A beginning to the end
Ikisith
Approx 5450 B.F.
A cool breeze brushed against Vathak's face as he stepped through the wildgrown gardens, the claws of his uncovered feet clicking gently against the worn stone of the pathway. Tugging his grey robes closer to his scaled form as a ward against the chill, he quickly scurried past a curator, dressed in the flowing garbs of the mind-schooled, and undoutedly heading for one of the many archives located here, at the heart of Ikild, the palace gardens. Pulling his hood further down, Vathak doubted that the male would recognize his face, but even so, the small brand below his left eye that marked him as Sathii - unbidden - would be reason enough to question his presence here in the most holy of places. Vathak, like so many others these days, belonged to the lowest of the social castes. The Sathii were broodlings concieved and hatched outside of the breeding periods, products of passion or just simply lust - both things that the ruling Hierophants had no care for. As thus he was a nobody, a menial, a simple worker in the bustling harbors of Ikild. It was no grand lot, but Vathak was content enough for it. Until he had met Hithiri.
Turning down a side path and crossing a small, worn bridge of stone cresting a dried-out stream, Vathak cast a quickl glance towards the Tower of the Hierophants looming in front of him. Stretching a hundred times the length of a full-grown male, the tower was a testament to the ingenious architecture of their forefathers. Architecture that none of the Artisian's caste could recreate in these days. His mind momentarily drifted, occupied once more by the violet eyes and soft grey face-scales of Hithiri. For what seemed like the thousandth time, Vathak questioned his own sanity. Hithari was Yaderisath, one of the Seer's caste, the offspring of one of the ruling Hierophants themselves. But she had sent for him... pushing doubt aside, his head filled with her visage, Vathak dodged aside from the stone walkway and onto a small, overgrown path crossing into a grove of Trap-Trees. Brushing their stringy, tendril-like branches out of the way, he emerged into a tiny clearing, little more than a round stone plate set into the ground, with an ancient, cracked stone bench rising from it, offering a spot to rest while overlooking what must once have been a beautiful little pond. Now it was nothing but a sunken hole in the ground, at the bottom of which resided a tiny, bubbling pool of mud-stained water. Whitemoss crawled along its slopes, and there was a faint smell of decaying vegetation in the air.
Hithari was sitting on the bench. Tall, regal, clad in white bodywraps and with small, gleaming gemstones attached to her face-scales in the way that only the rich and priviledged could afford, she rose as he entered the clearing, lifting her head to meet his gaze. He could tell she was drawing on the spirits by the white glimmer that seemed to reside just below the surface of her violet irises. Ensuring noone else was nearby, in all likelihood. Secrecy was a necessity they had come to accept. Suddenly the gleam died away and she stepped forward, her slender arms wrapped around him in an instant. For a long, silent moment Vathak simply held her. He could sense by her behaviour that she was rattled - an emotion that her carefully schooled face would never give away. Finally she broke loose and brushed off her clothing where dust from Vathak's rough worker robes had settled. She looked at him, and then spoke with a hushed, worried voice, "I had a vision".
Brought to her by the blood of her ancestry, Hithari carried all of a shaman's talents - channeling the spirits to view the world around her, soothing injuries with their touch, even calling their wrath on her enemies with the force of her will. She also had a considerable gift for precognition, visions into the future, a talent that was growing rarer among the Yaderisath with each passing brood. A fact known to almost all inhabitants of Ikild, but also a subject best avoided, lest you attract the attention of the Bladewatch. Composed, but with the same edge of fear hovering somewhere at the edge of her voice, she told Vathak of the vision. The vision had taken her for the first time three days ago, after waking, as she was viewing the city from the balcony of her suite, perched far up in the Tower of the Hierophants. She had once told Vathak that visions - at least not for a seer of her strength - were never bid. They simply came, dragging you with them like a tidal wave. In the vision, she had walked among the streets of Ikild - an Ikild laid entirely in ruins, and home only to scale-rats and scavenger birds. On its streets lay the bleached remains of iksar bones, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of unburied corpses lying where they died, ancestors know for how many years. She had been searching for something - or someone, she wasn't completely sure - when she had suddenly rounded a corner and come upon a male, tall and thin, clad in a black cape that seemed to somehow absorb the light around it. She had called to the male, and he had turned around to look at her, revealing a pair of eyes that contained nothing, and more than nothing, black gateways into a lightless eternity. She had snapped to her waking senses, screaming.
Since then, the vision has returned several times, though each time it held a different setting. Sometimes it showed bloody battles where Iksar soldiers fought a losing war against hordes of freed slave-races. Sometimes it would take her to a white wasteland where frozen corpses of Iksar males, females and children lay huddled close together, taken by the cold as they fled, she somehow knew, from their far away homes, crystals of ice forming on their stiff face-scales. Once, and after that vision she had been found in a crumpled, shivering heap by her female servant, Rihyaz, she had seen a world where nothing lived any longer, just an endless black wasteland of dead soil. Each vision had ended in the same manner, with the visage of the male with empty voids for eyes. She finished talking, and reached out to place her hand on Vathak's, gazing directly into his eyes once more, "I believe a great tragedy is to befall Ikild, Vathak, Ikild and possibly our whole race. And I-" she never got to finish the sentence, suddenly spinning around as her trained senses detected the intruders a moment before the sound of blades being drawn reached Vathak's ears.
