The Dawnblades did not march in silence. They sang their songs loud as they marched through the open plains. Drums dictated the rhythm, both of the march and the song. Heavenly lyrics ascended and turn to faith for their lord. Those songs echoed through the bond the legion had as well, elevating the spirits of every single warrior as well.

When they crested the final hill and stepped inside the area of Teul’Velik the column stopped and broke apart. The first soldiers secured the ridge, while the others began to construct the camp. From atop the hill Immedras, one of the captains of the legion, looked across the light vale towards the other hill. There a fortress build by the paladins stood. The legionnaire felt a very intense hatred for the structure and everyone around him could feel it through their bond.

In the past days he thought Anak’thas should simply sunder it, as a projection of their power. Now that he looked at it and at the legion that was preparing for the battle he realized that Anak’thas would sunder it. He would, through the Dawnblades. They would break apart the fortress like an orange. From the corner of his eyes he saw the Auxis knights arrive. Their clay-for-flesh armors were being transported by heavy carts pulled by four oxen each. When the walls were breached, they’d prove to be invaluable. He was sure of that.

That night he gave the order to prepare the siege weapons already. Galleys and a ram would be constructed, together with ladders to scale the walls. However, under the cover of darkness the Artificer-Priests hauled in another construct. Ten ox-pulled carts came rumbling into the camp. They haul was covered by canvas. All of it was hauled into a large tent constructed with the camp. The Artificer-Priests were uncharacteristicly secretive about what the tent contained beyond telling Immedras that it was a weapon of great import for the war.

Immedras never pushed. He did send a messenger boy towards the fortress with a very simple message: Surrender and live or fight and die. You have until tomorrow morning. The Dawnblades, the whole legion unified, desperately hoped the fortress would not surrender.

---

Amarcus ran through the streets. His leather-bound feet slapping against the dusty road. Chickens bawked at him as he cut through a crowd and older pedestrians hollered after him to slow down. Cutting through the low buildings of Callum, a town that sprouted near the border following the quarantine, he held a vellum note close to his chest. Finally the young boy came to a skidding halt in front of two paladins, their spears barring his entry past a low stone wall gated with iron.

“A message for Captain Hale,” Amarcus lied. Grimble, the older paladin on the right shook his head.

“Oh is it now?” His voice was like a grindstone. Amarcus nodded his shaggy head. Grimble stamped his spear to the ground and stood up straight.

“What does it say?”

Amarcus tightened his grip on the letter. “It’s for Hale’s eyes only, as per the runners.”

“Oh ho!” The other paladin, Ferdinand, finally piped up. “Three days as a runner and you’re already feeling a bit big for your britches, aren’t you boy? How old are you, twelve?”

“Fourteen, sir,” Amarcus grinned. “But the message?”

Grimble rolled his eyes and with a speed Amarcus wasn’t expecting, he snatched it from the boy.

“Hey!” Amarcus protested, but Grimble was already scanning it’s contents. A gentle pink brushed Grimble’s cheeks and he gave a cough.

“Let him through, Ferdinand.”

The other paladin looked back at Grimble with shock. “Was it truly for Hale?”

Grimble shook his head. “Just let him through.”

A wide grin formed on Amarcus’ face, “Thanks, Grimble!” He leaped forward, only for Ferdinand’s rough hand to halt him midair. His voice came down.

“Don’t make us regret this.” He let go.

Falling back to his feet, Amarcus beamed up at Ferdinand. “You won’t, I promise!”

---

Amarcus was already through the simple garden that acted as a buffer between the gates and the keep of Callum, having darted by other guards and rounded around the back to the kitchen entrance. There, a sandy haired girl named Faelee was holding the door open with a wide white smile and coal marked cheeks. Amarcus didn’t stop, running right into her and pushing them both through the door. A giggle sounded as the door slammed shut.

In the kitchen, a stew was bubbling and a grumpy old woman was looking over the steam at the pair, a disapproving or perhaps envious look in her eye. “Keep it down, would ye.”

Faelee hiccuped an apology through her laugh. “Sorry Merrill.”

Amarcus ignored her completely, pushing his letter into Faelee’s hands. “For you, Lady Faelee.”

Faelee sniffed another laugh. “Oh so old fashioned.” She folded the letter. “I’ll save it for later, first you have to tell me if it’s true.”

Amarcus’s smile faded and he tilted his head, “If what’s true?”

“I hear that you’re going to Fort Coldshank to run for them.”

“Oh.” Amarcus swallowed a thought. “Yeah.”

“They asked you specifically?” Faelee crossed her arms and Merrill was already shaking her head.

“Well, not exactly.”

“Not exactly, what?” Faelee’s joy was gone now. “Did they ask for you specifically or not?”

“No.” Amarcus admitted.

“Then why are you going?”

“I volunte-”

“Amarcus!” Faelee slapped her sides. “Running is fine but for Coldshanks, do you think this is a game?”

“It’s for the Queen!” Amarcus protested.

Faelee bobbed her head mockingly. “Oh is it? Really?”

Amarcus scoffed. “What do you mean by that?”

“You fetishize the paladins.” Faelee jabbed her finger into his chest. “You just want to be one.”

“So what?”

“SO THERE IS AN ARMY ON ITS WAY!”

Merrill stopped stirring and blinked. A second later and she was scooting out of the kitchen, an awkward cringe on her face. Amarcus stared down his opponent, who only gave him the most wicked squint.

“It’s for the Queen.” He insisted.

---

“Hale.”

“Fucking what?”

The voice game from a dark haired man who sat at a sticky table. His face was hidden under a long cut, his fist clenching an empty mug. Hale wore a long blue cape that spilled to the floor, giving him more dignity than a regular drunk, but instead insisted he was a noble drunk. The one who had provoked him stood off to the side, in a simple red cape.

“Is this really the state you plan on marching?” The criticizer, Leonidas, demanded.

“Who gives a shit.” Hale lifted his face to reveal red eyes and a snappy mustache. “We will get there, the bastards will show up, we will draw swords and people are going to die. Who cares how they showed up.”

“What the fuck, I do!” Leonidas shouted. “You’re supposed to be the captain, from the Artack!”

“And in the Artack you learn to stop caring about the details,” Hale squinted up at Leonidas. “Draw swords, something dies, whatever doesn’t die draws again later, then dies, or something.”

“A regular Vatarr,” Leonidas shook his head. “Philosophy aside, the army is ready to march to Coldshanks… and I imagine Karlene will be expecting a sober captain.”

Hale stared long and hard up at Leonidas, his jaw flopping open as if he was surprised or perhaps to shout a retort. He lifted his hand from his mug and in one fell swoop, he collapsed piss drunk to the ground with a clatter.

---

Hale looked over the ramparts, his eyes scanning the horizon to the distance. The enemy was a happy one, he could give them that — they must have never killed before. He bit his thumb and sniffed. From his position on the fort, a cold shade covered him and his outlook, the sun massing the fort in such a way that the shadow formed a big arrow. Coincidentally, that shadow was pointing at the hill the enemy was camped on.

Slowly he could feel his fingers traveling down his hip and finding the cold pommel of his sword. It was smooth, cold, metallic — nothing like how it was back in the Artack. Back then it was fiery hot, sticky with blood of who knows, and pulsed and beaten like a heart. His weapon was him and he was a weapon — or at least for Karlene, he was still a weapon.

“Captain Hale!” Amarcus’ voice came bellowing from a doorward that lead to the long stairs to the rampart. Hale let go of his blade and turned to the boy.

“What is it, lad?”

“The enemy sent a message to General Karlene.”

“So they do intend to take Coldshanks, well that’ smart of them at least — don’t want an exposed flank as you march into enemy territory.”

“They offered peace if we surrendered.”

Hale cocked a brow. “So are we going home and they can fester in this tomb or is that too much to ask for?”

“We aren’t surrendering.”

“I thought as much,” Hale turned from Amarcus and looked back at the enemy. “Oh well, it was a nice thought.”

Amarcus was taken aback. “How can you say such things?”

“Ha!” Hale chortled. “You walked right into the ‘have you ever killed a man’ speech, you poor fuck.” He turned to the boy and gave him a deadly stare. “So… you ever kill a man?”

“No…”

“Then you and the enemy have something in common,” Hale gave the boy a strange smile. “You just stay safe, you have a little cook to return home to.”

---

“It seems bloodshed is less than a night away,” Karlene announced. She stood in the meeting hall of Coldshanks. It was a tight room of stonework and little decoration. By all means it kept up with the fort’s namesake. The only thing that wasn’t stone or worn fabric was a pine table that sat in the center.

Hale nodded at the founding paladin and general. Other captains sat to either side of him. By all means Karlene mustered up a sizable force to hold Coldshanks and prevent entry into Node 13. Upon arriving yesterday, Hale found out he was the last captain to arrive and the forces from Callum were simply there to bolster the larger armies marched in by Captains Fafnir and Rebecca. Being so late to the operation, Hale missed out on the screening and skirmishes that were launched to size up the enemy as they marched into the area, but at least all his troops were fresh and ready.

“We understand it’s a sizable force,” Captain Rebecca started. She had one discerning eye and the other was patched away by a dense fabric — lost to a wolf-king while doing some community service for the 12th recruitment. “But a sally should be how we open this. Turtling will only give them positioning.”

“I agree,” Hale surprised himself with his voice. “We should sally to give them a final screening and see how much guts they have. If they want this rock, they will have to die for it.”

“We have the walls, we should use them right away,” Captain Fafnir disagreed.

“It puts us in a bad spot,” Hale said. “Supply tunnels can be collapsed and General Larissa’s army won’t be here for a week.”

“Exactly,” Fafnir pointed a finger. “A week! We have the stores for half a year in Coldshanks.”

Karlene laced her fingers together. “Captain Rebecca.”

“General?”

“Is it not true that your army trained in Maelite?’’

“Yes, General.”

“So how do they feel about the darkness?”

“They don’t know the difference between the darkness and the light, General, it’s all the same to a paladin of Maelite.”

“Good,” Karlene nodded to herself. “We will sally tonight, interrupt their sleep with some blood, and then…” She looked at Fafnir. “We will wait in Coldshanks for Larissa if they choose not to leave.”

---

The Dawnblades’ camp was made in a large rectangle, with neat rows of hundreds of tents within. Towards the northern part of the camp was the gigantic, mysterious tent of the Artificer-Priests that harbored their secrets, while the commander’s tent was located in the middle. It was surrounded by stakes. Only two watchtowers had been built in the dusk light.

The grass that carpeted the hills was long and in full plush from the spring days, and even now they radiated a soft heat from the day now that the sun was gone. Hidden like wolves, Rebecca, Hale, and a medley of the more elite troops Karlene managed to round up were crouched in the grass. Above them, the night sky was dark; the moon was only a slit and the stars seemed dull — but compared to Maelite, it was a sunny afternoon.

A cold night breeze rustled through the grass and threaded by the troops. Their usual bulky armor was replaced with jackets quilted to hide metal plates, and their spears were replaced with crucifix hilted blades. Of course there weren’t nearly enough troops behind Rebecca to disable the entire encampment, not when the enemy army outnumbered them significantly even when at full force, but the idea was to give them a taste of death in the hopes that it broke their will.

Rebecca held up her sword, the tip catching the light of the moon. “Remember how to best decapitate a creature with a hard carapace?”

A few nods from those who could hear her harsh whisper. “Should be easier when they are asleep. Show no mercy to the bugs, they are diseased and lower than the insects of Maelite.”

Hale closed his eyes and readied his blade, something about her words didn’t quite ring true in his chest, but he knew the purpose of them. “I’ll take the watchtower closest, you take the camp.”

With little else, Hale slipped from the group. He moved effortlessly through the tall grass, seeming more snake than man. Even in a deep crouch he kept an amazing speed, the power of the kiss blooming in his stomach and sending energy down to his legs. Eventually his eyes mapped out the best route and becoming a blur, he unleashed the energy of the blessing of the Queen.

Much like a winter wind, Hale was already at the base of the tower, his calloused hands gripping the wooden pylons and launching him upwards. As he approached the wooden rampart that sheltered the tower pinnacle, he noticed the chin of a lookout peering outwards. Hale grabbed one of the cross beams he was climbing and with an impressive tug, he lunged himself upwards, sword shooting upwards.

The tip of his steel blade punched through the bottom of the lookout’s jaw and shot upwards with a gruesome crunch as it pieced into his skull. Feeling the blade lodge, Hale tugged downward, slamming the deadman down against the lip of the lookout and using the force to launch himself upwards.

The impressive feat saw Hale leap the rest of the journey to the top of the tower, gliding over the ledge and planting him on the platform. Two bronze clade legionaries were staring at him with a wide look of confusion, their faces aglow by a nearby fire. Before they could react, Hale turned into a blur and sent his blade in a wide arc. The edge of the blade cut the throat of the closest soldier, while the other got the point. The steel ripped through the bronze scales and stabbed deep into the man’s chest, summoning a dark pool of red.

Suddenly Hale’s ears perked. Sound was coming from down below — there was no way? He rushed to the edge of the lookout and peered down at the camp. The entire encampment was on the move already! Somehow it seemed every soldier down below was aware of the fight and were on the move to the watchtower. Hale squinted.

“Shit.”

Out in the corner of his eye, he could see Rebecca and a clump of shadows hit the other flank of the camp. In his heart he wished he could tell her to retreat, but right now he knew he needed to withdraw first. “Ah well,” He clenched his jaw, they were all already awake. He sucked in a breath. “WITHDRAW!”

---

Rebecca perked up. Hale’s words rang across the hill. Her troops were already spilling through the corridors made by the tents. While a few managed to sneak in and slaughter some sleeping innocents, she too noticed the rest of the camp stirring into action. There was some ward, or some secret the Dawnbringers had that allowed them to coordinate so quickly, it was the only explanation. The captain swore under her breath and ducked under the white cloth of a massive tent on the northern end.

Falling into the dark, enclosed space, the sounds of the night were dulled by the canvas tent. Already she could see the shadows of her troops retreating as per Hale’s orders while others engaged the enemy. From her strange vantage point she could tell the enemy was having trouble against the steel of Xavior, but their numbers were too much all at once. Turning away, she looked inward.

A large silhouette covered in cloth dominated the center of the soil smelling tent and every second of her impromptu investigation caused her stomach to tighten. Slowly she was becoming isolated as the paladins retreated back to the fort. Even the sounds of clashing steel was beginning to fade, but she couldn’t help but wonder what sort of weapon or resource this tent was meant for.

“Captain…” A whisper came. Rebecca froze.

“Captain!” The whisper was slightly harsher.

“Who?”

A gruff hand grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her into the darkest shadow of the tent. She fell next to Hale, his handprint was sticky and wet. Her face contorted with confusion. “How did you get her so fast?”

Hale let go of Rebecca and put his hand back on his hip, a glistening of blood on the unprotected area. His sword was in his free hand, too densely covered in gore to refract any light. “I cut my way here. The troops are heading back to Coldshanks to regroup for the morning, what are you doing in here?”

“I ducked in when we were spotted…” Rebecca cocked her head and whispered. “Why are you here?”

“To get you,” Hale admitted. “We have to go.”

“Agreed,” Rebecca said but then looked over her shoulder and at the clothed silhouette. “But first, I want to check that out.”

Closing his eyes, Hale groaned. “Make it quick.”

Rebecca pushed back to her feet and slipped over to the cloth. Gripping it in her fingers, she tugged it.

The Cloth fell. Rebecca found herself standing in front of a face that was bigger than her entire body. Her eyes widened at the grotesque. It was the visage of a warrior carved onto a head that dwarfed both her and Hale.

“What in the…”

“Hey!” An alien voice came calling from the entrance to the tent and the pair whipped around just in time to see a set of soldiers with khopesh and spears glaring down at them.

Without thinking, Hale and Rebecca kicked up some speed and blasted by them. The flaps of the tent billowed at the exit and the crowd of Anak’thasian soldiers turned on them. Wind whipped as the two cut through the encampment, using the most of their speed blessing to get by the enemy.

Spears were tossed and arrows zipped by but just as the two hit the downward slope back to Coldshanks’ valley, a white feathered arrow cut by Hale’s nose, barely missing him. He saw the whole thing in slow motion, his adrenaline pounding through his veins. His head turned to watch the arrow and his eyes widened along with Rebecca’s. She was stuck in the air, juking a spear and heading right into the path of the arrowhead, she could see it coming the same as Hale, but could do nothing.

Time caught up and with a quick thunk of flesh, Rebecca went spinning to the ground — a loud and pained growl on her lips. Hale started to slow down, but the arrows came in thicker, provoking him to speed up. He looked back over his shoulder — he could see Rebecca’s shadow wriggling on the ground, and could hear the sound of her blade rasping from its scabbard. Other shadows started to crowd her and he could see the glint of her blade swinging from her down position.

He turned back to Coldshanks, a siege was to come — he shouldn’t think of anything else. But what was that face, and will Rebecca be okay? He frowned, his drunkard heart aching.

♦ The Power of Friendship

Tzallimi, or Chayimi, was the community that naturally developed on the meeting point between node 12 and 7, a river port and garrison at first, soon it became a colourful place populated where the cleverness and innovation of the council and their traders met the cold discipline of the magistrates.

Although the ideas were obviously radically different, the societies were almost incompatible at first glance, with effort and respect from both sides the proper arrangements were made for peaceful coexistence, making the difference into a strength allowing each culture to have access to things that they could never produce on their own.

The council soon noted that exchanging goods for services from the dusklanders was a profitable endeavour. They provided a consistent, frontier-dwelling, well-managed workforce, the cost of iron tools and local crafts that while expensive was still less costly than outfitting an entire working crew of paid local workers, furthermore the well-oiled management of the magistrates made sure there was no cost-cutting or slacking off when the dusklanders promised to build a road, house or mine in x days, there was no doubt they would do it.

Of course, the council was not stupid to fully rely on dusklander for such tasks, they mostly were helping in the north, as to avoid having too much reliance on what was still a foreign group, equally, the magistrates would never send their own people to slave away at dark dangerous mines or for an unequal gain for the sunlanders, all that was being done was to help develop key areas for the mutual benefit of both lands, improving roads, security and resource extraction in a way that both sides were richer for it.

The fast-paced, flexible and shrewd mentality of the merchants of Xavior was at time alien to dusklanders, but none the less fascinating, especially in how advanced it was becoming. Even with the Halle Kemiha and the unorthodox experimentation in Badja Kiri, they always found themselves lagging behind the Xaviorards in many techniques, it was no secret to anyone, as the flow of tools, utensils and devices from the 12 to the 7 had become the main form of trade in the dusklands. While there was some discomfort over it, ultimately, a certain sense of conformity took over.

"Why spend our minds and focus on retreading what they did in Eunomia" became the mindset of intellectuals in the Halle Kemiha, instead of trying to find their path to iron and catching up, they took that as a chance, "Since our allies provide that, let us focus on other things, explore the unexplored, the unusual, instead of trying to recreate the hammers and saws of the 12th node, we will be grateful we are given them, and focus on what other tools are yet to be created."

This had already been done, to a sense, as seen in the army. The core elite forces were characteristically dusklanders, clad in the light and opaque plates of Tzurkortze / Orichalk, with halberds and heavy shields, or the swamp-born light scouts, with elegant bows and poison coated arrows. Meanwhile, the bulk of the force, was made of bronze, iron and steel soldiers, levied from the ranks of civilian society, lancers and crossbowmen.

But that was the military, now, said mindset was dominating the rest of society, making dusklander sciences more akin to a branching off and being as isolationist as the rest of their night dwelling society. Soon said the focus would result in what most foreigners would call "Alchemy" after the group of magistrates of a similar name, soon, but not quite yet.

This led to a further friendship and reliance on the 12, no further exemplified than when the magistrate and the council finally realised an advantageous deal. The land-lease act gave to Eunomia a rotating right to lands and facilities within Dusklander administered zones. In Node 13, this was perhaps a bit of a ploy, giving the locals a taste of rougher more demanding farmers and landlords in the fertile lands of the west so perhaps they become more willing to join the dusklander owned communitarian farms to the east, but the act also included land within the Dusklands, most in the southern highlands of Node 7 were of little use to the dusklanders outside of a few llama herds, the land was however good for husbandry, with cattle, horses and some saurians being able to make use of the flat grassland with a notable lack of predators and chaos riddled wolves, and with just the signing of a few terms and conditions, aspiring or veteran cattle ranchers from the 12 could have a piece of that.

♦ The Notes of Marcus, the Pseudo-Paladin II

Be warned, traveller, of very real danger in the dusklands.

Accustomed to brighter lights, of a morning with singing birds and rays of sunshine, my body completely lost its sense of time, I was aiming to wake up at the hour when the rooster crows, but by the time I was up, it was almost midday, far from the morning time I had sought.

Rushing down, almost forgetting to dress properly, I caught the last servings of the accommodation's breakfast, narrowly avoiding a fate of imbalanced meals for the rest of the day.

This was also my first serving of the local breakfast, and well, it is an experience to be sure.

I already knew that in my heart, we all know the dusklanders hold extreme prejudice towards pastries, seeing milk and eggs as unclean, filthy even, how they think that but are more than okay with devouring ants, snails, frogs and whatever crawls in the shores of rivers is truly a mystery to all the normal people of the world. Nevertheless, what is important is that the typical pies, biscuits, bread too, would be off the table, and so would a hearty eunomian eggs and bacon breakfast. For a moment I was even scared it would all be honeyed fish or ants.

The truth was gentler. They do make bread, be it flatbread, made with sugar and dried grapes or nuts, there is something akin to a bread loaf, but it seemed to have been made by planting seeds onto a flour and honey mix and letting it germinate and create a few roots before it was baked. The taste was... nut-ish, sweet and a bit spicy, very hard to chew and harder still to digest, not for me but I would not say unpleasant. There was a variety of confectionery such as flavoured acacia gum, and what I noticed most dusklanders eating in the main hall was an acai paste with sliced fruit. Many sweet options, a very little savoury, I could see the struggle in the face of the Eunominite envoy as he could not find a thing to replace a meat and eggs filled breakfast.

For drink we were set off well, tea, most gentle, but there was one dark thing, made of this bean, I think it called kohfii? coffee? A very bitter tea, but recommended over and over to me because it was among the 'flame teas'. Not to be confused with fire tea. I will try to explain, but it confuses me still, the dusklanders separate their tea into various categories, the flame tea is one that seems to make one more energetic, active, while fire tea is a spicy, warm ginger tea meant to warm up. Once the servants understood I did not want coffee they finally offered me alternative options of flame tea, ginseng was pleasant and guarana was sincerely closer to a juice, but tasty.

Continuing with drinks, there are options beyond tea, juices for example, and we all know how the dusklander love their lemonades and citric juices. There wasn't much of a surprise outside of the fruits rare in my homeland, the one thing I wanted to share was a peculiar drink, it was made of a soy broth mixed with lemon juice, dense and yet with a hint of acid, pretty good actually. Soy was recently introduced to Dusklander society as their occupation of the 13 progressed and both it and sheep wool had become the latest fascination in their society.

Why, the main river of the 13, The core river of Anak'Thas first city, with so many noble names given by the followers of the accursed god, was simply called Mopotofo Tsonya by the dusklanders, Sheep River. Isn't it hilarious? I know for sure I am not calling it anything else.

Anyway, continuing on, after breakfast and my thorough analysis of all dishes served, it was time to face the city and continue my investigation of topics key to the interests of my people. And what timing for that it was! Because at that very day, a massive movement of troops was happening within the city, some were even training not too far from me, and since there is an interest in the dusklander military, especially to the paladins who have been seeking to recruit locally, I saw it as my duty to report on it.

They were marching down the stone walkways of the swampy city and

♦ A well oiled machine

"So. What should we do? There is a crime, but I do not think we should push for charges. The man is obviously no spy. Today he was set off to take notes on our army, instead, he wasted all of his paper on page after page of food descriptions, and I mean all of it, he is begging for more paper right now" the female magistrate with short hair questioned. Her superior agreed, he was a tall man with a sharp moustache that further enhanced the contrast of inky black hair and paper white skin.

"But, he did use harsh words against our goddess." she added.

Shaking his head, her superior dismissed such concerns. "We are not Anakists, we are not zealots, we are a people of logic who will not be thrown to a fervent fit by mere words against our goddess," he said. "He did not see you checking those papers, correct?"

"I was invisible and he was a snoring mess on his bed." she waved off the worry "He barely tried to hide it and had no system in place to avoid tampering, if I wanted I could learn his handwriting and by means of that forge letters, if that finds itself necessary." she stopped for a moment. "To clarify, I was not offended, I would never be a victim of strong emotions and sunlike behaviour, my worry was the perception he might give to others through his writing."

