---

Deos made men brave and strong.
To fight for right and face the wrong.

It was a silly childhood rhyme, but Hesiod had been repeating the words in his head for the last several days. It had became a prayer, more to his childhood than to Deos. The last few days had him pining for a simpler time.

His father had taught it to him when he was a small child hardly old enough to speak. Hesiod had been born on campaign, twenty years ago in the Serapium. The city had been delivered to the Milatids and he had been granted the "Honor" - he didn't understand it at the time - of living in the palace of the extinct line of the long extinct Copsid God-Kings. The people of the pale desert worshiped animals as gods, bearing no human form. Their statues dotted the ancient palace, visages of the worst gargoyles, bent and wrenching with hideous faces twisted in over-exaggerated grins or grimaces shaped in stone. The laughing antelope God, the horrible roaring Shaglion, scores of laughing monkeys and angry ape-men, they had all haunted him at night. Growing up in that palace, he had known few real dangers, but he had been certain that he was going to be eaten by one of the granite beasts all the same. No amount of nurses or servants could convince him otherwise.

It was his father that had finally calmed his nerves. "You have nothing to fear from animals." he repeated the same tired words that the nurses had said. "Principally not those animals." Hesiod did not remember what else had been said that night. He only remembered his father, the flickering torchlight dancing across lotus-flower columns and walls painted with flat river scenes in the overwhelming darkness. Onesimos Milatus had been a young man then, his hair still a curly black with nothing on his face but a small patch of fuzz underneath his nose. To others he must have looked young - a man who had been a boy when Syros first left the homeland to conquer the earth as was his right. To Hesiod, cowering in the dark, his father had been the closest thing to a God that he knew.

"Deos sent his daughters to look after us." his father had said, "Do not be afraid, child. Those old gods have no power anymore. You are stronger than the dead."

He had taken those words with him throughout his life. It had marched with him across the known world, defeating the enemies of Syros. When they died on the battlefield, they no longer posed a threat. It wasn't until now that his fathers words had been proven wrong. The death of Syros the Indomitable, Syros the Worldwalker, Syros who wore every crown, had been brought about by two dead men.

Hesiod opened his eyes. The world was a blur of red washed in the last traces of darkness. Around him, in the cold that nipped at his nose and chilled his skin, he could hear the horses and the first early risers stirring. The smell of goat-sausage crackling in makeshift helmet pans and the mutters of soldiers talking in hushed voices surrounded him as he slowly remembered where he was. Two days ago, the morning after Syros died, he had been sent to lead the outriders in their search for the Rhumid raiders that had changed the world.

It was a week ago that Galos, the only grown son of Syros the Always-Marching, led a small party to overtake the raiders that had been harassing their efforts across the salt-desert. The Rhumids were a tribal people, and most of their tribes were friends to the Calydonians, but a few had chosen to defy them instead. They had no hope of every succeeding against the armies that Syros had led against Empires - the Rhumids fought unarmored, with wooden spears and yak-hide shields - and their defiance had been no more than a small annoyance. So it was by poor chance that a Rhumid arrow -some whittled shaft tipped in stone - managed to smite the heir and put in motion the greatest calamity to befall them all.

Hesiod crawled out of his bedroll and brushed the dust off of his linens. Red dust covered everything in the Rhumi desert. It was a fine powder, carved out of the beaten red cliffs that watched over them. Most of the desert was a series of plateaus and rock formations rising out of the dirt like twisted fingers pointing toward the rusty sky. Ice and snow topped the tallest of them, which the dust turned pink and made them look like icing on top of porous stone pastries. The only way through them was a maze of crags and yak trails, which would have been intraversible if not for their Rhumid guides. In some places, it opened up to small spring-fed valleys or oasis's, where they could find grazing ground for their horses or Rhumid tribesmen to trade with.

And then there was the salt-desert.

Stretching endlessly to the west, the salt-desert carved through the Rhumid mountains like the bed of a long-dried sea. It was miles of cracked milk-white salty soil with no moisture but the occasional foul puddle of stagnate salt water. In its center, the Rhumid mountains looked like far off mirages so distant that it made a person feel hopeless. Fresh food and water had to be carted in from the pale lands to the south, as did feed for their mounts and a variety of other supplies. Syros had ordered the construction of a road to follow the armies across the Rhumid lands. Their march had slowed down as a result, but the men toiled all the same. Stone by stone went in place all because Syros had ordered it. For the Calydonians, their King commanded total authority, and his proposal to conquer the far west promised them wealth beyond what they had taken so far. Traders from the western sea brought heaps of jade, silk, and silver through the bridged straight that connected them to the civilized world. When Syros had announced his plans to conquer the west, his advisers had suggested he do so by sea. Calydon's power had always been at land, however, and the ships of the west were rumored to be like wooden castles, the biggest dwarfing even cities. The only land route was through the Rhumid mountains, and Syros conquered the logistics with his road.

Thinking about all that had been lost when Syros died made Hesiod feel numb, and the cold Rhumid winds did not help. He wrapped himself in the yak fur riding jacket he had purchased from the Rhumids with peppercorns. Wind whistled mournfully through gaps and pours in the blush rock faces, but they were spared from most of it's chill. The sky was still purple, save for the east where the rising sun colored the horizon like an old bruise - red crowning a sickly yellow.

Across a smouldering campfire, the Rhumid guide Wkantet was grooming a shaggy beast of a yak. Wkantet had the features of his people - the dark, wind burnt skin that was somewhere between beige and grey, the fine black hair and sparse whiskers, the slight, willowy build and bony features. He looked like he was in his middling years, though the hard lives that the Rhumid's lived made them look worse off for their age. He wore a vibrantly dyed shawl, colored like the rainbow, over simpler yak-hide clothes.

As gentle as a mother nursing her child, the Rhumid pulled a finger-sized knife from his belt and slit the shin of the Yak. Blood colored the animal's thick fur a wet red. Wkantet placed a small wooden bowl full of dried yogurt and mixed it with the blood. The yak did nothing.

Hesiod wiped the dew from inside his bronze open-face helm, feeling the cold of the porous metal beneath his fingers. "If you do that too many times, you will kill it." he said.

Wkantet did not look away. "The Yak can take this once a day. He knows. We nurture each other, man and beast. In this way we are one against nature."

It was easy to see that the Rhumids relied on their Yak-herds for life. Fur, skin, milk, blood, meat, transport, the animals provided their livelihoods and they loved them for it. Hesiod had known many a rider who treated their horses with the same affection. The relations where built on necessity. Need, and a respect for what that need meant, was the cornerstone of the strongest relations.

Hesiod picked up the light linen cuirass and buckled it on. It was milk-white, trimmed with copper bone-snakes and a stamped iron disk in the center of the chest portraying a swirling snake skeleton. Linen was a soft fabric when left alone, but once made into armor it became a lacquered shell. They dipped strips of the cloth in resinous glue and placed them across a simple leather frame, twenty two layers thick. With little more than a breastplate and a skirt, he had taken to wearing yak-skin pants so that his legs did not stiffen up from the cold.

A shout rang out, and Hesiod found himself grabbing for his scabbard lying on the ground. The sound of galloping came from the south, and soon a group of riders rode urgently up to the guards at the edge of the camp. They wore dented bronze half-helms and linen breastplates. A pair of banners fluttered above them. One portrayed a snake skeleton - the bone-snake - against a field of green. The wind whipped at it and concealed the words sewn beneath the snake, but Hesiod knew them. The second banner was white on black - an eight spoked wheel centered by a sunburst.

Wkantet studied the fluttering banners curiously. The outriders themselves had seen no use in carrying them, and he had only seen them in the hustle of larger encampments.

"Are those symbols under those bones... writing, as you have spoken?" he asked. He kept one bony brown-grey hand on the Yak's fur as if he was reaching out for something familiar.

"The cry of my ancestor Milatides" Hesiod answered, "We live long enough." The real cry had been 'We have lived long enough', and though that was a good thing to shout in battle, it sounded desperate outside of war. Milatides had lived long enough to sire a dynasty, for whatever credence that gave to his words. The bone-snake banner meant that his father had sent the messengers.

"And what of the wheel?" Wkantet asked.

Hesiod hesitated. "That is the wheel of creation." he answered. It was carried more as a prayer than out of any sort of necessity. The carriers were looking for protection from the Goddesses. That was troublesome. The armies of Syros had been in disarray following his death. The question of who was to rule, if anyone, was on everybody's mind. Hidden alliances and unspoken schemes had become the order of the day. Hesiod's father Onesimos had felt it was to send outriders in an attempt to find the Rhumid raiders who had killed Galos so they could be brought to justice. It was something, his father had said, that could bring them back together.

The arrival of the messengers dashed Hesiod's confidence. They looked frightened, and tired. When the camp-guard pointed them to Hesiod, the first rider gave him a look so mournful that it sent a chill riding down his spine.

"General Hesiod." the first rider said as they rode up. Their banners lost the wind and hung down limply as he spoke.

"Captain Hesiod." Hesiod reminded. "What news do you bring?"

"You are needed back." the messenger said, his voice hasteful. "The situation on the salt-flat has worsened. All men are being called back."

"How is my father?" Hesiod asked nervously, "My brother?"

"You need to see him." the messenger replied tentatively. "Things are heading toward war."

Hesiod nodded. War. He knew it had became nearly inevitable, but he had hoped - perhaps passed a shadow of a real chance - that they would succeed in coming to terms. Now it was clear that this was not true. The families of Calydonia, who had conquered the world behind Syros the Peacemaker, were going to tear each other apart.

He looked at the men who had gathered around him and nodded again. The small encampment began to pack up quickly. What didn't go on horseback piled into Wkantet's yak-back packs. Hesiod gave a sharp whistle and waited. Around the corner of a sharp patch of weeping red rock, Titan bounded with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and blood-red slober painting the fur around his muzzle.

Titan was a War Mastiff - the biggest of the large Calydonian breeds of work dogs. The smaller breeds were the size of wolfs, and were found everywhere in the homeland guarding the homes of peasants or herds of goat. The larger breeds fulfilled more specialized roles - guarding important people, hunting, fighting in the pit. None of them could stand against a War Mastiff. Titan was common for his breed - he was as tall as a pony and his limbs were trunks of muscle. He had a brown-red brindle coat that danced in the morning light. Calydonian horses were breed alongside the dogs, and both animals grew used to each other. Foreign horses were frightened of the massive hounds, however. A pack of mastiffs following a Calydonian detachment of horse often meant the difference between victory and defeat.

Titan fell in step as Hesiod mounted his horse. It was a Copsid breed - a horse breed by the people of the pale desert to move swiftly. The Copsid's preferred mares for this reason. Their horsemen took to battle unarmored and they strafed their enemies with bows and javelins before riding off. Hesiod has gained a healthy respect for them, and he preferred them over the bulky Calydonian war horses.

Wkantet climbed upon his yak as if it were a horse. It was a thick, hairy beast with stumpy legs and a drooping head, but it surprised Hesiod with how fast it could move. The yak could keep up with their horses at a trot, though any faster and it was forced to lag behind. This might have been a disadvantage in the open plains, but the paths that winded through the jagged rusty towers of the Rhumid desert were uneven and rocky. There was no place in the mountains to bring a horse to it's full speed.

Wkantet kept pace on top of his shaggy mount, sacks and pots swaying gently from the poles that straddled the animal's back. He pulled his woven rainbow shawl closer to him as they left the shadow of a wind-breaking rock. His eyes were on Titan, and he kept a distance from the huge mastiff as it ambled contentedly between them.

"Your Big King..." Wkantet said slowly. It sounded like he was unsure how to proceed, because he did not know the words or because he was afraid of offending. "Do you have no way... no tradition of finding another to fill his chair?"

"His throne." Hesiod corrected politely. "Sons are usually favored, unless another family member is preferred by the priesthood. But Syros left behind no family..."

This wasn't strictly true. Queen Lyca, the mother of Galos, still lingered somewhere. She had retreated to mourn after her husband's death, and Hesiod had heard nothing of here since. Naturally, she was not in the line of succession. Some blamed her for their disarray. Several times throughout her life, she and Syros had announced that she was with child. Only once did the pregnancy produce a living heir.

"No family?" Wkantet said incredulous. "Pah. No brothers, no uncles?"

"Solon, our King's father, was the only royal survivor of the Pinkblood Plague from a century ago. It killed near half the country, as old men like to tell. Like many in his generation did, Solon feared the end of his line and sired many sons and daughters. Syros had been first child."

"But the brothers and sisters... they do not live?"

Hesiod shook his head soberly. "Peris died earlier in the first conquests, defending his brother. His sister Nora brought her own death at a young age, jilted by some courtier boy who she claimed to love. Mela, his other sister, died of a fever that also took the newborn son Orum. Braddus died... he just died, no reason could be explained, while he was enjoying the company of three camp followers. And the youngest, Mordici, led the royal navy and went missing on patrol during a storm."

Wkantet was silent for a moment. "Such bad luck. Solon must have upset the justice of the earth in terrible ways."

Hesiod said nothing. He knew little about the Rhumid beliefs and kept quite about them. He knew that there were men who hid among the ranks had spied for apostates to report to the priests, and the priesthoods were a complication he had no interest in tangling with.

He began to catch the faint sour scent of the salt-plain. It was getting closer. The image of it - the alabaster expanse, so white that it made the red horizon seem clearer and brighter. It was perfectly flat, save for the foothills that met it in the pink salty dust at the edge of the plain. The thought of that place pained him. It reminded him of the games.

