The Metilian District, home to the downtrodden of the gleaming alabaster city of Luth-Astaril. Home to the many orkhin ranging from the ape-like, short gobokh; the gaunt, muscular orkhs; the hulking, desiccated ogrokh in hiding in the alley’s shadows from the rays of the Illius. Szeakrin meander in the dried, half-dirt half-paved roads carrying jugs of water created from their own sweat, transmuted and cleansed for healing the sick and the thirsting children and elderly. And the foolish Skaeze whom migrated down from the north, escaping the lengthening shadows of dusk in fear of their brethren’s vengeance.
All Pariah folk promised peace and prosperity in the lands of the Empire, in the heart of the Empire centuries before many of them had enough of the empty promises of freedom; the stripping of their names and the shame metered out upon them for sins they never committed. A promise made by the namesake of the district, whose crumbling, eternalized form of granite and metal adorned the center of the district surrounded by the stretching shadows of the cyclopean walls, the hexagonal towers marshalled be custodiir and legionariir whose piercing gazes carry centuries of distrust.
A hero, a chosen of Mineirvia whose clever words persuaded their ancestors to leave the dwindling forces of the Monarch of Ends, The Grimm Sovereign whose shadow still darkens the North. Melitia was her name, a name Aurelithae heard a few times, read much more in the journal of Moirstyria in the first few pages which instilled the desire of slipping down, out from the Radiant Keep barely more than a decade ago. A strange devotion her sister had for this chosen of the Deos of Valor, of Mortal Challenges, the first to use words instead of blades, spears and spells to attain a victory seemingly far or non-existent, yet one that proved essential for the victory against the one desiring to end existence.
As she exited the crumbling, desolate appearing house filled with dwindling life, she looked around the square filled with enervated forms with rings loosely hanging around their necks. First, she felt nothing for them, even to the children whose sunken eyes stared inquisitively at her, enamored by her handsome face, shapely features gifted by the Amber Lord and the Magnificent Mother of aevhen kindred.
What stirred the desires of Melitia whom protected the ancestors of these people from the vengeful spirit of dusk, the one known as the Extuingisher of Bloodlines? What made her sister awaken to a desire so different from their families, yet strangely fitting for their kindred, to unite all the refugees of Elhyrissian instead of shackling those who held different beliefs, who were shackled by the Will of Dusk centuries, millennia before? These questions lingered still in her mind as she was pondering on her road to and after her ascension to be the next Elhyrissiar.
As she leaned against the fractured, faded alabaster wall below the garbled window waiting for Mirayroth – another enigma in her life still alive – offering his aid, mending the sickly downtrodden. Though at least she suspected it was not simply out of a kind heart, but to gain followers, warriors whom shall aid in his realization of a new dawn of the Empire.
Though feeling a bit awkward whilst in her thoughts, Aurelithae entered the edifice and stifled her sensing of the awful odors permeating the dim hallway ornated by collapsing tables, unevenly hanging empty frames with names and dates of birth and death scratched onto them. A dire faceless portrait she concluded as she headed towards the stairs, then entered the room where the white wraith, mender of the downtrodden as some whispered in the recesses whilst she entered.
She took a few more silent steps upon the wooden floor whose moans intermingled with the child basking in the shadow of Mirayroth. A small orkhin whom she could not tell apart whether it would grow into a form like Naghig’s or one of the ogrokh’s whom she saw eyeing her across the square, shrouded by the dimness of the alley. A child that must have been in his teens ailed by the Rage of Acheryoth evident from his limbs showing cracks like the dried earth, yet devoid of the grizzly reveal of tendon and bone.
“A foolish kid reaching beyond his limits.” Sensing her faint presence, Mirayroth whispered as his hands engulfed in dawn amber and golden shifted between his wrists and ankles, each time the cracks seemed to close. “Or maybe just desperate.” She whispered surprising a bit herself. Looking at all the edifices, it was clear to her that most here were maintained not by the capital’s officials versed well enough in the facets of earth like marble and limestone, erudite in their very natures and ways to tame them besides knowing well the ravages of time upon their magnificent forms.
