Shadows Cast by a Golden Sun: The Liberation of Skalos

Chapter 1: The First Dream

"The elders of my people tell stories of a time before us, when they were young. Their elders told them tales that their elders told them. They told us that before there was silt, before there was sand, before there was Skalos; there was gold. They told us that there was nothing more terrifying.

They called them the Aure-Anthropos. The Golden Ones. Greed ran rampant across the stars. An enormous, galaxy-spanning empire ruled supreme, holding dominion collectively over many a planet. They had so much power, so much control, so much land. But they never found any life out there in the stars, no one to rule over. Just unused land. They had artificial life, so the legends said, machines that acted as if they were alive. But it was never enough for them. So, in their hubris, they tampered with life itself.

They created all sentient life as we know it now. Us elves were the most common, then the dwarves. They created beastfolk, like the avians, lizardfolk, the pig-kin and countless others.

I... suppose that, one day, they had enough of being slaves. It was said that they rose against their masters in a rebellion, and a great war ensued. The Aure-Anthropos fell... and they were free, for a time. My ancestors, along with countless other races, boarded an Ark and fled the Palace of Sol, where many Au'Anthropes lived. We settled on a small planet of silt and sand, and we dubbed it Skalos; meaning Grey Planet in Shadr-Kel tongue.

With new land, comes new conflict. Factions formed, the Skalossi Great Houses. House Hammuravi, House Immanuil, House Khammu, House Gidri, and House Enkara.

A tuuva elf, Agra as-Enkara, seemed to cling onto the old beliefs of the Aure-Anthropos; he vied for dominion over Skalos. Agra as-Enkara was never a merciful man. In the years since the founding of Skalos, the Wrathful Blade of House Enkara may, at least, appear to be diplomatic; before he had his advisors, he was less so.

In the founding era of Skalos, the great houses vied for power over the land. He came from the West of Skalos, bringing war. There he stood, atop the rubble of ruined, flaming towns, the red glow of Antares pierced through the smoke, held in Agra's stony hand. Antares; the Mourning of the West, the blood-red blade that felled thousands by the hand of Agra, and millions at the hand of his old Aure-Anthropos master, Samael. They said, coursing through it, was Samael's blood. They said that they saw him dancing through the smoke, in delight. They said that he never ate, that he never slept, that he never loved; that he only loved Antares. They said that he would never die.

Houses Khammu and Hammuravi submitted, and they bowed to House Enkara's tyranny, while House Immanuil and my ancestors, House Gidri, continued the resistance. In a devastating war known as the Battle of Enveeya, the rebelling houses made a final last stand to House Enkara's onslaught. The Plains of Enveeya were set ablaze with war, and many lives were lost. Eventually, House Immanuil was forced to kneel, but House Gidri refused to give up. Every one of them were slaughtered... almost every one of them. My great grandmother survived... For a time, anyway. Now, here I am."

Akkara as-Gidri wakes from a long dream, rubbing his face. Another dream about the history of House Gidri, he must have been doing too much late-night reading. As if the universe confirms this nitpick, he sees an old dusty book left strewn open on his bed. He traced his calloused, brick-red hand across the surface of the book, in reverence, like he was apologising for leaving it in such a state. He lifted himself out of bed, airing out his multi-coloured patchworked duvet, made by his mother for him at a young age. She wasn't his birth mother, but this didn't matter to Akkara. He loved her all the same.

He stretched and poked his head out of his circular open window, resting his arms on the dark brown wood of his windowsill. He left it open often; climates were hotter on the coasts. The dusty, egg-shaped, ceramic huts that the coastal villages like Ashi-Tha were known for, were dotted about the coast like large brown-orange eggs, the ones close to the sea set on tall wooden stilts. He checked the EnviroMonitor on his wrist; it was still the early hours of the day. The sun was rising, reflecting off the sea, creating the illusion of a golden bridge of light that led towards the strange ringed sun in the distance. Akkara could wake up and stare out of the same window a million more times, and he would never tire of this view. A moment of respite, before the hard day ahead, working the farms with his mother.

Skalossi children played on the coastline as the salty seas nipped at their feet, some running up and down with the advancing and receding of the water, while two were locked in a playfight, their horns colliding as they butted their heads together. Akkara chuckled and yelled out of his window "Hey, cut that out! Keep that up and you'll both be blind by the time you've reached your adolescence cycle!" They laughed, sitting back down and helping each other make sand-structures from the rich, grey sand.

