Phate

by Jason Alan

  The words struck a small pocket of shards.

  Soon thereafter, the asteroids trembled, flared, and broke from their paths and plunged down through the atmosphere!

  Syndreck’s voice went silent. He dropped back to his feet. The effort had nearly drained him, but his spell casting wasn’t quite complete.

  He closed his eyes and thrust his arms forward, his fingers jabbing and scratching as if at some unseen assailant. With his last ounce of energy, he tore at the dimensional walls that he had been steadily weakening. Huffing and panting, he slumped to the platform’s stone and crumpled beside his cauldron, his fingers continuing to jab. Black blood poured from his mouth and he could feel his consciousness slipping away.

  But before his awareness fully fled, he thought of the centurion, and these words escaped the chasm of his bloody mouth: “From the stars you have come, so shall the stars come for you…”

  Then he sank into unconsciousness, his face stamped with a smile.

  Meteors fell through the sky over the Continent Isle of Volcar. Those who witnessed this were stunned, for all prediction and prophecy had not prepared them for the visage of the falling shards.

  Prophets wept, seers sobbed, and mystics called out to the unhearing Gods. They supposed it was the beginning of the end of all history.

  They didn’t realize it was only a small taste of what was yet to come…

  …but we’ll get to that a little later…

  The shards swooped down and leveled over the Raging Sea. They flew so fast they scalded the sky they passed through and boiled the waters beneath them. Silken sails caught on fire, birds and whales burned in their wakes, and the world was reminded of its wounding a thousand years before.

  With Ulith Urn beckoning them like a dimly lit lantern in the distance, the shards approached the space Syndreck had been scraping with his spectral fingers. Weakened by his malicious meddling, the walls of the planes affixed to that space were ripe to rip.

  And rip they did.

  The group of shards shot through that weakened space with such force, their passage tore the sky open. The tearing emitted a sound so fierce, the thousands who heard it would never hear again. A hundred forks of black lightning sprang from the breach and spread out with an electrifying web that disintegrated the surrounding clouds. The lightning quickly dissipated, but the damage had been done.

  The sky looked as if it had been wounded. In essence, it had been. A red gash hung over the sea, bleeding thin wisps of an even redder light. So small, but so substantial, the door to the Dark Forever had been opened a crack.

  A billion demons went berserk with glee.

  On the Wicked Plains, Soular Centurion 7 paused.

  His silver-helmeted head tilted as he received alarming new data. Something had disrupted the normal flow of the space-time continuum, and his proximity sensors were pulsing with a beat whose intervals were rapidly decreasing.

  – OBJECTS APPROACHING: MULTIPLE SIGNALS INCOMING FROM OVER THE NEARBY SEA –

  They were large, these objects, and moving fast.

  Their trajectories were calculated, their destinations computed.

  They were coming right for him.

  He looked to the sky.

  Dozens of meteors came wailing at him like a fleet of suicidal starships.

  Morbidity is a disease that robs contentment from the mind.

  Moorgrey Thake

  Warlord Ruler of Serpentia, Prisoner of the Dark Forever

  Drinwor gazed at the sky.

  Though a night that was sure to be thick with darkness was close at hand, much of the sky was still alive with brilliant colors. Enhanced by the burning haze of Pyrlovos, the sunset blazing behind the companions was splashed with spectacular shades of scarlet and lilac. Overhead, the sparse cover of clouds could do little to conceal the reddish-orange glare of the fiery shards, whose brilliant belt now drew all the way back over the conflagrant horizon. In some small way, this dusk was reminiscent of brighter dawns from, oh, so long ago.

  But not all was so bright, for ahead the world was slipping into shadows, and directly below sprawled a rippling texture of blue. It was alive, this blue, and yet so deep and dark it was nearly black.

  It was a blue like that of the dusk elf’s eyes.

  This was the blue of a natural sea.

  Drinwor had never been this close to such waters. He had no idea how deep the abyss went, had no inkling of its power. He never would have imagined that its depths held the strength to crush the mightiest of metals, or madden the mettle of any mind. He didn’t realize that most races had gone farther into space than they’d delved into their own oceans.

