#keleos the kothian

[for-peace-war]

art by @idrawbuffgirls​

My second hour write practice (and Kelzack’s second hour drawing practice). With this one I used @lordcaliginous​‘ character Keleos, @diermina​‘s character Tsekani, and I made a small * for @mcsars​‘ story point because he did an awesome job of including Shub-Niggurath in his Conan lore, but I hate Lovecraft and changed it to Shar-Negrath, because well.  Lovecraft.  So those are my shoutouts!

Again, this is all just fanfiction nonsense, but writing other people’s characters is fun, so!  This is chronologically before Part I. 

THE GREAT WINGED ONE.

Follows Part I.

Part II.

KELEOS THE KOTHIAN calmly clanked his hammer to the choral chiming of his craft. Khorshemish was a beautiful city beneath an even more beautiful sky, but the clouds that surrounded him were belched from the furnace and stank of sulfur and sweat.  His hands were steady as he worked, for he knew precision was the key to success and a misplaced stroke was thrice as costly as one well-aimed. Sweat glistened upon his Kothian body, which stood tall and lean and tanned from the faint traces of Stygian specters that corrupted his bloodline.  His hair was long and black, ending past his shoulders and masking only some of the many scars that were interlaced upon his broad, well-muscled Kothian back.

His hammer clashed against steel, but the resonant sound was not what he had desired. It was shallow—hollow, a cheap replication of what he once knew.   Lathered in the sweat of a man’s work as he was, he could feel all of his effort—all of his desire, being wasted on so shoddy an outcome. There was no joy in that work; there was merely more that needed to be done.

He thought of his time as a soldier—when the only thing that beat to a steady pace was his feet against the ground at the command of another.  Then he was the hammer used to strike at the unprepared metals of Koth’s foes.  But now, now—he was somewhere else, and the soldiering that he knew had slowly faded into the smithing that he mastered.

“The sound is different,” a woman said from the door to his shop.

Her voice did not take him unawares—he had smelled her long before she spoke, and he knew well that she was aware of that.  Though the musk of manful pursuits and smithing may have cloaked the room, her scent was that of henna and burnt sage—of an exotic land not so distant, and yet impossibly foreign to him when he considered what she knew of it.

“Tsekani,” Keleos said her name as if it were a prayer.  He looked away from the cooling metal and to the Stygian woman, whose tanned skin was only a few shades darker than her golden brown hair.  She was not tall, but held the buxom physique of a Stygian temptress, and while quiet in nature spoke volumes if one looked directly at her.  The silken robes she wore beneath her cloak clung tightly to her slender body, recalling to mind their last conversation—of where they had last left off. Even then, her husky voice was fast in his ear.

It had been too long since he had seen her, he realized, after looking up.  It was too long since he had seen anyone that had once walked alongside him in the Accursed Lands—and too long since anyone, he felt, had seen him as well.

As ever, Keleos chose his words carefully. “You are alone.”

“I have not heard word of Zaliki since her travels to the East,” Tsekani said.  The three words he shared held a legacy of meaning, and the Priestess of Derketo had divined them in an instant.  If he were to be considered a perceptive person, then she was just as insightful.   But then, that had been why they had always been able to see eye to eye, wasn’t it?  They worked well together, in taciturn silence or shared interest.

But Derketo—no, she had turned to serve something more.  Shar-Negrath*, he believed it was called. The Great Black Goat of a Thousand Horns, was it not? The allure of the unknown was seductively pleasing upon her.

“You look well.”

“As do you.” She stepped closer into the shop but did not bother to peruse his wares.  That was the act of someone that had something to hide, and they both knew that anything that Tsekani had to hide was already well hidden.   Just as Khorshemish was a city built upon the ancient remains of a dark past, no doubt the Stygian woman was similarly conceived: ancient secrets were the skeleton of a body that rose gloriously before the eye.

He appreciated that.  Her compliment had seen him stand taller, which as he preferred a soldier’s bearing was not a great deal of correction, but still one that set the Kothian’s muscles to ripple in a way that only smoldering heat and manly matters could have built within him.  Of course, he knew that she appreciated him—and as his flecked eyes of amber indicated, he appreciated her as well.

“I have done well enough.”  The Kothian spread his arms slightly, indicating the shop about him.   Wherever a smith went, surely, he was inclined to find work—and in Koth, there was always something that needed to be done.  The shadow of the Scarlet Citadel was cast long many parts of the city, and he as much as any knew to both appreciate and fear whatever that darkness held.  Fear though, was not something that kept him at bay.  “But you are right, the sound is different.”

“Nordeimer steel seemed more to your liking.”

“Whetted in their blood, how could it not be?”  He gave a humorless huff, which might have been a laugh.  The Stygian looked at him directly.

“I have had a vision.”

“That is why you are here.”

