Circle of Reign (58 page)

Fallen! We are fallen!
the veteran wanted to scream. His soul struggled to contain the anguish. What was he to do? Where should he go? Arlethia lay unprotected and damningly molested with her enemies uncontested. Thoughts of his family jolted to the front of his mind. The General was able to sequester his personal circumstances while engaged in his duty very well, but they still made their way through the widening mental fissures caused by what he now beheld.

Our borders are breached, our great army fallen!
He counseled with himself as to his next move. Perhaps he should continue his raids, taking as many of the enemy down before falling himself or collapsing with exhaustion. Or should he charge the enemy host now celebrating in the forest?
My forest
. He felt no connection with the stone trees, though, only nostalgia.

Wisely, General Roan retreated. He was physically ill as he thought about how his men had met their end. “I should have been there!” he regretted aloud. What of Therrium? What of Arlethia? What would happen now? He did not know, but he resolved to continue his overarching mission: to defend Arlethia from all who would threaten her. His tactics would have to change now, but he would continue. More patience would be required, more strategy. Until he fell and joined his brave men, as far as Roan was concerned, his orders were still in effect.

FORTY-ONE

Rembbran

Day 30 of 1
^st
Dimming 412 A.U.

TAKING IN THE ELATION
from his
Dahlrak
’
s
completion, Rembbran tried to remember when he had felt such blessedness. He was aroused to a state so elevated that he lost hold of his identity, forgetting even his name momentarily. His body shivered uncontrollably from the rapture. The pain was completely ineffectual inside him for these moments. He waited. It did not return. Had Agony left completely? Slowly, he probed through his mental field and found that it was indeed there but failed to regain its hold on him. Rembbran had never felt such…happiness? Had the strange emotion of hope turned to glee within him? Was this possible?

The moment of climax passed and still the pain of years past did not find purchase within him.
The wound still present but no longer festering
. Had the wound finally closed and sealed?

No. It ripped open suddenly, tearing his mind in two with a vehemence that he had never felt. He squirmed on the ground, frantically clawing at his head and body, not knowing where the attack came from. His lucidness turned to darkness as Agony regained its position as master and punished its subject mercilessly.

“Why?” Rembbran screamed as he thrashed about against the stone soil, scraping and cutting his skin. “Why?” Drool and mucus
ran down his face and purple veins bulged over his shorn head. He was grunting and snarling like a mortally wounded animal but unable to die and find relief in death. And then he did something he thought he would never do, something forbidden his kind by all those who had possessed the Urlenthi. He prayed.

“Ancient Darkness, Mother of Helsya, I beseech you to turn away this suffering from me. For millennia untold we have suffered subjection and outcast for our apostasy, and I surely greatest of all. Bless me, I pray, and I will rediscover and reclaim Helsya for the Ancient Dark, wherever the sacred land has been hidden; lead me thereto that we may rise again as rulers as we once were; that our women would once again live to raise our children. Dark Mother, I have never sought you, but I beg you to hear me now and relieve my suffering that I might serve you. If not, in mercy or wrath, let me die.”

The Agony did not abate. Rembbran continued to wail and moan violently for several more minutes, each a personal eternity to him. This pain was deeper, pouring through him without end. He convulsed with spasmodic jolts on the ground, knocking into Therrium’s corpse.

“Then I curse you! I defy you! Helsya will remain forever lost and unclaimed for the Ancient Dark and I—”

He stopped suddenly. Was that possible? He sensed—no, smelled it, didn’t he? He was breathing heavily, still tense but then realized the pain had subsided. It had fled from him, the absence of it a completely foreign feeling, almost a floating sensation. He regained some of his control and took in the scents around him more fully. He flared his nostrils and the gill-like slits that ran up the ridge of his nose. It was there.
She
was there.
Impossible!

He dared not believe it, not for joy’s sake. Involuntarily, his gaze was drawn north. He saw nothing, but could nonetheless scry the exact vector from whence the scent exuded. She was older now, of course, but still young. Tears of sadistic exhilaration could not be stayed as laughter escaped from deep in his core. It rang forth in the emptiness of night, echoing off the stone trees that
surrounded him, augmenting the volume of his maniacal, cackling howls.

