by Jason Alan
“I delight in nothing,” Morigos returned, “I’m not a child, and I do not unleash sorcery just to amuse myself. If you recall, if you all recall, I said from the moment we came to this place that we should leave.”
Morning’s Hope spread her wings and coasted down. “Come, let us continue on to the hall.”
And with that, they followed her down through a sky vanquished of all evil spirits.
Vanquished of all…except one.
Drekklor the Shadow Demon had caught up to them. Now riding in their wake of winds, he slid silent and unseen behind them. Through his eyes the Dark Forever watched, and a billion demons growled with disdain.
The demons were disappointed, for the warriors of light had escaped Syndreck’s deadly illusion…
Invest half as much hope in your life as you’ve invested desperation and despair, and you may find your future to be even brighter than your past has been dark.
Morning’s Hope
Greater Translucent Dragon, Sworn Protector of Drinwor Fang
– SYNDRECK THE BROODING LOCKED ON TARGET –
The necromancer appeared as a glowing reddish blur in Soular Centurion 7’s cybernetic eyes. His soul seething with stolen power, Syndreck was either unaware he stood in glaring contrast to the dark swirl of sorcerous storms and spectral towers that surrounded him, or he simply didn’t care. There was no stealth, no deception to his doings. He made magic in full view of his enemy, in full view of the universe, for that matter.
“My challenge is open to any who dare oppose me!” he shouted toward the sky.
Such was the brashness of evil.
Soular Centurion 7 strode slowly, purposefully forward.
Haunted winds swept low over the Wicked Plains, bending what few reeds still dared to protrude out of ground otherwise bereft of life. Raspy voices filled the air. They whispered to the warrior from the stars, whispered things like death and torture, failure and horror…but it had absolutely no effect on him. He was part ghost himself, and it would be he who did the haunting here. Had he possessed any sense of humor, he might have laughed at the crude attempt to rattle his will. Now it merely emboldened his purpose.
Suddenly, Syndreck’s image brightened and his sorcerous singing arose. The song carried forth from the towers like a cold winter’s gale, and took visible form. A bluish blanket of magic spread far and wide, then settled down, soaking all the plains. The ground then trembled and churned. A rumble like that of an oncoming army’s arose.
Soular Centurion 7 slowed.
All the land before him seemed to be quaking now.
The centurion stopped…
…and for miles around, the plains split apart with a booming crackle. Fissures exhausted their stinking breath into the air. Black hills pushed upward, and crevices deepened between them, sprinkling the upper caverns of Kroon with dirt. The slivered plains overturned. Old bones were exposed, and the curiosity of the lingering carrion crows was aroused.
Then Syndreck’s song ended as suddenly as it had begun. The rumbling stopped, the wind calmed, and the dust of ruin settled down. For a moment there was stillness, an eerie soundlessness…
…until the clattering began.
After a night that had lasted a thousand years, dawn was finally breaking on the dead. Syndreck’s necromantic song had awakened the great graveyard of the Wicked Plains. Corpses stirred. Eyes broke open. Bloodless hearts began to beat! Tortured moans filtered up through the ground like a miserable chorus, a tormented, confused sound that grew louder and louder and louder.
And then the ravenous dead arose.
“Yes, yes!” Syndreck screamed.
You can imagine, my reader, how excited this made the necromancer?! The rising corpses lifted his spirits, so to speak. The dead thrust their hands through the dirt, their decayed, wriggling fingers grasping at roots, weeds, reeds or stones—whatever they could find to pull their bodies from their disturbed graves. They climbed up from miles around, from every crevice in the plains, hundreds of thousands of them, then hundreds of thousands more. They clambered over one another, the broken corpses of elves and demons and men, the casualties of war come to be victims again.
All told, they were a million strong, a blasphemous army stolen from a different age!
Some were wholly fleshed, while others were completely skeletal. Some had no heads. Some had no arms. Some were mangled beyond being recognizable as anything that had ever lived at all. Limbs crawled beside them and severed fingers inched through the dirt like worms. Eyes rolled about and swollen tongues wagged with no words. Not a shred of remains was wasted. Syndreck’s necromantic song had given life to every scrap, scrape, and ounce of rotted flesh.
