THE FLAMES IN THE SHADOW

Many moons ago, there existed a great island known as Agron, which abounded with wealth and beauty. Under the leadership of Chief Lanklis, black magic became a crime throughout the island, for there existed an eternal war betwixt Rezos, the god of goodness, and Arzalon, the god of evil.

There came a time when Zirik, the greatest overlord in the western region, craved for unprecedented power. He was desirous to turn the western region into a kingdom under his sway, for there was a lot of people who were willing to uphold his course and set up revolt for his sake.

Chief Lanklis, in order to stop Zirik, turned to Darlia, the greatest overlord in the southern region. Without any delay did Darlia seek the help of four other overlords, viz. Radak, Zedzka, Monti and Letta.

The five overlords gathered their men and joined forces together as a militia, having set up a bargain with Chief Lanklis. When Zirik saw that war was close at hand, he gathered together men and women and set up a militia.

Zirik and his militia engaged their rivals in a very bloody battle and fought like ravenous beasts. When Zirik saw that defeat had almost befallen him, he took with him the rest of his militiamen and fled to a forest called Desporas. There he made a deal with Arzalon on behalf of himself and his surviving militiamen.

Arzalon, very pleased that he had found the favourable means to procure the lion's share of the island, gave Zirik an emerald chest that abounded with dark magic powers, but Zirik and his surviving militiamen never made it out of Desporas.

They perished when Arzalon caused the air to cease in Desporas, but only one man, Zorakx, made it out of Desporas with the emerald chest since Arzalon chose to spare Zorakx's life and took Zirik to Kyrogid, the land of the evil spirits.

Peace eventually reigned in Agron after the civil war, and Chief Lanklis decided to honour his own part of the bargain that he had made with the five overlords.

Therefore, he split Agron into five great provinces according to the five overlords who had joined forces to fight with Zirik and his militiamen, naming the provinces according to the names of the five overlords. The crown and throne went to Darlia, whereupon Darlia became the royal city according to the will of Rezos.

When Zorakx opened the emerald chest, the militiamen who had followed Zirik to Desporas were resurrected. They became zombies that would never leave Desporas.

Agron fell under an enchantment, hence whoever sailed beyond the waters of the realm would never find their way back, and Agron became a ghost to the world beyond its waters. Alas, the beautiful island had become a prison of its own in the midst of the measureless seas.

Zorakx called the emerald chest the Curse of Zirik, for it was heavy with occult evils. Unhinged by the power of the Curse of Zirik, Zorakx plunged from the brink of a mountaintop and died. However, Rezos took his soul to Saz Draal, the land of the good spirits.

Before the whereabouts of the Curse of Zirik became an enigma to the sons and daughters of Agron, occultists tried to quell the darkness of the emerald chest. Unfortunately, a great evil that was detrimental to the island was the outcome each time the chest was opened.

To a few learned occultists, Desporas became a forbidden place on the island. Alas, the kingdom abounded with serious cases of the black arts. Alas, in the absence of trust amongst the provinces, each of the five provinces set up an army of its own.

Centuries, but centuries had gone by since the ground zero of monarchy in Agron, and there came the days when renowned faces became slaves to the cupidity for more and more power.

The night stood moonless, and perhaps the moon was under the sway of an enchantment so that it silvered not any part of Agron with its light, or possibly the night was one of those numberless times when the moon was utterly cloaked in its garment of invisibility so that the eyes of whatever living being expected not to behold it.

The stars were not different from the moon, for not even the brightest one amongst them was powerful enough to go against the grimness of the overcast sky. The pitch-dark clouds were scudding southwards.

Indeed, the violent wind, as though a rare tempest was about to come, howled round the hills, fields, habitations and more besides, rendering manifold leaves and weak branches adrift.

Not even one person that dwelt in any of the habitations of the island stayed outdoors mid the minatory weather, for the night was fast going pitch-black, frigid and more bizarre, moreover, outside the habitations, as long as a person still had breath, they would make haste to fly the coming scourge.

The blackness of the night had already engulfed the hills, mountains and woodlands, but the habitations were starry skies owing to the countless lamps al fresco.

