KOHKOL: Session 05 -- Prologue 'The Inheritance'

The Inheritance

Ranges of mountains stretched further than an eye could perceive. They stood in a series of rows like a shark’s teeth, one row after another, awaiting the chance to cause harm to any who managed to bypass the first. Above these ‘teeth’ the light of this place’s sky was harsh. The light didn’t bathe those lit by it so much as scour them. Faces seen elsewhere as less than average were exaggerated into horrible caricature. Those who might have been thought of as ultimate examples of their kind looked tired and severe.


A dry, gusty wind blew through a chasm filled with tumbled-down rocks that had fallen from the walls making up its sides. At the bottom, the rocks had been rounded not by waters but only by the wind. A troop of soldiers picked its way along the chasm floor, moving around the rocks. They moved slower than their kind would be expected to. Veer were accounted as the swiftest of Races. In this place they moved no quicker than the weary. The dry wind passed over the Veers’ chain-fashioned armours, bringing only irritation and no comfort. For some of the Veer brigade, this meant the continuous wind had dried their skin to the point that it was chafed, red, raw. For others, more mindful of their weapons, it meant that they had to repeatedly apply oils to their weapons so that the wind didn’t pit the surfaces exposed to the wind’s effects.



For one Veer the wind bothered him because it kept blowing his blonde hair across his eyes, making a mask he could not see through. He had given up moving the long strands from his face. The wind had won this struggle against Emblem of the Delve and he did not care. It wasn’t his hair or his poor vision as a result of his hair that was bothering him. It was his legs. There was something wrong with them. He could move them, that wasn’t the issue. They felt strangely... supple? That might be the best way to put it, supple and less strong at the same time. Longer too, if he wasn’t seeing that detail badly. Longer legs? Impossible. That was his hair getting in the way. Emblem decided that none of the things that affected him were worth worrying over. Worry about them why? His mind began to drift. Emblem shook his head to move his annoying fringe as much as to clear it... Once back on his feet he’d only be expected to continue fighting. There was plenty of fighting enough to go ‘round. The fights to come would wait. Better to sit here until his legs stopped hurting. Until then, he didn’t need to care.



He didn’t care that he was being left behind by Veer of the Der Alfmar either. Alfmarkind were as good, or as bad, as any to be with. Emblem only needed a company of Veer to be among, for the safety they provided against the more mindless of those they fought. Not that these Der Alfmar were greater fighters and sorcerers than others. He only used them as a fish might be part of a larger group to avoid being alone against a hunter in an expanse of hunters. He’d let them get a head-start.



Emblem was a bowman. That meant good things and bad things. One of the good things was that he could kill monsters from a distance and avoid some of their noisome effects. Effects that were so virulent that he’d often had to forgo retrieving his arrows from a slain enemy. Getting close to some of the monsters would mean a potential visit from the Godflex. Not a thing he wanted to experience. Emblem had seen too many changes made by the Godflex upon the soldiers of, Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei. The luckiest had become fervent idolators of the enemy they fought. The less fortunate had warped into collages of Veer and slavish monster. Another Veer, one of more studious manner, who was a keen observer of nature, might find the process of this chaotic change worthy of study. Emblem was no ‘unnaturalist’. He only wanted out. Out of the endless warring. Out of the ceaseless wandering that came between altercations. Out and away from this ‘world’.




Warren. Emblem let the world’s name whisper in his mind. Everyone placed here, somehow knew the name. The name meant the place was an inter-connected series of battlefields. Combats were not to win territory but the right to exist. None of those brought to Warren had the right to live. All brought to Warren had previously perished. Warren was something’s idea of an almost final resting place. Not much of a haven for the departed. Emblem thought it interesting that there were some here who remained resolute in their beliefs, despite this obvious sign that their deepest held hopes for final peace were foolish. The power that placed them here made the name, Warren, known to all. The power had detailed that those assembled needed to win their continued existence or be consigned to history. Emblem had no desire to be treated like a scroll slotted on to a rack to collect dust until some pupil might casually examine him and discard him in a bin.



To be forgotten.



Emblem didn’t want that so he’d fought. He fought alongside the few Delve he’d arrived with. People he knew. His brother and two cousins had been with him. Where they’d gotten to after the Delvish army had been obliterated, he had heard no clue. He’d fought with a Vast host. He’d aided a strange godling that named itself, Seth. That had gone well. Well enough, until Seth had been ‘flexed’ into some kind of ravenous beast, wolf-like, standing on eight legs, as large as a castle and with the voice of your best friend. A thing of horrors that might have been contagious. Emblem had barely survived to escape Seth.



