Triberias: Mark of the Called

The Curse of Sunset

The Song of Yearning.

Half turn, Half in darkness

Hearts lost in deepeness, in deepened murkness,

By foggy gloominess the land shall depart

The scepter that was stolen from them that rule.

Half turn in darkness, devouring kindles,

Where nothing brightens, the bloom has blightened

The welkin and apple, in blood they mingle

Second turn, whence shall not tumble

At nights return, Neither shall stumble.

Salvaged, the marked shall not take flight.

This be the heritage, For which shall fight.

With hope as helmet, Despair be well met,

This be the stand, For Darkness shall not command.

For first comes the marking, In whom is born the calling

I.

The Curse of Sunset.

THE FYERIAN PENINSULA,

400AA, After the Great Ascension.

A gentle breeze blew across the land bringing with it the smells of the sea and a taste of salt that hung in the air long after the wind had blown by. It was the product of the saline water that had effervesced upon the rugged rocks even as a wave after a wave crushed upon the high cliffs with the rushing of the wind and the rise of the great even tide.

This was the Eastern shore of the great continent of Erydria where the Fyerian peninsula broke away into the sea making it by far, the most eastern point on that Great continent.

In comparison, the Fyerian peninsula was much smaller than the actual continent, but not in anyway less important. For where it attached to the main continent, this strip of land curved inwards forming a bay that served as a dock for the little sea port town of Bethesda and a gate way that opened the rest of Erydria to the Great eastern sea of Ervana.

This was the military base where a fort would soon be ereted.

A fort that would serve as a hub and a command centre for the armada of military ships that were anchored there and all around the peninsula.

Dusk was swiftly approaching and with the sinking of the sun, the once blue sky over the peninsula was now painted a dull orange. The breeze continued to blow in. A flock of thick dark clouds and a chilliness that took away the hot humid air that had once scorched the land as the sun reached its peak at midday and continued with its journey westwards, drifted in.

Another day was ending.

A half turn of the globe and the light had drifted away just like the passing wind. Its joys and the day's conquests to be soon forgotten, just like many others that had come and gone before it, even as the horrors of eventide drew nearer with every passing minute. The was no way around it and the merchants of Bethesda knew this very well. Evident in the way they hurried along. Their wares packed away swiftly, every man to his own place with only a glimmer of hope, that he would outlive the curse and wake up to see the sunrise again.

Like the town square, the docks had also emptied out. The fishermen having hauled out their nets some few hours before sunset and now, all that was left was just a few tethered boats swaying with the rising of tide and the gentle breeze that continued to blow through the town quite deceivingly. Deceivingly yes, for its gentleness did not bode well with anyone nor did it foretell of peace, but rather, in this era, it was the telltale sign of the calm before the storm.

Slowly, even the town square emptied out leaving behind a multitude of empty little sheds and stalls. A ghost town that the fleeing merchants had left behind.

Everyone was fleeing indoors now and the sound of shutting doors and windows being boarded up filled up the suburbs. The wind continued to blow down, growing stronger with every passing minute. A woman was seen rushing out and moments later, she came back pulling in a screaming child that did not seem to understand the evil that was now afoot.

Elsewhere, a little lamb bleated as it followed its mother and a large ram into a makeshift shed that was placed inside a house's basement.

Pets were grabbed from the streets and houses locked. This was the hustle that every living being in the seaport town of Bethesda knew to abide to. To withdraw inside. To hide with advent of night for that was the curse of this world. To never see the stars as they twinkled or the moon as it journeyed across night sky to rule over the darkened firmament.

It was an unspoken law in this land that one had to hide to save their own life. That with the coming of sunset the safest place to be was inside. Inside a stone house. However and as with every population, not everyone seemed to abide by this rule and one such pair continued to walk down a cobbled pathway long after the sun had began to set in the western horizon and long after everyone had locked up their houses to keep away from the coming terrors.

The two walked on, weaving in and out of the buildings. Their destination, a place that was beyond the suburbs. Beyond the residential buildings that were within the areas around the market and the docks or within the Eastern district. Beyond the Central District, the western District and to the furthest reaches that were at the very edge of Western Bethesda.

