The Blood Amber
From Write
Prologue – The Final Battle of Braigh
It was at this very moment when each and every acknowledged soul living in the realm of Kavari had changed, as if a single drop sent overlapping ripples in the lake or a romantic sigh of the wind shifted the golden foliage of the autumn tree. It was neither a gradual change in time nor an instant connection between hearts. It was contagious; the imminent dread that ailed them. It was also at this moment when the centennial war was preparing to a definite close. After so many aggressive outbursts from each front, the hope for an end was fleeting. Until then, the dark silence confirmed their fears. The Final Battle of Braigh would already be planned to be passed on through bards with their lyrics and jesters with their tales, regardless of its uncertain outcome. However, at this fateful moment signaled the end to all legends, irrevocably turning them into myths.
The frigid stone towers that fortified the empire of Braigh remained brittle against the surprisingly light flurry that kissed the vast battlefield, as if as a sorrowful blessing. The dying light of the West gradually faded behind the rime citadels, illuminating the blood-splattered snow peaks in a rose-colored gleam. The incarnadine sky was enveloped by a veil of silky ash and thunderclouds. Within Braigh, the Alés stirred. Many reticent citizens, without a streak of courage, holed up in every crowded domicile in the heart of the city, sick with fret for the combatants that sided with the forefathers of their union. Including enraged parents and lovers, the rebels lined at the foot of the towers, near the thick iron gates. Some were barely of legal age admissible into the defense force, but the soldiers had not a care. Already a small mob was formed behind the line, screaming for reason. But there will not be reason. The first front had failed and the enemies were closing in.
At the blare of a distant heavy oboe, the second front of the Alés marched downhill with regal yet torn leather banners, plain beige and dyed slate blue, with no wind to fold them. These powerful, husky wolf-like Alés sauntered forward on ponderous hind legs, their shaggy tails tucked and sharp snouts directed. Their gigantic ears appeared almost larger than their heads, and their coarse, profuse fur shone of variant colors. Their myriad of eyes glinted both either deep bronze or a deadly white, irrevocably locked on their shadowy enemies approaching from the East.
Sickly pale, large bare-naked figures sluggishly trudged across the arctic plain with their black veins endlessly swarming beneath their translucent skin. Hardened ebony spikes slowly sprouted from their bent spines and their dead eyes never blinked. These tainted Strouges were once neighborly men to the Alés, but not anymore. They were distorted, altered beyond purity. It was talk that implied it was the work of the Bloodless One that came, promising all power to any outreached palm. Having paid the price, the ghostly Strouges were said to descend beneath the ice to the crevasses and subterranean caverns. Since the last battle of Pabbicar’s Crest, eleven years ago, they never surfaced again. Until now. This time, in their grasp was the all-feared Blood Amber. A flash of searing light abruptly shattered upon them from the raging clouds that veiled the darkening skies. Deafening thunder ripped above them like fire. The heavy oboe of the Alés had intensely continued to sound.
Atop the central fort of Braigh that overlooked the bloody tundra, only two armored warriors stood, staring in malaise. One was an Alés general, clad in smooth iron engraved with an ancient sigil. This symbol, three gashes crossing each other’s end to form a great triangle, represented his long inherited name: Gaferidel Ko’tellin. The brawny general stiffened at the bitter odor of the filthy mixed blood, and his sharp ears twitched occasionally under the tantalizing flakes. Glancing sideways to his equal, he saw a stern, broad-shouldered man with cold eyes and a strong jaw. This was the last untainted Strouge of Kavari. Though Gaferidel always pondered why he was the only one unchanged, he dared not ask. Both of them were inseparable and unstoppable together in war, like a force of nature that no shadow would dare entangle with. But Gaferidel did not feel that way even now at the sight of the ancient Blood Amber, the crimson sap that attracted and conducted the ultimate weapon of the skies: lightning. The galvanic stone was raised higher above the tundra by one black staff, wielded by one hooded Strouge wearing bronze-clad gloves.
“Dravin,” Gaferidel recognized with a heavy pant, his visible hot breath wavering in the bleeding light, as his calloused claws gripped the stone ledge, which caused a thin layer of snow to scatter down the depths below. “I fear the end, Alpha.”
“Come, Gaf. It is not you to surrender so easily,” the man retorted immediately in a harsh, scolding tone. “Or even consider surrendering at all. The Alés in all their reign over this ice had never surrendered. Not once. Why now, at our single pivotal moment in history, should we give up the reins of the future to the Strouges? It is not our end, but theirs.”
“Always calm and confident you are,” Gaferidel lightly chuckled as he matted down his thick, burnt-sienna fur. His eyes glimmered bronze at his peer. “Like the calming before a storm, I suppose.” Alpha still glared at the raging meet ahead, cold and indifferent. “The fronts are not effective, Gaf. We must think of a strategy fast. They are dying out there.”
