“Should we retreat?” Priernuss asked as he stood between Ulrich and Aelfsigior a safe distance away from the eerily silent monastery which walls stood impeccably while the putrid odor of finality lingered in the air. Hevaeck himself while clutching his amulet stared grimly as he searched vainly for any sign of life within the confines.
Through the spell he only felt the still dead awaiting for their prey to step forth the gate into their doom. Aelfsigior turned at him with a questioning look then asked. “How many do you sense?”
“Approximately thrice our number, though I have no sense of their capabilities as of now, but if they could break through the ward, I fear that the culprit may veil themselves and quite a few others.” Hearing this, Aelfsigior stroked his bearded chiseled chin while turning back to the silent walled monastery veiled by withered trees and bushes, the snow revealing only a few footsteps matching the approximation of Hevaeck.
Aelfsigior then surveyed the faces masking their slight dread before he voiced his thoughts. “I want to say we should turn back, but I am afraid that is what they expect too hence the revenants from three days halted in their strange pursuit.” He stopped then a mild revelation formed in his mind. “Say Hevaeck, the gate is in the House of Studies underfloor?”
At his question Hevaeck nodded firmly. For a few moments he remained silent then regaled his plans to the others, telling that they shall enter into the trap and fight their way through the House of Studies underfloor and escape as swiftly as possible through the greidor gate connected to the colonial city of Mocontriam two weeks away from their little fortified settlement.
“Though if anyone else have a better plan, speak up now.” As he finished laying out his quickly made plan, he inspected their visages once more and voiced his question. For a while their masks of bravery broke off and everyone pondered as they themselves were not cowards who would run from battle – be it favored or not – but the past few days spent witnessing the strange behavior of the revenants brought forth foreign emotions.
In the end they all accepted the plan, coming to the exultated conclusion that if they survive it will be a glorious tale to regale to their friends and loved ones, and if not then they knew they could not swim against the sweeping waves of fate.
Under the shadows of finality, the group stood in formation, white mist escaping the slit openings of their visored-helmets. At Aelfsigior’s command, they began their march into the overt trap laid by the risen dead.
**
I hovered silently over the courtyard of the black pyramid palace absent of the rows of thousands and even the triad of nightmarish Royal Guard. Only he and I remained with my strange feelings which beckoned me to heed my words and follow in his steps as he ascended on the thousand steps.
As if he was certain, and he was no wrong in his beliefs, he took step by step with a calm, mysterious attitude while the one voice whispering silently in my mind forced me in the end to hover after him. “Where did they go?” I asked out of my curiosity and quite oblivious to my circumstances for a reason now clear to me, back then they evaded me.
He stopped and turned to face me through his pallid silver mask with eyeholes revealing nothing but the darkness behind his mask. “I sent them onto an adventure. It shall be quite the experience for his future highness.” I tilted my head questioningly how a facet of a distant past would know of one’s future as I was aware even back then that divination of such level were only possible for the truly focused.
“Hold your further questions now. We shall talk in a much pleasant place with sweets of both liquid and solid.” Though now I feel a bit awkwardly foolish, those last words were laced with simple enchanting to my self who could rarely enjoy such lavishness of taste back then.
Like a well-behaved pet I nodded my head and continued and what felt like only a few moments we reached the top aperture of rectangular proportions where he turned around and pointed back at the once promised city of Khadrath. I instinctively let out an enamored gasp of wonder as my glistening eyes gazed upon the far-stretching city amidst dunes of many vibrant shades lighted in a divinely glow created by the warm dusk tones of the altering Illius.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” He asked and I answered in a soft whisper while I had a hard time taking off my gaze from the civilized vista of Khadrath. “Regret fills me every moment knowing that doom lingers near.”
I sensed a hint of solemn in his priorly emotionless, regal voice as the vacant holes of the pallid mask looked far into the distance. “Could you not parlor with them and let this remain as part of the Empire?” I asked naively as I felt sad for the stranger Pharaoh, though this fact evaded me.
