The Shadow | A Crystal Empire Story

And before you ask ‘why’, it’s because you have kept us weak Danen. Starved us. If you won’t take care of us, I must.

Set hundreds of years before the events of The Crystal Empire, witness a dark truth buried under a millenium of secrets.

Danen opened his eyes to a splitting pain in his head and blinked blearily through tears in the bright morning sun. That was a bad sign for how his day was going to go. Rolling himself up out of the puddle of sewage and rainwater he’d made laying his tired, emaciated bones down to rest last night, he realized he recognized the alley, and even remembered choosing it last night because he could stop at Rose’s for a drink when he woke. Silver linings there.

He had tucked himself into a narrow gutter between two old buildings that forked off a larger alleyway, but he hadn’t figured the sun would have risen right in line. The morning sun in Mena’hir was so bright it made his head hurt and his ears ring when he hadn’t had enough to drink the night before to wake up drunk. Groaning, Danen crawled out into the alley toward the far wall and its shade where he could collect himself and…

Something moved in the shadows and Danen froze. How many drinks had he had the night before? Five? No, four. He’d dropped a glass and they made him pay for the replacement. At the time, he’d told himself it would be enough to stave off the darkness only he could see.

It wasn’t, Yizarathiraz mocked in a voice he heard even with his hands clapped over his ears. This unseeable tormenter had followed him ever since that night years ago, haunting his dreams and whispering in Danen’s waking thoughts, making him do monstrous things. The only thing that stopped it was getting drunk. Being covered in piss was better than blood.

Danen sucked in a breath and pushed himself to his feet. His head be damned, he needed a drink. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw glimpses of motion in the shadows. He patted himself down, starting in his chest and then down to each leg, making sure he still had everything. His purse was alarmingly light, but he was comforted by the familiar weight of the lucky stone in his left pocket. It was the only thing that had managed to hold on to for more than a few days since the Eclipse.

Aren’t you going to ask me what I did last night? Yizarathiraz purred. Usually you’re so curious.

He wasn’t. One advantage of sobriety was the lucidity that came with it. Danen knew exactly where he’d been the night before, and hadn’t left his shadow the chance.

He braced his hand against the old, sun-warmed timber corner post of a building and looked out into the street, bustling with morning activity already. One way was lined with progressively taller buildings with white plaster or brick facades toward the cathedral, with a clear view of its single towering spike of rose crystal rising into the sky. They said the king walked around with a crystal like that, and Danen usually avoided crystal people like the plague-ridden. The other way led toward the city’s wall, a thirty foot tall and ten foot thick mass of earth and stone that encircled the whole city. Neither looked like the right way to Rose’s, but he knew it was nearer the wall. Or was it the market?

Daaaanen, the shadow drew out his name. Talk to me. This isn’t like you when you’re sober.

“You’re chatty today,” he muttered under his breath. He walked along the gutter between the animal-drawn carriages and the foot traffic on the other side. Again, at least it wasn’t blood.

His own blood pounded in his ears as he walked, and he felt like his head was going to burst. If he didn’t find this place soon he was going to be in some real trouble.

Don’t you want to know why?

“No,” Danen snapped. Two well-to-do seeming women walking and chatting, each towing a small child along, turned from their conversation just in time to hear him say, “Shut up.” One of them called him ‘disgusting’ as they covered their childrens’ ears and hurried away.

That reminds me of a song, his twisted shadow announced. I’m going to sing it.

“DADDY!” a child’s scream ripped through the morning din, but as he spun around looking for the source he saw he was the only one who’d heard it. Of course the worst sound he’d ever heard was Yizarathiraz’s idea of music. Danen recognized the voice in an instant, striking deep into the core of his memory, of the day the Moon had tried to swallow the Sun seven years ago and broke the whole world. His whole world. “Daddy help! Something’s wrong wi-”

Tev’s last words. He had only been six. Danen needed a drink. Now. 

He grabbed the first person he could by the shoulders and barked “Rose’s?” at them over the sound of Yizarathiraz recreating the worst moment of his life in excruciating detail. The poor, soot-covered man, probably a coal shoveler, flinched back and pointed toward a cross-street. He seemed too scared to actually say anything. Danen returned his silence with silence and let the man go, practically pushing him back into the crowd and using the momentum to speed himself across the street.

The cacophony in his head stopped. Like a rushing river had suddenly become a calm stream, his attention focused on a woman’s voice, clear as if she were standing right next to him as she said, “There.” Danen spun and saw the two women he’s startled earlier speaking with two of the city’s Vigils in their purple tunics and brass helmets. The two well-fed keepers of the last city’s peace kept their eyes on him as they said something to the women, which seemed to reassure them. One of them called out “Freeze,” when Danen jumped out in front of a carriage.

