Monolith

  Tales of the Verdant Realms

  FOREWORD:

  Fantasy has always been a part of my life. From reading Tolkien,Lewis,Jacques,Pratchett and so many others, to traversing the galaxies of Warhammer 40k, Discworld, and the Riftwar Saga, these worlds have shaped me. They are not just influences- they are woven into my mind so deeply it feels genetic.

  Dear reader, you will no doubt notice echoes of those tales in these pages. Do not mistake them for forgery. It is not my job to create something entirely new. It is my calling to present old truths in a way you may have never seen before.

  This book and those that follow seek to tell the truth in fantasy form. That truth may be beautiful or ugly, righteous or sinful, holy or heretical. It will not shy away from the heaviest, darkest places, but I promise to carry you through with care. I promise to tell it in a way that resonates and maybe heals, because as the ink dries on these pages, I am healing too.

  Sincerely, Adam Anglin

  BOOK 1:

  Gospel

  The Steelwilds, 4th Age

  Prologue:

  Clinical.

  Sterile.

  Clean.

  Disinfected.

  Solid.

  This was the world I was born into, Ezekiel Flame-Tail of the Tower in Flame-Tail Grove nestled deep within the Grovelands in the heart of the Verdant Realms. It was there that my grandfather, Fernweh Adamah Ataraxia O’Hangluinn Flame-Tail and his wife, Ekynami Ember Flame-Tail, began to rediscover and redifine what had been lost to the ages. The art of harnessing the raw magic of the Verdant Realms.

  Now, the Groves are neat, clean and tidy, on the surface, but just like fresh paint on an old shield, there is always the chance for rust hiding just beneath.

  Chapter 1: Rest in Pieces

  Hollow Port, Steelwilds

  I stood at the grave of one Mrs. Glymora Gladstone. She had been laid to beautiful rest in Saint Velessa’s Cemetery, just south of Hollow Port, almost fifty years ago.

  Except, judging by the fresh earth on one side of the grave, the broken and splintered remains of the coffin, and her skull grinning crookedly up at me, she was not resting quite so peacefully now.

  I lowered myself into the coffin gently and checked the chapel records again. The robbers had not been after gold or jewelry, judging by the coins and trinkets that lay scattered about untouched, glittering like discarded offerings.

  “According to the record, Mrs. Gladstone was buried with five potent beads: one for her first union, one for the birth of each of her two daughters, one for her final union, and one that formed the moment her life ended. They were stored in a neck pouch at the time of burial”, I muttered to myself as I gently brushed aside debris the remnants of a mouldering gown.

  No pouch.

  “Anything?”came the voice of my wife and partner Itza or as friends and family called her ‘Izzy’. I looked up to see her brown hair stirring faintly in the misty spring air.

  I climbed out of the grave and brushed the dirt from my coat, “ Nothing,my love. She was supposed to have a flame, two womb crowns, a hollow moon, and a death buried with her.”

  I turned back to the coffin and looked at the crooked remains of Glymora Gladstone. Her skull seemed to smirk at me, as if it knew something I did not.

  “She makes the tenth one this week, and the church still has no idea who is behind this,” I muttered.

  Itza grimaced. She had been by my side for the last ten years, and she had made several beads herself: two womb crowns, two flames, and one wound from the miscarriage between our two daughters. That one she kept in a hope chest that her father gave her the day we were married and bonded.

  “ I wonder why she didn’t pass them down to her daughters,” Izzy said as we walked past the cemetery guard and grave keepers. “They could’ve added the to the family rosary.”

  “You’re right. Those aren’t the kind of things most women would leave lying around” I took her hand in mine “Not with what it takes to make them, and they are certainly not something the church would leave behind either. Beads that potent? They would’ve been confiscated before the first shovelful of dirt hit the coffin lid.”

  We exited through the main gates of the cemetery, passing between two bare chested statues of Saint Velessa. Their arms raised in benediction. In the walkway between, lay an ancient and weathered mosaic,nearly worn to nothing. It depicted an almost forgotten myth of the Verdant Realms. A lithe green female dragon entwined with a massive male dragon: Sylvarax the Rootfather and the Green Mother.

  “It has to be an inside job,” I muttered as we turned onto Creator’s Avenue, heading to the Cloister of Investigations. “Not many people have access to bead records. One daughter dead, the other indentured to the church as a flame worker. She had no one to pass them on to. Easy pickings.”

  Itza glanced at the battle chaplets draped around her left wrist, pale red and white beads hummed softly with sealed offensive and defensive spells.

  “That’s why she kept them,” she said her voice low and hard with emotion, “ if she had tried to send them to her indentured daughter, the church would have confiscated them.”

