View Full Version : Bloodwork (Closed)
Bloodwork (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DeKmZbzvV0)
2409
Time line forwarded a decade from any previous material.
There are people and places beneath the surface of the cracked and sundered world lost to time. The Hummel, children of the Drow and the Silurian High Elves are one such people, and their crystal cities glimmer in the twilight like secret gems in the heart of Althanas. For centuries, Cydnar has been a guardian and watchtower for his peers, protecting the secret existence and residing on the fringes of society to ensure the will of Yrene, the snake god, is absolute.
There are times in a being's life however, that residing in the depths of tradition will deliver nothing but destruction.
The Dratzz live in Ymgarl, a city abandoned by the Hummel in the Sundering. Racial cleansing and outright civil war divided the Drow and the Silurian in the first formative days of the Hummel's ascension, and the Drow have remained a sundered people ever since. Those that remained in the depths became bittered, twisted, scornful of their day walker cousins in their sky ships and observatories. Or so it was believed and chronicled in the dwindling records of their descendants.
As Niddhog rises through the dark, to steal away the last hope of the Hummel, sundered by the war with Xem'zund and the many ills of man, Cydnar reflects on those exiled brothers he has been taught to fear all his life. It is perhaps ironic, that the blood work that ties them together through time and legacy is the one thing that gives the Hummel hope against their new adversary.
Without them, the Salthias cannot unit the councils and noble houses in a union of war.
Without brotherhood, after all, what good is a brother?
With careful steps, the party of emissary's and diplomats moved through the dark. With each of their beating hearts, the shadows pulsated as the geomagnetic energies that permeated each segment of their soul pushed aside the rock and dirt to allow them passage beneath the earth and through the ancient dermis of Althanas. Cydnar's eyes glimmered in the twilight beneath the warming embrace of the deep purple glow stones that levitated above their heads, casting a thin veil of illumination over their progress.
The atmosphere was tense, not least because of the absent air or the immensity of the peril they were in. Even the most experienced archaeologists feigned interest in delving this deep into the earth, for fear of all the unknown perils one might encountered in doing so. Brother Callas and Magister Sunthra on the other hand, were not merely experienced, but wise and over cautious beyond their millennia span.
It had taken weeks to persuade the council on their course of actions, and many more to prepare the party in the ways of mercantile interaction and discourse. Many had never even spoken to one outside of their own kith, without mentioning members of other races, civilisations, and for all Cydnar knew, entire continents. The Salthias's unique perspective of having dealt with others gave him the leverage he needed to ratify the new treaty of communication that was required in order to usher the Hummel's xenophobic cities out of their excommunication.
"Brothers, are we prepared?" He spoke in a low tone so as to not alarm any watches in the rocks. The Dratzz, or so it was scribed, possessed talents far beyond those gifted to the Hummel by their pious nature.
Five echoes of aye struck his ears like little raindrops of joy, and they fell into a vast chamber with a roar of energy and a sudden rush of air. Cydnar bore his fangs, sickened by the immediate connection to ancient magic that was unfettered by consignment of order and constraint. Silence, deafening and pure washed over the six envoys, and blades sheathed with nothing more than a passing flash in the vastness of the underground geode.
There were no crystals.
Cydnar barely had time to scream a battle cry before he realised their elementary mistake.
Umber Hulk.
The words span in Cydnar's mind.
It had been decades since there had been a report of such a creature in the Hummel's cities. Beyond their purview and scope, however, he had always had nightmares of vast catacombs of desolation in the dark, where the vast behemoths slumbered, waiting a foolish elf to stumble into his lair to be devoured.
The twin and pallid lights that marked the creature's location and eyes swooned down on top of the party before they could prepare their defences, and the sickening crunch of dense fist and claw rushed into Brother Leonid.
Cydnar leaped back to the wall of the geode and flinched as the young and once illustrious artisan's spine snapped. His corpse flew up into the rock and smashed to the floor like a rag doll. His head started to pound as the blood rush and Novocaine of fear grew into terror.
"It's eyes!" The Magister's voice pierced the commotion with foresight and clarity, and a smattering of magical energy which calmed Cydnar. He bore his teeth with a hiss, and drew Freya and Altheas to cross them before his hauberk protected torso. Without paying heed to the creature's strength, and the fact that his haematite defence would be little aide against the creature's brutality, he stepped into it's reach and pounced, his blades mimicking the descent of his teeth towards it's skin.
It's fist spiralled out into Brother Caenen's twirling sceptre, and sparks flashed in the dark. For a moment, as Cydnar landed on the creature's arm with his feet placed firmly together, he saw the place they had stumbled across and shuddered. He pushed down, and felt the tips of his swords chip into rock, before he kicked back in a spiralling flip and landed with knees tucked and swords splayed to the sides to the creature.
