Chapter XVII
Meet Madness
3rd of Late Spring, 376, 5th Era – Yikir, Southern Helkras
Mawing looked out at the city of Yikir, a pleasant view, and a beautiful city by the light of the evening. The wood and stonework was exceptionally made as well as symbiotic with the natural landscape. Broadleaf forests and mountains surrounded the dwelling, where it nestled right into the spurs of the peaks.
The King of Helkras was on the height of a table-like cliff top, where he had an excellent view of the city and its southern fortress. But he had no patience for the beauty of the place; his daughter and granddaughter were in the hands of an infamous madman who hated him, and he was still ten days away from them. Ten days at the least.
When he had been approached by the grimy, coarsely dressed man in his own court, he almost hadn’t believed the vandal’s wild tale. But what else could it have been but the truth? No one was supposed to know where Leyfian was except for a chosen few, and almost no one at all knew where exactly Kelestil had gone. On top of that, the Hargirmian outlaw had given their precise whereabouts and physical descriptions perfectly, as if to somebody who didn’t know their faces by memory. If Mawing had been a forgetful person, the bandit’s description of them would have reignited his memories.
Of course the messenger had demanded ridiculous terms on behalf of King Darenhar, and had expected to saunter back out a free man. Mawing had let no such thing occur. The nameless courier was his prisoner now, and if Darenhar expected the messenger to return quickly, well, Mawing was driving his army hard.
One of the unbelievable demands that the bandit had listed was that Mawing would approach Theargern unarmed and with only a few for escort. Like some kind of beggar pleading with his overlord. Mawing had almost spit in disgust; he would come to Theargern with a full army and besiege the city. If Darenhar tried to threaten him by holding his family to a knife or some such . . . even the madman wouldn’t dare try that, not without an army to back his threats, and Darenhar had lost his armies long since.
Perhaps I should have destroyed him when he was weak instead of letting him sit quietly, thinking that he was defeated. Mawing sighed angrily. He wasn’t usually roused to anger, but Darenhar had woken the fire in him, which had been frozen for many years.
With some amount of satisfaction, King Mawing appreciated the sight of his fifty-thousand strong army, encamped throughout the forest and within the city. It was the largest he could muster within so short a time, and more would be added by the next morning, when the fortress emptied out. All were mounted, and many of the horses were armored like their riders. Giant plow-horses pulled carts and wagons full of supplies or food, and regular horses were tied up in long lines, waiting to descend south.
Mawing looked to either side of him; the Counselor stood waiting to one side while Captain Taylan was at attention in his armor. The soldier held the pole of a flag of Helkras firmly in the ground, allowing the pennant to fly freely in a lively gust. Taylan had been somewhat demoted in his duties; since Mawing was taking command of his armies, the Captain no longer had control of the fortress or its residents, and he had reverted to his original rank. Taylan didn’t seem to mind, though—he looked relieved to be rid of such a heavy, dull burden and to be back in his steel plating again. There were Generals and High Captains throughout the army, dealing with the usual duties of command, but Mawing would lead them to battle and coordinate them as he saw necessary. It had been some years since he had worn his gilded, carven armor, so the suit of steel and boiled leather felt strange on his shoulders. The longsword on his hip, however, felt as familiar as it had twenty years in the past. He fingered the plain steel pommel and sighed.
These next ten days can not pass quickly enough, he thought impatiently. He was also a very patient and reserved man, but when his family was endangered, many personality traits fell to the wayside. Destiny can not mean to play with me like this—I am sure it won’t, but it can be fickle.
“Perhaps we should gain some rest while we have the chance,” the Counselor suggested with a yawn. He was utterly worn and groggy; no one involved with the army had gotten much sleep because of the long rides through the day, but the Counselor in particular had done everything he could to coordinate and plan the strategies of the force, two things that were unasked of him, but which his fidgety nature made him do out of instinct.
“Do what you like, Counselor,” Mawing addressed, not feeling half as awake as the other man. He was in a half-meditative state, viewing the situation from all angles while his body made sure that he was still standing. His brother-in-law stumbled off to a nearby mount and rode down the path to Yikir.
While Taylan stood still as a carving, the King went on with his thoughts. My army will be more than enough to wipe out Theargern, if it comes to that. Leyfian has to live at any cost, for the world . . . If Darenhar manages to surprise me with an actual army, I doubt that it would be even half the size of mine. In any foreseeable case, I can win and save my family, so long as Darenhar retains enough of his mind to know when he has lost. He nodded to himself, unconsciously watching as huge, black vultures circled high in the heavens. He thought that he knew Darenhar and the madman’s assets.
He was wrong.
Leyfian glared at the man who had imprisoned her daughter, just as he walked meticulously towards her. Darenhar had a blank, observant mask on, viewing her from odd angles as he circled her slowly in a spiral. Mithourn was almost utterly ignored as it went on.
The guards had been shooed off by Dirkfang, while the General himself had taken a seat at the long dining table, his booted feet propped up on the wooden top, cluttered in amongst the empty plates and bowls. It had been long since Theargern had hosted a feast.
“She has a nice ass, don’t you think?” Dirkfang commented placidly, but Darenhar just gave him a frown, then continued with his odd inspection of Leyfian.
Finally, the King stopped, facing the unnerved woman directly. “This is Leyfian of Helkras,” he confirmed with a nod. As if he knew! He had never seen her in his life, so she could literally be anyone, and he would never know. But then, it was pure insanity to question insanity.
“Where is my daughter?” Leyfian ventured to ask in a quivering voice. Her anger had somewhat been subdued by the strange events, and kicking Dirkfang in his crotch had been a great way to relieve a lot of that rage. Now, it would be best to act calm and controlled. “Where have you put her?”
“Somewhere,” Darenhar answered with a mysterious tone. “You might not recognize her remains,” he added with a little cock of his head.
Leyfian leapt forward and throttled him by the shoulders. Seeing how small she was in comparison to the King, the effect was very limited. “What did you do to her!? Answer me!”
Darenhar just laughed as he was shaken about, and then pushed her away with a violent shove, causing her to stumble and land on her bottom. “I forget, that was the horse!”
“What?” Leyfian noised, bewildered. She blinked from where she was, sprawled on the marble floor. He fooled me! Or is he just so insane that he can’t remember anything correctly? I’m feeling insane just trying to figure him out. From all of her experiences with prying into peoples’ personalities and gently probing their quirks, this was the most impossible. The man had already shown four or five different personalities in the space of two minutes!
Dirkfang cackled in the background clicking his tongue. “I said that he has his moments, but I correct myself—he has his days!”
Mithourn exhaled deeply, sounding ready to growl. He held out a hand for Leyfian, helping her stand, and when she was on her feet again, he turned to Darenhar who was stroking his chin reflectively. “Show us Kelestil, and return her to Leyfian,” he demanded.
Darenhar made a sneering noise in his throat. “So you think that you can order me around? That is your mistake, soldier. I hold the power here, and you will kneel before me if I command it. But, as your kind host, I will humor you and show the lady Leyfian her daughter.” His tone was one of disgust, so it seemed that he considered them less than grotesque worms writhing on the ground. He truly hated Helkras and its people.
The King snapped his fingers at Dirkfang. “Keep them right where they are; I will retrieve Kelestil.” He walked off in towards an empty corridor, towards where his throne room resided. When he came by dim ways to the girl’s dungeon cell, he found Hafkil there, keeping watch over the granddaughter of King Mawing. He had observed over the days as those two conversed and kept each other company, and he could see that they had adopted each other like family. Hafkil probably saw her like one of his own daughters, both of which had been sold along with the rest of the women.
Darenhar had no pity for any of the women he had forsaken; he would have his vengeance at any cost, even if he died at the end of it. So long as Helkras burned.
“Step aside, vagrant,” he said, kicking Hafkil in the ribs. The man didn’t even respond, he just rolled over to stand off in the corner, silently watching.
Darenhar fumbled for his keys, pushing the first that came to his fingers into the keyhole of the cell-door. The barred threshold swung open, but Kelestil just looked up at him with fearful eyes. “Out,” he commanded, and the girl listened obediently, taking two steps out of her prison. It was the first time he had allowed her to come out; he could see that she had suffered for it with a layer of grime and dirt. She was almost in the condition he wanted her to be when he trotted her out in front of her mother. If she just had a bruise to add to the affect . . .
He turned maniacally to Hafkil. “Strike her,” he said, thinking it would be better to come from Hafkil’s hand rather than his. It would betray the girl’s trust and upset her far more.
“No,” Hafkil protested in an incredulous voice.
“STRIKE HER!” Darenhar bellowed abruptly. When Hafkil just gave him a bland look, he changed his perfect plan for something more practical. “I’ll just do it myself,” he announced, bringing his hand back for a slap. But he never had the chance to swing his arm; he found himself getting thrown against the bars of a cell, with strong hands strangling his neck. Hafkil had finally cracked.
Darenhar had no weapon on him, and there was no hope for interference in such a secluded part of The Palace, so the King reached out to jab his ex-general in the eyes. Spit flew from his mouth as he croaked, spluttering, and his arms fell uselessly when Hafkil pummeled him in the crotch and the gut with a knee. His vision wavered, and then focused again as noises of steel invaded his ears. He fell to his backside as guards (arriving as if by providence) beat Hafkil into submission with gauntleted fists, then he stumbled to his feet, bruised parts throbbing, including his neck.
He rubbed at his throat. “Punish him thoroughly—make sure he never forgets this, but keep him alive.” Kelestil shrieked at that, yelping at them to not hurt The Bear, begging for the man. The King smiled. “You won’t even recognize him when they’re done with him,” he said, gaining tears from her. It was better than Darenhar himself could have managed with his previous plan; the girl was perfectly traumatized. He forewent striking her and followed the guards out of the dungeon as they took Hafkil off to be tortured. But where they left down one corridor, he went along another, to end up in the dining hall where Leyfian and Mithourn were held. He got an instant reaction.
Mithourn really did growl and Leyfian cursed the King with several foul words. She dashed up to her daughter, shoved Darenhar back a step and pulled Kelestil off to a corner of the room where she enveloped her child in her arms and stood there comforting her. Darenhar let the two brew for a moment and he took a glance at Mithourn, who stood between him and the womenfolk.
The bigger man was glaring at the King, obviously grinding his teeth into oblivion as he did so. “You’ll pay for this, Darenhar,” the High Captain said in Hargirmian, the language that Darenhar was more familiar with.
The madman responded in the same tongue. “Your country will be the one to suffer, and very soon, I will witness as it is dismantled. I pray you’re ready for it, because you and all of Leyfian’s family will be forced to watch as it is burned. And then you will all die as the final example.”
