Chapter Three –
The Darkness Stirs
Akhât ir n'et shívnôrstorak…
Legends of an ancient evil…
Nâstor azra reinor n'ete vaetron ríthfaednor…
Whispers that bespeak of a powerful darkness…
Etyrka nahz jezell, s'ríthfaedor estor shaáth, a'tar dranth nahz-ra'a indísaoir…
The world will fall, the darkness will come, and all will be lost…
S'ríth-Anstarinaor n'et Sytherria dran ílyor.
The Dark Lord of Sytherria has awakened.
Within a dream world, looking on at everything around him but unseen by any eye, he felt as if he was watching a strange, morbid dramatic performance. In the midst of a cavernous, being-filled corridor of black malachite: a stone as dark and ghostly as the figures that walked upon and within it, he stood in silence. There was an electrifying, unseen pressure on the air, as if a massive, black thundercloud full of wrath and wicked tongues of lightning were looming just above everyone's heads, awaiting the silent cue to let loose its fury.
'Something is going to happen,' it was whispered throughout the mottled and diverse crowd: composed of creatures of every shape and size and kind imaginable, but all dark and evil. This was a vile court – a court of the Dark Realm.
'Something is going to happen – he is coming.'
'He is coming…'
Drifting through the crowds, through the disgusting and frightful creatures and people, he soon came to a huge, circular room with a domed roof, upon the ceiling of which stretched a depiction of a black maelstrom, a storm of horrific proportions, of the worst kind.
'He is coming…' came the whisper in his ears…
A trembling silence came over the room then; all movement stopped, and every being within the place froze, and a dread fear came into their eyes. He could see it. The terror about him was almost tangible. It grew with each second…
Then, the darkness stirred.
He could not see this darkness, but he knew that it was there. In the deepest regions of his heart, he could sense the pang of the cold, aching recognition that was now awakened by the movement of this greatest darkness of all darkness. The place and people that surrounded him were both black…but this evil surmounted even them, and by far. This evil was the captain of all evil.
Something began to thud – to resound deeply, in the pit of his chest – but he couldn't tell if it was the beating of his own heart, or the Something that was coming forth from the dredges of the darkness, from behind the closed doors at the end of the room.
The silence intensified.
All held their breath.
The doors opened.
Ancient, familiar fear and loathing assailed him at once then, for he knew now that he recognized – without a doubt – the arrogant, towering black figure that stood at the thresh hold now, looking down from within the depths of a black hood: an icy, repelling set of waves seemed to come off of it, rippling into the room. A sound almost akin to the hiss of a snake – one gigantic, venomous, evil reptile – came from the crowd in the room: a greeting.
'Tis the Dark Lord.
Then a chill, musical woman's alto rang forth like cold steel from the silence. It was a voice that was devoid of any heart or soul, a voice that was empty and uncaring, but dripping with the black ink of evil. 'Ríth-Anstarinaor n'et Sytherria …Dark Lord of Sytherria…your time has come.'
A slow nod of the hooded head was all that the wraith – the only form that the life force of long-undead Dark Lord could manifest itself within – made in recognition of these words.
What he saw next was fast and blurred: the towering wraith, hooded and cloaked in black, with skeletal gauntlets upon its gloved hands, as he stood beside a tall, regal woman with fine, flawless skin of alabaster white, and hair that matched her black attire to the perfect degree, with eyes that burned within her painted face. Together, they stood before an altar-like black monument, looking down upon what lay atop it…
The still outline of a body shrouded in black silk…
A noise like a terrible whirlwind, and the shriek of all the most horrific creatures of the underworlds, and above it rose a chant in the tongue of the Dark Realm: calling the living figure of the Dark Lord of old back to life—
Two eyes of pure violet-gray flew open, staring straight at him—
Blackness, hissing.
Then…
'She will never escape my labyrinth…'
* * *
"Elowyn!"
