There was little more than a blinding light and a searing pain as Ansur gave himself to the central pyre. This is where his journey would come to an end, after a hundred years leading the last people through the treacherous Northern Passages and fending off all manner of horrors: a construct of wood and tinder. It seemed poetically fitting that the world could not bring him to his knees so he gave himself willingly to the embrace of death. He dared not look back upon the faces that had gathered to bear witness to his final moments, as he could not stand to see them shed tears on his behalf. He knew they would be happy in this new land; happy and safe, and under the guidance of all the Gods that had promised him safety for his kin.

The flame was roaring, burning hot, crackling in its intensity, yet somehow lacking. It was an empty fire at the centre of a grand hall of polished marble and columns of pearl, an empty fire that hungered for the soul of a hero to be complete. The presence of the fire would ensure that this new land would not suffer the same fate as the last, a warding light to fend off the end.

Ansur smiled as he often did. He had done his part. Mankind was safe, and no longer had to flee. He looked down at his hands as they began to flay and bubble. His furs had already turned to ash around him. Despite the violently bright flame engulfing Ansur, his vision grew dark and narrow, before he could see nothing at all, and could only faintly feel the burning anymore. He dropped to the ground, his legs unable to support his weight; he just lay there for a moment in silence... waiting for the pain to end.

Ansur did not notice the transition from life to death. To him, it seemed as though it were simply an extension of his rest. One moment he could feel his body crumbling, and the next he felt whole once more. All he could do was lay there, engulfed in shadows, unable to move. His eyes cracked open after some struggle, and he could just make out the night sky, framed by the great rings that hung in the heavens. He watched for some time, not knowing what this realm beyond life would bring. He watched for years or for hours - he could not tell which - counting the stars that shone in the otherworldly void. He could see some shine brightly, but some simply faded into obscurity, and, curiously, some simply vanished. It was as though something were extinguishing the stars themselves. And then he felt cold, as though somebody had extinguished a nearby campfire, leaving him to shiver in the darkness. Then there was a voice... a presence. A whispering. An endless lament that felt like fire in his mind, madness given form. It was speaking to him. Speaking. Speaking without hesitation or end. It was such an empty and hollow voice that he knew despair now reigned in whatever realm he had come to. It spoke with such anguish and despair and fury and anger all mixed together that Ansur knew this place was now Godless.

His eyes snapped open, only to sting as if sand had been rubbed into them. He gasped for air but only got a lungful of ash. He jolted upwards, coughing violently, splashing up clouds of ghostly white powder. He rubbed his burning eyes and took a moment to catch his breath. He squinted. What was this place? A great hall of crumbled marble and columns of faded pearl? Vines grew over the dilapidated ceiling, and mould and moss crept up the walls to meet it. It was vast and empty, but somewhat familiar to him. He looked at his legs and hands to find them buried in a great mound of ash, as though a fire had been raging in his very place for thousands of years if not longer.

Ansur forced himself upright, dusting off the ash and stepping onto the uneven tile surface. He looked up and he looked around, the familiarity with this place burrowing deep into his head, bugging him like a relentless insect.

There was a window on the far side of the chamber, not a decorative one by any means, but an aperture through which a thin sunlight filtered through. Without it, the chamber would have surely been pitch black. The place could have definitely used a fire or two, he thought to himself.

He hurried over to the window to catch a glimpse of the outside world to get his bearings. It took him a good few minutes to reach the far side of the hall. As he stepped up to the window he could not disregard the inscriptions lining it, though they were faded and difficult to read, he could make out the words:

'This chamber, dedicated to Ansur, the founder of Ansus, stands eternal in his memory. May we all strive to be like he.'

Ansur frowned. Surely, this could not be!

He leaned to glimpse out of the window. From his vantage point high above the surrounding plains, he could see two suns beginning to set, and great rings of light stretching across the zenith of the sky.

He was back?

"Halt!" Shouted a stern figure from the other side of the room. The voice was strong enough to shake the foundations of the chamber and surely stop any lesser man in their tracks. "You are in violation of the highest law of Ansus, in the name of our father Ansur, you have trespassed upon holy ground. You will submit or you will be killed!" it screamed.

Ansur turned to see a string of heavily clad soldiers filter in through doorways on the far side of the hall, all adorned in gold and silver, encrusted with jewels of the most beautiful incarnadine red. Each soldier bore a cloak gilded with gold leaf thread and a blade forged to the highest quality. But admire them as he may, it was only a mere moment before they surrounded Ansur, blades pointed in his direction, all stern and poised to kill at a moment's notice.

"Ansur?" he asked.

"Do not speak the name of our forefather in vain, you rat. Tell us how you got in here past the guards." one demanded.

"Tell us or we are authorised to use lethal force upon you," another added.

"Trespassing upon the Bastion of Light is a crime punishable by death!" yet another noted.

The Bastion of Light. His own design. The place he created for his sons and daughters to guide them through the darkest of nights. He was in Ansus, and had awoken in the specific place he had given himself to death. But the fire was... out? It did not even glow with embers or show the afterglow of a flame. It was stone cold and dry, out for some time. Ansur had awoken in a mound of his own ashes to an end he did not understand. Why was he back? How was he back?

"Speak!" demanded one of the soldiers, thrusting his blade forward, coming dangerously close to Ansur.

"I died here," he said softly.

There was a brief reprieve from the scrutiny as Ansur's answer took them off guard. They lowered their weapons for a second before raising them back.

"He's fuckin' with us," said one of the guards as he lunged forward with his blade, raising it overhead in an attempt to bring it down on Ansur's skull. Ansur sidestepped away with grace and elegance, leaving the blade to clash with the crumbled floor tiles, sending a mighty, resounding echo through the hall.

"My name is Ansur, and I died here." he repeated again and again, each time becoming more frustrated with the ignorance of the soldiers. Every time he said so it seemed to strengthen their resolve to kill him, though try as they might, they just could not lay their blades upon him.

"My name is Ansur!" he shouted one last time after dodging another stroke of steel. "I am the Forefather!" He latched onto the blade of one of the assailants, gripping the sharp of the weapon with bare hands, and yanked it from the grasp of the soldier. There was no blood, no scratch, nor any visible marks on his skin from disarming the soldier. He masterfully weaved the blade above his head, using it to slap away the incoming strikes before stabbing it into the hard floor tiles with such force that the blade would stand on its own, trapped there between the rock. A mighty shockwave followed the piercing of the tiles, sending each soldier's blade spiralling to the walls of the chamber and knocking each man to their knees.

It looked like they were bowing to him, and no man dared to stand up once more. So they knelt.

From their vantage, the soldiers could clearly see the artwork on the chamber ceiling through the thick overgrowth: an illustration of Ansur in his glory, furs adorned, hair as wild as ever; a spitting image of the man who had just brought them low. Could it be...?

"Ansur...?" One of the soldiers asked, tears brewing in this eyes.

"Stand, you are not in danger here." Ansur replied.

And the soldiers did, one by one, raise themselves to their feet. They kept their heads bowed and did not say a word.

He looked back, and then once more at the soldiers.

"Why is the Great Fire extinguished?"

The release of death was less like a sudden, climactic end.

Nay, life's end was more a sweet, subtle sort, a graceful fall into bliss—not unlike falling asleep.

The last thing Altim remembered was the sight of ocean-like, blue eyes and the feeling of warm, calloused hands. Those beautiful eyes and those diligent hands burned love one final time into the man as he passed from that world into the one that transcended it. In the company of his lover and his closest friends, Altim died a happy man in normal circumstances, for gone were the adventures and heroics of his past. His companions buried him respectfully at his request near the Holy Temple of Wisdom, where the man so saintly and wise took his eternal repose, and there the gods accepted the legend into the afterlife.

Clothed in white robes, he appeared in the infinite expanses of heaven and became a mere observer of time's passage. For a while, that felt right, but as the years drew longer and longer, Altim struggled to stay content with his posthumous disappointment. Not for he was impatient or entitled, but on merit of something... peculiar. There was truly something, something amiss, and after each century had ran its course, that fact became more and more apparent. The scholarly fellow came to his conclusion one night, when he gazed upon the stars that had danced in celestial splendor. The world around him grew gradually darker and colder, and Altim watched powerlessly as one by one, the burning lights in the godly sky were slowly doused. That malign entity wrought its sinful holocaust throughout the stars and brought each to its knees.

A mighty pang in the hero's heart signaled the fall of even Faerthus, the Wise, and tears stained Altim's sainted cheeks as he wept. Not even he whose wisdom was infinite could escape murder at the hands of the wretched creature. Yet the slaughter brutally continued.

Until the last god fell. Then there was nothing. All hope was lost.

A short moment of silence followed, and suddenly the world around him was damp. His eyes remained shut, but he did not need sight to know that his clothes were dripping wet and that the cosmic sensations of the heavens had been replaced by cold, timeworn masonry. His brown eyes flew open and made contact with a ceiling that seemed familiar to him to meet a relief carving, made by the hands of a famous sculptor whose name was lost to time. It depicted a scene of what were several men stricken in fear before a great light from within the forest. Vines had since grown over the carving, and although they partially obscured the text etched into the gold edges, one could still read what it had said:

Behold! That mighty light which illuminates the world is Wisdom.
All Virtue, Love, Peace, and Knowledge is enriched by it,
and from His sacred forest, the mighty light of Wisdom emanates.

Altim jolted upright in alarm and consternation. What was this? He sat in the middle of a clean pool of water. Behind him was what appeared to be stone double doors, but they must not have been doors since the space between the two slabs was very obviously closed. Outside the alcove in which the fountain lay, the room extended into a long hallway, at the end of which was a similar set of stone slabs, which comprised the true exit to the room. In the middle of the corridor, the ceiling raised to a glass dome, partially covered in overgrowth, from which light illuminated the building. The stone of the dilapidated structure had numerous cracks in it that moss and grasses sprung forth from, and the roots of a tree, in one place, broke through the ceiling in a hole that was packed tightly with dirt.

This, Altim understood, was the temple of his god, the Holy Temple of Wisdom. But how? He thought that he had died, but mysteriously enough, he felt whole. He was alive, with all of the needs and wills of the flesh. A quick look around himself gave him the answer. The state of the building was evidence enough that a whole era had passed since his last memories. Nothing was the same. At the time of his death, the temple was maintained ardently by Faerthus' disciples and Altim's students, but clearly it had fallen into disrepair.

The legend himself stood and walked across the cold, dusty floor, and he approached the door at the end of the hallway. He placed his hands upon the threshold and struggled to push the doors, but eventually the heavy slabs of marble and concrete gave way, dirt and pebbles falling onto Altim as the doors parted the soil that had blocked them. The forest outside was more or less lively as it was when he died. The birds still sang to the others, the leaves still swayed in the breeze. The temple itself was buried underneath a hill, atop which a large oak tree stood. Below the boughs of the tree, an elderly man sat. Altim's emergence from the temple stirred the new High Priest from his meditation beneath the oak, and with one eye open, the Priest asked, "What are you doing, young man?"

Altim raised a brow and pointed at himself questioningly.

"Yes, you."

The man seemed more confused by the Priest's affirmation. He was not young. In fact, he was certain that he was 137 years old if memory served right. But his body begged to differ. A quick glance down revealed that Altim wore not white but the same clothes he wore when he was a young man uniting the lands of Cynderia. "What happened to the temple?" asked the now young Altim from the foot of the small hill.

"Nothing. What ever are you talking about?"

"Nothing? The temple looks old and neglected. Its masonry is cracked. And its flame! Its flame is extinguished!"

"Of course it is old, young one. It was built in the years after Ansur established Ansus, and it is sixty-one thousand, twenty-three years since then."

That made Altim's eyes widen. He thought on it. "But is it not only fifty-eight thousand years since then?"

"What nonsense do you speak of? Surely, you are not two thousand years old!" The Priest spoke as if he were speaking to a blasphemer or a heretic. "Else you would have known the face of Altim, who saved this land from peril!"

"I am Altim!"

The Priest had a mixed look of disbelief and amusement. "You? Altim? You look nothing like the man! The true Altim was blond and had blue eyes. You have neither!"

Altim stomped his foot indignantly and scaled the hill. "Show me to Altim's violin," he demanded, a determined and fiery look in his eyes.

"And why should I do that? Your fingers are hardly deft enough to handle such a delicate instrument," the elder snappily replied.

"I need it," Altim emphasized. "And if you take me to it, I will best you with the truth of His Wisdom."

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.





