***
Many long days, months, and years passed as the lava eventually stopped flowing, and cooled to form igneous rock across the landscape that had once been grasslands. But a portion of the grass still remained in the area surrounding the great tree that had once been the domain of the great city.
Yet Doomba remained; the shadows that had spread with the flow of lava, covering the Wastelands from the newly formed mountains in the north to the shores of the south, came back to him. Doomba took up this robe of shadows, and stood once more, in human shape without human body except for his skeleton, a fragile link to his humanity. He stood, and looked upon the tree as, slowly, his monstrous Servants returned to him one by one.
When they were all gathered again, many long years after his attempt at destroying Coe Pidaria, he told them, “Build me…a fortress; far away from here, but close enough…to see.” His voice was halting, and weak when once it had been strong and forceful, but the wheeze still belayed a sinister, serious tone. He wanted to see, to keep his eye on Coe Pidaria.
“What about the humans?” A Ghoulman asked in a slithering, sinuous tone, licking his lips with his long tongue.
“The…humans?” Doomba asked. He had almost forgotten them; the humans, the humans that had built Coe Pidaria, what had become of them?
“They are rebuilding Arria.” A second Ghoulman told him in a similar tone, for the monsters of Doomba had no difference in nature to each of their own kind. “They have their own capital again, Coe Kiki, to the north of here in what remains of Tau Valley; a city named after the old queen. It is not much to look at, though, this ‘city’, barely more than a town. The king who lives there does not even have a proper throne yet, just a wooden stool that he sits upon while they plan out their attacks.”
“Why have…you not razed it yet?” Doomba asked. He was angry that the humans should still continue to live, and build, despite all of his efforts to crush their spirits.
“It remains protected by an army, a small one, though. They have too few men to do much more than defend this one town.” The first Ghoulman added. “Yet they fight back hard enough that it is difficult to get close to the king. Still, they cannot protect the rest of the country.”
“You should…you should keep trying,” Doomba said. “To destroy that city, that will not be tolerated.” He paused and wondered… “What about the rest of the country?”
“They, the king, his army, and all of his people, have not had the chance yet to unite all of the country under their control again.” The first Ghoulman said. “They are still weak, and while the army remains focused on protecting the king from our attacks, the rest of the country has splintered apart since the ‘fall’, disappearance, of their former capital. We have seen to that.”
Doomba felt pleased, to say the least, especially as he heard the second Ghoulman say, “We spread across the landscape, attacking from Tau Valley, to the Popo Hills, to Mila Forest.” The second Ghoulman practically crowed with delight as he described their activities. “We try to frighten every man, woman, and child before we kill them. They flee, though, and scatter, hiding from our forces until we find them, then they do not have the strength to fight back against us.”
“There are too many of them, though, and some humans do fight back against us, sometimes,” The first Ghoulman acknowledged, “so that we have lost some of our forces to their resistance.” As Doomba turned to him, the first Ghoulman declared, “But they are usually defeated, in the end!” He shielded himself from his master.
“Good.” Doomba said. “That bodes well for us.” He could not blame his Servants for what the humans did. “What about the rest of humanity?”
“The people to the east?” The Ghoulman shrugged. “We have not paid much attention to them. They have their own settlements, perhaps they might make their own nations, but we know how much you despise Arria and we have been focused on destroying that remnant of humanity before we try to attack the others.”
It was true…but still, Doomba wished that they might be quick about it, so that they could destroy the others. He remembered the other men who had wanted to destroy, rather than create, but if those men started creating their own nations, then it might be too late to completely eliminate humanity with the strength of their unity.
“Those other people have even been helping us, in that regard,” The second Ghoulman laughed. “They are trying to penetrate the interior of the country, to invade and take back the land they claim as their own. That has been a detriment to Arria, make no mistake.”
“Arria…is being attacked on all sides.” Doomba sounded happy; there might have even been a smile, if he had a face to show it. “There might be hope left for us,” he said, thinking that so long as men were willing to destroy each other, then there was always a chance that they would eliminate themselves before he and his Servants needed to get involved to finish the job. “Is there any hope left in the people of Arria?” He asked, thinking that doubt would speed things up in conquest if the people really thought themselves doomed by the time he got there.
“No hope in the people, at least…” The second Ghoulman paused. “At least as far as we know of.”
“Yet they intend to build it into something greater.” A gruelmoff added, interrupting their good news. “Arria is still moving forwards, even though it is backwards.” He said, looking around, as a dumb bird might, when all of the other Servants and Doomba were glaring back at him. Finally, one of the Trollas grabbed that gruelmoff by the neck, and then smashed him down on the ground, crushing his dissenting mind.
