Faestivul of Coming Cold – Dee Five of Five, 768 A.E.
“I’ve heard disturbing rumors.” The Greater Helion announced to Corydon, who stood before him in his audience room, which was resplendent in the morning light.
“Oh?” Corydon replied boredly, dabbling his hand in a fountain filled with fish of blue and gold in an attempt to catch one of the elusive fish.
The Greater Helion slipped out of his crystal throne and stepped down off the dais of veined marble to stand beside Corydon. It was a rare gesture of familiarity from a man who had held this position of strength for nearly thirty Yarres. “They say, old friend, that our Guardians have been strangely absent from our city in large numbers of late.”
“Interesting.” Corydon glanced up at his superior and quickly looked away. His white and gold raiment was blinding in the direct sunlight.
“They also say that they have been engaging in outright military actions against the Kerathi. I know this couldn’t be true, as everything we’ve agreed to do was to be covert, with a plausible amount of deniability. I’m not wrong, am I? The lowlanders are of no import, since they can hardly march an army up here and demand recompense for anything we’ve done. But The Grand Helion and even the Voice of the Firmament are a different thing. Even I have people to answer to, and I didn’t want to have anything to occur that I would have to answer about.”
“That is what we agreed to.” Corydon admitted, his lips twisting in the slightest of a smile to hear the Greater Helion ramble so nervously.
“Then why are these rumors circulating the city?” The Greater Helion demanded angrily, his middle-aged face lined with recent worries.
Corydon’s arm twitched, splashing in the fountain. His quick motion caused the Greater Helion to swallow and step back. When Corydon turned toward him and raised his hand, he held a golden fish in his open palm. Its tail flicked to and fro as its gills and mouth opened in a futile effort to breath air when it could not. With a smirk, Corydon flipped the fish into a meticulously groomed patch of daisies that ringed one of the columns of silvery marble that stretched from floor to the distant ceiling of crystal glass.
The Greater Helion’s eyes swept from the flowers that the fish lay dying among back to Corydon. His friend looked pale and heavier than he ever had before. He had a strange look about his eyes as well, one that was discomfiting. “What do you have to say then, old friend? Does that term even apply to us anymore?”
“The rumors are in the city because they’re true. It’s that obvious and that simple. The answer was there; you just didn’t want to believe.”
“But why? What has brought us to this?” The Greater Helion asked in confusion. “Our plans to search for the girl never included war with the Kerathi, and that’s what you flirt with if half of what I have heard is true.”
“Everything brought us to this!” Corydon shouted at the man he once considered a friend, Yarres before he assumed the mantle of his position. “Don’t you see? You might be content to live your life in this pretty little cage you’ve had them build for you, but it’s still a cage.” He swept his arms around him to showcase the extravagance the leader of Cenalium lived in.
“You forget yourself, Corydon. You forget who I am because I have been too lax with you.”
“No, you fool. Your blindness has made you forget who you are. You are the third greatest man of our race, yet instead of pushing us to be what we could be if we simply made a few sacrifices, you sit in here and pontificate. You waste your breath passing pointless laws and making idle decrees, but it is men like me who make us what we should be. You are master of none but your self, while I will be a leader of thousands.” Corydon said spitefully.
“What is all this? What have you done?” The Greater Helion demanded. “This has nothing to do with what we spoke of or planned for.”
“I’ve done what they said could not be done. I’ve freed us from the curse of Maletos.”
The Greater Helion touched his middle and forefingers to his forehead. “Curse? Have you spent too much time in the dark? You’re talking foolishness and blasphemy.”
Corydon stepped closer to the Greater Helion, his eyes blazing with fury and righteousness. “You’ve always doted on our beloved Goddess, never thinking that she might have been the one who put us here. Your simple mind never came to the realization that we were driven into the mountains because the Gods feared what we would do to their lowland children. We only began to worship Maletos and her husband Haestos out of fear of what else she would do to us after she cursed us to need her warmth and gaze to live.”
