The next few hours were spent in celebration. It had been so long since the people Thorn had anything to rejoice about, but the return of their uncrowned Dragon King certainly filled the requirement. The music was vibrant, and the feast delectable, no doubt especially for a recently returned who would not have tasted food in thousands of years. Yet a tangible sadness still filled the air like a fog looming over the superficial happiness. Ronan knew of this darkness that lingered, and Erebus could would have likely felt it, too. They clothed Erebus, they fed him, and then, once the celebrations had waned like a flickering flame, Ronan took the Uncrowned King aside and led him to the Elder’s Home: a modest hovel at the centre of the village.

Ronan told Erebus everything. He filled him in on the history of Ansus since his lifetime, and he regaled the Dragon King with stories of Kings past and wars waged. He told him of the dying flames, and he warned him of the bitter chill enveloping the world. They talked long into the night. Over two millennia of history could not be rushed.

Ronan gazed at Erebus, still not quite believing that the Dragon himself sat before him, listening intently to his recollection of the world. His eyes glinted in the midnight flame burning at the centre of the hovel; punctuating the conversation with much needed silence.

“They say that Kolantis was burned to ashes,” he said solemnly. “Out of nowhere. Some attacking force came from nowhere and razed the entire city. The guards stood no chance.”

Ronan fiddled with the long braid of black hair that fell from his head. He ran his fingers through the myriad of ornamental decorations anchored to his hair: feathers, beads, and other, more esoteric trinkets. It truly was an incredible collection of unusual artifacts. He thumbed one of the feathers like a nervous child, rolling it between his fingers for a moment as he watched Erebus’ gaze follow his own eyes. ”There are so few of us now. The crops will not grow, and all the animals seem to be gone. We once thought that we were cursed, my liege. But it has become apparent to us that it is not just us, but the entire world. Ansus is cursed.”

Ronan stood from his rough wooden stool and quickly strode to the far wall, where the light of the fire barely reached. He removed a strangely crafted tube from a unremarkable stand that was nestled between a myriad of strange relics that cluttered the Elder’s home. He promptly brought the tube back to Erebus, and screwed off the head of the tube and removed the object within: a large parchment scroll. He laid it upon the ground just short of the fire and unravelled it flat on the ground. The firelight was just enough for both Erebus and the Elder to see the faded ink that had been scrawled on so long ago.

”Ophel,” Ronan began. ”The Diamond Dragon,” he pointed to the scroll. It was a rough sketch of a legendary dragon, whose scales were perfectly formed into the shape of diamonds, and whose head was utterly reminiscent of its namesake. ”Ophel used to guard our lands. He took up the mantle once you passed from the world. He kept us safe. Perhaps he did so out of respect for you, my lord. We have always been able to sleep easily here, and know that no harm will befall your kin because of his watchful eye.”

Ronan quickly rolled the parchment up once more, and tossed it aside with little regard for its value. He looked Erebus in the eyes again. His own were glazed and wet, as though tears were trying to force their way to the surface. The elder suppressed them, though. It was his civic duty to be strong.

”But, my lord, the world is cursed. Ophel is no exception. His scales grow black, and his eyes speak of shadows. He no longer watches over us as a guardian. He soars for hours, casting his shadow upon our village, and we know that hunger is in his eyes. The dragon has become corrupted, but I do not know by what. But I am sure he will not wait for long before breaking his own vow of protection.”





The band of Alan warriors led Cinnead through the highlands. They had been kind enough to supply him with a cloak to cover his dignity, though it did little to shake off the bitter cold that set in as they moved further from the solitary tree. It was colder than Cinnead could remember; as he looked around things were different and ever so subtly wrong. It was as if the world itself was slightly off. The grass was thin and wiry, growing a sickly brown instead of its normal lush green; the clouds gathered in arcane ways that belied their humble nature, and the cold was far harsher than it had been thirty thousand years ago.

The air was thin there. The animals were nowhere to be seen. The only thing that seemed to move besides the dead grass in the chill wind was the ghostly boar, dancing across the plains, mocking Cinnead with every move. The Alan warriors did not seem to see the boar. It was as if the creature presented itself solely to the Spear of the West. Yet it moved with the band of warriors, running almost parallel to them for hours. Days. However long it had been. The day and the night were nearly interchangeable, for the suns offered no warmth, nor did much light fall upon the land through the thick, obscuring clouds. There was no way of telling how long they had walked.

Smoke loomed upon the horizon, past the next rising hill, and across the next plain. The highlands were vast and empty, and it was rare that one would encounter anything more than a stray wagon crossing its span. Yet as the Alan Warriors and Cinnead walked, they found more than a travelling merchant flogging his wares to the empty expanse. A camp - at least, what was once a camp. It would have once been a temporary home for travellers and maybe bandits; highwaymen of all walks of life, and of all different motives and roles. But now it was ruined.

And it seemed to not have been ruined by the hands of men.

Whoever had once called this place a comforting place to rest was now strung from spears of bone protruding from the very ground. Bodies upon bodies lined the perimeter of the camp, each one humiliated in death a new way. Their arms were ripped from their sockets and twisted and contorted in completely unnatural ways. Some had been cleaved entirely in twine and their intestines dangled like morbid ropes from their bellies. Others had been opened up and horrifying effigies of demons or worse had been crafted from their grisly cadavers.
The centre of the camp was no longer an old, worn out campfire, but rather a totem of human heads had been erected. Each one was void of eyes and tongues, and from each hole poured an endless stream of blood, trickling down each head below it.

And the heads were still murmuring. They were still alive. They moaned of unspeakable pain; being kept alive by some evil force. They lamented and wailed as best they could without their tongues. They seemed to groan a simple sound of warning, but the Alan warriors did not comprehend such grim advice.

”Gods save us…” one of the warriors whispered after fully realising what he was looking upon.

All the men began to look to one another in sheer confusion, hoping the next man would have answers. But none of them did. It was in the confusion that the ghostly boar appeared to all the men, shocking them even further. Such a situation was of greater intensity than they knew how to handle. But the warriors had no time to exclaim upon the sudden appearance of the Boar, for it’s manifestation was coupled with a mighty roar from its haunting mouth. It seemed to be looking at something in the centre of the camp.

And almost as if on cue, a man shrouded in shadows emerged. His entire form was little more than a churning darkness against the thin daylight. Burning points of fire blazed were where its eyes should have been, and two grisly swords rested behind it, as if it were trying to hide weapons from a foe.

There was laughing. Louder than it should have been, but laughing nonetheless. Hollow and cold, each man felt it in their chests like thunder.





Truly, it was a glorious day for the return of the Green Knight. He and Harald strolled heartily through the forest for some time, in search of gods-knew-what and honour. It would have been more devastating for the Green Knight to see the slow, gradual death of the forest than anybody alive, for his connection to it and Tavra was so strong. How terrible it must have been to look up and see not birds chirping in the canopy. How wrong it must have felt to not feel the light filtered through the canopy warming their backs. How odd it must have been to see swathes of trees crumbling into black husks of their former selves.

How crushing it must have been to see the forest die alongside Tavra.

Yet Harald trudged along unwillingly besides the giant of a man, the legendary hero of tales long told and songs of old. he was far less adept at moving through the thick, cold undergrowth than the Green Knight was. He spent the time both admiring and fearing the man who had so simply, and so easily plucked him from his comfortable life as a barely sober bard: he was surely the tallest man that he had ever seen. The biggest, too. His armour was that of the forest, adorned in all manner of verdant tokens and natural growth, and the horns upon his head were so colossal that they seemed to block almost all the light ahead.

They had walked for hours. Many long, tiring hours. Yet the Green Knight did not seem to tire. So they walked for more hours. More and more until night fell, and still they walked. it was some time before they came upon the tree. Perhaps it was what they had been searching for, or perhaps it was simply an act of serendipity. Harald was sure that they were on their way to Kolantis or Ghora, or even somewhere where he could find himself another tankard of ale to beat back the sobriety creeping its way through his body.

But this tree… was very much alive.

Unlike those around it, leaves still blossomed in mysterious shades of white and grey. Faces seemed to be carved into the wood by people from days long past. But the pair found themselves stopping at this most unusual tree, navigating through the tangle of overground roots and marching to touch the bark.

The faces upon the tree seemed to come alive as they approached. They looked to take deep breaths as though awoken from a long, restful slumber. Eyes opened slowly only to reveal more bark. Noses twitched, and eyebrows furrowed -if they could be called as much whilst on a tree with a face- and it began to creak and moan like a tree faltering under the prevailing strength of a terrible gust.

Ahhhhhhhhh came the first noise. Then a resounding Ahhhhhhhh

”Iiiiit…. issssss…. yoouuuuuuuu” it spoke, so slowly its words were almost inaudible.

”Tellllll meeeeee….. “ it started. ”Iffff youuuu wishhhhhh foooorrrr aiiiiiid, youuuu must prooooove youuuuu are wiiiiiise”

Harald could not help but look upon this with wonder and astoundment, mixed only with an ounce of fear as he saw the Green Knight approach closer.

”It may…. only be given….
Not taken….. or bought….
What….. the sinner….. desires,
But the saint….. does not.”





Ansur ran faster than he had ever run. He made haste to leave Kolantis and the destruction it had become. He bolted from the gates and gave little more than a thought to the Vampire Lord that he had encountered, knowing full well that he might still be out for blood. But that was no longer Ansur’s concern, for the city was dead, and the world was changed forever. The presence of such cultists, the constant lament of the King in Black…

He knew exactly why he was back. He knew. He had not known before, but it was worse than he could have ever imagined. He needed to find Altim, and he needed to find the King. He needed the returned to be at his side. He needed many things. But for the moment, finding Altim and the King were all that mattered.

He sped through the brush, faster than any living man could have done. He ran and leapt and dodged his way through trees and bones and rocks and… -
He stopped dead in his tracks, his velocity almost taking him from his feet and thrusting him into the undergrowth. With a slight adjustment to his stance, he retained his footing. He stood still for a moment, looking around for what he thought he saw. He was sure that he saw a Ghedrin through the trees, and Ansur knew of only one Ghedrin who made their home outside the subterranean caverns of their species. The Bastion’s own ‘Tay’… He had commanded the creature to go out into the world and find others that had returned.

”Tay!” he shouted into the forest. It was so empty that his voice echoed through the trees for a moment.

Silence. Not even birds chirped any more.

Ansur furrowed his brow in frustration. He was sure he did not imagine it. He called a second time, but it was met with only more silence. He cried out one last time, and was this time met with a gentle rustling some ways into the forest.

”Master! Master Ansur!” came a shrill voice. ”Master master master master!” it cried again. The creature emerged shyly from the shadows, clutching a bag of coins in both hands. It looked upset, almost on the verge of crying. Its head was held low and its shoulders were entirely hunched, even for a Ghedrin, it looked uncomfortable.

”Tay!” Ansur yelled, jogging over to the frightened creature. ”You are back. Did you find any returned?”

The creature nodded. It kept its eyes on the ground. It was so frightened that even its asymmetric blinking slowed almost entirely.

”Where?” Ansur asked quietly, though with a commanding tone.

Tay simply pointed into the depths from whence he had come. Ansur nodded in response.

He flung the Ghedrin onto his back so that he would not be left alone in the forest, and so that he could guide him towards this newly discovered returned. They ran for only minutes before they stumbled across what they sought. He lumbered through the forest in thick soldier’s armour, carrying with him a mighty shield, and bearing a tremendous grey beard. His face was scarred by what was undoubtedly years upon years of warfare.

Ansur stood in the shadows for a few moments. He looked up into Tay’s eyes, a gambit for the creatures approval that this was the man he had brought. Tay nodded and let a small smile creep across his face.

”Hail, wanderer.” Ansur called out, undoubtedly taking Ellarian by surprise. ”I do believe that I sent for you. I am told that you have recently returned from beyond the grave…”





The long road was both easy to travel, and gruelling to walk. It stretched for miles into the distance, far further than any man could see. Few men could travel it alone with few supplies, but Norco Khan was not just any man. The Wolf King walked for the miles that the road stretched, making his way quickly from the small village on the Eastern outskirts and toward Kolantis, the capital that had recently been razed to the ground. Khan’s search for purpose was frustrating and no clear answers had been given. And so, he walked the road watched not by Gods nor men, but rather by the birds of carrion that circled overhead, awaiting the Wolf King to succumb to hunger and so they may have their next meal, yet the Wolf did not falter, and the birds would go hungry.

It was perhaps three days since the assassin in the village had been foiled, and Norco had crossed only four travellers like he. Two had been afraid of him merely from seeing his massive stature from a distance. They had diverted their path in a long circle to avoid crossing him. One of the travellers had tried to rob him, and subsequently died a most painful death, and the last traveller was kneeling at a wayshrine just off the road and nestled in a thicket of trees around a small pool that welled from the deep earth.

”Hail” the man had said, fearing not the size of the man who had passed. Instead, he made his best attempt at conversation, though solemn travellers often had little to discuss. But times were tough, and the world was awash with strange happenings and desperate tales.

”There’s no point prayin’ to em’” he had told Norco. ”Its true what they’ve bin’ sayin’. They’re all gone. Don’t answer any more,” the man said as he looked up at Norco. He raised to his feet after praying at the shrine in hopes of guidance, or even an answer. ”Probably why the world is the way it is, ya’ know?” he asked. he pulled the rucksack he had laid down by the feet of the carved statue of Tael up onto his shoulder and bid Norco farewell. ”Ain’t nothin’ holy no’ more. Kolantis sacked, people dyin’ left, right an’ centre. Even heard that sum’ of the old heroes from the stories are walkin’ around again. Not sure ‘ow that works. Good day.’”

The man brushed by Norco, and before long had disappeared beyond the horizon, down the long road, into the setting suns.





Ki’ira’s wailing could have been heard from miles away. Her cries were just as raucous as her personality, and her pained cries were like fire to those who listened on. Those lurkers in the forest dared not approach a woman in such emotional agony. They knew it would be folly.

So the forest left her to her pain. It soaked up her fiery tears and made no move to comfort her. It was just as unforgiving as it had always been, if not more so. The sun had even disappeared behind yet more clouds, and a light rain had begun to fall. The ground soaked up the rain just as it had done with her tears. The air grew cold, and the ground grew sodden. Hope seemed to have been lost.

What was her purpose now? Now that her God was gone, and life was facing the end of all things. What was she to do? What was her path? Darkness clouded her mind. Even her attempts at optimism, her looting of fallen weapons looking for something to sell, was overshadowed by a great sadness within.

Then there was a light, mere feet from Ki’ira, blinding in its intensity. And within the aura of excellent light? A fox, larger than any found in the wild, with silvery hair that was perfectly groomed and cleaned.

”Child,” it spoke with a voice most heavenly, yet with hints of mischief running throughout. ”Why do you cry? It is I, Vinsha.”

Undoubtedly Ki’ira would have been confused, and blasted by emotion. For the Fox Goddess really stood before her, did she not?

”You have been deceived, child. Ansur lies to you all. You must be careful, for those who wish to be your allies will try to deceive the disciple of the trickster. You must not trust him, you must not. I remain in this world, just like you. Why do you think you are back?”

Vinsha spoke with the manner that only a God could muster. Beautiful, heavenly, flawless.

”You must kill him. For he will lead a band of heroes into evil. He seeks only to control you.”

The giant fox gently, and very elegantly approached the speechless Ki’ira. It nuzzled her wounded arm and shoulder, creating a soothing warmth that seemed to heal her ills.

”Use what I taught you, child. Bring the world back into light,”

And just as fast as the Vinsha had appeared before Ki’ira, she was gone one more, with little more than the blink of an eye. A spectre. A fleeting, transient moment of serenity.





”Alright, now excuse you, miss!” the woman half-shouted in frustration. ”Just who do you think you are? Talkin’ to me like that after I came all this way to check on you!” The woman made a gesture of offence before stepping backwards a little bit.

”Also! Don’t talk to me like that in front of my child!” she said much more aggressively as she bent over to slap the Windwitch hard across the face, leaving a red handmark on her cheek. ”You can’t be ‘avin’ any of my food, thank you very much!” she said sternly, before turning away and storming back to the road. She stopped her her food supplies once more and half-jogged, half-ran down the dirt track. She, after all, did not want to stick around so close to Kolantis. Not after what had happened.

The docks were empty. They were laying on the same sea that the capital itself reached, so looking down the coastline would have yielded view of the city silhouette, smoking, obscured slightly by the coming rain. Something was definitely off. Something was definitely wrong.
She was lost in a new time, and there was not a soul around to guide her. Small fishing boats lay dormant and empty, and crabbing baskets had long since been emptied and left to rot on the pier. People had abandoned this place long before she awoke.

Why was the world so empty and cold? Just why had she awoken, and why her?





There was a cacophony of rejoicing cries amongst those who had seemingly gathered to welcome Zahara back into the world. Understandably they would be happy about such an incredible development, but there was the growing sense in the air that there was, perhaps, something more to it than the return of a great warrior from times past.

The suns beat down heavily in the North. They burned with such intensity that not much could survive in the desert, save for these hardy people. Unlike the rest of Ansus which was being swallowed by cold and darkness, these lands were becoming hotter and brighter, yet more desolate and less in check. The sub-men still roamed the sands, beaten and bloody after their defeat at the North Fortress some weeks back, but the villagers here knew little of such wars of Southern men.

”You have returned to us, Iron-Tooth, just like we always knew you would,” the woman began. ”We heard tales of others coming back from death. Those from the stories. We knew it was only a matter of time before you came back to us, Zahra the Free, and we are glad.”

The old woman slowly and gently turned herself to face the assorted crowd that had gathered, and she confirmed to them that this was She of the Inner Flame who had found her way to their land of life once more. A tremendous crescendo of celebration followed. Men hugged and women cried. Children danced, and even the domestic animals yelped and barked and sprinted through the temporary disorder as the reality of the situation set in.

”You have come back to lead us to freedom, have you not?” she mounted hopefully, desperately wishing this newly revived hero from times past had the answers that she did not. ”And you know why the world is dying, too, yes? You have come to save us!”

She smiled a most heartwarming smile. She did not anticipate that Zahara knew nothing of her predicament. They looked up to her already. They knew it was her, for the belly-scar was the most famous in the known world. They were a leaderless people in need of solidarity and leadership.

And, without even being asked, Zahara had taken up that mantle.

The celebrations were so intense for those moments, that even the most astute among them did not notice nor acknowledge the patrol of sub-men who had poured into the village on warg-back, bony banners flapping high in the wind. The joy of the people was broken, and silence reigned once the leader of the band of sub-men dismounted his rabid beast and called for the attention of the villagers in his most ominous tone.

”You! People!” it cried. It sauntered up the the elderly woman, the crowd parting in the wake of the large, disgustingly formed man. It stood above her, Zahara watching the whole time, as it gripped the elder by her furs and pulled her close. A veil of fright fell over her face, sadly replacing the heartwarming smile that she had shown just moments before.

”Our… dowry. You pay. Or die,” it demanded.

The elder said nothing, she simply turned her head to Zahara, her eyes red and filling with tears borne of fear.

Falling.

He was falling.

He did not know when he realized this. It may have been a second since he left her embrace, it may have been an eon. But when he opened his eyes he realized he was falling from an impossible height. The world below was a smear of colors spinning in every direction as he tumbled through empty air.

He was aware of so many new things. A million, a billion heartbeats thrummed in sync beneath him. All the three realms were in his gaze. The leylines, coursing rivers of golden light, stretched across the firmament of the globe like a spider’s web. He knew all.

He was all.

He looked down at himself.

His mind nearly shattered.

A trick of the light, an abstract thing of unbelievable angles. His mind burned with fire and he screamed in terror and exultation. He turned away, focusing on the ground below, but he could still see it, in his mind. It had burned its way through. He was terrified of himself, he realized. He was an idea, or the hint of an idea, or the memory of something he had never known, or the shadow of all these things, their inverted reflection, on a still lake at night.

He couldn't be real, the man thought. His mind struggled to put all into words, to understand what had been so clear to him before. How could he have been real before this? It... he had had no substance. No weight. He had had mass, the man remembered, his embrace stretching impossibly wide, but behind the mass there had been no depth. It made no sense. How could he be real and make no sense?

He tried to look at himself again, at his body of fractured proportions and broken reason, but it was long gone. Replaced instead were limbs and clothes, and the hot flesh and blood that coursed beneath that was all too real.

He was impossibility made manifest, the formless given form, and he fell though the sky in fire, accompanied not by the roar of the very air set aflame, but the last whispers of a song’s echo.

“…Orders…”

It is only when the man breached the atmosphere that he realized how quickly he was moving. The wind buffeted his arms so violently he feared they would be torn from his body. It was like stepping from a calm shelter into a maelstrom of shrieking wind. He was tugged violently into the current, the force pulling, pushing and tossing him in every direction as unseen forces battered his body.

For a moment, the pain was swept from his mind while he tried to process all the things he could see. Lush, green forests. Windswept deserts. Towering mountains capped with ice and snow. The blue trails of rivers, winding their way to lakes and seas.

Ansus.

