Phantammeron Book One Page 5

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  Far away from Phantaia, in another realm beyond the storms and seas, there had sat brooding in the gloom another forlorn being. Deep within the bowels of Oblivion Agapor had sat, unmoving upon his ghoulish throne, dreaming alone in the quiet of the ephemeral night, whose foul miasma of death and decay hung upon his silent chamber like a funerary pall. In his silent and shadowy chamber he was want to roam, thinking upon the utter futility of his long-held desire to find his father.

  He had sent forth his servants, the Shadow and the Shade, to find the Twilight Mist, and bring word of him. And Yana, the terrible Magra, he had sent to destroy Phantaia, so that his father might be driven from its depths. But after an age, no word came to him of his father, or his fate. For the Twilight Mist now dwelt in a secret inner realm, deep within the woods, beyond the reach and knowledge of Agapor’s greatest servants, who had been sent to drive him out.

  As Agapor sat alone, he stared at the sinister phantoms that played their eerie forms upon his candlelit chamber walls. His hope of seeing his sister An had now faded from him, like the fading flame of a dying taper that flees before the slithering shadows.

  But in secret Agapor had toiled away, drawing to himself ever-increasing power and knowledge. His inner rage, born of his past injuries, seemed to have no bounds, fueling itself into ever greater desire for revenge. For in his heart had grown a relentless craving to obliterate this tragic world, which he had long hated.

  Embittered, he had embraced at last the morbid mind and will of the Limitless Void, his uncle, whose sleeping spirit within the crystal ring had ever crept into him, whispering in dreams its own desires to him, and driving its sinister will down onto his own. Like that tortured being, Agapor soon determined that his destiny lay in the conquering of the remnant states and forgotten domains of that embattled world. And so he began to resurrect even darker powers, much maligned in earlier times, aligning them once more against his remaining enemies, plotting war with the last domains of sea, mist, and land. For these still lay before his realm, like tempting treasures, waiting to be taken.

  Agapor had begun to collect the Void’s remnant armies from distant parts of his world, making them his own, commanding the countless gruesome beings of that depraved underworld, to come before his throne in throngs. These beings came from far and away to serve him. For the droning of his brassy horns upon his tower gates ever groaned, like a siren calling deep into the night, drawing forth the amber-eyed demonic black masses, which had long hid in the depths and holds of Oblivion.

  By the strange lights of the ring did he command the terrible servants of his mother’s house to flock to his own caverns, until the last that had survived the horror of the seas—giant black behemoths, ghoulish beasts, dark messengers, and the phantoms of demons that yet resided within the caverns under Oblivion’s icy peaks—had all awakened and returned to him.

  He summoned forth the slithering and slimy monsters that were spawned long ago, and which now hid in the depths of the underworld seas. Those beings arose from the foul waters and waste of the earth, and walked again, defying death itself, driven only by their desire for bloodshed and violence.

  In a great procession did their black forms flow into his towering halls, until beneath its great walls, bowing before him, they vowed to serve only him, until his will had been done. For as long as that ring, which yet held the spirit of their master, hung upon Agapor’s hand, they were enslaved by its enchantment over them. And so Agapor came to see the strange ring as his salvation in his war against the world.

  These forces of power he had gathered in preparation for the final days, when he would destroy the sea and forest utterly, and take what remained of its corpse as his own. So like his mother had he become a master over the sad denizens of that realm.

  In time, Agapor had prepared the seething multitudes, sending them forth to colonize parts of the vast cities of ancient Oblivion. They set about rebuilding its walls and keeps. For with the cracking of dark whips, did their demonic captains drive the endless throngs to carve great blocks of stone from the mountains, fashioning the thick walls of its fortresses anew.

  They set about rebuilding the Limitless Void’s terrible war machines and catapults of iron, creating vast armaments and armories within their many foundries, whose flaming tongues lapped the walls of his vast underground holds, burning blood-red again. And so there returned into this world many terrors thought destroyed in the ancient wars with the Primordial Ones.

  Yet had the horror of war, and the nightmares it would spawn, not yet been fully rekindled by the will of Agapor and his dark ring. Nor had his drive for violence been fully fueled by the vengeance his hateful heart had long borne.

  For none of these endeavors seemed to fulfill his deepest desires, that which had lain hidden within his restless heart. Agapor had remained trapped in his lonely chamber, fearful of the future and of fate, imprisoned within his weakened mind, and haunted by nightmares of his own making. Many nights he had arisen from his cold bed and thought again upon his sister. But he had given up all hope of ever saving her, as she was now eternally bound to a cursed sleep, which still held her firmly within the grip of the Dreaming Seas.

  Yet had he awakened, hearing the strange cry of a child in the night, one he could neither see nor find. Was it his sister? Then returned his feelings of deep regret and his anger against the one who had abandoned them. For his desire for vengeance against him burned ever brighter within his heart. But his father had fled far away into a distant land, alien to him. And in the fastness of Phantaia would he remain, far from the eyes of Agapor’s many spies and servants who had sought to find him. Thus had the twin powers of land and sea, like mighty fortresses, stood firmly between him and his great desire.

