Vroengard Chronicles:

Risen

Prologue: Rebirth

It was still several hours before dawn. The summer dew clinging to the innumerable pine needles glistened like stars in the waning moonlight. A light mist rose from the forest floor in front of the little copse of trees that marked the entrance to the secluded den. Dream Dancer had sung the glen into being when she decided to take on Mica as her mate. He wasn't her first choice, but he was always kind to her, and at least he was around. That was saying a lot in these dark times. Werecats are solitary beings by nature. They live as long as dragons, and are just as deeply tied to the elemental magic. But like the elves, they rarely mate for life, and are not quick to produce offspring. Maud as she was called by the elves had lately begun to notice the myriad subtle glimmers of consciousness that linked her to her kind had been fading. Their numbers were becoming dangerously small, so she decided it was time again for her to take a mate. Mica had felt the calling long before Dream Dancer, even if he didn't recognize it himself; such is the way of magical beings. He managed to cross half of Alagaesia without knowing why or where he was headed, only that he must continue. He spent months prowling the depths of Du Weldenvarden before the fates saw fit that they should meet. It took several months more for Dream Dancer to consider him as a viable mate. Then as is the way of such creatures, once she felt the new life stir within her she sent him away. He would stay nearby, and bring her food if he sensed her need, but she would have nothing to do with him. Mica had a rare gift among Werecats, he didn't just morph between his cat form and the form of a small child as most of his kind did. He learned over the centuries how to take on virtually any living form, a trait that has served him well over the years. Now he used it to keep an eye on Maud without being detected.

Several months had passed, and her two precious kittens Ilian and Voetta were just opening their eyes, soon it would be time to wean them. "High time too." Maud thought, as her strength and milk were running short and she felt the need to hunt. She could sense Mica was hanging around somewhere close by, but was not disposed to accept his help, it just wasn't their way. She concentrated on quieting her rumbling belly and continued to bathe Ilian oblivious to the two blood red eyes peering through the entrance to her grotto. It was still a couple of hours before dawn, the kittens were fed and fast asleep So Maud surrendered to her nature and left the grotto. Mica dozing comfortably in a tree less than a mile away sensed her leave, and the children sleeping. He broadened his perceptions to include the area around the grotto looking for any dangers. He sensed nothing and closed his eyes, but kept his perceptions keen. He could feel Maud stalking a black squirrel; feel one of the kittens role over on top of the other one, and even a small flock of bats chasing insects by a nearby pond. Then he felt another presence lurking near the den. It wasn't very tangible, more of shadow than of substance, and it wasn't moving. He focused all of his attention on the shadow, it had a mind, and the mind seemed strange, very old, almost crowded. He could think of no other term for how it felt, it was crowded, and he could discern nothing but malevolence in that being. He felt the shadow detach from the trees and head towards the den. He became fully awake in an instant leaping from the tree and morphing into a hawk as he fell. He screamed "Sundavar" at Maud but knew she wouldn't understand, so he added "Barnar Haski!" and flew with all the speed he could muster to the den. Maud was busy nibbling on her prey. She had kept her senses open to her kittens, and didn't feel anything amiss until she heard Mica scream in her mind. Her perceptions focused like a razor on the den and she was already running towards the evil presence.

