Private Tales Nightmare in the Twisted Temple

[Solon Raye]

To whomever stumbles upon this writing, I hope it serves as a warning to not repeat my folly. My love and ambition for knowledge has led me to many a foul tomb and many a forgotten city, necropolises buried beneath stone and dirt. The earth of Arethil is home to knowledge the likes of which mortals can't hope to understand. My hunger for it led me to the vile temple hidden in the peaks of the Spine. Even in this writing, I shudder to even describe the horror of that demonic structure. It looked to be built from the very stone of the mountains themselves and yet the material was unlike anything I've ever encountered on this plane. It's spires seemed to stretch like grasping fingers toward the sky and yet they seemed to extend to every hell imaginable. To enter this place is to enter the darkness in one's own mind. To enter is to give up one's agency to feel bliss or comfort. Every memory of love or happiness I had ever had seemed to flee from me. All I knew was terror. What knowledge is worth enduring such suffering? What knowledge already attained could save a man from facing the monstrosities I faced there?

I was the only one to survive the twisted temple where demons sang up toward hell.
No blade, no spell, and no will can hope to survive it. Ignore your pride and flee.
Lest you know the true hopelessness of the abyss.
​

The could mountain air was relentless in the way it attacked his lungs and yet Solon had pressed on. He recalled the many years of training in such environments under Syr Dorn and the more harsh Masters of the Knights of Anathaeum. The elements would always be harsh as was their way. It was a knight's duty to exert his will over reality itself. When the wind commanded him to falter, it was up to him to press against it so that it might grow weak against the bulwark of his consciousness. As they climbed, Syr Solon Raye wore no pain or discomfort on his face. The winds of the Spine would not see him in pain as it had so clearly desired to. He would give it no quarter and before long, the pain had become a part of him as all pain was a part of mortal men. The Knight Pursuant of Dawn pressed against the snow and rock, the glint from his gilded armor having disappeared in the absence of the sun.

Cursebreaker hung at his side. It hummed a low tune. It knew where the two knights were going and so it gave it's master a warning. The mountain itself seemed sick. The rocks crumbled just a little bit easier than rocks normally did. The snow fell as though it were fleeing from something not of this world. Magic was alive here and it wasn't something Solon was entirely familiar with. It filled him with a sense of dread, having read the account of the sorcerer from Elbion who came here with mercenaries as well as his colleagues from the magic academy. Yet, he did not allow fear to rule him. None should. Fear was what turned mountains to dust and kingdoms into ancient history.

"Hhh," Syr Raye breathed out as the reached a plateau in between mountains. He pulled his fur closer to him on his shoulders. Ahead of them was a darkness. The light did not touch it.

"We're close."​

 

[Syr Dorn]

Climbing. That was the business of the young and the Knight that had gone with Solon had represented the oldest spectrum of humans within the Order. Some might have wavered, ask for breaks, but not Dorn. Never Dorn. If an iron will could claim a mountainside, it was his, honed by over a half century of battle and spite.

Solon represented the greatest of his generation, as Dorn and Galvanhad represented the last of theirs. He was the present of the Order: noble, honorable, enough to make every teacher who took part in his teachings proud. So when Solon came to Dorn, he wouldn't refuse, even if he slowed down the younger knight. This was a chance to pave the way for the future, or fulfill his oath to preserve the present.

So Dorn climbed, gauntlet after gauntlet, boot after boot. Up the scaled into highest peaks of the Spine. Requiem, a gift from Syr Fillack, bounced against the back of his cuirass. There would be no magick warnings, just the steady beat of a heavy weapon. They would reach a plateu and Dorn would stick a gauntlet up for the younger man to help pull him over. "It's amazing Galvanhad never sensed this blight.. even the stone is sick." He growled as he got to his feet.

Decades ago, Dorn had wielded powerful magick, but it had been many years since he allowed himself to call upon it. Now, it served only to sustain him. The aches and pains from the climb would be soothed by the warm wave of magick as he pulled it from the freshly gathered snow.

Dorn would cough before spitting into the snow, the heat melting the powder. A withering gaze fell on the darkness that lay ahead and he thought to the stories Artorias had told him and Galvanhad. He didn't know whether this would be his greatest day, or his last, but he had resolved to live as he had every other day.. as a Knight.

