The Harbinger of Beligerance
She dreamed of the everfire birds traversing the turquoise stained sky by the end of the day, where the light was fading itself away to be replaced by the blackened reign of night over the arrowed spears and covered heads of uncountable warriors spreaded on the vast Field of Nesetle. Men from Notalherji coming from throughout the north roads with their swords seemed to never stop, bellowing in ire against the hopeful defenders. She saw the shields lines trying to contain the foes’ onslaught down at the entrance and the guards running from here to there up on the adarves, adjusting the mangonels at the top of the flank towers and some others throwing rocks from the machicolations. Falling from sky were the archers’ flaming arrows, whilst under them she could behold the daurs spitting fire and creating chaos on battlefield, but only until some warriors riding huge manequants with strong red tusks crushed them so as the carnage could be available everywhere.
Desperate she was, aflicted with the hundred voices screaming in total horror. Children inside the castle cried for their mothers just to be pushed by some impatient paladin late for battle, or coward enough to stay secure. Bones being smashed under frenzy horseshoes and spilled blood over walls and floor was now part of the view she had, and the landscape painted with the colors of war would never again become the same. The history of the gefidres could now be vanished for good. Nothing she could possibly think would help.
But that was all a horrible dream she told the venator that morning. So compliant he was, he tried to calm her down and let the sorrow tears get dry by the unlit furnace, smiling peacefully and offering water with his hands.
– Grateful – She wiped the tears away as the air once more filled her softly. – ... and I apologize, my Venator. I cannot comprehend how I got so scared with that.
– What do you mean, Sjallia? – The venator stood up slowly, the age reaching his joints faster than he imagined. The girl stoop up too and they started to walk along the castle's inner garden.
– Since childhood I am used to the war and... – A moment of hesitation was enough to get interrupted before concluding that thought.
– Oh, please, Sjallia, you do not need to apologize, I assure you. The fear sooner or later wraps its fingers around our throats. There is no thing we are able to do but face ourselves. You are not wrong.
– But don’t you think I can bring upon us the phantom of bad omen? The Moudha shall let the odds fall upon the Doig...
– The Moudha is not even alive, I fear being the one who warns you. – The venator again interrupted her, always speaking as slow as his force would allow him to. – Centuries of worthless effort have revealed me that we were living a fantasy.
– Do you mean the Évir-mor is wrong? – Thinking about what was being said, Sjallia started to doubt about the rituals the venators used to do for so long.
– He always knew the truth, actually, long before becoming our Prophet. The faith we are teached to have is nothing beyond a miserable fallacy. – Sorrow within those words, as he'd had believed in it once, was tangible.
Sjallia felt like hitted by a strong punch inside her, a punch filled with the venom of the astrayed soul of he who was talking to her straight on her most solid beliefs. Neither the manequants would have so much power to make her realize the truth behind that. And with so, she didn’t believe. She chose not to believe.
But the point was that, as Sjallia always heard the venators telling so creepy and absurd stories, with so many details within them, strangely questioning the same rules one day they swore to obey and preaching the desecration out of the Moudha’s rituals through the alleys of the Lower City, she just assumed he was perhaps getting mad.
– Why are you confessing me this, my Venator?
His semblance misted and Sjallia saw the silence blowing the secrets of the forest around the fortress. Those walls seemed creepiest than ever, and she truly let a short but loud scream come out when the door slammed behind them. From there came Cimim, the youngest and most responsible acolyte within the fortress’ domains.
– Venator Ghius, – Cimim talked gasping. He surely ran a lot to reach them, it was probably certain. – an urgence demands your presence in main hall.
