Age of Azmoq: The Valantian Imperium

by Rajamayyoor Sharma

  After what felt like an eternity, I had finally disappeared. I had escaped the clutches of the Valantian army. But the experience was different from what I felt usually. Usually, I re appeared almost at the same instant, not having felt any time pass. This time, when I disappeared, for a finite period of time, it was all black. It was like everything around me was completely devoid of light and life, trying to tear me apart, body and soul. For finite period of time, I felt scared. Something had definitely gone wrong. Maybe I had spun for too long and that somehow broke the power of my swords. I wasn’t sure if I had somehow killed myself while travelling, and this was some sort of hell I was doomed to experience for an eternity.

  Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. I was alive. When I re appeared, I was extremely disoriented. I felt my feet on solid ground again, but my mind was still fuzzy. I fell to the ground, with my vision completely impaired. I slowly regained my senses. I was completely wet, like I had soaked myself in water. It felt like ocean water. Slowly my vision returned.

  It was extremely dark, although it was mid-day in Capitol Hills. None of my other senses seemed to be working. The world seemed too dark, too bleak. There were no familiar smells, sounds. Even the air tasted wrong. It was all… off. I knew, I wasn’t dead. I felt the ground under my feet. I didn’t think hell would be a place which would have solid ground. I had always imagined it as a bottomless pit of fire and ash.

  Slowly, my surroundings came into focus. It was revolting. The area I was in, was truly dark. The road I was on, for it was truly a road, seemed grimy. Something seemed off. In fact, everything seemed off. Even as things came into focus, the feel, the sights and sounds of this place were off. I was slowly beginning to realize. I certainly wasn’t in Welehölla. This wasn’t any place I had been to before.

  The alley I was in, was dark and dirty. I slowly started to move around. I looked at the sky, to realize that it wasn’t dark because it was night. It was dark because a set of dark clouds were right above me. I could see some light at a distance, where the sky wasn’t covered with dark clouds. There was something wrong about the clouds too. I was starting to feel really paranoid, and I was conscious of it.

  “I must be paranoid. Otherwise how could I feel, or even think I felt that the clouds were different,” I remember thinking.

  I moved around the place, uncertainly. I got out of the alley, which was deserted, into a larger street. It was still a narrow lane. It was still a deserted place. The buildings were empty. They looked like they had been burnt down. They were in a bad shape, but they were still standing. These buildings, they weren’t like anything I had seen before. They seemed large, like some of the barns and warehouses I had seen in the country side. But their walls were not built of stone, they were built with something else.

  The walls which had fallen down completely, revealed beams of metal used inside them, not unlike a lot of the large buildings in Welehölla. But somehow, they too felt different. I was getting progressively worried. I had walked for what felt almost like a kilometer, and I hadn’t seen a single person. Just a line of burnt, large buildings. My paranoia was increasing. Had I come to some land, devoid of humans? Had I travelled through time along with space, and landed in the future, where everyone was dead?

  I started to travel towards the light, the place where the sky was not covered by dark clouds. It was a few hundred meters away, all of which, on both sides of the road, was lined with burnt buildings. As I neared the light, I could hear sounds. Sounds of people. I was thankful to the almighty that this wasn’t some apocalyptic future. Although I still wasn’t sure that it wasn’t the future. I soon reached the light.

  And I saw people. Many people. And I knew that I wasn’t being paranoid. This place was really different. I wasn’t sure where I was, I wasn’t sure when I was, but I was sure of one thing. I wasn’t in Valantia anymore.

  It was a wide street. There was a lot of hustle bustle in the street. The people, they looked like normal humans. But they were all dressed differently. The men still wore tunics and pants, but they were… different. The clothes seemed to be made of different material. They were styled differently. They were tighter, and more fitting. None of the women wore traditional dresses. Some wore shirts and trousers, like the men. That was similar to some Valantian women as well, including me. But then, there were others who wore really short clothes. They wore trousers which were cut in half. Some wore clothes that looked like dresses, but they were much tighter than what I had seen. I saw many men and women still wearing ancient Valantian attire, the Vashtra—single, long pieces of cloth which draped their entire bodies.

