The Caller to the Feast - Part One

The city had fallen the night before. Only a handful remained. They had taken a ship and fled. Yzrenithan was lost in his own mind as the ship bucked on the tireless sea. Black daemons had come from nowhere. Torn through the very fabric of their world and poured into his, seeking blood and flesh. The troubles of the rest of the world were but stories in this land. He'd thought he would be safe here from the nightmares of his past, but evil had a way of dragging him back into the war he had no right to call a life.
Aside from himself, no one aboard the ship knew what he was and the true reason he had managed to take flight and escape with his life. They knew he wasn't one of them. Fisherman prepping to launch a ship and flee on the sight of the fire that covered the sky and blotted out the sun. The clouds of blood would cover the sky in black and the city would never seen the light again. A sacrifice to the powers that held sway over the monsters and daemons only dreamed of here. Dreamed of by Yzrenithan.
He was stirred from his waking nightmare by a hand pressing on his shoulder and a spouting of words. He didn't understand. He looked the man in the eyes and stared back at him with an inquisitive look. The wispy man repeeated his question. Or was it an accusation?
"I am sorry but I do not speak your tongue. I am a foreigner in your lands seeking refuge." He knew it was no use. That this fisherman would continue with his onslaught of questions, he assumed they were questions, until he got something serving as an answer. Yzrenithan had only been hiding in the city for a few months, and he did not have a gift for linguistics unlike some of his former companions. He didn't even have a gift for people. Probably would've left his companions eventually had they not all been consumed by the same fire that was on the horizon now.
He slipped back to the present. The man still talking at him. The language was strange to Yzrenithan. Unlike some of the languages he spoke, this was different. All the words seemed to blend together almost like song, if an angry fisherman could be considered singing into the face of a foreigner and strange man picked up in the desperate escape from the death and destruction fading in the distance.
"Like I said sir. Your native tongue means little to me. I am not of your land. Do you not speak the common tongue of the south?" He repeated the same thing in the few languages he could speak, though common and his own native tongues were the only two he spoke with any fluency. The fisherman just stared back at him a look of confusion on his face. Abruptly he started yelling down the ship to another one his fellows. The other man turned and rushed over toward Yzrenithan and his hysterical friend. The chatter started between the two loud and rushed at first, then becoming hushed. Whispers in each others ears. Sly glances across to where the foreigner was sat. They then seemed to reach an accord.
The newcomer began grunting at Yzrenithan, motioning with his hands, pushing them from his ears back down to his shoulders. He kept repeating the motion while grunting at him. Yzren closed his eyes. This wasn't the first time he'd seen this gesture and it wouldn't be the last he was sure...

"Reveal your face murderer! And I wouldn't try anything stupid if I were you. I've got four archers trained on you and I don't want them filling you with holes," a wide smirk grew cross the guard's face, wrinkling the skin of his nose. It was likely he wanted Yzrenithan to make a move, but Zren wasn't as stupid as he thought the guard was. He grasped the front of his hood and slowly drew it back across his head. The guard's smirk left his face as he saw the man stood before him for the first time true. Scarred markings covered his face, possibly letters in some crazed foreign tongue, each stitched with thread through to make the marking look like letters raised on a patchwork. Though seeing it on a human face was a cross between comedic and unsightly. The blood messed in with the thread made it look more like the latter.
As the cowl revealed more of Yzrenithan's head it was clear it wasn't just the face, but the whole of the head that was in fact covered in these bizarre scars. Patches of hair cut away to allow for the scars to be made was growing in tufts around them, all in various lengths as if new symbols were being added all the time. And each one was smaller than a fingernail.
He moved his hands down by his side now that the cowl had been removed, relaxing at the look of the guards face. Not what he expected it seems. "What the hell are they? Why did you...Who are you?" The guard sounded both disgusted and frightened, the slight stammer in his voice was more than enough for Zren to calculate the situation was playing more to a bloody outcome for himself.
"They are wards. Protection from demons and elements. You do not recognise them I take it? I am unfamiliar with the Gods you worship here. Maybe they don't speak the language my deities whisper in the lower circles of Hell. Perhaps I can explain them to you in detail?" Yzrenithan knew being cocky might not be the best thing after speaking, "I am not your murderer. The ones I am being pursued by are more likely to fit the bill."
"And just who are you being persued by freak?" The guard raised his fist.

Yzrenithan stood up and flipped back his cowl to reveal shoulder length, greasy hair, the colour likely dark, but the night didn't leave up much light. A heavy growth of beard was covering his face across the chin and majority of his cheeks. There were a set of symbols cut and sewn into his face, a dull grey with smatterings of blood in the thread. One on either cheekbone and one on the forehead. But even seeing this wasn't the strangest things about his appearance. His eyes were perfect pearls of white. He looked each of the fishermen directly in the eyes, thoguh whether they knew this was beyond him. He looked blind to most who met him and he was to a sense. He could not see the same way mortals do anymore. He could thoguh see everything around him in his mind. The dark skies, the threatening storm approching, sails bursting with wind, the sea crashing across the deck, the burning fire of the city on the horizon.
The men had a look of sheer terror on their face and were pointing at his face. He could make out two words in their inane babble. Émo Rén. These words he knew. He had heard them many times in his travels. The words were part of a prophecy that had turned to a myth and a tale and was now now spun by bards in taverns across the world. The words meant Daemon Man. The one who opens the gate to the lower cricles of Hell and brings forth the armies of the Lord of destruction. He had heard the tale many times over his travels. His escape. Never had he thought that it could be him, but it made sense in the eyes of these poor men. Their words became cries and they ran about the ship screaming it. Yzrenithan for the first time in a long time felt fear.

"A cowled man, the language of the underworld inscribed into his face, blinded by the lust for power, will destroy the northern city and bring forth the armies of Hell itself to serve the one who brings the end of the world. The daemons will purge the city of all life, feeding on the chaos to fuel their hunger and fury. They will descend on the worlds of men, burning hellfire through everything in their path. The Lord of destruction will have his will done by Émo Rén, the caller to the feast.
"But that isn't the whole of the text. There is more that speaks of one who will banish them back to the depths. It is omitted from the commonly know story, though spun into more tales of bards and spinners to make it more of a rounded story, yet there is truth in this. Most of these bard tales can all be traced to something in the end."
The old librarian smiled to Zren as he waited anxiously at the table. The end was coming he knew and studying the old texts was the best way for him to be prepared. He had done bad things in his life. He had tried to escape his fate and it was catching up with him now. The only way he thought he could escape was to find out how to put the dark lord back in his pit.
"I honestly thought there was more to this than there is but I think this may be all we have to go on." He came back into the room. He carried a large book with him. Bound in red leather, strange symbols across the spine, sewn into the leather with a grey thread. "It was written about long ago but all I seem to have is this. In our tongue we call this 'The Chronicle of Emoriss' but it's origin is not anywhere in the southlands. The true name 'Shúa​Huí​ka Émo Rén' or in the common tongue 'Redmption of the Daemon Man'."
Yzrenithan looked up the book. It looked brand new but he knew this wasn't the case. The strange symbols upon the spine was a language. That of the daemons. He hadn't seen it in an age. Not since he had escaped from Hell.