N.E.O. -- Nomen est Omen: Game 0.5 Aeson, The Sword & Amen
General Summary
‘No scribe is short of food -- nor the man who knows the Names of others -- of the wealth of nations nor the rewards of thrones.’No more. These souls are mine, not yours.
‘I must insist on a continuance. I came willingly to you. This is why I did come within. To do my best, in a place which needed it most.’
I allowed entrance, foolish child of man. Those you have freed were problematic, but not in the manner you have judged them to be. E’en in this, you do as I would have it.
‘Perhaps I should free you from this prison.’
Do so, Human. I await your emancipation. . . So much for your surety. You know a fear that many do not. I might be unleashed in violent freedom that e’en in this form, dread as it is, I am not so capable. It beggars the mind, does it not?
‘I will not free you. You shall remain as you are. Known and Named is far safer for the worlds than unfettered.’
Then, go forth and start your rot as all mortals must. No more the haven of my person shall you have. Take death’s breath for yours once more. I expunge thee, Pietro Numerica. I disown thee, Surtice Lye. I brand you Aeson, a human of no family Name. You are spelled of your immortal timelessness here. Get thee behind me, Aeson.
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Powdered glass ground into every crease of Aeson’s face. Despite the welcome novelty of this real-world sensation, he couldn’t deny the irritation it was already causing. A voice at his right said, “Wear this. It will aid.” Shielding his face from the wolf-wind-whipped debris, he saw he’d been handed a dull-gold, faceted mask. Mindful of an ancient proverb of being wary of an unexpected gift from passers-by, Aeson glanced at it only briefly before putting the mask on. The glass needles pinged and toned off the mask’s surface.
“Here, let me look at you. Does it fit well? It will then, if it does not now, Sha!”
“I cannot see from it.”
“You aren’t alarmed. Enu, This is guud.” The stranger spoke with inflections that were half a-ways to poetry.
“If I were worried, I would remove it.”
“Sha! You could, so you could. But not just yet. Suun you will see and not only see. See the glassmist opens the mask to your vision. Sha, it polishes the mask tuu! How it shines. Like the Att – what will you name it? Like a -- daystar. Not this world’s though. It is a pallid thing. Not guud for much.”
“The time has come to offer me your Name.”
“So suun is it?”
“It is already overdue.”
“I sense you will not be put off?”
“___”
“Not a man to be denied this merest of things. Enu, I am called, Amen. Does this satisfy?”
“It will do.”
“Sha! You are an odd one. Skin so pale.”
“I have been a long time away from the light of a daystar.”
“In returning, you chose this? It is no paradise but a hell, the Warhammer. You would do better elsewhere for a time. I can send you from this place to that of your birth. Would that not suit your present purpose? A guud world in need of your gift. Fated for confliction as it is, you might make it something other. All here are dead or duumed unto death.”
“What are you? Why don’t you fear the bane sword? I have just come from it. It can’t be far from here. It brings worse than death.”
“Dead or duumed. I am one of this pair, Man. Besides, it has moved on. Something you said? Sha! That sword has many to select from here. Lost souls, bemoaning their fate, without realising the danger they’re near. Come Man, what do you think of my offer? Will you return to your birthplace, Guud O’Rahn, O’ Mirantian?”
The stranger truly could speak in an ancient, odd manner. When he’d said “O’ Mirantian”, he’d pronounced it as, “O’ Mere-Rahn-tian".
Aeson decided. “I... will.”
“Enu, Begone, I say. Begone!”
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There were no choices left to the general-crusader. Life reduced to a few, choice-less moments. The Cursed would fall on him. His bones would be smashed open and sucked on for marrow. He hoped he would not be denied death before this happened. Those who battered at the quickly assembled barricade of his comrades’ corpses, might make fast work of him. Small hope. They served a master that demanded they should take their time with him. They were made to revel in another’s anguish. To avoid torment he would have to make their hatred flare. He was almost convinced he had enough strength left to make his enemies believe he had more left to him than he did. The obstacle of bodies breathed. No, they heaved. The chaos spawned were already shifting them.
May the Lored dwell in me at the last.
The sword was not in the least ordinary. Longer by half again as most men could manage to use well. It had been faithful companion on this first of crusades against the Wretched Manifold. Accursed they are. My sword. Sforzand. Its name meant, a swift, sudden attack. A musical term. My sword. Made by Death himself. No reason to doubt that Death was the ultimate composer. Sforzand had never given cause to doubt it either. Be quick in coming for me, Maestro!
The corpses fell away to his left, a loose sliding mass of human loam that repulsed him. His companions, reduced to lackluster limbs and sinews. This and nothing greater making them human. No grimly shared asides now, eh men?
The Bloodbound tossed the last of the dead aside. They slavered for fresh life. Each of these profanities took in that here was only one man. Their greed was stoked. One man’s blood was not going to go far. The two warclads elbowed at each other in their eager charge to the man.
“HE’S MINE!”
“MORTAL’S BLOOD FOR LORED KHORNE!”
“MINE, PEACABLE ONE!”
“WARD YOURSELF, WEAKNESS!”
