And yet, Kevin could not see all. He could only see what he had been shown, and this realization suddenly struck him. This is not real. It is a vision of some kind!
Suddenly, the sky in the east erupted in flames. Fire shot from the soil with wrathful vehemence. People screamed and animals fled, but the malevolent firestorm rolled across the land, spreading west like a pyrotechnic tsunami.
His own people, the folks of Grinden who had become a fledgling flock to him cried out in anguish as the blaze arose around them. “Remember the mission!” they screamed as the heat blackened their bones and turned them to ash.
Tearfully, Kevin watched them surrender their own spirits. They flashed like blue lights, winking away like shooting stars as they flew almost instantaneously across the realm, finding their way to the western gate where they exited this forsaken plane of existence for a better one as the throes of death ejected soul from body.
Suddenly opening his eyes, Kevin gasped for air. His hair had matted with perspiration during the vision. He rose to his feet and paced for a few moments, trying to air out his sweaty clothes.
He looked at the maps of the lands he’d purchased on his very first day in this forgotten realm. The mission… we have to find the hidden tribe of believers founded by the angel Karoz… maybe we’ll find Karoz, even?
Kevin bit his lip. He didn’t understand why they were needed to complete this task unless something foul had befallen the angel and the community. He couldn’t figure that part out, but he knew that they would have to leave the area before long.
Soon. We will have to depart very soon. But first, we need to know what direction to go. Oh Lord, show me. But Kevin couldn’t find the answer he searched for. He only had a sense of peace that his course remained true, accompanied by a burning desire to accomplish his holy task. Still, he had no heading.
“I’ll have direction soon enough,” he encouraged himself. It felt good to hear it in his own ears, even if only in his own voice. “God will make the next step apparent before I must take it.”
He scanned the map again. But I really wish I could see the whole plan mapped out first.
***
Flipping a lens on the giant, telescopic contraption, wheels ground and a giant gear turn slightly overhead, exerting pressure upon the caged moblogs bound within the machine as a power source. The view shifted for The Watcher as the magic inherent in the creatures enabled the device’s view to penetrate the layers of shale, stone, and bedrock. He looked deeper into the earth, noting the changes in the subterranean kingdoms. Nvv-Fryyg fell to tyr-aPt. GliiK’twah from wRuo-Wo met with raoRk of AblarRd which made the viewer grin slyly. He knew that none of their scheming would ever surmount the crafty grr’Shaalg.
He flipped another lense and his gaze pierced even deeper, delving far beyond the realms that any other knew of. Not even the Gathering remembered Tartarus, although they often harnessed the power of its echoing corridors without ever questioning the source of such foundational magics.
Fools, he thought. They never question, and never remember. It’s no wonder these were the ones so easily deceived by hay-lale’. He scanned the trapped beings, each one hanging by eldritch chains. The Watcher smiled; his contingency plan remained a viable one. So long as the foundations of this kakos realm remain undiscovered by evil forces… he mused. I cannot be counted among the evil ones, he assured himself.
Pressure released and the gear returned as he untoggled the great lenses. The moblogs screeched as the pressure against their bodies relieved.
Retrieving a parchment and his inkwell, the Watcher penned an eloquent letter. Given long enough, he’d formed many potential plans and contingencies should circumstances ever warrant them. He tied the scroll to a raven and wished that he’d had a pair of linked qâsamai communication stones. He sighed and released the bird.
The Watcher wrapped himself in his bright, iridescent cloak and identified what belongings he needed for travel as he looked around the room. How long since he’d left this room? It had been centuries since he’d walked upon land. His gaze scanned the stone floor; his feet had worn dark grooves into it over the millennia. Long had he observed significant events from his post. He’d been a watcher since before the Gathering formed—since before the flood which severed the realms beyond the western gate.
His observations and senses informed him that time drew ever short. The end—the great conflagration that would consume this forsaken reality—was on its way. The spark which ignited it, he knew, was only moments from being lit—in truth, that same spark had already set foot in his realm.
