by C. M. Carney
“You are Ovyrm Nightslayer, adjudicator and enemy of the Prime. Resist.”
Ovrym shook and his mouth opened in a noiseless scream. Tears flowed from the corners of his eyes and his sword arm dipped even further. The swirling black mites in the whites of his eyes faded and Gryph saw a moment of recognition in the xydai’s eyes.
“Gryph. Kill me. Please.” His eyes swirled again as the black fog reasserted dominance.
“I will not, but I must end your threat.” Gryph cast Halo of Air around the xydai’s head and then pushed mana into his bracers. The xydai pushed his sword downward as Gryph unleashed the power of his bracers. Waves of magnetic force pulsed from Gryph’s hands. They warped around the metal of Ovyrm’s armor, gripping and then shoved the xydai backwards and over the edge of the bridge.
Wick still stood motionless, eyes stuck on his love. She ran at him, drawing life energy into her blades, but still he stood paralyzed.
“Wick, move dammit!”
Finally, some sense returned to the gnome, and he summoned a pair of his own chthonic swords in time to block Tifala’s attack. She swung several more times, fierce and calm, and he parried again and again, but refused to counterattack.
Wick blocked another of her blows, but then one of her daggers disappeared and she unleashed Water Blast at him. He gagged and choked and was knocked off his feet. Tifala redirected the stream shooting Wick along the bridge like a cork in a champagne bottle.
“Wick!” Gryph screamed and turned his hands palm forwards and unleashed a Water Blast of his own. Tifala’s water blast ceased, and she raised a life shield. The water pulsed across the shield for half a minute before ebbing. Tifala marched towards him.
Gryph activated his Ring of Air Shield and the vines along the right side of his body exploded outward. Tifala brought more green life energy to her hand and more vines shot from those still twined around the left side of his body. They wrapped him up again and tightened. His arms twisted forcing his open palms to point at his face.
Tifala walked up to him. She moved her fist, and the vines pulled Gryph lower matching her height. She stared into his face and the swirling fog staining the whites of her eyes swirled and cleared and she smiled at Gryph.
“Tifala? Are you okay?”
Tifala’s lips turned up into an unfamiliar smile and then words that were not hers came in her voice. “Hello Gryph.”
“Myrthendir, let her go you bastard.”
The aberrant elf turned Tifala’s hands back and forth, like a shopper examining an outfit in a dressing room mirror. “This feels odd. I can inhabit anyone the black fog has taken. It is quite a thrill.” She turned back to him and Myrthendir spoke again. “Which makes me wonder something. How are you immune?”
“Too strong I guess.”
Tifala’s fist twisted again, and the vines gripped tighter forcing the air from Gryph’s lungs. Tifala leaned closer. “It isn’t about strength. That isn’t how the Prime work. They find what you want most and they convince your brain they’ve given it to you. That’s how they gain access and though, deep down, where your soul lives, you know it to be false, your mind does not and your body does not listen to your soul,"
“Too bad cuz yours is destined for the void,” Gryph sputtered as he tried to breathe.
Tifala’s face twisted in anger and Myrthendir brought her blade to Gryph’s neck. “You should have fought by my side. This petty squabble is not the real war. Together we could have been strong, but you chose sentiment over life. I hope it doesn’t bring us all low.”
“You do not fight for us, but for yourself. You are so corrupted you cannot see what you have lost.”
Tifala’s face contorted into a livid sneer. “I’m tired of this conversation,” Myrthendir said and forced Tifala to pull the blade back. “Goodbye.” Gryph saw a blur of motion as the arm slammed forward.
Gryph’s watched the blade pierce Wick’s body before his mind processed the gnome had jumped in front of him, but his soul knew and it screamed. Wick sputtered and purple blood foamed from the corners of his mouth. “Tif?”
Myrthendir’s surprised smile was a blemish on Tifala’s face and he commanded her to shove the blade of green energy further into Wick’s body. Wick shook, his mouth agape in shock and pain and then she pulled the blades free and he crumpled. He stared up at Tifala.
“This is much better. You’ll both get to watch him die,” Myrthendir said.
“I will kill you,” Gryph roared, using every ounce of strength to thrash at his bonds. They remained unmoving.
“That will be fun. Come find me if you are able. I still have so much to show you.” Myrthendir said, twisting Tifala’s face into a capricious grin. Then the elf lord was gone and the black fog turned the whites of her eyes black again. Tifala looked down on Wick, face placid as a mirror calm lake, but inside Gryph knew she was screaming.
Wick reached a weak arm towards her, the pinky of his right hand extended. “Together forever.” The light left his eyes, his arm fell limply to his side, and he was gone.
“Nooooo!” Gryph screamed, and he struggled against the vines holding him. The smallest of whimpers slipped past Tifala’s lips and Gryph saw a tear stream down her face.
