A Feast of Spirits

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. The gates of Lys weren’t always sealed shut, and her people did not always starve, wither, and die by the hundred. Their bodies weren’t always incinerated to save space, and their ailing souls weren’t always devoured by the great drakes that lingered beyond the walls. It was a feast of spirits. For all of Lys’ power, all its silver spires and its armies of fighting men… it had been rendered a tomb.

I first arrived at Lys in the ninth month of Descent, what the people there had taken to calling the arrival of the damnable dragons. The road was long and the path arduous, for my preceptor and I were forced to travel by way of the Aiyental mountains that shielded the great city from invasion and, in effect, rescue. Spirits both ancient and malevolent roamed those ice choked unclaimed peaks. They did not appreciate our presence.

We were greeted at an ancillary gate on the western wall by a pair of crimson robed Echin, Lys’ crude excuse for spirit tenders. Unsightly beasts they were, masked by riveted bone facades inlaid with silver filigree. Much of their physical forms were hidden from us, but we knew. Beneath the layers of ornamentation, their flesh would be sunken and parched. Their eyes cloudy and bloodshot. They would not be human anymore. That, at least, was easy to see, for they towered no fewer than three heads above even my preceptor, a man of considerable build and stature. Next to them, I likely appeared very much like a child, thin framed and a rather short young woman as I am. They stood unbuffered and undisturbed in the night by the winter snow and shrieking wind.

“Preceptor Erosha Dis of the Argent Path.” Spoke one of the Echin above nature’s howl, voice like a grinding slab of stone against steel. “Neophyte Rin Rintalla. You are late by a margin of twenty days. Explain yourselves.”

My master stepped forward, a hand on his leather hood to hold it down. He was old, but strong. Tempered. Despite his age, and his weariness from travel, Dis’ tone was direct as ever. Deep like a cavern.

“Yours is a troublesome destination, Lysian. Dragons swarm the valley to the south and thus the only road in, and mountains infested by warped spirits to the north, east, and west bar the way. We made haste as best we could manage, but our kind are not welcome in either environment. Your masters should be grateful that we are here at all. Yours is not the only city to which calamity has fallen, and we are few.”

The hunching Echin did not move. It was an unnaturally still thing. It didn’t even breathe. “The Meridian Lady, blessed be her memory, is dead.” A pause. “Your delay has cost the great city of Lys her shining jewel, her future, and her hope. It was folly to put our faith in you. Like all the rest of your misbegotten kind, thou art a waste. A mistake. The Meridian Lady’s spirit is beyond our sight, likely taken already by the maw of the insatiable dragonkind like all the rest. Your presence here is no longer required. Return from whence ye came. We’ve not the resources to feed another two unable to earn their keep.” With a single thud of the creature’s staff against worn stone, it made its demand.

“Likely taken, but not for certain.” I said, struggling to make myself heard over the blizzard. “She is beyond your sight, but perhaps not ours. We are Argent Path, spirit tender. We walk the roads of the unseen and the dead. We will find her.”

Dis did not turn to me, but I knew he smiled.

The two robed monstrosities looked to one another, no doubt conversing by way of their strange inborn telepathic connection. They stood this way for some time before Dis interjected.

“I understand the matter is complicated, but perhaps we might discuss it further inside? The longer we debate out here, the better the chances of your Lady slipping into oblivion, or worse.”

The second Echin spoke then, voice similarly unpleasant but bearing the faintest hint of a forgotten femininity. “Come with us. We make for the palace. Do not deviate, do not slow. Hide thy rations, make ready thy weapons.” They turned as one body, unified in each small motion. They opened the gate, and led us into the dying necropolis.

The stench was aggressive, invasive, and wholly overwhelming. Despite the cold, it seemed the sheer volume of decaying bodies and rotting filth was enough to create a haze of foul odor that lingered in the air. What’s worse, these were not the slums. No. Lys’ western square consisted of the carpenter’s district, the smithing yards, and an array of markets. This was a place of life, of activity. Or, it was.

A lone spear wielding guardsman, clad in battered armor that had quite clearly been subjected to less than stellar field repair, joined our group at the rear behind me. The man had a dazed, exhausted, look about him. He stank too, reeking of low brew. The Echina led.

Within the first minute, I spotted the first eyes on us, the newcomers. They peered from second and third story windows, sunken eyes reflecting the Echinas’ lantern light. Within the next ten minutes, we were being followed. Just a few, at first, then more, skirting through the adjacent alleys like a pack of wolves stalking prey, searching for an opportunity. Black skeletal silhouettes darted from cover to cover, shadow to shadow. Their rag thin clothing, torn and frayed, often drifted around them in the wind. It gave them an almost ghostly quality. They moved more like animals than men… and hunger will drive an animal to do almost anything. We could hear them. Their scuttling. Murmuring in the dark.

Before us, the loping gait of the Echina set a quick pace to our march. It was all the better, for the number of night stalkers steadily grew with each turn of street. We could see the palace before long, high on the northern hill, lit by great braziers on either side of its silver hued stone.

“Away, thee mongrels!” Boomed the second of the Echina, waving their staff, which to a normal man would function very much like a large club by virtue of its size. “Waste not thy lives. Feed not the blasphemous beasts beyond with thy souls!” The thing’s voice was like thunder that had been strained through a meat grinder, shifting and cracking, but horrible in its immensity.

A stutter seemed to worm its way through the gathering throng in the shadows, with some peeling off into darker, further off, alleys. Cowed. And yet… many lingered. Poised.

I heard Dis whispering, quiet under his hood. “If I fall, break for the palace. Walk the path only if you must.”

My heart pumped in my chest, adrenaline building in my hands, in my knees. A tremor. I nodded. I could feel the desperation in the air, swirling around us like the falling snow.

