The suns were rising. Their scarlet glory spreading throughout all the lands of the earth, crowning all the snow-peaked mountains in the east, reddening the sea until the whole of the ocean seemed to be one of blood. Four Adrianians observed the birth of the day from near to the summit of one mountain that remained uncrowned by the crimson-disks. This was because of how theirs lay below the waves.
Such was how it had always been for those of Adria, or Lamantin as they were also dubbed. Up-world men might well have cooked their venison over a fire, yet as a oceanic-peoples the Lamantin ate their food raw.
The four were seated thereupon the peak of Mt-Vardhra with their tails either waving about behind them, or wrapped all about them, with the great city of Adria in the distance behind them. They had been out on a hunt, for a great shark their prey having escaped them which had left the majority of them frustrated. Deciding to see the suns-rise at the insistence of the largest of their numbers, this sudden request one that they had found irritated them rather more than it might otherwise.
Their teeth sharp as knives tore into the fish they had skinned, with nary a single utensil, none of them having a care for the ridiculous notions of civility that you or I might have had a thought for.
“Why do you not eat, Volthrin?” Keyr-nu asked irritably, of the fourth of their numbers. “Are my fish not to your taste?”
The scaled figure who had spoken was old, by the standards of any race. Quite how old, he might have been a mystery to any up-worlder observer, with his mottled scales and gills, greying hair and beard, his figure thin and clad in a long dark robe. His companions for their parts were in contrast young in comparison to him.
One wore a dark grey tunic with breeches that were loose and had his dark blue-grey scaled tail curled about him, just as the elder Keyr-nu did. The third of their numbers, was dressed in the dark steel-armour of the Mer-Drake Guard, the royal guards that kept near to the King of the Empire, his long tail covered by his dark cloak, and his own horns and claws rather more pointed than the first two, his eyes crimson and glaring.
Hardly fond of the last of their numbers, Volthrin, who dressed himself in the bronze-armour of a city-guard, the third Lamantin had never much liked him.
“Mayhaps, Volthrin thinks the fish unworthy of him,” Zhik grunted with similar disdain to that which coloured the tones of Keyr-nu.
“Hardly,” Volthrin answered in his cavernous voice, his eyes flashed with anger at Zhik. “I simply had no wish to miss a second of the rising suns.”
There was silence for a time. His words bewildered and confused them, save for Xardik who had caught the fish for them and of all of them, he was almost little more than a boy.
The youngest of the four, he regarded the city-guard with considerable more awe than the others had, it was also he who best knew his mind. “Why hunger for the suns, Volthrin?”
Volthrin hesitated ere he spoke. When he did it was with a great deal more thought than the other two might have been capable of. “Because, I wish to see them.”
“Such nonsense,” Keyr-nu muttered, “It is for that reason that Mayma-Tanu was said to have disappeared in ancient times. It is said that she too wished to see the suns, and melted away the moment she pierced the surface of the sea and peered up at them.”
“You have it backwards Keyr-nu, it is that very story that is nonsense,” Volthrin snorted.
“What did you say? That very tale was passed down to me, by my grandfather!”
“If you speak true, I should guess that he was no less foolish than you, yourself are Keyr-nu.”
“Peace the two of you,” Xardik said pleading with them.
There was grumbling for several minutes longer, on the part of all three of them. Zhik for his part, though by no means a friend of Volthrin.
It was the hope of Xardik that they might put aside their differences, when the time came for them to turn away from the sunset, to make for the city of Adria at the insistence of Keyr-nu. His hopes, though not held onto with much vigour, were nonetheless smashed onto the stones below them.
“Do not take to heart, what the bronze-guard decries, in regards to history,” Zhik remarked aware of where he might strike at Volthrin, where he was most vulnerable. It must be said that no man, is immune to the blows of fate or wholly removed from the effects of rage especially the bronze-guard, present therewith the Mer-Drake Guard. “Volthrin, it must be said that just as the stories of Mayma-Tanu lay behind us-”
“Allegedly,” Volthrin interjected indifferently, with a shrug of his massive shoulders.
“-So too do you lie in the past of my sister, Salaxia,” Zhik persisted a little archly, refusing to be deterred from his objective; that is to say besmirching the honour of the bronze Lamantin.
Those words tore a cry of rage from the lungs of Volthrin, who might well have thrown himself against the Mer-Drake in the hopes of were it not for Xardik and Keyr-nu. The savage satisfaction that the eldest two of the small group derived from those words were visible, which only drove him into a further towering rage.
