---

The forests of the island blended almost perfectly with the growing outskirts of Arbor. Home-trees stood next to their regular kin, though one took vastly more space than the other. Dirt paths snaked their way from drapes and door towards half-stone paths, which would inevitably lead to the fully hardened paths leading towards the center of ever-illuminated Arbor. Here the simple folk lived. People who cared less for the hustle and bustle of the center of the Evergrowing City. They had families and children playing happily between the trees and the grass plaza-clearings.

What marked it most as Arbor was the smell and the noise. Through the trees the scent of turmeric, garlic and nutmeg beckoned all those who wished to come. In the open plazas-clearings people sat on their benches drinking the Arborian Fruit Wines, with as many tastes as there could be, while tasting the served snacks made of bellpeppers, sun-dried tomatoes and marinaded olives.

Ayre’s mouth began to water at all the delicious aromas. Her belly grumbled in protest. How long had it been since she had eaten? How long since Ida? She turned to her twin, who walked by her side. She hugged herself and looked down at the ground, staff gripped tight to her chest. A sense of pain welled inside Ayre’s heart. Ever since they had seen the faces of the people, many had stopped whatever they were doing to look at the two. Curiosity and perhaps fear had driven most to linger and Ida grew all the more uncomfortable. Ayre wished they had been given long cloaks instead, though her horn still would have been revealed.

She looked ahead again, they were drawing ever nearer to the World Tree, it's great boughs overhead. Food and drink could wait, she needed to get Ida home. And father, he would be waiting for them. Then they could eat and rest. It felt like a lifetime since she had just sat down without worry.

She looked back to her sister, Ida had dropped her hands to her side. Her shoulders drooped forward. Evidently she had given up trying to look inauspicious. Ayre took that as a sign and grabbed her hand. The cold metal warmed quickly in her grip and she gave it a squeeze. “We'll be home soon and there we shall have a feast with father. We'll get to sleep in our beds and look out on all that's changed!” She said with cheer. Ida looked up, lips pursed and gave a small nod. Ayre frowned. “I know this isn't how we wanted to come back, Ida. But… It'll be better now. You'll see.” Her sister gave no answer but she didn't let go.

The closer they got to the Tree of Life, the more eyes were drawn towards the twins. Ida dipped her head to avoid eye contact but Ayre held her chin high. The home-trees grew bigger and bigger, as age and greensingers had more time to feed them. Entire estates with hedged yards began to form around them. Arbor had changed significantly since they last had been there and a feeling of uncertainty began to creep into Ayre’s bones. How long had they been gone?

Though, blessedly, landmarks like the Forge could still easily be spotted. Over it all loomed the Tree of the Firmaments, a name they had heard whispered as they walked. Due to its size its trunk looked slender. Yet, even here the myriad of spices could be smelled and that was at least some normalcy amongst all the changes.

Plaza-clearings gave way to bazaars and meadow markets, where goods from across the Land of Origins could be found. Ayre made a note of many, she'd have to venture out and see what was for sale once they were properly settled. Then came the central boulevard, which led from the Tree of the Firmaments down to the Tree of Life. Had it always been so hilly? As they got closer though, the truth revealed itself. Ayre felt her heart drop.

The Tree was still sealed.

“That's not…” Ayre began to speak but words failed her. She felt Ida’s hand tighten around her own. She couldn't believe it and she wouldn't.

She rushed forward to the sudden surprise of Ida who gave a small yelp and led them up to the great entrance. Webbed with ivory silk. A crowd had parted as they went and now many were gathering. How quickly word spread.

“No no no no…!” Ayre cried.

“Ayre…” Ida called her name. She didn't acknowledge it. Instead Ayre began to paw at the amulet around her chest. Her heartbeat thundered. Her mind was a flurry of thoughts. The tree was shut. If the tree was shut, their father… no no no, it had only been a day, two at most. He'd be alive. He was alive!

“We have to get him out!” Ayre declared. Some in the crowd yelled in protest. Others told them to stop. No one stepped forward.

“Ayre…” Ida hissed. Her voice a cold reassurance. She had to get her sister up there. To their home. To see their father. So their father could tell her he loved her. That he wanted her to be happy. She couldn't be sad. She couldn't!

She unsheathed her sword without thinking and rose it high before the webs. Many in the crowd shrieked as the blade burned bright. Some called for the death guard, others stood dumbfounded. Ayre didn't care. She'd get into the tree and save her father. As she brought the sword down however, Ida caught her arm and momentum stopped. Her sister had stopped her. Ida, the one she kept failing.

“Ayre… Don't. He's not…” Ida struggled with her words, face pained. “We both saw how much of Arbor has grown, Ayre. If he didn't get out… He's…”

“Don't say it.” She pleaded.

“...Dead.” Ida's voice rang with truth. But Ayre, she didn't want to believe. A laugh escaped Ayre’s lips. Her sword shook free from her hand, clattering to a stop on the wood. She looked at the remaining crowd in rapt fascination. No one stepped forward. No one wanted to help. Then Ayre broke down completely. Defeated. Something broke inside that would never be able to be fixed. She was a murderer, she was a failure, she had let their father die.

Ida grabbed her other arm and rubbed in a gesture of comfort. Ida, one she couldn't even hug.

“Ayre. Ida.” A voice rang out. From the bustle of the crowd the bone-white haired elf stepped, wielding a thin, metallic spear. He looked tired but his eyes were still filled with vigor. It was Aenos. He stepped closer to the twins, mostly to get out of the crowd but he kept a respectable distance. “You’ve been away for quite some time but Arbor is glad you are back. Irrithae would like to speak to you, if you can spare the time.”

Ayre let her sister talk for the both of them. “Aenos… Finally a welcome face. As you can guess, we happen to be free.” She said, gesturing to the Tree of Life. “But who's Irrithae?”

The elf led them off to the side, along the walled-away Wellspring that surrounded the Tree of Life. In only a few minutes they reached the large willow-like home-tree. It was a busy place, with a myriad of young people coming and going. Some of them held wands in various states of artisanality. Others walked with runestone-filled pouches. They were talking and laughing, on the green clearing in front of the willow, where a large white-stone statue of a Syllianth stood with her hand reaching downwards. “That’s Irrithae. Steward of Arbor.” Aenos explained.

A dozen eyes of the Willow students followed the twins. Not with fear or apprehension but with open curiosity. Aenos didn’t give them time though. He led them into the Willow, then through a near-labyrinth of corridors. Home-trees served as houses and buildings, but their internal architecture was vastly different. They rose, twisted and dropped again. Most rooms’ floors were not aligned with the room next to them.

Aenos led them through the labyrinthine building until they reached a cozy parlor. Its walls were covered from floor to ceiling by building, hexagonal bookshelves made of beeswax holding a rainbow-colored selection of books and scrolls. At the center stood a solid stump of tree holding, with young branches, a marble slate upon which three cups and a steaming kettle sat. The table was surrounded by three comfortably looking chairs. “Irrithae will be with you shortly.” Aenos said, ushering the twins inside.

Ayre’s eyes fell upon the slate but she was no longer thirsty. If anything, she felt like she was going to be sick. Ida guided her to a chair and sat her down, before taking her own seat next to Ayre. Silence fell, uncomfortable as could be.

Eventually she found herself muttering, “Something was off with Aenos… He never used to be so…”

“So reserved? And his hair… ” Ida finished.

“White.” Ayre said. She shifted in her chair. She sighed, a wave of grief settling in. She said, voice hoarse, “Nothing is going to be the same as it was before.”

To that, Ida did not answer. Instead, her twin silently took her hand. A tear rolled down her cheek, as they waited for the Syllianth to show.

---

“Oh great goddess I am so sorry!” Irrithae exclaimed the moment she entered the parlor. She had let them wait for five minutes. The Syllianth quickly closed the door behind her again, locking out the noise and hussle outside. “If I had known you would return today, I would not have taken that meeting up in the Tree of Firmaments. I hope you’re hungry, someone should arrive shortly with a cake.”

Irrithae walked up to the parlor table and poured some tea out into the three cups, then moved one to each twin and took her own as she leaned back into the chair. “Right, Ayre and Ida.” The Syllianth said, sounding a lot less hurried now. “Finally we meet. Aenos tells me you don’t know who I am so allow me to introduce myself: I am Irrithae. Chosen Prophetess of Allianthé and Steward of Arbor. The goddess assigned to me the task to govern Arbor while she remained in the tree to heal. Now, you’ve both been away for quite some time, so if you have questions I will do my best to give you any and all answers I can.” They certainly looked like each other but there were many differences. One of fiery hair, like the other elves but somehow richer in color, more vibrant with striking orange eyes. Such eyes, so distant. The other had hair of palest white, almost as if cold could be a color.

“We have no were else to go.” Said the redheaded twin, Ayre, her quiet voice tinged with bitterness and an edge. Ida, her horn sparkling in the light, gave her sister a glare before looking at Irrithae. “Do you have any water?” She asked, her own voice husky and a tad hoarse.

“Water? Yes of course.” Irrithae said as she got up and left the room for a moment. In a blink she was back carrying a wooden plate with three glasses and a pitcher filled with crystal clear water. She put it on the marble table and poured a glass for Ida, then she took her seat again. Ida drank from the cup in one deep draw. She then poured herself another glass, drained it and then poured again. “As for a place to go, Arbor could still be your home. If you wish to stay, I can offer you some purpose.” Her eyes turned to Ayre with worry. “Is that something you’d want?”
Ayre’s eyes met her own and she could see the flame within them. She opened her mouth to speak but Ida cut her off, “Thank you for the water. It’s nice to meet you, Irrithae. I did not know our goddess had a chosen one. How long has it been since she began healing?”

“A few months now, nearing a year. Though truth be told, I am unsure how long a god needs to heal.” Irrithae said. She was still facing Ayre, but her eyes were looking at the unicorn girl now. What role did each of them play towards the other? “It happened when the Tree was sealed. Aenos and I were both chosen. Me, to lead. Him, to… do what must be done.” It was clear from her words that Aenos’ duty was not something she wished to talk about. “Perhaps I should ask you first then, Ida. What would you like to do now that you’ve returned to Arbor?”

Ida’s eyes grew distant, a weariness seemed to come over her features. It was Ayre who piped up. “It’s almost been a year…?” she asked but to none other than herself. “But we… I… I just went down and… What happened when we fell?” She had turned to her sister. Ida remained withdrawn. “Ida…” Ayre spoke and shook her arm. There was no response. She looked back at Irrithae. “D-Did anyone make it out of the tree? When it was sealed.” She stood and her hands fell on the marble, jostling all the cups and liquid, her own cup of water spilling. “Was anyone saved?” She asked, raising her voice.

“You know the answer.” Ida whispered, remaining still.

If Ayre had heard her, she made no appearance of doing so. Instead, steam began to rise from where the water had settled around her arms. “Please.” She choked.

“A great many people made it out of the tree.” Irrithae said truthfully, though there was still great sorrow in her voice. “But I know what you want to know. I am sorry, Ayre. Your father didn’t make it.”

Silence fell. Ayre’s face became a mask of disbelief. Then she let go of the table and fell back into her chair. She leaned forward, covering her face with her hands and wept. A metallic hand fell upon her back. Ida swirled in soothing strokes and looked at Irrithae. “Could you… Could you give us a moment, please?”

“Of course.” Irrithae said as she got up. Quietly she walked to the door and opened it, but turned around before she left. “If there’s anything you need, I’ll be right outside. Take all the time you need though. It doesn’t matter if you need hours. I’ll be waiting.”

The sun peaked high overhead before Ida came to the door. Irrithae knew there had been some terse conversations by the sound of their voices rising and lower. For the past few, it had gone into a silent lull. Ida had pink rings around her eyes but she gave the Syllianth a small nod, “Thank you for that. She’s… Okay now.” Upon entering the room, she saw that Ayre looked utterly deflated. Hollow around the eyes and her skin paled. “We had some thoughts about what you said.” Ida sat back down. “About what we wanted to do. But the simple truth is, we don’t know. Yesterday, for us, was a different Arbor. Today, we’re orphans without a home.”

It hurt Irrithae’s heart to see Ayre so. It hurt her to see anyone so. Though right now there was little she could actually do. Ida seemed to be far more receptive to what she would offer right now. “Arbor has changed quite a lot, quite fast. I agree. Though in a way it’s still the same Arbor you knew from before. Just… a little bigger.” Irrithae said as she took her seat as well. “As for what to do, I have a few proposals.”

“First there’s something that is brewing in the Tree of the Firmaments. It reaches far above Galbar, to a place where you’re weightless. I can’t say much right now. Perhaps I could show you later. But it’d be an opportunity for a great adventure.” Ida’s brows furrowed ever so slightly at that and Ayre had no response at all.

She moved on. “I’m also sure that someone with your particular talents would be valued greatly at the Divinium Forge, Ayre. I’d have no doubt that my kind would gladly accept you there.” To that, Ayre met her eyes. She gave a small tug at her lips but that was about the extent of a response.

“You could also pick up a regular vocation, if you so wish.” It was clear from Irrithae’s tone that she considered this - in her opinion - the least interesting opinion. Still, she put it forth. “The city could always use more gatherers, potters, scribes or any other sort of simple workers.” The twins remained silent, watching her.

“Or you could come here to Willow. It’s a place of learning and understanding of the many magical arts, like Greensinging or Runecrafting. Your services would be greatly valued by Arbor.” As if it was jealous, the iridescent waters of the Wellspring flared, casting the whole room - that was overlooking the Wellspring on one side - in a myriad of colors for a moment. Ida’s eyes snapped to it. Irrithae let out a sigh and then added: “You could also join the study of the Wellspring. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it, but it comes with a warning: the Wellspring is exceedingly powerful. I’d caution against it.”

Ayre joined her sister’s gaze and for a time they just looked in that direction. Uncannily, they both looked back at her at about the same time and then they both spoke at the same time. Ayre said, “The Wellspring is too dangerous.” While Ida said, “Has anyone gone in?” They then both looked at eachother, eyes intent upon the other. Some sort of inner conversation only one could have with their twin.

Irrithae’s own eyes first looked at Ayre. “Very.” She said. She had put every bit of gravitas and weight upon that one word to make sure that the gravity of the situation was not lost on either of them. “You might drown if you go in or the Wellspring’s magic might devour you absolutely. If you are able to get out, the magic is a part of you forever. You will begin to mutate depending on how you use the gift. Your very mind and soul will change. There are ways to combat it but… they’re not perfect.” In fact they were largely fruitless but in her shame Irrithae did not wish to say that. In fact, she hid the biggest shame. The monstrous transformation at the end of the road. No more than a handful of Maecari had spawned in the last year. It had been too many already. Aenos had done his duty there, swiftly and without reservations. Since then Irrithae had covered up the truth of the Wellspring and cordoned it off.

However, she vowed to keep only the secrets she absolutely must for her own people. So her eyes then turned to Ida. “Yes. In the past, people have gone in and gained access to the Arcane abilities of the Wellspring. However, these days one must go through months, if not years of rigorous training. One must comprehend the fullest extent of the dangers first. Do you understand, Ida?”

Ida looked at her, nostrils flaring. She opened her mouth as if to protest but she shut it and in one moment she was back to her reserved self. “I understand, better than most. The Wellspring is not the only gift of Mae-Alari.” She outstretched her hand and then a finger, touching the almost empty water pitcher. The liquid inside began to freeze, the temperature in the room plummeting. When the water was frozen solid and frost had covered the glass, Ida leaned back.

“Was that necessary?” Ayre complained, wisps of steam came off her, as if she was a furnace on a cold morning.

Ida gave her a glance. “I was just curious.” She eventually said.

“I know.” Ayre said in a softer tone. She then stood. “If it isn’t too much to ask, could we perhaps have a room and take up this conversation tomorrow? I guess it’s been some time since I got to sleep in an actual bed.”

“Of course!” Irrithae said, letting her joyous self return as she got up from her chair. “You don’t need to make a decision right away. All I want is for the both of you to know that Arbor can still be a home if you want it to be. Anyway.” She clapped twice, and from an unobserved corner of the room something suddenly moved. It was a fairy that seemingly had either been unseen this entire time or simply appeared out of nowhere. “Uaisle, please show Ayre and Ida to their room.”

The two girls looked at the fairy dumbfounded. Taking offense, the fairy huffed, “Well, you would have seen me if you had looked!”

---

The day came and went. Even in the perpetual light of Arbor, the shadows still lengthened. The streets changed course. Black shades were pulled over windows as none could escape the confines of sleep. Ayre and Ida had not left their room since bathing. Food had been brought to them, as well as water. They took no visitors and they sought no one out. Ayre had closed the curtains and night drifted in.

Ida chimed, “Maybe just… Leave it open a crack?”

Ayre nodded and a singular beam of light cut the darkness of the room in half. They settled down in separate beds, the pillows lush and inviting.

“It feels like it's been forever.” Ayre yawned.

“I know what you mean.” Ida said, staring up at the ceiling.

“Goodnight… Love you.” Ayre murmured.

“Night. Love you too.” Ida replied.

Soon enough she heard her sister’s breathing deepen but the same did not come for Ida. She noted every root and bough in the ceiling, every small thing that crawled, every color in the dark but sleep did not come. She tried turning onto her side. She shut her eyes. It evaded her like a grasshopper. So close, yet out of reach.

She knew not how much time had passed before she threw the covers off of herself. She touched her chin and shuddered. She brought her hand up before her eyes and flexed her fingers. Metal. She was made of some sort of metal. What had happened to her arms? She did not like the metal. It was too foreign… Too wrong. She needed to fix them. Her face. Her back. She didn’t want the ridicule. She saw how those people stared and stared and stared at her. Horrified. Pitying. Her fingers closed into a fist.

She knew what she had to do. She turned her head to gaze upon her sister, only to find two glowing orange orbs gazing back.

“What are you doing?” Ayre whispered.

A complication. Ida sat up. “I can’t sleep. I think I’m going to go for a walk.” she sighed, putting on her best performance.

Ayre studied her, rising slightly. “I’ll join you.”

“No.” Ida said, too quickly. She gulped and quickly added, “I don’t need a babysitter. Go back to bed.”

Ayre glowered and turned away from her, pulling the sheets over her frame. “Fine. Suit yourself. Don’t come crying to your big sister when someone looks at you the wrong way.”

Ida winced. She hadn’t meant to be so mean but now… Oh now she felt no guilt in lying. She pulled on her stuff, being as loud as she possibly could, mumbling about their age difference. She would leave the staff behind, it would just draw attention to herself.

“Seconds… Minutes… big sister… Hmpmmh.” She walked to the door, opened it and slammed it shut. Then she stood in that doorway, leaned back on the door. She knew, if she was smart, that she should go back in there and sleep. But if there was a chance she could change herself, get her arms back… She had to do it.

It took a moment but eventually she found the way towards the Wellspring, acting as oblivious and nonchalant as she could to those she came across. This path eventually led to a corridor which was flanked by busts of various Wellspring-blessed wizards. It glorified them, but these busts also served as a warning. The wizards were shown with their mutations. They were many-eyed or had scales growing from their skin. It served as a warning and a reminder. Both of which Ida ignored. She was chosen by Mae-Alari, none of that would happen to her. She was sure of it. At the end of the hall was a large double door, blocked by a heavy, carved beam.

Panic bloomed within her. It looked way too heavy to even move and she was… She looked at her hands again. An expression of doubt on her face but she placed them underneath the beam and lifted. The beam began to move and she gritted her teeth as the weight of it pressed into her. Once she got it over the metal that kept it in place, she let it fall. A large boom echoed and she winced. It was now or never. She pushed the doors open.

---

“Stop!”

Irrithae’s voice boomed through the corridor. She was standing on the opposite side. “Don’t do this, Ida.” She said, as she slowly approached the girl. “I can only imagine how you feel, Ida. But the Wellspring is not the answer. Please, come back. Whatever’s driving you into those waters, we can talk about it. I can help you.”

Ida ignored Irrithae and strode into the round, half-open chamber. On the other side stairs descended into the Wellspring. Its gleaming waters were ever inviting. Then they were locked out, as roots and vines shot out from the ground and the ceiling to seal away the Wellspring. Irrithae stood with one arm outstretched and her fist clenched shut. “I won’t let you enter the Wellspring, Ida. There are other ways.” The Syllian said as she stepped closer. “Please, it’s not yet too late.”

Ida spun upon Irrithae then. None of the frost and calm remained in her face. Just bitter cold. Her eyes narrowed at the greensinger. She spoke with ice in her veins, “Don’t talk to me like you know me. You don’t. You can’t help me. Not you. Not Ayre. Not even the Goddess. Now let me through.”

“No.” Irrithae was getting more persistent. She bridged the distance between her and Ida fast. “I can help you. I will help you! But you have to step away from the Wellspring.” She managed to get into the round room. “Ida.” she said the name with pure pity. “If you step into those waters I promise you that you will regret it.”
“I don’t want your pity!” She raised her voice before taking a step back. Her hands were shaking as she grabbed the part of her shirt that met her shoulder and tore. The metal of her arm was dark in the light, pulsing with green veins. She tore free the cloth on her other arm too. “Look at me. Just look at me! I don’t want to look like this.” Her voice shook with anger and frustration. “I was already a freak before and now and now… Just look at me. I made us fall. I went down into the dark. I met Mae-Alari. I took the frost and do you know what I did with it? I slew those demons that attacked the innocents. I had no mercy in my heart for them. I sullied myself! And because I wasn’t with my sister, she came to find me and she was forced to do the same. I made her a killer. And then we were punished, by that… by that…” her voice shook, “By Bael-Davaur. A foul black thing. He wanted us to be his wives. How he talked… It was like being bathed in oil… No matter how much you want to be cleansed-” She gagged and began to shake her head.

“We tried to run but he caught us and I… I made us fall.” She gripped her head. “And I can’t… I can’t remember…! Why can’t I remember what happened?” She cried. “What happened to my arms?” Crystalline tears fell down her face, shattering as they hit the floor with tiny tinks.

“Ida, you were never a freak. You were born wondrous in a miracle-filled world.” Irrithae said, keeping her own voice calm. Slowly she approached the unicorn girl. “You’ve been through so much. Too much. I think so much has happened to you, and your life has been going so fast that you’re afraid to slow down but Ida-” Irrithae was close to her now, and took one of her hands in hers. “You’re home here. You can rest. You can take your time. And with the help of the others here at Willow and the goddess we can try and fix this.” As a sign that she did trust Ida, she released the grip on the plants. As she unclenched her fist the wall of roots and vines uncoiled itself, revealing the Wellspring again. “What do you think, Ida? Shall we take a step back and go a little slower for once? A little more controlled?”

Irrithae’s grip on the vines above was not entirely gone though. They still writhed above in the shadow darkness of the ceiling. Ready to move and coil once again in a moment’s notice. Ida, for her part, did not withdraw herself from Irrithae’s touch. Instead, the cold girl hugged her, wrapping her arms tight. She was afraid and trembling.

Then there came the sound of hasty footsteps and a gasp from down the tunnel. It was Ayre, eyes burning bright. Before the two embraced could even react, Ayre was already running towards them. “Get away from her!” She shouted. Ida withdrew from Irrithae and moved in front of her, wherein she confronted Ayre. The roots tensed.

“What are you doing, Ayre!” Ida shouted.

Ayre arrived in front of her twin, glowering at Irrithae.

“I came to find you. I shouldn’t have let you go out by yourself. And now I find you with her, at this hellish place? Do you have any idea what it will do to you?” She pointed a finger at Irrithae and looked at her, “It was you, wasn’t it!” she shouted. “You talk a big game, oh prophet of Arbor but you just want power. I saw through you the moment you walked into that room. Now you’d put her up to this!” Ayre’s eyes were wild, as if the flame within her danced to a beat of madness. Something was wrong. Ayre was clutching something underneath her shirt at her chest. She kept blinking and there was perspiration on her forehead.

“Ayre!” Ida shouted, “Stop this! That’s not- That’s not what this is about!”

“Then explain the vines!” Ayre pointed up at the ceiling. “They’d drag you in when you’d refuse! Why can’t you see that? She’s trying to use us Ida! Just like he would have.” Ayre tried to move past Ida but she stood her ground. Irrithae couldn’t see Ida’s face but the girl tensed at the her sister’s use of he. The demon.

“W-What’s come over you!” Ida said. “These are baseless accusations and you won’t even stop to hear me!”

“Ayre, you’re making a mistake.” Irrithae said, her own calm voice trying to calm the phoenix beastgirl.

“I have to stop her. Move.” Ayre commanded, ignoring what she had said. When Ida didn’t move, Ayre tried to move past her again and this time, Ida pushed her back.

A look of shock appeared across Ayre’s face and then it became anger unlike anything Irrithae had seen yet. The twin of flame reared back and then pushed Ida. Ida for her credit, attempted to stand her ground but it came too suddenly and she went backwards, right into the Syllianth.

The world slowed down for Irrithae. She lost her footing. The force knocked into her was too great. Vines from above reached out. Ida was falling too, right over her. Irrithae curled her fingers. The vines got closer and closer. Every second took a breath of its own. Then the vines wove themselves close right in front of Irrithae. Ida’s fall was blocked and the last thing Irrithae saw was that she had at least saved the girl, who had turned with horror in her eyes to look upon the one she had just embraced. The one who had just saved her. Irrithae fell with a smile on her face.

But right before she touched the Wellspring’s waters, a green glow emanated from her eyes.

---

Lapis was slammed down upon the stone outcropping. Wind like a hurricane whipped at her, sending the pelting rain down upon her skin like pebbles. She groaned, pressing her wings in tight. If she didn’t, they’d be ripped off. A great hand grabbed the nape of her neck and head, tufts of her hair caught in the grip and she screamed in pain. Lapis was dragged, broken and beaten, into a place where the wind did not tread. She flung a hand at the mass of scales on her captor but it bounced off uselessly. The fight in her had died back in the village. As her father was burned alive.

She felt the lifeforce ebbing from her and knew she was leaving a long trail of blood, like a fresh coat of paint on the slick stones.

“Let me go!” she croaked.

Her captor gave no reply.

Face down, she could not see much. But she felt the burns beginning on her exposed knees, rubbing raw on the stone. The biting pain at her head. The flickering lights on her left and right. Or maybe it was one light. Her vision began to blur as exhaustion caught up like a bad hangover. Punctured by claws, broken arm, black eye, broken ribs, flight feathers plucked… Compounded by blood loss- Yeah, she had seen better days.

Her head hit the floor when the demon at last let go. She wheezed as a fresh pain blossomed in her forehead. The cool stone sent shivers down her spine and for a blissful second, she thought sleep might take her somewhere far away. Then someone said, “W-Welcome back lord. I take it your excursion was a success?” It was a male voice, nasally and Lapis knew she would hate the face that it belonged to.

That thought vanished as she heard a deep guttural bellow, like some insidious lizard. She could feel it all the way into her core as it wrapped up with a hiss. Then an impossibly deep voice, dripping with malice spoke and her heart stopped. “This meat needs tending. Put it with the others.”

“At once, lord.” The nasal man said and just like that, the demon walked off. Each footstep grew quieter and quieter until silence reigned. Sleep sought her but before she knew it, many hands had grabbed her. She tried to fight them off but it was no use. She was lifted and carried.

What happened next was a blur as Lapis fought consciousness. Whispered words fretted and cooed. She saw angelic faces with dull eyes. Liquid washed over her body and she was scrubbed bare for all to see. Then something warm covered her and Lapis at last fell asleep amidst her delirium.

---

The land of origins held many secrets. Most forgotten by the beastfolk of old. In the time of beginnings there had been the great whirlwind and the exodus towards Salvation. Gods bent the world to save those ancestors who had been so hunted by their wildblood kin. Some still existed, shunned and waiting. Some had been slain, put down like the brutes they were. Heroes had risen to put an end to the depravations. Jaxx had been once such hero but others had existed. Their tales now but long shadowed dust.

The invasion had brought back the fear of the wilds. Salvation had taken on a different meaning when once safe places became overrun. Beastfolk had died, perished in the desert or had suffered much worse fates. There had been more heroic exploits, even by those that had once profused their insatiable hunger for their lesser kin. Once the fellbeasts had been driven back to their prison and the greater beasts annihilated, the world could settle once more. Life would always go on despite the scars.

Yet not all of those beasts had been driven away. Like insects to carrion, they found their dark places and began to multiply. Ever present and waiting.

The One Who Waited, the Lord of Hate, the Dark Shadow… He was such a beast but not of the invaders. In the time of the whirlwind, he had been born with a dark flame. Did Anat’aa know? Could she fathom her gift being bastardized? Was he chosen? These questions had no answers and his flame had no purpose.

It drove that black heart to madness.

So the Dark Shadow wandered. He watched his kin die. He killed them. He watched as they were eaten. He ate them. He watched them huddle around small fires. He burned them. On and on this went as time blurred into starless recess.

When that invasion had come, the Lord of Hate did not help the defenders. He did not help the invaders. He bathed both alike in searing flame. For he had come to realize in his long nights of travels, one could make their own purpose. His, he chose, was to wait. To see. To watch. And to burn. Why should he suffer all alone? Why should any other have a purpose but he?

He set his roost within gray mountains. Away from the cradles of civilization. Away from the gods and their ilk. The invasion came to a close and the dark shadow of his wings lengthened. He became despot of nowhere and tyrant of wanderers. He grew a hoard, not of wealth but slaves. For wealth was little to him but trinkets he could not ever use. The taking of flesh and subjecting it to his will, now that was what he could do. His visage grew beastly, monstrous with each village burned and hamlet scorched. He favored those of beauty. For innocence begot such delightful features. Men, women, even children- of all races, of those who were unfortunate enough to be caught. He took them to his mountain retreat where they could not escape. He made them work, he killed them for sport, he relished in turning them against one another. Beauty could be marred. Innocence lost.

It was there that Lapis had been taken. She was no innocent thing but for the first time in his existence, he had found a halfblood with wings to rival his own. It was a slight she never even knew she had made. There could only be one Sovereign of the skies and he would suffer no rivals. So Lapis was tended and washed by those of his slaves suited for the task. She was thrown upon a cot to sleep in the place that would surely be her tomb.

And the Dragon counted another for his hoard.

Just above a plaza of dark stone, a young croaker child found himself floating. He was, he was quite sure, dead. For one, there was the whole floating thing. For the other, he still had his gills, and should presently be suffocating in the air he had never entered before his untimely demise.

He was not alone in this place, and in coming to this realization. Even as he came to his senses other people were being deposited around him by the same unseen hands that had brought him here. Ahead of them all was a path, stretched out the front of the plaza, leading over a bridge crossing a dark moat/river that surrounded the large island. Around the moat were fields and forests of faded yet still beautiful and serene flowers and trees of a myriad of kinds, within which other spirits, other souls, seemed to frolic or laze contently.
.
The bridge did not lead there however, but instead to another island surrounded by its own moat, this one containing a manor of black polished marble, one as equally beautiful and as it was intimidating to even consider approaching. Yet where else was there to go? Certainly not into the water; as the tadpole watched, an avian beastkin attempted to fly over it, only to seem to be repulsed by some unseen barrier and to tumble to the ground. They rose, unharmed, but as their futile attempts to even walk into the river proved, there was no way forwards that way.

So, after making some conversation, and shouting at the spirits across the river who simply pointed them across the bridge, they took the only path available. They crossed the bridge and entered the manor.

Within was a maze of rooms, far more than it seemed it could hold on the outside, which linked to each other nonsensically. There were exits, ones leading out onto more bridges, but these were shrouded in mists, and no one who ever crossed one ever came back. Still, time, impatience and some unknown pull to a specific bridge caused the group to dwindle, till only the tadpole was left, wandering the halls, pressing deeper and deeper till, at last, at the heart of the great house, he finally found him. Sat upon a simple stool before an easel holding an impossibly detailed painting of the realm, pallet in one hand, paintbrush in another with which he was adding yet more detail, was Death himself.

Then the cry of a babe shattered the memory, and the true state of the land of death came into view. Gone where the souls living afterlives in eternal peace. Gone were the forests, fields and gardens of plants reborn after death replaced by a blackened ruin of scorched craters, more desolate even than the outer regions once were, while the labyrinthian home which once stood was gone in its entirety.

In its place was nothing. Just a hole, blasted down into the veil between realms, which a goblin in a pointed hat had just recently climbed out of with a babe carried at her breast.

“Shh shh shh little one, it’s alright” the Mother said, caressing the beastkin infant’s down feathered scalp till it was soothed and calmed. Then she pressed a finger lightly to its forehead and caused the source of the memory to reappear.

The tadpole-like mortal hovered before her, or rather, a representation of it did, for its soul was the same as that of the child. To it she asked, “and what happened then?

“I told him I hadn’t had time for much when I was alive. That maybe I could have another go at it instead of staying wherever this was,” the child told the goddess, “he told me that it was a rare thing to be gifted, but that that was a fair reason, and then just like that, I was someone else.”

The tadpole faded, and was replaced with a dwarven warrior. “It was a good life. Long life. Till the beasts came and I fell in battle. That time, no one took me anywhere. Well, the beasts tried, but El’zadir and me kin dealt with them. After that, me and everyone else, we just sort of, floated about. Not that that’s unusual apparently, a lot of the other dead did that for a bit and then ended up being born again, having never heard of the place I’d been to. Bit of a long wait this time, seeing as so many died during the attacks. So I thought I’d go try and find this place myself again.”

