Doom! Doom to all who walk
The stone paths of the fair city!
They shall share the portion with the brick,
And their blood shall anoint the flagstones!
-Excerpt of a nameless book of prophecies.
***
Another Age
***
The words had seen to drain out of him. He had scribbled down the letter in a fugue-like state, and when the ink dried on the page, all of the force that had moved him had vanished. He felt drained, empty, a shell of what he once was.
In that moment, he knew he had done what he had been made for. He could die now, and everything that had to have happened had happened. All in his life was complete.
Marcus Anderus waited for the ink to dry, every second an age. He had seen a vision, yes. A dream, too accurate go be his fevered imagination tormenting him. The vision still haunted him, every scream burned into his brain, every image seared into the foundation of his mind.
He had seen his own death, his own demise. A moonlit cliff, overlooking a beautiful lake. He would fall, and be dashed on the rocks below. He would fall, and everything would be over in a moment. He would fall, and feel the wind rush by him as he traveled to his final destination.
He had felt his death.
He tossed sand on the parchment, waiting for the grains to soak up the ink. Doing that to the next page, and the page after that, he waited. Waiting for ink to dry was definitely less than thrilling.
His heart beat heavy, in the absence of some distraction like the letter had been. He knew, in the deepest part of his being, in the core of his person, that tonight was to be his last night alive.
Before, he would have scoffed at such a thought; it was a lingering dream at best, a delusion at worst. But that man had died in the fire that had claimed his city. That man, who wasn't a skeptic as much as a fervent doubter for the sake of doubt, had seen the face of truth, seen what his hands had made. He had died then.
Him, Marcus, a person of faith? It was unthinkable! He, the Captain of the Guard, the man with enough arrogance and audacity to ridicule a king for his faith, was an equal believer? It was laughable, and the irony of the situation was not lost on him.
But he could not laugh. The strongest of faiths were oft born of suffering and tribulation, and his was no different. He had seen his home sacked -no, razed- and those who had claimed to be salvation become the instruments of this destruction.
Faith in himself was shattered. Faith in fellow man was equally destroyed. For if fellow man could trust those...things, those abominations, he was doomed to end his race. And now, in hindsight, the signs were clear, so clear only the willfully blind could not see.
Marcus snapped out of his thoughts. He grabbed the letter, rolled the three pages up into a roll, and used a few threads yanked off of his uniform to tie them shut. And then he pulled out the bottle.
It was pure, crystal clear, and felt like glass. Of course, this was of alchemy crafted. Powdered diamonds, steel and titanium, and bone shards. All were part of the mysterious recipe to make the nigh-unbreakable glass. The cork, likewise, was enhanced to hermetically seal and preserve the contents, and the mage circle inscribed on the bottom was designed to slow the effects of time and decay.
He stuffed the letter inside the bottle, pushing the stopper in, making sure the seal wasn't broken. Wrapping the bottle in paper, concealing it, he rose from the writing desk. Fortunately, this inn had a better, more furnished room than the last place he stayed.
He walked down the stairs, the lamps casting soft, sterile pools of light. Every sound stood out to him, blaring and screaming in his mind. Threats of impending death, the kind of thoughts that turned the heart to leaden metal, tended to do that.
The main room of the tavern was quiet, subdued, the silence soft and sleepy, feathering into him, lulling him into soft complacency. It made him want to sleep, want to curl up next to a fire and let the crackling and gentle heat lay him to rest.
Instead, he went to the innkeeper, a cheerful-looking woman wearing an apron. "Miss," Marcus said. His words captured her attention; that had been an art he had perfected. Simple tones of the voice, when used correctly, could magnetize others. It was a crucial skill in oration, and it had served him well to cultivate gravitas.
"Yes?" she asked.
Marcus walked up to the bar, and slid the paper-wrapped bottle. "I need you to take this," Marcus said, "and hide it. Keep it safe. Someone will come for it. Two mercenaries. A warrior, a scholar, a Vesperati, and a young lady." He pushed the item into her hands. "Not now. Maybe not even in your lifetime, but it will happen."
The woman eyed him like he was insane. "Um, sure," she said.
"Promise me," Marcus demanded. He didn't care if he had the same passion in his eyes as a madman. It didn't matter to him. What mattered was that the message was passed on, kept and preserved. "Give it to the scholar. Promise me you will," he insisted.
"Sure," the innkeeper said, arching an eyebrow in suspicion.
"If you don't see them, pass it on to the next generation. And the next. It has to get in their hands," Marcus said. "You understand?"
"What is this?" the woman asked. "Some new scheme from Elysion?"
