by BJ Hanlon
He thought of the dark skin and the glowing eyes and the bone breastplate that hung from his neck like a necklace.
It was at that moment that he didn’t summon the dematian king. Instead he saw the thing. The beast stood in the glow of an unknown yellow light staring at a wall. A blank wall of rock that was straight up and down and perfectly flat.
Above him, on top of the wall were trees and shrubs. Vines hung loosely down like tendrils reaching for the dematian king. Edin quickly glanced around and saw the dark forest they were in. And through it, there were other things moving into and out of the unknown ambient light. Then he saw it to be other dematians though they moved forward carefully, almost hesitantly.
There was chittering and chattering of their teeth above the wind in the trees and the gurgling of water. Then there was a screech above.
A wyrm was up there and he looked into the shadowy night as the beast flew over their heads. How many were here?
There was another screech and another beast flew into the light. It was a brief glimpse and Edin saw it was black. Like the dematians. And much bigger.
Edin turned back to the dematian king who was scraping his long nails on the rock in an attempt to peel away the foliage.
Then the dematians started to walk past Edin, not seeing him or acknowledging his presence in any way. Then he saw the blade following the dematian and it was being held by another one. He, or maybe she, Edin didn’t know, was pressing a horsehead knife into the back of the leader.
The prisoner, Edin thought.
Others were doing that as well. All were forcing these ones forward. Forcing them toward the dematian king and the brighter light.
Edin could tell a bit of difference now and though he wasn’t sure what it was, he knew that the ones in front were the wild ones and the ones in back were the more disciplined soldier types.
It wasn’t in their walk or in the way they moved, there was something else about them but Edin couldn’t put his finger on it.
But then there was a greater glow and it came from the wall where the dematian king had been scraping.
Seared into it like a brand was a circle with runic hieroglyphics circling it. Figures that Edin couldn’t even begin to attempt to translate.
Then the dematian king stepped forward and raised his hands above his head. Being held by him, was the staff and it was glowing yellow and just beneath the glow were the Ballast Stones.
The dematian king began chattering and chittering in a sort of chant. Edin was sure it was a chant but had no idea what it said and just stood there, open mouthed.
Then he lowered the staff and turned. For a moment, the dematian king’s eyes seemed to pause on Edin and its head cocked to the side in the fashion of Grent.
A demonic Grent.
Then he moved past Edin and to the nearest dematian prisoner. The demon lowered its head and chattered something and then a moment later, his head was on the ground and blood pooled out from it. But the body stayed standing. Then the dematian took the staff and waived it above the body.
Only then did it collapse. Then a moment later, the body sort of just melted into the ground that was now covered in dead or dying grass.
Edin saw this and looked back at the wall. The dot had grown and the dematian king was moving to the next. This time, Edin saw the swipe of the horsehead knife and the head flying toward him. It was fast. Very fast and then the blood poured from it and the body collapsed.
Then the head rolled to only a few feet away and again dissolved into the ground.
In horror, he watched the beastly sacrifices continue. Despite his hatred for the monsters, he felt a twang of sorrow.
There were thirteen in all and he watched every one of them. Every one of the sacrifices as they stepped forward. None seemed too willing and Edin noticed the figures around the brand were lighting up one by one in a very eerie pattern.
A few moments later, there was a giant rectangle that formed in the side of the cliff. An outline of the glow that went forty feet up and twenty wide. There was a shimmering within the rocks now.
The dematian king began to chant in his chattering and chittering tongue. He raised the staff above his head and started dancing and then he pointed it at the door.
Edin knew it was a door now and he swallowed. Then he saw the hand coming forth from beyond it. It was a great red orange glowing hand and it came forward like a person reaching into a sheen of water to check the temperature.
The hand wasn’t much bigger than the largest of dematians but there was a glow to the claws. To the fingers as it reached out and felt the air of this world.
Then, without any hesitation, the beast came forth. The clawed hand followed almost instantly by the rest of the body.
He saw the darkness of the skin and the teeth and the jaws and the pointed ears. Then there was the tail as well, and it wore a great metal armor breastplate and held beneath its arm, a helm that looked like the most hideous gargoyle that Edin had ever seen.
The beast; the demon; the God of the Underworld screamed out and the cry reverberated across time and space and into his body like the shock from his first meeting with the Sun Stone.
Then it began chattering in the language, and Edin suddenly knew it to be the language of the underworld.
The dematian king was bowing and he raised up the staff. The staff of power that had nearly killed them in the northlands. He seemed to be offering it to Yio Volor.
There was something in the words that were said to the dematian king, more like a priest, Edin now thought, and then the dematian king pulled it back down.
Yio Volor reached up to the sky and there was a crackling of lightning. Though not yellow or white or even blue.
This was red and demonic and it seemed to open up the heavens.
Then from the door came a stream of water. It flowed over the earth and moved to the right toward the sound of a river.
Edin swallowed as he saw the corruption within the small waves. It bubbled like it were boiling but it wasn’t water bursting on the surface. It reminded him more of pustules. Yellow pustules and it was meandering off into the woods.
