Year 219. Acocaea - Khirn

THE RUNEMASTER

The Runemaster blocked the swing from Jira ne’Jiral with a raised forearm, trusting the last reserves of the last ward he had cast in the seconds after this renewed fight was engaged to protect him from the blade. It did, but only just. Erik Apa danced back, his large frame once more belying the true agility he possessed through skill and enhancements. Jira gave him no time to rest, lunging at him with savage strikes from a gleaming longsword. His armor had been utterly ruined by this fight, stained in blood and dented by attacks, weakened by all that had occurred—real and infernal. It would not withstand any more blows from his enemies.

Erik went on the defensive, blocking everything with the intent to retreat to any of his forces still standing rather than looking for a weak point to strike his enemy down. His teeth bared and eyes wild with hate, Erik was a dervish on the streets, his armored feet slapped through rows of bones and meat, creating ripples through ankle-high puddles of blood. Jira ne’Jiral hounded after him the entire way. In the five minutes of their bout, Jira allowed him only three seconds of breathing room.

“You will not win this day!” she hissed, breaking his defense with a feinting lunge and upward slice through his thigh. “You will die here.”

Erik roared and dropped to his back, rolling like a boulder backward towards a pile of halved men. Jira’s downward strike missed by centimeters, but it was enough to allow the Runemaster to thrust up with the haft of his spear into her gut. He followed this up with another crack across her jaw from his fist. A visible shockwave vibrated from the impact of the hit. Jira remained standing and bounded over the sweep of the spear with a standing flip onto her feet. Her eyes were wide with shock, matching Erik’s flabbergasted expression. No words were shared between them as Jira pressed the offensive once more, slowly and finally being joined by the member of the Blessed Harbingers.

Loukas Tamasos’ matched her ferocity but was a touch slower. Where she was swift and precise, Loukas was methodical and oppressive. The Runemaster growled, bleated, and hollered as he was pressed back further through the streets...

And then was thrust into a building by a charging blur of black hair and horrific muscle. He rolled along the ground as the debris of the wall pelted him from the burst. Looking up at the hole made in the wall by the thing that had attacked him, Erik Apa cursed in his tongue as a Drayheller — the Drayheller — appeared before him, armored in black plate. A massive weapon was strapped to its back.

“Erik Apa,” it said in a melodious voice. “It is time for you to die.”

“You all keep saying that, and none of you have managed to do it yet,” Erik observed. He rose to his feet on wobbling legs, gritting his teeth while a blood trail continued to form from the gash Jira had made through his thigh plate. “I’m starting to think that you are suffering either a lack of skill or enough care to follow through on that threat.”

The Drayheller had appeared in front of him before he could finish blinking. He had never taken his eyes off of it. It had just appeared. “Silence,” it said, reaching for his neck with a single outstretched hand. Erik Apa, the Runemaster of Dekun, Maprapeyni, screamed in a voice shriller than a hummingbird’s whistle.

He flew back with a kick of his good leg, slamming hard into the wall behind him. It cracked, and part of the ceiling above chipped and fell onto him in slivers of wood and dust. The Drayheller was throwing its leg at him by the time he finished his blink. Erik moved his head to the left, falling to his side from the momentum of the beast’s kick into the wall, and scrambled away to roll to his feet with the spear at the ready.

“Very well then. You might be different,” he admitted with a rueful grin. “I like it. Will make for a good—”

The Drayheller swung an ornate war hammer the size of his arm for his face. A swift upward batting of his spear shifted the impact of the blow to his pauldron. It was still enough to shatter the bones and drop him to his knees. The Drayheller kicked him in the chest, breaking his armor and shattering his ribs across every conceivable inch. Erik couldn’t breathe. His lungs were bruised and pierced by bone and cartilage. His throat was dry and clogged. His eyes were wide and red and stinging. The Drayheller stood over him and swung down for his head. Erik Apa spluttered spit and blood through his teeth as he shot his hand up to catch the hammer. His arm was surrounded by a wreathe of shadowed flame the moment he caught it. The hammer continued to travel down and nearly snapped Erik’s arm in half anyway from the momentum.

