Eli, Ormoc, and Liassus (V)

The trio emerged from the forests and came across a desiccated, wooden gate overtaken by vines and spiders. There was no clearing, as if there was never an intention for a gate to be here. Or, perhaps, the forest had overtaken the clearing so thoroughly, betraying nature's skilled artistry; an overgrowth of brush rebuilt and reshaped the land so deeply that everything seemed to blend in.

Liassus knocked once, there was no response. She then pushed on it a bit more. Again, there was no response. “Don’t test me, boy.” She whispered.

Head up, she shouted at the derelict battlements. “Open this damn gate!” There were three more swings - heavy swings - and then they heard the sound of a massive lock on the other side.

Sullen eyes greeted both of them, a gaunt face conjuring up a half-hearted grin as a wiry old man surveyed the troupe.

“General.” He replied. “Sage.” He said again, hacking a cough. “And…”

“This young man here is Eli, and he’s one of my agents. I came here, Pernus, because I need your help. I want you to train him, get him ready and prepared, and know how to defend himself.” She patted Eli on the back. “The sooner we get him out into the field, the sooner we can start making another push against Northrow. How’s the Rail?”

“The birds are fine, no catches.” Pernus wheezed out. “But let’s not hang around here. Come in, come in.”

With a loud swing and a piercing clang, Pernus led them through some unmarked bush. Sunlight painted the greenery, full sunlight, nothing marked or masked by tall shadowy trees.

Eli winced. The midday sun was unforgiving. The place was hotter than he thought.

“It’s been hot all week, and it’s been hard to find food at times, but we’re fine. No bandits yet.” For a man who loved to wheeze, Pernus was very nimble.

“Anything I can do to help?” Liassus asked.

“No, no, you’ve done more than enough, General.” Pernus waved her off with a strong flick of his hand. “We’ll find something in the woods, we always have. And should things awry, we’ll live off the forest.”

“I see.” She smiled, albeit it was unclear whether she was relieved or ashamed.

Ilma - the hamlet of Ilma - was uncharted. It had no roads, no lanes, no rivers, and no bridges. Mud huts and thatched sticks defined it, the footsteps in hardened clay were the only signs that people lived here. Eyes emerged from the shadows of glass-less windows, fingers creeping out of holes like worms as faces swam out of the blackness.

Despite the destitute state of Ilma, they all looked at Liassus with a proud gleam, a beaming smile like a war hero returning to their hometown. Children rushed out of a small monastery, followed by a priest in a stained and tanned canvas leather, her uniform wrapped up with uncoloured hemp.

“General! General!” The kids yelled at Liassus, their wide, toothy grins coming from every direction.

“Did you bring us something?” One child asked.

“Nothing this time, my little ones,” Liassus said. They whimpered and then cast their eyes on Eli. “This man is only here for a little while. He’s not in Ilma.” She looked at the priest, a blonde-haired woman with a set of piercing amber eyes and a pair of massive, callused hands. “Pernus is going to train him for a little while, and then he’ll be moving with us to Aura.”

“Agent?” The priest asked. “Where from?”

“Beyond the gate.”

Her eyes widened. “So the wish….”

“Largely came true,” Ormoc concluded, “though, we surmise he wasn’t the only thing the gate brought over. His companion may have been brought over.”

“It’s not a problem. With what we saw from him, it won’t be long before she starts showing up.” Liassus' hand ran through Eli’s hair. “We can reunite them, and then, happy ending.”

“I see.” The priest said. “Does he eat or drink?”

Eat or drink? Eli thought. What did that mean?

“Drink, though he hasn’t yet drunk anything in the week he’s been with us. It may be some sort of big reserve.” Ormoc explained.

And then it hit him. Eli hadn’t thought about it. Since he came here, he hadn’t been hungry or thirsty at all. In fact, he didn’t remember Ormoc or Liassus eating the entire trip. They’ve been walking for a week now, and while it wasn’t arduous, it was strange that he didn’t feel tired. “What am I?” He eked out a whisper.

As the children ran back to the priest, he saw it. The shine of rubies lodged into soft skin. The twinkle of daylight catching his eyes, only for a second, but it was enough. They all had it. Everyone. All of Ilma, this strange place, bore the same marble lodged into their bodies.

Eli shook his head. “This is a slave hideout, it's - ”

“They are my children,” Liassus snapped back, “cast out from the throngs of proper society, left to die in the streets. Now, they have a place in the world.”

“As your slaves? As your slaves!”

Onlookers began to gather, people shuffling out of their homes. Eyes fixated on Eli. Hushed whispers. “Did you do to them what you did to me?”

