The Eternal Curse of Mayfil
Excellent. This chapter marks the end of revision and the beginning of new material. Rejoice.
I own nothing exept my plot and characters.
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Once again...on with the show!
Chapter III
Everything around her was cold. All she could feel was terrible, expansive, unrelenting cold. She found that her eyes were closed after gathering her senses, and set herself about the difficult task of opening them. Once she did, she blinked a few times. She was in some kind of ethereal plane, she guessed. There was nothing but blue energy surging around as far as the eye could see, and an awful, biting cold wind.
When she looked down she saw that her feet were frozen to the ground. Rather, frozen to what appeared to be the ground. The wind was causing ice to form around her feet and slowly form up her legs as well. She panicked for a split second, and then pulled her wits about her for the second time.
Scanning her memory for any idea of where she could be, she finally remembered the legend of the Schism—the gap between the worlds of the living and the dead. It seemed she had made it there. 'So it's finally all over...perhaps some rest will come to me now,' she thought to herself as she looked around her once again. Finally, Rose would be able to relax.
First, however, she had to set about how to get to the world of the dead before she was frozen. She didn't have to think long, however, as a voice came out of the nothingness, speaking her name.
"ROSE!" it said loudly. The suddenness of it sent a shock through Rose. "ROSE!" it came again. Rose couldn't think of anything else to do, so she returned the call. "I am Rose, who would summon me?" she called out into the nothingness. Out of the blue energy, a sort of non-light formed and condensed into the shape of a woman, and then slowly she began to walk toward Rose.
She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was of medium height, with long, flowing, waist-length black hair and ice blue eyes glowing through from her ghost white skin. She wore a white robe, and in one hand was a staff made of shimmering gold. "I am Mortska, the keeper of the Gates of Life and Death," she said. She made no move. Her voice was cold and chilling.
"I am here to ask of you which world you would chose," Mortska said as she slightly pointed her golden staff at Rose. "To choose the world of death will forever separate you from the world of the living. To choose the world of life will send you to walk the lands of Endiness as a spirit until the world meets its end." Mortska's eyes met Rose's. "And not to choose will strand you here as a frozen, immobile spirit for all of eternity." Mortska took a step forward.
Rose looked around her. She knew for a fact that the Schism wasn't where she wanted to end up. She knew the world was safe now, so she didn't think that choice was necessary. Besides that, she had friends in the world of the dead. She took a breath, and let it out. She breathed in slowly one more time, and let the words flow.
"I choose death," Rose said quietly. Mortska smiled a cold smile, and said "Very well," in her flat, nearly toneless voice. "This way," she said, and walked off.
Soon they came upon a set of gates. They were wrought of gold, and there was a symbol from archaic times engraved on the top of the gates. Probably an ancient Wingly rune from when Melbu controlled both worlds, she guessed. Mortska inserted her staff into the keyhole, and a loud snick could be heard as the lock moved and opened. Mortska smiled as she pointed through the gates. "Rose, enjoy your repose," she said. "Soa knows you deserve it." Her voice was no longer as cold, and for a second Rose thought that she had heard a strange and beautiful quality to it.. Mortska pointed through the gate once more and Rose walked through. She was quickly enveloped in a blue light, and reappeared in a place with sunshine and familiar buildings.
'Interesting,' she thought to herself. 'The afterlife looks a lot like Vellweb.'
Mayfil still sat on the barren plain silently emitting its deceptive call to the departed souls of Endiness. During the Dragon Campaign, the Dragoons freed all the souls trapped there when the city went down. However, it still had the power to capture certain souls. Like that of its creator, for one.
Melbu Frahma was trapped in a room he couldn't recognize. There was no light here, and all around him were loud moans of anguish. Next to him, a familiar voice said something. "Your Majesty," it said. There was no mistaking that voice. It was Faust.
General Faust, commander of the Imperial Wingly Forces. The man who gallivanted around Endiness in that horrible floating Tower of Flanvel. In the eyes of Melbu he was to blame for the loss of the Dragon Campaign. He clearly remembered the day they figured out the secret to the downfall of the Dragoons.
