KotL Short 2

Dramatis Personae: 

Voren: Eldest member of Ghal Johbak

Kael: Youngest member of Ghal Johbak, younger brother to Voren

Sibylline: Matriarch of the Skorpyan Order, priestess, oracle

Great Uman: Eldest member of the Skorpayan Order, Caretaker of the Great Deceiver

Raidriar of Kabbas : Captain of the Serrated Sun Company, noble, brigand, The Lord of Summer Lightning

Jerich the Thrice: Thrice-Resurrected chaplain, Swindler, Second of the Ordinal Conclave

Gossara Warada:

Beneath the wine red sands and pallid sun of the Desert of the Deceiver, a great complex sits in the rock, ancient and perfect, tunneling and endless. This is the place where the sixth lay to be dead, this is the place where only scorpions fear to tread. Here, out of sight. Here, without light. Here, in vaulted halls of silk and stone, the Sons of Skorpis call their home.- Dirge of the Trinquiati, recorded 2985aa. 

They came into the great hall by five, with one at each corner of the palanquin, and the Great Uman at the head of it. His ears lapped up the hollow reverberations of the steady shuffling chitin boots as the entourage trode down the expanse of the isle. It was pretty, Voren thought, at least for a funerary box. It had a hatched diamond pattern on its longest sides, and miniature spirals on each corner, which he was sure were hand cut. The roof was plain and triangular, but the pattern of the mottled sapphire by which the whole casket had been crafted, shone more brilliantly this way. 

In the center of the hall was an unornamented slab of white stone, flat and porous. The five men laid the palanquin atop the sheet of alabaster, and all, save for the Great Uman, began to somberly and uniformly make for the exit. The caretaker was a frail old man, fully without hair, his skin a dark leathery tan from years in the sun, his ribs visible through the gaps in his simple, moth ridden, sea green robe. 

“Awfully ugly”, Kael thought to himself. He had not intended to do so, of course, but the thought was already half way across the room before Voren clasped his wrist, squeezing the psychic thought from the air, before it reached the shaman. 

“Control yourself, brother” Voren thought, to the both of them this time. The thought latched from the synapses of one twin, to the other, like a rope bridge constructed for a mirco-second, then it was gone again. 

Kael responded without sending any communicae back, instead relaxing the muscles in his unknowingly tightened fist, and his brother unhanded him. 

From below, The Great Uman clasped his hands, the sound rippled up to their pew of carved granite at the back of the hall. In a low, gravelly, tone the old man spoke, “Eldest son of Ghal Johbak, this order wishes to pay tribute to your fallen, are all of your line present to bear witness?”

“They are so, Great Uman, past and present servants, we are all joined in this hall.” 

The shaman clasped his hands again, towards the ceiling, and thrust them down past the sapphire box, as if he were cutting it with a knife, and the palanquin began to open up. The little spirals wound down into the alabaster, and the lines of the hatches receded to follow, like watching ice melt, if the ice was being orchestrated by a conductor. As the box peeled away, the twins could see more of the pale grey flesh underneath it. After a few more moments, the box was entirely gone, fusing its blue motley into the white of the stone, staining it like paint upon clear glass. 

A young woman lay on the alabaster now, clad in a simple green robe, like the shaman, but hers was clean and new. In her arms was clasped a glaive, born of hard ash-wood and with a blade finished in bronze and still slick with purpled blood and viscera. Around the haft, her long braid was wrapped, down to near her stomach. Looking upon the visage of her still face, Kael thought he saw the faint creases of a smile on her lips. 

He nudged his older brother with his elbow, “Sibyl’s doing I bet.”

“What?”, the response arrived into his little brother’s mind with an unamused hiss. 

“That thing, with her hair, she wraps it around her fingers like that when she’s nervous.” 

For a moment, Voren said nothing, and Kael went to say something again, as if his brother had not heard him, even though he knew that was not possible. 

“Wrapped,” came Voren’s voice finally, though the hiss was gone, and it’s place, a wave of sorrow. 

