On flat lands in the northern reaches of Elusria, just a few dozen kilometers from the northern glaciers, sat a barrow. The windswept lands kept the snow loose and dusty, blowing across the chilled plains in a loose mist. The artificial hill housed the interred corpse of an ancient leader of a clan.
It was only recently that historians tied said Lord to the ancient tale of the Unequal Lord. To Ranvir’s eyes, this seemed a fitting place and the well-worn story clung to him like a tailored jacket.
The Unequal Lord, known to almost every Elusrian child, passed on from elder to young through word of mouth. A short tale, yet one that he remembered more than a decade after first hearing it. A story of harsh winters and lush summers, as most of them went.
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The clan was in dire need. Electing a new Lord, they saw their desperation writ upon the faces of all the hunters. Marked on the land itself, for winter was coming and they were not prepared.
Then a hunter stepped forth. He was young and fit, skilled in his craft, quick on his feet, and ambitious. To the clan, he offered a solution. He could resolve their needs. It would only require bold action and their best and brightest.
Swayed by his strong words and unshakable confidence, the clan swayed with the young Lord’s voice. He led them to success. Fresh meat, new territory. Winter was closing, yet every day saw them filling their stores, mending their hides, and fashioning new tools.
For their new Lord was a brave one. Young and blind to risk, he saw only the reward. For everyday he and his hunters brought home nothing, they brought back a mighty stag. The advisor cautioned the Young Lord against being too rash, but he would not listen.
Eventually, they found a grandfather bear, old and strong as the trees, had laid claim to their nearest watering hole. The clan wanted to move, but the young leader stepped up. He shouted his challenge across the world, filled his chest with the thirst for life, and lit his head with the ambitions of the Goddess.
Around him, the leader drew his fittest and strongest. Setting out for the old bear, an ancient of the forest, Young Lord led his clan to ruin. Their fittest and strongest hunters were killed, the youngest without teachers, and their stores half-full.
In a panic, the clan gathered. They needed a new Lord, someone who could guide them through this rough time. Someone who would not fall like the incautious mind of a young man. They looked to the graybeards. The old men of the clan. Hunters who’d outlived Young Lord three times over. Among them, the clan selected their new champion.
The Old Lord rose to the heights of his Clan after nearly six decades of service. Conservative in his measures and cautious in his approach, the Old Lord had never brought home a hunt like the Young Lord, yet he always brought something.
Where his predecessor could only see the rewards, the wizened elder understood the risks. He set his ancient eyes on their resources and conflicts. Moved the clan away from the bear’s territory, conserved their resources and looked to small gains. Little things they achieved to add together.
It was a meager winter. Chill to the bone, yet they survived. Their youngest still danced in the clearings when the thaw came. Their oldest coughed and hacked, yet carried water during the spring. The hunters ran thin, ribbed along the chest and narrower of arm, yet hunters they still had.
The Old Lord led them through a catastrophic tragedy and terrible winter into the wellspring of youth and life of spring. The advisor walked with the old man, telling him now was the time to strike. To head out and seek the bounty of the world while it remained rich.
But the old man understood the caution inherent in his words. He’d known many long winters, after all. He had forged his path and would guide the clan through it narrowly. The Old Lord was master of their future and he spring them into a great wealth, even if he never saw it.
Yet, as spring passed, summer came and fell, the clan saw the others, nearby settlements, thriving. They took from the seasonal bounties, pursued nature with vigor. They built great houses and churches. Fed their hunters and lavished onto their children. Their families were fat and happy when summer wound down, yet the clan saw only the Old Lord preaching of his ways to their hungry sons and daughters.
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Through the summer, the Old Lord brought home naught but rabbits, squirrels, and the youngest of does. Nothing that would risk harm to him or the clan, yet nothing that would fill their bellies until they hung off the branches. No hides so long and thick as to wrap around their shoulders.
It was scrappy and patchy clan of knit together cloaks and furs, that said goodbye to their elder master. The Old Lord’s body, after seven decades of life, six of them spent in service to the people, gave out one late autumn. Their stores had remained low, yet if they lived as the old man had, they might live through yet another winter.
