“I’m the strongest because I feel things. No Dahken taught me to find my strength; I discovered it accidentally years ago. I’ve started to learn that I can do more.”
“Yes,” Dahk said, nodding approvingly, “that was my gift to you. That is why you’re the Lord Dahken.”
“I’m the strongest because I can do things other Dahken can’t, that Dahken before me couldn’t do.”
“Just when I thought you’d figured it out,” Dahk sighed, “but you’re close. You’re on the cusp of it. My gift to you was the inherent knowledge, the ability to feel that you have power and the ability to discover it for yourself. It has nothing to do with the strength of it or that you can do things they can’t. You’re all as capable as the next Dahken, but you… you can access it without being shown the way. That’s what I have given you, and we gave your son the same thing.”
“But,” Cor paused as his thoughts began to spin, “but that means I could create a blood ghast if I liked, or that Keth could pull the blood straight from someone’s body as I did from Nadav’s.”
“Exactly! It’s not about strength or power, it’s about knowhow and understanding,” Dahk explained.
“How is that?” Cor asked.
“It just is, because everything in this world is what it is.”
“I do not understand,” Cor said. He realized that he was leaning forward, and the frustration, the aggravation caused him to lie back in the chair and stare at the sea.
“Of course you don’t, my boy, and that’s okay,” Dahk said with a light open handed slap to Cor’s shoulder. “I don’t even totally understand it myself, because it’s not my field.”
“Field?”
“Never mind. Let me try to explain it another way,” Dahk said thoughtfully. He reached down and cupped a handful of white sand so fine that it slipped between his fingers like powder. “What is this?”
“Sand.”
“No, it’s not. It’s blood.”
“What?” Cor asked, the confusion spreading.
“Okay yes, it’s sand,” Dahk said, “but it’s also blood. Or maybe it’s fire or water or wood. It doesn’t matter what it is as you see it. I know you don’t understand this, but you have to take my word for it. Everything in this world – blood, flesh, sand, granite, water, whatever – at its most simple, smallest level is all the same. It’s all made from the same small stuff. It’s only the way the small stuff is put together that changes what it looks like when it’s big stuff. Make sense?”
“Not really,” Cor replied glumly, though he felt like he should understand.
“Don’t worry about it, just believe me. What I’m getting at is this, Cor – you don’t feel or manipulate blood. Blood is just the medium in which you manipulate the world. Thyss uses fire as her medium. It’s no different than the artist who molds clay while another chisels marble.”
“That makes more okay sense,” Cor replied.
“Close on the word, but not quite, kid,” Dahk chided gently. “What you have to remember is that, in its simplest form, it is all the same stuff. It’s all blood if that’s what you need it to be.”
“I think I understand,” Cor said, finishing off his beer.
“Good! Then you’re ready to go back.”
“Wait, I have a question,” Cor said quickly.
“What?”
“The Tigolean scholar –“
“Ja’Na,” Dahk clarified.
“Yes, Ja’Na. How are you so sure that I’ll live through this to meet him?” asked Cor.
“Because you’re Lord Dahken Cor Fucking Pelson,” Dahk replied with a smile that stretched his mouth almost from ear to ear, and the beach was gone.
* * *
Cor nearly tripped and fell flat on his face as he suddenly appeared on the battlefield. He was running, and the sudden shift from sitting in a leather bound chair to running across the ravaged valley threw him off balance. He fumbled for a few steps as the momentum carried him, and he just barely kept from tumbling headlong. Dahk was right in that it appeared no time had passed, so Cor hadn’t truly and suddenly just appeared. He had never left except in his own mind. Thyss still hunched over on all fours, but she looked sickly, her normal formfitting outfit hanging loosely about an emaciated frame.
