Shadow's Rising - Chapter I

Chapter I
Night of the Ravager

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: They spoke of a doom that lay in this stone, a darkness imprisoned for years waiting to 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 scoffed at this of course, since the stone had been raised by the Dark alliance, who were not in the habit of imprisoning dark spirits 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. Therefore, though no one knew what the stone did, everyone knew that it was uncanny. 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.

Or was it?

A slight rustle could be heard in the grass, and the soft rhythm of hoof-steps – definitely of a quadruped – in long grass, sounding loud against the silence. The silence was broken but for a moment. Little did it know that it would be broken even more savagely tonight, little did it know that after tonight, it would never be the same again, here or anywhere. The hoof steps stopped. A sound of cloth sliding on leather, followed by the wed thud of something heavy landing on the ground. A soft whicker from a horse. A moment of silence. Another whicker. Then footsteps. It was unbelievable how well the sound carried in this place; the total lack of background noises made audible even the most minute of sounds over a long distance. The non-existent ears of the equally non-existent observer, sharpened by the silence, can hear the footsteps coming slowly nearer. Where did the footsteps come from? The non-existent eyes cast around, searching. Footsteps have a visible source, no matter how eerie the atmosphere. The eyes move over the moonlit expanse of meadow, colorless in spite of the light. There! A dark shape, trudging nimbly – how do you trudge nimbly? – trudging nimbly and determinedly towards the stone. As the figure drew nearer, it turned out to be wearing robes that glistened in the moonlight, a sort of glossy, unadorned black. The figure itself was of average height and slender frame. It wore some kind of a black leather bag on its bag that weighed it down somewhat.
After a few minutes spent walking in silence, the figure arrived at the hill, walking for a moment beneath the darker, longer of the two shadows, the one cast by Lyrissia's brilliant radiance, then moving on. Up close, a female mage was recognizable, raven-black hair tumbling down her back in an untidy, sweaty mane, some of it falling on her face, giving a stark contrast of color: Her face itself was as drawn and white as chalk, her dark eyes – their color unrecognizable in the gloom – her eyes wide open, if with excitement and eagerness or with terror at what she was about to do was not clear. Her nose short, but incredibly narrow to the point of looking like a beak, yet not crooked. The skin, covering a sharp chin that looked as if it could stab someone, high cheekbones and a tall, narrow forehead, strained with an expression of both exultation and utter horror. Not wrinkled or creased, but smooth. A young face. Assuming she was a human – and there were hardly any elves in Atharellia any more –, one would have estimated her age to be less than thirty. Of course, the mages – and she was one; everything about her appearance screamed "Witch!" – had their ways of disguising their age, but she did not look a day beyond twenty five.
She was extremely nervous, and yet there was an air of dark determination and resolution about her. Her lips, narrow as a blade, curved upwards in an expectant smile. This woman meant business, that much was clear. What business exactly she meant was not. But it would soon be: Someone had written down what the stone did, what power it contained and what foolish and wicked things you could do with it once a thousand years had passed. The thousand years had nearly passed, the account had fallen into the wrong hands, someone had read the account, and someone was about to do something extremely wicked with the stone. It would yet have to be seen if it was foolish, and it was also a matter of where you stood. From her point of view, it was brilliant. She was about to embark on a career of tremendous power. The world was about to embark onto a nightmarish trip of oppression and darkness, darkness the like of which it had not seen for nearly a thousand years. Brilliant.
The mage, having reached the top of the hill, walked up to the stone at once, walked up to its jagged, yet mirror smooth dark, polished surface. Examining it carefully, almost reverently, gazing into its black, opaque depths, the mage reached out with one pale hand with slender, narrow fingers, and brushed the stone, hesitatingly, respectfully and longingly at once, but also seductively, persuasively; the touch had the hint of a promise. Under her breath, she murmured words.
"I have come for thee, Mordaures. A full thousand years thou hast waited, how does that feel to one of thy kind? A L'zothgwaur, one of the three Lords of Hell, second in command on the infernal plane only to the Unnamed One himself, bound inside a stone on a silent prairie for a whole millennium. How boring. I shall offer thee something better, shouldst thou grant me thy power. Tonight, the sign of the Ravager is upon us once more, and I have come to set thee free. I have come to set free him that they call Shadow."