There are hundreds of buildings... Each one suspended high in the structure of the geode, faint and sorrowful...dusted and dead.
He roared, and panted, and wiped the sweat from his brow as the creature's aura beat against his senses and tore at his emotions.
Suffer not the witch, the heretic, or monster...the oath of the Salthias sprang to mind, and as the Magister's magic sparked with Brother Caenen's and formed a fiery convocation about the creature's feet, Cydnar and his compatriot, a Salthias initiate charged in to it's right flank.
The creature immediately roared, a piercing and shrill cry that spiralled high into the ruins overhead. With lumbering motions it flailed it's deadly claws, and elf and blade ducked, rolled and nimbly folded out of their way.
Cydnar and Drail struck together, a flurry of blades that were nothing more than a distraction. The heat that licked at their feet threatened to end their attempts if they were even remotely off balance. The creature was a walking monument, and it's many limbs and plates of armour gave the elves leverage to ascend to it's head.
"Together!" Drail proclaimed, and brought his blade up as he leapt from the creature's shoulder to the top of it's head.
It roared, as if it knew it was in danger, and brought both of it's arms up to swat away the purple clothed fly.
"Drail!" Cydnar's words were useless, and the elf flew with a snap from the creature's head beneath the simple brutishness of it's strength. He felt no life-force shatter, and watched the body tumble to the ground in a plume of unseen dust.
"Magister, see to him!" With a kick he leapt over to it's head from the opposite side and rested his blades over the glowing gemlike eyes.
The moral code of the Hummel slipped his mind as he drove them down. It mattered not if the creature were a mere animal, or something possesing a keen intelligence and instinct to slaughter...but all above, the graves of his ancestors marked all the cause he needed to relish the moment.
Blood spurted upwards in two piercing jets, covering Cydnar's robes with green ichor and a smell beyond description.
He vomitted as a gag reflex, and the bile ran down his chin in a twin flow, mimicking the rivers down the Umber Hulk's heaving torso. The terror in the chamber faded slowly, as the creature's death throws caused it to twitch and flinch, as if refusing to give up on life till the last.
As it flopped forwards, Cydnar fell without resistance and crashed into the dirt, sodden and distraught and recoiling in the horror. His chest burned and his eyes ached, and the fading strength in his bones refused to carry his stupid heroics any more. The flames died heedlessly.
Silence covered the party once more as the Magister tended to Drail and the breathless pants of the remainder of the envoys span upwards into memory.
"Is he...well?" Cydnar spluttered.
A reply of "He will live" drifted over the Magister's shoulder, relieving Cydnar of concern and allowing him to slump onto his back and gaze up into the shadow.
"Good..."
"We should not dwell here, there may be more than this one ancient soul lurking in the infinite bleakness of this place..." With nervous glances, the envoys encircled their self elected leader, young recruits eager to prove their worth to their captain.
"I think," the Magister rose, dusting his knees and lapels down with the tip of his rod. "That we can safely rest assured that we have arrived in out desired location."
"Oh?" They returned his self-satisfied look with one of confusion.
"Pick Cydnar up and help him remove the creatures stench from his robes, there is no time to explain except to say that the graveyard above your heads and all about us is a place named Formalin, an ancient Drow temple that leads to the heart of the Dratzz."
"How do you know this is the temple?"
Cydnar narrowed his eyes as he was lifted upright and tried to remember what was said in the council chamber. The ancients of the temples had read from the annuls of time itself to recant the tale of the Sundering.
When he had been a child, his father had told him the same story, only shortened considerably and with more adventurous blemishes and escapades.
"Where the dead of yesterday sleep...the children of tomorrow wait?" He stared at the mage for a moment, and nodded as he saw the old man's eyes widen. "I am not so young and foolish as to be kept in the dark, the treachery of the council aside...we should bury those amongst us who are perished, and lay out the gifts for our would be hosts to see..."
"We must earn their audience, before they will appear."
"Earn it you have...Salthias...".
Cydnar cast a confused glance to his left and right, as if to check where the voice had come from. His aids shook their heads nervously, and the Magister's aura grew in intensity, a gathering of manna from the tendrils of the world to prepare a defence...
"Who...who goes there? Speak your name!"
In the dark, there were eyes, thousands of specs of purple light with a thousand years of envy in their flickering flames. The envoys were surrounded.
"We," a tall Drow, with skin as dark as midnight and eyes brighter than the others stepped into view, "are the Sons of Ymgarl."
Without a sound, the envoys found themselves encircled by Drow in spiked armour, tinted purple and embellished with spiralling and glowing circles and vines. Ancient designs that they had only seen in the history tomes, and resting on the tombs of the First Salthias Kings in the catacombs of their fledgling cities.
