Darkness Rising (Ancient Vestiges Book 1)

by Brenden Gardner

  Darkness Rising

  Book I of the Ancient Vestiges Series

  By

  Brenden Christopher Gardner

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, organizations, and events are a byproduct of the author’s imagination for fictional purposes. Any resemblance to real persons or events are entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2016, 2017 Brenden Christopher Gardner

  Cover design and art copyright © 2016 by Savannah Snook

  Second edition May 2017

  For my Dad.

  May we meet in the Unseen Realm.

  Contents

  The Coming Calamity

  The Arrival

  A Father’s Sin

  The Order

  Landfall

  The Corsair

  A Leap of Faith

  Gateway to the North

  The Crystal Throne

  Soul of the Faithful

  Zelen

  The Storm Begins

  The Son of Lakarn

  The Northlands

  Sacred Halls

  Judgment and Vengeance

  Failure and Retribution

  Under the Mountain’s Shadow

  The Wasteland

  The Descent

  Before the Gates

  The Last Stand

  The Harpy’s Brood

  Waking Nightmares

  The Awakening

  Foe of the Dark God

  Survival

  Upon the Winds

  Trials of the Faith

  The Sentinel

  Calamity’s Tale

  Matters of Faith

  The Wine Sinks

  The Inquisitor

  Servant of the Dark God

  The Corsair’s Gambit

  The Warden

  The Harpy’s Claws

  Riders of the Storm

  Secrets of the Storm

  Gabriel’s Gift

  Home

  The Old Life

  Trysts of the Faith

  The Desert of Death

  Burdens of Command

  Shades of Prophecy

  The Dream

  The Voice of Mother God

  Blood and Shadow

  The Sea of Storms

  Secrets of the Sands

  The Cleaver Prince

  The Last Retreat

  At the Mercy of Mother God

  Royal Demands

  The Hunters

  Stone and Sky

  The Price of Faith

  Friends and Foes

  Of Days Long Past

  Hearth and Home

  Answers to Riddles

  From Dawn to Dusk

  In the Name of the King

  Upon the Tides

  Fates Entwined

  The Vault of Kings

  Of Gods and Mortals

  His Last Act

  The Wings of the Harpy

  Upon the Northern Fields

  Time of Ascendance

  The Heart of the Sand

  Subservience

  Part I

  Awakening

  Prologue

  The Coming Calamity

  Jophiel stood upon a broken land.

  The ground was cracked and dry, and the humid air nearly choked him. A bleak, ruined city lay in the distance, nestled against a great black mountain: its peaks tall and craggy, beneath clouds black as pitch. He peered across the plain and saw what seemed to be a courtyard once, and two foes locked in battle.

  He thought one was a woman, armoured from shoulder to foot in darkened plate, wielding a bastard sword that shone and reflected. The sheen from the layered metal reminded him of spell forged steel from Old Mazain.

  The other was a man garbed in ash-grey plate, though a dark cowl masked his face in shadows. The sword he wielded was longer, jagged, and darkened mists pooled beneath the steel.

  Jophiel stared in attentiveness. He did not know how or why, but the outcome of the battle would dictate the Great Fate. It had come before, and while his memory stretched to countless recurrences, some premonition gave him the unsettling feeling that this would be the last.

  And for some inexplicable cause, he knew that the woman must emerge victorious.

  The man sent the woman skidding across the stones and barren earth, and for a brief moment, he turned. Though the man was faint and indistinct, Jophiel saw mottled feathers upon the man’s breast; the plate seemed to be carved in fiery chasms.

  The woman did not rest for long. She pushed herself up and met the twisted blade of the man. A strong, prescient glow was upon her steel; it pushed out and seemed to engulf the man. He shrugged it off like it was some errant insect, and became suddenly suffused by tendrils of a twisted power, and he pushed back at her.

  What is the cause of that? Jophiel thought. I have not seen its like since—

  The Time of Ascendance.

  Pieces of lost memories were restored to him, like a puzzle long neglected. He recalled the prophecy had come before, said to come again; only to be forgotten until the Awakening was at hand, old as Time itself. It emerged in his ancestral home of Old Mazain after the discovery of the Animus Stones—crystalline rocks imbued with knowledge of the Ages, and a twisted, malignant power. That power belonged to the dark god, Sariel, summoned and fathomed by the Betrayer, before the First Son challenged and defeated the foe at great cost.

  Jophiel was there when it had come to pass, though he remembered little. Yet the Betrayer did fall after a drawn-out battle that rent mountains and soiled the earth. In the years that followed, the Betrayer would escape his prison and bring about the power of the dark god again—until the First Son rose once more to defeat the fell foe. The conflict churned endlessly over the long history of the realm.

  Yet neither the Betrayer nor the First Son fought on the field of battle.

  The Betrayer was beside Jophiel.

  Amos was draped in dark robes, and his long black hair fell down his back. His flesh looked pale and clammy, and his rheumy yellow eyes followed every movement of the battle, as if naught else in the realm beggared concern. Whenever the woman took a cut or lost her feet, Amos flinched, as if wounded.

