When Bloodoaks Weep

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Spiritual successor to United They Stand, Divided They Fall. Prelude to the Adventurer’s Crown.

The dreadnought, ablaze from bow to stern, accelerated to ramming speed and sounded one last note of defiance. Secondary explosions rippled its hull, a series of miniature suns scarring the onrushing night. Its escorts lay scattered upon the forest floor, pyres of flaming wreckage swatted aside like so many milling flies. Its ground support had either perished in their droves or had fled back towards the twilit mountains from whence they had come. Touma Kamikaji watched without words from atop a nearby knoll, lone spectator to its spectacular demise.

Its foe reached to the heavens like a mountain made of dark flesh, a titanic demi-god wielding a galvorn club studded with burnished diamonds. The girth of its legs rivalled the great stone pillars of the Dakian Gorge, and great bands of bulging muscle bound a chest broader than most villages. Living shadow writhed behind it in the floor of the Red Forest, feasting on the cadavers of fallen Aleran Blackcloaks. Together the twin aspects of mountain and shadow formed a single entity, the life and death of things. Kongorikishi the Berserker, the God of Benevolence, the Second Disciple of the Dark Goddess.

Almost in slow motion the Disciple swung its great club. Twinkling like a myriad stars in the dying light, the force of its passage alone carved the crowns from a dozen ancient bloodoaks. Gale-force winds whipped and sheared at Touma’s robes of grey cotton, threatening to tear them from his lanky, gaunt frame. But his snake-like eyes of dark brown erred not from the battle before him as it finally drew to a close.

The dreadnought’s armoured hull buckled, crumpled, splintered. Like a twig it snapped in two. Its stern disintegrated into so much rubbish as it collapsed to one side. A rain of splintered redwood and flailing elves plummeted to the Lindequalme, only the latest blood to be spilt beneath the crimson boughs.

But through either sheer courage or sheer determination, its decapitated bow carried onwards into the Disciple’s scowling visage. The thundercrack of its impact sundered the gloaming hours, rattling leaves from trees and the dead from their graves. Moments later the mana engines went critical in blinding supernova, sending further explosive shockwaves searing through the winter chill.

Had it succeeded in harming the eldritch monstrosity? Had the suicidal bravery of the Aleran commander even dented the Disciple's advance?

No.

Even as the green-tinted smoke cleared, even as the brisk westerly carried away the worst of the ozone stench, Kongorikishi strode forth unperturbed. Every step shattered the forest beneath it, the world quaking beneath its wrath as it strode through the ruins of the Aleran strike force. For now it seemed content to bask in the funeral flames of its foes flickering against its lower legs, but how long would that last? How long before it turned its attention to less prepared prey?

See how it humbles even the foremost marvels of arcano-tech, the slithering voice whispered in Touma’s mind. See how it sends the most powerful military in the known world fleeing for its life.

The magics of Pode had nurtured it. The slaughters of Xem’zund had nourished it. And he, Touma Kamikaji, had seen it birthed into the world.

The responsibility is yours, Serpent Tamer. Or, within two years, all Althanas will be overrun.

He’d seen enough.

A wave of his spindly fingers opened up a shimmering portal in the ruined archway behind him. He stepped through, leaving the burning battlefield behind in the blink of an eye.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

He re-materialised between an archway formed by the branches of two neighbouring bloodoaks, wiping the sweat from his lined brow. Darkness had already fallen in this part of the forest. Stifling and oppressive, it pressed in upon them until the world simply ceased to exist beyond the nearest trunks of bleeding silver bark.

Elnaril Aerataeth, Wanderer in Starlight, didn’t look up to greet him. Only his melodious inflections gave light to the anonymous clearing.

“The High Bard Council is desperate.”

Touma snorted in disdain, folding his arms as he towered over the masked elf. Brilliant green eyes matched him without flinching. Elnaril had lost both legs in previous battle against Kongorikishi, battle that Touma had initiated with only the most careful thought to the consequences. Two hundred Wanderers had entered battle that day. Barely thirty had survived to accompany Elnaril here, and only ten without permanent disfigurement. Like shadows in the night they waited for the negotiations to conclude, their loathing of the human palpable and seething.

So why do they seek you out now, we wonder?

“The High Bard Council, or what remains of it, is deluded and insane,” Touma replied. “They think that they can cleanse the Lindequalme of a thousand years of hatred and affliction by praying at it.”

