Evander watched the snow fall heavier as he took in the clearing he and his brother once loved. It was the one place they could be alone without the structure of their mother and father. Sadly, it now held a bitter memory, a memory that he shall not soon forget. This was the place where he lost his brother for the second time. There was nothing left of O'Leander. Nothing left to save. Nothing worth saving, anyway.
He took his time as he made his way out of the clearing and back to the tree line where Onyx was waiting. The snow was becoming harder to trudge through amongst the already tightly-packed trees.
His mind was calm and calculated, contrary to what most other people could say. He had been trained intently on mental-focus and self mastery, so his thoughts were in his control and not the reverse. Though instead he felt lost. As if everything he was to do now was all for different reasons. His brother returning had thrown his world into chaos and he all but forgot about the war that had been violently thrown into his lap. He had to remember that O'Leander was a threat and he should be concerned with him as such.
He pulled himself together and broke from the tree line. His ever-supportive son had been waiting for him there sitting upon his massive shire horse, Tolish. His long brown mane blowing gently in the snow-chilled air. He knew where his father would emerge as Onyx had been left behind to guard. The jet-black horse had relaxed when he saw his friends approaching from the west.
"Welcome back, father," Alrid said with a heavy relief present on his shoulders. "How was your meeting with O'Leander?"
Evander had hoped that it wasn't obvious that he had been crying. He refused to let others see his weaknesses, even ones as close as his son. "It went about as well as I could have hoped." He greeted Onyx with a hand and then mounted and with a glance to his son he said, "He may have one less limb when next you meet him."
Alrid shown an interested face until he recalled what the king had said, "You can spin me your tale later, father. The king has requested our presence, he has something to show us. He has already summoned Melganoth."
With a nod from Evander, they galloped across the snowy plains of their once-great homeland. It now lay burned and scarred in places where the enemy had traveled. Varamont's forces left nothing but ruin in their wake and it was a sorry sight to behold.
Standing outside the castle walls stood the king, Den and Melganoth. From what Alrid could see over the great distance with his elven eyes, the king had been holding a jar with cloth wrapped over it.
"What do you see, my son?" his father had to yell over the thundering hooves as their gallop remained constant.
"The king is holding a jar. Something is inside but shielded from sight!" Alrid cried out. Their pace quickened as whatever King John had wanted to show them gave the men the sense that it was time-sensitive.
They arrived shortly and greeted the others of their Trust in turn. Dismounting, Evander approached the king, "What have you found, John? Something interesting I hope."
The king chuckled heartily, "You could say that is the case. Have Henry look after Onyx and Tolish. I have been waiting to share this with you all." He referred to everyone then with the last part.
Evander and Alrid sent off their steeds with pats on their front shoulder to the stables. Henry would know what to do when they arrived.
"Should we not go inside from this cold, ye?" Den asked with a shiver. His native home of the Iron Isles was a much warmer climate than down this far south and he had not yet adjusted to it. It seemed that over twenty years was not enough time for the dwarf to acclimate.
"No, I wish not to take this inside," the king explained. "You will soon see why. I had left it with my knight's commander when I went to find you lot earlier."
Melganoth towered over them, his massive arms crossed over his chest as he waited for the king to get on with it. "You're keeping me in suspense, my king."
Slowly, as to not alarm the slug inside, the king revealed the contents as the cloth fell away. Melganoth instantly crouched to get a better look, his eyes sparkled with intense curiosity. "The abyss..." He looked at the king, "How...where did you find this?"
The king knew that Melganoth would be the most interested in this discovery. "It was left behind after the raid on Bromidium Keep. This was the topic of my meeting with the kings."
The demon's eyes remained fixated on the slug as Evander asked the king, "Is everyone alright? Do they need any assistance to rebuild?"
"They are quite alright, all things considered," the king answered. "They have only suffered minimal damage, though I cannot speak for the casualties. It seems the raid was more of a demonstration of Varamont's new ability. Well, new to us."
"Ability?" Den asked.
"It seems that he can now raise the dead at will," the king exhaled. This new turn now solidified in his mind as if saying it aloud made it true.
