Ain't No Rest For The Wizard

[Caden Law]

The door slammed shut (http://www.althanas.com/world/showpost.php?p=157789&postcount=20) with a kind of absolute finality, and the Wizard Blueraven understood in one sobering instant that he would probably not see his homeland again any time soon. Strangely enough, he didn't really mind that much. Salvar was cold. And he'd just helped murder the living god of at least a few tens of millions of people. It was probably good that he didn't go back there any time soon. Probably better still that Caden wasn't there now. In fact, the problem wasn't that Caden was no longer in Salvar.

The problem was that Caden was back in Tembrethnil Forest.

What was left of it.

Perhaps seeing the place was even more sobering than how he'd gotten here -- being teleported at the whims of a true Goddess who no longer owed him a favor. Caden looked around. The ground was still corpse-gray, and there were plants petrified all over the place. Their leaves had been blown away, and what grass remained looked like it had the consistency of dried paper and ash. Everything leaned out from ground zero -- not where Caden stood, but close enough that he still had chills running up and down his spine. He turned away from it and said, "Well, this isn't a hysterical downer at all."

A few seconds ticked by as the Wizard took off his soot-stained goggles, plundered around beneath his breastplate and inside of his coat, then took out his signature glasses and put them on.

The Elder Thayne still stood in front of him, larger than life and somehow realer than the rest of the world around her. The Wilder Queen no longer clung to a single form for the sake of on-lookers. Her appearance changed as wildly as her namesake, always humanoid but rarely human. Only the wings, massive golden shrouds dotted with stars, remained a constant. They draped over her shoulders like a shroud, and seemed to yield modesty more by chance than anything else. There is work to be done, Sorcerer.

The statement practically metabolized the alcohol right out of his system.

(Conveniently enough, it also made Caden vomit on the spot. A combination of exhaustion, undescribable dread and several types of shock will do that to you.)

It took Caden another minute or two to wipe his mouth and get the taste out. What remained was the peppermint aftertaste, and the clammy cold that he had come to associate with Necromancy. Another layer of unpleasantness. The Wizard cracked his neck a few times before asking, "Why did you bring me here?"

Because this is where you belong. You were never meant to leave Raiaera, the Thayne told him, and then Caden perceived a smile that he couldn't actually see with his eyes. You were never meant to do a lot of things.

"But here I am," he said.

Here you are.

The Wilder remained. Caden stared at her, waiting. Both of them, waiting. But it was the patience of a true God against that of a mere mortal. Eventually, Caden asked, "What do you want me to do?"

What you were supposed to.

"That tells me nothing."

It tells you everything.

"Khal'jaren's supposed to be the cryptic one, dammit," Caden spat, turned and found himself more or less face to face with Charger. His semi-trusty, quite tempermental riding ram, a gift of sorts from one of the few real friends Caden had made during his trip through Salvar. Big, white, black-hooved and curly-horned. "What the-"

He looked back and the Wilder was gone.

"Naturally."

Charger huffed.

"Seconded."

[Caden Law]

Caden rode out of Tembrethnil in short order. It was bad enough that corruption still lingered -- bad enough that he had caused it to begin with -- but the forest itself no longer felt very welcoming of him. A presence hung at his shoulder every second he waited there, silent and accusing and impotently spiteful. It was broad daylight out, but Caden couldn't see the sun for the life of him until he got out of the forest. And by then, the trail was familiar.

He'd been this way before, en route to Salvar. This was the western border of the forest, where he'd last seen the Walkers and not all that far from where he buried the Wizard Blightcrow. In fact...

A little squinting and Caden could still see that wretched old mage's grave. It stood atop a small, completely artificial hill now covered in nightshade and mushrooms. If you knew what you were looking for, you'd see runic patterns in the plantgrowth; Salvic and Elven and a little sideways too. Kholia was dead, but Raiaera was a land where that no longer meant much. Caden still remembered putting the hill in place just to weigh the old Wizard's corpse down if he somehow came back to life (or any reasonable facsimile thereof). Most of it consisted of rocks glued together with clay and then covered in raw dirt. Then came the runes geomanced into every single rock and then the dirt. The plants weren't there before, but the hill had been fresh then.

Caden still remembered the exact number of times he had to stab that rancid old mage to make him stop screaming. Twenty-seven. He had counted.

He didn't stray any closer to the corpsemound than he had to. Just rode on by and took what looked like the same path he'd used to get to Trenycë. It seemed right at first, but the further he went from Tembrethnil, the less anything matched up. That wasn't the right hill, that mountain wasn't peaking up in the distance, those trees weren't there...

About the only thing that looked at all familiar was a rotten corpse on the roadside with a bunch of arrows stuck in it. And Caden wasn't about to rule out the possibility that said-corpse had been reanimated since the last time he'd seen it. Assuming of course it was the same corpse he was thinking of. Faced with more than a dozen miles of open road travel through dingy, seemingly abandoned plains, the Wizard was finally forced to confront and uncomfortable reality. It was something he hadn't experienced in months, years even, but he was feeling it now and it was...

Annoying.

"I'm lost," he muttered. "I'm totally gorram lost."

Charger bleated.

"You shut up. I just need to think some."

Bleat.

"...your mother."

The goat stopped so hard it almost threw him right off. Having experienced a faceplant in snow back in Salvar, Caden's reflexes were just good enough to keep the Wizard from experiencing one in hard-packed dirt here in Raiaera. He tried at the reins for a few seconds, but Charger wouldn't budge.

"Fine, fine. Sorry."

The ram took off at its usual gallop.

Eventually, the sun set and the stars came out. By then it was a bit of a moot point. Caden could see lights in the distance. The closer he got, the higher and brighter those lights became. Close enough and more lights became visible, but these were blue and green and-

"Ah. Hell."

He didn't need to read the sign as he passed it, overgrown thing that it was. Covered in so many vines, shreds of cloth, stains and worse. It was in the shadow of a tree. And when Caden was well past it, the tree creaked a bit. It twisted to watch him, aged bark snapping off and a few railroad spike-sized nails poking out from the stumps of its long broken branches. And the sign?

It read simply, Anebrilith.

[Caden Law]

The closer Caden got, the less he liked what he saw.

It was a city in the distance.

It was two of them. Only one just happened to be undead.