“I did to them what I had to do,” Liassus assured him, a sour look on her face. “I want you to trust me, Eli. This is something I had to -”

He stepped back. She let him step back.

“You keep saying this! Just trust me, trust me, trust me. But it keeps getting worse." His fingers twitched and moved, the blood on his coat feeling like a weight dragging him down. "Why? Why'd you do it?”

His teeth clenched, he wanted to raise his fist, but he couldn’t. He knew why; it was unsurprising - that damn ball in his neck firing poison into his blood. It was a shackle, a collar. A writhing thread spinning its crystalline cocoon deeper and deeper into his mind, slowly enveloping him. But what, he worried, would he come out as? And would he still be Eli? Or another one of those eyes peeking through the darkness, thralls to this woman he knew as Liassus?

“If you could take away the hunger, the weakness, the coldness, everything, and replace it with a purpose, wouldn’t you?” Liassus asked. “Maybe this is frowned upon where you come from, Eli, but this is a natural state of order here. The only liberation is through purpose, and that can only be done in blood.”

Did Liassus perhaps believe in her own charisma? Or was this, for the first time, something unfiltered running through the matter in his brain? She seemed unconvincing and wavering, a saccadic mess of empty ideals.

“Don’t give me your riddles, Liassus, please. Don't give me this bullshit.” He couldn’t even grip his fists. The fingers fell flat, disobeying his very mind. His neurons were no longer his.

And then, with the approval of that damned machine in his body, he eked out something. “What are we?”

Her hands on the kids, bent down, she made eye contact with Eli. It was firm and unwavering. There it was - that damned energy of hers! It came back! How beautiful and commanding her gaze was! “You are my brood, my children.” Eli felt a wave of tiredness wash over him.

He was falling asleep.

Ira and the Medicalers (II)

Liarus kneeled at the bottom of the clearing. Tal had a round hole in his neck, the skin still twitching as if something was beneath it. In fact, the whole body seemed askew, as if some sort of life was wriggling in those frozen muscles. “Arlan, get the Xeno.” He told his second-in-command, a bespectacled and dark-haired man with a long and bushy beard.

Without delay, Arlan brought Ira over. She refused to look Tal in his eyes, which had long been picked clean by animals. His hand squeezed her cheeks and he guided her eyes to look. “Is this the man, my dear?” He turned his head, but his expression changed quite effortlessly. “Companion or leader?”

“Companion. My leader is….over there.” Ira pointed over to Aessur’s corpse, ringed with poking Medicalers. Liarus didn’t break eye contact. “His name is Tal, ser Medicaler.”

“Tal, I see.” Liarus pushed his fingers into the wound, feeling the jittering and pulsating flesh. As he did, it began to sear, almost as if something was burning it, as if his fingers were charring the skin. Worms writhed in agony around the wound, long and thin, flat-headed and roping around like fabric. His fingers still hot, he picked one up, only for it to crumble like glass. “Arlan!” He yelled. “Bring me the Vermite’s collar.”

“At once!”

Carried on a long palanquin by four beastly men was an ornate contraption. It was a metal cage of intersecting rods, each carrying a small and visible glass chamber. Swirling lines of bronze on each handle, dragons snaking around the feet. A great glass plate served as the floor for a rolling marble fixture. Inside were equally distributed speckles of red dust. Numbering at least a hundred chambers, the metal beams made it much heavier than it needed to be.

“This will hurt a bit, but trust me.” He whispered to Ira, holding her close and tight. As she blushed, he pulled out a small blade, nicking her finger. She winced and tried to pull back, but he was shockingly firm. Her blood on his fingers, he smeared the inside of an empty chamber and then waited.

A frenzy broke out. The dust came alive. Like locusts, particles flurried and banged against the glass with thumping ferocity.

To Ira’s shock, so did her blood. Shaking in its chamber, it undulated into a crimson mess, swirling like a strange fog, trying to break through the glass. Then, almost as if it had given up on trying to merge, it pointed into a direction deeper into the woods. Liarus smiled. “Looks like we’re not that far off.” He turned to his men. “Ignore the body! We've a trail on the blood mages. We’re diverting from investigation to interception.”

He turned to Ira. “My love lady Ira, we can do it! We can help you get revenge for your fallen comrades by stopping and exterminating the blood mage infestation once and for all!” Liarus kept his charismatic grin, standing tall and looming over a much more diminutive Ira who, it seems, had forgotten all about the pain in her fingers. He had already sealed it in flame. But when? “I need your blood. Will you help me and guide us to the people who so cruelly murdered your comrades?”