Although the corpses had no wit about them, they were infused with some dull sense of aggression. It was a nagging desire to hit, to kill, and, if they were lucky, to eat. For a short time, they stumbled about in confusion, looking blankly at one another. But then Syndreck commanded their heads to turn toward the gleaming galactic guardian.
“Ah, look there, you dimwitted dead! There lies satisfaction to end all desire!” said Syndreck.
Now, with limbs hanging, flesh dripping, and bones clattering, the corpses came staggering and stumbling toward the centurion.
– INTRUDERS APPROACHING –
Soular Centurion 7’s defenses went on alert.
A row of tiny red lights illuminated on his chest-plate, and the gold-flecked fluid racing through his exterior veins accelerated, thus granting him more energy. A small panel on his armored leg-covering opened. He reached into the compartment, unclasped an object from a small clip, and brought it to bear.
Simple, smooth, and silver, it was the hilt of his cosmic sword. It was relatively small, just long enough to be held in both hands. A transparent circular hand guard was set atop it, with a barely discernible crease across the center. By all appearances, it didn’t appear to be a weapon of extraordinary potency. But when the centurion flicked the little switch near the pommel, a massive, double-edged plane of pointed energy sizzled forth. Crafted from the compacted matter of a black hole, the blade was a sliver of the most hardened space. A supernova-like swirl of purple vapor wrapped its edges, and within twinkled a thousand tiny stars.
Once fully extended, the blade’s sizzle lowered to a hum. It was a strange sound, more like a voice, like a single solemn monk perpetually drawing out a note so low, it rode just on the fringe of mortal perception.
Here was a sword as alien as its owner.
Here was a power that had destroyed stars and Gods.
Here was the Sword of Molecular Destruction.
Whatever this blade touched disintegrated into nothingness. Whatever it passed through completely disappeared. And now upon the Wicked Plains it was unleashed like some hellish cosmic beast!
On came the miles wide mass of undead slaves. Oddly, they seemed encouraged by the sight of the centurion’s sword. Snarling, screaming, and flexing their serrated claws, they picked up their pace, broke into a trot. The first wave lunged forward, ready to rip out whatever heart lay in that silver chest!
Soular Centurion 7’s servos whined as he raised high his sword and literally flew into action. He leaped a hundred feet into the sky, a silver flash against the fading traces of blue, then soared down, sweeping his starsword across the fouled fields faster than Syndreck’s disbelieving eyes could perceive. Five hundred undead were instantaneously vaporized. What little dust of them remained settled like fertilizer upon the plains.
But more undead poured into their place.
Once again, Soular Centurion 7 bounded into the air.
And again, he came down fast, like a dragon setting flame to a keep, the Sword of Molecular Destruction arcing over and slashing through all before it. Hundreds more undead disappeared in a blinding black flash. Then the centurion leaped from side to side, his arms whipping faster than a sorcerous wind. Thousands more were slashed into nonbeing.
Yet still they came—thousands, then t
ens of thousands, heedless of their own demise. All were destroyed, the centurion twirling like a cosmic tornado as he eradicated his enemies from the fields!
Thus, the day drew on.
As the Shards of Zyrinthia stretched around the planet, as the sky lost its blue and the lands were once again clouded over, as the keeper of the Sunsword Surassis and his companions fended off their own undead, Soular Centurion 7 battled on.
“How can this be?” Syndreck the Brooding said as he peered into the Cauldron of Carcass Control. “What power holds this being?”
Throughout the day, he had watched the battle out of the corner of his eye, all-the-while preparing his most important incantations. The centurion had indeed turned out to be quite a distraction! Syndreck had presumed his sea of insensate warriors would overwhelm this one, mighty as he may be. But presumption had proven to be as foolish as presumption often is.
