Saladi'ilm Family/Dakthohol/SMIntro
| A new beginning - again! |
| Posted 2005-04-20 |
OOC:
Greetings all,
As I have now returned to BattleMaster and finds that SpellMaster are alive and kicking. I thought it would bee time to return to that also, though I do not have much time to write at the moment. Some of you might remember me from SMI and II and I will reintroduce my old character to this newest vision of SpellMaster: The post is made up by four parts; first my first ever post to SM (made the 16th of august 2000) to give a background of Dakthohol, then two posts from my failed attempt of resurrection in SMII (corrected for small spelling errors, though) and finally a newly written to fit the current setting in SM (James made me do it. Sorry for the length). Part I and II are also the last RP I have posted to SM. Fell free to meet Dakthohol anywhere you like as he do not know where he is. As long as you are aware that Dakthohol had a lot of power but had little control of it. At the moment he has little (or no) access to it (see Part III) and even less control of it. On top of that he has no notion of the current state of affairs in the world, a previous life he mentally have trouble keeping from this and therefore are very likely to get into a lot of trouble.
Enjoy!
IC:
Prologue:
A lock of hair fell down on his forehead and did almost immediately stick to his sweaty skin. He opened his eyes and glanced at the sail. It hung like a rag and had been doing so the last four days - ever since the day, the main ship blow up. He looked at some seagulls passing high above the mast along the boat. He remembered the old fisherman telling him, that the day they found him drifting in the wooden box at sea they where led there by the largest flock of seabirds seen within living memory. As they approached, the flock should have lifted up in a dark cloud leaving him behind drifting in the small ark. He did not believe that part but he had once seen a sketch of the ark, with it's dark wood and the ring of sixteen strange looking symbols surrounding his name:
Dakthohol di Saladi'ilm.
He had the same sexteen mysterious symbols tattooed around his golden tanned waist. Many times had they brought him comfort in his childhood, in the lonely hours or in a strong gale at sea and in the crowded ports when he had his last money stolen in some dark alley.
He reached out and took some of the fish he caught earlier that morning and sent a thought to the old fisherman who brought him up, until he was old enough to head out on the large merchant ships. As he was chewing he thought of his first voyage, the voyage were he after a month at sea for the first time felt the energy that flows in him and round him. The energy that had grown since grown on every voyage - every day at sea. He had been trying now for some time too reach it, to explore it, to learn it's ways and limits. And then finally he reached it, he could fell it's glory and power - it's vastness. It drew him closer and closer, so close that it was burning him - almost tearing him apart. He had to get away from it, had to push it away. But it was dragging him closer and closer. He pushed it away with all his mental force and then...
LIGHT!!
Weightlessness, gently floating and ...
SMACK!!
Water all around, silence and light below - no above. Have to get up there, and air at last.
He could not see any sign of the large ship only the little boat they had had in tow. He swam to it and climbed the rail. He look over the dead calm sea with wood scattered over a vast area.
A light breeze went across his forehead, tearing him from the memory, filling the sails and moving the boat.
He had to control this power - he had to seek help. He took the rudder and began the search...
Part I:
'Dull waves repeatingly run up the flat white sand, sometimes reaching the washed-up kelp, sometimes breaking in almost microscopic green rooms. Just to make life busy for the many sanderlings and stints foraging on the insects they bring in. The mocking of two large gulls sitting on a large wooden coffin mixed with the water gurgling on its sides. Suddenly the gulls take off as a blond head appears a few meters out in the water. Slowly it rises, dragging a well trimmed, muscular, but quite pale body up from the water. The tall young man opens the coffin and takes an expensive looking knife from a dark blue cloak. He starts to skin the fish he have brought from the sea, but stops and walks to a unlit fire to get that going before returning to the fish...
...After the last bite of fish has entered his white fence of teeth, he leans back against the coffin. Stretching his long naked body in the sun, that glitters in a little dark gem in his navel. This draws attention to the strange signs tattooed to a line round his waist.
After some time, when all seems to slumber into never ending idleness, he sits up quickly looking at a red bottle-shaped mountain in the distance. He knows that mountain. His life lies behind it...
