The Chronicles of Valana Volume 3: Open Doom
by AB
Chapter 10
Open Doom
Enthronos woke up in the warm, comfortable bed in his chamber in Gol'Lothin's Royal Palace.
The warmth from the covers and the fireplace increased by the presence of a very much naked Nirasala next to him, in his nightly embrace.
Waking too and propping up his head up on his hand and elbow he watched her sleeping visage and rhythmic breathing with a goofy smile on his face.
Sometime later, impulsively, he decided he couldn't take it any longer and hugged her, purring like a kitten, placing his head on the back of her neck.
"Hey!" He giggled, a few minutes passed, feeling her tickling his ribs.
Giggling and wiggling, with her offering just enough resistance, he managed to hold both her hands above her head whilst pushing his hips between her warm legs.
His body shivering, he brought his lips to hers. Like hungry wolves they proceeded to eating each other's tongues out, sucking and kissing.
He shoved his hips forward, with Nirasala reciprocating. This would not be the first time nor the last they coupled.
"Back in Gel'anr it'd require time and a poem to get to this point, but hey no complaints here!" He whimpered, finally pushing inside her, after some required teasing and foreplay.
"In Varaghia time is a precious commodity as is life, so to give out a poem we must… sample a lot first." She groaned back passing her hands around his neck.
"So… ugh… I'm but a sample, eh?" He began to move inside her.
"Maybe, maybe not." She returned with a sly smile, before kissing him passionately, moving her hips to match his.
He moved his lips to her developing breasts suckling and gently biting them, her hands on his head and her legs strangling his waist.
It did not take long for Enthronos to deposit his love's seed deep in her.
They snuggled in embrace catching their breaths until a knock on the door broke their peace.
"Milady, thy father seeks thee. He is in the throne room." A messenger told them, his head not directly looking in the room. It was no secret what young Elves do, nor was it forbidden, how else were they to find their mate if they did not experiment, so privacy was assured and provided.
"We'll be there in a moment." She replied him, and began to get ready.
They walked to the throne room, a room dressed in black and grey granite leading people's stares to the center and the throne of pine. Called thus as a huge pine try fifty meters high stood there, the throne carved right into the living bark, branches and twigs serving as arm and leg holders. Legend had it the tree was connected to the King of Gol'Lothin, so its leaves changing colours not on the seasons but on his emotions when he sat on the throne.
Enthronos had not had many opportunities to examine if the legend held true, but as he entered the chamber the leaves lay dead on the floor around him.
"Humans declared war on us, a month ago. The truce is no more and the army's ready."
"It was a wonderful month… it couldn't last longer could it?" Enthronos whispered to himself.
"My King," He spoke up louder. "I'm sure your daughter has told you of the day she found me in the forest near the seer's mount?"
"She has, although not all the details are clear to me, or her."
"I can help with that, I have been avoiding it because it would only add oil to the fire, as my father likes to say, but since war has been declared on both ends… " Enthronos waved his hand in a circular counter clock wise motion whispering in Elvish.
He groaned as a green-blue line of ether connected his mind to a black vortex forming in front of him. With a spell cast by Enthronos the black vortex turned to a water like surface projecting his memory of that day.
As the memory proceeded gasps sounded from around the chamber, the memory projection did not only contain of what had transpired before and after he was stubbed by Karthlang but also during his experience with yesterday's magic and if his mind had been unable to interpret all of it properly, the Elves present in the throne room had even greater problem comprehending what they were seeing. The only clear bits were his conversation with the entity and even that was heavily cryptic in nature that most surrendered all effort in trying to understand its meaning.
"That… mercenary was hired to kill my son… and the man who hired him is the Crown Prince of Ygramor?" The very tree trembled as King Fornworth gripped the arms of the throne tight, his face almost disfigured from rage.
"We will not just meet them in battle, nor do I want a victory against the Humans where we push them off our lands and remain there, anymore. This time we end it. By the end of this war either Elves or Humans in Varaghia will be no more."
"No! Don't you get it? Someone wants you in perpetual war, someone or something has elevated this ambitious full to wealth and intrigue and afforded him a large fortune, so he could in proxy fund efforts to keep Humans and Elves in never-ending war. They staged attacks on Human settlements to make it as if Elves attacked, and they attacked Elves to cause strife and hatred. They want you to attack Humans." Enthronos yelled, his hands in fists by his sides.