Kael did not speak again, and watched absently as the shaman paced around the room, clasping his hands and saying a rite, over and over. Under the horn and plates of his helmet he could tell Voren was tearing up, he did not need to use his abilities to know that. Anguish, loss, hatred, they all exuded from Voren like a thick miasma. In Kael’s own melting pot of turmoil, another tinge was added, like a drop of black oil sinking into the heart; amongst his own pain, there was now a little drop of fear. 

Once the prayers had been dispensed and the rites completed, the Great Uman shuffled back to the head of the stone. From his robe he drew a slim, pinprick of a blade, a four sided dagger with no edges but a singularly sharp point, thin as it was. Kael watched as the shaman brought his hands to bear once again above the young woman. Both brothers watched, almost in slow motion as the blade was brought down upon her porcelain neck. Voren winced, as it sank, half expecting her to shudder about in throws of pain, yet she laid still, and the horror turned to beauty. 

The air began to fill with a hiss as the air from the corpse began to escape it. But from the neck wound rather than blood, was instead shed petals. Some came a deep carmine red at first, but as more appeared, and more of the body fell away, other colors emerged; first a fire bright orange, then royal purples and cerulean blues, and finally as the skin gave way to bone, a bright and beautiful, mesmerizing silver. As the colors changed and the moments passed the petals began to gather and swirl in the air, and before they knew it, the funerary hall was filled with a bouquet of vibrant hues. For a moment, both warriors lost themselves in the stone of the pew, they forgot the cold and the bitterness, the younger his fear, and the elder his wrath. For a moment, they could feel her still, and they were a family once more. 

Once the whirlwind had come to halt, menials entered through the immense and austere plinths of oak the hall used as doors. Clad in the brown of clay or the gritty yellow of sand, they disrupted the perfect vibrancy of the scene. Voren secretly and momentarily wished he could fling them all through the door and against the stone on the other side. He instead settled for a sigh, as he rose to his feet, and his twin did the same. The sound of their sea-green plates clinking and clacking together as their immense frames bounded down the hall still startled a few of the newer aspirants who scuttled beneath them. They bounded ahead of and around the two, making sure to pick up any petals on the ground they might accidentally step on, but taking great precaution not to be obtrusive, like a school of minnows swimming around dubiously fed sharks. They scattered abound, most with bowls, but some with brushes, beginning to gather by hand or by instrument, the multi-colored petals off the ground. 

Outside the Great Uman waited, with an oddly content smile upon his dry lips. He bowed at the warriors, and at once they returned the gesture. 

“Thank you, Great Uman, for the…”,

“Gossara Warada”, Voren filled in. 

“Gossara Warada, yes, we are greatly honored.” Kael corrected, though the old man could tell the sentiment was sincere enough. He shimmed over to Voren without lifting his feet, and laid a hand upon his shoulder, though he had to extend his arm above his head to do so. Kael thought he might have whispered something, but by the time he strained his ears to hear it, the doors behind them began to close, the sound of which, took any hopes of eavesdropping with it. 

In the vaulted tunnel that they now stood in, the shaman merrily made his way down the left, and the twins down the right. Voren strode with purpose, bounding down the hall as quick as was perhaps acceptable, without breaking into a jog. Kael had to break out into a running step every so often to keep up. 

“Where are we off to?” he messaged in an evidently panicked tone. 

“To see the Oracle,” Voren replied, a snappy venom in his voice.

Almost a kilometer of tunnel away from the Funerary Hall, far deeper into the firmament, the twins arrived at a circular opening in the floor. Down it’s passage a narrow staircase of basalt descended, only visible by the intermittent flickering of azure flame. Kael walked up to the chasm; he remembered visiting Sibylline a few times as a novitiate, when he was a boy. Peering past the dim fire light, Kael remembered being afraid of falling. Down, down, and then…

Voren appeared beside him, using his immense gauntleted paw to ease him out of the way. He took one step over the ledge and then…

“He’s gone and jumped down the damn hole!”Kael exclaimed to himself.  He brought himself again to the edge and watched as his brother whisked away into the dark. Kael brought his legs into a squat as if he meant to leap, but lost faith halfway through the motion, and decided to take the stairs. 

