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Trainz_07 -> RE: The Last Sylvan (7/26/2013 22:21:36)
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Prologue: Loss
Alderon woke up with a start, fumbling through the dark as his mind continued to struggle between the abyss of sleep and the lucid, waking world. Obscure images flashed across his eyes, remnants of inexplicable dreams that had coursed through his consciousness, like a murky river replete with unknowns. Once he found his bearings, Alderon rose from his make-shift hammock, his mind abruptly clear as he shook off the haze of sleep. Something besides the phantoms of sleep had roused him, and his uneasiness was only compounded by the fact that he had never awoken at such an hour save for one particular night...and that night had turned out to be an unpleasant one indeed.
He took a few steps forward, his gait slow but careful, his movements betraying no hint of inelegance. Miniature clouds of gossamer white blossomed into existence with every breath, yet the cold night air barely troubled Alderon, who frequently slept naked from the waist up. Even so, he decided to don his usual apparel: a handsome tunic woven from a panoply of different leaves sporting shades of red, yellow and orange – the celebratory colors of his people. He slipped into his tunic effortlessly, sighing in appreciation as he felt the smooth texture slide over his skin.
He wore at his side a resplendent rapier, whose design and craftsmanship would put many a swordsmith to shame. Alderon had meticulously carved the hilt and guard from the bark of an ancient olive tree, while the blade itself was composed of layers and layers of Steelion grass, sung into the desired shape and form. Gleaming under the moonlight, the rapier’s pine green blade could rival if not surpass any steel counterpart.
Suddenly, the silhouette of an owl flew overhead, its characteristic hooting breaking the nocturnal silence, as if portending a grave tragedy. Alderon frowned as he noted that the forest was unusually quiet; there were no wolves howling, no raccoons scurrying through the undergrowth, no crickets or cicadas serenading the forest with their familiar rhapsody. Nothing but deadening silence. Even the stars were blotted out from view, their usual twinkle banished from the night sky. Alderon gasped as a sudden chill raced down his spine, and he instinctively knew that something evil was lurking about in Illyaweir, his forest, his kingdom.
Whomever it was that dared to encroach upon my forest will feel my blade, was Alderon’s promise to himself as he began to run, temporarily dismissing his senses in favor of his natural attunement to the forest, which directed him to wherever the source of distress was. Just like a spider and its web, Alderon held absolute omniscience over the entirety of the forest. At almost any given moment, he could subtly feel the steady growth of an oak tree or the serene flow of a stream. Even a twig crunched by someone’s boots could not escape his attention. Yet for some unknown reason, though he could sense the impending evil, he failed to determine what it was exactly.
As fast as the Sylvan was, Alderon knew he could not keep such a pace up for long. In a low, indiscernible whisper, he beseeched the power of the forest. Almost instantly, he felt an abrupt motion passing under his feet, moving him along his path like some sort of flying carpet. The forest had answered his prayer, and the grass beneath his bare feet had come alive, thrusting him forward with uncanny swiftness. Despite the situation, Alderon allowed himself a grin of satisfaction; though he envied the prowess of flight that his cousins, the Sylph, were renowned for, he was very pleased with his own ability to glide through the forest on a sea of green, a talent that none other could lay claim to.
A stray fringe suddenly obscured his vision, and as Alderon swiped away his dark green locks, he caught a glimpse of a patch of moon flowers that hid themselves among shrubbery. Like true prima donnas garbed in virgin white, moon flowers only bloomed under the splendor of moonlight, folding and closing their petals at the first sign of sunlight. Yet as though that wasn’t enough, Alderon had seen fit to enchant those flowers to also acquire a blue, lambent glow whenever bathed in moonlight. The floral sight brought a modicum of warmth to his heart, temporarily staving off the anxiety that festered within him. When he reached his thirtieth summer, almost a century ago, when he crowned himself king over Illyaweir, Alderon vowed to devote his life to protect and preserve the beauty of the forest, to show to the world its splendor, and to safeguard it from all who would wish it harm. He was not about to fail it now.
The blackness of the sky before him gradually gave way to a sullen red, which took on the eerie semblance of a bloody fog. Apprehension coursed through his veins, as the pungent smell of smoke and soot invaded his nostrils. Fearing the worst, he quickly unsheathed his rapier, then propelled himself forward with a burst of wind, rushing along a grassy path as if the Reaper himself was brandishing his scythe from behind.
And then the unholy sight came into full view.
Pennons of vermillion flames licked the sky as they climbed up trees, voraciously consuming the ancient monarchs of the forest and reducing them to naught but ashes. One by one they fell to the blackened earth below, creaking and moaning as they snapped at the base. And with every prey devoured the flames seemed to grow even more, cackling like mad demons at a banquet of carnage. Billows and billows of smoke tumbled through the night air, their underside highlighted with a ruddy light as the cauldron of flames continued to burn, giving off such an intense heat that Alderon had to cloak himself in a protective barrier.