“You should not have spoken to him of Ivra-ina,” Xardik reprimanded the dark-armoured guard who smiled viciously.
“She is my sister, I may speak of her as I please,” Zhik retorted evenly.
The lady of whom he spoke was one who weighed heavily upon the mind of Volthrin. Haunted by the manner in which their bond had been severed, after three years of marriage. The fairest of the ladies, of the city of Adria she had rarely been noticed for the longest time. That is until the Emperor had passed through the city.
The memory near drove him to a fury, with Zhik remarking rather pleased with himself still.
It was later as they swam their way down the length of the mountain; Xardik was to complain about the endless quarrels that seemed to ever haunt both Zhik and Volthrin.
“This was hardly meant to end in a quarrel,” The youngest of the four groaned.
“So says you Xardik,” Keyr-nu grunted irritably, only to brighten as the city loomed before them. “Ah Adria, the fairest of cities in the seven seas!”
The city that he celebrated so was a patch of ruins, of fallen towers and broken palaces and houses. Broken more than ten thousand years ago, at the fall of the previous era, Adria was colonized at that time by the Lamantin.
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Eyeing the broken city, with its fallen walls always left Volthrin disgruntled. Always he looked on the broken city, and wondered if it was always so. It was something that left him cold towards the queen-city of his homeland, with the warrior sharing none of Keyr-nu’s love for the city as it currently was.
“If this seems fair to you, I should dislike to know what you find hideous,” Said the bronze-warrior.
“Tush you fool! None ought to besmirch the honour of our city!”
“Only cowards fear criticism and call it ‘insults’, it takes courage to criticize.”
“To hear a man unable to fight for his bride, unable to go face her or her new husband speak of courage is strange to hear.” Zhik sneered. “Mayhaps one day, you will have the ‘courage’ to go face the Emperor to fall to thy knees and congratulate him, for his upcoming nuptials.”
Once again, the lesser warrior struck him.
The four dispersed to return to their respective homes, Keyr-nu left muttering about the greatness of the Emperor Myvron. Zhik was busy boasting of the Emperor’s manly achievements, whereas the youthful Xardik sighed and remained silent.
Never terribly fond of Myvron, the Unseen Emperor as he was known throughout the whole of the Empire of Adria, Volthrin had only become less fond of him, with time. Certainly, there was the theft of his bride that had angered him, yet always he had felt a sense of desolation and pity for his city.
She must have surely been a fair city once. Her stones were made of fine marble, of such quality that they had towered once nigh to the summit of the under-sea mountains, always spiralling high. After the cataclysm that had sunk the city into the city, it was claimed by the ancient tribes of the Lamantin, with the first dynasty established by General Galldryn the Great. It was he who had united the tribes, thrown back their enemies and had laid low the enemies of the Empire.
Since that time the Empire of the Middle-Seas had fallen into disrepair, corruption and oppressiveness. Rarely did Lamantins speak their minds, rarer still did they openly address the reality of their state and cities.
Most did not know who to blame. Volthrin did though. There was none other than Myvron the Slayer.
It was he who had slain the last of the old line, the befuddled, cruel Yld-rax of the Fourth-Dynasty.
The memory of the proclamation of how Yld-rax had fallen, of putting his head atop the gates still left Volthrin with a bad taste in his mouth. It had disturbed him then, and it still did. Certainly, Yld-rax was feeble, paranoid and had lost the right to rule but to replace him with a worst ruler, one with far less accomplishments was sickening.
Wisely keeping his words to himself for the next hours, especially once within the limits of the city (such as they were), Volthrin when the time to lay his head down to rest in his home he fell into darkness at once.
His dreams were not untroubled though, for he soon found himself not alone but in a place he had never been before, yet had been invited if only to be humiliated and had observed at a distance; the ‘throne-room’.
Seated upon the Drago-Throne of Adria was not Myvron. In this dream, sat a figure unlike any other that had ever seated the throne of the Empire, since the days when it was young, with this figure so towering, gigantic and daunting that Volthrin was as a child in comparison to him.
His claws were sharp as swords, teeth longer still and scaled gleaming even as he held a spear that no monarch since the founder had held.
Glaring down at him, Galldryn for it could only be he, such was the gargantuan figure that it could only be he. The half-god Lamantin who had dominated the Empire for longer than any other Emperor in the history of the heirs of Adria, was exactly as depicted on the few city walls, and buildings still standing.
Gold-armour glittered, eyes shining and his dark robes rustling it was all that Volthrin could do to keep from trembling. Carved into the armour were the most archaic of the Lamantin symbols, his dark foot-claws dug deeply into the great stones of the column upon which sat the throne.
