The Jerikova Wars, Prologue **UPDATED**

Vengarrn, Zaphyria 595ђ Second Era of Jerikova

Hurry, hurry, hurry! the walls whispered at Rares as he raced down the grey stone hallways of the castle toward the king’s High Table. The golden stardrop flower he clutched tightly pricked at his fingers with its sharp, purple thorns. The king and queen had gone out for the day, an excursion to survey the state of their kingdom, the people and villages within it. Today was the only chance he and the others had to perform the Kaa Fiindigarr, the forgetting spell, and there was no room for error.

If Kaenok or Rana find out what we’re doing – Rares stopped his thoughts there. He couldn’t distract himself by agonizing over what Kaenok would do if he found out about the spell, there was too much at stake and the others were counting on him to do his part. “Bring the flower, bring the flower, bring the flower,” he chanted as his feet pounded onward over a patchwork of stone and plush rugs, hoping the repetition would calm him.

The immense white pine doors of the High Table Chamber swung open before him, then quickly closed again as he ran through, his eyes immediately searching for a woman with long, white-blonde hair and bronzed skin among the small crowd of just over a dozen. “Neela!” he murmured gratefully when he spotted her, his long stride taking him across the room to her in just moments.

“Rares!” she cried in return, moving away from the frosted glass window and into his open arms. She buried her face in his chest, allowing him to kiss the top of her head and take a deep breath in, her jasmine-scented shampoo curling into his nostrils, a hint of his anxiety dissipating in knowing that his wife was safe at least for the time being.

“Are the children-“

“They’re fine, they’re on their way south to Lysteria with Sana as we speak. I gave them your love,” Neela reassured him, though her red lips were thin with worry.

“Good,” he said with a sigh of relief. “With the gods’ favor, Sana won’t have any problems crossing through the Far North.”

Images of the frozen wasteland flitted momentarily through his mind. First she’d need to cross the deadly ice and snow-capped peaks of the monstrous Ark’Orth Mountains, known for burying travelers amidst avalanches and raging snowstorms brought down by the demons that dwelled deep within the ice caves, before making the long trek across the tumultuous landscapes of the Far North. Riddled with fissures and ravines covered in layers of ice that Sana and the children could easily fall through on a warm day, hunted by faceless creatures that used the cover of darkness to hide their movement across the barren Ice Plains, inhabited by warmongering tribes that worshipped savage gods and practiced dark magick by the light of their fires, tribes who were bound by no laws and had no qualms about killing and eating whatever crossed their paths…

If they managed to survive the Ark’Orth Mountains and make it through the Far North, they still had to cross the Bloody Mountains, which were a rocky horror unto themselves.

“Sana is resourceful, she’ll make the crossing okay, and you know how tough Vyro and Ekaterina are. After all, they are of Asphalion’s blood,” Neela said and squeezed his hands, but the worry in her silver eyes betrayed the confidence in her words.

“With Rares’ arrival, everyone is now present,” Asphalion announced from his seat up at the High Table in the center of the room. Immediately the room hushed and every pair of silver eyes turned to the elder who had begun everything.

Asphalion Rares Dvorak was the First King of Zaphyria, the first man in Zaphyria to use powerful magicks, and the first known man to acquire immortality. At five hundred and fifty years old, his hair was as obsidian black as it had ever been, with a full beard that he kept trimmed close to his unwrinkled face and a voice like the dark, frozen Ark’orth Mountains. He was also the man Rares had been named for.

“Let’s not waste our precious time with chatter. Rares, the stardrop, please,” Asphalion ordered.

Rares ascended the steps up to the black granite High Table, meeting the silvery-white eyes of his other elders for fleeting moments before he set the golden flower on the Table in its designated spot in front of a violet candle. The First King dipped his index and middle fingers into a bowl of white Sacred Tree ash and wordlessly traced a circle within a diamond on Rares’ forehead. He finished with a horizontal line running through the center of them both, the symbol of Ysolara, the goddess of strategy.

Others in the room followed suit, each receiving the ashen mark that exempted them from the Kaa Fiindigarr and laying down the item they were instructed to acquire in tense silence: a Firebreath butterfly, oil of nightsage, three black mountain swan feathers, red hare’s fur, a screeching willow seed, a yellow Ark’orth crystal, and a slip of dove parchment containing the young prince and princess’ names in squid ink.

It had taken months to acquire all these rare and valuable items, but it would take only moments to burn them. Indeed, Asphalion placed the items in a bowl of black moonstone in a very particular order, ending with the oil of nightsage and then using the candle to light it. The entire bowl went up in a blast of flames that licked up toward the ceiling high above them, seeming to be a living creature trapped in fiery chains, fighting to get out, reaching and writhing and crackling.As it hissed, the First King began the prayer.