"Elysion's dead," Marcus said quietly. "Me, Rhaedra. Maybe a few others made it out. Elysion's gone." Her eyes widened. "That is why it's important you hide it. It's one of the few accounts of the destruction, and the agents of the destruction will want it destroyed." He pushed the wrapped bottle in her hands. "I'm trusting you with the fate of history."
She nodded gravely. "I...I understand," she said. "How will I know them?"
"They will arrive to go to a great city. They shall be the scarred mercenary, the fleeing Kai'Draen, a Vesperati assassin of great prowess, a noblewoman of tainted lineage, and they shall have the first Dragonblessed of the age." Dragonblessed. The thought of it gave Marcus shivers. He had been there when the last Dragonblessed died, when he took half an army with him. "Take care."
He marched up to his room. It was time for him to get going, to leave the town behind. He had to go to another town. Aedhin, maybe. Or Caeld. Maybe even damage control at Scelion.
He was so engrossed in his thoughts he didn't notice the monstrosity hiding in his room.
The door slammed behind him. Whirling about, drawing a knife, he jumped back, away from his would-be assassin. But then, seeing her fair frame, he stopped. "Ishta'ana?"
The woman stalked forward, and immediately the effects of her presence, her mind-warping aura, became apparent. The luscious swath of flesh, reaching from her head down past her navel, begged to be touched, kissed, caressed. The sway of her hips, back and forth, enticingly feminine. Her beautiful face, the kind that enchanted poets and enthralled artists, had also once enthralled Marcus.
But that beauty was tarnished when he had seen her mask slip.
"Of course I'm here," said the abomination, her voice as smooth as silk. Her dark hair tumbled down over her red, open tuniclike garment that exposed the soft, kissable flesh. Of course, it didn't completely expose her breasts; it showed just enough of them to inspire lust, to rear and bolster the baser desires of man. "You escaped, used one of the gates to flee the city. Of course I went after you."
She stepped up to Marcus and gently caressed his face. He was aware of everything about her, the perfume made of crushed jasmine flowers, the sensation of how her body pressed against his, the softness of her hand, the trail of burning fire it left on his skin. "Remember those nights we had?" Ishta'ana whispered in his ear.
"I do," Marcus said.
And then he stabbed her in the heart.
She didn't bleed, of course, and when Marcus rushed passed her, he knew she was yanking the knife out of her body, but Marcus had rushed past her, down the stairs. He rushed out of the inn, shoving the door open and throwing himself forward into the cold air.
The wall of the inn shuddered, before a giant shower of splinters and shards rained down on the earth. Stumbling, Marcus hit the ground. Pain shot up his arms as his hands caught him from falling into the cold earth. The pain was irrelevant, though. Ishta'ana was coming after him.
The thing leaped from the window. It was a shapeless, roiling mass of black, sticky, ropy tar-like substance. Lamprey mouths, half-formed faces, and roughly-made claws shifted, dissolving and reforming. Ishta'ana had no sex; she had been a woman once, but in her experiments, she had turned into that...thing. She had found immortality, but she had lost herself. Not in religious devotion, like Marcus had. Marcus surrendered and offered himself to God; Ishta'ana had erased and destroyed her identity.
He rushed forward as the thing charged, throwing himself past the next building. Ishta'ana was good at moving through hallways and urban environments, using the sticky mass that was her body to adhere to walls and climb; in forests, that advantage hindered her and gave Marcus a fighting chance.
He rushed past the next house, seeing the forest before him, the screams of the men and women deaf to his ears. If he made it to the forest, he might survive.
It was a moonless night, cloudy and dark. As Marcus dove into the shadows, he breathed a small sigh of relief. His vision of his death was set on a full moon night. He would live tonight.
His other senses engaged. Every snap of a twig was the crack of a whip, every smell of damp earth was the stench of a carrion covered battlefield. Each bird, each cricket was his scout. He could hear them grow quiet as they sensed Ishta'ana. They didn't know that she was a succubatic shapeshifter with a taste for blood. They just knew that something that unnatural, something that wrong couldn't be safe.
He didn't even notice the sting of the nettles as he leaped through a thin patch of them. Of course, he felt the scratches, felt the tiny tears and bites of the thorns, but they were better than no pain. Pain meant you were hurting. And to hurt, you had to be alive.
He ducked behind a fallen stump. Farther back, he heard the thing roar. Great. He was going to be dead now, going to be slain and eaten by Ishta'ana. He was going to die, alone and-
No. He had seen his death, and it was not here. He had to keep moving. He would survive. Marcus had seen the cliff, and this dark forest was not that place.