  We passed a group of Sisters in a prays circle just outside of Glowleaf Hollow, the courtyard of the cloister. In the center of the circle sat a woven basket atop an ornate cloth. One by one, each sister would bow her head and place her hands inside her robe, then once done, she would drop a glowing bead into the basket.

  I nudged Izzy with a grin, “Sister work was never your style was it, my love?”

  Itza sniffed at them, “I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime in Prayer School. I had to practice my prayers so much I had headaches and pruned fingers for a month. I’ll take Sanctified Rites and battle any day.”

  We stepped up the granite steps of the cloister. It was housed in what had once been the Hall for the Dark Druid Chieftains before Fernweh’s Deliverance. The doors were blackened oak, bound in wrought iron, and inset with sapphire,gold and crimson windows. Gargoyles made to represent beasts that were both man and dragon loomed on the tops of the walls and roof.

  “Some things,” I thought, “could never be fully erased by time or how white washed the religion of the day tried to make things.”

  Just before we reached the doors, we spotted another missionary couple in an alcove. They were an odd sight, especially in the Fourth Age when the modern church looked down upon interracial unions. Their reasoning was that certain bondings between races were incompatible and therefore not very conducive to bead production.

  The couple in question? Bithruk Bithrukson, an Uplander orc from the White Mountains, and his wife Tertalia Silverwood, an elf maiden from Silverlight Falls. By the look of it, she would be making a wombcrown of her own soon enough. Her stomach was swollen with the quiet work of the Creator.

  Itza lit up and dashed to her, arms wide, “Tert! How are you feeling? I didn’t know you were back from sabbatical?”

  Tertalia kissed Itza on both cheeks, then waved to me as I shook hands with Bithruk, his grip firm, calloused, and warm.

  “We called it short,” she said “ There were rumors coming out of Fogveil Marsh, and Bithruk wanted to look into it since that is so close to his homeland. So, we visited his family.”

  She leaned in and whispered into Izzy’s ear with a teasing voice, “ The Uplanders are so different from us, even folks from the heart of the Grovelands. They are so… out in the open with everything. That’s why they wear the kilts.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Izzy laughed, “I’ve heard that!”

  I gave Bithruk a nod, “How was Fogveil? Yogunomori still quiet?”

  Bithruk shrugged, snorted, and spat a loogey off to the side where it landed a few feet from the Sisters. One of the fumbled a freshly made bead causing it to shatter on the stones. It dissipated in puff of sparks and whispers.

  Izzy snorted at me, “See? Prunage.”

  Bithruk grinned, “ Typical Fogveil drama. No matter how peaceful talks go, the kitsune tribes of Yogunomori Stim don’t take kindly to the church shrines popping up near their borders. Their warriors burned down a Chapel of Saint Egretious a week ago.”

  He paused letting that settle, “Several Sisters were captured and taken back to their dens.”

  He leaned against the wall,arms crossed, kilt shifting in the breeze, “After negotiating, the Sisters were returned. The Wombweavers were busy for a while cleaning up that mess. Most of them won’t be able to make cycles now. The church is relocating them to Emberhome for rehabilitation.”

  Izzy and Tert smiled. The mental image of withered clergy harassing the warrior women of Yogunomori for their bead tithe too funny of an image to keep quiet.

  I turned to Izzy with a half smirk, “ You think it is some of your kin causing the ruckus? You are a Shadow-veil after all?”

  Izzy looked at me and shrugged, “Probably Skubason and his crew. The kitsune worship the Creator too just without all of the… organization. They honor the ancestors, sure, but I think it is mostly the bead tithes that set them off.”

  She cupped her hands like a bowl and lifted her voice in a mock clergy tone, “Hello, ma’am, have you made your daily pearl today?”

  Tertalia snorted the laugh making her belly bounce, “Yeah,I’d kidnap some Sisters myself.”

  We said our goodbyes still chuckling to ourselves. I pushed open the doors to the Cloister.

  Inside stretched long pillars halls, cool and echoing with old reverence. Alcoves along the walls held images of the saints, Saint Velessa was the most prevalent, depicted in varying forms of dress, undress, and divine exposure.

  If a person looked up,behind the peeling paint and cracked plaster, one could see glimpses of the old murals hidden beneath. Murals from what the Haints call the Old Truth. It was another depiction of the Rootfather in all his primal glory bowed before a black monolith.

  I stood there thinking for once I would like to see what these old myths were based upon, instead of all these unabashed images of over-endowed saints, sanctified bed altars, and blessed breasts. Just once, just to see what true and honest worship felt like.

  We approached a large desk stationed in front of a set of heavy doors. Behind it sat an older man, small and twitchy and mouse-like, peering at us over the rim of his glasses like we had tracked mud on the tiles.

