They should have picked a different name, he thought wryly. He hadn’t organized them directly, just placed an inspiring word here and there. Well, they picked the name and sent a bright beacon for Valkrage to follow right back to Taer Iriliandrel.
You goofed again, he chided himself. The great Kaldor, avatar of Archurion himself… nothing more than a fool. If only they knew.
“Your plan is evil,” Kaldor stated flatly.
Valkrage shook his head. “Not evil. Necessary. If we are not ready for Klrain when he awakens, all life is forfeit. He has lost himself to the Dark. You know this. This way will preserve life.”
“At the cost of what suffering?” There had to be another way.
Valkrage snapped in irritation. “Only what is necessary.”
Kaldor sighed. He did not hate the elf. Eldrikura had been Klrain’s mate before the Black Dragon embraced evil. She had paid the greatest price of all the Archdragons.
“I’m out of time, brother,” Kaldor confessed. “You do not plan for the healing of the world after you save it, and what’s the point of saving the world if you break it in the process? Even with Archurion’s essence granting me long life, my human body will not endure to see the end to pick up your pieces. I’m still human. I must plant the seeds now.”
Valkrage’s face turned to sudden compassion. “As I said, I understand. But your teachings are becoming too popular and disrupt the flow of faith. It is too soon. I can’t have you turning people away from the worship of Karanos.”
“You mean Aaron.”
Valkrage gave a slight nod and continued. “Your paladins provide too much ideological…” he paused and touched his fingertips together in front of his chest, “…distraction.”
Kaldor placed his coffee down the balcony ledge and faced the elf directly. “Well then,” he growled. “What do you propose? I won’t disband the Order, and you don’t have it in you to oppose me.”
Even though each of them had given to Aaron their spiritual links to the elemental powers of Light and Time, they were still both formidable wizards. Their magic was informed by dragon knowledge, and of the two of them Archurion had been the wiser.
But Eldrikura had been the most cunning.
“I need not oppose you,” Valkrage said. “I am the Dragon of Time, and time is what I need. The old Archurionite paladins,” Valkrage’s mouth twisted at the irony, “are now my Templars. They will root out and destroy all heresies, including your Kaldorites. Some will survive to the end, just enough to help the world start to recover—but they will be so harried that they will be contained along the way.”
“No!” Kaldor shouted. His mind touched the prepared spells of power in his spirit. A golden aura radiated from his visage, and little flames licked and floated in the air around him. Before thinking about what he was doing, he drew his wand from his sleeve, holding it at the ready.
Valkrage drew his own wand in response. He too glowed with an aura of power, violet in hue, with little fingers of purple electricity sparking in the air.
In that moment, Kaldor wanted to unleash his fire on the elf and then tear the city of Artalon asunder building by building, even as he remembered the Gold Dragon doing ten thousand years ago. His eyes blazed, and for a moment he saw fear in the elf’s eyes. If Kaldor unleashed his magic, only Aaron could defeat him, and such a battle would undo all of the elf’s plans… and then when Klrain finally did awaken, they would lose everything.
Kaldor released his power and slumped forward in defeat, lowering his wand. He knew the elf was right.
He saw no other way, and Kaldor began to wonder about the strange darkling prophecy. Only the Champion, neither dragon nor god, can wield the power of both to slay Klrain the Black. He wondered. If Aaron had received the power of Life from Graelyn, and wielded the three powers together, would it have been enough? Aaron still would not have been a god.
Valkrage rushed to catch him, letting go his own magic. “Worry not, brother,” the elf whispered. “I did account for the healing of the world. You were my plan all along. I will ensure you see it through to the end.”
Kaldor looked up into the sidhe’s eyes, not daring to hope. He stood and pushed himself away from his brother’s embrace, eyeing him cautiously. “This body will age and die,” he said again.
“I am the Dragon of Time,” Valkrage reminded him once more. “All I need is to delay you.”
Before Kaldor could react, Valkrage spoke the final words of an arcane spell. It was masterful, brilliantly constructed beyond mortal comprehension. Kaldor understood from hearing those words that, even for Valkrage, there must have been days preparing and casting the full spell in ceremonial ritual, charging and storing all of its magical energy into Valkrage’s aura of probability, just waiting to be released into the world by the spell’s final commanding words of completion. Such a spell could not have bound the full might of Archurion. The mere avatar of a small portion of the Gold Dragon’s mind, however, was another matter.
A crackling and humming sounded forth, and a subtle field of wavy shimmering descended around the tower’s island. The outside world vanished from view, replaced by a thick, oily purple liquid barrier that extended up and around in the sky above.
“I bind you and this tower outside of time,” Valkrage declared. “While centuries pass in Ahmbren, you will only see years. One city I will protect. I will withdraw the Empire from Aaron’s home city of Windbowl and spare it the Church’s touch. Your Order will have a safe-haven of freedom so that they might survive to the end.
“When the work of the Champion is done, I will return and restore you back to the natural flow of time. Only then will I free you to heal the world. Farewell, brother. At least now you will live to see Ahmbren receive the benefits of our sacrifice.”
