Ultimatum: Tirolith

I have always been fearful of the people within Gramma Tir's stories.

The white-haired woman, sat in her rocker as she always was, tucked away in the smallest nook of her cozy wooden cabin, smiled brightly at the young, amber-haired girl as she once again regaled her with tales of ages long past. She waved her hands emphatically with every word, letting the wide teal curtains of her sleeves fly wildly about.

As always, she was going on about characters like Tovas Strolcerth, or Faunia Vleren, or even the great Akvum Jirhali as she sometimes called him—all people that Alana had never the vaguest belief in. They were about as real as those twin gods, Azafel and Evra both. About as real as the mythical place of Kylinstrom Tir had grown to lovingly talk about at every possible occasion...

For fifteen years, Alana Valenkir had suffered these stories, had sat sometimes idly in her lap, sometimes vacantly on the floor... and only a few times was her attention held rapt by a story from the old woman's fibbing lips.

This was one of those days.

Catching Alana staring absently into the fireplace, the old woman Tir cleared her throat, turned her eyes out the window beside her, into the dark forest which surrounded her home. She said, in a voice that seemed to make the fire flicker and dim, "You know, Alana—Cedric Castelbre is your father."

And that caught the girl's attention.

Cedric Castelbre was one of those characters who frequently appeared in Gramma Tir's stories. He was a fantastical man, a legend, a hero. He had died a long time ago, for all of Tir's trying.

That was another aspect of the stories which Alana really hated; never was there a story told where Tir didn't appear right in the middle, acting as some benevolent benefactor to aid in the efforts of Faunia or Cedric or the both of them. Even once, she'd told Alana of a story in which the three of them together fought the God of Death herself! Of course, the God of Death was no match for Kasian, King of the Gods...

Alana's eyes narrowed in more than a healthy dose of skepticism. But, like all stories involving Cedric, she couldn't help but take some interest in the woman's words. They were perhaps the only stories from Tir's mouth which felt the most believable.

Tir patted her lap twice, prompting the young girl to climb up to sit with her. "You're getting heavy! I always forget how quickly you humans grow..."

Alana's eyebrows scrunched at that. "You're a human too, gramma."

"Well—yes, I suppose I am." She smiled warmly, though her blue eyes were as chilled as ever.

"Weren't you going to tell me about Cedric?"

"Oh, yes! Your father. Cedric Valenkir."

"...Castelbre?" Alana suggested.

"Castelbre was his name, yes. As it had become after he had to leave his old life behind. Once, he was born as Lorik Valenkir. He defected back to the old name eventually... Or, at least, Cedric Valenkir. That surname came from a royal elven family—his mother was from Cylenia!"

Alana didn't quite understand how a human could be from the island of elves (not that it existed,) but she was quite sure that Cedric's father had been an ogre according to Tir's own stories.

Tir seemingly answered her very thoughts: "Cedric's homeland was invaded once, by ogres. Not the ogre-kin who live in the civilized world, but proper, big ogres, green skin and all. His... father was a powerful warchief. Oh—and I should mention, Cedric was adopted, obviously."

"How did he get to Cylenia in the first place...?" asked Alana, quite doubting the veracity of the tale.

"That's a story for another day, Alana. You see, the ogre invasion weakened Cylenia quite substantially. Do you remember the Sylvet?"

"They were an army, right? Bandits? Mercenaries?"

"Just about right. The Sylvet were a huge legion of rancid bandits which scoured and warred upon the island of Kylinstrom, before the island moved back into place within Calamon."

However an island could move, Alana did not know.

"They were a nasty lot. Run from any who call themselves Sylvet, and do not doubt my words on that. But in any case, they were created by Kasian. You remember him? Good. Well, Cylenia was one of the rival powers which threatened his reign of Kylinstrom, threatened his ability to relocate the landmass for his experiment."

"He moved a landmass himself?"

Tir rolled her head left and right, looking for a simple explanation. "We'll have to go more in-depth on dreaming and Dyosius another time. For now, yes; he did in fact move the landmass of Kylinstrom by sheer willpower alone."

Alana's gaze lowered, losing her interest as the story seemed to trail off in extreme directions.

