A modest building amongst a pile of crumbling ruins that was shone as brightly as the other districts cast its shadow over Aurelithae and Mirayroth. Before their feet, corpses of the poor initiated who gave their souls for empty promises laid, they blood congregating into a singular lake shrouding the destituteness of the road beneath their hollow forms.
“It has been bugging me only a little while, but I have to ask. How do you know they were here?” Aurelithae voiced the question that gnawed at her mind ever since they passed the square.
“Because it was here that we all started out.” Mirayroth stopped for a moment relieving the distant and not so distant past. “Even with your sister – Moirstyria, this was where I met her for the first time as strange as it may sound.” Hearing those words, even more questions came into being within Aurelithae, but for now she let them linger, float amongst the many others.
Except for one. “So chose this place for the New Dawn too. Quite the sentimental choice.” She added while crouching down with a vial containing ravenous insects bound to her will. Upon uncorking, they streamed forth and sipped up the crimson, mauve and grayish green fluid, vitae while also devouring the corpses even though neither of them expected a patrol to come this way.
“Sentimental? No. It was the right choice at the time.” Mirayroth said as he waited for the insects to quench their seemingly ceaseless thirst and hunger. “Starting in the central districts would have been foolish, vain in those years as often those on the threshold of societies ladder tend to retreat into their bubbles – bubbles neither horrific or paradisical. I and Naghig would have seen as fools, as servants of unneeded chaos and would have just ended up mindwiped by the Inquisitoriir.” Then he held out his hand and swept it in a circle towards the dilapidated erections. “Here, we had the hopeless and those on the brink of it, those who were willing to ignite the first, little spark of change necessary for a better future in this paradise.”
Then he relapsed into his calm, listless manner in the shapeless eastern robes melding eerily into the dulled whites of the district. “But enough talk. The enemy is waiting for us.” He said shushing Aurelithae and heading straight towards the warehouse where his path truly began a few decades before.
Entering the warehouse, the two halted for a moment as the vast interior revealed itself, lit by the dimming lights of the Illius. A mockery of palaces Aurelithae concluded silently. Dented floor hidden by torn rags clearly stolen from the other districts; pillars holding the steep ceiling adorned with moldering, derelict baubles barely held by dirty threads winding across the dried, cracked wooden surface, clinking and breaking further as the gentle spring wind carrying the foul odor of the district passed with them. And straight ahead of the two, a throne assembled from crates, shrouded with dirty, torn sheets greeted them with the out of place silhouette of a djinn.
“Welcome to my humble kingdom!” The faernalist deep, melodious voice with a haughty tone greeted them. His pale form with a slanting head of owl like proportions with slit nasal cavities, thin and small lips, large oval and oblique eyes devoid of a pupil, occupied by the abyssal darkness matching his etheric locks running in the center of his head, collapsing to both sides and the horns sprouting from the sides, pointing at the two with a golden spiral against the dark, jagged surface. His lithe, slender form adorned in scanty royal robes of crimson and purple, golden trims and ornaments like the ten rings beset with rubies and amethysts, a cold gilded collar engraved with taeberian runes evoking a sense of familiarity and disgust within Aurelithae.
“I am the great Balasi, Chosen of our shared and grand Mother who gifted us with excellency!” He quickly rose and towered from the distance even as he courteously bowed before them. His robes waved magnificently as he walked down creaking steps of wooden, then soft thuds of his plush, marble white soles echoed in the mocking space.
“I’ll take care of this fool.” Aurelithae whispered to Mirayroth who answered with a simple nod of his shrouded head. Then stepped back and watched as Aurelithae stepped before the djinn Balasi who scraped his chin adorned by braided astral mist, held together by metallic beads of power.
“Before we taint this peaceful abode, let us solve our problem with diplomacy.” Then he spoke out and Aurelithae faltered out of instinct as she felt a strange, beckoning power, tendrils curling and wrapping around her mind, binding her limbs. “Then speak.” She said as she wrestled against the hold, scorching the tendril with etheric, unseen flames.
