The Colour of Sunrise (Part Three of Three)

Credit: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/the-sorceror-s-sunken-dungeon

Hime moved.

In practiced, steady steps he danced, not in the direct line to his foe but irregularly to the sides and varying his approach vector. His long strides ate the distance quickly. He would be no easy target for a ranged attack.

The stone square exploded in a pool of brilliant blue-white light; a thousand times that of the passage. Hime closed his eyes momentarily, memorising the relative position to his foe even as he surged closer.

The Grey One had turned; his hands still on the book. Hime abandoned his evasive movements in favour of a headlong charge. His right palm was already arranged for the disabling strike. Ten, then five, then three steps left. The warrior monk had a moment when he saw under the depths of the cowl, looking the Grey in the face. The evil wizard's visage was horror to behold - yellowed pus oozed from cracks on it's surface, a host of open wounds bled onto his matted beard.

“The evil wizard’s visage was horror to behold - yellowed pus oozed from cracks on it’s surface, a host of open wounds bled onto the front of his robes.”

The monk chopped his right palm in a practiced blow to the throat. He braced himself for a counter, a personal shield, or an evocation. To his surprise, the Grey One made no sound, even as the iron edge of Hime's trained palm crushed the wizard's windpipe. The stunned caster raised his hand, not to defend himself, but to wave helplessly.

Hime had no time to enjoy his luck, as a lifetime of training kicked in. Disable the vocal spells. Disable his somatic ability. Find and destroy any magical foci.

Hime's other hand came up a half-breath later, the wicked war'rang's bladed edge severing both the Grey's hands in a single blow. The tome could be a focus of power; but it did not seem to be reacting, so Hime struck the wizard again with his palm. Hot blood covered his hand, and the Grey One crumpled.

A magic ward activated. The air filled with a sizzling light and Hime felt his skin, hair and flesh burning. The pain was unbearable, contracting his muscles beyond their limits, boiling his blood, the pain driving all other cognition away.

It was all he could do to take a step back from the still glowing portal. 

He stumbled. His last image was the book, sitting open on the pedestal. Then he passed out.

---

With soft footsteps of her doeskin boots, she crept into the hall. Her blue eyes gleaming bright in a dark hall, she saw the Tjion, his dark skinned form fallen before the portal.

Tiandra had followed him across the plains, stalking him as she would stalk a three-antlered deer. She didn't understand then why she had done so. Why she was compelled to run after this strange warrior monk that had shown her no affection. She had cursed her folly as it took her a week to wind her circuitous around and down to the hidden cave. She had won her stone despite the male warriors saying she could not. That iron resolve, born of famished times and warrior spirit, had seen her here.

To him, in front of the softly glowing portal.​

Crumpled, bleeding, broken.

She ran, then, crossing the hall heedlessly and knelt by his side. He was still alive, breathing shallowly. He was dangerously cold. His eyes opened. Looking at her. Then she knew. Without the need for words, his eyes had captured her, as surely as any rabbit snare. This strange, quiet ascetic, so unlike the men she had known. His face was miraculously mostly unaffected, though his lips were cold. He spoke something, too softly for her to hear.

Tiandra leaned close. "Flask" he whispered.

She looked on his person and saw a small vial, finely wrought in bronze. She uncorked the stopper and poured a small amount past his cracked lips, seeing him swallow a small mouthful. She was about to ​give him the rest, when his hand, seemingly with renewed strength, clenched her thigh and gave her pause.

Before her eyes, his most grievous wounds knitted closed, not healing completely but showing months of recovery in mere seconds. A glow returned to his face; and he smiled as he looked upon her. A miracle not seen since the departure of the White Ones.

Then, miracle upon miracles, she helped him come to his feet. He groaned with bone-deep pain, it was all she could do to hold him up. She tried to make him take more of the miraculous potion, but he would not.

"That is for the future." his words were weak, with none of the smooth intonation she remembered.

She hesitated, then stoppered the ​flask. She began to turn him toward the entrance.

"No. Book."​

​He waved her off, standing on his own. He pointed at the book.

"Please... read. Portal. Careful."

Tiandra turned to the book. Behind it, the portal was glowing a soft blue.  The book lay open, yellowed pages filled with a fine script. She read out loud to the monk.

"...in our hubris we made a mistake. All our good intent poured into creating faithful, frail man. Our magic, alongside all that was dark, false and evil about our peoples poured into beings of another kind - the Yinchanu - the Grey Ones.

In the centuries that followed, chaos. From the fey planes from which we drew our energies, they poured forth, legion after legion of them." Tiandra paused in her reading, looking at Hime. His face was exhausted, but his manner begged her to read on.

“We had squandered the gift of magic, unable to bequeath it to our children. In our folly, we brought great evil upon our worlds.”

