“Fight!” Alex screamed above the clamor. “Fight!” She wanted to emulate the crisp leadership of Astal, who had drilled his men so thoroughly as to leave no room for hesitation, finding herself ill equipped for the task. These men were not warriors. Harani steel was in their blood, giving strength to their limbs, but that was about it... Rorik, the paladins, and the rangers acquitted themselves well – but the rest were nothing but an unruly mob, not much more than a militia, if even that. They'd never had to drill, common artisans were excused from it.
The influx of profit had given them comfort, and many had fallen into that trap. Growing fat and soft and complacent in the process. Micah of Riverwood committed himself well enough, but it was all chopping and no skill. Even a man of such great strength as he was a poor match for the horde of undead assaulting the gate. Slowly at first, gradually picking up the pace as they chipped away at the ironoak. Hard as it was, it wasn't enchanted. Leaving them no option but to sally, opening the gate and standing in the natural choke point provided while men atop the surrounding houses threw whatever they could from above, barricading as much of it as possible. It had always been her opinion that the undead were weak, mindless things, and though that was true enough...
There are too damn many of them... She cursed. Her mana reserves were near dry, and she was running on fumes, whipping her ranseur about and smashing a skull with every flick of it. She'd only trained in this manner of fighting for a few months at best, with... That man... And despite that, she was one of the only skilled combatants in the mass by the looks of it.
Hundreds of the things had become thousands, and the wardens still holding watch over the baron's estate were drowning in an undead army of their own. No aid would come from them, not today. But these were men of steel, and they acquitted themselves well, falling and dying without complaint, taking half a dozen down with them most times. But even steel had its limit, and in men that was their morale, threatening to buckle and break at any time.
Rorik roared, dashing a skeleton aside with his two handed maul so alike his primus. Alex was filled with loathing at the thought that she'd been so unprepared, but he knew better. To make a man fight and die for another was a great talent, to be a standard to look toward and howl for as they beat chest and enemy alike. And she was that standard. They followed her, the scion of the legendary House Goldmane, wife of their prince, the only one to come to their aid. With the paladins ordaining the gates and the priest behind them offering what prayers he could to any god that would listen.
Madness. Men wearing barrels over their torsos like armor, lumbering axes hewing rotting flesh of those from periphery settlements that hadn't possessed the convenience of a wall. Rorik constantly roaring in that ill fitting armor of his, Alex at his back and doing what she could, casting enchantments when her mana regenerated and using him as a bulwark by which to stab into the gaps with no risk to her person.
It was raining so hard as to be unnatural. They were no strangers to the wet, these men of Riverwood, but this was a foul thing. Sleeting rains that came down with such ferocity as to hurt the skin and make difficult the simple act of holding the tools turned to weaponry. What they could scrounge from the blacksmiths, a few of them wielding hoes as if they were long handled hammers, but most stuck to the lumbering axe. In Riverwood, that was something even a child would find familiar.
Even some of the children were fighting, old men and women joining them. One granny could be seen standing atop an overturned cart with a sock full of stones, giving it to them with a toothless howl of passion. That was a glorious one, the old woman swinging even when she was dragged down into the swarm and made a mess. Gallin the paladin of Tormund's faith cratering his warhammer into skull after skull, chanting his patrons battle song with no breaks, his arms and eyes alive with fine blueish mist. Blessing what people he could and ensuring he was always in the thick alongside the head man and the princess.
Rorik hearkened back to the words of his father, that grisly old coot with the burnt forehead and the beard grown down to his waist. Easy times created weak men, a simple truth, and even a year of overly sedentary lifestyle had bore an effect on them. Of course, it was its own benefit, namely the profit, without it they'd have had no paladins, nor priests. Their numbers would be less for it, too, but he couldn't help but wonder at the significance of that old man's words. Why the primus dictated they live in such a simple manner. If he'd a mind, and he thought he did, he'd have thought it was in near constant preparation for some great war, part of the Harani machine.
If we make it out of this... Rorik huffed, turning another skeleton into a loose pile of bones. All men at the age of majority with be forced to drill, every day if necessary. Twice as hard as I did when I was their age...