The first city he'd seen stood atop a high, huge hill; almost more like a mesa with a slope on one side. Even at a distance, Caden could see its high walls and ramparts. They reminded him of Eluriand, and so did other things. The fires burning behind them, red and orange and choking with smoke. In the skies above, shapes danced and cackled; shrill sounds that grated on his ears from miles away. He recognized the sound though, and that was another thing that reminded him of Eluriand: Harpies.

The second city was spread out among the network of hills surrounding the first one. A great big horseshoe-like thing that looked like it was made from the festering corpse of civilization. There were run-down wooden buildings by the dozen, rotten farmlands, and some of them burned blue and green in the night. There were stone structures that looked eerily like tombstones the size of churches. Trees staggered on their roots, and ghouls sang to the void between the stars. It was a wretched chorus, awful and undescribable.

And the closer he got to it, the more Caden thought to himself, I should turn back now.

He remembered Eluriand.

I need to turn back now.

His scars remembered Eluriand. An empty pit in his chest remembered watching Trenycë burn at a distance.

I need to stop and get out of here.

But as much as his body hurt to remember those things, his conscience ached more.

"I can't stop," he said to the unquiet dead, though they didn't hear him. "And I can't turn back."

He was still exhausted from fighting Denebriel. The few hours respite he had since then were spent on the road, nothing restful about it. He hadn't slept, hadn't eaten, and the only thing to drink had been wine on another continent. But the Wizard tightened his hold on the reins, and he inhaled rancid magic from the air around him, and he drew out his wand one more time.

"I won't run away from this anymore."

[Caden Law]

There weren't that many real fighters left in the port-city of Anebrilith. Most of the ones remaining were either pirates, the brutes employed by slave-traders, or the street urchins who knew what it took to survive and were willing to make someone else pay the price. Death Lord Kaverre's armies of the undead had done an absolutely magnificent job of whittling away at everyone else.

But there were still a token few left.

One of them was an Elf by the name of Shaul Karna. He was a slightly tall fellow by Raiaeran standards, head-height with your average Man, and he stood out among the local populace for a few other reasons too. One is that his hair was pitch black. Another is that he wore a steel mask with crystalline red lenses over the eyes, lending his voice a hollow reverb. He also wore dingy white robes, tattered from months of heavy use in siege warfare, and pitch black steel armor on his chest and shoulders, with strategic bits for the arms and legs, and finely made gauntlets for the hands. He carried a staff shaped like a long rifle or musket, tipped with a red gem of power that no longer glowed quite so brightly as it did some months back.

Shaul was a traditionalist of the oldest school there is. He walked the Path of the Ranger, but he did so in the shine of that eldritch pantheon, Raiaera's Star Gods. As he knelt behind the battlements of Anebrilith's highest remaining outer wall for his nightly benedictions, Shaul heard something. He stopped mid-way into the first syllable of the first chant, gripping his staff and daring to peek up over the wall.

What he saw was an explosion of raw magic. Blue and pink and red and purple, and he could swear to the Quivering Dancer that there were feathers glowing in the night. He saw ground shifting wildly, spikes shooting up out of the dirt and stone collapsing as if compelled to by some awful force of will. He saw power on display, and the light of it felt exhausted, but it felt like something else too.

For the first time in months, the Ranger Shaul Karna felt hope.

"Deithor!" he called, keeping his voice low out of habit. "Deithor!" At the second calling, the young Drow finally crept out of the guard tower next to him, joining Shaul on the battlements. "Look!"

Deithor did. "What's...what's going on?"

"I don't know," Shaul answered in a gleeful little voice. "But it seems to be coming towards us."

"Is...that a Man?"

Shaul focused. "...better. It's a Wizard. See the Hat? And the-the-the...oh. Oh, no."

"What?" Deithor asked. "Sir? Master Shaul?"

"Oh no."

"What?" Deithor asked again, Shaul's anxiety spreading to the younger Ranger like a bad cold.

"It's him..."

As if for emphasis, something blew up in the field.

"Who?"

"He's here..."

Deithor looked out at the eleventh hour champion who seemed to fill his master's heart so full of dread, and in that moment he noticed two things. One was that the Wizard was riding a very large goat. The other was the barely audible sound of Shaul's hopes crumbling before he could even finish raising them.

"...the Wizard Blueraven is really here..."

(Of course, that might've been the noise of a stone obelisk collapsing in the field. Whichever.)

"Oh...Gods..."

[Caden Law]

"He's headed this way..."

"We have to let him in," Deithor decided immediately, and leapt up from his post before Shaul could try to stop him. While the older Wanderer shouted obscenities in eldritch tongues, the younger one darted down the nearest flight of stairs. It was a spiral path, and he had to jump a sleeping comrade or three on his way down, but the young Drow kept going. At ground level, the doorway was open simply because the actual door had been cannibalized for firewood a few days ago.

"A Wizard comes!" Deithor shouted. "A Wizard comes!" There were only two guards at the gate -- the only ones who could be spared for the job, and the only ones who would've taken it anyway: Heldreth and Balakai, both of them also Drow and both of them just as young and maniacally optimistic as Deithor was. "Open the gates!"

There was some hassling. People cleared the streets in a hurry, but for a few thugs who had more self-preservation than that. Big, burly types who'd been able to come and go with the slave ships and the pirate vessels, slaking their awful thirsts and sating their eager appetites as they pleased. Two of them drew swords and a third had a crossbow loaded.

Shaul, for all his reservations and indignations and worse, put the crossbowman down without giving any of them the slightest hint of a warning. Killshot straight to the face, cratering his head wide open at the point of impact. The other two beat a quick retreat while Deithor, Haldreth and Balakai undid the locks and pulled the doors half-way open.

"Let him in! Let him in!"

Less than a second later, there was a white-and-blue blur shooting between the doors like a cannonball. The lower half bleated loud enough to sound like a roaring bull. The upper half screamed in a high enough pitch to sound like a frightened little girl.

And then there were chunks of somebody's ancestor gored all over the ground, and the riding ram was cornering so hard it bashed through a dicrepit shop window, and the rider wasn't actually there so much as he was staggering fast for the gates and shouting, "Shut the bloody things!"

"It's stuck!" Haldreth keened while Deithor and Balakai powered their door shut. "It's stuck!"

