Prelude

Taemes sat in his grandfathers sitting room at the top of the bastion tower as he had on several visits, and like his previous visits the room seemed intimidating. There was nothing about the room itself that inspired this, his grandfather had kept the furnishings as Spartan as his predecessors, and the chairs were designed for comfort. The walls were as they had always been, ornate stone worked with the power to look like glass, and he knew that they had also been worked to be as strong as iron. The few rugs on the floor kept the room from seeming cold, and the open doors to the balcony let plenty of light into it. But there was something about the room, or maybe it was about who he knew it belonged to, that made it seem imposing no matter what furniture was in it.

He heard his grandfathers voice outside the door, talking with some official or other, the gruff voice at once comforting and intimidating as only our elders voices can be. Whoever it was he had been talking to was dismissed and he entered the room, stately even in his advanced years.

“They’ve been encountering more patrols in the twilight lately, and want to send men into the dusk to investigate what’s going on, but they don’t seem to understand that we simply cannot spare the men. We’ve been hitting to many of the creatures in the caverns, and need all the men we can get to help clear them out.” he seemed to say to himself, with Taemes an observer, “The caverns are our weak point, I keep trying to tell them.” With that last pronouncement he sighed, and turned to Taemes, “But that’s neither here nor there. How are your studies progressing?”

What followed was the brief examination that started all of his visits. His grandfather had been guiding his education since he was four, and liked to keep regular tabs on his progress. They talked about his various instructors, and covered in brief a rundown of the eight subjects he was currently studying as well as basic martial forms. When his grandfather told him to run through the basic four routines in their correct order, he got up and without hesitating went through the steps, keeping his balance as he flowed from one motion to the next within the pattern.

“Good, good, but don’t forget to take time when your practicing child, the movements are only the outer shell, you need to take time to focus.”

“Yes grandfather.”

He heard his grandfather sigh and turned to look at him, and was struck by how very old he seemed. The long years of rule showed suddenly in his features, creeping out from the edges of his mouth and the corners of his eyes, as though his face was but a mask that was fraying at the edges, showing hints of the old man beneath. “Sit child, no more examinations today. What do you think of your new history instructor?”

“He’s ok, though I did prefer Mrs. Gandrel. Her mouth fit her face better than his does, even if she did smell funny.”

The lightness had the desired effect as his grandfather let out a great guffaw of laughter, “I suppose it did at that. But you’d better not let him know what you think of his mouth, he got it from his mother, and has always been attached to it in the particular way all little boys are to things they get from their mothers.”

Taemes made a face, “but he’s not a little boy anymore.” his grandfather chuckled, “boy, at heart we are all still the children we were at your age, no matter how hard we try to hide it.” it seemed that the conversation had called his grandfathers age back to wherever it hid, and a peculiar boyishness had taken its place.

They talked for a while longer, about his instructors, about his peers in those subjects he wasn’t being privately tutored in, his grandfather even asking if he had a crush on one of the girls in his class. But before long his grandfather brought them back down to harder subjects. “One of the reasons I wanted to talk with you is that next month is your parents anniversary. I want you to come with me to their graves.”

The call back to earth was expected, but still hurt. Six years ago, when Taemes had been just two years old, his parents had been killed in a cavern breach along with twenty other people. It had been the last major breach since the cavern city had been connected to the city proper to allow population growth without clearing away what cropland that was still fit for use. Under his grandfathers guidance the counsel had taken the underground city - then just a small mining community, and transformed the natural cavern below the city into a metropolis in its own right. The original idea had belonged to the founder, but had never been truly realized before his grandfather came to power as chancellor. The two cities existed in unison, the surface providing food and clothing, the cavern providing raw mineral resources and a place for people to live. This was the original plan around which the tower had been built, and its foundation in the earth turned, when it reached the cavern, into an inverted version of the tower itself. That his son and his wife had been killed in a breach within the new boundaries of the cavern city that he himself had set had never truly left grandfathers mind.

Uncomfortable with the reminder of his parents Taemes went out to the balcony and looked out at the last inhabitable land in the world, and the city around the tower. White buildings stretched in every direction, bound by the protective wall that separated city from cropland. Small towns in the distance spoke of farming communities, and copses of trees dotted the landscape with them, making the whole scene picturesque. But Taemes knew, as everyone knew, that this entire scene was more than just a nice picture. From the top of the tower one could just make out the twilight at the horizon. That gray area where the protective light couldn’t reach that marked the permanent boundary between this city and the darkness beyond it. This was a city of survivors of a terrible war.