Standing in the entry of the grotto watching the kittens was a girl of very slight build, no more than twenty. She looked on the joyful tranquility of the scene before her with a contempt bordering on disgust. She smiled cruelly, baring her pointed teeth as she raised her hands and began to chant an ancient spell. The kittens were surrounded by a sphere of energy and lifted from the floor of the den still sleeping to drift over to the girl. She turned to walk out of the grotto; the sphere following behind her, just as Maud pounced gouging her face with both front claws, and trying to rip out her throat. The girl weathered the attack showing little or no distress and laughed; with a cold merciless glee to chill you to the marrow. Maud spun to pounce again and she found herself flying backwards and crashing into a tree, the sound of her own bones splintering echoed in her ears before the pain even reached her awareness. She spun to pounce again but found she could no longer move her hind legs, her hips were broken. The girl closed her eyes and chanted again to the sphere and it vanished. Then she turned to finish off her victim gathering a ball of energy in her hand as she walked to stand over the broken form of Maud gloating. Before she could strike, the shriek of a night bird grabbed her attention as it reduced in pitch to a frenzied roar. She looked up in time to see the large brown bear fall out of the sky and land on her crushing her bones like parchment. With two quick swipes the bear ripped her head clean off her shoulders only to have the body turn to smoke before his eyes; her malignant laughter ringing in their ears. "If you want to see your children alive again, meet me in three weeks time at the well of dreams." That was the last they felt of the presence. Mica morphed into human form, gathered up Maud even as she growled at him and carried her toward Ellesmera. He knew she would never forgive him, but he would bring her children home, or die in the attempt. He promised her that much in the Ancient Language before she passed out from the pain. It would be two more days before he could get her to a healer, but not another word was spoken between them the entire trip.

It took Mica the better part of a week to cross Du Weldenvarden and skirt the desert to reach Hedarth, the lonely dwarf trading post on the Edda River. Even with the speed of a hawk it had been a long and arduous journey. Luckily, Werecats are revered by the dwarfs as much as dragons are reviled. Mica would allow himself the luxury of accepting their hospitality for one night to recover his strength, and fortify his body for the remainder of the journey. He could carry nothing in the form of a bird so to the general amusement of all around him, he ate like a dwarf. Sunrise found him already in flight. It would be two more days at least until he reached Galfni. Exhausted and nearly frozen to the bone, he sighted the village long after the sun had passed over the mountains and bathed the world in twilight. It may have only been mid afternoon to the rest of Alagaesia, but already numerous crystal lanterns could be seen glowing in the recesses of the distant valley. With the lanterns light to guide him, he ignored the deepening gloom and pressed on, confident of another meal and a warm blanket before heading into the wilds of the Beors to find the Caves of Manni.

It was dawn of the fourteenth day as Mica, in cat form, stood before the jagged maw of the caves. Even with the eastern sun behind him, Mica could only see a few feet into its ink black depths. Still, he hadn't the right to entertain a fear of the dark with his children at stake, then a thought unbidden entered his mind and he knew what he must do. Clearing his thoughts he extended his perception into the caves until he found a colony of sleeping bats on the roof of one of the main caverns. He focused on one to the exclusion of the others until he had memorized every nuance of its being, breathed with its lungs, felt the leather of its wings rustle in the still damp air, and saw what it heard. As he drew back into himself he confidently stepped into the dark and morphed into a bat. Unfortunately turning into a bat does not guarantee that you can navigate like a bat and Mica bounced off several walls before he mastered the basics. Deeper and deeper he flew into the mountain until at last he could hear the trickle of running water falling from a great height ahead of him. It was then he perceived the same evil presence from the den, and something else, something older, and far more powerful than any entity he had ever come across or even heard tales of. He felt tendrils of pure thought engulf him utterly; there was no chance of shielding himself, all he could do was surrender to the probe. There was no pain, no evil intent; all he could sense was curiosity. He flew cautiously towards the sound, tentatively reaching out with his own perception towards the entity. Instead of closing its mind, the entity welcomed him joyfully and drew him in deeper. It was then that Mica realized he had reached his destination. He was talking to the Well of Dreams.

