Funny the things you forget.
Zren
didn't move as the cries were being shouted across the deck. The men
frantically looking for the rest of their crew. Their cries were in
vain. They were entering the storm. The sails were rattling hard on
their masts and the ropes were taut in most places. Soon this would
become a frenzy of rain and wind. This ship would need to be manned
if it was to survive. He flipped his cowl back on and started to move
toward the men he'd scared by the mere sight of his face. The sight
of a prophecy made flesh in the eyes of men. Men of the land, he now
knew, that were the keepers of the Redemption of the Daemon Man.
From
below deck several men began to appear, looking around in the storm,
realising they weren't safe from the flames of the city if they were
to be consumed by a storm. Zren was in the same boat, in more ways
than one. If he was to be free from death and the eternal embrace of
fire he would have to do his part too. He reached the panicked
fishermen, "There is a storm! You must help with the ship!"
They stopped their tracks and seemed to almost understand what he
said. It was an almost that was too brief. One of the men jumped at
Yzrenithan, catching him off guard and knocking him to the ground.
The other at the sight of his comrade tackling the Daemon Man, he
followed suit. Grabbing a nearby bucket he clobbered him over the
head, knocking Zren's world to stars and black.
Pain
cut through his head, bringing Zren round once again. It throbbed
with quick, sharp pangs across his left temple and he could feel
blood had dried on his neck. Again he was racked by a hard stamp of
pain on the head. He opened his eyes and saw the two men who had
accosted him and one other standing by. The bucket was still in the
hands of the man who had hit him, a corner of his weapon bloodied
slightly. Zren gathered it was his blood. He tried to move his hands
to his face to protect from the blow, only to find they was tied.
"Not again. Don't hit me. I'm not trying to harm anyone."
"You
are Daemon Man. One from prophets." The third man was the one
talking. His words were jilted and heavily accented, the same as the
other two and those that were the people of the city.
"I
am a traveller. I do not consort with daemons."
"You
came after Kai Tan burn. It was you!" He was accusing Zren of
causing the chaos he was trying to escape. It may have been true for
all he knew. The city was assaulted barely three months after his
arrival in the foreign land and it wasn't the first time he had seen
this happen to a place of it's size.
"It
is not me. I am being pursued. I am not responsible."
The
man who spoke common gave him a long look, then barked a few words at
the other two who turned to leave. He barked again and the man with
the bucket placed it on the floor and the pair left. He waited to
hear the door slam shut then turned his gaze back on Yzrenithan. He
was weighing up his captive. Zren could tell, even with the bucking
of the ship on the choppy seas, with his head spinning. He'd been
persecuted before. Back in his home country when he had performed the
rites of passage for his coming of age. When everything went wrong.
When his world descended into this chaos. He wasn't sure if it would
ever stop.
"You
have a choice," the man's words seemed more measured now. Less
full of rage. "We need to calm ship for the storm. You stay
quiet here or I throw you over side." He continued to stare.
He
weighed his options. Going over the side was dangerous. Almost
certainly death. Staying here could be the same. The other two men
were likely telling everyone they had a daemon on board. The one who
starts the end of the world proper. Drown now or be clubbed to death
later? He didn't even need to think it over. They would have trouble
killing him now he was aware of their distaste for him. "Would
you not prefer my help? I have been at sea before and know my way
round a ship." Yet.
The
remaining captor untied the binds holding Zren's arms to his side.
"Stay!" He said as he turned and left the room, leaving his
prisoner alone in the cabin. For the first time Zren noticed the room
he was in. A cabin with several hammocks and cases around the edges
of the walls, leaving the centre of the room mostly empty. He tried
to stand but the pain in his head was great and he bounced down again
to the floor as the ship rocked under his unsteady feet. Better to
wait a while. Gather my wits again.
"This
book. It isn't of this land. I recognise the symbols on the spine."
The
old man looked in Zren's eyes. They were small and calculating,
likely from years peering over the tomes that lined the walls.
Scholars were an odd bunch he thought to himself, but in this
occasion he needed someone who could let him know something about the
prophecy. How he could cage Baal. "You have studied? I didn't
know the natives of the Dreadlands had such things."