Young unnamed man on the beach.
Part II:
His foot slipped on a loose stone and he thanked himself for the caution he had used all the way down the hillside and the firm grip he had in some grass. It was very treacherous! Not like the path he had been following for the last to days. It had been very hard to find and he cursed a lot when it vanished down this slope. But it was the same time that he had seen a thin stripe of smoke down in the valley. The only sign of humans he ever could remember to have seen - he had to find out more of it - he had to go down there.
He sad down under the burning sun and thanked the large blue cloak for its protection from the sun. It was hot but kept his skin from frying. It looked like there where water down there. It would be nice. It was some time since he last had had something to drink. He looked at the sun, it was not even at zenith yet, he better move before it got too hot. Maybe he could reach the trees down there in an hour or two.
He had not thought it would be this hard to reach the bottle mountain. It was just on the other side of the valley, but he had to climb much higher to get round a rift than he first thought. It did not look that difficult now. The first part after he left the coffin behind on the beach had been the worst, almost cliff climbing. It was not that he had much to carry; he had only brought the cloak, the knife, the odd stone from the coffin and some fruit, which had ended the second day.
Now there was nothing around him but stones, the sun and the shimmer in the heat haze. And a floating man, like an Indian fakir. No... it was a squid altering shape while pulsing light flickered along its sides. First it became a fish, then kelp, then another fish, then a shellfish, then a lump of wood, then a stone, a fish and then finally the floating fakir. He closed his eyes for a moment and the man was a feather falling from the sky. It could not be, but he was too tired to think of it now, he continued down the hillside.
At the end of the stones he got to the trees but they were below a cut-off edge he could not climb. He walked forth and back to find a place to get down in the promised land of shadow and water he could se below. Finally he got to the realization, that the only way to get down was to jump out into a tree and climb down that. He picked a promising tree and jumped. He got a firm grip on a branch but just as he thought "yes" the branch brooked and he fell down back first. He instinctively formed ball shape before all his air went out of him and he went out...
He felt his back hurt and slowly opened his eyes. He was in a low shed. He turned his head and saw an old, bony, hump-backed woman stirring in a pot over a small fire. She turned as if se knew that he was awake: "Oh, you're awake I see, you lucky basted. You darn near killed yourself. You should NOT climb trees in Breakwood, haven't your mom told you that?" He tried to answer, but the old woman continued: "You thank old Antaya for finding you and Darsey for bringing you here so I can look after you. You would have made many girls sad if you went dying, you would. Yes sir, yes sir. Here, drink this" She gave him something from the pot, that tasted awful but he was too tired to protest and drank all while she went on: "Not that there are any here, but we was once young you know. Once young and randy. Yes sir, yes sir. Now we are just randy, hihihihi. It ought to make you sleepy and 'co-operative'. Hihihihi. A stiff you know, hihihihi. Nighty, night. Hihihi..."
He fell back into the abyss of dark oblivion. He felt himself rise and saw a vulture soaring among the high mountain peeks looking down. It looked at him and he was sucked into its head. He looked through its eyes, seeing every small stone, bush and animal moving. It focused at something along a stream and he was thrown through its eyes down to it. It was teen small ears flapping along in a line. They queued up on a flat stone and hammered their little mallus on the anvil while hopping on their stirrup bone and miming Sigurd Fafnirsbane roasting the heart while the birds talked. Suddenly they all hided as a very small man rushed by on the path pulling himself by sniffing an endless line of white powder though a huge tube into his giant nose. He cursed when he almost hit a badger snuffling along, starting to dig in the ground felling with its nose all the time. Suddenly it breaks through and pulls out the sun that rises to the sky. It heat's up the ground, setting the grass on fire. Thick smoke whirls into endless dark clouds pouring tons of water down into the roaring wind that whirls it all into a vortex. Slowly it drags into a long thin string that whirls into a tighter and tighter knot, faster and faster - ending in an explosion - repeating, faster and faster and faster. Until it all is just a glowing ball that grows and grows - exploiting, slinging out rainbows in all directions. They all bended and returned to his in-side-out body faster and faster, ending by closing him right-side-out, trapping the light in him.