Voren landed like a thunderbolt, heaved from on high, and with all the raucous aplomb. Kael arrived surprisingly shortly after, practically having slid his way there. In front of them was a small reflecting pool, lit with the blue hue of the bioluminescent yariba bugs that lined the walls. One of the little yellow creatures began to circle Voren as he rose to his feet, landing on his shoulder, its brown moth-like wings fluttering pulses of rapid light. Past the pool was a narrow passageway carved out of the stone and guarded only by a hanging tapestry of gold chains and jeweled baubles that hung in obfuscation. 

The elder of the two warriors strode through and over the pool in two great strides, the younger going quickly around it. Both men had to crouch down to pass under the entrance, the belts of finery creating a silk-like song of chimes as they collided with their armor. The two arrived in another small room, which itself contained only a cot, a hearth, a small chest, and a table in its far end, upon which were several dozen vials and jars of many shaded powders and liquids. Crouched by the sky colored flame of the hearth, a woman in a black robe rose and turned. 

As shamed as he was to admit it, Voren had always thought she was pretty, or at least, she must have been once. Her jaw was square, and her cheekbones pronounced, her hair was organized in a large complicated fashion he did not have a word for, but he knew if she let the braid fall to the floor it would drag behind her feet, and sometimes it did. He did not know how old she was, ever since he was a boy, she had been stuck in the twilight of her second decade, almost perpetually it seemed. Though, since he had grown, her skin had gotten more pale every time they met, and now, against the azure flame, it looked almost chalk grey. Her lips too, had changed in shade, now permanently stained the same sea green of their armor, from constant use of psychoactive suppressants.  

She turned to greet the pair. “Oracle Sibylline,” Kael began. He always tried to meet her gaze, which never failed to unnerve him anyways, as their was no gaze to meet. For perhaps the dozen times they had spoken to her in their years of service to the Order, every time, she wore a blindfold the color of pitch. It was more for their sake than hers, as they knew what was under it, or rather, what was not. 

“Witch,” Voren thought, and for a moment she frowned. Though when she went to speak her capricious smile returned. 

“Ghal Johbak honors me with your arrival.”

“And we are honored with your audience.” Kael replied, even though it was technically not his place to do so, he knew he would be the only one to say the words. At once, his helmet shuddered and its segments retracted into his gorget, exposing his bare head to the oracle’s sight. Kael’s long, unbounded hair flopped out down to his shoulders in a mess of dark curls and matted sweat. 

Begrudgingly, Voren did the same, his horned helmet vanished into his plate, the symbiotic muscle of the armor beneath it retreating slightly, making his breaths ever slightly less heavy. Beneath his helm, Voren’s head was buzzed near clean, a fresh bolt of searing pink nestled from his cheek above his beard and past his ear. Kael looked at the two of them and decided he might be the only decent looking one in the room. 

Sibylline met Voren’s gaze as he bore daggers at her with his eyes. She spoke once more, “The earth stirs again, Skorpis speaks and you must listen.” 

“No.” Voren said, the word rolling out in an icy chill. 

“I beg your unbelievable pardon?” the witch hissed.  

“Nedine is dead,” he began slowly and evenly, “She is dead, because of your orders, your visions, your shit interpretations of them,” his voice rose into a rumble, “We are the last of our line, the last, us two, a line of warriors going back for a thousand years and now we are two!”

“That is not my fault!” she rebuked, throwing up her hands in defiance. 

“Not your fault? Who sent Gibral into the maw of a giant? Who sent Markus into an ambush? Who watched from her fires while my little sister had a pike driven through her belly?” Now it was a scream, “There will be no more expeditions or assassinations or projections of force, not until I can trust the words coming out of our prophet again!”

“Mind yourself, boy, I am the eyes and tongue of a god, our god.” 

“Then perhaps he should find a new one,” Voren replied in satisfied impudence. 

