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THE NIGHTMARE YOU HAD

The nightmare always felt real, no matter how many times it tormented young Erlorn.  

He was lost in darkness. Worse, he was hunted. 

A whisper at first, soon sounding like a chant floating upon the chill air. Erlorn strained his eyes against the dark. First, nothing. Soon, though, he could see within the murk a number of human-like forms of a deep obsidian color. Darker than the darkness about.

They—wraiths or ghosts or worse—approached. He was terrified. He knew them to be something ancient, something born from immortality.

Erlorn tried to run but there seemed no escape. They were everywhere he turned. His legs stiffened and froze. He struggled as the shadow-things closed from every direction. They chanted ever louder, a chant of ugly words that pierced his mind like icepicks.

He had to break free. He whipped his head about but spied naught but the endless dark. 

A hand, or something, fell on his shoulder. It held him fast.

“Draga aranta uho,” snarled a blur of black beside him. 

Erlorn trembled. The grasp upon him squeezed ever tighter and grew ever colder. His mouth moved but he could not speak.

The chanting continued. Soon, the ground beneath him crumbled, slowly giving way as though some enormous maw yawned beneath it.

Erlorn’s legs dangled above the ever-growing hole, but still the thing’s hand held him.

“Draga aranta uho,” it repeated, its voice a sick mixture of gurgle and growl. Erlorn felt sticky spittle on his cheek, but dared not try to identify it. 

The creature released its clutch.

Erlorn fell.

He fell and he fell, plummeting through a tight, seemingly bottomless hole. The tunnel seemed a living thing—its moist edges bloating then withdrawing with gasps and splatters of acrid goo. Things snatched at him from the fleshy membrane lining the hole. They tore through his skin, hurting and cutting and piercing him, but not slowing his descent. The air about him seemed to freeze as he fell. 

As he did, he sensed a growing and frightening presence of malice.

Hatred. Anger. 

Rage. 

And he felt that rage begin to swell within himself. He screamed.

Then he stopped, sensing only a frigid, silent darkness about him. That, and a palpable feeling of hate. The very worst kind, the kind he felt could only come from the heart of evil.

“Draga aranta uho,” he heard again, the sound of it from many voices and echoing about spaces unseen.

He calls you. Somehow, he knew their words now. 

He had changed…

Erlorn screamed again—or roared?—but the sound of it died inside him. But still he roared, his chest heaving and his mouth wide. He would roar his silent roar again and again and again. He would roar until…

***

He awoke. Sweat covered him and his woolen blanket stank of it. He pulled himself to a seat on the pallet in his featureless room, its bleak walls of stone interrupted only by the slit of a window filtering the frail light of dawn and a heavy oaken door that seemed invariably shut. Young Erlorn ran a long-fingered hand through brown hair soaked with the sweat covering the rest of him.

“The nightmare, child?” came a voice, a withered voice from an unseen corner of the room. “Tell me of the nightmare you had.”

Erlorn drew wet fingers from wet hair. “The same, Prefect Alfrin. The very same one. Just more vivid than before, like always.”

Erlorn heard Alfrin scratching upon parchment, knowing the prefect recorded the event, once again, in his journal. 

The scratching stopped. “You saw darkness all about, were surrounded by dark figures, and dropped into a dark hole. All the while you were told someone called you.”

“Yes, Prefect.”

Alfrin paused. “Who is it calling you?”

Erlorn shook his head, frustrated. “I know not, Prefect. Only that I sense great hatred.”

“Hatred.”

“Yes, Prefect.”

“Of you?”

Erlorn thought for a moment then heaved a sigh. “Hatred of everything.”

“Hmm.” More scribbling. “These must be quite disturbing to a boy of your age. Barely eleven years, correct?”

“Yes,” Erlorn said flatly. “And, yes, they are disturbing.”

Alfrin tapped a finger against the parchment. “Once, twice, thrice, again and again.  I’ve recorded thirty occurrences in just over six weeks,” he said softly, “and that doesn’t account for those you had before your brief time here at the Abbey.  How many times had you experienced the nightmare before coming here?”

“Another thirty nights or so, beginning just after I met the dying man at my family’s estate. All before I came here six weeks ago…” Erlorn had given a similar answer many times, but, once again, he heard Alfrin scribble in his book as though it were new information.

“Lector Elmas,” Alfrin said with a nod. “Lector Elmas was the man you found dying in your courtyard.”  

Erlorn shrugged, rubbing his eyes and squinting toward the old prefect in the room’s corner. Slowly Prefect Alfrin’s pale face, long nose, and thick hands became distinguishable from the dark gloom of his robes. 

