Intricacies of Asymmetry

[Caden Law]

Ask before joining; I got plans for this and mean to end it semi-quickly.

Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
5:59 AM, Day of the Iron Song, Month of Iraes Marching, 3177 of the Occultist Calendar (OY)

Picture if you will, a forest that should be green, crisp and clear. There should be animals about, some of them quite mythic simply Because, and others every bit as mundane as the deer you might see peeking at the road from a safe distance. Weeds and flowers should both be in full bloom, vines should be growing and the whole damn place should be filled with the racket of the everyday miracle that is Life in Progress.

Except it isn't.

Welcome to the deeps of the Forest of Tembrethnil, approximately one or two hundred miles southeast of Trenycë. Welcome to an area where the leaves are going grey, the animals have all gone missing or died, and there's an unnatural chill that simply should not be anywhere near a forest in the heat of Summer. Accompanying it is an equally unnatural fog; the kind that heralds Bad Things, and this one very much lives down to that archetype. We won't see them just yet, but don't(?) worry, they'll be along soon enough.

The collection of guerrilla warriors you're about to meet are actually counting on it, as a matter of fact. Along a rather old, suitably abandoned road, you'll only find three of them; the rest are hidden, but not at all far. Per the rules of the game, Bait must always be presented in the open while the hooks are hidden as cleverly as possible.

Their names are Aldinar, Vara, and Eledier. They stand out from their fellows by virtue of not being actual Rangers, and they look the part. Aldinar, the token male, stands to the left, wearing a mixture of armor and robes, holding a strange spear about as long as he is tall, his face hidden away behind a steel mask joined to an almost amusingly pointed helm. Vara, off to the right, is much the same, though her hair is long and dark blue, let out from beneath her helm in a cascade. She wields a slightly curved sword with the same odd appearance as Aldinar's spear; the blade looks like it's made from some kind of material that can't decide if it's stone, metal, liquid or glass, and its color is almost entirely blue with golden detailing.

At the center of the three is Eledier, and you can tell she's the resident Commander by virtue of the fact that she's dressed like both of them, but completely different. She wears form-fitting steel armor from the waist up, complete with a grim looking mask joined to a pointed helm, with her long red hair cascading down her back over a functional strip of cloth that's as much a banner as it is a cape. From the waist down is a battle-skirt; long enough to cover her legs down to the lower portion of each shin, with plates of armor straped and sown onto it. Beneath that are pants and boots. She carried a rather long-hilted sword, similar to her fellows except that its blade was red.

And now that you've wasted enough time examining them one way, examine them another: By what they say. If you can, try to ignore the metallic echo the masks give their voices.

"Something is coming," said Aldinar.

"Always," said Vara.

"Indeed," said Eledier. "But I do not believe it is what we are expecting."

Incidentally, this is when the fog rolled in. Heavy and dead and gray and thick; so thick you couldn't cut it with a knife. Things stirred within it and they could not be seen -- not yet, anyway. The noises were of sawing and screaming, gagging and horror. Nature itself dying a slow, wretched, indignant death, only to be dragged back into movement by a distant and terrible force of will. Where the fog crept, grass withered and died, and the trees seemed to almost tremble with a grim anticipation of what was to come.

And what came was not one ugly thing on its lonesome, but a whole bloody lot of them en masse.

First were the lowest of the hordes; dead Men telling no tales as they dragged rusted tools around, their eyes long since gone blank or having rotted out entirely. In teams of two and three and four, they took to the trees like a gang of rapists to a young girl. They spread out along each one, stripping it bare of leaves and hammering nails into its bark, then wrapping so many of the branches in barbed wire. Each and every single one bore a crude looking eye, notched into it with the clumsy tenacity of the dead.

After the first teams, there came more. They brought shovels and saws, and though their tools were primitive and their bodies weak, they had numbers and an awful drive. One by one, they uprooted their victims and rent the ground asunder as they did it.

Finally came the dead Elves, many of them ancient and many of them nowhere near it. Some still bled. A poor few still clinged to enough life that they were crying. All the same, they stepped through the tangle of roots and, using nothing but hammers and chisels, they drove in the symbol that now haunted Raiaran children's nightmares.

A six-sided diamond, inset with a single eye. The crudest form of Xem'zund's personal mark.

When they were done, the desecrated trees heaved themselves up like staggering drunks with a thousand legs each. Those that did not move were simply left to rot on the ground, the nails and wire ripped out of them in such a way that they bled sap all over the place.

It had been a slowmoving tide, but the Elves of the Farstrike Retinue were not known for any measure of impatience. For that matter, they were hardly known at all, which is exactly how they wanted it.

"They come," Vara noted.

"Their leader is not yet seen," Aldinar replied. "We may have to strike first, and deep, in order to draw him out."

"No. He will be here," said Eledier, placatingly. "That hedge-necromancer will die for his crimes today," she added, her voice almost liltingly pleasant even with the metallic echo.

"I do not see why we must wait as the forest dies," Aldinar muttered. "This will not be reflected upon kindly at Caesai Maer."

"War has a way of justifying that which was previously unjustifiable," Vara replied. "We wait because we must. We will fight because we must. We will die, if we must."

"Speak for yourself," Aldinar ordered. "I plan on living to see the end of this."

"Then do not advocate such a rush to your own death, fellow Seer," Eledier ordered in turn. What passed for an arguement ended right then and there, give or take a sigh.

Conveniently enough, this is when the target and his ilk finally showed their wretched faces.

His name was Kholia Horren. Once upon a time, he had been a proper Wizard of moderate skill and standing. Then he turned to necromancy. Then he went in too deep. And now look at him: Haggard and old, with his Grimoire chained around his waist and his Name claimed by Xem'zund in order to insure fealty. A lieutenant promised power beyond his dreams, driven mad, and then thrown into what amounts to a menial supply job. What had been a tall, strapping Salvic man was now bent forward with the ravages of age and darkened arcana, his face and head covered from the upper lip straight up, back and to the base of the skull by metal plates that had been magically fused into place. Etched into the front of it was the same symbol as what the dead Elves had notched into the trees.

Beyond that were greying robes and a distinct lack of personal hygiene, whatever that's worth.

He was accompanied, more worryingly, by an honor guard of cavaliers mounted on giant spiders, each one bearing an arcane lance covered in wicked barbs. Unlike the lot of them though, Kholia walked, leaning on an ancient staff the whole way. At its head was a red diamond, positioned like the blade of a spear and formed around an unblinking eye.

"Do you see?" Eledier asked. "Just as planned."

"Ho-ho," mocked Aldinar.

"Shall we strike now?" Vara asked.

The answer did not come in words, simply action. As one, each Seer planted their blades into the ground before them, stepped forward and began to move. As one, each Seer began to dance through exactly the same moves, at exactly the same time and in exactly the same way. To a casual observer, it would've resembled a combination of Tai Chi with some of the hand movements of a Middle-Eastern bellydancer.

Tracing along each movement, power coalesced around them. It converged into each Seer's right hand, and for the briefest of moments it crystalized into something the size and shape of a slightly deformed marble bearing an Elven rune.

As one, the Seers ended their dance and raised their hands; fingers alternately clasping and pointing forward as each one picked out the same target.

Then, without fanfare or battlecries, they fired.

The spells rippled through the air, spiraled into one another and seperated close to their target; three of the Necromancer's Guard went down in a blaze of teal fire and song. Their spiders and much of the area around them went out in the same way. Lurching at the center, his free arm wrapped around his head to try and shield himself, Kholia went unharmed. The Seers had foreseen him coming, but they had not counted on the possibility of his defenses including a scattershot barrier.

Time is a very fluid thing, after all.

"Oh well," Eledier sighed. "I suppose we may have to try this your way after all, Aldinar."

"I'd say I told you so, but that would be incredibly rude of me, wouldn't it?"

"Very human, at that," Vara replied, though not unkindly.

"KILL THEM!" Kholia screamed, his Voice rippling in the fog and briefly turning it bloody red. He thrust a hand forward and pitch black lightning shot from his fingertips.

In one fluid motion, all three Seers pirouetted back, drew their weapons from the ground and struck up into the lightning. Blades sang in the humid morning air, and Kholia's spell broke almost impotently against them.

"KILL THEM ALL!" Kholia screamed again, and the fog once more turned red for a split second.

By the time it returned to its normal ugly grey, Men and Elves were flooding through it, their movements so vast that no measure of fog could've ever hidden them. The sheer volume of their brandished weapons caused ripples and clearings that were visible even from the two hundred yard distance. Kholia staggered forward after them, screeching profanity the whole way.

