Beyond the Void

Chapter 39, Foundations to rebuild the old empire

KELDIN

One moon and three tens since the Mark of the Other One blossomed.

The following morning Keldin was still fuming with anger. He had not slept well. Bizarre and disturbing dreams had haunted him. The most distressing one had been a dream where his hands had become blades. He cut everything he touched into pieces.

Worst of all, he cut his brother. Then his brother had reached his arm out and grabbed hold of Keldin. All of a sudden he had become tiny and his brother huge, and somehow he was in Seldin's hand.

Keldin could not move nor scream, only an empty endless void surrounded him where pieces of his brother's life were reflected. Then tornadoes filled with the pieces of Ironcourt ripped him from his brother's hands and a figure of void stood over him, blocking the light.

He did not wake up screaming nor in cold sweats but with an odd feeling of coming back from somewhere beyond. This out-of-place sensation was not enough to quell his unease. The days before, leading up to this last challenge he had set up for his little chosen entourage, Keldin had been nervous.

What if he screwed this up in a big way? What if once it was time for the big reveal, they would all laugh at him? Doubts and questions swarmed in his head, and no definite answers were in sight. This was the best he, a Prince of the Ebonveils, was capable of. Why did Seldin have to betray him? But Keldin had come this far. It was impossible to stop now.

Annoyed, Keldin was now making his way across Narris citadel and south-west over the river and into the old town. Before he knew it, the gates of the district were in sight.

Instead of his princely robes, he wore a simple merchant's outfit. Nothing too shabby, but enough to make the city guards lose all interest in him. This was not the first time he had wandered across Ironcourt like this, but those occasions to be able to escape were in the distant past now.

This time he was not paying much attention to his surroundings. He bumped into several people, many of them still drunk from last night or seeking a cure for their illness. He would have liked nothing more than a target to relieve his frustration on. Come on! He found himself thinking. Try me!

However, a glare put all the troublemakers off their appetite. Supposedly, those not able to use or sense the flow could still tell when someone who could, was ready to let loose. A small and uncomfortable popping sensation would be behind their eyes and ears, and the stronger the presence, the more a person could feel it.

It was impossible not to reach for the flow rushing through Keldin's veins. He was restless and his emotions were boiling. His destination was already in sight. It towered above the flat buildings of the old town and was visible at the end of the street and high above the rooftops.

The scale of this ancient coliseum was hard to grasp. Once, it had been one of the first buildings in Ironcourt. They used to practice killing awakened ones there. The thought made him stop and stare at the massive building.

These days a fighter well versed in simple armed combat could easily match a stalker or another minor demon. Your average battlemage could often handle a varra, but matching power against power with an awakened one and then killing it was awe-inspiring.

The awakened ones were old, they remembered well the old empire, and they had once shaped its past. Their blood had not waned as it had in the humans born after.

Keldin knew when it came to the flow, he could hope to match it with a weaker awakened one, someone that had turned barely an Age ago. And he could only hope to send the fiend's soul back into the shadowlands, turning its body into a twisted mass of roots and branches.