Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “The elves and the dwarves,” Kali said.

  “The elves and the dwarves.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. If Kerberos wanted their help, why create two races that were at each other’s throats for millennia? It was only in their third age that they found any kind of peace at all.”

  “You are wrong,” Zharn went on. “Of course the two races fought, but that was exactly why they had been created so. To be diametrically opposed. The el’v, meaning, in the ancient language of the Pantheon ‘of the mind’, and the dwarves, a corruption of dou’arv, hammer and anvil, ‘of the body’. It was only by throwing mind and body into conflict that Kerberos believed they would, eventually, reach their full potential. I suspect it is the same story on a thousand worlds, far beyond the Pantheon. That many of the indigenous races’ greatest achievements come about – can only come about – as a result of war.”

  Kali stared at a peninsula overrun with soaring towers and factories, fortifications and battlefields.

  “The whole of the peninsula was a forge,” she realised.

  “A forge for the dwarves, perhaps, a laboratory for the elves. The distinction is immaterial. Each managed, in their own way, to create horrifying weapons of destruction. And the souls of the hundreds of thousands of each race who fell before them across the long years served only to strengthen Kerberos.”

  “So wouldn’t it have served Kerberos better if it had created lifeforms with potential for nothing other than destruction? Some kind of a… warworld to supply it with victims for evermore?”

  “Even millions of souls would have been insufficient for Kerberos’ needs, so weakened was it. What it needed to recover was the constant ebb and flow of billions of souls. The population, in other words, of a full and thriving planet.”

  “But,” Kali said, “all there is is the peninsula. It would never support that many people. Are you telling me that there are lands beyond the World’s Ridge Mountains – beyond the Stormwall – beyond the seas?”

  “On the contrary. I am telling you there are not.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “Each time one of the Pantheon grants life to a world, it begins, as you have seen, with the creation of a small section of land – in your case, what you call the peninsula, what is to you, in effect, Twilight. This land serves its purpose until the demands upon it begin to exceed its capability, at which time it must expand.”

  “The deity having drawn strength from what it’s already created,” Kali gathered.

  “You are perceptive.”

  “So,” Kali asked, “the dra’gohn return?”

  “Yes, the dra’gohn return,” Zharn said. As she spoke Kali’s viewpoint changed yet again, and she found herself so far above her world that she looked down on the peninsula as she might a representation of it on a map. Its coastline was fully visible from end to end, all but featureless at this height, looking almost unreal. Then she became aware of massive shapes that momentarily blocked her vision – the dra’gohn swooping once more from the heart of Kerberos – and when she looked again, these shapes were clearly delineated above the peninsula, heading as one to where a small ripple in the map indicated the presence of the World’s Ridge Mountains. Kali gasped as the heavenly forms flew majestically above the towering range and once more began to breathe their red and yellow threads, and, as they did, land began to form beyond that which she knew to be the edge of the world.

  And as it formed, as she’d seen in her earlier flight, the World’s Ridge moved with it.

  “Wait,” Kali said. “There’s something wron –”

  For the first time since their conversation had begun, however, Zharn did not pause in what she was showing to her, as it if were something she had to witness. It didn’t matter because, anyway, Kali’s question trailed off into silence. How could it not? She was, after all, seeing something she would likely never see again.

  Far below her, as the land grew, the flights of the dra’gohn diverged once more, banking gracefully out to all points of the compass, and where they went, they continued to breathe. Kali’s heart thumped until it felt fit to burst as she watched a vast continent begin to take shape, spreading for thousands and thousands of leagues in every direction, rich with forest and lakes, prairie and desert, rolling hills and mountain ranges that, this time, remained where they were created. A coastline that would take her lifetimes to explore weaved, darted and thrust itself out into the surrounding sea, but even as a multitude of small and large islands began to dot its waters offshore, the growth of the land did not stop, continuing on out of view, far, far beyond the curve of the world.

  It was a world. A whole, new world.

  Kali could hardly breathe. Her eyes ran with tears.

  And then the world was gone.

  “You had a question,” Zharn prompted gently.

  Kali swallowed, gathering her wits before she spoke.

  “It’s what I meant when I said something’s wrong. I understand now what the World’s Ridge Mountains are. They’re a barrier, aren’t they? A barrier meant to prevent exploration. To prevent people leaving their world before they – before the rest of the world – was ready. Before Kerberos wanted them to leave.”

  “As, along the coast, was the great elemental barrier – the phenomenon that you call the Stormwall – designed to prevent exploration of the seas. Such exploration would have been, after all, a voyage that would never end…”

  Kali suddenly felt very heavy, the weight of ‘the truth’ beginning to hit her.

  “But something happened to the Stormwall, didn’t it?” she said. “Just like something happened to the World’s Ridge Mountains.”

  Zharn smiled. It was the smile of someone who knew she had chosen her audience well.

  “Why do you say that, Kali?”

  “Because the World’s Ridge Mountains never moved.”

  Zharn drew in a trembling breath, and the void in which Kali hung seemed to tremble too.