Sibylline walked up to Voren and her tone shifted. She rose a hand to his cheek and caressed it, “I mourn the loss of your sister. I grieve for the loss of your family, as a friend, as a mother myself…”, Sibylline’s hand had found it’s way to the back of his neck, her nails pulling at it, like the scruff on a disobedient puppy, “but not as an equal, we are not that, we will never be that. I am the voice of this order, and so long as you are a part of it, you will do as I say.” Her voice was serpentine and cruel now, Kael watched writhing his fingers together, yet Voren stood seemingly unphased. “We are the servants of the last extant god on this planet,” she continued, “Flesh as he may be, incongruent as his messages may be, he is our best hope for a future, any future at all. We are honored,” the words came out in an almost horrified tremble, “and the next time you forget that, your line truly will be doomed.” She released her grasp finally, and Kael’s heart began to ease again. 

Voren stood straight and huffed, “Fine, who is it this time?”

It flew in a whirl, dancing through the air for a moment, in a circle, then in a figure eight, then from one face to the next, and on and on. By the time Raidriar finished his display with the spear , it seemed as if all the gladiators abound him had found their way to the grave. It was always like that, and it was always disappointing. Still, the crowd was cheering, his pockets were going to be heavier, and at the very least, he had broken a sweat. He added the final panache of a twirl as the brass scales of his lamellar skirt twirled and clinked. Girls in the stands began to whoop and cheer, a few boys too. Raidriar laughed with a great wide showman’s smile, and took a bow. 

He rested on the butt end of the spear for a moment, while an arena menial brought him a cask of watered down fruit wine, chill and crisp. From behind him more of the entourage from House Kabbas came to inspect his armor and flesh, tightening rivets, polishing plates, and so forth. With them came another armored figure, clad in resplendent gold hidden beneath an embroidered lilac cloak, his face obscured by a jade death mask, capturing the twisted and eternal wry smile of his former visage. 

“Word for you from the gatehouse, my good sir,” said the man behind the mask. 

Raidriar moved his right hand in a motion like a windmill, “Very well, get on with it Jerich. Got to get this armor off, heard tell of a bandit trying to drink all the rum in the city rummaging about, I think we’ll have to go undercover and pick up his trail.”

“You know there’s nothing I’d like more my dear friend,” Jerich cooed, “but there is one small, tiny really, perturbance you must settle before we leave the arena, and all your adoring fans.”

Raidriar’s voice was edged with impatience, “Well? What is it?”

Jerich cleared his throat and continued in a low whisper, “There are two men on the way, and they’re absolutely intent on killing you from what I hear.”

“Me? Whatever did I do?” Raidriar smiled impishly at the priest, who had no choice but to return the sentiment.  

Across the loamy floor of the arena a gate of brass spikes and black iron peeled back into the wall of the arena. Out of the shade of it’s depths stepped two men. More akin to creatures though, Raidriar thought. They must have been at least seven feet tall, one skinnier than the other, but nonetheless imposing. Clad in sea-green plates that jutted out at odd angles, they looked almost like walking crabs, or…

“Scorpions…” Jerich trailed.

“What?”

“Never seen one before, but that strikes me as the only thing they can be.”

“Jerich, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Deep desert dwellers, deceivers, destroyers.”

“The Procession think that highly of them?”Raidriar pouted a little, and began to tighten his grip on the spear.

“That’s all we know.” 

“You are a shit advisor. You don’t even have any advice.” Radriar waved as the crowd began to wildly whoop and whine, crying out in glee at the magnificent splendor of slaughter that was surely about to unveil. 

“You want my advice? Run, go have your drink while you’ve still got a stomach to get drunk with.”

“Eat shit Jerich.”

The priest sighed, and followed the spear dancer into the center of the arena. The chitin clad warriors met the two in a small dais of black marble about five yards across, which lay in the middle of the pit. 

Raidriar bowed theatrically and flamboyantly, flaunting out his long arms and stretching his chest. The scorpions said nothing.

“I am Raidriar, esteemed Captain of the Serrated Suns Free Company, heir to the House of Kabbas, the Lord of Summer Lightning!”, the last bit rolled off his tongue like honey, sweet and practiced, like he had announced it a thousand times. “With whom,” he continued, “do I have the pleasure of contesting?”