“Just see if it happens,” Mithourn challenged, storming up to Darenhar and glaring down at him with furious eyes. The soldier knew that he couldn’t murder the King, or all would fall to chaos, with him and the two women the first to die afterwards, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t give Darenhar a good waling. He restrained himself, cracking his knuckles in the effort as he clenched his fists tight. If he upset the madman, he realized that he could very well be killed, despite all that Darenhar had said. Breaking the King’s nose wouldn’t be worth leaving Leyfian and Kelestil without a companion and protector. Even if all I’ve done is steep them into worse and worse trouble . . . I can still help them out of this. He glanced at the woman and the girl, feeling a determination arise in him; he would see them in there own home again, uninjured and happy. He gave Darenhar a violent glare, then took a step back.
The tyrant smiled in satisfaction. “Guards!” he howled, and armored sentries burst into the chamber from several thresholds. “Take the man and woman back to their room.”
Leyfian gasped. “NO! I won’t go; I won’t!” She clutched Kelestil close to herself, the girl returning the action just as fiercely.
“Separate them,” Darenhar added as a command to his soldiers, waving his hand noncommittally in the air.
There was a struggle, after which Leyfian and Mithourn lost, and Kelestil was taken back to her cell crying. Leyfian cried as well, but not for the bruises on her back and arms, necessary wounds inflicted to detach her from her daughter. She moaned, begging to do anything at all if Darenhar would just give Kelestil back to her. She had to be pushed along to her room, and Mithourn had to be dragged, as the guards had been forced to be far more firm with him.
So they were back where they had begun; only Leyfian was now weeping quietly to herself as she watched over Mithourn where he had been thrown on the bed, cleaning his bloodied face and trying to Heal both of their bruises and gashes with her grief-weakened Magic.
Mithourn came to quickly, likely aided by her caressing fingers. He took a hold of her hand and gave her a stony gaze. “I’m going to kill Darenhar, and I’m going to get Kelestil back. You will return home.” He said it more to stoke his own inner furnace of determination than to assure her.
Leyfian nodded, and then ground her teeth much like Mithourn was apt to. “I fucking hate Darenhar! I want Kelestil back, but we’re so powerless, it’s hopeless. It’s hopeless.”
“Maybe it is,” Mithourn said tiredly, “but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. We’ll find a way. Kanni and Gelvir may even find some luck in helping us.” He did not sound so sure of that.
Leyfian took a deep breath, letting it out slowly afterwards. She sat on the bed next to Mithourn and felt as the emptiness gnawed its way inside of her. The longer she was away from the Kelestil the more it hurt, and her brief visit with her daughter had only made it worse. She laid down beside Mithourn, and they whiled away the hours gaining lost rest, as there didn’t seem to be anything better to do.
Nothing happened the rest of that day; it was quiet outside the door, and neither of them had the mind to go shouting at the guards again, so they napped intermittently until night came. It was deep in the darkness of day’s counterpart when they were both roused from sleep.
Heavy, rhythmic pounding echoed faintly through the ground and caused the bed to quiver slightly. And outside the window there was a . . . rasping . . . noise that made both of them quiet their breathing and look around suspiciously. In Leyfian’s case, she was terrified, but Mithourn had suffered every type of terror through his nightmares, so monstrous breathing was among the lesser of them. Still, the gritty, heavy breaths were unnerving, and Mithourn looked cautiously through the window to the outdoor courtyard. Nothing.
Wait, no, there is something . . .
A night-shrouded, lumbering shape moved around in the courtyard and then faded into the dark. The rasping breathing went away with it, and Mithourn laid back down silently.
The drumming continued.
After a day and night in the cave, it became depressing. Kanni woke from horrifying dreams, and she got little sleep in between them, kept awake by the memory of life and nightmare. She snuggled against Gelvir, just wanting to feel that someone was there. She didn’t mind in the least when he put his arm around her in his sleep.
By morning, she was haggard enough to pass out on the blankets while Gelvir got to moving around. After a too-short nap, she woke to nibble at some food, then huddled into a corner to wait for something to happen. Gelvir just paced around for a while, and they both let loose their own sighs into the air of the cavern.
“Let’s open up the wall,” the Captain announced at last. “We need some open space and crisp air,”
Kanni thought to ask about the danger of revealing themselves again so soon after being discovered, but she was too tired to protest. She just sat against the wall until Gelvir stood her up like a mutinous child. Was he getting a little too familiar with her? She didn’t really care at the moment.
“Just a little work, and then you’ll be grateful for it,” he encouraged, so Kanni forced some Magic into herself. It really was a pain when she was so tired and tortured.
I killed several men . . . she thought as the wall to the outside was slowly torn down. I . . . killed . . . people. It was truly making an affect on her now, the preliminary shock and detachment gone, replaced by full realization. As soon as the stone barrier fell away she dashed out of the hole and vomited into the grass.
Gelvir came out right after her, looking around and scanning the area for enemies while she took care of her business. When she stood up, feeling sick in every one of her Essences, he held out a handkerchief to her. He must have had a dozen of those things, the way he was always giving one to her and she never returned them.
The man tried to comfort her just by pointing out the calm beauty of the landscape outside of Theargern, such as a group of elk and the waving grasses, or the azure sky with the two moons, one of teal and another of crimson. Then he proposed a more intelligent way to infiltrate Theargern, and she approved of his plan.
Just his presence calmed her, whether her high energy was positive or destructive. He also made her feel well again, after having felt severely ill in both body and spirit. She doubted that Ålund could have done much better.
Another day passed, and then on the night of third, Gelvir prepared to leave. Kanni’s part to play in the new plan required her to stay in the hideout, or nearby it at the least. Just before the Captain left, the mage pulled on her bold side and gave him a rib-crushing hug, pouring all of her positive Magic into him. He sighed contentedly, and she breathed ecstatically, feeling the return of his brightened spirit.
Kanni felt a little drained after that, but perfectly happy in a way that she hadn’t felt in a while, especially since her deadly mishap with the thunderstorm. Her satisfaction could only be compared to one thing, so far as she was aware, and she was a little alarmed. Why do I feel like we just . . . had sex?
Gelvir didn’t seem to notice her dilemma; he just let a hand slide off her shoulder before leaving the cavern without a word. Kanni waited for a third of an hour while she sorted out her odd feelings, and then stuffed those thoughts to the side when the time came. Dus`ridyian had already passed with the early night, so she made her way out into the dark by clouded starlight, going a little distance to a nook in a hill, two-hundred feet away from the walls of Theargern. Then the fun began.
The half-overcast sky blossomed with fire and blooming explosions which roared across the plains, sounding like a gong above the city. Kanni was excellent at Elemental Magic, and she used it to full effect now, hoping to cause such a distraction that every living soldier in Theargern would go out to view it. She avoided using Lightning—she was sure that she would be traumatized by the Element for a while before she could bear to use it again.
The sky was alive with fierce, billowing flames, making Kanni feel as if she were causing another Great Blooming of The Sky. The event had been the turning point which had caused the Fourth Era to become the Fifth, and it had lasted three or so years. The heavens had simply burst alight with countless nebulae, new stars and entire galaxies, all of them centered towards the north. No one could guess what had caused the event, nor what had ended it, taking the nebulous material and stars away to make the sky normal again.
Although Kanni did not create a new Blooming, she made an excellent distraction with red fire, which rent the sky in pieces. The trouble was that she could only keep such a display going for a few moments. That limitation was why she hadn’t torn Theargern to rubble already, or killed Darenhar and his armies. She might have killed two-hundred men directly with her fiery explosions, and more besides with the aftereffects, but if she had put herself in the den to perform her deed, there would be a good piece more than two-hundred men, and any one of them could load an arrow into her back when she had just begun. Besides, she was still hurting from killing just a few men who obviously hadn’t been well-meaning. How she would suffer knowing that countless people had died by her hands without even seeing her. She hoped that she never had to kill again.
As all of those thoughts cycled through her mind, her fire-show grew smaller and weaker, until she slowly sunk to the ground, falling fast asleep in the grasses without a single dream. The fires winked out, letting the night seep into the sky again.
By that time, Gelvir had already singled out a soldier at the threshold to the wide cave opening, knocked the fellow out and taken on his armor as a disguise. Right about the moment he entered the underground stables was when he heard explosions shaking the keep from outside. The horses were oddly calm about the disturbance, but the men throughout the stables and in the actual Palace were stirred to a panic, and they scattered every which way, either hiding from or trying to find the source of the noise. They kept shouting something about creatures escaping from their . . . cages? Gelvir couldn’t accurately say, because he knew nothing about the Hargirmian language, and could only pick out a few words that were similar to Helkrasic. From what he heard, they sounded afraid of some beasts held in The Palace that had escaped their prisons. What would they think if they knew that it was just one woman making the firestorm?
Whatever their thoughts were on the current chaos, Gelvir didn’t really care; their cacophony of noise and movement gave him the perfect background to slip by unnoticed. His new outfit would keep them all from giving him a second glance, but if just one had the mind to ask him a question or address him, it would all be for nothing, and he didn’t think that he could escape after that.
He wondered how Kanni was doing; she had warned him that she could only keep up a large display for a few moments, but the booms and crackles outside were already fading after just one minute. Maybe the time had just escaped him; he was quite deep into The Palace already. The small parchment in his hand was already pooling over with charcoal writing. Right, up, right, left and then down, he listed off as he walked in those directions, putting down the corresponding arrow on the paper as he went. He would just reverse all of those directions when he decided to turn back. He hoped to learn Leyfian and Mithourn’s location before then, but the chances of that were very slim.
He passed several other guards, acting like he was responding to an urgent call, and the ploy worked marvels. Not one of them spoke a word in his direction, so he wasn’t forced to ignore a possible command or greeting.
He passed by a beaten, rag-clad middle-aged man who stumbled down the hall alone, but he ignored the poor beggar and turned down another corridor. It seemed that Kanni’s Magic show paired with the contrast of night had taken many of the Palace residents off, emptying most of the rooms and passages.
Gelvir had gone by hundreds of closed doors after only a little while, and he was tempted to start opening one after another to search the rooms hidden behind them. But then, he realized that if Leyfian and Mithourn were imprisoned in one of the rooms, they would likely be under guard. If there were no sentinels keeping an eye on the two, then it was likely that they were held in a dungeon someplace, where bars would be their guards.
He eventually found himself going down one of the countless sandstone halls, but one with wide open windows lining one side without glass or curtains. They looked out north to the city of Theargern, viewing the lantern-lit city with its levels and streets. It was a pleasant-looking city, but it was only half-lit, and populated with a quarter of its capacity, so it seemed lonely and dead.
Gelvir grunted as he collided with another armored soldier, a man of his build. The older fellow said something in a mild voice, but Gelvir just pushed past him and went down the nearest hall. He had hoped that it would end at that, but it seemed that the stranger had noticed something, and the soldier confronted him. Obviously, Gelvir couldn’t tell a thing that the graying man said, except that there was some mention of the color red and the a sword. The Captain sighed. No one south of Helkras had red hair unless they were foreigners, and even Gelvir’s ruddy hair was no exception. And Hargirmians didn’t make or carry long broadswords on their backs; they used short swords and polearms, and from what he had seen, the military code and discipline in Theargern was strict. Gelvir wished that he had left his sword behind, but it was too late for that, and he was left with no choice but to draw it from its sheath.
