Chapter 62
Aged and Weathered
Evium, Song of Death [Divine]
-- There once was a song. It was a song of life and joy, a song to which many-a-dancer danced. In that song, though, lies were bespoken; hidden amidst the lines were the cursed ways of the Aged. The Lineage that would not die, they called it. The weathered-folk, the blemished, the lasting. They hid their secrets in the song, and over time, the song grew large and thick. It grew darker and sallow. From joy to apathy to despair. It began with life, though in time it spoke of death. Death that would not come. Those who sang it felt their lungs turn afire and their hearts crack like porcelain--words yoked pain from within their choked souls, and they felt it. The small, insignificant part of the Aged. And they crumbled, like eroded cliffs by the seaside. Soon, only the Aged sang it. They sang it to their Children, the Accursed kind forever bound to the mortal realm. And the Children sang to their own... until there were no more Children, only aged ashes.
The words, parted between parched, thin, and dry lips, flew into the untoward stone, runes carved like magic until despair became a blade. In that blade lay a remnant of hope--Death, an eternally elusive foe, was fronted.
Let there be the Shroud of the Accursed, and let it be the funeral one; buried and forgotten, Aged out of being. Their names a fading ink on a buried parchment.
Forgive them, o’ thee, bespoken of light.
Forgive them, for they yearned thine embrace more than thine grace.
Note: For 30 minutes, embody the visage of Evium, Song of Death. You will be unable to level up for the duration and, after the effect's expiration, you will be beset with a massive set of debuffs that will last for 6 days. Mortal Flesh was not made to wield the traces of Divine--beware, for the flesh burns and rots.
...
Vaellonia, Elysium of Grace [Divine]
-- Unto nothing... life began. Whence came the Benediction? The Forefathers asked--as did fathers--as do the children, now. Faraway years obscure the voyage of stars, tempting with the glimpses of the old, but never granting the true sight. There are no answers--there never were. There are Prayers, there are Songs, there are Pleas, there are Curses... but what was of the world before its Rebirth, even the Aged only faintly know. On account of the Beloved God, a thousand truths swarm the conscious, none wholly true... but all comforting.
There are traces, however, of the Ages before the Rebirth. Tiny motes of knowledge that afford a glimpse into the unknowable--and Vaellonia is one such mote. A branch of an unknown tree aged nearly 8,000 years... withered, old, and burnt, yet still brilliant enough to have ushered the Age of Magi upon its discovery. However, it was stolen--by whom and for what reason, nobody knows. It has been centuries since it was last locked in the golden coffers of the Courtly Fires, though its tales still roam resplendent--even a young, manaless child, legends speak, could modulate a tower-size boulder of fire and slam it from the sky. Some say, even, it could compel the bones of the dead to arise and fight anew, even in death. As for the truths... few know, still.
Note: For 30 minutes, embody the visage of Vaellonia, Elysium of Grace. You will be unable to level up for the duration and, after the effect's expiration, you will be beset by a massive set of debuffs that will last for 6 days. Mortal Flesh was not made to wield the traces of Divine--beware, for the flesh burns and rots.
Asher's eyes danced solemnly between the two options--it was all just flavor text, with zero descriptions of what it did or how it was best used, or how much damage it could do. It was just a fragmented, sporadic history detailing a mythical account of a weapon whose fatal tales have likely been embellished ten thousand times over... though, by chance, might just as likely still be wholly true.
His mind had already stirred with possibilities of the knowledge contained therein--the Aged, the Lineage whom death eluded, withered and weathered by time... a blade that could finally grant them the final respite... and a quest in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of world it seemed.
Quite a few things concerned him--chief of which was the 'massive set of debuffs' that would cripple him for 6 days. But he was here, for better or for worse, and there was no coming back. The question was... which weapon to choose?
His first instinct, naturally, was to opt into the staff--it was his first weapon, and one he was most familiar with, though there was a rather compelling reason as to why choosing the sword might be better. Unlike with a staff, he had some experience with a Legendary weapon--even if ‘Divine’ existed above it, Legendary must be much closer to it than the Common Staff he’d wielded before.
