“Men as you,” Lord Aleksander said, “should know their place.” It was like a flash of light, but darkness in its stead: the overlord was thrust against the far wall, and the stones cracked and crumbled. He slowly regained his feet, wincing in pain and muttering under his breath. “We are talking,” the young lord finished.
“Who are you?” Ashleigh demanded.
“We are the Dark Brotherhood.” Lord Aleksander opened his arms, as if inviting an embrace. “Long the esteemed guests of these halls, until our trust was betrayed by our host. Sebastien Tiron and your dear Damian cracked such a subtle scheme, even the stones could not see all the threads that bound it. Yet as all men will learn, It unraveled the plans and lay it all to ruin.”
Sebastien had come with the men in cowls, Aerona recalled. What could have happened, she did not know, but these were not men to be trifled with, if indeed they were men at all.
“Where is that worm?!” Lord Daniel Baccan demanded, loudly and sternly.
“Safe for a time,” Lord Aleksander replied. “The Harpy almost slew him, if not for what I did. I doubt she realizes that, and what I learned from that encounter.”
“You shall learn death,” Aerona said solemnly whilst flexing her fingers.
The young lord laughed, and took two blackened hands and pulled his hood back. A youthful, scarred face stared back: the scabs fresh, still raw and healing.
Those eyes, they are telling, and cruel and wicked.
“Y-you sent me away,” Ashleigh stammered in disbelief.
Did you not know? Aerona wondered, looking to the sentinel.
Lord Aleksander shrugged. “Lord Kaldred willed it, and I carried out his will. Now he is gone, and here I stand. I found you once, but you were taken by the honeyed words of the Harpy here. I—am not Lord Kaldred. If I was, you would not have been lost to us. I mean to remedy that.”
“I am redeemed,” Ashleigh insisted. “I am no longer bound to your chains.”
“All men are chained; only Lord Eldred will free us at the Time of Ascendance.”
“Where is he?” Daniel asked angrily. “Reveal him so that he may taste our steel.”
“Do not tempt him,” Aerona scolded. “This man transcends death. How oft must you die before you stay dead, Aleksander?”
“How little all of you know.” Lord Aleksander floated three feet from the ground, a ring of Darkness suffusing him, expanding outward. “We are Death. To Death the knowledge of yore serves.”
She felt a great pain suddenly, though she thought it more like an absence. The Animus Stone once hid at her breast floated in front of her. It shone brighter than ever before; engravings upon the crystal revealed itself, writ in the blackest of ink. The symbol seemed to be a mishmash of letters imposed on each other, all but unreadable. Then the stone moved through the air, as it glided away from her. She felt a strong inclination to reach out and take it, but she dared not move against it: fear of harming it overcame every emotion. The stone landed in Lord Aleksander’s outstretched hand, the silver pierced through thick shadows that churned inside it.
Father…
“The Spherule of Sky,” the young lord mused as he turned it over in his hand. “Long has Elder Amos sought it. Too long has he not known where It is. All this time It was in the hands of a bastard.”
“My fa—”
“Was a good man by all accounts, yes, how droll your protestations always are.”
“Where is he?!”
Lord Aleksander smiled wanly. “I would have declared you a traitor, too. You squawk worse than those birds on the shore. So be it.”
Aerona felt a presence in the throne room that was not there before: twisted, cruel, and tortuous. An immense circle of darkness appeared between the men in cowls that churned like a maelstrom. She heard screams of agony and torment that made her tremble and waver. Human fingertips came up from the portal, thin, the nails cracked. A hand followed, and a large, grotesque spike pierced it, through to thick boards behind. The face was that of a man, worn and beaten, clumps of hair torn out, scars across his face and neck. It was only a scant resemblance to Sebastien Tiron, but it was him: his eyes, drooped, downcast and defeated, but they did not lie. Dalian’s renowned healer was naked, his body a ruin, stretched across a great wooden X, and a single long beam thrust up behind it.
“Are you pleased?” Lord Aleksander asked. “Is this not the fate you would wish upon him?”
Aerona was wordless. The Corsair’s face was fraught with rage, but for the slaughter Sebastien rent, or the tortuous sight that the Dalian found himself in, she did not know.
