The Rite of Treason
Well, this was a long time coming – I've been writing it off-and-on for weeks during my spare moments at work. It's easily the bloodiest, most violent scene I've ever put to paper, which allowed me to have a LOT of fun with it. It's a chapter out of my overly-ambitious series of books that may or may not ever see the light of day, and is about 6 pages in length. It looks really long but when you get into reading it, it should only take you about 10 minutes or so. Well anyway, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.Edit 7/31/05: I've provided a little more background information concerning this story in the comments below due to "popular" demand... read and be... enlightened? Then read the story again ;P
P.S. Reading this story directly off this webspace will undoubtedly strain your eyes. You might want to copy it into a word processor and enlarge the font or print it off.
The Rite of Treason
Kael stood stoically and silently in the dim, hollowed light of the antechamber, steadying his breath and concentrating furiously on the grim task that was finally at hand. He ran his fingers lightly over the darkened, mutilated skin of his muscular chest, once again exploring the vivid memories that each scar painfully forced into his conscience. Excruciating to relive as they were, they presented him a vast reservoir of resolve from which to draw. He thought of everything he had accomplished, of all the unspeakable horrors that he had endured and witnessed to get himself to this point, and allowed the ensuing anger and regret to coarse violently throughout his body.
He was stripped of his weapons at the entrance to the compound, as he had predicted, leaving him unarmed, but far from defenseless. The time to act was finally upon him, and he was not about to let such a triviality keep him from inheriting the power that he had so obstinately coveted his entire life. The very thought of it spread an unnatural, sanguinary smile across his face, a smile that hauntingly distorted his impeccable features.
He limbered his statuesque frame, and with a renewed sense of purpose thrust open the great mahogany doors that stood before him.
He strode purposefully into the room without a second's hesitation, taking particular notice of the two guards who ceremoniously fell in line to close the gap behind him. Despite the fact that the Senate had taken every precaution to blind him with an overwhelming array of lamps, candles, and enchantments, he swore that he could almost smell the fear in the air. It was thick and pungent, not unlike the useless senators themselves.
They sat clustered around an enormous table constructed of the same dark mahogany as the chamber's great doors, which the guards had just clamorously bolted shut. At the very end of the table, standing atop the ostentatious ritual pedestal, was the Arbiter; the Patriarch himself, draped in his grandest robes of scarlet to mark the occasion.
“You’ve kept us waiting a long time, Kael. Too long. Regrettably, I’ll have to make this short.” he said sardonically, his rasping voice echoing ominously throughout the room.
“You can safely spare me the formalities,” Kael replied, quietly. “I have attended enough rites of treason to have memorized them down to the very last word.”
The Senate’s incessant murmuring quickly dissipated into an uncomfortable silence.
“So, you are aware,” said the Arbiter slowly, after a brief moment of inward deliberation, “and yet you harbor no shame for what you have done? We trusted you with the divine knowledge, and you betrayed us all!”
Kael laughed silently to himself, but said nothing. The layout of the room and the table’s seating arrangement caused the individual auras of the attendees to bleed together, and he had begun mentally disconnecting them into their separate entities; calculating their relative strengths and weaknesses and coming to a conclusion regarding the number of his enemies.
There were twenty-seven in the room alone.
“You were very valuable to us, Kael.” the Arbiter continued. “I am saddened that you chose to squander your precious opportunity with such thoughtless indulgence. I only hope that you can find solace in the honor of having such a large congression presiding over your execution.” Again, his words were mired in scathing sarcasm.
“Indeed,” Kael sneered, imitating the Arbiter’s contemptuous, mocking tone. “for that, I am very grateful.”
The Senate’s silence was broken by a barrage of nervous coughs and the shifting of uncomfortable bodies. Blinded though as he were, Kael was still very far from harmless, a fact of which the Senate was well aware.
“Then, I see no reason to delay this any longer,” said the Arbiter, obviously anxious to quell the potential disaster before it was given a chance to start. “You may kill him.”
The guards at the entrance drew their blades and took several hesitant steps forward. Halfway between the door and their mark, they stopped to share a sidelong nervous glance. It was a predictable opportunity that Kael had planned to take full advantage of. He spun and delivered a frighteningly quick thrust kick to the forward guard’s leg, breaking it in two. He moved like the wind, spinning again to trip the second guard, sending him face-first to the cold stone floor.
Before he could recover and climb to his feet, Kael snatched the blade from his fallen comrade and drove it into the small of his back, severing his spine. The remaining injured guard’s cries of pain were silenced with a quick flourish of the blade across his throat.
Twenty-five.
