, destroying, being.

To open myself up to that power — from inside me, from all around me — meant to be carried by the swiftest current. It pulled me down, deeper and deeper. It gave me power, but the power was not mine, it did not belong to me. I was entrusted with it, a steward of it, and I was eternally afraid that it would consume me.

But that didn’t matter now.

I opened my mouth, and a single word shot forth like lightning from my lips.

“STOP.”

Thunder crashed above me, shaking the entire building. Dust fell from the rafters, bottles went tumbling to the floor, and a blinding light filled the small space.

All went quiet. Even the crackling fire had been extinguished.

The pain and cold subsided. As the air cleared and my eyes adjusted, I scanned the room.

Tables were overturned, and patrons had scrambled across the floor, looking for safety. No one said a word.

They just stared at me, eyes filled with terror. Some nursed cuts and bruises, but none stirred. Fear was thick in the air.

I must have been quite a sight: dark figure rising from a crouch, grey robes rustling in the silence, lit solely by the ember-light of the arcane rune freshly scorched into the wood beneath my feet.

I had brought this upon them.

“I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

My voice betrayed my weariness, and my sorrow. I have never meant for anyone to be hurt by my actions, but so many had been. These were not the first, and my fear was that they would not be the last.

It was too dark for them to see the tears welling in my eyes. They saw me as a monster, and I cannot blame them. I often saw myself the same.

I stepped over debris, making my way to the bar. The customers in my path quickly shifted out of it, to the corners of the room.

Reaching to my belt, I tugged on my purse straps, dropping the leather pouch on the worn wood. The coins inside clinked together loudly in the silence.

“I am sorry.”

No words could properly express my meaning, so I simply took a breath and crossed to the door.

I pushed open the heavy wooden portal with a creak, revealing the twilight beyond. One hand on the handle, I made a half-turn back.

“I am sorry.”

Shutting the door behind me, I wandered down the uneven street in the direction of the setting sun.