  Agapor fell into a deep despair. Sundered from that which he loved, he now saw he was truly alone in the world. And in his solitude, tortured and torn by anger and regret, he eventually succumbed to his own self-imposed imprisonment, embracing it wholly, and condemning himself to an isolated fate. In his cavernous hallways, he slunk about his underworld cities, deep in thought, wrapped in his enchanted cloak.

  He often abandoned his servants, walking alone, roaming through towering corridors with their twisting stairs, over narrow bridges spanning cold chasms, down subterranean tunnels that twisted maddeningly through the rock, under carved archways of colossal height, and out across windy wide balconies carved from the jagged and treacherous stone, which looked down from their haughty heights upon the dark and dismal depths of Oblivion’s vast underground seas.

  In those depths, Agapor could see the frothing waves of that vast ocean upon whose surface a phantasmal fog had crept. With the saddened glow of a sick and putrid light, its mists shined forth their strange reflections upon the surface of the seas and the cavernous walls. At times he thought he could see something strange, writhing within the depths of its dark waters—a being or spirit of something unknowable yet vaguely felt, whose monstrous cries he had heard echoing out of the depths. But always, as he looked more closely at the surface of those seas, it seemed the mist upon its greasy surface had created a mirage to play upon his imagination.

  Agapor thought again upon the cries of the child he had heard in the night. Then he would walk again, clothed in the darkness of his hooded robe, until after many nights he wound his way through the farthest fringes of his empire. There he stood before the window of a long-abandoned tower, which hung upon the forgotten cliff of some dizzying height. Here the last ordered and ancient architecture of Oblivion looked down upon the entropic depths of the Great Beyond.

  There he sat alone, hollow-faced and gloomy, listening to the endless roar of the icy black rivers as they poured forth from the great caverns of the Realms of Oblivion, down into the silent gray of the void. He knew all things would eventually pour into that bottomless pit of death. For all things would come to die there, never to return in flesh or spirit again. It was just a matter of time.

  He
pondered the unending emptiness of that cold space, and the frightful beings that dwelt in its gulf, waiting to rise up yet again, when their time would finally come to annihilate the world and the last of its fallen children. As he climbed upon the edge of the window, he thought upon the meaning of his own sad life. Had any of it mattered? Too many questions remained unanswered. It was then he saw again the strange glow of the ring. And he thought about the Limitless Void. He then returned in haste to his halls.

  With a new purpose, Agapor began to roam through the cities of the dead and dying, which lay in the lands above his own. In that eerie place stretched unending cityscapes of vast graveyards, the high walls of abandoned crypts, and massive mausoleums of thick stone and ice, upon whose rotting rock walls had been carved the many names of demonic heroes and their celebrated victories in war and death. For they had fought bravely against the children of the Primordial Ones.

  Agapor often climbed those great crypts to read the crumbling words carved upon their colossal tombs. Fallen in war, these ancient battle-lords had perished with honor in the fight. And in some gruesome celebration of the dead, their terrible deeds and names had been engraved upon great slabs of stone in cryptic symbols unknown to Agapor.

  Past those halls of the dead, Agapor was want to roam, through the towering hallways that connected their many underground arteries, entering shattered doorways to abandoned chambers, where once the demonic legions of the Limitless Void had dwelt, before the terrible wars had all but consumed the last of their kind.

  It is then that Agapor stumbled upon a vast treasure, which in time would be of great value to him. For he had come upon a rusting portcullis beneath the city, which had stood unnoticed for eons within the shadows of a great triumphant arch. Breaking through the iron of the gate, he saw that there stretched beyond it a vast network of long-abandoned archives and libraries, a limitless source of knowledge once coveted by the Limitless Void.

  Here were housed many lost codices of forgotten enchantments and black magic, countless dusty and disintegrating tomes of terror, arcane scrolls of ancient origin, parchments of demonic summonings, and thick volumes of trailing histories stretching back in time. In many of these manuscripts had been hidden a wealth of forbidden enlightenment and learning, which the Limitless Void had used in his wars against his kind. These his servants had collected and long coveted. And so came to Agapor a vast fount of wisdom and knowledge, which he had long sought.

  In the lonely alcoves of those dark and dusty libraries Agapor often sat alone, poring over piles of books, deep in thought beside the pasty demonic scribes who, bent and trembling, endlessly scribbled ancient enchantments, bleak histories, and the cryptic words of dark and dismal discoveries upon rotting scrolls and faded parchment. Under Agapor’s guidance, these knowledge-keepers of the underworld had begun to record new secrets, brought to them by his winged servants. For Agapor had sent many of his own messengers to travel the distant fringes of that forbidding world, seeking hidden treasures, powerful relics, cryptic scribblings, mysterious books, and strange objects of enchantment, all of which had been thrown into this world from others long ago destroyed and forgotten.

