Anodynia

[Whispers of Abyssion]

“… ugh…”

Professor Alba lay prone upon the cool slate floor, drenched in clotting mud. A thin film of filth coated his spectacles and restricted his vision, but at least his eyes had not drowned in the darkness. He last distinctly remembered being swept away by a roaring torrent of sludge, of being too concerned for his own safety…

“Ahhh!”

His scream came from the realisation that, amidst all the confusion, he had relinquished his grip upon the precious golden plaque. He jerked upright, ignoring the dizziness that clutched at his spare frame, and smeared the mud from his spectacles with the back of his frail hand as he desperately searched the vicinity for his prize.

“Good to see that you’re still with me,” an amused chuckle echoed through the shadows. Touma stood behind him, casually leaning against the wall with arms folded against his chest. In some miraculous quirk of fate, the mud that drenched Alba had not even touched the psy-mage.

“The plaque…” Alba gasped, looking up at his bodyguard and inhaling a nose full of muck for his trouble. One disgustingly extended fit of spluttering and swearing later, something clicked in his mind. “The ladies?”

“Gone, and gone,” Touma replied succinctly, apparently not overly concerned at either. “Are you ready to move now?”

Waiting for neither assent nor denial, the psy-mage started off into the darkness, footsteps deliberately loud and echoing in the corridors. Alba quickly lost him amongst the deep shadows; either the chamber they had ended up in simply did not have the slits to the outside world that had lit their path thus far, or they had fallen so deep into the tower that no light penetrated anyway. Hurriedly he gathered his wits and set off after his guardian.

“Wait, wait! Don’t leave me…!”

“Quentin, you can drop the act.”

Amber eyes flickered, as if the admonition triggered a switch in the scholar’s mind. His face visibly mutated, from the naïve innocence of the Coronian scholar to a hardened shrewd visage more becoming of a military strategist. The ‘Professor’ stood taller than before, shoulders unstooped and fingers held firm instead of wringing in worry every three seconds. Removing a clean cloth from his linen backpack, ‘Alba’ wiped the mud from his glasses and replaced them over his eyes with an easy confidence that almost mirrored Touma’s own.

“My apologies, Touma,” he said, his voice now completely devoid of the whiny argumentative qualities that had irritated his companions. “I fear that sometimes I get so caught up…”

“Don’t apologise. It’s why I chose you for the task.” The pair of them moved swiftly now, Touma unerringly choosing a path through the pitch-black tunnels. “Now’s a good time as any. Tell me what you have seen over the past year.”

“I witnessed the Black Dragon reborn in Scara Brae.” ‘Professor Alba’, or more accurately one Quentin Kerr, dropped his voice two octaves and spoke only in a careful whisper. One of two Golden Generals within Touma’s Fraternity, he specialised as an asset in gathering and interpreting information, effectively filling the gaps where Touma’s mirror-gazing did not reach. “Rather, a mutated facet of the Black Dragon, fused with and corrupted by the Dead Sun of Draconus and N’jal. The Wizard Blueraven and his menagerie struck it down before it could rise. It’s gone, and they’re the only reason that Scara Brae isn’t yet a sunken ruin full of corpses.”

“Caden Law.” Touma’s voice, rarely enough, denoted grudging respect. “Chosen of the Elder Thaynes, preventer of another apocalypse. Still, it’s good to know that he’s on our side.”

“Our side?”

Touma smiled wryly. “Fair enough. At least, he struggles against a similar foe.”

“And the Black Dragon? Sagara?”

“I can’t say for sure what magics were wrought to imbue the essence of Sijal Kar into a temple of one of the Twelve, but I do know this. You cannot hope to ever truly destroy a Disciple. No matter how many times heroes cast them down they rise again, whether the next day or a thousand years in the future. Mark my words, Quentin, Sagara is not gone, and we will have to deal with him.”

“Just like we have to deal with the others.” Quentin’s low growl stated fact, not question. “I’m pretty certain that another feeds off the carnage in Corone, but I failed to pinpoint its temple before receiving your summons.”

“I would not be surprised. In any case, it’s too late to stop that now.”

“But if we destroy the temple before it revives, then…”

“We might be able to prevent it from rising then and there, certainly.” Touma’s words echoed grimly though the passageway as it sloped downwards, ever downwards, into the bowels of the earth. “But how could you be sure that you destroyed the correct temple? They do not rely upon intact structures as a focus, Quentin. Even a single untouched stone might be enough, or a single grain of dust amongst millions. And even if you were to find and destroy said focus, they would only restart elsewhere in the world, in another temple, stronger for the souls already reaped. They are ancient and dreadful foes, Quentin. You would do well not to underestimate them.”

Quentin took the rebuke in stride. “But that does not mean that we should simply sit by…”

“The situation is too complicated, and between them the Ixians and that new upstart band have only made things worse. We fight the battles that we can win.” Touma spoke in a voice that bade no argument, callously damning millions of innocents to horribly meaningless deaths in a single sentence. “We build up our strength and recruit allies, however unwilling or ignorant. We simply do not have the assets in Corone to deal with the strife or the temple there. Hence we look elsewhere to try to break the chain of events that lead to the Cataclysm.”

“Blightwater?”

“Blightwater,” the psy-mage confirmed. “That is where the next battle will be fought.”

The silence stretched out uncomfortably, as Quentin noted Touma’s use of the word ‘next’. Eventually, the scholar worked up the courage to ask the question.

“What happened in Raiaera, Touma?”

“Besides the rise of Xem’zund and the utter destruction of the country?”

“Xem’zund was only the Harbinger. Small fry in comparison to what’s still to come. You said so yourself.”

The psy-mage grunted laconic acknowledgement, but took a while longer to formulate the rest of his answer. When it came at last, he spoke flatly and dryly, making the words themselves sound simple enough.

“Kongorikishi, the God of Benevolence. Deep in the Red Forest, feeding off the souls of the Great Corpse War. Hiroyuki’s crippled, Phillipe and Angelus are badly hurt, and the five hundred elves that chased us there died before they knew it.”

Quentin absorbed the information impassively, as was his wont. His next question echoed more with hope than with any true confidence.

“… were you able to…?”

“Stop it?” Touma laughed bitterly. “Barely even got in its way. God of Benevolence it might be known as, but Kongorikishi is the second most powerful of the Disciples, and certainly the most likely of the Twelve to lose its mind to anger and go berserk. Furthermore, it spent years feasting on the devastation of that land, on juicy elven souls grown fat on peace. We could do nothing against it. Nothing.”

Quentin absorbed the information silently, his mind whirring with the implications.

“Where is it now?” he asked at length, not expecting an answer. True to form, he didn’t get one. But the message echoed clearly through his mind. At least one powerful demi-god had broken free of its bonds to stalk the world. A second had only just been stopped by the efforts of the Chosen of the Elder Thaynes, a being far more powerful than any one of them could hope to be at this point in time. A third likely lay in its womb, suckling on the deaths of the Coronian populace as the civil war raged on without an end in sight. And the passageways they currently walked…

“Did you foresee this in your hell, Touma?”

The psy-mage smiled, a smile sour enough to send shivers up Quentin’s spine. The corridor split into three before them, but he walked through the right-hand archway without the faintest inkling of hesitation. Something somewhere called to him, a flaming beacon to their dusty footsteps, and he obeyed it without question.

“Natosatael showed me many things,” he said at length, shadows flickering upon his aquiline features. “I trust them less than I trust him. He was as quick to help me as he was to turn on Xuan and Kayu.”

“But he was aware that I am one of Aska’s Chosen.”

“Indeed. It doesn’t mean that I care to posit what his role in all this is.” Touma certainly wouldn’t put it past the capricious daemon to have helped him assemble his organisation only to stand back and watch in glee as the Disciples of the Dead Goddess tore it apart limb from bloody limb. The daemon certainly showed little enough mercy to his foes and his prey, a lesson Touma had learnt firsthand when he had unleashed the Night of Nefarious Flame some thirteen years past.

“So in the end…”

The bend in the corridor took them by surprise, and the dead end just beyond stopped them in their tracks even more suddenly. Quentin almost barrelled straight into Touma’s back, only one thought keeping him from accidentally bumping into the psy-mage: that his commander would thoroughly despise getting unnecessary dirt on his clothes.

“Strange,” Touma murmured, staring pensively at the unmoving stone.

“Stand back, please,” Quentin interjected, reaching into his backpack once more and this time emerging with flint and tinder. The sudden spark of bright flame nearly blinded them with its intensity after hours of prolonged dimness, but it also allowed them to closely examine the wall that blocked their path. “Hmm… glyphs… patterns… sun and moon… heaven and earth… mortal and god… duality seems to be a big theme here. Or rather, the dominance of one facet over the other… ah, here.”

Quentin’s true skills may have lain in deception and shams, but neither did he completely fake his knowledge of archaeology and ancient lore. Experienced fingers traced the etchings, noting the lack of dust in this area of the temple, and the stonework's lack of decay despite its apparent age.

“Four faces, each representing a different emotion… a multitude of beasts lying in supplication at its feet…” The scholar paused. “Touma, I don’t think we’re going to like…”

“Just open it,” the psy-mage responded, coldly. Quentin sighed and did as bid, muttering to himself as he worked. His words echoed as hollow whispers from all directions, amplified and distorted by the oppressive atmosphere.

“If I press here and here together… trace the dominant line over here… then allow the body to slide here and realign with its heads…”

A gentle click echoed in his ears, not unlike the one earlier that had torn the little adventuring expedition apart. This time, just like the last, the effect unfolded as desired.

Painfully bright white light blinded them momentarily as the wall receded downwards with a smooth solid rumble to reveal a large chamber beyond. They would have stayed there blinking until their vision returned, except the door remained fully open for only a bare moment before it started to rumble closed once more. Instinctively they both realised that it would not unlock for them again, and that if they wished to solve the mystery of the Agate Tower once and for all, they had best confront what unknowns lay beyond. Neither man looked back as they stepped over the rapidly rising slab of stone.

A sight from beyond their wildest dreams greeted their sore eyes. The hall, larger by far than even the first room in which they had fought off the three monstrous guardians, literally glittered with treasure. Gold coins, piled to the ceiling like mountains; racks of ornate weapons lining the walls; statues of jewel-encrusted marble proudly dominating the centre of the room. Ruby-lined goblets drowned amongst bolts of fine silk, and silver plates reflected ivory horns and ebony carvings in their appraising gaze. Bright sunlight streamed in from a hole in the ceiling above, casting a brilliantly gilded glint over the chamber’s contents. Somebody – or something – had stashed enough treasure in the depths of the temple to satisfy even the greediest of conquerors.

Quentin glanced at Touma, who contemplated the hoard with steely resolution. The find would finance his operations for years to come. And yet…

The psy-mage shook his head.

For the second time that day, his darksteel sword leapt from its scabbard, rending the very fabric of space and time as it consumed the veil over their eyes. The illusion collapsed with a bloodcurdling scream, vortices of dark arcane power erupting all around them only to be swiftly absorbed by the thirsty blade. In moments their vision cleared; the sword had even sucked away the false illumination, replacing it again with dim shadows cast by what wan light filtered down through thin slits from the Thaynes knew how far above. The chamber, only moments ago bursting to the seams with such magnificent splendour, now stood empty and devoid of all presence.

