Circle of Reign

by Jacob Cooper

  Banner backed away and stumbled slightly, finding hold on a tree. Reaching his hand around his back, he made a connection against the bark. He felt peaceful as he listened and took in the sounds of the forest, its grandeur and venerable serenity. Calm was spoken to his soul. Despite trees burning south of them and filling the night with smoke and embers, they did not seem to notice or mind. The roots would likely live and grow anew, stronger. Banner felt that the trees somehow understood this and accepted it as necessary from time to time. He looked up and saw the Helsyan, this chase-giver, saying something. His words, however, were completely inaudible to him as he prepared himself to join the forest eternally.

  But then his peace was shattered. The sound that reverberated through his skull—where did it come from? He wasn’t hearing it with his ears, he realized. He opened his mouth so wide he couldn’t breathe in response and clenched his eyes. They watered from the pressure. He blinked rapidly trying to clear his vision and saw his assassin looking down at him with curious amusement. Therrium’s hand gripped the bark of the tree he had connected to with such strength that the bark started to break free under his grip. The palm of his hand began to feel hot, to burn almost. Was this just in his mind? The sound was high pitched and thunderous all at the same time. The fright this caused in him was unbearable, fear beyond what should be possible for anyone to feel and yet live.

  “The trees!” he gasped in a desperate voice. “They scream!” And then, silence. Nothing remained, no sound that he could discern. He tried but failed to reconnect with the forest, with the tree he rested against. His eyes opened wearily and it felt like sand filled them as he looked around, scraping the undersides of his eyelids. Indecipherable blurry images spun. He had slumped down in his forced anguish and the chase-giver towered over him, but this seemed like a small thing to him in this moment. He tried again to reconnect, opening his hand wider in an effort to expand his palm and hopefully make another connection. It was cold, the bark of this tree. Rough and hard.

  The horror struck him. Banner Therrium raised himself up and turned to the tree. An elm of considerable size, certainly full and beautiful in life, confronted him. It was not beautiful now. He stepped back one pace and looked up to see branches that were off from their natural color. White. Gray. Still, despite a breeze. Dead. Turning his head, he saw this forest had become a garden of stone. It was too much to accept, too much for any wood-dweller to view. Banner could not contain his terror and began to moan like a child in ineffable pain. How could Alrikk have ever recovered from such a visceral experience? Being connected to the forest as it dies? Therrium did not know, but he did know the horror of it now. Looking down again to the trunk he saw wetness, a dark fluid that glistened crimson.

  He had not felt the sting of the chase-giver’s steel enter him in his state of marveling. He coughed blood and felt weak suddenly. The horizon turned vertical for Prime Lord Banner Therrium as he collapsed.

  FORTY

  General Roan

  Day 30 of 1st Dimming 412 A.U.

  GENERAL ANTIOUS ROAN TORE THROUGH the enemy camps like a vengeful ghost, a maelstrom of steel and speed, moving from one enemy to the next faster than their blood could fall to the earth. I am a sturdy bough rooted deep in fertile soil. His armor had been shed in the forest, searing hot from the flaming pitch with which he had been splashed. Mud and blood were his armor now. I am iron and steel, molded from the fires of adversity. I am life to those behind me, death to those in front. Flesh tore and blood stained his sword. I am Arlethia, and she is me. I am her silent shield, her impenetrable armor, her terrible sword. The ground quickly became soaked and stained crimson as men around him were returned to the earth. She is my strength and my all. Those who stand against her stand against me, and shall swiftly fall. The orange glow from the burning forest west of the enemy’s lines imitated the arrival of dawn, as if the sun were rising on the opposite side of the world.

  Why not? Roan thought. All else in the world is skewed, so why not the sun?

  Few of the enemy soldiers had any warning of his approach before their lives were dispatched, their focus being on the battle and blaze in the forest. Here, just behind the enemy’s lines, few had been held in reserve. Field and infantry marshals along with their staffs as well as those required to operate the siege weapons. Antious Roan did not discriminate as he dealt out his lethal aggression. After few brief moments, several catapults were left unoccupied save for the corpses that lay motionless around them.

