The Tale of Onora
Book One
The Boy and the Peddler of Death
by Dylan Saccoccio
Copyright © 2014 by Dylan Saccoccio
www.dylansaccoccio.com
Artwork by Virginie Carquin
Edited by Fallon Alexander-Brink
Foreword
To you, that you may awaken to understand that the whole universe is a dance of energy, and that energy is God, and that energy is you. You are something that the whole universe is doing, that God is doing, just as a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. The real you, the energy, the soul, is not a puppet that life pushes around. The real you is the whole universe. The real you is God, destined to follow no one, destined to ignite the ether, experience life from an individual perspective, and take part in the creation. So this is for you, my fellow creators, my fellow gods, and my fellow selves, that coincidence may never disguise itself with the mask of fate and torment you, that every moment be meaningful, and that no experience be lost.
PROLOGUE
The Inquiries of Devils
WINTER’S BREATH DUSTED THE landscape with icy snowdrifts. The stark trees quivered nakedly in the blistering swells of wind. Barren ridges of rock jutted out of gravel and dirt. Patches of grass were seldom seen and mostly dead.
A cloaked figure’s boots crunched through the terrain with purpose. There burned a fire in his heart, fueled by the only true thing needed to keep him warm.
The taste of defeat can spur a man to do awe-inspiring things. It sows the seeds of vengeance in the soil of his soul, irreversibly so. Exile nourishes those seeds, giving them all the room they need to grow and flourish, till the day their roots sprout out of the cold dark earth and spread their matrix of branches that bear fruit of the most terrible kind.
This was not the first time the cloaked figure approached the Gates of Septentrion. History was not so kind to him on the first excursion. However, this time was different. This time there was no army behind him or weapons in his hands. This time, he came alone. What he had within him was more dangerous than a standing army.
And so he advanced towards the entrance to the Nordic lands, sealed off from the rest of the world by an ever-expanding rampart of magnificent, monumental walls. They divided and protected the entire country. At mile-long intervals, for as far as the eye could see, lookout towers scraped the bottom of the sky. On each side of the gate, monolithic statues of ancient Nordic Elves reminded all those who approach that they were advancing towards the birthplace of destruction magic.
“Halt!” a guard from the city watch called down.
The cloaked figure stopped in his tracks.
“What business have you in the north, stranger?” the guard asked.
“Che’el De’Trezen,” the cloaked figure replied.
“The capital?” the guard asked, smiling at his fellow watchmen. “My apologies, sir. We’re at capacity and the city hasn’t a need for austral beggars at the moment!”
The guards jeered with laughter.
The cloaked figure remained still and silent.
The air shimmered around the guard who insulted him. The guard’s eyes opened wide and a blank expression eclipsed his face. Blood tricked from his nose and began to ooze out of his ears like a crimson fountain. He put his hands over it then held them out in front of his face so he could see what it looked like. He whimpered a little as he stumbled to stay on his feet. His comrades stared in horror as they watched more blood spill out of his mouth and his eyes bulge from their sockets. They popped out like projectiles, leaving streaks of slime on the surfaces they bounced off of, spewing gore out of the pits in his skull as he dropped to his knees and slumped to his side.
“By the time I’m finished with your city,” the cloaked figure shouted up at them. “There will be nothing but beggars left of your race! You shall be the austral ones as you look up at me from your knees, slave! Beseech me for mercy, for this time tomorrow, the rest of the world shall baptize you as the guttersnipes who thought they knew magic!”
The Nordic guards spun their wizardry in an attempt to shame the cloaked figure for his insolence, but he was quick to interrupt their spells with his own. His breath drained the energy out of the aether and the spheres of magic forming in the guards’ palms disintegrated like dead dandelions losing their seeds to the wind. The cloaked figure raised his open palms towards the colossal statues and closed his fists tight like a spectator celebrating a champion’s victory. An unnatural crack of immeasurable weight breaking in half upon itself and crumbling earthward split through the quiet landscape.
The cloaked figure brought the statues down like a conductor orchestrating a symphony. The broken halves plummeted through the city walls and the beautifully crafted Gates of Septentrion, reducing them to rubble. A giant plume of dust and soot skyrocketed towards the heavens like the eruption of a volcano. Chunks of debris exploded in all directions as the cloaked figure guided them to his will. Once they finished crashing to the ground, everything became silent again.
The cloaked figure walked towards the once impregnable entrance to the north, now a pile of wreckage and a gaping void in the Nordic defenses. His lips discharged a dreadful smile as he admired the aftermath of his dark art.
Littered corpses twisted themselves over the shambles. The cloaked figure approached one that he recognized. The Nordic guard stared up at him. His face was caked with dust and blood. His body was contorted in an unnatural position and pinned under slabs of debris.
“Please,” the guard begged. “Quick… Make it… quick.”
The cloaked figure took pity on him. “Most shall know me as the greatest there ever was.” He took his eyes off the guard and assessed the destruction around them. “But not your kind. No, your kind shall only know me by the trail of death I leave behind.”