"That is valid, and you did well with what you had, your plan would have been good, but, I think you assume there is worth to him when there isn't, I sought information already, compared it, and it turns out he is just a minor administrative clerk, I do not even believe he was officially sent." this made the woman raise an eyebrow. "So not a spy, as you said, but maybe someone who thinks he is one? Or just... a complex character."

"And a potential diplomatic faux pas." she added, rubbing her chin. "You intend to poke at the actual incoming diplomats using him?"

"Possibly. Yes. The Halle Koholle has reached a good stance with the Xaviorard sunlanders but the Benean and their Paladins are still a wild card, the military and provincial guards are worried about them trying to hire from our ranks, so we need some active situations to test them." he smiled. "So, for the time being, I will need you to act as the nanny of this man. If that is fine with you. Here, he requested paper after his little issue, it will give you a good chance to present yourself to him."

She took a deep breath. There went her plan to be hired in the newly made policing force to go occupy sunlander cities in the 13, suggesting it now was to basically spit in the face of her superior, so was voicing her doubts if such a close watch over a mere overweight man was an actual necessary task. "Of course my commandant. I will keep you informed."

Somewhere in the frozen part of the Daman lands, Renault found himself in a squat building crowded by plenty of other buildings. This particular abode was filled with smoke from both a roaring hearth and the haze of some smokables the patrons of the establishment bought from a strange plant woman behind the bar. She was a unique thing, Renault having never seen such a person before, with a pale green skin, glossy black eyes and protrusions of leaves and grassy stalks here and there, giving her not only a full head of ‘hair’ but grassy tassels on her joints. The paladin didn’t mean to stare, but he did, hidden behind the lip of his clay cup and hunched on a low seated table — turns out posture isn’t too important to hunchbacked wolf people and mutated hippos.

A voice lilted over the sounds of the other patrons.

“Hey.”

Renault turned from his cup and looked up at a tall woman staring down at him. She was plain but pretty, with little mutation other than a stray scale or four on her left cheek and blazing yellow eyes. The paladin gave her a sly smile in return. Without returning it, she continued. “And who might you be?”

Pumping an eyebrow, Renault answered, “Who’s asking?”

“Him.” The lady jabbed a thumb behind her, pointing out a large man with an angry misshapen face, playing with a sharp dagger.

“EUGH!” Renault flinched. The response wasn’t taken well and the large man bumbled out of his chair. As he approached, he was winged by two other Damans, each with a sharp blade.

The paladin stood up, finding himself the same height as the woman. He folded his arms under his cloak, fingers reaching for the metal ends of his armaments. “You too?” He asked with a serious inflection.

“Not my fight,” the woman replied and stepped out of the way.

“I know who you are,” The big man said, his voice shutting down all the chatter of the building. He pointed with his chin at Renault’s forehead, or more specifically, the chamomile tattoo that was kissed upon it. “You’re one of the Beneans.”

“Astute observation my obtuse friend,” Renault grit his teeth. “I don’t suppose this is a welcome party?”

“I put a lot of money on MASTEKEN in that first round,” the big man growled.

“What in the hell is a MASTEKEN?” Renault balked.

“That’s it!” The big man looked at his wingmen. “Get me my reimbursement.”

Both of the bodyguards took menacing steps forward. Renault fell into a low stance and shrugged his cloak behind him, to reveal his martial form. He stood crouched, as if about to strike, one hand on the long scabbard of a sheathed blade, the other on it’s hilt, as if he was about to draw it. He stared down the closest of the wingment, enough to make them stop in their tracks.

“Do you know the secret way of the blade?” Renault asked. “It’s said a true master can kill a foe by simply unsheathing their blade.” He shook his sheathed blade to bring attention to it. “The trick is that I can only swipe outwards in one predictable direction, so it is pure skill and speed that drives the sword into the neck of the enemy. Will you be ready for it?”

A bead of sweat began to form on the Daman’s forehead as he stared at Renault’s stone cold visage. He took a step forward. Renault tugged on the end of his blade, but instead of unsheathing it with a swipe, he let go — the blade flying pommel first in a straight line and smashing into the Daman’s nose with a bloody pop. The enemy howled but Renault already had pulled a different blade from the other side of his hip, the steel edge gutting the man.

The other bodyguard swung, but Renault blurred under it and came up with a headbutt — crashing against the strongman’s chin and knocking him backwards. With the enemy reeling, Renault tossed two needles from seemingly nowhere, the spines shooting into the man’s exposed neck. With a fluid movement, he spun back to the big man, the tip of his blade on the back of his neck.

Sweating, the big man had his hands held up and a scared looked stamped into his face. Then with a blast of air, the door to the establishment opened and in walked a strange figure, clad in a thick red cloak, her face remained unseen, almost as if it was only an expressionless dark void, her clothes, from what could be seen from the small peeks as the cloak moved, was something that was trying really hard to be Daman in style, but not quite there, the leather was seamlessly cut, the fabric was stainless and the boot, made of albino crocodile leather, while Daman-ish in pride and excess, seemed to have been crafted by careful hands, rather than just cutting the thing in two halves and forcing one’s feet in what was left . Renault recognized the red cloak as the sign he was waiting for and grinned. “Excuse me gentlemen, my date is here.”

Folding his sword back under his cloak, Renault walked from the fight scene and bumped his shoulder against hers before whispering. “You’re late.”

“I am not. This is the exact moment in which I said I would be here, as seen from the height of the moon and star positions.” she replied in genuine annoyance at the implication, as if Renault had started the conversation by declaring she was a failure, a broken clock. In truth, she had been waiting outside for quite a while just to make sure she was exactly punctual, not a moment too early or too late. “Nevertheless, shall we start our date? If you have more friends to play with I can wait for as long as you need.”

“I think I’ve played plenty,” Renault answered before shoving a hand behind him and waving at the mess he caused. “Au revoir!” His voice turned low as he looked back at the contact. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

---

The pair walked away from the smoky building and into the maze that was the unplanned town. Snow was starting to fall, dusting the air and the ground alike as they walked in silence. Due to the nature of the weather, not even a winter bird peeped, leaving the two in an echo with only the sound of the snow brushing against each other, that was until Renault broke the trance.

“So, where is master Jole?”

“Ah. Sun’s shine upon this land!” the figure blurted in clear frustration, she had been suspicious the whole time, the data was not adding up, but she had hopeful theories of perhaps the man being an envoy or a dummy, she herself had paid a Daman vulpine woman to be her stand-in for the meeting at first, but she had run off with her silver instead. “I expected you to know that.”

She pulled back the cloak to reveal her full face, or rather, a second mask hiding beneath the first, as the face was fully covered by black fabric. She wore a tiara of platinum adorning her black hair. “I am a magistrate. Under Dzallitsunya. I take you are a paladin, under Benea?”

Renault stopped, the pair coming to a halt. He stared long and hard at her covered face, pinching his chin and squinting. “Son of a bitch, this isn’t a joke is it?” He sighed and hung his head.

Defeated, he added. “Renault, Blade of Benea.”

“Fora, expedition leader of the Halle Kemiha.” she added, shaking her head too. “Seems like our lines of Daman contacts found themselves tangled up. Unfortunate.” she added, once again calmer, like a proper magistrate. “But the knowledge you too found Jole is at least reassuring, lest he too turns out to be a Xaviorard council agent or even an Anak’Thas zealot.”

“If it’s the latter, then we can take turns venting our stress,” Renault looked up at the snowy sky and blinked as the flakes started to kiss his face. He let out a puff of frozen air and hummed a thought. “I have another lead, Fora.” He tried the name out. “If you aren’t opposed to working with a paladin.”
Given her experience with the Daman so far, it would be a massive step up. “I see no issue in that, our masters are allies and friends, so helping each other seems logical.” she nodded, but Renault would feel, despite the covered face, that she held an inquisitive glare, actively measuring how much she actually believed what she had just said.

Peeking from the corner of his eye, Renault gave her a sideways glance. “I was thinking the same thing. Are you squeamish?”

“I became leader of the expedition branch by showing extreme prowess in anatomical research of unusual beasts. I could handle poking at a bowl of Maelite bug entrails, so I believe it's statistically unlikely I will meet something more nauseating than that?” She spoke the words like someone delivering a résumé. “Unless you mean bodily harm? Provided it's fruitful I would not mind it.”

Renault slowly turned to her and cocked a brow. He opened his mouth but then thought for a second before changing his tone and saying. “There is a business nearby, a shady one, where in a surgeon is known to ‘fix’ recently captured slaves to increase their market value. He makes his money via royalties on the sale and is quite popular since a majority of his fixes use ambrosian limbs. Do you see where I’m going with this?” Before she could answer, Renault added.

“I have reason to believe the higher craftsmanship is of Jole, meaning the surgeon has a link to his workshop, but we would need to go undercover to confirm their quality — and since you’re clearly the smarter of us.” He paused, “well, how would you like to be a newly christened slave-driver?”

“My goddess does have a very, uhm, firm stance towards slavery. My orders were, if given the chance, to poison and torment slavers at will. It was optional though, extra curricular activity, so I may hold off on that for our mission, but overall, let’s try to keep my time as your mistress to a minimum, okay? Having a slave wouldn’t be good for my reputation.” she smirked, no mask could hide that. “Now, do you have your own cuffs or should I bring my own?”

“Benea save me, I can already see this is going to your head.” Renault pinched the bridge of his nose. A long pause. Through the snow, one could practically hear Renault’s gears turning until he finally snapped a finger. “Ah! No need for cuffs, my dear Fora. I’d pretend I have a missing arm, hence our reason for the visit, and we can find a fake soul-biter to put around my neck. Just make sure you get the information out of him we need before he finds out I have all my digits.”

“Huh~” she seemed in a much better mood than a moment before already, the stage was being set again in her mind. “I will bring enough wine and dream honey, by the end of it the man wouldn’t be able to tell how many necks you have, much less arms.”

“It’s a date then!” Renault clapped his hands together. “Just, uhm, save some of that dream honey, would you?”

The border between the Fungal Marshes and the unnamed lands of Node 23 had been transformed over a matter of weeks. Land had been cleared for line of sight, a deep trench dug so that any attack would be at a disadvantage and the resources of both projects used to build a great defensive wall made of a mixture of wood, giant mushroom, dirt and stone. While a wall built completely of stone might have been more solid, the Fungal Marshes alone didn't have enough stone for the project, so it would have to be dug up and transported from another region... which was possible, but it would have taken months or even years to create a fully stone wall on this scale and they simply didn't have the time for that.

Besides, it was hoped that the combination of materials making up the wall would prove effective in its own right. After all, just because something was good at digging into dirt didn't mean it could get through stone and vice versa. Once you threw in the timber and mushroom it would prove to be a fairly solid obstruction. Once you factored in the trench in front of it and the armed solders who would be patrolling it, in theory it would be enough to stop the invading monsters dead. If that was what was going to happen was yet to be seen.

Regent-Queen Oxana was still a month or two away from giving birth, but the stresses of pregnancy on her body had caused her to slow down and take a less stressful role in the day to day managing of the kingdom of Vex, allowing other members of her government to handle the bulk of the work while she handled the paperwork side of affairs.

While Node 28 had been created as a toxic, volcanic hellscape in which organic life was unwanted and ill suited with death being the certain outcome of anything foolish enough to enter it, several interesting discoveries had been made along its border. New weapons of war that were being tested and developed as various volatile powders started to prove their worth, even as old and tested weapons were improved with new designs.

Despite the storm clouds that heralded harsh times of war in the future, Vex's present was brighter then ever.

---

Vatarr needed more power. While in singular combat he was confident that he could take on any opponent, his skirmish into Node 23 had proven that he wasn't fighting a singular foe. Fighting an army alone was not impossible, but he needed to stack the odds in his favor and that would require the aid of those humans that lived in his lands. Of course he had given his word that he wouldn't demand their allegiance to him and he fully intended to keep his word; He wouldn't to conscript them. They were already preparing for war because they knew that the infection of Nodes 18 and 23 was a threat that needed to be stopped, even if they had yet to see it for themselves.

He couldn't help but feel proud of them for that. But they needed to be more if he wanted them to have any hope of standing against the infected tide... and Vatarr had an idea of how to do that.

Whenever he had claimed Nodes in the past, while they had flooded him with god like power, he had also noticed that he had been spending some of his power in turn. At first it was only a small amount, but as time passed he had noticed that bigger 'donations' were required without truly grasping why. He had his theories, but seeing how quickly his mortals had advanced as far as ideas and technologies went he started to put two and two together.

Naturally, evolution of society and creatures were generally slow paced. Something that happened over generations as circumstances changed and solutions were required. Whatever he was offering up was directly granting his followers ideas, knowledge and abilities on a board scale.

Logically, he needed to give them more.

So he flew to Node 29. Between Life and Death and his new armor, it wasn't even a contest as the chaotic cat squid was dashed to pieces and the Node claimed. For about a third of the territory, it seemed as if the Volcanic Bulwark was being extended as more fire, stone and poisonous air claimed more ground... but the nature of the land would soon change as fire gave was to snow and ice. A forest of pine trees sprung into existence on a regional scale, their evergreen branches covered in snow and icicles while a chill wind blew. A realm of fire and ice that was beautiful, if harsh and unforgiving.

Then he turned his attention to Node 31.

This trip took a bit longer, if only because the region was bigger. If a chaos beast called this region home Vatarr didn't see it, flying directly to the Node itself and planting his hand upon it. Around Node 31, the world froze. The temperature plummeted as the wind picked up into a bone cutting gale, condemning this realm to an wind blasted, ice covered desert in which life shouldn't have been able to exist for any period of time.

And yet, even as Vatarr focused on the offering of his energy to fuel the development of mortal kind in his realm, he could still feel the presence of living things existing in this harsh, unforgiving and brutal landscape. It actually made him chuckle just a little to himself; Life existed where it could... life existed where it couldn't.

With the task he had set out to do complete, Vatarr used the last of his might to ward the Node and let him know if anyone came to take it from him before at last turning towards home and taking flight once more.

Great fields of golden grains washed across many of the rolling plains of the 12th realm, but one of those fertile plots was not the destination of the god who seldom left his home in the city. No Xavior’s destination was one where one within a ring of verdant natural vegetation which then gave way to hardier fare that looked withered even in health and then final raw, baked earth surrounding a glowing pool of lava which bubbled up from the earth.

For as long as any could remember these had been places to be avoided, if not for the heat then for the way the air choked the life out of all but the great scaly salamanders who lounged around its edges. Their presence was mostly lacking around this one however, the beasts having been ousted by humans who really had no business in the area.

Constructs of stone and steel had been erected that could withstand the heat, while the humans themselves were clad from head to airtight toe in form obscuring outfits made a glossy material.and that featured odd beaks over their mouths and noses. The garbs did not look comfortable, but Xavior, who had elected to go in bare rather than risk any of his finely woven clothing, imagined it was better than choking and/or being roasted to death

Had he not known the man responsible for all this, he might have wondered what madness had brought on this little enterprise. However he was entirely aware of who was behind all this and so sought out the demon in question with all due haste.

As expected he found Damian, the three spell wizard turned self declared scientist, at the most dangerous place possible: right next to the pool of lava. Or to be more specific, standing on a small platform raised above the lava, and leaning over to peer into it while his two assistants and a salamander watched on.

One of the assistants managed to rip their gaze from Damian for long enough to see Xavior approaching, and did his level best to inform the demon of the god’s arrival without interrupting his work or startling him enough that he fell in the lava. He succeeded (just, there was a close call and a bit of teetering) and so by the time Xavior had worked his way through the various scaffolding and support staff Damian was coming on down from the steel platform, holding a glowing stone in between a pair of tongs and, the god assumed, looking very pleased behind the beaky breathing mask.

“Ah, my god! So glad you could come and see my latest and greatest discovery” he proclaimed, the muffling of the mask doing little to suppress his loud enthusiasm, before extending the tongs and dropping the still steaming stone into Xavior’s open palm. The god caught it without a fuss and then held it up to get a closer look, squinting as he saw the familiar throbbing of an unstable crystal which now had globs of molten energy bubbling through it which, had he know what one was, he would have compared to a lava lamp.

Xavior’s examination of this discovery was then interrupted by a big long wet thing licking him, much to his vocal disgust.

“Oh don’t mind Bubbles, it’s just how she gets to know people,” Damian informed his god, as said god wiped his face clear of salamander drool and the oversized lizard herself used that same drool to produce more of her namesake frothing around her mouth.

“Ech” the god complained as he shook off a hand, before asking “what do you even have it… Her, around for? If you wanted a pet, you could have gotten you a raptor”

“Oh Bubbles is no mere pet, she is the key to all of this” the demon dramatically cast a sweeping gesture around the lavaside outpost, “to be specific, it is her shed skin, and that of some others we have domesticated, that has allowed us to insulate ourselves against the heat and thus make the discovery of the age”

“Yes this.. Stone. What exactly am I looking at?” Xavior asked, getting back on track

“Well now, this was an unstable crystal, but by filling it with the raw essence of the earth, in this case lava, I have managed to stabilize the energy. Balancing the chaotic energy with the, shall we call it, order energy inherent within land in a stabilized node” Damian explained “and before you ask, it has to be lava because that is the only part of the land that is… mmmm. Alive and energetic in a same way even remotely comparable to chaos energy. You can’t just shove dirt or some other dead matter in there. Believe me, I’ve tried”

“And this has allowed you too…” Xavior coaxed him on

“Why do this of course!” Damian declared, snatching the crystal from Xavior’s hands, juggling it a few times because it was still quite hot even through the protective gloves, and then finally catching it and thrusting it skywards and pulsing a tiny amount of power into it. Rather than begin to explode like the unstable crystals, this one launched a gout of flame straight up into the air for several seconds before it guttered out.

Xavior blinked a few times and then asked “I take it that wasn't something you learned in a ‘borrowed’ spellbook?” rhetorically.

“Not at all! In-fact, that was hardly me at all, and was instead (almost) all the magmatic gem’s stored power” Damian declared proudly, “and that’s not all we can make them do. Actually that's probably one of the simplest things. With proper refining? Oh there is no end to the possibilities.”

“You don't say,” Xavior replied, having seen the notes “I’m impressed, funding you continues to pay dividends it seems”

“I am honored by your patronage. It has allowed me to plumb the depths of this world’s possibilities, and it only cost me an arm and a leg ha ha!” Damian jokes

Xavior nodded and then had a concerned thought which prompted him to ask “Wait… you haven't lost another arm have you?”

“Oh no no no” the demon insisted reassuringly.

“Ah good” the god said with a relieved sigh.

“Now the leg on the other hand-”

♦ Light and Lightning

Badja Kiri, the frontier campus, was radial in shape, a central shared circular area, with a ring of sectors around it, each sector dedicated to one area of study. The central area had been left between a garden and just untamed wilds, meant for socialisation and relaxation, it stood in contrast to the many cutting edge buildings just across the street, with the core of dormitories, laboratories, libraries and other facilities dedicated to learning preferring to stay close to each other in the central ring. The outer layers expanded depending on the needs of the sector, the greenhouses of the botanical studies, the cages and prisons of the study of biology, the active projects of engineering and the warehouses of umbrium and other chemicals too toxic or flammable.

And all that rose in the middle of nowhere, a figurative oasis of learning, a literal oasis with its aqueduct and dams, and it all started as a little outpost that was never meant to have grown into what it had become. Badja Kiri, the dark gate, was situated in the only known crossing from Node 7 to the Maelite, dusklanders obviously had great interest in the dark, so most intellectuals naturally had visited the place a few times, seeking the elusive umbrium. When the information exchange with Node 12 started, it flowed there, when the three Halle were created, Halle Kemiha found no other place more fit to call home than it. The goddess herself had come to sponsor the building, letting her best engineers reshape the land, creating routes for food and materials to flow in easily, even hiring foreigners though few matched the magistrate precision in mathematics. The end result was almost more fit to legend than reality, from the artificial lake where engineers tested new ship schematics to the absurd abundance of libraries where one might find more information about their hometown than they would find in their own homeland, to foul smell of the fields bathed in distilled acid.

Djaro was one of the students in this facility, which to him was embarrassing. This was the opposite of what one would expect, he was a normal human, not a magi, and he was part of the single most prestigious of the schools, the study of heavenly elements, by all measures he was exceptional among the exceptional. But all that had been given to him not by merit proper, but by luck.

When younger, the boy worked for his family, one of the earliest to settle in the highlands, once a very prestigious one but fallen quite sharply into decadence given the upheaval when the magistrates overtook the clan structure. His work was simple, to carry goods on the back of llamas across the plains, but all of it changed with one bad decision of his, to brave said path during a bad day of the rain season. One lightning strike and his whole pack was dead and he barely made it, his body burned and scarred with the vein like mark of thunder.

It took the best and wisest of the duskland to save his life, but in exchange, the best and wisest of the dusklands took what they gave, and the boy found himself practically kidnapped into the academic world of the Halle Kemiha. Years later, he had become a natural to it, but still, to hold such a position of prestige having never been particularly bright himself still made he feel like an outsider, not to mention, some of the scientists didn't see him quite like an equal either.

"Yohoo~" A female magistrate with smooth dark hair and dark glasses rushed past the crowd, almost pouncing at Djaro. "Sooooo! How are you doing today? Did you think about my proposal? I promise it will just be a few magnesium probes, I wouldn't want to hurt Mava's pet, right~?"

He sighed. "Fuck off Radja. Don't you have a child to torture or something?"

The older woman gasped. "Why... how rude. When have I ever done anything to deserve that?" she shook her head. "Kids these days. I swear, anyone born after the world started just doesn't know how to do anything but eat coconut chips and be rude. Don't you agree pal~?" she turned thinking she would see one of her fans and sycophants, instead meeting the unimpressed eyes of a veteran. "Oh. Nyoriko."

"Hello Radjakiri. Say, the biological sector is quite far, isn't it? Any reason why you are haunting the halls of the upper engineering lab?"

"Mmm. I just like the food, you gearheads make a lovely salad, you know? Thinly sliced tomatoes, very delish... I saw my friend here. Thought I would say hi." she twirled her dark hair. "Welp. Back to work I guess, they say my sector is getting a little gift from node 13 soon~ See you two later!"

Nyoriko was a human much like Djaro, heir greying brown hair fashionably cut around the shoulder, contrasting with her darker skin. Her cold stare sent off Radja, who slithered away when facing perhaps the single most respected human of the Halle Miradja. "I swear." the engineer started "You would think Nora getting sent off would result in an improvement in the biological sector, but this Radja makes me miss her."

Adjusting her purple tinted glasses, she turned to face the young man. "Well. Nevertheless, how are you doing Mister Djaro? I take you are here to gather the latest stained glass for the heavenly sector?"

In a much better mood now that the weirdo was off, Djaro nodded. "Ayup. Heh, seems like I am falling back to my old work. Just transporting stuff about. It's fine though, it's what I prefer."

"Hmm? You think so?" she stared quite intently, although she was short and probably couldn't throw a punch, something about her eyes had the intensity of the stare of a wolf king. "If that is the case, then why not work for me here in the engineering sector? Heavenly studies, philosophy, arts, gears, if you think you should just carry stuff around, the sector wouldn't matter, yes?"

He gasped. "Well. You see uh..."

"You like the heavenly studies in particular, no?"

"Y-yeah."

"And why is that?"

"... Well... There is something about... the heavenly elements. Light and Lightning. They are so majestic yet so wild, power in its rawest form, even the crystal works of Eunomia pale in comparison. And even the gods, as Dzallitsunya confessed, cannot reach so far into the celestial realm. And yet, to work with light and lightning, it's such a delicate process."

"That is true. Lightning has hurt me a few times, but I escaped light alright" she tapped her glasses.

"Master Nyoriko, may I ask, why didn't you follow Dzallitsunya when she was making the first magistrates, you are, uhm, unblinded..."

"I think I look cuter when tanned, paper white just wouldn't go well with my aesthetic." she joked. "But perhaps... I am a prideful person. I like working hard for what I have, I like taming the beast of mathematics with no divine blessing." she patted the boy in the head. "Perhaps we are similar in that way, no?"

"Prideful? I wouldn't..."

"But I am older and less of a fool, I know for sure that my work was never damaged by my decisions, can you say the same?" she smirked. "Food for thought, you should probably rush back to Seer Mava with the glass, before he thinks I am trying to steal you. But if you want to talk again later, there will be a storm when the morning comes, we can go by the copper totems and watch the lights."

---

Mava stood in the central hall, his assistants adjusting glass panes, mirrors and candles... though the methodology was unclear, in fact, despite being so prestigious, this sector had never truly given any results, people merely respected them for their theme.

"Mister Djaro. You are terribly late." the short magistrate announced before even turning to face the newly arrived student. "You also smell of sulphur, I am guessing you were spending you time dating that girl from the chemical sector? Didn't I say to come here as soon as you had the oils and the glass?"

"Well, you see master, I..."

"Close the door, please. My work is gentle like an orchid, any hint of light and it will burn and wither."

