Ending Gahrus

Chapter 1:
Like A Three-Headed Lion

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The age of Gahrus was ending. The known world would give way soon and produce something different. Something that likely wouldn’t be recognisable as Gahrus, likely not even be called Gahrus. Because that world could take little more. War had been waged. Blood had been shed. The Gleaners–great grey and black beasts, over four feet tall, with the heads and bodies and dead-leather wings of bats, but with the hind legs of a goat, shaggy and matted like the haunches of The Cloven Hoof himself--had fed and multiplied on the bodies of the fallen warriors. The Gleaners always came to the field of battle before the fray and circled like vultures, then disappeared–but never far–while the field filled ankle-deep in blood, before returning to feast on the dead flesh of the fallen. Many are quick to hate the Gleaners as foul eaters of battle-carrion, but the Gleaners aren’t as selective as that. No one goes outside; no one returns to the site of the battle after nightfall.

Kayzec did not love the Gleaners, but nor did he hate them. He held for them a type of detached affinity, a cold respect. They were living things that surrounded themselves with the dead. They were living things that knew the dead. From the dead, they took their lives. The Gleaners would consume anyone: it didn’t matter if in life they had been a hero or a coward, a woman or a man, a king or a serf, a rich man or starving peasant, their rotting flesh was all the same. To Kayzec it symbolized that the Gleaners understood things few did: that in death, all are equal. That there is a joy for the living and a joy for the dead. That in death there is life.

Kayzec knew this as well as the Gleaners did.

The Dark Wizard, some called him, or The Grim Man, but it was a concept brewed from the stereotype of his profession: they say that no Fell-Mage, no necromancer, ever smiled, ever laughed, at least at things which would not elicit a scream from the sane. Some said that all Fell-Mages were the risen dead themselves. While it was true that without a certain draw towards the effects of mortality, one could not be a Fell-Mage, but simple morbidity did not have to mean perpetual solemnity. Certainly it was true that some were like that, but Kayzec was not. There was always something a bit off about him, but if one did not know already that he was a necromancer, he would seem as normal as a sorcerer could seem. A customary wizard, he was often taken for, and it would much surprise those who didn’t know that he was 1,600 years old and had a terrifying control over life and death. But in time of war, anyone who could raise dead soldiers (when given the right conditions) was valuable. Sometimes, it was said, a platoon of enemies would flee even a small company of those risen again by Kayzec. They were dead for all to see--with dark holes as eyes in empty sockets, greyed hair that hung in wisps, and ashen skin stretched tight wherever it wasn’t rotting away over their crumbling frame-- but walking. Sometimes it would be a warrior the platoon had known, one from their company, a friend, who had been brought back to fight for the other side. Given none of the rest rightful to those who have died. So Kayzec had, by his skills and the application thereof, procured a place among the court of NarQuen, The Ebony Fortress. NarQuen was a human stronghold at AllPoints, where North, South, East and West converged. The court of NarQuen was in turmoil, very few trusted each other and even fewer trusted the king, who was seen to be weak, underhanded and cowardly. King Rahnekir may be overthrown at any time, any moment, by anyone in his court: a high-ranking knight, perhaps. Maybe a nobleman. Maybe a General, or a courtier in charge of his affairs, or an advisor. Even one of his decrepit old mother’s ladies in waiting may show her dark side, slip him arsenic in his drink and become Queen, and the King was the only one unaware that his end was so close. Power was up in the air. Kayzec, however, intended to grab it.

He could not do it alone. But nor could he trust any of his acquaintances but one, Branir the head General of the King’s Paladin Knights. Branir no longer had any loyalty to the King. Nor did most of his lieutenants, nor most of the warriors under his command. But only Branir was high enough in the King’s Court that he and Kayzec could be useful, equal allies. But there was one he knew, one who could help Kayzec and Branir seize a double crown for themselves. One who could help them for they could see time in all directions.

The dead have many powers.

Kayzec walked into his rooms in the pits beneath the castle. These were not the dungeons, for they were not designed for prisoners. They were simply deep pits with stone and earth walls, lit by smouldering torches that cast a greasy, red light that somehow still was darkness. The first room was his study. A heavy iron and oak desk was there, with the contraptions to make strange substances none living dared drink assembled on it and looming over pens, inks, scraps of parchment, a wax seal and a closed book. The walls were lined with shelves that held books so old they were as yellow as a sigh. The language they were written in could only be read by two, maybe three, apart from Kayzec, and of those who could, Kayzec was the only human. He lingered by the desk for a moment, opening the book and scanning the strange symbols, reading columns of them from top to bottom. He reached up and pushed back the deep hood on the dark brown, hooded cloak with wide sleeves that he wore over his greying white, pale enchanters’ clothes--a tunic and pants–hiding them. The ends of the cloak were just frayed slightly, as they sometimes dragged roughly behind him on the ground. More often, though, the ends of the cloak, since it frequently billowed as he moved, wafted, raised several inches above the ground by the breeze, rippling behind him like a flag in a gust as he walked. He was strongly built, and if his leaning had not been toward the dark arts, he may have made a knight, perhaps supplanting Branir. His skin was mildly pale, his fair hair cropped short to keep it out of the way of his experiments, and his eyes had a perpetual narrowness to them. Kayzec opened a wrought iron door and went into his back room.