His lungs took great heaving breaths, the first of many as plummeted to the landscape alone. His fingers clawed at the void, desperately trying to gain purchase as gravity reeled him closer and closer to the ground below.

He sped over bustling metropolis, villages in snowy mountains, a castle consumed by the forest around it, then finally a small village at the edge of a forest, and vast deserts. A long stretch of brown and snowy jagged peaks stretched into the distance.

He was directly over the jagged mountains when their peaks rose up to meet him. There was an overwhelming burst of pain, a great explosion of heat and sound, and the man was aware he was yet again falling. A body newly born shattered the mountainside, and with it, his descent. Rocks clipped at his skin and face as he tumbled into the free-fall abyss down its slope. A lake swallowed him.



Lilith opened her eyes, wondering what had woken her up. After the horror of the day prior, she'd hardly been able to calm down. It wasn't until long after the knight had brought her to her room to wait it out that she could feel any semblance of normalcy returning to her.

Ever since then, her instincts had been telling her to get out of there, as if there were a cloud of danger all around her... if mother had taught her anything, it was that her instincts were seldom wrong about danger.

She had spent the night tossing and turning restlessly on a huge bed, fit for noble ponies with the softest silk sheets she had ever had the pleasure of feeling.

Still, despite her physical comforts, she had kept waking up, expecting someone—maybe a crazed bandit, or a blood-covered ghost with hooks for hands—to have snuck in to harm her. Eventually, she had finally fallen asleep into a dreamless sleep. Or had it been dreamless? She seemed to almost remember something. She mulled over it before she was overcome by a yawn and took another, fresher look at the room where she had been taken.

The room itself was pretty big, easily dwarfing the size of her own room in Eistwater, and had solid, grey stone columns located on each corner. It was decorated with tasteful vases with flowers on small, circular tables at regular intervals along the wall, clearly calculated to fill the empty spaces created between the placed paintings depicting men and women indulging themselves on a huge bounty of fruits, meats, vegetables and wine.

Lilith stared longingly at one of the pictured bottles before continuing her assessment, turning to the floor-to-ceiling windows, framed by silken drapes, and a book case twice her hight filled with tomes. A quick glance revealed nearly all of them to be some sort of religious books and papers.

It had all the necessities too: a dresser, carved of dark mahogany; a large mirror; a walk-in closet which held a single white robe; a chamber pot and wash basin in a separate room, with a curtain across for privacy.

The truly odd thing about the room was the desk opposite her bed. She had glossed over it on her quick look around, but now that she focused on it, there was something odd about it. It wasn’t the desk itself it was on top of it- a brown... was it... leather? Lilith’s eyes widened a bit as she got out of bed and walked up to the desk.

She realized it was indeed a leather harness of some sort that lay upon it. It wasn’t too big, roughly her size, actually, and on top of it, was the thing that had caught her attention and demanded her eyes concentrate on this desk... a single, perfectly cut, sapphire.

The room’s quiet broke when a set of three patient knocks on the door alerted her to the probable cause of her waking up. She shook her head, turning towards the entrance with a sidelong glance at the harness and sapphire, and called out, “Come in, please!”

A young man in a grey robe she recognized as one of the squires opened the door and slowly walked in, looking around and instantly spotting her. "Acolyte Lilith,” he said, “Knight Hierophant Regulus would like a word with you.”

Lilith blinked. “Wait, what did you call me?”

The squire arched an eyebrow.

“Oh!” Lilith quickly ran to the closet and pulled the white robe over her own, much more humble, clothes. “I think I look okay now!” she announced, glancing over her shoulder at the boy.

“Aren’t you going to wear the harness the Knight Hierophant got for you?”

Lilith blinked. “That’s for me? But... I'm not even sure I want to join.”

The cadet shrugged. “May as well bring it with you. And the sapphire.”

Lilith looked at him dubiously, but grabbed both objects and followed him outside. The castle was a hub of activity; squads of knights, squires and acolytes would pass them by on patrols so often it did little to reassure her that things were fine. She watched with interest, paying close attention to the time between patrols, and the routes they followed.

The way to their location was a veritable maze of corridors. Even her recollection as Regulus guided her to the room last night soon became useless, and much to her chagrin she was completely lost.

They eventually reached the barracks and Lilith was escorted straight to the back, to an open courtyard where several drills were taking place. Here the winter snow had been cleared, and Lilith pulled her robe tighter around as the chill set in, wondering how the knights could stand it. The squire looked at her strangely for a moment, before gesturing to the embroidery on the sleeves of her cuff. With much confusion, her fingers skimmed the copper threads. Immediately the cold fell away from her as the threads glowed with magic. It had felt as if someone had lit a hearthfire close at hand. “Oh, now it makes sense...” Lilith muttered, observing the few knights-in-training.

The squire snorted and continued to lead her up the wall to the battlements to where she had already spotted Regulus, his autumnal beard and black robe obvious even at a distance. Lilith took a moment to examine the drills, following the knight instinctively and watching with interest the practicing men and women.

Their drill seemed to consist of some sort of telekinetic grip on small stones or shards of metal, but the hold was different somehow from what she had seen her mother or the occasional traveling magician perform. It seemed as if each were levitated individually, rather than as a whole, then kept in the telekinesis hold as tightly as possible.

The knights would have the pieces fly around and spin under fine control, following set motions and imaginary attacks and blocks, locking them together at times, only to have them separate into several pieces.

“Like what you see?” Regulus asked, making her jump. The Knight Hierophant was a man in his late thirties, his red hair tied back into a tight knit ponytail. He had a warm countenance of genial content, and stood a head above nearly every other man there.

Lilith jumped. “Oh! Sorry, I was distracted...” Lilith smiled nervously up at Regulus before looking back at the soldiers. “Yes! It’s very interesting how it works. At first I thought they were levitating all the objects at once, but the fine control they display indicates something completely different. I was working on the theory that each piece was controlled by an individual telekinetic hold, which is then used, possibly in conjunction with a tied-in general hold, to form a sword or similar weapon which can then be disassembled for a variety of uses. The use of such a weapon can only be limited by the caster’s fine control and imagination... it’s... beautiful..."

Unbeknownst to her, the squire and Regulus shared a hidden look as she spoke. After a moment, the Knight Hierophant gave the tiniest shake of his head to his pupil before turning back to Lilith, a large grin on his face, that did not quite meet his eyes. "It is beautiful, isn’t it? The knight, or blade-caster as we are known, has to manage several things at the same time... it’s an art and possesses a simplicity in its final objective that is an absolutely beautiful thing to see in practice. Where did you learn so much, may I ask?"

"Oh," Lilith suddenly found her shoes very interesting. "My mother is the village hedge witch. She taught a few things to my brother and I, but Brian doesn't really have the gift."

Then it clicked. What exactly had been bothering her. Why she still felt the need to run.

"When can I see them?" Regulus was silent. The weight in her throat grew heavier. "...is she... is she here?" she asked hopefully.

“She did a fine job raising the both of you, I’m sure,” Regulus continued after a moment's pause. “But... she likely perished when those bandits razed the village.”

Lilith felt the blood run cold in her veins. “R-razed...”

Regulus nodded. “There was little I could do.” He sighed. “By the time the Order knew what was happening and sallied out, it was too late.”
Lilith looked down at the battlements, a lost look in her face. “A-and my friends?”

Regulus flinch. “Some survived... some died. I had heard reports that the local priest had managed to gather several people in his chapel and secure it before they began to burn everything. We found no bodies within the ruins, so we assume they had managed to flee the massacre..."
He stopped himself, almost smacking himself to his callousness. He had caught himself repeating the same speech he had given the Knight Commander to a child whose village had been the one attacked. "Look," he told her, kneeling down to bring himself to her height. "There's still a few people who came with us last night, and a few dozen wounder who are still resting under the care of the Knight Asclepi. Tommorrow, once I clear it with the Knight Commander, we can go see if your mother and brother are amongst them."

She did not respond.

For almost three hours hour she stayed at wall, silently staring out into the lake. Regulus stayed with her the entire time. She did not speak or cry. He did not comfort her or press. At one point, the squire began to remind the Knight Hierophant of the duties he had still to perform, but a sidelong glare from the man sealed his lips.

The morning passed slowly this way, the sun coming up and over to its zenith. The silence as still as the distant lake.

Then it was broken.

"Last night..." Lilith asked slowly, "You asked me a question."

"Did I?"

Regulus rested the back of his head against the masonry of the merlon, his eyes closed to the world around him. His black robe pooled around him like a puddle of shadow in the midday sun. "I take it you're interested then."

She looked at the knights below as the threw shards of their blades into the chests of scarecrows.

She imagined each target the face of one of the men who attacked Eistwater.

"I am."

So he told. He told her how a young mage had been assigned to protect a princess. How that mage grew into a knight, and how he devoted his life to defending his princess. How he would slay dragons in her name and loved all her his life. That the same knight would later found his own order of knights, and they, in turn would guard the land long after his death.

Twice the squire brought them food, and the suns sank lower across the horizon until they were naught but bands of red and purple light in the distance. A shooting star shot across the sky, and the lake rippled. Occasionally, Regulus would pause and glance at his student expectantly, and the boy would jump in without heisitation, continuing the tale of the Order.

"...it was then, after the siege of Cair Paravel that Knight Commander Aemon moved the Order from its ancestral monastary to a castle built on the shores of Lake Fafnir, near the Shrine of our founder. We have been here ever since, guarding the land and the empire as best we can."

"It sounds just like in the old stories and fairy tales."Lilith sat on the edge on a merlon, rubbing her sapphire around in her hands. "Just like Ansur, or the trials of Cinnead, or the Green Knight!"

The knights in the courtyard had ceased their training an hour ago, leaving the three alone on the wall except for the occasional patrol. Regulus's squire still stood at attention, though seemed to be fighting back the urge to yawn. "

"Except it isn't one." Regulus smiled and grabbed Lilith's shoulders, turning her to face across the lake. "Do you see there on the opposite side? That stone building way in the distant." Lilith nodded; she could just made the square squat building just poking out over the top of the scraggly fir trees. "We know this story to be true, because for over two thousand, the Knightly Harmonic Order of Coquelicot has guarded the-"
Regulus's voice froze as he fully brought his gaze around to the shore.

"The lamps have gone out," he remarked. The squire peered into the night, staring out across the lake.

"Every hour, on the hour. The oil doesn't last long."

"So why haven't they've been relit by now?"

Regulus waited with baited breath for another minute, then two, staring at the distant darkness with growing unrest. After the third moment, he swore loudly and ran off the battlements, a worried squire and a confused Lilith right on his heels.

"Get the Knight Commander! They're after the sword!"



The second his body broke the surface of the water was the second the cold truly began to set in. He had not known true cold before that moment. That world of white snow and mountain wind above was but a desert compared to this realm. Here was the birthplace of frost and he relinquished himself to its icy clutches. It rubbed every inch of skin beneath his clothes raw with its unforgiving embrace.

Chunks of ice frozen long ago drifted by him as his clothing, now as heavy as lead to his body’s apathy, pulled him further down. The pale light above dimmed with each passing foot, leaving the man curled in the cold and darkness like some primordial womb. A bubble escaped his lips, and drifted in the gloom to the only place he assumed was up, each second feeling like an eternity as he listened to the sound of his own heart thudding against his ears. Each eternity that passed slowed its rhythm, and in turn, his racing mind. Thoughts became clear as the lake leeched the heat from his body.

Emotion gave way to understanding.

With it, came acceptance.

The promise was empty.

That’s all the man needed to remind himself.

His body broke the surface and ice.

He had been aware of the pull.

He had always been.

Even then.

Even now.

Aware of the gnawing.

Of the emptiness.

His feet plodded onto the shore without question. It did not matter where the pull led him. All that mattered was that it did. He followed the edge of the lake for hours, sloshing through the icy the slush the lake washed upon the shore. The cold bit into his skin, hours old, and he hugged his body for warmth. The day sank into the dusk, and a light in the distance heralded him.

Directly ahead was a stone building nearly as tall as the trees around him. A domed roof reached for the heavens, and the water of the lake lapped at the back half of the building. Whoever had built this had built into the lake, the man realized. A string of lanterns illuminated the outside, held up by a series of poles. As he suns slipped beneath the horizon, he noticed their dying light upon his body. So much had changed. The snow crunched under his bare feet as the man drew closer, his chattering breath coming as wisps of cloud. It wasn't until he stood before the doorway to the building that he realized he was not alone.

Two knights in black robes walked out of their post, their laughter having been muffled by heavy stone doors that sealed the shrine. They stopped, obviously not expecting to encounter anyone outside, then lunged at the knight. The man rolled to the side as he tore a wooden support from the nearby lanterns, then plunged the makeshift weapon into the back of the knight on the left. He twisted it, and the sickening crunching sound of wood could be heard before the knight crumpled to the floor. The remaining knight tried to open his robe in time to free his shards, but the man was faster.

He did not need a sword to kill the knight.

The knight recoiled exactly as he had determined he would, and the man threw his shoulder forward and pulled her legs in with just the right amount of force to free her from its grasp. He struck out with a closed first as the knight regained his balance, hitting him just above the hinge of his jaw.

His mouth instantly sprang open, and the man stuffed his other hand down his maw. A look of shock crossed the knight's face, and the man pulled himself close to him, bit hard upon the knight neck, and pressed his free hand over his nostrils. He would not go back so quickly. He would know why he had been wrested away. He would not be powerless. The man was a chess piece in a game played by gods.

He would not be a pawn.

The knight tried to make some noise to warn other guards, if there were any but the man knew exactly what he was doing. He was physically weaker than the knight, his body sore and sluggish and freezing, but he had pinned his head under the weight of his entire body. The knight tried to pry his hands away, and when that failed, he beat at him and kicked uselessly. He bit down, but the man did not relent. What was this minuscule iota of pain when measured against the totality of a life?

What was one life measured against the fate of a kingdom?

“Your orders,” he uttered as his victim stopped moving. He rose to his feet, taking with him a new black cloak. The knight would not need it now.

As he delved deeper into in the ancientshrine, he had noted quite readily that it wasn’t all that impressive. There wasn't much to say about the decor. Stone columns, crafted out of the walls, were merely decorative, rather than necessary. The only element not created from the grey stone itself was the floor, which was made out of mosaic tiles. Certainly nothing comparable to many other places he had visisted when he was alive, but still, it had an eerie quality to it that made him pause.

There was something there. Something that was definitely not happy. He couldn't tell how he knew... but he could feel it in the stagnant air, permeating the walls and floors. If there was no guardian in here, whatever the presence was, it was powerful and worse than that... it was aware.

The man gave a bitter smile and delved deeper into the darkness. "I am alive and you are dead... and how furious you must be at the thought," he whispered to himself.

The man kept his eyes focused on her surroundings until the hallway widened out to a much larger room. Empty braziers sat in the corners, and in the center of the room stood a simple altar. Words in a language he did not recognize covered the floor now in gold; novels worth of words. But that wasn't what drew his attention; it was the twenty fist sized stones that lay upon the altar; carefully nestled on pillows of faded felt.
"At last," the man whispered aloud to himsef, as he picked up the stone. He released a breath he did not know he held, and examined the familiar object.

A thousand facets, an edge like a razor; even in the darkness it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the moon. He placed it down, and inspected another stone, and another.

All of them here.

All of them perfect.

He was whole again.

A torch lit the room.

"Beautiful, are they not?"



"Beautiful, are they not?" Regulus asked, as he blocked the exit with his body. "No doubt a thief like you would make a pretty copper selling them." He threw the torch he was holding into a nearby brazier, and orange light flooded the enclosed chamber. Sparks and smoke snaked the shallow ceiling as the oil roared to life. The knight casually pushed open his robe, revealing the leather harness underneath. "So were they worth killing my brothers outside for?"

The man turned to face him, his face till shrouded beneath the hood. The Knight Hierophant was not impressed with the rest of what he saw. Beneath the black robes, the man's clothes hung loosely around him; ill-fitted and baggy. And while his body was lithe with corded muscle, even in this light the Hierophant could see that the man was more than a decade his younger.

"I don't even think you realize what you have there," Regulus remarked, holding a hand out to his side. "A knight's sword can take many shapes you know." Ten golden stars detached themselves from Regulus’s harness and arced through the air to form a line in front of the Knight. Each had a different number of serrated edged to it, and they spun slowly on an invisible axis, glinting in the torchlight. “Hardened Steel that have been tempered to straw; hard and very sharp. Having more components or shards than an opponent gives you a major edge. Every one of these stars respond individually to my magic. Together, encapsulated by a single moment field, they form a whole blade—in my case, Zealot.”

Each of the stars began to spin at rapid rate, their edges a blur of movement. The image melded into each other almost instantly, forming a long whirring shaft.

To his shock, the man held out a hand and the diamond shards lifted themselves off of the cushion and came to rest circling the air around them.
The knight's jaw tightened, his face darkening as he slid his foot back in defense, narrowing his body. A small target to strike. "That's a fancy trick you got... but in the end, you're just a petty thief wearing stolen robes." He lunged forward, Zealot tearing at the air before him. "Now... let's see how you die."

The man crossed the distance between them with nary a word, and Zealot spun with renewed ferocity as it deflected the legendary blade. Regulus fought like a cornered manticore. His blade work was feral and frantic; Zealot was rarely in one place—or even one part—for long. It clawed at the man’s guard, desperately trying to work through his defense.

His efforts were to no avail. Fighting this stranger was like fighting a mirage. The man’s style focused not on power or speed, but duplicity; over half his strikes were feints of some kind or another, and every time the Hierophant intercepted them, he was forced into a more compromising position. Every step forward cost him two steps back.

He tried to circle around the man, his blade splitting to attack from several angles, but that seemed to be no challenge for him, who had already pinpointed the location and angle of each piece of Zealot and intercepted them immediately with Regent, using the remaining diamonds to send the Knight Hierophant skirting back, until his back was to the wall, a piece of Regent embedded in the wall where his head had been a moment ago.

He realized that somewhere in the midst of the battle, they had traded placed. Now it was the knight who stood within the room, and enemy blocking his escape. To his surprise, the man made no move to escape, instead reforming Regent and taking the same pose that Regulus stood in only moments ago: he was waiting for the knight to recover.

Standing up and summoning his magic, the knight noticed that the altar where Regent had rested had been destroyed somewhere in the exchange; half of it form blasted into fragments across the floor. The man vaulted across the shattered altar and took another swing at Regulus, and the knight caught it on Zealot once again, preparing to retaliate with superior force.

He didn’t get the chance to. Regent split into two separate parts as it held Zealot, and one of them came through the air towards him. Regulus threw himself back to avoid the blade, but the man had obviously been expecting this. His fist connected connected with Regulus’s face. It was a strike delivered with the strength of one who knew how to fight, and Regulus was thrown backwards over heels as the sharp sound of the blow rang in his ears. He came to his feet just in time to meet another one of the man’s advance.

“So,” Regulus said quipped over the sound of their clashing blades. “I take it you're no amateur.” His nose felt welt and swollen, and he could feel something warm dripping down his face. He flinched ad he felt the jagged stone of the altar connect with his leg. That was all the man needed. Two parts of Regent dove through the air towards Regulus, and he pushed himself away from the altar, crashing to the floor in the effort to avoid the shards.

“No," came the simple reply.

It was taking too long, Regulus though to himself. This man wasn’t just stronger than him—he was stronger than him by an order of magnitude. With over twenty shards at his disposal, by all rights, he should be dead already. So why wasn’t he? He met the man with Zealot raised to block, but Regent into two parts once more. They circumvented his blade, and he pulled Zealot back to block one. The other sliced him just across the forearm, and his hold on Zealot slipped, the steel stars clattering to the ground.

He felt another sting, and his shoulder followed the same fate as his arm, with blood pouring out of a razor-thin cut. Regulus staggered back as more cuts formed on his body, courtesy of Regent, which was flying too quickly for him to catch on to. With his focus gone, he was unable to muster the will to raise Zealot again. The Knight kept stumbling back, until his back hit the wall. A shard of Regent shot through his leg and out the other side, taking tissue and muscle with it and Regulus fell to the side with a cry of pain, leaving a smear of blood on the wall behind him.Regent split and came towards him, a dozen shards of pure diamond.

Regulus didn’t get the chance to flinch—every razor fragment of the blade was knocked aside with a shard of obsidian long before it reached him.

Keeper.

Knight Commander Arcon was exactly as tall as Regulus, but much broader, his wide shoulders carrying his presence. His hair was a ring of dark iron curls around a balding scalp. His robe was grey. He did not carry a harness. He stood alone.

His face bore the expression of dispassion that Regulus remembered so well as his squire. His eyes were cold and distant, his mouth a thin line at the peak of a square jaw. His crooked nose was missing a chunk of its nostril from a fight thirty winters ago.

Since they were the same height, it was difficult to tell how much older than Regulus he really was. But if one looked closely, they would notice that the tips of his fingers split into the same tight lines that mapped his face, and that his irises were a burning with winters long years past. He had a certain stillness to him, as though he could stand in the hall forever, watching with disinterest as the stone walls crumbled around him and were overgrown.

