A Love That Crushes Like A Mace

[FinlandiaWhiteEyes]

A Love That Crushes Like a Mace

Prologue: The Bloody Hill

Blood trickles down the streets of Hespeth. Smoke fills the air, swirling lazily into the skies like the clinging tendrils of a vine grown from fire, climbing the buildings of the village and blossoming into clouds. Silence blankets the town more completely than the smoke. Ravens rustle their wings and scrape at the mound of carrion in the town’s centre, but are otherwise eerily quiet. A small dog sits shivering in a frame whose stout oak door has been hacked from its hinges. The onset of dusk leaves the town spangled in fireflies, feeble sparks in a red and grey twilight.

The small dog moves to curl around an equally small, awfully still shape at the base of the newly built hill of Hespeth. The ravens have long since flown to the sturdiest of the caved-in roofs to roost. The sky blackens, and so does the blood staining the streets, the stones, the skin of all that was once a prosperous river town. The chill of the night sees only the dog and the ravens shiver. A wolf in some far-off hunting range lifts his voice in song, a fitting dirge for fallen prey, whether they are his own or not.

Morning at last sees the onset of flies, and the return of the ravens. The little dog snaps and snarls at both, and the ravens snap back at him. He does not let them touch his still playmate. A particularly large and spiteful bird tears a dull brown eye from a socket and tosses it at the dog. The flies nip at him, making his ears bleed, but he still does not move an inch.

The sun rides high in the sky, and the stench burns the thin dog’s nose. He trembles, and then looks up, body tense, as measured, implacable footsteps finally break the unsettled silence.

A tall man comes into view, his face obscured by the body he hauls on his shoulders. He throws the expensively armoured corpse at the foot of the large, stinking pile, so that the man, obviously a soldier, lies before the slaughtered residents of Hespeth like an actor before an indifferent crowd. The small dog growls at this action, but the tall newcomer, whose face is sharply noble and painfully grim, pays no attention. He fingers the hilt of a large sword in a silence as eerie as the one his steps had previously broken. His burning eyes flicker from the bloody mound to his former burden, and his mouth twists in disgust.

Just outside the line of buildings, back the way this tall figure has come from, a harsh female voice breaks this new, angrier silence.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same. Mankind is truly a pitiful creature.”

The man lifts his huge sword and plunges it through the armoured chest, once, twice, three times. The harsh voice speaks again.

“We’re wasting time. Come. Your own pile of corpses is looking pitifully small. Let us continue your quest for justice.” The man snorts, and the female voice responds, sounding amused. “I know you merely wish to add to the bloody hill, Caim. That was precisely my point. You can only crusade with the edge of a blade. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. Come now!”

The dog leaps up and begins to bark. The man, Caim, leaves the once-town of Helspeth to its corpses and its flies. The ravens start to argue over entrails.

Far away, a general dances to the melodic giggling of a baby.

Far, far away, a little girl burns a marionette instead of cutting the strings; an ancient dragon sharpens a plain knife with one long claw; and a beautiful enchantress curses her mother and rides savagely into an oncoming rainstorm.

The sun begins to fall in this world, and rise in another.






((New folks: Welcome! Old RPers: Welcome Back! So, this is the long overdue retelling of the ALTCLAM story, hopefully in its entirety, in the form of a sort of novel thingy. The plan is to post chunks every weekend. This is a little prologue to get you back into the...unusual mood of the world. Feedback and the like is welcome in the other thread in this section. Grazie, and enjoy.))

[FinlandiaWhiteEyes]

Chapter One: In which unsettling plans are finished, unsettling powers are flexed, and a lizard loses his modesty, but keeps his life.

For a brief moment, if you stand at the edge of a world and peer just left of the setting sun, you can catch the last moments of one day in one world, and the first moments of another day in another world, all at once. For one brief moment, those two worlds are tied together by the same dim light that is home to the best magic, and the most adept of plotters. For one brief moment, those two worlds, however different, can be turned inside out by one twist of fate. And fate, generally, twirls and writhes of its own accord, full of giddy glee because it knows something you don’t know.
And sometimes, very rarely, fate needs to be caught by the hair and wrenched into intricate knots by small, skilful hands.