Four large figures entered the clearing. Vathak's stomach clenched as he recognized three of the figures - massive, clad in interlocking armor plates, with double-blades now held in each hand - and then almost overturned as he saw the fourth figure. Diminutive by Iksar standards, the fourth figure was dressed in flowing red clothing, and the mark of a stylized third eye was branded into his forehead. A mind-mage. Worse, one of the High Enslavers by the marks of his attire. "Uzilatl", Hithari suddenly hissed from next to him. The smaller iksar stopped, a hint of a smile that showed his sharpened fangs crossing his face as he faced the shaman to speak.
"I am honored that you recognize my 'lowly stature', oh wise one." he spoke, his voice the pitched hiss of sarcasm, "I see you have found a friend. Of much higher descent, no doubt." he remarked, eyes taking in Vathak's dirty garb and the mark of the unbidden in his face.
"I always suspected you were one to cling on to an insult until it festers, mind-leech." she spat back, "What is your business spying upon one of the Yaderisath?"
"It is not my business, but the business of the High Council, as well as that of the Hierophants. After all, here you are, the offspring of Sathius, sharing knowledge that is privy only to the ears of the ruling with a..." he cast a glance filled to the brim with despise at Vathak, "slave-caster. Even for one of your stature, that is a grave crime, seer."
"Who I share my visions with is my business and my business alone!" Hitarhi snarled. Vathak took her in with his eyes, all straight-backed, undiminished fury in the face of the mind-mage and the three imposing soldiers, and could not help but admire her courage and will.
"Not anymore." Uzilatl replied with a tone that could only be described as a purr, his eyes smug as he took in her sudden surprise. He cut off her angry reply abruptly, rising the pitch of his voice to a hiss of fury, "I mean, seer, that the Hierophants have maintained their lofty seat of power for far too long. You are a dying breed, weakened, derelict like this decaying garden. It is us of the weavers that will take our race to greatness now. Your time is over. Ours has just begun." he suddenly turned around, a claw gesturing to one of the guards, "Sieze him." he ordered, pointing at Vathak. The armored figure took a step forward, then were suddenly slung back against a tree trunk with a clang of metal, snapping branches and cracking the trunk before slumping to the ground. Hithari's slender claws were held out in front of her. Her eyes blazed with luminiscent energy, the air around her humming with the spiritual power she was channeling. Uzilatl pulled his mouth up into a sneer, hissing, "As you wish then, seerling."
The second of the guards rushed at her, blades raised, moving seemingly impossibly fast for a male his size in full armor-plates. A burst of energy sent him reeling, and then another hurled him to the ground. Hithari turned to face the last of the guards when something invisible slammed against her mind, and she took a staggering step backwards, head snapping around to look at Uzilatl. The thought-mage had cast off his flowing robe, under which he wore black cloth-wraps inlaid with huge, red gems that seemed to gleam with the same pulsing rhythm as his own eyes, blazing a deep crimson to match the white of Hithari's own. Snapping out of it, she conjured a blast of white energy directed at the mage's head. The gems on his body suddenly flashed, and the blast unraveled harmlessly in the air in front of him, its power broken by the gemstones' enchantments. Another invisible blow caused the female to retreat, clutching her head, as Uzilatl took a step forward. Lashing out with his schooled mind, hurling daggers of arcane energy against the seer, he spoke slowly, calmly, as he walked towards her, Vathak watching as though from a great distance, his mind filled with disbelief.
"I came prepared for you, as you can see, Hithari. It is a good thing that your servant found you when you were recovering from your little vision, or my interest might never have been piqued. Apart from telling me what it contained -- you put far too much trust in lowlifes, seer -- she also revealed, after a bit of persuading, yourmeetings with your slave-caste lover here. Such a sweet story, something right out of the archive tale-texts. It is truly a shame that it will all have to end here. But do reconcile yourself with the thought that I will not allow your little vision to come to pass. Once we have purged our race of its weak Hierophant rulers, we of the Weavers will bring our race into a new age of glory. A new age of conquest! Where all races must bow their necks to the Iksar, and where all Iksar must bow their necks to me!" he paused briefly in front of the seer's form. Her features strained, she was down on one knee, desperately clutching her head and whimpering in agony. Vathak broke his paralyzation and rushed at the mind-mage just as the small Iksar's claws settled around his beloved's neck. He had almost reached them when he felt a stab of sudden, hot pain in his torso. The last of the Bladewatch was standing in front of him, right arm extended, the razor-sharp edge of his hand-blade buried in Vathak's chest. Vathak's claws reached for the blade, clutching at it, but the soldier simply pulled it out in a single, fluid motion, bringing with it a shower of dark blood. Vathak's legs failed him, and he dropped forward, a sudden, numbing cold starting to spread throughout his body. He lifted his head, and the last thing he ever saw was the shape of a tall, thin iksar male looming and watching behind the form of Uzilatl as he choked the life out of Hithari. Watching with eyes that were black, endless voids of nothing.