  “We have wrought an end that we shall not live to regret,” Amos said mournfully. He was near at tears. “More a fool that I was, thinking that a god could be brought low. For millennia, His voice was in my head, guiding my every action. I lost my will, but not my memories. Now, He has a more fitting vestige that will do what I was ne’er able to—a true Herald.”

  “The Awakening would have come, by our hand or not,” Jophiel remarked sadly.

  “We could have done more. Should have done more. We lost him whence Lord Eldred stirred. Look at her, Jophiel, look at our chosen warrior! The other lingers Unseen. He should have been given the gift. Reuven has beggared us.” Amos pointed a tremulous finger to the woman. “She is no match for Sariel’s chosen.”

  The battle appeared to be near its end: the woman could barely parry, her breathing was laboured, and there was more blood than flesh upon her face.

  If this is the Time of Ascendance, then it will not end as it did before. “This long conflict is at an end, Amos.”

  “No, you do not know Sariel’s mind as I do. There is no rest. Our spirit will be wrested from us—twisted and maligned—and borne unto the daemonic hordes of His own realm. The Nightmare, brother, returns to me, and you and all our kind will be ensnared by it. Undoubtedly the weaker will die, but the stronger, we will be no more than thralls to His eternal war. It does not end.”

  Jophiel kept his silence, watched, and hoped.

  There was no decep
tion to the woman’s feints, and so little strength to her blows. The man began to toy with her, cutting at her legs, arms, and shoulders. He gleefully pushed her towards a low broken wall.

  Amos turned away with a look of disgust. Jophiel thought some deep-seated guilt consumed his brother. That disgruntled, pained, look. It was much the same as when they brought him chained and defeated to Edren.

  A fierce, unmerciful wail cut through the air, and Amos dropped to his knees. The man speared the woman through the breast, slicing through layers of plate. Blood gurgled from her mouth, her fingers went limp, and her ancient blade crashed to the ground.

  The man reached out with a bloodied hand and ripped a palm-sized crystalline stone from her breastplate. As it glowed in the man’s palm, Jophiel knew what it was. He could not forget the Heart of the Sand—Gabriel’s last gift to the wayward children of Mother God.

  The gift that no longer emanated Light.

  “Three hundred years,” the man rasped while fingering the relic. “For three hundred years it has eluded my grasp, and given hope to wretched cretins who do not understand the realm beyond their borders. Now you, too, have fallen before the Dark Will. Light shall never rise, but the Darkness is all that shall be known.”

  Jophiel gasped as he felt his legs weaken. It took all his strength to stand and watch. He knew that whatever should have been prevented, faltered, and the shadows of Dusk would stretch westward, ensnaring all that had grown under the First Son’s watch.

  Dawn had fallen.

  “And you, treacherous snake!” The man’s hidden, piercing eyes were intent upon Amos. “We have not forgotten your deception.”

  “Madness,” Amos said faintly whilst trembling. “Madness has taken you. I know your mind, and what you intend. Even with this strength—even your ascendance—It shall not bow to your will.”

  The man crushed the Heart of the Sand into his breastplate. The malignant power that the man called Darkness smothered it; and tendrils of Its power were twisting outward, horrifying in its reach.

  This is how it ends. Amidst fury and rage. Naught but sorrow remains to us.

  In an instant, the man was in front of Amos, holding him up by the neck. “You who would not see Rebirth. The brothers that you had left languishing, all their sons and daughters, they shall see what was wrought, ever denied to you twice-named Betrayer!”

  “You…shall…fall…”

  “Rebirth, Amos. Fifteen thousand years we had dreamed of it, and now, upon the precipice, it will slip from your grasp.” The man’s fingers crushed bone, and Amos fell to the ground in a heap.

  Jophiel felt anguish and fear; tortured by the revelation that discord and chaos reigned in a seared, dead realm. His own birth, his brother, and his father—it was suddenly meaningless and empty. Fifteen thousand years had passed, and upon the knife’s edge, they were as dead as the rest of the realm.” Never before have we perished,” Jophiel declared sullenly.

  The man turned to him. For a fleeting moment, he could see the man’s face: scarred and mutilated, singed and sere, eyes a deep-set crimson, as if weeping blood. “You are naught but cretins who think over much of yourself. Rise, Jophiel, but know that I will bring about your fall.”

  “Darkness shall never find us.”

  “It already has.”

  Jophiel felt a reverberating, thunderous voice echoing inside his skull. The words ‘He hath come’ repeated endlessly. Jophiel put his hands over his ears, but it did not dull the pain. His sight nearly seared, he struggled to look at the man who seemed more like a daemon; and the man’s endless power churned like a maelstrom.

  “You have forsaken all that you ever were,” Jophiel declared weakly. “Treachery is aught you know. Lost now in this madness, this Darkness. Whatever it is you thought to have wrought, it is not what was. You have purged that.”

  “Naught but a thrall to greater powers,” the man rasped, and every word seemed to grate Jophiel, and he felt his very being wither away. “Not all of us choose to be bound in servitude. This is your prophecy fulfilled. I am the Darkness Rising, Jophiel, and I will break the Chains of Fate.”