“Why did he come there?” Erlorn asked.  “My father said he did not know him.”

Alfrin ceased his scribbling. “Such was, or is, his way—he foresaw a purpose.”  He scribbled again. “You’ve had other visions, haven’t you?”

Erlorn sat quietly. “I miss my family. Will I see them again?”

Prefect Alfrin again tapped his finger against the parchment. “Yes, yes. Certainly yes. But it is our discussion that matters now, Erlorn.  You must tell me of your other visions.”

Erlorn drew his narrow knees to his chest. He sighed.

“Other dreams, yes?  Or nightmares, rather?”

“Yes, Prefect. I’ve had others.”

The prefect set aside his journal. “Tell me, child.”

Erlorn swallowed. “Frightening things.”

“You are safe now,” Prefect Alfrin said. “Here, in the Abbey, your secrets are safe as well. That is what we do here, young Erlorn: We guard secrets. We guard secrets and we honor the goodness of Illienne the Light Eternal. Through Illienne your safety is assured.”

Erlorn thought on this but felt no comfort. He sucked in a deep breath but it did nothing to calm the tremor of fear that ran through him. “Blood. Many random imaginings of things I’ve never seen nor thought of before. Violence, death, and desecration. And a terrible feeling that I…” His voice faded as he recalled those horrid visions where blood covered his hands, where he had caused the carnage. But he wasn’t comfortable sharing that, not with the prefect. Not with anyone.

“Continue, Erlorn.”

Erlorn sniffled, rubbing at his dripping nose. “I never have any control over it.”

“Easy, child,” said Alfrin.  “Do not be troubled.  Remember, you are safe here.”

“I know, and I’ve told you all I can remember,” Erlorn said, giving an answer he knew to be false but hoped it would end the discussion.

Prefect Alfrin snapped shut his journal and arose. “I’ll ask no more questions this day, young Erlorn. Perhaps tonight’s dreams will reveal more.” He sniffed and shifted his robes. “I’ll have your breakfast sent shortly.”

Erlorn watched the prefect leave, then listened to the jingle of keys and the squeal of his room’s lock turning into place.  

And then he wept.

***

Karnag Mak Ragg pulled his steed to a halt and beheld a great canvas of death and destruction. Riverweave—a city he’d known long ago—smoldered in steamy ruin beneath the late afternoon sun. The stench of the dead hung upon the hot air. Corpses, many corpses, filled his view, bloated and ruined and clogging the streets and canals.

For an instant he wondered if the narrow-shouldered merchant who’d been his patron in the fighting pits had survived. He closed his eyes and observed possibilities becoming probabilities, probabilities becoming certainties.

Upon the atlas of fate Karnag witnessed the merchant burn, the thin, balding man screaming in a tangle of flames as his home caught fire from a nearby blaze.

Karnag opened his eyes and he smiled. The man was dead. The man who’d once sold Karnag to another for a handful of silver crowns after Karnag was wounded in the pits.  

I would not be defeated then, he thought. 

Nor will I be defeated now.

“Chieftains,” he growled. “To me.”

The twelve leaders of the Arranese tribes, already surrounding him, pulled nearer, their horses snorting and stamping upon the ash and bloody slop covering the thoroughfare. 

“My God-King?” said the nearest, a lean man with an angular face painted a flaking, splotchy white and a forehead sketched with a crow’s black wings.  “We await your command.”

God-King. Karnag smirked at the title, for he knew he had taken it from Thaydorne, strongest of the Sentinels. Karnag had severed Thaydorne’s head and then desecrated his corpse in the ancient way. After death Karnag had removed the fingers, one by one. Then the hands, the feet, the arms at the shoulders. And the innards were spilled then wrapped around it all before the whole of it was set aflame.

And thus Karnag had destroyed Thaydorne’s immortality.

Karnag swept aside his heavy braids and looked ahead through the steamy gloom. “We will reach Ironmoor, but, for now, the soldiers of Rune have gathered and fight like warriors. Still, we shall cleave through them like an executioner’s axe.” He turned and stared to the afternoon sky and the sun sinking toward evening. “We will rule the darkness. We will allow our allies to work the shadows and teach the warriors of Rune to fear the night anew.”

The chieftain—Anzak—nodded. “If it is your will, God-King, it will be so.” He paused, his face pensive. “I mean not to question, but I simply wonder. Will we face other God-Kings such as yourself? The Spider King had warned of it, but that was before you destroyed him.”

Karnag smiled. “None like me. But there will be others of my kind who will test us. However, I have foreseen future possibilities, and have stared deep into the darkest depths. I can say this with certitude: All things, even the immortal, must end. I intend to be the maker of that ending.”

