“I see intruders in their thousands in my fortress… So much blood… Proceed, priest, with the ritual of Eternal Life,” Styne ordered eagerly. “Take Gaetys’ life on the altar to represent Death, and Huethys to represent Rebirth. I will take their blood and their souls and turn them into Kruhd’asra, the Undead Blood Fury, who shall bring you victory.”
Bedar turned to King Gaetys. “Your Majesty, this is the price. I will ensure that everyone in Stynar Vort knows that the king and his commander sacrificed their lives and souls for their salvation.”
Gaetys and Huethys looked at each other in horror, then the king spoke with hesitation in his voice: “Bedar, this is… much to ask. Our souls?” He looked at the old priest, hoping he offered some kind of alternative.
“My King, you wished to kill the enemy on your own, and you said you would offer your soul for that opportunity…”
“Are you ready to die, Huethys, ready to die with me, for our people?” asked Gaetys, trying to find consolation in sharing the same fate with his commander.
“I am,” answered Huethys, as devout and impassible as ever.
The King of Stynar Vort stepped up to the altar and lay upon it, his head on the lower end. He turned to Huethys and with a strangely serene tone of voice said, “You were a good friend and I am glad to die for our people.” Huethys nodded.
Bedar murmured words not known to common men, then paused. With his eyes closed, he violently stabbed Gaetys in his heart. With his left hand he hammered Seyden’s Tooth deeper into Gaetys’ chest until the tip of the blade stuck out of the king’s back. Then, with an almost sadistic expression, the priest turned the blade in Gaetys’ chest. Blood started dripping from the king’s body into the funnel.
Styne’s voice boomed suddenly: “Rise again, as the Slayer King, and kill every enemy of Stynar Vort within her walls and on this mountain. I will drink the blood of the slain, and the people of Stynar Vort will hail their saviour who gave up his life and came back from the dead to deliver them.” As blood flowed into the altar, the two yellow-green flames gained a more crimson hue, and slightly grew in size. Styne’s cavernous voice broke the silence of the chamber to recite words of a language unspoken by Man.
Gaetys lay immobile for a brief moment, then a strong smell of burned flesh began permeating the room. His garments turned increasingly black as if burnt by invisible flames, then crumbled to ashes on the floor to reveal the corpse’s blistering skin suffering the same inexplicable fate. What once was Gaetys stood slowly up from the altar, shedding the last of his skin. He faced the eye of Styne, who welcomed his demoniacal creation with a cry: “Another Son of Styne is born. Join the eternal fight, my child!” The bare muscles of Gaetys’ body became covered by a black and silver armour. In one hand appeared a silver hilted black blade, in the other a black shield with the silver emblem of a serpent. He jumped off the dais and ran to the dark wall near Styne’s eye, to disappear in the darkness.
Bedar turned to Huethys, knowing what was expected of the king’s commander. Huethys slowly walked up the altar, and lay on it. As Bedar approached him with the althame, he blocked the old man’s arm and punched him under his chin, causing the priest to fall senseless on the floor. Styne’s eye glowed crimson and yellow. With maniacal eagerness he shouted, “What are you doing? You owe me your blood!”
“I do not owe you anything,” answered Huethys. “If it is blood you want, I will give it to you—Bedar’s blood!”
“So be it then,” answered Styne. “You are now the High Priest, Huethys. Now give me Bedar’s blood! Your god commands it!”
“Not before you show me the way out of here.”
At that moment, blood started dripping from the pipe that came through the ceiling onto the altar. Gaetys was massacring the enemy, and Stynar Vort was drinking the blood of the slain, to feed its God and Creator, Styne.
“Ahhh… blood, here it comes. My child is reaping lives!” Styne cried.
“How do I escape?” Huethys insisted, finding himself shouting at the god.
A faintly lit tunnel appeared in a dark corner near the stairs that lead down into the chamber, and Huethys paused to plan his moves.
“I held up my end of the bargain,” said Styne. “You are the High Priest. Complete the ritual of Eternal Life. Give me the blood that represents Rebirth! Stynar Vort will fall if you do not!”