A sharp clang of metal on metal sang from behind me. I turned just as the guardsman howled, a thrown dagger embedded in his shoulder plate. It was his weapon arm. Blood began to pour from the wound in seconds. Then they came at us.

Like a wave of skittering insects, each of them rake thin and shrieking in a cacophony of mad agony, they charged, dashing over rubble and through shattered storefront windows, pouring out into the street. I expected the situation in Lys to be dire… but not like this.

To my shock, the Echina were the first to react. Immense though they were, their honed reflexes sparked to life. Literally sparked. A flash of spirit break roiled from the end of the first’s staff, tearing through the air in front of them and blanketing the first group of four unfortunate souls in a translucent white haze of viscous lightning. The men screamed, the flesh of their bodies burned away by the raw energies of the path. Five more men and women leapt over the falling forms, only for the lazy streaks of power to lurch to them instead, immediately bringing them low amidst their wailing.

I lunged, a rock thrown from a sling hissing an inch from my head. I gripped my knife, a slender blade of alabaster steel with an ebony, silver trimmed, grip. The first to charge me found the point of the guardsman’s spear through her face, but the man had stabbed with his off hand, and the momentum of the rushing body carried the weapon with it to the snow-caked ground. The second was quicker, ducking a swipe of Dis’ knife and swinging at me with a hatchet. He was lucky, but it didn’t help him. A pair of steps and a single slice later, he dropped. Blood vapor hung in the frigid air as it sprayed from his neck. Two more came. Two more died.

“Keep moving!” I heard Dis howl over the screaming. Simultaneously, I watched him siphon the spirits of a pair of sprinting bandits with but a wave of his hand. Their eyes dimmed just before they collapsed into the snow, tumbling forward and leaving behind two tiny motes of gray light. With a quick spark, the path reclaimed the souls.

I obeyed my master, rallying nearer to both him and the Echina just as the cries of our escort were cut short by a falling blade that appeared to be a repurposed woodworking tool, serrated and layered by grime. In an eye blink, the crowd was on him, hacking and tearing at his body, stripping armor and meat in seconds. They fought over the scraps. Fought, like dogs.

It was a momentary lapse in their motion against us, however, as a dozen others more maddened than the first batch clamored over the corpses felled by Dis and myself. They struck at us with spears made from the legs of furniture, table knives, even the sharpened edge of a child’s toy sword. Though one did wield a proper sword, a guardsman’s sword, chipped at its center. Stolen, no doubt. I killed him first, whirling around his clumsy slash to carve along his abdomen. My weapon slipped through him as if he were water. He spilled onto the ground. A mess.

One Echin broke a pair beneath a blow of their staff. The second called spirit break again at the feet of one. The energy crawled up the man’s front, and leapt to the woman behind him as she crashed into his back. Preceptor Dis dealt with the rest, carving a bloody dance through them until the last fell. Yet there were more. So many more, swarming in a misshapen circle about us.

The rounded call of a horn ahead split the chaos. I craned to see beyond my taller counterparts. Banners of silver and red waved in the street, flapping angrily in the wind. A dozen spearmen stood at their fore.

“Tis the palace guard!” One Echin called as it shattered the spine of a frantic, bald headed, woman over its knee. “Avant!”

The mob staggered, weighing its options… until the horn called again, and the guardsmen charged, leading with spear tips. Dozens broke off immediately, slinking back into the shadows and alleyways to find shelter in the night and lick their wounds. Some stayed, braving the line of armored soldiers only to be impaled. Others were too slow, and found themselves in the path of our party. They died quickly. It had all happened quickly.

My master’s firm hand met my shoulder. He did not need to speak. A nod from me confirmed my health, which he returned in kind before turning to speak with a man that, I thought, looked very much like a toad. His eyes were bulbous, and his frame squat. His image wasn't helped as he likely hoped by the crimson plume that hung from the rear of his helm. Unlike many of his men, and certainly unlike the mass that had assailed us, he did not seem to suffer the gaunt cheeks and sallow complexion of the starving. I remember hating him immediately.

“Master Echina, guests of the Argent Path, I bid you welcome to the great city of Lys.” The captain, or perhaps he was a lieutenant, offered a mirthless smile. I was never very good with formal military. He might as well have been supreme commander for all I cared. To my misfortune, he continued to speak. “I do recommend you allow us to accompany you to the palace proper. My Lord Apha, eternally stalwart servant of Lys, had a feeling you might need additional security. It seems he was right. Do come along.”

The Echina strode onward, undaunted by the scene and uncaring for the words of the guardsman leader. Preceptor Dis though, ever the diplomat, shook the man’s hand, lowering his hood to reveal his short shock of gray hair and hard brow.

“Your men have excellent timing, and your Lord’s foresight is to be commended. I will be sure to pay him my thanks once our immediate business is concluded.” He said.

“Yes indeed sir. Now, come come, we mustn’t tarry.”

My name is Rin Rintalla, I am a Neophyte of the Argent Path, a student of Preceptor Erosha Dis, and a nuisance to some. By anyone’s best guess, I am twenty years of age. I’m not particularly unique, short and thin as I’ve already mentioned, and I’ve chin length black hair cut to function and eyes of deep green. What else? You might have noticed I am confident, and that much is true. I am Argent Path. I am trained for this. Or, at least, partially. Paint me in your mind as you will. I don’t much care what opinions might be formed of me from this retelling of the events in Lys. These are the facts as they are. Burn me or berate me, cheer me or congratulate me. I do not care. Now come, let me tell you of desperation. Let me tell you of lost spirits. Let me tell you of the path. Let me tell you of a doomed city.