  I was confused. As I entered the street, I expected people to instantly notice my attire, and how different it was. Not one person did. No one even bothered to turn. I mingled in this crowd as easily as I would have, if I was invisible. It was incredible. I started to walk around, observing the place.

  The sky alternated between being covered with dark clouds and completely clear, for as far as I could see. The street I was on was lined with shops. I did not recognize the language of the street signs and the signs put up on these shops. I tried to overhear the conversations of people to get a clue of my location, but couldn’t understand the language they spoke.

  Then I saw something incredible. It was a carriage, moving in the middle of the road. It seemed like a normal, open top carriage, the ones nobles used in High Seat and Welehölla to move around. It seemed higher than the Valantian carriages. The key difference was something else. The key difference was that this carriage didn’t have any horses pulling it. It was moving on its own! It was a tad slower than a carriage I was used to, but it was still incredible. And no one even batted an eyelid as this unnatural entity went past them!

  As it drew closer to me, I recoiled in fear. There was no animal, or human, drawing or pushing the carriage. I had no idea how this was happening. I stared at the horseless carriage till it disappeared around the corner. And soon enough, I saw another one! As I moved around the street, and some of its adjacent streets, I saw at least five such horseless carriages. Every time I saw one, I felt a shiver down my spine. It was unnatural. I never believed in the existence of demons, but I was tempted to believe in them every time I saw one of those carriages.

  I wanted to ask someone about where I was, what year it was, what those carriages were and why the people wore the kind of clothes that they did. But I couldn’t. First, I was too worried that I would be found and taken to the Valantian army, no matter how improbable that sounded. Second, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t find a single person saying a single word that I could understand.

  After a while, my base needs overcame whatever fear I had. I needed to eat. It would have been easy for me to jump into a food shop, but I was scared to use my swords. I wasn’t sure if I would turn up some place else again. I walked up to one of the shops that smelt really good. There was an old man behind the counter. I didn’t have any money with me, but I wanted to offer to work for him for some food.

  “Hi there,” I said, waving widely with my left hand. The man looked at me curiously.

  “I aammm reeaally sorryyyy to botherrr you,” I said, speaking really slowly, in the hope that the man would understand me.

  “Can you give me some food? I don’t have any money, but I can work for my amount.”

  The old man shook his head slowly. Then he said something that I didn’t understand at all. So I shook my head and my hands to indicate that I hadn’t understood him. Then the old man spoke slowly. The words were still strange.

  “Tvan kinn öeldese?”

  I spoke back in the common tongue, shaking my head. “I don’t understand you.”

  He did the same, speaking in his language. “Ahan tvan na chekhase.”

  After this back and forth continued for a while, I gave up. I was too hungry. So I signaled to him. I indicated with my left that I wanted something to eat, by playing out how one eats from a plate. Then I signaled to him that I would work fo
r him, by playing out how one cleans the table. The old man shook his head and waved me away. Apparently, he understood, but didn’t have the heart to help.

  I pleaded with him for a while, but he started to ignore me. It was humiliating. But I remembered then, what I had realized when I was young and out for the first time on my own. Hunger has no dignity. Hunger always drives you to do all that is needed to satiate it. There is no work beneath you, when you are hungry.

  I moved from shop to shop, begging for food, offering work. No one took the offer. I was getting desperate. It was night time; all shops were shutting. I hoped that I could scavenge some food from the shops that were shut. But the streets didn’t die at night, unlike the streets in Valantia. In fact, a different set of people hit the streets. The shops closed, but they were replaced by street hawkers selling their wares, including various foods. There were people walking up and down the street, some buying things, some just passing by. Possibly travelling to work. I saw a few more horseless carriages pass by.