Tir's gaze become hard, somber. "The ogres were only the first part of Kasian's plan to destroy Cylenia. They were mutations of people created by the fiercest mages of the time, freaks of nature made solely for battle and war. And, because they weren't human, mortal, or Evra-designed in slight, they could sneak in beyond Cylenia's warding barriers and destroy them. Their magicks were no use against the power of the ogres, nor their multiplicity. Then the Sylvet were the killing blow; Cylenia was felled beneath their weight, leaving the islands of Ruin behind to suit themselves."

"What does this have to do with my father...?"

Tir's smile returned, albeit weakly. "Your father was taken by the Sylvet. He was trained by them, and eventually his name was changed from Lorik to Cedric, as I said. He was to infiltrate Nelreign castle—"

"To take it for the Sylvet. He got caught, right?"

Tir's head perked up, having been caught off-guard. "...Yes. Did I already tell you about Serkukan?"

"Yeah."

"What about Harth? Rykaedi?"

"Yeahhh..."

"...His first time visiting Calamon?"

Alana meagerly nodded.

Tir chuckled awkwardly. "Well. How did we get onto this conversation again?"

"You said Cedric was my father."

"Oh, right! Sorry, I got caught up in his stories again. We traveled together for a very long time, you know."

I know, the girl thought. You tell me that every time.

Tir's expression became forlorn. "By the end of the Age of Etherians, he was already gone. Faunia Vleren carried on his legacy, as she's been doing ever since. I miss her quite often."

"Can you not just visit her?"

Her forlorn expression struggled back to one filled with warmth when the woman's eyes fell upon Alana once again. "No, not yet. Not until you're eighteen; you're the charge I was tasked to protect."

She didn't understand.

"It's getting late," said Tir, looking again out the window. "You should run on home now."

Suddenly, Alana had a vested interest in hearing more, if only to avoid her mother's wrath for her staying out so late. She'd have to be hearing all about how dangerous the woods are at this time of night, again.

But that could be delayed, at least. "One more story?"

Tir began to smile again, more genuinely. "One more, then."

CRNK.

The door to the log cabin suddenly crashed open; a torrent of rain flooded down in a wave behind the figure, suddenly covered all the windows in a blanket of water.

There, in the doorway, lit only by the white moonlight behind him, was a tall, black-robed man.

Alana's body froze in terror, an indescribable horror that she wasn't familiar with.

Tir's brow scrunched down hard. "It's too early—you're years ahead of schedule..."

"Oh?" His violet eyes flared as he tilted his head up to see her, to reveal the black mask beneath his hood.

But he was not the villain who Tir had expected. "You're...!"

He shifted his right hand into view. There was a long black blade within his palm.

"Alana—run!" Tir howled, launched the girl from her lap. She sprung up from her seat, something Alana had never seen, and her fingers immediately stormed with rips of blue lightning through the air.

The girl could feel her hairs standing on end, could only sit in paralyzed terror as Tir turned her magic upon the intruder...!

But before the bolt ripped across the room in an explosion of light, the masked man was already behind Tir's shoulder.

Shwick!

A purple aura exploded from Tir's chest when the blade ripped through the fat and muscle of her shoulder blade.

"GRAMMA TIR!" Alana howled.

The rainstorm grew in propensity, filled the air with a horrible, cacophonous drumroll from the pattering on the roof... then died to immediate silence.

Where Gramma Tir should have been bleeding... water drooled out over her robes.

"Alana..." Tir smiled softly at the child. A voice entered her mind: Run.

And she did. The young girl, with tears rushing down her cheeks, stumbled, fell, dashed through the doorway, and sprinted away into the dark forest beyond the cabin.

The masked man leaned down by the woman’s ear. His voice was as crisp as autumn, as dead calm as winter. “She won’t make it far.”

“Wh…why?”

The violet eyes within his black mask flared. “I’m going to cut down every last edition of his lineage—every last version of him across the multiverse for what he's done to me."

“Algi…”

“Shh, shh…” he hushed her when she tried to say the name. “You’ve gotten me mistaken for another. I’m not Algirak by a wide margin. You know my name. You know me.”