There came the frightening roar of an unseen beast. Lord Golrus, sitting astride a dragon that was standing on the ground, narrowed his grey eyes as he contorted his hirsute face unpleasantly in the witching hour. A callous light stayed steady in his eyes.

His dark dreadlocks well bespoke sheen, flowing down over his large shoulders. His red surcoat stood over the back of his suit of golden armour whose breastplate had a grisly emblem which was a serpent in its coil. The innumerable torches that were shining before his eyes made the suit of gold armour glister.

A burly seven-footer, Lord Golrus was. And again, he possessed a muscular build. A broadsword, which was reposing in a golden scabbard and seeking for blood, was at his studded leather belt. The scabbard glistered in the effulgent torchlight.

The sorcerer did not desire a helmet here and thus was wearing not one. Each of his sandalled feet was in a brazen ring that hung down on either side of the leather seat through which he was sitting on the dragon, and the pair of brazen rings was the simulacrum of a pair of stirrups. The dragon gave a roar.

Lord Golrus looked from right to left at the vast army of rebels, giants, zombies, dragons and griffins that stood before him. The villainous forces were numberless on the immense grassed plateau where he had mustered them.

Here there seemed to be no herald of a tempest despite the firmament was moonless and devoid of stars. The serried forces, in corps and corps, formed an unsurpassed army that stood ready to cause holocausts.

As they were under Lord Golrus' command, they were craving to cut down countless people and wreck habitations. They had the hankering to devastate fortresses and desecrate temples.

The giants, zombies and rebels had with them hatchets, swords of several sorts, battleaxes, quivers that were full of poisonous arrows, sledgehammers, spears, shields, longbows, crossbows, poisonous bolts, daggers, slings, clubs, stones, maces and tridents.

Also, in their midst were horses, chariots, battering rams, gargantuan catapults and scores of heavy stones, for they were hell-bent on sundering great walls and extinguishing portals.

The dragons were very desirous to immolate their foes and emit great flames that would consume manifold properties. They were the enemies of their ruler's enemies.

All the baneful forces that had been mustered on the plateau through grossly dark magic were the foes of Lord Golrus' foes, for they strongly had faith in Lord Golrus with regard to victory.

Their suits of armour were built with iron, and their breastplates bore the same emblem which was on Lord Golrus' breastplate. They had helmeted heads, and the emblem that stood on their breastplates was blazoned on their shields.

Lord Golrus lifted his right fist overhead. The foul creatures, just after they beheld Lord Golrus' uplifted fist, bowed their heads with obeisance to the would-be supreme ruler of Agron, from whom they would gladly accept commands; hereupon, with their voices as vibrant as thunderclaps did they shriek feelingly, again and again. Lightning started to appear in the sullen heavens.

The pillars of their ruler's black courses, they had been designed to be. Mighty destroyers to the islanders who were avid for everlasting easement, they hankered to become. The destroyers of comfort and togetherness and liberty, they yearned to become.

Their bloodlust was heightening; there was the craving to spill their foes' blood from cockcrow through sunset, and from sunset through cockcrow, hitherto the moment when the island would be heaving with dead bodies and captives and forced homages to Lord Golrus.

Lord Golrus anon glared round at the darkling skies. He was desirous to unseat the rulers, annex all the provinces of Agron and make every living being, whether supernatural or otherwise, acknowledge him as the supreme ruler of the island.

To the destroyers had he given commands to slay countless creatures, set habitations in ruins, bring the spoils to him, render numberless people captive, and instigate other brutalities of war according to the will of their own and on behalf of Arzalon.

So it came about that the leviathans of sorcery cut a swathe through the borders of the provinces, storming every habitation and battering down walls and portals of strongholds. Furthermore, beachheads worked to their advantage.

The baneful forces were going at their enemies fatally. Even dauntless sentinels were falling mid the defence of their homeland, and the doom stood inevitable. They made catapults power heavy stones towards castles.

The hope and valour of the resisters thereupon were very much vitiated. There were clashes of steel and the swoosh of arrows, spears and stones; arrows and spears burst into the bodies of countless beings whilst stones smote many creatures, and some forces in Lord Golrus' army flew not death.