  He grimaced, “Missionaries. State your names and business here.”

  I slapped a thick stack of papers onto the desk hard enough to make him jump, “ Lucius, you know who the hell we are. You and I went to Mission School together. You visited my wedding rite. Stop being an ass.”

  “Whatever, Zeke,” Lucius muttered trying to muster a growl, “ That was ten years ago.”

  He straightened in his chair as if the weight of the whole church and gospel weighed upon his shoulders.

  “I work beneath the High Chaplain now,” he said scraping together all the dignity he could muster, “ And he says, state your names and business.”

  “Ezekiel and Itza Flame-Tail,” I said firmly, “Married and rited before the Creator and Church at Flame Tail Grove, missionaries primus and prima of Battalion Arcurion. We are investigating the recent grave robberies that have been plaguing the parish.

  I met Lucius’ eyes dead center, “I request access to all sign-ins and archive logs pertaining to the last thirty days. Immediately.”

  Lucius simply stood there, still the mouse of a man I remembered. He removed a key from around his neck and unlocked the door.

  “Sign in records are on the podium to the left, along with archives checked out and researched,” he said in a tone too formal for the room.

  The a pause.

  “I truly am sorry for the brusqueness, but with more and more illicit businesses popping up under forged church documents… We have to be cautious, even in the face of familiarity.”

  We stepped inside the archive chamber. Rows upon rows of musty books,scrolls, and ledgers towered around us as quiet sentinels of long forgotten truths. I moved to the podium and scanned the most recent entries.

  “Ignatius Dormalian,” I read allowed, “Investigator Primus from the Church of Glimmerbrook.”

  I frowned, “He’s a long way from home.”

  I glanced over the column listing his research request, “ Unsanctioned Life Events of the Church of Hollow Port and Surrounding Parishes.”

  I flipped to the final notation, “Intersting, it shows he returned it.”

  I looked at Izzy, “Let’s go find the book.”

  The Records Priestess was clad in robes so thin they resembled vellum, translucent in the golden light of the archives. Her sect of three Gospel clearly believed in revealing the truth- quite literally. As she turned to face me, Itza let out a low growl of disapproval behind me.

  “How may I help you,Sir?” She asked unbothered.

  I handed her the slip of paper, “I’d like to see this record please.”

  She took it, and I caught a glimpse of her wrists, bracelets of whisper beads, several of them glowing faintly. A few cracked ash beads among them, dull and fractured.

  She scanned the request and smiled, “These records have become quite popular lately. Almost a popular as the Third Book of Saint Dominus.” Her eyes flicked up to meet mine.

  “I’ve read the account of Saint Dominus and the Blessing of the congregation at Everspring,” Izzy said as she followed the sashaying rear of the librarian down one row and then another, “It’s not that great of a read.”

  “I’d have to agree, my heart” I said with a knowing smile, the kind of smile that said ‘I’m going to be paying for this later.’ All because this trollop’s favorite color was apparently damn near clear.

  “Besides,” I added “ my favorite is the Gospel of the Dogs, especially chapter eight, verse sixteen.”

  Itza glanced back over her shoulder, one brow already raised, “Of course it would be. Isn’t that the verse about the justification of…” She nearly ran into the librarian who had bent at the waist to retrieve a large tome from the bottom shelf.

  I turned away quickly, doing my best not to give any more ammunition than she already had. The librarian rose gracefully and placed the heavy book on a nearby table.

  “Here you are,sir. I hope you find everything to your needs. If you would like more on the topic, the same shelf contains another fifty-three volumes of relevant information- marriage rites, sanctified bonds, solo inductions, and heretical/apostate reinstatements.”

  Then she circled slowly around Itza, her voice a silk thread laced with vinegar, “If you find your research dull, and your mind in need of a respite, feel free to leave your assistant here to work and come visit me up front. Perhaps you can help me with my research paper, ‘Proper and Expiramental Techniques for Producing Flame Beads’.”

  I choked, immediately flipping pages with a sudden and deeply focused interest.

  Itza all but exploded, the air around her wrist shimmering as her hand naturally shifted to a casting stance, an inferno spell primed and ready to reduce the theological wench to sacred ash.

  “Darling,” I said calmly without looking up from the tome, “why in the world are you worried about about one library worker, when if you look at your wrist, you can see undeniable evidence of my love and devotion…”, I turned the page, “To you and you alone.”

  Itza took a deep breath, her green eyes burning,her voice low and even “I’m going to beat you tonight.”

  “Promise?” I quipped, scanning the pages.

  Most of the funerary entries were the standard… oversight by clergy, death legacy beads collected upon official declaration by the Priests of Last Rights, but the last eight entries?

