Prologue - Night of the Ravager (Part. 1)

Shadow's Rising
by
Arancaytar Ilyaran

Prologue
Night of the Ravager

Silence. Nothing but complete, soundless silence. That was the best word to describe this place, utter silence. Totally unbroken, seeming almost unbreakable in a way, the silence hovered over the tall stone obelisk like a vulture circling over a fated traveler in the far-off desert of Kiret to the East. Not even nature herself dared to make a single noise around here; it was a calm, clear night almost completely devoid of clouds in spite of the late, cold season that the world was in, and barely a breeze stirred the long grass stalks, as was usual in these parts. Unobstructed by the clear night air, the two moons that had risen so far tonight shone brightly down upon the flat plains of grass; the huge yellow disk of Rinjo in the very zenith of the sky, every crater visible in the dim glow of its surface, and the small, fiercely burning silver sickle of Lyrissia that was hovering at the edge of the sky barely risen over the horizon of the northwest hills, with its lower tip still seeming to touch the ground: Lyrissia, the errant vagabond, who in the cold months of winter would reverse her path to rise not in the East, over the mountains if seen from here, as was common for the other moons, but in the Northwest. The stars shone as clearly, but were faint next to the light of the moons. Almost obscured by Rinjo's soft glow, the Mariner's faint stars were barely visible next to Rinjo further on in his orbit. Only his brow, composed of the three brightest stars of the night sky, was clearly discernible. Between Rinjo and Lyrissia stood the Unicorn, her fore hoofs upright in the air, her horn almost as bright as the Mariner's brow, but well nigh obscured between the two bright moons. Soon, the Hunter, with his bow and blood-tipped arrow cocked, would rise above the horizon, later followed by Red Blethar, the Bloody moon that always glowed with a dark, ominously red color: Blethar, the bloodhound of the Hunter. This, unbeknownst to most, was an assemblage that had not come to pass in the sky of Kerran for a full millennium, nor would it again for another thousand years. If there had been any astronomers strolling casually by to watch, which there were not, they might have noticed, and would have been troubled by the eerie and foreboding constellation of the three moons and three star signs. The light illuminated the surrounding prairie and the coal black stone almost as bright as day, but the otherwise dark, star-sprinkled sky was unmistakably that of near midnight in late Fall, almost Winter: A clear Autumn night, the weather already trapped in the cold season: Too cold for snow, and too dry for rain.
Nonetheless, for most of the beasts of the southern continent of Atharellia, the time of hibernation had yet to start, and thus even on such a cold night one might have expected the surrounding plains to have been at least somewhat alive with night-hunting predators trying to fatten themselves up for the long sleep. But no living thing could be seen or heard within miles. No one ever went here. Even animals seemed to avoid the dark, ominous spike that the ground thrust into the glittering star-filled sky here like a forewarning forefinger spelling doom. The humans had their superstitions, but the animals had their instincts to warn them. Even in the bright moonshine, the black stone seemed to swallow the light totally, only sparse glistening sheen reflecting from its jagged, irregular edges, the cold reflected moonlight giving the obelisk and its surroundings a ghostly and unsettling atmosphere.
Who had put it there? That question would have posed itself almost immediately to any traveler that chanced to pass by, as was very rarely the case. The stone was rough and unhewn, its sharp black edges glittering like blades. Yet it had obviously not arrived here by nature – it was a solid block of Obsidian, volcanic stone, and for many leagues in every direction there was not a single volcano or other geological activity. It stood upright on the pinnacle of a little hill; obviously the work of humans. So how and when had it been carried there, and who had stood it upright on this hill, and why?
The answer, in these days, was known to few of the wise, and hardly any of the common people. Only a few garbled folktales still mentioned the monolith; and the most ancient, cracking parchments with historical accounts that lay in the deepest levels of dusty old libraries in the houses of wisdom and knowledge in Carenath, the town of the wizards. It had stood in this place for very long, that much was certain. The old folktales that were still told by the common people on evenings in small, smoky pubs in tiny villages spoke of it as an old, forgotten monument to the darker times, when these lands had been ruled by the Enemy, the Dark Alliance, the terrible daemon-hordes from the nether. For an aeon ago, there had been the terrible half-daemon Baltazar, who had ruled over an alliance of both daemons and men, and had been about to usurp the whole world. The whole South of Atharellia, West to East, had been controlled by the daemons. And that was, according to the folktales and legends, the origin of the stone. That much was true, but only the oldest and wisest of the sages still were familiar with the significance and the purpose of the obelisk of Obsidian.