There were cries of the killers as well as the severely wounded victims. Innumerable freemen and slaves, while running here and there mid the parlous situation, wailed like lost souls that were tortured by very strong demons in the netherworld of the evil god.

The island, alas, had become a battle ground; whereupon, before a matter of longish time and thenceforth, many parts of the island were bound to become plates of fabulously bountiful food for the living creatures that would survive on the remains of human beings and animals.

Indeed, the great battles at the different provinces of Agron were far from their respective ends. Bedlam filled Agron since the invincible army of darkness was on the verge of putting its resisters to rout by means of death and captivity.

Megalopolises, and even Darlia, the powerful metropolis, had no ray of optimism for even an iota of the scent of triumph. The good deities seemed to have greatly approved of the sombre kismet of their worshippers.

Dragons, alas, were putting manifold buildings to the torch and the people who were hit by the flames of the incendiary beasts were immolated. Sanctuaries and treasure houses were sorely despoiled of treasure and patrimony mid the grave ruination: the dire sacrilege of a kind that nae place had ever seen on the island.

Many heads were prised from their respective bodies. People were held by the winged monsters, conveyed overground, up and up, and, alas, they were made to meet mortal free fall. Numberless corpses stood bloodied here and there like carcasses on the immense butchery grounds of abattoirs.

Many buildings in all the habitations had turned luscious foods to the relish of the roaring flames, moreover, the pillars of smoke and murk of smoke, as they soared and poured heavenwards, wished that they could form clouds in the welkin.

Alas, the megalopolises of the provinces had become necropolises that were waiting for the human remains to make for themselves the graves of their own. The animate sons and daughters of the vanquished might ne'er see the liberty of their precious homeland, for they were bound to become eternal slaves to the sorcerer who had made the great calamities come out of the blue.

Innumerable Agronites were fettered and kept alive, though Agron had been a place where escape was vain. The wounded, those who were avid for the afterlife and had realized that Death was just a stone's throw away, vastly thirsted for coup de grâce; a few did get coup de grâce, whereas others expired just after they stilled.

The wind mourned. Dark clouds sorrowfully enfolded the sun. The celestial bodies of night-time veiled themselves in the ether, too woeful to emit their light. The firmament hankered to weep and let its spate of tears surge down all over Agron. The living Agronites grieved over their several dead relatives.

Every province grieved over the fall in its manhood plus the dire decrease in the number of women and children. Men had forsaken their kinsfolk, whereupon orphans, elegiac parents, motherless people, fatherless people, widowers and widows abounded. Grief hung heavy on the island. Besides, those who grieved over the dead had already been put in shackles.

Lord Golrus, sitting astride a dragon, grinned in a sullen night sky in Darlia. He was blindingly pleased with the brutality of the bestial creatures that were at his beck and call. Alas, every province on the island had lost its bliss to the warlock who had deployed his extremely evil mojo before the seemingly puny divinities.

Lord Golrus gave a supernaturally ear-splitting cackle that effectuated an incandescent flash of forked lightning which was soon followed by an ear-piercing clap of thunder that burst athwart the island. The thunderclap even caused land and the deep that girdled the island to tremble.

A biting gale began to sweep through every part of Agron. It howled and howled. Besides, there was not even one animate creature outdoors in the dreadfully violent wind.

Some plants had died and numberless plants had lost some of their parts in the face of the erstwhile hazards, moreover, plants were now beset by another hazard, a wildly strong scourge. Plants were bound to lose many flowers, leaves and fruits.

Dead leaves were frolicsome fairies in the gale. Flashes of lightning came up. Claps of thunder came up. Rolls of thunder came up as if the celestial divinities were woefully drumming overhead even as the wind seemed to be weeping a plangent song, and plants appeared to be dancing wildly to the sounds that were created by the wind and celestial divinities.

When the storm clouds opened so that rain poured down, the bad weather deteriorated; the heavens became sorely angry and thus the start of a tempest. The adversity of the plants had just doubled, whereupon rich soils were likely to go poor because of the intensity of the flood.

After the tempest had dwindled and gone away, it seemed as though the island had met its sudden end. Also, it seemed as though Agron had turned a void. Quietude, but quietude descended in Agron.