These two were an odd pair indeed. A woman and a little boy. One being well dressed while the other wore clothes that may have been once beautiful, but were now ripped up with tears and areas of wear and caked in mud that covered his face and his hair and every other visible part of his body.

He was a small boy of not more than five years or so his lanky figure seemed to suggest, even as he held on to the hand of a young woman who seemed to be well into her thirties.

Unlike the boy whose only visible feature that was not caked in mad were his bright green eyes, the woman was quite clean, with short brownhair and matching brown eyes on a fair complexion. She was neither fat nor was she thin while her outfit spoke of a classthat was a little lower than middle class. .

"Where are we going? " The boy asked as he stumbled forward, tripling upon a lose rock that had jutted out upon the pavement only to be steadied by the woman's strong grip upon his arm.

"You will see." She spoke kindly to him, but did not shorten her stride or lower her speed even for a second. "You do understand why we have to hurry, right? " The boy nodded. He had seen his own fair share of the horrors and yet, he had had no choice in coming to this town.

Where there was a town there was bound to be an abundance of food and that was better than starving, right? He had reasoned when he had decided on leaving the forest to come down here.

"Alright then, please, do hurry up. I promised you a hot meal and a hot bath when we get back home, remember ?"she looked down at him and smiled. The boy just nodded, too exhausted to do more than that despite pushing his little legs harder in order to keep up with her much longer strides.

The two continued walking, matching down an almost deserted path that was occupied by stray cats and rats foraging within large open bins. That would have been his fate had she not met him this day. Had her affairs of the day not driven her a long way from home, all the way across the town to the town square in the Eastern district. This little boy would have probably spent the night here among these creatures, fighting among them for a morsel or two of stale bread or maybe some pieces of rotting fish.

What would have become of him? She wondered. She knew that she had wasted precious time back there, but Neema could not bear the thought of leaving the boy behind and now, even as dusk continued to approach, she hurried the boy along a rarely used path that she knew to be a shortcut out of the Eastern district.

It would lead them home eventually.

Home to her mother and to the little cottage at the other end of the town. That was what they were aiming for. However, she could not tell if they would actually make it as there not much time left. She had the loaves though, she comforted herself in knowing of the fact.

If only they could find shelter - she began to think, weighing all her options even as she thought upon a number of possibilities.

What nonsense? she quit her thoughts scolding herself for having given up before they had tried anything .

"Come on Killion. Please, do hurry up!" she urged him forward calling him by the name that he had just given her. "Come on, " she encouraged the boy, pulling him forward causing him to stumble as his little legs struggled and failed to keep up with her quickened pace.

Neema grimaced at this, sorry that she had to put him through that after all he had been through up to that point. However, it could not be helped. Once the darkness truly settled in, there was no telling what would happen to them. Being outside would make them obvious targets and she was not sure that she was ready to handle that.

Despite this, the pair matched on, leaving behind the little shops and the wooden sheds that had made up the Eastern Market and soon, they found themselves surrounded by walls. Walls of the storied apartments and little cottages that now made up the town's suburbs. They could still see the sun, but the two were also a long way from home and time was quickly running on from them.

Still, they soldiered on. Moving on westwards and the suburbs finally gave out to a more elite zone. A Central District where mammoth buildings rose up high into the even sky, filling up the spaces that were before them and towering over them to cast dark shadows on the path that they were continuing to tread on.

A cold wind blew across the neighbourhood and the little boy shivered as he stared up at the huge derelict mansions. They were bigger than anything that he had ever seen with his young eyes. Bigger than the ones he had seen in his hometown, the heap of rocks that now remained after that tragedy that claimed the lives of everyone in that past year.

Honto, Teneru...he wiped away his tears with his free hand, pushing back the memory of his dead friends that were now but rabble underneath a once flourishing town.

Killion looked around the neighbourhood and frowned. It was too quiet, not a light in sight or the buzz that usually signified the presence of people in a place.

He looked around again, and now that he was actually looking, he noticed that they all seemed derelict, with paint that was peeling off, broken glass windows and rotting wooden boards that had failed to stand through the elements that raged through the narrow peninsula.

The walls on the other hand were mostly standing. Tall and proud against the elements, even in the dim light that the setting sun now provided.

"Neema, what is this place?" the little boy inquired.

An echo answered him and the boy jumped back, surprised at the sound of his own voice, thrown back several times over by the massive walls of the nearby buildings.