Then other things came out. He saw the first pair of legs of a giant spider, then the many-eyed head.
Edin slowly began to step back, his feet, which weren’t really there were moving quickly back. Then suddenly they stopped. It was like they were stuck in mud that had dried instantaneously around his feet, locking him in place for all eternity. And then as if his chin was gripped and his head was wrenched toward the gripper, he saw himself staring up into the eyes of Yio Volor.
But then they morphed. They weren’t the same eyes anymore, not the eyes of a dematian. These eyes were almost human and that made it worse. They were the eyes of one who would put you to the sword and be gleeful about it. Not just happy but overjoyed as if it were the greatest thing in the world.
And then the face began to morph as well, melting and melding and he saw a nose and a mouth and hair and the skin became human skin and it grew pale.
A smile, a creepy and deep smile came over the demon god’s lips. “Edin,” he hissed into Edin’s ear. “It is good to be free.” His hair, long and dark, almost pitch black like the dematians was pulled back in a ponytail and his cheek bones were sharp like the rest of his face.
Those were elven features, but this god was not elven. The ears were not rounded, nor was he dematian or human.
He was still taller than Edin, taller than Vistach, and he looked strong. Edin struggled to move. He tried fighting it, he tried jerking his gaze free from the god but it was no use.
There was no getting away from him. His arms and legs felt like gelatin and his body, though it was not there, felt not his own.
“I want to thank you,” he said. “For if it were not for you, I would not have been reborn to this world.” There were sharp teeth when he smiled. Not the needle like ones of a dematian but the ones like a giant, carnivorous sea creature. Triangular and ridged.
Then he let go and there was a great laugh that ran through his soul. He heard movement and saw the dematians had all dropped to their knees and their foreheads were on the ground. There was chittering from them and they did not look up.
A moment later, Yio Volor waved his hand at Edin, it too was pale with humanesque fingers with long nails. Long, stiletto-like nails and then Edin felt his body, or at least the form that he was in, begin to fade.
“I will come soon,” Yio said in his head, his voice hissing and serpent-like and Edin saw his tail had now disappeared too. “The end of the god’s rule over this world has come.”
Edin was shaken awake and then his eyes opened and he continued shaking. He felt sweaty and sore and his mouth and chin burned like it had been held an inch over a pot of boiling water.
Or the corrupt water, he thought.
Edin looked up at the world, a dark world lit only by the torches and braziers. There were people around him, standing in a circle and staring but back at least five feet and most he didn’t know but he recognized one of his minders. He was the one that had been shaking Edin. He was crouched and looking at Edin with fear in his eyes.
“We are getting help,” he said. He looked like he was trying to be helpful, but Edin didn’t know if he was doing it because it was his duty or because he was actually nervous.
“Help me sit,” Edin croaked out, though as he moved his mouth, it burned and felt like it was bubbling and going to burst. The minder helped him and Edin was raised to the bench he was sitting on.
Edin closed his eyes and began rubbing them vigorously with his palms.
“What’s that?” a voice said and then he heard a shriek. A child’s shriek and Edin looked.
A kid no more than six was on the ground and he was shaking. Seizing up like he was being rattled and then he was smoking. Then Edin saw that he wasn’t smoking but the child’s right hand was and there was something in it. Something in his grip.
A woman, his mother presumably, was shaking him and trying to wake him and Edin coughed out, “the stone.” He felt like he was choking on smoke then and it scratched and burned at the same time, “rip it out!”
Edin felt pain in his chin and his body. Then there were other men rushing toward them. Soldiers and others screaming. “Out of the way!” and “move!”
People aided the kid but he couldn’t see who was doing what. “Grab that stone,” Edin said and then he was helped up and felt dizzy. There was a blankness to everything around and he couldn’t focus.
Then he was floating on time, a wave of it and it was slowly bringing him to the end.
To the end of time. And then that was what Yio wanted, Edin thought, “escape the under—” He said, at one point and heard a voice, a man cry out, “he’s trying to speak.”
“Edin?” someone said, then he knew it was Arianne. “Are you okay?”
He was laying down on some sort of bench and looking up at wooden ceiling with large beams crossing it.
Edin nodded. He kind of remembered getting here, he remembered people putting his arms over their shoulders and he remembered his feet moving.
There was the screaming of the kid and the panicked, wild mother, and then he saw the stone on the ground and he told them to get it for him.
“We’re in the southern maid’s extra laundry,” Arianne said, “you’re alright.”
A voice questioned, “How’d you know—”
“Quiet,” Arianne hissed. “Edin, what happened?”
“Yeah, you collapsed and screamed from the bench and then you started shivering and, and…” the voice was shaky.
“Smoking,” said someone else.
Edin shook his head and tried to sit. He saw the two minders as well as four other guards in the room as well as one of the men from the council. The spy master and Edin thought he remembered someone saying “Dwiral.” He was dark skinned and held a questioning gaze.
Edin licked his lips and tried to speak but his voice cracked. He tried clearing it and then a wooden mug was brought to his lips. Edin drank the water and then said, his voice shaking. “He’s free. Yio Volor has broken free.”
