The Prelude to Darkness Read online

  Then he felt something start to grow.

  Looking down at his hands, his flesh began to mottle, and it twisted into corrupted, rotted flesh. He placed his hands over his cheeks: they were bumpy, contorted, and diseased. Hand near his left hip, he grasped the hilt of a sword and withdrew it: the steel was long and dark, its incisors twisted.

  He was the Daemon Lord.

  The vestiges faded; they were dull and dormant. The chamber was covered in darkness, but he saw everything.

  Even the figures in the distance: his father and brother.

  “Amos!” Emperor Archelaus commanded from afar. “Stay this madness!”

  They cannot see me, not yet. “It has begun,” Amos replied. It was deep and threaded. He spoke as Sariel, not Amos.

  “It ends as it has begun,” his father replied, holding his long sword, Vindication, in one hand, a torch in another. To his right stood Reuven, who clutched a head by the hair with one hand, a torch in another.

  “Your traitorous ally,” Reuven said, throwing the head towards Amos. It stopped short of the dais.

  He knew the risk, Amos thought, stepping past it, standing a few feet from his father and brother. “Look upon me, Father.”

  Consternation flitted across his father’s face, and Reuven drew his stave-sword, the blades flitting out across the shaft. Emperor Archelaus extended his own steel. “Flee here, Reuven.”

  “I will not leave you, Father.”

  “You can. You will,” Emperor Archelaus said strongly. “This is not a foe for you. I shall attend this monster.”

  “The—”

  “Flee, Reuven!”

  Amos smiled at the distraught look on his brother’s face. Reuven turned and ran.

  Amos was alone with his father.

  “What have you done with my son?” Emperor Archelaus demanded.

  “Done with?” Amos answered, puzzled. “I have seen much, Father.”

  “You are not …”

  “His slave? No,” Amos replied, laughing. “No. ‘Tis time your choices are measured and judged, and the folly of it all revealed.”

  “All I have done is for the people!”

  “If you truly believed that, then you would not have forsaken the vestiges.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Where they belong.”

  Amos felt a stirring in his chest: dark, slithering, and empowering. The chamber lit up and the vestiges surged, channeling their light once more into him. Emperor Archelaus looked aghast.

  “Run, Father. Run while you still can.”

  The Sealing

  Dusk

  21 July 137

  Amos smiled gleefully at the desperation on Emperor Archelaus’ face.

  His father had always looked to him sternly, as if every word and action was a judgment. That was now gone; disbelief and terror had set in.

  The game is up, Amos thought, and he knows it.

  “Stay this madness, Amos!” Emperor Archelaus commanded, his sword still extended. “You can still come back from this. I know my son’s eyes, whatever else you have become.”

  Amos laughed and extended his own sword. “’Tis not madness, Father. I did not err, not even when I plead to you in council. The vestiges brim with knowledge and power—much I have seen, and more lays now in the recesses of my mind. I have become our saviour.”

  “What you are is twisted,” his father declared. “An abomination of what we were always meant to be.”

  “The Great Fate, Father?”

  Emperor Archelaus stared back at Amos. “What do you know of the Great Fate?”

  He does not know my strength, my knowledge. It is all too easy. “It is the bondage that the Pantheon has ordained for all your children. I have seen gods in chains, broken and battered. You would lead us to that gaol. I reject it utterly.”

  “Is that what you truly saw?” Emperor Archelaus asked, dropping his sword arm and shrugging his shoulders. “I did not think you so blind, my child.”

  “You would speak to me of blindness?!” Amos shrieked, before charging at his father. The emperor’s blade came up, but his sword arm trembled. “You who would blind all your children to the knowledge that has sustained them! You are aware of these gifts, the Golden Age that should not have ended. You are blind, Father, but I will not gouge my own eyes out for your foolishness.”

  Emperor Archelaus looked back piteously. Annoyed, Amos pushed him towards the near wall, staring into his father’s eyes the whole time: desperation, fear, and uncertainty threaded it all. His father was a craven.

  “Is this the tale of your reign, Amos?” the emperor asked, unmoving. “I can see it in your eyes, my son. I do not rule for you or your brothers, but for those who dwell under our dominion. They are dying, Amos!”

