The Secret histories

The wind howls. Lightning streaks across the sky, a portent backdrop of the four figures who stand against me at the top of a lighthouse whose flame has long since died.

One-by-one, they all collapse and fall to their knees. Only I and the human remain standing. Rain pelts my onyx armor, the crimson detailing mixing with the blood of my felled enemies. Sparks of familiar electric-blue lightning arc off my helm. I remove it, letting it fall to the ground.

"The world will know about you soon enough!" he calls against the shrieking wind. He readies the Vorpahl blade against me. I can see it enchanted with the magic of the Dusk Lands. I can feel its aura break pitifully against me.

"The sin is not in being outmatched, but in failing to recognize it." My last plea.

I let him move forward. My sword at my side.

He does not stop.

I let him strike against my armor. My sword at my side.

He does not stop.

His other hand glows with black-and purple light. I slam into him with a single, armored fist. I melt his armor away. I can feel his bones shatter. I can smell death coming for him soon.

The man falls to the stone of the lighthouse and tries to breathe through broken lungs. He looks at the elven woman behind him. They have matching lockets. The light left her eyes a few moments ago. She did not stop, either.

The mortally wounded man tries to crawl towards the elf. His story is coming to an end soon. His thread in this world has become undone. And I envy him.

"You are right about one thing, brave knight."

He puts his hand on the dead elf. How many more times would they make me kill?

"In time, the world know about me. In time, they will learn the tragic extent of my failings."

I place my sword onto his back. And I give him time. He was with her. The first day they met. A full moon, by a small stream, where Aslea itself parted the way between the worlds. I let him die there.

And then I was alone again. At the top of the lighthouse.

I pull The Watch out. The moments tick past slowly.

It was never supposed to be this way.

I wait. Hoping to hear him again.

You were wrong. I was not ready. None of us were. Every choice I make is the wrong one. You always had him by your side. But I am alone.

The Watch remains warm in my hand, time sifting through it, through all of Aslea. There is no response.

I am alone.

I pick my helm back up. I let the rain wash the blood off my sword. I disappear into the weave of Aslea, back to Tel'Terra, back to the only home I have ever known.

I stand near the ocean. I am at the precipice of a great cliff. The rocky faces are a silvery white. The smell of salt water and lavender swirls about me. The sky is a sullen grey, as if wreathed in perpetual rainfall. The grass around me is vibrant and luscious, glowing with the light of the muted sun that pierces through the hazy sky.

The sound of the ocean waves crashing against the rock surface has an almost…hypnotizing trance to it. The water is like liquid mercury as it slowly pools down from the rock face and back into the ocean.

Looking further out, I see the world enveloped by a mist, a slight drizzle slowly masking the features of the land.

I look down at my friend. She smiles back up at me. It's a sad smile. I know she's scared.

"Where did the mountains go?" I look around and I cannot see them through the mist.

"The mountains disappeared a century ago. Every day, it gets harder and harder for me to see."

"How much time do we have left?"

"A few centuries. Maybe a millenia. It's very hard for me to tell." She was worried she had failed me.

I looked at into the ocean. "Can you show me?"

She hesitated. I could tell she had already looked. She stepped forward and raised her hands, and the ocean followed. The waves shimmered and turned to glass. Images swirled about. Visions of our future. Aslea's future. Every passing moment my hope faded, but I did not let my friend see.

"Millions will oppose you, if they find out. All the realms of Aslea may unify to stop you."

"There's no other way. I have to protect them from what is to come."

I turned to give my friend an embrace, to let her know she wasn't alone. The hurt in her eyes stopped me.

"You sound just like him."

I gazed out into the ocean as the images shifted behind her. I saw the man with the glass face reading a book on his couch. The glass would shatter and rearrange, his face a twisting mask of fractured reflections. He paused and looked up. Turning to face us, as if he could see through the Sovereign's magic.

"Be careful, my friend." Her hands were clasped worriedly.

I nodded. She would never understand.

I stand at the top of the darkened lighthouse, overlooking a beautiful coast. The peaceful town of Svaha in the distance. Was I making a mistake? I do not know who else to go to.

