Stairway to Heaven

[Caden Law]

After several days of endless rambling through nowhere in particular, Fireside Company came upon its first city today! First non-orc city, anyway.

It had been completely wiped out.

There were chunks of bodies hanging from leftover walls and makeshift flagpoles. The rest of the bodies in question had usually collapsed to the ground in mangled heaps. Savas was the only one who didn't lose his appetite at the sight of it. There's not a single wall left standing that isn't covered in blood or grit. The further in we went, the worse it got. A lot of mages went down fighting here. Several areas looked as if they had been rigged at the last second for contingency measures; suicide curses that left hundred foot high glass obelisks in their wake, on-the-spot bids for self-resurrection, null zones where the laws of reality broke down for just a little while, and spells that actually cratered the air. They knew they were going to lose but they stood their ground. I can't imagine why. I don't want to know.

I saw a little girl with her body gnawed by bugs and rats and her head smashed in against the remnants of a temple wall.

The city's name, still barely legible on some of the broken signs and posts at its outskirts, was Achu Kintan. Savas is guessing that it had a population of several hundred thousand. Judging by the amount of arcane damage, this place had a disproportionately high number of magic users. Spellcraft doesn't seem to have done them any real good. And did I mention that some of the bodies sport the same kind of artificial bits and pieces as one of our would-be ambushers from a few days ago? The Sideways writing even matched. I'm reasonably sure we wiped out the last survivors of this city, a party of men probably on their way to martyr themselves in the Bay of Long Teeth. Why they stopped to set up an ambush, I don't know. Maybe they saw us first.

Beyond that, there are orc bodies all over the place too. And the wreckage of a few skyships drifting above the city. Broken guns, broken swords, broken limbs separated from broken bodies...

It's like the Corpse War all over again.

When he was done, Caden closed the grimoire and stuffed it back up into his Hat. He put his head in his hands and forced himself to think of clear blue skies and vibrant green fields without corpses in them.

"This is what Larkatz wants to do to Althanas," he said.

A few seconds later, there was a gun resting against his ear.

"Who is the Shadow Drifter and what is this Althanas you speak of?" a tall Kebiran man asked from beside him. Caden almost laughed. Almost.

[Caden Law]

What follows is a quick summary of a three day trip, made at the beginning, well before the boredom kicked in.

All things considered, it really could have been worse. We weren't even jailed, threatened with human sacrifice, tortured, or roughed up a little.

A few hours ago, we were rifling through the barren remains of a human kingdom, Achu Kintan. Now we're being given a first class ride through the desert on an unusual contraption that reminds me of an Alerian/Salvic train crossed with a Raiaeran vessel running on a crude but powerful magitech engine. Its wheels run in huge treads, its base is fairly wide, and its top speed is a little better than many of the horses I've ridden over the years*. It's got three decks, rows of siege ballista on all of them, and ten fortified turrets for casters to sit in and lob spells with relative impunity. The crew numbers about sixty-eight, counting the ten battle mages and six mage-engineers who keep the engine running. Most of them dress in sturdy, uncomfortable looking cloth and leather; the kind of stuff that can shrug off shrapnel and light knives, even if it doesn't look terribly comfortable.

A handful of them have souvenirs, I guess you could call them, taken from the orcs. Guns are spreading through the human realms of Kebiras, but not nearly fast enough. There's some kind of technical imbalance between the two races, and the presence of the demielven Treserán* is a wild card nobody seems to know how to deal with. The wyrmfolk are basically known by all, distrusted by all, but tolerated and serve as the continent's traders-in-chief. I don't know if any of the human kingdoms have skyships yet. If they don't, it's just a matter of time before the orcs grind them down.

And just think: The Alerians could be doing this right now back home!

...except probably less genocidey and maybe a little elfier instead.

We're en route to a place called Tchao Kantul. The captain, who wears a nice coat and who held me at gunpoint earlier, claims that it's one of the last real bastions of human civilization in this part of the world. I don't know his actual name. The orc mages are, apparently, big on hitting people with curses and the locals have caught on to that. He calls himself Stonecoat. The rest of the crew have similar adopted nicknames. Wormaxe and I have opted to use our Sorcerous Names; they didn't trust Aeraul or Rowan enough to have anything but their real ones. Aeraul for obvious reasons**, Rowan because his Voice still has not faded. I'm honestly a little worried about it myself. Keep burning your power that long and there's bound to be some kind of consequence to it.

