Raven Guard Chapter one

Chapter 1 (Ch1P1)

“To uphold the walls of our city fair,
Against whose might no fools doth dare.
We labor in our lands so that none ever starve,
But in exchange,
Stone hearts we slowly carve.
Here we are free of all man's vice,
But for this boon there is a grave price.
Our kith and our kin,
To cruel fortunes whim.”
-Valerian Nursery Rhyme

         It began as a stirring, a disturbance in the upper air lazily crawling down the layers of aether. It meandered slowly, finding its way eventually to the tumultuous lower reaches. It slipped between the mountainous heavily laden clouds as their cargo drug them earthward. It too bore a heavy burden, but its hold had not coalesced upon it just yet. It gracefully licked the foaming white caps of its beloved sea and danced among the hills and valleys that roared in its wake. It drank the cool brine of the coastal air, savoring its last moments of freedom as the tendrils of binding whispered in the distance, singing their siren's song.
         The familiar feeling settled slowly upon it, gently caressing its form. It started from the edges of its being, always wary and careful the effervescent strands laid their chains with precision and efficiency, sparing no unnecessary energy on roughness. Like a second skin that fit just a little too tightly the bonds settled into place and nudged it westward. It remembered still the first time, how it had fought, raging and calling down every being of air in the eastern sea. Its tantrum had devastated the coast for a thousand leagues and completely exhausted it. It rarely fought now, remembering how draining resistance was.  Now it conserved its strength, knowing that even after it had finished its nightly chore, it would be called again the following eve when the moon began its ascent once more.
         It struggled slightly for a moment, only stopping when the tension of its bonds increased minutely in response to its momentary resistance.  It focused on preserving its mental state, knowing full well the physical abilities of its nemesis were beyond it. Valmora, yes, it remembered that name. That was the voice that sang to it, the name it could not forget. Rage overpowered reason and it flexed its strength to the breaking point, rending its bonds by its unanticipated act of defiance and fleeing to the freedom of the open sea.
         It reveled in the warmth of the setting sun, screaming over the golden waves burning  a path to freedom before it, like shimmering angels illuminating its exodus. The seas parted for its escape, cutting a deep crest in its wake and scattering nearby vessels into the abyss. The dying wails of man were lost in its exultation as it bent the winds to its aid, pushing its abilities to the limit as it fled its dogged pursuer.
         Like a lash the binding cut deeply as joy quickly transformed into agony and what was once a gentle suggestion became blunt force trauma. Cables of blinding pain consumed all senses and wrenched it screaming from its beloved sea. The soft voice that had gently enticed to meander westward now wailed like a banshee as it was beaten and bludgeoned into unquestioning submission. Its will to escape evaporated as its mind surrendered to inevitability.
         Instantly the pain vanished in response to its acquiescence. Relishing in relief it drank once more the sweet salt of the sea as the ability to respire found purchase in its body. After a deep pull of brine soaked air it sang a pleading song to the heavens. It called for aid, knowing its desperate flight had spent too much energy and the task would now require more than its strength alone.
         Its brief respite dissipated all too fast as the pull upon increased steadily. It drifted doggedly westward whilst the sun was inexorably extinguished by the chill waters of the eastern sea. It watched the glorious warmth of day fade, like the final embers of a guttering flame. It mourned the last tendrils of light as they smoldered brightly upon the horizon. They too fought inevitability whilst the sun wept fire at their passing and was consumed by the sea. A final thought of resistance fluttered across its consciousness and was annihilated instantly as it followed the well known demands of the compulsion and gathered its fortitude for the arduous chore to come.
         Black pinpricks rapidly grew before it as the silhouette of Raven's Bay appeared. The great towers that marked the gateway to the east stood as both sentry and salvation to the few surviving ships fleeing the roaring maelstrom following in its wake. The placid calm of the bay erupted into madness as the winds reached gale force, sending mammoth waves crashing against the unyielding sea walls. It paid no heed to the few vessels foolish enough to be caught in its torrent. It battered them against the walls and bashed them together like matchsticks, as indifferent to the sailors cries as it was to the their deaths.