Calm before the coming storm, the Seers remained standing on the road, flourishing their weapons into ready stances with a sense of righteously doomed bravado about them.

"Tell me, Eledier," Aldinar began, "Are things still going as planned?"

"Just as planned," she repeated, then said again, "Just as planned."

The Bait waited, and the Rangers took aim...

[Caden Law]

The Seers stood their ground as spell after murderous spell shot towards them. From black lightning to hellfire to swarms of tiny demons made from tainted spiritual energy and shockwaves of pure force; nothing touched them until Kholia's army was close enough to do so personally.

Then and only then did the Seers give ground, and they did so while taking limbs, heads, and whole bodies for every single step. They fought with the uniformity of a musical troupe, each one covering the next in such a way that their defenses had no gaps other than those lined with blades and magic. It didn't take long at all before the bodies and parts were piling up around them, and an astute observer would've taken note that each Seer seemed bent on maintaining their own little pile.

Aldinar's pile consisted of severed heads and arms. Eledier's was made of more-or-less whole bodies, with added upper torsos. Vara's was composed of severed legs and lower torsos. It didn't matter who actually took each kill, that was simply how the corpses went. They did not distinguish between Man or Elf; Undead was Undead, and it was a transcendant state of vile corruption that made any other distinction irrelevant.

The whole while, Kholia kept moving closer and closer, throwing spell after spell and obscenity after obscenity.

"I WILL HAVE YOUR SOULS, SEERS! I WILL EAT YOUR EYES AND FLAY YOUR MINDS AND RAPE YOUR BODIES!"

The fog pulsed redder and redder as he came, and his spells were starting to grow more powerful.

"YOU WILL DIE SCREAMING, AND IT WILL ONLY BE THE BEGINNING OF WHAT I WILL DO TO YOU!"

Close enough now, he must've reckoned. Kholia stopped and raised his staff high with both hands. The fog had turned almost entirely red around him by then, and there were sparks of black and purple all about the staff's length. The Eye had settled its gaze on the Seers--

"WITNESS YOUR DOOM, FOR THE END OF THE AGE OF ELVES IS NIGH!"

Only when he finished Speaking did Kholia realize his mistake.

Shots rang out in the morning air -- a sound like an entire Company's worth of rifles going off all at once. But the bullets were spells, and the rifles were staves, and the Company consisted of Rangers with plenty an axe to grind. Bolts of light zinged and zipped by the Seers and between the zombies, sometimes swerving and sometimes spiraling as they shot in for their one true target: Kholia himself.

The first chorus of magic bullets slammed into his scattershot barrier and, appropriately enough, scattered. His remaining guards fell from their steeds, and then the spiders themselves went down as holes ripped through each and every one of them in turn. Mixed in with it all were explosions; like Akashiman firecrackers going off in the midst of a celebration. Kholia shrank back from it all and drove his staff into the ground.

His Honor Guard immediately transmuted in a flash of ugly red and black, turning into a great wall of ash as they went.

"YOU DO NOT SCARE ME!" he cried from his little safe haven.

Then the second volley of shots came in and incinerated it with another thunderclap of fireworks. Kholia staggered back and screamed something that could never be a word, only the crudest possible translation of indignant rage. The Undead took it for what it really was: An order.

The tide of moving corpses immediately spread out from the Seers, washing into the still living section of Tembrethnil Forest like a wave of blood and piss, leaving the security of the fog as they went.

"Guard yourselves!" Vara shouted, and the Rangers did.

Though they went unseen, the Undead kept track of them the same way anyone does when they fight a sniper: Muzzleflash. Ignoring the obvious differences between guns and magic, it was the easy way. Even if the Rangers took a terrible toll on them for it.

"We are being overrun!" Vara declared in the narrow stretch of seconds between a spinning cut and the impalement of her next attacker.

"Not yet!" Eledier replied. "We must hold the tide! Draw him in!"

"Sheer weight of numbers will drag us down!" Vara argued.

"Then we will do the logical thing and take the fight to the enemy," Aldinar finally declared.

Too late, Eledier and Vara called out for him to stop. With a singular lunge forward, Aldinar plowed right through three of his attackers and then leapt high -- higher than any Man ever could -- over a throng of Undead. Back into the frey with a twist, he sent bodyparts flying in every direction.

"Damn it all," Eledier spat, even as she and Vara switched places and enemies.

"Yes...come," Kholia muttered. "COME TO ME, LITTLE ELF!"

And Aldinar did just that. With his spear and arms moving as if they had minds of their own, he plowed a bloodless swath through the thickest part of Kholia's army, until driving right through them all and coming out in the clear, dead space that the necromancer himself occupied. Without a word, without a battlecry, without any sort of pomp or circumstance, the Seer struck.

His blade ruptured Kholia's last barrier spells as easily as a knife pops a rubber balloon, and with a similar sounding pop of air littered with tainted magic. He stepped forward, pivoting about and swinging his spear again--

And Kholia blocked it with his staff. In an instant, he was moving back and Aldinar chased him still. How such an old, weary looking man could ever be that fast, Aldinar would never know. He spun again and leapt this time, thrusting the spear forward at full length. Magic gathered at its tip, and there came a sound like furious angels singing as it struck.

The only problem was that Kholia wasn't there.

Point in fact, the only thing actually there was a horse. A beautiful white horse with lightly browned spots all over it -- a Raiaeran charger of the variety often used by long distance messengers. A very expensive horse by most standards, which is why most messengers had to spend the better part of a decade literally earning one's ownership before they could truly call it their own.

The difference being that the rider was not an Elf and the horse was only there for a split second before its entire body more or less rippled and detonated in an ungodly spray of blood, guts, broken bones and you-honestly-don't-want-to-know. In the process, the rider was hurled screaming right into Aldinar, which sent both of them planting back into the ground in an ugly tangle of limbs and screaming that mixed Raiaeran with...pretty much everything you can pin a name to, really.

For a few minutes, nothing happened in the clearing except for blood and gore raining down and covering just about everything in sight.

Then the Wizard named Caden Law finally lifted his head. He sat up, disentangled himself from Aldinar's twitching form and spent a precious couple of seconds patting himself up and down to make sure nothing important had been blown off. Particularly between the legs, since, y'know. Exploding animal. While he was riding it. [Insert Rude Joke of Your Choice.]

"Ah," Caden said to himself, "I believe I'm going to need a bath after this."

And right on cue, Kholia sat up. Even through the intestinal splatterings all over him, he had horse-shoe marks up and down his back. He turned, and though his eyes could not be seen, there was absolutely no mistaking that kind of glare. Only a Wizard -- fallen or otherwise -- could ever glare like that. It made the hairs stand up on your neck, and in this case it turned the air redder than blood.

Confronted with this, Caden quietly adjusted his gore-stained goggles and then added, "And possibly a change of underwear, yes."

Which of course had to be when Aldinar finally sat upright, shook the cobwebs out and made a few disparraging comments about something awful leaking through his mask. He took about the same amount of time as both Caden and Kholia, considered the situation and finally did something decidedly unElfly.

"Gods-fucking-bloody-hell-piece-of-shit-DAMMIT," he raved, and in Coronian, because Raiaeran is a language that's actually quite barren in terms of profanity. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK."

Caden, who by now was just about over his shock at the whole situation and probably had another ten or eleven seconds before he'd remember what all was chasing him, gave a little golf clap. "Very nicely put. I'm impressed."

"YOU BLOODY GODS DAMNED IDIOT!" Aldinar shouted at him.

"Very, very well said, Sir. You know, you're the first Elf I've ever met who--OHSHIT!"

He just remembered what he was running from. Which is why Caden immediately threw himself to his feet and resumed running like Hell, whilst Aldinar stayed put just long enough to exchange Significant Glares with Kholia. Who by now was completely veiled in pitch black lightning, hovering about three inches off the ground and looking rather pissed off. He held out one hand and his staff slapped wetly into it, leaving a string of intestines to wrap around it from the diamond down.

Try not to think about what splattered with them.

"I...am going...to...CAST YOU INTO THE BLOODY FUCKING PIT!" He howled.

Aldinar did not take this as the sign to leave, but he did it anyway. As all valiant men do, he grabbed his spear and righteously haulled ass in the same direction as Caden: Back to his fellow Seers, who were now surrounded by little pyramids of dead people.

"Yes...RUN! RUN FOR YOUR MISERABLE LI-"

It bears mention that Kholia was not the reason Aldinar decided to cut his losses and run.

