The Aether of Night
Page 50
A piece of him smiled as he watched the proceedings in the south, where the emperor was wed. His words to the man had been true—he would not, could not, interfere with the growth of his sons. And, hopefully, growth it would be. Only this one blight of darkness worried the Former.
He turned one of his many focuses north, looking in on the wreckage of the city of men, Vae Annitor. They had called it great, but they didn’t remember the times before, when his sons had earned their names, Slaughter and Despair. The city called Saeris Va, City of the Ancestors, had been far more advanced, far more beautiful.
Both were gone now, craters left in their places. At the bottom of each crater was something the men couldn’t see. An essence was slowly coalescing in the pits, forming over a period of months. Finally, six months after the cities’ destruction by the counting of men, the essences formed completely.
A naked human form appeared at the bottom of each crater. The two men blinked, identical save for their hair color—one black, the other white. The two raised themselves, shaking their heads and focusing on the world around them.
“Let the world shake and men prepare,” the Former whispered, his voice undulating quietly through the world. “The Fell Twins, Slaughter and Despair, have been released from their prisons.”