He ran, bursting from the base of the fallen stump, charging forward, away from Ishta'ana. The beast roared, charging towards Marcus. But the mass of tar-like substance got caught, slowing it down as it forced the abomination to flow around every obstacle it faced.
Marcus kept running, jumping over the fallen logs, vaulting over moss-covered boulders. The air was burning in his lungs, the breath begging to get out. He needed to breathe, needed to rest his burning lungs.
He burst out of the forest and stopped. His eyes widened. The chasm, the sparkling lake below... this was the place he would die. But the moon wasn't here. That was good.
He whirled around as Ishta'ana oozed through the brambles and brush, the thorns slowly being swallowed by the shiny tar.
The rough shape shuddered, pulsating and shrinking. The shaking thing condensed down, before stepping forward, the last bit of the tar slipping and soaking into the pale flesh of Ishta'ana's leg. Her creamy skin had been discarded in favor of a darker shade, equally as luscious. "You have nowhere to run."
Another shape stepped forward from the forest. A Vesperati, short and thin, her hair tied back in several braids. Yazhara. Another of the Eight.
A flicker of light, a speck of something that warped the air around it, appeared next to Ishta'ana. Another of the Eight. That flicker of light expanded to fill the form of a cloaked man, who stepped forward, coming into view. An Erinyan, the cracks in his skin had stopped flickering with inner fire, and instead burned with the cold, sterile light that surrounded him. Malaphaisto. His form flickered like a heat mirage.
"Marcus," said the man, with a voice as smooth as liquid silver. "Come closer, step away from the ledge. We need you alive, after all." His voice lowered. "Seven of the Eight roam free. Three have graced you with our presence. Where is the Eighth?"
"Her?" Marcus laughed. "You'll never find her," he said. He was at the edge of the cliff, yet he knew he wouldn't die. He was safe, for the cruel moon that would herald his death was yet hidden.
A roar echoed, shaking its way into Marcus's bones. He knew that roar. "RHAEDRA!" he shouted. "RHAEDRASHAH!" He knew the King of Joy, the Dragon King. He also had once loathed the dragon, but he knew the dragon's heart was good. He saved the innocent.
Yet he flew over Marcus, and didn't seem to notice Marcus.
"I would have been with you earlier," Malaphaisto said to Ishta'ana, "but I was working on a project. He just flew over us."
"Really?" Ishta'ana said. "You managed to affect the Dragon King?"
"Took Kazalibad and your Calixa friend to subdue him," Malaphaisto said. Yazhara was silent.
"What did you do to him?" Marcus snapped.
"I convinced him, like I convinced the universe of my causation." He smiled. "You know his latest joy, his soon to be child." He smiled. "It would be terrible once he found out Tesira's been unfaithful, when he finds out his 'son' has been sired by another. Might be enough to throw him into a rage." Malaphaisto smiled. "And what might he do? Slay her? Most likely." He smiled.
"You're monsters," Marcus breathed. "You'd make him the instrument of the murder of his own mate?"
"Maybe," Malaphaisto said. "But it doesn't matter, seeing as you'll tell us where the eighth of us is. Seven have gathered. Tell me where the last of the immortals is being held. You want to tell me."
Marcus felt it, that sleepy laziness that lulled his mind to rest. Yes. Telling him would be good. That was what he wanted to do.
No.
That word woke him up. Like cold water thrown on his face, he jerked up. "I realized something," Marcus said. "You are lies," he said to Malaphaisto, "and you are lust," he said to Ishta'ana. "You're gorging gluttony, but for this, you're irrelevant." Yazhara frowned at that but didn't say anything.
"Lies infect the mind, and lust the body and mind. You might convince me, seduce me, or do some other thing," Marcus said with a smile. "But there's one protection that's guaranteed to work. No way you can thwart this one."
"Listen here," Ishta'ana began, but Marcus cut her off.
"You want to know where the last one is?" Marcus asked. "Rhaedra had the memory expunged. You aren't foolish enough to go against an actual immortal, so that rules out one of the Sidhe queens. So that leaves me." He stepped back. "I'll tell you... over my dead body."
Malaphaisto, Ishta'ana, and Yazhara rushed forward.
For a second, the cloud broke. For a second, the moon shone, brilliant silver in the dark sky.
And with that, Marcus dealt the first blow in the struggle against the Eight.
He felt at peace. The war he had just started would involve every man, woman, and child. Tethyd, Calixa, Kai'Draen, Vesperati, Sidhe, Erinyan, human, and even dragon. Rich or poor, religious or heretical, this would be a war between all. But Marcus had seen the last battle. He knew the outcome.
He was still smiling when his body slammed into the rocks below, and his lifeless corpse drifted into the river.