It was ritual. They danced, their swords clashing as the clouds moaned and the rain sliced down. To the gathered tribe the two seemed to become one being, a whirling mass of damp animal skin cloaks and iron. They had been brought up as equal, but he knew he was more. He could feel it by the ice in his heart and the fire in his veins. At this moment, at this precise moment, he was more. The demigods, the spirits, even Axkhavi...they would line up to kiss the ground beneath his feet.
He slew the other there, in the clearing atop the hill, with the tribe gathered for all to see. With his father watching from his deathbed, Xivak slew his own brother, in the clearing atop the hill. This ritual, the first of many, was done.
Ten days earlier
The tribe seemed to act quicker now that he had control of it. His father had operated it as a sluggish, ponderous thing but Xivak was determined to, at least for the first year, allow no slack in the tribe’s movements or actions. They would be thankful for it. Xivak was part of the third generation who had known only the wasteland, but unlike the strange apathy of his father’s generation Xivak’s understood perfectly how harsh and cruel the world they inhabited was. Slow, rolling hills and dusty grasses hid a myriad of disease-ridden animals. An empty hut or cave could easily contain a true monster, one of the spider-folk or a Charmer or a demigod any other of the freaks the spirits had deemed fit to create.
Not all monsters are made by spirits. The thought crossed his mind for a moment as he hesitated, as always, outside his father’s tent. The moons lay still in the night sky. Official control still lay with Xivak’s father, and the old man required Xivak to relay any events of note.
The atmosphere of the room choked him as soon as he entered. His father lay feverish and shrivelled upon the large bed. Sometimes when Xivak entered there were women there with him. They would whisper in his father’s ear and giggle, or rest their head on his shoulder mockingly. Generally they were naked, and almost identical. Their features were too dark to be of Xivak’s tribe. Axkhavi sent them, he was certain of it. There were no women with him tonight.
His father slowly turned his eyes towards Xivak. It seemed wrong to have such cold, cruel eyes staring out of a being so dilapidated. They were a milky blue, the colour darkening towards the pupil. Before old age and illness ravaged him, his face had been brutal. Now though the unforgiving jawline, the jutting chin and the thuggish brow all seemed to be gradually folding and collapsing.
He was still dangerous, though. This man had executed countless enemies before they had even begun to move against him, had sacrificed thousands of demigods to hold hundreds of counsels with the spirits, had clung to power despite the hatred of his own people and had sold everything to Axkhavi.
“Xivak, my wise and dutiful son, I humbly address my deepest, most sincere thanks towards you for deigning to visit your worthless, dying father. I speak to you as a vestige of the past looking towards the hope of the new, and I praise the spirits for granting the tribe such a worthy new leader, and granting me such an honourable son.”
“Vargus, my sage and thoughtful father, I most respectfully disagree. It is I that should be thankful that you have chosen to spend another day with us, rather than begin your eternal counsel with the spirits. I speak to you heavy with the knowledge that when you leave, I shall weep for a thousand days and curse the cruelty of mortality for a thousand nights. I speak to you as your naïve and reluctant successor, fearful for the tribe’s future without you to guide it. I know not what the future clutches in its twisted, blackened hands but I know any disasters will be tenfold worse without such a perfect father and leader as you.”
Vargus’ eyes mocked him as they went through the traditional greeting. There was a brief, tense moment before the ritual ended and he spoke.
“Anything to report, then?”
“Not as such. Kavian tells there’s been a demigod in the Lich-Ruins. To the West.”
“I know where they are. Kavian, though?”
“Captain of one of the scouting parties. I promoted him.”
“Ah.”
His father stared at him coldly for a moment, calculating, before he spoke to him again.
“Will you pursue it, then? The demigod.”
“Yes.”
“We have many already captive, enough for you to counsel successfully with the spirits when the time comes. We do not need another.”
“Neither can we become careless. We may have enough for now, but it is impossible to say how much we will need the spirits in the future.”
“We do not need another.”
“I wish to capture one as a leader rather than a follower, then.”
“So be it.”
Xivak grunted his thanks and quitted the tent, his mind racing and his pulse steadily rising. He turned briefly and paled; for a moment the tent-flap was caught by the wind and billowed open, and Xivak caught sight of a woman with his father. Naked, dark-featured and staring right at him, she smiled mockingly. She must have materialised right out of the dust. A token sent from Axkhavi, to plot with his father.
Already, both Xivak and his father knew they were running out of time.
Hundreds of dimensions away in a dark, colossal maelstrom of spirits and dreams the great black mass of Axkhavi itself, half-formed and shifting in and out of this particular reality, rose slowly. Or maybe it descended. It was impossible to tell. White flashes of spirit either curled around it or were swallowed up. This was Axkhavi’s realm, the spirits here too weak to flee to another dimension.
Utterly lost inside the maelstrom, a new cloud of spirits suddenly exploded into the realm. Perhaps they had narrowly escaped some other Being, or crackled into life in some recent ritual or perhaps simply, suddenly existed.
Axkhavi abruptly stopped moving. The maelstrom slowed and came to a stop also, leaving twinkling shreds hanging motionless as Axkhavi grew darker and more vivid, its attention turning away from other affairs and towards its native realm. Slowly, inevitably it drew this new cloud of spirits towards its main body, surrounding it with a web of thin black tendrils. Thinner tendrils still erupted into the cloud of spirits, skimming and skewering their way through the splinters and shards of thought. Axkhavi searched for one in particular, and among the drifting memories, dreams and ideas that the cloud of spirits was formed of, it found what it was searching for.
And dimly Axkhavi realised, for the first time in millennia, it was threatened.
It's really good, in my opinion, and there's nothing to improve where grammar and punctuality are concerned, and usually I don't take note of these kind of things but I couldn't help noticing
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