masterghandalf | Game of the Ancients Vol I: Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Of Dreams and Demons

Thyra stood upon a plain of bare and broken rock beneath an overcast, sullen sky. A hot wind whipped her hair behind her, howling across the flats to eventually crash against the great mountains that loomed behind her. Smoke rose from the mountains and the distant plains as if it had been belched forth from within the earth, where it spiraled into the sky and joined the vapors that kept all of this land locked in perpetual twilight. From behind the clouds the sun’s dim light seemed to take a reddish cast, which in turn gave a bloody look to all that it touched.

Shadowy figures approached from the distance, and slowly resolved themselves into human shapes in ragged clothing, crude weapons clutched in their hands and the light of madness dancing in their eyes. Thyra stepped backwards and raised her hands as if to ward them away, but the barbarians did not attack her; instead they fell to their knees and placed the foreheads firmly against the stone, bowing before her in a posture of submission and worship…

And then she was gone from that place and stood in a great tower that overlooked the wastelands below. She stood in a great hall lit by the bloody sun through a series of vast windows, and in its center there stood a great table lined with thronelike chairs. At the head of the table sat a being that might, from a distance, be mistaken for a man but could never be taken for such when viewed clearly, for tough he walked on two legs and was richly clad his head was that of a great white tiger; the wisdom of ages was in his eyes, but with it there burned a terrible, unholy power.

He looked up from where he had been studying the talons on his backward-facing hands a saw Thyra, his burning gaze seeming to penetrate the very depths of her soul, but he made no aggressive move; instead, he seemed to smile. “Ah, you have come,” he said, his voice a purr yet underlain with greater danger that he didn’t yet feel the need to unleash. “Good. Take a seat. We have much to discuss.”

“No!” Thyra shouted. “This isn’t where I belong. I want to go home!”

The tiger face’s smile seemed to broaden. “But you are home,” he said. “This is where you belong.” Suddenly the fiend was standing at her side; he took Thyra gently by her arm and turned her to face the chamber’s obsidian wall, where suddenly a mirror hung that hadn’t hung there before. In it, Thyra saw herself reflected, but not the reflection she knew.

She saw herself golden-furred and tiger-headed, clad as richly as any queen; a power was in her only slightly less than the creature that stood beside her. “You see?” the fiend whispered in her ear. “We are the same!”

She pulled away from the mirror and the creature at her side and turned to flee, but the floor crumpled away beneath her feet and she found herself falling, falling, into an infinite dark…

///

Thyra awoke with a sudden scream that tore its way out of her throat and sat up, breathing heavily. The tower, the wasteland, the fiendish lord – all were gone. She was back in the lightning rail’s sleeping car, its walls lined with the bunked beds where other travelers lay. She could hear several of them tossing and turning, and not a few of them muttering curses at her for waking them up. Thyra sighed, mouthed an apology that no one could see or hear, and then finally steeled herself for what she knew she must do. Slowly, she lifted her trembling hands and held them before her, and took a long look at them.

They were human, forward facing and bare of fur and talons. It had just been a dream. Thyra let out a long, slow breath she hadn’t even been aware she was holding and lay back in her bed, wrapping the sheets around her and rolling over to face the rail car’s blank wall. Just a dream. She was safe, and still human, at least for now.

Silver Flame, she prayed softly, font of righteousness, binder of the wicked, be with your daughter now. Tira Miron, Voice of the Flame, watch over me. Give me the strength I need to see this through, and I promise you that I will serve your cause for all of my life.

I promise you.

///

Len lay on her back on the top bed, staring at the rail car’s ceiling. She’d heard Thyra’s scream and had surreptitiously watched the girl’s panic and gradual return to fitful sleep out of the corner of her eye, and now lay awake pondering what it meant. Maybe it was just a normal nightmare, a part of her muttered in her subconscious, but Len didn’t buy that. No, the larger part of her whispered, this might have been just a dream by itself, but taken into consideration with Thyra’s previous behavior, her evasiveness on the importance of this mission and why she wanted to come herself, and the fear that Yhani had noticed related to her magic, it was all adding up to something very clear. The girl was terrified of something. Len didn’t know what and she didn’t know why, but she was more certain than ever that there were important things about this job that Thyra wasn’t telling them.

