Visthern
“Look at them, squeezing from the earth as much life as they can.” Despite the distance between the two, Kheil’s deep chuckle seemed to resonate within Visthern’s bones. “Building their quaint little civilizations, playing in the dirt. Not dissimilar to people. Not at all.”
Visthern turned from his inspection of the spiders dancing a web between branches and strolled between the graying trees toward Kheil. He gently bent a branch out of his way and entered a clearing in the upper reaches of the garden.
Kheil squatted at the foot of a tree whose trunk thrust high into the clouds, its huge, sagging branches casting long shadows.
Dotted around the great tree on stretches of light gray dirt and patches of yellow-brown grass lay crimson fruits in varying stages of decay. Most had been partially or entirely crushed from the fall.
As Visthern squatted beside Kheil, he saw what Kheil regarded: a small bump in the earth. Within the small mound were many holes from which minuscule insects poured. A seemingly equal ratio seeped in.
Visthern’s eyes tracked along the dotted red line they made. It reached in a loop to one of the fallen fruits.
Kheil lay a hand on Visthern’s raising arm, stopping the gout of flame before it emerged beneath the anthill—a vain attempt to stop Kheil before he began.
“We must be better than them,” he advised quietly as he lowered Visthern’s hand slowly. “We must be benevolent. We must show mercy. Always. We mustn't think because we’re greater than them, larger than them, wield power they’ll never grasp, and clutch knowledge they’ll never understand that they have no purpose.”
“They’re parasites.”
“Are they?”
“They eat our food.”
“They eat what we don’t.” Kheil lowered a hand to the ground. One of the insects scuttled up his outstretched finger. “They enrich the soil and give it new life so that fruit may continue to grow. It’s only once they encroach upon our homes uninvited that we may take action.”
Visthern nodded slowly. Internally, he wanted to scream. Bastard. Old man.
“You’re still young, still learning the ways of the worlds.” The ant crawled up the length of Kheil’s arm and searched with wiggly protrusions from its head through the crevices made by Kheil’s relaxed muscles and on the surface of where his unscarred, ridged skin met chitin.
Visthern gestured to the ashen clouds and the blackened craters where sprawling mountains had allegedly stood. “That’s your mercy? Your benevolence?”
Kheil didn’t look the least bit bothered. “These are the aftereffects of being too lenient, the consequences of a weak-willed mercy.”
Visthern scoffed. “I wouldn’t have let them ruin our world.”
“Not only ours,” Kheil corrected with a cold smile and a dangerous narrowing of his eyes. “It was shared, long before you were formed. Our people gave them life, the scathing fires of ambition, and the incessant hunger for more than survival. With that fire, they created marvels, organic and inorganic. From humanity spawned many species of sentience, all carved in their likeness, as they were from us.”
Visthern opened his mouth to get a word in.
“But they stoked the fires more than they could contain,” Kheil continued, unknowing or uncaring of Visthern’s desire to speak. “And thus, the land was scorched, consumed, razed by the very ones we entrusted it to. Seeking peace, they warred. Seeking sanctuary, they tore down their own monuments. They carved huts from temples and citadels, never looking up to see the beauty of their own histories.”
“And the world was shattered,” Visthern finished. He was growing tired of Kheil’s voice, uncaring of the dangers Kheil posed. Visthern wanted short answers and to be rid of this insufferable entity.
His mind once more drifted to Yelethun and his eccentrics. He’d been especially evasive as of late. Visthern couldn’t help but think his manipulative brother was up to something.
Something that might undermine them all, perhaps? Visthern doubted it, but it’d give him an excuse to kill Yelethun once and for all.
“They began the process of reversal too late,” Kheil continued, ignoring the impatience in Visthern’s voice as the ant crawled across his bare, hairless chest. “They called upon the primeval spirits of the world to create others in an attempt to flee from a desolation of their own making.”
“Why didn’t we help them? Aren’t we supposed to be merciful, benevolent?” Visthern asked, unable to keep the annoyance from his voice any longer. He hated when Kheil began his ramblings.
Let him think, Visthern thought spitefully. Let him contemplate the past. Leave me alone to tend to the future.
Kheil lowered the ant to the ground, and it rejoined the line. “My sisters and I disagreed on what mercy entails,” he said bitterly. “They compelled Akalor and his other ancient spirits to oblige their wishes. But history is bound to repeat itself. The fire yet spreads. We must be patient, wait for enough of them to once again plead and moan for our mercy. Acting in haste led only to defeat last time.”
“Do you know what Yelethun is doing?” Visthern finally spat, his anger boiled over enough. “He’s acting strange of late. Hiding something.”
Kheil smiled. “I’ve set his attention on a task that should benefit us.” He paused. “Hopefully.”