The other man took a cautious step back and put a hand to his shorter blade. Gelvir gave him little time to draw it, but even so, the older soldier put up a good defense, so their swords clattered off of each other, and the walls, when they overexerted their swings. Gelvir threw his broadsword hard to one side, pushing his opponents blade far out of the way, then brought it back with a swift flick of the wrist and forearm. He made an ugly gash in his enemy’s arm, forcing the soldier to drop his sword, but instead of finishing the man with a killing blow, Gelvir just took the fellow’s head in one hand and tossed his skull into the rock wall. The older man collapsed to the ground with a metallic clang, and Gelvir slipped into a large, empty chamber. At least, it had looked empty upon first glance. An onslaught ensued, one where three Hargirmians leapt towards him with shining steel, two with short swords, one with a jagged voulge.
Blood flew into the air in violent curtains, and not all of it was from his enemies. The soldier with the polearm was the difficult one because his broadsword couldn’t give him the advantage in length like with the other two. One was already dead with a slashed throat, the other fleeing to call for reinforcements, spilling crimson as he did so.
That left Gelvir alone with long-arm. With a shout, the Captain charged forward, deflecting the voulge to make it run along his armored flank and bringing down his blade in a stoop, only to meet nothing. He swung around and saw that his enemy had slipped to the side expertly and was–
Gelvir ducked under a quick slash of the voulge, hopped aside to evade a whistling thrust. As the notched blade tore a cut in his cheek, he stepped forward and hacked his sword across the other man’s arms. His enemy choked in agony and let the voulge drop to the ground with a clatter. He ran his sword down the armored chest of the man, creating a spray of blood, and then made another along the gut.
He grimaced in distaste at his own brutality, before limping out of the chamber a second later, his heavy steps thudding through the halls. There was a gash in his calf, a chip of broken sword pinned through his chain-mail on his abdomen, and of course, the cut along his cheek. Also, he quickly noticed that the back of his hand was dripping red. All of the injuries stung like an inferno, but he was used to putting aside pain, while the adrenaline of battle lessened his agony.
Peeking cautiously around a corner, he assessed a room and then turned to find an alternative route. It would be just his fortune to find The Palace chock-full of soldiers now, when he had no credible disguise left. He had to get back to Kanni; he couldn’t leave her alone to take the responsibility of the prison break. He couldn’t do it alone, and neither could she. I need to escape, no matter how many wounds I get in the process. We need each other for this task, and I . . .
He couldn’t finish the thought, because his mind went blank when he nearly collided with a dozen armed men. Gelvir had no choice but one; he was willing to take wounds, but death was a toll he could not afford.
He dropped his blade.
In her dark, dank cell, Kelestil sat and despaired. She felt confused, sad, hopeless and afraid. A brief sight of her parents, and then she was torn away, back to her rotten prison. Hafkil hadn’t come back, and she was terrified, thinking that he would never return, or look like a scarred, broken creature if he did. Darenhar had promised her that she wouldn’t be able to recognize him, and she thought that he would make sure she couldn’t.
She just wanted to be home again. It made her want to cry, but her eyes had long since been dry of tears, since she had poured them all out into her hands hours before.
It was the shadow of night when she heard explosions quake the other end of The Palace, and she could see faint flashes of light in the sky through the window in the dungeon. The girl just sighed; enough strange things had happened since her captivity, so they no longer held any interest for her. A few minutes after the noises had subsided, a lantern made its way into the dungeon.
“Hafkil!” she screeched in disbelief. He had come back, and looking only a little beat up. Well, only a little compared to what she had imagined he would look like. The man was bruised and swollen all over, and when he spoke, he sounded like his whole mouth was giving him agony.
“So, you still recognize me?” he commented, ending with a pained hiss.
“I’ll always know who you are!” Kelestil stated. “Why did they hurt you so badly?”
Hafkil barked a laugh. “I try and murder my King, and you wonder why I was punished?”
“But don’t they hate him too?”
Hafkil sat down gingerly beside the cell, like he always had since meeting her. “There is a big difference between me and them, and it’s very simple; they fear him, while I don’t. They might hate him for existing, but he has a knife to their throat, in the form of outlaws spread throughout the army, and other things.”
“When will he just die? I want to go home . . .” Kelestil moaned, feeling anger stir in her heart. “I want it to all go away!”
Hafkil gave her a sympathetic look, and then sighed tiredly. I don’t have a home—it went away with my family. “I have a plan forming, but I wouldn’t put everything into it. If I can complete my part of it, then on the arrival of King Mawing, it could work. I overheard that a message was sent to your grandfather, apparently when you were kidnapped. If he got it on time, he should be halfway here, and hopefully with an army. That part is essential, or my idea won’t work at all. Darenhar has to expose everything for it to work.” He said all of that more to himself than to Kelestil, just smoothing out the kinks in his design by speaking it out loud.
“When are you going to do it?” the girl questioned.
“In a few days, just before Mawing arrives.”
A few days turned out to be eight, and nothing really happened in that span of time. Hafkil was worried and distracted as he spent the days guarding Kelestil’s cell, but the girl still managed to extract some conversation out of him. On one of those mornings, she asked him whether he had ever seen Dragons, and somehow he suspected that she asked everyone that question.
“In Firemere, there were lots of Dragons,” he answered. Kelestil was instantly enraptured, so he continued. “I was on a mission there, and King Sablar took a liking to me. I was young back then, and only a Lower Lieutenant, but he invited me to view his military base. We went through the normal army encampment and the armories, but then came the Dragons. Firemere has the second greatest force of Dragons on the continent, after Ferirgris, where the beasts are tamed and trained.”
Kelestil obviously wanted to know more. “What did they do?”
“Oh, they moseyed around a bit, eating out of their troughs and drinking from the well. They were massive creatures with two wings and four legs. One of them even had four wings, and he was the Alpha of the flock. He even deigned to say something to me.”
“What was it?” Kelestil squeaked.
“’Stop gawking, you dumb midget,’”
On the night of the twelfth, everything started to fall in position. Hafkil gave Kelestil a visit like always, but that time he brought a surplus of food and water for her, handing the clay vases and plates to her through the bars of her cell.
“I may be gone for a day or two, so while I’m away, only respond to Darenhar and stay in the corner if anyone else comes down. I’m sure no one will bother you, but it’s always better to be cautious.”
Kelestil grabbed his rough hand through the bars. She bit her lip as she thought of what to say. “Sorrel told me about how we can have a Soulmate, or a Soulfriend that we find in our lives . . . I think that you are my Soulfather. I know it.” She had thought it over, and she was sure of it now.
“Maybe you’re right,” Hafkil said, and left it at that. He squeezed her hand, then left the dungeon.
The Bear went out of the prison and through the many halls of The Palace, until he came to where he needed to be. He came directly to the guard in front of the door. “General Dirkfang needs you, and he told me to keep the keys until the next guard comes,” he said.
The guard gave him a suspicious glance, but then handed him the keys, leaving without a word, likely glad to be off from his post. Hafkil watched anxiously as the soldier turned around a corner, checked the other end of the hall, and then dealt with the plethora of locks on the wooden door. When he swung it open, he found the two he had hoped to discover.
He closed the door, looking to Mithourn and Leyfian. “Keep your voices down, I’m not supposed to be here,” he cautioned, and gave them no time to say anything. “I know you, and you may know me. I am Hafkil, the ex-general, and I have been kept here as a slave. I want to help you, and I have a plan.”
Mithourn gave him a distrusting look. “I haven’t heard of you going rebel,” he accused. “There were rumors that you had disappeared, but how do we know that this isn’t a trick of Darenhar’s?”
“You can’t,” Hafkil stated. “But you don’t have any friends or any hope of escape from outside help,”
The High Captain’s face went blank. “So?”
“So I am the only person promising you a chance of escape. Let me explain; King Mawing will be coming here in a few day’s time, if Dirkfang’s messenger reached him. Darenhar probably didn’t tell you this because he wants you to be desperate enough to come to terms with him, and then force those terms on Mawing.”
Leyfian stood up from her seat in the room. “My father is coming? He can help us get out of here,” she said and sighed with relief. It made perfect sense that Darenhar would need Mawing’s presence and cooperation to make use of Leyfian and Kelestil as leverage, so she could believe Hafkil’s news. “He can free us,” she said to herself, but Hafkil overheard.
“Not without my help,”
Leyfian looked a little haughty at that. “My father could crush Theargern,” she stated.
Hafkil made a bitter smile. The overconfidence of royalty could be amusing. “No, he couldn’t,” The Bear retorted simply. “Darenhar is hiding his real power, until he is ready to use it,”
As if to prove his words, the ground quivered underneath them with that fateful pounding that went off from time to time. The dust on the floor skittered about, and the one window rattled quietly. An especially powerful tremor made the furniture creak, before it faded back to the normal pounding in the ground.
Leyfian’s face fell. She had forgotten about that odd occurrence and what it might entail. “Oh,” she noised.
“Do you want me to show you?” Hafkil offered.
The woman looked to Mithourn, but he just gave her a level gaze, pinning the responsibility back on her. “I . . . guess,” she murmured, and then gained resolve. “Yes, show us.”
“We will have to be very careful; I know some less well known passages, but even so, you will have to lay anything noisy aside.”
Mithourn refused to take off his armor or leave his sword behind, and that was that.
They went out the door slowly, then Hafkil locked it behind them, keeping the keys with him and holding them together so they wouldn’t jingle. He took them along some dark, unlit paths through The Palace, avoiding the notice of any residents who might still be awake. There were always night sentries, but they were few and far apart.
By dim ways, they came to an odd room, empty of windows and furnishings, but lined on one side with empty iron boxes large enough for a few men. They had cables and a lever running down their back panels, and each had a lighted lantern dangling from their ceilings. Some of the lifts were missing, and only bare cavities in the wall showed where they had once been. That and a black abyss leading downward to unknown depths.
Hafkil took them to the most rusted, rejected lift in the corner of the room and had them pile in, pulling the lever up when they were situated. With a metallic screech and a groan, the lift descended into the floor, so they were soon staring at a rough shaft wall which went up past them. The pounding in the earth stopped abruptly, and it became quiet again, except for the quiet creaking of the lift.
Hafkil fidgeted nervously. “They never use this one,” he explained.
After what seemed five minutes, the lift lowered into a tall cavern, landing at the floor beside several other rusty lifts. Hafkil ushered them out quickly, having them hide behind the broken line of metal containers, where cables and other mechanics were pushed up against the wall of the natural cave.
The open space beyond the lifts was busy with soldiers and horses, and the whole area seemed to be a crossroads, because there were multiple thresholds going in different directions. The archways were coarse and wild, as were the caverns beyond. The only thing that was uniform was the ground, which had been leveled all throughout the cave system. The other caverns held several militant wings, one being devoted to forging and carpentry, another to an armory and supply storage, and yet another housing a barrack where there were hundreds of sleeping soldiers. In a far off hollow, Leyfian could see enormous siege engines, waiting to be used. She didn’t even want to imagine the lifts necessary to carry those things to the surface.
