The Roads to Chaos

Tig stepped into a twilight land with a deep, static charge humming in the atmosphere, and where the stones he tread upon were stones of madness. Before him, seated on the center throne among three, was a witch of power who emanated waves of energy that seemed to stress the fragile One of existence. Beside Tig, Con ra’Dor appeared, his dark presence seemed to further the nauseating sense of time and space on the verge of shattering, and when Tig looked at him, the daemon prince seemed to be shifting, on the brink of changing into another self, a thing of darker shadows that remained obscured behind a thin veil.

“What have you stumbled upon, witch,” said the Chained One who walked from the green glowing portal that had brought them hither from the freehold. “What foul thing have you unleashed?” His steps took him to the foot of the dais and there he waited on the witch’s answer.

“I foresaw your coming,” said the witch from her seat of power, “an ever pending possibility. And now in this place between,” a smile snaked its way across her sculpted features as she gestured broadly, “an absolute.”

“Henwin, what has become of your sisters? Where is Ahredel?” yelled Tig a’Mon, youngest son of Yarroc a’Mon, River King of the Kimens and Lord over the lands of Dhunlok.

“My prince you have come but a day too late. Ahredel has left for the City, to pay her respects to your father. But have no fear young wizard, she travels in good company. Your brother, Prince Yarrow, rides at her side.” The witch spoke sweetly, swiftly, her ridgid form outlined with shimmering madness. “As for Lohredel, she is picking flowers out in the surrounding fields.”

Where the dais rose from the smooth stone floor, Con ra’Dor glowered, “Witch, I sense madness in you that reeks of Chaos. What roads have you been walking? What is this presence that-” the daemon sniffed at the shifting, fragile air, “-waits? What waits beyond the rift?”

Henwin, eldest sister of the witches three, stood with a serpents grace, and circled around to wrap her arms about, and lay her head to rest, on the tall, stern back of her throne. “I saw you…” she sang softly sweet, “in a hall of black gold,” her eyes changed to black sightless opals and gazed into empty space before her, “there, you knelt before another, beaten, broken…,” the serpentine smile appeared cruel upon her thin lips, “chained,” she nearly hissed. “Tell your master this, slave, Madness creeps into the Strife, the Scales are tipping and soon there will be no Balance at all. Even the Holds will be forced to pick sides.” Henwin’s sightless eyes fixed on Con ra’Dor, and in each formed a smoldering vertical slit of ghastly jade light, “Soon the Roads to Chaos will be closed to any who resist the Madness.”

As if called by a nature alike to its own, the darker self of Con ra’Dor, the thing of deeper shadows behind the veil of brittle, shifting existence, began to pull and veer away from The Prince in Chains, and to Tig’s eyes took on a horrid bestial form, more akin to the pulsing winds of madness emanating from the whorling rift above than that of the elements of Life.

Unperturbed by his reaching, second self, Con ra’Dor spoke, “Since the Descent from One, the eternal roads have denied all those seeking to claim for themselves its dominion. Many are the roads to Chaos that are lined with pits into which those fools were flung. What is this Madness that persuades you of some other end?”

Henwin’s arms squeezed tightly about her throne of power as she lifted her draconic eyes up to the raging rent in the sky above, “Kar’thun Dur,” she whispered in fearful glee, “he does not wait, he comes.” The shimmering edges of her form began to veer rapidly outwards, her sculpted body elongated, broadened into a crouching long necked beast of black opaline scales. Her arms, still wrapped about the throne, shifted into huge branching, leathery wings, that hid from the two onlookers the remaining transformation of the veering witch. “He does not wait, he comes,” came a different voice from behind the massive black wings, seductive, hungry. A single smoldering eye peered out from the depths of unnatural shadows that engulfed the dias. “I think…,” hissed the ravenous eye, “that you should go. This…. Power,” she nearly purred, “it hungers...I hunger.”

Con ra’Dor was already striding past Tig, back across the stone floor, away from the dais, to the glowing green portal that had brought them hither, his dark presence radiating nausea that sent the wizard stumbling into a pillar to wretch. “Tig a’Mon, we have what we came here for. Heed the witch's warning, leave this place of Madness.” Then he was gone through the portal.