Both of his cousins had called to him to hold with them against the Godflexed Seth, but Emblem had known he needed range between himself and Seth if he was to have any hope of killing him. He’d shouted this to his cousins but to this moment he didn’t know if they’d heard him. His sense of that fight was obscured . Only one thing was clear in his cloudy memory of that fight: his bow had killed the godflexed-monster. He thought of his bow in that nameless way. It didn’t have a nickname or a title bestowed on it as a shipwright might give his vessel. Emblem just thought of it as ‘his taken bow’. A decent bow of the crossbow kind. It had been his grandfather’s. His brother had received a crossbow from their grandfather as well. They were a matching pair.



His grandfather had been the strongest Delve, Emblem had ever seen. Other Veer said the same of him, proclaiming him stronger than all but the heroic Veer of the Marillion.


As his grandfather drifted away, in the manner of the Veer, the old Delve had mouthed Emblem’s name and that of his brother. They were both to take a crossbow each. Emblem took the oaken crossbow, noted for its power. It was a weapon made to destroy. The twin bow known for its lightness and accuracy had gone to Dagnyr. That had been a century and more ago. Emblem had moved away when his domus had been fashioned. That occurrence and the wars of Pantheoniks and the struggles between the Races and the forces of the Mule, had made a new life for Emblem. He hadn’t seen his family from that time to his arrival on Warren. When he’d arrived on Warren it had come as a pittance of surprise in a heaped portion of shock that his cousins and Dagnyr had arrived as well. There was trust there that could not be found among the gathered armed hosts, allied or no.



His arrow had flown from the crossbow, not aimed at all, more a general wish of a shot toward the godflexed Seth. Emblem had little choice as he was dragging a leg and the other leg was near as bad. He could not hope to evade the thing much longer. Gigantic as the slavering, wolfish monster was, a quick-shot firing was not too bad an idea. It struck one of the monstrous hind legs. Emblem had cursed himself for at least not raising the bow to cause the arrow to fly into the bulk of Seth. The godflexed had seven other legs even if he’d managed to disable the one he hit. Before the godflexed thing, his cousins raised their weapons. Emblem was paying little attention. His body moved through loading his finest arrow. He called it, Glythiss.


Drawn weight set to maximum


Latch ring locked


Lever set and tensioned


Furrow gilded


Arrow flights smoothed, furrowed and nocked


Emblem remembered sighting along the arrow’s apex barb. He had searched the godflexed for a spot more tender than the rest. An eye? It had two... it’s throat? The armour there was too thick looking... Inside the mouth? A tricky thing to time...


He realised what he might aim at, lowered his eye to the bow and shot. The arrow flew with very little arc. It sped as if being drawn to its target instead of being fired from Emblem’s bow.



The Seth-monstrous-godflex’s nose exploded as the arrow had entered it. Gore had flown everywhere. Emblem smiled at the memory. One of his better shots. As he’d hoped the godflexed’s nose was extremely sensitive. Wolves’ noses, even godflexed ones, were seemingly made that same way. A testament to whatever it was that Seth had been before it had been transformed. Emblem had looked for his relatives but there was no sign of any of the three. Not seeing them was a better thing than knowing that they had been godflexed.



Small takings are still takings.



He turned to see to his legs, he was sure they were too long now. He looked about the chasm. Maybe his legs were fine. It was his vision that was odd. The chasm looked different too. It was shaded in striped, wavering hues that Emblem had never seen in his time on Warren. There was a spindly creature approaching where he sat. Friend or foe? Emblem reached for his bow, just to have it readied. He couldn’t bring his hand to pick it up. The bow sat on the ground but it was unreachable. What was wrong with it? He blinked twice to fix his perception. He realised not reaching the bow was not a visual problem he was having. He had no arms to reach out with. He blinked again, this time in realisation of two things; he had succumbed to the Godflex and he still could think, was still himself. He was a ‘monstrous thing’ but he was still, Emblem.


Dagnyr came around a boulder. His brother had come this way. Dagnyr’s bow hung loosely from the crook of his elbow. If not for this, the bow might easily have fallen from him. His wounds were serious. Even so, his first impulse was to find his brother. Emblem had doubtless saved his life with a last, explosive shot. Emblem had probably used Glythiss. That arrow was Emblem’s best. Dagnyr only knew that his brother had kept secret who the arrow had been taken from.



