Stairway to Heaven

[Leaf on the Wind]

Hellhand's mount tore open the chest cavity of an offending dragon, spilling assorted viscera into the sky-tunnel and dragging the beast along for several long seconds before internal connections gave way to the forces of air resistance and the mount's own violent head movements. The rider dismounted and leapt for his life, catching hold of the mount's bony wing. He held fast for a while, clearly screaming for help in an inhuman tongue, and then a great hand of abnatural fire ignited all around him, squeezing tight. Bloody red vapor and flash-dried ash spewed out from between the fingers and the rider fell away in bits and pieces. A moment later, siege magicks slammed into the mount and blew off chunks of bone.

The beast was nothing if not purposefully engineered. It could've been put together from an assembly of dragon parts, but it was more like an amalgam of nightmares pulled out of the other side with Hellhand himself during his ruinous return from the Antifirmament. It had three heads, all of them draconic and forward-horned. It had six massive wings, five tails of varying lengths, and no shortage of reaching claws and jagged protrusions. Hellhand himself rode in the creature's fortified ribcage, standing tall with arms crossed and staff hovering beside him. For all the havoc he wrought, for all the carnage of battle, he seemed completely unfazed and inattentive.

The dragonriders were fewer in number, relying on summoned demons and wore to try and make up for their losses. Their leader had placed himself squarely between Hellhand and the Wild Aeon, alternating between attacks on both. His were the only direct spells that seemed to have any effect on either, and the others may as well have been running interference for him.

Rowan was cognizant of all this, but the best he could do was report it to the Wizards who already seemed to know everything. Wormaxe looked numb with shock. Blueraven had his usual resolute wits about him. It would've been comforting if there weren't demons breaking through the Wild Aeon's wards in ever increasing numbers. And the skies were expanding. The deeper into the moon's atmosphere the ship descended, the easier it was to breathe. It didn't take long before the air grew humid and cold either, as magic of one sort gave way to another. And it didn't take long for the skies to get crowded as the Aeon leveled out in pursuit of some ship that Blueraven and Wormaxe both claimed to see.

Blue ships. They looked vaguely similar to the Aeon, but only in the sense of having similar ring-engines and keel layouts. Most were bulkier by far, without any obvious armaments. None of them even twitched in response to the battle clattering onto their collective doorstep. Down in the streets, horseless carriages blazed through streets without wheels, lit by lamps without flames, and eldritch things wandered the pale light of the urban forevernight, stalking the shadows of mountain-sized pyramids. It was a vivid picture of living decay, one that would've made Rowan think of the flaming red cities of Haidia if only by sheer contrast -- if he had time to actually stop and study any of it.

By the time the Wild Aeon had gotten close enough to pass between pyramids, the dragons had caught up. One lunged it, plowing straight through the wards on pure brute force, feathers boiling off of its toughened hide as it snapped down on the men of Blueraven Brigade. Rowan dodged a bite that took off another man's arm and part of his upper torso. Chi swirled around him in a tangle of metaphysical flame and ghost leaves as he jumped up and took the rider with one strong hooking punch, katar leading the way right through his chest and shoulder. Rowan sprang off from the wing joint and dove back to the deck with a teal scream, trailed by a mangled dead body as Brigadiers bore the dragon to the deck and pierced its vitals from every direction.

Another dragon followed suit.

"Find something to hold onto!" Blueraven warned, his Voice carrying over the racket of men screaming and dying to a blast of concentrated, superheated air bordering on magic in its intensity. Rowan dodged by the skin of his teeth. A spell shot by him, plowed into the dragon's mouth as the heat blast ended, blew out a chunk of its neck but didn't kill it.

Wild Aeon dove hard, trailed by demons and dragons. Hellhand's mount was already down below. Spinning wildly, the ship wove between two smaller towers and dragons slammed through eldritch stone and glass and metal. Several more men were lost in maneuvers, and others held on only because someone else grabbed them at the right moment.

Rowan wasn't one of them. He lost footing and concentration in the same moment. He was out of anyone's reach. He tumbled free of the Wild Aeon, passing through its wards and rocketing free, accelerated along through magic and gravity. He Screamed as he went plowing through the remnants of an already broken window, hit the floor, bounced up and tore through several flimsy walls and an eerie assortment of furniture; chairs on wheels, desks built into those same flimsy walls, strange blocks of metal and glass covered in eldritch runes and freakish lights. He hit broken metal doors and tumbled into a small room suspended by ancient, already damaged cables.

The cables snapped.

It was a long, long way down.

[Leaf on the Wind]

It took him a while to drag himself out a mass of debris that used to be a small room, now little more than wreckage far underground at the bottom of a vertical tunnel. He was bleeding all over, picking bits and pieces of metal and wood from his skin as he limped out into the street. The denizens of this strange city looked...

Generic.

They could've been anything. They were so generic that Rowan found himself forgetting what they looked and sounded like as soon as he looked away from them. All wore the same kinds of androgynous clothing, same patterns, same everything. All of their faces were bland beyond recognition. All their voices sounded the same. They were drones. They were barely even aware that Rowan was there in the city beside them.

"This is Limbo," one or another answered when he grabbed and shook them for answers. "This is Limbo. Where nobody knows your name. Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"Godsdammit," Rowan wheezed as he staggered down what he now recognized as walkways. "Never thought I'd actually be angry to get this kinda treatment."