The Knight Commander spoke in a fluid, resonant tone that seemed to demand attention despite not being particularly loud. “You forget,” he began to Regulus, coming to stand between his former squire and the man who threatened him, “our first rule. You never fight alone." The single remaining piece of Keeper not scattered to the corners of the room was held aloft before him. He faced the stranger, arms folded in the folds of his robe. "This has been the code of the Order of Coquelicot for a thousand generations. To strike one of our number is to invoke the wrath of all. An impostor in a fallen knight's robes would not know that, stolen sword or not."

"One cannot steal what is already theirs."

Arcon tried to kill him. He was fast, and there hadn’t been much distance between them to begin with. Regulus hadn’t even seen him dart forward. Regent wasn’t even reformed. Keeper angled towards the man's bare neck, the obsidian edge thirsty for blood.

Then the stranger was holding the tip of Keeper in an outstretched hand. There had been no indication of his motion; no flash of light, no blur of movement. No witchcraft or magic. His hand simply sized the blade before it had made contact.

Regulus stared with wide eyes. The Knight Commander’s actions told him that he did not believe victory was guaranteed. He was trying to win, which meant it was possible for him to lose. Regulus scrambled to his feet, trying to stem the bleeding of his arm with his good handle while reforming Zealot before him.

“Dot not call me that,” the man said. “Imposter. You think that you can hurt me. You think that you can taunt me with bravado. You cannot. You think that you can win this sword from me. You cannot. Despite all your claims that you are Knights of Coquelicot, your skills are found wanting. And your greatest weakness is that you can never change.” He pulled back his hood. Eyes as blue as as a thunderstorm pierced the brazier light. “I do not suffer the same flaw."

He threw away the last piece of Keeper, and held out his hand.

“My name is Clarent Coquelicot,” the young man said as Regent shone into life before him. “And you should not have thrown away your sword.”

Ki’ira was left speechless in place as she saw the familiar giant fox before her. All her worries vanished for a moment, before a striking realization reached her… she herself felt that Vinsha… the Vinsha she knew was no longer around. She felt it, but her heart couldn’t help but feel attracted to this image of the object of her love and devotion. Vinsha was their mother, she was the one who gathered and saved all of her daughters from the harshness of the world when they were small children. This… apparition felt so real, like her mother was in front of her yet again. Even the touch felt so familiar, like she remembered it. She listened to the fox talk, her voice so nostalgic, but the things she was saying slowly corroded Ki’ira’s hopes for this to be the real Vinsha… Finally as the fox commanded her to kill Ansur and to bring back the ‘light’ to the world and the vanished, Ki’ira’s shoulders fell defeated once more. This was not her mother… IT WAS NOT!

“WHO DARES TO PLAY THESE TRICKS WITH ME!?” She shouted, a ring of fire appearing around her and expanding in every direction around her. She was furious, tears had once again appeared in her eyes. Someone had the nerve to try to pull this on her. That deserved death! The fox eared woman was ready to burn down the entire forest, no she was going to turn everything around her into ashes! As the fire grew in a ring around her, she actually kept it at bay from her body, she didn’t want to have to find new clothes yet again.” Who dared to do that!? Fool! You think Vinsha would ever call her own children like that?! The fox goddess would never utter that nonsense as bring the world back into the light!” She screamed, she was praying that whatever tried that on her was around. With this fire, there was no way to hide from her… and she wasn’t going to let who ever did that escape.” I DON’T CARE WHO YOU ARE! YOU SENTENCE IS DEATH!” She screamed, giving even more energy to the fire, allowing it to expand rapidly.

“Come out! Coward! Didn’t you consider yourself equal to a god to take the image of one, why are you hiding!? Stand before me and answer for your crime!” She shouted, as the tears that were running down her face were evaporating from the heat around her. She may have been the youngest of the daughters of Vinsha, but she was also one of those who felt strongest connection to the goddess, she herself was aware of how trickster goddess talked and acted… and the biggest giveaway was… her mother wouldn’t just leave the Great Forest of Atma like that and then vanish again.

Laboured breathing and heavy footsteps sounded through the desolate, twilight streets of Kolandis. Volkimir wandered in the shaded back-alleys, fleeing from the coming dawn. His off hand was pressed tightly onto bleeding the wound in his gut, mostly to ensure that his entrails did not escape from it. It was deep, running completely through him, but nothing vital was injured. This was deliberate, Volkimir was sure, as the man could have easily killed him when back was turned. Volkimir's magic worked at the wound, slowly closing it up, but he had expended too much effort in his duel with the Forefather, and had already lost a great deal of blood.

The vampire eventually found what he had been searching for: a building without east-facing windows. Volkimir kicked in the door to the tenement and scurried in, hiding from the rising sun. Only when he was inside did he realized that he had discovered a charnel house. It seemed that just shy of a dozen of the black-robed cultists had met their end in this room, as their corpses littered the floor. Amidst them was a single corpse that was not of their own. A commoner in a black, leather apron; a blacksmith if Volkimir had to guess. A hefty axe rested in his dead hand, the blade buried in the head of a cultist. That same cultist had its demonic sword thrust through the heart of the blacksmith. The rats and flies had only claimed the corpse of the commoner; none apparently dared to touch the bodies of the robed assailants.

Volkimir was now genuinely curious. He hacked away the robes of the nearest dead cultist with Elbrus, and inspected the corpse. He didn't know what he was expecting; some sort of mutation or other anomaly. What he found was a symbol, seared into the flesh. Obviously runic, Volkimir was sure that he had seen the glyph somewhere before. However, his current state of exhaustion and blood loss left him without the willpower to search the archives of his expansive memory for the answer.

He needed a meal, badly, and there were unfortunately few warm bodies at hand. He would have to make do with what was available to him. Volkimir stripped out of his torn, bloodied clothes. He cast away the breastplate and its underlying maille, both pierced through by Ansus. Damned waste of new armor. Well, new to Volkimir anyway. The fine cloak was also ruined, and Volkimir threw that away. He inspected the wound more closely, and it was about as he thought. He would survive it, but it still pained him greatly and cost him much blood. Volkimir turned what remained of his sangromantic power to the corpses scattered about the room. It was distasteful to be forced to do this, but Volkimir's wish to no longer have a hole in his abdomen outweighed his pride. The flesh melted, liquefying into a slurry of bright, crimson essence. Sanguis Vitae, not a perfect solution, but it would suffice.

The ruby corpse-puree drifted into the air as Volkimir guided it, flowing through like a ribbon of crimson. It poured directly into the vampire's wound, and surged up through his body. Volkimir felt his strength returning to him as he consumed whatever life energies were left in the corpses he had cannibalized. The red flow quickly dried up, and what was once a deep, piercing wound on Volkimir's gut was now raw scar tissue. Not perfect, and Volkimir would still need a proper meal to fully recover, but at least he wasn't dying. He ran a thumb over the taut flesh of the new scar and hoped that the mark would vanish in time. He wasn't keen on having a permanent reminder of that embarrassing incident.

Volkimir threw himself into a nearby chair, which creaked in protest but thankfully did not collapse. Leaning his head on his off-hand, Volkimir's eyes wandered over the leftovers of the cultists that he had just devoured: their robes and weapons. This was what terrified the Forefather? Some lunatics that managed to land weapons from a surely lopsided bargain with a demon somewhere? Volkimir reminded himself that they had managed to essentially conquer the capital of the most powerful nation on the continent. They were at once an unknown enemy, and the enemy within. Insidious forces such as these were the most dangerous to established nation-states. However, this still did not convince Volkimir that they were a particularly credible threat. What did Ansur know that he did not? If legend held true, Ansur fled from Raida in the south in the wake of some great calamity. The man was formidable, this much Volkimir would admit. What could be so terrible that he would rather run than stand and fight? Did they face the same threat even now?

The Dark Prince looked to what his free hand held. Clutched tightly, as it had been since he had escaped from the Forefather, was the cloak that had been thrown over him to shield him from the dawn. Heavy fur, made for a man larger than Volkimir, rough in appearance but not lacking in practical quality. Why had he held onto it for this long? Volkimir questioned his own state of mind after having been burned by the Forefather's false daylight and run through by his sword. He thought back on Ansur's words, half-remembered and distorted by Volkimir's sun-scorched delirium. If there was such a grave threat to this world that Ansur himself feared it, what did that mean for Volkimir? This was the same world that he had fought and died to protect more than two thousand years ago. What had changed? Perhaps new names, new faces, but this was nothing that he was not already used to. If there were truly a threat that commanded his attention as the Midnight Suns had done so ages ago, Volkimir knew that it was upon him to combat it. Admitting this to himself felt like swallowing a hot coal, but there it was, plain as day.

Even so, was this a threat that could be fought? Ansur, who had so soundly trounced Volkimir, seemed to live in fear of it. Volkimir had the creeping suspicion that he was too weak to fight off something like that. A rare and unsettling thought, but once again obvious. Outsmart it, perhaps. Maybe even endure and outlive it, as he had done for many calamities before. However, he would not allow himself to be so complacent. However powerful he was now, it was insufficient. He needed to delve deeper into the forgotten depths and corners of the world. He needed more ancient secrets, even darker sorceries. If Ansus was to be believed, the Gods had returned fallen legends from their graves to combat this menace. Volkimir would have to match their desperation. Nothing could be forbidden at this point; he could not suffice to be the lesser evil.

The time for such preparations would come, but in the meantime, Volkimir had other matters to attend to. He tossed the heavy cloak around his shoulders loosely, and found that he did not dislike the weight of it. It felt like lives other than his own. A pressure he had not known in many years. It made him stand straighter, and put more care into how and when he acted. Volkimir touched the dessicated corpse of the dead blacksmith. Volkimir had spared the fallen commoner the desecration of being cannibalized. Now, however, he had use of him. The dead rose, stumbling onto his feet on rotted, half-eaten limbs. Volkimir gave the zombie a considerable portion of his own power, imbuing it with power well beyond that which a mortal could endure. The walking corpse followed Volkimir's silent, mental commands, leading into his forge in the next room. More corpses laid scattered about, a woman and children apparently mixed in with the cultists. On the vampire's command, the zombie hefted the corpses into the forge and reignited its fires. The coals burned with unearthly, blue light, fueled by the fires of undeath.

Volkimir picked up a smattering of demonic weapons that lay scattered about, and handed them to the undead blacksmith. "I have a commission for you," Volkimir said, more to himself than anyone else, "See what you can make of these."

She could barely feel the pain now. Instead, it had all been replaced with darkness - eternal darkness that never seemed to end. How she was forming thoughts in this void was beyond her, but perhaps this was the afterlife, a blob of blackness that let you sit in silence with your own thoughts. All she knew at the moment was one thing; whomever shot that arrow was no mere mortal man. A simple arrow should have never pierced through either her warrior sense or her shield. It had been so painful as well, so much so that she could not get the words out to warn the king... to tell them all that the man needed to be stopped and chased after. It was too late now.

Something was amiss though as a light started to shine through the pitch black. It was not what she expected however - there was no gentle glow to it, no hums of angels, or aura of warmth - no, this was far too familiar of a pain. The sun's rays stabbed into her tired eyes, causing her to lift an arm to guard herself only to realize that one truth. She was lifting her hand? Was she still alive!? That seemed impossible! The healers were no where in sight by the time her lungs gave out and her body gave up. How?...

Grumbling with the displeasure of a night owl, she forced herself to sit up, feeling the cool touch of age old stone and the dust that had made it's home there. It took some moments to get her eyes to truly adjust, the pain of her old nemesis being just as piercing as ever. Finally, her vision blurred into clarity, to which only caused the woman ever more confusion. She was sure she was alive, but how did she end up in a forgotten tomb? Her laying place had been made of stone, the slab pushed aside by someone or something other than herself, and the entire structure covered in a layer of dust that smelled of old age. This caused Elowen to simply paused and stare at her surroundings. Nothing fancy adorned the single hall leading to her and anything that had been there had been removed long ago, almost as if the tomb itself had been raided of it's treasures - if there were any.

To the far end, where the star's light was slowly moving downward as it rose into the sky, was only a big enough entrance for a single man. Originally, it looked as if you could fit a small party through, but an apparent collapse had seen to that issue quite permanently. So somehow, as she gathered her thoughts, she had been dumped into an old tomb. Such questions as 'why' would likely go unanswered for some time, but it was obvious what her next step was - crawling out of this god forsaken place.

Suddenly, that's when she felt it. She nearly jumped up and looked around in mild panic. A voice, distant and yet familiar, was prodding her mind but she could not understand it's words. They faded quickly, forcing her to glance at her own body, only fitted with a simple blue dress. Her armor and her weapon were gone, making the mystery increase in it's intensity by the moment. The worst of it though and perhaps what tore at her mind the most was a feeling of.. abandonment. Her right hand raised to greet her eyes, the rune gifted to her still etched into her skin - into her soul - and yet the pulsing of her goddess' warmth was.. gone. Arete had never left her before and she had come to realize that this mark was a park of the goddess herself, so how could it be silenced?

Balling her hands into fists, she shot a glare to the opening. This was too out of place, too strange and fearful, not to be something - something that was grand in design. She needed to get out and investigate exactly the cause of all of this. Pulling herself from the musty stone resting place, she walked briskly towards the exit and found herself on the other side. Again, the brightness of the sun caused her to wince, but the sight that she saw afterwards forced a gasp from her lips.

She could not believe her eyes. It was the field of battle she had just left... but there were no soldiers, no dead men, no armies, and instead of crisp air she was met with warmth. The fields had shifted, the forest nearby having grown into parts of it while a simple farm house sat right in the middle - it's crops spreading to the forest's edge. This was not the place she had been before...

There was only one real action to take now. It didn't take long, even with bare feet, to come upon the farmer and announce her presence with a simple question, "excuse my interruption, but I have but a simple inquiry - what happened to the battlefield? There used to be men.. laying in the grass.. but now your home is built upon it?" Surely, the answer was obvious, but Elowen couldn't accept it, not until she heard it for herself.

Zahra watched on as the village elder whipped the people around them into a frenzied state, a storm of human emotion twisting through the streets in electrified energy that pulsed painfully in her eardrums. People stared at her with an adoration that made Zahra’s skin crawl as if dozens of fire ants marched across her body, nipping at her exposed skin as they went along. She did not want it, any of it. Their awe, their idolization, their glorification of the things she had suffered throughout her life, or even their celebrations that she had been ripped from her oblivion and thrown into chaos once more. The old woman’s beseeching words grew more fervent with each breath and the Lioness realized then that the rebirth she had at first considered a gift, may actually have come at a terrible price.

Stop the world from dying? How could they expect such a feat from her, from anyone short of the Gods? True, in her life she had been an allomancer of exceeding power. She had done things that those that came before her had never been able to accomplish with their magics. But she was just one woman. One woman who had perished in the rebellion her own lust for vengeance had brought to pass. One who had never stepped foot outside of the deserts of her homeland. She was not like the legends of the old stories that she’d grown up on as a child. She had not traversed the lands looking for lost lambs to protect out of the goodness of her heart, slain entire armies with a single blast of magic, built an empire or entire nation from nothing, nor did she ever have the blessing of the Gods guide her every move. Zahra was only a woman, a tired woman with hands sullied by the blood of countless enemies and allies alike. However many generations she had spent in death had done nothing to ease her jaded spirit. She did not need paradise. She did not need to be remembered. She simply needed peace.

But it did not matter, she thought wearily as her somber gaze swept across the crowd, scanning the faces around her for familiarity she would not find. Regardless of how much time had passed, these were the children of her children, the children of the warriors that had become her kin, the children of the Dust. She would not abandon her own to their ill-fate, though she knew not of what could threaten the very existence of their world or how she could hope to stop it. If she was brought back from eternity to die beside them again, so be it. Maybe the Gods had granted her another chance to cleanse her spirit and atone for the lives she had ended, or maybe they wished to push her further into the blackness. It seemed they were fickle creatures, she thought as eyes and a long-fingered hand brushed across her middle where her ghastly scar lay.



A quiet so absolute blanketed the town that even the buzzing whine of the desert insects stopped so as to not disturb the moment. Zahra’s eyes snapped up to meet the cause and upon seeing the hulking perversions of men entering the town, those eyes grew so intense it seemed like her inner fire had leaped up through her throat to set them ablaze. The fear from the people around her grew palpable and Zahra set her feet apart in anticipation of a fight.

“You! People!” The leader spat and approached the elder, ill-intent plastered across his grotesque features. “Our… Dowry. You pay. Or die.”

The beseeching look the old woman gave her while being clutched by the monsterish man caused him to turn his attention to Zahra for the first time. Her searing stare made the thing visibly bristle at the unspoken challenge and he dropped the shirts of the old woman to spin full on to the only one of these desert people not cowering in his presence, this weaponless woman wearing not but a robe that she had to hold close with her own hand.

He stepped up to her in snarling menace, meaning to tower over the woman and insert his dominance. Make her fear him. But he didn’t loom over her so much as he would had thought; the woman was tall, and while he still had many inches over her, the woman’s six feet and daunting countenance made it seem much less. He pulled an ugly knife from his belt to brandish in front of her face. “Woman, kneel!”

But the Iron-Toothed only ignored his request, giving the crude weapon only a cursory glance, and more than that she leaned around him to speak to the elder. “Arshad, fizalat barai mun daried?” she asked in the ancient language of the deserts so that the invaders wouldn’t understand, seeking her metals. Though her fires yet again warmed her depths, she didn’t have sufficient fuel in which to burn.

The elder looked confused for a moment, but then nodded slightly. Good, Zahra had hoped that was the case since they had said they’d been expecting her return. She had been slowly pulling the dredges of metal inside her blood and body towards her center since the raiders arrival, but what she could gather wouldn’t last long. And pewter, the metal she desired most at the moment, could not be found naturally within the human body. She had noted that all the buildings around had swirling patterns made of her three metals inlaid into the walls -a purposeful design in homage to her, no doubt- and she supposed she could have taken her metal from those, but she would prefer that her first act since returning from death not be gnawing on the side of a house.

“Bring it,” she ordered in the common tongue they’d been speaking in, her voice heavily laden with the thick accent of the deserts. The sub-human before her seemed to relax back into his over confidence upon those two words, probably assuming Zahra meant for them to bring his dowry. She continued to watch his knife with her inner sense that allowed her to “see” even the tiniest filing of metals, however, just in case he decided he’d try to be the second person to spill her guts upon the sands. Fortunately he seemed content on just getting his prize and leaving, even with her slight of not groveling before him. His band was outnumbered here, and the only thing that let him control her people was their own fear. She would remedy that. She’d enjoy remedying that.

A youth just old enough to have a sword slapping at his hip as he ran came bumbling up to Zahra and the leader of the sub-men, and the woman held out her hand expectantly for the three small pouches clutched to his chest. The young warrior nearly threw the things at her to scramble back from the danger. She’d forgive it, though, hearing the small beads of metal clicking together delightfully in their tiny cloth bags. The thing in front of her seemed less enthused when she open the bags to reveal them.

“What this!?!” It exclaimed in a seething rasp. The mutated face contorted into anger and the knife gripped in his meaty hands flashed towards her throat.

It tip of the blade stopped mere centimeters from the soft skin of Zahra’s neck. The man roared as his arm, then both, strained against the unseen force keeping the knife at bay. Confusion now mingled amongst the fury. His mind troubled to comprehend the situation in which he now found himself.

The corner of the legendary freedom fighter of the Dusts mouth twitched upward slightly and then the monsterish man was impaling himself in the throat. His life-blood was soaked up greedily by the parched sands as he gurgled out his last dying breaths; drowning on his own blood. Zahra stepped over the almost-corpse and slipped three beads -one of each of her favored metals- into her mouth. The effect was immediate. Her fires flared and heat seeped into every part of her body and it hummed in her ears. These towering brutes would not survive the transgressions they’d brought upon her kin.

The Iron-Toothed lept into the air and used her magic to pull herself towards the group of intruders on their beasts. They’d barely had time enough to unsheath their crudely forged weapons before she was upon them, landing in their midst in a billow of silken robe and crimson sand. She pushed out her power in a burst and sent both weapon and armor-clad beast into the walls of the surrounding city. Those she’d caught were crushed between the weight of her own power and the thick stone. Bones cracked and inhuman wails of pain punctuated the quiet that had descended on the town.

She dropped her hold and bodies crumpled into the sand at the base of walls, her eyes sweeping over the enemies converging on her. Zahra stood to meet them, bringing a fallen sword to her hand in the process. The pewter burning in her core gave her far more strength, speed, and agility than any normal man was capable so when she brought her sword to bear against the first of the giant wolf-beasts she was able to duck beneath its mashing jaws to lodge it in its neck, sending the creature and its rider toppling across the sands.

An onslaught of blades and teeth came at her in rapid procession as the rest of the small pack reached her. But a lifetime of honing her natural fighting skills and years of heading armies with her allomancy made her a force to be reckoned with. She flowed around attacks with an astounding amount of control and grace, pushing them aside with both blade and magic. Zahra was the antithesis of these brutes who brazenly flung their strength and steel at her.

