The Darkening Blade

It didn’t start the way it should have. That day the wind carried summer heat quickly through the trees. Crows stirred restlessly on the low branches, piercing the morning air with their shouts. That day two riders moved along a forgotten path, their mounts snorting angrily, pushing weeds back into the earth with iron shod hooves. The first boy had hair the color of hay cooked by midday sun. When he opened his small mouth he spoke with a voice that was still changing, cracking and deepening into a man’s sound. 
“We are supposed to be training to join the arbalesters, Tak, making our fathers proud. Not traipsing through the woods searching for forbidden ruins.” 
The second boy laughed. Tak was the older of the two. There was hardness in his blue eyes that suggested that his mind had already outgrown what his body could learn. “My father is proud if the chickens are fed in the morning and the cows are milked. Besides Davys, when did you ever care about making your father proud? It’s Mariska’s father you’ve always shown the effort for.” 
“This is not about me Tak. This is about you and your quest.”
“You mean our quest, friend. Or do you forget that it was you who found the key?”
	Davys nodded but did not respond. 
“Besides, if we find something of value here, Master Ormon will be awfully proud of you then won’t he?”
	Davys smiled, “I mean to make a wife of Mariska. The secrets this crypt holds can make that possible.”
	“In truth friend, our treasure may be your only chance. Master Ormon  is the greediest man in Agamar. He means to marry his daughter into wealth. He cares little about how much you love her. It’s fortunate then that you found that key.”
	Davys nodded and touched his had to the medallion that had dangled from his neck for better than three weeks. It was a simple square, formed from silver and lined with another metal of a type he did not know. The medallion bore the image of a man with great wings that sprouted from his back. Tak called him an angel, and said the inscription beneath the image was the words of God telling them to find the treasure and make better lives for themselves than the promise of Dreananon’s Arbalesters and the duty of foolish wars.
	“You never told me how you found the amulet.”
	“No, nor can I, less a curse fall upon both our heads destroying everything that we touch.”
	Tak chuckled, “A simple, ‘I don’t want to’ would have sufficed.”
	“Very well then, I don’t want to.” And the two boys laughed. It had been a long ride from Westgate. The journey had taken six days and nights.  It was a dangerous journey, not the road itself, but the travelers and the many villages that dotted the southern reaches of Tharan on the way to Cassimere Forest posed a danger. The two boys had worn the garb of Dreananon’s Arbalesters but their leave from that battalion ended three days ago. They were deserters now, in a place where service was the obligation of every man.
	“Not much longer now,” Tak said. This section of the forest was older than the rest. The trees were several feet across at the base, resting in a bed of ancient snake grass. Like most of the villagers near Cassimere Forest, Tak had visited the ruins as a child. They both had.
	“Six years, and you still remember the way” Davys said. He slowed his horse until he was behind his companion. Tak led them through the ancient copse of trees to the edge of a small clearing. He stopped, and didn’t move any further until Davys was at his side.
	“There’s someone here.”
	The clearing may have once been home to a church or a great monastery. Now it was a place where children came to tell nightmares.  The young boys that often came here from nearby villages called it a place of Daemons, but no one really knew what dwelled here. The earth had broken through the stone and mortar many years ago. Trees had made their roots in the space where Daemons were thought to have eaten and slept. 
	“There,” Tak said. He pointed past a low wall shrouded in snake grass. The Arbalester drew his blade. The metal rang and flashed in the daylight.
	“Hold, Tak.” Davys leapt from his horse and called out to the person hiding behind the wall. “Mariska, it is safe to come out.”
	The grass rustled and a robed figure stepped from behind the wall. She had black hair so long that it vanished into her robe beneath her neck. Her eyes were strong green orbs that stared at each boy in turn before she moved to Davys and embraced him in a hug.
Tak smiled and climbed off of his horse. “I see why you wanted to send me back. You knew that she would be here for you.”
“I did not know that she would be as well.” Davys frowned and pointed at a second figure emerging from the space behind the wall. “Elys, you are supposed to be at home or in school. Not here.”
“School ended a cycle ago. You would know that if you visited, brother.”
“Mariska, why did you bring her here?” Tak’s voice was tinged with anger.
“She is my ward in the summer months Tak. The journey from Agamar is nearly two days. I could not leave her alone with her father. What would she do while he worked the fields?”
“She’ll ruin everything.” Davys was beside his friend, staring at the blond haired girl.
“I won’t” she said, and crossed her arms as though the action ended the matter entirely.
“What are the two of you doing at this place anyhow?”
Davys looked to Tak, but the dark haired boy did not want to answer. He shook his head and walked off deeper into the ruins. Finally Davys said, “We’re looking for a crypt beneath the ruins.”
	“Treasure hunting!” Elys squealed. Davys flinched at the sound of his sister’s voice.