  All this activity was enabled by another incredible creation I saw. It was a large lamp, placed every few meters on the road, glowing without any flame. It looked like a red-hot iron, only the glow was far brighter, lighting up the whole section of the street around it. It allowed everyone to carry on working through the night. Why someone would want to do that, I could not figure out. Night was a time of rest and recovery.

  But I had more important things to figure out. With no avenue left to even scavenge food, using my swords again seemed like a good idea. Even if I ended up in a different place, it couldn’t be worse for me, food wise, than this place. And that was the only thing on my mind at that point. So I took out my swords, with much trepidation, spun them around to create my lenses. They seemed to work well enough, as I could see that I had disappeared. I had no reflection in a puddle of water nearby.

  I carefully moved towards the hawkers selling some food. I was getting my confidence back. The spherical lenses, as taught to me by the High Seat intruder, were working wonders. I was able to take some hot dumplings easily. The hawker didn’t notice at all. I rushed back to the same deserted spot, and gobbled up my loot. After I repeated this with 10 different hawkers, just to be doubly safe, I felt happy. My hunger was satiated. I felt sleep take over as my most pressing need. I knew a safe place where I could rest.

  I returned slowly to the area with the burnt buildings. It was clear that no one came here. There were no glowing street lamps anywhere nearby. I was guided by the light of the stars. I couldn’t find anything soft to lie on, so I rested up on the hard street itself. It was a difficult sleep, with my dreams dominated by visions of Valantian soldiers riding horseless carriages and capturing me with glowing swords.

  I woke up at the break of dawn, having gotten a few hours of sleep in. My body ached all over, being so unused to sleeping on anything but a soft bed. My life in Capitol Hill had softened me. I looked around me. The burnt buildings looked extremely depressing. They were so lifeless, that I felt they were sucking the life out of my body as well. So I created my lenses, and start to roam the land I had accidentally ended up on.

  Chapter 35: The journey to Khratosh

  After Einesbrook, we continued towards the destination of Khratosh.

  It was a large city, built on the banks of the river Khratia. It was one of the most poorly planned cities in Morgenia. Once a small village, it had grown rapidly with the establishment of river side trade from the river Khratia, which was an extremely stable river, with the surrounding forests being easy to navigate, enabling rapid transport of material across the two sides of the Grand River.

  The path to Khratosh was full of smaller villages and towns, as the road connected Khratosh to Welehölla, a place of trade and production to a place of consumption and luxury. We continued to ply on this road towards Khratosh, with the idea being to rest and replenish ourselves before heading to Villasboro. We were in no hurry. The village was safe. Their quests for revenge had been satiated. Their bodies were still recovering from the effects of the explosion and there was no point exhausting them further by hurrying across a span of over 1000 kilometers. My mission, to reach the revolution, could wait until I met this master, who could tell me what I wanted to know about the spear sword.

  The road, called the Weltosh road, a portmanteau of Welehölla and Khratosh, was a wide one. It was more reflective of Welehöllan order than the chaos of Khratosh. There were three large lanes on each side. One was for carriages, one for slow travelers and one for fast horses and carriages, like the newspaper deliverers. There was a thinner side lane that was taken by horses, carriages alike when they wanted to take a turn, or exit into an approaching village or town. The road remained the same width across the 600-kilometer route, reducing only when it got closer to Khratosh. And that too not by design—street hawkers occupied the last lane as we neared Khratosh, trying to sell their wares to the travelers.

  Despite the traffic, this was one of the safest roads in all of Morgenia. The Morgenian troops regularly policed this road, and any disputes occurring were resolved the day it was brought in front of them. There had been attempts to replicate the success of this road elsewhere, but without success. That was because neither the geography nor the volume of trade was the same anywhere else.

  I took the time during our travel to understand more about my new companions. It was fascinating to hear their tales, which were almost as interesting as mine. The origins of Eric, whose actual name was Elbir, the story of Dev and his quest for revenge, they were all so different. And yet, in mere weeks of travelling together they had gelled so well together. It was also intriguing to see people with superhuman abilities. I could teleport between locations and become invisible with the help of my swords, but these guys were just built superhuman. I hadn’t met anyone like them before.

