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by Chris L'Etoile
Should the Stars Fall/The Child of Daralet -
from the
Zone
Portal Year 11 -- The
Fourth Sending of Darkness
November to December 2000
Three thousand years ago, a tragedy occurred. Harken; it shall now be
told.
A herald burned across the southern sky one
morning; a fiery drop, like the Watcher that visits Auberean every few
hundred years, yet moving far more quickly. Shortly after this sign, a
veil drew over the sun. Rain fell, and the drops were black and cold. The
trees and grasses withered. The clouds built until noon was mere twilight,
and the wind blew as cold as stone in winter. The people wanted for their
crops and herds. Some called it the end. Some said it was the judgment of
light, and that evils must be atoned for.
“Surely,” they reasoned, “it could
not be any evil of ours that invoked this calamity.” Many turned to the
Dericost. “It must have been those miserable, tainted people. Did their
ancestors not bind their own to rotting flesh, and seek to bring the world
under their heel? This must be their fault. The mercy we showed them has
turned the light from our shoulders. Now we must force them to atone for
their infamy.”
So the Dericost were starved.
What little could be grown was taken from
them. They died by the millions. And as they died, well-fed missionaries
told them, “You brought this on yourselves.”
So they hated.
One among them, a man of the village of
Daralet named Ilservian Palacost, could endure no more. He spoke in anger
to the Elders, saying, “You have food enough for many years in your
storehouses. Yea, for centuries you have tithed the crops of all in this
land, while mouthing pretty words of light and mercy and redemption. Now
you feast while we starve! My firstborn son shall die anon. He is an
innocent. Share out your food, and spare him!”
The Elders' pointed beards wagged over
their round bellies as they said, “It is for your own good.” Ilservian
was run out of town, though not before he vowed to find the edge of the
darkness that hung over the eaves of the earth.
He did not depart alone. His closest
friends accompanied him. Elithra, a Haebran mage possessing a wintry
beauty unsurpassed save by Leikotha. Ler Rhan, a once-corpulent scribe who
spent much (some said too much) time spinning tales for the children of
the town. Omadin, a rough farm boy embittered by the starvation of his
entire clan. Ferah, a tall warrior woman whose blue-green eyes bespoke
Falatacot blood. Foremost stood Isin Dule, a failed seminary and friend of
Ilservian since childhood. A small group of sympathizers also joined them.
They wandered far into the endless frigid
mud of the wastelands, vainly seeking light. At last Ilservian called to
the darkness in anger. At this, many deserted him. His friends did not.
But there was no answer, save perhaps a sibilant ghost of a laugh.
Ilservian pressed on, growing weaker, shouting his fury and anguish into
the wind and rain.
At last, something answered.
Many turns of the world later, a shadow
fell upon Daralet. The rains had ceased by then, and the world enjoyed an
extended spring. But in Daralet, the children disappeared. One by one, at
first, and then in numbers. First the poor and unwanted, then the children
of the garrison. Whispers filled the night. Malevolence brooded on the
hills around the town. Stupefied with terror, the people boarded
themselves in their houses.
Word reached the outside, and an army was
dispatched. It found only empty buildings, in many cases still boarded
from within. On the city wall, the Elders were found impaled, and with
their blood was written: “The proud shall know damnation.” With these
words had the victorious troops of Yalain and Haebrous put the last undead
nobles of Dericost to the torch.
The army marched beyond the desolate town,
and found a valley filled with a strange, whispering darkness. Above the
shadows, the crowns of trees stood black and wasted. One was seen to
subside into the mist, melting away like ice. Before the army went away
from there, huge coils of grey entrails were seen above the mist, rising
and diving again like the fins of great sea creatures.
The army encamped upon a plain that night,
and none saw them again. A lone girl, driven mad by horror, returned to
tell the tale. The watch fires trembled and bled away. The stars faded.
The ground turned grey and swallowed men. The general Lord Atlan was
ripped apart. The Shadows had come alive and taken them.
Ranks of living night swept across the
continents of Dericost and Haebrous. A black beast led them, howling at
the forefront of every charge. The few survivors called this apparition
the Slayer of Hope. Armies were put before it, and swept aside.