All presence but one.

A single statuette sat in the centre of the room, left behind alone and lonely after the dispelling of all its more conspicuous brethren. A wood carving of unassuming ash, the shoddy grain of the worksmanship noticeable even from a distance, upon first glance it merely existed as a brown blotch on the featureless grey.

But that first glance invited a closer look, and Quentin almost immediately regretted doing so.

“Ashura Four-Faced,” he said simply, grimacing at the taste of the words on his tongue. “The God of War.”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Any hope that he had judged wrongly died in an instant. The vaguely humanoid form bore four human faces mounted on a single elephantine neck, and six arms sprouting from bull-like shoulders: two ending in mantis blades sharp enough to rend through steel, two ending in bulky crab-like claws capable of crushing any armour, and the final two ending in outspread human hands. He could not mistake the hunched back heavily armoured in a chitinous shell, the thickset thighs of fine dragonscale, the heavy feet featuring a single hooked talon embedded into the hooves of a massive goat. The figurine's tail stuck out stubbily at the end of its torso, barbed like that of a spider and with the spinnerets to match.

Quentin’s eyes blazed in pain merely to look upon it, his brain throbbing in pulsating agony with every frenzied heartbeat. And yet, for all its sacrilegious blasphemy, he could not tear himself away. Its eight dead eyes infiltrated his very mind, insidious influence invading and enslaving his neurons until…

“Ashura Four-Faced,” Touma spoke, the merest hint of power in his voice breaking Quentin out of his charmed reverie. “God of War. Each face represents a primal negative emotion… wrath, pride, conceit, bellicosity.”

The psy-mage indicated each of the figurine’s faces in turn as he spoke, and Quentin could see that their expressions matched perfectly. Touma’s words were nothing new to his ears – in fact, Quentin himself had translated the ancient texts that had verified Natosatael’s initial information in the matter – but somehow they echoed reassuringly in his head. Cool calm knowledge acted as power against the alien pressure of the statuette.

It gave him the confidence to examine the idol once more, the crude craftsmanship chafing against his eyes. The whirls on the wood danced beneath the dusty light, as if… as if…

Human faces.

Captured in terror and pain.

This one was female, young and pretty. The church had accused her of witchery, tortured and raped her confession, and finally burned her at the stake. Her full lips remained caught in an anguished scream, and her frightened wailing echoed so very real through Quentin’s mind.

That one was male, none too bright but flush in his prime. A king’s guardsman, he might have even been handsome once, but a face full of Alerian buckshot had put paid to that particular asset. He had died so fast he hadn’t even cried out, his last thoughts blinded by gunfire and agony.

This one was a venerable noblewoman, stabbed to death by pitchforks wielded by the very bondsmen sworn to her protection. She had begged for her life, screamed when the prongs entered her flesh, but they hadn’t heard her words.

That one was an elven orphan, dead of hunger and exposure on the streets of Knife’s Edge. He hadn’t screamed; his passing had been long and lingering and painful. Hollow eyes peered blankly at Quentin’s soul, lips and lids long since eaten away by frostbite.

This one was a dwarven merchantman, torn limb from limb trying to protect his wares from rioters. Intense pain wracked his plump features even after death, the creases in his brow asking the futile question, why? Quentin had no answer.

That one was a priest, hung by the king for crimes against the state. Vacant eyes bulged in grotesque caricature, tongue lolling helplessly from limp mouth. A voiceless whisper prayed and pleaded for salvation, a deliverance that had been denied him even in death.

A thousand such tales and more flooded into Quentin’s mind before at last he could tear himself away. He staggered backwards two desperate steps, gasping for air through the sheer mental effort required to do so. The harrowing soul-cries of Ashura’s victims etched his mind like searing brands, the scent of burning flesh and boiling blood lingering in his nostrils like a bad migraine. He was not surprised to find that blood leaked profusely upon his upper lip, and dribbled nastily from his ears.

To his left, Touma remained engaged in pensive combat with the artefact, almost as if attempting to absorb the suffering of every last soul sacrificed to it, in order to exert mastery over their fate. But even the powerful psy-mage bled for his efforts, streams of red flowing like tears from the corners of his eyes.

A nexus, the Nipponese girl had called this place… and Quentin could see it all now. Here the flow of magic in Salvar waxed strongest, and thus here somebody or something had gathered the souls lost during the strife, likely by utilising the metallic fins soaring from the tower like giant beacons. The souls imbued into the artefact he now beheld had been amongst the first to die, and had given rise to the Disciple’s form. It had acted analogous to a carpenter’s blueprint or an architect’s mock-up, albeit fuelled by the agony and suffering of all the mortal lives lost in its creation.

He didn’t want to know what had happened next. What he did know was that tens and hundreds of thousands of people had died in the Civil War, and likely as not all of their essences had funnelled northwards to where he now stood.

Quentin Kerr shuddered unhappily, unwilling to dwell further on the worst case scenario.

Thankfully, Touma saved him by emerging from his trance. Shadowy motes of dust danced upon his features, as his murky gaze visibly digested what he had just absorbed. Quentin gave him a moment or two to recover before venturing a question.

“The footprints we saw earlier…”

Touma’s reply was simple, succinct.

“Of course.”

“In which case, it’s headed south… the Andvalls…”

“Fine by me.” Touma cut him off coldly. “Let the Andvalls burn, and the orcs fling themselves in vain droves at its feet, if it buys us the time we need. Let Kongorikishi burn a swathe through the elves of Raiaera and the dwarves of the World’s Edge if they manage to stall it for long enough.”

“You didn’t…”

Quentin looked into Touma’s eyes and found the answer staring him in the face; he had given the God of Benevolence a taste for blood and then led it straight into populated Raiaera, just to buy himself the necessary time. Even as they spoke, hundreds, possibly thousands of high elves died at the demi-god’s hands as a direct consequence of the psy-mage’s actions. He shuddered at the ruthless conviction in Touma’s eyes, even as he basked in unabashed awe at what the man could do without even flinching.

Touma truly didn’t care about what had already happened in the past or what happened in the now. He concerned himself instead with what he could do, in the limits of his power, to stop the Cataclysm from destroying the future. To that end he had sacrificed most of an entire city on the eve of his thirteenth birthday, and had not looked back since.

Having only known Touma for the best part of four years, Quentin could not begin to guess the full extent of his deeds. But not once had the man shirked from his self-anointed duty. Not a serial killer who flayed and cannibalised for pleasure, but a murderer who could point the finger of destruction at entire nations out of sheer necessity.

The scholar grinned. “Now, this is why I can’t stop following you.”

“If they want to be independent, let them stand on their own two feet. If they try to hold to such lofty ideals without the strength to back it up, they would only be trouble in the aftermath. Let the Disciple decimate them for all I care. It saves me the trouble of doing so myself.”

Touma reached down to pluck the figurine from the floor, regarding it meaningfully for a moment before tossing it in Quentin’s direction. The scholar snatched it from the air in a clumsy swipe, nearly dropping it in surprise. The wood burnt his fingers as if smouldering with burnished flame; his bespectacled eyes stared at the figurine suspiciously, and he could have sworn that the hollow pupils of all four faces stared him back with equal distaste.

“I don’t know,” he muttered beneath his breath. “It doesn’t seem safe.”

“Safe or not,” Touma told him, his ears keener than any owl’s, “it’s more than we could find from what remained of Kongorikishi’s temple in Raiaera. Your job, whether or not you choose to accept it, is to find out everything there is to know about that thing within a month.”

“One month? Is that all I get?” The mere thought of the long sleepless nights ahead brought exhaustion upon Quentin’s strained features.

“After that I need you to set out for Blightwater via Rousay. You’re the only one I can trust to keep an eye on things up close. You’ll have support, of course.”

“Is this what you pay me for? Dirty deskwork and even dirtier shadowcraft?”

Touma didn’t bother to dignify the question with a reply, simply favouring his man with a trademark deadpan stare. Quentin sighed in resignation and reluctantly wrapped the figurine in the muddy cloth from earlier, depositing it neatly in his tidy backpack.

“What next then, boss?” He knew that the psy-mage hated being called that. “Find the ladies and get out of here?”

“It would make sense to assume that this was the central chamber,” Touma agreed, ignoring the barbed jibe. “Kayu should be approaching from a different route. All we have to do is find another way out of here and follow that.”

“Are you sure?” In Quentin’s substantial experience, nothing ever went as smoothly as that. Surely even Touma’s confidence could only extend so far.

“It’s what I would do in her stead,” the psy-mage explained as he turned smartly on his heels. The corridor at the opposite end of the chamber gaped at him invitingly, the jaws of a flytrap waiting to slam shut around unsuspecting prey. Touma strode unerringly towards them, leaving a semi-flustered Quentin struggling to keep up in his wake. Only with sustained effort did the scholar catch up and overtake, just before the psy-mage disappeared beneath the arch.

“Woah!” he gasped, clutching at the other man’s outlandish robes. “Too obvious. Definitely a trap. This is the way we need to go.”

He leant against the wall to reveal a second exit from the room, rumbling stone activated by a hidden switch beneath his shoulder. Touma stared at the mud-covered scholar impassively as he turned to lead the way onwards.

Quentin had barely stepped through the shadowy slate archway before he stopped, as if arrested by a sudden notion.

“Ashura the Four-Faced…” he began thoughtfully. Touma looked at him as if confused, wondering why Quentin felt the need to reiterate something that had long since been established.

“Known as the mutator for his fondness for his experiments on mortal beasts, and his creation of monstrous creatures by tearing them apart and putting them back together again?”

“Undoubtedly so.”

“Oh, I’ve just realised… the chimera from earlier…”

A burly shadow rammed into Quentin's beanpole frame, and the scholar fell to the ground, poleaxed. Only luck and reflex brought his staff up in time to ward off the snarling wolf’s fangs, but that didn’t stop him from involuntarily inhaling a noxious nose full of the beast’s filthy stench. Neither did it stop the brutish ogre’s face from clamping down on his forearm with equally brutish teeth.

Quentin screamed.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

”What exactly are you doing?”

The sudden voice echoed cold and harsh from the rough stone walls. The richly dressed young man answered equally tersely.

“Reading.”

The intruder smiled. “Stunning choice of decor. Are iron bars over open windows the latest chic?”

“I prefer safe and spartan to decadent and dead.” The sound of a flipping page echoed crisply between sentences. “At least if I’m in here, the Church doesn’t come down on my neck like an executioner’s axe every time I read a book about the esoteric, and the King’s men weigh my apparent gift against my criminal record and decide that I’m best left alone.”

“I didn’t realise that esoteric tomes were part of the usual service down here.”

“A few coins in the right hands, my friend, and the world bows at your feet.”

“Supplied, doubtless, by the family of the poor bastard whose skin you’re wearing at the moment.”

The occupant of the cell froze. Loudly, certainly, the leather-bound covers snapped shut.

“Just to be clear, he was dead when I found him. I’m not in the murder business.”

“Merely the impersonation and fraud ones. Still, you have quite the talent if you’re able to fool not only his gaolers but his immediate friends and family as well.”

The imprisoned nobleman pursed his lips thinly.

“Thank you. Is it this talent that you’re after, then?”

“Oh?”

