The Umbral Messiah Pt. 01

The Chanti tower rose from the moorlands like a knife of cut obsidian - midnight black against a black sky, it was more visible by how it blocked stars and distorted the mists around it than anything else. There were no windows and no lights cast by human means - instead, there was only the faint glimmering witchfire of long decaying magic, sputtering around the outer skin of the tower. It was like the illustrations of the Southern Lights or the backglow after a poorly cast cantrip.

Sari tried to keep the excited quaver from her voice as she reigned in the steady bay mare that her master had given her. "Is that it, Master Phenrig?"

Her master, who rode on his own bound nightmare, snorted quietly. "What is the first lesson, apprentice?" His eyes were piercing blue in normal light, but seemed to glow like coals under the starlight. Sari felt a red flush grow on her face as she shifted in her saddle.

"Don't ask questions. Find answers." She shook her head. "Uh...it looks like Chanti construction. The witchfire has to be from either recent incantations, cast poorly...or...or..."

Phenrig let her fumble for a moment before dropping his own: "Or?" into the conversation like a rock down a well, clattering and thumping and splashing in the pit of Sari's stomach. She gulped and ducked her head forward.

"...or old magic that are dying." She flicked her tongue along her lips, nervously. The moorlands were mostly abandoned and uncultivated, ever since the war between the Silver Princes had destroyed the dykes and windmills that kept the salt water of the Moonsea from creeping into the lowlands. They were boggy and marshy now. But just because they were unpeopled didn't mean that they were less dangerous - without humans, dwarves, elves and orcs to keep the wild things at bay, the moorelands were now rife with monsters that most people only wished to hear about as traveler tails. Rumors abounded of knockers and stranglers and giant spiders...

Sari started as Master Phenrig lifted his hand. His fingers spread and the pale purple-white light of his magic glittered to life. For a second, she could see the geometric shape of the incantation - visible in the gleaming moment between invocation and casting. But then the magic was gone, swept away by his talent, and all that was left was a shimmering orb of pale white light that itself faded into sparkles.

"Two seconds," he said, softly. "Which means..."

"We're on a dragon line," Sari said, nodding. She thought she had felt the tingle of it on her skin, pricking and prickling like the moment before a lightning strike. She hadn't mentioned it, afraid that her master would chide her for starts. "It's definitely the Tower of Moloch Bar, master."

"Oh?" his voice was dry enough that she didn't even need to see his arched eyebrow - the spell he had weaved had killed her night-vision for the moment.

"The moorlands have two dragon lines through it," Sari said, gulping. "T-The, uh, the first intersection is where the town of Faenberg was built, the chapel of the Ninth Dragon is there, tapping the same line. But the other nexus is where the Moloch Bar built his tower, in the age of the Chanti Empire. E-ergo...uh...the tower. That's it. That tower. That is. Right there." She shut up under the impassive gaze of Master Phenrig.

"Correct," he said and Sari almost embarrassed herself further by letting out an audible, explosive sigh of relief. "Within that tower is an artifact I wish. This is your final test before you will go out as my agent in the world beyond our tower. Apprentice Sari, you will acquire that artifact and you will return before the dawn comes and the tower's entrances close."

Sari nodded, her knees tightening faintly on the mare - who whickered and tossed hers head restively. Her hoof rasping on the soft ground felt like nails on chalkboard.

"I won't fail you, master," Sari said.

Phenrig offered not a single word of comfort. Instead, he simply nodded, then gestured with one arm forward, into the darkness. Sari squared her shoulders, then let out a soft 'hyup!' and kneed her mare into moving forward. The horse's gait was slow and cautious - clearly not enjoying the idea of moving at any speed at night. Mist roiled around her long, thin legs, and the thumping of her hooves against the ground made Sari's shoulder and back tighten. She kept her own senses peeled for any of the monsters that were out in the moorland - and started at every shadow as they came closer and closer to the Chanti tower.

The tower itself rose from a rocky outcropping which itself was surrounded by a copse of trees grown sickly and weird over the years, likely leaching magic from the soil and into their very branches. Sari swung herself from her mare, whispering a soft word to her. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll be back..." She glanced around, made sure that there was plenty of grass for her mare to chew on, then tied her line to the least odd of the trees - but not before she shook it by pressing her booted sole to it and pressing. When the tree didn't burst to life and attack her, she nodded and then began to start into the copse of trees.

