"How many more will come?" Crinnan asked, "How many more seek… answers as you say?"
"All of them." the Govian promised as his head had begun to bob with dizziness. His eyelids grew too heavy to remain open for he had lost too much blood, and his life was fading fast. Crinnan spied a knife at the Govians hip. He reached out and pulled the weapon from its sheath.
"Is there anything else you want to say before I kill you?" A tear fell from the Govian's eye, and he nodded his head.
"I want… my mother," the Govian cried, choking not on his blood, but the lump of sadness stuck in his throat, "I am… afraid." Crinnan nodded his head, and without wasting another second, jabbed the knife through the Govian's temple. Crinnan watched the body go limp against the tree and let go of the handle of the weapon, leaving it in the soldier's skull.
"I need to get to my squad," Crinnan words were heavy, and he stood and turned to Sage. He briefly reflected on the Govian's words but had no idea what they meant. What had he done to piss the Empire off so much? He thought about that for a moment and realized that the answer could have been any among dozens.
He still did not know what to think of the Elf, but he did know that he was willing and able to kill Govian soldiers. He believed that at least at that moment, Sage did not want to kill him too.
"How do you feel?" Sage asked as he stepped up to the half-blood.
"What?" Crinnan asked, "What are you talking about?"
"Do you feel anything?" Sage pressed, "Do you feel sad for the Govian?"
"He brought himself to his end," Crinnan deflected, "As we all do. He’s fortunate not to have to fight anymore. He is Govian, so he now lives in paradise."
"All true," Sage agreed readily. "But do you feel sad?"
"No. Now I need to get to the Izla'Axi caverns. Do you… do you know the way?"
Sage stared at what looked like a boy to him and nodded his head, "‘Tis a day's walk by foot," he pointed to the west. "And I should say the Belhaasi Weald is not a friendly place.
"Well I'm not a friendly person," Crinnan replied, staring into the thick woods. "I should have no problem."
Chapter Six
Eon I
22nd of Ramlia – 346AG
09:00 – Canruusi Wasteland
He was nothing. Generations came and went as he burned in the Hells, and he watched the masses join him in their collective wails of agony. He endured the dismemberment and torture of his body over and over as he waited for his chance. Eventually, it came, and in spite of his nothingness, in spite of his two deaths, he lived again.
The Brothers light shone brightly and outlined the borders of the clouds beneath him. It provided a seemingly spectral path for his travels, a road of white and blue lined with the illumination of the suns. Their light, however, provided him with neither warmth nor spiritual comfort as it did so many others. He was without flesh or faith in any higher power, save his own.
Solid ground was miles beneath him, yet his gaze was not cast downward. For despite his recent awakening and return to the world, he already felt that he had seen enough of it. For the moment he simply wanted to be free of it all, free of his blithering host, of the mindless savages that followed him, and of the confines of a mortal body. He had found in his time back that he could only find respite, ironically enough, in the heavens, away from the effects of his power and the world he dreamt of transforming.
"The third demon has arisen," he determined as he navigated his near-invisible swarm of microscopic machines through the air, "The third of his kind. The girl, myself and now the boy."
His voice was no louder than a thought, his mind nothing more than a program running in a rogue cluster of nanomachines. He had designed his "vessel" centuries before to contain his conscience in the event that his physical body longer could. He was without form and entirely self-sufficient; timeless, alive and immortal.
His host, whom he had left on the ground for the moment, was a former soldier turned miner, and Eon felt only weakened and burdened by him. He had the brute strength but not the focus to carry out his former military duties. In the century or so that Eon had been free of one, he had forgotten how truly inconvenient and limiting it was to be trapped within the confines of a mortal body. The need to eat, breathe, shit, sleep, and fuck were all things he had happily been rid of. Without such needs and debilitating desires, he had truly felt free and finally been able to develop his one real sense, his sense of self.
"Behold," his whisper of a voice declared, the sound of which could have easily mistaken for the wind, "The true plane of the damned, the lands of the dying." He looked beyond the glowing clouds beneath him and sought out the forms of the beings on the planet below. He watched them move, seemingly with no purpose; it was all very depressing to him.