Cydnar pushed his aids aside as they hurriedly tried to clean the ichor from his body, and he knelt immediately to bow his head.
"Wise," the voice of the Drow said with a deadbeat amount of respect. "Foolish and pointless, but wise."
"I am no more foolish than a child, but infinitely more patience, my lord," Cydnar's autocratic sensibilities overrode his need to fight for freedom, and despite his appearance, he cast a net of humbling confusion into the beginnings of what he expected to be a long, democratic dance of wit.
"A child would not slay such a creature with such feeble blades and luck, but slay it you all have...death aside, and wounds sated, you live to ask me the question you have come to ask - though you proclaimed it so many times on your journey it is no wonder the dead did not hear."
So they do have spies... "My name is Cydnar Yrene, the Salthias, High Guardian of the cities of the Hummel and last of his kind to tether the council to the arm of war and the final days of it's mettle."
"Hail Cydnar," the circle sang harmoniously, so beautifully and heartfelt and resonant the Hummel looked up cautiously with a be-puzzled expression of wonderment.
"We seek your aid in such a war, against a foe greater than the hatred you have for us and the fear my kith has for you." He bowed once more. The tension from the tunnels seemed dwarfed in comparison to the electric that flashed through the air in long spiked lines of potential.
"I am the Voice."
"He the Voice" the circle answered in a reprise.
"I speak only for Him. Speak not now, for he shall hear you, and your answer I shall speak," he turned with little fanfare and disappeared into the crowd.
"Come," the Choir sang, and Cydnar almost instantly felt more at ease. The tentative first steps had been taken, and he had secured an audience with the Dratzz...whoever 'He' was.
The gathered soldiers pulsated with movement and carried the envoys with their natural progression across the base of the geode. The corpse of the fallen Brother was plucked from it's pool of blood and born unceremoniously with them, and the scraping and cankerous sound of armour and thousands of feet marching in unison echoed through the City of the Dead.
It had long been assumed that the Drow of old had been murderous villains. Their hatred and loathing of High Elf and man alike had been the spark that ignited the war, and it was through their suffering that the High Elves atoned and the Hummel were allowed to continue.
History has a way of obliterating the truth, however, and it's descendants make of it what they will, sometimes using it for power and leverage. The Council, fickle as ever, saw fit to hide the truth from the Salthias, to ensure that the war and faith of their people retained it's so called purity. If ever the two races allied, the zealous and minor church of the Council would not stand the purity of Ygddrasil...the ancient ways kith and kin to all elves of the world.
Cydnar watched the Magister's sultry scowl and hung head as they crossed the geode's lower floor and realised, with deep regret, that the Council had saw fit to waylay his plans after all. Tricksy and wordy and possessing magic, of all the sickening things, the Magister was the true snake amongst them...Cydnar, somewhat perpetrated, felt more threatened by his own leader than by the thousands of strange yet familiar souls surging around him.
They did not threaten his senses, not did they misuse whatever power or strength they had.
"We will talk yet if we survive this ordeal, Cydnar..." she spoke with a softened tone as she approached. "Whilst I may have tried to sabotage the engagement by waylaying information, there is plenty reason...all I can say, is that when you stand before the Throne of the Ymgarl, do not speak of this affair...treachery is a mutual enemy between our people, and our affairs are to be our own if we are to secure this alliance..." she walked slowly away and silence returned.
Cydnar said only one thing in return.
"Suffer not the witch..."
As the party moved across the arid earth, untouched by sunlight and air free of stagnation, they rose up the far incline that marked the curvature of the geode upwards to the vast crag laden wall. It stood like a fortress, blocking their advance, and even with the torch lights and glow stones illuminating the maze of jagged death, there did not seem to be a clear way up, through or down.
"Should we help?" The initiatives begged the question on the Hummel envoy's mind, and Cydnar shook his head.
"Our ways are theirs, their ways are older and wiser."
As soon as he said it, the choir sang once more together in a harmonious and deeper concerto of arrangements. The geomagnetic abilities of the Hummel originated through the blood-work of Yrene himself, but the Drow had a deeper way with the world, bound in song and voice, much like the elves of Raiera or the metal smith concubines of Alerar.
The first verse shook the bed stone of the geode, and Cydnar wavered on his fettered heels as the quake shook the ground and the ruined maze of buildings far above. Loose rock and tower spire cracked and fell, and fragments of the once prod city descended in silence before crashing into the base of the structure. The origin of the vast boulders and rubble that had barred their progress and made the climb tricky became swiftly apparent.
"They sing our doom!" The young novae cried, hands cupped to their ears.
