Chapter Three, Shattered Glass

Six months following, Upper Court of Windhand Hold

The sun scratched at paint of sky’s canvas. Threaded by beady clouds, it brought little warmth to this great northern fortress of Windhand. This titan’s hold seemed built to constantly conserve a cold aura about every stone and step, even when revivified by Drakoni decor. Drakkon sat high in judgement upon his alabaster throne, staring over the spiraling court and frowning at all that filled its space. A chorus of druids and robed skalds stood below his gaze. The weary sovereign slowly rose once the heralds had concluded their litany of empty honorifics. His figure, illumed in a foreboding manner against the relic glass; graven in his likeness, glowing by dwindling sun.

His eminent seat bared silent menace, for behind, before and beside his throne everything screamed against and for his menacing authority in simultaneous tumult. Those quasi-translucent glass windows showered fearful illustrations of his living myth, winking through Windhand to remind even his allies of his astral eye. This abandoned seat of their tribes mutual ancestors, restored from neglect under Vizzari, was well decked out with fresh signs of the new Aeon’s glory. Marble statues and faceless effigies to the other pantheon rulers and progenitors of tribal myth, likenesses obscured against the harsh light waning outside and pillars to their immortal imperator. Masonry & art to devoted to his grandeur littered the court with unliving cyphers to the divine crushed the living into claustrophobic cubes. The courtiers chafing against each other and the busts, betwixt the glare of their emperor.

“You come at dusk with a judicial matter to address, as the heralds confer. Well, what is this reason and why is it so deserving of being heard so late?”

Their speaker stepped forward. A wizened man with white-pale mane, a cloudy left eye, and azure streaks, lightning-tattoos, lining his chest & arms. He upraised an impressive staff with a blueish crystal at the head, heralding speech. “Hail Drakkon. I am the Druid Wulfir. I come with small company of likeminded brothers, pilgrims on righteous path. All of our minds are unified by a crystalline cause, a pure devotion to the true Justice of the gods.” The elder Druid stroked his wild, tangled beard and then collided his palm with the boy’s shoulder. “Thus, we deliver unto you this day a worthy sacrifice, a blasphemer and prime envoy of your enemy, that Malderath’s kiss or mercy shall be awarded this dying day.”

Drakkon’s brow and tone furled with suspicion. “But I thought your kind kept to the shade of the hidden groves away from all? Wherefore is it ye feel compelled to act against heretics on my behalf without a word beforehand? Are druids suddenly so interested in worldly sects?”

“Tis usually the case we are hermits, aye.” Wulfir smiled and his wrinkles stretched as gangling oak. The old man pushed the prisoner to the stone and fiddled under his feathered robe, in no great rush to produce the talisman of his station to questioning eye. “But alas foul times & entropic tides tangle up the ways of the world and the planes beyond. For the gods’ way is being defiled and while my brothers wilt by hermit stones, I decided to serve the Divine more actively and seek your council with a cause.”

The aged druid groused & gargled from tinny tunnel. “Behold! What may seem but an innocent or even praiseworthy mask may ought to be nothing but a frail façade concealing the presence of a lurking daemon. This ‘boy’ came to us, seeking solace, yet reeking of poison. He is the son of Kee’Tan – the renegade chieftain who declares himself the paragon of the People and the leader of their ‘Protectorate’. Hear the lad confess and let us hear your judgement.”

The lad, eyes downcast in grieving thought, then confessed to his Lord, perched on ashen throne, in a voice that nearly filled the ordained court despite his frame. “I am Vilas. A son of this land betrayed by its Lord. Another son you betrayed & abandoned! We have taken the Hold of Helcrest. We routed the false nobility to fling its defense against your Drakes. My father’s lands of lordship and all Helwreath rises against you.”

In retort Drakkon raised sword & speech simultaneously. Barking curses at this traitorous youth with ambition to challenge the high throne of heaven. “Putrid worm and writhing maggot! Thou hast no right to stand on this Windarian stone - Elder peak! Temple to my Thunder!”

Vilas spat seething acid as speech. “You mark my tongue as jagged, yet my voice is shared by villages manifold: you are a pretender, a tyrant & usurper of the people’s rights! Your new Aeon robs folk of happiness & harvest. This thought grows in agitated oratories within Illuminaries, taverns & common stands alike. This troupe of hermit sages have heard it in their learned Groves. Few are they who gleefully announce their ‘Lord’ in thee!”