         It swallowed their drowning screams as it whipped through the stone causeways of Draenoch, barreling relentlessly against the well battened storm shudders and creating a wail of its own. The staunch city endured its rage with stoic apathy. The well ordered grid of streets  were empty and the inhabitants weathered the tempest safe within their fortified homes thick stone walls. The massive black clouds hovering over the city then decided that now was a good time to release their watery cargo. The water rose in the streets and flowed in an orderly fashion into well worn culverts, then the downpour raged into large cisterns that quickly overflowed. Release valves were opened and the now well provisioned citizens allowed the deluge to find its own way into the roiling sea.
         It whipped the rain into a frenzy and pulled it inexorably upward,  lashing against the black cliffs of Sharr. The forces of gravity angrily opposed its task and it gladly accepted the help of its allies timely arrival from the aether. With their combined might the rain traveled impossibly skyward against the shimmering obsidian walls soaring menacingly before them. Together they marshaled their will and transcended from chaotic gusts into focus incarnate. Like a bowstring pulled taught they drew together both wind and water and climbed unto the heavens. They wove their way, battling both cliff and physics as they wrenched the storm from the sea unto the stars. Finally they found the icy peaks that towered above the unswerving port of Draenoch. From this height only the massive towers guarding the seawall were visible as black pinpricks beneath the raging squall.
         The frozen winds of Valmora's breath roared defiance at the ascent of the storm into its domain. The frigid air moaned, drawing the storms warmth into itself and unleashing a force greater than elemental might and storm alike, threatening to tear down the mountains with its fury. The tempest rent the heavens and screamed defiance at the moon as it took on a life of its own, barely contained by the efforts of the elementals it broke free of the clouds and escaped the glacial crown of the black cliffs. The gale raced across the ebony crags and plunged downward in an avalanche of air, gathering speed as it coalesced into a creature of focus once more.  The wastelands below rapidly increased in size as the object of its labors grew near.
         As if a thousand pit lords all cracked their whips in unison the sails spread their canvas as one. No normal wind could move such massive stone behemoths, but this was no normal wind. The unearthly gale pushed them at a snails pace at first that slowly inched into a crawl. The scrape of stone on stone crunched like boulders tumbling down a mountainside, the rumbling gaining in volume as the beasts gained velocity, eventually becoming loud enough to rival the maelstrom raging around the obsidian beasts. Each creature was a small mountain on its own. The massive bulk of the things was clearly evidenced by the ground surrounding the road sinking noticeably as the monolithic creations approached. The caravan stretched unendingly across the wastes until it disappeared into the gaping maw of a massive tunnel cutting its way beneath the root of the mountains to Draenoch.
         As smooth as glass and black as pitch they began to gain speed as the gust broke them free of inertia's grasp. All curves and no hard edges the flotilla looked more like beings from the depths of the ocean than wagons. Each spanned the breadth of the great highway that could easily fit eight mounted cavalry riding abreast. Even their sails were black, nearly invisible against the night sky, only their crackling canvas in the roaring wind betrayed their existence. Triangular in shape they stretched across their vessels girth and resembled enormous cones, sliced in half and stretched lengthwise from end to end. The wheels were cleverly concealed behind stone windshields so that only the portion contacting the road itself was visible beneath each beast.
         The road resembled a river of twisting night as it snaked before the procession, made of a stone so lacking in color it seemed to drink the very starlight. It was only clearly visible when the moonlight cascaded across it, dashing a quicksilver glimmer of its presence across the blackened and broken landscape. The wastes surrounding the highway were a bleak expanse consisting of broken volcanic stone covered occasionally by pockets of ash. The bits of coarse pumice and basalt stretched endlessly in all directions save east. There the high arcing cliffs of Sharr broke the line of desolation with an even more foreboding presence. They provided a gloomy backdrop for the strange procession stretching westward, drawn ever onwards by the howling torrents that seemed to only touch their sails and stirred not a stone off the road.
         For what seemed an eternity it battled its brethren. It badgered and bullied the great winds to follow it. For they too desired to return to the upper air, but it did not have the strength to move all the accursed hulks on its own. It was glad for the company as well. The fact that they all loathed it for committing upon them the same act of compulsion that enslaved it was irrelevant. It had the aid it needed to complete its task, willing or not. The fact that they despised it was of small consequence.
