Year Null. The Devoid

RUNEMASTER

His mother sat on the edge of his bed. The last he had seen of her was in that damned Tower, skewered by his hand. That was an illusion of the mind. Now, she was dressed in fine indigo and black silks, a mark of her heritage and rank in Druyan. Another illusion? “Am I dead?” he asked her.

She smiled warmly and folded her hands under her chin. Her elbows rested on her legs. “You are, Erik. As dead as one can be.”

“Who killed me?”

“The Drayheller. The Belanorians. Cut you down like a tuptot.”

Erik attempted to sit up. His body ached with pain, and pulled him back to his pillow. “Is this the afterlife, then? Rimkatski?”

“Of a sort,” his mother said. “Of a sort. You are currently facing a trial, but we will get to that soon enough. I want you to stay here for a moment.”

“Why?”

“Because I have much to tell you.”

“What could you tell me? You aren’t dead.”

“No. But here I am nonetheless to help you.”

Erik pressed his head further into the pillow and sighed. It was going to be a long death, he felt. “Very well. What do you want to say to me?”

“Let us speak over some breakfast,” his mother suggested, clapping her hands.

Erik nearly choked on his breath as he blinked and sat in the dining hall of his home in Druyan. His immediate thoughts of worry and surprise were taken by the scent of sweets, savory meats, and fresh ales being poured into wooden mugs and small metal cups. He looked around despite the stiffness in his neck. Personal coats-of-arms of past leaders of Druyan, banners of various noble houses, and strips of parchment with the Runes written on their length stretched across the expanse of the hall. Dining tables of hard black wood lined the center in a row of five, with ten black wooden chairs to either side. On the tables were platters of food beyond fantasy, plates of polished steel, silverware shining in the light of the candle chandeliers above, and various books with associated editions for historical comparison. Most of the seating was taken by finely dressed members of the Apa’s extended family. Erik was seated at the end of the hall at the smallest but most decorated of the black wood tables. His plate was filled with small chunks of softened butter, some slices of brown bread, a few links of beef sausage, and two cream-filled pastries. A cup of ale was brought to him just as he noticed its absence.

“Is it how you remember?” his mother asked.

“Yes,” he said in a hushed voice, barely audible even to himself. “It is concerning to see this place again, but only in death.”

Erik strained his neck to look at his mother. She took a large bite of bread and butter. “You might be able to see again in life.”

His eyes widened and then narrowed. “How?”

“You will see. For now, eat, and let me tell you what has happened in your absence.”

And so his mother regaled him of the momentary armistice between the Vasileús and the Dioúksis, though the Belanorians and Druyans continued their fighting along the borders and the coasts. Incursions of Aqellan pirates were also becoming an issue, she said—thieves and brigands seeking to plunder the good fortunes of warriors. Erik’s blood boiled at the thought of his home being desecrated by vile inhumans. Wealth and knowledge being stolen by elves and halflings. It soured whatever joy he could feel in this place.

“Who of my army survived Acocaea?” he asked after finally taking a bite of his food that had remained warm the entire conversation thus far. “Goka Tur? Akma Yal? Zeyn Gol?”

His mother took a drink of her ale and motioned to a servant to bring another cup. Her face looked gaunt and veiny in some places. “They survived, my son. Barely, but they live. They are currently in Heracla.”

“Heracla? Why do they stay in the Vasileús’s capital, not their homeland?”

“My orders. They failed to protect their Runemaster, so I had the Vasileús imprison them in the dungeon below his castle.”

Erik tried to stand from his chair, but his body failed again with wobbling legs and seizing arms. He could only eat, drink, and question. “But why Heracla? Why not our home?”

“The Vasileús possesses...certain methods I felt were necessary to mete out proper justice for their failure to protect you.”

“It was not their fault, mother. They could not have anticipated what had occurred. They could not have prepared for the rage that happened.”

“This entire war has been so, my son. Ever since we entered that city and made a spectacle of it.”

