Master of Words, Mistress of Stone

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“Set it down, nice and easy,” the Blackcloak ordered, his sword-hand never wavering. The coal-faced taleweaver complied without question, eyes of deep green wandering across the battlefield he’d elected to ignore. They alighted first upon Obahyurur’s inert form, face down in the river mud, then on Sigrun kneeling at the feet of a primed Alerian musket. She empathised with the look on his face; she recognised it from when she spent an hour or so reading scrolls only to find that somehow the entire day had passed her by.

That didn’t stop her from sniggering in satisfaction when the Blackcloaks dumped the bewildered taleweaver alongside her.

“There’s definitely only the two of them,” the Alerian second-in-command murmured in his youthful commander’s ear. “But Ulfar’s gone, and Zilkas won’t be able to fight with that shoulder wound.”

Perhaps he thought to keep the information private, but his actions only betrayed the typical lack of respect the dark elves held for the dwarves they called their allies. Sigrun had spent all her life in the mines, and though her eyes would never compare to those of that nanun-kulum, she could pick out the squeak of a blind molerat at a thousand paces. Even the taleweaver, a surface dweller if ever she’d seen one, had his ears primed and the line of his jaw set.

“That thing cracked Ulfar's skull open. Of course he's dead. Zilkas will just have to keep up.” The squad commander obscured his face with hood and mask, but still his anger and disgust emanated like the waves of heat from an open furnace. “More importantly…”

Together the Blackcloaks disappeared from her peripheral vision. The primed musket in the small of her back dissuaded her from following them with her head, so instead she closed her eyes and allowed the rolling night to take control.

The River Elleduin lapped upon the reeds and the mud of the ford, a loquacious lullaby lilting and loving.

“Told you that they weren’t… too many young… Greencloaks, not…”

Night insects chirped tentative queries into the aftermath of the violence, wondering what had happened to shatter their serene slumber so.

“Stop… matter now. Ready…”

The remains of the taleweaver’s campfire smouldered in wispy shadows, acrid and angry where the Blackcloaks had hurriedly extinguished them.

“Need to know… why…”

Stone clinked against metal and glass, a cacophony of breakables beneath an uncaring grasp. The strident symphony lasted for a few seconds longer while the Blackcloak commander searched for something within the satchels his men had carried. Then heavy bootsteps in the soft ground brought the shadowy figure back into view.

“So,” the dark elf spat at them both, one eye fixed on his subordinate. “I suppose this is what you hargluk are both after?”

Something landed in the mud before them, splattering their knees with the impact. Sigrun’s eyes leapt to a piece of hard granite, infused with enough runic power to make the hackles on the back of her neck rise in salutation. It took her a couple more moments to recognise what she saw, but she could mistake neither the master-wrought stone nor the sheer power that had shorn it from its mother-rock. She blinked in surprise and leaned close, forgetting that the Blackcloak standing behind her had orders to blow her head off if she so much as twitched.

“That’s a fragment of an Anvil of Power.” Sigrun whistled through her front teeth as her trained gaze picked out the trails of coursing power etched into the worn granite face like veins of electric-blue. “A makeshift one, not one of the ancient True Anvils, but whoever struck those runes upon it was one master runesmith. Don’t know if there’s ten dwarves in all of Kachuck who can wield power like that.”

She looked up, transferring grey-gleaming attention from the artefact to those who surrounded her. The elf’s mask had slipped into something resembling surprise that she would speak so freely of the value of the item. The taleweaver wore something more aghast, stricken that she dared to share precious clan-ken without regard for the consequences.

“But no, that’s not what I or he are after,” she told the Blackcloak before he could recover. “We’re here for something else. A different artefact. Something called a muse. ‘Strewth!”

Her eyes narrowed, and she wriggled free from the grasp of her captor, trying to ignore the muzzle sighted upon the back of her head.

“You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”

[Diadems of Promethion]

Throld winced as the butt of the Alerian musket hit the other dwarf squarely at the base of her neck. She went limp and collapsed to the ground, like a sack of tubers tossed into a storage pit. Four’s dusky fingers reached from the side and retrieved the broken artefact as One continued speaking, unperturbed.

“We?”

He knew that he had to come up with exactly the right answer, and that he had to do so fast.

“My. Din. Ner,” he replied, enunciating each syllable with the emphasis of the loss he had suffered. One blinked twice before shaking his head in resignation.

“Ah yes, seared salted meat and mushy beans.”

“High cuisine for a bug-eater,” Throld retorted, warming to the banter.

One cocked an eye. His words spilled with care, thoughtful and measured, even as he waved away the instinctive angry response of his subordinates. Throld could see that he’d touched a nerve, though. The enlisted men didn’t think as highly of their lieutenant as they otherwise might have.