	“Mariska, the forest is a dangerous place. If I knew you were bringing my sister I would have told you not to come.”
	“And what of me, Davys. Weren’t you worried that I would be hurt?”
	He shook is head. In truth, he was worried about Mariska. He was worried about all of them. “You can handle yourself better than most of the men Tak and I serve with. That’s what I love about you. But Elys,”
	“Do not worry about her, Davys. I am still her warden. I will keep her safe.”
	They were interrupted by a shout from the far end of the ruins. “It’s here!” the shout came again. Tak walked back into view, grinning. “I found the portal.”
	It didn’t take Davys long to explain to the girls what the key was for. He told his sister the myths that all children were told. He told her about Daemons and the elder races of man who walked the earth in the time of the great wars.
“I know the stories. Before the Daemons fell, one stood before the many. The elder races of man rose to face it and struck it down with the Darkening Blade. But I thought you and Tak knew better to believe in fairy tales and Daemons.”
Tak said, “I am, but I believe in great men, and greater treasures. Whoever was buried beneath these ruins may have had some of that wealth buried with them.”
	“Do you really believe there is treasure here Davys?” Elys was only nine but she carried herself with a woman’s swagger. 
	Davys smiled, gathering his sister in his arms and said, “There is treasure to be found, but you will not be the one to find it. You’ll stay here with Mariska until we return.”
	The girl groaned, raising a laugh from her warden who was barely more than a girl herself. Tak secured the horses to a tree near the edge of the ruins, then he began clearing a spot for a fire. “I’ll make a camp for the two of you here. You can wait by the fire until we return.”
	Mariska kissed Davys gently behind the ear then took the young girl from him. “You will be rich soon, then you’ll have everything you ever wanted.”
	“Not everything.” Davys smiled at her until she blushed and turned away.
	When the girls had settled in, Tak led his companion away from the fire and deeper into the ruins. The sky had grown dark and fat with clouds. The two walked by torchlight picking their way through bushes and broken walls. The spot that Tak had found was a circle of stone the size of a dinner table. The stone was ringed with markings. 
	“It’s the same as your medallion, Davys.”
	Moss filled the center of the stone tablet, covering the center rings. “Give me your blade.” Said Davys. Tak drew his sword and handed it to him.
	“There is something in the center here.” He cleared the moss away with the tip of his blade then laid his torch upon the stone to see what he had uncovered. 
	“There. It’s meant for the center.” In the middle of the stone tablet was a depression the same shape and size as Davys medallion. It slid into the how with a click.
	“Now we find a way to move it.” Excitement tinged Tak’s voice. The pair took position on one side of the tablet, feeling around its cold edges until they each found a place to take hold. The earth shuddered and groaned as the stone tablet was separated from it. A gust of wind shot from the opening as though it had waited a lifetime to escape.
 “It smells like this crypt hasn’t been opened in a thousand years.” Davys turned away, covering his nose.
“Perhaps it hasn’t.”
	Tak dropped his torch into the opening. The wood clattered down a long flight of stairs before coming to a stop at their base. 
	“It is as we thought, Davys. A place of the old ways.” Indeed, each step the pair took further into the earth reminded them that this was not a modern place. The stairs themselves were cut from obsidian. That stone was only common to the lands of Iriamor. No Tharanite had set foot in Iriamor for one hundred years, less under a banner of war. Wall sconces lined either side of the narrow stairwell but none held torch or candle wick. Their own torches pushed back the darkness forming a bubble of flickering light that moved with them as they descended. It took them several moments to reach the base.
	“I have never seen anything like it.” Davys’ eyes grew wide in amazement. The crypt floor was also obsidian and swirled with gold inlay patterns that reminded the young Arbalester of constellations. He separated from Tak and darkness filled the space between them. The crypt was enormous. Against the south wall, he could not make out the distance to the south wall.
	“It is larger than the chamber Dreananon uses to feed the order.” 
	“How can you tell Tak? In this darkness I cannot even see the walls.”
	“They are there friend. I can feel them and more. There is power here. Can you not feel it?”
	“No, nor can I see any treasure by the light of my torch. You should go back and bring more timber, more light.”
	“And let you be the first to put hands to our treasure? No, Davys. I believe our light is just fine.” And his voice trailed into silence. He had come to a part of the crypt his torch would not light. A line of darkness divided them from the back half of the chamber.  It wasn’t completely opaque. Tak could see enough to make out the hazy form of a statue hanging from the north wall. It was the only object he had seen in the chamber so far. As his eyes adjusted he saw more objects behind the curtain. There were chests the size of wine kegs and more than a dozen rectangular shapes that could have been sarcophagi. 
	“So, there is treasure after all.” Tak could hardly contain his anticipation. He started forward, cautious at first, but then jubilant when he discovered that the shadow had no substance. 