  Of the knowledge he gathered, Agapor had cherished most the ancient histories and texts concerning the Primordial Ones. Long into the night, he pondered the strange words written in various books and tomes, struggling to understand the twisted and distorted lives and destinies of his uncles and their brutal conflicts of old.

  Over time he began to collect the secretive knowledge and wisdom of the Primordial Ones, as given to them by the Great Father, much of which had been lost. Their fragmented history fascinated Agapor, tempting his imagination with its seductive tale of unending woe and heartache. Yet the more he read, the more he saw the scale and scope of their horrific crimes. And these began to haunt him.

  Agapor then came upon the Mystical Narratives, which recounted the sacred gifts granted unto the Primordial Ones at birth by the Essence Eternal, their father. He learned of the power of the Creative Flame, whose spiritual fire lived in them. And he learned of the Sacred Light, which had been lost. And he read of the hanging of the Veils of Night, and of the forging of the Arch of Heaven by the Essence Eternal, where the stars that had yet been created would someday reside. These wonders the Essence Eternal had left for his sons, so they might remake the world in their own image.

  Agapor then learned that the Essence Eternal had commanded his first-born son, the Endless Night, to construct the nighttime sky, so that the stars of the Heavens soon to come could be hung upon its black cloak. For this one purpose he had given his son the Wings of Night, so that he might rebuild its mantle. But the Endless Night had used them instead to suffocate the failing light of this world. It had then been drowned in his terrible shadow, until his brothers had risen up to defeat him.

  But Agapor learned that the last light of this world had yet lived. And this shining presence even the sinister twins that dwelt in the Great Beyond could not face. For it ever burned them from a distance. And so Agapor knew why they had remained in their prison, bound to it through their own desires, until the last light of the world had been extinguished. Yet the true light lay not in the stars, but in the children of the world. As their spirits yet shined had a hope remained that the Sacred Light would live again in the lanterns of their hearts, blessing the world with its love through them.

  By the corrupted Wings of Night alone could this last divine candle of the world be hidden from both their eyes and hearts. So had the Endless Night secreted those wings far away from the world, and from its evil, which had long sought to find them and pervert their powers again.

  But most mysterious to Agapor was the story of the Sacred Waters, which had been handed down to the sons of the Essence Eternal as a gift most treasured. Little was written of them, save that the waters had been placed into the hands of a chosen child. In him the Essence Eternal had placed his last hope for the world, that by his son’s children those waters would be reborn into it someday, to birth a new world, and grant to all a lasting peace eternally bound to its strange essence.

  But Agapor read that those waters contained something else—a darker and more devious will. And he sat in silence for many nights, bewildered by the enigma of those faded words. And he thought upon the brutal seas whose terrible violence had nearly destroyed him.

  He had also stumbled upon a small crumbling tome, whose pages fell to dust with every turn. He studied it long into the night. From its sad tale there began to unfold in Agapor’s mind the meaning and purpose of the Limitless Void’s long toils and troubles in the world. Yet, strangely from the Limitless Void, no word was ever spoken of his own children, nor his love and care for them, except their slavery to him and the sinister powers he himself was bound to.

  Agapor then saw the futility of their service to their grim father, and the long toils toward a dimly-seen victory which had never come. For that blinded father’s love was cruelly tied to their success in the world. Agapor read the sad tale of their torturous end, most cruel and savage, at the hand of their own father. For in the end, by the will for total power over this world, the Limitless Void had sacrificed his own children to the beings that dwelt in the Great Beyond. And the full horror of that act weighed upon the heart and mind of Agapor. For he too had made the same vow.

  These sad truths Agapor pondered over many nights. Yet he could not see the true cause for the strange bent towards self-destruction, which the Primordial Ones had taken. He saw in their dire fates a mysterious yet tragic play, one in which their children’s parts had been reflected and reborn yet again. But to what end their lives were sacrificed Agapor could not fathom or foresee. To what purpose was his life and that of his sister’s?

  Beneath these libraries lay an immense underworld of dungeons and vaults. These were filled with strange objects of devious magic, cursed relics, and infernal weapons of unnumbered wars, all forged in the spirit of the dark arts. These malicious objects of power the
Void had collected for himself over the many wars he had waged against his brethren. And these Agapor dug through, searching for that which would bring him some message or truth concerning his father.

  In time he found such an object buried deep in the corner of an underground cavern, which had lain hidden beneath his cities for untold ages. In his hands he now held a small globe, within whose mysterious crystal hung the strange fogs and phantom visions of his family’s past and future fates. Like a firefly, its eerie lights seemed to bob and weave new images upon his chamber walls, hypnotizing Agapor by the eerie ghosts of those he had known, and others he had not.