“But they are not stupid, manling. They would not attempt such an endeavour without prospect of success. The Elythian League has promised aid, as have Corone and Scara Brae, and mercenaries from all across the lands…”

“So your kind can finally see beyond their own noses.” Touma’s sinister half-smile withered crimson leaves from their cradling boughs. “Has this newfound talent blinkered them to problems closer to home? Can they not see that Nalith is a deranged lunatic, playing at your pantheon knows what in the forests to the north? Or that the growing morass of untamed necromantic energy they call the Plaguelands is a far greater threat to them than any thousand-year-old curse? Or that the Elythian League and its loose confederation of city states is the only stable government in the country at the moment? Or that their dark cousins intrude from the west and would prefer nothing less than to wipe them from the face of Althanas?”

“And yet they choose to focus on the Lindequalme,” Elnaril said, exaggerating for greater effect his tone of patience. “And we have chosen to find you.”

“Because you have to stoop so low as to ask for aid from a mere manling? Because you expect me to blanch by forcing me to witness the effect of my actions? I see that you’re already on your hands and knees, Wanderer. How far further must you fall?”

“You unleashed the Disciple upon us because you had no other choice: the many deaths of the Corpse War had bloated it to birth long before its anointed time. For this we do not blame you, rather the Forgotten One Xem’zund for his unwarranted campaign of terror. But you also count on us to hold it at bay until you can prepare a more permanent countermeasure. And for this, we believe, you owe us a modicum of assistance.”

This time, Touma didn’t bother to hold back a fit of genuinely amused laughter. It broke upon the encircling Wanderers like waves upon a rocky shore, inviting their violent revulsion to fill its receding wake. Gauntlets of elven steel tightened upon spears and staves. Myriad eyes glinted behind masks of sculpted ivory and bone.

Elnaril allowed insult and injury alike to wash over him without effect.

“You owe us this, manling.” A wave of his right hand floated him from the loamy ground, until he could stare into Touma’s face on equal terms. “You owe us this chance to avenge the comrades who you sacrificed to the Disciple’s wrath. You owe us this opportunity to banish the Disciple from the Firmament, once and for all.”

In his left hand, he now held an obsidian runestone the size of Touma’s head. Elven script, far too fine for any mortal hand to have inscribed, blanketed the black glass in flowing rivulets of chalky white. For the first time since the Wanderers had cornered him, the human allowed a measure of respect to enter his voice.

“A mana bomb?”

Elnaril nodded.

“Perhaps now you will be more willing to listen to what we have to ask of you?”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

It transpired they needed him for one reason, and one reason only.

To bait the Disciple into a trap.

“This artefact dates from the times before the First Leaguer of Caradin, designed as a weapon to annihilate even the Forgotten Ones themselves should they march on Eluriand,” Elnaril explained once certain he had Touma’s full attention. “It is the sole reason why neither Xem’zund nor Pode ever directly threatened the palace of Velice Arta, for they both knew that they would not survive the attempt if they tried. Now, with Istien veiled and the capital abandoned, we have no reason any more not to employ it against the greatest threat our land has ever faced.”

A Guardian Gem of the Eldalie. A rare enough find, but…

“And you wish to set it up here?”

They called it the Temple of Sublime Tranquillity, a broad structure of pink basalt hemmed in by walls of elegant mosaic. Though ornate wooden panels still screened the main windows, bright shafts of moonlight stippled down through broken sandstone lattices. The night air, crisp and dry, basked in the stench of ozone and musty death.

“We ask you to lure the Disciple into this location. We will engage the Disciple long enough for you to escape and for us to set up a barrier spell to contain the blast and maximise its effect. We will then detonate this artefact and banish the Avatar of the Devourer from the Firmament.”

Now, Touma stood alone before the Temple’s grand altar. Dedicated to the youngest of the elven Star Pantheon, it had endured untouched in the depths of the Lindequalme for centuries if not millennia. A film of fine dust covered every golden candelabra, every silver censer mounted upon the walls. None save he had disturbed the sanctity of the holy site in living memory, or else they had walked with light feet indeed.

All the better to magnify the effect of the mana bomb, and to neutralise the Disciple’s defences against it.

Selana, after all, had been the first of the Wanderers, the one whom all others took their cue. More so than Aurient or Galatirion, Earlon or Arddunwe, Cuarye or Megillion. Selana alone had wandered the farthest of the paths, and had returned. Though she had cleared her mind of the knowledge she gained at the end of every journey, in times of great peril, in moments of profound introspection when the need was great, she could recollect from her past travels and aid her fellow Wanderers.