The general-crusader struck his sword blade against a lost comrade’s helm that had rolled to his foot. Sforzand didn’t protest but rather sang. The peals grew in volume. The brutes of Khorne stumbled into each other, their balance disturbed by the clean notes that issued from the man’s sword. One’s heavily festooned gauntlet was thrown upward in vain attempt to somehow block the pure tones. Primal Chaos has no liking for such sonic purity. The gauntlet smashed into the other’s elongated ear, causing that one to swing back out an instinctive spite, born of their master. They crashed to the ground, striking out each other, a seething sharp-tooth, blade-claw, vile casting and spittle-venomed morass.
Sforzand took one in its centre eye socket. The eye had been lost elsewhere but the blade sank deeply through its vacated home and into the daemonon’s brain. The calm crusader withdrew the sword, shifted his hold on the hilt and stabbed toward the second fiend. It was getting to its feet, hand pressing down on thigh just above the knee. Sforzand pinned hand to knee. Daemononic curses were thrown to the putrid sky.
“Come forward! My blood is warm! Come taste it. I dare you pretenders to power. I have no fear of you. I am born. I am the last of a True Lored. Come and drink of a Final Man and thirst forever afterward for that which will be denied you ever onward!”
The Bloodbound was a host, but they hesitated. They could smell the Man was as he claimed. Each knew it craved this man as they could few else. Some would fall before his refusal would be halted. None were ready to end their time. Each awaited another to lose their patience in the hunger to inflict pain upon this vile human. Some amid the host called out for Khorne to be satisfied by those closer to the crusader-man. These shouts stilled. The man’s moment, almost arrived.
A loathsome voice from the rear broke into the pause, a pool of darkest oil on demononic waters,
I claim this man. Not for some demon-become-king, as thrones are for asses. I, claim him. I am ancient Ur. I am the angel of mercy. I am dread emperor and scarfed slayer. I am levitation & Leviathan. I am gated Babylon. I am revealed, Stormbringer. I thirst. I shall quench in the blood and souls of demons who stand against me and mortals that beg me for piteous surcease. Stand aside or wish you had perished at your mewling birth. Behold me at your last, I am come!
The crusader saw the horde vanish beneath the fury of a black blade of hatred. Animate animus.
He knew he had been wrong to see his end coming. His would not be an end. Like the Chaos-host lying before him, he was to be eternally damned. All others taken, the floating rune sword turned to the man. It gloated that he was indeed the final man. As the blade fell upon him, the crusader-general, first of Cathedrons and last of Catherdrals, took what time was left to him to strike Sforzand against the helmet until he could strike the helm no more. Tears at his faithful sword’s song were shed from emptied eyes. Tears that dripped down the already blood-emblazoned bane sword’s fuller. Stormbringer, tasted the tears.
Thinned, red-salted honey offered up to a forgotten god.
In the aftermath, the battlefield looters of the Warhammer also known as the World of Warriors or the Tenth World Warren, were mystified to hear music being played among the corpses. Sforzand did not know its wielder was gone. It sang until scabbarded by a looter named Amen.
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Aeson felt that the glass ‘wasps’ were giving up their stinging. In truth, they did not but instead they were no longer so sharp. More just dust that was being thrown at him by the wind. He knew he was returned to Miranse. He couldn’t say whereabouts. The dust came from a caravan’s passage along the damaged roadway. He walked to intercept. The wagons drew up before the solitary walker. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was less than common for a single man to move through the countryside. Any man doing so deserved to be halted for. It was prudent and caravans had lore filled with stories of imprudent wagon masters and their fates in circumstances like this.
The custom was observed. Aeson was made welcome to the food to ease travel’s wear and to the drink of travel’s toil. They gave him dances by children of both welcome and joviality and then talked into late night, beneath an achingly familiar starred sky of the world of his founding. These were people of Tighan’s wooded lands. These did not recognise any nation’s banner. They knew the names of many stars. They were travellers and traders, free as trading travellers have always been. They spoke uncaringly of the trials of the lands’ politics. They knew some about much. Everyone was willing to speak to traders in hope of a better price!
Aeson learned of the Houselands’s rise in fortunes. The return of the old battle-horses (Juggernauts. They called them), that had long before, gained the noble families of this nation all of Coaseth. The traders seemed certain this news would mean that these ‘armigers’ and their retainer ‘squires and page-men’, would begin to influence the world as before. They warned Aeson, in hushed tones, of the Garrotting Gates now become, Found Sharda’an, Kingdom of the Cleftyck Queen (her name wasn’t known).
When Aeson learned of it, the youngest trader was convinced to tell her story of doing business with men of Kreccidoc and Raskurvury of Baym. They had said that Terach (the kingdom of Seynse O’Rahn and evil history), had fallen under a new curse. All children birthed in the last summer had no feet. She was aghast as she spoke of it, but she was brave in detailing the horror of the Season of Mothers’ Tears. Troubling as this was, Laveeshen (her birth name), said that the children were happy enough and that certain makers of carts had made wheeled chairs for them that they might be mobile.
This was the night that Aeson learned he was within the ever-shifting border of the Houselands. The caravan had an hour earlier left ‘Ruinous Bygone’. He was struck by the place-name being close to Amen’s last words to him. Coincidence was rarely unimportant and frequently unsettling. What was an hour lost when the pockmarked road led the way? Toward Bygone then. Coincidence should not be damned on all occasions, after all.
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Nomen est Omen