She is alive! And so close!
Though the pain had abated for now, the draw to this familiar scent demanded his assiduity without relenting. He was only too happy to comply.
So close
.

He judged her location to be in the northern part of the Gonfrey Forest. He had searched nearly the entire Realm thrice over, including the North. His venturing was often truncated by the intolerable need to return to the Kail for even the slightest relief or to seek a new Charge from the High Duke. It was possible, though highly improbable, that she could have avoided his movements throughout the Realm. Some other explanation had to be the reason. But what that could be, he did not know. And Rembbran did not care. He had her now.

“Ancient Darkness, Dark Mother, I give all that I am to you and Helsya. Free me.”

Rembbran did not know what to expect next, but it was certainly not what happened. The scarred glyphs on his back between his shoulder blades, at the withers, glowed red-hot. He knelt from the searing pain and clenched his teeth but did not cry out. As it continued, his mind was flooded with information. Revelations. History. Scenes of the past. A group of people living on this land that he knew was long ago, far from now. They spoke a different language but in his mind he understood it; and, in his mind, he knew them to be
his
people, the way they were thousands of years before. There were no scars, no markings that covered their bodies. They were a delightful race, full of life. As his vision showed him the expanse of this land that was now called Senthara, he beheld that his people filled it completely. There were no other races, no Arlethians, no Senthary, no Hardacheons or any other race except his people. Helsyans.

Is it possible?
he thought.
This very land is Helsya? This must have been before even the Ancients ruled, before
—

His ponderings were cut short as the truth came surging into his heart. His mind could not believe what his heart now told him.
How is that possible? It has all been a lie, all deception!
The Ancients had not disappeared as all believed, only the way they once were, the way they lived and looked, had vanished. Rembbran looked down at his hands and forearms, turning them over.
How have we fallen so far?

The sights before his mind’s eye progressed until he witnessed the fall of his people, the Turning Away, as described to him by a voice. Only then did he recognize he was indeed hearing a voice, a narration. He scanned around him with haste but saw no one, just panoramic views of his vision. The scene of his people was horrific to witness, but he could not turn away. Generations passed as he witnessed a growing number of the population become wilder in nature, less refined. Racing before his mind were visions of different people rising up as leaders among them, teaching against the old ways.

One rose above them all, a woman of beauty so exquisite that even Rembbran, a Helsyan, felt such attraction to her. Helsyans did not have the same sensual attraction to beings that other races naturally had. The urge to reproduce had been severely dampened through the ages, brought on by self-loathing and a knowledge of what became of the mother. They had always been a doomed race, according to the legends.

Not always
, Rembbran now saw. The attraction to this prophetess had the same pull and strength of a
Dahlrak
, but with different desires. Her beauty was radiant, infectious, but not with light. Indeed, as he saw her speak and go about her thronging disciples, light seemed to dissipate, leaving a luminescent darkness around her. Over time it became a visual effect that caused her to appear ghostly. Rembbran witnessed the effect increase as her influence was more broadly accepted. The image of the woman stopped and turned to look at Rembbran, as if he were present among the crowds of his vision. So penetrating was her stare that he took a step back, startled.

“Do you know me?” she asked. Her voice had the timbre of wind howling through an open expanse. Musical.

Rembbran did not answer, thinking himself foolish to being spoken to by what was surely a dream of some kind.

“You do know me,” she said, not deterring her stare.

“I—” he started but could not seem to make his tongue work properly. A melody accompanied the vision. Haunting. Captivating. She smiled and lowered her head slightly but still stared at Rembbran. More penetrating, more devious. He found his heart racing from both sensual excitement as well as apprehension. Could it be a Helsyan was feeling the seeds of fear?

Noxmyra!
he screamed in his mind. The woman’s tight smile broadened, taking on a more wicked and feral shape. She laughed with dark harmony and the ground under her, green grass and fertile soil, turned dark and hard. Rembbran was in a trance. He had never felt so alive as he watched the Dark’s Influence bring decay and entropy. The people who worshipped Noxmyra became strong and powerful. Ferocious without restraint.

