Chapter 4 – Khrashnak

Blue Skin turned the corner, the trailing length of his midnight robes sliding away with a menacing rustle of sibilance. Khrashnak had long since ceased to be bothered by such things. She had thrown her lot in with the White Hand when she was younger, but those dreams were for the foolish and untested. Standing at attention next to her the Primer made a shuffling snort in his throat. Khrashnak cut her eyes towards the smallish uruk.

He is hardly small, Khrash.

Maybe not to you.

At a head over seven feet in height Khrashnak was herself at the lower end of the tall range for true-born Urukhainen. Most of her race fell somewhere between six and seven feet, only the purest bloods reached the True Height, nearly eight feet tall. Those Urukhainen hardly seemed part of her people, so delicate were their features. Much of her features were softer than most, though she had inherited more of her uruk ancestors than of the Westmen. Still her thick brow, its ridges curving with the most delicate and forceful swerve, was now rare. That particular trait had been bred out centuries before, after the Urukhainen had discovered Blue Skin.

After he shaped us...

perhaps we have shaped him as much in return.

“You will do as the Master requires?” Primer Ned’lin asked, his hands tucking themselves inside his voluminous sleeves. Others had mistaken the uruk for weak before. Many of them now slaved in the pits. Khrashnak knew better, even though she had little to fear from Ned’lin. Her rank was higher than his, if only by the smallest increment. In the Sunlands the military ruled above the civil authority, a direct decree of the Master.

“It suits me to follow Blue Skin’s plans.” Khrashnak said. Which was entirely true, if not the entire truth. It did suit her to follow Blue Skin’s plans. But Blue Skin, though acknowledged as the Master of the Urukhainen, was no Dark Lord. The Urukhainen had learned that particular lesson, learned it so sharply it could not be erased from them. They would not submit again to a wholesale decimation of their people, submit to service of the megalomania of a fallen angel. It had taken a great deal of death and war among the tribes before agreement had been reached, before the truth had been made clear to all. A great deal of learning and revealed truth. No longer did uruk strive in war without knowledge.

This is no war for a piece of magic jewelry. No war of darkness everlasting and towers of stone death. No war of attrition for a piece of that which is forever lost.

“Of course it does,” was Ned’lin’s reply, though his attention was directed elsewhere. Khrashnak followed the line of the smaller uruk’s gaze, out away from the inner sanctum of Blue Skin’s temple, towards the vast martial plain which surrounded it. A huge, some might call it monstrous, horde bivuoacked there, well-ordered lines of warriors a truly beautiful sight to behold, in Khrash’s eyes.

There lies our salvation. Our deliverance. Not in some false hope in the far West. Not in some mystical veil beyond which lies supposed Heaven. Not in some blond hair and blue eyes and shining white skin. We are Urukhainen!

The littany came to her mind often, whether she wished it or not.

“Come.” Khrashnak ordered, shaking aside her errant thoughts. She swept past Ned’lin and his Honors, out to the platform nearly a thousand feet above the Plain of Anderos, where the Pastor stood in silent benediction, in prayer for the war to come. Pastor was a particularly unimposing figure in his voluminous blue robe. His height marked him as not being True Born. Were he not Pastor this would have likely left the uruk little choice aside from a career in the Crafts or Works, or at worst, in the pits. Society demands. We accept. Sensing her arrival, the Pastor folded his head towards his steepled hands and turned away from the crowd. The silence was eerie, even for Khrashnak, who had been raised near the Plain, where silence was nominally law. It was as if the hundred thousand uruk below were frozen in a moment, the subtle sounds of creaking armor and weapons which in such large numbers should cause a tremendous din even without the addition of voices, were simply not present. Pastor’s hooded head flicked upward so his shaded eyes met hers. He was so human in aspect his eyes were a crystal blue, a trait so rare it had been considered a sign of curse or pestilence among the Urukhainen before Blue Skin had shared Truth with the people.

Pastor’s mouth twitched, the shadow of smirking, snarky grin. He was young to be Pastor, but though young he was never lacking for confidence. Not surprising, considering the sheer scope of his power, his position.