“And found this”

“Sure did. Then I got caught and turned into one of those for a bit,” the dwarf said, as he pointed out into the plain of death at a mist of spectral warriors riding out towards them from the edge of a kingdom that had been built on the ruins of the land of the dead, “got killed again in some war, got out of there, and then came to find you.”

It had been something of a roundabout method, The Mother knew. He’d come to Tricity, having heard the goddess favored it. Then conspired with the ghosts hanging out there to get him reborn specifically into the body of a spiritual family. They had then brought their newborn to the soul speaker as per family tradition, and via that the dwarf had managed to get out a call about the existence of and fate of the land of the dead.

And thus (after she had borrowed the dwarf’s next life to act as her guide) they were now here, at the border of a kingdom of the fay that had begun squatting upon the ruins of the lands of the dead, and they did not seem exactly peaceful. Watchtowers dotted the land with balefire burning atop them forming great eyes that had set their gaze upon her, marking out her location.

Towards it rode a unit of wraiths, cold spectral figures formed of souls bound in glamor, sat upon the backs of similarly undead steeds. The diminutive master of these, fluttering above them and directing them with a handful of spectral chains bound to their necks, was one of the new fairy creatures, wearing a spectral cloak over form fitting leather armor.

“Well well well, what have we here? A lost little goblin? Best you run along home now, lest you end up joining the Witchfeighd’s legions of the damned!” The fay declared as she fluttered above, her wraith-knights forming a threatening circle around the goblin, rather preventing her from running.

Not that the goddess was at all inclined to do so.

“Witchfeighd hmmm? I happen to be something of a witch myself,” the Mother replied, tipping her hat in greeting and entirely unperturbed by the strange copper, gold, and black lances being pointed at her, “more of one than this Witchfeighd, if this is her idea of hospitality. Assuming you are acting under her orders I mean.” She raised a questioning eyebrow at the little fairy and asked, “are you?”

“I am a wand in her arsenal, and her magic flows in my veins,” the fairy replied proudly, though she was in part boasting to cover how unnerved she was by how unconcerned this goblin witch, who had a baby sashed to her chest no less, was about being surrounded.

“That a yes? Good, then you shall take me right to her. I have traveled far to meet the new lord of this land. Or should I be going over there somewhere?” She asked, waving a hand casually towards a differently themed set of fortifications, ones watched over by bounded astral beings, that sat on the opposite side of the massive hole she had just exited from the realm this fay hailed from.

“Them? Hecate rules this land, not those interlopers! We’ll be tossing them out soon enough, her malevolence will see to it sure as death,” the fairy insisted, sneering over at the foe who was camped out on the opposite edge of the great hole into this realm, only to be quite surprised to find the goblin witch sat side saddle on the back of one of her wraith knights.

“Excellent, then let us waste no more time, yes? We don’t want to keep her waiting after all,” the witch stated, and at that point she’d already won.

The confused but smart-enough-to-know-not-to-pick-fights-with-people-exuding-so-much-casual-confidence fay promptly transported her guest as requested. As they did, the guised goddess got a further picture of the nature of the fairies of this realm, who seemed to be between campaigning seasons and preparing for the next. They were preparing such things that would have made mortal armies quail in their boots. Great wells of magical power were being filled from what little remained of the realm of death, its very essence being squeezed from the soil into great cauldrons. Undead legions were being formed, lost souls snatched away from the masses of dead created by the outer beast invasion, bound in spectral facsimile of their former selves, or even their own bones. Blood was drained from captured beasts, inner and outer, and used to prepare profane potions or paint the five pointed stars that seemed to be the basis for much of their equivalent of runework.

Most of their living space seemed to consist of barrows made up of the byproducts of their draining death from the land, transforming the dark substance into a pearly white stone and soil. Their queen lived in the grandest of these mounds, one decorated with great pillars of white stone that curved in like ribs, and at their center held the greatest of the balefire beacons. It's great burning eye stared down at them as they approached.

It wasn’t the only eye upon them, for those of many of fay around had been drawn to the strange goblin riding brazenly towards their lady’s parlor, and the rest caught on when she slipped off and casually strolled inside.

The insides contained the classic witch’s hut essentials, but scaled up to the quantity and quality befitting a witch queen. Racks of strange and rare ingredients lined shelf after shelf (both wooden and those that in an actual barrow would have held the dead), from eyes of newt, snakes oils and bones galore, along with numerous trinkets and artifacts stolen from all across the realms. Nets full of exotic herbs hung from the ceiling, drying in the heat produced by a great balefire burning beneath an even greater cauldron filled with outer beast bile, blood, and even viler fluids, along with a host of ingredients off of the shelves.

The Witchfeighd Hecate herself, rendered wretched and hideous by her deeds most foul, was perched upon the shoulder of a beautiful elf clothed in rags and chains who she was forcing to stir the vial bru with a ladle that contained more power than some fairies had in their whole bodies.

“Ah, I see our uninvited guest has been delivered straight to my doorstep in one piece,” Hecate observed as she ceased her slave’s stirring, before she insisted “this had better be worth my time,” as a clear threat to the fairy who had brought The Mother to her, causing her to back away half a step in fear even as she swore it would be so.

“Greetings, witch Hecate.” The Mother greeted the fairy in lieu of being greeted herself, stepping forwards and tipping her hat to the other witch in such a way that it obscured the fairy that had brought her here, a subtle manner of insisting that she was very much worth the time, and she herself would prove it.

“That’s Witchfeighd to you, stranger, whoever and whatever you think you are, stumbling into my realm like this, thinking you can command my minions to do as you please.” The witch replied with unmasked hostility, for, to a fay like her, there were only kneeling peons and enemies to be crushed, and the simple matter of her guest’s attitude was swinging her rapidly into the latter camp already.

“They call me Rose back in Tricity, and I’m just a simple mother, come to learn the fate of the land of the dead, and see the ascension of its new liege.” The Mother replied with words that were all technically true, seemingly now buttering Hecate up a bit, which the fay found just a touch suspicious.

Still, she was not one to turn down an opportunity to gloat.

“Well you have come at an auspicious time then, Rose of Tricity, for within the hour, my latest brew shall be complete, and when it is, the very earth of this realm shall swallow up my foes, and bury them in a shallow grave,” she declared, earning a cheer from the observing masses.

“Witch Rose, if you’d kindly,” The Mother replied politely, before saying that, “and I must say, you have quite the fascinating demesne,” using the term to refer to a witch’s combination of laboratory and living space, functionally a far more dignified and generalist name for a witch’s hut, “so many fascinating odds and ends you have here, though none less than that,” she said, pointing to a humble paintbrush sitting upon a shelf just behind the Witchfeighd, gathering dust.

This strange selection of interest prompted whispers of speculation among the many fay who had gathered around the outskirts of the large room, peering down from the shelves where they sat amongst the ingredients. One in particular caused one of the goblin goddess’ pointed ears to twitch, a whisper of, “wasn’t that the only thing we found here?” confirming The Mother’s suspicions about the artifact’s quiet power.

“And why is that, Rose?” The Witchfeighd asked with disrespect before asking accusingly “have you come to steal it?”

“Not at all, I’ll gladly barter you for it.” The Mother replied, before offering, “I have many pieces of fine runework from my home city that might interest you. All made with wondrous r’kava to boot.” As she pulled out a knife with the runes of pain painted on its blade, another with a scroll tied around its length that described an intricate transformation into a monstrous beast, and a third that simply had the rune for sharp on it.

“Bah, paltry offerings, you insult me with such base magics,” the Witchfeighd replied, rejecting her outright, “I wouldn't trade a thimble of glamor for the things made by dirt dwellers.”

“Then how about this?” The Mother asked instead, before reaching for a locket around her neck, opening it, and revealing the shrunken heart of Egrioth, one of two greater outer beasts, still beating, its power bound by innumerable runes. In response, all breaths went still for a moment, as its bounded power hurt the eyes of those who looked upon it.

Lesser fay flinched away, but the Witchfeighd’s own stayed locked on it for that moment, before flicking to the paintbrush and back again. She chose, as The Mother had expected, greed. What she had not expected was quite how deep that greed ran, as the fairy flicked out both hands and tried to claim both the heart and the brush, whose value she had clearly underestimated.

The air rippled as a deadly curse ripped forwards, only to crash into the witch’s hat, runes on its rim flaring to life as she used it not to protect her divine form, but instead the babe she carried against her bosoms.

“One of my grandsons got me that as a gift, you know,” she complained, as the hat disintegrated, magic spent protecting her from a single strike. Then she was forced to leap to the side, one hand steadying and protecting the infant in her care as she avoided another deadly curse. When she landed, she thrust a hand over her back and into a satchel she was wearing, out of which she pulled a second hat, informing the fairies with the air of a teacher that, “a proper witch always has a spare,” before popping it upon her head.

“Seize her, bring me that heart! Whoever does so becomes my apprentice!” The Witchfeighd barked at the spectating fay, prompting many to rise up into the air, drawing weapons and wands galore. This did not include the fairy who had brought The Mother here, whose eyes the goddess met and then to whom she gave a quick nod of approval before making all the rest regret rising against her.

Spells and sorcery flew, bolts of death, screaming skulls, balefire, and spectral scythes all raining down on the goddess, who stepped and leapt to avoid them and keep them from harming a feather on her ward’s head. As she moved, and countless shelves and nicknacks around her were destroyed, she retaliated using the heart, forming needle thin lances of pain that lashed out and skewered fairy after fairy, sending them tumbling from the air in bouts of unspeakable pain.

Other more martial ones darted in when the spellcasters failed, sickles and swords at the ready, but the goddess drew the mortal made knife marked with runes of pain, which extended a sword length aura of suffering from its material form. Wielding it, she caught and paired their miniature weapons with the metal blade, before slicing them with the aura of pain, forcing them back or down.

“Idiots! Fools! Are none of you worthy?!” The Witchfeighd castigated from atop her elven slave, even as she began to weave a wide reaching curse that would lay waste to both her foe and any fay who happened to be trying to take her down at that moment.

The Mother promptly tossed the scroll wrapped knife at the elf of all people, skewering her in the chest. Yet instead of killing her the blade pumped power into her, draining wells of r’kava and using it to twist her as the scroll described, transforming her in an instant into a creature like a howler monkey wrapped in chitin armor. In the process of transforming she shattered her chains and threw the Witchfeighd from her shoulder, and the first thing she did with this new freedom was to scream at her captor and tormentor with a voice that could shatter eardrums, or in the Witchfeighd’s case, make concentrating on casting mighty difficult.

Having distracted the Witchfeighd, the goddess continued to fight, happily taking hits to her own body while doing everything she could to prevent even a scratch from landing on the crying infant. The next to try were a squad of wraiths sent in by the fay, spectral forms of undead immune to the pain she had been inflicting on her living foes.

Given that the the souls within were living half lives of suffering due to being bound in these forms however, she had little issue with drawing the blade marked simply as sharp and cleaving into the wraiths with it, the concept of sharpness it was imbued with cutting them far more than the the metal that would have gone right through them otherwise. The undead shattered, freeing the souls from their prisons, all of whom called their thanks and cheered on the goddess as she used the space she had cleaved to unleash another barrage of pain inducing-needles upon the remaining aggressive fay.

She turned then as a new scream came, the elf slave turned monkey knight crying out as the Witchfeighd managed to finish a spell that left her slave a withered aged husk on the brink of death. Sparing her victim not a second glance, the Witchfeighd turned to meet the Mother’s eyes.

The two witches faced each other down, surrounded by the groaning forms of all the rest of the combatants, and watched only by those too cowardly or too wise to not get involved.

The crying infant rather ruined the dramatic atmosphere however, and the Mother was given only a moment to try and soothe it before balefire flames ripped forth from the hands of the Witchfeighd, threatening to wash over everything, minion and goddess alike.

In response she tossed her hat, the second rune-engraved head garment scything through the green flames, devouring the spell and then vaporizing like its predecessor had. In that moment however, the Witchfeighd had time to leap for the paintbrush all this had started over, which she proceeded to toss into her cauldron, causing it to explode with power, much to her cackling delight.

“Realm of death, rise up and claim these wretched lives in the name of the Witchfeighd!” She commanded, prompting the paintbrush to rise up out of the cauldron, and then for power to spear down from it into the earth. This prompted the inert soil of the realm of death to come to life, taking the form of endless grasping hands which grabbed hold of every being but the Witchfeighd, before attempting to drag them back down into it.

“Cease this!” The Mother commanded at the same time as she launched a titanic spike of pain towards the Witchfeighd, but the fay was no lesser minion, and though she suffered there was no breaking the spell that was sure to slay all in her demesne.

Again the Mother speared her foe, but she was holding back, unwilling to inflict deadly pain upon her foe despite the way the hands were close to breaking past her swatting hand to reach the baby. She frowned, began to try to step forwards, only for her eyes widened for just a moment before her form was replaced by that of a woman as old looking as the Witchfeighd, yet also one who had aged far more gracefully.

“Enough of this, if you won’t do it I will!” The Breaker declared, as she flicked a finger across her brow, causing a third and final hat appeared upon her head, this one not mortal made, but undeniably divine in nature. The Witchfeighd’s own eyes widened for just a moment as the Breaker shattered all the Mother’s pretense of being mortal, and then closed forever when in an instant the goddess had crossed the room, wrapped her hand around the tiny fairy, and crushed the life from her, ending her life to save all the ones she was about to claim with her foul sorcery.

The Breaker’s lips were covered with an ever so slight smile as Asheel took her first (natural) mortal life, only for a moment of confusion to cross her face before the Maiden appeared with one of horror on her own.

“She has no soul!?!?!?!?!?!” The youngest of them cried out in horror, as the magic came apart in her hand, and revealed this inexplicable exception to the law she had written in the Khodex.

“No no no. I can fix this. I just need to… I just… I can… I…” she tried and tried, but it was no use. The Witchfeighd was no more, and there was nothing left of her to bring back, at least nothing that would matter. She could build a perfect replica, this she knew, simply by looking back at what once was, but it would not be the same. Her cycle was broken, and there was no way of continuing what had already ended.

And so the Maiden, shocked, gave way for the Mother, who shed tears even for a monster like the Witchfeighd, who gave way for the Breaker, who opened her hand and let the magic both the others had been trying to hold onto, that had once made up the Witchfeighd’s body, drift away.

“The Witchfeighd is dead!” A fay cried out in panic upon seeing this, before above them there roared a mighty explosion as the great baelfire eye of their dead leader fell apart without her, letting the whole realm know of her death and that all her foul workings had been undone.

Her slayer cared not for their plight, instead bending down and pulling the blade she’d thrown at the now mutated withered elf out of their chest, causing the transformation to reverse, and the aging curse having already been undone by the Witchfeighd ‘s death. It was only when a second shout came that, “the armies of Eirgwyn are on the match! They’re coming! We’re doomed!” that she paid attention to the fairies again.

“I’ll lead us to victory!” “No I!” “No I!” called out several fairies who were recovering from the pain the Mother had caused and near-death their former leader had inflicted, all shakingly drawing weapons with clear indication on how they were going to resolve the question of succession.

“None of you will,” the Breaker broke in to say, before pointing at the one who had first met and then brought the Mother here, “she was the only one wise enough to not try and fight a goddess, so she will lead you,” before imbuing her chosen champion with the magic of the old Witchfeighd, and crowning her with a tiny witch’s hat.

“Meanwhile I suppose I will prevent the Mother from shedding any more tears, and make sure no one else dies today, not before we correct this mistake, and you are all granted souls by the Maiden,” the Breaker said as she unstrapped the babe she’d been saddled with, instructing her champion to protect it. Then, grasping the paintbrush all this had been about, she strode back out of the barrow.

As she emerged, she pressed two fingers to her lips, and whistled, causing a mono-wheeled motorcycle with bladed wheels to burst out of a poor snouter’s field, punch into the veil, leap through the hole into the land of death, and to then land perfectly before her, ready to be mounted. The Breaker did so, and then rode her machine forwards at lightning speed, scything across the land of the dead, and dragging the paintbrush across the borders of the fairy nations found within.

Where she brushed it, rivers like the one from the tadpole’s memory of the old land of the dead formed, ones which no mortal being, living or dead, could cross, caring not for how the fay who’s armies she was locking into their kingdoms tried to stop her and, in an instant, halting the advance of Eirgwyn’s armies, and forcing an armistice upon the war for the land of the dead.

Then Asheel, not Maiden, not Mother, not Breaker, Asheel, the Wheel, the Cycle incarnate, rose up above the hole in the land of the dead, and in three and one voices spoke thusly:

“Hear me, o tiny sparks of life who war for this realm: you have been made wrong. As the Maiden decreed, all things that live are to have souls, such that they will live on after death, and be reborn as new lives, to live out new experiences in a cycle that will continue till the end of time. Yet you and you alone will not, for you have no souls and so your death is the final end. This crime against the Khodex we will set right! Yet time it will take. So cease your wars, lay down your arms, put aside your grievances till the day that I grant you what you have always been owed, lest you face the wrath of a goddess who now holds the realm of death in her clutches!”

As the final words boomed, the wheel spun around the handle of Death’s paintbrush, and the fallen god’s realm was granted a new mistress. Bombed out craters were swept away, and in their place was laid a foundation of endless pristine white triangular paving stones, a fresh canvas upon which she would paint her own image of this realm in time.

For now, however, the wheel descended, and then three in one became one of three again, the Breaker riding back to the kingdom of the Witchfeighd. The new Witchfeighd. Whatever she was named before (a suitable name for a follower, no doubt) was swiftly forgotten. Now she was the Witchfeighd, and her name was Morghein.

It was not the new Witchfeighd the fay were hailing upon the Breaker’s return, however, but instead her patron, chanting, “hail her malevolence, hail her magnificence, hail the matriarch of souls!”

“Matriarch, hmmm? I can work with that,” she said to herself, before commanding the fay to clear away and to leave her in peace as she took over Hecate’s barrow, and making it her own demesne, within which she began concocting a brew to grant the fay the souls she had promised them.

After she returned the baby to its parents, that was.

“Well, how-dee-doo!” Tuuni swore with as much poison as he was capable of. He stood on his river floaty, his sunglasses resting on his forehead. Daffotales danced by the riverbanks, repeating his ‘how-dee-doo’ with as much anger as Tuuni himself. In the distance, past the glorious falls of Shengshi-La, the repellant of everything sane and good-hearted in this world, the Drowned One, approached with menace. It was a mountain-sized beast of cadavers and blood, a thick, blubbery blob of flesh, his many minions minioning at his feet… if one could call them feet. Upon closer inspection, they were in fact not feet at all, but even more minions: like a raft of ants, they rolled their disgusting overlord forward along its slimy trail. Its spawn morphed and shifted between an endless array of unspeakable shapes, stunning onlookers with their revolting visage.
With a grand flourish, Tuuni pointed his gnarled staff in the direction of the beast from beyond. “Stop right there!”
A great flash blinked through the sky above, and the world rumbled. Forcing its way through the atmosphere, a river with a dragon’s maw cut through and slammed into the Drowned One. The monstrosity roared with anger as the waves slammed into its side, sending its spawn scrambling to catch it as it tilted away, its flesh cut and bruised by the impact. A great gurgle erupted from it, its pale discs of eyes shooting towards the interloper who had dared attack it. With another gurgle, it gave a nonsense command to its spawn, a section of the grand horde splitting off and charging towards where the river god stood upon his floaty.
”Uh-oh!” Tuuni yelped. With little else, he tossed his floaty at the minions, refusing to elaborate the sudden destructive power of it as it landed with an atmospheric clap of an explosion. Minions were sent in all directions, and not all in one piece.

As the sound of the floaty resounded through the air a streak of fire rushed towards Tunni from the direction of the great tree. It bounded from rock to rock as it followed the river upstream at a speed no mortal could follow. In a flash it came to rest on a rock in the river across from Tunni as the configuration that made up its form settled into that of Anat’aa, sitting down with her head resting on her hand, a foot lazily dangling into the river creating a cloud of steam that circled around her. She smiled in her particular fashion as she looked at Tunni, oblivious to what was behind her. “Tunni! Good to see you! Hope you've been well! Gotta ask, what the heck was with that noise just now? Did I miss one of your parties?”

She would have continued on rambling but the fire Goddess was suddenly distracted by the half blown off form of one of the spawn as it dragged what little of itself across the ground towards the river and the two gods. Her smile disappearing into a look of slight disgust, Anat’aa reached her hand out and snapped her fingers. All at once the ruined form was enveloped in a white hot flame.
“Eww.” was all Anat’aa said as she rose to stand. Turning she saw the great horde spread out across the horizon, and the vast, corpulent form of the Drowned One at its center. The look of slight disgust darkened into one of almost total revolution as once more she only uttered “Eww.”
“Ugh! And now it stinks, too!” Seemingly out of nowhere, a three metre tall minotaur had appeared on the bank next to the two gods. There really was no explanation for how he had ended up there, and none would ever come. He simply turned to the others and said plainly, “Who are you?”

“Anat’aa, at your service, oh surly sirloin.” Anat’aa responded to the suddenly appearing minotaur, looking over to him with a grin. The bull snorted.
“Are you a friend of Galaxor’s?” he asked in, indeed, a quite surly manner.
A look of genuine confusion crossed Anat’aa’s face “No? Would love to meet him! Havent yet, still so much to meet and do!” The bull furrowed his brow, which cast a long shadow over his eyes, but he seemed to not push further.

As she spoke her face lit up as if she was suddenly reminded of something “But I do know someone who would LOVE this!” Rapidly she pointed at the great, probably damp, blob in the distance. Jumping from her rock she landed on the far bank for the river. Allowing herself to act on pure impulse, Anat’aa grabbed random plants and rocks and arranged them into a random, chaotic, jumble.
“I don't know if this is enough..” She quietly thought out loud before simply lighting the whole lot on fire for good measure “Oh sparklingly sweet chaos!” She called into the air, her broad smile only growing “You must see this! It’s… gross!”

A sudden prismatic flash erupted around the three gods, where there was once just a burning assortment of plants and rock, there was now a multicolored being of flame. A smile like watercolor quickly forming on their formless head. “You Called My Dearest Flame?” The god of chaos looked over, noticing the two others. “Oh! Good Evening! If I Knew I Was Meeting Anat’aa’s New Friends I Would’ve Dressed My Best!” They snapped their fingers, the flames merely changing from a multicolored explosion into…a slightly different multicolored explosion. “There!”

The minotaur stoop dumbfounded. “How did I end up here?” he mumbled to himself, but no answer manifested as of yet. He swung his hoe onto his shoulder and pointed a log-like finger at the mess of chaos. “You there! Rainbow carrot! What is your name?!”

“Ah Yes!” The chaos bowed, its flames dancing along as they spoke. “Yumash, God Of Chaos, Dear Friend Of Anat’aa Here.” They gestured towards the flame goddess, before returning focus back to the minotaur. “And What Might Your Name Be Dear Bull?”

“Unimportant,” said the bull and pointed at Tuuni. “And you there! Corn smut! What is YOUR name?!”

Tuuni looked up from his glass, a sparkling liquid sloshing about. “Hah? Oh! The name is Tuuni.” He squinted past his abrosian drink and at the drowned one groaning in the distance. A crescent smile curled under his white whiskers. “A barrel of RALK to whoever deals with our friend here.”

“RALK?! Sounds worse than milk!” spat the bull. “You can keep your barrel, tuna! I will deal with this filth myself!” The bull stomped ahead of the other three and waded into the water. He raised a thick palm over his head and clapped it down on the surface of the water. A tiny shockwave soared outwards in a ring that seemed to go on forever. Then, little by little, croakers began to show up, swimming in tribes and clans by the score. Goblins, snouters, beastfolk, elves, fowlfolk, goatfolk, dwarves, humans–all kinds of farmers of land and water showed up on boatbugs, on rafts or otherwise in the water. The bull raised a piece of the beach into a platform and addressed the mortals: “LISTEN UP, YOU SLUGS!” The mortals quivered. They had been called over by a spell promising free food, and all they saw were two bonfires, a hairy gnome and a minotaur who reeked to high heaven. The bull raised more land and conjured forth plowshares, hoes and baskets. “IN UNDER AN HOUR, THIS LAND WILL BEGIN TO SPAWN CORNDOGS! FARM THEM WELL AND MAKE ME AN ARMY!” The mortals were scared, frightened and utterly confused. The bull conjured forth a whip and started whipping the air. “NOW! PLOW, PLOW, PLOW!” The mortals scrambled, tools flying out of their piles like hot bread. Before long, the first corndogs began to spawn and the farmers picked them out and lined them up in formation. As they came to life, the corndogs barked with bloodthirst and jumped out into the river, heading towards the minions of the Drowned One.

Yumash looked past the gods towards the giant mass, their flames curling together upon their face to contort their watercolor smile further. “My Dear Flame,” They briefly turned to Anat’aa, “Do You Mind Distracting That Beast For Me? I have An Idea.”

“I think I can manage that sweet chaos.” Was all Anat’aa responded, a hint of mischief tinting her voice, as her form dissolved into a bolt of fire that launched itself over the corndogs and into the vast sea of spawn.

As she landed a swirling rush of fire exploded out, a defining roar announcing the coming configuration. As the fire twisted and swirled around the spawn, large tendrils of flame emerged and seized a number of the misbegotten forms. They were dragged further into the inferno, towards the epicenter where Anat’aa stood. Her form was ever shifting in the heat, like a shimmering mirage, her fox form danced around her before once more becoming part of her and vice versa. Both however wore an almost devilish vulpine smile as she looked upon the seized spawn, as she reached out and touched each one, their forms quickly ignited into bright flames.

With a gleeful giggle she threw them into the air, leaving a cloud of sparks behind them. Breathing in deep Anat’aa slowly breathed into the cloud, watching as the sparks grew brighter and began to dance in the air currents made by her breath. As they floated their movements soon began to take on an organized randomness, less like burnt gasses and more like a vast cloud of tiny creatures. Waving her hands in a dance-like motion, Anat’aa shaped the cloud of living sparks and whispered their name Whisps, before sending them into the mass of outer spawn.

Individually they were no threat, but as a concentrated mass the Wisps began to overwhelm some of the spawn, igniting them as those who had been used in their creation had been, bringing more of their number with each sparking fire. As the swarm grew Anat’aa tilted her head towards the bloated form of the Drowned One and willed the growing cloud at the beast. An order the mindless things fulfilled with as much glee as their insect like minds could muster.

To reinforce the whisps, the bull’s fields began to spawn heavier infantry: Monstrous cabbages almost four metres tall crawled out of the ground, knocking down the poor farmings trying to pull them out; eggplants armed to teeth with weapons of stone and metal rose from the ground and waded into the river; pumpkin bruisers with thick rinds for armour rolled into battle; poisonous mushroom troopers followed soon with venomous claws. The bull whipped harder, many of the mortals falling keeling over out of exhaustion. Then came the mental storms from the Drowned One, and the farmers screamed in terror, many running. “HOLD YOUR GROUND, YOU SCUM!” blared the bull and sacked many corndogs on the farmers instead. Lastly came the cucumbers, who snaked their way into the water and ate up spawn like orcas.

Seeing its swarms decimated, the Drowned One stepped up its mental assault. A wave of madness erupting from its blubbery mass. The shockwave invading the mind of mortal and god alike, sending their visions spiraling and wavering, the wisps and plant beings seeing double of every one of its spawn. Using its chance, it willed forth its own horde of spawn to intercept the cloud of wisps, flying beasts with great leathery wings that with every beat sent gusts of wind out in a burst around them, scattering the wisps. But it knew it would need to step itself up as well, with another thunderous gurgle, it began to create more of its spawn. Its great blubbery flesh ripping off from itself, rapidly evolving as it did so into more spawn and beasts, which quickly joined the fight to replenish those who had already fallen.

Yumash looked on from the sidelines with Tuuni, seeing the great wave of madness it had unleashed sparking another twinkle within their watercolor flames. They turned towards the river god next to them, “Tuuni Was It? Would You Kindly Be A Dear And Give Me A Boost? Need To Reach That Big Blubbery Boy While It's Still Distracted.”

Tunni looked up from his new floatie, recently weaved from Reed grass and some fluff shaved from some pissed off chipmunks. “Here you go!” Tuuni tossed the ring at Yumash, and behind the toss was a great pillar of water. “Good luck!” Tuuni said over the road of pressure.

The god of chaos caught the floatie ring in one hand, quickly slotting it on as they let the cascade of water take them away. Launching their form into the sky, though the poor ring floatie did not survive the mixture of the sudden rush and the lapping flames of chaos. With the height, Yumash caught sight of their target, the largest of the three white discs of eyes that covered the front of the great beast.

Extending one hand, they pointed towards the eye, extending out their thumb in a mock finger gun. Firing, they transformed themselves into a torrent of technicolor chaos that shot forward towards the eye. Hitting just above its target as it erupted into a great fury of flame. The beast let out a gurgling cry as Yumash transformed back into their humanoid form, sliding down and grabbing directly onto the eye the best they could.

“Alright! Lets See How You Like It!” They yelled, their form becoming more and more unhinged as they stared into the great white eye. The pulsing madness emitting from the beast now fusing with Yumash’s own pulsing chaos, the two energies clashing for dominance over one another. But with the Drowned One now focused on the mental battle of dominance, its horde was left leaderless, and ripe for the taking.

As the battle progressed, Anat’aa danced through the carnage. She was all at once a trailing fire that bounded from wisp infested husk to wisp infested husk, and a great fox that tore at the void spawn with glee. Even through the mental assault of the Drowned One did she not falter in this task, even as the double sight caused her great jaws to miss several bites and expose her flank to several raking blows from the spawn. In truth the sudden departure of the mental anguish caused her more concern than its presence.

Departing from the vast melee that had opened up between the grown soldiers and the spawn, Anat’aa reappeared in the company of Tunni and the Bull in a flash. Fire swirling around her she looked out upon the battlefield with a sigh “This all seems to be going well.” She said to the other deities, her eyes flitting across the great front before coming to rest on the battle between the Drowned One and Yumash.

She watched the battle of primal chaos closely for only mortal moments, a look of worry crossing her face before she returned her burning gaze to the armies. She watched as the spawn suddenly began to lash out with chaotic confusion. She watched as they threw themselves at the grown soldiers, and worse yet, how some began to abandon the field. “Do you two think you can keep the pressure on these wretches? I can corral them in this place and we can ensure none survive.”

“And you see,” Tuuni said from his reclined position, an otherworldly minion staring at him in wonder, an umbrella drink in each hand. “You want to pour the sweet stuff first, the bubbly after. It mixes nicer.

“Broough?”

Anat’aa’s question hit the pair and Tuuni hit the beast behind him. “Of course!” He waved his staff and the river nearby began to flood over, sopping the field in slowly growing water. At first inches, then feet. The bull unleashed a scolding snort and waved his hoe around menacingly in Tuuni’s direction.

“You are flooding my fields, you bushy gnome!” he yapped and kicked over a tired croaker. He stuck his hand into the quickly wettening soil and pulled out thick tree trunks, one after the other, that had been buried in the silt. He stuck one of them at an odd angle, aimed in the direction of the tide of minions, and tossed some more trunks at the mortals. “LINE THEM UP, SLUGS! SEED THE FLOATATOES!” As the mortals dodged, picked up and frantically assembled the pillars of wood, the cores of the trunks hollowed out by themselves, and branches along their lengths dug into the silt like pairs of legs. The farmers hastily tended to paddies of floatatoes, which popped out of the water with divine speed thanks to the presence of the bull’s ungodly ooze. The bull picked a specimen, shoved it into one of the trunks and stepped around the back before giving it a firm kick in the buried end. “BLAST!”

With a thunderous boom, the trunk exploded at the mouth, shooting out a flaming spud at an arc. A distance away, the boom was followed by a crash, minions flying everywhere covered in steaming hot mash. The air was thick with the smell of baked peel and stink of sulfurous tree sap. “RELOAD!” commanded the bull as crying farmers continued to collect the floatatoes and shoving them into the tree trunks at the pace of his lashes. “Hammer these vermin back into the soil!”

Anat’aa watched the other two gods set to work, her eyes following the arc of a couple of the explosive spuds. With a grin and a nod she set about her own task, once more donning the guise of the fox. Jumping from her place in the river she ran on the far edge of the spawn, leaving a trail of smoldering footprints behind her. As she ran these footprints would begin to glow brighter and brighter, a deep, intense flame burning within each of them. Eventually these footprints came to encircle the spawn in a vast semi circle, leaving only the killing line at the river untouched.

With this act completed Anat’aa once more retraced her steps, only this time as she did she set more of her power to the already smoldering ground. She willed the fire brighter and hotter, and the fire obliged. Soon the very rocks around them began to glow and crack, a deep angry orange apparing with each pass of the fox. Seeing this, Anat’aa poured more of her power into it, watching in her mind's eye as the radiant fire washed through minute fractures in the stone, deeper and deeper. Soon it found roost in deep stone, a hard rocky layer where the pressure was just right.

With a cackle the fox allowed the energy that was already trickling into the fire open into a flood. The deep fire danced and glowed, and for miles around every fire, from the smallest candle to the brightest bonfire dimmed suddenly. Coming to a stop back on her rock in the river, Anat’aa kept feeding the fire. Soon the ground began to groan and crack, deep fissures opening along her path. From the depths came boiling fire, suddenly trapping the spawn between watery, explosive death, and a quickly expanding floodplain of hissing basalt.

