Aegis of the Immortal: Blood Blessed

The soft sound of falling rain beyond the orphanage walls would've served as nothing more than a resounding lullaby if only he cared to give it the appreciation it deserved. But how could he when he knew the walls only muffled the truth; the rain drops raged in anger and yet the flashing lights and growling thunder refused it their company. If he was the rain, refused the company of those he had grown acquainted to, he would be enraged, too.             He listened silently, lying in the comfort of his bunk bed as the boy who slept above him tossed and turned, as he always did on rainy nights.             The orphanage was a good enough home to him. He had come in a year ago, snuck in by a child he'd met on a cold night and somehow gotten a bed despite the presence of more deserving children. Still, living like this took a toll on his mind. Every morning he would wonder if it was th

Morning came in its strides. With it, the light of the sun spilled into the room. First, slow and gentle. Then demanding. Valerik had been given the room that stood in the path of the rising sun. Whether the sun sought to trample the obstacle in its path or embrace a lover after a night of exhausting passion, he did not know. As he pried his eyes open to the waking world, all he was certain of was the beauty of the sunlight as the room bathed in the glow of its kiss. Awaking with a mild ache in his head and a dryness in his mouth, he forced himself to a sitting position. His body sagged from the remains of the night's sleep. He fought to shrug it off but it stayed. So, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand, he cast his thoughts elsewhere, wondering how long a man would need to ride a horse before his legs were demanded to bow from their time on the saddle. Riding Rive for two days, stopping only to sleep when night fell, wasn't doing his

There are various things that keep a child awake in the dark of night. The excitement that comes with the memory of the day, the unrelenting urge to resume the day's unfinished games. Sometimes, it's the fear of the dirges lurking in the corner from tales mothers tell to scare naughty children into decency or simply contemplations of what complex tricks are to be had when the morning comes. For Sethlzaar, he found it was most often the darkness. In the waking world he found a peace in its presence, a presence that came with a silence. But sometimes in them hilts poked from within, and with th

Sethlzaar always thought his life would end within the city walls; old and desolate, not seeing anything beyond it. Or if he was lucky, he'd die young, maybe spoken of in the reaches of the conisoir, like Zaar the blessed, a man said to have single handedly built the foundation on which the cesspool stood. A criminal mastermind who'd used the gifts Truth had given him to scare the Realm before settling down in Dun. It is said that his feats were so great that when the conisoir delved deeper into desolation, the city let it for fear of angering Zaar. When Sethlzaar joined the orphanage, his thoughts had banked on something akin to fear. A fear that the same life would be his, but where he could have lived it out in the conisoir, it would be in the city, as a nobody. Eventually, he would have been kicked out of the orphanage when he came of age. He would've perhaps tried to live in the conisoir, again. Reacquaint himself with life within it. That's if the conisoir

Rive stepped as the line dictated, waiting at the city gate, forcing Sethlzaar to the torment of the heat of the sun. Sethlzaar couldn't help but feel that somehow he'd relegated the strain of walking for the crime of the heat. It was preposterous, considering he'd have suffered the heat regardless. Or was it? The priest, in his hooded cassock taken from within one of the sacks dangling from Rive's saddle, made walking look too easy. Then again, his hood did protect him from the sun. Sethlzaar caught himself in a pout, and frowned. Not only was the priest oblivious to his problems, but now he was beginning to act like a child. It wasn't the priest's fault he had no hooded clothes. The priest paid no entrance fee when he approached the guards at the gate. After a brief search, they were within the city walls. The guards had only stopped him for the briefest mo