The two inclined their helms towards each other, as if they were about to converse, yet if there was any speech between the two, it had eluded him. Before he could object to the impolite mannerisms of these strange things, one held out a scroll and spoke, “Raidriar of House Kabbas, we are envoys of the great beast, He Who Deceives, He Who Lives, He Who is Skorpis, Foreseer of all.”

“And how have I wronged, this “great beast”, I’ve never even heard of? Must have missed the past thousand years or so my friends, gods all got theirs a long time ago I’m afraid.”

Without skipping a beat, the lankier one of the two held out the scroll and read again, “For the crimes of Thievery, Falsification, Smuggling, War Profiteering, Torture, The Traffic of Free Men, and no less than a hundred counts of Unsanctioned Violence, it has been determined that you must return to the wheel, to be spun once more.”

That sent a chill down Jerich’s spine, and he tugged at Raidriar’s sleeve, “Leave this well alone! Flee!” he hissed. 

Raidriar pushed him off, addressing the two in front of him, “Can’t deny any of that, I’m afraid, but a boy’s got to make a living somehow, aye? So, who am I fighting?”

“Both.” the two said in unison.

“Both? C’mon be sports, one and one, like men should.”

“Both.” they said again

Raidriar swallowed, and it felt like a pit was beginning to grow from unease at the back of his throat, Jerich’s word swam in his head, but he continued, smiling again, “Ok…but then I’d need a second for it to be fair.”

The two inclined their heads towards each other again, and after a moment spoke, “Acceptable”, they said, again in unison. 

Raidriar pulled the priest to the far end of the dais. Jerich shot his eyes over to the mercenary before his head could turn, “Don’t even say it.”

Raidriar shrugged, “It’ll be fun.”

“You do not pay me enough for this Raidriar.”

“How much am I paying you now? I’ll double it.”

“Do you even know how much you’re paying me now?”

Raidriar shrugged again, “All the more reason I can afford to double it.”

“Double’s not enough, I will not become hog feed for an extra sack of fucking denars every month.”

“What’re you so worried about? Won’t the eh, the Hierophant, bring you back again? Easy peasy right?”

“I’m already Jerich the Thrice, Jerich the Fource doesn’t really have the same ring to it.” 

“Two and a half times then.” Raidriar acquiesced. 

“Three.” Jerich demanded.

“Shi-three,” Raidriar threw his hands up, “Ok, ok, we’ll call it at Two and point seven-five.”

“You’re an idiot Raidriar, and we’re both going to die.”

“I hope so!” Raidriar squealed, sticking his tongue out in amusement. 

The four walked in pairs to opposite ends of the sand pit, divided by the half way mark of the marble dais. Raidriar met the more stout scorpion and Jerich met the leaner one.

At his end of the field the mercenary began his preamble, “Do you know why they call me the Lord of Summer Lightning?”

“No.” Voren lied, studying the dance of the captain as he pirouetted and flung his spear around in a circle, surrounding him. 

“ It is because, when I was a young boy, I was out on a fishing trip with a friend of my father’s, a real nobleman, you know?”

Voren saw that maybe every third or fourth step in the dance, he would inch closer to him, “And when I was on that boat, a storm came, and as the first lightning bolt crashed down in the distant sea, that man rose and drew a saber at me. Do you know what he said?”

“No.” lied Voren again, as he willed a segment of chitin to unlock from the back of his armor, a stacked segment of circular plates that overlapped each other. He placed it upon his left wrist and it sprung to a shield the size of a door. 

Without skipping a beat, Raidriar continued, “He said that because I had slept with his daughter, I had ruined her, and because of that I needed to die.”

Voren removed another panel from his armor, this time from a piece on his left thigh, it extended telescopically into a broad messer blade, straight and perfect, with a wicked curve at it’s end. He spread his legs to shoulder width and leveled the shield low and the blade over head.

“I had to think quick! The only thing on that boat was a harpoon, I dueled that man on that little boat and I-”, Voren faked a step forward, pushing his weight onto the forward bearing shield.

