Bereft: Foretold

42 | A Sacred Warmonger

The cold morning air caressed the Absolian's feathers and hair as he parted through the dawn's formidable radiance.

This city was not like the one he'd left in the west. Verweald thrived despite the corruption running through its streets like taint in a mortal's veins. The city grew and accepted the rotten parts of itself, embraced them even, took those bits into its very being. The city and the darkness it bred were synonymous, inseparable. Violence and death were expected there. Verweald was nothing without the blood painting its back alleys.

This place, Itheria, was much quieter than Verweald. Much smaller. There was very little darkness and very little growth, as if the city had come into being overnight with each building primped and placed, and it hadn't changed since. There was a falseness to it that tasted of deception on Aurelius' tongue, as if it was only the mask of a more hideous creation hidden in the earth's crust, shielded from eyes and the light of day.

Aurelius was curious, but not strongly enough to seek out the answers. It wasn't pertinent to his goals.

The light crested the blue waters of the horizon and he was mesmerized by the reflection playing upon the bronze dome of the city's main tower. He came to perch upon the ledge with his wings spread for balance as he pressed a hand to the shaped metal. Tiny mortal spells lain over the dome quavered beneath the Absolian's touch, and he examined how they dribbled into the tower's depths. Like him, the mages had cloaked themselves to hide the ebb and swell of their power.

Their shield was flimsy here. One tiny push and Aurelius could break it utterly.

Unhurried, he played his glamored nails across the gold buttons on his chest, satisfied by the click, click, click each pass brought, and settled with his back against the dome. His head rested on the metal, and the dawn flung its light across the smooth planes of his high cheekbones and sharp jaw.

The beauty of this realm was understated and difficult to find, as so much of it was maligned by the scents of refuse, but the beauty was less elusive here. Aurelius imagined it was because of the magic seething in the ground below. Magic and essence were the lifeblood of a world, and this realm had little magic to it. Like a rock secluded in the endless tides, the life that grew here was tenuous and frail, as breakable as fine glass.

They did not deserve this sun.

<Aurelius.>

The voice rang clearer and stronger in his mind than it had before. Grimacing, Aurelius attempted to shove the voice away, but the channel within his thoughts that he'd managed to choke into a trickle had been torn wide, and Iadlim's influence came flooding in like a river.

<What have you done, my son?>

Aurelius frowned as he made still the waters of his mind and worked to divert the communal channel. He heard the distant babble of the High King's other familiars, the most vocal among those thoughts the worries and questions of those who'd been under Aurelius' command. The words of Velrigan, the First Baron, rang loudest of all.

<Where have you gone, Commander?>

The Absolian inhaled through his nose and worked to reclaim the sanctity of his own mind. The obligations of a familiar rendered the nature of privacy abstract and foreign to the High King's creations, as all minds of the Absolians were rivers which ran into the great communal channel of their King's shared soul. The eldest of their number, like Aurelius, could divert their river and keep their private thoughts from entering the shared reservoir, but Iadlim held absolute control over the rivers and poured Aurelius' thoughts through the link without reserve.

All Absolians sensed the discontent breeding in the heart of the Us family's only remaining son, and it stilled the riled waters in Aurelius' mind. A hush consumed the thoughts of the Absolians, and Aurelius knew silence must have just fallen across all of Aromont.