“You had no right,” she uttered, weak and frail. She thought the overlord was going to speak, but he never did.
“He is our creature,” Lord Aleksander explained. “He is ours to do as we will. The man was the Warden—a protector of the stones, obeying Its will, a man of profound change and influence. In pride and greed, this Dalian threw it all away. Instead of serving, he sought power from mortal men. Do you see the efforts of your labour, Overlord Damian Dannars?”
“Heh, what a farce you are, accursed Isilian,” Damian spat on the floor, his floor. “The efforts of my labour will be the end of yours, traitorous curs!” He lunged forward, though he only made it a few steps before the floor stones came up in front of him, like a fountain, and a screeching wail scorched across the hall. The overlord stumbled, and disbelief and fear was palpable on his face.
Lord Aleksander sneered. “Now, now, Overlord, you are making your old friend quite distraught.”
Aerona saw a thin nimbus about the Dalian, black and red. The man grumbled inaudible words, ne’er looking up, she knew his eyes were on her: a sere, red glare as he watched every motion and peered into every thought.
“You have twisted him,” Aerona blurted out. “What sorcery do you wield?!”
“The gift from their dark god,” Ashleigh interjected. “Whatever is left of him is all they need. His stone will not let him die, is it not so, daemons?!”
As if that summoned It from a deep slumber, a red Animus Stone, brilliant in its sheen, appeared in front of Sebastien. Radiant and deadly, It brimmed with power.
There is no good left in him, thrall now to the stone, instead of It serving him.
“It is what keeps him alive,” Lord Aleksander said curtly. “The Spherule of Pyre, once yours, Overlord. You cast it out whence Lord Kaldred came to Isilia, thinking that it would rent and ruin an enemy that you could no longer master. Instead, Elder Amos deemed this disgraced Dalian worthy of it. Ashleigh herself knows the power of our friend here. Even with his vessel near extinguished. She has seen its power. She has seen the darkness inside his soul.”
The castle began to shake. Aerona barely kept her feet. Sebastien’s inaudible mutters were louder now, more shrieks than aught else. The sound was terrible; all her strength was bent on enduring it. The pain reached its pinnacle, and an enormous beam of colourless light came down upon the Dalian.
No, it has returned. The light that seared and burned and destroyed!
The spherules in the room cascaded with each other high above, its streams of red, brown, grey, black, and silver merging with the blinding light of destruction.
It went on and on. She heard screams of agony and joy, of despair and elation. Sebastien Tiron wailed like a madman; seemingly no longer able to discern between pleasure and pain, hope and despair. Yet above those sounds were words clear as day, though the speaker she did not recognize. What rents does not only destroy but creates. The will of God is infinite in its realities. See the Calamity born again. See the fall and rise of man. When man is shorn of pride, vanity and greed, it is Darkness that remains: a gift that the dark lord grants us all. The Harbinger stands before you. Bathe in his darkness, so that yours may see the Dusk.
The light of destruction vanished in an instant and the hall seemed less than what it was, like an empty husk, soulless. The men in cowls hovered near the immense ceiling as they looked down towards a blac
k mass of shadow. Slowly it receded, but what remained was not human. Great leathern wings snapped and fluttered, and stretched fifteen feet to either side. The creature was long and lanky with sheer black talons that gripped and crushed mortared stone beneath. A wickedly long sword was on its hip, not of castle forged steel, but much like crystalized darkness, denser than the obsidian from Isilia with shadows cascading up and down the blade, and twisted, dark mists puddled beneath it. The head was large and grotesque: stretched and creased, coarse black hair ran down its neck, teeth large and long, fangs that looked as sharp as the talons. Whence the creature stood, it was nearly twenty feet in height, and when those eyes matched hers, it was the same red glare that she saw before. This was the darkness in the heart of a man torn apart by war and death.
Shadows no more. The worst of our souls turned to flesh. “What have you done?!” Aerona screamed at the cowled men as she put Vindication up, though the monster made no move to draw his own blade. Ashleigh, Damian, and Daniel panned out, swords at the ready.
“Penance,” Lord Aleksander said as the monster put two long fingered hands on the blade. “See the dark god’s will done, and your soul redeemed in Darkness.”