"Right. Right. The door." It was midnight and there was very little wind despite the overcast skies, but his master was very peculiar about his 'work'. "Anyway, as I was saying, she needed help finishing a few concoctions and potions, since today is overcast I assumed I would be out of stargazing duties?"

"Hmm..." the magistrate tapped his chin "I guess today IS overcast. Huh. Well. I will be benevolent this time, try to be more punctual." he reached to take the materials and then waved off. Joining the rest of the stargazers, Djaro had nothing to do but watch the light show of colours and shadows as the candles and lamps were arranged in accordance to constellations and reflected on tinted glass. Sometimes he tried to spend his time reading, but the light rays always stole his focus.

Due to Mava's demands, the room was silent, the crackling of fire, the breathing of the other bored stargazers, the steps of the assistants in the candle ritual, the master himself eating his nails as if today would be the day they discovered the spell to milk celestial energy straight from the sky (it wouldn't), and the humming in his ear, incessant, as it had been since he was thunderstruck.

The ringing hum would change as he focused on certain things, and go fully silent when he saw what wasn't supposed to be there, like the hollow rays of light that emanated from the lava crystal light forcing its energised power past a pane of umbrium tinted glass. He tried to not focus on that, so far whatever impulse overtook him when following these visions only led to trouble, like when he tried to dip his hand into a mercury substance, entranced by the fluid mirror.

A distraction soon presented itself, but it was far from calming. The latest caravan of goods had arrived, meaning fresh food, new tools, new crystals from Eunomia... and prisoners. Radjakiri was there again, of course she was, leader of the biological sector, she was one of the main receivers of the latter. The occupation of node 13 had produced many... undesirable individuals. Brigands, invading beastfolk, Anak'thite zealots, soon hanging every foolish kid who thought about raiding a Paladin supply line felt like a waste, especially with the goddess not buying the whole idea of "leave them hanging to send a message" other cultures might subscribe to.

Then the Halle Kemiha provided an alternative solution, instead of wasting human life in executions or worse, putting them to work for life in a regime of slavery, they proposed finding an 'alternative use' for it, something to 'advance the sciences' and 'save lives'. Djaro could bet any of those in the cage would rather take the rope around their neck over being dragged to Radjakiri's catacombs, to be the first to test the latest medicine and potions, the effects of certain substances on the human body, or to be torn apart like toys, among other dark things one could only speculate about.

And yet, again, most of those in the cage would rather take Radja ripping their still beating hearts out of them over the second district master rushing over the cages like a vulture. Huruh was what people took to call the leader of the studies of the mind, she was youthful and curious, smart, as any magistrate in a position of power, but knew no boundaries. Infamous before the 'prisoner proposal' was put in effect, people were already saying she was insane given her interest in watching people die to see what happened to the mind and a sincere proposal of burning books to see if that would result in smarter demons. Now, with the prisoners, she had bloomed into a twisted flower fully.

Most prisons in the duskland were left comfortably dark and damp, so one may have respite and think about what they have done. Sunlanders complain, of course, but it was seen by the dusklanders as merciful. Huruh invented the opposite of that, the 'bright rooms', to study the harmful effects of excessive light upon one's mind, she crafted a room of pure white, with reflective white marble floors, stainless white walls and so much pure light one could not see their own shadow, even the jailers were made to wear white cloths when dealing with the prisoners, with white masks and white caps and always changing their shoes as to not stain the floors. The only extra colour that made its way into the white rooms was the eventual streak of red when violence and madness occurred.

Both her and Radja had particular eyes over the single beastman of the batch, a captured slave taker and a rarity, though lacking the implants that had become so desired by the dusklander scientists, it still would provide great results to whichever of the two got to 'break down' the man-beast. It didn't take long before they were bickering with each other and the commotion started to grow.

Djaro almost felt sympathy for the thing, before reminding himself these were zealots and slavers, ones that would destroy him and everything he loved for the sake of their demented sunlander desires. Still, it was easy to see himself in there, being one of the test subjects of these maniacs.

"Mister Djaro" Mava called for his attention. "Since you are the closest to the window, could you please throw a brick at the head of those two barbarians outside? Their yelling is upsetting my candles."

"I think that would be a crime Master Mava."

"Hmm... Shame. The ash in the trays then, perhaps? That would just be a misdemeanour, and for all I know, you are still dating that sulphur smelling girl and was never here to start with."

---

The early morning was arriving soon, not even the overcast sky could hide this, it almost made Djaro a bit tense as the memory of the day he was hit by lightning was alive in his memory. It was safe in the campus, however, as Miss Nyoriko's greatest work had been the copper totems standing tall and consuming all incoming thunderbolts. The main concentration of them was exactly where he was going, an invitation by her was not one you could refuse.

"Good morning!" Yelled the magistrate Manya, grabbing his arm and squeezing it. "Been a while since I last saw you~"

"Didn't we just meet? Master Mava yelled with me because of you." he stroked her pale-ish purple hair and delivered a kiss to her forehead. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be back to the dorm for the day?"

"Heard you were out on a date with Miss Nyoriko and I couldn't just let you go alone! That woman in dangerous~"

"She is uh... too old for me? And married to."

"Oh! Oh! Wanna know I fun story I overheard? Hmm? Sooooo, they say once, Miss Nyoriko had an eureka moment, like, in the middle of the 'act' with her husband, do you get what I mean? She just stopped, muttered some equation, and went off to grab the nearest paper sheet to write it down."

"I... ewww." Djaro shook his head. "I could have lived without info on any teacher's sex life... What in the shining hell! Manya!"

Manya laughed out loud. "Well~ I cannot forget this type of information given I am a cute little magi, and now neither can you. Have fun with that." she made a bow-like movement as if striking her boyfriend, before gasping as he was still shocked, wide eyed. "Oh come on its not that bad, I know worse info, this one, I'd say, is kinda... cute in a way?"

Djaro gulped, continuing to stare.

"What? Don't you agree? I would say this tale is quite cute, even if not exactly true." Nyoriko added, adjusting her glasses, this pair was gold trimmed with green lenses, she placed a hand in the purple tinted hair of the magistrate girl. "You magis always assuming we normal humans need to take notes whenever we think anything."

"Oh. Hi. Miss Nyoriko. Good Morning." The magistrate was almost going invisible, the intense sweating threatening to wash off the make up. "I brought the samples you requested, by the way."

"Samples?" Djaro questioned, but Nyoriko was now rushing the two into the amphitheatre like observation post overlooking the lightning rods.

When inside, the two women were quick to move to the nearest table, Manya handing the master a few solutions, most of them ones that Djaro worked on while in their dates, a few seemed like blood samples.

"I will take the cart to put them close to the copper totem, Magistrate, you will have to observe it to see if the results..." Nyoriko had started but was stopped by the roar of thunder, as a bolt hit the rod and travelled around the set field.

All the vials seemed to react.

"Well... no cart needed." Nyoriko said covering her mouth, taking off her tinted glasses. "So its true. Huh. I owe Radjakiri a lobster dinner." she picked up one of the vials.

"Manya, what is happening here?" Djaro questioned, squinting his eyes.

"Love. Look. The concoctions you worked on, they all are different from normal. I don't know how. The results. It was statically impossible, they were all anomalous. Results that happened in 1 out of 10 mixtures with you happened 1 to 1. So. I talked with Nyoriko, she started to look up..."

"And everything you worked on shows similar results Djaro." The engineer said in a harsh tone. "I knew something was up when you worked for me a few lunar cycles ago, but I thought you had tampered the results because of a mistake, not because of unusual and even sometimes better results. We all took Radjakiri's theory that the thunder changed you as an illogical hearsay, but now..."

"Now we got you. We got proof~" Radjakiri added, humming as she stepped closer.

"Oh fuck me, its a party now? You.. Won't cut me... right?"

"Don't be silly, if we wanted to hurt you, you would have been hurt already. Mister Djaro, do you even understand what is happening here? You... somehow, charged these solutions, changed them, when interacting with crystals you too bring out any results. Furthermore, the results differ based on your will, two of these concoctions Mister Djaro, were placebos of sugar and water, Manya also gave you the same request, boil them. And yet... somehow, these two vials now contain two different things, the only variable here is your mindset... its miraculous, really." her stare became harsh. "Its the type of miracle that could have helped us, its the type of miracle that Fora went to the Daman seeking, and you had it all this time. Its truly... shameful."

"So. Me, Nyoriko, a few friends, want to perform a few exams, don't worry, I will keep the prodding and probing to a minimum."

"But Mister Mava, wouldn't he need to approve?"

"He resigned." Nyoriko cut him off quickly

"HUH? He just held a class, he didn't seem like he was quitting and he sure isn't old enough to be retiring??"

"He gave his position of lead seer to someone else, the person who will be leading the Halle Kemiha as far as Light and Lightning, as you put it, is concerned."

"Then... who?" He questioned.

"Her..." Nyoriko rose a hand and pointed at Manya, who was coy for the whole ordeal and confrontation. "... boyfriend."

Those words echoed in his head and his eyes widened. "... You have another one Manya? Who is he?"

"Oh for goodness sake. My moon blessed treasure, its you, we just granted you the rank of master." Radjakiri was in a tenuous frontier between joy and rage. "Unlike the pupils, we all knew that sector was nothing but a sham, that is why we joked around saying smoke and mirrors whenever something was false, but it had a special religious purpose, so we kept feeding it resources. Did it never hit you as odd why the lightning rod studies were done by the engineers not those who studied the heavenly elements? You, however, changed this picture with those little magic fingers of yours, and you will have to take the responsibility one way or another."

“The pulses are continuous.” One of the Artificer-Priests reported to Anak’thas. The two of them were standing on a balcony overlooking the central hall that had been build around the mysterious node. Below Artificer-Priests were scurrying around. Some were handling brass instruments or silvery orbs. Others were interacting with a glyph-matrix in an attempt to glean more information from the reality controlling stone.

A pendulum was going back and forth behind Anak’thas. It mimicked the constant rhythm of the observed pulses.

“Start preparations for the next test.” Anak’thas announced. A few bells were run left and right. The Artificers working around the nodes quickly hurried away. Holy incense was burned to further enhance the god’s already formidable power.

Anak’thas wove his incantation slowly and carefully. It started as a simple, golden needle that floated between his two hands. Though soon golden strands began to join it, creating a construct of light that started to resemble a spear. Glyphs began to spin themselves around the spear in an effort to further strengthen the attack. For over fifteen minutes the god of the Verdant Realms wove something made of pure destruction. The priests watched on with equal part fear and awe.

And then he unleashed it. The sound of roaring fire erupted through the hall. Blinding light, as if the sun had become a weapon, shot forth from Anak’thas down towards the node. In his heart, he both wished it would work and begged whatever force greater than him that it wouldn’t.

He was secretly elated when the invocation burned itself out. The millions of prayers sang to him over the course of a year by thousands of people had burned in an instant. The Lantern-God was certain that such an invocation could even kill a god.

Yet the node remained untouched. The Artificer-Priests spared no time. They rushed across the bridges build over the vast expanse around the node towards the platform that was built around it. The stone was still, somehow, cool to the touch.

Anak’thas turned around and walked away from the balcony. He needed more results.

“Excavations are going better than expected.” The Artificer-Priest said as he hurriedly followed Anak’thas back into the office of the director of the Gnopolis. “We’ve delved about fifty-three meters around the node.” He continued.

“Nothing changed?” Anak’thas, clearly frustrated, asked.

“Well…something did. The stone has become… warmer to the touch.” The priest reported. “Not extremely but still sensibly warmer.”

“It’s something.” Said Anak’thas. “Anything else? A shard? A tiny creature?”

“We’ve found nothing, my Lord.” Said the Priest.

“How are you faring with the pulses?” The god asked.

“We’ve been trying to synchronize them with anything and everything in the world but.. so far the best we could achieve is having it be used as an accurate measurement of time. But that’s because-“

“It’s so consistent, yes. Anything else? The vibrations of some natural born crystal? Perhaps the waves of air a voice makes?” Anak’thas was grasping at straws and he knew it. Yet he was thirsty for the apparent knowledge his nemesis held. Benea knew more about the nodes than she led on. Far more. Which only begged the question: why was she withholding it?

“We’ll continue looking, my lord.” The priest said, bowed, and then took his leave. Clearly, he wasn’t happy with the lack of progress either. It would vex the man for the coming days and night, Anak’thas knew. He didn’t know his name but he knew he was a man of integrity, wisdom, and knowledge. But he would die someday, and another would come in to take his place. Another who would have to exemplify those same values.

Dawn rose over the south west of the 12th realm where fertile plains met verdant forests, both of which had been repeatedly fertilized by the blood of war. Here human and beast had shed each other's blood over and over, yet while their vitality had bled into the soil, no bones or bodies had left to lie, for instead they had filled bellies and bonfires to fuel the cycle of violence that had sloshed back and forth across the land in waves of crimson and hate.

Failure to strike a decisive blow had not been taken well by the humans. General Rebecca’s string of losses and Pyrrhic victories had seen resources that could have been used to reinforce her battered army directed north and east instead to more successful forces, leaving her to struggle in the mud against their first and most hated foe alone. Only now was she seeing a significant investment by the capital (sans the first), which she felt was well past time.

For perhaps the dozenth time her army marched forth. At its core were her veterans. Survivors if not winners of many battles, who had empowered by the dead such that they stood head, shoulders and broad chest above both of the rank and file she had scrounged up from wherever she could, and of the new bizarrely clad reinforcements she had been furnished with.

It annoyed her a little that the newcomers were not really here because they saw it as their patriotic duty to fight, or because someone had finally seen fit to fulfill her requests for aid on its own merit. No, they were here on a ‘test run’ and acted under the command of one known as Damina, who was riding atop some oversized lizard near the back of the formation from which he would ‘observe the experiment’.

She found herself scowling back at him, the man having been quite the pain to work with. He was an oddball that one, and integrating his own people into her army had been both a pain and only moderately successful.

Then the hulking blue skinned woman shook her head, dismissing the train of thought and instead ran her hand over one of the things she’d gotten out of the collaboration. It looked like a crossbow, only about three times as long and six times as wide, a size such that only a juggernaut like her could carry one around and use it as a personal weapon. It also didn't have a bow, instead it hosted a series of gemstones lined along the inner edges where the arrow would have. ‘Would have’ being the optimum words, because what went in that much wider groove instead was altogether much more fun than a plain arrow.

However she felt about the rest of this operation, Rebecca could not wait to try it out on a live target, and the all too familiar howling coming from the woods they were approaching told her she’d have plenty of those soon enough.

---

The howls of war rang out, calling the packs to do battle once again, and come they did, to cast out the invaders, and to prevent their home from being turned to ash.

These where no scattered clans fighting with tooth, claw and bestial cunning. No, the wolves of the south had both trained and armed themselves for war, first with stolen scraps, and then later from looted corpses.

Arrays of wolves stood ready with long-swords, axes and hammers held in their jaws, ready to smash armored foes, while smaller wolves carried bundles of spears for stronger throwers to use one at a time to strike their enemies from afar. A good number of them had squirmed into rusting armor, while the younger ones carried stolen buckets, ready to rush to put out the fires in the forest that inevitably came with a human assault on their homes.

They were old hands at this, some quite literally. A whole pack of kings made up the mirror of Rabecca’s own veteran core on the wolfish side, muscled brutes in stolen demon armor who had grown strong and towering from gouging on god touched human flesh. Meanwhile many of the rest of the pack where outsiders, come to heed the howl of war with hopes of doing the same.

Today, unfortunately, would not be the effortless feast some of the new arrivals expected. The leaders knew this both from experience and from their scouts, who had detected yet more new and strange contraptions among the human ranks, along with strange ones clad in form obscuring cloths.

Still, it was their home on the line. That they had learned from howls that had traveled all the way from the north, where the ill prepared kings had burned in a fire, brought low by their own arrogance and passivity.

The king of kings, Skullcruncher, would ensure this fate would not befall his realm, no matter what the cost.

The hulking beast, big as a rhinoceros, who had a coat white as death and blood red eyes and who carried a heavy warhammer in its jaws, growled instructions past the handle to his weaponless pack caller, who let loose a howl that began their preemptive strike. Whatever the humans had planned, the wolves would strike them hard and fast to ensure it did not come to pass.

---

They were getting into position now. Rebbeca was familiar enough with this land that she knew exactly where the requested distance from the tree line was, and she’d even made sure they had a hill to park on. Unfortunately, this hill plan had a downside, which was that the larger wheel mounted equivalents of her own new weapon were proving a pain to drag up there. Worse, the hybrid forces were getting in the way of each other as they tried to set up a battle line, which was exactly the worst time to get ambushed by wolves appearing from the underbrush on their left side.

It was also exactly when Rebbeca had expected they would be ambushed, so while the majority of the force scrambled to respond to her commands, the general herself was already aloft with her elites. Instinct had her itching to reach for her twin axes and to dive down into the fray, but she had orders from the council to prioritize weapon testing, and so instead she and her fellow demon juggernauts reached into hip mounted pouches and pulled out one of the set of disks that where held.

As practiced/told, she placed the disk at the bottom of the open air channel where the notch of an arrow might have gone if this were a crossbow. Then she raised it and started pulling power from her horn based mana reserves into a set of crystal wires on the handle and fore grip of the weapon, which caused the gemstones lining the flight groove to glow. In response the gemstone ladened stone disk began to hover, held aloft by geokinetic magics, and then started spinning rapidly, charging both the weapon and it’s ammunition with power until a few dozen heartbeats later she pulled the trigger and disk when hurtling towards the incoming wolves.

A barrage of a dozen of these scythed forth, hammering into the ground in all but one case where the luckless wolf was bisected by the spinning disk. Then they all exploded. But they didn't just explode. The demons in their haste and lack of real practice with these weapons had chosen a random uncoordinated assortment of disks from the carefully curated set they had been given, resulting in a chaotic cacophony of violence.

Some of the disks exploded with chaotic lightning, some in pillars of fire, others tore open fissures into which wolves fell, or caused massive stone spikes to rip out of the ground and impale their hapless foes, while one disk in particular simply liquidated the earth around it into a boiling pool of molten dirt.

The utter devastation should have broken the wolves but for a major flaw in execution, and that was that the delay in explosions ment the detonations had mostly gone off at the back of the pack. The front runners barreled on mostly oblivious to anything but the noise, while those close enough or spooked enough to look behind them found their retreat cut off.

There was nowhere to go but into the ranks of humans trying to form up ahead of them, and so race on towards them like cornered rats they did. Commoners in tinpot armor scrambled to react, firing off a smattering of crossbow bolts at the incoming enemies while captains shouted for order and beaked engineers demanded they be protected.

Rebbeca cursed, slapping another disk into her launcher and ignoring the safety instructions she had been given to charge it as quickly as possible. Her squadmates did the same and, just before the wolves hit, another volley of disks slammed down into the dirt behind them, Rebbeca and over half her squad’s launchers cracking, splitting or in one unlucky case straight up exploding from the misuse.

Another maddening eruption of power ripped through the rear of the charging ranks of wolves, far too close for comfort for the humans who those blasts had been intended to aid. When a set of fireproof suit-wearing soldiers pushed into the lines of militia troops and let loose torrents of scolding flame towards the incoming beasts, ignorant or indifferent to who was too close, it all became too much for the freshly mustered troops.

The humans broke and fled in response to their physiological damage inflicted by their allies' own weapons, and for a moment Rebbeca was witness to what to her was an absurd sight: human and wolf fleeing together, side by side. Then one of the wolves leapt and slashed down a human who was on its way with a rusted sword, and everything devolved into chaos.

Those humans with their wits still with them formed hap-hazard clumps of spears, jabbing at wolves who either tried to flee through the army’s front line or out the back into the open field beyond, and thus right through the soft center, but that was about the limit to the spontaneous coordination.

“General! Restore order!” came a shout from Damian, as his armored salamander let loose a torrent of magmaticaly empowered boiling spit into a trio of wolves and his assistants did their best to find shelter behind him, “I cannot work in these conditions!”

The demoness grunted with annoyance at his reasoning, but did not disagree in the slightest as that it needed done.

“Command team with me! Charge!” she cried out, tossing aside the damaged disk launcher and drawing her twin axes as she plummeted from the sky and into the panicked ranks “Form up! Form up! Stand with me and live to see another day!” She bellowed at the soldiers while bringing her axes down and cleaving a wolf in twain right as one of the flamethrowing masked troopers exploded into a pillar of fire.

“Creator’s breath, this is a right bloody mess”

---

As he thundered across the dead grass towards the fighting Skullcruncher would have had to agree with his opponent's assessment, but for him it was a bloody mess he could at least turn to his advantage.

The attempt at a hit and run attack had turned into a chaotic scrambled melee with both sides messed together in an incoherent mass. The wolf wasn't entirely sure why the humans had broken in response to their own attacks, but he wasn't going to sniff a proffered throat, especially one that had prevented the humans from bringing the same weapons they had used on the flankers to bear on his main forces.

They did still have other ranged weapons still of course, but these were of the kind the wolf was familiar with and could endure. Light bolts from repeating crossbows rained down, striking down lesser wolves but simply sticking in the thick fur of the kings, or plinking off stolen armor. In retaliation wolves with spears, axes or just heavy branches in their mouths pivoted and then leaped, putting their whole body into overhead tosses of their assorted throwing weapons, which crashed or stabbed down into the shieldless ranks of humans.

Heavier crossbow bolts retaliated, these ones held back by more professional troops for just the right range to strike down some of the tougher wolves. Skullcruncher was the target of many, but the wolf had been listening for the telltale human bark to fire and leapt to the side moments before the shots came for him.

Then heartbeats later he was upon their ranks, his titanic form and mighty hammer plowing through the pathetic human’s ranks as if they were naught but air. A human with a layer of stone somehow held across their full body suit as armor came at him with a tall axe. They swung it poorly, yet when he moved to block it the stone in its head quadrupled in weight, causing the wolf’s eyes to go wide as the putty human forced him back. But only for a moment. He quickly recovered and swept a paw forwards, batting the human aside, breaking its body with a single swipe and then moved on to continue the reaping.

All around him chaos had struck the human front ranks, who were being overwhelmed at the front and harangued from behind by wolves from the opening flanking attack who had regained some of their senses and were trying to regroup with their kin. It was all going down like a clean hunt, the king mused, which was right when he heard a familiar sound.

“You! This time you die!” came a shout, drawing Skullcruncher’s gaze to the sky and finding a great muscular blue skinned bronze armored demon swooping towards him. A familiar one. He’d recognize that stupidly long autumnal colored hair trailing dramatically down behind her anywhere.

He growled and leapt back as the annoying human came to fight him once again.

---

“Your reign ends here, White Death!” Rebecca screamed at the top of her lungs, as much out of passionate hatred for her foe as out of a desire to raise morale through her bravado. Then again it was easy to be brave when you were a towering titan of a demon and not a frail human, though against this king of kings, it was practically as if it were a battle of a mundane woman against a plain old wolf.

Except her horn and wings, of course, or the fact that the wolf came at her with a massive warhammer held in its jaws. She flapped her wings once to pull herself back out of the way of the blow, trampling a lesser beast as she did, then swung forwards with one of her massive hand axes.

The beast blocked it with the steel rod of the hammer as Rebecca cursed whoever had commissioned a hammer like resilient and then gone and died while wielding it, before swinging her other ax, only to get a paw swipe at her leg which knocked her off balance enough for the blow to miss.

She cursed and lashed out with a cloven foot in retaliation, forcing the wolf to pounce backwards. Then both of them had to block or dodge as both their allies took that moment to launch shots at their foe, Rebbeca catching a spear with the side of an ax while the wolf shrugged off more obsidian crossbow bolts and charged right in. The demoness brought up her other ax to guard, only for it to be smashed from her grip by the hammer bow. She cursed, and then, already on the back foot, got the other blade knocked out of her hands by a dastardly swipe from the end of the hammer’s handle.

“Piz!” she cursed, animal instincts telling her to flee to the skies while her mind knew that if, after her dramatic proclamation, she turned and fled the rest of the army would likely break and rout as well. So instead she dove out of the way of a killing hammer blow and snatched up the first weapon she could find that was her sized: an ax with a spear length handle and a comparatively small head that had a large rock of all things embedded in the core of the ax head. It was weird, but it would do, she thought, not knowing that the blade’s previous owner had fallen trying to slay the very same white wolf that she was up against.

She rolled to her feet and faced the wolf king once more, raising the new ax and sweeping it down in one swift motion, feeding power into it as she felt it desired her to do.

The wolf raised his hammer to catch the blade on the handle once more, only for them both to be shocked when the super heavy blade, fueled far past its intended limits by Rebbeca’s arch demon levels of mana reserves, smashed right though the handle, utterly ruining itself in the process.

Both were stunned at their sudden weaponlessness for a second, but would have gone at it tooth, fist and claw mere heartbeats later had the world had not started exploding.

