At sundown, the troop was still on its way. They came to the edge of the forest, where a wide plain spread out before them. They stopped to rest for a quarter of an hour, had a snack, and went on with their strength restored. The plan was to continue for a few hours more and reach the forest of the Aeg, but before this, they crossed the Limbus area, where nobody dared set up camp or sleep.
When they arrived at the forest of the Aeg, the silence fell like a curse. Its impact was strong and terrifying, and it made the men shiver.
By now, it was night. They set up camp with few words spoken. The vegetation was scarce here, as hundreds of years of war had irreversibly eroded the earth. Trees grew, it was true, but they were twisted and brittle with skeletal branches like tormented creatures.
They did not light a fire. Dinner consisted of the leftovers from lunch. The atmosphere became hostile. Four men took turns to guard the camp, but the reality was that nobody would manage to sleep. That silence seemed to absorb all sound as if they were in a void, and it awed them inescapably. Unlike the others, Trumbar slept soundly. He had never found silence as comfortable as this.
Morning came without anything new. The light folded the men into its tepid embrace. They broke camp in silence, afraid of what was to come. Today, they were to cross the forest of the Aeg and reach the graveyard of Aegrimonia: the border.
The Legendary and his men were shivering, but not due to the cold. Leongahr turned to look at his soldiers. A hundred men stank with fear, all except one. He gave the order to trot, and they quickened their pace when they entered Aegrimonia.
The frontier was a complex of ruins, stinking and accursed because of the numerous battles which had been fought there. In addition to this, the spells had poisoned the soil, which was now arid and sterile. In the past, a great wall had been erected from one end to the other of the nascent Mandrake Empire. This had protected it against the enemy, who had finally found a point of entry through the four towers the Mandrakians had built to repel the demons.
Of those lookouts, comfortably armed in their day, only skeletons remained. It was said that the Nemaldines, with their Dark Arts, had cursed even the stones. Leongahr the Legendary guided his men through the wastelands. They were all silent. They did not want to risk awakening the wraiths. The phalanx of a hundred soldiers broke up into five groups and each group headed toward its goal. Trumbar marched with a strange light in his gaze, unnoticed by his companions. Inwardly, he was doubtful.
After exploring separately, the five groups converged at the first watchtower, Fehrdammnis. They reported nothing unusual. Leongahr noticed that the soldiers were pale. He was afraid, but they had to continue the search to maintain the peace of the realm. For a moment, he considered how unfair it was that the rest of Mandrake should enjoy Ágamgor’s efforts. He wondered what would have become of him if he had been born in some other city, like Érliadon or Bónufor. He was aware that it made no sense to think that way, so he forced himself to get back to his task.
“My group will remain on watch while the other groups will each go to one of the towers. The goal is to find traces of the soldiers who disappeared. You’re free to proceed and respond in whatever way may be necessary. May the Gods go with you.”
The four groups dispersed at once. Trumbar set off with the third group toward the Balastus Tower. The other two groups went to Agrenovelia and Sérathos.
The loneliness of Aegrimonia enveloped the soldiers in its icy embrace. The air turned dense. The men had begun to sink into sadness in a matter of minutes.
The Balastus tower leaned to one side, on the point of collapse but still standing despite the attacks and the centuries. The main gate was bent inwards, a sign that the enemy had made a forced entry with massive maces. The leader of the troop went in, praying to the God of Light. The assault was carried out rapidly and combed over every corner, every nook and cranny, in a constant search for clues that might explain their comrades’ strange disappearance. Their faces dotted with perspiration, they made their way up to the upper level.
From there could be seen the vast land of the south: the Gárda region of Némaldon. At some point on its arid face was the fortress of the Nemaldines, an underground castle named Árath. The dethis who had survived the Köel war had taken shelter in that lair, safe from the sunlight that scorched their skin. Beneath the foundations of that castle boiled the cauldrons of Árath, a moat connected to the magma of the planet. There, they forged curses and created terrible beasts as well as the legendary attire of the dethis, the tíranis.