Something to exploit?

“You know that phrase, but you speak it with such disdain. You’ve been to Ettermire, then, but I am correct that you are not from Alerar. Tell me, dwarf, why should I believe that you speak with the authority of the Mistress? What assurance do I have that you do not steal her name?”

“None,” the coal-faced dwarf answered without hesitaiton, having spent enough time in the Alerian capital to know that none who played hwist, the Gentile Game, would give any such assurance. “Jal khaless zhah waela.” All trust is foolish.

“Khaless nau uss mzild taga dosstan,” One laughed as he gave the standard riposte, concealing his amusement at the dwarf’s poor pronunciation. Trust no one more than yourself.

Then his brow furrowed in further thought, and Throld could almost see the possibilities racing through his mind. Was this all part of an elaborate ruse? Were the two dwarves in collaboration, either to rob his troop of their prizes or to pin them here until Raiaeran reinforcements arrived? Did he have anything to gain by participating any further in this charade?

No. The lieutenant glanced once at his serjeant as if for affirmation, then let his glare grew hard.

“Even if you do have her approval, dwarf, she has no sway over the Blackcloaks. Especially this far away from the gutters of the Bottomless Pit where she belongs.” A curt chop of his hand cut off Throld’s protestations with a ruthlessness that indicated he didn’t intend to play games any longer. “Tell her to keep her blunted nose in her own affairs, and that if she wants anything from us she should try official channels. I believe the Undersecretary of Defence is currently the proper point of contact.”

“Except that I would have to get him to acknowledge your activities here in eastern Raiaera. Or the existence of the Blackcloaks in the first place.” Throld knew little of Alerian politics in comparison to One. But even he could tell that such a request would take years, perhaps decades, to pass through Alerian bureaucracy. And that assumed he had the political clout to make the request in the first place and the favours to trade to get word to the right ears. Of those, he had neither.

One grinned in wicked victory, now firmly in his element. Throld missed not the subtle nod he gave Five standing behind him, nor the rustle of crisp night air as the Alerian braced his musket.

“One last thing?” the Blackcloak asked, one gloved hand indicating the tidy pile of three sealed satchels that now lay behind him, ready for transport. “What was it that you both sought? What is this muse that you so fervently seek?”

Throld hesitated for the most ethereal of heartbeats, truth and lie alike dancing on the tip of his tongue. Before the elf behind him could make up his mind to club him regardless, he spoke.

“A stone tablet.” Eyes of polished jade gauged One’s reaction, not once deviating from their scrutiny. But the Blackcloak was far too experienced a political operator to give anything away with an inadvertent flick of his attention. “About the size of your palm, maybe a bit larger, traced with a single...”

This time One did react. But not towards the satchels. Instead, towards the dwarf-dam on the floor alongside him.

His hand went straight to his falchion, as if...

Throld instinctively dropped and rolled through the cold wet mud. Four strident syllables echoed over his head into the night.

“O-BA-HYU-RUR!”

[Pinions of Daedalion]

From the silted flats the golem ascended, like a titan’s cadaver risen from the dead, like an elemental of the earth’s wrath manifest. Rivulets of river water streamed from its body of black iron, waterfalls from on high. The activation rune on its chest glowed in silver glory, drowning the dim starlight dancing upon lilting waters. Mud squelched beneath its heavy tread as it answered her call.

The Blackcloak commander didn’t bother to check what rose up behind him; the stricken look on the face of his serjeant exclaimed the danger louder than a thousand words. In a blinding flash of swirling shadow and river spray he disappeared from the scene, leaving Sigrun with a clear view of Obahyurur’s beady eyes as they focused on the danger.

The Blackcloak guarding Throld, less inured to the unexpected, leapt two steps backwards with the liquid grace of his people. Training took control over frayed nerves, and he began to bring his musket up to his shoulder, bracing it against the automaton’s charge.

Greencloak. ‘Strewth!

But the one standing over her hesitated not. Instead of fleeing the golem, he raised his weapon for a killing blow to the back of her prone neck. No doubt he thought to deal with the mistress rather than the minion, and to save himself a world of trouble.

Sigrun knew better than to give him the chance.

Calloused fingers unstoppered one of the two vials at her waist with a deft snap and twist. Bottled smoke escaped into the night like a plume of volcanic gas, accompanied by a belch of thunder so loud she imagined the Ancestors themselves jolting awake from their stonebound sleep. Even in full knowledge of what would happen upon releasing the cork, she couldn’t prevent herself from flinching as the overwhelming noise turned her mind white.

But she could still react swifter than the deafened, blinded Blackcloak looming over her.