The cloaked figure brought his gaze back down to meet the guard’s teary eyes. The Nord stared up helplessly as the shadow of a boot slowly eclipsed his face. He flinched but said nothing.
The cloaked figure stepped down upon the guard’s throat and shifted his weight upon it. The guard made a painful wheezing sound as his esophagus was crushed. A loud snap gave way under the boot like a dead branch in the middle of a road being broken by the weight of a passing carriage.
Charcoal clouds rained darkness over the nation’s capital, Che’el De’Trezen. Cinder fell like snowfall while red-tinged streaks of lightning flashed out of the clouds and struck the tops of steeples. They blasted massive splinters into jagged hailstorms that fell upon the fleeing victims. Meteors split the sky with their sooty wakes, hurling themselves into buildings relentlessly.
The cloaked figure stood amidst the meteor storm of his conjuring. Broken statues of mighty heroes and exemplars lay crumbled at his feet in the city’s plaza.
A mother and her two small children, covered in soot, not having a clue what was happening to them, fled through the square.
“Where are your tin gods now?” the cloaked figure shouted at them.
They shot a frightened look in return.
“They’ve fled!” he continued. “Like you!”
Other displaced Nords stumbled through the ruins of the city in a confused stupor.
“Look at me!” the cloaked figure screamed.
Shock glazed over their faces. The whites of their eyes contrasted brilliantly with the grime of their dirty skin.
Orbs of aether swirled wildly around the cloaked figure’s hands. “I desire your gaze upon me as I destroy you! When the deformities of your flesh draw the inquiries of devils, I want their questions to elicit
this moment for the entirety of your eternal damnation!”
Exploding flames engulfed the city as gale winds swept burning hot embers wildly about, igniting everything they touched. The cloaked figure used telekinesis to draw the embers to him and convert them into fireballs. He flung them at the fleeing citizenry.
The fireballs exploded into crowds of people, setting their bursting limbs ablaze, ejecting chunks of their burning sinews in all directions.
The cloaked figure turned his focus back upon the woman and her two children. The mother’s poise was fractured by distress.
“I long for your souls to haunt me,” he called out to them. “That I may best you over and over again for all of time!”
He heaved a fireball at them. The shockwave from its detonation blew his hair back and illuminated the whole square with a bright orange glow. When the flames subsided, scattered corpses lay gnarled over the cobblestones. Their clothes were singed off their unrecognizable bodies and their bald flesh was glossy like melted wax.
The tragedy of all things being equal in Nordic Elfin society, on this day, was that the cloaked figure also saw all things as being equal. There was no king to seek out and execute publicly, no leaders to make examples of. There were no statesmen to despoil or houses of parliament to burn. It was all or nothing, and so he chose to destroy it all.
______________________________
IT HAD BEEN LIFETIMES since Woden Caliph used the power of The Trivium to destroy Che’el De’Trezen. Burning slag no longer charred the city, the clouds were no longer the color of charcoal, but now the color of pearls, and the streets were no longer gardens of dead bodies.
Everything else was just as Woden had left it, lifeless, only now the crumbled statues and ruined buildings were covered in snow and what little vegetation this time of year yielded.
A boy, not quite an adult but old enough to fend for himself, stood in the same footing as Woden did in the city’s plaza, when he brought fire down from the heavens and lobbed it at innocent victims.
A cold chill gave him goosebumps all over his body as he stood in the eerie stillness, scanning his desolate surroundings. Nature is the fairest of judges. It is equally cruel to all things. It left Che’el De’Trezen vacant and seemingly bereft of life, now, just as it did all those years ago.
The boy wondered if anything dwelled in the blackness beyond the shattered windows or the dark halls beyond the porticos and colonnades of the abandoned buildings. He equipped his bow and nocked an arrow.
“Just in case,” he told himself. “Just in case.”
He’d never been this far north before, but it somehow felt familiar. Something about the ancient city resonated with him. Even in its ruins, the layout of Che’el De’Trezen was mathematically perfect. As much as he wanted to stay and explore it, he was alone without a guide, and this was the last place he wanted to be when dusk swallowed the light.
The boy walked away from the plaza and left the residual effects of Woden’s energy behind. There were answers up ahead, on the other side of the city, beyond the reaches of its annihilation. All he had to do was make it through, and then he would be closer to the truth than ever before.
CHAPTER 1
A Drink to the Past
A WOMAN BOWED TO her husband and his guest, then politely retreated into the shadows of the archway and out of the room. Her midnight-blue silk gown and platinum, waterfall braided hair drifted gracefully from the wake of her fast-paced walk through the hallways of her estate.
Her emotions began to crack the chinks in her façade and overwhelm her ability to control them. Her breaths grew deep and frantic, yet even with her head held high and the tears streaming down her face, there was no denying her illustrious beauty.
She ran up a staircase and then into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. How could it be that this day had finally come, that this bastard, this disgrace was still alive and how did he find them? Did he come to tear her family apart? Would he succeed? No, she couldn’t let that happen. She would kill him with her own hands before she would let that happen.
