The Kingdom of Creation: Prologue [Steampunk, Occult, Horror, Romance...what more could a girl ask for!] by reneenouveau

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· @reneenouveau ·
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The Kingdom of Creation: Prologue [Steampunk, Occult, Horror, Romance...what more could a girl ask for!]
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# Prologue
Lucian Dojan had traveled for months among the strange Amari people. No airships marred the placid blue skies overhead these simple folk. He had learned their tongue and was able to communicate well enough to make his way among them towards the mountains that erupted along their countries western edge. They were a simple, trusting people. Not yet slaves to the steam-engines of the arrogant Anglefolc, on their distant isle. 

Here his pitch black hair was a common trait, though he was much taller than the peasant folk he passed on the road. His cold blue eyes, were also out of place and caused those he spoke with to gape at first. He had left his fine suits in Lundain and taken with him only the simple clothes of an adventurer. They seemed constantly dirty from the road dust, even though shrouded by the woven cloak he wore over them. 

He traveled by foot and mule-drawn cart through foothills, consulting his notebook often. Years of research and travel had culminated into this long voyage. The road into the city of Naxos wove between fields of grain: whitish barley and golden wheat. He passed numerous orchards that hugged the Archeron River's fertile plain. As he ate their fruit he wondered if these gnarled trees were descendants of the ones his people would have planted aeons ago.  

In the city he consulted with the locals and confirmed the location of the Bone Pit, one cavern in particular in the network that wormed under the mountain said to have once been a Theran burial ground, later a Trode temple of worship.

It was a day's hike up the steep path squeezed between two walls of stone. The path was overgrown, weakly marked for few ventured into this place. He passed the ruins of buildings, crumbling foundations consumed by the forest. He half-heartedly investigated them finding the upper floors were all but gone, detritus filling the cellars with broken fresco, pottery, and stone. He pressed forward, scaring birds to flight, until at last he saw the mouth cut into the rocky cliff. 

The locals called it cursed and haunted and his guide refused to lead him further than a grassy outcrop from which one could view the darkened entrance, a gash in the pale cliff. Better still, he thought, to be alone at the pinnacle of his quest. Lucian ordered the man to set up camp at the spot where he refused to progress and to wait for his return. He took his pack and continued towards the mouth. 

The Bone Pit’s entrance culminated in a steep slope formed by a cone of limestone slabs. At the incline’s greatest point the floor of the cave almost touched the ceiling. Lucian knew that the buildup of deposited sediments often hid the entrance to caves and renders them inaccessible to the rest of the network of channels. Many times in the past he single-handedly moved half-a-ton of sediment to clear away a cave mouth enough to squeeze his bulky form though. Here, though, no such work was required.

Once he was past the bottleneck, it opened into a large room located at the foot of a great fissure in the side of the mountain, which runs almost unnoticed to the top. That was why it was an ideal place to take refuge, cool when the heat outside was unbearable, and warm during the coldest months. Just beyond the fissure his umbra of torchlight fell upon the worked stone walls of the last fortress of the Trode. 

He stood agog, the weak light flickering on the ancient walls. His breath quickened and his heart raced to pump his Trode blood through his veins. Lucian was a descendent of the Trode, a splinter group of the long dead Theran race. He had searched for this place for over a century, where he might find a relic of his ancestors. It was his great hope that his necromancy might reveal to him alone their secret power. 

Here the locals had told him he would find the Os Sacrum, or Holy Bone. He passed through the doorway between the stone pillars, caked with the ropey deposits of sediment that dripped from the ceiling above and ran in rivulets over the carved surface. It gave the entire entrance an organic look, as if it had grown out of the rock around it, rather than built by his ancestor's might.

He continued into the fortress, down the central hallway to a large circular room. In a prominent position was a stone table and set upon it was a skull. Somehow this bone had escaped the ravages of time. Upon its cranium sat a golden crown, a simple band of metal. 

This was exactly what Lucian had hoped to find. Whoever the skull belonged it was obvious someone of influence. The wisdom contained within the mind of the long dead Trode, might assist him in plan. Confidently he prepared himself to work his magic. He had performed the ritual before, drawing the spirit back to inhabit a body part long enough for him to torment out of it any secret knowledge he desired. His powers had grown immensely by the successful operation of this ritual. 

For this ritual, he needed blood. Copious amounts. Wisely, he had brought a source that waited for his return just outside the cavern.

