“Lake Joanae?” the chief asked as he set down two mugs of ale. “If it’s where you’re headed then you’ll need to be careful. Townsfolk whisper gloomy tales of that place. The land before it is in ruins from an old war between naiads and Abyssians. The souls of the forest dwell there. It’s none of my business why you’re headed to that dreadful place, but you best do what you must and be gone as fast as you can.”
“Nice to know,” I said after a gulp. The chief went to greet new customers.
“Shall we go,” said Irvina after we finished eating.
Suddenly, I felt cautious. “Sure.”
Sleepy Corner grew crowded. We found the chief by the bar and bid him farewell. I clasped hands with the former Fox. “Well, until next time if you guys are gonna’ get going.” My last words to the chief were about the coming Abyssians.
“Many have already infested Memoria, but more will arrive soon. The Horde is on its way.”
The old Fox sighed and nodded. “The Memorian kingdoms still won’t fight I take it?”
“Of course not.”
He grimaced and cursed. “And the Militia’s come to warn the brethren across the continent?”
“The general and the others have yet to arrive, but yes.”
“So, this is my warning then. Is he calling us back to arms?”
“Not sure, but all retired and active members are to meet in Visqont in two months’ time to leave the heartland for good.”
Geronimo rubbed his face with a grunt. “Quite a dilemma you’ve given me now, sport.”
“If you want to survive, I’d pack up and go.”
“To die amid all of this may be better for me. It sounds lunatic, I know, but I think I’d rather spend my last days fighting to protect this old place than prolong my end by sailing on that old boat.”
I understood him. The chief had fought in so many battles—a faithful servant of war. He was tired. None could blame him for his selfishness. What sanity he still had, he owed only to himself. We said our final farewells, and then Irvina and I left, riding Rafael toward the city’s east gate.
The day was warm and windless. The sun shined over Gemmin, casting great shadows of its towers over the land. A few hours took us leagues away. And we traveled the plains going into elevated wetlands, talking little along the way. I learned Irvina to be a reserved, secretive individual much like myself. I told her my mother had been very sick. She expressed her condolences and said she hadn’t known what it felt like having something terrible happen to someone so close. “A mother... I can’t imagine,” she said with the underlying grief of something from her past. She didn’t elaborate.
I asked her if what the chief said was true, about Joanae Lake.
“I don’t know.” It seemed sincere. “I can’t remember when last I was there.” I believed her. But it didn’t matter. I’d come this far. I had no plans on turning back now. The tall buildings of Gemmin disappeared beneath a hill.
The wetlands spanned on for miles. I talked more about my family and of my many tours with the Militia. I spoke about the Abyssians, briefly at first, until she became curious about them. She admitted that she had known little about the soul-drinking creatures and had only encountered them few times before Southwood. “We were fighting nasracans,” I told her.
She leaned her head. “They are also Abyssians?”
“A kind of Abyssian, yes.”
“There are many of the same monsters?”
“Yes.”
“Those in the forest were horned and gray as stone with hides like iron and powerful tails sharp as blades. Are they kin to Men?”
“No!” I spat. It wasn’t precisely the truth. I apologized for the sudden spur. “In a way, yes. Men can become Abyssians, and there are some Abyssians that had once been men. The clokers that you said chased us can turn people into monsters. They’re necreins—the third and highest and strongest evolution of an Abyssian that we know of. The clokers twist and taint souls with their dark magic. But they don’t only target Men. Everyone is free game to them.”
The land flattened, and we weaved our way through a marsh. “How is it that your mother became afflicted with this plague?”
“The Black Salt Plague is passed to those scratched or bitten by an Abyssian, or who’ve ingested the Salt someway.” She grasped her shoulder in alarm. “It doesn’t happen all the time,” I reassured her. “But, it’d be a clever idea to set aside a Panacea Lily or two for yourself once we get there, just to be safe.”