“This cell’s located beneath the best-defended keep in Knife’s Edge, and you just whisked in like a summer breeze. Arcane portal, I guess, and a powerful one if you were able to get past all the wards placed on this castle. Let me tell you, though, you triggered every last alarm in the realm when you came in. I can almost see the magic pulsing angrily behind you.”

“I can.”

“You have maybe three minutes before a phalanx of battlemages come charging down that corridor. So whatever you’re offering me, make it quick.”

“Offer?”

“You took all the trouble to teleport in here, of all places, and then the first thing you did was not to kill me but to ask what I’m doing. You’ve admitted to appreciating my abilities. Hence you’re a potential employer. I warn you, though, that you’ve got a lot to beat. I quite like the peace and quiet down here.”

The intruder’s smile turned enigmatic.

“What do you know of the eldarin?”

“Enough not to dismiss them out of hand as some outlandish fairy tale.” The prisoner frowned. In that moment he knew that he had fallen for the bait: hook, line, and sinker.

“And the dar’el?”

“The Beloved of the Thaynes? The evidence does exist that…”

“Have you heard of the Chosen, then?”

The imprisoned impostor had not. And in that moment, he knew that he had swallowed the bait whole, and found it tasty. The fisherman wasted no time in reeling in his catch.

“You know the places you’re reading about there?” A long thin finger pointed to the well-thumbed tome the prisoner clutched, Codrig Ludwig’s Ruins and Relics of the Ancient World. “How would you like to visit them yourself?”

The prisoner regarded the intruder with an appraising gaze, and did not find him lacking. He had already proven his capabilities in opening portals in difficult locations, capabilities that would doubtless be useful in other matters as well, such as exploring the vestiges of ancient civilisations. The false nobleman also found himself drawn to the arrogant confidence in the mage’s murky eyes, and the numerous secrets that swirled like hidden galaxies within. But unquestionably the greatest lure lay in the opportunities he presented: finding ‘new’ knowledge in a book paled considerably when compared to finding it in person in the real world.

“On the condition that you tell me what you mean by the Chosen, when do we leave?”

“Whenever you wish, Scrolls of Anarion.”

Both men smiled this time, and a partnership was born.

The Salvic battlemages responded efficiently, beating the prisoner’s self-appointed limit by a full minute. But when they arrived, the prisoner and the intruder had already been gone for a minute of their own. Only the single leather-bound tome, abandoned by the moonlit windowsill with paper pages fluttering forlornly in the late summer breeze, left any sign of the cell’s occupant.

***

Quentin screamed again as the ogre’s teeth dug bluntly into his forearm, chewing away at the stringy flesh. He struggled to keep the monster’s bulk from pinning him down, legs scrabbling frantically as they avoided the beast’s talons seeking purchase. Every last spare effort went into holding his staff away from his body, such that the slobbering wolf gnawed away at iron-cored Coronian oak rather than his fingers, or worse, his throat. Thankfully the monster retained enough lupine instinct that once it had hold of something between its jaws, it displayed remarkable reluctance to let go. But that would not be enough to save him once his strength failed…

“Hold steady.”

Darksteel shimmered, poised, plunged. The ogre managed one last moan as Touma’s blade pierced its right eye, soon cut off as the tip reached the base of the brain. Immediately the pressure on Quentin’s arm lessened, as the ogre’s jaws unclenched lifelessly and left only a dull throbbing ache in their wake.

In a single smooth motion the blade retracted, spouting blood and other assorted bodily fluids in a gory fountain spray. Touma, however, had already stepped through the chimera’s hulking form to the other side. The wolf head, only just now realising that its counterpart on the far side had been reduced to dead weight, stopped its rabid gnawing for long enough to regard the psy-mage’s movements viciously.

And then cold bestial grey quailed upon meeting murky brown, and the wolf managed one last whimper through clenched jaws before its dying breath. Unwilling to let go of Quentin’s staff until the very end, it could do little more than glare as Touma’s sword found its fleshy neck. Unprotected by the leathery armour of its torso, the sweat-matted fur presented an easy unmoving target braced against the scholar’s desperate strength; the darksteel katana found easy purchase as it first penetrated, then with a flick of its wielder’s wrists tore out, the wolf’s throat. Disdainfully Touma stepped aside, as crimson blood fountained once more into the stony darkness. The pulsing stream avoided him neatly, although Quentin fared somewhat less fortunately.

Still the chimera struggled, but with wolf and ogre dead to either side, the goat in the middle could do little more than brandish its horns in ungainly challenge. Seizing the moment, Quentin at last scrambled clear of the wickedly sharp talons scratching against the floor. He spared a disgusted glance at his robes coated in mud and gore, his staff ravaged by the wolf’s fangs, and his arm chewed upon by the ogre’s grinding molars.

“Feast on me, will you,” he spat, quite angry now. Using his injured arm to support the end of his staff, he rammed it into the goat’s bleating mouth. Snake-tail hissed impotently from the other side of the monster’s body, as Touma watched on coldly. “Eat lead, beast.”

His finger depressed a hidden trigger, and the goat’s head exploded in a shower of unspeakably repulsive body matter. Shards of bone and wet brain dirtied his robes even further, but Quentin hadn’t felt so satisfied in ages. The monster managed one last defiant hiss before it toppled over with a solid crash, its corpse now surrounded in a halo of dusty motes.

“Two down.” Quentin withdrew the end of his staff from the ruined mess of a mouth and gave it another disgusted look. “Odds that the ladies have already taken care of that humongous insect?”

Touma ignored Quentin’s question as he stepped carefully around the chimera’s carcass. Unbelievably, his robes remained impeccably clean. “For your information, the trap that you referred to earlier was only a simple pit and stakes affair. Easily avoidable by shadowstep. Arcane trigger, so I could sense it from the centre of the room.”

Quentin grimaced for more reasons than one. Gingerly he tested his chewed arm; although he could not distinguish any more between his own blood and that of his deceased opponent, thankfully it seemed to be fully operational aside from throbbing pain and a perfectly preserved set of blunt teeth imprints.

“Makes sense, that this happens the moment I think I’m doing something right.” Once again he fished into his bag for something to clean his gore-stained spectacles, only to remember that the towel he had used earlier now cocooned the blasphemous idol of the Disciple of the Dead Goddess. He sighed and gave up on the thought of a clean set of spare underwear.

“As you said, it’s one less unknown variable to deal with. I wouldn’t call that a mistake.”

“Foolish?”

“Possibly. But all’s well that ends well.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No, I don’t, but doesn’t it make you feel better?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Quentin followed Touma through the archway that he had found, taking the time to gingerly sidestep the chimera’s corpse which seemed to be putrefying at an alarming rate. Already most of the rotten flesh had sloughed from the bone, and the air hung heavy with death and decay. He mentioned as much to Touma.

“Unsurprising, seeing as it was likely assembled by Ashura as a plaything after its resurrection. Take a few leftover human souls, body parts from various denizens of the highlands, a bit of dark magic…”

“Human…”

“All those separate parts, all those different wills, need something to bind it all together, don’t they? Each of Ashura’s four faces represents a facet of human nature that it can meld and mutate into something new, into a different and better form. Now that said glue is gone…” Touma indicated the liquefying mess on the floor. “We should go, before I start to smell.”

Quentin glowered at the psy-mage’s clean robes and almost sputtered a muddy curse, throttling it just in time. Wordlessly, albeit none too happily, he dogged Touma’s footsteps through yet another set of dusty claustrophobic tunnels composed of smooth grey slate. He found himself wishing for something more interesting to study, something esoteric and complex to feast his eyes upon, but like so much of research exploring this set of ruins seemed to be ninety-nine parts groundwork and only one part excitement. Although he remained pretty certain that none of his ‘fellows’ back in Radasanth had ever experienced such life-or-death stimulation. The thought of any of those ancient codgers leaving the school grounds for anything more than an afternoon tea made him smile.

Thankfully, he did not have to wait for long before the corridors opened up once again. Bright light at the end of the tunnel they walked indicated another chamber, or even a proper exit; muffled sounds of activity, growing louder as they drew close, indicated that something or somebody awaited their arrival. Neither of the two men, however, felt the need to simply leap out into another ambush.

As one they peeked out from the confines of the passageway, blinking at the unexpectedly dazzling welcome, breathing deeply of the unexpectedly fresh air.

Their eyes adjusted just in time to witness Kayu’s body flying past their tunnel entrance, smacking against the far wall and collapsing in a crumpled broken heap.

[Wings of Endymion]

Rewinding a few hours…

“Girl, why do you always run!”

“Not now, Auntie Tsuru!”

Tsuru’s swaddled form kept a close eye on their pursuit from her turbulent perch upon Kayu’s shoulders. Behind the young woman, motes of bright stardust burst into life in the confined darkness, buying precious moments more for their escape. Hungry shadows grasped at her feet, toying furiously with her hunchbacked silhouette. Long and looming with no end in sight, the dark tendrils flickered angrily into oblivion before pressing in upon her once more.

“Don’t fool yourself, child,” the old woman chided, nonchalantly tossing a fist-sized rock over her shoulder. It ricocheted in the distance with a brutal clack, somehow completely missing the seething tide of chitinous cacophony chasing them down the corridor. “You ran from your family, you ran from your responsibilities. You ran to Haidia, and then you ran from there again when it became unbearable.”

Kayu’s pounding feet faltered, stumbled, just about continued pelting onwards in full flight. Her mind blanked as she desperately sought the words to counter the sudden accusations levelled in her direction.

“… I…”

“You studied at the Toho Academy not of your own will, but through the machinations of the elves and the power-hungry greed of your own father. You travelled to Haidia in the first place because Touma offered you an escape from what you didn’t like in Nippon.” Clack!

“… I came to Raiaera…”

“Because you were scared of relying too much on Touma, but you didn’t want to face him about it. Did it never cross your mind that he was observing how much you could endure before you gave way on your own?” Clack!

“I warned Rostarinne…”

“After running away from Maeril Souldrinker. After you found out just how far Natosatael would go to keep you shackled to him. After you grew scared of just how much they would make you do, just how far they would push you against an old friend, no matter how long lost.” Clack!

Somehow Kayu kept her feet. Somehow she kept on going, barely a step ahead of the mandibles nipping at her ankles.

“I left Nippon a long time ago, child, but I never ran. Much like I’ve never been shy in travelling the world when those who think themselves better than me insist that I settle down.” Another pair of rocks travelled away in quick succession, staccato rattles resounding like dry Alerian gunfire in the hollowed tunnels. “Even met a man once. Bore him three daughters before he passed away from cholera. Then took to travelling the world again.”

The dying embers of Kayu’s hasty spell flared in one last blaze of glory, reflecting in the countless illuminated beads of reflective red residing hungrily in the darkness. As if on cue the largest of their number reared and hissed, baring yellowed fangs dripping with venom, spindly legs waving murderously from its segmented torso. Sixteen multifaceted pupils glared at them greedily from up on high, the eyes of a heartless hunter not quite understanding why its prey would not stay still. For a while she had to concentrate on evading its lunging talons, until she found enough breath for another flashbang spell, and her screaming legs pulled out a safe gap once more.

Emotion played in dancing shadow upon her face, sweat-streaked brow furrowed in concentration as the chase went on. The stunned silence caused her swift footsteps to echo far too loudly, and she felt the irrational need to holler at the bony bundle swaying dangerously upon her back.

“Do… do you miss them much?”

