Darkness Rising 1: Chained

by Ross Kitson

  ***

  Emelia swam through a turbid sea of darkness, thick like oil, its black depths infinite. It engulfed her, its weight pushing against her eyes, her mouth and her nose: a cloying, stifling totality. She screamed, but no noise came forth, for the ebony sea greedily soaked up the sound. In her mind she sought for the cynical reassurances of Emebaka but she was not there. Emelia was alone and that feeling terrified her far more than the liquid night that she floated within.

  She became aware of a tiny dot of light; her mind tried to assess whether it was a speck of red light inches before her eyes or a gigantic fireball a million miles away. The speck flickered and then a second appeared followed by a third. In an instant there were hundreds of them, all around her, twinkling bright in the void.

  The night coalesced into cavorting shapes and figures. Sound struck her all of a sudden, like a punch to the face, a primordial clamour that seared her ears like the hottest sun.

  She was being dragged through a mass of hideous creatures, chained with rusted links to a half-dozen warriors. They were armoured in scale mail, sown to worn leather armour. Their muscular arms were tattooed with spirals and circles and their hair was a rich brown colour, braided and hanging down their broad backs. A glance at her own body indicated she wore the same armour and bore similar tattoos.

  Emelia looked beyond the screaming hordes that surrounded her and she could see hills and mountains looming in the distance, snow adorning their hazy summits. The plane that she marched across was a filthy mire of mud and waste, its epic expanse trampled and torn by the clawed feet of the army that now occupied it.

  It was a goblin army. Their dark green faces and burning red eyes were contorted with hatred. Crooked noses dripped with mucous and rotted mouths drooled stinking saliva. Their raggedy armour and spiked shields were decorated with arcane symbols, daubed in crimson paint. They teemed like cockroaches as the prisoners were led forth, flowing back and forth like the edge of the sea.

  Their jailors were stranger creatures, the servants of chaos named cravens. Emelia was uncertain how she knew this or indeed how she had recognised goblins. She had the sense she had always known about the creatures. She could almost recall the first time she had felt goblin blood pouring down her sword, thick and green.

  The cravens were seven foot tall monsters, boasting four powerful arms and the head of a black wolf. They bore two serrated longswords strapped to their backs. They tugged with irritation at the line of prisoners and Emelia stumbled, her knees spattering into the thick ooze. Panic surged in her as she desperately tried to regain her feet. She twisted on her chained hands as she was dragged through the foul mire. It ran into her mouth and she gagged and coughed, fighting for breath.

  The dragging stopped and she looked up. The scene rippled and flowed like molten glass and she was stood in a wide tent, the filth cleaned off her.

  The interior was opulent yet garish; the drapes that hung from the apex of the tent were scarlet cloth weaved with gold in macabre patterns. Six braziers lit the room with a hellish luminescence, belching forth thick smoke, making the already warm air of the tent stifling. A suit of armour stood in the corner beside a wide rack of weapons: an assortment of swords, maces and morning stars. The plate armour was huge, its enamelled breastplate fashioned in the likeness of a leering devil.

  Emelia felt a mixture of terror and excitement as she observed the figure sat on the chair before them. She sensed three others with her and their fear was palpable. Sweat ran in rivers down their rippling torsos.

  Although sitting it was evident that when stood he would be perhaps seven foot tall. The ogre blood that flowed within his veins had conferred him a dark blue skin tone though not nearly as dark as the four ogres that stood guard at his side. The human blood had served to tame the harsher ogre features. His eyes were less slanted and wider; his mouth narrower and his teeth less sharp; he had a nose, unlike the two reptilian slits that adorned the faces of his guards. Despite being a foot shorter than his guards he radiated the menace and power of a coiled cobra. Magic oozed from his pores like sweat.

  He stood and approached the captives. With an odd jolt Emelia realised she watched the scene now from above, as if she was part of the drapes.

  “You are warriors of Gondland I see,” he said, his voice rich and seductive. “You are brave fighters, no doubt, and have bathed in the blood of goblin and ogre for many a year. Perhaps you are the bravest of the seven nation army that strives to halt the advance of my brethren. Yet Mortis is a fickle deity and he cannot help you now. Tell me why Gilibrion trusts the other kings to lead his people and why he does not ride the fields against me?”

  The warrior furthest from Emelia spat in the face of the half-ogre. “Gilibrion will return to dance on your bones, half-breed.”

  The huge half-ogre laughed. He grasped the Gondlander with his huge hands and whispered arcane words. Emelia looked in horror as the warrior erupted into green flames. His screams echoed in the confines of the pavilion as he shuddered and died.

  The half-ogre turned and spread his arms out in a wide shrug as if performing at the theatre and laughed to the four impassive ogres. “My brothers! To you I am half-human, to them half-ogre. It is evident why my upbringing was so traumatic.”

