Fiends

[Zmann966]

I grow bored at times, and occasionally random lulzy-conversations spark some interest into that boredom.

 

Quote

We always feared a new Desolation.
Even victorious, we knew the enemy wouldn’t sleep forever.
So we trained, and we fought. Preparing.
The Everstorm. The Final Desolation.
But nothing could prepare us for this.
 
 
     “What is going on out there?! Damnation, where are our scouts?!” Dalinar was sweating. The heat in the bunker was almost unbearable with the shutters closed and the close press of bodies. The confusion and stench of fear wasn’t helping. It made people want to run, to flee, to move. They were all trapped, squeezed together while their souls screamed “Run!”
 
    “None have reported back, Brightlord!” An attendant snapped a salute as he rushed up to Dalinar’s war table. Maps and reports were scattered across the surface, but they were few and told little. “We have sent more, with extra guard detail, but…”
    “But what man? Speak!” Dalinar winced as he saw the attendant recoil. He wasn’t usually prone to outbursts or shouting, but the last few days had set him on edge. They were all feeling the strain.
    “We don’t expect much, Brightlord. It’s an absolute mess out there, some men don’t make it more than a few steps before being snatched, others simply disappear into the mists and never return. We have no idea what we’re facing.”
    “What of Adolin? Captain Kaladin?”
    “No news yet sir, we haven’t—”
    “Father!” Renarin’s shout cut through the press of frightened whispers. “Father, err… Brightlord sir! Kaladin has been spotted.” The boy was wearing his Bridge Four uniform, but had abandoned his spectacles. I’ll have to get used to that…
    “Report! What did you see?” Dalinar asked.
    “Glowing in the sky, Fa- Brightlord. There’s not much visibility out there, not with the fog. But he’s up there.”
    “And Adolin?”
    “Coordinating the troops down here, last report has him on one of the adjacent plateaus. Said he had found an old barracks and was using it as a staging area”
    Good, that was good. Dalinar hadn’t been surprised when further exploration of the Shattered Plains—what were once the ruins of Natanatan—had turned up buildings and structures other than the Oathgate buried beneath layers of hardened crem. The old buildings weren’t much to look at, but anything was better than being stuck out in this oppressing heat.
    It was unusually hot. Beyond simply unseasonal for the Frostlands. The fog outside was more like steam than mist, heavy and suffocating.
    “Thank you, Renarin. Keep me posted.” The youth saluted and stepped back, hovering close enough to guard Dalinar, but not enough to get in the way. He knew his place. 
    Dalinar had always wanted his son groomed for battle and leadership, but with the revelation of Renarin’s powers as a Radiant, many things had clicked into place. Both for Dalinar and for his son. Despite his lack of skill with the sword or capability at commanding men, the boy was quickly becoming a man to be respected. A man Dalinar could respect. Training and working with Bridge Four under Captain Kaladin had been a blessing.
    A blessing from a dead god, Dalinar thought. And a useless one if we don’t survive the day. “I need more information. Someone try and catch Kaladin’s attention!”
 
 
 
 
    Kaladin flew above the clouds. True, it wasn’t actually flying. More like falling with style, but it was close enough to flying to feel the same. The wind rushed past him, pulling at his hair and his uniform, a freedom he would never let go of again.
    Syl flew along beside him, little more than a ribbon of light zipping against the blue of the sky. 
    He felt at peace. Now that he was a Windrunner in earnest, he felt like he could be free. Free from the struggles of the earth. Responsibility seemed so much less of a burden now that he was able to leap into the sky and cast off the shackles of gravity.
    But peace was not why he was up here.
    He was searching for the enemy. Searching for the source of the stifling heat and the thick fog that covered the Shattered Plains. He was searching for what had snatched men from the ground and plucked them into the sky. Something was up here, in his sky. And whatever it was it would have to answer to him.

    It had been hours since the fog descended upon the Shattered Plains, rolling in like a stormwall from the Origin. The scouting parties still helping with the move from the warcamps to Urithiru had reported it alongside a scalding heatwave, and Dalinar has sent a battalion to investigate. That battalion has included the Highprince himself and a detachment of his guard.
    Kaladin was irritated at the command, he had meant to leave for Hearthstone that morning, trying to warn his family before the Evertstorm hit them. But he obeyed, and not just because Syl showed deference to the Bondsmith.
    “I don’t see anything up here, whatever it is must be hiding in the fog.”
    “It’s not that deep Kaladin. The shadow we saw…” Syl said.
    The shadow. Whatever had taken those men had been enormous. All Kaladin has seen was a shape silhouetted in the mists before the shouts and screams began.
    “I’m not sure what we saw, Syl. That’s why we’re up here, if we can find—”
    Something breached the fog-layer beneath him, a massive shape rising from the mist with a sudden burst of speed.
    Kaladin lashed himself backwards, stopping in the air to prevent himself from crashing into the thing. “What in Damnation is that?! It looks like…”
    Carapace. It was the carapace of a giant greatshell. Judging by the curve of the ridges and the size of the armored plates it was easily ten or twenty times larger than a chasmfiend.
    Kaladin watched it rise from the fog, stunned. It trailed threads of mist as it emerged, and it kept coming. By the time the spiked ridges of the creature’s arrow-shaped head broke through the mist, the bulk of its revealed body was already seven hundred feet long. Massive claws trailed behind it in the air, and it’s long, sinuous body was studded with hundreds of tiny legs.
    Too small to support the mass of something that large, vestigial? Kaladin’s thoughts came unbidden, shock at the sight of this mind-numbing foe forcing aside rational thought and letting his inner surgeon ramble.