He tightened the grip on his sword as he witnessed the chaos that ran rampant before him, fury burning inside him as searing as the flames that tore through his forest. How could such a disaster happen? What happened to the layers of shields that he had erected just days ago? Strewn about the fiery arena were the corpses of animals that failed to escape the burning inferno. To his right he saw the charred corpse of a mother elk, who no doubt died protecting her young. Alderon covered his nose as he detected the stink of burned flesh, tears welling up in his emerald eyes at the thought of his dead companions. Every muscle in his body tensed with rage, every fiber in his being crying out for justice.
It did not take the Sylvan long to discover the culprits behind the wretched conflagration. Spread about the flames that crawled on the earth were loathsome creatures – two-headed hellhounds that spewed bursts of fire straight from their fanged maws, their smoldering, crimson eyes underscoring their demonic appearance. Alderon saw that they were large creatures, standing well over eight feet, their sizes thrice that of horses. Their backs were covered with a disorderly morass of stiff fur as if somebody had decided to haphazardly plaster it on them. No visible direction could be seen among the beasts; they simply went around every corner and unleashed their fiery breath, sending wave after wave of flames that hastily spread throughout the forest.
Alderon could wait no longer. Like a coiled spring compressed to its limit, he rapidly propelled himself into the fray, catching one of the hounds by surprise as he thrust his rapier forward, skewering each head in turn in flashes of emerald. He pulled the blade out of the monstrously large head with the utmost of ease, nose momentarily wrinkling at the sight and scent of oozing, sable blood on his precious sword. Yet he refused to pause to wipe his blade clean; only when every single one of these vile beasts lay on the ground dead would he stop. The Sylvan was a mild creature, in truth, though when his cherished forest was concerned, he would suffer no insolence.
It was only when he felled another of their comrades did the hellhounds finally took notice of his existence, and the monsters were quick to surround him, pools of saliva forming below their gruesome maws as they snarled at him. Alderon met their gazes defiantly, his shoulders pulled back and his head held proudly high, daring them to challenge him. One of them, an ugly brute with one missing eye on both heads, took the bait and began charging towards him, white fangs glistening in the red light.
While the oncoming sight was indeed terrifying, he maintained the utmost of calm, easing himself into a stance, his blade poised forward. At the very last second, just as the hellhound’s gaping maw began to smolder with an impending burst of fire, he sprang upwards above it, twisting and gliding through the air like a fallen leaf in summer’s breeze. The moment when he was aerial seemed to span an eternity, the world around him slowing down to a painfully laggard pace, and for a brief interval in time, nothing, not even the devastation around him, seemed to matter. Then reality came back in a rush of adrenaline, and as he gyrated ever so slightly in the air, Alderon struck with his blade, laying the beast’s necks wide open with deadly precision. With a flourish of his sword, he landed with scant any impact as if a cushion of air broke his fall. His adversary, however, collapsed to the ground with an ungainly thud.
The death of yet another one of their comrades served to aggravate the rest of the hellhounds, howling with rage as they bounded towards the Sylvan, their burning eyes pulsating with bloodlust. As the horde of demonic hounds closed the distance, Alderon still maintained his self-possession, not in the slightest way fazed by his enemies; it was not courage that lent him such composure, it was something deeper than that – an unwavering love for his homeland and the weight of his duty looming over him, gifting him with a rock-hard certainty that he would prevail this night.
He broke into a brisk run, now that the charred ground stripped him of his gliding. Holding his left hand outwards, he briefly spoke the necessary words of power and as soon as the last syllable parted from his lips, a burst of yellow light engulfed his hand, materializing an ornate, golden gauntlet that shone with the light of the sun. With a quick flick of his hand, a golden blade slid out of the gauntlet above his fingers, this one composed of a single leaf from the Tree of Broken Glass. Unlike the rapier that he forged on his own, the gauntlet was a gift from a dear old friend and to honor his memory, Alderon had tirelessly trained himself to use it.
And thus the dance of death began. As two of the hounds flanked him and prepared to sink their fangs into him, Alderon deftly evaded them with a quick roll, slashing their calves in perfect synchronicity as he got up. A sudden tongue of flame reached out to scorch him to which he sidestepped almost instantaneously, spinning around as he moved under one hound’s heads and lanced through one of the heads with a swift thrust of his rapier, his face a mask of absolute aplomb even as he pulled out his stained blade without trouble. Even as the other head howled in excruciation, Alderon turned ever so slightly and, with little momentum, leapt high into the air above. Like a true acrobat, he handled himself flawlessly airborne, avoiding a stream of fire with only the slightest of movements. As gravity beckoned him once more, the Sylvan flung himself down towards the hound, bringing his incandescent blade down with the force of a meteor as he sliced cleanly down the neck of the surviving head, tearing through bone and flesh alike.