Zahra pushed a blade from its wielder and used the opening she’d created to decapitate the sub-human with her borrowed sword. That had given her a gap and she spun a menacing circle in the ten feet of empty sands she’d forced for herself. Sweat and blood covered her now and she imagined she looked much like the Daeva she’d often been compared to in life. It seemed the sub-humans thought that too. None of those still alive and uninjured enough to fight her dared breach the open ground between them now. They were afraid. She could see it roiling off them now.

But then, she thought as her eyes raked the village again, so were her own people...

Across the lake, below the beautiful canvas of shooting stars that seemed to fire forth from the Rings of the World, the small hamlet of Fafnis slept beneath the calm. The lamps had been snuffed hours before, and the fishing boats had been docked and harboured for the night. From their sleepy homes nestled into the lakeside, the bastion of the Knights could be seen twinkling brighter than any star, standing stark against the expanse that seemed to drift forever outwards beyond the lake. The hamlet itself was small -tiny, even- and homed only fifteen families who were all fishers by trade. They made their living providing food the bastion, and selling rare delicacy fish to the Heartlands throughout the breeding seasons for such rare species. Yet something was amiss amidst the quietness of Fafnis. The night was disturbed. Sickened.

"Amelia!" a man cried, forcing his way through the door in his home to his daughter's bedroom. "By the Gods! Amelia!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. The man's face was visibly red against the dull lamplight he had produced to investigate the unholy wailing he had heard only moments before coming from her room. He shined the light deep into the shadows that covered her bed, illuminating the child with the flat, orangey light of the oil flame. Her nightclothes were torn, and her face was scratched bloody by her own nails. The bedframe, too, was scratched violently, as if assaulted by some feral animal. The girl herself, no older than five or six, had curled herself into a ball with her arms around her knees, and was sobbing uncontrollably.
"Amelia! What happened?" he asked, hurrying to her bedside in an attempt to comfort her. She continued to cry, but said no words that seemed in any way coherent to her father. He sighed, and let his head fall for a moment, before looking back up to her badly scratched face. He tried to put his arm upon her shoulder to make her feel safe, but he was shrugged away almost immediately with a fevered yelp from Amelia.

"Darius..." came a second, female voice. "Is she okay?" it asked.

Darius said nothing, he simply tried to make eye contact with his daughter. She was shaken worse this time than usual. Though his unresponsiveness was met with his wife poking her head around the corner to look into the darkened room. "Is she okay?" she asked again.

Darius looked back into the better lit hallway and softly shrugged to her. He did not know what to say. He turned back to his daughter, whose crying had somewhat alleviated since she was awoken. She struggled to form a few words as tears slipped down her cheeks in glistening streams of fear.
"B-b-... H-h-he..." she forced out, before her crying began anew with as much intensity as had woken her parents from their sleep.
"What did you see this time?" Darius began, attempting once more to stop her tears. "Amelia... Amelia! I need you to focus!" he said as he gently put his hand upon her shoulder, turning her tiny frame to face him.

The young girl could not speak. She blathered and blithered incoherent babbling despite her parents' encouragement. She was so shaken and frightened that she had almost forgotten how to speak entirely. Darius looked around for a moment, squinting his eyes to pierce through the darkness that was not washed away by the lamp that he had placed upon the floor. There was a dresser in the corner, complete with a few books stacked on top; there was a single window looking out upon the lake, and a small table opposite the bed. Darius stood for a moment, and strode over the the table. He snatched a sheet of parchment from the mess upon it and a small drawing stick that had fallen to the ground and brought them back to his daughter.

He knelt beside her, bringing his eyes to her level.

"Amelia. I need to know what you saw. Please... can you draw it for Daddy?"

The girl bit her lip, holding back more tears, and took the parchment and stick from her father's outstretched hands and began to scribble.

Drawing seemed to calm her. As she shaded and rubbed the stick against the parchment, and as her sketch began to take shape, her tears seemed to recede, and the fear seemed to free itself from her soul. It took her only a minute or two to finish her interpretation of her dream before she handed it back to her father.

His eyes grew wide as he looked upon the symbol that she had drawn. He looked back up at his daughter, his mouth hanging wide.

"Daddy... she choked out. "He told me th-that... that the world was... was going to die!
Darius moved to hug her. She held him tight for a moment. Into his hear, she whispered "He told me that... that you were going to die tonight. He told me that- that... That we are all going to-to-t-to... To die!" she began once more, wailing anew.

Darius let his daughter back to her bed. He asked his wife to look out for her for the rest of the night. Despite Amelia's protests, he had quickly gathered his cloak to fend off the cold of the night, and mounted his horse. He set out only moments after, clutching the drawing that his daughter had given him, and mouthing the words that she had said.

He headed toward the bastion. The Knights needed to know.

Something was wrong. So very wrong.





The forest was unforgiving. It yielded little any more. The fruits were rotten, and the trees were all but dead and void of their once colourful leaves. The sound of liveliness was replaced instead by the bitter tears and sour cries of Ki'ira, the chosen of Vinsha. “Come out! Coward! Didn’t you consider yourself equal to a god to take the image of one, why are you hiding!? Stand before me and answer for your crime!” she screamed into the hollow forest passages to no answer.

No wind. Nothing.

Just silence.

Vinsha did not reappear to her chosen. The silvery fox could have been an illusion, surely? A mirage created by a weary mind that had been shocked and concussed badly in the last few nights. It was the only explanation. Surely...

The forest yielded no answers.

Walking onwards, Ki'ira would have been greeted by the same, endless deathly silence. No matter how far she would walk, it was as though she were lost in the encroaching darkness. Like a maze, it seemed to enclose upon her; the world playing tricks upon the trickster. Wherever she turned, she seemed to end up in the same place as before, the same trees, the same rocks, the same beaten down path through the rotting vegetation underfoot. The same fog slowly creeping down through the leaved above. The same feeling of emptiness. Loneliness. Defeat.

The silence was broken once more. But not through any sounds piercing the obscurity. Silence still reigned, but as Ki'ira turned once more down the puzzled, arcane pathway, she would have been stopped in her tracks. Just in the distance, on the edge of the total umbra, stood a figure taller than any man she would have ever met. He was huge and powerful, and his mere presence could have felled even the stoutest of men. Impending dread, doom, and searing, terrible disgust seeped through Ki'ira's skin. She could make out no features upon his face, nor any upon his body. She could only see a crown of shadows sitting upon his head, standing like a throne of spikes atop the man.

Ki'ira could not move.

She wanted to, but she could not. She was frozen in place by a force unlike any the world had seen before. The man did not take a step towards her, rather standing in the misty, blurred darkness between the umbra and penumbra, making him hard to see. Hard to define. He seemed to have no eyes. No mouth. Nothing. Just a man in black, donning a crown that seemed as dark as his own soul.

He was only there for the briefest of moments. The absolute shortest possible second. It felt like hours; he stood there, staring right into Ki'ira's soul. But he was gone just as suddenly as he had appeared. He faded with the blink of an eye, receding back into the shadows as the hold upon Vinsha's chosen loosened.

The darkness relented just a little. It became just bright enough for Ki'ira to see the trunks of the trees spiralling up into the sky. She would likely have not bee prepared to see the same Silvery Grey fox from only hours before, dangling from a grotesque tree of flesh and bone, its neck snapped and its belly sliced. Ravens fed upon its innards, and the last isnects on the furst gnawed and burrowed their way into the mystical creatures fur.

This creature was no illusion. It was real. Ki'ira could see it. Smell it. Feel it. It was real. It was there.

What terrible force had overcome the world? What being could possibly take a god from its throne and string its body from a tree like a common animal?





The undead creature, an animate bundle of flesh, bones and skin, nodded soullessly to its master. It lived to serve the new master who had injected life into it from the great beyond of death. He was a man in life, a father, a child. He had dreams, aspirations, and goals. Now he simply knew how to serve the dark force that had brought it to the world once more. the creature let out a troubled urghhh before reaching out to collect the strange metal weapons that Volkimir had handed to him.

With the weapons bundled in its arms like a mass of sticks and firewood, it made its way to the old forge that his former self had set up as a place of work. The fire had been blown out by the explosion of holy energy, but a blacksmith never forgot his craft. Not in life, nor in death. It was only several minutes before the creature had reignited the forge and laid out all of it tools in front of it upon the workbench. It was only several minutes after that that it began to work tirelessly. It melted down the weapons into a sticky, red-hot mass that began to flow like water. The material was strange, oddly malleable, yet incredibly strong. It emanated a foreboding feeling of dread upon its touch.

The blacksmith moulded the material into one of his many casts for various weapons, though a master blacksmith like he had been always had special moulds for creating particularly expensive works for the nobles and the royals. The creature had rustled through his belongings for several minutes before finding the perfect cast for such a rare material.

His hammering continued for hours. He folded the steel more times that would be possible with any mundane material. He worked with such precision and delicacy that it would have been hard to believe that this was an animated ghoul; a shade of a man passed. However, the creature took great pride in finally revealing his creation to his master, wishing only to make him proud.
From the fires of the forge, the ghoul retrieved a masterfully crafted gauntlet, adorned with four exceedingly sharp slashing claws that protruded from the knuckles. The gauntlet itself was almost weightless, and could withstand strikes from even the heaviest of weapons, and the claws... sharp as anything. Steel folded thirty times. Unholy steel. The entire weapon was black as midnight, with the occasional stain of what seemed to be blood rippling across its jet surface.

The weapon cooled in seconds, much to the dismay of the Ghoul, who clearly assumed it would take much longer. He bowed to Volkimir as he presented the weapon.





By morning light, Erebus had found that Ronan had done just as he had instructed. He had assembled all of the gifted kin from Thorn, all those capable of fighting, excepting the children and the elderly, upon the village limits. The suns burned bright so early, and with no clouds to trap the heat of the day before, the air was crisp and cold. No storms raged this morning, and the ills of the world from the night before seemed to be irrelevant. It was beautiful, a red dawn: plains glistening with dew, and the mountain in the distance stood tall and stark against the blazingly bright sky.

Some of the kin had asked about their presence that morning, but a stern Ronan had given them little information besides Erebus wishes it, so it will be so. For many, this was enough to satiate their curiosity. The more observant among them knew that they had assembled to stand up to Ophel, the dragon who had given them such trouble in past years. Some of the kin were there for loyalty. Some were there for glory. All of them were there to honour their uncrowned king.

The cool morning air was stirred shortly after. Not by a natural breeze, but by a gust. A gust that seemed to hit the kin with force that seemed unfitting against the gentle, calming breezes that the morning had thus shown. It sowed some confusion amongst the lesser informed kin, and instilled a slight fear in the informed. A second gust beat down upon them. And another. And another. It had become unrelenting in mere moments. After only minutes, the beats were punctuated with a terrible, distant cry, echoing through the plains and across the mountain: it was like the shriek of a thousand dying men all at once, all lamenting in their woes and fears.

And then, just as suddenly as the gusts had begun, a creature emerged over the crest of the mountain in the distance: a dragon. Larger than most, its scales were burned a sickly black, and its once majestic face was twisted and contorted like some unholy force had crushed it in its hand. A dark cloud followed its flight path, and the ground beneath it went dark as it blocked out the light of the suns.
A dreadful whispering began amongst those assembled, yet none made a rush for their homes. They stood tall and fast as Ronan called to them that Ophel would learn his place this day, and that their Uncrowned King would show them why he was their Uncrowned King.

The dragon, noting the congregation, directed itself towards them. A meal, for sure. And an example, most definitely, would be made of them. For the Diamond Dragon feared none in this world, least of all a collection of men and women, united under what banner? If the dragon was capable of smiling, it would have grinned a grin of pure malice, as its poisoned mind saw fit to open its mouth and unleash its mighty breath upon the gathering of people upon the edge of Thorn: a wash of misty white came forth from its gaping maw, a gaseous spray of razor sharp particles that would rend the flesh of mere mortals upon its touch.





Excuse my interruption, but I have but a simple inquiry - what happened to the battlefield? There used to be men.. laying in the grass.. but now your home is built upon it?

The farmer looked at Elowen for a moment, as though she were mad. He squinted at her, and then looked at the suns in the sky. He looked back down to his hoe, and then once more back to the Woman.

She was mad.

"Um," he said hesitantly. "Bodies? he asked blankly, not knowing how else to punctuate a response to such an unusual question. He frowned and continued to hoe the small field that he had irrigated upon his property. He did not seem like the talking type, until he began to ramble in frustration whilst he toiled the field.

"People nowadays. Young'un's, honestly!" he exclaimed to himself. "People think that just cos' i'm old they can make fun'a' me like that. Nitwits! Rapscallions!" he looked up from his work to see Elowen still stood there, staring at him. He shot his head back down and continued with his hoeing. "Hasn't been a battle here in twenny' thousand years'. I ain't twenny' thousand years old. Damn kids."

He continued in such a way for a few minutes, tolling his field for sowing whilst muttering to himself about the rudeness of the younger generation of Ansus. According to him, kids had a lot more respect in his day. He started to sow seeds in the lines he had raked through his semi-fertile soil. Every so often he shot another glance to Elowen who seemed to still be stood there, confused and frustrated. Almost as much so as the farmer.

The elderly man stopped and removed his hat. He walked closer to Elowen's side of the field. He grimmaced and squinted and contorted his face in all sorts of unusual ways, before coming to the conclusion that this girl was not being rude; she had clearly been knocked so hard that she did not remember where or when she was.

"Are you lost, kiddo?" he finally asked, placing his hoe down into the parched earth as he rubbed his hands together to wipe off any crusted mud. "No bodies 'ere for thousans' of years. Twenny' thousand I think. Maybe you 'ave the wrong place?"

He looked her in the eyes, and saw the real fear and confusion and disbelief in them. It suddenly dawned on the farmer that she was neither lost, nor stupid, nor making fun of him, but that something was genuinely amiss. His eyes softened, and his paternal instinct kicked in.

"Look..." he said hesitantly. "I don't know what is goin' on with you, but I ain't seen that look in many a year. Maybe you'd better go inside and talk to my wife. She's fixin' up a wonderful mutton pie. Maybe she can help you out, too," he said, nodding, a small, warm smile creeping across his face.





There was a resounding chorus of 'shit' and other colourful expletives upon their realisation. The Alan warriors had gotten it so, so very wrong. They mocked him, and they had considered executing him when they first found him, yet somehow, Cinnead stood before them. The Spear of the West in the flesh. Their patron warrior, the man they read about growing up, the one they sang songs about in the playground. It was him. His skills did not lie.

Many of their own lay dead before them, cut down by the unholy wraith that he appeared from nowhere. They would have all been dead had it not been for Cinnead. They still could not believe their eyes; they could not believe how fast he moved, how furious he was with the spear. They could not believe how he felled the beast in only moments where they would have all died had they been alone.

One of the surviving warriors fell to his knees, and whispered a prayer of forgiveness to whatever Gods may have still been alive, and others looked between each other in confusion.
One of the men, who had yet until now to make himself known, stepped forward from the confused and frightened group.

"Lord Cinnead," he began. "We... uh- we know where your spear is. They keep it at a, uh, a small shrine just outside of Helford. it is a small village, uh, just a few miles east of the valley," he said, pointing toward the valley that had grown upon the horizon as they had approached the ruined camp. "We can take you there, uh, if you want. But we should find you some, uh, clothes. And we should salvage the camp. What was that thing anyway?"

The Alans agreed amongst themselves to salvage the camp, and scurried off into the remains of the place in search of supplies.

The camp was as ruined on closer inspection as it had seemed from afar. The bodies were grotesque, and two men could not hold their stomachs. Those who made it past the grisly wall of cadavers and past the totem pole of human heads found little in the way of usable supplies: a few packs of stale bread, a few pairs of cloth garments, and several rudimentary blades that were dulled and brittle. A bandit camp, for sure. Only bandits had so few usable supplies on hand at any time. They were also likely pilfered goods from passing caravans and adventurers.

One warrior had given Cinnead some of the garments to wear on the next leg of their journey, and the bread was broken between all surviving men. The walk was quiet at first, shock still permeating the group, and disbelief was all around.
"How did you... how did you come back?" one man asked, as they quickly descended into the valley, where a village could be seen on the opposite end.





There were no words. Just gasping and silence. They knew she was a fearsome warrior, and they knew that she would defend her own kin to her last breath, but the ferocity with which she killed the sub-men was... frightening, to say the least. She was their saviour, they knew that much for sure, but the celebrations were replaced with dubious caution. Zahara was dangerous. More dangerous than they knew. Perhaps she was a little different to how the stories portrayed her.
There was still cause for celebrations, however, as the plague of sub-men who had been demanding payments of food and water from them for years had finally been swatted like a fly against a wall.

The elder woman approached once more, rubbing the reddened bruise that had appeared upon her neck from the savage grabbing by the leader of the sub-men. "We are so glad you have returned, child. So glad." she held out her hand and stretched to touch Zahara's face. She just wanted to feel the real, living flesh of her saviour. Just once. She could not reach and lowered her hand, dejected. She was too old, too hunched, and far too stiff to reach so highly.

The last few sub-men who had not died during the fight gurgled as the last of their lives left their bodies in streams of red, feeding the sand much needed lifeblood. Not a single one escaped with their lives. Victory was sweet; it certainly seemed so. Yet it was also oddly pyrrhic. The elder began to cry very gently, her face crinkled up and several tears dropped from her wrinkled eyes and onto the sand, mixing with the blood seeping through.

"I always said... that... I would live to see the day you would return." she coughed, blood coming forth from her mouth. "It looks like I was right," she said quietly as she looked down at her belly. A deep patch of red was seeping through them through a hole in her gut created by the reckless slashing of one of the sub-men who had died so quickly against Zahara. "It seems I... I have been struck... Oh dear," she said, attempting to laugh and unject humour into such a situation.

The crowd was quiet. Men held their hands to their mouths in amazement, and women welled up in tears.

"I think I just need to sit down. I think I will be okay," she continued, straining to lower herself to the ground so she could lay down. Two men from the crowd rushed forward to help her down, laying her gently into the sand. The blood soaking through her tunic immediately began to seep into the sand.

"I... I'm so glad you are here. I am so glad that I get to look upon your face. So glad. You have to... lead them. Save them. You have to- to...".

Her eyes, in that moment, did not really change. They stopped moving, but there was something oddly profound about it. One moment, they harboured life, energy, wisdom, and love. And the next moment, they were the old, withered eyes of a woman who had just passed from one world to the next. From a life, to a body. After all, the balance on the world had to be maintained. The world could not gain one good soul without losing one.

The wind carried the sound of tears far and wide. Unusual glances were shot in Zahara's direction every once in a while by a crowd that had moved to claim the body of the woman. They carried her body to the temple in the town to be interred.

Not one soul approached Zahara. Not a single one.

Ki'ira was wandering this maze of darkness for a while now. She couldn't escape it, she didn't want to still escape it. She wandered around in her grief, trying to discern reality from illusion withing her own mind. How did the goddess appear to her? Was completely a mirage created by her mind? It felt so real, but sounded nothing like her mother. Was it an illusion from someone or maybe just a vision!? She knew not and did not care. Still her senses were strong even in her overpowering grief. She sensed him... she noticed him... a being beyond any human. He was standing there at the edge of darkness. His presence was so overpowering, even Ki'ira that did not fear any man nor beast felt the desire to escape with every fiber of her body. Her instincts were screaming to run away, but her body did not obey. The man clad in darkness just stood there, causing pure waves of terror and disgust to rush through her body. She tensed, her mind screaming to avert her gaze and try to escape, despite her inability to do so. Still many lesser men would have simply broken down under this presence, but not her. Gathering all the strength of will she can, she forced herself to confront the presence of the figure in black bravely.

“Shadows... darkness.. black...” Ki'ira mumbled just before the presence began to vanish. There was no mistake here, that must have been the so called King in Black! Her rage flared up in an instant just as the presence vanished along with the darkness that began to lessen. Only now did she saw what she couldn't before. Up there on a tree that was like taken from the worst nightmares, was dangled the body of a mystic silver fox. Her neck snapped, her belly cut open so the lowly creatures can feast upon it. She could recognize this fox anywhere, there was no mistake this time. That was Vinsha! Ki'ira's mind froze for an instant, before she jumped with all her strength towards the body. “MOTHER!!!! BEGONE ALL YOU LOWLY CREATURES! THOU HAS NOT THE RIGHT TO FEAST UPON A GODDESS!” She screamed, unleashing a wave of fire so powerful that it could turn into ashes everything it passes through. Ravens, insects, trees, nothing was spared by the all consuming fire. Only the tree of flesh and bones persisted, but she only focused her power even more. At this point hunger and fatigue did not matter anymore to the daughter of Vinsha. Focusing as much power as she can, she finally took down the tree and along with it, the body of her mother. As the corpse of the fox fell to the ground, the fox eared woman quickly rushed to it. Taking the head in her lap.” Ohh mother...” Ki'ira cried once more.” Did you really know this day will come? Was that the reason for your lessons?” Ki'ira felt like a little girl trying to talk to her parent that was never going to respond again. Vinsha always taught her children that death was an inevitable constant in this world. Entropy was a eternal force and that someday maybe even entropy will fall victim to itself and the world will cease to exist. That was the reason according to her to live every moment for it's own sake, to seek the meaning in life in a simple laugher. The reason that it was worthy to do pranks and seek entertainment.” Don't worry mother... it's over. No one will touch you anymore.” Ki'ira whispered as she softly brushed her hand along the fox's head and then gave it a small kiss on the forehead.