In his right hand had been the Spear of E’grn, the Sky Spear. Impossibly sharp, impossibly impactful, and indestructible on all fronts. Yet it had failed him all the same in Acocaea. Now, it was snapped. Broken. Shattered. A bladeless stick in his hand. But it was not the ruined Sky Spear that stole the attention of the shadows that screamed at him. It was the appearance of the man himself. Runemaster Erik Apa was a man of immense size, comparable to the old Golden Lords—a lie, of course. No one living could make that comparison. Greater than six-foot-eight and no less than three-hundred-fifty pounds of conditioned, gladiatorial functional muscle and illusionary fat. Over it, he wore scarred plate armor enameled bloody with tracing gory flourishes; the helmet engraved to resemble a half-faced avian creature, with the visor being two cracked circular lenses capable of magnification. Covering the breadth of the armor from helmet to toe were various sequences of lies in the language of his people, inscriptions from fictitious books, and other carvings he foolishly deemed to provide him impeccable protection against harm, physical and otherwise. He called it a relic of his family’s ancient past, back when the magic of Mystharin was far more prevalent in Khirn’s culture and far less demonized. This was the only truth he could see from that day.

All Hail Vasileú Hippon Aslofidor, Ninth of His Name! Royal Son of God Almighty! The Bear of Aslofidor! The Blade Breaker!” a crier announced to the thunderous applause of the shadows lining the streets, hanging by ropes, and the army of fire standing opposite the Runemaster.

“Hippon! Hippon! Hippon!” they cheered, bellowing with weeping cries as the Vasileú appeared at the top of the spiked stairs leading into the castle grounds. The young man was broad and robust, long-haired and long-bearded, carrying himself with a confidence that shook the castle’s foundations with each step. The Runemaster magnified his lenses on him and regarded him with the most profound hatred he would afford an Aslofidorian. He wore heavily polished golden armor of pointed metal sheets, the shoulder guards shaped to resemble bear heads mid-roar. In his left hand, he carried the head of that Drayheller, its jaws snapped and its eyes gouged. In the other, hoisted over his shoulder, he held a sawtoothed blade gleaming ice-blue.

“Hear how they cheer for their fucking Vasileú?” muttered a jawless Goka Tur in the native tongue. His voice slurred, and blood fell from his upper jaw with each word. “If only they knew how savage the boy was on the battlefield.”

“If only they knew that he would amount to nothing in this war except after the day that you died,” his mother said from the throngs of shadows. “Now, he forms burgeoning resentment against his father for the armistice.”

“Would that he form violence as well and kill the old man.”

“That will come to pass in time, my son.”

Erik snorted and watched as the image of Hippon took his place on a rickety stage, settling his hammer on the floor to let the flames begin to turn the wood into cinders. “Will it? Or will it fade from plans like all other things in this war into stupidity?”

“That depends on you, Erik Apa,” she said.

Erik groaned and threw the remains of the Sky Spear to the ground. His eyes searched the crowd of shadows for his mother. “You said that you had words for me, yet all you have done is tell me what has transpired in my death and that my compatriots are being punished for it. If I question, you press on with vague answers and create more questions. Speak plainly, or let me go on with my death.”

“All Hail Vasiles Iondai Aslofidor, First of Her Name! Royal Vasiles of God Almighty! The Shield-Maiden of Aslofidor!” the crier announced to the loudest applause from the gathering yet. Vasiles Iondai appeared with the stoic power of a woman who held the actual throne in the kingdom. She wore pale gold robes adorned with glistening ivory armor plates, the collar ruffled with raven feathers. A black-hilted curved sword was at her hip, sheathed in white leather, the pommel an ivory dragon’s head.

“The truth lies in her, Erik, as it does in-”

“All Hail Runearch Ezel Apa! The Desecrator of Druyan!” the crier announced to the seething hatred of the crowd. Ezel appeared from shadows atop the stage, clad in crimson armor with the helm of a dragon, wielding a reforged Sky Spear and holding her son's severed head. She threw the abominable sight down the steps and cackled madly to the world beyond. Erik stumbled as the head rolled to his feet, yelling as his own withered face gawked up at him.

“Common folk, serfs, warriors, knights, lords, and ladies of Aslofidor,” the head gibbered. “I welcome you to this most glorious of gatherings. Today, we put aside the last of our differences to finally lay siege to the last bastions of those who would dare to oppose us and our God-given right to the conquest of the world.”

“What madness is this!” he cried out to his mother.

