Eyes Of The Dawn Official Epilogue – Or is it a Foreshadowing?
GM Kenstrom wraps up Eyes Of The Dawn with the official Epilogue – although it reads more like Shades Of (Awful) Things To Come than tying anything neatly together. Disean, a Survivor, More Golden Eyes, and Stone, all at the Forums:
Category: GemStone IV Announcements
Topic: Important AnnouncementsDate: 11/14/2016 12:00 AM CSTFrom: GS4-KENSTROMSubj: Eyes of the Dawn – EpilogueThe mud-caked floorboards creaked as loudly as the knees of the old woman who shuffled slowly across the room. The blood bubbled and churned inside the beaker she carried, before she hoisted it up over a wide-lipped cauldron and poured its sanguine contents inside. Wisps of sallow mist coiled up from the vat, soon billowing out to suffocate the ceiling with a dense yellow fog.The witch smiled, her yellowed teeth positioned crookedly, few and far between her thin, ashen lips. Her viridian eyes gleamed as the liquid inside the cauldron began to thicken and darken. She tossed a handful of bone chips into the muck, and stepped back, mesmerized by her concoction. Long moments passed, and the old crone stepped away to fetch small mortar and pestle crafted from blood marble.
She leaned forward, dipping the bowl into the vat and filling it with some of the reddish-black liquid. Her gnarled, bony fingers sprinkled some fried white leaves into the mix, and with her pestle she stirred and mixed the contents. Her feet shambled as she crossed the room, stopping before a young bald man chained to the wall, his eyes as grey as polished steel.
The prisoner looked away, but otherwise did not resist. The witch took her bent fingers and dipped them into the red-black muck, slowly smearing the liquid along the crown-shaped scars on the sides of the young man’s head. The shadowy and sanguine fluid seem to meld into the creases of the scars, causing the old wounds to now glow bright red, like runes of blood.
“Look at me…” the witch cackled.
The prisoner refused.
“Look at me!” the witch howled.
The prisoner’s jaw clenched and slowly his head turned, his steel grey eyes staring out at her.
“That’s my boy…” The witch reached up, patting his smooth face with her twisted, sore-covered fingers.
Just then a dark-eyed goblin scurried out of the shadows, two silver stilettos sheathed at his sides. The witch turned around, just as the goblin handed her a small note. The witch squinted her eyes at the letter, and tossed it to the ground, stomping on it repeatedly, over and over and over. She spun back around and scowled at the goblin, “Where did you find this?”
The goblin swallowed hard, inching back, “I’ve had it for sixteen years.”
The witch blinked, “…and you just now…” She shook her head, seeming to realize the foolishness of what she was just about to ask. “Yes, of course…to be delivered on this day.”
Without another word, the witch, the gleam now gone from her eyes, hobbled off into the shadows. The prisoner, the scars on his scalp still bright and red, looked down at the wrinkled parchment.
It read:
“Dear Rachel, it’s been long enough. We’re coming for you. Love, Peter.”
The land was desolate and broken, with an endless terrain of fragmented grey earth caked in layers of ash. The air was suffocating with a thick, rancid odor and rippled with a faint heat. The sky was bleak, resembling an expanse of ink-whorled slate. Rows and rows of crumbled, charred stones were strewn about the landscape, where once the towering walls of Talador stood.
The hot wind swirled and danced about, scattering ash and smoldering debris. A dense insipid fog hugged the distance in all directions, leaving little to be seen without having some short proximity. Emerging from the wall of smoke, a blue-robed figure appeared. A golden hawk medallion hung loose around his thin neck. His eyes were the color of a summer sky, soft and blue. Tufts of white hair were peeled over his ears, his receding hairline long having exposed the top of his head to the world. He squinted, seeing an obscure form on the ground, several feet away from him.
He called behind him, “Over here, I’ve found something.”
Stepping out of the fog came a second figure, garbed in a similar deep blue robe, his greyish-brown hair tied back into a sleek ponytail. A two-headed golden hawk talisman hung down around his neck and pale archaic tattoos were barely visible along his forearms, seen only when the sleeves of his robe shifted as he moved. His eyes were multicolored, one brown, one blue. Both narrowed as he approached, kneeling down to a small figure sprawled out on the ground, seemingly untouched amidst the devastation that wracked the land.
The multihued-eyed man placed his hand to the chest of the fallen boy, whose skin was dark blue, his head bald and smooth. The man waited a moment, watching, listening.
“Is that a…” The first figure asked.
The multihued-eyed mage held up his finger to silence the other. He stood to his feet, lifting the blue-skinned boy in his arms. “Say nothing of this.”