---

Skullcruncher snarled, furious that his weapon had been broken by this annoyance. He was going to rip her throat out! Or at least that was the plan before the strange contraptions at the center of the army suddenly started glowing. They were like the ones the annoyance had used to devastate only even larger, having to be wheeled around by teams of humans, which was why it had taken them so long to get into position at the top of the hill. But now they were there and everyone could feel the magical charge in the air as they started charging.

Madness, were they going to shoot into the melee? Destroy their own people? The wolf king would not put it past the humans. The truth, however, was far worse. Geomantic magics hurled goat sized disks over the heads of everyone fighting, sending them raining down all across the wolves’ forest home, where they burst into searing pillars of flame that refused to go out no matter how much water was poured onto them.

The searing pillars reflected in Skullcruncher’s blood red eyes, the flames beginning to consume his kingdom. To consume his people. The young. The old. The pregnant mothers and their cubs.

The battle ground to a halt as anyone not immediately in danger found their eyes inextricably drawn to the building inferno. Close to silence fell across the blood soaked soil.

And then the humans started cheering with renewed vicious spirit and the wolves yowling in fear and sadness, their morale shattered by this attack..

And just like that, the battle was over.

---

Well, it wasn't quite the moment it ended. There were pockets of wolves too trapped to flee to put down, and those that were able to flee back to try and save either the forest, their kin or themselves were not allowed to leave bloodlessly, the beasts being hunted down by the victorious humans as best their forces could muster in their battered state.

As was tradition at this point, the victory was swiftly followed by the lighting of bonfires, the victorious general bathing in some of its power while a number of fighters from the ranks who had outdone themselves took the rest of the heat from the burning corpses (or sometimes not quite corpses) of the wolves.

As the general stood before the flames, arms outstretched while priests attended to her minor enhancements, Damina approached her: “I can see now why you were having such difficulty, without my inventions, this would have gone quite poorly,”

“It is because of your inventions that the left flank collapsed-” Rebbeca began to bite back, but then stopped herself. It was good enough to have someone important recognise the difficulty of what she had been through. So she switched tact and gave a proper analysis “we will need to acclimatize people to them, and make sure they are properly protected in future.”

“Agreed. Further refinement both to the new weapons and the military strategy of employing them is needed. The results have been quite spectacular so far, if i do say so myself” the demon said as he gazed to the burning forests, its light reflecting in the volcanic glass of his bodysuit’s goggles “we will simply need to ensure the people are better suited to make use of them”

“We’ll have plenty more battles. If this war could be one in one battle I'd have won it long ago” Rebbeca said, as she joined the scientist in admiring the burning woods. Oh how long she had waited to see that, and this, this was only the beginning of the fire they would rise.

---

Rebecca was wrong. There would be no more battles, or true ones at least. Not here. Not now.

Though his winter white coat was peppered with arrows and blackened with scorch marks and soot, Skullcruncher had survived the collapse of his forces on the battlefield. He had survived braving the first fires to pull his people from the ashes. He had survived challenges to his leadership, leaving more wolves dead at his own paws.

If he was to survive any longer, if his people were to survive, he and they were going to do the unthinkable.

They were going to have to leave the forest behind.

Thus as the humans cautiously closed in on the forests, flamethrowers at the ready, they heard howls not of war but of farewell. The southern kingdoms sent dire warnings along the woods to their eastern kin, and then left them as only wolves still stalking the 12th realm.

The northerners had burned in one swift execution. The southerners had fought on a brave fight, but they knew a slow death when they saw one. So they gathered their families, packed their stolen gear, and simply left, beginning a mass exodus south into the (to them) unknown lands beyond.

Let the humans have their ash heap.

They would find a new home in the south.

As for the easterners, well, they heard the news on the wind, of tales of gemstones and crystals bristling with power, and thought those sounded quite familiar. The last wolves of the 12th realm (and despite the death in the north and flight in the south, the east held legions far greater still) turned their eyes to the mountains and ships of strange crystals traveling down from them with vengeance in their hearts and hunger in their bellies.

And chaos sang out for its misbegotten children in kind

Node 9, and its faux sea of petrified immobile waves, had become the last bastion of chaos in the north. It housed raw chaos that made even the bestial men of Daman yearn for stability. The domination of all other lands and the constant prodding of other gods, be it Dzallitsunya's battles where the guardian was kept alive for her personal amusement or the ongoing Festival of the Red Leaves, already a natural bringer of ruckus on tamed lands, was now further stirring the unconquered wilds, the very energy emanating from the machines only further wakening the latent chaos.

The once lone boar-tusked dragon now mobilized strength in numbers, piranha-mouthed flying serpents swarmed around the rims while spawnlings of the dragon scouted further away, hiding among the half-melted rocks, waiting to pounce and chase at anything they saw moving, be it a chariot or god. At this core of chaos, even the light seemed to have lost its sense, it was dark yet shadows were being cast in bright noisy colors, too distorted to be a silhouette, more solid to be a blur, like smeared oil paint. A dark fog and strong winds circled around the node itself, the dragon lying in wait, its dark pearl eyes closed as it felt two intruders approaching, one new and the other an old enemy.

---

Chaos tore and gave way to streaks of order. Eleanna’s five claws, each shining as bright as a moon, led the way. The tears in the chaos were temporary, but they were large enough to coalesce into a great, protective dome behind her, which the following two dozen chariots struggled to stay inside of.

A rumble echoed from the back of the group as one of the Chariots’ Soul-burners went up in flames. Eleanna laughed, throwing her head back to look at the way the Chariot skid and veered off course, out of the dome and ultimately was devoured by the shadows of chaos.

“The contrast, Yenna! Grass and dirt paths here, crazy oil painting land crawling with beasts outside! Don’t you just love it? Reminds you of our adventures don’t it?” Eleanna shouted in the general direction of the Chariot’s cockpit, which was directly behind her given she was sitting up front with her hand in the air.

“I don’t remember having to pilot a hunk of wood that literally burns my soul, Anna!” Came Yenna’s sassy response, to which Eleanna waved a dismissive hand.

“Details, details! Truth is we both love this! A long struggle, a true test of endurance, testing the pilots’ ability to stay behind us while wrestling for first place, and to keep powering their Chariots for over a day… I just love how stressed everyone is!” The bronzed goddess gushed.

“I don’t remember signing up for this. I’ll be taking every last Xa you own for my medical bills if my nose burns off, I don’t think you know how expensive prosthetics have gotten as of late!”

Eleanna rolled her eyes. A beast of chaos lunged into the protective dome, only to be blasted away by at least 7 different manned ballistas on the back of the Chariots.

“Keep going this way, the Node’s just up ahead! We can give everyone a small break after we’ve stabilized Nine!” Eleanna shouted, pointing towards the massive cloud of swirling black fog in the distance.

---

Eight dark steel blades formed in-between the goddess fingers, they were launched down with unmatched precision, clearing out a school of flying serpents as they fell to the ground. Shocked, the dragon spawnling they were helping looked upward, seeing what looked like a falling star diving straight at him.

“It seems like this is our final battle Node 9, I cannot risk having you seized by the mad god.” she declared as she dove blade first against the forehead of the beast, even the godly crafted edge of the Eclipse could not so easily break the bronze scales of the dragon, but it did not matter, where the piercing blade had failed, the crushing momentum of the goddess attack would succeed, smashing the insides without ever breaking the skin.

Dzallitsunya stood over the fallen beast with a smirk, from atop it she had a good view of her surroundings, and was quite surprised to notice something she had not seen in her previous scouting of the area.

To the east, a pack of beasts approached in a shining trail of light and smoke. They announced this with loud metallic roars unlike anything the goddess had ever faced. She was left mesmerized until she heard a howl from the other side, a familiar one.

“What is it?” she asked the chaos wolf she had tamed, the only acquaintance she trusted to have in these lands, the canine tried to growl and point at a swelling blob onto the ground, but it was too late for the distracted goddess to react. A chaos beast, one that looked like a copy of the one that once guarded Node 2, pounced and both goddess and beast fell down a slope while trading blows.

By the end of the struggle, Dzallitsunya had the beast on its back, sword piercing its exposed underside where there were less crystals protecting the skin. The beast was dead, but the goddess noticed movement in the crystals, the light they reflected started to intensify and looking to the side she saw why.

She had fallen straight into the route of those roaring ‘things’, what looked like a dome of light quickly advancing towards her and in the blink of an eye, she was hit by a rush of warm air as she crossed the threshold of the dome (or perhaps the dome had crossed her?). Grass sprouted below her boots, and most important of all, a beast of wood, metal and light roared and rumbled as it shot past her, a familiar bronzed deity sitting on its muzzle. The bronzed goddess grinned, winked and made a strange hand gesture at Dzallitsunya before waving at every other roaring beast behind her. Their singular glassy eyes twinkled with the reflection of her clawed hand.

“ROADKILL TIME, BOYS N GIRLS! HUNDRED XAS TO THE FIRST ONE TO RUN HER OVER!” She shouted at the top of her lungs, and immediately most of the following beasts locked onto Dzallitsunya.

“The teeth stealer!?” the dusk goddess gasped seeing the bronze deity but in moments her focus had to be entirely upon the other beasts as the first approached her. She jumped to the left and immediately had to use the Shadow Petal to force her back to the right as a second car came right after. After she tried to run, the incoming chariots were quick to adapt to that, starting to aim where she would be. A few more dodges and her, now tired from overusing her relic, could not dodge the seventh car to aim at her.

But she was not run over either, with a short skip upward, her sharp metal heel met the chassis of the chariot, skiing against the wood as sparks flew.

The chariot’s cockpit hissed open and from the foggy interior peeked out an angry, short, rotund, hyperventilating man with his face split into half seal and half human. His disgustingly mutated features contorted as he snarled and screamed. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING LADY! GET OFF MY BELOVED WATERLANCE AND GO BACK TO THE STREETS!“ He gasped and threw everything he could find at her. A handheld broom, a bottle of Jermarvelous, a half-eaten space-goatdog burrito, and a moldy cushion were only the first of a veritable endless stream of random inane objects to bombard the Goddess of the Moon.

“Burn in the sun you bastard!” the goddess barked back, her sheer divine rage cursing the man to never find a proper parking spot for his ‘beloved’, though, it also blinded her, or rather, looking back to scream made it so she was hit face first by the bottle of Jermarvelous. The number 1 choice in man’s cologne, with the spark of thunder and freshness to entrance even the most demanding vulpine ladies of the Daman, while a lovely affordable choice of quality perfume, was not meant to be spilled upon one’s eyes, and Dzallitsunya found herself crouching on the ground, rubbing her eyes as she tried to regain her vision.

She could barely see when another car approached, this time she couldn’t jump either, so the only solution was to go directly against it, sliding beneath the chariot. Standing up after the fifth close call, still half blinded with her eyes burning from the perfume, sweating and with bits of her outfit torn and blood dripping from her forehead, she observed the last car to arrive.

Too low to slide under, too blocky to jump over, too late to jump to the side. The half-human half-clover pilot smirked. “Ahhh! Today. Today izzz me lucky day! Getzz ready to be a zmear in my vizzor, little bug” Dzallitsunya sighed, took a stance, and without words readied her sword. The plant-woman’s eyes widened. “Oh weeedzzz” and now she was the one who couldn’t dodge and a slash of the Eclipse, the last carriage was cut in the middle, both missing Tsunya before dramatically exploding on both sides of the fading light road.

Safe from being run over, Dzallitsunya took a deep breath and then let out an equally long sigh. She stared at the path in front of her, Eleanna’s light fading accompanied by an echoing crackling laugh. Dzalli closed her eyes, knelt and placed both hands against the floor, starting to lean forward as her cape, the Shadow Petal, started to wave as if hit by a strong wind, wind-cutting noises echoing around her.

When the goddess’ eye opened, she launched forward with a bang, stepping against the wind itself, breaking past it and running towards the race. In complete silence, with only eyes towards Eleanna’s chariot, she rushed past the cars, outrunning them on foot and outsmarting their delayed reaction times. It didn’t take long for Eleanna to recoil as she noticed the fellow Goddess running next to Yenna’s Chariot, with Dzallitsunya looking at the now-sheepish bronzed Goddess with a ‘hint’ of annoyance.

“H-How are you this fast?! Do you just practice running day in day out?! What the crap! Yenna, go faster!”

“Can’t, I don’t wanna get my brain juiced by the burner!” Came a muffled response from inside the chariot’s glassy dome.

“Damn!” Eleanna cursed, then turned towards Dzallitsunya, “Listen woman, that was fun wasn’t it? A good bit of exercise is good for the soul, just ask the pilots!”

“The first time I met you, you showed up with a dead squirrel then desecrated the body of our creator. The second time we met, you tried to run me over with your… things… that go fast and roar loud. Pardon me if I do not have a good impression.” she side-glanced at the node then back at the bronzed goddess. “What are you even doing? What is all this? Why does it smell like burned wood and burned… fish brain?”

“Name’s Eleanna! That smell is the smell of nearly two dozen soul-burner engines in high-drain mode with most limiters turned off! You’re literally smelling the souls of the most ambitious, most daring sportsbeasts in the entire Daman Lands! Exciting, isn’t it? I bet you’d love to meet the Beauty Pair. Oh, and this is a yearly thing. The Red Leaf Race, I mean. I’m just tagging along to make sure they don’t all suffer horrible deaths going through the most dangerous areas. Someone’s got to reach the end after all, or I would be out of a job!”

“The scent of your people’s ambitions has the smell of the boots of a courier after a day of work.”

“What, like Silvan cheese?”

“Of course you people like milk. I bet you like eggs too. Eugh.”

“WAIT!” Eleanna perked up with a half-gasp half-chuckle. “So it’s true you lot up north don’t eat egg mayo sandwiches?”

“We are to your west, not north!” Tsunya barked, her wolf also barked, but the goddess waved her hand, this was IMPORTANT. “And no, I do not eat eggs, or mayors, or sand, or witches. Two of those are people so it's kinda messed up to eat them. But we all know what they say about the beastfolk.”

Eleanna rolled her eyes “Yeah yeah, we eat people and children, whatever! Everyone’s got their demons, Pale. Keep up all that barking and I might just consider you one of the wolfkin. I know a bunch of them would be happy to ‘hear’ you out.”

There was now a soft orange glow bathing the two goddesses along with the chariots. “Demons!? So Xavior and the council are already over there? Damn. Those people act fast, and sure aren’t picky with the clientele.” barked Dzalli. “And you dummy, it's not me who is barking, it's my pet chaos wolf, whom I trained to…”

Dzalli’s gave a quick peek towards the node and the dragon, it was fully awake now, fire building up in its gullet, an army of ‘oil paint’ lesser clones of chaos beasts of the nearby nodes rising from the twisted ground. She looked back at Eleanna, a bit paler “You know what? I was being rude. You were here first, so go ahead, I will wait a bit.”

Eleanna grinned and pumped her fist up into the air, “Finally, someone treats me well! You stand back and watch. You too, Yenna!”

“Wait, Ann-”

It was too late for Yenna to voice her concerns however, as Eleanna wasted no time in blasting herself forward towards the approaching dragon and its army. Her trajectory mid air saw her go past dozens of flying spawnlings and right up against the dragon’s face. A low roar built up in its throat, living flame spilling from its jagged teeth.

In a split second, Eleanna took aim at one of the Dragon’s glowing ice blue eyes and shot her arm-ballista at it.

The crystal-laced bolt broke through the massive beast’s armored cornea and exploded, sending the dragon reeling off to the side and making it lose control of its own gullet, spilling fire all over his spawnlings and minions.

“YES! See that, Pale? Cool, ri-”

Before she could finish her sentence, one of the Dragon’s massive talons smacked her right out of the air and sent her barreling straight into a distant mountain, the echoes of her impact reaching Dzallitsunya several seconds later.

“That was rough… I hope she is alright.” the goddess whispered to herself as she saw raised dust in the distance. The wolf made a questioning growl at the goddess. “Hey. Calm down. She is annoying but I don’t want her to perish… Wow. What the hell is that in your mouth? Silly wolf, you can’t just use plant people as a stick.” rolling its eyes the wolf nudged the goddess so she looked back at the massive chaos beast.

“Right. Seems like most of its army is gone. The belly is pierced so no more fire bombs. Wolf, try to keep the beast people safe, I will finish this.” she readied the Shadow Petal and the Eclipse and leaped forward, once again advancing upon the dragon.

It clawed at her, but the goddess managed to parry and dodge, especially now that the pain made the beast slower, yet it had also become more vicious, Tsunya had to not only dodge the claws, but waves of flying rocks and debris thrown by the beasts’ talons and tail.

The malformed blurry beast clones start to appear again, Dzalli found herself trading blows with that same multi-headed serpent of Node 8 she once defeated, of a lesser quality however, she soon found herself slaying it once more, only to barely escape a crashing strike of the dragon.

“Using your spawnlings to distract, huh?” The goddess acknowledge, a rush of worry flowed through her as she was reminded the beastfolk was nearby, she looked at them to see if her wolf had done a good job and… he was calmly laying on the ground with some wolfkin and that still shocked clover plant-girl, most other beastmen were merely watching her, eating sandwiches and snacks, unbothered. A single frog dude, with a makeshift crescent moon painted on his chariot (it was previously a calla lily and previously still some other symbol) was using his mounted ballista to pester the dragon.

With a deep breath, Dzalli took the chance to take a position again, she wouldn’t be able to go past the wind again, no time or energy for it, but she still launched herself with a boom, gliding across the dirt and sliding past the open wound in its belly, she used the stomach wall and ribs of the dragon itself as footing, aiming up, rerouting her momentum, and pouncing blade first at direction of the heart of the beast.

The chaos expanses finally stood still, winds calming, beasts dispersing, and Dzallitsunya emerging victorious, and covered in more blood and filth than she had ever seen in her life. She had a ‘hint’ of annoyance in her face.

With calm steps she moved towards the now freed node, only to see a pitiful shape very slowly crawling towards the node. The shape heaved with every movement and vomited more blood than anyone should have inside their bodies.

“C-Can’t beat me…in a race… to the node…” Eleanna rasped out, a whistle in her voice and pain evident on her face through her grimace, even with half her teeth missing.

Seeing the missing teeth, Dzalli couldn’t help but notice the irony. Perhaps it was also the sign she should forgive her sister, she had no fault for being the way she was. It was probably the effects of too much sunlight… But first she rushed right past her and hit the node with her blood stained hands almost ten times.

A flash enveloped the world as the node was reshaped. A cold desert of gray sand dunes emerged across most of the node, broken by fields of white flowers and ponds and streams of freezing liquid nitrogen. The sky was starry, the sun in a permanent eclipse.

Dzallitsunya was once again clean and fresh, sighing as she approached Eleanna, right by the node. She picked her up, despite being smaller, and walked away as the freezing liquid flooded much of the area immediately near the node. She took her back to the racers and placed her against a rock in a white lily field. “Hey… Today was horrible, wasn’t it?” she whispered.

Eleanna coughed up a molar and smiled weakly. “Y’You’re kidding… Right? It was… The most… Fun I’ve had… In years…”

Tsunya tilted her head and then shrugged. “Hmm… I guess making that dragon explode was very cool of you.” she smiled, sitting as well, picking up a jar of flavored acacia gum candy, some lemon, some strawberry.

As Tsunya focused on the candy, she saw Eleanna wiping at her face out of the corner of her eye.

“C-Can you… Teach me how… To fight? Like the wind.”

Tsunya was taken aback. “O…oh? Fight. Well. I train a lot, that is true… I have a, hmm… You could say it's a magical training arena. It lets me set up fights against armies, chaos beasts, even other gods, they feel real despite being a dream. Do you want some candy?”

Eleanna reached inside her mouth and pulled a few broken teeth out, then tested the mobility of her jaw and nodded. “I heal somewhat… Faster now than before… Yeah, pass one.” Eleanna said, grabbing one of the candy and sticking it in her mouth without a second thought.

Tsunya looked down at the jar, seeing Eleanna hadn’t really washed her blood soaked hands before digging in. “You know, have the whole jar, as a gift.” she smiled. “And yeah. I forgot to say my name. It's Dzallitsunya. If you visit me, I can show you my dream arena, perhaps we can even spar.”

“Ah, thanks The Sally!” Eleanna said as she sat up a bit straighter, poking her ribs with a mere flinch before grabbing the whole jar of candies. “They’re sweet, what do you call them? And yeah, I’d love to spar with you! All the other gods I’ve met have been against fighting you know. Lamp guy was too straight laced for it and Benea was surrounded by her boyfriends.” Eleanna sighed. “Hey, you know, I think I’ve heard about you before. Some fishkin visited the New Daman Temple once talking about a new group of Followers of The Sally popping up near Lake Saragosa.”

“I guess you could call it, Jujube.” Dzalli nodded. She had no idea what any of those words meant, or where anything was, but it didn’t sound like bad news. “Oh, is that so? I hadn’t heard about that. Could you tell me more later?”

“Sure. Thanks for the Jujube, Sally.” Eleanna smiled, but stiffened as soon as she heard a set of heavy, tired footsteps approaching. She turned, hesitant, to see a sweaty, jumpsuit-clad Yenna with a full on nosebleed and bloodshot eyes approaching her.

“Having fun with your new girlfriend, Anna? How did you even survive this time?”

“I only broke half my ribs and teeth. It wasn’t too bad.”

“Ah. I see. As you can see, I’m at my limit. You’re piloting that damn death trap the rest of the way.” Yenna said and stormed off into one of the makeshift tents that had just been put up.

Tsunya smiled awkwardly as the two had their little moment, sideglancing at the other beastfolk. “Well, I should go check on my wolf, before it chews up that poor clover lady.” said the goddess who made the plant girl lose all but four of her leaves. “See you two later, good luck on the festival.”

Eleanna grinned and waved at Dzalli as she walked off. “Thanks Sally, I’ll visit your temple in Three in a few days, after the race is over. I’ll bring you some of the best Daman snacks, so wait for me!”

“There!” Benea chimed with a wide grin. She stood on a little stool with her hands now placed victoriously on her hips. All around Xavior’s throne room hung chains of daisies. They hung from everything. The banners, the shelves, the rafters, the chandeliers, the braziers, the frowning guards, everything. Where there wasn't a chain of flowers, Benea had placed a potted plant or replaced old red fabric with a fresh creme one stitched with floral patterns.

Not even the central dias or throne was spared, with the old impressive furniture replaced with something more modern and chic. The wooden frame was hand carved and given gentle artistic curves and a bright stain finish. Stretched across the frame was creamy silks squeezing plump cushions. Content with her victory, the goddess plopped herself into the chair, releasing the perfume that was imbued into the cotton and let out a long sigh.

“It smells wonderful in here, don’t you agree darling?”

A nervous guard nodded vigorously, the daisies that covered him nodding in return.

“Do you think Xavior will like it?”

Another furious nod.

“Oh! I also got him this!”

She swiped a booklet from seemingly nowhere. “It’s a daily log, I signed it myself and even pre-filled it with a daily schedule for the next three years.”

The guard flinch instinctively but then quickly smiled and nodded. It was too late, Benea saw the initial flinch and her smile drooped.

“Oh foo, you don’t think that’s too little do you?”

The man practically yelled. “NO!”

Eleanna tapped her index finger on the carefully sanded tree stump in front of her. She was sitting cross legged on the grassy ground, with the irritatingly long-haired and handsome Silvan Star across from her. He sat there with nigh-perfect posture, with features so regal and well-defined that even she couldn’t believe that he was all-natural, and with skin so perfectly bronzed and smooth that she couldn’t help but stare for a bit too long.

What made it all irritating was that the guy just wouldn’t acknowledge her obvious attraction. His icy white eyes regarded her with the cold of the Daman Tundra.

“Let’s skip the pleasantries, Goddess. I’m here to ask for freedom.” He nodded respectfully with his eyes closed.

“You already have that, Star! You’ve got the freedom to do whatever you want!”

“That’s untrue. I am and have always been a slave to the Lampseekers. I can never escape this fate, because slaves are not considered people in the Daman Lands. Even if I were to escape my captivity, I would just be hunted down and brought back to the Lampseekers.”

“What’s the issue with that? The added challenge only makes your Journey all the more meaningful. The Grand Struggle has blessed you.” Eleanna leaned her elbows on the tree stump.

“I disagree. What’s the objective behind struggling if you know there is no possibility of reaching your goals? And on the topic of the Grand Struggle… Don’t you think slavers have had it too easy?” The Silvan Star frowned.

Eleanna rubbed her chin and raised an eyebrow.

“You’d have me engage with the Silvan Lands in order to return slaves?”

The Silvan Star shook his head. “No, Goddess. I’m requesting you fulfil your duty as the Bronzed Bloom.”

Eleanna scoffed, “Huh?”

