The Tale of Onora: The Boy and the Peddler of Death (6 page)

Olwyn longingly gazed toward the lush narrows of eastern Caliphweald. Though the Nabians paid for it in blood, Yanta was paradise. She knew the Nabians would not take kindly to topsiders without proof of a royal connection, and alas, she had none.

Further east, the Nabian Narrows opened up to the Lost Coast and the Caliphian Sea. The port cities were dangerous. Free trade with the Nabians attracted all kinds of charters from the Old World. The commerce was so great that the Jarl Marduk was forced to commission the Royal Navy for protection.

Merchants weren’t the only ones from the Old World that were allured to the Lost Coast. Like the smell of an open wound to wolves in the middle of winter, free trade enticed buccaneers from the Old World as well. Olwyn could not venture to any of the port cities. The threat of being kidnapped and sold into slavery was too great a risk.

Olwyn turned around to weigh her alternatives. She faced the darkness of the western wilds that she knew to be the birthplace of the Lunaega Province. It was where fertile land gave way to a desert that married an ocean. It was the homeland of the Oussaneans.

When Woden Caliph used the power of The Trivium to defeat the Oussanean Brotherhood, he placed a fertility curse upon the entire population of Lunaega. The Oussaneans with the misfortune to be in their homeland during Woden’s onslaught had their Y chromosomes destroyed by radioactive spells. Not only did his sorcery eradicate the male species of Oussaneans, but also it brought about the destruction of a once pure race of warriors. A male Oussanean is born only once every century as a result of his black art.

The female Oussaneans were forced to procreate with Caliphians in order to evade extinction. Eventually all the men of their race died off, and so they subsequently groom the lone male that is born each century to be king.

Olwyn was aware that a male Oussanean currently lived in the second decade of his life. Perhaps the timing of his battle-ripe age coincided with the Oussanean’s eastern campaign, as there would not be another male to lead them for seven to ten decades.

The entire Oussanean race became primarily female, transitioning themselves from a proud race of warriors into a race of thieves. They were the heirs to the night, experts in espionage, sabotage, assassinations, and stealth. An Oussanean on horseback, armed with a bow and a large quiver, could handle a whole company of male soldiers by herself. They accumulated more wealth using subterfuge than they ever did waging physical wars, and thus became one of the wealthiest races in the world despite the lack of natural resources in their desert wastelands and their strategic marriages into politically affluent families around the world staved off invasions.

Olwyn wouldn’t dare take her child to the Lunaega Province. As grateful as she was to be alive, she knew time was not on her side. She lost a lot of blood from the birth. Her breath was raspy. Her body trembled. The sound of her racing heartbeat trounced her eardrums. She had no food, no shelter, nor the means to properly protect herself.

She spent a great deal of her mana, the natural sustenance in which all equipoise is derived, healing herself well enough to flee Drudgekreath. Now her mana was dangerously low. She needed to act fast, and so whether it was the result of fate or the result of logic, she slipped off the well-trodden path and into the thickly wooded fields of the southern Steppe.

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I
T WAS THE END of Sunscrest, the second month of summer, and so the wind ferried a scent of citrus and lavender glazed with the morning’s dew. The earth was soft and virgin. It invited each tread upon it with great warmth and earnestness of feeling.

Billowing clouds worshiped the milky-silver glow of the full moon, setting themselves apart from the stars. Neighboring planets glowed bright along with other galactic constellations in the sky. They painted the landscape with the faint glow of aurora. The symphonic rhythm of the crickets and frogs created a harmony that was accompanied by the occasional encouragement of an owl or the inspiration of a wolf.

The air was sweet like honeysuckle and heavy on the breath. Every once and a while a slightly metallic, industrial scent accompanied by a copper taste wafted on the breeze. It disrupted the wilderness like an intruder to a family feast.

Something unseen and unfamiliar slowly transformed the state of the Caliphian Steppe as it made its unnatural presence known. Nature’s harmony became unnerved. It began to speed up selfishly, progressively out of sync with itself as the urgency increased.