“Tormund! Bumi!” The paladins cried, each a bulwark of incredible ferocity against the undead. Rorik had his own god, he revered all the gods, for who didn't? But Astarte had captured his heart since his legion days, the god of war and battle. The hammer beating of a mans heart as he struggled to protect, to ensure others would thrive through sacrifice. And he howled for his god, for the reaving and the red moon, for the lust of battle and the passionate love for home. “Astarte, see me!”
Idiots... Alex huffed, her palms were sweaty, weak in the knees, her arms felt so heavy, vomit was on her doublet already, courtesy of that Riverwood spaghetti. She was nervous, but her eyes were calm and ready. It would be a long night, but she was as prepared as she could be for all of the horrors the night would bring. In truth, she wasn't, but she had to be, this was the way things were. A woman has to have a code.
“ASTARTE!” She leaped into the thick of it, back to back and Rorik and howling like a banshee. There were her people. Her responsibility. If he wouldn't come, she would stay, and she would die if it was necessary.
–
It was quiet, and as always his room was a mess of half eaten meals and more books than he could count. Dark and gloomy, many of the texts he'd brought were old enough to be sensitive to light and he didn't want to risk it when challenging himself to find a solution to Tyr's problem.
Rifling through the bag at the foot of his bed, Iscari went through memory crystal after memory crystal. He had no idea what they were actually called, but it was a somewhat appropriate way of naming them. They gave him glimpses, but few offered him any clear picture into what this ancient race had known and been capable of. What he was meant to see was different from what he wanted to see, very different, and each crystal seemed to be from a different place and time. It was hard to believe that they'd been discarded there in a loose pile, all of them held such incredible knowledge. The mind of a living creature. Still very much alive, reliving a panoply of dreams over and over again in their equivalent of an afterlife. Not all of them were nightmares as Tyr had said, but many were.
He knew that these fomorians did not have gods. They had... The 'us'. A collective consciousness that spanned millennium, binding them all together. They'd had divines, but those divines had been 'killed' so they'd found a new way of living, as if killing a god was possible, but at least they thought it was. In a way, the memory crystals were a replacement for faith in the divine. To keep their souls rooted and safe from the unknown oblivion the godless were offered. Like the orik, they did not worship, they only feared what gods yet remained in their era. Though Iscari could not figure out why, it wasn't a pressing question. He needed to find an answer. A way to fix Tyr, and he knew it lay in the old magic, the fallen races who had eclipsed humanity so long ago.
Depressing the button on the latest prism, he felt his body relax and slump into the soft satin comforter of his bed. His mind soared, seeing through the eyes of another. This time it was different, it wasn't experience, but a real and true historical accounting of things. Scientific, as if the being who had recorded it was reliving his own light through a half-autobiographical medium. He was there, sometimes, but... It was impossible to explain. One had to see.
And he did. He saw so much.
We found something in the rift! A young race, near brand new in their creation... I think. But they were old, too. It was... I'm not sure, I need more time. What were these creatures? A race of children with the bodies of titans, such terrors they are. I had little time to consider exactly how horrifying the scope of their abilities were, it is enough to know that they share our goals. We asked, and they answered, arriving here within days on wings of fire, falling from the sky! Millions of the Others were annihilated in their descent. And yet more of these new friends arrived from the west, stepping over the sea as if it were no different than the earth. Their armies were silver and gold., their souls winged, and they sang such a song... Such a song. Our hearts wept at their coming both in gladness and sorrow at what had become of us.
The others made it to the engine, but we are lost. It is closed to us.
They called themselves nim. Nephilim, auronim, and nim as a wider category. Different strokes among their race seemingly built for singular purpose. Some to slay, some to build, and others simply to live in whatever capacity they were made to. They fight savagely, sparing all of us, all but the Others. I know that they are salvation, and they aid us, feed us and shelter us, accepting the lessons of our elders and showing us a great deal of respect – but I consider what they are and I shudder...
A horrific race tailored specifically for killing. By their gods, those who could yet speak had said, but can such a thing be true? What god would forge such spectacular weapons of destruction? Perhaps we should not judge, for without them we'd have been lost. Biologically speaking, they are not so impressive. A simple system, the orik say, but balanced in a way that served to benefit all the various castes when working together.
