The Multitude
1863 PD: Inception of the Everwar.
“Have you come for something? You stand there, dumb as a mute. My time is worth more than your existence.” There was no scorn, no contempt. This was merely Stave’s truth. “Speak this instant or remove yourself at once.”
“Sycamores, Sir Stave.” Fend’s voice held a wobble.
The Euclid tilted his head ever so slightly, curious — no, wary — at the girl’s response. He wondered if it was the silence beyond the doors that set him on edge. Or the fact that a raggedy plebe, a child no less, had somehow gained entry into his quarters. “What do sycamores have to do with anything?”
“You see sir,” Fend said, wringing her fingers, staring down at them, “I have no idea what they look like. I know nothing of them save that they’re trees. But sycamores!” Her voice was like a twinkle, rich as the opulence on display around them. “The name fills me with such joy as you could never imagine. It rolls off the tongue beautifully, leaving behind a taste of…” she fluttered her eyes, moaning, “…of perfection.”
Stave revised his initial assessment. This was no plebe. And this was no child. His thoughts once more skittered to the unusual quiet. Twenty heavily guarded floors, she must have passed.
Fend grinned.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“Perfection, o mighty Euclid. It is perfection I seek. It caresn’t about good or evil, right or wrong. Irrespective of morals or motive, it is always there to be attained. You say your time is worth more than my existence” Her smile narrowed. “If that were true then it would be worth more than this world itself.”
Stave swallowed. He heard it in her voice, saw it in her eyes: this was her truth that she spoke.
“My existence serves the perfect plan, Euclid.” She turned, setting her gaze on the city through the windows. “And in that plan, you hand over your nation to me. Today. Now.”
“You overstep your bounds, girl.” It was his voice that trembled now, and no matter that he puffed his chest, posing as if it did from indignation, he knew the truth. “Quint! Rivet! Get in here NOW!
Fend cringed. “Easy with the shrill.”
Stave took a step back. “Quint? RIVET?” He wondered why his heart thudded so loudly, why he, The Euclid, was cowering from a little girl, in his quarters. He gasped as his back met with a solid mass. He was at the door already. He fumbled for the handles, bursting out into the hallway.
“It’s all the same all the way down!” she yelled from inside. “All twenty floors!”
Stave tried but the air would not come. His eyes watered at the sight before him, quivering even as his chest burned with tight pain. He had never seen so much red before. Bodies strew the marbled floor, torn up husks leaking blood from too many places. One of them, to the right, twitched. Rivet. His mangled arms still clutched his spilled innards beside him.
Fend shouted, “Can we get back to the topic at hand now?”
The Euclid scurried back into the room, unable to bear the rising dread. It felt like his lungs would implode if he beheld the atrocity in the hall for one more second.
Fend waited with an unnerving nonchalance. She said, drawing an object from the folds of her robe, “I assure you, not getting stained was more tasking than the actual killing. Ah, here we go.” She held forth a clay mortar, looking expectantly at the panting Euclid. “We haven’t razed your lands yet because we feel you’re intelligent enough to be convinced by this. Are we right in this assumption?”
A binding vessel. This was far worse than Stave had feared. “You…you still want me to rule,” he whispered. Not just that, but…
“Of course. Your progeny as well. Every future Euclid of this nation will serve our cause till perfection is achieved. You haven’t answered the question.”
A stray desire to stand defiant flittered in Stave’s mind. It was swiftly crushed by what this girl was seemingly capable of and where he suspected she came from. If he was correct, then there was no point in defiance. One way or another, he and his nation would be made to succumb eventually. If anything, this was a grace being offered to them. “Yes. You are right,” he responded. He approached Fend cautiously, stretching his arm till his wrist hung over the mortar. “I offer my blood and lifeforce.”
Fend quirked a brow at him.
The Euclid coughed. “W-willingly…I offer them both willingly.”
The runic grooves etched into the container filled up with scarlet light. Stave hissed as pain sliced across the under of his wrist. Blood smeared with streaks of a sapphire, gel-like fluid dribbled from the cut and pooled into the mortar. After a time, the pain receded, vanishing. The vessel’s light pulsed a final time before dimming to nothing. Stave withdrew his arm, stealing a glance into the mortar. It was dry and empty.
“In the spirit of our new alliance, and to prove this has been nothing but a method to force your hand, the Majesties are willing to supply replacements for your men. They arrive on the morrow.” Fend strode by him, exiting already. “It is a glorious thing, no? Joining the service of God herself.”
Fend crossed the breadth of the empty throne room. Thunderless lightning harried the skies, infringing on the Lance’s eternal night, providing the only illumination permitted in the land. She strode onto a large balcony, lowering to one knee, head bowed. “Your Majesties,” she greeted, presenting the binding vessel, “Tomen is secured.”
“Hold on to it,” Fend’s Chainer replied. “Where next?”
Fend rose to find herself being appraised.
“The mountain people,” the Shadow Queen rasped, studying Fend. “The Animeians must come last.”