    The creature rose to Kaladin’s level, and he could see the dull, milky-white eyes set into the head. Blind as well? No. A third eyelid pulled back, revealing the deep-green pupil as it focused on him.
    A deep rumble echoed in Kaladin’s chest, a thrumming that seemed to resonate in his mind rather than through his ears.
    YOU HAVE TRANSGRESSED, CHILD OF HONOR.
    The words pressed upon his mind, like how Syl’s did when she spoke to him as a shardblade. It reminded him of the Stormfather’s voice, but even when he had killed Syl it had paled compared to the scorn he felt now.
    “I don’t like this Kaladin. There’s something… wrong with that greatshell.” Syl said.
    “You mean other than the fact that it’s enormous, flying, and can talk?!” Kaladin felt the panic rising in his voice. He took a deep swallow, trying to calm his nerves.
    “Yes aside from that. It’s spren are all… odd…”
    YOUR PRIDE AND YOUR GREED HAVE OFFENDED THE BALANCE. YOU HAVE WRITTEN YOUR OWN DOWNFALL.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Kaladin shouted, mentally preparing for Syl to become a spear. Just in case. “What are you? Why are you attacking us?”
    The deep rumble paused. WE ARE WHAT YOU STRIVE TO BE. WE ARE THE PINNACLE. WE ARE THE CHOSEN OF THE SKY. YOU HELD SUCH PROMISE. BUT NOW YOU WILL NEVER KNOW THE STARS.
    “What have we done? I’ve never even heard of your kind until you attacked us!”
    YOU CALL US FIENDS. BUT YOU ARE THE MONSTERS. YOU SLAUGHTER US WITHOUT PAUSE. YOU KILL US IN OUR BEDS.
    Kaladin hesitated. Fiends? Were these… Were these the mature chasmfiends?! He couldn’t comprehend it. Not only could chasmfiends grow even larger, but they could fly? How had he never heard of this? Surely some scholar—if any of them were as annoyingly determined as Shallan—would have made this discovery. It just reinforced the fact that there was so much they didn’t know about the Shattered Plains.
    And what was that it said about killing them in their beds? The gemhearts. The Alethi had been watching for chasmfiend chrysalises for almost six years, ruthlessly carving into them to extract the valuable gemhearts.
    “We needed the gemhearts to survive! We use them for food, for shelter from the highstorms!” Even as he spoke Kaladin could feel the emptiness of his words. The Alethi didn’t need the gemhearts. They sought them for profit, for glory, for petty competition.
    THE LISTENERS USED US FOR SURVIVAL. EVEN OF THE VOID THEIR HONOR ECLIPSES YOUR OWN. YOUR KIND HAVE STRAYED FROM THEIR INTENT. 
 
    “We…” Kaladin tried to come up with an argument, a reason why this creature shouldn’t wipe them out with impunity. “We didn’t know…”
    IGNORANCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR GENOCIDE.
    The silence stretched between them, yawning like a great gulf between the massive greatshell and diminutive Windrunner as they hung in the sky.
    “I can’t let you destroy us. I cannot let you tear down everything we have built.” Syl formed as a long spear in his hand, glyphs glowing along the sharpened edges of the spearhead.     He whipped her to the side by the handle, spraying the drops of condensation into the fog below.
    The voice pressed down on him, rumbling almost as if… It was laughing at him!
    YOU ARE AN EYEBLINK. YOUR CULTURE IS A SHORT GASP. EVEN IF THE DESOLATIONS HAD NOT INTERRUPTED YOUR HEARTBEAT, YOU WOULD STILL BE NOTHING.
    “Even if that’s true… I will not let you take it from us.”
    THEN DIE, CHILD OF HONOR. KNOW THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS.
    Kaladin… Syl’s voice came to his mind, sounding worried.
    He gripped the spear in his hand and took a sharp breath, drawing in more Stormlight from the spheres in the pouch on his belt. He burst alight, glowing with power as his body urged him forward.
    Kaladin!
    He leveled the point of his spear at the creature’s arrow-shaped face, trying to ignore the fact that the thing’s mouth was the size of a building.
    Kaladin! Syl’s shout finally drew his attention.
    “What?”
    Look…
    Only then did he finally notice the streaks of light in the sky. Not the cool blue of stormlight wielded by Windrunners, but jets of red and orange, like fire. They were descending from the sky above, dozens of them piercing through the air, tiny at first but growing larger. Too large. There were more. They pushed aside clouds as they descended, coming from… From somewhere above.
    YOU EXIST BECAUSE WE ALLOW IT. AND YOU WILL END BECAUSE WE DEMAND IT. 
    The creatures fell toward him, legs and claws unfurling from cavities in their carapace as the compression waves beneath them faded. These weren’t chasmfiends at all, they were skyfiends.
    No Kaladin. Syl said quietly. They are from out there. Beyond even where you can fly. They are Stellarfiends. With the tiny cry of her voice, the spear in his hands disappeared. He looked towards her, stunned, as she formed into a young woman beside him. The fear on her face sent a cold shiver down his spine.
    And then she fled.
    Watching her ribbon of light streak away, running from the stellarfiends, Kaladin knew that this was a foe unlike any he had faced. Unlike any humanity had ever faced. This was an enemy that caused even an Honorspren—a splinter of a god who has fought Voidbringers and their gods for epochs upon epochs—to flee in terror.
    Kaladin’s eyes grew wide at the realization. This was bigger than Parshendi. Bigger than the Voidbringers. This was bigger than the desolations.
    He took a deep breath of stormlight, and ran. 
    The deep rumble of the stellarfiend’s voice followed him as he streaked away. RUN, CHILD OF HONOR. BUT THERE WILL BE NO QUARTER. WE ARE OF CULTIVATION, BUT YOUR KIND HAS TAUGHT US HATE. 
 

 

Edited June 18, 2017 by Zmann966

[Eternum]

Damnation. That's stormin' scary.

Edited June 18, 2017 by Eternum