Tuuni put his hands on his hips and whistled. “Good thing I was here.”

With its spawn now trapped in a killing field, faced with drowning, burning, or death by various sentient plants. The great beast was rapidly running out of options, its mental assault crashing against the chaos erupting from the god clinging to its eye. The two locked into a growing dominance of primeval power, the great multicolor of chaos clashing against the thick darkness of the outer beast. But with its great horde all but dead, it knew what it had to do.

Locking its eye upon the god of chaos, it began to increase its mental assault. The air around the beast beginning to warp and shift under the weight of the beast’s power. Any mortal unlucky enough to be immediately near the beast and the fight found their mind scattered and fragmented - farmers ran away screaming or simply keeled over as their brains blasted apart. Even those near the presence of the gods felt the strain and pressure from the beast’s power, their vision swimming and blurring with a growing intensity. Even the gods could feel the growing pressure, though thankfully the effects were too focused upon Yumash to affect them as deeply as the mortals.

The god of Chaos kept their focus on the battle, trying their best to shut out the wailing and gnashing that erupted all around them. Their mind and the beast’s beginning to almost fuse as both of them poured more and more power into the fight. Their vision swam, they could no longer focus on the material, instead having to focus purely on the mental fight amongst the stormy mind of the beast, which crackled with immense outer energy. But they couldn’t stop now, they had to keep pushing. Their prismatic flames grew in strength, their form now no longer humanoid, instead becoming a great mass of chaotic flame.

Within that mind, where only few could follow, the two beings clashed once more, their own projected forms taking shape. The beast’s becoming a rolling storm cloud which lashed out with thousands of tendrils of flesh and water. Meanwhile, Yumash fought back as a raging inferno of flames that stained the mindscape like oil paints upon a canvas. They clashed again and again, the tendrils would wrap around the inferno, seeking to drag it into the storm’s confines, only to be burnt by the wrath of chaos. The inferno would lash out against the clouds, driving them back and back, only for them to reform just as quickly. This was not sustainable, Yumash needed to do something, and fast, or they would surely fall in the face of its onslaught.

Within the realspace, they formed an arm once more, raising it towards the heavens. The flames of chaos beginning to flicker and erupt, acting as a lightning rod for something far greater.

Far beyond, amongst the void of the heavens beyond, the every moving vein of chaos heard the call of its progenitor. Without nary a thought it clipped through the cosmos and stars, sending itself towards the direction it was being called towards. To the mortal sight, nothing had changed when Yumash had brought up their arm. But to the gods and outers assembled, they witnessed a great vein of prismatic energy crack down like a bolt of lightning straight through the god of chaos and the great beast.

Within seconds, the area around the god and beast shifted and changed, the air between the blades of grass sparking with electricity that danced between each blade, shocking the poor mortals standing nearby. The air grew thick with static electricity, hairs standing upright, with even minor touches closing circuits and causing intense, but not deadly, shocks.

Meanwhile, within the mindscape, the situation was far different. The sudden surge of chaotic energy from the vein grew Yumash’s power within. The prismatic oil spilling itself throughout its mind, overtaking and consuming the clouds and tendrils wherever it touched. While the vein did not stay long, departing just as quickly as it appeared. It was just what Yumash needed.

The inferno surged forward, breaking through the defenses of the tendrils and striking straight at the heart of the storm. For a moment, the mindscape drew quiet, before the cloud began to emit a piercing screech, with prismatic light beginning to erupt from its core. In reality, the beast shook and spasmed as the light inside its mind grew in intensity. Before the cloud burst into a prismatic explosion. Another screech, this time from the beast itself, erupted, the mental assault rapidly pulling back as its mind was overtaken by chaos. Its eyes, once white, now transformed into an ever shifting rainbow.

Slowly, Yumash returned to their humanoid form, letting go of the eye, and letting themselves fall downward. Hitting the ground with a thud, their energy spent. What little that remained of the spawn scattered in a rout, chased away by a horde of zombie-like vegetables, many of which were partially eaten and crawling their way along the wet ground. The bull surveyed the battlefield with stern eyes, pouring particular focus into the quivering pile of goo that was once their enemy.

“The world is safe again from this wicked evil.” He cracked his whip. “Now we can go back to farming in peace.” The soft whimper of the shattered, maltreated farmers who had worked the fields of the vegetable warriors until their hands bled and their faces dripped, incited another round of lashings. “IN PEACE, I SAID!”

Tuuni gave a nod and hummed to himself. “Certainly a lively crowd.”

“That they were!” Anat’aa agrees, returning to the pair of gods once more, this time with a small spring in her step. Looking out upon the destruction wrought from the trio, she turned her attention to a single spawn that had braved the basalt flows rather than stay and fight. With a thought a hand of fire pulled it beneath the streams of magma. “Truly a job well done all.” She said with a satisfied smile, before looking upon the collapsed form of Yumash, the look of worry from earlier crossing her face again.

“Should we check on them?”

A hand shot out from the chaos god, a thumb stretched out. “Im Fine! Just Drained! Give Me A Moment.” Above them, the beast, now seemingly calmed, gurgled contently. Its shifting rainbow eyes staring off towards the distance. Suddenly, a giant portal opened up beneath it, letting the thing fall into a technicolored void as it let out a gentle exclamation of shock, its new home for now. “There We Go!”

With the Drowned One now locked away, and its spawn scattered, the horde of outer beasts were finally defeated and peace could begin to return to the Shengshi-La. Though the, various, creations of the gods now ran amok. But that was an issue for a later day. For now, life was back to normal. Or well, as normal as it could be.

---

Irrithae went under. There were barely any ripples on the water. Yet its depths were covered by an inky blackness. As the Wellspring wanted to hide what it was doing. In the distance, it sounded as if the very Tree of Life groaned and started moving. And then everything fell silent. The very world was holding its breath.

Ida pushed on the vines, she’d go in. She’d go in to get her!

Ayre grabbed her around the waist, the heat from her sister’s core as uncomfortable as ever. Ida struggled. “Let me go! Let me go!” She screamed, kicking and hitting Ayre. Her twin fell backwards after a time but she didn’t let go. “There’s still time! Let me go! LET ME GO!”

“I just… I just….” Ayre kept mumbling over and over. She still didn’t let go, her sister’s heat now painful and leeching.

“What have you done?” Ida spoke accusingly. She tried to use her feet as leverage to escape but they slid across the floor. Her stupid hooves couldn’t get any purchase. She let out a frustrated sigh as her strength began to wane.

“I just… I just…” Ayre repeated, her arms shaking.

“You’re such a fool, Ayre.” Ida snapped. “It was ME who wanted to go in. Not her. She stopped me. Why wouldn’t you listen, sister?” Ida cried, raising her hand to the Wellspring. “What drove this madness?”

She felt Ayre’s forehead press into her back. She didn’t want to be touched by her, not now, not after this but she had no say in the matter. Her limbs were weak now. The heat exhausting.

“W-What have I-I done?” Ayre’s voice was enough to rattle Ida’s heart. Melt a small part of the ice that had formed around it towards her sister.

“Let me go.” Ida said.

“You’ll jump in.” Ayre’s grip tightened.

“Ayre, you’re hurting me.” She tried to say in a clam voice but she gritted her teeth.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Ayre said, beginning to repeat what she said.

Bubbles started floating to the top of the waters. First just a few, then more and more. Until slowly a shape emerged from the dark waters. The divinium parts of the Syllianth were choked with brambles and thorns, breaking her face and turning it into a grotesque mask of what she used to be. Her bark skin meanwhile looked smoother. The legs were gone, and instead there were a hundred writhing and coiling vines that rose up from beneath the waters.

The creature looked at the twins. It still had Irrithae’s eyes. “Foolish mortals.” It spoke with a hollowed version of Irrithae’s voice, but it was utterly absent of any of its kindness. Its eyes turned to Ida. “So convinced that you could regain that which you so recklessly lost. ‘Tis your fault, Ida. Everything that happened to you is your fault.” Then it looked at Ayre. “Mad-cursed beast.” It spat, before sounding almost grateful as she said: “I thank you for making me. I’d let you live but then well… you’d remain alive.” With those words it lunged at the twins.

One moment Ida had been confined and then the next she was free, pushed to the side. Ayre’s hand shot forth and a wall of flame erupted between them and what had once been Irrithae. Ida began to choke back her horror. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She didn’t want to.

“Ida you have to run!” Ayre shouted at her. Her twin’s aloof shock seemingly gone at the threat. But Ida’s legs would not work. She couldn’t muster the strength to flee. She could only watch as fire and horror collided.

The maecari moved like some unholy combination of a snake and squid. It jumped through the flames screeching and started its grappling fight with Ayre. Vines burned and thorns drew blood as the two fought. One for their survival, the other out of pure malice. For a few moments that felt like hours the two seemed evenly matched until Ayre’s flame burned a piece of the maecari’s smooth-bark skin black. The maecari hurled itself away, breaking the grapple as it hissed at the phoenix girl. Then it turned its eyes towards Ida.

In the meantime noise was brewing from beyond the hall. People, students and teachers of Willow, were waking up to see what all the commotion was about.

The unicorn elfling hadn’t even managed to get back up on her feet yet. She had no words to say. No great battle cry. How could one strike that which had just been before her. Not as a monster but as a person.

“IDA!” Ayre roared, flames bursting forth from her hands towards what had been Irrithae. The maecari was flung to the wall where she held on for a moment. “Meddlesom wench!” It screamed. It looked at the situation for a moment, then saw the candle lights coming from down the nearby corridor. It smirked and then lunged not for either of the elflings but for the corridor and the residents of Willow.

“Nooo!” Ida screamed, finally breaking from her trance. She hadn’t gotten up, she didn’t even feel like she could muster anything but she had to try. Irrithae, the real Irrithae- would never forgive herself if she attacked innocents. Ida spread her palm out on the floor and from it a stream of ice charged forth, running parallel towards the Maecari. Right for those grand doors a sheet of ice began to form.

Ayre, for her part, took notice of this as the monster began to break and claw away at the ice. Something began to glow in the fell light and she held her sword aloft and it burst into flame. She then charged at the thing, swinging madly and with little practice. It was enough though. She cut through the thorned vines and the maecari lost its grip. It fell down upon the ground, the few vines it still had were writhing in clear pain. Even now though, there was only hate and malice in its eyes as it looked up at Ayre.

Then the entire room moved.

The bark walls cracked and twisted open, as the vine ceiling curled towards the edges. The whole room opened up like it was one giant flower. Though some of its thorned and bark petals moved to cover the Maecari.

“Enough!” A voice echoed from above. Allianthé floated into what was once a room. Her gaze severe. She spared a moment to look at the twins, then turned away from them. The maecari was still struggling against everything that was holding it back. “My beautiful prophetess.” Allianthé said. Her voice cracked. “How could they have done this to you?” The maecari hissed back at her.

Ayre let the blade slip from her hands as she fell to her knees, breathing hard. Ida felt lightheaded, weakness spiraling down into her core. She could barely lift her head to look upon the Goddess and she wished she hadn’t. Their Goddess. She had never seen her so close and yet… The warmth she had imagined was gone. She had accused them. She was right. Ayre began to crawl and stumble towards her twin. Ida did not know what to say, if there was anything at all to say.

Allianthé stepped closer to the now biting maecari. “I should’ve seen this coming. The good in your heart would get abused by the wretched and selfish.” She gently stroked the cheek of what was once Irrithae. There was no recognition in its eyes. A tear rolled from Allianthé’s eye. “Worry not, my dear. Fret not about Aenos. I will do what must be done.” With a blackened finger she touched the chest of the maecari. There was no scream, no shout, no last breath. The creature just lifelessly collapsed. Slowly the vines and the bark walls opened their prison up again and laid the dead maecari on the ground.

The goddess then turned towards the twins. There was clear sadness painted on her face, which turned into bitterness the moment she laid eyes on the both of them. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” She asked, her voice sounded like a bottled storm ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice.
“Goddess…” Ida croaked.

“...It was me!” Ayre stood, wild eyed as she faced the God. “It was all me. I-I did this. Please, leave my sister. She is innocent. She-She-”

“No.” Ida said, the word loud and clear. Ayre spun to her, face completely devastated. “I came down here and started…This… Leave Ayre, she is not well. Please, Goddess. Please.”

“Silence!” Allianthé barked. In a split second all of Arbor fell silent. Every cricket, every voice, everything alive in the city was bid to be quiet and had no other choice to obey. The influence passed again though, as the goddess released such an absolute grip quickly.

“Innocence. Guilt. Madness. What does it matter? Irrithae is dead! Taken from me by the reckless actions of the both of you. She was to be my good heart. My compassion and love. Both of you took her from me!” She took a step towards them. “I don’t care anymore for your poisonous words. For your lies that you spit with every breath. Irrithae was my mercy, for now I have none left. She was my ability to forgive, for now when I look upon you I can do only one thing.” She raised the hand with the blackened fingers and reached out towards the elfkin. “You die here.”

“Goddess… Please!” Ida cried. “We didn’t kno-”

A sharp laugh echoed from Ayre. Ida looked at her twin. She was gripping that necklace again and her other hand rested upon her side. She reared back and let out a laugh that painted worry on Ida’s face.

“I hate you.” Ayre giggled like a small girl. Ida felt her heart stop. “Of course now you care. Of course. Not about us! No, never about us.” Tears began to stream down her face, “Where was this care when our mother lay dying in bed? Aoife was her name! Where were you when Ida faced prejudices everyday! Where were you when our father was trapped, imprisoned and MURDERED! BY YOU!” She screamed. “You have long lacked compassion and love! You never had mercy. You know not what forgiveness is! So kill us. Be done with it! I am tired of living up to your false ideals when you do not follow them.” She took a shuddering breath and looked up at the World Trees. “Forgive me, father.” she whispered.

The audacious speech stunned Allianthé for a moment. Not so much because of the words spoken, but by the gall they were spoken with. “You dare.” She said, still hiding the full storm of her wrath. “Ayre of Arbor. Those were your last words.” Allianthé pointed at the phoenix elfling with her blackened index finger and let the power of the loathsome necessity flow through her, sending a killing curse straight forward.

Ida screamed, hoarse as she was. She felt her voice crack and break as she bore witness to the death of her twin. A light erupted all over them as she made to stand on wobbly legs. Pale and without flame it dulled to reveal a silvered figure standing before Ayre. Her sister’s face of shock. Ida stood still as the figure whipped her blazing white sword to the side and down. As if ridding it of blood. Behind them in the walls, death could be seen in two places. Ashen black where life once had been.

The figure spoke then, her voice a quiet reservation. “When last I saw you, my kin, you abhorred the death you were so ready to just give. What has changed within your heart, Allianthé? Surely it was not because of one favored mortal's demise?”

“Stand aside, Sylia.” Allianthé said as she kept her rage in check with every fiber of her being. “I do not expect you to understand a love for anything that isn’t made of metal. These two have voided their right to my gift.” Even as she spoke, a fountain of green dust and gold dust erupted around the goddess and a small figure flickered in a wave of glamour about the goddess’ head. Sylia did not budge.

“Gift, most noble Allianthé, or absolute right?” Fairqueen Arya intonated. “You are the pacific goddess of the world, the guardian of life and protector against death; by what twisting of the world on its head are you brought to kill? It’s not right!” The faerie came to a flickering halt before the goddess of life and looked at her pleadingly. “Don’t break my heart, dear friend!”

“I am not oft to agree with a mortal.” Sylia said, bemused. “But the little winged thing speaks truth. Though… I suppose I won’t count it against you for putting your beloved to rest. For you say I do not understand love, this is true, I shall admit. That doesn’t mean I can’t still recognize it. So tell me, what was she to you? A lover or more of a pet?” Sylia asked with a straight face. Ayre shuffled awkwardly to peek behind the tall Sylia. Ida was frozen in place as she watched the exchange.

“Return home, queen of the fairies. Tonight I will do what must be done.” Said the goddess of life, with a calmer voice. Though she did not deny that any of this was right. What was right anymore? Then she looked up at Sylia again. “You overstep. You insult. Why are you here, Sylia? Why have you come as savior of two mortals?” Allianthé had her suspicion, fueled by the metal on Ida. Though she didn’t want to believe it.

“It is never my intention to insult you, dear Allianthé.” Sylia said, holding a hand to her chest as if wounded. “What you see as an overstep, I see as necessary.” She sighed. “You were so upset with me when I took that goblin's life, that mortal’s life, I remind you. Call it my conscience. Call it a favor. I will not let you take the life from these two. Would you not protect… Hmm, wrong choice of word.” She waved her hand, “Fine, let me be plain about it. They are my investments. I can’t have you kill them and that’s the truth of it.” It was the Fairqueen who spoke up against Sylia this time.

“What, and no justice served? No reprimand for suspected wrongs? What fairness is this, Metalhewn Shatterer of the Darkfae? I did not think it the way of one such as you to leave such serious wrongs uninvestigated, and comeuppance unserved! Surely we must look into this affair with calmer minds that a most impeccable and beautiful justice is served! The Little god would agree with me, I know this!”

Sylia looked at Arya and then snapped her fingers. “Mind your tongue if you can find it.” she told the little Feighd. “And do not presume there will be no judgment and punishment, imp. I know not of your kind but who are you to meddle in our affair? Now begone.” Sylia waved her hand in dismissal and looked back at the Goddess of Life. The Fairqueen recoiled as though struck, and her green and gold magicks glowed a deep red of anger. A wand materialized in her hand and she swung it so that a great tempest arose around her. Her fair green eyes reddened as they bored into Sylia, and then with a mighty poof the Fairqueen was gone.

“You deny me still.” Allianthé said. The grip on her inner storm was weakening. If she had been in a different state the flourishing of Arya would’ve put her on edge. She was familiar with the workings of the fae people. The slight the Peaceful Queen suffered would not easily be forgotten. But she had no mind for that now. “Who are you to think that you can decide who lives and who dies?” The question was beyond a doubt rhetorical. “Find new investments. These two die tonight. Whatever happens here, their lives are forfeit.” In her hand a silvery, double edged knife shimmered into existence. Light flowed over it like it turned into water. “Now stand aside and let me finish this.”

Sylia’s eyes danced to the knife as it was conjured. Her lips pulled down into a frown. The Goddess of silver shifted her feet as her eyes met once more with Allianthé. “The small flying thing spoke the truth, as presumptuous as it was. To meek out this killing would be a grave injustice, if not first we seek the weight of their guilt.” From Sylia’s free hand there came a large ivory horn, engraved with sleeping eyes. “I will deny you from taking the title of slayer, for if by doing so I save you from later regrets, then my mind can be at ease.”

“Deny me the title of slayer?” Allianthé let out a momentary insane cackle. “I am a slayer!” She then bellowed. “I’ve become a slayer when that wretched thing of an Outer Beast was going to kill me! I’ve proven that fact once more when I had to end the suffering of Irrithae! This has moved beyond guilt. Beyond justice!” She readied the knife in front of her. “Stand aside, Sylia. I am owed their lives.” Her voice was as sharp as the edge of her blade. All the storm in her voice before had turned into pure focus to deal the killing blows.

The Goddess of craft shook her head. “You are not, Allianthé. You have always acted with your emotions first and reason last. You are letting them rule you even now. I have said my piece. I won’t let you at them. Try and you will be cut down. I shall say no more.” Sylia moved her long Divinium blade in front of her. Her stance became one of liquidity, her features relaxed and ready. The horn at her hip, firm in her grasp. The twins, too stunned to speak or even breathe, had not moved an inch but now, only now, did they look at each other. It was of grief and unsaid things. Guilt mixed with sadness. The two Goddesses poised to strike. The killing or the saving of all involved upon their blade tips.

“Sá chluin mo ríomhaireacht, déithe na Khothael, agus bí síocháin!” Roisin Magnolia’s voice echoed with deep power and utter calm through the heart of the Worldtree and between the two gods. It was a word of peace that she spoke, a spell of pacific command that she weaved. Her wand parted the Veil and she soared through flanked by a procession of glowing feighd dressed in glamours of beauteous silks and glittering light. Some beat drums and tambourines, others played on flutes and others yet strummed lutes and harps. A magick quietude, concord, and amity pervaded the place so that it became difficult to hold onto anger and desire for violence.

The procession came to a halt between the two goddesses, near enough frozen in their battle readiness. Roisin Magnolia, veiled from head to toe, turned her unseen head now to Sylia and now to Allianthé. “If there is vengeance being called for and blood to be shed, Then bring your hot vengeance and strike the Faerie Queen instead.” She stood there in her glamours and beauties, her wand resting easily in her hand and unraised, a willing faultless lamb offered in place of those accused. “Surely the blood of the High Queen enthroned upon the High Throne of the Highholt of Taramanca, the blood of the Khodexborndottr enthroned upon the Throne of Stone at Arbor, is a great enough ransom. It is a generous ransom. That, or hold off a while and let them,” she gestured with her wand to Ida and Ayre, weaving a glamour of binding upon them, “into my custody and permit me look into their affair. I will be nothing but perfectly just - from punishment I will not be dissuaded if punishment is what justice demands, and if it demands other than that then I will not be dissuaded otherwise. Have it as you wish, my life or my arbitration.” The gathered fae stood flanking their High Queen with faces of stone, but here or there a fae betrayed the slightest glamour of panic and alarm.

As on cue, the heavens fell.

Streaks of fire came raining down from the direction of the Firmaments tree. Like a swarm of meteors was descending. Dozens of objects were coming down, but moments before their impact the roaring fire streaks stopped. As if the natural laws governing compression were just suddenly and entirely ignored. From the streaks appeared a swarm of creatures never seen before. A giant lobster made of stone, with strange runes carved on its mouth, manta rays of shimmering blue flesh, shark-like beings with veins of Allianthite. Each creature was unique, except for a singular trait they shared: all of them swam through the air like it was water. They were unbothered by gravity. “We answered the call.” Emanated from the giant, stone lobster. It was vastly bigger than any of the other creatures, and came to gently land upon one of the petal-walls of the opened flower despite having no wings or other means of aerial maneuverability. The rest of the creatures roiled over the room like an ever growing vortex. Their eyes and other senses hungrily observing only the twins below.

Allianthé did not acknowledge them. Bitterness was spreading over her face. She had valued Roisin as a friend, just as she had valued Sylia as a friend. Yet the both of them were so blind to her own pain. They kept talking about justice. Justice! The very room began to transform as she lost the grip on her hatred. Thorns began to form upon the vines and the bark became jagged and rough. Bugs and critters scattered away as they felt something deeply malevolent rising all around them. The goddess’ mouth opened as if she wished to speak but then she looked around. What had talking done for her in the moment? Neither of her friends would listen.

She had enough. The thorned vines all around began to coil and move over the ground. The snakes and beetles and ants that were fleeing stopped and turned back. They flocked towards the twins while Allianthé took her first step towards Roisin, the fairies and Sylia beyond. If they were so keen on stopping her, they would have to actually do it. Not with words but with actions. Though Roisin did not move, her faerie host scattered and the binding of glamour that winded about the twins became a great glamorous light and maelstrom that erupted very suddenly and very quietly - and in a very small and contained manner, almost like a small magick show. As swiftly as it swelled, it faded again so that the twins were gone and the faeries too. Only the Little god of the Little Things, Sylia, the maddened Allianthé, and the life goddess’ newly-come warriors remained. “I guess this is goodbye, Allianthé of the All-Forgiving Heart.” Roisin intonated morosely, breaking the silence and shattering the hearts of the gathered soldiers of life. Then the fabric of the world rippled about her and she slipped away into the Veil, leaving the gods and warriors to their warring.

Sylia, true to her word, had said nothing when the Little god had arrived. Nor at her speech. Nor when Allianthé became poisoned with madness. Not even when her investments were taken away. With a look of grief mingled with the cold steel of metal, she simply lifted the horn to her lips and blew. A great low bellow ripple forth and from those that heard it, they crumpled into sleep as if they had been struck dead. It mattered not who. Down to the smallest ant and up to the great lobster, all slumbered when the horn commanded. With some even tumbling into the Wellspring, or they would have, save for a slab of earth coming up to cover the prismatic waters. Even Allianthé’s eyes flickered for a moment. Her consciousness receded away from the living world. She did not fall as fast as the mortals. “True colors… shown.” She muttered, before she fell down asleep. In response to her own forced tranquility, the hatred in which all that lived was steeped vanished. The thorns vanished, and the small critters that could not hear scurried away again.

The horn’s bellow ceased and Sylia stooped from her rigid posture. She looked upon Allianthé and rolled her eyes. Next the silvered goddess brought the horn back up to her lips and played a single high note before vanishing away.

• Summary [+]

  Irrithae falls into the Wellspring’s waters. Ida tries to go after her but Ayre stops her. The both of them contemplate for a second what had just happened, before something emerges from the waters. A maecari, which is a horrific abomination that Irrithae turned into. She taunts the twins, then goes for an attack. Ayre fights it, even though it’s trying to go for Ida. After a while it also tries to escape but it gets blocked by Ida.
  
  Moments later the entire room opens up like a flower (but grabs the maecari). Allianthé appears distraught and goes for the maecari. She realizes nothing can be done and kills that which had once been Irrithae. After which she turns her ire to the twins. She accuses them of deliberately killing Irrithae. After which Ayre blows up back at her. Allianthé declares that they will die, at which point Sylia appears.
  
  She asks some pointed questions of Allianthé, and tries to appeal to her more merciful nature. Which is a par that at least currently is heavily suppressed in the life goddess. Allianthé demands the death of the twins. Even Arya, the Fairy Queen of Pillartee appears to plead with her to no avail. The Queen is somewhat offended by Syllia and leaves. Tensions rise between Sylia and Allianthé.
  
  At that point Roisin appears with a procession of fairies. The fairy goddess pleads for justice as well. As on cue, Allianthé reveals her own force as the Ophanim, creatures of the Firmaments, come falling like meteors until they fly around with no issue. Allianthé decides to call the bluff of the goddesses and starts approaching the procession, Sylia and the twins wielding her own Godsbane.
  
  Roisin glamours away the twins. At the same time Sylia uses her horn, putting everyone present to sleep.
• MP Summary Allianthé [+]

  Allianthé start: 22MP
  - 1 MP: Use the Loathsome Necessity (Death) to instantly end the life of the Irrithae-maecari.
  - 4 MP: Godsbane Artifact “Severance” - Made with the esoteric Firmaments domain. A silvery knife upon which the very light turns liquid. It severs the connection one has with Galbar. For mortals it means that their body gets transported somewhere far away from Galbar and their soul can never return to the planet.
  - 8MP (Boosted by Firmaments & Life): Create the Ophanim.
  - 1MP: Turn Tophon, bonded of Xantus, into a hero.
  - 1MP (Boosted by Firmaments & Life): Boost the growth of Xantus, the stone lobster Ophamin of Tophon.
  Allianthé end: 7MP
  
  3/4 to the Death domain for Allianthé.
• Sylia Might [+]

  Sylia
  10MP
  
  -4MP to claim the War Domain.
  
  War takes many shapes and forms. From the savage barbarity of raged fueled slaughter, to the great and total subjugation of one's opponents. Battle is a constant state of change within the cosmos. When armies march and invaders pillage, innocence is always lost. No matter the side or the person. It is the breaker of all good things and the ruiner of hopes. It takes and takes and takes and seldom gives back. But in the end, War is necessity.
  
  Sylia takes upon herself War for that very reason alone. She is of the belief that one can never be overly prepared. She dictates the maxims of her own ideology. Through total overpowerment can the truest victory be achieved with minimal loss. So too can overwhelming force triumph. Why seige when one can blast through a city's gates and sack it? As such Sylia is capable of teaching War to others so that they are capable of battle through strategy, fighting, and empowerment. She is also capable of creating great weapons of War and implements of salvation. Strike fast and strike quickly. Leave your opponent without the capability of thought.
  
  6MP remains
• Of Might & Glamour [+]

  Roisin’s opening Might: 8 Might
  
  –1 Might to Create a Magick Spell of Peace, Calm, Amicability, Quietude, Concord, Amity, a Distinct Lack of Desire for Violence “Sá chluin mo ríomhaireacht, déithe na Khothael, agus bí síocháin! [meaning: Hear my command, gods of the Khodex, and be at peace!]”
  

  This is a powerful spell that may be cast by anyone who has a necessary magickal focus and knows the words. They must be recited correctly (words, pronunciation, tone, speed etc.) in order for the spell to take effect. A failure to recite it correctly may result in only partial success, a weak spell, or failure manifesting in a miscasting (e.g. causing all parties involved to piss themselves if they are inadvertently commanded to ‘be at piss’). [1/4 to the Incantations domain]

  
  
  Roisin’s closing Might: 7 Might

After nearly a week had passed and there was no sign of the rest of the clan, Reaper ordered the group of seven to move out alongside Elutil the Strider. Heavy silence was upon the band as they trekked. It seemed to them that the world, the gods, and the very wastes, were set upon tearing them from all whom they loved and all that they loved. First they were forced from Renev, then the very world seemed to change around them so that everything they ever thought they knew was a barren wasteland. Then a god - or demon, who could really tell? - had descended upon them and stolen two of their lads in the flower of their youth! And now the wastes seemed to have simply swallowed the great majority of those who had managed to survive all that. There was cause for misery and frustration. Paying heed to little other than the strider that led the way, the Renevits of the waste wallowed in hopelessness.

Though Elutil, out of respect, had silenced their questions, they nonetheless continued to take in everything they saw and heard. Day after day of walking, merely surviving, and day after day of healing; each sunrise, there were less cracks in Elutil’s crystalline matrix, even as the hole in their head remained. They could not see through the leathers that covered their head, and in its place they focused on other pursuits. They pieced together sounds, copying mournful wails and incorporating them into a greater whole that they sang from their body.

In some ways it was pleasing, though it evoked grief and loss. A shard of beauty extracted from the horrors of the wastes and the memories of what they no longer had. Day after day, and the song grew more and more complex, wordless yet dripping with emotion copied from the Renevits. It did not appear that the Renevits appreciated the sounds, however, which seemed to drive them only into a higher state of grief. After a day or two had passed with nothing other than Elutil’s keening, Reaper gruffly requested that it ease up on the sound. “The men are at their wits end with grief, Elutil, and that’s not helping.” The man explained.

Elutil’s covered head dipped in acknowledgement, and for a while the strider silenced. As they glittered in the sunlight, they considered the effect of their song on the group, and the grief it inspired. Questions whirled once more in their mind, and they elected to test it, but in a more positive manner. This time, as the party picked up speed in the direction Elutil had informed them harboured safety from the constant storms, the strider twisted their songs into ones meant to inspire determination and happiness. It did not fully dispel the group’s grief, naturally, but it brought their natural fortitude and strength of mind and will to the fore. Reaper’s commands came sharply and his remaining Renevit companions obeyed swiftly and wordlessly. They hunted together and were never to stray out of sight, not even when relieving themselves. When they had to rest, three of them were to be up keeping watch at any one time. In this manner they continued watchfully until one day the desert finally broke and they saw, in the distance, the sand and rock give way to trees and rolling vales of green. “It’s the worldriver!” Galloper breathed, eyes wide. The others murmured in agreement and joy. “By the wheat of spring! I can smell the clay of Renev on the wind!” Claymender cried, tears in his eyes. At mention of Renev the others were hushed and sadness took them. Then Donkeywhacker spoke up. “Maybe… maybe they’re back home. Maybe if… if we go back then…” he glanced at Reaper, desperate for any nod of agreement to give a spark to his flailing hope. Reaper’s visage was as stone, however, and Donkeywhacker’s face fell.

In considerably lower spirits, the Renevits and the strider continued their journey. Elutil, for their part, did not fully understand; though they felt the sandstorm lift, they did not know of Renev, nor of anything but the endless wastes. They lapsed into silence as they followed along, blind to the world and the river with the tents wrapped around their head. Reaper, who even in the midst of grief had remained the band’s dark-haired guidestar, led the way. He scanned the green horizon as they trekked on and the earth transformed beneath them from rock and sand to grass. After some quarter of an hour of searching, he finally saw something - a shape in the distance. “There,” he breathed, “that’s surely a town or settlement.” He gestured to the distant shape, and the others squinted and muttered their agreement. “Let us head towards it,” Reaper said, “and if the gods are kind we will find shelter there and safety, and we will be able to sit and think how best to find our people - who knows, maybe someone there will know something.” He glanced at the others and saw that there were nods of agreement all around. With a destination fixed, the band set out once more.

It was a half-day’s march, with very short rests, before they came to the edge of the town’s farmlands. They were greeted there by initially cautious but soon friendly peasants who were happy to share food with them, refill their long-emptied waterskins, and give them shelter for the night, even as they complained about the painful glares of light that emerged from Elutil. “How far is Renev from here?” Claymender asked their host, Rakbor, who was the ancient headman of the town. He was built like a horse and seemed like he would go on living ten thousand lifetimes more. “Renev?” Rakbor asked, “I’ve no’ hear’ ov i’, no I ain’. Bu’ maybe ask a wand’rin Daff’tale - them’s always wafflin’ one way or avah.” Reaper thought it a reasonable enough thing. “We will be heading out for the river tomorrow,” he told Rakbor, “forgive us for troubling you for the night.” The ancient giant made as if to swat his words aside. “Pssht man, Rakbor’s ‘earth’s a’wayz li’ fo’ gests.”

