The Underground Masque

Fiction short story JC Milan January 6, 2025 1 Comments

The Assignment Whispers

“You cut a lonely silhouette, hawk of the South,” came a voice laced with honey and poison. Without turning, Sorian felt her presence—Lady Lysandra, clad in flowing crimson silks lined with obsidian trim. Her mask, shaped like an elegant tulip, concealed all but her ruby lips. “Surely the infamous Sorian Vale did not come to merely bask in the performance.”

Sorian raised his head, his lips curling ever so slightly into a smirk. “Lady Lysandra. To what do I owe the honor of your venom this fine evening?”

“Don’t be coy. We both know why you’re here.” She extended a scroll sealed with a black wax sigil—a coiled wyvern. “You’ve been chosen.”

Though he accepted the scroll without hesitation, Sorian’s heart sank. The wyvern seal belonged to the High Magister of the Meridian Circle—a council in the shadows that controlled the balance of power across the known realms. To be "chosen" by them was to be bound to an unshakable, often deadly, pursuit. Yet refusal was not an option, not unless one desired to lose their head—and far more.

The Betrayer's Trail

The scroll, once unfurled in the privacy of a hidden chamber deep within the palace, revealed its grim contents. A name: Darvyn Cael. A crime: high treason against the Circle. A location: the Shattered Wastes, beyond the great Emberline Chasm.

“He used to be my instructor,” Sorian muttered to himself, the ghost of resentment lacing the words. Darvyn Cael had been the one to train Sorian in the ways of survival and subterfuge many moons ago, teaching him to kill with precision and silence. For Darvyn to betray the Circle meant layers deeper than any straightforward treachery.

As Sorian smoothed the parchment and burned it swiftly in the chamber’s hearth, a distant memory clawed its way to the surface—Darvyn’s gritted voice as he imparted wisdom that had become Sorian’s mantra. “Trust no one. Least of all yourself. That’s where the blade finds an easy home.”

The Hunt

The Shattered Wastes were a pale expanse of broken dunes and jagged obsidian cliffs, lit only by cruel twin moons in an otherwise starless sky. Sorian moved swiftly, his boots silent against the infertile ground. The same dragonhide armor he had worn at the Masque now bore faint bloodstains and ash from days of relentless travel. Overhead, the sound of distant predators—phantom raptors or worse—reminded him that even the air in this cursed land could kill.

A trail had been carefully laid and obscured. Yet to Sorian’s trained eye, the broken lines of shifted stone and a faint pattern of footprints told a different story: Darvyn was toying with him. Leading him, no doubt, into the jaws of some carefully engineered trap.

The Revelation

It wasn’t a trap, though. At least, not the kind Sorian expected.

When he finally found Darvyn, perched atop a high hive of craggy stone, the older man wore an expression of grim determination and sorrow. The years had weathered his once-imposing frame, leaving a wiry hardness to his posture. His robes, once marked with the Circle’s sigils, were tattered but still bore their iconic teal and gold hues.

“You shouldn’t have come, Sorian,” Darvyn called, his voice wavering slightly but no less sharp. “This is bigger than you, than me, than any of them."

“Betrayal is never bigger than the blood spilled because of it,” Sorian shot back, drawing his dagger—a slim, gleaming shard etched with primal glyphs. Its edge seemed impossibly thin, sharp enough to sever not just flesh but spirit.

Darvyn raised a hand, not to summon magic but as if to plead. “You don’t understand. The Circle—they command power, but they’ve lost their way. I found something, Sorian. Something ancient. Something..."

“...You stole something,” Sorian cut him off, closing the gap between them slowly. “What was it worth, Darvyn? What could—for all the realms’ gold—drive you to this?”

The older man’s expression darkened, and he reached into the satchel slung across his back. From its depths, he produced a star-shaped crystal pulsating with a pale, otherworldly light.

"This," Darvyn whispered. "This has the power to unmake everything. The Circle seeks to hoard it, to use it, to destroy entire worlds to maintain their control.” He looked directly into Sorian’s eyes. “They sent you, the man I trusted most, because they’re afraid of the truth."

An Impossible Choice

Sorian stood frozen, torn between duty and the weight of Darvyn’s words. He had not survived the dark underbelly of the realms this long by being a pawn. Conflicting currents crashed through his mind as Darvyn thrust the crystal toward him, desperation etched into every line of his tired face.

“You have to see it, Sorian. It’s not betrayal if it saves more than it destroys.”

The dagger in Sorian’s hand wavered. Memories flooded back: Darvyn teaching him to fight, to survive, to question everything. Then came the faces of the people he had eliminated on the Circle’s orders—the innocents, the liars, the guilty and the blameless.

Could this be a step too far? Was redemption not for the lost at all?

Genre: Dark Fantasy/Thriller

The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: The Golden Rule is Misleading Garbage Advice for Marriage!

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