"Then they have succeeded. A Human joint army from all their Kingdoms is moving north to the Seer's mount and that is where we will meet them in battle and kill off the Humans' ability to wage war and their beloved seer in one fell swoop before we descend on their cities with the vengeance of a hundred thousand years of warfare, suffering, death and hatred." King Fornworth stood from his throne.
"Seer? The third one, here?" Enthronos said in a lower voice.
"Third one?" Nirasala overheard him.
"There were two more, one in Valana, one in Elaria, the continent to the south of Valana. My father killed them both as they served the Master of the Dark Generals. The Seer in Valana knew but had been deceived and the Seer in Elaria knew not she had been. Which means the third one… this one has willingly given herself to the Darkness."
"What's that?" Nirasala held his hand in hers.
"A prophesy the Elarian Seer gave my father long ago. So… it was all a deception, him coming after me? Or is it two birds with one stone? Tangled web he has weaved, my father."
"I don't understand." Said Nirasala.
"My father… he is in Varaghia, he has come to kill the third Seer, he has come to slay her Master."
"He will never get close to her mount, the Humans guard it to well." King Fornworth told him.
"They do not know he's coming for her and to be honest? Even if they knew… my father will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and they can't comprehend the magic he can bring forth, and if I know my father at all, he will have his Hunters aid him in ways the Humans can't connect to the Seer, enigmas inside riddles inside deceptions." Enthronos shrugged.
Hunters? In Varaghia? Varaghia never had them before. But more Importantly… the line of Glothoin still rules from Gel'anr? The Snow Elves of Varaghia have not had a High-King for the longest time." King Fornworth replied looking at his daughter with sadness. "How I long to lay my eyes on the Elven isles, even if once."
"I want to join you, when you leave to meet the Humans. If both armies are heading for the Seer's mount and that's where my father is heading, then I want to be there as well."
"That is a given, young one." King Fornworth told him. "All able-bodied males and females above the age of twelve will and do with only exceptions those who will remain behind… to either care for our young or make sure the Humans can't get hold of them in case of our defeat, no more Elves will be sold to slavery, that I promise you. This ends here one way or another." He said and left the room.
"Secure the flanks! Secure the cavalry's flanks!" King Trael Lados of Qazameria yelled to the human armies coming up from behind them. The battle had been going on for the better part of two hours, with losses on both sides.
"If we don't sever their reinforcements from the sea, none of this will matter, we will be overrun sooner or later!" Yoro'l of Rod'eran replied amidst the chaos, hacking left and right at anything that moved and wasn't friendly.
Lados threw a dagger which passed inches away from Yoro'l's face to embed itself on a four-legged creature's head. It dropped dead.
"Thonril's waiting for something, watch your surroundings and have faith." Lados told the young King while pirouetting with a sword at each hand, things around him dropping dead as he went.
Stenoros and Kermenos' backs touched as they fought on the front line alongside with the Elf bears of Gel'Glidorn and Gel'anr's warrior archers.
Stenoros hid it better than Kermenos, how tired he was getting.
"Father, I hope you are ready, this can't go any longer. Your orders said two hours… we've given you two hours." Thonril launched a spear at a mounted Oghellen Human soldier near Stenoros.
"Nailal lor althond!" He yelled and with a spell his voice travelled across the battlefield. "Kings of men, have your armies protect us while we sing their walls to oblivion!"
In maneuvers trained to perfection the Elves closed ranks behind the Human armies coming closer together, so they were now shoulder to shoulder, all of them.
"Protect the Elves! Let nothing near 'em!" Forna's Duke yelled to his lancers.
In practiced synchronisation the Elves begun to sing in their tongue, their eyes closed, their voice otherworldly.
At first all was still, and yet animate in battle, then as time passed and verses spoken the ground began to shake, waves became larger in the ocean behind the citadel and the wind picked up pace. The shaking became so rough Kermenos lost his footing, falling on the ground, wishing this would end.
The earthquake seemed to have a mind of its own, moving as if by will to the Citadel's walls, leaving the rest of the battlefield behind at ease. With every verse and word, the stones keeping the walls high rumbled and trembled until with a thundering roar the fortifications begun to collapse from top to bottom, inwards.
