by P D Dennison
“Weren’t you supposed to be cleaning up the remains of your cousin’s house today? You look awfully clean.” Ekes looked up and down accusingly at Ravak.
Ravak grinned broadly and strode across the room to the table. “Uncle Gerenaan and I are done. We had a great deal of unexpected help. Well, nearly done. The hut is down and the graves are filled. He said he would take care of the rest himself this afternoon or on the morrow and that he had to go to see the White Bear elders this afternoon to tell them of Kerenaan’s wife. I didn’t know she was born of their clan until today.” More than anything, Ravak was sure his uncle just wanted the long walk to the White Bear lands so he could be by himself with his sorrows, but he dared not speak it. Ravak lowered his head, feeling saddened finally at the loss of his cousin. They’d lived right down the road from one another their entire childhoods. Played, climbed trees, gotten lost in the hills on hunts with their fathers, and completed their trials. They’d had some very splendid adventures with one another and now that was all a memory. He began to understand his uncle’s grief at the loss of his brother and his heart went out to the man.
Ravak became too wrapped up in his father’s foul words and the commotion of the events of the previous night to allow their great loss to penetrate his heart. How could the old man not be feeling what Gerenaan felt? he wondered. Ravak thought he might have handled the situation this morning with his uncle a little more gingerly while the old fellow was fighting back the tears of loss.
“You have a strong back if you tore that hut down and dug three holes in one morning.” He slapped Ravak on the shoulder and shook him playfully.
Compliments came seldom from the crotchety old bastard and Ravak didn’t handle the praise of his father well. He simply nodded and poked at his plate of food, stuffing a piece of meat in his mouth to avoid having to say anything.
“Tell him what we discussed, Ekes.”
“Tell him what? I didn’t agree to anything!” He slammed his spoon down and crossed his arms while staring into his plate of food.
“Ravak, your father has decided it’s time for you to join him at a Council meeting to hear the elders speak,” she explained with a proud smile on her lips as she reached out for his hand.
“Just a minute, luv.” Ekes backed away from the table and stood up. “It’s not as simple as all that,” he exclaimed with his finger in the air. “If I am going to take the boy into a Council meeting, he must first understand there’ll be rules and if he breaks them, there will be consequences.” He reiterated this last point with the finger in the air again to emphasize that this was a promise and not an idle threat.
Ravak jumped to his feet excitedly. “Really? Are you going to take me with you this afternoon?”
“This afternoon? Well, now hold your tongue just one minute. I was going to announce it to the Council this afternoon and bring you in on the morrow.” He scratched his beard and looked at the boy furrowing his wild and bushy brow. “But... I suppose it’s as good a time as any. You can come this afternoon. But this is by no means an excuse to carry on like a pup! This is serious! You must show respect and honor me before the Council! If you step out of line, I’ll never bring you into another Council meeting again! Never! Do you hear me?” He had one finger pointing out toward Ravak and that telltale eye of his closed to denote the level of seriousness he intended, the other arm extended wildly in the air to emphasize his point.
“I’ll not embarrass you. You have my word.” Ravak nodded obediently and sat back down, trying to contain his excitement at the prospect of finally being involved in the Council, grinning ear to ear all the while he ate.
“All right then. Get your best clothes on and make sure you’re clean and presentable. We’ll leave as soon as I’m done eating.” Ekes went back to his plate, lapped up the last of the gravy with a big chunk of soda bread and licked his fingers as he finished up.
Ravak wolfed down as much as he could, grabbed his nicest coat, and was ready in moments.1
1 “The Black Dragon, though one of the weaker, evilly aligned breeds, has a particularly nasty breath weapon it can employ. It can, at will, issue forth viscous and sticky acidic goo that will dissolve any organic and most inorganic substances it comes in contact with. Moreover, the Black Dragon may also change the solidity of its breath weapon and if it chooses, may also issue forth a foamy, less concentrated version of the same acid in the form of a spray. They do this in order to spit out clouds of the stuff that covers a much greater area. Less concentrated is something of a misnomer as even in the foamy spray form, Black Dragon acid is potent enough to melt flesh from bone in a matter of seconds.”
