His heart beat fiercely in his chest, skipping a beat as flash of lightning and crack of thunder filled his ears, overwhelming the shrieks of the corpses below their cliffside cave. Steadily his small hands shaped his life energy through his aura chalk. Not even the freezing rain beating against his head and body could be allowed to affect him.
Their Cavernous hideaway echoed with the torrent of the monsoon, rain drenching the sturdy chalk calligraphy of his near complete ward sequence. Any erroneous deviation in his chalkmanship would cause a backfire of the protection ward, likely killing his teacher and he instantaneously; if they were lucky.
If not, the corpses below would sniff them out and feast upon them. As if to prove his point, a macabre shriek split the night, cutting through the rain and raising every hair on his body. Thunder quickly took its place.
Steady Kaer, steady. His silent mantra flowed with his aura. Steady the aura.
With a final breath his last sigil in his flowing series met the first. The air in the cave shimmered as the protective ward drew energy from the land to completely hide their auras. His ward, or at least this one, ensured that if any living being tried to join them uninvited, the volatile and hungry aura field would answer them.
He rested on his knees, allowing himself to enjoy the rain, resting from his hour-long process. The breeze nursed his tender forehead, his hands gingerly wiping the sweat from around his runes. Any wayward touch to the Knowledge Runes; he shook his head, frustrated at his Common Tongue usage.
Ala’drun, that was the word. Any touch to the Ala’druns would result in significant pain.
Even though the rain obscured the Great Oak Forest beneath them, he felt as though the dead eyes of the feral, animalistic Cadavers glared with their festering hate of the living. The same eyes that still haunted his nightmares, from before.
“Kaer.” A low, rumble of a voice called to him, firm but gentle. He looked over his shoulder, peering down the cave. In his feverish work of warding, their camp had been set, a fire crackling and dancing with life.
His traveling companion sat loomed over the fire, his large frame trying to rival the stalagmites that dotted the cave’s center.
“Come.”
--- End Page 1 ---
No further instruction needed, he carefully gathered up his instruments. His chisel, brush, cloth damp with priming liquid all returned to his storage box. Extra time was taken, however, to load the aura chalks of varying thickness.
He had no desire to break the highly valuable resources.
Taking up his storage box and Warding Tome, he stood with care to not trip on his wet cloak end. With his head held high with dignity, he made his way towards his traveling companion.
His master.
It was odd, he thought, that his master would choose to so feverishly make an effort to journey here. As he walked and took in his handiwork from a distance, Kaer could find no indication of importance, even on his second glance. Admittedly large and spacious, no markings of history dotted the cave, no carvings or engravings, no statues; only rough walls, natural pillars, and ancient remains of animals.
Over the hundreds of feet he had worked, and now rewalked, he had checked for even worn glyphs, or a long forgotten shard of pottery, so much that he wondered if his master had been confused on their location in the realm; as he drew within listening distance to his master, he perished the thought, as his master had yet to be wrong.
His feet quickened, eager to join his master.
As he drew within range of the fire’s warmth, a different fire found his own cheeks, as he stared at his master, who had looked up from his tending. Glowing eyes, a mix of brown, gold, and purple, smiled at him coupled with a small smile underneath them, framed by his well kept beard. His long mane of oak and silver hair was allowed to flow free around his shoulders though bands of gold and bronze clinked throughout it; the fire was of no concern to the older man. Kaer often dreamed of the strength and grace to possess such long locks, his own inky black and shern short.
Kaer could only hope his warm blush was unnoticed.
Before him sat one who was the very perfection of an Aldvari man. Tower with seven feet of stature, as broad shouldered as a Redwood, yet graceful as a dancer; the man’s skin as golden as the sun, was an envy of Kaer’s pale white. Though he sat in his several layers of traveling clothes and cloak, dawned in his clan and family colors, the ruby and gold clothes were drawn taut across his broad chest and fitted around his strong legs. Just as strong arms moved as a large hand lifted a log the size of Kaer by the end, gingerly placing it into the fire.