The tomb was tall and empty. It seemed to reach forever into the blackness that feigned to be the ceiling. It was as if the place was almost hollow; lacking in some way. The walls were cold and crumbling, and the floor was no different. Pieces of the ancient brick would break off at the touch and turn to dust with such little effort that a determined individual could have caved themselves in without a struggle.
Daen stood at the center of the room, unsure what to make of his current predicament. He was shocked to have been alive once more. The measure of his rapid breathing was proof of that, and his previous scream that still seemed to be echoing through the antechamber was an even greater testament to the shock of pumping blood and flickering eyes.

Upon further investigation, it was not, thank goodness, the simple sealed off room that Daen had thought it was. It was rather a smaller tomb connected to a much larger mausoleum. His own chamber was connected via a small, very obscure passageway that was undoubtedly once showered with light from the rotted, burned out torches lining the walls. It seemed that this place had been looted years ago. All the worldly treasures that would have rested here were gone, replaced with spiderwebs and dust; there was no visible entrance to the tomb that Daen could see: no breeze rolling in through hidden doors, but there was a single shaft of blueish moonlight dissipating through the place. He could see it come down from a small circular hole upon the roof of the main chamber. Beyond the hole was simple darkness punctuated with glinting hints of the silvery moons overhead. But there were no stars to speak of in the world above. It was a sky of black and moons, nothing more.

The main chamber was little different to the smaller one he had awoken in. It took barely a minute to walk the passageway between the two, though the walk was in nearly complete darkness save for the dim moonlight that illuminated simple turns and walls with a faint silver lining.

There seemed to be no way out.

The main chamber was even taller than the smaller antechamber Daen had awoken in. There was no structure to climb to reach the small moon door that let in the light from above. It was a place of the dead that none should trespass within. He waited for some time in quiet contemplation, looking around him and exploring this strange place he had awoken in. What dark purpose could have substantiated his return? What task lay ahead? Why had Saevus disappeared? Was it true that the Gods were gone? That the Starless Night was nigh? Daen had no answers, and there seemed to be nobody to provide them. Not a single soul.

It seemed lonely there. Perhaps a mistake that he awoke in a place in which he could not escape? Was he doomed to die a second time from the pangs of mortality gone unanswered?

The God of Truth, however, seemed not to be a liar. The truth that his chosen would once more walk the land of Ansus was indeed a truth, and not a farce. Daen could hear voices in the distance, followed by three men poking their heads over the moon door, their crania blocking the moonlight tmporarily, plunging the greater chamber in and out of darkness as they swayed and surveyed what was below. The shadow of their heads played a great spectral dance through the beam of light: every light motion translating into a mystical, arcane display of transient shadows performing pirouettes through the air.

”Oy!” shouted one of the voices. ”I found an entrance. Up here!” his voice echoed. There was a momentary silence before a second and third voice joined with the first, grunting as they pulled themselves up onto the outer roof. They looked down into the moon door and then retracted their heads and a rope ladder fell from above in their place. The three men climbed down slowly, lighting torches as they landed on the crumbling stone floor.

The light would have hurt Daen’s eye at first, but in seconds he would have gotten used to unexpected brightness. With this new source of light he could make out the party before him: a trio of adventurers, one clad in a few old pieces of plate and chainmail with a dull iron sword, one in leather and wielding a bow, and the last in a simple cloak with no visible weapons.

But it was not only Daen who saw them. Almost immediately after lighting their torches they saw him and turned immediately to face him, drawing their various weapons as they went.
’Who the ‘ell are you?” the Swordsman demanded, shaking his blade angrily at Daen.
”He’s missin’ an eye. What the ‘eck?” the bowman exclaimed rather heartily; though he was visibly shocked by the physical abnormality of the man that stood before them.

Daen stared at the men before him. They were ill equipped, but without his pendant he would be helpless against a sword-wielding opponent. He'd learned basic sword forms in his youth, as well as basic disarming maneuvers, but he doubted he could pull any of them off with two other opponents standing so near. Perhaps one, but certainly not while the others had weapons as well. He'd be cut down before he could so much as swing the newly acquired weapon. All he had was the mark, and his brain. He looked tattered, trapped, they'd underestimate him for sure. He may not be the best swordsman, or the best fighter. But he was fast, and he'd have to use that if he wanted to survive.

Words were still falling out of the swordsman's mouth. Time slowed to a crawl as Daen began the strategic inspection of his opponents.

The Swordsman
Dented iron plate, rusted mail, doesn't take care of his equipment. Watch as he moves his arm..there, the joint of his pauldron catches on the hauberk underneath, restraining his motion. Can't swing well to the left. Watch out for the other more mobile arm with a torch.

The Archer
Keen eyes, taken away if I put that torch out. Slightly frayed bowstring and eight arrows in his quiver. Drawing one arrow now as the swordsman still speaks. Chewing..something, red lips, some sort of drug.

The Robed one
A mage for certain, I can see the strings spinning around him as he readies himself for battle. No sorcerer, a simple conjurer that throws lackluster sparkbombs and other paltry spells. Fidgety, ready to spread some flame, looks prone to accidents from the singed edges of his apparently flammable sleeves and hood. He's holding the other torch in his hand, presumably to draw easy fire from it for pyromancy.

Time wound back to normal as Daen formulated his plan. First the helpless.

"-o the ‘ell are you?” the Swordsman demanded, shaking his blade angrily at Daen.

Daen Put his hands up at his sides, looking terrified and slightly relieved.

"Oh thank the gods," A knot formed in his stomach. the gods. "I've been down here for days! I thought nobody would ever come." Daen feigned a shake and tried to look more sallow than he was. He turned his face down slightly to make his cheeks look drawn in the torchlight.

”He’s missin’ an eye. What the ‘eck?” The archer took a small step forward, seeming less threatened than before, but still wary. Daen supposed he would be wary as well if he'd found a strange man with a missing eye and a glowing mark on his face.

”How much do ya’ reckon we can get for his clothes?” Said the mage quietly. ”Plus, we can’t have anyone knowin’ we were ‘ere, eh boys?” Daen could hear the anticipation in the Mage's voice, and watched his foot tap as adrenaline kicked in. These were men used to killing the unarmed and helpless to get what they wanted.

Daen widened his eye in fake surprise, fake fear. "What? No, please! Take whatever you want, just get me out of here!"

The Swordsman in front laughed, his pity as fake as Daen's fear. Bloodlust hid behind those greedy eyes. "oh-ho boys. Looks like we's got us a begga'." The other two men laughed dryly. The archer stepped forward and knocked an arrow but kept the bow down. Rookie mistake. "'Ows about you give us 'at fancy shirt o' yoh's then? Show us some compassion fo' savin' yeh." The archer and the mage laughed more at this, their nostrils flaring with uncontained laughter.

"Wh-what?" Daen stammered, "oh, yes of course.. I suppose I could-" Daen pulled the shirt over his head, and took his opening. He tossed the shirt onto the archer's head. Who in a panic, dropped his arrow onto the floor. The Swordsman turned back in surprise, unsure what had just happened. Daen jumped onto the surprised swordsman, knocking the torch from his left hand to the floor and hopping around the swordsman's left to avoid the sword-wielding right arm. The Swordsman grunted and swung without hesitation. Not a rookie then, just careless.

The Swordsman's right pauldron caught on the mail hauberk, a stray piece of plate hooking through one of the mail's loops and hiking the hauberk upward, interfering with his swing. Daen used the hesitation and darted out with his right hand. He grabbed the swordsman's wrist and turned it up, forcing him to drop the sword into Daen's hand. The Archer had unraveled himself from the shirt and made another rookie mistake of going to pick the arrow up off the floor instead of pulling a new one from his quiver. He was feeling around the floor in the murky torchlight behind the now advancing mage.

Daen Quickly smashed the swordsman over the back of the head with the pommel of his newly acquired sword and jumped forward just in time to avoid a fireball that streaked past where his head had been before. he hit the ground gracelessly just as the unconscious body of the swordsman slammed into the ground next to him.

The archer had found his arrow and was knocking it again. Daen scrambled to his feet and broke into a sprint forward. He dived forward as an arrow streaked past where he'd be if he'd been standing. The archer cursed and began to pull another arrow from his quiver as Daen turned to face the two of them. His dive had been intentional, but not for the purpose of avoiding the arrow, which he'd not anticipated the archer could draw so quickly. The real reason had been to position the archer nearly between himself and the mage, who was readying another fireball to chuck at him. As the archer pawed for another arrow, the mage let fly the fireball. Daen widened his eye and the mark pulsed slightly as he reached out to the magic entwined in the fire streaking toward him. He found the string easily and tugged on it.

The fireball popped, showering the archer in flecks of flame, one of which caught fire to his hair. The archer flinched and loosed his arrow slightly to the right. The arrow skimmed Daen's shoulder and smacked into the stone wall behind him, turing it into kindling. The archer yelped as the magefire began to engulf his hair. He dropped his bow and began furiously patting out the fire upon his head. Daen stood frantically and made a dash for the ladder at the other end of the room. He'd made it two rungs up when he turned and had to unravel another fireball, which again popped into directionless flecks of flame that sputtered out into the air. He took a few more rungs and then waited as the mage roared in anger and consumed the last of the fire from his torch for a massive fireball. It was obvious from his widened, enraged eyes, that the mage was having trouble controlling that much flame. Daen barely had to touch the string and the magic fell apart.

The large fireball exploded in the mage's hand with a concussive whoosh that drenched his robes in fire. He screamed and tumbled sideways, rolling along the stone floor with panic that seemed practiced, presumaly from lighting himself up before. Daen climbed the remaining rungs and pulled the rope ladder up after him. Pausing to duck quickly as the archer, whose head was now only smoking but with far less hair than before, loosed another arrow far to Daen's right. As the arrow whizzed out into the night, Daen pulled up the rest of the ladder and tossed it onto the stone roof beside him. Then he fell backwards onto the roof and panted momentarily before catching his breath. He could hear the moans of the swordsman as he awoke from unconsciousness, and the lessening screams from the mage as he managed to put out the flames that had consumed a good portion of his robes.

Daen smiled up at the starless, moonlit sky. Feeling not quite as defenseless as before. The feeling of success was somewhat dampened by the fact that it was freezing cold, which wasn't helped by the fact that he was now missing his shirt.




It really was very cold. Daen shivered as he sat up and turned back around to peek down at the stranded graverobbers. The archer had thrown his bow and was stalking around, looking aggravated. The mage was finally picking himself up off the ground. given a very sinister look by the tendrils of smoke rising up around him. And the Swordsman was sitting on his arse, rubbing his head and trying to figure out what had just happened. Daen shivered again, the cold settling into his bones. He'd never been one to pity the pitiless. Truth had always been his master, and the truth of it was that these men certainly did not deserve to live. They'd tried to rob him, and most definitely would have killed him had he not acted so quickly. And for what? The clothes off his back and perhaps a scrap of gold somewhere in the humungous mausoleum that had been Daen's place of rest for who knew how long? Well, at least they would have the time to find the latter. Although looking at the barren walls and plentiful cobwebs, he doubted they'd find anything.

He watched as the swordsman sat up and did a cursory inspection of his companions. He furrowed his brow at the archer, who was still stalking back and forth and spewing profanities, most of which were directed at Daen. The Mage sat dumbstruck, still trying to puzzle out why his magic had failed him so spectacularly. Then the swordsman pushed off the floor and reclaimed his dented iron blade from nearby. He walked over to the archer and placed a hand on the brooding man's shoulder. The archer stopped immediately, his adrenaline filtering out at the hint of companionship. When the swordsman spoke his words echoed off the high walls, making him sound ethereal.

"Bit more 'en we bargain'd for, 'ey boys?" The swordsman chuckled, but the archer didn't approve of his dark humor.
"Bit more eh? My fookin' hair's gone! Burnt off. Always tol'ya that fookin' mage'd be trouble!" the archer shook his fist at the still smoking mage, who shot him a dangerous look.
"Wa'nt my fault. That damn one eye'd freak was doin sumt'n crazy! Poppin' my fire like brine bubbles." He gestured back at the archer. "Never hit one of you boys before 'ave I?" The mage turned and spat blood onto the dark stone floor. "Nah, sumt'n odd with that'un. I mean, this place is spose'd be forbidden. What was he even doin way out 'ere?"
"Probly the same thing we're doin way out 'ere," the swordsman replied. "Probly has a family o' his own to look afta. Freezin' like the rest 'o us." The archer turned and spat gunky red spit onto the floor as well, but it wasn't blood, it was from whatever he was chewing.
"Spit that shite out Mulik, is Anne fine's out you's was chewin again she'll 'ave my head." The archer, Mulik, grunted and pulled the glob of whatever-it-was out of his mouth and threw it into the darkness.

