Death: Tales of Miurag, #3

Published by Corpus Nexus Press

ISBN: 978-1-949552-28-7

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Tales of Miurag - Death, Copyright © 2015, 2016, 2017, 2024, A.S. Etaski

The Deathless Rises, previously published as Cris-ri-phon © Etaski, March 2015

Devour the Oracle, previous published as Ada © Etaski, October 2015

At the Crossroads, patron request from NotSoWeird, © Etaski, August 2024

The Herald Returns, previously published as Gavin © Etaski, June 2017

Harrowed’s Breath, previously published as Deshi © Etaski, April 2016

Cover Design by Eris Adderly

Book Layout by DocKangey

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction and intended for adults only. Sexual activities represented in this work are between adults and are fantasies only. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as the author advocating any non-consensual activity.

INTRODUCTION

My main published series, Sister Seekers, begins underground with No Demons But Us, where Dark Elves live and die in darkness. A novice Red Sister, Sirana, leads us through most of the story through her eyes, but many others explore the world of Miurag with their own stories to tell.

Tales of Miurag: Death is a same-world anthology collection of novellas and short stories linked to Surface characters touched by death magic and the Greylands, also called the Nexus.

I wrote the first versions upon request by my patrons in 2015-2017 to help flesh out the world’s lore beyond Sirana’s POV while I finished the original epic. Now they’re being rewritten and released with Sister Seekers.

Author’s note: these middle-epic stories fit best between Sister Seekers 8 and Sister Seekers 12. Reading earlier than Book 8 could be confusing.

First, we see Cris-ri-phon, Zauyrian Sorcerer of the Red Desert, and what happens upon his first and only true death.

Next, the origin of Ada, the Ma’ab witch who would give birth to Gavin, one of Sirana’s strongest allies.

In turn, Gavin features in two of his own stories in this anthology.

Lastly, we see the story of Deshi mere weeks after the events of Sister Seekers 10.

Warning: This book contains mature and disturbing themes and is intended for adults. These stories contain explicit horror, sex, and violence some readers may find disturbing.

A glossary is available at World Anvil where I keep my series lore!

The Deathless Rises

A Tale of Miurag

By A.S. Etaski

Chapter 1

Dawn of the Serenity Era, Year Zero S.E.

The Red Desert

The black dagger had been buried deep, but this was partly unintentional. Tombs built in the sand had a way of being lost without living souls staying behind to care for it. The grieving husband had not wished his queen’s resting place to be easily found in any case, but now mortals could not access it.

Perfect.

A clandestine visitor stood in pitch blackness, peering around Innathi’s tomb with his sight blade-sharp all the same. Though it lacked all color, every line and crease stood out in stark relief.

The late Queen’s body had neither been incinerated nor given to the flyers to eat but preserved against rot inside a sealed sarcophagus of stone and metal imbued with magic.

Why? As if she would reclaim a decaying body as he once did?

Such a Human choice, grasping a foolish hope, and a further insult on top of all else.

Lord Indrath Rousse broke the Zauyrian’s seal with ease, shoving the lid off and onto the bedrock without setting his finger upon it. Looking inside, he recoiled at the state of his granddaughter’s body.

Horrid. You insisted on living among us for longer than any soul has managed as a Queen’s consort and sire, yet you fail to understand the essence of she whom you worshipped.

Soul Drinker was on her belt, the dagger laughably peace-knotted, and one among many pieces of sentiment deemed important enough to be included. Indrath spared a glance for them, found nothing useful, and reclaimed the red rune blade once more.

Do cease whining, Narzeuraek. You and I are far from finished with our little game. He displayed his fangs, standing alone in the crypt. I won again.

Suddenly, the earth groaned far beneath him like a titan turning over in his sleep. Indrath froze, a chill spreading between his wings.

Not again, no …

It stopped.

Drawing carefully on the vanishing air, the Ice Lord opened his aura to search beyond the stone tomb, sensing the Ley of the Desert itself.

The sand.

The infinite grains below the surface had slowed, ceasing to shift as they should. And at an alarming pace.

The true fallout of the war had begun.

As I feared.

The Heavens and Hells would have stopped the Abyss before V’Gedra fell if the Sovereign had not arrived. She had made it all so much worse, delaying the Sargt of Flame from reaching beyond his borders in time for help. Now, as usual, she had fled the wreckage she’d caused, leaving him to clean up her mess, and now these borders could not be opened at all.

Adri. I will find you. You owe the world reparation for what you have done.

The Infernal curled his lip, his fist tightening around Soul Drinker’s sheath. But for now, Cris-ri-phon would answer for her sins.

As the fool sorcerer should.

