| by Brandon Paul
"meanbeard" Salinas From the
journal of Carlo di Cenza
The most difficult thing to get used to in
this new world is the varied abundance of sentient life. On Ispar, there are
only humans. We shared the world with animals and plants, but we were the
only creatures blessed with true intelligence. This new world is far
different. In my time here, I have encountered scores of alien societies.
Lugians, Drudges, Banderlings, Ruschk, and even the walking corpses of the
undead roam these lands. Most of these races are hostile, choosing to engage
in bloody combat rather than civilized discourse when meeting a new race.
The Fiun, however, are quite a different breed.
When the Fiun first approached our city, we
assumed they were hostile. We'd been attacked before. Once by the Drudges of
the forest and once by Ruschk raiders from the glaciers to the north. We'd
grown understandably wary of strangers. So when we first spied the Fiun
emerging from the surrounding forests, we called the alarm and rallied the
town's defenses.
There were five of them, a number which meant
nothing to me then, but which I have since discovered has a special
significance to the Fiun. They stood in a line, bereft of armor and weapon,
and simply gazed at our city. Their stillness allowed us a long moment to
take in the sight of them, a chance we are rarely afforded in these harsh,
blood-soaked lands.
The Fiun are slender, frail creatures. They
look very similar to one another; so similar that it is quite difficult to
tell them apart. They wear robes of exceedingly intricate patterns and
vibrant colors. Their eyes are large and black and quite hypnotic. You have
to remember to look away from time to time when speaking to them, lest you
lose yourself in those eyes. Their pale, grayish skin has an eerie, mystical
quality. And what's even stranger on this world of violence and death is
that they carry no weapons.
Even so, their sudden presence on our horizon
unnerved us. We've come across too many magic-casting creatures on these
islands to suddenly lower our guard when confronted with a weaponless foe.
We all stood in position, waiting for their attack. But the Fiun did not
move. Sir Bellas had no idea what to do. Normally, he would have ordered an
assault, but these five slender creatures simply stood before us in silence.
We had no idea what was going to happen or what these creatures wanted from
us. The frigid wind froze us in our armor while our two peoples simply
stared at one another across the open plain.
After what seemed like hours, the Fiun
finally stirred. They pressed their hands to their chests and bowed. They
waited five seconds, then rose. The Fiun in the center stepped away from the
line and approached us.
Sir Bellas raised his shield and readied his
sword. He opened his mouth, presumably to order the creature to halt, but
the Duke placed his hand on my knight's shoulder and silenced him. The Duke
and Eleonora stepped out from our defensive line and approached the Fiun. I
had to stifle a nervous cry. Neither the Duke nor his daughter was armed or
armored. Our archers would have to carefully lob their arrows over the Duke
should the strange creatures choose to attack. But for some reason, the
leaders of House Bellenesse trusted these alien beings. The rest of us would
have to trust that our Duke knew what he was doing.
The Duke stopped three paces from the Fiun
leader. The Fiun placed his hand on the Duke's chest. The knights around me
looked to Sir Bellas. They were clearly uncomfortable with this strange
creature laying hands on our Duke. I could feel our knights willing Sir
Bellas to order the attack. But Sir Bellas held his ground. He is a skilled
bodyguard, but more than that he is an obedient servant to the Duke.
The Fiun reached forward and gently took the
Duke's hand. He then raised that hand and placed it against the ornate robes
which covered his own, slender chest. They spoke quietly to one another for
several minutes. We could not hear their words; could not even hear their
voices for the distance between us and them. But we could see their faces.
And what we say was joy.
After a long while, the Duke turned to us and
said, "Friends of Silyun, do not be afraid." He turned to the Fiun with whom
he had just spent so much time talking. They shared a genuine smile. Then he
turned back to us and proclaimed, "Welcome Rehgus. Welcome the Fiun. They
are our friends."
*****
The next several days were the most exciting
of my life. We welcomed the five Fiun into our city, showering them with
food and gifts, peppering them with questions about their society and
origins. Soon after we accepted them thus, five more arrived. Then five more
after that. Soon, we were host to more than sixty Fiun. We had never been so
close to such alien life before without having to fight them. They found us
as fascinating as we found them. They spoke to all of us, not just to the
Duke and his daughter. And they demonstrated a startling command of the
Roulean language, though their phrasings were a bit stilted. We found them
to be most pleasant as well, full of warmth and emotion. Soon after their
arrival, we began to forge very real friendships.
The Fiun I grew closest to called himself
Luhjre. We struck up an immediate friendship and rarely spent any time
apart. He was fascinated with my tales of life on Ispar. No matter how often
I described the lands of Aluvia, Gharu'n, Roulea, Sho, Milantos, and
Silveran, he never grew tired or bored. We stayed awake well into the small
hours of the night on many occasions - Luhjre pressing me for more and more
details about Ispar, myself answering his questions as openly as possible.
