Chapter Ten, On the Trail

9th of Vintersfal, 19AD

Drakkon’s borrowed steed braved the latent snow of the ground to give steep pace. A trail of scorched earth split some of the ashen blanket, yet the wintry bite kept lingering assault. The horse moved more constant than its rider, who fluxed between dread halts & wild charge onward. Feverish migraine wounded his head, driving on as he urged the reins to bolt. Corinna’s visage burned in his mind with ardency to cauterize the rest of his mauling. Fixating on the mental talisman of her smiling, returning to the fold of his arms, as to do not allow doubt to erode his fervent ride and the hope to find her still breathing.

But no mental bulwark was substantial enough to fend off the lashing tendrils of baleful thoughts, lit by omens of calamity. Woeful images flared. Visions of Corinna taken by Mordaunt’s lackeys; of finding nothing at Silverwood but her corpse laid bare and beaten over the altar; of her coven crucified upon the cliff. These nightmare glimpses urged greater haste, that he might assuage these taunts by spotting the Grove & Corinna’s presence upon the horizon.

He could feel the effects of prolonged exposure to Delphine’s herbs on his acuteness. How many days had passed under her care? He knew not with any certainty. Nor how many had gone since he departed that makeshift ward. He’d left Karrathas’ stead under duress when the boy rushed in, pallid and scared. Barus warned him of the knaves in the woods and of the rogues’ rude introduction to Delphine. Further shame fell upon him from this, being unable to rescue the one who saved him. Nevertheless, he believed her spirit helped him fly faster. He knew her astral wings would avail him his quest, for she would not want him wallow now. This was no befuddlement of mind but a final sacrifice from a friend and miracle worker.

The wind’s vespers carry him aloft, spreading ghostly wings upon which he might ride with elemental speed more than that of any mortal steed. No visible souls cross his path. An eon of endless riding brought him to the outline of reclusive Silverwood. Arriving before the steps that stretched up to embrace the cloistered haven, funereal gloom suspends itself over the breadth of the Grove. A dense concentration of clouds materialized the form of a drooping talon with flumes of haze, its wilted fingers pricking the tiny hairs along his neck.

Answering his worries arrived as a whiff of charred ash and soot, carrying the scent of decay to the tips of his nostrils. Sight then beheld the mouth of the Grove: where once stood a beauteous canopy of blossoming trees that served as entrance gate, only forlorn cinders against a barren backdrop. The paleness of the snows receded to a muddy brown from the littered bodies of the Protectorate. Preserved from rot in cold blanket of red. Betwixt the desolation was planted Mordaunt’s mocking banner (a variation on the Drakoni standard with his ‘Winged Manticore’ at its centre). The insignia of pessimism, blowing in the besmirched air.

Desolation dressed Silverwood. Desecrated, bereft of life & motion, save sparse trees still standing. Corpses litter the place. Bodies of soldiers garbed in armor and priests & women slain in their robes. By the steepness of their count among the dead, it appeared that Baron’s resistance fighters had committed the largest aspect of their force to defend this shrine. Drakkon recognized many of the cadaver faces as veteran members of his former vanguard - prior to the schism between Baron and himself which birthed defection.

Baron, before facing him on the field of war as a rival, had left a garrison of his best. A precaution to protect Corinna and her circle. It seemed he expected the Drakoni war effort to expend itself on annihilating the Protectorate, rather than defending the people from a true threat. Drakkon’s heart dropped to the depths of his being, lumped in deserving anguish. Cursing his blind existence. I hungered for Baron’s death more than Corinna’s livelihood. The cheating bard, still evermore noble than I. Had he cared more for victory and usurping the reins than her, as I so zealously believed, he could’ve flooded the field; caged me in and paraded me about the countryside as sideshow tyrant. Have I flung her to destruction, stumbling in spite for him?

The only building standing, the stone sanctum overlooking the terrace. Not so easy to raze without witch-fire or dragon sap. The threshold of this haven held a powerful seal, yet it failed to keep safe any worshippers, disciples, or revelers within. The gates had been left pried agape. Inside the walls, a morbid tableau of innocence’ demise. Urns fractured, portraits defiled, idols desecrated; remains of priestesses strewn around in macabre fashion. Some dead by their own hand, as hinted by bloody ceremonial daggers pressed into their chests and hands. No sign of his love, his Lady. The upper-level door leading out to the balcony was also awry. On the veranda overlooking the ragged cliffside Drakkon met a spiteful sign. On the precipice before the leap to tumultuous seawaters lay a torn and abandoned frock. Adjacent to it, an athame drenched in blood, frozen as red tears dripped onto marble platform.

Convulsions of dolorous remorse claim him. Tears ebb estuaries of his soul. Rippling into gaping sea far below, which swallows his sorrow. He barely wrestles back the urge to dive from the edge & follow them to the crag. To plummet that his mortal fate would echo the precipitous end of his legacy. That sharp impalement on the rocks below could deliver his soul into an alternate realm - where he would again have the chance to see love and caress tenderly without this guilt scarifying his soul. Or if not, surrender instead to forgetful nothingness. To dark, Lethean draught.