With that, Valkrage faded and vanished, leaving Kaldor trapped in Taer Iriliandrel, outside of time.
PART 1: COEXIST
1 - The Paladin’s Mission
It had been nine years since the God-King died and the seelie first came to the world. Nine years since the runic magic that had powered every aspect of Artalonian life had failed. Nine years since Arda had left Windbowl to find the head of her Order. She had visited the Kaldorite commanders in every city for leads to Taer Iriliandrel’s whereabouts. She sought out Tulley, the commander in Astiana who had initiated Arda into the Order and trained her in the ways of the Light. He confirmed what she had already begun to suspect. At one time, Kaldor had contacted the heads of the Order once every year, but that hadn’t happened in centuries. Contact was intermittent at best, and Tulley wasn’t aware of any guidance from the wizard in his lifetime. It was not something the commanders regularly shared with the rest of the Order, knowing the importance of keeping their hope from dying while the Shadowlord’s Empire tried to extinguish them.
She hadn’t believed Tulley at first. She searched for two more years, scouring the countryside for rumors of Taer Iriliandrel’s location. After three more, she turned away from her quest. The world had more pressing problems that demanded her attention.
Now she sat on the back of Dart, her white warhorse, stopping for a moment on the road leading south from the small border town of Kriegsholm, which straddled the line between Hammerfold and Astia. It was mid-afternoon, dark with thick clouds that poured gray October rain over the world. Lightning rumbled in the distance, but only a clean shower fell where she was, drops diffused by a mesh of tree limbs and golden leaves overhead. The wind was strangely still.
Almost human, the wide brim of her brown tricorne hat had been fitted to accommodate large horns that sprouted from her temples, which swept up and then back over her head. The horns and solid pitch-black eyes marked her as a darkling, a human offshoot race branded with the features of the demonic citizenry of Dis. Her markings were a curse inherited from the mistakes of ancestors long since dead. The curse left her with other marks, too—clawed fingernails, tiny, pointed upper and lower canines that extended ever-so-slightly l
onger than her other teeth, and a long, rust-colored tail that emerged from beneath the slit at the bottom of her brown leather duster.
Her ancestors might have consorted with demons, but appearances were all Arda shared with them. She was a Kaldorite paladin, committed to the ten virtues of the Light.
Kaldorites were nothing like the classical paladins of old—they had become the Templars of the Church and long ago ceased to be called paladins. While Templars relied on runic magic granted by their God-King, Kaldorites were taught to channel the Light directly without need of a divine intercessory.
Ideology alone did not make a paladin, however. The Kaldorites also held an extreme commitment to physical and mental training, wielding alchemically crafted equipment that required no magic to function. Kaldor had understood that the greatest potential in mortalkind was not through mystical power, but through the strength of their minds and the capabilities of their bodies. He focused on training first and foremost and instilled a culture of discipline that began in candidates shortly after adolescence.
The equipment had come later, after contact with Kaldor became less frequent and further between and the location of Taer Iriliandrel obscured. The gnomish alchemist Xandelbrot—the very same gnome who had mentored the young incarnations of the Archdragons centuries before—lent his twilight years to the cause. He committed his magical craft to producing non-magical material of wondrous properties. He believed the natural physics of the world had many secrets to reveal, and if he had to take a few shortcuts to discover them through alchemical means, so be it. He held firm to the philosophy of Kaldor’s faith in his paladins’ natural abilities, and he wanted to give them wondrous tools that would not rely on external mystical power—unlike the Templars’ rune weapons, which had eventually lost their magic when Aaron died.
Xandelbrot’s first achievement had been the rediscovery of how to make the alloy called zorium from copper. It was the same remarkable metal that the ancients had used to create the impossibly high skyscrapers of Artalon. It looked like copper, but was stronger, lighter, and more flexible than steel, and it never tarnished. It could be forged into plated armor or spun into fine ropes capable of holding a hundred times the weight of ordinary rope. It could be woven into cloth or folded into the sharpest of blades. At first, Kaldorites wore zorium-plate armor and came to be known by their perfectly balanced, slightly curved, single-edged zorium blades. A few preferred zorium-gilded lead hammers and maces, but the unique swords captured the minds of the people and became a telltale symbol of their order. Eventually, gunpowder and firearms made their way into military and mercenary use. As strong as zorium was, bullets could still puncture it. Some abandoned the use of armor altogether as being largely impractical.
Xandelbrot put his alchemical skills to the test once more and developed his masterpiece before he died, which he descriptively called “armor-resin.” A soft, gel-like substance derived from the sap of eight different trees, it could be formed into a shape before the outer layer dried into a thin, rubbery shell while the interior kept its liquid form. This provided a flexible substance that, when hit with high velocity, instantly hardened to match the force of impact before it relaxed back to its soft state. It proved almost invulnerable to bullets, but weak to slower, sharpened edges.
Kaldorite armor evolved into a comfortable, mobile suit built for freedom of movement, perfectly fitted to the body of the paladin. It had a thin layer of cotton for comfort, another layer of armor-resin fibers covered by a thin skin of zorium-weave cloth, which was then affixed to an outer layer of supple black leather. Arda’s form-fitted black suit underneath the leather duster was effectively bulletproof while still providing a degree of protection against classical weapons.