Akkara looked around his warm, cosy room, lost in thought, when he heard a voice slice through the peacefulness. "AKKARA!" His mother.

"...Good Skalos... what's got you yelling at this hour?" Akkara rubbed his eyes in annoyance, exiting his hut. The hut next door to his, the farm hut, was ablaze with racket and cacophony. He saw a smelly, rowdy urhog running rampant about the farm, seemingly escaped from its pen, squealing and grunting. It was getting closer to rampaging its way through the fields where their crops laid with every passing moment.

"AKKARA!" She called once more, holding a lasso around the urhog's body, holding it back with all her strength. She was a strong woman who had farmed all her life, but she was also old. She needed help. "GO, FIND GHURASHA! BOTH OF YOU HELP ME WITH THIS INFERNAL BEAST!" She bellowed at him, and Akkara rushed off. He didn't know what he feared more; the rampaging urhog, or his angered mother. Akkara swiftly rushed to the place that he knew Ghurasha would be holed up; Akhel Drinkhouse.

Rushing into the old drinkhouse, the strong whiff of jahunna fills Akkara's nostrils. Blue ceramic pots full of the aforementioned alcoholic beverage were placed proudly on the shelf behind the bar, decorated intricately with golden accents surrounding the lids. Laughter could be heard throughout the drinkhouse, and many kinds of folk from all over Skalos, not just Ashi-Tha, bonded over their common interest; getting drunk out of their minds. Warm, red lanterns were hung up on the sandstone walls, while a warm fire blazed on in a small fireplace nestled away in a cosy corner. An opportunistic, heavily built shadr-kel dwarf grinned a toothy grin, holding up a winning card hand with one of her two metal arms, as all shadr-kel have, as she slicked back her plum-purple hair as it fell in a braid over her deep blue skin. She relished the victory she had claimed over a hapless avian; unaware that she had just swindled his money through an elaborate but simple card cheat. Ghurasha was up to her usual tricks.

"Ghurasha!" Akkara yelled frantically, grabbing her arm. She looked at Akkara in shock.

"A-Akkara? Is it bandits!?"

"You need to help me!" He said, stumbling over his words.

"Lucky for you, I have more urgent matters to attend to." She winked at the feathered fool as she gathered her winnings and stuffed them into her pouch. "Lead the way, Akkara! We're going to give these bandits one hell of a reckoning!"

The two of them ran to the farm, and Ghurasha saw the problem with her own two eyes. "Damn, your ma's having farm trouble?! Sorry, ma'am! We'll be right there!"

A long, tough struggle ensued. Ghurasha wrestled with the urhog, grappling its tusks as Akkara and his mother tried their best to herd it back into its pen. Ghurasha took one step forward, and the urhog took one back... a battle of strength and willpower. Breathe. One, two, three, PUSH! Ghurasha took another step forward, the urhog stumbling back once more, it's four legs pushing against the silt beneath their feet. Again. Deep breath. One, two, three, PUSH - She had done it.

The three of them stood outside the pens that they kept the urhogs in, panting in exhaustion. "Thank you... Ghurasha." His mother sighed, wiping her hands on her dirtied grelkskin hide tunic. "You too, Akkara. Let me cook for you both tonight, for your troubles."

Akkara stayed silent with his arms crossed after the struggle, but Ghurasha smiled warmly, feeding some of the urhogs, their slimy tongues lapping at her hard, metal hands, cupped to hold scraps of food. "Only if you're offering! You know I won't turn down a bowl of your grelk stew!"

Life went on, like always, in Ashi-Tha. Akkara, disgruntled, spent the day out in the fields working with his mother, operating the ancient farm equipment. The yield was particularly strong this annua, the seasons were kind. This brought Akkara no comfort; something deep within his soul was upsetting him. This couldn't be the life he had to live for the rest of his life, disguising himself as a simple farm boy, so that the Qaisar's Seekers could never find him. Sometimes he wished they would. Sometimes he wished they would hurry up and find him, just so he could get out of his duties as a farmer. Something about spending his life working in the fields, while his ancestors fought a bloody rebellion, made his stomach churn. They hated him. Their spirits looked down at him, from the Mountain of Kamokif, and they hated him... he was sure of it.