A short burst of angry laughter is contained behind Lord Kórakas’s grinning lips, clasping his goblet just a bit tighter.
“I’ve little interest in this frivolous banter,” Lord Decimus then suddenly gripes, the candlelight beaming sharply off of his bald head. His icy gaze then faces Achernar, who sees to Zena’s departure. “I will contact House Lino and gander upon their plans, Lord Nemeth.”
Achernar, turning to face Lord Ishvara, nods. “Good,” he acknowledges. “Now, if this talk of spears is all we’ve left, then we are done. The night has grown old, and I’ve quite a lot of paperwork to sort through at first light. This council will not meet under these circumstances again until Our Empyrean’s departure for Alverra. However, I will remain in close contact with each of you until that time.”
Achernar’s words truly the outro of the meeting, a string of words which conclude any and all further from being conceived. The tiny, oddly square shape cellar then resounds with the screeching of chairs, rendering ears very temporarily deadened. The affluent and influential begins their escape out of this ramshackle establishment, but before quickly equipping themselves in defense to the frigid air outside. Capes and cloaks of wool and fur are a popular choice, though none would give each member that sparkling gleam of nobility. Indeed, these are articles of cloth of modest, lowly origin, as to not arouse suspicion. Yet each are bound to their wearer by way of a brooch of a particular shade: a brooch of a sparrow. Regardless, Achernar’s gentle eyes would inspect each of them as they made their exodus, ascending up that run-down spine of death. The wooden vertebrae are as aged scaffolding, which quakes and creaks with unpredictability. It thwarts the confidence in the stride of those making the dangerous climb. Clouds of dust and cobwebs scatter aimlessly into the dancing light of the torch, even the walls begin to crumble at their touch.
“Mind your step,” Achernar could hear the Transcriptor Methea’s quiet tone ring, filling his darkening near-distance.
The air would then become swiftly and mercilessly assaulted by a foul, prolific choice of words. Yet as Achernar stands in witness to the plight of his political enemies-turned-allies, he notes the subtle shape of another remaining in the candlelit darkness. Telvern Thaddeus, the shivery, gruff-faced advisor, persists, adhering only to the beckoning finger of the bister succor he so desperately craved. His goblet trembles in his bony fingers as he pours yet more of that delirious liquid. Flooded to the rims, Telvern easily throws the refills back repeatedly like they were shots. He must enjoy his ale, one might comment. However, this is not the truth. The warmth permeating his being, the rosy-red color of his cheeks, the silencing of his screaming nerves—it is a fictional relief of this weakness ravaging him. They subsist, growing only in distance as though he had simply run away from them. Indeed, this mask burrowed into his face as if assimilated with his very existence, it speaks without speaking. A mask, which is influenced not by the enchantment of liquid glee nor the pleasantries it brings. This defined mask, this face ordained to embody misanthropy, grips Telvern’s face without challenger or contestant. His stomach burns with the copious amount of drinks he consumed with frightening speed, yet it endures with the perseverance of a survivor stranded for years. Frustratedly, Telvern throws his goblet away. Its cheap clay flesh cracks against the stone wall, sending its broken pieces to the floor. He then begins to hobble in his own exodus, possessing not a prominent limp in either of his legs, but more of an intolerance to move. No more words for neither Achernar nor anyone else, yet Telvern clearly harbors little positivity for the nobleman, shoving into him shoulder-to-shoulder.
As Telvern walks past, stumbling around both in weakness and drunkenness, Achernar’s eyes follow him. He then watches as the dispassionate advisor’s knees give out from beneath him, sending him staggering helplessly. He manages to catch the table’s edge like an expert, digging his nails gravely into the rough wood. Behind him, Achernar watches, exhaling deep grievance at the sight, the sound, of the man before him. He has no choice but to, for his mind has frozen his legs solidly to the ground. Scads of disquieting wheezes and gasps become the only sound to be heard. Telvern’s lungs like an overworked laborer, mustering what little strength they could to oxygenize his efforts. His callous expression fastens with a determined grimace as he strains to pull himself upright.
“This isn’t working,” amidst his struggle, Telvern hears Achernar voice, his fluid tone boding with unusual earnest. He hears another sound, a step from Achernar before the nobleman further speaks, “You’ll kill yourself sooner than anything else.”
“Did you ever consider…perhaps that’s the point?” Telvern haggardly reviles like a morbid joke, finally pulling his exerted body to its feet.
“Do not jest about such things. Have you sought Meliora like I advised?”
“…Sought her? No, she sought me,” Telvern seethes, clawing both his cane and the table. “Now she won’t stop flapping her damn gums about it.”
“She is a very kind and compassionate woman, Telvern. You should heed her advice,” Achernar expresses genuinely. “She practiced medicine side-by-side with her father. If she cannot help you, then there is no one.”
“Then there is no one,” Telvern parrots with strong opposition, the solemn crack in his tone startling Achernar behind him. The cloistered form of the furtive advisor then grows in motion, continuing his odyssey beyond here. His lungs rupture with a mild coughing fit as he sluggishly treads forward, delaying his eventual exodus even further. Telvern, as he hacks up a lung, points Achernar a barbed glare, before finally demanding, “Mind your nose…that it doesn’t meddle…in the affairs of others. This…does not concern you.”