Driven by their culture of training, paladins also mastered the art of firearms. As was common for paladins who wandered the lands, Arda carried two pistols on her hips, relying on these as her primary weapons, though she still carried the copper zorium sword as the traditional symbol of a paladin. It proved useful for things that didn’t seem to mind bullets.
Like vampires.
She turned her face to the rain and closed her eyes, letting heaven’s water subdue her wispy chestnut bangs. Droplets accumulated on her fair-skinned cheeks, and she breathed deeply, taking in a moment of stillness. The hat’s brim protected the back of her straight hair, keeping it dry. She knew it was dangerous to sit in the open and close her eyes, but damn it, she was so tired. For six years she had been fighting a war that seemed beyond hope of winning. Every year they lost ground to infestation. At least it was early morning.
Hammerfold was the only land still untouched by contagion, and Kriegsholm was the last line of defense on the eastern front. It could not afford to fall.
But keeping the watch in Kriegsholm was not her mission right now. Another paladin was there with a team of seelie and wolven rangers. The seelie had embraced the fight against the vampires to secure Hammerfold’s borders, for it was their home too. They were a great help. Arda only wished there were more of them. In the face of the undead danger, the people of Hammerfold rallied to the new Church of Light based on Rajamin’s pre-imperial, classical Archurionite teachings. A priest of the Old Gods now lived in every major town and city, wielding the runic powers of their faith. Kriegsholm was well defended.
Her mission took her into enemy territory. The Kaldorites had become special agents for the free peoples of the world. Originally intended to be preservers of wisdom and help rebuild civilization after the Empire’s fall, they were now the sentries defending its leftover pieces. They were the only ones who were capable of operating alone within the infested lands. She had spent much of the past years traveling between cells of resistance, training people how to take advantage of known vampire weaknesses. In Roenti, there were pockets of clean towns, but no community stayed clean forever. It was a perpetual battle. Vampires would come in, and the town would either hold out or not. The Kaldorites couldn’t be everywhere.
She opened her eyes, staring up at the rain falling between the leaves. She blinked when drops of water hit her eyes, and then she looked forward, allowing the brim of her hat to shield her face again. She urged her horse forward into Astian lands towards Traversham, the first village on the road to Astiana.
Arda had seen many things in the last nine years. She saw the utter crumbling of human society as people’s faith-empowered way of life disintegrated when the God-King died. She saw communities no longer under Templar control start to rebuild and revitalize civilization.
Arda had encountered her first vampire outside of the town of Dobron in Roenti while on her way to confer with the head of the Kaldorite chapter in Roen. It had already killed four locals. She had never seen anything like it, an undead revenant with no signs of decay, feeding on the blood of the living. She shot him through the head and assumed he was dead. That would have been enough for any other revenant she had ever encountered, but he was different. He rose from the ground and almost got the better of her. She had reacted quickly and decapitated him with a stroke of her blade. Then she made her second mistake and thought the matter resolved. She left Dobron behind and continued towards Roen.
Something in the back of her mind nagged her as she left, but she couldn’t say exactly what. On the second night south, she listened to her gut and returned to Dobron. The revenant’s four victims had also risen, and each had turned several more. She hunted them down, discovering their weaknesses by trial and error, until the town was free of the strange undead. The townsfolk called them vampires, and they said they had come from Artalon. The vampire had a companion with him who had continued south to Roen the night before Arda’s arrival.
She realized the implications of such a disease and wasted no more time heading south to warn her brethren. She made it to Roen but was too late. There was no containing the outbreak, and they were forced to abandon the city. The Kaldorite commander sent riders to warn the Order’s chapters throughout the Empire. Despite their
efforts, the vampire contagion spread quickly at first. Four years ago, the kingdom of Roenti fell to infestation. Two years later, Astia followed. Her quest to find Kaldor was all but abandoned as she became embroiled in the war.
It was late in the afternoon by the time Arda crested a hill and looked down into Traversham. It was a small village five days south of Kriegsholm, and the rain had not let up on her journey. It ebbed and flowed in intensity, but the sky’s gray shroud proved persistent, and her skin remained perpetually damp despite her coat.
She passed two abandoned towns along the way. They had fallen to infestation, their entire populace infected and turned. A contingent of Kaldorites and seelie rangers had cleaned the towns a year ago. Traversham was now the first inhabited village south of the border. One of the Kaldorites had established a resistance cell and enlisted their aid in sending recurring messages back to Kriegsholm with status reports from deeper inside Astia. At first, the reports spoke of their efforts, and they lost some people as new vampires wandered in. But, they stabilized and grew proficient at resisting the undead threat, providing an open line of communication to Tulley, who still led a resistance cell in Astiana. Over the past year, however, every message had become the same. We are well. Hylda, the Kaldorite commander in Windbowl, grew suspicious of what the reports did not say, and eventually the information flowing from Tulley in Astiana stopped altogether. Hylda asked Arda to investigate the towns and restore the line of communication that had been broken.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 39