Naurus froze in place, unsure of who this man was or why he was here. He rode on a bay horse with a prominent white blaze. As he drew closer, something just wasn’t right. The man just didn’t quite look human. Naurus’s hairs stood straight up on the back of his neck and shivers went down his spine as he looked into the man’s eyes. His bright amber eyes were very much like those of a cat, with slit shaped pupils. His milky-white hair was shoulder length and drawn back into a pony tail, revealing prominent scars on his pale white face. He wore a thick leather bardic over a leather brigandine with various pouches and potions attached to it. His tight leather pants matched his thick vambraces and gloves studded with silver spikes. What Naurus then noticed was the man wore two swords across his back, both similar in size but with noticeably different pommels and cross guards. As the man drew side by side, he locked his cat-like eyes with Naurus, who nervously shifted his eyes down. There he noticed the man’s strange medallion. It looked like an exaggerated wolfs face in full roar, pressed out of some sort of metal with fiery red gems for eyes that almost seemed to be actually burning. Naurus looked down even further and saw what looked like the head of a horrible, twisted monstrous humanoid of some sort hanging off the saddle on a meat hook, eyes glazed over and bloodied tongue hanging out. Naurus closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again to find the strange man gone and well behind him now. Naurus had to collect himself for a few moments, convincing himself that he had to go on. He didn’t want to turn back and run into that man again, or even bother to think who his next victim might be, but Naurus put that away in the back of his head for now and spurred Muffin onwards.
Down the path after some more twists and turns, it finally opened up and Naurus could see a thick forest in the distance. As the path flattened out and the valley opened up, the sun glinted off something hanging from a rocky crag over him. He looked up to see a rusted gibbet cage with a skeleton therein, swinging freely in the breeze. A sun faded and rotted wooden sign hung from the bottom of the cage, a language unknown to Naurus scrawled into it. He convinced himself it was little more than a callback from a distant and more violent time, nothing could be as bad up ahead, the forest looked lush and green after all. The rocky path he was on opened up into a wide rolling woodland preceded by a small pasture. He trotted his horse to the edge of the forest and dismounted after realizing the forest was too thick to force Muffin through. He hitched the horse up to a tree and started making his way into the woods. This isn’t so bad, not a wasteland at all! Why would anyone lie about this? He thought to himself as he made his way deeper into the overgrown thickets. Naurus felt the air was cooler in here than it was just outside the woods, and a light fog was settling in. Soon, he saw a clearing in the woods and went towards it, seeing what looked like a rocky field or some ruins.
As he drew closer, he started to hear loud crunching under his boots. He looked down, and realized that the ground was covered in bones, many partially buried and with various pieces of old metal and junk strewn out among them. A few tattered nooses swung from the tree branches among him. As he drew closer to one, he felt something start wrapping around his neck from behind. He spun hard around, drawing his blade and chopping blindly in one movement. A piece of thick vine plopped to the ground, black ichor dripping from the stem. He looked around and realized similar vines were all around, and he took special care to avoid the rest. The forest is alive… he realized as his heart pounded in his ears. Perhaps this was indeed the battlefield he heard about, and his suspicions only grew stronger when he made it into the clearing. The whole field was churned with skeletal remains, rusted armor, and any variety of old weaponry laid about. Naurus felt uneasy and decided that he probably had enough exploring for the day. He could hear the wind howling now, but the forest wasn’t moving at all.
His eye caught a glint off a sword that was stuck in the ground not far from him near the center of the clearing. He walked up to it, realized that it was in almost immaculate shape, the silvery-blue blade bearing no rust and the shiny leather and gold embroidered hilt was quite intricate. He wanted to feel how nice an expensive blade like this must feel and started to pull it from the ground. It wasn’t stuck in very deep, but once he got it out suddenly it became almost unbearably heavy. He grabbed it with both hands, struggling with the blade dragging along the ground, crunching and grinding bones underneath. Almost instantaneously he felt a searing hot pain shoot through his right palm and up his arm, forcing him to let go and recoil backwards from the pain. Naurus looked at his palm, and saw a now smoking brand, some sort of sigil burned in that he didn’t recognize. The pain subsided, and the smoking stopped. He tried to rub off the sigil but realized the effort would be in vain. The blade he was trying to pick up had no such inscriptions on its hilt, but he hadn’t any clue what to think of this. I better get going back, I think this whole trek might have been a mistake… he thought to himself as he turned around and made his way back out of the clearing.
