Intricacies of Asymmetry

[Caden Law]

Generally, there is a problem that comes with trying to fight Evil Doers at their own game. It's a very simple problem, and it can be overcome, but there's always a downright rancid aftertaste left as a result.

Bad Guys tend to be better than Good Guys at doing Bad Things.

For historical and social references, Wizards of Salvar are already a morally ambiguous lot. Put on your classic nine-alignment Good-Evil/Lawful-Chaotic chart, they'd typically hit on or close to the more negative aspects of True Neutral. They were a lot fashioned by time and tradition to hold positions of status and power; they were the atomic bombs the King and Church would drop in a war and they were the true, not-always-blue weathermen who kept the blizzards at bay. Such responsibilities breed pride. Pride breeds envy. Envy breeds all kinds of compromises with any moral code. A Wizard could technically consort with demons even worse than what most Warlocks dealt with, and he could damn well get away with it if he played his cards right. There were only a few laws that truly could not be broken, and that there was even a dividing line between generic Wizards and Warlocks was because most Wizards knew how to terminally break the spirit of those laws without damaging the letters.

Sure, you have the moral hard-asses like that old rogue, Greyspine, but for the most part...

Bad Guys tend to be better than Good Guys at doing Bad Things. Because they've been doing it longer. Because they've got more talent for it. Because they've cut the deals and sold the souls and spilled the blood and dug out enough of an ethical pit that they can do it faster. And because most of them simply don't give a damn about the art of what they do; results are king.

Thus it is that, at the very same second Caden and Eledier were doing a half-hearted masochism tango across the thin grey line between Good and Bad, we do our own hop, skip and jump across the much thicker grey fog of doom enveloping the region of Tembrethnil currently controlled by Xem'zund's Death Lords. Back to the grubby little hedge-necromancer's Magic Tower, currently trundling along at a suitably glacial pace. More specifically, back to the Fallen Wizard's sanctum arcana -- more commonly known as a Study. With all sorts of books, ranging from a shoddy copy of the Tome of Nyan (written fifth-hand on catskin, obviously) to a book that had no name to be conveyed in any living language.

The Study also doubles, quite literally, as a War Room. If you'd like a proper tour, keep reading.

Firstly, note the eight sides to it. Two sides, exactly opposite one another, have doors. One door leads into and out of the Study, the other leads to nowhere you'd like to hear about. Five of the remaining six walls are occupied by shelves holding all those aforementioned books interspersed with the tools of the arcane; skull here, an exotic jar-thing there, stuff like that. The last wall was occupied primarily by a fireplace and a stand, holding Kholia's staff of power in place. Note that the staff is floating, and note that its holding consists of a heavy, sturdy looking chain.

Scattered about the floor in a perfect pattern are tables, not unlike what you'd expect of a mad scientist. There's a single old chair, moving about on sinuously ebon legs, and at the center of it all is an array forged out of bone-powder and tarnished silver. The kind that got that way due to an excess of bloody staining after it was set down. The array resembles an eight-point star, each corner tipped by a piece of vertebrae, and each hollow marked by the presence of an ugly glass jar fused to the floor. Try not to look into the jar. Something awful might look back at you. Or into you. Or both.

Within this Study, you will find two major players in our little fiasco, as well as a third slab of cannonfodder that's only barely worth an introduction.

First of the batch is Ghez Felhammer's personal succubus attendant, Passion Near, whose actual name is something that can yield multiple orgasms just by writing it and who Kholia refers to simply as Sion (which is actually pronounced Shun. It's a Wizard thing). Insofar as succubi go, she was quite literally the total package with room and longing for everything that goes in it, in any way it can be made to fit. Long, slender legs and shapely hips, pale skin and an hourglass figure, and breasts that were just big enough to outsize a normal woman -- complete with a perfect shape, the perfect look and feel of weight, and the perfect amount of jiggling and bouncing or lack thereof. Add onto this a face like your highschool sweetheart gone raunchy and just fucking bad.

Literally.

Now put on black lipstick and nail polish, color the hair stark white with curtains to match the drapes, and put in a single stud on the left side of the nose, then stick on an almost cute pair of devil's horns sticking out from somewhere behind her bangs. Add to this a heated, impassioned look and a constant level of arrousal that makes nymphomania look numb and unfeeling. As a foreword, Sion will likely spend most of this little Event getting herself off in the corner next to the fireplace. She's been using both hands and has no shame and no reservations about...pretty much anything.

And yes, that means what you think it means.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Moving along, you'll find Kholia Horren. Who's trying his absolute hardest to ignore Sion's little schlickfest and failing quite miserably at it. Note the bowlegged stumbling as he moves from table to table, the constant gawking and the bitter little tictictictic of his mouth muscles. If you could see his eyes beneath that metal plate, they might be almost cartoonish in width.

It bears repeating that Salvic Wizards are downright infamous for sexual dysfunction. And Kholia's even worse than most for reasons you don't want to think about. Reasons that Sion is exploiting and appealing and downright sledgehammering all over the place.

"Will you please STOP THAT ALREADY?"

"Buuuuuuut whyyyyyyy--ee...ah...ah..."

Kholia's head tilted at a severe angle. He held this way for several seconds longer than could've possibly been comfortable. Then he straightened up, jammed a gloved hand into his pants and straightened that up too. Perhaps if his eyes weren't hidden away, they would've narrowed resentfully.

This was, after all, nothing more than a Look But Don't Touch teaser act. Ghez displaying ownership, among other things.

"Why did that barbaric oaf send you to me anyway?"

"NNNNNNNN..."

Kholia shuddered and willed himself to look away -- back to the centerpiece of the tarnished silver array, and the third principle player in this scene. There, in the space cordoned off by intersecting lines of bloodied metal and lit more by the glow within each jar than the emberlights of the fireplace, stood a zombie. One of a million or more. An Elf, height of five foot eight, very freshly dead since his eyes still shed tears and his blood hadn't even congealed yet. He was missing a fair chunk of meat from the side of his torso, his face had been maimed with scratching wounds and the back of his head had been broken open. A huge portion of his brain was gone. There were awful bite-marks faintly visible on what was left.