Unfortunately the citizens of Mena’hir are well trained by their king and his justice, and did as commanded by the vigil. Danen was barely across the cobbled street when a shimmer of green radiance flowed beneath his feet, running in the cobble’s lines.

Oh no, Yizarathiraz laughed, the instant the glow erupted in a flare, causing a vine to rip itself up through the street and wrap itself around Danen’s leg. You were really looking forward to that drink, too. Now you’re arrested. Just wait until you find out what we did.

“But I didn’t do anything!” Danen shouted. He pulled against the coiling foliage as the vigils closed in, but it only gripped harder. A green stone howled from one of the vigil’s belts, even though it hadn’t helped in years, Danen covered his ears and screamed and fell to the floor.

Let me help you Danen, Yizarathiraz laughed in his mind. You aren’t going to win this game. We could kill these men so easily if we just worked together.

Danen would never do that. Not again. The results were bad enough when Yizarathiraz got what it wanted in spite of him. He shuddered to think of what would happen if they cooperated. The drinking was supposed to make sure he never found out.

“I didn’t do anything!” Danen screamed as he rolled, looking for the darkest place on the street. That was always where the shadow was hiding. Indeed, the deeper he looked, the clearer he could hear Yizarathiraz’s gleeful cheering for Danen to break.

“That’s what we’re going to make sure,” one of the vigils said, not unkindly, as he lifted Danen back to his feet. Instead of a gem, this one had a sturdy cane hanging from his belt. The splitting pain faded as the man’s companion let the light in his crystal fade. It was hardly a relief. “Something happened last night, and the king wants all you bums brought in to the garrison for questioning.”

Steal the cane and beat him with it, Yizarathiraz ordered. Danen’s hand twitched in near-compliance, but he reminded himself that he was still in control here.

The guard reached a rough hand into Danen’s pocket and pulled out a small, smooth black stone with natural facets that drank in the morning sunlight. With one hand holding on Danen’s arm, the guard held up the small black stone for his inspection with the other.

KILL HIM, Yizarathiraz roared. SPILL HIS BLOOD IN THIS GUTTER FOR HIS INSOLENCE!

“That’s mine!” Danen shouted, snatching the pebble away from the guard and hiding back in his pocket and looking at the lawkeeper with suspicious eyes. “You can’t steal it.”

The man just shrugged. “Walk,” he ordered, and after a few halting tries, stumbling under weak feet back to the cobbles, each vigil grabbed an arm and lifted.

Danen howled against the vigils’ grip as they started hauling him toward their garrison near the edge of the city. But he no longer had the muscles of a man who spent his days laboring in the field and tending animals. That man had died with the rest of his family seven years ago and now the vigils dragged his remains through the city’s busy streets. All his cries and struggles did was draw looks of approval and pity from even the dirtiest of the passers by, but doing it kept his mind of the splitting pain of sobriety behind his eyes. That had been too close.

Early on in his time living on the streets of Mena’hir, he had made a habit of avoiding the streets near the city garrison, an instinct he hadn’t tested since the city’s new monarch had seized the squat, flat building to serve as his home. Seeing it again, Danen still thought the place was far too plain to house a king in it.

The watchman led him into the yard surrounding the building, now protected by a barricade of wooden stakes and mounded dirt, and handed him off to another waiting watchman.

“Put him with the others,” the third vigil said.

A moment later, Danen was unceremoniously tossed into an open air pen next to the stables and the city wall. Stretched canvas that snapped in the wind like a sail shaded the squalid souls beneath, several he recognized from the streets of Mena’hir. One, an old bald pale-skinned woman missing half her teeth recognized him right away.

“Ah they got you too,” Tusi said, straining herself to state the obvious. “You hear what happened?”

“I didn’t do it,” he snapped defensively, then blushed. Tusi had been on the streets of Mena’hir longer than anyone else he knew of, and not because she was pretty. She was always looking out for those on the streets, keeping them fed or warning them away from the unkind shopkeepers. It was a rare kindness in a world that was trying its hardest to pretend its rivers still flowed, its crops still grew, its flowers still bloomed. That its shadows did not whisper.

Tusi still had enough teeth to smile. She pointed at him with a shaking hand. “Me neither. We’re looking out for each other, me and you. They want someone’s head for this and it ain’t gonna be ours.”

Somewhere nearby, Yizarathiraz snickered. Wait until you find out.

“What happened?” Danen winced as he asked the question, trying to ignore the stupid shadow. “Sorry, couldn’t get a drink this morning.”

Tusi gave him a sly smile and a wink before drawing out a small hipflask. “Still got some whiskey left. You can have a sip but be quick about it. Don’t have enough to share with everyone. You’re gonna need this when you hear what happened to Rose, I know you had a tab with her.”

