Chapter Five, A Feast of Friends
The following Friday, the Great Hall of Crestfall
As the light of day died past the rolling crests the cloak of dusk claimed the cityscape. Flambeaus were lit to guide the path to the place of the Feast. This reformed palace of Vizzari’s crimson court, where magisters would dine and bloat themselves on the fruits of conquest & divide, contained atmosphere of undying glut. Save the awful spirit in the air of this wake. The ghosts of dead rulers remained, though the tomb decorations took on different shades. Whites, golds and sapphires over the old reds, golds, and blacks. When once this banquet was called as reverent toast to Drakoni perseverance, it’s theme had been tainted with tragedy. A trial of their togetherness in the torrent. An attempt to force celebration among rot & ruin.
The attendants’ spirits were low. Obliged to partake, they yet could not shake off that funereal malaise. This sentiment evident on the countenance of the servers & noblemen alike, and even on those jesters & minstrels deigned with alleviating the fog with their arts. Even they, of the lowest rung of prestigious pretenders, could not perform with their true heart’s resonance. Troupe and troubadours played futile flutes & soulless shows against the pallor. This grand hall held the airless aura of an ill-catered charnel rather than the dining place of proud realm’s favored citizens. All could feel it, but none dared make mention of it.
Drakkon carried this miserly air about his visor. Disdain and suspicion shown on every crease. Where once his bearing was so radiant & polished as to reflect the shine of his divine grade, he looked almost gaunt and pleated, as though he had not eaten nor rested in weeks. The Lord refused to dine upon any of the meals, so delectably prepared for all to partake. Nebulously claiming his appetite upset by a thirst for vengeance – a thirst rivaled by his liver’s swelling urge to wash down any sober thought.
This drink was much to Corinna’s displeasure. She sat beside her husband at the foremost table, barely masking her distaste for the reeking stench. The food kept far from them, both ‘fasting’ in their ways to mourn and ready the arrival of another war soon to come. The Lord forestalled all but his chalice he called to be continually filled; swearing off feast for sake of wine & pitchers to purify his gut. While the Lady inhaled ground herb to settle the existential stirring in her stomach, which fled at the thought of eating. She found the few smiles Drakkon graced her with unnerving, his teeth painted crimson color all too reminiscent of blood.
“My Lord, my beloved,” The Empress-consort cast calm plea, “my Light. May I be excused from the celebration for a wink? I wish to gather my thoughts before addressing our honored guests.”
Drakkon granted her a tempered nod. The motion of which draped his graying raven mane over his face, hiding the hurt behind his eyes. One of the bolder courtiers whispered, “again?”. Then Corinna departed from the Hall, disappearing into the shadowy corridors just beyond. Meanwhile Baron, who kept up appearances by mingling amongst the diners and sharing halfhearted words of hope, upon seeing her take her leave began to weave his way out of the throngs of nobles towards the exit.
“Leaving so shortly?” Mordaunt began, blocking Baron’s path with malice beneath rhetorical manner. “Before our guests could hear a song from the legend himself? I believe most would feel spurred to see you here only to slink away without humoring their weary ears.”
“Would you not prefer a passing toast to our Lord? Oh, I forgot, he ‘rarely partakes of such mortal indulgence.’ Yet surely, he would not turn down another glass for his sake?” The bard sighed, knowing full well he would be unable to escape this militant obstacle in Mordaunt who martialed demands of locals & their Lord. “Aye, I would be remiss to deny them such grace! Even if my heart feels far heavier than my lyre and my voice dulled by so much wine. Would you do me the honor of heralding my performance while I prepare a fresh tune?”
With a devious gleam behind his pale blue eyes Mordaunt obliged and brought the attention of the Hall to its center where the bard waited. The bitter conversations died down with the sounds of the banquet save for the occasional clanging of plates & silver utensils or relentless chewing of the gluttons among the audience. Baron, brought stool & lyre, began to strum somber, mournful strings. He played the instrument as though it were an extension of his body and soul, with such succinct flow that even his rival musicians and poets were impressed or envious of his natural talent.
A melancholic verse flowed from Baron’s mouth to match the minor chords he lay, lilting a tune that veered near a dark aria. “Where is the love which once filled all our days? Where is the light of our happy cause? Alas our hope is set ablaze, and all our alms covered in gauze.”
“O may we see a ripened dawn, of bliss untainted by this Aeon ov Drakkon!” His sad, subversive song kept on, “All our Lustre leaves, carried away by baleful Fall breeze! Yet we bow low to our knees as all our tears drape into the seas... for naught but thee, and never mine... our measure unwinds, no meaning to find. Would that Reign wanes, should bring such Spring rains!”