“Yet they…do not have…Coe Pidaria.” Doomba said, turning toward the tree as he ignored the slaughter. “They do not have…anything it contained, do they? They do not have….treasuries, galleries, libraries, halls of justice…and schools? They do not have… the wealth of man in knowledge and soul, artwork, books, treasures…things of that nature?” He turned back toward the others as he questioned, “They have…lost much, have they not?”
“Yes, they have,” A Trolla said, grunting in a guttural, deep voice that was as hard as the rock he was made of. “They have…none of that,” He said, still slightly confused as to what it all meant.
“But there are some things that were saved, we believe,” said another Trolla, thinking as hard as he could to recall what they had been talking about. “We do not know how much; it was not everything, though.”
“What do you mean? What sort of things?” Doomba asked, nervous now; he was afraid, for the first time, that he had neglected to credit man’s ingenuity in keeping him from fulfilling his goal. “The Swords of Arria? Do they have those weapons still?”
“We…do not know,” said the Trolla; “The Swords have not been wielded against us, at least.”
The Swords of Arria, the very same weapons that had belonged to the Knights of Arria, created by them and the Fay; endowed with magical powers as each one represented an element of magic, including the one element he was most afraid of…Doomba did not want to face the Black Sword.
“They say that their new king is Marvola, the prince who escaped from here before we came,” A Ghoulman added for the sake of informing his master. “We do not know that for a fact, but there were many people who escaped from Coe Pidaria, or so it is said when they heard of our advance; only those that stayed behind were the wizards and the ones most powerful in magic.”
“I can…believe that,” Doomba said, staring up at the tree. It would have taken many wizards, perhaps even the power of the Fay themselves, to summon the kind of magic necessary to build such a powerful shield that would contain the entire city of Coe Pidaria for all of these years, and protect it even against the force of Doomba’s power. He had underestimated the humans.
“There are some people with knowledge still,” said the Ghoulman, “We do know that, but they have...very little to work with. Nothing too valuable, we hope.”
“The Cup? Tau’s Cup?” Doomba asked, afraid that even he had neglecte
d letting that most important relic, the one most valued as a symbol of the kingdom and the king’s power, slip from his hands.
“We do believe that remains in Coe Pidaria.” The Ghoulman pointed at the tree; that was some good news, at least.
Doomba grew silent, pondering every word he had heard as the monsters waited for his final decision on what they should do at this point; to stay, and build him his fortress in the Wastelands, as he had asked, or to go forth and conquer all of Arria and the surrounding lands. However, it was not so simple; Doomba could see that the most important goal laid in destroying humanity, but he could not resist the chance to wait, and see if Coe Pidaria’s shield might fall.
If that shield fell, then he would be free to go forth and destroy Coe Pidaria, as he had intended to from the start, and claim its ruins for his own before he might be ready to conquer all else. Everything else would take too long, he thought; surely that shield would fall before he needed to conquer everything? The shield could not be so powerful when the men powering it were still men, and likely losing their strength in the effort; surely it would not be too long before they failed?
“We…will stay,” Doomba said, looking around at all of his minions. “We will stay, and you all will…help build me a fortress, a mighty fortress, that…can stand the test of time; it will take time to wait. It will take time to build. We can wait. And we can build. We are better than the humans…and the Fay; they can build, and so can we, better than they. We will build something that will strike fear into their hearts. Something that will last…long after they are gone; we will build ourselves a kingdom here, in these Wastelands, that will be greater than all of their kingdoms when we go out there to conquer them all. We will be masters, and all of their dreams, all of their ambitions, will be destroyed by what we have created here!”
The monstrous Servants cheered, and they went forth, traveling several miles away until Doomba declared that he would build his fortress here; and so they began, laying down the foundations of what would be the darkest, most formidable structure in all of the lands on the continent of Salarria.
For Doomba resided there, and while he sent his Servants out to conquer, and frighten humanity beyond the Wastelands, even going so far as to destroy the Fay themselves, in an attempt to eliminate another potential foe, Doomba remained in his fortress, festering behind its walls as centuries and millennia passed him by; waiting for the shield surrounding Coe Pidaria to fall.
But the tree still stood, on the edge of the Wastelands, untouched by the blight and the poison that Doomba spread throughout the Wastelands and beyond; it remained perfectly unspoiled.
The End
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