Other Literature [The Thorncrown] A Long Short Story

[MultiGunner]

--The Thorncrown--
A rarely updated long short story by MultiGunner

--Introduction--

The End has come for this world.​

In a dying world a wizened emperor has died before it, leaving in his death uncertainty.
The empire he had saved from the brink of ruin is beginning to come apart at the seams. His death is the trigger, the fuse to the gunpowder, that the great men of his world has waited for. Plans set long before the old man's fated death are now in motion, competing against one another to gain whatever it is. Influence, wealth, land. Or for some, to slake their thirst for slaughter, that is enough.

The ancient empire of the Dawn, and the innumerial fiefdoms and vassal states forming the Holy See has sounded the horn call.
Their armies marches to war against one another once more. The fragile quiet that has lasted between them nineteen years now dies with its maker. The two great powers of the world are determined to secure their final victory over one another. Their lords and rulers hoping that they will at long last bring the thousand years of war to a close; and the end justifies their means.
Their soldiers are legion, for they are many.
From the cleric-knights of the Pontiff himself, to the horned warrior-lords in the far north, to the sorcerers of the secretive dragon-school. For nearly a thousand years their tragedies have been played out by countless actors on this great, uncaring stage. From the lowliest levy, to the greatest knight-kings, their blood shall be spilled once more, for the fires of war threaten to engulf their world whole.

In these uncertain times the bells of prayer rings ever louder, chants begging for the alms of a greater power cries out ever more painful, and rumours of impossible things spread ever faster.
For in a time of despair any thin strand of hope, is hope. There are the whisperings of an ancient tomb that has been unearthed, after uncounted years beneath the sand dunes in the West, and the murmurs of items of legend being buried there with the sand. Items said to be powerful enough to tip the balance of power forever in one sides favour, items that have been conveted by countless Greats since the birth of the great powers. Though only rumours, there are ears listening in every street-corner, there are minds keen enough to make out the truth behind the spun yarn; and there are those with the ambition to seek out that power, no matter the price.

Those caught in the machinations that governs the reason of this world are many:
for countless peoples make up the known world. From the descendents of the once proud Northmen, with their ice blue eyes and jet black hair. To the remnants of the once mighty kings of the West, whom now seal themselves from the outside world. To the many countless others that makes up the great world. Amongst them are an old general, who struggles to keep his master's dying legacy intact. A little lord, who seeks out the things buried and left forgotten. And a thief hidden by the night, sworn to take back what was rightfully his.

But in such a world there are lidless eyes in the dark, whose gaze are fixed.
For some things are left forgotten, for a reason.

--Chapters--

Chapter one: The Isle of Marble and Gold
Part One: The Nightmare
Part Two: ???

--About--​

I doubt that anyone would remember me, but I use to run a thread on the regular literature forum, well now that I've run out of ideas for the terraria related series, here I am with another one with a similar premise; It's got swords, it's got magic, it's got all the regular fantasy elements. From big, bureaucratic, definitely unrealistic empires; to spells that, by the known laws of science, should not work. And parrallel worlds that don't require trucks to traverse between. And dragons.

and more. And hopefully I've upgraded my writing style enough over a three year break from the forums.
This series will be updated irregularly for the next three months or so as I still have exams real life commitments to clear up on, but hopefully I'll keep working on this one until it is finished, wish me luck. Ha.. ha... ha...

--Credits--
Based on a story by Coonall
Characters created by various users*
Plot by Mirrormere and Madder_Bomber
Writing and Editing by Mirrormere and MultiGunner
Proofreading by Madder_Bomber
Formatting with advice from AJDude13​

 

[MultiGunner]

Spoiler: The Nightmare

You don’t feel pain when you are in a dream. Everything is supposed to roll over you like a fine mist. You are but the audience to a story your mind builds to entertain itself.
At least, nightmares shouldn’t be lucid.
That’s what Komm believes,
believed, rather.

He finds himself trapped in that same place. In and amidst burning towers, crumbling stone, red iron. He finds himself trapped in a cage of broken pillars and falling walls. The nightmare refuses to end.
Komm looks down and sees that face, he does not recognise his reflection in a red pool. There’s a faint, pale ring behind him, where the moon should rightfully be. He takes a deep breath. This is going to be a long night.
He’s grown use to older, more hardened men tell him that dreams are something special, something spiritual, something with meaning. They somehow “Reflect what you had buried deep inside your memories, something you try to keep there, beneath what little sanity you can screw together. It happens so you don’t go insane when you try to pretend you’re fine.”