41
Myrthendir’s mind withdrew from the female gnome and returned to his body. It was odd being in another’s mind. Not only did he experience all the body did, but he felt their emotions. A part of him wondered why those emotions did not impact him the way they once had, but he discounted the thought. I have shed my weaknesses.
His army marched and grew, growing ever closer to Sylvan Aenor. He was a part of every new mind added to his army, and every mind extinguished as the battle raged. It was such a waste of life, life that should have been bent to his will, life saved to fight the Prime.
He looked at Barrendiel once again under his sway. “Tell them to lay down their arms. There is no more need for bloodshed.” Without comment Barrendiel ran, the army parting before him.
Myrthendir did not expect Gartheniel and the remaining free rangers to comply, but it was worth the effort. He continued his even pace, eyes drawn to the Spire. Soon he would tame them all, and this time, when the Prime came, he would tear them apart and consume them.
He stepped off the bridge and strode towards the Spire, pausing for a moment to tear a few blades of grass. As a child he had loved few things more than the smell of nature. He brought the blade to his nose and inhaled deeply. He smelled nothing, as he had expected, but a scowl twisted his mouth. Another thing to add to the list of reasons the Prime must end.
The sounds of battle dimmed as the army got close to the Spire. The last group of rangers and paladins had secured the doors from the warborn and their onetime companions. Barrendiel stood a safe distance from the doors, having not succeeded in his mission. Myrthendir walked up next to him and the ranger captain knelt.
The doors to the Spire were made from empyrean wood reinforced by adamantine, a gift from the Thalmiir so long ago. They were nearly impregnable, even all these millennia later, but the black fog was no ordinary weapon. It needed but the tiniest of cracks to slip inside and for all its faded majesty, the Spire was still a dead tree, full of small imperfections and gaps more than large enough to grant the microscopic motes of magic access. Still, Gartheniel had long served his people well and Myrthendir would rather he surrendered.
“Gartheniel, old friend, open the doors. There is no further need for conflict. Save our people’s lives. They are needed for the coming fight.”
“You are a murderer and a traitor and I will not be a party to your madness.”
Myrthendir wasn’t surprised and ordered the black fog into the Spire. Dull shouts of anger turned to terror and then there was silence. A moment later the doors opened and the light of the morning sun sent a beam of light all the way to the Twined Throne. The remaining paladin defenders stood on either side of the entrance like a welcoming honor guard as Myrthendir strode inside.
Ga
rtheniel stood at the end of the assembled honor guard and bowed as Myrthendir reached him. “Rise my old friend. We no longer need to stand on ceremony.” The older half elf snapped back to attention and Myrthendir grinned. “I have always wanted to do that.” He looked down on the Steward as if waiting for a reaction though he knew he would get none.
“My sweet cousin Sillendriel will be in the Bastion with the aged and the children. Bring her and introduce the others to the black fog.” The paladins spun into formation and marched around the dais and the central trunk of the Spire and disappeared from view. The warborn carrying the adamantine cube followed.
“Come Gartheniel,” Myrthendir said and strode up the steps of the dais. He walked up to the chair his father had so long sat in, caressing it with a light hand. “I never wanted this seat” He gave a sideways glance at the impassive Steward. “You don’t believe me, after all of this.” He waved his hands around. “But it is true. I only wanted to serve my people. I had no idea that providence would call me to a higher duty.”
His eyes fell to the living chair top the dais. The Twined Throne had long been the seat of kings, a living symbol of the bond between El’Edryn and the empyrean realm where elvish souls bask in celestial light while they waited for their next life to begin. Despite the centuries, the throne had survived the despair that had taken Aurvendiel.
Myrthendir’s hand traced the living vines of the throne and the thrum of life flowed through him. “I may not have been born to sit in this chair, but men of vision, those history remembers as heroes and saviors, must be bold before they can attain greatness.” Myrthendir turned, smoothed out the layers of his battle robe and sat on the throne.
“Do you have something to say?” Myrthendir asked and flicked his hand in a casual and unnecessary gesture.
Gartheniel gasped at the sudden return of his own will, still unable to move. “Myr… do not do this, I beg you.”
“It cannot be helped my old friend. The Prime are coming. I have felt their presence in the aether.”
“What did they do to you to make you turn against your people, your family?”
Myrthendir stood and walked up to the Steward. He caressed the side of the half elf’s face. “I will show you. I want you to see what I have seen, feel what I have felt.” He closed his eyes and pushed his mind into the older man.
Myrthendir rushed through the tunnels of the ancient temple, desperate to get away. Fear glistened on his skin and made his breath ragged. He heard the cackling laughter behind him, knowing it heightened that fear. He had been right, when nobody believed him, not even his traitorous cousin Barrendiel. The arboleth were still on Korynn.
“They caught me. Without Barrendiel I was alone and outnumbered.”
