Where No Gods Go (Solo)

[Cydnar]

Where No Gods Go

Attachment 1954

There are some beings in this world that live to die,
They exist, purely to create chaos and carnage.

There are some gods in this world that are fleeting, transitory,
Figments of a fleeting dream and a passing imagination.

There are some daemons in the dark that cower from the light.
Then there are those who walk brazenly under the sun.

There are those people in the shadows who fight these fae creatures,
Dedicating their lives to the salvation of the unforgiving.

There are some places, like the lands of my people,
Where not even the deities go, for they are not safe or worthy of our mercy.

[Cydnar]

Morgen lifted his mace from the dirt with a snarl and took to his stoic stance once more, oblivious to the wrath that bore down in him like a blistering wave of heat and violence. His skin rippled with muscle and arcane power, but his eyes gave away a weakness, a triumph on the part of his attacker. He brought his free hand up to his waist and flexed it in the tight grip of his gauntlet, admiring for a moment the fiery runes and lines which covered it. The daemonic tongue told the weapon's history like a play, dramatic pictographs of each and every soul it had claimed over the millennia. At it's tip, two long claws of mithril extended slowly, and he levelled it at the figure before him with a threatening and simple extension of his arm.

"Try that...again."

Cydnar did not need permission, nor did he wait to be goaded further. Across the rubble and the arid wasteland of the daemonic realm of Haida, which was more flame than fatherland, he sped with coiled muscle and bellowing regalia of his own. No more would he bander to the needs and whims of others for only his own morals and the snake blood in his throat would command him, urge him on, drive him to the ultimate victory over the dark foes of the world. As clichéd as he had become in his own mind, there was no thrill greater than dedication.

"Deceive me further, and see the wrong way to die!" The daemonic consort roared as the Hummel brought both his swords down overhead with a precision and grace that overwhelmed the simple, brutal efficiency of his own strength. The mace sparked as it rose to deflect the attack and swung down and out of the elf's reach. "You are nothing but a gnat, crawling over the carcass of Althanas!" He swung the heavy, spiked weapon up into Cydnar's right side and in the distance, rolling through the hillsides and the conflagration, the eyes of a thousand gibbering souls sharpened.

They forgot their allegiance and who to root for. The hellish chorus faded to the wind as the duel raged and the world turned through the seasons oblivious to the affairs of men and beasts.

[Cydnar]

The crunch of mithril colliding with haematite rang across the plains, and for a moment, the winds subsided and left nothing in their wake but silence. Cydnar gritted his teeth and allowed his fangs to protrude from his lips to ease the pain of the blow. He looked down over the runic hauberk and traced the outline of the mace against his body; one of it's spikes had cracked the material, and would no doubt bruise, but it was intact and devoid of the death sentence that would be blood in Haida's shark infested waters.

"I may chose to feed on this festering corpse, daemon, but I do so with mandate, with purpose, with honour." He punched the rod of the mace and stepped back. With lightning speed, Morden raked the air where his opponent had been and made a sound that could not be described, a hollow void of fear and terror bound in words.

Long ago, Cydnar had learnt enough of the Haida tongue to know that magic was afoot, that sorcery energies were being called from the voids between voids. He sensed it before it even reached the reality of the world, it filled his lungs with acrid sickness and made his senses roil and bob in a sea of indifference. "Without greed and gluttony," he amended, spinning both his blades around in wild-arcs to either side of his lithe form.

He knew better than to charge in wildly, to attempt to stop a spell as it was formed would only lead to a malign feedback that could kill them both. As the words formed and the runes covering the dense scales and armour of the daemon's skin strengthened and glowed less with flame, more with magma, he bided his time to strike - like a serpent, waiting, fangs bared, spine tensed.

"You seek," Morgen spluttered as the energy he summoned began to course over his body and tear at his black heart. "To end magic, where it is abused - trivialised?" The lights fluctuated over his limbs and started to gather over his chest in a fiery orb. "How do you hope to achieve this, when Althanas itself was forged of sin and greed? A man who seeks to destroy the world to save it is no more tragic than I!"

He arced his back and stomped his feet, and the energy rushed outwards in a shock-wave. The hollow thud of air breaking followed it and it formed a blue blur of electrical energy that sped across the wastelands and kicked up rock and soul alike. Cydnar crossed his blades with lightning speed and turned them on an angle so that they rested like scissors before the blast, and closed his eyes.