Cor had just regained firm footing and began to again sprint when something incredible hit him from behind. It had the weight and force of a thousand boulders, yet it didn’t crush his armor or shatter every bone within. However, it knocked him hard to the ground, causing him to churn up the earth with the impact, and his helm dug its way in, causing his neck to bend painfully. He became suddenly aware that a baby or small child cried, and it was a wail of the utmost anguish. He felt a loss deep within his heart, and tears welled up into his eyes. Cor dislodged himself from the ground enough to turn over, and a white light, as bright and pure as anything he had ever seen, washed over him. It was blinding and painful to look at, yet it was also calming and cleansing. While he could not see clearly, the light shot like a great beam from a tent far behind him, a tent that he knew to hold Cor’El. Cor stood to face away from it, toward where Thyss died, and he saw her begin to stand.
It disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Cor realized that the pain that had begun to build in his neck was gone. He reached up and disdainfully brushed a large clump of grass and dirt from his helm. Thyss stood some distance away, hale and hearty as always, apparently unharmed by the magick that some Loszian had thrown at her. The two ran to each other and embraced, Cor discarding his black helm just as they met.
“That was him, wasn’t it?” Cor asked quietly, tears slowly rolling down his cheeks. He realized that Thyss was not going to answer, and her body shuddered in his arms as she began to sob. Aware that he still needed to deal with the Loszians, the seconds seemed like hours as he held her, and yet Cor loathed the thought of releasing her. “How did he do it? How did he know?”
“He’s our son,” Thyss answered, and she said no more as if her statement answered everything. She pulled away and ashamedly began to wipe her face on her black tunic.
“I’ve never seen you cry before,” stated Cor quietly.
“And you still haven’t, you bastard,” she replied, and she slowly started the walk back toward the far end of the valley and their son. Cor looked after her and, in so doing, noticed that all off the again risen dead no longer moved.
He shook his head in wonder and slowly turned to saunter toward the Loszians and their chariots. Dark magicks came, and he simply walked through them. A cluster of dead arose not ten feet from him, and he dispatched the five that moved before they hardly gained their feet. As he neared them, he saw perhaps two dozen of the spindly necromancers, on their chariots some hundred feet away or so. He stopped his approach, and they ceased their spell weaving. As they silently regarded one another, Cor sought the method by which he would end their existence. He knew that he could have just walked up to them and pulled the blood from their bodies one by one, or perhaps even all at once, but no. He wanted to do something special with these Loszians who would serve Nadav and dare harm his Thyss, something demonstrative.
There was blood here, in this valley. There hadn’t been before, but now that he focused on it, Cor’s whole body felt afire with the knowledge of it. Much had been spilled, soaked into the ground beneath their very feet. The blood of nearly a hundred thousand men could be found here, and there was more than that. Some of Nadav’s dead servants hadn’t been dead very long, and congealed blood lay within their forms. But it all was spread out over such a large area that it was difficult for him to focus his attention on it all at once.
Start with what’s right here, Cor thought, and he held his hands aloft. He hadn’t realized that Soulmourn and Ebonwing were in each of his gauntleted grips, for he didn’t remember pulling them from his belt. Also, his helm was again on his head, and he didn’t remember retrieving it from the ground either. He wondered what he looked like, a black armored insectoid demon of
a man, standing amidst an uncovered graveyard, death all around him.
It began to come to him. Blood literally began to flow through the very air, tendrils of red mist coming from a dozen different directions from all around him. It came from the hundreds of corpses nearby, and it also rose from the dirt below. The blood came together about a foot over Cor’s outstretched arms so that it almost seemed that Soulmourn called the blood to it. It started as an irregular sphere that undulated this way and that as if something was within the center trying to push its way out. It grew with each passing moment to the point that it was several feet across. Not enough. I need more, Cor thought.
The valley had fallen completely silent as everyone watched the Dahken in awe. No one moved in inch, some out of fascinated anticipation and others out of hypnotic wonder. Perhaps they were afraid to break whatever spell weaved before their eyes. Even the Loszians seemed entranced by or at least curious of this blood magick that swirled about the valley ahead of them. Holding Cor’El high in the air, Thyss was the only one to speak coherently.
