Colder than Ice, Hotter than Flame, part 4
The conclusion of Colder than Ice, Hotter than Flame.
( He led us to where a gully bounded by tall, rocky cliffs forked off the valley. )
( He led us to where a gully bounded by tall, rocky cliffs forked off the valley. )
Bear in mind that any explanation Kit gives Tam is going to be grossly oversimplified. I couldn't have given a complete explanation for both in-story and pacing reasons; the first because they don't have the vocabulary in the language they're speaking to talk about it -- we do in modern English, but it would have been OOC for them even if Kit thought about it in the same categories -- and the second because it would have made that infodump before they met the Wild Man even more tedious.
"Darkness" in the sense Kit means it here isn't the kind related to actual demonic power, even if it felt that way to Tam. The closest thing to it he had experienced was from a demon -- not "Shadow Duke", but an as yet unplotted incident in the meantime -- but even he could tell it wasn't quite that, hence "almost demonic", which was as much a description of Kit's projected emotion as anything else. For Kit it's a matter of polarity. That's part of a technical description of what was going on, but there are also factors on psychological, moral, and spiritual levels.
I have to admit that I didn't work out the technical aspects in detail, and was thinking more on the other levels. I could probably come up with some kind of "Treknobabble" type thing if I needed to, but I'm not convinced it would be very interesting.
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