One hellhound attempted to spring from behind, but Alderon was ready for such surprises. As it darted its brutish head towards him, he casually flicked his wrist, muttering a quick string of verses. The earth trembled slightly, and then disgorged a large pillar of wood that promptly slammed into the beast, killing it instantly. More came rushing towards his side, and once again he employed one of his spells, this time summoning a net of gnarled roots that burst forth, ensnaring the hounds like flies in a spider’s web. It seemed as though nothing could hope to even hinder the Sylvan, as he continued to dance from foe to foe, blades twirling with blinding speed.
Yet even he was not immune to exhaustion. With every stroke he acutely felt the strain on his muscles, a subtle, burning pain that slowly began to seethe throughout his body. His spells grew weak as wave after wave of heat passed through him, sapping him of his strength. His people were never meant to wield the sword, and thus it was with remarkable fortitude that he managed to hold his own against such a brutal pack of beasts for so long.
Just as he prepared to launch himself into another salvo of attacks, a sudden shift of the tension in the air stayed his hand. All around him, the hounds too tentatively backed off, their sullen eyes remaining stubbornly fixed on him, just as his own swept the surrounding for whatever it was that managed to halt the hellhounds’ assault. His answer laid in a man, or at least the semblance of one, who sauntered out of a curtain of flames. Clad from head to toe in jet black plates of armor and cloths of red, with no emblem or insignia to reveal his origins, the most distinguishing aspect of his appearance was the trails of smoke that seemed to ebb from his helm, which was adorned with a pair of sinister ram horns. Alderon’s keen eyes took note of the air of obedience that suffused the hounds as soon as the mysterious man appeared.
“Who are you and why have you sought to bring ruin to my forest?” demanded the Sylvan, who was not in the mood for any banter. He held his blade towards the man, maintaining the air of dignity despite the sense of fear that began to take root in his heart.
The armored man deigned no answer, at least not a verbal one. Instead he stretched an arm forward, palm facing up as a swirl of fire blistered into existence. Alderon’s eyes widened in alarm as they took in the sight of the flames that burned a malevolent sable. Devil’s Wroth, it was known, the forbidden black fire that was said to burn hotter than hellfire. Rumored to corrupt the soul of the victim even as they charred the body to a crisp, mastery of these flames required either the utmost of discipline or one to have the vilest of souls. Alderon wondered through which path the armored man took to acquire such a reprehensible power. To brandish those flames within the forest is reason enough for me to strike him down.
Before the Sylvan could even act, the armored man abruptly unleashed a cannonade of flames that soared through the air with an acrimonious shriek. Doubting he could evade in time, Alderon hastily summoned an escutcheon of russet wood, made from the enchanted bark of the Stalwart tree. Yet though his shield stood strong against the fiery assault, the force of the impact spoke all too clearly of his adversary’s potency.
Alderon quickly dismissed his shield, and then drained a portion of his mana to call forth a storm of flower petals that flooded the air before them, making it almost impossible to see one another. As he expected, the armored man expelled a tide of black flames that easily scorched the floral tempest, though what he had not counted on was the Sylvan diving at him from the air, green rapier poised to lance through the opening in his helm. Unexpectedly, the armored man whipped out a sword covered in black flames as he riposted dexterously, to which Alderon countered with his golden blade. That, however, left him wide open, and his opponent exploited it with a swift kick to the ribs.
As he slammed into a soot-covered log, Alderon’s mind raced with both bewilderment and fear. How is this happening? No mortal should be able to react that quickly. The armored man did not relent, not even waiting for Alderon to get up as he held a hand forward, the trail of smoke from his helm turning into billows. After just the briefest of pauses, the armored man released a roaring river of flame that even the bravest of heroes would balk at. It was as though he had ripped the very fabric of reality, tearing a hole to the deepest recesses of hell to bring forth such a terrifying power.
Alderon drew his Stalwart shield once more, yet as soon as the surge connected he knew that there was no chance of him withstanding it head on. No matter how much mana he let flow into his shield, he was forced to concede to his adversary’s monstrous strength.
At the very last second, just before the inevitable destruction of his shield, Alderon threw himself aside, forgoing all grace for the sole sake of survival. He managed to escape from the black tide of flames with only minimal burns, though the ordeal left him ragged and drained, his breath coming in shallow bursts as the sweat on his skin mingled with his blood. Such power, such frightful, demonic power, was beyond him.
Yet even as the armored man approached him, lying on the ground as he was, even as he saw the black sword raised high towards the sky, Alderon refused to entertain his foe with any expression of fear or despair. For he was Alderon Bladesong, Monarch of Illyaweir, Greenweaver Savant and the last Sylvan, and none would be permitted to impute his name with cowardice. His one and only regret was his inability to protect that which he loved so dearly.
His regret was short-lived, as his executioner brought down his fiery blade.
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