“What?” the Drayheller gasped.

“What?” Erik Apa muttered.

The hammer was stopped. Erik Apa was alive.

“Decide...fate. Who...will be...me?” the old man said. “Who...will be...catalyst?”

He roared with what energy he had left, a blast of multicolored flame coiling up from his arm and around the hammer. The Drayheller released it as it was shunted straight into the ceiling with the velocity of an arrow.

“That’s new—” he said.

The Drayheller snatched him by his throat and lifted him off the ground with one hand. He felt its claws snapping past the metal of his gorget, the protective leathers underneath his armor, and into the delicate flesh of his neck. Blood trailed down from the incisions caused by its grip. Panic filled him. Multicolored flame roared around his arm in a punch for its snout. It connected and knocked it off balance, but its grip remained firm. Tightening. Darkness began to creep into his vision. His veins began to bend, blood cells popping under immense pressure. His face turned purple, red, blue, and all other manner of dying complexion.

“Decide...fate. Who...will be...me?” the old man said. “Who...will be...catalyst?”

Another punch. An uppercut from Hell’s depths itself. The Drayheller let go of its hold on his neck, dropping him to the ground as it grasped its jaw. An audible snap crack hit his ears. Had he broken its mandible? Dislocated it, at least. He cared little for the specifics, instead choosing to rush the gigantic beast with a tackle of his intact shoulder that breached the back wall of the building. Both tumbled to the streets, colliding with dueling groups of Dekunians, Belanorians, and Aslofidorians.

“Tohyi” one of the Dekunians shouted, fear in their voice.

“Maprapeyni!” another exclaimed.

The Drayheller was the first up, but the Runemaster was the first to attack. Flames in the shade of red lunged from his fingers as he launched another punch, and then another, and another. Each connected with varying degrees of success, keeping the beast from harming him any further for the time being.

A sharp CRACK resounded from the back of his head as a blunt object struck against it. He fell to his knees, rolling over in time to avoid the descending blade of Jira ne’Jiral. “Fuck!” he cursed, barely leaping to his feet and nearly tumbling from the pain of his injuries. “Can I have one fight without the interference of one of you other shits?”

“No,” Jira grinned, lunging at him.

Weaves of fire broiled the air around him, shielding him from the blitz of slashes Jira ne’Jiral unleashed on him. He backed away, pushing into the dueling groups with fire that burned flesh and melted armor on its own whims. Screams filled his ears, smoke his eyes, and ash his lungs. He gasped and choked, throwing his arm in wild motions for the shapes he thought were Jira ne’Jiral or the accursed beast. He only hit his own men, the Belanorians, and any Aslofidorian stupid enough to be caught in this hellfire.

Another shape appeared, one more distinct than the shifting glimpses of maybe. He growled defiantly, throwing one last punch at the woman who had chased him this entire battle. Yvon ne’Banuus struck his arm away and slashed down his chest with a screaming carve of her axe.

Darkness flooded him. Pain followed. Jira ne’Jiral appeared next, skewering his chest with her sword. Blood spewed from his mouth, as did a gurgling rumble. The Drayheller came next from the smoke and ash. His fires died. It reared back its arm and threw its fist at his head.

He felt a crunch. Blood pooled behind his eyes, tinting the darkness.

Then, there was nothing.

Year 220. Amphe, Capital of Duke Polydius Audax - Khirn

CRIUS ALEXANDER TOTALLIS

Crius Alexander Totallis stood hunched over his desk with his hands clutching a steaming ceramic cup of milk and coffee as twenty-six wax candles and four torches lit the expanse of his office. The desk, a polished redwood imported from Aqella, was covered in countless old manuscripts, old scrolls, old individual pieces of parchment, and old relics from ages he had dated back to the time of the Golden Lords and even ages before that, though no written evidence to that particular chronology existed in his texts. His robes colored a deep purple with maroon embroidery and golden edges, contained countless pockets further holding more of these items, adding substantial weight onto a frail, elderly body.