"Neither wrought by the flames nor pestilence of eternal damnation," he spat as he watched, "Molded by frivolous emotion, guided by illusions of false gods. I alone am your Savior; I shall bring you to the light by casting it from your reach. Hail your true God. Hail Eon."
With that, he began his descent, his return from the heavens to the domain of the living. As he passed through the clouds, he caught a glimpse of the Brother's light gleaming off the luster of Dauid's Tower in the distance, the tallest structure in all of Canrom.
Eon remembered what the tower had been before it was claimed and re-christened by the Imperial Church. Why, he even remembered High Father Dauid and what a sniveling alien he was, for he was fueled by his pride and mad with power. Those devoted to the Empire, however, saw not an insane priest, but a passionate leader, a dutiful servant of Dura'Ana. Eon snarled at the celebration of such a weak mortal.
As his swarm descended, the wastelands of Canrom came into view. Eon sneered at the sight, for the Canrom countryside he remembered had been rich with greenery and farmlands. He recalled the livestock that used to feed on the lush fields, the flowing rivers and azure lakes that had all but dried up, and the dense patches of trees where he had played with his friends as a child. It had all but gone, and what remained in its wake could only be seen as a mockery of some of Eon's fondest, most comfortable memories.
The land Eon had once called home, the country of Canrom, was completely obliterated in the last days of the Ancients. The livestock was slaughtered and the farmlands bombarded with weapons of mass destruction and militarized nanomachines. The small farming towns and interstates were flattened overnight, the forests and bodies of water burned down and dried up. For hundreds of years after the first bombs fell, all the land to the west of Canrom City was utterly uninhabitable due to the radiation and the subsequent fallout.
Once the dust settled and the skies healed, people slowly returned to the plains of Western Canrom. They journeyed in search of a new life, but they did not find what they sought. The vegetation never returned, as the ground on which they walked was nothing more than ash left over from the nanomachines and WMDs. Instead of the farmlands they desired, they found only dead ground and blistering heat. The little water that remained was irradiated, and any life that was around had been mutated, and most were beasts in search of their next meal.
In spite of everything, many of the settlers remained in the wastelands where the Govian Empire left them alone. Since they could not produce their own food and had no real resources to trade, they eventually began to obtain the things they needed by robbing the trains and caravans that traveled through. As they became equipped to do so, they shot down aircraft that tried to fly over, raided any villages or settlements within reach. Eventually, as a means to simplify their food shortage, they turned to cannibalism. They consumed the corpses of those who were unlucky enough to cross paths with them and even herded and enslaved people as cattle.
Over time these groups of people grew large and well known, feared by any who would even dare to think of venturing into the wastelands. They were savage hordes who did as they pleased to satisfy their most primitive desires. While there were dozens of tribes scattered across t
he wasteland, they as a whole were commonly referred to as "Marauders."
Eon's swarm found solid ground and hovered above a large Marauder camp. He looked around at them, at their short hairstyles and tanned skin. Their trappings were crudely yet effectively constructed from goods they had plundered from travelers in the wastelands. While many were bare-chested and covered in tattoos, some wore rusted metal armor fabricated from the hulls of ruined trains and aircraft. The rest simply wore the tanned or boiled skins of those they had killed and consumed. Eon found their garments tasteless and for the most part did not approve of their savage way of life. What he did appreciate, however, was their ruthlessness.
His appointed generals, judges and any he saw fit to knight were outfitted in armor that they had stripped from fallen Govian, AGRA and Black Knight soldiers. Eon had permitted his followers to paint and modify their armor as they desired, provided they followed his color scheme of white and red and bore his sigil, a circled white eye with a flame in the iris, on their chest pieces and shields.
