The Last of the Iseultians

Here's a story I wrote. This is about 3-4 hours of writing. It started off as a little paragraph for fun...but I really got into it.

Aedan, born of fire, gazed into the misty pool below. His coat of mail with gleaming metal shown in the bluish grey reflection. The night was calm and still, but unyieldingly discomforting. The air felt dead and still; not even the hint of a breeze could be discerned in this vast and open space. The ghoulish moon Ruari, in the South, and Murtagh, in the west, shown with their yellow-greenish stare all over this forsaken part of the world. Aedan had always heard tell of the Ruari, the pale moon that was only visible in the Vanishing Lands of the southern pole of the world. A chill went through his thickening blood as he thought of how far he was from his home in the land of Odhranian Lands in the North.

Odhrania was a difficult land to describe to one foreign to its graces. It was a rolling land full of moors and plains, everything green as far as the eye could see. The red-orange warmth of the sun never ceased to bask the land in a pristine eagerness. It was almost anxious, that land, and like a child unable to sit still and listen to the admonitions of the elders. Everything about it pulsated and breathed. It was there that Aedan, born of fire, had been raised. He was an adopted child, said to be the last of the Iseultians. Odhrania was the last dwelling place of the peaceful humans. Fiercer men roamed the rest of the wilder parts of the world, but Odhranians were hidden from the cruelty of the rest of the fallen world. They lived in a magical valley that had been the last of the gifts from the Beneficent. Tales of the Beneficent were the Odhranians’ favorite sort. Though none lived who could remember the Beneficent, everyone had theories about who and of what sort of creature she had been. The Beneficent was a dwarflike, two-faced creature with lilac-colored hair that wrapped her entire body. One face breathed a fragrant scent, which had been believed to be the creative force that formed the pristine valley of Odhrania. The other face spoke in a heavenly language that had not been uttered since the Age of the Utmost, near the dawning of the world, when the Council of Eight had chanted the world into existence. The Odhranians tried to translate the words of the Beneficent into their native language, but all attempts had failed.

Of course, after creating that wonderful valley, that cradling life force for the people of Odhrania, the Beneficent had vanished. Yes, she had been of diminutive stature, but she always loved to parade through the villages breathing her fragrant, life-giving scent that kept the valley young and beautiful. After centuries of living amongst the humans in Odhrania, her presence suddenly vanished. The valley began to get old and the warmth of the sun turned to burning heat. The Odhranians began to metamorphose back into exactly that which they had salvaged themselves from: they became more warlike. In the Dark Times, when the strength and wisdom of men failed and the demon-like race of the Baezha had discovered the Light of Etouha, then had the world become scalded with the grip of evil. Evil, first personified by the Seventh of the Council of Eight, who stole one of the fiery rings of the Land Beyond the Sun and his heart had turned evil. The other seven made war against him, war which lasted for thousands of years, as the inhabitants of the world lived their unaware lives down far below the watch of the Wise Ones. With the power of that all-conquering ring, the Seventh of the Council battled and raged on, unconquered by the other Seven, who had no power over the wielder of the sun-ring. The Council would surely one day defeat this traitor, but not until the Seventh did one final, vituperative deed.

Taking the name of Oisa, a more beautiful name than was deserving for such a treacherous creature, the Seventh of the Council knew he could use the creative power of the fiery ring, in one last effort, before he perished and became part of the four winds of the skies. Oisa had loved that fiery ring and had it encased in a large glass-like temple. A temple which had been built by the Council to glorify the Niphraim, the first of beings, of which the Land Beyond the Sun had come. There, the white-hot plasma rings of fire had been stored by the Niphraim, who decided that to entrust such a powerful life-force to imperfect beings would be too dangerous. The Niphraim alone had been involatile, perfect. They had given instructions to the Council of Eight on how to justly govern the world in its splendour. But now Oisa, having broken league with the Eight, accomplished one last deed of cruelty. He uncased the leaping fiery substance from its glass temple and hurled it down to scorch the world. It had not achieved the intended effect. The intended effect was that it bathe the world in flame and make it a brooding ground for evil. Instead, the a land of fire had been forged, a land of heat and blinding smoke and great pits of fire. Oisa, having surrendered the power he waged from the fiery ring, breathed his last breath of life into the land, creating the race of Iseultians, before the other seven of the Council finally conquered him, vaporizing his spirit and sprinkling his foul ashes upon the four winds.