He looked then to the force that kept the lurking darkness at bay, a crystal, suspended just above the tower. He remembered being told that it had not been created, but formed from parts that already existed, bound by the founder and two other men and placed as a protector against the encroaching night. Grandfather was the grandson of one of these two men. When the sun set, the light of this crystal shone like another moon in the sky, one which never waned and served as a constant reminder of the terrors humanity had witnessed before its creation, and a constant comfort that we never again had to fight for survival. Beneath this emblem all races had united, so that within the city of light you found orcs and elves and goblinoids and ogres and humans bound together by the fight to survive.

He felt his grandfather’s hand upon his shoulder. “I’m sorry child, I didn’t mean to remind you of your loss. You can come if you want, but I would…” his grandfather’s hand suddenly clenched, hurting Taemes, but before he could speak up he heard a voice, his grandfather’s voice, but not his grandfather’s voice, darker, more distant. Looking up at his grandfather he saw his eyes were completely white, and the age he seemed to have forgotten was terrifyingly evident. The mask which hid it had come off, and as Taemes watched he seemed to age even more.

“The destroyer comes. Thrice will chime the death knell. Twelve fragments has he, and himself. He comes to break what cannot be destroyed.” His grandfather turned to him then, and in a voice half his own spoke, “Run child. Do not hesitate, do not stop, until you are within the city below. Run.” As the last word left his lips his grip, painful before, abated, and he collapsed onto the balcony.

Taemes called for help and fell to his grandfather’s still form. A guard came, and seeing what had happened called for a healer. The guard checked his grandfather for a pulse, but Taemes knew what he would find. The other guard came then, followed by other men, one of them was leading Taemes away and telling him sympathizing things when the tower shook as a ringing filled the air. Taemes remembered then what his Grandfather had said, and as soon as his footing was sure, before the tower even stopped vibrating with the sound, he tore away from the guard. His grandfather’s dying words engraved in his terrified mind, he ran.

***

On the edge of the twilight, beyond which no force of the void could pass, a man stood. His gaze was fixed entirely upon the shining jewel above the city before him, or rather, where it would be if he could see it from here. Years he had prepared for this moment, for he was older than he looked. A man of the twenty years he still looked would never have had the knowledge to do what he had done to prepare for this day, or the will. He looked out to his left, to the nearest of the creatures he had forged for this work. The thing stood impossibly tall, and seemed more a man-shaped mass of the darkest shadow than anything truly alive. There were eleven more of the things, positioned all around the border between the light and the dark. It was watching him, waiting for it’s cue. It’s eyes were somehow darker than the thing itself, seeming to blaze from within its head and evident only because they seemed to shine darkness. In a way, they did.

The man turned back to the city, back to his goal. Now was the time.

He gathered the darkness around him into himself, concentrating it and reaching out for more. It was no natural darkness, but an almost living thing, a life force which muted the light of the sun and empowered those trained to use it. But it was dangerous as well. Early in his training he had had another student learning with him, who had died bringing to much of the living night into him. The man had taken it as another of his lessons, the darkness muted life as well as light if you weren’t careful. He had grown since then though, and brought the energy into himself hungrily, knowing he would need an incredible amount. It filled him, condensing his essence against the edge of his being and heightening every sensation. It was easy to imagine oneself immortal with this power. When he had brought as much as he could into himself, stretched himself as thinly as he could around the void within, he layered himself with yet more, coating himself as thickly as he could in the living shadow.

He was dimly aware of sounds behind him, screaming, shouting, yelling, the clang of metal on metal. It was the sounds of an army. It was the sounds of his army, given to him by all the lords of darkness for the single purpose of destroying the one remaining bastion of light. The thing stretched like a creature as far as the eye could see in either direction, all around the twilight. Not all the creatures which made it up were human, or even made in man’s image. Most in fact were nightmares, left over by the previous wars and left to wander the land. They had been rechained and were about to be put to use.

When he had gathered as much of the shadow as he could, and was coated so thickly he looked like another one of his creations, he walked to the edge of the twilight. The twilight was a blank zone, where neither shadow nor light could reach. Before him was a physical barrier beyond which no nightmare could pass, on pain of a searing, painful death. Shrouded in living darkness, he stepped into this sanctuary.