“My son, behold your father!” she called exultantly.
It’s all the same stuff, Cor thought. He closed his eyes, repeating Dahk’s words in his head. It’s all made from the same stuff, no matter what form it takes. It’s not bone, blood, dirt and rock. It’s not steel or wool, grass or wood. It’s all the same stuff; it appears as I need it to appear. It is all the same stuff, it is all blood.
He stood unmoving in the same place, his weapons pointed to the sky, and Soulmourn’s blade was deep within the now irregular mass of blood. Cor opened his eyes to behold something no one in Rumedia had ever seen. Everything around him seemed to slowly vanish, fade away little by little to be replaced by red mists and vapors that immediately sped to join the blood mass. Within a few moments, it was as if a thousand thousand misty tendrils fed into it from across the valley, and as Cor thought about it, he realized that he could direct from where it came.
He knew then that he could do the same to the Loszians that faced him. He wouldn’t have to draw the blood from their body, for he could simply turn them into it if he so desired, but no – he planned something so much more violent, a demonstration of what it meant to kill those he loved. He drew from the ground in front of him, creating a trench across the valley that stretched from one sloping side to the other. The packed topsoil and clay and stone underneath changed its form to reveal a channel that was over six feet deep and at least ten feet across. Cor felt the weight of what hovered over him, and he looked up to confirm what he felt. He held what could only be described as a lake of blood, beautiful and vile at once.
As the blood tendrils disappeared into the thing, fear and realization began to cross the Loszians’ minds and faces. A few in their arrogance threw magicks in Cor’s directions, which had no effect as he completely ignored them. Several stood awed into inaction, frozen in place even though they knew what was to come. Most succumbed to the most basic instinct imbued in all living creatures and started to flee for their lives. They turned their chariots around to head for the mouth of the valley or simply ran for it in blind fright.
You’ll not get away, Cor thought. He then shouted it in a deep, fully throated yell that came from the pits of his lungs, “You’ll not get away from me!”
The great, red floating mass, enough blood to fill ten thousand barrels and still run over moved with a speed and purpose one would not have thought possible for its massive size. It hovered over the ground as it chased down the Loszians, changing shape so as to resemble an impossibly huge ocean wave that never broke no matter how far it traveled, and with it came a roar over which none could hear anything. Those that did not flee were simply swept up in it to drown, and as it came up behind those that did, the terrible sound pushed them harder.
But they could not escape, would not escape no matter how hard or fast they pushed themselves or their horses. The wave finally broke with an incredibly disgusting crushing force that came down upon the Loszians from behind. The strength of it was unlike anything ever seen as it crushed chariots and bones alike, blasting apart the bodies of the Loszians and their horses. There was little pain in it, for it struck so terrifically that one’s life could not even be measured in a single second upon its impact. The red stuff washed everywhere across the valley and out into the plains beyond. It ran up the hilly slopes and came back down, and it rushed its way back to Cor as it sought to spread out evenly just as water would. The flood of red poured into the trench he had dug to help create it and angrily lapped up the sides to douse his sabatons in blood, but it otherwise did Cor no harm. Eventually the great rush of the wave settled into a calming lake that slowly seeped its way into the ground and out of the valley.
Looking over the sea of red reflecting the sun’s dark orange rays, he knew that no Loszian had survived the onslaught. Cor dropped his arms and started the walk back to his family.
34.
“The world is in ruin,” King Rederick said darkly as he looked out across the valley. It was once beautiful and lush, the very ideal of natural beauty with thick, tall grasses and a gentle, pure river flowing through it. Trees of all sorts had grown within it, from bright green flexible saplings to aged hard oaks, unbending and wise. All of that was gone, destroyed by the army he’d led to war. There was no green left, only the colors of death and decay and the red of blood.