Belatedly the musket-butt fell, the hammer blow upon the anvil of her vulnerable vertebrae. But she met it instead with the augmented strength of her prosthetic left arm, and though it hit with enough force to jar the gears in her ‘elbow’ she felt no pain. Thick smog blinded her opponent as he instinctively backpedalled, abandoning musket for sword. Into that gap roared Obahyurur the mighty, arms like tree-trunks sent scything through the air with almost enough force to tear shreds in the fabric of reality.

Sigrun paid her automaton no heed: the earlier skirmish had assured her that she could trust Oby to handle himself against any one of the Blackcloaks. More importantly...

... the satchels!

They had languished at the Blackcloak commander’s feet just before he’d disappeared. That left his second-in-command and that other dwarf within their reach, both closer to the prize than she. But neither could have expected the thunder and smoke. She had to make that count to her advantage.

With reckless abandon she threw herself forward, groping in blind haste through the diminishing smog. The shrill ringing in her ears soon began to subside. The kaleidoscopic world of bright colour stopped spinning behind her closed eyelids. With every shred of sense returning to her control she grew further aware that nobody other than Oby moved in her immediate vicinity...

... but then she touched the cold, ruined stone at the far end of the muddy clearing.

At length the smoke lifted from Obahyurur’s metal form on the river bank, still swinging in confusion at thin air.

And she stood alone, abandoned on the river isle, with neither elf nor satchel left in sight.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Downstream from the embattled isle, the Elleduin spat forth a mud-drenched dwarf. A handhold at a time Throld dragged his sopping body onto the safety of the gravel bank, coughing and spluttering curses in throaty Khudzul. Distant thunder lingered in his head, a storm of bright light and pain that refused to die away. The fingers of his right hand clutched the side of his grimacing features; the fingers of his left dragged behind him his sodden dragon-belcher. The tails of his auroch-hide longcoat dragged in the riverbank. Spidersilk robes of opulent purple clung to his belly below the translucent red hairs on his chest.

“Ronus sod that lassie. Ronus sod that golem of hers. And Ronus sod myself for falling for such a cheap trick!”

Now she had far more information about the Daughter than he felt comfortable about. And after that last confrontation, he had less chance than an icicle in the underearth to reinstate further negotiations. But the Blackcloak lieutenant One had made it clear that he faced decades, even centuries, pursuing the matter through Alerian bureaucracy. The New Elves would quite see him rotting in his grave before even acknowledging he had a claim upon their prize. And that presumed he could convince the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques to aid him.

At least the Ancestor-damned golem’s attack had confirmed something. Four, the Blackcloak second-in-command, had failed to resist a knowing smirk upon retrieving the satchels in the wake of Obahyurur’s charge. Even now Throld could picture in vivid detail the gleam of his filed canines through the dissipating smog, the gloating triumph writ upon his fine elfin features. They had what he wanted, and now they knew it.

That left him with but one option. He had to get to the Blackcloaks before they reached the safety of the Alerian frontline. And, whether by force or by wile, he had to retrieve the muse before the dwarf-dam beat him to it.

“Bah,” he snorted to himself beneath his breath. The stubble on his lantern jaw glistened in the midnight starlight. “By Ronus’s beard, I was never much one for this fighting malarkey.”

Still, he had no choice. Even if he himself had no personal attachment to the accursed artefacts, he could not set aside so easily the oath he had sworn in the name of his Ancestors.

And besides, now that he thought of it, what a tale he would have to tell!

Shaking the last of the thunder from his head, he reached down to check on Vera. Aside from the scar upon her polished stock she showed no further injury from the encounter with the Blackcloaks. As he feared, though, the river water had ruined the blackpowder cartridges carried in her belly. He would have to dry them out before he could use them, but he had no time to waste setting up camp if he wanted to overhaul and overcome the Blackcloaks. Not for the first time, he thanked his foresight in water-proofing the pouch in which he carried his spares.

With practiced ease Throld cracked the dragon-belcher open, ejecting the two sodden cartridges one after another. He spent a moment longer ensuring that no grit or weed clogged the delicate spring-loaded mechanisms within. Peering closely at Vera’s master-crafted insides, he felt almost like an apothecary examining a patient.

Satisfied at last, he reached into the oiled sealskin pouch at his hip. He had to think for a further moment before he chose a replacement pair of cartridges from within. In times like these, when he had a choice between solid and scatter shot, the Ancestors truly tested his ability to plan for the battles that lay ahead.

The moon slid in and out of the scuttling clouds overhead while he worked. A brisk autumn breeze bit at the nape of his neck, and the lullaby of the Elleduin whispered over the drumbeat of his heart through his aching mind. By the time he raised his head once more to look at the horizon, all his troubles and fears had slotted into their respective slots. His mind calm, his gaze steady, he turned his thoughts next to how he might track the Blackcloaks down.

Thankfully, though, he didn’t have to think hard.