With a thunderous crack, the choir stopped, and their hands returned to their sides. Cydnar rose slowly, his ears ringing and his heart pounding with the fiery convocation of fear and wonderment. The dusty smell was sucked from his nostrils, and he recognised the aura and scent of...air.
The one named The Voice turned, and smiled. Despite the collective entity of the Dratzz, the momentary display of emotion and certainty irked Cydnar further. He looked over his shoulder to where the strange man was pointing, and understood.
Their voice was their geomagnetic ability, their faith in one another the same divinity as the Salthias belief in Yrene himself. The strength of their combined power had sundered the rock, and a thin slither of azure light forced it's way through the fifteen foot tall crack in the geode's wall.
"Beyond this portal, lies the city of Ymgarl. Speak not to the children, nor to the artisans and whores of the under dark."
The command silenced the shattered envoys, who had no choice but to follow the gathered Drow through. As they approached, the crack widened, as if made of nothing more than cloth and thread, and they stepped into the unknown.
Cydnar opened his eyes slowly, and let the dim light of his bedchamber rouse his body from it's deep slumber. Wearily, he reached under his pillow for the crystalline shard that acted as his Last Guardian, and pushed himself upright under the duress of suspicion.
Another dream...
This was the fifth night in a row that he had witnessed premonitions of his family, kith and kin torn apart in civil war and coincidence. First there had been the images of the Daemon King, then his father reborn, his brother the betrayer, and now his brother the Voice...
He had not recognised him at first, the twilight of the cavern and the imaginary lethargy from his illusory conflict with the Umber Hulk had exasperated his own false senses, but once he had turned into the light of Ymgarl, there he had a revelation. Many decades ago, on the precipice of the war with Xem'Zund, the Grand Salthias and the Council had instructed their most trusted envoys and warriors, the bravest of Hummel to search for ancient fragments of quartz long buried.
His brother had been one such explorer, tasked with finding the Lillian Warp Stone that had once been a scale from Yrene's serpentine form in the days of the Early Dawn. They had not heard from him again, and presumed him lost to the snowy tundra of Salvar's inhospitable bleakness. He crossed his dagger over his chest, then with a slight push of mental concentration, he shattered it into dust and scattered it to the wind with a haphazard dismissal with his delicate and spindly fingers.
"I can suffer this no more," with a clench, he turned on his buttocks and stood up from the low futon, leaving a maelstrom spiral in the onyx silk bedsheets.
With baited breath and every effort to keep silent as he advanced, Cydnar walked along the bedroom floor and the cold stone and out into the corridor that connected his chamber with the auditorium; there he took audiences in private with generals, councilmen and sages on all the matters concerning the Salthias.
He stopped at the balcony that overlooked the quartz gardens of the Palace and frowned. If he did not decipher the meaning of the visions he was receiving, or of the strange white tree emblem that had sprung from nothing on his shoulder-blade, he darn't not consider the consequences. He walked on, and regally descended the outer staircase which spiralled down onto the marble floor and the central sunken seating area and debate table.
"Magister!" His voice echoed through the elaborate grandness of the auditorium, and bounced around the onyx pillars, emblazoned with intricate runic patterns in many different hues of quartz.
A moment passed, before a tall elf with grey hair and long white robes appeared from behind one such strut and bowed politely. "I am your humble advisor, Lord Yrene."
Cydnar smiled and beckoned for the man to be seated next to him at the grand circular table. "I wish to speak of a matter of grave importance, though I apologise for summoning you at such a late hour."
"The morning dawn would soon be approaching on the surface m'lord, it is no trouble for me to council you in this twilight time - metaphor aside," he slid over the floor, as if he were floating ethereally, "I am glad for the distraction from my work in Chambers."
"Then tell me...what does the Council propose to do about my recommendation?"
The Magister appeared to be taken aback momentarily, and minced his words carefully when he finally replied. He crossed his legs and sat two chairs to Cydnar's right, his back to the grand doors that lead into the entrance hall and beyond to the Steps of Ascension and the Quartz Garden.
"They are...deliberating."
"That is not good enough, tell me the truth!" Irate at his constant irked nature, Cydnar bowed his head apologetically, "forgive me. I have been plagued once more by the same visions of my brother and the denizens of the Under Dark...I seek resolution."
"Again? Lord Yrene, this is troubling news, but not unpresidented I fear."
"How so?"
"The Salthias title is beholden to a powerful oratory, this is true...but also, when one becomes Grand Salthias, the leader of the Hummel in all respects, he acquires congisence and a gracious gift from the World Eater himself."
"What would Yrene gift me, despite all my woes?"
The silent pause sent a shrill chill down his spine. A cold breeze washed over the table from an unseen crack in the fabric of the building, well timed to accentuate Cydnar's discomfort.
"Not Yrene, you must understand."
"Then who?"
