Ellas Past
Kane
In an instant, the screen before us filled with multiple images.
Around the periphery each scene was of an attack point – the dungeons from which prisoners would be freed and led to safety, the travelling chamber where even now the destruction of the stones had begun, the numerous barracks that housed his Nargu, his torturers and his own magicians, though they were few and none strong in magic, and the vast chambers that held those he would feed upon – but in the centre, largest of all, was the image of Dar’cen, the gnome creature that fed upon this world.
We all watched wordlessly, breath held, awaiting the instant where his features would show that he knew of our attack.
We did not wait long, for only seconds after Anna’s command, the body of the poor tortured soul hanging in mid-air exploded into a million pieces of bloody flesh and bone fragments, as the gnomes’s head, for that was how I would forever think of my former master, snapped to one side, staring off toward something unseen. Rage filled the twisted face as it slowly turned, red fire filling the eyes as they scanned the area before them searching.
‘He knows!’ Anna said, her voice a whisper, almost as if afraid he would hear her speak. ‘He knows of the attack… and he knows that we watch him. That is what he now does… he looks for us.’
Though her voice was hushed, I still caught the tremor in her words. She was afraid, Anna was afraid. God help us.
The head and the fiery eyes stopped their movement, and he seemed to stare out of the screen directly toward us.
‘So there you are, my sneaky, little spies,’ he said, his voice full of anger and hatred, and yet tinged with anticipation.
And then he smiled, a ghastly smile on that so very bent and twisted face, as his kindly, words of compulsion filled our room.
‘Come to me now. Come and I will show you wonders you could only dreams of. Am I not your benefactor, your one true god?’
Before me the image on the wall flickered back and forth from the ghastly gnome like figure to the so very Adonis like god I have served for so long. My emotions, too, swan to and fro, from love and adoration to hatred and revulsion.
Besides me, Anna’s face was white, her eyes bulged and perspiration covered her brow.
‘He bends all his will to find us,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘He sees the magic that we use but he knows not the source. If we can stand against his compulsion, we win time for the others. He know of the attack, but it is us he wants… he knows that we have seen him. We alone know his true forms… somehow he knows that.’
She fell silent for for a long moment, the strain of her efforts plain on her face, her hand trembling though she still clenched held mine like a vice.
Then, she gasped. ‘He radiates a hatred beyond comprehension, it beats against my barriers… it seeps through. I will not withstand this long, but I must try if we are to succeed this day. Father. Prepare our escape. Ready yourselves… all of you.’
Though I could barely pull my eyes away from the wavering central image on the screen, image after image of the periphery attacks scenes winked out as our people fled back into the tunnels that would lead them home, their grizzly work complete., until only one remained, that of the dungeons, where Ella’ren and humans struggled to help their frail and helpless charges from their cells and into the safety of the tunnels.
A long moment more passed, the gnome now screaming in rage, all pretence at kindliness gone, as flames enveloped all those that had lain before him.
‘You will be mine!’ he raged. But then, suddenly, he smiled. A twisted, horrific thing that brought a chill to my heart.
‘Flee! Leave them, there is no time left.’ Anna screamed. ‘He has me now, Father. You must go… you must leave me. He comes… Aghhhh!’
Garath stood as much as the room would allow, and swept Anna up in his arms, almost before her cry had left her lips.
‘Lead the way, Kane,’ he bellowed. ‘We must reach where we entered this place, or find where Mother Ellas alone stands before us… I can do nothing in this warren of men.
But before I could move, Gremok was in front us us, beckoning forward as he rushed passed the open door and into the corridor beyond.
‘Follow me,’ he shouted. ‘He will not find us… we children of the Wise Ones have the gift of Avoiding. So fear not, we will escape him this day.’
Garath, the now limp form of Anna in his arms, ducked below the door lintel, and followed in Gremok’s wake, and as I turned to follow, the figure on screen, now once again the god like creature that had been my master, a malevolent smile on his face, began to fade into back particles of nothingness as he came for us. I ran, not for my life, but for my very soul, and the freedom of this world, the freedom of this time.
He could not know of me, must not feel that which resided in me, that part of me that belonged to his future self. For if he did, Anna’s plan would surely fail as he pondered what really happened today.
I ran faster than I had in my entire life, and only slowed when Garath’s lumbering form filled the corridor in front of me. Some distance ahead of Garath, Gremok laughed maniacally, not the debilitating shriek of an Ella’ren at play, but the laugh of someone beyond fear, well into the realms of madness.
