It has been a long time since Aurelithae last felt such numbing dread. Barely she could focus on cloaking the mental and anima waves rippling across the astral wastes, reaching the dreaming vessel of hers lying motionless in a damp cellar. For the first time, Aurelithae experienced frustration mingling with dread, but ceased not her efforts. Even as stood near the bulwark, feeling every fiber in her body shake with terror, whilst Dumath giggled at the sight.
“I guess you never stood in the shadow of a true primordial
In the forests, beasts and vegetation possessing forms of intelligences howled, whimpered as winds marched abreast carrying the wrath and hunger of flames, cut with the sharpness of cold; the bellies of mountains trembled and shook, the mighty walls of dwarven forges formed waves and strange beasts crawled from their magmatic foam, the multicolored dunes of the far-south trembled, each mote rained the sky before tumbling back upon the terrified worms, the nomadic Yhanubj, and the citizens praying to the One and the Eight for forgiveness. Even the great beasts of the seas stirred in terror in their abyssal beds whilst the denizens of the coral cities covered in fear as their buildings shook and nearly crumbled all. And in Dhaugruz, peace ruled as the people went by their night.
“Sit down our dear. Drussaev shall take care of these pests.” He spoke calmly, yet a blazing wave rustled her flowing ashen red tresses. Looking down, she noticed Drussaev in his opulent panoply, besides him Nephyti whose eyes gleamed in the brilliant blue shade of lapis lazuli, draped in the finest layers of black and golden silk. Even from afar, she noticed the awkward steps he made, no doubt affected by the rage of their father. Without a word, Aurelithae walked past him and sat back into her chair. From the corner of her eye, she noticed even Akaerith trembled from the rage leaden aura that emanated from Terrianis. Warm air swept past her glistening lips.
Slowly, she arose from the cold floor of the damp, lightless cellar and stretched her arms–nearly done so in their suite looming over the arena. Despite taking her four times more to waken her secondary vessel and self, controlling the additional body taxed her less. Aurelithae credited at first to Dumath, though the elder shook her head in denial, confirming without words it was merely the shorter distance between the two of herself. Alongside getting more used to the feeling of existing in the same dimension twice, she made a few steps towards instinctual dual-existence.
“Worry not. Sit there and enjoy the show.
Aurelithae gaze swept across the whole arena, searching for the perfect place to guide Dumath across the capital. And at last, she found one where it seemed the New Dawn triumphed over the legionaries. She watched from afar as Luelia walked forth the shadows into the top seating area where hundreds fought. Five years passed since she slivered and spliced herself into another, yet it still remained a peculiar experience watching herself stroll down the steps, amidst the carnage on the grandstands.
Luelia’s chest swelled as she inhaled the air spiced with smell of blood, burnt flesh, crispened by the cold temperature shrieking still in the arena, creeping up where the New Dawn’s agents contended with legionaries of flesh and metal. Dumath’s gaze swept across the seats, grinned in her adoration towards death, whilst from behind heavy, metallic thuds signaled the approach of two Talos Legionaries. Two long spears tightly clutched in their cold hands.
With the pace of an idling onlooker, Dumath spun around, flicked her head at the two. Both hurled up a few steps, landed soft on a sylvan-kin with a valley carved across his chest and a djinn, three arrows embedded in his chest and one in his throat. A force slammed into both as they began rising back pinching them onto their grizzly beds, before a second shattered their simulacrums into thousand pieces. Then a preternatural heat melted each piece. Each drop flew up into the air, remolded into sharp and tiny arrows, floated behind Dumath surveying the grandstands.
Dumath sidled down, noticed at least seven or eight legionaries huddled around their sorceress, hurling spells at the encroaching citizens. Fear and uncertainty in their eyes, their ears clearly green. She raised her arm, flicked her hand towards the group, the tiny arrows volleyed the group, easily penetrated their plates, shields and then flesh where the searing liquid metal spread quick across their veins, boiled their flesh and marrow from the inside. Their shrieks lasted not long, could be barely heard through the cacophony of chaos.
Then her attention turned at the closed, thick oaken doors of the vomitoria whence the gladiators of the Host came forth. Beyond them, Dumath and Aurelithae sensed Mirayroth’s cold presence. She vanished from the grandstands at once and appeared right beside him, surrounded by a few more members of the Blackened Circle who awaited her arrival. Mirayroth offered no more then a silent, cordial bow. Aurelithae noticed recognition in his eyes, pondered if Grimslaukh informed Mirayroth of their little trick.
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In the next moment, Dumath took the members of the Blackened Circle, teleported them beyond the thick gates of the Vomitoria, into the pitch where the sand soaked in the blood of the combatants, the legionaries and the members of the New Dawn fighting atop the tiered seating. Aurelithae rose from her seating and walked towards the bulwark, Albrion staying close to her, hand on his vampiric blade thirsting blood in its scabbard. Her prismatic eyes glazed ethereally as she noticed the slightly different garments, she left on Luelia the night before.