The fellowship of the Renevits were awake just as dawn broke, and by the time the sun had begun to rise they had broken their fast, readied up, and were ready to set out. Rakbor swore a thousand oaths that they would lunch with him, but they offered him a thousand thanks and blessed him a thousand more, insisting that they could not wait or dally even a moment. “O I’ll no’ ‘ave i’!” the headman declared, “iv i’s to va rivah yer goin’ weyl I’m goin’ wiv ya til yer on a boa’ an’ off wherevah!” Reaper and his band had long ago given up on attempting to understand what the - they now surmised - half-crazy old giant was saying, and so they did not complain when he joined them with some five of his sons and continued chattering away to them. With his help they made fast progress and, by sunset, were camped out on a hillside. One of Rakbor’s sons sang long into the dark hours of the night, accompanied by Elutil, and eventually they set up a night watch and settled down to sleep.

Their journey proved relaxed, unmarred by any terrible beasts or unpleasant encounters, and Rakbor’s company made it all the better. Over the course of the few days they travelled together, his words seemed to become clearer and clearer to their ears so that, by the time they reached the banks of the worldriver, they could only wonder at the fact that they had struggled to understand him just over a week before. “Ah, well here you are.” The enormous man breathed, gazing out at the river as he slapped Reaper on the back. “The worldriver!” It stretched out before them like a sea and they could not make out the other bank even though they strained their eyes. “Aye,” Reaper whispered, “the Great Snakesea.” Boats sailed close by and in the distance, some were large merchant cargo carriers, others small fishing vessels, and others yet transports for people. “‘Fye’re lookin for yer people now,” Rakbor mused, “as I’ve tald ye, it’s Eastriver you should sail. No one what comes from Eastriver talks ‘bout anythin’ but great gods and heroes, cities for miles and,” and he gestured towards the great light shining upon the enormous tree that towered on the horizon, “and the holiest of holies there, the World Tree, the Divine Temple-Palace, and the Throne of Stone. If there’s anywhere you’ll find someone who knows aught about ‘em, it’s in those climes right there.”

Reaper scratched at his moustaches and stroked his beard in deep thought. “I think you’re right. Isn’t the homes of our lady of the earth that way too?” He glanced at Rakbor, who nodded and responded swiftly. “Aye, the sacred city of Sylia is in those climes too. If its her yer after then the destination is Eastriver, ever Eastriver.” And with that, the Renevits got to bidding Rakbor and his sons fond farewell, blessing them and praying eternal joy for them. He did not leave them till they had negotiated with a boatmaster and haggled him down to the skin of his teeth too, and they stood waving as the boat sailed away Eastriver- ever Eastriver! Once the docks were out of sight and the fellowship returned to passing the time, Elutil approached Reaper, their head still covered by the tent’s material, and asked, “Reaper, you and yours have been kind to me, tolerated my presence and the many questions I have offered,” the strider dipped their head, one manipulator arm motioning to the blindfold they wore to cover their wound, “but, would you do one more thing for me? I desperately wish to see what you see, and one side of my head can still see. I wish for a refined version of this blindfold, one that only covers one half of my head.”

Following that, Elutil remained below deck for some time while Netter - who, by virtue of his past life as a fishing-net maker, had most experience of the men with matters of fabric - worked on the strider’s blindfold. He folded it upon itself, so that it was thinner and padded it most thickly in the areas around the strider’s open wound. It was rather shoddy overall due to the lack of means, but when at last Netter descended below deck and wound it about Elutil’s head, everyone was in agreement that it looked fine. “How’s that now?” Reaper asked the strider. As Elutil stepped atop the deck, they did not immediately respond; instead they carefully examined the ship they sailed upon, curiosity and wonder evident; by their body language, they might as well have been staring at the most beautiful gem.

There, at the edge of the ship, the water. Elutil stared down at their own glittering reflection in the clear blue water. As the vessel sliced through the current, it foamed at the edges and left a wake that the strider studied with yet more wonder. Once, they had only known sand, blood, and the storm. Above, the clear blue sky and below the babbling flow of the river. They were silent for a while, looking out at the banks beyond and the plants growing upon them. When they finally did speak, it was choked, some form of awe in Elutil’s tone, “I never knew all of this existed. I couldn’t have imagined this when I heard you speak of your homeland.” Standing nearby and looking into the flowing water, Reaper managed a sad smile. “It doesn’t look like we have much homeland to speak of anymore.” He murmured, but was quite quick to move on. Elutil was silent once more, taking in the sights they had never before known, before they eventually responded, “Where will you make one,” the strider paused, and then clarified, “a homeland, I mean. A new one.” With furrowed brows, the man leaned over the side of the ship slightly and looked at the passing bank. “That’s not something I’ve had the luxury to think about. It’s like not something those of us who knew Renev will ever be able to do. But before we can attempt it - for the sake of those who come after us, anyway - we first have to find those we lost. Longsight and Badboy… Lifedancer, Rockpetter, Treesbane… and those from before too, who we lost during the assault on Renev and the failed flight to Fort Skybreak. I can’t even comprehend settling in any new home without everyone.” He released a long sigh and glanced over at Elutil. “So I guess it’s Eastriver, like Rakbor said. When we reach Sylann I am sure the goddess will have answers for us… or at least, that’s what I hope.”

“Goddess?” Elutil asked, suddenly, as they looked over at Reaper. Their manipulator arms held onto the railing; their head stretched over the edge, even as the bulk of their body remained firmly behind the railing. Hurriedly, once more a clarification was added, “What’s a Goddess?”
Reaper raised an eyebrow at the strider. “You know…” the man’s voice trailed off, “the one that took Longsight and Badboy- we’ve mentioned her plenty.” He approached Elutil and examined its head. “Has your wound addled your mind? Maybe taking in all these sights has confused you- go rest. And I should too, actually.”

And withholding a yawn, the man walked off to the quarters below deck to get some rest.

---

Sylia found herself in the palace of the thief. She had broken her stalwart vow of never again venturing into the immaterial. All fell silent in that little gay court. She did not see its beauty, she did not see its great craftsmanship, nor even the Little god herself. The God of metal fixated upon the crown hovering above the small god. The divinium crown. Not even Allianthé’s madness had caused her to feel so… Upset. The twins, who now owed her two lifetimes, sat before the throne fussing with one another. No doubt aware of how close they had been to dying.

Sylia pointed with her sword at that little feighd queen. “You said you were born of the Khodex? What proof undeniable can you give to this claim? Or are you a thief and pretender?” The small veiled god turned her head to Sylia, and with a word of ease she caused the faeries in the court to retire and take the two accused elfwomen with them so that the gods were left alone. “I don’t know what you mean by thief, and I didn’t think there was a need to prove something self-evident. I have never lied, it is not in my character. I don’t believe there is any greater proof of anything than the known truthfulness and integrity of the speaker - but you might not agree. If you have doubts or do not wish to believe it, I am not forcing you to believe it or coercing you in any way. You are free to think what you like and I shan’t be in the slightest upset - though I only ask, if you do not wish to be friendly, that you at least mirror the respect I show you.” The Little god spoke slowly and neutrally, neither offended nor offending. As she spoke, a great seat materialised for Sylia, and juices and fruits immediately familiar and wondrous were layered out in cups and on platters of silver, gold, and many gems. They lay on several small wooden tables of fine craftsmanship interlaced with latticework of lapis lazuli and jade, and studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.

The goddess flicked her Godwand, whose redwood enmeshed in Astralite and hilted with Magnolium put even the wondrous platters and tables to shame, so that Sylia’s already ornate thronely seat came to be decorated in silks, damasks, and luxurious cushions. “Forgive my inhospitality, please do make yourself comfortable and help yourself to some of these new tastes. I will be entirely open with you, there is no need for us to be standoffish. Come come, sit and be at ease. There has been too much tension for one day.”

Sylia's eyes were so transfixed upon the crown that she paid no attention to what had changed about her. In fact, it was only when the little god flicked her wand that she stopped staring at the crown to stare at that wand. She made no move to sit but lowered her blade. She raised her free hand and the magnolium component of the Godwand, after a few moments, obeyed the call of the metal god. Breaking off from the wood and Astralite, it streamed from the little queen’s grasp. Sylia studied the wand, her brow furrowing. Roisin was silent for a few moments as Sylia examined it, then she spoke. “Had you asked I would have given it to you. Now please, do sit. If I have to repeat myself I fear you will have made me seem very foolish.”

“This should not be.” Sylia whispered. “A divinium alloy… After creation?” She looked at the queen then - with some reluctance - gave back her wand with a gentle push. Her sword altered its shape until it was but a rod that hovered beside her. “Sitting will not be necessary in my case, Lady.” Sylia said with a slight bow. Her attitude whisked away in an instant. “The only foolish one here is myself. Your wand is proof enough of your designation. Khodexborn at last.” The Little god drew the Magnolium wand to her and affixed it once more to the Godwand, then placed it down on an intricately made pedestal by the High Throne. There it hovered and hummed with magicks and glamours.

Roisin Magnolia turned her head again in Sylia’s direction. “You are far from being a fool, don’t speak ill words about yourself. I am glad that your skepticism has been put to rest, though, Sylia Diviniumheart. Still, there is no need for formality. I am not enthroned upon a throne of authority, it is not mine to command and decree and, therefore, I have no right to obeisance to a like degree. Mine is an enthronement of being not of rule- but let me not annoy you with riddling words!” She rose from her throne and approached Sylia, moving gently through the air like a feather on a playful wind. “You accused me of being a thief also. I admit to being ignorant of where this accusation stems from. Could you elucidate so that, perhaps, I may offer up a defence?”

“There is no need for defense,” Sylia said, crossing her arms. “The Crown you wear was intended as a gift for the Khodex. As Khodexborn, it is yours by right. I drop all accusations and thus my apology to you is the maker's approval. Now, I am not at all familiar with you or your kind but I see plain you are with the best intentions. Allianthé’s heart is poisoned with grief and blooming with hate. It's too rash of her. Too emotional a response. I would never have put blade to her flesh, I shall have you know, but I cannot say the same of her at present. Perhaps this path was laid out long ago. Life cannot be life without death and I fear that fact alone shall lead her astray into corruption of her intent. What are we, for you have jumped into this mess, going to do about it, I wonder?” Sylia watched the small goddess hovering in silence before her.

“For my part - and you may see otherwise - I can do no more than to exhort Allianthé to goodness. I knew her before this grief, though even then she struggled. I will call on her and exhort her untiringly; there is little more I can do for her - I certainly cannot force healing or goodness into her. And perhaps if we show her mercy, kindness, generosity of spirit, patience, treat her ever with fairness and forgiveness, and in all manner exemplify that breadth of spirit and elevation we call her to… perhaps it will find a way to her heart. In all other ways we - yes, you too Sylia, I call you to it - can do nothing but ourselves be good.” Roisin settled down on the armrest of the fine throne she had conjured for Sylia. “That’s how I see it - but perhaps you, being a sister to iron and steel, see with a keener and sharper sight than I do. I welcome your say on the matter.”

“That's assuming she will want anything to do with us after this debacle. You may try all you like to open her heart once more but I cannot seeing it working at this time. Though I'd like it to.” The silver goddess sighed. “She will seek retribution that time will not dull. Her resolve will only strengthen, I have no doubt. The twins will be in constant threat of death. I would send them upon a quest to retrieve that syllianth's soul but it may already be too late. The wheel of reincarnation goes ever on. No, they have suffered and will continue to suffer. Just as Allianthé until reason is cast before her eyes or, unfortunately, beaten into her like common sense.” Roisin Magnolia issued an audible sigh at Sylia’s words, visible too as a cloud of variegated glamour. “Well, we can only do what we can - and what we see as right. I only implore you to remember: gentleness and kind forbearance is not in a thing except that it makes it more beautiful, and it is not taken out of a thing except that it is made less beautiful. I implore you towards that which is more beautiful.” She paced up and down the armrest for a few moments, deep in thought. “But I think you are right about the danger that swift follows the twins… it may be safer for both of them if they are separated.”

“Another unfortunate reality.” Sylia agreed. “United only to be separated once more. When I found them they were in a sorry state. I shall not speak of specifics only know I removed such memories from them. Such is best left to be forgotten, for they are already traumatized by their ordeals and now this. I shall take the fiery one, most to blame for this accident. She will face her own trial as punishment. I know not if she will recover without her twin but this shall be her test.” Sylia’s word caused the Little god to lift off from the armrest and rise so that she was level with Sylia’s head.

“Your words leave little doubt that you are certain of their guilt. I have received at least one narrative from a witness to the incident… but it seems to me that you may have another witness. Would you be willing to share that with me for the purpose of making a final judgment on this matter? Certainly the sooner we are able to arrive at a verdict the better it will be.”

Sylia huffed. “Allianthé would not have reacted if it had been anything lesser. Her chosen was transformed, accidently as any could see, by two quarreling sisters. Allianthé then took the life of her chosen without so much as trying to reverse the damage. They are both to blame for this tragedy but I do not think a life should be taken for a life, less two for one. Was their guilt not evident upon their faces?” No amount of looking at the veiled goddess could reveal what she thought about Sylia’s words, but her response came beauteous and calm as always, if not a little sad. “Your words mirror what I have been told. A sad affair in all ways, though who bears the greatest guilt for it I cannot yet say. I will attempt to speak to Allianthé in due course, once the agent of time has put some distance between us and the incident. I will attempt to have her accept my arbitration. But before I do any such thing I must ask you first: would you permit me to arbitrate on the matter? Will you accept my judgment when I reach it, even if it differs from what you would have liked? It will be terribly difficult to secure Allianthé’s agreement, and I will not seek to get it if I do not already have yours.”

“As you do not have a great stake in this matter, I believe you are the most natural suited for arbitration. If you wish it, then you shall have my agreement, no matter the outcome.” Sylia confirmed. Roisin nodded and soared back to her throne. Retrieving the Godwand, she whispered a word of summoning. Ida and Ayre, flanked by their faerie wardens, appeared before the throne once more.

Ida looked ahead, Ayre looked at the floor. Both dejected and unsure. Unease and guilt lingered in the air. For once, neither spoke. It seemed their ordeal had drained them of any speeches. Sylia, now before them, spoke. “You both have gone through much in such a short time. Unfortunately, it won’t be getting any easier. Your Goddess has declared you enemies of her state. Be it madness or grief that compels her, none can say. This is certain however, she will not stop hunting you until she believes retribution has been done. Life itself has chosen for you to die.” Ayre’s knees wobbled as a gasp escaped her throat and then she began to fall but invisible hands held her a loft. Ida stared forward at nothing. “I know the incident was accidental in nature. I would not have intervened otherwise. This doesn’t mean you don’t share blame in the act itself. A Syllianth- Irrithae, is dead. Thus we have decided your only course of action is to be separated until the time-”

“No!” Ayre yelled, cutting off the Goddess. “I won’t let you separate us! You can’t. It isn’t fair!”

Sylia frowned. “Fairness has little to do with it. Interrupt me again and I shall do what Allianthe could not- Cut out your tongue, little girl.”

As the threat settled over Ayre, the girl’s face contorted into rage. Steam began to rise from her body, as her features went red. Though neither Sylia nor Ayre moved, a great distance seemed to appear between them and Roisin manifested there, her flowing dress and generous wimple trailing behind her. She spoke cooling words and all about her were glamorous of utter peace. “Sá chluin mo ríomhaireacht, déithe na Khothael, agus bí síocháin.” She commanded, so that all anger and desire to lash out left Ayre. The goddess was still for a few moments and then she cocked her head. “You have something of divine make there,” she pointed to Ayre’s breast, “shew it me, dear daughter.”

Ayre blinked wildly, grasping at the necklace hidden beneath her clothes. “I…It was a gift.” she said, making no move to show it. The glamours of an understanding, patient smile flowed about Roisin. “Of course. You have drawn the gaze of many a god, Ayre…” her glamours turned to slight sadness, “but not all gods are kind or good, my dear. Let me only have a look, I’ll deny you nothing that is yours - I am no thief, I assure you.”

Sylia, near once more, watched as Ayre, with much reluctance, pulled out the necklace to reveal a large prismatic gem set. Sylia’s brows furrowed. She had felt such a presence before but where? As she tried to pinpoint it, Roisin Magnolia approached Ayre and inspected the gem. She flicked her hand, so that the Godwand shimmered across the throne room and into her grasp, and trailed the tip of her wand across the stone. “This is…” Roisin murmured thoughtfully, “quite terrible.” She withdrew her hand and fluttered away from the girl. “I would advise you, my dear, to rid yourself of that. It has great power, there is no doubt, but it will only bring your soul and form to ugliness. If you keep it, then you will one day lose all conception of yourself - though before that, you will have known much woe.” She let her words settle, and their seriousness seemed somehow reinforced by the glamours of warning that swirled about the Little god. “Do you understand me, Ayre? Let it not be said you did not know.”
Her hand began to shake around the gem. Ayre looked at Ida but it was as if she wasn’t there at all. Still she looked off into the nothingness. Ayre glanced back at the little god, her eyes beginning to narrow. Before she could say anything, Sylia interjected, “Power corrupts. Look how you are already shifting to blame her. Those eyes. Give it up Ayre.” She said, for once, in a voice like a gentle breeze. Once more Ayre’s face shifted from benign beauty to a flicker of anger. Her entire forearm was shaking now. She jerked her head and her eyes snapped shut. It was if she was battling some inner, wicked thing. Then, in one quick motion, she flung off the necklace and it clattered to the ground. Ayre took a deep breath and opened her eyes. There was a calmness about them, lucidity returned from the cusp.

The Godwand flashed so that a small maelstrom of glamour took up the necklace and brought it up before the two gods. “It is of the making of Yumash,” Roisin intonated distastefully. Her head turned towards Sylia. “I can hide it away here, but my faerie grandchildren are not all of them so wise or trustworthy,” her words did not seem to ruffle the faerie wardens hovering about Ida and Ayre, “and I fear that in time one or another will use it for some mischief.” She spoke a word of encasement, so that the necklace came to be bound in a small silver case. “I leave it to you, Sylia. Perhaps a craftsman like you might even be able to destroy it in time- but ah, do hold off on that. It may prove an important piece of evidence in this investigation,” she paused, “in fact,” she brought the case back to her, “it may be best I keep it until I have spoken with Allianthé. Surely showing her this will let her see that things are not as they seem. I will have it delivered to you immediately after for safekeeping.”

Sylia gave a wave of her hand in approval. “I trust you in this.”

The Little god flicked her wand and the silver case soared off until it came to rest on the pedestal by the High Throne. Turning to Ayre, she spoke. “How do you feel now? Better?”

The red headed girl nodded as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. “Yes, Goddess. Better.” Ayre looked back at Ida but her twin was much the same. She then looked at Sylia. “Separation?”

The silvered goddess gave another nod. “Until Life settles, it’s safer. I have elected to take you. It will be no easy thing, the trial ahead of you. But it must be done if you are to atone.”

The girl looked at the ground before her, nodding slow in acceptance. “I assume Ida shall stay here, in the graces of the Queen?” Sylia asked, looking at Roisin. For her part, the High Queen of the Faeries turned more fully towards Ida, as if observing the heavily scarred elf for the first time. “Yes,” Roisin cantillated, “Ida may stay here at Taramanca with me. Life has forced separation upon ye; Perhaps reunion ‘twill one day decree. I am sure that you and I will have many occasions to speak, Ida. But Ayre, as you are leaving,” she turned to the fiery twin, “I want you to remember how you cast the necklace from yourself. That took strength. It took will. And it took an understanding of what is beautiful and good. Keep that always in your mind and heart; goodness is a beautiful aspiration.” So saying, she wove glamours in her hand that formed up into a ring of silver interlaced with gold. It was studded with glimmering rubies. Incantations and words of great power were engraved into it right from the Little god’s mouth. “This is for you. Virtue and goodness is its own reward, true, but I would be truly unvirtuous if I was witness to an act of courageous willpower and did not reward it.” The ring soared towards Ayre and hung before her on a cushion of glamour.

Ayre took the ring gingerly and thanked Roisin in a small voice. She then looked at her twin again and said, “Ida… I’m so sorry.” Ida at last, looked at Ayre with frosty eyes. “So am I.” She said flatly. “Be well Ayre.” She turned and began to walk away, seemingly nowhere before the faery guards guided her out. Ayre called out after her, “Ida! I-I love you!” Her sister did not turn around.

Grief and pain flashed across Ayre’s face before Sylia crossed over to her, placing a silvered hand upon her shoulder. “She loves you even if it can’t be said. Do not worry, you will see her again. This I promise. Now come, we tarry here too long.” Sylia turned to Roisin. “And I shall see you again, little queen.” Roisin nodded to her. “I do not doubt it, dearest Sylia.” She gestured to one of Ayre’s warden fae. “Firborn will accompany you still, Ayre. With his help and blessings all the secrets of your ring will come unveiled to you.” The fire-headed Firborn settled on Ayre’s shoulder, and Sylia said at last, “Be cautious of Life.” before they were gone from the Veil in a blink.

• Summary [+]

  Sylia and Roisin meet and after a tense moment, Sylia recognizes the legitimacy of the little queen. They go on to talk about what to do with Allianthe and eventually agree that Roisin should arbitrate and see if the Life goddess can see reason. It is then determined that the twins will have to be split up, for fear they will be hunted. Ayre objects to this and it is finally revealed what she carries- the fervor necklace. Roisin says its bad news and Ayre wills herself to rid it and she does, in return, she is gifted a cool ring. She then bids goodbye to her sister, who has been silent as ever. Ida walks out after a tense goodbye. They then depart.
• Sylia MP [+]

  Sylia
  6MP
  
  Nothing spent
  
  6MP remaining
• Of Might & Glamour [+]

  Roisin’s opening Might: 7 Might
  
  -2 Might to Create a Glamour Focus in the form of a ring “the Roisring; the First Ring; the Ring of Power”
  

  This ring is a powerful focus for glamour. The one who wears it is more resistant to hostile magicks of all sorts due to the protective incantations engraved into it, while the spells that are cast are generally stronger and more stable. The ring responds more positively to wielders who manifest Roisin’s virtues and beauty; a spell cast with strong positive emotions, such as courage, self-sacrifice, love etc. will tap into a deeper power than those fueled by hatred, anger, spite (though stronger in a shallow sense due to Itzal’s curse, such spells are easily dispelled and quickly lose potency as they do not tap into the ring’s deep well of beauty/virtue-rooted power).[3/4 to the Incantations domain]

  
  
  Roisin’s closing Might: 5 Might

---

The blanket of night sat heavy upon the hills around Longsight’s cave. Two mounds outside the cave mouth marked the places where Songster and Tentongues rested eternally beneath the earth. A fire flickered inside, though nothing moved within. In the weeks following the Battle of the Cliff, the outer beasts (or demons, as Saboteur insisted on calling them) had gathered thickly about the cave mouth. Their patrols were unceasing and alertness unsleeping. They suspected that at any moment Hylsek Adech may return to finish what he started and would not be taken unawares. But now it was many months since, and not as much as a spybat had been spotted in that time.

A sense of security overcoming them, Badboy at last decided to turn his attention - and of that of the demons that now considered him their princeling - towards the caverns. For months he had worked them ceaselessly on carving the caverns into something of an underground palace fitting of a ‘princeling’. On more than one occasion Longsight had made him quite aware that this whole thing was getting to the other lad’s head. Badboy only smirked and signalled that he was just jealous. Longsight might have been, a bit. That said, Longsight could not deny that the work Badboy had set his new followers to was impressive. What were once caverns had become well-sanded and carved hallways, lit with lanterns of demon magick. The dangerous descents had become stairs and stairwells. Chambers had become great carved halls and crevices and fissures had been made into bedchambers, studies, leisure rooms, latrines, and other such things that Badboy’s demon advisors assured him that any fine princeling’s abodes required. Much of it was still incomplete, and the deeper caverns beyond the great Pool Chamber, which was still being fixed up as Badboy’s future throne room, had not been much explored.

Necessity had meant, though, that they ventured beyond the Pool Chamber and followed the sound of flowing water until the reached the subterranean river the sounds promised. Rather than a river, however, what they came upon was a great lake into which waterfalls flowed from above. In the darkness, Saboteur had been able to make out at least three waterfalls flowing from multiple locations above. When Horntusk dipped a hand into the water and raised it to his mouth, he released a satisfied breath. “Damn coolest and purest I’ve ever had.” It was a long way from the cave entrance to their newfound lake, the waterskins Saboteur and Horntusk had, as well as the two Songster and Tentongues had left behind, were large enough that they only had to make the trip every few days. Amongst themselves later, they agreed on naming it Lake Tentongues, both in honour of their slain goblin companion and due to the many waterfalls that flowed into it like so many tongues.

And so, while Badboy’s subterranean palace was being worked on, the two Renevits and their great-goblin friends (or orcs, as the demons insisted on calling them) maintained their sleeping and living quarters by the cave entrance. On that particular night nearly six months after the Battle of the Cliff, a strange sleepfulness overtook the four so that even Saboteur, who was keeping watch by the cave mouth, fell asleep.

Longsight woke to a great bang that rippled off the cave mouth and rattled his very bones. This was followed by another and another. The bangs overlapped as they became rhythmic in nature. So the pattern went and from the vantage point of the cave mouth, there in the distance, a white light could be seen. Frowning, he looked around himself at his still-sleeping comrades and immediately knew something was amiss. He instinctively reached for Bonebreaker, which was never far from him, but his hand only found empty earth. Brows furrowing further, he arose and came to the cave mouth, noting Saboteur’s sleeping form, then took in the light in the distance and the rippling noise all around.

In an instant he was ripped off from the ground by invisible hands and with a whoosh of wind, came before the light before he could even blink. There he was suspended. The hammering, for it was a hammer that banged upon existence itself, rattled his bones and made his ears bleed. The light was too bright to penetrate but it was all too familiar. Especially so when the hammering stopped and the demon god’s voice burst forth as a harsh whisper, “Did I give you permission to speak, tongue or no?” The boy’s heterochromatic eyes were wide, his milky blue eye aglow. His hand felt far too heavy, he could not even mouth a response. Still, he struggled against the ethereal hold and strained against the terrible noise.

“I thought so.” The Goddess said, her light approaching. “Did you think I would not have eyes in this place? Did you think I would forget about you? Did you delude yourself into believing there could be no more punishment?” The light was above him now. Her voice was reprimanding, uncaring. “You, who have been touched by Time itself? You, who should have been but flesh for carrion birds? You, who pretends to be anything else than a mere child?” At that last word, the voice wavered and fell silent. A long moment passed before Longsight was lowered, the hold about him vanishing. The glow of the goddess dulled and he heard a snap.

“Speak, Timeblessed. I will have answers before judgement.” The boy was still for a few moments, moving his lips as though it was suddenly very full. “W-” he coughed, “woah,” he spat a great ball of bile. Glancing at it with disgust, he brought himself to his full - if modest - height. “I don’t understand..” he managed, his voice slow and tongue heavy, “are you angry because… I still live?”

“No.” She sighed, “I knew you would live. You have angered me so, for learning to speak around the confines of your tongue. I am angry because I expected you to have completed my assignment. Instead, I find you playing kingmaker with filth.” Longsight considered her words for a few moments, then slowly responded. “We… can’t venture out just like that. I certainly can’t just on my own. There are things out here to curdle rotten milk. Badboy and I have found a place of safety, secured staunch allies and faithful followers. When we have the strength to go and find whatever it is you wish us to on this gods-forsaken coast, we’ll do so. It’s not like we have much choice however you slice it. And if I spoke in some manner, it’s because you simply didn’t forbid that! I don’t know how I spoke and I don’t know how to do so again, it just happened.” He paused, mind racing. “Also, this whole not speaking thing is gratuitously cruel. You’ve cast us out here as punishment, surely you can permit us to speak! It would probably help us get to your assignment all the faster.”

The light reached the ground and winked out. Only the natural radiance of a god did give him light and the demon goddesses illumination was subtle silver. “You have done well, all things considered. You’ve even grown taller, if not mellowed out some as well. You are also correct, I made no mention of speaking without your tongue. A technicality to be corrected, even if you deem it cruel.” She mused. “You have been gifted with power from Galaxor, the god of heroism, and yet you can’t venture out? I’m sure he would listen well to your excuses. But the fault must be in me, your Warden. This is a prison and I have not taken especially good care of you, I suppose.” She moved to the side and revealed an anvil with a pale hammer on top of… Bonebreaker. The Goddess picked up the weapon and looked upon it. “It has been used as intended, for that I have imparted power. Now you have no excuses.” She leaned it back against the anvil. The boy looked from the war hammer to the goddess. “Uh… so, you’re not angry?” He asked carefully. The ghost of a smile seemed to suddenly dance about his lips. “Maybe you’re even… pleased?” It was bold of him, there was no doubt, and cheeky too.

“Do not flatter yourself, mortal.” She said, crossing her arms. “I can be many things whilst you cannot. You are still being judged, even if I offer gifts. Now, do you have anything else to say?” Wincing slightly, he looked at the goddess thoughtfully. “Is everyone alright? Reaper and Rockpetter and Galloper and everyone… will we see them again? What exactly is it that you want of us here? You reprimand me for being anything other than a child and you reprimand me for playing kingmaker as you say - and in the same breath you are pleased that I have used Bonebreaker as it was intended. What will earn us such pleasure from you that this punishment will be lifted and we can return to our loved ones?” Whatever cheekiness had been there before was gone, and whatever childishness might have been in him when she punished him so many months before was likewise a shadow. He had become a man before his time and stood before her as such.

She studied him and reached out with cold metal hands to touch his face. “Can a smith not be pleased with a tool when it performs adequately? If you must know,” she sighed, “The Renevits have been split. The one you call Reaper and a few cohorts are not far from Sylann, my city. Rockpetter and most of your band are not with him. I know not what became of them in the desert. But do not let this sadden your heart, you do have it within your power to see them again and if you survive this ordeal, I will help you to reunite with them. And now we come to the thick of it.” She withdrew her touch. “Your life was to be wasted in the desert. You were already upon the threshold of a time that strikes the child from the heart. You were never going to laugh like the children in Sylann’s streets. You would never know a full belly and not one of constant starvation. Your childhood was over before it ever really began. It was cruel and I saved you from a death of wasting away into nothingness. Forgotten by all time, like your ancestors before you. You may see this place as punishment,” She waved her hands all around the prison, “ but try to view it as a forge. You are my metal, hammered from the crucible of conflict into the shape you were always meant to be. A weapon. If not for me, then for some other and some conflict. If any tell you this place will be where the Invaders went to die, they would be lying. They will return and next time, we will be ready. What I have always wanted from you here, is for you to learn. Learn how to slay them. Learn how to use them. Learn how to destroy them. Anything that gives us an advantage in the wars to come. This has never been punishment,” She smiled, “But an act of service for the greater good.”

Longsight blinked, digesting the words. He looked away, eyes welling up. “I… I see.” He managed. He took a deep breath and blinked whatever treacherous tears away. A tool. Like Reaper’s scythe, maybe, or like Bonebreaker. Certainly not a thing that lay at night and yearned for the sounds of the Worldriver beneath the star-speckled sky, the sight of mud-brick houses and ploughed fields, the laughter of cousins, uncles. A rootless tool, of steel perhaps or bronze, heartless and unfeeling. A tear burst unbidden and he turned away swiftly, wiping it and clearing his throat as he breathed and calmed himself. “Y-yeah. Galaxor said something like that too- showed me, I should say, the myriad ways I was destined to perish without his help. I suppose it wasn’t so different out on the wastes.” He turned back to her, his face free of any great emotion. “I… suppose your way of seeing it might be helpful. A tool is made in such a manner, refined even, to serve a singular purpose. If my purpose is to serve the greater good like you say, to learn about these beasts and prepare, then it makes things clear.” He looked down, a momentary despondency to his eyes, but then he glanced back up at her. “If it will prevent such beasts from doing what was done to Renev,” he murmured, “then I guess it is good.”

A hand fell upon his shoulder. “In time, you will come to understand it in a clearer light. You won’t be in this place forever, in fact, I have come with a promise of an earlier release.” She let go of him. “You are the leader of your motley crew, no? Or shall I summon the other one to hear it?” He almost jumped at the mention of the others. The idea of Badboy being brought did not appeal to him at all, he could already hear the thousand profanities on the boy’s tongue. “Uh, early relea- yeah, yeah, sure I can tell Badboy. No need to get him! But- early release?!” His eyes were alight with hope. “How? When? Uh- why?” He blinked a few times, and then that subtlest smile from earlier returned, “oh! Oh you! You are pleased!”

She did not smile. “Hylsek Adech.” She said, “We can not suffer a lord of these creatures a continued existence. Slay it and you may regain the function of your tongues.” Whatever good humour froze on his face and he winced. “That… dragon? You want us to slay a dragon?!” He could not look any more incredulous. “That thing killed that wyrm- the wyrm that ate me whole and utterly destroyed the Headsplitter you gave Badboy! How are we to go up against something like that?”

“Ingenuity, I imagine. The loss of my wyrm is unfortunate. It just goes to show how much a threat even lesser beasts like the drakhorey are. Imagine if they were loose beyond the wall?” Sylia said calmly. Longsight pursed his lips in a mixture of fear and disbelief. “Those… are lesser beasts? You mean… there are beings more powerful than that? Hylsek Adech said he hurt a god! A god!” Longsight looked at her helplessly. “I mean, you think we can kill something that says it hurt a god?”

