Bloodless

by Roberto Vecchi

  “How did you come by the knowledge that we needed assistance?” questioned Intellos.

  Hearing his follow up question caused the Acolyte to pause. Though he could not see his eyes, nor any other part of his face except for the bottom of the man’s chin as they were veiled inside a deep hood, Intellos was sure the man was trying to discern the nature of his question. “Brothers,” said the Acolyte, “it appears we have the privilege of being in the presence of the former,” he emphasized the word, “Grand Wizard, Intellos Sa’ik Sa’ir. It is a pity you have become as helpless as the rabble around you.”

  “Helpless?” Dianali interjected.

  The Acolyte slightly turned his head toward her. Underneath his hood, Intellos was sure he was grinning, “Yes, helpless. You face an opponent you cannot possibly stand against. If not for our presence, you would surely perish.”

  “You have made your point,” interrupted Borinth.

  “At the insistence of our new Grand Wizard, we are here to aid you. We will deal with your assailants while you flee. It is not his will that you should die here today,” said the head Acolyte as his two companions produced small daggers from inside their robes.

  Both Borinth and Dianali instinctively dropped into a ready position while the two Acolytes walked toward them. But just before the two warriors acted to defend themselves, the two robed figures veered away from them and approached the walls. When they were close, they used the daggers to slice a cut in their thumbs and began writing on the walls.

  “What type of necromancy is this?” asked Intellos.

  “Necromancy? We do not engage in such primitive displays of our power,” answered the Acolyte as he too approached a third wall.

  “Then what is it you are doing? Is not Necromancy the focus of magic through blood?” asked Intellos.

  “Intellos, please, you do not want to be here after our wards are set in place,” said the acolyte as he, too, cut a deep red line into his thumb.

  “Wards? That is impossible. Wards cannot be activated through Runes,” said the former wizard.

  “There is so much you do not know. So much that our current Grand Wizard has shown us about where true power lies,” he said as he began drawing a very complex rune on the wall; a rune that Intellos had never seen before.

  “What rune is that? I have never seen it’s like,” he asked.

  “You would not understand. Now, you had better get your friends away from here. You do not want to be here when we complete our ritual,” warned the robed man again.

  Intellos was about to further protest to their advised exodus, however his intuition advised him otherwise. As familiar as he was with the use of all magics, including the shrouded methods of necromancy, he had never seen the runes the three acolytes were drawing on the walls. They were arcane, that much he knew, but the more complete the runes became, the more he was convinced that they were not entirely born from the natural workings of knowledge-based magic, but something different; something sinister. And even though his assessment was based entirely on an unconfirmed supposition, he nevertheless felt strongly enough about it to convince both Borinth and Dianali that they should all heed the advice of the three Acolytes, and leave.

  “Intellos, please get Lupara to gather those in the cellar as quickly as you can and meet us outside the back door. Be quick, I do not believe we have much time,” directed Dianali.

  “Actually, you have less time than you think,” said the head Acolyte as he apparently finished the first blood drawn rune. “If you leave now, you will be massacred. You had better all wait in the cellar. You will not want to witness what comes when your assailants arrive.”

  “We are not some wolflings who have never seen battle before,” said Dianali. “We have seen enough blood and death in our,” but she was interrupted by the icy, hood-hidden gaze from the Acolyte.

  “There are more chilling things than death in this world, My Dear,” he said as he ominously rose and slowly walked to the fourth and final wall.

  “What do you mean ‘comes’?” asked Intellos, his voice betraying his rising anxiety.

  “Even in your tenure of Grand Wizard, there were things you had never learned. Neither had any wizard in time and history,” said the deliberate Acolyte as he slit another deep cut on his thumb to draw more blood for his next rune. “But that is not the case any longer under the guidance of our current Grand Wizard, Esthinor. He has shown us the true power contained in the blood of the living and how it is linked to realms we had never considered existed. Realms of power and purpose. Realms that existed before our pitifully small land, and realms that will continue beyond the time when ours no longer is.”