	“Tak, don’t.” But his friend went anyway, moving beyond the shadow closer to the figure hanging from the far wall.
	“This statue was made too well Days. It looks to me like a real thing.”
It had a dogs red face, and a mans body, but it was taller and more muscular than any man should be. It wore no clothes to hide its privates from view. There was no need, for it had neither the parts of a man or a woman. The creatures arms were hidden by long black-feathered wings that sprouted from its shoulder blades and stretched from its shoulders past its blackened feet. 
	“It is real.” Davys was trembling at the site of the creature.
	“No, it cannot be. They do not exist.” But they did. Though no one had seen such a thing in many lifetimes, the creature hovering in the still air before them was what they feared it to be.
	“A Daemon.”
“K’ael ‘on saek!” The Daemon’s voice was the sound of gravel crushed beneath a soldiers boot. It spoke the words again, eyes shifting quickly from left to right. Neither boy moved for fear of what might happen if they did. Then at once the beast’s feathered wings pealed back and its arms shot forward. Tak started to scream but the beast was upon him before the sound could escape his lips. It reached out with clawed hands that seemed to be formed from darkness itself. 
“Tak!” Davys’ shout went unnoticed by boy or beast. He drew his sword. The rusted length of steel made a sound like parchment crumbling when it left his scabbard. 
“Release him, or be destroyed!”
	The Daemon clamped its black hands around Taks head. Each claw dug into Taks skull. “K’ael ‘on saek!” it spat again. The creatures hands were like fire. Taks screams died as gurgles in his throat.  
	“Sh’Quoch, release him!”
	When Taks body struck the cold floor he was little more than a blackened skeleton, with pools of darkness welling up from where there had once been eyes. The Daemon looked to Davys. Its hands were still smoking from whatever it had done to the boy’s friend. Its eyes were focused on Davys, wide with surprise and understanding. 
Davys moved towards it. His blade quivered in his right hand. “I know you, Daemon. I know what you require. I know what you are capable of. You have taken him across the threshold. His thoughts, his memories, his language is yours now. I know that you can understand me.”
	It could have been a smile forming across the creatures face. When it spoke, its words resonated inside of the boys head, tearing every thought away until he heard nothing else. “Your language is lowborn. But no lowborn creature would know my true name. You were the one that opened the gate.” 
Davys could not respond. His heart was pounding so hard he feared it would escape his chest.
The Daemon looked to the smoking husk at its feet, “This one did not know he was to be your sacrifice. He came in search of treasures. Why did you come?”
	“For you. I needed to know if you, your kind were ever real.” Davys words were staggered by fear. It took all the courage he had simply to hold his ground.”
“No, there is something else…” and it leaned in closer until its red snout was flush with the boys quivering skin. “You seek power.” 
“No more than any other man.” 
It made a screeching sound that felt like laughter. “Then you want all the power there is to be had.” 
	Sh’Qouch lowered itself to the ground and knelt beside Tak’s body. The way its wings were splayed out behind him looked like a king’s cloak. It touched Tak’s blackened skull and paused. 
“A great deal has past since we were driven from your world. We are forgotten.”
	“Not by all. Some still feel the touch of magic. Those are the ones who remember your kind.”
	“And you?”
	“I am no archmagi.” Davys wanted to laugh. The misconception relaxed him, if but for a moment. “I am someone who reads the old texts.”
	“Then you have come for something after all.” Sh’Qouch moved faster than Davys could think to react. It grabbed his shoulder, closing it within a clawed black fist. Davys wanted to screen but could not.  The pain was outside the reach of words, of screams. Was this what Tak felt? Davys could feel his flesh melting away from his bones. He could smell it in his nostrils, taste the sweetness of the meat in the stale air. Then the bones themselves came undone.
“Is that what you seek?”
There was no ghost pain where there should have been. When he looked to what had been his arm, he saw the shape of it, born out of shadow. Davys opened and closed it, testing the new muscles. The shadow moved and throbbed like flesh. It felt stronger than his flesh ever had. The power there was more than he had ever experienced before. It was intoxicating.
	“A part of me is with you now. It calls to you.”
	Davys knelt to pick up his rusted blade. The longsword was weightless in his new grasp. He moved the sword from side to side with a gracefulness he thought reserved to the Bladeriders of the southern lands.  
	“I have given you what you wish Davys of Agamar. Now I ask the same of you.”
	The shadow flesh surged at the sound of its creators voice. Davys said, “All you ask is yours my lord.”
“You are my eyes now. Bring me others and you will have all the power you seek. With each life you take in my name you will grow stronger. Bring me my army and I will give you your realm.”
“Davys?” The voice was a squeak, a whisper and as she came through the darkness Days could see his little sister alone and crying.
“Davys, I heard voices. Terrible voices. Where are you? Where is Tak?” Then Elys saw the Daemon, and screamed.