Suddenly Daen felt something he'd not felt in a very long time. A pang of doubt. He couldn't recall the last time he'd misjudged an individual. That had been a quality that Saevus had so highly admired in him, his ability to see the truth in others. So how had he not known? He could only think that the lack of his lord was the cause. He'd been so in-tuned with Saevus that often times he didn't need to look to see. He furrowed his brow and looked over at the rope ladder that he'd pulled up. Then he looked back down at the graverobbers. He stood up and didnt have to look long before he found a bit of rubble nearby. He slowly inched the ladder back down into the moon door about a third of the way, then placed the cut stone rubble between two of the rungs that were laying flat on the stone roof. The men, who were bickering about something now, didn't seem to notice until Daen whistled to get their attention. At once, all three of them wheeled to look up at the moon door. The furious archer Mulik immediately went to grab an arrow from his quiver, screaming obscenities at Daen, but the Swordsman stopped him. He leaned over and whispered something that Daen didn't hear in Mulik's ear. Mulik then slid the arrow back into his quiver and lowered his bow.

"Look," Daen said, "I don't usually do this, especially to men who have threatened me. But here's your out. I intend to take one of your horses. And since you must've had a way to get out here, I also intend to take your boat. But I won't leave you to die down there." Daen stood and gestured to the precariously balanced ladder. "Of course that's assuming you can get yourselves out. Excuse my caution, but setting fire to people tends to make them slightly vengeful. Good luck lads." Daen turned to leave when he heard the swordsman call out. He turned to look back down at the men.
"Who are ya', one eye? Not many that can take down three arm'd men with only a shirt."
Daen smirked, trying not to seem as flabbergasted as the swordsman was by the fact that he had managed that.
"I'm Daen. The truthseeker. And if you'd excuse me, It's freezing out and i'd really like to get somewhere warmer."

As daen climbed down a pile of rubble from the stone roof, he heard the swordsman's dry laughter. He barely made out the words from this far.
"Warm? Ain't nowhere warm."

Luckily enough, he found a coat in the saddlebag of the speckled horse he chose to take. It didn't keep out the entirety of the bone-deep chill, but it was leagues better than being shirtless, so he couldn't complain. He rode out of the thicket of snow-laden trees that surrounded the mausoleum and rode down to the beach. The sea was covered in a thick white fog. But as Daen rode closer, he noticed that it wasn't a fog. Horse tracks stretched across a frozen strait of ocean, imprinted into the snow that laid atop the ice. Daen could remember when he'd come here to die, so long ago. It had been so hot he'd left most his clothing on the far shore before taking the crossing in his dinghy. Now it was as if ice had pumped through the veins of Ansus and frozen the skin of the world. Fog puffed after Daen's every breath and he begun his long trek across the frozen sea.
The words of the swordsman haunted him as he rode into what became a blizzard.

Warm? Ain't nowhere warm.

It was cold.

Jacaerys the Godseer could still distinctly remember the warmth of the flames as he stepped into them. He had been comforted by the familiar heat, had taken it as a sign that he was doing the right thing. Through the fire, the God of Purity would welcome Jacaerys into his unending halls. Or perhaps his spirit would remain bound to the mortal plane, and he would continue to guard this place from evils. But it had been warm, and now it was cold.

As he stood gingerly and acquired his bearings, the Godseer did not feel particularly like some sort of guardian spirit. He reasoned, then, that he must still be alive. But that, of course, could not be the end of it. Something felt deeply wrong somewhere within him, but Jacaerys could not exactly say what.

He walked a slow circle around the top of the tower, taking in the small discrepancies between his current setting and the memory that seemed moments ago. The tower's parapets, for instance, once all jagged edges of oily stone, were now worn and crusted with snow. And to think of snow, had the skies not been utterly clear? Now they were dark and overcast, and a harsh wind blew flurries across Jacaerys' back.

But neither of these observations lifted the feeling that he was not noticing something vitally and utterly important. Aha! he thought, finally noticing the lack of the accustomed weight of Lightwarden, his gift from the gods, in hand. Jacaerys turned and retraced the half-circle he had carved in the crusting of snow, until he stood back where he had first... reappeared? There, half-buried in a mound of white, the mace glowed faintly. As the Godseer took it back into his hand he was pleased to watch it flare truly into life, and he was no longer cold.

But wait. He was closer to the realization that was eluding him, Jacaerys knew that, but it still weighed heavily on his mind. Something was wrong. Tossing his weapon deftly to his off-hand, the Godseer plucked off one glove and reached down to touch the snow he had pulled Lightwarden from. It was warm, and as Jacaerys drew his hand back in confusion, it came to him that the drifts did not look very much like snow at all.

Ashes. But that could only mean one thing, one utterly unthinkable thing. Half-frenzied, Jacaerys ran about the top of the tower, occasionally shoving his hand deep into the snow-drifts. Falling from the sky was certainly regular snow, and he soon came to realize that a thin layer of it sat atop the rest of the ash -- but whenever he reached down, there was heat once more, and the handfuls he pulled out had the smell of flame to them.

Impossible. The Godseer had performed the rituals himself, with the aid of the dozen remaining acolytes he had had on hand, and fed the corpses of the slain necromancers to the white-hot fire. Such a blaze should rightfully have burned for hundreds, thousands of centuries. At least. And if this flame was out . . .

Such things were not even to be thought of. Jacaerys entertained, for a moment, the thought of prostrating himself on the ashes and praying fervently for guidance in such things. But instead he wiped the ash from his hands, and told himself that he did not fear that no answer would come. He had not been truly bothered by the cold, but now the Godseer shivered.

His stomach growled, suddenly, an abrupt reminder that he had perhaps spent far too long on this cold mountaintop. If the maps still held true, there was a small village northwest down one of the mountain valleys, into one of the very rare forests on this side of the Great Deserts. With any luck it had not also shriveled out of existence. He held his weapon forward as though it were a torch, and began to descend from the tower.

Strange things had been happening of late. The world grew colder despite the season, and at first, he assumed an early stream of eastern winds making their way west, but as things began getting colder and colder, he didn't think himself right. If anything, the northern winds should have overpowered the eastern, bringing in the heat from the deserts to warm their climate, not make it cold. And yet, there he sat, within his carriage, covered in a cloak tipped fur, shivering. He heard talk of the end of the world coming by the fervent religious few who took their religious matters far beyond the ordinary. That didn't mean they weren't religious, his people were extremely religious, yet they were sensible as well. Perhaps he was being sent out because he didn't quite share their view in religion. Oh, he definitely believed in the gods, but the tales of the many Heroes of old, that many took to be more than legend and myth, he couldn't believe. There was no sufficient proof for their existence.

He tried arguing this point with a colleague of his in the High College, but no good deed goes unpunished. If what he was doing could be considered a good deed at all. He remembered walking the marble halls of the college, its high ceiling interspersed with chandeliers of crystal and diamonds, its walls were nutmeg brown and high, tall windows that showed a view of the luscious gardens were set into them.

The historian recalled walking through the halls, his shoes snapping against the marble floor with every determined stride to show his papers. As a historian, he was allowed some strange views, and to pursue such things that could be classified as blasphemous, but he did it all sincerely out of enlightenment. His thirst for knowledge was strong, and it was that thirst that got him into trouble. He was to make a presentation on the subject of the Seven Vows philosophy, which in essence were a set of vows to live in peaceful coexistence with the world while using one's strength to protect those who could not protect themselves. He knew a modified version of the philosophy were used as a basis when the Federation was being founded. Curious about them, he searched the origins of the Vows and subsequently came to learn about Luther and the legend behind him.

The paper he took to his colleague was about that particular hero and his legend; years of research went into it, nearly a decade of traveling through Ivorine temple to Ivorine temple where he found the most volume of Luther's legend, and although he found a few documents, most of the information he had received was from word of mouth. In his papers, he wrote the legend of Luther was perhaps only a fictional tale to tell of the conception of the unique fighting style used by the ironically peaceful Ivorine monks. His colleague, although he agreed the paper was well written, took it to the deans of the college, who sent him off to the ruins of the Hirrlow kingdom to further study the legend.

And there he was now. It was on his journey west that the world slowly began to feel more and more queer. Two suns were visible in the sky, but they did little and less to overpower the cold, as if their own warmth drew back from the world. Two disks in the sky as useful in their warmth as nipples on men. He cursed silently and turned his head from the window in the carriage.

Several hours later, the carriage came to halt, and the historian stepped out into the cold, frigid air. To the east he saw the crags of the Giant's Maw Valley, and in front of him -- southward from what he could tell by the suns' descent -- he saw the ruins of the great Hirrlow kingdom. Pillars dotted the ground, half buried in mounds and burrows. Ancient stone structures were all but destroyed around, and the remnants of a great wall rose in the horizon. But the capital of the forgotten kingdom wasn't what he came for. He heard of a Grand Temple that rested here, forgotten to all save the monks, and it was to his right that he saw the anomaly in the ruined land.

Instead of a ruined temple, there stood a great temple, albeit empty, with grounds that were freshly cut, and stone walkways that looked to be meticulously tended to. What he and his hired help looked at was a cared for garden that outmatched the High College, with wooden canopies and fountains that all led to a main building that was both large and beautiful in a humble sort of way.

"Strange place, this," a mercenary hired by the college said, looking around, his hand resting easily on his pommel. The historian agreed, and walked forward into monastery and when he called out, no one answered. He called again, but again, no answer came. Deciding that whoever took care of the place was inside, he went into the building to find that unlike the garden, its insides were in ruin. As if the person who worked on the garden was too lazy, or too respectful of the place to care clean the inside of it.

The floor was made of hard stone that cracked and grew with weeds, and led to a great onyx and gold brazier upon a dais that was strangely without flame. An uneasy feeling came across the historian, but curiosity was stronger than his caution -- or his sense of self preservation for that matter -- and stepped up to the dais to see instead of embers, ashes. He put his hand inside and found the ashes cold. "Strange," he whispered to himself and stepped from the dais.

"I don't like the feeling of this place," the mercenary said, and the historian noticed he had a sudden rigid look about him, a honed sense of instinct from years on the road that told him something was amiss. "We should leave historian."

The historian looked around trying to see if there were any passages that led away from the dais. There. "Not yet," he said and approached what he appeared to be a set of descending stairs. "I think I'd like to study this ancient place a bit more."

"Not my place to say, but I wouldn't be going down there if I were you. I'll follow, but I bloody well won't like it."

"You have a sword, good friend. What use is it if you won't use it. Bring out the torch would you and handed it here." The historian took the torch and descended the stairs. It seemed to take ages, spiraling downward for long minutes, until such a point the historian thought it would go on forever. Then they reached the bottom and unlike what he had anticipated -- a dark, cold room filled with cobwebs and a suffocating atmosphere -- what he was met with was instead, a lush room with bright candles on either side with a high ceiling that had it's own candles to light the room. A miniature version of the garden above was inside and somehow the grass and flowers were kept alive without sunlight, and a feint glow emanated from them. In the center of the garden was a large stone tomb upon a white marble dais that gave the place a serene, but incredibly beautiful feel.

He approached the stone structure and found a square stone slab about a meter before the dais with an ancient language chiseled into the rock. He recognized it as Old Hymuris and knelt down before it so he could see the words clearer and read it aloud:



The historian stayed in place without moving for a long moment. A silence hung in the air as he slowly came to realize that the legends might have actually been true. And excitement filled him. He had discovered proof that the most ancient hero, save for Ansur, did in fact exist and the paper he would publish would bring him such fame that he would be talked about for eons! He stood, elated, and took in a deep breath to speak of the wonder he had just discovered to his mercenary guard when a deafening thunder-like crack echoed around the room with such force it nearly drove him to his knees.

"Arete's tits! Get back, old man," the mercenary shouted as he moved forward and shoved the historian behind him. He fell onto the floor, face down, hitting his head on something hard. Although a little woozy, he distinctly heard a sword being unsheathed and the grunt of the mercenary. He then heard a very dull thud as a body fell to the ground.



Luther looked down at the strange man that had attacked him, on the floor and unconscious. It had been by instinct that Luther felled him, but he payed no mind to the man. His eyes were wide with shock as he took in deep breaths.

