14th of Greenbirth, 4A:2491
"The Red Magister could not quell me, and thus he cursed me instead. 'You shall wilt and wither. Your salt and dust, your spirit and blood, shall be drained until your lips cannot part to sing the wretched songs of Lhë; and the dusk shall come green as promised; and the Glim One will shimmer until all kinglands are scorched and burnt bare. It has long been promised. It has long been promised...'" She spoke to herself, the daze of fatigue trailed her voice, and each movement was as weighty as its predecessor.
"Ma, please take your time," came a small voice.
The boy who spoke held the grimace of a grown man, but having just welcomed his ninth spring, he was only but a frowning child. Nilus gazed past the wind-waltzing of springtime wisps to see how his mother was keeping up with his strides. The woman staggered along the trodden path; her limbs moved in weakened motion but still she hummed a sweet song for him.
The sun hung in the noontide, atop the meadowlands and pastures of Elynire, and all around them bloomed an audience of wildflowers; the world seemed more alive whenever she crafted melodies.
"Do not worry, my little one. The freshness of the spring is what I needed," she spoke between deep breaths. The woman was beautiful, even in sickness; eyes of sky-azure and hair like falling flame, a glimmered smile for each word and the majesty of a monarch enkindled all about her; and even the trees seemingly bowed in her presence.
"Please ma, try not to push yourself," the caring boy said. "Father asked me not to let you, and I promised him." The silver of Nilus' eyes glistened with his worries, and her fingers came to pinch his rosy cheek teasingly.
"You are much too young to stare with such worry, Nilus. Rest and enjoy this beautiful day with me?"
The boy hesitated at first, but nodded. "Of course, ma…" He then gently took her reaching hand and held onto it with a delicate, loving hold.
"Tell me of your dreams, my darling boy. I love hearing of them." Alva said, smiling down at her son. Nilus led them into the shade of an ancient oak's twisting branches, where he knelt atop the earth and swept away the twigs and stones so that his stricken mother could take her rest with comfort.
"The same one from before keeps coming to me, more so these past few nights. The skies become green and a red-winged creature sets ablaze the land!" He made whooshing sounds to bring spirit to his tale, and waved his arms all about him to imitate the beast's crimson wings.
"And a man like father was there! Stood like this with his sword," Nilus said, puffing out his chest and causing Alva to chortle at his imitation.
"Just like my dearest Uilleam!" She said.
"Aye! Just like pa! I swore it was him at first, but his beard was like that of fire! And his eyes —" The boy paused. "They were as dark as Alasdair's whenever he becomes cross or saddened… like the greying of a storm…"
Drawing quietly, Nilus settled by the oaken roots, where he laid his head atop his mother's bosom and sealed his eyes to the faintness of her heart.
"You're dying, aren't you? Alasdair says so, and he's hardly ever right! But... Pa, he hasn't been sleeping much at all. I hear him in the night… Weeping and drinking."
"I-I…" Alva failed to conjure her words, knowing Nilus could easily perceive a lie.
"Be the light for your elder brother, Nilus. I know he is stronger and braver, but you… you are wiser and kinder. He is far too sensitive for this world, much like your father." Alva pulled her child into a tight embrace.
"I will always guide him. I swear it to the Creator and to you. You don't have to worry… you never have to worry…" The patter of what Nilus thought was rain began its cascade down his mother's pallid cheeks, to fall atop his curls of flame; but he turned his gaze upwards to find the sky an unclouded blue, pure and without greying.
"Are you frightened, ma?" Nilus whispered as he snuggled against her, careful as not to harm her fragility. "Because I am…" he admitted.
Alva laid a sweet kiss atop the crown of his head. "No, my little one, I am not frightened. But I am seized by both fury and grief too grand to be true at times. I have pleaded in prayer and song for our Creator's mercy, but even His blessings cannot keep the darkness at bay. I know he has allowed me to endure longer than permitted, so that I may be with you a little longer…" Her thumb tenderly swept his tears.
"I love all three of my boys, more than I can put into song… as I shall for always…" Alva whispered in her weakness.
Up passed the river of fire that was her hair, to once ruddy cheeks now sallow and waxen; Nilus noticed how peaceful his mother appeared as her eyes gave into their heaviness; the swaying blossoms all around, once majestic in springtime hues of pinks and blues, fell to wilt in disgusting greys of rot; and as the colour washed from Alva, as too had it washed from the land around them.
Nilus' gaze darted around as a brandishing of decay flooded throughout the meadow; its once emerald ocean of hills and patchwork of pastels laid blighted and barren.