“I do.” Sylia said with authority. “For if you wish to gain freedom outright, you will have to slay one who has claimed worse. One who has devoured godflesh. Bael-Davaur, a true princeling of their wretched kind. Not even I know much else about its origins, only that it is here within.” Longsight stood silently for a few long moments, his face turned away and staring out into the darkness. The stars were bright against the skies and by their light something of the crimson sea beyond could be seen. “Well,” he breathed, turning back to the goddess, “if you have forged me into the type of tool that can do that, then I’ll not debate you on it.” He glanced at Bonebreaker. “I guess I’ll still have need for that though, right?”

“Yes. That and more. Now we come to the matter of your punishment. I have taken into account your action was beyond your control. You are becoming more than a simple man. Therefore, you shall find within that cave that you have been joined by another. One of two, a twin of frost- fire. Much like you, she has insulted a Goddess but unlike you, she has also taken from my kin something that was very dear to her. She and her twin will be hunted because of this. You are hereby tasked with her protection and she is to be your charge.” Longsight nodded slowly at this. “Taken something dear? Blimey… a thief then is she? Must be a bloody good one if she robbed a whole god!” He paused for a moment. “Uh, why not just give whatever she stole back? That’d sort things, no?”

Sylia looked at him with a grave expression. “You can not give back a life, Longsight. Perhaps in time she'll tell you her full tale. For now I shall permit you to speak with her to tell your own tale and circumstances here, then you shall take back your silence until the drakhorey is slain.” The boy sealed his lips in understanding as Sylia went on. “There is also something else you should be made aware of. The elfling and her twin have already encountered the outer princeling. He covets them with all his black heart. If he is not slain by your hand, he will take her for himself and only horror will be her fate. It is part of her own test to overcome the beast to better herself. To atone. But you may help her and she you. Though, I have seen how she swings her sword and she will need training. All of you will.”

Longsight opened his mouth to protest her last words, but Sylia extended her hand toward him and from it there came into being a small black stone. Perfectly round. “The Myrmidon Marble shall be your instructor.” Mouth still agape, Longsight stared at the stone for a few moments then promptly closed his mouth. “Uh. How’s a stone an instructor?” He asked bemusedly, studying the extended stone but making no attempt to claim it.

The great god placed her thumb upon the marble. It pulsed with a red light and coalesced into a form, taking the shape of a man but silhouetted. He held a sword and shield and went into a defensive stance. “The marble shall train you. It is capable of producing several lightforms, each being able to wield whatever assortment of weapon imaginable. You will be able to spar with it and unlike training you may receive by mortal hands, the marble will ingrain you with its knowledge. Various combat styles exist in this world. It knows many. You and that other cohort of yours would be foolish to pass up this opportunity. One can swing a hammer all he likes but until he knows how to carry himself into war, it is but a dull tool. Sharpen yourself, Longsight.”

The boy did not protest, but nodded in acquiescence. “A bow’s about all a peasant like me usually has need for, forgive me if my skill with hammer wasn’t quite up to par.” It was almost sarcastic, but his face and tone betrayed nothing but sincerity, and his eyes were awash with wonder at the form that had emerged from the stone. “I’m sure that both Badboy and me - and even Saboteur and Horntusk and many others too - will benefit from this stone- uh, Mermaidon? Marmaddon!” He glanced at Sylia for reassurance.

“Marmaddon, yes.” Sylia nodded. “Now this talk of ours is coming to an end. You know what must be done and I know you will find the resolve to do it. Train. Grow. Take care of one another. Do not give into reckless pursuits. Face thy enemy with stalwart courage. Take your gifts and go now.” On her word, Longsight picked up Bonebreaker and tucked the great war hammer into his belt from behind. Gently, he received the Marble from Sylia and held it close. The Goddess paused before saying, “Oh and take Badboy these.” From behind the anvil, she revealed two macuahuitls embedded with sharpened blades of black steel and, like Headsplitter, boasting a broad tip that was not too dissimilar to a small double-headed axe. Obediently, he took them from the goddess; Badboy was definitely going to be happy. He paused for a few seconds then looked at Sylia. “I didn’t imagine I’d say it but… in a weird sort of way, if we overlook the whole putting us here thing - because it’s for our own good and all, and maybe the good of the world too,” he smiled and raised his eyes at how crazy it sounded, “but, uh. Thank you, I guess. Or, rather, I’m pretty sure; thank you.”

Sylia nodded. “Run along now and go back to sleep.” He felt himself rising, Bonebreaker and the twin Headsplitters, even the Marmaddon marble about him. Then he was whisked away on a gentle breeze, back to the cave. Where, nestled in his makeshift bed, was a girl with flaming red hair.

• Summary [+]

  We see a bit of a timeskip for the prison boys and one night Longsight wakes and realises something isn’t quite right. There’s a banging out in the dark of the land and as he goes to look he is abducted by none other than Sylia, who demands answers as to how he spoke. Eventually after much discussion, Longsight seems to realise Sylia isn’t out to get him and instead she gifts him better weapons, a training stone, and gives him two new tasks. They will be able to talk once more if they slay the first drakhorey and they will hve freedom outright if they slay the outerdemon prince, Bael-Davaur. As punishment for speaking, Longsight is tasked with the protection of Ayre, the newest inmate at the prison.
• MP [+]

  Sylia
  6MP
  
  -2MP to Enhance the Warhammer of Longsight, Bonebreaker - While this weapon has already, by means of the evolution, power of habit, and heroification written into the Khodex, become quite an extraordinary bone-breaking implement of battle, Sylia’s enhancement allows the wielder to be a battering ram in battle. Very little can withstand a blow from this hammer, which weighs very heavily upon enemies and is impossible to lift for any other than Longsight. Despite this, he is able to fling it as though it were a boomerang; it always returns to him. Okay fine, it’s a glorified Mjolnir - but cooler and sharper and stuff.
  
  -2MP to reforge and enhance the Macuahuitl of badboy, Headsplitter, into the Twin Headsplitters - While this weapon had, like Bonebreaker, become quite a proficient head-splitter, its failure against the wyrm means much of the powers of habit it had garnered were lost. Regardless, by means of evolution and natural heroification, it was already a formidable mortal implement. Now made into twin club-swords for Badboy, these will allow their wielder to become a veritable twirling hurricane of devastation. The wielder of these blades moves with litheness and great speed, becomes extraordinarily agile, and is able to cut through near anything. Heads everywhere beware!
  
  -2MP to create an artifact, the Myrmidon (Marmaddon) Marble - Conjured by Sylia to teach various arts of war. This small black marble is capable of instructing those who train with it in a myriad of combat forms. Acting in hologram form, it can be interacted with and those in its presence are able to learn how to fight at a much faster rate.
  
  0MP remains (Please give me more Frettzo)

It was neither in her room, nor in his bedchambers, that the Lord Quickblade’s wife found him in the morn. He was similarly not to be found in the great hall breaking his fast, nor in the stables inspecting some fine new horses and other beasts that another lord had just sent after the two men had finally settled a dispute over the fate of some war-captives. He was not addressing his men in the courtyard, nor meeting the foremost steward by the well, nor taking any of the usual and expected places that the castle’s lord might occupy in the morning. Rather, Quickblade’s wife found him lurking in the shade of a parapet atop the mighty walls of his hill-fortress, those which split the wind and bestowed it the deserved name of Fort Skybreak.

The lord looked out vacantly into the distance, casting his eyes over the village that had cropped up around and beneath his walls, over his demesne. This shielding under his protection stretched as far as the eye could see and then further, to encompass the land tilled by the Renevits and many other hamlet-folk. He gazed into the wildness and infinitude of the beyond, to a place that the eyes could not see and the mind could not grasp.

The heat didn’t help; Itzala had scorched away the clouds, so even this morning was warm. Above the ground in places the air distorted slightly and seemed to simmer from heat alone, as if the dry grass was alchemically generating a sort of substantial fume out of nothingness.

This broiling air threatened an afternoon that would make the laborers lugubrious in their toils, the children restful when they should have been riotous and gleeful, and the warriors slothful and content when they should have been drilling. This was why Quickblade rested in the shade of the parapet–sweat already started to glisten upon his temples, and soon it ran through his long hair and make his beard stick to his lips.

“Hmph,” Quickblade grunted as his wife greeted him by way of wiping away the sweat on his head.

“O my good lord, why be thee now alone? For what grievance have I these past days been banished from my lord’s side, made as much a foreigner to thy mind as thou has been to thy sleep?”

His retort shocked her. “Men hath gone mad,” he stated with the sort of conviction and demeanor with which one might say, ‘that Quickblade doth keep a sharp sword,’ or ‘Fort Skybreak hath high walls,’ and went on, “...or perhaps the world meets its end! I took the word of strange and monstrous beasts for bruit at first, yet sith the fourth sighting, my gut has sat unwell.”

Beneath his golden beard, Quickblade’s jaw was clenched. His chiseled face was all hard stony features, like a terracotta effigy, and his brows were furrowed such that they might have resembled the deep rows that those pigmen tillers of distant lands gouge into the earth.

So Itzala climbed and morn erstwhile passed, with Quickblade staring into the horizon. Within his eyes dwelt an intensity that threatened to set those lands aflame just as surely as the sun’s own baleful glare. His wife rested there beside him, hoping to lend comfort through presence of body if not through word or mind. The reverie was broken only when a lone chariot–that of a courier–raced across the drylands, towards the fortress and its village. Quickblade’s visage did not move, but his eyes traced the cart and its dusty trail as it slowly approached. As it came up to the gate and was admitted after a short time, there were a few shouts and cries between charioteers and gatemen.

Quickblade waited in his place, as befitted a lord, until one of his retainers came to attend him. “What intelligence cometh alow?”

“Villains!” the soldier reported, “Knaves! Reavers! They come to raze your hinterlands, m’lord!”

There was a flash of distinctive golden steel and, like lightning, the lord’s sword was unsheathed and raised high. “Hark ye!” the shieldlord called out, his booming voice resounding through the courtyard to all his levies assembled around and about, “To arms! Courage! To the field! Battle hath come! Ready mine chariot!”

“Peace, my lord,” his wife suddenly implored, “we heard naught of their count, their bearing, their mien, yet ye would charge out with sore swiftness to meet your foes upon the field!”

And to that, Quickblade spat out, “Fie, woman!” He brusquely shoved her aside, nearly knocking his wife off her feet. “I quoth long agone that none may test the swiftness nor the surety of mine blade–that oath I keep smoothly. Reavers, ha! That be a foe mine blade knoweth well and hath tasted before. Brigands be a pestilence mine arm can solve; not pestilence, not bruity!”

“Ye alow,” the shieldlord boomed to the charioteer who’d come to bear this fortuitous news, “lie not, for your work be not done still. Ye must lead our host to these foes!”

The already wearied man nodded with bitter disappointment muddled with determination. He had hoped for a deserved rest, but the Quickblade was not one to brook argument, objection, or any other manner of dissent.

Especially not when it came from his wife! Still, she nagged at him and tried to caution him with that sagely sort of warning that an old crone might give! “Plain not over thy shieldlord,” he bade her, “for my victory shall be great, and mine return swift. Thou knowst well that there be no throne I favor before the seat of my war-chariot!”

“At least suffer the paint upon thy face and thy horses, that you may go with the gods’ favor,” she implored. And he answered back with a “Hmph!” and yet tolerated her to gather an orange pigment and quickly daub their peoples’ sacred signs: one upon his forehead, and then as the horses were being yoked to the chariots, more upon their sides and foreheads.

And he would hear no more, and soon he was gone, and that was the last that the Quickblade’s wife there ever saw of her shieldlord-husband.

Between four dozen chariots, each drawn by two horses apiece, nearly all of the shieldlord’s mighty horses had mustered for this counter-raid. Yet he brought just about six-score men-at-arms and levies. None went afoot, they all rode two or three to each chariot, even if some would dismount. When the time came, even those foot-spears would be rested and ready.

In this manner, they rapidly advanced across the shielding, a great cloud of dust kicked up by the hooves of their horses and the wheels of their carts rising to herald the host’s coming. But there was no escaping chariots on these dryland flats! The courier led them in the right direction, but soon his guidance became unnecessary, for the plumes of black smoke showed the way to these barbarians.

Quickblade’s gilded sword was still bared, the shieldlord waving it to and fro to direct not just his chariot driver, but the men all around. He left the sheathe back at Fort Skybreak–he had no intention of hiding away the blade until its thirst was whetted!

The marauders betrayed themselves for recreants when they beheld the great approaching dust cloud, witnessed the chariot-carts beyond counting, and promptly turned and fled from the village they’d been plundering. But if they were too cowardly to give battle willingly, at least they were too foolish to hide between the burning hovels and make a fight in the narrow dirt paths where chariots could not so easily maneuver. Flailing his sword about to raise attention over the sound of the thundering chariots, lord Quickblade bellowed out the command for twenty swordsmen to jump off the chariots and make their way to the ruined huts anyway, to relieve the survivors and extirpate any raiders that had stayed behind. Then the rest of them gave chase.

It was a blistering hot afternoon. The sun was watching their triumph with something that might have been cruel glee, so Quickblade tore off his tunic and cast it away. Sweat covered him, and he glistened, but soon enough the dust kicked up by horse-hooves and chariot wheels would coat him, just as it would eventually cover his long-forgotten shirt where it lay abandoned on the yellow grass.

It was not long before they overran the fleeing enemy! Foolishly, the rearmost stragglers of the retreating band turned about to face their foes rather than be cut down from behind, but their disorganized formation could not stand up to the charioteers. There were a few quick exchanges of fire, javelins and arrows shot both from and at the chariots; the shieldlord’s eponymous buckler caught one, but then before his driver could even bring him about to cut down the archer, a second arrow soared from behind Quickblade’s right shoulder to strike down the enemy. The irate lord might have cursed his own man and his well-marked arrow for having robbed him of that kill, but there were foes enough to go around.



One by one, the raiders were trampled, shot, skewered. The first two or three dozen of them were butchered before someone further ahead, presumably their warlord, managed to rally together a body and form some semblance of a battle-line. Quickblade and his charioteers wheeled about, circling around this line. None of these men were true warriors; the mere tone of their skin said as much. Their darker complexions betrayed their blood as that of swineherds and farmers, the sort of peoples in the outer villages that Quickblade’s own ancestors had conquered generations ago. That was why they were dying so poorly, he realized, that was why they were being trampled like mounds of dirt.

But when Quickblade squinted, he thought he saw one taller than the rest and not so swarthy, a commanding figure with a lordly countenance–there was a horrific scream as javelin pierced horseflesh, and then the sky was spinning and Quickblade was tumbling, the dirt and grass scraping at his exposed flesh. His sword slipped out of his sweat-filled grasp, but its golden metal scintillated in the Hate-God’s brilliance, so Quickblade found and raised it just in time to confront the charge of a bellowing warrior–the very one that had wrecked the chariot with a well-aimed javelin throw. Quickblade’s sword was swift, but his feet had more alacrity still; he danced just out of the way of a spear-thrust. Once, twice, he dodged the metal point to the sides or by leaping back, until the third time he twisted around the spear’s head to close in on his assailant. One brutal overhead slash from Quickblade’s sword met shoulder, tore through clavicle, and cleaved deeply, perhaps deep enough to rip apart the lung. But in any case, a gruesome spurt of blood erupted from the dying, thrashing warrior as Quickblade kicked him down and wrenched his sword free. Covered in dirt and dust and sweat and blood, Quickblade resembled something like a demon out of myth.

With his free sword, he slashed again at the spearman’s throat as a coup de grace, then swiveled his head about in search of his buckler–he’d lost his grip on it too when he fell out of the crashing chariot. As he looked around, he saw the driver of his chariot only just now crawling out from the wreckage in a daze. Before Quickblade could find his shield, or rally to the side of his man there, he was met with a sudden pounding of footsteps from behind.

He spun about, and beheld another reaver! He tried the same ploy again, to dance around the spear’s tip and then close in, but this was a more skilled warrior than the last. As Quickblade moved to close in, the man both backpedaled and slipped his hands further up the haft of the spear, keeping its point ever in front of the shieldlord. Quickblade hated spears almost as much as he detested those lowly peasants that were wont to wield them. He spat, “Ye favor that loathly husbandman’s tool? Fie!”

He made as though to step forward, and the spearman practically leapt back, but it was only a ploy to create space. Seizing the chance afforded to him by the gap, Quickblade stooped down to snatch up a rock with his left hand, and he hurled the stone straight for the spearman’s chin. The man leaned out of the way, but in so doing he let fall the point of his spear, and then Quickblade was already upon him, for he’d charged in the same motion as throwing the stone. A vicious slash of his blade was followed by a swift stab to the gut, and just like that the Quickblade had felled another man.

Where in the goblins’ hole was his shield?

Quickblade’s left eye was watering, his vision blurred by dust. He made to wipe it with the back of his left hand, but that just smeared fresh blood over his face and into his brow. One of his chariots wheeled past, the archer riding as passenger in it, firing to fend off any more foes from nearing the shieldlord. But it did not seem that many were even trying; this makeshift stand had already turned into a rout once more. He made his way to his own overturned chariot, seized the driver by the elbow, and roared in the man’s ear, “Up, ere the knaves yonder levant! The score needs be settled!”

It was already too late. One of his charioteers, recklessly heroic to the point of madness, had been glory-starved enough to drive right for the enemy’s warchief, that lordling that Quickblade had spotted just moments before his own cart had crashed. Yet it seemed that the lone chariot had been overwhelmed, the driver pierced through the chest by a javelin and the rider dragged out and impaled. Even now, the pale-skinned lordling was climbing into the commandeered chariot–for the horses yoked to it had somehow survived all of that unscathed–and making as if to drive away. Blinded as they were by the din and chaos of battle, the rest of Quickblade’s charioteers were circling around elsewhere, apparently not seeing this calumny as it unfolded.

Quickblade would not have it! “Egad!” he cried out, thrusting his reddened sword to point the way, but none of the charioteers heard or saw him.

A whinny from the side roused his attention. The second horse of his chariot was still alive! A streak of madness suddenly entered the shieldlord’s mind. He was about to do what no man had ever attempted before. There was no time to deal with the fastenings; with a quick slash of his sword, he sheared through the rope that yoked the horse’s harness to the chariot. The smell of wet blood upon the blade upset the animal, but not as much as what happened next. With a great leap, Quickblade threw one of his legs over the animal’s back as it was standing up from where it had been trapped on the ground beside the wreckage. The animal whinnied in outrage and surprise, for men did not sit upon these magnificent animals that pulled their chariots–it had simply never been done before! But this particular horse was of magnificent breeding, a large and mighty creature, that was why the shieldlord had chosen it to pull his favorite chariot. And now that size did more than just win him prestige and awe from onlookers, it enabled the beast to bear his weight, even if it was bucking wildly and trying to throw him from its back.

With his left hand tangled into and gripping the poor creature’s mane and his right hand grasping his sword with a deathly tightness, Quickblade let out a mighty warcry, and the panicked horse did what panicked horses do–it ran. It raced forward with the swiftness of the wind. There was a great and heavy load upon its unsaddled back, but there was no heavy chariot weighing it down, and so its charge was swift. It was as if the fighting froze there, in the heart of the field! Around the periphery men still ran and died and fired bows and threw spears, but there in the center, within sight of this mad and terrible shieldlord, ally and enemy alike stared with jaws agape at the sight.

And as the horse thundered forward, it made for the fleeing chariot that bore the enemy’s lord–perhaps it could sense the Quickblade’s indomitable force of will urging it that way, or perhaps the path cleared by that chariot was the only one clear enough for a terrified animal to flee through, or perhaps it saw the two horses yoked to that chariot and wanted to follow the herd. Maybe it was just destiny or the silent working of benign or mischievous beings hidden and working beyond the realm of sight. But either way, Quickblade thundered toward the chariot, quickly overtaking it. None dared impede his charge. And in the last minute, just as they came within a spear’s thrust of the chariot cart and as the horse beneath him reared up one final time, bucking with a strength that would have surely thrown Quickblade from its back, the shieldlord twisted off to jump-fall-crash into the back of the chariot cart. The maddened, blood-covered Quickblade hacked and chopped and cleaved at this lordling that had thought to lead a band of brigands into his shielding, smiting him with a fury that conjured the image of butchery.

With his victory complete, Quickblade surveyed the routing enemies before him, allowing the horses to pull the reclaimed chariot gently along. The form of his slain adversary was draped over the side, blood dripping from him still and wetting the earth below. The broad-shouldered Quickblade twisted his mouth in distaste at those who fled and harrumphed into his moustaches. What wretched recreants they be, the lot of them. Was it for this that he drove the chariots forth? Was it for this that his birdbrained wife wetted his form and horses with her weird symbols and paints? She had always been an odd one–blessed by the gods, his mother had convinced him, a good luck charm and promise of fair victory. What empty prattle - what charm had he need for against such weak foes? What he needed, in fact - and he felt his pulse quicken with sudden anger - was a strong, healthy heir! The wench had given him nothing but daughters! Daughters!

He spat to the side, inadvertently getting it all over his felled foe. He kicked the corpse from the chariot in annoyance and finally reined the horses to a halt. He descended and got to cleaning his golden blade with some dirt. Before he was finished, hurried footsteps reached him and a loud voice. “M’lord! M’lord!” Quickblade stood and spotted the running servant emerge from the dust that had been kicked up everywhere and was now like a great blanket billowing over everything. Quickblade frowned suspiciously at the man, who was dressed in his wife’s colours and wore the distinctive braids of the shieldlady’s courier corps. The very idea of a ‘courier corps’ had always struck Quickblade as utter foolishness and a waste of resources, but the woman had insisted on it. They were always to be found in the oddest places, those couriers of hers, and seemed very adept at finding whoever they sought. It had always irked and disturbed him.

And then Quickblade was suddenly awash in a wave of exhaustion, the tribulations of the ride and the chase and the battle having at last caught up to him. Here he was, filthy and wounded and painted red, surrounded by equally ragged men who were trying to take account of their casualties. His ears still rang as though hearing the echoes of the hooves and wheels and clashes of steel, the whistling of arrows–it would not be until night’s cool that his mind could calm and his ears find peace anew. Yet right then and there, this bootless fool dared approach and shout at him!

“Thou dost remit my rest,” he acknowledged the mummer without bothering to mask the disgust and ire in his tone, to hide that he was dried with rage and toil.

“Forgive me m’lord!” The courier shouted, coming to a halt before the shieldlord. “But I come bearing a most urgent word from her esteemed ladyness, your most ennobled and glorified self’s immaculate spouse; whose immaculateness is but the impoverished reflection of your fuller, greater, truer immaculance, m’lord!” There was no such word as ‘immaculance’ of course, but the dithering fool thought to make up words willy-nilly even as he shouted on. On further observation, there seemed to be something quite odd about the courier - but whatever it was seemed to flit out of sight just as it seemed to become apparent. Quickblade was too tired for such things. “Her supreme ladyness says this m’lord,” and the courier stood up straighter and cleared his throat, “my lord! Oh my lord! Prithee send word of thine good health and sure victory- the gods know well mine heart and know well that it is with great pains I had thee go from my most loving and adoring breast- oh my lord! E’en now I know the tiredness that surely is upon thee when these mine words fall unto thine ears! So forgive my callousness and urgency: as you most bravely fought and grasped victory from the jaws of thine foes, as the recreants they most certainly are did they strike your subjects and plunder their harvests! Oh my lord, ‘tis not for such as I to give thee commands, but I can only beseech thee rush to the aid of your most adoring servants at the ploughlands of Renev!” And so speaking, the courier took a deep breath and stood to attention.

The mazed shieldlord caught perhaps half of that. He’d thrust his sword into the ground and was now leaning upon it, breathing raggedly. Before them, four of his men bore off the lifeless form of one of their own, that man who’d been pulled from his chariot and slain. Elsewhere there were others ransacking and looting the corpses of the enemy, or slaughtering those that yet lived–no prisoners were being taken–and then dragging them about that they could eventually be piled and burned. The killing was done, yet there was yet much to do before it would be time to abandon the field.

Several chariots had also been wrecked or otherwise put in need of repair; one soldier, who bore a lost wheel back to its broken cart, brushed up against the pomp messenger, whether deliberate or by mistake, and caused him to leap away with face twisted in disgust. “Oh fie, fie, fie on you!” The courier declared, reaching into the pockets of his obnoxiously large trousers and emerging with a small pouncet box that he proceeded to raise to his nose. “Have you no mind for the noses of the living, sirrah?” He asked another soldier who was busy dragging a bloodied corpse by. “Oh ‘tis most unseemly to drag such broken bodies, their bladders all emptied and their tongues hanging out, by one of her most illustrious ladyship’s couriers!” He raised the pouncet box to his nose again, waving his other hand before him as if to blow whatever stench he had imagined away. “Fie I say, a thousand times fie on such unmannerly ways! Verily ‘tis an age where good character is slain and at our door are the end of days!”

It was enough to madden a man! Quickblade spat on the insufferable knave. “I contemn thee and thy womanly mannerisms, thy loathsome bemoaning the reaping of a tilt thee didst not see! Thou art a poxy blight upon these eyne! Avaunt!” With a grunt, the shieldlord tore his blade up, freeing it from the earth that it’d pierced. The courier took bounding leaps back at the sight, wiping the spit from his clothes.

“Oh m’lord, m’lord, m’lord! I’ve spa’en aught but truth! Am I a gloried reaver as you to love the stench of bladders and defecation? I have no heart or nose for such things! Only the mighty and great are like to keep such a fellowship- and I’ve made no claim to mightiness or greatness, no I ha’en’t! Oh m’lord castigate me not my love of rosewater and musk, had I the incenses of all eastriverne lands I would have burned them here to spare you this stench! But I had forgotten that the glorious and great very much love such odors - though by what addlement of mind or sinus that is so I cannot say! Oh m’lord, placate thine blade and forgive your most blathering slave - not for mine own sake, no! But let the memory of your most beloved ladyship intercede for me!”

What little patience Quickblade possessed was long since expired; it was only his fatigue that had stayed him from living up to his name then. Grasping his sword by the dirty and blood-caked blade, the shieldlord at last struck the courtier across the jaw with its pommel. “Avaunt, I say! Methinks little of thy trite words. Avaunt with thee, mine lady-wife, and the blighted husbandmen of Renev!” Quite displeased at being struck, the courier snapped to attention and drew a twig from his idiotic trousers.

“Well now!” He said, his voice quite unlike before, “aren’t you just the most spoilt, ungenerous, profanatious, unstandable human I’ve ever known! And to cast the barb of your tongue on your own wife too!- who, might I add, is nothing less than a saint!” The man waved his twig about like a lunatic, having become quite unreachable despite Quickblade rushing on and on towards him. “Ickity pickity packity pock! Tickity tockity goes the clock!
Off you’re going for a trot! Run-run-run or you will rot!” And waving his twig with finality, he leapt into the air and was gone with a poof of light that sprinkled everywhere.

With a roar of outrage, Quickblade hurled his infamous golden blade up into the air, towards the retreating and flying courier. But as he looked up, Itzala’s brilliance scorched his eyes. He blinked, squinted, and then was met with the sight and thud of his sword reuniting with Galbar, its tip sinking into the soil. And worse–the scoundrel was nowhere to be seen!

“Meseems that picaroon was some manner of familiar,” Quickblade finally realized aloud, stating the obvious. It was quickly dawning upon the shieldlord that he may have just committed a grave error. “If it should show that meek visage once more, seize its pate! Part head from shoulder! Sith that be what I wast to do next!”

The warriors around him nodded or spoke their words of affirmation, and with that done, a grumbling Quickblade moved to help them with the work that remained. It was exhausting, but as dusk approached, the sickly smell of burnt flesh filled the air as they set fire to the pyre mounds. Their own honored dead were wrapped in what cloth was on hand–mostly the sweat-stained tunics of the survivors and whatever ragged clothes of the enemy hadn’t been covered in filth–and then loaded into the back of the chariots, and then they made to set off for home once more.

Quickblade was terribly thirsty, his waterskin having long since run dry. They’d left hastily and light, having expected to be returned to the fortress in very short order. Fortunately, there was a well in the village that they’d just delivered from the marauders’ wrath. Yet as they urged the horses onward–Quickblade sitting again on his throne of a chariot seat again, for the moment of battle-madness was past him now and he was not so eager to risk his neck mounting a horse again–they did come upon the village where it should have been. Instead, the dryland went on and on, ever onward. They advanced for two hours when the journey should have taken a quarter that time, and still there were no signs of the village, or of civilization at all for that matter!

In the distance was an unfamiliar copse of trees. The shieldlord wondered if it was a thirst-induced hallucination, but he forged a path to it regardless, hoping to find some landmark to regain his bearings. Had he lost his mind in the battle? It was a fool of a lord who became lost within his own shielding, and yet his men were just as befuddled as he!

It was as they’d hoped: in the shade of these trees, which upon closer inspection looked to be of a strange and exotic type, there murmured a small stream. Parched and bloodied still, the shieldlord and his retinue climbed down to rush for the waters that they could bathe and drink; the more merciful and thoughtful of the men unyoked the horses from their chariots that the animals might drink too.

Yet in their stupor of thirst and exhaustion, none in the party had noticed the sigils, the figures, the altars and the talismans situated in the river’s vicinity. Yet again, how could they have? They resembled nothing any of them prayed with, ranging from stacks of river shale to shells of river oysters. Feathers in the trees could have been mistaken for the birds that once wore them. The camouflage was weak, but their senses were weaker. The tranquil sound of the stream, deafened by the slurping of men and animals parched in the sun, coated their ears with cotton. They did not hear the branches break, the leaves rustle, and before that final sip that quenched their thirst for now, more assailants skipped out of the bushes. They ignored the horses’ nervous whinnying, thinking the animals merely impatient for their turn to enter the water’s respite. Hardly a minute passed before they were all surrounded by tall, bipedal frogs armed with spears, staves, and maces of wood and river coral. Their bodies were dressed in jewelry, feathers, scented spices and aromatics on string. Their numbers were many, and their leader stepped forward, a frog whose crown of feathers and gold was nearly as large as his torso. “Who dares?!” he demanded and gestured widely, “I say again, who is it that dares drink from All-Mother’s Duct?!”

The shieldlord had just about finished washing off the spatterings of dried blood that caked his bare torso (at least the front of it!) before the booming voice made him spin about, whipping up his sword from where he’d left it to rest by water’s edge. “Mine own name? Ha! Quickblade!” Usually the shieldlord’s reputation preceded him.

But then he beheld the speaker, and his eyes widened at the sight of these monstrous beings–were these the horrors that the rumors had spoken of? They narrowed into a squint as his jaw clenched and his grip on the sword tightened. “I rule Skybreak, and all these lands lay within mine shielding, ‘r close enow to make no matter! I come fresh from the field and mine temper still runneth hot–test me at thy own peril!”

“Insolence, the heretic dog yaps back!” chastised the leader and pointed his shell-tipped spear in Quickblade's direction. “Whoever you are or consider yourself to be, dryskin of Skybreak, your lips have so voraciously molested the Tears of Creation; a thousand egg-spawn to come will be sullied by your salty sweat and filthy beard. As tradition dictates, I will offer you a chance to split your throat yourself and give back the water you stole. Your blood will surely quench the wrath of the All-Source that is certain to come should you leave this place alive.” The croaker's flanking companions drew shell-tipped arrows by the score.

“Yond riv’r be thirsty, say? Then let us slake it!” He backed from the riverside into ankle-deep waters. Quickblade’s own men were confused, eyes darting between their shieldlord and the enemies, but by now they had at least formed rank and made some semblance of a shieldwall.

Quickblade stopped beside a few of the horses that had been brought to drink from the stream. Now even those beasts had their backs to the water, nervously whinnying as they looked at the oncomers. He raised his blade up almost perpendicular to his neck, but when the knaves may have thought he meant to cut his own throat, he instead slapped the nearest horse upon the rear with the flat of his blade. Then he poked the other one with its tip! The panicked animals cried out loudly and thundered away from him, barreling right toward the biggest, loudest, most pomp of all these frog-men. And right in their wake followed a frenzied Quickblade, bellowing like a demon, driving forward his shieldwall of men through the sheer wildness of his charge.

The frog in charge seemed momentarily stunned by the incoming charge, but then skipped high into the air, landing safely in a tree. The warriors closest to him rolled out of the way, and the riff of loosening bowstrings played like an orchestra of murderous harps. From the canopy above, the leader’s voice bellowed, “Spill their blood, honour-guard! Quench the thirst of the All-Source!” The archers were quickly backed up by soaring javelins coming from the woods and the war-croaks of scores of frogmen charging out in zealous frenzy, armed with shell spears and coral dagger-axes and armoured with bark and kelp cloth.

A flying javelin narrowly missed Quickblade, burying its head into the muddy ground as he twisted out of its way. With his left hand he snatched it back up; with his right, he flagged his sword forward, urging his men to advance and fight their way out of this ambush. The steady clattering of arrows striking the wooden shieldwall sounded almost like a sort of rain. But it was punctuated by the thunder-claps of war: there came the screaming of one of the exposed horses as it was struck by an arrow, and the shieldlord’s back was then painted by yet another spray of blood from somewhere behind him, one of his warriors struck in the throat by an arrow that skirted his shield from the side.