Syros had been seated on a makeshift dais, built from cheap wood pirated off of broken wagons and used barrels. Red silk and purple velvet had been draped haphazardly onto poles in order to protect Syros and his queen from the hateful sun. It did not matter how unfinished it looked - When Syros stepped onto the dais, with his resplendent golden armor decorated with the faces of the Goddesses and draped with fine purple silk, no amount of rotting wood could take away from his magnificence. He had seen sixty eight summers, and he had ruled for fifty of them. Fifty bloody summers. Looking at him, nobody doubted that he had conquered the known world. He was halfway from six feet to seven, with shoulders as broad as a bear and the face of a man made to be King of other men - strong, sculpted, with a fatherly warmth. His hair had turned gray in his old age, but Hesiod could remember when it was still a bushy brown.

The competitions followed one another. There was wrestling and boxing, archery and shot-put, followed by foot races of the two and three legged kind. They lasted for a week - the morning filled with competition, and the evenings given to feasting and drinking. On the final day, a chariot race was held. Syros watched from the dais. Hesiod had no handle of chariots, but Onesimos knew them well. Hesiod had watched proudly as his father took to the race against the other families, big and small. Scylla, the War-Woman, had scandalized the racers when she chose to enter the contest, as did Gregorios the eighty two year old retired royal guard who had chafed under the insults of younger men, and Htet-Wen, a Rhumid who had been eager to learn the ways of the Calydonians.

For three rounds the race had done been a whirl of excitement. Onesimos had followed directly behind Gregorios, trying to pass the old man to no avail. Scylla held the front of the race, while Htet-Wen had failed to gain any advantage. The rest of the field had been a blur of chariots with the banners of their families blazing behind them. The bone-snake flew in the center, behind Gregorious simple guardsman's shield and in front of a chariot flying a banner of red with the scale of law and sword of war in its center. Scylla's multi-headed monster against blue-gray seemed to be winning.

And then Gregorious died. It had not been obvious at first, but something in the old man's body had given out and his life fled him immediately. In his old age, he had the wisdom of strapping his feet in place, so it was not clear what was happening when he slumped to the side. His horses followed suit - well trained war beasts who would go anywhere until the last minute. They barreled through the crowd, and all of the cheering ceased. People got out of the way, but the frightened animals would have nothing of it. Kicking and dashing, they were wild, and when Syros approached them his immortal words could not quiet them.

"Be still." he said.

A horse responded by kicking him in the head. He fell, and he was trampled.

Soon, they were going downhill and the flat-white of the salt desert could be seen on the distant horizon through the dagger peaks of the red Rhumid mountains. The Milatid camp had been hastily brought up amongst scrub-choked hillocks and broken boulders. Titan bounded ahead, pink dust following his trail. A watchtower had been hastily erected by forcing a pole into the ground and tying a knotted rope to its top. The watcher stood on a simple plank of boards, and he watched Hesiod with sadness in his eyes. Hesiod felt uneasy. He has seen the same look in the eyes of the messengers who came to retrieve him.

The scene Hesiod arrived to was not what he expected. A host of hoplites, some battered and bloodied, gathered mournfully around a funeral pyre. The oil-slicked wood had been raised on stilts, providing a bed for the corpse to lay. Green banners flailed in the angry wind, twisting the thin-ribbed bonesnake noisily in the air above. They looked at Hesiod with their heads bowed down. For some, it looked like prayer, while others looked as if they were ashamed.

Hesiod understood immediately. His heart hit him with waves - first sorrow, then fear, then hate. The feelings mixed within his mind, a swirl of anxiety, and he leapt off his horse and dashed toward the pyre. His hands pulled him up the ladder with wartime energy, thrusting to the top.

Onesimos, Patriarch of the Milatids and father to Hesiod, had died grievously. He still wore the soiled green tunic he had been murdered in, the cloth around his stomach blackened with thick crusty blood. His body had turned pale, but faint hints of deadly bruised pools still lingered on his flesh. Hesiod pulled his father's corpse to him, letting the cool congealing blood oozing from his fatal wounds stain his pure-white armor. Tears burned like salt on his eyes. He was an orphan now, the child of two dead parents. His thoughts turned to his brother, who was no doubt unfeelingly staring at his books, counting every turnip and pinching every coin. It was no fault that he had no feelings, but in a moment like this it hurt Hesiod to think how little his brother cared about anything.

"Who did this?!?" Hesiod shouted, his voice hoarse.

"The other Patriarchs killed him. They are accusing everyone who was in that race. Scylla fled. You're father..." Rocles shouted up. Rocles was a grizzled old hoplite - a Veteran of twenty years who captained the vanguard. He wore a bushy beard the color of smoke, and his skin was windburned and scarred.

"My father... the father of us all!" Hesiod could feel the anger in his own voice. It heated him, and filled him with murderous thoughts. "He loved Syros, our King! Whatever plot he has been accused of is a plot against us and our people!"

There was a silence. He had their attention. Wiping the dampness from his eye with the linen of his sleeve, he looked down at them. They were hoplites dressed in bronze and leather and armored linen, hefting spears with metal tips. Others were dressed in common clothing, wearing a piece of armor or two at best - usually helmets, but some wore spaulders or greaves. There were archers too, floppy straw hats protecting their eyes from the sun. Some men had swords or daggers hanging at their sides, while some had nothing more than their first weapon. A company of Rhumid warriors had joined them as well, holding square wicker shields painted in bright colors. They were mostly unarmored, though some wore wooden chest-plates that protecting only their front, while others had been granted pieces from their Calydonian allies. The Rhumids all had the same brown-grey coloring, and their bony faces were stern.

"Did you fight for my father?" Hesiod yelled. "Did your blood flow around him like a moat, or did you abandoned the fight?" Deep inside, he wanted to blame them. They did not seem rebuked by his words. Rather, they stood and stared grievingly.

"Your brother ordered it." Rocles stated. "He wished us to join your first, before out march."

"Did you agree with this?" Hesiod answered. The old veteran nodded. Hesiod understood. They could not have fought there unprepared. They were looking for their next commander, for somebody to gather around. They were looking for him.

"We will avenge him!" Hesiod screamed, drawing his sword and pointing it toward the heavens. "The forces that conspired against us will remember that we did not live as goats in the herd! We a lions in the rushes! Look to your spears, men, because you'll be shoving them up their asses soon enough!"

An angry hoot echoed through the ranks once, than twice. "Come on, boys." Rocles added. "We have lived long enough!"

"We have lived long enough!" the soldiers echoed in turn. They began to form lines, riled by the call to war. Spears glistened in the rising sunlight and salty dust blushed in the air. Hesiod mounted his horse and found Wkantet, who had came to the small company of Rhumid warriors. His hand was placed on the shoulder of their leader.

"Be strong, but do not die. I do not want to tell your mother that you have died." he said to the tallest of the Rhumid's - a man of average a height that would be average to a Calydonian but was tall for the men of the red mountains. He had lighter gray-beige skin and wore a snow-leopard pelt over his clothing.

"I will fight true, cousin." the Rhumid said. "Our people made me champion for such a task. My spear will find its target and my name will be worthy."

Hesiod felt a twinge of guilt for leading them onto the battlefield in a war they had no part in. It had never bothered him before, but the death of his father was fresh on his mind and he was nursing a sadness filled with hate. "Who is your cousin, Wkantet?" Hesiod asked.

"Heitut. He is the champion of my people." Wkantet said mournfully. "We did not think this was a fight we would see."

"Neither did we." Hesiod muttered. "But we will see it."

It is said that in ancient times, the families of deceased kings would pay great sums of money to hire masses of paid mourners to weep for the passing of the dead liege. But if one were to compensate the grieving throngs that lined the streets of Heliocarsus on this day, all the coffers of Calydon would be emptied.

The entire city had gathered itself along the periphery of the Sisters' Way - the cobble thoroughfare that ran from the walls up to the Acropolis mount. Men with somber faces watched from between marble colonnades as their women crowded the road with tear-moisted eyes. A million wailing voices cried to the heavens as two horse-driven carts clattered up the road to the Mount of the Eight. The escort of honor guards draped in purple robes lead the wagons through the city, dispersing the mourning citizens back to the alabaster facades and chiseled columns on the edge of the street. But as the sandal-clad feet of the spear-armed warriors passed by, weeping girls surged back and cast garlands of posies and roses into the road. A fragrant carpet of flowers blanketed the road and crunched under the hooves of the drawhorses. Within the windows and upon the rooftops, onlookers gathered and looked down into the silk awning stretched over each wagon and sobbed. There, nestled within mounds of velvet cushions and pillows, passed Syros the Unbowed followed by Galos - his lone heir.

They had come from the very fringe of the known world; carried across the seas on a funeral barge escorted by a squadron of Calydonian biremes up the mouth of the River Helos from the hateful Rhumid wastes that had stolen both their lives. There was to be no jubilation this time, no funerary games held in the honor of Syros as there had been with Galos; the hearts of Calydon's people were too laden with grief to remember their fallen king and prince in happiness. There was only sorrow to be shown as Syros the Indomitable and his prince rode to their final worldly destination: the Mount of the Eight. Only there, on the very spot where Deos had spilled his blood to give rise to the Eight Sisters, could the people of Calydon find a piece of earth worthy of submitting their esteemed king and his son to the divine beyond upon.

Even along the narrow switchbacks where the Sisters' Way slithered up the granite hill upon which the Acropolis stood, citizens wishing to see their noble king one last time gathered upon the rocky cliffs to bid farewell. On jagged ledges scarcely wide enough for goats, small congregations of the more youthful and athletic onlookers formed amongst the conical poplars sprouting from the rocks. From their stony perches they cast blossoming wreathes at the hooves and wheels of the pall-carriages, along with a few well-wishes.

"Weep not, countrymen!" An onlooker clad in a dusty-colored tunic called out to his companions. "He will return to us! He who wears all crowns only leaves us now to conquer the heavens!"

There were a great many that could not believe that their beloved king - who had conquered the known world and beyond - could have been taken by so mundane a death. How could it be that Syros the Indomitable was struck down by an unruly horse? According to an imaginative-yet-numerous number, Syros' death was the product of Deos' direct intervention; they were convinced that the very creator of the world was intimidated by the unstoppable advance of the Calydonian king - and so he elected to end the Worldwalker's march before he might usurp his divinity. Others still held that Syros' death was the work of mortal conspirators. Their claims was a covetous noble family found opportunity rather than sorrow in the death of Galos and so orchestrated the accident that had claimed their king's life.

The pall-carriages passed into a tunnel carved into a rock face standing in the way of the twisting uphill road. A cohort of the same purple-clad honor guards stood vigil at the yawning mouth, preventing mourners from going any further up the mount or entering the Pilgrim's Passage. In the cavernous tunnel, flickering torchlight illuminated the way forward. In between the torch sconces upon the dew-slickened walls were great alcoves hewn into the rock. On the smooth walls at the back of the alcoves were giant frescoes each devoted to one of the eight sisters borne by Deos upon this very mountain. Offerings of stacked coins and withered flowers left by pilgrims on their way to the summit were piled at their feet. Iphygenia, the Goddess of Industry - a buxom maiden with swirling tongues of flame for hair who hammered out a horseshoe on an anvil from glowing iron - seemed to command the most offerings of the eight. Near the opposite opening of the Pilgrim's Passage, Dryca and Khryseis, the sisters of war and tumult respectively, looked down upon the wagons bearing Syros and Galos. Dryca rode atop a rearing warhorse, holding a mighty claymore to the sky and Khryseis held her hands aloft - summoning an earthquake that destroyed the surrounding cityscape in a maelstrom of dust, rock, and fire. Both looked down upon the wagons forebodingly as they passed back into the daylight.

The carriages and their escorts returned to the surface from a portal emptying out into an open plaza on the summit. The Acropolis - a small town unto its own - stood upon the top of the hill. Smaller shrines, chapels, and gardens of swaying willows and fountains proliferated alongside the cobblestone road. Beyond the Acropolis' own ring of walls, one could see the whole of the city spread across the land. Amphitheaters, domes, and towers rose up above the sprawl and reached skyward alongside to the Pelepos Mountains to the south and west. A great colossus of weathered granite depicting a victorious hoplite raising a bronze sword into the sky straddled the main gate of Heliocarsus. The greatest statue in all the land - so enormous that its fallen member had been converted into a guardhouse - still only came within eye level of the Acropolis. At the very peak of the mount, higher than every other point and edifice in Heliocarsus, was the Temple of the Eight.

It was a circular temple crowned in a dome of polished lapis-lazuli stone held upright by a concentric ring of columns decorated with flourishing swirls from whence carved hoplites, demons, titans, and mythological beasts burst forth. Swaying poplars danced about the steps of the temple where a corps of elite guards stood and waited to receive the fallen prince and king. From within the enclosed chapel underneath the dome, a heart-stopping wail echoed amongst the stones.

Queen Lyca, who in the space of a single week lost both her husband and only child, burst into the daylight screaming hysterically as the horsehooves clattered up to the temple, eliciting sympathetic grimaces from the stone-faced guards around her. A scar-grizzled man wearing a white toga beneath purple robes held her onto the Queen's left arm as she attempted to tear herself way from her escort. The fact that a wooden peg came down from his knee where his leg ought to have been did not make his duty any easier. The Queen's amputee escort lost his footing when his peg slid out from underneath him as Lyca tugged forcefully against his grip. He hobbled fruitlessly behind Queen Lyca as she charged through the line of honor guards to the carriages. Her chalk-whitened stola fluttered in the wind behind her as she charged herself at the first pall-carriage. She pulled herself up to the lip of the wagon and looked upon the pallid face of her dead son. Her mouth stretched open and a gurgling sob came from her lungs as fresh tears streamed down her face carrying a new deposit of eye shadow to her pointed cheeks.