He knew how to move and attack and retreat with the sword in his hands, even if the sword would be wholly different from the last. And though he knew how to do just that with a Staff too, he only knew so on a much smaller scale and on a much lesser level.
Thus, he hesitated.
It was a battle of heart and mind where, perhaps counterintuitively, his mind was telling him to choose the Staff and his heart was telling him to choose the Sword. Had he been asked this yesterday, he would have sworn his heart would be pleading for the Staff and not the other way around.
He fell into further silence and closed his eyes.
He wasn't so much deliberating his choice but simply taking a moment. He erased thoughts and emotions from him the best he could and he compelled voices into silence. There was nothing and nobody, only a thoughtless existence stuck in time.
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In the end, he chose the sword.
The light of the cosmos unraveled from the prompt and colors beyond his understanding washed into fluttering, smokey ink and gorgeous plumes, all slowly coalescing into the shape of a sword.
It was lengthy and thin, straight as an arrow, a muted glint of something primordial visible across the blade. The guard was of a simple design, ever so slightly curved--wholly symmetrical--with the handle expanding a couple of inches longer than the width of his hand. He grasped it and held it--it was light, almost too light in fact, though when he swung it... it felt perfect.
Each swing left a ripple behind it, flummoxing the world itself and scattering the motes of spacetime in fright. Though there were no lines of text describing everything... he felt it--everything that he could do with the sword, every move, every attack, every spell, every combination, every shallow secret of the blade was bared directly inside his mind. He saw it, the penultimate expression of death, lagging just ever so slightly behind the elusive one.
Tucking it at his side, Asher began the climb--it lasted a while, some ten minutes in fact, until he was at the 'castle' gates. No archers were manning the ramparts, there were no knights at the front to meet him, and there were no obstacles to speak of as he crossed from the bleak exterior into an even bleaker interior.
Everything was a ruin--decrepit buildings lining the sides of the ripped-up streets, weeds, and vines overrunning the aged stone, and shadows of moans and eyes eluding the gaze. He noticed them, ever so faintly, in the deep crevices of darkness--rapidly fading eyes, the shuffles of clothes, the gasping moans of the dying.
Nobody came forth or out to meet him--it was as though he’d come into a city overrun with ghosts, but he was the ghost hunter and they feared him.
The keep, too, lay wholly in ruin--there was a massive hole at its western side, jagged stone protruding unevenly, weathered through countless years. Just like the outer parts of the castle, the keep was void of life--eerily, the barely-paved street continued straight through almost like a perfect guide on where he was supposed to go.
Blocks of greasy black stone tumbled from their original form, leaving gaping wounds in the walls where now the scabs of moss and lichen thrived. Tarnished shields, rusted weaponry, faded tapestries, cracked and burnt canvases, decayed and aged cutlery all lay strewn among the rubble. Arches that had once soared gracefully now sagged under their own weight while cracks spiderwebbed across the surfaces, forewarning the complete collapse.
The straying pathways within the keep, those which were once likely inoculated with life, were now fully overgrown with weeds, the tiles beneath cracked and uneven, veined traces of gold seemingly ripped out with fingernails, most disappearing into the underbrush that encroached upon the castle grounds.
Numerous carvings which once lined and adorned the walls had weathered into obscurity, their features blurred by eons of wind and rain, and a persistent film of oily grime.
Looking up, Asher saw the sections of the collapsed rooftops that left behind gaping holes intermittently. Some were large, some small, and some even seemed intentional in their perfect make--though, in concert, it was a sore sight that only inspired gloom. More so because the sight beyond them, that of a sky without color, was effortlessly melancholic and depressing, all so in perpetuity, it seemed.
The silence was eerie and chilling; as he walked, he would occasionally hear the clatter of loose stones falling and echoing through the deserted hallways. However, just like with the outside, here and there, amidship the collapsed debris, he’d spot a glitter of an eye or the shuffle of the shadows. Fading, passing, temporary. Ghosts scared of their own vestige.