He was back.

Why? Who brought him back? A dark sorcerer perhaps? No, it couldn't be, his flesh was too whole, and he felt revitalized. He looked down at his body, and instead of seeing dozens upon dozens of bleeding wounds, he found skin that was complete and unblemished save for his tattoos. He looked ahead and found another man beginning to sit up, rubbing his head in a sort of garden, but they weren't outside. He looked around and realized he was in some sort of hall lit with strange glass that had fire burning within them.

He descended from the dais, confused and walked up to the man and crouched in front of him. The man seemed to look as amazed and confused as he did. "Y-you're alive," he stammered.

Luther noticed he wore strange clothes, and had a stranger hair style. And from the way he looked, he could see he had Nirlos blood in him. "Who are you?" Luther asked not unkindly.

The man blinked. "I can't believe it," he said rising to his feet. Luther followed suit. "I can't believe it! How? You're alive!"

"You have a fondness of repeating yourself, don't you?" Luther said, raising an eyebrow over the sash that covered his face.

"I-I'm sorry, it's just. I didn't... I wasn't expecting you to come to life."

"I can assure you that was the last thing I expected as well. Sadly, Fate has a way of bending the rules to amuse herself. Now, mind telling me who you are?"

"I can't believe it. Luther alive right in front of me. This has to be some sort of sorcery. It has to be! You can't be real, can you? Faerthus guide us, imagine the renown I will get when I walk back the College with you in Tow! Oh, but the scandal! How will they believe me? You hardly look like you do in the drawings, and the monks! I must --"

Luther placed a hand on the man's shoulder, calming him and cutting him short. "You are a strange man," he said with a smile. "The man who attacked me was your companion?"

"Him? Oh, he was my guard."

"No harm, then. I would have been just as shocked if I saw a dead man rise from the ground. A good guard. Now, if you will excuse me, strange man, I must meditate on how, and more importantly, why I am back."

"Of-of course. By all means."

Luther regarded the strange man a moment more before walking back to the dais and sat next to the unconscious guard and cleared his mind, the world around him going dark once more. He breathed in and out in slow measured breathes, and channeled into his Heavenly Magic by which he could feel the essence of life and nature around him. He sought answers and thought of why he would be brought back. Perhaps a powerful man resurrected him from his slumber, or perhaps it was the doing of the gods who disturbed his sleep. If it was, he would need to confirm with Ivorine. Although he was a Grand Monk he was never as close with the god as he could have been, he had a fierce independence about him and relying upon a god was somehow against that. But he tried now, if only for answers to a strange riddle, but when he did, he felt nothing.

Never before had he felt nothing, there was always a presence. Yet, that nothing was as loud as a scream, and it felt horribly, horribly wrong. Luther opened his eyes. The man sat patiently, albeit with an eager look on his face, before him. The mercenary began to stir and Luther stood. Curious, he asked. "How long was I dead, strange man?"

"Fifty thousand years."

The flowing expanse of the Plains of Dust shimmered softly beneath the sun’s rays, a sea of white sand sweeping across the northern wasteland, under the watchful eye of a lightly clouded blanket of sky, which seemed to merge with the blazing desert below.

Standing sentinel amidst rocky mountains and the searing slopes of golden sand dunes, stood an obelisk of black stone and slanted bronze roofs, bursting out of the barren landscape and lording over all which lay below. The Yimosha. “Vault of Terrors” in Vasihelian; a language as dead and desolate as the Plains of Dust themselves. Time had long since forgotten this slither of Ansus, sleeping silently at the world’s ceiling, but the Yimosha continued to slumber amidst the ocean of sand and rock, fading into the realm of mythology over the countless centuries since its creation.

Deep within the Yimosha, tucked away from the blazing heat of the suns above, and sealed within a cold stone room, the once-dead body of the Night Thirster stirred quietly amidst the darkness.

Jaralia had never maintained a particularly strong posture, but as she lifted her head up off of the floor of her cell, she suddenly became very much aware of the immense strain her overly-rotund body placed on her spine.

“Urgh...I think I’ll be taking the litter today.” the former queen muttered through clenched teeth, placing one plump hand gently on her back as she heaved herself up into a sitting position. Her stomach spilt out in front of her, plopping down in her lap, as she squinted in an attempt to try and make out the finer details of her darkened surroundings.

It was then that she remembered.

She had died.

They’d pulled her away from her experiments, and cast her down the side of her own pyramid. She’d burst like a grape on the rocky slopes, and become a dark stain on the side of her palace.

Jaralia shot up suddenly, the pain in her back instantly forgotten, her mouth agape with shock.

Where in Vasihelios am I?!

She slowly started to run her hands over she obese frame, feeling the gentle warmth of her own soft skin. She was alive, and this was very much real; that atleast was certain.

“This is an...interesting turn of events.” Jaralia mused aloud, a twisted grin sweeping across her painted lips.

She began to pad cautiously through the darkness, her bare feet slapping against the smooth stone floor.

Ressurection. That term began to ring through her head as she explored the cavernous halls of the Yimosha, pacing quietly through the darkness with only her thoughts for company. Did the rabble really think they could bring death to the Queen of Vasihelios? What was it that the usurpers had called her? The Night Thirster. Yes, that seemed fitting. I am Conquest made flesh. This realm of sand and dust could not placate me, so I have returned to quench my thirst on the flesh of the great green beyond.

Zhan sat, in his glade in the forest, on his plain blanket, beside a pot of tea.
It had been centuries since the last hero sought him out, petitioning him for advice. Zhan had occupied the years with his meditations, his practice and the company of the spirits, and he was at peace in this world.
But, as it often does, destiny got in the way of serenity.

Zhan woke.

The last thing he could remember was talking to Haba over tea. Certainly he did not remember traveling far from his glade, and especially not to anywhere where there could be... buildings?
All around him were walls, and above him ceilings. Planes of cracked and broken plaster covered stone and mortar, overgrown with moss and lichens.
He hadn't been in his bedroom in a very, very long time.

He knew that it had been millennia since his life here, and even he couldn't help but be surprised at the fact that he had returned. He had, after all, died. Yet, even with the knowledge of this great passage of time, it was a little sad to see that the great empire that he had forged had crumbled. Or perhaps it was only his bedroom that was in such a state of disrepair. Thinking now, he realised that he hadn't actually gotten up from the wooden floor where once stood his bed.

Slowly standing, he walked to the once-familiar door and stepped outside. Before him were the ruined remains of the palace of the once great city, now abandoned and destroyed.

Over the course of the next day he walked around the dead city, trying to find out if anything remained from his time as a mortal man. Nothing did.

He was sad that what was once so great had fallen so far, but through the course of the day realised that there was little use in mourning a city that died millennia ago. He began walking south, in the hopes of finding a warm, dry place to sit, sleep and figure out why he had returned to the material world once more after such a long, long time away.

Markiel, Nature's Arbiter

Mark always knew one day he’d fall. Never like this though. Once a hunter from a tiny village in the frigid north now a guardian of Nature. Soon to be ashes. He kept his promise. He gave his very life for nature to save it from the greed of humanity. How better to do so than through pure selflessness. Boreas landed next to the weak hero and nuzzled up against him. Memories of the once small fledgling filled his mind as the breathed the ashes gagging and coughing before filling their lungs with new fresh air.

Before them stretched the infinity of the universe. They were so small so insignificant to it. All of it faded away and they now stood in a garden with a small temple at its center. A perfect replica of “The old god’s”. Mark entered to find an idol like the one he knew, but made of all things even those beyond his human comprehension. It gleamed and shined with energy. A perfect combination of all things in balance. Mark fell before the idol stricken with awe. After a moment he felt as though a hand was against his cheek raising him to look at the idol.

“My arbiter. You have brought balance like there has never been before. You’re reward is here in my garden. Rest and be at one with all there is. Be one with me.” The god called.

There was peace and power, joyful noise and silence, All and nothing. Mark sat there, Boreas besides him, in meditation on the new state of existence. This would not last forever though. Mark was made to run and soar. He took to the new wild world he belonged to and began his great new adventure. It was paradise like none other. He met with the ancients who once served the god and spent his time on a glorious hunt. If not for the harmony in the place Mark would have grown tired. He always found success on his hunts, and the risks were gone. When there were no more challenges what was he but like all the rest.

He had no sense of how time was here and in Ansus, but there came a time when he began to feel his connection the unity fade and fluctuate. The garden was wilting and an unholy chill drifted through his being. He felt empty like his core has been removed and he was now hollow. He sought “The old god” for guidance, but could not find the temple. The whole realm was falling into disarray. Where there once was harmony was only chaos. Lost and terrified like a child seeking their mother he collapsed unable to comprehend what had come to pass. He no longer heard “The old god’s” voice. He was alone. There was only a fading vision of the idol blown apart into billions of pieces. Pain filled him an agony like flames were consuming him. He gasped for breath before feeling his lungs fill with dust.

It was cold, dark, and silent. This was what Mark felt death would be. There was a sound though. a faint near silent wind. He looked down feeling warm air brush by his chest. His own breath. So long had he been without such simple things he had forgotten the sound. Fumbling in the darkness he reached out feeling the feathers of his companion. Mark threw his arms around the bird clinging to the one thing he still knew he could trust.

He staggered and stood. With a moment of focus a little flame hovered nearby just enough to see. They stood in the center of a room made of black stones that looked like they had once been water. In the center of the room was a blade black as night and shining like the stars. Mark pulled it from the earth and felt energies filling him. That void was filling. In some why his connection to nature still existed.

Mark coughed out a laugh as he say the preserved bones and melted crown of Lord Ghorion. He was at his own grave. At least he knew now his plan worked. He just didn’t know why he was here.

Had he returned after the fire stopped? Had his god simply returned him to carry on? Mark tried to pray and find answers, but nothing came to him. His only option was to find out in person. He walked the long corridors of the palace all held by the lava rocks. He promised Ghorion a memorial and here it was forever preserved for none to see. Seeing the raw power of what caused his undoing amazed him galvanizing his faith. A god capable of this could not fall.

Mark emerged into a bright new day, at least it was bright compared to the volcanic cave. The clouds were gathered making the sky a cold gray. Without the sun clear in the sky it must have been chilly, but Mark’s layered armor kept heat well. Small fields surrounded the area; all were tended by villagers in a garb similar to what Mark wore, but something was off. Not a single face was familiar. Boreas took to the skies to scout the area at Mark’s request while the arbiter approached one of the farmers. He walked up to a young man asking for a moment of his time.

“You, child.” Mark said his voice calm, but still assertive.

The man looked up confused. He was probably in his late twenties already a thick beard on his face hardly a child to most. He didn’t dare to comment back when he looked up at the imposing warrior who called for him.

“Why are my kin not in the fields? What keeps them?” Mark asked a fearful possibility creeping into his mind.

“Sir, I know not who you are. Did I see you come out of the mountain? Actually I’m not sure we should talk.” The farmer shrunk away some as he spoke

“Who I am? Bah. Must be new to these lands. I’m certain Orea will sort you out soon enough. I am Mark.” The hunter said chuckled at the man's ignorance

“Oh like the folk hero.” The man laughed a bit, “My son always loves those stories.”

“I’d hardly call myself a folk hero. Just doing what needs to be done.” Mark said

“Not you. THE Markiel Harrir. The one from all those centuries ago.” The man chuckled despite Mark’s serious tone

In an instant Mark grabbed the man’s collar and glared into his eyes.

“Did you say centuries? Tell me!” Mark growled

The man panicked and squirmed away calling for help. The other farmers ran too all to a small village that wasn’t there before. A few men came charging out of it with maces and swords ready. The militia rushed to the area surrounding Mark.

“Now that was unnecessary.” Their leader said, “Just come along with us and everything should be easy to sort out.”

“Has the world gone mad in my absence? Have centuries finally caught up to my god’s work?” The old hunter muttered

“Excuse me?” A militia asked baffled.

“Tell me one thing. How long ago was this palace razed?” Mark asked weakly his soul aching.

The men conversed throwing numbers around before a consensus of forty was agreed.

“Forty. Forty thousand.” The militia captain replied.

Mark looked the mountain that had built up over the castle and something snapped. He held his head trying to think. Had so long really passed? It could never be true. But then again with his god he had done the impossible before.

“I need to see the elder.” Mark demanded.

“We can do that after we’ve sorted out you terrifying our people.” A militiaman said grabbing Mark’s arm.

