“Bleh! Bleh!” shouted the High Lord of Denderrika. He was unrecognizable from his former self. It had been half a decade since he’d been able to walk on his own two feet without supports in place. His heavy belly hung over his legs as he sat in a chair, preparing to hosit himself up onto his two purple legs. They were bruised and full of itchy patches of dry skin. “I cannot do it! I cannot!” he whined. The lady beside him maintained an endearing smile across her thin red lips. Her hair was silky and brown, running down either side of her breasts and down to her hip. It was straighter than straight and healthy.
“You can do it, my handsome lord.” The lady rubbed a gentle hand over his arm. It was full of boils and nasty scars. The High Lord needed to arise from his chair so that he could get into his herbal bath. It was the only thing that could sooth his scars and his rotten flesh. Two servants stood by his side, stressful looks spread over their thinly worn faces. If they tried to support the High Lord too early before he’d given it a good effort, they’d be chewed out and scolded by their High Lord. Besides, the lady who sat and watched over him could bring immense suffering to their minds without warning if they irritated the High Lord. Her demeanor would not change when she did this. It was unnerving, to say the least.
“BLEHHHH!” The High Lord gave a final heave of effort to lift his oversized rear side from the wide chair. He got up about half an inch and then collapsed back into his seat, spewing saliva and chunks of medicine up. The chunks lay on his chest now, over a dirty white robe that covered his entire body like an oversized cloak. “I cannot do this, Lady Sapphira. I cannot and I will not!” he was fussing like a child and pounding his fists on the arm rests of his chair. There came a knock on the door. “Bugger off!” shouted the High Lord. His lips were plump and swollen. His eyes were crusted over from swollen eyelids. He could hardly see.
The servants knew that it was now acceptable for them to assist the High Lord. They moved to his side, each servant grabbing a flabby arm. The High Lord’s shiny head gleamed beneath the dim lighting of the bathing room. The light was provided by the fingertips of Lady Saphira, who had the torches shining a bright blue light throughout the room.
The High Lord hadn’t always been this large and sickly. There was disease that had begun to spread throughout the realm, and Denderrika had been the first nation to suffer from its unruly symptoms. The High Lord was in an advanced state of the illness, but Lady Saphira’s healing power was keeping him alive. Her mystical power was his strength, but it was also to his detriment. With the maintenance of his (limited) physical strength came a plaguing of his mind. He was unrecognizable from the state he had been in when he was young and healthy. It was the same man who had turned young boys from Denderrika’s orphanage into cold-blood killers called the Ascendiens.
“I’ve got half a mind to slit my own throat and be done with all this. It’s too much for my weary bones,” cried the High Lord.
“Your complaints will be heard here, my lord. But you must remember, once we get you back to your High Seat you must portray strength and ruthlessness. The plan depends on it.” Saphira’s words were so smooth and creamy that even the servants were feeling swayed by their power. They weren’t sure what application her words had for them, but they felt an overwhelming sense of allegiance and attachment to this Sorceress.
The plan had been instilled within the High Lord’s armies over twelve years ago. It had taken a while to get all of the pieces moving in the right direction, but according to Saphira’s mappings, everything was falling into place. The plan had started in King Tarren’s High Court just mere days after Gareth Blackthorn’s appointment as Lord Commander. His reputation preceded him across the realm, and King Tarren had decided to hold a tournament in his honor. The tournament brought visitors from across the realm to partake in the feasts, joustings, combat, wine-drinking, games, and other rallying celebrations which had kept the Citadel rocking with noise and chaos for weeks. Saphira was an unknown figure back then. She was the High Lord’s best kept secret. In his mind, he had found her. It was a bleak, rainy day fourteen years ago when he saw her alone and shivering outside his mighty black towers. He sent men down to receive her, perceiving her undeniable beauty even from the distance from which he saw her. In reality, she had planted herself there and played the act well. She wasn’t a suffering peasant. She was a witch. A Sorceress. No one knew how she came by her power or to who she swore her allegiance. There was no answer to that. Saphira, alone, knew the answer.
After quickly becoming a lover and advisor to the High Lord, Saphira invented a plan to infiltrate King Tarren’s High Court and put their plan into motion. She attended the High Court during the busyness of Gareth Blackthorn’s appointment as Lord Commander. She dressed in beautiful swirling blue robes and with a jeweled tiara. She was a suitor from a faraway land–an obscure land that King Tarren had never heard of before but he didn’t doubt existed. He was instantly smitten with her, her false beauty swaying the King like all helpless men.
“I bring a beautifully crafted sword from the faraways lands of Hilaria. This blade was made for the hands of Lord Commander Gareth Blackthorn. Please accept my gift as a token of my respect for your great warrior, Blackthorn.” Saphira kneeled before King Tarren, raising the sword to him as her head was bowed.
Tarren’s Queen, Adalisa, was furious but there was little for her to do when King Tarren demanded she stay for a week and spend her nights in his private quarters in place of his own wife, Queen Adalisa.
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By the end of that week, Saphira convinced King Tarren of his desperate need for a trophy to trademark his reign as King. “What will set you apart, lord King, from all of the others who came before you? And who better to obtain this trophy, than Lord Commander Blackthorn? It would be a fitting way to honor both him and yourself.” King Tarren agreed, and within a year of her visit he had Blackthorn set to his task in the faraway icelands of Northrock. There was a year of training beforehand, of course. The rest, as they say, is history. That was the first plan of their multi-pronged plan.
