A Cliff-top Duel
V
Lessons of Courage
(Shard I)
(Shard I)
The night winds were beginning to kick up into a slowly churning sandstorm. The sanguine glow of Celanna above cast the sands below in shades of blood and rust. Beyond the Goddess of Blood on the horizon, the double-slitted eye of Vorthyl tore the sky in half. The hypnotizing twin rivers of stars and glowing celestial clouds was slowly being engulfed by the kicked up sands that were blowing in from the southern lands.
Despite the wind, the rocky lands of the Jolash Plateau remained still and devoid of activity. There were no howls of wolves as they sung to each other, yells from laborers working on stones into the night, or the hissing of snakes as the sought out their next meal. The entire plateau seemed to be as silent and as eerily haunted as a grave-site.
Ghelta remained perched on her favorite rock as she watched the stillness of the night before her. The blowing sands were growing bothersome so she lifted the hood on her black robes with a free hand. Her other hand clutched a long spear whose tip was buried far below her perch. Above her robes, she wore her leather armor that signified her membership in the Vhulkhovyr caste.
After securing her hood, she proceeded to dust the sand from the wolf’s fur trim on her shoulder plates and that trailed down her back; the familiar fur that she had harvested from Skartha when she set her to rest many years ago. She chose that fur as a testament to her origins as a warrior and to keep the spirit of her first wolf close to her heart. It would be the spirit of Skartha that would always watch over her and protect her as she watched over and protected the people of Alsira Thaenat.
Beside her on the rock laid the immense black form of Khollta as she watched the plateau as well. The wolf had grown from a pup to great creature that dwarfed Ghelta in size. Once Khollta had grown to two years of age, Ghelta realized why Skartha had died during childbirth. The children she had died for were born as dire-wolves. It was extremely unlikely for domesticated wolves to give birth to such mutations, but any that did so would surely die.
Ghelta didn’t know exactly if it was Khollta’s nature as a dire-wolf that caused her immense size and the bony growths that served as armor that sprouted from her shoulders and spine. Naturally, she would be larger than other wolves, but maybe it was the choice of milk and upbringing that Ghelta had given her that caused her to be even larger than normal. She wasn’t allowed in the kennels with the other wolves as she would easily rip them apart. It was always at Ghelta’s side that Khollta remained, and in those times where Ghelta had to be in civilized areas, she would let the wolf run wild outside the city.
More than the fact that Ghelta was her mother, the bond between her and the dire-wolf was exceptionally strong. Both had come from similar origins as orphans, as unwanted cast-offs from their societies, and as creatures that held a darkness within them beyond mortal reckoning. Both seemed to always seek the other out when they needed to and react the same in moments of emotion. Theirs was the same soul.
After preening her furs, Ghelta reached over and began to ruffle up Khollta’s black fur. She could hear the wolf groan at the playful action and slowly lift one of her giant paws to push Ghelta’s hand away. Khollta rolled from her back onto her stomach and began to nuzzle at Ghelta’s hip with her nose. She playfully tried to push the young warrior from her perch, but she resisted as she replanted her spear into the ground.
“Phah! You little runt.” Ghelta pushed back against Khollta’s nose and elbowed the wolf in the shoulder. She could feel the hard, bony plates scrape against her skin, but she knew the weak points to get the wolf back for her impertinence. “This is where I sit. Get your own place.”
Khollta gave a sassy and mocking set of yaps back at Ghelta as if trying to mimic her own words. She swiped one of her large paws against Ghelta’s back and the rolled over onto her back again. She held her head up and continued to yelp aimlessly for a few moments. She gave a sideways glance back to Ghelta, with one of her blue eyes looking over her black fur. She yapped once more to test Ghelta’s nerve and then went quiet.
Ghelta refocused her attention on the blowing sand and darkness ahead of her. Her eyes scanned the sanguine-hued horizon and darted over key points of the towering mesas to her left and the jagged mountain to her right. She could make out a few distant lights coming from the tops of the mesas, but their glow was becoming hidden beneath the growing sandstorm. The mountain to her right was devoid of any life at all.
She looked over he shoulder back to the glimmering lights of the City of Veils behind her. Many of the hermitages on the top of the plateau were closing up their doors and windows or blowing out their torches in anticipation of the sandstorm rising up. The lights of the central city could be seen glowing up from the wide canyon that the city sat within.
