NexLord: Dark Prophecies (2 page)

Glumly he wondered what other children his
age
were
doing at this moment;
having fun he had no doubt.

Standing over his fallen mother Aerin faced
the creatures that had struck down his parents.  The
young boy had never seen a
Togroth
before, but the six
snout-faced
brutes that approached him, with slavering
razor-toothed
maws
, were
more horrible than he had ever imagined.  Muscles bunched
on their shoulders, making their heads seem almost embedded without
a neck.  Dull and rusted pieces of mismatched armor
attempted to cover their thick hides unsuccessfully as coarse
bristly black hair protruded from the armor's joints.

Two carried small metal bows with short ugly
shafts notched and ready.  The others brandished axes and
nicked swords.  Even to a large human their size would
have been formidable, each beast easily weighed 300 pounds, but to
the small boy they were giants.  Piggish red eyes without
whites were locked on the boy, who stood above his fallen
mother.

"
Naugz
tar
gutuk
!" one barked at the
others.  They started to close the distance, fanning out
with sick grins of blood lust showing their black
teeth.  Looking at those teeth, Aerin’s fear grew as he
remembered the stories that said
Togroths
ate their foes raw.

From behind the burning
wagon,
a large man on a white horse trotted into
view.  He was obviously a warrior; muscles bulged across
his shoulders,
arms,
and nearly
naked chest.  His normally white colored skin was well tanned.
The hilt of a Great Sword projected upwards from behind his back
and his bare wrists showed the golden chain marks of the legendary
NexLord warriors. He had a strong jaw,
deep-set
dark eyes and short bristly blonde hair that was
nearly flat across the top. Dominating his face was a somewhat long
nose, arched at the bridge. His face was unconcerned and
confident
, even in the face of
these monsters.

He was like some great hero out of bygone
ages, the likes of which Aerin's father used to read about to his
son; tales from the old books that told of the mighty NexLords who
saved the world.  Hope played across Aerin's
face. "Help me, please, my mother is hurt!” the boy cried out
to the man.

The man spoke in the guttural tongue of the
Togroths, though his voice was not as deep as the
beasts
.  "Kag,
vabok
Nas!” he barked to the six brutes.

Aerin didn't understand his words, but the
short pulling motion of his forefinger across his neck told the
story plainly. 

The Togroths moved forward a little faster,
behind them the man on the horse dragged Aerin's father from where
he was draped lifelessly across the wagon seat and let the limp
body fall to the ground.  
Next,
he tried to cut away the burning canvas before it
caught the rest of the wagon on fire, but he was too late.

There was a zipping sound of an arrow cutting
air, followed almost instantly by another.  Feathered
shafts abruptly appeared projecting from the
foreheads
of each of the two Togroth
archers.  They fell heavily to the ground.

The others barked loudly in confusion, but
when a third fell to another of the deadly arrows, the remaining
three charged toward Aerin and the lethal hail of arrows.

Out of the trees behind Aerin a cloaked man
appeared carrying a dull gray staff, he was moving so fast his legs
seemed almost to blur.  Although the Togroths were closer
the cloaked man reached Aerin first.  As he passed Aerin
his momentum did not diminish, the gray
staff
blurred in a horizontal arc that smashed the
nearest
Togroth's
head to pieces.
Hardly slowing, the blurring staff continued in a circle with the
angle shifting downward.  The opposite end struck a
thrusting sword, breaking the metal with a loud '
chink
' sound.  Before the Togroth
could do more than gape at the worthless
hilt
it grasped, the other end of the staff came down on
the top of its misshapen head, not stopping until it reached the
bunched shoulders of the dying beast.  The body
dropped.  The sixth Togroth was already dead due to
another feathered shaft protruding from its eye socket.

The sound of galloping horses was all that
stirred in the forest meadow, as the
muscle-bound
human who had commanded the Togroths rode
away leading the
Togroth’s
large
mounts
.  The fleeing man
rounded the corner of the road a moment later and disappeared
beyond the trees.