“O, that Light is but a lie, a promise unkempt & pissed in the wind! It holds no Living Truth, no ho, that dark veiled deception for which we all die!”
Silence pervaded the Hall around the bard’s seditious song save for tearful snivels from several guests which were swiftly wiped away by handkerchiefs. Baron readied to take his bow as the applause began to ring. All the while a trustee approached Mordaunt, who placed himself close the front of the hall, and delivered to him sealed parchment. He leapt to present these to his Lord with a cold whisper explaining their meaning. Inside: reports of Baron’s movements in the past few years coinciding with attacks from the People’s Protectorate; with blasphemous inscriptions, in Baron’s scrawl, decrying Drakkon as a pretender taken from one of the Illuminaries the bard built.
Baron mouthed more words to his strong declaration but before his treacherous ballad could be given rallying encore, the same lord the bard gained a vengeful momentum towards trumpeted its end. Hearing this insult dedicated to him, Drakkon slammed the table with a thunderous thud as black sword broke out in his hand. He screamed a garbled & indistinct roar, howling blubbering curses to bound across the acoustics of the hall. A stream of simmering hate in his shout to cut off the performance which betrayed him before the eyes of all.
Irate, the emperor vaulted up from his decadently decorated table and read the contents of this evidence of treachery aloud to the audience. The indignation & enmity rippled through his roar as he announced his decree of retaliation. “You hath sung your last song. Performed your last dance. I hereby declare you a heretic and brand you as suspect in the murders plaguing this great city and all good people of our Domain! Drakes, arrest the traitor and ensure him transported safely to await trial before the eyes of all the tribes!”
Puffing swears, jumbled backbiting & uproar assailed the Great Hall at this horrid revelation. One nobleman, so affronted by the fact that this man who’d only just made him shed tears for the beauty of song, now revealed to be potentially responsible for the horrors that befell Crestfall, went so far as to toss his goblet at the bard. The cup wet his hair & beard with wheat ale.
“Do not harm him my good people! I ensure ye that Justice shall be dined on before the season’s turn. But we must not stoop to beast hood like this ill begotten ilk to smite it!”
“Justice?!” Baron spat as Mordaunt’s men bound his limbs & dragged him away unkindly. “Like that which you showed to Vilas?! The ‘Grace’ that was given to Kee’tan?! Or the druids? Ha! How merciful to condemn me for a crime I had no hand in all to flatter your raving, vain paranoia! O, what shall ye do when the Imperium’s helm runs out of peasants & plebs to fling against the walls of all the Holds which revolt in the name of reason?!”
“SILENCE, SLAVE!” Drakkon bayed in rage. “One more word from thy despicable mouth and I shall have thy traitorous tongue severed! This sympathy for the rebels is nigh admitting guilt! & we have plentiful evidence of thy plots, thy snares!”
His hand (quivering with ire unending) skirted over his ceremonial sheath, returning the blade there. Leashing his rage to not wield it to quiet Baron’s heretical gibbering for good. “Half my mind is bent on slicing that snickering jaw from thy head! But as thou uttered defaming curses against the seat of my Divine Dominion – to which thy loyalty is lapsed, despite all it hath given thee - thou shall be brought before a high court at Felhenge. There, at the seat the druids forfeited by falseness, face those peers thou bark wicked transgressions at.”
Following the lord’s signal his champion escorted the defamed Baron, with his famous face stolen by black cowl, from the presence of the good people. As he led the warriors and their prisoner away, Mordaunt gave one last look back at the occupants of the hall. His cold eyes fell on the banquet participants, seeing them for the glutted ghouls they were soon to wilt away as. With one masterful play he had ensured that Crestfall’s high society members would be eaten by the plague tainting their fastidiously placed meals. Were it not for his stony persona he would be tempted to tears of glee to see how well his ploy played out. But he contained his impolite pride in the coming punishment and unrest. The die is cast...