In one of the towers of the underground complex, there was the throne of Legionaer, the dead master. It was Trumbar who found the first trace of the vanished group. It was a corpse within a circle surrounded by a six-pointed star; on each point was a head. The conclusion was obvious: Némaldon was back with its spells, probably carried out by the sáffurtan, its powerful sorcerers.
Despite the desolation, they had found an explanation for the watch group’s disappearance. Now that they were certain of Némaldon’s awakening, they needed to go back and inform Nurimitzu immediately so that he could strengthen the defenses of the barracks. The Duke of Ágamgor would convey the news to Omen, the military city in the north of the Empire, in case Duke Hakama could send him a wizard capable of keeping watch over the perimeters.
The four groups returned to the meeting point. It seemed a somber setting for a spell of black magic. Leongahr could not wait to leave. He was about to give the order, but at that moment, the spell was activated. The ground shook. A red light was issued from the roof of each tower. The soldiers reacted like automatons, following the established procedure. They formed a protective semicircle, shields and swords pointing outwards. Above their heads, black wings beat the air violently, and a croaking penetrated the space around.
Wings beat the air aggressively, followed by guttural croaks. There were one, two, four black-scaled wyverns that swooped down, spitting corrosive acid from their jaws. The viscous liquid spilled over bodies and weapons, which immediately began to melt. The cries of the soldiers were horrifying. Trumbar was smiling. That violence fed the demon which was occupying the soldier’s soul.
When the wyverns came down on them for a second assault, Trumbar was unleashed. He raised his sword and aimed at the belly of the reptile hovering above. The blade of the sword sank into the scaly creature’s navel. The soldier opened such a long slash in it that he emptied the beast’s guts in a repulsive shower of pink organs. The viscera, burst apart on the ground by the force of their fall, poured out their lethal acid.
The soldiers and Leongahr, until now lost in a trance of fear and shock, stared at Trumbar in surprise. Could his true nature be revealing itself? Trumbar had always been a man who was little appreciated, and although nobody spoke about him, all suspected that the soldier had a demon inside him. Today, the beast had revealed itself.
After a moment of stupefaction, the officers shed their fear and threw themselves frenziedly into the battle. They had been infected by Trumbar’s awakening, but it was not to save the world; it was to unleash their hatred. Trumbar did not stop.
With his face drenched in blood, he smiled. His eyes were two orbs that shone with the brightness of coals. From his shadowy heart, there surged a buried curse. The man began to transform. Superhuman muscles covered his limbs, claws grew from him. A black discoloration, like coal, darkened his skin. From his back burst two powerful wings, and his mouth spewed fire and heat. He croaked like those reptiles, summoning all those around him, who immediately submitted to the curse. The soldiers of the empire were no longer men set on the defense of their fellow countrymen, but puppets contaminated by a powerful poison.
The wyverns and orcs sent to defeat the soldiers of the Empire fell prey to the black magic they had unleashed; they hacked apart and dismembered with horrendous brutality. A sáffurtan, the creator of the spell, was watching the disaster from a prudent distance. Never before had he seen a demon appear from nowhere, least of al
l one that was capable of defeating the black-scaled wyverns with such efficiency.
The sorcerer of the cursed lands turned to go and inform his lord, Elkam the Evil, about what had taken place.
Chapter XII – Árath
Somewhere in the south was the underground fortress of Árath, built during the Times of Chaos, when Mórgomiel had taken over those domains. The soil here was not fertile. It was a valley of volcanic dirt furrowed by rivers of magma.
Thousands of years ago, Mórgomiel, the God of Chaos, chose this place as his headquarters on his march to conquer the world. He charged Legionaer with invading the region, and in this way, he took the throne of Árath and declared himself Lord of the World. He dominated the powerful race of the dethis, beings created by the god Vórador. Elkam, Feliel, and their brothers, the terrible Grim Shepherds, were the product of the cross between dethis and humans.
The Times of Köel reduced the number of dethis, and a new idea had to be found to bequeath their powers to other creatures with a more efficient reproductive capacity. On the death of Mórgomiel, his faithful continued to obey the orders which the god, in spirit form, had given them: they had to go on murdering the Gods.