He heard the wind suddenly shift direction, then heard a clanking and rattling noise coming from directly behind him. Naurus looked over his shoulder to see a vortex of swords, axes, daggers, bone shards, and various other detritus rising up in a spinning column several times his height. It was perhaps a stone’s throw away, but the vortex started coming directly at him. He broke into a dead sprint into the forest, looking over his shoulder to see the tornado of death gaining ground on him. The forest was too thick for a sprint, but he stumbled his way along as best as he could. The sound of the vortex ripping through the forest, chopping trees limb from limb and shredding any foliage in its path goaded Naurus as fast as he could go. He suddenly tripped on a tree root and face planted, rolling up to see the vortex bearing down on him as splinters, dirt, and leaves rained down on him. He covered his face and backed up as far as he could along the ground, stopping when his back was blocked by something solid. The sound of hundreds of weapons and pieces of bone and armor came crashing down into the forest, and Naurus realized the wind had stopped and the forest was dead quiet. He opened his eyes to see a swath of destruction that stopped merely feet in front of him. He composed himself for a few seconds, then turned around to get up. It was at this point he realized he hadn’t backed up to a natural feature, it was a man’s legs he was up against. Naurus shot up as fast and he could and drew his blade while stepping back. The man wore old brown robes with a hood that completely shadowed his face. An old rope made do for his belt.
“I sense a soul in search of answers…” came a raspy, baritone old voice from the shadowed face. Naurus looked at the man’s hands that were clasped in front of him, seeing they were quite wizened indeed.
“W-who are you? Why are you here?” Naurus stammered, practically out of breath.
“Did you ask yourself these questions before you came here, Naurus?” The old man spoke as if they were blood relatives. Naurus stepped back visibly shaken, he had no idea who this man was.
“How in the name of the Old Gods do you know me? Who are you?”
“You want to know my name? You couldn’t possibly understand it. It’s not in your tongue you see. It’s unimportant to why you are here.” Said the old man calmy.
Naurus grew more defiant, “I demand to know your name! Stop making excuses and speak!”
The old man cocked his head under his hood. “Well, if you insist. My name is—”
Naurus was suddenly knocked to the ground by some sort of pressure wave, leaving him dazed and confused. He felt like a horse just trampled him over. He last remembered lapsing in and out of consciousness as the old man stood over him. His large knurled hands reached down and Naurus’s world faded to black.
Naurus awoke in a familiar place, his eyelids were heavy and he struggled to keep fully conscious. Through his blinks of lucidity, he saw his parents sitting next to his bed, with utmost concern on their faces. He passed back out, and awoke to the same reality a short time later realizing that it wasn’t just a dream. His mom cried and hugged him
and he fully woke, his father sitting back with a dark and brooding look on his face. Naurus was in the White Wing Hospital, a place he had wound up before with various childhood injuries and illnesses. The familiar smell of ether and alcohol filled his nostrils, the ever burning lanterns lit his room up with a warm glow. It was a clean and simple stone room with a bed in the middle. Naurus struggled to sit up, his entire body aching and fighting him down to the bone. With great effort he finally got up and sat on the edge of the bed, now sweating from the effort.
“Well son, you look like death heated over, but it’s time to get you home. The physician said you must have taken a hard fall or something. He said a kind old man dropped you off, carrying you in his arms. You’ve been here in a coma for a few days. Come on, let’s go and you can fill me in later.” His father said, a bit of relief apparent in his voice. His parents slung their arms over his shoulders and helped him wobble to his feet, his sense of balance and mobility slowly returning. By the time he got home a short time later, he felt mostly normal but passed out as soon as he lay down in his bed.