“Ha!” came the caustic reply, framed by a brief loud cackle. “Not as much as you seem to miss yours, girl.”

The younger woman flushed an even brighter shade of red. “I don’t regret…”

“Right! The opening to your right!”

Tsuru’s wiry thin arms tensed like cords around the younger woman’s neck; between them and the fire burning in her chest from her adrenaline-fuelled exertions, Kayu wondered how her lungs managed to draw any breath at all.

“Right, I said!”

She managed to re-orient her torso just in time, skidding through a slit in the wall that she could have sworn hadn’t existed a moment ago. The torrent of arachnids and beetles screeched in protest as their momentum carried them past, bugs the size of stallions crushing one another to ichor-stained pulp in their eagerness to recommence pursuit. By the time their limited intellects registered her misdirection, the slender alley into which she had escaped had widened into another main thoroughfare, leading downwards into the bowels of the earth… and then terminating in a set of double stone doors, very obviously shut and barred and too heavy for her to deal with.

A wave of renewed furious chittering assaulted her ears as the insect menace closed in, focused only on the thrill of the hunt and the musky fear of their cornered meals.

“Do something!” Tsuru screamed furiously in Kayu’s ears, a thin wail piercing the very core of her mind.

“I’m trying…”

Salty metal tinged the tip of her tongue as she chewed on her lip, eyes flickering desperately from wall to wall and ceiling to floor as she sought a way out of the situation. Featureless stone laughed at her futile seeking.

Slippery fingers wrapped in preparation around the supple staff that focused her incarnate powers. But the flow of energy in her surroundings trickled like an unwilling rivulet just out of her reach. Unlike her erstwhile classmates Yann and Touma, Kayu had neither the innate power to incinerate the tide of chitinous carapaces and taloned limbs that swarmed in her direction, nor the subtlety to open a dimensional portal for a quick getaway. All she had was finesse, and a spare thought to try to close off the passageway in front of her…

“Just what do you think you are, some brutish western wizard? You’re a spiritcaller, girl, a spellweaver. Use your wits for kami’s sake!”

Tsuru’s words washed over her like a faint breeze, and some distant part of her consciousness felt the small bundle of rags drop from her shoulders to the floor with all the litheness of an ancient cat.

“Focus. Feel the essence of the world around you. Feel it ebb and flow.”

A third hand reached to grab the solid yew brandished before her, surprisingly firm where she might have expected it to be frail. Almost immediately the universe expanded behind her closed eyes, as if she had suddenly gained altitude and could now see beyond all her previous horizons. Speckled lights, immaterial forms of shadowy grey, danced at the edge of her vision barely cognisable even to her enhanced incarnate senses.

“Control. Don’t panic, or you’ll lose your one chance.”

The darkness of the underground tunnels faded into a distant murk, the cacophony of scrabbling claws filtered from her thoughts. She steadied her mind upon the thump of her heartbeat and the slow whisper of stale air as it entered into her lungs, drawing out every shred of time that lay in her grasp and utilising it to the utmost. The dancing lights gradually shifted into focus, multiplied in number, flitted around her intruding mind in curiosity and suspicion.

“Breathe in…”

Of the incarnate elemental spheres, she had always found Earth to be the most recalcitrant in answering her calls, a simple matter of affinity that she had never overcome. But this deep beneath the surface, in a land that dealt with as much snowfall as Kalev…

There. Somewhere beneath her, far in the distance but not so far as to be out of her mind’s reach. A parliament of ethereal presences similar to but unlike the shadows of grey, an azure blue streak against the bland canvas of her surroundings. Water.

“Breathe out…”

Tentatively the young woman reached out to touch them, drawn to the warmth of their colour like a dove to its roost. They responded to her probing, stirring from the depths of slumber and coalescing into a single bright flare of light quite intimidating in its sheer brilliance. They – or rather now, it – saw her need and asked of her will, and responded with the single-minded fidelity so typical of the spiritual world.

“Let loose.”

For a single eternal moment Kayu met its gaze, and beheld it in all its glory. Ethereal eyes pierced the very essence of her soul and pinned her to the spot. Ancient and alien, a grotesque caricature of the sightless eels that the mountainfolk sometimes brought back from cave expeditions back in Nippon. Brutal and behemothic, a slumbering gargantuan reminder of ages long past in which magic both arcane and incarnate ruled the world. Cathartic and cataclysmic, wielding unfamiliar power far beyond the reaches of mortal ken.

Abruptly she returned to her own body, overwhelmingly conscious now of the dank reek of the darkness and the noisy chatter of the insects too close to evade. Tsuru stood her ground alongside her, still clutching the haft of her staff for support, their backs still trapped against the unyielding double doors.

The young woman had just enough time to notice the dog-sized scorpion that had launched itself, stinger poised, towards her face.

[Wings of Endymion]

The ground beneath her feet erupted.

Sheer explosive power sent her staggering backwards half a dozen paces, splattering her grimy white robes with clods of wet mud and shards of splintered stone. Tsuru’s grunts of pain told her that the old woman fared equally poorly, but the firm grasp on her staff of yew never once faltered.

The scorpion took the brunt of the welling force. It exploded upon the rock ceiling in a cascading rain of sticky gore and fractured chitin.

Transparent liquid surged from the rupture in the earth, funnelled by primeval intellect against the corrupted beasts. The relentless torrent swept up those insectoids that did not perish instantaneously via blunt trauma, and their spindly limbs flailed in vain as elemental might crushed air from segmented thoraxes. Almost between breaths the danger receded, swept away by sustained pressure until carcasses clogged the walls of the corridor.

Not all of the horrors were so easily disposed of, however.

The centipedal monstrosity alone held its ground, digging claws and talons into the stone and allowing the forceful water to stream over its sinuous form. Step by painstaking step it fought the endless flow, pushing with visibly grit fangs against the rushing cascade that just would not cease. At length the narrow exit behind it choked upon the sheer number of its drowned comrades, and against the reduced pressure the centipede made up another step… a second… a third…

But the water never ceased gushing. Although there was quite literally nowhere left for it to go, though the walls began to buckle beneath the strain and Kayu could feel the stress mounting in the back of her mind…

The centipede’s movements slowed. Stuttered. Stopped.

Fighting mightily against the spirit’s inexorable power, it managed to force the tip of one antenna through the solid wall of water in Kayu’s direction.

Half an antenna.

The point of a mandible. It shivered in defiant vain at the waterspout, thicker than the trunk of a thousand-year tree, that continued to funnel further water into the confines of the crystalline prison.

Liquid solidified, swelling against immutable invisible boundaries. Something had to give, and soon. Either the walls, or the floors, or the plug of carcasses, or…

The centipede’s carapace cracked, smashed inwards as if struck by some mighty blow. Then again, and a third time, as the pressure overwhelmed it from all sides. Bubbles of air and gore escaped from carapace harder than any steel, only to be crushed just as mercilessly within the emotionless grasp. Mandibles parted as wide as they could in a long soundless scream, and sixteen multifaceted pupils bulged in one last semblance of agony and horror before bursting apart.

Kayu could do little other than stare, transfixed in morbid fascination, lest a momentary lapse in concentration release the chimeric insectoid and give it the chance to regroup.

It took fully fifteen minutes for the last of the ancient spirit to well from the ground into the confined corridor. By the time its last drops emerged from the earth, the centipede had ceased its struggle for at least ten of them.

The young spellweaver found herself staring into a pair of alien eyes formed in the wall of solid water, appraising her with intellect wholly devoid of feeling. Distantly she grew aware of the uncontrollable trembling in her weak-kneed legs, the rapid-fire flutter of her adrenaline-fuelled heart in her slender chest, but all that mattered was the tantalising whisper of the spirit before her… mesmerising… inviting…

“That’ll do, child,” a small voice rasped at the edge of her hearing. “That’ll do.”

Tsuru’s wizened hand released its hold on her staff, and the yew nearly slipped from Kayu’s nerveless fingers as reality reasserted itself with a heavy crash. The palms of her hands burned with the residue of incarnate power, in stark contrast to the clammy dampness of the underground air upon her sweaty skin. Blood roared in her ears, surging and receding with every hammering heartbeat. Rot and decay settled in the back of her mouth, along with the stale fumes of water that had been far too long from the sun.

“Let it go.”

Belatedly she realised that she hadn’t taken a breath in over a minute. The putrid air that she reflexively sucked into her lungs disgusted her almost as much as the crushed pile of mangled limbs and sightless pupils that clogged the entryway ahead. But with it came the realisation that she still lived… and that the spirit before her awaited her next command.

Her next command.

“… thank you…” Kayu whispered, reaching out with one pale frail hand to bid the ancient farewell. Its fathomless eyes barely reacted as it deigned to regard her for a single eternity more.

Then the incarnate energies dissipated, and the waters withdrew back into the earth from whence they had come. The roar of the receding tides nearly ruptured her mind once more in its intensity, resonating with the walls around her like an endless earthquake. She sank to her knees beneath the wrath, clinging desperately to her sanity as it threatened to shatter along with all the power she had just released.

Only when another quarter-hour had passed, and the muted aftermath had finally settled peacefully in her aching head, did Kayu once again open her eyes.

Tsuru met her gaze with a flinty one of her own, carefully sculpted in varying measures of sympathy and disdain, pride and impatience. In that moment Kayu saw much of her old Academy teachers in the elderly woman… and echoes of her father, too, in the tightly set lines of Tsuru’s jaw. Involuntarily she shivered, recognising just how cold… just how sore… just how tired she was.

“Get to your feet, Kanamai Kayu.” Tsuru’s words grated upon Kayu’s eardrums like sandpaper upon skin. “Or are you going to run and hide again?”

The indictment hit home hard. With nothing to say in her defence, she slumped naked before the old crone’s judgement, barely retaining the ability even to draw breath. Soul bared and head hung in silence, her guilt lay exposed for the world to see.

Deep inside, she supposed, she had always known of her failings. The dreams she clung to of days gone by, warming her heart in the cold Rostarinne nights. The flashes of memory that lingered in the back of her mind only to flash past when least expected. The stray thoughts that sometimes infiltrated her subconscious mind – how would Touma deal with such a person, or would Akiyoshi appreciate the irony of the situation?

The knowing look on the old crone’s face made the bitter pill even more difficult to swallow.

Silence lingered and loitered like an unwanted guest, a third party to the awkward aftermath of Tsuru’s accusations. Who are you? it screamed at her from damp unfeeling walls, echoing and reverberating like some dissonant chord. Who am I? she felt like screaming back, the answer lost to she who sought it. So long had she merely wandered through a life of superficial purpose that only wispy tattered strands of will remained after the old woman had deconstructed her actions before her very eyes. Only gradually could she bring herself to swallow the painful lump in her throat. And all the while she fought her internal war, Tsuru glared at her with that curious mixture of sympathy and disdain, eyes that said she had seen it all before and would doubtless do so again.

It’s up to me, then.

Slowly she willed the strength into her legs, so that she could stand once more. It took more than a few tries, but eventually she found it in her exhausted muscles to obey. Wearily, achingly, she rose from the dust on the cold hard floor.

“What must I…?”

No. She couldn’t ask anybody else to make up her mind for her. That, in its own way, was also turning her back on reality.

She remembered how the boundaries of her power had expanded when Tsuru had touched her focus, how much more clearly she had been able to sense the spirits under the older woman’s guidance.

