Chapter 4: Fire Bludgeons

The Annals of Ghalensa: The Power to Remake

Chapter 4: Fire Bludgeons

    Whereas the wastelands known as Vikzyrn are not fit to sustain life;
    Whereas all that is vile, toxic, poison, evil and wasteful has been confined to Vikzyrn;
    Whereas the land itself, being the seat of the Dark Heart of Morbidity, is not worthy to be lived on;
    Therefore, no jennah nor urlani can or shall live therein, neither shall they attempt to traverse the land, for they will absolutely be consumed by the land and will be no more, their penalty being brought upon themselves by their own disregard or ignorance.
            The Book of Proposals, Vikzyrn: Script 3



         The Ravel, Kordin-Der, enlightened sage of the Hixzol Clan, waited by his lord, the throng leader, Zin Corvi, ready to administer the affairs of the clan. Kordin-Der served Corvi with pride, knowing the quality of his leadership and his regard for the sages. Few sages could claim to serve such a good leader. Many waited on arrogant, hardheaded lords who dismissed their wise counsel in deference to their own impulses and desires. Zin Corvi trusted Kordin-Der implicitly and expected his advice and counsel.

         The fire in Corvi’s eyes was certain. He craved to impress his lord, the drove leader, Vax Drizzol, by demonstrating how the fire bludgeons are forged. Kordin-Der and Corvi both stood with Vax Drizzol on a platform at the forefront of the shelter, a deep concave in the face of a large stone outcropping. Most of Corvi’s throng crowded in the concave behind them for protection from the anticipated daily storm. The rest found cover in other culverts and crevices.

         The relentless sun cooked them in sweltering heat. Working in the heart of the Gozim Desert did not appeal to most, but the privilege of crafting the deadly fire bludgeons made it tolerable. Best of all, the weapons they crafted would vindicate his people in the impending War of Revenge, whence they would annihilate the evil jennah once and for all.

         The jennah deserved to die. They had ousted his people from their ancient lands forsaking them to perish in the foul wastes of Vikzyrn. He gloated in the irony that now, here in the bowels of this dreadful land, the weapons of restitution were being forged, using the very orbs his ancestors took from the jennah they slaughtered in the Dire Age.

         At the end of Dire Age, the Ancients came from Ghalensa to protect their jennah offspring and issued their foolish Proposals declaring Vikzyrn to be the seat of the Dark Heart of Morbidity, and that no life could survive therein. Every wörlic cub learned the full oral histories as taught by the sages.

         The Ancients fled the evil taint of the Dark Heart of Morbidity into the shadows between realms, and came to our world, Urlana, to make it their home. They brought with them Ghalensa, their Tree of Power, which they made to grow in our world. But one of their own, a renegade, carried in his blood the taint of morbidity. This seedviler sired the cursed jennah by way of bloodwerking.

         The jennah contaminated our land with morbidity, for these horrific jennah, spawned of the taint, and of the Tree itself, could harness and manipulate the power of the Tree with their hands. By their wanton abuse of the power they afflicted our ancestors and caused the First Smashing, in which Aralon was torn asunder, forming the Void, a great, impassable chasm, separating what we know as Vikzyrn from our ancient lands of Aralon.

         After the First Smashing, the Ancients revisited the land and issued their foolish Proposals, offering us asylum and protection from the jennah if we would serve them forever. Most of our urlani ancestors chose to follow the Ancients. The sages, however, saw through the disguise of asylum, seeing the slavery it would truly bring. They issued the Recant, which initiated the War-Urlic Pact of the free-urlani who swore to survive Vikzyrn to some dawn annihilate the evil jennah and reclaim our lands. In time, we became the wörlics, remnant of the pact of War-Urlics, true inheritors of Aralon, our rightful land.

         Kordin-Der turned and fixed his gaze upon the approaching mass of thick black clouds, roiling in confusion over the agitated sea, covering it in murky, rollicking shadows. Winds howled through the monolithic fire crystals that formed a thick wall of spikes around the Vitriolic Sea. Several outcroppings of the crystals actually advanced into the sea, half-immersed in the caustic fluid, for the sea was not a sea of water, but of a thick vitriol.

         He marveled at the size of the translucent, vermilion crystals surrounding the sea. Many were as large as trees, jutting this way and that, interposed with other crystals of varying size, from way over his head to no bigger than his fingers. Few paths wove their way through the crystals to the actual shore of the sea.

         “Look to be good storm,” Zin Corvi said. He spoke in the crude wörlic speech. Only the sages spoke in the eloquent and learned tongue.

         With a brief, guttural, “Mmmm,” Vax Drizzol acknowledged in his usual manner.