On the bright side: They're feeding us.

I don't know what, but Aeraul isn't committing cannibalism so it's okay in my book.***

* Such-and-such years later, I finally learn that Era's people are called Treserán -- Treserá for one person. It translates roughly as Three Will Be, which...fits, I guess. They derive from an unheard of mix of elf, orc, and human ancestry. They're a relatively young people who have only recently formed anything close to an actual nation or civilization of their own; most are still living among the orcs or, more rarely, among the humans. Actual elves, as we know them from Raiaera and Alerar, do not exist here anymore. The Treserán are the closest people to them. I find all the ironies of this situation to be downright delicious.
** They actually mistook Aeraul for a Treserán several times, until he corrects them that he's human. This is usually followed by funny looks and the occasional (impolite) declaration of disbelief. Most have taken to identifying him as an orc or a half-man. He's taking it remarkably well, I think.
*** It comes from dragons. I'm okay with that.

Not included are the lurid tales of the things Scarabrian women will do when the lights go out.

[Caden Law]

It is a rare and terrible thing to render a Wizard speechless. Most people who achieve such a distinction tend to die screaming in short order. Those who don't are better off if they give the moment the reverence it deserves. Stonecoat and the other guides to the city of Tchao Kantul knew discretion and it served them well even when their foresight was inadequate at best.

Only when the moment passed did anyone, specifically a mage the Name of Blacklung, dare to try explaining that, "They all just...appeared out of nowhere. Lightning struck and eighty strange men, some pale and some dark and some more like albino Treserán...they were just standing there. We could tell they meant no harm. It's the only reason they're alive right now."

They stood inside of a makeshift prison of high wood walls and razor wire. Most were fully dressed. All had the same wild look of blending terror and confusion and resolve; the awful will to live that Caden had seen too many times when he looked in the mirror during the Corpse War. All of them, and Caden counted just a little over seventy, were wearing at least one or two items of blue. Some even had blue silk straps tied tight around their upper arms. Others, the handful of amateur talents in the group, sported great green markings designed to inhibit spellcasting of any sort. They looked the most determined of all, and underneath all the cold fury and the howling demand for retribution, Caden felt a small hint of pride.

He was soon to be in good company again and Fireside had nothing to do with it.

"Let them go," he Said with all the authority of his power and position, shaking the very ground beneath all their feet in the process. Blacklung was the only one who remained unfazed, hard-eyed old bird that she was.

"None of them know anything of our language," she said. "The only reason they're alive is because their mages have both the gift of gab and the talent to hold their own in a pinch. Are you sure you can handle that?"

"I have before," Caden told her.

The gates were unbarred.

Almost four years to the day after the Fall of Eluriand, Blueraven Company was together again.

[Caden Law]

It's been a while. About two months now, give or take. I haven't had much time to keep my notes up-to-date. A lot's been happening in the meantime. I don't think I've slept for most of a week but I can't be sure; little blurry spots here and there, even my ability to tell and track time breaks down after a while.

To make an egregiously long story short: I've been reforming what's left of the Blueraven Brigade, a conscript fighting force I lead during the defense of Eluriand. I'm amazed at how many of them survived the war, especially with Savas and his ilk trying to murder them all with curses aimed at me. I'm equally surprised at how well most of them are taking what's happened since then. There's a general air of resignation about them that seems as familiar as it is dishearteningly fatalistic. Most are the sole survivors of their friends, families, respective villages and so on. The Brigade is as close to a family as they've got left, and the fact that all have some stake in my Name...they're almost like my children, in some ways. Even if some are probably older than I am.

I've done my best to integrate Fireside Company into the group. I'm not spreading my Name around, especially not to Savas, but they're still jumping into things without so much as a word of complaint -- mostly. They tried to lynch Savas and he's sleeping with both eyes open and a dagger under his pillow, but I'm not complaining. He deserves it and worse and I'd kill him myself if he weren't my own student. He's still instructing them, and some of the locals, on basic alchemy as we know it in Althanas. Our Kebiran brothers are advanced, but their systems are laid out differently. Savas is learning as much as he's teaching. Aeraul has settled into the role of Brigade chaplain and...I don't know what to call it. Coordinator of harmony? He's basically trying to instruct the Brigadiers on how to cope with the things that happened during the war, and he's teaching them to move in unison, to have an awareness of each other, to basically act and fight as one. I think he's using it to reconcile something about his dual nature, but I couldn't say what.

