Eternal Beasts

On the Arch

"Come!" The dark cloaked figure beckoned with its hand, then folded its arms to apparently wait for them to join it.

Jared gave Samantha one last pat on the breast then slowly began to walk towards the creature, who now stood in the open space between the two opposing parties. As he did, he looked at the ones he had landed closest to and got the impression that they belonged to the Light. Which made the other ones, the ones across the way that stood in partial shadow ...

Jared felt the hairs on the nape of his neck slowly rise as his boots silently strode across the polished basalt surface of the Arch, strangely cool despite the searing fires below, his eyes coming back to the lean figure. 'There's something not right here,' he thought with uncertainty as he took his eyes off the shadowy figure just long enough to make another quick scan around himself. 'I can feel something incredibly ... evil here!' All of his training screamed at him to pull out his weapons, but Jared managed to subdue the urge as he reached the edge of the group of representatives of the races of Light before him.

As the big rider then began to make his way through the midst of the group, curious faces turned towards him, he saw not one of them was nysim. Forcing himself to ignore that detail, he continued to slip through the packed together bodies to come to the front. Then he stepped out into the clear space before once again deliberately taking a look around himself, ignoring the dark cloaked figure and his mounting apprehension. It was a show of bravado, but one that he had to perform or run the risk of losing his nerve completely.

The space they were in was bounded by tall pillars of rough hewn granite and basalt, set into the floor in a rectangular shape, their tops connected by basalt arches. Each was perhaps a meter across, and maybe thirty tall, their placement enough to make the space more than enough for the two groups to stand a comfortable distance apart, a distance of what looked like twenty meters or so. As he finished his survey and brought his eyes back to the cloaked figure, Jared felt a vibration through the ground beneath his feet. A movement to his right then caught his eye.

It was a massive slab of polished basalt, black at a starless night, that was raising itself out of the floor. As it lifted, the slab angled to a forty five degree tilt and revealed a massive book sitting on it, easily the size of a man in height, the cover pulling back by some invisibly magic means to expose creamy white pages inside, the pages falling to the side until the book was open to what appeared to be its middle, their whiteness in stark contrast with the absolute black of the slab. As he watched, it continued to rise almost silently until it was about a meter or two off the surface of the bridge. There, it stopped.

"The Book of War!" the figure, who had waited patiently for Jared to end his survey, intoned as it had watched with amusement Jared's surprise at the slab's appearance and ascension.

At the return of the creature's voice, Jared turned his head back to face it. And he watched as, with a swish of its cloak, it turned to stride silently to the slab. Where, with long, gloved fingers, it reached out to turn a page, easily as big as the creature was, the thin membrane crinkling as the hand turned it aside. The following page was blank of the spidery script that had covered the preceding pages with a black spider web of alien words.

"Here, we will pen down our discussion of war," it indicated, its voice dropping to a more conversational tone.

Jared put on a face of grim resolve.

"We have nothing to discuss, Harbinger," the big man flatly stated. "Your armies are poised on the northern banks of the Synn. All you need is a gesture from your dark council and it will start!"

"Ah, but you are mistaken, griffon rider. We have a great many things to discuss." It turned away from the book to tug the hood of its cloak down, revealing a cholim's angular features.