“I’ve studied Daman history, Goddess. You’re not the first Bronzed Bloom, you were merely pushed into the position by the First Sun. Did you know that the Bronzed Bloom is supposed to be a guide to the Daman People? One who pushes for equality of opportunity and consequence?”

Eleanna rubbed her temple.

“As things stand, there is no equality in the Daman Lands. There is no control, and therefore there is no equality. The strong trample the weak, and the weak have no way of chasing their dreams. You, as the Bronzed Bloom, are supposed to fix this mess. I’m requesting you fix it.” The Silvan Star demanded, staring so deep into Eleanna’s eyes that she had to avert her gaze.

“I can’t abolish slavery.”

“I’m aware. You do, however, have access to the Church’s vast resources. You could sponsor one of the few clans who still hold equality and xenophilia in high regard. I’m sure one of them is likely to be the driving force behind one of the biggest upheavals yet to come to New Daman society.” He explained, sliding a small piece of parchment over to Eleanna before soundlessly standing up and bowing. “Thank you for your time, Goddess. My request has been made, so I will take my leave.”

And just like that, the Silvan Star disappeared into the large tent that had been allocated to the Lampseekers, two of the infamous moth-women emerging from inside to stand tall to either side of the entrance flap with spears in their many hands.

Eleanna wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and felt a shaky grin sneak its way onto her face. The more she thought about it, the more that Eleanna realised that the Silvan Star was right – The slaver factions had had it too easy lately. It was time for a change, in order to uphold the integrity of the Grand Struggle.

The surgeon’s business was located in the bad (or worse) part of the snowy city of Owb. The building itself was sandwiched haphazardly between several other tall buildings, giving the entire corner a bit of a hive look to it. People were buzzing in and out of the many doors and up and down the spiraling stairs, all avoiding the darkened door in one of the alleyways that marked the entrance to the surgeon’s office — all but two, at least.

Renault and Fora stood by the entrance. Renault himself was stripped of his paladin decor and left in his simple dark cloak and whatever cotton clothes he had underneath. Around his neck was an ivory collar known as a soul-biter, but lucky for him his was a fake… or so he hoped — Fora was in charge of procuring it.

Next to him was the culprit herself, Fora, lacking the need of secrecy, she did away with the long cloak, instead wearing a more loose and revealing Daman outfit, or rather, it would be more revealing if not for the Magistrate still being dressed in the cloth that fully covered her body and left her faceless. She had dressed up in as much bronze and silver accessories as she could, also procuring many local beads and animal prizes like feathers and fangs. The last bit was logical for a wealthy slave driver, but she had yet to communicate how the hell she was not going to immediately kill the deal with the former.

For the moment however, all her outrageous look had done was to make the Daman for once be startled, the path past the crowd having been opened almost out of instinct, with everyone too busy whispering and gossiping to question them and far too many eyes staring for a thief to try their luck. “Huh~ I feel like a Eunomian merchant about to strike a good deal. Are you ready for this, servant?” she questioned tapping her heels on the floor before ringing what some would call a ‘doorbell’ while others would call ‘a humanoid skull covered in brass’

“Don’t call me servant,” Renault managed to hiss before the door swung wide open. There in the doorway stood a rather short mousy woman — in fact she was part mouse. Her features were pinched and she had the start of whiskers as she looked up at Fora, ignoring the chastised looking Renault.

“I don’t know you,” the mousy woman started, rather rudely.

“Tseh, is it my fault if you are ignorant?” the magistrate retorted. “Consider yourself lucky though, that the name of this place is well regarded by my contacts and that I do not take anything but the best when upgrading and fixing my property” she waved her head to the slave to her side “So I will say who I am, once I am properly greeted and taken far from the rabble of this street.”

The mouse-lady squinted and mumbled to herself before taking a step back so Fora could enter. The lady spoke with less enthusiasm than desired. “Welcome to Torundo’s office, do you have an appointment?”

"No. Just gold, prizes and foreign booze." She said with a wave of her hand as she passed, taking Renault along inside.

"Well, the place is smelly, but beats sharing the air with snorting pigmen." The magi said as she quickly took notice of everything around her. "Name is Nyindja by the way. From what some would call the golden city of the eastern jungle. Part of the Kamelia clan."

The lady had a face that shouted ‘I don’t care’ and as she walked behind a podium, revealing her job as a secretary, it made sense. The trio stood in a dark room with frozen stone walls and smoky braziers doing their best to heat the otherwise dungeon-looking room. Adjusting herself onto a tall stool, the mouse-lady spoke. “What brings you to Torundo’s office today?”

As she spoke, her eyes started to scan Renault, lifting a brow as she came down to his broad chest. Renault gave a nervous grin and used a single hand to pull his cloak further over him.

"Someone tried to pet the belly of a wolf lady after having got high on wine they sneaked out of my reserves. Now they are lacking an arm, and who has to fix it? Hmmm?" She made a little tsc tsc noise when looking at Renault. "And well, if I am going to have to do this, I decided I might as well go out and make sure it's a damn fine arm at that, perhaps one that is less biteable."

“Ah, sex slave,” the woman nodded with a certain understanding. Renault blinked in confusion and opened his mouth to speak, but then grit his teeth. The secretary hopped off her stool and started walking to a cloth veiled doorway. “I’ll get the good doctor if you want to wait here.”

Fora turned back as the secretary left and almost seemed apologetic despite the lack of facial expression. "How the shining hell did she make that assumption? Remind me never to join a Daman party."

Renault tilted his head and shrugged. “I’m pretty and you mentioned biting, I can see it.” A slow smile started to form on his face, only to wipe away as the cloth blew open and out walked a tall scrawny man with a blood stained apron. His face had snake-like features complete with a flickering tongue and yellow eyes.

“I’m doctor Torundo,” he introduced himself. “You’re Ms. Nyindja?” He pointed a chin at Fora.

“That would be me indeed. It's so nice to finally see a fellow reptilian like me, these mammals give me the allergies.” she bowed energetically. “I heard good words about you and your work Mister Torundo. It seems you know how to get the best the craft can offer.”

Torundo paused for a moment before smiling. “You’d be correct. I happen to have it in with a very famous artificer of ambrosian fibres, no doubt you already are aware or why else would you be here. Though I admit it is odd you came yourself and with a slave you intend to keep; usually my clientelle are bringing in property that was accidentally damaged during acquisition and in need of a remodel.”

“I am somewhat of a newcomer to the area, you could say, I used to be part of the unseen blades of the bronze bloom, but decided to follow a hobby instead. And you know, with the whole Anak crisis situation, the increased raids, I thought, why not get myself a few slaves. So, I would like to get a good look at the whole ordeal.”

“Hey, I won’t pry,” Torundo clasped his hands together, “I never stick my head into the business of a paying customer…” The implication was there.

“Sometimes that is for the best, no? Nevertheless, how does this work? I take, given its very personal work, I will need to put a request first, operation later? Hmm?”

Torundo lifted a brow. “Yes, are you familiar with the Xavian concept of the down payment? I find it extremely effective in this line of work. You’ll give me a third (just a third) of the total cost, and I’ll use it to purchase the wares from my vendor. We can discuss price while my nurse takes your slave’s measurements?”

“Yes, I am familiar! If I am not mistaken, they also enjoy a bit of wine while discussing the deal, no? I brought my own just in case you don’t have any.” she declared, finally revealing the bottles she had brought with her, they all looked fancy and foreigner, far better than what most of the Daman could get, given the war and other issues.

“A perfect,” Torundo said. He looked over at his secretary and nudged a chin at Renault. “Take Ms. Nyindja’s property to the nurse for evaluation.”

The mousy lady nodded and hopped off her stool once again. “This way,” she ordered as she passed through the cloth, Renault audibly gulped.

---

Renault was led through the hallway, finding himself slowing down as he passed oddities, such as displayed prosthetics that seemed eerily used, or even odd diagrams of mutated bodies. Each time he lingered, the secretary would pat him roughly on the back to get him moving again and each time the strike was aimed lower. Noticing that, Renault stopped dallying around the time she gave him two curious pats on the lower back and walked maybe even a bit faster than needed.

Eventually the pair came across a thick wooden door and opened it up. Inside was a room that could be described as grey. The floor was grey stones, the walls were grey stones, and there was only a slit you couldn’t fit a fist through for a window. A flat grey table (most likely a rickety combination of Xavior iron and tin) sat in the center and counters of equally dubious knives and pokers lined the periphery. The only thing that wasn’t grey was the white wearing nurse by the table.

The Paladin’s eyes glanced off the instruments of torture and landed on the plant woman who was to be sizing him up as his nurse. Before Renault could get a proper look in, the secretary slammed the door behind him, leaving him alone with the lady.

“Well hello,” Renault started with a grin.

“Get on zzee table.” The nurse barely looked at the man.

Remembering his mission, Renault shook his head. “Oh but it’s just my left arm, no need to lay down.”

The nurse furrowed her clover brow and frowned. “Fine zzzen take of your zzzhirt.”

Renault grinned wide, “Well if you say so… but um..”

“What izz it?”

“I’m a little shy, do you mind?”

The nurse crossed her arms and looked at Renault with a limited patience before letting out a long sigh and turning around. “Be quick.”

Not wasting any time, Renault took two quick steps forward. “Sneak attack!”

“Huh?” The nurse turned around just in time for Renault to slam the edge of his hand on the base of her neck. Her eyes began to tear up and her legs began to wobble.

“Awh weedzzz.”

She collapsed. The door swung open and the secretary burst in. “What’s going on in here?”

“Double sneak attack!” Renault chopped the back of the mouse-lady’s neck and sent her to the floor with a thud.

---

“What the (hic) hell was that?” Torundo squeaked through the cup of wine he was holding. He was sitting in a wood paneled office with Fora, the entire ordeal much nicer decorated than the rest of the surgeon’s place. The chairs were definitely imported from the Benea’s Queendom, and the workmanship on everything else spoke of the more cultured parts of the daman lands. In front of him and fora, the wine bottle was already half empty.

It was impressive what a little concoction of wine, herbs and dream honey could do to a man, one sip and he hadn’t even questioned why Fora wasn’t drinking with him. “Dear goodness, it might be too late.” the magistrate said, standing up. “Doctor. I may not have been fully honest. I mentioned before being of the unseen blades, I said I left but I did not say why.”

Without much context, she started to undo her clothing, first the Daman inspired outer layer. “You heard the rumors right? Of Eleanna meeting with anti-slaving groups. They are true, and we of the clan Kamelia, of chameleon blood, have been given a mission.” as she took off the black cloth, the doctor would see… nothing, the black textile gave way but did not reveal the fully invisible woman.

“But, I did not agree with the plan, I tried to set up a business but so many contacts were already taken down, the crackdown against slavers is starting, and who would be the best target to send a message than one of the most prestigious slave enhancers?” more noise rang outside. “We need to run, doctor, do you have a backdoor or escape route? We need to go now, and warn your contact as well, before it is too late. My clan… they will make boots and bags out of you, haven’t you heard of the odd woman with crocodile boots? That was Doctor Bartholomew.”

“Not Doctor Bartholomew!” Torundo foamed incoherently at the invisible woman, having never met or heard of a Doctor Bartholomew. He stood up quickly (nearly collapsing) and pointed heroically at the door. “This-a-way.” He took a step forward, only to collapse on his face.

“Seesh, should have added more coca, less fungi.” Fora whispered to herself before opening the door, peeking out, and then looking back at the doctor. “Torudo. They are surrounding us. It's too late to run. But I have a plan. Spread on the ground. Pretend you are a rug. Do not answer if they call for you, they have trained parrot men that will mimic the voices of all those you know. Meanwhile, I will go seek Jole, do you remember where his current location is?”

Torundo bubbled on the floor in thought, blowing raspberries. Renault stood on the other side of the door, peeking at where Fora should be as per her clothing and gave her a curious look. He mouthed. “What are you doing?”

“I know where he is!” Torundo shouted from the floor, “But you can’t tell anyone.”

“I will not tell anyone, I promise you Torundo. May the gods take my long chameleon tail if I ever tell you a lie.” Fora’s voice rang from a place completely away from where Renault was looking.

“You have a tail!?” Renault mouthed in surprise.

“Oh blesh you,” Torundo clasped his hands. “I meet with Jole’s assistant every fourth day of the week, so tomorrow, over at the Gringam Market by the potato stand run by Doctor Bartholomew… I think. Wait no, it was run by Drengant Bartogo, a dingo-man, he is the assistant’s brother. Can you bring me so I can warn them?”

“It's too risky Torundo! You have so many things to live for! Who will take care of your collection of Benea figurines should anything happen to you!? No. I will do this mission alone, I am already a woman born to fight, I can take the risk. You, you hide, as I said, do not believe anyone, even if they sound and look exactly like that breakfast you call a secretary (Renault put his hands on his growling stomach). When you feel like the coast clear, run Torundo, run for rivers Torundo, and swim Torundo, swim until the sounds of the villages fade away.” Fora pleaded, holding and shaking the doctor by the shoulders.

The intoxicated man stared wheeling his arms and blubbering “I’m swimming! I’m swimming!”

Renault shook his head and entered the room. He snagged Fora by the shoulder himself and pulled her away. “I think you’re having a bit too much fun with this, we should go before the other two wake up.”

“Oops. Sorry.” she hummed, trying to maintain her balance as she was pulled. “So. To the Gringam market then? And could you please stop holding me so close? I am without clothes, you know?”

“Oh.” Renault gave a simple blush before giggling. He cleared his throat and let go. “Well why are you naked!?” His hand waved behind her derriere, voice turning light and curious. “And do you really have a tail?”

“I… I am not a Chameleon, Renault.” she facepalmed, not that anyone could see. “And ah, to hell with it, I am too tired of having to find new outfits, the dusklander tsillo is meant for a hot swamp, not the dry cold. I will just wear a fur cloak and go ‘invisible’ when we need it. Like a little guardian looking out for you on the mission~”

Renault retracted his hand with a quiet “I know…” and nodded. “I won’t turn that down, but hey if you need extra clothes I’m sure the nurse had a few extra outfits somewhere…” He pinched his chin in thought, a smirk growing on his face.

“Could be useful, that mouse did have a pretty cute cloak too, go ahead to the entrance, I will do a little shopping and meet you there~”

Xavier had returned home from his expedition to Daminan’s lavaside crystal refinery, taken one look at the state of his “renovated” throne room and decided he did not want to deal with that right now.

No instead, after quickly popping by the center of the temple and sharing his node with Dzallitsunya as part of a trade organized via the embassy system, he left home once again, this time going on a short trim a half turn around the lake at the center of the 12th realm. On its western edge sat the newly constructed local headquarters of the Paladins, suitably separated from the main chunk of the city by the mighty river flowing down from the lake and into the sea.

His reason for visiting was twofold. First, it would be good to see in person this asset/potential threat sat on his doorstep and touch base with its leader in preparation for the further wars ahead.

Second, well, there was something he’d put off for too long that he needed to learn. The god knew that, having claimed but a single node, he was likely the least versed in combat god that there was, and he had not even killed the beast that had guarded his realm. This had been fine, right up until Monica returned from a stroll through the city, bearing a wound most fowl and casually reported a murder. Her divine kin had been horrified, Benea fell quiet and contemplative, while Xavior was split between grave concern for his sister and shame at what had occurred right under his nose. One god wounded and another slain right here in his city, and he had been none the wiser.

The corpses of a bird had been found by city enforcers following rumors of a particularly blasphemous black market sale, and now sat in a small coffin locked securely away, nobody having any real idea what to do with it, other than having it act as a grim reminder that the killer was out there, and that he had struck without them ever knowing he was here.

If Xavior could not rely on his people to keep him safe, or at least that was how it felt, then it would be foolish not to learn how to defend himself.

Thus, his real reason for taking a trip to visit the paladins: hoping to take advantage of their formalized training methods that his own people’s armed forces had mostly copied off of them anyway. Up until recently, heading across the lake would have involved traveling by ship, the rivers feeding in and out of it having never been bridged due to the fact that that would restrict the shipping swarming the 12th realm’s waterways.

Not so anymore, because a group of innovative demons had taken a leaf out of Annie’s first flight and used their wings to capture some of the flying Tonicalla that soared through the skies of their homeland. Not for eating however (or not primarily for that anyway, though the flying fish did pair very well with a lemon sauce Xavior had found), but for taming to be used as mounts. First only by people like them but, after they’d invented parachutes for safety, (a process made much easier thanks to the testers having the ability to safely abort a failed chuting) it had started to spread out to wingless people.



It was still expensive and a bit risky to do, but neither expense nor fear of falling where of any obstacle to the god, and as such his fishy steed granted him a lovely view of the paladin’s headquarters as he soared through the skies with his first priestess/royal bodyguard Annie (who had been rather instrumental in coming up with this idea in the first place) at his side.

Below the structure almost stood out from any other building or complex in 12th node region. The paladins were very specific on how it was to be built, making it a copy of Queendom architecture and very specific to regulations on what a paladin recruitment and garrison center should look like, with its own flair of course. Overall it was a large artificial hill with a shallow moat and a thick stone outerwall with flanged heels to deflect stones. The gatehouse was squat but almost always open, a drawbridge wide open to provide access from the road and into the walled garrison.

Inside the large square was a small town of buildings, from bakeries to smiths to armories. The only thing that kept it from being a well defended village was the sea of caped paladins, a bastion in the center, large dirt training grounds and the red roofed garrisons that hugged the interior walls.

The god found the self-sufficient nature of the compound simultaneously irritating on a political level due to it limiting the integration of the paladins into the local population (which limited his and the council’s economic influence over them) and admirable on a personal one. He was quite sure that he would do something much the same if he was in their place after all, so could he really disparage it? Indeed his own temple home was almost the same in how it sat amidst the urban sprawl that was Eunomia.

Regardless, the paladins had shown themselves to be nothing but amicable and helpful, so the level of concern this state of affairs caused these days was minimal.

The god swooped down to land before the gatehouse, respecting the formality of entering in an official manner even if he could have bypassed it, before he and his looming guardian made their way inside. The flying fish was handed over to a bemused stablemaster, and then the two of them set about seeking out the local leader of the paladins.

But it didn’t take more than three steps from their esteemed Tonnikala before a purple caped paladin approached Xavior and his bodyguard. Before speaking, the man fell to one knee and with both fists touching the ground, he bowed his head. “Welcome to the 12th recruitment, my lord.”

The god raised an eyebrow at this prostolatising, it was a touch more than even he, a god king, was used to, but he quickly adapted.

“Rise, nobel paladin. I have come to meet your leader, and I should be expected” Xavior explained simply, the god not being so crass as to drop in unannounced though this had admittedly been arranged on quite short notice. “Please, lead us to him, if you may?”

“Of course, liege,” the Paladin stood up and procured a long purple ribbon from under his sword belt. He held it out to Annie. “Please tie this to your wrist.”

It wasn't exactly the towering woman’s first visit to the compound, so she simply nodded and followed procedure, tying the ribbon around her blue skinned wrist which it complemented fetchingly.

“Right then, let’s be off and get to business shall we?” Xavior said, before they set off to meet the boss around these parts.

---

Steel clashed once, twice, thrice and then the fourth blow hammered Xavior in his armored gutt so hard it sent him careening through the air and into a nearby wall. The sturdy wood cracked and then the god fell forwards and hit the sand.

He lay there for several heartbeats and then with a grunt stabbed the tip of the blade into the dirt and used it to haul himself upright while holding a hand to his chest, healing his own wounds once more as he demanded “again!”

“No,” Frederick swung his massive blade over his shoulder to rest. “Not until you start listening to what I’m trying to tell you.”

“And remind me what that might be?” Xavior replied bitterly, repeated failure stinging his pride and fueling unnecessary vitriol, “because the memory seems to have been beaten out of me”
.
“Xavior” came the voice of Annie (who was observing/guarding the training) who when the god turned to her, gave him a ‘come on, really?’ look that caused him to sigh and add “please?”

Frederick twisted a frown and with a heave he slammed his blade down in front of him, sundering the ground between him and Xavior. “You keep leaping back to avoid the hit. To fight like a paladin, move to the side and don’t keep giving me more space to work with. I have the larger weapon, you want to keep the distance close, move in the circle pattern, keep your feet liquid yet solid.”

With little else, Frederick swung his sword wide at Xavior, utilizing the entirety of the space between the two to put a massive amount of weight behind the blow.

Instinct screamed at Xavior to back up again, but at this point he had given so much ground there wasn't actually any further back he could go, the cracked wall being only a few feet behind him. So, out of a lack of any other options, this time he actually tried to follow the Paladin’s advice and lept to the right, away from the incoming swing. For a brief moment, Xavior felt the joy of dodging the strike accurately, that was until a gauntleted fist plowed into his already dented chestpiece and knocked him on his ass.

Frederick stood over the god and shook his head. “Too rigid, and you took your eyes off of me.” The paladin offered a hand to Xavior. “I hate to say it, liege, but I do not think you are ready for skirmishing. If you want to fight like a paladin, you need to start at the beginning like everyone else.”

“That... That! … is not going to be good for my image” Xavior admitted, or semi admitted, why he had tried to skip straight to the advanced stuff.

“You were never exactly a warrior king” Annie pointed out

“Yes, well, still” Xavior began and then sighed “we do what we must. Let us begin at the beginning then, it is, in hindsight, the only place to start.”

“Perfect!” Frederick bellowed. “As with any new recruit, our first lesson is on how to breathe!”

“Technically-” Xavior began, only to be cut off.

“You don’t need to breathe, yes, but you also don’t need to circle me when you fight and yet that didn’t work out too well for you either, did it?” Frederick planted his blade into the ground and leaned on it. “The Queen has revealed in part the martial tactics of a warrior god named Faringdal. We mimic his fighting style, and so despite being mortal, we fight with the same technique as a god — so it should stand to reason it will only benefit you to follow it to the letter.”

“That... I did not know” Xavior admitted and did have to wonder how long these people had known what he had only so recently learned about the grand regent of the last cycle now that he did. It did put both a bit of humility in him, and a bit of concern. Afterall, he was learning the style of a god killed by the one he would have to face, passed through 2 different filters.

Still, it was a more mature technique than any other in the world, so it was still likely the best place to start. He had to learn to fight before he started trying to innovate something that could stand against Garravar. “So.. how do I breathe?”

“Annie,” Frederick turned to the demon. “Could you go and get me my training rod? You know the one.”

The demoness nodded, and in a flap of wings was gone to get the same rod that had turned her from untamed titan to towering warrioress. She hoped it would be able to turn her god from shut-in smith to stalwart swordsman. Only time and dedication would tell. He was not lacking in the latter, but the former? That was less clear.

The sun was rising

Rebecca was inside a tent. She was bound to a pole and gagged. The fighting in the distance had died down some time ago. Though the rustle and business outside never stopped. With the sun coming up now she could see the silhouette of her guards through the cloth of the tent. Sometimes someone joined them. All of them were silent, though Rebecca could recognize the mannerism of people talking. Then whoever had joined her guards left. Again someone joined her guards and stood there in silent conversation. This time the new one stepped inside the tent.

He was an older man, though cleanly shaven. There were still splatters of blood on his bronze armor. Wrinkled eyes took a moment to observe Rebecca, before he grabbed the stool that stood in the corner of the tent and placed it in front of her. He just looked at her then, for almost five minutes.

Then he pulled her gag down and asked: “Why do you fight for Benea?”

“That’s a loaded question, now isn’t it?” Rebecca all but coughed in response, her mouth dry from the gag.

“We’ve spilled blood.” The old man said. “So there is space now for loaded questions.”

“Why are you asking?” Rebecca pushed. “What are you hoping to hear?”

“The reason why you fight.” Old man was unphased by Rebecca. Another legionnaire stepped into the tent holding a pitcher and a wooden cup. Without taking his eyes off of Rebecca the old man took the cup and the pitcher and poured himself a cup of water. The soldier that brought it in left without saying a word;

“Generally to kill things,” Rebecca answered. “You understand how a sword works, don’t you? You broke the quarantine, violently, and are subject to the pointy end.”

“Do you know why the quarantine was raised?”

“To prevent Anak’thas and his followers from leaving Node 14’s region,” Rebecca recited. “It’s no secret that Anak’thas’ doctrines and influences are leading the Crucible to its doom. The containment is important for the continued existence of mortality. What about you, why do you like licking boots? Wait..” A pause. “I don’t suppose Anak’thas has any boots, does he?”

The old man released a grunt. “I fight for what is back home and for what you’re sitting on. Are you thirsty?”

“I’m not sitting, I’m standing, tied to a pole,” Rebecca said. “If you want to know what I am, it’s a little more angry than just thirsty.”

“Very well.” The Anak’thasian legionnaire got up and left the tent. Though he left the cup and the pitcher on the stool in front of Rebecca.

---

From the walls, the defenders of Coldshanks could see the perfect, square formations of the Dawnblades moving to their positions. They stayed out of range for archers though, as the legion as a whole was getting ready. The large, looming tent remained unmoving at the besieger’s camp. The siege weaponry made, galleys and battering rams were moved to the front as well. By nine in the morning, with the sun already high in the east, everyone was ready.