Then all was silent.
The Elves stopped their singing and unsheathed their weapons.
The first figures to appear behind the dust and debris were the Bishops at the sides of the Arch-Bishop mounted on huge black bat-like creature with red eyes and thick, sharp fangs.
"Your audacity knows no bounds, so be it." The Arch-Bishop looked less than pleased.
Thonril grinned clearing the muck from his face. "All talk, come and face me, fiend!"
"Arg-balang ladoch feour randokog!" The Bishops yelled banging their staffs on the ground once. The Speakers in the Human and Elven ranks understood it as the fell-tongue of Oghelle. "Bind their souls to Darkness!"
The Bishops' staffs begun to glow a grey-black light from the pearls on top.
"Sagurn valoch sar!" Make this so! – the Arch-Bishop chanted, his staff connecting to those of his Bishops via thin miasma tendrils.
There was a flash of miasma-light and a second later the Elves fell on the soil, clutching their heads or hearts, screaming in excruciating pain. Riders falling from their horses, bears changed back to Elf-forms while Humans found themselves unable to move, completely paralyzed.
The Oghellen troops, creatures and Humans alike stood their ground, neither retreating nor engaging the immobilised Human and Elven soldiers.
"Fundigorok," the Arch-Bishop addressed the Dark General behind him. "Bring me the heads of the Elven Kings, start with the audacious one."
And Fundigorok began to walk, slowly unrushed towards Thonril clutching his head trying his best to deny them screaming, he was Aer'andil's son, he would not give in to pain so easy.
The Arch-Bishop cackled low, and pointing his staff at Thonril he cast something. Thonril felt every fiber, cell and part of his existence tearing apart at the seams, shredding from the inside out. Blood came out of his mouth and nose, his eyes bloodshot and drained of colour.
He whimpered but did not scream. "I will start with thee, Aer'andil's eldest. Your soul! I want it! Your spirit! I want it!" The Arch-Bishop screamed in malice.
Despite the unbearable pain Thonril forced himself to stand, smiling in defiance.
"Do you like surprises? I like surprises, especially when I'm causing them." He then spoke a sentence, sending a flare of magic up in the misty sky. Mist had come in from the sea.
A second later the mist dissolved, revealing a massive fleet of ships.
"Welcome, the combined fleets of the Elven isles, Human Kingdoms under the King of Udala with his fleet." Thonril fell to the ground, exhausted from the effort and the pain.
"Off with his head!" The Arch-Bishop shrieked, now clearly enraged.
Fundigorok towered above him, a malevolent grin on his decaying face and rotting, purple lips. He raised his sword ready to strike.
"This is the place. We have arrived." His sword, dripping with dark blood and miasma by his side.
"Wait for me in the lake's northern shore." Minaroth and Vicanoth nodded, sheathing their stained weapons, behind them a messy trail of gore, guts, blood, and death littered the otherwise snow-white environment.
Aer'andil limped across the permafrost and lake encased in perpetual ice. Reaching the island mount in the center he began to ascend the rocky surface to the top.
"It has taken us ten thousand years to get here, old friend. Are you ready?" He aloud. A sudden breeze of warm wind waved his hair around. He smiled. "Then let us end this." His sword transformed into a bow.
A deafening roar followed by a large shadow descending from above them broke Fundigorok's swing.
"Death to Darkness!" A battle roar came just before a huge brown-scaled dragon with a head full of horns and sharp teeth fell on Fundigorok breathing fire, mounted on him the King of Dara. Behind him all of Dara's Dragon Rider battalions in the air, and Dara's military on the ground joined the Alliance armies.
"Darans!! Engage the Oghellen force, show them our mettle! Make them fear us!" The king bellowed.
Ten thousand dragons swooped from on high breathing fire onto the enemy's ranks, their riders throwing javelins, arrows, and spears into them, as the rest of Dara's forces moved into position.
With a scream of hatred, the Bishops, and the Arch-Bishop, covered by a magical barrier protecting them from Wyrm-fire extended their magic until the Daran forces lay on the soil, in pain.
Enraged by the pain of their riders, the Dragons landed, unaffected by the Bishops' magics, unleashing claws, armoured tails, fangs, and fire on the Oghellen forces, wreaking havoc.
