Once Lost Now Found
A scorching heat singed his hair, irritated his skin with a stinging fury and burnt the loose threads on his cloak as another fireball soared by with a shrilling shriek. Godsdamned hunters. Kaelys beckoned to his inner fire to channel a spell of his own with his Blessing. An inferno erupted to life within his breast as a familiar warmth rose into his neck and poured down his legs. The once stinging fury of his irritated skin dulled until it was nothing more than a prickling annoyance as his divine energy converged in his palms.
Kaelys overlapped his hands, but the shockwave of flaming splinters and shattered stone created by another fireball crashing into what was once a brick-and-mortar bakery threw the indyl sage to the ground. Plumes of smoke and clouds of dust choked the air in his lungs while the raining ash and soot watered his eyes. A flash of serrated white that tore across the black storm clouds looming overhead was followed by an echoing crack of thunder. It would rain soon, and he had to hurry.
A blunt, thumping pain greeted Kaelys when he placed his gloved left hand on the remains of a broken brick wall. His lips curled into a snarl, and he muttered a curse. Wet warmth moistened his hand, but it wasn’t until the outline of a bloody handprint was revealed when he pressed his hand into the stone with enough force to push himself back to his feet that reason for the warmth was made clear to him. A sharp, boiling pain pierced his arm like a dagger driven into his flesh when Kaelys pulled his arm away from the bloody monument.
How dare they?
It wasn’t the pain Kaelys resented, but rather the crimson gash in his cloak. Not only were the black and silver colors he wore a representation of the God-King Zarian himself, but the silks and satins of his multilayered cloak and jerkin were only bestowed upon the most fervent followers of the precepts. The proof of his deserved honor, and the symbol of the pride he took in his life’s work, was Zarian’s insignia, a majestic and mighty winged bull, embroidered in silver on his jerkin. That someone such as he should be injured was borderline heresy, but that the God-King’s garb could ever be desecrated in this manner was nothing short of blasphemy.
The thumping pain beat against his skull every time his heart beat, and Kaelys uttered another curse to himself. A powerful, howling wind slammed into him with the force of a rampaging bear when a tornado roared into life in the center of town. Unwilling to allow his attire to be marred further, Kaelys unfurled a swift burst of fire behind him to counteract the burst of wind seeking to displace him. His lips tugged at the corner of his mouth until Zarian’s devout servant was smirking at the proof of his Lord’s supremacy.
Pebbles and other loose sediments rattled about as a rumbling tremor shook the ground. His feet widened to brace for the inevitable impact from whatever was about to happen. A bead of sweat stung his eye and his chest tightened with uncertainty. Then, it happened. A spire of jagged stone that eclipsed any other structure in the town jettisoned out of the earth with such speed and ferocity that the wind sang a piercing scream. Kaelys lifted his good arm in front of his face in a vain attempt to protect himself from the screeching wind that cut at him.
His divine energy exploded with righteous indignation in response to his rising need to punish those who would sin against the God King by engulfing everything within five feet of him in a dome of blazing fire. This sanctified demonstration of his zealous fealty reduced lumber to cinders, nullified the heretical winds, and left the stone burning. Now, with the luster of his divine energy proving the legitimacy of his cause, Kaelys cauterized his wound and ran his gloved hands through his clean-cut walnut brown hair. Those heathens think they can do as they wish simply because some senseless beast is running amuck. He took a step forward. We’ll see just how brazen they are after they suffer the God-King’s hallowed wrath.
Another bolt of white ripped across the blackened clouds above. Another bout of booming thunder followed soon after. Rain would fall soon, and its arrival would wash away the trail that led him to that backwater town; and that was unacceptable. However, the admonishment of the dissidents would be as swift and fierce as a flame spreading across wild brush.
Before the hunters’ carelessness reduced the town to smoldering piles of brick and thatch, it was a nice enough place, even if it was located out in the middle of Accdor’s vast jungle. He walked past the tavern he stayed in the night before, which was now nothing more than ruins of billowing smoke. Its ale was stale and the service lackluster, but surely it deserved a better fate than that. Even the treasury up the road on his right was now a broken, hollow husk. But perhaps a small blessing might be found within the chaos. After all, travel wears the purse as much as the body, and surely a few chance coins spilled into the weathered dirt road wouldn’t be missed; especially considering that they would be spent serving sacred purpose.
Storms of wind and stone continued their assault on the ravaged settlement as Kaelys came closer to encroaching on the bedlam with every step he took, until at last he saw them. Two hunters. One a renkyl dwarf. The other, a tíra macaw. Both wore the flat black leather and shimmering steel those who killed for The Den were known for.