         It's loathing however, was entirely devoted to Valmora and her creatures. The smell of them reached it first. It began as a slight warming and a hint of decay brushing the edges of its senses and slowly enveloping them. It braced for the nausea and let the fetid stench soak into it and consume consciousness for a few moments until it acclimated to the overpowering odor. Nargs, it couldn't see them, but it didn't need to. Their aroma signaled the foul beasts presence long before any visual confirmation was required. While it detested the wretched creations, their smell had become a welcome one over the last thousand years. It signaled the final portion of its journey.
          The land around the great highway was slowly changing, the previously lifeless rubble now contained bits of tall grass and murky pools festering in scattered pockets that were slowly increasing in frequency. It felt the anticipation mount within it as scrub grass transformed into warped brush and eventually gnarled trees that refused to grow more than a few spans high. The stunted growths were patchy at first, gently coalescing into a dense murk  that was as much peat and moss as tree. The air was rancid and practically liquid as was evidenced by the condensation forming all over the rapidly moving caravan. Still cool from the chilly sea air the rapid change in temperature was creating eerie cascades of condensation that occasionally caught the moonlight in ghostly splinters. Like a quicksilver serpent snaking silkily through the swamp the ghostly procession bled silver across the highway, setting it aflame with iridescent fire as the moon ignited the glinting water droplets left in its wake.
         From on high it watched its burden cut through the bog burning brilliantly, and savored the beauty for a moment, for that was all that time allowed. The tightening on its skin reminded it of its purpose and it bent its will to containing the howling gale desperately trying to escape into the warm humidity of the swamp that pulled voraciously on the frigid sea air. As the surroundings grew warmer its' task grew more difficult, battling the forces of nature, the frozen tempest around it screamed dissent at its efforts at containment. It surrendered its senses and focused on its task completely, allowing the passage of time to continue unnoticed whilst it trudged endlessly through the marsh.
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         Beleaguered and it exhausted it felt its grip on reality slipping and it released the winds, clinging to its fractured sanity and desperately searching for its senses. The swamp had finally dissipated into the same scrub grass and desolate rubble as before. The unchanging road continued forward as always. However, in the swamp the great highway had snaked across scattered patches of bedrock and dry ground, but now cut an arrows flight into the distance without so much as a chip in the stone to mar the seamless streamlined perfection.
         Its' despised destination began as a speck, a tiny shimmering flash upon the horizon catching the glimmering quicksilver escaping the patchwork of passing clouds. As the procession devoured the rapidly diminishing distance the glinting reflection of moonlight slowly stretched into an elongated line that grew steadily. Finally the line stopped its horizontal growth and began to attack the vertical incline instead. The procession rumbled onwards as  the ramparts crowning the walls became visible.
         Atop the immensity of the fortifications, its gaze was always stolen first and foremost by the curious structures mounting the walls. An oddly glittering assortment of crystalline bluish black blades that tilted in such a way that they arced across each others paths at perfectly symmetrical angles. Like the depths of sapphire eyes torn asunder they resembled an iris cut and lain across the earth, shimmering sadly in the starlight as if they missed the eyes they once illuminated. Despite the size of the walls themselves, the ramparts always demanded its' attention, the ribbon of blades reminding it of its own effervescent bondage as they rent the stars in crystalline fury.
         The imposing line of shimmering shards was broken only by intermittent towers twisting through the woven weapons and breaking the continuity by sheer bulk alone rather than beauty. Each black monolith was unadorned and massive, defying gravity and calmly rending passing cloud banks with ease. The structures were neither rectangular nor purely cylindrical. Instead they grew, like stalactites born of heaven's dew. Such creations could not be birthed by the hand of man. It preferred to imagine that they had been molded from the stone, pulled from the earth and stretched unto the sky by the gods themselves. Adjacent to each tower the blackened walls curved outward eerily in a massive v, arcing towards the road on either side, seemingly inviting entry rather than prohibiting.
