Intricacies of Asymmetry

[Caden Law]

Ask before joining; I got plans for this and mean to end it semi-quickly.

Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
5:59 AM, Day of the Iron Song, Month of Iraes Marching, 3177 of the Occultist Calendar (OY)

Picture if you will, a forest that should be green, crisp and clear. There should be animals about, some of them quite mythic simply Because, and others every bit as mundane as the deer you might see peeking at the road from a safe distance. Weeds and flowers should both be in full bloom, vines should be growing and the whole damn place should be filled with the racket of the everyday miracle that is Life in Progress.

Except it isn't.

Welcome to the deeps of the Forest of Tembrethnil, approximately one or two hundred miles southeast of Trenycë. Welcome to an area where the leaves are going grey, the animals have all gone missing or died, and there's an unnatural chill that simply should not be anywhere near a forest in the heat of Summer. Accompanying it is an equally unnatural fog; the kind that heralds Bad Things, and this one very much lives down to that archetype. We won't see them just yet, but don't(?) worry, they'll be along soon enough.

The collection of guerrilla warriors you're about to meet are actually counting on it, as a matter of fact. Along a rather old, suitably abandoned road, you'll only find three of them; the rest are hidden, but not at all far. Per the rules of the game, Bait must always be presented in the open while the hooks are hidden as cleverly as possible.

Their names are Aldinar, Vara, and Eledier. They stand out from their fellows by virtue of not being actual Rangers, and they look the part. Aldinar, the token male, stands to the left, wearing a mixture of armor and robes, holding a strange spear about as long as he is tall, his face hidden away behind a steel mask joined to an almost amusingly pointed helm. Vara, off to the right, is much the same, though her hair is long and dark blue, let out from beneath her helm in a cascade. She wields a slightly curved sword with the same odd appearance as Aldinar's spear; the blade looks like it's made from some kind of material that can't decide if it's stone, metal, liquid or glass, and its color is almost entirely blue with golden detailing.

At the center of the three is Eledier, and you can tell she's the resident Commander by virtue of the fact that she's dressed like both of them, but completely different. She wears form-fitting steel armor from the waist up, complete with a grim looking mask joined to a pointed helm, with her long red hair cascading down her back over a functional strip of cloth that's as much a banner as it is a cape. From the waist down is a battle-skirt; long enough to cover her legs down to the lower portion of each shin, with plates of armor straped and sown onto it. Beneath that are pants and boots. She carried a rather long-hilted sword, similar to her fellows except that its blade was red.

And now that you've wasted enough time examining them one way, examine them another: By what they say. If you can, try to ignore the metallic echo the masks give their voices.

"Something is coming," said Aldinar.

"Always," said Vara.

"Indeed," said Eledier. "But I do not believe it is what we are expecting."

Incidentally, this is when the fog rolled in. Heavy and dead and gray and thick; so thick you couldn't cut it with a knife. Things stirred within it and they could not be seen -- not yet, anyway. The noises were of sawing and screaming, gagging and horror. Nature itself dying a slow, wretched, indignant death, only to be dragged back into movement by a distant and terrible force of will. Where the fog crept, grass withered and died, and the trees seemed to almost tremble with a grim anticipation of what was to come.

And what came was not one ugly thing on its lonesome, but a whole bloody lot of them en masse.

First were the lowest of the hordes; dead Men telling no tales as they dragged rusted tools around, their eyes long since gone blank or having rotted out entirely. In teams of two and three and four, they took to the trees like a gang of rapists to a young girl. They spread out along each one, stripping it bare of leaves and hammering nails into its bark, then wrapping so many of the branches in barbed wire. Each and every single one bore a crude looking eye, notched into it with the clumsy tenacity of the dead.

After the first teams, there came more. They brought shovels and saws, and though their tools were primitive and their bodies weak, they had numbers and an awful drive. One by one, they uprooted their victims and rent the ground asunder as they did it.

Finally came the dead Elves, many of them ancient and many of them nowhere near it. Some still bled. A poor few still clinged to enough life that they were crying. All the same, they stepped through the tangle of roots and, using nothing but hammers and chisels, they drove in the symbol that now haunted Raiaran children's nightmares.

A six-sided diamond, inset with a single eye. The crudest form of Xem'zund's personal mark.

When they were done, the desecrated trees heaved themselves up like staggering drunks with a thousand legs each. Those that did not move were simply left to rot on the ground, the nails and wire ripped out of them in such a way that they bled sap all over the place.

It had been a slowmoving tide, but the Elves of the Farstrike Retinue were not known for any measure of impatience. For that matter, they were hardly known at all, which is exactly how they wanted it.

"They come," Vara noted.

"Their leader is not yet seen," Aldinar replied. "We may have to strike first, and deep, in order to draw him out."

"No. He will be here," said Eledier, placatingly. "That hedge-necromancer will die for his crimes today," she added, her voice almost liltingly pleasant even with the metallic echo.

"I do not see why we must wait as the forest dies," Aldinar muttered. "This will not be reflected upon kindly at Caesai Maer."

"War has a way of justifying that which was previously unjustifiable," Vara replied. "We wait because we must. We will fight because we must. We will die, if we must."

"Speak for yourself," Aldinar ordered. "I plan on living to see the end of this."

"Then do not advocate such a rush to your own death, fellow Seer," Eledier ordered in turn. What passed for an arguement ended right then and there, give or take a sigh.

Conveniently enough, this is when the target and his ilk finally showed their wretched faces.

His name was Kholia Horren. Once upon a time, he had been a proper Wizard of moderate skill and standing. Then he turned to necromancy. Then he went in too deep. And now look at him: Haggard and old, with his Grimoire chained around his waist and his Name claimed by Xem'zund in order to insure fealty. A lieutenant promised power beyond his dreams, driven mad, and then thrown into what amounts to a menial supply job. What had been a tall, strapping Salvic man was now bent forward with the ravages of age and darkened arcana, his face and head covered from the upper lip straight up, back and to the base of the skull by metal plates that had been magically fused into place. Etched into the front of it was the same symbol as what the dead Elves had notched into the trees.

Beyond that were greying robes and a distinct lack of personal hygiene, whatever that's worth.

He was accompanied, more worryingly, by an honor guard of cavaliers mounted on giant spiders, each one bearing an arcane lance covered in wicked barbs. Unlike the lot of them though, Kholia walked, leaning on an ancient staff the whole way. At its head was a red diamond, positioned like the blade of a spear and formed around an unblinking eye.

"Do you see?" Eledier asked. "Just as planned."

"Ho-ho," mocked Aldinar.

"Shall we strike now?" Vara asked.

The answer did not come in words, simply action. As one, each Seer planted their blades into the ground before them, stepped forward and began to move. As one, each Seer began to dance through exactly the same moves, at exactly the same time and in exactly the same way. To a casual observer, it would've resembled a combination of Tai Chi with some of the hand movements of a Middle-Eastern bellydancer.

Tracing along each movement, power coalesced around them. It converged into each Seer's right hand, and for the briefest of moments it crystalized into something the size and shape of a slightly deformed marble bearing an Elven rune.

As one, the Seers ended their dance and raised their hands; fingers alternately clasping and pointing forward as each one picked out the same target.

Then, without fanfare or battlecries, they fired.

The spells rippled through the air, spiraled into one another and seperated close to their target; three of the Necromancer's Guard went down in a blaze of teal fire and song. Their spiders and much of the area around them went out in the same way. Lurching at the center, his free arm wrapped around his head to try and shield himself, Kholia went unharmed. The Seers had foreseen him coming, but they had not counted on the possibility of his defenses including a scattershot barrier.

Time is a very fluid thing, after all.

"Oh well," Eledier sighed. "I suppose we may have to try this your way after all, Aldinar."

"I'd say I told you so, but that would be incredibly rude of me, wouldn't it?"

"Very human, at that," Vara replied, though not unkindly.

"KILL THEM!" Kholia screamed, his Voice rippling in the fog and briefly turning it bloody red. He thrust a hand forward and pitch black lightning shot from his fingertips.

In one fluid motion, all three Seers pirouetted back, drew their weapons from the ground and struck up into the lightning. Blades sang in the humid morning air, and Kholia's spell broke almost impotently against them.

"KILL THEM ALL!" Kholia screamed again, and the fog once more turned red for a split second.

By the time it returned to its normal ugly grey, Men and Elves were flooding through it, their movements so vast that no measure of fog could've ever hidden them. The sheer volume of their brandished weapons caused ripples and clearings that were visible even from the two hundred yard distance. Kholia staggered forward after them, screeching profanity the whole way.

Calm before the coming storm, the Seers remained standing on the road, flourishing their weapons into ready stances with a sense of righteously doomed bravado about them.

"Tell me, Eledier," Aldinar began, "Are things still going as planned?"

"Just as planned," she repeated, then said again, "Just as planned."

The Bait waited, and the Rangers took aim...

[Caden Law]

The Seers stood their ground as spell after murderous spell shot towards them. From black lightning to hellfire to swarms of tiny demons made from tainted spiritual energy and shockwaves of pure force; nothing touched them until Kholia's army was close enough to do so personally.

Then and only then did the Seers give ground, and they did so while taking limbs, heads, and whole bodies for every single step. They fought with the uniformity of a musical troupe, each one covering the next in such a way that their defenses had no gaps other than those lined with blades and magic. It didn't take long at all before the bodies and parts were piling up around them, and an astute observer would've taken note that each Seer seemed bent on maintaining their own little pile.

Aldinar's pile consisted of severed heads and arms. Eledier's was made of more-or-less whole bodies, with added upper torsos. Vara's was composed of severed legs and lower torsos. It didn't matter who actually took each kill, that was simply how the corpses went. They did not distinguish between Man or Elf; Undead was Undead, and it was a transcendant state of vile corruption that made any other distinction irrelevant.

The whole while, Kholia kept moving closer and closer, throwing spell after spell and obscenity after obscenity.

"I WILL HAVE YOUR SOULS, SEERS! I WILL EAT YOUR EYES AND FLAY YOUR MINDS AND RAPE YOUR BODIES!"

The fog pulsed redder and redder as he came, and his spells were starting to grow more powerful.

"YOU WILL DIE SCREAMING, AND IT WILL ONLY BE THE BEGINNING OF WHAT I WILL DO TO YOU!"

Close enough now, he must've reckoned. Kholia stopped and raised his staff high with both hands. The fog had turned almost entirely red around him by then, and there were sparks of black and purple all about the staff's length. The Eye had settled its gaze on the Seers--

"WITNESS YOUR DOOM, FOR THE END OF THE AGE OF ELVES IS NIGH!"

Only when he finished Speaking did Kholia realize his mistake.

Shots rang out in the morning air -- a sound like an entire Company's worth of rifles going off all at once. But the bullets were spells, and the rifles were staves, and the Company consisted of Rangers with plenty an axe to grind. Bolts of light zinged and zipped by the Seers and between the zombies, sometimes swerving and sometimes spiraling as they shot in for their one true target: Kholia himself.

The first chorus of magic bullets slammed into his scattershot barrier and, appropriately enough, scattered. His remaining guards fell from their steeds, and then the spiders themselves went down as holes ripped through each and every one of them in turn. Mixed in with it all were explosions; like Akashiman firecrackers going off in the midst of a celebration. Kholia shrank back from it all and drove his staff into the ground.

His Honor Guard immediately transmuted in a flash of ugly red and black, turning into a great wall of ash as they went.

"YOU DO NOT SCARE ME!" he cried from his little safe haven.

Then the second volley of shots came in and incinerated it with another thunderclap of fireworks. Kholia staggered back and screamed something that could never be a word, only the crudest possible translation of indignant rage. The Undead took it for what it really was: An order.

The tide of moving corpses immediately spread out from the Seers, washing into the still living section of Tembrethnil Forest like a wave of blood and piss, leaving the security of the fog as they went.

"Guard yourselves!" Vara shouted, and the Rangers did.

Though they went unseen, the Undead kept track of them the same way anyone does when they fight a sniper: Muzzleflash. Ignoring the obvious differences between guns and magic, it was the easy way. Even if the Rangers took a terrible toll on them for it.