Huethys grunted. Reluctantly he leaned toward Bedar, then stabbed the old man in the heart, retracted the blade and immediately ran toward the tunnel. Blood was copiously dripping down the ceiling pipe, and Styne’s voice became inebriated, drunk on his everlasting lust for it. While the blood-obsessed god sang his pleasure, Huethys disappeared down the tunnel, running as fast as he could, with the dripping althame still in his hand.
Part II: 25 Years Later
IV
A shuffle of leaves broke Thruen’s concentration and he turned his head to identify the source of the noise. “Ah, it’s you, King Huethys…” Thruen said, barely hiding his irritation, and resuming his carving of the mythological scene of “The Swallowing of the Moon” on a staff.
“Yes, I came here because I knew you would be alone. We must talk.” said the king.
“It sounds important,” answered Thruen.
“Yes. You are to be king, my son,” Huethys said, getting straight to the point.
Baffled, Thruen looked at him and commented: “I am the commander of Helved’s army, and your protector. You are the king. I do not understand.”
“Thruen… I have spent the last twenty-five years festering inside, eaten by guilt and remorse. I am the worst sinner the Gods have ever known. Now I am old, and I need to atone before my physical and mental faculties abandon me and impede my ability to seek repentance… This is a quest from which I will not return.”
Thruen’s precise age was unknown. He was perhaps in his early thirties, but the scars on his face made him look older and—in combination with a tall muscular build, long plaited dark red hair and beard—decidedly menacing. His eyes were a bright grey, like those of a blind man, and there was a cold liveness in them, like a wolf observing prey from a distance. He stood up and said, “Then I am coming with you. And you will come back. And you will continue to be king.”
“You are like a son to me Thruen,” Huethys said. “I cannot ask you to do this… and I know you too well. You are fretting to return to your carving right now, and after dinner you will want to continue your studies. What did you say you are learning now… herbalism? Tomorrow you will want to practice archery, then sword fighting, then preparing ink. In this precise order. Yes, I noticed the hawthorn berries ready to be boiled. You have your whole life ahead of you, with that mind of yours. A mind so fine that it made you an unbeatable sword master and the perfect commander of the guards. Let go of old Huethys. My beard is white… When I drink wine I fall asleep before I can get drunk… I have been living on borrowed time for twenty-five years. It’s time I face my past.”
“Have you abdicated yet?” asked Thruen.
“Yes, it’s in the hands of the council now. You are to be crowned king soon, and you are already the regent by law.”
“Perfect. Then I command you to bring me with you on your journey,” said Thruen with his usual monotone voice. Then he sat down and resumed chiseling the profile of a wolf eating the moon.
V
“Helved was my sworn enemy, and now I am its king,” said Huethys breaking the silence of the ride. “Now that my life is coming to an end, I want you to know that I am a native of Stynar Vort.”
“Is this the same place of the Lost Army of King Hruath? That’s just a legend… I thought?” Thruen interjected.
“It is a magical place, and it is real,” answered the old king. “Everyone knows that King Hrauth the Greedy claimed he had found the mythical Stynar Vort, with its jewel encrusted walls, and set off to conquer it. No one ever returned from the expedition. What people do not know is that they all died within the walls of Stynar Vort. S
o yes, as far as the people of Helved know… Stynar Vort is indeed just a legend.”
Huethys recounted the events of his last night in Stynar Vort. He told of King Gaetys, supposedly trapped in the fortress as Kruhd’asra, the demon guardian, forever nourishing a blood-obsessed god.
“I swore revenge on those who invaded and destroyed my home, and I exacted it by grabbing Helved’s crown, by treachery, murder and sheer bravery,” the old king continued. “But as soon as that crown rested on my head… revenge felt empty and futile. Most importantly, all that was left was guilt. I betrayed my friend and king at the time, and abandoned him to an eternity of torture. I am going back to Stynar Vort to rectify this. I will kill him with this althame.” He gestured to the weirdly decorated dagger on his belt. “Then I will take his place as the demon guardian. But let us find a suitable place to spend this last night now. We have just enough time to hunt some game before it gets dark. We should reach the fortress tomorrow.”