“Hold!” Drakkon raised halt and looked to his commander at the left of his throne. “Heron, were you not tasked with keeping peace West of the Ruun & all borders along the great river? How does this rabble seize such a fortress just East of your governorship?”

“My Lord,” Heron offered humble honesty, “I have ordained your peace long. Only, you recalled me to your court here. To be assured of my loyalties, you said. As this Windarian stone & portrait glass borders me, I can little leave to defend holds manned by y-our Drakes.”

His Lord huffed resignation and gestured to the champion at his right to read the rest of the charges. But Baron, currently a courtier in this asylum ward of Windhand, noted this unreason from their host. Glancing at Heron, under his governorship all those from Torhildenberg to Windirin enjoy peaceful property. Tis the lands our Lord governs firmly that hail revolt…

Assembled besides his pedestal the other members of the High Council, from Mother Azarra to Heron, looked on with anxious curiosity. Though they were there to advise their Lord, his moods grew ever more taciturn. If any voice of dissent were to be raised, Drakkon would let fall the hammer of his wrath. Corinna and Baron exchanged wary glances in mutual prayer that the boy’s crimes would not incur the full force of that hammer.

The bold prisoner announced a ransom of his own. Addressed the master of imperium with authority beyond agelessness. As if those staves enclosing him were not captors but heralds to his call. “Ascend back to the stars, Lord! Or else retire to Ty-Drasil or some latent abyss to leave us mortals you toil to torment so in peace!”

“Ye wish to hold Helcrest but shall take smoldered cells with the Hels as wardens!” The Lord’s rage loomed. “So blind to my healing Light, he denounces it! All that is familiar to pests like him is surreptitious schemes. Borne as rat & maddening plague-doves, his kind spit poison in the mouths of babes, sages, thralls & druids alike! With what chips do ye seek to bargain? Thou already recant the blood of olden tribes- “

Baron butted in to plead mercy. “-perhaps his youth explains some of his foolishness, Lord. His head’s been rattled but he may yet live on to restore light to the world - “

Drakkon cut him off, his wrath soaring over the heights of Windhand’s pillars. His complexion turned an unnatural pale, wan intent pierced through his pores. “A head rattled by rousers scourging your Illuminaries! A pox keeps spreading among these ‘enlightened’ minds. If he has been so educated in his time there, his mind should make up for his youth. Thus, he stands as full-grown man before the Wrath I dictate, knowing full well what poisons sprout of his tongue!”

With clenched fists the Lord strode from pale seat towards his prey. But halted, suddenly remembering himself and his company. “Drakes of my Wing! Escort my beloved Corinna, thy Empress, to her royal chambers? I wish not her eyes be haunted by proper punishment.”

But as several sentinels swayed through the throne room to let the Empress out, Corinna stepped several strides past their watch. She swung herself to stand between the doomed lad and her husband’s sentencing steel. “Loving Lord! I beseech you find some semblance of mercy for the wretch. Do not take his head, so ailing from heresy implanted by others – like his father – when it might be cured!”

An icy-stalactite sigh broke from Drakkon’s breath as his focus revolved towards Corinna. But before warmth or reason could melt his frigid stature a lightning bolt struck the court from within. The throng of druids eschewed their robes. This ephemeral reluctance was all the visiting company needed to transfigure themselves from humble spiritualists & scholars to militant assassins. Runed mail and gambesons, their tunics. Their hands revealing serrated staves, clubs, tridents & long knives all readied to bleed a god.

Worn and weathered Wulfir arches his back. Retains a resilience to age in defiance of the towering Lord. Hailing fatal fury, he announces his purpose. “I denounce thee, despot! I speak for my Order in renouncing thy ‘divinity’! Thou art the dark breath of the dragon! Wyrm-fire leaps from thy monstrous mouth! Thy spit, the burning of townships & whole bloodlines caught in the ‘radiance’ of thy ‘light’!”

“Warlock!” Drakkon screamed at the Druid with obsidian threat. “Ye would betray primordial pacts to assault my domain! I should have cast thee into arid wastes of the East along with Aris! Such appalling gall shall be met with fury to match!”

“O Lord, beguiled by mortal wit: Aris was no brother to our Order. He may have spent time among our initiates but never earnt his talisman. At least not in any circle I know of!”