“It shall come to pass, just as you say,” said Anzak. “We will act as your sword and your shield.”

Karnag sniffed and scanned about. Far away, he spied a stone structure, a building that would have been a rarity amidst the many-colored wooden homes and shops of Riverweave, most reduced now to blackened ruin. His eyes narrowed, for he knew the structure’s purpose. He turned his horse toward it and eased the beast forward.

“God-King?” called Anzak behind him. “Shall we—”

Karnag shook his head. “No. Remain with my army, all of you. Make certain it neither flags nor falters. I will rejoin you once darkness falls.”

***

Karnag thrust an arm into a nearby canal and retrieved a bloated corpse. This man had been an ugly thing, and death had done him no favors. He was clad in leather armor now on the verge of bursting, his lips purple and eyes bulging, and his skin the color of chalk.

“No matter,” Karnag muttered. “Better they be defiled by the grotesque.” He heaved the corpse upon his steed and remounted.

He looked again to the corpse, the bulbous eyes staring at what Karnag knew to be from a moment of a fear so great it had shattered the mind. These eyes had seen the end—the very end—and that end would be burned forever upon them and in the brain behind. Karnag wondered if this dead man had realized his finality, that all that would come beyond would torment the broken remains of his soul.

He chuckled. “There is no mending you,” he said to the carcass, “so you’d best take whatever you have left to the great and ancient hells that lurk beyond.” He smiled, his grimace bending his filth-coated face. “We may speak there once again.” He tossed the corpse aside, leaving it aside for the moment.

He looked about, seeing his army slowly recede into the distance. They would prevail this night, he knew, and would take many lives. Many men marching away to the north. Soon, from the stretching shadows of the setting sun, his Necrists would emerge. He grinned again and spurred the horse toward the stone structure.

The building—hardly larger than the highland hovel in which he’d been raised—appeared precisely as Karnag expected. The image of a blazing sun, carved above the sagging wooden door, was an old symbol. Many ancient shrines to Illienne the Light Eternal bore the same.

Karnag studied it for many moments, his mind finding memories of banners bearing that same symbol, banners hoisted by great armies and by Castor and the rest of the Sentinels. By warriors both fleeting and eternal as they purged Rune of all influence of Illienne’s dark twin. Of the so-called Lord of Nightmares.

He looked upward, the waning sun’s glare finding his gaze. He remembered those “truths” he’d known then. Of Illienne’s “righteousness” and of the “evil” of Yrghul. Of the teachings that Illienne’s dark twin drew upon death in a mad desire to consume the world. Of the legends telling that he delved too deep into the void.

But Karnag understood, now. He’d beheld the darkness lurking beyond and before life. There were powers there. More, there were truths incomprehensible to those who knew only their waking moments and lives lived in the comfort of sunlight.

He dismounted and raised a booted foot to kick open the door. The boards cracked and the hinges squealed and the interior was revealed. With a glance he instructed his steed to remain.

The shrine was roughly circular, consisting of eight pillars surrounding a well of stone. It appeared similar to the last he’d encountered, the circle of dilapidated columns he’d seen just before killing the Lector and taking captive the spirit of Castor.

He smiled, recalling how he’d pissed in that well, the very aspect of the shrine symbolizing the Godswell in Ironmoor. Over his shoulder he found the hilt of Gravemaker—next to Heaven’s Reaper slung upon his back now as well—and his smile turned to a laugh.

He took a step inside, studying the pillars.  These monoliths bore carvings that had yet to be eroded by wind or rain, stones that had not yet been choked behind twisting ivy.  No, these carvings—these ancient symbols—remained vivid.  

He crept through the circle within them, Gravemaker held at his side and scraping upon the tiles with a squeal that rang within the tight chamber.

He walked with squinted eyes, seeing the leveled scales of Lyan, the watchtower symbolizing Valis, a dragon for the line of the High King, the spread wings of Sienne, Pastine’s robed figure atop a stag, Kressan’s intertwined hands, Thaydorne’s fist and great sword, and Castor’s eye within an eye…

Karnag stopped and drew Gravemaker upward, resting its blade upon his shoulder.  These demigods, or at least those he’d not conquered already, would stand against him now. They would be threats to him. In their ignorance and arrogance they would try to stop him, and in doing so they would ensure bloodshed of a magnitude the world had never seen.

They do not understand their folly, nor can they be made to by means other than violence.

Violence, death, and desecration.  

He grunted and turned about to the low, dry well of stone centered within the circle of pillars. He sucked filth from his teeth and he spat.  He spat and he chuckled.