"Solon, if it goes poorly, leave. Return and bury the place." they may have been the same rank, but he felt the knight would heed this Order. "Only one of us need to make a stand and I won't have energy for the climb down. So it will be you." One gauntlet slammed against the front of his cuirass as the other pulled Requiem from its place. "To the pain, lad. To the pain."

Solon Raye

 

[One Eye]

Cold greats you. Digs its long claws into the chinks between plate, as snow sticks and melts and does its best to sap away your warmth. Greedy as it is to turn back from ice into something else. The memory of what it once was. Its old shape.

Just like the shape of this place. Twisted and turned. Timeless stories told of green growths. Of trees that clung stubbornly upon the rocks, roots digging through the gravel. Sentinels, the oldest knights called them. Guardians of the temple. Stories so old no book could contain them. Stories that were passed through the words that fell from warm mouths. Soul to soul. Eye to eye.

How else did one share what they saw. What they drew in. What they lived.

What you saw.

Now, before the paired knights there was but absence. A reduction. Where once life might have clung now oozed but melted mockery, stuck across the stones, webbed between rocks. A substance that did little more than show that something had once been there, and now it was not.

Even the snow seemed to run from it. Desperate as it found you.

In the distance, across a narrow and winding trail, you would see shambling shapes. Hunched and jagged and spiny. They lumbered at some task. No march to orders, but no aimless stride. They seemed to search as they twitched and jerked and fanned about.

Beyond them, you could see the temple tower. Tall and sharp as broken bone, where old words once spoke of strong and sturdy as mountain stone. There would be no refuge there.

Solon Raye Syr Dorn

 

[Solon Raye]

"...To the pain."

His own gauntleted fist struck against his chest the same way Syr Dorn's had. A stoic expression was a knight's greatest ally in moments like these. Syr Dorn was a master of seeing into others and knowing what they were made of, what their intentions were. Certainly, it was why he'd been such a great battlemaster. Though his methods could be cruel and his tongue harsh, he pulled the warrior out of the hearts of men. He pulled out the warrior and brought it to the light so that it may do it's part in cleansing the world. Solon had learned from a great many masters, though. He learned from Syr Godfried when to speak and when to keep his thoughts to himself. Syr Dorn needn't know that Solon had no intention of leaving the old man here to die if it came down to it. Even if both of their lives were in danger and even if all of the darkness in the world resided in the abyss ahead of them, they would both leave this place alive or they'd die there together. No harsh word or promise of pain would move him.

Looking ahead at the decrepit and dead trees that danced at the snow fled the demonic abyss, Solon couldn't help but wonder what it felt like not only to die in a place like this, but to die alone. Seren Raye, as mighty as he was had died alone. There wasn't a night that Solon hadn't dreamed of his dead eyes staring at the heavens. Had those same heavens offered him any salvation? Where was he now? Did he sing with all the spirits who's form he imitated whenever he made art with his blade? Did he reside in Hell like all slaves to coin did?

Perhaps Solon would meet him in either case.

Not on this day.

"This blight is unlike any I have ever felt. It is ancient... As though the temple itself has eyes set into it's stone," Solon spoke calmly. "Perhaps that is why he could not sense it. It's power lies in not being seen."

And yet the stone there saw all. Let it see them. The Knights of Dawn and Dusk would be it's demise.

He searched his own heart for fear and was incapable of finding any. Even as a boy, he was foolhardy and there was no training that could remove it from him. It had simply become more refined. Keen. Sharpened into knowledge and know-how. Behold...

He cupped his hands together and breathed light on the cavern that he'd created. Within his palms, a moth made of light spread it's wings. Though it was small, it created a light that spread far beyond it's for. Silently and gently beneath the hard winds that pressed against them, he whispered kind words to it. It responded with warm flutters and left him, flying forward and providing light that penetrated the heavy darkness. In it's form, Solon could feel that it struggles to maintain it's presence here in the world. Best they move quickly. Solon pulled Cursebreaker from it's scabbard and followed behind her fluttering wings that pulsed with knowledge. Every speck of light that lit the cracks and crevices were like runes if one cared to look closely enough. They fell gently and unlike the snow that fled from the temple. The nature of it's light was calm and unbothered.