The winds weren’t particularly bad this night, but they were coming in from the Haakuenthi lands to the south, which caused the white sands to be blow up and over the plateau. The sands would be a nuisance and make it hard to see this night, but they wouldn’t be as savage as they could get. There were times, especially in the Autumn, when great storms would blow in from the South and cast flesh-ripping sands upon the winds. Great bolts of red and purple lightning would devastate the plateau creating the famed glasses that Alsiran merchants would sell in later days. As for anyone caught out in the winds, they would be dead and stripped down to the very bone before the day was done. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of those nights.
Ghelta had always been a night-person and enjoyed sleeping during most of the day, so it had become a habit that Ylethus would give her ranging duties during the nights. She would retreat to one of her favorite perches and watch over the outskirts of the city for any beasts or interlopers that might come by. For the most part, it was a boring task, as more expert warriors would watch further afield as silent and deadly sentinels. Still, it allowed her to spend time with Khollta and be lost in her own thoughts.
She would wait here for several more hours until Celanna had lifted more of herself into the sky — eclipsing the eye of Vorthyl — and then she would make her way to the mountain on her right to watch from a caern stone near the summit. She would then spend the hours around midnight at her favorite hiding place at the extents of the Alsiran lands and before dawn, she would do a quick survey of the mesas to the west. She did this almost every night, except those times she had to break the habit or watch another area that a different warrior was responsible for.
As more of the sands began to blow in, it was becoming harder and harder to see the furthest extents of the plateau. In fact, the mesas to the west were almost overrun, and she could only make out the outline of the mountain ahead of her. She tugged once more on her hood to cover most of her face and leaned back against an outcropping of rock. She would take Khollta’s lead and rest for a bit. She lifted and thrust the head of her spear into the sand and the let go of the haft. The spear remained standing up with the tattered scarlet banner on the top end trailing on the wind.
She remembered what Ylethus had said about the significance of that ribbon of threadbare cloth. Each group of sentinels or rangers were given a specific color, and each had to keep their spear end aloft so that others could find them. Ylethus would perform occasional inspections to make sure each warrior was holding their banner high. If any warrior was found sleeping and their banner fell, they would be punished severely. The significance of a lowered banner was that they were under attack, or had fallen to a threat. What he hadn’t thought of, however, was those warriors who found a way to keep the spears aloft, yet still get some rest during the quiet hours of the night.
Ghelta looked back to her spear once more, watching it to make sure it was securely stuck in the sand. She crossed her arms over her chest and pulled Khollta’s rump closer to her to keep her warm. She leaned her head back against the rock and closed her eyes for a moment.
Time washed away between a state of half-dreaming and occasional alertness as Ghelta gave into sleep and then to moments of flurried wakefulness. Each moment she was pulled back to the conscious world she would look up to see Celanna growing nearer and higher in the sky. During the moments that she let her self sleep, she held flashes of dreams where she was exploring an icy cave complex deep beneath the world.
As she drifted back into her ongoing dream, Ghelta noticed the chill that drained the blood from her fingers and toes. For the last few flashes of a dream, she had been working through several rooms beneath the world, but this particular room she found herself in made her skin crawl. As she made her way deeper and deeper, the light breaking its way in through the ice was giving way to darkness and shadow.
She found herself walking through an archway and into a larger chamber with a shattered stone slab in the middle. She had never seen a sarcophagus before, but she remembered how they were described in tales that Ylethus told her as a child. These slabs would hold the remains of the dead. Great stone covers would be placed over the bodies to seal and preserve them for countless centuries. They weren’t often used by the Alsiran people except in cases of putting famed heroes to rest. Mostly they were used by ancient societies in the hopes of preserving the dead so that they might come back to life later on.
Despite the growing fear pulling at her heart, Ghelta’s dream-haunted feet carried her closer to the sarcophagus. As she neared it, she noticed huge cracks and gouges in the rock. She noticed the debris of the sealing slab strew about the room as if the sarcophagus had exploded from within. She continued to near closer despite her mind pleading with her feet to stop.
Ghelta wanted to pull herself away from the dream, but she could not. She wanted to stop walking towards the sarcophagus, for fear of what she would find within, but her feet kept going. She soon found herself looking over the edge, her cold fingers seizing the freezing edge of the stone.
As she looked over the edge, she saw a woman’s corpse laid within. Most of her flesh had been eaten away, exposing sections of her skeleton. Someone had taken care to wrap her in linen, but most of the linen had faded away to stained tatters, barely enough to cover her form.