Aerin fell back to his knees at his mother's
side; he lifted her limp hand and spoke softly, "Mother?"

The large cloaked man with the gray staff
knelt down on one knee beside him and leaned his head down near
Sariah's face.  Then in a low deep voice that rolled the
‘r’s in a strange accent that was full of compassion, he spoke,
"I'm sorry, boy, but your mother
is
passed
all pain now.  She goes to her reward in
faraway
Nevarian
."

Aerin collapsed on his mother's still body
and wept.  After a
time,
he sat up and turned his
tear-stained
face toward the wagon, "Father!" 

The cloaked man next to Aerin looked toward
the burning wreckage of the wagon to where another man holding a
bow knelt by the body of Aerin's father, a look passed between the
two men.  The large man with Aerin placed a black gloved
hand on the boy's shoulder and shook his head sadly, sending Aerin
into renewed tears of grief.

The creaking sound of moving wheels heralded
the approach of another wagon, which finally stopped a short
distance from the scene.  Aerin looked up through tear
clouded eyes and saw an old woman with long gray
hair.  Her blues eyes were nestled in a
well-lined
face, old with age and wisdom. There
was a proud strength in the set of her shoulders, yet compassion in
her expression as she climbed down from the wagon and
approached.

The old woman's keen gaze took in the
scene.  The story was plain to see.  "They'll
need graves, over there by that copse of trees, where they'll have
shade during the hot part of the day," she said to the accented man
by Aerin. "They'd like that, wouldn't they boy?” her voice softened
when she spoke to the
grief-stricken
orphan.

Aerin couldn't speak, but he
nodded.  He stayed by his mother's side until the graves
were dug.  When the cloaked man lifted Sariah in his
large arms Aerin followed along behind, his head bowed.

Soon they went to get his father's
body.  Aerin saw the book that his father had been
reading to him earlier that day; it lay in the dirt by his father's
hand.  The history book was Aerin's favorite and they had
spent many an hour reading together about Ragol, last of the
NexLords.  Aerin took it carefully into his arms and then
followed as the cloaked man took his father's body and laid it next
to his mother’s.   Aerin stood before the open
graves to look upon his parents for the last time.  Still
clutching the old book in his hands, he spoke softly, "I'll never
forget you."  His tears fell on the old leather binding
and then ran off to fall on the earth that would soon cover his
parents. 

The old woman spoke quietly to him, "Remember
your love for them, boy, don't dwell on the pain.  You
don't want to stain this place with only sorrow."

Aerin nodded, it was something his mother
would have said.  He forced aside his grief for a few
moments and remembered some of the good times and the love he had
shared with his parents.  He almost smiled as he recalled
the many nights sitting by the fireplace with his father reading
wondrous stories, never tiring of his son’s endless
questions.  His mother would sit with them, usually
knitting, smiling, and sharing in the warmth of their
family.  Aerin promised himself that he would remember
his parents like that, and try not to think of how they died, only
how they lived.  His parents had been caring, gentlefolk,
that he loved above all else.  He couldn't watch as the
cloaked man covered their bodies with the earth, mixed with tears
and memories of love.

Aerin stood
silently
with his eyes closed even after the sounds of
the shovel had stilled, but when a new voice spoke Aerin looked up
and found an archer standing four paces before him, a long bow
slung over his shoulder. The man was thin, and he had
lavender-tinged
skin, obviously one of the
willowmen
race.  He
spoke in a soft voice, "What were your parent’s names?” He held two
young saplings, recently uprooted.

Aerin mumbled out his parent’s names, and the
willowman
concentrated briefly on
each of the saplings. Aerin’s parent’s names seemed to grow right
into the thin trunks, appearing vertically.

When the
willowman
was done working with the saplings, he said,
“Do these meet with your approval, young master?” And then before
Aerin could answer, added, "Their names will grow
with
the trees that mark their resting
place."