It was then that Némaldon embarked on a war against Flamonia where the Goddess of Love, Eolidálida, fell. The next victim would be the God of Light, the opposite of the God of Chaos, and responsible for his death. After the War of One Lament, the survivors of Flamonia emigrated to the land that would become the Mandrake Empire. Said heirs of Flamonia separated into two branches: the Wild Men of Devnóngaron and the Mandrakians. But Legionaer had not admitted defeat. Frustrated by the results of the war, he had set out to exterminate that entire population. Thus commenced the Times of Köel, and in the battle of Maúralgum, Legionaer was defeated. This happened just over four hundred years ago.
Afterward, Némaldon shut itself off, sunk into ruin after being defeated by a force of such inferior beings like humans, but matters were not going to rest there. During all these years, Némaldon had planned its revenge in silence and waited for the right moment to return. They had calculated everything down to the smallest detail. When Legionaer fell, Elkam assumed power. He created the Brotherhood of the Crows—humans who accepted submission to the law of the Black Arts—and entrusted them with dirty work and enough murders to be able to accumulate power and finish off the God of Light. But they found out that he would be reborn into a human being. It was necessary to eliminate him to resuscitate Legionaer afterward without the obstacles of the Light, thus managing to conquer the whole world.
The underground fortress was a castle of black volcanic rock, shielded by evil spells. It was a complex with thousands of chambers, torture rooms, dungeons, and halls for experimenting with new races. Sometimes they crossed orcs with humans, humans with wyverns. The goal was to create unexpected monsters to torment human beings. In the cauldrons of Árath, they forged weapons and armor from that metal they appreciated so much: tíranis.
“My Lord Elkam, the sáffurtan has arrived,” the voj announced.
The voj was a hybrid species created in Árath, a mixture of a human and giant orc. The voj was formidably tall, with a broad torso and near-translucent skin, a pig’s snout, and a pair of horns like those of a minotaur. Voj were the pride of Elkam, since he had created them in the cauldrons of Árath. Elkam himself was the first mixture of a human and dethis. So he had devised to create a species of his own, just as he was created by Legionaer, his dead master.
He was said to be the son of Legionaer and to have inherited his capacity to rule from him. He was of extraordinary height, his face crisscrossed by endless scars. Hundreds of years spent planning evil spells had made him ugly, but in Némaldon, nobody cared about beauty.
“So?” he asked, without taking his gaze off the deep shadow which loomed on the subterranean fortress.
“He brings grave news. He says that—”
“Let him in.”
The voj vanished behind the arch of volcanic stone which separated his master’s chamber from the outside. A few minutes later, he returned, followed by the sáffurtan, who walked in with bowed head. Like every servant of the same order, accursed men who devoted themselves to the Black Arts and necromancy, he had no name of his own. He was a servant of the high caste of Némaldon. The higher caste were the direct children of Legionaer, the original dethis. The second caste in power were the Grim Shepherds.
The sáffurtan used a cloak that covered his whole body, his hands, and even his head so that it was impossible to see an inch of his skin. This was a good thing because he had lost all his flesh and was no more than a skeleton. He had lost his muscles and skin when performing an exchange during a spell.
“What’s happened?” Elkam asked in a bored voice. After centuries of meticulously planning the resurrection of the master, Legionaer, he was sick of hearing about the failures. He sat down on a chair made out of black stone. The light of a candle lit up the place.
“My Lord,” the sáffurtan began in a voice that was no longer human but that of a beast. “The strangest thing has happened in Aegrimonia. Our servants died during the ambush. It would appear to be true: a powerful demon lurks among the ranks in Ágamgor. He was so powerful. A beauty…”
Elkam stroked his scars absentmindedly. He was wearing his armor of tíranis, which clung to his body perfectly. “Many Nemaldines migrated to the Empire. They think that they will be free of the curse of our lands when it is a gift from the god Mórgomiel. But thanks to those Nemaldines who have become Mandrakians, our plan will have an excellent outcome.”