- A.M. (Arch Mage) Zeraan Taaselfee, the Annals of Dragon Husbandry, Season: 762A.1. (A.1. stands for the First Age or Age 1 and is used to denote the passing of a season in the Land of Shaarn.)
Chapter 2
Waking the Dragon
Graxxen’s eyes were ablaze with anticipation. It had moved, almost imperceptibly, yet there was no mistaking it. He’d stared at it for weeks now. In the faint light of the cave deep in the bowels of Dragon’s Maw Keep, Graxxen nodded.
It was time.
Grey tendrils of cloud writhed in the air above Dragon’s Maw Keep. There was a chill from the last remnants of winter that clung to the bones. The stench of rotting ghoul flesh mixed with the foul aroma of eons of dusty, musty death hung heavy in the air. The living no longer walked the foul streets or breathed the putrid air. Only the dead dwelt within. Sooty smog hung low around the upper walls of the ancient and forgotten castle city. Dragon’s Maw Keep was an imposing fortress jutting up out of the ground on a mound of rock and earth that seemed out of place and unnatural amidst the ancient Rowenwoods of the mountain valley in which it lay, well concealed from all the Land of Shaarn for ages. The ancestors of the Barbarian horde, the fabled Dragon Rider Clan erected the keep in the First Age. A warring and conquering people they held a great power, which gave them the advantage in battle, the power of the dragons. They had learned to tame them, keep them as mounts, and to use their wicked magick and breath as weapons in battle against their foes. The legends told they built the massive city keep as both a monument to their power and wealth and also to protect and preserve the precious dragon armada that had elevated their kin to such great heights.
The keep had a high imposing outer wall standing some twenty feet tall that completely surrounded it on all sides and was some ten feet thick with a large parapet style walkway on top. Battlements for archers to defend the base of the wall from above or to drop cauldrons of hot oil down on would-be siegers line the top of the outer wall. The one known entrance to the keep, on the west face, was a large ironbound, treated Rowenwood drawbridge. Behind that lay two massive side swinging doors also constructed of sturdy Rowenwood specially treated to harden like stone and resist fire. It was barred from inside by three massive rods controlled by gears to be lifted from within the gatehouse.
The main gate was bound in intricately crafted wrought iron depicting dragons clawing at and surrounding the face of a much larger dragon. When the doors closed, it formed a menacing sculpture of the central dragon, mouth open, as if the very keep itself were alive and would swallow intruders whole if they dared enter.
Two towers fortified the gatehouse with many archer slits up their entire thirty-foot height. Both inside and out, two moats surrounded the walls, said to contain the secretions of the Black Dragons, a foamy insoluble spittle that would eat through anything it touched. The moat stunk of the sour, acrid rot. Every once in a while, some putrid vapor, trapped in rotting debris at the bottom for centuries would bubble up. Anything or anyone that was unfortunate enough to fall or be thrown in was burned alive by the acid.
Just inside the gatehouse, another drawbridge spanned the inner moat leading to the outer courtyard. This bridge could be demolished from the gatehouse or from within the keep by pulling ropes that felled the supports, destroying access to the great keep and securing those within.
Battlement topped walls and tall arched narrow windows jutted out of the structure, creating a spiralling pattern to the very top.
Inside the entrance, an intruder faced a two-hundred foot long tunnel lined on both sides the full length with spear holes, archery slits, and a roof lined with murder holes for dousing would-be invaders with hot oil, designed more for intimidation than for function, but it worked in both counts none the less.
The tunnel ended in the keep’s open aired courtyard some three hundred yards across that had once been alive with the bustle of Dragon Riders, common northern folk, and a busy marketplace during the First Age.
The courtyard was now overgrown with Elms and Rowenwoods. It had become a tangled mess of trees, shrubs, and vines both living and dead. All that coupled with the remnants of many small broken down old buildings from when in use. In the center, a massive pit, once the stables for the dragons, held the keep’s only true remnant of life deep in its shadows.
All along the inner walls of the keep, tight staircases wound up the courtyard wall with no rails to prevent a fall. At the top of each stair a walkway wound about the keep for access between the levels and various doors, right to the top to allow access to the upper battlements. Some of the doors held the remnants of signage denoting smiths, bakeries, tanners, tailors, abattoirs, furriers, spice distributors, and various other crafts shops common to the people of the Dragon Rider Clan during the First Age.