Afterwards she gently placed the fox's head back on the ground and stood up. Ki'ira couldn't fly and without her tail she wasn't exactly the fastest runner out there. Still she wasn't going to let her mother be defiled anymore! The calamity placed both her hands on the ground, letting her magic sink into it and form a huge circle around the fox goddess. She then released all the magic she can into it, turning the whole area around the body into a burning dome. This was going to turn the fox into nothing but ashes. With tears on her face, she turned backwards and started running in the direction where the coastline was supposed to be. While running, Ki'ira focused and bended her magic as she wanted, swinging both her arms to the sides, to flaming wave slashes flew in both directions. The incinerator dome she did for Vinsha was going to start the forest fire already, but this was going to aid that!

She ran as fast as it was possible considering she lacked her tail, but as she ran she remembered a certain small thing she discovered sometime before she died. If she condensed her flames enough, it was possible to use them to propel herself around. She had experimented with using the recoil to dodge things in midair and what not. Problem was she already expended quite a lot of power to deal with everything to this point and she was tired. She lacked the energy to use such thing for a long time that's why she just stuck with running for now. She wanted to have energy to use to fight in case something decides to show for the light show she just put up. Still her target was to reach the coastline and from there hopefully some remnants of civilization. Even if people abandoned the cities, it was still going to have some food around... and if she was lucky she was going to find someone to travel with...

W a t c h T h e S k i e s

Darius rode along the waters edge, whispering the words of his daughter.

But what he did not know was that she was not the only person to wake screaming that night. All across the world, everyone from nobles to knights to farmers found their dreams vexed to nightmare.

And though none of them could explain why, they knew deep in their hearts that something was terribly wrong.

They were right.

Darius spurred his horse onward into the dark night, the glowing lights of the castle, and sanctuary, still so far away. Sweat rolled down his horses neck, and yet he did no cease his urging. The still lake shone like glass in the moonlight. The trees swayed with the evening breeze. The stars shone in infinite splendor tonight. So why was his heart was sick with dread?

Though no wind blew, a ripple passed over the surface. It passed over the shoreline and through the land, and as it passed by him, Darius could feel it in his bones. His horse whinnied in a frenzy and reared up. The lake’s water boiled and bubbled, then turned an inky black. The churning mass of blackness suddenly let out an echoing boom, and the liquid spiraled into a whirlpool leading down into someplace dark and horribly deep. The smell of sulfur burst up and out of the portal, followed by bellows of fear and screams of pain from within.

Trees around the lake began to wither, their leaves crumbling to dust and their branches rotting away. The grass turned grey and brittle before it was carried off by the wind, and the rocks beneath were stained black by the vile liquid that splashed and roiled out of the water. Somewhere miles below, a figure climbed out of the lightning-streaked depths. It was something misshapen, something vile, something that had no place in this world. The light of the moons illuminated its shape as it pulled itself free of the steaming pit.

What happened next would haunt Darius's dreams for years to come.

The pit shuddered, slick black oil tumbling down the sides like miniature avalanches. Another shudder; a large bulge rose up, as though something was pushing its way out to freedom. Then something burst out of the water. Something huge and gleaming white, spotted with ash like the dapple gray of some horses’s coats.

It towered over the lake, and the sight of long phalange-like digits brought a touch of dread to Darius’s thoughts when he finally recognized the sight.

It was a wing.

A gigantic, skeletal wing.

Another wing emerged from the well, and then the skeleton was pulling itself free, ashes falling from the pale bones like snow shaken from a branch. Frozen in shock by the impossible sight, his eyes crept over the long tail, the strangely avian body, serpentine neck, and finally the predatory maw lined with dagger-sharp teeth. It may not have resembled anything he’d seen in books or pictures, but there was only one thing it could be.

A dragon.

The fleshless jaws opened, and a deep shuddering roar filled the countryside. The skeletal head dipped, convulsed, and then vomited a torrent of boiling blood. The sanguine waterfall poured over the ashes with a hiss, crimson steam billowing up and around the dragon’s wings.

He watched, horrified as the bloodstained ashes floated into the air. Glowing like fiery snowflakes, they clung and stuck to the dragon’s bones. When each burning flake met another, they gave a combustive flash and fused, creating a patchwork of tissue over the skeleton’s form.

‘This is impossible,’ he repeated over and over in his head. ‘Absolutely impossible.’ There was no way that this thing could be real. There was no way that this collection of bones and joints could be alive, could be regenerating before her very eyes. It just couldn’t be happening!

He looked back at the dragon. His body had fully reformed, the last scales fusing into place along his black hide. From the sharpened point of his snout to the spear shaped blade at the end of the tail, every inch of his body seemed to be designed for evisceration. He looked over the sculpted gleaming spikes that ran down his back, noticing the cutting edges that accompanied the dagger-sharp points, then the great scythe-like claws that tipped the digits on his feet. Every inch of the dragon’s body seemed capable of being used as a weapon. In fact it would be more accurate to say that the dragon itself was a weapon.

And it wasn't alone.

The sanguine tide pooled with the darkness in the water and it grew. Like its parent, it too began to take shape. A nightmare lifted itself from blood and shadow.

It was like nothing ever seen before. It resembled a dragon, if only in the way it walked upright, but any similarities ended there. Its arms were too long, wrists too powerful, claws too narrow, legs jointed wrong, torso too thick, toes oddly splayed, neck elongated, head misshapen, face monstrous. It moved with a hunched, loping posture that seemed to radiate violence and danger. Its eyes surveyed the world with cold intelligence, with malice and utter disregard for life.

Four more times did the dragon vomit forth blood of his body, and did four more sons answer his call. But by then, Darius had already fled, his horse galloping swiftly behind him along the lake's edge.

Racing for the Bastion of the Order



The fury of the night was nothing compared to that of the knights.

They had long since left the tranquil depths of the shrine behind and descended into the forest. It were moving now, ducking in and out of the treeline in an attempt to reach each other.

Arcon and Regulus had to think faster than the imposter did, because he could move faster. They had to strike truer, because he could strike harder. And they had to stay together, because apart he could destroy them in a minute apiece.

All things considered, they were doing an admirable job.

Tightening left leg. Tensing right foot. Arcon's thoughts were not vocalized in Regulus's mind. He could hear a fascimile his Knight Commander from when they had once trained, the old lessons coming back. He's about to round on you, blade high.

Arcon's call was right. Clarent wheeled on Regulus in the split second it took him to register the thought, and found that he had already ducked under half of Regent and thrust Zealot into his chest. His blade sank only centimeters into Clarent's flesh, but the wound bled around it. Clarent pulled himself away and struck out again.

Regulus's strike had only been a drop in the bucket, but that was enough. If they kept fighting like this, kept being careful, this imposter would weaken and die. They knew it was possible. They'd seen it happen a thousand times over, to a thousand different souls.

Regulus felt Arcon's mind run through each of the man's actions, taking in changes in his stance and expression so small and minute that he wouldn't have noticed them at all. His teacher had always been one to over-think things. Regulus had not. It was exactly his nature to rely on instinct, which was why he was so quick in reacting to the Knight Commander's observations. Between the two of them, they'd eliminated their greatest weaknesses.

The jewels that ran the length of Regent sparked, and the blade split into two lengths and came to rest at Clarent's sides. Sheet lightning ripped its way across the sky in the far distance, crossing from one horizon to another in three strokes, arcing around rim of the world. The sound of thunder layered atop itself was nothing to the whisper of his voice.

“Pathetic,” he said.

They converged on Clarent simultaneously, coming at him from both sides to bring their blades down upon his head. A shower of incandescent white sparks erupted from Zealot’s edge as it met Regent. Clarent held Arcon’s and Regulus’s blades still, parallel to one another. It seemed that even in combat, he was meticulous.

At half its strength, the legendary weapon Regent was stronger than either of their’s, but it was not a tremendous difference. This was a winnable fight.

Still, Clarent’s advantage meant that he had command of their blades. He threw them back with a contemptuous flick of Regent’s halves, then rounded on Regulus as Arcon was sent staggering.

Regulus ducked under a swipe with his fumbling grace, then caught another on Zealot, his blade ringing like a bell as the spinning blades locked around the jewels as he pivoted it back into position. He had always been the better fighter. It had made him Dame Nightshade's favorite.
It didn’t matter. In the second that it took for Arcon to throw himself back at Arcon, Clarent’s blades buffeted against Regulus’s defenses like the storm in the distance, crashing against Zealot again and again. Each impact put Regulus another inch out of his footwork, another step off his guard. At last he batted Zealot away and drove a fist into the Heirophant's chest so hard it tore the breath from his lungs
Then he rounded on Arcon, and it was all the Knight Commander could do to hold his ground. He rolled out of the way of deadly swipes, blocked his blades with repulsions of pure magic, stalled his approach with Keeper, and threw himself away from sword strikes that could shatter boulders.

Regulus burst from the trees beside them, and they met Clarent’s next onslaught together, catching the halves of Regent on the weapons of steel and obsidian. Regulus and Arcon had the advantage of numbers, but they struggled to maintain the advantage of position. They ducked under and flipped over the diamond blades, used shards and even their cloaks they worked in tandem to keep him between them.

It was difficult. Clarent whirled and stepped out of every one of their assaults, using the momentum from one strike to carry him into the next. He was the center of a shower of magical power, and he forsook grace and subtlety for pure technique and power. His blows hammered against Arcon’s defenses. His maneuvers broke his martial composure.

He struck with speed, power, and precision; he never seemed to be out of position or caught off guard by their tactics; he never resorted to misdirection. Clarent’s apparent plan was simple: he would wear them down. He’d simply fight them until they ran out of power and then claim another victory with their heads.

The legend moved with absolution, fought with the knowledge that he was unstoppable amongst men. The more Arcon found himself beaten back by the terrifying strength and will behind Regent, the more he felt his sense of Clarent’s indifference ebb a feeling of hubris rise. As he threw them away again and again, like a school bully playing king-of-the-castle, the more it became apparent that Clarent was very, very good at this.
Which meant he only thought he was unbeatable.

Right eyebrow quirked. Left leg tensed. Duck and stab at mid-rib.

Arcon ducked before Clarent's strike ever came, stabbing out to catch him in the chest with Keeper. He brought the second half of Regent up to divert his blade.

Left shoulder loosening, both legs tightening. He's about to throw him away and turn on Regulus.

Clarent thrust forward with both his blades, and Arcon was sent reeling back. He spun to face Regulus, but Zealot skimmed itself in his forearm as he stepped neatly out of the way of the diamond blade.

Shoulders set. Legs spread. He's preparing to meet both our blades in parallel. Feint and roll past him.

They led with their blades in tandem, points first, then ducked at the last moment, rolling under Clarent's blocks to flank him once again.
Regent met Arcon as soon as he'd tucked his legs and relinquished any possibility for escape. It dug into side, shearing away a large chunk of flesh with a shock of intense pain. His roll failed, and he tumbled forward into the dirt. Before he'd realized what was happening, shards of Regent had pinned him to the ground through his robe.

It was simple, Arcon realized. He'd been analyzing Clarent's every move and incorporating his reactions into their combat strategy, just like he had with every foe. Slowly, they'd taken initiative and started to win.

But Clarent's style of fighting hadn't changed at all. If the stories were true, he was a master at bladecasting—why hadn't he shifted his methods?

The answer was obvious. He'd waited, collecting all the data he'd need. But not to improve his effectiveness in battle, no—Clarent was just going to kill them. He wasn't making a gamble when he knew he'd win. He was just collecting his chips. He would kill Regulus and make Arcon watch every moment. And only then would it be his turn.

This was how Clarent Coquelicot won his fights.

That was when he heard it—or rather, felt it. The sound came to them from the ground, a deep, faint rumble that was like two boulders being ground together. Regulus barely had time to wonder what it was before leaping back into the fray, ducking under a shard of Regent.

Soon, however, the sound came again, much louder than it had before. This time Regent recognized what it was: a roar.

“Stop!” Arcon ordered to him. “Hold!” He needed to know what was going on before he could throw himsef back into combat, but he had a feeling it wasn't good. To his credit, Clarent had also lowered his sword, a most peculiar look upon his face. All three knights stopped and began to turn away across the lake.

Thump. A wave of sound hit them, like the beating of an impossibly large drum. The roar sounded again.

Thump. That was when Regulus saw the missing stars. An entire piece of the sky was gone. Or rather, something was blocking it from view.

Thump. Something enormous and perfectly black. “Dragon,” Regulus whispered. “That's a goddamn dragon.”

Thump. The roar he let out was now deafening. The knights covered their ears.

Thump. “But there haven't been any...” Arcon began.

Thump. “Fafnir. That's Fafnir reborn.” Clarent looked into the sky.

Thump. The force of his wing beats stirred their robes, and another, smaller form began to take shape against the night sky. “Sivek,” Clarent whispered.

Backlit by the light of the moons, the new dragon was bone wrapped in glistening sinew and smoke. Slender for a creature so tall, his wings spanned out behind him, a set of thin white fingers clawing at the air around him. Smoke spewing from the prison of white gave him the semblance of shape, with tendons and muscles expanding. All of his flesh was bloodless. He had no eyes, but they still burned, two pinpoints of light in the dead sockets of the skeleton monster.

Thump. Sivek stretched his wings wide to glide toward their position. He was massive—as big as the great hall of the Bastion.

“Well damn,” Regulus said. “That's not fair at all.”

The dragon dipped along its course, diving low toward three knights. It bore down on them with a terrifying speed.

“Move!” Arcon shouted.

Its path was clear. The dragon unfolded its wings just before it hit the ground, and they caught enough air to halt its fall and bring it into a sweeping line. The knights were thrown to the ground by the passing beast’s undercurrent, and Regulus and Clarent were pushed back by the wave of wind it made when it landed. Arcon rose from the ground as Regent's shards were knocked free, hands grasped firmly on Keeper embedded in the ground. “Well, boy? You’re the one claiming to be Clarent reborn.”

Clarent picked himself up off the ground, then frowned at the scattered fragments of Regent. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The dragon fixed its eyes upon them, then picked up an enormous claw and began to walk towards them. Thump.

“Clarent killed dragons,” Regulus said. He thought that one was obvious.

Clarent assembled his sword infront of him, eyes flickering between the dragon, its brood, and his fellow knights. "When I fought Grael, I cost me half my face. When I fought Fafnir... I died and that lake used to be a mountain."

Thump. Clarent moved to stand beside Regulus, his mouth a rigid line as he looked up at the approaching dragon. “So how about this,” he said, taking a shaking breath, sword at the ready. “If I give you Regent, will you kill him for me?”

The petrified look on Regulus's face made his answer clear as day.

"Right..." Clarent said, as he broke apart his sword. "I was afraid you'd say that."



Groaning in frustration, Lilith relinquished her hold of the second sapphire. Try as she might, she could not add it to her first and wield it half as effectively. She could levitate it, making whirl around her and move... but she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out how to use her telekinetic grip as efficiently as Regulus or his squire could. There had to be something else to it than sheer levitation.

It still didn’t feel natural to her, as some of the other trainees had alluded. Still, she endeavored. ‘Dame Nightshade has been training me very well,’ Lilith thought, concentrating through the motions of practicing with her sapphire. ‘But I don’t know if I can get more than one sapphire to work... it feels... weird.’ She sighed in frustration. ‘Is it that the material is wrong for me? Maybe I shouldn’t be using gemstones... maybe metal? Or something else? I don’t get it.’

The concept itself was simple enough; enchant stone, a metal or crystal, bind it in an incredibly tight form of telekinesis and use it as a weapon. The more you could control, the more deadly you could become. But there was something missing from hers. She didn’t feel like she was wielding a weapon, any more than she felt like she was just waving a stone around and risking poking someone’s eye out. Possibly her own.
‘I think that’s the problem,’ she mentally harrumphed. Regulus had left the castle in a hurry, pushing Lilith off to a elderly Dame by the name of Nightshade, a woman at least a decade older than Regulus.

She sighed and looked from the hovering sapphire to the one on the floor. She was about to envelop it in energy when she jumped to the side, barely avoiding two shards of the squire’s blade cutting the floor where she had stood just a moment ago, instincts kicking in just in time. ‘How did I even do that?’ She dodged again, this time by jumping back and glaring at the squire. She couldn’t see Nightshade at all, and the other acolytes seemed more scared of what was happening than willing to help.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?!” she shouted, lowering her stance. “You could have hurt me!”

A sapphire shot out with the force of a crossbow.

The squire jumped, but the floor where he stood cracked as a sapphire penetrated into it. The squire’s blade formed in front of him, all bright green gems clearly visible to her.

“Enough.”

The squire spun around, only to find Lilith was but a few footsteps behind him. His eyes widened and he took a step back, clearly not expecting her to be so close.

Lilith managed to catch the hint of a snarl on the squire’s face, which disappeared faster than she could reclaim her sword.
Dame Nightshade, Martial Trainer of the Knightly Harmonic Order of Coquelicot, only laughed. “Well that was interesting. Why didn’t you strike, Acolyte Lillith?”

Lillith sighed. “I-I didn’t want to hurt him.”

The squire looked affronted at the idea of the little girl actually managing to land a hit, but schooled his reaction, awaiting Dame Nightshade's comments.

“You wasted an opportunity, Acolyte. He will most likely not fall for that again.”

Lilith looked down, scratching the floor with her boot heel. “I... did manage to nick his robe... a little.”

“It does look a bit torn,” Nightshade acknowledged, “But he could have taken a lot more,” he added, looking at her sternly. “You can’t be afraid of striking even in practice, Acolyte Lilith!”

[center]http://orig07.deviantart.net/5808/f/2011/332/a/7/a785d8bbf26170192769c6950fc0b54a-d4hn3ht.png[center]

Dame Nightshade watched as her newest student twisted and turn in circles about the fellow she had been paired with, side-stepping attacks, distracting him with bursts of magic, using the area around her to dominate the battle and position herself for easier and more effective attacks against her opponent.

Clearly her combat style was not intended for direct confrontations. Yes, it worked as a dueling style, but it emphasised guile and quick reactions rather than strength.

She smirked. It was an ideal mix for bladecasting. Then she frowned. That was if she managed to work her way up to using a second gem for it, and more importantly put her head into it. It was hardly a blade with only one gem after all, although for an untrained beginner she had grasped the concept of how bladecasting worked incredibly quickly... But as long as she hesitated and shied away from harming her opponent, she wouldn’t be doing anything more than simply holding a gem in front of her.

Regulus's squire kept his eyes on Lilith as he walked back over to Nightshade, idily fingering the tear in the hem of his robe. “She’s certainly doing well against the other rookies.”

“She’s still no match for a trained acolyte,” the martial trainer stated. “Unless she killed without prejudice, she would be quickly overwhelmed by any competent fighter. She doesn’t have that skill yet... and still...”

The squire remained quiet, knowing that the Dame would let him know what he was thinking soon enough.

"She's a bit of a natural."

The squire raised an eyebrow, then turned to look at Lillith with carefully concealed curiosity, doubtlessly trying to figure out what Nightshade had noticed. She was fast on her feet, but many young girls were. And her magical training certainly shone through, allowing her to keep her balance and weave in and out, almost like a dancer, but what the Nightshade had said didn't quite ring true: the squire could have demolished her more than five times already. The only thing that allowed her to continue was the element of surprise. In a week, with Dame Nightshade's current training regiment, that may later have been a different story... but for now...

The ground began to shake beneath them. The tremor forced the younger squire to one knee, and even Nightshade found herself setting her feet to keep balance.

The rumbling ceased, and Nightshade raised an eyebrow. An earthquake? Here?

She searched for some sign of disturbance in the mountains, perhaps an avalanche or rockslide, but the skies above them were as clear as before, and the only sound was of footsteps racing up from the city.

“Dame Nightshade!” She turned to see a Knight hurrying towards them, the man’s bald head damp with sweat.

“Everall! About time you showed up! You were suppose to relieve me an hour ago," she chided.

“Forgive me, Nightshade,” he panted. “But… have to… tell you… quickly…”

“Ah, ah, ah,” the dame said, hiking a thumb at the shaken Acolytes. “I’m a tad preoccupied doing your job as it is. Whatever news you have, it needs to wait.”

“But-b-but,” Everall protested. “This is an emergency!”

“Then come back when it’s a catastrophe!”

The ground rumbled once again. This time, the stones beneath their feet began to crack, and the castle shook on its foundations, walls shaking and windows shattering. Nightshade hurried to the eastern battlements, and felt the blood run cold in her veins.

The view from the spiraled down towards the western coastline of the lake, until finally she was looking down on the village of Langcort, the closest of the small hamlets that dotted the valley.