  “There are no such realms,” interrupted Intellos. “I may be without the use of magic, but I am not without knowledge.”

  “Yes, we thought that too,” said the Acolyte continuing to make the foreign symbol on the wall. “But we were wrong. All of us were wrong.” The two other Acolytes, having finished their blood-drawn runes walked to the center of the room and began clearing a spot large enough for all three of them to sit. When the lead Acolyte finished the last blood-rune and no more blood was painted upon the walls, he stood up as methodically as he had drawn the runes and walked slowly to where his two other colleagues were sitting upon the floor. “Intellos, you and your friends should leave. We must begin.”

  Intellos was not surprised that Dianali spoke first because she often did, but he was surprised at the words she chose to speak for nowhere in her rather well-formed reputation was there any indication that she would ever back down from a challenge, direct or not, “Borinth, this does not feel right. There is something in the air, on the wind that I do not want to be present for. It is the same feeling I had in The Stone Keep.”

  “There is a bounty on your heads,” said the Acolyte, “but worry not. We are not here to collect it. Such things are beneath our energies.”

  Borinth looked to Dianali and then to Intellos, perhaps because he was used to the authority the former Grand Wizard carried in such matters and was looking to defer to his council. But after Intellos remained silent, he spoke up, “Then let us go,”. With his command, the last he would issue that evening, he, Intellos, Dianali and those who were working to prepare the defenses left the tools and wood where they lay and made their way to the cellar.

  With the addition of the joiners, the cellar space had become cramped intensifying the already stagnant, musty air. There were some worried questions asked by Lupara and a few of those with her, but they were put to as much ease as was possible when news of the invader’s numbers had grown from an estimated one hundred to one thousand became common knowledge. “But how can three Acolytes hold off such numbers?” some of them asked. “Are we meant to just wait here and hope?” was another question both Borinth and Intellos attempted to answer. Some of them suggested they all make an attempt to escape stating that while some of them would surely die, others would be able to mistake.

  Finally, it was Intellos who spoke up to silence the din of worried and scared questions and comments, “All of you listen to me!” his authoritative tone had startled even himself. Ever since the horrible ritual of The Severing, separating him from his magic, he had found a slower severing from certain aspects of himself, not the least of which was his authoritative demeanor. But, as it was, he was nonetheless capable of drawing upon it when necessary. “Yes, we are facing a very difficult situation, one that is almost impossible to understand how we will all live through. And yes, you are right to question; however, if we allow our questions, unanswered as they may be, to create within us an attitude of doubt, then I will tell you we have already lost something more valuable than our lives. We will have lost the very nature of humanity which is to hope! Without hope, without the ability to look beyond what seems hopeless, we will have lost ourselves. And that is a loss greater than any I wish to sacrifice to any attacker bent upon our destruction! So yes, we will wait, and yes, we will wonder; but we will not lose hope!�
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  When he had finished speaking there was a silence that pierced his understanding of what silence could be. Even Borinth and the ever outspoken Dianali just looked at him as if they had been physically stunned to immobility. Indeed, no one moved. Only their breaths indicated their motionless states had been naturally produced and had not been the result of some complicated spell. Had it not been for Lupara, the motionlessness may have continued well beyond this infinite moment extending into several more infinite moments. However, she was the first to break the raptured attention the former Grand Wizard had commanded and started gathering those still in his awe. It was not long before the immediate effects of his speech had given way to a sense of prolonged calm as all of them found spaces to settle into while they waited for the imminent attack.

  At first, and for seemingly a time longer than any of them could almost endure, there was nothing except their huddled bodies in the cellar of the inn whose comforts they had been recently enjoying. There was no ale, there was no music to hear, there was no food to eat, and there was no sleep to have. There was nothing except the silence of their calmly engaged stagnation as they silently waited and hoped for the outcome of what appeared to be an insurmountable mountain to climb. There was nothing that is, until they felt more than saw, a very faint pulse of violet light from between the floor boards above. And then, it began.