The dwarven slaves hands crafted all the intricate etchings along the staircase. Expert stone crafters, metal smiths, miners, jewellers, sculptors, and builders there was little the dwarven people hadn’t mastered the craftsmanship of. Their prowess in engineering was unmatched by any other race in the Land of Shaarn save the tiny Gnomish peoples of the Eastern Gnome Hills. The ancient horde knew that a castle built by these expert craftsmen would stand for all time as a testament to the era in which they ruled and subjugated all of the other races in the Land of Shaarn.
The interior walls of the courtyard were carved to nearly the entire height of the structure to depict the great battles and epic campaigns the Barbarians were involved in on their road to total wyrld domination. Now these works of art were cracked, aged, and some of the more intricate were crumbling and breaking to pieces leaving remnants lying about the courtyard as time slowly began to reclaim the rock back to the land.
One got a sense of dread and emptiness simply standing in the courtyard staring up at the statuesque walls, examining the horrifically sculpted images of the gory battles fought and peoples vanquished. Now, in its current state, the place spoke of only one thing: death and death dwelled within.
The air inside the courtyard was cold and stale. All one could hear was an ominous low hum broken only by the occasional whistle as the wind found its way down a few feet of stairs before dissipating into stillness.
In the center of the courtyard was a massive pit of which the bottom could not be seen even if one were to lean over the now rusted out, yet intricately crafted, wrought iron railing that surrounded it and peer down into the endless, shadows below. Down in the pit, deep down where only darkness dwells and vile things scurried along the face of the dank and mossy pit walls, a faint glow emanated from a hole in the wall. Inside that hole was something no man would want to lay eyes on. The lair of the lich Graxxen.
He’d only recently awakened from the great slumber that preserved his undead form throughout the ages as his power grew from that of a mortal into that of a lich. He’d taken up residence at Dragon’s Maw more than one thousand seasons past after destroying the last of the Dragon Riders. While he slept, his magick worked on the unhatched dragon eggs that lay about in a cyst-like state of hibernation awaiting fertilization from a male wyrm or from the skilled hands of a powerful wizard.
Graxxen, though once a man, became a dead thing and few remnants of his humanity remained. His corpse had grown dry and withered into a tightly knit husk that clung to his bones. Bits of flesh had either fallen away or turned to dust and drifted off with the ages. Only fragments of skin still clung to his parched fingers and joints. Though he’d been properly wrapped in ceremonial bandages and his body enchanted to withstand the effects of aging, time still took its toll on the dead. He, or rather it, was a creature created from magicks most dark and foul to preserve the body of a once living grand magus who’d gone mad with a lust for power and would not accept the toll that the passing of time took on his mortal body.
Graxxen was a thing of pure evil and an evil of the worst kind. Demons were inherently evil, chaotic and served the devils of the Nine Hells as they mindlessly battled the Archons of Asgaard in the Seven Heavens. They were born to wickedness and knew nothing else. Yet Graxxen, born to the race of men, had known the love of a mother, peace and joy, love and kinship. His hunger for power as he progressed as a mage of the Tower twisted him. He let the Blood Magick take him fully rather than taking control of it. He crept into the dark places of the Tower of High Sorcery seeking out the lost tomes of the ages, from times in which dark magick had prospered. He used them to fulfill his unyielding craving for mystic power and supremacy over the other Magi of the Land of Shaarn.
It was the power of this evil that he projected outward through his army of Blood Magi. They were a flock of wayward souls too weak-willed to be counted amongst the ranks of the Tower, yet too ambitious to give up on their aspirations for magedom. He had used them to lay siege to Dragon’s Maw Keep in one spectacular battle against the handful of pride-filled Dragon Riders who foolishly thought they were strong enough to overcome his magicks. The attack came so swiftly, they did not even have time to mount their dragons for battle. The wicked sorcerers used magick, something the Dragon Riders had little power over and little understanding of. They killed all those who dwelled within. They didn’t even spare the women and children. All were killed. Their bones were then heaved into the massive, seemingly bottomless pit, doused with oil, hexed and then burned so that the souls of the damned Northerners would feel the anguish of the mystic curse burning their very essence for all eternity in the hell Graxxen had created for them. He needed this; he needed their suffering to fulfill his ambitions for lichdom as was written in the ancient scrolls and tomes.