"This cannot happen!" The Queen wailed. "Deos, do not let this be!"

Queen Lyca looked to her side and saw the second wagon carrying Syros. The wagon drivers gave the despondent queen sorrowful glances and then directed their gaze to the cobbles beneath them. A small army of honor guards stood by, unsure of what to do as the queen screamed yet again at the sight of her dead husband. The peg-legged man shoved his way through the ranks of stunned guards and came to Lyca's side.

"Come down from there, milady." He pleaded, seizing her by the waist and pulling her down from Galos' carriage with surprising strength - the carriage rocked as he plucked Lyca from the side of the wagon.

"Release me!" The Queen demanded. "Guards! Seize this man!" She wailed between sobs. The Queen's orders notwithstanding, the honor guards didn't dare interfere with Septilios, Captain of the House Guard.

"Ssssh..." Septilios soothed, pressing his forehead against the Queen's. The guard captain was a frightening man to behold with his face carved and cratered with numerous scars. One would imagine that being so close to his tormented face would distress Lyca that much more, but he did manage to reduce her hysterical cries to controlled sobs."Deep breaths, milady... Very good."

"Why did Deos let this happen?" The Queen sobbed. "What did my husband do to offend him so? Why did he take my son so young?"

"I cannot claim to know." Septilios admitted, still in his soothing voice. He pulled his face away from hers back to a respectful distance. "Nor can any priest or soothsayer. No mortal can possibly know the designs of Deos and the godesses. We can only accept our place within them and be gracious when they decide our part has been played. Syros and Galos played a tremendous part and were great instruments of His will, but they have done their part... now it is time for them to rest."

"We too need our rest. Come retire with me, milady. It has been a very taxing day for us all." Septilios took the Queen's arm yet again. This time, she did not resist though she continued sobbing. Septilios led Lyca down the road, away from the carriages and their escorts.

"We will also need to be calm and collected. Mithreum has sent us an envoy, and we must take heed to his words when we receive him. I fear there may be more dark days ahead, milady. We must keep our wits about us if we are to meet them."

The dry salty air hung in all corners of the air. No amount of rugs. No amount of canvas to hide the putrid brine smell of the salt flats. The air was stagnant and cold. No heat or moisture resided in the salty desert landscape of the Rhumid north. It felt that no fire could force the cold winds to subside and retreat from even inside the tents of the mighty Calydonian Empire.

But there was no cold that could break the citadel in man that he retreated to when in mourning. There was no blade sharp enough to bring a man out from his sorrow for the passed liege that had fallen just days before, and the loss of his son and only heir.

A hulking shape sat upon a simple cloth-draped seat in the midst of a dark-red tent. Stakes the width of a man's arm waved and shook as the deep-red canvas caught the cold desert air and fluttered in the hard breeze that swept across the flats. A great black bolt of cloth lay draped over the floor as if a rug, emblazoned in glowing yellows and oranges flew a arcing star, ending in the points of a vicious flail.

In the middle of the dark tent the simple cloth-covered seat glowed like a fierce star alongside the twin braziers that crackled and sparked under twin nets of brass. The smoke rose gently to the ceiling, to be caught by the cloth roof and channeled out through the tallest point of the cold shelter.

And the beastly shape sat hunched between the fires. A man of sorrow. A man rendered from death to pity and shame.

Thespos Comatid was by no words a modest man in stature. No one could ever claim that he was anything less than a giant. And though his hair grayed and a lengthy beard fell from his chin he continued to defy the goddess's assault on his body. He defied the aching of his bones by lifting his sword. He threw himself to war and slaughtered many, hewn three men in half with one pull of his mighty sword. He had been cut, slashed, stabbed, and bitten in so many times even the scars that dotted his body lost count of the attempts men had made to down the giant of the Comatid family. The scars crossed his face in such a coarse cruel order, it was a wonder he stood still.

Falling over his shoulders a faded red cloak covered his arms and wrapped down to his legs. It past his knees, and fell at his ankles like a pool of blood. And where the cape parted from his chest, the blood of a king shone on his stained white armor. The blood was likewise trapped in the thread of his heavy cloak.

Thespos had been the first to rush to the body of Syros when that panicked horse had dropped him. Where many hang back stricken into shock to move. As the king's body was broken by trampling hooves Thespos had ran out to the broken corpse. Too late to save the honorable, great king the Goddesses had blessed them with.

And Syros broken and bleeding he had carried him from where he was dropped. On the pillar arms of Thespos he carried a man who knew no equal like a babe. For once, the man who had seen many brothers slain, and broken many families his equal had been broken. The ultimate price had been paid. And the price had been doubled when his son was slain. It still swam in him. Churning the murky din of his saddened conscious.

He wished he could be there. Could have saved Galos. Been in the way of the arrow on that fateful raid. There was anger. Anger so hot. Fire not for himself, but for the people who killed perhaps Thespos' closest friend, and his son. It addled him. Shook the giant's face. His soft sea-green eyes shivered in their socket as he struggled with himself.

There was a flutter of cloth as the flap to his tent opened. And the king's attention was brought up. His curled, dark-silver hair shone in the fire-light like iron.

Standing at the door was his very son and heir. A fair-skinned boy, with a build that echoed his father. Though he was not nearly as tall as Thespos.

He looked up at him, waiting for what news the young man would bring his elderly father. His son, Manoren was always the one to bring the news. Sometimes, it was all that Thespos thought he was good for. To receive and report information, or to operate on it. He was modest with the sword otherwise.

But this day Manoren did not raise his voice to speak. Simply he bowed before stepping inside, closing the tent flap behind him. The prince walked around the edge of the tent to a table in the far corner. The clink of silver and clay made a soft pattered song as he poured a glass of wine. The soft watery sounds of the deep maroon drink sounded as refreshing as the thought of water.

The two knew each other well enough as father and son. Manoren knew the tense silence of Thespos meant trouble. But he had not left, and Thespos knew that there was something his son must say. It was merely a waiting game on who would speak first and break from their respective, distant silence. Who would break the coldness on each other's faces. Who would thaw their tongue.

Manoren moved from the table, two goblets of wine in his hand. His pace was soft and calculated, and perhaps 'walk' was hardly the right word to use for the way he moved. He was softer than that. If there was any offensiveness in his gait, it was washed away on the wind by how he glode to his father's side. Rounding in front of him, he knelt out of respect and rose to him a silver goblet of wine, filled to just a hair below the brim.

Thespos glared down at it for a long time. His mouth remained shut. His eyes unblinking as he looked down at the offering. Manoren was about to retract the offering from his father. Finding defeat in the cold unmoving glare of his father. It disturbed him.

But from under his cloak a heavy hand reached for the silver chalice, and took it from his son's hands. With a thirsty chug, he rose the goblet and there downed the wine, half flowing into his thick silver beard and trapping itself in his bushy mustache where it remained, a maroon stain on whiskers of elder gray.

“You have something to say.” Thespos said, looking up at Manoren. His voice was booming even when silent. Rolled like thunder as it left his tongue. It rattled with the broken bones of the thousands of mens he had killed.

“It's hardly good news.” Manoren said. He was softer. It was still deep, but was not carved out in blood and battle. It had not been risen to roar orders and rallying cries across the thunder of crashing wood and screaming steel. It had not had to overcome the battle cries and roars of men.

“What could make these days darker?” Thespos asked saddened, “We have lost a King of Kings, and hardly a half week after we lost his son. We lack a leader, we're in the middle of the desert building his last wish. A road. A road! Such men should dream of better and build better.”

“It is Onesimos.” Manoren spoke, plainly, “He has died.”

“Onesimos.” Thespos spat bitterly. His distaste was obvious and shone green in his eyes as he looked away, spitting on the ground, “That is a king whose name is fit for a road!” he boomed.

“How did he go?” Thespos asked his son, taking a sip from his wine. To be honest, his curiosity was not profound and he could hardly care if he was gored by a Rhumid warrior, or had simply masturbated too hard for his cock.

“His men say murder.” Manoren said, “They want blood.”

“Is this true?” Thespos asked. He knew Manoren had a way for knowing and expected the truth out of him. He knew it would come from him to he.

“Maybe.” his son said indecisively, “I would examine the body myself if his men were not so on edge and saddened themselves. But I hear a poison arrow may have claimed him.”

Thespos spat a hissing spit. Half laughing, shaking his head. “That is a way to be claimed.” he said growling, “I doubt we can expect anything from his son now then.”

“Not until someone confesses or he kills the man he thought responsible, maybe.” shrugged Manoren. Walking across the tent he continued, “But that itself his uncertain. You know I know I have only known the man so long. I can speak in confidence.

“I would have much rather predicted Syros' next move. At least I had to guess with his honor.”

“Fuck that horse.” Thespos cursed. He swallowed back the pain in his heart, keeping a straight face. He turned to look at his son, who had stopped to examine the mighty sword his father carried into battle.

Star Fell was its name. Legend in the family spoke of it having fallen before Andrean Comatid one night as he looked out the windows of his palace. He observed a great fire streak across the sky, and a sparking fire in the country. Rushing to investigate, the king had found buried in a hole so deep it would fit a house a great black stone.

Andrean ordered the stone excavated, and broken and melted down to iron which as used to craft the large curved blade. His sword though lay sleeping in a wrap of heavy furs. Only the long wooden handle hung out. The handle itself was almost as large as a man's torso. It had become in itself a sort of rite to inheritance in the family since its forging. The son to carry the sword was the one to inherit the son. And none lifted it better than Thespos, who was the second of the line to carry it into battle.

“If it would make you happier, scouts later found the horse and brought it back to camp.” Manoren said, “I managed to acquire it and slaughtered it. For Syros. And for Gregorios.”

“Horses are expensive and hard to rear, why would you kill it!?” Thespos shouted angrily.

“It seemed the apt punishment. But that beast could be attributed to the deaths of two men who would call it master. And it was old itself. It had to be put down.

“I gathered up its blood, and if you would wish I ordered the cook to cut and serve the meat for today's dinner. Its hide will be tanned and set aside for armor repairs, and the bones ground to meal and used for ritual.”

“At least it will be put to damned use.” said Thespos.

Every eye in Heliocarsus directed itself up to the Acropolis mount as the sun retreated down beyond the mountains. Stacks of fire wood had been accumulating upon the summit throughout the afternoon and could be seen through most of the city, heralding a funeral pyre the likes of which had never been seen before in Calydon's history.

Septilios ascended the coiled switchbacks of the Sisters' Way for the second time today, this time on horseback as an escort to the royal funeral procession. The royal contingent was, of course, pitifully small; comprised of a single carriage occupied solely by Queen Lyca. Septilios guided the horse alongside the wagon regularly to ensure that she was well - or as well as she could be for given the circumstances. The guard captain found the widowed queen curled into the back of the wagon amongst the cushions, sobbing dolorously into velvet pillows. Lyca was beyond any consolation; Septilios veered from the wagon without bothering her. It had already been a torturous day for the queen - no need for futile attempts to comfort her. Nothing anyone could say could ever hope to console one in such grief, for there are no words in Calosae, Qarese, Copsi, or the magical clicking tongues of the Ebon Folk that could ever hope to calm a woman whose only child and husband had perished.

The guard captain's peg dangled in the stirrup as he took his place in front of the carriage, bouncing annoyingly against the belly of his horse with each step it took. Indeed, the peg of strapped upon the withered stump of his right thigh had always been a source of irritation. Had it not been lost - had the healers not failed him - Septilios was certain he would still be at the mighty side of Syros the Inexorable, putting to the sword any savage that dared to raise his filthy hand against the greatest king Calydon would ever see. If he had still been capable of serving as the personal guard to Syros and his son as they marched ever forward, Septilios was certain that Galos would not have taken that cursed arrow to the neck - such a thing could have never happened under his protection. The calamity that had befallen Syros' great empire would never have been allowed to transpire if Septilios had not been so grievously wounded in battle.

The Djom had stolen that brighter future. The war-wizards of Ctaqar conjured their dark magics in the defense of the Sjarran heartland during the Calydonian conquest. Septilios himself fought his last battle in the Siege of Ctaqar. A powerful Djom sorcerer had killed scores of valiant Calydonian warriors and rendered Septilios' leg a bleeding mass of shattered bone and ribboned sinew - Septilios repaid the wizard by cleaving his head from his shoulders. Though the wizards were butchered to the last man, their dark magic lingered on in the wounds they left behind. The healers could do nothing for Septilios and could only ease his pain with poppy sap as the whole of his leg withered and died. He could no longer march alongside Syros, and so was relegated to more sedentary duty - protecting the beloved wife Lyca.

A cohort of purple-clad horsemen led Septilios and the carriage through the torchlit Pilgrim's Passage out onto the Acropolis plaza beyond. A teeming throng of mourners split before Lyca's escorts as the wagon clattered past the smaller shrines and gardens to the Temple of the Eight. Honor guards formed a wide arc around the cobbled walkway before the steps of the temple, within which a massive funeral pyre ringed with large cobblestones was being assembled. In dancing torchlight, workers donning plain tunics stacked heaps of firewood in somber silence. Sweet spiciness wafted through the air as the pyrebuilders unwrapped leather faggots of yellow-orange twigs and inserted them throughout the pyre. The handful of bundles of aromatic camphorwood branches - imported from deep in the Ebon Lands - cost far more to procure than any other component of the funeral ceremony; no expense had been spared. Atop a towering bed of punky logs lay two lifeless masses under blankets doused in oil. A chilling scream rang through the night as Lyca saw her husband and child.

