Cries and shrieks echoed through the peaceful halls, corridors of the Radiant Keep as the servants leapt against the Impirith Praetoriir. Not long after Akaerith and her handmaidens arrived for the usual morning routine of dressing her and leading her to the dining hall, chaos erupted suddenly. At once she felt the primordial will of the Beautiful stretching across the city, reaching up to the Radiant Keep even wrestle against her Father’s who swiftly noticed the presence looming over his brilliant fiefdom.
Though it seemed to her that his father struggled to completely free everyone. The servants with weaker constitutions and mental protections remained under Her sway and now turned on their fellows. She felt the wicked energies of Taeberus course through their anima veins, erasing the distance between the Impirith Praetoriir – the best of the best chosen to safeguard the Elhyrissiar and his family – evident from their corpses littering the corridors, their myriad-colored blood tainting the alabaster marble floor.
Even she had a hard time putting down Akaerith and the handmaidens who suddenly were capable of conjuring more than simple cantrips incapable of harming her. An hour passed as she incapacitated the younger handmaidens binding them with etheric ropes molded by the invisible mana lingering in the recesses of the great, hovering edifice that was the Radiant Keep. Akaerith herself proved more of a threat as she herself was relatively well trained and had a natural affinity towards Time Maghia which the gift of the Beautiful amplified to the point she could peek into the near future.
Fearing she may reach her limit if she continued hurling spells after spell, Aurelithae tapped into the power gifted upon herself by the Black Book and by the pale figure. She tapped into the etheric tumor festering on the arkhaine point located right where the heart is and grappled onto it, tearing and tucking. With each attempt to pull it off, Akaerith shrieked like a banshee from the pain, and in the end lost her consciousness when Aurelithae decided to swiftly vanquish it by conjuring forth her golden flames.
She quickly rushed to her caretaker, while invoking a gentle draught lowering Akaerith’s limp and pale form onto the enormous carpet. Her eyes of a chromatic cavalcade of colors shimmered with worry, welled up with tears of dread and finally abated upon sensing her cold, sweet breath brushing against her face. Unlike the others, she knew Akaerith was free of bondage, and left her there hurrying to Terrianis. A road lengthened to preserve her strength as she came to a realization sensing the two Wills clashing against each, that even Terrianis alone won’t be enough to beat back the Beautiful.
She took a quick breath whilst draping her form in inscriptions of a false reality where she was a simple aevhe of still exceptional magnificence. And then vanished as she hurled herself forth the Radiant Keep, to the front door of the Sleeping Nereid Inn where she found Naghig, Isocrates and Brutius holding back cultists and daemurnus on the vividly brilliant streets.
**
Isocrates gently wrapped Euthymius in the coarse woolen sheets, guilt gnawing at him even knowing he had little choice. Yet the mark of his metallic fist remained on the soft cheeks of his brother who just entered the adolescent years of his life. “Stay here. I’ll be back soon.” He murmured to his brother, his words faltering from the pain. Passing through the narrow and short corridor, he took a peek at his parents laying unconscious, restrained by their own sheets whilst his little sister cried as her feeble mind was tainted, assaulted by the whispers which enticed Isocrates.
A memory that just returned, a memory which cemented his own foolishness. The self-realization of it hurt as much as the action he had to take against his own kin. The image of the fetish in the old merkin’s shop; Hunra and Rhenathorhia glancing at him with their visages of eerie handsomeness all flowed back into him, and he cursed his own name of not realizing their enemy standing before him. Yet not much could be done now, except cutting the head of the snake which slithered amongst the flock. A serpent confident enough to bare its fangs now evident from the rumble seeping through the walls, the closed windows.
Battle unfolded beyond the precipice of his home, inhumane shrieks reverberated through the whole capital as the enchanted and those freed from the grasp of the Beautiful battled each, the latter still oblivious how in less than a decade the capital or even the Empire could be on the cusp of destruction. Isocrates took a deep breath, curled his fists as a strong gust gathered within the dim recess of his home, dancing around him before it opened the door violently, and lifted a daemur and a cultist up in the air before slamming them into the roof of the building across.
Stepping out he noticed the custodiir pushing back and forth with the cultists, citizens whom they cut down without a thought, and the daemurnus’s of eerie beauty. Clouds gathered above the vibrant streets as Isocrates focused and shut out the sounds of battle on both his sides. Then at once the wave of euphoria shifted into jabbing agony as micro cosmic sparks lashed out against his soul, against his tendon. Blood splurged from his lips as he bit down hard upon his tongue, focusing on the great spell of thunder and fierce, devastating draught.
After placing in the last inscription, a wind swept through the streets lifting the cultists and daemurnus’s up in the air where mauve and white thunder pierced through them, ending their existences within the boundaries of the mortal realm whilst leaving the enchanted citizens for the custodiir. The sudden blow of his own conjured wind blasted him against the wall where he sat coughing up blood. He took a peak, and opened his mouth to convince the custodiir to stop their disconcerting effort of bringing peace upon the streets with brutality against the unwilling citizens, but stopped realizing the futility of his unborn effort.
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In the end, he realized he would do the same, and shall do. Mustering his strength, he rose back onto his feet spitting out the coagulated blood waving back and forth between the lining of his cheeks. He reached into his pouch and chugged down the potion calming the searing arkhaine points within his soul, then inscribed the speed of wind into his limbs before he charged through the winding streets overflowing with the saccharine odor of death and struggle, heading straight towards the Sleeping Nereid Inn.