They wouldn’t head north into the heartlands of Raiaera, for that would bring them too close to the Elythian League forward headquarters at Winyaurient.

They wouldn’t head south into the Lindequalme, for even after the Dread Necromancer’s banishment there lingered horrors and abominations beyond count beneath the eaves of the corrupted blood-oaks.

They wouldn’t head east towards Beinost and the coast, for the Elythian navy still held strong against the Alerians, and they dared not risk such valuable cargo in the turbulent autumn storms.

Which left westwards, in the shortest possible line towards safety, where the plague-lands awaited. But ironically Xem’zund’s legacy posed the least threat to those backed by the full resources of the Alerian military. Throld knew that he had exactly one chance to get in front of them, where he had one last card to play to find them again.

He had better get going, then.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

Dawn broke in the embrace of an ethereal mist, a wispy blanket of low-lying cloud protecting the grasslands from the first of the season’s hoar frosts. She had made good progress under clear moonlit skies for much of the night, but now at long last found herself forced to stop to check her bearings.

“Follow them,” she’d told Obahyurur so many hours ago, and after a moment of consideration it’d set off to the west in its typical loping stride. Perched on its shoulder, at first she’d had no clue how it knew in which direction to head. The question had piqued her interest, forcing her to divert much of her attention to solving the problem. At length she’d began to notice tiny signs - a broken branch here, a patch of flattened grass there - that not even the most patient of pathfinders could erase. A body of five or six elves, moving at haste but burdened by their heavy pickings, making towards the setting moon.

The monotony of the chase had taken its toll on her bone-tired backside, but still she’d pressed on. The Blackcloaks stood not a canary’s chance in the mines of Kachuck of outrunning her tireless golem, or so she’d thought. Until the mists had risen, and she’d lost sight of the tell-tale signs of their passage, and even Oby had slowed to a crawl to check its bearings.

“Well?” she demanded of it crossly, jumping down from its shoulder to stretch her weary aching muscles. The golem returned her mythril glare with its best plaintive expression, wispy tendrils curling from its reinforced shoulders. She tutted, scalding her creation with her ire, before venturing a couple of paces away to find a place to relieve herself.

Crisp morning tranquillity jogged her thoughts as she squatted, turning them back to her need for the ashes of a long-dead... no, long-lost muse. Without it her research would not proceed. That in turn would render moot the painstaking efforts spent filling her grubby apron pocket with grisly trophies. She considered the recipe upon which she relied, transcribed from the deepest darkest depths of Ankhas, a long shot anyways. But failure would irk her far less than to abandon the attempt without trying.

Even if it means destroying a priceless part of our heritage?

Unbidden, the taleweaver’s voice resounded through her mind. She pictured him as she’d last seen him, face down in the mud as he rolled away from her powerful bellow. Then she swiftly tossed him from her thoughts.

What heritage? she called after his retreating back, full of scorn and disdain. The heritage of a failing kin, forced to ally with the deluded rebellious elements of a race of supremacist singing mystics to survive? The heritage of ten thousand years of defeat and failure, of a thousand years of hiding away in the mountains and hoping that the terrors of the deep dark don’t notice?

A proud heritage! he tried to reach out to her. Fading into the void from whence it had come, his voice somehow took on shades of her tutors of old, the longbeards and naans of the scholarium in Kir Borim. One we should honour, not reject. One we should venerate, not desecrate.

Piss off, she laughed at them. If your heritage is really that important, then perhaps I can put it to use by learning from it rather than placing it on a pedestal in some temple somewhere. Until then, you aren’t going to stop me from doing what I think is right with pretty words alone. Put your lazy arses on the line, or get out of my way.

She banished the noisy ghosts with a wave of an imaginary hand. They disappeared as though she’d slammed a door shut in their faces, leaving behind only an accusatory silence.

Satisfied, she rose from her crouch.

“Obahyurur, you’d better have worked out which way to go, or so help me Freyja I’m going to remake you from scrap!”

Nobody would get in her way, not a hidebound taleweaver, not a squad of wimpy Blackcloaks, not even her own golem’s stupidity.

She had a recipe to complete, a potion to make, and immortality to attain.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Midmorning brought a miserable north wind, and a cold constant drizzle that somehow found a way to soak through two layers of thick leather. Icy needles lashed at his face and tore at the spidersilk string holding back his hair. But he came from a line of a doughty and hardy folk, and even lecherous ne’er-do-well Throld had the relentless endurance of his people. He would not allow a ragtag bunch of elves to outpace him on a forced march across open ground.