  As he worked his way northward, up the enemy’s line, some of the enemy soldiers noticed the cessation of ordnance from most of the siege weapons. Seeing their fellow soldiers dead on the ground, they shouted forth warnings of something being awry. It was not long after that Roan was spotted cutting down yet another group. Knowing his time as an invisible force was now over, Roan sped as fast as his mortal frame would allow him to move, darting from the enemy’s view faster than they could follow in the dim light. He hunkered down beneath the top of a tall grass field and waited. The smell of smoke was thick in the air, and even from this distance he could feel the heat coming from the blaze in his forest. General Roan dug his fingers into the soil, below the grass roots, and listened. Felt. Without the aid of a speaking tree or the massive intertwined root systems of the forests of Arlethia, the vibrations were more difficult to discern. Amplifying the burden were scores of thousands of men locked in the chaos of battle. Nonetheless, Roan persisted.

  Anxiety was difficult to force down as the battle unfolded in rough visions within his mind. He felt and therefore pictured several enemy soldiers tentatively looking for him. Their footsteps were slow and nervous, headed in the wrong direction. He ignored them and flushed that image from his mind. Tapping other segments of vibrations, he brought to the forefront of his mind’s eye the scene of the forest. It was convoluted and chaotic, but he knew he was getting a better understanding of the scene than was possible with eyes alone as the smoke would have obstructed much of his visual perception. In the images created from the vibrations, smoke and ashes could not mar the view of the observer. It was obvious to him that his men were fighting valiantly against overwhelming odds. The disorganization of Tulley’s men aided his own soldiers’ efforts. He tried to single out Colonel Bohdin from amongst the thousands of seismic indicators he was feeling, but this proved too great a task without the aid of the forest directly.

  Suddenly, Roan caught hold of a new vibration: heavy and swift footfall penetrating through the fray like an avalanche of terror. The strides were longer and faster than mere humans could achieve and heavier than any wood-dweller would produce, commanding his attention as the other vibrations faded to the background. They were emanating from within the Arlethian borders, within the forest. How could only five people produce such force?

  The confrontation changed dramatically and the General felt his soldiers’ posture and cadence change, becoming more frantic and hurried. They were…retreating. He felt his forces less and less as the moments flew by, their signals and vibrations becoming a thinner portion of the overall cacophony. And then something frightful happened.

  His connection through the ground was severed. No, not completely severed, but dampened to a degree that he could no longer discern anything. The vision in his mind blurred and diminished until it was a marred collage of dark, muted images. It was like becoming deaf and blind suddenly in mid-conversation. General Roan felt a bulge catch in his throat. Though severely attenuated, vibrations still issued forth from the forest, but they were strange. Sharper, blunter. More staccato-like, less rich. And then, it ceased. The rhythm and quick-stepped movements halted. There was only one reason the enemy would have ceased. Then confirmation came of his dread. A cry of victory rose from the forest that he knew was not from his men. He opened his eyes and raised himself enough to peer over the top of the high grass he hid beneath.

  For interminable moments, Antious had no thoughts. His mind was wiped from any semblance of coherency. Staring b
ack at him were not the beloved trees of his homeland, not the thick frondescence of his native dwelling. The fires had been miraculously extinguished. Unnaturally quenched. Stone, after all, does not burn.

  Fallen! We are fallen! the veteran wanted to scream. His soul struggled to contain the anguish. What was he to do? Where should he go? Arlethia lay unprotected and damningly molested with her enemies uncontested. Thoughts of his family jolted to the front of his mind. The General was able to sequester his personal circumstances while engaged in his duty very well, but they still made their way through the widening mental fissures caused by what he now beheld.

  Our borders are breached, our great army fallen! He counseled with himself as to his next move. Perhaps he should continue his raids, taking as many of the enemy down before falling himself or collapsing with exhaustion. Or should he charge the enemy host now celebrating in the forest? My forest. He felt no connection with the stone trees, though, only nostalgia.