He loved the idea of Ispar, and I loved sharing that idea with one who
appreciated its beauty as much as I did.
But when discussion turned to his own world,
our conversations took a much grimmer tone.
The arrival of the Fiun was much like our
own. They, too, fled a great evil. They, too, stood witness as their
civilization crumbled around them. But their evil - their destruction - was
self-inflicted. It was their own pride and quest for discovery that
shattered their society.
The Fiun Rehgus was considered by many to be
the greatest mage in the Fiun world. He was the one who crafted magical
cures for the plagues that ravaged their lands. He was the one who taught
others the means by which they extended their lives for centuries. And he
was the one that stopped the "fire that fell from the sky." When Luhjre
spoke of this last subject - on which I have never been able to coax him to
elaborate - he spoke with the reverence I have seen in the eyes of the most
ardent Karlun disciple. Clearly, Rehgus was nigh unto a god in the eyes of
the Fiun.
But Rehgus' failing was his obsession with
the creation of life. Like us, the Fiun were the only intelligent creatures
on their world. But unlike us, they lived for incredibly long spans of time.
Hundreds of years, from what I can tell. They had much longer to contemplate
their place in the world. Much longer to ponder what great meaning their
lives might hold.
Rehgus, along with a group of like-minded
Fiun, came to believe themselves gods. After centuries of pondering the
mysteries of their world, he and his council became convinced that their
duty was to create that spark of life which fueled their own existence. They
felt that some greater entity had given them the power to create new
sentient creatures with which they could share the beauties of reality.
So they crafted a plan to take a common
creature, something that appears to have been the equivalent of a feathered
Isparian dog, and transform it into a sentient being. To that end, Rehgus
led five groups of five mages in a spell that lasted five full days. My
friend Luhjre was one of these mages.
Rehgus' council retreated to a secluded
valley amongst a chain of low-lying hills. In those days, their cities
covered the majority of the world. But there were still some barren areas
where they could practice their spells without interruption. And for a
five-day spell, such a space was most necessary.
The mages stood in a circle five rows deep
and bound the creature with a set of powerful magic spells. The animal slept
peacefully for five days, seemingly unaware of the spell which worked its
way into its body. For five days, everything progressed as intended. The
magics that were expected to take hold, did. The components that were
expected to be consumed, were. So when the fifth day arrived, everyone
expected the spell to be a success. They fully expected the dog to rise,
examine its surroundings, and speak. But, unfortunately, that is not what
happened.
When the creature woke it looked at the
surrounding mages. It tried to move, but the magical bonds held it in place.
The Fiun peered into the beast's eyes, hoping to see a hint of intelligence
in the creature's soul, but there was none to be found. It merely looked
back at them with the blank look of a dumb animal. The Fiun feared their
spell a failure, their efforts wasted. But as they began to despair, some
small change did occur.
The beast coughed. It was a subtle cough at
first - barely even noticeable - but that cough soon turned into a strangled
choke, as though something were caught in its throat. The creature coughed
and hacked in an effort to clear the obstruction, but made no progress. The
coughing got worse. The creature barked and wheezed with increasing violence
until its entire body shuddered and bucked, shedding feathers with the
ferocity of its convulsions. The Fiun rose to their feet and exchanged
worried looks of concern.
That was when the creature screamed.
The animal shrieked as though it were being
ripped apart from the inside. Something was changing within the beast.
Something that burned like fire. It was but a moment before that change
extended to the creature's outer body as well.
It began to grow. Its torso puffed and
expanded. Its flesh began to shred. Blood ran down its sides and legs. It
screamed and screamed and then suddenly, its flesh was ripped from its body.
The fleshless creature howled as its limbs snapped and twisted. Its jaw
cracked; its mouth grew larger. Hundreds of sharp teeth pushed through its
gums. Its forelimbs withered and fell from its body, leaving behind great
bloody cavities. A new skin began to form, but this one lacked the plumage
of its previous flesh. It was mottled and blistered, covered in pustules and
boils. The creature thrashed wildly beneath the bonds of the binding spell.
The mages were terrified. They screamed in
horror at the destruction they had wrought. They lost their concentration.
The bonds were dropped.
The creature fled immediately. It barreled
through the circle, knocking the mages aside, and ran into the darkened
hills. The Fiun were left to endure the creature's shrieks as it fled into
the night.
Many in the council fell to their knees and
wept. They were not simply filled with the shame of failure - they were
grief-stricken at the agony they had caused another being. The Fiun may
possess something of a god-complex, but they are nothing if not
compassionate.
While the council devolved into a confused,
wailing mess, Rehgus remained calm. He assumed the creature would die soon
enough, but he sent two mages after it to end its suffering as quickly as
possible.
Several minutes after their departure, the
council heard more screams. But these were not the screams of the animal.