Mark growled throwing him aside. Another tried to bash him with a mace but the hunter’s reflexes were too fast. He grabbed the weapon and took out the man’s legs sweeping the mace at his kneecaps. All who still stood prepared to rush him. Boreas swooped down landing beside his partner the wind from his wings staggering the men long enough for Mark to draw Omega from its sheath on his back. The blade sang as it was drawn a soul freezing sound that could break the will of common folk. The guardsmen stood back in fear and awe.

“Tell the elder Markiel Harrir needs to speak with them.” He growled.

He was escorted through the town and all gather confused by the stranger. At first some jeered at him for harassing the farmer, apparently named Tomp. They were quickly silenced by the guards who hushed them out of fear. Mark was brought to the center of town a stone had been etched with tales of the past. The obelisk towered above all holding many millennium of stories. By now the crowds were growing restless unsure of what was happening. The militia tried to keep them patient, but they wanted answers about the stranger. Mark decided to indulge them. He drew Omega and all fell silent.

“You ask who I am. Have you forgot “The old god”? Have you forgotten the arbiter that made this land free? Markiel Harrir has returned.” He shouted raising the sword high for the masses to see.

The sun sat low on the horizon by the time that Jacaerys found his way onto a weather-beaten switchback trail that led down into the valley. He had stumbled his way down the mountain for what must have been at least an hour before that, carefully picking his way over cliffs and around great walls of soldier pines. At one point, he had tripped over a loose root and rolled a good hundred feet down the mountain. When at last the Godseer came to a stop at the mouth of an abandoned mine, he had pressed his hands against a dozen scrapes and at least one broken rib and given a silent prayer of gratitude that he still had the ability to heal.

For a time he had considered searching the mine itself for people, but the rotted logs that stood in support of the shaft every dozen steps seemed dozens of years old, at least. All the same he had trudged onward for a time, until not three hundred feet down he had found himself met with an impassable cave-in. So instead he had pulled out Lightwarden, though more for use as a torch than anything, and begun what he presumed would be a long trek to a potentially-abandoned village.

Perhaps another hour later, Jacaerys rounded a ridge and was able to spot a faint glow of chimney-smoke far off in the valley. Exuberant, he had taken the rest of the journey at a jog, even as the sun finally disappeared over the horizon. All the same, the first hazy light of dawn had broken by the time he managed to reach the end of the trail.

To describe the settlement as a "village" was perhaps being a bit too far to its occupants -- indeed, even "hamlet" was quite the stretch. Some few people were already out splitting firewood and drawing water from a well, but they turned to look with curiosity at the white-eyed man with the glowing mace. He recognized none, though his group had passed through the village... well, it must have only been a short time ago. Jacaerys stowed his weapon in the loop at his belt and approached the nearest man.

"You there!" he called genially, and was at least happy to see that they spoke the same language as he, "do you know where I might find the man Jace? A woodcutter here. My party passed through some nights past."

The man mulled on that for a few moments. "Sarah th'inkeep's wife had a grandad name of Jace, and his father before that. Might be more 'fore him. All long dead as 'f a few nights ago. And none've gone through here for months, 'n fewer come down that path." He pointed down to the trail leading into the mountains.

The Godseer took the information in stride, though he had no idea what it meant. "What of a priest named Jorehn? He came with my party, and remained here to prepare a nightfire whilst I journeyed into the mountains."

Another man chipped in from the well, stooping to place his bucket on the rough dirt road. "I know old Alandir kept a little flame going in the crypts. Said 't was ages old. Last I heard, he forgot to feed it and it went out." He pointed down to where a carved slab of a door led into the earth. "Thas a mighty fine weapon you got there, friend. Take care you keep it to yourself."

Inside the crypts, Jacaerys found himself the subject of an irritable old man, who raised a carved cane angrily and demanded to know who thought they would come marching into his chambers and if it was you again, Sarah, your boy's the same, let him rest and gain his strength. A glance at the eyes and the mace, however, and the man instead cowered on the opposite side of the small room into which the cellar door opened. "I tried t'keep that flame alive, I did, it died on its own, even ten-years-dead Olain couldn't have kept it better-fed, it just seemed to shrivel up and die! Please, Oraum, I am your humble servant, smite me not!"

Jacaerys had been blessed in many ways, but perhaps not in patience. "I am no god, old man. Do you know of the priest Jorehn? What's happened to this town in the last few days?"

At that, something seemed finally to click in the old man's head. "Perhaps, perhaps . . . Oh, indeed, as Olain himself saw in the withering flames. He waited for you, milord, but I can't say I've had the same patience." With no other explanation the man who must be Alandir led Jacaerys through a door and down a long, sloping passage. To each side lay stone coffins, recessed into the walls. And at the end of it was another chamber -- inside of this one, a few beds of wood and straw, a hearth of naught but ashes and an engraving set into the wall above it.

"The annals say that Jorehn built it in the town center, but my forebears had the good sense to move it down near to th'sick. Only it's been shriveling this last decade or two, and nothing old Olain nor I could do to stop it. Went out only a few nights past, I fear, and I thought you were Oraum himself come to smite me down for my impertinence." The man gave the Godseer a look that said that he was still not entirely sure that he wasn't.

"Before you do anything, milord, please take a look at young Josep here, Sarah's boy. A snake had a few bites in him these last few days, and I fear he'll die before he fights that venom off. It's enough to kill a grown man, I should know, my uncle died from one of those damned adders when I was but a boy." And indeed, a small child lay drawn and shivering on one of the cots.

Jacaerys crossed the length of the room in a few quick steps, and lay his hand on the boy's forehead. He felt a feverish warmth there, but kept his palms pressed firmly against the child's visage. In a few moments, he felt the heat replaced with a warmth of another kind entirely, and the boy sighed contentedly in his sleep.

"Aye, milord, there are some of us, living in the shadow of that Tower as we do, who still remember the tales of the old days. We've a lichyard where the first plague victims are buried for the last fifteen centuries, and your friend Jorehn was given to the fire as he dictated." At that moment, Jacaerys determined that he need not look at the engraving upon the hearth to know what -- or who -- it depicted.

"So if you've come back, Godseer, a mortal man again among us, tell me this -- why are the fires going out?"

"What so funny?" A Figure said from the darkness... "Nothing much dear, but have you wondered how far the two of us have come? Ever since you came to me all bloodied and worn on that fateful day?" The Female Figure asked as she looked at the other, before the other nodded in agreeance "Yes, it has been a long time now hasn't it? I wonder how long will I continue under your command, no offense, but that looks like it is going to be an eternity until something separates us. Which is good isn't it?" The figure said silently pondering the situation of eternal servitude with death.

"Yes, of course dear, life after death is always confusing but you will be surprised at the many situations that are thrown at you. You never know when one just might pick you up." She said passively, her estimate on his time serving under her if it not been tampered by a third party, would've last for a long time. Curiously asking the Female "Death, I was wondering if you aren't a god then what are you?" He asked the question like so many times before with the same answer given by her. "Again my darling, I am neither an almighty god who should be dead by now nor a demon capable of taking the souls of all who has died. If anything, I am at best nothing while at the same time I am everything which that is living for I place a clock over them that will ring once their end is coming. But my clocks only measure their original lifespans, it can be evaded for example, by the undead liches live through a phylactery or by the alchemists using the universal panacea, even psychics can leave their minds in objects far more durable than their flesh and live on as artifacts." Death simply said to her companion giving him an example of ways of cheating the system and she could go on, but simply did not wish to.

Sighing at Death, the Spearsman looked at himself before he noticed that he was glowing "Oh, what is this dearie? I guess that someone is brining you back... Hmm that was honestly quicker than expected Death said in surprise as she rosed from her seat in shadows as she saw Eamon starting to fade in and out of the darkness. "Ugh, Eamon I expect you to just don't die too quickly and enjoy it while it lasts, okay dearie?" Death sighed as she watched her guardian disappeared from the land of the dead and into the world of the living. Looking around she grabbed an hourglass before she flipped it, boredly watching the sand drain...

---

"Ugh, god damn it... Where am I? Eamon said out loud as he covered his eyes for he harsh rays of light that bounced off his light skin. Looking around him he saw his two spears, clearly impaled into the ground with a dark cloth tied to it... "Well that's my departing gift, you left it behind" Death said next to Eamon, appearing from nowhere as the desert wind blew grains of sand against his exposed arms while on the other hand the sand simply blew through her before she disappeared once more as quickly as she came.

He sighed as he was placed in a desert, partially must of been a joke from Death to see that he wouldn't die before he got started. So he was in a desert then, Eamon said to himself again as he glance his surroundings and took the cloth and tied the cloth together before he made himself a hat which would cover his head from the sun. Raising his pointer finger and drawing into the air, drawing magic symbol he watched it circled around him for a few seconds before it lead the way. It was a simple spell which tracked the nearest source of water drinkable, sensing only larger bodies of water meaning that small puddles wouldn't trick the basic spell. In his other hand he drew another magic symbol and lifted it into the air, which guided him south out of the northern deserts, traveling down into Ansus more greener pastures wiping the sweat off his brows his adventure began.

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 ladies 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. But 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 ancient shrine, 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.”



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.



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!”

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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.

Thunder cracked overhead as rain poured over the battlefield below. It flooded over the trampled and pockmarked earth, steadily washing bloodstains into the brooks and streams. Its downpour sounded against the armor of fallen warriors like a snare, though the beating of war drums had ceased some hours ago. Torches burned weakly in the storm, but the inferno engulfing Castle Sturmkirk continued to blaze defiantly. This was the end of their cursed line, purged at last from the world with steel and fire. Like any tragedy, the final act ended in tears. There were none left to cry for the fallen wardens of the Stormlands, and so the world itself wept.

A man was left alone among the ruin. Though he moved, bled and drew breath, he was not alive. If the the once-noble blood of Sturmkirk was to be eradicated, he was to die as well. It was only that his moment had not yet come. On hand and knee he crawled through the wet muck of blood and earth, flaxen hair stained and stuck against his face. The man panted with exertion as he crawled, a mist of blood expelling from his nose and mouth with each labored breath. The dawn was rising, the day was won, and his end was near, and yet there was one final task at hand.

Clutching tightly to a sword of mirrored ebony, he painstakingly climbed a gentle slope that stood across the field where his allies and enemies alike had been slaughtered. The wooded foothills of the Stormlands had been his home as a child, and as an adult they would be his grave. Reached the subtle peak of a small hill, he pushed himself back up against a withered tree. Wrenching his eyes shut with agony, he clutched at the wound in his chest as blood poured forth out of his cracked armor. His skin was ash, veins burned black. Not yet, he thought, soon, but not yet.

His eyes slowly opened once more, eyes glassy as midwinter ice. There it was, shining like the sun. His ancestral home burned, and before long would be naught but ash and ghosts. This was the best he could accomplish; the sins of his fathers had been too great to be forgiven. Volkimir hoped only that the Sturmkirks could be forgotten. The task was done, his final gift to his ancestors complete. Volkimir closed his eyes for the last time, wishing to feel the warmth of the pyre on his face.

A great and pleasant light; he saw it even as he slipped from the world of the living. This was the final wonder that had evaded him for untold centuries. He had seen such things that no man would ever believe. The skies on fire at the ends of the earth. The sea and skies inverse in the greatest storm. At at the very end, he was gifted with the simple sight of dawn that had eluded him for so long. So many moments lost, as secret treasures cast out into the void of time. Volkimir thought no more on it.

Time to die.

Fiery fell the angels, as thunder rolled about their shoulders. They burned the fires of of life. And so he had flown, wings ablaze, and he had burned so very, very brightly.

Volkimir awoke to a cold and empty world. He was not sure where he was, only that this place was strange to him. It felt as though it should have been familiar, but had changed since he last beheld it. He blinked slowly, feeling his eyes adjust to the sight of a moonlit forest, a monochrome of night sky and snow-cloaked trees. He had not awoken from sleep; his vision was perfectly sharp and adjusted to the dark of night. His was not stiff of body, either, despite laying prone in the snow against what seemed to be the husk of an old, dead tree.

His right hand clenched, and he found in its grip something strangely familiar. It was damned cold to the touch, like a bone of winter. A sword, as black as a sliver of midnight, stuck in the snowy ground, positioned as though Volkimir had always held it there. His fingers coiled about the hilt, and at once he felt the demon's call. Vengeance, it whispered. There were not enough living souls in this world to satisfy its thirst for retribution. Volkimir stood, and held Elbus, the Bound Blade aloft. Its familiar weight harkened back to a time now lost.