"What
your nations know of the Dreadlands can't exactly be called a
composite knowledge," Zren smiled to himself as he said this.
The people of his country were seen very rarely outside their
borders, except for the brutal mercenaries that dotted around. His
people didn't seem altogether too different however. While most were
barbaric, there were few isolated tribes who had pooled together to
create what was one of the most advanced in the so called civilized
world. However they hid from the outside world. Outsiders didn't
bring anything good as history had shown in his land.
"That
is true. All too often we think we know everything there is to know
about the world, but still I am sure there are lands none have
discovered. Alas the frozen sea is a harsh mistress. Exploration is
somewhat difficult. But I'm sure you want to know more of the book.
And you are correct in your assumption. It is not of this land. I'm
not even sure it is of this world. Can you tell me what you think
these symbols are?"
"They
are the language of the dead and of daemons. They speak this in the
underworlds and in the planes beyond the physical. I recognize these
two." He pointed at the topmost and centre symbol of the seven
on the spine of the old book. "The top one says 'Invocate' and
this middle one says 'Baal'. I am unsure of the others."
"You
are observant my friend. I have never met anyone who speaks them from
outside the learned and those skilled with magic. We call this
language 'Hrkshai' and few know of it. One of the secrets we keep
within the circles of scholars and magi. It reads as you so say
'Invocation Summon Man Baal Lord Destruction God'. It means these
words in common, but pairings of Hrkshai words have other meanings
when paired together. 'The invocation of man summoned the lord of
destruction and made him a god'."
His
eyes glazed somewhat as he was speaking these words. Zren looked down
at the threads weaved through the spine and words echoed in his ears.
Khor Shkreetan Mortal Gorma Blesaithe Baal. It repeated. A whisper on
the wind. A memory seared into his mind. "I have heard this
before. 'They spoke to him in the depths and told him of his destiny.
He would be the apprentice of his God and make him an army rivalled
by nothing seen in the world. Mortal men would tremble before the
might of the feasters, but a betrayal would mark the end of Baal's
reign.' I don't know why I've only thought of it now."
"Are
you alright my son? You seemed to drift for a moment then."
Yzrenithan drew back
his cowl from his head once again, allowing the scholar to see his
face in the light for the first time. “My
name is Yzrenithan Entikeni Mathinmaer. I seek redemption,”
he looked into the man’s eyes, filled
with shock at the sight of the demonic script sewn and cut into the
face of his pupil, “I am escaped from
Hell and with me I have brought Baal. I would know how to find what I
seek.”
Pushing open the door,
having trouble keeping his feet on the deck reeling beneath his feet,
Yzrenithan was accosted by wind and rain, flashes of purple lightning
in the distance. The fisherman working their boat were rushing
frantically about, pulling ropes and tying off to keep the sails from
being destroyed and possibly bringing down the entire crew. The rain
brought some sense back to Zren again, almost waking him from a
slumber. His head still ached but the cold of the air numbed it to
something more of a whisper on the chill night. He rushed to the
nearest group of men, reeling in the sail, and tugged on the rope
they were pulling with all their might. The final man needed, Zren
gave them enough of a pull to notch the last part of sail into place
on the foreign rigging, allowing another man to tie off the rope.
The
men he had just been helping peeled away from him like he wasn’t
their, moving on to their next task. Zren felt a shiver pass up his
spine and he wasn’t sure they were close
to anything like safety. He’d felt it
before. And not just once. He’d felt it
before the city fell, Kai Tan. He’d felt
it before his home had been consumed by fires. He felt it the day
he’d walked free of the flames of hell.
He closed his eyes, almost in meditation, and looked to the sky. His
eyelids flickered and the noise of the rain and wind about him
stopped. He felt the warmth of the sun on his face and a voice
whispered in his ear. “I have found you,
Warder.”
Of
a sudden he was back again. The wind and the rain and the bucking of
the ship. His cowl had come free and he was soaked almost to the
skin. Lightning crashed down, with the sound off a tree being spilt
apart, just off the stern of the ship and the air grew warmer.
Yzrenithan could feel it. They had found him again. This wasn‘t
a storm. This was always how it began. They announced their presence
to him and then they flooded the city and then he ran. But this time
he had nowhere to go. This time they had him and the only thing he
could do was fight. He had to stop running and face the daemons. He
had to stop being a coward.