Far and away the most noticeable aspect of the dwarf was his hair and beard, which wasn’t saying all that much considering how lackluster he seemed otherwise. Each thick gray strand looked as steel wire, tied together in braids and bound by ornate sapphire clamps. The dwarf wore a long-sleeved black linen shirt under a coat of pale chainmail with a black cuirass over it. His hands wore black gauntlets with steel casings attached to each finger, that looked almost like claws, in a way. Bladed steel bracers protected his forearms and greaves strapped to his shins did the same for his legs. There was nothing in his right hand, except for a faint brown aura that Kaelys recognized as earth attuned divine energy. So, he’s readying a spell, is he? Ha! As if that matters once I show him the unadulterated glory of the God-King’s Blessing. His left hand wielded a hammer whose head looked like nothing more than a rectangular slab of stone slapped onto a handle that trailed a few inches beyond his grip, if even that. How is that THING considered a weapon? Surely even they have standards.
The macaw humanoid, sadly, was as impressionable as her portly companion, which was to say that she wasn’t at all. Her vibrant teal chest feathers and cadmium wings held massive potential, which was weighed down by the drab, age-worn garb she clad herself in. The linen shirt, chainmail, cuirass and pants she wore matched her comrade’s attire. However, unlike the renkyl, the tíra’s hands bore no gauntlets nor did her feet bear the burden of boots. Instead, her talons were free to carve into anyone she set her sights on. The twin daggers strapped to her waist were yet unsheathed, as was the longsword fastened to her back.
With the philistine hunters now in sight, Kaelys indulged in the zealotry of his cause and stepped forward.
A white bolt flashed, but it did not tear across the darkened sky. No, it sheared through the heavens until it slammed into the earth some five yards in front of the hunters with enough explosive force to upend chunks of compacted dirt and stone within ten yards of the point of impact. Another burst of compressed air raced out in every direction, destroying every tree and building it came across. Thankfully, the macaw tíra conjured her own wall of wind with a flap of her wings which dispersed the compressed air enough to render it nothing more than a slight breeze by the time it reached him.
When the immediate aftermath of the impact passed, an amorphous mass of white electricity rose into the air until it hovered a foot or two above the hunters.
“By Zarian, it’s an elemental,” Kaelys shouted as his heartrate soared to match the intensity of the situation he found himself in.
“Oh great,” the dwarf said with a heavy, granular voice. “Another civ dirtying his britches.”
Kaelys lifted his hand to point at the renkyl, but before he had the time to speak a flash of white light blinded him. Something hard and rough latched onto his ankles and pulled. Unable to overcome the pressure or keep his balance, a rush of air pushed against him before a dull thud slammed into his back and everything went black.
The world returned to him when he opened his eyes and gasped a short time later. Each pound of his throbbing headache felt as if someone was crushing his skull with a hammer. His ears rang and his vision was blurred, but none of that stopped him from sitting upright when he recalled what happened in the moments before his loss of consciousness.
No one was in front of him anymore. At least, he was pretty sure that the hunters were no longer there, but it was difficult to say for certain since everything around him was out of focus. That said, even if he couldn’t see straight the intense luminosity of the nebulous light was impossible to overlook.
The ground shook. His ringing ears quieted. Images came back into focus. Time slowed for a moment as the plumes of smoke around him crawled to a halt. They then rose at a pace beyond his understanding before finally slowing down to a natural speed. A loud grunt, then a strained shout to his left preceded a flash. The air above where he sat cackled before a raucous BOOM forced Kaelys to cover his ears.
If I were standing, then . . .
Kaelys grit his teeth and unleashed a wave of divine energy as his fist slammed into the ground, swallowing his surroundings with furious flame.
No! I am not some sniveling child to be scolded and protected by the likes of them! I am Kaelys Cintallus, Sage of the Order Everlasting! Tasked by the Sancorus Maximus himself with finding our neoteric Prime!
The swirling flames of his inner fire grew ever more tempestuous as the sage’s anger deepened until he stood and shouted, which allowed the sweltering magic to erupt into a conflagration that devoured everything in sight.. Everything burned. Everything fell before his wrath until naught but ash and cinders remained. Buildings of stone vanished in an instant, while those of wood fed the manifestation of his prideful rage. All that remained was a stone wall to his left that spanned hundreds of yards in either direction and stood at least ten feet tall. A desire to eradicate that testament of blatant defiance churned within his breast. But, as Kaelys lifted his hand to cast the spell that would achieve the task, the wall collapsed back into the earth and the dwarf, who stood on the other side, was looking at him.