“I…I…Y-Yes, ser Medicaler.” She responded. Her head was dizzy, her body hot, and her face flushed. She was having trouble thinking, and all she could hear was the rustling of the Medicalers and the still-whirring hum of red dust.

Radan and the Headmistress (I)

To its few allies and many enemies, Ardalsalam was known quite respectfully as the City of Perpetual Flame.

Flanked by fortresses, its thousand turrets knew very little of darkness, even when the sun crept below the horizon. It was said that when the first of Men emerged out of the Owmslauch and found themselves at odds against elven-kind, they were the first - and greatest - children of fire magic, a tradition manifest in its landscape even today.

Each of its elven minarets - every single one - had been retrofitted into grand spires of cascading fires, powered with such grace and might that it was said that not even the greatest storms could darken its walls. Ardalsalam, of course, rarely witnessed storms, having been built upon cleared earth and fresh topsoil, a walled behemoth in the middle of farmland as far as the eye can see.

At the heart of its long, young roads was a great citadel hewn out of what seemed like a massive slab of granite, so seamless and clean that it was almost alien to its surrounding fixtures. Rumours abound that it was an Elder artifact, a piece of long-forgotten cosmic muscle, but even the bands in the north do not seem to know what it was. Regardless, what it was now was clear: the College of Ardalian Mages, the headquarters of the Medicalers, and more importantly, the home of the Sunlit Chamber.

And it was in this very chamber that a massive man walked around aimlessly, cuffs on his hands as warm wires draped down to a cracked marble floor. Slaves running the gargantuan star ceiling found that the wires would thump and hum at strange intervals, almost as if they carried an irregular heartbeat.

Around this circular room, nestled in the shadows, a harem of young women lazed around, their eyes glazed over as the rush of cold air would tussle their hair. Eunuchs cast worrying eyes at the figure in the centre, chains tied around a platform of brilliant white gold. There was no throne in the Sunlit Chamber. Instead, it was a bed, cast out of warbled steel, draped in tempered brass like the chitinous armour of some strange insect—beds with singed fringes and women with singed robes. Ashes flew around the room. There were always ashes.

Fast footsteps were hard behind two massive, featureless doors. They swung open, the clang echoing throughout the chamber.

The Headmistress of the College burst into the room, the clicking of her feet almost seeming to follow her like an echo. “Your Majesty, your brother sends word.”

Hollow eyes blinked at the words. A gaunt visage, draped in indecipherable tattoos, wrapped around throbbing muscle and bronze skin.

“What does Liarus want?” The King asked. He refused to look her in the eye.

“He found another thrall, almost turned. A dog woman, one of the Ravinders, they think. They’ve isolated the infestation...so they think they can use her to track down Imradir.”

He closed his eyes. “Can you bring her back?”

“The dog woman? Or -"

"No, my sister." He made contact—deep black eyes, large like a shark's. Around them was a ring of white sclera-like halos.

"I don’t know what I can tell you -" The air became hot and stifling as if it was beginning to boil. “But we’ll try! We’ll try!”

The air calmed down. Sweat fell past her brow.

One of the harem girls slipped out of consciousness. The others rushed to fetch some water, though the Headmistress knew better. Another virginal girl down. People were starting to wonder.

She clenched her teeth when the heat subsided. Then she looked at him with disgust. “Your Majesty, if the girls are not to your liking, I strongly, strongly suggest you leave them in my care. We are in dire need of new Medicalers, and if I may be so bold, I cannot risk you boiling these girls alive."

"Do not get in the way between me and my wives." His voice was emotionless. He didn't look at any of the women.

"Your wives are better served in the ranks of the College, where their mana will be put to good use. An Elder band is causing a significant amount of trouble in the Owmswerlauch, and, by the advice of Marshall Parasson, we cannot risk being understaffed when the Salah have already begun building a second tower on the eastern border.” Hushed whispers from the eunuchs surrounded her. She paid them no heed.

“Take them, take them all, if you want.” The King snapped back. He tried to wrestle with the cuffs. Again, nothing. The girls all breathed a sigh of relief, about to get up from their chairs before his eyes swept all over the room. “But you need the Wall, yes? Then bring me what I want, and you will have your girls! You want your mages, bring me your contemporary. That Elder scholar, Ormoc. He can read their language.”

She clenched her teeth. “Be reasonable, Radan. Ormoc has defected to Siral, and finding him is going to be impossible.”

“I made my offer, Headmistress. You want your girls.” He glanced at the women in the harem. Thirty? Forty? Young women, teeming with mana, all of them stuck here in a stagnant chamber, always ready for him. Of these girls, he's touched none. “I will give you your girls if you give me the Elder scholar.”

“And how am I supposed to find them?"