“Are you referring to Feliel Demanur, my lord?”
“Exactly. My brother in the Black Arts, another Grim Shepherd. He is preparing to infiltrate the Empire as one who has repented. And you know full well that Feliel is a great conversationalist who seduces with his arguments.”
“Will he enter the political sphere?”
“It’s the only way to ensure that Feliel can take up his post in San San-Tera. Beneath its streets, the tunnels of our powerful Lord Mórgomiel converge. That spot is called Kanumorsus, and that is where our master Legionaer will be resurrected. And then we’ll carry out the revenge we’ve been organizing these past four centuries. It’s been too long, but it was necessary to recover from the disastrous defeat the Mandrakians inflicted upon us. Soon, sáffurtan, soon.”
“Very well, my lord. What shall we do with the demon of the legions of Ágamgor?”
The Grim Shepherd laughed heartily. “Absolutely nothing. Watch him. We’ll see how he develops.”
“And what of the precious sacrifice?”
There followed an uncomfortable silence while Elkam considered his answer. “Have they found the right woman?”
“Yes, my lord. The assassins of the Brotherhood of the Crows are on it. They’ve located the woman, but they don’t know when she’ll become pregnant. They’re working intensely. I estimate that in a few years, the enemy monster will be born.”
“Excellent. Everything’s going perfectly. If we lose that girl, the spell Feliel has been working on for so many centuries to resuscitate Legionaer will be worthless. That must not happen. You know the punishment for failure…” Elkam’s shadow seemed to grow.
The necromancer shivered with fear. “So it shall be,” the sáffurtan hissed and withdrew.
Elkam the Evil was left alone, considering the master plan he had worked out to bring his master back to life. That spell needed thousands of souls to gather together enough energy and bring Legionaer back from the depths of death.
“Soon. Very soon,” he repeated. He sat down at the dining table once again to enjoy the charcoal-grilled human leg that was his favorite dish. Afterward, he would give the bones to the orcs so that they could fight among themselves for the remains.
“Gürd, bring me Iris.”
“At once, my lord,” the voj said.
An elf woman in chains came into the grim shepherd’s chamber. The voj gave a vicious pull on the
chain, forcing her to fall to her knees. She was naked, consumed by hunger.
“My favorite servant,” Elkam said, savoring the words.
“My loathsome dominator,” Iris replied. She was one of the few of her species left alive. The elves were now on the brink of extinction.
“Are you going to tell me where the last refuge of the elves is, my dear prisoner? You know well that Allündel is of great interest to us. TELL ME!”
The shout was deafening, but Iris did not flinch. She was not even trying to cover her private parts. “Rape me once and for all, you bastard. I promise to moan the way you like, you damned demon. I’ll never betray my people.”
Elkam clenched his teeth, and his face took on a feline ferocity. Iris had her eyes closed and her legs apart. She was not going to resist, but the Grim Shepherd knew that her warning was true: The elf would never be truly his, and she would certainly not talk. Mórgomiel was left longing to know the location of Allündel, the last refuge of the elves. One day he would find it. He gazed at Iris for a moment. She must die. But first things first.
“Gürd.”
“Yes, my lord,” the voj said.
“Do you fancy elf?”
The orc turned to look at the prisoner and licked his lips. Iris shut her eyes but could not help the tears coming to them.
“Defile her. And then eat her slowly,” said Elkam with a wicked smile. “Start by the feet. And then work on her until you’ve eaten her heart out.”
“Yes, master!”
Chapter XIII – Solar Sedition
He woke up from that dream. He felt a perturbation within him, something beat strongly within his chest. The seraph of light that floated around him was also agitated and shone with a mixture of red and orange. He rubbed his eyes. He looked at the horizon and checked that the same dull, opaque, unvaried gray was still there, unchanged. He focused on himself again. He was barefoot, and his feet were soiled with dark dust, like his hands. Meanwhile, the seraph came and went as though it were trying to catch his attention. But why? he wondered, following the shining wake of the little creature. What do you want to tell me?
Shepherd’s Awakening (Books 1-3) Page 25
