The Serpent's Son (Closed)

[Cydnar]

The Serpent's Son

Attachment 1967

Set following Where No Gods Go

The long road gave way to the hollow plain and Cydnar arrived in the daemonic realm of Haida... With a gritty determination he had driven himself mind, body and soul across the world, angry and bitter at every turn that the rupturing magical wound on the surface of Althanas had been allowed to exist for so long. The powerful aura and rubric commanded by the daemons cut the potency of his geomagnetism and left him on foot, unable to travel up from the bowels of the earth as the taint ran so deep it touched the heart of the world.

What providence did man possess to complain of his troubles, yet do nothing to cure it - do nothing to dredge the poison from his wounds? He looked out across the swirling sand storms and the shadows in the distance that could be illusions or creatures, and coloured himself certain to carve out the heart of Morgen with his own bare hands.

His dreams had been haunted from these plains, twisted nightmares had been hammered into his mind from afar. Somebody demanded an audience, and somebody demanded payment. Slowly, the heat of the hellish plains tore at Cydnar's cloak and he found himself striding across the sands askew with colour beneath the seven suns. A chaotic tune flickered out from the winds, like the rabid whispers of implings, taunting and dreading the elf's arrival at the same time.

With every step he shed his clothing and worries like the husk of a great python, slithering silently towards its prey. With every heartbeat, a flash of Manira's face gave him the strength to continue. With every lie uncovered, the Salthias pledged himself more devoutly to the World Weaver Cult - to the Great Snake of the Deep.

[Cydnar]

Fettered and bound by ritual and the solitude of his people, Cydnar's emotions where difficult, alien concepts to him. He had dealt with love, and the sudden and inexplicable loss in the only way he knew how - by driving his life deeper into the same ritual and nigh slavery he longed to be free of. His role as Salthias was a blessing, and with every day that went by, a curse.

He found a heartfelt sense of purpose in each objective, but each step towards success in the eyes of his masters and their mutual Thayne, only served to take him a step away from the humanity he had discovered living amongst the people of Donnalaich. That had become as futile an attempt as he had ever seen, with no hope of ever being accepted, there was little point in maintaining his workshop nor his artisan commissions to ungrateful, selfish customers.

With keen sight, Cydnar scoured the horizon for a sign. He did not care what the sign meant, as long as it foretold of activity, life, creation. The desolation of the wound in the earth was clear for all to see, but the magical waves of energy that rolled over the plains confused him. They were not, as one might put it, evil. The nature of the ether was not malign, nor had it been misused. In the eyes of Yrene, there was nothing here to consume, nothing her to slay.

If he were a daemon, a powerful Oni-King, he could not think of a better place to hide in the world. The Thayne themselves could not walk the world here, and they could not be detected with divination, geomagnetism or the senses of the magic-attuned people of the world - they were invisible, then, to everything but the truth of the naked eye.

After what seemed like days, which were in fact no more than hours, a dark pattern formed on the curve of the auspice. Cydnar could not be sure that the horizon he saw was the horizon at all, but without a guide, he had to rely on his own vision. He approached it with determined steps, until the sand storm grew so strong he was buckled forwards, hands over his eyes and knees locked to drive him home the last few metres.

He felt comforted as his boot landed on the first step, and the bulk of the tower shielded him from the storm. He ran hurriedly up the thirty seven blackened ascensions and slipped into the great hall beyond the open gates in silence, panting and gasping for clean, unhindered air.

Overhead, the dark spire of obsidian sang a cantor so ancient it fell through the radix of Haida, into the depths of shadow beneath the plains, and deeper still into the bowels of creation.

[Cydnar]

"This must be what madness looks like," he muttered to himself as he took in the surroundings of the entrance hall. It was a grandiose affair, a great dome within a tower that rose up into bleak shadow in a spiral of two concentric stairs beyond the limitations of reality. There was the ever present dull roar of the outside winds whipping against the spire rattling around like a devilish echo, and his heart stopped beating in awe.