Lucian returned to find the his guide unpacking the pack that had burdened him in their trek. The sun had arced across the sky and it was late afternoon when he approached. The man was a laborer, stout and fit, but no match for Lucian when he lunged at the man from the edge of the clearing. Lucian was a man in his prime. Despite his advanced age his Theran heritage bestowed upon him a longevity humans would envy. He was also a head taller than his guide whose neck he sharply twisted until the man fell limp in his arms.

He carried the body to the entrance of the Bone Pit and pushed him through the low opening where he himself had to wriggle on his belly. The body fell over the steep incline and lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom. Had his guide been alive and his neck not broken by the fall, he would be howling in pain at the bone protruding from his mangled arm. 

Lucian used his free hand to drag the corpse behind him and left a thin trail of blood on the floor as he moved towards the inner sanctum. He dropped the body on the floor in the center of the room, just before the altar of the Hieron Osteon. It was a simple enough spell to illuminate the room with wisps of light that hovered around him. 

He spread the man's limbs out like a star. The broken arm still leaked the contents of the man's veins across the floor. The quantity was insufficient until he brought up his knife and slit the man's torso down the middle. Lucian thought to himself, as he sunk his hands into the still warm flesh, that he would have preferred his sacrifice to be alive but that this would make do for his purpose. His sexual arousal was the lessened but the magic would still be as potent. 

The skull watched the gruesome acts with hollow eyes. Only when Lucian began tracing the symbols and incanting the magic words did the long-dead spirit stir about the bone. 

The soul of the man he had killed was still in flight. It raced towards the gateways in the veil leaving a trail for Lucian's magic to follow. It was the act of this parting that he was able to establish a channel beyond the veil of the unmanifest and summon forth the owner of the skull before him. 

Lucian was taken aback as the soul burst from the unmanifest where it had lurked for countless years. Instead of having to pull the soul forth, as he had often done, it rushed into existence with a force he had not been witness to before. 

A voice uncurled itself in his head. A chaotic growl at first, guttural and inhuman. Then in the tongue of the ancient Theran. Already the veil had mended. The deadman's body of no further use. Lucian kicked it aside and approached the alter. 


“Kyros!” It called, replaying it’s last thought before death. It was silent for a moment. 
"I am." said the soul who huddled intangibly inside and around his own long-dead skull. "I exist, once more?" He asked. 

"You do. By my power, I brought you forth into existence again." Lucian spoke aloud in the room.

The skull had no ears to hear, but the vibrations were received by the spirit nevertheless and it responded slowly at first but quickly gained confidence. "I am Oxyathes, High Priest of the Trode."

Oxyathes could sense the lineage of the man before him and knew that his people had survived. 

"How long has it been?" He asked. 

"That is hard to say, One thousand generation?" Lucian suggested.

"And the Trode, do we rule the earth?" hoped the priest. 

"No. I am one of a chosen few. Your blood is all but vanished from this world."

Oxyathes voice bellowed an angry unintelligible howl. "You shall serve me and I will bring my Ascended brethren back from beyond the veil to rule this planet for eternity."

"I am Lucian Dorjan, your summoner, I will serve no one." Lucian said just before he was brought to his knees by a pressure to his sense of himself. He turned his awareness inward and felt a menacing presence on the edge of his personality. He grit his teeth in resistance and summoned every technique of self-control he had learned over his many years of practice. His mind replayed Oxyathes' words. Did the skull speak truth about Ascended Trode who had slipped the bounds of the corporeal? He could not ponder long for the pain grew in intensity and he began to wail. 

"You are nothing, your blood is thinned by a powerless human taint."

"Yes," It took him all his effort to answer through the pain. "Forgive me."

The pain lessened, but the attempt to control him remained. "You will take my mark, and if you act as my avatar in the corporeal, I will reward you with every power in my arsenal. Your every wish will be granted."

Lucian's body moved against his will, in lurching steps he approached the skull. He was powerless to stop his arm from reaching for the gold circlet atop the priest's cranium. Once in his hand the gold loop began to untwist, spiral and elongate until in his hand he held a golden viper. It constricted about his immobile wrist before driving its fangs into his flesh. His cry of pain still pushed past his frozen face and then the power that had held him vanished and allowed him to stagger back from the alter.