"There's a ftaghn zombie lodged in it!" Haldreth screamed. Because there was. And it was still squirming and there were a lot more inbound and they were moving very fast and-

"Dammit!" Blueraven Said, flicking his wand in mid-stride. Rocks shot up out of the ground, slamming into the door and driving it shut with a resounding crunch and a spray of oily black ichor all over Haldreth. A few seconds later, the doors actually shuddered as a flood tide of undeath broke against it like cresting waves. Bony fingers wore themselves to nubs outside, while the three Drow and the Wizard worked the locks into place. Teeth snapped out of their sockets trying to get a purchase on enchanted steel bars, and faces pounded themselves to hamburger meet on what little enchanted wood was exposed behind them.

The gates held.

Whether that was a good thing or a bad one was yet to be seen.

"Well!" Caden said to the Drow, now that he actually had a chance to study them up close. It only clicked that they were Drow before he could think of something witty to say. He was left dumbfounded enough to ask, "...this is Raiaera, isn't it?"

"Absolutely!" said Deithor, who was easily the oldest of the three. He looked to be no older than one of Caden's nephews, probably fifteen or sixteen. And he was so energetic, despite all circumstances to the contrary. For a moment, Caden actually thought he'd ended up in an alternate reality where Drow were pleasant.

And then he heard a splash in the muddy ground in front of him, looked and saw a Starlit Ranger. They were a distinct bunch. Standard Rangers never dressed so well, nor did they carry riflestaves. This particular Ranger remained crouched for a few seconds, then stood with the slow grace of an Elf at war. Caden stared at him. Then he took a guess.

"Ringo, was it?" he asked. Caden had known a few Walkers before, and he no longer believed in coincidences.

"Shaul," was the answer. Caden almost shrugged to say close enough when the Elf continued, "Ringo Cehenath is dead."

"Oh." Caden blinked. "I...take me to your leader?"

The riflestaff was pointed directly at him before he could even finish speaking. By this point, Caden was actually too exhausted to be surprised. Given his relations with Elves and indigenous peoples in general, he almost expected it enough that it would've had a minimal effect anyway.

"Your last words, Defiler Blueraven. Choose them carefully."

A chorus of what from the Drow. Caden grimaced.

"Okay. Goat."

The gem lit up. Caden's life rather pointedly didn't flash before his eyes. But the Ranger did. Caden jumped to the side, knocking over Deithor and Haldreth as he did, and Shaul backflipped forward into the gate with a high-pitched scream of his own. Charger caught him square in the backside at what must've been forty miles per hour, and then the mountain goat from Hell rammed right into the gates so hard you could hear the walls supporting them rattle. Stopped cold and bleating indignantly, Charger stumbled back a few paces and shook the cobwebs out while Shaul crashed to the ground in agony.

By this point, the three Drow were questioning the wisdom of anything they'd done tonight.

"Warned you," Caden sighed, taking Shaul's staff and then systematically stripping him of his pistol-gripped wand, his flute, his fighting knives, his throwing knives, his carving knife, his fillet knife, and what looked like a hobby knife too. He took the Ranger's cloak, dumped the blades into it and tied the entire thing shut before handing it off to one of the apprentices. "Don't mind him, boys."

"I'm a girl," Balakai protested. Caden adjusted his glasses and looked at her: Flat as a board, her hair chopped short, wearing a dirty green version of Shaul's Ranger get-up with none of the armor, but her voice was girlish and her facial features were close...

"Okay," he shrugged. "Sorry about that, ma'am."

"MY LEGS!" Shaul howled, kicking feebling at nothing in particular. He was trying to strangle Caden from a distance.

The Wizard nonchalantly holstered his wand and kicked Shaul in the face. Hard enough to knock the mask off and expose the Elf beneath. His face was long, strong in the jaw and scarred visibly in several places. He was also completely unconscious. The apprentices were literally too stunned to be outraged. It probably helped that they must've been through months of siege warfare before this.

"Alright then," Caden said as he wiggled some feeling back into his toes. "One of you help me load him onto Charger. That's it, thank you. My name is Caden. And you are?"

"Deithor." Oldest, probably. Still young and somehow bright-eyed. His skin was so black it almost shined purple in the firelights of Anebrilith. Held Shaul's riflestaff like he knew how to use it.

"Haldreth." Youngest by the look of him. Heavier than Deithor, but when Elves are involved that's not saying much. His skin was more grayish, his eyes darker but still expressive.

"Balakai." The token girl, definately the middle-child in terms of age and mindset. Blue eyes, skin that actually was purple. Would've been more attractive if she were older.

Child soldiers. Too young to be fighting even by Caden's standards, but here they were.

"Charming," He said. "Apprentices? Figured. I'm assuming the walls are usually left unattended?"

No answer. Not even nodding. The undead had already given up on the door, and only distant ghoulsong and the shrill laughter of harpies remained.

"Thought so." Caden rotated his arm a few times and finally checked to make sure everything was still where it should've been. He was bleeding at the neck and there was a cut on one of his legs, but it could've been worse. "No sense fretting over it then." He grabbed Charger's reins, then lead the ram away from the gates. His knees were still shaking and his eyelids felt like lead weights. "Come on. You'll have to tell me everything and take me to your leader."

"Shaul is our leader."

"Your real leader. Should be a Seer or something, right?"

"She's...not responding, sir," Deithor uncomfortably admitted. "It's complicated..."

"You can explain on the way," Caden said. He already had a feeling that he was going to regret this.

[Caden Law]

The city of Anebrilith had been under siege for almost a year and a half now. It had missed the initial waves of undead by luck and geography, but then came the refugees and the siege engines, so fast that it was hard to tell where one group ended and the other began. The sheer number of refugees had been enough to gut whole parts of the surrounding area within a few weeks, and the panic they brought with them didn't help much. Most of the picturesque rural suburbia that had grown up around Anebrilith over the centuries was gone by the time the Necromancer's armies had arrived. The ports emptied, the city itself mostly evacuated of everyone who could get out ahead of time...

Then came the first siege. And with it, the dregs of the high and low seas alike. What had been a shining beacon of Elven society was now little more than an abused whore, beaten day and night by the unquiet dead and raped at least as often by the hook-handed drunks with ships. Killian Grimstone of the Necrosition, aided and abetted by a monster Caden knew entirely too well from his nightmares. Not that he remembered the thing's name. The first siege was broken by a Drow and a Man; the name of the one was unknown and the name of the other was just plain weird.