Wulfir’s bark ensnares Windhand. With a frenzied howl, a lupine spirit awakens inside him. He and his fellows bolt as berserkers. They charge the two sentinels closest to Corinna. With a couple ferocious swipes with serrated quarterstaff the guards fall to their knees, bleeding there from the gashes & sundered flesh beneath ornate armor. The warriors of wind sweep the guards back, cornering the Lord by his throne.

Vilas lunges for Corinna with a shivering hand. With sharpened stave he brandishes the edge over her throat. “I do not wish to do this desperate deed, Drakkon. I am brought to this point by thee! Grant what belongs to me and thy flock lest innocent flesh be rent as penance!”

“You! How could you do this?” Corinna gasps with what breath she could summon as his arm tightens around her throat. “I had faith you were of noble spirit. Better than this brutishness!”

“Release her, damn thee! Fight with honor and put steel behind your sorcerer’s words to face me for the fortune of thy tribe! I will not tolerate this barbarousness against my empress!” Drakkon, face ablaze with ruby red rage, takes a couple small but deliberate steps towards the villain holding his life’s love hostage.

“No more from thy mouth, lest I cut the good maiden before we rip thy draconic tongue out! Vilas shouts. Voice shaking with tumult. He pulls Corinna closer and brings edge nearer to her neck. “Thou art in no position to speak over me. For once hear out our demands with respect or be met with that same ruin that you made us familiar with! Not once hath thou heard the pleas of ‘help’ from the heaths, nor humored even my honorable father’s ask - save when he was needed by thee! So, listen now to me now or I shall bleed thee and thine!”

Baron leaps into the precarious dispute. Stepping swiftly between Drakkon and the druids he quickly and nervously throws up his hands and yells to break the lethal tension. “Is there not a more peaceful & pragmatic a way to come to an agreement? One that does not involve placing sweet Corinna at stake. Must her innocent blood be a futile cost for this display of ramming horns?! Please, let not tragedy be reaped this day for all here! We need not cross that threshold; we need but yield this rage to reason.”

“Time beneath his banners hath erodes all bridges beyond this!” Vilas growls feverish frustration. “We are desperate and starving for him! The dream, the destiny, of Elderath’s forgotten children is worth more than any life, no matter how pure or precious, even mine. Tis your lord you must reason with. Yet he is silent as our steads starve! He speaks only the language of death and cares for naught save his crown and queen!”

Corinna went to whispers words of her own defense, but the sharpened points along her captor’s stave stall speech. So close that to speak would cut skin. Drakkon, near erupting with the fuming desire to shout & charge at this man using his beloved as bargaining piece, knew he would never be quick nor accurate enough to cut him down. And as the warlocks of Felhenge, this foul circus of druids deranged by desperation, herd his Drakes into cautious corners he could not move to expunge this nightmare.

“I believe in your passion for your lands, your people. You need funds to replenish your holds? But you must know to harm her or threaten anymore only seals off any way to that destiny from breathing in life. Amy more shall ensure this castle your tomb.” Baron prods.

“If I might be so bold as to suggest something as a herald of our Living Lord,” Scanning the plaza in panic, Baron spots a servant cowering beside a pillar, “we will offer to send this poor lass from this precarious court that she might find a minister of treasury and a sizable amount of gems & metal from the vault. Permit us this mercy that we return it? Allow her release: that on her return, with fair proof of covenant we can negotiate on more promising grounds. All we ask from this is that fairest Corinna may be free to leave the tarnished table. Only then may heads be cool enough to refrain from travesty of murder. Does that avail ye?”

“Wherefore should this malicious deviant’s whim be honored when he storms in as a barbarian? Boasts heretical hubris against all that is sacred to me and defies Imperium?!” Drakkon’s spit forked lightning tendrils. His cautious stance snapping by hemorrhaging rage.

Baron glares at Drakkon through slanted eyes. Suddenly all too aware that Corinna’s life would not be endangered like this were it not for this man projecting his unwitting hubris so ceaselessly. He did so even now, at the risk of his wife’s precious life. But the emperor folds his focus. After fixing purpose he seconds the bard’s motion. He forces a rasping whisper to her ear before sending her forth.

Vilas leapt, unwilling to be caught in any backheeling to this tensely thin accord. “Corinna shall remain within my reach until this act is done! Neither she nor I will be at ease until coin is manifest here. Any trickery or nefarious guests making sudden appearances, any alterations to our deal and her fate, and ours together, will be sealed in blood. But I wish no meaningless damnation for any! I would rather that I see my forefather’s soil consecrated with the toil of mine arms, warmed & watered from the sweat of my brow. Rather be a farmer than executioner!”