His footsteps rang out as he approached the centre of the vast space, and he looked down at the floor. The entirety of the dome's base was a vast mural, etched in to time by magical hands and burnt into existence forever. Even from such a poor vantage point, he could make out great wings and bolts of light from a vast sun, scouring and burning angels as daemons rose from the dark to claw them into hell. It was a depiction of the End of Days, when light fell to dark, when the hunger of man could no longer be sedated by eager paladins of the triumphant lore.

"Fitting," he supposed, "for one to be reminded of one's goals." He looked up at the darkness once more and made out where the next floor separated the chamber from the upper reaches and unknown layers of the tower. Somewhere far above, a Daemon-King resided in his archaic throne, waiting, watching, listening...

With two swift movements, he unsheathed his blades and held them loosely crossed in front of his lithe form. With slow, cautious steps that lingered in momentary confidence, he walked to the foot of one of the spiral stairwells and placed his foot on one tentatively. He swallowed away the fear and with his eyes ever set on the thin point of light far above, he pushed on.

[Cydnar]

The first chamber of the tower appeared to Cydnar to be a simple library, an open planned floor with countless book shelves of various sizes with no clear structure, filing system or organisation. The heavy piles of books seemed to shift in time and space as he walked silently by, a page or cover falling into nothing only to be replaced with another a moment later. Whatever secrets lay here would have to be fought hard to find, fought harder still to secure in one realm. Haida's corrupting touch might have been deflected by the obsidian wall and magic, but it creped through the cracks and tore away like water against steel - determined and haughty.

The second and third were similar, but grew more corrupt and darker and deadlier. As he walked by, books on chains the length of an arm snapped out and sputtered dust and malice at would be food, unable to break free but determined to flail wildly for centuries in order to achieve a cessation of their thirst. Cydnar gritted his teeth and longed to bring fire and brimstone to the room, to remove the blasphemous artefacts from Althanas altogether. At the back of his mind he doubted mere mortal flame would suffice, but it comforted him as he rose through the mystery.

The third chamber, which began to shrink in size as the tower tapered into a spire, was a simple circular room with little in it except two small rises where the spiralled double helix stairs ended, and a small dais at the centre in the airy emptiness. Cydnar stopped cautiously a few feet from the edge of the stairs and sniffed, licking the air through habit as he cast his senses out to the unseen. There was magic here, undoubtedly, but something else lingered in the twilight. Something waited, to test no doubt, to bar the way to the inner sanctum of the Daemon-King from would be usurpers and rival abortionists.

"May Yrene guide me..." he muttered in prayer, stepping forth towards the dais amidst a sudden and audible cacophony, a melodramatic chorus of sound and heavy gears which seemed to erupt from every inch of obsidian and every etched rune on the floor.

[Cydnar]

"I tire of these games..." A voice whispered into Cydnar's mind. He stopped suddenly, looking left and right with shock. He had barely reached the halfway mark.

"I tire of these petty ramblings, these archaic tests."

"Who goes there?" The Hummel roared, his swords rose as hackles to defend against the unwinnable.

A light flickered into existence over the dais, and from it burst a pattern of fire and black wisps of smoke. It swirled outwards, expanding as it roared and grew and grew into a great terror in the dark. It stopped growing, a many limbed fiend from unknown realms levitating in a tightly clenched ball before a petty, mortal insect.

Slowly, it extended a talon to the dais and as the chitin touched the stone, the song changed, and Cydnar realised many things he rather cared not to realise.

"You..."

"Are everything I appear?" The daemon cut Cydnar off, the mental sounds rattling around in his skull like a message in a bottle. "Yes. I am so much more though, so much less, so much emptiness and wholeness in a simple form."

Silence cut the song off, and with a rush of energy, the beast extended his wings and arms and pushed out the fire and light that surrounded him in a tight ball of colour. The lines and bolts of energy ran along the floor and smashed into the walls of the tower, cracking away the obsidian in parts to reveal a lattice work of distant orange and gold, and whipping up a breeze in the inner sanctum of the Daemon-King.

"I AM THE HOUND!"

Cydnar smiled.

"And I the hunter..."