Heretics in High Places
Summer’s Fall, Solsheathe 20th, 17 AD, Hill Court at Felhenge
Clouds of incense smoke stretched ghostly fingers out to stroke & pall the faces of all atop Felhenge, Those assembled, readied for their Aeon’s trial. Above, in welkin court, the Autumn Aurora arrived early to hover over the proceedings. With spectral spectators riding the rivers, star stream tilting to wax golden & violet glow against the burgeoning bleakness. Ephemeral hues & phantom flashes dart the heavens crest, leaking eerie aspect of dawn goddess’ promise into evening, of her kin’s course. Baleful Judgement, cast in cloud mesh, marching for Astraea’s approach over the seat of stone circles & the Lord’s makeshift throne of fell slab. Dreary overcast from the west threatened Eos’ blessing of ever-dawn. Astraea’s touch, nocturne’s hug, sent shivers beneath cloaks and made more still hark how the sky held wan auguries in its drifting expanse.
Etched upon every face in the crowd were the heavy creases of allegations against the much beloved Baron. The infamous bard had been a beacon to many; a true messenger of the Muses & herald of Astarte’s lusting passions, Erosian mirth and ever a champion of the plebs. Few could deny that his Illuminaries provided the fruit of ancient & practical knowledge alike (& allowed an alternative service for second sons & daughters to flourish) to the people of all tribes and station. Few there sought to see him meet such a fatal sentence. But as his crimes were of a dour nature, the severity of the proceedings ordered religious treatment from all.
The Lord of Living Light exuded no such radiance of his namesake. Nor warmth from his place of elevation over the congregation. Seated on his throne – a toppled & reshaped black stone of the Druid hill, with a relic of fury affixed to its back: those tangled horns of Bellieus - beside his lovely, if weary, Impress, Corinna, in visage of embodied winter. Casting countenance of mournful gloom which hooked the breath of the court betwixt that circle of stone pillars.
While the other champions presented themselves as silent guardians, dispersed amongst the throngs of courtiers, sages & nobility (and their elegant courtesan escorts) encircling the scene, Mordaunt stood out before the Court just below the throne. Standing tall & firm upon the hill of stone his aura as prosecutor was as formidable as his master’s intimidating stature. While his poise was calm & courtly, in his eyes a gleaming hunger for justice bore into the soul of the accused. The chill of the air was seen in his sight, but his body never shook its granite against that pre-frost of imminent hallowed season. If anything, it made him more alert, sharply awake to his argument. Baron would suffer the brunt of the elements, and his rhetorical fury.
Azarra, meanwhile, had been relegated a position on the peripheral of the proceedings much to her displeasure. This she deemed a move of blatant disrespect against her Aegis. Her envy scalded holes through her sockets whenever her gaze passed over Corinna. Perhaps this humiliating seat of mere spectator was the result of her conniving? How could that glorified night-spouse not be plotting to push her further? That unworthy consort sunk into the embroidery of her powdered position beside Drakkon on her throne of judgement. Yet she, the mother and true giver of guidance, was sequestered; sent out among social climbers, austere sages & tangential nobility. Shut aside beside those ungainly, churlish sorts of a class she thought she’d clawed her way high above.
Her thoughts droned with tempestuous jealousy. Azarra spared a glance at the accused. Reflecting fleetly on how she first hired Baron to spread the word of Drakkon in her favor through siren skill. Skills applied now to subvert the reign of her & her son. Something Azarra did not want treated lightly. She sought it so that this ungrateful spinner’s end might rend a rift between that harlot, slinking behind regalia, and the son that her wretched guile bedeviled. With such partiality for the bard written on that soured succubus’ face she could see how the split between would restore her to imperial luster, of which Corinna was undeserving of.
The crowd’s wind-muffled whispers were silenced with the Mordaunt’s announcement for their star prisoner – ragged and worn, with intelligent but troubled brow. Mordaunt spoke in lurid voice of grand office. “Oh, loyal people of this great Imperium! Oh, children of our Living Lord! Before you, in fetters: the man guilty of most profane treason & blasphemous conduct against our Emperor!”
“Such treachery is made more deplorable by his coveting such high station. This famed bard who helped sound our rally to glory becomes a whispering deviant seeding song of discontent. Let his tale of renown, exaggerated and un-earnt, be tarnished by the truth of his treachery! His tongue and wit hath spurned us! Split our sides with forked trident of treasonous will! We hath unearthed evidence of his involvement and propagation of People’s Protectorate propaganda and designs of revolt. Behold this trickster hellion and hear those who shall affirm his guilt unto all.”
The air hung every heart in attendance with tense tethers as Mordaunt called forth the accusers. To Azarra the way the man’s nostrils broadened wildly during his address and the way his boar snout overshadowed the rest of his countenance, constantly made him appear eerily over eager. Beneath his mask of emissary of the Lord’s justice he possessed a crooked hunger given the unsteady, dusky ambiance of the trial’s setting. Faded impressions of boils along his visage added to his ardent hate and proved to the mob that their warden endured the bane of Crestfall as much as their kin. The declaration of ardent assurance flamed in his glare; the guilt of the accused already decided. Those in the crowd who spot this trait bobbed along in trust that this flare must simply be a sign of how compelled by the Lord’s work this zealous disciple was.