It wasn’t long after that when Kasian was strolling casually through the moonlit woods surrounding the cabin, his black sword—Grivonym—dangling idly from his gloved hand. His eyes darted left and right anxiously, as though expecting to find his quarry around any turn, in any nook between the trees, beneath any of the chirping summer cicadas.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

But there, on the floor of the forest just ahead of him, was already the dead body of Cedric’s fiery-haired daughter Alana.

“This universe is cleansed.” he uttered. Then he looked down to his hand. “No—there’s one more who I should be eager to take care of.”

And with a gust of the wind, he was gone.

A fat-faced nobleman in his gaudy, lavish robes barked, “I heard Cedric was sneaking into every princess’ bed chambers, he introduced himself personally to each and every one of them!”

Another man with an ugly caterpillar mustache laughed with him, “That's how he ended up with that lot of kids—one from the Jin, one from Calamon…" His voice lowered, "And don't forget, that's the only reason that Faunia Vleren got elected to be our leader!”

Like an actor cued to stage, Faunia Vleren rounded the corner just as her name was spoken—not the young, nimble Faunia Vleren that legends spoke of, but a Faunia Vleren whose face was wrinkled by time, whose silver hair had lost its sheen in favor of a dull greyness. She was plumper, too, by some measure, or at least more square in her frame; no more was she fit for quick-paced combat, but now bore a heavy mallet, a figure like Akvum's. And in her eyes, she was tired. So very, very tired.

The man speaking leapt back in alarm, like a cat with its tail stepped on. "V-Vleren!"

Then a blink, a flash of light. None of them could feel the gentle, swathing heat of the Etherian ley shifting.

His tongue was on the ground in a puddle of dark blood.

She glared as he protested wordlessly in agony, but did not stop her stride. She said, “I'm queen by measure of my power alone—it would do you well to remember that. For you all to remember that.”

By the time she was rounding the next corner of the hall, his tongue was replaced in his mouth where it belonged. The horror was over, just like that.

But her glare held heavy. Her brow was pulled low. Too many had slighted her. Ever since Cedric’s passing, since her election to Queen of Calamon… too many had made public their most obtuse thoughts of her.

And even the thoughts which were not made obvious... Tirolith had once done all too much in revealing them.

She slammed shut the door of the throne room behind her, pressed her back against it, released a great big sigh and let her brow relax as much as it could.

“Is all well?” asked a voice from up high, up the Aeon-inspired staircase which led to the grand, golden throne above.

She opened her eyes slowly, steadily let the glaring lights from the stained glass windows pour in with beautiful visions of Azafel and Evra each.

“...Mother?” asked the voice, a hint of disingenuity to his voice.

Faunia’s scowl returned, though softer. “Cedric.”

She'd always thought the name was pretentious. Wrong, at the very least. But it hadn't been her idea. She hardly felt like the child had been hers to name at all, let alone hers to raise. Their brief communion in that housetent, outside of Cromer—Cedric left her with a curse.

The war had been far from over when she had to leave the battlefield to finish carrying the child. She wasn't there to lead her troops, to finish what they'd started. She wasn't there to see Calamon cleansed from Sylvet, from Kasian, from Kogar.

And Cedric was killed in the center of it all. He'd been no match for Kasian in the slightest. But it'd been years since then—and now Faunia was ruler of Calamon, practically ruler of the world.

Aeon had fallen subservient.

Azaria had become a puppet state—their slaves had been liberated.

Llueves was embroiled in a fierce war with them, a war that the Etherian side was looking ever-more likely to win. The fate of the world which every force imaginable had banded together to try to prevent had come to pass—the Etherian Age was revived. All resistance would be crushed by Ordinator and Knight alike.

And now, here was the real puppet: that smug child atop the throne, thinking his princedom had afforded him any real control. With Tirolith, it would have been so simple to manipulate him to every whim, control him to every end to ensure his joy in faux ruling while Faunia pulled the real strings…

But Tirolith was gone, tasked with protecting Cedric's other child.

Just couldn't keep it in your pants, could you? She scowled. But it wasn't his fault, to some degree. Then again, maybe that was just her unflinching care for him. Her unconditional...