Great
black smoke rose from the very centre of the deck, as though the
soaked wood were smouldering. Yzrenithan watched, fear rising in his
gullet, as the smoke turned to a door, and from the door walked a
great horned satyr like daemon. The crew were bunched back to the aft
of the ship together, paralyzed with fear at the sight of daemons and
their Daemon Man before them. The great horned beast stretched it‘s
neck, vertebrae cracked loud like the thunder about them, and it
looked at his prey.
“I
have found you Warder. You have led quit a chase but you will always
be found in the end,” as he spoke more
beasts walked through, shorter than the speaker and with no horns,
but the same kind of bowed, hoofed legs. “None
leave Hell without being dragged back screaming for the release of
death, and you will beg before you leave this ship, Yzrenithan. You
and your little…friends.”
The beast smiled, seeing the fisherman for what must have been the
first time.
“No.”
Yzrenithan said. Looking at the great horned one before him,
unflinching even though he had fear filling his belly like a find
meal. “I will not go back. I will kill
you and your children, then I will find your Lord and drag him back
to the pit.”
The
great beast laughed. It sounded like the booming voice of a giant.
Load enough to make the wood of the ship creak and push back the
rain. He cocked his head back and erupted with laughter, his massive,
shaggy girth rocking back and forth in his glee. “How
will you, a puny human, destroy me, let alone Baal? I enjoy the will
of the human race. You are far more fun to break than the others who
have been about on this world. And I will especially enjoy breaking
you, Warder.”
It
stalked across the short space of two metres between himself and
Zren, took a deep breath and punched him in the gut hard enough to
crack stone, throwing the man back into the wall, just next to the
door to the cabin where he entered, splintering the wood and knocking
Zren to the ground. It laughed again, though only a single roar this
time, meant to add an insult to the crushing blow he had just
delivered. “Feast children!”
the great beast yelled and the other daemons that had poured through
the black door stalked across the deck to the fisherman, the same
gait as their horned leader.
“No!”
Yzrenithan croaked, from his position on the floor. “Back
to hell before I send you back myself.”
He tried to push himself back to his feet, but barely managed to get
back to supporting himself on his elbows.
The
great horned one croaked in surprise. “You
lack the grace to stay down when you are beaten. I truly wish I had
the pleasure of tracking down more of you Warders, but I thought
you’d actually put up a fight rather than
just prove yourself stupid.” It cracked
it’s fingers in it’s
fist, making the sound of splintering bone. “I
think it is time to remind you what pain is, as you didn’t
receive enough in Hell. Children, you may feast on the men while I
break this whelp.”
“Don’t
touch them daemons!”
“You
expect them to not only listen to a man, but one who can’t
even bring his belly from the ground? You astound me Warder.”
He was above his broken body now and delivered a sharp kick to his
ribs. Again and again. Yzrenithan screamed so loud he swore he felt
the sky break and the world collapse.
“You
are the Daemon Man truly? I had thought these prophecies wild tales.
Emoriss wasn‘t a mad storyteller of the
older days after all.” The old librarian
pondered for a moment, looking back at Zren, once again beneath his
cowl. “You adorn yourself with these
symbols to keep yourself safe from them, you say? To stop them from
finding you?”
“I
have read that these symbols are used to protect against daemons and
to invoke them. Used in the correct manner they are able to be plied
to ones wishes. But I am unsure how long they will keep me safe.”
“We
have a legend of men who do something similar. We call them Warders.
They were being not unlike priests or warrior monks, but they had
certain other skills that aren‘t found in
the holier disciplines. Warders were the disciples of Baal long ago.
He gave them power such as no warrior has ever possessed, but Baal is
treacherous. He betrayed these Warders, his followers,”
The old man walked to a shelf behind Zren and took down a thin book
with greyed, almost decayed leather, setting it down in front of him
and opening the pages. “He imprisoned
them in Hell where there powers could no longer serve them and they
suffered endless torments. But these Warders accepted this pain and
used it to fuel themselves into divine weapons. They vowed to bring
down Baal for his treachery and be his undoing.”
