Arc 5: Chapter 25: A Violent Impulse

    The dream began with the sound of fire, and the stink of burning flesh.

    I walked through a ruined city. Cracked towers rose in twisted columns into an acrid sky, stretching above pitted streets collecting a slow falling ash. Steam rose from those pits, as though they were openings into some volcanic depth. The ground seemed blistered, raw, ready to grow callouses.

    There were bodies. Soldiers, both Ardent Bough and Recusant, and civilians as well. Their glassy eyes followed me as I stumbled drunkenly through them, while their withered lips muttered sullen curses. To me, it seemed as though the very stone of the city whispered its hate, and its pain.

    I held a broken sword in my hand — it was fused to my hand — and wore the battered gold-and-green armor of an Alder Knight. Scars disfigured the filigree on my gauntlets, and the visor on my helm had been warped by heat and savage blows so it would no longer lower or lift, forming a twisted mask over my eyes. It made it harder to see, so I kept my eyes on the treacherous ground.

    The city was familiar. Kingsmeet, I thought, after it had been left in ruins. Once the crossroads of the Urnic Realms, now reduced to this fuming carcass.

    But some details were wrong. I crossed a bridge over a canal full of murmuring fog, and could see the cracked face of Myrr Arthor in the distance. It was Kingsmeet, but it was also Garihelm. The towers jockeyed for space with soaring trees left as blackened skeletons, like shadowy fingers desperately clawing at the burnt sky.

    Bits of Elfhome were here, too. Giggling, faceless manikins dressed as nuns watched me from the alleys, quickly flitting out of my sight when I glanced at them. Their mocking laughter echoed at the edge of hearing.

    Ash collected across the city, and on me, as I walked. I didn’t have a destination, didn’t know where I should go or what I should do. It took me a long while to recognize myself, and manage to form a thought.

    Stopping, I studied the scene around me. I stood in a ruined plaza. Once noble buildings formed an ugly ridge of shapeless rubble encircling the square. This had been the first battle where the Recusant armies had fielded cannons.

    They had used Marions here, and worse.

    “What sin did I commit here, Dei?”

    No answer. My eyes tracked to a scorched tree, this one ordinary in size. A set of statues stood near it, or what was left of them. They had once depicted the founding stewards of the city, a council who governed Kingsmeet as neutral arbiters within the feudal realms. Precursors to the Ardent Round, which Markham had used as models for his own government.

    The last batch of those stewards to ever hold that post had been impaled on iron spikes in place of those honored ancestors. Flies gathered around them in a hazy black cloud.

    I waited, but the fiendish shadow who’d been haunting my dreams since the past year did not make an appearance. I narrowed my eyes, trying to find some flitting phantom, or any other sign I was being stalked.

    Silence. Flames rose in the distance, but I couldn’t even hear them. I was alone with the falling ash and the flies and the corpses. The dead had stopped whispering. The faceless priestesses hid, or they had fled.

    “Where are you, demon?” I scanned the smoking ruins, all but holding my breath.

    The shriek of metal broke the silence. I startled, instinctively lifting my half-useless weapon and turning toward the sound. A shape sat on the edge of the fountain where the dead stewards had been spit. It reminded me of Laertes in the way light seemed to avoid it, leaving detailed features trapped in a clinging veil of gloom.

    It was big — at least as big as Karog, and I suspected more so should it stand. It held a brutal looking weapon in a fist larger than my skull. A spear with a serrated blade, which it ground along an iron bracer strapped to its left forearm, sharpening the edge. With each stroke, a piercing, ear-torturing screech cut the air.

    Sparks flew from the metal, briefly illuminating scattered hints of the thing’s features. It had a dramatic hunch, with what might have been a long strip of bristles or hair running from a flat skull all the way down its curled spine. Its arms were like a man’s, or an ape’s, and thick as tree trunks. Muscle seemed to erupt from it, drowning the curved neck in leathery flesh the color of dried blood.

    But what my eyes lingered on were the enormous horns emerging from either side of its skull, curving down below its jutting chin. They were both at least as long as my forearm, like those of a bull or an ox.