10
The Return of the Magi
It was at that moment when there was more news that came to them. A guard burst in the room.
“Unknown ships approaching the harbor.”
The men around them stiffened and Edin reached up and touched his chin. It still burned and he guessed it would probably blister.
“What type of ships?” Arianne said and looked around. It was then that Edin saw the spy master had slipped out with two of the soldiers. The remaining ones looked at him frightfully and clearly uneasy.
“Did he say Yio Volor?” one asked as Edin began to stand.
Arianne said, “No, sit down I don’t need you fal—”
“I’m fine,” he said shaking his head, “just a little dizzy spell.”
“That wasn’t little,” said his minder. And Edin shot an angry glare at him.
“It certainly was not,” Arianne said again.
Edin turned his head to stretch his neck, it became stiff on the right side and then he took a step. His legs were sluggish but worked fine.
“We have to see who’s come,” Edin said, “we must hope it is allies because we cannot face anymore enemies.”
After a few uneasy steps, he could walk again. He held his sword at his side as they left the room and went out into the courtyard. He saw the spot where he’d sat. Next to it was a crate seemingly randomly put into the center of the grass.
“I covered that stone. I wasn’t about to get it for you,” said a minder, the one leading them. “Here, up these.” He began up a set of outer stairs. Large stone stairs that were six feet wide and led up to the wall. They reached the top of the large wall, the roof of the apartments, and began circling. “You can see the harbor from the southern point. Though with the darkness, I’m not sure what we’ll be able to see.”
He was quiet then and they were looking off at the bay of brackish water. It was dark but for the flames lighting up the ships in the sea. On some of them he saw sigils.
A fist with six gemstones encircling a seventh purple one. The largest of them.
The Ballast Stone.
“They came,” gasped Arianne and Edin nodded. Out there, in the water, he saw the fires showcasing maybe ten ships. Hopefully more were out in the bay. “Why are they not approaching?” Arianne asked after a moment.
“One is,” said one of the guards, and Edin saw the boat moving near a large pier. At its end was a platoon of soldiers waiting for them.
Behind them, was the Prince.
Edin watched as people on the port side of the ship threw out ropes to others on the dock. People were quiet, he could tell even from up here that it felt like a somber occasion. He watched them tie up the ship and then lower the gangplank.
It was a far distance to see and the fires were bright though at first, he could not tell who was coming down.
It looked like two guards though he could not tell their faces and then normal dressed men. Three of them who definitely were not guards. An old man and two younger ones.
Edin spotted Dwiral, the spy master, a few feet away with a looking glass. Edin moved over to him and stopped. “Do you mind if I borrow that for a moment?”
Dwiral lowered it, raised an eyebrow and then said in a calm and even tone, “You could probably take it from me with a blink if you wanted. Am I correct?”
“Not a blink,” Edin said.
Dwiral didn’t reply and just handed it over.
Edin put the already warm metal circle up to his eye and took a moment to center it. He spotted the ship and then the men, now walking down the dock toward the line of city guards who stood before the Prince and a few other men.
“Is that Le Fie?” said the man next to him.
Edin lowered the looking glass and looked at the man. “It is.” He started to grin. Allies, and not only that, friend
s.
It was also his father and Tor. Edin guessed Casitas, if he was still in charge would be back on the isles and hiding. “Is there a way down to them?”
“Follow me,” said Dwiral.
Edin took Arianne’s hand and they followed. It was a complicated maze of stairs and steps that led down to sea level and then through more arches and doors and then finally out a postern gate with a small access door next to it.
There were guards everywhere and they watched them, Edin especially, with caution. Some of the guards instinctively reached for their weapons. But no one tried to stop them.
Then they were outside of the wall on a boardwalk that led to the dock. Their steps were hollow over the wood and below, he heard the waves slapping the rocks.
Ahead, he saw the introduction was taking place, he saw Tor was talking while an unarmed Rihkar and Le Fie stood behind. A peculiar thought, the former was literally unarmed, came to his mind and he had a sick chuckle. Then they were near the Prince’s rear guard. Beyond, Feracrucio stood with three of his advisors, one of them was speaking.
Edin met him the first long night they were in the city but like most he met that night, he forgot their names.
He moved within range with Dwiral and Arianne at his side.
Then Rihkar looked over and saw him. He smiled but said nothing.
“We believe that there is a great dematian army on its way,” Tor was saying. “The most likely coarse would be take out Resholt as they had Porin—”
Tor stopped talking because the prince had raised his hand. He was looking at Edin now. “Edin, did you summon anyone else here?” he asked suspiciously. “Did you tell others to come because you have been offered a temporary reprieve from death?”
It took Edin a moment to realize what he meant. It was a quick, shocked moment and then he shook his head, “No.”
“Are you alright Edin?” asked Le Fie, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Dwiral stepped up and looked at Le Fie, they seemed to acknowledge each other and then Dwiral spoke. “He has, we should speak inside and what he just said is true,” he looked to his prince. “We are in for a long fight and should welcome them with open arms.”