What a peculiar thing that even after so many decades, so few centuries I still recall the intense taste of my dear Mama’s broth, the intense clash of spices on the soft, steaming pieces of meat still clutching onto the bone in a deep desperation akin to a soldier’s who gut was pierced through by a poisoned blade. What a peculiar thing it truly is.
Even more peculiar – now that I focus my thoughts on the memory of that day – are how I can easily recall every minute of it. Maybe it is the aldraelhyn blood flowing in my veins, or the gift of my dear Masters I owe everything I achieved, I have.
The wetness of my brother’s sweat laden hair as I clutch onto it while overdriven by joy, by pride as Papa broke through Uncle’s shield with a single downwards strike or even how before the strike came to reality, he evaded in a mere moment while descending down towards the end of his quarterstaff.
Or the intensity of our training, the gnawing craving which beckons one to cast more and more spell until they get devoured by the cruel waves of the aethereal river Acheryoth. Or the amazement I felt towards Mama for mastering such a medium grade spell like creating Golems in a matter of minutes yet it took me at least a decade to reach perfection.
I remember my failed promise that still aches my heart, yet as they say time mends all kinds of wounds, though they can never heal fully. I wonder still if she would be proud of my achievements, or would she be disgusted with me. I can only hope she found eternal joy in the Beyond.
As I lay beside my Pale Orchid – gently caressing her face adorned with an expression akin to innocently dreaming beasts – her long auburn strands spreading far and wide across her delicate body, I wonder what beget my mind to recall that day. Was it my guilt for lying to her as I found sleep hard on that day, afraid what she would think of me as I recalled her terrified expression in the land of Oneiro on that fateful day.
Yet my worries were all in vain as when darkness enveloped my world finally after my dear sister already traversed the lands of Oneiro – one of her cherished grimoires resting alongside on her face – I found myself not falling this time, but by a strange sensation crawling my ankles as they planted into a fathomless lakelet of neither freezing nor scorching.
My momentary relief turned to terror which shifted just as swiftly into calmness born of void as I started surveying the endless surroundings and finally noticed the shape of unnerving curves and shapes hovering high with a blinding color out of this world. A color that proved weak against the surrounding blackness even as it hurt my eyes as I foolishly stared into it laced by my childish curiosity.
My calmness mixed with the seeds of fear as I noticed the strange shape moving in impossible ways as if trying to break free from the grasp of the blackness that slowly creeped onto its weird curves yet it failed and were forced into a stateless submission as the blackness swallowed me whole and once more felt the ecstasy of falling without seeing.
With an abrupt end I found myself in a wholly different, strange world that now I know was the far south opposite to where I lived and live. Warm sand tickled the cavities between my toes of my exposed foot eerily dry even after the fall.
The fallacious Illius created by the Servitors of Dreams warmly kissed my face as I slowly rose while a momentary fright made me yelp as a dark skinned man of the Yhanubj tribe passed through me ignoring as I was once more nothing more than an onlooker out of time.
Fulgent, mauve and golden dunes arose as far as I could see while spinning around with a few aspen trees with crystalline foliage of vermillion swindled gently as the warm air traversed towards the enormous walls of the once proud city of Khadrath where the once infamous Black Pharaoh ruled with legions of horrors following his silent words. At least that’s what the Empire’s scholars spread across the world.
As I plodded the same way as the man, people manifested all around us, folks of all southern kinds including a Changed-Folk with onyx jackal head with soft fur and long ears reaching high and a towering slender form with tight muscles. bursting veins stroke along the exposed areas of his garments. A gudraelh warrior beset in the revealing southern armor with a prominent angularly oval frame adorned with colorful gems.
Even some of the pariah folks appeared without their usual shackles of imperial nature, including an orkh family and a vampyr desperately wrapped in many layers of ragged garments to hide from the cruel rays of the Illius as it quickly desired to fill his arkharuine hunger.
Yet what truly beckoned my interest were the two figures whom manifested at the gates where two imposing statues of proud man dressed lightly in southern regal pieces cast their shadow on the people entering the city of the Black Pharaoh.
One, whom even without my dear Orchid’s guidance recognized as the proud blade of the Empire, The Reaper of His Children as some of the venerated Aydvroeghok referred to Augermil as he towered over all other just like the two statues. Even the orkh’s looked at him with admiration as they noticed the muscles wrapped in many layers of fine sheet. Yet his onyx scales adorning his heroic face were nowhere to be seen.
Even Terrianis – who stood in his shadow – appeared as no more than a common aldraelh of quite, near-divine beauty with his tall, delicate body which is often a preference for pure magosh. And what a magosh he was from what I learned from my Orchid and from the Masters – and most importantly – from what I sensed from just looking at a far past self of His.
Strangely I was both thrilled for some reason yet to be known at the time, and calm but curious at the prospect of maybe witnessing something so distant, so strange to me at the time. Though in that moment I expected my Orchid to show up and accredited these sensations to that but in the end, I alone followed the two inside as they entered the city with a little altercation as Terrianis wished to have an audience with the infamous Black Pharaoh.
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Thanks to Augermil’s calm, composed self, convinced him that they shall prove themselves worthy for a meeting easing the djinn guard who looked at them with suspicious in his large, bulging eyes of darkened amethyst while his thin lipless mouth remained expressionless. Instinctively I walked in Augermil’s shadow trailing close as they acted as my guides into this new, exciting world.
**
Fort Corrorth. One of the many fortresses erected by the Stone-Forgers of the Empire, elite magusos specialized in molding most if not all types of earthen materials including marble, basalt and even the menacing stalactites of Vhalleryon’s mountains. Except for one which is dhaugrite which makes up all of the Dhaugruz mountain range. A wicked stone as many of them tend to refer to it.