The army of undead that pretty well ran over him was.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
9:00 PM, Day of Iron Song

Say what you will about the Elves, and there really is a lot to say about them from every side, but they do like to think of themselves as good guys and will often go out of their way to help you just so they can remind you that they are the good guys. For people who can live up to a thousand years in some cases, they're remarkably childish like that.

But they're still very thorough about some things, to the point that the Raiaeran word for rescue has one very minute syllable to differentiate it from their word for taking someone prisoner. Another delicious irony is that the Raiaeran word for torture is actually the exact same word they use for hospitality, its meaning changed only with context.

Caden Law was painfully aware of these things, which is why he felt equal parts horror, dread, and suicidal when he realized he had woken up inside of a cage and the Elves had done the thorough job of disarming, disarmoring, and downright stripping him down to his 'civies,' which consisted of a pair of black pants and a white shirt, along with his boots and his glasses -- both of which had been set neatly into the corner near the cage door. All of his weapons, wands, armor, and even his Pointy Hat and Wizard's Coat had been set into a very neat row right in plain sight and well out of reach. They'd even gone the extra nine yards of cleaning the leftover grime off the things.

"Well. At least it smells better than the Kebiran Auction House," he mumbled to himself, just before scooching over to the wall and throwing on his boots and glasses.

It was around this time that Caden took stock of his situation. He did so in the manner of a Wizard who had been up shit creek and back again, and who then swam both ways while it was on fire. Which is to say that he was utterly unimpressed and trying desperately to stave off the impending flashback sequence.

The Farstrike Campsight was like any Raiaeran settlement that happened to be uncomfortably close to the woods: In perfect, rub-your-face-in-it harmony with Mother Nature. All in all, Caden's cage was really the only thing out of place about it. It hung a good five or six feet off the ground, held aloft on a bulky iron chain that looped between two intertwining trees. The bars were thick and well polished, the floor was solid and the door was held shut by no less than five different padlocks -- and only two of them were magical.

Incidentally, it was a steel cage. Which would've made Caden downright gleeful since that meant he could simply bust out of it when everyone was asleep. Except everybody knows Elves don't sleep. Which prompted the obvious response of: "Oh gods dammit."

"Are you awake now?" someone asked, in a Perfectly Smooth and Pleasant voice of undefined gender.

"Ah. Yes, yes I am. Care to tell me why I'm locked in a cage?"

"...you don't remember?" the Elf asked.

"No, no. I'm sure I remember. I just want to pretend the memory is a hallucination and I didn't almost get my legs blown off my Elven frag-stones while running for my life from an army of cannibalistic brain-eating zombies trying to martyr me in the name of the Greater Evil."

"Fair enough," said the Elf. "But it was not a hallucination."

"Shit."

"I am Ringo, by the way," and a hand more or less appeared in front of Caden. At which point, he noticed that he wasn't actually alone in the cell. There was an Elf in there with him, albeit slightly see-through and dressed much differently from the Seers and holding a pistol-shaped wand at him in an almost amiable sort of way.

By now, of course, Caden had seen and done and been through enough that this did absolutely nothing to phase him. So he shook Ringo's hand and shrugged.

"Blueraven," he said. "Funny name for an Elf."

"Funny name for a Man."

It bears mention that Ringo was wearing stark white robes with green trim, along with some lightly made steel armor about the chest, shoulders and hands. He(?) also wore a mask of solid steel. All the armor was colored black, the voice carried a hollow echo to it and the eyepieces were made from tinted red glass.

"So. Obvious question time?" Caden asked.

"We are guarding you in four hour increments. It is safest if one of us is actually in here to guard you. I am merely the second guard."

"...question #2, you get three guesses and then I try to stage a riot," Caden pointed out. The wand started glowing. "That was a joke, by the way."

"We stripped you of your weapons and gear in order to minimize the potential threat. We took you alive because it would have been rude not to."

"See, there's the problem. I don't get how I can be a potential threat, but then it would've been rude not to take me alive. I mean, don't get me wrong or anything, I rather like being alive. It just doesn't make any sense."

"Perfectly reasonable. But it bears mention that you were not the one we took into consideration when it came to letting you live. Incidentally," the Elf paused to backhand the bars, then shouted something almost song-like in Raiaeran. Caden recognized it as a call for an executioner.

As if cued by that and that alone, the camp sparked to life. Elves emerged from tents and from hiding in plain sight; at least thirty of them, men and women and only a token few still wore their masks. Among those who appeared, Caden recognized one in particular as the same Elf from before.

Not so for his face, but because he had a rather vengeful aura about him. Literally. It was glowing red.

"Ah," Caden sounded in recognition. "Well, I suppose that makes sense."

"More or less."

"I'd say it's been nice knowing you, but I'd be lying. No offense."

"None taken, as the feeling is quite mutual."

Which, invariably, begs the question of what exactly Caden did to get here in the first place. As the Run For Your Life sequence happened entirely offscreen, allow it to be summarized in short order: Caden ran for his life. So did the Elves. Over the course of approximately two hours, the whole bloody lot of them went fleeing through the forest, across a stream, and finally across a road. Said road had been completely covered in marble-sized magic landmines. Caden had, in a blind and exhausted and perfectly reasonable panic, detonated every single one of them right after crossing the road.

The problem with this is that while he killed a whole shitload of Undead, he had also severely wounded the body of one Seer and the pride of both others. In particular, Aldinar's ego had been shoved right over a quaint little cliff since Caden's incompetence had cost him the chance to kill one necromancer, brought another's entire army into the frey, and wounded Eledier rather badly. When Caden tried to get away from the Elves too, Vara knocked him out cold with the hilt of her sword.

Which leads to Here and Now.

"Get him out of there," Aldinar ordered. On cue, two Rangers simply appeared and started unlocking the door. Ringo gave a few motions with his wand-gun-thing and Caden eventually got the hint to climb out. He did so exactly three seconds before Aldinar would've ordered him to be dragged out kicking and screaming.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Aldinar asked as Caden was jabbed along into standing before him.

"Not a clue!" he replied with a manic little smile. "I've been too busy trying not to die to stop and think," he added as an afterthought.

"Your actions -- your utter incompetence -- have led us right back to square one, and may yet spell the permanent doom of the City of Trenycë. We were on the verge of striking down the necromancer, Kholia Horren, when you showed up and brought another entire army on your heels. You have Zero Stepped us and very well sealed our fates if the Gods do not answer Lady Vara's prayers soon. The deaths of tens of thousands are on your head."

"...actually..."

"Do not try and argue the point, Human. Atone. Accept your death with some shred of dignity and--"

"Go fuck yourself," Caden told him, just before giving Aldinar the old Field Goal Punt. And promptly letting out a borderline girlish scream as his toe went clang against the Elf's codpiece.

"Honorless dog," Aldinar muttered. "I had a feeling you would try that."

"Owowowow--"

"Force him down," Aldinar ordered, and immediately held out a hand to one side. Someone, a Ranger, presented him with his red-bladed spear. At the same time, the Rangers who had guided Caden to stand before him, including Ringo, smacked his legs out from under him and jabbed the combination of a wand and two rifle-like staves into the back and sides of his neck.

As he watched Aldinar slowly and deliberately raise the spear and give it an almost ritualistic flip to aim the point down, it occurred to Caden that he was probably about to die. Seriously. Unless he could improvise something downright brilliant, Aldinar was going to shishkabob him into the ground.

The problem was that over the course of being chased through Tembrethnil Forest, in addition to experiencing his last month of worldly travels and dysfunctions, Caden had basically run out of brilliant things to say or do. So he just did something stupid instead.

Caden reached down to the ground without actually touching it, then threw his hands to the side. In an instant, the ground he knelt upon was airborn and catapulting away from his weapons. Aldinar stabbed into the pothole left in Caden's wake and let out an irate scream, by which point Caden had smacked into another ranger and bowled her over. He landed on top with a roll, threw out one hand and--

The Wand of Nevermorrow shot right into his grasp. By then, a few dozen riflestaves were being aimed at him, but Caden's Wandhand was just that little bit quicker; he swept down and to one side, and the ground from one end of the campsite to the next simply shifted six or seven inches in the direction he pointed. On cue, shots misfired into the air and nothing hit him. A second later, Caden slammed the wand's tip into the ground and tapped into the magic-permeated soil that made Raiaera such a verdant place to begin with; dirt, grass, vines and leaves whipped up and captured the weapon-arms of his would-be executioners en masse.

When it was all over, Caden looked at the lot of them and smiled in an almost relaxed sort of way.

"I can't believe that actually worked," he declared, placing his hands on his hips.