With his master’s eyes on the fire, Kaer took the chance to shake himself free of the trance. He placed his belongings on the floor next to his traveling stool before turning to check on his wards, eager for a chance to compose himself.
“No; sit.” Came his master’s soft but firm command, startling him.
--- End Page 2 ---
Kaer looked at his master, confusion written on his face as the man was smiling at him. “Master Velor?”
“I trust your protection wards. No hum of error comes from them.”
Kaer couldn’t stop his mouth from falling open, surprise painting his face. He stared at his master a moment longer, but receiving only a continued smile, his face beamed with pride. Compliments were seldom without corrective instruction.
For as the man was an excellent teacher, his expectations were perfection.
Master Velor gestured to the traveling stool that Kaer continued to stand next to, his face aglow with joy from praise. Kaer looked to the stool before jolting with surprise, bowing several times to his master before taking a seat by the fire.
They sat in companionship silence, Kaer massaging his tired hands, while his master gingerly stoked the fire. Their respite had been long and hard fought over the many days of travel. Still softly smiling from his master’s praise, Kaer looked over his shoulder at the entrance to their cave, massage continued for his tired hands.
Even though his ward’s light softly pulsed through the air around him, his eyes locked to the entrance, his body turning some, a feeling of dread again welling up in his stomach.
In the light and praise of his master, he felt superior to the young boy he was determined to leave behind just over a year ago, with the tutelage of Master Velor.
Yet he knew that in the darkness, in his true inner self, he was the foolish boy who lived his eleven years in blissful ignorance. Blissfully believing that the Cadavers and all kinds of monsters lived in fear of the living and civilized.
He knew better now, and with that knowledge came his gripping terror. A cold sweat began to slick his neck and back, his heart racing with memory, when he relaxed in his chair. Eyes turned to the large hand that rested on his head, directing his attention to Master Velor, who offered out a skewer of cooked meat.
He looked up to his master’s face, the older man looking softly on him. “Quiet your thoughts, Kaer. It is that dread that gives them more strength. We will instill command over that emotion for you.”
Kaer gingerly nodded, blushing again at the man’s gentle pats before reverently taking the offered food. He gingerly took and chewed a chunk from the stick, wincing at the heat but hiding it as his master ripped his own stick clean in one go. Kaer watched as his master pinned the sleeves of his robe back.
--- End Page 3 ---
Ala’druns dotted up his forearms from the back of his hands, the spiral of character lines traveling up his upper arm and disappearing under the hems of his sleeves. Kaer stared in rapped wonder yet again, imagining the forgotten histories, the knowledge unutterable and incomprehensible to normal minds, held within those runes.
His master sipped from a waterskin, before tossing it into Kaer’s lap and taking a deep breath through his nose.
Then, Kaer watched as his master’s hands began to glow with his beautiful aura, the gold and purple particle manifestation of his soul. The two captivating clouds of color lazily drifted around his master’s hands, before the man drew both of them into the fire.
From it, two bodies of flame hovered over his palms, fed and controlled by his aura. With their new source, the flames burst into a swirling mixture of the two colors. Master Velor manipulated his aura to float the two fires, having them spin and dance around and between his hands, like a pair of fish, chasing the tail of the other.
“Kaer.”
Kaer was only half aware when his master spoke, his eyes transfixed on the spinning flames, their paths lengthening as his master’s hands drew farther apart.
“Kaer, you’ve done well.” His master’s second instance of praise broke his trance. Kaer focused on his master in surprise, seeing a knowing and amused smirk on the man’s face; he had the decency to look bashful at his tranced mind. “Our journey has not been easy.”
Had it been earlier in his apprenticeship, Kaer would have scoffed at the downplaying of the statement.