He shook his head before he answered once more in an emotionless tone. “I am afraid not. Sometimes we have to make decisions other would label as wicked even if it shall lead for the betterment of the world and all its inhabitants.” Even now I am unsure of what he meant, though before I could ask, he turned and headed into the vast interior and as I entered, the walls closed themselves behind us, yet the same day light lit the spacious hall as we neared the steps leading to where my fate truly began its alteration.
**
Their alloyed steps mingled with the crunching of snow, with the creaking of frozen mud as they stepped forth the gate with vigilant gazes and prepared arms and legs. Beneath their aurinthian helmets, their ears twitched as they sought the little sounds produced by the sly revenants veiling their faint cursed presences within the measured confines once home to life.
In the center Hevaeck supplying the ward adjusted his steps while a solemn feeling spread within him as he looked around in the silent surroundings, he once spent a considerable time in, recalling the days he spent amongst peers with a simple desire to cleanse this once lush woodland that bore mesmeric white and blue foliage which he once wished to experience like his forefathers.
Ulrich felt similarly as he himself visited this place when he was the same age as Eadwald, though he spoke little of it as his father a kind and valiant man of similar desirable looks were secretly laden with paranoid thoughts of whispering shadows and eyes regaling to their old enemies who still sought their demise so many centuries later.
He too recalled the kind folk who inhabited the monastery who taught him many things regarding the weaknesses of the risen dead, but also ways to traverse these accursed lands which accidentally led to the fateful day he gazed upon his present mate, who like him served in the 19th Legion as a veneficiar versed well in the arts of restoration.
Though the urge to regale this to Eadwald welled up in him since the day of their departure, he forgo to tell it as he was well aware children prefer to know little of the love affairs of the elders. And currently it was more imperative to stay vigilant as Hevaeck whispered that the revenants began to move near towards them.
“Prepare yourselves and don’t stop moving.” At Aelfsigior’s command, each of the eight warriors began to channel their mana into their limbs arkhaine points through their anima veins where they formed into spells amplifying their strength and stamina while also hardening their skin and flesh to be as resilient as their plates adorning their well-honed forms.
The foul odor of finality they sensed gradually worsened as the first of the revenants stepped closer and closer to the light before they burst forth the structures while emitting their raucous warped shrieks.
The sadness within Hevaeck deepened as he gazed upon the grizzled forms of the monastery’s inhabitants including Iuitl a former student of his whose lively fish-like visage was torn to shreds, even her half her skull shattered revealing a rancorous darkness leaking from it.
“May the Shepherd bless your dreams!” He murmured as ethereal, translucent spears protruded forth the radiant wall, impaling through the weakened, blackened flesh of the risen inhabitants before the radiant matter spread onto them and like ravenous beasts, devoured their haunting forms.
Elder revenants higher in the echelons of the dead watched from the shadows as their lower kindred rushed mindlessly against the radiant tips, each pushing further and further towards the translucent walls while their withered, frozen forms ruptured into nothingness while Hevaeck’s resilience waned quickly as the pleasant feeling of forcing his will upon the world began to turn into an agonizing pain of inner scorching not unlike of being set ablaze.
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“Move now, but do not forget! Leave the golden eyed child to me!” Then as the spears grown onto the domed ward, Her sweet voice rang through their ascended mind and at once all the dead marched forth and battered against the wall, impeding the eight and the one.
**
“Come, sit!” At long last we have arrived to the terrace overlooking the domed vastness of many colors stretching before the walled city of Khadrath. Though before I hovered near the long table beset with saccharine treats with two seats of obsidian and silvery trims which seemed to possess a metallic sheen, I passed between numerous busts of unfamiliar faces except for two which both oddly reminded me of folk, though I could not conjure names nor faces into my mind.
I relented as I believed I’ll have time to recall it, not knowing the cobwebs veiling the person were not made by my own mind’s will. Near the end where I stepped into the light bathed terrace, I sat opposite to the Pharaoh in Black who waited patiently while his pallid masked visage stared emptily at my place.
Though I expected to sense nothing, the as my bottom neared towards the seating, a cushiony embrace coursed through my weary being with a wave of soothing as I found my legs stretching beneath the desk which simply possessed no leg of its own, just carelessly hovered above the limestone floor of the terrace.
