Burning Souls

[Christoph]

((Closed to Bloodrose))

~~

*Insert Prologue*

* * * * *


Dearest Alexandria,

The trail is hot once again! After three long months of travel and fruitless investigation, fate rewarded my tenacity. While asking around in the city of Sturmovsgrad, I learned that none other than Cardinal Timko passed through less than a week prior. As you could imagine, I wasted little time in capitalizing on this miraculous fortune. I can only hope tat I am able to find him before Denebriel’s hunters. You’ve witnessed enough to know what is at stake.

You should also be relieved to learn that Cirothe has grown more docile lately and hasn’t made another attempt to eat me since the first week after I purchased him from the Bolokhov Royal Bestiary. Yes, Cirothe is what I decided to name this scaly reptilian monstrosity. He still eats everything in sight, but he’s got the constitution of a pair of oxen, which has allowed me to travel for days at a time without stopping. Hopefully it will be enough to catch up to the Cardinal while he is still alive and safe.

I haven’t been able to sleep much. I wake up with my heart racing night after night, shaken from nightmares that I can’t recall. Maybe my subconscious knows that the civilized nations are on the brink of collapse, or perhaps more sinister forces are at work. I grown increasingly paranoid, jumping at shadows more than I should, especially after these unremembered nightmares. Maybe it’s just the stress of my mission getting to me. That seems the most likely.

I miss your company more each passing week, especially since my only companion now is a giant monster. I pray that you and your father are well. I seek news regarding the shifting war whenever I can, and am always relieved when I hear that Volg Manor has not been touched by the conflict yet. I vainly hope that it remains that way, but things are grim. Just last week I heard that all of Knife’s Edge is aflame and thousands are dead. If the mightiest city in the civilized world could be reduced to such a state, who knows what else could happen?

When I hear these things, I am forced to respect the truly terrifying powers pulling the strings – the same powers that I have sworn to fight for the sake of our future. I feel that I am in over my head. My only advantage right now is that I’m a wildcard in this conflict – a variable that Denebriel and her agents couldn’t have foreseen. I can only hope that I can stay below the radar just a little while longer.

Try not to worry too much. I will return safely, no matter what, I promise. Maybe then I will finally be granted peace in sleep.

~Elijah

* * * * *

Darkness and rain swirled around him like a black plague cloud. He ran, though he knew not from what. His feet pounded with muffled percussive thuds against the drenched, rocky earth. His breath went ragged in his chest and his legs burned from strain as he struggled to run in his soaked clothing. Yet, no matter how hard he sprinted, he knew that he was not getting any further away from his pursuer.

But what am I running from?

Elijah’s rout of retreat suddenly ended as a massive wall of dark stone masonry materialized in the dark void before him. He glanced over his shoulder as he skidded to a halt, gazing into the shadows behind him through his drenched brown hair; he spotted a dark silhouette approaching. Frightened, he tried and failed to climb the wall. With an impassable barrier in front of him and something behind him, he had run out of room to run. It was time to fight.

He spun around with a splash of mud. Lightning flashed and came face-to-face with a leering devil. Black horns and thorns accented the creature’s red face and a matted mane of white hair hung from its unholy head. Eli reached for his sword; the one arcane weapon that he knew was mighty enough to vanquish such a beast. Yet, as he sought it from his waist, he realized that it wasn’t there.

“Looking for something?” asked the dark being, its guttural demonic voice laughing from behind hellishly glowing yellow eyes. The creature brandished the sword, its burning glyphs illuminating its wielder’s hellish visage. As it spoke, bile spewed from its blistered lips. “This, perhaps?”

The sorcerer recoiled. “Get back!” he cried, throwing his hands out in front of him, summoning his power and unleashing a vengeful fiery barrage against the beast. It chortled maliciously as Elijah desperately intensified the assault. “Stay away!” Flesh sizzled like water thrown into cooking oil as black smoke billowed from the demon. Yet, once the air cleared, the creature still laughed. Oh, that laugh… it chilled him to his core, inflaming both his rage and fear at once and grating like razors between his ears.

“Foolish child. You cannot destroy me. You cannot fight me any more than you could run from me.” Darkness consumed him. And still, it laughed.

* * * * *

Shlup, shlup, shlup.

The heavy slapping and thick sucking sounds of Cirothe’s clawed feet trotting through the slush and grainy mud greeted Elijah as he drifted into a confused wakefulness. He felt for his sword in his first moment of awareness, breathing a sigh of relief once his hand grasped the familiar, comforting hilt. He’d just fallen asleep; it had all been a dream. That realization didn’t make the whole thing any less disturbing though, as the infrequent dreams he experienced always seemed to bear some manner of significance.

The weary traveler sighed, massaged his temples, and tried to rub some life into his unshaven sandpaper face. He brushed some curly brown locks of hair out of his face and squinted through the late afternoon sun glared off the glistening crystalline trees. He had gotten rather hot under his woolen traveling cloak and his old and tattered chef coat was soaked with sweat. The air had turned surprisingly warm and moist; it filled his lungs like an angel’s breath compared to the unforgiving artic chill of Salvar.

He sat up straight and patted his Ashkore beast’s scaly flanks. The creature had certainly covered ground quickly; they must have already crossed through the mountain boarder into Alerar, given how warm it was. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed the jagged peaks close behind and confirmed his suspicion. Excellent. It meant that the gap between he and the band of Salvic Sway agents he sought to find and protect was narrowing. It seemed odd that he’d slept through the border crossing, though. There should have been guards there. They would have stopped him.

“You didn’t eat the border guards, did you?” Eli asked his draconian mount. He chuckled, even though that would have caused quite a bit of unwanted trouble. The last thing he needed was trouble from the law when he already had the daunting task of finding and protecting fleeing Ethereal Sway agents. His smile didn’t last long, and it wasn’t because of the missing guards. It was the dream.

He couldn’t shake the residual image from his consciousness. What disturbed him most was how calm he’d been while waking. He didn’t jolt up with a start; it was as though the nightmare didn’t happen. What did it all mean? It couldn’t have been a flashback from his past because his enchanted Prevalida sword had only been in his possession for a little over a month. It meant that the dream was either a premonition or a warning, alerting him to something in the present that he was not yet aware of. According to his past research on the subject and his experiences, those two possibilities weren’t very different in nature. They merely varied based on the imminence of the threat. Therefore, the real questions revolved around the nature of the threat and how soon it would manifest.

Belov’s thoughts were interrupted when Cirothe let out a low snarl, a sound he only made when he caught the scent of fresh blood. The traveling sorcerer glanced around, instinctively alert. The road was leading into a pine forest. It wasn’t particularly dark, but the misty fog created by the rapidly melting snow made for a gloomy atmosphere. The effect of the creepy mist was nothing compared to the display at the mouth of the woods, though.

The source of the scaly, dagger-toothed lizard’s agitation quickly became apparent. Three soldiers, two Dark Elf and one human, were hanging from overarching branches. Rather, their remains were hanging. Their flesh had been crudely slashed and flayed from much of their bodies and their stomachs had been cut open. Blood and core was still dripping from their hanging intestines. They were fresh, not even old enough to have attracted more than a couple flies. He guessed that they were two days old.

“Well, it looks like we found the border guards.”