The town was in ruins. Buildings aflame, inhabitants either fleeing for their lives or motionless in their own blood. Dark shapes moved across the scene; massive, crocodilian beasts and black-skinned demons that took to the sky, raining fire on everything. They continued their rampage, but the Dame's attention had moved on, drawing her sword as the bells of the castle rang in alarm.

"Enemies at the gates! To arms! TO ARMS!"



A black shape loomed above them, a nightmarish specter of spikes and blades. Eyes blazed, lips curled back over fangs in an unmistakable sign of aggression. Sivek was ready to kill.

“SIVEK, SCION OF FAFNIR,” Clarent shouted, raising his own voice, "FLEE OR KNOW MY BLADE ONCE MORE!”

The dragon reared back, apprehension flickering in his eyes. Then he was darting forwards, mouth opening wide.

Clarent cursed and fed his power into his sword, spinning away from the razor teeth throwing a sharpened diamond. It caught Sivek in the chest, lifting the shadow dragon off his feet and smashing him into the forest. The trees and soil cracked under the hit.

The dragon was barely winded.

He was dumbfounded. That strike had been a killing blow; a mixture of his own raw magic, and the finest diamonds in Grael's horde. It was strong, far stronger than anything in this world could survive. He had struck right atwixt the heartscales, or at least where they would have .
And Sivek had shrugged it off. For a bladecaster who represented the very concept of killing, seeing his powers fail was more than a bit unsettling.

The dragon was up and advancing. Regent, Keeper, and Zealot struck again, more out of reflex than any conscious action. The air rippled with the magic, and Clarent lended his magic to his fellow knights, and together they loosed a hailstorm of razor shards. Each mark could have blown a hole through six inches of solid steel. An entire platoon of armored knights would have been ripped to shreds. They struck Sivek’s etheral hide and shot out the other side, leaving only burned patches of flesh and bone in their wake. But the dragon stumbled beneath the assault; collapsed to the floor. A leg severed.

Clarent felt hope. If he could just subdue him, just keep him down…

Sivek’s tail lashed, his wings beat furiously. The dragon gave a snarl and struggled to rise. The ash that clung around the dragon began to refill the holes of their attack. Its limb began to melt back with the tendrils of smoke that reached for it.

“STOP RESISTING,” Clarent yelled. “SLEEP IN DEATH AND YOU SHALL SUFFER NOT!”

Sivek’s only response was a bloodcurdling roar. He charged once again, easily pushing through the last, needling shards the knight was able to fire. It was no use. The dragon was too enraged to be reasoned with, too powerful to stop.

The dragon before them was easily twice as large as a cottage and covered. It glared at Clarent, Regulus and Arcon with an intelligence far surpassing that of a simple brute as its claws tore furrows of earth in the ground. With a sound very much like a rush of steam from a blast furnace, it opened its mouth and began to suck in air.

“Fire!” Clarent shouted. It was unnecessary; Both the Knight Commander and Heirophant could practically read his movements anyway. They were moving before he was.

Clarent ran alongside Arcon, as they fled into the wood. They took the left, Regulus took the right, flanking their opponent as it drew in its fire. When they were level with where its wings met its shoulders, it exhaled.

The world was set aflame with emerald. It billowed and curled out from the dragon's maw in a roaring inferno, turning the small amount of foliage into ash and setting several of the sparsely placed ancient trees alight. It swiveled its head toward Clarent and Arcon, and more of the ground vanished in fire.

Clarent's bare feet pounded against the damp earth as he ran from the fire. Heat built behind him, the temperature rising to almost unbearable levels.

And then nothing. The dragon had run out of flame.

And only the dragon had to get close enough to them.

Regent burst into its fourteen fragments and whipped through the air, a glimmering storm of weaponized magic. The dragon wailed as the diamonds tore through its sinewy limbs, then crashed to the forest floor, its own inert magic quickly trying to repair it. The knights were leaving it far behind as they stumbled towards the distant castle.

After a minute, Regulus collapsed, the wound Clarent inflicted ripping open once more. They paused for but a moment to tear a strip Clarent's cloak and bind the leg.

Arcon didn't bat an eye as he heaved Regulus to his feet and threw the knight's arm over his shoulder. “Can you help him?”

Clarent slowly ran a hand across the tears on the Heirophant's flesh as he watched it rise and fall erratically with his breathing. He had done his job too well. “No,” he whispered. “I don't know anything about medicine, magical or mundane. I can kill a man in the space of a heartbeat a hundred different ways, and I don't know how to heal.”

“I'm still alive,” Regulus groaned. He turned to Arcon. “I'm going to need you to keep me upright. If I die, I'm going to die standing... or ripped apart by a undead monstrosity. One of the two.”

But Clarent had eyes only for the dragon of flesh and blood, who circled around the castle of the Order, rending towers and keep in his wake. "Blood of my blood," he whispered in realization, as Sivek's undeath knit his body back together.

He had an idea.

It was suicidal.

But he had already died once. What was a second death?

"Is there a way into the castle that we won't be seen from above?" he asked, hurrying alongside the Knight Commander. "And can we access the armor from there?"

The elder knight sucked great lungfuls of air through clenched teeth. "A tunnel at the foot of the mountain that leads into the lower cellars. Why?"

He told them of his theory as the rest of Fafnir's brood flew overhead.

They skimmed low over the treetops, stripping leaves and breaking branches with each downbeat of their wings. The sky around them was beginning to darken, the dry wind carrying the scent of blood and metal and smoke. The lakeside was lit with an unearthly glow, the light pulsing like some monstrous heartbeat. Columns of flame erupted in the distance as entire villages were reduced to ash in moments.

Regulus was afraid to ask, but he did nonetheless. “What if you're wrong?”

The words were cold and blunt. "Then he will burn your world down to the rocks and bake the rocks until they glow. He will melt the poles, grind the mountains to dust, boil the oceans and set the very clouds aflame. We will all die."



If Sivek was a giant, then his father was a Titan.

The dragon broke through the low clouds like some ancient god descending upon the wicked. Its bronze wings stretched hundreds of feet across the sky, blotting out the clouds and sun both. A head larger than a cottage trailed smoke from between its jaws, which yawned wide to reveal a hellish light within. The world shook again as it roared, and a river of fire erupted from its mouth, bathing the castle below. The squire had only just managed to shove her behind an arch, before a wash of flames engulfed them. He vanished before Lilith's eyes.

The ringing in her ears faded, replaced by a faint buzz. Her vision began to go gray around the edges. So fast. The dragon flapped its massive wings and began to wheel around for another pass.

Another roar broke through her paralysis, and she stumbled forward. Movemovemovemove! She tumbled forward, dodging debris and piles of ash. All that mattered was to keep moving. Behind her, she felt a rush of heat as the dragon passed near. The snow around her evaporated instantly. The walls steamed.

I see you. She heard its booming voice echo in her mind. She trembled beneath the force of its terrible will; the sapphire shook as she raised it again, and her second shot veered wildly off course, sailing into the distance. The dragon’s laughter resounded in her brain.

So little. Lilith dove from the pillar, landing in a jumble of limbs and robes a bare moment before the column erupted in flames as the dragon passed overhead. The stone melted.

She pulled her sword back to her, frantically searching around for a place to hide. The courtyard was a battleground; hundreds of knights ran in every which direction, some attempting to hold off the dragon, or put out fires, or carry the wounded. The dead, or rather, the ashes that remained of them, blanketed everything like sickly snow.

Too late. The dragon blasted through the plume of smoke that shrouded the sky. Nearly half the forest around the lake was in flames. Its mouth opened again, revealing the furnace that burned within its breast.

It was moments from exhaling on her when a large spear, nearly a lance, flew through the air and slammed into the dragon’s side with a crunch that sounded for miles. The beast bellowed in pain and flipped in the air, tilting its wings to change course and face the new threat. Lilith lowered the jewel, and turned to see where the spear had come from.

The Knight Commander Arcon and Knight Hierophant Regulus had returned, and stood in the middle of the courtyard with an unfamiliar knight between them. Five spears, each with a large leaf carved diamond for a head, swung in a slow orbit around the trio. As Lilith watched, Regulus thrust out his hand and spear closest to him shot through the air with a loud crack toward the dragon.

Her breath caught in her throat. "He can hurt it!" She thought to herself. "He can hurt it!"

Just as quickly, her hopes were dashed. The dragon reached out with a scaled arm, intercepting the spear with a casual backhand. The wood shattered against its hardened scales; fragments rained down on the courtyard in a stinging hail that drew tiny lines of blood on Lilith's arms. Apparently deciding the three was the greater threat, the dragon inhaled deeply, and sent another blast of fire into the castle. The three knights scattered, diving for cover as the flames licked at their feels.

Fafnir reeled back in pain as yet another spear embedded itself into his left leg.

The dragon's head snapped down, eyes slitted in fury as the flames from his mouth turned white-hot. Foolish wretch! May whatever god you revere take pity on your damned… His eyes finally settled on the knight in black with the diamond sword, and his murderous fury increased.

Clarent.



“Alive for less than an hour already trying to kill stuff again,” the Kingmaker asked in surprise. “My, but you’re a violent little bastard aren’t you?”

I am a dragon, he said. I burn. I eat. I kill. Destruction is my way, and you are prey. I once sat atop a black reign of fire that spanned the whole of the Tear, a terror to all your kind. Then came you with your stones and slew my sons.

Sivek alighted over head, landing with a earth shattering thump onto the castle walls. Twin pinprick's of light glowed from his unearthly skull. Another form dropped, and another.

But now I live. Now my sons walk upon your land. We are the hunters. You, the prey.

D'jac pounced, tearing up masonry from the wall as the drake lunged at Clarent. The knight had to throw himself backwards to avoid to the razor talons that shredded the air around him. A skull filled with teeth brought itself dangerously close, opened to devour him.

Two gleaming shafts made up of ten diamonds each took their place on either side of its neck, then twisted its head off with an explosion of bone and ash. Clarent threw himself to his feet, swearing as another of Fafnir's children swung into view as he rejoined the blade. A flurry of obsidian met the dragon, clipping its wings and felling it from the sky, if but for a short while.

Embolden by the return of their Knight Commander Arcon, many of the remaining knights threw themselves back into the frey. Metal shards and gemstones were fired at the dragons by the hundreds. The dragons lept and clambered over the forces, melting flesh with emerald flames.

Fafnir roared, seeming to forget about Clarent, and rounded on another knight. It opened its mouth, and that dreadfully familiar sound filled Clarent's ears again. By now it seemed to drown out every other noise in the castle, despite not being very loud in and of itself.

It beat its wings, buffeting Clarent with a thunderous wave of air and rearing up on its own hind legs, the gibblets falling to the ashen floor. Clarent watched the dragon, reassembling Regent as he searched for a weak point. There had to be somewhere he could strike.

Regulus made to throw his final spear at Fafnir, and was thrown to the ground, and as the dragon came down it slammed a claw into him. Dirt exploded outward as the Heirophant was pinned to the ground by the razor claws. He started to try and wrest his way free.

Too late Clarent realized that he was too absorbed in analyzing the creature, and as a result he'd overlooked two important facts.

First, Fafnir had the Knight Heirophant pinned to the ground and was about to unleash a torrent of fire. There was no question with Regulus—he simply wouldn't survive the inferno. Clarent needed to hit its head, or its claws, or something to save him. And that would cost precious time.

Second, he'd forgotten about Fafnir's tail.

It hit him square in the side, and Clarent lost all semblance of orientation as his feet left the ground. He was vaguely aware of a second impact, on her other side, before falling to the ground in a heap. If it hadn't been for the robe's enchantments, his spine would have snapped like a match stick. His ears rang and pain stabbed along his sides. His mouth tasted odd, almost metallic.

His kights were still in mortal danger. He needed to come to his senses and get up. He needed to help them, somehow.

A shatted column entered his field of vision—or maybe it had been there all along. Yes, Clarent thought, that was what he'd struck while in the air. He rolled his head to one side, trying to get a view of the dragon.

For the next several seconds, Clarent watched. He saw Rhesk, and D'jac, and Bomlac and Sivek, and Jahken; each of Fafnir's children was coming toward him to take a quick kill. Past them, the dragon still had Regulus pinned to the ground, and fire poured out of its maw in a poisonous blossom of heat and death.

But it never reached Regulus. Clarent barely noticed the blade drawn out of the air opposite of him him and throwing it forward in another shatter. His shards gripping the dragon by the lower jaw and pulling its head toward the ground was Arcon, screaming as flames flowed like liquid over his feet and standing in a pool of molten glass. What he did notice was Fafnir's wing, coming down and obscuring the Knight Commander from sight.

Fafnir breathed out with the roar of an erupting volcano, and the inky black flames poured forth to fill the space between his wing and his maw. They doubled, then redoubled, heating the enclosed space past the point that would boil iron. Fafnir kept going, heating stones a dozen meters away from the flames to incandescence.

It wasn't a scream that Clarent ever wanted to hear again. Not a despairing wail of suffering and pain. It was defiance and rage. Endurance and tenacity. Clarent watched Arcon save Regulus's life, and grit his teeth, brandishing Regent anew.

Clarent had always been somewhat defenseless. Fafnir was nearly invincible, but even King Solom and Sir Morgant could evade almost any attack. Clarent had only the blade, which was more often than not too busy on the offense to be put on the defense. He'd always needed his speed to protect him, but such was the nature of bladecasting.

Strike hard, strike fast, strike first. It was one of the first things the king had taught him. Bladecasting was the most efficient form of killing there was. Even the gods relied on the mortal weapons to kill their enemies.

He had been old when Fafnir, the Uncrowned King of all the World, and his children threatened the realm of Ynys Mons. He had been old, and gray and tired. To sacrifice the life of an old knight, his life, to stop six dragons had been more than easy to make.

But now Clarent was young. And the sacrifice had already been made.

The Kingmaker threw himself to his feet, ignoring the almost crippling pain that sliced through his sides. A skeletal drake pounced, aiming to hit him before he'd regained her balance, but even as he came to his feet he sent a single diamond through its mouth to burst out the back of its head. He rolled under the massive undead corpse, and every dragon between him and their father turned to face a Knight Commander of the Knightly Harmonic Order of Coquelicot.

A claw was sheared lengthwise in two as it tried to strike. Another dragon took a diamond through the eye. Clarent spun through them in a shower of blood and splinters, never losing his place.

Six seconds of flame ended, and the dragon snatched Regulus up in its jaws once more. It shook its head once, not bothering to draw in breath for fire, then pitched the knight into a nearby cart. Wood shattered as Regulus fell to the ground. Four more diamonds rained down from above to devastate the ghost-like Jahken. Clarent sent three more to new targets, then used a fourth for leverage, springing off it and over the swipe of the nearby D'jac. He landed, facing forward, just as the dragon’s other claw was torn away with a wet splash. It pitched forward as its throat followed. By then Clarent had moved on to other targets. His footwork was perfect, his form divine. He split his focus between each of his assailants, delegating the proper amount of diamonds to each even as he moved through their ranks. He incapacitated them all.

Until at last not a single foe stood in his path and he faced the dragon itself. Or rather, its tail.

Fafnir looked down at the unconscious Hierophant, then raised its other claw. Four deadly talons gleamed.

Four fragments of Regent gleamed a little bit more.

Clarent reached the dragon’s tail just as his blade reached its outstretched claw. He leapt onto the sinuous limb as each talon was sheared away to tumble off into the night. The dragon shrieked, rearing its head back, and whipping its tail up.

Clarent let go.

He was flying, soaring through the night air with his bloodstained robe fluttering about him. His blade had gone past the dragon's maimed claw; he called it now, drawing each of the pieces toward him.

His aim was true.

Clarent landed against the base of the dragon's head just as Regent assembled before him. He braced his impact with muscles built over years of training and wrapped his arms around the spines of its crest. The dragon reared its head, trying to throw him off.

His hair flew back in its loose curls, his bloodstained robe flowed around his form, and Regent gleamed as he thrust it into the base of the dragon's skull. He screamed, because that seemed like the appropriate thing to do when slaying a dragon, and he felt his blade slide into the dragon's brain. It split into twenty fragments that tore the inside of the dragon's skull into mush.

A tremendous crack rang out over the lake as a skull as thick as a tree trunk shattered into thousands of fragments. Gore and shards of bone exploded from a hole in Fafnir's head, and the flames coming from his mouth ceased. He collapsed, the light in his eyes dying like fading embers.

Clarent rode the beast to the ground, feeling the thud of its impact reverberate through his body. All around the courtyard, the wraiths of Fafnir's brood gave a last wailing shriek and collapsed into bones and ash, dissipating upon the ground.

Silence.

He could feel his heart threatening to tear itself from his chest, and with none to shaky hand Clarent pushed himself then clambered to his feet and stepped out onto the dead dragon's head. The remaining gathered around the fallen dragon, looking up at their founder. The courtyard was filled with the wounded, the dead, and the incinerated, with shattered stones and bodies strewn everywhere. Towers and villages burned, and the blood of Fafnir soaked into the castle ground.

The knight gave a tremendous sigh, and brushed the ash from his arms. A whisper brought Regent to his side, a weary, almost delirious smile on the knight's face.

He still had it.

Volkimir's servant seemed up to the task to which it had been appointed. The vampire had felt woefully ill-equipped since he had left his tomb, and sought to rectify that issue. If he had been as well armed as he was in his prime in his duel with Ansur, it may have ended very differently. However, Volkimir inwardly chastised himself for using such logic. That was hubris talking; he was trying to comfort himself for being defeated. His defeat was the result of Ansur's superior power, and nothing less. As Volkimir continued to darkly reflect on the evening's battle, anger burned his his gut like a bed of coals. As he had many times before, he felt the black seed of vengeance taking root in his heart.

He shook himself, breaking away from his current train of thought. Those were unnecessary thoughts, as he had a far greater enemy at hand. Volkimir returned to room connecting to the forge as the undead blacksmith carried out his orders. He picked up one of the cultists' robes, now devoid of a corpse, and felt its material. Simple wool, strongly woven and heavy. Cautiously he took the cloth to his face, smelling it for whatever the scent the garment might still carry. It carried the scent of blood overwhelmingly, clouding the scent of the wearer. However, Volkimir could not detect the scent of dye on it in any way. Such a strong color would demand a potent and expensive dye, surely. Volkimir concluded that this was the natural color of the wool, which could only be shorn from black merino sheep: common to the north-western reaches of Ansus.

Volkimir discarded the robe, and again seated himself in the blacksmith's chair. Leaning on his hands, he pondered the evidence currently in his possession. All he had just learned was where these men obtained their clothes. It did not necessarily indicate that they were from the region with these particular sheep; such wool was valuable and frequently traded. Or was he rationalizing again? Unholy steel meant that they had contact with demons. Such a quantity of them meant that it was far more than a single demon. Volkimir knew where both these sheep and this quantity of demons could be found. He had purged the Shadowlands of demonic taint to the best of his ability after the War, but they were strange and elusive monsters. They could easily have feigned death and returned to the many cairnes and caverns in the mountains to regain their strength. Volkimir gritted his teeth. He knew that he was being irrational, but he still did not want to believe where this evidence was leading. He assured himself that the evidence was circumstantial and so far inconclusive, and that he was biased in his recognition of it. Though he could not deny that this was so far the most logical conclusion. Volkimir's brow furrowed, and he ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. Was this the result of his last, greatest work? Had he cleansed his homeland of corruption, only to allow a greater evil to take hold there?

The rune. He remembered the rune branded into the chest of the cultists. This was the most important evidence. Volkimir's anxieties eased as he thought over this. Yes, this was the most compelling discovery; he knew this in both his heart and his mind, without having to lie or deceive himself. If he could divine the origin of this rune, he could put at ease the fears that had arisen over his homeland. To start, Volkimir would search the archive most readily available to him; his own memory. Thousands of years of experience, bottled up within a single mind. Constant recollection of such a voluminous history would put undue strain on his mind, and so his memories condensed in his subconscious like the sediments in the foundation of a castle. Only in deep meditation, techniques Volkimir learned from the Newa peoples in their mountaintop monasteries, could he pry into his own, ancient memories.

Volkimir cleared the floor of weapons, robes and whatnot, allowing himself a clear space. The robe about his shoulders was thrown over the splintered, wooden floor to give him a decent place to sit. Volkimir lit the few torches and candles in the room with fires from the forge in the other room. The room was bathed in steady, orange light, and filled with heat that was a mild, constant discomfort on Volkimir's half-living flesh. He shut the doors to the room, and blocked the spaces beneath them with the cultists' robes. The room already began to fill with smoke, slowly drifting out through the smallest cracks in the walls. Good, this would do.

Stripping out of his clothes and armor, Volkimir took up a seated position atop of the cloak on the floor. He crossed his legs over themselves in a position of concentration, his hands folded in his lap. He breathed slowly and strongly, as he had been taught many years ago. He remembered those years distinctly; the sharp, cold air of the highest mountains in the world. The stars at night, seeming so close that he could reach out and touch them. Those mountains were holy to the Newa people, not because of any belief in the gods that Ansur had brought with steel and fire to Ansus, but because of the austerity it brought to them. To live on their slopes and peaks was a hard, merciless existence, but it had made the Newa strong of both body and mind. Their warriors were cunning and ferocious, and Volkimir spent many hours sparring them with naught but their strange, curved knives. He seemed to recall receiving such a blade as a memento on his parting, but its location was lost to him. Another treasure buried by his years.