"It did not," said Aldinar, who was now standing behind him with spear in mid-swing for Caden's neck.

"STOP!"

And the spear did. Exactly one millimeter short of the skin on Caden's neck. For a few too many seconds after that, absolutely nothing happened. Caden couldn't breathe, didn't blink, and didn't dare to move so much as an inch to get away from the crimson blade poised to slit his throat and take the rest of his head off with it. The entire time, Aldinar was completely still as well; poised on the very tip of his right foot's toes, his left leg curled up and both arms clutched to the spear as if it were an overly long baseball bat. Even his hair didn't move.

"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Eledier, who had emerged from her tent just in time to put an end to it. She was shirtless, kept modest only by virtue of being bandaged from the waist straight to the chin and then back down to each elbow. How she made such a bloody, crusty thing look like a fashion statement, Caden would never know. Vara was there to brace her. The two of them looked like sisters, though Vara bore a small Elven rune tattooed on each cheek and Eledier was visibly taller even when slouched with injury.

Ignoring the obvious Hot Sisters thought, which would likely haunt him if he lived to see tomorrow night, Caden managed the simple leap to the conclusion that Aldinar was their brother. Probably. Hard to tell with Elves, since so many of them had similarly angled features, just about none of them had facial hair, and all of this particular lot had the old fashioned Pointy Ears of Death. On the bright side, most of them could be categorized by hair color. Sort of. Ish.

"Aldinar. What is the meaning of this," Eledier ordered, and Caden could tell it was such because he heard the distinct lack of a question mark. Wizards are weird like that.

"Could I volunteer that there is no meaning and this guy was just killing me to make himself feel better about having a tiny dick?" Caden asked.

"Now can I kill him?" Aldinar asked afterward, and Caden was accutely aware of the fact that the spear was trembling in rage.

"No," Caden mimed in a tiny voice.

"No," Eledier echoed, in a much bigger one. "Let it go, Aldinar." And just like that, the spear whipped away. It did so in a manner that was somehow entirely too close for comfort. Caden could almost hear the Elf nodding his head to the (elder?) Seer's authority.

"Holy shit," Caden mumbled. "It actually did work." And this was more for insult than anything else.

"What is your name, Wizard?" Eledier asked.

"Blueraven," he answered.

"Blueraven. Revert the camp back to normal, please," she said, and it was entirely too polite to be anything but an order. All the same, Caden hesitantly complied. The ground shifted a few inches, the soil let go of the Elves, and there were a few tense moments before something kin to Normalcy reasserted itself. The Rangers lost interest for the most part, and resumed their chores and recreations in turn, most vanishing from sight as they did.

"Step out of line and I will kill you," Aldinar declared, just before shoving past Caden and heading for one of the tents.

For his part, Caden just stood there like an idiot. His expression bordered on being an emoticon, spiritually similar to the D: face, except with functional eyebrows. And glasses. Which had almost fallen off by now.

"Shaul," Eledier called, and Caden was immediately aware of a see-through Ranger standing next to him with a drawn knife. He wore the full armor, same as many of the others, and Caden assumed him to be on-duty accordingly. "You know what to do."

"Preferably it doesn't involve stabbing me in the kidneys," said Caden.

"Do not be silly," Eledier said with a roll of her eyes, adding that, "We would rather cut those out."

Caden stared at her. Only belatedly did she add, "That was a joke, by the way."

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
9:50 PM, Day of Iron Song

When it comes to the fairer sex, men have a skewed view built upon years of indoctrination, misinterpretation, expectation, libido, and good old fashioned stupidity. The male Wizards of Salvar, particularly the scholastic branch from which Caden Law hails, is particularly infamous for creating men who are downright sexually dysfunctional across a hundred levels (which itself can probably be attributed to ritual circumcision at age five with no painkillers -- and that's just where it starts).

All the same, it isn't entirely unreasonable to assume certain things are going to happen when a barely dressed exotic warrior-princess-type issues a command to her subordinates along the lines of Bring him to my tent! whilst being handled in an incredibly suggestive way by her own sister. Who was also essentially half-nude, for that matter. Generally, this is cause for things like raucous celebration, renewed faith in one's god, the removal of pants, and then a healthy and athletic session of mathematics (count the legs, divide by two, add in the variable of three and so on).

Caden had these expectations. Point in fact, it was the first time he'd been downright hopeful of anything in a few months. The problem is that the Exotic Warrior-Princess of your dreams is supposed to follow up the first order with something like strip him or bring the oil of babymaking or even and fetch me my sheepskin protectives! whereas Eledier simply shot him down and nuked the wreckage with a casually dismissive, "And see to it that his belongings are returned to him."

Frankly speaking, Caden had never been so disappointed to go utterly unscathed in his entire life. Getting his stuff back felt like a slap in the face after his mind's eye had essentially pictured the kind of things that'd get you excommunicated from the Salvic Church. Or possibly just burnt at the stake. Whichever.

All the same, he got himself dressed (muttering obscure profanities the entire time), from the long coat to the pointed Hat, and even the return of his goggles. His scalpel returned to its makeshift hiding space between his sleeves, his Bazaar Wand went to the sleeves opposite, his bowie knife went back to its sheath on his belt...but he stopped short of putting the armor back on.

It had been beaten up, to put it simply. The Conscript Chestplate he'd been given back in Eluriand had seen him through everything from near-stab wounds to getting knocked through a wall to taking a fall from forty feet and Gods know what else. Looking at it now, the thing was little more than a torso-formed pile of dents, dings, scratches and a burn-mark or two. It was tin foil gone Quasimodo. It was dead weight.

And Caden convinced himself that he felt absolutely nothing when he set it right back down on the ground and strapped his Conscript's Sword to his back.

"Not going to take the armor?" asked Shaul, who had been self-appointed as Caden's overseer. There was an edge of passive-aggressive amusement in his voice, but nothing quite like mockery.

"No point in it," Caden said, just before experiencing one of those blinding moments of truly cosmic clarity, "Considering everything I've been through lately, and all the things I still need to do, a dingy piece of conscript's armor isn't going to do me much good."

Shaul shrugged, though Caden couldn't actually see it. They went the dozen or so paces to Eledier's tent in silence, and Shaul (probably) opted to stay outside while Caden brushed through the veils and entered alone.

For what it's worth, it probably speaks to the aforementioned Wizardly Dysfunctions that the first thing Caden noticed upon entering was that the tent was bigger inside than outside. Point in fact, the interior was something like a rustic log cobin with no windows, and veils instead of a door, and an actual working fireplace that just happened to burn a scentless, smokeless green without any tinder to fuel it. There was even a bearskin rug covered with small pillows on the floor. Incidentally, once Caden had noticed all these things, he also noticed the Unbelievably More Important Detail about what occupied the bearskin rug.

Namely Eledier, belly down, in nothing but a flimsy looking skirt. Vara knelt next to her with a wet sponge, also in next to nothing but a flimsy skirt and an equally flimsy looking top.

The only thing that possibly desexualized the image was that Eledier's bandages were being changed and her wounds were being cleaned. Considering that the wounds now amounted to nasty bruises and the cleaning was a bona fide massage, you can't really blame Caden for having a vocal chord trainwreck; the words were there to express what he thought of all this, but there were so many that they just slammed into each other on the way out and were never actually spoken.

"What?" Vara eventually asked, with a voice that was so innocent as to hit the male libido like a laser-guided sledgehammer. Caden buh'd at her for a few seconds. "Did you suffer a head injury in captivity, Blueraven?"

Buh.

"I think he is simply amazed at the magic we use," Eledier replied, propping herself up on her elbows. "I doubt he has seen Elven magic quite like ours."

Buh.

"Please, Blueraven. Be seated. We have much to discuss and only a limited amount of time to do so."

Buh, accompanied by the almost pained act of sitting down.

"...it is not all that difficult or impressive, Wizard," Vara mumbled. "Are you sure this one is worth our time?" she asked.

"He had better be," Eledier sighed, and then sat up. Which would've been gods damned magnificent if not for what she said next. "If he cannot help us, then he will die," she pointed out, as casually as if Caden wasn't even sitting there.

Elven Women 3, Caden Law 0.

Incidentally, he had but one thought about it all. One incredibly bitter little thought.

I hate Elves.

[Caden Law]

Strip away the glamour, Caden thought, and Elves came off as rather childish in ways that were easily missed because of how they presented themselves. To Caden, the subtext of We live for centuries! reads as an almost desperate plea for recognition; a paranoia that all their years amount to nothing unless the 'lesser peoples' know and admire them for it.