“This way,” Hafkil whispered, forging ahead, leading them in a crouch behind the lifts. They came to a dark and minute passage which was sinuous, and it took them around the large, populated caverns, keeping them out of plain sight. Even so, the three of them were as quiet as they could manage, afraid to breath. Except for Mithourn; he did his part to be silent, but he didn’t have a nagging fear, and he didn’t restrain his breathing. He had learned long before that it was foolish to hold his breath and jump at shadows; when something did happen, then he would be completely unprepared and over-reactive. So he breathed, while his companions almost did not.
They went up a narrow set of steps which the tunnel encompassed, ascending steeply. Leyfian’s heart began to pound away much like the ground had just a few moments gone. She had begun to notice that her inner pump was declining further of late; the past three weeks had been a stress on her whole being, and her heart had taken it badly. She wondered how long she had to live if everything went well. If everything went wrong, she imagined that it wouldn’t be long at all, and she might get killed by something other than her heart.
When they stepped onto the summit of the stairs, the tunnel opened up to a ledge overlooking an especially cavernous hollow. It was a coarse and well-hidden balcony, with the cave roof hanging low overhead, and the ledge was recessed far into the wall. Hafkil had his two companions look out at the empty cavern below. There was a single man sitting at the center of the expanse, and several enormous drums were planted at the corners of the cave. Mithourn nearly asked what in Creation the man was doing, as nothing seemed to be happening, but then something did occur, and he was forced to shut his mouth.
Things started to break out of the stone walls of the cavern, and crawl out of the tumbled floor, where they congregated around the man and his drums.
Hafkil glared down at the stony beasts, all with glowing, throbbing veins running along their bodies and oddly shaped limbs. “Uqauli,” he muttered.
The stone creatures began pounding on the drums; the three intruders nearly fell on their faces from the noise, scrambling to protect their ears from the rumble. They didn’t even notice an Uqauli pushing out of the wall behind them, and the stone golem rushed past them without taking note of the three. It jumped off the ledge to go join its own species, dropping chips of stone as it did so.
Hafkil led them out of the chamber, following the ledge into another tunnel and then ending in another room. They found that the deafening noise was much reduced, but the pounding still pulsed through the air, so they continued along through some small passageways, skimming past more large barracks and training grounds.
“How does anyone sleep down here?” Leyfian asked in a hoarse whisper. Her heart was still beating like those drums, just from the fright they had caused when they first went off.
“They don’t,” Hafkil answered, “at least, not regularly. Darenhar likes to keep them on edge and in a violent, skittish mood. He thinks it will help them conquer Helkras when they are all like wild animals. It also keeps them too tired to think beyond what he tells them to think of, or to even consider fighting him. He has one more asset which makes certain they will never revolt, because the surety of death is sealed. Come,” he said with a gesture of his hand, taking them deeper. Their path led them to a wider corridor, and from there, Hafkil was significantly more cautious. The way was dark, though, and only lit periodically with lanterns, so they could sneak past the few sentries easily.
“Are they asleep?” a high-ranking soldier asked one of the guards as the three interlopers slunk by.
“Most of the beasts are,” the sentry answered quickly.
“Good; we can clean their dung out now. It’s starting to stink.”
As it was, Mithourn and Leyfian did begin to smell the stench of waste, as well as an odd aroma that neither of them could place. Huge, empty archways began to line the dim corridor, but only darkness could be seen in the gaping hollows.
The smell grew until their noses became accustomed to it, but they weren’t concerned with that. Sounds echoed out of the dark openings, such as the metallic clinking of shifting chains and shackles, and a constant, monstrous sound of deep breathing. The snoring had a guttural quality, but it almost reminded Leyfian of purring cats. Big, giant cats.
Hafkil counted as they went along. “Eight,”—They went by one of the dark openings, which didn’t seem so empty anymore—“Nine . . . ten . . . eleven . . .” Each chamber was about seventy feet wide, so it took them a while to reach that number. They went on even further, until The Bear counted to seventeen. Then he stopped, and went into the darkness, having his two fellow conspirators follow him tentatively into the shadow. He called hoarsely into the blindness, “Bahn . . . Bahn!”
There was a deep grumble and heavy breathing that followed to make a Titan Rhino sound timid. Enormous chains shifted in the dark, and Leyfian tripped over a line of the tree-thick links, to be caught and set aright by Mithourn. He walked on just to fall over another set of the metal rings. Instead of being saved from the fall by someone, he landed against something. It felt warm to the touch and . . . plated. He scrambled off of it and rejoined his two companions.
Hafkil halted, whispering for the other two to stop as well. Then he spoke into the dark again, using the Ferirgrisi tongue choppily and uncertainly. Well, it was always a choppy language, he just made it sound more so. “Bahn, wake up!”
A single large, serpentine eye opened in the blackness, gleaming like precious opal. The reptilian pupil widened from a slit to a wide circle and observed them.
Bahn didn’t like it when her sight went grainy from strain, so she wanted more light to see by. She opened her maw and twitched her thorax to the side, causing a spark inside of her to ignite her gas-chamber. Flames poured out of her mouth in billowing torrents, roaring through the air. Being a polite Dragon, she sent the fire far out of the humans’ range. She gained the desired reaction form her fellow prisoners. Outside of her open cell was a deep underground gorge where similar prisons lined and columned both walls of the crevice. Dozens of those prisons lit up with the fire of entrapped Dragons, lighting half the canyon in warm, flickering light. Well, the topmost half. The fissure was bottomless to anyone’s sight, and the cells only went down about a hundred levels. The Dragons emptied their waste into the bottomless pit, but some only managed to get half of it over the edge, hence the smell.
Stopping her own spout of fire, the graceful, sapphire-scaled Dragon looked to Hafkil and his new comrades. The two new ones were gaping up at her as if they had never seen a fifty-foot long Dragon before. Fifty feet without taking the length of her tail into account, and her fifth limb was nearly as long as her body.
“Hey, who’s been shouting over here?”
That was one of the guards who pestered her from time to time. He couldn’t be allowed to find Hafkil and his friends, so she scooped up the three humans with her fore-paws and hid them under her chest. She made a yawning growl to cover any noise the midgets might make, and she leaned her swan-like neck forward to conceal them, while simultaneously acting as if she were just about to nap again.
She flicked her tail at the guard, and he tripped over himself with a shout, fleeing off down the hall in an instant. Bahn sat up slowly, taking her paws away from the humans and adjusting to a regal, feline stance as they sorted themselves out. She felt bad for the woman who was obviously smaller and more prone to harm, but there had been little choice in ways to hide them. Hafkil was a tough one, and the other man had armor on. She mused and wondered why men wore armor instead of women, if they were less easily harmed. She ended in the conclusion that humans weren’t usually swept up by Dragons, and that women probably avoided such instances while men ran headfirst into them. It was the same with Dragons.
The woman looked out at the wide canyon and wandered a little too close to the edge of Bahn’s prison. Apparently she was a little dizzy from the Dragon’s rescue, so she wavered dangerously on the ledge leading towards death. Bahn gently plucked her up and set her a good distance from the pitfall, dealing with her like a moth who had delicate wings.
When the three were thus gathered up, Hafkil explained to his bewildered companions how it was. “This is Bahn, the female Alpha of the flock. Her mate, the male Alpha is about twice her size, and far more violent; he and I don’t get along. Just to make it clear, Bahn was protecting us when she did that little maneuver. Hurting people isn’t in her nature, unless they hurt her first. She sees humans like we see cats.”
Mithourn’s face twisted. “Cats?”
Hafkil shrugged. “Smaller creatures who have a right to live and whom she won’t eat unless pushed to death. Of course, there are people who would kill the cats for fun, and some Dragons are like that as well. Her mate is one of them, and Darenhar has pushed him in the wrong direction by promising him an entire country for his hunting. Darenhar offers him Hargirmian soldiers to kill and eat when they show any sign of rebellion.” Hafkil shook his head in disgust and shivered, though it was quite warm from Bahn’s earlier display.
The lights from the other Dragons began to go out, and the place became dark again.
“Den hak sut,” Bahn said to the humans.
Hafkil crossed his arms in the chill of the underground, which had begun to seep back minutes after the Dragons’ light show. “She says that we should leave, and I agree with her; you saw everything I wanted to show you, so we should head back before you’re missed.”
Just as those words escaped his mouth, an earth-splitting roar reverberated through the subterranean canyon, and the clatter of enormous chains being tugged at followed directly after. More bestial howls followed, as well as the pounding noise of stone being rammed into relentlessly.
“DARENHAR . . .” The voice that bellowed the single word was so violent and hateful that it conjured up thoughts of blood, fire and death just by hearing it.
Hafkil made a sound in his throat as the titanic struggle continued at the far end of the crevice. “Vaerj is getting impatient. This will make things difficult.” He contemplated the dark for a moment and then perked up. “Let’s go,” he said, the other two following him quietly into the dark.
Just as they started on their way back, they heard the explosive sonic boom that occurred when a Fire Dragon used their flaming breath. They had to evade several guards by hiding in the darkness of another Dragon cell.
A group of sentries rushed right by them in a panic. “He’s trying to melt his chains again!” one of them shouted. “Get the tranquilizing javelins!”
Hafkil made sure that the soldiers and any stragglers were well gone before taking his companions back along the original path they had used. The room with the lifts was almost abandoned when they got back to it, but just as they were about to enter the rejected lift they had first used, they were stopped by a voice.
“Hey, you! Stop right there!” a man said gruffly. He chuckled as he let the joke wear away, and he greeted another fellow soldier more amiably.
Hafkil sighed shakily, then hustled Mithourn and Leyfian into the lift, quickly throwing the lever up and waiting impatiently for the lift to hide them in the ceiling of the cavern. After a moment of watching the open side pass below them, he put the lever in a halfway position, stopping the lift in its ascent. A stone wall faced them on the open end of the lift.
“This is the most hidden place where we can talk, but only for a minute; we need to get back before the next sentry takes his post at your room.” He scrubbed at his beard. “I want you to promise not to do anything drastic for the next few days; be as meek and obedient with Darenhar as you can unless it endangers you. If you don’t upset him, his bursts of rage will be tampered down, and there will be less of a chance of making him want to kill you. Don’t challenge him, and don’t accept any negotiations either.”
Leyfian nodded slowly, lantern-light casting strange shadows on her face. “I may wait another day or two, but if he offers me my daughter back, I’m not going to refuse any price . . . well, almost any price.”
Hafkil grunted, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to turn her away from her conviction. “I hope to end Darenhar the day Mawing arrives; if your father arrives with a sizable army, at least. He has to.”
Mithourn growled to himself and clenched his fists. “How did Darenhar get all of those Dragons and the Uqauli? He was defeated, damn it!”
