Chapter V
. The Trying .
- Sixth Age, year 1014
It had been two days.
The land was dying, the earth dried up and swept away by great storms, the forests cracking under the pressure of a dark mist that hung heavy over the floor of shed skin.
Only, this time it wouldn’t emerge as a new being.
This time, there was no second chance.
Two days had passed without newfound food, and their meager store of bread and some dried meats was growing thinner as the days passed by.
Most had left. Some by choice, others forced, and still more than a few to a far different land of promise than they had been expecting. It was good business, that is, working with nature at times like these.
Almost took no effort.
Mother’s face was growing pale and thin, looking for all the world like a ghost. She denied it, but Lyrus knew it was a result of her giving much of her own food to the younger children. She didn’t want them to suffer, because they least of all would understand why this all was happening.
He had asked why, on several occasions, and each time it was met with a stubborn acclamation that they would not leave.
“Your father will come home, eventually, and we will be here to meet him, standing on the porch, and smiling.”
But in the background, he could hear Maritha’s strained voice muttering in low tones. “That’s if he ever does come back.”
She heard it too, and so their mother cried, like she had a thousand times, and would for a thousand times more. Thus is life.
I have little patience for such things.
Already they could sense that something was coming. A horizon opened to the north, a thick cloud that built each day and seemed to rise up into the air and shroud out their view of the sun. There was no stopping it.
Word had come, once, of how they fared at war, and little was said.
“No news is good news.” Was mother’s proactively positive reply.
But he knew what it truly meant. No news, means there’s no one to deliver the message.
Or perhaps no one to give it in the first place.
. Rapture Revealed .
- Seventh Age, year 718
He felt like a new man, with a full belly and the sweet taste of roasted meat at the corners of his mouth. Real meat. Not any of that dried, tasteless paper that they had survived off of for the better part of seven days.
No, the cat, who’s name he had learned was Duraan, had chased down a few random creatures that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlucky for them, but a gift from the gods.
If it could be called that.
Aviin tore a piece and savored the moment, letting the flavors of energy flow through his system. It tasted like being born again, which made him laugh. So much had happened in only a week’s time. And there journey was still stretching long before them.
A sigh pressed from his chest, his eyes straying from the sun’s light, to the cat lying in the shade of a small tree, to the girl who’s form had been propped on the dark side of a rock. Her chest rose, then fell, then rose in a satisfactory rhythm.
“And what should we do about her?” He asked, directing his question to Duraan.
“What else is there to do, but to keep walking?”
“No, I mean, she needs a healer. Someone to tend to her sickness.”
The cat’s irritated voice crossed in front of him, speaking of his disdain for ignorance. It was merciless, and angered him greatly, but what was he to do?
“She’s not sick. It’s a sort of comatose state that she enters. Protection, in the most basic of language.”
“So what is she doing then? Sleeping?”
“Oh, no, not sleeping.” Duraan explained. “She’s most definitely awake and conscious.”
Aviin snorted, then regretted it, then laughed again because it was such an absurd comment. “If she’s awake, then I must be dead, because there’s no stone under Draal’s beard that could sleep as hard as she is.”
“You’re very naïve, I hope you know that.”
Aviin raised one eyebrow and made a little face at the cat, who smirked in his own way.
“You see the world as being flat, and so-“
“Oh really? I thought it was round….” He trailed off, scratching his head in a sarcastic way. Duraan was not amused, but he never was about much.
“Yes, that’s funny. And while you sit here and crack jokes, she’s somewhere out in the third or fourth plane trying to stay alive.”
Aviin drew quiet.
“There’s more to this life than just what you see, there are whole other dimensions of time, space and reality that you can’t even comprehend. Things that no one can, because you’ve never touched it with your own hands.” Duraan rose to his feet and stepped to face Aviin, forcing him to turn in an awkward position to look. “What you can’t see, to you, doesn’t exist.”
“That may be true, but it doesn’t mean I can’t believe such things.”
Duraan eyed him sharply, shooting out tendrils of his thoughts to connect with Aviin’s.
“And do you believe?”
His was a hard decision to make. For him, nothing outside a wielded blade and a suit of armor had existed for such a long time, that he was privy to believe that anything might exist out there.
It wasn’t something he had heard before, though. All so strange and fantastic, to the point of discounting it as some dream or conjured idea.
But he couldn’t deny the dreams.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” He asked, sitting a little straighter. The cat laid still for a moment, thinking. This part still confused Aviin. How did an animal become as smart and intuitive as an Adonai? It did not make sense, because it could not happen. And yet, here they were.
Finally, it gave its reply, “I thought you were her friend, are you not?”