He collapsed. Legs caved to quivering destitution. The world buckled as he gritted teeth, gnashing in fury of it all. Uttering hateful curses against all that is. Resounding a wailing of frantic denial & futility. The cry reverberated through the empty halls of the sanctorum and stung his ears with the same venom imbued in pained howl. The lingering effects of the hannabis plant permeated through his consciousness, amplifying the ghastly sound. Reflecting the woeful wisps behind his eyes. Vaporous mementos of Corinna hung there as thrashing reminders of what he could no longer grasp…

Yet suddenly there came upon him the shuddering awareness of something else nearby. A sentient yet wild force fixing on him from just beyond sight. This eye tugged his attention to the dense thicket adjacent to the sanctum, wherein slight rustling could be heard. What drove him on he could not name. Though he walked alone, his steed having vanished (bolting away on the breeze), what propelled his steps was no paranoia at the prospect of some prowling predator. For all spiritual vitae, all feelings of love & fear, leaked from his persistent cadaver, fled into the mournful surf with his departed bride. Washed up by entropic tide, with death’s toll the only tune to ring catharsis, what more could be mauled of him save this feckless, fleshy matter?

Leaving the emptied enclosure and nearing the thicket, a small clearing with a course straying along the side of the terrace calls him to forested area. Treading the brambly path, the sensation of eyes watching multiplies from every angle of the deepening woods.

Among the Trees

Later that day

Trudging through the singed coat of snow, Drakkon lost his steps to fissure of loneliness. Darkening temperament obscured his sight, that all seemed but a breathless shroud spread over cavernous void. Yawning wide in sullen expectance of the fall of all the whim & wit left in him. He strayed not from the path he traced, knowing not where it led and expecting no other travelers in the sparseness of locale.

But then, through the soggy veil of his tears, he made out a distant contingent of soldiers advancing beneath a hideously knotted awning. Trudging towards his spot as boots wading through drapery of frost. He couldn’t make out the emblems adorning their armor from afar, but whether they were friend or foe he opted to abandon their aisle. Concealing himself in the underbrush by a bedimmed and bushy thicket, he waited for them to pass. Seeking no dialogue nor combat with any living being in his befouled disposition. As the ensemble approached, the Drakoni sign cut through the gray enclosure. Yet with another covert glance from behind creeping bramble Mordaunt’s glaring banner bared up by their gauntlets.

Cold reason spoke to say that Mordaunt already seized all means of martial office already. That these could be the very men who, under treacherous order, razed Silverwood and brought the doom of Corinna caused contempt to seethe from his pores at their drawing closer. Churning antipathy infused blood with lava. He reckoned at least two dozen among their number, not a force that he could contend with (especially when still in so sorry a state). But the overflowing abhorrence and thirst for any taste of vengeance beckoned him to play the fool for Malderath’s fertile rot. A final flash of swords against wicked skin might at least unshackle his own. As fruitless as this fatal instinct would be, what else was there to act on in this life?

Clutching the hilt, he readied to slide that black-rune blade smoothly from the scabbard to strike when opportune. But before he could fully draw it, a fervent rustling from behind disturbing the ashen bramble turned his head. A sinister lurked there, unlike that of mortal men. Staying his meteorite-steel from the thrust of certain suicide. He would not end here through a drifting and ignoble contest of swords far from civilization. For now, he was hunted, not by those mindlessly marching men but by the shadow with eyes of wintry woodland.

There amongst the forest: a lurid sight of dumbfounding awe. A living vision emerging from spirit into flesh with astonishing and morbid form. A wolf-like creature on the prowl skulked its way towards him with a gait neither of man nor beast but something in between. Half human, possessing a feral and foul mark to it. The peculiar beast halted when a few meters before him, locked eyes. In that moment of deep mutual survey Drakkon’s soul trembled. Cast by unnatural glare worse than lifelong experience and ghastly revelations within.

Mesmerizing wolf-gaze begot an uncanny familiarity. As if this abominable hybrid held beneath its bedraggled fur some resonant chord of his own blackened heart. In this fascinating stupor he moved towards the dreadful fiend before him. The thing turned heel, intentionally leading him further through a bramble to a different canopy. All under deranged dream from which no awakening came.

The monstrous guide rears itself upon its haunches. Jaunts forward, raising its hind legs to walk as human man. Such grisly fashion that split asunder the coverings of sanity, lost to forlorn perdition. The thing turns its snout to glance at Drakkon, frozen. In that instant he gleans a sinister gleam, through that lupine visage a stare at once predatory and lugubrious. This creature, clear in its destination but not its intent; yet to spell if this one it led was set at its willing prey. Apprehension swells, realizing those eyes are the same pair he felt prickling on his back all the way back at the cliffside. That this malefic monstrosity of man merged with beast had the patience of deeper motive than simple curiosity or hunger.

The pair halt before a cavernous opening among a barricade of thick, concentrated trees. The Hel-hound presents a gaping passage to an abyss with no visible light or definition of shape within impenetrable darkness amid the woods. An immeasurable expanse of time outflows in the limbo before anything stirs, until finally two woeful silhouettes shoot out from the void. As their outlines fill in their shape, they appear draped in velvet-like vestments as black and dreary as a moonless midnight yet possessing material from some ethereal source that exudes a subtle glimmering violet. A torch of emerald sap glows their way, illuminates the shape of robed figures without revealing their full features.

The unnerving trio leads on through the trail, brightened by green effulgence from the torch, whose fire was spent lighting several more incendiary vessels along the way. Spreading wide the dark eminence of this unsettling labyrinth of winding bows & wicked roots. Many forks and contorting pathways branch off, but the strange fellows follow the one bearing fur of wolf without flinching. Often veering course but preserving his purposeful tread while deviating between two and four legs. Always the two phantoms flank Drakkon, making him aware that there would be no flight from this maze even if he sought to try.