  Now the Emperor of the Sky was to learn of the empires of the sea…

  Morning’s Hope flew down so fast and close to the waves, Drinwor thought that they might plummet beneath the surface. But the dragon leveled and straightened just before they would have submerged. She turned her head aside, her fluid voice carrying on the winds. “Know your neighbor, my Emperor. As much as you understand your own dominion, understand all those around you. Indeed, mark well the sea. Although the sky often disputes the sea, never will they war…until the end.”

  “You know what I’m going to ask,” Drinwor said with a little smile.

  “I do,” Morning’s Hope replied, “but I cannot answer, for these waters have no name. It was lost in history, lost like the race of beings who named it. It is now known simply as the nameless sea.”

  Fascinated, Drinwor looked all around.

  It was as if they maneuvered through an endless valley of undulating hills. And the air was thick, even thicker than the air that hovered over the trees. Drinwor inhaled deeply, and savored the salty richness in his nostrils. It was invigorating. He leaned forward, and said, “Morning’s Hope, I can feel that presence, the one that inhabits the sky and forest. It’s here, too.”

  “Yes, it is in all natural things,” she responded, “and some would say it is strongest in the sea.” She was going to comment further, but suddenly she lifted her head and blurted: “Ah, finally, we’ve come to the Hall of Voices!”

  Drinwor looked ahead.

  There, in the near distance, a great bank of mist was sliding across the water’s surface, slowly revealing a massive mountain island. Drinwor thought it odd he hadn’t noticed the mist or the island before. It was as if the whole scene had just materialized out of invisibility.

  “That was a long, perilous day,” said Vu Verian, “but we’ve made it!”

  “The day is not over,” Morigos noted, “and the night will be longer still…”

  Morning’s Hope flew forward, then swung out and arced around, making for the island’s far side.

  The whole island was a drab, dull white. It seemed to slink across the water like some decrepit, ancient iceberg. Drinwor thought the mountainous center resembled the giant skull of some ferocious beast, and he had the distinct impression that it was looking at him. He locked stares with it for some moments, but then averted his eyes down. All about the mountain’s base, foothills piled like burial mounds. The mounds gently flattened as they spread toward the shore, which was rimmed by a short beach.

  The most notable feature of the island, though, was the ivory castle that crowned the mountain’s peak. Like so many of Phate’s structures we’ve already encountered, the castle was impressively huge—but there were some features that made this particular castle quite unique. You see, the towers weren’t standing even close to straight. Well, that’s putting it mildly, for in fact they leaned at a staggeringly severe angle.

  Curious, Drinwor thought. He called ahead, “Morning’s Hope, it looks like…I don’t know, it looks like some titan tried to push the castle from the summit, then in frustration stopped long after it should have toppled over.”

  Morning’s Hope chortled, “That’s a good way of putting it. And that’s not even the most distinctive thing about it. Notice anything else?”

  Drinwor scanned the structure up and d
own its length, and as they got closer, he detected an even greater peculiarity. The castle was upside down, as if it had speared the mountain from the sky. The spires’ conical tops were buried like arrow points in the peak. Thousands of feet above, the castle’s base was lost in a heaving mass of violent storms that swirled the calmer clouds around them.

  “That is something indeed!” Drinwor said to Morning’s Hope. “Is it a sky elf stronghold?”

  “Yes,” Morning’s Hope responded. “It’s Shirian Shirion, loosed from its miles high perch and sent crashing to the bones.”

  “The bones?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  With the insect dragon and owl sticking to her flanks, Morning’s Hope dipped close to the shore. Although Drinwor had never seen a beach, he just knew something wasn’t right about this one. It was uneven, jagged, and when the waves met the shoreline, it rattled like a windswept field of prehistoric chimes. Rattled like…

  Bones.

  Drinwor gasped with realization. The entire island was made of bones, beach, mountain, and all.