Exploring preternatural change just outside the tomb would have trapped anyone else, but Lord Indrath used Soul Drinker to cut through the slow-compressing sand. Splitting it like a wound, he crawled up through spasming ground as if escaping the gullet of a monster trying to swallow him.

Reaching the surface, he paused, sensing the direction of a new, fourth center in the Red Desert. Without V’Gedra, this site existed in direct conflict with the canyons of Koorul and the Spire.

Paralysis. Indrath frowned, the vague concern of his expression belying his true disturbance. While even a speck of primal order remains on Miurag, she will draw the warp child.

Once each of them had settled in, no faction could win.

Perhaps I can do something to contain it, to slow its spread, until the Sargt finally decide what to do about it.

Although standing in sunlight was not the Ice Lord’s favorite activity, preferring snow-blown, coastal days and frigid nights, the visitor to the Red Desert relaxed when he shed the cloying sand to be enveloped in hot rays and warm air instead. The full-length sarong of brown leather around his waist was a bit heavy for this climate, turning heads as often as his nakedness from the waist up, but temperature fluctuation didn’t bother him in either extreme.

Hmm. Where to go next?

Probably the battlefield, he answered himself. Flying was an option, but he didn’t know who else might be here to see him and didn’t mind the walk.

Taking his first steps, however, his feet sank into the sand. He frowned, reluctant to acknowledge strange sensations while watching the way the grains scrambled back onto his hem, threatening to puncture the leather, and forcing him to feel their true weight.

He snarled. Uradri. Your recklessness has cost our children their home yet again.

The Infernal exhaled to catch his breath, drawing in enough ambient power to levitate. He maintained it to stride upon the very surface of the sand without collapsing, not dissimilar to walking on water or fresh, thin ice. The magical rumble grew around him as he headed toward the newborn center. The angle of the sun in the sky suggested that this aboveground time may exist months ago … or months later. Depending on how long he’d spent in that tomb.

The shock through the Ley Lines had alerted him in Vintern Hjem, and he’d come as soon as he could despite the ongoing disruptions with the other factions. Others might have crawled around to see what they could scavenge before he got there, but the Infernal cared not while two remaining stars shone on his metaphysical map.

Uradri’s sorcerer and the soul blade.

Neither could wink out the way Mazdel had. Even amid the chaos, a point of everlasting time lay in the vast dunes far from his home. Ever since he’d given Soul Drinker as a wedding gift, Indrath could choose his moments to check on both in one place.

So I’ve come again.

The final battlefield lay far out from the Davrin’s buried capital city, a crushing bruise left upon the world’s veins. Among the dead were Naulor Elves and their Srann, Dwarves and their allies, Davrin and their wild shifter refugees, and many, so many Humans — Zauyrian sorcerers, Kurgan tribesman, and a few whose mothers had clearly been raped by the Untamed.

They were all still here, frozen in mid-ripple, just below or above the surface of the sand, a layer of unchanging life forming a giant circle around a foreign, pitted black stone.

Rot had been rejected, either naturally or warped, simply disallowed to set in. Neither harbinger nor psychopomp of death or transience could enter this massive ring. No function of nature could reclaim its resources. The sand truly did not exist to be like rock or water. The five or six would-be looters stubborn enough to force their way into the circle had joined the armies in their ultimate petrification.

Indrath redoubled his effort to step into the circle and continue his walk.

Chapter 2

The Pillar of Serenity

The wind had not blown for some time — how long, he couldn’t know — yet sand bit into his back as if the weight of each grain had multiplied while he clung to the shattered Archway.

Movement which had been chaotic before seemed to slow beyond mere stillness. Perhaps his spell had lost momentum and would never finish what he had begun? Or could it be his perception had slowed as he crossed over a coalescing boundary into …

Whatever death waits for me.

The sun didn’t move anymore. Night never approached.

This can’t be the Greylands, can it?

Change had exploded after the summoning. Dunes swelled, rising above others as molten stone burst upon the surface of the desert, bright red tinged with green, forming a gate.

The Archway.

His muse of inspiration had assured this final effort would stop Queen Yivon for good. Her army and encroaching allies would never try this again.

We can defend the Zauyrian Kingdoms, even if we failed to defend your wife and her Queendom from those who had already betrayed her.

Pain lanced through his chest. Not just her.

Our children … Leuren’qo, Matalai, Phaere … Shunraeki.

All gone.

The Sorcerer-General of V’Gedra was alone. He had known many of his own army would die with him, but the lack of confidence in Ishuna’s ability to respond to the crisis had placed the responsibility wholly upon his own back. He had made his decision.

Those still believing in his strength as sorcerer and General had come with him here, had died here. Those too afraid of facing more loss had stayed behind. They had fled. Cris-ri-phon still denied that any here or there had faced more loss than he.