A congress of trees within this paling spiral of unending depth captured an eerie state of being. So many that were at once dead in appearance, corroded with the stink of rot and look of decay, yet possessed semblance of life remaining within their Cimmerian trunks. As if imbued with a restless vigor, persisting to stay arisen though in perpetual gloom. Walking the putrid path, every branch outstretched its bizarre branches to caress or scold their faces with uncanny touch. These wooded arms, tentacles of some great sea beast enclosed in earthen husks to wrap around his neck. Lashing fervent constraint only to release their grip. Almost as if minds of their own moved them and tested the intruder’s soul.

Every now and then the bulwark of trees would depart, interrupted by dilapidated stone walls and obsidian pillars. Standing tall & proud in their abandonment, even in disrepair. Colossal in awe and structure, they far surpassed any architecture Drakkon had seen among any mortal kingdom. Yet they were not unlike those foundations he’d once found in his fever beneath Moribond. Astonishingly the further into the forest they travelled & the more of these timeless towers appeared the less snow and natural resistance they encountered. Eerie incalescence emitted from the decrepit stone walls, radiating from source that melted away all sleet and kept the cold clime at bay. Gravestone spires preserved a warmth that fell to earth but wasn’t of it.

Drakkon, ruminating on this observation, recalled one of the tales his mother used to narrate to him. Her voice rang throughout his mind, from the mouth of the dead past. Telling of those bygone ancients who ascended to a seat in the stars. Whose skeletal testaments to their reign & ruin stretched across all corners of the plane they abandoned. Forgetting, in their passing, to leave the key to their terrible rites, which evoked the Hels and moved by their winds. Disappeared of Elderath’s folds to claim Astraean zenith in the silver sea. Chimeria, was one such name for the fell realm, lost to all but campfire legends that warned of their hubris and the curse that befell them. Yet the bones of their great cities remained. As did their deathless Watchers, the Night-Gaunts. Their arts & guardians, as unliving echoes of their Age.

Unbent by these terrible postulations, he readied to what fate may hold for him. Just then the bastion of trees and decrepit structures relented, giving wide breadth to reveal a vast & deep gully before him. Holding within its vale a peculiar encampment filled with ritualistic pyres and obsidian statues speckled about. Packed with more cloaked figures that eerily turn in unison to face their arrival as his enigmatic guides lead him into the living ruin.

Advent of the Wolf

Dusk over the ruins

A dreary fog birthed itself from the moist & yet lukewarm ground. Steam mist groaned from star-stone pillars, greeting Drakkon with dreadful excitement. Another figure manifests from the umbrage. A living shroud, lined with obsidian & violet velvets, came upon him. Forcefully taking his hands, it brought them up to its hood and beckoned him remove it. Exposing the face beneath the mantle, every fiber and thread of his heart shook with sickly astonishment. Seeing then the visage of Azzara’s former left-hand and favored apprentice, Dahlia. Who still possessed every ounce of her terrible beauty. Strangely, in the warping rays under supernatural ceiling, she had gained no single line over her brow or crease of aging. She seemed somehow frozen in a half-youth of devious origin beyond ritual care & ointments. As eternal and unliving as the ruins which crowned her as their newest master.

On her lips and in her eyes lived that look of insatiable hunger. A constant craving for power, knowledge, dreams boiled by blood and lust of flesh carved across her countenance. Her deep & dazzling glare betrayed her considerable ambition, with her ceaseless analysis of her environment and casting down judgement. Her gorgeous yet ashen visage oft pursed itself in apathy which congealed the thirsting look beneath. Only for Azarra and Drakkon did Dahlia deign to beam a smile. Before him now she shines one such glare on her front. “Ah, the Great God Himself steps forth before us! I am ecstatic to once more be in your presence, Drakkon. How long has it been since we last could search one another’s face and let fall away the rest of the world, would you say? Surely you remember that night we shared together in the wondrous tower ov Azar-Drakon?” Dahlia spoke in a peculiar tone and made an odd sign of deference.

“Memory is opaque on the matter and yet I know my soul is still scarred of sin.” Drakkon grunted. His fever depleted for worse strain to slither in its place. “Years of shame haunt from vague remembrance. Churned of my stolen memory. I have not been myself… in all my years.”

“Yet you were yourself with me. So bare and bold!” Dahlia’s lip quivered, poised betwixt mockery & obsession. “Tis shame you forget our night, shared. How saddened I would be to hear you thought me then another, when I was then so purely for you.”

Remembrance accused him through her eye. “You must hath seduced by some secret ambrosia! Only by bedeviled witchery did I engage in obscene kiss, unwittingly. I never betrayed Corinna of my choice but was confounded be thee! Would that I investigated enough to piece together thy witchery sooner instead of failing in my shame.”

A shrewd gleam came over her as Dahlia flared with devious delight. “It pleases me to help you rediscover impression of a night of such evanescent pleasures. Yet ‘twas not for fleeting purpose and the boons of blessed evening yet last, living. Take heart that I threaded well my reasons, which I shall unwind to you soon enough. Let us cast aside that veil of mystery so long woven around our relations. But first I wish to satiate your curiosity and reveal to you your guide.”

“Fenrik! Come, show yourself to our honored guest!” She summoned the feral man-beast responsible for this strangest of reunions to present himself.

His lupine guide arched its back in abhorrent fashion. Fenrik’s spine stretched backwards as it tore away, with obsidian claws, shed its bindings of bestial covering, letting its fur to fall about to ground. When it finished this transformation, that hulking canine-hybrid bore the sight of a young man of surly appearance, bereft of anything save thick black leggings & wolf rune etchings burnt on his back. He turned, disclosing his eyes to Drakkon. They were of the same hue as his and the sculpting of the face mirrored so much of his own. Beneath the scruff & remnants of that feral ruse it was a perfectly perverted reflection of his features, a familiarity lining there. Some slimy shudder trickled down his skull and he knew in the back of his mental fiber the true reason for the similarity. A morose apprehension clasped him as the revelation of his relation to the thing before him cleansed his mind in a hail of horrid fire. In this unrelenting awe, the confession of this knowledge unconsciously escaped his lips into frigid air. “My son?”