"We are being overrun!" Vara declared in the narrow stretch of seconds between a spinning cut and the impalement of her next attacker.

"Not yet!" Eledier replied. "We must hold the tide! Draw him in!"

"Sheer weight of numbers will drag us down!" Vara argued.

"Then we will do the logical thing and take the fight to the enemy," Aldinar finally declared.

Too late, Eledier and Vara called out for him to stop. With a singular lunge forward, Aldinar plowed right through three of his attackers and then leapt high -- higher than any Man ever could -- over a throng of Undead. Back into the frey with a twist, he sent bodyparts flying in every direction.

"Damn it all," Eledier spat, even as she and Vara switched places and enemies.

"Yes...come," Kholia muttered. "COME TO ME, LITTLE ELF!"

And Aldinar did just that. With his spear and arms moving as if they had minds of their own, he plowed a bloodless swath through the thickest part of Kholia's army, until driving right through them all and coming out in the clear, dead space that the necromancer himself occupied. Without a word, without a battlecry, without any sort of pomp or circumstance, the Seer struck.

His blade ruptured Kholia's last barrier spells as easily as a knife pops a rubber balloon, and with a similar sounding pop of air littered with tainted magic. He stepped forward, pivoting about and swinging his spear again--

And Kholia blocked it with his staff. In an instant, he was moving back and Aldinar chased him still. How such an old, weary looking man could ever be that fast, Aldinar would never know. He spun again and leapt this time, thrusting the spear forward at full length. Magic gathered at its tip, and there came a sound like furious angels singing as it struck.

The only problem was that Kholia wasn't there.

Point in fact, the only thing actually there was a horse. A beautiful white horse with lightly browned spots all over it -- a Raiaeran charger of the variety often used by long distance messengers. A very expensive horse by most standards, which is why most messengers had to spend the better part of a decade literally earning one's ownership before they could truly call it their own.

The difference being that the rider was not an Elf and the horse was only there for a split second before its entire body more or less rippled and detonated in an ungodly spray of blood, guts, broken bones and you-honestly-don't-want-to-know. In the process, the rider was hurled screaming right into Aldinar, which sent both of them planting back into the ground in an ugly tangle of limbs and screaming that mixed Raiaeran with...pretty much everything you can pin a name to, really.

For a few minutes, nothing happened in the clearing except for blood and gore raining down and covering just about everything in sight.

Then the Wizard named Caden Law finally lifted his head. He sat up, disentangled himself from Aldinar's twitching form and spent a precious couple of seconds patting himself up and down to make sure nothing important had been blown off. Particularly between the legs, since, y'know. Exploding animal. While he was riding it.

"Ah," Caden said to himself, "I believe I'm going to need a bath after this."

And right on cue, Kholia sat up. Even through the intestinal splatterings all over him, he had horse-shoe marks up and down his back. He turned, and though his eyes could not be seen, there was absolutely no mistaking that kind of glare. Only a Wizard -- fallen or otherwise -- could ever glare like that. It made the hairs stand up on your neck, and in this case it turned the air redder than blood.

Confronted with this, Caden quietly adjusted his gore-stained goggles and then added, "And possibly a change of underwear, yes."

Which of course had to be when Aldinar finally sat upright, shook the cobwebs out and made a few disparraging comments about something awful leaking through his mask. He took about the same amount of time as both Caden and Kholia, considered the situation and finally did something decidedly unElfly.

"Gods-fucking-bloody-hell-piece-of-shit-[i]DAMMIT," he raved, and in Coronian, because Raiaeran is a language that's actually quite barren in terms of profanity. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK."

Caden, who by now was just about over his shock at the whole situation and probably had another ten or eleven seconds before he'd remember what all was chasing him, gave a little golf clap. "Very nicely put. I'm impressed."

"YOU BLOODY GODS DAMNED IDIOT!" Aldinar shouted at him.

"Very, very well said, Sir. You know, you're the first Elf I've ever met who--OHSHIT!"

He just remembered what he was running from. Which is why Caden immediately threw himself to his feet and resumed running like Hell, whilst Aldinar stayed put just long enough to exchange Significant Glares with Kholia. Who by now was completely veiled in pitch black lightning, hovering about three inches off the ground and looking rather pissed off. He held out one hand and his staff slapped wetly into it, leaving a string of intestines to wrap around it from the diamond down.

Try not to think about what splattered with them.

"I...am going...to...CAST YOU INTO THE BLOODY FUCKING PIT!" He howled.

Aldinar did not take this as the sign to leave, but he did it anyway. As all valiant men do, he grabbed his spear and righteously haulled ass in the same direction as Caden: Back to his fellow Seers, who were now surrounded by little pyramids of dead people.

"Yes...RUN! RUN FOR YOUR MISERABLE LI-"

It bears mention that Kholia was not the reason Aldinar decided to cut his losses and run.

The army of undead that pretty well ran over him was.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
9:00 PM, Day of Iron Song

Say what you will about the Elves, and there really is a lot to say about them from every side, but they do like to think of themselves as good guys and will often go out of their way to help you just so they can remind you that they are the good guys. For people who can live up to a thousand years in some cases, they're remarkably childish like that.

But they're still very thorough about some things, to the point that the Raiaeran word for rescue has one very minute syllable to differentiate it from their word for taking someone prisoner. Another delicious irony is that the Raiaeran word for torture is actually the exact same word they use for hospitality, its meaning changed only with context.

Caden Law was painfully aware of these things, which is why he felt equal parts horror, dread, and suicidal when he realized he had woken up inside of a cage and the Elves had done the thorough job of disarming, disarmoring, and downright stripping him down to his 'civies,' which consisted of a pair of black pants and a white shirt, along with his boots and his glasses -- both of which had been set neatly into the corner near the cage door. All of his weapons, wands, armor, and even his Pointy Hat and Wizard's Coat had been set into a very neat row right in plain sight and well out of reach. They'd even gone the extra nine yards of cleaning the leftover grime off the things.

"Well. At least it smells better than the Kebiran Auction House," he mumbled to himself, just before scooching over to the wall and throwing on his boots and glasses.

It was around this time that Caden took stock of his situation. He did so in the manner of a Wizard who had been up shit creek and back again, and who then swam both ways while it was on fire. Which is to say that he was utterly unimpressed and trying desperately to stave off the impending flashback sequence.

The Farstrike Campsight was like any Raiaeran settlement that happened to be uncomfortably close to the woods: In perfect, rub-your-face-in-it harmony with Mother Nature. All in all, Caden's cage was really the only thing out of place about it. It hung a good five or six feet off the ground, held aloft on a bulky iron chain that looped between two intertwining trees. The bars were thick and well polished, the floor was solid and the door was held shut by no less than five different padlocks -- and only two of them were magical.

Incidentally, it was a steel cage. Which would've made Caden downright gleeful since that meant he could simply bust out of it when everyone was asleep. Except everybody knows Elves don't sleep. Which prompted the obvious response of: "Oh gods dammit."

"Are you awake now?" someone asked, in a Perfectly Smooth and Pleasant voice of undefined gender.

"Ah. Yes, yes I am. Care to tell me why I'm locked in a cage?"

"...you don't remember?" the Elf asked.

"No, no. I'm sure I remember. I just want to pretend the memory is a hallucination and I didn't almost get my legs blown off my Elven frag-stones while running for my life from an army of cannibalistic brain-eating zombies trying to martyr me in the name of the Greater Evil."

"Fair enough," said the Elf. "But it was not a hallucination."

"Shit."

"I am Ringo, by the way," and a hand more or less appeared in front of Caden. At which point, he noticed that he wasn't actually alone in the cell. There was an Elf in there with him, albeit slightly see-through and dressed much differently from the Seers and holding a pistol-shaped wand at him in an almost amiable sort of way.

By now, of course, Caden had seen and done and been through enough that this did absolutely nothing to phase him. So he shook Ringo's hand and shrugged.

"Blueraven," he said. "Funny name for an Elf."

"Funny name for a Man."

It bears mention that Ringo was wearing stark white robes with green trim, along with some lightly made steel armor about the chest, shoulders and hands. He(?) also wore a mask of solid steel. All the armor was colored black, the voice carried a hollow echo to it and the eyepieces were made from tinted red glass.

"So. Obvious question time?" Caden asked.

"We are guarding you in four hour increments. It is safest if one of us is actually in here to guard you. I am merely the second guard."

"...question #2, you get three guesses and then I try to stage a riot," Caden pointed out. The wand started glowing. "That was a joke, by the way."

"We stripped you of your weapons and gear in order to minimize the potential threat. We took you alive because it would have been rude not to."

"See, there's the problem. I don't get how I can be a potential threat, but then it would've been rude not to take me alive. I mean, don't get me wrong or anything, I rather like being alive. It just doesn't make any sense."

"Perfectly reasonable. But it bears mention that you were not the one we took into consideration when it came to letting you live. Incidentally," the Elf paused to backhand the bars, then shouted something almost song-like in Raiaeran. Caden recognized it as a call for an executioner.

As if cued by that and that alone, the camp sparked to life. Elves emerged from tents and from hiding in plain sight; at least thirty of them, men and women and only a token few still wore their masks. Among those who appeared, Caden recognized one in particular as the same Elf from before.

Not so for his face, but because he had a rather vengeful aura about him. Literally. It was glowing red.

"Ah," Caden sounded in recognition. "Well, I suppose that makes sense."

"More or less."

"I'd say it's been nice knowing you, but I'd be lying. No offense."

"None taken, as the feeling is quite mutual."

Which, invariably, begs the question of what exactly Caden did to get here in the first place. As the Run For Your Life sequence happened entirely offscreen, allow it to be summarized in short order: Caden ran for his life. So did the Elves. Over the course of approximately two hours, the whole bloody lot of them went fleeing through the forest, across a stream, and finally across a road. Said road had been completely covered in marble-sized magic landmines. Caden had, in a blind and exhausted and perfectly reasonable panic, detonated every single one of them right after crossing the road.

The problem with this is that while he killed a whole shitload of Undead, he had also severely wounded the body of one Seer and the pride of both others. In particular, Aldinar's ego had been shoved right over a quaint little cliff since Caden's incompetence had cost him the chance to kill one necromancer, brought another's entire army into the frey, and wounded Eledier rather badly. When Caden tried to get away from the Elves too, Vara knocked him out cold with the hilt of her sword.

Which leads to Here and Now.

"Get him out of there," Aldinar ordered. On cue, two Rangers simply appeared and started unlocking the door. Ringo gave a few motions with his wand-gun-thing and Caden eventually got the hint to climb out. He did so exactly three seconds before Aldinar would've ordered him to be dragged out kicking and screaming.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Aldinar asked as Caden was jabbed along into standing before him.

"Not a clue!" he replied with a manic little smile. "I've been too busy trying not to die to stop and think," he added as an afterthought.

"Your actions -- your utter incompetence -- have led us right back to square one, and may yet spell the permanent doom of the City of Trenycë. We were on the verge of striking down the necromancer, Kholia Horren, when you showed up and brought another entire army on your heels. You have Zero Stepped us and very well sealed our fates if the Gods do not answer Lady Vara's prayers soon. The deaths of tens of thousands are on your head."

"...actually..."

"Do not try and argue the point, Human. Atone. Accept your death with some shred of dignity and--"

"Go fuck yourself," Caden told him, just before giving Aldinar the old Field Goal Punt. And promptly letting out a borderline girlish scream as his toe went clang against the Elf's codpiece.

"Honorless dog," Aldinar muttered. "I had a feeling you would try that."

"Owowowow--"

"Force him down," Aldinar ordered, and immediately held out a hand to one side. Someone, a Ranger, presented him with his red-bladed spear. At the same time, the Rangers who had guided Caden to stand before him, including Ringo, smacked his legs out from under him and jabbed the combination of a wand and two rifle-like staves into the back and sides of his neck.

As he watched Aldinar slowly and deliberately raise the spear and give it an almost ritualistic flip to aim the point down, it occurred to Caden that he was probably about to die. Seriously. Unless he could improvise something downright brilliant, Aldinar was going to shishkabob him into the ground.

