The Sha’hdi had found a safe perch up in the rafters above the main room. The longhouse had short walls built within, and many of the crossbeams that supported the roof ran through the entire house, allowing for an enterprising assassin to traverse the entire building unnoticed even if she didn't have the ability to meld into shadows. Humans almost never look up when trying to find someone and that fact would make her assignment an easy proposition. Already having mapped out her escape route and precisely who she would have to kill to escape, she sank into a predatory crouch, her muscles coiled like springs ready to release, patient and certain that her moment to strike would come.
While Joven looked on, and the women busied about, Endrance was feeling a growing sense of worry spread through him. What if he made a mistake? What would the king do when he disobeyed him like they planned to? What if something went wrong and he never found the child? He started to feel weak and uncertain. It must have shown on his face as he stood there, as he felt a large hand clap him on the back, nearly sending him flat on his face. He looked back at Joven's signature grin.
“Relax, Endrance!” he said, winking. “You'll do fine. This is what you were hired for, after all.” he pointed at a white-dressed woman that walked past him, carrying an armful of towels. “Everyone here believes in you, and we will all stand by you, no matter what happens.”
His reassurances got the young wizard to smile. Even if the worst came, he knew that he could make it with his friend’s help. They had done the work, found the knowledge, did the research, and prepared for this moment. They were ready. Endrance nodded, and was about to speak when the double doors suddenly swung open.
A disheveled guardsman burst into the room. He looked around for a second, his eyes adjusting, seeing the Spengur he shouted, “The eclipse! It's starting! And that's not all! Suddenly four of the women's labor increased greatly!” He cleared out of the way as the first of the women were brought in.
More men in armor came carrying on wooden pallets the four women. Three of the women Endrance had never seen before. The first two were attended by their husbands, each in different stages of worry. The third carried by two men, nothing more. The fourth woman that was carried in was not on a wooden stretcher, but rather a cloth mattress carried by four strong men and followed by a smugly smiling King. Endrance's heart dropped as he saw them lay the queen on one of the beds. The king strode over to the wizard's position and stood before him, his armored hands resting on his hips.
“You are ready.” he said it more of a statement than a question. When the young wizard nodded he smiled again. “Good, remember what we talked about.” he said ominously, turning and walking back to his wife's bedside. The hem of his cape nearly whipped into the young man's face as he strode away. He wore lighter armor this day, fine chain reinforced with black steel plates over the shoulders, upper chest, forearms, and thighs. His boots landed heavily on the wooden planks of the longhouse. The king's sword lanced neatly through a gap in the cape and his back, sitting ominously in its minimal scabbard.
This time when he saw the king the anxiety he felt before was not present. Something was different, but what was it? He didn’t have time to ponder the change, he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
Endrance waved Anna over. She approached quickly. “So what does it look like?” He asked, partially aware of what she would say.
She looked over the scene. “These four went into labor exactly at the same time. They look to be ready to birth right away, and the eclipse will begin any minute now.” she pursed her lips as she watched Bridget come inside to help with the birthing. “We should be able to handle everything here, just stay back unless we call for you.”
He stepped back again and watched the midwives work. Walking to the doors, he peered outside and watched as the suns and the moons seemed to meld together. The eclipse was a beautiful dark orb with a corona of flickering multi-hued flames. Endrance saw colors flare that he never had seen in the daylight before, and forced himself to look away before he damaged his eyes. He then heard the four women groan almost in unison. Attending midwives shooed the bearers out of the house, and hurriedly began working with the soon to be mothers.
He shut the doors and locked them, it was time and now he had to watch the births. It was an amazing and yet strangely disturbing thing to the young wizard to watch someone give birth. The women panting and pushing, the husbands standing by, holding their wives hands; even the king had taken off a glove to hold his wife. Endrance noticed that the king’s wife was squeezing his hand so hard that his skin appeared to have a strange texture. When the blood was pushed out it looked entirely covered in scar tissue. He realized that the king must have a great deal of calluses from all the years spent fighting growing up. Shaking his head, he looked around again as the first of the four women finally yielded her child. The cord was cut, and Anna whisked the babe away from its mother to present the child to the Spengur.
He turned the babe over gingerly, careful not to harm the squealing newborn. Male, that was correct. However the babe had no birthmarks as the prophecy had predicted. Turning the baby back over to his mother, he declared that child was not the prophesied one. He noticed the king's smirk out of the corner of his eye, barely catching his gaze for a split second in the rush. Again, he remembered the king's threat.
He was unable to dwell on it as the second child was born only a few moments later, and again it was whisked away to be handed to the Answer-Seeker's slender hands. A careful examination of the child revealed a birthmark, but it was only shaped roughly like an acorn. The child was also female, and the prophesied one would be a man. He declared the child was not the prophesied one as well. The child was brought back to his loving parents. He sighed, turning to regard the remaining two mothers.
