Chapter 14

Song of the War-Ravaged

Once upon a time, well before the Kingdoms and Empires arose and slathered the Holy Lands in wars and decadence and opulence and rot, there existed a bloodline of Spryaes, Noble creatures like no other. Winged, holy, and spiritually attuned, they roamed the lands freely and untethered, sowing seeds of life everywhere. But their Nobility was desired, and greed like a parasite latched onto the living. All races, low and high, began capturing Spryaes–they made them slaves, food, trophies, jewellery, anything they could think of. Spryaes, the Wanderers of the Void, withdrew and hid, like roaches. Terrified. Ashamed. Angry, Bitter. Full of wrath.

Lifetimes passed and worlds changed, and all of the cosmos went beyond barbarism–but only in the shades. A'stul knew now as his ancestors knew before, there was no change to the mind. Simple born, simple gone.

He looked one last time at the thin tome his mother left for him, detailing their history. It was short, succinct, and to the point, but A'stul could feel his mother's anger, rage, bitterness, and even envy within each and every runic inscription upon those tattered and torn pages. She lived to restore the glory of her ancestors, but she failed–as all her ancestors did.

A'stul tossed the tome into the roaring fire alighting the shaded night, letting it burn. He didn't look away, staring until the last of its leather-bound cover was ash. He seared the sight into his breast and swore he would not die until his mother had her dreams realised.

“Holy One,” a shadow sprouted next to him from the seeming nowhere, but A’stul didn’t even react to it, still staring at the now-fading flames. “I have the report ready.”

“... speak.” A’stul voice was low, calm, seemingly unperturbed by anything. He was chosen. The Holy One. The restorer of the order long-forgotten.

"We have successfully infiltrated the Elven Hymns and rescued sixteen of our brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, Pyak, Elt, and three prisoners–Sylten, Qwalk, and Ottiun–perished in the course of the mission."

“Burn a tettun in their honour.”

“Yes, Holy One.”

“Go on.”

“The rumours were true, as you suspected,” the shadow continued. “Another Mark has been initiated.”

“How long until it blossoms?”

“It is hard to say. Lesser, filthy things have already begun their attempts at entering. The rumours speak of a world beset with riches.”

“They always do,” A’stul replied as the last of the fire died, leaving them encased in moonless darkness. “And yet never are.”

“How shall we proceed?”

“As we always do,” A’stul said. “Wait. Observe. And take what is ours.”

“I will task L’yeoun’s force with the mission.”

“No,” A’stul said, a sudden flirt of emotion stirring in his voice. “I no longer need to tend to Mother.”

“You mean… you will personally take charge?”

“It is time,” A’stul said. “What must be burned, we shall burn. What must be reaped, we shall reap. What must die, we shall slay. Perhaps, this world, unlike all others, might yet become our home, A’quintalah. But first… there is debt that must be paid. Lead me there.”

“Yes, Holy One.”

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In the dead darkness of the night, two figures moved slowly and deliberately, easily navigating the maze of k’wa trees and the gardened flowerbeds populating the space between them. Soon, they came upon a washed-down shack wrapped in runic chains. From within, three pairs of red eyes stared in rage and wrath, growls muted by magic. The shadow withdrew right after, leaving A’stul alone with the seemingly bedevilled. He moved his right arm slowly and calmly, undoing the runic chains binding everyone within the shack. As soon as he did, three figures leaped forward and lunged at him–but they did not get far.

Akin to the hands of gods holding them, all three lost the ability to move, frozen midair by magic beyond their comprehension. The three exchanged glances and tried all they could, but they could not break free from the binds that seemed to not be of this world. A’stul watched them struggle like worms, his calm heart stirring in rage. These were the beasts who were responsible for his mother’s untimely death. Three short, uniform, apprehensively ugly things called humans. A race so devoid of Nobility they had to steal it from the others.