"This is ill news," Evander considered ways in his mind on how to proceed against this new threat. "As if we didn't already have enough to deal with."
"Bradevere mentioned that fire was very effective against the abyssals," the king added. "He also mentioned they acted quite differently than they had during the Great War."
"How so?"
"He said they used each other to climb the walls when their ladders were made useless," the king thought for a moment. "Terrifying sight, he said it was."
Melganoth had somehow taken the jar from the king's hands as he was speaking without him taking notice. The demon inspected the slug intently now, its sickly purple hue spiked his intrigue.
"Might I take this to my lab?," he asked. "I would very much like to run some tests on it if I may."
"Of course," the king said happily. "It is the reason why I have brought it all this way. Viscount was not the most eager for a demon touched by the abyss to handle the task but I vouched for you. You have full reign of how it is handled. You are the expert here after all."
Watch out for you friend, Evander recalled the warning his brother gave him. This was too convenient to not have been planted. "Do not take it out of the jar!" Evander almost shouted it out. "O'Leander warned me to watch out for a friend. I think that friend is you and what we have to watch out for is that thing in the glass prison. This all seems to be a bit of a coincidence."
The demon now looked at the slug with different eyes, "Thank you for the warning, my friend. I shall be especially careful with it. I shall not let it out of my sight and as well I shall keep it locked within a chest when I cannot watch it."
"Excellent," the king excitedly said. "Will you come have supper with us before you depart? I am sure you get lost in your work and forget your need for food and drink."
"You make a fair judgment," Melganoth answered. "I shall join you." He looked around, "Where shall we keep this in the meantime?"
"We may leave it with my knight's commander for the time being," the king raised an arm in the direction of the castle gates. "He is aware of its toxicity and he will keep it safe."
"Excellent," Evander said. "Now let's go. I am quite ready to eat."
"You always are," the king chuckled.
After many hours of eating and drinking, the night wore on late. Following the recent events with Evander's brother and the new threat of walking corpses, it was nice to have a night of relaxation. Sadly, these kinds of nights were exceedingly rare and would only lessen as the war continued.
The two-year old O'Leander Drayton who had just been taken from his home was thrown into a cell in the realm of Demons. The cell was not one made from steel but one made of flesh and bone. It reeked horribly and his clothes were now saturated in a thick black substance from the floor he sat on. He noticed that he was the only one in this room where the cell was built.
A man, or at least what looked like a man to the eyes of the young boy, knelt in front of the cage. No words left his lips as he inspected the terrified child who held his knees tightly to his chest as he cried for his family.
The man scoffed at the sorry sight of the child, Pathetic, he thought. O'Leander looked in the direction of the man but the shadows of the room were unnaturally dark. He could not make out any discernible features of the man that watched him.
He stood from the child and methodically walked from wherever the cell was kept. In an instant, the room was drowned into the depths of impossible darkness when the light from the outside was shut off as the man closed the door. O'Leander was now ultimately alone in complete darkness.
For days he was left like this to cry and starve. On very rare occasions, something resembling that of food was brought to him. He would scramble towards the food only for it to be ripped away and eaten for him to watch. The other men laughed hatefully as his stomach tore at his insides as he had not eaten in an indiscernible amount of time.
The only time he was actually given food was when the first man he saw since getting in the cage brought it to him. Over the months of the cat and mouse game of the other men teasing him with food and the first man feeding him, he learned to love this man. In a sick and twisted way he thought of this man as his father, or at the very least a father figure. The one who cared for him and would not see him go hungry.
The older O'Leander grew the more brutal his torture became. At first it was starvation and isolation to break his mind and to form a synthetic love for the man. Then he was submersed into the thick black substance until inches from drowning. Every time after he would be thrown back into the cell by the other men.
The man would then console him without words and only with the smallest bit of food, not much more than suitable for a rat. O'Leander never saw the light of day during the majority of his torture nor did anyone ever speak to him. He lived in darkness and in mind-breaking isolation for decades. He broke further and further, day by day, month by month, year by year.