"Do not burn them!" The queen wailed, her voice hoarse from a day of weeping. "They are not dead! They cannot be dead!!"

Half a dozen guards subdued Queen Lyca as she threw herself from her carriage and made for the pyre, drawing a nervous glance from Septilios. Upon seeing the queen was under some semblance of control, he swung his peg leg over the side of the horse and dropped down onto his remaining foot, gathering the purple cape that had spilled out from over his shoulders around him. As the guard captain hobbled over toward Queen Lyca, a rider draped in a hooded crimson cloak intercepted Septilios and immediately dismounted.

"Captain Septilios?" The rider asked as he approached.

"Indeed." Septilios affirmed, tapping his peg against the cobble. "Who else might I be?"

A humored smile stretched across the rider's face, but immediately collapsed and his face returned to its stoic stoniness.

"Forgive me, Captain. These times are too dark to take delight in anything."

"These dark times shall pass, brother. Let us not forget to find such delight when peace returns to us... You are the messenger of the House Mithrid?"

"Aye."

Septilios nodded tacitly and extended his left arm, reaching for the rider's left wrist. The rider was stunned briefly, and then hesitated to reciprocate the gesture. With hands locked on the other's left wrist, they each gave a deft shake of the arm.

"You know of the greeting?"

Septilios nodded and lifted his left palm to the rider's face. There, amongst a dozen small nicks and a missing tip on his pinky finger, was a deep, jagged scar across his palm.

"I, too, tend the flame."

Septilios led the envoy away from the pyre and retreated into the very edge of the crowd of mourners, at the dim boundary of the torchlight where they could be assured they would not be overheard.

"The eagles bring ominous words from the North. Onesimus of the House Milatid is slain."

"The Rhumids were fortunate with Galos." Septilios growled. "They would not have have had such fortune again. This was treachery."

"Indeed." The messenger affirmed. "They say it was dagger to the back - such weapons are foreign to the Rhumids. A Calydonian did such a thing."

"The situation has deteriorated faster than I would have ever thought. Did they name suspects? Official or otherwise?"

"Scylla has appeared many times among the accused. But the generals and patriarchs all blame one another; it is only a matter of time before they make good on their accusations. Twelve armies stand now in the Rhumid desert waiting for their commanders to destroy one another. The armies will be annihilated and the satrapys will revolt if something is not done."

Septilios nodded thoughtfully for a moment before speaking.

"The House Solonid is not yet gone." The guard captain reminded in a low voice. "The family of Syros has not been destroyed entirely."

"There is another?!" The messenger asked excitedly. "Another son?"

"No." Septilios shook his head, and turned toward the wailing widow fighting against the guards restraining her near the pyre.

"Lyca? No queen can rule Calydon! You know this!"

"Queen Lyca is the blood of Prince Galos - heir to the throne. The legitimacy of this thing does not concern me - the generals and the satrapys need a leader. That is all that matters. It would be most just for Lyca to lead the Calydonians. Syros, after all, did chose her to give her a son... I can think of no greater endorsement."

"The families will not agree." The messenger contested. "They will not heel to Queen Lyca."

"Perhaps not." Septilios agreed, watching as the Queen fought against the guards as the torchbearers approached the funeral pyre - her anguished wails echoing across the Acropolis and likely throughout all of Heliocarsus. "Though some will. And perhaps the generals will as well. If enough of the generals and the families back our queen, the opportunists will have no choice but to back down. We can avert this disaster yet. Only through Lyca can we keep this empire together."

The messenger watched as the torchbearers cast the flames onto the pyre. The queen tore through the guards at last and screamed as the tongues of fire erupted throughout the towering pyre. She dropped to her knees in despair as the oil-soaked blankets draped over the king and son ignited.

"Will she be in any condition to rule?" The messenger asked incredulously. "I am unsure myself if I trust that she will be of one mind after such tragedy."

"She must." Septilios answered. "If not, all is lost."

"Ride back to Mithreum. Tell your brothers and send eagles to the North. Inform the generals that their Queen is coming."

The night fell like a cold black veil over their heads, as dark and crisp as Timaeus imagined the underworld. It reminded him of his initiation into the Brotherhood of the Flame. Like then, he was guided through the darkness by fire. The red snow-topped plateaus stood around them like shadowy titans with heads of white hair, and they rode between the narrow crags and twisted rock fingers like men on the asperous palm of a giant.

A gust of wind blew between the burgundy crags from the south and breathed life to the banners of House Mithrid flapping above them and to their rear: a white sword and scale on a golden sun against a crimson field bordered with gold. Timaeus had been following the flickering contour of the shaggy black yak ridden by their scrawny Rhumid guide, who held a torch above his head, when the sudden breeze blew against the flame and it nipped at Timaeus' face with a fiery growl. He pulled back in his saddle, his hood sliding off his head as he did, and his horse let out a panicked snort. "Careful, boy!" his uncle Hadrian, who rode beside him, said. "I've seen men stronger than us both fall to a horse in distress." His voice boomed from inside his helm like he spoke from inside a cave.

Their cloaks fluttered like crimson blood spurting forth from a wound against the rusty-red Rhumid soil. Except Hadrian's. He wore a cloak as white as the stars, and a breastplate that glimmered like silver against the moonlight, trimmed with gold. His spaulders were gold and shaped like the folded wings of an eagle. Under his hood, he wore a helm with a hooked beak. Jutting out from his breastplate, an eagle spread its wings over his collarbones.

It made Timaeus feel inadequate in his simple linens and hardened leather. He wore an open-face bronze helm that felt like the work of the lowest peasant in sight of Hadrian's eagle-helm. Only the simple-living Rhumids made him feel better. They wore rugged yak hides and rainbow shawls and leather pants, a pair of which had been so kindly gifted to Timaeus, and he wore happily during the cold nights.

Their horses played a soothing song that lulled Timaeus to sleep. But he followed the flame anyway, and kept his mind running to stay awake.

Timaeus and the Mithrid soldiers almost blended with their surroundings. They were but phantoms in the darkness, atop shadowy steeds, with their assorted bronze armor and their blood-red cloaks and capes. The Rhumid warriors and guides that accompanied them stood out more. But not as much as the towering Rys - loyal warriors of the conquered Transepruxian mountains.

They weren't nearly as vibrantly-colored as the Rhumids, but they were twice their size in height and broadness. They wore the hides and bones of beasts they had slain. Sivaas rode in front of Timaeus, and behind the Rhumid guide. Timaeus guessed he wore the skins of half-a-dozen creatures. Hadrian had guessed not even Sivaas knew for sure. The pelt of a saber-tooth lion rested over his head like a hood, its saber-teeth resting against the Rys' temples. The lion's mane now crowned the warrior from head to shoulders.

In Rys tradition, a warrior is only allowed to wear the full skin of an animal he kills, if it is done with nothing more than a dagger fashioned from an eagle's claw, or his bare hands. It dumbfounded Timaeus to think Sivaas had possibly strangled a saber-tooth lion to death at one point. It made him uneasy to wonder how. A tight leather belt around Sivaas' waist held the long bone-tail of another unfortunate animal - Sivaas now wore it as his own.

What parts of their bodies weren't covered in hides, were painted with woad, showing intricate tribal designs that Timaeus failed to understand. Even their faces were painted.

If Timaeus and the soldiers were phantoms, the Rys were the monsters that escorted the souls into Dys' realm. But what of Hadrian? Timaeus thought. Perhaps a benevolent spirit of Hypatia, fighting for light amidst the darkness. They called him 'the Benevolent' for the compassion he showed even against the enemy in battle, so it seemed appropriate that he would fight the monsters. He was a man with a heart of gold and a soothing, masculine voice that could strip a man of his shield and blade and his will to fight his fellow man. And he had done so before.

But Timaeus knew he was a great soldier and leader, too. Countless battles had been turned in favor of Syros' legions, thanks to Hadrian and his cavalry. There was no-one better to lead men and steed in the field of battle than his uncle, the Soaring Eagle. Looking at him, it was obvious why they called him that. But only those who had faced him in battle knew the true horror. Hadrian was known to employ the aid of horse and eagle.

The Mithrid horses were fortresses of muscle built to smash through enemy lines and scale the rocky mountains of the Mithrid homeland. The eagles employed by the Mithrids were giants and trained to claw at infantry, breaking their ranks before Hadrian's cavalry trampled through. Both were bred for war, and Timaeus had heard that even now Mithrid eagle-breeders sought a way to make them even bigger, and more vicious.

There was a saying that, although Hadrian never wore the Mithrid reds at the start of a battle, he always did by the end. But here, only the fine rust-red sands of the Rhumid mountains stained his white clothes.

"Open your eyes, boy." Hadrian said. Timaeus had drifted into deep thought. Their horses kicked loose rocks down the rocky cliffs as they descended.

They had spent hours patrolling the mountains for would-be Rhumid rebels. Timaeus' father, Cassian, believed they would attack their camp from the rear given the opportunity. Horse-mounted patrols were sent to prevent that, but so far there had been no sign of enemy warriors. The nights were long and dark and boring. Hours atop a horse, up and down the rocky switchbacks, put a drain on the young boy - but Hadrian never seemed to tire.

"You'll have your rest when we reach the encampment." Hadrian added, his voice comforting. "I'll tell your father you've earned a day of rest."

A full day of rest? Timaeus thought. He caught a smile forming and held it back. He was tired. The Rhumids were relentless. In the day, the sun battered away at the troops. And in the nights, they damn near froze. It brought him joy to know he'd have a day to rest, but he couldn't show it. He had a famous name to uphold. Timaeus Mithrid, son of the great Cassian. It felt like the world expected him to become as good a general as his father, or even better than him - like his great-grandfather Marcellus, who rode alongside Syros in the early days of the conquests.

He wasn't sure he could meet those those expectations, but he never admitted it. "Come the battle, I will bring glory to our House." he said to his uncle. "I'll guard the honor of our name even if I have to die."

A muffled huff of disappointment came from inside Hadrian's helm. "This honor in battle you speak of does not exist." he said, perhaps saddened. "You're a bright boy - and good. Don't be fooled by their distorted truths - they lie." he said. "I believed it once, but now I know the truth." he said with regret.

Timaues hadn't met a man more honorable than Hadrian. His uncle had been fighting a war ever since he could remember. How could there be no honor in war? "Why did you become a soldier?" he asked.

"Because old men with potbellies and hard stone walls between them and the fight told me I'd find glory in war." Hadrian said plainly. "And riches, and fame. And that all we had to do was go and kill soulless men who had no families, no faces."

But they lied... Timaeus thought. "Why did you keep fighting, then?"

"Brotherhood." Hadrian said without a second thought. "I fought not for lords, but for the men at my side - the good ones. I wanted them to come home." he said. He paused for a moment and it looked like he was laughing under his helm, though Timaeus could still sense a hint of sadness, even behind all that armor. "There was a time I thought my presence could make a difference." he continued. "I thought if I could take command of those men, I could teach them to be righteous - I still believe I can. But every man has the capacity for great evil; it's the dreaded horns of war that unleash the beasts inside them."

Timaeus thought for a moment. "Uncle, you are the most honorable man I have ever met." he said, thinking back to before. "And yet you've been at war your entire life. How is it that honor and war cannot exist together?" he wondered.

"When a man murders, is he an honorable man?" Hadrian asked rhetorically. "I've seen war, and it's not as you hear in the legends - those are too clean. In war, there are few heroes; men live and die as nameless pawns for tyrants. The bards sing of glorious battles as if it were a game. They sing it so pretty they convince you those men on the field get to go home to their families in the end, but they don't. They die in a foreign land fighting men they never met before. Their bodies lie putrid on the open field for vultures to feed on. Fathers and brothers and sons, no different than us. Women are raped and their children are slaughtered, torn apart. I have seen it myself."

Timaeus believed him, but he still felt he had to fight. He was a Mithrid; his father expected as much. "What am I to do, then?"

"Fight for good." Hadrian said. "Not for lords, not for kings. Fight for good." he said. "And fight for yourself, too."

"What do you mean?" Timaeus asked. The smell of brine now choked the air; they were close to the salt flats.

"Tell me our words." Hadrian said.

"We Tend The Flame."

"Do you know what those words mean to me?" Hadrian asked.

"The flame represents the balance between order and chaos; a flame can burn, but it can also cleanse - it is the perfect balance between right and wrong. We stand vigilant and steadfast against evil, and when the time comes, We Tend The Flame; we keep the balance."

"Your father taught you that?" Hadrian chuckled. "The hearts of men ache when they have done wrong. Even the most vile of men weep when they look back to their crimes. Their hearts are set ablaze with guilt; an inextinguishable flame, a struggle between what is right, and what is good for us all. They wonder their entire lives whether or not their crimes were justified in the end. They wonder if the good they helped accomplish made up for the wrong they did along the way. But they'll never know. They live their whole lives with that burning ache in their chest. Nothing can extinguish it. They can only live with it; they can only tend the flame." he explained. "That's what our words mean to me."

"And Mithreus knew this." Timaeus said. He had heard their ancestor had been the first to say the words, at the start of the Second Era, when he helped unite the warring Calydonian states under one Kingdom. Mithreus lived and died wondering if the peace he brought justified his crimes. It made sense to him now.