With this in mind, and with the pained realization that the sister-seers' fanservice was a genuinely innocent -- re: unintentional -- tease with no substance behind it, Caden kicked off the impromptu briefing with a rather disgruntled sounding, "Well?"

"What?" Eledier asked.

"I'm assuming this is the part where I'm supposed to ask For what purposes have you good and noble folk spared my wretched and miserable and altogether short life?," Caden answered. "Well I'm not polite like that, so cut to the chase already."

"We can kill you, you know," Vara pointed out.

"After all the shit I've been through lately, I can think of worse ways to die," Caden muttered. Eledier chose that moment to intervene -- before Vara or some plucky listener could put Caden's claim to the test.

"Customarily," she began, pushing herself up into a seated position. She wasn't wearing a shirt. Caden couldn't decide whether or not he hated her for that. "We tend to handle these things a bit more...politely, yes. When Elves ask of Men, I'm sure you can understand that the situation has grown dire enough to warrant the rudeness. Apologies either way."

Not accepted, Caden decided not to say, but it was a near thing.

"While you were recovering from the...incident, this afternoon, Vara and I, and our brother, Aldinar--"

"The git with the spear and the little man complex."

"Elf," Vara pointed out.

"Okay, the little Elf complex. With a capital E. Happy now?"

"As I was saying," Eledier cleared her throat. "The three of us went scrying, despite the toll of my injuries. It was a difficult task, conjuring the stones and using them to See. I expect, as you are a Wizard, that I need not explain the process." Caden shrugged. "Right...and perhaps it would be better if I were to start at the beginning?"

Yay! Give me a history lesson! Caden again stopped short of saying, but he sure as hell thought it with a vengeance.

"Tembrethnil Forest is an old and sacred region of Raiaera, integral to parts of our mythology. It is said that our first Bards were taught to play and to make their instruments by the fey kindred who once dwelt here. Even to this day, the trees remain a vital source of fine woods for the creation of musical instruments," she began in one of those voices that simply screams flashback sequence. Caden was too busy picking apart the words to heed the waves currently blighting across the fourth wall of your computer monitor. Incidentally, we're going to ignore them too, because Caden's analysis has more narrative meat to it.

Fey kindred, as any travelled arcanist will tell you, is a polite nickname given to the nymphs and satyrs who make everyone want to flip out and burn a meadow. The Elves of Raiaera are among the only people who can talk about them like that with a straight face. Chances are, the Bards learned not by being taught, but by trial and error based around observation. The Fey are not happy to share secrets for free, after all, and the Elves are just that little bit too prudish to trade sex for knowledge.

Vital source was another way of stating that the forest was used for logging. Creation was another way of saying logging and woodworking, and the Elven words for musical instruments are almost always closely related to their words for weapons.

While Caden was at it, he thought back to old and sacred, which was another way of pleasantly justifying a territorial claim by masking it with religious importance.

Eledier didn't even notice Caden's cynical look, and continued speaking. "In ages past, we protected the forest with great dedication...but times have changed, Wizard. Today only my people and I, the Walkers of Nenaebreth, still stand watch over these woods. And recently, we have been put to the test."

Protected is the noble variant of simple guard-duty. Shining Praetorians are protectors, filthy Watchmen are guards. It also hinted that Nenaebreth was basically nothing more than a self-important logging village without any other economy to sustain itself, and the Seers had all inherited their jobs because they couldn't handle anything else...though they could've also (and more likely did) take it out of some sort of ancestral obligation instead.

"The Necromancer's servants came. Kholia Horren, a fallen Wizard sworn to that foul banner, bringing with him an army of the dead to sack and plunder these lands."

Which Caden didn't really have much of a spin on, for the simple reason that a small shred of morality kept him from thinking, You got your asses kicked and his sweatshop zombies log the forest a hell of a lot faster than you ever could.

"For the past months now, we have engaged a hit-and-fade campaign of attrition against his push into Tembrethnil. For every one of us to fall, we take fifty of them in turn, but it's not enough. His forces simply outnumber us too much. Vara, Aldinar and I had laid out a plan to remedy that be removing Kholia himself from the equation; we were to strike him down, had Aldinar not broken rank. Had you not shown up when and how you did, we probably still would have."

Caden had a field day with this one. He felt absolutely no guilt for any of it.

Engaged was a nice way of saying fought for our lives. Hit-and-fade was hit-and-run, Bowdlerized since running is cowardice, even though it all boiled down to such an uncivilized concept as guerrilla warfare. When Kobolds hit and run, they're cowards and savages. Humans do it and it's just plain dishonorable. When Elves do it though, they're graceful, beautiful and deadly. The very way in which Eledier spoke, Caden noted, was all but designed to put the best spin on things. It was like she was subtextually begging him to not give her people and their tactics a harsh judgement, while simultaneously trying to heap blame on him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"While you recovered from the turmoil of the day, Vara and I set my wounds and went to scrying...but the fog has grown thicker, and we were only able to discern a few things about the ill tidings you've wrought on us."

Eledier looked him in the eye, and Caden put aside his analysis of her language. The preface was over now. Time for some meat.

"Tell us Blueraven," she ordered with a certain gentleness to it. "Tell us all that you know of the Death Lord, Ghez Felhammer."

Now we begin the flashback...

[Caden Law]

...except it's not actually when or where you think it'll be. Rather than pressing the rewind button for a week straight, we're only going back by about an hour or two. Maybe three, four if you're just feeling thorough about it. The truth is that the When is a very general thing, while the Where is most assuredly not. The Why is also rather important.

As Xem'zund's power spread, it faced the inevitable problem of dissipation. To make up for this, he employed lieutenants who were coming to be known as Death Lords. From horrors that raced the bloody tracks of nightmares to men and women who had long since sold their souls, and even a few things that were only vaguely humanoid anymore. Counted among the living Death Lords, a necessary grey area in Xem'zund's hierarchy, was Kholia Horren. As previously explained, he was a fallen Wizard of moderate skill and standing; a perfectly Average man in a perfectly Average order with perfectly Average talent and power. In the years prior to the Necromancer's rise though, Kholia went rogue. He parted from Salvar, took up the darkening arts of necromancy, and eventually attracted someone bigger and meaner than he could ever dream of being.

Namely, Xem'zund himself. Cue a little Name-selling bargain to keep from being tortured to death or worse, and Kholia now filled a role that could best be described as Warehouse/Factory Manager for Satan. Except with less dignity, no health benefits, and a downright shitty retirement plan that included possible vassal lichdom or sacrifice to something with a lot of tentacles and no concept of personal space. Kholia dealt with the whole thing the way that such men do: By being utterly miserable and sadistic and going on the occasional killing spree. He was now a proper Necromancer, forever convinced that he was being denied true glory because his master feared his potential, and forever aware that the sale of his Name meant he could do nothing to change it.

The only comfort Kholia took in the entire sodden affair was that Xem'zund gave him a proper Arcane Tower. It consisted of a great stone obelisk, hollowed out and covered with Durklanic runes and sigils. Most of them were covered in turn by a sprawling mess of vines covered in metal barbs, and the stump of a massive tree served as the base of the Tower, allowing it to move at a slow but stable pace. More or less hanging just above the stomp was a full-blown logging station, worn about the Tower like an ugly skirt that had been tacked on as somebody's idea of a cheap way of cutting costs in time and material. Trees went in to be stripped of unnecessary things like leaves, and to be covered in fire-proofing paints as their branches were drilled through to produce howling and whistling noises with every movement. When they left, they usually carried bits of decaying skin from the clumsy corpses who worked them.

In all, it was an efficient but uncomfortable way of getting by.

"Then came the raids," Kholia explained as he stood before a dimly lit fireplace in his study. His Voice had diminished for reasons you're going to learn soon enough.

At first they went unnoticed. A zombie fell over here, a limb detached over there...things you don't really put much stock in when your workforce consists of rotting corpses whose recognition of hygiene is as an alien memory and whose diet consists of bwaaaaaiiiiiinsh and 180-proof embalming fluid. Eventually though, some Smart Zombie noticed that one of the corpses had an arrow in it.

...and pretty much everything went downhill from there. It wasn't that the Elves, as Kholia eventually recognized them, were making a real difference. For every one of his workers they killed, he just spent a few minutes desanctifying and resurrecting them again. For every one they amputated, it just meant a few more minutes sewing the limb back on with whatever was convenient. All it did was slow Kholia's operation down and cost him more and more of his already nonexistent hair -- which meant that his armpits were going bald, since his scalp had given up the ghost and Wizards aren't generally known for manly facial hair until they've hit the Greyhame Years.