“Ysolara, hear our plea. An evil has descended on our kingdom and we intend to snuff it out. This will take a strength beyond what many of us have and we ask that you aid us when our bodies start to falter and our magicks wane. Please, we beg you, help save Zaphyria.”

In response, the small flame of the purple candle flared and popped, letting them know that Ysolara had heard. With that, everyone in the room joined hands around the Table, feeling their magicks ebb and flow between them, humming, buzzing, glowing from their eyes as they synchronized their outpouring into Asphalion, who absorbed it all through his bronze skin and then let it slip out of his lips into the incantation spoken in the tricksome Old Tongue.

Trechtan u belyarhe, hokke att lyg’

Cilt’ atteb ünthiok zhe atteb moghte

Erta fiindigat kre mok

Erta fiindigat kre resh

Vich’ mokken zhe gaqi’ yok u rahtepo

Gverta oleq dürsh erto yewke ix hajigat:

Vyro Asphalion Dvorak

Ekaterina Galatea Reykjavii

Rares chanted along in his head:

Memories of darkness, we bid you come

Bring your shadows and your void

They are forgotten by one

They are forgotten by all

Take everything and leave naught to remember

Never again let these names be uttered:

Vyro Asphalion Dvorak

Ekaterina Galatea Reykjavii

Then, Asphalion took the last two items, a corner from Princess Ekaterina’s rosy pink blanket and a corner from Prince Vyro’s emerald green blanket, and dropped them into the pyre. With a whoosh they went up in flames, the fire burning them quickly and greedily, sealing their fates. Rares felt his magick draining, like blood seeping from some wound in his body.

Suddenly the doors burst open and Sorokin, the ancestor charged with keeping watch, rushed in, knowing full well the potential consequences of interrupting the spell. “Kaenok and Rana have returned home early! They are here, in the castle!”

Rares went cold, instantly turning to look at his wife next to him, terror razing through him in an icy blast. If the king and queen found them here, they would destroy them all, and then Zaphyria would burn with their wrath. The First King looked around the table at all of his descendants. They were his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, and so on, all the way down to Rares and Neela. A flicker of fear glimmered in his ghost silver eyes and at that moment Rares knew not everyone was going to survive the day.

“We need to stop them from finding us here,” Asphalion said slowly. “We must distract them until the spell is done and we can disperse.”

For a few moments there was utter silence apart from the raging flames in the black moonstone bowl, until two elders across the table glanced at each other and nodded, a wordless understanding passing between them. “Drasa and I will go,” the man, Thorrin, said to Asphalion.

With pain written across his face Asphalion lowered his head momentarily. “May the gods and goddesses be with you,” he answered, watching as the husband and wife stood and hurried away, hands still laced tightly together.

A few other elders followed suit, unsaid goodbyes left hanging in the cold air. From his side Rares felt Neela squeeze his hand, and he knew what they must do. “Neela and I will go as well.”

“No!” The First King objected, his eyes snapping to them instantly, the whole room trembling. “You must stay here! Your magicks are essential to the Kaa Fiindigarr.”

Acquiescent, Rares settled back into his chair and focused solely on the energy and magick coursing through him, sending out prayers to the gods and goddesses to give him strength and courage. The strain on his magick was growing as the elders left the ring to distract Kaenok and Rana. Those who remained stared at the flames with an intensity that rivaled the fire itself.

There was one last piece of the spell to do, but the fire needed to be completely burned out in order to complete it. They all sat on the edges of their seats, tense and fearful as they silently prayed for the flames to burn hotter and faster, to eat up everything in the bowl in a matter of moments rather than minutes.

“Is there no way to help it along?” Rares asked, his palms slick with anxious sweat.

“No,” Asphalion answered. Suddenly they felt an explosion from somewhere out in the halls and heard a series of pained cries and yelled battle spells. Rares glanced around at the other elders, knowing what that meant and what was likely to come next, finding their silver eyes looking back at him and each other.

They waited. The battle grew louder, drew closer. A bitter, metallic scent so strong he could feel it on his tongue filled the air, the scent of raging magick and spilled blood. Screams echoed unceasingly through the castle, but there were no cries for mercy. The elders would never ask for mercy from Kaenok and Rana, not that the monarchs had any to give.

“Asphalion, what are we going to do? We will not be able to do the second spell if they find us,” Neela whispered in terror.

The First King hesitated for a moment, thinking deeply, before he answered slowly and concisely. “No, we won’t be able to remove their magicks. But perhaps we can stall them long enough so that someday others may finish what we started.”

She blinked. “How are we going to do that?”

“A confinement spell. We will make sure they cannot leave this castle, prisoners in their own home.”

Neela shook her head, doubtful of the backup plan. “Won’t they be able to break right through it? Their magicks are much more powerful than ours.”

Asphalion gave everyone a stern, resigned look and then they knew.

