“This world of Adamath, our world, so full of contradictions and beauty, strengths and weaknesses, is a place we all call home. It is a world rich in the lifeforce only a world filled with wonder can have, a lifeforce we call Ether. Adamath, a world of four continents, each divided by seas so vast, and cultures so old, that to journey across them is to put your lives at the mercies of the great hegemons themselves.
As much as our world is full of bounties and blessings, it is also capable of great darkness and evil, lurking in the most unsuspecting of places, most of all, like all evils, it takes root in the places farthest from civilization.”
Regent Lucien of the artificer’s guild.
His earliest memories were of the hole he lived in, he, his mother and father, huddled together against the perpetual cold. It had always been snowing them, white flakes which he and his mother would carry in wooden buckets his father had made from flexible wood that grew from the Ugue trees around their little hole settlement to make water during the frozen season. To call it a hole in the ground was more of an exaggeration, but the truth was that they lived underground, far from the shimmering floating cities that dotted the landscape.
A network of interconnecting tunnels, which he and his little sister had explored when they were young, that was, until she died a brutal death at the hands of one of the predators of their underworld home. He was still too young then, and so his mind locking it away, such trauma, watching as his sister was torn to shreds right in front of his eyes, saved only by a cave-in that separated him from the last death cries of his sister. He had never forgiven himself, even at that early an age, he knew he should had protected her, he was the older of the two of them,
He had been weak,
Even now, as he felt his body being dragged across the dry baked land that had taken them months of voyage by sea to reach, he realized he was still weak. Close to death’s doors, his body leaked so much needed blood, the scars on his body screaming as much as the raw open wounds that covered them as well..
Tunde,
That was his name, he had no idea what it meant, not even his parents, it had been one of the names passed down from generations to generations. It was supposedly an omen, a sign of something, perhaps good or bad, he had no idea. Not that it mattered right now, not when he was thrown into another hole, the irony almost bringing a painful smile to his face, if he could even move it. He landed among decaying flesh, that much, he knew, he was familiar with the smell, he had seen a lot of it growing up.
And as he felt the last of his life blood ebb away, his sight finally blurring to nothingness, he wished, he hoped, to whatever was out there, not that he really knew what was out there. He prayed to them, to it, to the earth and the skies, to the very hole he was in, that he didn’t come back in some other life.
He died, he knew he did, there was darkness and he felt nothing, till he heard the laughter. It was something short and terrible, something filled with power and brutal, it sounded like rage, like pain and like glee. It sounded like secrets, like power, terrible power, and he felt so insignificant in that brief second that it felt like an eternity. Like he was a single grain of dust in its presence, and when its gaze drew away, Tunde woke up, still within the decaying pit, darkness covering the landscape.
Reality set in as he woke with a great gasp, his body aching with pain, screaming with every movement as the pain began to recede slowly. He tasted ash in his mouth, his throat parched and as he moved a limb, his head pounding, all these drew his mind away from the object in his fist. When he finally realized it, eyes finally grasping the cube, the black thing with red glowing line on it linked with his blood to the decaying rotten form of a dead man lying beside him, he felt a chill go up his spine.
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It was linked through the manacles that had once bound his arms together, one half at least, the one on his other arm somehow disintegrated. The other half, the one splattered with the coating of his blood, was attached to the rotting carcass that was once a man. He was frozen where he laid, staring into the empty putrid sockets of a man that had died so long his bones were brittle, and then the head attached by a clump of blackened flesh.
Tunde felt himself praying it was the wind, but there was no such thing within the hole he was in, and when two glowing pinpricks of light came from its socket, Tunde felt tears drip down his face in terror. He was dead, there was simply no other explanation for this, and this place, wherever it was, was his eternal condemnation. The skeletal form moved slowly, weighed down under the bodies of hundreds of dead souls as well, staring at him. One arm moved, stretching forth as if trying to grab him, and yet, Tunde couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t feel his body as his mind shut down.
The arm hanged in the air, and then came down on his manacles, shattering it and piercing his right hand, the same hand with the cube. He gave a brief shout of agony that disappeared, living him groaning as his blood flowed once again, except this time, it stopped almost immediately. The cube soaked in his blood, opening up with clicking sounds as it drew his attention, his body finally moving slowly. Within it was a little pebble, pulsing softly with black and red light, and said pebble sank into his body again.
Perhaps it was a part of his mind that had been expecting it, perhaps the terror had prepared him, but when a lance of agony swept through his body again, this time, it mercifully shut down. He awoke a second time, with a deep breathe, gasping for every piece of air he could get, this time though, it was morning and there was someone in the pit with him. It wasn’t some dead skeleton, that one laid lifeless where it was, surrounded by hundreds that called the blackened pit home, Tunde doubting he had seen it move, only the empty cube that looked like a piece of rusted brown metal assured him it had been real.
The right-handed manacle was still with him, confusion in his sight as he had seen and felt it shatter, but it led to more confusion as he saw a man who saw him also in turn and froze. He was a muscular, brutish looking thing, pale skinned while dressed in dry leather hide of some animal, face painted with black and white lines of color, and a large stick with a sharpened metal on its head. It took the man a few seconds to roar, weapon raised as he dropped the body of a decaying man he held in its meaty hand to the ground. Tunde scrambled to his feet, pushing himself backwards as the crude weapon crashed into where he lay before, tearing through brittle bones and rotten flesh alike.
He rolled away, down the pile of bodies as the man came after him, weapon raised high, burning dimly with some sort of red energy. Tunde instinctively raised his right hand up, the one with the manacle on it, screaming hoarsely with a sore parched throat, pleading with the man that was about to split his skull in two. The weapon came down, clashing with the manacle as the man gave a yelp, Tunde staring in pure surprise as the manacle which was more like a one hand metal cuff glowed with black and red writings.
Perhaps what surprised him the most, apart from the cuff actually deflecting the attack, was the way it seemed to drink in the red energy coming from the weapon the man held, before repelling him backwards violently. He shut his eyes from the explosion, blinking rapidly to the see man in front of him, his weapon perfectly lodged between his skull, blood gushing out. The man fell, crashing to the ground with a dazed dying look on his face as shouts came from above, Tunde rolling away in confusion.
Everything was happening too fast for him, he should be dead, dead men don’t kill other men, especially not with a crude we he didn’t understand. He hadn’t taken three steps when a force crashed into him, holding him down as he stared into the face of another man, similar to that who had died. The man barked at him in a rough tone he didn’t understand, the same language he spoke, just gruttal and harsher. A blow to his skull that came out of nowhere knocking him out again.