Volkimir's breathing reached its desired regularity. The air in the room was thinning from the fires, a poor replacement for the air of the Newa Mountains, but it would do. He sweltered against the heat of the flames, his skin prickling and contracting as he could not sweat. Volkimir slipped in and out of consciousness as his trance began to take hold. He could not sleep as humans could, but such a trance allowed him respite from his eternal life. In time past, he had spent months at a time in ascetic meditation, if only to allow his mind a reprieve from the constant stresses of his ever-vigilant immortality. Visions came to Volkimir; voices and people long lost to this world. He could not direct what he saw, as his mind paged through the ponderous length of his life and experiences as his subconscious dictated. Not truly dreams, but as close as Volkimir could achieve to them.

"...A terrible thing; for a child to outlive his parents..."

Black and silver. The provider and the protector.

"...What troubles you, Volkimir? Fear not, I will listen as I always have..."

The warmth of light, forever lost to him.

"...He who calls himself, 'Heir to Sturmkirk.' Such boldness..."

Blood and betrayal, entwined eternally.

"...This was not our agreement, demon! Enough have died in suffering..."

The mouth of hell, overflowing with the void above and below.

"...Hush, Vova. Won't you trust him? We are his blood..."

Mother.

Volkimir's eyes shot open. The room was dark, choked with thick, black smoke. He coughed, rising from his seated position to the door leading outside. He kicked away the insulating robe, and found no light trickling in from under the door. It seemed that night had fallen as he meditated. Volkimir opened the door, letting in fresh air as the smoke billowed out. He thought back to his meditation, and the answers (if any) it brought him. Unfortunately, it seemed that he had never known the meaning of the rune. Perhaps he had glanced upon it in some ancient tome or another, but he never learned its true purpose. However, he was able to eliminate all doubt that this symbol was demonic in origin. A superior demonologist could possibly identify it. Glancing to where his sword rested against the wall, Volkimir silently admitted that a demon could also know the answers. However, they were often far from forthcoming.

Volkimir picked up Elbrus, and the demon of the blade responded to his silent query, "Yes, I know of this rune." It said, surprising even Volkimir, "Release me and you will have the answers you seek. After that, I will pick my teeth with your spine." Futile as ever to try to discuss anything with it, Volkimir noted.

Most of the smoke had cleared from the room at this point, and so Volkimir returned to his clothes and dressed. Of the armor that he had stolen from the royal treasury, he chose to don only the vambraces, greaves and sabatons. The breastplate and plackart were worthless to him at this point. He again took up Ansur's cloak, noting with some amusement that it would make a good funeral shroud for the Forefather when they next met.

The vampire remembered the zombie that he had raised in the other room, and returned to him. He found that the undead blacksmith had completing his task, and presented to Volkimir a fine weapon. A clawed gauntlet, forged of unholy steel. Volkimir took the offering and fitted it over his left hand, giving the claws a few experimental flicks. An interesting offhand weapon, and a welcome addition to Volkimir's meagre arsenal. Volkimir placed one of the bladed fingertips on the forehead of the ghoul and channeled a sangromantic spell through the demonic metal. The gauntlet carried the spell well through the claws, saving Volkimir the effort of having to transmit the spell remotely. Starting from where Volkimir laid his claw upon his head, the blacksmith turned to fine, white ash, and disintegrated where he stood. After a few moments, all that remained was a neat pile of chalky ash on the floor where there had just been a man. Volkimir considered this to be due payment; he had given the blacksmith the gift of blessed sleep.

With that, Volkimir set out back into the streets of Kolanis. He needed to get moving again, he had spent too long in this dead city. Forces from the other cities in the empire would be rallying to retake the city from the perceived threat, and Volkimir did not wish to be present when they arrived. However, upon walking a fair distance into the north-west quarter, he caught the distinct smell of smoke. At first he believed that it was merely the smell of the fires he had meditated in clinging to his clothes. This was not the case, as he could distinctly smell charcoal and pine ash some distance away. Had there been a forest fire during the day? Part of him wished to investigate, while another part knew that nothing good could possibly come of it. Volkimir decided to travel in the opposite direction from where he smelled the burned remains, just to avoid the trouble.

Volkimir's thoughts raced as he walked, eventually leaving the city. He had purpose, but not direction. He needed the expertise of a knowledgeable demonologist, or at the very least a linguist or historian of some variety. If Kolandis still stood, this would have been his destination, and as such Volkimir was now at a loss. That left another alternative, however. If Volkimir could summon and bind a demon, he would have all of the answers that he needed. However, this was a terrible task to undergo, as not any demon would do. Some imp or another would likely have no knowledge of the forbidden lore which Volkimir sought. He needed to gain the attention of an archdemon. Luckily, Volkimir knew of one such demon. This did not please him, however.

His grim task set in mind, Volkimir set out into the wilderness of midnight. Twin moons, like eyes, looked down on the last Son of Sturmkirk. Demonkind had plagued him near-on his entire life. It was they who cursed him, and led his family and homeland into ruin. They had brought on this new scourge. And now, they would answer to Volkimir. The destructors of Ansus would also be its deliverers.

"Forgiveness," the Green Knight answered piercing the unnatural silence that had once more overtaken the forest with the sound of his voice. For even Harald Silvertongue had kept his peace during the knight's deliberation and fear was still evident in his ashen features. Whether his fear grew from the sight of the the ancient tree or the dead forest the Green Knight knew not, but he nonetheless welcomed a reprieve from the old bard's never-ending questions and insolent comments about the foolishness of seeking out a talking tree. It bothered the Green Knight more than he cared to admit, even to himself, that knowledge of the Tree of Kimash had apparently faded into memory. For if men no longer recalled one of the most ancient messengers of the gods, what else had been lost?

Bowing his head low, the Green Knight addressed the ancient tree,"I have come to seek your council, much has changed since I last walked these lands and I fear that a great deal of it has been for the worse. Tell me friend, what ill has befallen Ansus?"

Deep within, the Green Knight braced himself for words full of woe and doom. His mood was already dark, the dead forest spoke of foul, dark things and he was not subject to the foolish hope of lesser men. Yet, beneath his skin, he could feel the radiating warmth of long since forgotten rage stirring. He would not stand still and idly accept the desecration of Tavra's forests, no, a reckoning was at hand, judgement would be delivered and he would once more stalk the lands claiming the hearts of the unjust.

The rough face carved into the very bark of the Tree of Kamish began to move once more, twisting and turning and opening and closing its eyes and mouth. It was surreal enough for The Green Knight to see such an unusual phenomena of nature, Harald Silvertongue was lost for words. Everything about the tree was arcane and mysterious, from the leaves that were starkly different from those of its peers, to the smooth, almost soft bark that lined the entire thing.

"Forgivness... friend...." it began, speaking in familiar tones of thundering depth.
"The riddle... has been... solved...
The man... wishes to know more...
About... the evil... evolved...

For... when the... great flames...
Are... withered and... dead...
So will begin... his terrible games...
When... the world... hangs by... a thread...

A King... in Black...
Shrouded... in night...
The world... will be his.... to ransack...
And for... you.... to fight...

Fear... the... starless skies...
And fear... the King's... great lies....
For... you... will come together... the mighty... and the wise...
Or this world... will suffer its... final demise..."

"Grim words you speak," the Green Knight replied making no effort to hide the concern he then felt. Memories of times long past assailed him, stories of ancient evils long forgotten returned, and he remembered. Warnings fearfully whispered in the dark came back unbidden to his mind and a name unspoken taunted him with promises of ruin.

It was then at last that Harald Silvertongue found his tongue and shouted with a heart full of newfound dread as he stepped between the knight and the strange tree,"It can't be -- A king...in Black -- NO! I do not believe it! The tree lies! Do not listen to it! The forest is corrupted and lost! We must flee and seek shelter in the cities of men!"

"Silence, you fool of a man!" the Green Knight roared in turn, the swift strike of an armored gauntlet in the air silencing the grizzled bard mid-sentence and sending him ducking for cover. Yet, when the spoke again, there was a softness to the knight's voice and the menace emanating from his form had dissipated. "This is not the time for fear nor the place for tears, old man, we no longer have the luxury for such things."

Returning his attentions to the still living tree and drawing nearer still, the Green Knight whispered in a tongue long lost from the memories of men,"Who are these mighty of which you speak? Who are these wise men that I should seek? Where do such heroes yet reside? When brave deeds once more must the fate of Ansus decide?"

The tree, for a very brief moment, said nothing. Silence reigned in the forest save for the gentle breeze sailing through the trees, and the pounding breath of Harald Silvertongue. It was perhaps thirty seconds or more until the face upon the tree jumped back into motion, its thick, barky lips beggining to move once more.

"Beyond... death... and the... grave...
Yours and others... souls... he saved.
Mighty... and wise... roam the land...
Knowing not... the danger... at hand...

Find Ansur... Find The Skyplitter...
Find the... Rampart... The Witch of... the Winds...
The Mountain Wolf... The Beast of the... Forest...
Find... The Trickster's Child... And... The Dark Prince...
The Dragon Blooded... The Mighty Spear... The Kingmaker...
Find... The Iron-Toothed Lioness... The Starsword...

These Mighty... Men and Women... Hail from tales...
Of times... long past...
Like you... they wander... and walk... the trails...
Of Ansus... Unite these souls... Unite them fast..."

"Alone I will not wander, these heroes I will seek, I will not forsake my oath and what was once perfectly divine," the towering knight finally replied, his fists clinched in anger and fury, eyes sorrowfully searching the ancient tree that was all that remained of the once great forest. "However, old friend one last question I must ask you, what of the gods? What of Tavra? I feel an emptiness within my heart, yet it is not death that has claimed her just charges, no, it is much worse than that."

Godless... is the... world...
Since his... rage... was unfurled...
They fought... for a day... and a night...
A battle... between... wrong... and right...

They could not.... defeat... the beast unknown...
Andurias... was finally... ripped from... his throne...
He was... desecrated... like swine...
His wings... torn from... his spine...

Tavra... fought long... and hard...
Until her... very soul... was shattered... and marred...
For she too... could not hope... to fight...
Against... the beast... that swallowed... all of the light...

Trodden... into the... ground...
Her greatest... champion... was bound...
Like... all of her... sisters... and brothers...
Who... called upon... others...

Now you know... why we cannot... rebuild...
Now you know... how the Gods... were killed...
Now you know... what the world... does lack...
Champion... Hail not the King in Black.

With a final rasping breath the tree of Kimash then fell silent and was once more lost to its ancient slumber. Shrouded in the darkness of night the Green Knight remained in silence for the better part of an hour, unmoving, and lost to his own thoughts. Anger overwhelmed him, hatred took root in his heart, and he wished only for revenge, for death, for the chance to claim the head of yet another monster. Yet, sorrow awoke him, ancient memories restored him, and his oath bound him. He would not falter, he would not break, and he would not kneel for yet another corrupted monarch. Beyond himself, the Green Knight could hear the fearful mutterings of the old bard cowering next to him, the angry words shouted at the now dead gods and the sad lamentations that Harald spoke about the doom that the small fellow now perceived had claimed him. Nodding to the now silent tree, the Green Knight turned and made to leave the forest.

"Wait!" He heard Harald Silvertongue shout, finding the man racing after him, trying his best to match his long steps. "We're doomed that much is clear, but you'll not be leaving me in this dead place."

"Do not despair Silvertongue," the Green Knight replied, his voice sharp as steel and full of fire. "We shall find these heroes of which the tree spoke and then we shall seek out this villain, this usurper, this monster who shrouds himself in black. Come of it what may, I'll have his head."

Like so much had pulled apart before him, he now was doomed to fray. The darkness surrounding him was oppressive, pushing down on his mind like a thick blanket used to snuff a fire. He tried to reach out, grasp a thread of the magic that was destroying him, but it pushed him away. It swept the great Unraveller aside like a strong wind blows a leaf.
This was too intricate. Even with the seed, it would takes weeks to unmake it, and he would lose himself far before that.

Daen crawled toward the dais, for upon it sat salvation. An aura of imperceivable colors swirled atop the dais. Simply looking upon it caused his mind to ache. No mortal could perceive what he saw there.
Unfortunately he was mortal.
And he was dying.
Blood trickled down his back, where poisoned barbs had implanted themselves. The poison didn't seem to be effecting him, but the pain made him weary. Cuts laced his arms and legs where dastardly razorwire traps had tried to slice him to bits. He bled freely onto the black stone floor, which seemed to eagerly consume the nectar of his life.
He crawled closer, struggling fiercely to keep grasp of what little sanity remained to him. He reached out toward the dais.
And brushed whatever sat atop it.
Fire blasted its way through his being. He was suddenly paper before a great fire, curling and collapsing in on himself. He felt the last fragments of his sanity being pulled apart. The colors he could not see fluttered inside his eyes, swimming in ever increasing tides until they blocked out all else.
Daen could not decide if he preferred this unknowable sea to the darkness that had oppressed him before.

But perhaps those were the words of a madman.

If he'd had the faculties left to laugh, he would have done so. Suddenly a blinding pain lanced its way through every fiber of his being. The burning of before multiplied by a thousand. It was as if his soul were being branded. Miraculously he could then tell that that was exactly what was happening. The mark on his soul was being mimicked on his face. Drawing itself around the seed of truth that rested in the socket of his right eye.

Pieces smashed back into place. Mind rebuilt. Numbers. That color, perceivable suddenly, yet unnamed. What was that?
Something flitted around the corners of the black room. And suddenly Daen realized that he could see the corners of the room. He could feel the darkness still, but it clawed at the edges of his sanity, unable to grasp his now unvexable mind.

That moment of hesitation was enough for the creature that struck him next. A flash of black skin, swirling patterns beneath its surface. It took hold of his head with an iron grip and suddenly he was tired once more. Despair tried to edge it's way into his mind, panic following close in its tracks. But they were both rebuffed easily. Daen starred into the eyes of his killer, if that was what one could call them. Pits of utter blackness. He could feel it's core. Once a man, corrupted absolutely by an imperceivable darkness that at once reminded him of the wraith of Imentis.

Daen laughed.
"I do not fear you."
For you cannot fear that which you understand.
A rage passed over the beast. Claws like needles tore into the flesh of his belly, extracting something he didn't see but he guessed was his intestines. He felt nothing but tiredness. In the corner of his darkening vision he saw streams of white light filtering into the beast, and suddenly he knew what the poison barbs had been for.

They drained his life away, strengthening this beast. The poison tried to tear at his mind, take back that which he had stolen, but it could not enter. The mark had done its work. The beast leaned close and licked blood from Daen's cheek with a long serpent-like tongue.
"Feeeeaarrr meeeee," It whispered in his ear with a voice like ice.

Daen locked eyes with the beast once more, resolute and unfeeling in death.
"I cannot," were the last words he spoke before all went black.


Death was dark. At least until he looked, if in fact one could look while dead, for he was very aware that he was dead. The mark had followed him here, at least in part. He could feel it's power still coursing through him, lingering like the image one sees after looking at a bright light. It's power allowed him the knowledge of this place. Though it would take him time immemorial to understand it. He wondered how ones without the mark existed here.

Around him swam the color he could not name. It ebbed and flowed through the aether like great tides of energy, shaping eveything. He then felt a presence, if in fact one could feel while dead. A presence that warmed him, for it was familiar. And then, not for the first time in his life, but the first time in death, he laid eyes upon is god, Saevus.

He tried to fall low, but had no body to lay prostrate. He tried to beg forgiveness, but had no lips to speak. The god seemed to sense his regret, his sense of failure, for the god of truth frowned. It was only then that Daen realized how very human the god of truth looked. He had a very human body, and atop that sat a very human head with very high human cheekbones and black human hair. The only sign of divinity he saw were the blindingly white iridescent eyes. Around Saevus' right eye were three faintly glowing interconnected circles.
In your failure you have succeeded.” Saevus extended an arm toward whatever Daen was here and Daen felt a pulse of energy that could only have come from the mark. He felt it burning within him, lingering on the fringes of his perception like an afterimage of bright light.
”I sense the mark upon you. That they cannot take, for it is bound.”
Saevus paced across the eternity, and white stones formed beneath him. The reality spread outward, splashing against invisible walls, and spilling reality into the aether like paint upon a canvas.
”Do not despair, my dearest disciple . For where there is one, there is also the other.” Saevus Smiled at him, showing very white teeth. The smile dropped quickly, and was replaced by a serious expression. ”Find my book, Truthseeker. For upon my departure it shall come unbound. “ He met whatever eyes Daen possessed, and held the look ”Do not search for the truth of time, nor the truth of the starless night, for you shall find neither. Search for the truth of I, who does not belong in this realm. I cannot impart the knowledge I had wished upon you, for in your disembodiment you are not unvexable.” Saevus reached out to touch Daen, but recoiled as if struck. Color began to drain from the god’s skin. His iridescent eyes dimmed, and for a moment Daen could see the darkening stones of the wall through the God of Truth.
”The Starless Night beckons.” Saevus fell to a knee and clutched his chest.
”One last gift, my dearest disciple. The page formed of your truth.”
An unfelt wind tugged at the God of Truth, and he began to blow away.
”We part, my dear disciple. Hide.. Beyon-”
The unseen wind blasted Saevus apart, scattering the fragments of him around and through Daen. Then suddenly it was silent.

Daen looked slowly around the black stone room. Dust layered every crevice and cobwebs hung from every corner. He blinked.
Wait.
He’d blinked?
Daen Screamed. He screamed so long and hard his voice went out. He thrashed and flung himself about, clawing at his skin and attempting to escape from the prison of flesh he found himself in. Dust billowed up around him, blotting out vision and forcing him into a fit of coughing, which luckily enough stopped his screaming.
After the fit, he flopped sideways onto the dusty bricks. Since when had existence been so exhausting? The panic slowly receded as he stared at the far wall, as black as all the rest, and in its place came a bone deep exhaustion.
He woke what seemed like days later, he couldn’t know for sure in this lightless room. He didn’t feel as tired now as he had before. He took another look around. It wasn’t dark per-say. There was light coming from somewhere, although dim and of a very dark shade, but he couldn’t make out the source. He reached out with his mind, seeking to grasp the magic that created the light and understand how it functioned. He found it easily, a charm, easily done. He tugged on the thread of it’s magic and felt a nip of resistance. It gave him pause. He’d not felt resistance at such paltry magic since before he’d been given the-.

Daen’s hands flew up to his face, he felt gingerly around the lid of his right eye. The socket was empty, the seed gone. A ball of icy dread dropped into his stomach. He grasped for his pendant, but it was gone as well. They had taken everything.

Except, as Saevus had said, the mark. Daen traced the lines etched into the skin around his now empty right eye socket. Three interconnected circles. It glowed a dim orange against the skin of his hand.

Daen sighed and looked around the room once more. No doors and no windows. The room was entirely sealed. He could feel no magic keeping him here. But without his pendant there was no escape that he could see. Then something popped into his mind. Riddles he’d never before seen. He smiled at the last gift of Saevus.

Page 25 of The Book of Truth:

My dearest Disciple:
By black will you fall.
By white will you rise.
Four times of four, you shall be your own guide.

Upon your return, I shall grant you this
In order to strike, at first must you miss.

And perhaps one more, for loyalty's sake.
To reclaim what you've found, you first must unmake.

The first part made sense now that he had died and appearently been resurrected. He hung on that for a moment. He had witnessed Saevus’ destruction, and therefore had no clue as to why he was back. Yet here he sat, propped up against a black stone wall, very much alive.

The last part was obvious as well. In order to reclaim the Seed of Truth and perhaps his pendant, he would have to unmake, or unravel. That seemed too obvious and had him wondering at the riddles possibly behind it. But that wasn’t the most important part.

In order to strike, at first you must miss. He hadn’t the slightest what this meant. He hoped it was a way out of this room, but he couldn’t be sure.

Standing on unsteady legs. Daen pushed off into the middle of the room.

The starless night had begun. his God was dead. There was so much to do, and he felt so very, very alone.

It took several moments, emotions washing over her heart, changing as quickly as ice melted in flames but eventually she was able to steel herself against the truth; Arete had left this world and in her absence, Elowen had been given life once more. She gave a simple nod to the man and he exchanged with her a look of pity before urging her towards the house. As she turned, the man returned to his fields, though more slowly and thoughtfully than before. In her walk to the farm house, she had time enough to think, to reason that if Arete was gone - there were only two ways that it was possible. Either she had left of her own volition or somehow she was no longer and if Elowen was being honest with herself, she could not reason why a being of virtue, of goodness and purity, would ever leave this world without her warmth. The question then became, how could you undo a goddess? She had never thought such a thing could be possible and yet her mark was no longer connected to Arete.

