The old race

Varion awoke amidst heaps of dirt. His hair stuck to his head and as he followed its course to the top there was a major sting sluicing through his body. His sight was impaired and returned only dimly.

The cut was not too deep, he found and managed to get up. Where was he?

Winds disturbed the wounded pastures around Doomsbane. The lush carpets of crops were aflame, spitting fume and blackness aloft. All that scattered in the air was little compared to the eruptions followed by massive quakes of earth. The forest to the south lit on fire and shrouded the Mount of Many with its column of smoke.

Blue-green sparks spurted from the black ceiling above, brightening the lea beneath and the people skirmished in a state of frenzy. The snowstorm of turquoise beams slashed through steel and skin; the firmament perforated the earthbound.

“ORDER, ORDER, ORDER!” a piked officer to his left clamored, reestablishing what collocation he could. The city watch acted out the behest and stopped panic-stricken persons, thrusting their shields into them and creating a wedge where a steady drizzle of people took flight without trampling innocents.

Lightning devastated a stray horse, then a man, falling into burnt, skinless pieces. The skies rebelled; furious cracks of blue green drowned the outcries of succor in fatal showers and Varion was locked on the spot, waiting for a strike to finally meet with him.

A myriad of sparks broke out on the bending meadow and a fierce convolution followed–one that did not emanate from the sky but from earth.

Landing on the splintered lea, several people appeared at once from the hued dust. Varion knew them as mages, and his supposition was verified as they interlaced their theurgy. The race clad in golden and purple rose their hands and summoned what lay behind the curtain of the atmosphere.

The more Varion gaped around the more of them he saw. Flashes lighted the sky. Cashmere of the egys ram was in abundance, glutting the steeled subordinates.

Paladins established order, golden and silver flourished with each stroke of the sky and caused a glittering reflection of armor. So gleaming were they, even during night’s dominance of day it was visible how they thrusted their golden shields into the masses and pushed them to the sides.

More manifested. Their gold and gleam hurried across the grey in budging intervals and with shields upon their heads as the quake forced them to protect themselves from the dismembering wall.

Streams of turquoise fused with the raised vibrancies as strings bristled in visibility. Like an intersected tree, the specter rose before the walls of Doomsbane. Not from the ground it protruded but from the depths of air, as if their world was merely a pond of matter mirroring an affluent lake of something higher.

The rift stopped expanding at the touch of the tree; the quaking subdued. Inches before the mages, thunder struck, showering them with earth and grass. But where the repulse had moved Varion, their poise was steadfast. Lightning struck the walls, and the golden runes glowed stronger in response. Siphoning the electricity seemed to strengthen the artificial plant.

The mages proved themselves by maintaining their flickering ligaments, entwining the air above the meadow into a braid of the sun. The fire in the fields gained range with every second and enshrouded the gash in black fog. A gaping hole, the storm hissed, jittering the golden tree diaphanously. The earth went from a shaking to a stern thrill and further cracks plagued the ground walls. Varion supported himself on the small hill of earth.

The wrathful atmosphere lifted, and he respired noticeably easier. The quakes subsided and the glaring light of the sky resonated in a high-pitched spurt as the high strings illuminated the gash. It was as though the chariot bearing the sun outpaced gloom and placed Doomsbane back into the realm of day.

As quickly as they had appeared, the mages vanished. Like buzzing fireflies, they disrupted repeatedly between the fields, bridges, and streets, annulling the fires and soothing the earth slides. The guards collected the pebbles which had splintered off the wall.

Varion watched as though entranced.

The cataclysm was over but what he beheld right now was a shock twice over.

He was drawn to the congregation, the madness gone, replaced by the rehabilitation of his spirits and a tug of supreme familiarity.

He was attracted towards a circle of steel, where the tug led him, as if he was a starved dog that smelled meat for the first time in weeks. Somebody was protruding from it, from the golden and silver bristle helmets–somebody important. There was a woman. She had been shouting orders, but quit abruptly, as though she saw something that required all her attention. But Varion was invisible behind the cloud of soldiers, she could not perceive him.

Shields raised; a female mage pushed the Paladins away and marched out on the beaten meadow beside the main road. The storm had stopped but gusts still persisted, disheveling grain and wheat between them.

The woman was tall, thin-lipped, and strict in expression. Beads of sweat covered her unhealthily paled face. She opened her mouth, but no vocals escaped. Her teeth were white and straight, in perfect accordance with the sound of her voice that he remembered.

They gaped at each other.

He took a step and walked right into an outstretched hand.

“Remain, Varion!” cried Estas’s voice, pushing him back. “She’s Aurian. Go not near her.”