Of course, that frail, elderly body was nowhere near such a state, but no one in his immediate or remote vicinity needed to know that. They only needed to see him as the wise professor of history and the esteemed Holy Bishop of the Righteous Church of Amphe.

Crius took a long drink from his coffee, ignoring the burning of it in his throat. He was unaffected by it, in truth. Something was missing from his desk, and twelve minutes went by before he clicked his tongue twice and turned to his assistant. “Nara, dear boy, did you ever find me the Second Volume of Mani Ehkma’s Treatise on the Symbiotic Relationships of Manticores, Lions, and Scorpions?”

A small voice with an air of trustworthiness answered back from behind one of the many rows of books the Holy Bishop had amassed over his long, long, long years living in this city. More books than anyone else would have been able to compile using natural methods. “Yes, Your Excellency. I placed it with your other books on the subject two weeks ago.”

Crius nodded without looking at Nara-ward as he appeared from behind the rows. His braces' distinct click and clack chipped away at the Holy Bishop’s immense patience. “Ah, yes. Good. Good.” One thing did chip more at his patience. “And stop calling me that. Crius is fine.”

Nara-ward appeared at the edge of Crius’ vision. What was once a crippled mass of bone and meat had been successfully reformed into something of a functional human being. The Holy Bishop was thankful he could remember the alchemical recipe for mending the boy's injuries. “What about Lord Totallis?” he asked with a sense of sarcasm.

Crius drank his coffee. “I am not mimicking the attitudes of our continents' Lords and Ladies. That just sounds pretentious. Crius is fine.”

“I’ve called you by some title or another during my entire service to you. It seems odd to address you so informally.”

Another drink, though he now looked at the young man with a discerning glance. What had been a youthful, freckled face topped with ashen hair was now angular crowned by a braided topknot. Religious text stretched across the clean-shaven parts of his scalp in tattooed lines in the style of Tahrir. He had chosen the lines personally from Crius’ old edition of the Tahririan Codices. “You’ve proven more useful to me as a servant in your crippled state than full able-bodied men have before your time,” he said. “If anyone has earned the right to address me in an ‘informal’ manner, it is you, Nara-ward. Now, fetch me that book, please. I believe I am onto something.”

Nara-ward bowed his head and vanished into the shadows of another row. “What are you searching for anyway, if I may ask?”

“Possible connections to the reports the Duke has been receiving. Tell this to no one, but his forces in Tahrir have encountered all three of those things. Scorpions and lions are one thing. The nation has the landscape for it, but Manticores? That is an Aqellan creature. How it came to our shores is confounding. Unless it did not come to our shores.”

“How do you mean?”

Another drink and, after ensuring that Nara-ward was not looking, Crius snapped his fingers and filled the cup with fresh liquid. “Many ancient, ineffectual scholars who studied Aqella believed that Manticores were created by some mutation of the genus of both insect and feline. But that is where the agreements end with me, and conjecture begins with them. One scholar suggested they could have somehow mated, and Manticores came into being. Most others believe they are a natural mutation. That is a load of shit. And frankly, disgusting. Mutations of that level do not occur without significant unnatural or outside influence, especially if mating is somehow involved, which it isn’t. Alchemy. Abjuration of nature’s laws. Evocation of ancient spells. Illusions on a different beast to spread fear. The possible causes are limitless, save for it being an occurrence via mating. Or being natural.”

Nara-ward appeared in the light once more, carrying a thin book. “So what do you believe caused them to be made?”

Crius took the book with a bony hand. “Shifts in the world’s tides of arcaeno.”

“Eh?”