The grasslands sickened around him, their condition worsening the further west he travelled from the Elleduin. Blankets of rotten ash blanketed farm and forest alike, a patchwork of fungal spores colonising Raiaera one acre at a time. Putrid soil gave way beneath his every step, the first sign of the contagion that would eventually consume it whole. The malice of the Dread Necromancer lingered long beyond his demise. But for now the rain dampened the worst of the blight, allowing Throld to navigate the rolling plains with little more than a light handkerchief pressed against his face.

Looks like the rumours were true, he grimaced to himself. If anything, they’ve understated how serious this is.

The villagers at Nenaebreth had spoken of necromantic residue preying on the fabric of reality as far as the eye could see. They had whispered in fear of heavy clouds of black ash that could zombify a man in the space of a single breath. Elythian Skyknights made regular sweeps of the boundaries of the plague-lands: hunting down Alerian infiltrators, turning away intrepid or overzealous adventurers, and burning away the worst of the spore infestations. But they had neither the capability to prevent the blight from spreading nor the numbers to close the border in its entirety. Could they do anything more than watch as their lands withered and waned?

The sun rose to its zenith in the southern skies as he pondered. As it began its downward journey, Throld sought shelter in one of the few farmhouses not yet smothered by the blight. A sweeping white-stone structure of curved lines and airy windows, it perched on the brow of a low rise and boasted a magnificent view of hillside orchard and sprawling grain-fields alike. But the will of the untamed wild had long since claimed the vista. Long had the manse lain unoccupied, its original owners dead or fled, any later occupants driven out by successive waves of undead abomination and necromantic plague. Not a scrap of edible food or drinkable water remained beneath the low-hanging oaken eaves. Jagged cracks in the walls and rotten timbers in the rafters attested to the building’s state of disrepair. A faint stench of wet mould hinted that it didn’t have much longer before the blight claimed it too.

Still, it would provide him with shelter against the rain while he played his last card. Suppressing his distaste at having to resort to it, he set about with a will.

He began by gathering what he needed from the dilapidation. A shattered piece of crockery, once a serving bowl for ten, now a jagged porcelain shard that would hold just enough water to reflect his face in. The stub of a honey-wax candle, both to disguise the stench of decay and to provide light to see by in the gloom of a disused antechamber. A pinch of priceless speckled glass-ash from his inner pocket, wrapped with care in his best handkerchief. And a flask of his favourite Isralothian red, smuggled in the inside pocket of his overcoat all the way from Gunnbad.

Pouring just enough wine into the porcelain shard, he placed the flickering candle flame to illuminate his unkempt reflection. He then sprinkled the glass-ash into the liquid and took a deep breath. In his mind he pictured the incantation he had learnt from the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques. He had to get the words just right, just so, or else she’d warned him that the ritual would fail. And with only a pinch of the speckled glass-ash in his possession, he had no second chance.

“Itten mo kumori no naki kagami no moto, mizu wa tomari shizuka ni tataeru,” he recited from rote. His mellow baritone enunciated each syllable with the necessary care, infusing them with their innate meaning. In a mirror as clear as a cloudless sky, water stands as still as the silence.

Arcane power breathed across the wine, the only movement in the motionless world around it. Ripples of the darkest burgundy drew his mind into their fathomless depths. Raw undiluted magic swirled about his person like a cloak of mist, setting every hair on his body on edge. He had to fight not to recoil against the unpleasant sensation.

But almost before he realised it he balanced in precarious poise over the liquid mirror, as though trying to see what lay beyond its shimmering surface veil. Just in time he caught himself from overbalancing any further and disrupting the ritual entirely.

This is why we do not play with the raw force of the void.

But he had no other choice. His oath bound him to do everything in his power to recover the Daughter. And that meant resorting to blasphemy if need be.

A minute passed without further change, then another minute that soon stretched into five. For long breathless eternities he feared that he had failed.

Then, in abrupt realisation, he found himself face to face with a living something. Human features, handsome and serpentine, melded into the flowing wine as though forcing it to their will.

“Gallievo’s dwarf,” they greeted with a brusque lack of ceremony, muffled and obfuscated as though fighting hard just to speak. “I had warned her not to be so profligate with the obsidian tears, so I hope this is of some importance. Very well. Ask me a question, dwarf, and if it is within my ability to answer it I shall do so.”

Throld swallowed in nervous trepidation. He understood the rigid rune-lore of his people. But wild magic, tethered to nought but the caster’s whim... never could he trust it. And yet, here he knelt, with only the Mistress’s word protecting him from this unseen mage.

For the Daughter, he reminded himself, girding his loins.

“I wish to know the location of the Calliopean Tablets.”

The face in the wine blinked once. Then it nodded in concentration. Within minutes, Throld had his answer.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“Answer me this, Obahyurur.”