The proceedings swiftly spun about an effigy of Baron as a traitorous turncoat. Fellow artisans of Illuminaries played parts as witnesses and (perhaps motivated out of envy) denounced his sonnets & sermons as designs of rebellion. Mordaunt hungrily led the chains of rhetoric from the speakers against the skald. One man, an Alrith, confessed then to crimes done under Protectorate banner: the murders of the noble Bastiones and the champion’s family.
Erratic whispers crackled through the court as a subtle murmur returned. The Court felt unease to be putting one of their own champions on trial for so heinous a crime. Few dared to gaze up at Drakkon on his throne for fear of witnessing his expression or, worse still, meeting his eyes. The confessor, a feral looking man with an unhinged stare stumbled before the scrutiny of the court. Alrith’s dark attire, remnants of a uniform that bore the stitched sigil of the People’s Protectorate across it. The circles of defeat beneath his eyes and furrowed brow made the man appear already broken, a prisoner in his own body.
“Confess again to these good people what thou did to those poor people. Tell them of the mothers and how thou treated my kin for thy seditious cult!” Mordaunt goaded.
“I-We... yes, we gashed out their bellies and festering guts... ‘twas a symbolic act against the ‘holy’ wardens who kept us all imprisoned in perpetual famine. For tragic abuse from they who let the poor, unprivileged, people of their province fade to famine while they filled their fat bellies. We were there on behest of intelligence from our commanding agent, Baron. Aye, he told us our tormentors were housed here. He allowed us entry into the walls and payment for their elimination. He said they were too much of a threat and that competition to his political prowess could not stand if we, the hope of the People, were to triumph. For we need a noble leader, he says! As did we poison the aquifers of Crestfall with blight; their stocks with rot.”
Tears trickled from the tattered man’s eyes in jagged drops. He shook beneath the scrutiny of Baron’s aghast and sickened look, not wanting to meet the face of the man he betrayed. Baron interjected and called to his former fellow. “Alrith, you craven! Why do you lie so?! You desecrate the livelihood & future of our realm for small survival? What monster here do you take the fall for? I did not think you were one to crumble beneath their weight!”
More tears fell to the prisoners’ cheeks as their eyes finally met. In an instant the animosity in his burning gaze was replaced with tragic glint of hidden insight. “They have my family...” At this forbidden exchange of telepathic signals Mordaunt pounced on the witness, bringing him to the ground with a mean blow.
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“Hark! I know this man as a captain of the Protectorate but not as a callous murderer! He defames himself – wherefore I can only assume is for fearful coercion? - that the real sinner can escape the light of truth! The code of the protectorate is not to strike wanton fear into innocent hearts but fight to free them, help them liberate themselves!” Baron blurted, exasperated & near spent. He flailed a chained fist at Mordaunt. “Listen not to the lies the gilt dog of Drakkon, here, pried of the mouth of this good man. This court follows the tread of our Lord’s lap-hound, supping the gore of his master’s endless war! Hear mercy, not machinations!”
“He shames the very premise of loyalty! He mocks our champion after gutting his family!” Pustules of people spat ardently against the accused. His denial only enhanced his guilt.
Drakkon roared abrupt adjoining to this debacle, stirring the tension in the swarms evermore. “So, you confess to your involvement in the marauding syndicate that tears at the fabric of what we have all built together! Thou art of malignant mind, spurring machinations for that treacherous group which plots to bring murder upon our mothers and babes! To write their obscene manifesto in the ruins of guiltless bodies! Why should we weigh a liar’s code as worthy of merit?! Savage conspiracy against all civilized peoples this is!”
The background murmur of the crowd ended instantaneously. Clamor, crushed by the sheer thunder from him & anticipation of a coming storm. Delphine, slinking beside Azarra, clung tightly to her cloak almost shrouding herself in it. Not for warmth but for wanting to disappear in its folds. To be free of the pain of witnessing such a fatal rift in those she had long cared for. Azarra, however, yearned then for blood as much as Mordaunt. This frightened Delphine, shivering more than before seeking her assurance. To be so distant of heart when so near gnawed raveningly at her marrow.