A'stul grasped his fingers into a fist and ragged his arm toward him, causing all three to fly over and stop a few feet in front of him, lined in a row. Their defiant faces cracked, their red eyes turned into shimmering shades of grey, blue, and black, and their lips mumbled for mercy. But A'stul was void of mercy, as they were void of empathy.

“My only regret is that you will not be alive to bear witness to your home burning,” A’stul spoke the human tongue–a thing he detested, despised, a thing that made his skin crawl… but he wanted them to understand. He wanted them to know the finality of everything. “To your brethren clutching at their throats as blood pools beneath them, forming a Red Ocean. Just as you, their lips will tremble for mercy. And just as with you, I shall reap their lives in my Mother’s honour, and in honour of my Kinship. The world will rue the day it cast my Blood into the shadows of the caves and ravaged us into shame and terror.” His arm began to tremble as the three figures in the air began to scream–they could feel their bones crunching within them, causing pain akin to nothing they'd ever felt before to assail their senses and overwhelm them. They screamed till their throats began to burn and they screamed through that until they began to bleed. "I will end humanity, so that your filth may never infest another world. Lesser things, you betrayed your Gods and took power for yourselves. But that power will not save you. Not now, not from me. I will claim it as it is my birthright, and use it to cleanse the world of all your ills. Go, bend to your Death Gods and beg them–beg them to save your kin. See if they do not shake and tremble."

Three bodies imploded, sending scattering arrays of blood and gore everywhere–but a shield of magic protected A’stul. He would rather die than let a single drop of human blood touch him. He long stood in silence after, unmoving, like a statue in the middle of a jungle. The night soon passed and the light of A’win arose, illuminating the world in its beauty. But the sight around A’stul was not beautiful–it was dreaded, ugly, unholy. There were pieces of whole everywhere, gushing blood having dyed the beautiful grass and rotted it, and there were the screeching, ghostly souls of the dead cursing.

He looked up, his expression stiff–A’stul stood some eight feet tall, with the Sigil of Oxya as his Birth Inscription. They were runic shapes every Spryae was born with, and his ran from his toes to his forehead, flame-shaped, wholly symmetrical. They were prophecies of greatness, and his sang the songs of war–for he would belt so loud the world would quake, and all the living would hear and tremble.

Eventually, he left, walking slowly away from the ghoulish sight. No, it was not a ghoulish sight–not to him. For he would cause sights far worse than that one, and he would cause them in spades. Though he despised all the living races, Low and High, he despised Humans the most–cursed with pathetic strength, despicable hearts, and greed beyond all else, they were like worms that dug their way into the tiniest of cracks and caused irreparable damage, time and again. But no more, he swore.

Reports of the new world were promising, but they always were at the start–brisk, resources-laden, perfect: those were the words always used to describe new finds. And they were always wrong, for most worlds were hellscapes laden with disease, decay, rot, and destruction, the last flash of their civilised nothing fading out of existence. Perhaps this one would be different, but A’stul doubted it. It didn’t matter, however. He was determined to see it through himself, and boldly roar to the world of his return, and slay all those who would stand in his way.

By the time he returned to Oxtulah, the Heart of Sae, the star was at its zenith and it burned bright and hot. His peoples were busy racing about, but they all stopped when they saw him and came to the Erudian and they knelt and kissed the wet dirt below them and mumbled a prayer to the Ancestors. He was their Holy One, and where he went, they would follow.

“Our Ancestors shall be our wings,” A’stul said. “And take us all home. Let them guide us and spur us and stir us as we take back what was robbed from us, what was thieved away by filth undeserving of another breath.”

“Al’qa, Al’qa!!” the crowd cried.

“Let us march to victory,” he said. “Let us march to tomorrow… and to the Holy Valley they burned with their glee.”

"Al'qa, Al'qa!!!" chants burned through the air like wildfire as A'stul retreated to his straw-thatched hut. He was the Holy One, the Bringer, and he would have his justice–he would have it in blood and death, and in no other way.