"...I had an opportunity to...put an end to this whole ordeal earlier today...

"But then you showed up, bringing that thrice-damned Wizard with you."

Here, Kholia paused and deliberately stalk-hobbled over to the table he usually ate his meals at. Most of the time, he was at the head, and his fellow diners consisted of one or two relatively Intelligent corpses who just sat there giving status reports and making idle, unimaginative chatter. Now he stood at the end, taking a dirty gobbet's worth of cheap wine and downing it like a shotglass full of vodka.

"Does that answer your question, Lord Felhammer?" He spat the words without even bothering to hide his disdain. And really, you couldn't blame him too much.

Wizards and Barbarians rarely get along with each other. When both are grinding incarnations of evil and one is pathetically and bitterly envious of the other, it's probably a miracle that they're not attempting murder (yet).

Now meet the reason why Kholia felt so inadequate that his Voice had diminished. His name is Ghez Felhammer, and in the words of a much wiser and articulate man, He will fuck your shit up. His history is that of a typical barbarian warlord; all axes and savagery, and then he went looting through an old Durklan Temple, got dooped by a sage and wound up meeting Xem'zund in person not long afterward. But you don't reach an age where you can contemplate a mid-life crisis without being smart.

Ghez cut a deal with Xem'zund, but he did it from a much better bargaining position than Kholia. This is why he was sitting in Kholia's chair with a succubus diddling herself on the armrest and a bodyguard of rather nasty looking suits of armor to accompany him. The entourage was wholly unnecessary of course, as Ghez himself was nearly seven feet tall and bulky enough that his muscles probably had muscles. He was a red-clad Hercules from Hell, wearing plate armor with gold trim and a pair of big, mean looking axes dangling haphazardly from chains on his shoulderpauldrons; presumably because sheathing them was useless and the chains were suitably long that it didn't interfere with their use.

Topping the armor off was a layered cape; the inner layers and lower length fashioned out of something's skin and the outer layers and upper length fashioned from mammoth's hide. The helmet was archetypally viking, with bull's horns curving straight up and tipped with gold, and the face exposed only through a narrow T-shaped slit for the eyes and the center.

The armor and axes, incidentally, were hand-forged with the full extent of Xem'zund's knowledge and power. Damned things that were about as tough as Adamantine despite being lighter than Mythril.

If the contrast isn't implicit enough already: Kholia dealt with Xem'zund and got screwed. Ghez dealt with Xem'zund and did the screwing. Literally. The succubus and the armor were only the beginnings of what the Necromancer had given him. Afterwards came all sorts of other gifts; from the armies to the vows of immortality to the virginities of everything that struck his fancy and darkened gods only know what else.

Incidentally, Ghez had obviously barged in and taken over and was very much enjoying helping himself to a drumstick the size of a human thigh (which may have actually been a human thigh). One of his retinue handled the helmet in the meantime. Unique for a barbarian, he waited long enough to finish eating before finally deigning to answer Kholia's question.

"More or less," he said, his own Voice remarkably laid back compared to Kholia's. It bears mention that the Voices of Death Lords rarely cut out.

"Good, good. That pleases me so very, very much. Now please, Lord Felhammer, tell me what in the Nine bloody fucking Pits of Hades are you doing here?"

Whether Kholia's outburst was bravery, insolence, or an attempt at suicide, Ghez didn't know or care. While the room shook and the succubus fell writhing in pleasure to the floor, Ghez just kept chomping away on his legbone. Again, he spoke only when he'd finished swallowing a mouthful.

"The Wizard. Xem'zund apparently has it in for him. All the Death Lords were given some specific instructions to torture him to death and bring his head to the Obsidian Spire in the Red Forest. Didn't you know?" Kholia twitched a little. "Ah. I guess you would be a little out of the loop, being out here and all. Where should I begin, Lord Horren?" Ghez asked, in a tone just civilized enough to past for elegant mockery.

"Wherever."

Again, the room shook. The succubus gave off a loud moan and a wet schlick. The bodyguards did nothing. Ghez paused long enough to take a sip of wine.

"We came upon the Wizard or he came upon us a few days ago, as we were about to march on Mirdan Timbreth. At the time, I figured...what the hells, eh? Just one Wizard on a tired looking horse. Should be an easy kill, then I could take the town and return to Xem'zund's Spire for my next reward. It didn't exactly go as planned, to put it...mildly," said Ghez after one of those short pauses that spelled out in bold type, THIS MAN IS NOT TRULY CIVILIZED.

Another sip of wine, another schlickschlickschlick from the succubus, and Ghez continued unfettered.

"We chased that little shit for hours. Then days. How he spurred the horse on that long, I'm going to tear out his fingernails until he tells me. He only stopped for a little while when we hit the northeast edge of the forest, then he ran wide around to the area you'd cleared. I figured we could certainly take him out this time, right?

"Wrong. The fool has a devil's luck and the wits to match. I think that's why Xem'zund wants him killed so badly. He gave us the slip with geomancy and arcana, threw spells at us for hours and then ran again. By then, I'd established a pretty good corridor around the areas you'd cleared. I figured we could drive him back into the thicker woods, where he'd have to stay on the road or go on foot into the forest; both scenarios where I could run him down at my liesure.

"Again, wrong. He passed right through the heart of your encampment without so much as a scratch, and I'm sure you know the rest. You still wreak of horse bowels."

Kholia twitched again. The look on what little remained visible of his face could only be described as homicidally petulent

"So, Lord Horren, that's the gist of it. Until I've killed or driven the Wizard out, I'm going to stay here and bolster your encampment's defenses. Any further questions?" Ghez asked in the polite tone of someone who wouldn't answer a thing.

"None," Kholia muttered. It was a good thing his eyes could not be seen through the metal plate fused to his face. There was murder in his eyes, you (don't) see. Murder and so much worse.

Ghez gave him a smile. Kholia bitterly returned it. A thousand miles away, their master chuckled to himself without ever thinking why.

[Caden Law]

Caden's summary of things was an ironic contrast to that of the Barbarian Death Lord: Short and straight to the point.

"He spent a week trying to kill me. That's about all I know, sorry."

"You cannot be serious," Vara muttered.

"Abso-bloody-lutely serious. Wrong place, wrong time, OH CRAP I DON'T WANNA DIE!, et cetera," Caden replied, with the proper hand gestures and facial expressions to match. He'd gotten so used to looking panicked lately that it was second nature. A few more near-death experiences and he could probably start looking for a career in expendable background characters in the next Cloverfield movie. "I'm so out of the loop, I don't even know why you called him a Death Lord."

There was a very, very long silence after that. Vara looked at Eledier, Eledier looked at Caden, and neither bore any remotely readable expression in the process. Eventually, Vara started to sigh and Eledier cut her off with a clipped explanation.

"The Death Lords are Xem'zund's chief lieutenants, Blueraven; the generals and champions of his undead legions. Some are alive, traitors to Life itself with every breath they dare steal from the Star-Lady's breast. Most are quite dead, mere automatons raised back to unlife and allowed some modicum of free thought so that he can delegate tasks to them and focus elsewhere. Others gained free thought whether the Necromancer allowed them to or not, and were seduced back into his service accordingly. Others still are neither alive, nor dead. We do not know what to make of them, nor do we want to. Nonetheless, we believe the Necromancer has Bound all of his Death Lords directly to his will, further ensuring their loyalty. We just do not know how."

It was around this time that Caden finally reached up and placed a hand on the tender space at the back of his neck, where a certain assassin's initials had once been carved. Now there were only unnervingly squared patches of scar tissue where Caden had gone at it with a knife. Two squares, one for each letter Viola Darkstalker had carved into him.

"I think I know," he offered, eventually. "A little bit, anyway. You're right that he's got some kind of connection to all of them, but I can't say for sure how good his control is."

And just like that, the Sister Seers stared a hole right through him.

"Continue," they said at once.

So Caden pulled down the brim of his Wizard's Hat and told them. The whole truth, starting with the simplest and emptiest words of them all, "I was there when Eluriand fell."

...and he was. Caden had fought and bled and almost died in defense of that city, from one of its bridges to its outermost wall and everywhere in between. He had tasted power at its purest and most vengeful, and in doing so, he had Seen things that Wizards of his level normally cannot. He had encountered several of the Forgotten One's Death Lords, back in the days when they didn't carry such fancy titles. The Nightmares, and the Assassin, and the Berserker too; all bound and connected by thin strands of powerful magic, similar to but different from the strands that bound all of Xem'zund's army to his will. Their lights burned bright and ethereal, their Names burning an aural display high above the empty pits where their souls should've been. For each, the relationship was different; some carried the whispers of promises and others bore the roars of domination, but all were united for that one terrible cause.