Rowan's Voice still has not faded out. His hair and eyes are now completely teal and every so often, his breath comes out as a teal fog or smoke. Similarly colored fires form around him when he's seriously fighting. He still won't talk about what happened to him in Haidia but at this point, if it's so bad that it traumatized his soul like that, I'm not sure if I want to know. He's taken up training for the martial arts. Where Aeraul is teaching them to fight as one, Rowan is just teaching them to fight. None of the regulars have advanced far enough to develop that chi stuff, and I doubt any of them will, but they're making progress.

And I've taken up my usual role as the chief instructor of magic. The men I'm working with here lack the kinds of raw natural talent that the elves in Beinost showed me, but they're survivors and they've had years to hone the basics that they picked up in the hours before the Siege of Eluriand. There are just three of them, they've all completely forgotten what they picked up from the Elves and instead defaulted to something like hedge-wizardry. And they're pretty good at it. If we all get out of this alive and they've got aptitude outside of combat, I'm going to see about getting them positions at the College Arcana.

For the sake of completeness and in case I need to write any obituaries...

Mages:

Rathorn Southron: Youngest of the three, easily the most destructive and worryingly gleeful about it. His magic affinity lacks any kind of elemental alignments, good or evil. He's literally just drawn to destructive magicks at the core. Seems to be a mid-to-close range mage, handy with projectiles and smaller weapons of nearly every type, seems to be capable with longer, thinner blades as well. Most likely of the three to spend his spare time whoring with locals and training with the soldiers. Rowan picks on him. Scruffy and blond.

Simon Graves: Middle of the three, more or less a hydromancer. You can still see traces of Bladesinger teachings in his magic, if you squint hard enough. It's more in the philosophy than the application. He's the generalist, master of nothing, so on and so forth. He's all over the place on where and how he wields his power, but he seems to be the best suited for counterspelling and countermagic in general. I've tried to focus him accordingly. I don't think he's got any armed skills to speak of, but he knows how to move well enough that he may as well be a martial artist as things are. Not scruffy, still blond.

Paul Hobbes: Oldest, actually older than I am by about two years, though you'd never know just by looking at us. Probably the most dangerous of the three since his natural focuses seem to be longer range, abstract and stealth magicks, with affinities towards the properly arcane. He strikes me as the furthest along overall, and might come into his own as a Named mage soon enough. He already has, and knows how to use, his Voice. Very well suited at countermagic, like Simon, but nowhere near as quick or overwhelming about it. He's more of a technician than a brawler. Tall, dark, brooding.

First Round of Soldiers

Lt. Commander Tanner Macheus: Currently the highest ranking of the bunch after myself. Voice like a chorus of trumpets in an empty colliseum. One of the only ones who appeared in armor, according to Blacklung, though it wasn't his old conscript set. Once upon a time, he was a farmer in the rural area surrounding Eluriand. He hadn't settled down before the siege, but he was getting there. Now, he's worryingly good with any number of sharp objects and he has no qualms about greyhawking people, places, or things. Best to keep an eye on this one.

Lt. August Hawk: No joke. I didn't make that name up. Tanner's second, my third-in-command. Virtually unrecognizable in a crowd, but he's a natural with the slow forms that Aeraul has been teaching the Brigade these past few months. Does a good job of keeping the others on task. Seems to have been a solicitor in Eluriand before all Hell broke loose, but the social status swap with Tanner doesn't appear to bother him.

Lt. Liam of Hegel: From one of the villages decimated before Eluriand was put under siege. War-scarred like crazy in ways that just don't show, at least not very obviously. At least as stealthy as Simon without the benefits of magic, even managed to sneak through some of Savas' practice wards one night. Aeraul's picking up clashing emotions every time Liam even walks into a room, ranging from happy to be alive to suicidal urges to murderous cravings. We're doing our best to make sure he has no bona fide Alone Time. Putting him in charge of some of the others seems to do a good job of it.

Those are the current Big Dogs beneath the company. They're a solid Brigade, overall. It's been nice to reconnect with some of them, swap war stories and so on. Some were involved in resistances all over the region, others just tried to survive. We've all got enough in common to make it a bonding experience. The other Firesiders are having trouble adjusting, except for Savas, who's...wierdly becoming a part of the crew lately. I guess since the war's over, there's not all that much reason to go on hating him for things he was technically obligated to do (not that this stopped several further efforts to lynch or murder him; I've not encouraged or condemned either*). It's still a surprise.