"Aye." said Hadrian. "But he wasn't the first to tend the flame."

They were on leveled ground now and the narrow pass widened to reveal a bustling camp set atop an escarpment overlooking the alabaster salt flat. Smoldering braziers lit the path to wooden palisades erected around the maze of dark-red tents, above which banners with the sword and scale of House Mithrid fluttered. Statuesque hoplites in crimson stood guard around the encampment, while others were rowdy and gathered around fires, their helms acting as makeshift cooking pots.

The strong breeze blew the campfire smoke into Timaeus' face. His face wrenched when he caught the foul smell of brine mixed with smoke and whatever awful thing the soldiers were readying to eat. Hadrian and Sivaas exchanged a few words under the sound of rowdiness and shouted orders, and soon Sivaas rode off to another side of the camp with the rest of the riders. Timaeus and Hadrian left their horses and walked to the end of the camp, where mounted contraptions of wood overlooked what could later become the battlefield. Soldiers loaded them with bolts the size of their arms.

Timaeus could see wooden crosses rising out from atop a hill to their east. Three men were nailed to them, the bloody rainbow shawls on their backs identifying them as Rhumid men. He swore he could hear their faint screams of agony between the clamor of the camp. Hadrian saw them too, and Timaeus thought he heard him curse under his helm.

There, looking out to the pale sands, stood Cassian. Timaeus' father was a tall man, and stern. He had eyes of brown and a head of black. His face was shaven clean and the bridge of his nose hooked slightly. Next to Cassian an eagle half his size sat on a perch hastily fashioned from wood. Timaues was terrified of them. As a child, he feared one day he'd be clutched by their talons and flown off to some mountain eyrie to be eaten - he still feared that now. He knew they were big enough to do it if they wanted - he had seen these giant eagles take down boars and even horses. The sun of the eight and the sword and scale of House Mithrid jutted out from the breastplate his father wore.

Hadrian and Timaeus approached him with their helms removed. The eagle suddenly took flight and flapped its wings so hard Timaeus thought the gust of wind would knock him over. To his relief, the eagle soon soared high above them. Hadrian shared Timaeus' grey eyes, but he wore a bushy black beard speckled with white hairs.

"You crucified Rhumid men!?" Hadrian said. He sounded upset but he kept his voice low enough that only the three of them could hear what he said. He looked at Cassian with disbelief.

"I crucified Rhumid rebels." Cassian said calmly, staring back into his brother's eyes. He had a quiet voice when he wasn't angry, but it carried a certain kind of weight to it. It was heavy enough to make men bow when he wished them to. Some of the Rhumids had been resisting Calydonian rule even now, attacking patrols and camps that moved into the mountains.

"In the Rhumid Mountains of all places!" said Hadrian. He sunk a hand into his black hair like he wanted to pull it out.

"I'll have the next rebel carry his own cross to Copsis before he's nailed to it." said Cassian, his voice fell empty. He looked Hadrian and Timaeus from head to toe and Timaeus was sure he had found something wrong with them. His heart skipped a beat. "Your cloaks are clean." Cassian said, like he expected them to be bloodied.

"We found no rebels." said Hadrian.

"They didn't dare show themselves, lord father." Timaeus said confidently.

Cassian took a glance at the crucified men on the hills, then he looked at Hadrian. Timaeus swore he saw the slightest of smiles form on his father's face before he spoke. "I wonder why." he said, tapping his brother on the shoulder.

"Creator! A swift beheading would have sufficed!" argued Hadrian. "A bloody pardon! Show them mercy and they too will fight for you. Rhumid men fight alongside us. What will they think when they see their kin nailed to crosses, being torn apart by vultures?"

"It won't be a thought of rebellion, I know that." said Cassian. "A pardon encourages the commission of more crimes." he paused. The bodies of four men in red cloaks were being readied to be burned at the pyre. Hadrian caught Cassian looking at the preparations and saw for himself. "Those four men won't be returning to their families." he explained. "But if it pleases you, brother, I'll have their murderers taken down and returned to their clan."

Hadrian said nothing.

The eagle from before let out a deafening scream high above their heads. Timaeus jumped, startled. He knew what it meant though: someone had been spotted. Mithrid eagles were trained to deliver messages and alert troops. Fight, even. He shuttered to remember those times he had seen them dive at their prey, screaming and damn near blocking out the sun if you were at the right angle.

"Riders approach?" Timaeus guessed.

"Someone is." said Cassian. He lead them to a red command tent as soldiers rushed for their equipment, shouting orders. Cassian himself issued a command while on the move, but Timaeus didn't hear. They walked inside through the draped curtains, where statuesque soldiers stood guard, and watched as Cassian retrieved a scabbard trimmed with gold and the image of Adrasthea, the goddess of peace. She was blindfolded, holding a sword in one hand and a scale in the other. "Onesimos is dead." Cassian turned to tell Hadrian as they stepped back outside. "They say he plotted to kill Syros."

"Do you believe this?" Hadrian asked. Soldiers rushed to the rear of the camp and a horn blew at another end. Timaeus stayed close behind. "Onesimos was a good man - a loyal man!" his uncle said. "I fought with him at Titan's Fork - he loved Syros as much as you."

"We'll never know the truth now." said Cassian. There was a struggle at the rear of the camp. Men in red were trying to force their way through a crowd of soldiers - but they weren't fighting. They shouted at each other to move, arguing and pushing and threatening to kill. At the center, four men cried out for mercy. Timaeus could see them between the soldiers. Their clothes were bloody and their bodies were covered in horrifying cuts, bloody and gaping. "Enough!" Cassian roared. It was a thunderous command, and the soldiers were silenced almost instantly. They parted and formed a circle around the men in the middle, allowing Cassian and his companions to advance. Standing over the kneeling men covered in blood were Mithrid soldiers carrying bloody whips. "Explain yourselves!" Cassian demanded.

The soldier in-charge stepped forward. "Lord Cassian!" he called with relief. "I bring you the murderer of Onesimos!" he announced, the soldiers around them roaring with disbelief. A man laid at his feet with wounds so deep in his back Timaues thought he could see bone and flaps of skin hung from their sides. Something crawled up his throat and he felt like he would vomit. The man's mouth was agape like he was screaming to the heavens for mercy, but nothing came out. Another knelt with defiance. There was so much blood it took Timaeus a moment to realize the men who had been whipped were also wearing Mithrid cloaks - all of them but the one laying. These men are Mithrid soldiers? They murdered the patriarch of the Milatids? he thought, and his heart threatened to burst from his chest. This is war.

"What have you done!?" Hadrian roared. "These men are not proven guilty!"

"They are!" the soldier in-charge countered. "These men have brought dishonor to your House, Hadrian! They have murdered in your name!" the soldier said, landing a hard punch on the face of the man kneeling. Blood spurted out from his mouth and fell on the red soil like a wet blob. Timaeus saw Cassian's eyes narrow and his fists clench. "They confessed!" the solider added, raising his whip over his head to strike the man.

"ENOUGH!" Cassian roared again. So loud was his command, that Timaeus felt the insides of his ears vibrate. "Take these men!" he ordered some of the soldiers behind him. "Cut their hands off!" he said. The men with the whips opened their eyes wide and their faces paled as the soldiers stepped forward and hauled them away by their arms. They begged and cried like the men they had whipped. "I will not tolerate the mistreatment of prisoners." Cassian said to the rest of the soldiers there. "These men have not even been proven guilty!" he roared again.

"But we are!" the kneeling man covered in blood said. The men around them could not believe their ears. "I killed that traitorous bastard!" the man confessed. He gritted his teeth in an ever-lasting grimace. Anger consumed him. "I fucking stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed again!" he said. "I stabbed him until my wrists hurt!"

"You confess, then?" Cassian asked him. Timaeus was impressed by his ability to restrain himself even as men around him had to be held back by their friends, otherwise they would have ripped the bloody man to pieces.

"Aye, I did!" the man confessed again. "For you! For Syros! For House Mithrid!" he said. "I said your words, Lord Cassian! 'We Tend The Flame!', and then I fucking stabbed him!"

It looked as though Cassian himself would step forward and behead the man in sight of everyone. He held his scabbard like he was ready to unsheathe his sword and bring down the blade of justice. But then another man called out: "Mercy! My Lord, please! Please! Mercy!" Cassian stayed calm and listened to what he had to say. He was the man who laid on the ground earlier - the only one who wasn't a Mithrid soldier. "My father is a foolish man!" he cried out in pain and sadness.

"Foolish!?" the kneeling man roared. "I should have killed you too, boy!" he said. But he didn't dare put a hand on his son. Not in front of Cassian. The other men could hardly stand around him; they cried silently.

"I didn't do it!" the boy cried out, tears streaming down his bloodied cheeks, washing away the blood that had dried on his face. "Please, Lord Cassian, have mercy! Don't kill me - don't kill my father! He is foolish!" he cried, looking Cassian in the eyes. "PLEASE!"

"Did you see your father kill Onesimos?" he asked lightly, but Timaeus saw his grip tighten around his scabbard. It was perhaps the greatest insult that these men, Mithrid soldiers, had gone and committed murder in his name.

"No! I didn't see it!" the boy said. "I didn't see him do it! He told me to wait, and then I saw him with bloodied hands, and he told me to follow!"

"He was the lookout." his father said, smiling like he was proud. The other men still said nothing.

Hadrian leaned to speak with Cassian. "We can't hold a trial." Timaeus heard him say. There was no time for that. "Make your decision." he added. "I will stand with you regardless - We Tend The Flame." He saw them hold each others' wrists - the greeting of the Brotherhood of the Flame.

"Very well." Cassian spoke up. "The Creator will judge you." he said, handing the scabbard to Timaeus. His heart sunk for a moment, thinking he'd have to be the one to fight the men before him. A trial by combat. Then Cassian unbuckled his breastplate and threw it aside, the red Rhumid sands clouding around it as it hit the ground. Soldiers gathered around them tossed a handful of weapons at the bloodied men - three swords and a bow with arrows. The man kneeling smiled, the rest had their faces washed away with despair. "Please, no!" the boy cried again.

"Give me your best four champions!" the kneeling man said. "I will gladly die - my work is done!"

"Stand, then!" Cassian said. Timaeus held out the gleaming scabbard and Cassian unsheathed the finest blade Timaeus had ever seen: Lawbringer. The pommel and grip were, together, the shape of a gavel. An eagle was perched on the top-end of the gavel; its spread wings formed the cross-guard; its head the rain-guard. And the blade glimmered like a star. Legend told that Mithreus himself wielded the sword, and that Adrasthea had given it to him.

"Please, mercy!" the boy cried another time.

"Stand aside, boy." Cassian said. "You will not fight today." he declared. The boy stepped aside with tears in his eyes and watched as his father and his accomplices stood on wobbly legs, swords in their hands. Timaeus' blood ran hot with fear. If my father dies...

"Name your champions, you ungrateful bastard!" the bloodied man roared. "I killed for you! I avenged Syros!"

"I name myself!" Cassian said and stepped forward, his red cloak dragging against the rusty soil. Hadrian stopped him, his hand on his shoulder. "I'll fight with you." Timaeus heard his uncle say, much to his relief. But his father declined the offer: "No need." he said. "The goddesses will judge the outcome of this fight. I could name a hundred men to fight these three, and a hundred men would fall, if they are innocent. It matters not that I fight alone."

Hadrian let him go.

The men around them were silent, their eyes on Cassian. Timaeus' heart raced faster than it ever had before. "You stand accused of murdering Onesimos, patriarch of the Milatids." Cassian spoke loudly for all to hear. He slowly circled around the accused, Lawbringer in one hand. They were three men. One held a single sword, another - the one that knelt - carried two. The third man readied a bow. "If you are innocent, may Dryca grant you strength and guide your blade. If you are guilty, be damned!" Cassian said. "If I fall, let it be known it was the will of the Eight that these men lived, and no harm should come to the-"

"Shut up!"

The men with swords pounced before he was finished. One of them swung his sword wide in a swiping motion, while the other pondered where to plunge his. Cassian ducked under and to the side of the sweeping strike. He turned as he did and came up behind the man, facing his back. There was a loud screeching sound as another frantic swing ripped through Cassian's cloak, which fluttered about as he moved. It happened fast and the crowd was slow to react. For a moment Timaeus thought his father had been run through the belly.

"Behi-" Timaeus tried to warn his father, but Hadrian put his hand over his mouth. Cassian must have heard him though. He glanced behind him and saw the archer readying an arrow. The men with swords turned to face Cassian and the same man swung again. It was a high-swing this time. Cassian swung wide and smacked it aside with Lightbringer. Metal screamed against metal and the man's sword flew out of his hands. In one fluid motion, Cassian ducked under a swing from the other man and appeared behind the first. It was a blur of red from Timaeus' perspective. His father's cape veiled his movements and it seemed the men he fought were just as disoriented. When the cape settled again, he was behind one of the men with his arm around his neck, using him as a shield. The arrow whistled through the air and plunged into his human-shield, eliciting an agonizing scream from the man before Cassian slid his throat and silenced it.

The man with two swords turned to face Cassian after his first swing, confused. He swung again as frantic as before, but Cassian rolled away towards the man with the bow. The bowman was raising his bow again when Cassian brought Lawbringer down with all his might. The wooden bow snapped in two in an explosion of splinters. The man screamed in pain as splinters pierced his eyes and blood began to stream like red tears. Another swing sunk into the man's neck with so much force that Timaeus thought he heard the bones snap. And they had. Chunks of white bone flew through the air coated in blood that spattered the spectators before the man's lifeless body collapsed under its own weight.