When Caden was done explaining all of this to Vara and Eledier, in much more technical terms pertaining to the mechanics of the arcane, the younger sister finally dared to ask the obvious: "Did you see Him, Wizard? Did you see the Necromancer?"

"Sure," Caden replied with a shrug. "I think I even hurt the son of a bitch."

More silence. And it was much heavier and downright pregnant with building anticipation. The sisters looked to each other and shared one of those tiny, all too Elven smiles that made Caden want to run screaming from the forest as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Perhaps you do have some use then, Blueraven," Vara offered. "Because the Necromancer has obviously put a price on your head."

Click-click-click went the tiny little cogs in Caden's brain. "Ah," he said, and understood the rest in an instant. "Well, yeah. I guess that makes sense. Hadn't thought about it like that though, on account of the whole OH GODS I DON'T WANNA DIE! thing."

"Perfectly understandable," said Vara with a nod.

"Indeed," said Eledier with a smile.

"I don't like the way you two're looking at me," said Caden, who really should've been inching for the door right about now.

"If it's any consolation," Eledier said, voice suddenly husky in the kind of way that made surprise conjugations sound downright conjugal. "You'd probably like the reason why."

"Does it involve knives and blood oaths and promises of great glories in the righteous fight for freedom or survival?"

"Yes," said Eledier.

"Not interested. Thanks though!"

"It also involves the prospect of a bloody hard threesome," said Vara, who was slightly more aware of the way human men thought.

"...ah," said Caden, and that pretty much settled it.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
Pre-Dawn, Day of the Screaming Inverted Mongoose

The following entry was written in some of the ugliest, angriest, most eraser-marked handwriting of Caden's life. Sadly, this cannot be translated into message board text formats. Use your imagination.

Prospect: Potential things that may come to pass. Usually in a positive light. Raiaeran Equivelent: Vyraes.
Bloody: Conversationally used to intensify the meaning of something. Traditionally used as an adjective to describe something covered in blood. Raiaeran Equivelent: Shydia.
Threesome: Arguably one of the best things ever. Raiaeran Equivelent: Saerysti, which is actually derived from and still rarely used as a military term.

Elves:

Here, the writing became completely illegible, angry looking chickenscratch ending with a slight tear in the page, doubtlessly caused by pencil lead breaking through and then snapping apart. There are corresponding dents the pages before and after this one, where the book may have been slammed shut, thrown down and stomped on with a broken pencilhead still inside of it. The presence of footprints on the front cover validates this assumption.

Not found within is the obvious translation.

Elven Women 4, Caden Law 0.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiera
Day of the Screaming Inverted Mongoose

Some time later -- presumably after a lot more obscenities, a bit more stomping and a good bout of self-abuse with the flavorless drek the Farstrike Elves called food -- Caden calmed down. Enough to sit back down, open up his boot-marked Grimoire and resume writing. Magical theory at first. This hit just one snag, around mid-morning, when an unidentified Elf crept up on him and pointed out the obvious: You can't do that. It goes against Byrioth's Law of Quantum Consternation and Valai's Laws of Power Constipation, the Elf pointed out, and Caden immediately assumed this to be because Byrioth and Valai had both been Elven Wizards of a time long ago.

He also assumed that the laws had their names strapped on because both had been violently killed by not adhering to them. Human Wizards had long since found the loopholes to get around it, but Elves...

"Bugger off or I'll turn you into a sheep," Caden had muttered.

Then he spotted the tiny little error that the Elf was referring to and corrected it. Bitterly. While the Elf stood behind him and nodded in the way that Perfectly Wisened Mentor-types do. Then the Elf wandered off and Caden flipped a few pages to the Personal Diaries section of his Grimoire, sat down with his back to a tree, and started writing.

Words are failing me right now. They are honestly, truly, utterly failing me.

I have been Had. Duped. Bamboozled. Tricked. Frauded, defrauded, refrauded, and then outright conned -- all using nothing but the truth. As explained in my recent entry, I was taken in by the intricacies of Raiaeran language. While I write these entries in my native tongue of Salvar -- and less frequently in the common tongues of Corone -- I have spent the past days speaking nothing but Raiaeran. Except for profanities. Of which I have many. But to explain...

Seer Vara of Farstrike basically promised me a good hard threesome if I'd swear temporary allegiance to, and membership in, the Farstrike Council. The problem is that she said in Raiaeran and the words she used are all double-talk for military actions and I walked right into it like a striking idiot. Which means I'm now oath-bound to stay with this merry little warband of zealots and fools until there's an explosive climax in their pitiful war for a forest. Which can effectively mean anything. I may literally die out here if I'm not careful.

And I can't just break and run because a Wizard's Oath is binding in a magical sense. To run now would be to become a Warlock. I might live, but I won't be Me anymore. Blueraven would die. I probably wouldn't even get to keep my Hat or this book. Tempting as that is, I'm too afraid of losing my Self to put it on a higher pedestal than my life.

"Pride goeth before the Fall." It's an old Denebrillian axiom. It fits.

Less depressingly, this gives me a small chance to study and deconstruct a sect of Elves who differ from the norm. Oh, don't get me wrong: They're a bunch of pompous jackasses and I hope they all die, but they're interesting pompous jackasses and I hope they all die.

In particular, they exemplify (eximplify? exemplefy? sic) the Worse and Worst things about our inbred pointy-eared striketard cousins. They follow a set of stock Olden Ways called Pathwalking, summarized to me as, "All journeys are a thousand steps, but all will invariably return to Zero. There, you will find Eternity."

Whatever that means.

Striking idiots. All of them.

Here, the writing stopped. Caden leaned back against the old tree, letting the book rest with its pages hidden against his stomach. Hat stooped somewhere and the shadows framing his face in a decidedly undramatic fashion, he watched as several Councilmen (Councilors?) assembled near the center of the encampment. Men and women with a two-to-one ratio and inhuman good looks for all. They wore light armor, when they wore any at all. Most had metal masks -- like Ringo -- hanging from one hip, and all carried an odd type of staff that reminded Caden of the drawings and examples he'd seen of Aleraran long rifles.

Standing before the line was the male Seer, Aldinar. He dressed to the nines in his normal clothing, but forsook the armor for the moment. Like the men and women before him, he wore a mask like an honor badge on his right hip. He held his spear with one hand, matching the parade stances of his Rangers. He was shouting instructions at them, in a harsh voice that made the normally soft, melodic Raiaeran sound downright barbaric.

Two by two, the Elves immediately began pairing off and sparring through relatively simple motions: Left angle, right angle, center angle, flat angle, repeat in reverse. After a time, this took on the added presence of footsteps; each Elf stepped left or right simultaneously, always circling one another. A little longer and they'd built up a rhythm that sounded like an Akashiman drum chorus.

"THOL VALYSTIA!" Aldinar eventually shouted, and the stick-chorus suddenly broke into something a lot more and less violent.

When the Rangers struck at each other now, their movements were in tightly controlled thrusts and wide, body-pivoting swings. Everything had a fluid acrobatic feel to it, and the baggy clothing, the capes they wore, and even their hair on their heads seemed to trail every single step, strike and dodge accordingly. Here and there came flashes of tonedeaf light, always silver-purple, as low-level magicks were brought into the melee. A more modern mind would've interpreted it as the Raiaeran equivelent to bayonet training. Caden simply interpreted as self-defense.

Up until the moment he realized that Aldinar didn't have an opponent, and was staring at him quite intently. Listen close enough and you might hear the banjos from Deliverance kicking in right about now.

"What?" Caden asked.

"Participate," Aldinar ordered.

"I'd rather not," Caden said, then deigned to wave an arm around. "Scrawny academic, y'see. I bruise easy too, and blood red just doesn't match with--"

Rule Number One for dealing with a Salvic Wizard: Do not touch the Hat. Do not ever touch the Hat.

Aldinar did not touch the Hat, though. Which was good. Except for the part where he impaled it to the side of the tree with his spear. Which was bad. Very, very bad. For all sorts of reasons, you see. A Wizard's Hat serves any number of functions; from travelbag to fashion statement to status symbol to arcane control device and every possible thing you can think of in between. Incidentally, it's not at all uncommon for a Wizard to be homicidally possessive of his or her Hat.

Which leads us into what unfortunately happened next.

"I'LL KILL YOU FOR THAT!"

