Post by sheriff on Dec 24, 2021 6:52:09 GMT
The walls of the palace shuddered, raining dust upon the crowd of retainers gathered about within the audience hall of High King Sarcellus Goetian. Brightly-colored dresses and surcoats were powdered with a plaster of debris, one that went unnoticed as all eyes turned to the King of Kings of Gothyelk, seated in white-and-gold upon his throne of azure and crimson—his throne of blood-and-water, his throne of fertility and violence. Some eyes were nervous, some treacherous. Some bloodthirsty, some tired. But Sarcellus could see that not a single one of them were hopeful; he did not blame them. How could there be hope left? Death thundered against the curtain walls of bright-gleaming Sheol, held back only by a millennia of wards and the strength of those sons the city had not yet interred into its sprawling catacombs. One did not need to be an academic, however, to know that the city would fall—the numbers were against them. The tide of darkfiends crashed against the breakers, and saw scores of the defenders dead with each blow; the cracks in the walls growing wider. What hope could there be, when they simply waited for the headsman's blade to fall? No, if the High King saw anything uniform amongst the eyes of his people, it was regret.
That same emotion plagued him now, just as it had plagued him for the past year of campaign and beyond. He had regretted sending off his levies to follow the call of the Prophet Shigek, who had promised that Eidh would grant their world salvation—if only they could seize it by the strength of their swords, and follow behind his newly-raised King Balor. That had been five years ago; Shigek, Balor, and the sons of Gothyelk and elsewhere had yet to return. Their Way had collapsed four years past, and it was then that it was decided the lot of the Holy Host was lost in the realms beyond. Silence and indecision followed, as the myriad nations focused on defending themselves against incursions from the darkfiends, and raids from their neighbors who were desperate to scrabble together what resources they could—the blood suffusing the land in great floods, until the land itself was inundated with the necrotic energy and withered unto nothingness. The famines which followed were the first winnowing; the Great Way that opened a year ago, the second. Sarcellus had lead what remained of his levies- ten thousand hardened warriors, where once he could have commanded a million- unto the great valley of Neciphon to meet the host of which had begun spilling from the way. There, along with the others who had rallied forth to make a last stand, his kinsmen died like lambs to the slaughter—and the dreams of a new dawn for Tairngire were massacred with them.
He had organized the valiant- if ultimately futile- withdrawal to Koraphea, whose walls he had held for months with only five-thousand knights. The sorties out from its gates had thinned the tied of darkfiends by the tens of thousands, the spawn of Gothyelk's once-ample lands displaying to fierce effect the strength that had won them a seat among the Great Nations of the world. Even so, the city still fell, and Sarcellus saw another thousand of his oathmen lost to the maws of the surging dark. From there the campaign dragged him ever-backwards towards Sheol, through Kutnarmu and Auvangshei, through Oswenta—which had once been thought to be undefeatable, its walls hewed from the bedrock and suffused with eons of ambient magic. By the time he had returned to his seat, only a thousand-odd warriors remained, bolstered some by the city garrison's few hundred men-at-arms. Now, Man-Felling Goetian, Giant-Breaking Goetian, Ælf-Hewing Goetian, sat like a struck-dumb cattle afore the cowherd's knife. Surrounded by simpering sycophants, deprived of his greatest warriors by war and attrition in equal measure, the High King could only quiver with the pent-up rage at his depleted state.
"My liege?"
He could hardly hear the man over the deafening ringing in his ears; eyes lidded, he did not even realize the darkness he was suffused by was not from the end of his world, but by his own making. Slowly reason returned to his clouded mind, the overpowering white noise breaking apart into little more than a distant resonance that blended into the detritus of background noise his guests made through their murmuring. His eyes unlidded themselves like a cat lazing in the sun, his heart-stopping gaze slowly shifting from the approach of his throne to the vizier at his side. Ah, Mönghûl! A more proper court-mage, Sarcellus could not dream of; the man was as adept at the art of statecraft and poisoning as he was summoning great tides of lava and storms of lightning. He looked troubled, which was almost a surprise—Goetian could hardly recall a time the man had shown the slightest emotion, even during the campaign. He only realized that the concern was over his own hearing, when the grey-bearded Ælf cleared his throat and repeated himself again. Blinking, the High King waved a hand towards him to go on with whatever he had to say, an annoyed huff at the monotony of court decorum passing through his lips. What was the point of it all, now?
"The augur brings you tidings, my liege. He says they are most urgent, and that you will want to view them with great haste."