The monster flew forth, swinging wildly in massive arcs; it shrieked terribly: fell and coarse. Damian advanced, countering the creature, but cuts along its leg only enraged it. When the two blades met, it looked as if the overlord was to be folded in half; the creature pushing down with one hand, and Damian’s two handed grip was failing. He dropped to one hand and ran, but not before the creature’s ghastly wingspan caught him in the gut and knocked him into the eastern wall with a sickening thud.
Aerona lunged forth, matching the monster before it could see a mortal blow on Damian. The swords met—she saw its blade was so much thicker and longer, at least twice as much—but with the knowledge that brute strength availed Damian little, she feinted quickly: striking and dodging and rolling, repeated over and over. It did not seem to harm the creature, but she did not intend to.
Daniel and Ashleigh advanced. They came at the monster from the back, the front, and the sides. As tall as this giant was, he was also wide, ne’er able to swing at more than one of them. Still for all that it was fast; and none landed even the faintest of cuts.
The monster suddenly let out a shriek that felt like a hot, sticky wind as it pushed Aerona back. Daniel lost his balance, but she remained on her feet. and she used her free hand to steady her. She saw that Ashleigh stood her ground. The sentinel stared back, eyes wide in disbelief, the monster still howling his cruel chorus.
“Strike him!” Aerona called out.
Ashleigh cut the monster halfway up its leg, and it let out a terrible inhuman wail. There was a thin line of white was where crusted darkened flesh was before.
“Again!” Aerona shouted.
The monster swatted Ashleigh away with its long right hand, and sent her in a crumbled heap into a nearby pillar.
The monster turned and found Damian. Daniel suddenly lunged forward and his entire length of steel was inside the creature’s leg. The monster looked down just as Daniel cut off its entire lower leg.
The creature wailed and moaned as it swung wildly. Aerona leapt forward without thought or concern towards Daniel, and barreled him out of the way before the monster could cleave a deadly blow on the Corsair.
The monster’s eyes turned to Daniel—and her. It flew towards them: its great sword outstretched, its aim to skewer and maim, not cleave. Then the creature stopped suddenly and thudded to the ground. Damian stood beside a maimed leathern wing, grinning cruelly. Ashleigh then climbed upon its back and thrust her sword straight through it, pinning it to the ground. It flayed and wailed like a dying animal, then Damian thrust his sword through the creature’s neck as it bubbled its last breath, with blackened blood seeping out.
“Did, did we do it?” Ashleigh asked. Her breathing was hoarse and laboured.
“The bastard will fly no more,” Damian said.
The monster ne’er stirred, but the body seemed to shrink. The blades entombed in its skin fell away as water sloughs off a stone. The coarse, blackened skin all but gone, wings dissipated, the talons shortened into nails. What remained, wept. Whether it was grief, or terror, or regret, Aerona did not know. Sebastien wept beneath a parched brown cloak as he repeated the words, “He hath come,” while clutching the red Animus Stone, dull and dormant.
She looked to where the men in cowls floated above. Each of them uttered the same words, “He hath come,” before they were cloaked by shadows, vanishing from sight.
Then Overlord Damian Dannars rose.
“Get up you gods be cursed cur. Get up!” he screamed, kicking Sebastien with the toe of his boot. The blows sent the healer scurrying across the hall, weakened. “Get up and answer for yourself you bloody gutter fish. Get up!” Sebastien was moaning louder now; the brutal kicks were the only sound that broke it up.
“Damian!” she screamed out.
“You come into my halls, you wretch!” Damian screamed, kicking the healer. “Deceive me in front of my men!” Another kick. “They are all dead on account of you!” He kicked him again and again. “Answer me whoreson. Answer me!” Again and again.
“He… hath…. come,” Sebastien said.
“Speak again you thrice damned traitor.”
“He…. hath… come.”
The overlord kicked his head; it was a vile, terrible sound. Sebastien lay on his back, spitting up blood and muttered, “He… hath… come…”.
Damian guffawed and looked down at the red Animus Stone. “Heh, I guess we get to take back what belonged to us all along? Send my regards to the Lord of Death.” Reaching down, he froze. His smile turned red, blood gurgling from his mouth. A darkened sword emerged from his gut. “A-Aerona.”
