The Lonely Fall of Andal Brask: Conclusion (Destiny)

by iconicbanana, C2-H5-OH + NAD, Portland, OR, Wednesday, February 04, 2015, 10:07 (3362 days ago)

Out of the darkness, he emerged, his mind naked in the dark. There was a light ahead, like a lantern on the trail, rolling and dipping toward him through a starless night.

Then the darkness lifted, and he found himself: prone on his back, wrapped in a torn sheet of plastic, his fatigues and chest armor riddled with holes. He wretched off the sheet, sat up on the burned grass, and his head swam in fire. His whole body throbbed in painful spasms, and he rolled over and vomited black bile, convulsing on all fours. Minutes of pain passed, and his mind mercifully began to clear. Around him, rows of burned corpses covered in bloody tarps spread out through the courtyard. The old stone walls surrounding him were charred black, and the windows of the short buildings were all blasted out from the fire that had burned their interiors.

He looked up to the sky: in the black, starless night, nauseating scars tore across the atmosphere, like fraying gaps in worn cloth. Seething tentacles of negative space and eroding starlight seethed behind the fabric, bulging against the black night like a massive school of translucent, ebony eels. The vistas of the skyline were blotted with the licking whispers of flames against columns of smoke, and he heard fires burning in the night. Then the light came before him again, flitting through the burned buildings and out into the courtyard. It stopped before him, a tiny geometric puzzle of cubes with a pulsing eye at its center.

“Good, you’re awake. I’ll need your help; there are injured civilians throughout the surrounding districts.” It spun as it spoke in quizzical blurs like the machinations of an automatic watch. It looked up with him into the dissolving sky. “The Traveler is dying; it’s attempting to bind the universe together with the last drops of its will. There is work to be done while it strives with the darkness.” It turned and whizzed toward a burned out doorway.

“Wait,” gasped the soldier, painfully. “Wait…I don’t understand. Who am I? Why can’t I remember my name? My….” He understood some of the flitting light’s words. The great white sphere of the Traveler, he remembered, and the urgency, the need to fight; but his clothes, the bodies, the fires around him; he had no memories to place them against.

“Little that you see now will have meaning for you, and what you were is meaningless; your world is gone. We must find a new one for you.” The light paused, patiently considering its new companion. “I can give you a name, to console you.”

“Am I dead?” the confused soldier questioned, struggling to his feet. “Is this hell?” He stared upward, his mind faltering against the wounded sky.

“Your name is your possession; the binding of your soul against the darkness that would destroy it. Your name is an ego you can ground yourself upon.” The soldier looked down at the tiny machine as it pulsed. “In different eons, on distant worlds, the Traveler knew a companion called Kartooth Brask; he was a great warrior of the light. I give you the gift of his lineage. When you struggle with the darkness, take heart in your great ancestors. Be known as his scion: Andal, child of Brask.”

*****

The Devil’s Archon did not move as Brask approached; it only wheezed heavy, rattling breaths, staring at Brask as he walked quietly towards it in the pale blue light. Its eyes seemed to dart imperceptibly over his shoulder; he dove forward, rolling on his back and to his feet, drawing his arc blade, as a giant Kell leapt down lithely from behind, landing where he had stood. The two warriors crouched, regarding each other: the human in his dark cloak, his face in shadow, knife and blade at the ready; the Kell in his royal blue cape, his four arms spread, each holding a long, wicked scimitar. They slowly began to circle each other, instinctively; attempting to eye both the opponent; and the surrounding floor and walls, for any rock or crack that might trip up a lunge or parry.

Brask knew the crest on Draksis’s burnished chest plate. Memories of all those he had sent for the beast came to him; rumors of the monster’s prowess and cruelty surged with rage and grief for the friends he’d lost to it. He suppressed his emotions; they swelled and were gone, and he prepared for the work before him.

He waited for the Winter to strike, but the beast seemed reluctant; it paused, and then to his great shock, spoke to him:

“You are…great intelligence of city, yes?” It croaked and barked and growled out the words, less with malice than strange respect. “You are ‘Brask’, yes?”

“Yes,” murmured Brask. “You are Draksis?”

The Fallen bowed its head curtly. “You do me honor, Black Wolf of city.” He resumed his crouch. “Prepare.”

Then the Kell flew forward, a blur of blades and limbs; he swung both left arms as he spun past Brask, bringing his high right arm down as Brask leapt between those initial blows. Brask landed, whirling backward as the high right blade swept down, centimeters from slicing him in half. He spun right, back to back for an instant with the Kell, and stabbed through the Kell’s giant left quadriceps with his ark blade.

Draksis howled, snaking back his left elbow, hitting Brask square in his back and sending him sprawling on the stone floor. Brask was quick to his feet, turning and then swooning immediately to his back as Draksis flung a saber inches above his prone form. Again Brask leapt to his feet; as the giant galloped forward one-legged, Brask charged as well, leaping and pirouetting upside down in the air, above Draksis’s head. As the Kell swung his sword in an arcing uppercut, missing by a hairsbreadth, Brask’s quick dagger found the hose of Draksis mask, spraying ether vapors into the still air. Brask landed deftly on the other side of Draksis, as the huge Kell fell to his knees, fumbling haplessly with his mask. The hunter rose, turning slowly toward wounded Winter, his knife ready in hand.

Then he was floating, weightless: the world was spinning without moving. He looked down, at the blade that had protruded suddenly through his heart: it disappeared just as suddenly back through him, and he sagged to his knees, and fell forward, dead. Riksis stood over his victim as the Winter’s Kell finally stopped the fleeing whispers of his sustaining ether, rising slowly to his feet. They regarded each other; Draksis spoke.

“We should flee this place.” He stared back to the fires beyond the mountains, where the pale sphere glowed, half in moonlight and half in flame. “The hierarchy is dissembled; without their monarchs the Houses will fall to disarray. We must march a hasty retreat, and preserve those we can.”

“It was ever a fool’s errand,” replied Riksis. “I will repair my forces to the aged laboratories in the far northern climes; perhaps there is still another oracle to be salvaged in their ancient ports there.”

Draksis nodded. “I will return to the second planet. The strange artifacts of the dead singularity must be monitored perpetually, lest they rise and begin their crusade anew.” He shambled forward, standing with Riksis over their slain adversary. “A pity he was not of our own race. He was ever my equal. The Black Wolf, I called him. I only knew whispers of him, a shadow in my dreams; so many of my House were claimed by his blades.”

They looked out over the rustling jungle. A skiff approached, down from the silent mountains, and they were gone.

*****

The soft haze of approaching dawn was settling on the mountains when Cayde finally made his way to the shattered crown of the old fortress. The dead forms of the Kings’ Kells were strewn about in the rubble and broken walls of the high hall. At the center of the strewn rooftop, a curved fallen blade had been fixed, point down in the broken floor; rent, bloody, the sinuous black cloak of Andal Brask hung on the blade, the hood looped over its pommel. His body was nowhere to be found.

Cayde looked out over the stirring jungle. The Traveler hung over the city, vibrant and still. The fires of the night were dwindling smoke in the morning, and the distant thunder of the battle was gone. Cayde pondered a long while on the walls, as day broke on the mountain tops, and the sun prepared to climb. Then he took the black cape from the sword, and leapt down from the castle, disappearing into the jungle. The old fortress stood, wounded and sagging, overlooking the broken Ketch: a strange tomb to the House of Kings, a lonely witness to the end of Andal Brask.