  In answer, Amos pushed the blade aside, lodging his own near his father’s throat. He chuckled and spat. “There is no price too great for Ascension. For years I have obeyed your will, but now it is time for you to obey mine: for I am the Daemon Lord.”

  “Then do it, my son!” Emperor Archelaus shouted. “Ascend and bring all this to waste. All that we have built. All that we are. Tear it asunder!”

  The vestiges still poured their hidden power into Amos. He felt it reverberate, endlessly churning to knowledge of what was, what is, and what would be. Then he heard a calling, dark and deep: a command to tear open a portal to the Pantheon. He had the power within him, he knew, and these Animus Chambers would serve as a gateway.

  Still pressed against his father’s blade, Amos closed his eyes, giving into the power that roiled through him. There the immense arches of the Pantheon’s halls towered before him, and the marble city stretched endlessly beyond. Bleeding through the horizon, the tower—the tower that chained all who live, and all who had yet to live—stood tall, and the sphere that fools worshipped churned out endlessly.

  The vestiges resonated and the dark god was with him, but the Pantheon sat like a distant island, far and fleeting; and then it all began to fade.

  Amos saw naught but a grey emptiness: shorn of Darkness, bereft of Light. He reached out, but there was naught but stillness; he tried to run but there was no ground to run on. Then there was heat and a putrid smell: it rose all around him, pushing the grey emptiness away.

  Opening his eyes, he saw that the steel of the emperor’s sword shone a pristine blue. Deep in the folds of the steel, glyphs pulsed in a scorching golden light: None shall fade to Darkness while Her Light reigns.

  “Traitor!” Amos screamed, pushing with all his strength against his father. “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!”

  “The only traitor is you, my son,” the emperor replied, and he pushed forward, sending Amos skidding across the chamber. “I did not want this, but you have forced my hand.”

  Fear and desperation no longer beaded in Emperor Archelaus’ eyes, but stern judgment reigned in its place, as he had shown over countless years.

  Amos searched the recesses of his mind. Countless knowledge of the ages came and went, of nursed hatreds and unending malice; though all roads lead to one name, and it hurdled forth: Lucretia. “She cannot breach this realm.”

  “Not in the way that you think, Sariel.”

  Surprise took Amos. The name of the dark god was not uttered in Edren; he did not know it himself until the Darkness suffused him. “How do you know that name?”

  “Are you asking that, Amos, or Sariel?”

  CURSED LIGHT BLESSED FOOL! the dark god screamed in Amos’ mind. It pained him, though he resolved to show no sign. The voice had not come to him since he returned to the realm. The power of the vestiges and the dark god threaded through him still, but there was something else, distant and faint, but powerful.

  “Amos,” he said reluctantly. He did not believe it, but what his father knew was too important.

  “Then there is Amos, there is Sariel, and the Daemon Lord. Mayhap there is hope for you still.”

  “Tell me what you know, Father. How is it that you know of Sar
iel? Of the Daemon Lord?”

  “I will not deny you, my son. See that you remember it ere the end.” Emperor Archelaus shook his head. “My oldest memory is waking up naked on the plains of this continent. I rubbed my eyes and saw three figures, like gods they seemed to me, and still are. The first was taller than I was, but he looked of middling height to the other two; and he glimmered in the pale morning, as if he was no more than a spirit. He named himself Xavier the Builder, and in my mind, I saw works great and small, from masonry to sustenance to weapons.

  “Then the next figure came forth. She was beautiful, though garbed only in white robes. She named herself Lucretia, and She told me of faith, wisdom, and sovereignty; and that though Xavier gives unto life, it is Her knowledge that will see my children through the ages.

  “Then the third came forth.” Emperor Archelaus dropped his eyes, as if pained by the memory. “He seemed to be much like you are now, my son, though tall and lanky. He named himself Sariel, and He proclaimed His gifts to be strength, judgment, and destruction, when threatened.”

  “It was then that you betrayed me!” Amos said, though he did not speak the words himself. The dark god, wherever he was, did. Amos watched it unfold.

  “I did no such thing, Sariel.”