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t have saved here if I wasn’t.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true. There are many others that would have different prerogatives, and very different intentions of what to do with her. But you don’t….”
Brackish trees spattered the dry ground around them, like so many dead men’s bones, all arrayed as scarecrows amidst the vast field. But what were they protecting? This was the edge of the wild, and they soon would enter the southern country of Lanket Vel-Dume.
“She comes to me in my dreams.” He said of a sudden, and now Duraan was intrigued.
“Dreams? You mean, the ones you have at night?”
“Yes. It’s always the same, for the most part. I’m standing at an edge, she comes to pull me away….”
“And then….”
“And then I wake up. I talked to her, though.”
Confused as to what he meant with his words, Duraan urged him forward into more detail. “Talk? You mean, about the weather and the latest happenings at the capitol and-“
“No, of course not.” Aviin retorted. “I would never bore her with such menial things.”
“Oh, if not, then what?”
His eyes drifted to the horizon, as if delving into the past and rousing out all those old days.
“Some things just can’t be said.” Aviin remarked in answer to the question placed before him, then almost in no connection asked, “What’s her name? She never would tell me.”
“Savill, of Gyffare.”
“We talked of life, and death, and I promised that I would save her.” He looked to Duraan, eyes falling from one to the next. “And so I have.”
. an excerpt from the book of draal: Chapter XLIX .
It is the third year of the reign of the Lord Eiris, and the Orr Tav have entered through the gateway at the city of Stone Maidens. The entire city has been evacuated, the people moved to outer lying towns, and the royal army was called forth to fight for their king.
Lord Eiris led his men to battle, and to victory. But after only a few months of relative peace,
they come again. Now they pour from the gateway in great numbers. At first in the hundreds, and soon by the thousands.
The king has succeeded in holding them at bay, but only for a short time until they were outnumbered and could not hold out any longer.
The plague enters into the people, raging throughout the land and overcoming many.
Eiris has declared war against the beasts and began the call for the men of the realm to march forth and gather beneath his banner. Many came to fight, and many die on the plains of Uldred and Thurn each day. Thousands succumb to the influence of the plague, and were murdered by their brothers to protect the kingdom.
Despair and darkness becomes our greater enemy as the forces amass in what remains of the city of Stone Maidens.
. The Falling .
- Sixth Age, year 1014
It may seem to some a sad thing. To others, little emotion will rise to their throats to choke out the breathing.
I myself do not feel, but I must admit, it seemed a colossal punishment to have one so young as he was to walk such a path.
Only a few days before he had buried a friend. An animal, but a friend nonetheless.
Only today he had buried his mother.
And his youngest sister.
Maritha had been of no help to him, carving that shallow grave into the hard ground. It had grown cold, though winter was still many months away. Her tears had frozen in the morning chill that swept the land like a vicious Kraul, howling and gnashing its wicked teeth. Biting into everything.
It was not that he did not feel the depression and the anguish over the loss of so much that caused him to refrain from weeping, but rather, he now had to be strong, for his sister and his brother.
They needed him.
A scanty loaf of bread, one of their last, sat on the table, but none of them wanted to eat much, so they just sat and stared in silence.
And then a knock at the door broke into their stunned suffering.
Lyrus rose to answer, confused as to who it could be. There were so few left in these parts. The rest had moved on.
Word had come a few days before that most of them perished in the wilderness, preyed upon by hordes of ravenous beasts that seemed to be turning vile with the descended dark that had now begun to overshadow the land.
Upon opening the door, he found it to be none other than Mr. Quintery, a fellow farmer whose wife had been too sick to leave.
“Hello, sir.” Lyrus said, a troubled look on his face. “What can we help you with?”
The man was tall, and very thin. So were they all, but him especially. His older frame not supported well by the lack of all things good. He looked down at Lyrus with sunken eyes, then to the other two children at the table.
“We ate our last few morsels last night.” He said, licking his parched lips. “We figured that you may have some to spare?”
Lyrus’ heart went out to the man. He certainly was in desperate need. But they couldn’t exactly afford to give up what little they had. He planned to take them farther south, hoping that the grasslands would have fared better.
They needed the food for the strength to travel.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Quintery, but this is all we have left, too.”
His eyes grew dark and somber.
“You could give me some.”
Lyrus sighed heavily and shook his head. “No, I really am sorry, but if we give you some, then we will have none. We haven’t eaten much in a long time.”
“There’s enough here for the all of us.” The man argued, stepping into the threshold. “Just give me a small piece.”
“Sir, I have to ask you to leave our house.”
He glared down at the young boy, snarling with his long nose curling at the end.