It made sense that the Starlit Path, the Endless Road, led them back here one last time.

Time had not eroded the jewelled triptych screens placed to either side of the altar, their sapphire blues and ruby reds glimmering gently in the darkness. Time had not eroded the prevalida emblem of the Pantheon, the Star Tree Manwelindome, set in the silvery Timbrethillin liviol of the backdrop. Time had not eroded the quiet peace and hope emanating from the sanctum, the memory of a golden age long since lost.

It didn’t take him long to realise that another presence had joined him in his lonesome vigil. For half a heartbeat his hand strayed towards the hilt of his sword. Only with great effort did he stay it.

“You will aid my followers, edan?”

Dress of gossamer starlight danced about her dainty ankles. Her hair, as silvery as the liviol altar erected in her name, cascaded in flowing tides from her shoulder past her knees. Her features – elfin, ephemeral, eternal – had once mobilised entire armies. Now she clung to the past like a beggar to his praying bowl, a goddess of a dying people, a memory lost to time.

“You will help them protect Tel’Eldalie from the Devourer?”

The Young Star herself.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

“My lady.”

Lowering his hand to his side, Touma inclined his head and averted his eyes. In the same movement he palmed the shard of glass he kept up his sleeve. It afforded him another opportunity to glance at the figure who confronted him, and to steel his will against what he saw there.

Her ethereal gaze pinned him to the spot, piercing his innermost thoughts like a needle through an unwary finger. Her brow crinkled in a frown of unparalleled delicacy and beauty, her lips barely moving as she projected her voice through the hollow sanctuary.

“You have agreed to assist us in driving forth the parasite from our lands?”

“I have,” Touma replied, throat bobbing as he swallowed. He dared not look up, for he knew those of the Star Pantheon to be capricious in the extreme. A single mistimed word, a single misplaced gesture, could end him where he stood. Best he held his bow and kept his answers short and to the point.

He felt her frown caress the back of his neck, crawling static setting every hair on end. He felt tendrils of her power infiltrate his mind, batting away his feeble attempts to keep them out. He felt her seize control of his senses with little regard to his mortal frailty, and he had to fight just to maintain sanity amidst the heat of her touch.

“Then you know that, alone, my Wanderers cannot defeat the Avatar of the Devourer. Not even the Guardian Gem can avail them of victory.”

“They are confident they can contain the blast and amplify its effects.” Touma grit his teeth. How much else did she know?

Too much?

“They will fail.” Her powerful lilt filled his ears, echoing against the inside of his skull in bone-numbing intensity. “I can offer you further assistance. I can offer you power reaching beyond the boundaries of your mortal comprehension. I can offer you the means to defeat the Disciple and all others that will follow.”

Without warning she wrenched upon his thoughts, sending them tumbling through the vagaries of time and space. He found himself standing on the edge of the Lindequalme as Kongorikishi stalked its boughs, the pyres of the Aleran dreadnought still visible in the distance.

“You know much of the forces in this world, Touma Kamikaji. You, lurk in the shadows like them, in the dark just beyond sight. You watch. You wait. You know everything, see everything. You learn of people, and of events, and of decisions that shatter the earth. And once in a while you are asked to make such a decision. Such as now.”

She knew that he’d released the Disciple into the world, then. How much…

“Do not underestimate me, manling!” Her anger thundered through his synapses, and she scalded the back of his neck with her glare. “Of course I know of the Necromancer’s Cave, and of the Tower of Warding, and of the myriad other choices you have made to spill the blood of mine own and mine kin.”

Touma blanched, reeled. Instinctively his hand went to the hilt at his waist. But before he could reach it the Young Star pulled upon his mind and transported it to yet another locale. Now he stood in the smouldering corruption of a ruined clearing in the Lindequalme. Something massive had torn a chasm a league wide in the loamy earth, and had churned up even more mud and matter fighting its way clear. The decaying corpses of eight-score Wanderers littered the vicinity, too broken even to reincarnate as minions of the undead horde.

He recognised the place. This was where he had unleashed the Disciple of the Dark God upon the world, where it had fought its way free of its bindings and through those who had tried to prevent it.

“Do not underestimate me, manling,” she whispered again, sibilant and susurrating. Waves of fire rolled through his mind, one after another, giving him no respite from her ministrations. “I know of the days you fight for your soul, wondering how much more should you sacrifice for the sake of the world. I know of the nights you sit awake before your mirrors, wondering whether they will ever forgive you for what you have done.”