  Wisely, General Roan retreated. He was physically ill as he thought about how his men had met their end. “I should have been there!” he regretted aloud. What of Therrium? What of Arlethia? What would happen now? He did not know, but he resolved to continue his overarching mission: to defend Arlethia from all who would threaten her. His tactics would have to change now, but he would continue. More patience would be required, more strategy. Until he fell and joined his brave men, as far as Roan was concerned, his orders were still in effect.

  FORTY-ONE

  Rembbran

  Day 30 of 1st Dimming 412 A.U.

  TAKING IN THE ELATION from his Dahlrak’s completion, Rembbran tried to remember when he had felt such blessedness. He was aroused to a state so elevated that he lost hold of his identity, forgetting even his name momentarily. His body shivered uncontrollably from the rapture. The pain was completely ineffectual inside him for these moments. He waited. It did not return. Had Agony left completely? Slowly, he probed through his mental field and found that it was indeed there but failed to regain its hold on him. Rembbran had never felt such…happiness? Had the strange emotion of hope turned to glee within him? Was this possible?

  The moment of climax passed and still the pain of years past did not find purchase within him. The wound still present but no longer festering. Had the wound finally closed and sealed?

  No. It ripped open suddenly, tearing his mind in two with a vehemence that he had never felt. He squirmed on the ground, frantically clawing at his head and body, not knowing where the attack came from. His lucidness turned to darkness as Agony regained its position as master and punished its subject mercilessly.

  “Why?” Rembbran screamed as he thrashed about against the stone soil, scraping and cutting his skin. “Why?” Drool and mucus ran down his face and purple veins bulged over his shorn head. He was grunting and snarling like a mortally wounded animal but unable to die and find relief in death. And then he did something he thought he would never do, something forbidden his kind by all those who had possessed the Urlenthi. He prayed.

  “Ancient Darkness, Mother of Helsya, I beseech you to turn away this suffering from me. For millennia untold we have suffered subjection and outcast for our apostasy, and I surely greatest of all. Bless me, I pray, and I will rediscover and reclaim Helsya for the Ancient Dark, wherever the sacred land has been hidden; lead me thereto that we may rise again as rulers as we once were; that our women would once again live to raise our children. Dark Mother, I have never sought you, but I beg you to hear me now and relieve my suffering that I might serve you. If not, in mercy or wrath, let me die.”

  The Agony did not abate. Rembbran continued to wail and moan violently for several more minutes, each a personal eternity to him. This pain was deeper, pouring through him without end. He convulsed with spasmodic jolts on the ground, knocking into Therrium’s corpse.

  “Then I curse you! I defy you! Helsya will remain forever lost and unclaimed for the Ancient Dark and I—”

  He stopped suddenly. Was that possible? He sensed—no, smelled it, didn’t he? He was breathing heavily, still tense but then realized the pain had subsided. It had fled from him, the absence of it a completely foreign feeling, almost a floating sensation. He regained some of his control and took in the scents around him more fully. He flared his nostrils and the gill-like slits that ran up the ridge of his nose. It was there. She was there. Impossible!

  He dared not believe it, not for joy’s sake. Involuntarily, his gaze was drawn north. He saw nothing, but could nonetheless scry the exact vector from whence the scent exuded. She was older now, of course, but still young. Tears of sadistic exhilaration could not be stayed as laughter escaped from deep in his core. It rang forth in the emptiness of night, echoing off the stone trees that surrounded him, augmenting the volume of his maniacal, cackling howls.

  She is alive! And so close! Though the pain had abated for now, the draw to this familiar scent demanded his assiduity without relenting. He was only too happy to comply. So close.

  He judged her location to be in the northern part of the Gonfrey Forest. He had searched nearly the entire Realm thrice over, including the North. His venturing was often truncated by the intolerable need to return to the Kail for even the slightest relief or to seek a new Charge from the High Duke. It was possible, though highly improbable, that she could have avoided his movements throughout the Realm. Some other explanation had to be the reason. But what that could be, he did not know. And Rembbran did not care. He had her now.

