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Chapter 12: For you were once Darkness

The curtain parted, disrupting the enchanter's commune with a whoosh. A dark-cloaked figure swept into the room, staggering in like an unstoppable windstorm. She stepped forward, her silhouette a fleeting ghost against the crackling red hue of the fire, her dark fabric falling about her as she sat down on a large sitting stone.

He was not captivated but curious. She leaned and for a moment, Nammen thought he saw a ringlet of red hanging out from her cowl. What little of her face shown, revealed fine features. She had a fair complexion, a perfect full set of lips smooth like oil, and an evil curve to her mouth.

Her gaze seemed directed to the fire. Nammen looked at the woman. He felt her aura was not right. Looking at her was like falling into a narrow well. He sensed two beings in his presence, not one.

The woman looked up at him and smiled. "It is good to see you, Master of the well."

"Why have you come?" Nammen asked her, hearing her name in whispers through his friendship with the dead. He dared not say it out loud.

"My name is of no concern. I'm in need of a guide'" She paused, her voice within a voice echoing a sultry rasp. She spoke with a hiss like a snake.

"Specifics, my fare maiden. Otherwise, you waste my time."

She responded, "Divine for me and bring up whomever I name."

The Glenoid's eyes widened and he replied, "Surely, you know what Nimmod has done, how he has cut off our people from the land beyond. The only way to perform a powerful summoning is to leave the confines of these walls..." He paused and jumped up from his sitting stone. "Why are you laying a trap for my life? Perhaps you pray to bring about your own death?"

But the woman swore, "As my beloved Lord Nimmod lives, I shall not tell him of what transpires this night."

Finally, he eyed her, "Whom shall I bring up for you?"

"Bring up Abbadoth for me."

Nammen cried out, "Heed my warning: The Lord of the abyss does not relinquish power. If disaster befalls you, he will bring his darkness and they shall descend upon you."

Nammen's piercing gaze began to dissect her crafted facade, searching for the other half of her persona. Asking the dead to reveal the presence of someone hidden was no light task. Their price was usually steep. So he waited until the woman pulled at her hood revealing her true face.

"Then let the darkness come," Ramses vowed.

Nammen was shaken to see the attaché to his ruler sitting in his home, yet he reciprocated. "You must go to the Tannak, stand at the falls between a set of pillars--" He cut himself off and stood, his feet moving across the shifting pebbles like sands in an hourglass, his hands reaching for a parchment.

"Recite this," he whispered.

Nammen turned, his voice like cold stone. With precise movements, he handed the weathered parchment to her, its edges brittle and burnt. As she unfolded it, Nammen spoke another warning. "To call forth the Dragon, the conqueror. You also call forth his Sheepherders of the Lifeless, something I fear more than the dead." But he also feared her eyes. Those were not the eyes of Ramses but the eyes of Valaria, the being's name his dead friends whispered to him.

With a steady hand, Valaria pressed Ramses hand against the parchment, rolling it back into place. Shadows slithered around the edges of the room, drawn to the gravity of her task.

In that instant, Nammen's chamber faded into a mist of memory. The breathtaking expanse of the Tannak lay before her. There stood Ramses body, barefoot and breathless. Her outstretched arms embraced the water's spray - wielding elemental powers like threads in a loom.