But the locals, who had to do all maintenance to survive in a district on the threshold of crumbling were erudite not in any of these arts. They could only hope their imagination and will working together would prove enough keep roofs over their heads, roofs protecting from the elements at least.
And by his age, she could deduce the little orkhin pushed beyond his limits, though still not enough where his form would have crumbled like the few edifices near the walls. For a moment as she envisioned the orkhin crumbling into earthly dust, a singular spark ignited a flame of anger, though not for long as the door slapped open just as Mirayroth finished healing, soothing the Rage of Acheryoth consuming the boy.
“Thank the Deossos!” Said the disheveled man of northern blood whose few dry strands of hair flowed over his wrinkled, sunken face of blemished skin and eyes circled by dark patches, his slender starving form wrapped in tattered robes as he approached Mirayroth hastily. Though his exclamation wasn’t towards the mending of the orkh or ogrokh, but for seeing Mirayroth.
Without saying a word, shadows darkened the walls, the floor and ceiling and tendrils wrapped around his ankles and wrists, stretching his limps as he was lifted into the air. For a moment, the glow of metal squinted her eyes as the blade in the skaeze’s hands dropped and stuck into the floor. “I had no choi…” He could not finish or even start his pleading as a shadow passed through his throat with the haste of thunder, severing tendon and bone like adamantium blades of the First Legion.
“There is always a choice.” Mirayroth whispered into the air whilst things registered in Aurelithae already reaching for her own dagger. Though instead of questioning, she turned towards the walls sensing four more approaching the edifice, leaking with the taint of Taerebus she familiarized with through the past few years of hunting cultists.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Without uttering any word, Aurelithae left as Mirayorth turned back and approached the others within the room, scared at the sudden demise of one of their own. “No need for fear. The fool chose the easy way.” He said in a soothing, kind tone whilst conjuring a small basket of goods whilst Aurelithae watched before continuing onwards, before the four entered the edifice.
Towards the four encroaching the home, she felt grateful for their brazenness as only they remained on the pentagonal square. The children, the orkhin and the szeakrin all retreated into their crumbling houses offering little protection in the fore coming clash. Time seemed to slow as she flipped through her memories of spells engraved by decades of Prisceirith’s teachings, instinctively. And with a sudden instinct, she opened her eyes and altered the way of mana flowing into her arkhaine points, changed her astral attitude of relying on her indomitable draconic will to impose upon the order of the world, and instead tapped into the primeval desires of the soul to have agency.
As the four pariah kindred approached draped in colorful garments unfit for this home of the destitute, a coldness older than time, a warmth preceding the dawn effervescently cascaded across her being. And at once, her azure eyes opened with roots of a color beyond mortal comprehension crawled towards the gleaming pearls, while runes whose true meaning evaded her, yet had a vague sense of their assembled intent carved into her arms beneath the sleeves of her tunic.
First to fell was the descendant of the exiled Virdr folk whose flesh began to move, disturb like waves bursting as rocks, pieces of the steep granite and limestone shores fell into them. The silent cacophony of his tendon tearing, bones tearing echoed in the square, drawn out only by his bloodcurdling scream which faded into oblivion when his body torn itself into six gory segments.
The one he considered friend and vice versa followed, a corpulent orkh who lunged swiftly towards Aurelithae with a long golden club crafted with serrated surface in hopes of saving his fellow with whom he survived in this deossos forsaken place. Before he could reach and deal the finish blow upon the delicate form wreathed in illusions and strange energies, matters the top half of his corpulent, pallid form disappeared revealing the tendons of the nether area and below.
The remaining two – a young szeakrin maiden and her partner – met their doom in tandem. Their scaled, pale torsos, necks, limbs and heads twisted, spiraled into themselves until their mortal shells reached their limits and imploded into bits and pieces of tendon and bone right beneath her feet. She stared at the four carcasses, or at least what remained of them and felt nothing but the disgust as the scent of dusk overpowered the stench of the destitute.