Once upon a time, this was a warrior fighting in defense of...somewhere in Raiaera. Probably somewhere close, since he hadn't been dead all that long.

Now look beneath the corpse to the thing that makes it valuable: Its still lingering soul.

Which was joined to countless others for the common cause of defending Raiaera.

Defenses are always lower when its technically friendly fire. Even when it isn't.

"Whatever," Kholia muttered as he rolled up his sleeves. "Silence, please."

Schlick.

"...whore."

"Yes!"

Facepalm.

Kholia finally, resolutely, and with great difficulty, tuned the succubus out entirely. A second later, he drew a rather large, vile looking machete from one of the tables. Then he began to speak as he walked in circles around the standing corpse, each stride quicker than the last.

"Hear me, O Watchers in Silence, O Kindred of the Tidebearing Queen. Hear me now, ye Oathbreakers of Old, ye Despots of the Shadowed Lady! I invoke thee, to do my bidding on this, the day of the..." Kholia had enough shame left in him to look a little indignant at this part. He mumbled the next few words. "...day of the screaming...inverted...mongoose. I INVOKE THEE! To do my bidding...to strike down but one of my foes -- and to do with him what you will.

"In the Necromancer's Name, I call upon you to strike at the Wizard Blueraven, Caden Law."

The Radasanth Reader delivers.

"In offering...and to slake your thirst between this lowly realm and yours On Shadow, I give you this Elf's lingering mortal soul."

Kholia didn't swing, as you might've expected.

He stabbed. Right through an eye, and then he drew back and hit the heart and bellybutton in turn. Only then did he finally take that swing, and you wouldn't think a scrawny, haggard, bitter old man could hack through someone like that, but he did.

The corpse fell, and the remnants of the Elven warrior glittered in the air afterward. They had his general likeness. And it didn't take long before they started mutely screaming as something dark and horrid began to blot out each and every single spark that made up that Elf's soul.

"Glory, Amon das N'jal, said the Fallen Wizard, signing a double cross over his center and left chest. Grim red light followed the movements of his hand, and the lopsided Hagalaz rune left in its wake was quickly and violently sundered to nothing by a swipe of the machete.

In the not too distant corner of the room, Passion Near came with a husky moan. In the all too distant reaches of Raiaera, someone died screaming.

[Caden Law]

Inner Eluriand, Raiaera
Morning, Day of the Wretched Heart

Disregard, if you will, the notion of a city caught up in the middle of a desperate siege that's currently dragging heel into its second month. Ignore the fact that there are women and children starving to death in the streets because the Elves never planned for the remote possibility of their capital city being besieged in the first place. If at all possible, don't even pay attention to the harpies circling like maddened vultures or the renewed vigor with which the armies pound at the city's gates.

Focus now, on the body of a man rent asunder. Conscript plate blown open, organs torn and flayed all over the street, eye sockets looking as if something had emptied them with blindly imprecise teeth. The corpse's limbs have been mutilated in a similar fashion, and what remains of the whole thing's skin has been spread out in the rough, hideous pattern of a Hagalaz rune with an eerily precise bloodspatter pattern forming an octogon around the whole thing. Several of the ribs have been stabbed straight through what's left of the hands and feet, and the whole sight is the sort of demoralizing horror show that the people of this dying city really don't need.

Because it slipped right through all of their defenses like they weren't even there.

And perhaps most infuriating of all, it was a miss.

The man's Sorcerous Name was Blueraven, yes. Except that he wasn't even a hedgewizard. Oh, he knew a spell or two. He fought in defense of the city. He really did own that Sorcerous Name as any Wizard or Warlock or assorted mage would.

But his Birthname was Colin Leore. He was among the 400 or so Men and Elves who comprised the Blueraven Brigade during the defense of Eluriand. Caden had given them that Name in a moment of blind comradery -- shared it with them and allowed them, however unwittingly, to make it their own. He never counted on any of them receiving death curses meant for him.

Funnily enough, neither did anyone else.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Encampment, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
Day of the Wretched Heart

Pure Raiaeran Tantra differs heavily from the sexualized concepts found abroad, both among the Drow of Alerar and the much more widely spread Humans who covered the rest of the world. To these people, tantric magic is little more than an excuse to have noneuclidian sex with a contortionist. The magic only happens when you're spaced out of your mind on something herbal and/or illegal. Popular tantric magic is a bunch of formalized rituals that turn good, healthy sex into joint-breaking gymnastics. It's good exercise, maybe it'll tickle your spirit through your genitals, and you're pretty well guaranteed to go home happy so long as nothing breaks (save, possibly, a hymen), but that's about it.

Compare to the aforementioned Raiaeran Tantra, which is actually a very intricate form of dance built into a system of magic mostly centered on conjuration and divination. To describe it simply was to describe it poorly, because Raiaeran Tantra isn't simple. The shortest adequate description anyone ever gave it comes from a Scarabrian Sorceror whose words have long outlived his or her Name: It's like trying to perform poetry with motion, or trying to construct a picture out of the letters for a thousand words.

That in mind, we rejoin the Seers and token Wizard of the Farstrike Encampment, presently gathered into the tree-quarters that the Sister Seers originally shared with each other alone. Note that the scenery has been changed: The luxuriously spartan furnishings are all gone, and makeshift candles dot the floor in precise patterns. A Ranger is shadowed to each corner, and two of the Seers are dancing.

Eledier was not one of them. Her wounds were still too severe to allow it. She participated in the Tantra all the same, however, by positioning herself at the southern tip of the candlefield. Two such flames burned small and bright beside her, and her Seering Sword was unsheathed, standing tip down on the floor with hands clasped to its hilt in a gesture of prayer and concentration.

Across from her was Caden, sitting meditatively at the northern tip of the field. Candles framed his place as well, but he bore no blades and his wands weren't drawn. He didn't even have his glasses on right now. His hands were mostly clasped, save for his extended thumbs and the glassy blue lights freezing above them.