She looked the corpse over and noticed the carefully placed jewelry placed over her long and claw-like fingers, and hanging from her neck. The jewelry had strange runes carved into the metal and precious gems. As Ghelta raised her eyes to look at the corpses head, she was able to see the remains of a porcelain mask that half covered the dead body’s face. The porcelain had been broken in half, and what remained was heavily chipped with age and ruin.
Around the corpse’s head was an ancient headdress of silver spikes that erupted from a blue and gold segmented crown. Each spike of silver had crimson hair wrapped around it like a snake made of blood. Immediately, Ghelta recognized the same hair color as her own. As this thought echoed through her mind, she found herself reaching out a hand to grip the corpse’s own. As her flesh met the chilled and ancient flesh of the dead woman, a voice seemed to float up from what was left of the dead woman’s still lips.
“They call you the desert lotus.” The voice was commanding and unearthly, yet seemed to float into Ghelta’s ears on a whisper. “The name they gave you is a lie. You carry my namesake and are doomed just as I am.”
The corpses’ eyes shot open but the dead woman remained still. The icy-blue eyes looked up at Ghelta and seemed to pierce into the very seat of her soul. The eyes were familiar, like a mother’s eyes, but they glowed with an unholy power.
“I am your mother’s mother, young one.” The room around the sarcophagus grew all the darker, yet the body of the dead woman remained visible to Ghelta’s eyes. The piercing blue eyes glowed all the more and seemed to cast the inside of the sarcophagus with a silver light. “You belong with me. I seek you out, but I cannot find you. You must come to me so that we can be reunited in death.”
Ghelta looked down at her hand and saw the corpse’s claw reach up to snatch at her flesh. The cold of the dead woman’s flesh crept up and bit at her living skin. Trails of blackness began to burrow up through the skin of her wrist, spreading like an infection up her arm.
“You should not be alive, my daughter’s daughter. In your heart and your veins is an ancient curse. I have seen what will befall the world if you don’t allow me to kill you.” The woman’s mouth opened up into a snarl of metallic fangs. “Let me in so that I can find you. Draw upon my darkness and let me see with your eyes. I will end your suffering and bring you home to live inside of my soul. Once you have been cleansed, then all of my children can find peace.”
Ghelta began to scream, but could not draw any breath. The corpse lifted itself from the sarcophagus and seized her neck with its other clawed hand. She could feel tendrils of darkness rising up from the dead woman and ripping into her soul.
Despite the wind, the rocky lands of the Jolash Plateau remained still and devoid of activity. There were no howls of wolves as they sung to each other, yells from laborers working on stones into the night, or the hissing of snakes as the sought out their next meal. The entire plateau seemed to be as silent and as eerily haunted as a grave-site.
Ghelta remained perched on her favorite rock as she watched the stillness of the night before her. The blowing sands were growing bothersome so she lifted the hood on her black robes with a free hand. Her other hand clutched a long spear whose tip was buried far below her perch. Above her robes, she wore her leather armor that signified her membership in the Vhulkhovyr caste.
After securing her hood, she proceeded to dust the sand from the wolf’s fur trim on her shoulder plates and that trailed down her back; the familiar fur that she had harvested from Skartha when she set her to rest many years ago. She chose that fur as a testament to her origins as a warrior and to keep the spirit of her first wolf close to her heart. It would be the spirit of Skartha that would always watch over her and protect her as she watched over and protected the people of Alsira Thaenat.
Beside her on the rock laid the immense black form of Khollta as she watched the plateau as well. The wolf had grown from a pup to great creature that dwarfed Ghelta in size. Once Khollta had grown to two years of age, Ghelta realized why Skartha had died during childbirth. The children she had died for were born as dire-wolves. It was extremely unlikely for domesticated wolves to give birth to such mutations, but any that did so would surely die.
Ghelta didn’t know exactly if it was Khollta’s nature as a dire-wolf that caused her immense size and the bony growths that served as armor that sprouted from her shoulders and spine. Naturally, she would be larger than other wolves, but maybe it was the choice of milk and upbringing that Ghelta had given her that caused her to be even larger than normal. She wasn’t allowed in the kennels with the other wolves as she would easily rip them apart. It was always at Ghelta’s side that Khollta remained, and in those times where Ghelta had to be in civilized areas, she would let the wolf run wild outside the city.