Her husky words broke the hushed tedium, strangely muffled from beneath the grimacing face shield given to all dwarven smith apprentices. The drizzle of earlier had progressed into a full-fledged downpour, complete with occasional iridescent streaks of electrostatic discharge racing through the dying twilight. Corruption poured from the skies in greasy sheets, burning like acid against what bare skin she left exposed beneath all the leather she wore. The sun had long since fled, leaving behind only the cold and the dark. Even Sigrun, at home in the dark and the damp, felt some semblance of discomfort beneath the relentless assault.

“They could have killed us last night, no trouble.”

Yet had they elected to fade away at the river isle instead of forcing the confrontation. She could not have hoped to better a Blackcloak in a sprint, any more than the pigeon could outrun the peregrine. Even over longer distances, elven fieldcraft usually outfoxed dwarven endurance. But encumbered by their pillaged burdens and sheltering an injured comrade, they might have feared that she would keep pace with them. Surely it made more sense for them to cripple her there, even at the cost of one or two of their number, before retreating?

“So why did they run?”

The golem neither answered her nor relented in his loping stride through ankle-deep muck. Viscous rivulets of black filth streamed about his feet, eating away at the master-forged black iron like scavengers nibbling away at an inert corpse. She would have to replace the iron when she returned to proper civilisation. It wouldn’t do to let her most valuable tool to fall victim to necromantic corrosion. Even if it did have an annoying tendency to ignore her rhetorical questions.

So she answered herself instead.

“Because they have a plan.”

Precariously perched upon Obahyurur’s shoulder, she peered out into the cloying gloom. Her fingers, dusky with freshly engrained blackpowder, left sooty streaks on the cold metal. The driving rain dampened all sense of sound and smell, forcing her to rely on her weak eyesight for any information about her surroundings. She envied Oby, who seemed quite content to continue on whatever course he’d found.

Ground unfolded before them, its ascension into the shadows culminating in a ridge line perhaps an hour distant. Beyond that ridge, her mental maps told her, stretched the abandoned highway from Eluriand to Anebrilith.

“Which means, Oby, that we have to act before they can.”

Sheet lightning rippled across the crimson underbelly of the heavens above. For its brief existence it illuminated a structure on the heights ahead. Three slender spires of glass and marble reached in broken grasp for the starless heavens, protecting the travellers as they journeyed the High Path. A wayside temple to Aurient the Star Mother, to Galatirion the Sky Father, to Selana the Young-Star.

They’re there, she realised with a start.

Like all the buildings in this part of Raiaera it lay abandoned, devastated by tides of war and necromantic horde. The slenderest of the towers had toppled in its entirety. Shards of stained glass had scattered across the slope, reflecting every anvil crawler like an ethereal carpet of stars rippling through the night. The remaining two towers still stood against the darkness, their spires crowned with lapis lazuli domes glistening in the wet. A narrow skywalk connected them far above the ground, parting the low-running clouds like a keen-edged blade.

A stray thought struck her, as random as the thunderbolts from the storm overhead.

“Wonder if that taleweaver’s already caught up with them?”

Then she chuckled to herself, laughing away the ghosts in a cloud of pungent ozone and necrotic toxins.

“Not that it matters!”

Find the Blackcloaks, take the tablets, leave them in the dust. Preferably in that precise order.

Nothing too much to ask of Sigrun Kondrat, artificer extraordinaire.

“’Strewth!”

[Diadems of Promethion]

Lashing raindrops drove into empty gaps in the wall, once occupied by stained windows etched with scenes from Raiaeran mythology. The voyage from the west. The Durklan wars and the blighting of the Black Desert. The curse of the Red Forest and the Leaguer of Caradin.

Now priceless history lay scattered in myriad shards across the marble mosaics and the muddy hills beyond, soon to fade from the reach of all who might seek it. But the Blackcloak lieutenant cared little for any such melancholy, nestled in the corner of the largest tower in full slumber. Two of his men curled in fitful slumber a short distance away, among them the wounded Zilkas. The remaining three kept watch from the top of the spires and the skywalk overhead.

Throld almost felt bad for disturbing them.

He scraped the heels of his boots on a patch of muddy gravel, loud enough for only One to hear. The Blackcloak jerked awake at the sudden sound, only to find Vera’s muzzle staring him in the face. Shock flitted across his cruel-wrought features, reminding Throld of a young lad caught in a compromising situation. Priceless. To his credit he reined in the reaction with all the reflexes of his kind, narrowing his golden irises into an inscrutable, suspicious mask.

“How did you...” the dark elf snarled beneath his breath, though he dared not make any overt move beneath the custom dragon-belcher’s unflinching glare. Throld simply shrugged.

“Never keep a dwarf from his prize,” he grinned, exposing a single gnarled tooth. Like his prey he spoke in lulling quiet, his baritone rolling like gentle thunder beneath the relentless rain. “Truth is, Blackcloak, you had me worried for a while. Nearly slipped me, you did.”

