2017 Altered Reality Event: The Lessons of Ceroj the Red

#1

Ceroj the Red was a Falosini, master among his peoples. Once ascended and a Sovereign over the Children of the Falosini, Ceroj was once considered to have his word be law… But now…everything had changed…

[to be continued]

#2

The tent was large, not the largest in the camp though, that honor was held by the Children of Falos tent where the Dra’khans of Ceroj held their ceremonies to his father. His father, Lord Falos, who led his people from their home dimension to countless distant shores. HIS FATHER, consider a god by those ignorant folk who could not distinguish great power and wisdom from immortality. Lord Falos had sacrificed himself once at the end of the K’ias Wars to restore peace to his own species and many many others. Then Lord Falos had been sacrificed at the end of the Border Wars to restore the Peace of Falos to the galaxy.

Ceroj sighed. He felt like his entire life had been the sacrifice of that which he loved. Maybe he had missed the lesson of selflessness his father Lord Falos tried to promote, but then again maybe that message had become twisted and bitter over time.

Ceroj the Red, ascended, and Sovereign among Falosini had an endless army of K’iorn, K’iou, Baribur and Vorin. He had many, many Kumfei Strategists passing his orders down to those combined forces called the Children of the Falosini. Yet Ceroj considered all these people both his army, and his charge. Those HE was responsible to protect. It was through this that the route of his descention lay.

First during the K’ias Wars, his entire family was slain, except his fellow Sovereigns, his daughter Ceros and his son Cero’opis. But children, grandchildren, mates, all were annihilated by K’ias Ziggurats during the K’ias Wars.

Then Ceroj lost his father…

Then his son Cero’opis became the Warden of the Hidden Dimension, a great honor, but one that meant Ceroj never saw his son again.

And then the travesty of the Glacial Wastes. His daughter, brave Ceros and her child Xoto, and her bravest and most loyal Archwing and skyknights had left to claim the egg-clutch of the Mother-Dragon End of Worlds. Along with her went the Forgemaster Ikatha the Unfreezing, and the Zaodonai To’min, with their respective K’iou and Dag’gog’goa, and their K’iorn and Vorin. And they all failed their Falosini Lord.

Ceroj had known the full truth, but his ascended state meant he had to keep so much of that truth a secret to allow the mortals involved to make their own choices. He had suffered in silence, first as his daughter was turned into the Quall Hive Queen Cerox (and later the experimental Technomantic monster Ceroxis with her Legion and Minions).

Then he had to keep silent knowing full well his final falosini grandchild Xoto was turned into the Quall Queen Ayx.

In each case he knew of a cure to the Quall infestation. In each case he had to refuse to give it, because it involved the Annihilation Leyas so forbidden by Lord Falos. The same Annihilation Leyas that had opened up the K’ias Emperor to possession by the Ancient Evils and the Warmonger. Ceroj knew the madness of Annihilation Leyas could even affect an ascended being, and break apart their true view of the cosmos with the rips and rends in reality that Annihilation created.

He knew it because he had suffered it. For aeons he had held a hard line against Annihilation. A hard line against K’ias and their ilk. And a hard line against Time Shredders.

Then when his father Lord Falos returned to life, restored by a K’ias Sarcophagus through the power of annihilation at the height of the Border Wars, Ceroj was first overjoyed.

He wondered if his ages of hatred of Annihilation Leyas had been misplaced. He immediately set out to learn all he could about it, and through it he was able to learn of much that had been hidden. Dark and evil things, true, and some led him down the road to being captured by the Ancient Evils, unable to do anything as a puppet to one of them, fighting off allies and adversaries alike.

He had to stand by and watch as his Lord Falos equally was taken over by Xephon one of the four highest Ancient Evils, and sacrificed to drive Xephon into the blade of the Daemonsbane sword.

Ceroj wept…

Then he dried his face, knowing he would have to show a brave face to the Colonial visitors. Ever since the Earthers had come to Refuge, this planet had become a major focus of the war against the Quall and the War against the Warmonger Cult.

But unknown to most that was because this planet was linked to the prison dimension of Les’tas’tral. The place the spirit of Warmonger had been imprisoned since the end of the K’ias Wars. Then he had finally escaped this year, only to be bound to a Quall body and annihilated. In a ritual both rare and almost impossible to time, the Warmonger had been destroyed finally and utterly in this timeline.

And the value of both the planet Refuge and the prison dimension of Les’tas’tral had fallen to zero in the mind of Ceroj. It was only a source of his grief.

