Darkblade Guardian

by Andy Peloquin

  Humans labored beside the Serenii as Enarium continued to grow. Years passed in the span of a few seconds, and the city expanded outward.

  “But as we built, we soon discovered that our power would not suffice to close the way to the Devourer. We twelve alone would fail. In vain, we entreated our brethren to join us, but they turned a deaf ear as they fled. We turned to the Abiarazi, the ones we had saved, only to discover they had been tainted by the touch of the Devourer.”

  The scene flashed back to the warring demons and narrowed in on them. Their eyes bore the same inky blackness the Hunter had glimpsed through the rift.

  “The seeds of chaos had taken root in their minds and souls.” Kharna’s voice took on a sorrowful note. “The Devourer had twisted, inflamed, and tainted their passions and desires. Their physical prowess far surpassed ours, and they used weapons of war where we sought peace and reasonable discourse. Many of my brethren fell to their cruelty and bloodlust. We twelve knew that we could not save the world from the Devourer and fight the Abiarazi at the same time. Our only choice was to find a way to win the war and use their power—power that, in many ways, rivaled our own—to defeat the Devourer. Thus, we built Khar’nath.”

  The Hunter hung in the air high above Enarium, staring down at the massive crater he knew as Khar’nath. However, it was empty, without the shelters and structures, without the prisoners. Simply a deep pit with walls lined with glowing red crystals.

  “We could not fight them physically, yet the powers we wielded—powers you humans call ‘magick’—gave us an advantage they could not defeat. They relied on the strength of their arms and the passions burning within them, and we turned those things against them.”

  A single Serenii wielding a staff topped with red-glowing crystals faced a horde of Abiarazi. The grey-skinned creature made no move as the demons raced toward him, but just before they fell upon him, his staff flared blindingly bright. The demons shrieked and tried to retreat, but too late. The crystals drained their strength, and with it their sanity. The Abiarazi grew more bestial, more savage, their primitive urges amplified until they were the mindless monsters the Hunter had encountered outside Enarium.

  “The Abiarazi learned to be wary of direct confrontation, so they sought a new way to battle. Instead of fighting us themselves, they enslaved or conscripted humans to fight beside them. Humans that shared the lust for battle and blood, the desire for conquest and wealth.”

  Men in crude hide armor and carrying weapons of wood, iron, and stone marched before the Abiarazi. A wild light shone in their eyes, and they raced toward the field of battle, as eager for blood as the demonic masters they followed.

  “We had no desire to harm those the Creators had entrusted into our care, but we could not let them destroy what we had built—built out of a desire to save them. We sought aid from the humans we had brought into our cities, those we had sheltered and with whom we shared the knowledge we had gained.”

  The Hunter watched as two Serenii spoke to a gathering of primitive men and women. The people seemed in awe of them, as if they were…

  “Gods, they called us,” Kharna continued. “They revered us, worshipped us, and made sacrifices to us. We did not ask lightly, yet logic dictated that we required their aid. Thus, man warred against man. Bloodshed and death held Einan in a grip we could not break.”

  The Serenii-led armies marched toward the combined forces of Abiarazi and humans. They carried swords, spears, and shields of steel, bronze, and metals the Hunter had never seen before. Some carried weapons that resembled the Scorchslayers, weapons that harnessed the power of Einan itself against the enemy. The Abiarazi commanded from the rear and the Serenii watched from their high towers as men fought men, and rivers of human blood stained the face of the world.

  “We lent mankind what aid we could, yet we had our primary concern: to defeat the Devourer. As we built Enarium, we came to understand the importance of the humans. We needed them to win not only the war against the Abiarazi, but against the Devourer as well. We were but twelve, yet humans numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Though their lives were short, the force of their emotions caused them to burn far brighter than any beast or creature on Einan. The Abiarazi’s passions had led them to breed with the humans, both to satiate their lusts and in a desire to populate their ranks with more soldiers to fight for them. We did the same, for it was the logical choice. Though human blood diluted our own, we believed the proliferation of mankind could multiply our power sufficiently to defeat the Devourer.”