  “It is true,” the elf said, after a second. “What you have just seen was what would have been, were it not for the unimaginable tragedy that occurred. Something that broke the cycle of Kerberos, damaging the deity so badly that it might never be restored.”

  “What?” Kali said.

  “The death of the dra’gohn.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “OH GODS,” KALI said. She did, of course, know that the dra’gohn were gone, but she had never learned the circumstances of their demise – or realised they had such an important link to Kerberos or Twilight itself. “How did it happen?”

  “The time came when the civilisations of the elves and the dwarves were at their peak, thriving in every sense,” Zharn said. As she spoke, the chamber flared to life again and this time Kali found herself with a far more intimate perspective of the peninsula, swooping down across the land, passing over – and sometimes between – the buildings of towering cities of both elven and dwarven origin, witnessing the wonders that filled them. From the technology on view – steam-powered but nonetheless impressive dwarven engineering; the more organic path that the elves favoured – she guessed that in time she was somewhere very near the end of the second or at the start of the third age of the Old Races, the time where, at last, the two had begun to work together. But it seemed Zharn had been almost understating the facts when she’d said they’d thrived in every sense of the word. Their populations growing with the prosperity that peace between them had brought, both races had spread across the peninsula until there was little of it left, taking with them their phantasmagorical devices, their clockwork chariots and their flying machines, the remains of many of which she had come across in her travels. Kali even recognised the genesis of many of the sites she had explored as ancient ruins: Robor’s Skyway, the Avenue of the Fallen, and on the coast the bay-encompassing Amphibitheatre of Rossox, where now lay Vosburg but where once the Calmamandra had come to play.

  It was clearly time for the Old Races
to expand, for the land to grow. But as Zharn had already intimated, there was nowhere for them to go.

  “Tell me,” Kali said.

  Zharn nodded. “Whether it was by accident or design there was an… encounter between the Old Races and one of the dra’gohn,” she said. “The encounter ended with the death of the dra’gohn, its form torn asunder by the weapons and powers that its opponents wielded.”

  “The death of one dra’gohn caused the collapse of Kerberos’s plan?”

  “Not one, no. It is what happened after its death that was to lead to the collapse. Many flocked to the site of the encounter, wishing for whatever reason to observe the remains of the heavenly form, and it was one of these visitors who eventually noticed something very strange. Where the essence – blood or threads, think of it as you will – of the dra’gohn had seeped into the ground, the rock below changed, infused with some kind of energy that made it pulse as if alive.”

  “This rock,” Kali asked hesitantly. “It wouldn’t by any chance have been orange?”

  “I see you are once more ahead of me, Kali.”

  “Amberglow,” Kali said, swallowing.

  “Amberglow. What was to become the power source for most of the elven and dwarven machines that followed. The element that sparked the Old Races final era of magical technology.”

  “Are you trying to tell me –”

  “Its discovery,” Zharn spoke over her, “led to the wholesale slaughter of the dra’gohn. The extinction of the very creatures that were needed to save them. Even as the dra’gohn returned to breathe the land, the elves and the dwarves were waiting for them with their airships, with their mages, their ballistas and their cannon emplacements atop the highest peaks.”

  “I can’t believe it. How could they be capable of such greatness and yet so stupid?”

  “They were not to know how integral to their future the dra’gohn were. How could they? Besides, if you were handed the power of the Pantheon – the threads, the power of the gods – are you sure you would be able to resist?”

  “Of course I –”

  Kali stopped. Would she? Would she really? How much had she enjoyed being at the controls of the scuttlebarge? The dwarven mole? Carried into the skies and beyond by the Tharnak? Even wielding something as simple as a crackstaff? None of these things would have been possible without amberglow.

  It was a question she might never answer, and certainly not now, for the images resumed. This time she witnessed the effects on the land the end of the dra’gohn had wrought. Their slaughter, Zharn explained, sent ripples through the threads that became tsunamis of change, and Kali saw the peninsula they had created reforming once again, this time in turmoil. Great cracks appeared in the land, into which many of the Old Races’ achievements tumbled, to be lost forever. Earthquakes felled building after building and shattered roads and trade routes. A huge rolling ridge of land – similar to the World’s Ridge but here rolling free and uncontrolled – came to rest in the heart of what would become Vos, the upheaval leaving behind it what were now the Drakengrat Mountains. Most dramatically of all, the coast of the peninsula to the west and to the north began to break apart as a result of the stresses elsewhere, and Kali gasped as she witnessed huge chunks of land shearing away into the sea. She was awed by the sight for what she was watching was the formation of the Sarcre Islands and of the home of Jakub Freel, Allantia itself.

  “The Stormwall,” she said. “This is what destroyed the Stormwall.”

  “Yes,” Zharn confirmed. “Following the Great Upheaval all that remained of the barrier was that which now separates the Sarcre Islands from the mainland, and a much weakened zone of meteorological disturbance along other parts of the coast.”

  “Much weakened?” Kali reflected. “Pits of Kerberos.”

  “This, then, was the last time the dra’gohn had any influence on the future of our lands. What remained was to become the stage on which would be played out the final act of the Old Races.”

  “The darkness,” Kali said.