More than the fact that Ghelta was her mother, the bond between her and the dire-wolf was exceptionally strong. Both had come from similar origins as orphans, as unwanted cast-offs from their societies, and as creatures that held a darkness within them beyond mortal reckoning. Both seemed to always seek the other out when they needed to and react the same in moments of emotion. Theirs was the same soul.
After preening her furs, Ghelta reached over and began to ruffle up Khollta’s black fur. She could hear the wolf groan at the playful action and slowly lift one of her giant paws to push Ghelta’s hand away. Khollta rolled from her back onto her stomach and began to nuzzle at Ghelta’s hip with her nose. She playfully tried to push the young warrior from her perch, but she resisted as she replanted her spear into the ground.
“Phah! You little runt.” Ghelta pushed back against Khollta’s nose and elbowed the wolf in the shoulder. She could feel the hard, bony plates scrape against her skin, but she knew the weak points to get the wolf back for her impertinence. “This is where I sit. Get your own place.”
Khollta gave a sassy and mocking set of yaps back at Ghelta as if trying to mimic her own words. She swiped one of her large paws against Ghelta’s back and the rolled over onto her back again. She held her head up and continued to yelp aimlessly for a few moments. She gave a sideways glance back to Ghelta, with one of her blue eyes looking over her black fur. She yapped once more to test Ghelta’s nerve and then went quiet.
Ghelta refocused her attention on the blowing sand and darkness ahead of her. Her eyes scanned the sanguine-hued horizon and darted over key points of the towering mesas to her left and the jagged mountain to her right. She could make out a few distant lights coming from the tops of the mesas, but their glow was becoming hidden beneath the growing sandstorm. The mountain to her right was devoid of any life at all.
She looked over he shoulder back to the glimmering lights of the City of Veils behind her. Many of the hermitages on the top of the plateau were closing up their doors and windows or blowing out their torches in anticipation of the sandstorm rising up. The lights of the central city could be seen glowing up from the wide canyon that the city sat within.
The winds weren’t particularly bad this night, but they were coming in from the Haakuenthi lands to the south, which caused the white sands to be blow up and over the plateau. The sands would be a nuisance and make it hard to see this night, but they wouldn’t be as savage as they could get. There were times, especially in the Autumn, when great storms would blow in from the South and cast flesh-ripping sands upon the winds. Great bolts of red and purple lightning would devastate the plateau creating the famed glasses that Alsiran merchants would sell in later days. As for anyone caught out in the winds, they would be dead and stripped down to the very bone before the day was done. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of those nights.
Ghelta had always been a night-person and enjoyed sleeping during most of the day, so it had become a habit that Ylethus would give her ranging duties during the nights. She would retreat to one of her favorite perches and watch over the outskirts of the city for any beasts or interlopers that might come by. For the most part, it was a boring task, as more expert warriors would watch further afield as silent and deadly sentinels. Still, it allowed her to spend time with Khollta and be lost in her own thoughts.
She would wait here for several more hours until Celanna had lifted more of herself into the sky — eclipsing the eye of Vorthyl — and then she would make her way to the mountain on her right to watch from a caern stone near the summit. She would then spend the hours around midnight at her favorite hiding place at the extents of the Alsiran lands and before dawn, she would do a quick survey of the mesas to the west. She did this almost every night, except those times she had to break the habit or watch another area that a different warrior was responsible for.
As more of the sands began to blow in, it was becoming harder and harder to see the furthest extents of the plateau. In fact, the mesas to the west were almost overrun, and she could only make out the outline of the mountain ahead of her. She tugged once more on her hood to cover most of her face and leaned back against an outcropping of rock. She would take Khollta’s lead and rest for a bit. She lifted and thrust the head of her spear into the sand and the let go of the haft. The spear remained standing up with the tattered scarlet banner on the top end trailing on the wind.
She remembered what Ylethus had said about the significance of that ribbon of threadbare cloth. Each group of sentinels or rangers were given a specific color, and each had to keep their spear end aloft so that others could find them. Ylethus would perform occasional inspections to make sure each warrior was holding their banner high. If any warrior was found sleeping and their banner fell, they would be punished severely. The significance of a lowered banner was that they were under attack, or had fallen to a threat. What he hadn’t thought of, however, was those warriors who found a way to keep the spears aloft, yet still get some rest during the quiet hours of the night.
Ghelta looked back to her spear once more, watching it to make sure it was securely stuck in the sand. She crossed her arms over her chest and pulled Khollta’s rump closer to her to keep her warm. She leaned her head back against the rock and closed her eyes for a moment.