She broke into a full-on sob.
“What have I done?” she cried. “What have I done to deserve this?”
She sat on her bed, rocking back and forth with her face buried in her palms. Her temples throbbed so badly that the pain forced her to stop weeping. As her whimpers subsided and she caught her breath, she thought of the one thing that had always brought her peace whenever she was terrorized by the loneliness of being away from her husband. It was his personal journal that recounted his experiences from the time he was young and lost her till the time he found her again. It told of his perilous quests and everything he wanted her to know in case he didn’t survive them.
The strength of their relationship had been tested countless times through the years, but they had always kept it together. There were times in their youth when neither of them knew if they were going to see the other alive again. On the night of their wedding, he gave her the journal. She found some of her greatest comfort and strength by reading it.
She delicately walked over to a shelf and picked up what looked like a black leather casing fit for a book. The casing had engravings carved into it that had been suffused by melted silver.
“Tesso uns’aa dosst statha,” she commanded.
The engravings glowed as the leather case retracted enough to reveal the common shape of a leatherback book, eager to obey the woman’s command and tell her its story. The woman opened it. The pages did not have written words on them. Instead, beautifully scribed sigils were etched into each page.
As she touched the first sigil, the ink sparkled with multi-colored light and painted her face with a rainbow glow. She heard her husband’s voice.
We have journeyed to infinite worlds, you and I. We have lost and found each other so many times that all the words in every civilization would not be enough to recount their tales. The majority of my life is over here and I am still without you. Perhaps I won’t find you in this realm again. Perhaps it’s not possible.
You wander the halls of my dreams and take me to our favorite places that I’ve not yet been to in this life, to remind me what it is I live for. The people I encounter have dreams of you as well, often side by side with me, your ethereal eyes burning ever so bright.
I decided to tell the story of one of our lives together, that if you’re still alive here you may read it one day and find me again, that my tale shall be my distress signal and you my deliverer.
I wrote this to help you remember what you are, what you stood for, and why you’ve come here. I wrote it selfishly, that if my Onora is never to be found again, I might at least bethink what it was like to have her while I drift towards oblivion. If my shot is never heard, or my signal never seen, I shall depart this world knowing I said all I mean.
______________________________
THE HEARTH FIRE CRACKLED in the dark room. A man sat tucked away in his plush chair. It was not quite a throne, but it was certainly fit for royalty. He wrapped himself in the pelt of a beast. His hair was long and his beard overgrown. His face was hardened from the steep and treacherous paths of his life.
The man’s eyes were the color of fountains mixed with dirt and blood. They chased the memories of his youth. He searched the great outdoors through a cloudy window that was large enough for any adult to walk upright through were there no glass to block him. It was embedded in a wall of granite bricks and engraved by dusty, golden latticework. He watched the snowflakes fall like angels from heaven, their broken wings causing them to drift wildly. The wind howled over the frozen tundra outside. It screamed at all those with shelter to remain, warning that Mother Nature would eradicate the god-written title of every person’s life that was exposed to her breath.
“I’m quite impressed you stood alone against the world up here, in the ruins of Che’el De’Trezen,” the man said. “Less than half the age of the man who destroyed it.”
His words were met
by dead air.
The fire’s glow brought the trophies of the man’s conquests to life. There was a bearskin rug at his feet. Its soul still resonated from the dark hollows of its eyes and the gape in its mouth.
There were jewel-encrusted chalices on the mantle. Magic staves and swords hung from silver and mahogany racks on the walls, each one telling a tale of valor and heartbreak. There were effigies, talismans, and relics scattered about, the sort of items only acquired by staring death in the face and then defeating it.
Near the hearth, a boy at the end of his childhood sat on a stool. He stared into the flames. Stratagems raced through his mind. His pupils contracted, revealing the red center of his irises as they contrasted with their yellow-green outer parts. His wildfire hair broke through his dark skin.
The man studied the boy. “Enduring Che’el De’Trezen alone is not the only thing you share with Woden Caliph, you know.”
The boy’s attention was captured. “What could I possibly share with Woden Caliph?”
The man smirked. “Your siblings are made of his blood.”
“Siblings?” the boy asked.
“Two,” the man replied. “A sister of seven years and a brother your very age.”
The boy felt his stomach churn. A brother made of Woden’s blood meant only one thing. His dreams of becoming king were as dead as the city of Che’el De’Trezen.
The boy tried to mask the looks of his feelings being crushed. He glanced around the room. In the darkest corner, there lay a small heap of assorted equipment. There was a pair of boots with golden soles at the bottom. There was an unfamiliar dust on them that sparkled with each flare that erupted from the fire. On the heel of each boot, the gold soles rose up and formed wings. The man’s eyes fell on them. His thoughts travelled back in time to what it felt like traverse deep, dark chasms while walking through the air. He recalled looking down at oblivion on more than one occasion. The golden-winged boots allowed him to accomplish what the mind had previously determined to be impossible.
The Tale of Onora: The Boy and the Peddler of Death Page 1
