Chapter 16

Lake of Light and Fire

“I danced the Dance, and I sang the Song, and I prayed the Prayer; what more of me can the Gods of Fire ask? I have burned my only child, for infernal’s sake!”

My Dawn, Vol. I

Ozwok Fyorworm, third of his name, paced relentlessly from one end of the Throne Room to the other, the long, silken, black-smudged cloak fluttering behind his back, unveiling the silver-cast armor molded around his fat body. The chains hanging by the waist’s end clanked and clunked in tepid disharmony, his hanging belly dancing along the swaying movements of his footsteps. A crown of blood-gold rested upon his head, tugging away at the strands of his disheveled, ash-gray hair, its frontal end nearly collapsing over the aged, wrinkled and high forehead. Beneath it, a pair of snake-like, grimly, yellow eyes danced and shook, parted by a high-browed bridge that gave way to a long, eagle-like nose beneath which a pair of thin, dry lips quivered as though doused in terrible cold.

His cheeks were flushed, as though he had just been drinking, his fingers shaking as he repeatedly reached for the crown, as though to reassure himself it was still there, hardly bothering to fix it.

The throne room around him, in his eyes, bent and welled; the grand chair, one upon which he sat countless times, one that he knew in and out – cast out of black stone, enriched by the Misted Rubies, slightly narrow for his wide frame – was now a maw of a beast spewing silver fire that turned into slaver's chains as they melded into the tiled floor. The walls, the ones he remembered being decorated in silver and golden linings, sporting exact one-hundred-and-twenty-three portraits of his long-lasting lineage, were now iron bars beyond which sets of red eyes stared viciously, greedily.

The pillars cast out of silver-stone, the hands which upheld the high, domed ceiling, were eerie, translucent shadows that whispered terrible evils into his mind. He avoided them, but they followed. Time and again.

His restless eyes widened as the massive doors to the Throne Room were flung open violently, a voice shouting “My King!” – there, in the mass of darkness, a cask of fire burst through and shed some light. Twenty guards draped in the armor of black steel rushed along the path of fire beneath and surrounded him, only one uncloaking himself, revealing a crest-filled face of a yellow tint, and a pair of blood-red eyes.

Ozwok’s restless mind quieted somewhat as the world around him calmed and withdrew, his eyes beginning to see the reality again – the grandeur of the room, the beauty, the long-lasting sigils of his dynasty. Dynasty that was falling.

“By Gods, Damian, I was seeing it!” he spoke in an old, tired voice and sank to his bottom, sitting on the floor despite the guards trying to lurch him up to his feet. "That Witch! She told me, she warned me, Damian!"

“She cast the Dark upon you, my King!” the man shouted, grabbing Ozwok’s shoulder and forcing the latter to look up and meet the blood-red eyes. “The Dark so vile even I failed to see it! We cannot fall before her evil, my King… we must fight.”

“Fight? Ay, fight,” Ozwok murmured absentmindedly. “I haven’t fought for a long time, Damian. I was a young man the last I picked a sword; remember? Avan’s Rebellion, I think they call it. Some Misted Lad thought himself the Son of Fire and rode stallions to sack my cities. I showed him good, no?”

“… yes, my King. You did.”

“… I am tired, Damian.”

“Don’t listen to them, my King,” Damian urged, shaking the old king’s body. “Don’t listen to the lithe whispers; they’re a lie! Just like the burning walls and the scalding shadows!”

“Where is the Witch, Damian?”

“My King—”

“I need to speak to her! I need to, Damian!” Ozwok seemed to temporarily return to the image Damian still held of him in his head – the reason he became the King’s Guard was that he saw this man, this shell, once upon a time, riding a white mane with a burning sword cast to his side. He was so high, Damian thought, and so mighty, that the skies themselves had to fold back in respect.

“… she is in the Dungeons, my King.” He replied unwillingly, looking away.

“Lead me to her.”

“… yes, my King.”

Even twenty grown men were barely enough to lift the tired King up to his feet, and Damian had to support him using the Kindle, still barely managing. He led the aged King down the deserted corridors; for a fortnight now, the Palace had been emptied – no maids, no servants, not even his wives and children were allowed to enter – just his most trusted Guards with whom he spent the majority of his life.

The empty corridors were awful, eerie beyond description; the fires of the torches and candles were dim, and they cast wiggling, abominable shadows across the walls and floors. The nightly winds would whizz past the open windows and form strange, creaky sounds that reminded Damian of the wailing widows. Alas, it was his King; whatever was left of him, it didn’t matter.