  I had never ridden for such long distances in a while. My journeys usually consisted of teleporting a kilometer at a time along my line of sight and seeing where that takes me. My back was hurting and my thighs were chaffed from riding a horse for so long. But I was still happy. It was an open road, and it was beautiful. Even the communication towers looked gorgeous in the backdrop of the open road.[9]

  We stopped over at the first major city on the way, Argos. It was a nice, little city on the side of a large lake. After having lived in Capitol Hills, seen Welehölla, and hell holes like Amurazon, this was a nice change of pace. We ambled around to find a horse to buy for me, so that there was no chance we would have to return to Einesbrook. Aunt Em was lovely, but we really couldn’t hear her drone on and on again. Plus, we weren’t in any hurry, so there wasn’t a need to race ahead with rental horses.

  The city of Argos was almost completely white. What that meant was that most of the buildings, be it privately owned or government owned, were white in color. Even the pavement was mostly white. Out of curiosity we took a tour of this city. This quirk of the city was apparently the result of a coincidence.

  The man who helped set up the city over five centuries ago was Argein. He set up a small village by the lake side and created a white building for himself, which he used as his residence and his office.

  Once Khimon, one of the seven great kings then, happened to be visiting, and saw how beautiful the white building looked against the backdrop of a blue sky and the lake’s blue water. He, in a burst of passion, pleaded to Argein to make the entire village white, and keep it that way forever. Everyone panicked, including Argein, and complied quickly, taking the weird request from the king as an order.

  The city was kept completely white in anticipation of another visit. The next visit never happened, but the city stayed white. It became a point of attraction for people.[10] Even their newspapers seemed whiter than normal, although that was impossible, as all newspapers were printed in Ganolfan.

  This was interesting. What the whims and fancies of a king could do to a town, for centuries. This town benefited from a king’s fit. But who knows how many towns were
disadvantaged, or even destroyed because a king, or the Imperium for that matter, had a random thought/request.

  The people in Argos were particular about their cleanliness as well. It was a little difficult to adjust to all that, but we had a good time. I returned my horse and bought a beautiful brown horse from the local stable. The money, I got from the stable’s own register. As usual. The other three didn’t even realize anything was amiss. After resting there for a week or so, we moved on, packing a lot of food for the road. The guys were feeling better, more rested. But instead of hitting the Weltosh road again, we took a smaller side road.

  I asked them as Karn indicated we move to the side road. “What are we doing this for? I mean I understand you have time, but I don’t really want to roam around the country completely aimlessly.”

  Karn nodded, and added cryptically, “We wouldn’t roam aimlessly. You’ll see.”

  It was the first time after we started our journey that I began to feel doubt and fear. What were they planning? Whatever it was, this time, unlike when I met them, I was much more comfortable. I had my swords with me, firmly connected to my bracers, so I could easily take on these three and escape. I had tweaked my bracers a little to make sure that Dev wasn’t able to pull them away with ease.

  All three of them were being quite shifty, looking around to see who all were there. We soon reached a completely isolated spot. It was like an alcove among a tuft of trees.

  Karn whistled. “This looks perfect.” Dev and Elbir nodded. They took out all their weapons. Dev had a short sword, with a large blue stone embedded in its hilt. Karn had a full blade, a half-broken blade and four swords, which barely had any blade, only the hilt was intact. Elbir had a large hammer that was mostly intact, but his other hammers were completely broken.

  Dev took his blade and levitated it. I touched my swords. I was ready. He sent it flying towards Elbir. I relaxed. This wasn’t about me. I wasn’t sure why I kept misjudging them. I guess they were the first set of people I had opened up to so much. So I felt more vulnerable with them than anyone else I had known, leading to increased mistrust. I swore to myself that I would trust these guys more, from that point on.