The High Lord had finally got himself lowered into the piping hot bath. The steam was billowing upward into the blue light of the bathing room. The servants gave a nod and Saphira bid them away. They waited outside the door, planning to return once the bath was done to lift the monstrously obese High Lord from the tub.
“I was…indoctrinated,” said the High Lord as he let out a deep breath. He had gotten over the initial shock of the scalding hot water. He tended to have these moments. He would state his thoughts aloud, many of them stemming from a place deep inside his mind that took Saphira more than a few seconds to pick up on where he had pulled it from.
“Indoctrinated, my lord? By whom?” asked Saphira in her sweetest voice.
“By my father and his forefathers before him.” A scowl was spread across his pudgy face. “Windem…” was all he managed before the cobwebs of his mind’s illness had scattered his thoughts back into the recesses of his mind. He was trying to remember why he had such a spite for Windem. The plan was centered around that hatred, after all.
“Let’s do your memory exercises, Maltor, shall we?” asked Saphira. His face had snarled into a ball of anger. Snot and drool dripped from his face and into the tub of herbal water.
“If you insist…then we shall,” Maltor said, malice all too evident. It took some time for him to accept that it was question time. Saphira would ask him a series of questions to keep his mind sharp–making sure he was aware of the plan. He still had to put a strong face forward for the rest of Denderrika. They were going to war out of allegiance to their High Lord.
“Let’s begin.” Saphira placed a hand onto Maltor’s meaty thigh. It was the one place on his body that was smooth and void of scars and boils besides his face. “Who is the one prophesied by my signs and wisdom?”
“Blackthorn,” spat Maltor. His mouth was lazy and his lips hardly moved. Getting into the bath was exhausting work.
“Which Blackthorn?” asked Saphira.
“The kid.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bleeehh! Tristan…Blackthorn!” The thought of Blackthorn registered a dark malice with Maltor. “I’ve been indoctrinated!” he shouted, somewhat randomly.
“Very good, Maltor. Very good.” Saphira gave him a few moments before asking another pointed question, aimed at refreshing his memory and keeping him in line with the plan.
“Who is slated to tilt the balance of the war; the tide of the final battle?”
“Blackthorn. Tristan…BLACKTHORN!” His lips and tongue came together sloppily and spittle flung from his mouth.
Saphira grabbed a bar of soap and some crushed plant leaves and rubbed them across his back. Maltor let out an “ahhhh” as she rubbed the medicine across his scarred and pimple-ridden back.
“Name the nations of the realm,” instructed Saphira. Maltor appeared to go brain dead for half a minute. His eyes had rolled back but then came back.
“Denderrika, Windem…” he was stumped after naming the two most prominent nations. Then it came back to him. “Brantley, Solaria…PREN!”
“Well done, my handsome lord.” Saphira stroked his thigh.
“Wesnia…Rittgeal…Benthicar…and…the Clan--CLENDIEN EMPIRE!” he shouted so loud that Saphira struggled to hold down a grin. His foolish babbling could take off into unpredictable directions at times.
“Who will rally the Graycloaks of Denderrika together, after we’ve infiltrated every town, village, and city with fire and ashes?”
Now Maltor’s voice was calm and pleased. “Dalko-o-o.” He let the “o” echo into the bath chamber. “Lord Dalko Rivien the Ascendian.”
“Yes, my lord. He is a product of your training. I am hearing reports from our eyes and ears that Dalko has found the boy. Tristan. He’s been hidden away on the outskirts of a remote town called Sesten.” Saphira leaned forward, saying the words very deliberately into Maltor’s ears. She ignored his sour smell, despite almost gagging.
Maltor merely laughed. It sounded like a rumble. Fluid wetted his lungs. The disease was ruthless.
“Dalko will win Tristan Blackthorn to our side and train him in the same ways that you trained Dalko. With his power and the sword that I gifted to his father, Denderrika will win the final battle. It will be no contest.” Saphira paused. She wanted to see if Maltor was still listening. His heavy eyelids batted at her, his head turning slightly. He was listening. Saphira followed up with another question. “Where is the sword? The sword that I gifted to his father, Gareth Blackthorn?”
“It…is with…” Maltor trailed off, too tired and out of breath.
“It is with Basidin, the Shadow of the North. I know what you meant to say, darling.” Saphira ran a finger along Maltor’s cheek. “And where is Basidin?” She looked him over, then ran the soap along his thighs. She then answered her own question. “Basidin has already infiltrated the Castle. He guards the sword which dwells in waiting deep below the Castle, where the sewage and the rats rot with the rest of the filth. Tristan will find it, eventually. He will be drawn to it. But he will need help finding it.”
“Ahhhh,” said Maltor.
“That is the only snag in our plan,” replied Saphira. “How do we get Tristan into the Castle and down into the tunnels? The forgotten corridors of Windem.” She pondered that thought, knowing Maltor’s mind was already gone. Fatigued.
“Let’s finish your bath and get you down to your High Seat, my Lord High.” Saphira called the two servants back in to hoist Maltor from the bath.