  The battles continued to rage, drawing closer and closer to the mountains. The human armies of the Serenii retreated and the forces of the Abiarazi advanced.

  “Then came the moment when we could delay no longer. The Er’hato Tashat approached, and with it, the power of our sun would be amplified a thousandfold. The time had come for us to make the sacrifice for which we had prepared.”

  The sky turned a bright red, painting the world a deep crimson. The human armies ceased their war in fear of what was happening. They fell to their knees and beseeched their gods—Abiarazi and Serenii—to protect them.

  “Our offspring, those you call Elivasti, were far too few to turn the tide. Thus, we had no choice but to use the Abiarazi and their offspring to aid us against the Devourer.”

  The Abiarazi suddenly froze where they stood, their eyes going blank, as if their minds had been turned to ash. The human armies fled in terror, but the demons could not move. At the command of some invisible force, they moved in unison toward the open gates of Enarium. Their offspring, the Bucelarii, strode beside them as they shuffled through the city and descended into Khar’nath.

  “Deneen, the one you call the Swordsman, was the strongest of us, with the ability to harness the forces of nature to shape this world to his will. With his death, it fell to me to serve as the shield against the Devourer.”

  The Hunter’s jaw dropped as his vision changed and he stood in the room beneath the Illumina. The creature he knew as Kharna lay on an altar made of a single black stone. His arms were crossed over his chest, his expression resigned yet resolute. Eleven figures stood around his altar, their too-long, multi-jointed fingers moving with unhurried grace as they tethered him to the same flexible, transparent tubes from the Chambers of Sustenance.

  “Direct confrontation with the Devourer would prove fatal, but if we could harness the power of Enarium, our power, and that of the Abiarazi against the rift, there was a chance we could seal it against the Devourer of Worlds.”

  The Hunter watched as the eleven Serenii connected Kharna to the tubes, and Kharna’s eyes met his before they closed. Sorrow burned within those impossibly violet eyes, and the force of that emotion sent a shiver down the Hunter’s spine. Then Kharna closed his eyes and the black gemstone lid was closed. Runes glowed brilliant azure all around the black stone room, so bright the Hunter had to shield his face. When the light faded, the obsidian altar lowered into an opening in the floor. Stone closed over the silent, still body of the Serenii and the floor sealed itself above him until it was as flat and featureless as the rest of the room.

  “But I was not the only one to make the sacrifice that day.”

  The Hunter found himself following the eleven remaining Serenii climbing the stairs to the top of the Illumina, where eleven Chambers of Sustenance waited. Ten of the stately, grey-skinned figures watched as the eleventh, one who appeared somehow older than the rest of the timeless creatures, traced glowing runes in the air.

  Crimson light filled the air to the east, and the Hunter felt a surge of power flooding from Khar’nath. He watched in horror as lightning arced throughout the entire Pit, a thousand white-hot threads of power crackling between the multitude of crystals protruding from the wall. It was into this raging inferno of energy that the entranced Abiarazi and their offspring marched.

  Horror froze the blood in the Hunter’s veins. He was down there, somewhere, beside Taiana. He, like the rest of his kind, marched to their
deaths.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Yet he hadn’t died. Something had stopped the Bucelarii from dying that night.

  As if Kharna read his thoughts—he very likely had, given that the Hunter was somehow in the god’s vision—the Serenii’s ageless, echoing voice continued.

  “My brothers sacrificed themselves that day. Their power flowed through me, amplified by the power of the Er’hato Tashat and Khar’nath to seal the rift against the Devourer.”

  The eleventh Serenii strode toward a low stone altar covered with glowing blue runes and gemstones, inserted the two halves of the Swordsman’s necklace into two slots, and twisted both in unison. The Keeps around Enarium flared to life and, beyond the outer rim of the city, the red crystal-lined walls of Khar’nath glowed with blinding brilliance. Power streamed from the floor of the towertop room, surging toward the rift into chaos. The light of the magick pushed back against the crack, sealing it slowly closed like two sheets of metal forged by an invisible hammer.