But how far lost? How long had he slept here? Volkimir stalked through the stark and snowy wood, swift and silent as a dark memory. Naught stirred in the shadowed forest in the dead of night; no rodents scurried, no vermin crept. He found no birds aloft nor any tracks of greater beasts in the powder snow. What was this place that stood as an open mausoleum? Volkimir descended into a glen, and a small clearing emerged. Here, rock and gravel lay scattered about on beds of leaves, overcome by moss and worn down by ages. One of these monoliths caught the eye of the forgotten wanderer, and so he swept it clear of snow and detris. A single name was engraved deep into the stone; etched so that all the trials of time could not erase it.

Sturmkirk.

Volkimir had come home, even though he had never truly left.

Ki'ira finally arrived at the town she heard was besieged by the forces of the allied against her kingdoms. In the past decade or so she stopped most major conflicts in their tracks by decimating any army she found on the march. It wasn't once that she had interfered in the middle of an already in process battle, just to waste both sides until they retreated. It wasn't really a big surprise when a couple of kingdoms joined forces to deal with the 'Natural disaster' that she was. Sure enough now they drew her out by attacking a town, she knew it was a trap, but still came. She had swore to herself that she will fight war until the concept was no longer present. She tried, tried really hard, but no matter how many times she stopped a war in it's track, they always tried again and thus she found herself in this situation, where most rulers considered her a danger.

“Calamity, by the right of the coalition forces, we demand your surrender!” One of the officers shouted to her. Initially when she began to appear most people underestimated her, now it was clear that was no longer the case. All the present soldiers had completely serious and ready to die fighting faces.” If you do, your death shall be a painless one!” He finished his speech, causing Ki'ira's ears to twitch and her tail to wave around. Her eyes were focused on the man and a huge grin appeared on her face. A spark flew from her hair, blown by the wind.” A mare mortal man dares to order a Daughter of Vinsha?” She asked with sarcastic voice as flames began swirling around her. A barrier of fire around herself to serve to protect and attack, her hair, arms, fox ears and tail were already also covered in fire, giving her that calamity look, the one that she was rumored to have. Suddenly swinging her sword, a huge wave of fire flew and clashed into some of the soldiers.” I MAY DIE TODAY, BUT I WILL TAKE YOU ALL WITH ME AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” She shouted with a laugh and charged into the enemy lines, her magic bursting into multiple directions, burning people in it's path.” KILL HER!”

….............................................................................

The battle raged for more than a day, so many her enemies were. At the end of the day, as the sun was already starting to hide behind the horizon, she had finally fell even the last soldier. The area around the town was littered with bodies, the civilians were looking at her from afar. The one who saved them from the soldiers. Ki'ira was standing in place, unmoving for she had already no strength to move. She had lost too much blood and her body was pierced by so many arrows and swords, cut in so many places that she was already living her last moments. She looked slightly up to see the sunset...” It's beautiful... man... it was worth it to come to the outside of the forest after all... I've had so much fun in this journey...” She mumbled to herself as a small child from the town ran over to her with a cup of water. Ki'ira reached and patted the child's head. In that moment her heart finally stopped and all was swallowed by darkness.

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1815 years later
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Something was wrong... suddenly she was torn away from her final rest. Her eyes flung open as all she could see was darkness. It was all around her, she was bound in some kind of narrow space. In her confused state, Ki'ira began panicking, her magic erupting. Flames covered her body and began to intensify within the narrow space she was at, she could not breathe nor move. After a few moments, the magic finally did it's job and with a loud bang caused the thing around her to burst open as pieces of wood scattered in all directions. Her body fell on the cold stone floor, she was trembling, unable to think straight. What was this nightmare... why had she not stayed in her eternal rest...

Finally after unspecified amount of time, she began to calm down. Her breathing also starting to return to normal as she began to take more and more information from the surround as her senses returned. She blinked a few times and slowly rose from the ground into a sitting position. Her head was still a little bit hazy, but she starting to think on what was happening. She certainly died back then... and she wasn't there. So she somehow returned from the dead...” My head...” She muttered as a headache was still present. Only now she realized she was... naked. Whatever she was wearing, her flame burst from earlier must have turned it into ashes, not that she supposed it was anything more than rags... She realized this place was old... she must have been here for ages.... who knew exactly how long it was since she died. This appeared to be some kind of tomb, probably made for her actually as she was the only body here. Taking a few attempts she stood up and looked around once more, creating a small sphere of fire to illuminate the tomb. The entrance appeared to have caved in, but there was air current so there was opening somewhere. She tried to hear it and suddenly she realized... her fox ears were gone! The presents from her mother Vinsha were gone! Along with the rest of her equipment! Ki'ira once again started to panic as she began searching for them in haste. Among the remains of the coffin she was in, she found at least the ears, which she quickly put on. She felt the familiar sensation of them connecting to her body, as her hearing increased to monstrous levels. Now she could hear the flow of air around... With no difficulty she located the breach that led to the outside. It was a small opening in the rock wall, surely not big enough for her to fit through. She smirked, it was time to put her abilities to the test, if everything wasn't as it used to... this was going to be a very short life.

Ki'ira unleashed her magic, creating a sphere of fire between her hands. She gave it more and more power as the heat between her hands grew. The incredible powerful sphere of fire, threw warm orange fire across the tomb, all air began circling towards her as the fire created a point of low pressure and when she sensed it was at it's peak, she unleashed it at the area of the opening in the rocks. The heat was so great and the concentrated power so strong that the explosion and the heat quickly widen the breach. The rocks were red, but Ki'ira did not care. Her body had long since stopped being affect physically by heat and fire. Granted she still felt some pain, but she did not get burns. Quickly moving through the hole, she felt the heated stone with her skin. It was painful, but the desire to be outside was stronger. A few more seconds and she was finally outside. A cool breeze hit her the moment she stepped outside. It caused her to momentary shiver, but she wasn't really cold, despite being naked. She really was alive, but where the hell was she?! Looking around she saw no signs of civilization. Relying on her hearing she searched the area for a water source and luckily she heard some kind of stream, so she made her way there.

Pouncing almost like an animal through the forest, she finally reached the water and with a relieved sound began drinking. She was dead thirsty and hungry actually, but one thing at a time. After she finally did not feel like drinking anymore, she sat on the ground and took a deep breath. Now lied a second problem... she was naked and she couldn't walk around like this. Good that there was a lot of mud here. Using something she learned from a tribe of people who preferred to live alongside nature, she quickly began covering herself with mud. They taught her that mud was quite good to wear on your skin actually. It kept you warm, protected from insects and had surprisingly good effect on the skin's health!

It would come as a surprise to none that the consummate necromancer Dormeria had had much time to think upon the nature of death. Dormeria had lived by the teachings of Orthus for a little under half of her life, the creed that all things are temporary and must meet their end eventually chiefly among them, and that had shaped her actions for so long that she had stopped having to think about the will of her patron God before dispensing it. The relationship between Orthus and Dormeria had never been particularly close, but it had been the closest the Prince of the Void had ever gotten to a mortal. Lyr had been too hasty to seek the end, he had not valued the precious time given to him, and Sarynia sought to deny Orthus his rightful claim to the paltry souls of mortals with only her own soul as a bargaining tool. They had been tools, crafted to serve a divine purpose, but Dormeria had taken his lessons to heart and acted as an arbiter of his will, an avatar of his being.

Or so she had thought.

In the end, when the staff Ukenagasu burned the last of her inner flame, Dormeria had considered death on a more intimate level than she ever had before - it was rapidly approaching, and it would not be denied. "The shadow of the candle looms tall even as its light grows dim.", she had thought, considering the end of her life to bring her closer to the apex of her power. It had given her the strength to bind the Undying into Sarynia and force the demon's form to be tied to her own forevermore. The last sight she had seen was the look of betrayal on her companion's face as she realised the gravity of what had just happened to her. She had felt her lips curl upwards into a brief smile, accepting that her time was spent, before she had turned to ash.

For a time, the void had been her company. She had never known what to expect of the domain of Orthus, and when she arrived it was far more tolerable than she had imagined. Empty, but filled with the light of a thousand thousand stars, each burning down the path to their own demise and being reborn from the still-hot ashes they had left behind. It had been oddly poetic, that the grand cycle continued, and she had been content to be unravelled and woven together again in a new permutation for all of eternity. The time passed blissfully, without meaning, until the dying stars had stopped being reborn. Before she knew it, the comforting embrace of eternity had grown cold and distant, and eventually even Orthus himself had been extinguished as the void consumed itself.

It was oddly poetic that the Prince of the Void meet the end he so brought to the world.

Dormeria knew only that she was next, that her own cycle would crumble to ash and her immortal soul would succumb to the ravages of the mysterious force that had driven the void into its own recesses. She no longer felt the serenity of accepting her fate in the moment that she realised that the grand cycles had been destroyed - the serenity she had worked millenia to achieve was consumed in a single, terrifying instant and she begun to scream into the now-empty void.

But Fate had a different design for the Herald of Quietus.

She realised that she could hear her own screams. Her throat was hoarse, rendered raw by the intensity and duration. She did not remember how long she had been screaming for, but as she realised her voice stopped and she dared to open her eyes.

Dormeria was greeted by a veritable palace of dark, gray stone. Immense walls ensconced her by comparison tiny frame, elaborate carvings in the ceiling greeted her from far above. It took her a moment to realise that she was in a ceremonial necropolis - a tomb for the most venerated members of the Atronan dynasty if she remembered correctly, and she wondered both how she had ended up in their tomb and how it was still standing. She could not imagine exactly how much time had passed, but she knew that it was long enough that she did not belong in this world. Clambering to her feet, shakily, Dormeria looked around the ceremonial tomb for any signs of what had happened after her demise. That the structure was still standing was testament to the continued success of her divine mission - though she had known that she had succeeded on some level simply by being in Orthus' presence.

The carvings on the walls had surrendered to the passage of time, smoothed down and filed and broken, and she could not make out any meaningful information. She had expected vibrant colours from the royal tombs, but was surrounded only by dark, gray stone. At the other end of the room, deep within the shadows, a flame of unnatural intensity and colour burned. Dark purple in colour, and very faint, Dormeria regained her bearings slowly as she shambled across her needlessly vast resting place. She made a mental note to track down the architect's family, kill them, and have their reanimated corpses kill the architect. It seemed fitting in that one moment of frustration.

As she got closer, Dormeria realised that she recognised the sultry hues of the flame she was inching towards - she had never seen it from afar before because it had always been in her hands. Ukenagasu, Caller of the Dead, and in that moment her salvation. After ten minutes of slow walking, of growing accustomed to her mortal form once more, Dormeria's spindly fingers touched the smooth wood of her beloved staff for the first time in almost fifty thousand years and she felt herself immediately reinvigorated. Her innate magic would take weeks - perhaps months - to return to her body, but Ukenagasu had held onto a spark of what she had once had.

It would be enough to start with.

Raising the staff skyward, Dormeria brought it down onto the concrete with an immense cracking noise and the walls of her container peeled themselves apart, splintering into cracks and then into dust as they exploded outwards and Dormeria laid her eyes upon her beloved homeland once more.



"Dormeria's tits, what was that?!" Atroa shouted, darting upright out of his chair as he was woken by the sound of a thunderous crash somewhere in the distance. Strange things had been happening lately, that much was true, but nothing like that had happened in the massive cemetery since it had been unveiled when a fissure in the ground had opened up one day out of the blue. Many of the remnants of his order had flocked to the geological feature, eager to explore the history contained within, and had happened across an undisturbed fragment of the Imperial Catacombs of the Atronanian Empire. It had been the source of much excitement from those that had managed to complete the exodus from the Ivory Towers of Callixus to the decidedly more humble town of Riverside.

The dig had been underway for a number of months, and while very few of the epitaphs had survived the passage of time they had spent a copious amount of time researching the dusty fragments. They had not explored any of the royal complexes where the monarchy were supposedly entombed for both a lack of resources and as there was no visible entrance to any of the tombs. If he had to guess, Atroa imagined that the sudden ruckus had been created by one of the tombs' foundations failing and having the structure collapse. If it were safe, it would be the perfect time to explore the inner catacombs.

Atroa quickly grabbed what he could from the shack he had decided to rest in, ending up with a cloak and little else except the clothes on his back and he rushed from the flimsy wooden structure and set out into the desolate wastes. As soon as he stepped outside he could see exactly what had happened - the second biggest of the necropolises had been completely and utterly pulverised. Shaking his head, partly in loss and partly in excitement, he clambered down the roughshod ladders into the canyon where the cemetery was and rushed towards the center.