Perhaps the so-called dead god Illienne will rise from her abyss to save them…

He laughed again, then a heavy scowl stifled his humor.

I cannot be stopped. Death cannot be stopped. The end is, as ever, inevitable.  

He stood for a moment, looking again about the pillars. Many men and women and children would die; many souls would be gifted to the Elder God in the heavens and to whatever lurked below in the old hells.

He knew this to be his purpose. He knew this to be his calling, his ending.

I will rewrite the atlas of fate.

He left the shrine and retrieved the corpse of the bloated soldier and chopped it in half with several sweeps of his blade. When the work was done, he discarded the legs and underparts into a nearby canal and took the remaining half with him. With it held in his arms, he entered the shrine once more. 

He looked again upon the pillars, studying each of their symbols for a long moment. Hatred burned within him. At last he hoisted the bloated, dripping half-corpse, all head and arms and torso, then shoved the slop of grime and filth upon the symbol of each and every one of the statues of what would have been Castor’s equals. He did this with violence and vigor, toppling four of the statues, and made certain they were covered with gory bits and chunks of the dead man. 

As he did this, it seemed he could hear screams coming from the heavens, or perhaps the old hells, as if the spirits of the Sentinels cried out in protest.

Karnag grinned, his gnash of dirty teeth the slash of a razor. He looked upon the desecrated statues and shuttered his eyes. He breathed deeply, feeling tendrils of shadow seep from the mutilated corpse he hefted and then those tendrils contorting before plunging down his throat and up his nostrils.

Slowly he opened his eyes and roared, a feral and bestial roar echoing the deepest, darkest places of the world. Places holding countless truths, truths unseen to that multitude of living things that feared the night, that multitude which closed their ears to its ancient secrets, to the life that existed beyond life. 

Death, the acrid scent of it and its cold, consuming embrace, filled Karnag as he roared. The tendrils of shadow spun now from his mouth and his fingers, twisting together to form an ever-growing whirlwind before him and creating a low howl upon the air.

Karnag screamed. “Despocha lygarra Elhirrus!”

The black whirlwind yielded to his command. It swirled before him for an instant before lashing out at the stone tributes of the so-called Sentinels, of the so-called guardians of Rune.

The shadows consumed the statues, spinning about them until only worn nubs of stone remained. Karnag felt his rage diminish and the shadows did as well.

He breathed deeply, his breath easing as he beheld only a room of destroyed monuments to demigods who would soon lose all power over this realm. Those, and the half-corpse still within his grasp.

He laughed, then heaved the remains of the desecrated corpse down the mockery of the Godswell at the chamber’s center. For a moment he waited until he heard its soggy plop upon the well’s bottom.

“He calls you,” he remembered, like a glimpse of dream only barely perceived. He heard now the whisper once again.

“It is I who calls him,” Karnag growled. “I am the author of all things yet to come, and my sword is my quill.”

***

Erlorn awoke not long after dawn, his small, boyish fingers trembling as he drew his blanket about him. He pulled the wool to his neck and shivered.  

“Another nightmare, child?” The voice was Prefect Alfrin’s, now like a rooster’s call of morning for Erlorn.

Erlorn raised himself to his elbows and after a moment he nodded. “More vivid. More real.”

“What, precisely?  You must try to remember every detail you can.”

“The shadowy figures. The words they say. The feeling of something… worse. It seems nearly as real as when I’m awake. It feels… I don’t know. It seems to end there.”

Prefect Alfrin scribbled in his journal, the sound of the scratching quill discomforting.

What is he writing?  Erlorn squeezed the knotted end of the blanket still held in his small fists.

“And?” Alfrin asked, his thin voice drifting across the room. “Did you perceive anything else?”

“Not that I can recall, Prefect.”

“You must tell me, child,” said Prefect Alfrin, his voice strengthening. “You do not understand such matters yet, but these visions are of vital importance to the whole of our order, indeed to the whole of Rune.”

Erlorn shivered. “It feels as though I’m meant to be there. I feel the hatred. I feel it inside me.”

Alfrin stared and waited for a moment, quill poised above his journal. “And?  What else did you see?” 

“Blood,” Erlorn whispered. “Blood and shadows as always. Every time I dream, it becomes more real.”

He heard Alfrin slam shut his journal. He could see the man smooth his dark robes in the pre-dawn light. 

“We will speak more of this tomorrow,” Alfrin said. “As ever, I will have your breakfast brought at the appointed time.”

He watched Alfrin leave the room, then the squeal of his room’s lock.

He slumped back in his bed, wondering if all these visions held a horrific element of truth.