As he wove through his Marauder encampment, Eon became more and more disgusted with his subordinates. In his absence, a feast had erupted complete with the drum and electric guitar music he so greatly despised. His Marauders had wrangled up and roasted a few slaves over a fire, and ravenously picked apart and consumed the flesh of the bodies on the spits. Others indulged their senses in plundered narcotics and alcohol as they danced mindlessly to the music that was being performed. In his eyes, they had too much freedom. They squandered their downtime on satisfying desires, and as a repulsed Eon made his way through the horde and observed his follower's behavior, he felt compelled to bring it to an end.
Before Eon had conquered and taken command over his few tribes, public debauchery was commonplace and even part of the culture. While Eon withheld his qualms regarding cannibalism and the tanning of hides, he greatly detested open sexuality and brutally enforced his rules against it. He had a brothel tent specifically created and set aside for that kind of behavior.
As Eon floated through the mob, he passed by a pair of males who had a Vampress bridged between their crotches. Eon stopped moving and observed for a moment as one of the savages thrust ferociously into the female. He wore a look of complete absence, a face of stupor that infuriated Eon. How could somebody so boldly and blatantly defy his laws, he thought as he pondered a punishment.
The dark-skinned Vampress twisted her thin body between the two fornicators and released a muffled groan due to the obstruction in her mouth. While Eon was without a physical body, he felt the ghost sensation of his stomach churning. His impudent followers were a sickening sight, and his anger blazed.
"Such insolent acts of putrid fornication," Eon seethed, his silent voice sick with disgust, "Do my words fall upon deaf ears? Could it be that even as I, the greatest of undying specters, traverse this despicable mockery of a world in vain? The body I have commandeered, my host: a physical vessel that can be spoken to, heard and reasoned with, do I bring myself before these savages for no reason? Could it be that my loyal subjects still fall short of obeying my clear and indisputable commandments?"
Eon watched as the naked female Marauder was lifted into the air and flipped over onto her hands and knees where, with only a slight grunt of discomfort, she all but welcomed the brutal sodomization that followed.
"Such filth!" Eon roared with growing fury. "Such disobedience to my laws! Fear not, my subjects for I, your king and savior, shall rid the world of these stained and soiled souls."
At that, and with only a moderate amount of concentration on his part, Eon split his single nanomachine swarm into three smaller swarms. Though he was but one conscience, he was able to direct all three swarms with ease.
The first swarm navigated into the mouth and nostrils of the sodomizer, immediately locking his body in place mid penetration. As the female turned her sweaty head to see why the penile barrage had halted, the second swarm filled her body, and she froze. The final fornicator grabbed the female's head to thrust it back into his lap just in time for the last swarm to overtake his body.
For a moment, Eon left the three in place and allowed them only control over their eyes, for he wished them to witness their punishment, to realize the wrath that was to be unleashed on them. He wanted his entire army to witness the result of such disobedience.
"Brothers, sisters, slaves and cadavers!" the trio suddenly and loudly shouted in unison. While their voices were still their own, it was not they, but Eon who spoke through them.
"Your King, your savior, and dear friend has returned with news." The three bodies twisted out of their shameful positions and stood shoulder to shoulder, with naught moving but their eyes and lips. The music stopped, and the surrounding Marauders turned toward the curious sight and watched.
"But before we reveal the news," the three voices continued. Their tones were flat and lacking emotion, "We, with great sorrow and shame, confess before you our sins. We have betrayed the trust of his highness, the most powerful King Eon. With humble hearts, we embrace our public punishment, that you may learn from our transgressions."
"For the sins of sodomy, fornication, and public disconsideration, we forever surrender our lives." At that, their knees locked solid, and each of them stood up straight. Their fearful eyes darted in all directions, and sweat dripped down their bodies. Eon had complete control over their movement but not their emotions. They were all filled with dread for they had seen the wrath and power of their King before.
"Sir Heklaar, if you will do the honors," Eon said through the Vampress in the middle. The Marauders all turned her eyes toward one of Eon's judges, a Gaian adorned in full black and red Eonic regalia. He stood at least two heads above all the non-Gaian marauders, and his shoulders were nearly twice as broad; thrice with pauldrons.
Heavy metal armor and chain clanked as Sir Heklaar approached. The rest of the Marauders watched intently, both fearful of Eon and eager for the bloodbath that was coming.
