The Harvest Wars - Part 1 - Awakening

Prologue

A crow flew over the blinding white lands of Ruuin, its once-green plains now a corpse to which ice and snow clung like armor, mockingly withholding any prospect of finding food. Driven by hunger and instinct, the large black bird flew southward as so many of its kind had, toward the promise of warmth. On its long journey it glided over frozen streams, windswept plains of ice, over empty cities, craggy mountains, and skeletal woods that rose from the frozen earth like fingers of hungry revenants.

It was over one of these woods that its beady black eyes registered the scene of a great battle raging hundreds of feet below. Two armies, one pure and clad in silver and white, the other a horde of sinister monstrosities, fought savagely around a hill rising from a clearing in the middle of a dead forest. It was a battle the likes of which had been fought since the beginning of time. Purity against corruption, darkness against light...

This time, the darkness was winning.

None of this mattered to the crow, of course. However, the bright red of blood on the snow, the bodies that had been cut down and ripped apart—those mattered. They were a promise of nourishment, relief from the searing hunger that had been tormenting it for so many days. It cawed in anticipation of the feast at hand and swept down, gliding over the rows of monstrosities that streamed toward the hill, where the fighting was strongest, as was the carnage.

A bright golden light exploded from a single figure on top of the hill, blinding the bird. Like a tide ripping through reality, the light flowed in all directions, forming a sphere that rapidly expanded. In its wake, the fighting stopped, and man and monster alike fell where they stood. It all happened so fast that the tiny brain of the crow could not even begin to realize the significance of it, and as soon as it flew through the ever-expanding barrier, the bird plummeted. It was dead long before it hit the ground, every last shred of life swept away by the golden light.

In the epicenter of the sphere, bathed in such a brilliant radiance that the sun seemed pale and dull, stood a man, the last words of a spell just leaving his lips to echo over the now-silent woods. When he stopped, the sphere, which had expanded over a distance as far as the eye could reach, retreated back toward him like an imploding star.

It was over as suddenly as it began, and where the flaming avatar of destruction had stood, an old warrior in golden and ivory armor fell to his knees. Then, as his amber eyes beheld the havoc he had caused, a tormented scream erupted from his chest.

It swept over the battlefield, the wail of a lost soul, followed by cries of anguish, by tears and sobbing.

By the time the old warrior regained his composure, the blood on the ground had turned to ice, as had the tears on his face. Looking up, he stretched out his hand to take hold of a vicious black greataxe resting in the snow beside him. Screaming unintelligibly, he smashed its handle repeatedly into the ground, as if the weapon could be punished for what had happened.

After some moments passed, he ceased his fruitless effort, laughed sadly, and stumbled to his feet. And so Caron, the last king of the Cemnok, the last of his race, stood, axe in hand, face clouded by sorrow, and surrounded by a sea of corpses.

"I let you down, master," he whispered into the freezing morning air, the confession bitter in his mind and his soul.

"I failed you all," he said, louder, despair drenching his voice as he regarded his lifeless kinsmen.

He stared into their faces. Faces that had accompanied him throughout his long life, that had been by his side during the gruesome years of the Harvest War. Now these faces were as bleak and motionless as the ground beneath his feet—and so was everything else. Not even the wind seemed strong enough to shake the skeletal branches of the trees, let alone carry his lonely wail that had been a companion for so many days.

"Things unliving can be hidden from dead eyes only by life itself," he whispered into the still air, repeating the words his master had told him. "The vessel is flawed; it can be broken. That must never be allowed to happen! Carry it away from here; bring it to the end of the world; and hide it from all searching eyes."

As he stared into the dead faces of his kinsmen, he knew he had reached the end of his journey... and it had turned out to be much closer than expected. The life energy of things wretched and pure raged through his body like a wild river. The power was hard to contain, and he knew he would not be able to control it for much longer. It needed to be released, given a new form.

"Guard it, you ordered me, master... and guard it I will, for all eternity."

With these words, Caron lifted the black axe. Staring at the cruel blade, the king thought he could feel the amusement of the alien intelligence within. Then, as his mind unveiled what he was planning, he could feel something else emanating from the weapon: boiling rage.

On top of the hill where he and his men had made their last stand, he fell on his knees, ramming the butterfly-shaped blade of the axe into the frozen ground.

"May you never be found!" he whispered bitterly, his hands shaking as he led his wrists to the weapon's keen blade. When skin touched steel, he felt the axe tremble, but whether it was the reaction of the prisoner within or just his imagination, he could not tell.

"Be cursed!" he muttered, a withering grin flashing over his face.

Slowly he ran his wrists over the blade while his lips unleashed the words of the imprisonment spell his master had taught him. Yet it was not blood that poured from his wounds, but golden resin. Faster and faster the sticky liquid streamed from the gashes, engulfing the unholy weapon like a spider ensnaring its prey. Then, once the axe was covered, the amber substance spread over Caron himself, who now embraced the weapon as a father would an unloved child. In a few heartbeats the resin had spread over his whole body, and before it reached his mouth and sealed it forever, the king spoke the spell's last word.

Moments later the resin turned as hard and dark as amber, but only for an instant.

It quickly changed into something new. The smooth outer shell became wooden and gnarled. A trunk. It grew—upward, downward, and to the sides. In the blink of an eye, it sprouted branches with thick green leaves that clawed into the air with the speed of a whipping lash. Roots forced their way down into the frozen earth, breaking soil and stone with the ease of a hammer smashing ice. The earth shuddered and groaned at the violation, and in mere moments both king and axe were no more...

Where they had been, a giant, blooming oak stood, its green leaves fluttering in the icy breeze as if the cold held no sway over it.

And, in fact, it didn't.

For centuries the oak stood in full blossom and ignored the everlasting winter, much as the world ignored the tree's presence. Nothing alive or undead ever came close to this forgotten guardian; the only things that kept it company were the frozen corpses of the soldiers that had fallen in the last great battle for the soul of Ruuin.

Then, one morning, a single leaf detached itself from the tree and, as gently as a feather, spiraled down to the snow-covered ground, where it came to rest. There it lay like a terrible omen.

The leaf had turned rotten...  

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