by Jason Jones
Stand down, Angeline demanded, yet she received no response, for she had only thought the statement, she had not spoken.
Three, then six, then a flurry of crosscuts and lunges and swirling slashes came toward her from this elven menace. Her blade sparked, her head ducked, and she sidestepped as fast as she could. His gaze never left her eyes.
Not able to match the speed of this killer, nor his two attacks against her one blade, the silent bodyguard concentrated. Thinking on the air forming under her boots, she lifted up as she deflected and parried the lightning strikes of the pale faced swordsman. Her body rose into the air almost ten feet, and her balance was perfect on top of the nearly invisible swirl of wind. Angeline crouched, rising near the temple ceiling, out of reach from the marked elf that had tried to kill her.
There were no words between them, just stares, neither able to make contact with the other, an awkward silent length of moments. More voices now, getting closer from the western doors and within the Temple itself. City guard, clanking armor and shouting orders. Angeline would have called out if she had the powers of speech. They both looked each direction, surveying the best route out.
The elven killer pointed his blade tip toward her, nodded his head, and turned away fro the floating woman on a wall of swirling air that he could not reach. Angeline raised her chin a bit, and pointed her blade down to him the same, keeping the distance.
Kendari headed west, sheathing his weapons simultaneously, ducking outside the western doors before the city guard entered, and he sunk into the night.
Angeline Berren hovered low, keeping to the shadows of the corridor, not stepping nor making sound above that of the blowing winds from outside, and tried to follow the killer into Vallakazz. She rose again, hiding behind the statue of Alden almost thirty feet high outside. She watched the Vallakazz soldiers enter the western doors below her, oblivious to her presence above. Angeline tried to spot the elf, but he was gone. Not a sound on the wind, not a trail in the snowy streets, not a motion caught in the shadows. The mysterious bodyguard waited and watched the rooftops, waiting for him to emerge from shadow once again.
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The warmth of the chamber refreshed the five acquaintances the moment they entered. Gwenneth snapped her fingers and the purple and blue torches flashed to magical life, offsetting the low warm glow of the lit hearth. Her chambers were as she had left them, organized, locked, and with several glyphs hidden on various walls that only she knew were there. Some to protect her books, a few for some enchanted gifts she had received, and one to alert her if anyone other than herself had entered the room.
Azenairk poked around, peering at vivid colors of bottles and gold trimmed tomes on bookshelves. There were staves in the corners, wands on the desk, scrolls and tomes everywhere he looked. The priest was amazed that a human wizard had accumulated this sort of trove so young. It was larger than the library in the temple of Vundren in Boraduum, that being a small study in comparison.
Shinayne looked out the paned windows, frost growing in streaks on the outside, and admired the city again, this time from high above it through colored glass. Her thoughts drifted with the snow, to Lavress Tilaniun, wherever he may be. Surely he was proving himself again to the court of the Whitemoon with yet another act of salvation for the mystical fey monarchy and the elven kingdoms. She so wished to be at his side, night and day, regardless of trial or terror. She would travel this kingdom or that, to hear his voice whisper in her ear anything at all, forever.
“What are we doing here, Lady of Lazlette?“ Saberrak huffed under his drooping eyelids and tired spirit.
“We are keeping safe and inspecting what it is that makes you so sought after by so many. May I see the scroll now?”
“I had thought we were going to the Temple of Golden something, to meet father someone?”
“If the church has the answers you need, be my guest. I doubt they will protect you as I can. If their priests had the answers they would have told you in Southwind. Your scroll may be beyond their ability to understand. If you would like my help, I will need to see the scroll.” Gwenne acted the part well, her mother hopefully sleeping soundly by now, or busy with whatever was plaguing the city with her colleagues. “I will give it back, brave minotaur, you have my word.”