  Initially, the pulse was felt by only those adept at noticing the nuances of battle. Dianali, Borinth, and Intellos stopped what they were doing and looked toward each other with a foreboding in their eyes. There it was again, another singular pulse of violet light. This time though, it drew the attention of more of them. The few children present looked up to the wooden ceiling. Their mothers and fathers, if not tending to the children, also noticed the strange pulse. As their attentions fell from above to Borinth, he signaled they extinguish their small candles. The subsequent and instinctive adjustment their eyes made would have been much more preferable had it been made to complete darkness rather than the faint and ominous violet light leaking through the boards above.

  There it was again; a third pulse individually separate from the first two. However, this time, the pulse was quickly followed by another. Accompanying it, and all subsequent pulses thereafter, was a low-grade yet constant emission of what could only be called energy. It was not magic. Intellos was sure of that. The magical signature indicating its presence could be felt only by those possessing magical ability themselves. But there was no denying that everyone felt it. No, it was not magic, but that did not mean it was altogether unfamiliar to the former wizard. He felt this kind of energy before. On the rise overlooking the farm that he witnessed being sacked, when he battled the dark robbed man, he felt something similar to what he felt now. As the quickness and intensity of the pulses grew, the energy emitted and the violet light between the spikes intensified. By now, everyone in the cellar could sense that the preparations the Acolytes were making above were accelerating and almost ready. What they were, however, was beyond anyone’s ability to suppose, even the once Grand Wizard.

  The mothers began to hold their children just a little more tightly. The fathers began holding their wives a little more closely. And the fighters began to hold their weapons just a little more firmly. Lupara looked to Intellos and Dianali looked to Borinth, but all of their gazes were interrupted and directed to the ceiling when there was one final pulse followed by a dead stillness, the kind of stillness that draws the hairs on the back of one’s neck to stand. Following the last pulse was a feeling of pressure, as if the pressure of the surrounding air grew stronger making it more difficult to breathe. Not that it impeded one’s natural ability to draw breath, but it did force one to instinctively concentrate on it lest breathing be halted altogether.

  And then they heard it. A low, hideously intense primal growl followed by an unnaturally human gait pattern of slow and methodical footfalls began to land hard upon the floor above them. The growl was more a result of breathing than from the intentional production of sound. Regardless though, it was deep, feral, and sounded full of lethality. A second pulse, and then a third produced two more distinctly different growls and footfalls.

  Below, each of Lupara’s guests all huddled together with those closest to them. It did not matter if they were strangers. They did not care. All they knew was what was about to occur above, in defense of their little inn, was something they did not wish to witness. But so penetrating were the sounds and now smells from above, that even though no one from beneath could visually see what was happening, they were no less disturbed.

  Audibly, the contest began as three great bellows erupted from whatever it was that had come as a result of the blood magic of the Acolytes. The thunderous roar was answered by an equally shrill and loud, high-pitched crescendo that caused the spines of all those in the cellar to tingle with a primal fear. From outside, they heard a unison of marching. The kind of marching of an organized, advancing army holding its unity until the very last moment when all togetherness is abandoned in the throngs of battle. The heavy thuds of a thousand unified stomps combined with the deep and thunderous growls was enough to unnerve even the most steadfast, battle-hardened mercenaries. Such was the case with Borinth and Dianali. Even Intellos, in spite of his overwhelming experiences, was beginning to feel uneasy. No doubt because he knew that whatever it was that was assisting their defense was no less sinister than what was necessitating the assistance.

  The sounds, too many to adequately describe, continued for what was probably a shorter amount of time than it felt. When the thunderous roars, growls, metal on metal clangs, and high pitched, shrilling screeches reached a cacophony of audible palpability, there was one final pulse. And then things went still. Bone still. As if all blood produced by their marrow was stopped by a command so forceful, none dared to protest. Their acquiescence was final. Unbelievably, this stillness felt more treacherous than the pulses from whatever magic the Acolytes engaged.

  It was broken only by the strangely alien voice from the head Acolyte who said, “Your presence is allowed. Please come up from the cellar.”