“Gotten it out of your system then, have you?” he dropped his shoulders. “Guess not then. By the Stone, must all you fiery sort be so testy all the time?”
“Gravelheart,” the macaw humanoid said with an amplified booming voice that descended from somewhere above them.
“Yeah, yeah,” the renkyl named Gavelheart said as he drove his left foot into the ground, which led to a boulder twice his size ripping itself out of the earth near him and hurling itself into the sky. “I don’t rightly know what your tantrum’s about, but as you yourself said we have an elemental to deal with. And let me tell you something. This ain’t no ordinary one either. There’s something. . . wrong about it.” He shook his head. “Point is, I don’t have time to deal with your theatrics right now, so either point the light show at the beast or get the hells out of here.”
Each word the dwarf said served as nothing more than kindling for the broiling anger his inner fire grew into, but there was something about this Gravelheart that kept Kaelys’ words stuck in his throat. It wasn’t fear, far from it. No, it was something else, and it wasn’t coming from within him. Whatever it was had to do with the renkyl. His stern, stoic and callous expression remained the same from the moment the dwarf lowered his wall to the moment he waited for Kaelys to answer him.
But, that wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense. The sanctimonious tempest born of his deific edict still burned unmitigated and unchecked behind him. Outside of Kaelys himself, its deific majesty was all that remained for Gravelheart to see, but regardless of this truth, the renkyl’s indifference remained unmarred.
How?
Fragmented shards of flaming stone crashed into the earth around them.
“Fire?” Kaelys asked after choking down a yelp.
“I told you this thing ain’t normal,” the dwarf said. “If anyone other than Skyshard were up there right now you’d be dead before you wrapped your head around this. That said, this hunt is a two-man affair, so can I get back to my job or are you going to burn down the entire jungle if I turn my back to you?”
“I,” Kaelys said as he tried to find the words to encapsulate the brazen disrespect and sheer lack of reverence displayed by Gravelheart. “You!”
The sky flashed a blinding white again. But instead of being caught unawares like he was earlier, Kaelys lifted his good arm over his head and channeled his rampaging divine energy into a fiery ward. His shield appeared ten yards above him and arched downward like a dome. Less than a second later a surge of electrical transgression collided with his spell. A squealing shriek equivalent to the shrill of one-thousand banshees all but deafened him, but it was going to take more than mere sound to crack his defenses.
Gravelheart maintained his emotionless stare as the mounting pressure of repelling the raw surging power of an elemental started to take its toll. His chest grew heavier with each breath he took. Every second that passed saw his limbs become all that much harder to move. It was as if his body was slowly turning to stone and nowhere was this more evident than in the arm that was raised over his head. Kaelys spent his life honing his innumerable talents with the finest instructors and endless hours venerating Zarian with pure piety. So then, how was it possible for a prodigal son of the most powerful deity in the pantheon who has claimed the most prestigious background imaginable to experience what it meant to exercise effort?
It simply didn’t make sense. But, despite that fact, the unrelenting pressure of the amorphous mass of white lightning drove Kaelys to the point of exhaustion. Then, something miraculous happened. The relentless onslaught of downward pressure that sought to hammer him into the earth like a stake relented. It was a slight reprieve, but the only one he needed to bolster his confidence enough to push back against the force. At first the conflict was a stalemate, but a few short precious seconds later his surge of divine energy repelled the hostile power and the pressure pushing against his ward vanished.
A fit of delirious laughter took hold as he exhaled sharply and took a long deep breath. However, the lapse in concentration disrupted the flow of divine energy powering his ward, and the small holes that appeared were large enough for the elemental to slip through.
Gravelheart pressed his palms together and all manner of stone from the grains of dirt in dust to what chunks of brick remained flew towards the elemental. The nebulous mass of electrical energy shot around the battlefield in a series of disorienting white flashes, but no matter where the elemental appeared the volley of earthen projectiles pursued it. A pair of lightning bolts targeted the sage and hunter, but a column of swirling wind intercepted them. The spiraling gust pulled against him but resisting it was easy enough with the proper footing. Fierce hissing rang out as the bolts branched out into a sprawling network of misshapen white lines that looked like cracks on a pane of glass.