  Vu Verian called out, “It’s the sight of yet another atrocity we must bear witness to on this day.”

  “Yes,” Morning’s Hope agreed, “it is another atrocity, another sad story of unrelenting violence, of incalculable loss…another sad story of war. So many dragons I knew were lost here, so many…” Her words trailed off, her head swaying from side to side as if she was trying to shake the memories from her mind.

  “I’d like to hear this story,” said Drinwor.

  Vu Verian cast Morning’s Hope a questioning look. The translucent dragon nodded and, with the beach of bones not fifty feet beneath them, they all slowed to a hover. Vu Verian nervously glanced to the fiery stars, then said, “I will tell you the story, Drinwor Fang, Emperor of the Sky. I will tell you, and then I will have to leave, for night is nearly upon us, and my spirit urges me to seek the safety of cloudform.”

  “No time for stories!” Morigos warned.

  “You’re afraid of the dark?” Vu Verian posed.

  The mage cackled. “You do have a sense of humor, after all, my sour sky elf friend.” He pointed his staff toward the sinking sun. “You all wish to see the Emperor safely into the hall? Better do so before nightfall, or else our adversaries on this eve will multiply. There are far greater shadows than the one that chased us across Volcar…”

  “You speak of Warloove, don’t you?” Morning’s Hope said plainly.

  Warloove.

  All went silent upon the voicing of that name.

  To Drinwor, it was as if she had cursed, and the name echoed through his mind. Warloove…Warloove… Now, on the brink of night, when the possibility of a confrontation loomed, the name stepped out from under the grieving gloom of his consciousness. Now, with its utterance, his inner demons of sorrow and anger were reawakened, and he felt a familiar little prickle of fear…

  Morning’s Hope asked the dark elf, “Do you sincerely believe that Warloove has already obtained the Gauntlets of Loathing Light?”

  Morigos nodded.

  Morning’s Hope frowned. “Even if that’s true, he’d have to wait ‘til after dusk, then fly all the way across the continent to catch us. We’ll be long gone before he tracks us here.”

  Grumbling, Morigos bowed his head and shook his staff in frustration. “Oh, you beings of light, sometimes your faith blinds you.” Then he lifted his head back up, said, “Warloove could fly to the moons and back in the blink of an eye. I tell you, we should get the boy into to the Hall of Voices at once.”

  Vu Verian glared at Morigos. “Need we always do exactly as you wish?”

  “We needn’t do anything,” the mage returned with a cough. “We can hover here and wait for the sun to explode if you’d like. I’d like nothing more, quite honestly.”

  Morning’s Hope rolled her eyes.

  Vu Verian’s feathers ruffled, and he lifted up over the little group. “We will do as the Emperor wishes!” (Morning’s Hope looked to Drinwor, and he met her glance with a shrug.) With wings fluttering, Vu Verian asked, “Drinwor, do you still want me to tell you the story?”

  “Well, yes, but if—”

  “Then I will tell it,” Vu Verian avowed, while casting Morigos a condescending glare.

  “You’re the Emperor,” Morigos chortled at Vu Verian.

  The sky elf mystic ignored the sarcastic comment. He turned his attention to the air before him and whispered a fluid, gentle song. Sparkling streams of blue sorcery fled his beak and gathered into a little cloud. The cloud brightened, and in its center a window of images came to life.

  Vu Verian had cast the Eyes of Time.

  And now his sorcerous song sounded like a lullaby as the incantation invited them all to look into the past. Drinwor’s mouth fell open like a captivated child’s, and oh, so silent and still he remained while the sorcery construed its story before him.

  And in less time than it takes to describe, this is what he saw…

  A thousand years ago, the war with the Dark Forever was raging. Swarms of dragons shot through the sky, spitting many shades of fire while a million clawing demons etched their hides with blood. Branches of black lightning cracked the clouds, spectral storms surged over the roiling seas, and a lashing wind filled with newly damned souls carried the sorcerous songs of battle. It was a hurricane of combat. And right here, over the nameless sea, where the fighting was the most furious…it happened.