Another silent pact consummates between the players. Thick hostility chokes the air of the mountain court with its empty space. The helot hurriedly departs, leaving net of quietude, of a stiff and inverted nature. Exhaustive cloud permeates the castle’s breath, suffocating any speech that would dare shake dreadful stillness.

To constrain his convulsing heart from jumping out his chest, Baron hums a tune out of the depths of memory. That serenade starts inside his head but soon escapes through his lips. Before he realizes it, the song manifests aloud, shattering that covetous silence. A couple of other voices join his, not in sharp admonishment but as accommodating, if cautious, choir. Even the young sire holding the empress in thrall lulls into unconscious harmony, recognizing a familiar key.

Corinna, beside her wits before, upon hearing unexpected rumbling of Vilas’ voice resonating with the good bard’s idle song lets out a gentle refrain. Daring her melody to enter their musical movement. Diffusing the court’s clouds, this song shares brief repose for most. While Drakkon, planted firm behind glowering mask and druid staves, refuses to sing, his accuser surrenders to half-song. Pained chuckle hides sniffling tear sliding along his trembling mold. “That tune… I recall it from long ago, in the haze of a forgotten dream which I perhaps lived. M-mother would sing it as we strolled the heath.”

Her captor mutters this to himself more than she or any other. But as Corinna secedes from song, no longer feeling razor edge of staff press tight to her, she addresses him directly. “You are stronger than this hate, I know it! I can forgive you for this desperate transgression, though tis not an act of sound mind nor one your stars would readily ordain, but I can never forgive you should you bridge that final gap into darkness. Do not abandoning that beautiful vision of a budding rebirth for Elderath and her children. Your ancestors surely do not smile on the vanity of violence borne of enmity when there is yet a beaming Light leading the way back to the land of your mother’s tribe.”

A blurred whip of sound & motion came then. The court door swung open. The servant and the treasury minister (a nimble yet gnome like man whose buggy eyes bulge with itching angst at loss of coin) crossed the threshold & shuffled up a few paces from the throne. There they tossed two heavy bags that clanged & jingled onto the floor.

A stark wind then blew by the miserly goblin of a minister’s (equally foul) voice across the court. His spindly fingers in a nervous dance of trepidation. “a monetary indulgence arrives, milords,” sayeth the hunched banker, “I hope this is sufficient. No disrespect is meant to thee, druids, and son of Kee’Tan, only this spare pouch is what was stored in the belly of Windhand. The Harvest hath not come here ye-”

The young man emits a woeful groan and collapses to his knees. Corinna leaps from the grip of this shambling mess; stepping sprightly from those captors as a gust of steel-ice, incarnate in Mordaunt & his men, cuts through the court. Their tempest batters the ring at the center, knocks down the song-sundered Vilas. But their squall clashes headlong with frightful tridents wielded by the intruders who roar belligerent chaunt.

Forming a makeshift phalanx to stave off the sentinels, Wulfir holds his warlike staff above and roars with the resolve of a bear charging a lesser beast. “No gold shall pay penance of shed souls! Drakkon must die as we discussed! We are the blade of the People’s spirit & aegis ov Protection! We shall not rest, even when our bodies lie lowered beneath the soil, not until his skull is split by true Gods’ hammer!”

Enclosing rout encases Mordaunt and his fresh host. While their first fusillade fells the feral warlocks, their bows & pillars then stammer. Knowing not who to litter with missiles next, with colors of foe & friend so fused in haze. All suspended in entropy & unknowing. All suspect. He scarcely succeeds in staggering away from an abrupt & ignominious end at the polearms of odious mystics when his Drakes thrust themselves in the way of assassins’ blades.

Azarra screeches. Her banshee wail besieges the entire sphere of Windhand’s peak. Having left her elysian tower to find herself at tip of brutish spear, she screams horrors to hail from the heavens. The belligerent champion snaps to her defense. Slashing spear lines and militiamen, he & her trained disciples push back those encroaching on her and her Azarine faithful.

