Read The Tale of Onora: The Boy and the Peddler of Death Online
Authors: Dylan Saccoccio
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Horror, #Dark Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Genre Fiction, #Literature & Fiction
One by one, Olwyn began to lose her senses. Her mouth became so dry that she could barely breathe, let alone taste or smell. Her infinite aches grew such that her brain could no longer register where the pain was coming from. Her entire body throbbed until it became numb. Her vision was bleary. Darkness encircled her focal points until it completely enveloped everything. Once she lost her sight, the panic set in. The claustrophobic feeling of her surroundings caved in on her. The weight was unbearable.
The pressure built up until Olwyn felt death embrace her. In an instant, the panic dispersed into a weightless, painless feeling. A ringing sound penetrated her eardrums like a needle. It grew so loud, yet subtle, that she felt it would crush her like an egg inside of a closed fist. All of the sudden the ringing ceased. In its place, a trickling sound allured her perception.
The clean scent of water filtered the pollen away. She knelt down and felt her surroundings. Her fingers foraged through vines and shrubbery. They sifted through earth and gravel. Finally, they touched blades of grass. She rested Aithein in a soft patch of it.
With her hands free, Olwyn crawled towards the sound of water. Smooth, damp stones filled her palms as the weight of her body pressed upon them. She knew she was close. In a desperate effort, she exerted her last bit of energy in a sprawl of faith to reach her target.
She landed on her stomach. The side of her face smacked into the wet sand, a pain most beautiful. The woods gifted her a stream. She propped herself up. The cold water soaked her garments heavy and refreshed her feverish skin. She drank from the crystalline river. It was the most refreshed she had ever felt. Her body stabilized itself and her senses returned. She looked down at her dirty hands and felt the sediment on her face. She began to rinse the sand off of them.
A territorial growl came from behind her. She recognized the all too familiar sound from the sojourns that she and her husband took to the forest. Nothing could be worse.
Olwyn slowly turned around to face the drooped lip of an Eidolon Bear as it sniffed out her intention. Her heart sank while she looked at Aithein lying in the grass on the other side of it. She hoped with all her willpower that the baby would remain silent.
Olwyn slowly extended her right arm and dabbed her fingers beneath the surface of the water. She stared the bear down and quietly drew a deep breath. Her focus retreated to the center of her mind. She thought of jagged glaciers, of contraction, formation, and crystallization. The tips of her fingers stung with an arctic bite until they grew numb. The moment her fingers lost feeling, they grew hot. The spell was charged.
The water particles excited around her right hand. Tiny crystals of ice formed around her fingers. They broke away and floated downstream. She slowly raised her left hand towards the bear. Ice magic flowed from the stream and rushed through her veins. It filled her heart. Her eyes grew midnight blue and unforgiving. The icy sensation shot through her left arm and manifested in her palm. A sphere of blue-white energy seethed with steam as the magic irritated the summer air.
Olwyn thought of the fjords, of her parents, of the conditions in Drudgekreath. She thought of her poverty and her involuntary servitude, of having to keep her marriage a secret because of a racist Caliphian society. A most disturbing rage silently built up inside the center of her mind. It consumed her. It was the kind of ferocity known only by those who realize they were born into a prison and never had a chance at real freedom, that the world was so wrong that the only thing left to be done was to destroy it.
As the sphere extracted the electromagnetic energy from the surrounding air, Aithein let out a cry for his mother. The bear was startled. It whirled around and stared at the baby. Olwyn gritted her teeth. She feared that if she used the spell in that moment that it would knock the bear on top of her son. The bear carefully approached Aithein and sniffed him over.
Olwyn let out a scream of agony. “Don’t you dare!”
The bear spun around. Its hind leg jostled the baby and narrowly missed crushing him. The bear sprang up, roared at Olwyn and lunged. As it swooped down upon her, she cast the spell.
A massive blast of ice soared through the air. It seared into the bear and tore through its flesh like an arrowhead through wet parchment. As the spear of ice exited the wound, it spewed chunks of sinews, blood, organs, and bone.