The gray gladiator pulled out the heavy stone scroll and handed it to the lady of Lazlette, his senses telling him something didn’t fit entirely together, yet his body felt about to collapse. He retired to a bearskin rug on the floor. Most evidently it was for decoration, yet the horned warrior did not care. He had met the last week head on and the night and warmth had taken him into deep slumber despite his fighting effort to stay awake. James too, had lost himself to dreaming in the warmth of the chamber, armor still on, asleep in a chair of fine tanned brahma hide leather across from Saberrak.
Shinayne looked from the window, having indulged in fantasy enough for the evening, focusing on what the next move would be. She turned to see Azenairk kneeling toward a plain stone wall by the fireplace, praying and humming hymns in his sharp dwarven dialect and holding his hammer and moons symbol to his chest. He had quietly taken off his armor, piece by piece, and laid his warhammer down beside him. Turning to her right, the other two warriors lay fast asleep, worn from battle and travel.
“Men.” The elven noble strolled to Gwenneth Lazlette, watching her unroll the parchment on her long oak table. “Seems we are the only ones with strength left, Lady of Lazlette. The men have lost their zeal and ferocity, leaving you and I to unravel this conundrum.”
“Yes, I see as much. Please, call me Gwenne, one lady to another. Now, if you could hold the stone end there, yes, and let us see what fate has brought us Lady T’Sarrin.” Gwenneth was fascinated, exhausted as well, but too enthralled with this to even consider sleep.
“Please, call me Shinayne. One lady to another.”
“Very well, Shinayne.”
“If this is a holy text, Gwenne, how will you be able to comprehend the dialect or fully grasp the religious meaning in any great capacity?” The elf looked at the words, almost a pattern of ancient artwork rather than a language.
“I studied most every ancient language, including this one, ancient Altestani. This spoken language predates the commonly used arcane writ and most divine scripture known in existence. However, we have one professor here, well, a few, that intensely preach of the beginnings of the divine and the arcane as having much the same roots in ancient Altestan. Parts I see already, in the old Carician tongue, which I can also read. I assure you, I am well versed in my Aldane, my histories, and my languages. If this is half as valuable and timeless as I feel it is, you will have every effort of mine at your disposal.”
“You are truly fluent in these languages, and have what one would need to decipher this?”
“I should be, after growing up in such a place.”
“One would assume,” Shinayne grinned.
“You said Kilikala was your home, yes?”
“Indeed I did.”
“Do you know Lavalandara?” Gwenneth teased.
“I have met her, yes. Do you?” Shinayne smiled wide, her eyes sparkling, for she had someone commonly known with this woman.
“We have traded notes, a few times,” Gwenneth lied. It had been her mother that traded notes with the famous elven magistrate, but she had been there to see it.
“Many seek her advice, from around the known world. How many years has it been?”
Gwenneth thought a moment. “Three years now, but she was seeking my advice, Shinayne.”
“Impressive.” Shinayne watched Gwenne begin quiet incantations with awe.
Hoping that put her questions to rest for a small time, Gwenneth began picking pieces of parchment off the bottom, chipping with small tools at the ink and stone, and invoking dozens of spells and arcane powers. From ancient identity orisons, to deep reading glyphs, and even elemental counter-divinations, the prodigal wizard s
tayed hours into the night examining every aspect and word of the scroll found under Arouland. Fueled by inspiration, focused by curiosity, and driven by passages and phrases with hidden magicks and meanings only she could uncover, Gwenneth did not rest until long after Shinayne had given in to sleep.
The vials of alchemically prepared and enchanted liquid had all been glowing with a radiant blue for more than an hour, unlike anything Gwenne had ever seen. She had tested many liquids and chemicals in here, yet never had anything produced a glow to the entire room, let alone for this long. The parchment in the beakers as well, along with her spells of divining truth from simple matter, all pointed to an odd conclusion. This ink, she knew, was indeed blood. Some of it several thousand years old, some of it only a decade near the end. More was written, in Carician, just recently, at the bottom. As impossible as it was, it was all from the same being. She doubted herself and her abilities, yet she had cast the incantations perfectly, twice, and had received the same arcane impulses and derived the identical conclusions.
