Get me out of here.
Scene Four
Break of morning, coldness lingers on.
Shroud me into nightmares of the sun.
-Opeth, 'Bleak'
Sithil shivered, pulling his furs around him in a futile attempt to hide from the biting wind that scoured his bones. His teeth chattered, and already he was barely distinguishable from the snow around him, so covered by the storm as he was.
"Why do you think he chose this gods-forsaken place to live?" his companion, Quirt, asked, likewise chilled and wrapped in fur.
"The Keeper said we'd understand why when we met him," Sithil replied. The pair could not have been more different; Sithil was tall and extremely thin, whereas Quirt was stubby and stocky. "And then he chuckled."
Quirt squinted past the hail. "Must really dislike company," he said, heaving one foot out of the snow and placing it in front of the other.
Up ahead, the vague outline of a castle was visible. It was not large, as castles went, but its design was intimidating enough - gargoyles lined its facades, and the walls of the fort would have been black even without the weather obscuring them. The parapets of the structure were barbed in a hellish design, spikes reaching up to split the sky with their jagged lines. An indistinct statue stood in front of the twinned gateway, huge and alert, in a guardsman's position - yet clearly the figure was more than a human.
Sithil grunted, his breath frosting in the air, and slugged after Quirt. Wispy lights floated almost serenely around them, occasionally manifesting into a shrieking spirit that dived towards the two travellers, but always dispersed before actually touching them. By this point, the companions were used to it, yet still they flinched from the diving specter.
Not long after, the guarding statue loomed above them, a demonic figure with the head of a goat and cloven hooves, a huge sword in its grip, blade balanced on the ground. Hellfire burned in its eyes.
"Do we knock?" Quirt asked. As he said that, the door opened with an agonising groan, the opening slowly parting to reveal the blackness within, until finally the hallway was revealed and the screaming of the hinges stopped.
Swallowing back their anxiety, the pair entered the long hallway, which past the first few steps was brightly illuminated by a series of torches set in recesses along the wall. An elderly man, well-dressed in a dark suit of finery, politely inclined his head.
"Welcome to Mount Kilsorrow," the butler announced. "Your presence has been anticipated and your possible requirements already met. When you are ready, the Master will see you."
Sithil looked at Quirt, and the stocky man nodded back. "We are ready now," he said. The butler nodded approvingly.
"Very well. May I take your coats?"
It was only now that Sithil realised just how hot it truly was in the hall. He shrugged the layers of jackets off of his lean figure, and the butler hung them on a rack, a few pegs away from a large, full length black jacket that the rogue assumed belonged to their host.
The butler led the pair through the entrance, and into the great hall. To Sithil's surprise, they were not met there, at the vast table and open, roaring fireplace. The room was titanic - decorations, trophies and statues lined it, and the table was a massive oak affair that seemed more expensive than a bribe to a noble house of Slom. He and Quirt still followed until they were led into a much smaller room, realistically designed to seat an average-sized family.
The contrast to what the two rogues had previously seen was astonishing. No roaring fire burnt in its setting, and the light was a warm suffusing glow from a silvery-yellow crystal hung from the ceiling. The brightness caused Sithil to blink a few times before his eyes adjusted.
There, at one end of the table, their host waited. At his place, and two others on the table, a meal was set which made Sithil's mouth water - roasted lamb infused with herbs, a full complement of vegetables and a bottle of wine in the centre of the table.
The host himself was at complete odds to the room he currently sat in. If ever a person embodied a colour, black was his - hair, garments, even the eyes of the Hero were a deep obsidian which drained hope from the room. Like his butler, he wore a suit, however he was much younger - Sithil guessed mid- to late-twenties - and exuded an aura of confidence, a pleasant smile upon his face, which while angular and sharp with definite cheekbones and a sharp nose, was not unpleasant to gaze upon.
"You made good time, given the weather," the Hero said. Were it not for a slight pitch, it would have been a pleasant baritone, however the edge to it hinted at a madness, which the Keeper had warned his agents of. "You are my first visitors, and I am pleased to note that my humble abode had its desired effect."
"Which was?" Quirt asked slowly, eyeing the food.
"Impress and intimidate, of course," their host replied, as if it were an exceedingly stupid question.
"Why?"