  Zharn nodded. “It was three thousand years, measured in the Old Race’s calendar, before the Hel’ss reached this world, and in that time the elves and the dwarves became masters of the magical technology their wholesale slaughter had brought them. But in mastering it, they forgot the roots from which the amberglow had come. The threads that the dra’gohn had breathed were but one segment of the Circle of Magic – sometimes called the Circle of Power – with which Kerberos had imbued this world and on which its survival depended. Had the dra’gohn threads – the dragon magic – remained in the Circle, Kerberos might just have had the strength to fight the Hel’ss, but without them the entity was the weakest it had ever been.”

  “Kerberos’s experiment to defend itself against the Hel’ss had succeeded,” Kali said. “But because of the folly of its creations, one vital component was missing.”

  “Yes. The ship and its k’nid were ready to be launched at the Hel’ss, while here, on Twilight, Domdruggle’s Expanse was ready to be used as a sanctuary by our people during the chaos that might ensue. But the ship was found lacking. Without the armour of the Circle of Power it would have carried with it, it could not penetrate the Hel’ss defences, and was never launched. And without the Circle of Power defending Twilight, the Hel’ss was able to launch its attack on Trass Kattra.”

  “By the ship, I take it you mean the Tharnak,” Kali queried. “Strange, flying thing?”

  “The guardian’s name,” Zharn said, and smiled.

  “If only they’d waited. They’d have developed another means of power.”

  “That is the tragedy of it. Soon afterwards, the darkness came.”

  “Now, that’s what I don’t understand,” Kali queried. “If the darkness did come, if the Hel’ss merged with Kerberos and fought that battle you showed me, why didn’t Kerberos die like Chazra-Nay, Faranoon or the others? Why wasn’t it consumed?”

  “You might equally ask why Kerberos did not consume the Hel’ss. Both entities had travelled so far that they were equally weakened – starved of souls – and what should have been the final, decisive confrontation between them ended in stalemate. The struggle for supremacy lasted a thousand years and more but neither the Hel’ss nor Kerberos emerged victorious, in fact they emerged as far from victorious as they could possibly be, wounded, scarred and almost dead. Kerberos became the shadow of itself that looms above your world to this day while the Hel’ss retreated to deep space, regaining, through the long ages, what strength it could. The strength it knew it would need to one day return.”

  “And now, here it is,” Kali said ominously.

  “Yes. Returned for an unprecedented second confrontation – the first time in the history of the Pantheon that this has occurred. And because of it, the Four have the best chance to end their war that we have ever had.”

  “Okay, here’s the other thing. Who the hells are ‘the Four’?”

  “The last survivors of a world Kerberos drained long ago. A world before this universe but with a race not dissimilar to your own. Four individuals who came to perceive the true nature of their god and who voluntarily surrendered their souls to it. Souls which, through their mental discipline, were able to insinuate themselves into Kerberos’s Cycle, to be reincarnated once on each planet it seeded. Souls that might eventually find a means to rebel against the Pantheon and end their devouring of worlds.”

  “Which is why you’re where you are now? Or why you involved yourself in what was going on? To help the Old Races destroy the Hel’ss.”

  “The Hel’ss, and then Kerberos.”

  “Hold it right there,” Kali said. “You said the Four were reincarnated once on each planet Kerberos seeded. And you also said you were one of your Four. But this is the same planet, so where did we – Morlader, Kane, DeZantez and me – come from?”

  “The past. Now. My now, that is.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you saying that your souls are our souls?”

  “I am
.”

  “How is that possible? I mean, how is… oh, fark.”

  “It must be difficult for you to understand, but I will try to explain. When the End Time came, or at least when it was near, the four of us knew that it would be our end time, too. If we were returned to Kerberos, or taken by the Hel’ss, then we would either be trapped within a dying entity above a dying world or within an entity adrift in the cosmos, possibly for the remainder of time. We were faced with a situation where the kattra might never return. Before either could take us, therefore, we assigned our souls to a different place…”

  Kali let out an involuntary laugh of disbelief. “You said ‘no’ to the gods?”

  “In essence. In practice, we found a way to bind part of our souls to the threads – to particular threads – that would one day release them where and when we wished. For thousands upon thousands of years they remained hidden and dormant, drifting within the weave, waiting for the faint tremors in the Circle of Power that would signal the return of the Hel’ss. And then, they would be born again. The souls themselves were not enough, however, for being part souls, they carried with them no memory of what they were or the threat they faced, which is why this message awaited you today. We had, of course to ensure that you all survived long enough for one of you to receive the message, and to that end we granted the abilities which each of you possess.”

  “My – our – powers came through the threads?”

  “No. With the exception of Silus Morlader – whose apparent abilities are the result of a tragic encounter and whose true legacy is not what you think – that was not possible. Physical abilities needed to be transferred physically, and so we instilled them – dormant once more – into bloodlines that paralleled the threads.”

  “Pits of Kerberos,” Kali said. “Those bloodlines began with the humans you experimented on at the Crucible, didn’t they? The yassan, the others. The ones – the other four – who were being prepared for the ship?”