The bear fell towards Olwyn. She managed to dodge the majority of its body, but not its claws. Its paw struck her in the side and tore through her flesh. The force knocked her to the ground. The bear slumped over. Olwyn stared into its gaped mouth, its lifeless eyes focused upon her. They demanded that she never forget their encounter. She pressed against the weight of the bear’s massive arm and squirmed out from under it. She feebly crawled to Aithein. The baby was fine.
Olwyn was bleeding. Her adrenaline wore off and a searing burn replaced her temporary relief. She collapsed next to Aithein. Her eyes grew heavy until everything slowly turned dark.
A stream of blood trickled from Olwyn’s body into the sandy riverbank. It entered a rivulet and eventually made its way to the brook, joined the rapids, and flowed downriver.
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D
AYBREAK’S DIFFERENT HUES OF purple, blue, pink, and orange drove the black night away from the east and back towards the desert. The light of dawn rose from the sea and flooded the landscape. The Oussanean and Caliphian armies now had each other in sight as they marched towards oblivion.
The eastern skies grew dark and turbid around the sun. The cloud cover manifested in a devastatingly unnatural manner and brought with them a darkness of a different kind. The Shadekin chanted in unison as they led the Caliphian army towards its moment of reckoning. Their otherworldly hymn charged the aether around them. It revealed their white hair, the red irises behind their silver-purple glow, the luminous insignias tattooed upon their flesh, and their midnight colored shadow armor. Their white breastplates bore the infamous red symbol of the shadow tribe and their capes flapped like loose sails in the wind.
There were different units in the Caliphian army, based on what weapons they wielded and what function they served, but the majority of them looked the same. They were adorned in hardened leather armor studded with steel and protected by breastplates and pauldrons. Beneath their armor they wore chainmail over mahogany colored gambesons.
Their heads were sheltered by steel barbute helms that were as varied as the individuals wearing them. Some had ferocious demon horns sprouting from the sides of cold steel while others had dragon wings spreading out of them. Steel gauntlets protected their hands. Those closer to the frontlines wielded long swords, hammers, and maces, and wore cuirasses with bevors to protect their necks and tassets to shield their thighs.
One might think that nothing could capture the rising sun, that nothing could close the world’s great eye of light. One ignorant enough to mold his beliefs to the narrow shape of his perspective could never understand the Shadekin. They were created from an idea and they existed as such. As energy obeys natural law, it may never be destroyed. As ideas are energy created from thought, they are bound by this same principle. As long as men think, they create ideas. As long as ideas are created, so too are the lives and illusions of the Shadekin.
Taliesin, the Shadekin Prince of Bards, played his xun fearlessly. He was every bit a warrior. His instrument was his weapon. The xun imposed its unearthly influence on the chants. It harnessed a power that patiently waited till battle to be unleashed.
The Shadekin knew the names of all things. To know the name of something is to command it. They called the name of a storm as a master calls the name of his slave.
The Oussaneans approached the battlefield from the west. The thunder of hooves spread across the landscape in an ever-moving echo of fright. An acrid smell accompanied the loudest gallop of all.
A mildew scent, mixed with hints of musty, rotting wood and moist earth, chased away the smell of foreign spice. The scent belonged to Neirym, a master conjurer. She was named after the goddess of creation, death, and the hunt. Her features were Oussanean, but her hair was sleek and black. Her eyes were a pale tint of azure. Her skin was smooth like porcelain yet fragile like parchment. She was a vessel that sailed between worlds, neither fully alive nor fully dead.
Neirym glided over the terrain beside the rider of the demonic warhorse. Her body was slender and athletic. She was adorned in the spikey, light armor of a necromancer. Her dark cape shrouded her from behind and surged with the wind like smoke. It was difficult to tell where its edges ended or began, for it seemed to be part of the air itself.
Neirym carried with her a blood magic staff made of wood and bone, of metal and fear. A jewel embedded at the end of the staff glowed with the captured souls of those valiant enough, or foolish enough, to oppose her. They were the main component of her power to summon the dead. There was a tragic feeling that pervaded the hearts of men whose gaze fell upon Neirym. Were she not a soulless, heartless sorceress, she would be amongst the most beautiful of maidens.