Raidriar took the bait and swept from over head, Voren swept his blade up to meet it, but it was gone and had already appeared again, smashing into the left face of his helmet and skating past it. The scorpion bashed the great shield upwards, bouncing the spear away from his head, and in the hands of a normal man, would have easily disarmed him. Yet, Raidriar let his hand fly down the shaft of the spear as it sailed upward, catching it at the last hand’s length of it’s haft, spinning back with it’s momentum and into a similarly low stance, the head aimed at Voren’s throat. 

“Clever man, good armor too. But it makes you slow!”, Raidriar faked another high thrust, this time feinting towards the visibly more sinuous underarm of Voren. He was wrong, Voren batted the spear off from a mile away with the shield. 

Raidriar let out a frustrating screech, recovering his ground and posture again, only to begin the same dance again, but this time more erratically and carelessly, forcing each movement, as if he were swinging a hammer. Each blow landed, and Voren stepped to the counter, and what could not be dodged was thrown aside with the bulwark. Raidriar howled again, twirling and then jumping with the spear from behind his back, it looked like a perfect strike, aimed for Voren’s soft tissue between the throat. The scorpion did not need to be psychic to tell it was a ruse, but it helped. He began to move his guard above his head again, exaggerating the movement just enough that-

The speartip gave way to a wet sinking noise as it embedded itself in Voren’s forearm. Raidriar, for once, actually felt surprised, as he landed, and pirouetted again, he started to cheer, looking out upon his adoring crowd. Yet no sound came, he tried again, but all he could muster was a wet coughing, and then he couldn’t breath. He took another inhale, but felt less air than before. He took a hand to his throat and felt like weeping, as his hands for the first and only time, filled with crimson stain all his own. 

As he fell, the crowd shrieked, many ran, some started to throw things into the arena, yet Voren cared little. He cast his gaze over to the other side of the arena, where Kael cast a stone-like head of chitin at the Processionist priest from a loose stalk of sinew. The priest was arguably more deft than the mercenary had been, the perfect throw of Kael’s flail landing in an eruption of sand. The two were about matched, Voren thought. It was impossible for the priest to get past Kael’s meteoric throws, but he was too quick to catch head on. Yet, he knew Kael would not close the gap himself, always doubtful of his own capabilities in the melee, he would not risk a trade of blows against Processionist blessed steel, for it may not have erred against the armor as Raidriar’s spear had. 

Between blows, Jerich noticed the slumped corpse of his charge amongst the sand, and as another sweeping chain threatened to take off his head he ducked low and took to a knee, dropping his sword and dagger. At this, Kael stopped, raising the sinew stalk of the flail into a rigid mace now, but he refrained from swinging it down upon the head of the priest. 

“I yield good sirs, I yield!” the priest cried. 

Voren bounded over to the pair by the time the pleading had ended. Jerich looked up at both warriors, “Look, you’ve obviously made your point, and I think I made it fairly obvious that I wanted no part in this.” he claimed through baited, winded breaths. “I don’t want war with your lot, and I know damn well you don’t want war with the Church. So, let’s shake hands like gentlemen and call it a day?”

The twins looked at each other, “Acceptable.” they replied, helping the priest to his feet. 

“Say then, can I buy you lads a drink? You’ve got me out of an awful bugger of a business.”

Halfway between the city and their home beneath the sands, the twins perched atop a cliff of the red and white of far desert rock. Kael let his curls fly about the gusting headwind, sipping from a large skin of crisp fruit wine. He passed the skin to Voren who took a swig, while he was drinking Kael thought, “What’s it mean again?”

“What’s what mean?”

“Gossara Warada. I know Gossara, obviously: poison, death, the life-ender.”

Voren drank again, “Old Sibyl would be cross with you for forgetting your grammar lessons.”

Kael chuckled, out loud and real, lost as the sound was against the howling wind, Voren kept drinking and simultaneously talking, “Warada means…the beautiful or the spectacular, or…I suppose literally it means “like a flower.”

Kael rolled the words around in his head, “A spectacular end…”

“A death by flowers…”