Len didn’t disapprove of keeping secrets; lies and deception were something that she and people like her learned from a very early age. But she did object to the keeping of secrets when there was a very good chance not knowing them could get her team killed, and if her suspicions were at all based in reality, it was starting to look very likely that this was one of those times.

Rolling over onto her side, Len stuck her head over the edge of the bed and looked down at the bunk below her, where Yhani lay. The elf was awake – not that her race ever needed to sleep the same way everyone else did – and she met Len’s eyes and nodded once. The two of them had been together for years, first as friends and then as lovers, and they could understand each other without much needing to be spoken aloud. It was clear from Yhani’s expression that she shared the captain’s suspicions.

Len glanced across the aisle to Thyra’s bunk and then back to Yhani, and nodded again. Yhani’s eye’s narrowed, and she nodded once sharply. Good; she’d be on the watch as well.

Whatever was going on, they were going to get to the bottom of it. Maybe Yhani was right and Thyra needed their help. Or maybe she would turn out to be a bigger threat than ir’Sarrin. Either way, Len had no intention of walking into this blind.

///

Numerous races share our world, Irinali read, and among them they have produced countless religions and creeds, nations and histories. And yet one motif which has recurred time and again is that of the progenitor dragons.

It is said that in the beginning of time the three dragons existed – Siberys, the Dragon Above, Eberron, the Dragon Between, and Khyber, the Dragon Below. Khyber slew Siberys and scattered his corpse across the sky, but was herself overpowered by Eberron, who sealed the Dragon Below away within her body. Thus the three dragons became the three divisions of the cosmos – Siberys, the heavens, Eberron, the earth, and Khyber, the underworld. And so has it been ever since. Yet while the history of the progenitors may seem to some as little more than a fairy tale for children, it is necessary to understand the history of what has been known as the Age of Demons.

For in the beginning of time Khyber’s wrath burned hot, and she desired vengeance upon her sister who had imprisoned her. And so she gave birth to a legion of fiends, and they burst forth from their underground realms and overran the world. Greatest among them were the Overlords, terrible titans who each embodied a different form of destruction – these were beings of immeasurable strength, the gods of their day. Chief among the servants of the Overlords were the tiger-headed rakshasa; it is for this reason that the Overlords have sometimes been called the Rakshasa Rajahs, though in truth they are no more rakshasa than the deities of the Sovereign Host are human.

Under the rule of the Overlords, Eberron became a living hell. Thus it endured for uncounted millennia, until at last the dragons banded together and rose up against the Overlords and their servants. The war raged for centuries, but at the last the dragons found the power to force the Overlords back into Khyber and imprison them there for all time. So ended in fire the Age of Demons, and began the Age of Giants after the mortal race that would come to dominate it, though their story lies beyond the scope of this writing.

Though their masters were defeated, the rakshasa remained. Scattered and leaderless, they dreamed of a return to the time when their Rajahs reigned unchecked and they themselves stood as lords above all other creatures. Some among their number determined to find the Overlords and release them, though the process of unmaking their prisons was certain to take time beyond measure. The name of this alliance has been whispered among those who study the deepest secrets of our world – the Lords of Dust. Here shall follow what is known of these beings, their names and goals, and the dark masters whom they still serve.

Greatest among the Lords of Dust who have names in the tongues of mortals is the rakshasa Durastoran, called the Wyrmbreaker. It is said that he earned his name for his undying hatred for the dragons, and that he has clashed with them many times since the Overlords fell. Here follows what I have managed to ascertain of the history of this conflict, though sources are sparse, for dragons seldom deign to speak with common mortals, and few of those who would pry into a rakshasa’s secrets live to tell what they found…

The sound of a hand rapping on wood tore Irinali’s attention from the tome that lay open on the desk in front of her. Histories of the Age of Demons were hard to come by, for it lay so deep in the distant past, but she had made a point to study them since ir’Sarrin had determined to embark on his search for the buried sepulcher. Even the little that most texts contained – and it was rare to find one that gave more than the cursory overview found in the book she was currently perusing – was enough to give some idea of what they might find.

The knock came again, and this time Irinali responded. “Enter,” she said; the door creaked open and one of her apprentice stepped inside, head bowed and face hidden under his hood.

“I’m sorry to disturb you at this late hour, mistress,” he said, “but Lord ir’Sarrin is here and wishes to speak.”