The wetlands stretched long, but soon we came to the densely forested Elwood Realm. The trees shook with rustling that grew unnaturally louder as we entered and Irvina guided us through the foggy verdure. But there was no wind. “The trees are speaking,” she said. “My blood rouses their slumber. They are delighted yet saddened and oddly confused.” Down the straightened path, Irvina became disgruntled as she listened. With a hard kick, she urged Rafael into a sprint. Briskly, the stallion cut turns, going in what seemed like circles with a disarranged direction.
“What’s the rush? What’s wrong?” I barked. Irvina focused.
Soon we came to a clearing of blackened grass, dead elm trees, and broken stone. Velmica. It was a maze of mossy, withering ruins. There’s barely anything left. We went under an archway and past a broken and jagged column and an old rusted spear jutting out of the dirt. Ahead was a former war zone, the lay of the land beaten and scattered with debris and skeletal remains. Irvina alit; walked forward and gazed with an austere mien, her eyes glazed. Nausea came in the pit of my stomach. The air was eerie and ill-omened. Rafael dawdled by.
It was a sickening sight. Irvina was speechless. She only looked forward as we passed more skeletons and old corroded weapons. Large mosaics marked the stone ground, and symbols were on the half-standing walls and wreckage.
“Are they...” The naiads? I didn’t finish the question aloud when she had stopped at a leaning fortress. It was in the center of the ruins, trodden and conquered, its jeweled design shattered.
“The citadel,” Irvina whispered. She shook and whimpered, her face falling into her hands. I quietly waited until she collected herself. Two miles beyond the ruins there was a field of flowers around Joanae Lake. Irvina walked the entire way.
The lake was a dead, swampy green—yet a beautiful landscape of sorrow. I halted in a bed of anemones and dismounted.
Irvina went toward the water, squatting. I searched the lakefront, combing through roses, daisies, and honeysuckle for an hour with no success. I was heading toward a row of orchids when Irvina came with two black and yellow flowers cupped in her palms. “I found them.” I breathed with relief. The lilies were no larger than the pad of a finger—so small a thing with the extraordinary burden of deciding the fate of life.
“Thank you, now take one yourself.” She downed one with water. “You’ll have no worries now.”
She walked back toward the lake and looked into the distance, blank and quiet. I came beside her. “You, all right?”
“Flashes of war appeared before me back at Velmica’s Citadel, embers burning in the night. There were many screams,” she said. “My heart aches.”
“Were you here when it happened?”
“No,” she answered. “The reveries I speak of are of my home island Kor’Curtavanna. It was destroyed like this one—our sister queendom.”
I looked forward this time, my skin crawling. She talked with great anguish and loss. “The last thing I remember is defending the princess. Everything after is a blur. Months ago, I woke in a cave spring west of Memoria with no recollection of why or how I’d gotten there. When I traveled back to Kor’Curta, I found it just the same: destroyed.”
“So, you traveled all this way in search of another queendom?”
“I swam a great distance, yes.”
“How many queendoms are there?”
“Four,” she answered.
A lump amassed in my throat. “You think more naiads still live?”
She paused quietly, still focused on the distance. “I... I don’t know. We naiads can feel each other’s life forms. I haven’t come across any since I awakened.”
I set a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what to do or say other than that. I wasn’t great with consolation. All I could think about was Nova and Mother and how lost I would be without them. Watching Irvina struck apprehension in me. I left her alone, gathering more Panaceas from where she’d found them first. Rafael came jabbing his snout against my back, snorting. I rubbed his face. It was time to get back. “Looks like I have what I came for.”
I went toward Irvina, feeling mournfully uncomfortable. “I’ve lost a lot but can’t pretend to know what it feels like to lose it all. And I can’t claim to know what to say or do after the damage. But for whatever reason, you remain alive and well, now, at this moment. It’s up to you to find out how and why or forge it yourself.” Her back was to me as I spoke. She rubbed an elbow. “I have to head back to Lucreris to get the Panacea to my Mother. I know the plan was to go our separate ways once we reached Joanae, but you’re welcome to come along as far as you’d like.”
I gave her a moment to answer. She was silent and unmoving. “Well then, this is where I leave you. Good luck.” Rafael whinnied, and I turned to leave.