Aside from all that, reports are still filtering in. The human kingdoms of Kebiras are about as unified as the old Salvic League would've been without the Crown or the Church to unite them at Knife's Edge -- which is to say that they're not united at all. Every single one has at least one different language within its borders and even the Common tongue has a lot of little variations. I've nailed it down as a derivative of an old Elven language and taught the men the basics, but it's slow going beyond that. Larkatz has been shoring up his power base and he's been meeting plenty of resistance in the process, both from men and other tropes of orcs. There's been talk of a great alliance forming against him, but that worries me more than anything: What if the alliance ends up being worse than he is?

* Toughens him up or gets rid of him; not complaining either way.

It is here, exactly here, that Caden Law looked up from his journal and remembered the Drifter's words.

All he needed now were the stairway and the ripple.

[Savas Tigh]

Tchao Kantul can eat bag fulls of dead orc bits. Given the way things work on this continent, it wouldn't surprise me if the natives actually did eat dead orc bits. I want to be back in my territory. I have no idea how things have been going in Corone during my absence and I fervently hope that the tower is still intact and otherwise unmolested.

Gods be damned. I haven't even eaten anyone since I got to this damned place. I've done my best to play the part of Amiable Reformed Monster but Blueraven's clods don't make it easy. They've been trying to kill me almost daily since he got them out of that rotten cage the locals put them in. I've held back from killing any of them in turn, but it's been bloody well tempting and I've started studying some of the local magi in the process. My ability to cast spells on the fly is still sorely lacking, but I'm exploring ways around that. The Kebiran battle mages, at least in Tchao Kantul and adjacent areas, have perfected a technique of prepared spellcasting that might be useful to me. It reminds me of certain esoteric methods that my teachers only ever told me about to mock me, but here, they have it. I've been trying to study, but my Kebiran brethren have too many common enemies to go at each other the way we do in Althanas proper.

Goddamn orcs.

Aside from that, I've finally started getting in touch with the spirit of these lands and I must say...they're violent beasts. My understanding of the other side of Althanas is that the things dwelling there, ghost and otherwise, at least know enough of civilization to try and replicate it with some success. There are empires of the dead in that blighted realm, which we cannot point to or name or easily hope to comprehend. But here? All I can sense are vengeful animals on the other side. Huge frothing monsters, mad godlings locked in a forever war of all against all, so far beyond hope and reason that they barely exist as anything but delusional words uttered by the living who think they have even a shred of meaning.

I hear them calling to each other when I sleep. It's a sound like sirens at war, the drumbeats of hearts bigger than cities, the roar of rivers of blood boiling through the aether beneath the tender flesh of reality. That a thing like Warlock Hellhand could survive that with his individuality essentially intact, nevermind his actual identity and sense of self, is almost nightmarishly terrifying. Either there's a secret that the practitioners on this side of the world have learned, some way to dodge the maelstroms of horror that dominate the soulscape here, or he is the single most formidable undead I've run into since the end of the Corpse War.

And yes.

I'm counting the insane demigod and the abstract entity of pain and the demonic plague lord in all of that.

I've seen some bowel-quaking terrors in my time but the things I haven't seen in Kebiras worry me more than all of them. And the others don't understand at all. Most of them, even Blueraven, aren't even aware, though I suspect that may have something to do with our respective affinities. He only delved into the necromantic because he had to; I was born to the black calling. I'm not alone, at least. The local practitioners are not especially fond of the dead, not as I am, but they know and respect them enough to try and use them appropriately. Some of the magi operate networks of ancestral spies, unreliable given the brutal nature of the other side, but still better than waiting on living word of mouth. They call upon grandfathers and great aunts, the deadsiders, to investigate far and wide for them. And the dead comply because they are beyond fear, which poses a special problem for me.

I can't rely on my usual tricks. The spirits here won't be cowed or intimidated by the likes of me. I doubt I'd have much luck eating any of them either. Even if I could overpower them, most are probably too cunning to outwit. I've gotten the hang of absorbing ambient energy but it's...hard. Every last shred is owned by something bigger and nastier than me. The best I've gotten is drawing on actual concepts, and even that's touch and go. I'm at the brink of trying to study Rowan, if only because I'm stagnating on my attempts to create a Dark Messiah style of rotary spellcasting and it might help me channel energy more easily. At least the constant attempts to kill me are keeping me fresh

The period never made it to the paper because Savas instinctively set down the journal and stood up. He stepped away from the wall he had been leaning on, went to the center of the room and waited.