[Cydnar]

The small quartz which appeared at the cross of the blades shimmered in the wake of it's collision, before shattering into a thin trail of dust. Cydnar watched it fall with a sigh of relief before standing slowly upright with his blades hung loosely on either side. The two giants stared at one another for a while in silence, before they gave one another a mutual scowl and bowed politely.

"No more tragic, perhaps, but more morally ensconced in existence," Cydnar offered, the philosophical debate waging a war on an unseen, mental front to compliment the titanic duel. He was certain that Morgen would not relent until he was dead, and that his words had no effect other than to fan the flames of controversy. He could not help spew his own dogma, sick as he was by the sound if it.

At the back of his mind he tried to understood the process of cross-cancellation, but he could not measure it's efficiency or reasoning. Whatever had cancelled the wave, pushed it aside and anywhere but the path of breaking his bones and killing him in a violent eruption where he stood had saved his life.

"You have grown strong enough in potency and servitude to the snake daemon to cast aside my spells, so much so you have cast aside his pious words as well!" The daemon let his mace drop to the ground, and it kicked up dust with a lazy thud. "Tell me, will you rip out my throat with that puppet jaw, or give me an honourable death befitting of a king?"

"You are no sovereign of mine, so you shall die a pauper's death!" Cydnar scooped up his blades, and with a heavy hand and heart, he ran forwards in a whirling dervish dance. Each step began with grace and ended with a leaping pirouette, weaving a pattern of death through the air as he advanced into the lazy guard of his opponent. Roaring defiantly once more, Morgen lifted his mace and extended the mithril claws embedded in his gauntlet to full length.

He stepped into the maelstrom of crystal ore and the sound of weapons clashing rang out across Haida once more.

[Cydnar]

A downward strike bounced clean from the mace's shaft and spiralled backwards. With quick intuition, Cydnar stepped into a retreat and pushed forwards with both blades directed beneath Morgen's guard into his pelvis. The satisfying crush of resistance from his skin sent a tingle down the elf's spine, and a sickening sense of victory on the horizon as he leapt back and crossed his blades before him in a defensive stance.

Morgen wavered on his wide stance as if nauseous, before probing the small piercing wounds, which resembled the bite of a boa. The blood, thick and dark red rolled down his tabbard and dropped in gobbets of rage to the ground. The whirling flames that surrounded them and set the horizon ablaze grew stronger and brighter and hotter for a few fleeting instances as the daemon concentrated his magical power into the injury, and then it was gone - nothing more than a crimson smear on his rugged form.

He lowered his gaze onto the Hummel and smiled with a malefic that spoke of eternal damnation. "Strong, agile, but weak," he laughed, a deep thud of horror rolled down Cydnar's spine. He realised from the aura and the smell of jasmine and lavender that the Daemon-King Morgen was king of monster and necromancy alike - he was a Succour, so powerful that he could not die, and would not wither into a corpse by the grace of his hellish immortality.

"If I cannot kill you, I will drain that power from you drop by drop!" Barely touching the ground, Cydnar scuttled forwards and levelled his blades out to his sides like metallic wings. As he approached, he drew them inwards in a dual swing and roared. The right clashed with the gauntlet's dense armour and the left found itself knocked askew by a wild swing of his mace. Both spiralled in on themselves and lunged forwards in the same dual strike that had struck home once.

"Try that, again," Morgen smiled at the irony of repeating himself, his hand striking both sword tips and catching them from the air with inhuman speed.

Cydnar smiled, pulled the blades back to strike pain into the daemon's fingertips and drove Freya into the ground as he retreated.

"Let us see magic fight sorcery with sainthood!" His eyes glowed as he rested a palm onto his stomach and breathed deep the cancerous air of Haida. Beneath the surface of the ground, quartz began to form in small shards all around their feet. A deep hum filled the air beyond human comprehension as the gift of a god brought itself to bare.

[Cydnar]

"Where did we go so wrong, to resort to killing one another so soon into life?" The daemon smiled, sensing the crystal appear from nothingness but unable to see it. He was a trickster, a vile daemon of deception and he expected, without fail, for deception to lend itself to the elf's victory. The horizon burst into life once more as the ever shifting energies of the otherworldly realm constantly shifted; where once there had been a mountain range, now there was nothing but mist and constant remunerations burnt into the clouds. Where once there had been a tree line, gnarled spiky demagogues of nature's prominence in the most unlikely of places, now there was a wasteland of tired ash and arid rock.