“But you found us all the same.”

“Never underestimate a dwarf kept from his prize,” Throld nodded in genial agreement. “Now, while I have your attention, shall we talk this out like gentlemen? Or would you rather cause a ruckus, call for help, and end up with a fist-sized hole through your head for merry measure?”

He took the Blackcloak’s silence to indicate a willingness to listen, at least for now. Bracing Vera with one meaty hand, he reached into his coat and drew out a leather-drawn purse jingling with gold coin. Luminous Alerian eyes followed his every move through the wafting murk, but he could tell that he’d piqued the elf’s interest.

“Two hundred golden coins. The finest thrones from Gunnbad. More than worth their weight.”

“For?” The youthful lieutenant licked his lips without realising it. Two hundred Gunnbad thrones was not an inconsiderable sum, depending on what the stunted one wanted. His superiors needn’t know, after all. That said...

“I know you’ve got what I want. Let me look through your pickings... if I find what I want, I exchange it for the gold. If I don’t find it, you keep the gold anyways. You don’t lose anything that’s important to you, one minor artefact amongst that haul. I get what I want, you get the gold, we both win.” Eyes of glittering jade studied his adversary with care. “What do you say...”

“No,” came the instant response, clear and cutting through the downpour. Throld’s bushy red eyebrows rose, taken aback. Vera wavered from her target before settling again.

“... I see,” he muttered, quashing with ruthless abandon his own warring instincts. He had promised to talk like a gentleman. He would not break his word now. “Perhaps then, you would be kind enough to explain why?”

Gleaming gold irises bore into his own, and not for the first time Throld marvelled at the Alerian’s sheer youth. But when the elf’s melodious tones gave voice once more, the dwarf shuddered inside at how weary they echoed beneath the oppressive thunder.

“Know you not then, dwarf, of the monstrosity that stalks us in this Silent War?”

“Plague?” Throld guessed. “Some present of the Necromancer that hinders your advance into the Eluriand heartlands?”

The Blackcloak shook his head, the words he spoke burdening his shoulders with the weight of the world.

“If only it were so simple.” Dark lines traced his cheeks as he grimaced. “Perhaps it is right that you should learn of this from me. A Disciple of the Dark God has risen, an eldritch abomination from the legends of eons long past. It stalks the western reaches of the Lindequalme, stymieing our every attempt to break out in force from the Niadeth Pass.”

“A whattie of a who-what?”

Furrows of deep black creased the dwarf’s forehead. Never in his many years of spinning tales had he ever come across the title. Oh for sure, he would weave myths of monstrosities capable of decimating entire armies before the chosen hero defeated them. But they were just that... myths, stories, caricatures against which to paint the virtues of determination, courage, and honour. Never in a thousand years had he...

No, he corrected himself, sick to his stomach. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe. It was that I didn’t want to. What storyteller wants his worst nightmares to come to life?

“That bad, eh? That you would grasp at any straw, even the abandoned relics of an arcane battlefield, on the chance that they might give you an advantage?”

Etched horror rose to the surface of the Blackcloak lieutenant’s features. Throld met it with sympathy, and care, and a sudden overwhelming desire to work out a deal with the Alerian. Perhaps if he accompanied the Blackcloaks back to Ettermire, he could talk directly with the elf’s military superiors. There, the influence of the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques might count for more.

He’d just opened his mouth to make the suggestion, when two things happened at once.

First came the whistle from above, piercing and strident and urgent.

Then came the voice from the darkness.

Throld groaned in despair.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“Now that’s interesting! Tell me more!”

Obahyurur powered through the base of the tower, shedding raindrop and marble fragments alike from its black iron shoulders. The earth shuddered in time to its advance. Towards the sheltering soldiers it marched, towards their stunted guest and the untidy pile of satchels that it sought. Sigrun followed her automaton through the gap, heedless of the ominous creaking from above. Spitting ashen dust and the taste of greasy corruption from her mouth, she greeted them all with a cheery smile and the barrel of her dragon-belcher.

“See, I don’t think it’s a very nice thing to do,” she continued without missing a beat. “Keeping secrets from people. Withholding knowledge from those who would benefit from it. It’s heavy-handed. Mean-spirited. Short-sighted. Narrow-minded.”

Her smile turned to a growl. Her eyes narrowed to slits of fury. Her boomstick never wavered from the pair of targets beneath its muzzle.

She paused to give their slow minds a moment to comprehend, and as she did so the tower behind her crumbled into the night. A piercing Alerian scream echoed into the drenched darkness, meeting a premature end in solid mud and rock. A shower of debris accompanied the groan of falling stone, crescendoing to the thunderous cacophony of impact and a wave of billowing mist.