The Emperor convened the five most learned
mages of the land for council. Old Viceroy Uweden Kormar came clad in the
frost blue robes of Gelid, the Dericost province he had governed before
its fall. Lord Kerenth Portenaer was promoted from the ranks of the
Hieromancer Order, where he was held in great esteem. Lady Adja,
prophetess and priestess, sailed from far Ithaenc. Lady Rajael Fellarien
was released from her lonely tower in the austral wastes. Maila Realaidain,
the gentle widow of Atlan, completed them.
They studied, and they worried. It seemed
the enemy's strength flowed from some other place, an abeyance of light
deep within the earth, yet beyond the world they knew. A power, potent and
invasive as nerve poison, leached from this other place, to the Hopeslayer,
and on to his horrifying servants. At Dernehale the council fought a
shadow-woman calling herself Elithra of Daralet, and only with the
greatest of efforts was she defeated. The Imperial Archives were
consulted, and in a brief dispatch from Dericost, that name was found
among the exiled companions of Ilservian Palacost. The true name of the
Slayer of Hope was known.
An impetuous boy, talented only with a
small ability for noticing details and drawing connections between them,
called the work of Nilrhem Facill to the attention of the council. It was
possible, he said, to seal Ilservian in a small portion of the
“alternate world” Facill wrote of. The council agreed. As the island
city-states of the Empire withered and shrank before the crawling chaos,
they constructed a device that would realize the boy's plan.
The last enchantments were bound to the
mechanism of the trap on the island of Ireth Lassel, later called Dereth.
The council worked feverishly, as did the boy, knowing damnation was
stretching forth its hand across the water. The darkness raced across the
seas, as if called by the sputtering, flaring energies of the other plane.
Ilservian came to the site of their work.
His chaotic mist ate away the rock below the fortress. His Thorns loomed
close, blasting the walls with entropic energies. The desert plain below
was black with a living carpet of Shadow-entities. Ilservian stormed
through the corridors, slaying all who tried to stop him. At the end, he
came before the council and the floating stones of the trap. As if
ensorcelled, he waded through them, crushing Uweden's skull, reaching for
the pulsing violet light.
The council cast their final spell, and
Ilservian was thrown into the other realm. Everything for over two-thirds
of a human mile around the site was utterly destroyed, and a vast
wasteland of cracked and scorched earth marred the southwest of Ireth
Lassel. The council was slain, but the darkness ebbed and slipped away. It
did not leave altogether. That which had empowered Ilservian's rage
remained, shrieking, waiting. Its remaining servants in this world melted
away into a thousand hidden places. The surviving members of Ilservian's
inner circle, too powerful to be killed, were merely made discorporate by
the blast.
The trap burst into six fragments, but the
Empire was only able to recover five. The last piece was never seen again
by living eyes. That should have been the end of the tale, save for the
Gelidites.
The capital of old Dericost, home to the
dread necromancers, was the brooding Plateau of Gelid. Its living
population had been rounded up by the victorious armies, and marched to
reservations on the plains of Haebrous. But they were sore abused there,
and found comfort in an apocalyptic faith based on half-remembered
prophecies. After an age of cleansing ice, they believed, they would
master the globe once more. After a particularly brutal inquisition, many
fled to Ireth Lassel. There they hid themselves away in the mountains, and
excavated an underground city.
It was during the digging that a young mage
named Frisirth found a beautiful, sparkling crystal. Over the years, he
studied it intently. He found it had an unusual magical connection to the
deep earth, a potential to draw up and store vast amounts of energy.
Frisirth announced to the Gelidites that the fulfillment of prophecy was
at hand. By enchanting the crystal, they could extract the heat energy
from the ground.
They bent their own energies to this task.
The world cooled. Far above, where now new kingdoms lay, snow began to
fall. Yet at the last moment, disaster struck. A human expedition bumbled
into their lost city, and the Gelidites were forced to slay them. Other
humans came in search of the lost party. They slaughtered the Gelidites,
and destroyed their “Great Work.” As the malignant crystal shattered,
darkness swallowed the center of the room, and a faint, eager chuckle was
heard.
