"I deem our world long broken into shards. Is it truly not too late for us, O King?" A voice, coarse and weary yet respectful, posed the question. The man, Chanel, draped in a long black cloak, stepped with the tread of a captain who had lost his purpose, as if he had vanished in the cruelest age. Yet all who beheld him would sense that this man was an antiquity still breathing, or but half of a life yet lived…
"My life, it is silent. Too silent for my heart to bear. My mind is filled with histories, yet I may not feel them… I do not understand what gift you bestowed upon me, upon them, upon a son, a daughter, upon every living thing in our time. Yet if you command it, there remains but one duty: to execute your will, however unseemly it may be." The scent of a black, murky river, akin to the amniotic fluid of a young woman—she who should not have conceived, for any cause—reverberated upon the cessation of his words.
The curse's power in this place was so foul that even pure mana withered away, rendering one near breathless. For the small, reliant beasts who must traverse this land, the plight was heavier still. A curse born of a newborn child, wrought by the irresponsibility of a caretaker or a father who held no reverence for a small woman. It shattered all things. The sorcerer's curse, which conjured the mist beneath his feet, obscured everything from the sight of those who call themselves warriors, or monstrous devils, or sages. All such persons were alike in their blindness. The curse that had reduced this domain to its current state was the same curse spoken of before…
His two feet trod with steady pace. He ascended a staircase slick with the fine, wearying rain that had dusted the cliffside of the castle. In that desolate, uninhabited space, one heard only the distant rush of water from above, the clash of steel, the bold cries of stout men. All were beneath the mist at the base of the precipice, a height so immense that a hundred stacked giants would not reach half its measure. Fiends, or at least creatures not so dire, shrieked and scrambled beneath his feet. The stench of malevolent souls at such a pitch… it was beguiling, a temptation to descend and harvest them for any desire, if only the yield were sufficient…
"After scores of millennia, or perhaps a mere decade more… the body shall rot and die, leaving but bone, yet the soul, which died in torment, shall remain in the corpse, never to depart. A grim echo of the saying that whoever fights and falls upon this soil, this eternal cemetery of corpses, shall never reach the Blessed Realm." Chanel mused, his thoughts bent on some specific thing, as though he knew well that even God was too frail and pure to be tainted. He looked down upon the depths below. He did not speak, merely thought within his own being. He understood, or had himself once executed, this very task with his own two hands… hands that now threatened to shatter each time he spread them wide.
The pain, the desperation, washed over him in a crimson light, nearly provoking a scream, but he was too long accustomed to care. As the Dark Captain walked, he stumbled, his body often drenched in blood, yet always he rose again.
"Cough… cough, cough. The after-effect of the curse. It has never left me." He spoke, his voice cold and rasped.
When the Captain reached the uppermost limit of the stone staircase, he came upon a forest mid-river. Flanking the wooden causeway on both sides, like a bridge spanned across, were trees of the most grotesque shapes imaginable. The place was dark, shrouded in a sickly, foul stench—the odor of beasts of every kind, hiding somewhere in the mangrove marsh. And here, too, resided the source of the crashing water he had heard, a howling tide that coursed violently down the connecting path, plunging toward the terrifying cliff base below. The sound was like a whisper heard close to the ear upon closing one's eyes.
He, Chanel, the lonely Captain, gazed across the cursed marsh. Small birds, black-feathered and phantom-hued, flew out into a darkness yet deeper. A black stone pillar stood before him where he raised his eyes, and a weathered wooden wall marked the far end of the causeway. This was what remained after all the primeval wars of the Gods, an era when he still hunted for "someone" who had faded from memory.
At the Interstice between the Sacred Land and a Realm Felled by a Single Blade.
"Unto the Divine Lord and the Goddess, delivered unto the Great King above and beyond the skies, we proclaim our purity. We seek forgiveness in our name. We have harmed these sinners without supplication to Thee. Please, grant Thy child pardon." A knife sliced from the center of the man's abdomen on the execution block down to his groin. He shrieked in agony, cursing the large man who had cut him. Hellfire consumed him upon the block in the center of the thousand-year-old battlefield. The large man who had sliced the abdomen of the one who defied convention spoke with a still voice, saying nothing more after the prayer concluded.
When the blood had flowed to soak the hem of his golden-carmine hawk-feather skirt, he squatted on one knee, stooping to drink the blood from the ground like a savage beast. No one was in the room. No one dared to gainsay him. The blood of the sinner was consumed entirely. He stood still once more, the large man rising to his feet before using his enormous, iron-gauntleted fist to smash the head of the man slain by the blade, liquefying it in a cleansing fire. The smell of the burning soul was nauseating, but the large man in the cumbersome white and gold leafed iron armor stood untouched by the flames.
As he watched the corpse burn, his blood-stained hands began to evaporate, free of the dead man's curse. Swift footsteps rushed toward him. The roof of the shelter was absent, revealing the deep blue stars of the night sky. A colossal tree spread its branches, nearly reaching the high white pillar next to the execution block, yet it did not quite obscure the stars from view of this place. The location, once a chapel for prayer, supplication, or self-sacrifice to meet God, had been eroded by countless sandstorms. It was transformed from a site of pilgrimage into a place of punishment.