"Godhand Striker?" Caden had asked.

Then came the second siege, and it was worse. Much worse.

They came in force this time, sustained and ruthless and better organized. The Death Lord in charge had done his homework, bringing necromantic auxilliaries in addition to hordes of walking corpses; his own personal lieutenants. Xem'zund's armies were starting to sound like real ones already. "Baron Rovsen Kaverre, he calls himself," Deithor explained. "Foppish prick if I ever saw one."

"You've been watching the pirates too close, Deith," Balakai chastised. Of the three apprentices, she was the only one who actually sounded like a Drow, and even then all of them could've passed for humans or half-elves with the way they talked. Caden chalked it up to the war.

"He didn't try to take the city," Deithor continued like he hadn't heard Balakai at all. "He just...encircled it. And let the rest happen on its own, almost."

Kaverre struck at random, with overwhelming force that always seemed just that little bit too weak to break through the defenses. He had harpies in the skies around the clock, plucking good men and women and children right out of the street with no warning whatsoever, but not always. Mostly, they just circled. And laughed. And sang with the ghouls at night, making it that much harder to sleep.

Kaverre let ships in. Pirates and slave-traders and smugglers especially. And he let convoys in too, their wares completely untarnished so long as they swore to drive hard bargains and didn't try to smuggle anyone out as more than property. He caged the Elves of Anebrilith in and then he dissected everything that made them what they were. He took and took and took, always letting them steal, bribe, bargain, buy and do whatever they had to just to survive -- just to find that little shred of hope and resolve to keep going.

Just so he could knock them down again.

"About three months ago, maybe four, we snuck our way in on a pirate ship," Deithor explained. The mission had been one of merciful reinforcement. It didn't work out that way. They managed to take out a few pirate lords, but no-one left in the city knew how to sail on their own. They were too weak to make effective fighters. And the harpies saw everything. No way to train in secret. So the Walkers tried a more direct approach.

"Ringo died first," Haldreth said, empty-voiced and grim in the eyes. "Ripped apart by giant necrotic spiders. Kaverre's got his mask as a belt ornament."

"What happened?" Caden asked.

They were trying to assassinate him. A true Ranger mission, full of stealth and guile and intrigue. Ringo, Shaul, Erral and a few that Caden had never heard of. To the Rangers' credit, most of them actually made it back in one piece. To their misfortune, not all of them made it back alive.

"That's how Erral died," Haldreth added. "Made it right into the gate before undeath took hold of him."

Erral killed a few more of the Rangers, and some of the apprentices too.

"And when that failed, we simply tried a counter-siege. But only the Seers were trained to Walk that particular Path," Balakai cut in. "We came with eight. Only one remains, and she's been unresponsive for weeks now."

"What happened to her?" Caden asked. As luck and timing would have it, he posed the question right as they arrived at what passed for Walker headquarters: A blasted-out concert hall, and not even one of the big landmarks either. The apprentices lead Caden inside, and Haldreth stayed behind to clean the gore from his clothes and rearm the wards that kept local nasties and sky-stalkers alike from barging in. Charger and Shaul stayed with him, if only because the ram wouldn't go any further into the building. Caden followed a silent Deithor and Balakai deeper in until they arrived at a basement.

Balakai spoke a passcode in Alerian, one of the few major languages Caden didn't speak, though it sounded almost like a butchered variant of Raiaeran.

"We who will not die?" Caden asked in actual Raiaeran.

"Close enough," Haldreth said.

A few seconds later, a Ranger simply appeared in the doorway of the basement stairwell. She, and Caden was sure it was a woman, wore the same battle-shredded robes as Shaul and used the same riflestaff too. Her hair was longer though, too long for any human woman to make practical in the Ranger's line of work. And it was white, even if dirtied by circumstance.

"Drow?" Caden guessed.

"Yes," she answered. "Ape?"

"Wise-ass," Caden replied.

"...he can pass," the Ranger said, and Caden could almost hear her chortling. Laughter must've been rare around these parts.

Down they went, and it was only when they neared the bottom of the stairwell that Deithor finally answered, "She tried to summon one of the Pantheon's captains."

"She succeeded," Balakai snapped. "They all did. But there's a price for that."

The basement was weird. It was equal parts study, war-room, shrine and hospital. There were scrolls of musical notes on one wall, near-empty shelves and half-full weapon racks on another, a few simple cots and one actual bed. Not a nice one, just a bed. The only things on the shelves were masks and empty helmets; Caden recognized the patterns as Ranger and Seer, and one that didn't look at all familiar. The bed was small. Narrow. It had one occupant. Caden knew her.

She was short, thinner than she had been at Tembrethnil but still beautiful in the way that Elven women always are. Slants here, curves there, soft angles and sharp ears, closed eyes and a pink-lipped mouth closed tight. Her hair was dark blue, shorter and straighter than Caden remembered. She was still wearing a set of battle-stained Seer's robes, but all of her armor had been removed and neatly piled at the foot of the bed. Her mask and helm were among the rest of the armor. Her sword was propped against the side of the bed, curved and ornate and exactly the way he remembered it. She almost looked perfect, like she was sleeping.

But the air around her pulsed. Things writhed in and out of it, eldritch lights sparkling for a moment and then vanishing as quickly as they came. It was as though something had simply laid claim to her, and you could look and touch but that was it. Caden could sense a pressure in the room, like reality itself was weighted down around the Seer, and it made him cold.

"There's always a price," Balakai sadly repeated. "They sent great captains and soldiers to aid us, but Vara was the only Seer who survived the attempt. Morilin hasn't been able to wake her. Seer Lin'Quel has been missing since the night of the summoning. All we have is his mask. Vara's the only one left, and..."

The girl trailed off. Her armor actually had enough of a chink in it that she didn't violently object to Deithor's arm around her shoulders. Caden ignored the urge to play big brother to the two of them.

"Captain of what, exactly?"

"The Pantheon's Armies," Deithor answered. "The Star Gods. Surely you've heard of them by now, if any of the Wanderers are familiar to you?"

"...heard of them, yes. Know them closely, not really."