Aerin nodded to the lavender man in
gratitude. 

Soon the two trees were planted and Aerin had
to face his future.

The old woman gazed deeply into his face, and
Aerin met her keen stare with his red-rimmed eyes
unblinking.  "Do you have other
kin
, boy?"

Aerin shook his head; his only uncle had died
last spring, and both sets of his grandparents had passed away
before he was born.  "We were going to Strakhelm, so my
father could write the chronicle of the new NexLord," he explained
dully.

Mara raised an eyebrow at this
disclosure.  "Your father was a scholar
then?  That is an interesting occupation for a man in
these hard times.  No matter, now you may come with us,
we too travel to Strakhelm.  I'll see you are taken care
of once we arrive."

The large cloaked man finally pulled down his
hood, revealing his completely hairless head.  Bronze
irises with golden flecks sparkling within looked into Aerin's
eyes.  "When his mother fell he didn’t run, he turned to
face them with naught but a butter knife; he has courage
Ma-r-r-
ra
," the Quarian rumbled,
his accent rolling the 'r'.

Aerin looked with awe upon the strange man,
he had often read about the mysterious
Quarians
but had thought them a
mere
legend.  He wondered about the
Quarian’s
hands, but the long sleeves of his
cloak kept them covered.

Mara looked Aerin over again, and then a
small smile crept to the corner of her mouth.  "Yes,
Tocor
, perhaps there is something
here worth a look.  Do you remember that section I've
pondered for some time?  `Common, but uncommon, and
matched in grief, they bonded closer than any
before.'  They have both lost their parents now."

The
Quarian
didn't answer, but he nodded, his bronze eyes never leaving Aerin's
face.

The young boy took no notice of their talk,
his heart ached for his parents, and his mind was far away in the
past.

Aerin's wagon had completely burned to the
ground, so with nothing but the history book, and no family, he
climbed up into Mara's wagon to begin a new and greater
journey.

Chapter Two

“
...and I saw the savior of the
land marked
by the
death of his father at an early age.  Son of the Warlord
and a future Lord of the Nexus: metal heated by the fire of loss,
shape molded by the teacher’s hammer, strength quenched in the
blood of adventure and razor edge honed by the loyalty of his
friends.  This I saw… Tremble Dreadmaster, cower Wraiths,
for into this world comes a NexLord, and the strength of his Bond
spells the end of an evil renewed since the beginning of
time.”

-  From the Prophecies of Gold

Gandarel was plotting his escape.

While
Kimmerman
, his Courtesy and Protocol instructor, droned
on about proper lengths of lace cuffs and when and how low to bow
to whom, Gandarel was considering how he was going to get out of
the castle, and more importantly, out of his lessons the following
morning.

He nearly had it worked out now,
first,
he needed a diversion.  He
had noted that one of the large sows in the animal pens out back
had given birth to a pack of piglets a few weeks
ago.  His plan called for the piglets to escape their pen
and somehow get loose inside the main castle halls, in fact, very
near to his first classroom session.  He decided to make
sure they were well-covered in excrement to make them extra
slippery.  Gandarel pictured the rotund
Kimmerman
trying to capture the slimy piglets as
they ran squealing around the room, but he couldn't make his mind
up if it was the piglets or his teacher squealing the loudest in
his imagined comedic scene.  A small smile crept onto his
young face and he tried to hide it, which of course made it even
more difficult to contain.  A small shaking of his body
and his eyes watering gave him away.

Kimmerman
fixed him with a stern gaze.  "What do you find so
amusing about proper choice of colors to wear to a funeral?

Gandarel swallowed hard, biting his tongue on
purpose to stop his laughter, it wouldn't do to let Kimmerman know
his fate before it transpired.  His teacher had a date
with some pigs. That thought nearly started him laughing again, but
he managed to contain it this time.  "Nothing... really,
about a funeral, something else just struck me as
funny."  He told his teacher.