A dog-like creature landed on Hadelfordoroth , Daran King's dragon fore shoulder. He grabbed it with his other claw-laden paw throwing it on the ground and bathing it in fire before returning his attention to Fundigorok.
"Three of us there were. One knew and committed willingly even if fooled. One was fooled without her knowledge even if with a hateful heart. The third does not know even if she has a will of malice and iron. The puppet will kill you for you to kill him." Aer'andil walked inside the dark cave, droplets of water falling around him, slowly forming stalactites, moss covering the floor. "That is the prophesy one of the other two seers gave me, before I killed her."
A young woman sat on a bed of rock and lichen. She was plainly dressed, with a wreath of white flowers on her head. What held Aer'andil's interest, though, was the black pearl on her lap and another, smaller one beneath her feet, glowing white light. "Micraal, you succeeded indeed in this part of your mission." Aer'andil thought to himself.
"You have come then, to my final abode. But do you have it in you? To kill me? Do you know what is required to kill me?" The woman said, though her voice was not of a woman's in her mid-twenties.
"I have killed your Generals, one outside just now, killed by life's true name, released from his prison only weeks before. My son will kill your last one in Valana, come out. I know you lie here in Gilthian. Come out and let us end this." Scorn and contempt dripping like venom from Aer'andil's lips.
"You have looked for me for so long… are you still the boy I tortured back in Fadria's castle ruins?" Gilthian stood before him.
"I have grown since. And I am ready to kill you, yes."
"Open Doom then, break the pact. It is the only way." Gilthian replied him.
"One thing at the time. First, I have to kill your Dark General vessel and the final Seer, then… we'll see." Aer'andil lost no time, took an arrow from the quiver on the left side of his waist, and fired it at the Seer, plunging it right into her heart, the black pearl shattered.
"No prophesy for you, I require no more prophesies from Seers."
She laughed. "But a prophesy you'll get, one last one. Victory here means nothing even if achieved. To truly defeat the First of all evils, killing it is not enough. The light within you will turn to Darkness if it returns to the Spirit-planes. Your death is required." Life left her lips with the prophesy's last word. The pearl rolled at her feet from her lifeless hands.
"I know." Aer'andil placed his bow around his left shoulder, his gaze turning to Gilthian.
"There is a line in the prophesy that started us on this… adventure that I find most interesting. You do remember that prophesy, yes?"
Outside the Human armies arrived on the lake's southern shore. An hour later Minaroth and Vicanoth saw the Elven banners appear on the horizon beyond the lake's northern shore.
"I remember it, yes." Gilthian unsheathed his sickle-like swords.
"To kill what is neither here or there, one must understand what is here and there.
Neither here or there, only celestial essence can bring there.
Neither there or here, only fire can bring it here.
Neither here or there, it cannot exist in here and there.
To Undo become Yesterday's magic."
Aer'andil recited the prophesy's last verse.
"I find this most intriguing, this has guided my actions since I first heard it. To Undo become Yesterday's magic ."
"You will never find celestial essence and without it fire is useless."
"You have lived for a million years and, yet you do not understand, do you? None of it matters, the whole prophesy is pointless, meaningless. Glothoin's wife, tricked by you to breach the pact, knew. She knew this was the only way to slip what was really important past you without you knowing. So, that's what she did, she waited until it was time and she gave this prophesy to my father, just so she could let slip this one line. All the rest of it is inconsequential."
"The prophesy tells you what you need to kill me. Breach the pact and let the Host of the Aeternae defeat me." Gilthian sneered.
"Ten there were, one turned to Evil, one was Darkness, First of Evils, one resisted and declared war on its brothers, three were killed, one cast into exile, one exiled itself and two were assimilated, the remaining possess not the combined power to control the hosts of the Spiritum." The second Seer told me this, her effort in hatred to cause me suffering. She thought she was telling me the Aeternae are not strong enough to help me kill you. In truth and in her arrogance, she failed to understand what she had really told me."
"And what was that?"
"Why you really want the pact breached. What you really desire out of all of this. She confirmed what I theorized and aided me finalize my plans."
Gilthian remained silent.
