[TT][IP] "King" by Ömer Tunç

...

"My Lord... The portal's resonance is changing."

The Mage bowed low before the throne of the Eastern tower, its grim shadow casting with a looming shade from the figure who stared down from thick blocks of stone. Leader of the wicked and the damned alike, above those slabs sat a Master who had not stirred in days.

Not even to breathe.

If they didn't know better, the Mage would have thought him dead, for all rights in this world that was how it should have been. Instead they bowed, face hovering over the cool polish of the floor itself as they acknowledged a weighted stare from on-high. It held like a pressure of magic, but more: The ghastly face of a corpse whose ghost had been trapped for far too long, blackened armor covering all but a look of stern ambivalence as the great warrior watched all those foolish enough to approach. Finally, the voice came.

"Does he return?"

The question was more a rumble over plains, than it was words or speech. A deep roar that whispered from a far off place which living never dared approach. In the strange fluctuations of light and glow, clouds and cities of glass behind his throne, a bystander might only pick up the faint aroma of blood on the wind; of iron and rust exhaled.

Stale breath from a body unable to die.

The Mage bowed further still, nose touching the cold stone as the fear took them up in its grasps. No man should be impervious to magic, and yet the Dark Knight who stared down upon them had been molded to a close kin of that ancient way. How long had it been since the fallen hero had tasted mortality? How many hundreds of years since his soul was taken?

"We know nothing for certain Lord Rodrick, but we believe he has tried." Lungs forced themselves to squeeze out the reply, breathing deep to continue. "Under his influence, we fear the planes are aligning. Hundreds of tears have been sighted only to fade away again. We know little beyond our borders, but it is not just here in the tower or the Western lands. It is also elsewhere in the world, just as it was before the final rituals were met with failure: Just as The Dark Lord Gillian once wished-"

"Do not speak of him."

Thunder was no longer far off in the great voice, horrible glare seemingly to burn within the skull that horrid head of bone and lost flesh. Behind the raised throne of summoned stone, the portal shifted, twisting and turning as the spheres of chaos around it spun about their lazy orbits in the air about the room.

"One day he will find his way back to this place..."

In the great expanse that rose up from the floor of the Eastern tower, The Mage lifted to witness the expanse rise: Vibrant clouds and cities of glass in that unfamiliar and distant place beneath the portal spinning together and twisting towards yet another scene of duller blue and greying whites.

"One day, he will claw through what barriers and distractions lay before him, and he will us show no mercy."

Beneath the dark hood of black cloth, eyes widened at the sight that rose up with a resounding screech and roar. A Dragon, not of the ancient and undying race long forgotten: But new and young, primal and wicked in its glory as it crested the alien skies of a far-off reality.

But the horrible stare continued, like grains of iron piling upon those who waited beneath it. Unable to withstand the terror that lurked behind it, the Mage slowly bent; bowing again if only to escape the pressure. The Great Blackened Knight knew no mercy in his oppression: The great Lesser of Evils who waited for their end.

Those burning eyes stared on, coals alight in the fading ashes of true hatred.

"Until that day comes: The day in which we all will beg for death and release more so than I already have, Do not speak his name."

The portal dulled once more, casting the tower into darkness, but not silence.

"Do not speak his name."