What is lost.
By: Zimona Posted on: June 30, 2016 "They're at the gates!"
The bibliothecary froze as panic gripped his chest, seizing the muscles of his body until he felt paralysed, as if some serpent had pumped him full of curare. For a long moment the Grook couldn't move, his webbed, moss-green hands gnarled into fists.
It was impossible! How could those infernal creatures have broken through the phalanx of defenders?
Denial threatened to consume the Grook But the herald panting before him, a harbinger of death and loss, revealed the truth to him.
Shallam was lost.
The milky veil of the Grook's double eyelids twitched as his enormous round eyes focused on the boy. War weary, and with soot and blood decorating his simple tunic, the cleric knew it had taken much for him to race his way through the streets.
“How can it be," the bibliothecary breathed.
“They..they are burrowing beneath the streets. They're in the bedrock."
Shallam had been under siege for months, the alien, reptilian creatures born at the Worldreaver's behest surrounding the Jewel of the East like the coil of a massive python trying to crush the life from the Holy City. The Sultan had been trying to keep the citizens calm, but with the loss of the Gods – Garden above how could that have happened? – they all knew it was just a matter of time.
A loud boom rattled the Basilica's library, ushering in the sound of wood splintering and a loud groan into the recesses of the city. The earth itself screamed, and the ground shook beneath the Grook's feet.
The Shallam Bridge, had it fallen?
The ormyrr had been crafty, slinking in through the seaside village of Jaru , which meant the Basilica was in direct risk of being overrun. Situated in the northwestern part of the City of Light, it would not be long before the marauders arrived, and their Mhaldorian lackeys.
The bibliothecary had a choice to make, one he had been dreading for months now. There hadn't been enough time to move all the knowledge of the City to another location. Some had made it out, smuggled past the wall of enemies. But a majority of the vast treasures stored deep within the vault remained. Hundreds of years of history collected in a single location, the root of Shallam's wealth, and soon it would be laid to ruin.
The Grook turned sharply towards the herald.
“Can you run," the bibliothecary eyed the quaking youth. He looked as if he were about to keel over beneath a stiff wind. A quick sketch of his gaze took in the delicate, sylph features and pointed ear tips jutting through his matted hair, and the deep circles beneath the boy's bright green eyes. The Tsol'aa looked exhausted. He was just a boy, a runner, racing between the western and northern front, ferrying messages to the Generals located at each. The outline of a purple boar throbbed upon the boy's face, the tattoo desperately working to rejuvenate him, but with each throb it grew lighter, and lighter, before fading completely. On his opposite cheek, a Jera rune was nearly lost in dirty layering the Tsol'aa's skin.
The bibliothecary saw the boy's narrow shoulders sag, his chin angling towards his chest. He knew what the Grook was asking him to do.
“Yes."
The Grook's moist hands gripped the boy's briefly before he turned in a swirl of gold-hemmed robes and rushed into the vault. “Follow," he croaked as he disappeared into the bowels of the Cathedral, his fear thickening his voice.
The two made their way through the twisting labyrinth of room, before the bibliothecary stopped at a massive double door. Plucking a torch from the metal sconce beside it, he tapped his tinderbox to the kindling material within. Light sputtered, illuminating what looked like a silver sun, its rays reaching across the entire expanse of the door, with a large blue sapphire in the middle of it. “Help me with this."
The boy gripped the crossbar keeping the door shuttered, and with a grunt the two lifted it aside. The wood thunked onto the tiles as the bibliothecary shoved it open.
Firelight glittered over a wealth of treasures. Mounds of golden sovereigns were heaped on the floor, sparks of colour revealed the resting places of jewels, artwork nestled into the corner, and framing the entirety of the vault were towering bookshelves filled with tomes and scrolls. The must of old parchment and ink filled the room.
The bibliothecary ignored it all as he waded towards the back of the chamber, a meteor arrow directed at one of Shallam's most prised possessions.
The Te'Serran Primary. Once written upon great stone plinths by Divine fire, and standing as tall sentinels in the middle of the city, some intrepid historian had chipped shards of each away, and took a sketching of the words written upon, when the Holy Church of Achaea was dissolved. The plinths themselves couldn't be moved, but perhaps these fragments, these relics, would be of use later.
They had to get out of the city.
Shaking his head with a sense of helplessness flaring through his veins, the bibliothecary felt hopelessness wash through him. He couldn't give into it. Not now. Moving past the treasures, the sound of clinking gold and the hiss of his robes announced his path to the back of the vault. To the unannointed eye there wasn't another exit, but the Grook knew the Basilica like the spots decorating the back of his hand. Touching the wall in seemingly random patterns, dust puffed into the air before the wall began shifting. The whine of metal, some clockwork mechanism churning behind the stone, revealed a cob-web cluttered tunnel.
The bibliothecary pressed the box into the stunned Tsol'aa's hands. “Get this away from the city."
“Wh…where should I take it?"
The bibliothecary shook his bald head, his webbed hand running over his skull.
Where? Gods above, was anywhere safe from the madness of Bal'met and Lord Sartan?
“Anywhere," he whispered. His bulbous eyes bored into the youths. “Run."
The Tsol'aa emerged from the catacombs of the Basilica what could have been days, or a month later. He didn't know. Time lost all meaning to him in the terror which haunted his footsteps. Occasionally the screams of the dying reached him, and he would lean against the jagged walls and weep.
Finally, sunlight nearly blinded him, and he offered a prayer to Lady Mithraea, Goddess of the Sun, fallen now beneath the horror that was the Worldreaver.
He couldn't think about that now. The loss of so many Divine. It terrified him at a primal level, and if he thought of how easily They had fallen beneath Bal'met, he would never be able to take another step.
Getting his bearings, the boy looked behind him, realising that he was far from the Jewel. Instead of near the Pash, which he had mistakenly assumed he was headed, he had emerged amid lush rolling hills. The Putoran? Though not far enough away that he wouldn't have been able to see the spires of the Basilica, or the gilded alchemy tower upholding the orrery of the sun.
Instead, devastation blighted the horizon. Hulking shadows swarmed the bright cerulean sky, circling around an enormous dragon breathing destruction and carnage upon the former City of Light.
The view rooted the boy. Tears ran down his grime-streaked face as dust and debris choked the air.
How many of his peers, his fellow city mates, had been crushed beneath the carnage?
Grief tore through his chest, his heart cloven in twain as he watched the Father of Dragons, and the alien invaders, decimate his home.
Then, with teeth gritted in resolve, the boy – now a man born of war – hugged the box to his chest and ran.