“’Tis time you met your Lordly father, Fenrik. O! How gracious am I to hath received this, your gift – your seed! For I was chosen to ensure a new flower of light. That would blossom into this world through my body, the vessel of the pure realms above. Just as Azarra’s once was for your incarnate passage! But the flower which sprouted from my womb was a dark flower, one of Night… under the Sign of the Wolf. Conceived when the stars ceased spinning, that he should tread their course and tame the wilds ‘neath their crests.”

The sorceress spun her speech with a sultry, hoarse sense of performative pride. “Behold that flower of the Wilderness foretold: of the Shadow ov the Sun that is Fenrik Drakonis! The son of Light begot to rule over the Night! That all dualities shall be borne of this blood and raise the Wolf to lead our pack through the marsh of mankind! Hunt our hunters & prey to assure immortality. As doom descends upon all the profligates only those sworn in ceremony of holiest life-waters shall endure! Suffering to seize the Black Flame and inherit the Earth for our brood!”

There was no joyous reunion nor long waited (yet ne’er expected) embrace for father and son. Instead, only a sullen silence as the progeny wore his dour expression with utmost resilience, unflinching before his father. Beyond the surface mold there were far more aspects in the young man’s countenance that betrayed relation to Dahlia’s blood and his. The volatile stare, which his father could not meet, suggested the pup’s thoughts threatened to topple at any moment into violence. But those foul orbs also contained a wolven cleverness.

Fenrik’s posture erect; though still a shambling resemblance of man, becoming more regal in a terrible way. A daemon of the hinterlands’ fiercest creatures & most bubonic of winds. There was still a great agitation in him, itching at his chest and neurotically clamping on a small obsidian stone hanging down. Another odd talisman chained around his neck, emitting an eldritch energy the same sort of aura projected by this cursed zone. Sinister strands from the bleakest regions reached out from the gem and in the glow of lycanthropic stare. Marked by the grim gravity drawing all here into its maddening space.

The wolf aspect in him howled once more. Stroking the stone and falling apart again in his form. Following that feral call, a trio of wolf familiars rushed to his side from the outskirts. They stood by him as both a brother and their Master. Pacing about & eyeing Drakkon hungrily.

The viscous sensation of Dahlia’s slender arms slid over him. She drew her devilish mouth to his ear as her tongue licked with torrid breath while whispering audaciously. “Let not confusion cloud your eyes, Lord. For all this was bid to me by your Divine Mother, Azzara, Wise in her ways to notice with antipathy and aversive dolor how your ‘Queen’ and consort Corinna bore no tender fruit from her womb that could aid the Drakoni Empire we all suffered to build. A barren and bottomless basket ascribed of her. She conferred to me that our world would wither and wilt if we let the Divine line break by that succubus’ spell. Aye, you were so foolishly infatuated with that one that you refused to take up any (lusher & more fruitful) mistresses - much to your mother’s ire...”

She went on in an ever more presumptuous manner. “Indeed, Azzara, in all her luminous insight bid me enter your tower chamber. A grace that I could be the one to sire your issue into this world. That the line of demi-gods would link the chain of the pantheon of the celestial realm to the witches & seers who tend the earthly gardens. That there would be everlasting balance and that your blood would directly course through the people of the lands and fulfill the prophecy in unexpected ways. She granted me this Sanctuary, untouched by intrusive ways of man’s domain – so casually cruel in its make – to harbor our heir. To give him the best clime to train in, pertinent for him to grow into warrior and a leader adept enough to rival his father and fulfill the promise ov the World’s Waning!”

“My only failing was spurning her, not allowing her presence here earlier. But I only wanted our Fenrik for myself.” Drakkon shuddered at her truth. His heart fell into the cavity within his chest as the rest of him shook in stasis. He could utter no protest as Dahlia’s harpy talons slid from his shoulders and she stepped before him with augury upon her tongue. “There shall be a greater reunion soon. She who is a mother and teacher to us both in varied ways hath been summoned by the Hels to be their agent on earth. Azarra hath peered into astral plane and returned. As I grant her my throat, she shall soon join us again in full. For her I grant providence over my grove once your heir is crowned upon the crimson hills.”

“Fenrik! Escort our regal guest to the holding post. With our sire nigh we prepare the rite of augury. We assemble our coven this night. That we may Will the stars be right for us. We shall bleed sacrifice to make it so. We will delight in honorary tribute to the Great God, that his yet unseen Light shall flow into us all as One.” The matriarch whispered one last reprise, letting out through regret that there was less holy blood to offer that hope yet lived. “A pity the empress could not be here to grant us tithe of regal red. Yet your sacrifice should be enough to grant my Lady ov Hel her voice over Elderath again and feed us the lineage of immortals.”

Night of the Augury

That Evening, Among the Ancient Alcove

Fenrik led his sire further along the occult nook until they came upon the onset of an entire microcosm of a secret civilization, bubbled in the cyclopean wood. Black soot covered the ground, giving the mirage a myriad of different colours divvied through a prism of light. A kaleidoscopic shine before the eyes gazing too deeply into the ebony sands. The center of the valley descended into a steep crater, opening to reveal a colossal ziggurat that rose above his head, reaching with great, magnificent steps lined by an emerald-black banister. In different circumstances this sight could have been considered the most magnificent sepulcher ever arisen. With perhaps ‘newer’ additions such as the totems of a more ‘modern’ faith. At the top of the ziggurat propped five identical spires, positioned in formation around an eldritch altar, but to what gods or faith?