"She managed to call down the wrath of He Who Dances In His Name," Deithor said. "One of their highest servants. He used her as an avatar to do battle on this plane-"

"And the others?"

"Seer Teriniel managed to serve as an avatar of Song of Wild Nights, and Seer Barathul became His Divine Right Hand and-"

"What happened to them afterwards?" Caden interrupted.

"...they were...empty," Deithor confessed. "Nothing but husks and clothes. That's what happens when you try to contain a god in a mortal shell."

Caden remembered Denebriel, and his encounters with the Elder Thaynes. He had no problem believing the boy.

"Ever since then, she's just...laid there. No need to eat, or drink. No need to relieve herself. Doesn't respond to anything. She just breathes and sleeps," Balakai said, sadness turning to reverence. "It's...beautiful to sleep near her."

"Well," Caden pinched at the bridge of his nose. "You're not doing that tonight. None of you are. You're going to leave me alone in here and whatever happens, whatever you hear, think, say or do, you will not come down here."

Both of them shot looks at him. Caden had been stared down by better. And by worse.

"You're also going to take the Ranger standing four feet to the left of me and the Ranger standing nine feet ahead of me and drag them out too."

Silence.

"Don't make me repeat myself."

As if on cue, both Rangers appeared, riflestaves aimed squarely at his head and chest. Neither asked, but Caden answered them anyway: "Lucky guess. It's where I'd stage an ambush if I were you. Now get out."

Either his skills at bluffing were getting better, or the Wanderers in Starlight weren't quite as hardcore as Caden remembered them. Either way, the two senior Rangers and both apprentices left the room. Hesitation marked every step, but you don't argue with a Wizard in situations like this. You either kill him quick and hope he stays that way, or you do what you're told and hope it doesn't end in hexes and tears. They filed out and Caden waited until they were all the way up the stairs before daubing a finger in blood from his leg wound. He traced a spell on the doorframe.

A split second later, the air froze into solid black ice between the basement and the stairwell. Caden left it there, staggered over to Vara's bed and took out his knife.

"Sorry about this," he said. "But it's for your own good."

[Caden Law]

There was a lot of blood by the time Caden finished his ugly work. Blood and splinters. He never was much of a wood carver, and the floorboards were pretty tough. First came the circles, then the seemingly random assortments of lines, and then the blood and ink that turned those lines into sideways lettering. Pretty much all of it came from Caden, with a little help from a small jar of ink someone had left dusting in a far corner of the room. He couldn't actually pierce Vara's skin or he would've used some of her blood to help.

The end result was twofold: Caden was so exhausted and lightheaded that he was having trouble standing, while Vara's bed was completely encircled within an unactivated barrier spell. It was crude work. Caden wasn't used to making barriers, and he had always been more of a secular Wizard than one of those Church whackjobs. Like his little sister, Cadence. She would've known what to do about this.

"Ugh," Caden grunted at the thought, sitting down outside the circle and rubbing at his eyes. Thinking of Cadence meant thinking of consequences: How would the loss of Denebriel affect the people of Evernorth? It'd always been so far removed from any seats of power, its Wizards always holding a bit more power in town than its Clergy...but then there was Cadence and her ilk, who were both and-

"Stop that," he said to himself. "Need to focus here."

Caden looked up to the circle, the bed, the elf, the distortions imploding and expanding in the air above her. They didn't hurt to touch, oddly enough. Didn't cause damage to anything Caden poked them with either. The whole thing looked positively demonic, but it felt utterly amoral; completely lacking any conceptual links to good or evil. The distortions didn't even feel like magic, living or dead. Caden tried to think of the situation as it might relate to Sorcery, but nothing came to him. He tried to connect and compare it to his studies as a Wizard, but this was new. Demons had rules and those rules were well recorded and reasonably understood. Whatever was plaguing Vara, it didn't fall into any category Caden was familiar with.

"Trigger," he mumbled to himself, stabbing the knife into the circle and shunting some power into it -- what little he had left at this point. "Trigger, dammit." The spell sparked and sputtered to life, blue lighting up in slow paths along each line and letter in the circles. A wall formed, eventually, and it was thin and transparent, blue and occasionally marked with the appearance of drifting feathers. It was a miniaturized version of the spell Caden had used to sever Denebriel's power and set up a magical null zone. The thing above, attached to, possibly echoing from within Vara, pulsed against the spell's walls. But it did not distort them, nor did it push through them. It didn't even acknowledge them, except as a fish might notice glass.

"It'll do," Caden decided.

He then did what any (in)sane Wizard does after killing a false god, killing that same god's guardians, blowing out huge chunks of a city, toppling ancient orders, jumping continents at the behest of another God, riding hours at a time through war-torn plains, then charging head-on through a city of undeath and confronting the passive shades of an eldritch abomination: He crawled over to one of the cots on hands and knees, and flopped his way into it. Caden didn't really fall asleep so much as he passed out. Drooling. Face down. Goggles still on. With one leg hanging off one side of the bed and the one arm hanging off the other. With that same eldritch abomination still locked in the room with him.

[Caden Law]

There once was a Wizardess who vied with a gent named Tön're Aullum-Seu, known to his peers by such colorful titles as the Darkest Lord of Dai-Hath, the Blackest Warlock of the Obsidian Coven, the Binder of El'Rolloch, the Dier in Iron and the Eighty Year Sojourner in Vile Truth. Tön're is remembered, at least in certain circles that keep track of these things, for being one of the archetypal black magic badasses. Even though he spent eighty years in an arcane prison while they Worked out the means of actually executing him, and spent most of that time guiding proxies through astral commands and other such methods. Tön're's great contribution to history, and the one that ensured his name would be remembered, was a proverb roughly translating as Never give a Wizard time to prepare.

The Wizardess who vied against Tön're, and whose identity is remembered only as the White Lady Anon, made a few contributions that have mostly been forgotten. The one that's remembered is the one that was unintentional. It's a quote that was originally in an ancient, mixed dialect of Salvic and Raiaeran, presumably from a scholastic trade language no longer used in either country. It was translated liberally into Old Diamonic, then re-translated into a dozen other languages, such that it has no need for formality when quoting it. Even if someone doesn't know of the White Lady Anon, there's a pretty good chance they've heard her wisdom at some point in their lives. Especially when they were children and the monsters in the closet were so very, very real.