Baron’s features contorted miserably. Trembling with bitter stitch he pushed past Mordaunt and stared directly up at Drakkon. Though bound he showed no thrall’s posture but stiff disobedience. He would have offered a cheeky grin were his temper not so enflamed. “I will not claim to be anything that I am not. As all bards – and all people - are bound to follow the strumming of their own heartstrings, so too am I pressed to pursue & play the resonant tune of truth. I do not deny my allegiance with the Protectorate. I embrace, honestly and fervently, that my soul burns for the people. I should have adopted the ideals of their crusade sooner.”
Baron began boldly. “But I did not order the deaths of the Bastione bloodline – that is a lie! Nor wish for any massacre inside that place. Not a whisper did I hear of seditious conspiracy to turn Crestfall’s sanctum to a pestilent crypt where innocents are ignominiously buried! Someone else schemed this! I am willing to be a martyr but not over another’s crimes – let me die only for mine! Only through verse and philosophy hath I shaped any plot against you, and I stand by my declarations against the injustice of this Imperium, but I share in tears for this senseless slaughter. The only conspiracy I know of is the one which is casting me in the mold of a maniacal murderer! When I am ever just a poet who cares too bloody much. Yet ye frame me as a sorcerer who spawned this horror! Yet the pool of their blood reflects thee!”
Drakkon forwent his throne. The black marble behind him, with relic coronet of the Forest Lord fastened to it, swathed his looming stature in the shadow of horns. All awaited with unease, suspended with morbid curiosity & trepidation of what the emperor would do to this admitted traitor. Corinna too rocked with unnerve as her husband and sovereign abandoned her side to confront one of their oldest friends. This friend and former star: prostrated before the highest court in disgrace at the mercy of an unforgiving Lord.
Mordaunt swerved back, clasping the other prisoner by the neck. Blighted hand pressed with such pressure as to show the sooty hue under white glove. He too steered back, knowing that this was no longer his official sanction but a deeply personal matter unfolding before the eyes of the world.
“Why?” The emperor’s tone austere, every syllable carried by painful undertow. “Why betray me thus? Why lie and defame my name when I have given you all?”
Baron met his consternating watch unabashedly. He could feel the world narrow, shearing all around in singularity of that stalactite stare. A nauseating spiral churned as his core seeped into stinging speech. “When I pledged myself to your cause ages past I did so because I believed in you to truly deliver the world a green chance. I thought you would grant your promises – not to me and those who helped raise you to your throne of grandeur and opulent pedestal but to all the realms. I had faith you would bless our tribes with unity, or at least grant them their sovereignty. I dreamt that your triumph could renew our respect for each other’s choice and foster fertile grove for the clans to craft an equitable society-”
“- I have done this. I shook the foundations of the old world and sent the state of the Dread Serpent toppling into the void. I propped up the Drakoni Aeon as prophesied, remolded our world from Divine essence. I fulfilled promise to my champions and made you the herald of Light. I granted you safe harbor for future generations to learn & flourish in this garden I groomed. Yet you inverted this gift and made it a blade with which to pierce at my heart!”
“Nay!” Baron erupted with impassioned indignity. Fuming with scorn and with vigorous candor. “You lopped off Vizzarion’s dreadful head, aye, but only that your own neck may splinter and sprout from the wound like a hydra’s. Even that title of ‘Imperator’ is one of many stolen from them. Your Winged Drakes are but rescaled Dread Knights or lictors. One crown shed so another duplicitous gemstone may sit upon that heavy head. A thousand serpents are one in you! The mark of your malice is more titanic than this realm yet knew. Such cruelty for its own sake. As though a noxious addiction of yours that all of us below must be flayed for!”
Spitting spite, he stood with feet planted as the stone pillars of this court, refusing to bend before his Lord nor the pressure of that darkened glare. “Your rule unites us only in bonds of suffering. Your boot steps upon every throat that dares not utter every breath for your vanity! Any head that fosters a mind of free will is lost by your executioner’s axe!”
Acrimony rang through Drakkon’s pupils. Blinded with hate yet paralyzed by tolling rancor in eye of his own storm. All while Baron’s charge rolled on. “At least the Magistrate’s malice had its limits. And they knew it, even in avarice, too chaining for one man to hold the reins, all heads of states. Our people are divided more than in any age in the gulf between the impoverished and those chosen few who serve you in absurd affluence! Your militarism and expansion beyond promised riches for all. But all that was pocketed into the treasury of soft-spoken nobles who benefited from your sadism. The rest turned to rot and harvest of rue! The People cry out for a chance to breathe beneath the weight of your duplicitous throne! This chair of lies that you raise higher every day pummels the backs of the people who brought you to it!”