Higher beings among them, the nephilim, live as young celestials. Their power is tremendous to the point of shattering the earth, yet they remain placid and even amicable toward us. We are not the enemy, they said, and thus far they have not changed their minds. It puzzles me, though. They eat through the same apparatus in which they breath, some can lose limbs and fight for a day or longer without perishing. They give little thought to their dwellings once destroyed, simply rebuilding them time and time again. Losses mean nothing to these new friends, stepping forward into the crucible of war, howling like beasts and baying for blood.
Mourning only briefly for their closest of kin, turning immediately toward vengeance. So driven in their art, they give thought to little else, those same breathing apparatuses are weapons in and of themselves. Just yesterday, I watched a nephilim devour a fallen Other and... Smile at me, still covered in the bodily fluids of the beast. That is what they call it, an expression of happiness or joy. They are such an odd race, to show teeth as beasts do to communicate positive emotion...
Their saliva has pseudo venomous properties. Highly acidic and rife with enzymes that, even inadvertently, can slay one of our kind should we make contact. If they bite, it's a death sentence for fomorian and orik alike. Their mouths are incredibly filthy, containing a plethora of deadly bacteria, yet it affects them not at all, in a way, it serves to benefit them. I've never seen one fall ill with the musk fever, some have even caught the boil blight and been on their feet again within one turning of the sun!
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
They adapt to any climate in mere minutes. Arriving here naked by and large, it was naught but days before they began to kill and strip wildlife and Others alike. Wearing their flesh as... As a layer of protection, it would seem. Terrifying, I say, we all say this, and we see it, but as ever their brutal efficiency can only serve to aid us. Such ingenuity. To use every scrap of a deceased, even their own kin, and almost always make use of it all to develop new weapons of war...
Recently, they've discovered the toxicity of fermented fruits. Things we and the other more civilized races stay away from. Eating them, before developing a way to further ferment and liquefy them into a beverage. It heightens their already rabid aggression and serves as an anesthetic of some kind. They imbibe the poison willfully, howling as they fight. Even in my happiness to have gained such powerful allies, I have seen one split in twain by a Prince class Other and drag himself upon the floor seeking to reap more death for minutes before succumbing to the wound.
Their softer parts are surrounded by a barrier of bone as hard as any steel, the bodies of their lesser kin seem frail at first but they recover from wounds monstrously fast. They fight like Anu, bestial and cunning, but with so many of them as to swarm over the land in an unending tide. Every bounty of the earth they devour, eating the bark of trees and consuming the well known poisonous fruit they call 'banana' with abandon. Just two days ago, I saw one of their female breeder variants giving birth on the battlefield, the born child carried away while the mother returned to fighting! It was... Disturbing. The umbilical apparatus still... Ah, well, it serves no scientific purpose to elaborate, she chewed right through it with no concern to the hygienic!
Again on their biology... For all of the relative frailty of the lesser variants, they are maniacally effective endurance hunters. Just yesterday, Hy'Peleth watched as a nim ran down a stag for near an entire day until the thing dropped death of exhaustion, it's heart failing. Willfully consuming unpasteurized flesh and offering us a haunch of the beast as if such a thing was normal. It is odd, truly, to see such violence and yet such... I do not know. Is this what constitutes friendliness or tribute in their society? The greater variants do not speak our words, and their language is beyond our ability to translate. They can indicate the same simple object and the word changes every time, they must have an incredibly complex linguistic structure, belying their outwardly primitive nature.
Nim are highly social creatures, but they've no tact or awareness of modern sensibilities. Though, worth noting, they absorb information at an amazing rate. While inferior to us in most ways, in my opinion, they make do with what they have, content to constantly seek out ways to make it more. Their greed in conquest is both frustrating and inspiring, what if we were such enemies to the base concept of complacency? How far could we have gone? Some of them even fight with clear infirmity! Missing limbs are not replaced via ether, they simply do not care! One armed, or even one legged soldiers can be seen on the battlefield at times. Some even go so far as to refuse our assistance, hooting and growling in their tongue, and from what we can make out, insisting they are fine! Fascinating.
They can subsist as omnivores, able to consuming anything, save rocks, to absorb nutrients, but it is the meat they most enjoy. Even bipedal races are devoured with abandon. Disconcertingly, they seem to eat even when they are full, sometimes as often as four times a day! Their metabolism is extremely fast and Per'Yava has noted that they grow mightier through passive effort. I am hesitant to name them simian with no statute, but one of these beings has been observed simply... How do I put this... Lifting heavy objects and putting them down again in a routine cycle? Marked improvements to stamina and strength follow this bizarre act.