"Yggdrassil."
An image of a white tree, taller than any other and set beneath a blazing vigil of fire he knew to be the sun flashed before Cydnar's eyes. He had seen such a thing in his illusionary war with Xem'Zund,. far beneath the surface of the embattled plains of the High Elves.
"The World Tree?"
The Magister nodded appreciably. "The very same, you have been branded by it's guardian, the White Sage, and no doubt he means to gift you visions of the future and true the present, in order to prevent the very thing we move to halt ourselves."
"Nidhogg's rising?"
"Precisely."
Cydnar considered the news gravely, and bit his nails noisily and out of turn. He did not understand how his dreams of devils and daemons could possibly relate to Yrene's brother and the Thayne of Greed. Was he an envoy, a saviour, a false-hood prophet leading his people to another timely death? He had done that once too many times, be it on the plains of Raiera to prevent a deadly summons in shadows and dusk, or beneath the dermis of the world fighting the necromancer...
Yrene had given his mortal coil there to seal the creature permanently in a tomb of quartz so dense and incandescently violet a comet would have to fall upon it to break the creature free.
"Can you tell me what my dreams tell me?" He raised an eyebrow after what seemed like an eternity of uncomfortable silence and shuffling feet. The Magister nodded, and Cydnar stood.
"Walk with me, through the Quartz Glades, if you would?"
The Magister rose silently, a wavering wraith in his white silk and bellowing grace. There seemed to be no substance to his body, no weight to his walk, as if he were simply knowledge in a hallucinogen. Cydnar wandered as he walked across the gold stone, still clad in his night robes if he were still dreaming.
"It would be my honour Lord Yrene, lead the way."
They stepped out onto the uppermost step side by side, and took a moment to admire the intensity of the cityscape that rose before then. The geode was so vast that one could not see the other side, except perhaps the shadows and swirling mists that veiled the true shape and form of the buildings and crystalline bridges which knotted together to form the districts, quarters and slums.
One by one they descended, and took a left along the delicately cultivated path. The garden formed a ring around the vastness of the Salthias temple, which stood at the heart of the city. Cydnar's quarters were only a quarter of the building, with the rest encompassing the Temple Ark, Sacrificial Chamber, quarters for the council and it's associated grand theocratic chambers. It was the heart of the government of the Hummel, it's democratic and religious power resting next to his own private world.
The Quartz Garden had been delicately constructed by Cydnar's family over the last thirty years, to fill the sparse statue fields that marked the death of each and every previous Grand Salthias and High Magister. Exception had been made for the captains that had fallen at the battle of Bahrain, and Cydnar had overseen the funeral and the construction of their epitaphs personally as a way of consoling his grief and failure. That same day, he had been crowned Grand Salthias.
"It started with the dream of Haida."
The words fell away into the expanse of the geode, and had no echo or depth to them. As they progressed into the spindly maze of vermilion, violet and fuchsia branches and chiming crystalline berries, they both felt the calming wave of solemn spirituality that washed over the graves and gavels of ash palms.
"The Daemon King?"
"Yes, I interpreted this to mean a devil in the Council, betrayal or antimony."
"You assumed correct, when the treachery of Lord Summar was revealed he spoke in tongues of Haida's ascension."
"I dreamt of snow, and of my brother's return to the family home."
"Then your uncle killed your mother and father...and fell for the temple you kept in your basement... possessed by his own guilt, he mocked you with the one thing you have no power to defend..."
"Then," Cydnar turned to face the Magister, and pulled at a nearby tree with telekinetic tendrils of geomagnetic power. With a hum, several of the carefully crafted blooms were plucked from the branch with a delicate breaking of crystal and floated down in a sensual pattern. They landed one by one in Cydnar's palm.
"I dreamt of the Drow...I dreamt that a union was formed to fight Nidhogg - enemies for millennia, bound together in the common blood work of our ancestors."
The Magister politely took one of the flowers which were offered to him, choosing the one with five petals and no heart, and hung his head. "I fear this I cannot help you with. That can never happen m'lord."
Cydnar raised an eyebrow, taking the seven petalled bloom and discarding the other with a push of energy and a shattering of it's structure into dust. It sparkled away on a breeze, leaving the two men be-speckled with flecks of colour. "Why not?"
The Magister sighed.
"The inhabitants of Ymgarl were eradicated centuries ago..."
"By whom?!" The urgency and horror in Cydnar's voice struck the Magister's heart like a carefully trusted blade, piercing the dual armour of wisdom and knowledge.
"Grand Salthias Artemis...we destroyed them ourselves."
"NO!" Cydnar stormed off in the direction they had been walking, his usually delicate advance turned to a thundering stomp and a sudden well of anger and hatred trailed in his wake.