Embattled blur of a nightmare captures all the court. Unshakeable in its sway & all too vivid to deny. A couple of lords and nobles in attendance of the High Council (sycophants and shallow misers as they were, who would muck up all the murk of anyone’s past to defame and shame them or turn a blind eye to a dying peer so long as it benefited them) meet their ends by point, pitchfork, and bludgeon. Others shed ruse, costumes of cloth & cuirass, to join the fray in favor of revolt, casting cowering courtiers as hostages.

Drakkon contends with Wulfir & his wolves, garbed as shepherds. The lord of the realm cornered at the back pillar by his elevated throne. One, armed with a trident, rushes him as another flanks him with heavy Morningstar flailing. Profound artwork fixed to the tall glass window beside them shatters by blow of brutal strike aimed for him. But the lustful bliss of combat overwhelms him and blends cerebral tactics with flaring intuition. The Lord strafes to the side as the disguised sentinel lunges with his trident, swiftly tripping him off balance. The wobbling sod would never find his feet again. Fallen from the edge to his death hundreds of cubits down the fortress wall. His ally runs with wild gale. Only for the bull rush of last vigor to pounce upon black blade, plunged into his belly. The piercer, singing for bloody tones, reaches with heat of hungering harmony through tabard to skin to rend its key.

Isolated from his soldiers’ shields & scattered swords, jagged tooth punctures his thigh. The crystal canine atop Wulfirs’ staff artfully chisels Drakkon’s flesh. Another of these bites scrapes his leg. The ancient master, relentless in his driven hate. The old man, drunk on the drawing of deity’s red, chortles and chants with adrenaline glee. But the louder song of obsidian blade slashes him. With appetite teased, gashes from thunder-impressed blue veins to chaunting cords.

The dead druid’s limp trunk collapses in twain. Separated from the grizzled, desiccated head which led the way for the rest. Toppling out the smashed aperture. Shards of graven glass shower the spot where the pair scuffled. One scratches the Lord’s temple; a piece of his Living reflection staring back as it lunged in. With an aggrieved growl, the victor limps back to the stairs of his throne, a hand resting over the bloody opening while his sword props him up, as a cane would its cripple. The parting cadence of the solar chariot’s trail descends into the nether, leaving only the black streaks of the day’s decay & bleakness of the night’s chill from the shattered displays.

Azarra and Mordaunt shuffled over to Drakkon, along with the former’s trusted alchemist, Albrecht, who jumped to the task of bandaging their charge’s lacerations. His mother attempted to keep him from exhausting his reservoirs needed to heal, reserve his speech for rest. But her Lordly son rambled, as the vacuous shouts of embittered evening berated them just the same.

“Every bloody time we crush these parasites they simply swarm up in greater number. Now they intrude into our halls – my seat! They desecrate the holy sanctum which we built with calloused hands and endless hours all for their pathetic plea for martyrdom. They wish to play victim?! They shall get the chance on stage over their balefire on which they & their children shall burn!”

“You must rest, my golden son! Blessed beaming Light! Do not tear those glowing veins being taut over a minor cult of dull-witted fanatics. Your spirit is pure & deathless, but this coil of man must still grant time & peace to heal.” Azarra lathered oozing sap & oil onto the shoulders & chest of her progeny.

“I will rest when the rogues who covet my seat are lashed to stakes, alit by Fyre!” He laughed in retort to her insistence. Ripples of distress & pangs of hurt accompanied his refusal of her cry. “Hear me, Wulfir, from beyond the mortal maw: I shall retake Helcrest; the storms I summon crash thunder upon their pilfered helms! Then I shall seek the hermit court at Felhenge and burn them as bloody scarecrows of conquest! An augury for all to hark at the fate of warlocks!”

The holy mother’s eyes sharpened with the blade of precise compassion. Drove them home into Drakkon’s, her concern & rushing need flushing out. “They will see their day of judgement soon, my beloved boy. You will see to their doom, I know it – feel it turn tides of night stars.” She cradled him as though still a babe. Her opaque gown blew over them as a sail snared by Helwinds. “But hurry not off the precipice into darkened slopes & brimstone steps. This matter is dire and thus your aim must be true. I beseech your eminent halo to alight by the waves of meditation & careful planning. Just because those villains played their hand does not mean we must instantly show ours.”

“My Will is to march personally against this line of dissent. To tear out the vein of treachery with mine hands. With mine own might stamp it out conclusively and finally free us of this menace.”

“But my son - my Shining SUN!” Azarra pleaded. “May I remind you, only in courtesy, that we have not the funds for a prolonged campaign fought through hostile marches-”

“All that we are is already flung forth into the forward lines of grim-faced war & her dour stripes. Our survival is at stake. This Protectorate ensures its demise or else our Imperium’s.”