New instruments erupted in volume and drove the harmony into a violent, primal orchestra of fear. Birds awakened from slumber before their natural rise. Flocks of them alerted each other over vast distances. They warned others to flee, to head to the mountains. Herds of bison and wild horses stampeded in all directions. The orchestra rapidly degenerated into a frenzy.

There are certain predators that never allow a crisis to go to waste. Cerlyn Wolves were among them. The aureolin glow from their eyes kindled the air. Their husky black fur shook with each muscular stride as they prowled towards their unsuspecting victims. From the rugged terrain of the northeast, prides of saber-toothed lions tracked innocent families of the animal kingdom as they innocently fled their homes. As the predators herded their prey appropriately, the unfathomable wickedness of nature reared its ugly head.

The free meals did not last long however. Even the predators were afraid of something, a power so organized, so subtle, so interlocked, and so complete that its very presence pervaded the land long before it was seen to arrive. The orchestra of fear eventually passed away and life deserted the terrain.

Only the abandoned, tilled acreage of the grassland and its immovable surroundings remained. Stillness took center stage of the Caliphian Steppe. Even the wind stopped. It was a silence born but once a lifetime.

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A
STEADY MARCH OF thousands of boots crept from the east with the first signs of light. Legions of silver-purple eyes glowed at the head of the silhouette army. The girth of the massive black mass that marched behind them was daunting. It took every warrior in Caliphweald to create it. The army resembled a giant serpent with thousands of glowing eyes as it slithered over the terrain. They were the eyes of shadowlight, the gaze of the Shadekin.

The Shadekin were mesmers, masters of Illusion Magic. Long ago, before Woden Caliph used the power of The Trivium to ascend to deity, nay, before he even found The Trivium, he promised the men and women that accompanied him to the ends of the earth that he would deliver a new reality to them.

After he found The Trivium, Woden granted new skill sets to his companions in exchange for their eternal allegiance by binding their blood to the aether of the sky. The ritual transformed them into elementalists that were able to harness and manipulate the electromagnetic energy fields of nature. This building block of life subsequently empowered the elementalists to manipulate the very fabric of reality. Using their sky magic, called
Nulofaer
in their native tongue, they summoned the storms, conjured the lightning, and beckoned the wind. They slipped between dimensions, created complex illusions, and perhaps most dangerously, they found a way to travel to the Shade, a twilight realm that exists between the material world and the spiritual one.

Those who were awake said that some of the Shadekin learned to manipulate the flow of time, in which frequencies could be played on unique instruments that harnessed this ability. They often endured stones being cast at them and their character being assassinated by those whose minds were asleep. Many went to their deaths professing they had seen it done while their peers dismissed them as madmen.

As time passed, the carefully constructed illusions of the Shadekin lulled the population into a hypnotic state. They spun the world to the rhythm of their music. The further Caliphian society drifted from the truth, the more it shunned those who spoke it.

Not all of the Shadekin went along with the unnatural spellbind, this order of the ages that imprisoned humanity. Some of them were crucified upside-down and burned at the stake for protesting it. A message was sent to those that dared to yield the secrets of The Trivium. One had better not speak above his breath when proclaiming its effects on society.

There were Shadekin who feared the consequences of their actions and disappeared forever, leaving nothing behind but the curiosity of where they went. Some folks revered these Shadekin as heroes who travelled back in time to change what they had done. Other people despised these Shadekin as cowards who could not face the reality of their own creating.

It is said that the entire world is a stage and every person is merely an actor playing his part in the grand performance of life. Since those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future, there is not one shred of doubt in Caliphweald as to who runs the show.

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A
T THE OPPOSITE END of the Steppe, the aroma of foreign spice and earthiness drifted with the breeze, swirling with the scent of vanilla and clove. A legion of figures swiftly crept out from the valley towards the break of day. Their silhouettes coasted over the arid terrain. They displayed a sexually attractive dexterity. Though the figures were young, they were suitable for midnight deeds by virtue of their maturity.