  “You perverted what was given to you. I taught you judgment, and judgment you had scorned.”

  “Are not judgment and sovereignty intertwined, Sariel? Yes, you taught me judgment, but Lucretia taught sovereignty. Your gifts are but two sides of a coin—without them, they are bereft of meaning.”

  “Do not speak Her vile name!”

  “I must!” Emperor Archelaus proclaimed, and Amos thought his father was taller than he ever was. “For there is much you do not know, Sariel, though half you have guessed. Do you not recall that Lucretia was the last to leave me upon the plains?”

  “She gave you a gift, to which you gave to Jophiel. He does not understand it, and it will be his downfall. She betrayed Xavier and me. It does you little now.”

  “Two gifts, Sariel. It halts Ascendance.”

  SLAY HIM! FLAY HIM! SLAUGHTER HIM! the dark god screamed inside Amos’ skull. Amos collapsed to the ground; shadows and Darkness filled his sight. He knew his father was moving, but the movements were distant and muffled. Then he raised his sword up, but his father was pressing down. “You cannot overcome this,” Amos said.

  “Let the Light burn away all your sins, my son.”

  Amos averted his eyes from the glow of the steel and the golden glyphs. Pain roiled through his body; he clenched his teeth, crying out in pain. Stubbornly, he slashed upwards, sending his father skidding across the ground.

  Gaining his feet, he parried an oncoming slash from the emperor. Amos pushed the blade away, swinging quickly to his father’s legs; but he was parried, and he found himself defending blows from every side.

  Matching a short strike, he held the emperor’s blade in check, though the pain was tearing him apart. He looked into his father’s eyes: stern and judgmental, but no longer grey—they seemed to be flecked with gold.

  LUCRETIA’S CHOSEN CHAMPION!

  Power roiled inside Amos. He felt it surge, and sent a torrent of Darkness towards his father; but it reached no more than a few inches. A shield billowed, pale and opaque, and it burned terribly. He felt his flesh burn and crack apart; the dark god wailed, and Amos felt his legs give way.

  “Stay this madness, my son! Do not force my hand!”

  “Help … me …” Amos muttered into the dirt. He felt every muscle stretch, every bone crack, and his skin withered

  “Stay this madness!”

  “Lord Sariel … our fates … entwined …”

  There seemed to be no Darkness in all the realm. Light overtook it.

  “Lord Sariel …” Amos screamed into the dirt. “Deliverer!”

  The Light began to fade.

  Amos found strength in his body, slowly pushing himself up. His father still held on to the accursed shield, but tendrils of Darkness slithered unto the cracks. Amos felt it emanating from him. “I cannot, Father. The death that this will wrought is of your doing—not mine!”

  The ground shook. Cracks and fissured opened beneath, the Darkness surging like eruptions. Amos saw his father’s mouth move, screaming, but heard no sound. He felt the Darkness gather towards him—and he saw what it was doing.

  In the halls of Edren men and women screamed out in terror; they faced their nightmares: daemons with long twisted scythes, tearing flesh from bone. The dead lay still, twisted and contorted, the fear palpable in pale, shrunken faces. Then the daemons laughed wildly, before turning into streams of shadow and Darkness. There it surged through the halls, tearing apart stone and mortar, rending the earth and tunneling towards the mountain.

  Amos felt every cry, every moment of terror, every withering shrill of agony. He welcomed them all into his bosom; the agony strengthened him. He felt his flesh reknit, then the corruption and mottled flesh seared it.

  No longer did he fear what had to be done. He understood why the corpses had to pile up. The dark god’s power was in death.

  And so freedom must be wrought with the cries of death.

  Emperor Archelaus screamed, but Amos did not hear him. Nor could the First Son do aught now.

  Ascension was at hand, and Emperor Archelaus would not halt it.

  Looking to the sky, Amos rose above the barren plains to the purity of the Pantheon. He stood upon the gilded halls, ignoring all but the tower that rose higher and higher. The dark god was in there, he knew; he felt it, the call. It is nearly at hand. I am a worthy herald. My body did not shatter. We shall break the Great Fate.