He came around the final bend and hovered in the dark as realized that just ahead of him the Shade was standing near a small pool fed by the merest trickle of water from a height well beyond his powers of perception even as a bat. The pool radiated a light and warmth all its own. Now he knew why the dwarves venerated this place and would not speak its name. "Are you Kilf?" he timidly thought. All at once the entire mountain seemed to roar with laughter. He had to dodge the pebbles and rocks that fell from the unseen heights above. Reka, the Shade, peered into the darkness and simply said "Come.". As Mica flew forward he dropped to the floor and morphed back into a cat. She looked him over with contempt. "Good, now we can begin.". Mica morphed into human form not wanting to contact the evil presence directly. "Begin what? Where are my children? What have you done with them?". Reka starred at him, her thin lips again curling into that malignant grin. "They are safe, for now, but very far away. Whether they remain safe, however is purely up to you. I have a very easy task for you. I'm going to channel a spell through you, and you're simply going to remain connected to the Well, and allow its strength to flow through you until the spell is completed. Then we can discuss the release of your kin. You need do nothing else, but be warned if you break contact with me or the Well, you will die, it's just that simple. Do you understand?" Mica didn't trust himself to answer so he nodded his assent. "How do I know you'll keep your word and free my children when this is over?" Reka gave a short hollow laugh, "I have given you no word to keep, you simply have no choice. Now lower your defenses and expand your consciousness or your children will be left to rot in darkness for all eternity.".

As Mica expanded his perceptions and his thoughts again brushed against the Well entity, he found himself engulfed in a maelstrom of visions. The past, the future, the present all connected, winding through each other as an unbroken thread. He could see the creation of the dragons, their rise to greatness, the tragedy of the Elf Wars, their brush with extinction, the rebirth of their species, their rise to greatness once more, and the inevitable decline to oblivion at the end of all things. He could see his own race as well as that of the Elves, the Humans, the Dwarves, and even the Urgals in the same harsh unblinking light of truth. He was so caught up in the multitude of interrelated images that he didn't even notice the Shade had begun her spell. What he couldn't have fathomed is that she was chanting one spell, but in fact casting several other non verbal spells at the same time. They were so old that none alive had ever heard them, and they had never been written down because they were considered much too dangerous. His consciousness continued to expand as it drifted through the fullness of eternity, he became aware he was no longer standing in front of the pool but floating over it. Reka's spells went on and on, becoming more complex, more powerful, and more focused. The water in the pool began to boil, changing color from a pure milky white, to an almost opaque maroon color.

The pool had transformed into a cauldron of boiling blood! The mephitic vapors it emitted reeked of death and decay. Mica began to surrender to fear, instinctively pulling back on his perception and immediately felt his life's energy rapidly drain away. It was then Mica noticed the voice at the very fringe of his awareness. "Fear not little friend, she is of no consequence. I can teach you all that you need to undo her evil. You have walked in eternity without fear, trust me now or all is for naught.". Mica knew that voice, had always known that voice. He knew to trust the voice, he knew he had to. With an act of shear willpower that he would have thought impossible yesterday, he closed his eyes, calmed his breathing and again expanded his perception. Immediately a cacophony of new images flooded through him, along with a renewed vitality such as he'd never felt before. He noticed that the images he was experiencing were not the random images of before. These were being purposefully chosen, directed, scripted; these images had lessons to teach. He saw a virgin land, rising from the sea, a mass of boiling rock. He watched as it cooled and the elements beat down the rock into soils. He watched as plants developed and evolved into forests. He saw another land ever so slowly collide with the first, crumpling the coast and pushing up vast mountain ranges. He saw the coming of the Grey folk, and the awakening of magic. He watched as the magic got loose and all but destroyed their world. He watched them sacrifice themselves to contain the magic once more and as a consequence of that sacrifice, the creation of werecats and dragons. He listened to the ancient chants of naming and binding. Words of such all encompassing power, that he feared for his sanity even to have heard them. All at once all the images went dark. The well gave him one last image to ponder. It was an image of utter chaos, of the unfettered energy of raw magic ripping apart the fabric of reality, and destroying all before it. He felt the tears well in his eyes and mourned for the death of a world. He drew back into himself and realized that the chanting had stopped. He also realized that he was no longer floating above the pool but lying next to it. The shade had completed her spells and was no longer alone.