But with his last bits of ascended knowledge before his fall, Ceroj had ripped a certain ritual from the cosmos. A ritual that would allow him to ride a time loop created by another. It would allow him to jack a ride on another’s already successful time travel trip, without altering the timeline, without resulting in any changes in the past or present.

#3

He would need three things, and two of those three were already being recovered by his elite K’iorn Dra’koons, Baribur Skyknights, Vorin Snipers and K’iou Greshai.

One of his smaller armies of only a few hundred soldiers was already raiding the Aerie of the Doomwyrms for Doomwyrm eggs.

Another was raiding the Hidden Keep of Roan Desdaemon. They were there to sink a section of the illusive and mazelike keep, and recover the Armor of the Highest Zaodonai, worn by the last Starfalcon High King. Ceroj knew the High King had sacrificed himself, trapping the endless armies of Warmonger in an endless time loop preventing them from joining their master for his final battle.

And without his endless armies, the Warmonger had lost in the end.

But the High King was still trapped in time, looped as part of the same temporal trap that bound the Warmonger to his final fate in the Glacial Wastes.

Ceroj could use this loop but he needed one last thing to act as his tool, the blood and bodypart of a K’ias who had been drawn through time and was touched by annihilation.

There was but one legendary K’ias who had done both. And he was Rurik, from whom the Rurik scepter was forged.

Ceroj had tortured enough Uthvelor prisoners of War to discover that Neliff the Orthodox had escaped with the Rurik Scepter back to the Cloud Slaver Mountains between the Goblin Lands and the Lost Domes and the Valley of Vegalia. Here the Yyan Empire had a resugurence under Neliff guidance. But they were suffering horrific losses.

Much to Ceroj’s humor it was the Armies of Quall under Queen Ayx, born of his own grandchild, that led the charge to wipe out neliff and convert their Yyan into Quall. It was eating away the defenses of the Yyan Empire Fort Tropo where the Rurik Scepter was being held.

But Ceroj would have to fight past a Yyan Army on the way in, and a Quall army on the way out which was why he had not committed his troops to the battle yet. Ceroj thought the Falosoini were worth more than the K’iorn, K’iou and other races of the Children of the Falosini. He thought they were better in every way.

Despite his almost chess-like view of how to use them on the battlefield to protect their Falosini leaders, he still valued each and every soldier in his army no matter what their species. Except for Dag’gog’goa, those Bastards were born without a name for precisely the purpose of their use as trap fodder, he thought.

He hoped this negotiation would be fruitful. He knew that Candidate W had reached out to him, and he knew it foolish to offend a man who could one day launch Earther Atomics at people he didn’t like. Alongside him was the enigmatic General Vulfrym.

For someone to be an enigma to an ascended being was quite a feat. For that someone to also hold the role of General in a military with the might of the EEF was deeply concerning. Ceroj didn’t know what relationship the enigmatic General Vulfrym and the Candidate W shared. And he would need to know that, and more.

He looked down at the sword that had rode at his side since the early days of the K’ias Wars.
A sword he recovered from a K’ias stronghold. A mysterious sword that had been called the Myr Fluv’su Legna, forged in the style of a Sovereign’s sword and unknown to any of the stronghold’s inhabitants even under the most intense of interrogations. Its blade was finest annihilator bone, its hilt forged from an unknown material, powerfully obscured.

The sword had served him for aeons, cut down innumerable K’ias, Krato, Yyan, Quall, Uthvelor and Pelebor.

He wondered if he would need this blade again today.

#4

Part 2: How NOT to handle a moment of diplomatic confusion.

Candidate W sat across from the mighty Falosini Sovereign. As a Vlahadassi, he knew that the Sovereign looked down at the mating of the Vorin and Earther that had spanned W’s kind. And Ceroj did everything to make it clear he was right for feeling that way.

“Candidate…Wengyr…I have many operations running simultaneously,” said Ceroj, “But I made time to meet with you. I definitely wish to know what you are seeking…”

But Ceroj seemed to trail off in that moment staring at General Vulfrym who was standing alongside Candidate W.

Before Ceroj could say a word, there was a swirling of earth and shadow Leyas as his elite officers returned from their missions.

In the hands of Five Dra’koons were held the eggs of Doomwyrms. Ceroj felt an unnatural joy fill his heart, a joy he had not felt since his descencion. Then another swirl of leyas as more of his soldiers returned carrying a single set of armor, the famed Starfalcon Armor of the K’iorn High King.

Now the last third of his plan needed to go into effect. At first he was tempted to invited Candidate W to join them, to see what the half-breed could bring to the battle. But again the presence of Vulfrym resulted in Ceroj hesistating and trying again to breach the obscurements around the strange nondescript General.

