Prologue - The Arrival
In the distant countryside of East Valharden, in the air above a junction between the nearby plains and the mountain region bedecked by the canopies of massive trees, at the end of a ridge, a fissure in the fabric of time and space emerged. As this was a world built solely on an energy source to which the name ‘mana’ was given unto, it was surprising to see such destabilized dimensional matter in its domain. Here, certain humans could achieve superhuman feats, wingless flight to mention one thing, and break through the mold of normalcy.
In this place, above the gushing waters separated into two steady streams by a large boulder, the very air distorted as a spatial tear began to wrench and vertically rip apart space.
As the dimensional wormhole opened up, the surrounding air grew thin, sucked in as if there was a desultory siphon connected to the nothingnessof space inside, void of matter and life. Every living creature in the area grew increasingly mute; a maturing deer raised its tiny head from afar, staring towards the unnatural phenomenon, its beady eyes reflecting deep-seated dread, its limbs frozen. The better part of the animals inside the forest scurried off at mach speed.
From within the unnerving pit of darkness of the void inside the spatial distortion came nothing — at first. Before long, sounds of a wailing infant faintly emerged like a drowning man’s futile calls, until, finally, they came as a thunderclap in the midst of the soundless environment — so sudden and piercing, indeed, that it made even the trees in the area tremble, the stems of the incipiently falling leaves wilting akin to the loss of hair in humans when met with tremendous, life-ending stress. It was in the middle of summer, yet this was a sight reserved for autumn. It was only when the infant was gently placed down onto the boulder beneath the vortex-portal by an invisible force that it fell silent, comforted by the invisible force’s touch to the cheek.
"My son..." Dulcet tones echoed faintly.
Then, the ‘force’ dissipated, forever.
Leaves fell, floating down through the area like spring petals of some significant yearly event, and as if a moth drawn to flame, a young man from the local area scouting out the outskirts of the village nearby had approached, gazing upon the diminishing spatial tear with his eyes wide open in awe at the sight. He wore lavish armor for such a desolate area in the countryside, the plated mail gleaming golden in the dim-lit shade of the forested junction between plains and mountains. The few rays of sunlight that struck his face through the canopies made him squint a few times, both out of disbelief and a natural ocular reaction to the change in the sunlight’s intensity.
“By the twelve… how has a tear in space occurred here?!” The youth spoke, his voice shaky, but his astonishment ended prematurely once the infant swathed in a plain red blanket entered his vision by the tip of the sabatons on his feet.
Approaching with worried steps, the youth, Eustace, crouched down to scrutinize the foreign child’s features and appearance. It was a simple baby, its pudgy cheeks yet to be molded by age, and tufts of dark-blue hair on a head of pure white devoid of scars or the vicissitudes of time. “... Did this little guy come from… that?”
Hardly believable.
His green eyes, carrying the gentleness of a field of grass, shifted between the baby and the spatial tear. It wasn’t possible, right? The air it gave off felt otherworldly.
The scrutiny was short-lived, however, as the vortex began to close in on itself. The world’s own mechanisms began to repair the wound in its axis of space without complaint or hesitation. If he had the capacity to stomach this, surely he’d have exploited this opportunity to examine the intricacies involving the spatial forces of nature! Left alone with the silent baby, Eustace found himself unable to abandon the child due to a severe case of personal principle, staring into the twinkling, innocent, purple eyes of the child with a helpless look.
“Hey, now, you can’t just stare at me with those eyes and think I’ll be charmed—,” but the child reacted with a rub of its face with the wrist wrapped in its blanket, instantly forcing Eustace to douse a squeal stuck in his throat. He had a soft spot for adorable things, in the end; it was an uphill battle for him from the beginning.
“Ah, hell, whatever! You win!” A small curve to his lips shaped an amused smile on Eustace’s face.
Picking up the baby, which inadvertently began to pull at his nose and jaw, the young knight seemingly on leave or some sort of roaming trip began to wander back to the local village, fighting back the infant’s infringement of private space meanwhile.
Back home, little did they know that he’d be bringing back a second little orphan, and a brother to boot, for them to take care of!
And this one had a background even more elusive than the former two combined.
Entering through the doorstep, Eustace happened upon his aunt staring at him with her lips spread apart — she had been leaning against the windowsill of the kitchen window earlier, when he jaunted into the garden with a baby in his arms much too casually for her tastes.
“Eustace,” her voice was a low croak, and her eyes gave a twitch. “Don’t tell me…”
“Yup!” He beamed back. “I found another little kid lost in the woods! I’ve got amazing luck, haven’t I? I have two little brothers now, found in the exact same manner as I was when young, hahaha!”
The aunt raised a hand to her face, palming the middle of her face, rubbing her temples for a while. In the end, she could only yield - sighing, she lifted her head to view the child in his arms.
And it seemed like she had an even softer spot for little things…
“Look at this little… adorable, adorable,” the woman, Nessa, cooed, her voice soft, softer than cotton candy if physically measurable, “adorable thing! He doesn’t seem much more than… two? Three years of age, too. Poor baby, to have been left out in the woods… Yet another orphan joins among the townsfolk of village Gallot.”
Eustace gave her a long look, contemplating her words. The spatial tear was a fresh memory in his mind, and it kept replaying. For some reason, he felt something was amiss — he had an ominous feeling that came from the most base animal instincts of survival. And his was off the charts amongst the human race.