  “Ancient Darkness, Dark Mother, I give all that I am to you and Helsya. Free me.”

  Rembbran did not know what to expect next, but it was certainly not what happened. The scarred glyphs on his back between his shoulder blades, at the withers, glowed red-hot. He knelt from the searing pain and clenched his teeth but did not cry out. As it continued, his mind was flooded with information. Revelations. History. Scenes of the past. A group of people living on this land that he knew was long ago, far from now. They spoke a different language but in his mind he understood it; and, in his mind, he knew them to be his people, the way they were thousands of years before. There were no scars, no markings that covered their bodies. They were a delightful race, full of life. As his vision showed him the expanse of this land that was now called Senthara, he beheld that his people filled it completely. There were no other races, no Arlethians, no Senthary, no Hardacheons or any other race except his people. Helsyans.

  Is it possible? he thought. This very land is Helsya? This must have been before even the Ancients ruled, before—

  His ponderings were cut short as the truth came surging into his heart. His mind could not believe what his heart now told him. How is that possible? It has all been a lie, all deception! The Ancients had not disappeared as all believed, only the way they once were, the way they lived and looked, had vanished. Rembbran looked down at his hands and forearms, turning them over. How have we fallen so far?

  The sights before his mind’s eye progressed until he witnessed the fall of his people, the Turning Away, as described to him by a voice. Only then did he recognize he was indeed hearing a voice, a narration. He scanned around him with haste but saw no one, just panoramic views of his vision. The scene of his people was horrific to witness, but he could not turn away. Generations passed as he witnessed a growing number of the population become wilder in nature, less refined. Racing before his mind were visions of different people rising up as leaders among them, teaching against the old ways.

  One rose above them all, a woman of beauty so exquisite that even Rembbran, a Helsyan, felt such attraction to her. Helsyans did not have the same sensual attraction to beings that other races naturally had. The urge to reproduce had been severely dampened through the ages, brought on by self-loathing and a knowledge of what became of the mother. They had always been a doomed race, according to the legends.

  Not always, Rembbran now saw. The attraction to this prophetess had the same pull and strength of a Dahlrak, but with different desires. Her beau
ty was radiant, infectious, but not with light. Indeed, as he saw her speak and go about her thronging disciples, light seemed to dissipate, leaving a luminescent darkness around her. Over time it became a visual effect that caused her to appear ghostly. Rembbran witnessed the effect increase as her influence was more broadly accepted. The image of the woman stopped and turned to look at Rembbran, as if he were present among the crowds of his vision. So penetrating was her stare that he took a step back, startled.

  “Do you know me?” she asked. Her voice had the timbre of wind howling through an open expanse. Musical.

  Rembbran did not answer, thinking himself foolish to being spoken to by what was surely a dream of some kind.

  “You do know me,” she said, not deterring her stare.

  “I—” he started but could not seem to make his tongue work properly. A melody accompanied the vision. Haunting. Captivating. She smiled and lowered her head slightly but still stared at Rembbran. More penetrating, more devious. He found his heart racing from both sensual excitement as well as apprehension. Could it be a Helsyan was feeling the seeds of fear?

  Noxmyra! he screamed in his mind. The woman’s tight smile broadened, taking on a more wicked and feral shape. She laughed with dark harmony and the ground under her, green grass and fertile soil, turned dark and hard. Rembbran was in a trance. He had never felt so alive as he watched the Dark’s Influence bring decay and entropy. The people who worshipped Noxmyra became strong and powerful. Ferocious without restraint.

  The vision swept on before him and Noxmyra disappeared from his sight but strands of the strange song remained. Under her teachings, the people became more decadent as the years passed and the land started to change.

  Cycling, Rembbran realized.

  A faction separated themselves from the largely apostate masses and refused to relinquish the old ways—the ways of the Ancients—but they were overwhelmed and about to be destroyed completely when he saw a change come upon the most devout followers of Noxmyra. A rival people rose in the land and warred against his people. They were larger, fiercer. Hardacheons. Rembbran had never seen them before, having been born long after their extinction, but he knew they were Hardacheons all the same.