Year 219. Acocaea - Khirn

THE RUNEMASTER

The fight had begun in earnest, and those not locked in their own battles watched with the enraptured awe of audiences gazing upon the gladiatorial arenas of Khirn’s ancient past. With the reverence of the armies of the Golden Lords, who stared slack-jawed as their superhuman commanders and champions dueled in ludicrous bouts of strength, skill, and cruel magic.

Erik ducked a wild swing from the Great Blade, jabbing out with a feint, pulling it back, and swirling to trip her legs. She jumped over the spear and hacked with a counter-attack that split the air. Erik rolled away from it, once more jabbing out as he steadied himself, this time letting the weapon complete its travel. The mystharinic steel tip screamed against the metal of ne’Banuus’ pauldron, the electrical currents of his armor traveling with it. Blade and shock nicked the chainmail coat underneath. ne’Banuus’s face contorted in rage at the impact, ran with the spear’s trajectory, and let the electric defenses engulf her like tendrils. She batted at the Runemaster. Erik spun around the blow and formed the Rune of Chonrin, blasting gouts of wind at the woman. The Great Blade braced against the hit. The Runemaster rushed her in the moment of distraction and cracked the haft of his spear into her armored ribs. With the blessings of his enhanced strength, the metal buckled around the unbreakable wood. The sound of cracked bones resounded in the Runemaster’s helmet. He grinned.

ne’Banuus back-stepped, blocked another attempt on her opposite ribs, and traded five for five with the Runemaster. His wards protected him as expected, but only just. They were weakening. The strength of the electricity coursing around his armor began to dull.

The injury slowed her; there was no doubt there, yet she was still beyond those he had fought before. Still, she was slower, and he was still alive. “What were you saying about mystharin not helping me in this fight?” the Runemaster asked in a brief break of the duel.

The Great Blade chuckled and grabbed at her dented armor. “I never said it wouldn’t hurt, Runemaster.”

“Prepare for it to hurt more,” he said, quickly carving the Glyph of Petsu to unleash flame upon the woman. The act strained his body, and he felt himself growing slower. For all the strengths the Druyans had in combat and their might in the mystharinic arts, they were still, ultimately, a people of skirmishes and overwhelming attacks before their opponents could respond. A trait he had long aimed to fix when he took over as Runearch.

Yvon ne’Banuus deftly avoided the flames with the unexpected twirling of a hunter cat, dropping low and pouncing from place to place. The Runemaster grew startled at the unnatural dexterity of one as brutal as her and for the unsettling nature of her movements. The flames stopped as she neared and unleashed a back-cut for his face. He blocked it only barely and skidded along the ground toward the circle of onlookers. Murmurs, cheers, gasps, yells, screams, and chants erupted from the crowd. Truly a makeshift coliseum. Some held out their hands to keep him from propelling into them, pushing him back into the arena. ne’Banuus advanced upon him, her armor scored with a dozen marks yet no blood weeping from wounds. This—the endurance of the Belanorians—is why his people and the Great Blade’s people had never truly engaged in total war.

The Runemaster stood still at the arena’s edge to catch his breath, which he only realized was growing short. “Getting tired, Erik?” ne’Banuus asked.

“No,” he replied, charging the Great Blade.

Once more, she dropped low and pounced, using the head of her axe to brace her landing each time. He swung at her, roaring as she turned the strike aside and chopped at him with a felling strike. He parried quickly, frantically, and carved through the air in a dance around her flank. The plate sliced open, the chainmail snapped, and blood welled from the wound. ne’Banuus groaned and stepped back. There was a flash of lightning, and the Great Blade was slumped over. She recovered just as the Runemaster swung at her with a tornado of slashes. She hammered into him with the flat side of her axe. He grunted as one ward fell. The electrical currents had all but died out now. Another hammer cracked his face, and he felt teeth loosen in his jaw.

“Tell me, Erik, why do you think your mother decided to ally with the Vasileús?” ne’Banuus asked, letting a moment of calm pass between the two warriors. “Why do you think she swore Druya to the Vasileús?”

“To end our war,” Erik answered, recalling the lavish ceremony from so long ago. “To end our feud.”

She shook her head. “I wish it could be as simple as that. But your mother is not so foolish to think it could end.”