The Greater Helion stepped back, his hands trembling as he listened to the strongest blasphemies he’d ever encountered – even stronger than the ranting he’d heard from heretics that had been put out of Cenalium. “You know not what you say! Stop this at once.” He insisted.
Corydon laughed bitterly. “You fear not me, but the truth of my words. Did you know that our fear for Maletos and Haestos grew into respect and love only because of the weakness of Helions like you? Rather than face the fact that we were being punished, rather than fight the Gods and remain in the lowlands, our people fled into the mountains and set up settlements. Those cowards were the first of our Helions, and they were not the last of their ilk. These towers and the towers of all of our cities were built on the bones of thousands of our dead who did not survive the time it took for us to build homes that could be lit for ten Ouers a Dee. They are monuments to our acquiescence and cowardice.”
“I know the stories of our people. I know of how the change came upon us and how we had to move out of the lowlands, but they say nothing of your twisted theories.”
“That’s because you have to read between the lines. The people who wrote those histories were too afraid of Maletos to commit anything to writing that might cast a poor light on her. They sought to appease her by giving in and not pursuing their previous goal.”
“What goal?” The Greater Helion asked.
“Dominion over the Broken Crown.” Corydon replied. “The calendar system and the medicines we gave to them were but the beginning. We were establishing common culture with them to coincide with the common language provided by the Elegian occupation of these lands. Our machines and way of life would become so integral to their lives that we would have ruled them all before they’d even realized that they’d given up all control over their lives just for the sake of progress. They couldn’t allow one race to have what they did not, so all of them would jump at the chance to get the same handouts. We would have been the masters of all, and they would have loved us for it.”
“This is madness. I will have you beaten and ran out of the city!” The Greater Helion howled.
A dark look came over Corydon. He smiled as he asked, “By whom?”
The Greater Helion’s lower lip began to tremble as he heard heavy booted feet approach. He knew the sound of Guardian boots slapping the polished marble. It was a sound he’d heard and knew as a reassurance of his safety for the last thirty Yarres, but for the first time in his life, he associated it with fear. He turned to see the Guardians as they entered the chamber.
Illias, whom the Greater Helion had heard of but had never met, lead a group of eight Guardians, all of which had a strangely dark coloring and much more massive builds than he had ever seen on an Aurean. In fact, they looked so foreign and strange that he did not know them for what they were at first. “Who are these men? Why do you have lowlanders in Guardian uniforms?”
“Lowlanders? Hardly. These are Aureans as they should be. They have been cured of their dependency on the sun.”
The Greater Helion looked at the men that had come to stop behind Corydon, flanking him with an obvious show of support. As he looked closer, he could see that they were indeed Aurean, though not like any he had ever met before. “How is this possible?”
“It started with your predecessor, who authorized experiments to be done by myself and one other – Orestes.”
“The girl’s father? He was the father of the girl we seek?”
“None other. He and I tried everything we could think of, and the depravities we committed in the name of a cure haunt me even now. Yet we succeeded as you see, but we wouldn’t have without the help of a few lowlanders.”
“You bred with lowlanders?”
“No, but their blood contained elements that allowed us to sustain ourselves within darkness for lengthening periods of time, and we found that the results were permanent. Even more, when our modified Aureans or ‘Dark Aureans’ as some of them refer to themselves as, began to breed on their own with other unchanged Aureans or even more of their kind, the results were passed on to the offspring. What you see here is the results of Yarres of careful breeding.”
“But what good is this? There are but a few. Why would you start a war with the Kerathi even if you had found a cure for this so-called curse?” The Greater Helion asked.
Corydon smiled. “Because we are not just a few. We number in the thousands now.”
“We?” That single word was enough to prove that
“I’ve taken the treatment. Blood can be drawn from any of the Dark Aureans and with but a short series of doses, we can make anyone resistant to the dark. Maletos’ curse is at an end.”
“But even so, what will you do? The Kerathi will not allow you to attack their settlements.”
“I am not worried. I am baiting them in, actually.”