He made it through several more introductions and questions, then found a street corner and leaned against it with his eyes wide open. He was afraid of what he'd see when he blinked. It wasn't Haidia. It wasn't anything like Haidia. But he couldn't think of anything else. Haidia had been his home for...it felt like years. And everyone in Haidia had known him, even when they didn't. That was at the low end of the things that had ruined him there.

The man called Rowan Stormwind disappeared from the city of Scara Brae not long after the Day of the Black Silk Son. He stepped into a shop and the door closed behind him and when he opened his eyes, he was lost in a Hell unlike anything myth will tell you. Haidia is just a word to most people; it's a name without meaning, because most are only educated of its existence through barely truthful stories told by people who weren't there to see what they were talking about. At best. Rowan had been there. He had been consigned to Haidia by his own foolishness and the things done to him and by him and around him were unspeakable.

They started with his body, rearranging his scars and turning him inside out and playing with him until he couldn't stand it. Then they twisted his soul into knots, tied tight and then severed with a swiftness worthy of Gordian myth. They molded him until he was unrecognizable to himself. They set him loose on people from times and places he didn't know. They bred him. They mangled him. They butchered him. They ate pieces off of him and then they threw him into an arena for their own sick amusement. And then, somewhere along the way, someone decided to take him back to his base.

They got a lot of details wrong. That's why Rowan's scars weren't right. But he was close enough for his soul to take care of the rest, shaping him back into himself or something like it. From a blob of meat to a man in hours and hours, and he could remember every last drop of blood and every last lump of gore that squeezed out in the process. That was why he had changed so much. His body was nothing but a reflection of willpower and spirit, so reliant on the designs of his broken down soul that he couldn't turn his powers off even when he tried. They were the main thing holding him together.

"You okay?" Caden asked from beside him.

"Hells no," Rowan Laughed. "How long was I out? Where's the ship?"

The Wizard helped him up from the ground, bracing him as they looked after the smoke trail. "I have no idea," he answered.

Rowan tightened his grip on the katar. He still hadn't let go. "Can't see too well right now. What happened to your coat?"

"Had to ditch it when I got off the ship," Caden answered as they started down the walkway, Limbo's denizens treading facelessly around them. "Needed to lay low. Don't look up but we've got company."

Something exploded. Rowan looked up anyway.

The orc skyfleet was up there. "Where the hells..."

"I dropped them back in," Caden said. "Got desperate. Needed to buy some time so I could get my bearings."

"You can do that?" Rowan Mumbled. He started to laugh.

He felt a pinch in his neck, then his blood began to run cold. Literally.

"...oh Gods dammit," Rowan rasped as the world faded to black.

It took ten seconds for his legs to hit the ground. Just a few more for the rest of him to flop down, lifeless as a puppet with its strings cut. The people of Limbo never even noticed.

[Aeraul Smythe]

There was fire and fury and, at the heart of it all on a deck of eldritch wood beyond age, there was a sense of absolute calm and awareness.

Aeraul slit the head off an orc boarder with the speed and grace of a nimble dancer half his size. He could sense hundreds more just like the decapitated corpse, waiting in the wings and warring in the skies of a corpseyard moon. He could sense the emotions of the Brigadiers as they fought for their lives and lost the battle, man by desperate man. Liam of Hegel thought of his family as a hooked blade tore out his intestines and sent him flying overboard. Rathorn Southron laughed and laughed and laughed until his lungs flooded with blood; he was surrounded by bodies and pieces of bodies near the bow of the ship. He was in shock and it was either laugh or cry as the world started to fade out.

Rowan was gone.

Aeraul took his cutlass through a dismounted dragonrider's midsection, then batted the torso away with his jian. The deck was as sticky as it was slick. Simon Graves was cold and afraid and his left hand kept twitching even though the arm was gone and he wasn't far from the ground now. Tanner Macheus remembered his hometown as he ducked and wove between lashing blades and whistling shots that blew quick-sealing holes in the wood at his feet. He put a sturdy dagger -- a mail piercer -- straight through one orc's jaw and leveraged him into another's line of fire. He was numb beyond reckoning, a great dam of calm holding back unbelievable terror as he began, desperately, to want to live.

Rowan was gone.

Aeraul made his way up a short flight of stairs onto the pilot's deck, just as an uruk slammed down in back of it. He wore nothing but boots, pants, wode, and bloodstains. He carried hooked swords as long as a man's leg and twice as wide, scything back viciously and glinting in the distant, suddenly alien sunlight. He was without fear, only purpose drove his feet. Aeraul fenced him with the jian, the uruk -- Gazingo -- sidestepped and tried to take his arm off with both blades. Aeraul dropped the sword and recoiled, swept the cutlass over Gazingo's attack and vicariously experienced a beheading as his blood ran cold. Blueraven was standing behind him, struggling desperately to keep control over the ship. Savas was doing what he could to take potshots at everyone and everything from a position of safety.

Caden was preparing for something. Something big.

Rowan was gone.

Aeraul stood still on the ship and said simply, "My brother just died."

No one heard him.

His blood was running cold and Aeraul was so calm he couldn't even feel the chill creeping into his veins. There was so much going on now that it was hard to focus on any one thing. The man who could read the hearts and souls of a thousand others could no more grasp his own emotions than he could grasp the air between his fingertips.