He laughed, beaten and broken. Not only could she read his thoughts, but his emotions too? She whisked him away a third time, now to the roof of the Temple in which they spoke. Four slender spires rose to the heavens around him, one for each cardinal direction. An ocean of unwavering stars watched his every movement, their light a healing touch on a forest that bled bright red.

“Leave your soul in my hands, manling,” she murmured, the flames of her voice now a balm upon his tortured mind. She cocked her head to one side, as if in question, and he felt it on the back of his neck. “Leave it with me, and I shall send you forth anew with all the grace and virtue that lie within. Whisper my name, and I shall come to you.”

Her offer echoed in his mind, receding with every pounding heartbeat. Tendrils of searing heat withdrew from his head, leaving behind only a thunderous headache and an irrational longing for her touch. Her electric frown retreated from the back of his bowed head, and he could feel his shoulders aching with the effort of maintaining his awkward posture. The whisper of her starlight robes vanished into the void, now but a lingering memory.

Whisper her name, and she shall come to you.

He bowed once more to the altar, in the formal Nipponese manner. Only then did he return to the task at hand, far more confident now than before.

He had a Disciple to kill.

And not much time in which to do it.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Eventually he emerged onto the roof of the Temple, between the four slender spires so typical of Raiaeran architecture. Unlike in his earlier vision, no stars stood sentinel over his every movement: the heavens lay blanketed beneath an obese sky churning with fast-moving cloud. The rain tasted strange, something vague but alchemical. It sapped the colour from the night, paling his face and shadowing his eye sockets.

Sandals of woven reeds squirmed for grip as he struggled from the ladder hatch, almost slipping on the slick stone. Angry winds whipped at his face and his robes, driving icy lances into his eyes and the exposed skin of his face. Below him in every direction the Lindequalme wailed and sighed, an abject lament for the battle still to come. He paid it little heed as he lowered himself to the frigid floor, slipping his sword from his belt and laying it across his crossed legs.

Settling himself upon the apex of the exposed dome, he allowed the scent of wafting petrichor to infiltrate his lungs, the silence of the falling rain to suffuse his mind. Closing his eyes, he attuned his senses instead on the malignant forces at work upon the world around him. Pockets of remnant necromantic energy warred with the blanketing crimson of the witch’s curse. Everywhere he looked, the forces of darkness coruscated and roiled like leashed typhoons. Only in his immediate vicinity did wan starlight penetrate the penumbral veil, and even then it seemed a weak and forlorn hope in contrast to the overwhelming shadow.

Whisper her name, and she shall come to you…

More annoyed than intrigued by the pernicious refrain she’d planted in his thoughts, he pushed it to the back of his mind. He had work to do here, a Disciple to lure, and his chances of success diminished with every echoing distraction.

His thoughts followed a familiar spiral as he entered the state of semi-conscious concentration he needed for optimal focus.

He thought of the members of his Fraternity, scattered about the world on their appointed tasks. His oldest friend, Hiroyuki Doson, leprous and paralysed by his contact with the Disciple. Angelus Eltharion, cast out and despised by both his homelands. Silmeria the Dar’el, similarly ostracised by her people, and her burning desire to serve. Quentin Kerr, he of many faces; Phillipe Renar, who took such pride in his master’s wellbeing; Gellievo Malvae, the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques. All such valuable allies in the approaching end times.

He thought of the one called Nanashi, whose life he had turned upside down with a single decision so many years ago. He thought of Akiyoshi Sanada, who he had duped into trusting him and doing as he bid for two decades.

He thought of Kayu Kanamai. How he had twisted her sense of duty such that she’d followed him first to the gates of hell, then into the battlefields of the Corpse War.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do to save them. Nothing he wouldn’t do in the name of saving Althanas.

Nothing at all.

Even if it meant burning everything down with his own two hands.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

When he opened his eyes once more, he saw the world in its full spectrum of greys. Like shattered shards of reality, every raindrop passing before his eyes showed him a different vision of what had come to pass. His attention flickered back and forth between them, the meanderings of a hummingbird spun from lightning.

Minutes stretched into hours, amplified further by the intensity at which he worked his mind, as he sought to make sense of it all.

He found what he sought when the first cold haloes of cloud-obfuscated dawn broke upon his soaked and bowed back. A raindrop on the western border of the Lindequalme shuddered beneath a steady series of earthshocks heading east-north-east.