Between them, sharing a slow and fluid dance, were Aldinar and Vara -- both dressed in full armor. They were a perfect mirror for each other's every movement, from the blinking to the breathing to every single step and wave of the hands and arms. It was like watching glacial bellydancing mixed with performance Tai Chi, and every move was calculated to take them from one combative stance to the next. Offense, defense, neutral, reverse. A more astute observer would've paid close attention to the hand movements: Up, up. Down, down. Left, right. Left, right. Back. Again.

As this was happening, the Rangers began to use their spellrifles for something wholly different: Music. They played not with air currents or vibration or even the consent of physics, but with pure willpower. Magic became music, because music is magic.

And it was magic with a very specific purpose.

Eledier and Caden both began to Speak, she in Raiaeran and he in Salvic. The reason for this wasn't entirely divorced from Kholia's reasoning about comradery: He and Caden were both Salvic Wizards, born and raised.

"The Compass of Six Points: South, East, West, North, Within and Without. Hear our Voices and answer the call. Let the Tap be opened again, let the Weave be undone once more. The Compass of Six Powers: Hromagh, V'dralla, Y'edda, Jomil, Khal'jaren and Draconus. Beside you, the Harlequins in Stars, and the Pantheon Unbidden. Below you, the Queen Writhing In Shadow. Beyond you, the Unknown and Unfathomable.

"Hear us, one and all. Hear us and lend us your wisdom, your power, your knowledge, and your charity."

Silence. Aldinar and Vara paused in mid-step, each of them half-bowed to the north with southern arms extended up and back, and northern arms bent low and forward. The candles dimmed, and the temperature in the room dropped...

"We seek a Sorcerous Name, that of the Traitor-Wizard and Necromancer, Kholia Horren."

A wind came from nowhere. The shadows took lives of their own. All was still -- even the flames no longer free to dance atop their wicks. Only the two feeble antilights still fizzled and crackled above Caden's thumbs...

...finally a light, and the sound of gemstones clacking to the ground from a direction best described as Nowhere. Each one was a light blue-green, bearing Diamonic glyphs that seemed to move and shift as each pebble and rock fell and rolled into place. Without actually opening his eyes or using his own Voice, Caden -- or perhaps someone or something borrowing his vocal chords -- read aloud.

"Blightcrow," said the voice, staying only long enough to get the syllables out in precise ordering.

As if suddenly released of a heavy burden, every single candle in the room spouted a six foot, thin as a whip and bright as a tiny golden star. The shadows twisted and decayed back into shape, and the aftersmell was that of barely scented brimstone. The room -- the whole damn tree -- felt a century older than it had just a few seconds ago.

Silence reigned...

...and then the Wizard laughed.

Understandably, all eyes looked to Caden with more than a little apprehension. When a Wizard laughs, it's rarely for a very good reason, and Caden's reasons right now were probably worse than most.

"Blightcrow," he repeated at the sighing end of the laugh. "Blightcrow." Almost...

"Blightcrow."

The pronounciation was perfect. Every single letter spoken and placed with the kind of auditory precision only Wizards can manage. Caden smiled, and it was an awfully grim look on someone like him.

"Ladies and gentlemen...I believe we've got a Dark Wizard to kill. Who's up for another dance, hm?"

[Caden Law]

Minas Teradyn, Raiaera
High Noon, Day of the Wretched Heart

Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Absolute knowledge is absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But such corruption can only be maintained through redundancy, and this is as true in the mystical world of Althanas as it is anywhere else in the multiverse. Just as Xem'zund used the hierarchical Death Lords to ease the strain of controlling his vast armies and to free the depths of his powers for more important tasks, the Necromancer used Archivists to protect and augment his knowledge-base -- and with it, his power.

Because after a certain point, memory fails and that lump of meat in your skull just isn't going to keep up anymore. To get around this, Xem'zund employed the Archivists. They were men and women, mostly human and mostly well preserved undead, whose job it was to carry around his own personal library's worth of grimoires. Each of these tomes was a truly massive affair dedicated to a specific field of arcana, from the occult history to the disciplines of magic to the simple beureaucracies that made his control of the Death Lords functional. There were multiple copies of each one, always built to the exact same proportions: Four feet tall, two feet wide, clasped shut with heavy alloy locks and bound to each Archivist by chain straps. The subject was always written in Durklanic above Xem'zund's personal symbol, the Necromancer's Eye.

It goes without saying that every single one of these things was connected to their owner's mind through arts best left undescribed. They weren't even a necessity so much as they were a simple precaution, and Xem'zund could easily withstand losing all of them now. Especially given his current backer. How many was known only to the Necromancer himself, but they were a diasporatic lot indeed. The only concentrations of them were in Xem'zund's personal retinue, and in the Tower that served as his stronghold.

As to the Archivists themselves, they were a relatively unassuming lot that fit the mold of Endarkened Acolyte to a bloody tee. The majority of them were humans of Raiaeran upbringing, though a number of proper Elves of both major ethnic groups held the status as well. Generally because Xem'zund had bound Durklanic revanents into the bodies. Almost all of them were undead to some extent, and well preserved at that. The standard uniform was a hooded purple and black robe, heavy and protective and quite minionly.

Incidentally, as the clock struck 12:00 PM, one of the Archivists of Names convulsed and dropped to the floor. He writhed for a few minutes longer, and stopped only after literally vomiting out an unidentifiable internal organ. He didn't move again.

Now, think about that.

It bears repeating that the Wizard Blightcrow had sold his Sorcerous Name to Xem'zund, and thus it no longer fully applied to him. It also bears repeating that the Archives were more of a precaution than a necessity. Among their other benefits, they spread that Name around so much so that it was good luck Blueraven's killing curse ever hit anything at all. It also bears mention that, being undead at the whims of their Evil Overlord, Archivists are much easier to replace than Death Lords.

Precaution. Not necessity. And not even for his own sake.

An Archivist is dead. Hail to the Necromancer.

[Caden Law]

Twice that night, the question is asked.

"Did you kill him?"

And twice, it is answered.

"...in all likelihood..."

"I don't know."

For all the uncertainty, here is where the intricacies of Blueraven and Blightcrow go asymmetrical.