Her son shuffled out from her cape, shoved her aside. “Corinna, my shining star, come hither unto me and be freed of wretched clutches.” Commanded Drakkon, before any other spectators could fully comprehend the scope & swiftness of what occurred. With one hand he beckoned her to him. The other kept high his bleak sword, as a scythe to reap the life of Vilas as a farmer slices his crop (the death of traitors his yield).

Corinna gasped. Frozen in dismay while her brain spun about in struggle to regain her breath & wits. Yet she proved resilient through this fray. Rushing over to the unconscious Villas, she shields him from her husband’s black blade arcing overhead. While she could still feel the phantom molestation of his serrated stave gripping the edge of her neck, her pale face was flushed with concerned. “Nay! Stay thy hand! For the sake of thy love in me and thy trust in the Light of divinity I beg thee spare his life! Do not slay him for my sake. Please, lower that sword and raise up civility for this lost soul. He is not in accordance with his mind.”

Drakkon gaped at her. Aghast at this inconceivable behavior from his beloved. Yet he did not surrender his sweltering rage so soon. “Ah?!! Wherefore are you so vexed in this manner, woman? Why do you insist on wasting words too kind for this fiend who was hungering for your throat minutes ago?! Are you as possessed by lunacy as he?!”

Corinna’s body became a bulwark against her lover’s chagrin. “Promise me that he shall not be slain, that is all I ask. All I pray for you to grant me this day. I wish not for a redeemable life to be laid to waste in the name of my honor when tis I who proclaims my forgiveness. Let no torture or scythe touch him!” She clutched a hand to her chest and another to his. Pressed tight to as if to invoke some spiritual Aegis.

Her stare linked with her husband’s. She saw his emotional state imploding further on itself with this added confusion. But she kept her gaze genuine and firm without veering into any harshness that could upset him more. Before him, the empress summoned a spell of feigned distortion; steeping herself in a swill of spirits and sweeping back her eyes as she tumbled into his folds. “Love! The Light shines insight: we must not spill any more blood upon this hallowed stone lest all our holds soon be awash with a flood of it. The Muses pray mercy that horror departs.”

The bard, beside them, saw in Drakkon then such a loathsome & heinous beast masquerading as a ruler. Such harp pain dug into his chest, bit at his heart, gnawed at his ribs. This tunneling fission inside of himself carving rift between he and the man called his friend and lord. Thankfully though, that blind barbaric drive for malice melted beneath the rays of her reassurance.

Her lordly husband held her tightly. His sight pried the windows of her soul. After long peering into her being, through stare so firm it almost frightened save such an immense sense of care for her it carried (always surprising in its depth, even to her) Drakkon nodded. “I see. forgive me then for my mistrust, ‘twas the haze of rage which hath incited this in me. But I understand. I believe in the truth your gift, my love, and promise to honor this insight. Yet I ask you now to lake your leave of us and this court. Only that my focus will not be drawn too far into your elysian glow. That I might serve justice. Know no more shall be bled here.”

She returned his long look. Witnessed the fyrds of passion levied there. She sensed truthfulness in the weight of his adoration and knew it only right to offer her belief in him back. She knew how grievously he struggled to keep caged his wrath. And how much it meant for him to abstain. “Very well, my love and guiding Light… I shall away to the Chamber of Reflection, that I might meditate and move my mind from this stress into needed rest. Should you care to join me once your tribunal concludes I shall be there and would welcome it.” Corinna delivered a curtsy to her husband. She started her trek out with a few servants behind. She flashed one last look to Drakkon, projecting reminder to keep good on his oath to her, and then left as agreed.

Mordaunt, meanwhile, appeared aloof from their dialogue. He’d asked leave from this council session on behalf of the wintry sickness of his Lady Portia, as to avoid the assumed drollness of it. Yet he returned to pulverize the aggressors. Lashing out at them as means of channeling his distaste for being stuck wintering with the wife in Windhand, denied his Selene till afterlife’s spring. His thoughts dug inward, confusion chipping away his moral center. A stray gust of wind picked up and tossed the grim man’s yellow locks aloft; his mane mirroring the disarray of his head as numbness returned to his jaw. Drakkon’s watery colour is the same as that which I shed for him. The kind I hath bled before! Even if I came to him seeking salvation for Selene, would his hand, laid upon her soft brow, beckon any miracle forth? How long must I bear these dubious shackles of an empty ‘god’ before my purpose can be bared? Did I miss my shot just then? Or is this the sign of circumstance, to unshackle myself and end this farce? To force a prophecy ov power beyond any hedge witch’s or pretender’s imperium?