For a minute, nothing happened. The legions stood nearly completely still. Only the most perceptive Paladins could see the hints of movements. Certain flags were raised. Small kids, runners no doubt, made their way between the captains. Things were moving. Small groups at every formation of the Dawnblades moved a way to make a circle.

A moment later rocks half the size of a man were hurled through the air. They streaked through the skies like falling stars, coated in golden glory. Behind the formations the mages – called the Auxis Arcanii – of the Dawnblades were chanting their invocations to ritualistically hurl the stones. At the same time the battering ram moved forward towards the gate. The remaining formations remained still and almost unnaturally silent and motionless.

The falling stars were answered in kind. The legionnaires could first hear only a whistle on the wind. A moment later and a blast of fiery energy ripped through one of the formations. Another bolt came crashing down and ripped the ground assunder. The men and women holding the battering ram hurried forward. Left and right of them bolts crashed down with arcane, explosive energies. A galley exploded in lightning, killing everyone inside of it. The smell of burned flesh and smoke began to rise from the field in front of the fortress.

The legions maintained their iron discipline. They marched forward in answer of the ballistae. The first ram crew were getting close. A fateless ballistae bolt shattered the earth in front of them. Ram and legionnaires alike were swallowed by the ground. Another crew mounted another ram and moved forward. The Auxis Arcanii were retaliating for each hit. Falling stones crashed down upon the walls of the defenders. A few lucky shots had hit some of the ballistae. One particularly lucky one had set of a great explosion atop the walls. Still, it would appear that neither side was winning.

Until the roar of a titanic horn could be heard coming from the Dawnblades’ camp. The tent began to collapse in on itself. From the cloth and canvas a figure rose up. One that was so big that it dwarfed anything nearby it.

The golem, a creation the size of two houses, marched forward. The Auxis Arcanii knew what to do. Golden-coated stones were hurled at the ballistae of one particular section of the walls. The barrage did its job. Another ballistae lit up like a lightning bolt charging upwards towards the skies. All the while the golem got in closer. At its feet were smaller, nimbler constructs.

---

The gate groaned under another slam of the battering ram on the other side. Beams had been set up against it to buy the defenders some time. Most of them had already been broken. Another bang, another groan. Wood cracked. The sound of hurling rocks were muffled down here almost.

The gates flung open as wood splinters and dust blasted over the defenders on the other side. The dust cleared and the Dawnblades’ shieldwall came marching through. Up top, someone yelled and steaming buckets of boiled water came pouring down from the ramparts, catching the first through with scalding burns and screams. After that, blue caped paladins closed in to contain the breach.

Hale was one of them as he stood in an irregular line. When compared to the reforming shield wall of the dawnbringers, it almost seemed like a lazy excuse for a formation — but if someone who knew the Artack elite was watching, they would know such an accusation would be dead wrong.

Captain Hale stared forward at the enemy as the dusty and steam was settling. The scalded soldiers were either dead or rolling on the ground in pain, but their comrades stood steady as stones, each hiding behind overlapping shields and a bushel of spears. In contrast, Hale stood apart from his fellow Artack, their kite shields covering their individual fronts and their longswords held off to the side. Like predators the Artack elites stared on, waiting.

Above on the gatehouse, Amarcus was running through the plumes of smoke and dust from the exterior attack, a bag of crystals in his arms. The stones underfoot shook violently as the enemy barrage continued and at any moment he felt like he was either going to go flying off into bits and pieces or fall forward and throw up his breakfast from all the adrenaline. Sweat was beading on his face as he looked over his shoulder and down to the atrium courtyard where Hale stood. He knew they were waiting on him — then a copper glint caught his eye — the trigger.

Not wasting any time, the kid tossed the bag of crystals under the strange copper rod that had been struck into the stone and uncovered the sheen of the xaviorian rocks. Using twisting wire he attached the volatile structures to the copper — a blink starting in the iridescent surface of the crystals. He gulped.

Adrenaline found his legs as the blinking increased and before he knew it, he was sprinting back the way he came, his face red and a cold fear on his back. A loud crack sounded and then his hearing went numb as an explosion erupted behind him, knocking him forward in its blast.,

Back down in the courtyard, Hale and the other elites held their shields high as the gatehouse drowned in a ball of flame and blew into a dust of debris and rubble. All at once the stones and bricks of the construct came crumbling down on top of the invaders, cutting the head of their formation off from the exterior forces with a sickening crunch. In the confusion, Hale roared over the sound of stone and through the cloud of dust.

“Frost cobra!”

The surviving front line of the shield wall buckled back and held tight and orderly, but the elites started waving their swords in such a way to catch the sun over and over as they undilated forward and backwards, ever creeping forward at an odd progression. Eventually Hale picked a target and as a blur he struck forward. An Anak’thasian spear came thundering forward to intercept, but Hale was too fast with the kiss of chamomile and put his sword between him and the spear, his shield to his left between him and another. In one swift motion he pushed both spears back, two Artackian elites behind him pushing outward as well.

Hale’s blade found flesh and tugged as it bit into the neck of the first soldier, his wingmen using the opening to take down the peripheral soldiers and their wingmen doing the same, the swords working better in close quarters than the spears. This continued until the cobra strike was complete and the elite forces collapsed the wounded line and turned the encounter into an all out brawl of sweat and blood.

The intense fighting pushed backwards onto the hill of debris and Hale yelled out.“Secure the hill, break their lines on uneven ground!”

Even under the heat of battle, Hale could feel a cold pessimism in his chest asking him if they would really be able to hold out long enough.

The rhythmic clang of a marching front line could be heard from the other side of the debris. Then something else. At first it was just soft thumping. Then it became louder, and louder. The first few of the paladins rushing the debris were suddenly flung into the air with inhuman force. The Construct Knights scaled the debris with ease. Line across their frame glowed with silvery light. “Auxis Equis!” One of the knights bellowed, it was the first war shout ushered at the gates by the Anak’thasians. “Break them!”

Hale could feel a snarl form on his face as his heart pounded poison through his veins. The wind picked up the dust of the fight and ringed him in with one of the knights. Staring, Captain Hale soaked in the strange construct of clay, metal and fiber, his feet defaulting to the general stance of the paladins. Slowly he started to circle the construct, his sword waving up and down in the sun.

He turned his ankle and pushed off his back foot, lunging forward in a blink. He connected. A bit of clay-looking armor chipped away. A bronze glint caught his eye. Hale jumped away. Just in time. A large weapon came crashing down. It cracked the stone where Hale was standing. The knight didn’t relent. He pushed forward, swinging again at the paladin. Meanwhile, behind them, the first shields of the Legion could be seen coming over the debris, Hale cursed under his breath.

A spear with a squirrel skill tied to it came blasting downward and into Hale’s vision. The streak of violence slammed into the knight in front of him and blasted out the back in a gorey mess. Karlene’s voice came bellowing behind Hale.

“I thought you were from the Artack?” She quipped, already rushing past the stunned Captain. Without stopping she ripped her spear free and continued onward into the fray. Hale sucked in a breath and cracked a grin before rushing behind her.

The battle of the debris was a heated one. Hale and the paladin line were first met by the knight troopers which proved a major obstacle. Luckily their bulky size in irregular terrain meant that the smaller paladins could use fast hitting pack tactics, which at the very least slowed their advance — the luckier groups managing to down one of the constructs, while the unlucky groups were splattered across the rubble.

Past that the legionnaire lines were pushing forward, their order impeccable and eerily quiet. The jagged landscape of the collapsed gatehouse broke any idea of a shield wall but even still, the unity of the enemy was unmatched. Hale watched Karelene and the regulars slam into their forces with a ferocity. Even still, Hale could see past their ranks and at the ocean of soldiers still marching forward. They were stalled here, but only for as long as the paladins could keep fighting against a superior number.

He knit his brow as he stood on his vantage point, the enemy showed no sign of fatigue despite the blood on either side — they were almost soulless in their advance, inhuman. Time played in Hale’s head as his mind churned out predictions until finally he swore and rushed into the fray.

Ducking under spears, rising with his blade, cutting a gut, and sidestepping a khopesh, Hale found Karelene. Her brow was lined with sweat and her teeth grit as she fought an enemy. Hale rushed to her side and held up his shield.

“We should sally port,” He hissed as a spear barely missed his shoulder. An enemy slammed their shield against his and he pushed back.

Karlene didn’t respond right away, a streak of crimson flowing down her arm. Hale shoved with his shoulder and knocked his enemy backwards. “General Karlene, we should sally port!”

“I know!” She finally hissed before falling silent. A violent second passed, any thought interrupted by the shaking ground and a plume of stone from the fall wall. A gigantic fist had plowed through the fortifications with a magical whirr, their giant had made it to the walls, opening a second breach.

Karlene swore. “Call it! I’ll hold here.”

“I’ll hold, you do the call,” Hale barked back.

“Call it!” Karlene growled, she looked at Hale briefly, her eyes wide with adrenaline and fury. “I. Will. Hold!”

Hale gave a final shove with his shield, pounding it against the chest of an enemy and disengaging the soldier before leaping backwards. His vision caught sight of the scene in its entirety. Knights slamming into elites, paladins cutting at an endless sea of enemies, a cloud of choking debris and the smell of blood. The second breach was already swelling with the enemy, his troops unable to contain them as they spilled into the courtyard. He could feel a chill in his chest as he backpedaled before turning into a run.

“Sally port!” He roared until his throat choked. “Sally port!”

He ran down from the hill of debris, any unengaged paladins and runners following his command. “Sally port! Sally port!”

Hale ran past the new breach. “Sally port!”

His legs pumped and his breath was heavy. “Sally port!”

All at once the man stopped, the cold in his chest freezing his body and his eyes widening. He stared ahead at a pile of stone that was blasted from the wall. A pool of dark blood lapped at one of the boulders, the dazed eyes of Amarcus looking up at him — his legs hidden under the stones. The boy opened his mouth, almost smiling at Hale.

The Captain felt horror in his belly, the smile stuck in his vision. “Amarcus.”

No sound came from the boy’s mouth. A spear came shooting out at Hale, stabbing the dazed paladin in the back. The bronze tip bent against the steel cuirass and glanced off, giving Hale a shove forward. He turned with a wide arc and the head of an Anak’thasian legionnaire lobbed free from its body. Hale spun back to Amarcus, dropped his sword and threw his arms under the boy’s body. With a heave, he started to wrench the runner from the stones — the soundless mouth of Amarcus starting to scream in absolute pain.

“Keep screaming.” Hale’s head was rocked back from the blast of sound. “Keep screaming, damn it.”

Screams turned to loud whimpers, energy fading. “Scream, you little shit, scream!” Hale barked into the boy’s ear. Bone grinding on stone sent sickly vibrations up the Captain’s arm as he pulled the boy free.

A sharp pain burned through Hale’s back. He knew he had been stabbed. His elbow shot backwards and shattered the shaft of a spear, the other half still protruding from him. In his peripheral vision he could see Fafnir coming to his aid. The sound of cutting flesh came from behind the captain and in a moment Fafnir was next to Hale helping him pull Amarcus free.

Bubbling came from the boy’s mouth as the two captains finally yanked his limp body free. Hale cradled the boy close to his chest, blood smearing his armor. Amarcus’ shattered legs dangled loosely against him.

“Sally port,” Fafnir said through a puff of exhaustion. Hale nodded and held Amarcus tight.

Coldshanks had fallen.

There was calm in the lunar inspired fields of Node 9. The Daman were gone, their race still ongoing, and the goddess finally could appreciate the silver dunes and shining white flowers as well as the visage of the cold mist that rose from the freezing shores of this land's massive crescent shaped lake.

Of course this land provided booms for her people, the white lotuses floating in the nitrogen waters, the sugar cane on the gentler fields, even the flowers themselves, the silver cotton, the seeds and herbs. It still was inhospitable to most, not deadly, but even animals seemed to avoid the land, a few darting and rabbits called this land home, almost free from predators, almost, for in the conversion, a few drakes had too been tamed and bound to the land, though as the lesser version of the lesser version of a beast, they were little but another animal of the land, chaos fully expunged from their core.

"I wish we could stay here longer" she whispered to her wolf companion, but, much like everything else, Anak'Thas and the Crucible stole all that was dear to her. With a sigh she stood up, touching the node one last time to share it with Xavior, then leaving to collect samples of all she had gifted the land, so that her magistrates and newly founded alchemists would find their uses and further enhance the Duskland's potential.

She was sure they would love the sugar especially, so far they had to make do with concoctions and apple extracts, but this was sucrose in its purest. The sugar canes could also produce ethanol, another product that was becoming highly desired, especially in Badja Kiri. With her hands full, she looked once again at the field of white and grey, dunes and flowers, a mirror of the moon above and...

CARMINE

The sky shone red, tinting the pure and white of the moon with blood, her fields of innocent white were poured in the sanguine carmine, each and every tulip, lotus and rose, the streams of cold nitrogen, red. Her mind too, went red, her eyes too she imagined, a feeling surging into her, as if the world broke a bit more, a hollowness in her chest and yet a rush of blood and fury to her head. Cracking crystal and tooling bells.

WHITE

In a moment, it was gone. But the feeling of red stood. A scar in her mind, and a memento in the flowers and plants she had just caught, all fallen to the ground. What had just happened? Whatever it was, it was not good... something that could turn even the gentle night into something so obscenely deranged and violent... truly, the crucible would not allow her to have anything.

When she returned to Vallora, further proof would be given of that.

---

"And this is what happened at Coldshanks"

The room where the goddess had met with her elite overlooked much of the verdant land of Node 13, tainted with the red of the dawning sun. It was a silent cold morning, the only noise being made were the exhausted panting of a magistrate, who had run day and night to deliver this message and their first hand account, which the goddess could peer into given the link between her and the magi.

"How could the fortress fall so quickly?" questioned Daga, sister of Zed, and one of the three best skilled generals in all of the dusklands, one of the two darkhorses of the program held at the Mirori dream battles. "Even with magic, a bunch of kopesh yielding zealots should not be able to simply overrun Paladins. Its... not logical, is Anak'Thas willing to send his whole population against us?"

"Why should he care? The population of the verdant lands breeds like rats in a granary." ever stern Hatzur retorted, wife of Marana, leader of the unshakeable Hatzur-Marana banner. The one who all expected to be one of the leading generals, and she had lived up to expectations. "Their people don't know struggle or hunger, they do not have to plan for dry seasons and winters, especially in the new Nodes. So he sends them in human waves to be slaughtered, but not before the men breed the women so that the another wave may grow inside them."

Silence, the Orichalk clad woman looking to the side. "No offence." she declared to the third great general, the second and most true of the dark horses, for the man was not a dusklander, on the contrary, a few season ago he had been one of the most fierce of their enemies, with the blood of people they knew and liked in his hand.

It took divine intervention for the man to not be killed when out of nowhere he showed up in Vallora, 'I was just following orders' didn't cut with Hatzur, who had merely retorted 'then blame and hate those who ordered you for what I am about to do.'. But he had come in peace, unarmed, with his family, something was fishy, and both the magistrates, and later Dzallitsunya, had given him the benefit of his doubt.

He tried again and again to explain Anak'Thas tactics, but his tales were so wild the dusklanders took them for fables. Being ignored, he took to himself to join the competition of dream generals, landing the second position. Theodoro, the sunlander, the wretch of Anak'Thas, even with Dzalli's blessing, most took his appointment as insanity.

Now, with the images Dzallitsunya saw in the Magistrate's mind, he had been truly vindicated.

"So." he declared. "As I warned, the Legion is a machine, Anak'Thas, cursed be he, has warped them fully out of the spectrum of humanity. A movie wall of cold eyed bodies, ready to strike." he took a sip of the fire tea he had been served. "And this is only of the many debaucheries he brings. Be prepared."

"Theodoro, I must say I am sorry. Seeing what I saw, I can understand why you took your daughter away from it." the goddess said in a low, almost ashamed tone.

"I could not have her grow to be part of that or worse things." The man shook his head, sorrow in his eyes. "I wish I had believed in you sooner too. I believed in bright lights, but the brighter the light the darker the shadow, but the gentle light has a gentle shadow."

Hatzur and Bada stared at each other for a moment, the latter deciding to speak. "My lady, what shall we do now? Do you think the troops we have and are sending will be enough?"

Hatzur crossed her arms and. "Goddess, the food situation is truly problematic, we put so much effort into making our lands bountiful, while other lands get all of that with much less effort."

"I think retraining and adaptation would be best, but we need a stronger military presence right now or risk worse results. As to you, Hatzur, There are consequences to taking farmland for granted, overproduction without care will lead to loss of quality given enough time."

"Right, but that is in decades or centuries, but right now, more free hands not tied to the farms would be better. Perhaps, moving farmers next spring? From the more arid areas of 8 to maybe farms in the 13? With our techniques and irrigation allied to the already bountiful land, the crop output would be absurd."

At that the goddess stopped, rubbing her chin. "If we expanded our farms to the sunlands, there is the danger our techniques would spread, can you imagine how much scarier the verdant lands would become with our botanical expertise available?"

Hatzur for once was shook. "Yes, exactly what you are thinking. Thankfully, Badja Kiri has made us proud and met expectations, I will give them directions and I am sure they will further work on solve our issues, there is much potential still in all of our lands. They may be harsh, but they are rich in resources and filled with excellent people."

Theodoro leaned forward "Some blessings are curses, roads and bountiful farmlands make it ease for anyone to prosper, friend, or foe. A dusklander army can easily forage for food in Node 13, 14, and so on, but could a foreign army do the same in 8 or 7?"

"A foreign army will never step in our lands." Hatzur cut him quickly. "But I see what you mean. Still, more hands to hold weapons will always be welcomed."

"Oh, but what about the reinforcements from the other paladins and the Xaviorard mercenaries?" Daga questioned.

"Psshhh, Benea just left her own to die like dogs, we should not count on her for a thing. Do not forget we also once held Node 14, but she made no effort in defending it."

"Hatzur... we were just discussing how the fanatical attack of Anak'Thas caught all of us..." Daga stared at Theo before adjusting her sentence. "Most of us by total surprise, its likely she did not expect them either. As for Node 14 uh... I am sure she had her reasons. Right Tsunya?"

The goddess was looking to the fields, somewhat distracted. "I do not understand Benea either, so many illogical choices, and now that the situation is bowling she seems to be gone." this slapped the optimism out of Daga's face. "But I have confirmation that more troops are arriving soon. I will also have the Paladins use my magistrate administration to coordinate more efficiently, this should give us enough of a surplus of forces... to send Daga and Hatzur back to the Mirori to train more troops and themselves."

A unified what filled the room, including Theodoro.

"My lady, to split forces now. That is absurd." Hatzur had risen from her chair.

"I question why you elected three generals if two will be out of it for the whole thing?" Daga insinuated.

"The enemy is employing human waves, the more troops ready to attack the better, else it will turn into a torrent of defeats in detail."

Bathed in the red of the sunrise, Dzallitsunya smiled. "More armies means a more reserved Anak'Thas, therefore less armies means its more likely he will into the field personally, if he does, I will put out his light and save the world from bloodshed. If he does not, then I will still be on the field, holding the line, while the rest of the Dusklands marches forward, readies up, and comes fully prepared to march into 14." she laughed. "We must force his hand, the sooner the better, the sooner, the less people die, and if he denies us that, then that just means our control of 13 will be total, that Kiri Tzur in the central sea will be ready and functional, that our scouts will go deeper and deeper into his land and wreck havoc on their supply."

Tension somehow both increased and eased with her words, as paradoxical as it sounded.

"It almost sounds like you are itching to battle him."

"Oh I am. Perhaps Benea gave you the wrong impression of the gods with her total failure at Coldshanks. I do not leave my own to die, if I must, I will put myself in harms way to solve an issue over simply letting the mortals suffer for it. And the sooner Anak'Thas dies, the sooner peace will prosper, the less people will be blinded by his light." she waved at the window, causing a magistrate to lower the curtains, hiding the now fully risen sun. "Theodoro has reminded us of something important, which is, dusklanders are not defined by blood but by character. Anyone can become a true dusklander, once they see the harms of burning ambition and embrace the gentle shadows. We are liberators my friends, we are the truth and the promise of a better world. Once that vessel of obscene light is put out, we will bring peace to everyone from Node 13 to Node 17, and beyond."

---

Bada was the last one to remain in the room besides Dzallitsunya. She hummed. "Like old times, eh Tsunyi?"

"Weren't we meeting regularly until recently, sister in law?"

"Ohhh boo hoo, in my brother's home I become Auntie Bada, not here, here I am good old adventurer and troublemaker Bada!"

"Hmm. On one side both versions look like brats, in the other, at least Zed is not asking for you to produce offspring and find a husband."

"Yeah..." she sighed. "Man, times sure changed eh? War with gods... bah. The only war back then was me teasing Croll..." the mood immediately soured. "D...Did you know his grandson became like, the head of a department in Badja Kiri? The blood runs strong! Well... after skipping a generation and... oh... damn I messed this up, huh?"

"Croll leaving us so soon was shocking, I was so sad back then, we lost many good people so far, many. And to bring peace, I will have to kinslay, this is all a bad joke..."

"Tsunyi..."

She turned to Bada, smiling. "But with each node I become closer to a god. A true god. And what problems can a true god not fix? I can somewhat defy death right now with my limited power, imagine what I can do then! So I am not really sad, this war, this slaying, it bothers me but it doesn't matter, when the world in unblinded, I can bring him back, them all back, and there won't be another fight, because we all will rest peacefully under the gentle night."

The Union of Umbrium Harvesters wasn't exactly the most prestigious of organizations that made its home in the burgeoning fortress town of Twilight's Rest. The sturdy lumberjacks, hard working farmers, free roaming herders, the wealthy merchants and their Paladin-Demon dark guards all had their palace and various kinds of respect.

The Union members meanwhile were snidely referred to as the ‘road sweepers’ because of how they collected up the dust of the ever dark realm that drifted onto the road using long brooms and cart sized dustpans which generally got in the way of merchant traffic.

They provided an invaluable service, in their opinion, both in keeping the road of light clear and in providing non lumber based fuel for the infernal fires of Twilight’s rest, freeing up the still somewhat dangerous to acquire wood to be used for construction. Yes, it wasn’t exactly skilled labor, and so their ranks were often filled with what some would consider the dregs of society, but they put back into their work and their necks on the line against the roaming horrors of the dark land to bring back warmth and light to hold back the dark and fuel their defender’s might? But did they get respect for that? Not one bit!

Or at least that was how they felt, and it was part of what had had the Union pile together what excess funds they had on a commission for something to improve all their fortunes, and today was the day it had finally arrived.

With the palisaded town looming behind them and the road of light close at hand, the sweepers had gathered to watch as one of their number, Geoffry (a middle aged bald man with rosy skin and an impressive fiery red handlebar mustache) was strapped into a suit of salamander leather (ethically harvested from the great beast’s shed skin) that, with a few modifications, had been made to keep his heat in and the cold out just as well as these suits normally resisted the cold (the secret ingredient being massive amounts of soft fluffy goat wool).

This suit had two other notable alterations to the standard pattern on top of that cold proofing. The first was a pair of boots with green gems in their soles, and the other was a tiara of them on his brow. Both his forehead and his feet had Ambroisen fibers wrapped around them, but these were connected via crystal wiring linking them to the gems and not to his own nerves.

These meant that, as he stepped forwards into the dark and the world vanished into nothingness, he did not step without wisdom. No, instead as he carefully picked his way across the ever dark land the Ambroisen fibers around his feet squeezed around them with greater or lesser intensity to tell him how far away his foot was from the ground, feeling nothing upon contact with the ground and an constricting with almost blood stopping pain when he almost stepped into some kind of ravine that would have claimed his life otherwise.

Being able to walk was all well and good, but if it where only the land he had to worry about, they could have done this with guide ropes and tethers (which he did have, one was tied to his back and trailing all the way back to the land of light so he could find his way home).

No, the issue was that he wasn't alone in here. There were things out there in the dark. Horrible, crawling things that goddess Monica, bless her soul, had made for reasons no one really knew or understood. What they did know was that they hated all other life with a feral passion, and that was why, on top of the blindness and the cold, walking into the dark should have been suicide.

The man only had so much time till he attracted their attention, so he swiftly set to work, crouching down and pulling out a small rock hammer, which he used to chip away at a nearby outcropping, chipping off some samples of pure Umbrium, and then trying to do the same with one of the local plants, only to fail to break its crystalline structure and resorting to a combination of hammering the ground it was in and pulling to uproot it.