Syr Raye was steeling his heart and before long, as they went into the blackness ahead they entered a realm without sound. One could hear their own heartbeat...

 

[Syr Dorn]

Cold was never a problem to Dorn, after all, corpses were cold and Dorn felt as if he had been a walking one for many years. In fact, he was one. Fillack, Tova, and others had died alongside him and with a cursory gaze he could see the twin peaks in the distance. Where he had died. Where they had died. It was a turning point in his life and resurrection was a fickle thing, it could restart the heart, but sometimes it damaged the mind. Gave hate a controlling stake in one's life, and hate had consumed Dorn for decades. Hate, not for the squires, but for himself. For corruption.

He didn't wish that for Solon or any other knight, but hate gave some strength, so he had tried to give the squires something to hate without the loss of life: him. He didn't care what they felt of him, so long as they outlasted him, rose above him. The knight beside him saw through that years ago, and rose above him. A success story as clear as any other.

His gaze washed over the blight that lay ahead and even though he wasn't Galvanhad, he could feel it, like a poison infecting his body, a parasite. "Whatever it is, we'll tear it down stone by stone." He would say with a hearty laugh and a mirthful grin.

Dorn had known many loves, many mistresses, but none was he more faithful to than Battle. A sickness, some within the Order would call it, but to Dorn it was a necessary cure for the dark world they lived in.

Fear had left Dorn when he was but a boy fleeing his home with his best friend. He didn't find it while training under Syr Fillack, he didn't feel it years later when he charged the Orcs, nor did he feel it hours after that when an enchanted axe cleaved through his armor and split his heart. And he knew that Solon was like him, a being without fear, and if any were to be the proper ally for this quest it was he.

Years had passed since he used his magick frivolously, but it was simply just a muscle to be warmed up. So as a Solon willed a moth of light into existence, Dorn would kneel on the snow, his gauntlet touching the blighted rock just beyond. Death loomed here and though his connection to it was hampered by a rusted winch, it would take only a few seconds for the winch to move, to open.

Faint wisps of purple clawed their way up through the earth, first at his hand, and then they began the slow and agonizing crawl up his arm. The souls of the dead, tormented, trapped by the tainted ground. They were souls reduced to nothing but hate, and a different Dusk, they would have overpowered them, broken them, caused friction. But his hatred was equal to theirs, their plight similar, and so he welcomed them in. The purple haze would flicker as it engulfed his armor, before coalescing, and sinking inward.

Where Solon would only see Dorn, Dorn could look either left or right and see the bloodied grins of shades. There was no necromancer to curse them, nor would he break the tenants of the Sanctum by doing so, but he could become their revenant and their tool for revenge. The weight of the dead was a heavy burden and it was one that Dorn bore daily, perhaps others just bore the weight of him.

Wordlessly, he rose to his feet, Requiem in hand. They advanced side-by-side into the darkness, the moth guiding their way and the shades whispering warnings into Dorns ear. What could this evil do that hadn't already been done? What chance did it have when those sent could overcome death? When the line needed to hold, you called the Battlemaster. When darkness needed to cleansed, you called the Killing Light. The pounding of steel upon steel resumed. Let them come.

 

[One Eye]

To the pain.

To the death.

To the end.

As ye brave two marched on, darkness wisped and whipped about. Its tendrilled essence, like a chilling mist turned ashgrey smoke, curled and waved you welcome. Parted as it did against the gentle moth's light.

For Dorn
The shades, who grant you strength, writhed and wormed inside of you like so many grubs in old dead wood. A feeling that discomforted. Unsettled. If only because those long dead, who wished that you would see them avenged, found no rest, even in the burning furnace that was your venerable gut.

The dead, as all re-animator and soul-caller knew, gave no peace to those who sought their aid. So the Duskers' mind was tempered. Turned to silver cage. But still, these dead, matched by your hate born again, rattled at the very bars that contained them. Action. They demanded action. That you undo that which kept them among you.