Dagnyr spotted Emblem’s bow and quiver. They sat on the rocky ground but his attention shifted to another thing sitting close to the crossbow. A comical snake. Dagnyr was like any other when it came to snakes -- they weren’t normally amusing. However, this snake did elicit from Dagnyr’s mouth a smile. It was something in the way it was rigidly bent in the middle. The back half was straight upon the ground and the front half went straight up, its underside to the boulder. The snake’s yellow head did most to create the humour of its posture by being turned around to face away from the boulder. It was the mixture of the head facing the wrong way and the snake’s right-angled stiffness that almost made Dagnyr laugh. He didn’t need to fight off the laugh as he was too worn to expend the effort. He was careful too. Snakes could be venomous and Warren’s snakes ... Dagnyr bent to pick up Emblem’s bow. The snake hissed, staccato. Dagnyr halted his hand. There were guardian snakes, he vaguely remembered. Some childhood tale? Cobras could be kings? Something of the deserts’... Dagnyr shrugged and moved his bow to a purposeful position at his hip.


“A boulder makes a poor armchair to rest your bones on, my flexible friend.” The snake’s hisses were even more sharp. Dagnyr was almost sure the snake thought it was speaking to him. Dagnyr shrugged. If a snake wanted to talk to a Veer, it should have learned his language.


“You haven’t the means to use this weapon. It belonged to my grandfather. My brother must have dropped it here. I’m not ‘taking’ it, you understand? Just safeguarding it. If you meet another called, Emblem, be a good snake and point in the direction I go?”


The snake trembled. The snake might have tried to strike at his hand as Dagnyr stopped to put the bow atop his own, he couldn’t be sure if that was what the creature’s movement had meant. He attached Emblem’s quiver beside his own. The crossbow’s weight was uncomfortable. He’d get only so far lugging about both his bow and Emblem’s heavier one. Dagnyr strengthened his resolve and moved past the snake and its ‘boulder-chair’. His footsteps’ numbers rose as he climbed up a narrow ledge on a wall of the chasm. Hundreds of steps. Thousands. At a worrisome, weary and indeterminate point, Dagnyr’s feet had trudged further than he could number. At that exact point, where the time he’d walked in solitude became his existence, he noticed the burden of Emblem’s crossbow had gone. It was the nature of Veerkind to drift away. Emblem’s bow had become spectral and vanished. Dagnyr quietly breathed a farewell to his brother. He wondered at the bow's drift but not for too long as he felt himself slipping away. The wounds. They went deep. He felt weaker than before. Less physically... capable...


Dagnyr felt strong. That was odd as he had been drifting comfortably just a moment before. Light surrounded him. He had often heard humans call the experience being 'bathed in light'. He'd never really thought about the phrase before not being given to the poetic, as some of Veerkind were prone to be. Delve had better things to be about than scrolling poems. There wasn't much point that at this moment, that's where he felt he was, 'bathed in light'. A voice penetrated the Orange-tinged light. Penetrated -- the voice might emanate from the light.


"Dagnyr, I am Dragon A'Bramha.

Dragon is a title I bear. It means ruler. Not a ruler of places or lives. I am a ruler of a singular thing --a thought. This thought is something known to all the realms and all the things, intrinsic, ephemeral, real, small and great and sentient within them. This thought is of an overriding nature -- that of the goodness that exists everywhere and in all times, must eventually be paramount. Thoughts to the contrary must be watched for and defended against until these thoughts fade from the minds and places of the realms. In you, Dagnyr, I sense a kinship that arches above our differences. Do not think to confuse yourself with thoughts of your time or your cause, your wants, needs or desires. My thought is a beacon and you see it around you. Do not drift away to join your kind. Come with me and be renewed. In the service of my Noble Thought, you can be an aid to all. Serve the me, the Good Dragon. You will forever be lighted."


Dagnyr realised his thoughts were consumed with knowing only this Dragon. The Thought. In thinking this, he found himself transported to a forest wood, cool, dark and calm. Wildlife of the smaller orders scurried, bustled, skittered or croaked from beyond his sight. He saw the back of a broad, bare-chested figure before a house. The figure knocked, then awaited the door of this house to open. When it opened, the figure stepped inside. Dagnyr knew he was to wait. He knew that the wait would not be long and somehow that the figure that had gone inside the house was the Dragon.