He opened his eyes, standing in ashes, surrounded by burning wood, while the old woman cried. "Stay from me, stay away. Don't burn me. No, no. Stay away. Arhh, arIIIIIhhh." Suddenly he had enough and cried, "Silence" and all went silent. As he started to walk from there he remembered his name:
Dakthohol di Saladi'ilm
Part III:
It was long into the next day before he heard the first bird. Singing melodiously from a little bush next to him. It had been a hard day before. He could still feel the pain in his legs from running all day and his back aching from the fall. It had been a very odd day. At first he had just be walking from the burned shed, but soon the panic caught him and he started to run. First slowly, trough the forest but soon faster and faster not stopping until he after hours had run right out into a very could stream. There he had escaped panic lying in the icy water. At first the numness had been wonderful, blocking out the world around. But soon he had grown stiff and the fire he felt with in had returned the panic. He had sprung from the stream and started of up the hill in a furious pace and had kept going until darkness fell and he ran strait into a rock that knocked him strait into a dreamless night.
Now he slowly sat up holding his head. What had happened yesterday? What was it the old lady had given him? He had to remember all the details. Ah, it was hard to think with that huge pumping ball on his forehead. He had to concentrate, look into himself - deep down in his memory.
Soon he slipped down in to unconscious again. Down, deep down in a never ending fall. But he could fell that he was not alone. He could hear the whirling sound climbing and climbing. He had to see.
"You cannot. HaHa. No, no, cannot" echoed a giggling voice from all directions. "I have control here. I am the Herbman. I can see everything. HaHa. Old fool cocked me hot. Little fool drank me up. I can do any thing. HaHa - HaHAHA"
"SILENCE" yelled Dakthohol and all sound disappeared, just as at the old woman. Long were just the fall and nothing else, then a word came to him and pressed itself out of his mouth:
"Light"
And all around him shone bright and blinding. In front of him was a little man-shaped root dancing, grinning from what would have been ear to ear, singing:
"Haha, Haha, you spoke my dear, now I sing your fear.
Haha, Haha, come and sit here near and all' be clear."
Haha, Haha, power you had like no one else"
He drew forth a little metal cage.
"Now I put it to shine in a little cage, locked up in a larger box, all hidden well in your little chest."
He went on in a 'normal' voice. "There you can see but not touch! HahaHA" This said all the light was sucked into the cage and the Herbman put it in a large heavy armoured box and locked it with a huge key, twisted trice. Then scrimped it between his hands to the size of a hen's egg, put it inside Daktohol's chest as if it was the natural thin to do, swallowed the key and said: "Now it is locked and safe and you cannot use it. HaHa. The key I keep. If you what it you can just visit me." This said he jumped into the earth and disappeared without a trace.
Dakthohol snapped awake with a grasp of air. He could feel a warm pain right next to his heart and a sniffing to his right, but all around him it was dark as coal. Remembering the dream a though struck him and he tryingly said: "Light" Nothing happened, except the sniffing stopped and what only could be described as a grouffling could now be heard. He tried to concentrate hard and visualize the box and light, as it had to be the power the Herbman had mentioned. Slowly he could see the box in his mind, with a little flame dancing on it. He concentrated on the flame and said: "Light!" again this time with real conviction. A bright light flashed like a lightning and all around him stood unnatural clear in a split second. He instinctively closed his eyes and he heard something squeal and rush off. He opened his eyes and in a dim light he could see an apple tree in front of him.
He felt hungry and took an apple and looked around. It was like the weak light followed his eyes. He held up his hand and saw it weakly then looked at his feet. The same, he could see in the dark. 'I am going to like this "power"' he thought smiling. Before he picked some more apples and set off in the dark.
Nearby a little squirrel ponder over the man with the glowing eyes walking by, while it stuffed yet another not into it's mouth. 'The young ones are not going to believe this when I tell them...'
Dakthohol di Saladi'ilm
~SpellCaster in chaos~ (- with glowing eyes -)
Location: unknown Time: unknown
PS: His waist tattoo looks like this: 
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