Cassian turned again to face the man with two swords - the boy's father. "Please! Mercy!" the boy screamed from the crowd. "MERCY!" he cried. The man swung his swords like a butcher swung his hatchet. It was a hail of frantic strikes. He swung wide and Cassian skipped back to avoid it. Then he swung low, then high. He jabbed and swiped and kicked. Cassian jumped from side to side, ducking, rolling. Then their swords screeched like the eagles above them. Metal met metal and it rang throughout the camp. Again and again, their swords met. "Please! Mercy!" the boy cried from behind them.

Then Cassian ducked under a swing and spun. His cape twirled about in the air like a red veil and it suddenly brushed against the man's face, blinding him. It was then that his belly split and his innards fell cradled in his arms. Cassian reappeared with a bloodied blade. The man's sword fell with a cling as his collapsed on wobbly legs, screaming. The boy let out a bloodcurdling scream as he watched his father die. The man wanted to cry out but all that came forth was blood. "Creator have mercy on you." Cassian said, plunging his sword into the man's heart. The boy ran out from the crowd and swept a sword off the ground, raising it over his head mid-run. Cassian turned and plunged his sword into his stomach. The boy fell into his arms and he set him down gently.

Had Timaeus blinked, he'd have missed it. Again, he thought his father had been cut down. He looked in shock as everything unfolded. He was shaking, his heart was racing. He had paled. But though he had seen a boy and three men cut down by Cassian, he was glad it had been them and not his father.

"I'm sorry." Timaeus heard him say to the dying boy. The boy reached for Cassian, grabbing his cloak and pulling it to no avail. He reached for Cassian's face like a blind man trying to feel what's in front of him. Cassian reached for something on his waist. The boy's eyes were going still when Cassian plunged a dagger in his heart. "I'm sorry." he said again, setting the boy down.

He stood, bloodied but unscathed. "Onesimos has been avenged." he said. Not happily though. Timaeus didn't think he even sounded certain. "Let these three rot." he told his soldiers, pointing at the men he fought against. "But burn the boy." he said. "He deserved better."

"We must inform the Milatids that justice has been served." Hadrian stepped up. He too looked saddened. "They'll want to know." he said. "Give them the murderer's body. Let them see that he is dead."

"Very well." Cassian agreed. "See to it that it is done."

The salt flats of the Rhumid wastes presented an interested challenge for Sepruxian warriors. Though they were flat, much like the Sepruxian plains, and surrounded by mountains just the same, the sheer logistical challenges they presented proved frustrating to some of the most hardened warriors.

They were inhospitably windswept and cold in the nights, and blisteringly hot during the day, even when sheltered in tents made of the thickest leather and fur the myriad wildlife of Sepruxia could offer.

Water was cruelly scarce in the salt-flats, and the little that could be found was often already polluted by salt – requiring time and supplies that could not be afforded in such wastelands.

The animals, of course, had a dislike for the wastes inherent in their very instincts – Many animals could not adapt as readily as humans, and were essentially unable to hunt or forage for food in the eternally lifeless flats.

The Sepruxian plains, of course, being rich with farmland and species that made viable livestock, made its inhabitants well-equipped on their trek, though they were limited in use of supplies by the distance and the harsh terrain that lay before them. Even despite the plenty of food that they had fought to defend, it was an impossibility for them, as with any other family, to ensure merely acceptable conditions in the Rhumid lands would be nigh-impossible.

The Sepruxians, of course, were not of the ilk that would be disturbed by a lack of comfort. Despite the abundance of food in their homeland, they were plagued by terrible dangers – warring tribes, pirates, vicious wildlife, and disease; their people fought hard for their lands, just as the Calydonians; particularly Syros, earned their everlasting respect by defeating them in battle.
Although Syro’s death was certainly mourned by the Sepruxians (and the family of Magesanitus Valentinus that had come to rule the region), their people were one of the first to leap to action after Syros’s death – rather than wallow is misery, they had made the choice that the best was to remember Syros would be to honor him through battle.

Valentinus sighed, turning his blade against the fire at the center of his tent as if to examine its glint in the light. The blade was, despite its age, rather ornate; engraved with the founders and heroes of the Magesanitus family, gleaming in the light of the roaring flames despite the many battles it had fought. Though the blade itself had been largely destroyed many years ago, what little remained of the blade, along with its hilt, had long since been re-forged into a short sword, more alike that which the Sepruxians wielded.
The narrower, longer blade, sheathed behind his back, was ornate much alike the first, though intended for a far different purpose. Whereas the short blade was intended for close-quarters combat on foot when paired with the shield, the narrow blade was designed for combat on horseback – to stab and slash from the side of the user that was not protected by the shield.

Valentinus fully realized that he may die in the coming battle. Soldiers were suffering from exhaustion, thirst, and hunger, and word of traitors had already begun to spread through the camps. Normally, as per his family’s tradition, the eldest son most experienced in combat would accompany the patriarch, and, in the event of his death, prepare the body for burial and immediately inherit leadership of the clan in order to avoid the chaos that might follow a leader’s death. Valentinus faced one inherent problem in this fact – he had no living male heirs, and only one daughter who possessed the combat skill required to inherit leadership. Although it was an incredibly rare occurrence, in such times, desperate measures had to be taken, as was the case. Aemilia, the daughter he wished to marry off for political purposes, was the only one eligible to perform these rites.
He shook his head, lifting open the flap of his tent. There were a few lone souls wandering his family’s camp, but the majority had retired, excluding those who stood watch. The night was lit with stars and the moon, but even the chirp of crickets Valentinus had grown to find comfort in on sleepless nights was missing from the salt-wastes. There was nothing – only the howling wind and the bitter cold.
Valentinus, despite his many years of combat skill, feared the casualties that would befall his family if the coming battle was to go wrong. His daughter, he hoped, would not die with him.

Aemilia, though one may be unable to see it in her armor, was a pinnacle of Sepruxian beauty. Though she was certainly physically toned by the rigors of combat, the typical role of Sepruxian woman in combat – as saboteurs, rangers, and skirmishers meant that they preferred agility and lithe tone over the sheer brawn that benefitted the heavier varieties of infantry. She maintained her figure even with her specialized training, a fact designed into the training the few lucky Sepruxian women received.

With hair a soft blonde-brown, typical of many Sepruxians, it accented the medium tan of her skin so well that it seemed to almost have been purposely designed. Her hair was cut short to her ears to allow easier movement in combat, though the dark red of her irises was often sufficient to distract from that fact, though her hourglass figure was often enough to distract from any physical flaws she possessed. Her bust, though certainly luscious, pert, and even pillowy, was often hidden from sight by the binding she was forced to use in order to keep it from posing an obstruction in combat – especially with the bounce they normally possessed. Her hips were quite obviously built for child-bearing, wide and sculpted to be an attractive feature for any man wishing to continue his family’s line. It was accented, too, by her deliciously round heart-shaped rear, legs smooth, long, and slender enough that they would draw eyes for miles around. All of that, though, except for a few rare occasions, was hidden from most any eye by layers of cloth, leather, and metal.

This presented Valentinus with a unique problem – if he sent his daughter into the thickest of combat, she would be proven as a worthy heir, though such may mean turning away prospective alliances. It was a unique problem that Valentinus could not avoid, and it was a decision he would have to make very soon.

They had waited for days, and little had happened. The salt flats were littered with encampments, each slowly using up their supplies as they tried to outmaneuver the others. Envoys ran back and forth carrying deals, but nobody could gain a clear political advantage. The men were growing restless, forced to stew under the pale Rhumid sun only to cling to their animals, or to each other, during the biting cold Rhumid night. And each one of those nights brought Hesiod a legacy dream.

Last night he had seen back into the roots of time, at the era of the wooden shield and cold stone spear. Hesiod had been taught the stories of the titans, and how each of them had nearly destroyed everything Deos had made on the earth. They were dark things - belches of creation that proved how powerful Deos truly was by showing how monstrous even his mistakes could be. They were small mistakes after all - things overlooked in the process of creating something as immense and glorious as the universe. When he had heard them described, he had imagined them as brutally as a young boy raised in a palace who had saw more statues of wildlife than the living things themselves could imagine. But it was in his dreams, in the legacy dreams, that he learned what they were.

Balochus was one of the last titans, and one of the few that Deos himself did not challenge. He had been the lizard king of the depths - a dragon-like beast made of armored scale and muscle that walked on its hind legs and spouted fire that could melt bronze in mere moments. In his dreams, Hesiod has seen the beast. It was taller than words could describe. Taller than mountains, with shins the size of castles. That had been Balochus. Iron skinned Balochus. And Milatides had sworn to destroy him.

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, Balochus tore the tangled treeline down. His legs brought forth quakes, his roar scorched the earth and left blackened soil. Milatides stood on the edge of the earthen wall that protected his new home. He could see the monster miles away, its forest-green scales gleaming with fresh sea-water. Milatides, the hero, held tightly to the ten feet of solid ash tipped with a sharpened leaf of darkened bronze that promised him his victory. The monster roared, it's voice breaking through the scattered trees like a coming storm. The roar had woke Hesiod, and brought him back to this world. In his dreams, victory had felt certain. Balochus, as impossible as he was, could never stand against something as purely heroic as Milatides. Hesiod faced nothing nearly as daunting - only armies, with an army of his own at his back - but he was all nerves and uncertainty.

The blue glow of dawn filtered through his tent, weakly outlining everything inside. It was early. Outside, Hesiod could hear the sounds of an encampment in the morning. Men muttering, the whining of horses, the rattle of bronze, it all mixed together in a low whisper. Tossing the furs from his bunk, he stood up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He could see his breath. He had spent most of his life in Serapium, where the pale desert met the sea. In the winter, thin sheets of ice would form a crust over the river Enverne, mostly carried down from the icy north. Serapium rarely saw a snow, however. Men still wore sandals and pants, though oftentimes with linen socks. The Rhumid colds were something else. It was not yet winter, and the Rhumid's were already talking about snow-blocked passes in the north.

Gooseprickles formed on his naked skin, and he could feel a numbness setting in on his limbs. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them, enjoying the few seconds of warmth it gave his face. A breeze caught the flap of his tent and made him shudder. Quickly, he dressed himself. Pants and a tunic would be enough, with an gold-embroidered green bonesnake tabard over the top so that he looked his rank. After forcing on a pair of leather boots, he walked outside into the morning air.

The salt flats were named aptly. There was no other words to describe them but 'salt' and 'flat'. They stretched to the south infinitely, only the slightest hint of a hazy red line marking the mountains in the south. To the north, however, the red stone of the Rhumid mountains commanded the scenery. Their weird shapes made them hard to accept as mountains. In the rest of the world, mountain ranges were sharp-rising hills and commanding peaks. In the Rhumid wastes, they were as uniquely shaped as the clouds in the sky. Some of them looked like loafs of bread lightly frosted with sugary snow on the top, while others looked like knifes pointed hatefully toward the sky. There were tables and chimneys standing alongside phallus's and arches. Their red rock and dust rolled down into the foothills where the Milatids had made their encampment, mixing with the salt to create a stinging pink dust. It got into everything, and when the wind picked it up it stung at their eyes. The men walked through the camp weeping much of the time. It reddened the eyes of the Rhumids too, but they never seemed to mind that much.

Now that he was outside, Hesiod could hear the Rhumid's. They woke their own up with the rolling sound of drums. The Rhumid beat sounded like a distant thunderstorm, full of energy and feeling as if they would never stop playing. Some had complained, calling the native sound a racket, but Hesiod had grown fond of them. The Rhumid's, with their felt tents and simple lives, had made Hesiod second guess the entire concept of an empire. They reminded him of those stories of their ancestors, about how they had been farmers and goatherds peeling a life from the land they called their home. They were not glorious, nor did they live in luxury, but they were happy.

"Cousin" a voice called out from nearby. Hesiod turned abruptly, as if an arrow had buzzed his head. A group of riders had dismounted nearby - three Calydonian men with plumed helms and a fourth man as pale as the salt desert. One of the Calydonians approached and pulled his helmet from his head.

"Acacius." Hesiod grinned. The two men embraced, patting each other on the back before breaking off.

Acacius was a young man - hardly seventeen, in truth. He had proven himself in battle, and the men saw him for the warrior that he was, but Hesiod still had a hard time separating him from the boy he had been. He was tall now, a slim youth that had taken his mother's more handsome looks rather than the thick-boned appearance of the Milatids. His jaw was square, but it was clear he had yet to grow anything more than a few stray hairs on his chin. His white linen armor was covered in a dusty pink, and a rider's sword dangled loosely his side. He had went scouting, Hesiod immediately understood.

"What news is there?" Hesiod asked.

"It is quiet." Acacius said sternly. "The Mithrid's have been executing Rhumid's they claim to have helped murder Syros."

Hesiod spat. It had been rumored that the Mithrid's ordered Onesimos - Hesiod's father - killed. Blood ran hot between the two families now, and Hesiod felt the pressure to stand strong against them in the name of his fallen sire.

"The Efernii say they spotted Hadrian moving in the mountains. They might be searching for more Rhumid's? We haven't learned."

"If they are declaring war on the Rhumid's, they are going to make things harder on themselves." Hesiod replied. This was their land. They knew it, and they knew how to use it. Onesimos had taught his men to respect the natives, and Hesiod was beginning to understand how that may pay off more now than it ever had before.