"So there was war. While man dug deep into mountain roots or roamed the endless plains of grass and horse, we duelled with the Grey Ones. We fought them to a standstill, but our magic drew from the same source. Since they were our creation, we took responsibility. We destroyed the Blue Fountains of Nei, the source of magic on this world.

Then came the Great Lessening. So a few of us walked amongst our children, teaching them the ways of battle. It came to be that those students called themselves the Tjion, meaning the chosen. In time, they would grow strong while we and the Greys would weaken. The world would be left to the Enchamen. A final gift."

Hime had moved beside Tiandra, looking down at the book. There was but one passage left of the text. Here, the ink was fresh. Anger filled him as he realised that the Grey One had written in this holy tome.

"And I, Ebellin the Final, humblest of our order - report that the Tjions have been trained well. They have hunted and destroyed all but Uun-gannu the Dark, the avatar himself. For fifty years, I made it my life's quest to hunt him. I have destroyed him. Though I am broken myself, return in honour."

Hime stared at the page. He looked down.

He looked at the cloak of the Grey One, still sprawled on floor. A dirt-stained cloak, threadbare and worn with the years.

A once white robe.

The Colour of Sunrise (Part Two of Three)

Credit: http://desktophqwallpapers.com/red-mountain-top/

A red sunset, fogged with grey.

The villagers had seem him along the dusty road from their homes; the girl and a red warrior walked with him to the edge of their lands. She was full of questions for him.

"Where are you from?"
"I come from the Silver Monastery, in the valley beyond."
"Are you the elder there?"
"No, I am a Bronze Brother of the Fifth Circle. The Abbot runs the monastery."
"Is hunting Greys the only thing you do?"
"Actually, my primary task is to gather the lost knowledge of the White Ones and keep it safe. It is the senior brothers who are tasked directly with hunting Greys."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because," Hime said, looking at the girl's only stone, a blue shard below her eye. "This was my homeland."

The girl and the warrior left him at the edge of their outermost field; beyond stretched the grassland toward the lair of the Grey. As Hime continued on his way, the two stood watching. At the very edge of hearing, the girl shouted out:​

"Tjion Hime, I am Tiandra!"​

He did not turn to acknowledge. Tjions knew many things, but women were not one of them. Instead, he walked on.

He tracked the path of the Grey One across the plain, leading toward the mountain. His quarry's steps were shuffling. Was the spell caster tired? Despite his apparent weariness, the path tended eerily straight, guided by the Lines of Lei.

And so it was that Hime came onto the foot of the mountain. Thrust into the sky, like a sudden titan's foot struck down from heaven, the Cloudfeet Peaks bore well their name. The grass of the plains ended suddenly, and there was naught but the blue-grey stone reaching skyward. At their top, a crown of starkly white ice.

“All true knowledge was in the tomes of the White Ones; and those were buried in tombs deep, temples long ruined, and magic towers unscalable.”

All trace of the Grey ended abruptly here. The hunter-monk remained unfazed. He placed hand on a ridged, grey stone, and lifted himself off the ground.

Three days and three nights he spent scaling the peak, nothing but the fingers of his hands on the tips of his toes keeping him stuck to the wall. When it rained, he drank his fill, hugging the cliff-face like a babe at his mother's breast. When the sun beat down, he ignored the ache at his back and continued ever upward.

Hime came onto a natural tunnel carved into the face, too small to be seen clearly from below. It was high noon, the rain just passed. A small rainbow formed just above the village, rendered in miniature by the distance. He stopped at its opening for some time, preparing himself with a recitation of the Forms and the Movements. It brought him focus, concentrating his abilities on the task at hand.

He entered the tunnel, leaving the sunlight behind.

---

The passage remained lit as he ventured deeper. A soft blue light, seemingly without source, kept all the walls visible. Hime stepped forward cautiously, senses alert for danger. Inscribed all over the walls was an intricately carved text. It was of expert craftsmanship, likely the work of sorcery. He picked a wall to begin reading:

"…we Wynchalla were like the gods themselves, remaking reality..." the Wynchalla, the name the White Ones called themselves. A holy place? Hime scanned forward as he progressed, taking care to look for any sign of the Grey while he memorised this knowledge for transcription back at the monastery.

"...soon enough, some of us grew lonely; some needed partners to assist in grand endeavours. So it came to be that we created  noble creatures in our own image. We imbued in them all that was best in ourselves. We called our children the Enchamen, the companion people." This was the gospel of the genesis of humanity. Hime took his time to read all the walls, committing them to his trained memory.

Before long, he neared the dead end of the passage. Against the wall, three stone figures seemed carved from the rock of the tunnel, rising seamlessly from the stone floor. Many Tjion holy places had two - not three - figures carved in this style, and Hime recoiled from the blasphemous representation in the stonework.