Sleep lightly and carry a big stick.

As an apprentice, Caden had slept lightly and often did carry a big stick. In those days it literally served as a teddy bear you could bludgeon things with, and it was practical at two levels: Not only could you smash animals with it if attacked in your sleep (as Caden had to do at least a few times out on the frontier), but you carried it with you into your dreams. Caden didn't put up with nightmares in his childhood. He beat them stupid. As he'd grown older and more insecure in his imaginings, he lost that sense of invincibility through caution, translating it more into waking actions than sleeping ones. Tonight, he regretted doing that.

Because tonight, as he drifted off into la-la land, the Wizard found himself truly drifting off. He remembered hitting the bed, and then he remembered standing up on ground that moved like a river.

He stood still then, there, in a place without time and meaning. He stared at his feet, and he noted with detached calm that the world was dark and glowing and the river was made out of faces and flesh between them. A glance left, there stood a ziggurat of choral and bone. A glance right, fire that laughed like a man and walked like a woman and burned like some fifth stage between wretched age and infantile innocence. Behind him, Caden could see stars racing along hills that rose and fell like breathing, and a sky that was moving without clouds or fixed points or colors at all. Directly ahead was a grand temple in the likeness of a skull that wasn't at all human, with watery lights freezing in its eyes and doors in each of its million teeth. Somewhere, a violin was playing.

There were children laughing and singing.

And the skittering of claws on bone, the sound of skin crawling, of mouths opening and of eyes grinning like they had teeth -- because they did.

Caden wished he had a big stick nowadays. He couldn't feel his magic. A stick would've been nice.

[Caden Law]

He settled for screaming and flailing around and falling out of bed. The Wizard jolted upright, dizzy and irate and trying to draw his sword, wand and rod all at once; the wand summoned out of his coat, slipped through his fingers and crashed into the ceiling. The sword didn't even leave its scabbard, and the rod came up more like a drunken baseball bat, stopping just short of cracking Caden across the back of his own head.

Left, right, back, forward. He was in the room. He was himself. His hands were still pallid and veiny, his goggles were lopsided and his Hat was lying on the floor. Caden gulped. He looked over to the barrier spell, Vara, and the distortions. The air had no face, and the antilights sucking in and out of it lacked any physical features at all, but...

Caden could swear they were smiling at him.

A thousand tiny little mouths, smiling at him.

Caden felt nothing for a few seconds, then half-heartedly mumbled, "It's nice to be out of my league again. I was almost getting accustomed to knowing what I was doing and having a fighting chance at it." This was not spoken with a smile or a challenging tone. Caden was serious. So numb that you might as well have dunked the essence of his personality in novacaine and shot it full of morphine, but utterly serious.

The Wizard replaced his holster, summoned his wand properly and adjusted everything back to its proper place. Then he walked over to the circle and stepped right through it. The sensation of being cut off from background magical energy wasn't all that different from holding one's breath, though it was made more disconcerting by the fact that Caden was still breathing. He tried to imagine a wall in his thoughts, just as a precaution, while he bent down and wrapped his arms around the Seer. She felt light. Caden didn't have much experience picking up Elves of either gender, but Vara felt lighter than any human woman he'd ever lifted. He hauled her over one shoulder like a sack, then nonchalantly stepped out of the circle.

Vara didn't stir in the slightest as she left, but the thing remained in the circle. Caden set her down, rather brutishly, on the nearest cot. The thing in the circle was still heaving in and out of existence, and now he could see it pushing up against the barrier. The distortions were growing faster and faster, until they weren't, and then they just stopped all together. But he could still see a bulge where they pushed against the circle and then even that was gone. Caden heard a snap sound and he knew it was gone.

After a minute or two, the circle faded out completely. Caden felt the magic powering it shut down, and then he felt nothing out of the ordinary at all.

"Huh," he sounded to himself, then looked at Vara. She was still sleeping, now sprawled out rather indignantly with how he'd practically slung her down. Caden went over to the shelves and started pilfering around. He found smelling salts, went back to Vara and waved them under her nose. When that didn't work, he tried a few light slaps to either cheek. When that didn't work, he shook her and tried shouting. When that didn't work, Caden actually resorted to his Wizard's Voice. And when even that didn't work, he settled down on the edge of the bed and tried to think the problem through.

And here, his education combined with his instinctive knowledge of Sorcery came in handy: "In the old stories, the princess is awakened by a kiss from a prince. Technically speaking, a magi are a form of nobility...and...Sorcerers are a form of royalty," he said to himself, "The kind won through trial and conquest..."

This was followed by another, more muted, "Huh," and then a "Hn," and finally a "Screw it."

Caden leaned over her. Considered what he was about to do, both as a mage and as a man: On the one hand, he had to focus enough to conjure up the Sorcerous powers and channel them to his lips and mouth. On the other, Vara was beautiful. Alarmingly beautiful. And he hadn't had so much as a kiss in five years.

Deep breath. And...

Incidentally, for a dainty little Elven maiden who hadn't moved in weeks, Vara had one hell of a left hook.

[Caden Law]

"Aw, man," Caden said with a grin. "This is just like old times." He poked the bars. "I mean, shinier, yes, but still. I feel like I'm back in Tembrethnil already. Or perhaps Evernorth. Or Dueril's shack. Definately not that one Orc ship though, their bars were nowhere near this fancy."

Vara's Voice literally dripped liquid sarcasm out of thin air: "Glad you approve, Wizard." The stuff puddled, congealed and evaporated in short order. Apprentice Rangers clustered behind her, mostly in abject terror. Shaul occupied a cot. He had a wand in one hand and a water skin in the other.

"Gods...it just takes me back to better times, more innocent times. D'you kids know her tattoos used to look more like dimples when I first met her?" Stares from the crowd. "Oh, she was so...nubile then. Probably still is, way you Elves are, but good Swaying Saint..."

"You disgust me."

"Just like old times!" the Wizard laughed.

And then, rather abruptly, he stopped. "Except it's not. You should have three more of your best in here if you plan on holding me for any amount of time. Nine if you plan on actually killing me."

"That cage will explode with enough force and heat to reduce this whole theater to molten glass if you try anything." Vara's eyes narrowed as she spoke. She had her armor on again, sans helmet, and her sword in hand, sans sheath. Its blade looked like molten glass, or genuine liquid crystal, or some other material that made no sense for a bladed weapon.

