And So Dost The Red Realm Crumble

[Swgrclan 2682]

The fires of the Red Realm burn furiously; blackened earth crunching under the countable boots of mortal armies. They brought with them steel; they brought fire and anger. They brought the spirit of vengeance and the desire to carry it out. The Wyrm had challenged the descendants, and it was met. His corruption was undone and his slaves were defeated. They came to the walls of His keep and they fought His armies; but what the great black Draakar had conjured was not enough. His Harbingers were too few and the mortal cultists were too weak. They were all failures from the start ... their weakness was not their will, but their design.

One sheltered itself within the keep; heavy cloaked upon it as it prayed to it's god which sheltered himself within the volcano. It was Nostrem -- and Nostrem bore no patience for fighting anymore, even though it transpired outside the very walls that kept him hidden. There was no time to combat the death it knew that would come to it, that would come to all it's kin. But he waited so long; he waited so long for this day to come. But he felt no relief that the end was near and that it declared it's coming from the roar of mortal men who sought to destroy Nostrem and his brethren. He felt ... fear. Whatever emotion the Harbinger's infernal being retained rushed to it in mere seconds as it heard the gates of the keep crumble under the force of countless mortal descendants, and without thought it rose; ascending a staircase which led high above. Only then did it take notice to the sudden shaking of the earth as the colossal figure of Setherien tore it's way out of the titanic volcano.



Nostrem could only watch as his master flew through the sky and brought about an apocalypse which sent tremors through the very realm; the might of the bastard of a Daemon which wielded fury and anger and forged a prophecy that these descendant armies would shatter. They came for the King -- and the King came for them.

---

"Come... my child." A great, heavenly being of scales and power spoke; spoke to it's kin, it's offspring who sat dwarfed before it's mighty figure. "I shall tell you ... of your destiny. The destiny you must claim for yourself, for none other may do it for you."

The draagarling simply remained silent; in awe of it's godly guardian's words.

"There are other things are live in this world. Evil things."

"Things like wolves... and Men."

The godly guardian stated lowly as night fell upon the earth; the cry of beasts cutting through the plane's air. The little draagarling was frightened, but it's father spoke soothingly:

"But you are a Draagar, my son. You mustn't be afraid."

"For one day, all of man and beast will bow to you, and you will be king."

"All the humans will bow. All the wolves will bow."

"The dwarves in the earth, and the stags of the forest."

"All the elves in the trees, the orcs in the dunes and the lions in the planes."

"They will all come to you, little Draagar, to rest a crown of embers upon your head."

And the Draagarling said,

"Will I be strong and fierce like you, my father?"

"Yes..." The guardian spoke; "You will be strong and fierce just like your father, Setherien."

---

Nostrem was not present for the fall of the Black Wyrm; its master, its king. It was not there to watch its other brethren pierce the heart of the one who shackled it into slavery, but granted it everlasting power. It but stood within the Red Realm, and watched as it began to crumble, as it began to shatter. The island of the old Kiev peoples was dying without the one who nurtured it with darkness to keep it stable and alive as cancerous as it may be, and the Harbingers that survived the fall of their lord could not possibly keep it from destroying itself -- and so it did. Nostrem watched its world, its home, crumble in silence. Tremors ran through the blackened earth. Crevices crack through brimstone and brought up fire and magma, the blood of the land. This deterioration was so scarring that the Red Realm itself failed to follow the laws of reality; and thus, it seemed that time slowed under the mass of destruction. Pieces of the realm rose up from the sea where others sank to it's depths from the dark shores and suspended themselves in the air. An abyss was present where massive cracks in the earth was made; an abyss that led into a nothingness akin to the Void.



But Nostrem would not let the fall of a fallen king's realm take him, just like it had survived the severing of his connection to the Black Wyrm. It had prepared for this moment. It had waited. And thus, a great rift opened within Setherien's crumbling keep; one that Nostrem strode through with much haste, into a place unknown to it. The rift carried the Harbinger far, far away from the dying Red Realm; only to toss it back into the mortal land of the Fringe where the victors shared their drink and their stories; Nostrem's master nothing but massive bones upon the earth now.

The dying Harbinger hid away into a lair of his own, known of by none and only himself, and it is there that the changes too place. Nostrem felt weakness... what it had not felt in a long time. It felt a disruption within it's being; the heaviness, the strain of mortality that the infernal warrior had not felt since it made it's last breath before the Wyrm immolated it. It felt the breath of lungs that were not there, the beat of a heart that turned to ash long ago. Peering down at it's gauntlets which seemed to crumble to mere frost, the Harbinger saw a change... the melding of elderly flesh and the banishment of darkness that once gripped it's anchored soul.

[Birdwhisperer 1174]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.