And that, that was what caught the attention of something dangerous. So far only little bugs had been trying to kill him, but thanks to his fully enclosed suit that was oxygenated by two small canisters of re-breather kelp sitting on either side of his mask, and one larger one strapped to his chest and connected to his mouth via tube, they had been able to do him no harm. Now something larger was approaching. Not too large, only about the size of a dog. But in the land of the blind the monster that did not need to see is a deadly hunter no matter its size, for it could fight tooth and claw while the man was helpless.

Or so it had been till this day.

Geoffry caught the beast coming closer while glancing back, the Ambroisen fibers on his forehead constricting and forming little pinpricks as the gems on his forehead’s magics reached out ahead of him and detected the tiny seismic tremors of its many feet striking the bear stone of the land.

It wasn't detailed, he could mainly tell that there was something coming at him, and that it was big but not that big, and it would not be enough to let him land a sword strike or nail it with a perfect arrow. Besides, Geoffry was no warrior, let alone camomile kissed paladin or inferno fueled demon.

He was merely a sweeper with a pair of nubby horns. But he was sweeper with a new tool. With shaking hands he reached over his back and unslung something crossbow shaped and sized and pointed it in the general direction of his incoming death.

Then he pulsed his pathetic magic reserves into the trigger pad, and there was a crackle of magic and a a wumf of air followed by a scream as the stone thrower shotgun blasted a dozen geokinetically propelled stone shards in a cone wide enough that even the blind sweeper was guaranteed to hit something.

The man tugged his rope and started to backed up/be reeled home, his stone sensing steps letting him tread backwards as he fumbled a latch on the the stone thrower, pulled out and replaced the spent stable crystal battery and then shoved another rock down the barrel, before bringing the gun up and with a crackle, woomf, crash another shot blasted out and hammered the beast. And then another. And another. Till his forehead stopped being pricked by the bug’s writhing and the deed was done.

A few dozen moments later, and the man stumbled back out into the light and into the arms of his fellows who gave a collective sigh of relief as several came up to embrace the brave pioneer.

“How was it, you hard bastard?” one hairy chested bloke asked after breaking his bear hug with Geoffry.

“Terrifying. I mean it worked. I’m back and not down a ravine somewhere, but still. Bloody terrifying” the man said, before reiterating “But it worked, creator’s bones did it work. Took one of them down with this thing” he clapped the stone thrower before getting to the main event, reaching into his pouch and pulling out first the Umbrium shard that seemed to eat the light even out here “but i got the rock, it's definitely mine-able, though the land’s a right bloody mess in there. Cravasses and such everywhere. Gonna be right bloody pain”

The other’s nodded. They hadn't expected it to be easy, but damn would it be worth it if they could get lots of dense flammable Umbrium out of it.

“Plus I also got a plant… ah where is it, the bloody thing was a pain to pull out let me… tell… you” his words faltered as he and the other’s beheld one of Maelite’s plants in the light for the first time, and its crystalline structure sparkled in the sunlight.

“Are… are they all like that?” the technician who had provided the suit asked, breaking the stunned silence “because if they are… if the entire land is suffused with these gems, that could be a boon and a half to science and industry… May I see it?” she asked, getting a stiff nod of permission and taking the plant to give it an examination during which the reality of the situation

“Do you know what this means Geoffry?” the bear huger said as he grasped the stunned explorer’s arm in both of his hands“we’ve got more than just an endless supply of firewood on our hands here, we’ve struck bloody gold!”

“Diamonds actually” the technician helpful informed them, which damn near caused the entire assembly of sweeper to faint with shock. Their fortunes were made, and from the sweat of their brows and the black and clear bounties of Maelite the 12th realm’s industrial revolution would truly begin.

It started with pained screaming.

Despite the advanced nature of Vex's medical knowledge, their understanding of biology and the usage of painkillers, the act of giving birth was still a tiring, painful process. It was just a lot easier and safer to give birth within Vex for both the mother and child(ren) involved.

While Oxana might have been the first to figure out the knowledge that had been crafted by Vatarr in order to educate the mortals that had followed him into his realm, she wasn't the only one. As was the nature of things, once one person figured out how to do something others tended to follow suit shortly afterwards. One such person was currently tending and aiding the Queen-Regent and future mother to be during this tying time with a small staff of trained nurses in order to assist.

Under normal circumstances the situation would have been stressful. Vex had been united under the banner of a woman baring the child of one of the divines and that mortal born demi-god being their future leader; This birth being complicated would risk the young kingdom dividing and falling into infighting for dominance on the eve of biological horrors invading and trying to add them to their mass. It didn't help that Vatarr himself was in attendance.

The deity had arrived shortly after the Queen-Regent had gone into labor, shedding the insect like flying form he had been in for his traditional one before quietly stepping into the room and finding a place to take a seat to witness the birth. Normally the staff would have insisted that the father wait outside, but none of them really had the nerve to try and tell Vatarr that he wasn't welcome in the room and since he was staying quiet and out of the way they just did their best to ignore him while they professionally carried on.

After hours through, the screams and moans of pain started to quiet down as they were replaced by a new type of cry altogether; The cry of those who had just entered the mortal world for the first time. The freshly born baby was disconnected from her mother and cleaned up quickly before one of the nurses nervously carried them over to the waiting father. "W-Would you like to hold her, Vatarr?"

It was almost comical and definitely fey, watching the divine being gently take the new lifeform in his hands carefully as he looked her over. Despite her parentage, the child looked like a normal human as her appearance clearly took after her mother Oxana, through an unkind person might point out that the baby seemed to be lacking the unsightly 'fishy sheen' of the skin that the Regent-Queen did. In fact one would think she was pure human... until she opened her eyes. Her eyes were her father's and no one could ever mistake her for being fully mortal once seeing them. While Vatarr didn't say anything, something about his presence and the way that he held the small baby caused her to stop crying... and start giggling.

After a few moments, the deity walked over to join Oxana, carefully offering the small bundle of joy to her tired mother so that she could see her for the first time. "Did you have a name in mind, Oxana?" Vatarr asked softly with a surprising degree of tenderness that suited the circumstance rather nicely.

Oxana couldn't help but offer a soft sigh that morphed into a yawn as her droopy eyes gazed down at her child. "...I did. I can't remember what it was through. I'm just... rather out of it at the moment. Did you have something in mind?"

There was a moment of silence... before Vatarr muttered one word. "Agniya."

Oxana pondered it for a moment, figured she was too tired to really give it a whole lot of thought, before softly answering "I like it. Welcome to the world Agniya."

The sky above Vallora had the tones of afterglow with the sun high but locked in a state of eclipse. The city was buzzing with life, the sound of forges, of accounting magistrates, and the marching of soldiers to the camp set by Theodoro. A wave of orichalk lances standing high as the men marched down, flowing from Vallora to there like a river of metal, yet the world was silent, the cannons had quieted, the twacks of bows and crossbows, all gone, the time for drilling had passed, it was time to take position and stand ready.

It was impressive to some, imposing to others, but to Dzallitsunya it was just melancholic. She was sitting in a nearby hill, under a tree of purple blooms, Eclipse had been planted on the ground, the goddess resting her hands and chin against its hilt.

Even in the afterglow, as modest of light it may give in an otherwise dusky atmosphere, something cast a shadow over Eclipse. Whoever owned the shadow was creeping ever closer, throwing their shade over Tsunya herself.

“Benea.” The shadow goddess said with a coy tone, killing any chance for a fun surprise. “I was wondering when you would arrive.”

“Shortly,” Jermane answered, “she is just cresting the hill now.”

The goddess turned her head to acknowledge the shadow. “Ah, Jermane. I had not seen you there.” she stood up, taking full hold of the sword. “To be fully honest, you spooked me.”

“I told him to do it, dear!” Benea called out as she finally overcame the slope to stand atop the hill with the others. She held her hands high in a stretch before resting them on her hips. Jermane simply bowed his head to Dzallitsunya and then Benea before backing away to give the two of them space.

“Good technique, I was very distracted by your presence.” she said, then looked to the side for a moment, her lips moving in a hesitating manner. “The news arrived here already.” she added, focusing again on Benea with a side-glance.

“Hmmmm?” Benea gave a playful hum as she went to sit down, a curly-framed chair of birch and flowers knitting underneath to catch her. As she sank into the chair she tapped her cheek. “So much has been going on, my sweet Tsunya, which news?”

Tsunya closed her eyes for a moment, when she opened them again she had fully turned to Benea. “I cannot deny that. I could be talking about the fall of coldshanks, of the, now somewhat old, news of a floating spirit of winter, I could be talking about the embassy coming to me with the most dire news, the death of a god… Did it happen in the past too? That tint of red in the sky when a god dies?”

“Yes.” Benea folded a leg over her knee and crossed her arms — a serious look taking her face. “Every single time. It lingers longer the closer you are.”

“How terrible. That light was truly repugnant.” she stared up at the sky when remembering it. “Sigh… Benea. I do not care much if once you ran by another name. But I cannot deny it… hmm. Stings a bit, to know you knew certain things. This world is full of things beyond my reach, things I can never understand or even change, the sky, the past, the future, death and our fellow gods. Your existence however turns a few of those more tangible to me.”

Benea tucked a slant into her cheek. “Don’t take it personally, darling, it had nothing to do with you and our relationship. Originally it was for my own safety — though I suppose I chose the wrong name for that, it just popped in my head first. Then it was so I wouldn’t accidentally interfere with you or the other’s developing will in an effort to sort of recreate the peace of the past crucible.” She waved her hand and an identical chair appeared facing her. “Do you want to sit and talk about it? It’s far too late for my original plans, or Peninal’s.”

“We both love peace, and in a great irony, I believe we both took actions because of that that only gave room for violence to rise.” Dzallitsunya said, before nodding, sitting down, letting Eclipse fall against the grass and crossing her legs. “I am sorry… I do not have tea today. I could make some but I grew too accustomed to the real deal, summoned tea feels notably… hmm, faux.”

“Oh don’t worry about it.” Benea waved a hand. “I’m sure our time with questions will fill any time for sipping tea. Where would you like to start?”

She stopped, pondered and then let out a somewhat nervous grim. “It will be a charged question, I try to find lesser ones to make the stage for it, but my mind just goes back to one thing.” She took a deep breath. “From where do you think Peninal or the Crucible or… the Node system the… whatever made us, from where do you think they took that? The assumption that we just came from nothing never felt full to me… I know this might be beyond you, but… The end of the last crucible and the start of this one, you had an experience on both sides. I do not. Even your most raw and shallow speculation would be more than what I have.”

Benea tilted her head. “You want to know why you were created? How the crucible decided on making you specifically?”

“Yes, something close to that... We all were born with so many preset thoughts and aspects, the humans too, it just… doesn’t make sense in my mind.”

“Hm… let me try to answer this to the best of my ability, dear.” The Calla Lily Goddess pinched her chin. “You and everyone in this crucible, including myself, is an aspect of Peninal’s will. Whether conscious or not, he wanted all of us to exist and so we do. I won’t lie to you though, it is more complicated than that — there are rules, even if you take all the nodes.” She trailed off. “With no barriers between us, darling, this is not my first crucible — nor was the last one my first either.”

The response surprisingly soothed her curiosity. “Ah! That makes… more sense. I was worried it could have been something worse.” The mention of rules however had echoed in her mind with a sense of dread, yet she also feared asking Benea about it, it was too close to confessing how much she had been thinking about the conquest of all nodes, and she did not want to appear sick to Benea.

“I imagined there was the possibility it was not your first. How many… Do you remember?”

She nodded. “I do.” Benea held out three fingers. “I was born in the sixth crucible, reigned over the seventh, and was reborn in the eighth.”

“Oh? That is… Less, haha.” she contained herself. “Sorry, I was childish for a moment, you are the only old god I know so my mind had raced to the possibility of you being… ageless.” she rubbed the side of her head. “I am sorry, it's just so much to think about. Uhm. But how did you know it was the sixth? Was there someone from a previous crucible, like you exist here?”

“In the sixth? No. I honestly didn’t know it was the sixth at the time. Garravar discovered the numbers for the crucibles, so even then I’m not entirely sure how accurate they are — but he was a very thorough man,” Benea admitted. “But there was an artifact filled with everything we needed to know to work with the nodes, back in the sixth I mean.” Her face twisted with some worry. “Back then, I was the weakest of my sisters, you know? Ha! Look how far I’ve gone since then, sweet Tsunya.”

Tsunya tilted her head. “Well, your arms are still pudgier than Mine or Eleanna’s… heh.”

“Are you calling me fat, dear?” A stern tone laced Benea’s words.

“Closer to soft…” she smirked. “What… were they like? Your sisters I mean. The gods… the people from before.”

“There were four of us. Me, Olipha… then my identical twin, Beneha, after her was Lon and Galina as well.” Olipha answered. “You can see where I found my alias… but to answer your question, they were all fantastic. Beneha was a curious and loving creature, Lon was headstrong but filled with passion, Galina was contemplative and so smart like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh. Now I understand why you said that about your name… Wait. Hmm. Now that I think about it, we all saw glimpses of the end of the last crucible, but how did your first one end?”

A quiet thought shadowed Benea’s face, as if a strong pain stabbed at her. “I won and created the seventh crucible.”

Tsunya’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh…!? So… You… Had all the nodes in your control? And yet the crucible continued?”

“It was my will,” Benea said simply. “A lot had happened in the sixth crucible, but I didn’t want to give up on a peaceful existence between gods. I loved my sisters, I loved them a lot and I still miss them even after so many thousands of years. I had so many options, and I chose the seventh crucible.”

The wide eyes narrowed. “But… What was it like? You had all the nodes and then what? Did they extract your wishes without your input? Did you get whisked to a secret Node dimension to talk with whoever made the nodes? And if you were the weakest, how did you win?” by the end of her last question she was leaning almost too close, then with a sigh she enrightened herself. “I am sorry, I just have been… with a lot in my mind as of late.”

“I…” Benea furrowed her brow and put a hand on Tsunya’s knee, giving it a reassuring pat. “I’ll tell you the rest but you have to promise me that you will talk with me and Xavior so we can all decide together who should take all the nodes, okay?”

“I have been one of the first to propose that, and… despite everything, I stand by it. I cannot say I have not questioned you both before, sometimes I may have had harsh thoughts even, especially with certain acts during this war but…” she took a deep breath. “I truly trust you, you both, I think when the time comes, even if I have to step back, you two will understand my worries and concerns and bring that forth no matter what.”

It was something Theodoro had touched upon a long time ago, something she had not realized until he had put into words. “Not to say I simply stand back to all I have done, I think I am not without merit, yes?

Giving Tsunya a soft smile, Benea shook her head. “I do trust you, it’s just stories of the past have a certain way of muddling thoughts. Either way, I’m ready to tell you about the sixth crucible if you’re ready to listen and be my friend throughout the story.”

The dusk goddess nodded. “Of course. I can stand and listen until the sun dawns again, and it is not dawning for as long as I am standing here.”

“Sweet Tsunya, we are sitting.”

The dusk goddess gasped. “I meant… uh…” she blew some air out of her mouth. “You totally understood what I meant, didn’t you?” she said with a pout.

“I do, darling, I do,” Benea gave the dusk goddess a snorting laugh. “So, the sixth crucible.” Her face turned serious. “I was born with my three sisters as I said; Beneha, Lon, and Galina. When we first awoke we were surrounded by humans, same as you were, but instead of Peninal, we found a great and ancient pillar not far off. Of course we shied away from it at first, it was very intimidating but eventually Beneha decided to investigate it and I quickly followed. Following so far, dear?”

"I am" she rubbed her chin. She wondered if later she could request Benea to draw such things.

“From the pillar we learned about the triggering event and capturing the nodes as well as a brief history on a past crucible,” Olipha recounted. “Unfortunately, Beneha didn’t take it all very well and grew upset and angry to the point that she wanted to destroy the crucible. I tried to calm her down, I really did, but before I could make any progress, Galina and Lon grew upset with Beneha’s actions. Eventually, Lon took Beneha’s life to silence her rage.”

"Ah." The dusk goddess nodded solemeny "Was it… just you four back then?"

“Yes,” Benea answered. “Just us four.”

"What happened next? After the… conflict…"

Olipha let out a long sigh. “I killed Lon to avenge Beneha. She wasn’t expecting it, but neither was I. After that, it was too late. Galina and myself fell into a feud. She raised the humans into an army of paladins, so I did the same and for a little over one-hundred years we fought back and forth against each other. We captured nodes and lost them just the same, but it was never about winning the crucible, it was about our sisters… until a few years before the end at least. During our fighting, when the world was split between her and I, the triggering event started. After that, it was a maddened rush to finish the war and prevent a collapse of apocalyptic proportions. I won.”

She sighed. "I almost feel tempted to say the crucible truly is wicked… But well, humans do it too among themselves, it's far more widespread, like a blinding fire." She turned to Benea. "But then, what next? How did the end of the crucible go?"

“Hm.” Olipha chewed on her cheek. “I saw the ebb and flow of all creation and after that, my will was law. The world sundered itself to my vision and the seventh crucible was formed, and for thousands of years, my will didn’t part from reality — I was all powerful, though… I suppose not all powerful, there were rules.”

For once there was a glint in the shadow's eye. "You mentioned them before. What were they? I can imagine the nodes still stand supreme and unshakable, even as the world bends to your will?"

“Well no,” Olipha actually disagreed. “The nodes bent to my will just the same. Two rules come to mind the most, though. I inherited them by taking all the nodes, you see, and was bound to the will of a previous being named Kaksi. I don’t know anything about Kaksi, except that they left me two things I could never break. First, was that the Children of Trine shall always persist, to which I had no idea what that meant, and second was that a god could never break physical reality.”

"Children of Trine, hmm." She had a main guess, among many, of who those were. "And no breaking of reality. Ergh. Very flexible wording, to me flying fish broke that, until I saw them, so does Umbrium…"

“Wait,” Olipha held up a hand. “Where else would you see fish but the sky? You’re a silly one sometimes, Tsunya.”

"The duskland's rivers are full of fishes."

Olipha snorted a giggle. “Silly. But go on.”

"If you don't mind me asking, in the seventh and sixth Crucibles… was the sky the same?"

“Heavens no.” Olipha waved a hand. “The sky you see now was made by Peninal.”

“Huh… Is that so? What was different from the previous crucibles then? The sky is so immense I had the impression it had to be beyond reach for all things, even a fully unified crucible.”

“Well for one, I wasn’t a constellation in the last crucible.” Olipha winked. “That boy really did have quite the crush on me, didn’t he?”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “I mean, yes, that is probably one way to say it. Truly… reaching for the stars and then just doing something so… But, well, I guess that also meant he went the full way to bring you back…” she tapped her chin. “Were they brought back from the sixth to the seventh? Your sisters…?”

Olipha shook her head. “No. I wish I had a better explanation for you on why, but… leave a survivor to grieve, dear.”

“Sorry…” she nodded in acknowledgement. “I knew it was something harsh to ask but… With Anak’Thas I thought, as a silver lining, that he could be given a second chance… well, he was already and denied it, but I mean, a second chance in a better world.”

“You mean if it would be possible or wise to renew Anak’thas in a ninth crucible?” Olipha peered at Dzallitsunya with an uncharacteristically blank yet thinking stare.

“It would be up to the judgment of the person who makes the final decision, in my own viewpoint, yes. If I am chosen to lead the final union, then it will be because most people trust that my methods and views can bring peace, and if that is the case, then Anak’Thas in such a world would not follow the same unfortunate path…” Tsunya tapped her legs and looked down. “Huh. I expected more resistance to me mentioning taking down Anak’Thas.” she thought aloud as soon as the realization came to her.

“Yes, he wouldn’t, but not because you created a world in which he wouldn’t, but because you created an Anak’thas that couldn’t.” Olipha crossed her arms. “I was reborn in the eight to fulfill a plan set by myself and Peninal, but living in it as long as I have made me realize how futile the plan was. I have given up on it as well as on an idea of me taking all the nodes once again. Instead, I plan on anointing either you or Xavior as my successor… though such a heavy decision does not come easy.”

“... Oh. I guess… I should have guessed. I started this conversation declaring the tea I can create as a god to be faux compared to the real one. And yet… You don’t seem annoyed at your own existence, and at the new chances…” Unless, this was all a set up… but then… Dzallitsunya shook her head, skipping to the next topic. “About the decision… I appreciate this, that I am one of the two you would trust, but you should not burden yourself this much, me and Xavior had a pleasant time together, we too can come to amends should the time come.”

“I’d rather you have someone to blame other than yourself if you don’t find all you’re looking for past the nodes, dear,” Olipha disagreed. “It’s the least I can do for inspiring your existence.” She shook her head. “But enough doom and gloom, I’m starting to think that this is all god’s think about… no, I will admit that there has been thousands upon thousands of years of peace and happiness in the crucible, and from what I have heard, there has been more good that has existed and more joy than there ever was misery and hate. It’s up to us to cling to that optimism, as our wills birth creation.”

Olipha looked away for a moment, shame brushing her cheeks.

“Those work much like light and shadow, when you look at them, you see how one amplifies the other. I cannot deny, when I heard of this cycle, of this thing that at times mimics a deranged game, the thoughts to just let it all end do pass in my head. But… There is also egotism in that, we are gods, and we should take responsibility in our positions.” In comparison, Tsunya’s demeanor was somewhat frigid, a serious look on her face.

“And yet I can also almost envy your current position, having given up on the contest, you can enjoy creation at your will, exploration at your will. I wish I could do the same, but given my position, all choices are weighted in a great intrigue…”

“Oh, sweet Tsunya, no.” Olipha shook her head. “I have conceded my place as the one to take all nodes, but I am very much still involved in the crucible. I cannot let it fall to those like Anak’thas. His will won’t create any of that joy I mentioned, and even if I am no longer the Queen of the Crucible, I won’t let it be poisoned after I’m gone.”

“Hmm. Any help at this frontline will be welcomed. I want to minimize the suffering of the humans, including Anak’s own. I know Xavior would not want his men to die either, we are too young, death is a foreigner… A Coldshanks like situation with our own… I dread to think of it.” the implication was shot without Tsunya ever realizing.

“The Paladins are the frontline.” Olipha sat back. “Trained in the warrior arts of Faringdal and bestowed with my wishes of peace. They know all too well the doom that god like Anak’thas bring to the nodes and will fight to see the nodes free of his grasp.”

“With the dynamic mind of Eunomia, the wealth of the Dusklands, and the food of the Verdant Realms, we will truly be set. We don’t know what is happening in the south, but we will be ready if they are equal to Anak in will, but hopefully that is not the case.” with a tap on her chin. “That said, Faringdal, hm? The name echoes somewhere in my mind… Ah no, Yargindal is what Garravar said in Peninal’s memory.”

Olipha pursed her lips, a blush of embarrassment on her cheeks. "Well, you can't blame me for slipping something up after all this time now can you, dear?" Changing topics. "Was there anything else you wanted to know?"

“Given the situation I don’t blame you.” Tsunya picked up Eclipse and sheathed it, the sun was already setting so there was little reason to keep it out. “There is something, but it is not pleasant. Garravar. I have received some information from Xavior, but, I do wonder, do you know how he learned about the previous crucibles?”

"I do," Olipha admitted. "I know all there is to know about that man…" A sigh. "As for his methods, not all of them were savory, but naturally he studied the nodes and scoured the world for clues."

“But each time the world is remade, isn’t all else erased?” Dzallitsunya leaned back a bit, narrowing her eyes.

"I'm here, Peninal was here, the nodes are here, the map is here, and the pillar was there when I was first born." Olipha shrugged. "Some things stay. Others are constants, like the sun or humans."

“And tragedy. But we can always try to change that…” she glanced at the setting sun before focusing again on Benea. “The map, right… how… infuriating, I wish I could visit the central node again but that is far from simple given that creature of chaos dominating it now.” she bit her lip “Do you think Humans are the Children of Trine, that you mentioned previously? There are very few things that are both constant and yet still fit to be called children.”

"Probably, unless it is referring to all life." A pause. "Though it does make me wonder who Trine was whenever I think on it, not even Garravar could figure that out."

“It leaves me curious as well. Most of us are humans in shape and demeanor, and if humans are a creation of Trine…” she sighed. “I can’t think much about these topics right now, this war consumes so much of my thoughts, but once I am free, we should try to work together to see what else we can discover.”

“Onto one last worry, Garravar is already harming our generations of gods… Given his age and the prowess he showed in the one Peninal memory I had access to, I don’t even dream of fighting him, my concerns on that matter have been with the topics of defense, retreat, containment…” the goddess raised a finger, and in a moment, innumerous jade colored moths that were previously merely fluttering by rushed to her body, wings uniting in a distinctly divine defensive material, not only that, but a few were dedicating to forming the same plate around Benea, but in a binding fashion. She lowered the finger and both dissolved.