"What of the others?" Hesiod asked.

"Thespos Comatid broods. He is in mourning, I am told. If we come to blows, we don't know how the Comatid's will react." Acacius said uncertainly. "There is no word on the Magesanitii. They are quiet. I am told others move, but to what effect we are having difficulty learning."

Hesiod felt a twinge of relief. Thespos Comatid was a name that stood out amongst the Syros' generals. He was a leftover from the early conquests - a man who had walked with Hesiod's grandfather in the burning ruins of Melida. There were few of that generation left, and they were growing fewer every year. When Hesiod and his captains had sat to consider who would contend for the throne, Thespos ranked high on the list.

"Their supplies are running low." the pale man added. Qamut was one of the Efernii - the people from the far north who lived in glaciers. They had once ruled the pale desert, before the ancestors of the Rhumids or the Copsid family of Calydon. They were a small people, standing a head below other men, and their slight builds made them more agile then strong. Qamut had the ghost-like looks of his people. His skin was snow white and his hair a platinum silver. He had a hairless, moon-like face dominated by radiant blue eyes that seemed to glow. And at night, they did glow.

"Our raids are turning up less and less. Food trickles down the Red Road, but the families fight over it. Now the world outside of these mountains know that your war king is dead, they are hoarding what they can. They know what is coming."

Hesiod nodded grimly. "Our supplies are none better." He had kept tabs as much as he could, though he hardly had the heart to visit his brother and so he knew less then he thought he should. Phaedrus disturbed Hesiod. His brother was a colder man than any he had ever known. Onesimos had made his older son the Quartermaster, as he had no energy for war. Even his numbers didn't truly interest him, he simply handled them because he had been asked and had no interest in arguing. If he had not been given another task, Phaedrus would have likely spent his time staring at the walls.

"It's either retreat or battle." Qamut said. "Your great-uncle rules the pale lands. The other families must go south along the road, they have few other choices, but you can go east..."

"Retreat?" Acacius snorted. "Our family would never live that down. They killed your father, Hesiod! They murdered him in cold blood! If you cannot avenge him than ours is not a name to be feared! We must give battle! More than anyone else, we must!"

There was a sick humor to that. They could escape easier than anybody else. Their friends were to the east, after all, and the Rhumids knew this land well. They could escape, but they couldn't. There was no running, Acacius was right in that. Onesimos had been brutally murdered by the Mithrids. His death had to be avenged. Hesiod could see no way to do so without destroying everything they had here. His family, his friends, his life... they all balanced on this. It burned, like a headache lit aflame. All of it had fell on him, and his shoulders were buckling.

"I'm going to speak to Phaedrus." Hesiod said cooly. "If our supplies outlast theirs, they will be forced to attack first. We can lead them into the mountains and crush them against us."

Acacius looked the warrior, his helmet under his arm as he nodded in a way that looked as much like a salute as it did like an agreement. Qamut was still, and said nothing.

The mood in the Milatid camp was that of boredom and restlessness. Men sparred with each other, beating their frustrations into the shields of their comrades. The sound of dinging bronze and shuddering wood spears rose from several corners of the vast maze of tents. Calydonian archers practiced in jest against the Efernii longbowman, who's prowess with the bow was hardly paralleled. Separate from the rest, the Rhumid warriors practiced amongst their own.

The Rhumid's fought like angry demons. They painted their faces with red clay paste, and when they fought they pelted their enemy with shrill warcries and faces bent in murderous rage. Even their advance was different. The Calydonians approached tactically, considering all their angles as the walked toward their enemies at a steady pace. They would drum their weapons against their shields, but those shields were always ready. The Rhumid advance was a dance, however. They hopped and roared, drumming their spear against the ground and flapping their hide-and-wicker shields through the air as madly as a child waves a flag. It was not organized, and it worried Hesiod. They opened themselves to arrows and javelins. Calydonians were not frightened by warsongs, and no amount of pink paste would deflect a bronze spear head.

Not all men practiced. Some bitterly nibbled on hard cheese and stale bread. Others weaved small icons from their own hair, symbolizing patron ancestors or favored Goddesses. Others yet groomed themselves, combing their dark Calydonian hair and braiding the curls of their beards so that they were ready to be presented to Dys. These were all men readying for death. They had came to accept that they would fight their Calydonian brothers across the burning salt waste. Did that make it inevitable? The thought that there was no other path for them to travel but one of battle made Hesiod nervous. He reached Phaedrus's leather tent, sighed, and entered.

The tent was a closed pocket of human odor. Half-eaten food littered the floor. A simple cot stood at one end of the room, and a desk covered in papers and coins stood in the other. It was undecorated and austere, more like a prisoners tent then that of a young prince.

Phaedrus was bent over his desk wearing a stained tunic. His hair was a nest of ratted hair and his patchy beard was just as bad. He was focused on a ledger scroll, carelessly dragging his fingers across the flaky paper. He looked completely unaffected - like a man doing nothing but somehow focused on it all the same.

"Brother" Hesiod announced soberly. "Have you washed."

"The servant girl hasn't been by today." Phaedrus murmured. It was the same voice he always spoke in - a voice that said he did not care, and that he had never cared. "She wasn't by yesterday either. Probably found a man to fuck." Even his cursing was neutered.

Hesiod wrinkled his nose. "You need to be washed." he said. He got no answer. When he had told Phaedrus that their own father had died, he had replied with the same sort of energy he gave dirty laundry or tardy servants. 'We will need cords of wood for a pier' was what he had said, as if news of the death of the man who brought him onto this earth was little more than another requisition order.

"How long will our supplies last?" Hesiod finally asked, getting to business. Phaedrus did not move. He did not look up from his books. He only answered.

"A week and a half." he said. "Rhumid supplies will bring us to two. Raiders won't change that much."

"Two." Hesiod said grimly. "What do you suggest we do?" the futility of his words smacked him in the head as soon as they left his mouth.

"Find more supplies." Phaedrus said.

Hesiod felt the confused rage that had been building up inside him since the death of their father rising into his head. He made a fist and gritted his teeth. "You should care more!" he shouted. "You will die too!" he stepped forward and there was a pause. Phaedrus looked up at him with uninterested eyes. "He was your father too!" Hesiod demanded.

Phaedrus looked down at his ledgers. "It is too bad." he said, meaning none of it. Hesiod knew that his brother did not know what bad was. He knew the definition, sure, in the same was a child might be told what death was before they could understand. Phaedrus had no feeling of bad, or of good. He just was. Hesiod could have pulled his knife out right then and plunged toward his brother in murderous rage and he would have got little more than a reflexive flinch. Angry, Hesiod left the tent.

A salt wind blew across the desert. Hesiod couldn't tell if his eyes stung from tears of anger or tears of burning dust. He looked east, toward the sun rising over a distant stretch of the Rhumid mountains. The sky was purple with a burst of red flowering on the horizon. Soon, the sun would take to the sky and it would be day. Another day in the Rhumid waste, mulling over whether to act, or how to act. His men would stew in the desert, ready for war or hoping they could avoid it. This was the first war in a generation that threatened their families at home, Hesiod realized. Civil war. They had fought on the frontiers, warriors side by side knowing that their women and elders were safe at home reveling in the wealth of the new Empire. That safety was gone now. Their old men and young boys would soon be marching in Calydon itself, and across the many provinces of Syros' Empire.

A solitary horn blew at the edge of the camp. A long blast. When the watchmen blew a short blast, it meant their own were returning, but when they blew a long blast it meant someone else. One of the other families had sent someone. Could it be peace? Hesiod held his breath and jogged toward the sound.

Others had gathered to watch as procession of riders arrived in the camp. Their banners were the red and gold justice of the Mithrid's. Each rider was dressed well - wearing ornately trimmed linen riding armor and long-plumed bronze helmets. Crimson capes caught the wind behind them and flew in the wind. A bloodied linen pack draped the back of the leaders horse. Hesiod sucked in air as he realized what he was seeing - a body. Efernii raiders had been sneaking into enemy camps at night and sneaking off with what they could. Raiding was a well kept secret amongst all the clans - Hesiod knew that they had lost supplies as well. Still, if the Mithrids had decided to publicly slaughter one of the Efernii raiders, they were as good an excuse for war as any.

"Hesiod of House Milatid?" the first rider hopped off his horse and took off his helm. He was a young man with short-kept curly hair.

"I am him." Hesiod answered. "What business do the riders of Mithreum bring us." he studied the young Mithrid soldier. He was cocky and self-sure, even now that he was surrounded by those who blamed his people for the death of their leader. Hesiod could see the tension building in his own men.

"I bring a gift from Cassian Mithrid." the soldier motioned toward his horse. Two other men dragged the bloodied body bag from the back of the animal and tossed it on the ground. Hesiod looked toward Acacius and nodded. Drawing his sword, Acacius knelt over the bag and cut the strings that held it closed. A bloated face was revealed. It was one Hesiod had never seen before. As Acacius pealed the bloody linen from the body it wrapped, Hesiod looked up at the Mithrid rider and barked. "What is this?" he demanded.

"Justice." the rider replied. "The murderer of Onesimos, your most beloved father. Cassian himself administered the punishment."

A murmur rose up among the men, and Hesiod did not have to hear words to guess what was being said. Had Cassian punished a random man for the crimes he committed? Were they being lied to? Was this a trick of were the Mithrid's being true? Hesiod could see in his eyes that the Mithrid captain sensed the same thing. He looked all of a sudden uncertain, but his cocksure outer shell did not waver.

"This man was a zealot. He was convinced by the evil rumors that Onesimos plotted against our beloved Syros. He and his fellow conspirators murdered your patriarch in cold blood and shamefully boasted that it was in the name of our noble clan. He died for that lie. We do not wish for bad blood to flow between us."

Hesiod paused. What did this mean? He could declare Cassian's man a liar right here and start the war they were all waiting for. They had told him it was inevitable. Still, was this the chance for peace that he wanted? He wished for that to be true. His conscious begged him. He hesitated, but he could feel the hesitation lasting longer than it should. He could not be weak. Not now. He knew this.

He spat on the body. "Does Cassian Mithrid think us women?" he shouted. The riders suddenly looked frightened. "You are free to leave this place in safety as envoys, but know this! The Mithrid's are murderers and Cassian is a coward! He fears us! He fears that we will take his neck for the crimes he has committed, and he is right! Go tell him what we have said and know that will kill him! We will scatter his body across the sea so that he never may enter the afterlife a whole man! I curse him! The children of Milatides curses him!"

As Hesiod watched the riders leave, he felt a knot in his stomach and wondered what he had just done.

Seagulls dived and swirled about the masts and rigging of the galley Didela. The sails reflected the sunlight in a warm, creamy glow as the updrafts caught in the billowing slack. A foamy wake trailed behind the ship as she cruised across the open sea on her own power now, leaving a crew of swarthy, musclebound rowers free to move about the deck of the galley. They could be found in a congregation at the bow of the ship along with all but two of the passengers.

"Tell me, shipmaster." A voice from behind the gathered crowd called out, accompanied by a rhythmic tapping of wood against wood. The congregation parted as the grizzled Septilios hobbled across the deck to the bow, where the captain stood. "What in the name of the Creator is going on here?"

"It has been a full day of sail since we departed Comadua, Captain Septilios." The shipmaster reminded. "We have passed beyond the coastal waters into the open sea. These waters do not belong to us..."

"Surely you jest." Septilios snorted, expressing equal quantities of amusement and annoyance.

"I do not." The shipmaster reported solemnly. "The sirens are not to be trifled with, Captain. The sea is their domain. We will give them their tribute, and they shall leave us in peace."

Septilios rolled his eyes. "Superstitious nonsense; sirens were but an invention by the Elephese merchants to scare competitors off the seas."

"Perhaps you are right, Captain." The shipmaster admitted. "But I am charged with the safety of this ship, and all those aboard it - including our Queen. I will not put any of us at risk on the account of your peevishness."

"Do as you wish" Septilios sighed, throwing his hand dismissively into the air. "Drop some jewels into the sea and be done with it already. Get these men back to the oars, we have plenty of sea to cover yet."

The shipmaster nodded and gestured for a pair of rowers to come forward. Both carried a small chest by the handles on either side and deposited the box at his feet before opening it and retiring into the gathered onlookers. The ship captain drew a small brick of silver from within the lockbox and held it high above his head. Septilios' stomach turned upon seeing the offering - what a waste of such fine silver.

"Denizens of the sea and the deep places! I am Gorgios Veleto of the House Magesanitus, shipmaster of this ship Didela! I offer up this token unto thee that you might forgive our intrusion into your realm." The only response was the sound of waves being crushed into bubbles and froth against the snub-nosed bow of the galley. With a loud plunk, the ingot splashed into the waves and sank down to the bottom of the sea. By then, Septilios had already taken his leave and left for more pressing matters.

Septilios found Queen Lyca sitting upon a pillowed lounge on the upper decks beneath a canopy of purple silk - exactly where he had left her. Lyca had scarcely moved since boarding the Didela and had spent nearly all of her time aboard the ship staring torpidly beyond the bow of the ship into the empty horizon. At the foot of the lounge, carafes of wine and plates of neatly-arranged pastries had been left exactly as the servant had placed them - save for a few pastries that brave seagulls had absconded with.

"Milady." Addressed the Captain of the Guard as he approached the Queen. Gulls waiting on the side rail to steal pastries from the undefended plates gave startled caws and took off as the veteran bodyguard hobbled over. "Have you eaten anything today?"