“A demon gave them to him,” The Bear said quietly. “All it asked for in exchange was . . . was every woman and girl of Theargern between fourteen and thirty years . . . Darenhar sold them! Like cattle!” His voice ricocheted around the inside of the lift, bombarding their ears for a hollow second. He shook with unhinged fury, and held back tears of anger and grief. “The demon didn’t really want the women and didn’t need payment of any kind, it just wanted to cause more chaos, and Darenhar was more than willing to give them away. In return, he was given millions of Ferirgrisi marks, which he used to purchase his flock of Dragons. The Possessor who controls the Uqauli was another gift from the demon, and—so far as I know—the last.”
Leyfian was silent, already aware of who it was Hafkil spoke of. There could only be one one faction, one demon who held so much power and hidden influence. But Mithourn—like most inhabitants on Vaskil—was confused and wanted answers. “Who is this demon? Where and what are they?”
Hafkil leaned against the back of the lift and crossed his arms, closing his eyes contemplatively. “’Out of a Realm of Nightmares there shall come an Overlord,’” he said, quoting an old legend, “’and his name shall be Quix.’”
Chapter XVIII
The Storm Grows
27th of Late Spring, 376, 5th Era – ???
A lonely red-spotted spider crawled out of her stone crevice, spindly legs oozing out of the crack and into the open. Her bulbous, black abdomen came after with its blaring red star that showed her to be lethally poisonous. The room she came into was old and decrepit, solid only in its frame. Everything was made of sandstone grayed with lichen, algae and age, and dark steel beams which were often geometrically decorative as well as supportive. The ceiling and walls of the chamber were half-open to the outside by way of fallen stones and collapsed bricks, so the dim, overcast light of midday came into the empty room. Not that the spider could see much of that; her sight was poor, so she relied on tactility more than anything. She had a mind to wander around before returning to her messy web which she had so proudly built, but a large beetle quickly got in her way. It was big enough to be a threat, so she reared back and splayed out her dagger-like legs to appear more impressive. The horned beetle was apparently in a bad mood because he clicked angrily and faced her in a stance that signaled his desire to charge at her.
They were unaware of the enormous, furry beast looming above them, whose space they had unwittingly invaded. A titanic paw smashed them both before they knew what was happening.
Keelkzar studied the twitching remains of the two minuscule creatures on the pad of his paw. They had both been about to fight, and he had ended the feud for them. Neither of them had won, and it had been an unknown, outside force which had defeated them. He liked the idea of being the unknown force which took out squabbling enemies, and he had played that role many times, or helped take part in such constructs of chaos. Just like with Hargirm and Helkras; the two countries thought that they were fighting each other, but in reality, Quix would be the only one to benefit. The bony Wolf couldn’t wait to hear what Darenhar’s new Dragons had done to the continent, how they had twisted and reshaped the face of the land. Quix had made a tactically genius move right there. If things went correctly, then several other countries would join the war to defend their side, and more Dragons would be involved . . . It would be cataclysmic.
Keelkzar snarled in a jagged grin. He loved chaos, to see how it shredded a whole into ragged tatters—such as people and civilizations.
He walked on southward, having paused in his trek only to study the insolent creatures on his paw. After shaking out his mangy gray fur, he looked about the building as he walked through it. The structure was more of an odd tunnel, built over the old road for who knew what. It was an outlying structure of Mithonstorng, one of the first he had passed on that cloudy day in the swamps. The City of Demons would not be far. It had been within sight for a day already, starting as a dark smudge on the horizon, then resolving until it was a behemoth of gray-stained structures in an architectural style long forgotten. He walked from under the tunnel and into the light rain that often shrouded the Srinajic Swamps. The road led directly towards the city across the flat region of the swamp, hopping between marshy islands via bridges.
The whole biome was gray and dreary; the trees were small, scraggly things, the water clogged with Slimeweed and rot, grasses clumped together in tangled bunches. A few birds flew overhead, tiny, ragged creatures who fed off of seedpods and Creakers near the water. Only small creatures survived around Mithonstorng, as the largest were hunted for a wide radius. He watched the swamp-water closely to make sure nothing leapt out to feed off of him; many of the monsters in the area knew little of a skill called facial recognition.
The army of twenty-thousand following behind Keelkzar was not large by his standards, but it was bringing in a fair store of grain and food, stolen and forced from villages and towns along the journey. There had been casualties, mainly from Hafkil and Kcarc’s little skirmish with him, but most of the rag-tag men and savage Wolves he had gathered had made it through the trip. He wondered how many would regret surviving. Many men found the environment too harsh, and the weak either tried to desert, or died. The fortress had been named the City of Demons for a reason. The Wolves should fit in better, especially with his Rending Kien.
The ancient dwelling was surrounded by tall, thick walls of jagged shape, with towers like fangs jutting up out of its length. The walls went out of sight in either direction, curving slightly towards the south, where they would meet again on the other side of the city, fifty miles away. The rusted steel and stone gates were massive, unbreakable because of sheer strength as well as Enchantments rendered far before the Eras. Far before recorded time, which went back over a hundred-thousand years.
Keelkzar felt the familiar chill of ancientness that came with Mithonstorng as he approached the shut barricade. The place felt old, like it should be buried in the planet instead of staying submerged in the air with trees and vines growing off its walls, birds flying among the towers. Moss grew off of sandstone that had been turned gray from ancient algae.
The hunter stopped a small distance from the gates, looking to the wall’s toothy crenelations and towers, where armored men stood on patrol with crossbows in hand, while giant versions of the weapons were mounted to the wall to take out large opponents, if the need arose.
Keelkzar liked to think that he would require one of the giant crossbows, if the sentinels had to kill him. He opened his notched mouth. “OPEN THE GATES!”
Several shouts came in response to him, bellows that repeated his orders to the operators behind the wall. There was always an instant reaction when his voice came into the mix; it was unmistakable, and the most grating, violent voice he had ever heard. No one could match him for shouting.
A set of struggling roars sounded behind the walls as massive creatures worked the wheels that opened the gates. When the barricade opened for him, he was greeted with the sight of Mithonstorng, the largest city on the known world, though it looked to be more a dwelling for unseen spirits. Four massive Uriks turned the cogwheels for the gates, each the size of a cottage, with short horns like a musk ox. He ignored the beasts and continued on his way through the city, along the main thoroughfare which went nearly in a straight line through the metropolis, but was sporadically overshadowed by tunnels and open buildings. Steel decorated most of the stone structures in the city, flat bars of metal that were bent in sharp, geometric designs and placed into buildings to substitute windows or fences.
Keelkzar sauntered through the ruined city, while his army of men followed. The gates closed after the last man was in, the doors shutting with a quivering boom.
Though it would take millions to fully populate the city, it was still a busy, loud place to reside in. Preparation was going on everywhere, as it always was. There was not such a thing as over-preparation. Men worked forges in huge, empty towers, clanging out steel while others trained or cared for horses in massive, stinking stables. Wolves fought in pits in an old warehouse, their shadows being flung everywhere. Obviously, they would try to not kill each other, but a few deaths were unavoidable. Keelkzar didn’t care; there were several thousand Wolves in Mithonstorng, so a few of them dead was no real loss. How Minchardaac kept them all under his control—no Kien in history had been so large—and without them splitting off or killing each other, was beyond Keelkzar’s comprehension. The Black Wolf was a legend, of that there could be no doubt. Minchardaac was one of two living beings that Keelkzar truly respected and feared, in a way. Quix was the second.
He passed through a part of Mithonstorng that looked like any normal town; a marketplace where food and supplies was sold to the soldiers of the fortress, though everything was grimy and gray. That was the only place where a heavy population of women was kept; they worked, were used by the men, and survived another day. Most of them were the price Darenhar had paid for his Dragons, women sold off because of a mad king’s hatred. A perfect example of chaos, though Keelkzar preferred the more destructive side of bedlam, such as fire and blood, death and ruination. He found torture to be . . . slow. The explosiveness of a battlefield was what made his veins go alight, his giant heart beat like drums.
Towards the center of Mithonstorng was a massive conglomeration of towers, walls and buildings, built up roughly in a pyramidal shape, leading to a great height. The Stronghold was two miles wide at the base, and it led four miles into the air, where the pinnacle seemed to pierce the sky. It was the most ancient part of Mithonstorng, and consequentially, it was the place of Quix’s abode.
Before he reported to The Stronghold, however, he needed to drop off his army of cannon fodder to the region of the city that was reserved for his personal forces. Each high-ranking commander under Quix’s leadership had their own army that responded only to them. And Quix, of course.
Keelkzar was fourth-in-command, and he controlled a good fifty-thousand in mixed assets. His Kien of Wolves was always prone to being overtaken by Minchardaac, if The Black Wolf had a need of them. Keelkzar usually didn’t mind such interventions; Minchardaac was High Commander, and High Alpha. The latter title only had weight with the Wolves, (a very great weight) but the former meant that he was second-in-command, directly below Quix himself. Such a title could almost get him anything he needed; everyone showed respect to him, all their forces were his to take, and every resource could be his. The few restrictions he had were going against Quix’s orders and starting a war without the demon’s consent.
Keelkzar still didn’t understand how a Wolf had gotten to such a powerful position. Maybe it was because of the deed that Minchardaac had first fulfilled for Quix. It had been a difficult and traitorous task. Still, from the little that Keelkzar knew of the Overlord, he thought that Quix would find a High Commander of another . . . race . . . to be more fitting for the title. Then again, Minchardaac worked the title perfectly, so he supposed that Quix had been wise to choose The Black Wolf.
The hunter thought that fourth-in-command was the prime rank for him; not all of the responsibility was his, but there was more than enough power to wreak destruction on the world. Power didn’t really appeal to him, just the hunt. Rank had gained him more control over how far that hunt went, and for that, he was willing to bear the responsibility he had, but any more would impede him.
He took his army of men and Wolves to the Eastern Fortress of Mithonstorng, where the rest of his army was housed. Once there amongst the towers and walls, he handed off his new troops to his lower commanders for them to organize and prepare. He had gathered Wolves along his journey, a pack here and there who was interested in what he proposed. Most had refused or even outright fought him. They had learned through deadly lessons, and the others would as well, soon enough.
The men he had taken from an outlaw holdout, which had gained a reputation in the northern reaches of the Western Unclaimed Territory. They had leapt headfirst into the opportunity that Keelkzar had set before them. Serving Quix promised freedom from prosecution, the hope for power and fulfilled desires. The fools thought of course that The Overlord would just hand it to them once they won some battles in his name, but it didn’t operate like that. One had to work with every fiber in them to gain his favor. The prize was already half-won by the time he bestowed it on the individual. Just as Minchardaac had done, and Keelkzar after him.
Once everything looked under order, he went to treat himself with a nap, in an old war room reserved for his use, but before he could get there he was approached by a dark . . . thing.