Does the Disciple tire of this game too?

A silly thought. The God of Benevolence cared for nothing but the ending of lives and the bringing of deaths. Some foes he could reason with, dissect their motive and subvert their goals. The Disciples of the Dark Goddess were not such a foe. Touma detested them for that. It made them so difficult to oppose.

And yet it heads straight towards you.

A second raindrop afforded him another view as it plummeted to the forest far below. Touma steeled himself against the Disciple’s visage, against the permanent war-scowl etched upon its bronzed features and the deep trenches of glistening rain that only served to further enhance its eldritch fury. As he fell further he caught sight of its diamond-studded war club, dull and lifeless beneath the turbulent grey skies. The remains of the Aleran dreadnought and its crew still stained its ridged flanges.

The responsibility is yours, Serpent Tamer.

A third raindrop fell bearing a fragment of his consciousness. This time he felt the Disciple take notice of his presence, in the same way that he had felt Selana’s presence behind him in the Temple sanctum. He couldn’t quite explain how it felt to attract the attention a higher power. It made his skin crawl and the hackles on the nape of his neck rise. Cold sweat ran down his brow. His heart palpitated in his chest. Frigid chills raced up and down his spine. His breath caught in his throat, constricted and choking.

Was there not nothing you would not do?

A fourth raindrop into which he projected his will, to the right of the Disciple and away from its thundering path. He watched with satisfaction as it veered to follow him, brushing aside millennia-old bloodoaks and trampling their corpses beneath its mangled gait. It shrieked in challenge without once altering its expression, subsonic pulses blurring the world and threatening his honed focus. Long living shadows at its feet writhed in anger as they reached for him.

Would you not rather see the world burn?

He let go of the raindrop just before the shadows swallowed it whole, adroitly skipping ahead to another watery bead falling from the sky. It would need to do more than that to disrupt his concentration, his hold over the myriad tears shed by the skies over Raiaera. The Disciple shrieked and raged as it followed his taunting dance through the cursed forest, and Touma allowed a small half-smile to curl about his thin lips.

All proceeded according to plan.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

“Lure it to the Temple of Sublime Tranquillity at sunset tomorrow. We shall stand ready, and there we will consider your debt to us paid.”

So he had told the young manling. But in his seven centuries of existence Elnaril, Wanderer in Starlight, had never once forgotten a grudge. He had walked the paths of Faithful and Forger and now Seer, and never once had he returned to the Zero Step without a clear conscience and his debts repaid in full.

Thus he had approached with customary caution and care the opportunity to avenge the deaths of his comrades at the Necromancer’s Cave.

And now the time had come to exact the price in blood. How Elnaril looked forward to peeling away the false skin the Serpent wore. How he longed to see that smug smile fall away from the manling’s face when he realised that the Wanderers had never intended to let him escape before setting off the mana bomb.

The cloudy light had not yet begun to fade as the Wanderers approached the Temple, some walking, some limping, some floating through the dense crimson shrubbery. The thunderous beat of quaking earth, bleeding into a single continuous shudder as it crescendoed in strength and intensity, warned them that the Disciple too approached. Five of Elnaril’s cadre, the youngest and least experienced of his Seers, remained outside to chant the barrier mantras. When the dust had settled and all had come to fruition, they would then spread the word of their martyrdom throughout Raiaera.

Elnaril and the rest of his Wanderers crept in silent step into the Temple, fanning out into skirmish file with polearms held at the ready. The towering shrines stood empty and ruined, rose-tinted stone gleaming in the half light. As they moved into the slanted shadows, a chill ran down his spine as cold as anything he’d endured during the winter of the Corpse War. All sound fled his ears, stolen away by the void of the ancient tombs and the hollow echo of the abandoned cloisters.

With a start he realised that the heretic manling had ransacked and defiled this most holy of Selana’s sanctums. Nothing remained. Not a relic, not an artefact, neither a speck of litter nor a sign of damage.

Deft hand signals sent some of his cadre ahead into the lofty chapel, and others down a side avenue of stone monuments and stelae. He himself advanced into a smaller chapter house where the Choir to the Young Star had resided in times of glory long past.

Inside, he witnessed only the rows of empty alcoves where the household shrines should have stood. Every holy item, every icon, every text, every worship statuette… vanished. The altars stood empty, the votive alcoves bare, the reliquaries desecrated. Doubtless also the Serpent’s doing… but why?