“To what end?”
“The Farsight Outlooks have been modified according to some rather intriguing texts I found hidden away in your archives. Tests have been done, and we are ready for a full-scale demonstration when the first wave of their attacks arrives todee.”
“Todee? They’re already coming?”
“Don’t worry, your highness.” Corydon scoffed, earning a few throaty chuckles from his Guardians. “Even if they manage to reach the shores of Maethlin, which few if any will, they will be cut to pieces by my Guardians, who wait in Fjorlen for them. What the Kerathi don’t know is that Maethlin is already completely ours. Already we are fortifying it and rebuilding it according to my needs.”
“But what of Cenalium?” The Greater Helion asked, more than a hint of pleading in his voice.
“Cenalium will be yours once more if the people will have you, but not until after I have taken what I need so that we can build our cities in the lowlands. Todee is a Dee of change for the Aurean people.” Corydon prophesized. “Todee will be a Dee of enlightenment. Our Fliers are all being sent out to the Grancittas of the Aurean nation as well as the most important of the Menocittas, where my writings will be distributed. I will shed light on the truth about our nature and those who are willing will join me as we build a nation away from these barren rocks you and your weak-willed followers cling to.”
“You’re going to tell everyone what you’ve told me?” The Greater Helion asked, aghast. “A few things will surely happen if you do. If you don’t incite everyone into a mass frenzy and panic, even though I think you will, you’ll at the very least be branded the worst heretic in our history. The Grand Helion will be forced to deal with you.”
“Let him come!” Corydon shouted, his words echoing strongly amidst the pillars of the crystal-domed audience chamber. “Let him come and see for himself the new world I am building. Let him see the error of his ways. Perhaps I will let him join me. For even the entire muster of Guardians in all the cities of our people will not be enough to stop me.”
“You would ruin us all for a little girl.”
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“That girl is not just any girl. She is a mistake of nature. Orestes couldn’t bear to let his beloved Kerathi flower whore or his daughter be drained of their body fluids for the sake of our kind. His weakness and love for her robbed my Aureans of her abilities. They could have been the mothers to a special breed of our kind who would have the strength of the Thaumaturges and the power of our own nature. Orestes’ failure failed us all, and that was the cause of his disgrace and dismissal from the Guardian service.”
“Yet his love was enough to overcome our other curse.”
“Yes, he was able to breed with a lowlander, and I still do not know how.” Corydon said, throwing his arms up as if it were something he cared about not in the least. A sick smile crept onto his face then. “Despite his reproductive magic, he couldn’t save his own life. How he managed is immaterial anyway so long as I recapture the daughter.”
“Perhaps it is best that the girl escaped then. I had always thought that she would be a help to our people, but now I see she was just another piece of your twisted plan. She could have brought a new level of growth to our kind. You spoke so passionately of the sick she could cure, the illnesses she could ward off, and the greater good she could have done for our people. I can’t believe that it was all a lie.”
“She still will do us a great deal of good.” Corydon promised. “It just won’t be in the way your pacifistic nature envisioned.”
“Please, even if you care little for what happens to me, don’t tell everyone what you told me.” The Greater Helion begged. “The hysteria and panic will cost so many lives, and for what?”
“I fear our chat has come to an end, old friend. I will have to begin preparing for the riots and the audiences we will have to contend with come morning. They are sure to feel quite betrayed by the lies the Voice of the Firmament and the Greater Helion have been propagating to keep them imprisoned here. They’re oh so tired of swarming over each other like rats just to find a place to live. Imagine their devotion and thankfulness when I show them the way out of the light and into the dark. They will not have to fear anymore.”
“Don’t do this.”
Corydon turned to his Guardians then, and said to them, “Escort the Greater Helion from the room.”
Illias nodded and stepped forward to grab at the Greater Helion, but he slipped away and ran toward the bed of flowers that Corydon had thrown the fish into. Corydon, seeing his intent, held up a hand to halt Illias.
