Era of Obscurum

Chapter Three - Children of Death

Thurian Vandorius considered himself a man of opportunity. Unlike his rivals he spent little time with political bribery or the services of assassins. His family held the least influence of the six after all...no president had had the Vandorius name since the disastrous tenure of the child-president Xzasti.

No, Thurian knew that the true power in any nation lay within its people. And while the Arachni Union stretched for miles, its power was almost purely concentrated in Neo Arachnis, the largest city in the world. It was overcrowded and entirely lacking in resources. This was the fault of people like him, Thurian knew, but that bothered him little. His family had worked hard to reach the heights of wealth and prosperity. It was the poor's own fault they could not stand at the city's heights with the Great Families.

But Thurian understood the poor. He knew that many of them were violent and aggressive, craving vengeance against the ruling class and indebted to various criminal organizations. He also knew that the old legends of the ancient days were widely read in Neo Arachnis' underbelly...one only had to take a stroll to see graffiti wall murals depicting Feros Obscurum's battle with the Tyrant King Ferdinand.

This Feros was an interesting figure. Thurian had read all the legends available in his family's vast library. All accounts state that he had been even crueler than his rival, but while Ferdinand had sought to wipe out all that represented love and beauty Feros had defended the people...yet with a cold, hard hand. No one had grown hungry during the days of the Obscurum Empire, and those who hoarded wealth and power at the expense of others were quickly cast down. Yet the executioner's axe was never dry in those days, for Feros Obscurum was a man who never forgave.

Building a religion around such a man was an easy way to get the common people on his side, especially since the date of Feros' return was soon approaching. Thurian had already rehearsed the return scene in the grand temple he'd built, starring an unknown actor he'd hired for his similarity to the description of Feros. "Feros Obscurum" would make his grand return and immediately command his growing number of followers to rise up against President Cybers and the other Great Families. Once a good deal of his most powerful rivals were dead or ruined in the riots, he'd stage a tragic death for Feros and have the dark lord proclaim him his successor. Tonight's ceremony would be the culmination of years of planning.

But things weren't as simple as he originally thought, for people truly were not as simpleminded as Thurian believed. He believed them to be desperate, he believed that what they lacked in money they had in senselessness. How wrong he was.

Thurian had very scarcely gone into the temple so he had no way of knowing that, at the dead of night, far past when he had left to go back to his sleek and modern penthouse, thousands of people gathered. For this large group of people that gathered in this temple at the dead of night were the real Children of Obscurum.

Right when the clock struck five in the evening Thurian grabbed his long black cloak from a rack, seemingly made of bones. "I am positive that this expensive cloak shall bring these peasants to their knees! Perhaps my entire cult shall participate in this event! Oho, I shall be expecting perhaps even twenty people!" Thurian guffawed, his rotund belly jiggling.

Thurian hopped down the hall towards his huge front door, stopping beside a mirror to comb his large, white beard with a shark-tooth comb. As he stared at himself in the mirror he grinned, "Oho! The fabled man by the name of Feros was said to be handsome, but I am sure I am far more handsome then the actor that I hired, and my hair is currently as white as Faros' is supposed to be!" Thurian chuckled to himself for two more minutes, as a wild plan began contorting in his mind. He ran to a holographic screen placed on a table, and with a press of a few buttons began a video call to the actor.