Lyca stared off into the line dividing the sky and the deep sea, failing to acknowledge Septilios in any regard. Even when directly addressed, her eyes did not so much as flicker toward her guard.Trails of tear-washed eyeshadow ran down her face from the eyes to her cheek and chin. In spite of the dark smears across her cheeks and frazzled auburn hair, Lyca was quite a handsome woman - especially considering her advanced age. Age had come gracefully to the Queen; her face was devoid of the crisscrossing lines that marred the faces of most women her age. Though a lifetime of fearing for the safety of her husband and son had resulted in pointed cheekbones and small bags underneath her eyes, they did not detract from the pointed beauty of her visage. Syros had chosen well for his wife.

"My Queen, you must eat something. This past week has exhausted you. and you will need your strength when we reach the Copsid Dominion - we will all need your strength then."

"I am your Queen? Is that so?" Lyca said - the first words to leave her mouth in days. Even so, she failed to return eye contact and continued staring beyond the sea.

"Of course you are, my Queen." Septilios affirmed. "I do not understand, though, why you would ask such a question."

"At times you make me doubt that, Septilios. You tell me what I must do quite often for a subject of mine."

"Only because I have your well-being in mind, milady."

"And that is why you lead me to an uninhabitable wasteland on the frontier to meet with a dozen traitor generals?"

"Milady, my intent is no-..."

"Leave me, Septilios." The Queen asked demurely.

"I am only trying to help you keep the Empire that your husband - my King - worked so hard to build!" Septilios declared exasperately. "I do not wish to see what your husband accomplished fall into-..."

"I told you to leave me, Septilios." Lyca reminded. "As your Queen, I dismiss you. Now go." A grimace of frustration wrinkled the guard captain's face. Even so, he bowed before Lyca and hobbled off down to the lower decks.

"As you wish, my Queen."

Rhumid Wastes

(Song)

Even behind heavy canvas the coldness of the Rhumid salt flats could not be stayed. The wind and air found holes and cracks between openings in the fabric. Fires held back the cold well enough, but it was still uncomfortable. And without the sun it was even colder.

All the same, gathered at a large heavy table the armored figures of the underlords and commanders under Thespos Comatid had gathered in console to their liege-lord. Atop the heavy salt-dried and wasted wood of the table lay spread an impressive map painted on goat skin. Pinned to the heavy woods by daggers as to not unfold for the men who looked down on it.

“The situation goes tense.” Manoren said, rising from his log-hewn seat at the side. The dark red cloak he wore to keep warm in his armor fell loose from his lap, hitting the dusty, salt-crusted carpets with a thud. As with all the men here, his face bore the pink and pale complexion that came with having too much salt and dust brushed into his face. It almost made him more ghostly than he was. “Cassian Mithrid's son's men rides through the mountains and the salt flats cutting down Rhumids on the claim that they are responsible for the death of Onesmios. This has predictably made the natives tense, many of who are allied to Hesiod Milatid. The death of Hesiod's father has no less made him considerably tense in the past few days as we all now orbit each other tensly.

“I don't think we need to be told that there is a tension amid the camps. Ever as we move along, I got to say it's become less a focused march to protect the construction of a road, but the simple act of pretending to do so. And far too many more families are eerily silent on the matter.”

“It would seem to be a good time we withdraw from the field.” grumbled an elderly general, Sparaia. He wasn't a man of high-birth; having been a former slave. But it had come to be revealed the man had significant education when he was purchased by Thespos to tend to his gear. That was over thirty years ago, and it showed.

He was nothing older than Thespos who sat slumped over the table, drumming his knuckles on the dry porous wood. Sparaia's head was a rich crown of full curled silver hair, flaked with white bright than the sun's basking glow. Deep lines curled over his knotted and crudely drawn face. He had never spoke where he was from, but it had never been a point to ask. He was a slave, he was a different sort of man and his freedom had given him a second rebirth in his life. “I have surveyed our supplies and I fear if we continue consuming our rations the way we have been we will not last a week. We could last at a week and a half, but our men will become underfed and watered. That would be dangerous here. Even as cold as it can be, simply walking in this bitter wasteland will drive a man to thirst as he would if he carried on for three days without so much a drop.”

“Are you suggesting that we retreat from our duty!?” another commander shouted, throwing thick heavy hands down onto the table for emphasis on his rage. Thespos turned to him. He was his uncle, some many generations removed by his wife's brother's in-law by some unknown number of generations. Or that's what he was told when he arrived at his court in Qarim, in the city of Kangdi.

He was a tall man, with soft caramel tanned skin and a thick head of golden hair. His nose was bent and curled both to the side and downwards. He looked unlike it, but he shown himself a Calydonian through and through to reciting the epic poems of the Calydonian people and reciting the histories of the Comatid lineage, and the Solonids. “I would not take you as a coward, brother Sparaia!” he spat loudly. It was his trademark to be loud. Alecxos the Loud, “We should stay and stand on this field, and slay all the foes and all the commanders of the houses where they stand!”

“And what will we do then when we march back for home? Between us and the sea stands at the very least the pass, that might I remind you the Milatids control!” Sparaia argued, “And if they get so much word that a son of their family has died their men would cut us down in the rocks, and our victories would be for naught.”

“If we cut them down here, then we will cut them down at the pass.” Alecxos continued in a booming, proud voice.

“I do have to add he's right, Alecxos.” Manoren nodded, “What do we have as a bargaining chip to ensure our safe passage. It's not just the Reddened Gates in those switch backs and narrow canyons that stands to block our march home. But we will all the same need to reach the sea. Then what? Lay siege to the weakest port to procure ships? March along the coast to the Kaindo bridge and cross home by foot? We'd have well over many months of marching to do, and winter is dawning on us.”

“Then what would you have us do?” another old general asked. Long silver hair hung to his shoulders, from even under his helmet as he turned to Manoren with squinted half-blind eyes.

“Consolidate ourselves, lord Maxos.” Manoren bowed, “We can't stand against eleven armies. We need to seek allies. The mutual survival would benefit us.

“That would be an insult on us!” Alecxos boomed.

Thespos looked over at him. Though he knew he only used 'us' as an empty means of inclusion, he did respect the pride he had in the army and his confidence. Raising a hand he bid the attention of the men to him. “Alecxos, may you give us the standing retinue of men under my banner?” he asked.

“Certainly, my liege.” Alecxos bowed, lowering his voice. He stood from his seat as Manoren surrendered to his.

“At the moment we stand at 9,000 men.” he said, “4,000 proud Calydonians noble to our cause, 2,000 horse, and four-thousand retainer levees from the Qarim people. We hold seven-thousand spears, two-thousand bows, and a thousand swords. 1,000 of our men are of high birth, with the armor and equipment to their name and our horses as fresh and well raised.”

Thespos nodded. “Thank you.” he said politely. “I committed some of the highest manpower to this campaign and several thousand slaves from the Qarimite barbarians to the construction of this road in faith to Lord Syros. In my campaigns with him we have faced armies far greater than our own. All of them unified in our destruction.”

Raising to his feet he leaned over the table, placing his finger down on the lines drawn in chalk, marking where they were. In the heart of the desert of the far north. “The families that followed our Godly Emperor are divided amongst ourselves in distrust. If the tensions are as my son suggests it will break soon and they will fight.

“We shall not flee from the field. We shall in fact be present. And there as the banners of our enemies burn themselves against one another we shall stand to see their insolence destroy themselves.

“We do not need to commit at the first drawing of blood. We shall commit when all our enemies have destroyed themselves on their own spears. Then shall we move to steal away the survivors.”

“How do you propose we pass through Mithrid lands, my lord?” Sparaia asked, shocked.

“If we may, take Mithrid prisoners. If he has not been killed, steal Hesiod. We shall ransom the true son of the fool Onesmious as our ransom for safe passage to home. Then do as we may decide when we reach home.”

“Father, I must confess that this plan could turn the Mithrids too far against us that we won't have time to consolidate for anything but them!” Manoren pleaded, “We will need their faith for as long as we can get it.”

“And what might we possibly do when we reach home!?” Maxos squinted.

Standing out of his seat Thespos rose. The mighty beast of a man rose until he towered clear over his contemporaries. He was a giant in size. Sitting, he was a brooding ox. But on his feat, he was like the cyclops his ancestor had slain so long ago.

“We bring ourselves to inherit Syros' legacy.” he said, “And if the other families would stand against us, so be it. We'll kill them all. As we have for so many eons.”

A rusty thundercloud rolled over the salt flats, directed onward by a score of warhorses. Iron-shod hooves tore through the crusty earth and scattered clods of salt through the air. Sweat-soaked horses of pure muscle charged at full gallop before the roiling pink cloud; riders upon their backs held bronze-tipped spears aloft, each decorated with silk banners that glowed in the sunlight.

Several hundred yards before them, a gaggle of figures rendered featureless silhouettes by the glow of the white salt plain stood defiantly before the thundering cavalry. Though they outnumbered the horsemen some three to one, their death was assured. Nothing - certainly not some undisciplined smattering of barbarians - could hope to halt this wall of muscle and bronze.

A young boy with handsome locks of curly black hair led the horsemen on. He gathered the cape of purple silk fluttering violently on his back as he turned in the saddle to rally his companions. The horsemen dug their heels into the haunches of their steeds and they sprinted across the empty white expanse. Gleaming yellow spearpoints lowered down to the ground, each lance bobbing with the stride of the horse beneath it.

The pathetic wicker shieldwall of the tribesmen buckled as their courage vanished in the face of the rumbling death approaching them. Their line collapsed as the cowards among their numbers broke rank and fled to the spindly mountains for dear life. With their victory assured, their leader in the purple cape thrust his spear arm up to the sky - rallying his fellow riders onward once more. He let loose a throaty warcry as his steed closed the gap between the routing desert fighters.

But his cry was cut short. A crude arrow loosed from somewhere on the plain sailed from the sky plunged deep down between his clavicle - just above the lip of his gilded cuirass. A wad of fresh pink blood burst from his mouth as his eyes rolled back into his head.

_________________________

With a violent scream, Queen Lyca woke herself. Drenched in sweat, she bolted upright off the cushions of the lounge and found herself upon the deck of the galley Didela. Uncertain as to where she had woken, she took pause for several moments spent determining where she was and whether what she had just witnessed really happened, or if it was merely a nightmare. One by one, the events of the past week came to mind. Syros and Galos both were no more - and she was not dreaming. She gagged as the awful realization came to her once again. On weak legs, she stumbled off of the chair and staggered to the side railing of the galley and leaned over the edge to vomit. Her empty stomach wrung itself, but ultimately failed to produce anything. Lyca could not recall the last time she had anything to eat. For man eats to live after all, and Lyca no longer had the desire to do either.

A whole moon - the Pearl of Dys - glowed a spectral white as it hung low over the midnight sea. Legend had it that on these nights, Dys herself lured the forlorn and hopeless toward the moon off of cliffs, mountaintops, ramparts, and windows like flies to a candlelight. Queen Lyca needed little persuasion from the Sister of Death; she saw no reason to continue on. Her beloved husband and unbowed king, and her cherished son through whom her blood would rule the world for joyous centuries, had both been stolen from her. Across this sea, on a cold desert of uninhabitable saltland, avaricious generals who pretended undying loyalty to her husband sharpened their swords and prepared to tear asunder all that her Syros had spent his entire life building. The coming months and years promised a cataclysm the likes of which had never been seen in the Mortal Era. A future of destruction, hardship, and sorrow is all that awaited; a future that Lyca had no interest in seeing.

She could end her part in the living nightmare that had become of this world. She could fall beyond the railing into these dark waters, beneath the moonlit waves and down to the very bottom - deeper than the siren lairs and haunts of drowned titans - through to the waters beneath the world where she would fall into the Great Void. There, in the blackness, her drowned body would tumble for a thousand years until one day, she might come across the spirits of her husband and son. At last, they could be rejoined, together in the blackness, far beyond the world its atrocities.

Queen Lyca threw one leg over the side and straddled the rail as one did a saddle. She twisted about, with one foot planted on the deck and the other dangling over the foam churning along the hull of the ship.

"Milady!!"

Septilios' voice rang out from somewhere behind her. The Queen was startled, and in her hesitation gave Septilios time enough to reach her. A rapid clopping of his peg leg against the deck of the ship signified that he had seen her over the rails. Before she could think to shove herself off and escape him, rough and calloused hands scooped up around her waist and yanked her over the rails onto the deck.

"By the Creator, what happened?!" Septilios demanded as he deposited the Queen back onto the cushions of the chaise lounge. "I heard a terrible scream. Tell me, what happened?"

"I-I had a horrible nightmare, Septilios." Lyca confessed. "So enrapt in the nightmare I was, that I must have screamed and walked about the ship, and did any number of other things. I don't recall anything until I heard you cry out."

"Thank the Sisters I saw you when I did."

"Indeed. I am indebted to you, dear Septilios." She said with feigned gratitude.

"Think not of it." Said Septilios dismissively. He took the Queen by the arm and pulled her gently onto her feet. "I may not have been there to protect Syros or your son... but I shall not lose you, my Queen."

"Now come with me, I will find you a vacant bunk inside the cabin. It will hardly be fit for a Queen, but you shall rest comfortably upon it all the same without fear of falling overboard. We must be well rested, for we arrive in Copsis tomorrow." And so the Queen followed reluctantly behind her guard down to the galley's cabin, looking longingly over her shoulder at the Pearl of Dys as she went.