A Legacy of Blades - An Epic Tower Fantasy

The rain was coming down in sheets; it was always coming down in sheets nowadays, it seemed. What anyone had done to piss off that particular god was a mystery, but here he was pissing all over these blessed people. Some bit of a divine comedy there, but the joke missed its mark.

The once temperate region was quickly turning into wetlands after weeks of unabashed rainfall. It was sick, like all the people who had previously been unaccustomed to incessantly damp feet, a twisted parody of life as they'd known it. The last crops of the season, not harvested before the storms came, suffered a similar fate as they drowned from rising groundwater levels. The soil, unmatched in its permeability, drank up the deluge and prevented rampant flooding at a cost. What sustenance would normally see the local villages through the cold months lay cold and sodden, unfit for harvest and rotting in the mire.

The lords of the area, magnanimous in their generosity, began to ration what provisions survived in their storehouses. Truthfully, none had a better alternative, and yet it was a measure that would doom countless lives. There simply wasn't enough food to feed all the mouths, and everyone knew it. The lords even went so far as to curtail their frivolity, canceling the harvest festival as "we sacrifice our festivities that our people might know less suffering."

Those were the last of the good times.

Rationing grew tighter as the storehouse supplies dwindled. If not for the rising death toll, they would have run out of food far sooner, but there it was, a small blessing from benevolent gods, the final gift from the departed. Game was scarce, as even wildlife struggled during the metamorphosis of their home. What foragers found was rarely worth the energy invested in the trip, but necessity drove people to gamble.

The wilds were unrecognizable from before the storms. Entire swaths of forests had fallen and rotted from the root, turned to bogs and muddied waters. Mushrooms, mosses, and lichens grew in abundance, feeding off the decay. Bones lay scattered, seen and unseen, picked clean by scavengers and insects. The small furry critters that were once so prolific couldn't weather the storms and had their role usurped by slime-coated amphibious creatures, their dens becoming spawning pools beneath the murk. The predators of the forests and plains had fled the rains to find small game, leaving reptiles and ever-more frightening beasts in their wake.

Dark was the atmosphere and grim the mood. Gone were the times of neighborly goodness, and even the most benevolent of the lords grew cold as their belts grew tight. There is a strangely sinuous muscle that grows in hard times, unlike true healthy, beefy mass, but vicelike in its grip. The worst of the lords fast adopted an approach of iron-fisted severity, forgoing their gracious appearance in favor of security as their hard stone walls began to sink, reclaimed by sodden soil, and none doubted that the best of them would follow.

Hard times breed hard people, and hard people need hard lessons. A lashing is sooner forgotten when smothered by hunger pains. Old forts, no longer able to be manned by such a diminished population, were repurposed as jails to house the malcontents. Order gave way to authority as abundance fell to austerity. Fresh water was scarce, as there simply wasn't enough dry wood for proper sterilizing fires.

Still, there were those who clung to hope.

A man watched his family wither away, struggling to feed those little mouths, breaking as his wife passed, her will broken by the loss of their youngest. One after another, the children wasted away, unable to even be buried in their ancestral farmlands that had turned to marsh, left to slowly sink, claimed by the murk and what lies beneath. The man knew despair as only those who have lost everything can know. Changed forever by his misfortune in surviving, he couldn't bring himself to give in. He would not dishonor their memory, their struggle, for the sake of an easy end.

A grandfather lay in soggy hay, the last vestiges of comfort, as he silently thanked the gods for taking his daughter before the storms. Never did he think he'd count that a blessing. Feeling the creeping cold claim ever more of him, he knew her for the lucky one. The weeping children surrounding his deathbed would always remember her as she'd been in her prime, not stretched and thin as he'd become. As he died, a prayer of hope rattled from his cracked lips, a hope that the gods would see these little ones through where he had failed them all.

Towers and walls that had stood silently for generations, rebuilt from the ashes of the Great Collapse, began to crumble, their foundations claimed by the voracious land. Now, they stood like so many bones, pockmarking the landscape of a dying land. It would be a wonder if, in time, even one remnant structure remained from this once prosperous land.

Already, the time of reunification, a mockery of the legends of old, crumbled, spurred onward by squabbling lords who had never truly desired unity. From its corpse sprouted forth a fractured land, plagued by a dissonance of peoples, marked by the fetid veins of the growing bog that, in the not-so-distant past, wasn't.

Ekkron wept, but the tears went unnoticed in the rain. It was the dry season, so the rain was relatively mild; the constant monsoon died down to what some folks might call "spring showers." In all truth, the man hardly noticed the weather, as a matter of perspective. Still, he appreciated the cover it offered him. His stone-featured face offered no insight into his inner world, but wet streaks would be a dead giveaway, were it not for the rain.