  Each bore the same seal: High Priest of Funerals.

  I frowned and glanced up at the shelf full of other tomes. Why was Mrs.Gladstone’s funeral different? What would make her ceremony skip formal oversight. No attending clergy, no official rites? One word came to mind.

  Indentured.

  If her youngest daughter had been bound to one of the church’s essence houses, odds were the entire family had been as well at some point. Mrs. Gladstone may have only been recently relieved of service. She had been deep into her twilight years- any beads she produced would have been rare. Precious. Possibly unmonitored.

  I took out a pouch of “Angelle Daemon’s” fox weed and put it in my lip, ignoring the look my wife gave me.

  “Izzy, bring me that one labeled ‘Jubilees and Renewals.’

  Her entry was just about as cold,heartless,and clinical as one would expect. I sighed.

  How could this beautiful thing that my grandfather rediscovered get so beaurocratic?

  ‘Book of Jubilees- Release Dates- Appendix

  Name: Gladstone, Glymora

  Race:Human,Haint

  Lineage: Wildborn Convert

  Birthplace: Wither Hollow

  Reason for Indenture: Inability to provide income and housing for single daughter and self

  Contracted under: Superior Antionette Balgerone of Hollow Port

  Notes: daughter contracted separately

  Contracted agreement: one doze flame beads, twenty four daily whisper beads, fourty eight yearly cycle beads until term completion, and thirty six daily prayer beads.

  Contract annulled: Jubilee of 349,Fourth Age- twenty third of Sunheight.

  Reason for annulment: Production of a Legacy bead cited as ‘Last Union’

  Discharge: Released from housing with personal belongings, including all legacy and flame beads acquired prior to indentureship.’

  Izzy whistled beside me, “ Holy Light,” she said “They worked her to death.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “ That’s what usually happened in places like that. These poor women and men get used up, dried out and cast aside- wrapped in the pretence of fogiveness and making it right. And usually? It works out, if they’ve got family to take the back in. If they are young enough, maybe they get bonded or married. The less fortunate?”

  I shook my head, “ They wind up in the Black Markets.”

  I tapped the word printed carefully beside Glymora’s name: “ Wildborn.”

  “Why?” Itza asked, pulling a chair beside me, “What is a Wildborn?”

  I flipped a few pages deeper into the Jubilee index , “ It’s a term from the Third Age, just before and around Grandpa’s time. They were originally married Druidic couples who when bonded became bound to or embued with spiritual energy from the groves. The result was always the same, the woman would grow to massive proportions and the male would shrink. They would then become bonded in all ways: body,mind and soul. Their main purpose was to overwhelm and terrify enemies of the new Druidic order. Think divine shock troop.”

  I paused turning another page, “ I’ve never heard of any Wildborn having offspring in the Grovelands though. They were recruited as an extreme response to the Dark Druid’s retaliation to Grandpa’s conquering this land and pushing back the Taint. Seems to me the Haints and Dark Druids had Wildborn of their own.”

  Itza still looked at me, brow furrowed in that curious calculating way of hers. Even though she had been converted young, she had still been born in Yogunomori, deep in the Fog Veil Swamp. Her heritage was Kitsune, not Druidic.

  “ What’s all this have to do with beads?” She asked “ And grave robbers?”

  I paused as my finger stopped on another Jubilee entry. A name I recognized: Orthello Roarthank, Ember Hollow, Wildborn. Another grave we had investigated. I exhaled slowly.

  “Wildborn were the prototypes of the sanctioned missionary couples you see in the church today. Grandpa Fernweh meant it for good- sacred bonding, holy unity- but the evil power of the Taint corrupted them as well.”

  Izzy leaned in, listening hard as I continued.

  “ The rituals and unions… they were too powerful. Too unstable. Physiological changes. Magical anomalies. Spiritual damage. When I say these couples were bound- I mean bound. Emotionally. Mentally. Magically. If one of them died…the other didn’t just grieve. They broke.”

  I paused and added another pouch to my lip, “ Most of them were sent out as suicide shock units. That is how unstable the bond was.”

  I saw Itza form the mental picture. Two lovers walking into battle, lighting the world on fire with one breath.

  I tapped the name again, “ These Wildborn mortals- they could generate and store essence in quantities we would struggle to measure today. Now, think about that, Izzy. Think about what kind of beads someone with that kind of blood line could produce. In Fernweh’s day, a single pulse from one of the pm could level a grove.”

  I looked at her dead in the eyes, “ Now, imagine that refined, crystallized and bound into bead form.”

  Itza took out her pencil and journal, “ Ok, so where do we go from here?”

  I asked to check the record book out, “ We head to the funeral office and ask for the obituaries.”