Atop the demonic steed sat a hulking specimen of man. Beneath his dark obsidian armor, his garments were the color of coffee and caramel. A crown jewel of mysterious origin rested on his forehead, swirling with magic of fire and ice. His hair was receding and untamed as a tempest. It seemingly had no separation between his scalp, his eyebrows, or his beard. Facial hair was absent on his upper lip. It revealed the coarse, leathery texture of his skin, which had a reptilian hue. His irises were a muddy green outlined in a vengeful red. His large ears came to sharp points like those of a wolf. His jaw was square and his nose was hooked. He was the only male Oussanean born within the past century. His name was Rotm
örder, the King of Lunaega. Wherever he went, hell was sure to follow.
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T
HE JINGLE OF LIGHT ignited the aether as it chimed through the forest breeze. Childlike figures clad in green tunics, forest attire, and followed by fairies manifested around Olwyn and Aithein.
Olwyn heard the soothing arrival of the Amori and their prepubescent voices, but she was too incoherent to make sense of what they were saying. She fought to open her heavy eyes. Another world beckoned her, but she could not slip away just yet. Her vision was cloudy. She could see pairs of legs with the tender sinews of youth scurrying around her. Their feet were adorned in deerskin moccasins and gently rustled through the leaves and thicket.
Ellia, an Amori girl, knelt before Aithein. Her hair was as green as apple tree leaves but not long enough to graze her shoulders. Her eyes were as cerulean as the rapids of Nabian River.
Baby Aithein gazed back at her. A warm fuzzy feeling tickled his belly. A smile broke across his face. He recognized her from the dim mists of time.
Ellia placed her hand upon the baby’s chest. Her irises shimmered with shadowlight as she recognized Aithein’s energetic signature. She couldn’t help but smile as a word from the Shade escaped her mouth.
“
Namus
,” she said.
Ancient companion.
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R
USVI’MENEL WAS A MEMBER of the Ani’Yun’wiya tribe, one of the native inhabitants of the Steppe prior to King Woden’s conquest. His name, when translated to Caliphian, meant Breaking-the-Sky. Man’s oldest emotion was unknown to him. He was a shaman, a warrior monk. He wore the head of a Cerlyn Wolf as his crown. Its autumn eyes glowed with Sunfaer, an incredibly rare form of illumination magic. It had a hypnotic effect on his desired targets.
Rusvi’menel was renowned for his skill in Wakan, what Caliphians call holy magic. He was a High Elf. His skin was bronzed from its long endured exposure to the Wakan’s atomic properties.
Magic does not allow those who possess it to remain anonymous. It craves renown. It is alive whether one chooses to harness it or not, and like all things living, magic wants to be loved. It yearns to manifest itself and be displayed, which is why elementalists also make the best performers.
Tales of Rusvi’menel’s adventures roamed from the docks of every port to the inns of every marketplace. They told of him resurrecting slain allies in the heat of battle and turning the tides of history. They told of him hypnotizing all species of beast to fight by his side. They told of him travelling to distant lands to heal kings and heroes. He cured plagues to save whole populations. His dancing washed away droughts. He gave life to tarnished lands and drove away famine.
From the dark corners of pubs to the bowels of merchant ships, where the unsavory sought refuge, some tales rolled off the tongues of bards that painted Rusvi’menel as a villain. They told of barbarity, blood magic, cannibalism, and the occult. But to every man who ever fought beside him, his nearby presence was treasured more than a fairy in a bottle. While a fairy can be sacrificed to spare a man from his deathblow, Rusvi’menel could cast wards and regeneration spells to protect those in his range of healing. He could create healing springs in the earth capable of recharging an elementalist’s mana. To most, he was a legend. To many, he was a savior. To the Shadekin, he was a brother.
Rusvi’menel inhaled deeply through his nose. His eyes squinted with concentration as he picked up the Oussanean scent of foreign spice. As he exhaled, a somber thought occurred to him.
“Their blows shall be devastating,” he said to himself.
He cast Guardian Aegis on his nearby allies. It was a protection ward that gave his Caliphian allies a two-thirds chance to evade attacks, yet it diminished their strength equivalently so that their health would remain in balance as they gained unnatural speed and awareness. He knew the Oussaneans were much quicker than one could anticipate. It was more desirable to be prepared a day earlier than a second late when it came to these women.