Brethren - Chapter 3

Brethren - Chapter 3

The general considered his options. He had always been a believer in the strength of intuition, and in the potent predictive power of dream. This was not the first time a threat to his own or others safety had become apparent to him while he slept. More than once during battle, an image or sensation brought to him in dream had proved of strategic value the following day. Both Yena and Elenna had been under threat in that torturous vision, and there was no reason to believe that the masked attacker from the balcony was alone. It was unlikely that he had entered without at least another body behind him. For the moment, the looming question of why his home had been attacked in the first place would have to wait.

“Flowers” had meant the garden that Elenna kept religiously upon the roof of their home. When they had met, she had lived in a tiny village in the steppes of Athdarien, far to the north of the city. A captain in those days, Balael’s legion had passed through on its way to fight in the now legendary Pinnacle Wars, and had made camp nearby. Elenna had tended many beautiful gardens in and around the village. She had made it her duty to award each and every soldier in the legion, over a thousand men, a white minnagen flower for their bravery, and to carry with them for luck in battle.

The night before they were due to move out, she came to the men and gave them their flowers, each presented individually and with the words: “For your life, and with luck” It was then that they had met, and had shared a fleeting kiss in the darkness. When Balael returned four years later he was a hero. Rather than march to Aramondria to be honoured though, he came straight back to her village and asked her to marry him, giving back to her the flower he had kept at his breast throughout the bloodshed.

That lone and peaceful flower sat framed above the mantle in their home, a constant reminder of the gesture of goodwill between strangers that had brought them together. Elenna had never lost her love of things that grow, and at times it pained her to live so far above the ground, above the soil of The Plain. Knowing this, Balael had arranged for a garden to be included in the design of their house, and had used his renown to bring the best architects in the city into his employ for its creation.
The flowers so intricately engraved upon the stone steps made little impression upon him as he stalked upwards.
He emerged from the staircase amid a lush and textured harmony of colours. Before him lay a precision crafted work of stonecutting and floral artistry. One line of colour ran seamlessly into another, over and over again, as an underlying theme of death and rebirth ran its course through the garden. A small circular wall ran the circumference of the roof for Yena’s safety, itself meticulously engraved with scenes from the turbulent history of the Caleduan people. The garden’s glorious centrepiece stood at the far end, facing the centre of The Plain and The Evermount itself. A great marble statue of Signius, the Angel of earth and growth, stood masterfully upon a tiered pedestal, each step lined with bright blue flowers. The position of the head and arms, as well his expression, indicated both a profound sadness and a colossal strength of resolve; the eyes looked hopefully southwards to Endym, the realm of the Gods.

Balael’s eyes leaped place to place, frantically scanning for any signs of life. There were places to hide, he knew, and so with a cautious haste he proceded forward, head moving mechanically from side to side, keeping his flanks guarded. Though he could not see anyone, he felt something amid the scent of flowers and the chill of morning, a presence that did not belong. There was fear in the air, and it was not his own.

As he reached the centre of the garden, he was aware that he had uncovered enough within his line of sight to rule out all but one of the possible places of concealment. He turned his eyes to the statue. As he moved forward slowly through the flowers, he felt something soft catch his foot. His hand involuntarily gripped harder the hilt of his blade as the image of Dashia’s lifeless body flashed momentarily before his bloodshot eyes. Keeping his gaze locked firmly on the statue, he knelt slowly and felt through the cool stems with his free hand. He felt material, and rising took the shortest of glances at what he had found: a black mask, identical to that of the first attacker, revealing of only the eyes of its absent bearer.

He quickly processed the find. Elenna must surely have torn the mask from its bearer’s face in the struggle. She had always been strong, both of will and of arm. If the dream had warned of a nigh impending threat, as with the first attacker, then it was possible that his own arrival in the garden had in fact interrupted the second assault. His identity revealed, the unmasked assailant could have heard Balael ascending the steps to the roof and quickly hidden himself and his quarry behind the statue.

As if in submission to his deductions, the surrounding flowers, and indeed those leading up to the statue, were bent and broken, trampled in haste. As his eyes followed the line of crushed plants to the statue, his fist clenched about the mask in anger. This was to be a place of peace, of serenity and harmony amid the chaos of life. By entering into it with such vile intent, the assailant seemed to have opened a window to the outside, to the evils and vices of the world beyond the garden. To Balael, what had been so beautiful a place now reeked of hatred, tangible and heavy in the scented air. He had waited long enough for the intruder to make his move.

“Show yourself!” he bellowed towards the statue.

There was a sharp intake of breath, and not his wife’s. Fear abounded in the crisp breeze.

“You will return my wife to me, or die by my sword. This I promise you.” Balael expounded the ultimatum in his most imperious tones.

There was a shuffling of feet, and a muffled cry. The cry was hers.

She was alive.

Relief swamped Balael’s consciousness once more, but he remained stoic, motionless and unyielding as the statue itself.

“This is my final warning, stra-“

He was cut off mid sentence by the harrowing sight of his wife slowly emerging, cheeks tear-stained, a black gauntleted hand around her pale throat. Her mouth was open, trying to speak, to shout, to scream, but the vice-like grip of her captor choked all sound into submission. Her striking eyes fixed upon Balael’s. There was fear there of course, a flood of it, but also there was trust; a staunch belief in her husband, in his strength and in the relentless passion of his love.