[Caden Law]

Hellhand's bone-dragon slammed into Larkatz's flagship, dragging it down in a tumbling, flaming tangle of limbs and magicks and engines and worse. The Wild Aeon steered towards them and a lot of things happened in a very short amount of time.

A dragon swooped up in front of the ship, entirely too close to avoid it. The bow mast stabbed it right through the chest cavity and intertia drove it the rest of the way to the icepick-like battering ram's base. It spewed superheated air for several seconds, head banging around, limbs lashing at random. The air lost concentration over moments, until it finally became nothing more than the dying rasp of an enormous bio-magical combustion engine. As this happened, the red rider dismounted and drew his sword, a slightly curving blade colored like a metallic rainbow, most of it purple and yellow. Rathorn cast his dying spell at the beast and annihilated it. The sword came up and voided out the spell in turn, even as the dragonrider started stalking through the battle.

"Wormaxe!" Blueraven called at the sight of one of his men being cut down by that wicked blade. "Take over for me!"

Wormaxe looked at him questioningly. All Blueraven bothered to say was, "This foe is beyond any of you."

Staff already in hand, Caden drew his sword and didn't even bother for a running start. He was on a moving ship. And he knew how to work gravity, just a little bit.

He hopped, tucked his legs in and came clear of the pilot deck in the blink of an eye, then came back down behind the red rider. He didn't even bother with a greeting or a spell; just a swift sword strike that went too wide to be of any good. The rider struck back and blade met staff.

Caden's resonant shard briefly cracked at the impact, which echoed like a scream below thunder. Power shot up through his arm and discharged in a spray of ghost-feathers from his shoulder. Caden cringed, shifted his foot and flash-froze the blood at the rider's feet. Metal plowed into ice and wood below, followed by a rabid snapping of gloved fingers. Caden reflexively dodged away but it was a feint, opening him up for a weaker, less defined spell that was all green and malice. It hit him the face and shattered all over wards the Sorcerer barely remembered preparing, then it was all he could do to parry the follow-up thrust. The rider spun around under they stood back to back, trying blindly to turn and stab each other.

For a moment, they broke away and faced each other.

The rider's mask exploded into a spray of ice and fog. Caden flash-boiled it on reflex, dispersing the haze as quickly as it had formed.

What remained was a familiar draconic face, its muzzle curled into an inhumanly fanged smile that never once twitched as an internal mouth gave sophisticated voice to what the wyrm had to say.

"Fancy meeting you here," Spoke Anton Icetongue, the former Warlock Banebram, who had somehow managed to dodge death all together even when it was completely impossible for him to do so.

"I don't have time to play with you," Blueraven answered, just before triggering spells with both staff and sword. Lightning lanced from both and Anton dispassionately caught it on his sword. It was enchanted dehlar; one of the twenty-one Magicide Blades of N'Thayn'sal, the dark and dreary world of a Could Be Tomorrow, left behind when Caden lead a Wizarding raid through Evernorth and effectively burned the place down. Even as the Sorcerer's spells broke, Anton pointed and snapped his fingers. Caden ducked away and Anton laughed. It was a bluff.

Anton was the only enemy who had fought him often enough to have that kind of familiarity. Even now.

Bluff, bluff, not bluffing -- an enormous ball of green fire, which Caden only barely broke using his staff as an arcane bulwark. Anton was right behind it, swinging his sword up at the Sorcerer's face without the slightest hint of fear or hesitation. Caden countered again with his own sword, jammed the staff down between Anton's legs and tripped him up all as he was stepping to one side. The Warlock hit the floor and rolled away, vomiting up raw fire and black ice as he went. Magic missiles shredded through the spell and decimated the deck around where Anton lay, but all they could do to the Warlock was flicker out against his wards. Anton was already up by the time Caden made ready to attack again; staff and steel met magicide and pale blue feathers rippled out from Caden's elbow, power collapsing in on itself as he met old Banebram head to head.

"This isn't a game, Wizard," Anton told him, powering the younger mage down through sheer force of will. The air literally cracked around them as he put a hand on the back of the blade and began to sunder the shard right in Caden's hand.

"Didn't you hear?" Blueraven asked with a feral grin that glowed blue between the teeth. His Mark shined, lighting up a maddening network of power underneath his skin. "I made it to the big leagues."

The weight of his Voice actually broke all of Anton's momentum cold, and the power behind it slammed into the Warlock at more levels than the five basic senses could track. Anton staggered at the very Sound of it, a ripple of blue running through his skin. Caden straightened and stomped forward, unleashing raw gray-blue force from his knee and lower leg. It plowed into Anton's legs and drove him back, popping one of his wards like a grape as he went. The Warlock slashed Caden's spell to ribbons before it could truly harm him, but it did the trick.

"Siege Arcana!"

The Wild Aeon rocked. A shockwave briefly blew out its engines, sending shards of molten black glass and freezing ice in every direction, even as a black hole writhed and gasped right there on its deck. Caden had never actually used the spell so close to the target before.

Anton deserved nothing less.

The fact that it didn't work was proof enough of that.

The Warlock rode out of Siege Arcana atop a dying, screeching demonic thing that had taken most of the damage, protecting himself from the rest with enchanted dehlar. He bared sharp teeth in a monstrous grin, even as his laugh bellowed over the din of battle. The Wild Aeon rattled off course and tore free of the spell, smashing into a pyramid as it passed. Glass broke everywhere as the demon crashed topside and Anton rushed off, shielding himself with magic even as he tried to slit open Blueraven's stomach.