He woke up to a familiar feeling: Mokhey kneading his entire weight into his chest, claiming the morning sunspot that all cats seem entitled too. Naurus decided this would be as good a time as any to get up, but struggled to roll out of bed. His entire body ached and he felt decades older. As he finally managed to stand up on his own, his joints popped and cracked all over as he gingerly limped down the stairs. By the time he made it down he started to feel a bit more limber with every passing minute, but for now he didn’t get far.
“Come take a seat, Naury. Tell us what happened to you…we were worried sick when we got the news from the hospital courier last night!” His mother started.
“Well uh..yeah he was right. I took a fall off my horse, that’s all!” Naurus replied nonchalantly. He scratched the back of his head with his right hand, and locked eyes with his father right as the latter noticed the sigil burned into his hand.
“Naurus, son, what in The Dominion is on your palm?” His father asked, triggering Naurus to look furtively between his palm and his parents as he came up with a white lie on the spot.
“Oh! Yes that, well uh I grabbed a hot brand when I got too drunk the other night, stupid me right?” Naurus forced a fake laugh to his unreceptive audience. His father grabbed his hand and inspected his palm closely.
“I don’t recognize that brand, and that wasn’t on your hand just two days ago. In fact, it doesn’t even look like a burn, there’s no blistering or scabbing. Do you enjoy lying to your parents, boy?” His father’s eyes flashed with anger.
“No Dad, I just…went on a little bit of an adventure. I decided to hunt past the mountains, I ran it into trouble but I’m alive and that’s all that matters!” Naurus grew defensive. His father’s gaze became almost unbearably heavy, and after several agonizing seconds he finally said, “So son, you didn’t listen to us when we told you as a boy to never go there. Curiosity almost killed the cat here, so you’re going to humor me. Tell us about the adventures of your own stupidity…now!”
“Well, it was all going well until I ran into some unsavory characters in Kaladore…” He said, with his parent’s expressions giving off no surprise about that fact at all. “But I made it out ok though. Then I ran into a very strange man in the Iron Valley. He wasn’t quite human I don’t think. He had eyes like Mokhey and wore two swords across his back. He had hair white like mine too!”
His father nodded along, eyes lighting up with every word. “That man you saw was something like a sell sword, except they only come to hunt monsters, both human and not. They portend of troubling times, only called upon from distant lands and paid handsomely for their bounties. I’ve only ever seen one in my life, we’ve called them Vizdemyn, an old loan word for ‘monster-hunter’. Children tend to go missing after they’ve been around, soulless freaks of nature they are. My advice is to stay as far away from them as possible, but luckily the one you ran into seems to have been in a good mood. Now go on, what happened after you cleared the Iron Valley?”
Naurus continued the story in painful detail, going over everything he saw in the woods and what happened to him and the old man he encountered.
“That old man saved your life from whatever that vortex of death was it sounds like. So, he may have used an incantation or some such on you to knock you out. Maybe he was the guardian of the forest, maybe he was a wandering wizard, maybe he was nothing more than a magickal illusion?” His father mused.
“No, I know what I saw and what I felt, nothing of the sort was made up. I just know something was so very wrong with that forest…” Naurus replied.
“Of course, there was something wrong! What have we told you your whole life? We told you to stay away, but not you son. You decided to go poking around an ancient battlefield and grab a sword which burned something into your hand. It could be a curse or hex of some sort, but you’ll have to ask someone with more knowledge than I about that. I certainly hope you weren’t there to make some quick coin...” His father spoke with some pain in his voice.