He clicked his tongue. "Dramatic effect. It would not do well for me to live in a little cottage by the sea, would it? No, of course not. But a demonic fortress atop a snow-sleeted mountain? Yes, that is much better. Much more… impressive. Much more… me!"
"You are… you are Arash'ruin, otherwise known as the Psychomancer?" Sithil asked, beginning to realise that the Keeper's warning had been well-founded.
Arash's face darkened. "I have always despised that epitaph. Do you know what ruin means, little ones? I ask only to assert my control, I am aware that you do not. It is an word from ozkavosh, the demonic language, which loosely translates to 'arisen'. However, what a demon considers arisen would be to a creature extremely evil indeed."
"Yet you are…" Sithil was put off by the sudden transitions between joviality and intimidation. He sensed it was by design.
"I am not the man I once was, no. Now that I do not have a thousand others to watch for, it makes it much easier to think about people that aren't me. I prefer my old name - Arash Vespender. It was so much more simple back then."
Suddenly, the Psychomancer's mannerism changed completely yet again. "But of course, where are my manners? You must be starved and cold after such a journey. How uncourteous of me. Please, sit and eat, and we shall discuss our business."
Sithil and Quirt gladly obliged, savouring the meal. In contrast, Arash ate little, and Sithil got the sense that their host rarely ate large amounts of food in general.
They settled into an uneasy conversation regarding the state of the world in other sectors now that the Ancients had fallen. Once Arash was satisfied that all was well - Sithil had heard that he had been one of those instrumental in their destruction, and likely did not want his efforts to go to waste - the rogue turned the topic to the Keeper's request.
"He calls for a reunion of sorts," he explained lamely. "Messengers have been sent to other Heroes as well, asking that they join up. What for, he has not told me."
Arash leaned back, apparently considering the prospect. "…Yes," he concluded. "Yes, it would not do well to ignore the summons of a Keeper."
"You shall… go to the reunion?" Quirt asked.
"Not for my former compatriots there, you understand. They bear me little love and in this time succeeding the war I have given them little reason to change their opinions, no. Rather, I go on the bidding of the Keeper, for I am more familiar than most with the ways of his kind…"
With that, the Psychomancer stood, moved over to the wall. Upon an ornate peg there was hung an odd weapon, a bladed gauntlet, its fingers instead razor-edged talons almost a foot in length.
"Do you recognise this weapon?" their host asked softly. Both rogues shook their heads. "Yes, I figured as much. These edges have seen many horrors, perpetuated some of them. Pale Morrow is its name, a title that suits its wielder as much as the blades themselves… it is mine, stolen from the corpse of the demonic smith that made it." Arash smiled. "So ironic, then, that Pale Morrow becomes an agent of the greater good."
Quirt had finished his food, and Sithil almost likewise. The latter cleared his throat.
"One other thing…" he began hesitantly.
"Go on."
"The Keeper said… bring a date. There will be dancing."
As he was pitched headfirst out of the tallest tower in the mansion, Sithil reflected that it had almost been worth it just to see the look on Arash's face.
Almost.
***
Ash, ash and the acrid smell of smoke. The once-proud trees were now blackened husks. New life would spring from them, eventually, but that would be well past the lifetime of this generation.
Nightsilver was preparing for war, and perhaps its change in appearance reflected that. Luna breathed deeply of the cool morning air and cast her eyes toward the grey skyline. From there, she gazed over the warriors, five hundred huntresses and horse archers - a cavalry force to make armies quake.
But the dead do not feel fear, she reminded herself. Luna exhaled.
It is not enough.
Word had come, urgently - the Bronze Legion would fight alongside them, as would the Skywrath and the noble houses of Slom. There had been talk of even the Slithereen sending a detachment. Were she to estimate numbers, the force would come at an easy ten thousand.
The crucial information that eluded the consortium, however, was the Dead God's arsenal. How many undead horrors did he command?
Even with the full force of Nightsilver around her, Luna still shivered, feeling unsafe. Doing her best to shake off those feelings, she scratched Nova's neck and howled to the wind.
"We ride onwards to the fields of war!" she cried to the assembled army. "Let the ground quake beneath us!"
The thunder of five hundred mounted warriors tore apart the calm of the morning as they set off. War was coming, again. Nightsilver would not be found unready.
Awesome writings by the way, I enjoyed it verily.