With a look of disgust for Corydon and his Dark Aureans, the Greater Helion knelt and brushed aside the flowers to pick up the fish. He carried it over to its fountain then and let it go. With a defiant intake of air, he said to them all, “I see now the error of my ways. I was willing to sacrifice a few Kerathi lives for the chance to have that girl and use her to improve the status of our people. I see now that I was wrong when I see the reflection of my deeds on you all. I see how even an insignificant life is important. You will doom us all with your hatred and greed.”
Corydon laughed. “But a life taken is a life you cannot restore.” He pointed to the fish, which floated belly up in the fountain. He flicked his wrist once more and his Guardians surrounded the Greater Helion, seizing him none too gently.
The Greater Helion’s fists were clenched tight as he struggled for a moment against the heavy hands of the Dark Aureans, only to find that his strength was not the match for one of them, let alone nine. “Kaneitha take you all!” He shouted as he was carried away, his fire opal adorned circlet falling off his brow and onto the ground to be stepped on by Illias.
“I will gladly suckle at her shadow-wreathed bosoms, old friend.” Corydon called after him, smiling.
Only after the Greater Helion had been escorted completely out of the room did Corydon step up to the dais and take the crystal throne. The throne was not something he intended to keep for long since he’d go into the lowlands when he’d done all he needed with the city, but it did have a nice feel to it. He smiled and considered the Ouer, wondering how soon it would be before he would be summoned to see the power of the Farsight Outlooks demonstrated.
Had he looked, he’d have seen that the fish he’d thought dead was no longer belly up. It swam weakly, but its strength returned with each gulp of water it took.
Captain Genero stood beside Corydon as they supervised the powering up of the eastern Farsight Outlooks of Cenalium.
What had once looked like harmless but giant astronomical devices built of lenses and bronze metal had become rather sinister looking, but that might have just been because Genero knew that Corydon must have something awful. New giant lenses had been constructed and attached above them, and they had been framed in silver instead of bronze. The whole device had been turned around as well. Formerly, the largest lenses had been facing downward, like giant looking glasses. Now the largest lenses were up, and the narrow ones were down, and with the added parts, they reminded Genero quite strongly of arc-lances.
The sky was grey yet strangely, for the season, almost clear of clouds. A few wispy cirrus clouds tumbled through the sky, stretching and reforming periodically as they raced across the horizon. It was a fitting omen for what Genero understood was to happen, though the details of how this all worked had not been completely explained to him. He knew only that a demonstration was in the works, and he expected nothing short of terrible from Corydon.
Genero and Corydon had stations of honor beside the one Farsight Outlook that had not been altered for todee. At it, they each watched from a looking station amidst the levers and lenses. They sat on cushioned seats while they shouted orders down to the men below to adjust the looking device one way or another so that they could better view the incoming fleet. It took a crew of eight men to man the massive wheels of the great device, which stretched almost ten Mayters from tip to tip, and it was not even the largest of the Farsight Outlooks.
With a nod of encouragement from Corydon, Genero put his eye to one of the pair of eyepieces that was provided for a team of watchers. Things were always observed in pairs, that way there was a corroborating witness for what they had seen. In this case, Corydon was sharing what he had promised to be a stunning display of Aurean might with him, and yet Genero didn’t feel honored to be the one this was being displayed with.
Still, the majesty of a view so far away was hard to deny. As things came into focus slowly and the lenses swiveled into place, a Kerathi longship came into a startlingly detailed view. As they focused further, Genero found he could count the men on the lead ship they viewed, one of many ships he had seen dotting the horizon as they had come into focus.
Genero exhaled in surprise when they focused directly on the leader of the vessel, a man standing at the prow, his hand on the grotesque figurehead carved onto the front of the ship to resemble Cainel slaughtering his enemies. The captain was bearded and broad in the shoulders like most of the Kerathi men Genero had ever seen, but he had a regal bearing to his stance that suggested he was a man of importance. Behind him men pulled at the oars tirelessly, putting the ship that much closer to Maethlin with every rhythmic pull of wood against water.