The orik have begun offering their pit slaves to stave off the hunger of the nim, anything to keep them at bay. They breed so incredibly quickly, and their ability to adapt to various stimuli is amazing. Mana and the spira alike, just who are these strange beings? They have no consideration, nor care for what appears to be their own technology, the arks they arrived on, salvaging it for what they could. Even bludgeoning Others with what appears to be the parts of a deconstructed spira reactor. A barbaric people, but the one we needed, even the primitive Anu are not nearly so violent.
There are flowers in the blue valley, flowering vines that grow scarlet blossoms. Their fruits contain the corrosive and highly acidic chemical compound known as capsaicin, deadly poison to our race and many others. Yet these 'nim' use these same fruits to spice their dishes. Eating them raw, and only reddening slightly at the face, showing very little reaction, erupting into laughter and making a game of challenge out of how many they can eat before falling ill!
A proud warrior race obsessed with battle, I would posit. Their entire culture is centered around it, and it's all they think about. Fighting, death, and other violent things. Gestation cycles like theirs are not so strange, and their young are slow to come to adulthood, but it is in the violent reproductive cycle that strikes fear in me most. Some of their breeders are capable of whelping five to ten young in a single lifetime. Incredible! Within the first century of the black sun, they've quadrupled in number, even with all their losses. They are slowly overwhelming the Others and brings the era to a close. At least... I hope.
Even with their fragile and half-learned magic, they are so ingenious. Weak, comparatively, but their creativity has seen them achieve that which they shouldn't be capable of. Not in utility, but always in reaping death, giving themselves until elemental magic and taking no interest in prismic or soul arts even when we've attempted to teach them of it. It is all they think about, that death. Some of them yearn for it. They exalt their strange gods even while in the process of dying, gods who do not exist based on all measurable data.
These nim, what strange creatures. Blessed are we to be their friends, for to be their enemy would be the greatest of nightmares. We who feared the dark, when it was those born of the light who were the greatest monsters of all.
It skipped forward by... Years? Decades? Perhaps centuries. Iscari couldn't know, so lost in the droning voice and grand visions of all that he saw. Vast cities of stone. Not human cities, but those that belongs to other races, long lost beings of all shapes and sizes. Species put to sword and axe and torch. He doubted there was any evidence that would ever support the fact they existed on this continent. His race, the 'nim', had seen to it when they attempted to stand against them – but the voice purported that it was necessary. Not all races were good, not all of them supported the right side.
Iscari saw these races. Saurian creatures with humanoid bodies and scaled skin, butchered by the nim. Arachne and all manner of known monster given the same treatments, sapient wyrms and an avian species, blue skinned giants with flat faces and six limbs fleeing en masse from the defilement of their holy places. A swarm of man dressed in ridged gray leathers, clubs and spears of bone in their hands, smashing shrines and burning idols with madness in their eyes.
He found himself looking through the perspective of a fomorian now, as if it had all been recorded by a device and only at this point did he truly see from their perspective. Something with six eyes and six arms. Bipedal, but wholly unique to his kind. Iscari saw in colors that didn't exist. Mana was foreign to him, only accessible through external devices, but the spira was not, world energy flowed through his every breath. It was looking at his fellow 'man' that was most surprising. 'He' stood on a cliff alongside those of his own race, in this alien body. So many men. Millions of them, at least, formed in perfectly ordered ranks and deathly silent, not a single rattle of armor or gust of wind to disturb them.
Titanic mana engines belching azure mist raining death in the distance, stitching a line of destruction that must've stretched hundreds of miles. Flattening hills and mountains, shattering the continent until kingdom sized parcels of earth were left as barren wasteland.
In the distance, towering spires landed on faraway plains, more nim walked forward, bare naked but robotic, so perfect in their form as to put all of the legions of Varia to shame. These arks, long things that streaked across the western sky and landed to expel their cargo of flesh.
Centuries had passed, and the various races had equipped the nim that had chosen to ally with them as best they could. That which they hadn't provided, the nim had invented. They were a weapon, first for the gods, next for the mortal races of Hjemland. But they didn't complain, felt no fear and died with smiles on their lips in their war against a horde of shadows and other men. Some great, stereotypical evil, but they weren't. The nim knew that, and their leaders, the nephilim, knew it most of all. They were kin to these creatures in some respect, but showed no sign of remorse over the epic scale of the brutality.