The Watcher gathered those few things he would need. He would travel overland to meet this Kevin. They would parley, and then The Watcher would finally know the answer to his question, the question which could not be satisfied through millennia he’d spent in surveillance and reflection.
If the answer was as he hoped, The Watcher would begin his journey home. If it was as he feared, then he would light the very fires of damnation himself and watch them burn for an eternity.
The End
The Kakos Realm
Book 11:
Rise of the Dragon Impervious
by
Christopher D. Schmitz
Prologue
He finished his hasty packing for the journey ahead from his tiny post high above the Briganik Mountains. Quickly, the Watcher prepared his provisions in the tiny, secret chamber which blistered out from the Babel Spire above the Luciferian capital and monastery adjacent the nearby the Fields of Splendor. The ancient, giant spire connected the lower firmament where mortals lived to the upper one where the demon council, the Gathering, kept court.
The Watcher took one final glance into his enormous viewing machine and surveyed the obscure tribe of chosen ones founded millennia ago by Karoz, the first traveler to breach the watery barrier between this and the Earth realm. They remained much the same as ever: hidden away, both out of danger and ineffective against the plans of the Gathering. The Watcher frowned at them through his looking glass; they’d long upheld their part of the tenuous bargain: neither interfering with the demon lords nor subject to their peril.
He panned upwards and swapped lenses so that the machine peered beyond the veil and into the Babel Heavens where key members of the powerful demonic council kept fortified strongholds impervious to attacks from the ground. There, demons plotted and schemed against each other as they had throughout the ages; each one vied with the others for power and position, trying to ascend to greater position than any of their peers. They’d truly become a house divided without the brilliant deceptions of hay-lale’ blinding and binding them to a common cause.
With a placid grin, the Watcher rolled his eyes. He knew what would happen. After observing the way of things for millennia, he had become an expert in predicting the ebb and flow of events and regarding the general nature of things. The Gathering had spent more than their allotted time in the sun. Other forces were in motion. Even now, the winds shifted and multiple powers positioned their tokens on the game-board that was life.
Already he’d seen the aristocracy of Nod preparing their pawns for a new campaign. They would make the same gambit they’d made so long ago after hay-lale’ disappeared, thousands of years ago. It was a good move with a realistic end-game, provided they timed it perfectly. The Watcher could only smirk. The vampiric spies had obviously recognized the same things that he had seen.
The Watcher tightened the thongs of his sandals in preparation for the arduous trek. Forces mustered across the realm, though few even realized it. The balance of power had shifted when the infiltrators, Karoz’s successors, penetrated the barriers and set upon the small Grinden, the eastern city on the trade routes.
The storm was coming: the inevitable great conflagration which would overtake the realm and destroy all three firmaments and The Watcher had every intention of seeing this great upsetting of powers at a close proximity. But before then, T
he Watcher had to speak with Yah-weh’s emissaries.
He closed his secret door and began descending the Babel Spire at the Temple of Light. Finally disgorging from the tower’s access he ambled across the Fields of Splendor unchallenged.
The Watcher walked onward; Fire was coming.
***
Naadine bared his fangs and brushed his silky, white hair away from his pale face and watched the approaching bird. The wendigo snatched the pigeon from its perch with lightning fast speed. Much more than a revenant, but far less than the powerful Adamic line of vampires: the original and pure race.
Still, the wendigo were powerful. Naadine turned the bird over in his hand, looking at it, drinking in its life with his senses, feeling the bird’s rapid heartbeat as it cooed in distress. Naadine had once been human, long ago; he did not miss his human life—not given the alternative of his powerful vampiric form.
Glancing at his brother, Fayge, with pink, vacant eyes, he bit the head off the bird and sucked deeply. Spasming avian feet twitched as the wendigo drew out the message hidden by their master within the creature’s blood. His eyes rolled back and Naadine dropped the bird and shuddered; the bird’s memories rushed into his mind.
