Ashen Oath Pt. 2: The Mortem Song

The village of Kaleum is quiet. 

A place that attracts no attention, and simply slips through time without much change.

A fly buzzes, trapped in a spiderweb. Many shiny eyes of a spider emerge from its shadowy den. Then suddenly, fingers gently snatch the fly from the web.

"You're free little friend," Calden says in a lighthearted tone.

Night settles in like every other evening in this town. Calden, a young adult, sits in a small house, his white hair lit by fireplace light. Across from Calden is Veynar, the village Elder, and the only person Calden has ever known as family.

“I think about them,” Calden says. “My parents. If they are alive, if I was even wanted.”

Veynar’s wise eyes looked at Calden and said, “I wish I had answers. You were left at our gate with nothing more but silence. That’s the truth of it.”

“Then why leave me at all?” Calden says.

“Reasons are as many as there are stars,” Veynar says with a slight grin. “Fear, illness, hope, or…” his voice drops to a hush, “...perhaps you were hidden here to one day rid the world of evil.”

They laughed together as the weight of the conversation lifted.

Then Veynar’s expression shifted to be more gentler and solemn. “The reason matters not,” he said, placing a hand on Calden’s shoulder. He stood and walked over to a shelf and returned with a small cloth bundling something. “This was left with you.” Inside was a jagged green crystal shard.

Calden brushes his finger against its edge, “Ow!” A bead of blood fell onto the shard. And then he could hear what sounded like a choir. Muted at first as if voices coming from a far away cathedral. Then, louder, radiant, filling Calden with a calming warmth. Every doubt, every ache and any emotional burden was lifted. For the first time he felt whole.

“Can you hear that?” Calden said. “It’s singing.” But Veynar heard nothing. “And look! My finger!” Calden shows Veyner his wounded finger as it begins to mend before their eyes.

Far away, sitting upon an obsidian throne, the Mortem King stirred. His voice was deep and echoed. “There is another.”

Back in the village, the candle flickered and sputtered. Then suddenly, WHOOSH! The air crispened, and the ground rattled. The elder rushed to the door where he saw towering figures march into the village. The Mortem. Armored skeletal warriors clad in blackened armor ribbed like forged bone. One lifted a blade of screaming souls and pointed. The others obeyed and began cutting down villagers on sight.

The shard in Calden’s hand pulsed and the song in his head grew louder and more panicked. Outside, screams from villagers shrieked in despair.

“Hide!” Veynar shoved Calden towards the rug. “Into the hatch now!”

Calden slipped into the crawlspace noticing a sword wrapped in cloth brushing against him. As Calden looked up through the floorboards the door exploded inwards and Veynar was thrown to the ground. Standing in the doorway was not just a Mortem, but an elite, a Choir’mourn! Its helm was formed by jagged bone structures and crowned with batlike wings.

Veynar tried to rise but the Choir’mourn drove its sword through his back and into the floorboards, barely missing Calden’s cheek. Veynar’s fading eyes met Calden’s through the cracks. Calden clinched his hand around his mouth holding back his scream.

The Choir’mourn noticed the hatch peeking out from under the rug and ripped it free with a chilling roar. A gauntleted hand grasped Calden around the neck lifting him effortlessly. The Choir’mourn raised his screaming sword.

“You are Corthanis?” the Choir’mourn haunted with surprise.

Defensively, Calden screamed his last breath as he thrusted out his hand. His palm struck the Choir’mourn’s chest, and in an eruption of green light, the Choir’mourn evaporated, leaving only a pile of its twitching armor. Calden fell to the ground, still clinching the shard tightly.

In a daze, Calden momentarily reflected on what the Choir’mourn spoke: “Corthanis.” Then Calden’s trance was broken by the frantic screams of nearby villagers, of nearby friends. An unfamiliar feeling of rage, heartache and survival turned his focus on the fallen armor. And it was at this moment the cursed armor began to whisper to Calden, and influence what would change his life forever.

“You are seen… you are remembered,” the armor whispers once again as it scrapes across the ground towards Calden. The shard begins to pulse in Calden’s clutched hand. Shaking his head as if he’s trying to wake from a nightmare, Calden slowly slides away from the abomination.

With an outstretched arm, the armor raises into bodily form. As the gauntlet's wicked clawed finger nears Calden’s face, Calden attempts to strike the ominous hand away. The gauntlet was immovable like the weight of a hundred knights. And at that moment, Calden’s hand fused with the gauntlet in a burning, unnatural union.

The armor pulled itself towards Calden as it continued to forge onto his body. Wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder… the armor continued to envelope him until it reached Calden’s opposite hand holding the shard. And in the final moments of Calden’s known self, he glances at the shard as it flickers into the armor.

“Corthanis, it is the name your blood remembers. Calden is who you became, Corthanis is who you are,” whispered the armor.

Painfully clutching his chest, as if he was trying to control a violent battle, the shard thumped as his new heart. The shard was at war with the cursed armor; a battle between pure good, and ultimate evil. Calden struggled to stand. The thumping became more radical until the obsidian black skin of the armor began to crack and crumble. Shrieks of a thousand lost souls escaped the armor. And in one frantically shaking moment, Calden fell to his knees into a pile of thick black ash.

Head slung low, he began to rise to his feet. The final dusting of soot cascaded from each crease and crevice revealing pale white and gold armor of the once was Choir’mourn.

The armor whispers once again. This time in a sorrowful way, “Our King took our name… do not let him take yours.”

Calden shakes his head in disbelief as the shard beats stronger in his chest. “This can’t be true!” Calden says in panic when suddenly the world goes silent, and a montage of images scroll in his mind:

Snowfall across marble towers. 

Hands holding him close. 

A lullaby song that he shouldn’t understand . 

A gentle voice calling him Corthanis.

Screams continue within the village, snapping him out of this trance.

The armor speaks, “One cut ends the fear, let us guide your hand.” Calden turns to look back at Veynar, and the shattered crawlspace near him. Reaching down, Calden pulls the sword from the crawlspace and unwraps its elegant blade.

With deafening feelings of thrashing anger and heart-bled loss, Calden struggles with being consumed by vengeance and hate. But the Choir’mourn armor makes it impossible for him to resist. His armored fingers shriek together as he clutches the adopted blade of Veynar! The dark choir bellows its haunting aria as he squeezes the weapon tighter and tighter! The blade flashes green as if it acknowledges its bearer.

Calden reflects on the armor's message. “Corthanis is what you are…”

“I will not hide! This King they speak of will know me by name!” Calden swears through clenched teeth. From a low growl to a thunderous shout, Corthanis howls:

“And by my hand he will die!”

With one swipe of Corthanis’s blade, the side of the house erupted in an explosion of wood, steel and debris. The attacking Mortem freezes for a moment to see a white armored figure emerge from the swirling dust. And without hesitation Corthanis lunges at the nearest abomination driving his sword, wrist and elbow through the still stunned Mortem.

Nearby, amongst the shadows, a low and uneasy voice speaks, “What am I looking at, Curfew? Mortem fighting Mortem?”

Curfew tightens his hand around his ax. Something began to stir within him, memories of armor cursed, of the throne he once stood beside. “Vesperon my friend, this Mortem clad in white armor is familiar in ancient ways.”

As Vesperon and Curfew emerge from the forest rim, moonlight reveals their monster-mocked embellished armor. It’s a sight that has caused many of the most horrifying monsters to flee in terror. They are hunters who stalk the world’s darkest horrors so ordinary people never have to see what hunts in the shadows.

They are the Eventide.