Note: I've written a lot of discontinued stories that have teetered off the narrow plateau of my interest, but THIS one I intend to finish in the next two months. Here's to hoping my resolve stands.
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An age of darkness loomed over the planet. Evil had emerged and in its thrall was a nation. The banner of the swastika was hoisted. Under its corrupting shadow, hatred was exalted. Cruelty was celebrated. Men treated men as vermin. Evil in its many forms spread forth its dark tentacles, and the crimson mist of war was ubiquitous. Even those that would be saviors cast aside morality and bowed to the cold tyranny of expedience.
So it was that the radiance of a thousand suns burst at once into the sky, and the world trembled to the will of mortals.
From afar the Ancients watched, from a place of banished terrors. Deities of old, their connection weakened without the worship and sacrifices of mortals. They recognized the danger of this new power man wielded. The destruction of humanity was imminent, and consequentially their own. The Forgotten would be set adrift in the void until they faded away.
A plan was conceived by the minds that birthed monstrosities. Though their power had waned, they still had their servants upon the physical plane. For millennia, through their creatures of darkness, they had gently plucked the web they wove to alter the course of man’s destiny as much as they were able. Those servants they would use to avert such an apocalypse, and
at long last,
to restore them to their former glory.
Suckling babes were stolen from their parents, orphans of war from uncaring caretakers. Children in thousands were taken away. With them as the forerunners, a new realm was created, where the hard-earned knowledge and wisdom of the past was lost to man. A realm where mortals
learned to live in terror of the Old Gods once more.
In time, the rest of humanity destroyed itself; a remainder lived on, as slaves to the Ancients.
Drey, of unknown lineage
November, 4286 AD
It was the coldest winter I had ever lived through, but that wasn't saying much. I was only twelve winters old. Kal, who was a veteran of fifteen, claimed if it got any colder you could grab a handful of winter and sculpt a God's heart. Kal was always saying things like that though. I stopped believing his tales ever since I found him earnestly trying to sell a pouch of ineffectually perfumed sewage as a divine nectar that bestowed immortality. Also learned that day was caution when offered anything he claimed safe to consume.
The Capital wasn’t far away, which was a good thing. I didn’t particularly like traveling on snow laden roads and neither did Gray. I looked over to the stall where Gray was put up and watched his shank rise and fall. He had the right idea, but sleep was being rather spiteful to me. The pony’s snores were oddly similar to Kal’s. Or maybe I just missed him a lot. I pulled at the hair on my chin as I reminisced.
It was almost a year ago that I met Kalivaer. Kalivaer, he never did things the usual way. His way of saying hello involved knocking me out cold when I was asleep and dragging me off to the basement of a house that looked like it would collapse with a slightly forceful exhalation. I woke up to a skull that felt like it was split in two, and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Below them was a grin the length of the Griffin Road
‘Finally if fleetingly freed from the clutches of the nightstalker! Excellent,’ he said with a clap. Questions about who the hell he was and where hell I was and if he wanted a fist knocking his teeth into the back of his head were forestalled by a dramatic wave of a scrawny hand. ‘Look around you, and remember how this feels my new friend, the nascence of a legend. Mark this day, soon we’ll be making history, you and I,’ he cackled as I clutched my head groaning.
He became the closest I had to kin.
A few weeks ago the Priests arrived; everyone in the city knew to stay low and pray that neither family nor friend was given the honor of their attention. But Kal, the stubborn fool, said ‘They only have as much power over you as you allow them. Ideas, Drey, are only as strong as our belief in them. Besides, empty streets, unattended carts. Tonight, we feast!’
He got picked off the street by the powerless idea when he was trying to sneak off with a pant full of radishes, of all things.
That was how I ended up on the trail to rescue him. Or at the least give it a try, even if it meant I wouldn't live to see those couple of hairs on my chin grow into the magnificent beard I knew they had the potential to become.
‘C’est la vie,’ I said to the thatched ceiling, rubbing my jaw.
***
Arkhanen, son of Terberon the second
August, 3157 AD
Unnatural breeze stirred the claws of leafless autumn trees, their branches raking the moon, leaving pale blue scars on its bloodless face. Restless fireflies lit the clearing, bound by the black cloaked shamans with rites that sanctified the earth upon which I now stood. All the clans of the east were gathered to witness with glittering eyes. Even the babes were silent, clutching at their parents with tiny hands.
In the midst of them all, at the eye of the whirlpool of fireflies lay the body of mine uncle. There was the man who raised my brothers and sisters and me, the man who taught me the ways of honor and steel. It felt like yesterday that I stood at this very place, filled with fierce joy, and my uncle stood to anoint me as Daeryon, an apprentice to the elite warriors of Moon-fire. Eyes that were filled with pride now stared eternally into the worlds beyond eyes closed.
From the fore of the multitude my younger siblings looked on with impassive faces as the eldest of us awaited till the shadow of the headstone to fully shroud the Chief. What I saw planted a seed of prophetic dread. Within my elder brother’s heart that I knew was a husk washed out by sorrow he felt a spark of anger.
‘As was, so shall be,’ he said, his voice drawing blood from the silence. The spark had been fanned to a flame, and his tone betrayed the fury he felt.
The grass around my uncle, my brother and me was sucked in and beneath us the features of a visage was formed from the bloodied mud. The earth opened its maw and swallowed my uncle, as it had swallowed generations of Moon-Fire. Never sated, never at peace, forever ravenous. The face then dissolved, yet in my mind I could still see it, betraying prodigious avarice and smiling with glee at the inevitability of the words that would escape the lips of my brother.
‘War,’ he whispered into the quiescence, and where a wound was once his voice dealt a deathblow, and the clans bayed at the cold uncaring moon.
***
Rya, daughter of Rebert the Fourth
March, 3963 AD
The walls of the dungeons were smooth. I had scratched the walls a thousand times, but there wasn't a single mark. Something in me was dying, and there would be nothing for it to be remembered by.
The single torch that lit the cell flickered. Shadows were written on the walls like messages from another world. A world where I was free. A world where I wasn't chosen. The fire laughed mockingly. A world out of my reach.
I couldn’t remember the last time I slept. I only remembered it was before my last visitor. He was dressed in black silk. When he moved he was like one of the messages. Grey flickers against the wall, like a promise of ancient terrors. A reminder of the darkness man learned to fear.
He came with a chalice. It had been days since I ate when he came. Back when I roamed the Throne, ignorant of the fetters they had placed upon me, I had been taught what to expect. I drank its contents without a word. It was sweet as poison, it was bitter as death.
No words, however, could prepare me for what I felt after. There was something dying. There was something dying, and there was something killing it, both in me. It was ravenous. It was strong. It made me afraid. It made me repulsively ecstatic.
In time, as I knew would happen, the door opened again. A naked man crawled into the room, chained and broken, on the inside and out. The rest was a blur of red.
When I came to again, there was blood on the floor. There was blood on the walls. There was blood on the ceiling. There was a human body ripped to shreds.
That night I finally slept.
The next morning I woke as a Goddess.
***
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