The Chainer wrinkled her nose. “The savages, you mean.”
Fend was old. Yet to these two, she was an infant. Their eyes held a stillness hewn from centuries past. Their every movement whispered a promise of untold chaos. It was there in the glacial shifting of the Shadow Queen’s gaze to the Chainer, then back to Fend again. Edifices had been obliterated with lesser gestures.
“We should not disparage them so, sister,” the Shadow Queen said. “They have grown more capable than you remember. As have the Starlans.”
The Chainer smiled. “Too capable for my Nameless?”
“Perhaps not the Nameless.” The Shadow Queen finally took her eyes off the girl. “Fend, however, won’t be sufficient. A tower of healers is child’s play next to what lies in Starl.” She stared into space, as if reweighing the stakes. “No. We need more.”
Fend cleared her throat. “Might I offer Scylla, Your Majesty?”
The Chainer looked to the Shadow Queen. The Shadow Queen shook her head.
“Vennon, then?” Fend asked again.
Another shake.
“Barok?” she blurted, failing to conceal her disbelief. Were the mountain people as dangerous as the queen was implying? Or had she begun to lose faith in the Multitude? Whatever the case, Barok eliminated all doubts. Nothing survived him.
The Shadow Queen nodded grudgingly. “Even though I suspect even he might not cut it — ”
The Chainer bristled. “Who’s doing the disparaging now?”
“It is no insult to properly gauge one’s enemy, sister.” She turned to Fend. “If it comes to it, unleash the Nameless. That is all.”
Fend bowed. She centered herself with the repetitive thought of one word: sycamores. “Yes, Your Majesty. If the plan wills it so, we shall loose upon them the full width of our power.”
“Good. Now run. Go bring Ulilgorn to his knees.”
Fend ventured north as the manifest. Of the Multitude, she was most suited to travel. Barok would manifest when the time came.
She made a quick detour to the Nyaminthian Groves, adding two days to her journey. Perhaps it was the queen’s caution getting to her, but now she carried a flower stalk with her as she slipped into Dunim — capital city of the Starlan Kingdom. It wasn’t particularly beautiful. Neither was its smell alluring. When she thought of sycamores however, she could now savor the feel of the stalk through the numerous folds of her oversized robe. Her belief in the supremacy and inevitability of their plan had never been stronger.
It was with this bolstered faith that she came to stand before the ancient castle of the mountain people; the seat of Ulilgorn the Second. With a parting caress of the sycamore flower, she died.
Barok manifested. A dark rag hung from his shoulders, scarcely reaching his waist. A clay cup covered in markings crashed to the ground. It didn’t crack. A green stick fell as well. He gathered the rag and fastened it around his waist. He grabbed the binding vessel and secured it to the top of his makeshift skirt.
His commands lingered from the previous manifest. He took in the looming stone structure, letting out a savage cackle. A challenge awaited him in there? He could only hope it was a worthy one.
His laughter alerted the guards. They shifted in their stands by the gate and their patrols across the ramparts.
Barok only made it midway through his first step when a hand suddenly clutched his throat. His feet dangled in the air, scrambling for purchase as fingers like steel dug into the muscles of his neck. He traced the arm that held him aloft to its owner’s face.
It was a man, thin with toasted wrinkly skin. His eyes, swirling like dark smoke, beheld Barok. “This is no place for a creature such as you. You reek of malice. Leave now or I shall be forced to end you.”
Barok enclosed the man’s wrist with a fist. He clenched and squeezed, but the man would not yield. Grunting, he added his second fist. At once, the vicelike grip on his neck loosened. As gravity claimed him, he twisted, hauling the man overhead in an arc, and flung him away. By the time Barok’s feet touched the ground, the man already rose from the hole in the wall, shifting shattered bricks and disturbing the settling cloud of stone dust. “‘Find the one within whom burns the sun,’ such were my commands.” The earth shuddered beneath them. Barok felt power surge from the land in steaming cascades, flooding into the man’s hazy figure. “How considerate of you to save me the hassle.”
The world erupted with color and heat. Fire, thick and tall as the castle walls, surrounded them in a ring. Cries rung from outside the crimson cage. At a scowl from the risen king, the fire burned brighter, roared louder, drowning out the guards’ shouts. “Who sent you?” Ulilgorn asked coolly.
Where the king stood unaffected, Barok dripped hissing sweat that quickly turned to steam. It stung every inch of his skin, yet only served to widen the feral grin he wore, to stoke his inner fire — an unquenchable bloodlust. “No, no,” he shook his head. “Before anything, we must dance first.”
The crux of Barok’s mission hadn’t escaped him. A binding required willing submission, both in pronouncement and at heart. He had to rid the king of all hope. To eliminate any inclination of resistance. Strong as Barok was, he could tell, even without tasting the flames, that Ulilgorn would hold his own for a time. The king would crumble beneath his might eventually, but it was a whitewash he sought. The Nameless had to be woken.