Waking from the horrible dream that had overcome his mind, wresting himself from the blackness of unconsciousness, Orandor – Lord of the White Realm and the fortress of Avalennon – sat up quickly and began to gasp for breath, eyes wide and staring at the room that surrounded him, looking at it as if he had never seen it before.
He could feel a cold, icy sweat coating every inch of his skin, and there were horrible shudders of loathing, age-old fear running up and down his spine. The darkness of night seemed to close in around him, pressing against him as if it sought to choke the very life out of him, its fingers trying to find their way around his throat…
Then, next to him, Vahlada had also awakened and was now sitting up and reaching out to him, cornflower-blue eyes searching and worried: graceful, lovely features etched with both fear and concern. Her hand touched his arm.
"È-tor, my love, what is it?" she asked, her soft, gentle voice running like silk over the syllables of the faery name of affection.
Orandor closed his gray eyes and prayed to the Fates, the Seven Powers of the World, and the Three Themselves that what he had seen was not what he thought; meanwhile, Vahlada continued to gaze at him searchingly, a line appearing between her curving brows. Finally, he raised one hand and put it to his forehead, letting it pass over his eyes: fingertips briefly touching his suddenly very weary eyes.
"It was a dream, tel-anor," he replied, using the same tongue as she. "It was a dream…but of a kind unlike any that I have ever yet experienced."
Having said this, he raised his eyes and looked out into the room again, gaze focusing on some object that was beyond reach and tangibility. Vahlada did not take her eyes from him.
There was something in her husband's air that unnerved her. For hundreds of thousands of years, for millenniums past the mortal reckoning, she had seen each one of her beloved's reactions to everything, and she knew her mate as well as he knew her. When a faery took a mate, it was with the understanding that they will be together for all of eternity, conjoined as one, and both partners soon learn that they will know each other better than any other being in all the world. Vahlada had seen Orandor in many situations, ranging from grim to humorous to joyous to desperate…
But never yet had she seen him so troubled.
Slowly then, he reached out a hand to her, and she put her own hand within it. Orandor drew her to his side then, and they remained silent for a long while, arms draped about one another as the shadows of night continued to shift and change about them. At length then, he said, his voice low and pensive, as it was wont to be when he was in deep thought about something, "I do not know from whence it came, but it spoke of the return of the darkness – of evil incarnate and undefeatable. It spoke of the return of the One who would destroy us all."
The Dark Lord of Sytherria.
Vahlada remembered the Dark Lord well.
Hers had been a faery stronghold in the mortal world, and she, the warrior-princess daughter of a noble monarch – but the strength and potency of their magic had been far from enough to keep back the ravages of the Dark Realm. The dread lord of Sytherria had struck his most devastating blows at the very foundations of their land, and it had taken many long and arduous years to return it to its former status of peerless, pure beauty. She knew his name well. Never would she be able to forget, in all her life, the sight of that towering figure in black armor: throttling a helpless faery warrior in one hand, seizing the life from him.
Burying her head against her husband's strong, smooth shoulder, she closed her eyes and strove to banish those horrible memories of the darkness unassailable from her mind. Orandor's hand abstractedly ran itself over her flowing, wavy golden locks, as they both lapsed into silence.
" 'She will never escape my labyrinth…' it said," he murmured, softly. "Why does my mind fill with the thought of none other than the one who is to bring about the downfall of all evil? I cannot keep her from her destiny – I have long known this; no one can…"
S'ríthfaedor estor shaáth…
The darkness will come…
"What do you have planned for her, Lord of the Darkness?"
* * *
Author's Note: Just a side note here – the Dark Lord featured in this story, he's not exactly the Sauron type, if anyone sees a resemblance. Yes, they'd both be out for world-domination and the complete and uncontested rule of evil if they were actually real, but other than that, they're quite a bit different. (Bar an obsession with gothic looking armor…of course…) I just felt I should add that in there, so no one would sue me or whatnot for being a bad little copycat.