The boiling blood in the pool had begun to coalesce as it slowly took on the form of a man. Mica watched in horror as the ghoulish mass became more and more defined. Bone, sinew, organs, skin, there was no doubt what was forming before his eyes. He wanted to turn away, wanted to run, anything to escape this madness but couldn't move. Then he heard a sound that chilled him to the bone. That grisly thing, just took a breath, and it was now moving. He watched it step naked from the pool and stretch. The shade took a step closer and knelt before him. "Master, it has been too long.". Mica stood up in terror and tried to back away. The ghoul raised his hand and the palm glowed, freezing Mica in place. The ghoul looked into the werecats eyes and smiled. Mica shook his head from side to side. "But it can't be … you're dead. You've been dead for hundreds of years … it can't be." " I was ... I'm better now" the ghoul said with a laugh. It was then that sanity left Mica behind. The ghoul laughed even harder.

The lonely cry of a solitary gull pierced the deepening gloom as twilight settled across the secluded tidal salt flat. The constant rumble of the gentle surf crashing upon an unseen coast, and a constant mild breeze, fragrant with the aromas of the sea; were the only clues to the location of this peaceful hidden vale. In any other reality this tranquil setting would have been a haven to those seeking to cleanse the soul with meditation and spiritual reflection. But reality had very little sway here. One had only to look up and notice the multifaceted red and gold crystal the size of a small mountain floating serenely hundreds of feet above the wash to realize this was no ordinary place. Nor were the three beings that suddenly materialized on a broad flat shelf high on the valley wall next to the eroded remains of an ancient altar. Mica was so taken back by the extraordinary vista that at first he failed to notice the small sphere floating above the altar or the two sleeping kittens contained within. Reka stared with undisguised longing as random arcs of pure energy leaped from facet to facet along the face of the crystal. For this was the legendary isle of Eoam, and the crystal was the spring from which all magic flowed in Alagaesia. Mica noticed that the longer he looked at the crystal the harder it was to focus on, as if it wasn't really there at all. The thing that most caught his attention and held him transfixed was the illusion of double vision. The floating mountain seemed to have a ghostly twin, slowly rotating in the opposite direction of the crystal. Mica slowly moved from one end of the plateau to the other, but no matter from which vantage point he looked, the "twin" was always directly behind the crystal. Mica had no way of knowing that that particular visual paradox had been hotly debated by scholars, wizards, and kings, since before there was written language in the land. Many simply referred to her as the Shy Sister.

Reka stepped forward to the altar closed her eyes and raised her arms. She began to chant quietly and in a few moments Mica could feel the ground tremble. The very stones of the altar glowed a deep shade of crimson, as all of the other light seemed to be sucked from the sky all around it. Years of accumulated detritus shimmered and fell from the slab as the stone flowed together erasing the damage of eons. When she stopped chanting the sky returned to normal, but the altar continued to glow. The sphere floated a meter above the surface, it glowed a steady blue against the crimson background. Mica cried out as he saw the sphere, and leaped at the altar. At a glance from the ghoul he was fixed in place and unable to speak. Reka seemed to sway slightly and began a new song, for song it was, only the language was unknown and the words had no meaning. It was like the ancient tongue and yet it was somehow more. The stone surface of the altar now smooth and polished seemed to ripple and flow like liquid fire as a fragment of the same crystal floated from the depths and began to resonate to the song like a tuning fork.

Ever so slowly it began to rotate and soon spun in perfect unison with the mountain before them. The song built in passion and volume and the ground again began to shake. Then the obviously exhausted Reka fell to her knees and slapped her palms against the altar. There was a blinding flash as the roar of thunder echoed off the valley walls. Both the fragment on the altar and the floating mountain were perfectly still. What's more, the Shy Sister also became still and no longer tested your eyes. She was an exact twin of her sister, finally visible through a hole in space and time, a corridor to another universe. All the crystals resonating in harmony, connected to the altar by an invisible ribbon that could only be described as a ripple in the air. Reka still on her knees withdrew an ancient curved blade from her cloak. The cutting edge shimmered and was hard to focus on. She raised it above her head and began a new song, this one quiet as a whisper. The blade began to resonate and soon added its voice to the harmony. The sphere shimmered as the song changed and seemed to become solid. Reka slowly got to her feat and opened her eyes. She stepped forward and slowly brought the blade down on the sphere. Mica screamed inside but was still fixed in place as the blade passed gently through the orb. The kittens inside seem to part of their own volition; the blade passing between them, leaving two spheres behind, each containing one of the kittens now fully awake. The song changed again and the spheres traveled along the invisible ribbons to each be absorbed into the heart of a sister. The song of the crystals seemed to double in volume and rose in pitch as the altar glowed even brighter.