"Excellent! May we finally see the recognition we deserve, Kholia," said Ghez, slapping a metal-gloved hand onto the haggard old Wizard's shoulder with enough force to bruise right to the bone. It was a testament to Kholia's insecurities that he knew better than to try and correct the Barbarian's assumption. "My scouts have uncovered their campsite. We attack at dawn. Sleep well, Kholia, and be ready with all the curses and doom you can bring to bear. Tomorrow will be the most glorious day of your life."

"You are not certain? ...then it cannot be helped. Whatever the outcome, this will end tomorrow. Aldinar's personal retinue is, even now, working to lure their forces into an ambush," said Eledier, laying a tender hand onto the tired young Wizard's shoulder. It was a testament to Caden's cynicism that he knew better than to assume anything good would come of it. "That you did not go through with a sacrifice is testament to your own goodness. Accept it. Accept it and get some rest. Tomorrow may yet be the most glorious victory of your life, Wizard Blueraven."

Both were met with smiles, and both returned them with equal parts nervousness and pessimism. But they said nothing. Almost in unison, Blueraven and Blightcrow nodded to their superiors and wandered off to find a place where they could get some much needed rest. For Kholia, this would mean a night spent sleeping in the saw mills since Ghez had claimed his bedroom. For Caden, it would mean a night fumbling with the arcane while trying to conjure up a tent in an effort to tire himself out. Eventually, both would sleep.

...and both would have nightmares, because both had dodged the bullet without ever actually knowing it.

[Caden Law]

Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
5:59 AM, Day of Avatar's Cruelty

Picture now a road through the forest. It's a nice, wide road, and on so many other days, nights, mornings and dusks, it would've felt safe. It was the kind of road that simply invited long treks, be they on foot, horseback or wagon. You'd tell your grandkids about walking this old dirt road in your youth, or maybe you'd write about it in your memoirs. The morning fog was usually a sight to behold, thick enough to build rainbows from nothing and wild enough to curve them into shapes that science would be dumbfounded by.

Now, the fog was just something else. Not something good, but something else. It carried with it the smell of rot and death, rather than the scents of morning dew. The only sounds accompanying it were not those of woodland creatures starting the day, but of hard leather drums being beat for the hell of it while something worked an awful lot of saws just beyond sight.

War is in the air, as holy and righteous as it is tainted and mocking. It's in the noise, it's in the smells, it's in the ground, the air and the trees themselves. It's in you, and you're not even part of it so try to imagine, if only for a split second, the kind of glacial terror creeping through the guts of a certain Wizard who'd much rather be running right now.

They will doubtless strike our campsight first. Best we be elsewhere by then. The Rangers know what to do, Eledier declared, and both Vara and Aldinar had supported her. Even as they were helping strap her armor back on.

You're too injured for this. We should run; bide our time and strike when you're well, Caden advised, more from pragmatism than actual concern. The true subtext was lost though, either willfully ignored or never even considered in the first place. Eledier laid a hand on his cheek, all armored and pristine and chilled to the touch. She met him in the eyes and smiled, as only an inhuman thing could.

We cannot. To run again is to consign this forest -- and all our tales of it, and the way of life that so many of our kind have built around it -- to an undeserving grave...or worse. Here, and only here, did the smile falter. Vara spoke up after that, with an authority that probably wouldn't have been present if not for Eledier's injuries and Aldinar's uncharacteristic silence.

We release you from your Oath, Wizard. If you wish not to fight, you may leave, she said, and everything after that was a bit of a blur.

Caden did not leave. And for that, he had an entirely new reason to hate and loathe the Elves of Raiaera: They forced him to fight the good fight, even knowing that it would likely be the death of him. He declined their offers of arms and armor, turned down their thanks and resolved himself to the inevitable in the only way that made sense.

Look at him now, standing in the woods beyond both the road and the fog. There's a single Ranger assigned to guard him, Shaul Karna, but the Elf can hardly be seen while Caden stands out like a bruised thumb. Pointed blue hat and matching longcoat, bound shut from the waist up with buttons and a thick leather belt. Black pants and a white undershirt, and heavy boots. Pasty looking skin and unimpressive blue eyes yellowed away behind what appeared to be aviator's goggles. Not so much as a single hair's worth of Wizardly Beard, though what's visible of his hair is shaggy and light blond. Looks more like an eccentric academic than any kind of warrior, even if you took into account the sword sheathed on his back or the bowie knife holstered at his belt. A wand like a katana hilt was tucked into the belt opposite the knife. His hands were mostly bare and unarmed.

His hands are also the important thing here. Look close now.

Close enough to see the stark green bandage wrapped around his right hand, tinted red with blood.

The reason involved a knife, a blood oath, and promises of great glory in the fight for survival. Inevitable as rolling fog, really. Speaking of which...

...the fog crept across the road, and among all the other things it enveloped were the Seers and their bodyguard of willfully exposed Rangers. Caden could see them still, but only just. They began to move, and though he could almost feel her pain from a distance, Eledier showed no signs of slowing down or imprecision from her wounds. She and her siblings danced, each and every movement echoing the one before it like ripples in water. Blue light shone around them, and coalesced into teal colored stones marked with many runes. At the same time, the Rangers' staves began to light up.

They didn't fire. Not yet. The Seers were gathering up ammunition. The Rangers not seen were taking aim. The first salvo was going to have to do as much damage as possible, because the front-liners wouldn't get a second chance like it.

That's where Caden came in. He wasn't on the front line.

"Whatever you are planning to do, Wizard, now would be a good time to prepare it," Shaul advised in a unnecessarily low whisper.

"I know," said Caden. "I hope you're not sentimental about the layout of the forest."

"All we care for is that it lives."

"The ends justify the means?"

"Unequivocally."

Caden smiled. As cryptic Wizard smiles go, it was suitably devious looking.

"That's exactly what I wanted to hear."

[Caden Law]

There was very little pomp or circumstance this time. No screamed threats, no time wasted throwing insults back and forth. The fog rolled right over the road and washed into the forest like evaporated sin, taking with it a small amount of detail and visibility from the landscape. Immediately after came the sound of drums being beat with the kind of cohesive rhythm that only emerges from unncoordinated chaos; a thousand different hands slapping away at five hundred different drums with the end symphony being more than the mere sum of its individual racket.