Dormeria stood impassively, looking out towards the crack in the ground above her that signalled Ansus proper. She would leave in due time, but for now she was searching for the corpses buried below her with subtle waves of powerful magic - an army of the dead had heralded her depature from the mortal coil, and she thought it only fitting that it heralded her return. Suddenly, she felt something that she had almost forgotten - the life force of another living creature. She had not extended her senses far, so this single individual was coming towards her. Good. She needed information as to the state of the world.

It took the pair a little over five minutes to eventually meet, and upon laying his eyes upon the figure before him Atroa let out a gasp of such intensity that Dormeria was concerned for the old man's wellbeing.

"Tell me your name." Dormeria spoke, hoarsely and with great difficulty. The sound of words leaving her lips was almost impossible to describe after so long - hearing herself talk shocked her almost as much as it shocked the old man.

"I... M-My name is Atroa Posayre, Grand Exemplar of the Order of the Skyward Eye... Might I ask for your-" The old man began, before noticing the artefact that Dormeria was wielding and recoiling in shock. Thinking on it, the weapon looked fairly similar to what scraps of portraiture had been archived within the Ivory Towers of Callixus prior to their sacking.

An icy breeze swept in from the ocean, flowing through the leafless trees to break against the foothills of the mountains that dominated
the island further inland. There was a time, many thousands of years ago, when the isle was considered cursed by the presence of a dreadful warrior. Man was good at forgetting what they deemed unpleasant.

A small coastal village had sprung up where once the ground had been painted with corpses. Houses and buildings made mostly of stone reclaimed from ancient ruins and thatched roofs stood in little clusters with a well-worn track of dirt running between them, and along the beach fishing boats were pulled up away from the surf and weighed down with some of the same stone to stop them from sliding into the ocean whilst untended.

A simple existence, isolated from the goings on of the continent to the north. They did trade, yes, but mostly with villages further along the coast and other nearby islands. For the most part they were complacent in this life, sure the occasional youth would sail off on his own or join in with a party of raiders, but otherwise nothing ever happened on the island, and most folk were sure nothing ever would.

Of course, those were adults. For a child, even the mundane forests an hours walk inland were a source of adventure and excitement. So it was that a band of village children had worked their way into the woods with all the daring of youth, and even now urged each other to go farther yet than ever before. Four in all, these boys had the dark hair and sun-tanned skin of their forefathers, and most fisher folk. The ground had begun to slope up before them, the trees thinning, and as they crested a rise the face of a mountain flatted by time rose before them, at its base a loose scattering of stones that their untrained eyes did not recognize for the foundations of a once mighty keep, stripped bare by the islanders over millennia.

The sun reached its peak in the sky as they came abreast of the ruins, silent now as if by some youthful intuition they understood that this place had, once, been more than it seemed. The only sounds that could be heard were the scuff of feet on rocks and the whistling wind as they edged forward, still curious despite their trepidation. A tremor shook the earth beneath them, sending them screaming back towards the trees, having seen enough for one day.



In a vault closed off from the ravages of time, an ancient entity stirred for the first time since his death. All that remained of his essence had been confined within that mask for an unfathomable amount of time, dwindling until it was scarcely different from stone or sand in its capacity. Then, it felt an unfamiliar pressure, a bemusing and foreign sensation that it eventually identified as pain. It was ignored for a time, but slowly the ramifications of its presence came into focus, and Balor opened his eyes to see… a slab of stone, heavy as two horses, which was crushing his body.

What is this? He pondered. The last thing he could remember was a field of fire, the corpses of men, dragons, and angels as far as the eye could see through the thick haze of war. I died. I have been… sealed… away. Strength was returning to his limbs, or at least he was becoming aware of them. He pushed, but his arms were pinned and he had no leverage, he was well and truly stuck. Then he remembered the mask he wore. Calling its energy to him for the first time in he knew not how long proved difficult, but after hours of straining he released a concussive blast that sent the tablet flying to shatter against the cavern’s ceiling.

Chunks rained down on him, frustrating his attempts to sit up for a time, but eventually he managed to swing his feet over the edge of the altar and stand on shaky legs, casting a curious gaze at his surroundings. An octagonal stone chamber, once a chapel to Oraum which had been desecrated long before Balor first arrived at this keep. Yes, he recognized this place, Thandlarax. Home, or so it once had been. Now it was clear some time had passed, if not by the state of the chamber then by the altar behind him.

Powerful inscriptions laced the whole of the surface, with their nexus where his head had once lain. When consecrated to Oraum, they should have held him fast for a thousand years, even with the power of his mask escape would have been futile. They were dead. Such a time had passed that he could not sense the faintest whisper of power, what remained could not have held a spider in place.
What has happened here? What… will I find above? Reaching for his scabbard, he saw that his sword was missing, an image of his arm spinning away flashed into his mind and was gone. Lost on the field of battle, unfortunate. Unfortunate indeed. He was beginning to understand the magnitude of his dilemma, and with that a cold fire was returning to his heart. With a wave of fire he blasted open the barred stares, scaling them only to find his way blocked once more, but by now he had regained the ability to make short work of these barricades.

What he found on the surface, when the smoke cleared, was light, blinding light such as he had never felt before. He clutched at his eyes, falling insensate for a time from the shock, when he rose he saw that no two stones remained standing on top of each other. Turning to the mountain he shouted a phrase in a cursed tongue, the line of a doorway appeared in the sheer cliff face, but the Invisible Gates lacked the strength to open, and they were too great a barrier for him to pass with force.

“Athos!” he called at the stone, his gravelly voice echoing off the wall, hoping for a response, any response from within. With clenched fists, he looked over his shoulder to where the smoke from cook fires rose above the tree line. He set out for the coast.

Survival.

The thought tore through the dragons’ consciousness with the clarity of a lightening bolt across a blackened sky. A dragons memory is for eternity and there was no mistaking the memory of the final battle fought, the pain of her enemies weapon as it buried itself between two plates of armoured scales in the small of her back. The foe had been underestimated and she had paid a terrible price, only the ability to fly had saved her life. She could still remember stretching her massive wings and thrusting for the sky, the dust storm created by the motion being enough to deflect what should have been a killing blow. Even then the hero had pursued her across the sands and her blood had given him an easy trail to follow for everything touched by it shrivelled and died as she sought to escape.

Falling.

It had been her only hope for refuge, the volcano in the midst of the desert, an oasis about its edges, deep in the wastes where few ever dared to venture. She had crashed into the side of the Volcano and, with her last strength, dragged herself up the final climb before toppling slowly, like some broken thing, into the fiery abyss. The fire had saved her life, scorching her wounds closed but she had been to weak to do anything more than sink into the molten lava that welcomed and closed over her like a great blanket. Any other creature would have been incinerated but not she, not the Elder Dragon, not one born of the same fire. Instead it hid her, closed about her, protected her, and she had lost consciousness, she had lost much blood.

Consciousness.

She was acutely aware that she was not dreaming anymore. The speed of her thoughts had slowed and she could not move, in her dreams she could do what she liked but now she could not even flex her talons. The lava that had welcomed her so long ago had cooled and hardened around her. The volcano had died, giving its own life so that she might live. She felt strong, hungry, but strong. She knew now that her wounds had healed, a dragons sleep is meant for little else than to heal, but how bad had her wounds been, how long had she slept to feel so complete again?

Humans.

This thought came swiftly as she detected the slightest sound coming from above, the "chink" and "thud" of someone fighting above her. Who were they? How could they know she was near, if the Volcano had cooled around her she was certain several thousand years, maybe tens of thousands of years, had passed since she collapsed into its healing embrace. Without trying she knew she could not move her heard for a better angle to listen, she was encased in hardened lava after all.

Information.

She reached out through the lava piled deep above her, tenderly touching the magical currents that she could feel surging throughout the land. It was stronger than she remembered. Interesting. It took her a moment to focus on the source of the humans above her but she had no trouble tapping into one of their thoughts so gently that he would not even know it was happening.

Pain and anger, the humans mind was swirling with them. He was fighting someone else, someone bigger than he, and he was loosing ground. It was clear as she delved deeper that they were fighting to become champions, but champions of what. She entered into his memories, searching for answers. When she found what she was looking for, it was not was she expected. The humans were fighting in her honour, the honour to call themselves champions, champions of the Great Fire, a tournament to honour her, a tournament that had been waged for 50,000 years.

His thoughts exploded into her consciousness and she felt a jolt of surprise ripple through her. 50,000 years. She had been asleep for 50,000 years. That was a considerable time for any dragon to sleep, even a wounded one. She had never slept that long before, certainly not in her memory, which carried back to creation itself. And they were planning to mine her corpse if they found it. Humans, such an industrious and idiotic species. She withdrew from the humans mind and focused back on her current state.

All this had taken the same amount of time it took the man above to swing his sword twice, roughly six seconds of human time. To a Dragon it was time enough to make a decision on what to do next.

I will fly again.

She opened herself to the magic around her and felt herself grow stronger still as it coursed through her. For anyone who has fought even a small dragon they would know of their magical abilities but, she was Rythin, the Fireheart, the Elder Dragon, and she was greater than them all.

She flexed her talons now and felt the lava crumble at their touch. She blinked and the lava about her eyes turned to dust. Her legs were beneath her and she flexed her muscles, gingerly testing for any wounds that had failed to heal but all seemed well. She would live again. She thrust upwards.



The two Champions who fought on the sands of the arena never knew that the Dragon they fought to honour had returned, they died instantly as the ground below them exploded into fire and smoke. For the fifty thousand spectators, the entirety of every desert tribe within five hundred kilometres, it was a sight they would never forget.

The Great Arena, built within the long extinct Volcano, had seats set all up the sides, carved from the hardened lava. A great set of stairs opened into the crater from one side, guarded by great statues of desert heroes long past. Here, on a floor of fine desert sand, every year for fifty thousand years, the tribes had gathered and each had produced a champion. The winner would be crowned Dragonheart and given his or her pick of the breeding slaves as well as a champions purse contributed to by every tribe. Usually this meant camels, horses, cows, and the like, material wealth that would keep a champion in great comfort for a lifetime.

Those same spectators, gathered to witness this years fight, a grand spectacle for the fifty thousandth anniversary of the fights, now came to their feet as a giant wave, disbelief crying out from their throats as the middle of the stadium vanished into nothing. Some feared, at first, that the Volcano had awoken but then the screams of terror began as Her head appeared and the Elder Dragon heaved herself onto the sands of the arena.

Black scales glittered and gleamed in the noonday sun as she stretched her massive wings, so vast that they reached from one side of the arena to the other. She craned her neck high, feeling the tension of fifty thousand years leaving her muscles. And then she roared, it had been to long since she heard her own voice. The earth shook beneath her and her long tail swept the surface of the arena, its barbed menace only made more terrifying for the great spike that formed the end of her tail. Fifty thousand voices fell silent as she challenged the sky with her own call. The Dragon Terror was upon them, they were frozen in their place. All but one.

She stepped into the arena, her step so gentle that it barely registered on the sandy surface. Blonde hair swirled about her face from the wind that now howled throughout the arena. She could feel the magic too, the currents that had been so steady here for generations were now snapping and almost popping as they seemed to surge towards the great beast that now towered above her.

The yellow dress that marked her as a Priestess of the Great Fire was billowing and shreding about her legs as she walked forward. The sand had become like so many small missiles, tearing at her clothes but not marking her skin. She opened her arms, completely unafraid for she, of all the people who had come to this scared place, had known that the Dragon had awoken beneath them. She had no connection with the great creature itself but she could feel the magic of this place bend and warp as something more powerful than she could possibly understand had suddenly come into contact with it again.

"Welcome Elder Dragon." Her voice was quiet, so quiet she barely heard it herself but the intensity of the Dragons gaze told her that she had been heard. For a moment it thrilled her to think that she might be consumed by fire but it did not come.

Who are you? The Dragons voice exploded in her head with such force it brought her to her knees.

"I am Celeanda, Priestess of the Great Fire. We have been praying for your return." She muttered, or thought she muttered, as the Dragons will beat upon her.

[i]Who do you serve?"[i]

"You." She tried to whisper though she could not say the word but the Dragon knew. The power that had been bent upon her suddenly released and it took all of her strength and stand again. The Dragon watched her as she moved, the huge eyes never blinking. No one in the stadium moved.