Davys moved without thinking. He lunged for his sister and she started to run. Though she was small, she was fast and the distance between them was too great. He stopped and hurled the rusted blade forward. It tumbled end over end hissing through the darkness until at last he heard the wet crunch of the edge piercing flesh. He raced to her then. The sword poked out of her small, pale body; her insides still sliding down its rusted edge and forming a red pool upon the obsidian. 
“I am sorry. You should have stayed upstairs! You should have stayed with Mariska! I could not let you leave with what you have seen. I could not let you tell Mariska what has been done here. She cannot know.” Davys knelt over the body and wept softly. He did not know what he would do next, how he would explain any of it to Mariska. 
“Bring her to me.” Sh’Qouch’s voice was very faint this close to the exit. The Daemon spoke twice more before its words goaded the boy to movement.
	“You will learn the value of these mortals in your service to me Davys. It matters not if they are from your flesh or from another.”
	Davys stepped through the veil and dropped the body to the ground in front of his new master. Then he turned to Tak’s body and removed his friend’s sword from its sheath, placing it in his own.
	“Long have you wanted to do that. It echoes in your thoughts. How long have you dwelt behind him?”
	“Too long, Lord.” Davys touched his human hand to the blades ebon hilt. 
	“Yet, at the end your thoughts were to save him. Stranger still. I will enjoy understanding you.” 
The creature rose into the air, its wings beating backwards. Davys did not move for he did not understand what was happening. 
“Listen.” It said.
“I hear nothing, my lord.”
“Listen again. Listen without your flesh. Listen with your thoughts.”
	He could feel his shadow arm tingle and then a calmness flooded him. It was as when Sh’Quoch spoke. Every other thought fled his mind except for that which he was focused on.
	“Yes, you understand now. Listen.”
	From somewhere in the vast darkness of the crypt, somewhere beyond the veil of shadow that held man and beast, Davys felt the sound of a woman crying.	
Mariska.
“Bring her.”
“My Lord?” But Sh’Quoch did not repeat the words. It knew that Davys understood what was required.
“I cannot.” He shook his head very slowly, very deliberately.
“You will.” It said, and Davys felt his shadow hand roil with pain. The boy screamed and fell to a knee, unable to bear the weight of the curse this creature had given him.
	“Stand.” And with that Davys rose to his feet. He had no will left, other than what Sh’Quoch had placed there. Davys turned, drawing Tak’s blade with his shadow hand, and set off to find the woman he loved.
	“Listen.” Sh’Quoch said again, but the creature’s words grew dim once Davys stepped past the veil. He could feel control returning to his body. His own thoughts filtered back into his mind.
	“She is near. Bring her.”
	“Mariska?” Davys found her quickly. The girl had curled herself into a ball and would not speak.
	“How much of it did you see?” She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. He reached for her with his human hand and she recoiled. He knew then that she, like his sister had seen everything.
	Sh’Quoch made the laughing sound but there was no humor in its voice. “She means something to you. She is nothing. You will have a hundred like her, each more beautiful.”
“You don’t have to give me to that thing. I still live for you, Davys,“ she whimpered, staring into his eyes in search of something familiar, something that was no longer there. Davys reached out to her with his black hand. His slender fingers were cold against her skin. The hand closed tight around her head and the darkness enveloped her.
	“Good.” Sh’Quoch hovered just beyond the veil, waiting. “Bring her to me.”
	Davys hesitated, full with her thoughts. “All that she was is mine now, Sh’Quoch. You will have your army, but she belongs to me.”
	He tossed the body across the veil that separated them. It did not matter. It was only flesh. Everything that mattered was inside of him now. The boy turned away from Sh’Quoch without another word. He headed towards the stairs and towards the city he had left six days past. Davys headed towards his army.

*	*	*	*	*

When the boy had gone Sh’Quoch pealed back its wings and walked to edge of the darkness. It touched the veil. It, like the floor was a solid thing, a container no Daemon could escape. 
Sh’Quoch gathered the bodies that lay strewn around it. Sh’Quoch had slept too long, and now the world had changed without an old one to shape it. The Daemon thought about the whelp that had known its true name. Peculiar, Sh’Quoch would have to discover how the boy knew so much. It might not matter at all though. Sh’Quoch had sent the boy to bring him an army, a daunting task for a warrior, let alone an unskilled whelp. The boy would fail and be destroyed. 
No matter, Sh’Quoch had toys to play with now. 
“K’lah ‘une.” The words of magic coursed through its body. One by one the bodies rose on wobbly knees.
“K’lah set.” Only the little girl still had eyes. They snapped open. Her once blue pupils were unfocused and hollow. Elys wasn’t alive. None of them were. But something still lived behind the emptiness that filled each of their eyes. Sh’Quoch watched the three of them standing, waiting, and it laughed.