Rather far to the south of the bloody hamlet of Hespeth, there is a walled town on the edge of a disappointingly mild desert. That town has seen gold rushes, magical discoveries, unexpected quiet coups, valiant leaders, and violent wars. It will see all of those things again, soon enough, but very few of them will stay in the town for long, and none of them, in fact, belong to it.
Not far from the town, in the foothills of the mountains to the west, there is a small, sandy cave that has been the setting of a surprising number of momentous events for such a nondescript place. In that cave, where a great many things have been tied together, a small girl made her home, just as she had for centuries, on the pale floor heedless of comfort. She sat weaving intricate patterns, as she had for centuries, and singing soft songs and scraps of poetry.
What made the embers of this day unusual was that her weaving took the form of a basket and her poetry was nonsensical.
She also had a visitor, which was even stranger.

The girl seemed so intent upon her work that it was not even slightly surprising when she failed to notice the visitor enter the dry cave. She hummed softly to herself, twisting the browned leaves over and under, over and under, over and under. The movements were unusually frenetic, swift and neat one moment, and slow and unsteady the next. The tune wove around the actions of her hands, racing when they were slow, haunting when they were fast. The girl’s visitor seemed content to watch in silence. This silence continued for a long while, neither uneasy nor companionable. Then suddenly, the little girl spoke, her voice harsh and cynical.

“I have never liked weaving.”
The visitor seemed startled by both the sound and content of her abrupt statement.
“But you are so very good at it!”
“You are so very good at getting underlings killed, my dear Indral. That doesn’t precipitate enjoyment.”
The Indral scowled and turned to glare at the wall of the cave. This seemed to amuse the weaving girl.
“Sorry, did that touch a nerve? And please, glare at me if you want to. I dislike being feared. Makes for ineffective Sibyl-ing, you know.”
“That’s not a word.”
“So, aside from finding your inner self whilst trekking through the desert, you have also found Drakengard’s thinnest argument. Hurrah for you.”

The other woman was silent for a while. The she turned to look at the sardonic child again.
“I am glaring at the general situation, not at you. I must also confess my confusion towards your etiquette. I thought treating allies with contempt was a sure way to get them to dislike you, leading to a break in alliance, or perhaps outright betrayal and feuding. That’s the way it works back home…back in the Indral lands, anyway.”
The girl laughed, hoarse and mocking.
“I find treating allies with contempt is the only way to keep them efficient; the important ones, at least. The ones that don’t squeak and shuffle about your toes like oh so many brown mice.”
“I should consider myself lucky to be wrapped in the mocking pinions of your contempt, then, should I?”
“Don’t flatter yourself too much. You are far too tall to be that important.” The girl ignored the other’s confusion at that remark and continued, “besides, breaking alliances and feuding and such is reserved for those blessed souls with options. You know; things like homes and families. And names.”
“Sometimes I think that you were in my mother’s ear that day, whispering advice and abandonment. For the good of the nation, of course.” The girl shrugged.
“How do you know I wasn’t controlling the firebird on ritual day to make sure you were conceived?” The woman looked unnerved.
“The joys of knowing every possible course this world can take, however minute.” The girl wiggled her fingers of one hand at the taller figure while continuing to weave with the other hand. “Surprise!” she cheered, voice laden with sarcasm. This elicited no response from the startled other.
“Don’t worry; you have complete and utter free will. I promise. As long as you choose the same thing I choose, there’ll be jam for tea.”
The woman blinked, and then grinned. “You must be a blast at parties,” she said admiringly.
This startled a laugh out of the girl, whose hands fumbled briefly.
“Oh, you made me mess up my place!” The whine was so out of character that the Indral laughed. “Hmmph. Well, I wasn’t enjoying it anyway.” The girl stood, and dusted herself off. “Let’s discuss the important thing: have you done it?”