You are strong. Said the Dragon as it took a step closer to her, its huge head lowering towards her. The eyes and mouth were red like molten fire, the black scales about its face shimmering and shifting with every movement.

"I have spent many years channelling the magic that surround this place, I have much to learn." Celeanda found herself able to speak again and she drew herself up to her full height again.

These people. They are your kin?"

"No, they are the gathered tribes of the desert. I serve only you. My sisters do as well."

Sisters?

"Yes, we have a temple here. We have long worshipped you and worked the magic bound to this place by your death."

But I am not dead. I live.

The Dragons rage beat down upon her again and it took every ounce of her being to not collapse again.

"We thought you dead but we have protected this place. Only the Sisters truly believe."

Then these others are fools. I will show you much and you will serve me.

Celeanda could only nod as she sank slowly into the sand at her feet, the Dragons will was slowly crushing her and she felt as though her body was about to explode. Then, as before, the pressure was suddenly released as the Dragon drew itself up to its full height.

Witness my return.

Fifty thousand people stood motionless in the stands of the stadium, frozen with fear. The Dragon consumed them all. All but the Sisters.

"Well then, young one," the Priest retorted snarkily. "You will have to journey to the Heartlands. They don't keep Altim's Violin here anymore. Not since the Fire went cold."

He stared this imposter down, assuming his claims of being Altim to be an alcohol fuelled vie for recognition and fame. He raised his walking cane and poked Altim a few times, before forcing himself to his feet. The ravages of time had not been kind to the priest, and even standing was a struggle nowadays.

"It is kept in the Bastion of Light. If you want to try your luck with the God Guard Legion then you are more than welcome to tell them your story. Maybe they will buy it. But you aren't Altim. Altim is long dead," the Priest asserted. "If Faerthus is gone, then Altim would be too. So take your stories to some other old fool, and convince them of it, you heretic!" he shouted.

The Priest turned his back in such a rude fashion that he almost felt bad for doing it. Almost.


The tremors in the earth beneath them startled the people, and after the initial shock had passed, the villagers abandoned their tasks and rushed for the hills and the forests further inland for safety. The people took to the canopy and clung tight to the branches of the trees, and there they waited, watched. Things were still for a while. Then the earth shakes again, but this time, the villagers look to the mountains. Time had long erased the carnage that had occurred where the villagers then stood. They lived on a gravesite, and yet they knew nothing of the sort. But something stirred in the shadows, and its presence felt old and looming.

Balor's shouts echoed through the woods, and his demonic tongue pierced the ears of the villagers who heard. They cowered though they had not seen the source, and truth be told, they did not want or need to know of the source. Such an ominous and clearly malevolent sound belonged to a force to be reckoned with, and the villagers had no will to fight so strong an evil presence. Women held their children's mouths shut, and men held their tongues. The people quelled their fears and quieted their screams. As the unwelcome presence drew near, the people watched intently for him from the higher branches.



"You? Caecilia?" the woman tensed her brow in disbelief. She exchanged looks with the other dancers before she turned her head to face Caecilia again. "You cannot be Caecilia. She died so long ago."

One of the other women stepped forward and charged, "We have forgiven your trespass upon this sacred ground, but this claim you make is simply heresy if there is no truth to it. Explain yourself, else you are criminal and shall be banished from these grounds." The women created a circle around Caecilia and drew their blades from their hips. The dancers bore menacing and wary countenances, and their daggers pointed directly at Caecilia. Their forms were tense but practiced, and their piercing gazes dug into Caecilia's skin. One small move could be fatal.



Wind and snow blew harshly across the frozen sea-turned-tundra. What unprecedented force set those seas to freeze was a strong one, and Daen was lucky enough to ride a horse outfitted with the proper horseshoes. Nothing - no land, no life - could be gleaned through the whiteout, and Daen and his equine vehicle simply rode blind onward. That is, until the horse stopped in its tracks and refused to continue further. Although it appeared nothing was in its way, eventually some gray silhouette, lone against the horizon, came closer into view. Its blurry form became more definite, and soon enough could Daen identify a man. A muffled shout reverberated across the cold expanse. As the man repeated his shouts, they became clearer and clearer to the ear.

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

"Sir, excuse me, sir!"

"Could you spare a ride atop your steed?"



Atroa averted his eyes from Dormeria's with a sense of awe and fear. Not that Dormeria was a truly evil thing, but that with a destructive weapon like Ukenagasu, one could do some very dangerous, very grim work. This was the original wielder of such a destructive weapon, and he could not bear to show Dormeria anything more than full submission. Death herself reviled that dreaded staff, that much Atroa could garner about the eldritch tool, but the Grand Exemplar was not aware of the toll which the staff took on Dormeria's life to do its job.

"Praises!" Atroa could not mistake her. With Ukenagasu in hand and already a semblance of power exhibited, Dormeria's identity was hard to deny. The question lingered in his mind, though. Dormeria had lived 48,000 years ago. How and why did she return? "But pray tell, my dread lady, wherefore have you returned?"



As the greener lands came closer in Eamon's view, the skies seemed to grow grayer and grayer. Eamon's first spell began to fizzle, and its light shifted directions rapidly. One moment, the light pointed somewhere in the southwest, but then it immediately turned northward. It changed and changed, and it showed no signs of stopping until it suddenly exploded in a flash of white light. At that moment, the rain fell from the sky onto Eamon and washed over the land, the sound of thunder rumbling across the rolling hills, plains, and meadows of Ansus' northern side. A wonderful feat of nature, however, is easily spoiled. Deeper in the forest, a loud, mortifying shriek echoes against the boughs and the brush and the wilds.

The evening found Jacaerys mounted on an ornery two-humped camel, picking his way slowly across cooling sand dunes. Behind him trailed half a dozen men, some on similar creatures and others riding plow horses or donkeys. Among them were the old priest's nephew, who claimed to know the location of every oasis in the Great Desert; the man he had first spoken to, a competent if sullen man; and a few other farmhands and woodcutters who thirsted with piety or for a taste of adventure. The Godseer had gotten his mount from the caravan of a merchant who had had the bad luck to be in the town at the time -- though the man initially refused, the townsfolk had quickly persuaded him of what an honor it was to give up some small portion of his supplies to the Right Hand of Oraum. That was also how the small party had acquired a reasonable stock of water and provisions, carried by a mule that one of the townsfolk led along.

Jacaerys had been advised to travel by nightfall, so as to avoid most of the terrible heat of the deserts. Though it was a roundabout path, the nephew assured him that it was possible to ride swiftly from one oasis to the next each night, and shelter at them during the day. The lack of light did little to alleviate the great desert winds, however, and so as the Godseer rode in quiet contemplation he held one hand in front of him to shield his eyes from the sand that kicked up sporadically around him.

Shortly after his conversation with the priest had concluded, Jacaerys had politely shooed the man away, leaving himself alone with the quickly-recovering boy he had healed. For several hours the Godseer had attempted to rekindle the flame that must have once burned in the hearth, but he could not manage to achieve the white flames of Oraum despite his best efforts and incantations. When Jacaerys emerged from the chamber drenched with sweat, he had told the priest that he intended to travel back to the Great Temple. "It may be that they do not know that the fires are going out," he had said, "and I must warn them. Or perhaps they have already devised a way to keep their own alive." And almost that quickly, he found himself preparing to depart from the village.

Presently the nephew pulled ahead, turning off slightly as he gestured at some sort of sandstone obelisk half-buried in the sand. "We're too far north, we need to turn left a bit." Jacaerys complied with a yawn, and fought with his mount to get it to turn its head in the direction that the young man indicated. He rubbed his temples; for all the wondrous healing that the Godseer had found he could perform, he still could not truly fight off sleep. With any luck, the first oasis would soon be upon them, and plentiful time to rest and wait for the moon to rise once more.

The desert city of Ahak was busy and bustling. It lied 5 miles west of the Yimosha in the Plains of Dust, and it was the largest and capital city of the Vashiel province. Ahak's towers and buildings of sandstone bricks stood over black stone streets like yellow golden dunes that trickled with oil. Bronze still dominated the land, but silver - yes, silver - was the new pride of the Plains. The people here liked to dress loosely, with flowing robes and sashes. Some wore scarves, others bandages. Jewels and bangles bedecked the gentry, and the poor wore rags and lived in shambles. At this particular point in time, wearing a circlet around the head was common for those married or engaged. One fact was immediately apparent of the masses in Ahak: they were a variegated sea of colors and styles.

This people's great wealth, the social inequality, the weak infrastructure, and the strong regional identity, the Vashieli people justified it all with their might in the defensive industry. Vashiel housed numerous military barracks, supplies, and bases. Although extremely rare in these days, the few magically-gifted who were born in Vashiel were encouraged to join the military, so that a large piece of Ansus' military might lied in the North. This force tamed and maimed dragons with a wave of the finger, this force could wipe a raucous, unjustified rebellion off the map.



The forest was full of small stones and vines, and a thin brook wound its way in between the trees. As Ki'ira explored further into the reaches of the woods, the gray and brown stones seemed to grow larger and larger until they became collapsed walls and roofs of ruined buildings, covered in moss, vines, and dirt. This was the former village of Kaleze, and the rest had rotted while the trees that grew in the forest had overtaken the village's buildings and broken them apart. The laughing of girls could be heard, eerily rebounding against the trunks of the trees, and it would seem as if a million unseen eyes were watching Ki'ira. The bushes rustled and the treetops shook as if something really fast was darting among them. One thing would be apparent then: Ki'ira was not alone.



The mercenary jolted to consciousness, and he immediately laid eyes upon the historian. "Is everything fine, old man?! What the bloody hell happened?!" the mercenary shouted in a panic. He shook his head and took a look around him to jog his memory and get a grip of his surroundings.

Then he saw Luther, standing above him, and the mercenary, whose name was Grant, gawked for a few moments before he crawled away and clutched his hands tight on his sword. Grant jumped to his feet and held out his weapon defensively. "Who the hell is this?" he asked the historian. "Did he hurt you?"



An old man with a long, white beard exited from a large wooden structure which faced the main road and stood on the opposite side of the obelisk, and he stepped onto a platform which was higher than the rest of the town square, such that all the villagers could see him upon it. Two soldiers from the local militia, a smaller arm of Ansus' military, flanked the old man on either side as he stepped closer to the front of the platform and stopped, hunched over his cane. He announced for all to hear, "Markiel Harrir! The Arbiter of Alnox, Guardian of Nature! I, Chief Agreth, have been expecting your return."

Chief Agreth pointed to a relief near the top of the obelisk, the art of which depicted Nature's Crusade and the establishment of the Wilds. "It has been nearly fifty thousand years since you have walked this earth. The Wilds have since become a new province of the United Federation of Ansus. Welcome, the Old God's Chosen, to the Province of Alnoxia." The soldiers who carried spears then banged the ends of them on the ground, and the crowd, the militia, and Chief Agreth kneeled before Markiel in respect. When they rose to their feet, Agreth spoke again. "Markiel, I can answer your questions in the Great Hall behind me if you so choose."



As the chaos erupted in the arena, the Sisters ran onto the arena to meet Celeanda at its center. There Celeanda and the Sisters convened, and she, their leader, spoke first. "The Elder Dragon is come."

The other Sisters nodded in acknowledgement. They wore similar outfits to Celeanda's, but theirs were much simpler to show their status in the Sisterhood of the Elder Dragon. Thesaria, the next highest in command, stepped forward and said, "Then it is in order that we dedicate ourselves to her preservation."

"Aye," the Sisters replied in chorus.

Celeanda said, "Then it is in order that we prove ourselves to her fellowship."

"Aye."

Thesaria and Celeanda joined hands, and the Sisters followed suit as they formed a circle in the center of the arena. They awaited Rthyin's landing in their presence, and they readied themselves for further instruction.



A cold, wicked, blood-curdling scream cut the dead air. Feet pounded in the snow, and they darted behind objects as the sources of both that scream and several subsequent groans and screams approached Volkimir. The scent of decaying and rotten flesh filled Volkimir's nose, an unpleasant and unwelcome scent that portended sinister work. An emaciated, gray body jumped at Volkimir from behind a pile of rocks, and it grabbed at him with ugly, deformed hands. Soon there were more, and they charged at the vampire with haste and hunger. They looked more like skeletons than they did like living creatures, the flesh on their bodies decomposed, foul, and barely hanging. They tugged at the vampire's body and mashed their teeth as they attacked with the intent of eating Volkimir.