Gently, Elowen pushed the old wooden door open, her eyes gazing upon a humble house. There was nothing more than a staircase leading up, an open kitchen, and a living room that took up the rest of the floor. It was lined with simple things, such as wooden chairs, table, and even a worn cloth relaxing sofa in front of a unlit fireplace. The smell of mutton pie wafted through the air, eventually finding Elowen's nose and causing her stomach to growl softly, making the Starsword realize how hungry she actually was. Suddenly, her eyes met that of a middle-aged woman, her hair a mix of gray and black, newly formed wrinkles, and yet a gentle face. "Oh my! Haha, you scared my deary..." she said at first before wandering over and examining the young woman. "Did Jeremy send you in? You look exhausted. Come, sit on down, hun." She quickly and calmly lead Elowen by the small of her back to the dining table and urged her to sit before going back to the kitchen. It seemed her timing had been perfect as only moments later, the wife returned with a pie and three glasses of milk. Expertly, she cut a slice of the pie and sat it onto a plate for Elowen before smiling. "Go ahead, dear.. I'm just going to call in Jeremy."

She looked down at the plate and then watched as the woman went to the door, doing as she promised, yelling out her husband's name to return for a mid-noon snack. Elowen had been surprised by the sheer amount of good will they both showed, but wasn't sure if it was virtue they held or just simple foolishness - but she supposed she didn't look like much of a threat, walking around in only a short blue dress, no shoes or weapon to speak of. At that, she decided to dig into the slice of pie, just thankful she had run into such kindness. Not too long and the couple were sitting at the table with her, both starting their snacks as well, though with Elowen's blessing this was more the entire day's meal for her.

"So.. what brings you here?" the husband finally asked, unsure how to really approach the problem at hand. Elowen had finished her slice by now, gulping down the last of her milk before letting out a soft sigh.

Looking up at the pair, she could see a curiosity and worry in their wizened eyes. "I'm not sure.." she began, "but please, if you would, tell me - why does the world seem so cold? Elowen thought it best to avoid the subject of her resurrection, but it was obvious the world had grown colder and she suspected the god's absence was the source of it.

"We're not sure.. just one day, stars started goin' out and then everything started getting hard and cold. Jeremy told me that he's been having trouble with the crops too, but no one seems to know why." This time, the wife replied, to which her husband only nodded sadly, sliding some pie into his mouth.

This was certainly very disturbing news that chilled even Elowen's bones to the core. Not only had Arete apparently been undone somehow, but it was not beyond imagining to think that the others gods had met the same fate - perhaps even all of them. However what sort of being could challenge all the deities and win? Elowen could only reason that it had caught them off-guard in their realms, like an assassin hiding in the shadows, and struck when it knew it could win - whatever it was. However then, why was she brought back from the dead? Surely, she could not defeat what had felled the gods, could she? Even if there were others, were the gods just desperate or mad, to think mortals could stand up to something that could snuff stars out?

A thought flashed in her mind then and she quickly stood up, giving the married couple a particular look, one that caused them to pause. With determined flaming in her eyes, she straightened her back and spoke. "Please, I need a pair of shoes and any blade you can spare - even a dagger." It was not long before the couple was bidding her farewell, sending her off with a pair of sturdy sandals and a trust-worthy dagger (for what else would farm hands have?). Elowen's eyes gazed into the distance and took a few moments to gain her bearings. She had been all over the land in her previous life and hoped dearly that even twenty-thousand years of absence did not change the location of temples and Bastions of Light, even if they had grown cold. One advantage she had at the moment at least, even if her rune was still waking from slumber, the magic it did provide was already mastered. She knew it's basic abilities like she knew how to breathe and within a single instant, she was gone.

Novissah's temple stood before her as she materialized into view once more. In her younger years, she could only ever 'blink' short distances and for only so long, but her mastery had given her access to true teleportation, letting her travel anywhere she had been once before or at least had an idea of the location. So here she stood, examining the old temple of the Omniscient. Elowen needed to know not only what had happened but more importantly of why she was alive again. Surely there were only two explanations; either the gods had gone mad with fear and resurrected her (and probably others) as a last ditch effort or there was a specific reason why she had returned, a game plan, a last hope, for without aid of something greater than she was, how could she hope to hold off a creature that killed gods? To her, there was no choice but to try and find this secret weapon, whether it be a ritual or artifact of some kind, to hope that there was some chance in her safeguarding the world against whatever evil snuffed the stars out. What better place to learn such things then the libraries of Novissah...

Zahra straightened to her full height, losing her fighting stance, as the village elder breached the empty space between them to approach with soft eyes. Such a fool of an old woman. Couldn’t she see that warrior’s battle rage still flared in her gut? Her fires stoked on metal and her inbred response to fight that which threatened? Every muscle in allomancer’s body was tensed and quivering with anticipation like the taut string of a bow ready to loose its arrow.

But still she came. Eyes of warmth against the hardened stoicism of the bloodied woman before her, trying to touch Zahra’s sullied face and crooning at her with soft words. The Lioness did nothing to aid the woman in her endeavour, instead adopting a stillness that would have put many a statue to shame. Indeed, she might have been mistaken for one, had her nostrils not been flaring ever-so-slightly with each quick, shallow breath she took.

And then the elder fell, blood surging out from a wound so like that which had taken Zahra’s life that it bordered on cruel. But still the woman smiled and cooed. Even as men helped settle her dying body into the sands her words remained calm and non blaming; reverent even, to the warrior standing before her half-naked in a tattered robe and covered in sub-human blood.

Zahra lost her fight and the blade she’d commandeered fell to the sands as her grip loosened. Her fire turned to a chunk of lead that settled in the pit of her stomach, an uncomfortable feeling of sympathy and emotion that threatened to crack her carefully emotionless face. She swallowed a lump in her throat at the elder’s last words to maintain her passive mask. But it hurt. It hurt that this kind and considerate woman had been the one to die. And it angered her that in a village full of men who had swords and knives strapped on their belts, not one had been drawn in defense of their own.

The woman’s body was lifted and carried in stream of men, women, and children towards a small temple to give her to the gods for safekeeping. Zahra followed slowly in their wake, alone and utterly silent. She loomed over the proceedings like the spectre of death her people had seen her become, an austere observer with a face etched from stone. She watched as the elder’s body was gently cleansed and covered in a silk shroud. Listened as the villagers raised shaky, emotion ridden voices in unison to sing her death song.

Several other elders presided over the woman’s funeral rites, standing on the dias where her body had been laid in solidarity and solem countrance. Now would have been the time that they lead a prayer to each of the gods for the woman’s soul, but instead they were silent. Zahra’s gaze swept across those assembled, but none of the other villagers seemed confused by this lack of tradition. Only sad… and afraid. Maybe the rites had changed since her death so long ago. Or maybe not.

Zahra strode towards the front of the dias, feeling like she was missing something very significant. She only had to move a few people out of her path before the rest took notice and parted before her. Nimble leaps took her to the top of the raised platform to stand with the elders, but their eyes diverted away from hers as soon as she met them. Fine, they could cower, but she would pay her respects and then gain answers from these people as to why exactly she had been resurrected, and why they thought the world was dying.

With one last penetrating look to those gathered next to the old woman’s body, and pulling a dagger from one’s belt, she approached the corpse of the woman who had shown her such kindness. She closed her eyes and muttered a little prayer before dragging the pilfered blade lightly across her hand. Blood started to bead from the cut and pool in her palm -a palm that was utterly riddled with scars from like cuts- and drew back the silken cover. Zahra pressed that bleeding hand firmly against the opening in the old woman’s abdomen, mixing their bloods. A warrior tradition among those of the deserts. “Once we were of kin and spirit,” she told the body, her voice clear and ringing through the deathly silence, “And now we are of the same blood. Through me, you live, and you continue to fight. Fear not death, our forefathers await to greet their child.”

The crowd’s silence turned into a cascade of desperate whispers and shifting bodies as she turned away from the corpse of the old woman to address the remaining elders; they could sense the re-hardening of her heart.

“You will tell me what has happened.” Her voice was low and dangerous, but still could be heard over people and shifting sands. “You will tell me why it is the world needs to be saved.”

“Honored-One,” the bravest of the lot said with a small bow of his head, “The stars have faded from the night sky. The gods have perished and the world is following.”

“How?”

“Our shamans can only see blackness, She-Who-Leads-The-Free, we do not know what has befallen the lands of Ansus, only that others from times past have come forth again across the lands. The deserts burn, and the lands beyond grow cold.”

Zahra studied the man before her in silence, droplets of her own blood splashing down on the stones beneath her clenched fist. She searched his face for lies, for addled-mindedness, for anything that could lighten the heaviness of his words. The truth of his words. She began to pace before the elders upon the dias, uncaring or unknowing of the eyes that followed her every predatory movement. Several minutes went by in silence as the woman fell into contemplation, but no one dared move except for the Lioness herself. The gravity of the situation in which she now found herself had firmly settled upon her shoulders. Yes, she was certain now, this new chance at life was far, far from a gift.

Dark brown eyes filled with purpose and determination snapped back towards the elder who had spoken and the rest of her body stopped abruptly. “I will need a horse, map, weapons, and supplies for a weeks long journey… and some real clothes,” she added with a hand indicating the tattered, blood-stained thing wrapped around her. A plan was swimming through her head now. A foolhardy, dangerous sort of plan, but it was one nonetheless.

“Bu- But… I- We. Lioness, what of us?” another of the elders stammered, stepping up to her with placating hands, “You must help us. Our savior!”

Anger blossomed across the woman’s face and in one quick movement she was inches from the man and pulling him closer so that he might feel the heat of her fires rolling of her. “I am no martyr,” she hissed before pushing him back to address the village as a whole,. Never did her voice raise in level, but still her words cut through the desert winds like one of her knives. “I do not know what the stories of me tell, but I will tell you this: I am no savior of the weak, I am a leader of the strong. Of warriors.

Not one of you pulled your weapons to aid in the fight against the men whose bodies now litter these streets; the men who subjugated, and threatened, and stole from you. The ones who slew your elder. Not one. I will not sacrifice my own life so that you may walk meekly to your deaths. I fight for those who fight with me.”

Again her gaze ran across the faces of the crowd, searching for any signs that these people were really the descendants of her brave warriors. “Our people,” she continued with careful deliberativeness, “were among the most fearsome and skilled clans of warriors to walk upon Ansus… And if I have been brought back to lead you into the end of the world, we will be again. If I return to these sands to call you to arms you will answer, or you will die. By your forefathers, my forefathers, and the Forefather, I make this promise to you. Decide.”

The desert had grown far more harsh since Zahra had last traversed its expanse. The cancerous suns, the cankerous heat, and the cantankerous cold of the starless nights were heart-haunting. Not even the layers of cloth wrapped loosely around her body and face could ease the immense heat, and the dark lines of kohl painted around her eyes could stop the blinding light from drowning out her sight. Everything in this place was either wicked and warped or blasted and burned now. Nature's laws had been overthrown in the deserts. It was only an orgy of wanton violence between its denizens, all of whom have been disfigured and crippled by their attempts to live there. It was just a vast, mournful pan of emptiness where anything sentient resented anything else that was alive.

Luckily, only once did she encounter any other predators; desert lions. A small pride that eyed her warily through lidded eyes as she and her horse strode through their hunting grounds, low growls humming through barred teeth. Her namesakes. Usually terribly aggressive, the large cats seemed to be placated into not attacking only by the half-eaten remains of some other bestiary between their jaws, and perhaps animal sense to know she was no easy meal. Regardless, Zahra gave them a wide berth and laid a hand softly upon her new blade’s hilt as she continued on.

Slowly her fine-boned mount picked its way south through the scorching sands, head bowed and sweat lathering it’s neck and flanks. Zahra scratched the base of its mane encouragingly; they weren’t too far now. Even now the sands grew less dense, and brittle plants and cacti sporadically spotted the landscape. Soon they would reach the southern border of the Plains of Dust.

Sands eventually gave way to rock, and rock gave way to dirt. Zahra shivered as if the suns had shrank away from her back, and grasslands now stretched before her. For the first time in two lives, the Iron-Toothed left the lands of her ancestors. What laid beyond in this dying world she could not imagine, but some deep-rooted instinct told her to seek out others that would play a role in this potential unending of life.

The woman's palm smacked against her cheek with an audible crack, the sharp clap of flesh on flesh - and not even the fun sort; what a shame! - warping as Crow's frazzled brain put forth its most valiant attempt to process these recent events. She'd - she'd tried the best trick she had, lead up with a compliment and a dazzling grin, and - and nothing. No eyelids fluttering in accompaniment with a sudden swoon. No bashful, flattered little grins. Not even an indulgent wink.

And suddenly, the flighty little spitfire felt very, very cold. Dilapidated buildings loomed ominously about her, exuding a pressure the likes of which she'd never felt, and the distinct chill of foreboding trickled down her spine in icy rivulets. The wind was stale here.

Old. Dry.

Dead.

She - how in the seven realms of frosty hell hadn't that worked? She'd pulled out all the stops, rifled around in her sleeve for every single trick she'd stashed up it, and the only thing her efforts had earned was a slew of epithets and a sore, aching cheek.

Pure, unadulterated bemusement swept across her face in panicked waves, and as she counted the uneven, lumbering footsteps indicating the haughty pier-goer's departure (six, seven, eight, each heavy thunk stinging more harshly than the slap), she registered a distinct, poignant sort of solitude.

"Oi! Wait, I - hey, just listen, I can - fucking wait, damn it!" A fit of frustration seized hold of her train of thought, mangling it beyond comprehension; sheer aggravation had hindered what was sure to be a tirade of epic proportions.

idiot, idiot, idiot, what a complete JACKASS, you think there's a port in hell that'd welcome an aberration like you? some kind of heinous monster? stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Somehow, she'd managed to condense the very concept of glumness, crumple it down into a compact, convenient little ball, and inject each breathy sigh with a hearty dose of misery. Looking not unlike a kicked puppy - albeit a scrawny, malnourished one incapable of comprehending ideas like 'keeping one's hands to oneself' and 'not terrorizing the villagers with one's sapphic tendencies' and even 'learning that extortion was bad, and probably not a good idea' - she heaved one more sigh for dramatic effect, despite the lack of anyone to benefit from this little display.

Gritting her teeth, Crow shook her head, dispelling that sudden wave of negativity. Frankly, those sorts of thoughts weren't important, and since she was an Important ™ person with important things to do - things that didn't involve listening to gross, inaccurate bullshit like that - it was a complete waste of time. Aw, quit your whinin'! Ain't worth the effort, anyway - prob'ly would've sicced that little devilbeast on you, anyway!

Taking a moment to prepare herself, every muscle in her legs tensing almost involuntarily, Crow lurched unsteadily to her feet. Stabilizing herself via a clumsy, trembling stagger, she eventually - key word: eventually - regained what little sense of balance she had. 'Sides, you got that godhood to figure out!

Newfound determination pumping through her veins, the reinvigorated Windwitch spun on her heel, looking quite like she might want the wind to tousle her hair dramatically. Her call went unheeded, however, as the wind was quite preoccupied with playing with a pile of leaves a few feet away.

Whatever - they'd have to work on that.

“Please... spare them Nridriel... let them live....” the young woman echoes to herself- begging the small spark in her chimed bracelet. “Let them go- they don't deserve this...” the sound of a crying woman barrels into her ears , not even drowning out the sound of the infant she held tightly in her arms. Everything was riding on this one moment. A tear slides free form Arsanna's face, falling to the refractor bellow her feet. Throwing her hands up, a chime erupts out, a beautiful multichromatic light expands- it resonates through the walls into the city, spreading across the cobble stones and tiled roves. It carries to the edges of the city itself, a sharp crackle of the stone gates screams across the sky already enveloped in the carnage of a weeping city bellow being shredded into the sky.
Dizziness settles into the young soldier as she falls to her knees, several priests run to her side to assist her as she shakes them aside. “No! I'm fine... Go...” she smiles tears running down her face, closer to sobs. “It's better this way. Get everyone here in the Palace and go-”
“Milady Arsanna-”
“I said go!” she shakes off the man who tried to grab her hand.
Several onlookers took this moment of silence to stare on at the young defeated general of one of the most powerful cities this land had ever known. The chamber was now silent say for the crumbling city slowly ripping into the sky and the crying child. Taking to her feet, and drying her eyes Arsanna took a moment to stare at the crowd who took refuge with her.
“Remember what we stood for. Remember what we all fought and died for. Remember the sins we committed that brought us here today. Remember the things we gave up and cried for... Remember that there is always salvation amongst the stars... Go now- flee before there is no longer time left,” she points her way toward a visible western gate from their location. “Don't turn back. Don't watch our pride be swallowed whole. Let it die! Now go!” she screams onto the crowd that now began to make a break for the exit, leaving Arsanna and a single priest alone in the chamber.
“So- you wish to see the end along with me?- Priest,” she says with a bit of acid in her tone. H shrugs, smirking slightly. “That slight grab at my wrist... wasn't to pull me to my feet.. it was for my bracelet. You must be with the thief and the counsel.”
“I figured I could try- as orders are orders. But I'd rather go down in flames than be part of the problem-” he caught silent from a ring of the chime from her wrist; a single quick, brief resonating band passing by him as he stares wide-eyed. He blinks in horror and shock as several pillars behind him fall in half in a slight diagonal fashion. His vision doubles slightly, his head diagonally sliced and falling clear in half from the rest of his body as he crumbles into a bloody heap on the floor as Arsanna- hollowed to the counsel and anything in relation, stared on empty-eyed. Looking down to the chime she used on her wrist, dismay had washed in- the bell was now cracked- it housed an ember of a fire- something that as stolen. There wasn't any way it could be contained in this host any longer, and there wasn't any time left. No song could save her now. Nothing could.
“Gods... Gods please... give me the strength to be strong,” she prays allowed. Tears again welling in her eyes. Tears became sobs and finally, unable to contain it, becomes morbid reality that everything was now gone. Her parents, her sisters of battle- even the city of Izarem. Despair, for the lives she forcefully took, for the family she could never love or hope to see again, for the unborn child she lost one winter passed. The light in her heart began to dwindle and go dark deep inside. The hurt of never having the chance to try just one more time- just once more.

The young woman awakens in a field- beautiful blue flowers dance in the gentle breeze as the sun's embrace brought warmth to her weakened form. In the distance stood a tree sheltering a young woman, her lover and a small girl clad in blue following butterflies of scarlet shades. The girl notices Arsanna and stares on- her parents shattering like glass and falling to pieces that cascade the ground. Arsanna shrills, trying to reach for the girl as she turns to run away from her. The child falls forward and pops into a black puddle of sludge leaving only black stained clothes. The woman now stands alone staring down at the sludge that now surrounded her feet. It was but a hallucination...

Reeling back, her eyes engulfed in pure light, a cry of agony filled the halls of the palace. Sobbing rage poured from the woman as echoes cried in abnormal tones across the sky. The bracelet, Apple of Autumn shatters like glass off her wrist, leaving but the lonely and pitiful spark to slowly rise, the girl going silent and drifting upward with it. Her flowing hair flows freely, defying gravity as she floats above the mechanism she used to protect her people. The sounds of her cries still clearly resonating above began to echo from refractor to refractor- hundreds of bands of light and loops began dancing across the city while others took this as a signal to escape their refuge.
Her eyes slowly close- it was time- time to return to the stars. To join the daughter she could never love and the soldier she met who fathered her. A tear roles off her cheek and hits the refractor- the young woman is engulfed in flames as the palace explodes upward.
People began clearing a hillside outside the city, watching as the sky appears as a dark vortex, eating the city whole from a black void in the sky where one of their many moons once held high. A single bright light slowly rose into the black hole as opulent lights grew and in one bright flash, everything was gone. The city, the verdant land and everyone and thing within it. Ruins lay in shambles but no semblance of life remained. A young man took his sword, digging it into the ground and bowed as the other survivors began to follow his lead. The moons held high in the evening tide, no longer being a reminder of the Moon mother, but of the rage of a Goddess usurped by her most loyal followers.

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“She finally waking up!” the man cries out in relief. “You scared us, young madam... you... walked into the Oasis and got your hair tangled in some roots...”
Arsanna, scratches her head- trying to speak but too hoarse in the throat to say much of anything at the current moment. She sits up looking about at a young man, a farmer, a doctor and an elderly woman standing about her inside a caravan tent.
“I'm sorry young lass but.. we had to cut that beautiful hair... raven's feathers hold nothing to that hair but... you would have drowned!” the old woman tried to jokingly push the fact aside that the woman was confused and unsure what was going on. “Wherever you came from, did a number to you... your clothes were burned so heavily... I tried my best to trim it but... here, take this and take a moment...”
Arsanna sits up, moving herself to feel something within her for a moment in some fashion of circulation. Staring into the hand mirror given to her by the elderly woman, a gasp comes out of her, an unintentional line of radiance pressing against the mirror that begins to glow in intensity. Her hair was no longer near ankle length but now barely meeting the mid of her back. Shrilling at the top of her lungs, the branded text goes black and the hand mirror shatters. Confused and mentally exhausted, she drops the mirror as the group leads her away to the bed once more; catching the old man by the arm she tries to whisper-

“Where... am... I?”