He shook his arm wildly to buck the snake from its root. His eyes fell upon the wound, to survey the damage done but when he raised it into view he watched in horror as a dark fluid pulsed just under his flesh. He felt the venom spurt into his body, forming a dark tendril from the mouth of the snake that wriggled its way towards up his forearm. His other hand came  up to grab the golden viper, to wrench it from his hand but when he touched it, it came away a crown once more. He dropped it to the floor and recoiled as the dark stain moved beyond his sleeve.

Lucian tore open his shirt, buttons scattering into shadows of the room, and watched as the venom made its way to his heart. It was a dark stain, manifesting as the ink of a tattoo, that encircled his heart with a arcane symbol. A spiral and a 5-pointed star, a design he knew to be the mark of Trode magic. 

The pain that had seared his arm and torso subsided enough for him to respond to the skull that had sat motionless while he had floundered. He spat at it and cursed it and said. "That was unnecessary, you had my promise." 

"The promises of men are worthless. This ensures we are bound together. I to you and you to me." said the voice. "Now, take me into the world. I wish to see how it has changed."

Lucian begrudgingly acquiesced. He would test the limits of this Oxyathes, who demanded his obedience in time, but for now he would obey. He picked up the skull and from it tumbled a metal sphere that clattered loudly to the stone surface. 

"That is holy Zro." demanded Oxyathes. "Bring it and the crown. They will be your tools to bring about the new order." The metal sphere was inert but warm to the touch as if had been sitting by an open flame. He hoped it would not burn a hole in his pocket. The circlet of gold that had transformed into a serpent was harmless now as he placed inside his pack. Finally he took the skull, carrying it under an arm and left. 

They exited through the lateral opening, and ascended the steep path squeezed between two walls. Lucian felt compelled to climb the long and fatiguing trail  trail up the side of the peak. It afforded his passenger a view of the dazzling landscape after much darkness. 

The limestone skirts were covered by a forest of oaks. Below, Lucian could see the river’s course visible through strands of poplar and ash trees that run along it's banks. To the south, Lucian could see the town of Naxos and far in the distance, two large hills, at whose feet lies the town of Trefos. To the west he saw a plateau and stretched along the River Kokytos is the city of Pylos. But to the east, the landscape is dominated by the high summits of the Amari Mountain Range with the snowy peaks rising above all the rest. Small glaciers nestled in its deep gorges. 

The landscape upon which the ancient Trode farmers and cattle breeders gazed could not have been much different from what Lucian saw today, although the geography of river would have run much closer; in fact, for thousands of years, the river had been gouging its basin in the soft terrain). During the various sinuous carvings, the river had deposited stones on the plateaus that now are cultivated fields.

He had read that his ancestors  were the first to open clearings in the forest in order to tend cattle and cultivate grain. The ax, fire, and teeth of domestic animals were their allies, when the mystic engines that had powered their civilization for millennia disappeared. The Trode were few; the great urban concentrations had been dispatched by war and Ascension leaving few hands to plow the fields. Soon the humans encroached  and weakened the Trode blood flowing across remnants of the continent of Thera.  

In the soft twilight of a day at the end of summer; a gentle wind stirs the grain in the cornfields and the landscape produced a pleasant feeling of harmony, yet Lucian would gladly see all of it burn if it furthered his Plan. He wrapped the skull in cloth while ignoring its protests and tucked it in his pack for the journey back to Lundain.
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### Writing Journal
No word counts, no deadlines, no countdowns, and no silly acronyms! Just a continuation of the momentum from NaNoWriMo. Now that I've established a 1,666 or so word per day habit, it would be shame to put it away for the rest of the year, so I present you a rewrite of my first book in the series. (Impulse of Creation is it's prequel...however that is suppose to work!)

I'm hoping that with the universe fresh in my mind that the plot points that have tied me up for years will begin to come unraveled. My goal is 50,000 words and 30-some chapters. No promises on how often I'll post or how far I'll get, but I thought I'd bring you along on the fresh start to a well-traveled tale. 

I miss my other projects like BlockCorp and...whatever it was I use to do all those 50,000 words later, so expect more of that in the days and weeks to come!  

The cover image is a painting in the care of the Philosophic Research Society. It was painted by my great-great-great grandfather J.A. Knapp.
👍  , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and 66 others
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@beowulfoflegend ·
Awesome start! So glad you're capitalizing on the momentum you generated during NaNoWriMo. Can't wait to see where this one goes, too!
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@reneenouveau ·
Thank for the kind words and constant support!
👍  
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