Funereal pageant of cowled figures materialized out of a moaning mist. Wordlessly they beckoned them to follow the crater line, drawing towards the breathing black-stone temple. Drakkon’s eye leered at the broach of the sky; a single break of red light from dying solar rays tumbles into the netherworld. Perhaps Delphine’s ghostly eye winked from above, prying for a miracle to shower against a bulwark of obscuring darkness seeking to oppress his steps & sight. Curiously, the temple spire tempered the storm. Invisible ceiling bent the skyline to subdue aura. Waves of snow waged contingent assaults from above but melted away before reaching anything near the odd halo emanating from the ancient, hallowed structure. This monolith towering over the assembly of hidden dale with an indomitable presence. Implying within its unconscious affect whisperings and broken chants from long dead rites fostered eons ago.

Indecipherable fragments and daemonic imprints with no worldly origin were abound. Yet to his perception they possessed in their subversive affect a malefic intelligence. As if the destruction -or ‘ascension’ - of the bygone masters of this shrine consecrated their artifacts as to imbue them with life beyond death. How had time conquered these great minds who shaped themselves a union of astral & earthly foundations? Had they vanished as consequence of sorcery going awry? Or did their arcane rituals allow them to seek to another place across that starry shore? What would they have thought of this cult occupying their tombs, or are they somehow aware?

The gauzelike webbing over his thoughts, unwoven for a beat by jarring shoves sending him towards a black beam jutting forth from a slight pedestal. Chorus of discordant crooning rose from hidden mouths of black ensemble. Fettered to the pole before him, for who knows how long till now, was a young man garbed in the style of an acolyte of the Grove. A crestfallen expression became him, with his chin cast to the ground were surely his hope had been buried.

The captive’s face turned up to regard the arrival of his fellow hostage and for a moment the despondency in his gaze was lifted as he beheld the sight of his Living Lord before him. In that second the light beaming across his face danced in the sway of ephemeral, yet to him eternal, splendor. Perhaps believing that his prayers found answers and his deliverer arrived. The look alternated to perplexed though, witnessing Drakkon in chains. Spectating him brought & bound to the very post, without any trace of defiance or attempt to free himself. The boy’s hero appeared as dejected and wrapped up in defeat as he.

Dahlia came before them bringing a chalice sculpted from the witch-wood bark, a husk of bizarre properties. She poured psychotropic brew into obsidian cup. She bid Drakkon drink. The taste, foul & nauseating. Burning as corrosive vitriol churned stomach and mind deliriously. The young boy beside him was made to consume it as well. Then the matriarch lifts herself for the ziggurat, while her dreary disciples light emerald fires that blaze in a circle around the base of the looming edifice.

Bound adjacent to the youthful prisoner who yet looked haggard for his age, given the stress of this imprisonment. This fellow hostage leaned over, asked with quavering whisper: “Wherefore does the Great Lord himself so callously accept the manacles of this woeful circumstance? Should you not rise above this sorry debacle?”

Because I am not a sodding god, you indoctrinated cretin! I am but a fleshly fool whose doltish obedience to his mother’s deceits brought only catastrophe! You gaze upon the ‘glory’ of the plague bearing glutton who ate away at Divinity’s shroud. All while blighting those beneath his unhallowed crown. You see the accursed cause of this reign of wilting ash. He was tempted to howl in a stint of feverish ire. For the haunting belief of godhood only vexed him with reminders of his ultimate inadequacy. Irked him with keepsakes of Azzara’s terrible talons, by which she scratched so deceitful a notion in the minds of many like this adolescent egg. But he stopped himself. In the rear of his mind the residue of Delphine’s advice and in homage to her he decided not to break the spirit of this poor hostage just yet. Not curse this fresh-faced glimmer of hope stretched over his face as he awaited his ‘god’s’ answer. Yet, though he eroded the antagonism of his shallow suffering, he could not entirely repel these innermost affronts.

“My crown is splattered with stains of innocence. It sets upon a head that seems more mortal than divine. For the mind within allows corruption by a psyche addled with self-indulgent whim. Drawing in desire rather than working for the good of the land as I long ago promised. For more than my own sins I am left here bereft of my companion goddess, Corinna. Let me cast on this hanging pole alone. For I am without she who loved me through the dark hours and kept my spirit alit with bright visions of how to better shape this world. Let kinder mortals have what is left of it.”

Drakkon droned on, in sundering of hope & somber inflection so far from his former (imperial) glory & confidence. “Her radiance held mine in orbit, soothed with the savage expanse of infinity. But alas, she is fallen. And so, the absolute severity of midnight’s gloom devours the stars into blackest gorge. Where no life may emit in such wild a haunt. Thusly, my soul and thoughts alike pull me into the abyssal chasm where I fall endlessly, devoid of hope & reason to fly back to the earthly realm. What goodly paradise is still deserved? Only Corinna could cleanse my eye of wrath & pride-”

“Pardon me, my Lord.” The shackled acolyte interrupted, a craving to speak filling him. “I don’t mean to accuse your High Self as being ignorant or being a perjurer –and forgive me this, as I believe you will welcome my words after I speak to them – but concerning the Goddess, she lives…” His tongue caught on the edge of his mouth, as if half expecting to be reprimanded for speaking out of turn and contradicting his shackled sovereign. But Drakkon nodded and bid him go on. “Mordaunt sent his forces to our modest Grove. Declaring you dead and that they were there to protect our Empress from the rowdy paws of the rebels.”