“Right, I’ll leave him in your care, then. How’s that spry rascal, Gilthunder?” Eustace’s eyes turned gentle at the thought of his younger brother — an infant smaller than even this spatial tear-baby — found in a very similar fashion. In response, Nessa’s lips curved up sharply, her eyes teasing, “Look at you, so doting on these oddballs appearing out of nowhere.”
Her timbre was by no means reprimanding.
“Haha, sorry, Auntie. It’s a principle thing—” Before he could clarify, the very core of the planet seemed to tremor, attempting to shake something off its back, as the silver and glass wares in their small home began to rattle and sway. A few glasses fell down the kitchen table, splintering into thousands of pieces. Eustace had already grabbed Nessa and stabilized her, for she held the baby wrapped in red, unable to cope with such external stimulus on her lone.
“It’s dangerous inside! I’ll go get Gilthunder!” Eustace shouted through the rumbling sounds of the earth tearing apart.
It felt no different from the end of times, and it wouldn’t be surprising for the more religious inhabitants in the tiny village comprising only three blocks of houses — gardens, really, as they were all fed by their daily agricultural work — to kneel down and implore the heavens to have mercy upon them.
The tremors grew increasingly intense, and a fracture spread through the main beam supporting the stability of the house. With a shaky foothold and a reeling mind, Nessa and Eustace, one older and one younger, fought their way outside, an infant wrapped in a red blanket in her arms and another wrapped in blue in his arms. They had no time to fetch their personal belongings — it was much too late!
The moment Nessa stepped out of the house, it caved in on itself. Eustace managed to scarcely jump through the various falling stones and beams and splintered woods, shielding the babe in his arms with his upper body, landing outside safely with an unharmed baby brother.
Luckily, he was almost an Empyreal Knight, stuck at a bottleneck to ascension.
Gazing at the debris and aftermath, after heaving a sigh of relief, Nessa turned to look at Eustace whose entire body appeared stiff — something in the distance caught the attention of the young knight, and as she turned her head, a bad feeling began to nest itself in her stomach.
And, then, Nessa’s premonition came true.
In the distance hovered three figures, the appearance of each so grotesque that her heart skipped a beat; an aura of unprecedented strength surrounded each figure, eclipsing even the young man’s already very lively presence of ‘mana’ beside her. The outlines of these figures were humongous, several stories long and tall as a rough estimate; their faces appeared beastly, each a variation of the cardinal animals: feline, mammal and avian. A lion-like chimera blended with the bloodline of dragons, as if in jest; a minotaur with rippling, bulging muscles; and a garuda-like creature with razor feathers. All three winged — one pair leathery, another fleshy and a third sharply feathered — floating gently up and down in the air in a rhythmic, synchronous manner.
Behind them, a tall, glossy, spire made of a building block of stone with a surface so immaculate it gave off a reflection of the world — or perhaps it was soil, a brown so pure it mirrored a world mired in strife? — sprouted from the ground. For some reason, when Eustace gazed into the surface of the spire, he saw a crisp reflection of the world bathed in flames and death, the buildings behind him set aflame and razed down to the ground. When he looked back, the world was as he knew it, unsettled yet peaceful. Following the spire came a tower of runic stone the color of midnight, which was as wide in diameter as the village itself, blotting out the sky, but, fortunately, it only uprooted the very outskirts of the northern part of the small hamlet. It would hardly surprise Eustace if even the most seasoned carpenter or stonemason, or both combined, could not assess the material used to construct such a tower. Soon, it ceased its eruption, the tremors inadvertently following suit, coming to an eerie, sudden stop once the front gates were revealed, heralding a silence that was suffocating. Upon the gates, seemingly made of steel yet the senses foretold of imperviousness unmatched, the image depicting an angel and a wingless creature with two horns on its head on each side, on the verge of clashing with one another, was engraved. The spire itself pierced the clouds, the entire structure seemingly grabbing the heavens in a show of arrogance.
As the reading of energy he got from this tower sent his senses reeling, he felt fear penetrating deep down into his bone marrow, a kind of feeling that had not occurred to him ever since he had encountered the wielder of the blade of darkness. Nay, this was leagues beyond that, something a human could not recreate.
Swallowing the spittle in his mouth, hard, he glanced aside, “Nessa, take the kids away. Far, far away. In fact, go to the major town closest by, or the capital if you can! Seek out Captain Greymane of the Empyreal Watch.” There was no room for discussion in his voice. It was an order, and the glint in his eyes as he looked at her told her enough of the severity of the situation.
Nessa did not shovel through the debris in search of any of the vestiges of their old home or personal belongings, for she always carried their money on her person and that was enough. She took to the road minutely, holding both infants in each arm!
Soon, after traversing quite a distance away from the little hamlet surrounded by forests, she heard loud noises from behind her, glancing back to see the vague outline of four figures in the air, one small tangling with three large. Her heart sunk, but she was powerless - and, then, she involuntarily gave a cry as she saw the small figure plummet to land after meeting an attack of all three of its foes simultaneously!
The beastly vociferations were more than several miles away, yet she could hear them so crisply, as though they were emitted right beside her ear. She wiped away her tears, clutching Gilthunder tighter in the gesture. Hushing at the children, who both began to whimper — whether because they could feel the danger and grief emitting from her, she could not determine — Nessa brought the foreheads of both close, giving each one a deep kiss.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine!”
Perhaps it was said to comfort herself. She had known that young knight since he was a little babe, after all.
She was torn, whispering to no one in particular, “You better live, Eustace!”
ns 172.70.127.130da2
and then Add to home screen.