“Dioshen quein pesueno,” she said. “Never have I seen a man so compassionate toward a naiad in all my years. Humph... a decade’s past, you say? This truly is... a new era. I do want to find out why I was asleep in that cave for all these long years,” she said matter-of-factly, “and if I’m the only survivor of the war, you spoke of. Perhaps I will journey with you. If there are any naiads in the north, then I wish to know.”
She mounted Rafael, lending me a hand to climb into my seat behind her. “Good,” I said. We were off again, back the way we came. Leaving Joanae behind, we trotted hurriedly across eerie Velmica. Halfway back into the ruins, I probed the area with stark, darting eyes. A prickling came in the back of my neck—a warning. Old weapons had disappeared from where they once laid. With narrowed eyes, I noticed skeletons had vanished. We stopped in a cleared area.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, Rafael, agreeing with unnerved movement and vocalizations. “There was a skeleton there... and a sword there... a spear there.”
A hollow groan soared through the air, and then a sudden gust swept by. Irvina leaped down. “Anger,” she said.
I leaped after, hand wrapping my sword handle. “What? Who’s angry?”
“The dead,” she answered. “Your presence, it angers them.”
“I haven’t done anything!”
An echoing, cold, airy voice came from behind us. “Hunoma!” A skeleton garbed in a withered robe was more than shouting distance across from us. A rusted crown hung down over a skinless scalp of hair still long, dark, and vibrant. In the undead naiad’s hand was a short single-edged machete. The queen. “Hunoma! Quein bruto hunomas. Quein icara. Ne quein bekruzeck,” she spoke, pointing at me. “Bek Dioshen benins. Dioshen. Bek, venia ukre’ek.”
“Bekruzeck!” Irvina blared in a pleading tone. Tears welled in her flickering eyes. Rafael paced with fright.
“Should we run?”
More waking groans resounded. The undead grew from the ground all around us as if only from slumber. So much for that plan.
“Liches,” said Irvina.
“Liches?”
“Undead.”
There couldn’t have been any less than twenty surrounding us suddenly. Promptly, I drew my sword. A nearby lich ran toward us with a dagger held high. With a quick twirl, Irvina pulled a chakram and sliced into the rotten carcass with such elegance, severing its arm. Swinging her other star-bladed weapon, she lopped its head off. “We’ll have to fight our way through.”
Screeching unleashed. The liches converged, rushing from around corners of standing ruin, stomping forward with more agility than one would imagine of such ghastly beings. We assaulted them, striking in two columns. Bones flipped and flew, scattering the murky estate. When I felt the dead touch of one’s grimy ligaments on my backside, I sent its corpse crashing into the others with a jolting kick. Limbless, they came. Headless liches walked. The broken freaks cornered me, skeleton hands clawing at me from everywhere.
In the distance, Irvina battled the undead queen. Her offensive advances were hesitant— an accurate depiction of someone with no desire for savage melee. But she had no choice. The twirling hacking queen was unrelenting.
Quickly Irvina sliced an arm free from the skeleton. Spinning, she severed the opposite forearm next. The queen collapsed. As the ferocity of the naiad damsel’s attacks escalated, the liches that encircled me started after her. The instant they left me the armless queen rose again. “No! The man!”
Their focus returned to me. Irvina diced what remained of the queen and darted for me. But there were too many between us to close the gap; too many limbs to separate; too many bodies to fell. A drove of liches held me by the arms and legs locking me in place; my sword ripped from my grasp. Irvina thrashed through the horde, bursting through many, but never again could she distract them from me. Fortunately, I was rarely in need of saving. With a burst of energy, I ripped free an arm and grabbed for a pocket in my jacket. “Irvina, no!” I yelled as she had just beaten a lich over the head. “Catch!” I leaped, flinging it across the wind. The pouch sailed into her hand. “Go to Lucreris. Find my mother and sister. They live in the Nork District. Give her the Panacea.” A nod and swirling azure eyes were the last things I had seen of her before she galloped away on Rafael.