The boy soon heard it. The deafening silence of death; the fragility of life as it left his mother's bones; the frailty of his heart breaking and sinking into a void of disbelief; and he wailed loudly to the world and to the Creator, begging her spirit to return a hundred times or more.
He screamed until his voice fractured in sobs. How quickly her flesh came stained by the veil of quietus.
"Please! Please!" Frantic. He kept to the futility of his begging and weeping and shaking but she would not awaken.
"CREATOR, PLEASE!?" He begged, wept and shook.
"Ei'in!" Nothing.
"Tvir!" Nothing.
"D'irlla!" Nothing.
"Jor!" NOTHING!
The boy tried imploring the Mystai, and spoke the four arms of Villir, spellcraft the woman herself had taught to him in secrecy.
But death cackled at the lad's attempt, rejecting his Will; and the radiant cobalt of his glowing palms did ought to spring her back to life; for his reach could not grasp a fleeting spirit.
"Creator! I will do it! If you refuse to bring her back I will speak the name of Hessi!" He bellowed to sky.
Nilus was hesitant but willing. The boy took a sharp stone and drew a deep slit across a palm; the cascade of fresh blood trickled from grazed flesh to curdle with the rotting earth below.
"PLEASE!" The boy cried until his throat stung from rawness. He knew his begging would only be answered by the unseeable shadow, and so he went to speak the Oath of Night. He would act in sin by speaking a name no living creature should dare.
"I beseech the Bristled-Idol by a name that is eternal, ripened red and born from a moonless abyss. I ignite old Hessi with darkness. Your olden name, the symphony and the profanity…" all things grew to stillness in anticipation. A noble sacrifice was to be made if the symphony was to be sung; and all things waited in baited curiosity for whatever Nilus would offer atop the altar of his despair.
"B'ha—" Half the song-name came, but a hand swifter than his voice cupped his mouth to keep sealed his tongue, and at the sight of his older brother, Nilus threw himself into the arms of Alasdair. With dirtied, bloodied fingers clinging to fabric, Nilus' lament came without resistance.
"Nilus… She… Ma wouldn't want you to do that…" The older boy whispered. "'Never speak such profanity, don't ever sin or give yourself to evil so willingly.' Those were her words to us. We promised to never sin against the world. Remember? 'We cannot purify evil with evil,' you told me that…" Alasdair had spoken softly to his weeping brother, whilst shielding him from their dead mother.
"A-Alasdair!" Nilus cried and he cried and he cried, trembling with sorrow.
"I-I'll stay with her. You go and get pa, alright? We were hunting the burflaks by Tirrin's farm," said Alasdair.
Nilus dithered at his older brother's behest but Alasdair insisted with a reassuring nod, "Go on now, you must be brave for all of us," the older boy said, and the younger one hastened to their father without as much as a fading glance.
Alasdair fell to kneel in the wilt of meadow flowers once Nilus was from sight, as though all strength had been filched from within him. His pale cheeks tinted red from the unusual sting in the wind, the tip of his nose grew numb too; and the blackened feeling trailing the rot had the boy near to heaving. The weightlessness of the air stirred into a cumbersome force, like a suit of Genhassi armour upon a frail body.
"Evil is all around me…" Alasdair's silver eyes moved about him.
The noonflare flowers grew from Alva with a bitter stink, and Alasdair knew then what had truly killed her. It was not some uncommon sickness as his father had drunkenly told him. He was young, but he was no fool. Only through the greatest sin could the noonflare bloom — or so his mother had taught him.
"Gore-speech…" He spoke to himself, as the flowers of sin came in black bouquets, siphoning the quintessence of life to bloom with impiety. He dared not to touch a single one, for a great evil lived within each; but no ordinary gore-speech could conjure such wicked blooms; it was a curse, a profanity beyond his understanding of such things.
"Why, ma? W-why were you cursed in such a wicked way? Why you? You have only shown kindness to this disgusting world!" He spat out.
Impure with blighted intention, it sunk deep below flesh and seared into the spirit. The curse was made in a rancid bind, devouring greedily and taking until nothing remained but fell and bone.
Her skin peeled in folds of dust; and Alasdair never wept a single tear as the blood from her veins leaked black with a soured stench, for a hatred without measurable weight came to him before any desolation.
The ancient, nameless oak against which his mother rested, fell from its eternity, and Alasdair stood watching the leaves crumble away; and all the creatures fled their abodes, away from the boutade of taint.
By the time Nilus returned with their father, nothing of their mother remained, but bones too brittle to carry and the blooming black petals of the godless noonflare. Alasdair saw his father's anguish from afar, and heard the man's pain wail across the grey. Alasdair's world fractured then, because something great and unnamed had been stolen from within his heart.
It had long been promised...