The central figure was robed, elderly man standing outstretched, his hands to the skies and face exulting. Holy Arruun, avatar of the  Wynchalla, first among the White. On his left was a woman, perfect in form and beauty, who stared forward into the future. Mim'me, mother of humanity, unrobed to represent her lack of magic. On the White One's right - a figure hidden by voluminous robes carved from the stone, head bowed and face obscured by the cowl.

“Mighty in our magics and sure of our control, we remade our reality as we pleased. There was no dream that was beyond our reach on this world…”

The Grey Champion, Uun-gannu. This place was an eldritch altar to Grey powers. What a mockery of holy art! Hime calmed his rage, putting it aside. The knowledge here was useless.

Hime stepped away as a deep, thunderous scraping sounded. The figure of the White Spellmaster split in twain, the walls sliding apart to reveal a huge space beyond.  The monk moved fluidly with the left panel, hiding his form behind blessed Mim'me. He took mental note of his glimpse of the room beyond.

Beyond the sliding doors, more writing covered every inch of wall of a huge hall. A hundred meters deep and forty high, forty wide. At it's very end, four long stones formed a square, like an empty door to nowhere. Next to it, a pedestal with a huge open book.

Standing in front of the square, a grey-robed figure whose torn robes revealed a skinny, misshapen form. The Grey One, leaning over the tome.

The Colour of Sunrise (Part One of Three)

An orange sunrise, shot through with white cirrus clouds.

Hime descended from the mountains at dawn, the sun at his back. His sturdy leathers creaked, heavy on his broad shoulders. Absently, his hand caressed the worn pommel of his war'ring. The bladed chevron of lightweight steel was a familiar companion.

He went into the village, amongst the women smoking the thin, eel-like fish of the lake, the matrons at their looms, and the veterans at their pipes. The children raced underfoot, small and undernourished. The older ones would be out in the salty fields with their fathers, growing what they could.

He passed two men with sharp stones set into the skin of their wrinkled faces, standing outside the largest hut in the hamlet. They nodded to him, acknowledgement in the silent bond of warriors.

Entering the hut, the smell of tea-of-myrtle and pipe weed enclosed behind him.

"It is the hunter."
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. A figure of high cheekbones and deep authority sat within. The ancient man's bare chest was riddled with scars and patches of badly healed skin. His face was a broken mountainside, filled with stones set into the cheeks and forehead.

“A figure of high cheekbones and deep authority sat in the hut. The ancient man’s bare chest was riddled with scars and patches of badly healed skin, his face was like a broken mountainside, filled with stones set into the cheeks and forehead.”

Hime bowed deep. "Elder, I am Hime, of the Valley Tjion."
"Welcome, holy man," the elder said, "Your presence honours us."
Hime had much to say, but it was the way of the plains people to eat before their business. So he sat and broke bread with the elder and a half-dozen stone-marked warriors of the people.

They dined slowly on flatbread made from the scant barley of the fields, the smoked eel-fish of the lake, and the dried figs of better seasons gone by. This was a grand feast to these people. Thus, Hime showed them the honour of taking his fill of what they had to give.

When they were done, they sat in the wispy smoke-weed of brotherhood. Hime broached the polite silence first, as was customary.

"How fare the crops this season?"

"They are poor," said one warrior with stones of blue and grey, passing the pipe on. "The rains do not come, and the salt comes closer to the soil than ever before."

"It has been this way for a number of seasons; each worse than the last," said another, a young girl. "Since the coming of the Grey One". The youngster had blue eyes, uncommon for the people of the plains. She spoke eagerly and he watched Hime with closely in a way that made the monk uncomfortable.

"He who boldly stalks our lands, that servant of pestilence!" A third warrior grimaced, his face showing a freshly embedded red rock, still crusted with blood.

"Oh, gone are the days when the white wizards walked the land." The elder said, his bass-toned wisdom imbued with the gravity of years gone by. "Noble in their power, fathers of humanity. They, like the order from which our honoured Tjion guest comes from, reined in the Grey ones. The White Spellmasters fought them on the plains and in the valleys; on mountain tops of our world and drove them by the dozens through gates to places unseen." He recounted common folklore in the manner of plainsmen storytellers. The elder paused, wracked by a deep cough. The others waited reverently.

The next part did not need recounting, for it was within living memory. The Grey Ones had returned. They were but shadows of their former selves, powers diminished as if the passing of time had embellished the legends or blunted their evils.

“The White Spellmasters fought them on the plains and in the valleys; on mountain tops of our world and drove them by the dozens through gates to places unseen.”

But, even so, each one was an implacable foe, the better of entire tribes of mortal warriors. And none of the White Ones had come back.

Instead there were only the hunter-monks. The Tjions, mere humans. Like Hime.

"I have come to slay this Grey that plagues you." Hime said. The warriors all nodded once, at the same time. He had their approval.