Though this emptiness was subsided when she felt the fearful gazes upon her bloodied form. “I see you’re done.” Saved from regret, Mirayroth commented as he carefully avoided the gore adorning the barely paved road in a cold tone of his own. “Do not feel bad. For now they may fear you, but with time, they shall hail you.” A momentary smile brightened her visage and she ignored the rising regret of choosing brutality over magnanimity as the four may have been forced by desperation – and the Beautiful’s cult.
“Do you have an idea?” She asked taking her thoughts away from the piercing gazes. Mirayroth nodded silently, sauntered past the silent square, towards the north-east.
**
“What a beautiful lie.” Terrianis said as he sauntered through the windings streets of old Astaril stopping at marks he heard many times from the lips of his father and eldest brother. The square arranged in a perfect pentagonal layout with buildings magnificent even in their crumbling state, slowly reclaimed by her Nature; the old temple of the Amber Lord and his siblings brimming still even after eons passed in the seconds of the great illusion; the great market where the merchants flocked with their peculiar goods from the distant lands of a now dead world; the towering structure where the greatest of human, dwarven and aevhen kin assembled and created the First Legion still protecting the peace of the Empire.
“Yet all lies must come to an end.” He whispered expecting the unseen ears of his captor to receive them even in their low intonations. Yet the end seemed far in the distance of the faux vista of the city built onto the side of the great alabaster mountain which peak reached beyond the cloud infested sky. A place where his family came into being thanks to the Heavenly Host offering the greatest of their flock for reformation, for the elevation of the form preferred by most of the Deossos except for the chaotic sculptor and the eldest driven to madness.
The one whose sculpted form reminding him of all things coming to their end still adorned the crumbling interior of the great temple erected first for the devotion of Dawn, the opposite of him. The beginning of all things, the reminder to all mortals that the dusk of all things is inevitable, it can still be delayed if one holds out for long. A simple, but rejuvenating notion he though of now and many times before.
And like the lies, his patience thinned and neared its end as he climbed tirelessly the stairs leading to the peak, to the birthplace of his kin, where the first Elhyrissiar came into a new form before he received the essence of the Eight. “Finally.” He exclaimed listlessly as his chromatic gaze fallen upon the back of his great grandfather, yet as he stared his firm back towering as Augermil’s, he felt a twinge of cold beget of a fear – no, an uneasiness of a hidden revelation.
Led by his millennia old curiosity, Terrianis hastened his steps as he followed the phantasm climbing towards the great palace on a molded plateau with dim, aged marble of alabaster and golden stretching across the nonagonal structure the palace was built upon. A palace with an angular dome and many towers evoking resemblance of the both the Cathedral and the Radiant Keep within Terrianis. A piece of excellent artwork always missing from paintings, frescoes of great, creative minds of painters and masons of the earth, stone and wood.
Desiring to see its inside, to etch its magnificent recesses into his mind dampened the anxiousness ailing his own heart and mind, though not for long as he found himself hurrying past Traquis Manitae whose awe and fear overflown in Terrianis as a freezing draught breezed through his long hair, concluding the perfect order of straightness imposed upon them by his resolute will; a deep shadow lengthened over the darkened, ageless marble swallowing the fading white and gold whilst the sky ceased to be, in its place a starless emptiness stretched as far as he could see; and as he turned around the awe and fear grew twofold as his own senses awakened before the gargantuan form of etheric flesh and scales visible even in the near complete darkness.
For the first time in his existence; for once again he felt small like a mice standing in the shadow of its mighty predator and as insignificant as a mote of dust wiped out from existence by a simple towel, or by the hand of an unaware child playing, adventuring in long forgotten ruins. This sensation of awe and fear compelled his eyes to glance only at the claws of obsidian reflecting his form in their utter darkness, the size of the cathedral’s pillars holding roof and balcony, dug effortlessly in the robust marble.
Then came the much desired conclusion, just as he fully took in the dark form of the Nightscale before himself, before his grandfather Traquis. A poetic end as he concluded himself in his erratic mind in the silent hallway still lit by the early noon’s glow.