“Please teach me.”

A brief flicker in Tsuru’s eyes. A swift show of softening, saddening. Then the flinty gaze turned to steel once more, as cold and as emotionless as the still-damp stone that surrounded them on all sides.

The old woman’s robes rustled as she brushed past, wordlessly beckoning Kayu to follow with a sweep of her thin arms. Her bandaged feet made only the slightest of whispers in the cocooning darkness, skimming the surface of stray carapace carcasses forced in their direction by the sheer force of the spirit’s anger. Gnarled hands planted themselves against the heavy double doors at the end of the corridor, the only way out of this hellish catacomb. They seemed so small and insignificant against the intricately carved slabs of granite.

To Kayu’s surprise, however, the doors responded.

Sudden shafts of bright light flooded the shadows. Her hair rustled briefly in her ears as the air pressure readjusted. Dusty musk overrode the cloying stench of death and decay, damp staleness replaced by something a little drier and a little warmer. The foreign taste on the wind lingered at the tip of her tongue, something dangerous, something wrong, something…

In the ages it took for Kayu’s mind to form those thoughts, however, the doors had already begun to creak shut behind Tsuru’s relentless pace. Arms folded behind her bent back, swathed in shapeless robes far too large for her diminutive size, nonetheless the crone projected power and authority far beyond anything she had displayed thus far over the course of their journey together. Combined with their desperate situation and the looming insect carcasses in the darkness behind her, Kayu knew that she could not afford to stay put. She too slipped through the heavy double doors, blinking rapidly to readjust her vision.

The coarse arena sand beneath her soles, individual grains almost painful despite the thick boots she wore.

The warmth of the air; hot and rasping against her clammy skin and the sweat-drenched robes that clung to it.

The light so bright, somehow natural and comforting as it filtered through her lashes, despite the smoothed upturned bowl of a ceiling clearly visible overhead.

The sheer size and vastness of the deep underground chamber, such a welcome change after the claustrophobic confines of the tunnels downwards.

The balustrades of intricately wrought stone protecting the balconies on the upper level, serpentine columns intertwining with stylised beasts in grotesque bas-reliefs.

The numerous archways set equidistantly upon the chamber perimeter, gaping maws leading from kami-knew where to this one destination.

Stagnant pools of dirty water, scattered here and there about the patiently smoothed floor, where even the skills of whatever ancient power had constructed this Agate Tower had not been able to keep out the ravages of time.

Kayu made to follow Tsuru’s unerring footsteps out to the centre of the pit, but her legs froze in sudden apprehension and fear. Her stomach sank, further into the depths of despair, as her surroundings altered imperceptibly yet irrevocably.

The rustling whisper of breathless dust devils, in a cavern that should not have had any air flow.

The taste of dry sand in the back of her mouth, rancid and sickening.

The stench, so cloyingly thick as it clogged her nose, of ancient tome and ruined mausoleum and unused abattoir.

Sudden movement from all around.

They were not alone.

[Wings of Endymion]

They died easily enough.

I’m sorry.

It did not take her very long to decipher their true nature. Unlike the hordes of zombies she had witnessed during the Corpse Wars, no necromantic will drove these animated sacks of putrid body parts. Rather, they moved under a limited semblance of their own initiative – initiative based on primal bloodlust and berserk rage, but their own initiative nonetheless. Flesh golems, stitched together from the bodies of the fallen, powered by the warped agony of souls trapped on the brink of death.

Their vaguely humanoid form, unlike the bestial fusions she had fought previously, weighed heavily on her conscience. Kayu had fought to the death against dire wolves and giant insects, misshapen monstrosities and ethereal horrors, but only rarely against anything resembling a fellow person. She knew in her head that she faced mindless and emotionless brutes, mere shells of the departed inhabited by alien impulses wishing upon her only the cruellest of deaths. But still she hesitated for just that split second before striking, winced for just that split second afterwards.

And no matter how she hacked and slashed, pummelled and hammered, never once did she ever lessen their overwhelming numerical advantage. It wasn’t just their sheer weight of numbers, the fact that she would beat back one only for two or three more to take its place. A nagging voice at the back of her mind, more attuned than her conscious thoughts to the residual spiritual energies of the malevolent antechamber, kept trying to draw her attention to something important, something vital…

No time.

I’m sorry.

Her staff spun in graceful arcs, fending off three golems at once. One stepped in too close, and she responded by batting the solid yew across its face, splintering bone and distorting features like soft pulp. It blinked once, slowly as if somewhat distracted, and kept reaching for her with the viciously serrated pincers that replaced its arms from the elbow down.

I’m sorry.

She spun on the spot, neatly evading the clumsy attack and sending the golem on its way with a solid whack to its backside. The movement flowed into a full pirouette, outstretched wood buying her a momentary respite from the milling crowd of foetid corpses. Into the gap fluttered a single sheet of thin washi paper, painstakingly inscribed with intricate incarnate insignia.

I’m sorry.

Starlight blossomed upon her palm, then seared into the shadow like flame along a wick. Three golems perished in soundless screams, disintegrating from the neck down amidst the cone of pure illumination. Two more staggered back, missing an arm and a leg respectively, blinking in comical unison at the cauterised stumps of their wounds. One final golem groaned wordlessly at the chunk of flesh her spell had carved from its flanks, bubbling innards pouring down its haunches as the dark magic holding it together fought to compensate.

I’m sorry.

She leapt into the breach, knowing that if she stood still she would die, knowing that only by remaining mobile could she hope to survive the milling mass of foetid bodies. Reflexes almost supernatural slammed her staff into the injured golem’s wound, and she cringed as residual power unravelled the golem’s life-force and sent it backlashing up her arm. But she had to keep moving, had to keep dancing. Though she knew distantly that she had already used too much of her energies, both in the previous spiritcalling and in simply warding away this new batch of foes, she had to keep…

An inkling of breathing space, as momentarily Kayu found herself fighting back to back with Tsuru. The older woman fought a desperate battle of her own, leading tens or perhaps even hundreds of the flesh golems in a merry dance across the sandy arena floor. The girl ducked low as Tsuru sped away without so much as a word, catching a trailing glimpse of wiry arms corded with thin muscle, bony fingertips splayed painfully crooked in all directions.

Then she too had to leap, barely keeping out of reach of a pair of stinging claws and the acidic dribble of a vacant-eyed foe. Her knees screamed with the strain of propelling her entire body from a buckled crouch, and even her spell-enhanced swiftness could not spare a second tanning of the forty crowns of quality Elythisian leather protecting her feet. Only a hasty breathless whisper, and the resulting bright activation of a binding sigil where she had just stood, prevented the golems from dragging her down and feasting on her flesh there and then.

Accumulated dust plumes choked the air, stirred up by dozens of pounding feet as they hammered at sands untouched for long millennia. It was not long before she found her visibility restricted to something very close to zero. Her heartbeat raced even higher, threatening to choke her now as the fear of losing control over the engagement sent adrenaline coursing through her veins. If she let slip the advantage of her speed and reflexes, if they mobbed her while she stood caged and helpless…

The stench of death suddenly hung heavy in her nostrils, and her stomach rebelled against every last shred of her will.

Before she could recover and formulate a counter-plan, the shadows stirred. A ghastly figure stumbled forth. This one stood shorter than the rest, faceless and mewling pathetically, blindly groping at thin air with malformed arms. Noxious black vapour rose like fuming steam from pit-black pores upon its doe-like limbs, and Kayu recoiled impulsively from the poison in mixed revulsion and despair. Her eyes flicked to its chest, searching for something real to fixate upon, but instead met the pitiful gaze of a young girl captured in perfect terror for all eternity. The next thing she realised was that the girl was only one amongst many… that the golem wore a patchwork quilt of young faces, all similarly frozen in deathly fear.

Kayu retreated another step. Choked on a sob, as crystalline tears poured down her cheeks.

And broke the thing’s neck with a single wild blow.

I’m sorry.

It didn’t die immediately. Broken like a lifeless doll, it fell to the sands and flopped about spasmodically. Muscles contorted and thrashed in agony, spilling putrid pus in all directions, and the thousand child-like faces carved into its torso screamed in soundless horror.

I’m… so… so sorry.

Only then did she see it, a momentary vagary of the swirling clouds revealing all to her in innocuous glory. Suspended in the midst of the army of golems, as if hung from a slender thread dangled from above... a glittering red rock, perhaps, or a jewel...?

Involuntarily her keen eyes focused, drawn to the point of reference like moths to a flame.

Immediately she regretted the decision.

It was no rock, no jewel that hung there in the middle of the antechamber. It was rather a compacted mass of gory flesh, similar to the golems that swarmed about below but somehow more condensed, more compressed. Pulsating at a regular rhythm like a heart exposed to the cruelly scouring elements, it literally overflowed with malevolent energies and dark magic.

The child-like golem at her feet succumbed at last, jerky movements ceasing their erratic beat upon the ground. And at precisely that moment the fleshy heart pulsated powerfully… was it her paranoia, perhaps, that it had grown a size since the previous beat…?

No.

“Auntie Tsuru… that… what’s…”

Words failed as she instinctively sought the older woman’s opinion. From somewhere in the obscured distance, tartly bitter words echoed in reply.

“Took you long enough, didn’t it?”

Kayu recognised the uncompromising steel underlying Tsuru’s voice… and the faintest hint of victory.

“Auntie Tsuru, no!”

Her shout came in vain. Straining to see through the sandstorm, she just about caught sight of the older woman as the last syllable left her lips. Fingers still splayed in joint-wracking contortion, Tsuru cackled evilly before tugging hard upon unseen strings.

They died easily enough.

In the half-second it took for Kayu to blink, every last one of the two hundred and twenty four flesh golems still standing in the arena burst apart in fountaining showers of blood and gore.

Monofilament threads… the young woman realised, although she could not quite fathom exactly how she arrived at that conclusion. Set up to span the entire antechamber whilst Tsuru played at being chased, and then transferred to the Firmament with that final tug.

The explanation also accounted for why she still stood safe in the midst of the carnage – Tsuru had deliberately manipulated her threads such that they did not manifest to reality in Kayu’s immediate vicinity, thus sparing her the same gory fate.

Part of her marvelled in pure awe, at the sheer skill and audacious cunning of the elder. The logical part of her mind, however, knew exactly what would happen next. For she was not the only one within the bloodstained arena that Tsuru had spared.

The pulsating heart at the centre of the chamber exulted in joyous triumph.

All around her lay chunks of bloody flesh, all that remained of the golems torn apart by Tsuru’s arts. The amphitheatre sands feasted upon the fallen constructs like kings at a victory banquet, and the air positively thrummed with the dark energies released by their destruction. Her mind drowned in overwhelming repulsion, the very fibres of her being screaming to be released from reality.

A single hideous beat of the blood in her head, ear-splittingly audible in the shocked silence.

I’m sorry.

The fleshy mass in the centre of the antechamber burst into life, faster than the eye could see, swifter than the mind could comprehend. A sickeningly slick appendage caught her flush across the chest, and the next thing she knew she was airborne.

Not for long, however, as the granite of the far wall came up to meet her with a thunderous crack.

[Wings of Endymion]

Her head swam.

Pain – agonising, overwhelming, nauseating pain – ran like lightning through her nervous system, burnt like fire in every muscle of her fragile frame.