The backroom had almost nothing in it. Around the edge was a indentation four feet deep and in the centre a low iron table with a dark bulk layed on it. It was too dim to see what it was.

Kayzec walked into the room and raised one hand, open, with the palm held vertically forward. His hand was facing the deep rim around the room.

“Gendu!” he said, “fire” in the dark tongue of the Feybren, creators of shadow sorcery. The oil he kept at the bottom of the deep runnels around the room lit up like a forge. The room was instantly awash in sickly fumes and hellish flickering flame-lights and churning shadows.

The dark heap on the table was a body.

It had been human in life, that much was clear, but only by the fact that it had no fur, no scales, no tail and no snout. Apart from that, it was largely unrecognisable: The flesh had half-rotted, brown and festering in some places and and in others missing completely, showing grey, flaking bone or shrivelling innards. Some teeth were missing and both eye sockets were yawning pits. The nails had grown like yellow claws and the hair was matted and patchy. The head had been cloven completely in half, vertically down the middle, down to the base of the neck. The corpse lay spread-eagle, with both arms and legs heavily chained the table. Kayzec walked to it.

Kayzec put one hand above the cloven head and the other where the heart once was. In a voice as commanding as the one with which he’d called up fire, he ordered the dead man speak:

“Grii Azianahg! Mae Oringahst! Mae Nuatu!” he said in the tongue of the Feybren, with a strange sort of measured cadence, then repeated in Common, “You Rise! To Speak! To Me!”

A shriek, as of a consciousness being wrenched through the fabric of reality, ripped from everywhere and nowhere. Kayzec took his hands away from the body. The corpse on the table heaved upwards, as if in some kind of convulsion of pain. It turned it’s twain head to look at Kayzec and spoke with his same cadence.

“I Swear. To Serve. My Lord.” it said, it’s voice like the grinding of stone, like an earthquake as heard from deep underground, like the jaws of a beast crunching bones. It was the voice of The Oblivion Nightmare.

Kayzec broke the initial cadence.

“I am your lord.”

“Then command me.” The corpse said. The two sides of it’s split jaw moved out of sync and the two sides of it’s head shifted sickeningly.

“Speak of the future.”

“I cannot.”

“You can!”

“The future is as viewing a painting splashed across all the sea. The mind cannot grasp it’s scale, and it’s constantly being altered by the waters. If you are to see it, it must be by one small part at a time.”

“Then tell me the future of this court, then! Who is trying to become King? Who will succeed? How? How can I take the throne myself?”

Another shriek issued from the walls themselves as the corpse looked within it’s self for the answer. It heaved up, convulsed, twisted as if the act burned it.

“Many vie for the crown! No one can take it!”

“No, there must eventually be a king!”

“I say that no one can take it! No one can compete with all the others! No one can take the crown alone! One cannot hold the throne alone!”

“Then I take the crown with Branir’s help and we shall both rule?”

Another shriek and another spasm of convulsion.

“The next Lion shall have three heads!”

“What?!”

“The next Lion shall have three heads and all three wear a crown!”

“So three shall rule equally? Is that what you’re saying? Branir, myself, and...who?!”

“The next Lion shall have three heads, each with a crown! I can see no more.”

“Ahkto beznen. Feeahra. Kain pharuin grii.” Kayzec said, “Then go. Sleep. I release you.” He placed his hands over the head and heart of the thing. It fell limp back to the table, dead once more.

Kayzec raised his palm toward the fires around the room.

“Hevandu.” he said, meaning “wind”. A gale blew momentarily through the room, swirling his cloak and whipping out the fires. Kayzec stood in silence for a moment.

There was a sound in Kayzec’s study. He tore open the door, charging back into the room with the desk. He suddenly calmed. It was only Branir.

Branir the corrupted knight looked up from the book on the desk. It was meaningless to him. Branir was a smaller man than Kayzec, but darker-skinned and with slightly longer hair, which was black. His wide eyes were dark brown and he was thin and slightly shorter than Kayzec. He wore finer clothes than Kayzec’s cloak and enchanter’s clothes. His shirt was long and red, almost to his knees. It was loose on him and the collar and the ends of the sleeves were yellow. His pants were also loose, and these were dark blue. This was the style for knights.

