Shadowsong: Chapter 4- Harbinger of Death

Chapter 4: Harbinger of Death

The Gatekeeper retrieved me the next day as promised. She led me out to meet my escort- Mikréla and Selanlar. I didn't say a word as I fell into step between them, Mikréla in the lead. I was brought to the same room Lyrel had gone to the day before.

The map had been returned to its original state. Bericus and Lyrel stood over it, conversing in quiet Angelic. Bericus' white lion lounged at his feet as Lyrel's raven preened next to him.

Mikréla and Selanlar nodded to their superiors, then left. I was unsurprised- the angels didn't need mortals to be anything more than soldiers as they battled the darkness.

I shed the eyepatch and glamour as I entered, glad to finally be able to see again. Darkness flew over to the map and landed on the table, studying the markers intently. The demons' attacks seemingly had no pattern nor any visible intent except to destroy. They didn't target tactical strongpoints for the Lightwings, which puzzled Lyrel and Bericus. And when they left, they didn't bring anything with them. It seemed a pointless waste of resources and time.

"But Cornix isn't stupid," Lyrel was saying. "He must have a plan."

"Well, he certainly doesn't seem to have a good one." Bericus pointed out.

"Then there is something we're missing."

"Chances are it's hiding in plain sight. I just can't see it."He was plainly frustrated.

"Look harder," I suggested.

"Thanks for your infinite wisdom, Raven," Bericus retorted sarcastically.

"Do y-" Lyrel was cut off by the opening of the door. A red-haired woman with pale blue eyes walked in. She wore studded leather armor with a broadsword and dagger on her hips. Next to her trotted an auburn shepherd with golden-brown eyes. I saw something in the heart of the woman, a part of her destiny.

"I hereby name thee Agrona, harbinger of death!" The werewolf alpha howled to his pack. Finally, the wolf-child had survived, and now, she was a wolf!

She ran for her life. The hunting howls of wolves sounded behind her, their forms cloaked by the shadowy night.

She would survive…

Her bare feet slipping on the damp stone, Agrona stumbled and hit the earth, hard. Scrambling to her feet, she kept on running, hurdling straight into what appeared to be a tavern. The tables were scattered haphazardly around the room, filled with humans that gambled, drunk, gossiped, brawled, and bartered. The lair of the Thieves' Guild…

Color washed from the world as she leapt at the wolf she'd once called father, her teeth bared as the girl turned from human to beast…

"Stealin' makes me a' outlaw. Killin' innocents 'longside t'e guilty makes me a murder, no better 'n t'e very wolves I seek vengeance on," she told her leader.

The gates of the Hunter stronghold closed behind her, the clang as final as death. She swallowed her fear. She would survive. She had to…

Raising the horn to her lips, the former wolf-child called in the Hunt. From puppy to full-fledged Guard Dog, she summoned allies for the first time. She would protect the innocent!

The ice-eyed wolf growled as Agrona readied the killing blow. She hesitated. No. She couldn't do it. She couldn't kill the pup she'd helped raise, the one she'd once called pack. Wolf or otherwise, Agrona released her and fled into the forest from whence she came…

"Tell me it isn't true. Tell me you aren't working with the Pack."
He looked away. After all the years, after everything they'd been through…She would have trusted him with her life. Now, she saw her trust was misplaced.

"Forgive me, Kolvar," she whispered, then sank the sword into his throat…

She was the Hunter-borne, the Guard Dog, Chosen of Avren, her destiny to combat the werewolves and finally return peace and heal the rift between the Pack and the humanoids of Ethnu.

"Tasha," Lyrel acknowledged her. "I see you made it."

"My apologies for my lateness, Lyrel. I got a bit held up with a vampire."

"It is of no consequence. Do come in."

The warrior did so, then paused as she saw me. I didn't bother to return her gaze. Instead, I inspected one of the bricks in the wall. It had a history, that much I could tell. She sized me up for a moment, then turned to Lyrel and Bericus. "I don't suppose you would like to tell me why there is a demon hanging out?"

"She has information,"

"Then why is she up here instead of down there?"
"If we simply wished to interrogate her, she wouldn't be here in the first place."

Tasha looked at me skeptically as I cocked my head at the marble. "Now tell me why a demonic nutcase is even helpful?"

I laughed. "Oh, I'm not mad, Harbinger. I see the webs of fate, the labyrinth of life, the past and the future." I turned to her, looking her straight in the face. I saw the flicker of fear as she saw my multicolored eyes, but she did a good job of hiding it.

"Harbinger?"

"Death-bringer, wolf-killer, Guard Dog of the Day, Huntress of the Night. Hunter-borne, Avren-blessed. Yes. The Harbinger of Death."

The tension in the room rose as I spoke the words.

"Dæmon, is it?" Tasha asked.

"Yes. Thatis Raven, Cornix's second."
"I thought you'd killed her."

"No. Souls are too slippery to hold on to. Dæmons in physical form are much easier. We deliberately encouraged that belief, though. The common people don't usually understand that death isn't permanent."

"Hmph." She moved over to the map, pushing Darkness out of the way. The bird squawked indignantly as she hopped to the side, then returned to my shoulder.

"There isn't a pattern," Tasha said.

"No, nor a plan, as far as we can tell," Bericus told her. "The Legions of Hell aren't attacking tactical positions, they aren't taking anything. They just burn, kill, and leave."

"Demons. Mindless destroyers that live only to annihilate," I said. "Mindless…Of course, if they do it with thought, is it perhaps with mind rather than without?"

"Is there a possibility there isn't a plan?" Tasha ignored me.