Even from where they stood at the top of the northernmost ridge, he could feel the heat that rose out of the valley, and immense plumes of black smoke could be seen for miles as an inferno raged below. Even with the thousands of men at his command, it would be the work of weeks to haul all of the bodies to the deep trench Cor had made. They did not separate the bodies from their weapons and armor, for that would have only added more time to the gruesome task. As it was, many of the corpses had been dead for quite some time, animated by Nadav’s magicks, and many of these fell apart as they were drug, strewing more detritus across the valley’s floor. The trench filled quickly, and to this mass of rotting flesh, Rederick added the makeshift catapults for kindling. The burning started, and it continued for days. Rederick was thankful that today’s wind blew hard to the east, carrying the stench of burning flesh far away.
“We saved the world from ruin,” Cor replied. He flicked a finger toward the blazing carnage below. “This will pass. Cities can be rebuilt. Crops and trees will find a way to break through and be reborn.”
“We lost so many. How can I be King when I feel as I do?”
“It’s because of those feelings that you must be King, and those that live will return home and raise new families. It will all pass, my friend,” Cor said, placing a reassuring hand on Rederick’s shoulder. Their eyes met for just a moment, and Cor saw tears in the king’s eyes.
“I can’t help feeling like there was some other path, some way to avoid so much death. Tens of thousands will never leave this place, and that says nothing of the tens of thousands dead across Aquis and all of those Nadav killed here in Losz. Yet, you seem to feel nothing of it. I envy you, Lord Dahken Cor. How do you so easily bear the weight of this?”
“Because it had to be done,” Cor replied simply. “Nadav had to be stopped, whatever the cost. The Loszian Empire had to fall. I pledged myself to it the first time I truly saw the way the people here live.”
“I don’t disagree with what you’ve said, but why do I feel so much sorrow?” Rederick asked.
“Because you’re a good man,” Cor said, patting the man’s armored shoulder before dropping his hand to his side. “It’s your sense of doubt, your sense of responsibility that makes you a good king.”
“It makes me weak. You are the stronger. You should have been King of Aquis.”
“I see what must be done, and I do it. I will always be here to do what must be done, but I cannot rule. My strength would make me a tyrant.”
“I don’t believe that,” replied Rederick, his tone dubious. “Your sense of what’s right keeps you fair minded and
strong.”
“My sense of what’s right…” Cor repeated, trailing off as he said the words. “My sense of what’s right has led me down a path of death and bloodshed for years already. It led me to Taraq’Nok, the man most responsible for my parents’ death, and I killed him for it.”
“Justice.”
“That justice ended all of his magicks, which led Nadav to know something else was going on. Nadav tasked his nobles with raising enormous armies, besought his gods for more power and invaded the Shining West. My sense of what’s right led me to strangle Queen Erella to her death, placing that useless sack of shit Aidan onto the throne just when Aquis needed a strong ruler to defend the land.”
“So, I hear regret?” asked Rederick.
Cor looked to the king’s face to find that he was being examined almost slyly. He thought about his answer for a moment. “No. It had to be done. It all had to be done, but it all could have been avoided if I had just decided not to chase after my parents’ murderer.”
“There’s a good chance that none of this would have ever happened,” Rederick agreed, nodding, “but then, that’s not Cor Pelson, is it? You’re a rash man, my friend. No, do not act hurt. I have never met anyone in my life that makes such wild claims, charges headlong into all of his decisions and yet never fails. Perhaps this carnage is all your fault, or maybe the gods have made you the epicenter of the world for the time that you are upon it. I don’t know, but I will console myself with the knowledge that we can now build a better world for all of us.
“Now,” Rederick said with a deep breath, clearly changing the subject, “you speak of what must be done, and there is much to do now. We must sit in negotiations with the Seven Lords and the Loszians to determine the shape of our newly reunited Shining West.”
The Cor Chronicles: Volume 04 - Gods and Steel Page 26