He had taken up residence in a tiny wood shack while Fireside took up Tchau Kantulian offers of hospitality in order to reform Blueraven's men into a fighting unit. Blacklung and the other elders seemed to have some real hope for what they might accomplish, even if they didn't even have a mission yet. Savas' shack was unusually cold during the day and downright frigid at night, but it was his and he had established himself in it. Not quite a demesne, but certainly a safehaven of sorts.

At least until the knock on the door.

There was no lock, but the third or fourth critical injury had taught his wood-be assassins to be polite about trying to kill him on his makeshift homeground. Savas briefly considered going for his axe, or perhaps drawing a wand or a dagger. He decided against it based on the coldblooded calculus that he would be too likely to inflict fatal wounds, and that might make things messy down the road.

"Go away!" he shouted.

"It's important!" said the voice on the other side.

"Go away!" Savas shouted again.

"It's important!" said the voice, which he now recognized as one of the men. He couldn't quite place it.

"Go away!" he shouted one last time.

"Godsdammit, Beardo, this is important!" the voice insisted.

Savas took up a stance and sighed. "Fine. Open."

Boot, door, swing, screaming. Boots on floor. Savas ducked a spear thrust, grabbed the weapon by the shaft and used it to leverage himself and his attacker. Straight palm to the throat -- his throat, actually, even if it was at an awkward angle that rendered the blow less effective than it could have been, should have been, probably would have been. Savas wretched back a few paces and reflexively had his arm up in a block, knocking the weapon out of his attacker's hand. The next thing he knew, the man barreled into him with dagger in hand and poorly aimed. There was screaming. They went to the floor. Something about a brother, dammit.

Savas smashed an empty clay pot on his attacker's face. He squirmed away, grabbed a wand and got off an unaimed spell that discharged harmlessly into one of the walls as the man threw himself back into the fray. What followed was a tumbling, frenzied exchange of near-misses, exploding furniture, and ripped clothes as both men tried, very sincerely, to murder each other in anything but cold blood.

Savas knocked the dagger loose and headbutted the attacker twice in rapid succession. He got the wand up under the man's chin and let loose. Ringlets of blood shot out from around bulging eyes, from each nostril, earhole, and in squirts from between his teeth. Magic, dark green and purple, discharged up out of the top of the man's head and dislodged his chainmail coif into the air, breaking some of the links. He went limp in the span of a heartbeat and collapsed to the floor at the Wizard's side. And for a long couple of seconds, that was that.

Savas sat up, wheezing hard and checking to see if the man was dead. He wasn't. Pity that. Looked like Liam of Hegel, but Savas had trouble remembering who was who on his best days. He wiped his face off and tried to collect himself.

Later on, he would write, Screw the brink.

[Leaf on the Wind]

"Ido! Palo! Tero! Coro! Feyo! Nelo!" Rowan called as he paced from the front of the brigade to the back, walking a slow and steady circuit around the lot of them. Every word was a number, one through six. Every single number was also the name of a fully-fledged martial arts form, all of which flowed together into a single, much larger form. There were twenty-one in all, broken down in seats of six and then three. It was one of the things he had picked up in Haidia, just like the daikatar and the active chi and the changes to his body and soul and more besides. He ran the men as far as they could go, rattling off nelo after feyo after coro after tero after palo after ido, always ending with the demonic HUT! command, which stopped them both hot and cold, and sweating buckets under the blistering Kebiran sun.

"Ido!" Forward punches and blocks, a kick.

"Palo!" Another kick, sidelong punches and blocks, a spinkick.

"Tero!" All blocks in different directions.

"Coro!" Kicks. Nothing but kicks.

"Feyo!" Two-handed attacks and defenses.

"Nelo!" Elbows, palms, backhands, blocks.

"HUT!" Stop and hold. Sometimes for minutes, the only movements coming from breathing and blinking. Most of them were so disciplined now, so in tune with the forms, that they didn't even swallow until he followed with, "Shan," the Haidian word for rest.

Rarely, he stood before them and went through the first six forms himself. It was mostly to show them what he wanted them to do, and to remind them what he was capable of, and how far they still had to go. None of them could channel the energies that the forms were actually intended to rely upon. Without chi, they were still dangerous movements, but with chi? They were an equalizer. A bloody, brutal, merciless equalizer, one that needed clarity and temprance to perform -- the very things that made it so hard for actual demons to master, yet made them so lethal when they did. It was easier for Rowan. Even now, it was easier.