Nothing stirred in answer but the steady thunder of the Disciple’s approach. Chill wind howled across the high plateau, and steady rain drummed on the vaulted arches.

His rage mounted, manifesting in a fiery halo at the tip of his staff and billowing green flames beneath his floating form. With scant regard now for stealth, he crossed the courtyard of weeds and broken pavestones and entered the main shrine. Arched vaults towered above him in a confection of rosy rhinestone and cyclopean marble pillars. Here he had hoped to make his stand against the Disciple, but here too the sanctum lay bare. Worst of all, the colossal gilt-swathed altar bore no branched candelabra, no censers, no triptych screen, no starry emblem of the Pantheon.

So be it, he thought to himself. Lacking the advantage of the Young Star’s holy benediction, they stood little chance of defeating the Avatar of the Devourer, no matter how powerful the Guardian Gem they wielded. His fingers caressed the inscribed obsidian he held as he considered his options, arriving only at the inevitable conclusion. They would have to fall back, live to fight another day. They would have to look to another occasion to avenge themselves on the manling.

Though why he had taken such drastic action, undermining his chances of defeating the Disciple…

He smelt something odd in the air. A tangy stench, like thick oil in the skillet, or pickled fish.

His lips went moist. He licked them, tasting liquid metal.

“Elnaril!” his scout hissed.

He wiped his nose as indicated, only to find blood weeping from it as from a fresh puncture wound. Every Wanderer with him leaked the same crimson rivers, from noses and eyes and ears. The youngest amongst them started to whimper. The eldest pitched over on his face, stone cold dead.

“By the Young Star,” Elnaril whispered in reverent horror.

The stench intensified. Time slowed to a crawl. Elnaril watched his own hand reaching out in front of him, stretching in vain for the nearest shaft of twilight. How slow! How graceful! How futile!

The very air around them tensed in treacly weight. His Wanderers swam in its embrace, insects caught in sticky sap. Some had half-fallen to the dusty floor, limbs outstretched and limp. Some convulsed in their death throes, others knelt in fervent prayer. Perfect droplets of their blood glinted in the air, like crystalline rubies.

The manling had done this to them. He had been ready. He had stripped the shrines of their holy wards and had left something in their place.

Something lethal.

“Serpent…!” Elnaril tried to curse. But the blood seeped from the inside of his mouth, flowing into his lungs. He choked and he drowned, and he retched crimson excrement into his goddess’s sanctum.

Maggots crawled there, and leeches, and all manner of vile writhing abominations.

But with the last of his cadre’s life force gathered on the tip of his tongue, he broke the seals that bound the Guardian Gem’s wrath and retribution.

Time stopped dead. Premature night draped across the precinct.

In a flare of blue light like the petals of a translucent orchid, the Temple exploded.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Coruscating energy levelled the mountaintop upon which the Temple had stood, and a five league radius of the Lindequalme besides. Fires took hold beneath skies that wept a black and sticky rain, though the mana bomb had carved a swathe of blood-red twilight through the clouds. Voracious tongues of incandescent flame fed upon the accursed bloodoaks, mist-blue and frost-green like some hallucinogenic aurora.

The concussive blast washed over the advancing Disciple with nary an ill effect. The shockwave that followed merely ruffled the bristly hairs on its naked form, mockery manifest of the lesser races. It waded through heat that would have seared the flesh from any mortal bone, intent only on closing with the flitting fly that taunted it so.

From the safety of his new vantage point, half a league clear of the blast zone, Touma watched. He could feel the heat of the multihued inferno even from here, as the stone cliffs of the plateau melted and bubbled in the form of mutated screaming faces. But hawkish and intent, he had eyes only for the eldritch abomination advancing into the remains of the erstwhile Temple of Sublime Tranquility. His mind strained with the effort of not only keeping the Disciple’s attention, but of melding to his will the residual energies deposited by the last stand of Elnaril Aerataeth and his cadre of Wanderers.

The responsibility is yours, Serpent Tamer.

So it was.

Blast pillars rose on all sides of the titan, streams of arcane energy fleeing the corrupted earth towards the gap in the heavens above. Together they formed an archway of a size that Touma had never seen before. One that he might never witness again.

He didn’t hesitate. Drawing upon every last reserve of his mental strength, every last dreg of residual arcane energy bound to his command, he willed the Disciple to be gone.