“You may not be aware of this your excellency, but our goals match the same. A new order where all shall be equal beneath our true Mother who gifted us our enchanting forms.” The djinn faltered, sensing the resistance of his prey. “I doubt our goals align. Otherwise you may not rely on terror and violence.” She retorted.
“Sometimes to awaken the content, tools of extremities are needed. In the present they may view as evil, agents of chaos but in the near future, they shall see the truth, see that fruitful progress requires these abhorrent tools.” The numbness began to fade, and her arms seemingly frozen besides quivered softly. “I believe those tools shall achieve nothing, but fear and hatred both against us, and you and your vile Mistress.” Then she spoke those words, clearly angering the Balasi who beforehand assumed a calm, poised demeanor.
“Well, it was worth a try at least.” Balasi whispered with a primeval anger and disappointment not of his own. Then his arm raised, but the killing spell he formulated within his mind and arkhaine points and veins shifted into a ward, the strongest he knew as he felt cold, familiar energies converging before him within the delicate form. A ward that proved little against the strange power that hurled him across whilst golden flames wreathed, devoured his fine clothes.
Aurelithae tensed her stance, one arm held out with her strange runes glowing through the sleeves graven into her tender flesh. With expectant eyes sensing the mana within the smoking, rising Djinn escaping from the palms, knees and chest in the form of myriad astral threads unseen to the naked eyes and shaping into spells of destruction and restoration as the agitated Balasi fixed his burnt attires. “Like your Sister, you do not play fair.” He said with a venomous tongue.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“No point.” Came the simple answer accompanied by spells taking the shape of golden flames framed by an aura of the strange color tearing through the air with speed barely perceptible. Wards erected before his palms, but instead of swallowing the materialized flames of dawn and beyond, they ricochet off from the transparent surface of a wicked mauve and golden and hit the roof where they quickly began to spread to satiate their unending hunger.
Burning pieces fell, yet the three remained in place, waiting for the conclusion, the next step or attack. Aurelithae’s faux azure pearls rushed right and left, up and down, to and from the boundaries of her eyes as she deciphered the wicked mana of Taeberus forming into infaernic runes, inscriptions which at once faded to oblivion only to appear right beside her. Before their destructive effect, a sweet smothering air compelled her mind and body to halt its necessary functions activated, she leapt while wreathing herself in an all-encompassing aura of sealing, dismissing the vile formulas’ from ceasing her life.
Formulas that followed her like slithering serpents in the air, their shivering intent chilling her spines as she felt the approaching twilight of her life unless she made the correct step. Instinctively, she wiped her arms before her, focusing and clearing her mind to in simple words, wish away the approaching formulas. Then she recalled the spell that bound her just moments ago, deciphered the nature of the wicked tendrils and reconstructed them by recounting the blurring, shifting words etched into the Black Book gifted by the pale figure.
“What in the?” Balasi’s voice faded as even his speech was impeded by the Aurelithae’s own tendrils, one that evaded his senses as he looked puzzled as his limbs stretching, head pulled back by invisible hands devoid of impressions. Her draconic heritage slowly awakened, a deep assuredness beyond the influence of the Beautiful compelled a grin from Aurelithae, then her palms reached towards the Djinn and pulled him towards. Palm onto the exposed half of the bosom, she desired, wished the flames of the Dawn Before to penetrate through the wicked walls of runes protecting the restrained Balasi, and upon doing so, his mouth opened agape while flames raged within his body, consuming him until nothing, but ashes remained.
Claps brought her out from the short trance as she took deep breaths as she expected the first mild signs of the Rage to rear their head. Yet nothing came, just an emptiness slowly filled by the joy of exultation as she glanced coldly at the pile. “An excellent work though I believe we should leave.” His cold touch made her turn and be aware of the collapsing roof of charred wood and the distant cries of the custodiir and legionariir who witnessed the smoke spiraling towards the endless skies dimming at the approach of dusk.
