Malcor's Story

by Eric K. Barnum

  “No my king. I saw the sword in my dreams and crafted it. I have never seen your blade until now. At the forge, working this blade, I always knew what I had to do, and have done it. It is a work in progress.”

  "Your father or master perhaps?"

  Ishan stepped forward and bowed low, "My Dar, my son enters trances and does this work as if possessed. He collapses when done." The king nodded and Ishan stepped back.

  Rojo presented his sword, “Attack my sword Twilight Fell. Show me what the Queen instructed you to build into your un-named blade.” When R’Dar Tor had fallen, Malcor had watched his dreams of knighthood die. It seemed beyond belief that he should still be standing, let alone talking with the King. Attack the KING?! He dared not. “Go on - Attack. I order you.” The king’s voice, which had been jovial by comparison, went back to that very dangerous snake-like whisper. Malcor swallowed. No backing down now.

  Mal raised his blade and for the first time since its making, he prayed to the Queen and said Her Words as he heard them in his heart, “Let that which is created, come undone.” As he spoke, he heard the Queen’s voice moving as if he had lost control of his voice. The words sounded not like his own voice, but nonetheless, his. His sword pulsed in his hands suddenly feeling squishy like flesh but hard at the same time like a flexed muscle.

  His sword had a name and Mal had heard it moving through him during those lost fugues at the forge. His pulse quickened and Malcor felt it was time. Though hardly a moment had passed, his perception ripped between the real world of the living and the ethereal realm on the banks of the River of Time. The King appeared split in half with his more glorious self apparent on the shores of the River. His real self, though it did not lack for glory, seethed with frightful power.

  Malcor struck out with his sword, faster than he could believe, faster than he had ever wielded a blade or swung a hammer. Equally fast, the King lowered Twilight Fell and summoned a sword of lesser craft in its place. Malcor’s sword bit into the edge of that lesser sword. In the realm of the River, Malcor saw this occur as if in slow motion knowing the King’s intent to switch and the wide-eyed watching as small crackles of lightning ate away from that crack into the king’s blade. A concussive blast rippled the river in circles around them.

  All around, dragon wings dropped to protect the villagers and onlookers. In the real world, there was a fraction of a second and the King’s blade’s magic exploded in an outbursting of fire, energy, and hot color. It washed over and throughout the courtyard vanishing up into the air along the ramps of leather wings. The king’s sword cracked at the small chip and then shattered across its length snapping the blade in half along its length. What remained, bereft of magic, was still a well-made piece of sword art but magic-less and shattered.

  The dragons, the clerics, the knights all watched stoically as the blast’s shockwave blew out over them. The villagers in the courtyard took a longer time re-adjusting their eyes from the bright explosion to the now near-dark night. “A well-made sword Malcor. Perhaps R’Dar Tor spoke the truth and you are a prodigy who should stay at a forge. Your blade has ripped, permanently it seems, the magic from my own. Though not Twilight Fell, that blade,” he said kicking at the broken tip, “was made by a powerful trio of mages and highly skilled craftsmen. It is truly remarkable that your unnamed sword did this. You’re nineteen? What do you want out of this Ceremony?”

  Malcor nodded yes to his age and then a thought struck him. Straightening his back and standing in firm imitation of the knight’s saluting, Malcor cleared his throat and asked, “My king, more than anything, I want to be a knight, no a paladin. I do not know about Destiny, but there is something I am supposed to do today. I have a gift I was supposed to give to you. But now I feel there is a different recipient for it, a black dragon. I know this in my heart and must.” His satchel holding the dragon statuette felt solid and weighty. He removed the dragon statue as he said "black dragon". He noted Dar Shara's interest.

  The king raised his eyebrow and, sweeping a hand around the area, said, “There are more than a few Dragons here, but none are black dragons.” The Temple classified dragons by their breath weapon and then as a color. Black Dragons breathed acid instead of fire. All of the dragons here were Red, or fire-breathers. A dragon could actually be any color, but until very aged or until they used their breath weapons, a human could not tell what “type” of a dragon they faced. “Are you sure this is your destiny? Be careful of what you “want” versus what is actually your path. May I?” He took the statue from Malcor and examined it even as Shara walked up and touched it lightly.

