Shadows of the Lithilium

“No. There is no way.”

I am so shocked that I actually say the words out loud. No one in the room seems to notice my presence, and my voice doesn’t draw any attention either. The figure in the center of the crater, lying prone in scorched and shredded clothing, is Bloquan.

“But how did Bloquan get here?”

My brain struggles to understand what my eyes are seeing. If my body was under my normal control I would have staggered back and fallen to my knees. As it is I remain suspended a few inches off the floor as my body goes slack.

“I’m sorry my friend. I thought the formula was stable. I thought I had finally done it!”

It takes a moment for me to realize that the man cradling Bloquan is speaking. His words slowly begin to fit the pieces of the puzzle together in my mind. Somehow I’ve been transported to the past and am witnessing the moment that Bloquan became a Lithilium.

“How did I get here?”

Bloquan’s eyes snap open and in the same heartbeat his arm comes up, launching the rotund man who had been hunched over him through the air as though he doesn’t weigh anything. The man smashes into one of the remaining bookshelves with a sickening crunch. The impact causes the bookshelf to topple on to a table full of instruments and papers with a crash.

After a moment more of hesitation Bloquan sprints for the doorway out of the building. I think about following him and instantly my body is following him on his mad dash through the forest surrounding what I assume must be a laboratory of some sort. As Bloquan forces himself through the underbrush branches whip back and pass straight through my body. The first time it happens I flinch and try to dodge, but before long I am used to the effect and don’t even notice it happening.

The light fades away around us as Bloquan runs for mile after mile. I know that he can see as well as I can in the dark, so it doesn’t surprise me that he continues running through the rest of the night. As the sun comes up again Bloquan is still running. After a moment I notice a smell that seems familiar, but I can’t place what it is. Suddenly we burst out of the trees into a clearing.

I see a flash of dark hair, a flicker of something flying into the air, and then hear a thud as Bloquan tumbles to the earth rolling over a young man who appears to have been gathering food by the contents of the basket now lying far from the pair of them near the center of the clearing.

I stop moving as soon as I am aware that something has changed, a handy perk of whatever this is that I’m experiencing. I look down at the pair and see that Bloquan has landed on top. He seems to be covered in small scratches, which even as I watch close leaving only the faintest trace of blood on the surface of his skin. He rolls off of the boy and onto his feet.

“A very young man.”

He appears to be quite tall, dark hair, and is also covered in small scratches that must have been made as he and Bloquan rolled across the ground, and seems to be completely unconscious. He also looks vaguely familiar to me.

“It’s me!”

It feels like a bolt of lighting through me as the realization hits.

“That means this must be the day that I transformed.”

Listening carefully now I can hear the village I had stumbled into that day. Memories wash over me, but Bloquan only pauses for a second before running in the opposite direction of the village. I’m torn about what to do, whether to stay with my past self, or continue chasing Bloquan, but after a moment the decision is made for me. I feel myself being pulled in the direction that Bloquan went. Clearly whatever is happening to me is tied to Bloquan in some way. I reluctantly yield to the pull and am almost instantly right behind Bloquan again.

“I suppose this does make the most sense, since I’ve already lived out the events of my own life.”

The thought doesn’t bring me much comfort.

Bloquan continues running, changing course anytime the sound of civilization can be heard on the distance.

“Why is he so careful to avoid other people? He only just became a Lithilium, no one knows to hate him yet.”

Bloquan finally begins to slow and look around as the sun begins to settle along the horizon. He stops on an outcropping of rock sticking out above the tree lined slope of the mountain I didn’t realize we had begun climbing. He gazes out over the landscape, scanning from one edge of the horizon to the other, and then grunts to himself and slides down the outcropping of rock. Trotting off to the north, around the side of the mountain.

As we round the mountain I begin to realize where we are.

“But how did he know this was here?”

In the distance is a single stone peak pointing into the sky. The peak is broad at the base, and narrows to a sharp point in a smooth gradual curve, almost as if some giant hand had carved it and set it down for later. Bloquan continues making his way to the peak. Suddenly the landscape around us blurs out of focus and I feel a lurch in my perception of reality. I close my eyes and settle for a moment. When I open them again Bloquan and I are at the base of the peak.

“He’s been here before!”

Bloquan climbs with purpose and surety to match the tone of his run from the alchemist’s laboratory where he had been transformed. It begins to dawn on me that I really don’t know anything about Bloquan’s past. I went to him long after he began collecting Lithilium around himself, and he rarely chose to talk about himself or what his life had been before he began collecting his Lithilium followers.

Bloquan climbs to a point about halfway up the mountain and slips into a crevice little wider than his body. The crevice opens up to a point where Bloquan can turn his body perpendicular to the walls after about 10 feet. The tunnel continues on for another 15 feet, with enough twists and turns that the sunlight from the entrance is no longer visible. With our enhanced eyesight Bloquan and I have no trouble seeing, but any reasonable human should have turned around and headed back for the light and warmth of the sun.

Seemingly without warning the crevice opens up to a space several miles wide, and even more than that tall. The entire inside of the mountain seems to have been hollowed out, though I know there are no tool marks on the walls. I have always wondered how Bloquan found Drithlalic, but I am very familiar with it. This is where Bloquan gathers his army for the next two-hundred years.

“But how did that army form?”

It was a question that had never really occurred to me. When I became Lithilium no one had really known what happened to me, but there is a quality to Lithilium that has always scared regular people. I’d learned that first hand the day I became a Lithilium all those years ago.

Bloquan continues through the cavern. Passing through a murky darkness even my enhanced Lithilium eyes can barely penetrate. We go by giant monoliths of stone, their tips lost in the murk above us. Bloquan makes his way to a second, smaller, cave off of the main chamber, then to a ledge along the back wall. From the very back of the ledge he pulls out a sword with jagged edges.

The blade of the sword is cankered with rust. The hilt appears to have once been wrapped in leather, but now shows only stains and scraps of what once was there. The pummel is made of a stone that I don’t recognize, wrapped in a coppery wire that appears resistant to the ravages of time.

“I’ve never seen that sword before. What is he planning?”

For the first time it really strikes me how much time lies between this moment and when I came to Drithlalic.

“I never really understood Bloquan’s plans it seems.”

There is clearly so much intention to what Bloquan is doing now, that I can tell he’s planned it all out well before hand. Without warning something shifts in my perception of the world. Everything feels as though it is just slightly out of focus. Then it begins sliding away into a pin prick of light. Finally it is just black. Nothing around me. Nothing left but my sense of self.