His bonds chafed as he leaned in, continuing before their hosts notice. “We knew this premise to be a ruse. Corinna had invited Baron’s “rebels” – no offense nor political subversion intended here, Your Good Grace - to stay and protect us while the Drakoni soldiers were away at war in far villages. Mordaunt was unenthused at our stubbornness. Cut down countless champions and our peaceful disciples when Corinna refused to offer herself up to him as he demanded.”

“Mordaunt pushed us to the sanctum walls and when Baron arrived with a small force, he repelled them with ease. Half his hunters chased he who sang for our relief into the western fens. The force of sentinels meant to flank from the forests never came. I thought them craven till I became the wiser to this nasty brood skulking behind them, covetous for Corinae blood.”

Drakkon became a sour sort of pensive while hearing word of Corinna’s struggle. He tried to heed what faith he could of this winding tale of grief, with little relief yet arriving of it. “Since the boar-drake outside threatened to burn the entire Grove unless Corinna delivered oath to him, she valiantly – against our protests – opened the gates to give us our lives. But the bastard kept not his promise. Sent his marauders in to kill and despoil. Tossed those who did not submit to thralldom into the Icarian sea then made off on horseback with Corinna far from there.”

The unfortunate gardener of Silverwood emphasized each word, weighted with truth that wore him down. “When they set the tree line ablaze and hacked their way through the last of Baron’s vigilant guards many of the coven formed a death pact. Escaped by sinking daggers before Mordaunt’s vile fiends could lay their hands on them. In the chaos that ensued I leapt from roof to snow and chased after a shadow into odd passage. Made pursuit to refuge and found the ruins of our flanks, felled by this wolf-cult. Then that thing pounced upon me. That hulking brute brought me, captive, before the rest of this necromancer council.”

Drakkon sighed. The block beneath them groaned splinters in response, muttering his misery.

“But my Lord – my Lord who yet Lives! - you are not to blame for your ‘wrath’. Tis a storm of fury but not without its purposeful winds. Those bolts of lightning crack tablets of wickedness and reveal who each of us truly are. Hear me: Not only should a god exist on a higher scale of being, over moral judgments in the ways of mortals. Surely these destructive signs mean greater change; point to some fault within us, perhaps drafted by the stars. Far worse – “

A hollow, forced wheeze came from Drakkon. Breaking up his fellow prisoner’s speech. “They followed my dream, my ‘divinity’ to their deaths. How many men I led to the march of scorching ‘purpose’. In the cruelty of this world, the winds of circumstance that twist & twirl all our fates, not even the gods are infallible, boy.”

“But we are willing to shed blood for our dreams to blossom, Lord! We must, or we waste for nothing. Divinity steams through innumerable folds, so oft unknowable and yet it lives in you!”

“Even here you hath faith in the one who misled you? Divine, am I? Yet captured by some mockery of man and wolf and bound to a post by some hedge witches, aha! A swine to the stake!” Drakkon laughed cynically, exhaling with his breath the fear breeding in his lungs.

“The wolf, Fenrik, is a demigod in its own wretched right! Whispers here, in this temple of blight, tell that he is of the high priestess’s brood, the cursed seed of her sorceress’ womb. Yet what can the wolf do against the light of the sun? You are here with me, a mere man, and humble me by coming into suffering as I have. I trust the Light will shine from you, guide me out.”

Drakkon found furious and desperate clarity. Restrained his doubts & self-disparagement enough to turn to his companion and try to infuse share the same rejuvenated (if misbegotten and futile) hope. Granted him slight show of thanks. “Thank you, good disciple. It is no task of small speech when demon ears prick about. I bless you for this. Though you may not yet know the gods, they will know you; set a seat for you in their hearth of truest hearts.”

A terrible vestige of woman & wraith stifles their resurgent hope. Dahlia’s announcement begins, her shape: only a mist among the mirrors and cancerous pillars. Her shrill cry travels from atop the monolith to all within the crater-valley, ushering a spectacle of depraved rites.

“Hail and thunder to ye! O children of the Earth! Raise up your hearts to reach for the coming hour of creation! Let tears flow to the ground in mourning of the world. We leave behind the old and infertile, only that it may nourish new path; arise above its decay! The hour is nigh for the waning of the world! Ye who revel, forgotten in the Forest ov Old and beloved by its Lord, our Wolf – His Heir! Io & praise unto the spinning cycles of the stars that guide us! For I declare unto ye: The Great God returns to us in this glimmering portent. The Father ov Fathers gives himself up to us, his chosen people. Celestial Lord of the heavens incarnate comes to to wake all Elderath and tie threads laid out in prophecy.

The liturgy shall Live in form to feel! This mortal vessel of the Living God wills to be given to his people, as symbol of his everlasting Love! We shall live eternal through holy flesh! That Divine blood flows through his chosen inheritors of the mortal realm, that we will be as gods among the earth! Taking his Thunder in our veins to spread forth the Holy Fire! To enrapture all in state of blooming pyre of endless Creation!”

Befouled auroras stream above the pillars. Dahlia’s fell auguries bloom as flowering rivers, lining the firmament with sign of her truest speech.

