"The rest of my team is doing equally well, with terrorists going down faster than Hawk on Mark4."
-Bob The Newt
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| "Initium Ultio" - A Heretic Fanfic | | | Author: | | | IP: | 170.89.1XXXX | | Date: | 04/11/01 12:04 | | Game Type: | Other | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 6, Min: 6
Lifetime Rating for Nafarias: 6.8889 |  | “Initium Ultio” – A Heretic Story
(For those of you not aware - Heretic is the 1993 First Person Shooter from Raven Software and GT Interactive that insipired the sequels "Hexen", "Hexen2", and "Heretic2". The main character in Heretic was a lone Sidhe (prounounced "SHE") elf named Corvus. Yes - I know the language here is long and prolix. I don't apologize for it. I was going for an epic tone here, and envisioned a "high" fantasy - not an action oriented gore-fest. That was my choice. If you don't have the stomach for high fantasy then click elsewhere. For those of you familiar with the game, this story is heavily based on the H1M1 map - "The Docks", the first map in the game.)
Corvus stood alone and stared without words at the remains SilverSpring, his childhood home. It was long since he had been here last, and even the memories he had counted before as unpleasant now came back to him with a bittersweet savor. In happier days the city had been a realm of peace and a center of trade where folk of many races met without rancor. That was many years ago, in a different age of the world.
The Sidhe elf sighed as he unshouldered his physical burdens. He stood in a knot of great cypress trees on the edge of wide fields to the east of SilverSpring. It was cold. Frost dusted the dead tree leaves in the grass. The air was gray, shrouded in the still melancholy of a waning autumn. The muddy earth was dotted with brakes and copses of rotting cattails and other dying wetland plants: ilexs, mosses, lilies, creepers, and reeds tall and thick. With caution Corvus had darted from fen to fen – unseen by the fell eyes of D’Sparil’s servants – until he had come nigh to the very threshold of the city.
Corvus had stopped at the edge of the mires just before the desecrated fields surrounding SilverSpring. The fields had been well ordered and tended long ago, but they now were filled with hideous growths that sprang from the remains of unburied dead. Twisting paths, the wreckage of former roads, crawled worm-like through the fields towards the city. Each road was decorated with piles of bones lying around spikes and poles where Sidhe had been impaled or crucified.
The fields extended a league east of the nearest city wall. To the south was a great bay and haven where docks collapsing into flotsam fell into the sea. Long ago as a boy, Corvus dove for shells and other hidden treasures of the water in that bay. Now the waters were stagnant and tainted. The only things hidden in the bay were terrors best left undisturbed.
The city itself rose up like a specter in his sight. SilverSpring it once had been – fair and clear - but it was not so now. The City of the Damned it was called, its former name forgotten or lost except by a few who now hid in fear and spoke of the city with dread.
Walls, crumbled with time and rotted with neglect, jutted from the ground like sickened teeth. Buildings inhabited by vile creatures stood like tombs, mausoleums of the families that had died there. The stench of rot and filth untold rose from the city, an invisible cloud that darkened the mind and poisoned the body. Even the wild plants that grew unchecked outside east wall seemed unholy – bent shoots and brambles like the clasped and intertwined fingers of a clawed hand. This was SilverSpring now - a place so long steeped in evil and tutored in cruelty that no other way of life could be envisioned or recalled.
Corvus rested, crossing his legs and wrapping himself in the moving dream that was the sleep of the elven race. He cast the hood of his cloak over his face and walked in the ways of his mind, there finding the sustenance his weary body needed to claim the vengeance his will demanded. As with all the Sidhe, Corvus was of two worlds at once. His body walked the world of men as did other mortals – but his living spirit dwelt in the ether which mortal men knew only as the Other Side. Hours passed as water in a stream while Corvus rested and fed his body with the fires of his spirit’s wrath.
Mortals could not understand the thoughts Corvus had as he slept. Were men to take part in such visions they would be consumed with fire unquenchable. Mixtures of the past combined with tints of the future on a palette of the present, painting a picture to the Sidhe that men cannot see. But Corvus saw, and the visions filled his heart with anger.
He saw the Sidhe as they were in the deeps of time and how they stretched like a line of silver through the ages. He saw the world lain out before him with all its peoples. He saw the world as it was meant to be. And then came the darkness from Outside. The Serpent Riders had now tarnished the Sidhe thread, all but cutting it off completely. Now the whole world was black in his sight, and the blackness had a name: D’Sparil.
Memories of his people’s destruction still at times unbidden arose in Corvus’ mind. He had stood near the circle of Elders as they extinguished the candles that tied Parthoris to the Sidhe. Tyketto, Delmintalitar, Valador, Darchala, Inhilicon, Torpol, and other great ones of his race had the mastery over the mortals of Parthoris – the unwitting pawns of D’Sparil.
But the powers called upon that day had exacted their price. D’Sparil had been foiled, but his arm was long and he had weapons besides the deceived races. Corvus remembered how in a sundered moment the weakened Sidhe had fallen. Those that survived D’Sparil’s enchantment were attacked by his minions, creatures erupting from the earth as though the division between dark dream and waking world had been violently shorn and the denizens of an uneasy sleeper’s nightmare made real. Few had escaped.