Finally with luck and his immense power he pierced the veil of obscurements around Vulfrym. His eyes widened in horror. It was a K’ias…a K’ias here. And not just any K’ias, one whose aura had been damaged by prolonged exposure to Annihilation Leyas and Time Shredding. Had one of the ascended beings sent him a gift? He wondered…

He never suspected the balance was at work.

Yet Ceroj did see his opportunity. An opportunity to avoid the assault on the Yyan Fortress, and the inevitable losses they would face.

Candidate W was asking after the new threat, the Quallyyan. Giant monsterous quall the size of a WarGiant. Ceroj suspected it was a result of Neliff experimentation on the Yyan that the Quall were capturing and using as Hosts for the larval young of Queen Ayx.

Ceroj told him just enough to let W take it back to his masters and alert them to the real threat that the Quallyyan of Ayx would mean for all enemies of the Quall N’drone. And as the eyes of W, and his coterie widened, as they were distracted by such thoughts, Ceroj made his move.

A single swing of the sword Myr Fluvsu Legna came down on Vulfrym, severing the k’ias’ hand and a section of forearm. As the hand spun through the air, Vulfrym panicked lifting up his sword and bringing it down. Ceroj was not the only one at the table with a relic weapon.

Vulfrym’s sword was the Punishment of the Left Hand, a sword forged by the K’ias Jkutu, also called Domino. Domino had been a founder of the Church of One, and he had personally bathed the sword in the blood and quenched the blade in the flesh of countless Children of the Falosini prisoners. It was a blade of darkest evil, and as the blade touched the ground shadows extended from it in all directions.

Everyone across the entire camp fell dead, the lifeforce drained from their bodies by the unholy blade.

Candidate W was the first up and alive again, his regenerating arm saving his life once again. Ironic to consider it was the arm of the Bishop Kasanth that saved W from Domino’s battleblade.

He looked up to see Ceroj had regenerated as well.

Ceroj was already using the blood from Vulfyrm’s severed arm to inscribe the ritual marks on the Starfalcon Armor. The old Falosini felt a moment of bliss as the ritual activated and the Annihilation Leyas drew Ceroj, his Dra’koons and the five doomwyrm eggs back in time. There was a flash of red light and they were gone…

Candidate W looked out of the tent and saw that Quall Warriors were beginning to swarm the camp. He suspected they saw the massive shadow wave that disabled the camp and thought it was a signal to attack. If he had been watching the camp it would have been when he would sent the word to the BFF to launch the attack. Then he saw the head of one of the Quallyyan approaching. It was terrifying to see one so large, breathing fire, setting the tops of trees alight.

He backed into the tent, placed his hand on the ground and used its immense power to restore the life of all the deceased defenders of the camp. They were discombobulated and many fell to Quall in those first moments of melee, but others survived and fought back.

W turned to Vulfrym and Childeen, and the trio agreed a tactical retreat back to the aircraft that flew them in would be preferable to implantation by a Quall Queen.

#5

Epilogue

Childeen Blackheart watched the feed from his proprietary drone in flight above the Mysterious Keep of Lord Roan Desdaemon.

He saw what looked like armed armatures fighting off the K’iorn when a flash of Red Light appeared and from them flew massive dragons. Not simply the lithe juvenile dragons of the Doomwyrm Aerie, these were truly ancient Wyrms of Reknown. They each were large enough to pickup and carry sections of the K’iorn Army to safety.

Ceroj was at their lead, his once pristine red cowl and cloak now tattered and worn. The starscape of his Falosini face was dimmed but for his eyes which glowed twice as bright. In his hand, he held the bridle of one of the Doomwyrms. In the other he held the sword, Myr Fluv’su Legna, now glowing with energy. He sheathed the sword, lifted up the Armor of the Starfalcon High King and dropped it down, returning it to the angry armatures who reverently carried it back into their mysterious castle. And with that the siege of the fortress of Lord Roan ended.

Ceroj and his army flew off a distance into the sky before finally teleporting away.

“Ceroj could have annihilated them? He had the dragons. Why didn’t he?” asked Vulfrym looking over his shoulder.

“Because of a variety of reasons, most of them diplomatic,” said Childeen, “The Question I want to know is where did Ceroj go when he was traveling? You noticed the color when he Time Shredded away?”

“Red…the only being I know who has used a red flash when Time Shredding was the Krato General Tharr,” muttered Vulfrym with concern.

Candidate W quietly watched through the window as the Dragons of Ceroj arrived and began to annihilate the Quallyyan attacking the camp. Ceroj looked older and worn after his journey across time and space.

But even a Quall army could not stand against the Dragons of Ceroj…