A stern gust preceded Skyshard landing near Gravelheart. The two hunters nodded at each other, but in the instant they took their eyes off the elemental each strand of sprawling electricity trapped in the column of wind broke free and launched themselves at the duo like a storm of arrows fired by a battalion of archers. Kaelys pressed his palm against the fragmented earth and conjured a wall of flame, but his efforts were thwarted when an array of bolts transformed from strands of electricity into streams of water.
“What?” Kaelys asked in disbelief as his wall burst into a cloud of steam.
A harsh rain bombarded the battlefield as the elemental, now a mass of blue-gray water, assaulted Kaelys with three watery tentacles. The ground in front of him rose to form a barrier that he dove behind as the tendrils crashed into it. Skyshard crossed her arms across her chest before throwing them back down to her sides to reveal a pair of swirling whips she now held in her taloned hands. Then, with a flap of her wings she flew towards the elemental with the speed and grace of a bird soaring through the sky. Many of the raindrops that hit the ground grew into additional aqueous limbs that attacked her, but the tíra answered every lash with slashes of her own without slowing down.
Mounds of earth cobbled together to form three golems. Each stood at around twice his height and engaged with the three serpentine constructs that slithered towards each member of the trio. Hydrous fangs bit into earthen necks, and boulder fists clobbered liquid scales. The dust and stone that pursued the elemental back when it was made of lightning eroded into sediment, but sediment that floated throughout its main body, if an ever-changing blob of elemental mass could be classified as a body. Either way Gravelheart used the muddy remnants of his previous spell to tear each appendage off the main form.
“Now,” the renkyl shouted. “Threaten its main body with that there fire magic of yours to force it to form shift and pray we don’t get something even worse.”
Without so much as a word or a nod Kaelys motioned his hands to encircle the elemental with four flaming columns. Each column equaled the stature of the golems and arched as they stretched ever higher until they converged directly above the water elemental.
“Quick,” Gravelheart shouted. “I can’t hold it still for much longer.”
Kaelys clenched his fist as tightly as he could and threw his arm down to his side which caused the mass of converging fire to blast the elemental with a beam of concentrated hellfire. Flames spewed beyond the boundaries of the columns and the air hissed and cackled as all the moisture in the ground and air evaporated. Seething clouds of steam rushed forth as the now arid earth cracked and crumbled under the strain of his exalted heat.
His resplendent flames blipped in three locations and something drove his left shoulder back with such force that it drug him away from his spell until his back slammed into a remnant of debris. Whatever it was that struck his left shoulder pierced his flesh and dug through his tendons and bone until it carved its way out of his back. Pain and blood oozed in equal measure as his once sanctified vestments suffered the profanation of being desecrated by his own blood. Yes, a nigh indescribable pain straight from the blazing hell devoured his shoulder and spread further throughout his body with every passing second, but it was the betrayal of his blood that almost brought Kaelys to tears.
Heavy, panic ridden breaths overcame him as Kaelys touched the crystalline javelin protruding out of his arm. The simple act of grabbing the shimmering gemstone and tugging it drove the sage to the brink of madness. Sweat poured down his face as readily as rain drops cascade down from the canopy during a storm. His arm grew cold and numb. His vision blurred before returning to normal.
With what was left of his dwindling strength, Kaelys returned his attention to the battlefield. However, instead of spending the last of his reserves pleading with Gravelheart and Skyshard for aid, a foreign power beyond his conceptual understanding took root within his breast and bloomed in an instant. It was something, cold, dark, primitive and. . .primordial? Whatever it was, it ravaged his senses until all he could do was unfurl a guttural, bloodcurdling scream fortified by all of the effort every fiber of his being could muster.
Afterall, how could he do anything other than scream at the sight of Skyshard crucified against a diamond obelisk? Blood that flowed from the javelins impaling her skull, wrists, chest and ankles painted the pillar with majestic horror. But, how could that be? She was a hunter of The Den, the mercenary guild that only accepted the strongest fighters and molded them into legends capable of slaying any foe, be they man or beast. How could someone like her be bested by an elemental? And, if that monster could kill a hunter, then what was going to happen to him?
“No! Please stop,” a young human girl, no older than eight, shouted as she ran onto the battlefield. The indyl child wore tattered rags covered in stains and littered with holes. Her silver hair flowed with an opulent radiance and resplendence that defied description. Just who was this girl and what was the source of that mysterious air about her? She ran towards the prismatic elemental who was holding a skewered Gravelheart at the end of one of its crystalline arms. “Please, you have to stop.”