“A future you will live if you do you endure the trial to come,” the head on the ground answered.

“What trial? All I have been given is mystery.”

“Open your eyes,” Goka Tur slurred.

“Does my presence offend you, Maprapeyni?” the woman asked, her voice slithering into Erik’s mind like a dagger.

Erik Apa looked upon Sevi Ulu, lying on his bed in his war tent. She was dressed only in the finest of garments her position could afford, plus some additional adornments from the Runemaster’s purse. Her face, so soft and sunkissed, was framed by blonde hair tied into numerous beaded braids with silver disks. “No,” he shook his head. “It does not. I have missed you, Sevi.”

She did not smile. “And I you, Maprapeyni.” Her tone was joyous.

He cocked a brow and looked around the tent. It was tattered, old, abandoned. He gazed through the flaps to the world outside. Rain beat and singed the ground, tiny pockmarks of melted earth stretching far and wide. Elsewhere, the horses neighed, and the cart teetered under the protective canopy Sevi had set up the previous night. They were safe as long as the horses didn’t bolt in fear.

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“But it fills me with more questions.”

“I imagine so. I tried to answer as many of them as possible when I was with you. Serving you visions of your future.”

“But not ones beyond Acocaea.”

“I could not see beyond it.”

“Why? I asked you then, and you never answered. Your skills are prodigious. You left me dark, and I perished for it.”

Sevi sat up in the bed, her face impassive but her voice full of dreading emotion. “I could not see beyond it, Erik Apa, because your future ended with it. Now, it can be rewritten.”

“Rewritten? How? What kind of afterlife is this? This cannot be Rimkatski. Eternal rest. That is what it was supposed to be, with the ancestors and heroes. Not a chance to rewrite death.”

Sevi reached around his waist from behind and pressed her face against his back. Her voice was quiet and sad. “It is what your mind will allow you to see to make sense, Erik Apa. The truth of it would drive you insane.”

Erik Apa refused to touch his hands hers. “I am already dead. Whatever else happens is of no consequence to me. Show me the truth, Sevi.”

“Go outside. A future waits for you.”

Erik groaned low with each step away from the tent, stalks of dead foliage crunching under his feet as his body healed itself against the torrent until, at last, he reached the tree with the cage under it.

Inside, Yvon ne’Banuus sat cross-legged and cross-armed, her hands and feet cuffed and chained. Even in this confined space, the defined musculature of her body was not lost on the Runemaster. It was admirable how she had maintained such a consistent physique over the years. It should not have been impossible for her to break out with some physical effort that she was refusing to use.

Her single eye—the one not covered by an ornate black and silver patch—was shut tight in some form of meditation. Erik tapped one of the bars to get her attention. When she didn’t give it, he tapped repeatedly until she opened her single eye to look at him. Red. Entirely red like a garnet, traced with ash-gray. A gemstone for an eye.

Her mouth was pulled into a light scowl at the sight of him. “What?”

Erik crouched to her level and folded his arms over his knees. Behind him, a wall of liquid fire had formed. A static haze briefly illuminated by sunlight in the shrouded, storming sky. “What is this?” he asked her, low and rumbling.

Yvon grunted and closed her eye again. “A future for you. One we’re bound to meet each other again. You just have to hear him. Hear him calling for you.”

Erik clicked his tongue and buried the annoyance in his chest. “Hear who? God?”

“That can take all day if it was him. The man is tongueless. Old. Decrepit. No, I mean a greater power.”

Erik nodded, words not his forming on his tongue. “A catalyst? Who will be him?”

Yvon leaned back against the rear of the cage, presenting indifference. “Not you. But you will help the one that will be. Just hear their voice.”

Erik clicked his tongue again. “Whose voice?”

She opened her eye again, piercing the strength of his visage within an instant. A feeling that had never existed struck him arrow sharp. He kept the feeling she placed in him with that stare hidden, just as he always would when it would first form. “All this effort you’re going through. Only to hand me off to some degenerate revenant deity in the end.”

“What?”

“Hear their voice, Erik, and get on with it.”

“Yvon-”

“Why do you care so much for this?” Sevi asked in a huff, dropping her fork to the plate. “We have been wandering with her across this fucking kingdom for months now, and she keeps trying to kill you and shows no remorse or indication that she won’t try again.”