Through the chaos and the din, Quickblade spotted the great frog up in the trees, and with a grunt, he hurled the stolen javelin right for the croaker’s belly. The croaker chieftain had caught the sight of him at the last minute and managed to dodge to the side so that he wasn’t speared, but the javelin nonetheless sliced along his right lumbar region, leaving a strip that quickly began to ooze white croaker blood. He growled fiercely and swung around underneath the branch before kicking off, becoming a spear-headed rocket diving for Quickblade’s person. A corner of the shieldwall began to cave as croakers utilised all three dimensions to fight, jumping at their adversaries from the front, the side and above. Spears elevated to the skies were lucky to catch maybe one or two overzealous frogs coming down, but those armed with swords and axes found that their strikes would connect only in time for a croaker body to crash into them first. Religious fervour incited the locals to throw all sensibility out of the proverbial window.

Quickblade danced just out the path of the chieftain’s spearpoint, having had time enough to see it coming and knowing that the brute would not be able to change his path in mid-flight. From the very instant that the chieftain handed, Quickblade was all but on top of his slimy skin, grabbing at the spear’s shaft with one hand using the other to hack wildly at the croaker with his sword, bellowing some frenzied cry all the while. Screams and croaks filled the air already; death was all around as both sides took heavy losses in this chaotic melee brawl, the shieldwall all but shattering as the fight devolved into two dozen individual duels between man and croaker. Yet before long, Quickblade was looking down on little more than a pile of green flesh and white goo bespeckled with gold jewels and rainbow feathers. An instant later, the mess was spotted by one of the duelling croakers, who kicked his adversary back and disengaged to a safe distance.

“Misfortune to no end! Dead! Pond-Guru Balhamrajah is dead! Gods’ mercy be with us, for he is no longer! Retreat! Retreat!” As though programmed, the lot of the croakers fell back as quickly as they could, disappearing into the woods around the river stream as quickly as they had arrived. They did not collect their fallen comrades nor their equipment – like leaves taken by the wind, they were gone in a breath. Yet the area still did not feel safe. The fighting may have stopped, but red eyes like orbs of human flesh could still be spotted in between the bushes and trees. Quickblade’s men quickly looted the fallen, friend and enemy alike, divvying up what armor, weapons, and other spoils were to be had. In the chaos a few horses had bolted off, but with their numbers diminished, enough remained yet to pull their chariots.

For his part, Quickblade cut out the grotesquely long tongues of a few choice specimens to keep as trophies. He reckoned his wife and daughters might squirm at the sight of such things, but he never did make it back to Fort Skybreak, for there he stood in the Indias.

They retreated from that accursed river and the wood around it, fearful of another attack from the leaping monsters, and wandered a long time before they encountered any signs of other men.

Turn 8 has started, please check the MP Spreadsheet for your updated MP counts. Please let me know if any number is off and I'll fix it when I can.

Now for an announcement…

TODAY MARKS THE START OF OUR FIRST X-TURN!

The Hands of Time move ever forward, as do its subjects. For the duration of this turn, you’re heavily encouraged to make at least one post (no matter how short) exploring any of Galaxor’s creations.

The way you interact with your chosen creation is up to you. You could write about adopting tech from the Dominion, you could write a simple short exchange between an adventurer from Sylann and one from the Dominion, you could even write and complete your own quest within the Dominion, free of all oversight and with full creative licensing (yes, up to and including which reward you get from its completion.)

---

“We mustn't forget our neighbors to the north! We've all heard the stories! Should we allow such a place to build its strength enough to challenge us?” The goblin spoke with an eloquent tongue, wearing his fine robe of red. Jewels glittered on his fingers and about his bald head there was a floral signet in the shape of a rose.

To his decree many in that place stood, mostly other goblinfolk, and cheered but were steadily drowned out by the boos. A vast majority of those boos were of beastfolk in a multitude of assortments. Mammalian, reptilian, avian… Full, half and marked. The few Syllianth in the Forum remained ever still, giving little opinion of their own.

Another goblin, across from him, stood. His own robe white, while he sported a trimmed beard and tied black hair in a bun. Rings lined his fingers and a ring of gold pierced his nose. He spoke with the same eloquence, if not in a deeper pitch. “Stories! Tales! Gossip! These are what assemblyman Rosefield would have you believe in with absolute truth! As it remains, they are just that- rumors.” A few ayes could be heard at that. “Trade has always been steady with Thysia! The Suneater, as you all know, has shown hospitality to our people and we have to his! Such baseless claims to even suggest he could ever sack this great city, are preposterous!”

The roar of the room answered this decree. When it quieted down, Rosefield spread wide his arms and said, “Let it be known I have no doubt our city, with shining walls, could best even the ocean down south if it were to assail us in one mighty wave! We survived the hordes of demons! We have brought peace to our side of the river and so has the Noble Suneater, with his now vast holdings. We should not dismiss the rumors, even if they are just that! If Thysia is building its strength for a great campaign, why would we not be interested in this! And need I remind anyone that the Fairwater’s have always benefited from such trade between our two states?” The strike was a cunning one but to his words there came much applause and many more whispers.

Assemblyman Fairwater’s stalwart demeanor was of supreme confidence. “My good assemblyman!” he began, shushing the forum. “You all know me. You knew my father, you knew my eldest sister. Gods rest their souls! Heroes of the invasion! You know my character.” he thumped his chest. “My word has always carried weight amongst ye! I would cut off my own arm in defense of this city, there is no doubt! And I say now, we have nothing to fear from those in that country but if it will alleviate your hearts, let us put a vote to it. As we have always done and will continue to do!” Many shouted in approval, the air thick with a sense of pride.

“I am in favor of continued peace between our states, who is with me!” A chorus of aye’s flooded the room, from top to bottom. “And all those in favor of strengthening our borders?” he asked next and many gave their own aye’s but it was clear the victor.

“And peace we shall have, let it be blessed!”

Rosefield glowered and sat back in his seat. Fairwater smiled in that cocky way of his. Truly a voice of reason when you helped line the pockets of those aye’s. The goblinman tightened his fist. They would see. He and his cohorts would make them see.

Another voice broke into the fray of voices, “Now have any here remarks for Human and Feighdfulc citizenship?”

---

Long did they labor in the dark of the world with only starlight to abide them. Such was the ineptitude of herself and her kin. They, who held creation in the palm of their hands. Who had fought and bled during the invasion. Who now murdered each other over little gains. She was tired of it, of them. Her peers.

This world was but darkness and even that was only to be banished by a cursed sun. For such a short time, mortalkind knew nothing but cruelty and the dark. It was not enough. Long had she waited for any one God to ascertain what she had but none had ever stepped up to the challenge. Now, many had faded into the requiem of silence. Forlorn and soon to be forgotten, if not already bent by toil.

Sylia would show those who remained what it truly meant to be divine.

With the vastness of space behind her, Sylia turned to look upon the jewel of their universe. Galbar. Oh, Galbar. The deep blue sea of the Land of Origins, with its twin trees, gazed up like a vast eye. Brilliant was the World Tree. Brighter was the Tree of Firmaments. She would show Allianthe the truest reach of the celestial heavens. Even if Life could never again be reasoned with. Even when it came to blows, which it would, sooner or later. She would show that grounded Goddess. Yet, despite it all. She wished her sister well. Did she not know that pain? As fickle as it was? She, whose heart did not know love?

“You think so little of me…” She whispered in the dark, her slender hand over where a heart would be. She pulled it away and looked at her fingers. What was love but a chemical reaction, induced in two mature beings to create healthy offspring? Not every animal felt such an allure but the mark of greater intelligence pulled so often in such a direction, that chance fell away. She shook her head, such questions had been eating at her since that fateful confrontation. Where she had not acted… Well. She shoved it away, a project for another time.

Try as she might, however, Sylia could not shake the burden of her ever growing tasks. Even weightlessness as she was in that place between places. It had seemed that Civilization had fallen before her solely. El’zadir was not fit for the task, nor could she truly count on any other. She knew not why but it was evident that something had befallen El for the very sword she had created for the reticent goddess, had vanished. Gift, she had called it. Sylia’s mercurial blade.

She would find and retrieve it in time.

Still, Sylia sighed. Perhaps she’d go and look for El too. Perhaps not. For now, it was time. She had not been to the inky black between worlds since the dawn of creation. Now she spun and gazed out at the majesty of it. One day she would travel to another world and see what creation had to offer. For now, she focused on the task at hand. The creation of a celestial body was no easy matter to undergo. She had her plan, sketched with the holiest place of her mind. None had seen it but they would.

She raised her hand and the cosmos was changed forevermore.

---

Althea sat on the roof of Ophelia’s house, knees at her chest. The air held a gentle cool breeze upon its winds. It was a reprieve from the stifling day. It was the only pleasant thing when the dark took dominion. So there she sat, having forgotten how many times she had watched the stars up above, in their myriad beauty. She knew in her heart she could watch them forever and never cease finding something new in the heavens. It calmed her mind and she even had begun to deign that it was mending what had broken inside of herself. But that was a fledgling hope she had no inkling of stoking. The stars were hers for a time and they would remain so.

The distant sounds of Sylann nightlife were her only company. That and the occasional buzz of an insect or other night denizen. From the vantage of Ophelia’s estate, for it sat upon a hill on the outskirts of the city’s center, Althea could see soft lanterns dotting every street. A new technology, one where extracted oils from animals were burned for a light source. As genius as it was, the lanterns did not stop the occasional bonfire. She had kept away from the hustle and bustle of the city for a long time, having found that a peaceful life was her calling. She told herself that it was better that way. Of course she helped around the estate and kept Ophelia and the baby company. Yet she could never shake that unwanted feeling of idleness. The pull to do anything but mope around, it was returning. A small comfort, she supposed.

“There you are.” Ophelia said. Althea turned her head to see her friend, wrapped in a blue blanket, walking towards her. She sat down beside Althea and the lilac smell of her was not unwelcome. So too was the bit of body warmth they shared. “Couldn’t sleep?” Ophelia eventually asked.

Althea looked upon a face that only had the gaze of stars. “I could sleep for days.” She confided, turning her head back up to the stars. “But if I did I would miss this.”

“True. They are lovely tonight. No clouds at all.”

“Mhmm.” Althea mumbled.

Silence fell between the two. Content as they were in each other’s presence. One did not always need to talk to pass the time.

“Oh!” Ophelia gasped as a star blinked past in a torrent of distant light. “A shooting star!”

“Make a wish.” Althea said, turning to see Ophelia’s beaming grin. She could not help but yield just a little to it, producing one of her own.

“A wish?” her friend asked.

“Well,” Althea blinked, suddenly feeling foolish. “I once overheard some kittens saying that if you saw a shooting star, you got to make a wish. It’s probably just… Children being children.”

She looked back up at the stars but felt Ophelia’s hand upon her own. She looked back at Ophelia, her fellow Syllianth now smiling softly.

“Done.” She said after a moment.

“Done?” Althea asked.

“I made my wish.” Ophelia's chin rose as a playful smugness overtook her features.

“Oh,” Althea let out a small chuckle, her own smile returning. “Well, what did you wish for?”

Ophelia opened her mouth to speak but another star streaked past and both of their heads snapped to it. Then another streaked past, and another. A meteor shower? Althea got to her feet, helping Ophelia up as more stars streaked past. They began to shoot by so quickly that it began to blur into a vast ocean of how white. Ophelia gasped at least a dozen times.

Althea could hardly believe what she was seeing. There had never been anything like this before. No one had ever mentioned it, at least. Ophelia gripped her hand tighter and she returned it with a squeeze of her own. When the streaking stars became one in all motion did the heavens at last reveal what lay beyond the curtain- An explosion of light that brightened the very skies into day.

Next followed the tremendous sound of a hammer clanging metal. It rippled across the earth and down into her very bones. Harmony came in the form of invigoration, as the sky settled back into night, not so dark as before. Althea scanned the heavens, to the very epicenter of the light and she saw now a thing that took her very breath away.

There was the goddesses’ symbol. A gigantic silvered hand. Each finger, ringed with golden circles and crowned with starlight. All coveting the great golden ball in its palm. Althea felt her knees begin to wobble and it was only Ophelia helping her down that she didn’t collapse so completely. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. She coursed with every sort of emotion, from pure elation to the smallest of inferiorities. She had bore witness to an event that would be remembered forever.

It was then that it began to rain. Not of water, she realized. It was…

“Silver?” Ophelia asked, picking up a small silver shard.

“Silver…” Althea repeated, feeling the smile tug across her lips on its own accord.

“It seems my wish came true.” Ophelia said as she scooted in close, resting her head upon Althea’s shoulder as they watched the Hand rain silver.

---

Sylia sat upon a dias of chiseled marble at the apex of the middle finger. From her viewpoint, Sylia saw everything. A bespeckled Galbar in all its glory. She had dictated that place as her most holiest of sanctums, far beyond the scope of the Atelier. Her Observatory would never be unmatched.

She could only beam with triumph. Her great work was accomplished and now mortalkind did not have to be so afraid of the dark. With the Hand now in orbit and acting as an artificial moon, Sylia could further advance all life upon the planet. It would be in the hopes that one day, perhaps generations in the future, the scope of civilization can be turned upon the distant stars.

Mortals would one day be able to live here, free from the duress of grounded life. Here they could achieve the progression of all-kind. The refinery at the center of the palm would furnish wonders. And most importantly, Sylia would not have to worry about further invasions upon Galbar’s surface and skies. She had surprises for any would be invaders but that would have to wait. She couldn’t show her hand, well, with a bemused smile, she could and she already had.

But such a place would need to be protected and mended from the inside. Toil… She would have to fix that error one day but it ever remained one of her chiefest concerns. Thus Sylia fashioned with her hammer a being much like the Formed but lesser in scope and size. More humanoid in shape and made entirely of metal. Steel. For the realities of their duties would be ceaseless. She needed something that could last and be produced somewhat easily if needed. They would have no faces, just like her Watcher of old. Then she replicated the process a hundredfold until a mass of lithe, hardy automatons stood before her.

“You are the Sylicants.” Sylia proclaimed. “Caretakers of this installation. Stalwart defenders of the Hand. This I declare, your Goddess. Now go.”

So they did and Sylia went back to her observations. There was still much to do but for once, she had earned the right to simply watch.

Time passed as Jaxx left the company of Seam and Lily, his only friends in this world. Well, almost his only friends. Lady N, his herosense, turned mortal proved to be a better companion than he had in the past. His whole demeanour changed as he spent almost every waking moment talking with her.

Arbor proved to be too quiet for the duo. Criminals existed there but they were quickly caught by the guards and even when not, they were merely thieves and burglars. Nothing heroic. No innocents in true danger. So they moved on. Where? They didn’t know. For the first time in Jaxx’s life, he didn’t have a direction. No ringing in his mind to drive him crazy if he took a break.

Lady N only came with suggestions, ideas of where to go and occasionally, scream in his ears when innocents were in real danger and that’s how his current quest began…with a scream, a direction and a strong sense of danger.

The duo walked for what seemed like months but couldn’t have been more than a few days until they reached the swamp. Jaxx trudged through the dense, murky swamp, his double-handed sword, Heropentia, strapped to his back. The air was heavy with the scent of decay, and the sounds of the swamp creatures filled the eerie silence. With each step, the muck threatened to pull him down, but his determination drove him forward.

As Jaxx moved through the swamp, he couldn't shake the feeling of movement at the edge of his vision. Each time he turned to look, however, there was nothing there but the shifting shadows of the murky landscape. He was being watched, that much he knew but by what? Besides the usual alligator and insects, nothing seemed to live here…yet, Lady N drove him further. Someone was in danger.
Eventually, he emerged from the dense foliage and saw a town. Buildings stood in disrepair, their walls crumbling, and the streets were deserted, save for a few brave or crazy souls that tried to stand guard. A pointless task when you can’t see 20 metres in front of you from the fog and darkness.

Jaxx shealted Heropentia and walked forward, confidently. Whatever troubled these people would be a thing of the past now that he was there, that much was certain. A startled human guard let out a shout and charged towards Jaxx which side stepped him, easily.

“Calm down, men. Calm down. Not here to hurt you. ” said Jaxx, as he let himself get surrounded by the other guards. Most seemed to be children, by any species’s standards. No more than 16 summers old.

“Wh–who? Ha-haalt! ” shouted one of the guards, stumbling over his own words, spear shaking in his arms.
These “men” were clearly no warriors, not even trainees. A rag-tag militia at best.

Before Jaxx could say anything, a strong, loud roar could be heard, coming from all over. Immediately, the guards started shaking even more in fear before one of them shouted “INCOMI–!”

Only to be drowned out by a large Outer Beast with a head of beetle and the body of a lion as it launched itself from somewhere high up and landed on the ground with a loud thud.

As soon as it touched the ground, it went towards the closest guard only to be met by Heropentia. In a flash, Jaxx was behind the Outer Beast cutting through it. Before the beast could turn towards him, he was already plunging the sword deep into its head…killing it on the spot.

The dust soon settled and out of the homes, ragged townsfolk came out. Hope gone from their eyes. The look of dead-men walking. After a few brief discussions with a woman who self-identified as “the leader of this rabble”, Jaxx was told the story of this town.
A large metal Outer Beast appeared one day, surrounded by others. Many others. They soon created a nest and from inside it, a dark fog that seemed to sap the strength of humans emerged. A fog which soon enveloped the whole area, blocking the sun and any path out of town.

Shaking his head at the clear lack of strength and hope these people exibited, Jaxx shouted out loud for all in the town to hear him.

“What a sad, sorry excuse for a town! Lettin' all these Outer Beasts push you around. When I walked into the town, I barely passed a healthy crop. You're all actin' like the town that the gods forgot. Supply me with a torch and some rope…and I’ll give you hope! Supply me with a group of men and I'll put this to an end. ” he shouted, almost rhyming as he said it. A clear determination on his face.

After all was said and done, the town was silent as Jaxx and three militia-men went deep into the swap, ready to kill whatever dark monster spawned this fog and brought pain and suffering to the town.

“Representatives, please! There’s no need for all this alarm!” Lilly, secret daughter of Asheel and member of Tricity’s council, called out, attempting to defuse the uproar her clarifications about the nature of the Dominion had caused among her fellow council members.

“Beneath our very feet exists a god chosen civilization ruled by a mind controlling despot, that is most certainly reason for alarm!” retorted a snouter giant in both height and girth as he slammed a fist down onto his sturdily built chair, before pointing a fat finger at Lilly “How do we know you are not compromised right now, and this isn’t some scheme of this ‘Maxima’ you spoke with?”

“How do we know every goblin isn’t compromised?” a young beastkin with the body of a human and head of a tuna added hysterically, jaw flapping at the top of his head while the one eye he was looking at them with wheeled around the room, looking for answers, befre fixing on the closest goblin council member.

“I know my own head you ingrate, and I’ll gut you if you need me to prove I’m not under this peace enforcing princess’ spell” said goblin woman, who had come to the meeting in a set of overalls of all things, and who was the last sitting representative of the greatly diminished miner’s union, bit back at the tuna-kin, before putting one of her boots up on her chair so she could pull a knife from it.

“She’s got her! Assassin! Monarchist assassin!” the tuna-kin shouted in a panic as he rose from his own seat, knocking over his chair, only to fall over it and knock over the representatives who had come to his aid.

It was all Lily could do to hold her face in her hands while her avian companion Seam quietly asked if they were always like this. They were all saved however, when the doors to the chamber were quietly opened, and an aged looking kingfisher wildblood entered the room, his cane and pegleg clacking against the fine stone floor.

The Speaker, a man old as the world, a mortal not from woman born but made by the hands of gods, and thus one of a rare few who could practice the arts of speaking with other’s past lives, took the scene in for a moment. As he did a platypus-goblin attempted to calm the situation, only to be grappled and accused of being mind controlled as well by a muscular croaker, prompting him to try and stab the tuna-kin with his poisoned spurs, at which point the Speaker decided to intervene.

He raised his cane once more, and struck it forcefully into the ground, causing runes on the handle to glow and create a pulse of awe to radiate through the room, while at the same time, he used his actual power to touch every soul found therein for just a moment.

“That is quite enough” the speaker declared, with a voice that, though now withered, still held the command and confidence of a powerful leader. He was, of course, not one, merely a spiritual guide, but still, he brought the council to order and to their senses just long enough for a thankful Lilly to rally a rather simple argument “If she wanted to control everyone and take over, surly she wouldn’t have me tell you what she could do. And especially not that her will could be broken”

“Hmmmmf. Broken by the will of a legendary hero” the large snouter, one Counselor Vontibrath, retorted, clearly unconvinced, though with more of a debative tone now rather than an accusatory one “besides, we had already heard an account of this Dominion from… oh what was that Aardvark-kin’s name?” he snapped his fingers twice, before a pig-kin beast woman whispered something in his ear “ah yes, Desmond. He already told us about how how you, council member, ensnared your companion here while the other goblins held him up and blade and hammer point without a second thought about your prior allegiance”

“Hey, I can vouch for all of this so don’t you dare use me against her” Seam bit back at the big snouter

“Hmm, yes, you say as you wear the gifts of the god who is patron of this land of slaves, a god we may well have misplaced our worship in if he created a land so antithetical to our values” Vontibrath replied in reference to the fancy armor and diamond topped swords Seam had been gifted, prompting several gasps from the more religious among the rest of the council. Only a few however, as Galaxor’s addition to the rota of gods worth veneration was rather recent.

“Galaxor’s worthiness is a topic for another time, but is hardly a reason to distrust Seam” Lilly replied evenly, before pressing forwards with what she hoped would be her winning point “Still, I understand that the council might have difficulty trusting either who’s lives Maxima has touched, which is why I invited the Speaker here”

“Ah, I see it. This Maxima can controle goblins, but you have not always been a goblin, have you, my teacher?” the old bird quietly said as he caught on, despite lacking much of the initial context, before addressing the council at large “If you will allow me just a moment, council members, I shall bring clarity to this situation”

There was some further discussion and a vote on the motion of taking him up on the offer that took a fair bit longer than a moment, but after that, those in their room closed their eyes, followed the Speaker’s steps, and then opened them in a shared vision of sorts. Before them a great serpent-kin, a snake in all but her eyes, one who sat coiled lightly around Lily in a comforting hug rather than a crushing bind, and who spoke in defense of her current life.

“I am here. I am free. I saw all even if could not help when the queen held Lilly’s mind” the serpent-kin said, seemingly ashamed of not being strong enough to intervene, before explaining in her short words that “I saw how god and queen played a twisted game with a hero, threatened to leave him forsworn. Saw too how Lily danced around the queen to prevent that end, and bartered great treasure for home from the god”

The counselors, their own past lives leaning over their shoulders like an ensemble of advisors, nodded along, looking quite relieved, but some, the great snouter Vontibrath
Chief among them leaned in with a great deal of interest at hearing one word, and that was “treasure?”

---

Months in the future, but not many, down in the depths, a wall cracked, and a monster with too many limbs, hardened digging claws and a mouth sloping stone melting acid burst through into a cavern filled with ore, gems and crystals galore. Its arrival was met by a line of armored pike wielding goblins, the miners working this holiest of sites having already long since cleared out after hearing it scratching at the walls.

With a cry of “For the Dominion!” They rushed the beast before it could recover its strength from its digging work, a dozen diamond tipped blades impaling the beast before their owners fell back, and a second row seamlessly charged past them and delivered a second sequence of stabs. These two backed off to get behind a remaining pike wall, preparing slings to continue to contribute to the fight with, but the caution was unwarranted with regards to the beast, reduced to a pincushion, collapsed to the ground.

It was, as it turned out, still warranted however, as no sooner had the beast fallen but 3 figures burst out of the tunnel it had dug. All three were tall and slim, with pointed ears, but that was where their similarities ended. A sea of tawny feathers somehow moving silently on 4 sets of viciously sharp talons that where reinforced with bronze and which starred down the goblins with the massive light drinking eyes of an owl came first, followed by a tower shield carrying humanoid tortoise moving unnaturally fast thanks to the rings carved all over its shell, and a elf with angelic swans wings wielding a glowing trident and covered in shimmering tattoos that hurt to look at.

The shield carrying tortoise-kin immediately put themselves up front, slamming their shield into the ground in a taunt and catching a dozen thrusts and stones upon it as a result while the howling owl started to slip to one side of the pike wall. The goblin commander was no fool however, and she barked two short commands that prompted the wall to start backing up and angling its flank’s pikes after the hulking owl-kin so as to not get flanked by it. A few took jabs at it as it got too close, only to be rebuffed by the most powerful hoot they had ever heard, the sound wave pushing them back with physical force rather despite only momentary deafening them

The third of the bestail figure’s number did not join in this positioning and, rather than attempt to flank the goblins from the other side, the swan-kin called back into the tunnel “someone tell the boss we found the goblins!” before telling the others to “hold you two, hold!” prompting them to back off a few steps.

The goblin commander was quite sure she could take them still despite the unusual abilities they had demonstrated, but she wanted answers rather than blood, and so she was happy to use the space to back up and take an even better defensive position. Once she was situated atop a small ridge and had sent a runner to report the situation with another hyper efficient command, she called down to the beastfolk, demanding to know “Who are you? Who do you serve?” and then regarding the monster they had initially put down “Why are you associating with outer beasts!”

Her answers arrived on cloven hooves that trampled through the blood of the fallen beast, flaked by another such monster, several more beastfolk equally as eclectically armed and armored as the first three, and followed by some kind of plaque that held, of all things, a little garden. “That, is, or was a Chimera made specifically for tunneling. Top of the line and damn expensive” the group’s leader, a certain snouter large of height and girth, informed her as he emerged from the rock dust, lightly brushing it off his fine long coat and tophat, before informing her that “And these fine folks serve me, just as I serve Tricity, and we’re here to stake our fine home’s claim on this god gifted bounty!” as he swept a hand across the caverns the goblin had been protecting

“Any objections?” Vontibrath asked, as yet more beastkin (along with the odd snouter and croaker) peaked out of the freshly breach into the hold site, not a goblin or miner’s union member in sight.

---

Weeks in the future, but not many, Vontibrath paused in his digging to admire his work. It was a fine patch of land he owned, one he had carefully cultivated only the most fascinating underground plants, all of it growing in soil that had traveled with him from the outskirts of tricity to the heart of its richest district, and now down here into the depths of the world where he might be the first of his kin to stake a claim.

True, it was a touch of a downgrade from his lavish lifestyle up with the movers and shakers on Trictiy’s northside, but his other work made it more than worth it. Setting down his trowel, he stood and looked down from his rooftop garden and out over the burgunning town growing around the entrance to the cave of unlimited bounties. True, there were some hurdles to be found in this new operation. No one made Buggies quite like goblins, and with their banning from the exposition, lest they be compromised by the mind controlling despot they now shared the cave with, they had to rely on newer, more experimental methods of transportation. The only recently tamed Chimeras had resulted in a few unfortunate accidents, it was true, and there had been teething problems with the Runecraft and R’kava modifications made to the miners, but it was all worth it.

With the first outer beast infested and then earthquake collapsed mines restored, and bolstered by the unending ore growth of the cavern, Tricity was once again king of the eastern waterway’s metal trade, and this time it was free from the stranglehold of those dirty unionists. No now it was Vontibrath who had that stranglehold and by Hummus, was he going to milk it for all it was worth.

First thing’s first on his agenda, muscling in on as much of the cave’s bounties as possible. The Dominionites had had a head start after all, it was only fair that they make way for his, or rather Tricity’s, workers for a time. And if that argument never moved back into something more balanced? Well, now wouldn’t that be a damn shame?

---

The pulsating mushrooms illuminated the far reaches of that dark tunnel every few seconds. Closer was the red glare of the torch glancing off the damp walls. The air here was not like it was in the Dominion, like home. It smelled of old things, of musk and the occasional stench of decay. There was only a slight current that blew through their loose garbs and the hair that wasn’t stuck with sweat to unwashed skin. How long had it been since they could take a bath? Delight in warmth as the body was cleansed? Not so long surely, but long enough. The tunnel kept going down, down, down. The slope was so insincere. Only the growing warmth was the indication of just how deep they tread.

“I’m hungry.” Barn complained.

“And I’m thirsty.” Julie snapped back.

“Take a drink then, miss thirsty.” Barn said in a low mocking way. “We don’t exactly have food I can just shove into my mouth as we walk, not like you can with a water canteen, now can we?”

“You are insufferable.” Julie hissed.

“Well it takes one to know one.” Barn crossed his arms, head held high.

No words came next, just the crash of two bodies upon the stone. It seemed Julie hadn’t liked that one. The two rolled around as they grappled for domination. A pot broke free from Barn’s pack and lay next to them. Julie, on top and looking for anything she could use to gain the upperhand, found the pot. She brought it high over her head and was about to bring it down before her wrist was seized by a giant hand and she was yanked off of Barn.

“Can you two do anything but fight? By Galaxor!” Came the exasperated voice of Kleer. As Julie struggled in his grip, Barn got to his feet with a snarl. He took a step forward but was stopped when a hand was placed upon his chest by Masy.

She sighed, “Leave it be Barn. You’ll only cause more trouble.”

“Well she-”

“Enough!” Kleer barked. “You’re hungry and she’s thirsty, you don’t need to fight over it just to prove which of you is more insufferable. Haven’t you two learned anything from your schooling days? Use your words, save the fighting for when we have to!” Kleer let go of Julie’s wrist and the young goblin-woman let go of Barn’s pan, cursed something under her breath and began to walk ahead.

Barn, his green face tinged with red, bent and picked up his pot. He muttered something as he took off his pack to readjust it, then wandered off after Julie.

Masy, her ears folded back, watched them go with annoyance.

Kleer’s torch came closer and the great goblin looked down at her. “Your tail is twitching, Mas.”

She folded her arms across her chest and peered up at the bearded goblin. His features sharp and worn. Lines were just beginning to crease his dark green face but his hazel eyes, they had always been kind.

“Their fighting is getting worse.” She began to walk and the big goblin followed in step at her side. “I still can’t believe you’ve dragged us on this adventure and you still haven’t admitted that we are lost, Kleer.” She gave him a side eye.

“Lost? Please. We are simply following in the footsteps of the greats. Weathertop Tomgunny, Bladelink Torl, The gray Healer, the Weasel Trio, the Maxi Gems and who could forget Jaxx! You heard the stories, how he came to the Dominion with his party? How he dined with Maxima!”

“What are you getting at, old man.” Masy yawned, seemingly uninterested.

“Old man, please.” Kleer laughed deep, amplified by the tunnel. “We aren’t lost, we are simply on an adventure Masy!” He gave her a pat on the back.

“Now come on before those two get-” The great goblin and the elven fox rounded a bend in the tunnel, coming face to face with Julie and Barn. The two goblins were not fighting for once as they rolled on the cavern floor. Instead, they were making out as if their lives depended on it. And with such passion, they didn’t even notice their audience.

“Oh by the gods.” Kleer sighed, hand sliding down his face. Masy just rolled her eyes.

---

“All I’m saying is that this new time stuff makes little sense.” Barn said, before scooping a spoonful of soup into his mouth. He chewed as he spoke, “You’re telling me, that if we aren’t in the same timeline, things might go awry?” he swallowed, “But how can that be if I’m looking at you right now, at the same time you’re looking at me?”

The great goblin shrugged. The fire between them cast his face in a shadowy light. The fire crackled once before he spoke, “Time is but a construct that we define. Who's to say we haven’t already been here before, having this exact conversation? Or perhaps we haven’t yet? Perhaps we never will?” he touched the silver band at his wrist, his time anchor device. They all wore one, put on at the same time as a precaution. “Is not time but a fickle thing? Let us leave it to Mighty Galaxor to keep.”

The fire burned more as Barn, eyebrows furrowed, continued to eat in silence.

“It’s for those Diamond gemstones to figure out.” Julie said, coming back with more rootwood for the fire. Masy in tow, having collected more mushrooms for the stew.

As the two settled in around the fire Masy said, “All that time talk will lead you nowhere. We are here, right now, in the present. The past is the past and the future isn’t knowable.”

“But-” Barn was jabbed with Julie’s elbow, who just so happened to sit next to him. The young goblin almost choked.

“But nothing Barn. Masy knows best. She’s a sapphire after all.” Julie said with a bit of pride. Julie’s own deep purple amethyst sat around her neck. Barn gripped his own orange garnet as he looked between Masy’s blue sapphire ring and Kleer’s red beryl earring.

“Gemstone ranks hardly mean anything unless you achieve diamond or onyx.” Masy said as she focused on skewering her mushrooms.

“Oh is that right? But diamond Reginald always said," Here Barn’s voice took on a nasally tone, “If you don’t make at least emerald, you’ll be back studying in no time.”

Julie laughed. “What skills do you have, Barn?”

“Well, the usual, I guess. Good with a dagger. Athletic. Good looks.” Barn took another bite of the stew.

“If you’re so good, then how come you aren’t a diamond guard?” Julie asked.

Barn sat a little straighter at that and waved his spoon at Julie. “Those guys are all bluster. I bet ten shakes none ain't ever gone on an adventure like Jaxx. Like us. Show offs all.”

Julie scooched closer to him and Barn stiffened a little. She whispered something in his ear and his face blushed.

Masy took a bite of her cooked mushrooms as her shifty eyes looked towards Kleer. “Youths are often prone to folly, wouldn’t you say Kleer?”