Beneath the veils of their elegantly shrouded bodies, the Oussaneans had bronze skin. Their fiery hair and feline irises ignited with enthralling sensuality. The Oussaneans habituated that it was not enough to merely conquer a people. They must seduce them.

The Caliphians had a lust for these women, an addiction even. The Oussaneans would hardly succeed at the art of seduction were they not masked by some sort of honor. If one had experienced the dilemma between stealing the life of his soul mate and refusing to do so at the consequence of his own death, he may know the feeling of fighting against these women.

The Oussaneans swept over the terrain. Their glaives and scimitars swayed gracefully like willows in the wind. Every tangible piece of their armor and weapons bore the inscription of the moon, the symbol of the Lunaega Province.

As the legion made their way east, an ominous gallop grew louder and louder until it matched the sound of thunder breaking the sky. A warhorse, blacker than oblivion, more powerful than a herd, tilled the soil as each hoof cut through the earth. The monstrous steed was clad in dark obsidian armor. Its ruby red eyes burned like embers from a diabolical fire. However, it was not the horse that was frightening. It was the rider of that demonic steed and what followed him that struck terror into the hearts of men.

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O
LWYN ENTERED THE EIDOLON Woods. Everything about the forest was different from the rest of Caliphweald. If one were to remain still, the live organisms that floated upon the aether glowed and banded together into beautiful golden formations. The moment anything moved, the particles dispersed into bursts of light.

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W
HEN WODEN CALIPH WAS a god, he discovered the Shade by using the power of The Trivium to access its portals. He brought back a type of seed and strategically planted it in the southeast forest of Caliphweald. From it grew what Woden named The Great Faelen Tree. To Shadean beings, a faelen tree was neither great nor unique. Prior to Woden, faelen trees only grew in the Shade, and Caliphians had no knowledge of them, or the injurious effects it would have on their bodies. But they learned soon enough that those who ventured into Woden’s forest unprepared
became lost forever. Death was more preferred than suffering such a fate.

As a deity, much of the equipoise Woden brought to Caliphweald was learned during his time spent in the Shade. But equipoise was not the only thing that Woden brought back with him. As unnatural as the faelen seeds were, they were of no concern when compared to the ancient things that crept from the swards of darkness and followed Woden out of the Shade.

The Great Faelen Tree converted the Eidolon Woods into a magical barrier that protected Caliphweald from the outside world. There was an immense fear of the impact that life from the Shade would have on Caliphweald’s ecosystem, and what would happen to the physical world because of this.

The Great Faelen Tree eventually summoned beings from its native habitat. They crossed through The Great Barrier into this dimension and once acclimated, they shared their customs and knowledge with the Caliphians. These beings believed they could survive in the physical world so long as they remained under the protection of a faelen tree. Woden named them the Amori, the children made of love.

The Great Faelen Tree absorbed the nature around it. It mimicked life in such a way that it created a sustainable habitat for the Amori as well as for the indigenous organisms of Caliphweald. The Amori protected and tended to the forest’s needs. They built a village close enough to the Steppe so that Caliphians could trade with them without being exposed to the faelen tree’s enchantments for too long.

Amori Village resembled the Shade. Its structures were carved into trees, but in such a way as to keep them alive. Their gardens were masterful, as though crafted by the architects of the universe.

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O
LWYN KNEW THE AMORI would protect her. Olwyn’s husband was Shadekin, and though unnaturally related to the Amori through The Trivium, Aithein was nevertheless a distant relative to their kind. She knew they could not resist the innocence of a child. The Amori existed to nurture life. They were highly evolved and driven by empathy. Her son’s greatest chance of survival would be with the beings from the Shade.

Olwyn’s mouth was parched. As she treaded through the forest, every breath brought with it a sting of bitterness, oak, and flowers. Her pace was a stumble, her legs were weary, and her muscles burned with fatigue. Her head throbbed with unnatural heat as she struggled to put one foot in front of the other.