“That’s our first target.” Corydon breathed in excitement.
Genero frowned. “The lead ship? Will destroying it be that much of a deterrent that they won’t press the attack?”
“It makes a much more stunning display when your leader is suddenly killed before you even have a chance to defend, but being Kerathi, they will likely charge forward to the last man.”
“Who is the stunning display for? Didn’t you say all of these men would die todee? Who can they tell of their defeat?”
“Sometimes it’s not in how many you kill but how you kill those very many that makes your Dees work so satisfying. Besides, this is not exactly a deed that will be without witnesses.”
Genero shivered and cast a glance over his shoulder to where his wife Cerelia stood on the cliff surrounded by a group of dignitaries and other men deemed loyal enough to Corydon to witness his glory. Although, some among that number were likely forces of opposition that had been invited so they’d be cowed into submission by a demonstration of Corydon’s might. Cerelia stood out among the crowd, at least to Genero, but when she caught sight of him looking her way and raised her hand to wave at him, he looked away in shame.
Would that she didn’t have to be party to this, even through me, he thought. Yet she was so impressed with her husband’s apparent raising of status that she seemed to have turned a blind eye to the misdeeds he had and would continue to perform. He had told her only the briefest account of what he had been through, and she had shrugged it off as him being melodramatic. Melodrama wouldn’t have made him unable to look at himself in a looking glass though.
“It’s about to begin.” Corydon announced as Genero returned his eyes to the eyepieces and the scene Kilomes away.
True to his word, things started rather quickly then. Corydon gave his signal, a simple red flag he waved, and the Farsight Outlooks set to work. Lenses that had been aligned and then blocked with opaque sheets of metal were uncovered. Light began to filter through them, and beams of white materialized out of thin air, the result of light being focused and forced through smaller lenses. As the beams of light grew denser, they became rather obvious against the grey sky. They continued to thicken and intensify until they looked like the beams of a lighthouse piercing a dark stormy sky, yet it was not dark out.
Genero witnessed the cries of alarm from sailors who found themselves in the path of the beams of light, their skin blistering in Saycunds from the heat that was still growing stronger. The Kerathi looked around in surprise and began pointing upward toward the distant mountain on the island of Maethlin. He couldn’t hear their screams, even though he could watch them do so. Even had their voices somehow carried all the way to Cenalium, they’d have been drowned out by the hum of the Farsight Outlooks.
It was then that Corydon gave his second signal, an aptly colored black flag that was the signal for the Farsight Outlooks to go fully unstoppered and concentrate on the lead ship. When four beams of light swept across the bow of that longship, the wood sizzled and smoldered, the clothing and leather the men wore burst into flames, and the large square sail the single mast held roared into a blaze. On the second pass, men began to die, and even in the distance their soundless cries of agony did not escape Genero.
He shuddered in disgust and felt his stomach turn as the regal leader of the vessel went up in flames on the third pass, a pillar of fire that was cast into the sea when the figurehead blew apart. By then the entire ship was ablaze. Men flung themselves from the ship only to find the water around it boiling. There was no succor to be found for them and those who tried to escape the ship died just as horribly as the men who burned alive on the ship.
The third signal went up, a green flag that let the four Farsight Outlooks choose targets at will. The four beams of light began sweeping across other ships in the fleet like a pen across the paper. These ships had no hope of outrunning a weapon that could strike from many Kilomes away.
Genero clung to his seat, feeling his stomach lurch once more and his gorge rise as the wave of death hit his mind. Even from afar, witnessing such destruction was nauseating, and it didn’t help that Corydon was having the men swivel the Farsight Outlook maddeningly in his glee to observe the chaos.
The whole affair lasted some fifteen Mynettes, but it seemed like an eternity to Genero, who stopped looking after the first five Mynettes. At first, he’d just let his eyes loose focus so everything was blurry, but after awhile he simply could not watch even that way anymore. The fact that he was not watching Corydon’s display allowed him to witness something that his master did not.