The sixth piece of the council's snare was
never seen again by living eyes. But the Gelidites, desiring to witness
their prophecy fulfilled, had used the proscribed arts of their ancestors
to turn their backs on time, and chain their wills to dead and rotting
flesh.
The Shadows began to venture from their
hidden places of power. Ilservian's surviving friends became corporeal
once more and raised the Thorns, using them to alter the patterns of magic
in the world. Ferah and Ler Rhan weighed the measure of the strange
outlanders that had come to their world with probing attacks and
individual trials. Only two proved useful to them: the “Dark Masters”
Blackthorn and Vidorian. They were given items of power, and told that
they would be called upon in the great days to come.
But Isin Dule had misgivings. He remembered
the final days of the last war, his friend's blank expression when the
planar energy was felt, and the compulsion that had come upon him. “It
is likely a trap, brother,” he told Ilservian, and still they had gone.
Dule, brooding in the wastes, steered a
fateful course. He took his portion of the Shadows into his confidence,
telling them that the pieces of the council's trap must be protected. If
his friend should be released, he feared it would be the end of all.
Ilservian was not fully in control of his own mind. What would happen
after his vengeance was slaked? The price that the darkness of the
wasteland would demand of them was not yet known. But Dule's first attempt
to stave off disaster failed. The humans of Ispar gained access to the
Nexus Facility, and a second piece of Ilservian's prison was destroyed.
There were remnants of Dericost in the
world beyond the shattered Gelidites. On far Aerlinthe, the Lady Aerfalle
observed the passing days and rising blight with worry. She sent her
emissaries into the world, contacting her old friends and enemies.
The fractious Undead came to rare accord,
and massed an army. For its commander, they chose Anadil, the last great
general of their old realm. He set his banner in the creaking jungles of
Ithaenc Isle. At his side stood Asmolum, an ancient schemer and diviner.
Asmolum's agents soon located three more fragments of the council's
device. But others under the night sky observed their scurrying. . .
Anadil sent a force to garrison two of the
fragment vaults. Dule's Shadows, following them, moved to defend the third
vault, named Caulnalain. But Dule's fellow generals had also witnessed the
movements of the Undead, and made ready an assault. This, they decided,
would be the decisive battle of the campaign to free their friend.
Complicating things further, there was a
third faction of Shadows in the world, predating Ilservian. They were
neither loyal to him, nor to the rogue Dule. These Shadows were even
farther from what they had once been. They were a single mind in myriad
bodies, subordinate to the will of. . . something. It was these ancient
creatures that brought about the Darkest Night. While Ferah and Ler Rhan's
Thorns attacked Cragstone and Arwic, drawing the attentions of the
defenders, the elder Shadows destroyed a long-buried circle of standing
stones beneath the oasis of Tufa.
Even as the rubble of Arwic was settling,
Ler Rhan's forces invested Anadil's garrison at the Fenmalain vault. The
fighting was fierce and lethal, but ultimately indecisive. Reinforcements
promised by Dule failed to arrive. Ler Rhan, livid, accused Dule of
treason. Before any action could be taken by the divided Shadows, the
Isparians came into the fray again. They swept through all three vaults,
battering through both Anadil and Dule's defenders, and destroyed all
three crystals. Again, the immigrant races had served as an unpredictable
force of change.
The fate of the world hinged now on the
final piece of the council's trap. This was the most cunningly hidden one,
titled the Shard of the Herald. The Undead found it first, again through
the divinations of Asmolum. It brooded in the catacombs beneath the
Cathedral of Ithaenc, near at hand to Anadil's encampment.
Almost as soon as Anadil was informed, the
Shadows knew, for they had long infiltrated the rotting army. When the
Undead attempted to gain access, they found the final portal had been
altered such that only those who'd sworn themselves to Ilservian could
pass through.
Taken aback, the Undead leadership split
the key to the catacombs into three pieces. The first remained in the
keeping of Aerfalle, the second given to the commander of the Undead
legion from Chalicmere Castle in the Direlands, and the last to the head
of the legion lent by Aerfalle's own political faction. Again, the Shadow
infiltrators among the Undead foiled their plans. The last commander was
murdered, and his key given to the keeping of Ler Rhan's Shadow Children.