  “There are some powers that even you cannot conquer. My brother had the right of that,” Jophiel declared before flinching, and a burning pain blinded his senses. “Taking my life’s blood will not change that.”

  “Be bound to the dark god’s realm, as we have been to yours.”

  The Darkness suffused Jophiel; the Light no more than a dull inflection.

  He screamed in terror.

  Chapter One

  The Arrival

  Aleksander sat by the tower window, gazing out at the city below.

  People bustled among the darkened, soot choked streets. To his eyes, they were no more than distant, flurried specks. Though he thought they were pushed aside by a small retinue venturing towards the hold.

  Aleksander knew who had commanded such attention. He did not need to see the shadowed face to know, and there was little he would not freely give to forget about it.

  “Master Avrill!”

  Three knocks followed on his chamber door. He rose resignedly, and tied a draping burgundy cloak around his neck. He opened the door and saw a familiar page without. Jeremiah was dressed in a burgundy coat and grey trousers. The lad was wiry with shaggy hair, and had an honest, youthful face. Aleksander could not help but see a grimness—stark in contrast to the boy’s usual joviality.

  “Do you fear what will come of today?” Aleksander asked. “You should not.” I do not believe a word of that, but still—

  Jeremiah brushed past him, and made for the tower window. The page looked out, and Aleksander could see that the boy’s face was pained. “The imperator, he frightens me. He was always hard and cold, but fair, very fair. Now he, he seems cruel, Master Avrill. I cannot help but think that he will do something rash. This stranger is driving him mad.”

  Memories from the bowels of Dead Rock stirred within Aleksander: the guttural, rasping voice that seared his mind, the stranger demanding servitude, and the broken bodies and rivers of blood that puddled at his feet.

  “If naught else, we must trust to our sovereign’s judgment.” Aleksander lied, wrenching himself from the dark recesses that clouded his thoughts. “He has always lead us true.”

  The boy turned and shook his head. Fear beaded in his still, dull eyes. “It is not the same.”

  “No, lad, it is,” Aleksander protested. “Three hundred years the imperium has stood against more enemies than we can fair count. Three years past our own swords threw back Trecht’s vaunted strength. It is not to a vagrant that we shall fall. We, lad, always rise.”

  Jeremiah put his eyes down and made for the chamber door. “We should not keep the imperator waiting.”

  “No, we shall not.”

  The hall outside was narrow and dim with naught but a token guard along the adjoining chamber doors. Aleksander followed the young page without thought or regard, though the stranger still lingered at the edge of memory.

  He descended the winding turret stars of the tower. Faint rays of light illuminated the dull, darkened steps. No sound came from within the turret chambers, save for a chill wind streaming in through the windows. Though he heard muffled talk from the hold beneath. Gathered in the grand halls would be his fellow scholars, nobles, merchants, and councillors. He knew they were utterly heedless of what awaited them, and blindly trusted to the wisdom of Imperator Argath Diomedes, the strength of his Black Guard, and the bravery of the Sentinels of Umbrage.

  If they knew what I did, they would lock their cell door, and cower beneath their beds.

  “What, what will you say to him?” Jeremiah squeaked. His words were barely above a whisper, and Aleksander thought there was a slight trepidation to the boy’s step; the grim silence seemed to have only wrought unease.

  “Little, I hope,” Aleksander replied, trying to steel his words. “Imperator Argath will ask him much. Then, the Black Storm must awaken. Blood must pay with b
lood.”

  “The Black Storm? Was that not what the imperator was known by, whence our enemies feared him?”

  “They still do. They simply are not enemies anymore.” Or so I hope.

  Aleksander emerged from the turret steps and found Cimmerii’s Hold bustling. Merchants, nobles and sentinels intermingled at the base of gilded pillars, down the western halls, and in dark corners. Lesser lords and ladies sat upon couches with wine in hand; the portraits of imperators of the past peered down upon them as if in judgment. High-born children scurried about while admiring the ancient weaponry and blackened suits of armour.

  He followed the page closely, but listened intently to the conversations—all of which centred upon the stranger.

  “If you ask me—not that any of you have,” a bejewelled nobleman declared to a hunched in crowd of twenty, “he is a Trechtian dog. Who else would dare spill blood upon our land? The priests would not feign to stain their robes, and the pirates fear us, if they would admit it not.”

  “Is that why I pay tithe and tariff to the whores from the islands?” a lanky merchant with long black haired replied. “The apple does not fall far from the tree, or so it is oft said in the greener lands. What difference does it make who sits the throne, if the same sons dictate the will of the old land? Mark my words: King Tristifer thinks himself clever, but he does not fool Imperator Argath. Not a wit.”

  “What would a merchant know of council business?” the nobleman asked gruffly.

  “Just as much as a nobleman.”

  Aleksander guffawed, though he did not know who was closer to the truth. He was present when Trecht’s young king had come to the imperium not a year past. King Tristifer seemed much unlike his father: more genuine, sincere, though treachery could lurk unbeknownst. Aleksander recalled much of the council casting doubt, and though the imperator dismissed their prattling, he would not share his mind.

  Aleksander did not think the stranger was much like the king, or what he knew of King Marcus Marcanas before his death. Not that it means much at first glimpse.