[ ALTARUS: ] You must learn to control your
spirit-form, Xerxes... for by mastering the art of
traversing the mists you may effortlessly travel
to many places, and many times. Countless secrets
will be unlocked for you, and great enlightenment
shall be yours.
[ XERXES: ] Yes, master... and yet, there is one
realm which intrigues me above all others, one era
which occupies my thoughts unceasingly... What of
the clash between the Royal Army of Hyperborea and
the Wraiths of the Chaos-Liege?
[ ALTARUS: ] Ah, yes... command the mists, Xerxes...
gaze into their limitless depths... compel them to
show you that martial vista which you so fervently
seek.
[ XERXES: ] Yes... I see the massing forces, the
battle is imminent! How splendid the Imperial Army
looks as it fronts the foe... into the fray they
ride!
[ Chapter 1: The Bloodying of the King ]
[ (The Armies of the Hyperborean Empire steadfastly
engage the Horde of Wraiths) ]
[ THE KING: ]
Imperial Cavalry... advance! RIDE THEM DOWN! In to
the fray! Demonstrate unforgettably the art of
Hyperborean warcraft! Spearmen, form into Omega
Phalanx. Archers, notch arrows, prepare to loose.
Warriors, stand ready... Sound the clarion!
Hearken, sons of the glorious Empire... Here we
stand upon the Field of Blood... Though this day
we may die, Our legend shall live forever.
[ ALTARUS: ] And the armies met upon the Field of
Blood which stretched lifeless before the
aeon-veiled citadel which men called the Shrine of
A'zura-Kai, a mysterious and foreboding place
steeped in ireful omens and legendary dread...
Aye, the carnage of that first clash was
phenomenal. The Hyperborean Cavalry tore
gloriously into the foremost rank of the
shadow-warriors, the enchantment of the Crystal of
Mera rendering the squamous pseudo-flesh of the
wraiths fully vulnerable to the steel of the royal
legions. The king himself rode at the forefront of
the onslaught, his ensorcelled ebon blade hewing
ten to the left and cleaving ten to the right, his
grim eyes gleaming beneath his shimmering horned
and plumed helm. The momentum of that first charge
threw the dark ones into shrieking disarray, and
the vanguard of Chaos fell back before the
thundering resolve of the Imperial attack. But the
baleful, poisoned blades of the wraiths took their
toll upon the Hyperborean horsemen. Raught by
leprous swords and spears, men and mounts fell
screaming to the dusty earth, where they were
mercilessly rent and devoured by the slavering
jaws of the Chaos-Liege's minions. Aye, glorious
was the courage of the royal warriors, admirable
was their mettle... for every Imperial Knight
felled by the dark ones, five wraiths met their
deaths beneath the slaughterfall of royal steel.
And yet it was not enough. Like a slithering tide,
the shadows engulfed the cavalry, and the bloodied
king ordered the Hyperboreans to ride clear and
regroup. Then, with volleys of shafts as their
herald, and the Battle-Prayer of Hyperborea upon
their lips, the Imperial Guard marched into the
ravening embrace of the melee, and never in the
grim and sanguineous history of battle was there a
clash to rival the slaughterous magnitude of that
awesome engagement...
[ THE ARCH-WRAITH: ]
Minions of Chaos, rend their flesh, crush their
bones, devour their souls!
[ Chapter 2: Havoc at the Shrine of A'zura-Kai ]
[ THE KING: ]
Onwards with our spear-heads gleaming, Meet them
with cold steel a'cleaving, Fall only when our
hearts cease beating, Men of Hyperborea.
[ ALTARUS: ] At the King's command, the clarion was
sounded to move the battle-hardened veterans of
the Seventh Fen-lander Army into a flanking
position to unite with the remnants of the Royal
Cavalry. Like a purifying storm the allied
Imperial forces clove into the wraiths to deal
righteous pattern-welded death unto their nighted
foe. But at that moment, black terror descended
screaming from the twilight sky... howling swarms
of winged fiends, hurled forth from the malignant
bosom of Lord Angsaar, soared razor-taloned into
the fray. Beseiged man-to-fiend upon the field,
and harried from above by the shrieking horrors of
the Chaos-Liege, the Hyperborean Army began to
falter, and to fall. And lo, beholding the
carnage, the King raised high in his left hand the
ancient Crystal of Mera, and in his right gauntlet
he brandished the Bane of Angsaar, the dread
Shadow-Sword once wielded by the Chaos-Liege's
immortal nemesis... and he spoke aloud the
terror-fraught and aeon-swathed words of
invocation which he alone had been audience to
deep within the shadow-haunted Mountains of the
Dead...
[ THE KING: ]
By the darkling powers of the Shadow-Sword, I call
forth the fury of the storm to rend the massed
legions of Chaos!
[ ALTARUS: ] And at the sound of his baleful Words
of Power, the sky split wide in fury, and searing
tendrils of ruinous lightning lanced inexorably
forth from the heavens to rake and reave the
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massed hordes of Chaos...
[ XERXES: ] The fearful spells he had learned from
the Mountain... did their casting win the battle
for the King's legions?
[ ALTARUS: ] The fiends were dealt a staggering blow
by the sorcerous incantations, the power of the
spells inexplicably magnified by the enchantments
of the Crystal. The Wraiths were routed soundly by
the elder magics, fleeing the field howling their
anathemas and maledictions against the King, and
the winged horrors fell seared and burning from
the enraged sky. But the twisted machinations of
insidious Chaos had prepared for the King one
final blow in this dread confrontation... aye, the
Chaos-Liege had reserved his most heinous
perpetration 'til the last...