I conjure The Watch and observe its perfectly synchronized ticks. Sometimes it felt as if I would break apart into grains of sand, and drift into the watch, falling and falling, endlessly.

I command the lighthouse to open. A darkened, twisting stairwell leads down. Down to the heart. The only place I could think of to possibly contain the pieces of TANIS.

I could see his shattered face.

I could see him smiling at me in Adagio, hugging me. You fixed me! I remember the joy in his voice. The simple happiness. I remember my own smile slowly spreading on my face, thinking that perhaps maybe I would be able to do all of this after all.

But TANIS had meddled with the flow of Time far too much, and for far too long. There can be no creation without equivalent exchange. His debt came due, and I could not help him.

I do not remember descending the staircase. Or approaching him at his desk.

But there I stood. TANIS sitting in front of me. His desk resplendent with scrolls, tomes, and books, all of which contained empty pages.

I could not risk TANIS learning anything new. Somehow, a Stormheart had found their way into his Lighthouse. He now knew what powerful bloodlines the elemental planes were able to create. A consequence of magic which did not exist during his time. Before I created the Keystones.

The window behind his desk was open. There was falling snow. He had always been fond of the snow. A fire crackled soothingly behind him.

"You saw it too, then? The specter which walks between the worlds? Sometimes I am amazed at what this world is able to fabricate."

His serene voice did not match the latent malice which emanated from his eyes. The way he carried himself. His face was a reflection of me. I could see my own worry. Broken. Forever? The glass shifted and he spoke again. 

"There's nothing you can do...alone. But perhaps you and I together. We could figure something out. All you need to do is, let me out."

"I came to see if you were...well again." As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I had made a mistake.

His tone suddenly matched the dark energy exuding from him. He glared at me. "Well? As if I am something broken in need of fixing? Do you know where you'd be if it weren't for me?" The lighthouse trembled and I could feel it drawing more magic from Aslea's core, keeping TANIS imprisoned.

"Leave Coronius. While I still allow it."

The Watch flared into bright light. I place my hand over it. I speak to it in my mind, "It's alright, my friend. We will figure something else out. We always do." The light dimmed, and the peaceful ticking resumed.

I nod at TANIS and ascend the staircase back to the top of the lighthouse, wondering, hoping, and praying it never falls.

I cannot sleep. There is an aching in my body. A stinging in my head. A chorus of whispering voices in the back of my mind.

I look over at my Circlet. It lay dormant. It would tell me if someone were here. If someone were watching me. If the voices belonged to someone else.

They had to.

I leave my bed and don my armor, affixing my sword to my back. I pull The Watch out and stare at the ethereal cogs moving inside. The Watch is warm. It glows. I have yet to be able to read its moods and desires.

I adjust the dials on The Watch, turn the time back, and leave Tel'Terra.

I arrive in Adagio the second I leave Tel'Terra. I am standing in the middle of the Great Library. The insignia on the floor lights up upon my arrival. Seven Towers…or…was it already alight? I look around slowly and see nothing. My circlet remained quiet. No one is here.

A soft breath exhales in my mind, a dying gasp.

I have been hearing those more. Dying…gasps. Soft slithers in the night. Harsh consonants when I am around the forge.

It was only around TANIS when everything was quiet. My fear? Or something more?

The floor moves apart. I descend the staircase to the crystalline nexus below. The Heart of Adagio.

I pass fractured moments in Time and paradoxical twistings in Space. I follow the light of The Watch and I remain safe. A mantra I had to repeat every time I visited Adagio.

The ever present Mist that envelopes this city tries to cling to me, lashing out harmlessly against the protective aura of the small timepiece in my hands.

I finally reach the twisted gem that reaches from floor to ceiling, its crystalline roots growing to all the seven towers of Adagio. I walk closer, and I see the millions of hairline fractures. The Ark'Eld wasn't working. I hear laughing. I turn around. The Moment in my hand. There is no one there.