  That voice came to him again, the female roaring voice now softer and more sensual, the one that had commanded him to kill R’Dar Tor whispered in his ear and he felt it in his heart. Yes, this is what you must do my young dragon. Call out for Dar Kell, the Black Dragon. Stand strong. Be proud. He is your father. Of course there is yet another you might call out to, but be warned for I am a jealous god. The whisper almost stole Mal’s resolve if not for how strong hearing it made him feel. Dar Kell – my father? The voice whispered it but still, Dar Kell – THE high priest from the capitol's greatest temple? It could not be possible, yet the whisper made him know its truth.

  Strengthened by the voice, Malcor answered the king, “I am sure My King. I must give this gift to my fa… – Dar Kell. The Black Dragon! He is here.” Malcor looked around expectantly but not before taking note of the quickly hidden smile exchanged between Dar Shara and the King. While most Klennans had heard of Dar Kell – who had not after all? – just few knew that he stood as the highest ranking member of the Temple, and its first male priest. And he had a deadly reputation. The voice whispered to him again, You do well to not declare him your father. Do not grow overly fond of him as a father. There is no love and no father for you there. I am pleased by your exercise of wisdom in face of great revelation.

  Chapter Four – The Father's Trial

  Thirty years before Malcor faced Tor in Klenna, a young paladin stood at the Temple At Morbatten’s altars, a priestess by his side. R’Dar Kell, heroic knight of Tania, asked his request for marriage to a young priestess of powerful and noble birth. Though Marshella had not yet attained lofty rank, she and Kell had found themselves lost in love while serving in one of the never-ending Bloodstone Wars. Though a priestess always could take any lover she chose and to birth any child with any man she deemed suitable – even paladins, paladins themselves were not allowed to exit their chastity vows except if they left the knighthood, or through retirement. As a young knight and of noble birth, leaving the knighthood represented too much dishonor. Retirement lay too far away to consider in the midst of a war notorious for killing and death. Their love and pride in honor held them there asking for this one exception.

  The high priestess of the Temple at Morbatten declined to hear their request. “A paladin may not marry and remain a knight. That is the absolute doctrine of the Queen.”

  Kell and his fiancé bowed low and left. They wed anyways but were careful to keep a low profile. Seeking to work within the Temple structure, Kell submitted request after letter after audience seeking permission to become a priest. And, the Queen drove him to escalate his request. I am the Goddess. I am the Queen of Dragons. I understand why my people have followed this matriarchal order, but my Children of Morbatten are not Dragons, not yet. My doctrine and my will never required only female priests. You will be the first my Son Kell.

  Bloodstone called them back time and time again to war and years passed. Kell rose to the highest ranks of knighthood. Despairing of becoming a priest and being free to openly wed with honor, he began teaching the Queen’s will as a new doctrine, that all of Her Children could serve in the Temple. Quietly, he pursued the suggested revelation that Her People could become dragons. Taught by the Queen and blessed by Her, his teaching lit a fire suppressed for millennia. Morbatten would burn. The Dar Priestess named Kell heretic.

  Time passed and Kell, finally wearing a
priest’s robes and symbols over his knight armor, ascended the road to the Emperor Alerius. Hundreds of paladins and priestesses and male disciples of Kell followed. Atop the mountain, in his throne chamber, Alerius consulted with the High Priestesses of the Temple at Morbatten and Bloodstone. Dar Ana of Bloodstone felt the change Kell brought and in prayerful deference to the Emperor and the Goddess, spoke in favor of allowing men to the Priesthood. Glass had said it best, "The gender separations of the Eldar dragons do not apply to us. Not necessarily. I feel that this is the Queen's will, to bind the male color with the female metallics and heal. Kell seeks marriage, not dominion. I will grant him this."