  Amos stepped towards the great arch. Guards stood in shining, gilded plate, with long spears and glistening shields. They did not heed or hail him. He crossed the threshold, and still they did not look. He laughed, but then the marble path gave way. Terrified, he screamed out, but naught could stop the descent. “Sariel!” he cried out. “Sariel!”

  He thudded hard ‘gainst the ground.

  Every bone seemed to be broken, and every movement was laboured; but still he had to get up—the dark god would expect him to. He rose to a knee, opened his eyes, and saw the emperor wreathed in Darkness; the shadow of the dark god churning above his father.

  Sariel has abandoned me …

  Swiveling his head, he saw his brothers next to each pedestal, holding up a vestige, chanting, the streams of the dark god funnelling into the emperor.

  “Sariel, you would turn on me?! Was I not worthy? Did I not come for you?”

  The dark god gave no answer. Emperor Archelaus brimmed in power, and the maelstrom of Darkness and shadow churned above him.

  “He must bear witness to this,” Emperor Archelaus declared.

  Rough, gauntleted hands grabbed Amos; they forced his head straight ahead, towards the dais, which Emperor Archelaus walked to. Amos did not know who it was that grabbed him, but it must have been Deathsworn. He felt limp; their strength was all that kept him upright.

  He would not dare close his eyes.

  The First Born still chanted. Emperor Archelaus, stepping upon the dais, raised Vindication into the air—it still shone that pristine blue, and the golden glyphs surged bright as the sun. Amos felt a great pain, though his body did not move. He saw that the streams of Darkness fed into the emperor’s sword, surging upwards; and the maelstrom of Darkness and shadow stretched, faded, and cried out in a great cacophony.

  He means to slay the dark god...

  “Father! No!”

  Emperor Archelaus looked back with his stern, judgmental glare, and said, “This madness ends.”

  The pedestals around the chamber began to sink into the ground. Streams of light emanated from Vindication, crafting a smooth, silver disc upon the ground, spreading like a fire in a deep forest; it halted at the pedestals, joining them all, revealing shallow crevices. The First Born kneeled, placing the vestiges into the crevices.

  Sovereignty, Sk
y, Pyre, Cognizance, Faith, Entropy, Dominion, Subversion, Plague, Lucidity, Salvation, Twilight, Amos read as the glyphs appeared upon the disc, and their light shone up to top of the mountain. Cascading pillars of…

  Horror took him as he realized what the emperor intended. He tried to push himself forward, but the Deathsworn would not relent.

  A shrill wail broke the air, and the maelstrom of shadow and darkness slowly descended.

  The First Born chanted, their ululations rising louder and louder. The First Son stood tall with his sword upraised. The maelstrom passed through the First Son and onto the silver disc. The dais sunk into the earth, leaving a hole, and Emperor Archelaus slammed his sword into the middle.

  All Amos could hear was unrelenting screams of misery and pain. He could barely keep his eyes open. He bent his thought to the dark god, but it was faint and fleeting.

  Lord Sariel, Deliverer, do not leave me, do not…

  HERALD! YOU MUST—

  The glyphs upon the floor shot into the centre, just above the hole in the disc. It seemed like an explosion of Light cascaded in every direction. Amos could see naught but its vile, wretched purity. Then it faded, and the hole was replaced by a glyph he had never seen before; and then twelve glyphs of the vestiges surrounded it, dull and dormant.

  Amos hit the ground. Out of his right eye he saw the Deathsworn walk away, standing sentinel by the edge of the silver disc. He saw his brothers walk towards him, though they gave way to Emperor Archelaus. Vindication was sheathed. Amos thought that a small mercy.

  “On your feet, Amos,” his father commanded.

  Amos sat there for a moment, before pushing himself up. His legs were like jelly, and he fell, but someone caught him. Looking to his right, Jophiel held him up. Amos leaned on his brother; he felt disgraced.

  “You are my son, and a First Born,” Emperor Archelaus declared. “You will face my judgment as such.”

  Before Amos accepted the dark god as a part of him, he feared judgment would come about if he did not act. He did act, and it came anyway. Grimacing, he said, “I spit on your judgment. I am not yours anymore.”