The wind was chill in the throne room on that night. The windows on the perimeter were all shut tight, the gold-patterned curtains were all drawn save for those decorative ones engulfing the stained glass windows high above the chamber, high over Cedric’s shoulders. Evra, Azafel… Faunia was almost disgusted by how much they’d invaded the country’s collective thought, how much worship and praise of them had become the mainstay religion of her realm.

More than that, she was disgusted by the profound ego of one Cedric Valenkir now sitting upon her throne.

“Things are fine, Cedric.” The name stung her tongue. How long had it been since he died? The real one?

But that young boy smirked with that overwhelming ego of his, just like how his father had once been. "You seem more upset than ever this morning." His voice was soft, condescending. Annoying. Annoying in a different way than the original Cedric had been. Cedric had lacked maturity in great measure when they first met, being a sarcastic, no-good bandit, a slave to the Sylvet, a man with power beyond his own understanding... This Cedric was a slave to the Hunters, a man with powers he didn't even know about.

Because when he'd been conceived... Faunia had Tirolith with her. And Cedric had more than just Serkukan...

"Proxima," she'd called it, in a chamber with Tirrowin (the eldest designer of devices from Azar'kara, who'd somehow escaped death by Kogar's hands,) and the rest of her council. "Dyosius was the dream engine; Proxima seems to be the love engine."

"What are you implying?" asked Tirrowin before the council, raising his voice in such a way that it reached every member of the huge marble table, which stood as a ring around the centered Faunia Vleren.

"Dyosius worked on impulse for those with a propensity; it would allow dreams to become physically real for everyone alive, it could alter reality more substantially than any red Etherian to exist, even Serkukan at his peak. Dyosius also allowed people to survive just by willing it to happen, as we saw with those who were originally chosen to be Etherian Knights."

"An experiment which failed, we should remind you." said one white-bearded councilman.

Faunia held her breath for a moment, struggling to restrain her frustration. "Yes. Proxima seems to have been formed within Cedric—the second Cedric. I've seen it on display a few times, and it reads more similarly to Dyosius than any other power."

"Would you care to share these examples with us?" Tirrowin, that gold-haired elf, unwrinkled by time, brandished his most smug smirk for the occasion.

Faunia hesitated before she began. "Lavish gifts have a habit of creating themselves from him, as if in response to my caring. Times when I, or my housemaids, have shown delicate hospitality to him, as an infant and a child, were met with creations akin to dreams. Rings, flowers, celebratory banners... any way he can conceive of that we might appreciate, he seems to accidentally replicate within his mind."

"What makes this different from Dyosius?" asked another councilman—an older Eson, rubbing his stubbled chin in curiosity more than doubt. "Do they not do the same things in the end?"

"They have the same results, yes. But Proxima acts only on love. We experimented with threatening the boy's life, much to my chagrin. He cannot react for himself. It seems that Proxima may be limited only to supporting others, as a healing mage is unable to heal himself."

The council seemed to hold their questions for a moment.

Then, all at once, their protests began. Their deflections of the power, their allegations of responsibility...

She shook her head, shook away the memories. It doesn't matter if you don't like it. There's no erasing Dyosius. There's no erasing Proxima. They're eternal. They exist beyond us, perhaps even beyond Evra and Azafel.

Faunia found her words again: "I'm just tired. Things in Llueves aren't proceeding exactly how we'd like." I'm beginning to see why Kasian thought it appropriate to invade Cylenia using ogres and Sylvet. Their wards are too strong, even for Etherian Knights.

"I wish you all the best in Llueves, mother." He smiled.

Faunia got no hint of joy from that smile. It was the kind of smile held by one who had been brainwashed, controlled... or was doing the controlling.

She gently shook her head again to rid herself of that thought. No. That wouldn't be possible. He's just a boy, Tirolith placed a hex upon his mind before she left for the Jin...

She gently began to feel the ley ahead of her, felt the lines as they all converged in that seat upon the throne, like banners strung up to the center fountain of a great festival. Like chandeliers with chains which connected all the way to the floor...

—But there was no hex.

Faunia's eyes sprung open in alarm.

Cedric was standing by then. "Is something else amiss?"