Pain – sweet, succouring, life-giving pain – gave her the strength to flutter her eyes open, the first step to working out what had just happened and why…

Her vision floundered.

Suspended above the blood-drenched sands, the palpitating mass of gory flesh bubbled and seethed. From the central heart that she had witnessed earlier, multiple limbs sprouted almost at random, some long and thin, others short and stout. Its shape shifted constantly, never stable; neither the sleekly efficient lines of an artificial construct nor the beautiful symmetry of one of nature’s own. Her mind warped simply by looking upon the aberration.

Perched on the balcony beyond the visceral horror, barely visible as a bundle of dusty clothes through the haze, Tsuru looked on in observant contemplation. The composed manner in which she sipped tea from a bamboo thermos contrasted starkly with the crimson splatters staining her surroundings. Kayu thought she detected a faint hint of a triumphant gleam in her hard grey eyes lost in folds and wrinkles.

And then movement in a nearby archway… Touma and Professor Alba. The Coronian scholar stumbled forward in an attempt to aid her, but abruptly halted his progress at the flourish of a loose navy sleeve. In muted shock she realised that Touma too stared at her in thoughtful vigilance, almost as if expectantly waiting.

Her heart drowned.

Had his eyes always been so cold?

Something snapped, deep inside her. Something primal and terrible oppressed by long years of restraining her emotions. Something let loose as the last shreds of willpower slipped from her fingers amidst the sea of tiredness and pain.

Everything happened at once.

Like a bullet from an Alerian musket one of the fleshy fists shot towards her face, followed closely by a serpentine sequence of half-tonne ‘muscles’ held together by what looked like elastic glue. The ‘arm’, for in reality Kayu could not describe it in any other way, moved with a speed frankly ridiculous considering the sheer mass involved. It displayed unerring accuracy as well, aimed at the slender sorceress who had marked herself out as a target.

With a battle cry more scream than roar she forced her broken body from the coarse ground, eyes blazing furiously in defiance.

“Shu-no-in… Tenshukaku!”

A shimmering barrier danced into view about the young woman. A moment later it shattered into a thousand crystal shards under the force of a tremendous impact, the chain of rocks ricocheting away into the cool cavern air.

In less than a heartbeat her keen eyes focused on two shapeless forms racing towards her through the mountains of bloody gore. Bone and meat flew in all directions as the ‘arms’ ploughed through the remains of the sacrificial flesh golems, a gruesome mist that acted to obfuscate the exact line of attack. Kayu was minded of the treacherous sand sharks that preyed upon unsuspecting victims in the dunes of her native Nippon.

“Enough,” she heard herself call in contemptuous disdain, an uncharacteristically powerful word that echoed clearly throughout the dust-choked chamber. Still clutching the supple wood of her staff with both hands, she plunged it into the hard-packed dirt beneath her feet, ruthlessly summoning spirits to her command.

The ground exploded, concentric rings of mud and carnage thrown up one after another as her powers flowed outwards. Not only did the consecutive blasts stymie the assault, but the sheer force involved in the spell cleared the air like a breath of fresh wind. Her foe revealed itself in all its macabre glory, an amorphous flesh titan held together by ectoplasmic crimson gel, two of its many limbs still plunged into the earth from its latest attack.

Swift as a peregrine, Kayu retracted her staff from the ground. Drawing upon an imaginary string, her fingers wove a mystic arrow from the winds until the yew quivered at full extension like a live animal. She loosed, and the arrow took swift flight, speeding like a pearl-white thunderbolt straight and true towards the pulsating crimson glow that to her eyes seemed to power the titan’s heart.

The titan did not move, barely even reacted. A subtle shift of bloated flesh and the glow changed location; the arrow impacted a breathless instant later upon soft muscle which swallowed the shaft whole before it dissipated prettily into shattered shards of light.

Tutting angrily, Kayu drew again. This time no less than ten mystic arrows formed between her hands, a line of ballistae bolts readied to launch…

Her senses caught up with her.

The morbid stench of splattered blood and shattered bone.

The bright crimson of her surroundings, sand and stone alike dyed in the same pooling trickling red.

The soft pucker of the titan’s flesh as it oozed and gurgled, obscuring the faint keening wail of souls bound in eternal torment.

The intense pain in her bruised and broken stomach, and the thunderous pounding in her head left by retreating adrenaline.

The bitter bile in her throat and the sanguine salt upon her tongue.

Violently and without the faintest shred of dignity, her stomach emptied its meagre contents at her feet. A second wave of heaves wracked Kayu’s slender frame, then a third as muscles worked to reject her innards along with the scenery all around her. She still retched uncontrollably when a colossal blow caught her for the second time in her flanks.

The air left her lungs, and she blacked out from lack of oxygen, choking on her own regurgitations.

Her consciousness recovered a moment later, sprawled in a messy heap on the opposite side of the room. Spluttering helplessly to clear her airways of acidic bile, she only realised that she’d left her staff behind when fingers from both hands scrabbled for purchase amidst jagged vertebrae and tacky mud. The intensity and proximity of the sickly stench nearly caused her to lose her stomach again, but her mind recognised the looming shadow overhead as something more worthy of her immediate attention.

Once again, something snapped.

The pain died, as if she had never felt it.

Her concentration returned, as if she had never lost it.

Her power flared, as if she had never relinquished it.

The titan fixated her with a baleful blind glare, numbing her ears with its mute battle cry. Every twitch of the nebulous cloud of pulsating muscle sent fist-sized clumps of rock-like flesh spitfiring in her direction and hammering against her prone form. Up rose four of its appendages for the final blow.

Down they came, pulverising the bloody sands into so much scattered dust.

It roared again, triumphantly blasting an area five metres wide with soundless shockwaves. Hard grey rock appeared beneath its anomalous form, sand and gore piling in deep concentric drifts with the macabre fiend at the epicentre. One by one it raised its putrid limbs, expecting to find an unrecognisable corpse buried beneath the cairn of flesh.

The gruesome task so absorbed its simple mind, it failed to notice the shadow on the ground until far too late.

As the wind she moved, her grace almost preternatural. Tattered robes and loose black hair billowed in the buffeting winds of her own magic, her eyes cold and hard like they had never been before. A glint of metal, the naked short sword in her left hand plunging deep into the titan’s central mass and cleanly piercing the pulsating crimson within.

Her foe barely flinched. Something tightened beneath her grip, the grisly knotting of flesh and bone, and the slender kodachi caught fast within the folded muscle. Only the fine forging of the blade kept it intact, and Kayu did not bother attempting to pull it free. Her perch on the titan’s ‘shoulder’ swayed precariously, and she dared not jeopardise it further.

A frustrated growl slipped her blood-red lips, barely human in its feral ferociousness.

She leapt away, tensing her legs and flying clear just before the titan made to swat her like some annoying housefly. Agile beyond its monstrously lumbering bulk, three more appendages tracked her movements and swiped towards her as she landed behind it. The arms pummelled in rapid succession against the rocky ground as she dodged with an artistic series of backflips, and the accompanying shockwave nearly burst her eardrums. Her growl devolved into an untamed scream, echoing piercing and cold throughout the antechamber.

She could not defeat it in melee, but even at range it could batter at her without once exposing a vulnerability. Even now it tracked her with arms both buried and flying, blood and gore scattering aimlessly in all directions as she fought for her footing on the violently quaking ground. Even in her state of heightened awareness, avoiding the relentless assault stretched her far beyond limits both mental and physical. Soon she would falter; she could not win a war of endurance against a mindless emotionless automaton.

The rumble of its repeated roars reverberated like rolling thunder throughout the cavernous chamber as it pressed the offensive. Metre by desperate metre she fought its advance, until at last she ran out of room and turned at bay. Her boots squelched in ground churned from bloody sand and mashed flesh, her white robes splattered with rusty gore, her cheeks dripping with unmentionable matter. But still her eyes flashed with animalistic defiance. She had neither staff to brandish before her like a protective ward, nor sharp steel to wrap the last strength of her fingers around, but she just about had the strength to whisper mystic words of power, as quickly as she dared roll them from her tongue. Multifaceted runes glowed into life at her feet, the very air itself coalescing at her beckoning.

The unseen barrier deflected the first arm of flesh aimed in her direction, shattering like jagged glass panes beneath the overwhelming force. Gracefully she sidestepped the second with mere millimetres to spare, and it slammed into the wall behind her, peppering her back with sharp shards of slate. In response wafer-thin paper fluttered through the air, and her hoarse incantations sending a quick succession of concussive blasts spiralling unerringly towards the titan’s overwhelmingly powerful form. The first dented one of the titan’s fleshy shoulders… the second shattered it, exposing bleached bone to the swirling dust…the third destroyed it utterly, sending one long muscular arm falling to the dust with a mighty crash. The sound echoed painfully in the faint reaches of her mind, frighteningly detached from the action occurring in front of her.

Grasping with all her might at the faint spark of hope within her breast, Kayu launched an all-out assault upon her foe. Gust after gust of compressed stardust sallied forth against the mutated muscle, keeping up a constant and relentless barrage that succeeded in first removing another arm, then as the titan vainly attempted to make ground against the tide, one of its legs at the waist. Sweat poured in trickles down her face despite the wintry cold, her skin sticky red and ghostly pale, slender chest heaving due to the exertion. But still she didn’t alleviate her destructive display of incarnate prowess, knowing that she dared not surrender her hard-earned initiative…

Behind you!

The warning did not reach her limbs in time. Something hard and heavy crashed into her back, sending her flying some distance from where her protective wards glowed bright amidst the carnage. She landed badly, all breath knocked from her lungs, her mouth full of grisly gore and metallic blood. That little detached part of consciousness where her sanity seemed to reside reeled in agony and shock.

Its limbs can act separately from its body…?

It could also reassemble itself, she found out a moment later, pinned amidst the butchery beneath weighty flesh as her glyphs slowly died in the distance. Its shoulders became new legs, its legs formed a torso and most of an arm, its old legs did the rest, and from somewhere amidst the throbbing mess it gloated at her with baleful crimson gaze. Rearing to its monstrous full height, the titan towered over her for an endless moment of sheer terror.

The bestial rage faded suddenly, leaving her empty and exhausted. Somebody somewhere seemed to be shouting something at her, but between the weight upon her back and the ringing in her ears, she found it somewhat difficult to concentrate. Disgustingly rich stench clogged her nose, the taste of filth hanging heavy on her tongue. Her bright eyes, bleary with unsuppressed tears, found themselves inexplicably drawn to the pulsating crimson at the fiend’s core.

Smaller than before? she asked of it with a wryly weak cough, not expecting any form of reply. Good to know that I might have hurt you in some way…

She knew of one last thing she could try, but it involved direct contact with the crimson pulse at the heart of the titan. She could not accomplish such a feat without paying the corresponding price. But duty bound her to destroying this monster, and if such was the price she had to pay…

Kayu paused.

Did she really want to pay that price?

Is that really the path…?

Sudden chill gripped her heart.

No.

For a fleeting instant her vision returned, sweeping across the entirety of the antechamber in crystal-clear clarity. Her surroundings drenched in vivid ghoulish scarlet, a literal bloodbath upon the ravaged gladiatorial sands and expressionless slate walls. Perched on the balcony just to her right, still serenely sipping her tea, the old crone who had betrayed them all by summoning the flesh daemon. Sheltering in an archway on the far side, a speck of clean cloth amidst the slaughter, the man who had brought her there in the first place.