The parchment had tested as pressed skin or tissue from the same being twice over as well. Her candles nearly spent, puddles of cascaded wax forming intricate designs down the base of the holders, Gwenne tried to put together the ancient passages with testimony to dark ties in Altestani worship. Annar was in fact the being that wrote it, and having done so with his own blood, on paper made of his skin, over a span of nearly four thousand years. Her divinations had answered the same result a dozen times now in the night.
“You are far beyond a relic. And you have an entire set of scripture hidden with the blue glow, but you won’t let me see it,” Gwenne spoke to the scroll, spoke aloud to herself, and it answered. A slight blue flash made Gwenne’s eyes widen, as if it affirmed her query.
“So you know I am trying to read you then?” Gwenneth chuckled, amused at the coincidence that the mystical reaction had happened in time with a spoken question.
Then it flashed again, slow and misty blue, the tip of the haze caressing the bottom of the scroll.
“This is rather odd.” She followed the mist. Then her jaw fell open. She read, and read again, yet there was no denying it. A name was written there, then two names.
“Oh my.”
Gwenne’s mind raced with possible paths to take with the information. The church would hide it, or declare it blasphemy. It spoke of Yjaros, the God of divine creation of the Altestani people, and the devil Shukuru of old covenant texts, in the same document. The scripture itself was magical, divine, arcane, older magic, not any that Gwenne thought could be reproduced. Feeling and thought seemed to grasp and enervate her mind as if the words had mystical evocation upon sight. It pushed a penetrating belief in the writer’s tale of torment and deception. Despite the blue glow that emitted from it, the priests would deny it as an error, or a plot from a cult of demon worshipping savants playing a cruel prank. Her own mother would have it destroyed or sent away, far out of Vallakazz, for safety and to avoid attention from anyone that might find interest, good or otherwise, in this artifact. Gwenne knew what she had to do, the only answer to truly unveiling what was inside with any certainty, in private.
“It could take weeks or months to unravel what is hidden below your words,” Gwenneth spoke to the unspeaking relic. “I hope you do not mind a long journey.”
The mist flashed once more, then seemed to retract into the scriptures and pages as if it had never been. As she went to reach for it, the document began to tighten and roll back on its own before her eyes.
“Breath Gwenneth Lazlette, breath now.” Her heart rate fluttered, she felt fear and awe, never had anything she studied moved or acted on its own.
Middir would side with her mother, Dasius opposed her, and the other professors were plainly under her skill as it was. Gwenneth knew that Dasius of Caberra kept a forbidden warlock mirror in his chambers. Unbeknownst to Aelaine, she had used it before when she had snuck in. She had contacted Lassado of Eisel Inne in Shanador, and now she would use it again. The prodigy felt fear for but a moment, traveling up her spine and forking throughout her body. What she was about to do, was walking this moment to do, her mother would possibly banish her for. Gwenneth went to make contact with the only man she trusted with more power and knowledge than her own. She went to contact her mother's first mentor by trespassing and using illicit arcane devices. Knowing that a God was the creator of this scroll, and for a divine purpose that needed intensive research, Gwenneth needed more than what Vallakazz could offer. She went to contact the most famous and powerful wizard alive, Kalzarius of Harlaheim, and plead for his sanctuary.
Knights I:IV
Lazlette Academy
Vallakazz
James stumbled through the halls, all lit with strange purples and soothing reds that bore no flame upon their torches. Bottle in hand, he slugged down more wine, yet he could not sleep. His left shoulder scraped the walls, and he wandered aimlessly searching for nothing he could recall.
A white light, translucent and dull it was, reached out a hand to stop him. James knew who it was, he had seen him many times before. Turn after misguided turn, he wandered and avoided the light that followed. But, everywhere he wandered, the light would appear, trying to get closer.
“James…” It whispered, and the sound was inescapeable.