Her boots crunched on fallen leaves and she brushed aside hanging fronds as Sari considered risking a quick incantation. Phenrig did not forbid her, precisely, from casting spells...but...he preferred it when she did it with her supervision. Magic was dangerous to the untrained and unwary and, to be honest, the unlucky. But she didn't relish stumbling any deeper in away from the starlight...so...she held her fingers up, pressing the pointer and middle finger to the air before her temple, like she was touching the invisible visor of an armored helmet.

Magic jolted through her and washed through her vision - and when it was gone, the world was recast into brilliant blues, whites and somber purples that transformed darkness into a surreal daylight. The trees were bright blue, while her own hand glowed with a pale white-red illumination, as if she could see the very heat from her body - fingertips growing noticeably dimmer, back being darker than palm, and the light of her skin becoming obscured by her jerkin and leggings. Sari grinned to herself, then moved forward with more confidence.

The first difficulty was the rocky base of the tower. The earth looked as if the tower had thrust up from the ground, stabbing out of the world and leaving behind molten outcroppings that had then cooled to jagged petals. With her Sight on, she could find the handholds that were safe enough to grip and pull herself up, scrambling from jutting petal to petal with a soft grunt and wheeze. A great deal of her training had been in upper body strength - a vital step in the arts of magic that Phenrig had taught her.

It hadn't been much of a sacrifice. It wasn't like there were people at Phenrig's tower other than his servitors - and most of those...

Didn't talk so much.

At the top of the earthen outcropping, Sari could place her palm against the side of the tower, feeling the smoothness of it. No brick, no mortar, nothing but smooth, unfaceted stone. She craned her head up and saw, barely visible with her Sight: A thin slit of slightly brighter blackness between two parallel lines of darker darkness. Sari allowed herself a little grin as she whispered. "There we go..."

She opened her pack, fished out her grappling hook, and then started to thread the rope through it. The faint clink of the potion bottles she had brought with her made her wince - she was trying to be quiet, just...just in case. She tried to quiet the bag, but her shifting hand bumped against it and sent the backpack slipping onto its side. One potion rolled out, and then started to roll towards the edge of the rocky outcropping. The downside of the Sight was it robbed her of color vision - and so she had no idea if it was the healing potion, or-

"Nonononono!" Sari squeaked, scrambling and grabbing for the potion. Her fingers just barely closed around it and she fell flat on her belly with a grunt. She lay there, just...panting softly, looking at the bottle in her hands - a tiny twitch of mental focus caused her Sight to shift from the magically enhanced version she was using to normal. In the faint starlight of the glen, the glowing pink hue of the potion was clear. "...you...are not going anywhere." Sari hissed, then shoved her Rebis potion back into the bag, before swinging it shut.

Master Phenrig would kill me if I broke one of his Rebis potions, she thought, lifting her hand to recast the Sight. Hell, I would kill me if I broke that!

Phenrig had told Sari that she was a Rebis early...it had been one of her first memories, more clear than dim thoughts of parents. She knew they had died during the war between the Silver Princes. Phenrig had said her mother had been a mercenary from the free cities, an arbalasteer who had been slain shortly after bearing Sari during a siege. Her father had been a peddler, who had died in the epidemics that had ravaged the countryside after the armies had marched by - and Phenrig had taken her from the cloister of the Ninth Dragon, having recognized that she was...well, what she was.

A Rebis is the perfected form of the alchemists art - but they can be born naturally, as well. She could hear his lecturing tone of voice. Do not mistake it for uniqueness or an excuse to assume ease in future trials. It simply means you have certain options that other magicians may never have. Now. Drink up.

The potions had made parts of her training - especially retaining upper body strength - devilishly hard.

...but she had rather appreciated the tits.

Not that Sari would have ever admitted that to Phenrig. She was pretty sure he'd petrify her with a single one of his sardonic eyebrow twitches.