[ Chapter 3: The Awakening of Chaos ]
[ LORD ANGSAAR: ]
Fly, my winged sentinel of the night, Deliver unto
me the Ninth Crystal of Power, That I may at last
be free once more...
Come then, mortal! Test that cursed blade of black
steel against me if you dare! O' great king, your
pitiful army shall be swept away before my wrath!
'Ere the dawn, ten thousand shall die!
[ THE KING: ]
For the eternal glory of Hyperborea!
[ ALTARUS: ] Striking from the swift darkening sky,
Angsaar's Arch-Wraith, which had been watching the
battle with gleaming inhuman eyes, leaped to the
attack and smote the King, engulfing him in its
ebon wings and driving its steel-rending talons
into his golden armour. And yet it was not the
life of the Royal Scion of Hyperborea which the
fiend sought to take on that fateful eve, but
rather that which the King held tight in his
gauntleted fist... the Crystal of Mera. Wrenching
the glimmering antediluvian jewel from its keeper,
the Arch-Wraith unfurled its leathern wings and
soared into the deepening gloom with a cacophonous
cackle of victory, leaving the King to roar his
ire after the fleeing wraith.
[ XERXES: ] But what did Angsaar want of the
Crystal? I know he battled his immortal nemesis
over possession of the mystic gems many aeons
ago... but what use would just one of the jewels
be to him?
[ ALTARUS: ] After rising from his Chamber of
Slumber, the Chaos-Liege's power was direly
depleted... and he was unable to venture beyond
the obsidian walls of his Citadel of Shadows,
being compelled to control his wraiths and fiends
to undertake his diseased schemes on his behalf.
When he ascertained that the wizards of the Royal
Court of Hyperborea held in their possession the
Ninth Jewel of the Galactic Confederation of Mera,
the most powerful of all the crystalline keys to
the Psionic Epsilon Matrix, he began to formulate
an elaborate scheme which would gain him the gem
and facilitate his liberation, sundering his
fetters and allowing him free reign to spread his
vile influence across the land once more.
Utilizing to its fullest extent the dark art of
sorcerous mind-control. Angsaar succeeded in
placing spies and traitors within the King's
Court, and thus set into motion a dark chain of
events treacherously crafted to bring the Armies
of Hyperborea to battle at one carefully
predetermined place... the Shrine of A'zura-Kai...
an ancient citadel built over the site where, many
thousands of years ago, one of the Galactic
Confederation's galaxy-spanning star-chariots was
cast forcibly to earth by the tempestuous skies of
a powerful cosmic witch-storm... a place where
resultantly, the star-born energies of the Prime
Crystal would be magnified tenfold, if wielded in
unison with the correct arcane incantations which
Angstaar alone knew...
[ XERXES: ] Then the battle, the defeat of the
wraiths, all that had been merely a ruse... a
scheme implemented by the Chaos-Liege merely to
realize his ultimate ambition of the sundering of
the mystic shackles?
[ ALTARUS: ] Aye... the Shrine would act as a
portal, a gateway opened by the power of the
Crystal, a yawning aperture in the dimensional
barrier through which Angsaar could escape the
incarceration of his Citadel at last. And as the
Arch-Wraith soared the night-winds on its return
journey to its malign master, the Prime Crystal
clutched in its bloodied claws, the King knew as
he watched the Shrine of A'zura-Kai begin to glow
with a great and ominous sidereal luminescence,
that he had on that battle-fraught eve defeated
one dreadful menace on the Field of Blood only to
unleash an infinitely more terrifying foe... But
the Chaos-Liege had reckoned without the power of
the one thing he feared the most... the one thing
which had the merest glimmering hope of thwarting
his dread scheme and restoring order to glorious
Hyperborea...
[ XERXES: ] Yes, the only chance... the last hope
for victory...
[ ALTARUS: ] The Shadow-Sword. Evident once more was
the fearsome extra-dimensional intelligence
linking the sword and the gem, the same
crystalline sentience which had guided the King to
the mountainous resting place of the ebon blade,
and had shielded the presence of the sorcerous
immortal weapon from the dark one until it had
been brought into play upon the field of battle,
that magical link placed within the Ninth Gem by
the Immortal if ever again the power of the
Shadow-Sword should be needed to bring to bear
against Chaos! And with the Arch-Wraith
disappearing into the massing dark, that yard of
fearsome black steel spoke once more to the King
in the same long dead tongue it had burned upon
his mind deep within the Mountains of the Dead,
the essence of the Immortal mystically encased
within the blade instructing the Scion of
Hyperborea to commit himself to one final,
cataclysmic deed... a deed which would end the
aspirations of the Chaos-Liege forever, or plunge
Hyperborea and the kingdoms of the world into an
endless abyss of eternal suffering and a ravening
maelstrom of limitless carnage and galactic
terror...
[ XERXES: ] What was that deed? What could stop the
Chaos-Liege? I must know the outcome of this
confrontation!
[ ALTARUS: ] The vista begins to darken... the mists
once again weave their spell to withold their
timelost secrets. Practice your art, Xerxes...
hone your skills, and the final outcome of this
epic tale shall soon be made known to you... |