“You’ve let him in on plans before me?” Visthern spat to the side, clawed hands balling up into fists. The sky darkened, and thunder hissed. “He has no claim to lordship; he has no means of true possession!”
“There are many ways to control.”
“He’s unpredictable!”
“He’s crafty. More than any in my court. Still,” Kheil sighed, “I understand where you’re coming from. And I suppose it's past time you’re aware of our goals.”
Satisfaction and curiosity took the place of Visthern’s rage.
“Come along.”
Kheil led Visthern behind the garden, down a hidden trail Visthern hadn’t noticed before. It wound downward around the crags of ash-stained rock. They crossed between the mountain and where the colossal corpse of a behemoth lay.
It was a sad sight. Visthern had heard that it was as tall as mountains when it was alive and standing upright. Visthern shook his head. Now it was no more than just a strange-looking, oddly-shaped hill.
As Visthern looked closer, though, he could spot figures moving about along its length, feeling at the self-preserved body.
“What’re they doing?” Visthern asked, tilting his head in the direction of the corpse.
“Testing some theories. Nothing to concern yourself with.”
“Nothing to-” Visthern sputtered, the ready rage churning violently in his chest. “What are you planning? Necromancy didn’t work!”
Kheil waved his hand and continued along the path. “On its own, it didn’t. Its soul is too heavily constricted by the vestigial magic of that damned sword. If we can get enough of a substantially potent stimulant paired with the right necromantic arcanums, then maybe… but really, it's nothing to concern yourself with. Just an old man’s tinkering.”
At Visthern’s huff, the sky hissed with thunder. Kheil didn’t stop. Visthern thought he heard a chuckle. Begrudgingly working to stifle his tumultuous wrath, Visthern resumed following Kheil.
The path eventually turned sharply into a cave as they reached the base of the mountain, and the beginnings of the squat bluffs radiated like the jagged petals of a particularly beautiful flower. Visthern’s divine gaze easily pierced the darkness, enabling him to follow Kheil through the cave’s snaking tunnels without a stumble. In an elegant sweep, Kheil tucked his massive, complexly vascular wings behind himself.
At the end of the rocky passage, behind a thin wall of shimmering air, there sat a small, bipedal creature with skin of regal pallidity and a smooth, eyeless face. It plucked a set of strings on a triangular contraption, its leathery wings twitching to the rhythm, even folded behind their back as they were.
“Tell me again what will soon come to pass,” Kheil prompted.
The creature kept plucking at its strings.
“Tell me again what will come to pass,” Kheil implored again, his hand brushing up against the barrier. “Weave your tale, great celestial muse.”
The creature’s face turned toward where Kheil and Visthern stood. It began plucking a repetitive, foreboding melody. Words spilled from its thin lips, rhythmic in nature, with breaks every so often:
“Angels shall succumb to beckoning ash;
As heir, the fallen one will rise anew.
The unnatural beasts of nature crash
Against the Seven’s army, rending through.
“Rearing their heads, wailing, their cries shall ring
Throughout echoing halls, their mourning calls
The many-faced thief to combat the king,
And both be swallowed in unearthly jaws.
“Flung through fire and brimstone, the pair will fight:
Hell’s iron bites, silver shines its luster,
On that treacherous day, the fated night:
One remains, standing above another.
“Though three Chosen among eight defiers,
Only few endure that which transpires.”
The creature fell silent. Echoes of the otherworldly message lingered like a sweet scent in the relatively small space.
Kheil clapped Visthern on the shoulder. “Call to Akrohniss, Azivizil, Naluanata, Rymarast, and Hagolroth: we must amass our armies again. And we must find Virrahol from where Hatohship sequestered it this time. We might find a way to turn it against what resistance we may find.” He chuckled, looking back to the pale creature. "Despite all its vaguity, I already know who this ‘silver’ is.”
“Who?” Visthern asked; he wanted to know who to kill if Kheil took his time.
Kheil patted Visthern’s shoulder knowingly. “Hatohship’s brother, Vendrethaisen. But he’s off limits; I’ve been wanting a rematch since he managed to escape.” Kheil strode back the way he came, leaving Visthern alone in the cave.
Visthern stood in that cave for long hours. All the while regarding the strange creature. The red sun had sunk low and dipped to an umber color by the time he finally extended his hand and whispered the words Kheil had uttered to it.
The creature seemed to smile. It began to pluck its strings.
Good prologue. Curious to why Visthern has anger issues, what his connection to Kheil is (trainer, friend, family?), and what the Seven's army is. I could picture most of this well, but maybe some more description of the bipetal creature would be nice, unless imagining the creature similar to Smeagol from LOTR is accurate. ;)
Noted! I added more description to the Muse :)