The Iseultians lived, bred, and died in the fires of Iseultia, that accursed land formed in the dying moments of Oisa the treacherous. Yet the evil he intended never came into absolute fruition. The Iseultians were a mighty folk indeed, impervious to flame, nearly a cubit in stature, and with terrific eyesight. They were able to see through opaque matter for about a mile radius. The evil that Oisa had intended for the land of Iseultia had not seen the light of day. After all, the very fire Oisa had hurled down was not inherently evil. It was only evil as long as Oisa lived, a point he had overlooked. For that sacred fire had been forged by the Niphraim, in the Land Beyond the Sun. The Niphraim had forged it after their own nature: perfect and pure. Therefore, the Iseultians could make a choice. They could use their powers either for good or for evil. They were given a heart of fire, which they would wield their entire lives. They could use this heart to hurl rings of fire at their foes, or friends, whichever they chose. Many chose to stay in Iseultia. A few began to wander off into other lands, until the Land of Iseultia was eventually abandoned by the Iseultians, and the fires began to die down, as the power of its people waned. It was then that the Dark Times had begun, when the demon-like Baezha had besieged Iseultia and starved out the few remaining within its borders. The Baezha had killed the last of the Iseultians and occupied that land of fiery pits and volcanoes. However, the Baezha had not the power to keep those magical fires burning. Slowly, Iseultia turned into a land of ash and mud, wasted by the careless Baezha. The only Iseultians who remained were those wandering the four corners of the earth.

The reason the Baezha were able to occupy Iseultia lay to the fault of fickle and weak humanity. The strength and wisdom of men had failed. Greed and power caused so much fighting amongst men that they could not inhabit the same lands together. Mankind had been the glorious passion piece of the Niphraim, created as a peace-loving race. But the hearts of men, easily corrupted, allowed the Baezha to turn them against each other. In warring against the Baezha, men became overtaken themselves by the same greed and lust that that demonic race itself harbored. But the few men who had not been corrupted in those Dark Times banded together in search of a new land where they could start a new life. A land where they would be safe from the raping, pillaging, and murdering ways of the demonic Baezha, with their cruel fangs and spiked heads. They had found a grey flatland in the North, untouched by life experience, harboring only the Beulah plant, suitable for food. The more they ate, the more godlike they became and the more love was restored. And that was when the Beneficent had visited these peace-lovers and graced them with the magical valley of Odhrania, from which they took their name.

Nearly two ages after the eventual disappearance of the lilac-haired, angelic Beneficent, a stranger had appeared within the borders of Odhrania. A hooded Voor with a worn staff had hobbled into the valley. This mystified and intrigued the Odhranians, who had been told by the Beneficent that the magical valley was hidden from the rest of the corrupt world. This Voor, hobbling into the valley, bore strange news of the rest of the world. The Odhranians had never seen a Voor before, either. Voors were silent, strange creatures. There actual physical presence was never seen. It was only cloaked by a massive robe that covered their supposed bodies. They were giants, with only two burning green eyes that shown in the blackness underneath their grey hoods. This Voor told of a strange new use of the Light of Etouha by the Baezha. They were using it to conquer the wills and minds of all other races in the world. He told the Odhranians they were no longer safe. Their valley, though currently untouched, would soon be overtaken by the mysticism of the sullied Light of Etouha, employed by the Baezha. The last thing he did before he left was to pull from beneath his robe a young, screaming child. The child looked both entirely and unentirely human at once. The features were that of a man, but body shape was wavy and almost free-form. The skin of the infant was a dull yellow-orange. This child, the mysterious Voor claimed, was the last of the Iseultians, a group of creatures born of fire. His name was Aedan, “born of fire.” Leaving Aedan behind to be raised by the Odhranians, the Voor vanished from the valley.

Aedan had grown up under the constant care of the Odhranians. The valley, still beautiful enough and wonderful to inhabit, was at the same time waning from its former glory, unprotected by the presence of the Beneficent. Aedan had received a human upbringing, but became more and more unable to fit in the older he got. After 25 years of life under the nurturing gaze and watch of the Odhranians, Aedan had seen a vision. He had seen a lady robed in white, with hair so golden-blonde it outshined the sun. She came in the midst of clouds, parting the heavens, whispering a foreign language to him. He understood it in his heart. The lady in white told him he was destined to save the world from an onslaught of darkness, manifesting through the Baezha’s corruption of the Light of Etouha. The only salvation, she whispered, lay in the Pool of Uriah, in the Vanishing Lands of the south. “The only salvation, my child, lies in the Pool of Uriah.”