The problem was that over the course of being chased through Tembrethnil Forest, in addition to experiencing his last month of worldly travels and dysfunctions, Caden had basically run out of brilliant things to say or do. So he just did something stupid instead.

Caden reached down to the ground without actually touching it, then threw his hands to the side. In an instant, the ground he knelt upon was airborn and catapulting away from his weapons. Aldinar stabbed into the pothole left in Caden's wake and let out an irate scream, by which point Caden had smacked into another ranger and bowled her over. He landed on top with a roll, threw out one hand and--

The Wand of Nevermorrow shot right into his grasp. By then, a few dozen riflestaves were being aimed at him, but Caden's Wandhand was just that little bit quicker; he swept down and to one side, and the ground from one end of the campsite to the next simply shifted six or seven inches in the direction he pointed. On cue, shots misfired into the air and nothing hit him. A second later, Caden slammed the wand's tip into the ground and tapped into the magic-permeated soil that made Raiaera such a verdant place to begin with; dirt, grass, vines and leaves whipped up and captured the weapon-arms of his would-be executioners en masse.

When it was all over, Caden looked at the lot of them and smiled in an almost relaxed sort of way.

"I can't believe that actually worked," he declared, placing his hands on his hips.

"It did not," said Aldinar, who was now standing behind him with spear in mid-swing for Caden's neck.

"STOP!"

And the spear did. Exactly one millimeter short of the skin on Caden's neck. For a few too many seconds after that, absolutely nothing happened. Caden couldn't breathe, didn't blink, and didn't dare to move so much as an inch to get away from the crimson blade poised to slit his throat and take the rest of his head off with it. The entire time, Aldinar was completely still as well; poised on the very tip of his right foot's toes, his left leg curled up and both arms clutched to the spear as if it were an overly long baseball bat. Even his hair didn't move.

"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Eledier, who had emerged from her tent just in time to put an end to it. She was shirtless, kept modest only by virtue of being bandaged from the waist straight to the chin and then back down to each elbow. How she made such a bloody, crusty thing look like a fashion statement, Caden would never know. Vara was there to brace her. The two of them looked like sisters, though Vara bore a small Elven rune tattooed on each cheek and Eledier was visibly taller even when slouched with injury.

Ignoring the obvious Hot Sisters thought, which would likely haunt him if he lived to see tomorrow night, Caden managed the simple leap to the conclusion that Aldinar was their brother. Probably. Hard to tell with Elves, since so many of them had similarly angled features, just about none of them had facial hair, and all of this particular lot had the old fashioned Pointy Ears of Death. On the bright side, most of them could be categorized by hair color. Sort of. Ish.

"Aldinar. What is the meaning of this," Eledier ordered, and Caden could tell it was such because he heard the distinct lack of a question mark. Wizards are weird like that.

"Could I volunteer that there is no meaning and this guy was just killing me to make himself feel better about having a tiny dick?" Caden asked.

"Now can I kill him?" Aldinar asked afterward, and Caden was accutely aware of the fact that the spear was trembling in rage.

"No," Caden mimed in a tiny voice.

"No," Eledier echoed, in a much bigger one. "Let it go, Aldinar." And just like that, the spear whipped away. It did so in a manner that was somehow entirely too close for comfort. Caden could almost hear the Elf nodding his head to the (elder?) Seer's authority.

"Holy shit," Caden mumbled. "It actually did work." And this was more for insult than anything else.

"What is your name, Wizard?" Eledier asked.

"Blueraven," he answered.

"Blueraven. Revert the camp back to normal, please," she said, and it was entirely too polite to be anything but an order. All the same, Caden hesitantly complied. The ground shifted a few inches, the soil let go of the Elves, and there were a few tense moments before something kin to Normalcy reasserted itself. The Rangers lost interest for the most part, and resumed their chores and recreations in turn, most vanishing from sight as they did.

"Step out of line and I will kill you," Aldinar declared, just before shoving past Caden and heading for one of the tents.

For his part, Caden just stood there like an idiot. His expression bordered on being an emoticon, spiritually similar to the D: face, except with functional eyebrows. And glasses. Which had almost fallen off by now.

"Shaul," Eledier called, and Caden was immediately aware of a see-through Ranger standing next to him with a drawn knife. He wore the full armor, same as many of the others, and Caden assumed him to be on-duty accordingly. "You know what to do."

"Preferably it doesn't involve stabbing me in the kidneys," said Caden.

"Do not be silly," Eledier said with a roll of her eyes, adding that, "We would rather cut those out."

Caden stared at her. Only belatedly did she add, "That was a joke, by the way."

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
9:50 PM, Day of Iron Song

When it comes to the fairer sex, men have a skewed view built upon years of indoctrination, misinterpretation, expectation, libido, and good old fashioned stupidity. The male Wizards of Salvar, particularly the scholastic branch from which Caden Law hails, is particularly infamous for creating men who are downright sexually dysfunctional across a hundred levels (which itself can probably be attributed to ritual circumcision at age five with no painkillers -- and that's just where it starts).

All the same, it isn't entirely unreasonable to assume certain things are going to happen when a barely dressed exotic warrior-princess-type issues a command to her subordinates along the lines of Bring him to my tent! whilst being handled in an incredibly suggestive way by her own sister. Who was also essentially half-nude, for that matter. Generally, this is cause for things like raucous celebration, renewed faith in one's god, the removal of pants, and then a healthy and athletic session of mathematics (count the legs, divide by two, add in the variable of three and so on).

Caden had these expectations. Point in fact, it was the first time he'd been downright hopeful of anything in a few months. The problem is that the Exotic Warrior-Princess of your dreams is supposed to follow up the first order with something like strip him or bring the oil of babymaking or even and fetch me my sheepskin protectives! whereas Eledier simply shot him down and nuked the wreckage with a casually dismissive, "And see to it that his belongings are returned to him."

Frankly speaking, Caden had never been so disappointed to go utterly unscathed in his entire life. Getting his stuff back felt like a slap in the face after his mind's eye had essentially pictured the kind of things that'd get you excommunicated from the Salvic Church. Or possibly just burnt at the stake. Whichever.

All the same, he got himself dressed (muttering obscure profanities the entire time), from the long coat to the pointed Hat, and even the return of his goggles. His scalpel returned to its makeshift hiding space between his sleeves, his Bazaar Wand went to the sleeves opposite, his bowie knife went back to its sheath on his belt...but he stopped short of putting the armor back on.

It had been beaten up, to put it simply. The Conscript Chestplate he'd been given back in Eluriand had seen him through everything from near-stab wounds to getting knocked through a wall to taking a fall from forty feet and Gods know what else. Looking at it now, the thing was little more than a torso-formed pile of dents, dings, scratches and a burn-mark or two. It was tin foil gone Quasimodo. It was dead weight.

And Caden convinced himself that he felt absolutely nothing when he set it right back down on the ground and strapped his Conscript's Sword to his back.

"Not going to take the armor?" asked Shaul, who had been self-appointed as Caden's overseer. There was an edge of passive-aggressive amusement in his voice, but nothing quite like mockery.

"No point in it," Caden said, just before experiencing one of those blinding moments of truly cosmic clarity, "Considering everything I've been through lately, and all the things I still need to do, a dingy piece of conscript's armor isn't going to do me much good."

Shaul shrugged, though Caden couldn't actually see it. They went the dozen or so paces to Eledier's tent in silence, and Shaul (probably) opted to stay outside while Caden brushed through the veils and entered alone.

For what it's worth, it probably speaks to the aforementioned Wizardly Dysfunctions that the first thing Caden noticed upon entering was that the tent was bigger inside than outside. Point in fact, the interior was something like a rustic log cobin with no windows, and veils instead of a door, and an actual working fireplace that just happened to burn a scentless, smokeless green without any tinder to fuel it. There was even a bearskin rug covered with small pillows on the floor. Incidentally, once Caden had noticed all these things, he also noticed the Unbelievably More Important Detail about what occupied the bearskin rug.

Namely Eledier, belly down, in nothing but a flimsy looking skirt. Vara knelt next to her with a wet sponge, also in next to nothing but a flimsy skirt and an equally flimsy looking top.

The only thing that possibly desexualized the image was that Eledier's bandages were being changed and her wounds were being cleaned. Considering that the wounds now amounted to nasty bruises and the cleaning was a bona fide massage, you can't really blame Caden for having a vocal chord trainwreck; the words were there to express what he thought of all this, but there were so many that they just slammed into each other on the way out and were never actually spoken.

"What?" Vara eventually asked, with a voice that was so innocent as to hit the male libido like a laser-guided sledgehammer. Caden buh'd at her for a few seconds. "Did you suffer a head injury in captivity, Blueraven?"

Buh.

"I think he is simply amazed at the magic we use," Eledier replied, propping herself up on her elbows. "I doubt he has seen Elven magic quite like ours."

Buh.

"Please, Blueraven. Be seated. We have much to discuss and only a limited amount of time to do so."

Buh, accompanied by the almost pained act of sitting down.

"...it is not all that difficult or impressive, Wizard," Vara mumbled. "Are you sure this one is worth our time?" she asked.

"He had better be," Eledier sighed, and then sat up. Which would've been gods damned magnificent if not for what she said next. "If he cannot help us, then he will die," she pointed out, as casually as if Caden wasn't even sitting there.

Elven Women 3, Caden Law 0.

Incidentally, he had but one thought about it all. One incredibly bitter little thought.

I hate Elves.

[Caden Law]

Strip away the glamour, Caden thought, and Elves came off as rather childish in ways that were easily missed because of how they presented themselves. To Caden, the subtext of We live for centuries! reads as an almost desperate plea for recognition; a paranoia that all their years amount to nothing unless the 'lesser peoples' know and admire them for it.

With this in mind, and with the pained realization that the sister-seers' fanservice was a genuinely innocent -- re: unintentional -- tease with no substance behind it, Caden kicked off the impromptu briefing with a rather disgruntled sounding, "Well?"

"What?" Eledier asked.

"I'm assuming this is the part where I'm supposed to ask For what purposes have you good and noble folk spared my wretched and miserable and altogether short life?," Caden answered. "Well I'm not polite like that, so cut to the chase already."

"We can kill you, you know," Vara pointed out.

"After all the shit I've been through lately, I can think of worse ways to die," Caden muttered. Eledier chose that moment to intervene -- before Vara or some plucky listener could put Caden's claim to the test.

"Customarily," she began, pushing herself up into a seated position. She wasn't wearing a shirt. Caden couldn't decide whether or not he hated her for that. "We tend to handle these things a bit more...politely, yes. When Elves ask of Men, I'm sure you can understand that the situation has grown dire enough to warrant the rudeness. Apologies either way."

Not accepted, Caden decided not to say, but it was a near thing.

"While you were recovering from the...incident, this afternoon, Vara and I, and our brother, Aldinar--"

"The git with the spear and the little man complex."

"Elf," Vara pointed out.

"Okay, the little Elf complex. With a capital E. Happy now?"

"As I was saying," Eledier cleared her throat. "The three of us went scrying, despite the toll of my injuries. It was a difficult task, conjuring the stones and using them to See. I expect, as you are a Wizard, that I need not explain the process." Caden shrugged. "Right...and perhaps it would be better if I were to start at the beginning?"

Yay! Give me a history lesson! Caden again stopped short of saying, but he sure as hell thought it with a vengeance.

"Tembrethnil Forest is an old and sacred region of Raiaera, integral to parts of our mythology. It is said that our first Bards were taught to play and to make their instruments by the fey kindred who once dwelt here. Even to this day, the trees remain a vital source of fine woods for the creation of musical instruments," she began in one of those voices that simply screams flashback sequence. Caden was too busy picking apart the words to heed the waves currently blighting across the fourth wall of your computer monitor. Incidentally, we're going to ignore them too, because Caden's analysis has more narrative meat to it.