For Ekkron, the storms brought more than just a change in weather. No, they painted his whole world with a fresh coat of dreadful woe. He'd grown so accustomed to the flavor, he now hardly noticed its presence. Patrol helped. Long walks in the wet by his lonesome, with only sparing personal interactions, worked wonders to help him forge a makeshift appearance of normalcy, what with his involuntary tendencies.

He found himself on patrol a lot nowadays. It took his mind off the consuming feelings of loss that threatened to eat him from within, a pervasive, atmospheric affliction of a people subject to such catastrophe. It helped to have a direction, some sense of purpose. It helped to put one foot in front of the other until you found yourself…somewhere. Anywhere was better than there, the land remembered.

Don't think of it, never think of it. Remember them as they were, not…that.

Some pits threaten to swallow you no matter how far you run, some moments eternal, despite the passage of time. As he had countless times in the intervening years, he swore to their memory. He swore to be their witness, to carry with him the marks they had made in a land now passed from all but memory. It was a promise born of necessity that had grown to be more, grown to bear the remembrance of his people's loss, now testament to more than just his own departed.

And so he trudged through the mundane life he'd forged in the darkness of the Stormlands. This simple life of servitude was the scaffolding that supported his broken frame and allowed him to carry himself, to carry the weight of memory through the cascading years.

Months passed in a blur after the relentless rains came, months wherein he patrolled aimlessly, despair painting his days in a clouded gray hue. He left behind village after village, each a unique flavor of misery and hopelessness. The undertones, despite the people's differences, persisted. Nowhere remained unblemished by the taint of hardship.

Ekkron went on patrol, a dreaded duty for most guardsmen, as lawlessness was on the rise, more frequently than any of his fellows. On more than one occasion, he returned from a circuit only to set out again after the briefest of respites. None of his compatriots cared to comment on his behavior any longer. His obsessive patrolling habits were a poorly kept secret, if ever there was one, and they did make for an exceptional guardsman.

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No other guard was a match for his diligence, and none felt the need to draw undue attention to the man. The higher-ups were aware, but wrote his vigor off as just another odd coping mechanism, something far too many people had developed. When confronted in the early days, he gave no explanation beyond, "people to help, souls need a watchman," his eyes distant, his face grim but set with conviction. The questions died after that.

In his moments of lucidity, rare among the haze, he did what he could to help his fellow victims. These instances were hounded, ever chased, by ghosts of his past. A memory of a small hand touching his would ignite joy within his core, only to be doused by the rains like countless hopeful flames. The warmth of torchlight on his back brought with it memories of his wife's embrace, before reality came rushing back, filling his veins with dreadful ice. His aid was never enough, and always later than needed. Still, he steeled himself and continued his vigil. The Stormlands' need was great, and the watcher would stand witness.

With time, established and populated settlements became few and far between, his circuits increasingly bleak with the passing months. Villages that, while not teeming with the stuff, once showed clear signs of life now stood silent, bearing evidence of the people's passing. Those bones of civilization longest deceased held the least danger for Ekkron. He didn't fear the beasts dwelling in the mire, only the haunting visions that rose up from his subconscious. In places washed clean of humanity, even the remnant laughter of children had been cleansed, despite the ever-present echo in his mind. He appreciated these places for their stark contrast. In a dead land, his ghosts were more apparent.

No, it was the places showing more recent signs of habitation, where apparitions flirted with reality, that posed the greatest threat. When life and death intermingled, he found signs of the life he'd lost beneath every stone.

He'd lost count of how many times he had cleared a village of its water-laden corpses, each seeming heavier than nature intended, yet lacking a particular weight inherent in the living. In these moments, he found solace in his rituals, some old traditions of his broken people, and some uniquely his. A prayer lost in the howling wind and thunderous rain, never meant for the ears of those still able to hear. A drink to health that would never return. A series of solemn trips away from town, bearing one burden at a time, to let nature reclaim what was born from the earth, just as he'd done for his own. Unable to grant them the peace of a burial, the least he could do was return them to the cycle another way and end their unwarranted desecration by the elements.

The scent of death followed him as a pall over his shoulders, so often did he walk in its embrace. One step after another took the watcher through those dead marshes, always vigilantly searching for signs of life.

The morning dawned with a grim foreboding, different from the standard apathetic dread Ekkron knew so well. The light, if one was generous in their definition, that dripped through his window was gray and listless. The air was thick like a blanket laid heavily upon the world, urging the weary souls of the Stormlands to stay abed lest further misfortune find them. Sleep had become the mode of escape for too many, and days like this embodied why. Still, something felt different in the air that day, like the weight was more significant, of a greater and more woeful quality.

The wind whispered the whims of fate, and misfortune.