For a moment, the silence had settled between the two warriors again, and during that allotted time, Gaferidel could sense the man’s seeping heat nearby. He fidgeted uncomfortably while his mind drew blank. It wasn’t like Alpha to act this aggressive to him, but then again, this untainted Strouge was an enigma. They weren’t truly friends. They just happened to meet during their first battle somewhere in the centennial war. After a while, Gaferidel learned that at every fight, this man would appear to their aid, but at every end, he would disappear.
“What of Netheal? Have the city sent a messenger?” Alpha urgently questioned, his voice suddenly distressed. “None at all? Are we truly the alone saviors of this ice?”
“There had been reports from the ranks of a stream of billowing smoke in the East,” Gaferidel responded in a morbid tone. “Mayhap the city of Netheal was ambushed first. Our resources are cut off, Alpha… They mean to smother us.”
“So we are alone,” he concluded softly in a whisper as his jaws clenched. Gaferidel frowned and reconsidered, “I don’t suppose that this is the end, after all. It occurred to me just now the Seers had prophecies foretelling the Children saving us all from Apocalypse. These Children will prevent the Bloodless One’s second coming.”
“Prophecies are worth no more than snowflakes, Gaf!” Alpha snapped furiously. “When the Seers announce that your wife will have seven children, it happens because you will it to. Our fates shouldn’t be known, or else there would be interference and a shift for the worse, a seal of doom.”
“So these Children will not come?”
“I am saying that these Children may fail,” Alpha heavily exhaled, his eyes cast in definite shadow. “If the Children were obsessed with the destiny of redeeming us all from Apocalypse, they may risk their own lives too soon than what would be plotted. The future is easily changed, Gaf. The future should not be revealed to us no later than the present. We already have history to learn from, and it shall be the mistakes of our pasts that redeem us.”
“I too fear the end,” the man bowed his head almost shamefully. “I cannot lie to you, Gaf. The end could be here and now, or in another part of the world at another time. I fear that all of what we had built together, all of what we achieved – would be nothing in one fell swoop… when Essumæl returns.”
Gaferidel drew a sharp intake of air and spoke hastily, “I wish to bid my wife farewell. And the one that lies in her womb. I remember the first time I had seen Liora. She was a magnificent silver maiden all alone in a court, with no one to dance at her side. As fate would have it, I took this opportune chance, but she turned me down. She was a traditional woman, you see. Her beau should have to offer her a beryial ring, and then she would consent to being courted during the annual Coronation. Once I had purchased one, she vanished. I never saw her again until twelve years later when I still held the ring, waiting for her return. She was even more beautiful and sharper than the first I had seen her. Fortunately, she accepted my hand to dance with her and the same very hand in marriage, which had a set of more customs, but that is another story. She was a very blunt, firm woman and still is. Liora would be very cross with me if I did not bid her farewell. Love is a mystery, is it not? Surely you concur?”
Alpha did not say a word, and Gaferidel averted his gaze forward. The battle seemed a faraway dream, but a growing nightmare drawing nearer to the walls of Braigh. The Alés were being pushed back. He was alerted to hear the man softly sing a familiar chorus over the oboe’s eerie vibration:
“Spread out thy wings my heart. Will thee soar here? Will thee fly there? Where I gave thee my part? No other love than sewn, Together all my own.”
Once Alpha had finished, a smile crept across the Alés general’s face, “Who wrote such beautiful, compelling lyrics? Someone from somewhere home?”
“She…” he hesitated. “The woman I loved all my time around her… She was recently lost in a tragic accident. I will never forgive myself nor will I forgive Essumæl.”
Then another strike of lightning dangerously pounded near them, utterly pulverizing the charred remains of the second front into ash. The ash dissipated once the Strouges continued to march on.
“They come,” Alpha’s words sliced through air. “Farewell, Gaf. Be with your woman and child one last time. Let us head out without a say in our fates until the last breath should we take. Let us fight the final battle of Braigh and let us show them we know no future, no fate, and no end.”
“Gratitude be with you, old brother, as are we all on your side,” Gaferidel Ko’tellin, the Alés general, nodded sharply before leaving him to scale down the ladder to the lower castles below where a clamoring mob of denizens cried out in despair of such news. Some Alés women clutched their bodies, as if to hold their wombs, while their young sons came forward to the volunteering line to defend their beloved ones. Gaferidel had seen his wife stumble along the crowd, intensely rubbing her silken, silver claws in worry, but she did not see him. He closed his heavy eyelids shut in grief. Pain twanged each time his heart had throbbed. Once Liora’s wide bronze eyes linked his, she directly understood. She approached Gaferidel with eyes brimming with tears. He leaned in to hold her with his armor closely as his left claw grasped an iron broadsword, engraved with his sigil. Then Liora broke in his caressing arms. The legendary Alpha remained motionless under the light flurry in the aloft, staring coldly from his fortress toward the enshrouded tundra under a colossal thunderstorm. The heavy oboe resonated for the final time, and their enemies did smother them.