Morgen smiled and brought his own energy to fruition once more. He focussed his power into his gauntlet and without much thought, the metal began to glow white hot and steamed the vapour from the air with its intensity. No blade, except those magically forged or bound would withstand it's advance, no armour it's crushing blow, no mortal it's harrowing thirst.

"Come, elf, reveal all to me before I kill you!" Tendrils of dark power dripped from his tongue.

"What is to reveal, except that I shall never cease?" With a snap of muscle and bone Cydnar reached out and mockingly crushed the daemon's heart, before pulling his hand back as if taking an apple from a tree. Upon his command, the shattered quartz fragments burst upwards from the rock like burrowing assassins and surrounded Morgen's pious figure. They spiralled with speed around their target, driven by the keen attentions of their master's mind.

"You have been found wanting, and in breech of the Ancient Lore - only one such sentence remains, death!" He blinked, and the crystalline rain stopped alert before driving itself inwards towards the daemon's skull.

[Cydnar]

Cydnar opened his eyes with a cold and frightening glimmer in them, his breath turned to mist and his limbs shook as he returned to life. For a few moments, he felt nothing, and heard only his panting in the shadows of the twilight. His senses began to return to him slowly and he began to make out the shapes and contours of the darkened chamber and the faint glow of purple light that hung overhead throughout the capital city.

Since his visitation to the mountains in the north, and his return to Dheathain to retrieve the last of his possessions, time had gone slowly. The days had slowly fused together and washed away all sense of perspective and achievement. Times changed the weakest of men, and for Cydnar to have been altered so easily by the changes in season and the changes of heart had made him question himself even more.

His chamber was a spartan affair in the noble quarter of the Salthias Citadel, which stood on a levitating platform at the centre of the crystalline geode, deep under the ground hidden from the world. It watched the city like a hawk, and protected it in equal measure but it could never match the spire he had seen not a week ago. It had been glorious, deafening, harrowing.

It was the very same structure that had made up his mind. He had questioned his allegiance to the temple and his people, his fate itself for so long the decision came quickly and with surprise. All it had taken was that ward shard - the last of the purple stones that Yrene placed upon Althanas to ward away the ill magic of old. Whilst the Ancient Lore was sundered, and dead gods walked the earth and the voids between, it was the ironic guardian of Donnalaich and in turn, of the Hummel.

"Another dream..." said his servant, who slid into the bed chamber as if he were levitating.

"Yes..." Cydnar replied, rolling onto his side in a bellowing and shimmering tumble of silk. The purple accented his pallid skin and glowed in the limelight. "They are becoming ever the more frequent."

"Allow me to consider something, Lord Yrene." Morgen was an old relic of the temple, a servant to the royal house for almost as many years as Cydnar had lived, he was impossible to remove, but invaluable in that iteration.

"I suspect you will not take no for an answer, good sir," he sat upright and slid his feet over the end of the bed.

"No," the servant chuckled, and set the silver tray onto the bed side counter to tend to the steaming vessel of hot water. With delicate hand movements, he strained tea leaves from a pewter bowl into the cup and poured the water over it from height. "Your dreams are messages, as you received in your home and more certainly so, they are messages to be read, and returned to sender."

"But who sent them?"

"That, I do not know. We all receive dreams in our lives, it is part of the Awakening, what man calls the birth of adulthood. Mine were from the temple, deep dreamers and priests precognating my ascension to this house - yours, perhaps, are indeed from your brother - perhaps, they are a trick, a vision skein to deceive."

Cydnar fell silent and stared intently at his toes.

"Drink," Morgen held out the cup with both hands and bowed, as was customary. Cydnar took it gently with a bow.

His skin, Cydnar noted, was as grey and rugged as the walls. He had long jested that his servant was a part of the building, but it had become a more literal comparison with age. He breathed deeply and settled his nerves as the last images of the Daemon-King's skull imploding fled his mind. The crimson white wash to his slumber was the fourth of it's kind in as many nights, and the duel had extended each night until it reached it's gory conclusion.

"Is death for a daemon finite, or infinite?"

