A Narrative Essay, by Sehmakhrim Besadura.
- Haasdra was dark; the city was silent. Ghosts wailed with the smell of blackened blood, the tips of the emerald Viragius cold and slow to a hellfire night. A twisted world of everything and nothing, where all but little lights were dimmed for the blackest nights. So long - how long did those cold frigid nights last, where the Amalgamate was without a King? How long ago was that? Could we have remembered it so well? I could not. Just, nothing. A blackness. A coldness. A chill of my spine, like a ghost wreathing her fingers, sharp as knives, around my backside. The frost of my blood in a bleak winter was nothing compared to the chill of the sands. Silence, a soft whir of the dune seas far off, without challenge, the waves of the sandy ocean as it prickled my eyes. Oh, these golden whitecaps were luscious, indeed.
Such as it was that night. The night the moon stayed still in the sky, wading above us like a haunting ghost, the fortress of angels upon their silver chains, sailing across the glittering sea to nowhere. Nowhere. A dark light, a fool's light. Glistening in envy at the brightness of Haasdra below. The smell of the winter dunes, for even as hot it was, the walls were cold. Bare. Lifeless. Without a soul. Just as our throne was, much length ago, and now ever more. Karakorun was stepping down as the Regent, and now, the Therax would soon be seen in Enkur's light. A bright future, I can smell it!
And such I felt, when I walked down the halls to the chamber. An infinite staircase they said - it was not that long, really. I've been through much longer. I miss them, my family. I miss the smell of the teas of Rephalim, the softness of the ocean's waves in the shores of Eimuun. I miss the kiss of the cold winds in the northern mountains, where snow - real snow! - fell with grace and softness, a beauty unchallenged by the maleficent desert. An escapist world, an apostate of the climate around them. A bone-hewed darkness. A lifelessness in this city. Rashkta died years ago. The woman that sat in her stead, here, is not her. It couldn't be. The women I was enraptured with is gone. Just a shell now, who sits and weeps and laments of years gone by. A reactionary without even a husk of a life. None such exists anymore. Not for her. No, not her.
The sounds of the footsteps were heard when I walked into the grand hall of the Zarazego, and so interestingly, as I walked down, if felt as if the air became lighter, smoother and better, as if I had rushed into the tips of its minaret-shaped precipice, standing tall as a watchtower across the world! I felt strong and capable at that moment, and even all that came to me was such, I was able. I was willing. As I grasped the handles, golden handles, of the doors that were twice my size, carved of the finest stones, opening with the brush of Temsplaces. And so, I was surprised. I was shocked, in sudden shimmers. The light of the room was strong and piercing, and I pressed the surface of my books. They were fresh, ready, the chamber a round set of nothing more than chairs, each refined to each Lord or his representative, shadowed by a great being behind them. Never have I seen so many Temsplaces in one place.
I had heard stories of these men, these Temsplaces. Strong fathers and brothers, priests of the male variety with the ability to fight on the frontlines for what they believed in; God. The God Enkur, a precious beast of a being who made the Methronnians, our kin, many many millenia ago. I had heard the stories, like any other Jenrakian youth when he was growing up - how the wondrous life of Enkur when he fell from favour against the schemes of his brother Ciranaar, and so he sought to make an army bred of the beasts that lived on his father's corpse, the World. And so, as he plotted against Ciranaar who sat from his Silver Throne on the Moon, he made us. He made the Ascherans; the firstborn, the last. He made man in all his glory so that he may think, but he made man in all his weakness so that he may serve. He had wished us to grow, as servants, and such shackles were the way of the word. As the Karbulians bowed before Enkur before them, so do the Temsplaces before their Lords now. Truly, I had never thought of the magnificence of such until now!
Each was trimmed in golden lace upon a white cloak, draped from head to toe, where the strong sections of armor poked out unknowingly from their shoulders, without armaments others than the swords by their side, the handles dangling from their waists to the cheeks of their masters. It was not them who unsheathed the blades, but their Lords. They were nothing more than decoration here. From one corner, standing in front of a great insignia of a mirror greeting a rising sun, there was the Tempestra. He represented the Eastern Star, I had learned somewhere. Saerus Annirak. A quiet man, of temperance, of carefulness, of prudence. But a man with a sharp tongue, and a man nevertheless. As a man, he birthed himself and his children in a fire of war. When I spoke then of his children, I meant the Temsplace. So frightening he must be to those who did not know war to be a Lord of Temsplaces, to make the world as Enkur sees fit. As God does it to his will, so will the Blessed Saerus will do unto others. It cannot be escaped.
And to the opposite, how can I address him but none other than one who holds the throne already? A man with black glasses and tired eyes, thin lips and a sharp expression, wrapped in casual clothing without address to the council of the 95, his shoulders low, but his arms built. He was a lean and powerful man of average height, but he stared back at the white robes of Saerus without worry of an issue of challenge. A black crown stood atop his head, and black leather gloves were placed upon his fingers, wrapping lovingly around their master's form. Karakorun Menerauk, the Regent.
To the right of Karakorun, the left of Saerus, was a woman of bone-white hair; small and fragile to the image, but well dressed and kept tall and strong. Her eyes were sharp and vivid, her fingers locked together as she stood upon her own pedestal, standing beneath the insignia of a dying tree. Hands behind her back, head held high, she had a look of certainty and pompous propriety. Yet all that did little to hide the blade that hung at her waist, the chains kissing its cold blood-nicked surface with a soft jingle. Her pale face was soft and emotionless, and she looked in her black suit, so dark it seemed a single thing, a single entity in itself. Akreska Verdahk Treyuko. The wife of Miriana Treyuko. A cold, callous woman to match an equally cold man.
I walked into the room to hear the closing of the doors behind me. The only way out. The dim light of the Lords as they sat, all 95 of them - how fragile so many of them were, and how weakening the Jenrakians are becoming! For each year, it diminishes. It wanes. It dies. We die. We are dying. So we make concessions. We make deals. We come to gripes.
We conquer. We assimilate. We convince. We destroy, rape, pillage and plunder. To survive. We are a dying breed, for even I carry barely any Methronnian blood, and I am so pure in my heritage to carry as the Councilman. But here, I watch. I write, and I wait. A discussion of bickering for the most powerful position in the Amalgamate. A discussion until one has felled for their thirst of power. The doors were locked. Nobody can get out. The Temsplaces will not let anyone out. All 95 of us.
So, such as it is, I bow my head. It is a good thing it will be a long night.