“If you don’t, then I will just close the door.” Lyrus placed a hand at the latch and began to push slowly.
Then those eyes went completely black, veiled by some dark membrane that ate the light. He seemed to grow a little.
“No!” He cried. “You little prick! Get out of my way!” Shoving Lyrus aside, he burst into the house, lunging for the table and the food that they had. “Today I feed!”
Maritha screamed, jerking their younger brother out of harm’s way and scooping up the bread. Mr. Quintery wasted no time in charging for her, leaping to the top of their table.
“Maritha, run!” Lyrus cried, searching for something to defend them with. She dodged under the table, narrowly escaping his clawed grasp, and fled from the home, followed closely by his now transformed appearance that resembled beast more than man.
Lyrus remembered that his mother had always kept a dagger beneath their bed, for times of trouble and danger. Was this such a time?
Frightened screams confirmed his thoughts.
His sister had run behind their small log house, searching for a hiding place to escape her mad pursuer. The man ran clumsy and flat footed, slapping his tattering shoes to the ground and stumbling into random objects strewn around the yard.
She went to leave the yard, but a clammy hand slapped against her ankle, dragging her to the ground and slamming the air from her lungs. She fought hard to retain their precious bounty, kicking at the man’s face, desperately trying to escape.
Free, she ducked around the corner, falling to the ground again, her hand wrapping around a pole.
Three tines stuck from the end.
A fork, for pitching hay.
Now wielding a sharpened blade, Lyrus rushed to his sister’s aid, following the path of turned ground that led to the back of their home. Sounds of desperate struggle pumped his blood and sent terrible visions through his mind.
Someone screamed, an evil, terrible cry that stood his hair on end.
Rounding the edge of the house, the sight that met his eyes nearly brought him to his knees.
Maritha was there, cowering behind a crate, sobbing and shivering.
On the ground lay a writhing figure that resembled Mr. Quintery, only his features had gone pale and dark around the eyes and mouth.
Three pointed spines stuck from his back.
The pole out the front, rapping on the ground as he shook.
. Incubus .
And then, I’ll eat some Truvvian truffles.
Her mind had wandered far, but at least it was in a wonderful place.
Back home.
With warm smiles of her friends and family all around, and the safety of a world tucked away from the empire’s reach. It was this that gave her the most distress. Had it not been for Remus’ outrageous, and bias laws, there would be nothing in her life to keep her from being happy, as she wanted to be.
But the gods seldom give us what we want, do they?
Trust me. I know something of these things.
The world around wore a mask of thick fog, draped heavy in the air. It was better this way, though. She didn’t have to see where she was going.
Her direction?
Who knew. Even I could not ascertain to what place she desired. Perhaps she did not even know. There was only her and the silence of air to keep company. But a good friend it was, never talking back, never giving spiting remarks.
Never telling you that you were wrong.
It was for this solitude that she searched, and here, it grew in abundance and she could reap the harvest.
How long had she been away? Then again, it did not matter much, because time was such a nonexistent thing in this world. There was no way to tell, so she put it from her mind, choosing rather to dwell on the more positive present. Who was she to waste an opportunity such as this?
A tree came before her.
Tall and wisped, swaying to the music of our silent hall, and the sound of the sky standing over them. It looked content, and pleased with itself. Letting the strands of its silken hair run over her hands, she strode to its trunk, placing a palm against the strong grain and watching as it began to glow beneath her touch.
This was Rorith.
And it had grown s
trong.
. The Rising .
- Sixth Age, year 1014
The dark was at his mind, knocking and seeking entrance into the chambers of his soul.
It took Maritha, almost too fast.
She had changed the day before, a strange appearance descending over her. And then, she was gone. Joreth, the youngest, was still fine. But when Lyrus looked into his reflection that morning, he saw the same black at the edge of his eyes, slowly creeping in.
There was a war to be waged, and on this field of battle, no reinforcements were to be found. No help from his kin.
They were all gone, well…except for a few.
He looked to the west, to the future.
Even the sun seemed to understand as it was driving in that same direction.
There was nothing left of the fair dales. Even the abandoned homes seemed weary under the weight of so much sadness, bending in the middles and cracking at the edges. He, and his brother, were no exception to the rule, but the Fates favored them.
At least, that’s what they thought.
But reader, you must understand this, sometimes it is better to die.
That’s why She is so beautiful to me.
Lyrus swore, something he had never been tempted to do before. His father did often, and told him that such things were not for gentleman, but he didn’t feel like having manners, then.
Nothing remained for them on the plains, nor of their family, but he knew of at least two that would be waiting for him.
It was to them that he would go.
Curse the dark and curse the war, this was his calling, and he would make that answer.