The currents of the flames wavered. All around, strips of fire drifted off the burning cage, pooling in separate clumps. They grew, gaining definition, till a static hale of flaming armaments — arrows, spears, lances — was trained on him. There was a fraught second in which their gazes locked, and Barok, wide-eyed, saw the sun; an effulgence at whose core Ulilgorn glowered.
Then hell rained.
A hall of abundant white. Barok sat in a high-backed chair. The seats either side of him were empty. All the others in the circle were occupied.
“You give up already, Barok?” the little girl questioned. “Wasn’t it just now you were frothing at the mouth to battle this man?”
Barok’s nostrils flared. The only thing small about her was her size. “Yes. And on another day, I might have relished it, a proper fight. But that is not what the Majesties have ordered.” He looked each of them in the eye: Fend. Scylla. Vennon. Wreather. Daemoclytus. “The Shadow Queen was right. It must be done.”
It could be him this time. The one whose soul would pave the way to usher the Nameless into this world. It could be any of them.
They placed their palms on the marble table between them, setting them onto alabaster grooves. Energy bled from their hands, filling up the intricate pattern linked to the grooves. In concercion, they pronounced, “We are the Multitude in one…”
Where Barok had once stood, another now did. The Nameless sliced the air with a hand — snow-skinned and ridged with scarlet veins. That one gesture dispelled every lick of fire: the flaming missiles, the burning wall, even the sun that burned within Ulilgorn; all snuffed out in an instant. Surrounded by scorched, smoking earth and clear sky, it breathed, “…We are Nameless.”
Try as the king did, no power welled from the ground at his beckon. Before the Nameless, Ulilgorn was a powerless, ordinary old man. The king’s frame sagged, deteriorated by this realization.
The Nameless approached him, bearing an object in hand.
The king raised his head. His eyes first squinted at the strangeness of the creature, then glimmered as they honed in on the object. “A binding vessel?” he spurted with restrained mirth. “So she finally makes her move.”
The Nameless’ voice was a conflagration of many, blended so they were one, “How have you come to know the identity of our mistress?”
“There is only one being who would send a messenger to conquer a kingdom. Only one being with such hubris.”
“Is it hubris if it always works?”
Ulilgorn finally let out a laugh. “Starl is the sole refuge on Ilea from her influence. Why would I subject my people to her rule? What could possibly move me to such madness?”
“A promise of war, the like of which you have never known. If you care for your people, then this,” it raised the clay mortar, “is the better option. None may oppose her, you know this.”
“What of the Animeians then?” Ulilgorn said. “They are a blade in her side. We could ally with them.”
The Nameless blinked. “They are a thorn, nothing more. Is that what you would reduce your people to? A torturous life of meager rebellion, barely holding out till inevitable defeat. And all for what, king? To uphold the dignity of a stubborn old man?”
A magicless fire kindled in Ulilgorn’s eyes. “Portray it however you wish. I will not sell my soul, nor those of my descendants.”
“Then we will take you. And bide our time till your heir ascends the throne. Perhaps he will be wiser than his father. If that isn’t the case however, and all your line is rife with obstinacy, then war will rage, blood will flow, and your own people will curse your name before the Goddess’ and her daughters’.”
Ulilgorn could no longer use his magic to defy this creature. In his spent, aged bones, he knew resorting to kicks and blows would be pointless. All he had left were his words. “Take me then. Starl will remain free and untainted.”
For its goddess’ sake, the Nameless saddened at Ulilgorn’s decision. The guards had started to reappear. The Nameless would avoid needless bloodshed if it could. It closed the space between itself and the king — a gracious passing of white and might.
Ulilgorn stood steady, unshaking for what was to come. Or rather, what he thought was to come.
It held the king by the temple, touching a thumb to his forehead. It tipped his head back slightly, muttering an unintelligible cant as it watched the nearing guards.
Thick blue veins rippled underneath the king’s skin, surfacing in a network that terminated at the point beneath the Nameless’ thumb. A wet gasp escaped Ulilgorn as the veins pulsed, transporting within them a glowing liquid.
The Nameless harvested the king’s lifeforce forcefully, yet met no resistance. As the last of Ulilgorn’s soul escaped his body, it whispered, “You think you have achieved some victory. But you will live to see the day they curse you.”
Ulilgorn’s lifeless, greying body fell to the ground. Task completed, the Nameless returned to whence it came.
Fend manifested, hidden under the cover of her robe — now a sweat-soaked skirt. Also hidden to the approaching guards by her power, she slunk away from the city, undetected, leaving behind a dried, buried stick with singed flowers.
Barok could tell that Fend was manifest. He was first to return to the white hall. One by one, so did the others: first Wreather, then Vennon and Scylla.
Daemoclytus never made it back.
As they observed a silence on his behalf, a man appeared in the seat next to Barok. Ulilgorn croaked, disoriented, “Where is this?”
Their eyes met and the deceased monarch’s widened in shock. Barok quietly cursed at forever being robbed of a good fight.