The champion’s concentration was challenged by his master, who turned rumbling voice to his ear. “Mordaunt seek not the silence of thoughts but speak freely as to our plight!” Drakkon waved off the hurt but didn’t manage the same for the doubts of his less than loyal thrall “Let not this skin-deep scratch ne’er deter you from higher course nor from true faith. You shall be my sword, my emissary, my prophet upon the field of battle while I prepare the ascent into our infinite season of supremacy.”

“Shall I dispose of this patchwork heathen? Or will that be the honor solely of the Lord of our eternal Imperium?” So spoke Mordaunt, kneeling before his emperor. In a tone chillingly indifferent to the asphyxiating anxiety that plagued those who’d experienced so close a fall into tragedy. Behind those frigid eyes, roosting in the prime material of his humanity, shot a hungry longing – like a malnourished manticore salivating at sight of fresh feast.

“You shall act as my Hand. Though it shall not wield mortal axe but instead a tool of a more precise punishment.” Drakkon looked down upon the beaten boy, bound now in chains. “Because this lost soul proves blind to the truth of my Light he shall be damned to dwell in darkness. You shall blind him with caustic Spear of Fire. Prod out those two useless orbs from his skull. But it shall be done in such a way that not a single ounce of the blasphemous poison running in those blackened veins is spilt unto this floor!”

“Servants! Azarra! Albrecht! Prepare a potion, cauldron, tarp & the searing stick. As I hath sworn, every drop must be burnt away lest it congeal unto this sacred court.” Commanded the wounded immortal. “Let this be mercy! For he shall live past his hour of treachery and not see the fate of his kin. Yet, in perpetual dusk, he shall know of it.”

Azarra looked a wraith. Vanished in somber of mist of her disrepair. Have I lost him so? To see him swayed by simple ruse from false Seer and maid less than fair? Be fate so cruel that the tainted seed I raised must sprout sour thorns to cut me? To repel my touch and cast me out! Yet her tongue furled false firmness. “And with a little murkroot and Andrasil sap this lad shall spill his secrets without need of question.”

Drakkon paid her little heed. Instead attending to his champion. “I declare that it falls you to tend to my seat in the capitol as Steward and harbinger of my Peace. I shall decide this campaign indefinitely from the fronts with mine own blood & fire. I will root out the groves those ‘druids’ hide in and burn them down. Tear out any nests infested with rebellious sentiment with crushing closure. We shall take Felhenge, the prime roost they forfeit. Sculpt it into pre-eminent place for executions. But while away I would have my Champion in you remain resolute and ready in Crestfall. We must have a stout mind & strong sword remain. For we know not what bedeviled mischief this mutinous mob may spawn in my absence.”

Mordaunt offered a long, low bow of pensive acceptance of his new task and title. It was though this command of Drakkon placed a phantom coronet upon his brow. The weighty mantle of responsibility and authority about his shoulders now that he was soon to become acting steward over the capitol. Upon being given official leave to prepare for the coming caravan to his adopted Crestfall the blood hound in him could not help but grin with such sinister sedition. Grinding his remaining teeth with anticipation, mulling over all the sadistic schemes being born in his brain by this gestating opportunity.

“As for the twelve frauds who soiled themselves when our court found real conflict:” the Lord passed arraignment over the sentinels who’d given their arms up and were lined for arrest by their betters, “have them split into pairs to duel in the yard. Above the earth but beneath sight of sky & mountain – and upon no sacred stone - they shall fight to regain some shred of honor. The victors may be merry their fates be but that of eunuchs.”

Heron tried tenuous rejoinder. “Lord, you’d make six eunuchs of our spears this day?! What shall that do for morale of your other men, your honor-guar- “

“Aye, I shall! The vestiges of their manhood shall not gore our tower though. That they’ve surrendered their dignity proves them at a loss to rectify their true states. Helwinds! They once complained that as Winged Drakes they were ‘clipped of flight’ to be but house guards. Yet we shall clip more as is required. Be lucky not to be among them. They are slaves, not spears!”