Now that they’re all dead and gone he thought he never needed to hear that ever again, at least not from himself. It seems so stupid really, all this talk about dreams, why?
Komm certainly doesn’t recall being someone else.

He can’t see that face properly, but he can tell there’s an angry pair of eyes staring him back as he looks at himself in this red mirror. He gives his face a tug, a little bit of blood drips from somewhere on him. It disturbs the liquid a little, he can’t quite tell if the face had moved or not now. Something falls with a hushed bang, some tongues of fire springs up somewhere behind him. His eyes wander from the pool, then seeing the fire he begins to run.
Komm runs in the opposite direction from the previous night, making for an open place amidst this forest of fire. He didn’t like being burnt in his own dream. He takes a deep breath of air and smoke as he begins to run through this alien scenery, he feels oddly lightheaded from this. He doesn’t recall armour to ever be this heavy, or as suffocating as this.
It’s well worn, the armour that sticks to him right now. He’s tried peeling it off before in previous nights, it hurts. There’s a hole in the cuirass, like something took a bite out of it. There’s a dent in the back of it, and a damn nasty cut near the shoulders. It looks like the flayed iron had ruptured from him like some boiling sore had burst open. Maybe well worn is twisting the truth a little, maybe more like this thing and this person in the mirror are on their last legs. Hell maybe he’s on his last legs.

There’s smoke in his eyes and lungs, and his arms and legs are weighing him down like they were carved from stone. It stings whenever some uncovered part of his skin touches the armour, like it had been removed from a furnace and onto him; he’d much prefer that deep, reflective dream his old commanders spoke of.
He’s keeping his mind entertained with these aimless thoughts, trying to ignore the image of his hell around him. There are human faces dancing in the fire like ghastly lamps, he’s trying not to see them. There are shadows in the smoking ruins, he’s pretending they’re not there. Komm runs past them, he refuses to believe this represents something real. He’s going to prove it to himself tonight.

There’s a pale ring in the sky, in the place of the moon. It moves regardless of where he’s stood in previous nights. It moves constantly like the hands of a great clock in a great unbroken wheel, keeping some unknown time for something in this hell.
He hesitates to think that something is himself.
That faint ring always is just beyond the horizon at the night’s end, tucked behind a little ring of hills and broken stone just before he finds himself in the waking world. It is burnt into his eyes now, that image of a ring of fire and the amber sky as the nightmare burns itself out.
Imagine the insanity, that somewhere in his mind there’s a great clock that keeps track of the time as it passes in the world beyond this nightmare frontier, keeping track for some predestined end time perhaps for himself. It sounds as absurd as the reality he’s confronted with here. He’s inclined enough to believe his own absurdity.

Tonight he’s going to see if he can reach the ring, to see if he can catch it and possibly end this nightmare. He can tell he’s getting closer to it as his legs groan under his weight, that’s probably a sign that this is really a dream. There shouldn’t be a man faster than the sun. That’s a good sign. Komm has had a hard time trying to justify this fact to himself this the past week, his grasp of reality has definitely slipped his hand as he’s aged.
He finds himself in an empty field once his breaths grow too heavy, and his muscles resign to weight in protest. Komm stares at that dark sign in the sky from beneath. Nothing special happens, he collapses from the disappointment. He takes in a mouthful of the air on his way down out of boredom. Something alien enters his chest.
He convulses from the shock and coughs out the black mass from his orifices. It was ash, burnt ash, cold ash. Someone had gone and bothered to spread it all around this field. Komm chuckles as this strange thought rises, trying to reel in the shock. The horror is numbing him less now.

Standing on the field of ash, alone, still afraid of the nightmare he finds himself trapped inside, he watches the dark sign retreat behind the ring of hills and stone. He resigns himself to only getting this far tonight. The sky rolls away as the dark sign fades into the distant hills, lit up in yellow and red fires, and scant tattered clouds retreating from its burning anguish. And then the sky grows dark and grey, and like a curtain had been pulled over a window, the world around him fades into a pitch-black shadow. The nightmare comes to its end for the time being.

Komm takes his last breath of burnt air before the night is up, staring into the fading image of this field of burnt ash, and crumbling towers, and distant hills, and the dark sign.

Then, with a heavy knocking on the door, the old man was awake.