She shook her head, focused, and began to twirl her grappling hook. It whistled up, caught, and she started to scramble up, arm over arm, legs braced against the smooth side of the tower. Her boot soles caught and rasped and, soon, Sari was at the window, tugging herself in with a grunt. She peered into the Chanti tower's interior. The gloom of ages had worked on the interior - old wooden furniture had rotted away and the tapestries that had once made the place livable and welcoming had rotted away, leaving behind only smooth, angular corridors and the faint glitter of magelights and the forced open stone doorways that led into side rooms.

"Wait," Sari whispered to herself. She moved to the first of the doors and stepped inside and found that there was a small pile of collected gear - picks, shovels, crates full of blasting powder, and more. The material you'd use to break into a ruin if you had about as much magecraft as the Dragons gave a flea - brute tools, used by brutish hands. Next to the crates were quivers of arrows, unstrung bows, and a few spare swords that had been set out. Sari stepped to one of the swords, snatching it up with a frown. The leather scabbard was painted black and when she yanked it open to examine the blade, she saw it was steel, with a makers mark on the crossguard hilt.

It was a stag's skull, circled by thorns, with a stylized B in the center, in the script of Albernacht.

"Black Walkers," she whispered, sheathing the blade again. She chewed her lower lip, thinking furiously. The Black Walkers were just hired swords - one of the more infamous mercenary bands that had stuck around after the war. They took silver from any of the Silver Princes and other, less savory types. She looked back at the supplies, then started to rummage through it, looking for any journal or scrap of parchment. Most Black Walkers couldn't read, but their commander would-

A scrap of parchment came fluttering free. She snatched it up, grinned as she peered at it, before she whispered.

"Shit."

The text was, like the rest of the parchment, a sheer blue surface to her Sight.

She dropped her vision...

And thanks to that, she saw the flickering glow of torchlight before she heard the faint sounds of thumping boots.

Sari froze, her heart hammering - and then she scurried into the darkest corner of the room, hearing a pair of voices speaking up.

"This beats the hell out of the last gig we had," the first voice said. Male. Gruff. Grumpy. "But, by the Second, I'm sick of sitting around waiting for the stuck up bitch to get through the door. We brought blasting powder for a reason."

"I don't know why you're bitching so much," the other voice said - nasally, whistling, like something was wrong with his lips. Also male. "We're getting paid by the day. And it's not like the corpser is light on the silver, heh."

Corpser, Sari thought as the torchlight spilled into the room - the two men were walking beside one another, and the one who had mentioned corpsers was holding the torch, which cast along his features. It was not a flattering light - his face looked as if he had been hit by a hatchet at least twice and patched through with healing magic in the nick of time. And not exceptionally talented healing, from the hideous scars and the way his lips were literally stitched together to keep them from...flopping. His grin was the corpse-grin of a damned man as he turned to face his comrade. "Get the stuff."

"Right, right," the other man said. He was a silver haired man of middling age - the kind of sellsword who would die in the life without enough to pay for a retirement or a real vocation beyond the service. Either that or he simply enjoyed it. Or he aged quickly. There was just one problem.

He was old.

But he wasn't blind.

"Wait, hold your torch up," he said, hand dropping to the hilt of his sword.

Sari saw the light cast along the floor - and fall upon her. She threw out her hand and purple exploded along her palms. The spell was, on the whole, not exceptionally elegant. But it did the job. The sword she had been examining whipped out of its scabbed, surrounded by a nimbus of purple fire. The fire winked out midway through its arc and the sword began to fall. Sari flung herself forward and snatched the blade from the air and stood up, holding it in both hands.

"Fuck me," the grayhair said, grinning. "We have ourselves an apprentice witch here."

"Remember orders?" Hatchetface said.

"That I do," Grayhair said, drawing his sword with a rasp. "No witnesses."

Sari's throat went dry. "I, uh, I don't want to hurt you," she said, evenly. "But-"

Grayhair walked forward and swung his sword with a brutal, almost contemptuous movement. He knocked the point of her blade out of the way and, with the backswing, planned to hack her face off. It was the movement of someone who clearly didn't expect any competition. Sari was honestly so shocked, so insulted, that she almost got her entire face removed by a sword, purely out of annoyed indignation.