“All this time!” Cydnar roared, his bare feet scrunching the gravel beneath their advance. He slowed, suddenly aware that his outburst was to no avail, and rested his temple in his trembling hand to massage his brow.
The Magister appeared slowly at his side, and peered cautiously beneath his Lord’s fingers to catch his gaze. They looked at one another with a brief respite of sincerity, before smiling. “I am sorry that you were not told this before, but I am instructed only to speak when required – it is our way, and that of the Council.”
“Did you not think that I should have known?” He let his arms relax and turned on a heel, walking in a small concentric circle to concentrate.
“If you had spoken to me of these dreams sooner, perhaps we might have arrived at this very conclusion before they turned to nightmares.”
“This is the first time”
“-But it will not be the last.”
The interruption would have garnered the Magister a swift reprisal from Cydnar’s forefathers and ancestors, but he knew there were plenty of good intentions in the put down. He was right of course, they would not stop until he acted on them.
“You speak as if destiny is so easily understood!”
“It is, when you apply yourself to its pursuit.” The Magister trailed off further along the path, swaying with satisfaction as Cydnar paused, tensed, then followed as his curiosity got the better of him.
“I’m sorry; you make it sound as if you know my intimations before I have even considered them myself?”
“These dreams are not sent by Yrene. Or…perhaps they are, the source matters not. If it is your brother’s subconscious cry for help, then you must go to him and rescue his soul from whatever shadow he has fallen into, and if it is Yrene, then your duty is even more important.”
“Don’t even dare mention a grand design,” with a carefully set expression of stoic warning, Cydnar ended the conversation, but as they continued in silence in emotional spirals, he wondered just how true the Magister’s words could be…and if his brother was truly still alive, buried in time and apathy?
In due course, they came full circle about the temple to the foot of the Lord's Chambers once more. Politely, they shuffled in the dance of etiquette to align in order of rank and ascended back through the great doors and into the council chamber. Cydnar set the delicate flower down on the long trestle slate table as he entered, alongside a plethora of other fauna forged in quartz by his own design.
Democracy was a far cry from the artisan way, and a far cry from temptation to return to simpler, less demanding times. "You have been busy," the Magister commented with sardonic wit as they strolled over to the sunken table and resumed their places from their earlier conversation.
"It does not please me to say that I have, far too busy to truly pursue the pleasures I have until now become accustomed to. A decade of service since my speech in the Chamber of Trypsin and I grow weary of the age already."
"I would not worry, it has taken that long to regain even a fraction of the strength lost in the war. It will take longer still before we can rest assured we are safe from harm."
"Is my dream something to do with Nidhogg?"
The Magister paused, carefully considering the impact of any truth he spoke. "I believe so, but not how you might imagine," he pointed a wizened digit at the crystalline box embedded into the stone table.
Cydnar concentrated on it for a moment, and slid the lid off with telekinetic agility. It landed haphazardly, and the ringing of it's circular motion as it came to a stand still gave them both pause for thought. When it died down, Cydnar lifted the tray from it's place and set it carefully down between them. The two tall cylinders of polished quartz were ornate and well carved, and set the sophisticated tone required when Hummel consumed their favourite beverage.
"It has been a while since I partook, but you are most welcome," Cydnar tipped the bottle with a wave of his hand and the umbrae nectar rolled into the glass.
"I believe your brother is alive, but somehow trapped. Your vision is no doubt a mental map, you travelled to a geode did you not?"
"I did. Though in a party of envoys, and a treacherous Magister of womanhood and lies."
The Magister smiled, "Do you remember where?"
"Where?"
"Where you went, how far, from which lodestone?"
Cydnar thought intently, and poured himself a glass of the fortified wine with a haphazard shrug of the shoulders. Slowly he pieced together the scattered fragments of his dream, hazily broken into many parts by the rising dawn and the awakening strains of another day.
Then it struck him.
"Salvar."
The howling gale whipped against the armoured torsos of the Drow warriors as they clambered wearily through the oblivious obfuscation. For hours they had blindly pushed deep into the pine tree cavalcade, on nothing more than an innate sense of direction and a reckless abandon for safety.
Deep down and far below, pieces of a plot older than any elven race formed a new puzzle in the strands of time. Nihjar placed one foot before the other unaware of his place as a puppet of the gods. It was history's greatest irony, to blind so called prophets from the truth of their deities, and to bind them to their service in a way that fashioned trust and false freedoms. His weakened, jealous mind had been too easily swayed in such a manner.
He had retained his need to explore, and to pursue adventure, even as the civil war amongst the last clans of the Drow had broken out and the Ymgarl worshippers struck bloody blow after bloody blow against the last followers of the Two Snakes. Every day almost, when not rebuilding the shattered spires of the ancestral city far below the surface, he had taken to delving into the ruination left in the wake of another Civil War of faith.