“Undoubtedly.” he replied, stroking his graying beard as he watched the flames dance.

“You could have hired any veteran of the caves for this journey, but you picked these two enemies to lovers.” Masy made a face and shook her head. “Folly indeed.”

Julie likewise made a face and she showed her tongue in a child-like gesture. “You old timer’s are all business and never fun. If I recall, you’ve never even left the Dominion either, Masy.”

The elven fox, her orangish red hair with wisps of white strands gave Julie an incredulous look. Then she shrugged. “It’s true, I haven’t left the Dominion. But I did leave the Goblin Underground plenty of times.” She smiled with smug satisfaction.

Julie glared in return.

Barn took on a new shocked face as he looked at Masy. “You were… You were born before the Dominion?”

“Of course, Barn. We of elfkind are long-lived.” Masy took another bite. “My parents relocated to the deep in the dawning days of my kind. When we were created in the Goddesses image. Instead of staying up top with the others, they journeyed below. They always did say they preferred the dark to the light, or whatever that meant.”

“They aren’t…?” Barn began to ask.

“Oh heavens no, they’re still around. They live in the upper tier of the Obsidian Reach. Mother teaches and father runs a business selling gems. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Fire Opal?”

Barn and Julie looked at her blankly.

Masy frowned. “Well it’s a big place, home.” And she went back to eating.

“Shouldn’t you be working with your father? Sapphires have plenty of skills, don’t they?” Barn asked.

“Me? Sitting around a shop all day and listening to my father complain about Maxima’s tax policies? No thanks. Besides, the business is going to my little brother and his wife.” Masy said with a tone of bitterness in her voice. Her eyes darted to the fire as she threw the empty wooden skewer in.

“I know what you mean.” Julie said in a quest voice. “I have three younger brothers and three older sisters. I’m the middle child. I’m sure right now they might be wondering where I am but eh.” She shrugged.

“I’m an only child.” Barn confided. “Parent’s split after mom found dad cheating on her with some younger gob lass down the road. It was just my mom and me for a long time. Then she got sick and died. No idea what happened to the old man. I’m sure I’ve some half siblings out there somewhere.”

Masy looked at Barn and she nodded at him. He returned the silent gesture much the same before Julie placed a hand on his shoulder. She pushed back her thick black hair away from her eyes and said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Barn.”

In truth, Barn seemed unbothered but he gave her a soft smile anyway. “Thank you, Julie.” Silence fell for a time, as the two looked at one another.

Masy rolled her eyes and got up. “I’m going to bed. Wake me when it’s my turn to watch.”

Kleer nodded, turning to watch Masy roll out her assortment of blankets. They had found rest in a small, but wide cave. The drip of water hitting the floor had provided them with a fresh source of liquid. When they had all rested, for it was impossible to tell the time so dark below, they would continue on.

“What’s the plan boss?” Barn asked Kleer. The great goblin looked back at the two. “You sleep. Separately. And I take the first watch.”

The two blushed slightly and Barn got to his feet. “That’s not- I meant, It’s been great wandering these caves and cleaning up some monster dens, but do you really think we’ll find it?”

“Yes.” Kleer said, putting his fist into his open palm. “We are close. Very close.”

---

The next few days, if you could call it days or weeks, left them wandering aimlessly in the tunnels far below and apart from the Dominion. They hadn’t seen a fellow Goblin or even A diamond patrol for what felt like an age and still they kept going on. Walking topics of discussion ranged from heroic tales of heroes to the old stories about the defense of the Goblin underground during the invasion of outsiders. Masy was tight lipped during those discussions, as if she didn’t want or couldn’t speak about it.

Barn and Julie fought occasionally but their spats would always be somehow resolved through shared lips. If they were doing more, they were quiet about it. As talking began to become more and more taxing, silence crept in as well as doubt. Kleer had promised a grand adventure, through the depths of the world, all in search of what he called, “The Old Gob.” A rumored figure who granted wishes if found. No one knew if he existed. Perhaps there was a reason old Kleer hadn’t said anything about his own family. Or perhaps it was something else entirely that guided him.

It wasn’t until they were completely lost in the bioluminescent caves of the vast underground that Kleer stopped dead in his tracks. They had arrived at a fork in the tunnel. Their water supplies were running low and they had not found root sap to keep their torches going.

“Well this is great.” Julie said as she fidgeted with her stave.

“What are we going to do Kleer?” Masy asked, the elven fox’s ears twitched as if she was listening for sounds.

“We at last come to the decision.” Kleer whispered. “Right or left. Damnation or salvation.” he seemed to say to himself. “I’ve dragged you all this far. Time to vote. Left or right.”

“Left.” Masy said with little thought. “I hear… Something. I’m not sure what. But the right tunnel is dead.”

“Left then.” Julie said.

“I’m with these two.” Barn added at last.

Kleer looked down the right path with the sort of determination one could only muster if they were absolutely sure of themselves. Then it faltered and he began to walk left. “Left it is.”

The winding path of the dark tunnel, shaped as if something had burrowed its way down or perhaps out, kept them occupied for a long time. They managed to find a drip of water, the noise that Masy had heard. That at least lifted their spirits but as they continued on with full canteens, it became increasingly apparent that the left tunnel was off. The bioluminescence that guided their way and provided food was growing sparser and sparser. Whole sections were lightless, save the torches and even they were becoming wisps. There was no root wood and thus no root sap to sustain a longer fire.

Luckily, all of the party could see decently in the dark. Just one of the perks of being a deep dwelling people. It mattered not if one was a goblin, beastfolk, or elf. Masy also had excellent hearing and a good nose. Kleer was the muscle and boss. Barn was the jack of all trades, able to do most tasks when required. Whilst Julie was their apothecary, their healer in times of need. Making it all the while funnier when she decided to beat on Barn. Each brought something to the party that complimented the whole. They were lucky for it.

For when Masy froze in her tracks, ears perked, she held out her hands to stop them. She was frowning at the inky black of the tunnel that was ahead. No sound came and then all at once Masy shouted, “Down!” and dove to the ground. The rest followed before the unmistakable sound of arrows whizzing came overhead, followed by the clacking of them hitting stone.

That wasn't the worst of it though. A hissing flaming arrow sung past and embedded into the floor behind them before exploding with tremendous pressure. They had seen nothing of the sort like it before, the blast, the terror of it, the ringing in their ears. The rock underneath them quivered, trembling like a child that had been struck by their father, before it gave way entirely. Cracking as if the world had cursed it forevermore.

The party fell for what felt like a lifetime. Panic stricken in the dark, torches lost and snuffed out, it was by sheer happenstance that nothing interfered with their descent. No long ledges jutting out and certainly not the bottom. A flickering light gave way below until Masy could see that it was a great cave full of tall glowing mushrooms. Their light, soft blue, gave the reflection of twinkling stars. She could have sworn, beneath all that sudden doom in her chest, that they had been falling upwards.

Until the bitter cold of icy water blanketed the fall. Now it was a only chance, as boulders and rocks thundered into the waters around her. She swam. Something slick and slimy brushed against her legs but she kept going anyway, up to the light. When she crest the water, and took a great breath of air, she heard Julie shouting for Barn, his own reply muffled.

“Find a shore!” Kleer's voice came above the din and the ringing. Find the shore.

Masy looked around. Julie found Barn with a bleeding head wound while the great goblin that was Kleer swam for his two smaller compatriots.

Masy swam, the cold leeching all warm from her bones but she swam anyways. She found footing on a rocky bottom and her ascent led her to a small sandy bank that she half dragged herself and fell upon.

“O-Over h-here!” She cried out as best she could. She turned back to the water, removing her pack and bow as she rubbed her limbs for warmth. Why was that water so cold?

A large splash caught her eye and she found Kleer, carrying the two goblins, emerge upon the shore. She walked to them in the gloomy light.

“We need a fire. Masy can you find something burnable? Julie, get some dry bandages for Barn ready.” Kleer said in a commanding voice. The voice of a leader. Masy grunted and began to walk off as Kleer set Barn and Julie down. At once the small goblin lass began to fret over a semi-conscious Barn.

“You’re bleeding too.” Julie said, reaching out to Kleer.

The great goblin touched the back of his head and then wiped the blood on his wet tunic. “I’m fine, see to the boy.” And that was that.

The mushroom forest they found themselves in was not without ample kindling and in no time a fire was going that the four sat around. Stripped of clothing save for the essential to warm themselves, while their belongings hung on vines drying in the smoke. Here beyond the fire the world was of luminance. The musky smell of mushrooms was not so unpleasant to the senses and an occasional breeze brought warmth as well as the fragrance of something sweet. The chattering of some small creatures and the occasional splash out on the lake were the only real sounds, beyond distant drips and a low roaring of perhaps a waterfall. No one had the energy to talk after such an ordeal, though their minds were no doubt racing as to what or who had blown up the tunnel and sent them plummeting.

Julie was bandaging Barn’s head, the goblin man looking up at her with rapt admiration. He eventually said, out of nowhere, “Marry me, Julie?”

Masy and Kleer's heads spun to them at the confession.

Julie feigned innocence, “Barn, you're being silly.”

“I am not.” Barn said, using his elbows to prop himself up to look at her. Longing stained his face and his blue eyes were clear. Julie blushed and turned away from him, fussing with the bandages in her bag. “It wouldn't work.” She mumbled.

“Why not?” He said softly.

“Because I'm me and you are you.” She said, flustered.

“You could be a trolley snail and I’d still want you.” Barn said.

Masy bit her lip to avoid laughing at the terrible analogy and Kleer only smirked. Julie turned to look at Barn, with every right to smack him but instead, she placed her hands on either side of his head and kissed him. When they broke apart, faces flushed, she gasped. “You stupid oaf, of course I’ll marry you.”

---

It took them a good long sleep to gather their bearings. Barn needed to heal and Julie was his faithful nurse. Kleer’s own injury was forgotten and he gave no confession to pain. Masy kept herself occupied by scouting and hunting. Not long after they fell, Barn was assaulted by a giant bat that Julie struck over the head with her stave, killing it instantly. For once they had most in their bellies, despite some reservations over eating a pale corpse of a creature. It didn't help when Julie alone threw up after she slept. After that they stuck with mushrooms, tried and true. Though it was curious.

They did not talk of their plight in open discussion either, for Kleer shut them down. Something had begun to change in the old great goblin’s silence. Before the fall he often looked contemplating. Now it was of furrowed brows and muttering. Masy left it alone and the two lovebirds had each other. The fox girl had been in more dire circumstances before, this was just the newest in a long list. The others would cope however they could.

It wasn't until Barn no longer needed to wrap his head that they began onwards. Masy had found a winding path along the cliff-like cave walls that would lead them up to whatever end.

“How deep do you think we've gone?” Barn asked, looking up at Kleer.

“As deep as Galaxor allows.” He shrugged.

“We are far lower than the lowest bowels of the Obsidian Reach. Maybe even lower than the Library.” Masy interjected. “I wouldn't be surprised if we were the first ones to tread here and even so, life goes on without us knowing.” Kleer remained silent, looking ahead. But it was true, the vast Underground was a myriad of wilds that would probably never be explored. Life was as simple as mushrooms or as complex as whatever swam in the cold depths of the lake. The ecosystem thrived with the sounds of insects and the flapping of some invisible creatures. Most of the life gave off bioluminesce much to Julie’s enjoyment but it was a hard life for those not accustomed to it and mortals most of all.

So it came as no surprise to Masy and Julie when Barn murmured, “Well, I'm quite ready to head home.”

It was then that Kleer stopped and spun upon Barn. The great goblin, with his massive hands with root-like strength rippling from his forearms, grabbed Barn by his garb and lifted him into the wall. “There’s no going home!” He roared. Julie went rigid with fear and Masy unsheathed an arrow. “Not until we find what I'm looking for! Don't you see how close we are? Galaxor guides us! He does!”

“Put him down, Kleer.” Masy commanded.

The great goblin snarled and dropped Barn. The small goblin had Julie at his side in a heartbeat, helping him up.

“What's the matter with you?” Masy said, dropping her arrow slightly. “You’ve been off. You don't act like this.”

“The path before us has always been clear. We are close, so close now. We can't go home until we find what we came here to find.”

“The old gob?” Masy asked.

Kleer began to walk ahead. “The Prophet that never was.”

Masy looked back at Barn and Julie and the three shared a look. But up from ahead came a strange sound. Like a small piece of metal had been dropped upon stone. Tink. Tink. Tink. Silence. Masy looked at Kleer, who had frozen. He began to turn towards them but before he could an explosion rippled forth from under him. Masy didn't have time to fall down. Instead the force of the blast knocked her backwards onto Barn and Julie. She felt like someone had thrown a handful of pebbles at her as hard as they could. Heat washed over them in a bright flash, followed by smoke that billowed forth with sulfurous fumes. Masy gagged, it felt like salt had coated her tongue and tried to breath before rolling over. She grabbed her head, the ringing almost unbearable. She couldn't hear anything. Not as Julie grabbed at her, the goblin’s face, one of concern.

Then a faint breeze washed away the smoke and Masy looked to where Kleer had been standing. She took a ragged breath, not sure what she was looking at, at first. Then her eyes went wide at the realization. Kleer lay in pieces, his blood coating the walls above a charred floor.

Masy turned her head away. A convulsion went up from her stomach and try as she might to stop herself, she threw up. This time Julie was beside her, rubbing her back as Barn stepped to her other side, blocking her view.

They began to speak as Masy tried to calm her nerves. “She's in a bad way, Barn. I can't tell whose blood is whose and poor Kleer.” Her voice trailed off as if she was in shock.

“Don't think about that right now. Focus on Masy. Come on, let's get away from here.” He began to grab Masy’s left arm, under her shoulder. Julie grabbed her other shoulder and they began to drag her.

“I can… Walk.” Masy protested, but her feet did not listen to her.

“Masy darling, there was blood in your vomit.” Julie said.

The two goblins shared a look. Both looked far paler than average and Julie herself looked ill. They dragged Masy towards a cut out that overlooked the path. There Julie began to cut through her clothing.

“I don't feel…” Masy began, “Pain.” She said with a shaky breath.

“Masy. Listen to me.” Julie’s hands were coated in fresh blood. “Barn get over here! Apply pressure!” Barn did as expected and cursed under his breath. “Masy. You're going to be okay. I'm going to fix you.”

“Kleer…?” Masy coughed.

“We'll have to bury him later. After we tend to you. Barn! Get the fresh bandages and sutures from my bag.” Julie commanded and was obeyed.

The next few minutes were a blur as they worked upon sealing Masy up. Julie hissed at a shard of metal she extracted from the wound. “Get the poultice ready, Barn. And water. We need water.” This was done and before she knew it, something cold had been pressed into Masy's belly.

She had just been on the verge of a sleep that Julie hadn't been allowing her to have when Barn yelled out, “We have trouble!” Followed by a terribly loud sound that jolted Masy awake. It was like that explosion but not as loud. Barn came up from the lower path out of breath.

“Goblin.” He wheezed, pointing behind him. “Down the path. Hovering. Old. Has some sort of boomstick. Shot at me.”

“What do we do?” Julie asked, her voice flooded with panic.

“Go and hide.” Masy said.

“But-”

“No buts Julie.” Masy said, her eyes clear and focused. “I have a gut wound. You saw it. You've healed many things before but this is different. We both know it.” Julie began to tear up. Barn began to grab their things.

“Go up the path and hide. Barn, did he see you?”

“He must have seen something. He boomed at me.” He let out a frustrated sigh, “We should stand and fight.”

“No. No more death. Okay?” She could see them forming an argument and held up her hand. “No arguing. I’m the boss now, got it? You do as I say.” With lips curling with frustration the two begrudgingly nodded. Masy could tell it pained them beyond reason. “Okay. Now you two get out of here. Don't look back.” Masy said, pulling out a knife and hiding it beneath her hand. The stone floor was cold. Next she ripped off the bandages and Julie hissed, “What are you doing?”

“Making it look like he hit his target. Now get out of here!” She whispered with annoyance and threw the bloody bandages out of sight. She placed her hand over the stitched wound and smiled.

“You better name that child after me if it's a girl.” She said with mirth as she looked at Julie and winked. The goblin lass looked confused for a moment before her eyes went wide and she placed a hand on her abdomen. Barn, oblivious, grabbed Julie's hand and pulled her along.

“Goodbye, Masy.” He said in a shaky voice.

“Tell my family…” Masy gritted her teeth and Barn nodded. Julie looked at her one last time, the heartbreak of a friendship lost, one that could only be forged on an adventure. It broke the elven girl's heart. But there would be no more victims of terrible magicks today. She would make sure of it. For their love had brought her joy and she was dying anyway. Why not make use of it yet? She just hoped they didn't come back to save her. That foolish honor of goblin and friends.

It didn't take long before a figure aloft a long dirty rag rounded the corner. Hunched in an equally dirty cloak, it cackled as it saw her. A long stick glowing of green script was held by gnarled hands. No, not just wood but metal too, she realized. What puzzled her most was the rag it rode, somehow flat where it stood and flowing freely underneath as it moved on a phantom wind.

“What's we haz here?” It said in a tongue of goblin that was old and gnarled like his fingers. For it was an old goblin man. Under that hood, green glowing eyes looked upon her with a mix of curiosity and madness. “Gots it in the bellys we didz.” It snickered. “What is its bez?”

“Elvish.” She gritted her teeth to fake pain. She still couldn't feel her legs or her stomach. “With a bit of fox.” She smiled.

“Foxses eh?” It propped, what Masy could only imagine was the boomstick, up and leaned on it. “Yous the one tripping me triggers. Boom boom boom!” He laughed. “Heards anotha boom. Lost a frend didcha?” She couldn’t see his face but knew he was smiling with glee.

“A great goblin. Kleer was his name.” Masy said. “Never seen a thing like that explosion. He was just… bits.” her memory flashed and she grimaced. The old gob noticed and tilted his head.

“Shoulda look where he waz steppin.” he nodded, as if this was the only fact that mattered. He stopped leaning on the boomstick and hoisted it up to a holding position, aimed at her. “Canni have yas livin. No hard feelins.”

“W-Wait!” She stammered, trying to sit up but failing. The goblin lowered the boomstick slightly. “I’m dead anyway but I’m curious. Are you the old gob? The prophet that never was? Why’d ol Kleer want to find you so bad?”

“Ancient gob.” He spat. “I was killed long go, by angry silver goddess. Life brought mees back. I told other gobs, they worship me. Maxima…” he snarled at the word as if it was a stain in his mouth. “Maxima! Maxima! Maxima!” he leaned back on the boomstick again and began to use his gnarled hands to point at nothing, “Shes took them. Shes sent me away. Me! Prophet! Many gob hates her, afraids of her. They comes to find mees.” He paused and removed his hood. Masy felt herself flinch. It wasn’t just his eyes that she had thought deformed. His entire face was inscribed with swirling runes, etched into ancient leathery skin, more like bark. He was a hideous thing and the smile he gave proved it. “I founds the way. Mees! I make powder! I make boom! From batsss, from salts. No gobs can know.” There was a wild look in his eye as he began to lift the boomstick.
“How do you fly?” Masy asked, her heart beginning to beat faster.

At that question, the old gob cackled. “Silvers folly.”

Before he could point the boomstick at her, Masy threw her knife right into the goblin’s neck. He gurgled and dropped the stick. It hit the ground with a loud thud as he panicked at the knife wound. Masy only watched as he gurgled more and then he was right in front of her. She blinked, not knowing what had just occurred. The old gob put his weathered hands around her neck and began to squeeze but his strength was already waning and with her own hands she pushed him off and the rag went with him as he drowned in his own dark blood.

It was then that Masy could see what had happened. His hovering rag had not been a rag but a sword. A beautiful swirling sword that reflected the dying torchlite. A sword that had impaled her. She didn’t feel the pain at first but then it coursed into her as if her veins had caught fire. Try as she might to hold in a scream it was useless. She was being burned from the inside. Her blood seething with a rage she could not last. Then, abruptly, there was no pain and she felt so very tired. The world became fuzzy, her eyes blurring as if she was underwater. She smiled as her body began to spasm. At least those lovebirds would be safe.

---

“...And that was when we found the magic sword! Your mammy thought it was too pretty to stain with our dirty feet, so we covered it with a cloth. You should have seen the people’s faces when we flew past! Oh it was the darndest thing. Knew where to take us and everything.” Around the hearth, the small goblin children looked up at their papa with a mix of awe and wonder.

Then he was assaulted with questions.

“How fast did you go?”

“Did it scare you?”

“Where is it now?”

“Tell me more about the bats!”

“Hold on now kiddos! Hold on!” the old goblin laughed.

“Kids! What did I say about asking grandpa too many questions?” A goblin woman, curly black hair and wearing the gemstone of a sapphire on her apron walked in. She kissed the old goblin on the cheek.

“My darling Masy.” he said, taking her hand and squeezing. “Let them ask! Let them be kiddos. I don’t mind.”
She cupped his cheek in the palm of her hand as she smiled. She looked so much like her mother. “I always did love that story.” She said with knowing eyes.

“Me too, darling.” he said with a soft smile.

“Come on now kids, lunch is ready!” Masy said, “And grandma will be coming home soon!”

At that the children screamed with delight and ran off towards the kitchen, Masy in tow.

The old goblin rocked in his chair, and looked to the rune covered boomstick hanging above his hearth. He never did figure out how to use it. Then his eyes slid to the corner of the room, where a bundle wrapped in white cloth lay against the wall.

“Was it a faithful telling?” he asked aloud.

There came a muffled reply in a familiar voice, “It was good enough, Barn.”

The old goblin smiled.

---

With little more than a snap, the almighty Galaxor had thrust knowledge and thoughts right into the minds of goblinkind, but with those revelations had not come a full understanding. Could the mysteries of time magic ever be fully understood? Still, with the way illuminated to them, there was an itch to discover more and attain mastery over this new art.

Unfortunately, for all the understanding and divine intellect that Galaxor had imparted unto a generation of goblins, it’d taken only a singular mundane rock to undo it all for Gemless Gerry. See, he’d been a bright young goblin lad bound for the Library, but after the Dominion was consecrated and the earthquakes came, some rubble landed upon his head and he’d never been quite the same after that. The rubble rolled right off his noggin and then he was fine afterward, except sometimes his memories also rolled right off his noggin. Usually he was fine afterward, in a sense, but it was enough to keep him from every earning any gems. He’d tried every trade there was, and then tried most a second or third time because he couldn’t remember his first, but forgetting everything made it too much to even earn so much as a sapphire in any field of import. He had a few quartz crystals and maybe an opal to show for his efforts, or so he sometimes said, but he’d forgotten where those things went. Or what they’d been awarded to him for!

Gerry was an aging goblin now. A perpetual state of amnesia lended him to a forgiving nature (for he couldn’t hold onto any grudges better than he could put names to faces, grasp skills, or remember anything important) and he never did mature out of his boyish state, so he was at least amicable enough to be liked rather than just pitied. Healers tried to un-rock his noggin, but it always seemed to serve no avail. This was just the way that Gemless Gerry was meant to be. Fortunately there was no crime in the Dominion, so nobody sought to take advantage of his forgetful nature, and a place was found for him in a laboratory. Though he wasn’t of any real help researching, even if he sometimes thought that he too was a diamond-ranked scientist just like the rest of them, he was always happy to help his colleagues and fellow geniuses whenever instruments needed cleaning or moving. Provided it wasn’t anything that took too long, he could usually remember what he was doing long enough to do it!

“...are we really the first to discover anything? Perhaps we are wrong to think in such ways,” echoed the voice of one of his esteemed colleagues–though if Gerry remembered right, that one might not be the shiniest diamond of the bunch–from down the corridor. Gerry shuffled towards their voices, eager to join in the scholarly debate.

“Time, being cyclical, could lend to the hypothesis that there is no state of being first. Properly compressed and twisted, any innovation could perhaps be sent backward, so who can truly claim to be the ‘first’ to uncover some truth when it will inevitably be shared with ancestors and predecessors? And then only Galaxor can untwist the timeline that follows when the original inventor needn’t invent anything at all, and is taught his own revelation in the Library…” another philosophized.

“But,” chimed in Gerry, who’d at last entered the room, “not everyone can compress time!”

There was an awkward lull in the conversation as Gerry’s genius stupefied them. Finally, one came to grasps with that revelation, but then gasped dramatically. “Gerry, you must’ve misplaced your diamond! You’d best go find it before it’s lost!”

Gerry looked down, and indeed saw that he was gemless. “Oh Galaxor, I’ve done it again! Any idea where it could have gone?”

“It probably fell off in the testing room,” that other scientist offered helpfully.

“Wait, why are you sending him in there? Marvin is still taking measurements from the latest–”

“Thanks, I’ll go find it,” Gerry promised, surprisingly choosing the right hallway to go down this time. He barged into another chamber, startling a hunched over figure who’d squinted into the scintillating depths of some enchanted jewel. “Oh, there is it is! Melvin, do you like my diamond? I think I earned it from mastering the skill of, uh….”

Brushing past the fourth scientist called Marvin, Gerry reached out for the jewel where it was socketed on a table. “No, wait!” Marvin cried, trying to stand in the way, but Gerry barreled right past him cackling, “Time never waits!”

He seized the jewel and yanked at it. It was stuck in the socket pretty good, so Gerry twisted and pried. He twisted really hard, hard enough to where the oversized gem’s facets dug into his skin and he pulled his hand off to wince and contemplate his next move even as Marvin dove as if to take cover beneath another table–what a silly guy. Melvin was probably the dullest diamond of the lot, on second thought. But as Gerry thought that, strange things happened. The iron socket holding the jewel rusted and broke apart; the gem came out free.

Gerry reached towards the jewel, but before his elbow could even flex, he saw his hand touching the gleaming surface. Then he saw it release its hold, and move backward towards his side. Marvin flew up from under the desk, and was standing upright and talking backwards like a lunatic. Then Gerry was suddenly flying backward down the hall. Time was rewinding. He was remembering everything! Every lecture, every lesson from every discipline he’d studied in the Library, from every failed apprenticeship, every tidbit that had gone in one ear and out the other was now flying back in and sticking. Yet Gerry felt like he was caught soaring backwards. He kept on falling into his bedchamber full of energy and going to sleep full of energy, and then falling back out as though waking up exhausted. He was exhausted, but then he toiled at menial labor and chores and found his vigor renewed. He felt himself suddenly feeling different, and realized that he was young. TIME WAS MOVING BACKWARDS!

He felt all sorts of sudden aches and pains that grew sharper and worse with each passing moment, until there came the sweet relief of the moment that he received the injury. The worst of these was when he felt a rock jumping off the ground, skipping up to his head, bouncing off his noggin and back up to the cavern’s ceiling above.

He scrambled, willing himself to grab onto something, but time was not some river that you could simply swim through or oppose if you grabbed onto something. His will was powerless. The river flowed harder, faster, inexorably dragging him back to the beginning. The Dominion was no more, this was the Goblin Union again, seen through the eyes of a goblin toddler. He could no longer walk, now he was crawling backwards. Everything blurred.

There was a bright flash of light, then an all-encompassing darkness that not even goblin eyes could discern anything through. He wasn’t sure his eyes were even open. All that he felt was a feeling of warmth, but also of suffocation, of being unable to move. He couldn’t breathe, but then he didn’t have to.

He was suddenly an adult again, cognizant of how his hand was touching the jewel powering this time compressor device–he understood everything in this experiment now. What was this?! A second chance? An alternative timeline?

Then there was a blinding flash of light, and the flakes of iron that surrounded the entropic-catalyst time accelerator jewel disappeared. He only had a split second to ponder his peril before there was another blindingly bright flash. Even his newly-repaired mind didn’t have time to register what happened before his body was shredded into oblivion at an atomic level, the entire laboratory blown to smithereens as the compressed time expanded into space and ripped everything apart, stretching matter tortuously at an atomic level, shredding molecules.

---

Inexplicably, Gerry opened his eyes, and he still saw something. Another timeline? Was he doomed to be trapped in a loop of endless death..?

No, this was something new. Something he’d definitely never seen before, that no goblin had ever seen before…that was, if time chicanery even permitted such concepts as ‘never’...

This was a very dark place. The air was oppressive and stagnant, but not in the ways of the caverns. This air here was thinner, with less weight bearing down on it, as if they were on the surface instead of in the bowels of Galbar–not like any of them knew or could describe such a difference in sensation.

Them? Why did he speak in plural? Oh yes, because he looked to his side and saw Marvin–of was it Melvin?--as well as Tarm and Elmo (those two philosopher-scientists that had been debating the nature of time in the laboratory’s other room) right there beside him. Immediately, the four goblin researchers were relieved to have the company of one another, but terrified of their new surroundings.

The darkness of this place was not one that their cave-adapted eyes could pierce.

Yet it was not totally devoid of light. Like tiny little distant light-jewels, there were twinkling glows. Almost like the stars, which were a legend down in the caverns. But these were not stars, because they were not merely overhead but also set into the crevices and recesses of this place, and this place was not even Galbar per se, certainly not a place with a sky and clouds and stars.

“What has he done?!” a bewildered Elmo demanded, balefully glaring at a distracted Gerry. “You didn’t stop him from touching the time compressor?!”

“I couldn’t, he just pushed me out of the way, and it was unstable, I was, was, was afraid to get close once he was reaching for it–” Marvin stammered.

Tarm paid neither of them any mind, too bewildered by this strange plane. “Where are we?”

Gerry at least had an idea, and began to answer Tarm, “Could it be that our time-compression field failed, and during the rupturing event we had a sudden expansion of time that resulted in a backwards flow until the resulting distortionary waves weakened enough to match the current flow and result in destructive interference. Do you understand the implications of that? Our localized time moving backward at the exact same rate as time elsewhere moving forward could result in a total cancellation, with the effect of essentially deleting us from reality. Except, as we are demonstrably still sapient in some state, could it be that we were expelled from our native plane of reality? It is possible that we ripped through the fabric of time so thoroughly that we created a hole, and fell through it and into some lower–” he stopped to think for a moment. That was perhaps a poor choice of word, ‘lower’. It assumed too much, some sort of hierarchical ordering or even general proximity of planes, when such metaphysical constructs were only hypotheticals and had yet to be rigorously proven–bah, this whole idea seemed awfully flimsy, and now Gerry regretted opening his mouth so prematurely, but he felt compelled to at least finish his thought. “--erm, maybe not lower, so much as a distinct, foreign plane? In other words, could we have tunneled from one reality into another one altogether, not merely some variant along a different timeline?”

The others looked at Gerry, dumbfounded that the Gemless scientist could vocalize something so sophisticated, even if it went above their heads to the point that they still dismissed it as the garbled nonsense that he was wont to usually spit out. Gerry, meanwhile, was deep in contemplation. After a few long moments, he concluded, “No, it seems more likely that we’re all just very dead and this is some sort of afterlife.”

---

She couldn't remember her grandparents. Being the youngest of a large family and only a baby when they passed, she could only remember the vaguest impressions of warmth. It was a comfort she clung too when life brought anything but. That wasn’t to say her own parents did not dote upon their youngest and smother her with all manner of affection. But there was always a certain sort of love that only came from the parents of the parents. She would yearn for it in later years, when she grew up with her older siblings’ children and her own parents became grandparents. She would be an aunt to nieces and nephews that could be sisters and brothers in age. Such was her lot in life and with aging parents, she could only see that ache in her heart grow.

So she made a vow. A stalwart promise to herself, to the very gods- She would have no children. It was a contradiction to say the least. Yet she had no desire for growing offspring and no desire to be a parent to them. She saw how her siblings had struggled and the great tolls that were placed upon child and parent alike. If she could have, she would have skipped parenthood and gone straight to being a grandparent. Luckily, she wouldn’t have to be. Once her nieces and nephews began to have their own children and then those with their own(Goblins were prolific, after all), she knew she'd be the best great aunt.

If she ever came back.

---

The body slumped into the puddle with a splash, churning the water dark in that rumbling sky. Rain pelted the landscape in thick sheets that drenched to the bone but even that wasn’t enough to stop them. Moss rolled to the side, avoiding the blade as it cut through the water and hit the puddle where she had been. It was a sloppy strike, overreaching and she took advantage of that by slicing her dagger across the beastman’s sword arm. He let out a great roar of pain, cursing.

“Goblin bitch!” he swung again, letting anger take over. She leaned back, avoiding the strike and then using his momentum to her own advantage by parrying his sword away with her dagger. He staggered to the side and with her other dagger, struck true into his chest. A wet soppy noise, like air being squeezed out of a waterskin, escaped the beastman. He clutched his chest and staggered backwards. Moss twirled her daggers. Always stay in motion while in a fight, even if you couldn’t move. That’s what master Aish had always said. The beastman’s eyes began to glaze over as the malice left his maw. He coughed blood and his sword dropped into the mud. Then he fell backwards with a splash beside his companion. Lighting rippled across the sky.

Moss prowled forward and slid down onto the corpse, straddling the beastman as she pilfered through his inner pockets. The brown cloak was heavy but she managed to secure a few coin purses and a leather-bound satchel. She almost opened it before realizing it was still raining with a well timed boom of thunder. She had grown numb to the cold after removing her cloak and shirt. Now the only thing keeping her bare from the dreary world was the wet wraps around her chest. Only a miracle by mighty Galaxor did they stay in place, not that she cared about solemnity.