A thin coat of taut, leathery fabric adorned her lithe form, a few plates welded on at the shoulders and waist, including a tiered tasset. Its silhouette remained angular and subtly lustrous, giving her a noble air, thanks to its high and stiff collar enveloping the neck for protection and attention. A cowl of duller fabric sprawled onto the shoulders and chest area, and a wrinkled hood cast her masked face in shadow. A white mask of an aevhen belle, with lips darkened by gleaming paint, black and red accented leaves drawn around each eye hole, chevrons lined on the chiseled nose, pointing upwards. Baggy breeches held by a tight girdle held pouches and her daggers, whilst the boots of flared and folded down rims, elevated soles sunk into the snow. Both made of the refined arkhaine-leathery fabric like the coat, woven with enchantments she felt unnecessary.
“What is it Sister?” Albrion asked, hearing the covetous sigh parting from her lips.
“Nothing. Merely irking to participate.” She answered, never taking off her eyes from the scene unfolding in the arena.
Four auxiliaries charged forward fearless and oblivious of her true nature. Until their spears crumbled into golden dust, each gilded speckle sharp as serrated knives meant for gutting and parceling up fishes. Each shrieked no more than a second as they got frittered in their own gilded panoplies whilst Dumath watched, ripples of her excitement stirred Aurelithae herself.
“Watch and learn.
A golden, tapering breastplate of angular, symmetrical plates stretching straight down his torso, the long, broad head of the Prismatic Lord sculpted at the center of the bosom, the thick antler-like horns slithering under the gorget of a diamond silhouette protecting his neck, dragon claw like rivets bossed upon the enameled golden surface, betwixt the ruby red fluted lines. Beneath, a golden scale-mail draped over a velvety deep, imperial purple tunic, with a high collar wrapping around his neck like a shawl, its trims seamed in golden. Neither which exerted its true weight upon his honed torso.
On his shoulders, overlapping, pointy plates with three defined corners, vaguely resembling the silhouette of dragon heads; on his arms gauntlets each ending in long, sharp claws she had no doubt could as easily cut through flesh and armor as the greatest of adamantine blades. His piercing citrine eyes peered out from the Y-shaped opening of his helmet, with a high and red crest upon its dome, an azure tinted diamond fitted at the forehead.
The ornamental greaves fastened onto his legs clanked with each careful step, before he stopped ten or fifteen steps from Luelia in the snow. A sorrowful gaze he cast upon the pile of minced meat, at the corpses littered around in the snow and dark soil their warm blood melted away. He inhaled the air seasoned by the sweat and blood of living and the dead, before piercing Dumath with his eyes once more. All the while, Aurelithae wondered why she hadn’t made her move yet. She hated when the primordial intelligence withheld her thoughts and processes in the name of teaching.
Then at last, Drussaev made the first move on the taunt of Dumath. Once again proving, the ingenuity of aevhen and dwarven blacksmithing, as the whole panoply impeded not his pace, the almost preternatural velocity he closed the short distance betwixt themselves. His gifted axe lifted high, gathering the little light of day upon its gleaming, curving blade, a bit unpleasant for Aurelithae as she squinted her eyes reflexively. Dumath’s merely reflected a cold glee behind the mask.
Instead of finding its way into her vessel’s flesh, tearing the fine leathery fabric, the axe fell unceremoniously from Drussaev’s hand. Albrion quivered in his own panoply, standing on her right as their brother lost his speed, down on his knees sinking into slush and snow, splashing a little on Dumath who boorishly wiped it off. The azure on his helmet’s forehead lost it luster gradual, first gathering into a swirling star, then the star burst and the ethereal motes faded into a colorless state. His eyes lost their strength and brilliance, tears welled in each, his body shook powerless.
Aurelithae nearly gasped, at the sight shared by Dumath. Both stood over Drussaev reduced to a whimpering husk, kneeling and watching his friends perish in a hundred different ways, some containing the truth. But most, shown not just Luelia disemboweling the dwarf, ripping apart the orkh with an unseen force devoted to her will, the ones which strained his mind the most, involved Albrion and Calaviril themselves turning into executioners of his companions, friends in fate and death.
And the more he spent there, it involved even the dearest to his heart, gnawed on by ravens, torn apart by ghouls wearing mockingly the panoply of his auxiliaries. Aurelithae stood there, questioning the necessity of prolonging the inevitable. Even questioned if she herself shall turn out to be the same, once the process of melding completes. Though, the end came not from the mercy imposed by Aurelithae’s psionic pleadings to Dumath, but from Nephyti herself.