Fey kindred, as any travelled arcanist will tell you, is a polite nickname given to the nymphs and satyrs who make everyone want to flip out and burn a meadow. The Elves of Raiaera are among the only people who can talk about them like that with a straight face. Chances are, the Bards learned not by being taught, but by trial and error based around observation. The Fey are not happy to share secrets for free, after all, and the Elves are just that little bit too prudish to trade sex for knowledge.

Vital source was another way of stating that the forest was used for logging. Creation was another way of saying logging and woodworking, and the Elven words for musical instruments are almost always closely related to their words for weapons.

While Caden was at it, he thought back to old and sacred, which was another way of pleasantly justifying a territorial claim by masking it with religious importance.

Eledier didn't even notice Caden's cynical look, and continued speaking. "In ages past, we protected the forest with great dedication...but times have changed, Wizard. Today only my people and I, the Walkers of Nenaebreth, still stand watch over these woods. And recently, we have been put to the test."

Protected is the noble variant of simple guard-duty. Shining Praetorians are protectors, filthy Watchmen are guards. It also hinted that Nenaebreth was basically nothing more than a self-important logging village without any other economy to sustain itself, and the Seers had all inherited their jobs because they couldn't handle anything else...though they could've also (and more likely did) take it out of some sort of ancestral obligation instead.

"The Necromancer's servants came. Kholia Horren, a fallen Wizard sworn to that foul banner, bringing with him an army of the dead to sack and plunder these lands."

Which Caden didn't really have much of a spin on, for the simple reason that a small shred of morality kept him from thinking, You got your asses kicked and his sweatshop zombies log the forest a hell of a lot faster than you ever could.

"For the past months now, we have engaged a hit-and-fade campaign of attrition against his push into Tembrethnil. For every one of us to fall, we take fifty of them in turn, but it's not enough. His forces simply outnumber us too much. Vara, Aldinar and I had laid out a plan to remedy that be removing Kholia himself from the equation; we were to strike him down, had Aldinar not broken rank. Had you not shown up when and how you did, we probably still would have."

Caden had a field day with this one. He felt absolutely no guilt for any of it.

Engaged was a nice way of saying fought for our lives. Hit-and-fade was hit-and-run, Bowdlerized since running is cowardice, even though it all boiled down to such an uncivilized concept as guerrilla warfare. When Kobolds hit and run, they're cowards and savages. Humans do it and it's just plain dishonorable. When Elves do it though, they're graceful, beautiful and deadly. The very way in which Eledier spoke, Caden noted, was all but designed to put the best spin on things. It was like she was subtextually begging him to not give her people and their tactics a harsh judgement, while simultaneously trying to heap blame on him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"While you recovered from the turmoil of the day, Vara and I set my wounds and went to scrying...but the fog has grown thicker, and we were only able to discern a few things about the ill tidings you've wrought on us."

Eledier looked him in the eye, and Caden put aside his analysis of her language. The preface was over now. Time for some meat.

"Tell us Blueraven," she ordered with a certain gentleness to it. "Tell us all that you know of the Death Lord, Ghez Felhammer."

Now we begin the flashback...

[Caden Law]

...except it's not actually when or where you think it'll be. Rather than pressing the rewind button for a week straight, we're only going back by about an hour or two. Maybe three, four if you're just feeling thorough about it. The truth is that the When is a very general thing, while the Where is most assuredly not. The Why is also rather important.

As Xem'zund's power spread, it faced the inevitable problem of dissipation. To make up for this, he employed lieutenants who were coming to be known as Death Lords. From horrors that raced the bloody tracks of nightmares to men and women who had long since sold their souls, and even a few things that were only vaguely humanoid anymore. Counted among the living Death Lords, a necessary grey area in Xem'zund's hierarchy, was Kholia Horren. As previously explained, he was a fallen Wizard of moderate skill and standing; a perfectly Average man in a perfectly Average order with perfectly Average talent and power. In the years prior to the Necromancer's rise though, Kholia went rogue. He parted from Salvar, took up the darkening arts of necromancy, and eventually attracted someone bigger and meaner than he could ever dream of being.

Namely, Xem'zund himself. Cue a little Name-selling bargain to keep from being tortured to death or worse, and Kholia now filled a role that could best be described as Warehouse/Factory Manager for Satan. Except with less dignity, no health benefits, and a downright shitty retirement plan that included possible vassal lichdom or sacrifice to something with a lot of tentacles and no concept of personal space. Kholia dealt with the whole thing the way that such men do: By being utterly miserable and sadistic and going on the occasional killing spree. He was now a proper Necromancer, forever convinced that he was being denied true glory because his master feared his potential, and forever aware that the sale of his Name meant he could do nothing to change it.

The only comfort Kholia took in the entire sodden affair was that Xem'zund gave him a proper Arcane Tower. It consisted of a great stone obelisk, hollowed out and covered with Durklanic runes and sigils. Most of them were covered in turn by a sprawling mess of vines covered in metal barbs, and the stump of a massive tree served as the base of the Tower, allowing it to move at a slow but stable pace. More or less hanging just above the stomp was a full-blown logging station, worn about the Tower like an ugly skirt that had been tacked on as somebody's idea of a cheap way of cutting costs in time and material. Trees went in to be stripped of unnecessary things like leaves, and to be covered in fire-proofing paints as their branches were drilled through to produce howling and whistling noises with every movement. When they left, they usually carried bits of decaying skin from the clumsy corpses who worked them.

In all, it was an efficient but uncomfortable way of getting by.

"Then came the raids," Kholia explained as he stood before a dimly lit fireplace in his study. His Voice had diminished for reasons you're going to learn soon enough.

At first they went unnoticed. A zombie fell over here, a limb detached over there...things you don't really put much stock in when your workforce consists of rotting corpses whose recognition of hygiene is as an alien memory and whose diet consists of bwaaaaaiiiiiinsh and 180-proof embalming fluid. Eventually though, some Smart Zombie noticed that one of the corpses had an arrow in it.

...and pretty much everything went downhill from there. It wasn't that the Elves, as Kholia eventually recognized them, were making a real difference. For every one of his workers they killed, he just spent a few minutes desanctifying and resurrecting them again. For every one they amputated, it just meant a few more minutes sewing the limb back on with whatever was convenient. All it did was slow Kholia's operation down and cost him more and more of his already nonexistent hair -- which meant that his armpits were going bald, since his scalp had given up the ghost and Wizards aren't generally known for manly facial hair until they've hit the Greyhame Years.

"...I had an opportunity to...put an end to this whole ordeal earlier today...

"But then you showed up, bringing that thrice-damned Wizard with you."

Here, Kholia paused and deliberately stalk-hobbled over to the table he usually ate his meals at. Most of the time, he was at the head, and his fellow diners consisted of one or two relatively Intelligent corpses who just sat there giving status reports and making idle, unimaginative chatter. Now he stood at the end, taking a dirty gobbet's worth of cheap wine and downing it like a shotglass full of vodka.

"Does that answer your question, Lord Felhammer?" He spat the words without even bothering to hide his disdain. And really, you couldn't blame him too much.

Wizards and Barbarians rarely get along with each other. When both are grinding incarnations of evil and one is pathetically and bitterly envious of the other, it's probably a miracle that they're not attempting murder (yet).

Now meet the reason why Kholia felt so inadequate that his Voice had diminished. His name is Ghez Felhammer, and in the words of a much wiser and articulate man, He will fuck your shit up. His history is that of a typical barbarian warlord; all axes and savagery, and then he went looting through an old Durklan Temple, got dooped by a sage and wound up meeting Xem'zund in person not long afterward. But you don't reach an age where you can contemplate a mid-life crisis without being smart.

Ghez cut a deal with Xem'zund, but he did it from a much better bargaining position than Kholia. This is why he was sitting in Kholia's chair with a succubus diddling herself on the armrest and a bodyguard of rather nasty looking suits of armor to accompany him. The entourage was wholly unnecessary of course, as Ghez himself was nearly seven feet tall and bulky enough that his muscles probably had muscles. He was a red-clad Hercules from Hell, wearing plate armor with gold trim and a pair of big, mean looking axes dangling haphazardly from chains on his shoulderpauldrons; presumably because sheathing them was useless and the chains were suitably long that it didn't interfere with their use.

Topping the armor off was a layered cape; the inner layers and lower length fashioned out of something's skin and the outer layers and upper length fashioned from mammoth's hide. The helmet was archetypally viking, with bull's horns curving straight up and tipped with gold, and the face exposed only through a narrow T-shaped slit for the eyes and the center.

The armor and axes, incidentally, were hand-forged with the full extent of Xem'zund's knowledge and power. Damned things that were about as tough as Adamantine despite being lighter than Mythril.

If the contrast isn't implicit enough already: Kholia dealt with Xem'zund and got screwed. Ghez dealt with Xem'zund and did the screwing. Literally. The succubus and the armor were only the beginnings of what the Necromancer had given him. Afterwards came all sorts of other gifts; from the armies to the vows of immortality to the virginities of everything that struck his fancy and darkened gods only know what else.

Incidentally, Ghez had obviously barged in and taken over and was very much enjoying helping himself to a drumstick the size of a human thigh (which may have actually been a human thigh). One of his retinue handled the helmet in the meantime. Unique for a barbarian, he waited long enough to finish eating before finally deigning to answer Kholia's question.

"More or less," he said, his own Voice remarkably laid back compared to Kholia's. It bears mention that the Voices of Death Lords rarely cut out.

"Good, good. That pleases me so very, very much. Now please, Lord Felhammer, tell me what in the Nine bloody fucking Pits of Hades are you doing here?"

Whether Kholia's outburst was bravery, insolence, or an attempt at suicide, Ghez didn't know or care. While the room shook and the succubus fell writhing in pleasure to the floor, Ghez just kept chomping away on his legbone. Again, he spoke only when he'd finished swallowing a mouthful.

"The Wizard. Xem'zund apparently has it in for him. All the Death Lords were given some specific instructions to torture him to death and bring his head to the Obsidian Spire in the Red Forest. Didn't you know?" Kholia twitched a little. "Ah. I guess you would be a little out of the loop, being out here and all. Where should I begin, Lord Horren?" Ghez asked, in a tone just civilized enough to past for elegant mockery.

"Wherever."

Again, the room shook. The succubus gave off a loud moan and a wet schlick. The bodyguards did nothing. Ghez paused long enough to take a sip of wine.

"We came upon the Wizard or he came upon us a few days ago, as we were about to march on Mirdan Timbreth. At the time, I figured...what the hells, eh? Just one Wizard on a tired looking horse. Should be an easy kill, then I could take the town and return to Xem'zund's Spire for my next reward. It didn't exactly go as planned, to put it...mildly," said Ghez after one of those short pauses that spelled out in bold type, THIS MAN IS NOT TRULY CIVILIZED.

Another sip of wine, another schlickschlickschlick from the succubus, and Ghez continued unfettered.

"We chased that little shit for hours. Then days. How he spurred the horse on that long, I'm going to tear out his fingernails until he tells me. He only stopped for a little while when we hit the northeast edge of the forest, then he ran wide around to the area you'd cleared. I figured we could certainly take him out this time, right?

"Wrong. The fool has a devil's luck and the wits to match. I think that's why Xem'zund wants him killed so badly. He gave us the slip with geomancy and arcana, threw spells at us for hours and then ran again. By then, I'd established a pretty good corridor around the areas you'd cleared. I figured we could drive him back into the thicker woods, where he'd have to stay on the road or go on foot into the forest; both scenarios where I could run him down at my liesure.

"Again, wrong. He passed right through the heart of your encampment without so much as a scratch, and I'm sure you know the rest. You still wreak of horse bowels."

Kholia twitched again. The look on what little remained visible of his face could only be described as homicidally petulent

"So, Lord Horren, that's the gist of it. Until I've killed or driven the Wizard out, I'm going to stay here and bolster your encampment's defenses. Any further questions?" Ghez asked in the polite tone of someone who wouldn't answer a thing.

"None," Kholia muttered. It was a good thing his eyes could not be seen through the metal plate fused to his face. There was murder in his eyes, you (don't) see. Murder and so much worse.

Ghez gave him a smile. Kholia bitterly returned it. A thousand miles away, their master chuckled to himself without ever thinking why.

