As each tendril touched the queen’s face, Emery noticed that her skin began to change colour. Her paleness began to dissipate beneath each spot of contact.
Emery stood in awe by what he was witnessing. As the dozens of tiny tendrils gently caressed Sirillia’s skin, the life seemed to slowly come back to her. They radiated a soft, angelic glow as they shifted and flowed. Her skin tone eventually shifted from pale to a much healthier colour.
“What… what is this?” Emery stuttered, the white light illuminating against his face.
Morpheus turned his head proudly, recalling the tendrils back into his hand until they disappeared. “That, King Emery, is just a morsel of what I can offer you, to save your wife’s life.”
Emery was completely mesmerised by what he had witnessed. His eyes still stung from the glow of the tendrils, and his heart was beating out of his chest with excitement.
“You can save her?” Emery repeated, falling to his knees before the robed man.
“I will save your wife’s life. I am the only one who has the power to.”
Emery began to sob, bringing his hands together to signify his gratitude and emotional shock.
Sirillia would live. His wife, the one woman he had ever loved, his gracious, intelligent, beautiful wife and mother to his children. She would finally be rid of this horrific illness.
“But…” Morpheus began.
Emery’s lip quivered. He lifted his gaze towards the towering figure, consumed by fear, grief, and relief all at once in an overwhelming mix.
“B-b-but?”
Morpheus sneered. “I will do this for you. But you will need to do some things for me in return, before I can begin culturing a cure for your poor, dying wife.”
Emery bowed multiple times, willing to do anything he was asked to save Sirillia from this horrific fate. The last bow he made, his crown came tumbling off his head, clanging against the rug at Morpheus’s feet and rolling away against the stone floor.
“Anything you ask,” Emery begged, taking no notice of his crown as it tumbled away. “Anything.”
Morpheus knelt, facing the king at eye level. His white eyes were almost glowing, as if staring straight into Emery’s soul.
“You will bring me the children I need. As many as I require,” Morpheus said sternly.
Emery nodded. “Children… yes, I can get you some children.”
“Not “some”. I need more than some.”
Emery knew not what children would be needed for. Extra labour, or smaller working hands, perhaps? If it meant curing this deadly disease, then it was worth trying. Morpheus appeared to know exactly what he was talking about.
“You will declare war against the kingdom of Caldaea,” Morpheus stated.
“I… what? Why?” Emery asked, suddenly confused. What did that have to do with anything?
“Asking questions will only serve to delay what little time your wife has left.”
Emery closed his eyes, trying his best to think, to work all of this out. But nothing made sense to him. Nothing about this seemed real.
We are practically at war anyway with the Seynards. What harm will come from making it official?
Emery sighed, before agreeing to the second condition made by the enigmatic Morpheus. “I will declare war on Caldaea.”
“And,” Morpheus said, standing back up and glaring at the king who was begging at his feet, “you will find me an ancient book, one of great value to me. A book that has been stolen, a book which holds the secret to your wife’s recovery.”
Emery nodded vigorously, willing to agree to any request the old Magister threw at him.
“You will find me Kyzon’s Tome.”
End of Act IV
Epilogue
Morpheus, hooded in his black robes, sauntered into the undercroft beneath the keep of Alderhall, an enormous, open space lined with ancient brick walls. Rows consisting of dozens of archways spanned the area, acting as supports for the stone ceiling above.
Against each pillar hung an iron sconce, all unlit and doused with decades-old cobwebs and dust.
The hooded man approached the nearest sconce and held his flaming torch against it to light it up. The dried fuel within ignited, illuminating a small area with orange light.
Some would call the undercroft frightening- a dark, long-forgotten section of the old keep in Dawnhill. It lacked any furnishings, décor, lighting or even windows.
The entire area was empty. The ancient, unused bowels of Alderhall. Any noise would echo around as if being repeated several times before running quiet. The air was stale, frigid, and felt dead.
It was perfect.
Morpheus kept his face covered in shadow. He grinned at what would become his new base of operations. His ambition was racing; he sorted through all the options he now had in his head.
Morpheus held his hand towards the single lit torch, focusing on the heat against the skin on his palm, the flickering light, the small trail of smoke.
He concentrated before flicking a trigger in his mind.
The dozens of other scones across the undercroft all came alight at once, as if each had an invisible person igniting them in unison. The shadows were immediately vanquished throughout as their flames erupted into being.
Good.
The two other members of the Order of Apostates followed Morpheus down into the undercroft, after receiving word that he had succeeded in convincing King Emery and their plan was well underway.
Morpheus turned to look upon his Children with a heartless yet pleased gaze, his white beard elongating his overly bony, long face. He felt something wet running from his nose which he calmly wiped away with his hand.
Black liquid.