The proximity of Knife's Edge to the geode the Ymgarl dwelt in was no accident. Centuries ago the Drow had discovered the quartz deposit thirteen miles down into the heart of the tall, jagged peak, and made their home in it's midnight grasp. They believed in a kinship with the Salvarian people, and settled there so that they might develop trade and connect to the people's sentiment in a mutually beneficial manner.
It had not been a successful adventure, and Nihjar had taken it upon himself to reclaim the lost treasures and tributes paid to the priests of The Sway during those formative years. He could so unhindered now, whilst eyes were turned to the restoration efforts in the causative period after the war had, for now, seemingly ended.
Even in the bitter chill, an inner sorrow and determination shone in the fiery light of his eyes. He did not know that the very same emptiness which drove him further into the madness of kings and the lethargy of tired men preaching, was inadvertently bringing to his world the very thing his people hid from...
The chiming of crystal to nervous teeth filled the silence as Cydnar pieced together the last fragments of his dream into something useful. He had remembered the momentary blizzard the envoys had experienced as they had risen to the surface to lay a way stone...the harsh environ of Salvar was blisteringly painful and had taken much of their provisions and strength.
"Could it really be so simple?" He set the glass down onto the table and slumped into the tall ornate chair, emblazoned with flecks of quartz and shining as much as the towers and tapestries of great deeds that surrounded them.
"It is plausible an idea, is it not?"
"His fear brings me to him," Cydnar assumed.
"Or perhaps his treachery. I urge you to go to find him, to see what has become of the man you once called family. The city prepares itself for war and will do well enough without your guidance, for a time."
"Then I have your blessing?" Cydnar's voice was tainted with a faint weak trace of hope, a desperation growing in strength as quickly as his excitement at the prospect of leaving the sanctuary of his office for the first time in a decade.
"Of course, Lord Yrene," he reached out and took Cydnar's hands affectionately, "you have the blessing of Yrene, and Yggdrassil, and in turn, my own. You must find yourself, and your brother, and action shall be it's own reward."
Cydnar rose as the Magister stood to make his leave, and they bowed to one another as was the custom. With a regal turn, the sage strolled from the chamber out into the cool air of the Hummel dawn, and dissipated down the steps into the gardens and broad walks that lay beyond.
"What reward is worth finding, if it leaves the heart frozen and the mind lulled..." He picked up his glass once more and floated the Tantalus to it's lip to pour himself a second glass.
"Come on you wretched dogs!" Nihjar's voice cracked like a whip through the tree line and struck the scrabbling Drow servants with brutal lashes. Even with the gale, the command reached them with feverish gusto and determination. They quickened their pace, stacking and hauling crates together at the apex of a gaping black abyss that delved down into nothingness.
"We shall make camp here, then raid the temple at first light, when they are weakest and the shadows conceal us!"
The Sway had been toppled, and Nihjar felt gracious and empowered by his own conflicted faith seated amongst the broken and distraught humans. He sensed the power of the Way Stone fragment he had come to reclaim even as far out as a league, and every few moments he stopped in his tracks to gaze through the trees at the small blot on the landscape's horizon.
"Lord Yrene!" A spindly and sickly looking Drow, hooded and cloaked in heavy wool that was tattered and worn approached the behemoth armour and cankerous aura of his liege. "Our spies prove that the fragment rests in the Church's ruins, as you suggested!"
Nihjar smiled, his fangs and inflamed eyes piercing even with the pearl white and bleak backdrop.
"Good." He turned once more and glared at the smoke trail that rose up from the settlement, and then beyond to the shattered mountains of Knife's Edge that cut off the sky with jagged and shattering lines.
He felt the excitement of exploration and conquest kindle his blood, and something stirred within. Rage...lust...promise...hope.
"Get those tents up," he unsheathed the heavy blade Gallblaster and levelled it breathtakingly at the servants, cracking of a reel of orders that came to him naturally behind the veil of his authority. They would work long into the night, and through the twilight of the dawn.
"Perhaps I will find him doing what he set out to do...reclaim way stones..." Cydnar's private thoughts rose up to the dome overheard, and he landed back in reality with a waver. He had been standing for almost an hour, lost in his own drunken thoughts as to how and when he would take the joy in finding his brother.
As much as he hated the cold, and as much as he had come to loathe the surface world despite his long years amongst the people of Donnalaich and Dheathain, the prospect of leaving on an adventure was sycophantically corrupting.
He did not truly think his brother would still be alive, never mind still searching...but as he walked across the chamber floor to the stairs that spiralled up into his private quarters, he considered the possibility enough cause to attempt a search.