And hence had Aedan come. Through much tribulation he had come to the Vanishing Lands, which, according to legend, were only visible when the moon of Ruari showed itself 5 days out of the year. The Ruari moon showed a path through the Damned Forest, as it was called. The Damned Forest encircled the Vanishing Lands and had driven many a creature mad. Anyone in search of the elusive Vanishing Lands was lost in the Damned Forest forever, coming under its enchanted spell, doomed to wander aimlessly forever. Aedan, though, had been destined to find the lands and the Pool of Uriah. And after 10 years of searching and fighting the more evil races of creatures, namely the demonic Baezha, here he stood.

The Baezha were an omnipresent fiend who, collectively, were both laughably powerless and formidably dangerous. Their danger lay in their multitudinous nature. Their origin lay with the Iseultians. Much of the course of the world’s history had been dominated by the decisions made by those first Iseultians who roamed the ancient world, long before the Dark Times. After all, evil crystallized with Oisa’s rebellion in the Council of Eight’s sky realm of glorious palaces. His rebellion manifested on earth through the cruel hatred he poured into the sun-ring tossed down from above. Though that ring of fire had been lovingly and caringly crafted by the Niphraim to be an expression of purity and beauty, like the other fire rings beyond the sun, Oisa tainted, as it were, that bit of plasma he tossed down. After all, a substance can be the purest stuff in existence, but if a part of a wicked act, can become used by dark forces. This was Oisa’s dark triumph: throwing something sacred down in a fit of wickedness. The result was that the Iseultians had been allowed to either use their fiery hearts for good or for evil. Many who left Iseultia and procreated throughout the world were responsible for the creation of beautiful races of creatures and everything righteous in the free world.

But many of those first Iseultians became corrupt. Their ability to control fire and produce it from their breast was too great of a power for their imperfect hearts to handle. They formed wicked and vile magics that were stored in various locations, in natural habitats. They hurled great pillars of flame at all who opposed their self-serving conquest of the mysterious and far-reaching lands of the world. As they joined themselves with other creatures, other races were formed, evil races that knew nothing of art and music, of love and tenderness, of honor and glory. Races of creatures who could only destroy, not create. Creatures who ate ashes and dust, who drank blood to quench their lustful appetites. The basest of these, by far, were the Baezha.

One band of warlike and vile Iseultians had come into league with the a prophet of the Azekahn order. The Niphraim, upon taking the first virgin soil of the world in its infancy (ages had passed since the world lay in pristine splendour, unsullied by the tarnishing of history!), had made man and given the Council specific instructions on the growth of this race of beings. Man was the Niphraic passion piece, created from soil. Man would prove the slowest to reproduce, evolve, and develop, compared to the other more enlightened and superior races of creatures. Yet man was special to the Niphraim, in that he had always been meant to be a steady and undying breed. As other creatures interbred and became one with their environments, the slow and often weak humans remained unchanged, a curious source of constancy in a changing world. The Niphraim had given the Prophets special powers to use the many iron pools sprinkled throughout the world to communicate with each other and see the future. They were the wise ones, entrusted with guiding mankind. Many and divers orders of Prophets evolved, the Azekahn being the most respected and feared of all creatures.

It was a Prophet of the Azekahn order that was taken captive by a marauding score of Iseultian warriors, threatening to burn his tower of marble and stone to the ground. The Prophet Ilvus gave an audience to these Iseultians, who wished to be endowed with the foreknowledge of the Azekahn order. The Ilvus the Prophet knew better and was wiser than to give into such a threat, for the Prophet knew he had the power to stop an Iseultian onslaught. For not easily do the hairs of an Azekahn grey, nor are the works of an Azekahn so easily toppled. No, there was a temptation that persisted, something forbidden by the law of the Niphraim. The Azekahn were not to use their powers to lead other creature sinto battle. They were an order of advisors, not warriors. Yet Ilvus saw the mightiness of the Iseultians, and wondered. He wondered if, over the command of the Iseultians, he might overtake the rest of his order and become the mightiest of the Prophets. He therefore made an agreement with this Iseultian band. If they would tend to his tower and his garden and fields, Ilvus would spend however long it took to develop the magic necessary to endow the Iseultians with the foreknowledge of an Azekahn prophet.