The question hung illegally in the air, like a criminal waiting to be charged. Morgen paused mid gasp and smiled politely, washing away his personal response beneath the order of his position. He set the lid onto the pot of steaming water and lifted the tray from the table.

"Who knows such things. Now," he turned to leave, "the Council wishes to hear your report of the ward stone operation, and you will no doubt receive a new assignment - do not," he glared, "be late..." With that, he removed himself from Cydnar's chamber without a further word.

[Cydnar]

Alone again Cydnar drank his tea in contemplation and cursive thought. Many questions spiralled around his head, and many would go unanswered. Since his return, and since his change of heart, the world had seemed more convoluted and less translucent, as if his destiny were clouded from view on merit of being too easy, too simple to understand. He had to seek a resolution to his torment, to the endless whispers in the night.

It was ironic, he mused, that after all his trials and tribulations against masters of death and family heartbreak, his own mind refused to accept anyone esle or anything to be responsible - except himself. He had watched his friends and loved ones fall in sacrifice in the night air of Raeira. He had seen Manira cast a pillar of ice to the sky to save him, and the last remnants of the Salthias, and the Dawnbringers draw strings of fate together to save Althanas in turn.

What was he left with, if not more mandates and tasks - more petty deeds to commit himself to without reward? He gulped the last of the peaty liquid and spluttered on the dregs of leaves which his clumsy servant had failed to strain. With a delicate movement, he cleaned his cheek with the hem of his silk night clothes and shook his head.

"Morgen will truly be the death of me..." He closed his eyes and recalled the last moments of the dream, the fleeting gambit from the daemon-king, the metaphorical assailant and flinched.

[Cydnar]

The quartz impacted against the dense metal of the Haidan crown and deflected harmlessly from it in a tumbling, crystalline rain. Morgen rocked his head and cackled with a laughter containing daemon essence and hate, one which sent shivers down Cydnar's spine and a look of disbelief dancing across his face.

If he could not harm him with blades, end him with the strike and pious swing of his dual short swords, nor with the full might of his pagan magic, what hope was there? He lowered his body slightly and tucked his knees so that he was more crouching than standing, and gripped Freya and Altheas tightly in his hands, both tips pointing at Morgen's neck, both eyes settled squarely on the daemon's forehead.

"Pitiful!" He roared. "Hiding behind a masquerade of potency!"

Morgen did not answer, instead he charged, flaming claw raised to the sun and mace out to his side like a fell-staff waiting to swing into victory with a sickening crunch of bone and a twisting of muscle and sinew.

"With my death, you awaken the wrath of the gods themselves!" He crossed his weapons before him and rose them up into the descending path of the gauntlet with a feeble display of stubbornness and steadfast grit - at the back of his mind, as the fiery claws sheared his swords in two and struck his once pretty face, he wished and hoped that with his last words a glimmer of doubt and a chink in the king's armour would form for whomsoever made the next attempt on his life.

Then there was pain.

Blackness.

Death.

[Cydnar]

Cydnar's eyes spawned two tears as they opened. They rolled down his cheeks like pearls in the twilight of the dawn. He set his cup onto the table, satisfied and contented by the herbal properties of Donnalaich tea, but still left with a gaping hole in his chest. The same death had played out for the last two nights, and the dream sequence had come full circle since it's broken, scattered inception on his return journey from the surface. He had remained suspended in the liquid rock for an hour, trapped by the vision and held in fear by it's implications and sudden, visceral imagery.

The name was, he hoped, a coincidence. Fate would not be so cruel as to turn friends and neighbours against one another in paranoaia - he settled sternly on a metaphor, and stood slowly. He shook and felt dizzy as blood rushed to his heat, and slowly came too properly from the depths of the sunless morning. Up far above the Hummel city the sun would be shining and the birds of Autumn would be singing, but they were nothing more than pictaresque mementos of his life on the surface and under the sun.

There was nothing left for the Salthias. the last of the Paladins and servents of Yrene in his lifetime - the only one worthy of the name. Whilst the temple and people recovered from the ravages of the war with Xem'zund he would be the feral dog serving his master faithfully and unquestionably. He had to discover the cause of his dreams, and with the satisfaction and peace of mind in knowing Donnalaich was safe, and his people hidden, he had to travel to the last place on Althanas he would otherwise turn...

Haida.

He had to find answers in the flames - in a land where no gods go.