He bit his tongue at the sight of her, struggling to remain in control. Furious anger, love, and terror all at once rained down, seeping into him, assaulting his mind from every side. He felt like a puppet at the hands of some cruel entertainer, held at bay with ghostly strings, enacting some tragic scene for an audience of weeping flowers. He tried to speak, but his throat felt as though it too was gripped hard by some pitiless hand.

“Rele-” he choked, tasting blood in his mouth. “Release her.” He had intended it to sound threatening, dominant and absolute, but it came out suffocated, pleading and weak. For too long there was silence, nothing to be heard but the breeze and the clutching gasps of his wife. At length a sound could be heard, a low, repetitive hum, constant and monotonous. There were words buried within the layers of sound, but Balael could not make them out. Still the rhythm was familiar to him, something long ingrained, forgotten. It became louder and more deliberate, agitated and spoken through clenched teeth.

“Fall….power…. peace….blood….eternal” Odd words floated on the wind, disjointed.

Then one came that awoke Balael’s sleeping memories.

“Forgive.”

A prayer. The Prayer of Absolution, of absolute and complete forgiveness from Nevarrius, the angel of the wind and skies and the progenitor of the Caleduan people. He was preparing himself for some sinful act, and his rising tones announced its imminence. Elenna began to struggle harder, nails scraping futilely at the armoured hand about her neck. She could hear him, sense the tension rising in the firmness of his grip. Her eyes were wild now, darting in all direction, rolling back in her head as she struggled to remain conscious.

Balael’s body primed itself for speed, igniting the blood of every muscle for the order to attack. Just short of unleashing himself, he screamed in passionate entreaty.
“Please!! Please stop this madness!! You will not have your forgiveness!! You will join the red souls, I swear it!! I beg of you, save your soul and hers; release her!!”

An answer came from between tortured breaths and voiced by a man profoundly and sorrowfully resigned to his fate.

“This….is what must be!! It is the path we were born to take!!”
He wept loudly.

There was a conviction in his voice that spurred Balael to action. This was a matter of faith, and it would not be solved with words or an appeal to reason.

In a second he had covered a quarter of the ground to the statue, tearing flowers from their roots as he went.

“Do not think me a demon, general” the voice pleaded. The glint of a silver dagger hung in the air, snaking along its curved source as it emerged from behind the swirling marble.

Balael could not even hear his own scream as he ran. A low growl began to emanate from behind the statue, increasing in intensity until it was itself a scream, the scream of a broken man with a tested faith. Though he was half way there now, it seemed to Balael as though an ocean of mocking colours separated him from his love. He would never reach her in time, not in body. He drew his blade back like an archer tensing his string; muscles taught, hand as one with the metal of its hilt. Still he ran, propelled by the sight of her.

His focus was absolute, the world around him crystallized until his task was done. All there was now was himself and the statue. Calling at once upon every atom in his body, he poured every thread and flow of physical energy into his blade-arm, infusing it with his full and considerable power. In his mind’s eye he saw the line, knew that he had to be absolute in his aim.

He released, his every sinew re-aligning as both feet left the ground, his arm snapping forward, propelling the blade full force at its target. As it span whirlwind-like through the morning air, the silver dagger grazed the soft skin of Elenna’s neck. As Balael’s feet found the floor once more, his eyes caught a spot of red at her throat. He found himself still in full sprint, his fingers outstretched to her as her eyes fixed once more upon his own. Love in its truest and most honest form flew between them in that moment.

“I am sorry” said the voice, with a sincerity that was lost upon Balael as he ran.
The great broadsword carved through the hard rock of the statue as though it were merely an extension of the flesh of its target. The sound of cracking stone was contrasted a moment later with that of the puncturing of flesh, and the gargled death-scream of the man in black.

Balael however, heard something different.

He heard the sound of birds that first morning after they had made love.

He heard the sound of the grass in the wind when he had asked her to marry him.

He heard the sound of her voice in sweet song the day he had met her, as her hair had glistened with the first lone drops of rain.

He heard her body as it fell lifeless into his arms.

Her eyes stared up him, grey and clouded.

Blood soaked his hands.

Everything that he was and had ever been was at that moment taken from him, ripped from his very being with violent and matchless strength. He felt as though an abyss had opened within him, and that it now drew everything else into it; happiness, sadness, life and even death. He felt as though he had surpassed death, that his soul itself had been obliterated, that nothing remained of him. His eyes began to lose focus; he fell to his knees and gasped for air. He lay his love sweetly down upon the stones and clutched at his throat, struggling hard for every breath. Shadows encroached upon the edges of his vision, and he felt weak.

As he fell to his hands, the last vestiges of consciousness slipping away from him, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the man in black, slumped inanimately upon the great sword that jutted forth from the cold marble before him. For a moment the face stirred in him some memory; but it was too dark now, and as he slipped silently from the waking world, his last cognisant thought was of little Yena, small, alone and in shadow.

Darkness and silence.