At that, the woman smiled and pulled him a little closer. She did not show it, but she, like the little boy, was very much spooked by this ghost town that rose up high all around them.

"It used to be a rich neighbourhood." She beganto tell him, the quiet sound of the evening filling in the gaps that were left in their soft conversation.

"Used to be? What happened? What happened here?" the little boy, with fervent inquisitiveness asked one question after another even as he stopped to stare and point at a massive building that was more elaborate than the rest. It was huge and with massive pillars and strips of peeling up paint shining golden even the dim light. Unlike the others, this building had no visible windows and the huge gilded doors stood up high and as unyielding as ever atop a huge flight of numerous stairs.

"I believe it was a temple. The people who lived here served there, but they are gone now . They have been gone for many years and the place just remains like that."

Where to? The boy wondered but that was not the question he ended up asking. As it was, his mind had hit a snug and even then, he struggled, wondering at that particular word and what it really meant.

"A temple? What is that? " the little boy questioned his saviour and the woman that was holding on to his hand sighed wearily.

How could she even begin to explain this in a world where there was no similitude to the words that she had just spoken? She looked down at the boy and smiled. A sad smile that reflected the tales that had been passed down to her and the reason behind the curse that was now plaguing them.

"It is a place of veneration Killion."

"Veneration?" the boy puzzled, his brows furrowing with knots of confusion marring his face. All these new vocabulary was not something that he had ever encountered before. He knew his own fair of vocabulary considering his background, but his nanny. His late nanny was yet to teach him all these when disaster had struck.

"It is a place of worship. Temples were normally built as monuments for the deities. Erected in their honour and to reflect the people's believes and this was a place that much like that if not more. "

Worship? Deities? The woman's words continued to resonate in his mind. Spinning and becoming even more and more confusing with every passing minute that he pondered on them. Her explanations were doing nothing to take away his puzzlement. Instead, they had added to his confusion, leaving behind a funny expression that was now twisting his little face awry.

"Worship? What is a diety?" he finally questioned, his mind sensing that there was something to be gleaned by asking such a question. "And why is it that way? What happened to it?"

"Time happened." the woman laughed despite her once sombre mood. The boy's myriad of questions and his funny expressions was beginning to have that sort of effect on her. "One question at a time," She scolded him albeit quite playfully. "And maybe I will finally be able to answer all of them."

"Yes Neema." The boy replied sullenly.

"To answer your questions though, the temple is like that because it was abandoned. All the servants left. That was many years ago after the era of the last king." and that is the reason why we are haunted every night. She added in her thoughts, but did not speak it out loud. There was no point to it.For the boy was still too young and there was nothing to be gained by worrying him with such farfetched theories.

The last King? The boy frowned. What had he been told about that and what did it have to do with this particular temple? He tagged at the woman's hand, this time twice in order to stop her. "Why?" he whispered.

"Even I do not know that Killion. They just did. My grandmother told me that her own grandmother had told her of a time when Priests roamed all allover the place, doing good in the service of the King but one day, they just upped and left. All of them and now all the temples all around the land are just like this one." She ended as she thought back to the tales that she had heard of this place and many others like it. They stood like that for a while, both of them lost in their thoughts and unaware of the danger that was slowly crawling in.

"Neema, what will happen now?" The boy whispered, pulling the young woman out of her short lived reverie and to the world that was now.

"I do not know about that Killion." The woman replied, her eyes wandering up to the western sky where the sun had just set, casting a crimson glow over the temple's golden roof top and bringing to attention the fact that they had been standing there for quite a while now. "It is getting late." She worried. "Let's get home before the darkness truly settles in."

The boy nodded. He looked around as the woman hurried him along, his sharp eyes showing an understanding and experience that was way beyond his years. He knew what it meant to be caught out after the sun had set and even as he thought on this, a roar so loud, so sudden, yet very much expected filled up the evening air, shaking up the two of them all way to their cores and to the bones under their flesh.

It had began.

The roar tore up the evening sky, ripping apart the calm and the peace that had once shrouded them. The ground shook up even as the orange telltale signs of the menace flickered on and out all over the peninsula.

The storm had finally rolled in and with it, came in the curse that was brought down by advent of night in this eastern country.