The queen screeched in pain, her face contorted in pain and agony. Bridget struggled to hold her down as she squirmed, and despite this she nearly threw her to the floor. A thin trickle of blood dripped from a corner of the twisted sheets onto the floor. Her eyes remained locked on her husband's eyes and he stared back with a steely gaze, seeming almost indifferent to her pain. Her free hand gripped the post of the bed, and he realized that the wood, while not of great quality, had compressed and splintered under her grip.
Barbarian women were scary, he thought while looking down at his own thin fingered hand. Someone like Bridget or Anna would utterly crush his poor hand in childbirth. He then realized he was thinking about himself having kids, and he shook the thoughts from his head, a hint of a blush rushing through his cheeks. This was no time for him to be thinking of that.
The remaining two women were having an incredibly rough time. Their bodies were covered in sweat, and the midwives were trying to stop them from bleeding too much. The King seemed a statue, staring solely into his wife's eyes. His intense concentration was so great he neither blinked nor did a single muscle twitch. His wife was staring back into his eyes, her face unsurprisingly in pain and anger.
The other woman was half sitting up in the bed, breathing hard as Selene tended to her. She was otherwise alone, her husband or family absent. Endrance noted that as the woman clasped Selene's hand that she wore a wedding band on her finger. She groaned in pain as a powerful contraction tore through her. She seemed to be much calmer than the queen, save for immediately during a contraction where pain forced its way across her face.
He leaned over and asked his vigilant guardian quietly. “Joven?” he asked.
Joven's eyes flicked to him and back out over the birthing. “Hmm?” he grunted, his massive arms crossed in front of him. Only Endrance from his vantage point of being slightly behind his bodyguard could see a trio of slender throwing knives Joven had palmed in his hand.
“You know what happened to her husband?” he asked, pointing towards the lone woman.
Joven shrugged. “Her husband's one of the King's generals and Balen’s equal. He's currently mobilized with his army skirmishing against the wolfmen south of us. He
couldn't break away to be here,” he said. “Though I know him to be a good man, and that he served with my brother Balen. Would have been here if he could.”
Endrance nodded. He had a strange feeling pass through him. His eyes closed as he thought back to the Journal and its prophecy. The child would be of the nation, but forsaken by it. He had to carefully contemplate the context of the text to understand, as the current verbal recitation of the prophecy did not have that information. So, I don't think that the king would fors-
Both pregnant women cried out at once, and the midwives moved to their feet. Endrance could not see all the activity through the blankets covering them, but he could tell that the time had indeed come. It was strangely disturbing to watch as he couldn't help but notice both sides of the birthing room were doing the exact same thing. The pregnant women cried out in unison, the midwives announced the same events during the birth, and even they both suffered unusual blood loss birthing their children. He glanced at Joven, who gave him an indifferent shrug as he peered up at the rafters.
Jalyin was perfectly still, her crouch in the shadows of the rafters above the proceedings undisturbed by the flicker of torches and braziers. She watched her mark's bodyguard, and knew he would be trouble. He had been slower and clumsier than her, but if he were to connect with a blow it would most assuredly take her down, at least long enough to prove fatal. And now he looked up into her area, scanning the ceiling for potential threats. She was confident that her abilities were more than sufficient to hide her, she had before stood in the shadows within a hand span of a mark and he never knew she was there till... well, he never knew she had been there while he lived. Now she watched him bemusedly. His eyes crossed over her area, and she felt a flicker of uncertainty as his eyes seemed to actually lock vision with her. After a tense moment of looking into his eyes, his vision shifted on to the rest of the shadows in the rafters. She settled again, realizing that he was just peering into the shadows, and only seemed to be looking her in the eyes.
Joven glanced down at his ward, who was practically wringing his hands he was so distressed. The young mage had a good heart, and a type of kind strength that would endear him to others easily, but his naiveté would let others take advantage of his good nature. Joven knew that if the young man lived long enough to get the experience he would need to grow up, the wizard would become a great man. The bodyguard's eyes flicked over the threats within the room and knew grimly that this night if any, would be the time he would be thrown into the fire to prove what he was made of. A smirk edged its way onto his face. He hoped he would survive long enough to give the man a chance to survive the flames. It was his life, his duty, to die before his charge. He knew it would be his destiny.
The sky outside went dark, and a great rumble echoed across the sky. The two mothers cried out once in unison, and the flames within the room flickered briefly and died out. The torches completely lost their fire, while within the brazier only a faint ember glowed. The two pregnant women went silent and still. A cry of alarm spread through the room, as the midwives had to finish working in the dark. Endrance felt his strength leave him. His muscles trembled, and his aura seemed to flood out of his body into the ground at his feet. The others in the chamber didn't seem affected, though he couldn’t be sure as even his acute night vision had also become hazy. He felt like he had spent almost every possible drop of power he had.
In a panic he thought that the cause was the eclipse, but he remembered one of the key phrases of the journal of Lehtor: And lo, the world went dim, and even the light of magic waned in reverence of the savior of the races of the earth.
He felt a hand catch his arm before he fell to his knees, and Joven helped steady him. He could hardly see or move, but his bodyguard seemed entirely unaffected.