"Ten Spiritum Aeternae there were. One turned Evil, and was thus killed by the others. One was Darkness. One declared war on Darkness, thus the civil war that has waged ever since in the spirit planes commenced. Three were killed since. The Darkness was cast into exile, "cursed" to walk the planes of mortals for all eternity. One exiled itself, its reasons its own. And two were assimilated. Only One remains up there and it does not have the power required to sway the forces of the Spiritum in my favour, nor do these forces have enough power to defeat you. You, my dear, intent and want me to break the pact, deceived into thinking your fellow-spirits can kill you, so you can assimilate them all. I know what you want out of all of this."
"I will never understand how mortals like you can conduct Yesterday's magic, when I cannot, when we the Aeternae cannot. How can you!" The Aeternae inside Gilthian demanded.
"As for the Celestial Essence? Look beneath you, it connects to this one." Aer'andil pointed behind Gilthian's robed legs to the white glowing orb, revealing its counterpart from within his fur coat.
"How… where did you find this?"
"You kept bending the rules of the pact, without breaking them. So, your self-exiled brethren decided to do so as well, and while exiled he used the embodiment ceremony performed by King Lados of Qazameria making me his host. So, now with an Aeternae inside me, and knowledge in my mind I have all that I require to end you. permanently." Aer'andil smiled. The smile of a spider, her prey finally caught in her web.
Gilthian attacked him. "Scared are you, now?" Aer'andil avoided him with ease.
"I have no time for this." Aer'andil punched Gilthian square on his face with a quick left hook. Making some space between them.
"Fire."
"Fire cannot hurt me, young King. I am not Naire." Gilthian commented seeing Aer'andil turning into fire.
"I know. Water." Water and fire mixed together as recognition started to dawn on Gilthian's visage.
"You begin to understand now, yes? What I am going to do?" Aer'andil's smile broadened. "Air." A gust of unworldly wind blew Gilthian back several meters, against the cave's walls, behind the Seer's dead body. "Soil." Aer'andil's body became more complex with every yesterday's magic word he spoke, the words mixing together, creating concepts even the Aeternae's mind could not comprehend.
Outside, by the lake's shores Humans and Elves alike watched in awe as lights of unknown colours escaped the cave's entrance, bathing the lake's iced surface in iridescent caustics.
"Life." All round him flowers grew, the very air becoming alive as his hair trailed the very essence of life while the Seer's mount filled with plant life that had no right being during the heart of winter. Every Human and Elf gasped and kneeled, thinking themselves in the presence of a miracle or a god-like activity.
Gilthian tried to move, but he could not, trapped in the white pearl's glowing prison, as he had been since Micraal placed it there, ten thousand years ago. Now it restricted it more.
"Death." The veil tore around the fringes of his lips, creating a fracture at the edges of his figure. The wails and Chants from the souls of the dead beyond it filled the air.
"You may know these, but you know not the one required to bend the Spiritum to your will!" Gilthian, or rather his Master within him cried. It was not a taunt but fear. The fly caught in the web, unable to move.
"True, but a friend of mine has had ten thousand years' worth of time to discover all and everything he could about what Spiritum is. And all I need is nothing." Aer'andil responded him.
"Lucas, have you a word for me, old friend?"
"Your friendship to him ended! I saw it!" Fear turning to despair.
"What? Him challenging me in Elaria? You saw what I wanted you to see." Lucas' ghostly apparition appeared next to Aer'andil. He whispered something to his ear before vanishing again. He did take one extra second to wink at the captured foe.
Aer'andil's body of true words shuddered visibly for a moment, making the cave's walls crack and tremble outwards. The very mount shimmered.
"Spiritum." Aer'andil's figure lost its Elven humanoid structure becoming a being of light more akin to a wingless bird with a long feathery tail.
Gilthian shrieked, trying to break free of his prison, but unable to touch the white pearl.
"I told you a while ago, I said it knowing you'd overhear me. All I needed was… time."
The Human mind, the Elven mind cannot comprehend time's true, thus it creates a linear existence of it to make due of a concept it denies apprehension.
When Aer'andil spoke the word for time in yesterday's magic speech, that linear existence, the very concept of time collapsed forcing the minds of Elves and Humans to perceive everything around them as "frozen" or "stopped."