The Steward shivered, and the vision warbled. A group of silver masked men dragged a beaten and bloody Myrthendir through a hallway lit by a sinister gray light and into a large cavern with a lake at its center. Standing on its shores were two humanoid figures in long robes. Their skin was the shade of drowned flesh, and their eyes deep pools of inky blackness. A pair of slits oozed a protective mucous where their nose should be. But the true horror of their visage was the thin mouth surrounded by four barbed limbs.
“Illurryth,” the Steward said in horror.
The Prince Regent struggled against his captors as a chittering rose from the illurryth. The crab-like appendages around their mouths writhed, the chitinous tips clacking again each other. Myrthendir screamed but got no sympathy from the men holding him.
They dragged him to the water’s edge, and both illurryth approached him, their chittering growing louder. One of them raised his right hand to Myrthendir’s face. The index finger bore an over large talon and a bead of milky white liquid flowed from its tip.
It dragged the talon down the side of Myrthendir’s face, flaying the skin. Myrthendir screamed not in pain, but in pure terror, for he knew what was to happen next. His screams tore at his throat and the shaking in his body crested and then faded as the neurotoxin filled his mind. The alien presence of the Prime filled his mind and stole his body.
The cultists released him for he was no longer a threat. The illurryth backed away, the unearthly chittering rising and falling like the refrains of some hellish anthem. Myrthendir’s eyes flitted back and forth, but then snapped to the lake as the water roiled with froth.
A massive form emerged from the lake, bloated and grotesque. Tentacles unfurled and reached out towards him as the arboleth rose from the water, floating on a telekinetic cushion of air.
Myrthendir tried to run, but the arboleth’s hold on his mind was perfect. Instead his own muscles pushed him forward. Tears pulsed from his eyes as his feet hit the edge of the water. The arboleth’s monstrous singular eye pulsed with flares of blue light, like the facets of a giant sapphire.
A tentacle eased towards him and as it got close a razor-sharp blade of bone snapped from its tip. The arboleth twisted the blade back and forth in front of Myrthendir’s eyes, the flecks of light glinting off it, another taunt designed to break his mind.
The bladed tentacle snaked around to the back of Myrthendir’s neck and sliced into his skull. Hot blood gushed down his back, and another tentacle writhed up to Myrthendir’s face. This one clutched an opaque sack of thick leathery material. Inside something shivered and moved and screamed.
The arboleth brought its bladed tentacle up to the egg sack, slicing it open with far more care than it had shown the elf lord. The sack burst open and the larva spasmed, thin, glass clear tentacles writhing in hunger.
“In that moment, I fought back. I was Myrthendir, son of the Regent of Sylvan Aenor and I would no longer beg or fear. The Prime heard the defiance in my mind, and it became angry.”
The arboleth brought its offspring, the extension of its own self, to the back of Myrthendir’s head. The larva howled in glee like a ravenous wolf finding an injured doe. The larva’s tentacles pulled the edges of his skull apart, but he refused to let the agony cloud his mind, even when it sliced through the protective layer around his brain and pushed its way inside his skull. The tentacles sliced bits and pieces of his brain away and eased them into its circular maw of razor-sharp teeth.
There was little pain as the Prime larva consumed his brain, just enough sensation to terrorize him. Terror was the Prime’s main weapon, so Myrthendir refused to let the fear take him. He pushed through the horror and the trauma twining his own will into the mind of the immature Prime and replaced the ethereal daemon with himself.
The Prime neurostructure was far denser and more complex than his own and Myrthendir finally understood their arrogance and sense of superiority. But they were mere beings of flesh and ichor and he was pure will.
By the time the arboleth realized what was happening it was too late, Myrthendir had suborned the larva’s mind to his own. He pushed his will along the unbreakable pathways the Prime used to keep their offspring enslaved, penetrating the arboleth’s mental defenses.
Once inside he tore the aetherial beast apart. Surges of psionic energy pulped its body and expanded outwards in waves of telekinetic force. The illurryth’s bones imploded and their bodies crumpled and cracked open, dumping expanding pools of yellow ichor onto the ground.
Human cultists, traitors to their own kind, screamed as their limbs twisted in directions they were incapable of turning, bones splintering and rupturing flesh.
The arboleth shuddered and fell to the hard stone of the cavern floor with a wet flop. The elf who had been Myrthendir, and was now something more than Prime, walked up to the shuddering creature and revelled in its pain. The dying arboleth tried to reach its mind through the aether seeking more Prime, but Myrthendir blocked it and let his own mind fill the aether with his challenge. “I am coming for you.” For a moment he let the rage of the Prime pour over him, but then he sent a spike of pure mental energy into the arboleth’s brain and the connection ceased along with the arboleth’s life.
Myrthendir opened his eyes a
nd released Gartheniel. The older man was shaking. “I am sorry, I had no idea. “