"I doubt that. Cornix has always had something up his sleeve," Lyrel said. "I just don't know what it is…"
"Does he have any reason to attack the towns? Is there some advantage in the slaughter?" Tasha asked. "Or is it just instinct, like the wolves?"

"For the demons, it is instinct," I answered. "But the dæmons and devils are the ones pulling the strings, and they aren't such instinctual creatures. Well, technically-"

Lyrel cut me off. "Please don't go into the technicalities of what drives the dæmons and devils."

I shrugged.

"So, is it or is it not just instinct?" Tasha asked.

I started to answer, but Lyrel interjected. "Technically yes, but not in the way you're thinking of it, so for all intents and purposes, no."

"So they must have some reason to be doing this. Any ideas on why?"

Bericus shook his head. "No. It seems a waste."
"A waste…" I murmured.

"They don't even pillage. They just destroy!" Lyrel was frustrated.

The Wastelands. That's how they were making the portals. They were using the leftover energy from various spells and such that went there, then lighting it with Hellfire and using magic to wield it. So to close the portals, one would have to push them out of the Wasteland.

By destroying the villages they got two things: souls and leftover energy that would be sent to the Wasteland. The souls could be turned into power to either devour or create the gates with, and everything that the Hellfire burned would be turned into energy to power the portals.

They only attacked farming villages with a lot of fuel for the flames. If they attacked tactical strongholds or towns, there would be more stone structures, and, thus, less fire. And everywhere they opened a portal was among the easiest places to do so due to how dimensionally close the locations of the portal in each realm was.

I grabbed eight white tokens that represented likely attacks and placed them out in the other farming villages that were dimensionally close to the Wasteland. Combined with the former attacks, it made a symbol. The symbol of Night.

"How do you figure?" Tasha asked, studying the tokens I'd laid out.

"The Hellfire, they…the Wasteland is…" I struggled to explain. For the most part, I couldn't speak very clearly, and trying to explain something that complicated was all but impossible. "Due to dimensional closeness they've managed to use power from the Wasteland lit by Hellfire to make portals, by controlling it with soul- and likely blood- magic. They use Hellfire in the towns with a lot of fuel to bring more power into the Wasteland, and then take the souls from the dead in addition to the hearts of innocents which will bring them much power." I never knew how I managed to get out those two sentences.

Bericus raised an eyebrow. "Wow. She actually managed to say something helpful."

"Helpful is a relative term," I pointed out. "It depends on your point of view."

"Oh, shut up, Raven. No one cares about your philosophy."
"Philosophical standpoints are proved only by logic and reasoning based upon hypothetical proof, where areas science is based upon mathematical, physical, and theoretical proof that are supported by physical or magical entities, behavior-"

"I swear to Brightwing, shadewing…"
I shrugged. If he wanted to continually use incorrect words, that was up to him.

"I don't suppose any of you could repeat that in the language of us commoners?" Tasha inquired. "You know, those who haven't bothered to read up on Hellfire or Wastelands or magic or portals?"

"The Wastelands are a series of…well, I guess the best way to put it is a magical dump in the Realms of Darkness. It is where all the leftover energy from spells and such go. Cornix has found a way to burn that power with Hellfire to convert it into usable magic by himself and his dæmon mages. He then uses what is probably a mix of blood and soul magic to be able to actually control it. He selects targets that are dimensionally close to the Wastelands to make the rifts in so that it takes less energy to create," Lyrel explained. "Then he burns the village- that has lots of fuel because of crops and wooden hovels- to put more energy into the Wastelands and kills all the villagers to take their souls, blood, and/or hearts."

"And I thought wolves were bad," Tasha muttered. "So how do we fight them?"

"We cut off their power source."

"In other words we anticipate the next attack and defend the village?"

"Something like that."

"Great. Here's the next problem: how do we fight a demon horde of unknown numbers that comes without warning from a portal in a location we don't know the coordinates of?"

Bericus gestured to me. "We use her. She can tell us where the most likely place for the rift is. She can also see into the Realms of Darkness due to her status as seer and can tell us their numbers. After that, it gets down to solid tactics."

"Tactics I can do. Trust a dæmon? Maybe not so much."

"I shall not lie," I said.

"Oh, yes, let us trust the evil dæmonkin who eats the souls of innocents and tears out their hearts, for she says she won't lie. Because there is no flaw in that logic." Tasha's dog snorted in agreement.

"I can tell if she is lying. It pretty much gets down to how we phrase the question so she can't loophole it and tell us a twisted truth," Lyrel assured Tasha.

"Isn't that comforting," she retorted sarcastically.

Watch as they squabble like fledglings over a meal, Darkness thought.

They shall be easy prey, I completed, for siblings who fight divided cannot win against a united evil.

Such is the way of the world, we thought. Or perhaps the way of the multiverse. Will I ever know? Alas, never shall it be so. For we can each only guess the laws that govern the way of things. They may be proven, but we base our assumptions on only what we can see- the small picture, from our point of view. Nothing more.

"We'll see," Bericus was saying. "Maybe this is a futile battle, but we have to fight it. Rally the Hunters, Guard Dog. We need them more than ever."

"Yes, sir." She nodded her head in respect and started to leave.

"One last thing, Tasha."
"Yes?"
"Protect the dawn from the night."

"As I am sworn, sir, I shall always fulfill."

"Yes, I am sure. Fare thee well."

"And to you." And she was gone.

A futile battle. Perhaps. Or maybe it really did make a difference, even if it was lost. Everything had an impact, no matter how small.

A fly on a summer's day could be the only sustenance for a bird who's song would inspire a great bard, who's music would bring hope to men on a dark day and bring victory because of the faith in their hearts. And if that fly had died, none of it would have happened- all would be lost.