Reka lost consciousness and collapsed where she stood. Mica was suddenly released and fell to the mossy ground. He screamed then sobbed hysterically as he clawed his way to the edge of the platform. The ghoul looked down and smiled. "You shall make me certain promises, werecat, if you ever wish to see them alive again.".

As Reka regained consciousness she found herself face to face with the nondescript ghoul. Mica lay on the edge of the precipice staring at the crystals and sobbing quietly. "You brought me back from the void as promised and I'm grateful even if you had no choice. But I have never heard any of those words in all my centuries. Nor have I ever witnessed a spell of such power and complexity. Before we go any further I will know with whom I deal. You will tell me who you are spirit. I wish to know your story, and the origins of those spells, as well as what it is you expect of me, and what I may expect in return, and you will tell me in ancient language. The time for deception between us is long past.".

Reka starred into the ghoul's lidless eyes for a solid minute, then nodded and continued in ancient. "The name of my host was Reka, which is the name you may call me. My own name I will keep to myself. I was one of the "Grey Folk" as you name us. I was a scholar studying the nature of magic. It was I that built the altar. It was also I that severed the fragment and thereby set in motion the events that nearly destroyed this world, and it was I that was forced to whiteness the death of my entire race as they sacrificed themselves to stop what I had begun. It was in the cataclysm that followed that I lost my life. You don't recognize the language because it is the original tongue. During the great sacrifice it was altered, limited, restrained into what you now call ancient. I however am not bound by their pact. I remember the original tongue because I was there when it was last spoken aloud … and I am NOT! … Limited, and restrained. I have the power to make that which you desire most a reality. Let me show you a small sample.".

She took the ghouls right hand and pressed it to her breast as she began a new song. After a few minutes she raised it towards the crystal and the song changed. Mica found himself floating towards the altar bathed in raw energy. When he was aligned between the ghoul and the crystal the song changed again. A beam of energy passed from the crystal through Mica and into the palm of the ghoul. New flesh, whole and sound flowed back from the hand to cover the body. The ghoul had become a man young and strong, but Reka wasn't finished, and the song changed yet again. A ball of raw energy formed on the plateau and began to expand to an enormous size. Mica screamed as the beam of energy expanded to engulf his entire body. His every nerve was on fire and his fur stood on end. The energy began to coalesce into a more recognizable shape forming wings and a tail, but it was still just a cloud of light. The song grew in intensity as Reka pulled the man's palm toward the cloud. Instantly the palm began to glow as the beam of energy now flowed through his chest, down that arm and into the cloud. The cloud contracted, becoming more and more solid as the flow of energy from the crystal diminished. The last few lines of the song drifted on the air and it was done. There on the platform stood a massive red dragon, ancient by size but young and strong, and on the man's palm still faintly glowing was the Gedway Ignasia. Mica drifted to the ground and lay there unconscious as the man rubbed and flexed his wrist. He walked over to the dragon and stroked his muzzle. "Welcome back old friend, I've missed you" In answer, the dragon threw back his massive head and let forth a torrent of flame into the night sky. He looked over at Reka who bowed slightly to him. "Welcome back master." Mica stirred and looked into the face of the man for the first time. He knew that face, he was there when Brom thrust his own sword, Zar'roc, through his heart, he was there when his dragon screamed and fell. There was no mistaking him … Morzan has returned.