The General had been wearing enchanted armor which reacted badly to the essence of the rift. Unlike everyone else sinking upon the expanse below, he was in the nude, clinging to a black column of frozen lava; the red sand beneath him had begun consuming his feet, leading up his ankles to his calves. He could not push it away with his hands; he had tried. The Sun remained hot on his head and his back, but he could not tell if his feet were cold. His skin did not burn.

At least the invading Naulor would never leave the Desert to attack again. The Pale Queen would not recover this loss quickly. The spell had worked.

Beyond my fiercest prayers.

The Sun God offers free rein these days, said a familiar voice from above, his shadow offering some respite from the bright glare.

Cris looked up. You … ?

Not a cloud in the sky to cover what you’ve done, Indrath continued, assuring the spent mage had enough shade to make out his face. Have we time to talk, Cris-ri-phon?

He must know we are truly alone.

The Fey Lord’s skin appeared like a brown-skinned Wilder Elf suffering the chapped redness of a scalding sun while his back bore the leathery likeness of the wings of the Red Dragon. A majestic crown of ivory horns rose from a proud forehead framed by perfect, Elven ears. His eyes lacked any pupil or iris, his distant gaze crystalline white, somewhere between sun-lit quartz and a glacier.

Rarely did the Ice Lord display this form in Innathi’s Queendom.

That meant everyone was dead except for him.

Cris chortled bitterly. Stay long enough, ‘gift giver,’ and we shall have an eternity, you and I.

Ah, but we already do, in part thanks to the same man-eater with an alluring face.

The Zauyrian curled his nostril. "Do not talk about my wife that way."

His visitor sneered. "I speak not of Innathi, though the description may fit. I speak of the other seducer to whom you pledged yourself."

When?

Prior to wedding the mother of your children.

Before Innathi … ?

Indrath grinned. You and I met soon after. How I got your invitation to present the ceremony.

Fingers tightened on the black stone. "There was no one before her, he said. You speak lies."

The Infernal tilted his head back and laughed. Cruelty and contempt burned the rims of Cris’s round ears before the solidifying air swallowed the sound. A pregnant pause, then the Ice Lord lifted Soul Drinker in its sheath.

Sickening heat rose in his chest.

How did you find that?! Cris demanded.

Indrath eyed him as though he was an adorably fussy child. "One must be on familiar terms with bodiless hunger before it can be given form. I was its midwife, and I always find my children. Something you worked for but never perfected."

Put it back, the sorcerer croaked, testing his legs. Still trapped. "You gifted it to me, and I gave it to her for all time!"

I’m afraid ‘all time’ has come. Indrath sighed with a tight smirk. "I would have burned her body properly had there been enough air in that pit you created for her. Alas, I had to leave her as you left her. Quite distasteful."

"Less so than looting her grave, Lord."

The winged Elf tilted his head curiously then lowered himself to one knee, both to speak quietly and to put the sun back into his eyes. "Are you certain your Queen did not lose control handling the dagger? I did warn you."

"She was the wielder for centuries. Cris-ri-phon just refrained from rolling his eyes. Her will was stronger than mine!"

"Mm-hm. Yet I’ve heard many stories of parents not acting themselves while holding a too-familiar weapon above their children. Such regret could be enough to give up everything. Even a Queendom."

Cris growled and struck out with his fist; he missed Indrath as the sand held him fast. "I don’t … believe you."

The Ice Lord chuckled, caressing the red runes on the sheath as he stood up straight. This time, he did not share his shadow against the sun as he mused, "A pity Innathi never used it on you. Although she might have destroyed a great deal in the process, she could have undone you before you fully realized this curse of yours. Now … A subtle growl entered the Lord’s ethereal, smooth tone. You shall finally learn what your hubris has bought you, and I shall be left to mitigate the damage left behind. As always."

An incomprehensible ring of truth, like nothing he had ever heard from this ruler before. It left Cris-ri-phon cold. He kept his eyes closed against the glare but sensed Indrath peering at him. Trying to probe his mind; he could feel it. He hated it, he always had but had become much better defending against it.

Do you truly not remember her? the Fey Lord crooned.

He heard the smile in that voice, imagined the tilt of his head.

I saw you lying beneath her in this very Desert. Broken, old, and filled with regret. She fled when I discovered her but, by then, she had her hooks so deep, you couldn’t know what she’d changed. You were too late to save your soul, Second Son of Begir-al-thon. Long before you married your first love.

Stop.

Cris’s personal wall held; his memories were not breached. "I do not know of what you speak."

The Lord lifted the torment of his mental needle. Hm. I can see why you’d deny it. So few souls seek to remake their essence in this world. Do you know why?

Panicked eyes darted behind his eyelids as Indrath continued.