Neither his stern grandfather, nor his valiant father in their very worst rages or at their most stern could have pierced Volthrin as Galldryn’s gaze did thence.
Neither Lamantin spoke. Words were needless and for lesser men so to speak, with the youth’s soul trembling, quaking and shrinking from the anger therein those dark orbs.
Bowing his head, he did obeisance if silently so.
This only worsened the furor of the ancient Emperor. After some time, he at last raised his gaze to meet that of the mighty monarch. It was this moment that determined his fate, when at last he awoke from this dream and vision. This along, with the minor cut delivered unto him by Galldryn’s great spear of Thálséiker, or ‘Sea-Shaker’.
The cut hurt yet still he did not tear his gaze from that of the gargantuan Emperor. Aware that he was being tested, and had previously been found wanting. It was in this moment that duty bound him to prove his worth.
When at last he awoke, it was to find the night still dark. Naught was at all different from when, he had at last closed his eyes… wherefore he saw floating upwards, whither into the distance high above, droplets of blood.
The arrangements for his audience with the Emperor Myvron were easily arranged. It was one that Zhik had gladly arranged in the hopes, of bearing witness to the city-guard’s downfall. The palace through which he guided the warrior, was one that dated back to the reign of Galldryn. The ruin into which it had fallen, was the fault not of the founding ruler but rather to the negligence of those who came long after. Namely it was the fault of those of the third and fourth dynasties, who had none of his care for the civilisation of Adria.
Guided along hallways with nary any roof, nor in some cases even walls so that there was a sense of grief that pervaded the core of Volthrin’s being. How far the sons of Adrias had fallen!
Brought before the same pillar upon which the Drago-Throne rested that he had borne witness to, the prior night, all was as he remembered it. The throne room had nary any walls, save for a few behind Volthrin who presented himself upon the pillar all those who knelt before the Emperor were bidden to prostrate themselves upon.
It was his duty to prostrate himself.
Before him sat a great, towering figure who could well have crushed the whole of his body in one single claw. Adorned in raiment blacker than night and in armour more golden than the suns themselves, he loomed higher than the twin spheres in the heavens high above the sea.
The vision soon dispersed.
In its place sat diminutive, feeble Myvron. A figure with a small mop brown hair, atop his head and with wide eyes the same colour with nary the light that shone from those of Galldryn. Dressed in gaudy robes rather than armour, the once Unseen Emperor was nigh on half the size and weight of his guards who remained at the outer edges of the hall. Their dark raiment of armour only aided in obscuring them from the view of most.
To one side of the dragon-winged throne floated Salaxia, prize of prizes! Future Lady of Adria, and keeper of Volthrin’s heart, it was thence to she that he looked to.
In her eyes he saw an affirmation of all that he had known, and all that he must do.
“Have you come to at last pay homage, and give your blessings for Salaxia to become mine?” Myvron demanded of him, his voice high almost feminine so that it inspired even more contempt in Volthrin.
“I have, and I have a gift for you,” Volthrin answered him, taking the spear at his side as if to proffer it to the Emperor.
Intrigued and eager, for there was no greater gift than a warrior’s arm, Myvron leant forward. Hardly hiding his glee at this ultimate show of humiliation on the part of the warrior, he bared his dulled teeth, used to biting through soft sea-weed and fruits, in place of the fish and meat the warriors favoured.
It was as he leant down to grasp it, his eyes upon the gleaming Lamantin-steel arm that never dulled in the water, eyes hardly noticing the steel in those of the kneeling peasant.
As lightning the spear was shifted and put to bloody use. Striking not unlike thunder, it hewed down the usurper, bringing down his dynasty ere it could properly begin!
Long did the guards stare in shock, reeling from the death of their liege where they were slow to realize what had happened, Volthrin who had long schemed this very deed did not hesitate. Faster than the blow that had sundered its way through robes, scales and heart alike, he was away. Salaxia in his arms, he carried her aloft thither to the surface, and away from Adria.
The blood of the tyrant floated upwards, with his dying whimpers and pleas echoing in the ears of the bronze-clad warrior. They were as music to him, finer than that produced by the most skilled of harpers.
The guards gave chase and threw their harpoons and spears, once they realised what had befallen Myvron, yet it was too late; Volthrin easily left them behind. Just as none had dared strike Myvron, none dared follow him just shy of the surface. It was to there that he swam, and there he found refuge, ere he descended down towards the mountains.