Aldinar tried to laugh -- operative word being tried. He got the first red Ha! out, then it turned into a blinding scream of surprise as he leapt aside to avoid a six foot spike that simply shot out of the ground without worning. He landed and another one shot out and he dodged this too, until suddenly the ground turned to a sloshing green mud at his feet and there was no jumping this time. Caden had his Wands out, and arcana danced around their tips in a maddened set of rings and sigils, showcasing all the colors in the rainbow and a few that human eyes aren't meant to perceive. The air pre-emptively smelled like burning flesh, and Caden's shadow all but whitewashed into the ground behind him.

Wands pointed forward with mirrored thrusts, and there came a blast of lightning and a surging spiral of colored winds, the space between each shade a razor-thin sliver of black and gold.

By all rights and wrongs, it should've ended there. Would've ended there, certainly could have ended there. And technically, it sort of did. Except for the part where Aldinar didn't get a hole blasted through his chest while his upper body was being flayed to the bone between the neck and hips. This little pocket disaster was averted solely because several nonexistent gemstones happened to be in the right place at the right time to first absorb the cutting winds and then sap energy from the lightning.

Then Vara appeared, flourished her sword into what remained of the lightning spell and cast it skyward. It was gone just as quickly as Caden had cast it, and at the same time there were a few dozen spellrifles aimed right at him.

"Stand down!" Vara ordered. Aldinar stared back at her from there the mud had entrapped him, and over her shoulder to where Caden was still very obviously trying to work out ways to kill him on the spot. "What is the meaning of this?!"

"He stabbed my Hat. MOVE," Caden ordered, and the force of his Voice was such that several Elves faltered. Aldinar was one of them; he couldn't meet Caden's eyes for the shame of it. Vara was not, and she certainly could meet Caden's eyes.

"It is a hat," she pointed out.

"It's my Hat, you little shrue," Caden spat at her. "He stabbed my Hat because--"

"You're acting like the hedge-necromancer," Eledier called from her tent's entryway.

Almost immediately, Caden sagged a little. He put the Wand of Nevermorrow back into his belt after a few seconds, and then turned to get his Hat. To do that, he had to remove Aldinar's spear. It was a well-made spear, mind you, with a great many enchantments to secure its use. Nothing short of a Seer should've been able to touch it.

Caden grabbed the damn thing, yanked it out and flung it aside like so much rubbish. He retrieved his hat in the process, reaching inside to straighten it out and then staring angrily at the damages.

"What caused this?" Vara asked, as Eledier was too busy catching her breath.

"I was trying to motivate him!" Aldinar pointed out. This would've gotten him a round chewing out from all involved, except for Caden cutting pretty much everyone off with his Voice.

"I'm not subtle, Aldinar." He considered the Hat for a few moments, and the holes running clear through it. Then he added, "Nor am I forgiving."

"Then take your frustrations out in fair martial combat!" Aldinar spat.

In less time than it takes to blink, the ground had swallowed him up to his neck, spinning him around to face Caden from behind and between his own sister's legs. The Wizard gave him a terminally dismissive glance -- the kind that often preceeds the fall of nations and the martyrdom of kings.

"I'm not very fair either," he pointed out, willfully ignorant of the dozens of spellrifles charged and glowing at his vitals.

"That is enough," Eledier declared. And really, it was. Caden collected his Grimoire from the ground and tucked it into his coat. The entire time, he kept the Bazaar Wand out in one hand, clutching his tattered Hat in the same fingers. The Sister Seers regarded him coolly, and their Brother simply struggled with his body mostly submerged and his tongue held in check more by wisdom than fear.

"I have need of you, Blueraven," said Eledier, and there was nothing remotely alluring to her voice this time.

Feh, was the sound Caden made in response. He stalked over to the entrance of her makeshift domicile and went inside without another word. Eledier remained standing in place long enough to nod at Vara, then vanished from sight as well.

"...a little help, sister?" Aldinar eventually asked.

"No. I think you deserve to get out of this one on your own," said Vara, just before sparing a glance at the Rangers and asking, "Well?"

Right on cue, they got back into the thick of things. Click, clack, glowy bit here, swing and a miss there.

"...do you really think it was a wise decision to bring him onboard?" Aldinar asked. He was squirming his shoulders about now, not complaining in the slightest.

"Eledier seems to think so. I have my doubts, but it is best to remember the old words: Touch not the stuff of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."

"...you made that up," Aldinar muttered.

"Only somewhat," Vara replied.

"And this one has all the subtlety of an earthquake," Aldinar added.

"That too," said Vara.

"And you're enjoying this entirely too much, sister dear."

"I confirm nothing," said Vara.

Guess who the older sibling is?

[Caden Law]

"Question, Wizard."

"Shoot."

"What is the importance of the hat?" Eledier asked, and was rather patient when you consider that Caden wasn't speaking to her about anything else until he finished repairing it.

"Hat," he corrected.

"That's what I said."

"Punctuation," Caden explained. He added, "It's a Wizard thing."

"Ah. What are you doing?"

"Alchemy."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a terrible sewer and Alchemy does better at repairing the damages without compounding them. There's magic at work, remember?"

Which is where we finally stop the chatter and take a look at what Caden is actually doing. Alchemy, you see, is traditionally regarded as one of the middle-grounds between the duelling forces of Science and Magic. It's one of the harried little diplomats that allow them to function cohesively under the right circumstances. You can do a lot of things with Alchemy, but the most important is transmutation. Which Caden pretty much sucked at, since he just used it to get past little things like sewing and repairing broken windows.

He went about using it on the pointy blue Hat by scraping a spare piece of bark along the floor until there were three circles; an inner one, a middle one, and an outer one. Then he swiped Eledier's inkpot and began fingerpainting various symbols into the space between each circle. First were the runes, and then the mathematical symbols, and then the things that looked like they could be either. When he was done, he fingerpainted one last circle -- smaller than any of the others -- on the outside, and crossed through it in the same motion.

A split second later and the ink was gone. The damage to the Hat was completely undone, as threads merged into threads and frayed ends simply ceased to be. There wasn't anything particularly flashy to it by the standards of Magic, though the ink did burst into a white-blue flame void of temperature or sound for a few seconds. When it was done, Caden inspected the Hat, reached inside to make sure everything was correct, and finally put his Grimoire back inside.

"Right then," he said, as he was putting it back on. "What did you want me for?"

"Questions and answers. Let us start with the Hat, since you never answered me about it."

By then, Caden had taken a seat in one of the room's chairs. It didn't strike him as being odd that the interior of the Seers' Quarters was entirely too big to fit into the trunk of a Tembrethnillian tree; Elves were fey things, after all, and Raiaera itself did so love to shower them with favors and conveniences because of it.

"What about it?" he asked.

"Exactly," she answered, having long since taken to sitting with legs folded on the floor. Caden didn't blame her. The wounds to her back hadn't healed yet.

"It's a Wizard thing," Caden replied. "Equal parts status symbol, safety gear, personal trademark and carry-all. Don't touch it."

Eledier nodded.

"Now can we talk about something else please?"

"Kholia Horren," Eledier replied. "His Sorcerous Name. What could you do if you knew it?"

"Varies. Sorcerous Names can have any function or none at all, and they can change when the circumstances are right. At its core, it's part of a trifecta of Birth Name, True Name, Sorcerous Name. Know all three and you've basically got a line on someone's soul, right through any defenses he can conjure, and there's nothing he can do to stop you. Even not having a soul at all isn't proof against what you can do with all three Names."

"And this is why you have not told us your actual name, Caden Law." Note the eyebrow twitch. Eledier shrugged. "The Radasanth Reader delivers, my friend."

"Peachy," was all Caden bothered to say to that. "Hopefully the ten billion Evil Overlords I'm doubtlessly going to end up stomping the toes of aren't avid readers of it.

"That said, the Sorcerous and Birth Names only have as much power as you give them. For Wizards, we invest minimal power into them. They're there just so we can have a few extra hours to block an incoming curse or, worst case scenario, to send a return shot at whoever's casting it. Warlocks tend to put more worth in theirs, mostly because of how they set up their defenses against each other. You can't sneak a curse on a Warlock unless you know his Name."

"And if you knew Kholia's Sorcerous Name -- could you kill him from a distance?" Eledier asked.

Caden stared at her.

"Could you?"

"Are you suggesting that I cheapshot an evil Wizard to death without ever giving him a chance to fight back?" Eledier shrugged. "That's the single most dirty, underhanded, dishonorable way of thinking I've ever encountered in an Elf. I like it. But there's this one problem, Elly--"

"Do not call me that."

"What's his Name?"