“Io! The Dark Sisters smile upon our entry into their Pantheon. Malderath, Queen of Change through mortal mold! Praise ye Hels, O queens between the stars, & her sisters! Io Astarte, Lady of War & Lusting Flame. We are their Chosen ov Creation! We are they who shall receive the Gift of Miraculous Blood: Drakonic Communion! Let Materia of Living Light nourish our vessels & souls with Immortal wisdom & Sight to know ourselves united with empyrean every hour. Bask in boundless Essence imparted in broad daylight before the veil of mirrors. Ours is the inheritance of Flame of prosperity which gives light of life to our clay. That we remake world in proper portrait of astral tapestry!

Soon… this will be ours, but we must yet be patient even before our gracious gift. We consort the auguries to test if the hour is right, as to not offend the fates… Let this point of pinnacle lead us to zenith as conduit of our ascension! Bring forth the vessels to the Great Eye! Revel in the flesh and the mysteries it unravels to our minds and commence with Omen!”

Dahlia’s coven received her rally with roaring wails. Worshipping figures howl hope of fleshly, red ascension. Her faithful link arms and lead the pair of prisoners to the base of the ziggurat. For these verminous revelers, were she to bid them drink hemlock, her inane cultists would gleefully gulp it. With every step forced forward, Drakkon felt the influence of wicked brew increase. His sight, wavering with surreal shades and stumbling hues of that prism of morphing light.

The prisoner steps into living umbrage, coveting all, until infinity collapses on itself, and he arrives at the peak, by the obsidian spires. Dahlia, in nefarious design, reveals herself upon her perch. Stepping before the eye of prism arrayed in goddess costume: a duality of Astraea & Selene; with the wax-torch of the former’s Justice as horn between the orbed circlet of the latter, reflecting the glimmer of carmine sunlight. Mystic proportion becomes her dress & scepter.

Each pillar jutted forth, plentifully bestrewn with carvings and icons, shot unblinking stone stares. Projecting the unnerving sensation of being conscious and attentive to every move before them. Their arachnid sight fuses with the vision of the prisms’ Eye. Peering with unforgiving scrutiny into the naked contents of Drakkon’s spirit; no thoughts, memories or sensations could be hidden before the perpetual vigilance of this watchful guardian of un-life.

Dahlia slams her ritual stave into the nexus of arcane symbol five times, turns about three, before raising it to the ceiling of the bleeding, night-less and dayless sky. Her eyes roll ferociously within her skull, searching for the messages appointed to her invisible missives. Performs every quivering throe with such engrossing zeal and religious conviction that illustrates her honest absorption in trance. Raptured up in bindings of her entrancing spell. Though to what other realm of thought her mind had been willingly delivered, he knew not.

Dahlia dances towards the bound acolyte. Closes her ceaselessly spinning eyes as she halts inches away. Her mouth drapes open, chattering obscure litany from long dead scrolls or else simmering soup of her soul’s channel. Her ritual dagger glides over to the boy’s stomach, where it rests tentatively before slithering into the where the augury components are buried. Lesions mark then carve him. Innards spill unto the ceremonial runes, feeding prophecy of bloody lines. The mad matron of malefic circle drapes organs as omens across the circle. She wrenches his heart with dagger to fix it atop her staff. With its bloodied adornment on, she stabs the stave again. Five times before losing herself to the scattered scrying pool of the boyish grove tender.

Drakkon, suspended in dread, as Dahlia knelt before the vulgar offering of flesh. Studying what signs it bared, a sullen scowl crept over her. Betraying that the signs she read were not those she hoped for. She gestured to near disciples to cleanse the pulpy portends of stagnation. Cast them into fire and wash the lines with consecrated wine. Then she faced her captive, while addressing her manifold host below: “Behold, children ov Elderath et ov Drakkon! We must seek patience and await the alignment of welkin! See how Saathar still shines its saturnine sign of caution? Yet those winged rings warn us not only dying sun but to wait for a shine of another carmine sheen! Gauntlet of our grim sacrifice shall be had soon; that sanguine chalice of starblood, our coming feast! The Divine shall be within our essence when the red moon again claims the evening sky! A final rite for the world’s waning!”

Within the foreboding black spires and strange acoustics of this lost temple of the earth’s bygone masters Dahlia’s voice seemed to project and rebound from every angle of the air. “Alas, the augury speaks ‘prithee, patience’. Do not despair my eager servants, who are soon to be fellow Godkin – denizens & inheritors of Godhead! For, hear me, the omens do not forbid us from tasting a sample of the coming ecstasy. Nay, we may but tease our sanguine appetites with a small amount of godsblood! So, arise & reveal your naked selves before our godly guest as we revel in Vitae & Virtue of Vice. Let his drops flood our tongues and our gullets enough only as to savor a sip of what full future this chalice holds!”

Dahlia slides the dagger across her prized prisoner’s forearm. Streams trickling crimson to her chalice. When enough gathered there, she presses the concoction to her lips. Imbibes much with hellish eagerness. She shouts salacious delight; the taste delivering her to orgiastic voracity. The sorceress swathes around her victim, guides him from the top to ravenous congregation. These followers frothing to share in a sample of this ‘divine’ treat. Drakkon, enervated from loss of lifeblood leaking, flows invigorated by adrenaline & rush borne of foul potion.

Among the throng of witches, warlocks & hallucinations many were clad bare beneath the sky. Wearing nothing but mad grins, all stripped of their cloth. Presented pure before the lunacy of imminent moon in sway of red witchery. Green fires abound cast uncanny illumination about their bodies as these revelers quailed with lascivious fever and adjoin their bodies & tongues. Fusing flesh together in celebratory trance of profane pleasures erupting from carnal urges freed.

All beyond these black & pale peaks of unknown origin faded. The spell spun sun and stars from their seats, leaving only this plane of pleasure & pain entwined as one.

