The Warlord

Chapter 30: Lorelei

Two more of the ghostly spirits, resembling the boy and his horse, have visited me. A mother cradling her babe, both staring at me intently with milky white eyes full of sorrow, appeared in the early dawn of the sixth day. Later, when the sun was at its peak against the blistering, blue sky, a man unnervingly smiles at me before an invisible breeze carries him away. The constant fear of falling victim to the curses has smoothed over, becoming a part of me, sinking deep enough that I do not even care for it anymore.

It has already been a week since I arrived, and I have made no progress on both fronts of interest. The mosaic has not told me anything useful of how to contact the gods, and I am no where close to unraveling what the parchment says.

Sheltered from the blazing sun, I sit in the temple, studying the Katacrisian script. Tracing the faded characters with my fingertips, I try to look for patterns and signs of sentences, but all I see are jumbles of ink. I only know how to read and write in ancient runes, and my Serestinian vocabulary is not advanced enough to make any connections with the Katacrisian. For I moment a glimpse of hope flutters up within me as I "read" a part that seems to have a marking ending it as a sentence, but it turns out to be another character. As I keep on skimming the piece, the words nothing but jargon, similar characters keep appearing, but they are never the same. Panic grows within me as I finally reach the bottom of the paper, but then I spot a familiar character. I drift over it, my eyes searching for where I saw it in the past. I find its double near the top of the script, and as I compare the two, praying for some sort of resemblance, I notice something. The hooks at the end of the curves of ink, the "tails" spilling out in clean sweeps; they resemble witch runes.

Frowning, I try to find more of the characters, and I manage to locate three others. My eyes grow wide as I connect them all together. They could form a pentacle. My heart starts to thrum as I tentatively trace the symbol through the runes with magic on my fingers, imbuing the paper with my witchcraft. A second of silence follows, with nothing happening, and I begin to sink back into mundane despair. Then my pentacle lights up in a purple fire, glowing with white-hot magic that is not entirely my own. The five characters have morphed into the witch runes I am comfortable with, and I read them as meaning "vision". There is a looking glass in this paper. Looking glass is a spell that only high-level witches can perform; they capture the moment by weaving the magic around them into a spell and placing it on some sort of object, where it can be activated by drawing a simple pentacle.

Gripping the parchment, I stare deep and hard into the bright light as it grows into more of a supernova. When my eyes feel like they are being seared off, everything around me shifts, and I begin to shiver. Goosebumps crawl up my skin as the world darkens, swallowing up the paper. Even though I can see nothing but blackness, my mind whirls with the sickening feeling of vertigo. Blinking furiously, I lurch forward, and my body seems to leave the earth, floating into nothingness. Then cool hands are on my shoulder, steadying me, seating me back down.

I instinctively whirl around to look at my side, and I almost scream when I see the little boy and the smiling man standing next to me. Trembling, I peek at my right and find the mother and the baby. Their eyes are all the same; a swirling, chalky white that seems to choke out all the life within them. Their mouths drip and droop in sagging frowns, and one by one, their voices fill my head.

Watch and look, Worshipper. The boy whispers, his lips, once again, making no movement

See, see, see. See and behold. This time it is the man, speaking with an erratic beat and ending with a not-quite-sane giggle.

I gulp as the darkness stretches out before me, wondering at what is going to happen. Then my hair streams backwards and my skin peels off my face as we seemingly rush forward, my clothing billowing behind me. A scene of smoldering houses and roaring skies unfolds before me. At my sides, the ghosts' touches vanish, and I am left alone to witness the destruction in front of me.

View the carnage. View the blood. The woman chants, her voice still echoing in my ears even though she is no longer there.

The pain, the pain, the pain. The baby babbles, following up its mother.

And I do. I watch, I see, I behold. I view the carnage, I view the blood. And the pain, the pain, the pain. It spills out in the cries of the people, in the flames licking at the wooden houses, at the fires fighting to climb to the sky. Red and orange and blinding yellow overtake the darkness of the night, the mellow glow of the stars, and I can feel the sand pulsing out with heat and suffering. Katacris burns right before my eyes, smoke and ash floating through the air as infernos claw down buildings and temples and houses. A man flees for cover, racing past me, screaming for his life, when he suddenly falls to the ground with a soft thunk. I stare in horror at the arrow jutting from his body, the blood pooling around the shaft and staining his white robes.

Searching the area around him for the archer, I find a presence that cannot be avoided. A figure draped in a black garb with wings sprouting from his back, and even though a hood and the shadows of the fire cover his face, I still recognize him; his power, his weapon, his outfit. Zarul, the god of Death. But what is he doing here? He shouldn't be in the middle realm yet. Confusion clouds my mind, and as I dumbly watch, he takes off into the air, aiming his bow at something else. This time, a scream shatters the scene from where his arrow lands.

I stare off into the fire-lit sky, and I see other figures zipping through the air. Two have swords in hand, and they occasionally take to the ground. Screams follow them as well. Kassiel and Varlock, power and war. The gods are definitely tearing Katacris apart, but why? I get my answer soon enough as a shockwave of magic ripples out from above the city. Three lithe figures, with thick, flowing hair, are summoning swarms of vines and thorns against an opponent which emanates pure, primal power. Averith, Soranel, and Malelai. And they're attacking Good.

Everything just screams chaos as the scrambling figures of Katacrisians leap through the flames, as a pulsing shield flickers above the city, as the Gods wage war against the Primordials, and as people die. I hear the whinny of a horse, and to my horror, I watch as it tramples its owner, a young boy, flat into the sand. The ghost. My heart thumping in my chest, I catch a glimpse of the mother and the child being struck down by one of the sword-armed Gods, their cries cracking through the fire. And the man, racing like the mad person he is, screaming and laughing with the same insane smile on his face, bounding straight into the fire and burning alive.

I want to cry as I watch death seep into the sand, as I watch my beloved Gods burn and hack and destroy. And then Varlock's voice booms through the midst of it all, a sharp and loud bellow. "It is time to end this!"

The sky above Katacris begins to shift and hum ominously, and the dark blue splits apart to reveal gaping black. I hear the Primordials scream in the distance, scream in terror but also in rage. The Gods cackle in return, each floating away from the gap in the sky, watching the Primordials feebly throw up shields and spread their power too thin on top of Katacris. A crack of white light arcs into the sand, like a lightning bolt, and then there is a jarring boom, like the world is being stomped flat by a ginormous demon. I am blinded by white light once again, and when everything clears after the split second that it lasts, Katacris lies in smoldering ruins, the Primordials no where to be seen. I sink to my knees, and even though I am not even in the scene, I can feel the hot sand against my bare skin.

Something tingles in the back of my head, growing warmer and warmer and stronger until a snap literally sounds in my ears. An imaginary, tight band that I never knew was there releases its hold on my mind, and I plunge back into the day where everything went wrong.