Not long after the drums, there came the sound of explosions. Blasting runes -- the arcanist's favorite landmines -- going off one after the next in rapid succession. It was the boiling scalpel feebly trying to cut out an oversized tumor in the forest, and it failed. As near as living ears could tell, the drums didn't even miss a beat.

Finally the smell of rot and burnt meat, and then the first lines came into view. Skeletal warriors and rancid ghouls, their last bits of flesh hanging limp and maggot-riddled as they stomped, stumbled, marched and ran forth in a terribly coordinated display of barely contained animalism. At the forefront were the ghouls, and some of the warriors held them at bay with leashed made of barbed chains, and others still ran wild in front. At the second line, there were trees. Dozens of them, though not as many as there could've been. Skeletal archers stood within the lashing branches, their bodies long since stripped of meat by the barbs and hooks around them. They wielded arcane crossbows with arrows made from bone shafts and heads like sharpened teeth.

And at the third line, standing atop the shambling Tower of Blightcrow, stood the Death Lord, Ghez Felhammer. He was a massive figure in his own right -- so much larger than life that the Tower itself actually looked smaller just because he was standing on it. With one hand anchored to its flagpole and the other brandishing one of his axes high in the air, he threw back his head and roared. The noise coming from his mouth wasn't so human as a scream, it really was a roar; like a T-Rex on a rampage. His cape billowed in a wind that seemed to stir up solely for his benefit, and curled between his uprisen knee and the flagpole was the succubus, Passion Near.

On the whole, it was a wickedly intimidating sight. The kind that'd force you to admit that, no matter what you thought of him, Ghez Felhammer had style.

Nowhere near as stylish was the man riding into battle on Felhammer's loaned-out war-steed, which consisted of something quadrapedal and encased in so much plated armor that it could only vaguely be described as wolfish or bear-like. The armor was entirely red and gold, with just a scant few black lines here and there. Whatever the monster was inside of it, its claws and teeth were naturally golden and its eyes were an ugly, hateful pair of green lights that stood in murderous contrast to everything else. It had no reins to speak of; just handles on the back neckplaces and a leash made out of heavy chains. Good luck trying to find a saddle.

Riding upon this monster in the second line, and looking absolutely unsuited for it by any standard, was the Wizard, Kholia Horren. Flanked by a bodyguard of spider-cavalry on all sides, wielding his staff of power once more, and looking unusually terrified for a man whose mood could only be guessed at through context and body language.

All the same, this was one time where he would not be completely outdone: Power flared black and red at the head of his staff, its eye settling squarely on Seer Aldinar. Kholia managed a brief smile, and then...

"Witness his glory..." The eye began to tilt, and then it started rolling. Lightning swirled unnaturally until its pupil, and then red and black electricity washed down the length of Kholia's staff-wielding arm, around his shoulders, and to his free hand's fingertips. "Through me!"

The Elves struck first. They not only did so without glorious battlecries or overwhelming numbers, but they completely killed Kholia's attempt at grandeur in the process -- along with most of his retinue of skeletal cavaliers on their giant spiders. Spells crashed in a wave against his scattershot barrier, and when he finally let fly with the entropic lightning bolt, Aldinar, Vara and Eledier all performed the exact same uppercutting sweep of their weapons. The spell hit this and shot upwards, lost to the ages in an instant.

As one, the Seers flowed into mirrored stances of one another; weapons held back empty hands pointed forward, and conjured spellstones orbiting down from a halo above them all. The stones spiraled around each Seer's outstretched arm, then shot not for Kholia, but for a much grander target.

His Tower.

Across a hundred yards of falling forest and over the heads of an undead horde. Past Kholia, between trundling trees and finally right up against an arsenal of defensive spells that would've laughed off anything short of a Turlin-blessed siege ballista. Though the stones were small, each teal thing being only a bit bigger than your average pebble, they had power on their side.

One by one, they exploded in to tiny suns, burning bright enough that the outermost barrier appeared as a pitch black wedge by comparison. Nearby trees caught fire and collapsed, crushing dozens of warriors as they fell. Kholia himself panicked and charged forward, trampling a few more as he went, but through it all a single sound could be heard.

Ghez Felhammer laughing like a maniac.

"I do not believe we can take that one down," Vara pointed out.

"And I am inclined to agree," said Eledier with a nod.

"The Wizard then," said Aldinar. "We leave it in his hands."

"Is that faith I hear in your voice?" Eledier asked.

"Resignation to a horrible screaming death, actually."

A moment's pause, wherein Kholia pulled far enough into the front line that the Seers' personal Rangers were taking shots at him just to ricochet into his nearest soldiers.

"Close enough," Vara mused. Eledier nodded in silent agreement.

[Caden Law]

There is a difference between Elves on Defense and Elves at War. Contrast, if only for a moment, the defense of Eluriand and the battle for Tembrethnil.

From the beginning, Eluriand was an attempt at mere survival. The mindset going in was that victory was a slim chance, hinging mainly on reinforcements that ended up slaughtered and used by the enemy. Its defenders were a sorry lot; arrogant soldiers who had forgotten their enemy's strengths and weaknesses in favor of a decade's worth of myth and legend, and unprepared fools who had little idea what they were doing. It relied on chokepoints that could be bypassed with ease and there were few attempts made to keep the fighting spirits high.

"We may yet withstand them..." was the unspoken motto at Eluriand, tepid and frightened as it was.

The battle of Tembrethnil -- this battle in specific -- was the culmination of a month's worth of guerilla warfare. Asymmetrical savagery, and it was hard to say which of the two sides was more merciless than the other. The Farstrike Warband, three Seers and a small platoon's worth of Rangers, went into battle not expecting or hoping for a victory, but with the full intention of ripping one from the cold and bloody dead hands of their enemy. Preferably after saving said hands from the rest of the enemy's brutalized corpse. These were Elves at war; fey things clad in armor and spite, toting arcana the likes of which should've gone extinct a century or five ago. Lithe and quick, graceful and merciless, violent without remorse and savage in the way that bridges the rising ape and the falling angel -- like Men, but not.