  All of those in the cellar, including Borinth, Dianali, and even Intellos, looked around at each other uneasily, skeptical that whatever aided them was not bent on continuing its joyful battle and carnage on them. Someone had to move first, but none were less reluctant than the other. That is, until Lupara almost tearing herself from Intellos’s embrace, moved to climb the stairs. Soon after, Intellos followed. Then Borinth, Dianali, and the others joined them. But it was not a celebratory emergence one would expect under the circumstances. Rather, it was a progression of almost sadness; a sadness because the effects of the presence of whatever it was had not yet worn off.

  “You see,” said the head Acolyte as the four clear leaders of the situation emerged from the cellar,” Everything has remained unharmed.”

  “Yes, it appears it has,” answered Intellos, “but at what cost?”

  “Cost?” answered the Acolyte.

  “Yes, cost. There is always a cost to using magic. Or is that lesson no longer taught within the halls of the building I once called home?”

  “It is funny you should mention cost, Intellos,” answered the Acolyte again. “Our intervention does not come cheap.”

  “What do you mean? There was no mention of cost previously,” stated Lupara as she stepped forward.

  “My dear, as Intellos so clearly explained just a moment ago,” he paused to look directly at him, “there is always a cost. But do not think of it as such. Think of it as merely a tribute to he who has enabled us to assist.”

  “You mean a tribute to Esthinor,” said Intellos.

  “My dear man, Esthinor is rather above such things. No. The tribute is not for him, but rather for our direct supervisor. It is to him the tribute must be made,” he said.

  “And who exactly is he?” interjected Dianali, as she returned to her quick-to-challenge demeanor.

  “Xonyos,” the Acolyt
e said.

  Lupara turned to Intellos and then to both Borinth and Dianali, but their eyes returned only confirmation that the tribute must be paid. “Very well, what is the price of this tribute?” she asked. The Acolyte smiled.

  Godaga

  (Judgement)

  There was a chill in the air reminiscent of the deep Dwarven caverns. This chill, while a little premature for this time of year, was not without precedence. He remembered a time long since removed from having relevance upon his life when he sat in an altogether different carriage, but felt the exact same chill he was feeling now. Just like today, he was on a journey of sorts across the whole of Avandia, but unlike today the destination and direction of his past journey was the opposite. As he recovered his balance after losing it from a particularly rough patch on the stone laid, he closed his eyes.

  Even though there was no decrease to the visual stimulus seeking to interrupt his recollection of a time long gone when the space separating his lids was reduced to nothing, he still felt an increase in the clarity with which he was able to remember. Perhaps it was this very same portion of rough road that was the culprit provoking his father’s ire so many years ago. Perhaps it was not. Either way, it did not matter because as soon as his lids closed, he was instantly transported back to when his father, his Elven father and King, was sitting across from him in the Royal Carriage warning him of the potential hazards of traveling over rough patches of road. But, of course, he did not listen. He never listened.

  “Eri, I distinctly remember telling you to watch how far you leaned out of the window,” said The King as he exited the Royal Carriage, descending the three steps to reach the ground. Eriboth, laying on his back and gasping for air, was unable to respond to his father’s unspoken request for an explanation. It was not the first time he had his lungs emptied forcefully. He was well acquainted with the familiar, death like feeling because he was repeatedly on the losing side of he and his brother’s combat training exercises. As familiar with and used to it as he had become, this incident was perhaps the one that stung the most. Not because it was the most painful, but because it was the most embarrassing. It was the first time his disobedience to his father’s wishes had caused the familiar feeling. Yet, as much as he had to struggle for air, it was not the losing of his breath that caused his inability to respond to his father. It was, in fact, the sight of watching his father slowly walking toward him that promoted his embarrassment to a paralytic level. In all reality, the youngest prince was grateful for the reprieve his vocal paralysis caused and took ample time to indulge in his breathlessness to formulate an appropriate response. But the longer his father stood over him with his elven displeasure in full, stoic display, the more he resigned to the reality that he had no good response.