Iron gave way to iron, and where once the path had seemed clear before you, the invitation of the light, that most luminous moth that fluttered so valiantly before you, seemed only to draw the shadows closer. Turned them thick as silt stirred up from the bottom of a mire.

A figure broke through the gathered swirl of snow and shadow, a thing that seemed stitched together. Jagged edges, tangled into hobbled shape. Its limbs shook with each of its jerking steps, its clawed arms scratched at the air with every simple movement it made. At its core was a sphere of bone. A depression, like a pupil there in the center of the sphere. It slid and moved inside its strange socket, and it regarded both brave knights. Studied you for but a breath. The great eye at its center slid to follow the fulltering wings of light and it took two clumsy steps to turn and follow.

A boney hand reached out. Claw-like fingers clutched and grasped at the moth which but fluttered on. Fluttered forward, ever valiant. Then a new hand emerged from the dark, just as small and jerky as the last. Just as greedily it clutched at the moth. And a third, and a forth.

Four of these strange things jostled and bumped and grasped out for the moth. Until one finally trapped it in its claws. Brought it close to its oculus as it squeezed.

The little moth struggled in its clutch, and the other strange things gathered round it as the light began to fade. They watched.

Solon Raye Syr Dorn

 

[Solon Raye]

"Have you ever heard a song that shook you to your core, boy? And I don't mean one of raunchy tavern songs... I mean something real.
Something comforting, like... the Priestesses of Astra gathering about a Star-Dome to sing her praises to their goddess.
The song of a heartbroken man missing his lover.
The song your mother used to sing you to sleep at night, Solon. Those kinds of songs."

"I don't quite remember my mother or if she sang... Or what her voice sounded like even when speaking."

His eyes cast down.

"Mm. And Seren never spoke of her?

"No, Syr. And after a time, he told me to never speak of her again."

"I see. That sounds like Seren Raye... Solon, I want you to close your eyes. That's an order."

His eyes closed.

"A man never forgets the sound of his mother's voice.
Even if the heavens have made her another shining star in the aether, her voice remains.
You must focus and move all of the clouds from your psyche. Become as still as the water in your cup.
You will hear her. Carry that voice in your heart and let it amplify. Make it strong and searing. Find the light."

All Solon found was flame.

She had a voice like flame.
​

Solon always imagined his father would dance to his mother's voice whenever she would sing. In those imaginings, he remembered every step and every which way his blade would turn. How it was always there to meet the steel of his enemies. Sometimes he would become as air and the steel would find nothing at all. Solon would watch as he would spin through the air and make the sands red with the blood of his quarry. Suddenly he understood what it was old Seren was dancing to. The fire that the memory of her voice must have filled him with. How could a man not move that way if every fiber of his being was set ablaze that way?
​

The Man On Fire
A sword was but an extension of a man's essence.
​

In the darkness where foul darkness sought to grab hold of the bit of light he'd created to make their path, yet another light was born. This one was far from gentle. As Solon's mother sang to him, the blade Cursebreaker erupted toward the sky itself with fire. The Knight Pursuant's armor shined in the light of the violent flame that was born from his weapon. If one listened closely, one might have heard the spirit of flame sing. Her voice made Solon's eyes burn like two rubies. Solon stepped forward dangerously with his blade raised above his head. In a master stroke, he swung his enchanted and burning blade against the creature's of darkness, seeking to remove the hand that clutched at what little was good in this place.​

 

[Syr Dorn]

"Eldyr have mercy on this Order, if you two are the future of it. If you're the ones that must claim my corpse. How will you change that sentiment?" Fillack would hiss.

"By filling the void of the lost?" Galvanhad, always the hopeful. A head shake from Fillack.

"Focus on the lost will distract you from our purpose."

"By realizing the only life we live.. is for the Order. Nothing else matters."