The vision swept on before him and Noxmyra disappeared from his sight but strands of the strange song remained. Under her teachings, the people became more decadent as the years passed and the land started to change.

Cycling
, Rembbran realized.

A faction separated themselves from the largely apostate masses and refused to relinquish the old ways—the ways of the Ancients—but they were overwhelmed and about to be destroyed completely when he saw a change come upon the most devout followers of Noxmyra. A rival people rose in the land and warred against his people. They were larger, fiercer.
Hardacheons
. Rembbran had never seen them before, having been born long after their extinction, but he knew they were Hardacheons all the same.

From the north they covered the land like ghosts, carrying with them powers and Influences that enslaved his people, changed them. Their skin became riddled with scars and symbols, marring their once pure visage. And their strength, though still present, was now tempered by a power of some create. Their women became barren and their men were forced to breed with slaves
the conquerors had brought with them, but the men could not produce seed to create more women. Only boys were born and the women slaves that bore the Helsyan offspring perished in the effort. The male babies were born with the same marred cicatrix over their skin that their fathers bore. The Hardacheons brought these curses with them, but deep inside Rembbran knew it was his own people that had cursed themselves. The consequences of the Turning Away. The Light they had once served turned against them, limiting them by degrees that prevented their outright dominance.

A haunting laugh surrounded him and he could watch no more. Grabbing his head between his hands he shook it from side to side, trying to dislodge the hellish vision from him.

“No more!” The pain on his back was searing and the reddish light that shone from his one unique glyph illuminated his immediate surroundings. Darker than the light of fire, it was nonetheless visible and radiant. Near the apex of his physical capacity to deal with the acute pain, which capacity was substantial, Rembbran heard a word spoken. His name. Not in Sentharian, but in an ancient tongue that he instantly had command over.
Dralghus. I am Dralghus
.

Energy and adrenaline rushed through him, supporting him against the pain, against the transfiguration taking place. The glyph at his withers burned brighter, the dark red glow increasing in intensity to a whitish yellow luminescence. Tissues and muscles were singed and fused from the heat and arteries erupted as his blood boiled, forging a new landscape within him. The pain was no longer punishing, but abstergent. Fortifying.
It is my name
, he realized, referring to the unique symbol on his back.
A name glyph
. No, more than just a name.
My identity
.

When it was done, he arose. Vapors steamed all around him, the stone earth black and charred beneath him. It had fissured from the heat. He stood more firm and taller than he thought he ever had before. He felt lighter, more nimble. More lethal, if that was possible. Free. Though he labored under no
Dahlrak
, his body
remained in its Charged state. His muscles were cut and thick, senses heightened, his drive for carnage an unquenchable thirst. He would be the Ancient Dark’s instrument in cleansing the land and reclaiming Helsya.

“I now serve the Ancient Dark, Mother of Helsya,” he proclaimed. “The
Urlenthi
’s claim on me is broken. I shall now set my own
Dahlraks
and keep my own counsel. The Ancient Darkness is a kind master.”

The Kerr youngling girl he now saw as an inevitability. He would not seek her at this instant, however. No, for the power of the Ancient Dark and the shackles of the
Urlenthi
loosed, the agony of the unfulfilled
Dahlrak
from a previous master held no sway. He looked internally and sought his other former master, the one that had tormented him relentlessly without release or leniency. He felt for Agony and found her squirming to conceal herself in the deep recesses of his mind, fleeing in fear.

It was as if he were a majestic and terrible eagle tracking a field mouse running scared in a valley far below. He swooped down in his mind and caught Agony in his talons, crushing and piercing her. Breaking her. She squealed and he rejoiced at the feeling of hot blood flowing between his claws in his mind. A tight feral smile of satisfaction formed on his face. It was done and the agony inside him was dead.
She
was dead. A more euphoric pleasure waded through the currents of his being than he had ever before experienced. A
Dahlrak’s
ecstasy paled in comparison to this new height within him.