I ascend the spiral staircase, My hand on the railing, cold to the touch. The abandoned mansion was at the center of so many of my memories. Back when I thought I was a mortal. Back when I was only a stoneshaper. I arrive at the top of the staircase and stare at the simple wooden door, with a red rug leading to it.

The same it had always been. The same it would always be.

I open the door and stepped into the infinite corridor. A never ending hallway of wooden doors, with a simple red rug lining the center. Electric blue ghost light floated in between each door on both sides.

I set off on the path I had long since memorized, going between doors, hallways, doors, hallways, knowing what lurked behind the walls of the corridor, waiting for me to open the wrong door.

I eventually find myself in front of a non-descript door, with no red rug leading to it. Just a stone-floor, tinged with green light.

I enter the chamber. Where it all began. When I stole The Watch so long ago.

The sand sparks with green lightning, arcing to the ceiling of the domed, rock-hewn room. It swirls harmlessly around me. I greet it as an old friend.

I am in front of the dias, the lone object in the room.

I look around the empty room. Devoid of the glow of life which used to abound.

What did you want? What was it all for? All those games… All the trials… Why did you leave me a dying world? Did you know?

I pull the watch out of  my robes. It ticks slowly, comforting me, its warmth spreading across my entire body.

There wasn't a response. There never was.

I used to think he was watching me. Guiding me. Ready to help me, should I fail.

I do not think that anymore.  He is gone. And I am all that stands between Aslea and chaos.

I approach the throne slowly. Cautiously. It had been so long since I came to the Abyss. There is a deep, primordial fear inside me. The remnants of the mortal I was.

She sits upon the heap of ashe, bones, and torment. Smiling at me, her stark white teeth in contrast to her fiery red skin. Upon a pair of twisted horns of shadow sat a crown of yellow wildflowers.

"Mordoth."

 I greeted her. Respect, but no deference.

She flicked her wrists and the dark specters around me fade into nothingness, dismissed.

"To what do I owe this…delicious pleasure to. I have abided by your accords, O Great Arbiter," she bows in an exaggerated, mocking movement. I could hear the barely concealed rage beneath her rosy, pear-shaped tones.

"You have. Yet not a week goes by I or my Knights or the Sillwatchers slay yet another demon. Surely the Great Mordoth is aware of the intrusions into the material world?"

She giggled. It sounded like a demonic knife shearing through bloodied steel.

"I am but a humble Lord of this…simple circle… What could I possibly know that the Great Arbiter does not?"

I could not hide my surprise in time.

"Yes, my dear little Dragon. I know why you are actually are. I know what has caused you to venture forth from your kingdom of clockwork. I know why you approach me alone, instead of with the full Host of the Ark. Every day I feel your mistake growing beneath our feet."

She walked toward me and stopped within arm's reach. Mordoth was never unlike the others. She had never feared me.

My words were failing me. How many knew?

"You know…before you sealed off your precious children to "protect" them from us… Aslea was in balance. Symmetrical. A cycle of life and death, energy and entropy. Magic and souls. Do you have ANY idea what your Ark'Eld has done to this realm, Coronius."

She spat my name. I felt a vice grip around my chest, the power of Onomancy. Ancient magic of true names, lost to most.

Before I could command it to stop, The Watch flared into brilliant, protective golden light, blasting Mordoth and sending her careening across the throne room. It created a gate, rending the Ark'Eld open, and sent me back to Tel'Terra.

// Excerpt from a scroll entitled "The Llialen Apocrypha" found in lockbox stolen from the Amenthyian Guild //

Long ago, before the era of men, dwarves, elves, or even the elementals themselves, a formless sentience drifted through the infinite aether. With every movement it

made, new moments swirled around it. When the thing stopped, the moments stopped. The aether was frozen.

It traveled through the void, aimlessly. Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

Where it moved, moments moved. Where it stood still, everything was static. Until eventually it realized it was quite alone. However, the thing thought, perhaps

because it is very dark and I cannot see other things. I shall become whole. With eyes so I may see. And light to guide my way.

A golden light swirled around the formless sentience, binding it to the Aether. A form appeared. A boundary. You could call it humanoid, though the description would be bereft.