Were they any more ethereal, they would've been intangible. Considering how few of them fell for every single monstrous foe they vanquished, it wasn't much of a stretch to think they already were.

Though the Rangers numbered more, it was the Seers who did most of the work. Salvo after salvo, they flung spellstones into the hordes of undead. Every single spell went off with a different kind of effect; explosions of sound and light but no heat, or raw force collapsing in on itself, and music that sundered the bonds between atoms and simply reduced dozens of ghouls to sprays of nondescript grey matter. Where the Rangers truly shined was in keeping the Seers free to do these things: Their shots were precise and calculated and seemingly without reason, until you took a look at where the bodies were dropping and piling and forming trip-zones that slowed down everything to set foot on them.

And every now and then, a shot went screaming at one of the two Death Lords. Kholia always screamed in equal parts fear and anger as his scattershot barrier took incoming spells and threw them at somebody else without rhyme or reason. Several trees bore fresh scars as a testament to this, and many more bodies had been ground under root as well. Ghez just kept laughing. He never stopped, not even for a split second.

Behind the lines though, distant from where the Elves and the Undead had finally begun slamming into each other in hand-to-hand combat, another power was growing. Gold and green, and all of it mixed with a blue guide-light that looked eerily like a trail of feathers spiraling about in a lightning storm. Where the fog touched the light, it simply ceased to exist. Leaves and broken blades of grass littered the air, and a whole segment of forest seemed to lean about as if pushed and pulled by a wind that wasn't really there -- a wind moving in total opposition to the light at the disturbance's center.

There, veiled in power and glory that he still wasn't quite able to control, stood the Wizard Blueraven. His clothing billowed with the nonexistent wind, and behind the goggles was only a thick blue and gold light threatening to break the glass lenses. It shined out from his nostrils and his mouth, even his ears and with time, every single pore on his face. His hands were placed forward, as if trying to compress something into the size and shape of a bowling ball. He Spoke, and letters writ themselves into the air all around him; pitch black effigies burning shadow and purpose into the light he was gathering.

Something new blackened into the space between his fingertips. Lines first, but then they expanded into the rough likeness of an egg made from polished onyx. Blue sparks of lightning feathered out along its bloody red event horizon. The spell was complete. It needed but one thing.

Its name.

"Siege Arcana" said Caden, so intent on the spell that he failed to include a comma or period after it. Fitting enough, since the spell itself Worked rather like a period: A sudden and terminal stop.

"Get down!" he finally ordered, and whether they were paying attention to him or not, the Elves of Farstrike did as he wanted. One and all, they ducked.

An instant later, the spell blasted right over the Seers' heads like a pitch black cannonball trailed by a comet's tail of red ice and purple fire. There was no spiral this time, nor was there a massive trench of molten and frozen glass left in its wake. Only the screeching of ravens and the sundering of air and then...

Impact.

The unstoppable force and the immovable object met: Blueraven's Siege Arcana against Blightcrow's Tower Shield. Magic against Magic, and the exchange of energies broke the air like glass in every direction. The barrier burned into view, first black and then stark flaming white with an edge of putrid yellow and a shape like a wedge. It stood in wicked contrast to the spell Working against it, and the space where the two met was little more than the abstract concept of Conflict rendered into something both visible and undescribable.

The run-off from it was enough to set fire to everything within a hundred feet, though the flames burned at absolute zero and their victims were reduced to piles of snow and ice instead of ash.

Over it all -- above even the ungodly racket generated by the clash of spell on spell -- one thing could still be heard.

"KHOLIA!" Ghez Felhammer screamed, and he did not sound anywhere near pleasant as he did it. "YOU LIED TO ME!"

No-one could ever really understand why Kholia did what he did next. Maybe it was terror, or maybe it was blinding rage; though who he was angry or afraid of was impossible to say too. Either way, the barrier began to crack. Black spiderwebs shot across it, harsh angles merging and diverging until the whole looked like a pair of great black eyes.

"BLUERAVEN!" Kholia screamed as he drove Felhammer's Hellhound straight through the fighting masses of Elves and Undead. The Seers were ready. They were prepared to hold the line; all for one and then some. Spellstones rained into Kholia's scattershot barrier and completely torched the ground at his wake; when the bodies ran out, trees started to explode and shrubs and grass all caught fire. Music failed, magic failed, blades failed...

...because Kholia completely bypassed the Seers like they weren't even there.

As the Hound hit roadside, it jumped. Higher and farther than any horse ever could, all three tons of it jumped. Over the Seers, over their Rangers, over the piles of corpses scattered and writhing around them. Through branches, over bushes, off one tree and then another, and finally back down with a barrel roll that something the Hellhound's size and build shouldn't have been capable of.

Caden looked up right in time to see Kholia bearing down him, framed by the image of the Tower's Shield collapsing like broken glass.

[Caden Law]

The sun rose high and red over the fog-addled forest of Tembrethnil. As it overwhelmed the morning twilight, so too did Blueraven's Siege Arcana overwhelm Blightcrow's Tower Shield, shattering it as artfully as a rocket-propelled grenade through a church window. Magic imploded into magic, light warped into anti-light and the whole area inverted its colors for precious seconds as the barrier collapsed in huge shards to the mangled dirt below.

As quickly as it'd changed, the light snapped back to normal and the shards vaporized into neon aether, then faded into the fog. As they went, what remained of Siege Arcane plowed headlong into the very midsection of Blightcrow's Tower. Put simply: It broke.

In more detail, the Tower bent severely as its midsection jolted back and its top and bottom struggled to stay in place. After a moment, it was almost cartoonish looking. Then came a spiderweb of cracks, every single one black and red and blue. Masonry gave, stabilizing spells shattered and the whole thing simply toppled over with a sound like old gods dying.

Too many things happened next to convey with mere text. Text doesn't give a sense to time and confusion. Try to imagine though, that everything you're about to read happened within the span of ten seconds. No more, no less.