After the tenth run through the forms, he released them all to Aeraul's mercies and walked away, to one of the public bathhouses that dominated Tchao Kintul. The people there had differing concepts of modesty from those in most Althanian cultures. They also didn't have the abundance of water, even magically generated water, that allowed for Althanians to bathe individually. The waters in the bathhouses were purified routinely, every hour on the hour, by local magi. They were in use at every other hour of the day. Rowan bathed without even noticing the other men and women in the building, dressed himself and blasted the sweatstains out of his clothing with chi. He took to the streets again as the sun began to set, making his way back to the training grounds that the Tchao had set aside for the Brigade.

He was stopped at the gate by a Wizard. Not the blue one, but the black one, clad in pants and a long-sleeved shirt, barefoot and barehand, cracking his knuckles and neck, going through stretching routines not at all unlike the ones favored by the Ai'bron monks. Rowan humored him enough to wait until he was done, then asked, "What do you want, Savas?"

"Training," the Wizard told him. Rowan was aware of Wormaxe's inability to channel on the fly like Caden did, and of the constant attacks on him by the Blueraven Brigadiers. He wasn't exactly sympathetic on either count.

But it was a chance to beat up a Wizard.

"Okay," he said. "Training begins now. Full contact spar. Show me what you're made of and we'll go from there."

Savas didn't even blink. He took up a stance and Rowan read it like an open book; all experience and mimickry, no actual training beyond the minimal crosstraining they'd done before going into the Catacombs. But there was power there. A dark energy, weak and flickering, but still there. Where there was power, there was potential. Rowan smiled savagely and Savas still didn't waver.

He held nothing back.

The Wizard still went three and a half minutes before he went down with a hole clear through the back of his shirt and a series of leaf-shaped scorchmarks on the front. The actual man himself recovered in due time, hacking up phlegm and blood, but he still recovered. And when he sat up, Rowan towered over him with his arms crossed and his eyes glowing.

"Again," he said.

Savas did not disappoint him.

[Aeraul Smythe]

Rowan taught them the hunger of speed and the discipline of ends. Aeraul taught them the discipline of speed and the hunger of ends.

For Rowan's instructions, the men moved with no real unison; they just went at top speed and tried to get faster every single time. For Aeraul's, they knew to take their time and breathe. He taught them to go through forms from his own martial background with much more deliberation and precision. While armed and close to one another. All of them used roughly similar swords, the personal keepsakes from their conscript days or the relics they kept from the war, and some had also been outfitted with Tchao replicas. They all moved just that little bit differently due to the nature of any given blade, but they still had unity of pace and form; unity of the important things.

Aeraul always got them when the Brigadiers were exhausted and demoralized. He always kept them until they were, more or less, able to smile and laugh again. He knew which ones to seek out and which ones to leave be. Men lack the empathic resonance of orcs, but they were still thinking, feeling beings, and he was still on the same wavelength as them. Three were going through severe withdrawl symptoms. Fifteen were suffering nightmares and worse. Plenty of them were missing their families, questioning their beliefs, questioning themselves. Aeraul redeemed them all to the best of his ability. He became the communal big brother, even to men older than himself. He affirmed them, gave them reasons to keep moving, encouraged them to make the most of things. Several Brigadiers went local at his behest, and the women, in turn, weren't long on becoming parts of the Brigade's support structure.

It wasn't the same thrill as bringing down a mad demigod, but it was no less poignant. It was the chance to reform others as Aeraul himself had once been reformed, back when he was a boy struggling with the hormone-induced insanities of half-orc puberty, a time when most male orcs are making their first frenzy kills and most male humans are on an emotional rollercoaster between despair and rage and lust. Monks had taught him peace and he was trying to pass the lesson to others.

Some took his advice readily. Others, like Liam of Hegel, needed a bigger nudge.

"Why did you try to kill Savas again?" Aeraul asked him after a small meal, a hold-over between training and actual meal time.

"He murdered my brother," Liam answered. "And I'm supposed to trust my life to that guy?"

"Only to an extent," Aeraul told him before a long back-and-forth argument -- civil and peaceful -- over the nature of whether or not Savas was truly responsible for his actions during the Corpse War. The general conclusion was that he was still scum, but he was only responsible for what he'd done before and afterwards. Liam was still going to try and kill him, but he was no longer blatant about wanting revenge. It was a start.