As his body passed through into the light, the darkness coating him writhed, but withstood the light shining dimly on it. His foot hit the ground, and his entire being shook with the very earth upon which he was now standing as a note played through the air. The sound was crystal, pure, and extremely unexpected. Never had he suspected that the orb would react thus, and it would require some consideration to know what it meant. But not now. He brought his second foot forward, out of the darkness, and again, as it reached the ground, the note sounded. He glanced behind him, and was glad to see everything proceeding as planned, despite this damned ringing. His creations had moved out of the dusk, but brought the dusk with them. No longer could he see the army behind him as the massive creatures pressed against the edge of the light, coating the barrier in a seething mass of living darkness. He took one last step, finding the clear ring slightly comfortable. The shadow he had gathered around himself shied away from the light now, leaving his face and hands clear of its protection. But he wasn’t a nightmare, and found the light merely uncomfortable rather than deadly.

Standing there, the first to have entered the light, he felt drunk with the immensity of what he had just done, and what he was about to do. None of his “masters” could have done it. When they had betrayed the apprentice and stolen of his power they had doomed themselves. They hadn’t even been his highest generals. They had claimed the world for themselves, yet needed a student to fix their problems for them. Fools. He reached behind him and grabbed the hilt of either of his swords and spread his arms wide. The sword tips dipped back beyond the shadow and drew from the energy his servants had gathered as its boundary. Now was indeed the time. He felt more than saw his creations come forward. The roiling surface of the barrier gave to the torsos of their immense forms as they too spread their arms wide.

Master and servants, in unison, brought their hands together, throwing the energy stored behind the barrier toward the thing which had created it. Never again would the world be the same.

***

To the outside observer, it would have been a strange sight. The birds eye view would have seen nothing more than the land becoming slightly darker, less sunny, but not even as much change as a cloud. The pedestrian would have noticed less, simply a slight chill and a faint breeze as the shadow passed over him. The guards in their towers, scared from the chiming that seemed to come from the earth itself noticed the coming shade, and knew the fear of their great grandfathers for the first time in their lives, not the dull knowledge that there was darkness in the world, but the surety that it was coming for them. Even before they could ring the alarms, it had passed them, racing its way toward the city, toward the tower.

Within the city itself the people were frightened too from the chimes before, those asleep had awakened, those in the streets and shops talking worriedly about the sound. By them all the darkness went, unconcerned and unnoticed. When it reached the tower itself it flowed up it, not as a stream but as a flood. Those few who happened to be looking for those few seconds knew, but before they could call warning it was over.

With a sound like glass shattering at thunderous levels and a flash of light, the crystal of light was no more. It’s fragments fell like glowing snow throughout the city, and panic spread. It was then that a second wave raced forth from the border. A wave of darkness. A wave with faces and teeth and malice in its collective heart. The nightmares had been unleashed. Originally created from the minds of men who had gone mad, given form from the living darkness, no two were identical. But they all knew their horrid purpose.

***

Taemes had never stopped running. Though he was only eight, he knew that his life depended on his getting underground. Despite himself he had stopped to look at the crystal fragments falling from the sky. The impossible had happened. He knew what would come next, and he wasn’t about to wait. This time he wasn’t alone in running, at first a few, then more of the cities population realized what the crystal’s destruction meant, and no one wanted to be around when knowledge became reality. The tunnels leading into the underground city were already filled when he made it to the nearest one, but he used his size to his advantage against the press of the people. The way was slow going, soldiers tried to make it up as the populous tried to make it down, and with everyone so tight falling would mean being trampled.

He was halfway to the gate when he heard the first cries of battle over the din of panicked civilians, which then became a roar as the people became violent in trying to reach safety. The first nightmares to reach the city must have been flyers to reach it so quickly, and as such the wall meant little to them. The crowd pushed and shoved and kicked to get through the gate, and just on the other side he tripped, and was nearly trampled before finding a place to hide from the mass of people. The guards stood to either side, letting the people through.

It had been a solid hour or two before a man came, clad as a military messenger. He whispered in one of the guard’s ears for a few seconds, and was nearly punched by the man he had been speaking to. In moments though, he had steadied his nerves and sent the man back with a message his face said the man’s senders would not like hearing. Within moments of the messenger being sent off, he called out his orders, and the soldiers began blocking the path as the gate began to close.