Time washed away between a state of half-dreaming and occasional alertness as Ghelta gave into sleep and then to moments of flurried wakefulness. Each moment she was pulled back to the conscious world she would look up to see Celanna growing nearer and higher in the sky. During the moments that she let her self sleep, she held flashes of dreams where she was exploring an icy cave complex deep beneath the world.
As she drifted back into her ongoing dream, Ghelta noticed the chill that drained the blood from her fingers and toes. For the last few flashes of a dream, she had been working through several rooms beneath the world, but this particular room she found herself in made her skin crawl. As she made her way deeper and deeper, the light breaking its way in through the ice was giving way to darkness and shadow.
She found herself walking through an archway and into a larger chamber with a shattered stone slab in the middle. She had never seen a sarcophagus before, but she remembered how they were described in tales that Ylethus told her as a child. These slabs would hold the remains of the dead. Great stone covers would be placed over the bodies to seal and preserve them for countless centuries. They weren’t often used by the Alsiran people except in cases of putting famed heroes to rest. Mostly they were used by ancient societies in the hopes of preserving the dead so that they might come back to life later on.
Despite the growing fear pulling at her heart, Ghelta’s dream-haunted feet carried her closer to the sarcophagus. As she neared it, she noticed huge cracks and gouges in the rock. She noticed the debris of the sealing slab strew about the room as if the sarcophagus had exploded from within. She continued to near closer despite her mind pleading with her feet to stop.
Ghelta wanted to pull herself away from the dream, but she could not. She wanted to stop walking towards the sarcophagus, for fear of what she would find within, but her feet kept going. She soon found herself looking over the edge, her cold fingers seizing the freezing edge of the stone.
As she looked over the edge, she saw a woman’s corpse laid within. Most of her flesh had been eaten away, exposing sections of her skeleton. Someone had taken care to wrap her in linen, but most of the linen had faded away to stained tatters, barely enough to cover her form.
She looked the corpse over and noticed the carefully placed jewelry placed over her long and claw-like fingers, and hanging from her neck. The jewelry had strange runes carved into the metal and precious gems. As Ghelta raised her eyes to look at the corpses head, she was able to see the remains of a porcelain mask that half covered the dead body’s face. The porcelain had been broken in half, and what remained was heavily chipped with age and ruin.
Around the corpse’s head was an ancient headdress of silver spikes that erupted from a blue and gold segmented crown. Each spike of silver had crimson hair wrapped around it like a snake made of blood. Immediately, Ghelta recognized the same hair color as her own. As this thought echoed through her mind, she found herself reaching out a hand to grip the corpse’s own. As her flesh met the chilled and ancient flesh of the dead woman, a voice seemed to float up from what was left of the dead woman’s still lips.
“They call you the desert lotus.” The voice was commanding and unearthly, yet seemed to float into Ghelta’s ears on a whisper. “The name they gave you is a lie. You carry my namesake and are doomed just as I am.”
The corpses’ eyes shot open but the dead woman remained still. The icy-blue eyes looked up at Ghelta and seemed to pierce into the very seat of her soul. The eyes were familiar, like a mother’s eyes, but they glowed with an unholy power.
“I am your mother’s mother, young one.” The room around the sarcophagus grew all the darker, yet the body of the dead woman remained visible to Ghelta’s eyes. The piercing blue eyes glowed all the more and seemed to cast the inside of the sarcophagus with a silver light. “You belong with me. I seek you out, but I cannot find you. You must come to me so that we can be reunited in death.”
Ghelta looked down at her hand and saw the corpse’s claw reach up to snatch at her flesh. The cold of the dead woman’s flesh crept up and bit at her living skin. Trails of blackness began to burrow up through the skin of her wrist, spreading like an infection up her arm.
“You should not be alive, my daughter’s daughter. In your heart and your veins is an ancient curse. I have seen what will befall the world if you don’t allow me to kill you.” The woman’s mouth opened up into a snarl of metallic fangs. “Let me in so that I can find you. Draw upon my darkness and let me see with your eyes. I will end your suffering and bring you home to live inside of my soul. Once you have been cleansed, then all of my children can find peace.”
Ghelta began to scream, but could not draw any breath. The corpse lifted itself from the sarcophagus and seized her neck with its other clawed hand. She could feel tendrils of darkness rising up from the dead woman and ripping into her soul.
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