**
Collapsed on the embroidered carpet with the oval silhouette of a mirror, Rhenathorhia twinged and twitched from the sudden assault of pain. Pain of his self being torn bit by bit, memories fading. Memories of Angura encouraging him on his inauguration within the Miarhiost Circle; the smile of Prisceirith and the self-imposed pain of his own weakness at not telling his feelings towards her, but instead promising her greatness within the Circle. And many others floating as blurred moats in a sea of ravenous oblivion.
The pain he felt years before hours after he and the dark figure instructed the tainted Hunra, the once innocent Hunra who was destined for greatness but was robbed from it by unseen hands of primeval horrors whose games slowly unfolded, misinterpreted by his family and he, once brimming with endless confidence of his now eroding self, could do nothing about, just play along as the Beautiful tugged her along like a puppet.
Was it equal? He found it strange that amidst the suffering, this question could form in his head, in his mind no longer his own. Rhenathorhia definitely felt the death of another tainted by the essence of the Beautiful, but even as she tore and grinded his self to primordial motes of anima, this death felt different, distinct. He felt her near infinite mind looking away whilst still remaining as his tousled golden locks gained a more divine sheen while his unblemished skin turned even more smoother. The soul tainted by her essence, fell into her dream-like realm of near perfection where it shall experience the same pain, suffering before becoming an eternal servant, manifestation of pride, arrogance.
He felt joyous at the prospect of another sharing in his suffering, and let out a laugh of his own volition for the first time in decades since the dark one appeared before him, on the night when the Heavenly Monarch vanished, taken by this very nameless one – a true manifestation of the end he concluded after years of being jailed in his confiscated body.
Then as he got accustomed to the pain, remembering only of his name uttered by his father whose face melted into itself, a sudden stronger wave rushed through him and he spread limply across the carpet, tears flowing in his glistening, vacant eyes. “Should have done so sooner.” Came the uncaring voice of an elderly with deep timbres and the echoing of a distant emptiness in the recesses of gloomy mountains, spreading in the loftily furnished office as the aetherkiin of utter dimness sat draped in his flowing robes of a pious magus with scarlet stoles rounding the hood, flowing down on the knitted together front.
The Beautiful rose slowly onto her feet, and stared at the cushioned palms, then rotated the hands and stared at the golden ring ornated with an obsidian devoid of the light that once occupied it. “Is she worthy of your adoration?” Rhenathorhia’s own melodious, soft voice enveloped by a distorted feminine laden with a beckoning, an invitation towards devotion, each inconsequential word carried an air of primordial regality and confidence worthy of agelessness.
“I adore no one.” The anger filled voice of a child overlapped with the calmness of the fading elderly as they poured forth the darkness occupying the imposing hood with trims of a menacing, dim scarlet. “But her death is still early and would be pointless to break his resolve. Wait until the boy returns.”
The Beautiful stared out the windows, glancing at the Illius fading as dusk approached and tainted it into the Lunarius. “Such a shame. He would be the perfect vessel for my dear brother.” She said with a distant desolation whilst lifting the golden cup to her lips adorning a now androgynous mortal face blessed with the distinctness of a divine, primeval exquisiteness.
Then He rose and appeared before her. Hands reaching towards the androgynous face and touched the sharp chin between the perfectly tapering jaws. Yet she felt nothing; not a coldness or warmth; not the tickling of mist or haze or whatever kind of matter fabricated those utter dark hands with clawed silhouettes swallowing the light falling upon them; she felt the nothingness touch her.
“Just wait and amass your forces. The twilight of their rule is nearing. A new dawn is on the horizon.” The austere, raspy voice of an elderly woman poured out into her mind and for a moment she felt, seen the world flicker all around them. A feeling of hurled from the fabric, yet still within its boundaries, took over her and felt the trembling of existence as if fear and anger filled it upon the steering of all of its occupants before it came to a sudden end and she sat alone within the confines of Rhenathorhia’s office.