Crius placed the book on his desk, immediately flipping it open to the page he needed. He began reading it, tracing the texts with his fingers. “Arcaeno flows throughout our world like the tides of an ocean or the stream of a river. Despite our species’ desire to be rid of it and worship God instead, it exists and will always exist. But, it can be manipulated. Torn. Shredded. Remade. Repurposed. Like any metal or plant. Manipulate it too much, however, and there are bound to be consequences. Alterations to the world spawned from an energy source stretched too thin or made too compact. Explosions of magic that change and—”

Nara-ward read the book with Crius. “Mutate.”

“Exactly. And many creatures in Aqella have known origins in such events. The Chimera is one such horrific monstrosity, as are the Hydra, the Giants, and so on.”

“Why would the scholars believe that Manticores are different from those creatures if they knew about them?”

“Well, they either didn’t, or they simply lacked the interest to research them.”

“Ineffectual, as you said.”

“As I said. Now, many other creatures do not have their origins known, but that does not mean they are not the same. Which means...”

“The Manticores were made by someone using too much arcaeno? They’re an accident?”

“Yes. Or, worse yet, they were made by someone purposefully.”

“So are you saying that Tahrir has someone using arcaeno to the point of creating Manticores?”

“Indeed. That or its natural reserves of arcaeno are so skewed from ancient history that it is still creating problems today. Think of all the ruins they’ve been uncovering. Ruins that date back before the Golden Lords of Humanity, like many of my relics.”

“So what does that mean for the Duke’s forces there? For the King’s forces?”

“It means they are likely to make things worse if they discover the source. Read this part.”

Nara-ward bent down to read the text easier as Crius drank his cup empty. A subtle snap filled it for the tenth time. “‘Manticores, like many other beasts of its kind in Aqella, elect to remain in one place for most of their life provided enough food and sport are within acceptable proximity. Unusually, however, the Manticore often chooses to remain close to its place of birth rather than find a new home after months or years of a nomadic lifestyle, spreading the borders of its species’ territory outward over many generations.’ So, if they’re encountering Manticores now, then the source of their creation must be nearby.”

Crius smiled warmly and spoke rapidly. “Indubitably. Whether that is a person, place, thing, or phenomenon, I have no clue. But, I am certain that the fools there will only make it worse by meddling with it without a guided hand. My hand. Your hand. Our hands. This means we must now be prepared to travel to stop them and help them.”

Nara-ward blinked and shook his head, taken aback. “What? What? How? What?”

Crius drank his cup empty in one long gulp, belched, and threw the cup away into the shadows of his office. “I have already proposed to the Duke to have a...special allowance to travel to Tahrir and meet up with his forces if I believe I have enough cause to do so. The benefits of being the Holy Bishop, eh?”

Nara-ward held up his hands, slightly shaking them. “But what about dangers? Expenses? My condition?”

“We will be protected, my boy. Do not worry. And paid for. We should be okay.”

“But, all of your current projects? The Church! Won’t they need you?”

“I will have Father Thras cover for me during this time. It will only be for a few years. Think of the worldly experiences you will gain. The culture of Tahrir you will absorb. The magic of arcaeno. Oh, it will be so much fun.”

“But—”

Crius was already moving to pack several bags full of maps, ledgers, and guides. His face was bright with joy and excitement. He had traveled the Divine Road for pilgrimage many times over his life, but this would be the first in five hundred years that he would be able to leave the confines of his role as Holy Bishop. No memories to erase. No history to rewrite. Not this time. This time, he would be making it, and in Tahrir no less. How he had longed to go there when the time was right. Was the time right now? Was it his chance to bring things back to the way they were? Back to their prime when he was in his? The presence of these aberrations—his children—had to be the sign that it was the right time. Right? There was only one way to find out. Deep underground. In the Athenaeum. In that prison.

“—So much worry! Calm down, my boy. It will be fun. Think of what secrets we will uncover. I hope you are set to go home, Nara-ward. It’s going to be quite a journey.”