The daemon darted forwards on levitating guile, four black wings and four scythed arms scrabbling for its prey, four long legs and a serpentine blemish kicking as if swimming through air towards the carefully baited treat.

As the beast approached, Cydnar stepped into a run, uncrossed both blades and span both to his left and up into the beast with a backwards slice.

The wind roared.

Destiny smiled.

The song returned, ever the more violent with every blow struck.

[Cydnar]

The blades cut nothing but air and the daemon flew overhead without so much as a claw swung or tail lash. Out of harm's way, it turned in a barrel roll and swept down into Cydnar's rear guard with a cackle. Both its longer claws cut down into the elf's shoulders and connected with the heady metal ore that formed the archaic hauberk on his back.

"Nothingness begets emptiness, and you shall be empty of life...so pitiful, so dreary, and so dead..."

Cydnar's knees buckled, and he fell to the ground as if struck by a comet from heaven. The wind in his lungs seeped out in a rasp and his swords clattered to the ground. The daemon kicked upwards and rose into the heights of the chamber on a plume of black fire. "RISE!"

With a roll, a double extension of the arms and a sharp intake of breath Cydnar did so, and stood back up in defiance of his attacker, swords crossed before him once more in a neutral stance. He glared up with deep purple light in his eyes and fangs born menacingly. Fear had suspended itself before him for too long, and had withered and died and become something more useful for survival...hope.

"Why did he send you?"

"Send me? I was not sent, fool, I came willingly."

The shackles of promise bound the daemon that much Cydnar could tell. The serpentine appearance of the creature and the powerful energies that had been cast from him merely in his arrival marked him as a Haida born entity, a powerful, immortal creature that could only be banished, never killed. In his limited schooling in the depths of the Hummel cities, he had been taught to riddle and rhyme with such creatures, to raise hackles and tempers into foolish mistakes over fighting immeasurable talent with insurmountable stupidity.

"If I must drain the ichor from you drop by drop to reach the Daemon-King, then I shall do so - let us begin!"

Cydnar clashed his blades together and pushed outwards with his inner energy. All around his head, small shards of quartz appeared from nothing. Each one glowed as the tendrils of Haida's storm light crept in and exploded against them. When there were six, no bigger collectively than one single projectile he might have fired in the Citadel or Proving Grounds of Donnalaich, he ended the spell and span them gently around his body in a weaving erratic pattern.

"Let Daemon beset the Daemon's Son!"

The creature descended, and claw and talon clashed with Freya and Altheas with a world rending scream,

[Cydnar]

Right claw dropped into right blade, and both retreated into left swings and a flourish of blows that were deflected with ease on both sides. The Salthias style lent itself to the confrontation, as each of the daemon's arms moved independently and as strongly wielded as a different man's blade. He stood, feet apart in a stoic stance and deflected the attacks, striking and lunging between opening with nicks and gashes against the thick hide where he could, and took each strike against his armour into a long tally bruises he would collect before he either died, or stood triumphant and exasperated.

"Who is the son, and who is the daemon?" The creature whispered calmly, his forked tongue lashing behind a wall of movement.

Cydnar thought long and hard, crossing his blades and jumping back at the same time as a form of reply. The daemon dropped his guard for just long enough, and the Hummel struck. The flecks of crystal rushed forwards and inwards onto a collective path, and shattered the Daemon's cornea with a satisfying and sickening wrench. He pushed them in and out, and spun them recklessly once they had struck.

Instantly the creature floated upwards, arms scrabbling at its face and it's many mouths screaming many hellish screams. Cydnar cupped his ears feebly and tried to drown it out, all the while smiling.

"Maybe I'm a lion...maybe I'm a fool, maybe I'm about to die...but maybe, just maybe, I am the serpent's son, and you the daemon's pawn..."

"You are ready, rise!" The daemon whispered with a pang of pain and burnt away in a bright ball of white smoke and glistening glittery strands. The air filled with lavender in his wake, and the lights flowed through the air and settled briefly on the dais before fading altogether.