The Tower fell, but the Death Lord Ghez Felhammer didn't go down with it. He leapt from its rooftop at the last second before its collapse, his cape billowing roughly behind him and one of his axes dragging with it. He reached back, took the axe in hand and started spinning. Closer to the ground and the spin became a flip became a full-fledged 1080* rotation in several directions at once. As he went, the axes lit up with a corpsetaker's red glare, and when he finally landed, the ground around him lit up in a great flaming red circle to match. Lines of fire and lightning and raw force shot out in eight directions, like compass points gone wrong. With no regard for friend or foe, they severed and cauterized what they hit. Three Rangers died screaming, another lost his face and simply died on the spot.

At the same time, Passion Near went airborn. Great black dragon's wings and a devil's tail shot from her back in a way that was as much sensual as it was demonic. She launched from the tower and swooped a tight arc around Ghez as he leapt, then raced him to the ground and weaved an impossibly quick, narrow path through Elves and Undead alike. Rangers took shots at her, ghoulish arrows came perilously close to tagging her in a dozen places, but there wasn't anyone or anything that could touch her.

She accelerated along the ground; sixty to a hundred and faster still, her canine teeth turning to fangs and her long-nailed fingertips turning into savage claws. She straightened and stretched, drew her wings in close and let out a vengeful shriek that sounded damnably close to a moan...

...and then she slammed into Vara like a humanoid cruise missile and both were gone somewhere into the forest. To her credit, the Seer fought the whole way out of sight, and even over the racket of war being waged, you could still hear the two of them do battle.

Now hit your rewind button one more time. Ten seconds in reverse, and then...

"DIE!"

Grass flattened. Branches snapped downwards. Bushes imploded towards the ground. Smoke burst out of everything, and within his Circle of Power, all Blueraven could do was to look up and meet force with force -- Word for bloody Word.

"NO!"

It was like a joust without lances. Kholia snapped back and did an ungainly flip off the Hellhound's back, then tumbled to the ground as Caden leapt out of the way and shouted again--

"Stone Maiden Mausoleum!"

It cost him his Circle, but the Hellhound exited the fight in bloody spectacular fashion. Four dirt pillars shot out of the ground, each one stabbing into the next with a wall's worth of thick stone spires. The Hellhound landed dead center in the midst of it, the Circle collapsed into the base of the Mausoleum and a spray of blood and broken metal shot up out of the empty space where a roof should've been. A yelp followed, and then the undersized construct collapsed into piles of dirt. The Hellhound stood still and bloody for a few moments longer, and then it keeled over as well. The lights of its eyes flickered once, twice, and then never again.

"Get down!" someone screamed as the seventh second ended. Caden didn't even stop to think about it -- he just did as told.

It was the only reason he wasn't killed on the spot by a hail of purple shards of ice, each one double-pointed and two feet long. They would've gone right through his back and out from his chest if not for the warning. They passed him over instead, made it another twenty feet and were sent flying in a scatter by something like an M80 explosion. When the smoke cleared, the Ranger Shaul stood with spellrifle held and charged, his mask conveying a look of frantic determination.

"I'll deal with you later," Kholia declared with a dismissive shove of his hand.

Shaul went from zero to a hundred-and-twenty in less time than it takes most people to blink. He didn't stop until he hit a tree hard enough to snap it in half, and still went another thirty feet after that.

"Prepare yourself, Blueraven," Kholia ordered, raising his staff of power high in the air as he did. Caden looked back at him over his shoulder, just in time for the next few words. "Veil yourself in power and glory. Ready your spells, your mind, your wits, and your will. Ready yourself for the end, Blueraven! ABANDON ALL HOPE AND KNOW THAT YOU WILL DIE A--"

Lightning hit Kholia's scattershot barrier, splintering all over it in a hundred different directions. In the relative silence to follow, he seethed enough to start drooling.

"Sorry," Caden offered, though it wasn't much of an apology. He was still posed in the act of casting a lightning bolt with one fingertip. "I'm a sucker for stylish heroic interrupts."

"WITNESS YOUR DOOM!"

Kholia brought the staff down...

[Caden Law]

It was like a wave of raw emotional force, felt as much in the mind as on the body. Not unlike the times when Caden had channeled his own pent-up frustrations into magic, Kholia let loose with a lifetime's worth of not-so-impotent rage and fear so far mixed and gone that they turned into a horrifying sort of despair. The whole thing was like a pitch black shockwave, growing thinner as it expanded, and within it were images. Awful ones. Familiar ones.

A boy being mutilated for tradition's sake. A girl turning him down because someone better was pursuing her. A teenager realizing his limits for the first time. A young man realizing he'd never achieve his dreams, because there would always be someone out there with more power, more experience, more skill, or a better body, better mind, better soul, and better heart. A middle-aged man finally crying himself bitter at a desk. A slightly older man tasting the Dark Arcana for the first time, and realizing that he very much liked it.

...and the voice that lied, whispering the sweet promises of power and glory never to be realized...

Kholia threw it all at Caden, and the younger Wizard didn't stand a chance of really defending himself. This isn't to say he didn't try, but it wasn't much use. Discipline metaphorically kept his head above the waters, but the physical reality was that Kholia's sheer rage sent him flying several dozen feet with no regard for what he had to smash through to do it. In the haze of pain, Blueraven's only true defense was the last resort. The thing that no true combatant ever wants to use against his enemies. The nuclear option of the mind.

Understanding.

Because when you understand, you cannot truly hate.

You can fear, you can despise, you can wish ruin, but there'll always be that little bit of a chip in your blade's edge, or that moment's hesitation when you've got the other guy down. Sympathy and mercy come from understanding, and so does suicidal error. But Caden had no alternative. It was understand, or die.

And so, Blueraven allowed himself to see the images for what they were. He allowed himself to know and to understand the intricacies of asymmetry between himself and Blightcrow. And though there were tears of something very much like sympathy in his eyes when he got up, that wasn't important. That he was able to stand up after that kind of emotional blitzkrieg; that was important.

When he was done scraping himself up out of a pile of broken branches and grass, Caden dusted himself off. He was bleeding from a few places, but for all that...it could've been worse.

He looked at Kholia and knew, deep down and in ways he'd never want to admit, it could've been much worse.

"I'm sorry," Caden said. "I'm so sorry."

This, if only for a moment, brought pause. Even with the faceplate covering his eyes, Kholia could be seen staring, his head cocked to one side in morbid curiosity.