Enough…

She saw him standing there, still staring at her with those cold, cold eyes. She thought of the path he had given her, the meaning he had injected into her life… wondering again if she truly had nowhere else to go but to rely on him...

No more.

She still had things to do. She didn’t want to die. Not here. Not now.

“Not like this!”

In a flash it was over. One moment, the titan pinned her to the floor with every last pound of its weight, crushing the life from her lungs. The next, the torturous bulk had disappeared, and a fine spray of sticky red mist showered upon the back of her head. She found herself gasping helplessly as her face rose from filthy offal, taking deep thankful breaths of cool iron-stained air as monochrome flame licked and smouldered upon remnant flesh. A rasping, weathered, weary voice whispered into her ear with as much sympathy as rebuke,

“It’s never easy, is it?”

Kayu had little time to dwell on Tsuru’s cryptic wisdom. Anodynia beckoned, the sweet blissful absence of pain, and she fell into its embrace with nary a complaint.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

“Well, at least that went according to plan.”

“Unfurling the Win…?”

“Indeed.”

He slipped from the shadows across the scarlet-soaked sands, Quentin a silenced spectre at his side. Halfway across the corpse-strewn battlefield, Tsuru looked up from Kayu’s prone form to fix them with an angry glare.

“Hands off, serpent. She isn’t yours any longer.”

“As you wish.” Touma raised his arms in appeasement, unwilling to engage in conflict with the crone while her hackles were raised. After all, he had just witnessed exactly what she could do with barely a twitch of her little finger. Circling the women respectfully, he picked his way with exaggerated care through the piled mountains of unidentifiable body parts and the gently undulating dunes of sticky sand. Tsuru’s distrustful eyes followed him every step of the way, boring into the side of his head as she tried to divine his intentions.

Let her try, he thought to himself. My job here is nearly done.

Eventually he ended up where a fragment of the titan’s crimson heart lay throbbing its last upon a bed of minced flesh and diced bone. He reached for the dying artefact, savouring the warm temptation that achingly caressed his fingers as they pulled it free of the floor.

Then, in a single fluid motion, he withdrew a shard of highly polished glass from within the folds of his robes and plunged it into the corrupted heart, so deftly that the fresh fountain of fluid sprayed away from him and onto Quentin’s boots instead. Every last fibre of his being focused on the honed knife for that one instant, such that his colleague’s soft cry of dismay did not reach his ears.

A heartbeat later he tore his mind away, a satisfied grunt escaping taut lips.

“Found it?”

In response to Quentin’s query, Touma looked upwards and slightly to his left as if tracking an unseen thread through the ceiling of packed earth.

“Mirror,” he ordered, again picking his way daintily through the slaughterhouse, this time to the nearest archway. His assistant rushed to obey, reaching into his trusty pack and rummaging around for a moment or two before withdrawing a Raiaeran seeing-glass of the finest craftsmanship, inlaid with filamented gold and encrusted with dully throbbing rubies. It took another minute of arcane probing until Touma felt satisfied that he had located exactly the correct spot to anchor his dimensional portal.

He looked so laughably out of place amongst his macabre surroundings. Despite everything he had been through, only a pair of stray rusty splotches on the hem of his robes and the general abattoir stink blemished his person. Even Quentin – the one conscious person in the room with the grace to express even remote horror at the grisly décor – looked quite the mess by now after having followed his master through the antechamber. And that said nothing of the immobile Tsuru still standing at the centre of the carnage, or the young woman unconscious at her feet.

The archway shimmered, and a thin sheen of neverending oblivion spread across the stone door. The void beyond flickered invitingly, occasionally giving glimpses of wan skyline or a whiff of fresh air tinged with the stench of damp earth. A single line across Touma’s aquiline forehead gave lie to the concentration required to keep black lightning from crackling across the portal and collapsing it entirely.

“Would you join me, perhaps?”

He directed the question towards the women in the centre of the antechamber, indicating without movement the doorway behind him.

“You would offer us a share in your way out?”

Tsuru’s voice betrayed her distrust, though the kami knew that she had little right to be so suspicious. Not after what she had done to Kayu. And yet…

“Trust me, it’s not in my interest to leave you two here to rot,”

Swaddled in dirty cloth from head to toe, the old crone grunted sardonically. But he allowed her to sense the uncharacteristically gentle honesty in his words, and watched her hesitate. No doubt that instinctively she wished to refuse, to be rid of the malicious young man and his manipulative ways, so that she could concentrate on more important matters such as Kayu’s fledgling powers. One look at her feet, however, at the young woman in contorted peace there, and she made the difficult decision to accept.

Gnarled fingers danced delicately, weaving a web of tangled translucent thread. Swiftly Tsuru strung together a simple hammock about the young woman’s body, cocooning her gently from below. A subtle twitch of her little finger and the makeshift stretcher levitated to head height, rising clear of the wanton butchery staining the sandy floor, and with shuffling steps the old woman dragged it clear. Grunting in mock exertion, she followed the two men through the portal just before it fizzled and failed.

They emerged one after another upon the pinnacle of the Agate Tower, the air suddenly cold and blustery as it scoured their lungs. Frozen winds whipped at hair thoroughly fouled by long hours of underground warfare, and their blood-stained clothing stuck clammily to the goosebumps upon their skin. What stray rays of midday sunlight that managed to filter their way through the layer of scurrying grey overhead held a weakened, tentative quality, as if not sure whether or not it belonged there. Somewhere in the distance a giant strode across the tundral landscape, and in response the tower trembled and quaked at every second heartbeat.

Some equally powerful being had moulded the floor at their feet from polished quartz crystal, arranging a swirling riot of colour seemingly at random so as to confuse the senses and befuddle the mind. Perhaps twenty paces in diameter, dominated by the folded metal fan rising so far above their heads, they were untroubled here by the thick blankets of snow that buried ground not so far below. Somehow they could even feel warmth through the soles of their feet, warmth heartless and warped by the evil done here.

Touma breathed uneasily, feeling the taint on the tip of his tongue, smelling the corruption in the earthy ozone. Quentin shared his qualms, directing a single long glance at the southern horizon as if expecting the departed Disciple to suddenly reappear and punish them for their intrusion. Only Tsuru seemed unaffected, whether through feigned nonchalance or sheer ignorance even Touma could not tell.

They were not alone.

A weathered old man slumped in a gilded throne carved into the base of the metal spire before them, barely skin and bones and haunted stare. Wisps of thin hair fell like scraggly hay across a face as dry as parched earth, and they could count every last one of his ribs, broken and gaunt, against the pale translucence of flesh stretched too taut across his stomach. Milky white eyes peered longingly into the distance in the same direction as Quentin, not deviating so much as an inch even as his visitors approached.

“Your guardians are dead, Keeper.”

Touma addressed the old man with cold calculation, despising him for what he stood for but needing the information hidden in his mind. The Keeper represented Ashura Four-Faced’s remnant will over his temple, the empty urn that had once prepared the souls of the dead for sculpting by melding them with the Disciple’s malice and hatred. Unlike those whose fates he had helped condemn to eternities of torment, he had doubtless once numbered amongst the brightest of the Disciple’s pupils, amongst the most trusted of his lieutenants, to be honoured with such an esteemed role.

Now, though, he appeared little more than a tattered husk, one last shred of humanity desperately clinging to the final embers of his abhorrent life. Slowly, without once tearing his gaze from the horizon, lips wind-torn and mummified whispered a mocking reply.

“There’s always more where they came from. More flesh to reap. More souls to harvest. More experiments to create.” Something dry and weak rasped from the depths of his lungs, something that might have once passed as a laugh. “Maybe next time the lord will craft such wonders out of your…”

Touma had heard enough. Ignoring Quentin’s murmured “Wait….”, ignoring Tsuru’s eerie silence and Kayu’s deathly pallor, he reached out and grasped the Keeper’s fragile skull between the iron hold of his fingers. Marshalling every last shred of power at his disposal, he pushed into the cognitive realm of the enemy before him.

It gave way mushily, soft and pliant unlike the usual resistance put up by a sentient mind against foreign intrusion. Apparently it had been moulded to the will of others so often that it had lost all semblance of its original integrity. Touma’s lips curled in distaste, sifting through and discarding recent shards of memory as he purposefully pushed deeper in search of greater reward.

Flashback. The fan over his head fully extended, archaic runes glowing in flaring anger as they overwhelmed the clear night sky. A steady flow of light passed down the metal and into his gluttonous stomach, and he greedily gorged on the souls of the dead funnelled through his bloated form.

Flashback. Something dark and malevolent speaking sonorously into his mind, nearly splitting his head with power and pain. The words echoed incomprehensibly but their import resounded clarion and clear. He had been chosen to fulfil his lord’s greatest duty. He would do the job well.

Flashback. A young man, hair flowing but somewhat wispy and thin, studying beneath the harsh tutelage of…

Abrupt pain. The decaying walls of the Keeper’s mind began to crumble, visibly eroding before Touma’s eyes. Trap, the Nipponese psy-mage realised swiftly. Destroy the evidence, protect the Disciple’s secrets.

Promptly he withdrew, like a leviathan surfacing from the depths for air. The devouring presence within the Keeper’s mind sought to entrap him at every turn, but Touma had far too much canny experience beneath his belt to fall for such tricks. Barely before he could blink he emerged once more into the wan Kalev tundra, staring again into the rheumy pallid eyes of his ancient adversary.

He wasted no time.

Darksteel flashed in the wintry air. Droplets of blood blossomed like flowers upon the patterned quartz. A great gash opened up the Keeper’s torso from hip to shoulder, cleaving wiry muscle and ashen bone alike in a single swift stroke.

Before the old man could fall from where Touma had held him, the steel struck again. This time it impaled the Keeper through his bony throat, rheumy eyes twisting in pain as knotted airways spluttered for oxygen. The Nipponese psy-mage twisted the sword he now held in both hands, slowly and deliberately, feeling the pathetic weight of his spasming foe as it slowly slipped back down the edge of the blade.

And still Touma was not done.

Darting shadows, and in the next heartbeat he stood at the edge of the tower, dangling the Keeper from the precipice like a hanged man from a noose. At long last the ancient white pupils dilated, as if they finally realised what was about to happen.

“For your sins. Perish.”

Cruelly, without a single shred of hesitation or remorse, Touma tossed the old man from his blade onto the rocks ten metres below. He didn’t even stay to watch as the broken corpse floundered lifelessly, staining everything with that ridiculously evanescent crimson. Sunlight pounded mercilessly upon his back as he flicked the blood from his blade and carefully returned it to its sheath, but he paid it all absolutely no heed.

Tsuru’s sarcastic tones shredded the silent aftermath.

“So it’s just you and I now, serpent. What next?”

The wind whispered eerily into the space between them. A brief moment of thought, and then a small smile played around Touma’s lips. He replied with the same nonchalant arrogance he had displayed before, as if the entire episode with the Keeper had not just happened.

“I said earlier, it’s not in my interest to harm you.”