Strychnyn was a Srinaj, a race of demons. Keelkzar didn’t understand the dark beings, but he thought that they shared similarities with what he had heard of the Kuldaki. They could change shape (though they almost never transformed after choosing their first form) were black as The Void and feasted on the life of living beings, growing as they did so. They had no eyes, though, and seemed to rely on other, alien senses to move about. Though very powerful, Strychnyn had chosen to keep himself the size of a man, and in the shape of one. He was an assassin to the core, even if he juggled the responsibilities as Lower Commander of Mithonstorng, meaning third in the chain of command. His head was blank of any features except for a wide, jagged mouth of fangs. He wore armor in the fashion of Mithonstorng; sharply pointed plates of steel interlocked with one another, much like what the Mrithician people wore. The white symbols painted on his armor contrasted oddly with his inky flesh, which reflected no light.
The bony Wolf met him in the center of a large chamber with high-set windows lining one wall, filled with geometric steel bars. Keelkzar thought of Strychnyn as he instead of it just because doing so made matters simpler. Srinaj couldn’t be defined by sex—they weren’t even technically alive. They were the opposite of life, but not death. Void and nothing explained them best, because they feasted on life-force, making the victim an empty body. How Srinaj came into being and thrived without any way of reproduction still joggled Keelkzar’s mind.
Giving a bow of his head in respect to his superior, Keelkzar waited for Strychnyn to speak. Most Srinaj lacked the knowledge of speech, but if they learned any language, it was that of Mithonstorng.
The Srinaj clasped his hands behind his back, head tilted down to regard Keelkzar as if he could see the Wolf. “Quix has a need to see you, Flank-Commander,” the demon addressed in a voice that was low like deep sea currents, and yet hissing like cold winds.
“I will report to him immediately,” the bony Wolf assented, skirting past the Srinaj, who watched him go with one sense or another. Even after being surrounded by Srinaj since he was a pup, Keelkzar still felt unsettled by them. He had been informed that others less familiar with the demons felt absolute terror when near them. That was almost understandable for him; there was always a feeling that they could bite into him and suck him dry of life—or something more essential—whenever they wished.
There were many, many Srinaj in Mithonstorng and around it, but they tended to remain secretive and could only be seen fleetingly, before they hid in the shadows again. Many took their residence in the lifeless parts of the city, remaining out of the way of man and beast. They might have fed off of every living being in the metropolis already, if not for Quix, who prevented them from doing so. They had to get their sustenance elsewhere—namely, The Srinajic Swamps. They starved slowly, so the marshes provided just enough life to keep them in a strong state.
To get to The Stronghold, miles of the city had to be passed first. He trotted through it all, past half-eaten towers and keeps, along roads suspended like bridges over the shorter buildings, between crammed walls overgrown with Slimeweed or vines.
He passed The Pit, a coliseum which had been turned into a storage facility—a storage area for raw meat. The kills of the day were piled in there, half eaten, whole, or rotten. The dead were placed there as well, which was why only desperate Wolves ventured there for a meal. It disturbed many to see their own kin rotting away in The Pit. Quix had set the place up for a reason, Keelkzar knew, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t detest the place. He hated Avakil; they were such disgusting creatures, even if they were useful.
I would never eat one of those, he thought just as he passed a pair of the beasts.
As he was passing along a cramped alleyway, he felt an emptiness hang in the air, and stopped abruptly. Just in time, too. One step further, and he would have been ended.
Right before him, the alley warped, fading out of view, turning to blackness which sucked away at the light, toying with Keelkzar’s eyes. After a moment, the blackness twisted out of sight, being replaced by the alleyway, which was missing chunks that had been there a moment before. The place settled a little, collapsing where essential stones had been lost. Keelkzar watched in fascination; no matter how much Mithonstorng was rent apart, it was still strong as rhino bones, and mostly whole. Worse for wear, perhaps, but that was all.
The warping of reality was a danger that Keelkzar had grown used to; Mithonstorng was constantly in a state of flux, parts of it falling out of Existence at times, but only little pieces. It was an effect of Dark Magic. It was a force that only came readily to the Srinaj, and the Srinaj were always using it around Mithonstorng. Dark Magic was an opposite force of mundane Magic. There was an old explanation that Keelkzar could barely recall because he had little interest in it: Whereas Magic caused things to happen, and built up all the blocks in between, Dark Magic simply made things happen. Like a tower without a frame, the structure of reality eventually fell apart, slowly falling in on itself. A little Dark Magic might have caused rot or sterility in the land, maybe even random cataclysms like quakes, explosions or gales. An enormous amount of Dark Magic, however, caused the deeply disturbing problem which Mithonstorng suffered; Existence itself wavered at times, and bits of it ceased altogether, while everything tried to fill in the growing gaps caused by The Void.
Keelkzar had noticed that in recent years, the warping had increased in size, and happened more frequently. Far more frequently, actually.
The hunter went on, alone in the dark passages that he chose. The Stronghold loomed ahead, its topmost levels capped with gray clouds, lightning roaring around it periodically. Armored men guarded every entrance to the keep, holding their weapons of choice at hand. Every one of those sentinels knew to allow Keelkzar to pass without a word of challenge, only a salute in the form of a fist to the chest. The first chamber he entered was enormous, with huge open windows, banners with Quix’s symbol hanging from the walls, and floor stones large enough to be foundations for houses. It was mainly empty, with only a few braziers for light, and nothing else for furnishings. That would make it one of the meeting halls, where contingents gathered for announcements from their superiors.
Keelkzar continued in and up, taking wide staircases and colossal corridors through the fortress. It was like a city itself, with all the segments of one; residential, trade and production districts, each spread throughout the whole place. Of all the regions in Mithonstorng, The Stronghold was the busiest, with men on duty, hurrying about work or in training, horses clattering in the hallways with carts hitched to them, Wolves wandering about for no particular reason. The highest concentration of mages and sorcerers in the city dwelt in the middling levels of the keep, near where The Library had its place. Formingar was reputed as having the largest library on the continent, but those fools were wrong—it was Mithonstorng that held the greatest depository of books ever known, with hundreds of thousands of tomes lined on towering shelves of stone, lit by Magical lights so as not to risk a fire. The bony Wolf passed those levels without seeing a single book; he had taken the central stairwell, which bypassed the area like so many others. It led directly to the top of The Stronghold, which made it the quickest route to Quix. The Overlord had never shown impatience in front of Keelkzar, or anyone he knew of, for that matter, so he had no fear of being rebuked, but the gray Wolf felt an urgency to obey the demon when called for. There was just a raw power in Quix that he felt he should prostrate himself to, out of respect and fear. The fear was that of failing his master, not of being punished. Keelkzar had no fear for pain or injury, not since he was a pup.
As the Flank-Commander walked up the empty, spiraling staircase, he looked out the narrow windows it held, observing the growing storm and the City of Demons. In tandem with the growing warps in reality, the constant storm over Mithonstorng had been growing, gaining in strength and darkness.
The Stronghold had towers built atop the flat-topped roofs of the lower structures, making miniature dwellings of their own. Men and horses weaved in and out of those towers like ants, acting as guards and maintenance workers. Something always needed repairing, or perhaps delivering.
Keelkzar went onward, leaving more of the high towers behind as he reached the greatest height of The Stronghold. Eventually all he could see out of the windows were gray clouds, thunder crackling around the narrowing tower. He could feel an energy building in the air, a sense of something ancient that pervaded throughout the whole city but was concentrated at the top of The Stronghold. A nameless script was engraved into the walls of the stairwell, ancienter than any known dialect, completely unreadable. The whole place reeked of mystery, just as much of Mithonstorng did. Many deep places of the city were empty, unexplored, and though the heights of The Stronghold had been seen by many, something seemed to hide there undiscovered.
The bony Wolf of course had little interest in such things; perhaps a mage or historian would find it fascinating, but he cared more for living, doing something and being lit afire with strength and energy. Extreme joy or extreme pain were the things that interested him; mediocre, sluggish activities would kill him from sheer boredom. He liked to take life away, to destroy things. And yet, he hung onto life harder than anyone else.
When he came to the topmost level (aside from the rooftop) he looked about at the familiar chamber. He had been there many times over his life of fifty years.
The hall was wide and circular, with a slightly domed roof and a flat, stone floor. Columns ringed the large expanse, the space in between them empty, without walls. It led to a wreathing balcony which was encased with boiling clouds of water vapor, dark gray at that height, which was so close to Quix.
Despite being open to the air, the whole chamber was eerily still, with not a breeze ruffling the dust on the ground. The lightning ripping through the sky seemed muffled when it thundered.
At the perfect center of the hall was a single pedestal, made of sinuous stone which glowed with veins of color. He knew those geodes could harbor any color, depending on the time of year, even the hour of the day, but at that particular moment, they shone in sapphire hues, accented with purple, like the lightning outside. The stand held nothing at its top, but that obvious fact seemed irrelevant to the demon who stood at its side.
Quix was a Srinaj, and yet, not one. His abilities and traits were at times a little odd, frequently mirroring other Srinaj incorrectly. When Keelkzar approached him, he was in a vaporous form, a mere shadow of indistinct shape, roughly the size of a man.
The rippling darkness shifted when the Flank-Commander drew near. “You return,”
The voice that spoke from the shadow was . . . immortal. It was ethereal, like wind speaking all around Keelkzar’s ears, in a single place, but all around him as well. Quix always had the same deep-toned voice, but it constantly shifted in the air when he spoke, becoming full, then thin, and accompanied by odd reverberations in the air that reminded Keelkzar of quivering leafs or dull water currents.
The canine bowed his head in respect, but only because he felt he should. Quix had no need of special titles, nor did he demand deference; those who served him gave it of their own accord. His inferiors had made up his name as Overlord. He had no arrogance or insecurity, fear or hatred. He just was.
Keelkzar shivered as a familiar sensation washed over him. It was like a blanket of The Void encompassing him, making him less, until he was nothing. The feeling of oblivion faded, and he raised his eyes to look at Quix. “I have brought in the bandits who were held out in the Western Territory, Quix. There were many Wolves who wished to join my Kien as well.” After that little report, he fell quiet, waiting for The Overlord to address why he was there.
Eventually, the demon spoke. “Minchardaac left a day ago to fulfill a task. His armies were left here in Mithonstorng, without leadership except for his seconds. You would fit his position better while he is gone, I know.” His voice seemed to fade into the distance, then come back with a reverberating growl.
The Wolf turned his head down again, his tail doing the same. “I will keep his forces in balance, Quix.” Part of gaining the demon’s favor was knowing exactly what he meant, even when all one could make out was an implication. Quix rarely gave direct, lucid orders to his highest ranking generals; by the time they were at their station, they knew him well enough to understand what he intended.
“Keep them well-prepared,” Quix added. “They will be needed when the time arrives.” And then he faded, disappearing from sight, the feeling of his presence going off into the distance, until it was too faint to detect.
Left alone in the great chamber, Keelkzar swished his tail instinctively as he scanned the room. He turned about and headed back to the stairwell to descend all the way back to the world below. Breathing excitedly as he bounded down the empty steps, he dashed through his thoughts quickly. Is he saying that The Invasion is about to begin? Is that why I’m needed to keep a strong paw on Minchardaac’s forces? Soon, then. He choked back a howl of exhilaration; he restrained himself to a point that most Souls wouldn’t believe.