"For what, exactly?"

First the cheapshot: Caden thrust his left hand forward, and from his sleeve came the Bazaar Wand. It slipped into his grasp perfectly, and before it could even settle there was a blast of lightning. Kholia shrieked, but his barrier held -- and then came the Arcane Blast, so fast that it wasn't visible as more than a glimmering trace of light about half-way between them. It sank precious inches through the barrier, then detonated. An instant later came a comet of stark blue-white light.

That old classic, Magic Missile, smacked into the weakened segment of Kholia's barrier and did not scatter as so many other spells had. It sank in, pushed through the barrier and finally ruptured it outright; magic could be seen rippling and then blowing out as a crystalline vapor in every direction, and Kholia flailed and screamed at the center.

Caden did not apologize because of that.

He drew his free hand back, and from his belt came the Wand of Nevermorrow, flipping and twisting and crashing into his palm like it'd been yanked there by string. He clutched it on reflex, shunted power and emotion into it and returned the favor accordingly.

Where Kholia threw out impotent rage in every direction, Caden threw out something worse. Something much more focused and direct, appearing as a torrent of navy blue feathers swirling about a collumn of white light. It hit the Dark Wizard head-on, and brought with it the things that no such monster should truly be forced to see -- even if they deluded themselves into thinking they'd be able to spot a weakness in doing so.

A boy being mutilated for tradition's sake. A family shunning him and a girl liking him because he was different from the rest. A childish rebellion against state dogma and mindful obedience. The acceptance of a weathered and wisened old mentor, and the journey of a frigid lifetime in only a few years. The battles won, the love lost, the wars waged and the will unfaltering.

...and the vision, however brief it was, of Kholia's own master quitting the field in injury at the young Wizard's hands...

Blightcrow faced this onslaught with the humiliated endurance of an overworked peon. His discipline and his tenacity and his own brand of understanding and experience let him survive it all without even budging until the last few moments of Blueraven's onslaught. Until he saw Xem'zund, his own master, turning away from a shot that should've been heard around the world. Turning away from the very Wizard who stood before him now.

"...I...see..."

The assault finally died away, and Caden brought both wands in. He assumed a stance that looked something like a practitioner of Akashiman kendo and Coronian fencing, except with wands instead of swords or daggers. Kholia trembled a few moments, and Caden knew what was going to happen next. Knew it in his bones. Counted on it completely.

Tears would not slip from beneath Kholia Horren's faceplate, and that was just as well.

"I WILL KILL YOU FOR THAT!"

The old man had gone to the other side of rage, and his understanding brought with it no sympathy. Only an awful, ugly kind of power; dark and red and hellish all over. He screamed. He screamed so loud that his vocal chords probably bled from the strain of it.

He raised his staff high, and then brought it down again. A razor-thin line of fire rippled from where it hit the ground, and arcs of lightning spread from the eye. Caden sidestepped the one and caught the other in the air a few inches from the tip of the Bazaar Wand. He twisted around, dragging the energy along with him and then casting it right back.

Kholia vanished. The lightning struck somewhere near the road. Caden turned hard and let fly with Magic Missiles from the tip of Nevermorrow, just as Kholia reappeared. The Dark Wizard simply swatted the spells aside with the butt of his staff, then stomped forward with vigor that such a haggard old man shouldn't have possessed. He brought the Eye-end to bear, and Caden swept the Bazaar Wand around -- he parried not with his body or wands, but with the very terrain itself. Dirt shifted hard, Caden fell over, but Kholia ended up striking ground with enough force and power to implode and set fire to it for seven feet out in every direction.

Caden slid to a halt somewhere behind, rolled to one knee and let fly with twin Lightning Strikes. Kholia batted them aside blindly, sweeping his staff over and around his head, then slinging it out in one hand and turning. He aimed it like the mother of all wands, screamed something in true Old Diamonic, and a blast of dark blue fire shot from the staff's Eye.

Caden countered through sheer force of will, thrusting the Bazaar Wand into the fireball's very core. Magic plowed into magic and disrupted it, tearing apart both the wand and the spell it was countering with a ring-shaped blast that trenched the ground between them and left both Wizards momentarily blinded.

Kholia dealt with it better. He spun forward, slinging the staff around more like a pole-hammer this time. It smacked into one end of the Wand of Nevermorrow and jarred it right out of Caden's hand.

The Dark Wizard was laughing after that. Both men regained their sight simultaneously, and Caden's first vision was that of Kholia spunning around to thrust the butt-end of his staff at him. There was magic gathered there, like a spinning drillbit made from vaporized blood.

"Who's sorry now?!" Blightcrow cackled, to which Blueraven only replied...

"I am."

Caden lunged. There was nothing fancy about what happened after that. He ducked under the staff thrust, tackled Kholia around the waist and dragged the old man screaming to the ground. When they hit, he drew out his bowie knife with the same faux telekinesis he'd used to draw the Wand of Nevermorrow earlier. With it, he stabbed Kholia.

And he kept stabbing him.

In the throat, in the chest, in the stomach, in the jaw. Twenty-seven times, it took, until the Dark Wizard stopped screaming. Another four or five after that until he stopped moving. Another six until he stopped breathing. Another seven until the life -- what little remained of it -- finally bled out of the old man's body. There was nothing pretty or glorious about any of it, and the drama faded out around the same time Kholia stopped fighting back. You could call it an act of war, but it really wasn't. In war, the kills are made with swords. You could call it a duel of Wizardry, but it wasn't that either. Spells hadn't won the day.

Point in fact, nothing was won at all.

Caden Law murdered Kholia Horren in cold blood. He understood the man, sympathized with him, and then drove him insane with rage to provoke weakness. Then he dragged him down and murdered him with a big sharp knife.

When the deed was done, Caden stood up. He wiped blood off the knife's blade with one of his sleeves. He was drenched in red along the front of his coat and pants, and none of it was his own. He sheathed the knife, summoned his remaining Wand up once again and looked at Kholia's dead body one last time.

"I'm sorry," he said again, though there was markedly less feeling in it this time. "I'm so sorry."