Kael sensed a dozen of the more courageous senators beginning to make their way toward him, the ringing of their freshly-drawn steel echoing harshly in his vulnerable ears. More importantly, he realized that a handful of men near the back of the room had formed an impromptu channeling circle and were beginning to summon forth a powerful invocation.
The rest had backed themselves against the various walls of the chamber or crawled underneath the table, cowering in fear of the Shadur’s wrath. Three remained seated, entirely overcome with shock and terror. After all, knowledge only truly amounts to power under certain selective circumstances – circumstances that could not possibly be further removed from the present time and place.
Kael made a split-second decision: the channeling circle was his priority.
He sprinted toward the advancing mob and pushed himself upward off his feet at the last possible instant, springing catlike over their heads and landing in a crouching position on the very edge of the great mahogany table. He thrust the sword downward with all his strength, splintering the delicate wood and burying the pointed edge deep into a mound of quivering, squealing flesh.
Using the hilt of the buried blade to push himself to his feet, Kael continued his sprint toward the rear end of the table. He slowed mid-way to kick a burning oil lantern into one of the sitting senators, the force of the impact knocking his chair backward to the floor. His horrified screams reverberated through the room as his oil-soaked cloth robes fed the flames engulfing his body. By the time Kael reached the end of his sprint, they had fallen silent, giving way to the roaring crackle of the fire, which by now was rapidly consuming the table and the myriad oil-fed lamps. Those still alive who had chosen to seek refuge under the great expanse of mahogany had resigned themselves to a cruelly ironic fate.
Twenty.
The channelers were straining to ignore the death around them in hopes of finishing the invocation before the Shadur got to them, but he was unbelievably quick and struck with lightning precision - within mere seconds, seven of their brethren had been killed, and Kael had leapt gracefully into the center of their circle.
The most pronounced aura among the channelers was that of the eldest senator, the man who was leading the invocation. Kael gripped him by the wrist of his outstretched hand and twisted it almost a complete 360 degrees, breaking all of the bones in his arm in one fluid motion. The man shrieked in agony as the connection was lost, and the premature invocation exploded into a whirlwind of antimagic that recoiled into the faces of those who had summoned it. There was a deafening crack as the impact lifted the channelers off of their feet and into the far walls of the room, where they hung for an instant before crumpling lifelessly to the ground, their faces smoldering and unrecognizable.
Fourteen.
Kael spun on his heel to face the men he had left behind, who were now crowding around him in a circle, brandishing their weapons. It was painfully clear, even to Kael, that they had lost their resolve. But this was a kill-or-be-killed situation – for those who possessed the divine knowledge, running away was hardly an option.
One of the men, consumed by a potent combination of unbridled fury, shock, and desperation, let out an ear-splitting battle cry and charged into the circle with his sword outstretched. Taking advantage of the reckless move, Kael ducked and threw the man over his shoulder and into another. He lost his grip on his sword mid-flight, giving the Shadur the opportunity to snatch it out of the air with his main-hand and bring it down hard into the pile of scrambling senators.
Twelve.
Kael broke free of the oppressive circle through the newly-created gap in the wall of bodies and retrieved the other dead man’s sword in his off-hand. He turned to face the remaining men and began to back away protectively, flourishing his dual weapons and once again exhibiting that haunting, bloodthirsty smile.
It was like fighting a shadow – in fact, it was as if the Shadur occupied a separate plane of existence altogether; a dimension where the laws of physics held no influence over its inhabitants, where the intangible became the routine. Unfortunately for the Senate, however, Kael was as deeply rooted in reality as they were, a point that his weapons continually drove home with exceptional clarity.
He fought with a purely defensive strategy, as was always the case when the initial element of surprise had expended itself and multiple opponents were bearing down on him. It was a particularly effective against humans, as the conflict was so invariably predictable that it could almost be reduced to a mathematical equation: dodge and parry, duck and block, until the inevitable opportunity to strike presented itself, which never took more than a moment or two. There were simply too many factors playing against them: their minds were typically unfocused, their bodies sluggish and quick to fatigue, and their will easily shattered. It was almost always the latter that afforded him the chance to land the killing blow, however, as most men find it extraordinarily difficult to maintain their composure when standing face-to-face with a Shadur; one of Ilandoril’s most powerful and feared beings.
It was all over in a matter of seconds. The Senate was even weaker than Kael imagined them to be, though his final three opponents did manage to impress him with their unwavering dedication to the preservation of their cause. The fresh wounds on his chest and arms, gleaming crimson in the firelight, affirmed Kael’s notion that they were the only Patriarchs whose passion for their legacy burned brightly enough to manifest in their defense of it.