Elsewhere, Jalyin nearly fell from her perch. Only her natural litheness and decades of training kept her from collapsing and slipping off the rafter when the magic dimmed. Elves of any kind, having naturally more magic than humans to begin with, suffered greatly when they had no magical energy at all to exist on. She gritted her teeth, clenched the rafter's wood hard enough to stick a splinter through her gloved hands, and remained silent despite the pain and fear that coursed through her. She would endure this, as she had endured many torturous things, and take down her mark as her employer had paid her to.
The barbarians across Balator seemed none the wiser nor impeded at all by this sudden lessening of the world, and in the darkness and the ruckus of the Draugnoa trying to deliver two babies in the dark where no fire would light, no one noticed the change in the woman's appearance, nor did anyone see Anna take Selene’s place as the young Keeper barely made it to a chair and sit down exhausted. The King's ever present smile faded into a scowl, but no one could tell in the dark if he was trembling.
In the dark two babes cried out for the first time. Almost as if their cry was a signal, the braziers burst into light again, and those who felt the fatigue of their energies being sapped could tell the draining effect had slackened, but not restored them. Jalyin felt herself sink back into the shadows again as magical effects returned into force. Endrance's vision and strength returned, and Selene shook her head as she pulled herself up to help again.
Anna and Bridget came up to him, and presented the babes to him. Both children were very healthy, and had strong lungs, crying out loudly as they were cradled. Examining their features, he found them to be similar. He had not seen which of the two the child of the king was, and which the child of the general was. He knew the other means to determine which was the one by birthmark. Directing the Draugnoa to flip the babies over, he saw that the first child had a mark on his left shoulder that looked like a dragon's head. He then saw that the second child had a distinctly different looking dragon's head on his left shoulder as well. The journal only said the child would have the mark of a dragon upon their shoulder. Perplexed, he looked for the only other identifier noted in the journal.
The journal had also identified that the child would have a mark 'like unto a scar' that would be in the shape of a sword. He examined the first child. There was no other mark on his body. . He turned the other child over onto his back, to examine his chest. This babe, crying loudly and healthy, had a black mark across his left breast, where his heart would be. The mark was blackened, looking as if it had been branded onto the skin, an impossible feature in a newborn. The mark looked like a skull.
He looked up at his Draugnoa, the look of fear on his face infecting theirs. The hairs on the back of his neck and arms rose as he realized that he had stepped into incredibly dangerous territory. This mark was a very bad sign.
“Tell me, whose child is this?” he asked quietly. The room was not yet silent as Selene was doing her best finishing up caring for the mothers.
Anna, who was holding the child who only bore the dragon's mark, said “This is the child of the general's wife.”
Endrance nodded slowly. He knew then that the other child, the child of the king, was going to be trouble. The whole eclipse birthing was trouble, but the king's machinations only made the situation more dangerous for him.
As he sat there, he realized he had a chance. Here in his hands he held a babe who was destined to grow up to terrorize the world with darkness and evil. He could end the child’s life now, and save the world from darkness later. He could even do it with a small amount of lightning, and the baby wouldn’t even feel a thing.
He shuddered and almost shoved the baby back into Bridget’s hands. No, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t take a life that was innocent, no matter how dirty it would become some day. There was only one thing he could think to do that would help. He touched the back of the babe’s head with his left forefinger and whispered a single word of power, using one of the first spells he ever learned to sling. The meager amount of power he had recovered since the darkening drained, and nothing seemed to happen visibly.
Satisfied, he took a step back and looked over the two newborns. Their similari
ty was striking, and Endrance was starting to get a nagging suspicion.
As if he knew what Endrance was thinking, the King stood and walked towards the Spengur and his bodyguard. Joven didn't budge when the king approached, and received a stern scowl, but was more intent on his goal than protocol. “I take it you have examined the children?” he asked, a wicked smile of anticipation on his face.
Endrance nodded. “Yes I have your majesty.” The hairs on his body hadn’t relaxed, and he could feel the trickle of adrenaline in his system. He realized that something else made sense here, and he was just now figuring it out as he spoke to the king. Something he could not have realized until then.
The king frowned threateningly. “Well, what say you? Let's get this done with.” He looked about the room dramatically. “Everyone is dying to hear who the child we have been waiting for is.”
Endrance almost flinched when he said that. He was being threatening, but subtle. Endrance would have to admit the king was sly. He was a barbarian, but he was also clever and savvy. “I have found some... unexpected results here. I believe I'll need a few minutes to find out what the signs mean.” he said, hoping that it would give him time to think of a way out of this. He really didn't want the king to be mad at him, especially if he had to point out exactly why his wife’s son is not the child of destiny.
The king's eyes narrowed. “No no,” he dismissed the notion, waving a gauntlet covered hand, “Just tell us, and we can make the announcement together.” he said, no one but the young mage was able to see the threatening glare in his eyes as he spoke. “You wouldn't want your king looking surprised before his people would you?”
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