“I know. But she must make the trip.” Words he would not say for a very long time.

Sevi clasped her fingers together on the desk. “For some bloody lesser God half-a-world away from where we should be? I don’t understand how that woman is so important to Blackstone?”

Erik placed a hand on Sevi’s shoulder. She lowered her face to it, letting her cheek rest on the back of his hand. “Who am I to hear?” His voice wavered as he regained control of it.

Sevi breathed slowly, collecting her thoughts. “Disorder, Erik. The beginning and the end.”

Atesh.

They were draconic and humanoid, seductively feminine with traces of masculinity in the face. They were strong and gentle, muscular and lithe. Clad in rich green-blue silks, most of the coverage only around their breasts and groin, though in the current situation, that mattered very little. They lay sprawled on a grand throne that shifted colors every minute, wide enough to be a couch with velvet cushions and golden sheets, attendants giving themselves to the deity’s every desire and whim. A consistent hum of energy was present in the ambiance.

“A child of Blackstone enters my home,” they hissed in sensuous, echoing sonata of a voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Erik shared an uneased glance with Sevi and took a deep breath after handing her the bundle of armor and the spear. He stepped forward and knelt against his will. “Mighty Atesh, Lord of Valor and Spirit, of Conception and Love, I - Erik Apa, the Runemaster - kneel before you today to ask you to…explain whose voice I am to hear so that I may rewrite my future.”

Atesh pushed away their servants, their form shifting in a blink to a more identifiably humanoid visage. Erik’s mind struggled to maintain sense of it. “Ah yes, such was the deal I will make with your master. Such was the request they gave. And how, mighty Runemaster, shall I do this for you? Have you brought me the sacrifice I requested? The Great Blade of Belanore?”

Erik shook his head in confusion before instinctively motioning for the guards to bring Yvon ne’Banuus forward, pushing her hard enough to drop her onto her stomach. She laughed silently, turning her head—her face now bruised—to look into the Runemaster’s eyes. “Guess this is it?” she mouthed.

“Runemaster Apa,” Atesh said, having sat up entirely on their throne. “This is the Great Blade of Belanore?”

“It is, Mighty Atesh,” he said in a voice almost quivering with hesitation. “She is as strong as the legends say. It is her that killed Blood Mourn.”

Gasps resounded throughout the central chamber of the Great Ardor, murmurs of agreement and refutations of that fact. Yvon ne’Banuus. Killer of Blood Mourn.

Atesh’s breath hitched in their throat, and they clapped their hands, a hard, sharp noise in everyone else's ears. Their eyes glowed vibrant and blue. “Yes…I can see it. It is her and yourself that will kill me. Hear their voice, Erik Apa. The end and beginning.”

“Why do you fight for the mortals, Great Blade?” he asked, tossing aside the head of Atesh. He picked up a sawtoothed sword from the headless corpse of Vasileú Hippon.

“Why do you serve that bastard at your shoulder?” she asked in turn.

He craned his neck but was unable to past the clawed hand. “Ask my mother. Ask the Vasileús. Ask the Vasile. Do not ask me, for I had no desire to fight alongside this cur. I only wish to know who they are!”

The two traded blows.

The Great Blade grunted. “Hear their voice, then, Erik Apa. Hear it. The end and beginning.”

“Erik!” his mother shouted from below in the silo. “Erik, help me!”

The Runemaster rushed down the impossibly angled stairs, screaming for his mother. Outside the windows, the worm-like things had begun to cling to the glass alongside winged bugs with the faces of rotted Elven corpses. He ran until he could run no longer and found the bottom of the silo. Yvon ne’Banuus, the Drayheller, and that Belanorian knight stood over his ruined corpse.

Yvon was smiling. Too widely with too many teeth. “Erik. Maprapeyni. You are finding yourself,” she said.

He took a step back and pointed the sword at her. “Yvon? You...what are you doing here? It was my mother last time.”

Yvon’s smile grew from ear to ear and beyond, stretching to the back of her head. “Hear their voice.”

“Whose! Whose voice!”

The Drayheller spoke next. “You died to the Great Blade. To the Drayheller. To Jira ne’Jiral. They killed you. But I found your body, and I died of a broken heart. But here we are together again. I have much to tell you.”