“Our blood will seal the spell forever, won’t it?” Rares asked, feeling like someone had dropped a rock into his stomach.

Asphalion simply nodded.

“And we have all the ingredients here?”

“Yes. I brought them with me, knowing that there was a chance this could happen. Kaenok and Rana are no fools, they know when something is afoot. They’ve probably suspected us for weeks now,” the First King said.

Another explosion shook the walls, rattling dust and crumbles of the ceiling out from cracks between the stones and scattering them across the floor. Rares cringed. The flame burnt out. Instantly Asphalion thrust his hand into the still-smoldering ash, careless of the burns inflicted to his fingers, and smeared it across the map of Zaphyria that lay before them.

“Zat’ gülya fiindi.”

Let them forget, Rares echoed silently. For a moment the map flared with a blinding, purple light, and he felt the ash symbol on his forehead burn, and then it went out with one last flash.

An enormous weight crushed him as the gravity of their actions sank in: they had wiped out all memories of Vyro and Ekaterina ever existing in Zaphyria. None but them, the chosen elders, would ever remember their names, their faces, their little laughs… They had ripped two young, innocent children from their home and their parents’ arms, banishing them to the unknown lands in the south with only a dedicated and loyal nursemaid to care for and protect them. Neela squeezed his hand and gave him a sad smile, somehow knowing exactly what he was thinking about.

“It is done. Now quickly, we must get the Reh-Torr M’orka set up. Kaenok and Rana are getting closer,” Asphalion ordered, and then followed with an explanation of what they needed to do. The confinement spell was simple and quick, thankfully, and didn’t require being spoken in the Old Tongue or nearly as much energy as the Kaa Fiindigarr, which was a blessing because everyone knew their magicks were nearly tapped out. Within a minute they began.

No longer free to roam or wander

No longer free, but cursed forever

Eternally confi-

It was then that Kaenok and Rana reached them, the hulking white pine doors ripped from the doorframe with a wooden crunch and thrown back out into the hallway as if they weighed no more than a child’s picture book. Blood-spattered and scowling, the king and queen stood in the doorway, their once silver eyes now blazing a burnt red, streaks of black flashing through them like living lightning. The air smelled of charred corpses, acrid and sulfuric, and the hall behind them was black, all light extinguished like the far bottom reaches of the ocean that never saw sunlight.

“You think you can hide from me?! You think you can destroy me?!” Kaenok roared, his very body seeming to swell with the intensity of his fury and the essences of the dark magicks he was streaming from the Darkworld demons. His waist-length coal black hair whipped out behind him, loosing from his braid even though there was no breeze here in the High Table Chamber.

The First King answered. “You have to be stopped, Kaenok. Both you and Rana.”

“What exactly is it you’re stopping us from doing? Ruling the world? That is what we were meant to do, Asphalion! We are immortals! All mortals should bow to us,” Kaenok snarled back.

The similarities in Kaenok and Asphalion’s appearances had never bothered Rares before, but now the former’s bronze skin was covered in blood, his black hair pulled back into a warrior’s braid with corrupted eyes sparkling, the air around him crackling with his power, and it was one of the most disturbing sights Rares had ever seen. It looked almost like Asphalion himself, and it was not a picture he enjoyed.

“You would destroy the world if given half the chance! Your power – it is too greedy. It will not stop until it has completely consumed you and everything you touch.”

“Enough, old man!” The flames in the wall torches snapped with his words like the crack of a whip, dark magick rippling through the air and giving raise to goosebumps on Rares’ skin, the metallic scent growing stronger by the second. “You have lived long and seen much, but now is your time. You will die today, so face me with all your great power and we shall see what you are really made of.”

Rana hissed as Asphalion stood, her lengthy white-blond hair stained and dripping dark red. “Continue the spell,” the First King ordered of the remaining elders. Too fast for Rares to catch, the fight began. Kaenok attacked Asphalion, Rana went after the elders on the opposite side of the table, leaving only Rares, Neela, and two others to finish the job.

Eternally confined

magickally bound

Prisoners they are

Until the world -

Rana leapt at them, her black robes billowing out behind her as she slammed an elder’s head to the ground but was quickly yanked back by another who blasted her with a wall of ice. Rares heard her scream in rage, heard Kaenok’s animalistic snarls as he battled with Asphalion, but still he chanted on.

- tumbles down

This spell is cast until they are but dust

Now only he and Neela were left to sustain the spell, and Rana was quickly murdering her way through the few elders who protected them, while Asphalion still held off Kaenok in a truly incredible and terrifying show of magick that Rares hadn’t even know the First King possessed.

On the ashes of the earth whose lands they did lust, Rares and Neela finished, their voices barely functioning through the strain of the spell. As they reached forward to finish with the ingredients, Neela was suddenly ripped away from him, shrieking.