When he was done with the men, Aeraul went into town and visited a tavern for dinner. The people no longer stared at him but he still felt their fear, their apprehension at the sight of anything green-skinned and relatively less human than they were. Aeraul bore it without pride or prejudice. They had their reasons and he forgave them for it. When he was done, he went back to the camp and began to run through his nightly routine of meditation. The Wizard interrupted him; the blue one, not the black.

"I'm thinking we need to leave soon," Caden said without bothering to say hello.

"Why?" Aeraul asked, cracking open one eye and looking up at the Wizard from where he sat.

"Because Larkatz is on the move and we're as prepared now as we'll ever be. The Drifter said something about ripple's end and an enemy as yet unknown. I'd rather not sit here and count down to an apocalypse in the meantime," Caden said.

"...but where will we go?" Aeraul asked.

"And there's the ninety thousand gold piece question," Caden said as he reached into his coat and took out a map. It was a Kebiran piece, folding from both sides like a grand parchment. "I was hoping you'd be able to help me with that."

"There's something you're not telling me," Aeraul noted.

"...right. Savas has already been over it. Rowan doesn't care enough," Caden answered. Aeraul nodded. Caden unfolded the map, then held it wipe as he waited. Eventually, Aeraul put a fingertip on a place meticulously subtitled The Seven Steps of Heaven. Caden grinned like a maniac for just a few seconds before saying, "Savas and I both picked that on our list of places to go from here."

"...why does statement that fill me with dread?" Aeraul asked after a long while.

[Caden Law]

"Probably because it should," Caden told him without missing a beat. "I picked it blindfolded. Savas picked it with the map facing down on a table. I'm basically a cosmic plaything and he's drawn to death and suffering like moths to an open flame. And you? You're an empath. It could be for any number of reasons, but you still chose the same place without being given a hint of information aside from we need to go. I'd like to think you have enough of a difficult time reading me that I didn't influence your decision."

"I have trouble reading you, yes," Aeraul admitted, then said with the tact and compassion of a baseball bat, "But that's generally because you're the walking wounded wrapping yourself in your pain the way a soldier wears armor. You're hurting so much, so frequently, that there's nothing specific about any of it. It's an indistinct haze of psychic agony. You need help on a level I can't give, Blueraven. I don't think even the Gods could help you at this point."

Caden stared at him.

"I'm assuming you wanted an honest assessment," Aeraul shrugged. "Which probably goes to show how hard it is to read you."

"I've seen some shit," Caden said. He thought about trying to explain it further, but couldn't. For a man who kept a diary, he wasn't especially gifted when it came to expressing his feelings. He was, in fact, still trying to get the hang of having a personal self beyond the mission at hand: "There won't be any apocalypse. That's what's important, Aeraul. We're leaving in the morning unless you think the men need to stay here a little longer."

"Two days to prepare," Aeraul answered. "They'll follow you into Hell and back but you need to give them time to settle their affairs here. Some of them literally. You might also want to talk to the Tchao magi. I doubt they'd take kindly to all of us just vanishing at dawn after all the hospitality we've been shown."

Caden nodded. He looked at the map again, then to the horizon. There were smoke clouds in the direction of the Bay of Long Teeth. It was probably hundreds of miles away, but he could still see smoke.

Larkatz was moving, alright. It was only a matter of time before Tchao Kantul followed Achu Kintan, or worse.

"Perhaps it'd be better if I recommended an exodus for these people," he said.

"I doubt they'd agree. Even if they did, we'd probably go in different directions."

"And I'm okay with that," Caden said, and tried like Hell to mean it. "At least that'd be less chance of the bad guys coming after us."

Aeraul didn't look at him so much as he looked through him. Caden flinched. "I didn't say I liked it," he added as an afterthought.

"And I didn't say you did," Aeraul noted. "What I said is that you wear your pain like armor. And it sounds like your conscience agrees with me."

It's a rare thing for a Wizard to be dumbfounded into speechlessness, and it's even rarer for a Sorcerer. Most people who accomplish such a feat do so at their own peril, and very few ever have the opportunity to relish in their private victories. Aeraul wasn't among that number, not because Caden would harm him but because he just wasn't the type to look at that as a win.

Eventually, when he was alone and most of the arrangements were out of the way, Caden sat down and mulled over what the half-man said to him. In the end, all he could think was, Crap. I am a good guy.

For once, he didn't even bother to think about kicking a puppy to balance it out.