"Nilla!" He roared at the ornate door, and with a dull roar the hundred steel snakes slithered aside and opened the way. He skipped with grace up the cold onyx marble and stopped as he was greeted by his study.
Resting on the desk, at which he was sat most days scribing treaties and promises to the noble houses and making declarations in the name of Lord, God and Council, were his most trusted companions.
He made his way quickly to their company and picked them up, the purple runes on their sheaths describing them as sword canes, one named Freya, the other Altheas. They were the names of the brother & sister who were born of Drow and High Elf blood millennia ago, the very epoch of the Hummel race.
Without thinking, Cydnar walked into his wardrobe and made to put on his usual attire of Salthias robe and hauberk. As he did so, he recited the tale of legend that inspired him as a child to train harder in service of his people.
In their memory, he would find the last way stone, and in their honour, he would lead his people out of the darkness, just as they had done to keep their blood work running in the heart of their descendants.
A sudden guttural stop ended Nihjar's roar, and he felt uneasy and uncertain. The howling wind had begun to die as darkness descended over the hastily erected camp, and it was the hour when infra vision and true sight blurred into paranoid shadows.
A faint voice echoed at the back of his mind, one familiar yet ethereal and alien to him. He shook his head and trundled through the deep drift to the centre of the camp, time as it was to recite the Ymgarl scripture and pray by the flame of the camp fire.
The voice spoke again as he neared the halfway mark, louder and more tangible.
A long time ago...
"Who said that?" He looked nervously over his shoulder into the infinite bleakness. The tall pines formed prison bars blocking his path into the wilderness of Salvar, but no visitor stared back. His envoys and servants stared at him silently, knowing that speaking out of turn would end in a swift reprisal and punishment.
Two siblings, torn apart...
"I demand to know!"
With a blinding pulse of pain, memories of his child hood flooded back, and the stone armour covering his torso pulsated momentarily, carved as it was from the geode wall of the Hummel capital itself.
He heard the voice clear as day now, and remembered.
"Cydnar!"
His blood boiled at the thought.
Cydnar strapped the sash around his waist with firm and rugged movements, and turned to stare into the polished mirror hanging from the exterior wall. It reflected a serene and defiant image of readiness back at him, and he sighed with relief.
"A long time ago...two siblings, born of secrecy, vowed to never be apart."
He tucked his blades beneath his belt and strolled back out into his office.
"They were of Drow and High Elf blood, hatred and nihilism born and raised in light and mercy. Both their parents fell to blades most jealous, and their cries kindled determination unseen in the children's eyes."
He scooped up the papers on his desk and tidied them away, to leave his quarters appropriately settled for the Magister to work in whilst he was absent.
"As war broke out, the siblings fled, and built a home in a geode deep beneath the land of Dheathain, the heart of magic itself. In the shadows, there rested Yrene, a snake with eyes of purple quartz and a slithering tongue. Thus the Hummel were born, and in his guidance and wisdom, rose the Salthias and the Council."
Cydnar hung his head to pray as he walked to the door and made to pull the door to.
"When the siblings were met by the envoys of their oppressors, thinking the Drow redeemed and the High Elf forgiving of their trespasses, they were blinded by their faith and their innocence to see the flash of blades that took their blessings, and so engrained became that act in the Drow, that forever they are to be children of the Under Dark."
He dimmered the glow stones with a nod, and trundled down the steps with heavy footfalls of leather on onyx stone.
"Their blood work curses eternally in solitude and isolation..."
Their lies forever warning to the Hummel, who stand alone as testament to man's nature.
Silence Sei
03-27-11, 09:24 AM
Story (5/10): There were some confusing points in your story, but you cleared it up quite well with your background story. Furthermore, you gave those backgrounds in a way that was quite belivable.
Continuity (4/10): I would score it higher as a person who has read previous Cyd threads, but looking at this from the perspective of somebody who hasn’t, there was a –lot- of confusing materials to take in.
Setting (6/10): You did pretty well here, there just wasn’t a whole lot of details until the last few posts to any background really.
Creativity (7/10): I love the fact that the story went from dream, to conversation, to the perspective of two different characters. Good job.
Character (6/10): I got a grasp of Cyd, and even the magister, but the brother left something to be desired.
Interaction (8/10):
Strategy (6/10):
Mechanics (8/10): You had plenty of time to fix any errors, and it seems like you did, I could hardly find any.
Clarity (3/10): At times, it was very confusing to understand what was going on, mainly in the sections I liked in the creativity category. It was just hard to keep up with.
Wildcard (9/10):
Total: 64/100
Cyd gets 2000 Exp for a good thread, and as a Head Judges apology for being so late with the judgement.
Silence Sei
03-27-11, 01:58 PM
GP-Exp added.
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