Drakkon towered as a monolith over Baron, who retained his plucky poise even while assailed by burning words. “My will commands the movements of the stars! The planets above: as gems orbiting my crown and shining at the behest of my Grace! All that is earthly, all that is corporeal is blessed by my Light and holy touch which gave it this chance to flourish in merciful existence! Those who are cursed with plague and poverty are those who hath squandered my light- my gift – to wallow in the mire of mortal misery... Those who cannot endure are impure souls and ungrateful heretics, dregs dwelling in filth & fallacy! Black-hearted heathens who deserve not to bask in the halo of my Divine glory!”
“Even those heathens of the Crest, defended by your Imperium?”
“Crestfall shall rise from this curse. One you claim credit for through this insistence. The strong of spirit shall survive by empyrean aegis.” The emperor’s hue distorted to a lurid purplish glaze. His visage, appalling to witness, let alone be the target of that wrathful look. “You dare before the highest decry my radiance, my ordained rule as hollow?! I am the sovereign of heaven and earth and you, in your hubris deny me?!”
“’Tis you who are bloated with hubris & fattening fallacy, Drakkon!” Baron spoke up, stretching his resistance. Though his voice trembled, this was not from cowardice before facing an exacting verdict but from the sorrowful blame and guilt that burdened his soul, that it should come to this. “You are blind to the plight of your people. Seeing only the glistening reflection of illusory luxury. How many sons have you sent to die for empty titles and how many died disobeying delusion? How many farmsteads were torched when their tribute was not to your satisfaction? Ah, how many ancient writs are travestied for a circle of sycophants to supplant real wisdom with inflations of your ego? Your diet of wyrms and eyeless drakes?”
Storm light struck, burning through aurora. Bolts heralded the inclement Helwinds. “My wisdom gives them Light, reason for life! They Live through me, those that do not veer into black veneer of sorcery & curses against all proper Order! I never claimed that the revolution of this planet to my Aeon, in full sway, would be peaceful. Nay, I warned of great sacrifice, to no avail to lesser hearts as thine! Those who heed not the cost of greatness!”
“Greatness?” The defendant thrust forth trident of his tongue. “All these hollow worshipers who chant dumb litany of petty praise, resounding in your ear with what you want to hear that they may rise to suckle the teats of luxury. But it will not mute the sounds of your people’s whimpers and screams for change. Never shall you silence cries for truth & a right to make life our own!”
“Heaven strike thee! This pitch of blasphemy, alight by my Thunder!” Drakkon verged on spontaneous combustion from his indignation. In the drapery of early evening above, the great constellations winked resistance to walls of heavy bouts. The star sign of the Wyrm, Zar’Rion, and its rival dragon of fyre & wing, Astralis-Drakonis, collapsed in cyclone river of evenfall.
“Let your Divine Thunder strike me dead without hand then!” Baron lifted his chains, cursing the heavens, daring their wrath. “Show them your eminent Will manifest as Malderath’s blessing upon me! Ah, but you are no storm god. No rebuke shall light me but that of your malice. Ha! Look at these spurious reverent & frail flatterers you collect! Your courts: so obscenely adorned with frivolous affluence. Yet the masses beneath your high throne and lofty towers are shackled in servitude with a dearth of substance and a travesty of life granted to them for their burdensome loyalty. How many souls must drown in the wake of delusion before you realize what you have become?”
“I am a god of Storm & Sun! I could bid daylight return or a fork of lightning make ash of thee! Alas, these baleful gales are most befitting Our mood; painted in the weather. For my mercy tempers the tempest, covers this court in my Aegis. That ye face wrath of living hands, are strangled by the throat which thought to speak for all of them. Unless repentance moves thee!”
“You are blind to your nature.” Admitted the cursed rebel with somber & more intimate intonation to his ‘merciful’ Lord. “You are no god at all. Only a man encased in vain deception, capable of seeing only what you desire to be true. You are a tyrant, a villain! No more divine than a grain of sand or a snow-capped mountain! Nay, even less! This thing, this husk, before me is no creator, no king, but a monster that betrayed everything it espoused!”
The crowd: horrorstruck at this blasphemous claim. They whipped wildly in their places as Drakkon unsheathed his notorious meteorite sword and poked the obsidian edge at Baron’s bare throat. Cries of ‘Traitor,’ ‘blasphemer,’ & ‘kill the covetous lout!’ rustled through the spectators. Along with a vehement call for the ‘sodding bard’ to have his innards torn out and fed to his fellow ‘rebel dogs.’ Braver souls in the audience dared voice support for Baron, pleas for mercy. Though they hid their faces and shushed their mouths before anyone could pinpoint who said such things as ‘hear him out!’ or ‘he sings the song of truth with soul of a skald!’