  “Yet it was not enough.” A note of sorrow echoed in Kharna’s voice. “The rift could not be sealed. Even as my father, the one you call the Master, prepared to join us in our eternal struggle, the humans of Enarium came to him. They offered their aid once again, to give of their lives to seal the rift. They, too, knew the danger they faced from the Devourer of Worlds.”

  Armor-clad humans climbed the steps of the tower to the upper room to speak to the grey-skinned Serenii in front of the altar.

  “My father, in his wisdom, sealed a bargain with the humans—both the Elivasti, those who shared our blood, and those we had taken into our cities. Instead of using all the energy we’d gathered into Enarium in one blast that might not suffice to seal the rift, we would instead channel it into stabilizing and preventing the rift from expanding. We would shield the world with our lives, until the day they could add their power to ours.” Kharna thrust a long, many-jointed finger toward Khar’nath. “By our calculation, the power of one million human souls added to that of the Abiarazi and our own would be enough.”

  The Hunter let out a long, slow breath. His mind boggled at the thought of a million people—that was more than the populations of all of southern Einan combined. Yet a million people dying all at once in that Pit? A shudder ran down his spine.

  Something Kharna said gave him pause. “Wait, you said only the human, Abiarazi, and Serenii lives. What about the Bucelarii?”

  According to the legends of the War of Gods, Kharna had been the one to plead with the other gods to save the Bucelarii from death. Many details of the legends had been true—the Swordsman’s death, the defeat of the demons by the Serenii “gods”, and more—albeit twisted by the passage of time. Was this another aspect that held a grain of truth?

  “Did you truly save us?” the Hunter asked, fixing the god with a hard look.

  “Yes.” Kharna spoke in the Hunter’s head. “My father was the one to speak to you, but it was I who determined the Bucelarii were best-suited to aiding our offspring, the Elivasti, in the quest to save the world.”

  A memory flashed before the Hunter’s eyes, yet it was more than a memory. He was there, reliving the experience as if it happened to him in that moment and not thousands of years before.

  A voice, deeper than the ocean and wider than the empty sky, rumbled through his thoughts, but he could not understand the words. Fear tinged its words—what could make a being of such immense power fear so?

  The knowledge of what he had to do sat like a mountain on his shoulders, but he had no choice but to bear the burden. He and all those of his kind. They alone could do what needed to be done. They alone could save mankind.

  The words crystallized. “THE DEVOURER OF WORLDS COMES.”

  The Hunter snapped out of the vivid memory with a gasp, and he found his heart hammering as he struggled to digest the information. “Why?” he managed to spit out after a long moment.

  “Humans have short lives and shorter memories,” Kharna replied simply. “Being the emotional creatures they are, we believed they had struck the bargain out of fear for their lives and their desire to serve their ‘gods’. We could not trust the fate of this world into their hands. We needed those who could do what needed to be done.”

  Acid surged in the Hunter’s throat. “Us.”

  “You slaughtered each other in the name of your forefathers.” Kharna’s voice held no trace of emotion. “You showed yourselves willing to do whatever was needed to survive, at any cost. Coupled with your enhanced physiology and the ruthlessness you’d inherited from your Abiarazi ancestors, that sort of logic made you the ideal choice.”

  The Hunter’s jaw dropped. This revelation about the Bucelarii hit him harder than anything he’d learned thus far.

  “To our offspring, we entrusted the secrets of Enarium and the blood with which to activate the power stored here. To you, we entrusted the Im’tasi stones that would aid you in your quest.”

  Stones like the one set in Soulhunger’s pommel. Back in Voramis, the First of the Bloody Hand had told him the gemstones were connected to Kharna, would feed him. Yet to hear it from the god’s own lips sent a shudder of revulsion down his spine.

  A long, straight-edged sword with a glowing gemstone set into its hilt rippled into existence before Kharna’s fingers. “Each of these weapons contained a piece of the Im’tasi that linked me to the power gathered in Khar’nath. The lives claimed are my sustenance in my struggle.” Kharna’s eyes pierced to the core of the Hunter’s being. “With each death, you have strengthened me in the fight against the Devourer of Worlds.”