Corvus was one of those few. The others were hidden, trying to preserve the Sidhe with what power they still retained. Corvus, against their advice, took another road. At a very young age he learned that one could not conquer darkness by retreating from it; darkness must be dispelled by light. He had traveled by night for many months to return and purify SilverSpring.
Here D’Sparil’s power and realm on Parthoris now centered. The dark armies led by the disciples of D’Sparil ranged all over the continent, perhaps over the entire world. But in the former realm of the Sidhe that wickedness had its source.
D’Sparil and his brothers Korax and Eidolon knew when they came from Outside that the Sidhe were their greatest threat. The Sidhe were not like the mortals of Parthoris. They saw the Serpent Riders for what they were – abominations not meant for the realm of ether. The Sidhe could be broken by them, but they would not serve them nor could they be deceived by them.
The Sidhe were not wise, in those early years. They did not act against the Serpent Riders; they watched and waited – attempting in vain to persuade the peoples of Parthoris to expel them from their kingdoms. Instead the mortals ignored the advice of the Sidhe Elders, succumbing instead to the seductive power the Serpent Riders offered them.
Time passed and the mortal kingdoms increased in enmity towards the Sidhe. The Serpent Riders were worshipped as gods, and their dogma spoke only of hatred towards the elven people. The Sidhe were heretical, shunned by all. Many elves withdrew from the cities they had built among mortals, retreating into their own secret strongholds against the evil days ahead. The abandoned cities were either razed or taken by the Serpent Riders, and they set up fastnesses there to mock the Sidhe and to encourage mortals to no longer fear the elves. SilverSpring had been one of the first to be abandoned, many Sidhe fell into the hands of the mortals who took it.
The Sidhe then took new hope, for they learned that Krovax and Eidolon had left Parthoris for other worlds and that only D’Sparil remained. The mortal kingdoms began to struggle against each other at their evil master’s bidding. The elves, recognizing the time was ripe for action, began to send out armies to foray against D’Sparil. But the mortals of Parthoris then rallied against the Sidhe, and their assembled might could have destroyed them. In a battle against the elves the mortal kingdoms would also have been destroyed. This mutual destruction, the Sidhe knew, was intended by D’Sparil – who only desired death for all that dwelt on Parthoris.
The Sidhe enchantment that smote the mortal kingdoms disrupted that plan. But D’Sparil had been prepared for the stroke. When his mortal servants were gone he unleashed his demonic minions on the elves at the moment of their triumph. These creatures of the night, spawned or magically summoned, were new to Parthoris. Corvus could sense them from afar as tears in the fabric of the ether and he knew from whence they came.
D’Sparil’s fastnesses lay not on the lands of Parthoris but in the seas north of SilverSpring. Corvus could sense them like a wounded man can sense his own injuries, offensive and painful. The strongholds were filled with his creatures and they galled him; he yearned to be rid of their presence. And he would be rid of them, even if the only way was with the edge of a sword.
But Corvus did not know how to reach them. He knew only that the cities abandoned by the Sidhe were where the power of D’Sparil’s realm began. He hoped there to learn what he needed to invade D’Sparil’s palaces and take him to task for his crimes.
And Corvus returned to the world with that thought. It was the morning of yet another hopeless day on Parthoris and the sky was still wrapped in the perpetual cloak of gray cloud that had dimmed the sun since the time the Sidhe had broken the link between themselves and the world. Corvus rose from the moist earth and stood, feeling cold airs blow from the north. The clouds hurried by – dim uncertain shapes above that in the distance to the west stroked the earth with veils of rain. Corvus felt a curious anxiety mixed with anticipation at the advent of his revenge. SilverSpring stood before him unmoving.
Corvus drew forth his wand. He could feel its warmth in his hands, comforting him in the cold wetness of the sad world. The thin rod of two feet ended at the tip with a bright yellow crystal. Runes and sigils of power ran its length. This was the weapon of the Sidhe, and it was linked to Corvus’ own soul and drew power from it. When he so wished it would burst forth with his anger, twisting the ether with fire.
Corvus exited his hiding place and began to cross the fields. He half expected D’Sparil’s creatures to immediately rise from the earth as they did when his people fell. But Corvus met no resistance, and indeed no sign that his presence was even heeded. The signs of death and evil he ignored, though they stirred his heart with anguish for those who once he had known that had suffered such despicable acts.
The city gates were in disrepair, blocked with heaps of rubble that sealed the city against entry. Corvus instead slipped south along the walls until he came to the remnants of the docks. He knew this place well, and hoped here to gain some advantage over the demons he would face.
There was a door along the southern wall where a small guard had been kept when Corvus was young. The door was broken and lay in shards on the earth. Webs were on the jamb, and beyond them – darkness. Corvus felt every grain under his boots, heard every rustle, and felt every air in that moment of decision. And into SilverSpring he plunged, like a diver into deep waters.
END PART ONE OF A THREE PART STORY |
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