Over a thousand years ago, the Dark Alliance had ruled over this entire region, from the mountains to the sea. This spike, standing in the exact center, had been the focus of their power that held all of south Atharellia under their dominion. The terrible Dark King Baltazar, self-styled King of Daemons and Men, Emperor of the Isles of Blood and All Atharellia, Lord of Hell and Earth, had many powers that resulted from his own heritage. For the nature of half-daemons is thus: They have both a physical, mortal manifestation, and a daemonic, immortal spirit trapped inside. Normal daemons cannot choose to manifest on the mortal plane, but can only appear when raised by a mortal. When this mortal is unconscious or asleep, they can still stay on this plane for a while, but soon fade. When the mortal dispels them or dies, the daemon is instantly thrown back to the Underworld. That was the sole reason why the daemons had never conquered Atharellia until that dreadful day a thousand and two hundred years ago. The unholy alliance between a dark witch and the arch daemon Sphaloron, whose name in our language means Flame, had produced a child that was both of this world and the other. Able to summon unlimited numbers of daemons at will, but at the same time bound to the mortal plane, Baltazar had ravaged the world Kerran with his might and the strength of daemons and traitorous humans behind him. And this stone had been one of the three mighty focuses he had put up in his realm, each one under the control of one of the three arch daemons.
But when in the third Great War of Atharellia, a little less than a thousand years ago, the land had been reclaimed for the Kingdom, the armies of the King had cleansed the countryside of all signs of the Dark: The tall towers, menacing fortresses, and dark, gloomy cities had been thrown down and razed to the ground. Except for this single stone. They had tried, oh yes; they had tried. They had used every single power available to them in order to try and destroy it, for the wizards among them knew well what kind of danger resided in it then, even though it had been forgotten by now over the hundreds of years. But it had been futile. No force could so much as crack it. A hammer or an axe or a sword that struck it flared into brilliant flame and burned to fine dust and ash. The most deadly lightning bolts and fire balls that the wizards could throw at it – and the magic of the humans was strong in those days, before the fading and the start of the next age, that started with the defeat of Baltazar – the most powerful magic that Carenath could muster was deflected without leaving so much as a scorch mark. The people who then tried to lift it complained of an unbearable coldness permeating the material, an unnatural iciness that felt like death, and was not of this world. And they had given up. And so, after the wizards had reluctantly left to set down the historical accounts for the later generations, the obelisk was left to stand.
That was what the sages of this day knew, for that was what the wizards and scribes in the old days after the defeat of Baltazar had dared to set down in writing. And that, in turn, was what the Archmage Rolnic Ormessos IV of the High Tower of Carenath, today dubbed – not without a hint of bitter sarcasm – the Farseeing, had wisely allowed them to set down. But it was by far not all there was to it, for there had been quite a lot of censorship going on at the time. In those days it was thought to be a security precaution: The knowledge of what the stone did was dangerous, for how easily might the human mind be enthralled by the lure of the kind power it offered? Someone was bound to do something really foolish and really wicked with it.
In the end, the wizards had been fools themselves. Too farseeing to glimpse their own noses. Too concerned with the distant future and what might happen too notice the horrible mistake they were making by not recording the dangerous knowledge, effectively withholding the crucial information from their successors. The information was not entered into the chronicles, and when, in time, the wizards and scribes all died, it died with them. And to think that by not writing something down for your friends you can withhold it from your enemies is as foolish a mistake to make as to think that by closing your own eyes you can will the world to grow dark. Things get written down. Somehow, they always do. Where there is a pen, a parchment and a rebellious mind, there is an unaccounted-for piece of writing. And that piece will fall into the wrong hands. Somehow, it always does.
Meanwhile, the common folktales might be garbled, but they were not censored, and that was a plus, for that way the information was not totally lost to the world and to the wizards of the kingdom: In this case, the tales spoke of a powerful daemonic being imprisoned in the stone, trapped for centuries before it would once again come forth from it and wreak horrible destruction upon all of Atharellia in revenge for the shame done to King Baltazar and the Daemonic Legions in the Third Age. The sages these days, in the year Nine hundred and ninety nine of the Fourth Age, scoffed at this of course, since the stone had been raised by the Dark alliance, who were not in the habit of imprisoning daemons any more than a burglar breaks into houses to leave presents. But the legend remained in spite of the scoffs of the sages and the wizards, as legends are wont to do. They cannot be influenced by the authorities or the single mind. That meant that, though no one knew what the stone did, everyone knew that it was extremely dangerous. And that meant that any traveler passing through the plains – few as there were – took great pains and a long detour to avoid the vicinity of the stone. And that, in turn, was why the area in the vicinity of the Obelisk, for miles around it, was shrouded in totally unbroken, maybe even unbreakable, utter silence.

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To be continued.