For 100 years, Ilvus burrowed into the earth, his magical experiments destroying more and more of the landscape, as he grasped for the method necessary to transfer power to another race. When he came to the Deep Places, hidden knowledge that had been sprinkled in small bits by ancient wise ones at the world’s creation, he found the hidden magic he had sought for, and attempted to transfer his power of foreknowledge to the Iseultians. The magic was strong, but it yielded an effect not intended. This was sacred ability, not intended by the Council of Eight to be used for ill means. It has a reversing effect when used for ill-gotten gains. The Iseultians who had labored for Ilvus for so long were turned into a ghastly group of creatures with thin, maroon-tinted black skin covering a skinny body of scaled monstrosity. Horns jutted out of their heads in tormented shapes and at crazed angles. Their eyes were sunken back in their heads and their tongues lolled out of their sickly mouths. Claws for fingers and toes emerged and a visible black mist with a pungent odor filled the air when they croaked their vile words into existence. Ilvus, in disgust, exclaimed the strongest of curses in the Azekahn vocabulary, “Baezha!” And thus the Baezha were formed, who immediately slit the throat of Ilvus and drank his precious blood, blood that for a Prophet, was supposedly not able to be shed in vain. Only when a Prophet committed a vile act could his blood flow so freely, which had never been done before. And so the Baezha became a race of bloodthirsty savages, demonic creatures who quickly procreated and multiplied faster than any other creature that would ever come to inhabit the world.

The Baezha, this omnipresent fiend and epitome of evil, had constantly faced Aedan, born of fire, in his quest for the Pool of Uriah. The Baezha were a clumsy element at best, but the threat of them lay in their sheer vastness in number during an attack. They were also very silent creatures, enabling them to sneak up on an unsuspecting enemy with great ease. They survived through the consumption of ash, a mockery of their former glory in ages past, when as Iseultians, they had harnessed the power of fire. Now they must, their whole putrid existence, eat the ashes of fires long burnt out. The smell of the toxic excrement they left behind was poisonous to most races and would put the brain into a semi-intoxicated state. Some creatures had developed an immunity to the odor of Baezha waste. Iseultians for some reason had always been immune, a blessing for Aedan, born of fire, in his quest. The number of Baezha he had slain with lightning bolts of fire he had hurled from his breast! Oh, the songs that were written of Aedan, slayer of multitudes, multitudes of dastardly Baezha, a bastardly race of bloodthirsty demons who knew only one word: destroy. And since they had begun utilizing the Light of Etouha to control the minds and thoughts of the races of the free world, their destructive powers had become even more evil. And this was the very reason for Aedan’s quest. Onward to the Pool of Uriah he pressed, to discover the secrets of the Light of Etouha.

The Baezha in all their cruelty were only one small challenge faced by Aedan, born of fire, in his quest to the Vanishing Lands. Oh, the fortune these 10 years had brought Aedan, the young and valiant, the last of the purebred Iseultians, Lord of Fire, Wielder of the power of the Niphraim from the Land Beyond the Sun! Misfortune was a constant companion, as were the strange creatures and lands he encountered in his quest: the Leviathans of the Glass Sea in all its turquoise beauty, the giants of the Ercescus Flatlands, the seduction of the Daughters of Chaimecea in their great halls of crystal, the worshiping forest dwarves of Kozeh Mountain, the phantoms of the ancient kings on the Endless Stair to the Ilvus’ Deep, the endless reading of transgressions at the court of the King of the Isle of Scale-Covered Beasts, the battle of wits with the Sorcerer of Hrense Pass in the midst of the sea cliffs at the edge of the Hinder Sea (which empties into the Lake of the Nymphs), the alliance with the mountain monsters of the Black Mountains, scorched by years of fiery battles with the Dragon Sons and Daughters of the unholy union of the Anakims with the great winged goblins of the stone wastes of Ziz. Oh, the tales that could be told of Aedan, son of fire, wielder of flame!

And so a rich history lay dormant, lay silent, behind the Son of Fire. Eternity past was cheering him on at this instant, on this mystical night, foreseen of old by the first of the Prophets. A time when the strength of men would fail, and those born of fire would be undergo their final test. And tonight it would be the ancient Iseultian blood that would boil and Iseultian veins that would bulge at the tense opportunity that now lay shrouded in mystery. The Damned Forest behind him, Aedan, born of fire, gazed into the craterous lake before him, unsure of what this foul night would bring to life. As he stared into the iron-colored Pool of Uriah, suddenly his reflection disappeared. Before him was the piercing gaze of the lady in white, searching the eyes of the last of the Iseultians.