[Caden Law]

We left Tchao Kantul a ghost town in our wake. There are about a hundred of us now, counting some of the Tchao women and a couple men who wanted to come with us for their own reasons. One of them, Stonecoat, is probably one of the fiercest battlemages the Tchao have produced in a generation -- at least according to his cohorts. We've adopted the newbies into Fireside Company since I'm not spreading my Name around any further than it already is. Looking after my men has given me a certain level of insight into what it must be like to be a father. A real father.

I wonder how Iera is doing?

The Tchao, at least, made a point of outfitting us well on our way out. Stonecoat's influence, perhaps, or possibly Blacklung's. We've got one of their older, weaker landships. It's basically held together by willpower and happy thoughts, but it's ours and we're making better time on it than we would by horseback or on foot. The desert is already giving way to plain old badlands. Savas is still trying to commune with local entities but he's not having much luck. Stonecoat knows enough to gather a limited amount of spiritual intelligence for us, but that's not saying much either. Larkatz is indeed on the move. He seems to be striking at other orcs right now, still trying to solidify his rule and build up his forces. The gist of what we're getting is that he's powerful enough to defeat any of the others, but not if they start working together. And most of them are forming into coalitions around him, trying to contain his empire before he can overrun them.

I don't know for sure but it's a comforting thought that we might yet have some kind of head start on all this.

Unfortunately, I don't think the landship is going to last a whole lot longer. It's on its last wheels as is and it's a wonder we've gotten this far. If we're lucky, it'll hold together until we get to the mountains. If not, at least we've outpaced the movements and gotten clear of the territory occupied by Larkatz's armies. It's a start.

I'm also pretty sure we're being stalked. Although I've yet to run across Huskers, it wouldn't surprise me if they were waiting in the wings for their chance to make my life miserable.

Speaking of which, it's midnight and the ship just started rocking.

Caden closed the grimoire and stuck it in his Hat. He grabbed his staff and made a break for the topmost deck of the ship, expecting the worst.

He was not disappointed.

[Caden Law]

Caden emerged topside with sword in one hand and staff brandished in the other, clad in full Wizardly glory, minus the conscript plate stowed under his bed. The ship creaked to a halt so suddenly that, upon his arrival, most of the people on deck faltered and fell over in surprise.

"Don't panic!" he called out pre-emptively. Swords had already been drawn. Rowan was dangling off one of the ship's masts with katar alight in his hand, the red blade wrapped in teal fire shedding crumbling, burning leaves into the whispering night air. Aeraul was somewhere below decks still, but Caden could sense his power building as well. Savas, at least, was right where Caden wanted him to be: in plain sight, axe and plynt dagger in hand, looking significantly more paranoid than the rest of them because he was probably more aware of whatever danger they were in.

"Could we just be stuck on something?" one of the men asked after a while. He was a fairly average looking fellow, not the sort who looks readily expendable in the context of most stories. He wasn't too big, wasn't too shrimpy, wasn't anything special at all. Caden kept an eye on him on general principle.

He had two shadows.

And then three.

Four.

Caden stopped counting at ten. He looked up into the man's eyes and calmly asked, "Do you have anyone back home?"

Realization dawned in an instant, followed by a crash course through every step of the grieving process. It was something Caden had often seen in mirrors. Watching it happen to someone else was a brand new way of being unsettled. The man said only, "My name is Jai of August. Break my sword when I'm gone."

"I'm sorry," Caden told him. "I'm so sorry."

There was nothing he could do for Jai, except make it quicker than it would have been otherwise. He didn't have to. Without even looking down, Jai whipped up his sword and plunged it into his own stomach, through a gap between his breastplate and his belt buckle. The blade sank in deep. He started to fall but his body never made it to the deck.

Up came the many angled hands of shadow, blending and breaking away from one another so quickly and so wildly that no one limb could be defined from the mass of them. They engulfed Jai in the pale moonlight of the Kebiran Badlands. They reached up into the holes in his skin, found purchase, and ripped him wide open. It took less than a second. Caden triggered a light spell but all it did was give definition to the shadows, rather than actually driving them off. What was left of the man was nothing more than a fleshless pile of meat in freefall to its knees, unable to scream with its vocal chords and tongue torn out. Its eyes were left staring madly into the night as another wave of shadow hands came slithering up over it -- over Jai of August.

A few bloody bones hit the deck. Everything else was gone.

"...now's a decent time to panic," Caden mumbled to himself.