Shimmering energy snapped into place in time for Kongorikishi’s next step. Like an enormous silvery curtain it wrapped about the mountainous humanoid figure, draping to the ground at its feet to cocoon its writhing shadow. He had one shot at this, one attempt that might well determine the fate of all Raiaera if not all life on the planet. If he failed to envelop his prey in the webs he had laid… if he couldn’t take advantage of the blast pillars and oversaturated mana pool left behind in the aftermath of the Guardian Gem…

Did he have enough in him to entrap the Disciple? Could his mind handle the strain of creating a portal large enough to consume the eldritch monstrosity whole?

Would he fail here, lost to all history like Elnaril and the rest?

No.

He whispered a name.

The veil snapped into place.

The Disciple disappeared from sight.

Reality reasserted itself with an ear-wrenching snap and the pungent stench of ozone. A second shockwave fanned the flames left behind by the first, extinguishing some only to reignite them elsewhere. In the end, little but the oily downpour remained to sully the ruins of the Lindequalme.

Until, before his pounding heart had the chance to settle, a pained shriek shattered the hard-earned silence.

“You killed them!” From above the silver-robed lady swooped. Her eyes blazed green fury. Her hair trailed crimson fire. “You killed them all!”

Touma staggered beneath her assault, drained of all strength. She alighted on the branch before him like a mythic bird of prey, arms spread wide and fingers held like claws. Her ethereal beauty only marked her out further as a being not of this world, as a vengeant goddess manifest.

“I will rend the flesh from your bones. And then seek out all you hold dear. And rend the flesh from their bones too. And then drag your mouldering carcasses into the ruins of my Temple and string you up above my altar, and burn out your pain centres as I wait for the End Times to arrive!”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Time dilated as she rushed him. Slender fingers reached for his face, poised to rake his eyes from his skull.

But as swift as she struck, his blade struck faster. Whipping from its scabbard like a streak of black lightning, it carved a crescent arc of darkness through the silvery blur of her passage. Her attack faltered as she bled hissing cloud into the frigid air. With a wordless shriek, like nails on a whetting stone, she regrouped beyond his reach.

“Back away,” he rasped, exhaling steamy puffs into the encroaching twilight. One foot in front of the other, his sandals scrabbled for purchase on the silvery trunk of the bloodoak beneath him. He cocked his head as if lost in thought, still trying to catch his breath. But before she could act, he dropped another carefully considered syllable.

“Witch.”

The silver-robed figure drew herself upright. Her surprise showed for only the briefest of heartbeats, before laughter rich and low began to bubble from her mouth. As her mirth took hold, so did the changes in her form. Inner flame burnt her hair a luscious and vivid crimson. A brilliant emerald green hue tinted her blank silver pupils. Thick purple veins crawled up her limbs from her hands and feet, until they clasped her slender neck in a tight chokehold. Her gossamer robes dissipated, revealing a sleeved gown as red as blood, plunging into her cleavage and accentuating the curves of her hips.

Touma dismissed the details as soon as he noted them, uninterested in her obvious pandering to her own ego. Instead he focused his attention on the curl of her cruel lips, and the way her jaw jutted forwards just so when she began to speak.

“My, my, my.” Her voice slipped into his ears like a dirk sheathed in silk. Her thin smile matched Touma’s own. “You are an intelligent one. Tell me, what gave it away? The hair? The act? Even that bratty Selana gets out of her cubby hole once in a while, you know.”

He dared not reply, instead lowering the tip of his blade to point straight at her throat. For what it was worth he attempted to blank his mind, to restrict her access to his thoughts. She read them anyways with no visible effort.

“But of course. A mirror of true-seeing. I suppose it was slightly foolish of me to try disillusioning an illusionist… you do know so many tricks of the trade. But not all of them. No, arrogant manchild, not all.”

His head burnt, throbbed, as if she had somehow transferred to his mind the incandescent inferno that fed upon the Lindequalme. Gasping for breath he fell to his knees upon the rough bark beneath his feet, his sword clattering harmlessly beside him. She must have left something behind when she’d last invaded. It hurt, as if a thousand burning needles threaded their way through his synapses, as though a million electric ants nibbled at the flesh betwixt his skull.

“To think that I spent aeons waiting for just the right agent to act on my behalf, only to stumble across another candidate so quickly. But you are no Briarheart, are you? You do not waste time blinding yourself with false convictions or holding to vain hopes. You know that you are already a monster, and you are perfectly willing to accept what needs to be done. And in turn, that undermines your worth. You are a glittering garnet, manchild, but not an imperfect ruby.”