“DAMIAN!”
Aerona did not hear whatever Ashleigh and Daniel shouted at her; she rushed to her consort, cradled his head in her hands, weeping.
“Get up,” was all Aerona heard in a deep, throaty, coarse voice; it was not her that got up but the shuffled sounds of Sebastien beside the speaker, and a deep red glow touched her face. She looked up and saw a cloaked man in ash-grey plate. The man grasped the Animus Stone and crushed it into his chest, and an image of a great mottled bird appeared upon it. The stranger had no eyes for her, but they were crimson, like weeping blood.
“The Phoenix...” Ashleigh muttered, trailing off in disbelief.
“What does the fool in the desert know?” the cloaked man asked gruffly.
That voice. I have heard it before. No, part of it. There is a familiarity to it. Just like Sebastien, in the guise of that monster.
“Enough to ward me from you and your dark god,” Ashleigh bristled.
A thick stream of darkness and shadows pushed Ashleigh to the wall, and trapped her high against it. She screamed in terror and agony.
“What ward protects you, oh false paragon?” the cloaked man demanded. “For fifteen centuries, the wayward fool in the desert professes to know much, lead on by artifacts that have escaped Sariel’s will. He knows only of the lesser powers, and none the greater. I am that greater power.”
You are not afraid. She knew it as her father’s voice. You are my brave, little warrior. You always gave me strength and courage and resolve. Now you must do it for others now, worthy of your light. Stand against him. Stop the Bringer of Dusk.
Vindication in her hand, she took a savage overhead swing at the Bringer of Dusk, and before she knew it, their blades met in a savage dance of death. Daniel left Ashleigh to fend for herself, took to the other side, but was rebuffed by lazy parries, and an onrush of darkness and shadows that thrust him across the room, and into pillars and walls.
On and on Aerona fought, until the stranger forced her into a corner, amidst broken stone and puddled water. Daniel still reeled, his plate and mail dented, struggling to walk. The Bringer of Dusk smashed Vindication away from her hand with a mailed fist, and her foe’s own dark
ened blade neared her throat. “Do it. Do it then,” Aerona muttered back at him, defiant.
“Do you know who I am?”
“End me.”
The Bringer of Dusk ignored her demand, and pulled his hood down. She saw a worn and scarred face, with war-weary brown eyes: the face of a leader, of salvation, of devotion to people stared back at her. “Wh-what happened to you?” she asked.
As if the face was all but an illusion, it faded away, and the only eyes that stared back were crimson.
Aerona closed her eyes, but her terror was broken by an old, familiar voice shouting, “Enough, Lord Eldred!”
She cried as she slid down the wall. Shapes and shadows flittered in front of her, as if it was some half-remembered dream. The throne room lightened suddenly as the shadows fled. Shapes faded and took form again, and a man with a bent and crooked back approached her. Ashleigh stood only with the help of Daniel. They did not come to Aerona.
“G-Gregory Tanev?” Aerona asked in wonderment. “Why are you, I thought you left, I thought, I thought—” She realized the most important question and asked, “W-why did he obey you?”
“I am the man you knew, and I am not. I did not want to deceive you. No, I did not. In times as these, we must do what we do not like.”
“T-that w-was…”
“That was long ago. Now, no longer. Eldred. That is his name now, yes, that is what he chose. Eldred.”
“W-why me?”
“Seek stone and sky, child. Seek stone and sky. You will learn what your father protected more than aught else.”
Shadows swirled around her oldest friend, and he was gone.
Time seemed to pass slowly. Thoughtless, she sat with knees up. Life had suddenly returned to the Overlord’s Seat, and she heard the heavy tread of mailed boots.
“Overlord?!”
The shout came from beyond the doors. They burst open admitting a stern-faced, diminutive man in crimson. Daniel bore a wide smile of recognition. “Jaremy Dahk.”
“My lord? Did not think to look for you. Where is the bloody fool of an overlord?” The words had just escaped his lips when he saw the dead body of the overlord. “Ah, that will do us no good. Guess that makes you overlord now.”
Darkness Rising (Ancient Vestiges Book 1) Page 50