Passing through the dilapidated reality began to weigh on him so he stopped looking around like an interested tourist--he passed through the straight hallway, ignoring the collapsed chambers where cobwebs hung like ghastly drapes and ignored the air’s thickness permeated with the scent of damp stone and decay.
A couple of depressing minutes later, he finally reached the end--the walls parted further and opened out into an extensively wide backyard. Looking from the castle’s front, it would have been impossible to predict that there would be such a large and spacious backyard at its rear.
Once, it was walled off--though, now, those walls had largely collapsed, only an occasional remnant remaining as a reminder of what once stood there. The ground beneath was barren save for two exceptions--to both his far right and far left, there were two flowers. Both were shaped like swaddled babies, with the left flower’s exterior showing off a bloody-red hue across its flower with its inner stem being milky white, while the right flower was the exact opposite of that.
They hadn’t bloomed yet--though how they could in this world, Asher did not wish to ask or know. Their scent, however, was sweet and it managed to overcome the damp stone--it was something close to cinnamon, sweet and tender.
Above all, however, his eyes quickly wandered to the front where he saw a lonely figure standing, facing out into the misted forever. Her long, almost unnatural smooth and white hair fluttered in the gentle breeze, coiling around as though moving independently. She was tall--extremely tall. In fact, she was only a few inches shorter than the old man he’d met. However, because of the sheer space of the backyard, she still seemed so... small. Lonely. Adrift in a place beyond hope.
She wore an armor featuring largely a patina of age and wear. The once intricate engravings and runes that adorned the chestplate had faded, their lines marred by scratches and dents. The plated armor was tarnished and dulled, with small fissures spider-webbing across its surface, passages of a tome depicting its age.
Of the two pauldrons, only one still remained hanging over her shoulder--it hung slightly askew, the joints stiff and creaking. The edged linings had lost their color and shine, now blending in perfectly with the adjacent metal. The leather straps were barely hanging on, seemingly an aggressive movement away from bursting into ash.
A tattered cape hung from her back, its fabric once rich and flowing, now torn and stained. The edges were frayed and the material had lost most of its former luster, with only the traces of its intricate embroidery remaining--a few lines, coils, and a strange rune with several concentric circles within.
Both gauntlets as well as both boots were stiff with rust and rot, the polished surface nowhere to be seen. The gray and ashen hue overwhelmed everything else, though the tinges of red appeared at the edges.
What the armor was made out of... Asher hadn't a clue. He couldn't have a clue--it wasn't steel, it wasn't iron, it wasn't silver or gold or obsidian or any of the 'exotic' stones that he knew of. Even aged and stiff and frayed, there was luster therein still that could not be fully extinguished.
She turned, at last, her movements graceful and deliberate--the strands of hair hid half her face, though the other half radiated beauty almost beyond compare... and yet, there was indescribable grief and desolation ingrained within almost every pore. The one eye Asher could see was almost bespangled--it was not just one color, but a repeated shift of them... from red to blue to green to black to white to topaz-colored. It was a repeated pattern on a cycle of a few seconds, colors fading between them perfectly.
She was sickly pale and sallow, and even so stirred something within him that he had to bury.
It was also then that he saw the pair of blades hanging at her sides--semi-long and thin, their scabbards just like the rest of her armor antediluvian. Her thin lips parted for a brief moment and a voice came through. Soft, kind, and warm--a contrast to the world around them, to the desolate wasteland she existed within.
“Evium, my love,” she smiled faintly. “How are you? I see... and... how, how is he? Ah. I am ashamed.” She was not looking at him but rather the sword in his hands; not for long, however, as the gaze of the singular eye drifted upward and met his. “Be proud, lowly scab... for what your unworthy fingers behold is holy beyond measure. Even I was not worthy to hold it... so, why--why--WHY----!!” a storm of radiant yet subdued lightning suddenly raged out around her, prompting Asher to quickly lift up his arms.
The shift of colors in the eye sped up until it was a blur, plumes of colors bursting out like smoke.
“Why are you worthy?!! No--you are not!”