    The demon drew its spear over the bracer one more time. In that flash of sparks, I caught a glimpse of empty pits where its eyes should have been. It had a skull’s face, locked into a perpetual feral grin.

    “Sin?” It said with a low chuckle. “Yes, there was much sin here. Such a bloodbath.”

    Judging by its brutish appearance, I would have expected the creature to have a deep, guttural voice. There was a growl in it, but it spoke in surprisingly high tones. They were not fair or melodic, but carried to my ears with a buzzing, throaty rasp, almost artificial. Rusted metal given a voice.

    I started walking again, not getting closer to the seated figure or retreating, but pacing in a wide circle around it. My armor clicked mutedly with each step.

    “Don’t tell me you’re surprised to see me?” The demon hissed with a laugh sounding like nothing so much as an animal trying to cough something foul up. Something buzzed beneath, or within, that voice.

    The flies, I realized. They were buzzing in tune with it, echoing its words.

    “Rath El Kur,” I named the creature. “I killed you.”

    “Yes.”

    The demon’s locked, pointed teeth did not move when it spoke. It kept that nightmare smile, its voice originating somewhere deeper within. Was this a vision, I wondered? Some construct of my memory fashioned by Shyora’s shadow into another old nightmare? And where was she? She did not always make a personal appearance in my dreams, but usually I felt her hand in them.

    But she had not been there when I had battled this creature. Most of the scenes the Shadow weaved were of things we had shared, or spoken of.

    “I am real enough.” Rath El Kur, who had also been called Paingorger, Feeds-The-Flies, The Brute of Rancor, and many other putrid names, responded as though reading my thoughts. “You know better than most that death is not an end, paladin. That wretched fire in you draws the dead.”

    “What do you want?” I demanded. Stopping my pacing, I shifted to face the monster directly.

    Would it try to fight me? Repeat our battle? I’d slain it here, in this city. I hadn’t done it before the beast had put scores up on spikes. Their screams had drawn me to it, just as it had intended. In the midst of all that torment, it had been truly strong.

    My hate, and my despair, had proved stronger.

    “Want?”

    Rath El Kur seemed to chew on the word a long while, tilting its eyeless, perpetually grinning face to one side as it studied its barbed weapon. “Why should I want anything?” The demon hissed sullenly. “You have given me everything I could ever need, Alder Knight.”

    “What are you talking about?” A bead of sweat made its way down my temple.

    The abgru?dai stood to its full height. It was taller than Karog, by at least a head. Every fiber of it was calloused sinew and ill-formed muscle. When it stepped forward on cloven hooves encrusted with half dry blood, the reek of gore and feces lingering in the air grew sharper. The sound of buzzing flies rose in pitch as well. With every syllable the beast uttered, their tiny wings melded with its voice to create a foul chorus.

    “You mortals bound me into this form.” The ground trembled with every slow step the demon took as it walked forward. “You gave me horns, and claws, and fangs. You molded me into your image of fear. You sent me to slay your enemies. You chained me to flesh. To bile.”

    I took another step back. My back pressed against something, blocking my retreat. Split bark, encrusted with blood and smoldering with dull yellow fire. A twisted tree. An Executioner’s Tree.

    “You can deny it until the moment that golden flame turns against you. It will. It roils every time you let that corpse caress you.”

    It wasn’t true. Catrin was a good heart, no matter her past. She deserved the aureflame’s protection as much as anyone.

    This time, the dhampir’s voice emerged from the demon’s teeth. “I can feel that sacred fire in you baring its teeth at me. I hate it... and it makes me hate you sometimes.”

    The buzzing of the flies grew louder, lustier. Like they were laughing at me too.

    The demon leaned close, the reeking, grinning face drawing almost near enough to kiss. “You left the path of righteousness behind long ago. This land will have war again, Hewer... and you will be its herald.”

    “I won’t,” I promised.

    I had only fallen for a demon’s lies once. I’d let it convince me it loved me. It had taken my loneliness, my longing, my need to believe in something, and lured me into the same trap as legions of other dupes.