Then years of training took over as she jerked her head back, shifted her grip, and swept her blade upwards, under his guard, then stepped to the side as a fountain of blood splashed the wall. His sword hit the ground.

His hand followed it, a second later.

Grayhair gaped at his wrist, and then Sari kicked him as hard as she could. He was off balance and his body slammed directly into Hatchetface, sending both of them bowling over. Hatchetface's torch went flying from his fingers and landed among the cloth sacks and parchments and shovels and picks...

And blasting powder.

Sari's eyes widened.

"Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!" Escaped her lips as she sprinted out of the room, slammed into the wall. She could dive for the window - and risk a fifteen, twenty foot drop into a forest - or...

She flung herself down the corridor, skidded along the smooth floor, and curled up right before the blasting powder went off and the whole of the world was shrouded in smoke, flame, and pain.

***

Hecate frowned as she watched the corpser at work. The main thing going through her mind at this exact moment was the same refrain, the same chorus, that had been ringing through her head for this entire goddamn mission. Ever since she had been given the order by Old Man Walker himself, ever since she had slung herself onto her horse, strapped on her sword, and drunk her last ale in town and forced herself to put on her professional.

It went a little something like this.

I want to be doing literally anything but this.

There were Nine Dragons that had made the world - but there must have been a Tenth that had specifically crawled from the abyssal void itself to vomit out this job. It didn't just involve escorting a corpser through the patchworks of kingdoms and free-cities that survived in the world after the shattering of the Silver Crown, it also involved...

Listen, Cate, you need to make sure this fucking corpser gives his masters a good name for us.

Old Man Walker's voice had been gruff and his eyes had been pitiless and cold. Hecate clenched her jaw, as if she was back in his small office, full of the smell of ink and parchment and candles.

The Necromancers are on the warpath. My birdies tell me that they're forming an army - an army that we've not seen since the War. Armies means jobs. Wars mean jobs. We want this Corpse Lord to see us as a reliable batch. That means...

"By the Third Dragon's scaled behind!" The corpser hissed venomously. His palm drew back, smoking faintly as he glared at the elaborate door he had been working at for the past day. He clutched his wrist, his eyes narrowed. His voice was high and effeminate, and his manner was the perfect combination of fussily neat and utterly grating that every single member of the company that had been detached to accompany him - two squads of ten men each, with Hecate in command - had begun to call him the bitch.

Hecate kept her arms crossed over her chest. She bit back her first, second and third response - but that didn't matter. The Corpser swung around to glare at her, his black robes fluttering, his hood falling back to show the marks that his necromantic arts had taken on his body: his skin was withered and drawn, corpse-like in complexion, with thin lips, sunken eyes, wrinkles fanning out around his eyes, and the black mark of the Corpse Lord on his forehead, burned there in some arcane ritual. He thrust his finger at her, his other hand still clenched to his chest.

Hecate could smell burned meat.

"Your men are disrupting the magic flows here! With their armor!" he hissed. "With their constant movements!"

"The patrols, you mean?" Hecate asked, dryly, reaching up to subtly adjust her eyepatch. She cocked her head to the side, her shoulders shifting. Broad shoulders, on a broad body, with muscle to match. "The patrols required to keep you safe? With the armor required to keep my men alive?"

Not that Hecate thought the squads she had been detailed represented the best of the Black Walkers. They were all the cutthroat bastards who had joined up because there was little better options.

Like me, honestly, Hecate thought with a grim smirk.

The Corpser turned back to the door, glaring at it. "The Chanti empire built magical constructions larger and more complex than anything else save...maybe the orcish temple on Rarous Island." Just admitting that alone seemed to gall him. "I should be able to open this damn door."

The amount that Hecate knew about magic could fill a letter so short that even she could write it. The closest she had gotten to a magical education was when she'd gotten one of the scant few women who had served in the Walker's meager artillery 'company' (it had, at the height of the War, never been more than four hedge wizards and one Silver Academy dropout.) The academy dropout had dropped out because of her worrying tendency to drink and her equally worrying tendency to cast while drunk - but the former had led to her sharing Hecate's bedroll for the night, so it wasn't entirely something she could judge.