"Did you not come in with news from my brother? Leverage what needs to be done, talk to the Marshalls."

"What happens if I cannot find him?"

"Then I will remain here, doing what I've always been doing for the past years."

"You've been burning through these girls, Radan."

His eyes narrowed. "Find me the scholar, and you have your girls. I am a fair King. More than fair, in fact, I did not abandon this country."

Her footsteps followed a great thud of the massive doors. Click, clack, click, clack. Each step echoed with a rhythm, fast and rushed. The headmistress’ fingers were hot, her veins throbbing in her arms.

“That...brat! Putrid! Vile! Horrendous! Murderous filth!” She murmured under her breath. “Ormoc can be anywhere, going anywhere. How can we find someone like that?”

The weather-beaten arms of a Medicaler trailed behind her, his hands clanging against the pommel of his long, bladed staff. He scratched his head, hair from his whispy beard flying into his face as he tried to keep up. “Headmistress, if I may….” His deep voice seemed to carry a sort of boom, his throat wracked with years of poor ale. “Why does he want the Elder scholar?”

They reached an opulent pavilion, surrounded by gardens on all ends. “Ormoc is the only one in the Empire who can successfully read Elder language. Before he became a thrall of that vampire, he was the only one on the Council of High Mages who could actually decode what any of the spells were. Think about it, an entirely foreign and different stream of magic, locked away in the mind of one person who might as well now be in Siral - anywhere, in Siral.”

“But the Elders have long lost their territory, stuck to the fringes of the Northern wastes. Is their magic so powerful?”

“Ser Marshall, you don’t understand.” They reached the first of many gates, the noise of chains and sliding portcullises drowning them out. “Elder magic is ornate, situational, and forgotten, but anyone can practice it. It requires no bloodline, no reserve, nothing. And worst off, it is summoning magic. The heart of Ardalian Flame has blessed us for so many years, but it cannot build an empire alone. Fire can make so many things, but it cannot make people.”

“I don’t understand. Why would His Majesty need people?”

“He doesn’t want people.” She explained. “He wants a way out, and I need to find that man before he decides that the way out is through my girls. I’ve lost so many women to that mongrel; I’m not losing more.”

The Swift Suns (II)

“Go back…” Alan whispered. “Go back.” He cast his sight at the edges of the forest, gripping the staff. “What’s there?” He jostled the pigs away from him; missing folk had opened some of the fences and others were destroyed, with much of the livestock remaining behind. It felt much like a time after pandemonium, a post-collapse where animals had already begun reclaiming the land.

It definitely smelled as much.

After his explosive command, Thora kicked them out. They remembered his enormous hands waving in their faces.

No matter what Alan said, it seemed he aimed at getting them to leave. So, here they were - the Swift Suns swiftly without a job. “A-are we still getting paid?” Irwin asked. “Cause I thought we were - ”

“We’re getting paid.” Alan interrupted him. “I’m making sure of it.” He whispered. He turned to Kadan, “What do you think about those words, the blood mage? Do you think that’s real?”

“No witch been seen in these areas for decades.” Kadan scratched his head, his teeth clenched in an uncomfortable grimace. “But if rumours are true, I can see black magic causing the air to turn foul. Though I suppose,” his eyes darted to Nara, “you’d have no problem handling it.”

“That’s true; miasma spells don’t work on elves,” Alan said. “And with Irwin, we have a good chance of maintaining a strong defence against what’s in the woods. I’d rather we bring something back to Commander Mira. I don’t want to see us come back empty-handed.”

Kadan crossed his arms. “Fair, and she could say we didn’t do anything and then refuse to pay us. I’ve never worked for the Commander before, but, ah, I want to make a good impression.”

“I’m not so sure,” Nara chimed in, “none of us knows the Burrows as well as these farmers, and they’ve been told to flee. Something vicious is here, and what can four adventurers do? I’m silver-ranked, but the rest of you are bronze. Do you think you can handle what’s in the forest?”

“It’s killed one man, not men, and a farmer at that. I can kill a farmer.” Something about Kadan’s words gave Irwin chills. “At least, we’ve got our little healer.” He wrapped his arm around Irwin, who tried to regain his composure. “And besides, you’re interested in what’s going on in the forest, right? Your magic is strong, right?”

Irwin gulped. All eyes focused on him.

A part of him tried to shout out, bleakly and weakly, that Nara might be right. She had been one of the people of the woods; wouldn’t it make sense that she’d be the one to understand the horrors of these sylvan mazes more than anyone? He understood the situation: none of them were farmers, none of them knew the Burrows, none of them were prepared for the miasma in the wild growth. Still, at the same time, what he needed was clear as day, not only for him but for everyone back home. He couldn’t risk it.