For the first time Fillack look pleased with Dorn. Normally, it was the opposite. "Ours is to preserve the Order and the Vale.. in any way, at any cost." He would turn from them to grab an axe from his desk, tossing it to Dorn. "And so you may defend it properly. Those who rely on the magick, become bound by it. Wield it, but don't let it take too much of a hold over you. Name her boy, she decides if you live or die." Master Fillack would say with a nod to the axe.
​

Dorn gripped Requiem tighter as the voices of the shades whispered into his ear. Any discomfort could be ignored, he was an old man, long past his prime, and still he clung to this life. Bones ached, muscles groaned, organs wept, yet still he pressed on. That discomfort was tempered into a hunger for action. They needed violence, they soon would get it as creatures of the dark threatened to snuff out the light.

Light, no, flame ignited the darkness as Cursebreaker wreathed itself in its fury. Where Solon harnesses the flame, Dorn would summon the dead. A hand would lift and he willed the souls that latched to him to shoot forth. They would try to wrap and isolate the claw that held the light and tiny wraith-like hands would enter the material plane and push outward, trying to give space to the light. They would try to work alongside the bout of flame launched by Solon.

The moment they left his hand, Dorn would bellow out a challenge to the other dark creatures and charged them. Before he closed the distance, he would then fire out a blast of telekinesis, trying to launch one into the other. This light could not be snuffed, no light would be while he still drew breath.

 

[One Eye]

Sword aflame sliced through boney limb, constricted by gheists' grasp, the clutched claws still wrapped tight about the luminous moth, fell to the floor and rattled against the rocks. The singular round oculus at the creature's center slid, and it looked at its missing limb a moment. The gaze of the other three slid down toward the moth, watched where its chitinous cage bounced and bobbed as the small moth struggled against its confines, and the creatures scrabbled toward the light.

Each being, constructed from bone and stone and metal, hunched a head shorter than either of the two knights, and when Dorn blasted one with raw magick force, it but buffeted the foe, gave their shamble march pause, but caused no stumble, no rock or roll to crash and fall.

As the old Battlemaster closed in, one foe's round eye twist and turned, its dimpled center focused on Dorn. Its claws gleamed, metalic sheen painted fire gold and moonglow white with the moth's light. It wound its claw back with a twitch and a jerk, and raked them forward with a twisting snap of speed.

One of the four kept its eye on the moth, and bent low to grab it up.

Darkness, swirled thick around you.

Enemy formation
One enemy stayed back - lost an arm
One moving enemy lagged behind - blasted by the psionic magic
Two enemies pressed forward - One toward Dorn, the other chased the moth
Solon Raye Syr Dorn

 

[Solon Raye]

The learned Magus has a different understanding of fire than the common man. For the common man, fire is simply a tool that can be created at will and used to either light a dark passageway or as a tool of war and violence. For the Magus, it is important to understand fire at it's truest nature. In ancient Elven cultures that studied magic and the natural world with the same intensity that Dwarves and Humans at the time were discovering how to form minerals and raw metals to their will, they understood fire to be corrupted form of Light. Light was capable of supplying the most basic lifeforms with eneergy so that they might grow. In the same vein, a Magus could use Light energy to make their own physical prowess just as great. But what was it about fire that still drew the learned man to the most corrupt version of the most pure element?
​

"Shut your trap, boy. Shut your trap so that you might understand true wisdom. Syr Godfried is training you in the ways of Life.
I am here to teach you how to make your will and desire into something tangible. Something that all who have eyes to see might marvel at.
The first people of every race in this world had to get over their fear of fire. The fear of passion and creation and change.
The Pursuit of Flame is woven into all things, you see? Whenever a man must defend his family or create some great work, it is his passion that drives him.
It is his passion that shapes the world about him because he who masters his own fear, his own urges, his passion, his voice, his might...
He who masters all of these things may wield fire however they wish. They'd sooner burn the phenomena than be consumed by it.

Let us begin."
​

Even as their claws gleamed against the light created in the swirling darkness, Syr Solon Raye continued to wield Cursebreaker tightly with both gloved hands. The heat coming from the depths of him was beginning to make him sweat. The cold air felt as though it was but a breeze. The darkness that whirled and twisted about them would understand how brightly fire could burn in true need. The creatures before them lacked flesh and were made from easily broken things. The Knight-Pursuant of Life began to dance as Seren once did on the sands a long time ago. That voice that Solon heard echo through the halls of his conscious sang louder. The voice was all of his insecurities and nightmares. The voice seemed to make the flames about his enchanted sword all the brighter. And so as he gripped his sword and moved his practiced feet across the stone, the fire he'd summoned matched his intensity. Like a lover in the midst of a passionate thrust, the fire came alive. The sword's edge was made all the more dangerous. Their master with two eyes like glowing rubies in the pitch black made.