Thwacking! of whipcord cracks against backs. Wanton groans and cries of sinister arousal, all weepy & wailing, arise among the array of mingling expressions. From tormented yowls to outlandish bawling and animal cries, unbound unity of shouts & joyous screams covets the coven’s looming pinnacle. Witches moan in heated delight & feral shrieks, accompanied by the howling of a sect wolves. Between them, gasps emit of the prisoner’s shuddering breath.

His senses blend, merging with fantastic charms. Called to dance with the nymphs, spirits and strange orbs of painted light taking flight in odd capers. These wispy threads careen about his head. Auras flare then disperse capriciously in the middle of fae dance. Sanity departs. Insane visions intrude in their absence. He spies Fenrik in form of wolf slicing open the back of a fresh disciple with claws shaped of sharpened black shards. Tearing chunks of flesh, ripping with filed teeth. Trees, pillars, and planets align in their abrupt collapse. Passing through his corporeal form and meshing with this sadistic bacchanalia. Woe to the wonder of what this ritual climax should be had the stars been more wickedly aligned. How would this abominable half-breed, raised by an even more insane mother than he, have served her vampiric plans?

Libertine revelers sport animal heads and skins sewn to their bodies. Dressed in excruciating fashion, raw stitching still showing. Other creatures spawn of spinning shadow. Drakkon, alone amid unholy magicks & performative orgy. This nightmarish party swept his soul into their roiling cauldron, spit its then into sharing mouths. Beneath the pyramid, ceremonial dancers weave a nymphaeum of the air, pirouetting from thin silk ropes suspended from phantom ceiling. The form & matter of these baseborn scapegraces & maidens of the heath avaunt for those of Daemons & angels of enchantment; nymphs & satyrs with wraith wings of shimmering thread, flapping veils about their petite breasts & cut to naked thighs. Setting snares with sensual splits as fingers dig in & claw-nails reach for fleshly aphrodisia.

Should the swill they made him swallow have him see double the count, this cult had yet still unprecedented numbers. A vulture sect extant off the bones of Chimeria. What had these people been before they heard this maddened call, this lycanthropic transformation? Breeds and professions before initiation, diverse, but unified by uniform fever; nude rapture stripping persona & possessions to capture more of themselves. Carnal curtain of carmine eruption, their cloak. All one under Dahlia’s allure. Under the eldritch glare evoked through her vile eye.

Libidinous intonations rouse euphoria & excruciating droning, knitting swirling modulation; filaments of disconcerting emotions and ringing the lashings of harpy claws & lupine screeches. Tying him to it as Dahlia’s reverends tether themselves to wretch’s joys. Somber triad hovers high, haunts with dissonant chord struck from distant source. With enigmatic spectacle three witches wove themselves through the mist to lift the wrappings of secret song. With enchanting caress, they silence what hope remained for the sublime with strident shrieks of wild ecstasy and dissolute felicity.

A frothing gnawing of toothless ire seizes Drakkon. Bleeds a brief drop of sobriety, breaking through the mind-bending mélange for a slip. He beholds Dahlia, clear enough to purvey her vain audacity. She props her tendrils to the firmament as gloom of nightfall permeates the lunar circlet adorning her head. The dismal display rebounds the foreboding aura of the wicked temple. Drowns out the waves of light. The nebulous brew fogs his thinking, but ailing sight made out Dahlia dipping dagger into willing throat of a caroused. The sharp athame slithers across her disciple’s tender lines. Draws red rivers to her lips. She drains sanguine succulence from the willing woman, lashing the wound with draconic tongue. While the crowning crescent atop her pilfered headpiece shimmers cascading crimson waters.

Drakkon’s muscles convulse. His body made a puppet to be twirled about in pace with macabre dancers, who continue their wraithlike miming throughout the abyssal shrine. Feverish hallucination holds him in paralysis. Azarra resurrects as a specter, manifest from the nether. With façade of transient gloating, even from death she reaches out to taunt him. Or else this vision of her floating head arrived as distant messenger of her faraway flesh. Baring derisive scowl above a hollowed ribcage.

From that sunken crater where the heart should be a tangled morass housed several spidery limbs. Protruding spindly feelers across the prehistoric arena. These grotesque arachnid appendages lace a network of invisible tethers, encasing Dahlia & all these disciples in her vaporous web. One of these gangling strands detains Drakkon, clamps tightly around his legs. Her throat compels with spectral order. Banshee cackles gurgle from gash in her throat, from which sprout serpentine necks. All screaming & laughing, caroling bane.

Her son could face her ghostly messenger no more. Turning from her levitating leer to be spun by the trio of witches. Circling him in perverse predation, they push their sacrificial lamb onward to the base of the temple, up from where the obsidian stairs climbed to a chamber. His harpy hosts edge him through the yawning fissure at that widened mouth of the menacing structure. A labyrinthine hole to swallow the sum of standing reality. The occultists follow into the great tomb, incessantly rollicking about animalistically. All the way through to the innards of unfathomed darkness their screeching parade becomes deafening reverb.

Drakkon mystified, locked to opposing magnetism of supernal song & infernal rattle. Even as his ears forgot themselves, in that obfuscating curtain inside the Chimerian crypt, a simple trace of Corinna’s thought contested the hex of the witches’ brew and booming hymn. Lured him to ephemeral curls of wish. Carried into crags, closer to walking unconsciousness where there came no fear, shame nor discipline to know… Nothing left but that one shard of self, enduring for her amongst evil malaise. That last sheard of Dream to grab on to before shadows sealed him in the perilous pits of unknowing underworld.