Ever since he had been a pup, he had heard of the planned Invasion, and he had waited impatiently for half a century. Now that it seemed imminent, he needed even more restraint to not explode with anticipation. When The Invasion began, so did his hunt, when the very continent of Vaskil became his grounds for destruction. Everything could be his to annihilate!
As he went on his way to fill Minchardaac’s position, the hunter allowed himself a brief roar of glee. All he wanted was to see the world burn, turned to ashes, and he was assured that Quix wanted that as well, but he was wrong; what Quix wanted was worse.
Much worse.
Chapter XIX
Feast of Souls
12th of Late Spring, 376, 5th Era – Karshdr, Central Caldkere
The large Caldkarien city was busy in the early morning hours, with thousands of people spread throughout the metropolis. Stone towers and white-paneled cottages were layered and stacked upon one another, cobbled roads leading between.
Merchants bustled in the trading square, shops worked like gears in the craft district, and random fools wandered about the residential area. Horses, carriages, wagons and people added to the confusion of the streets. They took no notice of the drunk man relieving his bladder on a lantern post.
When he finished his stream, he tied up his trousers and stumbled into the street, spitting at anyone he disliked, while pushing everyone out of the way. He chose to work against the flow of the majority, not really thinking of where he wanted to end up. He pushed a pregnant, but otherwise slim girl to the side, then punched her lover hard in the abdomen when he tried to defend her.
The drunk reeled forward, coming to an intersection, where he expected to push over many pregnant women. He staggered into a furry barrier.
“Hey the fuck are you?” he asked violently, looking up at the huge creature who was half-concealed by armor. When there was no answer or movement from the contemplative beast, the drunken man tried to attack as best he could.
Dak`kcar finally turned to the disruptive man, who was pummeling his legs with tightly clenched fists. He picked up the annoying runt with a single hand, lifting the man to eye level. He gave a low growl and threw the drunk all the way back to the recovering girl and her lover.
Resuming his meditation, Dak`kcar smelled the air. Many aromas went in and out of his none too keen nostrils. People—lots of people. Horses. Horse shit. Drunk-man’s urine. Food. Fire. Stone and wood. Venom.
Venom. Dak`kcar shivered, and followed the scent through the bustle of humans. They stared at him, but most continued on their way afterwards. Caldkere was a huge, prosperous country, and plenty of strange races passed through, especially in the city of Karshdr. Dak`kcar saw a reclusive group of Ykarri just as he was thinking of odd races. The serpent-eels were slick and their scales glittered in the sun. They huddled among themselves, staying within the confines of a fountain, obviously gathering moisture before they continued on dry soil again; it was difficult being an amphibian. They spoke in low, odd voices, their language incomprehensible and bubbly, or guttural. One of them pointed with a twig-like arm and hand to Dak`kcar as he passed.
“Hail, Kuldaki Hunter,” the Ykarri communicated to the Yindarian by Diffuse Telepathy. Telepathy was the only way an Ykarri could speak with someone of another race; their language was just too hard to understand to be spoken by anyone else. It also happened to be an inborn trait of theirs, allowing them to speak with anyone, because the Diffuse Telepathy translated itself to anyone’s mind.
Dak`kcar gave a solemn nod of recognition to the serpentine creature. He was glad that some still remembered, that some still recalled the first Kuldaki Hunt, which he had led in his youth. Following the smell of poison, Dak`kcar continued on his way to find it. He didn’t notice one of the Ykarri trailing him through the streets.
“Venom,” the stag mused to himself. Why was it so strong there? He had followed Soul Skulker’s trail, south and west, but had lost it near the border of Caldkere. He would find the demon though, or the demon would find him. It didn’t really matter, so long as Dak`kcar was prepared, and he always was.
Dak`kcar shivered as he felt the presence of darkness, somewhere in the city. One of the Kuldaki was near. In all of his five centuries of hunting after the two demons, he had never known Soul Skulker to be a secretive predator, and knowing how large the demon was, Dak`kcar ruled The Dragon out. That left Nether Wraith, who was a notorious sneak, and an excellent one.
Dak`kcar felt a black shroud encroach on him. The presence of one of his most livid enemies cast a shadow over his Soul, or what remained of it. The Dark fraction that had been left to him burned furiously, spluttering, crackling. He wanted revenge, and all of the many violent deaths he had sentenced the Kuldaki to weren’t enough to sate his hatred. He remembered tearing each limb off of Soul Skulker, but his quivering screams never brought pity to Dak`kcar. Crushing Nether Wraith along her entire serpentine back, until the plates of her body were shattered and shredded her innards. Seeing her grovel among her own fluids and dismembered body before she finally died never affected Dak`kcar. He enjoyed it, seeing his enemies die again and again. He had begun to like the fact that the two Kuldaki could keep reforming in physical form; it gave him the chance to devise more horrible ways to destroy them. He had almost forgotten why he even hunted after them.
My village, Dak`kcar growled at the thought. My very race. Even half of my Soul. Those were the things that the Kuldaki had stolen from him, the last burning most in his pounding heart. His newly healed arm-stub also stung with pain, as if acid were working its way deeper inside of him. Nether Wraith’s poison was inside him, slowly festering, and if it didn’t kill him, it would at least shorten his life, which was already in its winter.
I’m old. Ancient, Dak`kcar thought, feeling a familiar exhaustion. I’ve been fighting for so long. I’ve never rested, not once in my centuries of fighting. A new and rare feeling pervaded through him, damply dark compared to the fiery rage he usually gave into. It was sadness, a longing in his deepest being that wanted more than revenge or hatred. But there was nothing left. If he had ever had the chance to feel happiness like other creatures did, he had lost it long ago.
The Yindarian realized that he had locked all noise out of his mind, and turned his ears to take in the sound of the Caldkarien city. Thousands of people moved about, for all that his ears could hear, and he knew that his hearing couldn’t encompass the whole of the city. He then looked about, where he was standing in place, and watched as humans and other intelligent creatures flooded past him in the compressed city. So many living beings, so many Souls, he could almost see the inner Light and Darkness seeping out of them all.
Wait . . . can I . . . see in them? There’s a Light around that woman, and a Shadow over that Boar. I-I can . . . He didn’t know what to think, or if he should even believe it. Maybe he was just hallucinating. Or perhaps not . . .
Looking closer, he stood in place and studied the passing Souls. Some were dark, mostly men, and they were almost as dark as Dak`kcar’s. In that moment, he only saw faint auras, like faint clouds or flames encompassing each person or creature. It was like a . . . a second sight which didn’t interrupt with his mundane vision.
Most of the Souls were bright, and an especially intense little Light walked up to him. An innocent moppet of a girl looked up at him with wide eyes. “Are you a monster?” she asked in a squeaky voice. Dak`kcar didn’t answer.
“Come, Keri, leave him alone.” The girl’s mother came and took her arm and directed her away from the stag. She gave him a fearful look as she herded her other children away from him. Her Light seemed dominant, but was darkened with concern and suspicion. Dak`kcar made a small, tusked smile, something that hadn’t come naturally in years.
Light. Most of those people were filled with it, but his had been stolen.
Am I a monster? he wondered, almost coming to the conclusion that he was. But, as he thought of that mother and her innocent children, his own inner Light grew without his noticing. It was a mere pinpoint next to the Darkness that had consumed him, but it was invisible no longer.
“Have you lost the scent?”
It was the thin, serpentine voice of an Ykarri, spoken with such strength in Diffuse Telepathy that Dak`kcar could hear it through his physical ears. He turned and looked down at the upright amphibian, his three eel-like tails trailing on the ground. His six angular eyes met Dak`kcar’s with an alien intensity.
“Why are you following me?” Dak`kcar questioned, thoroughly caught off guard.
“You have followed one of the Kuldaki here, why else would you journey through such a city? I sense the demon as well.” The creature closed his eyes in concentration and looked pained as he raised two horns like fangs on the back of his head. The two sensitive horns vibrated with the slightest breeze and from the tremors of footsteps in the ground.
“That didn’t answer my question,” Dak`kcar accused.
The Ykarri cocked his head, eyes still closed with transparent lids. “I hate the demons as well, as would any living being. I feel one of them right now, burrowing, deep in the ground. It is looking for something, and moving faster. Very fast. It’s burrowing—”
Dak`kcar felt the quaking beneath his feet too late. A hopeless, fearful sensation ran through him as his heart jumped a beat.
The ground burst open between him and the Ykarri, cobbled stone and dirt splitting to reveal the black maw of Nether Wraith. She writhed and wriggled her way out of the ground, her head as large as one of the two-story buildings of the city. Her horrid panting rent the air with shuddering reverberations, making windows rattle and lantern posts wobble. The populace within half a mile fled in a panic, not very effective because of the dense crowds. Their screaming, the horses’ neighing and the clatter of wheels were distant noises compared to Nether Wraith’s gathering clicking, the sight of the crawling roads less riveting than the black patch that The Serpent made in reality as she groveled up out of the earth.
Dak`kcar leapt back nimbly, axe already unsheathed and bow nocked with an arrow. He glanced at his Ykarri follower, who slithered away from the enormous demon and took cover in an alleyway. The Hunter knelt to one knee and took aim at Nether Wraith, looking down the long shaft of his Arium quarrel, feeling his arms quivering already, though not from physical strain.
Nether Wraith was in the center of a metropolis, a city. A city full of Souls. Souls she could eat.
Judging from her size, Dak`kcar noted with burning rage that she had been secretly feeding off of the inhabitants’ Souls for some time. He let loose his arrow just as she exposed her insectile throat. The shaft buried itself deeply into her black flesh. Nether Wraith didn’t have the underbelly armor that Soul Skulker harbored, but she had something else. A venomous aura that shriveled any life that came into contact with it. Her Wraithvenom—ethereal, yet sapping and deadly to every Essence: Body, Mind, Soul.
Screaming with rage as she flung herself out of her burrow, she toppled over all the structures within a hundred foot radius and released her inner poison. As Dak`kcar escaped her reach for the moment, he saw a dark cloud emanate from her entire form, blackening the ground. She spat a stream of venom from her fanged mouth, aiming more with rage than intention. Dak`kcar knew that he would have to work with Magic more than weaponry, but he fired another arrow nonetheless, where it flew and passed into the demon’s crimson eye.
He smiled grimly. The first damaging strike.
A shriek escaped Nether Wraith and shimmered through the air, assaulting his ears. Throwing his bow to the side and his axe towards his adversary, Dak`kcar prepared to use any of the Magic Classes he knew of.
Nether Wraith rounded on him, and spread her many jagged legs out for a firm stance. Her eye spewed black fluid which reflected no light, bubbling out of the flaming crimson. The arrow was still lodged in her eye, as was the one that had struck her throat. She stared at Dak`kcar with defiance, and he waited. Her aura spread around her, causing screams to echo from the buildings she had collapsed. Her body turned indistinct as the shouts of agony subsided. Then her form turned a definite black once again, and Dak`kcar’s arrows were forced out of her as her flesh healed, while her throat and eye became whole again.