[Caden Law]

Caden's summary of things was an ironic contrast to that of the Barbarian Death Lord: Short and straight to the point.

"He spent a week trying to kill me. That's about all I know, sorry."

"You cannot be serious," Vara muttered.

"Abso-bloody-lutely serious. Wrong place, wrong time, OH CRAP I DON'T WANNA DIE!, et cetera," Caden replied, with the proper hand gestures and facial expressions to match. He'd gotten so used to looking panicked lately that it was second nature. A few more near-death experiences and he could probably start looking for a career in expendable background characters in the next Cloverfield movie. "I'm so out of the loop, I don't even know why you called him a Death Lord."

There was a very, very long silence after that. Vara looked at Eledier, Eledier looked at Caden, and neither bore any remotely readable expression in the process. Eventually, Vara started to sigh and Eledier cut her off with a clipped explanation.

"The Death Lords are Xem'zund's chief lieutenants, Blueraven; the generals and champions of his undead legions. Some are alive, traitors to Life itself with every breath they dare steal from the Star-Lady's breast. Most are quite dead, mere automatons raised back to unlife and allowed some modicum of free thought so that he can delegate tasks to them and focus elsewhere. Others gained free thought whether the Necromancer allowed them to or not, and were seduced back into his service accordingly. Others still are neither alive, nor dead. We do not know what to make of them, nor do we want to. Nonetheless, we believe the Necromancer has Bound all of his Death Lords directly to his will, further ensuring their loyalty. We just do not know how."

It was around this time that Caden finally reached up and placed a hand on the tender space at the back of his neck, where a certain assassin's initials had once been carved. Now there were only unnervingly squared patches of scar tissue where Caden had gone at it with a knife. Two squares, one for each letter Viola Darkstalker had carved into him.

"I think I know," he offered, eventually. "A little bit, anyway. You're right that he's got some kind of connection to all of them, but I can't say for sure how good his control is."

And just like that, the Sister Seers stared a hole right through him.

"Continue," they said at once.

So Caden pulled down the brim of his Wizard's Hat and told them. The whole truth, starting with the simplest and emptiest words of them all, "I was there when Eluriand fell."

...and he was. Caden had fought and bled and almost died in defense of that city, from one of its bridges to its outermost wall and everywhere in between. He had tasted power at its purest and most vengeful, and in doing so, he had Seen things that Wizards of his level normally cannot. He had encountered several of the Forgotten One's Death Lords, back in the days when they didn't carry such fancy titles. The Nightmares, and the Assassin, and the Berserker too; all bound and connected by thin strands of powerful magic, similar to but different from the strands that bound all of Xem'zund's army to his will. Their lights burned bright and ethereal, their Names burning an aural display high above the empty pits where their souls should've been. For each, the relationship was different; some carried the whispers of promises and others bore the roars of domination, but all were united for that one terrible cause.

When Caden was done explaining all of this to Vara and Eledier, in much more technical terms pertaining to the mechanics of the arcane, the younger sister finally dared to ask the obvious: "Did you see Him, Wizard? Did you see the Necromancer?"

"Sure," Caden replied with a shrug. "I think I even hurt the son of a bitch."

More silence. And it was much heavier and downright pregnant with building anticipation. The sisters looked to each other and shared one of those tiny, all too Elven smiles that made Caden want to run screaming from the forest as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Perhaps you do have some use then, Blueraven," Vara offered. "Because the Necromancer has obviously put a price on your head."

Click-click-click went the tiny little cogs in Caden's brain. "Ah," he said, and understood the rest in an instant. "Well, yeah. I guess that makes sense. Hadn't thought about it like that though, on account of the whole OH GODS I DON'T WANNA DIE! thing."

"Perfectly understandable," said Vara with a nod.

"Indeed," said Eledier with a smile.

"I don't like the way you two're looking at me," said Caden, who really should've been inching for the door right about now.

"If it's any consolation," Eledier said, voice suddenly husky in the kind of way that made surprise conjugations sound downright conjugal. "You'd probably like the reason why."

"Does it involve knives and blood oaths and promises of great glories in the righteous fight for freedom or survival?"

"Yes," said Eledier.

"Not interested. Thanks though!"

"It also involves the prospect of a bloody hard threesome," said Vara, who was slightly more aware of the way human men thought.

"...ah," said Caden, and that pretty much settled it.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
Pre-Dawn, Day of the Screaming Inverted Mongoose

The following entry was written in some of the ugliest, angriest, most eraser-marked handwriting of Caden's life. Sadly, this cannot be translated into message board text formats. Use your imagination.
Prospect: Potential things that may come to pass. Usually in a positive light. Raiaeran Equivelent: Vyraes.
Bloody: Conversationally used to intensify the meaning of something. Traditionally used as an adjective to describe something covered in blood. Raiaeran Equivelent: Shydia.
Threesome: Arguably one of the best things ever. Raiaeran Equivelent: Saerysti, which is actually derived from and still rarely used as a military term.

Elves:

Here, the writing became completely illegible, angry looking chickenscratch ending with a slight tear in the page, doubtlessly caused by pencil lead breaking through and then snapping apart. There are corresponding dents the pages before and after this one, where the book may have been slammed shut, thrown down and stomped on with a broken pencilhead still inside of it. The presence of footprints on the front cover validates this assumption.

Not found within is the obvious translation.

Elven Women 4, Caden Law 0.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Campsight, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiera
Day of the Screaming Inverted Mongoose

Some time later -- presumably after a lot more obscenities, a bit more stomping and a good bout of self-abuse with the flavorless drek the Farstrike Elves called food -- Caden calmed down. Enough to sit back down, open up his boot-marked Grimoire and resume writing. Magical theory at first. This hit just one snag, around mid-morning, when an unidentified Elf crept up on him and pointed out the obvious: You can't do that. It goes against Byrioth's Law of Quantum Consternation and Valai's Laws of Power Constipation, the Elf pointed out, and Caden immediately assumed this to be because Byrioth and Valai had both been Elven Wizards of a time long ago.

He also assumed that the laws had their names strapped on because both had been violently killed by not adhering to them. Human Wizards had long since found the loopholes to get around it, but Elves...

"Bugger off or I'll turn you into a sheep," Caden had muttered.

Then he spotted the tiny little error that the Elf was referring to and corrected it. Bitterly. While the Elf stood behind him and nodded in the way that Perfectly Wisened Mentor-types do. Then the Elf wandered off and Caden flipped a few pages to the Personal Diaries section of his Grimoire, sat down with his back to a tree, and started writing.

Words are failing me right now. They are honestly, truly, utterly failing me.

I have been Had. Duped. Bamboozled. Tricked. Frauded, defrauded, refrauded, and then outright conned -- all using nothing but the truth. As explained in my recent entry, I was taken in by the intricacies of Raiaeran language. While I write these entries in my native tongue of Salvar -- and less frequently in the common tongues of Corone -- I have spent the past days speaking nothing but Raiaeran. Except for profanities. Of which I have many. But to explain...

Seer Vara of Farstrike basically promised me a good hard threesome if I'd swear temporary allegiance to, and membership in, the Farstrike Council. The problem is that she said in Raiaeran and the words she used are all double-talk for military actions and I walked right into it like a striking idiot. Which means I'm now oath-bound to stay with this merry little warband of zealots and fools until there's an explosive climax in their pitiful war for a forest. Which can effectively mean anything. I may literally die out here if I'm not careful.

And I can't just break and run because a Wizard's Oath is binding in a magical sense. To run now would be to become a Warlock. I might live, but I won't be Me anymore. Blueraven would die. I probably wouldn't even get to keep my Hat or this book. Tempting as that is, I'm too afraid of losing my Self to put it on a higher pedestal than my life.

"Pride goeth before the Fall." It's an old Denebrillian axiom. It fits.

Less depressingly, this gives me a small chance to study and deconstruct a sect of Elves who differ from the norm. Oh, don't get me wrong: They're a bunch of pompous jackasses and I hope they all die, but they're interesting pompous jackasses and I hope they all die.

In particular, they exemplify (eximplify? exemplefy? sic) the Worse and Worst things about our inbred pointy-eared striketard cousins. They follow a set of stock Olden Ways called Pathwalking, summarized to me as, "All journeys are a thousand steps, but all will invariably return to Zero. There, you will find Eternity."

Whatever that means.

Striking idiots. All of them.

Here, the writing stopped. Caden leaned back against the old tree, letting the book rest with its pages hidden against his stomach. Hat stooped somewhere and the shadows framing his face in a decidedly undramatic fashion, he watched as several Councilmen (Councilors?) assembled near the center of the encampment. Men and women with a two-to-one ratio and inhuman good looks for all. They wore light armor, when they wore any at all. Most had metal masks -- like Ringo -- hanging from one hip, and all carried an odd type of staff that reminded Caden of the drawings and examples he'd seen of Aleraran long rifles.

Standing before the line was the male Seer, Aldinar. He dressed to the nines in his normal clothing, but forsook the armor for the moment. Like the men and women before him, he wore a mask like an honor badge on his right hip. He held his spear with one hand, matching the parade stances of his Rangers. He was shouting instructions at them, in a harsh voice that made the normally soft, melodic Raiaeran sound downright barbaric.

Two by two, the Elves immediately began pairing off and sparring through relatively simple motions: Left angle, right angle, center angle, flat angle, repeat in reverse. After a time, this took on the added presence of footsteps; each Elf stepped left or right simultaneously, always circling one another. A little longer and they'd built up a rhythm that sounded like an Akashiman drum chorus.

"THOL VALYSTIA!" Aldinar eventually shouted, and the stick-chorus suddenly broke into something a lot more and less violent.

When the Rangers struck at each other now, their movements were in tightly controlled thrusts and wide, body-pivoting swings. Everything had a fluid acrobatic feel to it, and the baggy clothing, the capes they wore, and even their hair on their heads seemed to trail every single step, strike and dodge accordingly. Here and there came flashes of tonedeaf light, always silver-purple, as low-level magicks were brought into the melee. A more modern mind would've interpreted it as the Raiaeran equivelent to bayonet training. Caden simply interpreted as self-defense.

Up until the moment he realized that Aldinar didn't have an opponent, and was staring at him quite intently. Listen close enough and you might hear the banjos from Deliverance kicking in right about now.

"What?" Caden asked.

"Participate," Aldinar ordered.

"I'd rather not," Caden said, then deigned to wave an arm around. "Scrawny academic, y'see. I bruise easy too, and blood red just doesn't match with--"

Rule Number One for dealing with a Salvic Wizard: Do not touch the Hat. Do not ever touch the Hat.

Aldinar did not touch the Hat, though. Which was good. Except for the part where he impaled it to the side of the tree with his spear. Which was bad. Very, very bad. For all sorts of reasons, you see. A Wizard's Hat serves any number of functions; from travelbag to fashion statement to status symbol to arcane control device and every possible thing you can think of in between. Incidentally, it's not at all uncommon for a Wizard to be homicidally possessive of his or her Hat.

Which leads us into what unfortunately happened next.

"I'LL KILL YOU FOR THAT!"

Aldinar tried to laugh -- operative word being tried. He got the first red Ha! out, then it turned into a blinding scream of surprise as he leapt aside to avoid a six foot spike that simply shot out of the ground without worning. He landed and another one shot out and he dodged this too, until suddenly the ground turned to a sloshing green mud at his feet and there was no jumping this time. Caden had his Wands out, and arcana danced around their tips in a maddened set of rings and sigils, showcasing all the colors in the rainbow and a few that human eyes aren't meant to perceive. The air pre-emptively smelled like burning flesh, and Caden's shadow all but whitewashed into the ground behind him.

Wands pointed forward with mirrored thrusts, and there came a blast of lightning and a surging spiral of colored winds, the space between each shade a razor-thin sliver of black and gold.

By all rights and wrongs, it should've ended there. Would've ended there, certainly could have ended there. And technically, it sort of did. Except for the part where Aldinar didn't get a hole blasted through his chest while his upper body was being flayed to the bone between the neck and hips. This little pocket disaster was averted solely because several nonexistent gemstones happened to be in the right place at the right time to first absorb the cutting winds and then sap energy from the lightning.