“It’s from Queen Mother,” he said of the vision sent in the messenger.
Fayge snatched the bird from the ground and drank from it, too. It was too great an honor to receive a bird from Queen Lilth and not taste from her words, even if it broke protocol. Naadine was the regent, after all.
Naadine ignored his brother’s breach of etiquette and locked eyes with him. “Our time is finally rising. I will gather enough cattle to sustain a coven and have our trackers snare a cadre of miners for slaves.” He snatched up a handful of maps and rolled them out upon the old table.
Fayge looked over his brother’s shoulder. “Have we located all of the gegenes?”
“Quite nearly,” he replied. “Very soon, our glory will be made known.”
Fayge grinned wickedly. “We will tear Heaven from the sky!”
“Yes, we shall.” Naadine smiled with a warmness unfitting of his cold, undead body. He fixed his brother’s gaze and ordered, “Gather the Shaw-than’ and send them to me. You know what must come next?”
He nodded. “I will send out the scouts and locate him.”
Naadine nodded, musing, “Perhaps we will earn our own place high above the Noddic Mountains?” He made the order explicit as to whom he needed to speak with. “You must seek out Mil-khaw-mah’.”
***
Absinthium held his head high and noble as he paced the length of the stables at the edge of the Fields of Splendor. The buildings and fences sprang from the lush, verdant countryside which topped the plateau like a green head of hair. The canopy spread a distance between the Babel Spire and the massive monastery grounds on which the Temple of Light resided.
Drab and grey, the steppe-like mountain terrain starkly contrasted the field which boasted in colorful glory as it towered above her peers. No animals grazed the greenery and so the grass formed heads upon tall stalks. Brilliant yellow and white flowers bloomed at random spots like blazing punctuation marks.
The arch-mage grinned as he exited the stable building where sheep cowered, refusing to exit the safety of the structure unless prodded with jagged spikes. Even then, many of them often dashed madly for the edge of the plateau and flung themselves over the edge and into the abyss beyond.
He knew what they feared… why animals refused to walk through the Field of Splendor. It was the very same reason that he’d come here. Absinthium followed the footpath which curved down and around the side of the rocky ledge past the rear fence posts. A craggy cave opened in the side of the crumbling, shale outcropping. It opened like a black crack upon the ugly face of the earth. Lichen and moss grew around the stone mouth like festering sores.
Entering the cavern, Absinthium found his acolyte where he expected him. The sorcerer leaned upon his gnarled staff and waited for his apprentice’s attention.
The Wyvern Rider worked the leather of his custom saddles. With his black robes undone and hanging around his waist like the spare yardage of a great kilt, his muscles glistened with sweat and the locks of his damp hair mopped his shoulders where the oil of hard work and mid-day heat slicked the skin and inflicted it with mild acne.
His name, discarded long ago, had been given as Prock. He’d traded it long ago for his tutelage under Absinthium; he was now the lead acolyte under the Luciferian High Arch-Mage who served under the demon beh’-tsah. He was Prock no longer; he was the beast-tamer, the Wyvern Rider, the chief of his peers.
He concentrated, working the leather of his newest set of barding, working the greasy animal oils into the tanned skins to make it more supple and pliable. The Wyvern Rider’s voice was a baritone and full of gravel. “I see you there, master arch-mage. I heard you coming since the stables.” He snapped a strap taught; it cracked sharply: leather on leather.
Absinthium smiled benignly. “It is good to see that the humiliation from your recent injuries has not dulled your fire.” He spoke matter-of-factly; his words carried none of the vitriol and harsh condemnation that the acolyte had expected.
Prock turned to regard his superior. He understood. The squad of acolytes failed in their assassination attempt against the former ranger and his friend, the body-locked werewolf clansman. Failure aside, too much had been invested in the secret acolyte corps to discard them. Despite a disappointment, the clandestine assassin-mages remained a deadly strike force that only a handful of folk even knew of. One failed mission out of many did not change that fact.