The sounds of roaring and jeering bandits rang in his ears, before they bled away into frightened screams and false pleas of mercy. Their bodies were numerous in their wakes. Before he could even begin to puff with pride, the still terrifying, scarring memories of the undead, feral Cadavers flashed through his mind, seizing his heart though he fought against it.
Their journey had been far from easy. All his master received in response was a reserved nod, hands pressed into his lap.
Master Velor smirked for a moment, looking at the two flames dancing around his hands.
“You know, I know a young boy who would have given quite the sharp retort to me for such a downplayed observation.”
The man locked eyes with the twilight eyes of the boy, bringing out an instinctual straightened posture. He gave the boy a small smile, but his eyes were solemn and far off.
Velor leaned away from the boy, still peering down at him.
“It has not been a traditional one either, unfortunately. Were it so, I would have left you at the clansite with your mother and father until your fifteenth year.”
--- End Page 4 ---
His pale pupil nodded at the man. Velor’s mutter of three years too early felt like vomit, sour on his tongue. Yet, even though the boy’s eyes gleamed with exhaustion, they still held the spark of spirit; Ethali.
Velor smiled at Kaer in earnest, moving the flames to dance around the boy’s head and back to him.
“While you’ve taken to it well, your gift and artifact have forced us down a different and… difficult path.”
Velor straightened himself in his stool, causing his pupil to do the same, more so if it were possible. The two sprites of flame returned to the campfire, and returned to the master even larger, double the size of his hands. Then the flames drifted to the center between Velor and Kaer, hovering above the fire.
Velor wore his more common face of calm collection, his eyes gleaming at his pupil.
“I still wished to follow the traditional enlightenment for you. For every young Aldvari, full and half, must know what we know.”
“The truth, forgotten by all but us.”
Slowly the two flames began to move like water, blobulous and taking on firming shapes. One, a distinct yet featureless man, fleeing in place from its companion flame.
“One evil, Kaer, ever present and vile, has stalked and hunted the living, haunting as a deadly spirit.” Velor told, his voice lacking emotion or grief; Kaer could only wonder the times the man had told this story.
The companion flame split into several smaller ones, morphing into the form of a hunchbacked, lanky, and decrepit being, eyeless with taunt parchment-like skin. They lunged at the fleeing man, their fiery claws digging into the skin, maws snapping.
“It snaps and gnaws the neck of the ill-prepared and unaware in the wilds and deep caverns, trudges through the swamps and mucks the marshes.”
The fires reformed into other figures, some bound in chains, some dressed as the elders, some carrying small flame children. Again the forms of them appeared, swarming the innocents.
“It cares neither for the slave nor free, young nor old, man nor woman. From time immemorial to the other races, Maratheth, this Rot, and it's’ Marathkar cadavers have long run its ruin on our realms of Ellium."
Kaer watched in rapped horror as the moving mass of corpses, the Marathkar, reformed into a plain of dead bodies, individuals and piles alike that began to slowly wiggle and twitch.
He froze, remembering the sight before him.
“They rise from the dishonored dead, those left to rot in the open; those desecrated in the eyes of the great Aurervol. They are quick to be added to the legions of the Maratheth.”
Then came a sight unfamiliar to Kaer, breaking him from his moment of terror. The Marathkar were swept up, formless, into a spinning vortex of flame, flying high into the air above their heads. Spread above them, the flames became a sheet, cracks and tears leading to a large pillar of falling flames to a ground below. Small near indiscernible Marathkar were flung from the pillar to the ground, little more than embers.
“Truly, as from time immemorial to the other races, even Valtharan, the great torrent, is prey to the Maratheth, flinging the Marathkar from the Firmament above even the Wyverns.”
Kaer stared at the repeating fiery scene, shocked and horrified that such a being of nature existed. He had only heard stories that such a strange thing was real, a pillar of water, yet not water, so strong not even the sharkfolk nor fishfolk could withstand its pressure. He had thought it tall-tales.