Both the people who had made it through the door and those who had yet to pass began shouting at the guards, calling them heartless monsters and murderers. Nonetheless, the guards continued closing the gate. Taemes heard the heavy bolt seal, and realized that the gate had been built for this exact reason. He dimly wondered if it had been the founder, or perhaps even his grandfather who had thought that the city would fall. Taemes found a nook in the stone, and hid from the violence as the guards re-took order and told people that yes, they knew there were people on the other side, but there were many more people on this side that didn’t know what was happening and weren’t prepared for battle. Men and women were pushed back from the door and only a few guards remained, and seemed to have forgotten Taemes.

The sounds on the other side of the door never stopped as people shouted and screamed and begged to be let in. The guards faces were those of tortured men. Taemes watched them, wondering what must be going through their minds. One of them made as if to open the gate when the one Taemes supposed was in charge stopped him. “We can’t defend against that,” he said, his voice wavering, “we’ll never get it closed again if we open it now.”

“Sir” the soldier started, “we can’t just leave them to die.”

“Not even to ensure the survival of the entire city?”

The soldier seemed about to start his argument again when the officer said, in a voice that said he understood “You can go soldier, make sure the women and children who did make it are being cared to.” the fact that he had emphasized women and children didn’t escape Taemes, nor the fact that the people in the tunnel would be the first to fall.

These things weren‘t wasted on the soldier either, who clapped his fist to his chest and gave a terse “Sir.” before going down the tunnel, a tortured look on his face.

They stood a while longer, a few more soldiers following after the dismissed guard. Then the sounds changed. Screams took on new shape as the nightmares went into the tunnel. The people frenzied on the other side, pounding the door, asking for mercy, while behind them others screamed as they died. The thick stone of the gate muffled the sound, but the dead silence on this side meant every muffled sound rang true - stone or no stone. Eventually other sounds were heard, violent, non-human sounds. The nightmares were there, just on the other side of the door, and suddenly the screams stopped. Clawing could be heard, the nightmares scraping the door, and the guards steeled themselves, ready for whatever it was to come through. Swords in hand those remaining looked to their officer, who watched the door as if willing it to remain secure. Then something slammed against the gate, and all the guards jumped. The officer, weapon now in hand, was calling for his men to steady. Again the stone gate was hit, and Taemes thought that whatever was on the other side must truly be massive. Only once more did the great door vibrate with an impact before whatever was on the other side apparently lost interest.

In the sudden silence the officer heard Taemes crying in his hiding place, and when he came to look Taemes saw tears in his eyes as well. “Come on little guy, this is no place for someone your age.” Taemes allowed him to pick him up, happy of someone to hold him, happy to be away from this awful place.

Neither noticed the trickle of blood seeping out from the corner of the gate.

***

The man who had brought the barrier down walked among the ruins of the city. It had been three days, and the destruction was complete. Uninterested in working to find any survivors the nightmares had simply gone after the second day. No one really controlled them anymore, and the man had no interest in doing so either. To try to control a nightmare was to try to control madness, and invited it into your mind. Any man who had sought to harness that madness had long since become one of the vary things he had attempted to control, though before that time he was as powerful a man as most could ever dream.

He walked through the streets, admiring what these people had created in their isolation. He looked again to the mighty tower, still standing after the conflict. The sides showed scorch marks and clawing all along its shaft, but remained firm. They had done their work well, the founders. A small nightmare walked the street in the distance, sort of like a stray dog. But meaner. It sniffed the air and the man noticed it had no eyes, nor even sockets for them. Even so, it seemed to sense him, and sense his power, before scampering off the other way. Whatever madman had inspired it’s creation had at least given it some survival instinct.

He thought for a while on the evolution of nightmares, and how it, in its own twisted way, mirrored the evolution of the natural animals. Some could reproduce - after a fashion, while others were solitary units. It had seemed odd to him that any could reproduce at all, being what they were, but after some study he found that most that could reproduce had been based on something natural, like that dog-creature just now.

A sound off to his right drew him out of his thoughts and alerted his senses, he could sense… something there. It was like nothing he had ever felt before, and drew him. It was like a concentration of the presence he had been feeling here all along, the reason he was still here. There was something, something else in this place. Something he couldn’t quite fathom.