"Not only because the process is difficult to begin with, but because it is far too easy to lose bonds to the natural pathways and become lost. To become Cursed."

Cris cracked an eye as an elegant, clawed hand gestured to the sinking igneous column to which he clung.

"Even before this, sorcerer, you could never follow your Deathwalker tutors to the Greylands, though you were born to. You’ve lost your way. Have you realized that yet?"

You want another deal, Cris-ri-phon said.

Indrath chuckled again, levitating above the creeping pull of the sand and brushing the grains from his sarong. No deal we could make can free you from your fate. Why I cannot kill you, or I would have already. A shrug of naked shoulders. At best, I can help you die.

The man’s face twisted in confusion. You said you can’t kill me.

But I can aid a transition. These are two very different things, Sorcerer-General. Fangs flashed. Or have you forgotten your first lessons among your precious Deathwalkers?

A reflexive shake of his head. No more deals. I will remain here where my Queen lies.

The Ice Lord shrugged, offering him shade once again, letting him see the diabolical smile. As you wish.

No further words, yet the Lord did not leave.

Cris clenched a trembling fist against the stone. What do you wait for?

For either the Sargt or another fragment of the Broken One to come deal with you.

Broken … ?

The fading man shook his head the thought from his mind, repeating aloud, Sargt. I know that word, I think.

Indrath’s smile turned malevolent. Of course you do. Part of Ishuna’s ramblings recently, wasn’t it?

Cris swallowed, his stomach sinking faster than the rest of him. Dragons …

"The Dragon, rather, who’ll not be pleased with your threat to his Desert. You’ve lost all control. Anything you might have hoped for in staying is beyond you reach, and what lies within your reach is worse than the Hells."

Cris ground his teeth. Within the Circle of Serenity, a molar cracked, splitting in two and bringing tears to his eyes. He tasted no blood. Y-you try to frighten me into another deal.

The Infernal huffed. "That you are not afraid proves my point. You haven’t the barest comprehension what you set in motion. Either you take my way out, Cris-ri-phon, or you become unknowable. If the latter, you shall meet — briefly — the guardians who flay the unknowable. A smirk. I see it much like your varied Human tribes occupying the same territory, except these creatures know you are not one of them."

So … they will kill me where you cannot.

Again, that laugh.

Worse, he said. "Much worse. Unlike Innathi, they won’t pretend so they can suck down your unearned magic to enhance their own. Nor will they let you convince yourself you have the wisdom to wield that power in their realm. Unmaking you will probably kill one of them or injure many more. The survivors will use your remains as a cautionary tale, and I do not mean V’Gedra. The city is gone, already to be forgotten, along with all your sacrifices for the harm you’ve done. All you must do is wait here."

The Ice Lord may as well have pierced his heart with that black dagger, though it remained in its sheath. Gripping the stone, Cris-ri-phon tried to wrench himself out of the sands; he bellowed agony as one of his ankles broke.

Indrath chuckled softly.

Wh-what is your ‘way out’? he asked quietly, hearing his own weakness in even asking.

The Ice Lord sighed softly, turning his head to peer at the horizon as if watching for something. The concern seemed unnaturally genuine the moment before he turned back.

I will make a path for you to the Greylands, he offered. I can do this once, but one time only. I will send agents capable of helping you keep your Vis strong until you find your direction. Attempt to meet your sun god if you dare, or embrace another way, I care not. Either way, you are out of reach of those bound to this world.

A-and what do you get out of it?

What is in my best interests.

And those are?

Not your concern.

I could make it so. As part of the deal, you tell me your ‘best interest’ before you open that path.

"Hmph." Indrath crossed his arms, pretending to consider.

During that pause, the ground vibrated, a rumble echoing in the earth, reaching depths beyond comprehension. The Infernal’s wings might have quivered, or it might have been a trick of the ever-stranger light around him.

If that is all, said his visitor, have we a deal?

Cris-ri-phon tried to lift his hand from the shattered archway. He could not.

You haven’t much time, General, Indrath pushed. Shall I help you die?

Yes, Cris-ri-phon said, voice straining now. A deal. Tell me … what you get out of it.

The briefest exhale, "Yes."

"Tell me … what you get out of it, Indrath."

What I get … The Infernal drew Soul Drinker, his aura intensifying as he brandished it above his head. Two runes lit up, glacial eyes shifting to match.

Cris panicked. No, wait — !

"Is you and this column as separate beings!"

Darkness rushed in behind his eyes.

Chapter 3

The Greylands

All around him fell quiet, yet unfettered rage left him spinning.

Stick-faced, goat-fucking dandruff on a camel’s ball sack! May his asshole become his ears and shit on his shoulders!

Indrath killed him, using his beloved wife’s dagger to do it! Such agony when the material had been undone, dragging him from one plane