Then Vara appeared, flourished her sword into what remained of the lightning spell and cast it skyward. It was gone just as quickly as Caden had cast it, and at the same time there were a few dozen spellrifles aimed right at him.

"Stand down!" Vara ordered. Aldinar stared back at her from there the mud had entrapped him, and over her shoulder to where Caden was still very obviously trying to work out ways to kill him on the spot. "What is the meaning of this?!"

"He stabbed my Hat. MOVE," Caden ordered, and the force of his Voice was such that several Elves faltered. Aldinar was one of them; he couldn't meet Caden's eyes for the shame of it. Vara was not, and she certainly could meet Caden's eyes.

"It is a hat," she pointed out.

"It's my Hat, you little shrue," Caden spat at her. "He stabbed my Hat because--"

"You're acting like the hedge-necromancer," Eledier called from her tent's entryway.

Almost immediately, Caden sagged a little. He put the Wand of Nevermorrow back into his belt after a few seconds, and then turned to get his Hat. To do that, he had to remove Aldinar's spear. It was a well-made spear, mind you, with a great many enchantments to secure its use. Nothing short of a Seer should've been able to touch it.

Caden grabbed the damn thing, yanked it out and flung it aside like so much rubbish. He retrieved his hat in the process, reaching inside to straighten it out and then staring angrily at the damages.

"What caused this?" Vara asked, as Eledier was too busy catching her breath.

"I was trying to motivate him!" Aldinar pointed out. This would've gotten him a round chewing out from all involved, except for Caden cutting pretty much everyone off with his Voice.

"I'm not subtle, Aldinar." He considered the Hat for a few moments, and the holes running clear through it. Then he added, "Nor am I forgiving."

"Then take your frustrations out in fair martial combat!" Aldinar spat.

In less time than it takes to blink, the ground had swallowed him up to his neck, spinning him around to face Caden from behind and between his own sister's legs. The Wizard gave him a terminally dismissive glance -- the kind that often preceeds the fall of nations and the martyrdom of kings.

"I'm not very fair either," he pointed out, willfully ignorant of the dozens of spellrifles charged and glowing at his vitals.

"That is enough," Eledier declared. And really, it was. Caden collected his Grimoire from the ground and tucked it into his coat. The entire time, he kept the Bazaar Wand out in one hand, clutching his tattered Hat in the same fingers. The Sister Seers regarded him coolly, and their Brother simply struggled with his body mostly submerged and his tongue held in check more by wisdom than fear.

"I have need of you, Blueraven," said Eledier, and there was nothing remotely alluring to her voice this time.

Feh, was the sound Caden made in response. He stalked over to the entrance of her makeshift domicile and went inside without another word. Eledier remained standing in place long enough to nod at Vara, then vanished from sight as well.

"...a little help, sister?" Aldinar eventually asked.

"No. I think you deserve to get out of this one on your own," said Vara, just before sparing a glance at the Rangers and asking, "Well?"

Right on cue, they got back into the thick of things. Click, clack, glowy bit here, swing and a miss there.

"...do you really think it was a wise decision to bring him onboard?" Aldinar asked. He was squirming his shoulders about now, not complaining in the slightest.

"Eledier seems to think so. I have my doubts, but it is best to remember the old words: Touch not the stuff of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."

"...you made that up," Aldinar muttered.

"Only somewhat," Vara replied.

"And this one has all the subtlety of an earthquake," Aldinar added.

"That too," said Vara.

"And you're enjoying this entirely too much, sister dear."

"I confirm nothing," said Vara.

Guess who the older sibling is?

[Caden Law]

"Question, Wizard."

"Shoot."

"What is the importance of the hat?" Eledier asked, and was rather patient when you consider that Caden wasn't speaking to her about anything else until he finished repairing it.

"Hat," he corrected.

"That's what I said."

"Punctuation," Caden explained. He added, "It's a Wizard thing."

"Ah. What are you doing?"

"Alchemy."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a terrible sewer and Alchemy does better at repairing the damages without compounding them. There's magic at work, remember?"

Which is where we finally stop the chatter and take a look at what Caden is actually doing. Alchemy, you see, is traditionally regarded as one of the middle-grounds between the duelling forces of Science and Magic. It's one of the harried little diplomats that allow them to function cohesively under the right circumstances. You can do a lot of things with Alchemy, but the most important is transmutation. Which Caden pretty much sucked at, since he just used it to get past little things like sewing and repairing broken windows.

He went about using it on the pointy blue Hat by scraping a spare piece of bark along the floor until there were three circles; an inner one, a middle one, and an outer one. Then he swiped Eledier's inkpot and began fingerpainting various symbols into the space between each circle. First were the runes, and then the mathematical symbols, and then the things that looked like they could be either. When he was done, he fingerpainted one last circle -- smaller than any of the others -- on the outside, and crossed through it in the same motion.

A split second later and the ink was gone. The damage to the Hat was completely undone, as threads merged into threads and frayed ends simply ceased to be. There wasn't anything particularly flashy to it by the standards of Magic, though the ink did burst into a white-blue flame void of temperature or sound for a few seconds. When it was done, Caden inspected the Hat, reached inside to make sure everything was correct, and finally put his Grimoire back inside.

"Right then," he said, as he was putting it back on. "What did you want me for?"

"Questions and answers. Let us start with the Hat, since you never answered me about it."

By then, Caden had taken a seat in one of the room's chairs. It didn't strike him as being odd that the interior of the Seers' Quarters was entirely too big to fit into the trunk of a Tembrethnillian tree; Elves were fey things, after all, and Raiaera itself did so love to shower them with favors and conveniences because of it.

"What about it?" he asked.

"Exactly," she answered, having long since taken to sitting with legs folded on the floor. Caden didn't blame her. The wounds to her back hadn't healed yet.

"It's a Wizard thing," Caden replied. "Equal parts status symbol, safety gear, personal trademark and carry-all. Don't touch it."

Eledier nodded.

"Now can we talk about something else please?"

"Kholia Horren," Eledier replied. "His Sorcerous Name. What could you do if you knew it?"

"Varies. Sorcerous Names can have any function or none at all, and they can change when the circumstances are right. At its core, it's part of a trifecta of Birth Name, True Name, Sorcerous Name. Know all three and you've basically got a line on someone's soul, right through any defenses he can conjure, and there's nothing he can do to stop you. Even not having a soul at all isn't proof against what you can do with all three Names."

"And this is why you have not told us your actual name, Caden Law." Note the eyebrow twitch. Eledier shrugged. "The Radasanth Reader delivers, my friend."

"Peachy," was all Caden bothered to say to that. "Hopefully the ten billion Evil Overlords I'm doubtlessly going to end up stomping the toes of aren't avid readers of it.

"That said, the Sorcerous and Birth Names only have as much power as you give them. For Wizards, we invest minimal power into them. They're there just so we can have a few extra hours to block an incoming curse or, worst case scenario, to send a return shot at whoever's casting it. Warlocks tend to put more worth in theirs, mostly because of how they set up their defenses against each other. You can't sneak a curse on a Warlock unless you know his Name."

"And if you knew Kholia's Sorcerous Name -- could you kill him from a distance?" Eledier asked.

Caden stared at her.

"Could you?"

"Are you suggesting that I cheapshot an evil Wizard to death without ever giving him a chance to fight back?" Eledier shrugged. "That's the single most dirty, underhanded, dishonorable way of thinking I've ever encountered in an Elf. I like it. But there's this one problem, Elly--"

"Do not call me that."

"What's his Name?"

[Caden Law]

Generally, there is a problem that comes with trying to fight Evil Doers at their own game. It's a very simple problem, and it can be overcome, but there's always a downright rancid aftertaste left as a result.

Bad Guys tend to be better than Good Guys at doing Bad Things.

For historical and social references, Wizards of Salvar are already a morally ambiguous lot. Put on your classic nine-alignment Good-Evil/Lawful-Chaotic chart, they'd typically hit on or close to the more negative aspects of True Neutral. They were a lot fashioned by time and tradition to hold positions of status and power; they were the atomic bombs the King and Church would drop in a war and they were the true, not-always-blue weathermen who kept the blizzards at bay. Such responsibilities breed pride. Pride breeds envy. Envy breeds all kinds of compromises with any moral code. A Wizard could technically consort with demons even worse than what most Warlocks dealt with, and he could damn well get away with it if he played his cards right. There were only a few laws that truly could not be broken, and that there was even a dividing line between generic Wizards and Warlocks was because most Wizards knew how to terminally break the spirit of those laws without damaging the letters.

Sure, you have the moral hard-asses like that old rogue, Greyspine, but for the most part...

Bad Guys tend to be better than Good Guys at doing Bad Things. Because they've been doing it longer. Because they've got more talent for it. Because they've cut the deals and sold the souls and spilled the blood and dug out enough of an ethical pit that they can do it faster. And because most of them simply don't give a damn about the art of what they do; results are king.

Thus it is that, at the very same second Caden and Eledier were doing a half-hearted masochism tango across the thin grey line between Good and Bad, we do our own hop, skip and jump across the much thicker grey fog of doom enveloping the region of Tembrethnil currently controlled by Xem'zund's Death Lords. Back to the grubby little hedge-necromancer's Magic Tower, currently trundling along at a suitably glacial pace. More specifically, back to the Fallen Wizard's sanctum arcana -- more commonly known as a Study. With all sorts of books, ranging from a shoddy copy of the Tome of Nyan (written fifth-hand on catskin, obviously) to a book that had no name to be conveyed in any living language.

The Study also doubles, quite literally, as a War Room. If you'd like a proper tour, keep reading.

Firstly, note the eight sides to it. Two sides, exactly opposite one another, have doors. One door leads into and out of the Study, the other leads to nowhere you'd like to hear about. Five of the remaining six walls are occupied by shelves holding all those aforementioned books interspersed with the tools of the arcane; skull here, an exotic jar-thing there, stuff like that. The last wall was occupied primarily by a fireplace and a stand, holding Kholia's staff of power in place. Note that the staff is floating, and note that its holding consists of a heavy, sturdy looking chain.

Scattered about the floor in a perfect pattern are tables, not unlike what you'd expect of a mad scientist. There's a single old chair, moving about on sinuously ebon legs, and at the center of it all is an array forged out of bone-powder and tarnished silver. The kind that got that way due to an excess of bloody staining after it was set down. The array resembles an eight-point star, each corner tipped by a piece of vertebrae, and each hollow marked by the presence of an ugly glass jar fused to the floor. Try not to look into the jar. Something awful might look back at you. Or into you. Or both.

Within this Study, you will find two major players in our little fiasco, as well as a third slab of cannonfodder that's only barely worth an introduction.

First of the batch is Ghez Felhammer's personal succubus attendant, Passion Near, whose actual name is something that can yield multiple orgasms just by writing it and who Kholia refers to simply as Sion (which is actually pronounced Shun. It's a Wizard thing). Insofar as succubi go, she was quite literally the total package with room and longing for everything that goes in it, in any way it can be made to fit. Long, slender legs and shapely hips, pale skin and an hourglass figure, and breasts that were just big enough to outsize a normal woman -- complete with a perfect shape, the perfect look and feel of weight, and the perfect amount of jiggling and bouncing or lack thereof. Add onto this a face like your highschool sweetheart gone raunchy and just fucking bad.

Literally.

Now put on black lipstick and nail polish, color the hair stark white with curtains to match the drapes, and put in a single stud on the left side of the nose, then stick on an almost cute pair of devil's horns sticking out from somewhere behind her bangs. Add to this a heated, impassioned look and a constant level of arrousal that makes nymphomania look numb and unfeeling. As a foreword, Sion will likely spend most of this little Event getting herself off in the corner next to the fireplace. She's been using both hands and has no shame and no reservations about...pretty much anything.

And yes, that means what you think it means.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Moving along, you'll find Kholia Horren. Who's trying his absolute hardest to ignore Sion's little schlickfest and failing quite miserably at it. Note the bowlegged stumbling as he moves from table to table, the constant gawking and the bitter little tictictictic of his mouth muscles. If you could see his eyes beneath that metal plate, they might be almost cartoonish in width.

