Ioren walked down a polished marble staircase within the grand entrance hall of Riverstop Keep, marveling at the immense beauty of the building’s entryway. Along the wall at the rear of the staircase stood a window composed of hundreds of small square glass panes that illuminated the room with a view of the clear afternoon sun. A pair of massive wood doors lay at the helm of the room across from Ioren. Columns at least forty feet tall stood in disciplined rows along both sides of the hall, solemnly holding vigil over the long-forgotten interior of the keep. The white quartz walls were filled with patterns of gray that looked as if rain clouds flitted through the room, frozen just beneath the sheen of the smooth stone. The marble in the floor at the foot of the staircase was arranged such that the black and white overlap of the stone created floral patterns that exploded like fields of wildflowers, depicting some species Ioren had never seen before.
Closing his eyes, Ioren tried to imagine the building at the height of its glory. Well-dressed nobles filling the halls in immaculately designed outfits, drifting between conversations like a transient seeking greener pastures at the village just over the next hill; servants with platters of exotic fruits and cheeses passing among the conversations, invisible to all but the famished or conversation-weary; soldiers in sparklingly polished armor standing at attention along the edges of the crowds, awaiting the inevitable inebriated guest to create a disturbance that needed tending. Even in his imagination, and while standing within a beautiful testament to man’s ingenuity, Ioren could only picture an underclass of people serving at the beck and call of noblemen. He opened his eyes, dispelling the fantasy in disgust, and was surprised to find the skull-faced man standing across from him. He hadn’t even noticed Chernicotl approach.
“It is magnificent, isn’t it?” The pale man asked Ioren, his stretched mouth barely opening enough to mouth the words over his sharp teeth. “I often regret forgetting the original creator of this treasure. His name surely deserved to survive with the last of us Danetians; but alas, the cruel march of time erodes all.”
“You lost it to Cantimorelius?” Ioren asked.
“Perhaps. Maybe it merely drifted from my mind at some point. There comes a day when the bird leaves its nest for the last time,” Chernicotl mused as he walked, tracing the lines of a giant fractal flower pattern in the polished stone floor. “You did not need to rest?”
“I found I was not as tired as I expected,” Ioren admitted truthfully. Typically after over thirty-six hours in Danet with only a single sleep his body would begin to feel fatigued, but not so today.
“Gather enough bonds and you will never need to sleep again - though you may come to envy those who dream,” Chernicotl responded. “The strength of Cantimorelius is often like this. Both a blessing and a curse, never one without the other. Some time ago, as we slowly unraveled the consequences of Cantimorelius’s boon upon Danet, many became angry with him. They mourned the loss of their dreams, their relationships, their memories, their sanity. But does all power not come with drawbacks? The king is hounded by knives in the dark, the captain faced with mutiny, the noble threatened by thieves of the night. Why should our bond be exempt from this law?”
“That is merely the danger of life,” Ioren answered. “It has nothing to do with power. Those without power, at the bottom of society, face the same dangers - the knives, the rebellions, the thieves - yet they enjoy none of the power. Those accustomed to life at the top often forget this,” Ioren retorted, remembering his first interaction with a nobleman. News of his father’s death in the Reunification War had recently come to their town. The noble patron who owned the land on which Ioren’s home sat paid a visit to his mother the next day. He informed her that, without her teaching position at the now-defunct Temuli War College, and without her husband’s prestige, she was no longer welcome on his estate. I cannot accommodate a destitute and disgraced officer on my lands; imagine the effect on my reputation! Surely you understand.
She cried as she packed their lives into a few bags, and the next day they left Temul for Danet.
“You are wise beyond your years, it seems,” Chernicotl responded with a toothy smile. “Perhaps the world on the other side of the Divide has advanced more than we thought.”
“You’ve not been to Havan in all this time?” Ioren asked, surprised.
The man was silent for a moment, then beckoned to Ioren and began to walk toward a door leading away from the grand entrance hall. Ioren followed. He had planned on exploring the keep anyways - though he’d need to come back later without his guide to take anything that wasn’t nailed down.
“There is something I’d like you to see,” Chernicotl said as the two walked through a small, dark hallway, a stark opposite to the previous enormous and bright room. “This is a service hall that leads to the cellar of the keep. I know there is much I have yet to explain, but I hope what you see here will convince you of the urgency of our mission.”
Chernicotl opened another door in the hall to reveal a black room. He removed a torch from a sconce on the wall and lit it with a firestarter from his pocket. The flame illuminated a tight spiral staircase leading downward into the depths of the castle.
“Our numbers here in Danet are thinning every day. A few decades ago, the Last Prince proposed a desperate plan to restore the lives of the Lost - 'Greys,' as you call them. We would overthrow Cantimorelius within Epthel, and the prince would use the power to return the memories and sanity to the people of Danet.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Ioren shuddered at the thought of battling the massive deity. Considering the new knowledge of the powers Cantimorelius bestows upon those bonded to him, Ioren had assumed he was invincible.
“How would you overthrow a Deep God?” Ioren asked, intrigued at the plan. He had assumed the Last Prince was a pitifully selfish man that forsook his people in the search for immortality - though if he sought to overthrow a god to save them and right his wrongs, maybe he had misjudged.