Baron became broadly emboldened in his conviction. “I will no longer play the purveyor of wide deception and deplorable artifice. Innumerable lives were committed to utter woe, their preventable anguish ordained by this fraudulent doctrine, this false dogma... I will not be an agent for the suppression of knowledge and free thought that your despotic agenda may prevail. Your claim to divinity is an unfounded concoction only real in the heads of those indoctrinated by the lie. Inculcated on ruse! You are a man lost to mere pose.”
The poet’s rhetoric rouses electrifying shocks in the galleries gathered on Felhenge Hill. This sacred site of the Druids, deformed into sacrilegious sham trial might as well be his burial mound if he could but hurl final cord of revelation. “With how ravenously you took from those stable granaries and crops I should expect you to look the mirror image of ole Magister Fel! Aha! What shall they say when our holy lord gains a paunch from his glut?! Or more fitting to say your belligerence and rape of all lands & rights you believe yourself beholden to hath shaped you the same as old Kassan! You, but the blind heir of hapless hubris. Your real father: the one you took those horns from! Will you not bare for us that ursine skull, your true likeness!”
The bard-champion-turned-traitor pointed starved finger to the horns hovering over the throne in decoration. The festooned-antlered trophy which hung over the court as a reminder of Drakkon’s strength was that very Crown of Bellieus. Lifted from the temple after much muttering opposition to the move the relic to stay in the shade of their divine lord. To follow wherever he goes, as sign of Imperium where court is held. But Baron reminded all that it had belonged to Kassan, the terror of a man who nearly brought the tribes to their knees for his conquest. “You are less a god and more a wilted mirror Kassan, without the kilt!”
“LIAR!” came the witch-wail of the High Mother with sudden, unsettling insistence. With harpy’s shriek she tore at the ears of the attendees with verbal talons. “Lecherous asp! My auguries prophesied that there would be a great betrayal among this court! That Saatharian rays would again creep up to strangle we high nobility in our slumbering trust. Here is that wretched snake before us! We should commit him to the balefire and burn his memory for the sake of all our reverent spirits! To tolerate such brazen blasphemy will bring the firmament down upon us!”
This pious, if passionate, pronouncement produced great concurrence. Ensnared the mob with a vicarious yearning for brutal punishment. Anger prevailed over clemency. Nameless folk called for the lecherous liar to be immured, castrated, quartered, and fed to rats. Should the line of Azarine faithful not have been blocked by their Lord, whose Eye wavered then on his mother, they would have torn him in twain and dunked the halves in the Felstream.
Yet another dissented. Silent and graceful, Corinna glided down from the rocky seat and reached for her husband’s arm in ardent plea to stall for mercy. As balletic in form as shocking in spirit to the audience around. With gentle fervor she appealed to her crowned spouse. “Please, my love! Deliver him to the folds of time’s decay but not to the headsman’s axe – and not by your blessed hand. To do so would only make him a martyr and enflame the militia fyrds with dire fervor against us! We must make it known to the people that this all too well-beloved bard is a treacherous cur before we commit him unto death. Lest we enrage those ignorant souls who think him a hero. Display him in the chains he earns. Imprison him in lasting scrutiny of the immoral path he paved.”
Drakkon turned from Baron to his beloved. Not with the warmth of mercy in his eyes but an arctic gale that hailed an avalanche over her being. Searching for any sign that she too may be in league with the enemy. Then he relented a sigh. “I understand your concern. But we can withstand any blows that may come in retaliation. This conspirator must be made an example of. Given the pedestal of his position he must be executed. Baron, the lascivious leech, will be flayed thin before the eyes of all faithful Drakoni.”
His commanding tone thrust her a couple steps back. She felt a rift tearing at the tissue inside, widening the glaring fissure between their love. Though Corinna was a mere few feet from Drakkon she’d been committed into the yawning gulf of cold and treacherous space. Many in the crowd were confused that the Empress stepped up to defend the admitted traitor, even marginally so through the mercy of imprisonment.
Azarra, aware of this budding unease, sent hushed whisper to those around that “Perhaps the Impress is not what she seems?” a sentiment which travelled anonymously through the throng of wary nobles & superstitious servants. “Has she been seduced?”