"That's nice," Caden shrugged. "I killed a demigod about twenty hours ago. I'm a little tired, but I could add everyone in this city to my tab if I had to."

"You're bluffing."

To which Blueraven merely smiled as only Wizards can.

"I can smell corruption on him," Shaul spat. Several of the apprentices finally followed his example, pulling out riflestaves and pistolwands of varying make and quality. Caden noted that all three of his early saviors were using what looked like jury-rigged field work. Balakai's had obviously been carved out of an oar and Deithor's still had a bent nail near the tip.

"Of course you do," Caden said, hiding his hands. "I just waded through a field of undead not three hours ago."

"No," Vara Said. "You have changed, Wizard. Your very aura is different."

"Oh, that." Caden showed his hands this time. The hiding had been a specifically planned lead-up to it. The skin was still paler than the rest of him, veins still stood out. They were ugly. One was scarred rather badly from magical acid burns back in Salvar. "I'm a Lich now." Cue the gasping apprentices and the shocked look on Vara's face. "Just kidding. Have dabbled a bit in Necromancy, but only as a counter-measure." Bold-faced lie. He didn't want to think about the times he'd ripped energy from the Sway, or even from Xem'zund's assassins. Let alone Tembrethnil. But... "Oh, don't look so surprised. Not like I haven't committed crimes against nature before or anything. Just ask the Spirit of Tembrethnil Forest. Oh, wait. You can't."

"Monster. Let me kill him, Seer. Please let him kill him," Shaul said, and a few of the older apprentices were really, really backing him on it.

"You really have changed," Vara noted, her Voice gone out in absolute surprise. Maybe she was a little bit tired too. Her sleep didn't seem particularly restful, and even though Caden was the one sporting a fist-sized bruise on his chin, that had been a rather rude awakening.

"For what it's worth," Caden said. "You have absolutely no idea."

The surface of the cage's bars quivered slightly. The air in the room moved in time with the rise and fall of the Sorcerer's Voice. The Mark on Caden's cheek actually lit up with each and every syllable, and dust began to drift down from the ceiling, shelves and walls.

"Why are you here?" Vara asked, staring now.

Caden shrugged, and finally let go of the bravado. Sincerity was key here. And he really did tell her the truth this time: "Because I was supposed to be all along."

"You've been missing for months," Shaul replied. "Gone into hiding to study the foul wisdom of the enemy, perhaps?"

"Left Raiaera on a journey of self-discovery, actually, back in Salvar," Caden answered, ignoring the accusation. Shaul's justifiable paranoia wasn't worth being angry over at this point. He waited. Elves had a sense of drama, most of the time. Sooner or later, someone would ask the obvious.

Vara did: "What happened to you?"

"In dramatic or chronological order?" Caden asked. No answer. "I burnt down an arcanery, killed four or five Death Lords in the mountains, learned how to swordfight from a Drow-Dwarf named Dueril, was arrested, nearly executed, triggered a purge of Warlocks and a near-civil war in my hometown, was banished from said-hometown, had my heart broken into a million tiny, slightly bookish pieces in said-hometown, went to Berevar, met somebody else's Gods, gained tremendous power and insight and optimism, went to Knife's Edge, killed my God, met another of those other Gods, was thusly Godjacked and dumped here, and then...oh, well." He shrugged. "You know the rest, I'm sure."

A chorus of mute stares.

"Gods, you should see the looks on your face right now. It almost makes it all worthwhile. Except not."

"Are you insane?" Deithor asked.

"Not at all! I'm a Wizard."

"Which is even worse," Shaul muttered.

"You just wish you had a Hat this pointy."

Silence.

Caden stood up in the cage, though it left him hunched over doing it. "Oh, that's another thing. I forgot to mention it last time I saw you, but I went timetravelling and for some reason I keep glowing gold and getting taller by about an inch every few months. Neat, isn't it?"

Caden nonchalantly let himself out of the cage. Nobody so much as blinked. It was about the effect he was hoping for: They were already shellshocked from war, and from the sudden return of their leader, and now here was a human Wizard being completely and harmlessly insane in their general direction. Sooner or later, even an Elven mind will short out. Caden politely shut the cage behind him and examined the locking mechanism before announcing, "I have no idea how I just did that. So." He looked to the lot of them. "Any questions? Concerns? Comments? Compliments of my sexy Hat and manly scars?"

Nothing for the longest time. Then Vara actually admitted, "You did get taller. I had not noticed that."

Caden summoned his wand, rod, knife, sword and breastplate from the farthest corner of the room, fitting each one back into its place accordingly. It was then that Shaul asked, "Who'd you kill for the Conscript plate? You threw yours away back in Tembrethnil."

Caden finished latching it on. Thought about it for a second. Then answered in absolute honesty: "Myself."

"What."

"Myself. I killed myself. The breastplate was a reward from Elder Thayne Draconus. You know, he actually smiled without lips when he gave it back to me. Said it was about time I saw its use, or some such. Swell guy, really."

"What."

"Question," Caden said. Vara looked at Shaul just shook his head at the floor and lowered his wand in defeat. The Seer looked back, and Caden smiled. "Does it always feel like this when you lot brag about how awesome you are? Because I could really get used to it."

"Whatever chance you had of bedding me before, you just blew it," Vara replied in short order.

Caden snapped his fingers, but the impact wasn't anywhere near what it would've been a few months ago. He actually spent a few seconds seriously considering his next words. They were rude, crude, and really just plain Wrong on a lot of levels.

Which is exactly why he said them anyway.

"Well, for what it's worth, I actually did want to bed you for a little while there. But that was just a momentary fad, courtesy of shock and desperation. Truth is, there are two things to consider: One is that your insides have been populated by an eldritch abomination for at least a month now. It'd be like chucking a piece of meat into a canyon full of writhing teeth. Two is that, well...this is personal, but one of my life's goals has been to see if there is such a thing as an Elven prostitute."

Shaul actually sat up. "You're still on about that?"

"Abso-gods-damned-lutely," Caden replied with a completely straight face. He then adjusted his Hat, straightened his glasses and started walking. "Incidentally, I'll be back later." Through the door, up into the theater. Charger bleated a greeting. "Don't wait up!"