Caden dodged away, his sword sweeping through the air just above Anton's. They parried back and forth several times without even touching blades, even as jagged broken glass and other, harder debris rained down around them, clattering off walls of ice and power. The whole world could have fallen apart around them and they wouldn't have noticed, they were so enraptured in combat. And they were equal now. For the first time, Blueraven fought the Warlock on even footing and held his own, relying on nothing but skill to carry the day where trickery and luck would have gotten him through before. Whether that was because he had come so far as both a fighter and mage or it was because Anton had lost so much power in past encounters -- or both -- he couldn't say.

"Hellfire and a half!"

Pity it wouldn't last.

[Savas Tigh]

"We're going down!" Wormaxe announced with absolutely no shame whatsoever. He had no idea what he was doing. Blueraven didn't even know what he was doing, really, but he had more of a clue and more power to throw around than Wormaxe did. Piloting a ship of such craftsmanship requires hours and days and maybe even months or years of practice and attunement -- for the people it was designed for. For poorly educated, all too human Savas Tigh, who couldn't even evoke on his own, it was a lose-lose situation on every possible front. He was doing his best just keeping the damn thing in a straight line.

And then Blueraven screwed it all up and now the ship was going down hard and Hellhand's bone dragon was coming up alongside it and grabbing on and Savas just gave the Hells up right then and there. As his master fought the wyrm Warlock, Savas stepped back from the helm and got a running start towards the aft of the ship. He was about to jump and the plan was to wing it to the ground; not too bad for someone with a dragon wing wand. It didn't work out that way.

Hellhand's beast grabbed on in several places all at once, wrenching the ancient proto-elven skyship groundward and then piledriving it the rest of the way down. Savas lost track of everyone and he didn't care anyway.

Except for Aeraul, who somehow knew when and where to be to grab him by the ankle and hang on as Savas deployed the wing wand. He screamed at the grip, bit down on it, then went groundward at a respectable speed. The ship preceded them by about two minutes. Its 'landing' was marked by a small mushroom cloud and a shockwave of power and wreckage from both the boat and the city. Streets rippled around the point of impact, windows blew out for a city block in every direction. If anyone was still onboard by that point, they'd be a lumpy red paste now. If they were lucky.

"Look!" Aeraul called, pointing.

Blueraven and the Warlock were still fighting, having traded the ship for the open sky. The Sorcerer rode hard on a nimbus of gray-blue energies, the Warlock stood on the back of something vaguely draconic and overtly demonic. They were throwing siege magicks at each other with little or no regard for the surrounding area, and they were really making a mess of things in the process. Far, far above them, a handful of surviving skyships were being ravaged by demons and a small number of surviving dragonriders. The battles were all breaking down towards their conclusions; no matter who won, they wouldn't be in pretty shape.

"I don't think anyone's ever going to believe this," Savas mumbled to himself. Aeraul nodded mute agreement without hearing or seeing the words.

It took them a while to get low enough for the big man to let go and drop to the ground. Savas touched down close by. They were both immediately surrounded by an oblivious legion of nobodies in weird clothes, moving through their day-to-day routines without even noticing what was happening around them. The closest they came were strangely voiced questions lacking tone or significance. Aeraul was visibly repulsed at the sight of them.

"Aberrations," he explained when Savas asked, saying nothing else.

It was then that, for the first time in a very, very long time, Savas showed a little empathy of his own. "You okay, Aeraul? You've been out of it since we got here."

"I'm going to be fine with everything in a few minutes," Aeraul told him without preamble. "Don't hesitate, and listen close. Whatever I feel like saying is going to be important."

"What?" Savas asked. The big green man stalked right by him without answering. Savas looked back to the nightmare green funeral pyre of the Wild Aeon, then drew his wand and followed suit. "What are you on about?"

"Peace and I are at the same point of unfolding and I need to go this way because I'm feeling things that I haven't felt yet and I'm unhinged and you shouldn't try to do what I think you're going to but thanks anyway," Aeraul rambled. "Feathers. It's all feathers, fluttering down from something big. Too big for us. Too big for itself. I can...feel it."

"You're striking crazy. And coming from me that's saying something."

"I'm so calm...so calm..."

Aeraul sniffled.

Savas stared at him and said nothing.

"I think this is...yes. This is where I feel it all at once...yes. Yes."

The big man collapsed to his knees and started to cry.

He sounded more relieved than anything else.

"I...everything else is gone now. I'm alone in my head. I don't have to hold back the storm anymore. Oh Gods..."

"You're seriously freaking me out," Savas told him.

He watched Aeraul for a full minute before awkwardly looking around and trying to assess their surroundings. The streets were basically empty. Tons of dead nobodies littered the sidewalks. There was a crashed skyship sticking out of a building overhead, slowly burning. A dragon had been crushed all over one of the pyramids nearby and there wasn't an intact window anywhere in sight. The lamps still burned but they were dimming away, light by flickering light.

Savas felt a prickling sensation along the back of his neck. He looked out again and sniffed the air. The scent of death was so overwhelming that he'd finally gotten the hang of smelling life by default; it was the only distinct thing standing out against the white noise plaguing his other senses.

Soon the lamps would all burn out and the street would be lit only by the fading glow of stars.

Aeraul stopped crying suddenly. Savas looked at the lamps again.

"We've got company," he reported.