At first it had bothered him, even worried him. Over time, he had been getting used to it, to where it never concerned him any longer.
His two Children stepped forward from the shadows, the first Apostates that Morpheus had converted.
The woman, Imra, had a sinister grin upon her child-like face. Her eyes were accentuated with thick, black streaks of eyeliner, and her eyelids and facial muscles twitched uncontrollably. Her frizzled curls added to her overall terrifying yet beautiful mystique.
Imra bowed to her master but quickly straightened up, rubbing the wrinkles from her tight-fitting, black dress.
“You succeeded!” Imra giggled through stunning white teeth.
“I had no doubt in you, master,” the man, Cerus, said.
Cerus smiled as he waited by his sister’s side, several heads taller than she.
The pair were nothing alike. Imra was crow-like with black and white streaks through her twisted hair, lean, and had a certain beauty hidden behind her menace.
Cerus was a brute; built like a tree, square-jawed, and battle-scarred.
But what they lacked in physical similarities, they made up for in cruelty, and devotion to their master. That is why Morpheus had chosen them to be the first Children of the New World.
“Today is the first day of the New World,” Morpheus announced, clutching his hands together tightly. His overly long fingernails dug into his pale, wrinkled skin.
Imra jumped up and down on the spot like an excitable child, unable to contain her pleasure. She crowed with glee.
Cerus looked to his sister questionably before gazing back to his master.
“Do you have orders for us?” Cerus said. His voice was so low-pitched that it barely resembled a human’s tone.
“Now that we have the king under our control, we can begin,” Morpheus said.
Imra clapped her hands together, cackling maniacally. “Let me start with the children!”
“No!” Morpheus bellowed, loudly enough to shock the excitement from Imra’s face.
Imra shrivelled back like an uneasy rodent. Cerus remained steady like the block of stone he was.
“We will not ruin the work we have already done by revealing our cards too soon. If the king gets an idea of what we are doing too soon…”
“I hate the shadows,” Imra hissed.
“You will have your chance to feed, young one,” Morpheus said, raising a wrinkled hand to stroke the side of her pale face. “Soon.”
“Soon,” Imra repeated with a grin.
“The Final Ruin has already begun. We need only enhance the mayhem and disorder. If anyone catches a glimpse at our work, then the Alyrian royal families may unite against us. We cannot have that. Not yet. Not until we are ready,” Morpheus explained, clasping his black-veined hands back together.
“We will contribute to the unrest, master,” Cerus replied.
“Where do you need us?” Imra muttered.
“The north has already begun to fall. It is only a matter of time before the Akurai gain traction, and my spies tell me that rifts have started to open across the Broken Coast and the Highlands already. We must, therefore, focus on the south.”
Imra cackled to herself. “The south? Never been down there before.”
“We are yours to command, master,” Cerus said.
A wicked smirk spread across Morpheus’s shadowed face. He felt the Blight surging through his body. The rush it gave him was paralysing, pleasurable and agonising, all at once.
“You will begin in Aurora,” Morpheus commanded. “I will leave it to the pair of you to go from there.”
“And what about you, master?” Imra said.
“I have work that needs doing here. I must remain by the king’s side for now. The Light will continue opening rifts across Eos, more and more each day,” Morpheus explained.
Imra smirked, looking to her brother who could not help but show a hint of a smile.
“We will have unlimited power. We will gain unlimited control,” Morpheus howled like an insane prophet. “I single-handedly brought upon the next Cataclysm; I will see it through to its very end. Through fire and ash, black wings across thundering skies. We will bring about the end of days, the war to end all wars. The Final Ruin. All shall suffer under my choking hands.”
Imra and Cerus took a step back with power and lust in their eyes.
Morpheus felt the skin across his back begin to split and bleed as his body shifted. A pair of enormous, black, leathery wings exploded through his skin and out from underneath his robes, stretching to double the size of the man himself.
Imra dropped to her knees, black tears welling in her eyes and praying to her master. Cerus clenched his fists with ferocity, black fluid dripping from his salivating mouth.
The wings flapped with raw fury in an amazing display, razor-sharp, spiked feathers shimmering in the light of the flaming sconces.
Morpheus howled to his Apostates, “I am the Enlightened One, the Winged Death. The æther gifted me with wings of pure midnight upon the bleeding star’s return. The Final Ruin is finally upon us, Children. We must transcend and take on our purest forms, as the æther demands. We have opened the doorway, and now we shall devour this world through flames and ash, ice and stone, death and blood!”
“Yes, master!” Imra screeched, clapping her hands together.
Morpheus stretched his titanic wings, the colour of the blackest night, before running his pulsating fingers across his bowing Children’s electrified faces.
“Let us begin.”
Starfall (The Fables of Chaos Book 1) Page 59