“I heard screaming...”

Kayzec told Branir what the oracle-corpse had told him.

“So we have another coming then?”

“So it would seem. How nice of you to point out the obvious. I certainly hope you’re around when I finally take the one-way trip to Oblivion myself. Then you can point out that due to lack of pulse and breathing, I must be dead.” Classic Kayzec: morbid, sarcastic, but oddly funny.

“Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. I suggest you leave now and tell no one what I told you.”

“Of course I won’t. How will we know the third?”

“I can only hope they will know us.”

Branir left by the stairs back to the castle. He returned to his own chambers. It was the barrack-room reserved for the head of the Royal Paladins. The room was in a guard tower, over looking the approaching road to the front gate of the castle.

Once he had been loyal to the King. He was no longer. The king was weak and he could see that. He knew himself to be strong and he could not believe that the strong were meant to serve the weak. Protect them willingly, fair enough, he supposed, but not serve and answer to them. The King was no longer his master. He would wait, and watch, and when the time came, he, Kayzec and one who is now a stranger would seize the throne for themselves. Perhaps it was not so chivalrous as the knights of older times. But it was still right, and it was still natural to him.

Sighing, he walked to the road-seeing window. The road was simply a hard-packed path through the dunes of the sandy, gravelly desert that was AllPoints. He squinted at a moving shape on the horizon. It was a form. A cloaked and cowled figure riding at a gallop on a Gõrõdon.

“The Lion’s third head...” Branir mused to himself.


Just barely in sight of the castle, the Lion’s third head halted her Gõrõdon, looking at NarQuen. She pushed her hood back and patted the side of her creature’s thick neck absently. The beast grunted like bored, tired dog.

A Gõrõdon was a beast of burden. In form, it was like a horse with paws and long, shaggy
fur--usually in dark colours. It had the tail of a Dragon, scaled, red and spiked at the end, with green ridges down it. It’s head was like that of a wolf’s or dog’s, though the ears, which extended in an inverted arch and opened towards the back, were markedly longer. Ram’s horns grew from it’s temples. Though it wore a simple halter, like a horse’s, it required an elaborate saddle construction: a horse’s saddle would simply slide to the back, front, or side, or spill backwards and forwards as a Gõrõdon ran not like a horse, but like a wolf.

Trateotu simply sat on the back of the beast, surveying the fortress for a moment. The great bulk of it there on the sand was like a massive shadow slicked in oil. Was this the place she’d heard of ? Of coarse it was: how many other fortresses could be in this barren waste?

It is impossible to actually accurately describe Trateotu. The best one can do is to describe what she looks like at any given moment: Trateotu was only half human. Her father had been a ShapeShifter, a Seulkay, a Sea Dragon from a small island far, far to the south. She had his abilities. At this time, she had the form of a young girl, a bit tanned, dark eyed and with waving dark hair almost to her waist. She was wearing a brown, long cloak with a deep hood and wide sleeves. Though it was a bit like Kayzec’s, she did not have an enchanter’s clothes on underneath; instead she wore dark pants, a black shirt and a brown leather vest. Her hair was loose and a green cloth she’d tied around her head in a triangle, so two corners tied at the base of her skull under her hair and a third went back over her head, pointing down her back kept her hair out of her eyes. Beneath the cloak, a good amount of jewelry glinted, probably a habit she’d picked up from her Seulkay father.

Trateotu was sure this is where she had to be. She’d heard of the turmoil in the court and knew an opportunity when she saw one. Yes, she’d vie for the crown there. It suited her larger purpose. What this purpose might be she considered nobody’s business but her own. She was a wanderer and sometimes gave the impression of being a dangerous person to be around, because like all wanderers, she had to pick up a lot of skills along the way, not all of them pleasant--assassination, for one. She had no trade in particular, unless you wanted to count thief and rouge. That’s not to say she was dark, at least not in the same way Kayzec was--she had her own darkness, and that, like her purpose, was her knowledge alone–it is more to say that while, like Branir and, in away, Kayzec, she had do things that could be considered evil, but was not herself bad. She was more a neutral, with no belief or inclination toward one or the other between good and evil, law or chaos. Everything simply was, and everyone did whatever suited their purpose. Trateotu’s purposes were her own, and so her motives largely unknowable.

“So this is NarQuen. Yes, this feels right.”

Trateotu clicked her tongue at the Gõrõdon and kicked it back into the lightning gallop she had been riding at before.

The crowned Lion’s third head approached the Ebony Fortress.