Old Water

Written by: Wong Yong Bo (24-E1)

Designed by: Xavier Lee (24-02)

I

Miraculously, even in this weather, Emnivid, the prolific writer he was, had somehow not gone mad. Somehow. - Lunconid Trajia, Magus and Author, The White Tomb of Rangaross.

Emnivid had been sitting there for four hours waiting to leave; he just wanted to go outside to pin up yesterday’s news, buy the food for today and tomorrow, spend some time at the docks and then go back home. Yet he couldn’t. 

He still could hear it, even through the closed window: The howls, the screams and screeches of the winter storm, raging, flailing and slamming into the house, the mountain his house hung onto, and the few tree skeletons that stood. Three years this winter had kept raging, kept murdering. For some reason, only at day would it stop, and even then just for an hour. Through this, the town miraculously endured this otherworldly punishment befitting Loki.

Regardless, he stayed; Miserably, but he did. He had been waiting all this time for news of his family; his brother and father. At least that’s the lie he tells himself to keep him from insanity and madness; it takes three hours to even get out of the region. Nevertheless, he had some other justification. Of all the residents left in the town, only he would receive the news of the war on his desk at night — sent at night by a magus in the capital, a friend of a friend of a friend, only able to speak in a foreign language — and only he could translate, write and put it up on a notice board. To him, it was important; it was charity.

In front of him was a desk, on top: a manuscript for the third story he would write in his spare time. He played around with his pen; looked at the wood ceiling shake; looked down at his shoes, and had continued this sort of routine since sitting down. The paper remained empty. He found it ironic. Very ironic. 

Emnivid continued his routine until all the noise — the howling, the constant strain of the wood — disappeared. The snowstorm lifted. 

He stood up. Shoved his chair back into its spot. Then, he went to the doorway, layered a third valuable bear fur coat layer on top of his first two, and finally stepped outside. 

II

Emnivid first went to the notice board to pin up yesterday’s latest news, it was on the path to the main parts of the village anyway. A minor crowd, maybe a dozen people had already started crowding around and waiting for the latest news. Cries of “No, Harald!” and “My son!” were all he heard after he put the news up and walked away, with women and brothers burying their faces in the embrace of their remaining family. ‘It was to be expected,’ he told himself. The news regularly included sections on the death of units or battalions, and hopefully, specific names of soldiers had there been a body recovered — a recognisable one anyway. He began walking over to the market… 

“Hey Em!” only to be ‘harassed’ by her. Emnivid stopped, groaned, and turned around. As usual, she also brought two baskets.

“Good morning, Astrid,” he murmured. She had caught up right beside him, and they started walking off. Unusually, a coif hid her lush golden hair.

“So, where are we off to?” Astrid asked.

“I’m off to the market…” 

“All righ-”

“...And you’re off elsewhere,” he interrupted. 

“And the vegetables you always forget, Em?” She turned a little to look at him.

“I won’t. And stop calling me that.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, turning to face him directly, as he did too.  Like an enchanting witch penetrating his mind — her eyebrows furrowed, she squinted slightly, and stared a hole into his eyes. With a seemingly blank expression, he began, “I won’t-”

“And you’re not convincing anyone. Especially me,” she insisted firmly. 

A long pause, breathing in, followed by a breath out from him was all Astrid needed to know that she won. 

He began walking off, accompanied by her.

III

They reached the fragile, small, and shrinking marketplace soon after. Some people were hastily unloading the cargo from all over the Kingdom of Amphuten, transported via magus portals. They were quite fast, but they were still struggling. The pacing, the speed, everything needed to function; He stood admiring that: the skill, the intensity and labour, the dedicati-

“Hey! Are you not listening to me again?” she spat, tearing a hole through his trance.

“Wh-What… did…you say?”

“You…!” A sigh followed. “Never mind...” 

“I still don’t understand how you stand this cold so easily,” He voiced out, turning his attention to a stall selling fish.

“What do you mean- Are you calling me fa-” 

“No! I’m just asking how you don’t feel cold,” he defended with a slight grin, putting trout in the extra basket she brought. She only wore two visible layers: a velvet-smocked beige blouse and quite a thick white sheepskin coat. 

“Oh…I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of these fancy clothes someone bought me?”

Silence followed as he walked away, followed by her catching up to him.

“...Hey! Did you seriously not hea-” 

“Yes, I did. I bought those because you pestered me all day for them.” He approached another nearby stall for their beef. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever lets you sleep at night,” she added. Quickly scanning the selection, he picked out the tenderloin, handing the stall owner 10 pennings before leaving speedily for the frozen docks. 

“Aye! You forgot your vegetables again!” she yelled with a smile, stopping just before the market exit at the last stall.

He halted. He turned, and he started walking back to the market.

IV

Arriving on the docks, they stood on firm and rotting wooden panels. Everything below the skyline was a vista of pale blue, a veritable land reflecting the light of a much-missed sun, from the shore and docks out to the far horizon. He put his basket on the ground, and then sat on the edge of the wooden panels. Astrid joined him, and they looked off beyond the ice. His mind travelled to the fields and gardens of thoughts; both new and old.