The Dragoons, they discovered, worked as a unit. Separate, they were formidable foes, but nothing the Imperial Wingly Army couldn't handle. However, together they were an almighty and unstoppable force. That was the point of the attacks on Vellweb—to assassinate Zieg, their leader. Weakening their number by one seemed like it wouldn't accomplish much, but with no leader they would have to take a long time to recover and to plan their next move. But something went terribly wrong with that plan.
Melbu and Faust had planned a superb attack on Vellweb. They would send the Tower of Flanvel and a large sum of Imperial forces to the city. The Dragoons, however, managed to confuse the forces of the Imperial Winglies and crash the tower down. Faust barely escaped with his life that day.
The next attack they would bring upon Vellweb was a sure win. They began to move Mayfil, the City of Death, to Vellweb and summoned up an even larger army than they did with Flanvel. They moved on Vellweb, and it was chaos. There was no chance for the people of Vellweb. The Winglies slaughtered them, and the Dragoons barely managed to escape.
That was when the Winglies thought they had the human rebellion finally crushed. But something went horribly wrong. The Dragoons looked down upon Vellweb from the sky, seeing their homes, families, and friends burned, destroyed, and killed. The carnage and emotional overload pushed them over the edge. They all simultaneously summoned their vassal dragons, something they hadn't been able to do before, and the combined force took Mayfil away from Vellweb and brought it down in the desert.
The Imperial Wingly Force was then chased back to Kadessa, and their plan was completely thwarted. Faust barely survived this one, but was angered that not only did he fail to destroy the Dragoons, but also they had saved the souls of all the humans there from being immediately trapped in Mayfil.
Emperor Melbu Frahma was beyond fury at Faust's continued string of failures. He told him he had one last chance to take down the Dragoons. After all, they only had one city left to destroy, and it was the capital of the Wingly Empire.
Kadessa was by far the most fortified and populated city of the Winglies, though. The Dragoons hid in the forestland near it to plan their attack. They rallied human support and summoned an army the likes of which the Winglies had never seen. It seemed every member of every enslaved race was there to do battle with them. Melbu remembered looking down over the exterior wall of Kadessa and seeing this, and seeing the terrified face of his older sister. She said something to him he would never forget. "Fool! You tried to make yourself God, and now you're going to die, Melbu. You're going to be stuck in the hell you yourself created. Mayfil is waiting for its creator!"
Kadessa, after a long and tiring battle, eventually fell at the hands of the Dragoons. Melbu was defeated, but as history tells he put his soul into the spirit of the Red-Eye Dragon to be reawakened one day.
But even reawakened, he was defeated. And forgiven by them. It was all so confusing. However, none of that mattered now, he was here, just like Charle told him he would be.
"Nice to see you again," Faust said in a sarcastic tone. Melbu was surprised. Was this some sort of cosmic joke? Soa couldn't possibly be angry with him, he did what he was expected to do! He was supposed to carry out her will. And now he was stuck next to the one man who couldn't do anything right.
"The feeling is mutual," Melbu replied. "So, your Godliness, what do we do now? We're both in here; this is your fantastic creation. How do we get out?" Faust inquired, making no effort to disguise his intentions. "First we get out of these chains," Melbu said. He easily broke his, and then Faust's. He used his power to make light in the room.
The room was vast. This was the first hell he had designed—that for humans. However, when Mayfil went down most of them were freed. Melbu and Faust sprouted their blue wings, and Melbu let the way up and out of the room.
"We have to be careful, or we'll be sucked through the gate to the Schism," Melbu said. So with that they carefully picked their path through the city, avoiding all the paths that led to the center of the city. Several hours later, they reached the top of the city and climbed out.
They could see out to the barren plains where the explosion of the Moon That Never Sets had made a huge crater. The remains of the Divine Tree were scattered everywhere, pieces of wood and bark had fallen from the crater and out across the desert. "Let's go. We have a world to take back."