Yet here sat his master, speaking plain truth to him.
Truly it would seem that Aurervol had abandoned Ellium.
Though as he watched, again the fires would change, funneled down into the hands of his master. On one hand hover a frightening and mangled Marathkar, snarling around itself, scenting the air for signs of life. From it split a separate body of flame, hovering above Velor’ free hand. When the foul creature sensed the burning flame, it turned, running as best it could from it.
“Yet.” Velor declared, glaring at the creature in his hand, the flame engulfing the silently screeching beast.. “Maratheth and its spawn can be dealt with, praise the great Aurervol. Yet there is a plague far worse that can not be beaten by the burn of a fire or torch.”
In the blink of an eye the bright flames in Velor’ hands and campfire disappeared. Kaer gave a short yelp of surprise as darkness hid his master from view, not even the smoke of a fire or a torch to guide him.
“The Great Nepenthe, the voiding of all knowledge. The consumer of memory.” His master’s voice was but a growling, having not moved from his seat.
“A force of cold disdain for the living, and for us Aldvari. So much so that it would have the world forget we even lived.”
The light of the purple and gold flame returned, resting between Velor’ hands. “It would have the world swallow up our history, our past, our future,” Velor pulled his hands apart in a flurry, sending gold and purple embers flying. “Even in this cave, oh so important to our people.”
The embers seemed to multiply and cover every surface of the cave, giving it a mix of purple and gold dusting. Kaer watched in awe as the world around him started to shimmer.
“For the world would seek to bury our truth away. It seeks to cover our mark on history even here. The Great Nepenthe would hate our people so deeply, it would kill any others who would seek the truth with their eyes.”
The cave around Kaer began to dissolve away the natural and rough stone walls, revealing fine carved blocks of gray, gold-veined stone, laid in staggered layers. The stalagmites gave way to ancient gray, gold-vein spiral-carved pillars. The cave ceiling was gone, a vaulted mosaic-tiled scene of hundreds of his father’s people, displaying great feats of auracraft around a transparent moon that filtered in the light of the true celestial body. Beneath his feet the floor receded like the tide, brilliant pearl tiles revealed, covering everything in its diamond pattern.
“It would seek to hide away our refuges from ages past, and seal tight our doors of history.”
Kaer looked to his master, following the man’s gesturing hand to the far back wall. No more was it a dark and dank stoneface. In its stead stood a beautiful set of intricate double doors, that were he standing before them would dwarf him ten times over. Pearl edged and inlaid with gold that gleamed even in the low light of the moon.
Kaer took notice as Velor stood, raising his hands up and outward facing. In a fluid motion, his hands moved as if to come together, and with them came the innumerable embers of Velor’ aura, which hovered around them, manifesting as a gold and purple dome of haze. He held it for a moment, the dome vibrating with energy, before palm-thrusting towards the ground.
The aura shot into the ground beneath their campsite, causing a large array of aura channels that Kaer missed to come alive. Slowly the ground began to rumble and hum, nearly knocking Kaer from his seat as their campsite began to rise a foot from the actual ground.
Velor looked to his student, who held onto the legs of his stool for dear life, and gave the boy an amused smile. “Hold fast, boy.”
As the platform began hovering forward, Kaer was as stiff as a board while Velor gathered up his stool and placed it beside his tent. The platform made quick work of the hundreds of feet between where they started and the doors. Kaer clung tighter to his stool as his master only paced as the platform grew dangerously close to the doors.
When they neared enough to hit, Kaer clenched his eyes shut, preparing for a horrible collision.
Kaer peaked his eyes a hair, to see his master standing tall before the doors on their frozen platform, arms wide open. For a moment a beam of light rested on Velor, before the doors glowed with runes and opened, sliding into the walls. Without a moment to spare, their platform hovered with speed through the opening and into the darkness.
The doors slammed shut, drowning out the rain and shriek of Malathar.