He cocked his head. “Why do you say that?”

She pointed the axe at him and lightly shook it. “Your offer to me. You offered to have us, Bela’norians and Druyans, join forces and wipe out the Aslofi’dorians. What could you say now that could make me believe you still wouldn’t seek this outcome if you were to win the war? To wipe out all Alsofi’dorians? I do not think your mother would be so foolish as not to consider the same.”

Erik charged, traded three blows with the Great Blade, and stepped back into a defensive stance. Lightning cracked above, and a flash of light was in his vision. An image, unclear and distorted, accompanied it. He could not determine what it was, only that it filled him with disgust and dread. “And so, you doubt the mother because of the son?”

The Great Blade lowered her axe. “I do. You are more like Ezel Apa than you think. You strategize like you; you fight like her; you talk like her; you look like her.”

“And how are you so acquainted with my mother to draw these comparisons?”

“I have traveled, Erik—more than my kin. I have seen more, done more, fought more, and learned more. Your mother did not join forces with Aslofi’dor to end the feud. She joined for something else. Something only she knew and did not care to let you know. Why do you think that is?”

He charged again, carving the Glyph of Petsu once more. And once more, the Great Blade avoided the flames, though the crowd around them did not. Fire engulfed hundreds and burned them to their bones. Erik advanced, slammed the haft of his spear into the face plate of ne’Banuus, and stabbed at her chest. She batted the spear away and punched the man in his stomach, breaking the wards with sheer physical power. He bent over and caught vomit in his mouth. A stiff knee to the face sent him reeling back, and a forward kick to the chest sent him flying back. Lightning cracked, images filled his eyes, and disgust rose.

He saw something. Bulbous, wet, adorned, grotesque. Half of its body was sunken into a pit of oozing water, and its clawed tentacles were chest-deep in some fleshless, hairless, eyeless thing floating in front of it, pulling organs out by the handful. A meat puppet that bore only the bare minimum of resemblance to his mother in build and the construction of its face. Another figure appeared next to the horrible thing, standing at the edge of the pit, wearing his mother’s armor and his mother’s face. She looked at Erik Apa and wept black tears. The grotesque thing looked up and barked with hooked, needle teeth. Its head was topped with a halo of red light. Something roared in the distance of this image, and the pit melted away into a timorous bog that stretched for infinity. Something roared again, and Erik Apa spun around to see a living wrong that was monumental, winged, and multi-headed. It raced toward the Runemaster. He screamed as the image ended. He found himself on the ground, Druyans and Belanorians staring at him.

Only a second had passed. His mouth distended in a wrathful bellow. He rose to his feet. In a blind rage, he engaged the Belanorians who had stood so simply by watching their leader fight him. He carved through hundreds in the minutes that followed this challenging roar. Blood ran ocean-wide in the streets from his carnage, and his compatriots, his kin, snapped free of their stupefaction at his duel and engaged again.

The Great Blade was nowhere to be seen.

“Kill them all!” he roared. “Kill these fucking Belanorians! Burn this village to the ground. Take the river! Take it all! KILL IT ALL!”

None could stand to him. None could face his ravenous hatred. He carved reality asunder and brought down death anew. The ground shuddered and split with tectonic shifts. Mountains and geysers erupted around them. Buildings collapsed. Thousands fell in seconds. Before long, each step was marred in a marshland of crimson water, weeds of muscle, and swimming flesh.

“Tohyi!” he heard Akma Yal shout from across the barbaric hordes of violence. He turned as a shock of arrows pelted those around him. His frantically formed new wards were already half-gone, and one arrow was stuck in the gap of his shoulder. He grunted but moved toward his friend.

“What?” he asked.

Akma Yal pointed to the nearest breach in the walls of Acocaea. Through it, the Runemaster focused on the charging hordes of two Aslofidorian aedo. Charging from the same direction he had marched. They had flanked—worse, they had trapped him. It was an instant recognition. The chaos, the barbarism, the manic hatred. Was it all a ploy? A trick to get him to weaken his position, to grow into the same bloodlust that had always hampered him in extended fighting?