  He gestured at another captive and the warrior jerked as if he had received an electric shock. Wisps of a grey mist began flowing like water from his nose, mouth and eyes through the air towards the half-ogre. Emelia had a strange feeling of watching the events simultaneously from the ceiling of the tent and through the eyes of the female warrior standing at the side of the jerking prisoner.

  The smoke thickened and pooled in the half-ogre’s hand. Emelia could see within its swirling depths the face of her comrade. There was a look of terror on the ethereal features. The half-ogre brought the cloud of smoke to his face and seemed to lap it up like a cat would with milk. Then he wrinkled his nose and shook his head before clapping his hands; the ball of mist dissipated and the warrior to Emelia’s right gurgled and collapsed on the floor of the tent.

  “He knows nothing. Well obviously he knows nothing now, as his brain is as desolate as the deserts of Pyrios. To be precise he knows nothing about King Gilibrion. Take them for target practice or supper or for whatever the goblins fancy. Don’t let the cravens wear their bits as jewellery though; I’m not a monster after all.”

  A black armoured ogre began to pull them out of the tent. The half-ogre raised his hand and pointed at Emelia. “Wait. Leave the girl. There’s something curious about her.”

  With a sudden wrench Emelia was within the female warrior’s body again. She now felt acutely aware of every sensation, whereas before all the occurrences seemed almost abstract and unreal to her. Get a hold of yourself Emelia, this is just a dream, she thought with a tingle of uncertainty.

  She was sat on an expanse of cushions. Her armour was gone and she was dressed in a black satin gown. Her hair was pinned up with three golden pins. The half-ogre was sat next to her and it was apparent that something about the dream had changed; he was looking at her in a very curious manner.

  “Do I repulse you, girl?”

  Up close his dark blue skin had a velvety quality to it and Emelia had a strange urge to stroke it, to feel the smoothness. His features were bulky and crude, as if he had been carved from marble by an inexpert sculptor. Yet his eyes crackled with intellect and with menace, burning with a pale blue fire. Emelia felt a perverse pang of attraction to the demonic countenance.

  “No. Not exactly,” Emelia said. “Rather the things you and your troops have done to this land repulse me.” The words seemed a mixture of her volition and a script that she was reading.

  “You are different to the other Kisarti that your king places so much faith in. There is some aberrant quality to you that I am unable to ascertain. Would you care for a drink?”

  Emelia shook her head and observed silently as the half-ogre rose, poured some wine and then returned to the cushions.
His skin radiated heat like a furnace and she was conscious that his body was now closer to hers.

  “The gods have given me a destiny, a role in this world. It began when my mother, a feisty woman from the lands on the far side of the Khullian Mountains, was taken in a raid and given as a gift to my father, Nggin-Ak-Tor. As you surmise he was an ogre and also a shaman, yet he surprised all by keeping my mother as a slave rather than utilising her as a sacrifice to Ingor.

  “That was nothing compared to the surprise when my mother gave birth to me. I entered the world in a torrent of blood and pain, a half-breed to both my kin. Nggin-Ak-Tor refused all demands to drown me in the bubbling streams of the Khullian Mountains and raised me as a shaman, as a mystic.

  “It is said man may not wield magic, for that is the privilege of those born of the elements, those fashioned from the Great Crystal by the Elder Gods. Yet the mix of ogre and human blood within me has allowed me to do what no man in this day can do; to use the flow of magic to my own ends. The Trimenal lands shall yield to me and I shall rule as a black king for all time.”

  In his passion he had spilt some wine and it ran in dark red rivulets down the cushions, like blood from a wound. Emelia was transfixed by this creature; what was she dreaming of? Man could wield magic, both with the aid of the gems of power like the Air-mages or without, such as she. He had said Trimenal lands; the phrase rang some distant bell that she could not place.

  “I see you think of me insane,” the half-ogre said. “How may a creature of flesh rule forever? How may one such as I laugh at the rot of time, the decay of the decades? The whole truth is too terrible for your ears, but suffice it to say the answer flows warm and salty within your veins.”

  A creeping sense of dread began rising within Emelia. The dream was so vivid; she could feel the texture of the cushions beneath her and the wispy brush of the black satin.

  The blue skinned half-ogre leant forward and held on to her arms. She was helpless, her body paralysed with fear and with excitement. She could feel his breath burning the skin on her neck as his teeth brushed tantalisingly against her.

  His whisper in her ear was as loud as the roar of a lion.

  “Who are you? Who are you to come into my dreams?”

  Terror surged within her and suddenly the tent disappeared into a black chasm. She felt a surge of motion, as if the world was being pulled away from her at the speed of thought.

  She awoke covered in sweat beneath a rough blanket. Her face was pressed against a damp sod of grass. The shattered walls of the lighthouse loomed above her and she could see the glow of the campfire and the glint of the knight’s armour nearby.

  Emelia shivered but not from the cold. Her bound wrists were cramped and chaffed and she felt tearful.

  It had been many years since she had had a dream that vivid and the last time she’d had one, a friend had died.