Three years Rangaross had been slowly depopulating; some made the simple yet fatal mistake of staying out too long, and their corpses were found on the streets, trying to find their way home. Some lost it, and in turn, lost themselves in the white frost. He had heard sparse rumours of powerful magic, and their sorcery able to bring ruin to entire villages and towns, even cities in the most extreme terroristic cases, but what had the town Rangaross got to do with it? It sounded far too outlandish to him. 

Yet, what other explanation was there

“...How’s your writing? When can I read your next novel?” she inquired.

“Huh What?” Emnivid was snapped out of his thoughts. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

She sighed yet again. “I said how’s your writing and when can I read your new novel!” she repeated, and like a child, dragging out “novel” at the end. 

“Oh. It hasn’t been…” He scratched his head, “Ideal. And it might take a very long while before you get to read the next one; I’m stuck on page 5.” 

“That must be tough. I know it must be hard.” She looked at him. “Sorry about your mom, still. Missing her probably isn’t helpin’ at al-” 

“Pardon?” 

“About your mom: She died a few days ago, right?” Her expression held a softened warmth, while his grew to a strong irritation and anger, unbeknownst to her. “That’s why you keep looking at the unloading…She worked the hardest too-”

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“Shut. It.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It is like I told you before: don’t talk about her-”

“It’s better to talk it through than to-” Emnivid shot up. He picked up his basket, and swiftly walked away. She stood up and shouted to him, “Wait! I’m sorry! I just wanna hel…” yet he didn’t stop.

V

Walking back to his house, through the market and the path between, he thought, ‘How dare she…’ His breath had become more erratic, and so had his mind, ‘Who does she think she is? We are not even that close and she thinks she can…’ 

He finally made it back to his house, past the ‘annoying’ crowds who blocked his way at the notice board. ‘That damned woman…getting in my business for no reason…should have never let her…’ Sitting in the chair he had occupied for so many mornings and evenings, leaving the third coat on for warmth. He tried to write. Tried. Every idea was a garbled mess. He tapped his feet; shook his leg; readjusted his fur coat in the usually cold room. Hours went by like this. Nonetheless, page six remained empty. 

“Damn it…” he thought aloud, and he exhaled again. He took out his diary and frustratedly scribbled circles before he wrote some quick words on the other page. Next, he heard it.

Sounds. Crystalline sounds. A piece of paper. A falling piece of paper…A magus portal.

‘R-Right. News from the capital,’ he remembered. He took the new reports from the desk drawer, but hastily and mindlessly skimmed through them. ‘This is all because she-’

He stopped his hand on page 34, almost flipping to the next, staring at those handwritten words. The house stood, weathered but stable. Yet Emnivid was frozen. ‘The almost complete wipeout of the Lion Battalion…’ he read. ‘It can’t be…that isn’t Dad and Magni’s battalion, right?’ he thought. He re-read that one page over and over and over, again and again and again. Yet, the words did not abandon the page, and his eyes were red. He hurriedly flipped in search of the casualty report. Every page he passed wrote more dread and worries into the book of his conscience. He scanned every square inch of the report pages, ‘Page one, nothing; page two, nothing either…’ filling him with some vigour of relief, or worry, as their names weren’t present

Until they were. They appeared.

‘Magni Trajia’ and ‘Audomn Trajia’.

He repelled from his seat; He had almost fallen... His eyes had become watery, and slowly he walked backwards till he was against the wall. Then, he slowly became smaller and smaller, until he curled up into a ball. The tears abandoned his eye socket. Leaving them; disappearing into fabric. The more he looked into his feelings about their deaths, the more his sobs came, like a tear expanding on cloth. Then, his head looked to the table; to the paper.

And he screamed, “WHY?”

The screech that pierced the house's walls, the snowstorm, and even the heavens itself came out. The rawest declaration of his rage and frustration at a volume even the neighbours might’ve heard. 

He got up slowly; Breath completely erratic. He walked over to his desk, and swept the contents of the desk onto the floor. He next picked up the chair, raising it high, and onto the desk, he-

Slammed. “WHY?”

Slammed. “WHY?”

Slammed. “WHY ME?”

Slammed. “WHY ALWAYS ME?”

He slammed until the chair had disintegrated, to which he hurled it onto the bed. Then, next were the walls of his very house. More babblings of “WHY?” or different variations of it were all he could manage as he pulverised his house with his hands.

Screams. Incomprehensible sounds. Tears. Violence. Accusations; Both to the gods and the world, mixed in one night, into one man. 

The ice had shattered.

VI

The next day, the neighbours came in to look for him, mainly because the news hadn’t been posted. The house they found was ravaged. The weathered slanted roof greeted them as warmly as the snowstorms, with the addition of fist-sized holes broken into the walls; some even contained drips of dried blood. The door was unlocked and opened; seemingly for a long time too, considering snow had colonised a good amount of the house. A hollow and deathly chill permeated the house. In his bedroom: An irreparably damaged chair on the bed, a smashed desk, and papers all over the floor. 

Maybe, most jarring of all, he was nowhere to be found.

Perhaps he had truly lost it during his breakdown. Perhaps his contempt had fermented to a deadlier sadness during the night. 

Perhaps that's why he chose to escape into the white frost.