Now he gazed deeper into his cauldron and looked right into Soular Centurion 7’s eyes. There was no fear in them, no hesitance, no doubt. No, those eyes held the straightforward intent of the dead that marched against him. Those eyes were purposeful to a fault, as emotionless as a spider’s.
Syndreck nodded, whispering, “So, I have underestimated you. Well, no more…” He stepped from the cauldron, threw back his head and screamed the shrillest of sorcerous songs.
Arcane anger came ripping over the Wicked Plains.
The undead masses were instilled with heightened savagery, their limbs imbued with unholy strength. Their incessant snarls elevated to roars, they charged the centurion like starving lions.
It did not matter.
As the undead ramped up their savagery, so, too, did Soular Centurion 7.
The warrior from the stars fought like a cornered beast on fire. He whipped the Sword of Molecular Destruction around so hard it created a vortex. (Ironically, the vortex’s creation nearly tore open the very dimensional walls Syndreck was currently trying to break through.) The air around the centurion swirled inward, and the surrounding undead were pulled over the ground, right into his sword’s plane. Their torsos were sliced in half before what was left was sucked into the depths of the black hole blade.
The sword’s hum heightened to a wail. The vortex intensified into a violent maelstrom. Solar winds gusted all over the Wicked Plains. The remaining corpses uplifted, thousands of bodies whipping around the centurion like tattered rags. There were screams and moans and curses, limbs and legs and cosmic lightning! Then everything was pulled into the storm’s center, spiraling down, down, down into the blade’s tip. The galactic warrior held his hands high over his head, and the Sword of Molecular Destruction sucked the atoms from the last of the undead!
It was done.
The undead were gone.
The maelstrom dissipated, its winds following the bodies into the blade with a roaring whoosh. The centurion flipped the little switch near the pommel, and the blade disappeared.
But not all had been defeated…
A lone eye rolled up to Soular Centurion 7. Still instilled with arcane aggression, it bobbled at his boots. He lifted his foot and squashed it. Now the Wicked Plains were purged.
The one had defeated a million.
And slowly, purposefully, the centurion of the stars strode closer to Ulith Urn.
It is difficult to climb a mountain when one carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Sharl Lindray
Queen of the Spirit Elves
Morning’s Hope flew down through a layer of sorcerous storms. She descended rapidly, banking this way and that, with Fleeting Shadow buzzing behind her and the Great White Owl just off her left flank. Arcs of emerald lightning leaped over them, wind whistled in their ears, and rain nipped them from all sides. It was as if Phate was reminding them that the earlier day’s brilliance was an aberration, and the skies would always belong to the storms.
Let it rain, Drinwor thought, for these rainstorms are much preferable to the storm of apparitions that just tried to kill us.
Now that the encounter was over, he realized just how much it had shaken him. He tried not to think about it, but alas, how could our sensitive Drinwor not? When he scrutinized the possibilities if just one of those haunted beings had gotten to him…well…he realized he could have died. But such imperilment was a part of his life now, and he’d have to get used to it; he’d have to thicken his skin and suppress his overly contemplative mind. He knew if he constantly dwelled on his fear, he would be tentative in the face of confrontation, thus endangering himself, thus endangering them all. Yes, for everyone’s sake, he must learn to be mentally strong.
He was Drinwor Fang, Emperor of the Sky, Son and Savior of the Stars…
The companions broke through the bottom of the storms and continued eastward. The rain was steady but light, the world before them drained of color, as if it had been sheathed in a dreary grey sheet.
Drinwor, still grappling with his thoughts, shivering in a chill wind, leaned forward and called out, “Morning’s Hope?”
“My Lord?”
“Are you all right?”
The Greater Translucent Dragon smiled sympathetically, for she understood—the boy was reaching out for comfort.
She tilted her head slightly aside, said: “I’m fine, Drinwor, we are fine.”
“Morning’s Hope?”
She waited for the question…
“Back there, should I have done something more? I mean, as Emperor, should I have led us? I just wasn’t certain…”
Morning’s Hope looked forward, checked her bearings, then swung her head back around. “All our lives we learn Drinwor, from our first steps to our last flight. You can do nothing more than what you know to do from your experiences. In time, you’ll be able to lead us when such situations arise.”