He waited, one with the world, breathless and wordless as her words grated through his mind.

“And so, I am afraid, I am unable to gift you the power you seek.” One silky hand reached out to caress the top of his head, ruffling his matted black hair. Every touch only served to fan the flames of the conflagration consuming his mind. “But a minor position, perhaps? My offer does still stand, you know… a boon or two, for your soul?”

Now she bent close to his ear, her words a delicate enticement.

“Whisper my name, and I shall come…”

Touma mustered the last of his free will.

And laughed in her face.

“Not for all the power of the Tap.”

Her reaction was instinctive. Clawed fingers reached to carve his neck in twain.

“You see, witch,” he continued without pausing, still wearing that knowing arrogant smile. Umbral tendrils reached around her arm, freezing it in place before she could strike. “My soul is no longer mine to give.”

A silky serpentine voice susurrated through the shadows.

“For the sake of all that binds us to this Firmament, Forgotten One,” it said, colouring dulcet tones with mild displeasure. “Do have the courtesy to leave my vassal be.”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Few beings could stand between the Red Witch and her prey. Fewer still could give a Forgotten One pause for thought. But Natosatael the Unbound, Prince of Infernal Light, was one such entity that could do both.

He sauntered from the shadows in his favoured form: a dapper gentleman just entering a dignified middle age, dressed in the finest of Cathayan silks and Coronian brocades. Shadowy power emanated from every pore of his borrowed body, a portion of which held Pode’s knife-like fingers away from Touma’s neck in a grip gentle but firm. Then he smiled, revealing the daemonic runes carved into his gums and the stringy elf-flesh lodged between his filed incisors. If the failure of Elnaril’s vaunted containment field had been no indication, there was no doubt now that the remaining five Wanderers of his cadre had perished long before the Temple had exploded.

“Oh, do stop hissing. It’s terribly undignified.”

In a cloud of red mist Pode dissipated into the dying twilight, reforming once more at a wary distance from the daemon prince and his charge. A slender wrist reached to her mouth to wipe away the daemon’s touch. Her eyes glared emerald daggers at those who had dared to insult her so.

“Natosatael,” she spat, infusing every syllable of the name with fiery hatred. “Remember and rue this day, daemon, for I shall not forget this insolence.”

The east wind breathed a warm pungent breath, and she began to disperse into it with a sultry smirk. Her last words, aimed at Touma, boded well for the future.

“Fare thee well, Serpent Tamer. I do hope we meet again soon.”

One last flicker of crimson, and only the slight scent of spicy cinnamon remained of her presence.

“Well, that went well.” One of Natosatael’s tendrils reached with nonchalant grace into Touma’s head. The ‘manchild’ flinched in momentary agony, then exhaled in shaky relief when he found that he could breathe easily again. The last vestiges of Pode’s control crumbled from his mind like rusty manacles.

“Elves are predictable. The thing about living a thousand years, inheriting the experience of a million, is that it sets them in their ways. So easy to play for fools.” He spat blood from his mouth as he sheathed his darksteel blade, wincing as his thoughts forced their way through the worst headache he could recall in years. “I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when they realise that the Lindequalme was not only designed to keep them out, but also to keep other things in.”

Low rich laughter greeted his show of bravado.

“Ahh. At times, how I admire that arrogance, that confidence. The Red Witch herself holds you at her mercy, and you think no more of it than to quip at how easily you accomplished your job.”

“Of course,” Touma smiled, that half-smile that kept creeping back onto his features. “I have you on my side.”

Gathering what little strength that remained to him, he glanced at the ruined temple, to the flames still feeding in the distance. Natosatael joined him on the precarious footing of the branch, arms folded behind his back, reeking of burning oil and pickled fish.

“And the Disciple?”

“Trapped in a pocket dimension, for as long as those flames can anchor him there.” Touma’s voice betrayed weariness, but also an equal measure of triumph. “I make it six months, a year at the most, until it breaks free and resumes wreaking havoc upon Raiaera.”

“And how do you propose to deal with it then?”

Touma’s smile grew, now positively sinister. He looked to the bloodoak upon which he stood, to the weeping wound his blade had carved into it when it had fallen. Crimson sap trickled like blood from silvery bark.

“Why, we anchor it to an even greater source of mana. A source that’s persisted for a lot longer than a Guardian Gem. Of course.”

The boughs of the Lindequalme quivered beneath his hawkish glare.