Seconds later, an icy chill swept over me as a hate filled scream of frustration reverberated from the rooms we had just vacated. ‘Faster Garath,’ I urged.
We ran on, turning this way and that, Gremok’s mad laughter ahead of us a counterpoint to the chill of rage and frustration that grew ever closer. On and on we ran, Anna now alert in Garath’s arm, a look of extreme concentration on her face as she leaned over his stooped shoulder to look back past me.
Garath turned a corner ahead of me, and I chanced a look back as I felt his nearness. Behind me, the lights that lit at our passing were one by one flickering out in the distance. He was nowhere in sight, and yet I could feel him – it was a though he was almost there, almost upon me.
I surged around the corner in Garath’s wake, only to find the way ahead empty. Light lit the passage ahead for twenty yards or more before it again turned, and Gremok’s laughter echoed off into the distance, but my comrades had disappeared, and the feel of Dar’cen’s presence grew ever stronger.
I walked on quickly, glancing into each alcove and doorway that I passed, and yet seeing no sign of my friends.
Then, as I scanned around one brightly lit room from its doorway, a hand appeared as if from nowhere, grasped my coat and pulled me forward into the room.
‘Behind me,’ hissed Gremok’s disembodied voice, as his face appeared as his hand had, a wide, fang filled grin on his face.
‘Get behind him, Kane, he is almost upon us,’ came Anna’s voice from somewhere to the rear of the room.
Gremok’s arm pulled and guided me behind him, and from that vantage I could see the room and my three friends – Gremok was to the front, facing the open door, Anna and Garath stood behind him alongside where I now stood. ‘What happens here?’ I whispered.
'It is the Avoiding,’ Anna replied, her voice calm and conversational. ‘With it and my Cloaking, he will not be able to see, hear or sense us… I believe.’
Anna’s words, loud in the surrounding silence, had barely reached my ears, when the air before the open doorway darkened, became almost a cloud of back particles that, in seconds, became the form of Dar’cen, his true gnome like form.
His head moved from side to side on his spindly neck, almost as if sniffing the air. Then suddenly, his form changed, morphed into that of the master of old that I had so worshipped for so long. And with that change, a desire to call to him, to go to him, filled my mind almost overwhelming me.
I had thought myself immune to his compulsion – Anna, the future Anna, had freed me from his hold – and yet I wanted, needed, to show myself to him. I took a step, and as I did so, Dar’cen’s so very beautiful face turned to look into the room, looked directly toward me.
Anna’s hand grasped mine, squeezing it tightly, and as if it had never been, his compulsion fled before her touch. Dar’cen peered into the room, a hint of confusion on his face, and then his head snapped around as Gremok’s maniacal laughter magically screeched out from somewhere distant beyond the doors threshold.
Instantly, Dar’cen seemed to fade into a cloud of darkness that hung in the doorway for an instant, two fiery red eyes seemingly still scouring the room, and then he was gone.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
‘Quickly now, we must find—’
‘Here, Daughter. Behind this rear wall lies Mother Ellas. Will the Avoiding mask the noise as I reveal her, Brother?’
‘Do it, Father. Between us not a sound will leave this room.’
It took only seconds for Garath so score the plastic like wall cladding with his bladed hands and tear it down to reveal a framework of steel like girders that supported our room and the floors above. The stone revealed between two vertical girders vanished, forming an almost square tunnel whose end was lost in darkness.
‘Hurry! He returns!’ Anna shouted, just as I felt the air in the room chill, and darkness flowed from empty air and began to coalesce in the doorway.
‘I must go first, but you must all be close to me… you must hold on to me!’ Garath said, urgently, as he ducked between the overhead girder and into the tunnel, pulling Anna with him. ‘Quickly now, both of you!’ he growled.
I backed into the tunnel, my hand grasping Gremok’s tunic and pulling him along with me, as Dar’cen’s twisted face peered out of the cloud before us, fiery eyes finally falling upon us, his prey.
Then, as Garath’s arms enveloped us all, the stone floor we stood upon vanished, and with stomach wrenching speed, we fell.
It was pitch dark, and we fell. And we continued to fall. The light above and Dar’cen’s scream of rage had abruptly cut off as, I assumed, the vertical tunnel we fell through closed behind us. Now, the only noise was the rush of wind past my ear and Gremok’s maddened laughter.
Garath still held us tight, but even as close as we were, all squashed together between his arms, I couldn’t see any of my friends. It really was that dark.
We fell for what felt like an eternity.