But the clan gazed at the spare man. Gray of beard and thin of hair, he was wiry muscle, rib slatted chest. It was not wisdom and sly cunning they saw in his eyes now. No longer taken by the fear of an oncoming winter, they saw true the fear locked so deep in the Old Lord’s eyes that even death could not scrub it out.
So it was with fresh eyes that the clan looked upon its members, searching for a new leader. The faced fast approach of winter once more, yet knew well the dangers of electing their youngest and strongest. But could they select from their elders again? Someone who fought not to live, but to avoid death?
It seemed to the clan as they gazed upon their people that they saw only two options: young who saw only ambition and life, or the old who feared pain and death. It was then, one wife, a young woman of keen ear who listened to the ramblings of a tired advisor, ignored for so long.
She spoke up what he dared not say a loud. They had need of someone who knew both caution and courage. A Lord who could rise above vagaries of life and lead them forward. Not a straight path, but a curving one that sought ever to reevaluate its own merit.
The clan asked her who, and she pointed to the advisor, electing him for leadership. Yet the advisor understood his abilities and skills well. He was not fit to be in charge. He was not a leader and should not be called.
“Yet called you are,” the woman said, and the clan joined her. “Answer.”
The advisor looked at the clan, seeing before him the downfall of the tribe. His inept hand could not lead them in the hunt. His weak legs could not carry their water. The advisor would be a Lord without equal, for never would the clan choose another. Should he hold the charge?
Yet he looked on them and saw they would choose no other. With a resigned head, he bowed to the clan. He was unequal to the task before him, yet he must try. With the clan at his back, he turned to face the fast racing autumn and brutal winter.
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Ranvir sat in silence. His meditation ended some time ago. The story of the Unequal Lord racing in his head. The Unequal Lord was a cautionary tale, simple and easy. Yet, he now lingered, not on the easy morals of the story, but the question at the end.
It was perhaps apt for him to consider the tale now, standing at this very point in time as he did. Less than a week. In some ways, less than an hour. The clan survived. It must’ve to make such a barrow. Yet, barrows had held many meanings in the history of his people.
From traps to hold the souls of the vicious undead, to celebrations of their glorious deeds in life. Usually, there were signs in the barrow, yet this had been created on a wind torn land without shelter. All that remained of such monuments were tumbled stone, dead grass, and powdery snow.
Mystery, the question, would be his companion now.
With a sigh, he rose from his seated position, stretching body and soul. A flash of storm mana saw the howling winds sweep around him and catch his wings. With ethereal ease, he hung motionless, yet carried by the winds into the sky. His sand-pocket shimmered to existence, filtering out and around him. Sandstorm Rage engulfing and enforcing him.
A purple light snapped to. A figure stepped out. Yellow eyes, rimmed red and strained, stood out in her dark features. She did not appear as Ranvir remembered her. The features fear had burned into his mind had changed over the years.
Yellow eyes weren’t so large as to fill her skull, her grin not so wide as to split it. Her hands smaller and not so striated with strength. Her soul wilder and less tamed than he remembered.
“Son!” she said in a hoarse cry.
Without her sword. Shame had hoped to take it from her. Ranvir struck her with the full force of his strength. Body enhanced to the limits. His first blow caved her chest in, crushing her heart and snapping her spine. Saleema’s body spun limp to the ground.
Dead.
Ranvir looked down at the yellow eyes staring up at him accusingly. The soul flickered and guttered. His eyes could the dark ravines deep in her irises, purple fingers spreading them apart. Her soul flared to wildfire rage, animating her corpse with the fury of the mad.
In a flash of compressed space, Ranvir drove towards her again. She tumbled across the windswept plains, her ragged body sending plumes of white into the air to be caught by the constant gusts.
She picked herself up, blood seeping through the impact cavity in her chest. A slow trickling leak stemmed by the lack of a heartbeat. She turned, running away, and Ranvir pursued. Slipping through space, she dipped into the distance and he followed.
He could not catch her, understood. Desperation forged from her broken soul, an obsidian edge driving her into greater and more distant flashes of purple.
Her body and soul had almost been divorced from each other. On a knife’s edge between life and unlife, Ranvir felt the horror of her condition like an icicle to the heart. A chill seep to freeze his blood. He had to choke out her soul, eight-hundred to a thousand years old and of a strength to match Kyriake’s.