Drakkon quelled the commotion by persisting in his declaration of Baron’s doomed kismet. “I will tear down the legacy of his treachery! I will make him a monument of mockery to be loathed. Remembered only as a lesson to those who prop themselves up as a tainted shadow against my Light! I will burn those shadowed Illuminaries in effigy and make it impossible for treason to be spread through any foundation of this glorious Imperium! I will erase every stain of his abhorrent existence with those colleges!”
“Nay! Never!” Baron’s spout of ardency made Drakkon turn a violet shade. “Burn my body, burn this ‘treacherous’ flesh of mine! Destroy this earthly vessel to satisfy your rage. But I beseech you not to burn these temples to Light & Knowledge! Burn not the heart of this land, of our people and history to ash! Why toss the legacy of all our combined minds onto funeral pyre when I, alone, affronted you! I swear upon all that once existed between us, all those bonds of friendship and the zeal we shared in bettering the world that it was solely my influence that wronged your rule! I acted on my whim and should be punished for this. But I assure you that the Illuminaries serve everyone in offering learning and in thriving anew in communal understanding. Those students and instructors of muse & medicine are innocent of my meddling.”
With such resonance of palpable ardency in his defense, a portion of the crowd were caught off guard by his heartfelt zeal for this ideal. But most remained cynical and thirsted to see blood shed on this hill for the hell which became their Crestfall, not far from sacred site.
Mordaunt dispensed his argument on the matter coldly, further immuring the prostrated bard in suspicion. “He only states such a desperate claim in hopes of clearing any of his slithering kin well imbedded in these institutions. I would advise, my Lord, to proceed with an investigation to uproot any remaining snakes.”
Even Mordaunt tread carefully in the wake of Drakkon’s incensed state. “They do aid our alchemists & engineers, these schools. Better to purge them, than raze them. But if they cannot concoct any salve for the blight, it may yet be small loss. How’ere, if the colleges are but schools of revolt and they slaved for the slaughter of my line...” Manticore tears dropped as frost flakes, pouring his longing for Selene into pseudo-chalice of his fallen ‘family,’ “let them be staked upon pyres of Imperium!”
“Stake your own rot, fiend! The plague is not our doing. You may have done better to make your imperative its staving & containment. But that it spread from the south to encase all the eastern Ruun only shows the incompetence of the censors & stewards of this empire of ataxia!”
The emperor ignored this frivolous prosecution from the traitor. He stomped up to Baron and, with the strength residing in his one hand, pressed the prisoner to his knees in poise of disgrace. The legendary blade gleamed with thirst even in the sparse light persisting in the darkening sky. It licked at Baron’s neck, suckling drops of his blood without any application of force from the wielder. “Any bond that once existed between us was sundered the moment you breached my trust, began this plot against heavenly throne. I see no reason to permit you any last grace, nor should I risk humiliation by trusting your sordid tongue...”
Grim insinuations lingered in the volatile vacuum between the two men and the purgatorial moments upon which the threads of their fate hung. Drakkon sheathed his sword but held tight in his condemning intonation and in his grip, latched to Baron’s neck. Then the Imperator released the defendant’s gullet & declared the censure from his own. “Come Eos’ next visit, this court shall meet once more for an official show of the great traitor’s damnation. He will die, that is certain. But it must be fitting show to every person of grand & low standing in our land, as to make his death a meaningful warning to any scoundrel harboring ill intentions. He will confess before even greater number soon. Put a muzzle on him for now! Mordaunt, show the damned party what will happen to any sniveling rats lurking in his ‘temples of light’ by demonstrating on his fellow betrayer.”
Mordaunt shoved Alrith to the stone slab at the center. Ushered to the chopping block to meet a long, merciless knife. Making methodical incisions & artful mutilations, he carved carefully to elongate these signets of Imperium branded of his flesh. The condemned perpetually muttered anguished prayer before those cords were cut, “salvo nostrum domus.”
Alrith’s executioner tried for stoic, enigmatic expression in enacting Astraean act. But the predatory flare revealed through the feigned lack of pleasure in tormenting a man who once fought beside him in the front. The doomed bard caught this sinister gleam. Forced to witness, muffled & voiceless, his friend’s prolonged public death.
The congregation of clouds, grown burdensome, wept over the assembly. Rain poured over the stone pillars and washed carmine streak. With a signal from the Lord the courtiers were dismissed, bid to disperse. The many hailed his Justice. Then they scampered off into dismal murk, submerging into the brisk bleakness that claimed the hill.