The augur? He couldn't help himself from bursting into rancorous laughter at that; the bellowing mirth ringing off of the acoustically-perfected walls of his lavish hall. He gestured for the vizier to bring him forth; no words were exchanged, of course. Sarcellus never spoke directly to his people, and rarely did he bother speaking to the brown-nosing little shit Confaihr to his other side—the man's family had enough wealth and sway to have secured him a place as Speaker when Sarcellus had lost the last at Neciphon; a loss Sarcellus still mourned to this day, for Confaihr wielded only a fraction of the presence needed to convey the Voice of a King of Kings. Sarcellus ruminated on killing the whelpling until the augur was brought groveling afore his steps. Turning the eyes of his grotesque war-mask to the wheedling charlatan, he extended a hand and gestured for him to provide his report. And what a report it was! Oh, it made Sarcellus wish all the bards hadn't died off weeks ago—they would've been in tears at the high tales this man wove! It reminded Goetian why he'd even allowed the man a place at court to begin with; his art was so fantastically stupid in its appeals to the base pride of a man, it drove him to such heights of amusement that he almost felt as much joy as when he was on the field of battle, adrenaline pumping through his veins. His eyes- clouded with tears from stifled laughter- swept across the others in the hall, to see if they shared his humors.
What he saw instead drove his hand to grasp the bejeweled hilt of his blade. That shut the nasally peddler of false futures up within the same heartbeart—his retainers, however, continued dumbly gazing upon the augur, awaiting with baited breath on what his lies his lips would next conjure up. It was then that Sarcellus realized that Gothyelk was dead; that it had been dead, for months now. Only the cowards remained. Only the craven, who had been first to run, had lived through the battles which had come before. His grip tightened. The golden chain nestled beneath his ivory-white plate filled the deathly-silent hall with the noise of its rustling, as his feet thundered down the steps of his throne. The augur hadn't even the time to cry out for mercy afore his head was cleaved from his shoulders by the great square-tipped blade, whose fuller ran over with the blood that gushed forth. Standing stock-still for several beats, Sarcellus reveled in the rain of blood splattering across his lacquered plate. Then, the bestial visage of his war-mask turned to the nearest noble (whose pants quickly darkened from a rapidly-emptying bladder) and fixed him with a stare. The quivering man nearly fainted, when he heard his king's voice a moment later.
"I call for a Letting. Let he who can strike me down take up my crown, and bear upon his body the Mantle of Gothyelk."
When the chittering devils finally broke through the doors of the hall, their surge of elation at such a feast being laid before them blinded them from perceiving the red-and-gold form of High King Sarcellus Goetian, seated upon his throne of azure and crimson—his throne of blood-and-water, his throne of fertility and violence. In his hand he lovingly clasped the back of Mönghûl's head; caressing the cheek of the vizier's decapitated skull with a mailed thumb, Sarcellus too did not notice his new guests until they began to ascend his stairs. Rising to his feet once more, a shudder of ecstasy passed through him—battle-lust flooding his muscles, as the viscera of his slaughtered court flooded his flaring nostrils. Ah, he had earned his titles anew with this sacrifice to Eidh! Striding downwards to his death, Goetian bellowed the final war-cry of now-dead Gothyelk into the void which surged forth to swallow him; the endless void of darkfiends which would, in time, surely consume the rest of Tairngire.
But he did not care. He alone stood, at the fall of Sheol, at the fall of Gothyelk. There could be no better end to a kingdom, than to die with its king.
That same emotion plagued him now, just as it had plagued him for the past year of campaign and beyond. He had regretted sending off his levies to follow the call of the Prophet Shigek, who had promised that Eidh would grant their world salvation—if only they could seize it by the strength of their swords, and follow behind his newly-raised King Balor. That had been five years ago; Shigek, Balor, and the sons of Gothyelk and elsewhere had yet to return. Their Way had collapsed four years past, and it was then that it was decided the lot of the Holy Host was lost in the realms beyond. Silence and indecision followed, as the myriad nations focused on defending themselves against incursions from the darkfiends, and raids from their neighbors who were desperate to scrabble together what resources they could—the blood suffusing the land in great floods, until the land itself was inundated with the necrotic energy and withered unto nothingness. The famines which followed were the first winnowing; the Great Way that opened a year ago, the second. Sarcellus had lead what remained of his levies- ten thousand hardened warriors, where once he could have commanded a million- unto the great valley of Neciphon to meet the host of which had begun spilling from the way. There, along with the others who had rallied forth to make a last stand, his kinsmen died like lambs to the slaughter—and the dreams of a new dawn for Tairngire were massacred with them.
He had organized the valiant- if ultimately futile- withdrawal to Koraphea, whose walls he had held for months with only five-thousand knights. The sorties out from its gates had thinned the tied of darkfiends by the tens of thousands, the spawn of Gothyelk's once-ample lands displaying to fierce effect the strength that had won them a seat among the Great Nations of the world. Even so, the city still fell, and Sarcellus saw another thousand of his oathmen lost to the maws of the surging dark. From there the campaign dragged him ever-backwards towards Sheol, through Kutnarmu and Auvangshei, through Oswenta—which had once been thought to be undefeatable, its walls hewed from the bedrock and suffused with eons of ambient magic. By the time he had returned to his seat, only a thousand-odd warriors remained, bolstered some by the city garrison's few hundred men-at-arms. Now, Man-Felling Goetian, Giant-Breaking Goetian, Ælf-Hewing Goetian, sat like a struck-dumb cattle afore the cowherd's knife. Surrounded by simpering sycophants, deprived of his greatest warriors by war and attrition in equal measure, the High King could only quiver with the pent-up rage at his depleted state.