"Sir Heklaar," Eon voiced through his temporary host, "We have committed the sin of public fornication and beg of you Eon's discipline. How will you right our wrongdoing?"
Sir Heklaar stood tall and silent. His face was hidden behind the visor of a heavy black helmet. As the most favored of Eon's judges it was his duty to decide how to punish any being Eon designated.
"Kal," Heklaar's voice was deeper than the Hells. He looked to the blonde haired Elf on his right. Eon released his grip over Kal's mind, "This is not your first taste of King Eon's judgment, Kal. You will die today."
"Ema'as," Heklaar pointed his armored finger at the Vampress in the middle. Eon released his grasp over her, and she gasped loudly, "A Vampre whore's punishment is unending death, you shall be imprisoned and stricken with the Thirst."
"Faang," Heklaar looked to the male on the left. "You have given yourself up to your lusts over and over again. You are to serve two years in the brothel tent. You shall receive no compensation for your services, only food, and water."
Kal and Faang fell to the ground and broke into tears at their sentence. They sobbed before Heklaar and Eon and begged for mercy in every way they could fathom. Ema'as, the lone female fearfully wept between, suddenly feeling shame for her actions.
The surrounding Marauders whooped and cheered as Heklaar approached the guilty. Kal, the blonde Elf, got to his knees and clasped his hands together before the judge, begging for forgiveness. He wept bitterly and desperately pleaded, but Heklaar was not shaken by the display.
"Kal," Heklaar flatly announced as he pulled a heavy looking maul from his back, "I banish thee to the Hells. May Eon show you mercy in the afterlife!"
Heklaar swung his maul into Kal's chest, caving it inward and forcing his last breath from his body. He flew backward and skidded against the dead, sandy ground for a moment before coming to a silent writhing stop. In what moments he had, Kal tried to gasp, but because of his wounds he could only lay and stare up at the clouds and at the Brothers who shone
behind them.
Eon heard the dying Elf's thoughts and listened with great interest. Kal thought of his mother, the one good thing he once had in his life. He had lost her at age thirteen in Canrom City. They were caught in a crossfire between Black Knight rebels and Govian Inquisitors. Following her death, Kal was left alone on the streets. He survived for a while foraging through waste bins and pawning whatever he could manage to steal, but he eventually made his way out of Canrom City where he joined a tribe of Marauders. Without the love of his mother or any real hopes or dreams to work toward, Kal spent the rest of his short life addicted to sugir and debauchery.
Eon felt the emotions of the dying being, and as one final act of mercy, he manifested a memory of Kal's. As Heklaar crashed the head of the maul down through his face, all he heard was the voice of his mother.
"I love you, baby boy."
With the death of Kal, Heklaar turned to Ema'as, the Vampress. Behind him, two Marauder soldiers had wheeled up a wooden cart with an iron cage attached to it. Within was the wildly panting and thrashing body of a Thirst-stricken Vampre.
The Vampre people had three different forms. The Low-Vampre or regular Vampre were the first form. They were standard, average people with no abnormal strengths or weaknesses save an allergy to garlic. Nearly all Vampre in Duraan were regular Vampre.
The second form called a fledgling or Thirst-stricken Vampre was a very fragile one. The Thirst-stricken Vampre required blood which they craved ravenously; otherwise, they suffered from a temporary and extreme insanity. Their libido increased, and their physical strength and speed nearly tripled, but they developed a severe sensitivity to the Brother's light and could not stomach anything but blood and raw flesh. Very few Vampre survived being stricken with the Thirst, but if they did they advanced to the Vampre's final form.
The final Vampre form was called a High-Vampre. High-Vampre were incompatible with the NaNe but naturally immortal. Their sensitivity to sunlight decreased, their strength and speed doubled yet again, and they were capable of powers such as mind reading and hypnosis. Some were even said to have even learned advanced techniques such as flying and telekinetics. Govian law strictly forbade the existence or transformation of High-Vampre outside of government positions.
The Black Knight Box Set Page 8