Fire swirled about him, coming from his sword and likely making him appear otherworldly to the one-eyed ones. Solon swiped at the enemy making a reach toward the caged moth, first at it's claws and own his next spin, at the dimpled orb that it used to see.​

 

[Syr Dorn]

Mighty were these foes, indeed. Unscathed by a psionic blast, unhindered. Dorn was already mid-leap with a downward swing for the wood around the neck of the abomination when the force of a maul stuck against his side. The old warrior would be thrown from the force of the blow, dazed briefly as the creature stalked towards him.

"Get up onto your feet, boy!" Fillack ordered. A voice from the past.

"I don't think I can.." Dorn croaked as he pushed himself up. The Minotaur had broken several of his ribs and each breath was a labor unto itself.

"There is no excuse for us to falter. The Order lives and dies as we draw breath. You fail to pick yourself up, our first line crumbles. Now, get onto your feet!"
​

The shades raced after the abomination chasing the light, gnawing, clawing, dragging, as they crawled along its surface and pulled it back inch by inch from the moth. It was their untamed hate against an unstoppable force, two impossible wills tugging and pulling with the ebb and flow of the world around them.

Fillack had watched Dorn fight from the sidelines, one of his earliest tests. There would be no mercy for the next swing. Pain lanced up the young squires body as several more ribs were broken. "Did you not hear me, boy?! Get up onto your feet! Only you, can save yourself!"

The Minotaur loomed overhead, the strike poised to end him.. and down came its maul.​

The abomination would close on Dorn, its crushing swing aimed for the Knights head before Requiem shot upwards, the head of the axe, catching the clawed stump. Along the haft, Dorn could feel feel the tension from the weight. There would be a roar from the old Battlemaster, as one hand released to fire a psionic blast to try and stagger the looming behemoth, before the next swing of the axe, aimed for the closest wooden joint.

in his sixty years of bleeding for the Order, dying, that first line had never fallen. It had never given an inch. Today was no day for that to change.

 

[One Eye]

Struggle on the light did against the dark. Bounced against the cage of claws as it rattled against the doom stained earth.

As fires roared their blazing tongues. Summoned there by them who would save so small a thing. As the souls of the raging dead crawled and crept and dragged across the stitched together chaser of light. Flames leapt and bound and burned.

The old battlemaster's blast lifted the wicked construct, the weight that bared down upon Requiem eased, the tested weapon scraped free and hacked deep into the mockery's joint. But stray metal, twisted about the blighted wood, bends to catch the axe's head.

A swirl and sweep, a golden arc with a tail of red comes down against an outstretched arm. Sturdier than the last, the burning Cursebreaker but feels the stick of melting metal, hidden in the tangle of turned nature. Smoke in the nose, sizzle in the ear. The next cut, born from the flow and spin, catches the side of the stone sphere. A spray of sparks and the bubbling of stone. The burn of wood and bone. The dead crawl there too. Those wrathful spirits, claw into the metal and rot and hold the thing down.

Cursebreaker digs, slowly, across the mass as the creature flails its remaining claw and stub at the Pursuant of Life.

Away from the struggle. The first construct to taste the kiss of flame watches the knights struggle on. Its orb grinds to the right. It watches. The oculus grinds to the left. Runes, like clawmarks patterned across the stone, glow red then purple, then black. The oculus pulses red from that point through which it does see.

The construct that stands tall above Dorn shifts. Draws back an arm and finds its leg to fail as it buckles under its own weight and crashes to the ground, freeing Requiem. Still, there is another construct there beside it, twitching as it looks down upon the elder. It raises its clawed hands up and its oculus spins rapidly left. Stone grinds against metal, and the oculus glows red. Its center burns bright, and it spits a thread of focused flame toward the old man, like a spider would silk.