When he reached young adulthood the torture amplified even further. He was hanged by his wrists for days at a time, his toes barely able to grace the floor. That was when the physical abuse began. Now that his mind had been substantially broken, it was time to break his body.
He was gagged by a cloth saturated in the black liquid tied around his head and mouth. With each swallow of the very little saliva he was able to produce, he was unknowingly ingesting the abyss. He still was completely unaware of what the liquid was.
His body was beaten with steel batons and burned with red-hot iron poles. He would be slashed with whips that split into four strands at the end and each had a sharpened metal knife. With every painful impact he only grunted and cried as he had never been spoken to and since he knew not how to speak nor had any knowledge of any known language.
He would die countless times during this period of the existence one would not even call life. It was a life that even death would not take. He would be left to bleed out for days until dead. Then in a very unceremonious manner, the man would resurrect him with dark magic. His blood would be returned to him and he would breathe life again. Then the same man would comfort him in his wordless and cruel manner.
O'Leander had grown to think that the man was his only friend in this evil place, wherever this place was. He knew not that the man was the one ordering all of the pain that had been inflicted upon him and all of the future misery that had yet to come.
By the time the young adult O'Leander had reached full adulthood he had died hundreds of times. He had lost more blood than even the Great War had spilt on both sides which had happened during his imprisonment.
For what reasons was he subjected to such misery? Was it for the amusement of the man who comforts him? Was it for the purpose of military strategy? It made no difference because yet here he was anyway.
O'Leander was allowed to come and go as he pleased as he was no longer his own man. The Great War of the continent had come and gone. O'Leander's mother, Cassandra, had been slain over twenty years ago by this point in his life.
There was just one thing left to do. He would be made into a carrier of the abyss. The last bit of humanity that was left in him would be taken away to ensure his complete servitude to the man.
He knew not of what was to come as he lay strapped down to a solid stone table set in the midst of another dark and bone-built room. The table was drenched in blood and the dark matter that had been present around him his entire life.
Bags of the abyss hung upon a thin rope which stretched down from the low ceiling. The other men surrounded him as the man he had grown to love stood at his feet and he heard speech for the first time in over four decades. "You will be like me."
Jut then O'Leander took notice of the tubes that had been injected into his arms at the inside elbow. The man then snapped his fingers and O'Leander's blood began to drain ever so slowly from his flesh.
This was the absolute pinnacle of the pain he had endured up to this point. His life was quite literally being pulled forcefully from him and he was powerless to stop it. His heart rate quickened to compensate for the blood loss but it too began to slowly give out. With each passing beat it slowed to a crawl.
His head began to swim and his world grew darker. His organs screamed from the inside and the pain he experienced was beyond anything his mind would allow. He wanted to pass out but somehow the man had been able to prevent that too.
Each second felt like a lifetime as he slowly died. And to make his death even more of a tragedy, all of his blood was not drained into a bag but discarded right onto the sickly floor. His blood was not even valuable enough to save.
Death finally took him when his body could no longer function without blood. His world went dark and he was back home with his brother, mother and father. They sat around the supper table enjoying a meal together. There was laughter and a nice fire warming the small hut. He seemed to be of young adult years from the look of Evander.
Cassandra seemed perplexed at him from across the table, "What's wrong, dear? You look lost."
Before he could answer, a sudden and intense sharp pain struck his chest. More specifically his heart. He hadn't realized it wasn't beating until it started up again. He clutched his chest as he was ripped from home for a second time.
His eyes opened and the vibrant blue eyes he once possessed were now that of a pitch black gloss. He drew in a painful breath using dead lungs and his entire body burned as if the very fires of Hell were inside him. He screamed out of pure rage and agony. He was still tied to the stone and he fought violently against the restraints.
He could feel strength returning and broke one of the restraints of his arm. He reached out for one of the other men and clasped his hand over the man's esophagus. He squeezed with the strength of a hundred men and ripped it free from its throat.
He flung the removed part across the room as a new-found hatred and rage took root deep within his blackened heart.
"Where. Is. My. Brother?" he growled with a malice that the man had never seen nor has ever seen again.
Varamont said nothing as a wicked grin developed over his twisted face.
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