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

He grabbed Akma Yal’s shoulder. “Take Goka Tur, find the other commanders throughout the village, and bring them back here. We consolidate our efforts in one place. Those guilds will take time to deal with our siege engines. And find our Seers. Have them send word to any Druyan forces nearby and reinforce us here. We can hold for a few days if we use our efforts wisely.”

“A few days? Tohyi, we cannot hold for a few hours against this! They have led us-”

“I am aware, Akma,” he said, agreeing with the unsaid words. “I know. These cowards use deceit and deception to accomplish their goals rather than with pure fighting.”

“Ghut yet yak ghep!”

“There will be a break in the fighting, Akma! There always is. We can fight our way to a defensive position somewhere in the village. Hold there for a few days until reinforcements arrive.”

Akma Yal sighed and nodded. “As you say, Tohyi. I trust you—tu chu tsogh.”

“Tu chu tsogh. Go now, friend. Lead our people to survival.”

Akma Yal disappeared into the fray. The Runemaster controlled his breathing and turned around to rejoin the fight alongside his men as a proper commander. A hard fist to his face ruptured that idea.

Before him stood a man of imposing size in plate armor that perhaps was silver underneath the gore. He wielded a massive sword, emerald-bladed, adorned with pieces of someone’s face. He heaved with each breath. “Runemaster. Druyan. Invader. Heretic. I, Harikides of the Akaios Opos, challenge you to a duel to the death. Fight me, coward.” His voice was an abomination. Wet and torn.

The Runemaster groaned and steadied himself. This Harkides advanced, swinging hard and heavy. The Runemaster avoided the strike and stabbed his spear through Harkides’ head. Harkides kept moving with the spear lodged in his eyesocket.

“What the fuck?” the Runemaster swore, backing away in shock as the gory giant rammed at him repeatedly with the sword.

"Die, die, diiieeee!" Harkides gurgled. His blood was black with streaks of putrid slime.

The Runemaster ducked under a wild blow, leaped at his spear, grabbed the shaft, and moved to Harkides’ back. He twisted the spear and snapped Harkides’ head entirely around. The thing, for it was not a man, kept moving.

“What the fuck?” the Runemaster swore again.

Harkides twisted his head back around with a single hand. "Ruuuuunnnnemasterrrr...hereeeeetic...innnnvaaaaaderrrrr. I...deeeeefeeeeend.....Aslofidooooooooorrrrrrrr."

Erik Apa looked to nearby warriors of his cohort and ordered them to stab the creature. They did with ease. Harkides kept moving, brushing off the injuries with nary a glance at the blood and pain. He removed his helmet with the same hand that had righted his head. The backed-up blood poured from the inside of the great helm. Harkides’ face was a ruin. His cheeks slashed to reveal teeth and the tendons of his jaw; nose sliced off to the skull; hair matted and falling out; remaining eye sunken so profoundly that the socket appeared empty if not for the slight reflectiveness of black irises; neck withered and torn to the cords and fibers. Worst of all, however, was the stench. Putrid and rotten and textured like stone. It reminded Erik of the fleshless, hairless, eyeless thing. All warriors—Belanorian, Druyan, and the now appearing Aslofidorians of the aedo he wasn’t aware was in the village—retreated from the shambling thing that was once a man known as Harkides.

Those that had stabbed him formed a small phalanx with the Runemaster.

“Tohyi?” one of his warriors squeaked. “Tohyi, what are we doing?”

“I-I don’t know,” Erik replied honestly. “This was...none of this-what the fuck?”

“Are they using mystharin? Ressurection? What are we doing, Tohyi?”

“I-fuck it...fuck it all. ATTACK!”

The phalanx charged as the Runemaster, with the last ounce of his strength, formed the Mitsi of Yeyni to empower his soldiers. Harkides swatted them aside with one of the most titanic swings of a sword Erik Apa had ever seen. Their bodies were burst apart before the Mitsi could take effect. One’s head landed in front of the Runemaster, face frozen in fear and conviction. Those not fighting with the Runemaster backed away at the horrific sight.

“Runemasterrrrr...heretiiiiic....invaaaader.”

The Runemaster choked on his breaths and the stench emanating from the walking corpse. He fell to his knees, spear slipping from his fingers. Time was slowed. He heard his cohort screaming at him to get up. He felt his heart struggling to beat. The ground shook with the aftershocks of mystharinic power thrown throughout the village. He was uncertain how many had died now. Indeed, it was more than intended—more than anticipated.

