Illuminating the Dark Prince

The Amethyst Forest

Giant trunks of the darkest midnight twisted up all around us, with their many gnarled boughs stretching out to create labyrinthine canopies of wooden lace. Sagacor's heavy hooves clunked and crunched over the ashen soil, obscured by a blanket of ghostly mist swirling across the ground. Black undead birds similar to ravens, with tattered feathers and skeletal branch-like antlers winding out from their skulls, flittered and flapped within the trees. Their croaks were ghastly and echoed, while they seemed to almost curiously chatter amongst themselves about our arrival.

Valarendrik's arm was firmly yet gently holding me against his chest, as we sat upon Sagacor's clanking saddle together. He was apparently taking me to a different forest other than the nightmarish one that I'd first stumbled into. One that he thought I might actually enjoy. He'd warned me that it was a somewhat far distance from the cave though, so I'd brought along an old abyssal mythology book to read during our journey. 

This particular one was about how Hsarohpem, a great lloigor birthed from heinous cosmic caliginosity, blessed this world with everlasting darkness and death. An ancient tenverian king by the name of King Xiraveinn, had fought vehemently against Hsarohpem and the growing darkness, successfully fending him off and almost casting him out permanently. But Hsarohpem was nefarious and cunning, and would not suffer defeat by any means. He bribed King Xiraveinn's traitorous brother, Prince Dirnehkil, convincing him to perfidiously murder the king before total victory was ever achieved.

With Xiraveinn dead, Hsarohpem quickly rose to power. He created the wailing mountains of the west and filled the gulches of the deep, using the millions of anguishing souls who would not bow to him, cursing them with living death and eternal neurosis. He turned King Xiraveinn's armies who had valiantly fought against the darkness into the lamenting hollows of the forest, leaving them to forever cry out for vengeance within their sorrowful timber prisons. He breathed pestilence across the world, and eternally darkened the skies with his stygian shadow.

Prince Dirnehkil was given immortality through eternal death as a reward for his loyalty. Giving his bloodline great serpentine power and a dark spirit birthed from the shadows of Hsarohpem's depraved soul, passing it to him through a crown forged from Xiraveinn's severed fingerbones. Dirnehkil was declared King of Tenveriel, and Hsarohpem, God of The Abyss... It was quite interesting mythology, really.

The aged ashen pages softly thumped together as I gently closed the book. I slowly glided my pale hand along the silken cloak which Valarendrik had gifted me, watching how the inky shadows seemed to swirl within it, then I turned to look up at him. His otherworldly eyes shifted to meet mine from beneath his heavy hood, with a look of adoration within their crimson depths. A gentle smile fluttered across his face, as he leaned down to plant a tender kiss upon my head. 

I leaned into him with my own soft smile gracing my lips. "Is it true that the corpsen trees of the forest were once honorable soldiers who'd fought against Hsarohpem? And that is why they grievously lament in despair?" I curiously tilted my head up, causing my hood to slip off, allowing the elegiac breeze to catch and twirl the golden tendrils of my hair with it's cold unseen fingers.

He gently stole my fluttering locks away from the grasp of the wind, then tucked them neatly behind my ear with his ebon claws. "It's possible, but no one really knows for sure. Hsarohpem has been Tenveriel's most reverenced god since the beginning of all recorded history, and nothing was ever written about Xiraveinn or his army. As far as most are concerned, the myths are just that, myths. Besides, the corpsen trees lament in such a long ago lost and ancient language, that no one understands what they're saying. It could be utter nonsense for all we know." He slightly shrugged. 

My gaze drifted to the inky roots webbing out from the blackened trees, noticing very small, slender-snouted, almost fox-like skulls peeking out from within their labyrinthine crevasses. Pale bony fingers spindled out towards us, while they whispered in hushed voices with unmoving fang lined mouths, repeatedly saying something about the arrival of a prince. It was very strange, but they didn't seem to be hostile.