Elden Lord

Chapter 3 - Rot

The Outer Lord

Chapter 3: Rot

There were few who remembered Caelid before the Rot set in. Most who did were few and far between, with the majority of their number having been swallowed by the blighted swamps of the decaying region of the Lands Between. Remnants of the cataclysm that was The Shattering still occupied parts of Caelid. The Redmanes, they called themselves, along with their enemies, the Cleanrot Knights of Malenia the Severed. The last vestiges of Starscourge Radahn's forces still fought to beat back the nightmares spawned from the death the region, while the Cleanrot Knights gathered at the heart of the deep swamps, where they stayed and kept vigil over the Rot-spreading Aeonia flower.

It was a world unto itself, unlike anywhere else in the Lands Between. Day or night, the sky remained its sickly scarlet hue as if the clouds themselves were flush with pox. The earth was red with corruption and the blood of warrior's long dead. Plants and fungal growths overtook the fauna, creating alien mushroom-like growths that spread their malignant spores on the sour wind. The animals were mutated, freakish things, alive yet rotting. Maddened and ravenous, they engaged in the eternal game of kill and consume with the inexhaustible bands of Radahn's fractured army. When they weren't doing that, they stalked the wastes and preyed upon each other. The dominant predators were massive, malformed hounds, formerly the war dogs of the Redmanes, twisted by the Rot. Their direct competition were the carrion birds, crows swollen to gargantuan proportions that swooped down on anything unfortunate enough to catch their attention.

Amongst the ruins of towns and bastions, flame-belching war machines trundled along the uneven ground, dousing anything they found in cleansing fire. Amongst them, Radahn's men carried out their general's final orders, honouring them forever more. They wandered Caelid, purging and slaying until finally slain, only to do it all again.

Greyoll the Elder watched it all, day after day until measurements of time lost all meaning. There was nothing else she could do, grounded as she was. The Shattering had stripped Caelid of its everglades and deep pools just as it had stripped her of her flight. Oh, how she wished she could take wing once more and put this whole cursed place to the flame.

As the Mother of Dragons, her dear, dear children had taken up the task in her stead, attempting to scorch the blight from these lands. Alas, poor Ekzykes and his brothers and sisters had been touched by the Rot, their scales flaking, their flesh sloughing, their flames extinguished and replaced by the breath of decay. Greyoll forbade her children from venturing out and kept them close, terrified by the disease that could lay even her mighty species low. So she lay at the foot of Fort Faroth, crippled, vulnerable and waiting to die.

A shriek roused her from her sleep. A warning call from one of her brood. She lifted her immense head from the ground and returned the call to calm the broodling. What approached? A mutant stray or one of the malformed corvids? Perhaps Radahn's men had grown bored and sought a greater challenge.

Then she smelled it. A dragon, yet not a dragon. This one smelled different, borne of foreign skies. She knew all dragons, both living and dead as she ranked amongst the oldest. This wasn't Lansseax, as she yet prowled the Altus Plateau, still grieving for her lost Tarnished. Fortissax had... vanished, never to be seen again. Gransax was dead, last she'd heard. The ancient ones were elusive these days, sequestering themselves in within the city hidden in the maelstrom. Her own children and their children were similarly scattered. The smell in her nose was ancient, like a sepulchre newly opened after countless ephochs, with traces of blood and ash and the touch of Grace. It was strong too. Akin to Lord Placidusax in his prime.