“Handy, no? Very hard to perceive, very flexible.” Dzallitsunya smiled. “I will send a message to Eleanna, custom fit so that no foolish idea crosses her mind. But the south…” Dzallitsunya leaned forward. “I have a port city at the bottom of the sheep river, that being the central one of Node 13, Kiri Tzur. Canoes and barges leave Vallor daily for there, and a worthy sea vessel awaits there. I planned to use it to reach the far off island but… I am now bound to this land for as long as Anak’Thas shines. I was thinking however… what if you went South?”

"I could, to accomplish what? And while Garravar's name is handy, never engage him if you do see him and certainly don't get close." Benea wagged a finger. "Even if you do manage to hurt him or even kill him, he will only come back even stronger. Fire will slow him down, but not indefinitely."

“To scout out the stability of those gods and potentially warn them of the dangers we know.” she stopped “But it's merely a proposal. Eventually I will have enough magistrates to spare for at least the former. It's just that… you do have a way with words.” Dzallitsunya shook her head. “Sorry.”

Benea smirked at the compliment. "Very well, darling, I trust you and our sweet Xavior can handle things up here while I take a look."

It was a very quiet march. The warriors had divided into two parties; a smaller group led by Talia to scout their advance and the remaining majority of their small group herding the offspring. Nea was not so considerate as to give Grym space to breathe. In Dorian’s absence she elected to shadow him. It was unusual of her to volunteer in this way, but she followed quietly for a time. Only when Grym looked up, toward the node’s border approaching on the horizon, did he notice Nea’s fixated stare in his peripheral. He got the impression that she’d been staring for a while, though it didn’t resemble the same callous animosity as when they’d first met — more like he was being audited. She was probably waiting for him to realize it because as soon as Grym unclenched his jaw to speak, she stole the first word. “Is this really all you are?”

Even without context, he had an inkling of what she meant. Nea saw through him like this from the beginning, and she continued to be his most demanding critic.

“Half measures. Compromise. Bravado.” She continued, since Grym hadn’t mustered a response. “You promised us power and stature — protection. And you said you wanted everything, no? The stars in the sky, the sky itself, the oceans, blablabla.” Her tone became infantilizing.

He knew she’d keep piling on to stir up a response, not that it hadn’t already provoked him at this point. “Yes!” He burted in exasperation. “I’m aware of my.. Mis-steps.”

“Not mis-steps.” Nea cut in. “Cowardice.”

Grym stopped walking and turned to face her. “I know.” That was all he could muster; he didn’t dare apologize.

“You know.. It’s not about winning, Little G. We followed you because none of us want our fates decided on a whim by any of those holier than thou fuckin’ pretenders. So either get it together or get out of the way.”

That’s right; It isn’t about winning. No, it never was. There weren’t any words with which he could respond right now. Nea was the type who preferred you to show, not tell; so he merely resumed marching on toward node 26. Whatever the outcome, he couldn’t afford to waiver again.

As they walked, a sudden anxiety started to freeze in the chest, until a familiar voice laughed behind the walking pair. “Little G?”

Garravar had appeared out of thin air, walking behind them with a glint in his eye that matched the glint on the edge of his spear.

"Well, see, you're Big G; though I prefer G-money, so Talia started calling me Little G. I'm great with the pet names, as you're aware." Grym nearly jumped out of his remaining skin when he heard Garravar's voice. Really, how does he just poof like that? He would've asked about it if he wasn't so preoccupied with the anxiety of two failed deicides. It felt like being visited at university by your step dad - because Peninal was his real dad - who's paying for your classes, and now you had to tell him you're flunking out.

Garravar seemed to forget that he had even asked and changed subjects entirely. “Your actions have forced another god to claim two additional nodes.”

"Aren't the real nodes the friends we made along the way?" Grym bantered and then, on seeing Garravar's unamused mug, paused before waving dismissively at his own comment.

"Don't answer that. I don't know who's taking what, but as you can see I'm very much on my way to genocide an idiot's city. I'm getting better, I promise!" He nodded earnestly.

“No, you’ve done good, theoretically,” Garravar answered — but keeping a neutral tone. “It just means more nodes will fall into an unwilled state when Vatarr is removed. As for Brey, let me show you how it’s done.”

"You're gonna help me kill Brey? Really? Ooh, I knew you were a softie. I don't care what they say about ya!" He hummed excitedly.

There was a brief hesitation where Grym glanced between his marching army and the immaculate Garravar, but such indecision quickly vanished as a familiar cardinal flame emerged around him. "I've actually been brainstorming an idea just for such an occasion. You're the inspiration actually, though it pales in comparison to your transcendence of the Crucible. If only I'd had more time.." The last bit he more mused to himself as his voice seemed to trail off. Reservations be damned, the time to act was now.

The volatile energy hissed and bubbled, deepening in shades as a form took shape — separating from Grym's body. Its silhouette first appeared as a tiny crystal that emanated a deep, yet subtle glow. From the crystal sprouted a body of a human man similar in size to Grym. He had flowing red hair and a rigid physique. The hexagon crystal took the place of his left eye, shrouded by an eye-patch, while the man himself was adorned in a simple tunic over furs fashioned as clothing; at his side, a sheathed claymore. In contrast to Grym, the man was an exemplary product of mankind; the second side of the same coin.

"Wow, flesh feels weird.. Tight, really." It spoke.

"Happy birthday, me-you. I'm your dad, but also you." Grym greeted, confusing even himself somewhat.

"I know we're us because I made me. We should know that; you do know that. We’ll call me.. Gryffith! Or Gryff for short. Less confusing that way." Gryff and Grym nodded in agreement with themselves before turning in unison toward Garravar and asking, "Be honest; what do you think?"

“Using your signature to make a copy of yourself via crystal vehicle,” Garravar arched a brow. “Simple but effective. I assume you have a plan for Gryff?”

“Simple, yes. I hoped to recreate your miracle anomaly, but enough of that. Plan’s simple.” Gryff responded to Garavarr, pointing toward the horizon where node 26’s border lies. “I’ll keep heading South to kill Vatarr, while you and me head North for Brey. I can only imagine what’s happening up North that drove you down here to get me — I must be taking too long.”

“The north has completed the capture of the nodes, we are behind schedule in the south — besides, I want to show you something that requires the death of a god,” Garravar answered, “then I will reveal the secrets to you.”

"Let's go kill an old fart." Grym agreed and gestured for Garravar to lead the way. Gryf waved farewell, if only as a courteous gesture, as he would continue the March south with a bewildered Nea.

---

Brey’s facial expression was dead serious. There were no people in the city, as the illusionary images of people in Molbrew wandered back and forth doing their duties and going about their lives. The false images of mages and soldiers were all armed with steel, medieval weapons, long bows and the like. Brey was viewing the horde of traitors and other enemies with his telescope, and took note.

With the people fleeing the city only hours earlier, Brey didn’t have long to prepare. All the books were gone. The shelves were empty, and the old man deity was not in his wizard’s robes. He was now armed with the magic axe, and wore a powerful magical armor, covered in runic protection wards. His ring finger on his right hand still wielded the power that made it so coveted by the other mages.

Through his magic, Brey unleashed a disembodied voice to the invading armies. “Turn back.”

Garravar was floating far above, frozen air hugging his form as he looked down at the library. He had his spear in one hand while the other rubbed his chin in a quiet contemplation. Without a word he slowly descended until his boots tapped the tiles that lead up to the library door. The sky above was swollen grey, silhouetting the scene in a dusk.

He stepped through the open portal and into the interior of the library, each footfall echoing off its recently bare walls and shelves. Any semblance of warmth escaped the building and flames turned blue, throwing a wintery chill over the scene. Behind Garravar, Grym descended in tow, notably holding his own swordspear and accompanied by one hundred offspring of various degrees. His disheveled plate mail softly clanked into a resting position as he touched the ground, drowned out by Garravar's heavy footfalls — footfalls which were only more pronounced by the barren shelves of the library they'd appeared in. This caused Grym to frown in whatever way he could express such. There was a tinge of curiosity gnawing at him still; how Brey anticipated them, where and how he'd hidden the contents of this massive library.

"There will be something of him left once we're done, I hope. Gotta add him to the collection." Grym glanced back toward the offspring.

Brey chuckled, invisibly, under his breath, in his powerful, newly created magic armor. “I’ve chosen to move on from this life.” Brey stated mysteriously. “I’ve also chosen to fight.”
“Life is full of surprises, so I’m surprised myself at the potentiality of an afterlife for gods.”
“Nevertheless, things are as they are.”

“Perhaps you would like to sample the delicacies I’ve laid out on the table in the center of the library. Or are you more enticed by something. . . else?” He stated rhetorically. “I hope you don’t mind the lack of a waiter.”

“Anyway. Now I have you where I want you.” Brey exhales a single breath, and the small army invading the library go blind. The gods leading them are likewise unable to see.

“I already know the outcome of this battle, but I’ll show you that I’m not a venerable old man.”

“I’m amazed, then.” Garravar blindly stepped forward, his steady walk slowly approaching the node as the minions of Grym saturated the entrance. “That you had the foresight to know what happens next, but what does happen next? Do you really know?”

“I fight. Likely die, and won’t make it even half easy!” Brey’s vocal statement was ominous.

Garravar placed his hand on the node. "Do you even know what you're doing here?" The black structure started to glow.

“What does it matter?” Brey responded. “You don’t need to worry about my education. Here, I am headmaster.” A mysterious rumbling of thunder filled the entire building.

“Allow me to lecture you, then,” Garravar said with a palm placed flat on the node. “You have about an hour to strike me down before your node bends to my will and I replace your library with a frozen wasteland.”

“In the meantime, enjoy the finest hospitality I have to offer!” The honeyed fish on the table transforms into a huge honeyed Megalodon. “Get em’ Donald!” The flying Megalodon immediately began breathing a searing flame on the Cradle’s soldiers. The fire was intense, but Brey’s fire wards stood firm.

Grym snapped his fingers and a reverberating hum consumed the library, restoring sight to all those affected. He gazed longingly at the incredible beast bellowing flame. "You've always been generous with your homecoming gifts, old sport."

The offspring, which had stood motionless even while engulfed in flames, suddenly sprang forward at once in a concentrated frenzy. Simultaneously, thunder signaled the appearance of an expanding cloud just below the library's high ceiling; raining down upon the empty shelves and dousing flame. Screeching thralls hounded the shark, leaping and climbing shelves to chase it wherever it might scurry. There wasn't much space for the large beast to escape the infectious spores, much as it tried to shake its voracious pursuers.

It wouldn't be long before the shark succumbed to the Cradle's blight. Grym then turned toward Brey.

"Let’s see if your armor holds up, old boy." He let loose the spear right at Brey's chest, just as he should've let Dorian do all those days ago. It grew quickly in size to something several times larger than even the largest ballista, intending to plaster Brey and his armor all over the library's walls.

Oh give me a break, Brey thought. The armored figure would leap onto the large Ballista like spear, running along the shaft and jump , throwing the magical axe towards Grym. It was immediately then, that he telekinetically took hold of Grym’s body,, attempting to distract him before the flying axe would find its mark.

Grym watched the axe fly toward him, realizing it was difficult move so he opted not to. When the head of the armament found purchase it was not Grym that had been struck but rather one of his juggernauts that had intercepted to bare the brunt of the blow. One of its arms had been clearly sheered in two with the axe having driven further and embedded itself in the juggernaut’s chest. The juggernaut, while battered and cleaved, was still alive and turned toward its master who ripped the axe from the offspring’s chest by its haft. It was at this time Peninal’s spear had returned to its original size, having left a gaping hole in the walls of the library where light shone in, and whizzed back toward Grym. He had stayed where he was precisely for this moment, the moment when the spear returned and Brey wouldn’t expect it to plunge through his back on its way back to Grym.

So the Megalodon was still alive, briefly while it unleashed a large torrent of flame against the Infected, slapping away some of them with it’s massive tail from the air. Brey chanted three syllables instantaneously, thus he unleashed a powerful thunderstorm. At nearly the same moment he raised a mage shield. These thunderbolts were intended to hammer the whole army with it’s assault, with both enemy gods included.

Brey’s Ring Of Archmagi displayed it’s might as the thunder storm raged in the library. Rain pounded down with the storm as the clouds cracked and spat. Sounds of thunderclaps deafened the arena and conquered all sound, all sound save for an eerie melody. Chimes clinked and clattered over the sound of the storm, and the rain turned to sleet, and the lightning grew irritated and swollen. The library began to chill and the walls grew slick with ice. Garravar released his hand from the unclaimed node and grinned at Brey.

“You’re not the first to try elements.” The god of winter held up Tolbog and pointed it at Brey and as he did, the chimes died out, as did the sound of the storm and the sounds of battle. The air was deafened until it popped in the ear and fizzled as if time itself became mute, and then all at once a brilliant flash erupted from Garravar as he kicked off from the ground.

Garravar turned comet was wreathed in destructive power as he aimed Tolbog at Brey. The magic forcefield around the wizard screamed with sudden and immense strain until it shattered and the blue comet crashed through (GO)

Knocking the wizard god to his feet, he was astonished at the power of Tolbog. Nonetheless,he managed to feign being unfazed. Multiples of the corrupted soldiers began to slash, lunge and slice at the wizard’s form, which rolled on the ground. Suddenly the wizard sprang up and began to destroy more of the corrupted. Ironically, he eschewed lightning for now in order to telekinetically just tear some of them apart through sheer force.

Eventually though, Donald, the flying Megalodon stopped cooking the infected soldiers into fried intruders, and turned around. It was covered in bleeding wounds and it’s eyes suddenly changed into a sickley dark green within green. The wizard immediately raised his mage shield again, this time, he furthermore side stepped the large stream of fire from the transformed creature.

Brey couldn’t see the corrupted soldiers anymore, and his head snapped to see Grym on one side, and then Garravar on the other. Raising both hands in the air, Brey commanded the clouds in the sky to storm on himself. The thunderbolts crashed through the building. Multiple thunderbolts surged through his physical form, and through sheer discipline, he would remain unmoved through the massive energies coursing through every vein of his body.

Several seconds would pass as the dangerous thunder began to slow down, and his skin, and body would be transmuted into ash. Only his life less, and fleshless skull would remain to send a shockwave up to the sky through the crumbling roof, bleeding the heavens into a blood red as to signify the death of a god. As the incredible energy of his suicidal annihilation rendered much of the library now unfit for habitation, the wards against fire on the book shelves, and tables failed, and whatever that was flammable within the ruins was now on fire.

Garravar let Tolbog shimmer into thin air before turning to Grym. “Even at the end, he preferred suicide to dying at your hands.”

Grym had swung Brey’s axe from on high, intending to fell the stubborn goat with his own weapon. Only, instead of the satisfying sensation of flesh tugging against its edge he fell forward into a cloud of soot and ash. The momentum of his swing caused him to trip while the axe itself wedged a fissure into the floor of the library, becoming stuck. Feeling deflated yet again, despite the apparent success, Grym just laid where he fell trying to accept things as they were.

“Fuckin’ old man just had to have the last word, huh?” He audibly mumbled in response, picking himself up from the ground.

From behind one of the far shelves came the sound of slow, incremental clapping followed by a snarky, yet familiar, voice. “What’s that saying? Don’t bite the hand that feeds you? Take the W, Little G; I’m honestly impressed for once.” Nea remarked, stepping out from her little hiding spot. She’d snuck through the portal by mingling with the offspring.

“Nea? But you were supposed t-” Grym began, though he should’ve known better by now.

“Apologies, Master Grym.” Nea interjected, faux apologizing and facetiously bowing. “Anyway, I needed to see if you had what it takes, when push comes to shove. You did, shockingly enough. Plus, I wanted to see G-Money in action.” She turns to Garravar with a beaming smirk. “Legend, by the way. Geezer probably zapped himself just so he wouldn’t get pasted over his own walls by you.”

"Perhaps." Garravar looked to the node, the black pillar standing as still as usual. "There will be plenty others but first, Grym, look at the node and tell me what you see." Nea was visibly delighted by Garravar's response. She gathered the spoils of battle in a blissful trance, fantasizing further conquests.

With a little razzle dazzle, Grym wretched the misshapen armor he'd been born with from his body and magically adjusted Brey's armor to fit him in its place. It was woven with many intricate runes that pulsed and glowed. The metal itself gleamed a mythril hue, accented with silver trim — fitting of the one who'd made it. As an added personal flair, he manufested an impressive burgundy cape that reached down to his calves.

Garravar's question pulled Grym's attention once more, obliging him to look toward the node in contemplation.

"A monolith of indecipherable power, the single (as far as he's aware) remaining constant throughout every iteration of the Crucible. They provide an avenue of creation without rhyme or reason. I can only imagine they're at the crux of it all, maybe even the triggering event."

“More immediately,” Garravar corrected, “it’s a stable node, in spite of its owner's demise. There is no longer any will transfixed upon it and yet nothing collapsed into the chaos, and nothing has changed.”

Grym hadn’t thought of that, but it was a fair point. “Mm.. You’re quite right. Why is that the case, and what are you getting at by making the point?”

“I promised you answers,” Garravar stated. The winter god folded his elbows square behind his back and walked over to one of the large holes in the wall. He looked over the great expanse outside of the library and stood tall with Grym to his back. “Come the triggering event, the crucible will check the nodes for a single will — the will that controls every node — and design the world accordingly. That will is attached to a god, same as Brey’s was attached to him before we killed him, so as long as that god lives, their will is law in such a state, and if the will begins to crack, so does their reality. Furthermore…”

A pause as Garravar turned to Grym, peering at him with icy eyes. “Upon the end of the triggering event, all life is extinguished to be remade as per the will. So what if there wasn’t a will?” He looked to the node. “What if the world was stabilized, but the wills that stabilized it had perished, leaving the nodes without will but the world in a state of stability. What would happen then if the triggering event had no will to mirror but no chaos to sow?”

Grym sat down and wedged a honeydew, offering an enthralled Nea a slice before taking one for himself as the two listened intently to Garravar’s grandiose speech. Nea couldn’t help but giggle anxiously when Garravar turned back toward the pair — their mouths stuffed with melon. Grym’s chewing slowed, his jaw oscillating intermittently in a manner that mimicked the gears turning in his mind.

“I was actually close to the mark, eh?” He finally said in a bewildered tone. “Your question is all I’ve ever wanted to know. I was born wanting to free the nodes from the will of God's, only reason I sought the nodes myself. There's this unavoidable curiosity to find out. What would happen and what would it be like?” The realization hit him and he darted up, pacing toward Garravar. “That memory at the end of the last cycle. G-money, you rascal! Almost did it, didn't you?” Grym leaned in and nudged a playful elbow into the big guy's ribs.

A deadly silence followed. Garravar simply stared at Grym, the younger god’s elbow still in his rib. The stare lasted long enough for everyone to become uncomfortable, and perhaps worried before Garravar spoke again, Tolbog back in his hand. “I was close, but now your own decision is before us. Will you capture this node and die later to free it, or will you leave it blank?”

“Oh don’t be so miserable, ya big lunk. If we fail, there’s an infinite number of iterations after this where we get to try again.” Grym rescinds his elbow, stepping up to look toward the horizon beside Garravar and adding, “So long as one of us makes it to the next one,no? Let’s be honest, something I hate doing, and admit I neither have the time or power to take all the nodes. I was never that ambitious. Taking the nodes was a mean to an end and I’m only now getting the full picture. It’s too late to get serious now.”

A pause, while he collected his next thought, because he rarely spoke this candidly and found the act taxing as well as boring. “I’ll take the node for now. I think our best bet is to let another take the nodes and assassinate them as the triggering event begins. This assumes I survive long enough, but that’s why I made another me. He’s insurance and a means to keep Vatarr busy. All I have to do is convince the North I’m a good guy. Pin Brey’s death on Vatarr, plead for aid in ending his tyrannical warpath, and hopefully join their little alliance. After that, I help them take nodes and bring peace. Then, you and I find the perfect time to strike right before the triggering event.” At the end of his long-winded tirade, Grym lets out an exasperated breath. His head tilted toward Garravar, eager for his reaction and hoping to glimpse even the smallest of cracks in his unyielding, icy demeanor.

“You have spirit, but no one is inclined to believe you,” Garravar insisted. “Instead I will directly recruit from the gods to come south. I know of a few who would only benefit in helping me carve up the nodes. In the meantime we should put pressure down here, perhaps I will go directly to Vatarr — I know of a winter land he had created, and I’m inclined to see it.”

“Perhaps, if I were on my own. Luckily, I have one of Brey’s trusted advisors to vouch for me. He’s currently on a little errand for me, relaying to Asvarad of Vatarr’s unwarranted assault, but he’ll be back soon. No one in the North knows me, so if I cry wolf after and point a finger at Vatarr; who’s to say I’m lying?”

“Very well,” Garravar conceded, ”I’m interested in seeing how it would work your way, regardless. I will be close, and definitely watching — just remember the goal: every node must be blank yet stable.” The winter god leaned over and picked the ring of archmagi off the ground. He held it up to his face and with a quick puff of air, he sent the ash dusting from its surface. With a small look and nothing else, he pocketed it. “We will be in touch.”

“Jewelry doesn’t suit me anyway.” He waved his bony fingers. Once Garravar left, he returned to Nea who had been fumbling around with Brey’s skull. There was much to do.

The birth of Princess (and future Queen) Agniya should have been a happy occasion. A time of celebration and jolly festivities. It was but... the oncoming war cast a deep enough shadow to make it a somber, limited affair. Any gathering or celebration was a small, brief thing between family and friends; A toast to the new born leader where villages, towns and cities should have been having a party.

The sky briefly turning red and refugees fleeing from Brey's former lands told a dark tale; Brey was dead and his murderer and their horde would be continuing the march soon enough. The fact that there had been a betrayal of a diplomatic deal made between the two sides earlier didn't really provoke the sense of outrage within Vatarr that it should have as he paused on his way towards the border between the heartland of his realm and Nodes 22 and 23 to stop by his throne and the Node of the Fungal Marshes. Brey had witnessed the first 'invasion' of his realm and the fact that he had seen the enemy and not instantly deduced that co-existence would not be possible meant that Brey had, in the end, proven to be a fool.

The mortals of Vex were already in the process of extending their defensive line now that the enemy could come from two nodes rather then just one, but Vatarr felt the need to add his own... personal touch to the defense of his realm. He would be taking a more active role in repelling any invaders of course, but he could only be in so many places at one time and he had a realm to secure... and his skirmish in Node 23 had given him information he was going to make use of to do it.

Placing his hand on the Node, he channeled his strength into it in order to subtly reshape the Fungal Marshes as a region. The change itself was small... but at the same time, affected everything. Every aspect of Node 26, be it air, earth, water or just organic material was infused with and released a chemical compound that was perfectly tailored to destroy the spores that infested the horrors that originally came from Node 18.

Since the horrors took advantage of all manner of organic creatures to serve in its tide, a solution that purged all organic life in a region already filled with it was not the best solution... so Vatarr had already decided to take advantage of what he had discovered in the creatures in Node 23 to strike directly at the root of the problem and target the means in which the infection animated and controlled its victims. Any creature sent into the Fungal Marshes for any length of time that was infected should have the infection destroyed and be cured of it...

Unfortunately, this alteration required more alterations. The chemical infusion was perfect for killing what it needed to do... but it also had the unfortunate side effect of being toxic to a number of other life forms as well. This was a problem since it was kind of pointless employing this method of defense if everything you were trying to protect died as well.

The animals and plantlife of the region could be altered in order to survive and thrive in the post changed region: Altering the lungs to better process and filter the air and some minor tweaks to digestion and how the blood deals with the chemical once it enters the system were generally easy enough to do without any major developments or mutations. Normally he would be against this sort of mass alteration, but since it was in response to a change he was making to the environment it seemed only fair. It did also mean that they wouldn't exactly be able to leave the Fungal Marshes without... complications, but that wasn't a major issue. At least not an issue to worry about for the time being.

The real problem was the humans. While some of them had been born in the region, they were not native to Node 26 and thus, couldn't be altered in the same way that the native creatures could be. Granted the change wouldn't be instantly fatal... but some measures had to be taken all the same because it would take lives otherwise.

While he did trust the people of Vex to come up with means of surviving until he rested and was able to alter them to be better able to survive the change in the environment, that would take time to do. Thinking of the issue for a few moments, a temporary solution presented itself. Around settlements large and small (as well as along where the defensive wall was currently being manned and constructed, since there were a sizable number of people there) a series of trees and bushes would spring up with dark purple leaves.

The plants had a fairly pleasant scent, but it was the leaves and berries that were important. If the leaves were placed in water, it would infuse into the water and when drunk, would allow the human body to temporarily be able to process the the new chemical. Eating the berries caused a similar effect. They weren't a counter to the chemical as much as they were designed to allow the human body to deal with it.
It wasn't perfect, but for the moment it was the best he could do and still keep people safe. He trusted that they would figure out other methods of survival as time passed.

Taking a deep breath, he started his announcement region wide about the changes that had taken place, why they had happened and the properties of the new purple plants in question that had sprung up nearby baring berries.