"I needed time to understand time, can you comprehend the irony of that?" Aer'andil chuckled. "But now to give you your greatest wish, you can no longer take advantage of it."
Aer'andil, a being of light floating in the air, Gilthian lying trapped on the cave's floor.
A tendril-like appendix appeared from the light-being. "Join me, brother of the one inside me. Gilthian, you are no more." A multicoloured-white-living-fiery-watery-timeless – pillar of air, ground, and light shot from its end impacting Gilthian directly between his torso, where hiding in his rusted, rotting armour the black pearl lay.
With a shattering noise the black pearl disintegrated with Gilthian turning into ash and dust, the magic binding him in the world of the living broken.
A being of shadow, similar in form and shape to Aer'andil's light being came whooshing out of the shattered pearl.
Aer'andil materialized in a corporeal body, again holding both white pearls. One in each hand.
" To Undo become Yesterday's magic. Magic." He said in the language of old magic.
The cave walls exploded outwards, house-sized boulders falling on the lake below, cracking the millennia-old ice.
"First of all Evils." Aer'andil, the avatar of yesterday's magic in the planes of the mortals, looked up to the Aeternae's true form battling to free itself, to escape. "You are no more, you are undone." He told the panicked spirit before speaking in yesterday's magic speech.
Fundigorok was gaining ground, Hadelfordoroth unable to truly kill him, no matter how hard the building-sized Dragon tried when the Bishops' magic waned and failed, the pearls at the ends of their staffs shattering. With their connection to their Master gone, their magic undone the Bishops and the Arch-Bishop lay there, nothing more than dazed men, as defenseless as a newborn babe.
Thonril stood up, picking the sword from the ground, unsheathing the other one from his back.
"Come here, last of the Dark Generals. Your ass, as my father would say, is mine!" Thonril launched himself at the giant fell-Orkhavoc in a flurry of sword strikes and magic incantations.
"Elven weapons cannot hurt me, child." Fundigorok laughed.
"I know, but this can." Thonril's glee could not be contained no more. "Death-swords." His swords turned from Elven steel to incarnations of Death's true name. Thonril's mind could only concept them as liquid void in the shape of a sword's blade connected to a veiled hilt. His sense of touch refused to acknowledge the feel of them.
"You will have a minute to kill the Dark General, and undo the words, one minute, no more. After that the veil will claim you and you will be alive no more." His father's words sounded in his mind.
60 seconds remained.
The battle around him resumed in avid fashion, Oghelle's forces undeterred by the Bishops and their leader in Valana losing their powers.
Elves, Humans, ranks were broken. Now it was every man for himself as chaos slowly ruled the battlefield.
"Push them back to the sea!! Send them right into Norion's hungry jaws!" Thonril yelled to the Alliance troops, Elves, and Humans alike and turned his attention to Fundigorok.
50 seconds remained.
Fundigorok's stance had changed. Lost was his confidence and assured composure.
Thonril attacked him, Fundigorok tried to block with his sword, only to see it break in pieces. He dodged, a smile returning to his fetid lips.
"You have little time, young one, after that I will be the most powerful Creature of Darkness in this world and I will become the Master." Thonril's blades descended only inches from his face, again and again he dodged them.
40 seconds remained.
Thonril changed his stance and school of swordfight going with feigns and ambushes from left and right. Fundigorok used his shield to block them, it also shattered to shreds.
30 seconds remained.
Thonril began to panic, changing his stance again trying to kill Fundigorok with acrobatics and jumps so that his blades could find their target past Fundigorok's movements and parries.
20 seconds remained.
Thonril threw himself in a flurry of movements, jabs, and slashes.
10 seconds remained.
The Seer's mount dissolved before their eyes, only the frozen lake remaining behind with the cracks and fractures where the boulders had hit.
At the center of it, now turned back to his flesh and bones Elven self, lay Aer'andil.
"That's my father! Why is he not standing!" Minaroth and Vicanoth had united with the Elven army upon its arrival and Enthronos had recognised them, introducing them to King Fornworth. Now Minaroth knowing what would come next, held Enthronos by his elbow in a tight grip.
"Is he dead? Why is he not standing! Let go of me!" Enthronos demanded trying to free himself, to run to his father's side but Minaroth ignored him.
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