The dwarf and her golem never once halted in their stride.

“So. Stay where you are, hand over those satchels, and tell me everything you know.” She thought for a moment, then nodded. “In that order. ‘Strewth.”

Urgent cries from overhead heralded the collapse of the remaining skywalk. Handcrafted fragments of marble crashed into the mud behind her, splattering the back of her legs and raising clouds of corruption in her wake. She stopped walking when just out of their reach, her dragon-belcher watching them carefully all the while. Grimy rain sizzled and steamed as it traced coursing paths down her pinched cheekbones.

The Blackcloak and the taleweaver exchanged glances. Between them passed a veritable cavalcade of emotions: anger, distrust, remorse, acceptance. The former hardened his glare. The latter winced.

Then the Blackcloak uttered a sharp command.

“Elgg tu’harglukkin.”

Kill both dwarves.

[Diadems of Promethion]

She must be out of shot. If not, she wouldn’t have walked into the open like an idiot to let her fuse get soaked.

“No shit, there I was...” Throld muttered to himself beneath his breath, blinking the rain-spray from his eyes and throwing himself into action.

By his count five elves remained, arrayed in disorder against a batshit-crazy dwarf-dam and her mindless automaton. His poor lonely self formed the unwilling third party to this impromptu melee a trois. A generous storyteller would remark upon how high the odds stacked against him, as if the fates themselves delighted in his misfortune. A more pragmatic one would allow a moment of silence to linger, to let the facts sink home. But when he put it all together, it meant that he only had one realistic chance at getting away alive.

Grab and run!

Throld's shoulder struck the Blackcloak One behind the knee, buckling the young dark elf to the ground just as his falchion cleared its scabbard. Momentum carried the dwarf into the pile of satchels beyond, head slamming into the crumbling wall behind them with the force of hammer on anvil. Stars and white flashing lights hampered his recovery, but he knew that he’d gambled correctly. The lassie had not shot him.

Instead she screamed like a wildcat, tussling with the poor Blackcloak commander who found himself with the hard luck to stand between her and her prize. Even on one knee the Alerian had the advantage of training and skill, but the dwarf-dam more than made up for it with sheer ferocity and a dirty trick or two. Pouring rain blinded his keen golden eyes. Slippery mud took his remaining foot from beneath him and sent his blade skittering away upon the flagstones. A well-timed boot caught him flush in the groin before he had time to brace.

Hurry, hurry, hurry... Throld urged his trembling fingers.

The two other Blackcloaks on the ground fared little better than their commander. The injured elf had just enough time to rub groggy drug-induced slumber from his eyes. Then the golem picked him up with impossible ease and tossed him wailing over the low compound wall between the two rubbled towers. His comrade, Two, recovered from shock just a moment too late. For the first time that evening the roar of Alerian musketfire rent the torrential downpour. But the bullet ricocheted from the automaton’s armoured form, kicking up sludge where it tore into the pustulent earth.

Two screamed as the metal monstrosity came for him. His terror did not last long.

Found...

Throld’s ears pricked, and he looked up from his hasty search of the satchels to find the dwarf-dam headed his way, murder burning in her mythril glare. Hastily he primed Vera in her direction, hoping against hope that the damp had not got to his powder too.

“Now, now, lassie. You win, I lose. If you don’t mind, I’d just like to skedaddle...”

Another shot rang out, and only the mists cast by the golem’s wanton destruction of its surroundings saved its mistress’s life. Red-hot lead grazed from leather-clad shoulder to forearm. Screeching in pain and rage she threw herself out of the firing line... and towards Throld.

Hastily he backpedalled through the treacherous mud, evading her first desperate lunge by throwing the remaining artefacts in her face. She reeled, surprised, and he took the opportunity to turn for freedom.

A black-clad shadow landed alongside him with a soft plop, falchion bared and glistening in the rain. Five had eyes only for the golem as it rushed to its mistress’s aid. It lashed out in pure instinct, but the Blackcloak parried with such skill it sent the ironclad stumbling to the ground beneath its own momentum. As the elf turned to face again, all swirling black cloak and elegant footwork, Throld scrabbled past on all fours and ducked behind a piece of fallen marble.

There, making himself small against the clamour of battle, he allowed himself to breathe again.

And let his fingers caress the Daughter held against his chest, savouring the thrumming sensation of dormant runic power.

The Calliopean Tablet, he marvelled. A little voice reminded him of the Alerian sharpshooter still perched in the remaining tower, of the Blackcloak bladesman duelling the golem not five paces to his left, of the insane dwarf-dam who would soon finish searching through the satchels and possibly realise he’d robbed her. He wasn’t safe yet. Not by a large margin.

But neither could he wrench his eyes from his prize.

And then things got worse.

A whole lot worse.

“No shit.”