The Black Citadel: 1017

Eseer Darkthorne

Active Member
Eseer emerged from a black pooling vortex of dark energies. The sound of his footfalls echoed through the empty halls. This had once been the seat of his power, of the Darkthorne empire he had built here on Ayenee. The other Darkthornes had vanished with the veil, disappeared with the Blackthornes and the others. In his absence it seemed, no other Darkthorne had arisen to take his place. The halls were covered in dust and cobwebs, the structure was thrown into disrepair, a ruin.

What had happened to the others? Eseer strode up the steps to his dusty throne and his empire of ghosts. He sat upon the throne and looked over the grand hall, no artwork, no tapestry, only dust, and webs. The few debris upon the floor were either shards of masonry or unidentifiable.

"Soon these halls will be filled once more, I shall sow a new tapestry of destruction and conquest across this empty land. The machines I salvaged from the portals I opened could be the tool of my rise back to power. Perhaps the black book can speak once more and share its secrets?"

Eseer stood up and began to weave his hands in the air, knitting arcane webs of power together as his voice intoned words chiming with energy. The air was thick with static, it felt thick as he knelt and touched the floor. All around him the tale of history seemed to rewind, dust and rubble flew upward, detritus became tapestries, paintings, tables, and décor.

His eyes glowed as the power surged through him like a thread through a needle, going down and out his hand. The halls were restored to splendor, but they were still empty. Refilling them with living beings was beyond his magical powers, but not his other skills. He would have to recruit, to resurrect, to locate, and recreate the Darkthornes.

He looked at the steps of his throne, " Now to line the base of the throne with the heads of kings and queens." Eseer smiled and looked over the citadel, it would do he thought.
 
Eseer knocked over a table displaying a map, furious anger welled up inside him. He had spent his life trying to undermine destiny, to throw the world into a state of chaos. He looked at the map, marked with a good number of x's. The world was in a state of chaos now, but there was very little for him to enjoy. The Southern kingdoms were gone, the veil between Ayenee and the southern lands was nothing more than a shimmering expanse of ocean. He wondered what had happened to the Darkthornes that chose to stay, to the Blackthornes and especially his counter part? What happened to the Darkthornes he left behind when he entered the city of time?

He had so many questions, but very few answers. There was very little left of the world, and what was left was a dusty wasteland filled with wasting diseases and rabid groups of mutant survivors. Eseer walked over and picked up the tattered black cloak and the scarf, along with a pair of goggles. If he was going to rebuild the Darkthornes he would have to brave these polluted, dangerous zones in search of candidates. He had sought to enjoy the ire of world, but that had already passed. He had tied himself to time, found the immortality he sought, but the price had been his dreams. He was left without purpose and with unanswered questions.

The hall was filled with silence, always silence, his mind however was rife with thoughts. He had to do something, sitting here listening to himself think, to the whirling dust storm outside. The isolation was driving him even more mad than he already was. He pushed open the doors of the citadel, looking down at the winding staircase cut into the mountainside, currently being threatened by the sifting sands. Everything was sand and dust, as far as the eye could see was desolation. He put a foot down into the ankle deep sand and felt something beneath his feet. He knelt down and plunged his hand into the sand, pulling up a femur bone belonging to someone of his race. He dug some more finding a skull and a silver jawbone.

Eseer smiled, but the smile last for mere seconds, "hello Drummond...so that is the fate of the Darkthornes" part of him didn't care, but another part questioned if any had survived? He didn't want to admit that he was the last of his kind, the last of his clan, even if he had been thrust into it unwillingly.
 
The days had passed and the wasteland had lived up to its name. Eseer worked his way from the South towards the West. He found the ruins of the Soratia kingdom, the land there was devoid of life. He spent the night in the castle ruins, but his quiet reprieve from the reality outside was disturbed by the restless dead. The kingdom was not so devoid of life, it was now a home to the wandering undead.

After destroying two handfuls of undead he realized it was pointless to continue. He decided to leave and headed deeper West. There was a swath of land that radiated a harmful energy. He spotted the decaying hull of some giant metal ship, like none he had ever seen before. He investigated and discovered that the gravitational field around Ayenee was acting like a magnet pulling in anything that came close. He came to this conclusion after coming across a second vessel like the first, but different in design.


This one had crash landed, but was in somewhat better condition. The years had claimed its functionality as the vessel had at some point cracked into two pieces. Nature was working to claim it for her own, trees grew up through the crack in the vessel. Trees like none Eseer had ever seen before. Inside the strange metal starship, he found the remains of some of its crew. They were laid out on beds, their arms crossed over their chest in some sort of ceremonial significance.

Eseer found something scrawled in blood on the wall of one of the rooms. It looked like some strange symbol, almost like a weird backward "S". There were signs of a fight on board the ship, arrows, strange burn marks, bodies laying where they fell in death. Eseer spent a whole day studying the ship, he knew if he had some past connection to it, he could use his new found temporal magic to rewind time for it and make it operational again.

He would still have no idea how to use it if he could. He also had no past ties to this vessel, so the idea was completely off the table. It was here that Eseer realized how the quiet was too much like the time vault, he had grown to hate solitude and silence.

A familiar voice echoed through the halls of the ship. Reese Blackthorne's ghost spoke to him either from memory or across time itself. "If you want to truly be free of being the Effigy's puppet, then stop being the monster he made you be something else." Those words stung him in the pride and distant hatred he had for his double. The words would not leave his mind.

They had haunted him during his time in the vault, haunted him for what seemed an eternity. "I am no one's puppet!" Eseer yelled, out into the corridors of the ship. He exited the ship and summoned forth the memory of burning flames in the back of his mind. There in his mind's eye where the chaotic forces of nature, of creation, violent eruptions of magma and explosions.

He focuses those thoughts as he summoned forth the energy needed from the land around him. Folding the energy and manipulating its atoms into a ball of caustic, explosive, force that he directed at the ship. It exploded much more than he had anticipated, a shockwave of force came flying into him. He was lifted off the ground and tossed through the air like a child's doll.

He came tumbling down onto a dry river bed, his fall broken by the soft silt sand. He lay there unconscious for a few hours, his body weakened from his adaptive magical protection aura and from the summoning of the explosive spell. He was used to recovering from such an expenditure of energy with minimal effort. He commanded his symbiotic armor to disengage to dislodge the sand from it. He then summoned it back to him and felt it adjust to the levels of radiation that emanated from the destroyed ship.


Eseer turned looking at the West once more and began to travel. His passing marked by the footprints left in the sand of the ancient river bed. He found a strange burrow dug into the bank of the river. He halted before a red door and reached out a single hand to the door. It was not enchanted, the red paint was chipped and peeling. His hand sent out a pulse of necrotic energy, the door faded from red to black and then fell to dust.

He crossed the threshold of the domicile finding it filled with cobwebs and dust. No one had lived here a very long time. Again the strange image of the backward "S" on the wall. The furniture was overturned, keepsakes either broken or long faded. There were no answers here, only ghosts and more unending silence.


Eseer walked into an adjoining room from the entrance and halted seeing Reese Blackthorne standing there. He readied a spell, but then halted seeing the image for what it was. He walked over and pushed the mirror over, it shattered on the floor. "The world was full of ghosts. Who are the heirs of this strange new world?" Eseer wandered through the underground home finally relenting to the inevitable same conclusion.

He had gathered from the ship, and from the ruins of Soratia. Whatever life there was left in the West was scarce and the image of the backward "S", a mystery needing to be solved. He left the burrow and climbed up a sand bank. He looked out over the new world and wondered if he were on the right track? He knew if he continued to find nothing, but ghost that he would begin to lose his mind.
 
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