“It spoke of a great beast awakening in the chilled depths of a burning hell.”

The Kothian weighted that statement for its worth.  Great beasts and chilled depths of burning hell.  It sounded like an adventurer’s task—and to think, he was but a blacksmith, plying his trade.  “We escaped that place.  Why go back to these troubles?”

“We escaped to be free,” Tsekani said.  “Do you feel free?”

“I suppose.” It was an answer that he knew cost him thrice as much as silence, but it was an answer that he needed to hear—that he wanted to believe, even if it rang with less truth than the shoddy steel he had bartered with from Shemitish traders.  

No, he did not feel free.  He would never feel free, he believed.  Working in his shop had given him something to do, but it had not freed him—no more than a draught horse was freed because it had been given a field to plow.   His muscles sang with sweet harmony for the day’s sweat they had earned, but they did not sing of relief.  They were tense, always, for he knew he had once been taken away and that just as easily one day he might awaken staked to a cross once more.

Only this time, would a kind wanderer set him free?

Was there truly any kindness in the world? Perhaps dying on the cross would have been the kindness.  But then, could he have learned of who he was?

Could he have learned of what they would all become?

“Your pensive silence speaks the truth,” the Stygian said.  Her voice was ever dry and to the point, denying the playful tones of she that had ventured to the East.  Tsekani had always been a quiet reminder of basic truths though.  She did not prevaricate—for her, the point was all that mattered.  The strength of her voice made him stand straighter.

“And what if it does?  Does this Great Beast of Frozen Hells promise freedom?”

“Freedom is all I dream of,” she said. “Thus, it must be a step closer.”

But how many steps did he have left, he wondered?  He was not growing younger as time went on, and though still formidable and well versed in combat, Keleos knew that the path between life and death was one fraught with many potential falls.  A man could win a thousand battles, but it only took one loss to determine his fate.

“I still think of our time together,” he said.  “In the temple of that woman.”

For once, Tsekani seemed surprised. She started, but he continued before she could speak.

“Not like that,” he chuckled. “But that woman served many gods—perhaps all gods, and there she was, as damned as the rest of us.  Did not one of her patrons think to protect her?”

“For everyone that did, four more damned her in jealousy.”

“Exactly. Freedom is a lie, is it not? We will always be bound by something.  Anchored. Weighted.  Kept from rising to the heights we might otherwise know.”

Tsekani drew closer to him.  Up close, she was surprisingly warm.  He did not touch her and yet he could feel the thrum of her body; hear within each breath she took the sound of her enchanted delights when men and women explored carnality in a way that exceeded nature’s demands.  Her goddess—whatever she may have been—had blessed her further than he had known when they were together in those accursed lands.  But her eyes were cool and deep dunes that whispered an eternity’s promise of treasures unknown.

“I will be free,” she said. “Those Accursed Lands could not hold me—no Frozen Hell will, either.”

Keleos mulled it over.  Her passion was certain—and he knew, deep down, that she had reason to believe in herself.  Had anyone else come upon him in that moment, he would have sent them away.  But the Stygian sorceress did not play games with men’s minds or their bodies, in truth.  Derketo may have filled her heart, but her mind was something else—it was something severe, sharp, and uncompromising.  “Fortunately, I have taken up fletching as a pastime.”  He recalled her skill with the Stygian bow.  It was not nearly as masterful as her necromancy, but then it was more reliable—and less likely to turn heads if used in the open.

“We will need a great many arrows, yes,” she said.  “And your best arming sword.”

That surprised him.  “You fancy yourself a duelist now?”

She gave him a quiet smile. “No, but Valenso does.”

“The Zingaran?  I did not see him as one for mountains.”

“He is one for the seas, though,” she said.  “One does not simply walk into Pictland, after all.”

In a flash, he saw the depths of her plans.  Caethe in the Pictlands—Valenso from Zingara.  Even Aesileif, who had returned to Asgard, would be somewhere nearby if indeed they ventured to Nordheim.  It truly was an adventure.

Despite himself, Keleos could not help but feel some of the tension in his back fading. Leaving as they had, with so much unfinished—unsaid, had cost him more than he realized until he was once more faced with the prospect of joining that band of heroes to face down another challenge.

A Great Beast from the Frozen Heart of a Burning Hell.  If he had another step left in him, then why not make it in that direction?

“Where do we begin?” He asked.

Tsekani’s smile became warmer.  “Where we left off, of course.”

[for-peace-war]

The Crew from @mcsars‘ Conan tabletop game.

Æsileif - Nordheimer barbarian, @perfectperfidy

Tsekani - Stygian scholar, @diermina

Valenso - Zingaran noble, @iamreinhardt

Keleos - Kothian soldier, @lordcaliginous

Caethe, Pictish borderer, @scowlet

All of these pieces were done quickly and efficiently by *Curry.  Grab a piece if you can!