The madness of the war against the horde had driven him into the cold and spectral hands of wickedness itself. It severed his soul from his humanity, into a creature of raw torturous, unrelenting evil. And as his evil acts wrung the life from his soul, the desire to cheat physical death drove Graxxen to transform himself into a lich.
A lich is a creature of purest evil driven by high ambition and complete disregard for the living. It is an undead manifestation of a once living mage of great power transformed by ancient, heinous and evil Blood Magicks into a thing of the night. Few throughout the history of the Land of Shaarn possessed such twisted and self focused ambitions as to disregard their own immortal souls to make this deal with the Nine Hells. Yet Graxxen had had little left of his soul to lose.
He could use eternity in the immortal form of a lich to fulfill every devious ambition he could conjure. All of the books and ancient shamanic scrolls of black magick that contained the lich transformation rite were burned save one locked away in the Tower of High Sorcery in Stromsgate. Enchanted with several wards, power totems and mystic locks to ensure the magick could never be brought forth to be used again, Graxxen, with his knew found found power, acquired it through less than honorable means.
The ritual required the blood of no less than twenty vessels to preserve the undead body of the mage, twenty male magi who placed powerful magickal hexes on the pool of foul li
quid. The cursed pool would ensure that the flesh of the mage to be turned would be preserved for the centuries that he slumbered as his power grew making him both undead and immortal—a lich.
In the final phase of the ritual the sorcerers would take their own lives by slitting the throat of the man next to him in the circle of magick, their bodies falling into the bloody pool to be consumed in the last rite of preservation of the soul and resurrection of the rotting flesh. Through this grotesque ritual Graxxen had taken the rite one step further by including the flesh of the entire Dragon Rider Clan to give himself even greater power upon his return. The legends say he succeeded and grew into a creature of the Nine Hells more evil, wicked, and more twisted than anything ever imagined in the darkest of nightmares. In time, he’d pay a toll for such power, losing completely his only link to the physical wyrld: his mortal body.
He had instructed his followers that once his transformation was complete that they were to drink of the blood that remained from the pool, that they too would become immortal. Most were blindly loyal to him as they’d fallen prey to his powerful charms; they followed his commands unquestioningly. Those stronger willed who refused were killed for their disloyalty and turned into soulless thralls, ghouls. Those who trusted in him and drank from the tainted waters also found themselves his ghoulish slaves.
Deep within the pit beneath Dragon’s Maw Graxxen stood awkwardly hunched over a great cauldron that sat atop a mound of fiery red coals. He carefully and methodically added ingredients according to the rite laid out in the terrible tome before him. A deformed ghoul served him, bringing the required ingredients for his steaming elixir. Another ghoul with only one arm stood by stirring the cauldron as Graxxen added the ingredients and spoke the mystic incantations to enchant the liquid.
He was making a love potion, of all things. Not the kind a mortal man would use on a woman to steal her heart, though this love potion would do that too if only it were intended to be used for such a pleasant and romantic purpose. No, this love potion would be used to entice the first born male black dragon in centuries to fertilize the eggs that Graxxen’s ghouls so carefully guarded and cared for all these long seasons. Once complete Graxxen scooped up a ladle full of the draught and bottled it, holding it up to the dim firelight to examine his handiwork. His face was skeletal with bits of dried rotting flesh clinging to the bone here and there. His hair was all but gone. Only a few strands remained, all white, dried and frizzled. He was ashen and grey, his face set back into a deep black hood to hide his horrendous visage from the wyrld. His eyes, faintly, so faintly glowed a pallid purple, the eyes of the waking dead, the color of Blood Magick. His hands, skeletal, mostly, still held some flesh around the palm, but it was all dried and cracked like the parched earth of the Black Desert and they were bound with ragged bandages to help preserve what flesh remained. His finger nails had grown for a short time after his passing from life to unlife and they were long and ragged.