"I know," Aeraul sighed as he started to stand up.

[Aeraul Smythe]

"I know you're there!" Aeraul called. "And I can tell you right now that it's not going to work!"

Savas ducked away on preemptive reflex. Aeraul jumped back as spires of stone shot out of the ground and collapsed into each other. He didn't assume a stance, didn't look to retaliate. He just wanted a few more seconds. He could feel his own emotions now and he wanted nothing more than to go on feeling them. But he alo knew that he wasn't going to, because he had already resigned himself to it a few seconds in the future.

So he resigned himself to it with a sigh, then cracked his fingers and dodged another attempted killing spell -- spires again, their collapse as intricate as origami and as jagged as a razor's teeth. "So be it," he said, gathering up chi as he walled himself off again -- just like he knew he would. But it was a real calm now. A quiet, peaceful calm, not like the traumatized omniscience of before. He was without any weapon but himself, and he already felt that would not be enough. He also, already, felt that wasn't important. Effort was all that mattered now.

He reached deep.

Chi simmered in his stomach, smoke lightly puffing from his nostrils as his eyes began to burn blue at the iris. Veins stood out more as he assumed a stance, bulging blue and red on green skin. Tattered clothes began to ripple from chi that manifested as smoke and the sound of embers crackling came from all around him. Now was a good time.

"You murdered my brother. I will never forgive you," he said simply, tapping into a rage that was clear on the other side of incomprehensibility. It was easy to understand, easy to control, easy to draw power from.

Now was a very, very good time.

"Let's go."

Siege magic came thundering at him from one direction. Aeraul took off in the other, leaping his way onto the side of a building and slagging broken glass so quickly that it didn't have time to cut his fingers. The air around him burned as he swung from window to window, sliding in a gravity defying crouch that put him exactly where he needed to be.

He came down with an elbow that cratered solid granite for ten feet in either direction. Blue fire spread all around him as he sprang back up, hurling a wave of chi into the dark of what he knew to be a barn for those automated carriages; a garage. Glass and metal broke and warped inside -- he saw, but didn't need to see, the shape of a man ducking down underneath the wave. A sharpened battering ram of ice came for his chest and Aeraul shattered it with contemptuous ease. He was in his element here. He fought with a certainty rivaling his execution of Sijil Kar, the Black Silk Son of Draconus and N'Jal.

Lunge forward, striking into the darkness with an open palm that generated a halo of blue fire. Fear to one side, honest but checked. Aeraul struck with a kick and knew he would hit the mark. He did. One of the carriages rocked and broke, flash-freezing on impact. Aeraul leapt to one side and an enormous blast of fire -- really superheated air -- incinerated the space where he had been standing. He charged in, striking three times in rapid succession and holding nothing back, even though he knew it wasn't going to work. Blood flew into the air and burned before it could rain back down. He knew something was about to happen because he had already felt his own lack of surprise about it.

Bright violet and red light flashed on his chest and it was like getting hit by the Magic Missile's bigger, meaner, angrier cousin. Aeraul tumbled back several dozen feet and went skidding back out into the street. Several lesser missiles slammed into him. He felt the chi of the area subtly rearranging. The ground twisted out of place beneath his feet and he went skidding around in an ever widening spiral that planted him shoulder-first into a darkened lamp post.

It hurt, but the pain would be temporary. Aeraul pushed himself free just in time to avoid a combination of pillars of ice and stone, raining down and rising up all at once. The lamp was obliterated. It was all he could do to stand and counterattack, bringing both hands to bear with a passionless scream -- kiai, burning bright blue in the forevernight of the graveyard moon.

Fingers snapped in the dark. Aeraul saw just a bare glimpse of an all too familiar face.

He missed and it didn't matter and the whole godsdamned city block blew sky high as runes triggered, shaped into the air itself using precisely placed temperature variations. They were all Sideways.

[Savas Tigh]

A Wizard can be many things, but too proud to run and hide isn't one of them. Many of the longest-lived magi of any tradition are the ones who know when to fold 'em and call it quits. He who lives to fight another day has a funny habit of laughing last, if only because the other guy winds up dead later on. And when your life could potentially be measured in centuries or longer, what's the point of fretting over a minor setback here or there?

Savas rationalized his cowardice like a champ. He felt no shame and that was fine. He didn't even watch the battle play out, just ran and ran until his legs were burning. Then he ran another fifteen feet and jumped.

It was the jump that saved his life. The city block's explosion wasn't natural and didn't conform to such petty notions as spreading out. It was concentrated into the shape of an enormous, unevenly shaped pillar. It would've been a lot bigger if it wasn't contained so efficiently. It didn't last long, nor did it generate so much as a puff of smoke, even though almost everything within began to smoulder and fume after it was over.

Savas waited a while longer before he even bothered to look back. He hid himself among the bodies in the meantime. It was safer that way.

The very first thing he saw was Aeraul still standing there, wreathed in fading blue flames, covered in hideous burns and bloody wounds, his clothing shredded down to indecent rags and scraps. One of his eyes lacked a discernible pupil and the other was beginning to fade away. He held still a few seconds longer and then heaved smoke -- bloody red smoke. He collapsed again, twisted and fell hard onto his back. He was still breathing.