"Your Royal Highness of Sorgrathat, we have found a lost soul in the land of pilgrimage. He wears no priest's vestments. His demeanor is extremely distressed, Sire." The Bound Priest reported to the large man. He did not reply, simply walking away from the place. His strides were filled with dread, more formidable than many a warrior… the madness of the fire beneath his eyelids. His face was placid, unmoved. Even the sand that struck his face, creating many small fresh wounds, did not cause him to blink.
In this sacred place, as he walked away from the ruined old chapel after the execution, the true state of the high pilgrimage land was revealed. The sand was finer than common sand and sharp as a blade. Faint reddish-orange, the sand was scorching hot by day, yet colder than ice in a field of white tulips on a glacier this night. With every step he took, no hunters, Bound Priests, or numerous pilgrims were present at his sides or around him, only the sight of all gathered, bowing to something in the darkness on the dune. It was a broken statue, only the lower half of a Goddess holding a shattered staff remaining.
"How sublime Thou art, Goddess. How sublime Thou art." The large man spoke in a sorrowful tone. His long hair—was it truly the emblem of the sins he committed for God? The flowing hair trailed along with his skirt in a terrible majesty. Tears flowed thinly with the gentle sandstorm.
He closed his eyes, looking forward, laboring through the nightly mist. The sound of waves met his ears once more, a murmur of rumor. A multitude gathered around a small boat at the sandy beach beside the sea. Foam and the scent of a sage's mana. A man pitifully emaciated was carried in the arms of the Bound Priests. The large man saw it all. He said nothing to the sage, Migaloz.
"The body is thin. Its wings are spread, drooping, full of holes. It slays the despicable King. The King dies beneath the ruins of his house. It is the very essence that brings about change. I cannot deny the sage's dream, not even a fraction of it. I do not wish to see it. I cannot bear it." Migaloz, the former Hand of the King on the Throne of Waves, whose entire kingdom and everything within it had vanished in a flicker of hope. No one could ever go there again. A single act of destruction by one whose origin was unknown. He destroyed it all in one blow.
"You have something to say. That thing will follow. And you, too…" He seized the sage's body from the priest. Those who had gathered around the small boat earlier ignited their lanterns. He cared not how much pain Migaloz felt. He cared not what rank the man once held. For though we might once have stood at a height where we never had to care who died, now, all about us are those who wait to trample us. The large man's face was still, his infernal, cataclysmic eyes staring into the eyes of the sage, who was dead but yet lived.
"Your kingdom was laden with sin, Krazmer. It has been worthless for too long. It is merely a passage to the waterfall of the worthless. You are not worthy to tread upon this soil. The stream of the sea's mana might pity you in the name of a sage, but I do not favor you. You shall die in this place, Migaloz."
He yanked the sage's hair. He slammed the remaining body onto the sandstone, dragging him as one would drag raw meat toward the execution block. Migaloz had nothing left. Neither rank nor title was of any use. Both his body and soul would be burned to ash, leaving no trace upon the earth.
The remaining people followed the large man, who dragged the last survivor… past the rough fragments of cement, past the debris of the past, which now served only as an execution ground for those he deemed sinners.
"Let me be saved, I… I desire to live. I still wish to dream. I have been misled by the pursuit of power all along. I sought to flee the nature of the dreaming sage, the one who inscribed… the Cornerstone…" Migaloz's body was placed upon the stone block, stained black with the scorch marks of the corpse just burned. The large man gripped the knife at his side, staring fixedly, never letting his gaze stray.
"The religion we brought to your kingdom—we spread it so that you might come to know the truth! But has it reduced you to this state? That was never the purpose of the pilgrims!" The large man's hair flew out in a fit of rage. He roared until his followers, watching the punishment, recoiled. Some still held their faith, kneeling or imploring, and the most fervent shouted for the sage to be forsaken by God…
But a splinter of thought pierced the veil of dying consciousness… a glimpse that revealed something his own family had encountered, pursued, and hunted throughout the ages. "A black feather." Migaloz spoke in a voice that was fast fading. He could endure no more… His two eyes closed, seeing not even the stars in this desolate expanse. His body was colder than the frost. Had he died without meaning already, before the execution had even begun…
"A black… feather… is that so?" Everyone in the ruined church heard him. The shifting sand abruptly ceased. The large man burst into raucous laughter. He declared that he had found it. He swore that he would hunt it and seek out the very thing his bloodline had sought to destroy for generations.
"Hah! At last! At last! At last!! I have found it! You are not dead yet, Demon Captain, Ogre Captain! I swear before the Royal Line of my house! The time has come for me to accomplish what your dead failed to do!" He raised his face toward the clouds and the storm above the heavens. He laughed gleefully, amidst the shouts of praise from all.
"And I shall find you, Chanel! Chanelich!!" His final roar unleashed a fiery aura that burst forth from his body. The sheer force of the "Faith" his family had craved had now given him the power to perform what the forgotten corpse on the execution block had provided as a final testament…