    “If I am wrong,” the demon asked, “then why are all your dreams of war?”

    I woke with a snarl barely recognizable as a human sound and moved without thought. I didn’t see the figure standing next to me, didn’t know who they were, only that they were close enough to put a knife into my neck.

    In a blurring series of movements, I kicked the chair back out of my way, grabbed the arm hovering near my shoulder and twisted. There came a sharp gasp, cut off as I put the arm into a lock and slammed its owner face first onto the desk with a loud bang. One of us, maybe both of us, let out a muted grunt. Papers and other material went flying in every direction.

    I didn’t recall drawing my rondel dagger, but it was in my hand. A solid spike of steel, made to punch through gaps in armor. I pressed its point against my attacker’s neck.

    “Shit! Wait, stop, it’s just me!”

    My nostrils flared with every heavy breath, and red seemed to crawl in at the edges of my vision. My fight or flight instincts — mostly fight — roared at me to end the threat, to shut it up before it could call for help or get a blade into position. The fact I didn’t recognize the face beneath me immediately didn’t help stall that instinct. Medium-toned skin, black hair, a heavy-jawed face with panicked brown eyes.

    Recognition came as I studied the face, and with it my heart started to calm. “Beatriz. What were you doing?”

    The guardswoman swallowed, a bead of sweat forming on her temple. “I was trying to wake you up. You wouldn’t answer the door.”

    I glanced at the window. The light looked dimmer. Nearly dusk. How long had I slept?

    “Can you let me go, ser?” Beatriz’s voice was tight with fear.

    Realizing I hadn’t broken my lock, I stepped back to let the woman stand. She grabbed her right arm, wincing and cradling it against her chest. I sheathed my dagger. Though I tried to do it calmly, Beatriz flinched at the motion.

    With a shaking voice, she explained her presence. “Your squire told us you needed rest, so we didn’t disturb you. But it’s nearly dark now, and there’s a letter for you, and she said you needed to go out soon.”

    To meet Catrin, I realized. Taking a deep breath, I nodded. “I understand. Thank you.”

    “The letter is on your desk.” Beatriz made a brief gesture at the mess. “It’s sealed.”

    She turned to the door, not waiting on a dismissal. I sighed.

    “Beatriz.”

    She froze, turning slightly. Her fists were clenched at her sides.

    “I’m sorry,” I told her. “You startled me, and... I don’t sleep well. Next time, get Emma if you can’t wake me.”

    She nodded stiffly. “Yes, ser.”

    When she had gone, I straightened up the desk and found the letter she’d left. The seal had the insignia of a golden leaf, and looked oddly glassy. On a strange impulse I sniffed it. Rather than the scent of wax, I got sap.

    Opening the letter, I began to read the artful script inside. It had been written in elvish, the same script used in Seydis. I grimaced, trying to parse the contents. I’d only been in the Golden Country for a few years. Hardly enough time to master a language literally older than human civilization.

    Fen Harus must have been conscious of this, because the message turned out to be simple by his people’s standards. We should meet and discuss your theories. You may find me in the gardens on the eastern face of the palace before noon.

    Actually, what it said was closer to thy mind is an enticing mystery, mortal brother. Let us meet in the hours before the Day Star reaches its ascendancy, upon that place within this fair abode where the petals beckon the light.

    As I said, it was simple by his people’s standards. At least he didn’t hide the message in a poem.

    I put the letter down and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, letting the last of the angry heat in my blood fade. Had it just been a reaction to being woken suddenly, or...

    The details of the nightmare were vague and scattered, but I recalled enough to feel uneasy. I had wanted to kill the woman, even after recognizing her. To lash out at something, ease the boil in my veins. Had that been me, or the influence of the dead? My lost ring had been intended to protect me from such manipulation.

    Either way, I needed to take better precautions. I shouldn’t have let myself sleep without my wards.

    I doubted I would be sleeping again that night, at least. The demons in my dreams were gone, just echoes of themselves. There was still one who roamed free, and it had come time to hunt it down.

    Yith would die that night.