Blue Skin has put much faith in this Pastor. The uruk’s power grows by the year. Soon he could be unstoppable.

Khrashnak had no intention of letting that happen.

As soon as she appeared on the platform, as the masses below caught sight of her blue lacquered armor shining in the morning sun, they began the slow, steady clap of weapons to armor. The cheer of her army was a magic Khrashnak never fully understood, though it gave her such unrestrained joy and strength she also never questioned it.

This is my power. My people. My Urukhainen.

With practiced effort Khrashnak raised arms over her head, elbows bent so her hands hovered lightly over her thickly wound, black locks. She jerked both hands skyward in a motion so reverent even she forgot for a moment everything around her. Even the magic of the army below, her army, or Blue Skin’s plans, or the danger of Pastor, or Ned’lin’s churlishness. There was only the beaming Sun above and the warm, ineffable might of the burning fire within her, the Destiny coming to fruition. As though the natural occurrence had been planned solely for effect, for benefit of her moment a ray of pure sunlight crashed into the vambraces of her armor and refracted back to the sky in a glittering shimmer of blue fire.

Against all tradition, against all law, against all ingrained prohibition the Urukhainen below vocalized at the sight. Rather than be shocked or appalled by the transgression, as Primer Ned’lin clearly was from the disapproving look on his face, Khrashnak reveled in it. Pastor remained cloaked in benediction. The susurration infused Khrash with a power she had never before felt, stronger than anything she had believed could exist outside of the unclothed spirits of angels and demons.

Khrashnak did not worship Blue Skin, as most of the Urukhainen did. Nor did she pay homage to the Lost Ones, as some small few still did. Nor did she revere the old Master, the Dark Lord, a being of malice and darkness who had nearly ground her people into dust with his machinations, though still some worshipped Him. Fools. Khrashnak did not worship any of them, though she believed in them all. Blue Skin’s friars had rejected her as a child for this very reason. They had said she “lacked the faith.” Clearly Pastor had not lacked such. Only now as the adulation of her people roared over her in gentle, but unstoppable waves, did Khrashnak finally understand what it meant to worship.

Is this how Pastor feels when he makes his spells of fire, of ice, of earth? Is this how Blue Skin feels when he summons his fey energies? Is this why the Eldar once wielded a light so terrible to us?

The din grew as the few who had not at first participated were taken in. What was at first only a rebellious, if guttural, hum in her honor grew to a loud, persistent chant. The words had once held an entirely different power, sinister and more puissant. Now these words held power only for Khrashnak. There were no Ringbearers left. The words were a benediction from the mouths of her people, a call to action, a hope expressed within the old words, and a rejection, even changed as they were by time and distance.

We scream these words now, in the light of the Sun! We fear no darkness. We quail from no light! We bow now to no master race. No Dark Lord drives us in madness by his will. Yet His words will give Us strength.

They will give me power.

Gimbatuluk, thrakatulûk, krimpatul... DURBATUL!

The language was not commonly spoken by the Urukhainen, who had adopted rather the speech of the Westmen, with whom they had interbred after the Fall. In fact, few outside the friary knew the meaning of any words from that tongue, save those rising to Khrash from the Plain. All knew the meaning of the words now being shouted with exuberance and joy at Khrashnak. All had been given the Truth, part of Blue Skin’s efforts at bringing the Urukhainen forward to salvation. Of who the Urukhainen had been. Of the ruined West, of the Cursed Island, of the Rings of Power, and the fell swords of the Westmen. Hard to believe that once they were our forefathers. What would they think of us now?

But Khrashnak had been raised on the Plain. And in the Zig, despite being denied entry to the Friary. She knew the words of the tongue once called “the black speech” by some. And she knew the full text of the dark lullaby from which the words being shouted at her came, and more. She knew her people’s hearts and felt their joy in her purpose, in her Destiny, in the use of those words.

Find them all, bring them all, bind them all... RULE THEM!

And she needed no ring with which to achieve it.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5 - Anrik