It bears repeating that Salvic Wizards are downright infamous for sexual dysfunction. And Kholia's even worse than most for reasons you don't want to think about. Reasons that Sion is exploiting and appealing and downright sledgehammering all over the place.

"Will you please STOP THAT ALREADY?"

"Buuuuuuut whyyyyyyy--ee...ah...ah..."

Kholia's head tilted at a severe angle. He held this way for several seconds longer than could've possibly been comfortable. Then he straightened up, jammed a gloved hand into his pants and straightened that up too. Perhaps if his eyes weren't hidden away, they would've narrowed resentfully.

This was, after all, nothing more than a Look But Don't Touch teaser act. Ghez displaying ownership, among other things.

"Why did that barbaric oaf send you to me anyway?"

"NNNNNNNN..."

Kholia shuddered and willed himself to look away -- back to the centerpiece of the tarnished silver array, and the third principle player in this scene. There, in the space cordoned off by intersecting lines of bloodied metal and lit more by the glow within each jar than the emberlights of the fireplace, stood a zombie. One of a million or more. An Elf, height of five foot eight, very freshly dead since his eyes still shed tears and his blood hadn't even congealed yet. He was missing a fair chunk of meat from the side of his torso, his face had been maimed with scratching wounds and the back of his head had been broken open. A huge portion of his brain was gone. There were awful bite-marks faintly visible on what was left.

Once upon a time, this was a warrior fighting in defense of...somewhere in Raiaera. Probably somewhere close, since he hadn't been dead all that long.

Now look beneath the corpse to the thing that makes it valuable: Its still lingering soul.

Which was joined to countless others for the common cause of defending Raiaera.

Defenses are always lower when its technically friendly fire. Even when it isn't.

"Whatever," Kholia muttered as he rolled up his sleeves. "Silence, please."

Schlick.

"...whore."

"Yes!"

Facepalm.

Kholia finally, resolutely, and with great difficulty, tuned the succubus out entirely. A second later, he drew a rather large, vile looking machete from one of the tables. Then he began to speak as he walked in circles around the standing corpse, each stride quicker than the last.

"Hear me, O Watchers in Silence, O Kindred of the Tidebearing Queen. Hear me now, ye Oathbreakers of Old, ye Despots of the Shadowed Lady! I invoke thee, to do my bidding on this, the day of the..." Kholia had enough shame left in him to look a little indignant at this part. He mumbled the next few words. "...day of the screaming...inverted...mongoose. I INVOKE THEE! To do my bidding...to strike down but one of my foes -- and to do with him what you will.

"In the Necromancer's Name, I call upon you to strike at the Wizard Blueraven, Caden Law."

The Radasanth Reader delivers.

"In offering...and to slake your thirst between this lowly realm and yours On Shadow, I give you this Elf's lingering mortal soul."

Kholia didn't swing, as you might've expected.

He stabbed. Right through an eye, and then he drew back and hit the heart and bellybutton in turn. Only then did he finally take that swing, and you wouldn't think a scrawny, haggard, bitter old man could hack through someone like that, but he did.

The corpse fell, and the remnants of the Elven warrior glittered in the air afterward. They had his general likeness. And it didn't take long before they started mutely screaming as something dark and horrid began to blot out each and every single spark that made up that Elf's soul.

"Glory, Amon das N'jal, said the Fallen Wizard, signing a double cross over his center and left chest. Grim red light followed the movements of his hand, and the lopsided Hagalaz rune left in its wake was quickly and violently sundered to nothing by a swipe of the machete.

In the not too distant corner of the room, Passion Near came with a husky moan. In the all too distant reaches of Raiaera, someone died screaming.

[Caden Law]

Inner Eluriand, Raiaera
Morning, Day of the Wretched Heart

Disregard, if you will, the notion of a city caught up in the middle of a desperate siege that's currently dragging heel into its second month. Ignore the fact that there are women and children starving to death in the streets because the Elves never planned for the remote possibility of their capital city being besieged in the first place. If at all possible, don't even pay attention to the harpies circling like maddened vultures or the renewed vigor with which the armies pound at the city's gates.

Focus now, on the body of a man rent asunder. Conscript plate blown open, organs torn and flayed all over the street, eye sockets looking as if something had emptied them with blindly imprecise teeth. The corpse's limbs have been mutilated in a similar fashion, and what remains of the whole thing's skin has been spread out in the rough, hideous pattern of a Hagalaz rune with an eerily precise bloodspatter pattern forming an octogon around the whole thing. Several of the ribs have been stabbed straight through what's left of the hands and feet, and the whole sight is the sort of demoralizing horror show that the people of this dying city really don't need.

Because it slipped right through all of their defenses like they weren't even there.

And perhaps most infuriating of all, it was a miss.

The man's Sorcerous Name was Blueraven, yes. Except that he wasn't even a hedgewizard. Oh, he knew a spell or two. He fought in defense of the city. He really did own that Sorcerous Name as any Wizard or Warlock or assorted mage would.

But his Birthname was Colin Leore. He was among the 400 or so Men and Elves who comprised the Blueraven Brigade during the defense of Eluriand. Caden had given them that Name in a moment of blind comradery -- shared it with them and allowed them, however unwittingly, to make it their own. He never counted on any of them receiving death curses meant for him.

Funnily enough, neither did anyone else.

[Caden Law]

Farstrike Encampment, Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
Day of the Wretched Heart

Pure Raiaeran Tantra differs heavily from the sexualized concepts found abroad, both among the Drow of Alerar and the much more widely spread Humans who covered the rest of the world. To these people, tantric magic is little more than an excuse to have noneuclidian sex with a contortionist. The magic only happens when you're spaced out of your mind on something herbal and/or illegal. Popular tantric magic is a bunch of formalized rituals that turn good, healthy sex into joint-breaking gymnastics. It's good exercise, maybe it'll tickle your spirit through your genitals, and you're pretty well guaranteed to go home happy so long as nothing breaks (save, possibly, a hymen), but that's about it.

Compare to the aforementioned Raiaeran Tantra, which is actually a very intricate form of dance built into a system of magic mostly centered on conjuration and divination. To describe it simply was to describe it poorly, because Raiaeran Tantra isn't simple. The shortest adequate description anyone ever gave it comes from a Scarabrian Sorceror whose words have long outlived his or her Name: It's like trying to perform poetry with motion, or trying to construct a picture out of the letters for a thousand words.

That in mind, we rejoin the Seers and token Wizard of the Farstrike Encampment, presently gathered into the tree-quarters that the Sister Seers originally shared with each other alone. Note that the scenery has been changed: The luxuriously spartan furnishings are all gone, and makeshift candles dot the floor in precise patterns. A Ranger is shadowed to each corner, and two of the Seers are dancing.

Eledier was not one of them. Her wounds were still too severe to allow it. She participated in the Tantra all the same, however, by positioning herself at the southern tip of the candlefield. Two such flames burned small and bright beside her, and her Seering Sword was unsheathed, standing tip down on the floor with hands clasped to its hilt in a gesture of prayer and concentration.

Across from her was Caden, sitting meditatively at the northern tip of the field. Candles framed his place as well, but he bore no blades and his wands weren't drawn. He didn't even have his glasses on right now. His hands were mostly clasped, save for his extended thumbs and the glassy blue lights freezing above them.

Between them, sharing a slow and fluid dance, were Aldinar and Vara -- both dressed in full armor. They were a perfect mirror for each other's every movement, from the blinking to the breathing to every single step and wave of the hands and arms. It was like watching glacial bellydancing mixed with performance Tai Chi, and every move was calculated to take them from one combative stance to the next. Offense, defense, neutral, reverse. A more astute observer would've paid close attention to the hand movements: Up, up. Down, down. Left, right. Left, right. Back. Again.

As this was happening, the Rangers began to use their spellrifles for something wholly different: Music. They played not with air currents or vibration or even the consent of physics, but with pure willpower. Magic became music, because music is magic.

And it was magic with a very specific purpose.

Eledier and Caden both began to Speak, she in Raiaeran and he in Salvic. The reason for this wasn't entirely divorced from Kholia's reasoning about comradery: He and Caden were both Salvic Wizards, born and raised.

"The Compass of Six Points: South, East, West, North, Within and Without. Hear our Voices and answer the call. Let the Tap be opened again, let the Weave be undone once more. The Compass of Six Powers: Hromagh, V'dralla, Y'edda, Jomil, Khal'jaren and Draconus. Beside you, the Harlequins in Stars, and the Pantheon Unbidden. Below you, the Queen Writhing In Shadow. Beyond you, the Unknown and Unfathomable.

"Hear us, one and all. Hear us and lend us your wisdom, your power, your knowledge, and your charity."

Silence. Aldinar and Vara paused in mid-step, each of them half-bowed to the north with southern arms extended up and back, and northern arms bent low and forward. The candles dimmed, and the temperature in the room dropped...

"We seek a Sorcerous Name, that of the Traitor-Wizard and Necromancer, Kholia Horren."

A wind came from nowhere. The shadows took lives of their own. All was still -- even the flames no longer free to dance atop their wicks. Only the two feeble antilights still fizzled and crackled above Caden's thumbs...

...finally a light, and the sound of gemstones clacking to the ground from a direction best described as Nowhere. Each one was a light blue-green, bearing Diamonic glyphs that seemed to move and shift as each pebble and rock fell and rolled into place. Without actually opening his eyes or using his own Voice, Caden -- or perhaps someone or something borrowing his vocal chords -- read aloud.

"Blightcrow," said the voice, staying only long enough to get the syllables out in precise ordering.

As if suddenly released of a heavy burden, every single candle in the room spouted a six foot, thin as a whip and bright as a tiny golden star. The shadows twisted and decayed back into shape, and the aftersmell was that of barely scented brimstone. The room -- the whole damn tree -- felt a century older than it had just a few seconds ago.

Silence reigned...

...and then the Wizard laughed.

Understandably, all eyes looked to Caden with more than a little apprehension. When a Wizard laughs, it's rarely for a very good reason, and Caden's reasons right now were probably worse than most.

"Blightcrow," he repeated at the sighing end of the laugh. "Blightcrow." Almost...

"Blightcrow."

The pronounciation was perfect. Every single letter spoken and placed with the kind of auditory precision only Wizards can manage. Caden smiled, and it was an awfully grim look on someone like him.

"Ladies and gentlemen...I believe we've got a Dark Wizard to kill. Who's up for another dance, hm?"

[Caden Law]

Minas Teradyn, Raiaera
High Noon, Day of the Wretched Heart

Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Absolute knowledge is absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But such corruption can only be maintained through redundancy, and this is as true in the mystical world of Althanas as it is anywhere else in the multiverse. Just as Xem'zund used the hierarchical Death Lords to ease the strain of controlling his vast armies and to free the depths of his powers for more important tasks, the Necromancer used Archivists to protect and augment his knowledge-base -- and with it, his power.

Because after a certain point, memory fails and that lump of meat in your skull just isn't going to keep up anymore. To get around this, Xem'zund employed the Archivists. They were men and women, mostly human and mostly well preserved undead, whose job it was to carry around his own personal library's worth of grimoires. Each of these tomes was a truly massive affair dedicated to a specific field of arcana, from the occult history to the disciplines of magic to the simple beureaucracies that made his control of the Death Lords functional. There were multiple copies of each one, always built to the exact same proportions: Four feet tall, two feet wide, clasped shut with heavy alloy locks and bound to each Archivist by chain straps. The subject was always written in Durklanic above Xem'zund's personal symbol, the Necromancer's Eye.

It goes without saying that every single one of these things was connected to their owner's mind through arts best left undescribed. They weren't even a necessity so much as they were a simple precaution, and Xem'zund could easily withstand losing all of them now. Especially given his current backer. How many was known only to the Necromancer himself, but they were a diasporatic lot indeed. The only concentrations of them were in Xem'zund's personal retinue, and in the Tower that served as his stronghold.