Patting off dust, he curbed the impulse and did not run across the husks of bared trees towards her. The tug was now strong enough for him to forget himself. He cracked his knuckles to not embrace her. Instead, he turned to the emissary, the unease and desire in his face outstanding.

“I decidedly will,” said he and took another pace. Despite the fact that each step felt as if he was wading through the swamp of his mind, he reached her and stretched out his hand.

Not a single Paladin intercepted.

The agitation in her voice, the fright in her gaze, and the general shock in her graceful poise were distinct. Even though the cataclysm might have unfolded such effects, Varion thought of the stories of the man they eulogized as liberator of the humans.

His legs shook. His mouth was dry, and his heart beat heavy rhythms. The picture of his tiny, childish hands touching her straight, dark brown hair was louder than the implosion of the ceiling had been.

His real fingers grazed her fumes. The woman was gone. The vision of his youth remained.

🏛️

Utter, terrible, nauseated fear clang through her every cell, compressed the blood in her veins and robbed her of any sanity lingering within her skull. How was this possible? Kalia plunged herself into desperation because she couldn’t allow herself the elation. She knew Aevar too well.

She droned coolly, “I am still waiting on a full report of all the villages but the crops in the south were all consumed by fire. Right before the harvest. We lost more than two dozen oxen, three stables worth of horses, five with pigs, more with cows, lambs, and close to a hundred chicken nests, and an entire reservoir of deer that was meant for the winter games, all dead, bearing the scorched signature. They even found a pierced ison near the Copse of Laela, one of the last ones according to the Magistry. What they can, our cooks will use and spread out during the festival, but Aevar, if the calamities keep ravaging like this, we will soon face hungry mouths. And hungry mouths have violent minds.”

“We have enough supplies and Sunfall will bestow a vast granary on us.”

She was exasperated and sat down. His study remained in bad use and the couch next to it was fully deranged with sheets and a lace, so she perched on the curule before his desk. “There have been other casualties as well, Aevar.” Not to mention what she had seen on the plane before the city.

The facet of the King changed, and he nodded into his cup. “How many?” he asked coldly.

“More than two dozen corpses,” she said.

“Could be more.”

She rubbed her forehead and tried to smoothen some of the furrows in her brow, but Aevar did not make it easy. How did… how did he even exist? “Is this really the time for a campaign? Almost the entirety of the Ancient Lands bows before you. Shouldn’t we strengthen the bonds between the Valleys, unify the fiefs?”

The glare he shot her was piercing. “We do as I order.”

“If you truly behold war as a solution to any of our problems, then you are not just playing with fire, you are putting glass on a heated stove.”

He took large sips until he finished his goblet. After emptying it, he sighed emphatically and thudded it against the darkwood. He bent forward and grumbled, excited. “Watch what happens as soon as it breaks.”

Her arms fell into her lap. She didn’t know how to begin the subject. The King had a strong opinion on this topic. But she could not keep it from him. If common sense would not solace his greed, then maybe the internal drive to protect his kindred, that every Aurian possessed, would. “There’s something else, Aevar.”

His amethysts sparkled again. It was as though he sniffed the hesitation in her voice as yet another groundbreaking development. If only he knew how right he was. “I’m all ears, dear.”

Kalia untangled one of her palms and raised it before her chest. “This concerns the half-mage Estas has caught–”

“Ah!” The King of the Ancient Lands pressed the air out between his closed lips like a horse. He sounded disappointed. “You sound so like him. Spare me this talk of bastard nonsense. And here I thought you had something of substance to say to me.”

“But Aevar–”

“Enough, I say!” A quiver of his insistence went through the room, displacing the drained cup. “The bastards are your problem as they were my son’s. I don’t believe in their fostering, and I only permit their admission into the Pantheon as it keeps you from pursuing other things. I will, however, not have them rise in court!”

“This is not about some bastard!” She ruffed her hair. It could not be and yet what her own eyes, what her daimon–her theurgical mind–had told her was undeniable. “Would you just listen?”

The King opened his mouth, but no word left it as Kalia beat him to it. “For fuck’s sake, Aevar! It’s not some bastard. It’s him! I–Estas found her son. He even looks like Astaros if you don’t trust magic any longer.”

His eyes widened and it was as if another person stood before her now. A hammer–an artifice of fate knocked every mad and eager grin from Aevar’s face. Every piece of drunken behavior faded, sobriety establishing herself in his mind.

His look was empty. The paleness of his face took on a sickly note. The circles beneath his eyes were darker and his face was that of dread. “Where?”

“In the city. With the emissary, whom you leash.”

“Leave me alone.”

It was the last she heard before he disrupted. Coward, she thought at first. But then, had Kalia acted differently?