Fuck. He would have to work some powerful Magic if he wanted to even survive the battle, much less win it. He thought to Keri, the little girl, and all of the many bright Souls that were in danger. Bright beings he had just learned to see. If he didn’t defeat Nether Wraith, she would have a Feast of Souls, and no one could stop her after that.
The serpent-centipede charged at Dak`kcar, her legs carrying her furiously through the wreckage of Karshdr. Her venomous cloud dissipated, but her poisonous mouth opened wide—she wanted to taste him before he died.
Dak`kcar raised a great gust of Wind and sent it hurling constantly into The Serpent, keeping her at bay. As she fought against the torrential force, he summoned more power from the air, from the Magic of the universe. He used Combat Magic, his specialty out of all the Classes. He forged a phantom of an axe out of nothing, the blade many times larger than himself, but then, it was a ghost of an axe, being as weightless as he wanted it. It proved real enough as he brought it down on Nether Wraith, just as she broke through his Wind wall. The weapon crushed through her upper jaw with a resounding crack! becoming hefty when he needed the weight.
As soon as it struck, the axe disappeared at his command, leaving him defenseless for the moment. He jumped aside, barely missing The Serpent as she plowed ahead, destroying more houses and causing more screams from mortal people. She formed another cloud of Wraithvenom, hoping to heal her new wound with more Souls.
Making a half flip backwards and rolling the rest of the way to his feet, Dak`kcar seethed as he dodged the poisonous mist even further. Nether Wraith was in a nearly indefinite fountain of Souls; she couldn’t be touched as long as she was surrounded with living beings.
Using more Combat Magic, he made a phantom spike, extending it to spear through The Serpent’s plated flank. Another skreak, more demon’s blood pouring onto the ground.
The sky darkened overhead suddenly, filling with gray clouds that roiled and writhed in the heavens. Dak`kcar wondered for a second at the change in the sky. He hadn’t made it with his Magic, nor did The Serpent as he could tell. Her Magic had little to do with the mortal Elements and more to do with The Void.
But he couldn’t puzzle over the darkening storm for more than a small moment, as Nether Wraith rounded on him. The demon glared at the stag as rain started to pour on them and lightning tore at the sky. Why won’t you die! I won’t return to The Ground, no matter the cost! She screamed like she could destroy him with her voice.
Before Dak`kcar could make sense of her last words, The Serpent was already crawling across the rubble at an impossible speed. With a burst of his most powerful Kinetic Magic, he shot her back and made her rear into the air, spindly legs flailing. Another Kinetic shot sent her twirling onto her side, but that second burst of Magic was not Dak`kcar’s own. It greatly helped though, so he took advantage of it by creating huge icicles out of the surrounding water and launching them into The Serpent.
With a grating, but weakening screech, she flung her tail and body into Dak`kcar before he could prevent it hitting him. One of his sturdy ribs cracked painfully, and another one made a vile crunching noise as he landed in the heap of a ruined building, still smoking with fire from underneath.
Lightning flashed between the two enemies, striking the ground with a thunderous quake. He was blinded and deafened for a moment, but Nether Wraith crawled onto her legs again, making her way weakly to Dak`kcar. Icicles dangled from her belly, dripping blood, and her pierced flank still poured black life-force. Her split and crooked jaw made her eyes stare at Dak`kcar from different angles.
He stared back, still in pain, propped against hard stones. He grunted, shifting weakly as Nether Wraith slithered up to him, growing in his vision like an approaching storm, staring eerily. The downpour overhead weakened, but the clouds darkened further, as if to signal that the storm was only beginning.
Very slowly, The Serpent came to a stop, eyes glistening wetly. Something glittered in them: Hate, relief, triumph and satisfaction. Never again, I’ll never return to The Ground. Finally I’ll be eternally free. She edged closer to Dak`kcar.
He grimaced and tried to move. That’s right, he thought, just come close enough for that final blow.
The Serpent raised the anterior of her body, ready to pounce Dak`kcar and end his saga, securing her freedom. The storm overhead was swirling into one enormous mass, one point above them.
This is the end, Nether Wraith uttered, seething.
Dak`kcar bared his tusks. “Yes it is.”
The Serpent reared herself to full height, and fell down heavily to smother him. He raised his hand up and shot a spike up into her stomach, just as a dozen lightning tridents descended as one from the mass of clouds. They struck the spike as it pierced through her back. The electric pulse vibrated from one end of The Serpent to the other, coursing through her every fiber and searing her black core. Once the strike was dealt, she lost her grip on her physical form, dissipating quickly into dark smoke. She could not even howl in pain, the instant of defeat came so swiftly.
Dak`kcar watched as the dark vapor flew away and fled into the distance, eventually dipping into the ground, disappearing. Nether Wraith was defeated, for the time.
As Dak`kcar found his axe and bow, exactly where he had tossed them aside, he wondered at what Nether Wraith had said. What had Nether Wraith meant by saying that she would never return to The Ground? Another mystery, though he hoped that she suffered there, wherever it was. He searched through the debris of the ruined part of Karshdr and found too many shriveled husks of men and women. And children.
Though hatred and Darkness still soaked him to the heart, the little Light that had grown that day was beginning to take a hold, and it was subduing The Void in him. If it grew enough, it might set him on the right path, not the jagged journey he had been taking, strewn with violence and revenge. Of course, he did not think nor understand that.
The sky had cleared of all clouds and was bright with springtime morning once again. The inhabitants of Karshdr were beginning to return to the ruins at the center of the city, searching cautiously among the blackened rubble for anyone who might need help. Many gazed at the stag in awe, but stayed clear of him for fear. Chatter went about, all excited, unbelieving at what had just happened, ripped through with weeping and terror for those that were.
The stag heard a whimper come from under the overturned panel of a house wall. He turned over the structure, pain stabbing at his ribs, but he raised the wall enough for a small shadow to dart out of it. Lowering the wall back to the ground, he turned and saw Keri looking up at him. She had obviously just experienced true terror—Nether Wraith had that effect on all but the most courageous—but she managed to give Dak`kcar an appreciative look. He picked her up in one hand and brought her out of the darkened place, to the unharmed part of the city. He set her down, kneeling by her, feeling awkward. “Where is your mother?” he said in Caldkarien, being fluent in many languages, even in some that had died centuries past.
“I . . . don’t know.” She was on the point of tears as Dak`kcar searched the crowd of noisy people gathering around the swath of destruction. His eyes were still keen, but only upon turning to the wasted circle of the city did he find who he was looking for; a woman digging frantically through the debris, searching for her lost child.
Picking Keri up in his arm again, he came to the woman. She turned to look at the looming figure above her, having the most relieved, happy expression Dak`kcar had ever seen on anyone. She reached for her daughter who was being held above her. Dak`kcar pushed her away, though, as gently as he could.
“You can’t touch her,” he said solemnly. Before either the mother or her daughter could protest, he pointed at the woman’s arm, which was blackened and infected with Nether Wraith’s venom. It obviously stung at her, but her maternal fear had pushed aside the pain. “That is poisonous,” he explained, “and can infect upon contact. If you want to live it will have to be removed.” The woman was speechless, only widening her eyes in silent fear.
“Not exactly,” a thin voice spoke out, echoing in all of their minds. The Ykarri that had spoken to Dak`kcar earlier slithered out of the dark space of a toppled house.
“You would need powerful Magic to Heal that poison,” Dak`kcar pointed out.
The Ykarri just used two of his spidery hands to support the woman’s infected arm, which she eyed with renewed horror. “Who do you think summoned that Lightning storm?” the Ykarri said, and made a weird grin filled with short, dull teeth. He drew his hands along the length of her arm, making her hiss in pain. But where his hands passed, her skin returned to normal, no longer soaked with venom. A slight scar remained, however, which the Ykarri could not Heal.
“Is there anyplace else where you were infected?” the serpent-eel asked, but the woman shook her head, answering with a stuttered negative. His thin fingers let go of her, freeing her to let her retrieve Keri.
“T-Thank you—may The Mountain Bless b-both of you,” she said quickly to both Dak`kcar and the Ykarri before she practically ran out of the ruined space of Karshdr, away from the poisoned swath.
The Yindarian warrior and the Ykarri mage left the ruins together, after the latter had checked that no others needed his Healing skills. They headed south, through the streets full of panicked inhabitants. What was normal for Dak`kcar was cataclysmic for everyone in Karshdr, it seemed.
After a time, Dak`kcar spoke to the amphibian. “Who are you?” he asked, rather pointedly.
“Sakin, from the Empire of Oshyigar.”
“I thought that Oshyigar was part of the Gelsingean Empire.”
The Ykarri gave a shake of his head. “They live on the surface waters, and only because Emperor Araxes allows them to. We, the Ykarri, live in the deepest of the waters.”
“So why are you here?”
“Because the Emperor commanded for several . . . ‘scouts’ to search the realms of land for answers. It seems that the continent is falling under darkness,” Sakin explained, just as they came to the outer circle of the city, where no one had noticed anything of Nether Wraith’s attack aside from the storm, or refused to believe it.
“Well it seems you’ve found what you were looking for,” Dak`kcar said, thumbing his ribs with a thick finger, wincing at the pain of his broken bones. They would mend, especially with some help from his Healing Magic, weak as it was. As he fixed the bones enough so they would remain in place, he added, “That Lightning storm was powerful, how did you manage it?” That was as close to thanking Sakin as Dak`kcar would get; he wasn’t one for pointless words that seemed to mean nothing. At least, not since losing half of his Soul; much of his personality had gone with it.
“With patience,” Sakin said. “That is why I took my time in delivering the last strike.”
Dak`kcar nodded, and they continued in silence, coming to the place where he had thrown a drunk man into the streets. There, the Ykarri halted. “I must say farewell, Kuldaki Hunter,” he said. “I will warn my Emperor of the demons that still prowl the world, and see if I can convince him to help in the destruction of them.”
“That won’t happen,” Dak`kcar pointed out pessimistically. “They come back. They always come back.”
“In any case,” Sakin said, unperturbed, “I will warn him. And then we may meet again.”
Dak`kcar nodded, and watched the Ykarri turn and head back into the city, probably to search for his kin. As the Ykarri rounded a corner with a group of chattering humans, The Hunter noticed that Sakin’s Soul was odd, swirling between Dark and Light. It made him wonder at his new sense, but there would be no answers for him regarding it. Not for a long time.
He felt his fur drying stiffly in the sunlight, but his thoughts ignored that. A strange creature, Sakin, but the first companion I’ve had since . . . it’s been a long time. He then diverted his mind to the Kuldaki. They’re out there, wounded and hiding, but they’ll heal quickly if I don’t find them. He rolled his three shoulders in their sockets and continued on his way. The Light that had grown in his Soul still burned, but the Darkness flared suddenly, filled with the memories of pain, hatred and revenge.
You will die a thousand times before you perish. I’ll keep my promise, Kuldaki. I’m not done with you yet.