“Come out” he called, “I know your there.”

A boy, no more than six, peeked out from behind the refuse. This could not be what he had sensed, and yet… he knew, somehow, it was. The boy, seeing him, came out into the open and faced him. Who was this child? He had probably survived by remaining hidden, the nightmares were notoriously sloppy in their work, and yet, if he had survived in hiding, why show himself now? And why on earth did this sensation come from him?

The boy stood, inspecting him. “I won’t harm you.” the man said in the boys language. “I’m no nightmare.”

“I know you.” the child spoke in the man’s own language, something ancient and foreign and most probably forgotten in this place. “You’re the destroyer. You brought down the light from the sky.”

“How do you know my language? How do you know it was me who destroyed the crystal?”

“Brought down, not destroyed. You broke it into tiny pieces and scattered them among us, but you did not destroy it. It cannot be destroyed. Not really.” Scattered them among us. Could it possibly be? But no, that can’t be what this child-thing meant, whatever he was. Then the boy continued. “You took the last thing we had, destroyer, you took our home. You took our hope.”

“Look around you child. This city was nothing. It was dust. It was an illusion of safety that your forebears had built around themselves. I stripped your people of the illusion. I gave you your reality. You, standing here before me, have more than those hiding in the caverns below. Most are looking for someone to save them, someone to die for them, and many men did. You have what they cannot dream of. You have yourself. No one, not even I, can take that from you.”

The child nodded, then looked up the street. The man followed his gaze to see the nightmare standing not ten feet away. It would probably go for the boy. Should I defend him? Let him die of starvation? Or let his end be mercifully quick? But the issue never arose. The dog-thing sniffed the air once or twice more, then padded off past the two of them. Whatever the man had sensed in this child, the nightmare could also sense, and wanted nothing to do with it, not even for food. He looked again at the child, and couldn’t resist a closer inspection. He opened himself up and extended a small tendril of his essence toward the boy, who never flinched as it reached him. The child’s health was good, but something in his aura had been fundamentally altered. After a few seconds inspection he realized what had happened, and stared at the boy as if the world had come tumbling down. In a way, it had.

“That can’t be.”

“Don‘t be afraid of him. He doesn‘t seem to do much harm, just looking for food I think. He‘s not as nasty as the others, just hungry. What you said before might be true, but some illusions are pretty I think, like a magician on the street. We want to be fooled my dad always said, that’s why they can fool us. What‘s the fun if you always know his kerchief is up his sleeve? Maybe the men who made our illusion just wanted us to be happy. But maybe also we had forgotten it was an illusion.” He looked up and down the street, at the ruined or empty buildings all around, “doesn’t matter much now I guess.” With that the boy walked off, looking for food among the broken buildings.

The man wandered through the city again in a daze. The crystal had indeed been broken, but it had found hosts for its energy. And apparently, it had carried some of his own energies with it as well. He had sensed himself in the boy, twisted within the timeless power of the crystal. There must be others as well. The fragments would each have found a host. There must be hundreds of these survivors. What’s more, the weak ones beneath don’t know they exist. They have been forgotten here, to recreate what they can. They will be strong. They will be deserving. They might just take back everything.

That thought shook him. His own people had been among the last to fall to the shadow, outlasting all others in their bid for survival. They had always been tougher, but in the end they had fallen, like all others. It was their way that the defeated were defeated for a reason, and visa versa for the victorious. His own motives had never been those of his so called masters, and for that very reason he would not tell them of these survivors. They were a new breed. They were stronger than their brothers beneath, they had themselves, while the others had only their tattered illusions. They would survive, while those beneath them would fall.

He respected the child.

But he feared the child as well.

He left the city and its inhabitants to their ends. The strong would survive, and make strong children. They would evolve, change, grow. They would claim this world for their own, while their former brothers killed themselves beneath. They had the true hope in the world. All the others had was a broken illusion of survival. Even those who had not been touched by the crystal would be stronger than the strongest beneath.

He spared one last glance at the scarred tower. What was your scheme founder? You knew I would come and bring the whole thing tumbling down. You knew it wouldn’t last forever. And yet… it hadn’t come tumbling down, had it? Still the tower stood, and still the strong survived. Perhaps there was hope yet.