“Neela!” Rares cried and lunged after her, seeing Rana’s red eyes laughing at him as she dragged his wife across the table by her silken hair.

“No, my love, finish the spell! It is the only thing that matters!” Neela yelled back, struggling with the queen.

Fighting every instinct in his body that screamed for him to go to her, he fell back into his chair and began combining the ingredients as fast as his hands would allow him. The room, the air, the floor around him shuddered and groaned as the elders traded magick shots with Kaenok and Rana so fast and so heavily it pressed on his chest, as if all the air were being slowly sucked out the window. His skin tingled and prickled, like he’d sat too close to a flame, but still he worked.

“Rares, I would not do that if I were you!” Kaenok’s voice suddenly boomed, a strange silence following it, letting his echoes be heard with a ringing clarity. In his left hand he clutched Asphalion’s severed head, in his right a gleaming, spelled sword dripping with bright blood, and next to him stood Rana with Neela tight in her grasp. Rares’ fingers twitched over the last ingredient, the locklace oil, as his heart trembled in his chest. “If you care at all about your lovely wife, you will not finish that spell,” Kaenok growled.

“Don’t listen to him! He’s going to kill us both anyway!” Neela cried desperately, receiving a sharp blow to her ribs in return.

“Listen to me, Rares. I can make the end painless, for her, for you…” the king said, a strange tone in his voice that almost sounded like an enchantment, like he was implementing a curse even as he spoke.

Neela’s terrified, silver eyes locked with his, her face pale, blood dripping from her nose and one corner of her mouth, half of her hair singed black. The necklace he’d given her for their first anniversary lay crooked at the base of her fluttering throat, the turquoise blue gem still glittering and bright after all these years. Seeing his wife like that, seeing her helpless and vulnerable, he almost considered surrendering.

How could he subject her to the terror and pain that awaited her if he continued? But then how could he subject his people to that same terror and pain? The people that he and Neela had ruled for one hundred years before passing on the crown, who had no magick of their own to protect them? If he didn’t do this, Asphalion’s death, Sorokin’s death, Thorrin and Drasa’s deaths, all the elders… They would all have died in vain, for nothing.

Swallowing hard, and knowing there was no other way, he choked out, “I will not stop this, I can’t.” In an instant he had added the locklace oil to the mix and lit it ablaze.

“No!” Kaenok yelled, surging forward too late.

Rana let out an inhuman shriek and then plunged a dagger into Neela’s heart, twisting it savagely.

“NEELA!” Rares was halfway across the table to her when her body hit the ground and his whole world crashed down around him like ocean waves breaking upon rocky bluffs. Even though he knew there was no escaping the king and queen, and he sensed the life ebbing out of his wife, healing spells shot from his mouth as fast as they could form on his tongue. Neela’s white-blonde hair spilled across the grey floor, her red blood creeping along through the cracks between the stones. No, no, no, please, no! Please not her-

Kaenok shoved his sword through his back. He screamed, agonizing, scorching pain gushing through every inch of him, blood spurting out from the gaping wound when the king wrenched his blade out. Still he kept moving toward his wife, crawling, dragging himself, intent on reaching her so they could die together, so he could hold her one last time. A strong hand gripped his shoulder and forced him onto his back, cutting off his path to Neela.

“So it will be your face I see as I die,” he gasped, seething through his teeth clenched so tightly he thought they’d shatter, hot tears leaking from the corners of his eyes and trickling down into his ears.

“Did you really think this would work?” The king hissed, leaning in close enough for Rares to feel his breath against his face, his lips pulled back in a snarl.

“Someday, someone will finish what we started. Someday, someone is going to kill you both,” Rares gurgled through the warm blood collecting in his mouth, darkness starting to cloud his vision as he lost feeling in his toes and fingers, the paralysis slowly moving up toward his chest.

“And if that day ever comes, you won’t be here to see it, father,” Kaenok whispered, then pushed the sword through his heart with pure, undiluted hate exuding from his whole body.

As Rares’ world went black, he uttered the final words of the spell through his last, gasping breath. Let them be confined.

Kaenok and Rana watched him die in silence, seeing his red blood pool across the map of Zaphyria and mingle with the ashes knocked out of the ingredients’ bowl.

“Do you know what it is they tried to do?” Rana asked, moving closer to her husband and eyeing the chaos that lay scattered across the table.

“No, but I know they didn’t get to finish it,” he said confidently, wiping his sword on his black cloak before sheathing it and turning toward her. “Let us go celebrate this historic day. The elders are ended, and we shall rule the world unchallenged, my dear.” A wicked smile spread across Rana’s face. “We’ll burn the bodies later.”

Chuckling maliciously, the queen slid her arm through his and together they strode from the High Table Chamber, using their magick to easily clear debris and bodies out of their way as they went.

Behind them, the blood-covered map of Zaphyria flared with purple light.