Savas waited until he was reasonably sure that the coast was clear. He waited some more, until a Siege Arcana went off in the distance. He could hear Hellhand's Voice bellowing again. It wasn't the only one. He stood and slowly crept over to where Aeraul lay. His face was burned, but he was still trying to make lip movements. His breath and voice came as a faint hiss. Savas knelt down beside him, careful to keep his wand out, then leaned down to check his heart beat.

"I can try to heal you," he said, "but it wouldn't...you wouldn't be you, bud."

Rasping hisses.

"You'd be one of my minions. Just like the spies waiting in Kebiras and the housecarl in Corone. Like Blightcrow and-"

He remembered Aeraul telling him about this. And he stopped and leaned in to hear what the dying man had to say.

In all his life and all his career as a practitioner of the darkest art, the Wizard Wormaxe never heard what Aeraul had to say to him.

For the first time since his childhood, he knew shame.

[Caden Law]

Hellhand joined the fray and the battle sounded something like a million-strong chorus of sledgehammers and a twenty-one gun salute by nuclear artillery in the middle of a hurricane. For all the power afforded by Sorcery, Caden was doing his best just to keep up, and Anton wasn't having much trouble at all.

A squadron of mighty demons ripped through an army of skeletons and ghosts as Sorcerer and Warlock brought powers to bear on Warlocked Necromancer, who seemed only slightly upset at the prospect of fighting both of them. His dragon was finally gone, his wards were failing left and right, but he was replacing them as quickly as they failed and still finding time to launch counterattacks that Blueraven was simply unable to block, though Anton had considerably less trouble. Without so much of his power bound up in maintaining the dragon and its defenses, Hellhand was actually more formidable. And while Anton could get in close enough to nick him here and there, neither mage had anything close to Larkatz the Butcher's skill or ferocity. They were squishy weaklings trying to win a boxing match with a wrecking ball.

The best they could manage was an intricate dance that saw attacks of opportunity curbed; an unspoken alliance of convenience, delaying the inevitable for just a little bit longer. Hellhand was still overpowering them.

Something had to give.

And it did.

"DAMMIT!" Anton Roared as his magicide blade snapped in half, dehlar and enchantments all giving out under an arcane onslaught. He ducked and rolled and immediately changed targets as the air behind him exploded. "I WON'T LET Y-"

It was an alliance of convenience that Caden had been more than ready to break.

Solid steel wrapped in gray-blue light plowed through Anton's remaining defenses like they weren't even there. Caden's sword found the Warlock's heart and kept going. He nailed Anton to an upended slab of stone more than a hundred feet from where the wyrm started. Anton managed to gag something like a curse and tried to cast one more spell before disappearing in a flash of green fire and a puff of violet smoke. The sword remained, soaked in blood and gleaming in the light of battle.

Demons vanished immediately.

Blueraven stood still, regarding both the other Warlock and the horde of skeletons arrayed against him.

"Huh," he sounded in a normal voice. "Probably not the best move."

"Now there's an understatement," Hellhand chortled. He was grinning from ear to ear, far wider than even an orcish maw should have allowed. Not even the orks grinned like that. "And now, little mage, I am going to do the world a favor and be rid of you."

"I'm pretty sure it's the other way around."

"Is it, now? You don't know anything at all, do you?" Hellhand chortled.

Caden impaled him straight up through one leg and out the shoulder.

It took less time than blinking.

Hellhand actually froze for a moment, then grit his teeth and Screamed so loud that one of them shattered clear from his mouth. He stomped with his free leg, flailed his free arm, and dropped his staff in agony.

"Stone Maiden's Tree of Woe," the Wizard declared as spines tore out of Hellhand's body at every angle. The Warlock vomited blood before several organs shredded their way up out the top of his skull and elsewhere. It was a bloody, ugly mess. "You let your guard down. Never do that against a Wizard. Not even for a second."

"And you actually think this is going to be the end of me?" Hellhand's Voice asked, suddenly disembodied from the rest of him. "You've made a grave error in judgement today, Blueraven. It's going to cost you dearly."

"Like I haven't heard that one before," Caden muttered, just before triggering a proper Mausoleum around the Warlock. There's no such thing as being too thorough. When he was done, he sealed the tomb, much as he had once done to Blightcrow back in Raiaera.

He promptly collapsed against his staff and tried not to vomit. The Sorcerous Mark burned so hot it was steaming and the rest of its outgrowths had already faded away. His vision was starting to blur, even with the help of his goggles. He was having trouble breathing. And perhaps the worst thing of all was the fact that it wasn't over yet.

Larkatz Roared even louder than Hellhand. His Voice was an assault on the soul and Caden had to tap back into the reservoir of Sorcery just to hold out against it. He turned in time to see the burly warlord charging at him, accompanied as ever by his faithful gun-toting goblin-servant, Berk. He had an axe in hand. Caden didn't have time to summon up his sword from the stone. It was lodged too deep.

He closed his eyes and called his wand from its holster on his belt. He pushed off from the staff and concentrated, focusing power and emotion into a recursive bundle, then shoving it down the sore interior of his arm. Sorcery lit the veins bright enough to show through his coat, until finally power was sparking all around the wand.

Larkatz jumped at him, axe held high, covered in so much antimagic that even Hellhand's best hadn't done much to slow him down.

The Sorcerer Blueraven took three limping steps forward and bisected him with one swing.

The Butcher rained down in two shocked halves, still swinging his axe even as wards and antimagic runes gave out all over him. It didn't take long for the warlord to simply combust from it all. The fires consumed him before he could even finish bleeding out.