“I think we should at least see the woods.”

Nara’s expression softened, though her eyes couldn't hide her deep sadness.

Eli, Ormoc, and Pernus (I)

Eli jolted up. It was dark. The town was silent and lightless. He clenched his hands. “She did it again.” He murmured.

“She had to,” Pernus said. “Sleep it off. She wants you to calm down and think.” The moonlight cast a faint, haunting glow on Pernus, the two of them united by the weak twinkle of crimson sparkle etched into their bodies. “I heard about it from Ormoc. He told me that you’re different - a real summon?”

“Yeah, I guess so. So is my fiancee; she might be here.”

“Hmm.” Pernus stood up, stretching a bit. They were in a watchtower on a hill, looking over the hamlet of Ilma as the cool breeze washed over them. He produced a small flask, uncorked it, and then took a swig. “I hope you find her.”

“Do you mean that? Or did she tell you to tell me that?” Eli fired back.

Pernus breathed a loud sigh. “You’re a little bit of a brat, aren’t ya? I can’t believe I’m the one who has to train you.”

“I’m sorry, but….”

“Pernus.”

“Pernus, help me understand. What am I missing? I’ve been brought here against my will, and this thing is inside me. All I see is myself as a slave. What makes any of this okay?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I never said anything here is okay, just that for all your complaining, have you ever asked what she wanted to do? To accomplish?”

“What do you want from me? To ask my owner why they do what they do? Does it make it better?”

Pernus frowned, his fingers rapping on his flask. “You’re right. None of this is okay. But,” he leaned forward, “what does it matter? You’re stuck here, forced to be in this situation. Maybe we all follow the General because she’s a thrall-maker, but…what can you do? How do you break these chains?”

“That’s it? We can’t do anything?" He scoffed at the thought. "This isn’t okay!”

“Starving to death isn’t okay. War isn’t okay. The brutal violence that keeps this world running isn’t okay. Ormoc told me about how, even under her spell, you recovered astonishingly quickly after tearing that poor man apart.”

“But I had no choice! She forced me - ”

“She forced you to kill, but I bet you chose to be indifferent about it. To be shocked at the act you were forced to do and nothing but.” Pernus pointed at the hamlet below. “Everyone here is a slave, a cog in the machinery that is Liassus of Ardal, but not a single one complains. Why do you believe you’re the only one who can see past that? Do you think so little of the people there that they can’t feel her thoughts worm their way into their minds?”

Before Eli could say anything, Pernus slumped down again. “People don’t come into this world wanting to be infested with these,” he ran his fingers on his own ruby orb, lodged into his forearm, “but the shackle isn’t the end of it. I can still think and love and learn, perhaps she has made me feel more sympathetic, but there is, I am sure of it, something inside.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any of this okay, but I feel like I can live in these margins. You want to find your fiancee, correct? Did she command you to feel that way? Liassus, I mean.”

“She didn’t.”

“Then you still exist. Don’t forget that. This,” he dug his finger into Eli’s chest, “is where your soul lingers. We still have that.”

Eli paused for a second, but then, "What am I?"

Pernus softened his expression. "I can at least answer that." He stood up again, stretching, and then pointed at Ilma with strange pride. "We're her brood, the brood of a blood mage. We feed off mana, and mana comes through blood."

"So wait, I don't understand. What do you mean mana comes through blood?"

"It looks like you've been blessed with a massive reserve, so I don't think you'll need to worry about it for a while. But yes, mana is what keeps us alive, and blood is the easiest way to get it." Pernus shrugged. "We're blood mages now, Eli. Isn't that freeing?"

Leanne (I)

Leanne sat in the Commander's office that night, reading Liassus' correspondence. Ormoc was going to get in touch with the others in the Northrow underground, and she was planning on bringing Eli, once he was ready, to Aura. Together, they'd meet up with the members on the coast and then make a move towards the capital of West Siral.

Much of the letter was rather matter-of-factly, with very few flourishes. However, in a message only for Leanne, Liassus penned one final note:

Take care, my lovely Leanne. This nightmare is almost over.

She kissed the pages and then packed them away. There was another letter, one from the Swift Suns. Much like Liassus, they had penned something quite simple as well. However, the note was odd, scribbled hastily in a childlike script, as if the writer was unfamiliar with human cursive.

The Burrows is lost. Something foul has emerged from the mountains. I am halfway back.

Kadan is dead. My Alan is dead. I am bringing healer back. He is turning as blue as mockleberries.

Please tell the guards to let us in, he needs the pure air of Aura.