Drinwor looked away, fixed his eyes on the distant gloom of dark clouds. “Those things wanted to kill us. I’m honestly not certain what I should have done.”
“Do not dwell on what happened.” The translucent huffed, rolled her eyes. “It was more my fault than anyone else’s. I made the initial decision to stay.”
Drinwor didn’t seem to hear her. He mumbled, “If I do something wrong, or command someone to do something and they get hurt, or—”
“My Emperor, listen to me,” Morning’s Hope interjected, her commanding tone snapping him out of his contemplation, demanding his full attention. “Do not worry about such things. You are the keeper and protector of the Sunsword Surassis and, for now, that is burden enough.”
Drinwor shook his head, and brought his gaze back to her. “I just hope that when the time comes, I make the right decisions.”
“You will.” Her voice softened. “Remember, listen to your heart and trust the good within you. You will learn to make good decisions. Have you ever before encountered a sky elf graveyard?”
“Well, no.”
“Well, now you have. What will you do should you see such clouds again?”
“Command you to fly far away from them?”
Morning’s Hope laughed. “There, you see, you are becoming a wise Emperor!”
Drinwor laughed, too, then quickly quieted down. He grasped his glowing sword charm, looked at it, and asked, “Why did you want to linger with the dead clouds?”
Morning’s Hope didn’t answer immediately, but when she did, she said, “I was fairly certain that place was as Morigos claimed: cursed. But if there was even the slightest possibility that it wasn’t, I didn’t want to deny Vu Verian the chance to honor his people. He’s been lonely for so long. I…” She glanced to the sky elf owl, made sure he hadn’t heard her. Then she sighed, quietly said, “Sometimes circumstances dictate that you knowingly make a wrong decision. But that is something we will talk about later.” And then she said nothing more.
Drinwor sat back and mulled over his dragon’s words, the continent isle flowing by beneath them.
The afternoon aged.
By the time they crossed into east
ern Volcar, the sun had fallen far behind them. Its rays, still filtering through the Shards of Zyrinthia, cast a flickering pall across all the wilted lands. Shadows flourished both in the air and on the ground. Some were natural…and some were not.
There was so much to see, so much to take in. As Morning’s Hope continued to descend, Drinwor was once again captivated by the myriad features of Phate.
I shall do my best to describe even just a fraction of what he saw…
They passed high over the Lion Lands of Irixx Een, a realm of hundred-foot tall silver reeds whose shining city of platinum pillars was ruled by an undead, lion-like beast. Amongst the reeds Drinwor caught glimpses of the gilded backs of some giant creatures, which crept throughout the city. The companions passed over this place quickly, and once having flown beyond its borders, they heard from behind them a roar of such frightening, domineering might, they were one and all instilled with the will to never return.
None of them ever did.
Morning’s Hope carried on with what appeared to be a predetermined path, such was the confidence with which she now flew. She led them far from Irixx Een, then soared through Scimiton, an invisible forest of birches that stood thousands of feet tall. The great boughs supported a forsaken city of invisible elves who had disappeared from existence not long after they had disappeared from sight.
Morigos snickered as they flew through the great trees.
Drinwor was never aware of why.
On they went, ever eastward.
After a time, they came down even closer to the ground and flew over Cygorgia, a rocky plateau that was dotted with the ancient ruins of a cyclops warlord’s warrior state. (Time had proven to be an adversary even a military nation couldn’t defeat.) Broken ebony stones were strewn in great circles, as if some god had flattened the realm with his palm, then smeared the remains. Rivers, once rushing with liquid gold, were now dull and leaden, slogging through cracks and crevices that lined the ruins like wrinkles on an ancient face. Groves of withered trees were scattered about, their sparse, limp leaves hanging with cloudy broken crystal. Abandoned by its inhabitants, abandoned by nature itself, all the glimmer of the land was gone. And it was deathly quiet. The wind held no whispers, for even Cygorgia’s ghosts had long fled.