Cydnar's heavy breathing occupied the chamber for a while, as he concentrated on examining his shoulders. Deep purple bruises had covered most of them already, a stark reminder that whilst his armour was forged in the shadows to ward off the heaviest of blows despite its size, he was not impregnable...they ached and twanged with agony with every movement, and forewarned of a battle against his own body, should the Daemon-King have blood on his mind...

Frowning with uncertainty, his confidence from his gambit against the daemon fleeing him quickly, Cydnar turned to the dais and approached. Somehow, as if the ancient way had been known to him all along, he reached out with a shaking hand and touched the cold stone.

The runes all across the chamber erupted into life, into roil of fire and glowing dreams.

The chamber dissipated, and from the sudden blackness loomed a great throne larger than a house, and the dread aura of Haida's True Threat...

Cydnar dropped his blades and fell to his knees, realising his mistake. The great serpent that slithered over the throne in the vast circular tip of the spire was all too familiar, and his stupidity now all too clear.

With dark green eyes, Niddhogg flicked it's tongue and proclaimed the Trial of the Heretic open.

[Cydnar]

"The Council convenes it's session!" A voice rose from beside the great throne, and Cydnar traced in his delirium the shape of another humanoid. He wore a golden masque and long, bellowing robes, and the recollection of his youth returned to him. He drowned out the democratic talk of death and sentencing to wallow in such memories as his head span.

Long ago, two serpents had been born in the primordial waters of the first days. As the Thayne crafted the mountains and the lakes, the rivers, seas and plains, Sinisax, the Council Man who watched over them placed his own wards to balance the wars of the gods. The first serpent had vanished into the earth, eager to consume the magical errors and maladies of man, named Yrene, the World Eater.

The second, corrupted by his creator's power in the formation of Althanas had dredged all the evil from the world and turned man against daemon - plotting for centuries until the rift in Haida burst into existence and he could rise from obscurity to hide in the swathes of magical storms in clear view of the gods, undetected, untouchable, insurmountable.

Cullen had been that snake's name, until he refashioned it in his own image, and became the Hope Stealer, Niddhogg, the antithesis of Yrene. Dreams and delusions where his providence, and now Cydnar realised his mistake. All the images, the precognitions, the lies in his mind were Niddhogg's doing, to lure the last Salthias to his lair to end all hope of Yrene recovering from the war with Xem’Zund. Whilst his brother slumbered to recover in the core of the world, and all his servants and warriors were killed, there would be no one who even knew Niddhogg's name to stand in his way.

"How do you plead?" The councilman spoke, glancing once at Cydnar, then again up into the amphitheatre which surrounded the throne and the defendant. As far as the eye could see, the stalls rose into the distance, full of masque faces so innumerable Cydnar doubted they were inhabitants of Althanas alone.

"Plead?" He coarsely replied, his head finally resting and his vision returning. "I did not hear the charge!" He tried to stand, raising a fist towards the distant spokesmen, but found himself dragged back to his knees by skeins of golden lightning that rattled his bones. He fell again, defeated.

"You are charged with the murder of Niddhogg's son, the Daemon-King Morgen, with the collusion with the enemy, Yrene, and the death of the necromancer Xem’Zund...how do you plead?"

Cydnar dropped his jaw, incredulous.

"Morgen? That...creature was the son of a Thayne? You should know gods do not die, they simply slumber...he shall rise again in due course to fail at my hands!"

"SILENCE!" The entire chamber burst into a momentary uproar.

"How. Do. You. Plead?"

"I fought against Xem’Zund to stop Raiaera’s fall, to save Althanas itself, where Niddhogg would not lie except in death had we failed! How am I to plead against the defence of existence?"

"Answer the plea..." A ghostly voice filled his head, and Cydnar glared into Niddhogg's daemonic eyes. The spokesman might control proceedings, but he realised that it was because the serpent laced a voice. He smiled weakly.

"My 'collusion', finally, is part of my birth - we are Yrene's people, as much as you are Niddhogg's! If you are to charge me for my lineage, than I place you all on trial for colluding with my enemy!"