         Vax Drizzol, was a hard, seasoned drove leader, the victor of a number of clan wars. His gnarled tusks jutted three inches out from either side of his chin. His rippled leather face was frozen in a far-away scowl. “Me see results, me be pleased,” he said, irritated by Zin Corvi’s overeagerness. After a brief pause, he slowly raised a clenched fist above his head and shook it, shouting, “Me see fire bludgeons.”

         Politicking and in-fighting were a way of life among the clans. They climbed over each other to the top of the heap in quite a brutish manner. The herd mentality ran deep in the core of their temperament. They considered a good wörlic to be one who commanded respect by the way he ordered his underlings around, by the promptness and loyalty he extracted from them, and by their eagerness to impress him.

         The sages, called Ravels, in honor of their magnificent abilities, differed from the common wörlics. The hordes revered them, for the sages knew the histories, understood the ancient languages, and grasped amazing things beyond the power of any ordinary wörlic. They exhibited extraordinary mental prowess.

         Most sages worked hard to be worthy of such respect. They avoided acting superior and strove to exhibit a steady demeanor of unconditional service. They walked quietly in and out among the clans never vying to get ahead, but ever working to educate, to help, to promote stability, and to foster an enduring nobility among them. Through stately functions of polity, they preserved the fragile suzerainty of the wörlic clan-state, bringing a semblance of order to the herd mentality.

         Despite meager results, Ravel Kordin-Der strove to encourage his people to treat each other better. He labored to elevate their level of thinking above the baser matters of life. He yearned for the prophesied Dawn of Enlightenment, when all wörlics would put away the herd mentality and become more refined, more civilized, more like the sages.

         Most sages regarded the Dawn of Enlightenment as a mere myth and waste of time. They held that the crux of sagacious duty focused on serving the hordes to bring them to greater glory, not yearning for some phantasmal dawning which would never come. He disagreed. He disliked the herd mentality and believed his people could change. To that end he served Zin Corvi faithfully, helping him rule his throng wisely.

         Zin Corvi nudged him out of his thoughts and back to the present moment. All eyes were focused on the network of suspended blackwood clubs that would be forged into fire bludgeons by the storm and the sea. The rich, dense blackwood was impervious to the power of the Ghalensa Tree. The power of the Tree could not penetrate it, nor run through it like it could most everything else.

         Skilled craftwerkers polished the hewn clubs to a high ebony gloss, then placed an ancient orb in the top of each, like a precious stone in the clawed setting of a ring. Once set, they dipped them into the melted sap of the Ghalensa Tree, cooled them, and suspended them upside down in the Vitriolic Sea near the fire crystal outcroppings. When magnevic bolts of lightning struck the fire crystals, the vitriol would churn and bubble around the suspended clubs causing the sap to fuse with the blackwood, encasing the orb in a glass-like cocoon which enhanced the charging and discharging of the orb.

         The ancient orbs were charged with the power of the Tree. Upon contact with anything other than blackwood, the orb released a devastating shock which maimed or killed its victim. It didn’t take even the common wörlic intellect much thought to surmise that if the orbs could somehow be harnessed and controlled, the discharges could be used as a weapon in combat.

         Up to recent months, fire bludgeons had been few in number, being used rarely during clan wars and disputes. The sap of the Ghalensa Tree was hard to come by, being obtainable only by constant foraging of the lower coasts. Chunks of it might be found washed ashore.

         But this all changed with their new trade pact. They now received a steady supply of Tree sap from the upper coasts enabling them to mass produce fire bludgeons in preparation for the long-awaited War of Revenge. Zin Corvi was doing a fine job of making it all happen and he wanted the Vax to know.

         The storm came every dawn from beyond the desert. Kordin-Der watched in wonder, bedazzled by the tremendous display of natural raw power. Bright white and pink bolts of magnevic energy flashed on and off while thin, purple bolts danced for long minutes upon the fire crystals, energizing them from the inside to shine forth in magnificent sanguine brilliance. Loud pings and whistling shrills meshed with the sounds of the howling winds as they cut their way through the crystals. The dancing magnevic bolts skipped from crystal to crystal, producing loud cracks which rocked and rolled in alternation to the rumbling thunderclaps. It sounded musical at times.

         Despite the astonishing display of color and sound, even more enthralling to the wörlics, as they watched, was how the vitriol began to churn, then bubble, then roil. A green vapor swirled about the bludgeons. It filled the air with a pungent odor that always irritated their sensitive noses and brought tears their eyes, making some even visibly cringe. Kordin-Der merely twitched his nose at the stench. He was used to it.