The insanity dawned on him in what he believed were his final moments—a village of impossible size, containing armies of unimaginable size, fighting in ways only detailed in bedtime stories, historical accounts of the Golden Lords, and fictional works of bored scribes. He would have laughed at it if he had the strength.

“God Almighty...Eos...what has become of you?”

Runemaster raised his head enough to see a man in plain armor gawking at the monster. The creature ceased its advance and looked at the man.

“Eos...my brother...what...”

“Tamasossss...Runemaster.”

The man in plain armor shared a brief look with the Runemaster. His expression was unreadable when he looked back to the creature. “Most Noble...that thing in the water...it did this to you, didn’t it? That monster.”

“No monsterrr...Most Noble...” the creature snapped his sword for the man in plain armor. Erik’s heart beat with renewed vigor as he saw the man raise his hand and produce a protective ward shaped like a swirling energy shield.

The man allowed a single tear to run down his cheek. “I am sorry, Eos. But you must remember the price we swore to pay after Gortinda if our souls were ever to be damned by our newfound power.”

“Pardon?” Erik whispered to himself.

The thing roared, an act that tore its jaw from its face. It swung again. The man ducked, slashed, and removed the head. The creature twitched and fell onto its back.

Erik rushed to his feet, demands listing in his head and lunging his spear at the man who formed the ward almost instinctively. “You...you were at Gortinda. You are one of the Akaios Opos.”

“I am,” the man said, locking his gaze with Erik’s. “Loukas Tamasos. Liohagos of the Akaios Opos.”

The Runemaster seethed with rising anger. “Aslofidorians using mystharin in view of the Belanorians. I knew it happened at Gortinda. Too many survivors told the same tale, but I was under the impression you had all been executed for your crimes. Now you are here. Using it again. Without punishment?”

“We use the Gifts of the Most Noble,” Loukas Tamasos said, placing more energy into the shield. “Unlike you, Druyan. You use it as a weapon of the Devil. Look at the village around you. In your hatred, you have destroyed it. You’ve mutilated it.”

“All you had to do was accept my terms of surrender,” the Runemaster said. “This...all of this...could have been avoided. I should have been wiser in preparation. I should have known you would bring yourselves so low as to degrade your realm.”

“We do not degrade ourselves. We elevate!” Loukas Tamasos growled, launching a surge of energy through the shield to push back the Runemaster.

Erik rallied as another flash of light and images filled his eyes. He saw the creature—Harkides, Eos—on the table, body ripped apart, filled with black-green blood. He saw the tremendous winged thing in the distance. A tower of brass and bronze loomed over him. The ground was mushy with meat and rotted bones.

The entity in the pit snarled at him with those needle teeth, its eyes a terrible icy blue under the fatty, smooth folds of its brows. “Jud’ kʼi. Mengyi kʼi. Chʼul nya.” Its voice was raspy and long, growl-heavy like a dog. "Nyip jukka teshub’ gi."

With a fling of a clawed tentacle, the entity flung something at the Runemaster. It pierced his armor and stuck to his chest. He felt something fill his veins, his muscles, his soul. When he returned to the real world, he was mid-step just after the push from Loukas Tamasos. His muscles clenched. His jaw set. His eyes narrowed. His grip on the spear was tightened. His feet dug into the ground. With the propulsion of a Tahririan city, he launched himself at the Aslofidorian.

The Great Blade barged into him with her shoulder, tackling him to the ground. They rolled onto their knees and glared.

“We weren’t finished, Runemaster,” she said. Her helmet was gone, and her face was bloodied, but there was an undeniable conviction in her expression. She was confident that today was the Runemaster’s end.

The Runemaster said nothing save uttering the Tupri of Tsiyno. Darkness enveloped the two. A sphere of impenetrable, unbreakable, untraversable darkness. Only those within it could see. Only those within it could fight. He twirled the spear in his hands and readied himself.

“Power restored, eh?” she asked him.

He only nodded, the image of his mother still in his mind, along with that entity in the pit and that dart in his chest—those words echoing for eternity.

The Great Blade chortled grimly and cracked her neck, standing upright and holding her axe in both hands. “Good.”

They charged.