**
Thanks to the timely warning, Aurelithae ducked down just in time. A long spear’s metallic shaft glinted at her as it wobbled while its crystalline tip pierced through the thick, layered marble wall of the Sleeping Nereid. She turned quite eloquently at her attacker – a fellow aevhe and a cultist draped in fine robes of a wickedly pious nature with a hint of elegance reflected in the choice of colors and the silken like material it was sewn from. A garment which proved little protection against Aurelithae’s retribution delivered by her peculiar dagger she inherited from Moirstyria’s collection she gathered up within her former chambers.
Its long, tapering blade of a snow white and brilliant silver easily cut through the fine seams, the hardened epidermis closer to marble than the hide of mortals. As it opened a narrow wound, it chugged up the blood at the very moment it cascaded out from the body whilst its tip continued unabated, slicing marrow before it faltered piercing the heart of the aevhen cultist who had little time to realize, his doom hath come.
Another, a young adolescent girl with eyes of utter fervor towards the Beautiful charged at Aurelithae, blade wreathed in brilliant, yet sinister flames conjured forth the Taeberossian realm of her primordial liege, a flame that said to posses a mind of its own, a mind reaching out to all gazing upon it, latching its tendrils onto the victims who all surrender their life for the glory of their new mistress. An event that failed to pass, as thunder struck down at her from the sky, burning her mildly, still enough to end her in that moment as smoke rose from her eyes and orifices.
Naghig’s yell drawn in her attention momentarily: his almost bestial bellow conjoining the death throttles of an elderly cultist who slowly withered away, skin darkened and full of blackened veins before the orkh released his grip on her throat. Though it seemed, the cultist shall serve a further purpose for Naghig. After he hurled the carcass at the nearby triumvirate of cultists joyously cutting open a custodiar whose own fading shrieks were muffled by one of their smooth hands.
Upon impact, a sinister haze in an ophidian shape escaped from the empty orifices, swirling around each of the gleeful cultists. One by one, they fell grasping their throats whilst their innards burned as if acid was poured down their throat. Blood flowed forth their eyes, forth between their lips and nostrils before they laid down before their victim. Witnessing all this, Aurelithae felt glad the orkh was on her side and a bit of curiosity drawn her attention away from the horrid reality she was living through – for a moment at least.
Gradually, the cultist dwindled and only the enchanted citizens led by a few daemurnus of the Beautiful remained on the Sleeping Nereid’s street. Aurelithae, feeling emboldened from the small victory, focused all three slave masters overlooking the streets from the steep border of the roofs. Creatures with a vague aevhen resemblance as she noted to herself. Near the same regal, graceful contours which made up her and Mirayroth’s lineaments yet there was an infernal imperfection in each. An infernal mockery she thought to herself.
Namely eyes stretched too wide with the corners bleeding purple into the marbly white skin surrounding them; lips smooth as silk yet ornated with sickly veins stretching and disappearing in the nearby areas; arms of uneven lengths with claws of azure and purple and of a texture reminiscing her if rare minerals often hewn into gemstones for lofty jewelry of the patricii and wealthier merchants whilst their curved horns of geometrical precision tearing apart their flesh at their foreheads resembling crystals more than marrow.
Just looking at them filled her not with dread or mild fear; but with utter disgust at which the Beautiful sculpted her children, her minions not out of love like the Magnificent Mother of Aevhen Kindred, but to mock the superior being for her kindness to share her own beauty with one of the mortal kin. This mockery born disgust fueled her the spell raining down upon all three daemurnus. A spell swift as raging wind lit their bodies up in the golden flames of dawn, burning not just their sulfurous flesh but even their tainted souls, hurling them back to the darkest recesses of Taeberos.
Down below, the last of the enchanted custodiir fell, their bodies encased in ice. An ice searing their flesh until they became charred carcasses within their embrace. Their gilded armor melted onto their blackened forms, facilitating the crumbling decay of their once proud, honed forms. The enchanted citizens themselves were restrained by Isocrates and Gnaeurian who was more versed in the martial art of spear than the arts of maghia. A strange quality of the aurhe that aided in the incapacitation of the enslaved folk.
“We could have saved those too Vel!” He complained in his silken, melodious voice to Vel – a tall truscian man dressed in all black with a hood veiling his haggard, bristly face in shadows. A man who was gifted with the affinities towards the element of ice and fire which he combined into one during his long tenure in the north.
“And we would have lost precious time.” He counted in his dry, raspy deep voice while ice retreat into nothingness from his hands whilst looking over the carnage decorated street. “He is right, now is time is off the essence.” Naghig agreed with him as he snapped his fingers and ordered the other agents within the premises of the Inn to retrieve the restrained folk.
“And what route shall we go? The streets are a battlefield and we shall clog up if we choose that route old friend.” Gnaeurian said as his golden eyes stared in the distance, his long sharp ears twitched as he listened to the distant sound of battle. The clash of steel ringing out, mingling with the crackle of arkhaine energies as spells ignited the air, glows painting the vibrant alabaster scenery of Luth-Astaril.
“I can take us to the House of Records. From there through the hidden tunnels, we can reach the Cathedral without possibly alerting the enemy.” Aurelithae spoke up. Naghig looked down, pondering before staring right back into her faux azure eyes. “That will have to do. We shall lose less time that way.”