  The Hunter stared at the blade hovering above the god’s hand. He’d wrestled with guilt about killing, fearing he would be the one to hasten the end of the world by freeing Kharna from his eternal prison. He’d known he was feeding the god, yet this discovery…it changed everything.

  “Before my battle with the Devourer weakened me too greatly, I reached out to each Bucelarii and spoke to them. I told them what was needed of them, showed them the logic of what I asked. I knew I placed a great burden upon their shoulders, yet they agreed. They, too, had inherited the emotions of the humans whose blood flowed through their veins. Many of them were burdened by the knowledge of what they had done in the name of survival and were willing to accept what was asked of them. They sought to atone for the suffering they had caused. And so, using the knowledge of my brother Irroth, my father implanted in your minds a single thought, a subconscious imperative that drives all of your actions.”

  “What…was it?” The Hunter found himself afraid to know the answer.

  “To feed me, and to return to Enarium.”

  The words were spoken in such a plain, matter-of-fact tone, yet to the Hunter, they held an enormous weight.

  All his life, he’d been aware of something in the back of his mind. He’d heard Soulhunger pounding in his head, until the dagger began to speak like a physical voice. The voice he’d called his inner demon had manifested in Voramis, yet it had driven him onward in his quest to find answers—answers it knew he would only find in Enarium. Both voices had grown louder and more insistent the closer he drew to his ultimate destination. They had been terrified when the Illusionist Cleric threatened to erase his memories—memories that had set him down the path toward the Lost City and Kharna.

  Realization hit him with the force of a crashing waterfall. He’d wondered why the voices—dagger and demon both—had gone silent since his arrival in Enarium. Could the voices have been this “subconscious imperative” of which Kharna spoke?

  It seemed almost too impossible to even consider, yet he forced himself to evaluate it. He’d seen street hypnotists manipulating people’s minds to make them bark like dogs or cluck like chickens. If the Illusionist Clerics had powers like that, including the power to erase memories, was it so far-fetched to imagine that the Illusionist himself could do something as simple as implanting a command?

  And what of the voices? They had seemed so real, som
ehow separate from his consciousness. He had found a way to conceal his thoughts from the demon and erect a mental wall to hold it at bay. Yet what if he’d never had the voice of his demonic ancestor talking into his head? What if his mind had simply translated the command into a voice that drove him to kill, to feed Kharna? The voices of Soulhunger and his inner demon could have been his mind’s way of putting the Serenii’s command into something he could understand—like the dreams of a feverish man or the hallucinations of a Bonedust addict.

  “Then why did the Illusionist Clerics wipe our minds and erase the knowledge of what we had agreed to do?” the Hunter asked in a quiet voice. “Why did the Cambionari, the ones supposed to serve you, hunt us down and kill us?”

  “That was one outcome we did not foresee.” Kharna said, with a hint of sorrow in his voice. “Their memories were shorter than we imagined. The minds of men were flawed, prone to loss. With the passage of time and generations, the truths of the Devourer and the power of Enarium were lost to the humans. But the memories of the suffering and death during what they called the War of Gods remained. They saw the Bucelarii as the cause of their pain, and thus sought vengeance.”

  “If you knew what was happening, why didn’t you stop it?” Once again, the familiar anger sparked in the Hunter’s chest. Everything he’d endured, and Taiana and all the other Bucelarii along with him, had been caused by the Abiarazi, but now it turned out the Serenii bore the burden of blame as well. “If, as you said, we’re working for you, why did you allow the humans to hunt us?”

  “Allow?” Confusion showed in the Serenii’s face. “You speak of us as if we are gods, that we permitted this evil to happen. For millennia, your kind has asked that question. We are not the Creators of this world. We do not control the humans. Once, we influenced and guided, perhaps, yet we were never the ‘gods’ they believed us to be. I do not guide the actions of mankind—mankind alone bears the burden for that. Only humans can claim responsibility for the evil they cause, as well as the good.”