"Sic semper whatever the Hells," Caden rasped as the arcane blade popped out of existence, diffusing into a sprinkle of feathers and sparks. "Always wanted to do that."

He spat out a little blood. His knuckles hurt and he couldn't let go of the wand. It suddenly made sense why the thing was shaped like a sword hilt -- because that's what it was. Or perhaps the man it was originally meant for, Greyspine, would have created hammers with it. Caden didn't know and he didn't particularly care.

Berk smashed him across the face with the butt of a rifle. Caden fell to the ground, dizzy and bleeding.

"You fuckin' idiot! Do you have any idear how many years I tweaked 'at big fucker's mind ter get 'im where I wanted?" Berk spat.

"Ah," Caden finally sounded. "Your name's Berk, isn't it?"

The goblin positively glowed. Literally.

"Nice work with the antimagic," Caden said as he tried to sit up, only to eat a boot to the head for his efforts. His Hat sat lopsided and his body was aching all over.

"Thanka, Man-Berk," the goblin said. "Been workin' at 'is fer years. Spreadin' my Name all ova da continent, bindin' folks ter me will wit' nuttin' but."

"Shaping culture and language so that your Name becomes synonymous with magical power," Caden said from the relative safety of the ground. "You must be pretty godsdamn old to pull that one off."

"882 years," Berk said. "Funny thing 'bout orcs is, they don't got much of a memory for folk like me. Just how I like it. I'm a mindmage, buddy. No good fer alla that fancy fighty shit, but I got what it takes ter get the job done. Any last words?"

There was a gun in his face now. Caden stared up into the barrel and considered his options. He was tired.

"You really should duck," he gambled.

"Nice t-"

Blood splattered all over the Wizard's face as an enormous lance of ice stabbed through Berk's chest, obliterating his heart and flash-freezing his skeleton into a bulging, brittle mess that ripped muscle and skin alike. Even if he had countermeasures prepared in case of an attempt on his life, sheer pain kept him from triggering them. It all happened so fast he couldn't even squeeze on the trigger. Caden calmly nudged the gun clear of himself, then scooted out from under the goblin's tottering frame.

He kicked out one of Berk's knees on general principle. The goblin shrieked all the way to the ground, where he practically appeared to deflate into a pile of living, breathing, weeping meat for however long it took to bleed out and die from heart loss.

Not long at all, really.

Caden watched Kebiras' greatest unsung mastermind die, cold and alone and so very far from home. No one would ever even know Berk existed.

He twitched at the lips, closed his eyes, and found himself remembering the Drifter's words.

Caden looked to iceward.

And at ripple's end, he knew his enemy.

[Caden Law]

The Wizard Blueraven snarled his way into a smile as he spoke, voice beginning as little more than a hushed whisper and ending as a defiant shout. All around came the rising sound of birds cawing and great engines starting to turn.

"Where I come from, the people worship a deathless Saint and her angels. But Saints aren't gods. They have to be appointed by something more than themselves. There was an unspoken assumption, all through Evernorth and Salvar, that Denebriel was given power by the Thaynes only to surpass them. That's wrong. None of them are gods. But there is a God," he explained, raising his wand. "And He hates us all. There was a War in Heaven and they couldn't kill Him. The best they could do was throw Him down for a cancerous aeon bathed in screaming starlight. But now He's clawing his way up out of the darkness, a million strings of inevitabilities, all bundling up into one sacred Name.

"N'THAYN'SAL!"

Caden Law laughed in despair and anger and hatred. He was a tall fellow by the standards of his village, just over six feet, and limber. Built for agility and endurance. He was pale to the point of being pasty, battle-scarred all over and wearing a blue jacket with matching mantle, easily recognized as the remnants of his old Hat and coat. His hair was shorter and even more disheveled. He wore clear glasses, the lenses untinted. His boots were heavy and black, pants brown and rough, shirt white and buttoned and stained with blood that looked worryingly teal. His only visible weapon was a bowie knife holstered on one thigh.

Caden was no stranger to killing himself, but this felt different. The Caden Laws of the Icehenge were plucked out of alternate realities, elseworlds where something had gone differently here or there. They had never really registered to his arcane senses as anything other than proper individuals. They were him but they weren't. No matter what, there was a clear deviation; a defining moment where he could have been them and chose otherwise.

This was something else.

Caden struggled up to his feet and spat out blood. His mind was racing as he watched himself laugh, keenly aware that his own guard wasn't going to be down this time, and equally unsure about why.

"What the hell are you?" he finally asked. "What's your story?"

"There's a hole in the place where my heart used to be," the other Blueraven answered as he looked back down, grinning brokenly. His eyes glowed in the dark. He exhaled blue feathers and ghost dust. His scars were different. He had lots of them, but they weren't like Caden's. "I never thought I would get to actually meet you, but the universe is nothing if not sadistic. All the better for what He has planned."

"...what happened to you?" Caden asked. The longer he could stall, the more time he had to regain even a shred of his power. If he was going to win, it'd be on the first blow.

"You could say I was hurt in a fall," the other version of him answered. "A twenty year fall that broke me apart. And I've been putting myself back together ever since."

Caden grimaced, understanding settling on him like the weight of worlds. The teleportation incident that put him in N'Thayn'sal had also torn him apart at a quantum level. He had, for a while, existed in multiple places at once. He could still remember it. But he had always assumed that he had absorbed the other parts back into himself. It took him a while and it had physically warped him a little, adding to his height and weight, but he had still done it. He thought wrong. That was why this other version of him felt so different -- he wasn't another Caden. He was Caden.