Ekkron, unlike many of his countrymen, hardly felt the atmosphere's enhancement while getting out of bed, beyond a simple acknowledgement at its tangibility. The anchor his soul dragged through the muck weighed more heavily upon him than any atmospheric disturbance, supernatural or otherwise. Rolling from his slumber, he pulled his duty clothes, perpetually damp in the humid air, from the chair and donned them methodically. He could find his buttons in the dark, by now, and his fingers noted the uneven lay of fabric where he'd needed to make his own repairs.

He recalled, briefly, how that sniveling rat of a quartermaster had laughed at his request for a new uniform. The man seemed to take pleasure in denying any and all requests that weren't mandated by the acting lord. Neither then, nor now, had his passing annoyance managed to crack his shell of depression, the void that had swallowed him these past years.

No, Ekkron had simply taken an amateur hand to darning the simple clothes. His attempts had improved over the years, but one could hardly call his duty clothes appealing, bearing the marks of countless crusades as they did. Thankfully, they served their purpose and provided a layer of insulation between his body and his armor. No one ever anticipates chainmail's unpleasant tendency to pull any hair left uncovered when their underclothes are in full repair, and his hauberk hung lower than any sane person would appreciate having hair pulled.

Thankfully, he'd remedied that particular issue, unsightly as his efforts were.

The pitiful grey light shone on his reddened hauberk, the oxidized iron not moving as it once did. On a time, it glistened in even this lackluster lighting, but oil was a commodity made increasingly scarce for those of lesser means, helped in no small part by the rodents that hoarded supplies. Rusted armor proved better protection than nothing, and the padding underneath served its purpose well. What oil he could procure was reserved for maintaining his sword and spear. A poorly maintained weapon would more likely doom his patrol than subpar armor.

His body moved of its own volition, going through practiced motions as he prepared for his day. His mind wandered down these and other paths carved of memory, always analytically. Emotions rarely broke through the shroud that kept the past at bay, but reminiscing helped pass the time. It was all so routine, he no longer even had to trick his mind to quarantine memories from before the world broke. Despite everything, that day he felt cracks in his faithful armor and a tightness in his chest he hadn't felt in gods-knew how long: anxiety?

He hurriedly equipped the rest of his gathered gear, eager to be about his day. The methodical plod of patrol always served well to mend the chinks in his mental fortitude.

Footfall after splashing footfall imbued Ekkron's route with a certain cadence.

Splash!

Sluuurp!

Splash!

Sluuurp!

Each rise and fall accented his journey with the voices of the swamp.

The muddy path, once a great road for his people, made for better travel than cutting a path through the mire. What flagstones remained, sucked beneath the muck, provided a more stable platform for the mud. It was true, quality muck, sodden soil he'd come to know well. The few flagstones that hadn't been reclaimed by nature had been erected into Cairns to mark the path. In the early days, his patrols served as much to maintain those markers as to truly look for trouble.

People weren't abundant enough anymore to warrant most of the deep-swamp beasts venturing from their territory; they had food closer to home. The occasional lesser beast that trespassed upon his route more often fled the tell-tale sounds of his march than chose to risk needless injury.

Recent months had shown Ekkron the real danger didn't come in the form of beasts any longer, but other people set free by the hardships of the age. In his lucid moments, he pondered the shift.

Once, I would have hoped these wretches took to banditry to feed hungry mouths, and maybe some did, but more and more I see signs of the darkness in men, darkness that waits in quiet thoughts, biding its time until it might find a hold on its vessel.

They say you never forget the first man you kill, but Ekkron couldn't place his. It had come on a day as normal as any other, wet and dismal. It had happened, routine as anything, just a guard ensuring the peace of the roadways, and it had been filed away with all the other threats he'd dispatched. It was his job to take care of beasts, human or otherwise. Those weren't the faces he wished to keep alive in memory.

They'd made their decision when they took up arms against their kin, and deserved the repercussions. Not everything should be remembered.

As he went through practiced motions, following his familiar route, the sound of voices reached him. Travelers weren't unheard of, even then, but they brought trouble to them like moths to a flame.

Ekkron firmed his grip on his spear, knuckles popping in his gauntleted hands, and prepared himself for whatever mess he'd stumbled upon. It was always a mess nowadays, he'd found.

Men, or monsters: what waits along the road.

Once, he would have walked in, head held high in honor, set to determine the nature of the scene, but no longer. No, he crept upon his prey as a predator born in the marshes, to watch and to wait, ready to dole out swift justice if the occasion called for it.

Honor was a thing for civilized times, and civility was dead. Hope did not beat in his chest, the tone of the voices all but cementing his course.

Blood would be spilled, and the worthiness of his convictions, tested. If he fell, they all died with him. That was all he needed to fight on.