Naurus assured them of no such thing, and they seemed to believe him for now. He suddenly felt a cloudiness in his head, then just as quickly an almost burning hot clarity of mind that only had one focus: to go see Ektor and more specifically show him what had happened to his hand. Naurus was still tired and sore, but this sudden impulse was overwhelming, and it filled him with dread to fight the urge to see Ektor. He bid his parents a quick farewell and was out the door before they could object any further. He made his way down to the Royal Athenaeum and banged on the door. It was supposed to be closed at this time in the morning, but Naurus just knew he had to be here for some reason. Soon enough, Ektor opened the door and looked not surprised in the least at who had showed up. Naurus was ushered inside and taken inside up to Ektor’s private quarters where he lived. It was a simple affair with only some wooden furniture such as the table that they both now sat at, the morning sun coming in through the dirty stained glass window on the far side of the room. Ektor looked at Naurus with a cheerful grin as he passed him a pipe and a cup of tea. Naurus suddenly felt his thoughts cloud again, and then felt himself once more. He just realized he didn’t really know why he was there. Ektor still bore the ear to ear grin, which made the exchange a little uncomfortable.
“Ektor, I shouldn’t be here this early. Why are you smiling like that?”
“I hear you had quite an adventure, you did!” Ektor started, “Tell me more, I’m dying to know what lies in the wastes beyond.” He goaded on like a curious child.
“Ok well…wait a minute. Why am I here? I had no plans of coming here and suddenly here I am. It almost felt like something else was controlling me and forced me to come here…” Naurus trailed off, a bit distraught at the situation.
“Oh no need to worry my dear boy! It’s just a little geas I used to make sure I got to see you today. My friend is in fact the one who brought you back to the hospital, and he made sure to let me know that he saved you from some trouble!”
“A geas…you used a spell to force me here? Ok whatever, but your friend was the old man in the woods? I remember he knocked me down with some spell or something. The last thing I remember was him reaching down to grab me. What’s his name? He never told me.”
“Yes, that was my friend. I believe he did in fact. But you see his name is not pronounceable in the common tongue. He told you his name. But it’s…well it’s a blast of magicka to the senses of someone who isn’t gifted with that connection. He didn’t trick you, in actuality you got exactly what you asked for!” Ektor said with a chuckle.
“But wait a minute! He knew my name. I’ve never seen that old man before. I couldn’t even see his face. Why was he there? How did he know me? I’m so confused.” Naurus lamented.
Ektor chuckled again, this was apparently a very entertaining situation to him. “Well you see dear Naury that man assuredly saved your life from the vortex you encountered. That was s
omething I call a blade spirit, essentially a collection of tortured spirits of those who were felled too soon by the hands of others and are stuck on this mortal plane. They who can find no rest and seek to destroy those who trespass where they fell. You see my friend is very old, far older than me and not exactly human in fact. Far more powerful and influential than I too. His identity is of no consequence to you. He will find you if he wants to. He is also something of a steward of that forest you trespassed in. Usually only grave robbers and bandits come by there. But he knew that wasn’t your intention or he would have made sure you didn’t make it out alive.”
Naurus mulled over these revelations with a long hard drag on the pipe and a big gulp of tea to chase it down. Ektor was indulging him with more of the good stuff it seemed, and he took another pull on the pipe too soon triggering a coughing fit. Ektor took the pipe away and simultaneously flipped his hand over, revealing the jet black sigil burned into his palm.
“I knew something was off about you before I even saw you today. Tell me how this happened.” Ektor nearly demanded.
“Well out in the clearing, there was this immaculate and beautiful sword. It looked so out of place. I decided to pick it up but I couldn’t, it must have weighed as much this building! Then suddenly I felt this burning in my palm, and looked at my hand to see this brand burned into it. What is it?” Naurus asked.
“Hmm…it’s definitely a curse sigil of some sort. That sword you saw was merely an illusion. It wasn’t real. It was bait for thieves, which you unfortunately took even if stealing wasn’t your intention.” Ektor said as he got up to retrieve a book off the nearby shelf. It was a dusty old leather bound volume that looked older than the kingdom. He quickly thumbed through some pages and pulled Naurus’s hand over next to the book. Naurus couldn’t read the book, it was in some strange language he didn’t recognize. But he did recognize that there were various runes and sigils all over the pages and one looked quite similar to what was on his palm: a circle containing a triangle with two horizontal lines bisecting where the triangles points met the circle on the top and bottom.
Shadow Kingdom Page 5