"My liege?"
He could hardly hear the man over the deafening ringing in his ears; eyes lidded, he did not even realize the darkness he was suffused by was not from the end of his world, but by his own making. Slowly reason returned to his clouded mind, the overpowering white noise breaking apart into little more than a distant resonance that blended into the detritus of background noise his guests made through their murmuring. His eyes unlidded themselves like a cat lazing in the sun, his heart-stopping gaze slowly shifting from the approach of his throne to the vizier at his side. Ah, Mönghûl! A more proper court-mage, Sarcellus could not dream of; the man was as adept at the art of statecraft and poisoning as he was summoning great tides of lava and storms of lightning. He looked troubled, which was almost a surprise—Goetian could hardly recall a time the man had shown the slightest emotion, even during the campaign. He only realized that the concern was over his own hearing, when the grey-bearded Ælf cleared his throat and repeated himself again. Blinking, the High King waved a hand towards him to go on with whatever he had to say, an annoyed huff at the monotony of court decorum passing through his lips. What was the point of it all, now?
"The augur brings you tidings, my liege. He says they are most urgent, and that you will want to view them with great haste."
The augur? He couldn't help himself from bursting into rancorous laughter at that; the bellowing mirth ringing off of the acoustically-perfected walls of his lavish hall. He gestured for the vizier to bring him forth; no words were exchanged, of course. Sarcellus never spoke directly to his people, and rarely did he bother speaking to the brown-nosing little shit Confaihr to his other side—the man's family had enough wealth and sway to have secured him a place as Speaker when Sarcellus had lost the last at Neciphon; a loss Sarcellus still mourned to this day, for Confaihr wielded only a fraction of the presence needed to convey the Voice of a King of Kings. Sarcellus ruminated on killing the whelpling until the augur was brought groveling afore his steps. Turning the eyes of his grotesque war-mask to the wheedling charlatan, he extended a hand and gestured for him to provide his report. And what a report it was! Oh, it made Sarcellus wish all the bards hadn't died off weeks ago—they would've been in tears at the high tales this man wove! It reminded Goetian why he'd even allowed the man a place at court to begin with; his art was so fantastically stupid in its appeals to the base pride of a man, it drove him to such heights of amusement that he almost felt as much joy as when he was on the field of battle, adrenaline pumping through his veins. His eyes- clouded with tears from stifled laughter- swept across the others in the hall, to see if they shared his humors.
What he saw instead drove his hand to grasp the bejeweled hilt of his blade. That shut the nasally peddler of false futures up within the same heartbeart—his retainers, however, continued dumbly gazing upon the augur, awaiting with baited breath on what his lies his lips would next conjure up. It was then that Sarcellus realized that Gothyelk was dead; that it had been dead, for months now. Only the cowards remained. Only the craven, who had been first to run, had lived through the battles which had come before. His grip tightened. The golden chain nestled beneath his ivory-white plate filled the deathly-silent hall with the noise of its rustling, as his feet thundered down the steps of his throne. The augur hadn't even the time to cry out for mercy afore his head was cleaved from his shoulders by the great square-tipped blade, whose fuller ran over with the blood that gushed forth. Standing stock-still for several beats, Sarcellus reveled in the rain of blood splattering across his lacquered plate. Then, the bestial visage of his war-mask turned to the nearest noble (whose pants quickly darkened from a rapidly-emptying bladder) and fixed him with a stare. The quivering man nearly fainted, when he heard his king's voice a moment later.
"I call for a Letting. Let he who can strike me down take up my crown, and bear upon his body the Mantle of Gothyelk."
When the chittering devils finally broke through the doors of the hall, their surge of elation at such a feast being laid before them blinded them from perceiving the red-and-gold form of High King Sarcellus Goetian, seated upon his throne of azure and crimson—his throne of blood-and-water, his throne of fertility and violence. In his hand he lovingly clasped the back of Mönghûl's head; caressing the cheek of the vizier's decapitated skull with a mailed thumb, Sarcellus too did not notice his new guests until they began to ascend his stairs. Rising to his feet once more, a shudder of ecstasy passed through him—battle-lust flooding his muscles, as the viscera of his slaughtered court flooded his flaring nostrils. Ah, he had earned his titles anew with this sacrifice to Eidh! Striding downwards to his death, Goetian bellowed the final war-cry of now-dead Gothyelk into the void which surged forth to swallow him; the endless void of darkfiends which would, in time, surely consume the rest of Tairngire.
But he did not care. He alone stood, at the fall of Sheol, at the fall of Gothyelk. There could be no better end to a kingdom, than to die with its king.