Somewhere behind him he heard giddy snorting, like a child who knows they’ve done something naughty just waiting to be caught.

Danen froze just before his hands closed on the small leather flask. “Rose?” he asked, eyes unfocused as he screamed internally at his shadow. Yizarathiraz only laughed.

“They found her this morning in the alley behind her tavern,” Tusi said. “It was brutal too, I heard, broken bones and blood everywhere. Her ribcage split open.” Danen thought of stepping into that shed on that afternoon seven years ago, of the things that had been done to Shera and Tev. “Everyone’s got some worse version of it. I don’t believe half of it.”

His mind raced trying to think of how it could have been possible. He had gotten drunk! Sure, not as drunk as he liked to be, but the shadow was always chased away by alcohol. If he drank enough, Yizarathiraz couldn’t do anything with Danen’s body even if he managed to take control. And he had not taken control.

Oh this really has been fun Danen, but you were never in control here. I was whispering in your ear all night. Who do you think spilled your drink? Who suggested Rose’s. And before you ask ‘why’, it’s because you have kept us weak Danen. Starved us. If you won’t take care of us, I must.

Seeing his hesitation, Tusi had almost withdrawn the flask. Almost. Danen snapped it from her weak grip and began untying its cap. He would drain the whole thing if he had to, anything to stop the shadow from doing whatever it thought it was going to do. The old woman wasn’t a fighter, but her unexpected slap across his face caused him to drop the flask into the dirt several feet away.

Kill her, Yizarathiraz ordered.

Danen’s hand was around the woman’s neck before he even had the thought to argue and was pushing her to the ground. He screamed at himself internally and pulled his hand back, crawling instead for the flask where it lie nearby.

No, Danen it’s too late for that, Yizarathiraz chided. Danen froze, unable to continue toward the flask but neither would he let himself kill the woman. Looking around, he saw faces of shock on the other streetpeople of Mena’hir, but what drew his attention was the swelling manlike shape of a malevolent shadow behind them. It seethed itself past the crowd, unnoticed, and as it did it spoke into his mind. Kill her, and the rest of them. It’s been too long since we’ve eaten and I am hungry.

“Do you see it!?” Danen pleaded to the others, pointing at the form of Yizarathiraz, like a man made of shadow that flicked at the edges like flame. It really was too late. Yizarathiraz never wasted an appearance. “Do you see the shadow man? He comes for me!” 

Tusi kicked him in the side, knocking him to the ground. Then she spat on him. “Bastard.”

He felt the stone in his pocket press painfully into his hip, and as he rolled and groaned in pain he sent a hand in to fish it out. It was cold and smooth as ice to the touch, just like it had been when he’d pried it from Rolan’s broken, bloody fingers in the shed. Darkness-shrouded fingers Danen had broken to get this very stone away from the nine year old boy who had just killed Tev and their mother.

That cold feeling consumed his left hand. When he looked, he saw the shifting blackflame shadow had crouched down beside him, resting a hand upon his.

It was the right thing to do, Danen, Yizarathiraz said gently. And so is this. Will you make the right choice again?

Danen wondered how killing a woman could be the right thing. Over the sounds of his own wailing he heard several gruff voices shouting into the crowd.

Not just her. All of them. You are right, this world is broken. Something, me, has to step in and take control.

“What is happening to him?” one of the streetpeople asked. “What’s that around his hand?”

Will you stand?

He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He had to resist the shadow. Danen knew the kind of world it wished to make, and he would do everything in his power to stop it.

“No!” Danen growled. “No I won’t let you!”

It’s too late for that. Stand.

Yizarathiraz lifted him by his hand, and his shadowy form wrapped itself around Danen, swallowing him whole.

This is so much easier when you work with me, Danen. Until I find someone better I’m stuck with you.

Danen watched in horror as the cold black flame that made up his essence oozed from him in lines along the ground, reaching for the nearest living souls. A vigil rushed into the pen, the one with the green crystal, and the ooze reacted the instant he lit it, sending a shrieking pain like cracking ice through his whole body. Then it attacked.

His body turned to focus on the vigil, all tendrils of ooze pulled back from their previous targets to close in on the green glowing guard, wrapping up his legs and digging in his flesh like the bites of angry serpents. The man fell to the ground screaming as the black flames oozed their way up his body.

This is what I did to Rose, Yizarathiraz said the instant before it drove its shadowy form into the vigil’s gut. Danen could feel as it speared its way into his chest before ripping up against the sternum with enough force to rip free. With the death, the shadow flames grew stronger and Danen felt even colder than he had before.

Danen tried not to watch the slaughter, but Yizarathiraz used his eyes to see its victims, his arms to direct the shadow-stuff to their quarries, and his throat to cackle like a maniac at the misery it caused. And all the while its flames grew stronger and Danen grew colder.