He recited a silent prayer in the old tongue as he observed the auras slowly slip away from their lifeless bodies, paying his respects to the only truly deserving members of the Senate. After all, these men were hardened warriors, not useless politicians; they were the only remaining indication of what the Patriarchs once were, when the world lay entirely at their mercy. Kael would have been glad to have them follow him into the new era, but they did what they had to do, and for that he did not blame them but respected them all the more.
In the heat of the battle, two senators emerged unscathed from underneath the burning table and fled through the great doors, into the stark wilderness. Kael did not bother to pursue them, as he knew that the fate that awaited them on the outside would be far worse than the quick deaths he intended to bestow upon them. They would be tortured at length as blood traitors, but not before imparting a detailed account of what transpired deep within Eva’s End; of the gruesome scene that lead them to forsake the greatest secret that the world had ever kept.
He now turned his attention to the one aura that remained, an aura so diminished it was on the verge of slipping away without ever tasting the Shadur’s blade.
It belonged to the Arbiter.
Kael advanced upon him as he cowered maniacally near the far corner of the room. Stripped of his precious Senate and his foolish pride, he had become but a huddled mass of cloth and delicate human tissue.
“W-w-what have you done?!” he shrieked, scrambling away from the advancing Shadur on his hands and knees. “You now have the blood of kings on your hands! T-t-the b-blood of regents, generals, captains!”
“Pathetic,” Kael mused, ignoring the man’s desperate intimidation tactics. It was now his turn to revel in insolent banter. “A thousands year-old legacy wiped out in a matter of seconds.”
“There are still members in the f-field, all over Ilandoril, and, and...” the Arbiter backed himself into a wall.
“And me.” Kael finished, closing the remaining distance.
The man began to sob uncontrollably, clutching an ancient, weathered tome paternally to his chest like a crying infant.
“I’ll take that.” said Kael sternly, motioning to the book.
After a moment, the Arbiter looked up at him, tears streaming down his pale, sullen face. He met Kael’s steely gaze, and for an instant there was a sudden, surprising flash of conviction in his wide, sallow eyes as he raised the book over his head and threw it into the fire.* * *
Kael pried the lifeless fingers from the tome and carelessly tossed the severed appendage onto the floor next to the Arbiter, who was silently clutching the gushing stump of his right arm.
The Shadur stood silently over his defeated enemy as his warm blood pooled around his feet, savoring the glorious taste of victory and revenge. No longer bound by the shackles of the Patriarchs, he contemplated the endless possibilities that now lay as open as the azure, cerulean sky.
The quavering voice of the defeated Arbiter ripped him from his thoughts.
“Please...kill me now, I beg of you.” he stammered.
Kael sneered and released his grip on his blades, letting them clatter noisily to the floor. He knelt down and placed two fingers underneath the Arbiter’s chin, lifting his head so that his clouding eyes met the Shadur's piercing gaze once more.
“Without the book and the Senate you are completely and utterly powerless,” Kael began, “and this is where the difference between us lies. The divine knowledge belongs with the blessed few who have the capacity to act upon it, not with your worthless diplomats and greedy politicians. Had you embraced my strength and recognized my potential, we could have ushered in a new world order together a long time ago. But instead you used me, and now your senate is dead and the others are soon to follow.”
The Arbiter said nothing, but emitted a pitiable whimper, not unlike that of an injured dog.
"Ironic that you carelessly throw around assertions of squandered opportunities, when I have sat idly by and watched you waste the legacy for years. You wanted nothing more than to inherit it and all of the power and wealth associated with your title, without ever having to lift a finger to prove that you deserved it. My strength and ambition threatened your complacent, effortless existence, and so you thought to have me killed. Unfortunately for you, I was not about to let that happen. I am not about to watch another opportunity pass me by. You have no one but yourself to thank for this, Arzosa."
The Arbiter's eyes widened further upon hearing his birth name. He opened his mouth to speak, but all words failed him; and all he managed was a trickle of crimson blood.
“Now," Kael began, smiling that awful smile, “before you leave this world, we have much to discuss.”
The Shadur were not known for their benevolence or compassion.* * *
Kael emerged from the smoldering ruin of the End an hour later, his past severed, his life open once more. He threw off his deeply reddened garments, welcoming the pale, golden moonlight that meekly kissed his flesh and the gentle easterly breeze that carried with it whispers of the coming storm. It assumed the unmistakable voice of the great Starseer, though it sounded uncharacteristically apprehensive and disturbingly hoarse. He uttered a plaintive warning of the fresh blood coursing the earth's veins; an omen so dark that it had stirred the Druid from their thousand-year slumber.
Kael smiled to himself. The Druid had every reason to be worried, though there was no way they could know just how badly the very foundations of the world had been shaken this night.
It did not matter. They would find out soon enough.
They all would.
posted by Sylpheed @ 8:08 PM
12 comments