An army of shadows and naked with paper white skin facing off against steel clad giants of such might that it left no doubt in his mind. Primus. Thousands of them, raining death from above and below with feats that would challenge the mountain cracking force of the orik siege engines.
Iscari, in this form, was titanic. Truly. With various recognizable plants and animals as scale, this fomorian must've been ten to fifteen feet tall. Had a family, too. Six centuries of life and he'd go on naturally for much longer than that, with two sons and a daughter. Happy days were followed by violent ones, fighting alongside the nim even as he studied them, witnessing the changes in them. The uniqueness in their form, the ability to blend mana and spira together with no education on either. It just came naturally to them.
Their vast, millions strong legion of silver and gold charging into battle and scourging the world free of threat. And then... There was a great sadness, but Iscari did not see it. A toll of death so great that even the author of this memory crystal could not bear to repeat it, even in his dreaming state. Too much loss, too much devastation. And then something had come, touching him, trying to bend him to its will through the anima – but the fomorian had refused the presence and was sent back into the loop for it. Marked a defective product and tossed aside into the pile where it had remained until a significantly more gentle hand had taken hold of it.
Iscari was out, left panting and sweating in his bed, hands shaking from the visceral experience. Everything about the vision had been realer than all the others – as if by some effort. Most troubling of all was the rawness of the mana in the atmosphere in that ancient era. The balance was nothing that he'd expect. In fact, there was barely any of it... Only spira had existed, the mana was an energy source only gathered beyond 'the rift', which was the veil between the material world and the place beyond. Humans had brought mana with them and through use of it had saturated the entire world, a process that still continued to this day.
“What exactly is a shaper...?” He mumbled... So many questions rolling through his head as to blossom into a throbbing migraine. Shaper magic was known to him. Octavian knew of it, and Tyr apparently possessed it. Iscari's father named it a unique form of magic, but not necessarily a special one. Not superior or divine, simply a different way of obtaining power, no different than racial magic such as that possessed by dwarves and elves.
The shapers in the dreamlike reality of the cube were just ordinary mages in the perspective of that ancient race. Those fomorians, beings so powerful that they'd successfully implanted artificial mana cores inside themselves. Developing ways of changing themselves like the orik, they'd conquered their relative weakness comparative to some younger races before the outbreak of a great war, and another after that. They were huge, titanic beings, strong too. But strength couldn't win wars against beings like the orik who were capable of creating such vast machines, or the 'spira kin' who could call the very will of the world to their side.
Or their kin, who had fled into some great engine of consciousness and refused to struggle against the calamity.
Everything was from their perspective, so the 'nim', the humans... Their magic wasn't so impressive, it was about the nims numerical superiority and refusal to quit. Only a few of the higher humans managed to capture fomorian interest, and they had used very subtle magic in the scenes visible to Iscari. Still... 'Subtle' in their minds. If 'subtle' meant summoning a literal hurricane of fire that swept a great portion of the southern continent bare, killing millions in the process... It was hard to pick apart, since everything was from another races point of view. It wasn't like a typical memory crystal, he could still feel that alien intelligence overlapping with his own.
The past was full of wars and this fomorian knew of them, but Iscari was not able to break whatever barrier was necessary to take that knowledge beyond what it dreamed of. It wasn't like he could read their minds, but it seemed like humans had arrived and immediately started slaughtering everything. Maybe Tyr was right, maybe men were the closest thing to monsters. There were a little over a dozen 'common' races on the continent now that could be seen in most cities. But back then, there had been dozens, as in the plural. In their millions, at least 84 independent civilizations on the eastern continent and more elsewhere. Orik, altan, the elves presumably were alive back then and unlike so many others remained through some way or another. He'd seen no dwarves, one of the more dominant 'elder races' in the consideration of the clergy, nor had he seen most of the modern races. There was no chance in hell they just decided to evolve in a span of a few millennia, it was like they hadn't existed at all...
Unfortunately, it didn't give him much to go on. As phenomenal as the conscious dream had been, he was still at a loss. Iscari opened Confessions once again and began leafing through the time worn pages. There had to be an answer here... And he would find it.