As night fell on the travelers, they enjoyed a meal of pheasant roasted over an open fire, and a flask of the finest ale in all Helved, which Huethys reserved for what he thought to be his last night. The tired old king lay on the ground, as comfortable as any veteran soldier, pillowing his head with his arms. In his drunken sleep he mumbled “…forgive me, my King…”
That night, Thruen immersed himself in his meditative state, and remembered the day when Huethys first found and rescued him from his solitary confinement in the darkness of the basement of a Godanian monastery. It probably—Thruen could not be sure—was the place where he had learned to replace sleep with meditation. Thruen was then perhaps seven or eight then, and twenty-five years had since passed. A part of him feared this was indeed his last night with his saviour and adoptive father, and, in his sadness, he was grateful for the years spent together.
The following day was decidedly harsher on the two travelers. As they reached for higher altitudes, mist turned to drizzle, then drizzle turned to sleet, and sleet into light snow.
Huethys halted his horse and took a long look at the surrounding peaks, barely visible in the mist. “The entrance to Stynar Vort is behind that boulder,” he declared. “I used this tunnel to escape all those years ago, and I would not dare enter through the gates knowing Gaetys is guarding the courtyard.”
Before entering the tunnel concealed behind the great rock, Huethys grabbed Thruen’s arm and said: “You have been a great commander, a great son, and an even greater friend.”
“I will be bringing you home, Huethys,” coldly replied Thruen, still unaccepting of Huethys’ conviction of his imminent death.
“Stubborn to the end. How unsurprising,” commented Huethys.
Huethys touched the rock forming the arched entrance of the tunnel and murmured unintelligible words, and a small floating yellow-green flaming orb appeared on his hand.
“You never told me you were a sorcerer,” Thruen said with a slight tone of disgusted surprise.
“That’s because I am not,” answered the old king. “But I am a priest, and this is one of very few tricks I possess. It only works here anyway, so do not think I withheld these abilities in the past…”
“I’d be upset to know you willingly put me through the ordeal in the tunnels of Sevar,” said Thruen, referring to an adventure the two shared years before.
“How can I forget? No, I would not willingly subject us to that oppressive inferno,” said Huethys. “You are awfully talkative today, Thruen. Come, follow me.”
VI
The old king and his commander walked down a narrow tunnel which gently sloped down into the earth for what felt like an eternity. Then at last, a brighter light in the distance signified the end of that highly uncomfortable journey.
“Stand back Thruen, let me explore first,” whispered Huethys.
He glanced around the corner of the wall at the temple that he had left twenty-five years before.
Huethys was catapulted back to his last day in Stynar Vort, when he descended the spiral stairs with his king and friend Gaetys, and old Bedar showing the way. He decided to take another very cautious step forward so to reconnoiter the room further. But before he could do so, he heard a whisper, a repetitive sound, coming from the centre of the room, and clicking noises. The whisper gradually became clearer as it got closer, and to Huethys’ horrified amazement the word being repeated was his own name.
“Huethyyyyssss… Huethyssss…” the voice repeated continuously as it began to move farther away. Huethys glanced again at the temple, and discovered the supernatural source of the noise: a skeleton wandering aimlessly around the temple, still dressed in Bedar’s rotten robe. The undead priest repeated his name endlessly, at times stopping to look around, checking the empty scabbard hanging at this belt, while conjuring yellow-green flames in his bony hands and empty eye sockets.
Huethys took a couple of steps back towards Thruen and described the scene. “It’s as if he is suspended in a limbo unable to fully die, his skeleton and his will lingering.”
Huethys paused for a moment then regained focus. “To the right of the altar there’s a wall. On that wall you will notice a gigantic glass hemisphere, and beyond that is the entrance of a tunnel that leads into the fortress. We should try to reach it without being noticed by that monstrosity.”
“Something tells me he sees in spite of his empty eye sockets,” Thruen said while extracting his sword, “so I will prepare for the worst.”