One of the Farsight Outlooks glowed red hot, its bronze and silver metal superheated from focusing so much light and energy through its lenses. With an audible crack followed by metal warping and twisting, the modified Farsight Outlook ceased projecting a beam of deadly light. Instead, it smoldered and continued to deform itself, the weight of its melting parts causing it to droop.
At the cessation of the fourth beam, Corydon raised his eyes from the eyepieces and demanded, “What happened?”
“It melted sir.” Was all Genero could manage to say.
Corydon scowled deeply at his fun being spoiled and the red glow of overheated metal that surrounded the other three weapons. The auras of heat surrounding the other three promised a similar happening if they continued use. He waved his fourth and final flag, a white one that indicated the end of the attack. Lenses were tilted to break the flow of light and covered were thrown over them. Cries of alarm went up when the operators were burned badly trying to operate the devices, which had become far too hot to safely be near.
Genero had no doubt that a few men would be badly disfigured or killed before they’d managed to cool the devices completely. He hazarded a look back into the eyepieces, which showed a zoomed-out view of three surviving ships amount the wreckage and fires of over two dozen, each which had likely held fifty men or more.
“Success comes at some cost, even from afar.” Corydon said wistfully, eyeing the broken Farsight Outlook from his vantage point. “The ground forces can easily handle what’s left, though I doubt what remains will escape our Fliers long enough to land.”
“I suppose so.” Genero said mildly, still trying to keep his afternoon meal down in front of his superior.
“Now is not the time for weakness, Genero.”
“It’s merely the heights, sir.” Genero lied.
At that, Corydon laughed. “That’s why you among all of us should be gladdest to leave these mountaintops to go live below.”
“I suppose so.”
“And you leave todee.” Corydon declared.
“I do?” Genero asked in a mixture of alarm and confusion.
Corydon nodded and a look came to his face that reminded Genero of a banker greedily counting money. “I’ve received reports of Anthea’s presence far from here. You and a team will head immediately to Aetheline to intercept her.”
“Aetheline?”
“She’s already left Miniya and will likely be leaving Rummas soon. I have no doubt that she’ll be taking a vessel toward Zaraig and from there to Aetheline.”
“Begging your pardon, but isn’t that a few guesses to make?”
“It’s always been her goal, and heading to Rummas only proves that she’s still going there. It’s the only place conceivable to catch a whaling ship that will take her near the Crooked Ridge. The Muerans are closer, but they wouldn’t go there and they certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with a whaling ship.”
“I leave… todee?” Genero stammered, surprised that his odds and ends duties and errands in Cenalium and the Kerathi cities below on Maethlin were at an end. He’d been supervising the construction of fortifications in Fjorlen and Norsjalde for two Waykes now as well as the hunting of the few resistors that remained. The abrupt change of plans came as a surprise, but he wasn’t sure it was a welcome surprise.
“Yes, right now in fact. We’d best get you down from here and give you a moment to say goodbye to sweet Cerelia and your son before you’re off to Aetheline. A good husband does what he must for the well-being of his family.”
The way Corydon had referred to his wife made his mouth twist sourly, but Corydon didn’t seem to notice. “I see. This time I will recover Anthea.”
“Good. This time Illias won’t be there to foul you up, so you have no excuse, right?” Corydon asked.
Genero nodded. “Agreed. I will not fail again.”
“See that you don’t. You don’t want your child to grow up without a father or your wife to live without a husband, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Keep it in mind then as you do what I bid you.”
“It never leaves my mind.” Genero replied, being completely honest.
Corydon reached over then a laid a companionable hand on Genero’s shoulder. The man’s touch made Genero want to shrug it off and shiver, but he resisted the urge. Instead, he took one last glance out from Cenalium onto the carnage below.
I am party to this, and I deserve to witness it, he mouthed soundlessly to himself. Yet he didn’t see what he looked at. Instead, his wife’s beautiful face and his son’s innocent smile came to his mind, blotting out the horror with shame.
