Rupture in the Void

Tale One: Rupture in the Void

         The battlefield stretching out before the ever-watchful eyes of Kyria Lightbane was littered with the fallen corpses of her enemies and allies. The sight before her tugged at her innards, but she knew that if she were to survive yet another battle that she had to go search the bodies of her fallen comrades. A voice whispered inside her head telling her to run for her life, but she decided for once not to listen to that voice. All of her life she had lived as a coward and would have run at the first sign of danger. Now that she was a Typhra, she decided that she would never run again.

         Kyria walked to the center of the battlefield with feet that felt like they were made of lead, but she forced herself to continue. She had to find the cause of this battle, if there even was one.  Among the dead bodies of fallen comrades and friends, even some that had been considered family, was a single man with torn flesh and broken bones. He knelt in the very center of the corpses, sitting on his knees directly on the dividing line between the corpses of friends and those of enemies.

         The Typhra woman moved over to the kneeling man, keeping a hand upon the hilt of the sword strapped to her back. The man swayed forwards and backwards, holding himself protectively in his own arms that were covered in dried blood and grey dirt. He spoke to himself in a hushed tone, reciting some form of a forgotten prophecy that made no sense to Kyria even when she stopped moving to listen closely.

         “Come to the throne of the Sundering Sun, o ye faithful, and drown in the pleasure that is fire and torment. Sacrifice yourselves upon his altar and he will deliver unto you a prince born of ashes and war. He will take up the sword of man and the crown of the dead, and he will smite down all who oppose him. A hundred-year war will be waged under his name which will rupture the very fabrics of the Void, and the sky will turn red with the fury of the gods. Humans shall be born unto the world as the redeemers of this world’s foolishness, and the Elves of Legend shall be trampled beneath their steel boots of military and magic. Weep, o ye faithful, for your children shall witness no other pity or comfort than those of the tears you shed for them.”

         The man then plunged a concealed dagger into his own stomach and twisted. No scream rose up from the man as he killed himself, but his eyes revealed to Kyria the sorrow and pain of what he had just witnessed. Thunder cracked and roared in the distance as the man fell to the ground, his hands finally releasing the dagger that was stuck in his gut.

         Kyria knelt down and brushed her hand over the man’s open eyes, closing them and muttering a blessing under her breath. Once the blessing had been recited, she watched as vines decorated with black thorns rising up from the ground and wrapping around the man’s corpse. The very ground seemed to starve for mortal flesh as it opened up without a sound beneath the man, the vines dragging the corpse into the depths of Aarim where only the foolish or brave dared to travel. Sighing, Kyria stood up from the ground and sent off a small spark through the magical force surrounding her. Moments later and three of her kin formed before her, spawning in the form of shadows but quickly and seamlessly taking the shape of mortal men and woman.

         The female knelt between the two men before Kyria, holding the sword at her waist in both hands. The men wore cloaks that seemed to be made of the shadows that they had formed from, each one wielding a weapon foreign to this country. One, the man to the right of the woman, wore a chain covered in barbs around his entire body with a small blade linked to each end of the chain. The other man, to the left of the woman, wore a cloak that seemed to bulky for his body and build, and in fact it was made to conceal the several swords linked to chains hidden inside of the cloak.

         “I demand to know what the man meant by what he said.” Kyria commanded her superiors, but the Typhra believed that the less fear you have, the more power you are capable of controlling. Kyria was most likely sealing her place as a top-ranking Krhon Typhra by commanding her superiors for information that even her own father probably should not know.  With a second spark of magic, she sent the words that she had heard into the ears of the other three still kneeling before her.

         “We…we do not know, Typhra.” The woman answered, hesitating to tell the truth but telling it nonetheless as is required in the Typhra. She looked up at Kyria with eyes wider than usual, and then looked away from her for showing her own emotions. Both of those were signs of weakness, and it was possible that what she said might have been a lie.

         Kyria drew her sword off of her back and slashed at an angle too quick for any of the three before her could stop, and the head of the woman fell to the ground. Her body, seconds later, went limp and collapsed to the ground as well. Only a single drop of blood stained Kyria’s perfectly sharp blade, and she cleaned it off with her tongue. “I do not accept lies, men.” She told them, sheathing her sword.