Reacting to his master’s comment, Prock wriggled his shoulders and loosened them. They cracked and popped in response. Rivulets of sweat trickled down into the abrasions which had begun to heal on his chest; the acolyte gave no heed to the stinging pain that radiated from the reddened wound on his torso.
“I will be fine just as soon as I am able to get my next mount prepared.”
Absinthium glanced briefly at the fully grown, but young wyvern which nested within the cave just at his left. The beast’s scaly, black hide chaffed and molted in specific areas where the barding hadn’t quite fit.
“The harness must fit perfectly or the mount will fight it; it cannot cause her discomfort or she will find the union distracting: a situation which can prove… perilous.”
The old wizard nodded. He had watched the previous conflict as their enemy, Rashnir, transformed Prock’s sure victory in the sky into an upset. He’d won a war of attrition, adding deadly distractions one upon another while the airborne beast climbed for altitude—finally Prock’s previous mount crashed to the ground, dumping the acolyte into the forest beyond Grinden.
“I understand that,” he reassured his protégé, looking again at the roughed scales of Prock’s newest mount. Immediately after the acolytes’ return to the Temple of Light, Prock had set about breaking in a replacement creature and subtle signs indicated many long hours spent with this new mount.
Wounded pride had spurned the Wyvern Rider to prompt action and Absinthium could see that his acolyte took the failure to heart; the ignominy of returning via gryphon instead of wyvern had set him on edge. What could they call the Wyvern-Rider if he had no aerial steed?
Absinthium’s eyes shifted to the saddle he’d been crafting. Leather working tools lay strewn about the cave alongside spare pieces of barding and tack. He wondered aloud, “Can you make another?”
The rider looked at him suspiciously. Absinthium handed him one of the three tightly wound scrolls that he carried. Prock opened it and stared at the plans in wonder and awe. They were highly detailed, and very old, far older than any texts he’d ever studied.
“Are these details and measurements accurate?”
“They are perfect,” the mage replied. “It is easy to tailor the measurements of a creature whose flesh has been turned to stone. Of course, plans for this contraption had been hidden
away in the archives; they had always been merely theoretical. The magics required for making such an undertaking useful were quite speculative in the ancient days.”
“So this is no longer speculative?”
Absinthium grinned deviously. “Perhaps not,” he said. “It remains to be seen, and further consultation with our dark lord will be needed. But in the meantime, it would not be too presumptive to begin construction.”
“And the other scrolls?” He nodded to the other two.
“A list and a map of your tasks. Such high magic won’t come without work.”
The Wyvern Rider bowed to his master. “If this is so, then perhaps the Dragon Impervious is not as perfectly formidable as always assumed in the past?”
“Perhaps not. Or perhaps far deadlier things than an indestructible mountain of terror have grown in the eons since the dawn of the Gathering and imprisonment of the old serpent?”
***
The ambitious goblin, Griq’nnr, scampered into the designated cave where grr’SHaalg had commanded him to arrive. He waited patiently for a few minutes, knowing intuitively that his sire would do another security sweep just to make certain that there were no spies. grr’SHaalg was thorough, he reflected, and Griq’nnr was fortunate to be alive at all, given how grr’SHaalg conducted himself.
Finally, grr’SHaalg slid into the natural grotto; it was a significant distance from any goblin residence. As the one pulling strings on a multi-national level, grr’SHaalg had never been one to waste much time with small talk. [I have a task for you, Griq’nnr, something that will catapult you into the field alongside the shadow players: kings and clerics and other persons even stronger.]
Griq’nnr nodded solemnly.
[If you fail in your task, certain death will await. If you are discovered or leave a trail of evidence, the fate is similar. Do you understand and accept?]
[I am ready.]
The Kakos Realm Collection Page 29