The Indral gazed down at the sandstone floor of the cave for one long moment. Her eyes followed the movement of a small emerald lizard scuttling between the loose pebbles, before lifting to meet the impatient golden eyes of the girl before her.
“I’ve done it. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t need you to like it. Did you implant the false trail?”
“Into water? Do you know how hard that-” the girl tutted. “Yes, I implanted the trail. She’ll think whoever wins the power struggle-”
“Which one?”
The Indral rolled her eyes “the one with that weird Empire man in it. Whoever comes out on top is the one who sent the orb and trapped it to bind to whoever found it. The binding was fairly easy to do, as was the compulsion to fetch whatever it is she’s fetching. The fire elemental seemed to make it easier, which was surprising.”
“Tying things together is always easier than taking them apart. Sometimes, the only option for the latter is to rip. And ripped things don’t often survive when they’re bleeding everywhere.” This was said with a great deal of savage relish. The Indral blinked.
“I’m sorry, has this elf done something to you in the past?”
“I don’t like her face.” The silence that followed that comment stretched out, as the little emerald lizard found a particularly nice rock to perch on. Finally, the girl spoke again.
“She could ruin everything. It was always a risk to send her out.”
“Ah, your mysterious heroes.”
“Love triangles have killed far more good plans than talented double agents.”
“I won’t even pretend to know what you’re talking about. Still, it’s done. The water elemental will be able to sense my magic, though, and it’ll have negative connotations for her. She’ll work with me, because of you – which is probably why I had to do this, hmm? – but she probably won’t ever like me much.”
“Elementals tend not to like anyone who isn’t wet or hot enough. They are picky bitches like that. Incidentally, the popularity contest is in the capital, not in Janus. So if you want to win it, you’re in the wrong place, Mieli-”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that.” The Indral was awash with blazing blue magic that startled the emerald lizard into hiding, but had no effect on the young girl.
“Touchy,” she observed flatly. “If you’re going to protest that name, at least give me something else to call you before I start calling you ‘That Fucker’ in my head.” The wrath nimbus of blue died down as quickly as it had sprung up.
“Well, I’m not calling myself Sorrow. It’s a stupid name.” She gazed thoughtfully at the girl before seemingly remembering something. “Do you think-” she blinked for a moment before grinning ruefully and beginning again. “Will Arzoth win this little power struggle?”
“Yes.”
“All roads lead to the Empire, hmm?”
“He will succeed, if he has to beat the success into every citizen of his glorious dead realm. The Empire will rise again! How long that will last depends entirely on the parcel our little elemental is going to collect.”
“And it all depends on these strangers? The Union’s fight and ours?”
“The Union won’t even know they’re in a fight until someone helps them to pull their fingers out of their collective arses. And yes. For reasons I won’t bother you with, it all entirely depends on these people. I tried some other ways, but this one resulted in less death and, as that idiotically cheerful lizard crowed, a better narrative. Why that matters, I don’t know. I do know that I like you more than I like him. You have a more reasonable disposition.”
“You’ll kill me last?”

The girl’s head snapped towards the woman at this innocuous comment, and her eyes whirled white. The Indral blinked uncertainly, then gasped and stumbled back, her eyes wide with terror as the girl child forced her immense, alien power into the very essence of her flighty, magical soul. She began to tremble, tears trickling down her face, as the girl examined her spirit intently, with a callous disregard for her best and worst thoughts, and the power they had over her.

Then, abruptly, the onslaught ceased, and the girl’s eyes filled with cold, unyielding gold again. The effects of the mental intrusion, even the very memory of it, faded from the Indral in an instant, and she merely became rather confused as to why she was on the floor. The girl assuaged this confusion by coming and sitting next to her. She reached out and caught the emerald lizard, which had finally been foolish enough to exit his hidey-hole. Examining the lizard with mild interest, the girl patted the woman’s leg absently.
“No, dear. I don’t think I’ll kill you at all.”
“Oh.” The Indral seemed unfazed by her companion’s sudden herpetological interests. “Well, thanks. I think.”
“You’re welcome.”
They sat in a silence that approached companionable without ever reaching it. The girl let the lizard go, and he rather wisely left the cave, to seek the safer companionship of an eagle, a fox, or a plague.
“Solace.” This was said with the quiet finality of someone making a monumental decision.
“Yes, that’s much less stupid than Sorrow.”

As the embers of that day dripped onto the sparks of another, the Seer’s golden eyes looked a little left of the sun, and watched as one orb left her world, and another entered it. Both events were momentous, even if the second rather modestly made no fanfare at all. Solace gasped as the magic of her world was briefly displaced, then reasserted itself with the quiet dignity of a magisterial woman who has just been touched inappropriately.
The Seer smiled smugly.
“The board is set.”
“Cryptic.”
“Shut up.”