  The sky elven battle castle of Shirian Shirion floated into the thick of the fray. It was a mighty fortress, called ‘The Bastion of Gods’ by those who’d fought alongside it. It soared to this very spot and bolstered the reeling dragons. A thousand warrior-wizards strong, the fortress was able to turn the tide of battle toward the side of light.

  But good fortune was not long to last, and a new host of demons flew to meet it. They were led by a cruel, taunting succubus, Zyllandria. She encircled Shirian Shirion, and one by one picked its wizards off the parapets with her enchanted whip. She teased them, laughed in the face of their pathetic volleys, thinking they’d swoon under her seductive powers. But lo, she underestimated their strength!

  The warrior-wizards of Shirian Shirion raised their collective voice and their songs converged into a sorcerous symphony. A thousand white fires conjoined as one, then sizzled through the sky and struck Zyllandria. Never expecting such a powerful reprisal, she was overwhelmed. Her head afire, her heart ablaze in her breast, she shrieked and fell lifeless, down, down into the sea. There, the waters broke open as if to claim her for themselves.

  But rising from the rent in the bloody waves was an abyssal force of demonic deep elves. Leading them into the sky was the newly proclaimed ruler of the oceans, Murdraniuss, he who was betrothed to Zyllandria herself. As he arose from the waves, Zyllandria fell into his arms. He was astonished, appalled. In a hundred thousand years he’d loved nothing but her. And now her burning body broke apart in his hands. She was gone. Enraged, he flung her remains into the murk of the blackened sea.

  Then time seemed to stop.

  All the dark stars awaited.

  Murdraniuss opened wide his maw and unleashed a cry of utter despair. His scream carried on and on and on, a guttural howl sired from the very pits of the Dark Forever! The sound pierced the soul like a spectral spear, killing all who heard it. His massive horde of demonic deep elves fell to pieces and the pieces piled about him. Above, thousands of dragons lost their spirits and fell from the sky. The warrior-wizards of Shirian Shirion felt their brains burst in their heads before they toppled from their towers, and the sorcery sustaining their fortress fled. Bereft of its magic, Shirian Shirion overturned and came wailing down, its spires plunging into the massive pile of dead.

  And still Murdraniuss screamed.

  Buried beneath an island of bodies, he screamed until the demonkind were vanquished from the world, screamed until the flesh from the bodies about him rotted to bone, until the substance of his own skin had been purged fro
m the primary universe and all that remained was a specter of his forgotten self.

  Eventually, finally, over a hundred years, his voice faded. But always does it echo…always. And in this place his stubborn specter still haunts. For within the mountain of bones lies the doorway to the only heavenly haven a good soul of Phate might find, the Hall of Voices. And as long as his spirit endures, as long as he is alone, he will admit no living soul.

  He is Murdraniuss, the Lord Banshee.

  And with that, the window to the Eyes of Time closed.

  The little cloud evaporated, its magic dispersing into sorcerous dust that settled on the bony beach and dimmed.

  “Well, I’ll give you this,” Morigos piped up, “for a snobbish albino bore, you tell quite a story!”

  Drinwor shook his head, wiped a strand of hair from his face. To his surprise, he also wiped away some tears. Vu Verian, who was staring at him, said, “Shed no tears for no demon, Drinwor Fang, son of he who was slain by such a beast. Shed no tears for Murdraniuss, the murderer of millions.”

  Drinwor dried his face, but his midnight blues still glittered with moisture, for he was unable to shake the image of Zyllandria falling dead into the arms of the forsaken, unable to keep his mind from imagining the unfathomable despair that followed. He could still hear the banshee’s cry echoing in his ears, and it filled him with sadness and fright.

  He said: “I didn’t think evil beings were capable of love.”

  Morning’s Hope looked to Drinwor as if with surprise. “It wasn’t true love, for Murdraniuss only cared about himself and his own desires. Zyllandria was to him but a slave. That is not true love. True love is a thing given more than it is a thing received. Murdraniuss had no heart for anyone but himself.”