They were the screams of the Fiun.
Fear now mingled with the shame of their
defeat. They knew not what might have harmed their fellow mages - for at the
time the Fiun knew nothing of predators - but those screams filled them with
the primal dread that flares up within us all when faced with nature's
ravenous hunger. Rehgus went to investigate, and he took the entire council
with him. The group fanned out over the hills, searching in parties of two
and three.
It was Luhjre's group who found the missing
mages. When he told me about the bodies - the condition in which he found
them - he dropped his head in anguish. He wept for several minutes, unable
to form words. I have never seen anyone so aggrieved. I've met many whose
loved ones were slaughtered in battle, many whose misguided actions ended
the lives of innocent people, and many who have been so personally ravaged
by war that they simply could not comprehend breathing another breath. But I
had never met anyone who held himself responsible for the death of his
civilization. Not until now.
The bodies were ripped apart. There was
nothing left but a mangled mess of meat and bone. At first, Luhjre believed
he had found the remains of the beast, but when he saw the tattered robes of
the Fiun on the ground nearby, he became aware of the horrible truth. This
mass of gore was all that remained of his friends.
The creature, however, was nowhere to be
found.
Two days later, the beast made itself known.
Somehow - and the Fiun are unclear as to how this happened - the creature
multiplied. When next they saw it, there were hundreds of them. They
descended on Luhjre's city in a swarm. Gone was the agonized wail of the
wounded beast. In its place was a mindless hunger that knew no bounds. These
creatures did not merely destroy - they ate. It did not matter what
stood in their way; they attacked structures of wood and stone with as much
esurience as they did the animals and Fiun who fled for their lives. In a
matter of hours, Luhjre's city was lost. Over ten thousand Fiun lost their
lives.
Along with a handful of others, Luhjre was
able to escape. But the beasts pursued them for countless miles. Eventually,
Luhjre lost the creatures, but by that time his band of over one hundred
escapees had been whittled down to a mere seventeen survivors.
While Luhjre and his comrades hid in a cave
high in the mountains, the creatures multiplied at a frighteningly rapid
rate and laid waste to every other city on the face of the world. The Fiun
tried their best to fight back, but they had never had need for magics of
war. They were healers and creators; they were not fighters. Within a month,
the monsters covered the globe. Every Fiun city was destroyed. Seven million
Fiun were dead. Those who were not killed either went into hiding or met a
far worse fate.
The Fiun have long believed that the seat of
their intelligence lies in a gland in the back of their neck. This is where
their 'soul' resides, if you care to use such a word. There is something
about this gland that the creatures are attracted to - something that sends
them into a frenzy. Should the gland be ripped from a Fiun's neck, the Fiun
usually dies. But those that do survive the attack are driven mad by the
loss of this gland - by the loss of their 'soul.' They become wild, mindless
beasts bent on destruction and violence. They are every bit as frenzied as
the creatures that ravaged them, though far less physically powerful.
Over the course of several months, Luhjre and
his comrades ventured out of their cave and searched for other survivors. It
was difficult going. The beasts could sense the Fiun over great distances.
They gave chase to Luhjre's band of survivors and slaughtered many of his
comrades. But over time, Luhjre's clan grew in size. He found other pockets
of survivors and led them in search of still more living Fiun. Eventually,
they came across another large band of Fiun, this one led by Rehgus himself.
Rehgus led the great clan into a massive
network of underground passages. By this point, they were too large to
continue scouring the world as one unit. They made camp in these caves and
sent small groups on regular hunts for more Fiun. Few of those groups ever
returned.
They debated for weeks on how to free their
world from the tyranny of the beasts. Numerous suggestions were bandied
about, but none were equal to the threat which ravaged the Fiun world. Even
the great Rehgus was bereft of any useful solution. Eventually, the Fiun
realized that there was nothing they could do. The monsters multiplied at a
frightening rate. And even if the Fiun could find a way to destroy the
creatures, there was no hope of rebuilding Fiun society with so few of them
left alive.
They fell into a dark despair. They stopped
eating; they stopped talking. Many of them left the underground passages to
meet their doom on the surface. Few who left even bothered to bid farewell.
After a time, Rehgus himself called a meeting to discuss the future of the
Fiun. His proposal was grim. They would all enter the wilds and surrender
themselves to the beasts. Their time had come to an end. The world of the
Fiun was over, and they had brought that destruction on themselves. Death
was the only proper punishment for such a transgression as that which the
Fiun had wrought.
Rehgus seemed surprised at how quickly the
other Fiun agreed with him.
They hugged one another, wept for their
fallen world, and began their final trek to the mouth of the barren caverns.
But as they began their journey, something
happened. Something they could never have expected. In the cave behind them,
a purple ring of energy silently swam into being.
From Turbine's
Throne of Destiny site. |