Moments passed in an eerie silence as I fitted my small form to appear brave and elegant matching the distant royalty before me, and I curiously waited for him to reveal what lied beyond the pallid mask of his, though in the end he just swept his right arm across the table and the plates of saccharine treats marched towards my side and as I could no longer hold back I reached for the nearest softly crumbling disks garnished with shrunken yet still quite juicy fruits quelling both hunger and thirst.
“What we must speak of shall not be a pleasant or easy subject, that I swore to be the truth.” My body and being tensed as he spoke those words in his rigid voice with hints of solemn. I stopped my munching on the saccharine treats and turned at him questioningly on what me and him could talk, though I had a sense he knew of my gift and the seed embedded into my soul.
“Even if time separates us now, I still impart my wisdom, and offer a choice not even him imparted onto you when he had chosen you as his vessel.” A foreboding cold swept my soul as I continued consuming the treats laid before me feeling even my earthbound body. I remained silent as pondered as a small form could with what little I knew.
Being chosen was a new and exhilarating feeling, knowing that my dream of one day becoming a great magus was nothing but certainty. That one day I may meet my Pale Orchid and speak with her, to explain I had no intention of scaring her, though I wanted to ask for advice in matters of speaking with one’s soul mate from father. Yet in that moment, those words awakened that dread which lingered in the recesses of my mind that surfaced for a moment after revelation as well.
I looked into the dim holes and nodded as I wrestled and triumphed over the slight dread. “What choice do you mean I have yet not aware of?”
“A simple yet hard one, but one that may entice you once you know more of the true price of being his chosen. A price that hides itself as a reason to set you on the path that one day shall lead to your doom and this dreams’ too.” His head turned and stared at the colorful phantoms forming from the union of sand and wind beyond the rising walls of the city.
“Though I fear we may have been late as one price, one reason had been metered out upon you and your siblings to face the great winged lord who breathed the night and awakened time long before the awakening of the deos and the races you know.”
My munching slowed and swallowing the tasty treat proved challenging as I felt coldness grip my hands reaching for the next as if the answer lingered in my mind evading the grasp of realization. “That you shall know the moment you awaken. For now know there is a path I offer you, a path in which no doubt majority of the world shall brand you as the second coming of the Grimm Sovereign, the True Disciple of Dusk, but it shall also save what shall be taken and reward with furthermore including the right that was taken from your family so long ago.”
I stared at him frozen, and as he looked into my eyes, feeling uncertain whether to answer and if yes what to speak. I just watched silently the light behind the holes of his pallid mask, the lights flickering with a color from beyond.
**
Ulrich’s left arm ached from the continuous battering and from the pieces of cursed metal lodged from the lacerating wounds whose frames began to blacken with veins spreading and numbing his sense of it amidst great aching. A white torrent of mist escaped his exposed face as his helmet laid amidst the grizzly corpses of the once more unmoving dead.
With his plate half-destroyed – exposing his scar riddled left side – he walked near Eadwald who laid wheezing and teary against the scorching of exhaustion as he sat the blackened ground while clutching the hilt of his forged blade.
“Burn her.” Aelfsigior’s sore voice reached his ears and he watched as the soaring flames of amber engulfed the torn form of Lioba staring vacantly at him. Her form fitting armor in shambles, torn like paper while her guts forced out onto the cold ground while her head almost severed, where once her throat laid now a gaping hole remained though not for long as flames devoured her decaying, blackened and paling flesh leaving nothing behind but just old memories of her.
As there he had no more use for it in its current state, Ulrich let his broken shield fell to the bone littered ground and sheathed his blade as he offered his one remaining good hand to Eadwald. “This can wait.” As Priernuss approached offering healing for his aching arm, he declined with a smile as wave of unease washed over him and the desire to rush to the greidor gate compelled him.
Malodorous scent of finality seared their noses once more and at Aelfsigior’s command, they all rushed through the broken gate of the House of Studies the moment they felt the earth’s light tremble as the revenants charged towards them from beyond the walls and gates of the desolate monastery.
