Deathless

Deathless Chapter Thirty-Two: Arcaneus

Chapter Thirty-Two: Arcaneus

Man, in his existence in this world, spends all of his days running. Running from commitment, running from responsibility, running from death. All our lives, we flee from death, try to avoid it, try to cheat it. But death is the one certainty of life. All beings must die. All beings must perish, one way or another, be with a sword in our hand or a quick and easy passing in our sleep.

Death is the one thing we all try to avoid, all our lives. Emperors and kings throughout the ages have tried to avoid death, have tried to convince themselves that they are somehow higher than death. But they have all been proved otherwise.

Even mighty Hyperion the Conqueror, or valiant Aeqonis, the Knight of the Dawn, or brilliant Dosoyn the Burner, even the greatest among us could not escape death. No matter how hard they tried.

None of us may escape death, no matter how much we try. The one thing we evade all our lives must one day come upon us.

The fear of death is what drives a farmer to toil night and day to feed himself and his family. The fear of is what drives a warrior on the battlefield, what drives him to kill, or be killed. The fear of death drives us in ways that we can even scarcely imagine. Yet at the day's end, all our efforts to avoid the inevitable ultimately fail. At the day's end, one way or another, Death shall descend on us with swift wings.

But what if one day, it all just ceased? What if Death's shadow failed to come upon us, no matter how ill, how bloodied, how mutilated one was? A man that lies on Death's door would remain there, no matter how much he desired to escape from life's clutches.

And when Death, the one certainty, fails us, what then? Do we continue the fight against Death and cling to this life, as a cub clings to its mother? Or do we embrace it with open arms?

-From the writings of Alvarin, the Last Mage Lord, dated 1071 2E

It was once said that when the Mages first settled on Arlenia, in 478 2E, the so-called Year of Mages, hailing from the shattered ruins of Wymar, the Kingdom of Dragons, on the other side of the world, they built for themselves the mightiest fortress that the world has ever known.

They founded the city of Morsar on the Claw, south of the Archipel Islands, at the eastern tip of Southern Arlenia, after they had been gifted those lands by Emperor Margus the Mage, who was said to have been granted magical powers by the Mages in exchange for the lands.

For seven hundred years, Morsar would be the most impregnable fortress in the land. With the towering, unerring pillars of the Arcaneus Peaks to their west, and treacherous seas surrounding them to the north, south, and east, Morsar was said to be unconquerable. It was said that even if all of Arlenia was conquered by foreign armies, Morsar alone could stand defiant.

It was the Mages that had attained salvation for the Arlenians during the Second Great Serenian War, the bloody conflict that raged across Luartia and Arlenia from 857 2E until 901 2E.

Xernas, a warrior kingdom that had arisen in the far South, launched a deadly campaign to conquer all of Serenar for themselves. Within seven years, they had conquered Luartia and were preparing to march into Arlenia.

Luartia, Arlenia's steadfast ally since its founding, had fallen, and now the Arlenians had been forced to take up arms to defend their own borders. The rest of Luartia's territories, primarily Ninever, one of Luartia's colonies since the Second Ninevan War in 754 2E, in which Luartia and Arlenia managed to wrestle Ninever from Borran control forever, would be of no help in the defence of Arlenia.

The Ninevans, taking advantage of Luartia's fall, gained their own independence from their colonisers, fighting the Ninevan War of Liberation, freeing them from Luartian control while leaving Arlenia to deal with the storm that was brewing in the southern reaches of Serenar.