“So, Kharvin couldn’t sleep either,” Irinali said under her breath; technically she, being an elf, didn’t sleep at all, but her thoughts had proven too jumbled for the meditation that served the same function for her kind and she’d found herself drawn back to her study. “You can send him in; his lordship is always welcome. It’s his house, after all.”

The apprentice bowed his head and withdrew; a moment later, ir’Sarrin strode into the room, clad in a loose dark robe he sometimes wore in the late evening. He glanced around himself at Irinali’s study, taking in the rows of bookshelves, the window that currently looked out on the Karrnathi night, and in front of it the heavy desk where the necromancer herself sat, now carefully marking her place in her book. Ir’Sarrin smiled and seated himself in front of the desk.

“Reading late, I see,” he said, nodding at Irinali’s tome. “Anything of interest?”

“Not much, sadly,” she replied. “I’ve been researching the Age of Demons to try and get a better idea of what it is that we’re looking for in that sepulcher, but every text I find repeats essentially the same garbled stories about the progenitor dragons and demon gods, mixed with the author’s own speculation about what the so-called Lords of Dust are up to. Well, some of the names show up a lot, but otherwise they all contradict each other, so I’m afraid to say most of the authors seem to be just making things up.” She shook her head. “I’d hoped this one would be more useful – I had it shipped from home, and my people have long memories – but no such luck. Apparently this history is too stuffy even for the Aereni.”

“A pity those ancestors of yours don’t seem to actually do anything useful with their immortality,” ir’Sarrin observed. “Almost as much a pity as their hoarding the secrets of life beyond death only for those they deem worthy instead of sharing it with the world. Can you imagine, Irinali, what an entire civilization of immortals might accomplish?”

“Oh, I can imagine,” Irinali said with a short laugh. “Why do you think I left? The Aereni people are a proud race of raging hypocrites who condemn me for practicing necromancy on one hand, and venerate an assembly of reanimated corpses on the other. Well, when my family denounced me I denounced them back and set off to find those who would be more appreciative of my talents.” She spread her hands. “And so, my lord, here we are.”

“I think you sell your people too short, my friend,” ir’Sarrin said. “You’re proof that not all elves are so intractable. And after all, the Queen herself is an elf, or was when she lived. But I think all races have their flawed leaders. Just look at my own king, a coward who sued for peace when all of Khorvaire should have been in our grasp!” He slammed a fist down on the desk, causing several scrolls Irinali had carefully stacked by one of the corners to fall to the floor; the elf shot him a disapproving look, and ir’Sarrin breathed deeply and seemed to master his temper.

“But we can make it right,” he finally said. “We will find this buried weapon, we will use it to place this continent back in the hands of its rightful rulers, and in the end, King Kaius and the Undying Court and all the others will have to see that we were right.” He shook his head. “I just wish I was out there myself.”

Irinali suddenly understood why ir’Sarrin couldn’t sleep. He was a man of action, but the Crimson Covenant’s orders had been clear – he was not to travel to the dig site until the expedition confirmed that whatever was buried there was valuable. The Order’s leadership was unwilling to risk a noble-born agent in the Mournland on a mere chance of an important find.

“I won’t be long, my lord,” Irinali said. “Soon, we will recover the weapon, and then we can put our true plans in motion. And I will be there at your side.”

///

Thyra’s dream is just a dream, not any sort of magical vision or sending (there is, of course, an evil power in the Eberron setting that can control dreams, but they’re not involved in this fic). However, it certainly is based on things she fears and represents a further piece in the puzzle of what exactly is going on with her. But there’s a reason for all of it, I promise you.

We also get a bit more of a hint about Len’s secrets as well (and no, it’s not about her sexuality, if you thought I was going in that direction – she’s never particularly bothered to conceal that she’s bisexual, and only downplays her relationship with Yhani to the limited extent she does because she thinks it might look unprofessional for her to be sleeping with her second-in-command). Her secrets aren’t as plot-shaking as Thyra’s, but are still very important to who Len is as a person.

Irinali’s choice of reading material is mostly a means of providing intel on setting backstory that will prove important to the fic. Things that are general knowledge in the setting (ie, what are the Five Nations and the Last War, what’s Sharn, what’s a warforged, etc.) I’m mostly not going to bother to explain, but for more obscure information that the average person (and most of the characters) would know little about I’ll go into more detail about, especially when it’s central to what’s going on in the story.

-MasterGhandalf

Game of the Ancients Vol I: Chapter 5

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