“Nobody is certain,” Chernicotl admitted. “Since the discovery of Epthel and the existence of the Deep Gods, no one has ever slain one of them. The only two that revealed themselves to us were Cantimorelius and Yasha; now, one of them reigns over Danet, and the other has disappeared since her exodus from Danet. However, one of the other excisors proposed a bold plan: to infiltrate the land across the Divide and kill Yasha, absorbing her bonds and powers.”
Ioren’s throat went dry as he listened to the story. Even after Little One’s story of Yasha’s exodus from Danet, he still assumed she was some sort of nebulous entity like the Yasha worshipped by believers in Havan. Followers of Yashanism had dubbed her “the savior of mankind,” yet Ioren had always assumed she was nothing more than a figurehead for their beliefs. Now, he was forced to see her as real; Yasha existed, and she existed somewhere in Havan. Also, she was the target of the mythical immortal killers of Danet. “The excisors are real? And they plan to kill Yasha?”
Chernicotl stopped mid-step and revealed his characteristic toothy smile again. “Of course we are real, child,” he answered before continuing down the winding staircase. Ioren’s stomach churned violently while all the hairs on his body stood on end. He felt as if he suddenly realized he was in a cage with a leopard. The bloodthirsty killer in front of him could obliterate him at any moment. His legs jolted with fear as he considered sprinting up the way he came, but he quickly abandoned the idea. If they had wanted him dead, they would have killed him long ago. They needed him for something, and if he wanted to stay alive, he had to figure out why he was needed.
“Has anyone attempted this plan?” Ioren asked, trying to hide the shaking in his voice with a facade of curiosity.
“There are three in Havan now, in Redden’s retinue. I gather they have not yet succeeded, as they would have returned over the Ivory Bridge to confront Cantimorelius. Though, I hear Redden’s conquests were very successful after his return,” Chernicotl continued, seemingly unaware of Ioren’s shaking.
Ioren was stunned. It was known throughout the land that the Red King - then a lowly Ivan warlord - had discovered the Temuli Passage during a campaign in a rural Temuli province. He ventured into Danet, and when he returned wielding terrifying powers he went on to conquer not only Temul, but also Rolakkhad, uniting the three states of Rolakkhad, Temul, and Iv for the first time in Havan’s history. Now, Chernicotl was telling him that the power he found came from these three excisors the entire time.
“Yes, he unified the entire continent,” Ioren confirmed.
“Impressive indeed,” Chernicotl mused. They had reached another door at the bottom of the winding staircase after walking for what seemed like an eternity. Now, as they approached their destination, Ioren found himself scared to death at what lay behind the door.
“Originally, we had planned to bond Redden or another that he trusted to hunt Yasha in Havan. We have no knowledge of the continent, and are hardly able to travel alone without arousing significant suspicion - especially given our peculiar handicap, so it would be much simpler to have one from Havan seek out Yasha. However, Cantimorelius has not created a new bond in hundreds of years, so we were unable to follow through with this plan. Perhaps he is aware of our intentions. Regardless, your discovery has validated the idea once again,” Chernicotl said.
Ioren’s throat tightened again. He thought of taking a drink from his canteen, but knew his shaking hands would be too obvious in front of the excisor. They want me to kill Yasha.
“Beyond this door is our reason for seeking out the newly bonded from Havan,” Chernicotl continued as he opened the dark door in front of him. A breeze blew through the door as he opened it, carrying on it an overpowering smell of death and decay. Ioren’s stomach had finally reached its limit, and he turned around to retch across the stone steps. He wiped his mouth before turning back toward Chernicotl, who frowned at him.
“It should not, but it greatly saddens me to see your reaction. Though I no longer remember any of them, I know that beyond this door lies all those I have ever loved, and the loved ones of many more,” Chernicotl said.
Ioren stretched the cloth of his collar over his nose and cautiously approached the doorway, struggling to ignore the stench emitting from within. He peeked his head into the dark room to find it surprisingly crowded. Hundreds of people, shoulder to shoulder, stood within the massive domed room. Dim torchlight flickered along the edges of the rotund chamber, their crackling the only sound that echoed within. Ioren squinted his eyes and studied the faces of the people within. Their eyes were sunken, skin withered to a dried gray tone. None moved in the slightest. With a start, Ioren realized he was staring at a chamber filled with hundreds of Greys.
“They’re… all Greys?” He asked Chernicotl.
“They’ve all been lost to Cantimorelius’s curse. Their minds have been obliterated by centuries of death and rebirth in this cursed land,” Chernicotl answered.
“How can so many people die so many times? I thought the bond made you immortal?” Ioren continued.
“Famine, murder, insanity… This is all we could save of the former gentry of East Danet before its collapse,” Chernicotl answered, clearly dismayed by their performance.
“What of the commoners?”
“What of them?” Chernicotl answered. “They still roam the lands, or have been lost to time. What care you of the commoners? They are not the keepers of Danetian culture, nor the lifeblood of our nation’s history. The peasantry were not a priority when it came to saving our lands; that is merely the way of the world,” Chernicotl said.
A fire boiled in the pit of Ioren’s stomach as he listened to the explanation. These people were as ignoble as any rulers he had ever met. The Prince does not care for his people; only of restoring the gentry that had once surrounded and fawned over him. Ioren wanted to draw his dagger here and now and end Chernicotl; he wanted to absorb his bonds and seek out the Prince himself. Instead, he asked a question.
“Can you train me to use this power?”