Together, the two robed mages disappeared back into the cloud of smoke, carrying the boy right along with them.
Bells rang out across the cobbled road that connected the Imperial Palace to the Temple of the Steps. For days, the people had been in mourning. Their faces have been chiseled from stone, grim and dark, thankful to be alive, but shaken by the tragedy of their cousins in Talador. But now, a much-needed cheering filled the courtyards of the imperial plaza. From countless balconies of the palace, voices cried out, “Empress Samynthra has given birth! An heir is born, an heir is born!”
The eerie silence that had hung over the city like death’s gallows had been broken. Citizens burst into tears, shouting both praise and cheers at the sound of the glorious news. The black of night exploded into a frenzy of color, illuminated by crimson and gold fireworks echoing out across the very heavens. It mattered little what the hour was, as the plaza began to become flooded with people and well-wishers. It seemed as if, even if for just a moment, the calamity in the north was forgotten.
Again, the voices declared, “An heir is born! An heir is born!”
Deep within the palace walls, Emperor Aurmont stood beside his wife, his granite-flecked ashen blue eyes regarding his new born son with a true sense of accomplishment and unconditional love. His once stoic look at least now temporarily replaced by eyes framed with tears, suddenly aware of emotions he had not entirely expected. He squeezed his wife’s hand, and Empress Samynthra looked up, her pale crystalline blue eyes catching those of her husbands. Both cried, embracing one another, as the cry of their baby son was welcome music to their ears.
The Emperor and Empress remained enraptured, heads pressed against each other as the baby lay upon his mother’s chest, still crying as his first moments in the world continued forth. The baby boy’s eyes were bright blue, a perfect mixture of the shades of both his parents. Bells continue to ring out in the distance, and a line of white-robed healers stood at the edge of the room, content in silence and space, allowing the new father and mother to have their memorable moment.
Just then, unnoticed by any in the room, the son of the Emperor, the heir to the Sun Throne of the Turamzzyrian Empire, blinked and his blue eyes shifted to a bright golden hue.
The dark-skinned Tehir man strode slowly down the wide hall, his bare feet padding quietly on the floors of smooth obsidian. His angular face was concealed by a pale white veil and two black ora khopeshes hung down from a bone-inlaid belt around his hips. His eyes were pale white, absent of any irises. He made little to no sound as he passed from the hall and into a wide, spherical chamber that held more shadows than light.
Hundreds and hundreds of bodies were scattered around the chamber, either as a macabre decoration, or haphazard piles of discarded corpses. As the Tehir man moved by, he noted the bodies in silence, observing that each resembled the rest. Black hair. Sea blue eyes, open in shock and death. He maneuvered through the chamber, stepping over corpses, finding uncluttered footholds as he approached the center of the great hall.
Rising from the sea of doppelganger corpses, stood a wide throne of shifting shadows and fragmented bones. Seated upon the ghoulish chair was a black-haired man with sea blue eyes. His grin was as wide as the throne, and at his side floated a green crystal orb. Before the man, a pillar of crimson and shadow churned out of a deep hole in the ground, resembling a fountain of blood and murky ichor from a fetid wound beneath his feet.
The Tehir man came to a stop, unsheathing his dark blades and laying them at his feet. He stepped before the column of shadow and blood, placing his bare hands into the roiling liquid. His screams filled the hall, echoing out like the cries of a thousand men, and his skin shifted and ripped, dozens of wounds tearing across his flesh as he stood. He soon fell back, his hands now reduced to gooey clumps of incarnadine muscles and scorched bones. The Tehir man shook violently on the ground, frothing at the mouth as he twitched. Faceless men, absent of any features, ambled out of the darkness, grabbing the Tehir man by the arms and dragging him off, where they began to wrap his bloodied, mutilated hands.
Then, stepping down from his ghastly seat, the blue-eyed man stopped before the pillar of blood and darkness. With a slight gesture, the green orb floated over to the shadowy pedestal and landing, as if lowering down into a bowl. The blue-eyed man uttered an archaic phrase, his words sounding more metallic than human. From out of the dark pillar came a white mist, which soon covered the green orb in a pale, hazy film. The man visibly held his breath, and with one hand, grasped the orb, pushing it down into the rising blood and shadow, submerging it.
The blue-eyed man stood silent in anticipation, his gaze once or twice going to the collection of bodies tossed about the hall. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours. After what felt like an eternity, the man pulled both his hand and orb out of the shadows, his grin growing impossibly wider than before.
The blue-eyed man stepped back, comfortably returning to his grisly throne.
Gone was the green shade of the orb, replaced now by the deep red shade of blood.
The red orb floated towards him, and on command, lowered into his waiting palm.
Grishom Stone smiled.
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