The fortress itself was molded from gelum marble native to the northern regions beneath the mountain range, resulting in its wall having an icy, even to some glass like quality to it. Walls with sharp edges and turns, a surface pristine, immaculate even while smooth as the new frost born onto the surface of lakes at the start of the seasons of finality.
Immaculate walls which rise even above the reach of the frost giants of the north, straying from the jagged, gloomy walls of the mountain where a singular cavernous mouth lead down into the natural labyrinth known as the Veinways.
“Open the gates!” With a loud yell, Gadaric an auxiliary of the 19th Legion clad in their muscular armor ordered his comrades when he noticed the patrol returning with dozens of refugees dressed in barbaric garments. The imposing birch gates moaned as they opened forth letting the unfortunate folk into its courtyard of four sharp corners.
For a moment uncertainty grasped his heart as he watched the eerily limping folk march slowly into as their safe haven, a second womb where their new life shall begin. It quickly faded the moment Praefectias Ruari, a driiad of northern kind with long white foliage like hair and skin a strange fusion of flesh and soft petals of the northern flora, greeted the leader of the refugees, a towering man whose hulking arm wrapped around his slender one.
Those of the patrol – including Radegond, his little sister – dispersed after receiving their orders for rest and recuperation just as the Illius began its transformation signaled by the cold tones spreading across the skies.
Calm hours passed as Gadaric made his rounds, often he stared into the menacing crowd of trees surrounding the fort, spreading towards the south sometimes noticing the restless dead. Now that his dear little sister was back in the welcoming belly of the fort, he could remain calm while feeling excited a little as his time shall come to venture into the cold veins of the mountain, to save more lives from the claws of the Dusk.
“Brother.” He suddenly stopped in the angular archway of the watchtower, in the shadows he barely made out the well-honed slender form of his sister calling out to him in a husky voice not matching her vibrant. His heart began to beat harder with each gradual second. “Help me!” She said while walking out into the silvery white light which revealed her pale face with a kind, inviting expression.
“What happened?” Yet his brotherly love won over his slight suspicion as he walked up to her. His hand felt the cold, yet he could not resist his love even as the dagger plunged into his throat and a river of blood burst forth. “Do not worry. He is a gentle shepherd.” She said while tenderly holding his body, lowering it down to the ground.
“In his care, we shall live forever.” Her mouth opened wide as an ethereal serpent woven from shadows of nekrotic matter slithered forth and down into his. Confusion and terror beget anger as he felt the call of the Solemn Shepherd grew close than distant.
His grasp waned as all the others’ within the now haunted fort. His pale corpse stared at the sky, then as he unwillingly decided, joined Orhadin’s herd.
The elderly shepherd of the living dead plodded as the gate moaned a third time, welcomed by the eager lamb reborn in death. “Keep your dead in the towers, we shall wait for a few days.” As a towering disciple of his walked up, with emptily wondering serpentine eyes, he wondered at the architecture he heard so much about from his dearest mother and father.
The towering disciple of partial giant-blood bowed then his large hand lit up in the cold light of nekrotic matter as runes of finality enveloped his exposed log of an arm. The rotten dead spreading their vile stench disappeared in the cavities of the fort.
Gentle, cold air breezed his robe as he stood in the center of the courtyard like a phantom bound to the decrepit amphitheater watching the Niodr’s vomiting streaks of silver into the fathomless darkness. As he heard the footsteps approaching, he walked towards the imposing gate, through which a fading road slowly claimed back by nature led towards the blessed forest where the lost wandered eternally.
As he slowly approached the second gate, two moderately cyclopean statues of ormdraelh stood proudly clad in their angularly sculpted, segmented plate armor eternalized into welcoming stances yet he could feel nothing but disgust as his ophidian eyes gazed upon them.
His living dead pushed their cold and fresh palms onto the chiseled wooden gates and slowly opened the way. Excitement shook his body for a blink of an eye, as he glared at the trees bathed in silvery holy light, his tread came to a halt.
“Vellinid, Thorlak. Prepare the swiftest and slyest of your dead.” He focused on the forest even as the naedraelhyn and skaeze disciple of his stopped thrice a feet away, bathed in the shadows of the gateway. “Seek out the restless lords of this land, tell them that our Masters shall bless their unending with the salvation of rebirth.”
Vellinid the naedralhyn maiden replied, her voluminous silvery white hair cascaded unimpeded down her robe of finest silken produced by her kin, bathed in the shades of dusk itself. Her mesmerizing face devoid of emotion except for faux joy frozen eternally on the exposed skull of her half-decayed face.
Thorlak on the other hand was meek, short skaeze with a gaunt visage hidden behind his charcoal beard braided many times as flowed down on his ivory armored robe of a pale grayish shade. His vacant eyes contoured unevenly round while deep shadows occupied the corners.
“Shouldn’t we hasten their demise?” The blind disciple asked with unsure tone as his head tilted eastwards eliciting a poisoned gaze from Vellinid.
Orhadin stroked his sharpened chin while a pensive look occupied his darkened visage. “Even with our numbers, these walls would cost us dearly. For now we wait for the patrols to return, then amass before we swarm the other forts.”
With that the two nodded then left to retrieve the best of their dead while Orhadin stood still. As he glared into the distance, anxiousness gently creeped its way into his mind. Was it the right move? Will the masterless dead follow his word? These questions surfaced in his mind, but he smothered them as he recalled Grimslaukh’s strengthening words.
“Time is on our side.” He whispered to himself as he turned his back on the silent forest.