He
seemed to move across the pages, searching for a certain entry on the
pages while he spoke. “When Baal
assaulted the world, they found the time they had been waiting for.
They possessed the daemons, bringing their power inward to fuel
themselves and broke free from Hell. They tore through the undead
armies of their former lord and with the power they had taken from
all the demons they had slaughtered, the confined Baal back to Hell.”
As he spoke these final words he found the page he was looking for. A
group of naked men, burning with black fire standing tall over a
picture of a cowled and cowed man, who Zren could only assume to be
Baal. The men were adorned with runes across their bodies. Hrkshai
runes. “You, Yzrenithan, have the same
power as these Warders and you can fuel your own power with that of
the daemons who you are at flight from. You can banish the Lord Baal“
All
he could hear was the laughing of the horned one. The sound of his
snapping ribs under the bombardment of blows from the daemon was
drowned out now, the laughter fuelling his rage, the pain fuelling
his power. Yzrenithan thought back to the agonies he’d endured in
Hell. The endless tortures that made every day seem a lifetime. He
felt his eyelids flickering once more, his eyes turning up into his
skull and he yelled aloud. “No!”
The
horned one stumbled back, and his children stopped in their tracks,
just about to attack the fleeing fishermen. Zren looked up at the
beast before him, his eyes a blue fire. Standing to his feet in less
time than a normal man would take to fall to the ground. He grabbed
the beast by the neck and plunged his hand into it’s chest. The
beast roared in pain for several seconds then turned to dust in
Yzrenithan’s hand. He looked skyward and rose from the floor for a
brief instant then turned to it’s children. The storm grew more
fierce everywhere except around the Warder, who was now surrounded by
a cascade of flame.
The
other beasts roared in unison, abandoning their prey to attack the
one who had felled their leader. The first who reached Zren was
flipped into the air by and unseen hand and thrown high before
plunging head first into the sea, slowing the few at the back just
long enough to see the next two grabbed by the head and pushed to the
ground at the feet of their now master, Yzrenithan. He uttered some
words, speaking so quickly no one would be able to hear, upon
stopping he clapped each hand against the head he was holding,
exploding the daemons into a red mist. The remaining four moved
around him, hoping to take him from all sides. Zren stood still and
let them, apparently drained by killing the last three monsters. They
looked to each other, each grunting in some sign of community then
jumped at him as one.
Time
seemed to slow for Yzrenithan. He could see each of the beasts face
and what they were doing. He turned and crouched low, before
springing himself upward, watching the daemons come hurtling to the
space he was once occupying, before he crashed down upon one of them,
liquefying it’s spine, forcing his fingers into it’s back. He
drew from the beast, sucking it’s unholy energy from the carcass
and drawing it into his fist. The other daemons had crashed to the
floor with the blast of him coming down and were rising to their
feet. The corpse on the floor turned to ash and black tendrils moved
into Zren’s finger tips. His eyes rolled into the back of his head
once more and he flung a great ball of black lightning into the three
remaining beasts, trapping them in agony as they clutched their heads
and fell to their knees. With one final sweep Zren took a step back,
curling his fingers as if grasping something and flung the beasts
back through the door in the black door in the smoke.
As
they crashed through the gate bellowed forth sparks of fire and
crumpled in on itself leaving nothing in it’s wake. Zren fell to
his knees, barely stopping himself from falling flat on his face with
his still outstretched hands. He felt himself being picked up and
brought back into the cabin. It was now he noticed the rain had
stopped.
“And
what you do now?” The fisherman asked Yzrenithan, in his lilting
accent. It was morning and the skies were clear over Xiansai once
more. The ship was on the pier just behind them and the other crew
were looking over the jib rail, still a look mixed between fear and
curiosity over their passenger who was being left on the shores of
their home country while they were making to flee.
“There are more daemons
here, and behind them Baal, and I brought them here. It is about time
I stepped forward and did what I should have a long time ago.” He
shook the fisherman’s hand then turned away, pulling his still wet
cowl up over his face. “I’m sorry,” was all he said as he
walked away. The fisherman stayed a while watching, until there was
just a silhouette on the dark land, knowing that what he had seen on
his ship was nothing compared to what would happen in the city before
him overrun with daemons and the divine knows what else.