"Your hex..." she muttered before she realized.

"Oh—yes, I noticed that it had broken."

"Cedric, wait—"

He began down the steps. "You manipulated me, didn't you? You controlled me, let me pretend to run this city, this country while you did the real work?"

"You don't understand. Let me explain."

"I understand perfectly well. I'm a tool for you, aren't I? You don't love me."

"I do love you, Cedric—" saying those words aloud filled her with all sorts of strange feelings, for both the current and bygone Cedric. "—Of course I love you! You're my child, you're all that's left of your father!"

"Not all that's left." He held out his hand once he'd stopped at the bottom. He waved his fingers as though ordering her. "Give me Serkukan."

Her face contorted in horror.

"Give him to me. Then we'll talk."

Faunia's brows slowly came back down, lowered into place, twitched as she tried to hold them in the most unassuming position possible. She knelt down. "Okay. You can take Serkukan. Then we talk. Right?"

He nodded.

Faunia shut her eyes. Transferring an Etherian was once a great challenge—now it was as easy as asking him to go.

Cedric supped in a deep breath, his eyes flared red for a moment.

Weakness took Faunia as she passed on her last Etherian. Her heart palpitated before it found a new, steady beat. She held the ground to prevent herself from collapsing as a lightheadedness passed through her.

"Thank you. You have a visitor, by the way."

"A visit—" She gagged. Then her head hit the floor, absent from her body.

Kasian wiped his black blade along the dark sleeve of his robe. He did not look to the boy, did not even address his presence.

Cedric smiled. "Was that all you wanted?"

He didn't answer.

"Because if you're plotting to kill me... I love myself more than I love any."

Kasian raised his head to the child. "Ah, yes. Proxima, the love engine. I'm familiar with it. I'm quite unafraid of it, as well."

"Oh?"

"Is love any stronger than sheer willpower? Is a human's survival instinct lesser to the urge to be a martyr, to protect others?"

"I suppose it depends on the person." Cedric steadied his arms by his sides, preparing for a bout.

"Well... my willpower is quite significant."

Shwick!

Kasian cleared the distance of the room in an instant, and his blade was plunged through Cedric's chest.

The boy gasped but couldn't find a breath, gagged but couldn't produce anything from his stomach besides blood.

Kasian clicked his tongue. "All talk, no fight. I'm disappointed in you. You were so... stupid." Then he rattled the hilt of his blade, still in the boy's chest. "Oh, this? This isn't Grivonym anymore. This is something I created to exceed it; a blade which rends Etherian and man all the same. Feel your heartrate slowing? Your body growing heavy? That's because Serkukan, and not just Serkukan, but Proxima as well... are mine...!" he snarled.

The stained glass windows of the chamber exploded, a horrible gust of frenzied wind swept the chamber. When the gust reached Kasian, he was gone again.

Cedric fell to the ground, his head struck the tiles hard. The last thing his eyes caught were the silver boots of guards glinting as they rushed into the room... and the guards who stopped over his mother's body—the first and final victim of his ego...

Tirolith woke up with a start. The air was suddenly humid, uncomfortably so. She felt like her armor would start melting—

But she wasn't wearing any. She felt at the thin brown clothes which covered her body, the clothes which Faunia had lent her. She was surrounded by the jungle, swarmed by the loudness of the daylight chirping, and croaking, and...

"Are you okay?"

She looked up. There was Faunia Vleren, in matching attire, approaching from the uneven terrain ahead. Tirolith touched her mind just gently, gently enough to go unseen as she guided her footing down the precipice, carefully avoiding the hidden patches of gravel, or the roots which could have snagged her ankles.

Tirolith smiled only once Faunia’s boots landed safely in place on stable ground. "I'm okay. I just had a bad dream."

Faunia’s face scrunched in dismay. She couldn't help but remember what Tirolith had said about stealing her nightmares, subjecting herself to it...

But Tirolith still smiled. She was happy to do it. So long as Faunia Vleren was alive, so long as her fate was set on the Deadworld... Tirolith would suffer any fate which would beset her.

Tirolith, in the presence of Faunia Vleren, was happier than she'd ever been.