"SELF-ADMISSION!" The spokesman roared, raising his long sceptre to silence the crowd before they burst into frenzy. "The defendant freely admits the crime with which he is charged - sentence is to be carried out."

[Cydnar]

"I bow to no court, I revere no mock decision!" Cydnar's voice carried itself even over the tumult of the crowd, and the Spokesmen snapped his triumphant expression back to the elf's face. He traced the outline of the fangs that glimmered in the light, and feigned shock.

"The cornered rat of certainty does not like this decision? The sentence, as is written, is death - do you fear death?"

A silence descended over the amphitheatre, and Cydnar tested the strength of his bonds once more. When the crackle died down, he said his answer with a calm serenity. "I fear nothing more, but I am merely an insignificant grain of sand in the endless ocean. You, however, fear death because your master embodies it - life lived in constant fear is no life at all my good sir."

"Wise." Niddhogg whispered, and Cydnar pierced the snake's vacant expression with a confused look. Something was afoot, amiss, and agog in the chamber of his damnation. Was he dreaming, even now? Had insanity crept in and stolen another night's slumber from a tormented soul, to tease and to convey a sense of guilt for Manira's death?

Love...what a strange thing to fear losing in the final hour.

"In the ancient rites of our people, we condemn this heathen to death, death in the hands of the Great One himself!"

The sound of titanic scales scraping against well-worn rock filled the chamber, and Cydnar shuddered before Niddhogg's advancing form. With slithering grace, the vast snake's gigantic form rose up and fell down towards the insignificant being before him. It opened its mouth, and two great fangs of otherworldly strength bore down on the Hummel.

Cydnar closed his eyes, and for a brief moment, felt nothing but a rush of air, a sudden dampness, and then emptiness and solitude.

The council chamber roared triumphantly, it's enemy defeated and vanquished proper.

[Cydnar]

Death was a curious state. Sometimes, those who died fell into the cracks between the planes and worlds, instead of passing safely into the infinite bleakness of the afterlife; be such a life in heavenly realm of hellish scape. Cydnar felt nothing but pain for so long the sudden bright lights of the meadow he found himself in rested in stark contrast to his expectations, to his self-doubt.

His boots landed softly onto the bellowing grass blades, which were a yellow cream shade to distinguish them from the radiant and blinding white sky wherever else he looked.

"Hello?" He whispered, and he listened to his voice echo into the infinite for what seemed like hours.

A response came in the form of a sudden reprisal of the music that had permeated the realm during his conflict with Morgen. It rang heavily in the air and conjured hope, for just a moment, beneath the purple and black robes.

"Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same." The voice spoke not into Cydnar's mind, but into his very soul - it crackled with power and wisdom, like a sage's spirit convalescing behind every word.

"Hello?"

A tall ethereal creature appeared before Cydnar, with pointed ears and long flowing white robes embroidered with two silvery snakes interlocked in a constant pattern. As the music erupted into a cacophony of sound, the sage bowed, and then the melody formulated words of its own.

"Your deed, Cydnar, cannot be undone."

"My deed?"

"The crystal pillar and the death of your comrades, it is a mistake to think you are to blame. Do not punish yourself for that, or the Hummel shall not rise to the defence of their realms when The Usurper rises."

Cydnar thought long and hard in the confused state his death had inflicted. Was he still awake, dreaming, or was this the Kinsman's Final Speech before he slipped into eternal slumber and felt nothing more than an eternal satisfaction? He bit back the tears, and tasted the fleck of blood on his tongue to remind himself of the severity. "You speak of Niddhogg?"

The Sage nodded.

"How can I forgive, when I am already dead, too late to help those below when I have gone!" He expressed himself with erratic hand movements, and finally let a single tear roll down his pallid skin.

"Your deed cannot be undone, Cydnar...you, however, can be." The Sage smiled, and waved his arms convexly over his chest. "Niddhogg will rise, and you must be the one to restore The Salthias, and Yrene to power to fight them head on...the Thayne's mistake of two snakes must be undone...you must undo it..."

Cydnar fell into silence once more, and the plane of intermission fell quiet and sorrowful in his absence.