Blood's Wake

[Fez_The_Kid]

Solo.

Singed trees quivered under a raw, soughing wind, a wide strip of decaying forest that crackled and slanted in protest. Trodden roads cut through the landscape, traveling ancient woodlands and prairies. Hooves of mounted warhorses had furrowed the ground, leaving their prints' asymmetrical pattern on the path. Atop these beasts armor-clad soldiers had cocked their lances, thundering toward their foe in the name of the Ethereal Sway; a second pattern faced the first in opposition, one belonging to an army that rode under the standard of King Iorlan Rathaxea. Where the armies met was a storm of footprints, the sides of which Anubis of Skavia loathed evenly.

A trace of old blood hung faint in the air, but a foul undercurrent spoke of sorcery. The forest soil too had been disturbed, churned up by the same warring sides. Shafts of quarrels had sprouted out from trees, the metal heads firmly anchored in the scorched bark. Dying columns of smoke dotted the field of battle, tainting the brightening sky overhead. The fighting, he concluded, had stopped with the Church's victory.

He had always dissented from the sides' views, abhorred them both for it. They would have to soon dissolve, he'd decided, for the good of this nation. Pained by the scene he relived in his mind, the Salvarian realized he would never participate, for this was one war he had nothing to do with. No, he had traveled here for another cause.

Anubis gathered the reins, turned with his mount and guided it a dozen paces up a rising slope, then slowed to pause atop its crest. The eastern horizon brightened gradually, the sun still lurking behind a vast portion of land that had remained doubly untouched. Silently surveying the grassy plains, Anubis turned at a sound of an approaching rider.

The newcomer reined in, his peachy face weathered with exhaustion. Pointy ears stretched beyond the scalp, the blades of his jet-black hair swinging in the wind. An insignia of the elven Bladesingers graced his rusty breastplate, broken and tattered.

"Sure took your sweet time," Anubis said, his bruised heart evident in his voice. "Oh, don't give me that look. I'm fine. Been thinking... that's all."

The elf's brows fractionally rose. "About the war?" he asked.

Anubis gave a nod, his eye wandering till it settled on his mount, the beast's mane silently ruffled by the wind.

"I understand," the renegade whispered, moved his horse a few paces past, setting his face in the growing sunlight. His glittering black hair was like a piece torn from night itself, two rosy eyes adorning the firm ridge of his brows. The pinna of his ears ever pointed skyward, his skin violet and pale. "I know how it is like as well."

"I appreciate your sympathy," Anubis sighed and continued, "but this is a civil war, it's different. Think of it as two brothers battling over the last morsel of meat. Your war is only two neighbors fighting over… power, land, and resources.”

"Poor distinction, but bravo for the effort," he grinned. "However, they're still my brethren. It is the hard, bruised truth..." The elf paused, then continued, "Regardless, I had a considerable part in dealing the death of their scores. A fact which haunts me to this day." The elf's face suddenly turned sober. "We cannot separate ourselves because of a difference in ideologies and skin, Anubis. I had to watch a handful of them bleed out from my own-inflicted wounds.”

"Sorry," Anubis murmured.

"It’s all right, friend," the elf said. Whatever thought that seemed to have arisen in his mind was fleeting, as he simply shrugged. "What's happened happened." The elf's gaze returned to the road, "We can never change the past, sadly."

A faint smile crept onto Anubis' lips as gathered the reins again and clicked his tongue. He then broke his horse into a walking pace along the road. "Come on, we should be close."

"Lead the way," the renegade croaked. Formerly called Hearvarr, the elf now went by the name of Merka Ralem. An ex-soldier of the Raiaeran Bladesinger forces who easily stood two heads above Anubis. He was barely into his first century--a youth among his kin, but a wise one nonetheless. The bond the two now shared had formed over the years, now a companionship unbreakable by any force they had confronted yet.

***

Anubis' gaze was fixed on the eastern horizon as the forenoon sunlight bled through ranks of paperthin clouds. The trading road they now traveled had went on for longer than anticipated, and often they met with merchant carriages drawn by lowing, toilworn quadrupeds.

A town's gateway loomed in the distance, flanked by a revolving palisade. The tattered rooftops of buildings crowded the space within. The treeline, now turned into a stretch of plains extending further inland, had traveled with them until a few leagues remained between them and the settlement. To the left it ran only for a half dozen leagues, suddenly twisting into the swampy bogs of northern Raiaera. There the land was sheathed in dense thickets, in which prowled both the mundane and the supernatural.

So claimed Merka, who explained this survey through his sharp memory; perhaps an ability that was to him both a blessing and a curse.

The Bladesingers were once the renegade's life. To them he had sworn an oath, which he later broke and now lived by, as the vow's shattered remnants harrowed him every so often. Who drove that stab? Anubis pondered, his conscious, maybe. Or his heart. Whichever, he's not forgetting the day he broke his solemn promise, looks like.

They had nurtured Merka, raised him to the elf he was now. They'd taught him how to kill. Two decades he spent slaying Raiaera' foes in the name of its glory. And it all turned out to be for naught. No-one saw the truth as he did. Only he saw it unveil. A mutineer that didseek Raiaera’s glory, but in ways largely different to the ones that had been--and still were--executed.

Should they find him, they would kill him without hesitation. They would feel no remorse. He had always been aware of the consequences. No regrets plagued him, but if the thought ever arose, it was crushed, destroyed, its vile throat slit. He knew that the moment he rode out of the encampment, he would have gone rogue. Even as he hesitated, he took the decision and escaped the confines of an empty oath.

Merka suddenly turned in his saddle, fixed his eyes on the Salvarian. "Is this it?"

"Yeah. Lakewick. Modest village, but it’ll do."

The elf murmured something, then returned to facing the settlement. Silence ensued, then a while later, "I’ve a feeling luck shall be on our side today."

"Don't push it," Anubis said. "Smaller settlements aren't exactly the friendliest to outsiders. Even of their kind." A light tap against his mount's sides sent the beast into a trotting pace, striding down the road leading to the gateway a few hundred paces ahead. Merka heaved a sigh and followed in silence.