         Two such structures stood sentinel on either side of the road. However, the titanic towers were silhouetted by a mass so gargantuan as to dwarf the entire city by sheer girth alone. Standing imposingly behind both tower and wall Beloch's Cairn provided more deterrence than any fortification ever could. A veritable mountain on its own, its eastern face was dotted with a variety of bizarre structures with a single commonality, they all reflected the silver shafts of moonlight light piercing the clouds, sending them cascading in a dizzying array throughout the city. Each growth of stone seemed to wander with a life of its own, lazily curling around more like fungal spores than colonnades. A web like lattice of these curious columns crowned the cairn. They began from the sides of the ebony tomb as oddly twisting pillars of iridescent night that sprouted out of the mountain and into the moonlight, catching shafts of light and twisting them into eye wrenching kaleidoscopic ribbons. At the base of the web they appeared randomly alloted, like a creature of nature they seemed to grow wherever they pleased when examined individually. However, as it looked higher up the cairn it found that the tallest among the strange machinations was composed of seven such pillars woven from every side of the mountain. They innocuously swirled around each other, weaving in and out of almost pattern like designs and culminating in a single latticework of intertwining spires that swirled together to create a single spire. As the nightly procession slowly approached the walls, the glittering knot work veritably pierced the moon, like a fiery lance slaying some mighty beast.
         Despite the queer beauty displayed dazzlingly before it, its attention was roughly redirected as the fiery light was lost beneath the great walls' shadow suddenly looming over the wind haulers. As the distance to the city evaporated the true size of them became apparent. Over two hundred spans high they cast a colossal shadow and were a truly daunting sight as they seemed to be growing astonishingly fast. Made of the same strange black stone as the haulers they too were devoid of any plane or angle. Seamless and gently curving they looked like no thing cut by the hand of man. It considered them and decided the earth must have bled them out, a monumental scab to staunch some great wound. As smooth as satin they stretched across the night unendingly, curving slowly with periodic towers breaking free of their grasp.
         Of all the glory before it,only the gates appeared to be the work of man. The walls curved out around the road invitingly, supporting the gatehouse to the left and right with symmetrical arcing wings. A small hill on its own the gatehouse was carved in the semblance of a gigantic bird of prey. Its wings were permanently affixed in the down stroke of flight and fit seamlessly into the walls of the tunnel arcing beneath it with no noticeable breaks in the stone, as if the creature was attempting to escape from the wall itself. The beasts' breast arched above the great tunnel and its talons surmounted the outer portcullis guarding the passageway. A stone gate fully four spans thick stood open for their entry and the titanic portcullis was raised in perfect unison with their arrival, each crossbar the breadth of a horse.
         Its binding chafed and its will was taxed to the breaking point, it could feel consciousness slipping from it once more. It feared this time it would not be able to find its own thoughts in the chaotic knot work of magic binding its will. Surprise fluttered across its fading senses, the hold upon it was weakening. It redoubled its efforts and the stone caravan groaned in response. It hated the tunnel for there was no sky within it and it yearned to soar in the upper air once more. Finally it passed a second massive portcullis and entered Valenoch feeling the last of the threads that bound it snap. With a howl of elation it broke free of the earth and screamed its ascent home unto the heavens.
         Still cruising along under now slack sails the curious caravan slowly spent its remaining momentum plodding into various gigantic box like buildings situated in orderly rows along the highway. Within moments of their arrival a veritable army swarmed upon the wind haulers like ants on a carcass. Out came food stuffs of every sort. From one came fruits and vegetables, another nuts and dried meats. From the others came live stock complaining loudly as they were transported via more mundane methods to the slaughterhouse. Still more goods flowed forth unendingly until the first tremulous hints of dawn touched the city. The final goods were removed and other more refined products were inserted. Works of skill and technology replaced the bounty of the harvest. Bundles of wheat exchanged for blades and armor. Into other wagons went jewelry, fine cloaks and textiles of the highest quality. Finally, as full dawn broke upon the horizon, the wagons' brakes were released and they slowly reversed under the weight of their own girth. Their expert drivers pivoted them eastward to begin their long return to the sea, trundling now under gravities pull. First at a crawl and then with increasing velocity they rolled down the gentle incline and began their return to Draenoch.