As to the Archivists themselves, they were a relatively unassuming lot that fit the mold of Endarkened Acolyte to a bloody tee. The majority of them were humans of Raiaeran upbringing, though a number of proper Elves of both major ethnic groups held the status as well. Generally because Xem'zund had bound Durklanic revanents into the bodies. Almost all of them were undead to some extent, and well preserved at that. The standard uniform was a hooded purple and black robe, heavy and protective and quite minionly.

Incidentally, as the clock struck 12:00 PM, one of the Archivists of Names convulsed and dropped to the floor. He writhed for a few minutes longer, and stopped only after literally vomiting out an unidentifiable internal organ. He didn't move again.

Now, think about that.

It bears repeating that the Wizard Blightcrow had sold his Sorcerous Name to Xem'zund, and thus it no longer fully applied to him. It also bears repeating that the Archives were more of a precaution than a necessity. Among their other benefits, they spread that Name around so much so that it was good luck Blueraven's killing curse ever hit anything at all. It also bears mention that, being undead at the whims of their Evil Overlord, Archivists are much easier to replace than Death Lords.

Precaution. Not necessity. And not even for his own sake.

An Archivist is dead. Hail to the Necromancer.

[Caden Law]

Twice that night, the question is asked.

"Did you kill him?"

And twice, it is answered.

"...in all likelihood..."

"I don't know."

For all the uncertainty, here is where the intricacies of Blueraven and Blightcrow go asymmetrical.

"Excellent! May we finally see the recognition we deserve, Kholia," said Ghez, slapping a metal-gloved hand onto the haggard old Wizard's shoulder with enough force to bruise right to the bone. It was a testament to Kholia's insecurities that he knew better than to try and correct the Barbarian's assumption. "My scouts have uncovered their campsite. We attack at dawn. Sleep well, Kholia, and be ready with all the curses and doom you can bring to bear. Tomorrow will be the most glorious day of your life."

"You are not certain? ...then it cannot be helped. Whatever the outcome, this will end tomorrow. Aldinar's personal retinue is, even now, working to lure their forces into an ambush," said Eledier, laying a tender hand onto the tired young Wizard's shoulder. It was a testament to Caden's cynicism that he knew better than to assume anything good would come of it. "That you did not go through with a sacrifice is testament to your own goodness. Accept it. Accept it and get some rest. Tomorrow may yet be the most glorious victory of your life, Wizard Blueraven."

Both were met with smiles, and both returned them with equal parts nervousness and pessimism. But they said nothing. Almost in unison, Blueraven and Blightcrow nodded to their superiors and wandered off to find a place where they could get some much needed rest. For Kholia, this would mean a night spent sleeping in the saw mills since Ghez had claimed his bedroom. For Caden, it would mean a night fumbling with the arcane while trying to conjure up a tent in an effort to tire himself out. Eventually, both would sleep.

...and both would have nightmares, because both had dodged the bullet without ever actually knowing it.

[Caden Law]

Tembrethnil Forest, Raiaera
5:59 AM, Day of Avatar's Cruelty

Picture now a road through the forest. It's a nice, wide road, and on so many other days, nights, mornings and dusks, it would've felt safe. It was the kind of road that simply invited long treks, be they on foot, horseback or wagon. You'd tell your grandkids about walking this old dirt road in your youth, or maybe you'd write about it in your memoirs. The morning fog was usually a sight to behold, thick enough to build rainbows from nothing and wild enough to curve them into shapes that science would be dumbfounded by.

Now, the fog was just something else. Not something good, but something else. It carried with it the smell of rot and death, rather than the scents of morning dew. The only sounds accompanying it were not those of woodland creatures starting the day, but of hard leather drums being beat for the hell of it while something worked an awful lot of saws just beyond sight.

War is in the air, as holy and righteous as it is tainted and mocking. It's in the noise, it's in the smells, it's in the ground, the air and the trees themselves. It's in you, and you're not even part of it so try to imagine, if only for a split second, the kind of glacial terror creeping through the guts of a certain Wizard who'd much rather be running right now.

They will doubtless strike our campsight first. Best we be elsewhere by then. The Rangers know what to do, Eledier declared, and both Vara and Aldinar had supported her. Even as they were helping strap her armor back on.

You're too injured for this. We should run; bide our time and strike when you're well, Caden advised, more from pragmatism than actual concern. The true subtext was lost though, either willfully ignored or never even considered in the first place. Eledier laid a hand on his cheek, all armored and pristine and chilled to the touch. She met him in the eyes and smiled, as only an inhuman thing could.

We cannot. To run again is to consign this forest -- and all our tales of it, and the way of life that so many of our kind have built around it -- to an undeserving grave...or worse. Here, and only here, did the smile falter. Vara spoke up after that, with an authority that probably wouldn't have been present if not for Eledier's injuries and Aldinar's uncharacteristic silence.

We release you from your Oath, Wizard. If you wish not to fight, you may leave, she said, and everything after that was a bit of a blur.

Caden did not leave. And for that, he had an entirely new reason to hate and loathe the Elves of Raiaera: They forced him to fight the good fight, even knowing that it would likely be the death of him. He declined their offers of arms and armor, turned down their thanks and resolved himself to the inevitable in the only way that made sense.

Look at him now, standing in the woods beyond both the road and the fog. There's a single Ranger assigned to guard him, Shaul Karna, but the Elf can hardly be seen while Caden stands out like a bruised thumb. Pointed blue hat and matching longcoat, bound shut from the waist up with buttons and a thick leather belt. Black pants and a white undershirt, and heavy boots. Pasty looking skin and unimpressive blue eyes yellowed away behind what appeared to be aviator's goggles. Not so much as a single hair's worth of Wizardly Beard, though what's visible of his hair is shaggy and light blond. Looks more like an eccentric academic than any kind of warrior, even if you took into account the sword sheathed on his back or the bowie knife holstered at his belt. A wand like a katana hilt was tucked into the belt opposite the knife. His hands were mostly bare and unarmed.

His hands are also the important thing here. Look close now.

Close enough to see the stark green bandage wrapped around his right hand, tinted red with blood.

The reason involved a knife, a blood oath, and promises of great glory in the fight for survival. Inevitable as rolling fog, really. Speaking of which...

...the fog crept across the road, and among all the other things it enveloped were the Seers and their bodyguard of willfully exposed Rangers. Caden could see them still, but only just. They began to move, and though he could almost feel her pain from a distance, Eledier showed no signs of slowing down or imprecision from her wounds. She and her siblings danced, each and every movement echoing the one before it like ripples in water. Blue light shone around them, and coalesced into teal colored stones marked with many runes. At the same time, the Rangers' staves began to light up.

They didn't fire. Not yet. The Seers were gathering up ammunition. The Rangers not seen were taking aim. The first salvo was going to have to do as much damage as possible, because the front-liners wouldn't get a second chance like it.

That's where Caden came in. He wasn't on the front line.

"Whatever you are planning to do, Wizard, now would be a good time to prepare it," Shaul advised in a unnecessarily low whisper.

"I know," said Caden. "I hope you're not sentimental about the layout of the forest."

"All we care for is that it lives."

"The ends justify the means?"

"Unequivocally."

Caden smiled. As cryptic Wizard smiles go, it was suitably devious looking.

"That's exactly what I wanted to hear."

[Caden Law]

There was very little pomp or circumstance this time. No screamed threats, no time wasted throwing insults back and forth. The fog rolled right over the road and washed into the forest like evaporated sin, taking with it a small amount of detail and visibility from the landscape. Immediately after came the sound of drums being beat with the kind of cohesive rhythm that only emerges from unncoordinated chaos; a thousand different hands slapping away at five hundred different drums with the end symphony being more than the mere sum of its individual racket.

Not long after the drums, there came the sound of explosions. Blasting runes -- the arcanist's favorite landmines -- going off one after the next in rapid succession. It was the boiling scalpel feebly trying to cut out an oversized tumor in the forest, and it failed. As near as living ears could tell, the drums didn't even miss a beat.

Finally the smell of rot and burnt meat, and then the first lines came into view. Skeletal warriors and rancid ghouls, their last bits of flesh hanging limp and maggot-riddled as they stomped, stumbled, marched and ran forth in a terribly coordinated display of barely contained animalism. At the forefront were the ghouls, and some of the warriors held them at bay with leashed made of barbed chains, and others still ran wild in front. At the second line, there were trees. Dozens of them, though not as many as there could've been. Skeletal archers stood within the lashing branches, their bodies long since stripped of meat by the barbs and hooks around them. They wielded arcane crossbows with arrows made from bone shafts and heads like sharpened teeth.

And at the third line, standing atop the shambling Tower of Blightcrow, stood the Death Lord, Ghez Felhammer. He was a massive figure in his own right -- so much larger than life that the Tower itself actually looked smaller just because he was standing on it. With one hand anchored to its flagpole and the other brandishing one of his axes high in the air, he threw back his head and roared. The noise coming from his mouth wasn't so human as a scream, it really was a roar; like a T-Rex on a rampage. His cape billowed in a wind that seemed to stir up solely for his benefit, and curled between his uprisen knee and the flagpole was the succubus, Passion Near.

On the whole, it was a wickedly intimidating sight. The kind that'd force you to admit that, no matter what you thought of him, Ghez Felhammer had style.

Nowhere near as stylish was the man riding into battle on Felhammer's loaned-out war-steed, which consisted of something quadrapedal and encased in so much plated armor that it could only vaguely be described as wolfish or bear-like. The armor was entirely red and gold, with just a scant few black lines here and there. Whatever the monster was inside of it, its claws and teeth were naturally golden and its eyes were an ugly, hateful pair of green lights that stood in murderous contrast to everything else. It had no reins to speak of; just handles on the back neckplaces and a leash made out of heavy chains. Good luck trying to find a saddle.

Riding upon this monster in the second line, and looking absolutely unsuited for it by any standard, was the Wizard, Kholia Horren. Flanked by a bodyguard of spider-cavalry on all sides, wielding his staff of power once more, and looking unusually terrified for a man whose mood could only be guessed at through context and body language.

All the same, this was one time where he would not be completely outdone: Power flared black and red at the head of his staff, its eye settling squarely on Seer Aldinar. Kholia managed a brief smile, and then...

"Witness his glory..." The eye began to tilt, and then it started rolling. Lightning swirled unnaturally until its pupil, and then red and black electricity washed down the length of Kholia's staff-wielding arm, around his shoulders, and to his free hand's fingertips. "Through me!"

The Elves struck first. They not only did so without glorious battlecries or overwhelming numbers, but they completely killed Kholia's attempt at grandeur in the process -- along with most of his retinue of skeletal cavaliers on their giant spiders. Spells crashed in a wave against his scattershot barrier, and when he finally let fly with the entropic lightning bolt, Aldinar, Vara and Eledier all performed the exact same uppercutting sweep of their weapons. The spell hit this and shot upwards, lost to the ages in an instant.

As one, the Seers flowed into mirrored stances of one another; weapons held back empty hands pointed forward, and conjured spellstones orbiting down from a halo above them all. The stones spiraled around each Seer's outstretched arm, then shot not for Kholia, but for a much grander target.

His Tower.

Across a hundred yards of falling forest and over the heads of an undead horde. Past Kholia, between trundling trees and finally right up against an arsenal of defensive spells that would've laughed off anything short of a Turlin-blessed siege ballista. Though the stones were small, each teal thing being only a bit bigger than your average pebble, they had power on their side.

One by one, they exploded in to tiny suns, burning bright enough that the outermost barrier appeared as a pitch black wedge by comparison. Nearby trees caught fire and collapsed, crushing dozens of warriors as they fell. Kholia himself panicked and charged forward, trampling a few more as he went, but through it all a single sound could be heard.

Ghez Felhammer laughing like a maniac.

"I do not believe we can take that one down," Vara pointed out.

"And I am inclined to agree," said Eledier with a nod.

"The Wizard then," said Aldinar. "We leave it in his hands."

"Is that faith I hear in your voice?" Eledier asked.

"Resignation to a horrible screaming death, actually."

A moment's pause, wherein Kholi