  The High Priestess of Morbatten, most powerful cleric in the most powerful of the Temples, remembered her refusal of Kell’s marriage four years ago. Her pride would not let her be shown to be wrong. The Emperor, shapeshifted in to his human form, put his hand on her shoulder. “After all, I am a male am I not? When the River first moved, my brothers and I gave the Queen our power, not because She is female, but because She is the Strongest. Though culture and practice, change is endemic to humans. Even the dragons see that Morbatten becomes stronger by allowing this. I could order you to allow this, but the Queen desires your free will.”

  No. Not Kell. Heretic.

  As Kell entered the vast chamber and bowed before them, priestesses and paladins from the Temple At Morbatten loyal to the high priestess attacked, massacred, and slew Kell’s entire family and hers too. Kell and Marshella had two children destined for great things. A seven year old boy, beautiful and endowed with the Queen’s favor, fell to a paladin's sword and a priestess’s flame strike. His wife, the love of his life, was put to mutlifixion; tortured death on the wings of healing to draw it out until the soul rips and tears. The broken vessel left behind fills with undeath and the multifixion continues until faith or magic fades entirely from the soul leaving nothing. Their three year old daughter, blessed with rare golden hair and bright green eyes clung to her mother as her death spasms ripped the poor girl’s world to pieces. Stricken with madness, the child fled and was taken hostage, as a safety precaution.

  Bowed low, Kell felt it. The attack had been timed impeccably. It could not be stopped. Kell looked up at the High Priestess and growled as he felt his wife’s concern turn terrible as her soul began to tear apart in the first multifixion. As his children came under attack, he asked a simple one word request, “Stop.”

  No. You are heresy. My charge is to protect the Innocents from the likes of you!

  Then his wife’s death throes hit Kell. A life and mind brightly dedicated to the Queen’s Glory and the majesty of Morbatten snapped and blind rage filled Kell’s heart and soul. Not just the first male priest, Kell had studied with the Queen Herself. In that moment of his wife’s first death, he dragonshifted reaching out for her the impossible oblivion left when a soul is multifixated. Overshadowed with anger, his first dragonshift turned red fire into darkest black. His human hands on the chamber’s gold-gilded stones pulsed and morphed into giant dragon claws and his human skein burst asunder. The transformation caught even the Emperor off guard as Kell became a Shadow Dragon; the only dragonkind to not pledge to either the Queen Takhissis or Her Consort, the hated King of Dragons.

  Kell's human voice slurring all-consuming pain through the shadow dragon’s maw, “I will kill you and will not stop until you and yours are beyond death…” In his madness, he may have attacked all. The high priestess seeing the shadow dragon cried for guards to attack. There in the emperor's throne room, Alerius ordered them to stand still. It almost worked but when Kell sensed his daughter's terror and saw in the River she had been taken, he snapped. Spears of shadow slashed into the high priestess.

  Alerius, turning dragon in an instant, clamped down on Kell's throat and ordered him to stand still. "Give me time to protect the Innocents Kell. You may not hurt the innocents!"

  “My daughter still lives –“ Kell growled. “Why?!” he raged at the priestesses standing by shredded high priestess. “WHY?!”

  “I will find and guard her,” Alerius promised. At his words, Ynt’taris raced south to find and preserve the daughter of Kell.

  The Kell Conflict began. Multifixion ensures no resurrection, no hope for reunion by either destroying the soul or trapping it in undeath. It is the ultimate Tanian execution normally held for capital crimes far beyond a love-based marriage between a paladin and a priestess. Kell would never see Marshella again. Mutlifixion denied her an afterlife. The son, Ynt’taris resurrected by the Queen’s grace. The daughter required more time and healing, but under Ynt’taris’ care, they were removed from the Conflict.

  Kell’s wrath knew no end as he lashed out at those who supported the high priestess and murdered his family. Those who participated in the massacre, he killed. Females, he captured and raped. You will see me everywhere you look, he seared into their fear-filled days of captivity. The Queen seemed to abandon those who had turned against Kell, and though they tried to surrender, when they saw Kell’s hate and rampage, they took up arms. The civil war stayed mostly confined to the families of Kell and those loyal to the slain high priestess.