The two made their way down, deep into the roots of the earth, where the dungeons were carved six hundred years ago, reserved for the vilest and most deplorable criminals of the Kingdom. Only three have ever been thrown into it – Avan the Bright, Wor the Outlander, and now her, Mystia, Witch of Blood and Fire. Prior to this, Damian had only heard rumors of her; strange folk tales spoken among the masses of the old, haggard-looking woman living isolated in the Weeping Creeps, crying tears of blood and bathing in flames.

Stories like these are hardly strange, as Commonmen always make them up, for one reason or another. It was why Damian largely ignored it, until the Witch came into the Throne Room itself via vile Dark, and cursed the King. Cursed him with lies, Damian believed, but the lies which the King heard as penultimate truths. For a fortnight now, no matter how much Damian questioned, Ozwok would not tell him what the Witch said – just that she shared in with him the truths, and that Wights and Wraiths were coming for him as they were coming for her.

The Dungeons were open-spaced behemoths, roofed and walled by dirt itself, dark and damp and largely empty. The Witch was right over by the entrance, chained to the wall, stark naked, old, her skin folding over, her white, rotting hair covered in dirt, creases along her face revealing endless scars from fire. It might true, Damian cringed, that she bathed in flames.

The woman looked up haphazardly, her empty lips turning up into a hollow smile, revealing toothless mouth, a scalding odor immediately assailing Damian's senses. The King fought off from Damian's grip and fell down, sitting on his knees, breathing heavily, looking at the Witch with the eyes of terror, wonder, and awe.

“… why have you come, my King?” the Witch spoke in a hissing tone, truly like a snake, licking her lips in the process.

“They are getting closer and closer… closer and closer… Witch,” Ozwok said, his lips trembling. “I can touch them. Touch the shadows. Kiss the apparitions.”

“… ha ha ha ha ha~~”

“Do not laugh and help me, Witch!!” Ozwok raged, slapping his fist against the dirt below. “I need not the truths! I need peace and calm!!”

"Peace… and calm? Bathe thyself in the Fire, then, my King."

"To hell with the Fire!" Ozwok screamed. “I don’t wish to burn myself to death!”

“I am dead, then?” the Witch smirked wryly.

“Why did you do this to him?!” Damian asked, finally forcing the Witch to look at him. The gleam in her eyes shifted completely from the way she looked at the King. He quickly reached to his waist and put his hand onto the sword’s handle, ready to behead her at the first sigh of her using the Dark.

“Rest thy hand, boy,” the Witch mocked. “Your blood… makes me sick. The Light’s son?”

“…” Damian frowned, remaining silent.

“… he he he, whispers… whispers… whispers…" the Witch crackled, shaking her head, causing the chains binding her to clank in the dark. "Light grows restless, and even the Dark withdraws boy; weeping shadow ascends the Throne of Light – fulfilling its destiny –, a cruel dagger becomes its Bringer, and the curtains of a thousand enslaved eyes unfold. Cities purged, Kings chambered in stone, Light and Dark raising the banners of war, lonely laughter filling the empty halls, the world weeps; whispers… whispers… whispers…” Damian shook; her words formed a strange melody, almost like a song, causing him to nearly relax and drop his guard. “Why did I do this to him? I did nothing, boy. Look at him; be it now, or be it when you admired him. The Lineage of Fyorworms is dead, boy. King X’av began the Grand Dawn, and his descendants failed him, while your King pisses himself regularly. The Wheels are turning, the little boy of light. Even whispers are scared; they shake and whimper. Whatever is coming, comes bringing blood and fire and dark – black and awful, yet made of your dearest Kindle. Flee boy; flee these harrowing halls, and let the Kingdom plunge itself into its grave.”

“…”

“The Misted Curtain will withdraw,” the Witch ended, closing her eyes and drawing her last breath. “And from it, terrible, terrible… terrible Death shall shallow the world, Darkbringer – as it has during the Sunless Age, and the Age of Fire before it. Whispers… whispers… whispers… they come…” the old, haggard body suddenly burst into a flash of fire and vanished into the window of ash.

Damian stood stumped and confused, looking around, finding not a trace of the woman, before finally looking at his King. The blood froze in Damian's veins as he saw the drained, colorless cheeks of his King, the breathless lips laying partly open. He was dead. The last of the Kindled is no more; the Crown upon the King's head, one that was already turning haggard itself, flashed once again in a burst of flames, before vanishing completely. However, for a moment, within those flames, Damian saw a figure – a beautiful woman draped in furnished silver, her Light heavenly, her golden hair flying like tendrils of the Grand Dawn – and her amber eyes piercing his soul. She stood perched on top of the Throne of Light, casting a shadow that swallowed the world.