Achernar feels those words cut into him. He coils his fingers into his palms even tighter, bites his lip even harder, and bleeds his heart a little drier, yet nothing helps. As Telvern’s aggravated lungs finally let him go, he continues to hunt his exodus until its conclusion. Steadily, albeit slowly, he drags his broken body away, departing the presence of the noble Achernar. Once more did Achernar exhale morosely, his tired eyes drawn to the flickering flame of the candle. As its loosened wax begins to fall upon the ancient table’s flesh in tiny droplets, scarlet red and flame-lit…just like that day. Many things, even ordinary things with no value, remind him of it. It haunts him repeatedly, continuously, perpetually, even as he could stomach it no longer. Swollen beads of sweat dampen his forehead and soak into his fine doublet, standing in an entirely different world whilst dwelling in a simple tavern cellar...
Equipped in blackened steel of loyalty, sword fast in his hand, flames and smoke smothering the sky—Achernar is there again. The arm of a citizen-turned-protestor swirls without gravity before his ash-covered face, taken with the mighty cleft of his broadsword. As much as Achernar tells himself to stop, he doesn’t. Instead, he watches in horror as his sword craves a devastating path through the protestor’s abdomen.
Blood splatters upon his breastplate as he forces the sword out with a swift sabaton to the protestor’s soon-to-be corpse. He scans ahead of him, confronted by the collective indignation of his race wholly. A raging mass of bodies—the bodies of his brethren in loyalty and his brethren in blood—chaotically churn before him. They clashed frantically around him, knights against men so berserk that they were no longer men. Some are fighting, some are getting killed, some were already killed—nothing but the hysteria which gorged every sense Achernar possesses. He feels nothing else. His eyes see nothing else. His ears hear nothing else. His nostrils smell nothing else. His tongue taste nothing else; nothing else but the atrocious, horrifying reality of death. Yet there, in the eye of this maddening storm of bodies and blood, Achernar’s battle-weary eyes grab hold upon a single vessel. Raphael Divus Barn resides in the heart of this chaos, for he, to many people, is the heart of chaos. He stands there, holding himself straight like a standard hoisting the banner of logic and reason upon the battlefield. His indigo eyes, so disheartened yet so calculated, peer forward, straight into the screaming mouth and throat of the chaos. A powerful, guttural roar tears through the thunderous blitz and blur around Achernar, for a singular body charged for his king. A Solasúian donned in armour just like Achernar’s, a Solasúian he knows by name. Achernar’s vision becomes beclouded with sorrow, feeling as his lips move subtly to mouth two words.
“Ossian, no…”
Ossian dashes madly at his king with every ounce of energy and adrenaline in his body. Yet holds fast does Raphael, even as Ossian raises his flanged mace up as if poised to commit the unthinkable act of regicide. Calmly, yet unfortunately, a deep sigh funnels from Raphael’s nostrils. His hands become iron fists, clad with conviction, yet they tremble like paper.
As he is confronted once more by his eternal enemy, Raphael stands as if at the ready himself. At the ready for what? What is his young king trying to do? It didn’t matter what Raphael is or isn’t trying to do, he’s in life-threatening danger. Achernar feels himself on the move again, barging through anyone and everyone to stand in the defense of his king. His crying eyes run with tunnel-vision, ignoring all of the chaos around him until only the back of his king is all he can see. The armoured arm of Achernar reaches out before him, for Ossian now steps just a fingernail away from his most hated enemy, the king. His face widens with shock, helpless to protect his king. Achernar can still remember it as clear as daylight: that moment of feeling complete and utter failure. Yet Achernar recollects the next moment with even more lucidity.
A light.
A light all-consuming and overwhelming as though the sun itself fell to the earth.
Then a sound.
A sound so thunderous and piercing that it shook the very ground beneath him.
Then a sight.
A sight so horrific and petrifying that it made every single soul question whether this were a night terror.
Like a scene from a dream, a blast of pure, pale-red energy physically manifested and surged from her elongated claw-like hand. It took into it the shape of the charging Ossian, devouring him completely, utterly, wholly, until it didn’t. It faded away as instantly as it came, but what it felt in its wake would terrify and scar the hearts and minds of everyone in attendance—everyone, save Raphael himself. Something came out from the light that consumed Ossian, but it wasn’t himself. It fell to the cobblestone, lain out as if dead. It was grotesquely disfigured, mutilated, and seared to such a degree that it scarcely even resembled a living person.
The façade of his armour of pride and loyalty was reduced to a melting pile of steel, dripping along his molten flesh to the point of being one and the same. Everyone and everything ceased to even breathe as though time itself had begun paralyzed with fear. Protestors and Loyal Knights alike are adjoined in this moment of pure horror. Yet it was not he who their broadened eyes gaze upon, who numbed them all to their very core. She floats without realism at his side. Her figure dark and monstrous like a nightmare and hollow like glass, yet somehow exists in our world. Her head fumes with an endless flow of wispy mist, wildly pouring like a flame. Her arms long and to her knees. Her eyes a horrifying, soul-piercing red. Her ears pointed and jagged, just like…the old Gyermeki.
The moment every consciousness saw her, there was a single entity who could have possibly appeared before them upon this day…