"The enemy at ripple's end is myself," he muttered, brandishing his staff. "Big surprise!"

"That won't work on me," Blueraven warned. "I've already won."

Caden said nothing to him.

Siege Arcana rippled through the night of the moon.

The battle was joined.

[Caden Law]

The spell didn't fizzle out so much as it cracked apart and disassembled itself in a spray of glowing two-dimensional sentences, ceasing to exist down to an abstract, conceptual level. Only a small shower of harmless sparks and broken glass shards made it far enough to rain down at the Wizard Blueraven's feet. He thrust his hands out to either side and had a wand drawn in each of them; fourteen inches a piece, black rywan and cored with liviol, Caden knew at a glance. They weren't the wands he'd lost in his time in Raiaera, but they were certainly close to what he wanted to use as their replacements.

Blueraven brought both to bear. Caden ducked twin flashes of lightning and dragged his own wand along the ground, sending a small tidal wave of rock at his lesser self. The Wizard stopped the spell cold and nullified it, then lashed out with a whip made out of magic missiles.

Five of them hit and Caden grit his teeth on a scream. He staggered and the Wizard caught him in the chest with an arcane blast, knocking him over and blowing out one of the defenses that had been meant for Anton. Caden hit the dirt rolling and immediately forced his will into the ground and the air, negating two spells in rapid succession, then smashing flat a third on the tip of his other self's left wand. Blueraven glanced another missile between his shoulder and neck. Caden struck back with a blast of raw, Sorcerous force, one that looked like his own grimacing face.

Blueraven saw it coming, turned and was gone.

He reappeared behind Caden, one wand at the back of the Sorcerer's head and the other pointing straight up.

Bang.

The Hat went tumbling from Caden's head. It was the nearest miss in years and it was all he could do to send an avalanche across the ground behind him. Blueraven jumped off the crest of a granite wave and threw one of his wands like a knife.

The knife happened to become a bolt of pale blue light, missing Caden by scarce inches as it embedded itself into the ground beside him. Blueraven touched back down and came racing in, his wand flicking and swishing about in preemptive gestures that negated any spell Caden could even think to bring down on him.

Point blank and there was the scalpel he had left buried in a dead man's eye, slicing neatly through the air in a silver streak, its tiny razor-sharp blade braced against Blueraven's finger. Just like Caden's used to be whenever he had to use it. Blueraven had never given up the art though and it showed -- the silver treak was ice forming in an arc behind the blade's path, ice that promptly spiked out and exploded. Caden's coat stopped two spikes but a third gashed him across the chin and all of them hit like a ton of bricks. He brought wand to bear and ate a boot to the throat -- Blueraven had spent more time in hand to hand, apparently. It was a backwards roundhouse kick, something Caden had never even tried. He stumbled back further, gagging and his vision blurred as he fired off an indistinct spell.

It missed at nearly point blank. The next thing he knew, his goggles were gone and there was blood gushing down from between his eyes and across one cheek.

Blueraven brought the scalpel up once more and had ice completely enveloping both it and his finger, such that the weapon looked like a rapier's blade turned to crystal.

Caden shattered it with one good swing of his staff, blowing the Wizard back in the process. He didn't waste time trying to talk, to mock, or to strategize. Any win here would be fast and furious. More magic. More. He still had enough left to win. And at this distance-

It didn't matter.

Ice and fire spread from his back in great shining wings that sprouted just a few inches shy of his shoulderblades.

Caden looked down and saw the bowie knife lodged in his stomach, the wand discarded on the ground nearby, and the scalpel twirling daintily between Blueraven's fingers. The paths of power beneath his skin -- his channel to the Eternal Tap, his Sorcerous Mark -- felt strange. He tried to speak but nothing happened. His vocal cords were frozen.

"Have you ever wondered what that gold light really was?" Blueraven asked him suddenly. "It was my other selves, dissolving back into me. Some of them just went back into you."

Blueraven looked him in the eye and asked, "Did you ever find the secret pages in the Grimoire? Greyspine lied. He was never warning you. He was clearing a path. Why try to fight the inevitable when you can send back the perfect sleeper agent to do the work for you?" he chortled, hopelessly. "I tried to hold back the storm too, you know. I've been all over Kebiras, all through Dheath and elsewhere. I heard about you, now and then. I did my best but I can't do it anymore. And I don't want to. Because in the end there is no choice. One apocalypse or a thousand -- why pick?"

Caden struggled. He could feel ice breaking in his veins with every gesture as he tried, desperately, to bring a weapon to bear. Even his power felt cold though, too distant to use. And his Mark had turned gold all over.

"There is no Reaper Queen to fear, corpse army of Xem'zund. There is only the Sorcerer-King on my throne in Murdered Raiaera," Blueraven said. "Now die, you other, lesser me. Die and give me the power I need to end this world."

"No," the Sorcerer answered, his Voice breaking ice and dousing flame. He jammed a wand into Blueraven's face and glared into his eyes.

There was a hot prickling feeling racing across his neck, followed by a jagged cold running up and down his spine.

Caden tried to find the Words to do something, but they would not come.

Blueraven stood still, staring into his eyes as the world suddenly felt heavy, so very, very heavy...