The Blackwild

A Chronicle of the Blackwild Revolution
The following are excerpts from the Journal of Narek, a Dramphinian relic. The journal chronicles the end of the Attamek Wars, which lasted nearly two hundred years in the land that would become Arneria. Narek was the first paladin to take the Oath of Revolution.

February 8, 212 The datus and beys fight for this many-named city. These fields and houses have shared so many rulers’ names in my short life. It feels foolish to call it by any single one. Tonight was the thirtieth day of conflict. I face thirty more, and then thirty more. My hands are numb.

The datu who has ruled the city for the last three years wakes up every morning to rouse his boys for another day of battle. His commanders straighten them out, stand them up, close their fingers around dull kampilans. They inspect the boys’ eyes to ensure that their weariness is properly swallowed. They chant, and the boys chant along, until there’s enough energy to send them into the fight. I am watching them fan a cookfire in a monsoon.

A month ago, the boys’ eyes were changing. They were beginning to feel secure in this place, to smile again. All their lives, the boys have fought for promises. This city is their home forever, once they defend it from the Beylik’s “vermin horde.” The last home was promised to be a temporary solution, to losing the battle for the one before that.

I tend to any boys bleeding badly enough that it wouldn’t stop without my intervention. I am a tool, sent to stop a boy’s bleeding so he can go and bleed again. This is all I’ve known. There’s a rumor of a western place where they don’t carry weapons. I hope it is real. I hope there is a better place than this.

Carrying out the will of justice leaves me with a weary heart. All of me is weary. The datu promises reinforcements are coming. The other barangays will send more boys for me to stop from bleeding. He promises.I doubt Dramphine is in this forest at all. Narek

May 1, 212 The black mass broke the air with a hiss, and it spread with a shriek, like Nature itself crying out. The sound shakes a person, it makes their fur stand on end. That shrieking blackness spread faster than a fire. The boys helped others and we all ran together. With speed and luck, we outran it until the mover-sloths could whisk us away to a place that is safe for a while.

Everyone in the barangay escaped it. They moved together, rushing between the trees in harmony. I am proud of them. They are afraid, but there was also a feeling of purpose. I felt it fill me, then it filled them even more. A cycle of purpose and empowerment. I’ve never felt anything like it.

As we ran, I saw the bey’s boys running, too. I hope they got far enough back. I hear others saying the same thing. The datu stops them when he can. Sympathy for the “vermin” will not be tolerated, but I wonder if the boys still care.

I am looking into the valley where this began. I cannot see any of the city outside the black anymore. It creeps out, and trees fall away into it. Fields vanish. The boys watch their home swallowed, perhaps forever.

More paladins are coming. We must halt whatever this is. I am ashamed that this shadow might be our doing. Have we failed Dramphine forever?

When the boys helped the others to run, so many kampilans were left behind to be taken by that creeping shadow. Remembering that makes me hopeful. Narek

May 3, 212 We have stopped the advance of the black mass. It sits still and quiet now, like a missing piece of the world. A ring around the blackness is beginning to rot. We abandoned the border to cauterize the wound. I hope that the gods will forgive us for surrendering any part of their world to that darkness.

There are over a hundred Dramphinians here now. All of the faithful of the forest came to stop the black shadow, but the paladins from the desert also arrived yesterday. There are more of them than I expected. They eat with us and sleep in our camp. Even now, I can see one of them, talking with one of the datu’s boys. Neither of them look angry.

The panic from the black space’s appearance has broken something in the datu’s soldiers. They are talking amongst themselves, ignoring their orders to congregate. There are two or three officers still trying to rouse them, but I wonder if the fire burning down this beautiful world has finally gone as far as it will go.This afternoon, after another attempt to pull the boys into a drill, one of them approached me. His eyes were not afraid, not weary. He told me something I will not write here, in case their plan goes wrong.Dramphine is here, in them and in me. Narek

October 29th, 212 I have walked the rainforest and the desert, through every village and every beylik. The clouds of doubt have lifted and I have found my purpose in all of their hearts. I walked with the beylik paladins, and with their soldiers into their cities. We showed the soldiers the hole in the world, and asked if they would still fight. We asked them if the death of the world was worth a bey’s lust to hold one more river bend. Every link of every chain has shattered.

Dramphine grants them power through me. Justice has come to this place. The Moon Wolf would wait at the door no longer. The war is over. No one will fight if it means ripping the world at its seam, and those who would force their people against each other have been brought low.

The beylik’s rats are changed by the thing in the forest, which the people call Blackwild. Their speech is slow and stammering. As they move closer to the void, their words become mixed, guttural. Unnatural. The affliction seems to calm somewhat as a rat travels further from the void.

The beys insist that the datus hatched a plot to open the Blackwild. They presented us with forged evidence of a pact with some unknown force beyond everything that exists. They say that the datus traded their city to steal the rats’ silent speech. The datus make the same accu�sation in reverse. Their evidence is also a lie, conjured proof of a wicked conspiracy to give the unnatural force their voice, in exchange for a darkness that would rid the forest of their kind forever.

Dramphine herself cannot discern the truth of this. Our magic fails to ascertain it and their words are made somehow flat, unreadable. I suspect the truth itself is lost, fallen into that horrible void forever. If that black void can hide something from even the lady’s lantern…

The sentencing is tomorrow. The warmon�gers who stoked the flames for so long will answer for it. The horrors they forced on this place will be accounted for. Her great justice, that of her people, will be done. Narek

March 5, 213 This place is united under a name. Arneria. The relationship is uneasy, but the beginning of something. The people are eating together, discussing the future of the home they’ve snatched from the ripping jaws of war. Old wounds may take generations to heal, but Dramphine’s most faithful will keep the peace for now. It is their true will, untarnished by fits of pique. They want peace, and peace is a seed that takes time and care to grow.

Pirhouans have begun to resurface in the new barangays, mice who have hidden among the people during all this violence. Their bethels have never taken hold before now—the Beast Mother does not belong in a place where her children cut each other down. We guard their keepers as they foster good faith in this newborn union. Our people are learning quickly, and I hope they can find their own way to pay penance for the lives wasted in spite of her teachings.

The wounded minds of the rats have healed, but the Blackwild still claws at them. The stammering speech and lost words persist when they are close to that unnatural place, but they are no longer in pain from it, at least. Many have already left for the west to study the affliction, and more will soon follow. The rats grieve their lost home. I grieve with them. I will visit their new homes soon.Peace will take time. But we will protect it with unbreakable will. Narek