Gremok’s laughter abruptly cut off as Anna said, her voice calm and yet slightly higher pitched than normal, ‘It would be good now if you were to slow our descent, Father. Surely we have fallen far enough to have escaped from him?’
A ball of light appeared before me, hovering above Gremok’s palm, revealing the tunnel we fell through. It was almost circular, its walls constantly changing, blurring from one rock type to another as we fell deeper and deeper. Looking up and then down, and I could then see that we weren’t really in a tunnel. It was more a chamber surrounding us that moved downward, the floor, ten feet below us, disappearing to let us pass, and then reforming a few feet above us. It was very disorientating to look at, and I almost wished for the darkness to envelop us again.
Garath’s reply was slow in coming; he too seemed to be examining our surroundings.
‘This is not of my doing, Daughter. Mother Ellas has a hand in this, our escape… I doubt we would have escaped him had she not.’
Gremok’s mad laughter began again in earnest as I said, ‘So how do we stop, Garath? Can you do anything, Anna?’
Garath was again slow to answer, probably only seconds, but enough time to have fallen hundreds of feet more given how the wind whipped passed my face.
‘Worry not… no harm will come to us. Mother Ellas will care for us,’ he finally said, his rumbling voice calm and full of confidence.
Almost as his words finished, light suddenly suffused the chamber from all around, the blurring of the walls as we passed them slowed, and the air around us thickened, becoming a cushioning force slowing our descent.
Garath’s grinned in delight, hideous sight to be true, but one that brought relief to us all.
Slower and slower we fell, until we were finally at rest.
Each and every one of us sighed in relief, although Gremok’s was more akin to a giggle as he wriggled free of Garath’s embrace and looked around at the stone that surrounded us only a few feet away in all directions. Palms laid flat against the stone as if to open a door, he said, ‘What now—’
Gremok almost fell as the stone he leaned against moved away from him. All of the stone surrounding us rapidly moved away until we stood in the centre of a circular chamber that was perhaps twenty feet across and almost as much in height, now much like a miniature version of an amphitheatre rather than the cylinder that had surrounded us in our fall.
Garath smiled, his face filled with a reverence I had not seen before, Anna looked about questioningly, I sighed yet again, and Gremok just looked bemused, his mad laughter finally silent.
Though light emanated from all around us, a brighter, almost pure white light, began to pulse in the floor some feet in front of Anna. It seemed to quickly rise up out of the stone, growing as it did so, until it formed the figure of a woman.
She was old, or perhaps ancient was a more apt description – Her hair, silver white, was braided and hung over one shoulder almost down to her hip, and her milky white skin was creased with lines of age – and yet her posture did not fit with one of such advanced years – she stood erect, back straight and shoulders forward almost as if on parade.
It came as no surprise to me that her eyes were blue, bright, bright blue, as were all the magical ones I had ever met on this world. But it was not her eyes that drew my gaze, it was her smile, a warm and radiant smile that needed no compulsion to gain my trust. I could not help but smile in return.
‘Mother Ellas,’ Garath whispered, as he fell to his knees.
‘No, Garath,’ the woman said, tenderly, as she faced him. ‘I am not Mother Ellas, so stand please, I implore you.’
‘Garath stared at the woman, his eyes wide, but he did not move.
‘Mother Ellas is not one being, Garath. She, as your own beliefs tell, is all things that make up this world… she is the very stone you stand on, the water and the air you breath… and she is all creatures that live here in this world of ours… all souls, living and those long passed, form part of the entity you name Mother Ellas. I am but one of those past souls, and act as Mother Ellas bids.’
As Garath slowly stood, his eyes still wide and fixed upon the woman, Anna, a smile breaking her face, stepped forward with her hand outstretched.
‘You are she,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘It is you who spoke to me as a child. You who guided me then, and led me to safety… you who guides me still.’
The woman’s hand reached forward to take Anna’s, a sad look on her face. Then, as the two hands came together, Anna’s passed through the woman’s as if it was an insubstantial thing, a thing of mist.
‘Ah!’ Anna said, sadly, as she let her hand drop to her side. ‘A past soul, you said… that explains much.’
What it explained, I did not know, because I was in a state of confusion. I heard the words spoken, I understood them even, but they passed over my conscious awareness as I stared at the woman, not knowing, not understanding, what it was I felt.
She seemed familiar, seemed as if I should know her, know who she was. But I didn’t – I had never seen this woman before. But knowing that didn’t help, it didn’t dispel the feeling, the warmth I felt for her… the love I felt for her.
