Crystal Clear

The lanky tall Elf had taken his eyes off Tu for only a few minutes, to speak with a gardener who had approached him about beans. The gardener had looked quite frantic and was incredibly excited to see Goober back in the homeland. Meanwhile Tu had been helping himself to a cup of water at the well from a crystal Goblet. (The Goblet was of course an invention of the Goblins, who crafted these drinking vessels out from clear crystal Quartz.)

“Stop! how much have you drunk?” yelled Goober insistently, when he realised what was to come next.

This well appeared similar to many of the other wells in Faerie - except for the sign in Elvish script engraved in its stone saying:

“Beware all who drink here”.

Tu obviously had not read the sign.

Goober put his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes.

“Oh Gawd, what did you have to do that for?” Of course he knew it was he himself that was to blame.

Tu stepped back … already his eyes were beginning to haze over. He quickly sat on the ground, the world had gone dark … he could hear voices but he could no longer see anything.

There was a rush of hot air around him - hot moist air - and the sweet fragrances had been replaced with the stench of burning … or more accurately - flesh burning.

He could hear a clashing and a banging. The sound was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place what it was, and worse still, coming to him, closer and closer, were the sounds of men crying mournfully, with the occasional scream puncturing the dense air about him. It was too dark to make out where he was, and what was happening.

He closed and opened his eyes, yet it was still the same either way. Tu clenched his fists with tension and attempted to stand up with his back against the well wall; he leant shakily on the shelf there … the stones felt slimy, perhaps moss? But no. It was a much thicker, stickier texture. 

In a strange way all of this seemed very familiar. If his depression had been let out of a bag, this is what he might have heard or sensed following him for all of his days. But no. It is an impossible thought. His depression manifest?

The ethers were beginning to lighten, and he could make out shapes in the mist in the half dark now. Vaguely as though in a the most terrible dream, Goober’s voice could be heard in the distance. Perhaps he had been transported somewhere else, he did not know, but he seemed very far away from his friend, and was helpless with the hellish noises all about.

As though there was a theatre curtain revealing what lies behind, so too there came to the Master, a vision of a bloodied and dismembered mass now fully lit. Hundreds of bodies, a tangle of metal, ruptured by yet more metal; maidens laid bare, old women broken boned, contorted, cradling infants - and he knew what this scene was in front of him - it was the vision of his legacy.

“They are not real my boy” came Goobers voice - “they are just memories of what passed long ago. When you drank from the well it revealed to you your overshadowing burden.”

“This, this then is all mine?” asked Tu, still caught between the vision and Goober’s voice. But he knew inwardly the answer. He knew in this instantaneous recall that this was of a time where he had led the charge that caused this suffering and death.

All in the name of good. It was a revelation. So much had happened since, where he had been buffeted through lifetimes of disarray running from this ineffable truth. This was on him. this scene of dereliction was his.

“No wonder I’ve been depressed” he said.

And as soon as he had said this, he was returned ever so swiftly back into the sunlight of Faerie.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series