Nearly a dozen corpses littered the pen around him when Yizarathiraz froze, startled by a sudden spark of light. They spun to see a ring of vigils had formed outside the pen, with a man dressed much finer than the rest at its head. Danen had never seen the city’s king before, but the purple silk tunic, the circlet of gold upon his dark oaken brow, and the sword that hung upon his belt would have been enough clues, even before noticing the six-sided pillar of radiant glassy crystal that loomed in the air behind him.

Yizarathiraz wasted no time, snapping all of its tendrils toward the man while walking Danen to the pen’s edge. As it wound up to attack, the king’s crystal swelled and a wall of violet light grew up before him. Each tendril didn’t just draw back, it dissolved, its power gone where it had touched the shield. The shadow seethed.

“Another one?” the king called in a clear, confident voice. “I thought I’d purged all of you Moonspawn from my city.”

Yizarathiraz’s cold flame flared at the comment. “And deprived me of so many good meals,” the shadow hissed with Danen’s voice. “For that I shall delight in killing you especially.”

The man who must have been the king shook his head like a frustrated parent might with a child who won’t hear a lesson they’re trying to teach, not for the first time. Light swelled in the man’s crystal, and Yizarathiraz made to run.

No, Danen said. He had not been able to take back control of his mouth, but Yiz had forgotten about his feet.

“YOU SHALL NOT DISRESPECT ME AGAIN!” the shadow bellowed through his mouth. “I HAVE BLESSED YOU WITH THE NAME YIZARATHIRAZ AND YOU SHALL USE IT! NOW MOVE US YOU INSOLENT CUR!”

A wave of violet light surged toward them, wrapping itself around them like a net. Every freezing inch of him where it touched burned in agony, but Danen had spent years trying not to become the very monster they all now saw, and he would stop it any way he could. Even if it was the last thing he did.

The shadow let out an inhuman wail, forsaking Danen’s lungs to do so. The king and his floating crystal approached, step after certain step. Each moment that passed, Yizarathiraz’s cold power waned and warmed.

“I’M GOING TO RIP YOUR FAMILY TO SHREDS BEFORE YOUR EYES!” Yizarathiraz screamed. “THEN KILL YOU! I’LL KILL EVERY LAST STUPID PERSON IN THIS WHOLE CITY. KING OF WHAT? KING OF NOTHING IS WHAT YOU’LL BE.” 

“You, Yizarathiraz, will serve,” the king said.

At his words, the shadow stopped. Suddenly, for the first time Danen had ever felt in their seven years together, Yizarathiraz was scared.

“Please, no, I know what comes next. I don’t know how you know, but please, don’t do that to me, don’t send me back there. I can tell you things. Important things.”

The king tilted his crowned head toward his massive glowing gemstone, as if listening to some councilor. “I want nothing from you.”

Without a perceptible shift of any kind from the man himself, the heat of the king’s net grew threefold, and both of them screamed, two voices ripping through the garrison yard. They fell to their knees, agony spreading across their skin in a grid of searing pain. Looking down, Danen could do that again, he could see the shadowy flame retreating from his body where it was trapped in patches. The strongest remains were around his left hand, still wrapped around the same cold glassy black stone Rolan had been holding when Yizarathiraz had killed his family.

“Give it to me,” the king ordered. He had crouched low and one hand was offered to receive the black stone. 

Danen met the man’s grey, cloudy morning eyes through tears and said, “I can’t.”

The man gave him a grim nod. Wrapping his hands in white light, the king deftly pried the black stone from Danen’s grip. Panic and rage surged through him, and he thrashed against the net binding him in place. He could not lose that stone, that last memory of his life! Without it he had nothing in the whole world left of Rolan and Tev and Shera. Even if he knew it had been the thing that had killed them. He hoped they would forgive him if he ever got to see them again.

Blackness clouded the edges of Danen’s vision as he collapsed into the dirt. He could just barely see as the king held up Yizarathiraz’s black stone, inspecting it between two fingers for a good moment. “That’s a good chunk. I’m surprised we didn’t find this one sooner.” Then, specifically to Danen, he said, “I’m sorry friend.”

Light surged in the man’s hands and his expression hardened. “Yizarathiraz begone!” he shouted as he pressed the black stone between glowing palms. A fresh wave of pain surged through Danen then and he screamed, the throbbing behind his eyes worse than any hangover. When the king’s hands came apart, black dust crumbled away like ash.

That was the last thing Danen saw as his eyelids felt too heavy, the pain too much, to keep his eyes open any longer; the last thing in his life that mattered was truly gone. It was over. He was done. His last words, as he lay there in the dirt, were “Thank you.”