The Iron Lord

As the great moon swallowed the harvest moon amidst it’s decent to the horizon, a rider made haste across the Bainfeld ridge. They rode hard, their horse heaving for breath and frothing at the mouth as its hooves crashed through gravel and dirt. The sun was nearly upon them and they must hurry. The ridge gave way to a well trodden dirt path that wound down the hillside, the rider careered through shrubbery and over jutting rocks, cutting the corners of the path and charging down the hill in a single direction. As they reached the bottom, the rider pulled hard on the reigns, the horse rearing back and skidding to a halt. The rider turned and surveyed the sky, as the first essences of blue began to appear and had already begun to turn yellow on the horizon. The rider frowned but was no longer in a hurry; he had reached his destination. The horse wheezed as the rider stepped down from its saddle and pulled off the load from its back then eyed his surroundings.

Lake Núl split the Bainfeld Valley right down the middle, expanding for thirteen and a half miles to the north and another six miles to the West. The rider found themselves greeted by the ebbing black waters of the South East bank, an area notorious for the birth of various fairy tales and horror stories, made up to scare the children. Stories of Almas; the wild people – savages from birth, know only to kill, rape and maim; The Amarok Wolf, a lone beast that hunted down any chid foolish enough to leave the village boundaries at night and possibly the worst of all; The Draug – soulless creatures, claimed by Death himself but their bodies repossessed by the dark spirits that cling to the borders of life and death. They can appear from nowhere, they move silently, not eating, not sleeping, just moving through the land killing all in jealousy for their life. A single one isn’t too bad to deal with, but when they mass together, for example in the ghost towns on the borders of Grenloch and Aberthwaite, they become an unstoppable force. The rider dropped his bag to the floor and removed his hood, presenting a face masked by a porcelain masquerade disguise. The mask had intricate design, coloured mostly white with black and gold vines, animals and a jumble of words placed at seemingly random places. The man beneath the mask was Lord Beyron, known as The Hawk. Lord Beyron had been part of the King’s court until the events of the Altarian Revolution deemed him a traitor and he was captured and sentenced to death. His chosen death penalty was to burn at the stake, as he had burnt many of his victims after crucifying them, using them to light his midnight feasts for himself and his patrons. During the execution, so legend has it, Beyron became stuck between Life and Death and spent an eternity being tortured by forlorn and abandoned spirits who clawed at his skin and his eyes, trying to find a way into the human world. In reality all of this happened within a second, but to Beyron it was an eternity. Finally a daemon approached Beyron and offered him a second chance, as long as he sacrificed the life of child to the daemon for every ten more years of his life Beyron whished to live. Then, according to the Legend, the fire grew black and the flames lashed out at the baying hordes that had come to witness the execution and burnt out the eyes of those close enough for it to reach. When the fire died down Beyron was missing and a boy lay beheaded amongst the ashes.

How much of the legend is true is unknown to all but Beyron himself, but with his past life he left his name and reputation and formed a new identity as The Hawk, a solitary figure, sighted irregularly across the five Iron Lands, but leaving in his wake bodies by the hundreds for daemons to possess and form mass hordes of Draug. How he came across the name of the Hawk falls to the mask he wears to cover his disfigured face, burnt from the fires that destroyed and created him. Although the mask is covered with various forms of life, a spread winged Hawk covers the eye piece, it’s wings covering his eyes whist the body and tail run down his nose to the top of his lip and it’s head up to his forehead.

Beyron adjusted his mask slightly and sighed heavily, his breath echoing within the porcelain case. He knelt and unwound the bounding on his bag, rolling it out on the shingle in front of him. The water of Lake Núl was still, it was always still, the word Núl meaning dead or still in the Norodic language of the Bainfeld settlers from the early Easterling Era. It was also the place that Beyron had heard the great witch Avalaith had been encased in the unbreakable glass of the Immortals. If Legend had it that Beyron existed, then he believed that his sources would not be incorrect. Within his bag he housed the necessary items needed to bring forth Avalaith and let her walk freely upon the human world. A box of candles of varying make, one from the each of the Dragon Dynasties in the East, a spyglass especially designed to create immense heat by magnifying the sun’s rays and a single bell with a polished oak handle. The bell was the most important thing he had in his possession. With it, he owned the single power of summoning Avalaith from her slumber and breaking the glass in which she was contained.