For he who dances with the mistress most ravenous
A pounding. A beat. The heat swells. A flame in the pit of your stomach. So hot its burns. Starlight within you. There for but moment. Hesitate, and know it will be gone.

For he who crawls with those most vengeful left
A pang. Sharp. It tears at you. Claws sink in from earth. Needles of ice in to your spine. Their points prick that most tender chord. A pulse ripples across each vertebra. One long dead grants you her icy strength. The spirit of Syr Kerdun the Glacial Wind.

"They sent an old man to clean up this mess?" You hear her voice say. "My, how far our dear Order has fallen."

Ice crackles about the knuckles of your gauntlet, and all pain absolves from your frame.


Solon Raye Syr Dorn

 

[Solon Raye]

One of Solon's fondest memories was slowly falling asleep in the back of a merchant prince's carriage after the completion of one of his father's contracts. Through the thin curtains, he had a view of the stars that seemed to hand lower in the sky along with a full moon. A moon so close and so vibrant, it seemed as though he could reach out and touch it. His father who sat in the back of the carriage with him seemed to read his mind. "Try your little hands, my son," said Seren as he smiled at his boy. "Reach out and touch it. There is nothing beyond your grasp, my strong boy. Remember that."

Solon wouldn't reach out for the stars or the moon.

His father had been sweet to him that evening. He was distant when he was sober and his true, warm self when he was drunk. Either way, Solon had developed a sort of fear of him. One never knew who he would become even in the next second. So rather than say anything at all, he allowed himself to pass into unconsciouness. He slept with a smile on his face and dreamed of her... The woman in his dreams wreathed in flame that burned brighter than any star could hope to. Gods, if he could just reach out to her and hear her voice. He would know what true warmth was. True comfort. Perhaps that was the true reason why he pursued the Light. The touch of Life. He would never know the touch or the love of the mother who had given him his. She was far away. Dead or simply gone, he would never know it.

And yet he reached. The power that welled within him was right there.

Let these vicious creatures feel his wrath.

His strength would not fail and neither, so it seemed, would the carcass of this vile construct. How unfortunate was it for them that his fire had not burned as brightly as it could. The power of his light became searing within him. So much that it threatened to burn through his chest if it wasn't released. His eyes had locked with the occulus and he could see that it prepared another attack against him. Even as it whipped and clawed at him, he would give no quarter. As it's eye glowed with runes, so did the cracks and crevices in Solon's armor. So did his eyes and mouth glow. When he spoke, he spoke an incantation of light. A star seemed to burst from the tip of his lips and lit the mountain as though the sun had risen. Light was used for destruction as well as restoration. Let them see that snow, nor stone, nor darkness would keep him at bay. The great orb that burst from his mouth like fire from a dragon's gullet threatened to swallow the enemies of the Knights of Anathaeum.

And perhaps the Knights themselves.

One Eye ​

 

[One Eye]

A star. Bright and blinding in its fury. A star born from the shadowed heart, and all the blood that danced to its cosmic beat. It devoured. It consumed. It killed. For light too, took life to grow. Wick to a flame near eternal. There for but a drowning instant upon the corrupted crag.

Before the darkness swirled round its wake with wisps of smoke and ash and sounds came back to that space before the twisted tower.

Rubble and ruin fell all about. Stone and gravel plinked off the hard surfaces all around. A body, protected by sigiled plate, runed with enchantments of old, lay prostrate upon the smoldering earth. Alone.

Steam rose from the dawn-gold carapace, swirled and traced about the runes scribed so artfully across its surface, their etched paths aglow with the feint gold of new day's light. Red and orange and gold, burned there, defiant of the dark that poured around them, like smothering waters that rippled against stone, the blanket of smoke threatened to pour over the downed knight.

A gentle light. Feint as an early moon, bounced and fluttered about the shadowed air. The oppression of darkness warded, if only by the tiniest bright wings of the moth, almost clumsy as it traced its way to the knight, and landed on his pauldron. Its wings beat gentle in its rest. Its light glow kissed him, and it seemed to whisper.

Stand, Syr. Stand. True are you, child of Dawn. Stand, and face this wicked whirl of wills beyond.

Tall before the fallen knight, still stood the tower, twisted with dark delights.

---

Solon Raye