  The Emperor ordered all to withdraw except the House of Kell and those loyal to the High Priestess of the Temple at Morbatten. Alerius sought out and found a knight, one of intense devotion to the Queen and Empire rather than a Temple – Rojo – and made him witness and enforcer of the Kell Conflict.

  At some point, Kell began regaining his senses and was guided back by the Queen Herself. Dar Shara, an upcoming priestess in the Temple at Morbatten, fought against her own High Priestess and slew her. As a peace offering, she offered the position now rightfully hers, to Kell. The slain’s great house almost continued the war as an internal temple one. However, Rojo intervened and with a force of paladins secured the situation by execution and new vows. Rojo witnessed the end of the civil war when Kell took the offered role of High Priest.

  Kell became Dar Kell, the High Priest of the Temple at Morbatten, first dragon shifter, and Lord of the Shadows. The female priestesses were ordered to keep the children spawned by Kell to be raised amongst the Empire as foster wards held sacred by a prophecy that a boy and girl child would seed the next generation's heroes. Provided they did this, they retained their rank. Kell rebuilt the Temple and appointed Dar Shara as the successor to the High Priestess of the Lost Temple of Glass. The emperor appointed Rojo the first human king.

  Very quickly though, it became apparent that the children of Kell possessed an alien edge, as Kell’s insanity pulled him into the realm of shadow and anti-life. Wondering at what it meant, Alerius ordered the children abducted and placed in safety throughout the kingdom so that not even Alerius knew where they had gone. He knew Kell, even if he regained his sanity completely, would never forgive, never let it go. When Kell found and murdered the first child, it confirmed Alerius’ concerns. Later, as the house of the fallen priestess realized what had happened, they commissioned death squads to find and kill the remaining children. Touched by shadow dragons, the children of Kell lived in secrecy and anonymity. Those with overt markings, died quickly.

  The ending of the Kell Conflict should have brought peace. Peace ushered in a new era for Morbatten, one of unprecedented might, wealth, and influence. The doctrine of Matriarchy fell to the doctrine of Mighty; of the great temples, the Dar Priest or Priestess would be the mightiest regardless of gender. The priesthood remained a separate path from the paladins, but rather than paladins swearing to a Temple or even a Priestess, they swore to the Mother. The era of dragon shifters began and Dar Kell the Black Dragon wrote his pain in letters of blood across the Empire. And his story will never end so long as even one of his children worship the Queen.

  And Dar Rojo’s story as king began. There is a prophecy regarding his successor, a prodigy and the rebuilding of the Lost Temple of Glass. The Kell Conflict identified a weakness in Morbatten and, filled with undeath as priestesses and paladins warred, the Demon God of Undea
th chose this time to attack, reclaiming much of Bloodstone. The Kell Conflict became the Jaden War. Kell led and drove the undead hordes back into the mines combing the Bloodstone Valley.

  Chapter Five – Malcor's Path is Set

  The King Rojo, the High Priestess Shara, the Dread Lords, and the Klennan villagers watched Malcor stand before the king. The moment drew out but Malcor stood firm. The dragons watched. No black dragon appeared. Again, that small voice from behind Malcor spoke. Klara walked up and touched Malcor’s shoulder. “Are you going to be a knight yet?” she asked.

  As the moment stretched, the King saw Malcor’s resolute stance and asked him, “You intend to wait for the Black Dragon?” Malcor nodded. “There is not time to wait for that one. He comes and goes as he pleases. When you find the Black Dragon, you will give him the statue. Tell us about it."

  As Malcor described the statue, the king’s expression did not change in the least. Dar Shara’s face though took on one of amazement. “Young man,” she breathed, “this is amazing! Rojo,” she added dropping pretense and title, “this looks like it came straight from…”

  “…the tapestry in the Emperor’s library. Yes,” the king finished. He looked long and hard at Malcor and then noted, “There is no way you have ever been to see the Emperor, or visited his library? Of course not. Malcor, your statue is an exact match to a magical tapestry in Alerius’ library. Only members of the Inner Council would have been in a position to see it, along with other Dread Lords.” The king shrugged, “I do not know what this means, but there is certainly Fate and Destiny on you.”