I glared at the screaming face of a lich. “How about letting me go, skull-face.”
The ground shook. A sudden crack split the earth. All around me, countless skeletons vanished plunging into the growing fissure. “The pit of Velmica welcomes you, human. ‘Tis an excellent death for all of you and your wretched kin. May your filth be wasted upon that foul earth!”
I yelled and, as did my adversaries, descended into the darkness below.
Awakening
the chasm of Velmica led to a profound discovery. Falling dirt beckoned my consciousness. I wasn’t dead, but I wallowed in death it seemed. The lich bones lay both around and underneath me, free from the curse of their mourning souls. I couldn’t find my sword anywhere. Above me was a cover of darkness, hypnotic and odd. It seemed somehow misplaced with no way to gauge the distance. It resembled a black storm cloud. I stood to my feet, dusting the debris from my lap. My body ached all over, but I had broken no bones. Somehow, someway, all the best parts of me remained intact. The liches must’ve broken my fall.
Abruptly, I heard a voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but it spoke in a menacing tone. “Anyone there?” I called, my voice echoing. “Show yourself.” I gripped my tattoos. They throbbed. The air was thick and the ground, gritty underneath each step. A dark path lit with dim, flickering light lay ahead.
The beating in my chest intensified as I walked, and suddenly I was feeling exhausted. I kept going until a shortness of breath drew a pause. And then, I couldn’t breathe at all. I collapsed, hitting the dirt in a violent crash. There was a flash of white light, a flash that took me somewhere else, someplace unknown.
“Vail is in ruins, Airius.” A woman’s voice spoke firmly. The hiss-snap of a searing flame burned in the background. There were dead men and a smoldering white palace.
“We must save what’s left, Reva. We will destroy it and the Abyssians.” A man in gleaming gold armor set his gauntlet-clad hand upon the shoulder of the woman that spoke. All I could see was his backside. His hair fell to his shoulders. The woman was fair skinned with long tresses dangling below her knees, pinned high. She was armored, as was he.
Loud clatter sounded in the distance. The two met the ricochet in horror. The man drew his sword. Its hilt was burnishing gold like his armor. The woman brandished her own, a single-edged saber with a hilt of lavender. Together they ran to the far end of their quarters, leaping from the bal
cony. A light as brilliant as the sun shined around them. Four white wings sprouted from their backs, and they soared across the air beneath the red sky.
What? My arms shook, nearly buckling as I pushed upright. On my feet again, I headed forward. A pulsating headache pounced as I barely made way through the dark tunnel, every step a more challenging opponent than the last. Whispers sounded in the air. A cold breeze came from an opening ahead. The voices grew loud and comprehensible.
“Die, you winged pawn,” spoke an ear-cringing voice.
“We will destroy you, demon. Mark my words.”
“You’re pathetic and weak.”
“You...can...kill me, but more...will come.”
“Your brethren shall suffer their demise soon enough. And your Superiors shall share the same fate.”
“Ahhh!”
Suddenly everything left then—the pain and the whispers. Beyond the opening was a chamber lit with purple and red flames floating on walls. I gazed ahead, finding a door inscribed with unknown symbols.
A sudden quake nearly felled me as the bizarre glyphs lit with a mauve glow and the door split from the ground. Violet shadows covered the floor of a vast chamber, deriving from something mounted in the center of a pedestal of stone. The pedestal stood on a floating bed of rock and crystal with a staircase climbing several feet to lessen its height.
I gazed upon it with uncertainty as I approached it; stopping at the foot of the stairs. From the pedestal’s center, a spectral purple radiance gleamed beyond visibility. I set a hand before me. Above the light hovered three revolving objects, three billowing sheets of vellum.
As I took the first step, a stirring air resounded. I looked back. From a whirlwind appeared a robed man. He was white-haired, his visage contoured by strong, bold features. Grave sunset eyes glinted like flecks of flames beneath his faint brows.
“Ah, I’ve been waiting on the one who would find this place.” His voice was like silk. I gazed in bewilderment, stepping away from the stairs.
Enigma: Awakening Page 10