“Leave me be.” James muttered and went down a flight of stairs.
“James, stop this. You are needed, you are here, as I have---“
“You are dead, or I am dead. One or the other, nothing you say matters.” James smiled at his former Lord, the apparition of Arlinne T’Vellon. “It never has.”
“Show my sword to the Lady of Lazlette, tell her how I died, James, please.” The ghost appeared behind James as he fell up stair after stair, trying to find his way back to the room his new accomplices slept in.
“No, no one believes me. It matters not, it is over, and no one cares anymore, my lord.” He was lost, every hallway looked the same. “I have killed more ogre the last decade than our whole company killed that day in Arouland. It only gets worse, there is no salvation.”
The voice was hollow, fading, echoing now with hushed tones. Arlinne appeared at the top of the stiars, torso trailing to mist before legs could form. “I need you to speak of me, of our battle, to heal wounds here that have been open too long, James Andellis of Southwind.”
James laughed and walked through Arlinne T’Vellon. He offered a drink to his haunting visage, and as usual it was declined with an unpleasant scowl upon non existant flesh. “No wine? More for me then.”
“The wine will run out, or you will fall before it, but it will win you no victories, James.” Arlinne appeared to the front of James now, pointing his finger at the bottle.
James looked at the bottle before he drank of it further, it was full again, always was here, he liked these nights. He smiled to Arlinne. “It is better when you visit, my lord, the wine is endless and nothing hurts.”
“It is not real.”
James sat in the darkness, his rear thudding to the cold stone. “I know.”
“You will wake worse than before, and it will never end.” Arlinne hovered low next to James. “Unless to try and amend pains, yours and others by---“
“Why did you not tell me about the cemetary, the monument, that they honored you and that hill with our kin?” James felt the tears fall as fast as the wine was going down.
“How would I know? I am dead, James.”
“Right, forgot.” James wiped his eyes and sniffled. “And this is another damned nightmare, a dream, one that leaves me haunted and tired in the morning.”
“Likely you have a stone there as well.” Arlinne raised a phantasmal eyebrow toward his former pupil.
“As it should be then. I died that day, every day after, and I feel nothing inside. My world is gone.” James hung his head as the apparition slowly faded.
“You have a new life. Just wake up and take it, black on blue….James Andellis….” The voi
ce of Arlinne, along with the light, was gone.
“Strong and true…” James finished the Chazzrynn saying, and downed as much wine as he could before it spilled out the corners of his mouth.
He gasped, not sure if he had fallen asleep here, or if something brushed against him. James stood, fell forward, then caught himself on the opposing wall with a swaying brace of his arm. He was standing again, though how, he was not certain.
“Where is my wine?” He spoke to the empty dark hallway, as to the whereabouts of his missing bottle.
“Gone…”
“Who is that? Where are you?” James heard the voice, it was vaguely familiar, and a faint light twinkled at the end of yet another unknown hallway. He stumbled that direction.
“You won’t remember my name, just my face, and my brothers face.” Two voices whispered down the hall.
“Stop, in the name of Southwind.” James waved his arm as if he had a blade, yet his hand was empty. His slur was heavy, saliva dripped to his beard and only one eye would open fully. He rounded the corner and looked to the light. “For Alden’s sake, no, no, no…stop, please.” James hit his knees and lowered his head to vomit onto the floor.
The brief look was enough. There stood a griseled and rotted ogre, maggots falling from every bone and scrap of yellow flesh that remained. It stood, hollow black sockets glaring at James, its decomposed mouth trying to smile. In each skeletal hand was a head, a severed head of the two boys with the wagon. The eyes stared to him, the blood echoed a pitter pat to the stone floor, the rotworms squirming madly in the crimson.
“Help us James.” The boys whispered in unison.
“I can’t…I did…I was late….I was…” James pulled his blade free and raised it. It was a bottle of wine, pouring all over the floor as he stood and backed away. He looked, no sword was at his side.