She laid a palm on the beaver-man's chest and pushed off of him. Then she went and inspected the other. Some sort of creature he had been, with green scales along the ridges of his face and pale white fur down the middle. Moss shook her head, unable to place what he was, besides dead. She had gotten him in the throat and now his dark eyes stared up at ceaseless rain, unblinking. She found nothing on him of value after a quick search. With a grumble she stood. The two bandits were novices at best and fools at worst. Their mistake had been letting her remove her shirt but perhaps that was the inherent problem with men. They didn’t always think with the head on their shoulders.

“Should have stayed home.” She murmured to herself as she retrieved her discarded things. Her shirt and cloak were soaked through. Putting them on wouldn’t be pleasant but she did so anyway. The thrill of battle was beginning to fade and with it, the warmth in her limbs. The rain was cool and it just kept falling. So Moss placed the coin purse and leather satchel in her pack and hefted it on. Pulling her hood over her head, she began to walk. She left the bodies where they lay.

---

“Mistress!” Rahdayo called, waving cheerily from where he sat once he spotted her in the small crowd along the dusty path. The youth got up, his packs full of cookware clattering to life as he bound his way over to Moss, who had stopped under the shade of a tree. His floppy white ears bounced up and down with every step. It seemed he had been waiting for her outside the town. Sweetdew was its name. A nice cozy nook in the middle of nowhere. Only a passing merchant, who just happened to sell maps, had pointed it out to them.

At the time, Moss had other errands to run without the need for others and the bandit encounter only brought her relief at that fact. It was good she sent her pupils to meet her here.

Rahdayo held out his arms as he approached and before Moss could stop him, he gave her a big hug, squeezing tight. She returned it gingerly, scrunching her nose at the smell of spices coming off him. The once gangly youth had been shorter than her but now, it seemed he had hit another growth spurt. He still lowered his short cropped white hair to nuzzle into her face and she sputtered, “Rah! Watch the horns.”

He pulled away, unconsciously touching the two goat-like horns sprouting from his head. They were a grayish color and beginning to curve outward at the sides. “Sorry mistress, I keep forgetting.” he said sheepishly. Which was, of course, ironic. Since he was part goat, after all. Not with any beast blood that was, but modeled after-

“Talyr be praised, mistress!” Rahdayo beamed a smile, it was infectious. “I’m glad to see you. After all, you missed your rendezvous point! I was about to set off to find you but Teefee insisted we wait another day.” he frowned at that, his unique horizontal eyes ringed with gold, glancing at the ground. “I should have gone.” he muttered.

“Nonsense. You did well Rah.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, then murmured, “What have I always said?”

“A day late means wait.” he grumbled.

“And after that?”

“After the second, you better get to checkin’.” he said, mimicking her voice.

Moss shot him a look and the Talyrian winced, before breaking into a toothful smirk.

“And where is Teefee and Zafrina?” Moss asked, placing her hands on her hips.

Rahdayo blushed, his old habit of looking around when trying to be avoidant was all too apparent. She knew something had happened. So she just sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose before asking once again, “Where are they?”

“Teefee’s at the pillory.” he whispered. “Zafrina is… Occupied.”

Moss felt her face furrow with annoyance.

A moment later, Rahdayo was leading Moss into the town. The bustle and hubbub of trading hours were in full swing. Beastfolk, goblins, humans, even an elf or two- mingling about and bartering. Sweetdew was far away from the region's capital, Ahdor, but still well within its protecting influence. There would always be bandits prowling after the unsuspecting but Ahdorian soldiers patrolled the well worn roads and streets within the Kingdom. Hence the pleasant atmosphere. Past Sweetdew however, there were only the wilds between nations. No man’s land, prowling with all sorts of people and terrors.

It didn’t take long for Moss to notice Teefee. In the bustling town square, off to the right side, sat two raised platforms. Weather beaten and stained, a crowd stood around and gawked. On the highest platform sat the empty gallows but beneath that sat two pillory boxes. The one left of the gallows was empty but the right one held Teefee. The beastkin girl had her arms and head in the pillory and she was facing the floor. Her once pristine white hair was stained with bits of fruit and… Well, Moss didn’t want to guess.

“I told her not to do it.” Rahdayo whispered vehemently. “And then I tried to get her out but the guards wouldn’t have it. Said she was a thief and the punishment could have been worse.” Teefee’s cat ears twitched.

“And Zafrina didn’t do anything?” Moss looked at him. The goat boy paled.

Then he gritted his teeth. “Zafrina has been…”

“Mistress?” Teefee called out. “Mistresssssss?” She pouted louder. The crowd's eyes began to wander and then fall upon Moss as Teefee tried to crane her head up to look at her. “Mistress! Teefee is sorry! Please help Teefee!” She whined.

A few guards wandered over and one shouted at Teefee, “Oi! Quite you.”

Teefee hissed, before a low growl emanated from her. The guard didn’t seem to care much, he was a big burly fellow and a lad no older than Rahdayo sauntered up beside him. Moss craned her neck to look up at them, noting how the burly guard favored his right leg and had a relaxed grip upon his weapon. The younger guard’s eyes shifted nervously, the grip upon his spear firm.

“This one yours?” the burly guard asked, nudging his head to indicate Teefee.

“Unfortunately.” Moss said. “What’d she do?”

“Stole ribbon from a merchant this morning. Tried to run but became distracted by some chickens.”

Moss didn’t let the disappointment show up on her face. “How much?” she sighed.

Once Teefee was freed from her confinement, she had attempted to hug Moss but the goblin held her off. Teefee was a sorry mess and she smelled. She began to lick herself in earnest before Moss yelled at her to stop. Then there was a stern talk between master and disciple. About the proper getaway technique and that becoming distracted over chickens was the dumbest thing she had heard of and that Teefee had done a lot of dumb things. She told Rahdayo to go help her clean up at the creek just outside of town and that she’d be there soon with Zafrina.

She just had to get her first.

As with all vices, she found Rahdayo’s older sibling in the tavern. Not just in the tavern but in a room she had to bust the door in on. She was met with an all too familiar sight. A reeking room.

Strewn out on a thin mattress, with a thin sheet covering her lower torso, was Zafrina. Her long black hair was a mess of curls wrapped around her back facing horns. Her ears were cropped, unlike her brothers, and went straight out on either side of her head. Like goblin or elf ears. She snored softly, not even deigning to wake with the intruder in her room. But oh, the man she had been sleeping with had not only woken but had also stumbled to the floor and was sluggishly putting on his clothes. Moss took note of the wrapped bundle leaning against a corner of the room and tension she hadn't been aware of eased off her shoulders.

“Ma’am.” the man said, stumbling past. At least he was pleasant on the eyes.

Moss flashed a knife at him and he picked up his pace after blinking a few times. Then she took out her water skin and poured it on Zafrina’s face. The talyrian sat up with a gasp, a knife coming up with her. She jabbed at Moss, who caught her wrist and bent it at an odd angle. Zafrina cursed and dropped it. Her pupil seemed to accept her fate, not even trying to fight back any further. Moss frowned.

“You’d be dead if I meant to kill you.” she chided, letting go of Zafrina, who by now, registered who her would be assailant was. Her blue horizontal eyes rolled and she sighed, flopping back down.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, mistress?” She said sarcastically.

“That was sloppy, even for you. Was it the drink or the fucking that addled your brain into inaction?” Moss said, putting her arms behind her back.

“Both I guess.” Zafrina said nonchalantly.

Moss gritted her teeth. “You guess?”

“Yes, mistress.” Zafrina put her arm over her eyes, as if to avoid the light streaming in through the hallway.

“Why is it the gods decided to saddle me with an incompetent thief, a lazy pleasure seeker and her golden boy brother whose choice of weapon is a ladle?” Moss goaded, judging Zafrina's face. At the mention of Rahdayo, those blue eyes grew cold.

She sat up and said, “You can give me all the shit you want, Moss.” She waved a finger at the goblin. “But even you know how stupid it is to talk ill of my brother.”

Moss smirked. “And what are you going to do about it, pupil?”

“We've been down this road before. I'd rather not get my ass beat right now.” Zafrina sighed and laid back down.

Moss nodded, satisfied. “Well, at least you're learning and that hot-headedness of your youth is tempering. Not get around, we're leaving Sweetdew.”

“And why are leaving?” Zafrina asked.”Teefee?”

She nodded. “Teefee.”

---

They found Rahdayo dripping wet as he brushed the very dry (and somehow clean) hair of Teefee as she self groomed in a patch of sun, eyes shut. Rah was humming a simple tune, focused on his work. The water on him gleamed in the light beside the gently flowing creek. In the sand next to the water there seemed to be signs of a struggle. Still, Teefee’s purring was audible as she licked her hands, as were the ways of her kind.

When Moss cleared her throat the two looked up.Teefee's fluffy tail swished at the sight of them while Rah flushed red from embarrassment or perhaps shame, when he saw Zafrina. His talyrian sister had, perhaps unconsciously, begun to twirl a finger in her own hair.

“Save the brushing for camp tonight. We need to start out.” Moss said, folding her arms.

Teefee stood, a full two heads taller than the goblin, her pale yellow eyes but suits. “Teefee is ready to go!” She exclaimed before taking her back from Zafrina, who had luckily kept it with her.

Rahdayo stood after a time, putting a hand through his hair and shaking the excess water off. Moss was surprised at how long he had been able to endure water. Talyrians, and costs in general, hated water. Perhaps it was the more humanoid part of him? As he began to grab his things, Teefee spun and went over to him, before placing a kiss on his cheek. Rah froze as Teefee giggled, running off in the wrong direction.

Once more Rah blushed, turning red as Zafrina walked over to him.

“You'll comb my hair tonight?” It was a question but more of a demand. Moss rolled her eyes. For someone who had forsaken children, she somehow ended up with three teenagers.

“Talk as we walk.” Moss chided and began walking in the opposite direction of the catgirl. “Teefee!” She shouted and the cat changed course. In a moment she was beside Moss, walking backwards to face her. “You owe me you know.” Moss said to her.

“But mistresssss.” She began to whine, a pouty look on her face.

“No buts. We add it to your debt as usual. Looks like you're sticking around even longer.” The goblin grinned.

Teefee folded her arms and huffed. “Once we get to Teefee’s homeland, mistress will be paid and Teefee will be free! Mistress will see. Then Teefee will get to see big sis Shah and papa Kah! Mama Imara will have been worried and all the others will ooo and aww at Teefee's tales!” She outstretched her arms and spun on her heels. “Then Teefee will be sold into marriage and have a family of her own! Mistress will see!” She had an aura of triumph about her.

Moss was about to point out that being sold into a marriage wasn't very free but thought better of it. Would the girl even understand? Moss grimaced as Teefee caught herself from falling. Just from walking. Gods be praised she found her when she did, otherwise Teefee's tales would have been cut very short.

So instead she said, “Whatever you say, Teefee.” Then a mischievous thought popped into her head, “But,” She smiled widely as Teefee looked at her, “But what about Rahdayo?” She half whispered, glancing at the two siblings behind them. They seemed to be in deep discussion about something.

“Rah?” Teefee asked, befuddlement plastered on her face. She paused and Moss saddled up beside her.

“If you are sold into marriage, Teefee dear, what will happen to Rah?” Moss asked with feigned innocence.

Teefee’s left eye twitched. Moss could see her mind making sense of it, coming to some cat reality with each passing moment. Moss began to walk on, the siblings getting closer. The only thing she heard from Teefee was a low hiss, before the cat girl caught back up to her.

“Mistress does not know everything.” She then hmmphed and walked on.

Moss began to whistle. Then she looked back at Zafrina, to the cloth covered item she carried at her back. Her eyes caught Zafrina’s and she looked back at the road in front of her.

“Don’t worry, old friend. We’ll find answers.” Moss murmured to herself, as the road went ever on.

---

An old weathered face looked at them with lifeless, cold eyes. Aged it was, covered in vines and half buried by a bed of earth. It was not made of stone but the light from the early dawn cast it in such a way, it looked as if it were. But one quick tap let any see it was of metal, still rust free after countless days passed. An ancient sleeping, waiting, but for what?

Teefee began to climb the head, as all cats were want to do on an object that dwarfed them. Moss snapped her fingers and said to the girl, “Don't.” At Teefee’s puzzled look, Moss explained, “Sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone. Let it rest undisturbed by us.” Teefee pouted but otherwise obeyed. They had reached an old forest where well worn paths had become overgrown, if any existed at all. The morning light barely penetrated through the tops of the trees. It was dark within those gnarled boughs but not so entirely to thwart passage. Interspaced within the woods were large barren patches of earth. Like someone had come along and taken everything living or had cut it all away. Occasionally there would be a large metallic object within the clearing or scattered throughout the woods, much like the old head. Light peered down through the clearings at least and illuminated the surrounding trees, many of which grew… Wrong. They grew away from the clearings, as if unable to touch within. They were gnarled trees of no definite species, almost black of bark with diseased looking leaves, if any grew at all.

Suffice to say, they steered clear from those places. Moss couldn't help but feel unnerved by them and at times they all fell silent when close to one, and she felt the strangest melancholy. She didn't even have to tell Teefee to stay away, the cat girl’s hair always stood on end and she put Rahdayo in between her and the clearings. When they had reached the head, in the night of last, they had assumed it was just a boulder and Moss had decided to take a break for the day.

Only now did they see what watched over them in the night. The path they took was one she had only heard of but it was a shortcut, supposedly, in such uncharted lands. It would take them closer to their destination, if they managed it. So far nothing had happened. The clearings were eerie, yes, but nothing came of them in the dead of night. Granted, they had camped out of sight of any so far and Moss would keep it that way.

“Why is this place,” Rahdayo began as they started to pack up, “So…”

“Strange.” Zafrina finished for him.

Moss took a moment as old memories burst free from their cages, filling her mind with voices she knew as a child. She smiled at that and then said, “Listen for a moment.” She stopped putting away things and placed her hands on her lap. Rahdayo and Zafrina followed suit as Teefee hummed to herself before being elbowed by Zafrina. She hissed low and then fell quiet, most likely more out of embarrassment. It wasn't silence that enveloped them but life itself. Birds chirped and sang their lullabies. Insects buzzed with their melodies. Some animal called out deep in the forest, only to be answered in a tree above them. They looked up, it was only a squirrel.

“Is it so strange?” Came the voice of Moss. “The telltale sign of strangeness is silence all around you where it should not be. Even around those clearings, things chatter and sing. No, this place isn't so strange. You just aren't familiar with such woods. Not yet, anyway.”

“But, mistress,” Rahdayo said, eyes yearning, “What caused those clearings? Why are there so many metal parts strewn through the woods? I've never seen the like of them before.” Zafrina and Teefee nodded in agreement.

Moss started packing again but said, “My father told me his great grandfather survived a great ordeal once. Upon the surface, when home wasn't home. The sunlit world was dangerous after all and my great great grandfather ran from its evil to find shelter in the dark. Monsters sought him, but he tricked them at every turn. It was just a bedtime story. I thought.” She stood and looked at the great old face. “It was only when I knew better did I ask if it was true or not. My father told me there was a time when our world was besieged. That creatures so dark and terrible washed over the land, gobbling up any in their path. Like a fat goblin at a feast. He said the gods fought back, for us mortals who could not on our own. Terrible battles took place and the wounds still exist today.” She turned back to them and smirked, “Great granddad was a survivor. He ran for his life and got lucky. Wouldn't be here without him, so, guess that's good.”

Her three pupils looked at one another before Teefee got to her feet and said, “Teefee knows such tales. Papa Kah would tell Teefee and Teefee’s siblings such stories before bed. Mama did not like when we all scrambled into bed with them at night. Papa Kah got a scolding.” She then went back to her humming and started packing before a butterfly flew past and her attention fell upon it.

Rahdayo looked contemplative but it was Zafrina who spoke next, asking, “If it's true, then the gods must have won right? So what became of the creatures?”

“I imagine they were all butchered.” Moss said. “Just look at the size of that head and tell me the body wasn't built to match?” She waved her hand in dismissal. “And if they weren't all destroyed, then they went into hiding in the forgotten places of the world. Nothing like that will be bothering us. Only bandits. If we're lucky.”

Both Rahdayo and Zafrina blinked. “Lucky?” they both said.

Moss laughed.

---

It was a most uneventful travel, all things considered. They had left the forest three days ago, after a week within and the country had given way to sparse grasslands, dotted with an occasional hill or deep gully. On one such hill they had been able to see a long way around them. Mountains dotted the distant horizons to the north. The forest was behind them and the Trees were to the east. The trees, their guiding lights. Wasn't it odd how everyone you met instinctively knew where those trees were? Yet no one would have thought so.

Even her pupils didn't think it odd. They just knew, so she was told. This puzzled Moss some but it wasn't that pressing of a concern. Furthermore, her other concerns were more pressing. Zafrina had turned cold towards Rahdayo and they weren't talking. A common sibling occurrence but one that had grown tiring. It seemed that a dispute, one Moss had considered to be extremely stupid, was actually of life shattering proportions for the two. Zafrina had suggested adding a certain tuber to their supper a few nights back. For a more hearty stock and taste. Rah had denied this and was certain it wouldn't mix well with what he had going on. The fight, if you could call it that, was more of a heated argument about the culinary arts and not getting her way, Zafrina stormed off. If there was one thing Rahdayo had backbone in, it was his cooking.

Now she was being brisk with her brother, who felt guilt when he shouldn't. Time and time again Moss had tried to explain to Rah that one did not need to feel guilt for everything but his heart was just too big. And Moss could tell how much it was bothering him. Every subtle facial tweak at her brushing him off. The sad eyes. He was easy to read and Moss wasn't the only one to pick up on that. Teefee made her move, filling in their silence with chatter and laughs. Zafrina’s coldness only grew. For if there was one rivalry in her party, it was between the girls and their want for attention. Moss just cursed her luck.

On a night where the Hand shone brightest, Moss awoke with a chill. Groggy at first before her senses snapped sharp, she realized two things. One being that the fire had grown to embers and that her three pupils were gone. She felt a surge of panic threaten to knock her senses silly, so she calmed herself. Remembered her training. She quickly got dressed and began to look at the ground around their sleeping pads. Indented grass, footsteps that led off into the darkness. They had camped in the shadow of a hill that led down to a small brook. In the light she could make out nothing until the rustle of grass made her draw a knife, poised to throw.

Yet it was Zafrina who stalked back into their small circle. She froze when she saw Moss and then walked forward. She didn't say anything, indeed her face was a mask of indifference as she got under her blanket and rolled away from Moss.

“Fine.” Moss grumbled. “I guess I'll ask then, what's wrong? Where are the other two?”

Zafrina’s biting whisper answered her, “Down by the water.”

Moss waited for anything else but when it didn't come she stalked off, muttering to herself about rude goats. The trip to the creak was short, well usually, but she stopped halfway when she heard the strangest of noises. Like someone was whimpering. Was one of them hurt? Moss felt her heart speed up and she quickened her pace but as she got closer, the whimpering turned to a peel of laughter. Teefee? And then a low moan. Rahdayo? What was she doing to him? Why, she'd wring that cat's neck if she had hu- Moss froze in the pathway. Before her at the brook’s edge were Teefee and Rahdayo. The Hand's light revealed them to be very, very nude. Teefee was on top of Rah. Moving to some hidden rhythm. And it clicked. The whimpering. The moaning. Moss spun and trudged back up the hill, feeling very flustered and foolish.

She reached the camp and instantly attacked Zafrina, jumping on her and shaking her shoulder. “You could have spared my eyes that, you stupid g-” She stopped as Zafrina looked at her, blue eyes watery, rimmed with red and cheeks stained wet. Moss sighed, deflating at the sight. Zafrina stared at her, rubbing her eyes. She looked… Sad? Sorrowful? Moss reached out her hand and touched her pupil's cheek. “Let’s talk.” She said in a soft voice.

After throwing some wood on the fire, Moss wrapped herself up in a blanket and sat beside Zafrina. There was silence between the two and one Moss would have to break, as Zafrina just stared at the kindling flames.

“Zafrina. Please tell me you aren't upset because you wanted t-” Moss began but was cut off as Zafrina turned to her, eyes brimming with a familiar anger.

“You're joking right?”

Moss raises her hands in defense. “Alright, not a great question to ask I suppose.” She smiled and Zafrina rolled her eyes. “Then what's this all about?”

Zafrina sighed and looked away. “He shouldn't be doing that with her. She's… Not right for him.”

“Oh?” Moss asked, putting her hands out towards the fire. It was warm on such a chill night.

“She’ll hurt him. I know it. She's just a stupid girl and he's a foolish boy who can't say no.” Zafrina scowled, anger in her voice as she stood up and began to pace. “Teefee is always going on about being sold into marriage. How she can't wait to go home. And then she goes on leading my brother like this? She'll leave him after using him. He'll be… Devastated. I can't… I don't…” Zafrina looked pained, words difficult for her. This was odd, she was usually so full of quips.

Moss shut her eyes for a moment, thinking about that one time Renny and Delo, her cousins, had been fighting over the same girl. This was strangely similar but still different enough to make her choose her next words carefully. “Zafrina. Why didn't you stop them, then?”

At the question, Zafrina sighed and sat back down. “It would not have gone well if I did. He already hates me.”

“Hates you? Please. He's your brother. He could never hate you.”

Zafrina looked Moss in the eye, “Then why won't he speak to me?”

Moss squinted her eyes. She wasn't serious, was she? Oh for the gods sake, she was. Moss opened her mouth to speak, framing it as delicately as possible, “Zafrina, have you tried to talk to him?”

She opened her mouth to speak but shut it. Zafrina’s eyes cast a look of shame and she looked away from Moss.

“You didn't like when he put his foot down the other day. Over that stew because you thought your idea was better.” Moss said, Zafrina nodded with some reluctance. “Ever since, you've turned a cold shoulder to him. You, Zafrina. You do it all the time. To him. To me. Teefee. It wasn't always like this. This conversation has been a long time coming. So why?”

“Because I'm just a bitch.” Zafrina’s voice was quiet, etched with self loathing.

“No.” Moss blurted but thought better of it, “Well, yes, you can be. So can I. But that's only a symptom of the real cause. So what is it?”

“Thanks.” Zafrina grumbled, before looking up at the night sky. “I guess I…” Her voice wavered, “I'm just angry. All the time. I rarely feel anything else.” She took a deep breath. “I know if I lose my temper I'll hurt the people I care about so I shut them out. It's easier that way. For the both of us. I hate myself, Moss.” She quivered, looking back towards the dying fire. There was something else on her face. Terror.

“I know such anger.”

“No you don't.” Zafrina snapped.

“I do.” Moss said with calm. “My first teacher was murdered in front of me.” Zafrina stilled. “Yes. You aren't the only one in the world to watch people you care about be butchered before your eyes. That anger drove me, consumed me and I ended up hating myself. Just like you. So I tracked down the murderers and I slew them all. All of them and anyone else there at that time, even if they were innocent. After that, my guilt coupled with that anger drove me to a very dark place, Zafrina. I thought about ending it all but time has a way of moving on without you knowing.” She sighed. “My cousin found me, wandering alone. She took me back home. It wasn't pretty at first but it did get better. And you know why?” She looked at Zafrina, whose focus was already on her, “Because they loved me and were patient. I let them in, I didn't push them away. Eventually I left. Not entirely well, never entirely will be but then I stumbled on a couple orphans. The girl, with her blue eyes, she knew them. They had been my own.”

Moss took Zafrina’s hand and squeezed. “I never wanted children. Truth be told. But you've been stuck with me now for a long time and I won't let you suffer in silence anymore. I thought training you would help, perhaps it has, but now comes the hard part. Talking.”

“Tears slid down Zafrina’s face. “How do I start?” She asked.

“Apologize to your brother. Start from there.”

“Okay.” She dipped her chin. Moss squeezed her hand again.

“I am proud of you, you know. You're a brilliant young woman, Zafrina. With so much potential.”

Zafrina said nothing as she nodded and wiped at her eyes. After a time she spoke again, “Moss. There's something else.”

“And what's that?” Moss raised an eyebrow.

“I missed my cycle.”

Moss stared at her in disbelief and opened her mouth to say… She didn't know what. Thankfully, or ironically, before she could say anything Rahdayo and Teefee burst through the brush into the clearing, holding hands and giggling like children. When they saw Moss and Zafrina, Rahdayo blushed a deep red and Teefee’s face became extremely smug with triumph. Moss stood up and pointed a finger at all of them.

“That's it! We're having the talk. Now sit down!”

This city, this Thysia – It was boring.

Shahari yawned, her arms stretched forward and tail stiffened until she felt that familiar release deep within her muscles. All the fatigue she’d built up over the day washed away in an instant and as she returned to her curled up position on this strange sandstone-tiled roof, she observed the colours of the sky begin to change.

The vibrant blue of daylight gave way to a spectacle of colours, no doubt painted by the Gods themselves. A deep red gave way to oranges and purples as the Itzala set. As the accursed eye moved its gaze to other parts of the world, a comforting chill and sense of peace came upon Thysia, one that blessed them every night, and one that Shah wasn’t particularly fond of.

The Thysians were a boisterous people during the day, but they retreated back to their homes and all but disappeared at night. Even the nocturnal beasts were hard to spot as soon as the Itzala went away, and so usually Shah was all alone at night, stalking the empty streets and alleys and jumping from roof to roof in an attempt to find anything to do.

Oh, to be one of the Pantheras back home!

Shah sighed, a smile finding its way onto her face.

’Us Pantheras hunt and hunt until we catch life by the throat, love!’ would preach Shah’s father right about now, ’No time to mope, so get up and get to where Shah knows she must go!’

“Duh!” She responded to her own memory and giggled. A groan came from the people sleeping in the room below her.

There was an issue, of course, she’d been prohibited from going where she needed to go.

And so she had resigned herself to jumping around at night. That had been nearly a month ago.

A flurry and not-so-quiet flurry of movement later and Shah had slid off the roof and landed amongst the rubbish strewn all over the alleyway below. From there, she simply followed her nose and ears. She found her way out of the labyrinthine network of alleyways and onto a main avenue - the kind the Suneater’s warbands would use to parade into town after a successful campaign - only now it was completely empty.

Completely empty, that is, with the exception of a lone stall. A stove full of stew bubbled quietly, the spotless countertop lit up by a pair of unassuming, unscented white candles. It was a nice kind of candlelight - not too bright and not too dim, perfect for Shah’s enhanced vision.

She approached the unmanned stall, sat down on one of the stools, and rang the bell.

The pot continued to bubble. A meaty scent wafted up from below the cast iron lid. She rang the bell again.

Then a third time. And when she was about to ring it a fourth time, an onion crashed and exploded on the ground next to the stall. Shah hissed and in her periphery saw what looked like a window closing. Nosy losers, the Panthera thought.

“No one here…” She muttered and stared at the pot of stew.

A moment later, she had opened the lid and stuck her clawed finger into the stew. She licked it clean, hummed as the savoury, smooth flavour coated her mouth, and went back for more.

At some point, Shah had actually figured out how to turn off the stove and had cooled the stew down enough so that she could scoop up entire handfuls.

She hadn’t eaten the entire time she’d been awake, after all! Two hours without food was probably long enough to kill her, so she hyper-focused on the stew in front of her and nothing else.

And out of nowhere, a large hand grabbed her by the collar of her dress and lifted her up into the air. She choked and coughed out a mouthful of stew and threw the stew in her hands all over the stall.

“OI! Caught ya, ya shitty cat!” Shouted a deep, gruff voice into her ear. She hissed back.

“Shah’s not done anything! Shah’s innocent, she only ate free food!” She explained even as she swung her claws all over, failing to scratch anything other than air.

“Free food?! Ya dirty li’l… It’s a SELF-SERVE! Three coins per plate! Readin’ too difficult for ya, ya thief? No one tell ya how night time stalls work?! Bah!” The stall owner spat at Shah and threw onto the counter, spilling the still-hot stew all over it and Shah.

“Shah’s food!” She cried and tried to scoop the spilled stew back into the pot with her hands.

“Your food?! ‘Cause of ya, I haven’t been able ta save a single coin for tha last three months! Always stealin’ food from me stall, always gettin’ away with it! I got a family ta feed!” The merchant slapped the pot out of Shah’s hands and pushed the Panthera off the counter and onto the gravel road. She gasped at the sharp sensation along the palms on her hands and knees as she landed.

“And now – ‘Cause of ya, this is another night I ain’t workin’! Oh, I ought’a…” The stall owner, whom Shah could now tell was a particularly massive Snouter, fell silent for a split moment, then opened a drawer and pulled out a cleaver. “... Ya catfolk have only made this city worse. I’ll show ya how Thysia treats unwelcome guests.”

“N-No, please! Shah thought - She thought the food was free! Please!” Shah sobbed, her heart nearly exploding and her legs having turned to jelly. She did her best to crawl away from the Snouter, but soon a brand new set of footsteps entered her earshot. Metallic and heavy, these footsteps rushed to her side, and she could tell the Snouter had stopped approaching.

With tears in her eyes, Shah turned to the armoured guard kneeling next to her, her eyes widened with hope, only for the guard to suddenly force her arms behind her back and tie her wrists tightly with rope.

Her hope was crushed in a second and as she was slung over the elephant-like guard’s wide shoulder and carried away, she could only stare back at the smug look on the Snouter’s face. Suddenly, she became aware of all the people leaning out of their windows and staring at the scene she had been a part of, and immediately she hung her head in shame. It was only made worse when the Guard grumbled.

“Might need to throw this uniform away now… Cat piss smell ain’t gonna come off.”

Shah whimpered.

“Joking, lass. I’ll give you a pair of new trousers when we get to the garrison.”



Shah was dressed in a plain grey set of trousers and shirt, no shoes, squeaky clean and lying curled up on the prison bed, staring at her bandaged hands.

How did she even get there? Was she an actual criminal now? Thysia made no sense, she was nearly killed and yet she was the one that ended up behind bars.

It was very early in the morning – the Hand was probably still high up in the sky, if her internal clock was to be trusted. By all means, everyone should be asleep, even the guard that had imprisoned her. But she could hear two sets of footsteps approaching. She perked up as the guard from before appeared and looked at her from the other side of the bars.

“Not lucky, are you li’l panther? To have a run-in with the Pigskins. Don’t worry, I went back to the scene while you were cryin’ in the bathtub and confirmed that what you ate was a chicken and beef stew.” The guard pondered for a second, “I guess not so unlucky after all.”

Shah hissed at the massive man and curled up even tighter. Making fun of her, arresting her, and now even trying to confuse her with riddles!

“Say, I rescued you back there, am I gettin’ a reward for that?” It wasn’t a question, Shah realised, as the guard immediately reached for his keyring and went to unlock the gate to her cell.

”Touch her and it’s your head I cut off.” A familiar voice erupted through the prison hallway. Shah could hear the light talon steps of the half-blooded Kestrel draw closer, as Konne marched towards the guard standing in front of her jail cell. Her face was a mixture of annoyance and pure anger as she stared at the guard. ”You’re to release her immediately, guardsmen. Orders from Lord Suneater himself.”

The guard stiffened up nearly immediately and simply unlocked her gate and swung it open for Konne. “Wouldn’t dream of touching her. Had many chances while she was washing and changing. Did nothing then. Saved her from the Pigskins, would’ve ended up in a stew downtown.”

Shah sat up on the bed and as soon as Konne walked past the guard, Shah ran towards her bird friend, grabbing onto her clothes while completely unaware of her claws. “Shah did nothing wrong! She thought the food was free, she really thought so! Shah is not a criminal, she’s a Panthera, can’t be bad!” Shah whined and nuzzled desperately into Konne’s midsection. “Konne!”

The Kestrel sighed, doing her best to unhook Shah’s claws from her clothing. ”I’m sure you didn’t know Shah. But you can’t just bound off into the night like that.” She replied, half-pulling half-leading Shah out of the prison cell. Before turning to the guard with a glare on her face. ”First thing in the morning, get your fellow guardsmen and arrest those Snouters. Harming the bride of Lord Suneater is a crime punishable by torture and I will ensure it is delivered.” She didn’t wait for a reply, instead continuing to pull Shah along down the hallway.

Soon enough they had found their way out of the garrison entirely and Shah was able to regain control of herself, or at least enough of it that she managed to retract her claws. Then, after a while of silent walking, she let out a deep and shaky breath.

“Shah goes out at night because her husband sleeps all night. She was banned from sneaking into his room to watch him sleep so nowhere to go but outside! But Thysia is dangerous, she realises now. Also need new clothes. Shah threw her old ones away because uh, the Snouter ate them. Yeah.”

As she spoke, Konne suddenly stopped, looking at Shah. ”You…snuck into his room? No. Don’t answer that.” She sighed. ”We’ll get you new clothes, and. I’ll try to think of something for you to do at night okay? Something not dangerous that doesn’t require you leaving the palace.”

“And Konne?” Shah climbed onto Konne’s back, careful enough to not bother her wings, in one well-practised move. “You saved Shah- You saved me. Thank you. I was scared…” Shah whispered into her friends’ ear, and then went on to nibble on her shoulder.

The kestrel let Shah onto her back, having gotten used to the half-blood’s desire to be carried at times. ”Lord Suneater ordered it. And. The palace would be less lively without you I suppose.” She glared at Shah nibbling on her shoulder, sighing again as she continued to carry her towards the palace.