The desperate innocence of her plea roused a ravaging rage within Kaelys, but with his body itself being ravaged as it was, his borderline animalistic desire to help this strange young indyl could only thrash around in his mind as he sat with a crystalline javelin pinning his shoulder to a piece of shattered debris.
She cried out again as prismatic stalagmites grew from Gravelheart’s flesh like a fungus, but instead of crying out himself, the hunter grabbed the arm impaling him with one hand and swung his hammer with the other. Each BANG of the hammer striking diamond echoed with the ferocity of thunder, but even that was not enough as the steel cracked with every blow until it shattered into pieces. More stalagmites protruded from various parts of his body as the renkyl rebelled, but it seemed to do little to dissuade him from continuing the fight as he gripped the handle’s hilt like a shank and lifted his arm to stab the elemental.
It was at that moment that the crystalline monster struck the dwarf with an upwards vertical slash from its other arm. Time froze for a moment until a fountain of blood signaled the beginning of the corpse’s separation as the left half of Gravelheart’s body fell. The sight of the renkyl’s internal organs still sitting inside the right half of his body would have had Kaelys vomiting in a heartbeat, if he still possessed the capacity to do so. A sickening series of clinks slithered into his ears when the left side of the hunter’s body smashed into pieces upon striking the ruined earth. Kaelys wanted nothing more than for the nightmare to end, but instead it replayed as the right side of Gravelheart’s body slid off the prismatic arm and shattered against the ground. To make matters worse, if that was still somehow possible at that point, the girl’s constant cries and sobs only added to the horror and his own pathetic uselessness.
I am a Sage of the Order Everlasting! How could I be rendered all but inept at a time like this? If my Blessing, if Zarian’s almighty power has failed me, then what was the point of it all? Was I truly born to simply die here? Is my fate truly to be an obsolete footnote in history? No, I can’t, I WON’T believe that. There MUST be some higher purpose for my life. Please, my liege, my god, my king SHOW me. Show me the purpose of my life so that I may serve you as I always have. Please, I don’t want to die here.
The crystalline contsruct turned to stand in front of the young girl. The child?
“No, get back, stay away!” the silver-haired indyl shouted as she scurried away from the elemental until she tripped over a loose stone and fell. The creature advanced. “No, stop!”
The sentinel continued. “Please,” she said.
It slowed to a stop when it stood in front of her. A prismatic arm rose heavenward like a sanctified guillotine poised to administer god’s judgment. It dropped.
“I SAID STOP!” the girl bellowed in a deep and heavy tone that was not from this world.
In less than an instant a holy violet hellfire beyond comprehension erupted like a volcano powered by the very heart of creation itself. The power and authority of the purple flames was absolute, and Kaelys smiled.
“YES!” he said, despite not having the energy to speak. “Yes, I understand now. Thank you for entrusting this most sacred task to me, the humblest and most devoted of your servants! Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you! I swear upon my very soul to see your Will be done!”
The black storm clouds were the first to feed the violet flames. Next was the sky, which was no longer blue, but instead a burning purple worthy of displaying divine providence. The surrounding jungle, unworthy as it was, vanished before regal authority. Stone, wood, brick, thatch, wind, earth, water, diamond. None of it mattered before the true manifestation of the God-King’s Will, and it all melted away.
A happiness and splendor that matched the existential intensity of the Everlasting Flame overwhelmed Kaelys when the crystalline javelin pinning him down bubbled and burst whilst he remained unscorched. Tears of joy flowed freely down his face as Kaelys got on his knees, lifted his head and extended his arms. All around him the world burned, melted and was otherwise vaporized and erased due to the unimpeachable might of the iridescent flames, and yet he, and far more importantly, the indyl girl with silver hair, remained unharmed.
Her pained sobs were a slight against Zarian himself, and as His chosen acolyte, it was Kaelys’ God-given responsibility to be the salve for her current wounds and her shield against any future blasphemes. To that end, the sage stood up and walked through the violet apocalypse with the certainty only true faith and conviction could produce. Air and moisture trapped within the bubbling earth he strutted through burst through a crack beneath his feet which caused another explosion of violet flames, but such trivialities were beneath him now and he continued towards the crying girl undisturbed.
Kaelys kneeled next to the child and took the greatest of care when he placed his hand on her shoulder. “Ssh, it’s alright. You no longer have a reason to cry.”
The girl flinched when he first touched her, but she did not pull away from him. Instead, she turned towards him and stared at him with her shimmering violet eyes.
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she said.
Kaelys wiped the child’s tears away and said, “Don’t worry. There is nothing that can hurt you anymore.”