Beyron quickly set the candles up in the correct order upon a smooth rock at the waters edge and picked up the spyglass, kneeling down, but turning to watch the sun rise. The sky began to glow a pleasant orange and the Bainfeld ridge began to glow. Beyron held up the spyglass and as the sun’s rim burst over the peak of the ridge, the light was pinpointed at the first Dragon candle with the spyglass, a single, focussed beam of light causing the dragon hide wick to burst into flames. The spyglass was the only thing that could create an energy hot enough to ignite a dragon candle, apart from dragon’s breath itself. Beyron quickly passed the beam of searing heat over the wicks of the remaining candles upon the stone and placed the spyglass back into the black hard leather case where he kept it. Then, carefully, as to not let the bell make a single noise, Beyron picked up the bell by its clapper and gripped the handle with his free hand. Then he waited.

The smoke from the candles began to rise and change shape, casting odd shadows across the waters surface, like strange creatures dancing in the flames. The water of Lake Núl then began to change. The water began to run clear as the smoke spread across the surface, turning the water so translucent that you could see down to the bedrock itself. Beyron watched with anticipation, his grip on the bell steady and firm. Then, as the sun cast it’s light upon the clear waters; Beyron saw what he was looking for. The light from the newly born sun glinted off the glass encasing of Avalaith’s prison. Beyron almost smiled with satisfaction. His mission of nearly fifteen years had finally come to his point. He could make out the outline of a figure within the glass and knew this was the time. With a huge sweeping motion, Beyron raised the bell above his head and crashed it down, the clapper hitting the brass side with a single note that resonated throughout the entire valley. The note was perfect, something you never heard in a piece of music or anywhere on this earth. It was an otherworldly sound. The water around Beyron rippled with the force of the note, the ripple cascading outwards towards the glass case, then the Lake erupted.

A torrent of water leapt into the sky and the light was sucked from the surrounding area. Beyron felt a moment of panic flash through his mind, but he composed himself, his hand edging slightly towards the sword that hung from his waist. The water spiralled and twisted, making all sorts of pillars and cascading water falls, then suddenly fell. Hundreds of gallons of water crashed back onto the surface of the Lake, separating the lake in two and revealing a large stone platform that had risen from the rock bed. Upon it knelt a naked woman, jet black hair fell down her back in a thick braid and steam rose from her skin, as if she were emanating a huge amount of heat. Beyron gripped the handle of his sword until the leather creaked under his hand and ground his teeth. He had every right to feel uneasy about the whole thing. Although it was his mission to fulfil, he didn’t know how Avalaith would react to being woken up by a mere mortal as himself. Well, mortal was pushing it slightly, but he didn’t deem himself worthy enough. As the water around the stone platform settled, the lake returned relatively to normal and Avalaith began to stir. She slowly pushed herself from kneeling into a half stand, her legs shaking as if she were learning to stand again. After a couple of seconds, she rose completely and cast a look across the lake so fierce that Beyron took a small step back. Then, unexpectedly, Avalaith smiled and slid smoothly into the water, disappearing from sight, before reappearing closer to the waters edge, walking quickly along the bedrock, as if the not even the water could hold her back. Within half a minute, she stepped onto the shingle before Beyron and stopped. They stared at each other for a second before Beyron offered his cloak. Avalaith accepted in silence and wrapped herself in the garment. Beyron could not help but notice the youthfulness of this being. She resembled a young woman, beautiful and blossoming, but he could feel the air was cold around her. Her eyes gave her away, a swirling blue in colour that opened a window into the immense depths of magic and power that oozed through her blood stream. It was this beauty and dangerous power that led Avalaith to be known as The Siren. A great wonder to humanity who’s main purpose was to maim and destroy.

Then she spoke.
“You are Lord Elsander Beyron, Third Lord of Thalgorn, son of Kimblain Beyron. Or –“ She paused and eyed Beyron’s mask. “The Hawk.” Beyron nodded and bowed his head slightly.
“Lady Avalaith, I have been sent by the creature Gregor to awaken you and deliver a message.”
“Speak your message.” Avalaith demanded.
“The creature Gregor says;  Thŏr ich trel veyn aèn græbr vah leyowij jautian The Shield ik The Sword embl yevj jievl vah yubwen.”
Avalaith nodded as Beyron carefully went through the message and as his deep husking voice faded to silence and turned to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I am trusting in you, Hawk, to carry out the duties that Gregor has entrusted in you. You understand what this entails?”
Beyron nodded.
“Then we shall go at once. Lead the way, protector.”