“Bedar can have my life if he wants it so badly,” added Huethys, “so long as I have freed Gaetys’ soul first. I die today. Once I achieve my goal then it is of little importance who will have taken my life.”
Thruen flattened against the wall and took a few steps to the right, then signaled Huethys to follow him. The two kept shifting in the darkness of the shadows that pervaded the periphery of the chamber, slowly and stealthily making their way toward the glass hemisphere.
“Huethyyyysssss…” hissed again the robed undead, turning toward the two men in a slow and menacing way, positioning his hands in front of his rib cage with palms facing each other. Between the undead priest’s hands an orb of light appeared, which quickly became oblong and assumed the shape of a viper’s head, and a glowing green serpent oozed out of the orb as if made of liquid light.
“That’s the Serpent of Light,” whispered Huethys. “It’s lethal and invincible, but it only lives in the temple, it cannot go outside this room. We need to reach the exit!”
“Can you run?” asked Thruen nervously.
“Yes,” answered the old king.
The two ran the length of the naked rock wall and snuck under the protuberance formed by the glass hemisphere on the wall. Thruen made a quick turn into the tunnel, while the luminous serpent slithered its way toward the two intruders. Then, while the viper wraith hissed a hellish noise that would terrorise a god, Bedar growled “Huethyyyyyssss!” and in an instant Huethys’ leg was caught in the supernatural grip of the serpent’s fangs.
Huethys fell to the floor with a choked cry, as if the air was being sucked out of his lungs, while Thruen observed the terrifying spectacle of the old king’s blood running through the glowing and transparent body of the serpent. Bedar moved closer to the two men and as blood from Huethys reached his hands he started to grow what looked to be muscle fibers and organs, and eyeballs were forming in his sockets, and a heart appeared in his empty rib cage. Thruen leaped toward Bedar and aimed at his heart, but the undead priest was quick to parry the blow, and in doing so, his hands disconnected and the Serpent of Light disappeared. Bedar grabbed Thruen’s throat and squeezed against the warrior’s corded neck muscles. In an effort to free himself from the deathly choke, Thruen grabbed Bedar’s skull with his left hand, pressing on the forming eyeballs, while thrusting his sword blindly into the undead’s body. Bedar groaned and with his other hand grabbed Thruen’s shoulder and crushed the plate of armour covering the warrior’s upper arm. A piercing and unnaturally cold pain ran through his entire b
ody as Bedar’s hand pulsated of a strange and icy blue light. Thruen pulled his hand out of Bedar’s skull, ripping the abhorrent eyeballs out of the sockets. As Bedar released his grip on Thruen’s shoulder to prepare for a final crushing blow, Huethys cried “Thruen, here!” and threw the althame. The red haired commander caught the flying dagger by the blade. He flipped it in the air, spraying blood from the new cut on his palm. He grabbed it by the handle and struck straight into Bedar’s heart. The undead priest’s heart exploded and the skeleton shattered, leaving the once gold-adorned blue robe to flop onto a pile of blood, malformed guts and bones.
VII
Huethys fell back, semi-conscious, and Thruen immediately tended to him.
“That was horrible. I am drained,” whispered Huethys. “That wraith was sucking my soul as well as my blood,” he added, looking deathly pale and trembling, “but it takes more than a little bloodletting to kill this king.”
“Can you walk?” asked Thruen.
“Yes, barely, but we are nearly there, and that’s all the energy I need to muster,” answered Huethys.
Thruen helped Huethys to his feet and the two resumed their quest by walking into the dark tunnel that opened in the wall near the glass hemisphere.
After a long and strenuous uphill walk, the tunnel turned into a short flight of stairs which lead into a room on the first floor of the citadel. From here, Thruen and Huethys glanced out the window and were stricken with horror at the sight of what had become of Stynar Vort: the courtyard of the fortress had turned into a lake of blood, with the remains of countless soldiers stacked to the side of the lake. At its center, an altar stood on top of a massive rock emerging from the lake. The altar was horrific to behold, for it was washed in blood, with dried rivulets running down its sides. Huethys remembered standing on it to blow the retreat twenty-five years earlier.
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