         The storm lasted less than half an hour and began to move off over the sea where it would die before it ever reached the other side. The inflow on the trailing end sucked the pungent vapors up into its bowels and a somewhat refreshingly cooler blast of air followed before the desert returned to its usual baking stillness.

         Zin Corvi’s workers knew their tasks well. They descended upon the network of interwoven branches and began to draw the suspended bludgeons in toward the shore by way of the ropes set on each line, handling them ever so carefully. Zin Corvi commanded one to be brought to him. He demonstrated to Vax Drizzol how to safely receive a fire bludgeon from a fellow-at-arms.

         The Vax had not yet spoken. He reached out, mimicking Zin Corvi’s movements, and took the fire bludgeon from him. He clutched it with both hands, eyes wide in attentive regard. Nodding approval, he shifted the weapon to his right hand to test it’s weight and balance. After a moment, he vigorously thrust it high above his head and growled with gusto, then yelled, “Fire bludgeons.”

         The entire throng burst into a snorting chorus of cheers. A wide grin emerged on Corvi’s face. It was a good dawn. Kordin-Der knew Corvi would certainly be in good stead with the Vax now. He was sure to receive command of his own drove soon. Even so, a throng was no small task either. Corvi commanded over a thousand warriors with all their wives, cubs, and slaves, thirty-five hundred wörlics in all. Kordin-Der had guided Corvi wisely in choosing capable and loyal rout leaders, and now he enjoyed the fruit of his labor.

         The Vax waved his arm calling for silence and turned to Zin Corvi with a sudden urgency, “Where be outlaw?”

         The Vax had sent word demanding that the fire bludgeon be demonstrated on a condemned outlaw. Corvi nodded toward his most trusted rout leader, Xar Turret, who barked the order. Two others dragged a bound wörlic from a covered cage under the platform where they stood. The throng again cheered wildly, seeing it was a Parziak condemned to die. The Parziaks, or grass wörlics, were disdained because they resembled the ancestral urlani the most. The urlani were hated for having sold out to the Ancients. Furthermore, the Parziaks voiced their reservations over the new trade pact, clearly indicating they quietly opposed the War of Revenge.

         “Bring there,” Zin Corvi commanded, pointing to the executioner’s post, a beautiful post of polished blackwood in the front corner of the platform. The grass wörlic trembled as they bound him to it. He moaned and grunted his disapproval through his gags as he pulled futilely at the bonds. Terror seized his eyes.

         Kordin-Der took a clay tablet from his leather case and handed it to Corvi. Corvi glanced at it, handed it back, and said, “Go on.” It was merely a formality, for the Zin could neither read nor understand anything written on the clay tablet.

         Kordin-Der declared, using the eloquent, ancient speech reserved for official functions, “This wörlic, Aud Izar of Wen-Zydan of Hixzol, a slave named Izar belonging to the high family of Zydan of the clan of Hixzol, is condemned to death for the crimes of being a runaway slave, and of murdering Slor Fregrin Wen-Zydan of Hixzol, the pack leader of the high family of Zydan of the clan of Hixzol, this sentence being passed by the honorable Zin Corvi Vyn-Jizu of Hixzol on the tenth dawning of the second season of the circuit 2716.”

         Zin Corvi reached out to safely receive the bludgeon from Vax Drizzol, but the Vax would have none of it. He brushed Corvi aside. Not a hard task considering he wielded a fire bludgeon. Silent anticipation descended upon the throng, and upon Drizzol’s special guard, who stood close to their lord.

         Drizzol moved behind the condemned slave. Holding the bludgeon in both hands, he inched it toward Izar. What a brilliant plan, Kordin-Der thought. Drizzol intended to just barely touch the side of the outlaw’s head, thus proving to himself that the power unleashed from the orb would kill the condemned slave and not the force of a blow. Vax Drizzol braced himself for the impact, obviously expecting some recoil.

         In the silence, Kordin-Der thought he could hear the sand baking. If there was any sympathy for the condemned slave or concern over the seeming unfairness of his trial, which Kordin-Der presided over himself, it was now forgotten. Indeed, it should be an honor for this low Parziak to die in preparation for the War of Revenge. They were doing the slave a favor by giving him this honorable death in service of all wörlics everywhere.

         Kordin-Der reveled in the expected gains of Corvi’s success. When Corvi made Vax, Kordin-Der would become a drove leader’s sage. The increased prominence would win him many lesser sage followers. His influence and stature would earn him the latitude he needed to freely work toward the Dawning of Enlightenment. With the increased support, he could make it a reality.

         He smiled as he watched Vax Drizzol touch Izar’s skull just above and behind his right ear.

 Next  "Chapter 5: The Cave"