Almost as though she saw my confusion, the woman turned to me, the gentle smile still on her lips but her blue eyes now wet with tears.
‘Ka’in,’ she said, the name strangely twisted in the way she said it, but the tone nonetheless filled with what I somehow knew to be love.
‘Ka’in, my dearest one. Oh, how I wish that I could touch you, hold you close and keep you safe… but alas it will never be, it must be enough that you live.’
‘Who are you?’ I whispered, my voice faint and wavering, in my confusion. ‘Who–‘
‘I have already spoken much that I should not have. Know only that I exist, and that, where I am permitted, I will aid you against… him.’ Her last word, a reference to Dar’cen I was sure, was filled with hatred.
‘Who are you?’ I asked again, my words almost pleading.
The woman looked to me, tears still filling her blue eyes. ‘My name is Erithain—’
Anna gasped. 'You, it was you who wrote the prophecies. You who guided my life... and that of the world with your words?', Anna said, as she fell to her knees, a look of awe filling her face.
'Stand please, Child, I do not deserve your reverence. I but did what I could to make amends…’ her voice trailed off, and for a moment she looked away.
When she looked back the tears were gone, as was the smile, and a look of determination filled her face.
‘Today I have assisted you, but do not expect that I will always be able to aid you such. Today has cost Mother Ellas much, and she is weakened greatly by her intervention. And so I have only words to aid you as you move forward against him.’
She hesitated a moment, before turning to Anna. ‘To you, I say that his final defeat will only come when he is sent back to the darkness from whence he came. That dark place, and of his birth, you must learn of if he is to be forever banished. You will not find what you seek in the words of my prophecies, they do not exist in those tomes… what you seek was written long before, in place you must journey to, if this is to end.’
Turning from Anna, she again looked to me, a smile momentarily on her face, quickly lost as determination took its place.
‘You, Ka’in, must know that your being here has birthed a future where, on this very world in a far distant time, the words that tell of his final defeat are being crafted by two who would be sisters, two who are sisters in truth… Soul Sisters. What they write and that which I have told Anna of must come together with the knowledge held by another… he who my prophecies name the Unwitting One.
’Both are told of in your writings, Erithain. But of them, you were… vague. Hinting only at their importance in what was to come.’
‘Like you, I was a dreamer… I saw futures in my dreams, fragments of futures… of possible futures. I wrote that which I saw, that which I remembered of my dreams. Now, some things are more clear to me, some futures more real… more possible. And so it is that I can guide you toward those futures, but that is all… I can only guide. The future is not a thing that is… your actions, all our actions, determine what it will be. It is for you to act upon what I tell you… for you to interpret for good or ill that which I have said.’
‘But you said that two, these Soul Sisters, are writing of his defeat… you said—’
‘I did. And that future is set, secure. You yourself have seen much of what is to come, and that cannot be changed. What I speak of is a consequence of that future and the actions you have taken, Ka’in… and those cannot be undone. The Soul Sisters will write their words, and for you now... it is as though they already had.’
‘And the writings that I must seek, of his birth and where he came from, what of them? Are they set, or is the past a fluid thing that may be changed, too?’
‘The past, his past, is done. It is a think unchanging… though that I wish it were not so… so very much suffering could have been avoided. The story of his birth is as much my tale as his, but one that I cannot speak of… it is for you, Anna, to seek this knowledge.
’But why? If you know, why can’t you just tell us?’ I said, exasperated.
Erithain face looked crestfallen at my question.
‘I cannot. I must not tell of this now. Not now… and not to you, Ka’in. To do so now would set another future that I have seen, one that must never be. You will learn of this story, but from another… one who you trust, one whom you will believe. Your life has ever been one of suffering, my Ka’in… and more pain is to follow… much more. But I know you, I have always known you… you will endure.’
Tears streaked the woman’s face, her hand trembled, and she suddenly looked frail, so very frail.
I couldn’t help myself, as I stepped forward and took her in my arms.
Anna gasped, as did Erithain herself, for my arms did not pass through an insubstantial things as Anna’s fingers had done. Instead, they held a living, breathing woman, a woman who sobbed in my arms, and held me as if she would never let go.
A long moment passed as we held each other, and I, not knowing why, cried too.
Then, looking up into my eyes, Erithain smiled and pushed back through my arms, once again becoming insubstantial and ghost like.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as she spun around the chamber facing the walls surrounding us. ‘Thank you, Mother Ellas… for a gift I never thought possible.’
And then she was gone.