“Oh?” This time, with bushy eyebrow raised amongst the wrinkles of her face, the old crone seemed determined to press the point. Her flinty eyes passed over Quentin as if he were nought but a mangy cur; although it would have been out of character for her not to have known of his true nature, still she apparently treated his treachery as the despicable act it was. “And what would your interest be, then?”

“The Oracle requires me to answer a question?”

“Ha.”

He hadn’t expected his words to unbalance her, but still he stood in quiet awe of how deftly she fielded the reveal.

“A man of my position would be a fool not to be aware of your identity. Much as you were aware of mine and Quentin’s… and Kayu’s.”

“So she is the centre of all this, then.”

Touma inclined his head wordlessly, inviting the scathing derision to bathe him from head to toe. Tsuru obliged without hesitation.

“Let me guess. You went to all that trouble… laying the groundwork with your dog here, spreading unsubstantiated rumours about the Tap, sneaking an astral projection into Winyaurient, planting just the right ideas into the girl’s head to bring her to odds against that snoddy archmage, holding open a portal against the high elves’ wards, fighting your way through beast and weather to reach this Agate Tower, confronting the echoes of a Disciple… just to get me to know her?”

The smile never left Touma’s face. Behind him, Quentin readied a second mirror within the confines of his haversack, just in case.

“Not just,” he clarified tersely. “But mostly, yes.”

“And why would that be?”

The Nipponese sighed; again uncharacteristically gentle, uncharacteristically honest.

“You know better than I do, Oracle. The girl needs strength, but seems quite incapable of attaining it herself. Left to her own devices, she wiles away her time in a castle tower, dreaming of her past rather than looking to the future. Like a naïve child she wishes to make a difference, but has not the faintest idea how. And so she grasps at thin straws, and drifts from shelter to shelter without thinking, and crumbles at the first sign of adversity.”

“And you want me to…”

“I need her strong, Oracle. She has the potential to become a powerful weapon against the coming darkness, but at this rate, she will waste it all. I cannot afford that loss.”

“You hear that, girl? Not once was he ever thinking of you.”

[Wings of Endymion]

Slowly, tenderly, she pried herself from the comforting softness of the silken threads embracing her. Her head throbbed in pulsing agony, remnant aches of the exertions that had seen her fight non-stop for over an hour, but that hadn’t prevented her from overhearing the conversation that had just taken place. Face as pale as starlight beneath a wintry moon, she turned her gaze to her erstwhile friend.

She had no need to ask whether or not he told the truth. A man who valued the weight of his words and spoke accordingly, Touma never wasted his time on idle chatter. Even when he lied, he did so with such purpose that his words took on truth in their own right. He would not have spoken so harshly without a reason.

The cocky smile playing about the tip of his lips only reinforced that impression, letting her know that he could tell exactly what went through her head.

She turned to Tsuru, and noted the similarities there. The slightest of triumphant gleams barely visible in her wizened eyes. The faintest of eager trembles in bony balled up hands held loosely at her side. The whisper of the frigid wind as it whipped at her swaddled robes.

Anger welled up from deep within, the same bestial anger that had blinded her during the battle against the flesh titan.

How dare they. How dare they play around with her life so.

Her breathing grew heated, her vision constricted. But her head throbbed again in agony, and the fury died like a candleflame beneath the tsunami…

… leaving her with the memory of the last dream she’d had in Winyaurient. The memory of how she’d had to overcome and cut away her own father to move on with her life.

Know your place, Kayu, or else…

Touma had offered her a different path, a path to Haidia and the knowledge secreted there. She’d followed first him, and then Natosatael, in a vain attempt to discover herself amongst the hellish fires of daemonic Haidia and the nightmarish pyres of wartorn Raiaera.

You were scared of relying too much on Touma, but you didn’t want to face him about it. Did it never cross your mind that he was observing how much you could endure before you gave way on your own?

For years now she had danced like a puppet on strings held by others. But the question… the real question she had to seek an answer to…

All you’ve ever wanted in life is to make a difference, to put your heaven-granted abilities to good use. But not only do you fear that you’ve never succeeded thus far, you also fear that you will never succeed in the future. Hence you seek more power, and more knowledge, and the opportunities to put them to use.

Power and knowledge both held great meaning in her life. She had to be strong so that she could be of use to others; she had to be wise so that she could use that strength well.

The power corrupted him. Not necessarily as it corrupts others, for corruption differs from mortal to mortal just as pride and wrath and any other emotion. He would not stoop so low as to use it for evil. But it preyed upon his insecurities and his loneliness until it consumed him whole.

All she’d ever wanted was to do her duty…

Because you yourself should not walk down that path, no matter what the cost.

What was that duty?

Duty to her family, as her father had professed? Even at the expense of her freedom?

Duty to the world, as Touma would have her believe? How much more, then would she have to endure?

Duty to herself, as Natosatael insinuated? But did she have the mental strength to manage such selfishness?

That is the nature of great power, Kayu. You hold on to it, study it and treasure it dearly, all in the hope that you never have to make use of it. But should the time come, and the need arise, you use it without hesitation. Tell me, Kayu, if the Night of Nefarious Flame were to repeat itself somewhere else… would you rather I had the power to prevent it, or not? What is the use of great strength if you cannot even protect those you care for?

The flames of that infamous night, the flames that had bathed her youth in devastation and sorrow. She had sworn then, never again. But did she risk turning into the very beast that she sought to prevent?

Think of it this way, Kayu. To an ordinary farmer trying to eke out his meagre living in these kami-forsaken lands, you and I are already far more powerful than he can ever hope to be. To them, we are already gods, already omnipotent… and perhaps, in their small suspicious minds, already corrupted beyond salvation. To them, you are already a monster.

Had she already travelled too far down the path of damnation?

You ran from your family, you ran from your responsibilities. You ran to Haidia, and then you ran from there again when it became unbearable.

Had she already fled past the point of no return…?

Her mind froze in horrified chill, as cold and as still as the tundral night. Normally she would have laughed away such a thought, would have denied its existence in the face of her desire to do good. But the burning anger that had surged through her veins and blanketed her mind… the few vague snippets that she could recall of her battle against the flesh titan…

The possibility that someday she could be the one instigating such an atrocity.

The mere thought that she could be the culprit behind such a crime.

No.

Suddenly the idea didn’t seem so farfetched, the prospect not so unreal. And that scared her more than anything… the thought that no matter how good her intentions, she might have already progressed too far. Comprehension dawned upon her like a rising sun upon benighted thoughts.

No!

She had no idea of her duty, but still she aimlessly pursued power. She had no clue about her destination, and yet she blindly followed a path laid down for her by others. Even the best of intentions had not prevented her from rotting away from inside without her knowledge.

She had failed.

Mean-hearted spirits on the wind tore at her hair and ripped at her shredded robes, vestments so disgustingly caked in cracked rust and filthy stench that she immediately wished nothing more than to be rid of them. For what felt like hours on end she suffered, and for what felt like hours on end three pairs of eyes witnessed her suffering in stolid silence: one cold and calculating, one uncaring and unsympathetic, one piercing and persistent. When at last she spoke, her voice but the barest of whispers amongst a howling cacophony of conflicting thoughts and distressed emotions, she directed her words towards the last of the three.

“Please…"

She recognised the disgust welling up within her, that she still had to rely on another to light her path in life. But at least this time she'd made the choice herself, based on knowledge she'd gained in many years of experience: Touma could not be trusted. It was progress, wasn't it? It had to count for something, didn't it?

“... can you teach me?”

She could barely hear her own voice, cracked and parched and evanescently weak. She had no idea how Tsuru managed to understand her, though she merely repeated a feeble plea she had first made what seemed like ages ago. So much had happened since then, so much…

The old woman’s reply rasped raw and ragged across her throbbing head.

“Depends what you want to learn, child.”

What she wanted to learn. What did she want to…?

“Everything.” The word spilt from her mouth before she could censor it. Once it hung before her as a haloed sun behind swift-scurrying clouds, the rest of her questions started to flood, a river of emotion held back until now by the dam of self-repression. “Who am I? What can I do? What is power? How can I control myself? Who can I help? How can I help them? I… I…”

Tsuru sighed critically, after ensuring that Kayu had the time to wring the last of her feelings from her exhausted frame.

“It’s a start.”

The young woman held herself as if at the end of her tether, slender frame trembling with every breath as exhaustion and catharsis took their toll. She tried to take a deep breath, but the chill numbed her lungs and nearly tore her heart asunder. The stench of battle and blood would take days if not weeks to remove from her fouled person, and the scars carved upon her soul would take far longer than that to heal.

And yet, still, some things she could now see clearly. By shedding all pretence, by scouring her mind through death-defying battle and purging it of all extraneous thought, some truths she could haplessly stumble upon.

… because there has to be something, anything… something that even somebody like me can do. I know I’m not the strongest, or the bravest, or the smartest, or anything really… but I have to try. Don’t I?

Somebody somewhere had once said that to her. She’d forgotten exactly who, but the voice seemed somewhat nostalgic, somewhat close. Despite herself, despite everything, a faint smile broke through her tear-streaked lips.

“You know nothing, child.”

Tsuru’s response to her inner thoughts held a tenderness that had not been present before.

“But at least you now know that you know nothing. It’s a start.”

The snow petals fell with all the transience of fluttering cherry blossoms. Crystals of glimmering ice travelled from sky to ground in a lifetime ephemeral and meaningless, joining their innumerable comrades in an unmarked graveyard stretching from horizon to horizon. She stood like a lonely stone lantern, stern and sentinel over the serene snowscape, while the thunderclap echo of the portal opening behind her signified Touma’s decision to retreat from the ruins.

Kayu turned to him, raising her face to allow the bitter wind to cleanse her soiled features.

“Farewell, Touma. I hope you found that artefact you were looking for.”

He took the words well, replying with arrogantly raised eyebrow and sinister smile.

“Something even better, my dear.”

He bowed, and spoke one last time as he stepped back through his portal.

“Until we meet again.”

[Wings of Endymion]

A whispered worry.

“Please tell me she’s safe.”

A cackled response.

“You worry too much, Seregon. She’s safe with me.”

An ancient sigh, echoing loudly through the hollow dreamscape.

“Still, I wish…”

The sharp rustle of swaddled robes in the shadowy darkness.

“You had the boy. The girl is mine.”

Translucent hands raised in appeasement.

“I understand, Oracle. But the Serpent Tamer?”

A disdainful snort.

“The daemon’s taught him enough already. He’ll manage.”

Long silence as the two elders wandered in their thoughts, broken once again by the high elf.

“That the world should come to this.”

Furrowed brow, pained grimace.

“The fates are fickle, the Thaynes without mercy.”

Pallid eyes nodded reluctant agreement.

“But that they should have to shoulder…”

A curt caustic breath, the air heavy with melded magic.

“Too soft, you’ve always been. Thanks to you, the boy now wanders the north alone.”

A sad smile.

“He will pull through. As long as…”

A wave of a gnarled hand, fingers knotted with years of abuse.

“As long as the girl remembers. Yes, yes.”

The tall shadow stooped low to peer the shorter one in the eyes.

“You will help her?”

A scoffing nod.

“Where she once had pain, she will now find purpose.”

Relief and release.

“Thank you Oracle, Mistress of Destiny. By your leave.”

One last cryptic farewell.

“Don’t thank me, archmage. Thank the boy.”

The darkness swelled and parted. Only blissful oblivion remained in its wake.