The Runemaster shook his head. “No. No! Not again!”

This Jira ne’Jiral’s smile overtook her entire head. “Here, you are learning your true self as I tried with so many before you. You are the first.”

Erik slashed the sawtoothed blade through each of the women’s bodies. “I already know my true self! It is you who needs to learn who I am! I am Maprapeyni! I am the Runemaster of Druyan! I am the next Runearch! I AM-”

Their smiles grew so vast that their head split in half, and voices that should not have been voices echoed for eternity. “Child of Blackstone. Awaken.”

“Erik!” Sevi screamed from somewhere in the room. “Erik!”

Erik turned and turned until he spotted Sevi standing where Atesh had been. He rushed her, stopping at the base of the throne. “Sevi, I heard it. I heard the voice.”

Sevi shook her head, her hands clenched and shaking. Tears stained her cheeks, her hair undone and disheveled, and bruised welts forming across her neck. Erik’s heart ceased beating at that moment, and only for that moment.

“What did they say?” Sevi asked. Erik wouldn’t answer, prompting the woman to leap down the entirety of the stairs and seize his shoulder. “Erik! What did they say?”

Erik’s fearful, confused expression morphed into disgust for the woman before him. A hatred so freshly born. Erik would have wept for her if not for the Runemaster feeling nothing in his heart. “Awaken.” Erik Apa informed.

Yvon ducked the wild swing of his spear with the deftness of a ballet dancer if that ballet dancer was a warrior with nearly one-hundred ninety pounds of muscle forming the majority of her body. She grinned madly and lunged with a hard thrust of her dagger for the man’s open chest, having elected to practice using the weapon specifically.

Erik voided the strike, spinning on the loose dirt to smack the spear's haft into her back. She fell forward, landing on her hands and rebounding with a forward flip onto her feet.

“Did you see that?” she asked in astonishment.

“I did,” he exclaimed with genuine surprise. “Almost as good as a Mathuan gymnast. Well, a novice. Try to do that again.”

Yvon used Erik's new expectation for her to lure him into opening up a weak point. As she had anticipated, when the battle naturally took its course and she could perform the acrobatic feat once more, the man struck at her as she was on her hands just as swiftly. He dropped low, using his momentum to become a swinging pendulum with the blade inches from her face. She acted. She bounded backward, landing on her feet still but able to plant them on the spear’s haft. Erik yanked the spear up in surprise, but this only granted her the chance to land a stiff thrusting knee into his jaw, land behind him, and press the blade's edge to his throat.

“I win again,” she grinned.

Erik laughed, much to her dismay. She looked down and growled, seeing the Runemaster’s dagger pointed up and pressed against her ribs. “Punctured lung, no mystharin to heal you. We both lose. You almost had me without you going too, tsuret.”

“Tsuret?” Yvon asked in a mixture of confusion, joy, and disgust. “You’re going to give me a nickname now?”

Erik brushed her away and picked up his spear. “Figure it works out, eh?”

Yvon half-shrugged and nodded. “Fair point. What does it mean?”

The voice of eternity answered. “Awaken.”

Erik Apa screamed as breath was returned to his lungs and threw a haymaker into the face of the extravagant figure standing before him in the void. It connected with the most tremendous force he had ever put behind a punch. The figure was unaffected, but the old man with diamond-blue eyes next to them yelped in surprise.

“How dare you!?” he screeched, holding his hands up and open with crackles of mystharin passing between his fingers in offensive intent.

“Peace,” the figure soothed in a voice like honey. “Peace. Hearts of panic do not for conductive reunions make.”

Erik Apa breathed heavy and hard and held his arms up in a defensive position. “Who the fuck are you?”

“The first and the last, Erik Apa,” the figure answered. “The end and the beginning and between. All that was and will be and is are my domains.”

Erik grunted. “Lofty titles. Simply put, for a simple mind?”

The figure giggled, a sound that ached Erik Apa’s ears. “Time, Erik Apa. Time has been the title, though many others have there been.”

Erik gritted his teeth and took a step back. “The most common for me to refer to you as?”

The figure cocked their smoking head and smiled sharply. “Blackstone. Much there is to discuss...my child.”