Anadil sent emissaries to make contact with
the enigmatic Virindi, knowing them to be similarly distressed by the
chaos of the Shadows, and thus potential allies.
One last time, the humans acted
unexpectedly. Finding new paths to Ithaenc, a tide of human warriors and
mages flooded Anadil and his army. The old general was slain, but not
before asking his attackers to take up his burden. “Don't let it end
like this, young ones. If you must send me to the wind, my task is yours
to complete. Protect the stone.”
And so they did. An unprecedented coalition
of Isparian barons recovered the pieces of the key, and set a watch on the
catacombs and the terrible, hallucination-inducing black stone that hummed
and spun at its heart. The stalwart members of the Shard Vigil repulsed
several attacks by humans in the service of Ilservian.
Frustrated, Ferah and Ler Rhan assumed
human guise once more to contact the Dark Masters. Blackthorn, who had
turned his coat and become a member of the Vigil, wisely disappeared for a
week. Vidorian, however, sought out her aggrieved masters, and begged
forgiveness for her failure to break the Vigil and the stone.
On a quiet night in the third week of the
Vigil, the two Shadow generals and Vidorian swept into the dungeon,
driving the defenders back and shattering the Shard of the Herald. With a
shriek that could be heard across worlds, Ilservian Palacost was freed.
Isin Dule knew his time would be all too
brief once Ferah and Ler Rhan spoke with Ilservian. Thus he offered
assistance to the fledgling Virindi-Undead alliance.
With a heavy heart, I decided I must also
cast my die with this unsavory coalition.
All unknown, we gathered in the wastelands
that mark the wreckage of the Jailne Lyceum -- the place at which
Ilservian was last defeated. Each of the inhuman powers held an item that
would sap the power of our Enemy. I believed I had the knowledge to
combine these items into a single, united thaumaturgic assault.
But the time was not yet right; the items
had to be prepared. So it was that I challenged Ilservian openly. It was
nearly my end. That which empowers him is far beyond my feeble powers. Had
he not been determined to toy with me, I should have died most swiftly.
While I distracted the Enemy, Lady Elysa
Strathelar set her feet upon the roads of the world, seeking knowledge of
which monarchs could be trusted and which could not. She charged those who
walked in light with the recovery and safe transport of the various pieces
of the spell. The items were to be delivered to Luminary Golems in the
Isparian capital cities. These entities, relics of ancient and lost
demiurgic arts, were immune to the influence of shadow.
The children of the other sun recovered the
items. The great binding was cast, and Ilservian was much enfeebled. At
this, humanity charged into the breach. Their losses were terrible. The
man of Daralet had already surrounded himself with the misbegotten
leavings of elemental chaos. These things lurked among the flapping,
green-tinted membranes of his inner sanctum, where the walls breathed and
ate the flesh of men. After numerous assaults, a coordinated team of
mages, warriors, and archers destroyed the physical form of Ilservian
Palacost.
But this was not the end of him; rather, it
was the end of the part of him that remained mortal. His dark spirit
descended, summoned by whatever created him. Before he left, his scream of
betrayal was heard by the triumphant humans. “Dule! Base traitor! I
sense your art in this artifact assembled by the last Yalain. Thee and
thine are banished from Our sight for all time, and ye shall be hunted
until the stars fall from their course! Marked are thee!”
Ilservian's story, then, has not ended. He
goes on. His generals Ferah and Ler Rhan go on. And his best friend Dule,
somewhere in the lonely wastes, also goes on. The seeds sown here may not
be reaped for a generation, but their poison will spread. There will be
accounting. We have only won a reprieve.
These were the reagents of the binding. A
fragment of the Virindi Singularity was used to divert a portion of
Bael'Zharon's power into the wilds of portalspace. The Heart of Shadow,
supplied by Isin Dule, was a partial manifestation of Bael'Zharon's
connection to the Shadow World. Its destruction sapped him of still more
power. Last came the skull of a child, enchanted with lost Falatacot
bindings by the Dericost Undead.
The skull of Avroen Palacost, the son of
Ilservian. The skull of a child of Daralet.
Think kindly on Ilservian, if you can. Who
among you can claim that your grief should be less? For my part I will bow
my head, and pray that father and son may find peace.
-- Asheron Realaidain
Continued |