Ulrich remained last, ignoring the pain as he turned around with his blade once more in his hand, rending the few revenants nearing them. To his aid, Priernuss came hurling weak spells while healing some of his wounds and to his worry Eadwald severing the twig parched neck of an aevhen dead.
The three slowly backed with Priernuss’s ward keeping the revenants from tearing them apart. “There.” Hevaeck weakly shouted towards the turn leading from the central hall riddled with torn books, dried blood and decaying pieces of flesh to the steps descending below the earth.
Near the steps, Ulrich grabbed Eadwald’s shoulder and hurled him towards the steps then followed after him after cleaving head from shoulders of two dead while Priernuss stayed arms stretched forward as his ward began to crumble as cold shadows gathered in the corners.
In the long, gloomy corridor of neatly stapled stones, Ulrich perceived Eadwald’s terror plastered on his face, freezing him in place. With half turned towards him, he pushed his back while aimlessly thrusting the tip of his blade engulfed by tenderly swirling Iuboron matter parting shadows with its radiant gilded glow. With each chaotic thrust, the golden mist latched onto the blackened and brownish flesh of the ravenous dead, then their gravelly screams echoed through the chambers followed by the ear-bleeding shriek of their master.
In the final hall at the end of the corridor, Gna who carried Hevaeck placed the elderly dwarf onto the center of the room, into a whitish marble circle engravened with numerous curious drawings in front of the curving gate riddled with carefully hewn hieroglyphics spelling out the name of Mocontriam. With his palms locked, eyes closed Hevaeck began to channel what remaining cavalcade of matter remained in his four arkhaine points and began to pour them into the center.
While the rest lined up for a possible last stand, as they felt the permeating cold presence approaching hastily, he rushed to Eadwald crumbled onto his shaking knees and with a swiftly calculated slap, brought him out of his terrified state. “Do not fear anything as long as you see me.” He said while grabbing onto his shoulders, a kindly smile curved onto his handsome visage.
“Won’t be able to hold any longer.” Priernuss said amidst gritting his teeth as he felt a cold anger slipping into him as pitch blackness pervaded the other side of the sharply curving arch filled with his expanded ward. As he the ward crumbled into aethereal dust, two blades of radiant and amber energies appeared in his hands and they all let out a unified cry overpowering the cacophony of the dead.
They all swung and thrust forward in perfect rhythm, dead flesh halted in decay rendered and torn, plates of alloy, bone and other materials shattered, bones cracked and broke, shrieks emitted and hurt the already damaged ears of theirs and Ulrich once more felt the dwindling of time. Amidst the pouring gangrenous dead, he witness the floating pale form wrapped in vicious and hardened shadows embroidered into regal garments, and beyond the veil a murderous stare in the pitch black eyes aimed at his son.
“It is done! Hurry through!” Hevaeck’s voice yelled through the roars of the dead just as the bluish light bathed the room. Ulrich saw him stepped through and ordered Eadwald to immediately follow after him. Though he relented at first, Ulrich promised to come behind him then watched as he and Azugh entered in quick succession while the elderly remained holding the few dead.
Though as his back was swallowed by the bubbling aethereal waters, a second stronger shriek shook the whole structure, sent them tumbling down the floor and even shattered the remaining revenants into pieces of rotten flesh and yellowing bones.
Fear hastened the beating of his heart as he noticed the dangling pair of pale legs sprouting beneath shadows pass over them, and while ignoring the pain beget of his bleeding ears and eyes, aching head he stretched his right arm towards the gliding wraith and wave of strong ecstasy washed over him as hundreds of slim strings of golden mist and sand sprouted from his palm and towards the Queen of the Damned.
“Hurry! I’ll see you all on the other side!” Even though he could not even hear his own voice, he yelled smiling from the top of his lungs as he felt the anger seeping from her breaking the gilded bonds. As the last of them disappeared in the waters, he channeled what little matters and energies remained within into his central arkhaine point while his eyes closed.
His effort proved vain as he felt a cold hand breaking through his flesh and as he opened his eyes, he stared down into the pale, grotesquely alluring visage shrouded by shadows, smiling back at him before waves spreading from him shattered the greigor gate to pieces. He felt the burrowing maws gnawing at his being, halting the approach of the dream.