Fifteen Elves and Drow stood in absolutely baffled silence. One more just groaned and went to sleep on the spot.

[Caden Law]

It was all very funny up until it actually happened.

A little over two years ago, Caden Law had written in his diary that he wanted to find and take out certain frustrations on an Elven prostitute. Later, he added that he might need two just to get the kinks out. Eventually, it hit him that such an obsession -- even passive and fanciful as it was -- was unhealthy. Then it became a joke and, once in a while, served as an effective deterrent to conversation: 'What're you here for?' someone might ask, and Caden would pleasantly answer, 'I'm looking for an Elven prostitute! I'm sure one exists out there somewhere!' And then he'd get stared at and the other person would very uncomfortably move away.

Hilarious. Really.

Up till the moment Caden actually saw it.

Anebrilith was a city in tatters, but it was still an Elf city in tatters. Caden expected that the people would have some shred of dignity left, some unbroken pride and that haughty air about them that he just loved to hate. But they didn't. All the buildings were run down, and plenty of them were piles of rubble. Some were just missing parts: Doors here, shutters there, anything flammable. There was vandalism scattered about the place. Symbols, sigils, emblems, quotes and even just the names of choice passages. A few memorials caked in mud along walls nobody stopped to look at. And the scenery was just a reflection of the people in it. Caden saw little children running in the muck, not as if they were playing, but as if they were running for their very lives. He saw men sitting broken at their front doors, slough-eyed charicatures of their former selves. The few people that were roaming the streets in anything resembling good help were actually Men, and the occasional Dwarf or Orc. All pirates and slumlords in the most literal sense, most decked out in whatever passed for their ship's uniform.

At the docks, Caden found a tavern that hadn't been gutted. It had furniture swiped straight out of a museum, and priceless art sat crooked and defaced on its walls. Most of the inhabitants were Men, harder looking than Caden would ever be. Coronians in red and stained white, Salvarans in black and blue, maybe a half-dozen Fallien rogues differentiated by both their dusky skin and the style and make of their linens. Scarabrians too, and more. All of them looked like filth to him; the kind of men who would be shot on sight for one past crime or another in most parts of the world. They weren't welcome here either, but they were the ones who had food and drink. And they had women because of it.

This is where Caden finally, finally saw her, and the joke stopped being funny. He stepped into the tavern, just to see what was going on, and there she was. Some nameless beauty, weathered and tarnished and half-naked on the floor. A fresh bruise, shaped in the print of a Man's hand, covered one of her cheeks and eyes. Something was dripping from around her mouth, and there was a Man laughing it up not three feet away from her, and his friends were laughing with him. For a full minute, Caden watched as she sat there. Her eyes were cold and unresponsive. She blinked a few times, audibly swallowed, then wiped her face off with one of her skirts and stood up. One of them tossed her a loaf of stale bread, and another offered meat if she was willing to do something Caden didn't quite hear clearly.

She didn't even stop to think about it. In full view of every single soulless thing in that tavern, she disrobed.

Caden left in short order. He went back outside, over to the edge of the docks. He leaned over those dark, troubled waters, with what looked like dead fish actually swimming in them, and he tried not to vomit as all the implications, realities, and rancid truths finally hit him at once. Elven whores did exist. And there wasn't anything worth laughing about where they were concerned.

"Oy," someone said. They had an accent thick enough to hear from one syllable. "Nice hat." And they weren't speaking Raiaeran either.

"Hat," Caden corrected them. "Capital H."

"Nice threads in gen'ral. Spidersilk, right?"

"You can't have them," Caden sighed, straightening up and looking at his visitor. It was another Man, bigger and taller than him. Pirate, judging by the off white shirt and the green bandana. Had a bona fide cutlass on each hip and a crossbow in hand.

"Oh, c'mon now," he said. The crossbow was already aimed. "No need to make hasty gen'ralizations like that. I could just want ya liver."

"Get in line."

"Real joker, arn'tcha?"

"Wizard, actually."

Which had no effect whatsoever. The pirate grinned. He had big, blocky teeth and a thinly cut goatee to boot. "N'the real question is, what's a Wiza'd doin' out here, a Man no less, unaffiliated. See, I don't recognize ya. And our good friend the Baron makes sure ev'ryone what comes he'e, knows each other-"

"I took the front door," Caden replied. "Incidentally, you might want to watch out for my associate behind you."

"Oldest trick in the book," said the pirate. And then, without looking, he whipped a throwing knife from his sleeve and hurled it over his shoulder. It sank to the hilt in a rotted old wooden beam that somehow hadn't been burned for warmth yet. "Takes more 'an that t'fool the Dread Pirate Granai, bub."

"Noted." Caden wiggled his fingers a bit. The motion wasn't lost on Grannai.

"Fingers," he said. "Thumbs, Wizzy. Oh, don't look so su'prised. I know 'bout 'ow you pricks cast ya spells."

"Good for you," Caden sighed. And then he threw up a Gravity Gambit anyway, the air warping in and out on itself less than an inch from his pinky. Hand up, the sphere grew larger. Grannai fired his bolt and Caden's spell barely caught the tail end of it with the tip less than an inch from the left lense of his glasses. The bolt went wide in reverse, snapping in half as it flew back at Grannai. The pirate threw his first weapon aside and drew both cutlasses with a laugh, rushing forward in the same breath.

Caden drew his sword just in time to bash the first strike away and scare Grannai out of making the second. The pirate lurched back, cagey and grinning like a maniac. Caden grimaced.

"Did you just feel like starting a fight for fun, or what?" he asked.

"Words already out," Grannai replied. "'Bout a Wizard chargin' straight through the gate-lines. Oh, we know all about you, blue-hat."

"Blueraven," Caden corrected. They were on a pier already. No ground to twist beneath Grannai's feet. Any attack would have to be direct. At least there weren't any ships on either immediate side. Not that the prospect of zombie fish was any more appealing than an ambush, and Caden wasn't ruling out snipers. "Your plan needed some work."

"Plan?" Grannai asked. "Fun's never planned!"

And he surged forward, leading left and swinging in right for the follow-up. Caden blocked one, parried against both, missed on his counter and barely managed to avoid the kick that followed. Grannai was twirling his left cutlass so fast it was hard to follow, but that was just a distraction and the right cutlass came swinging for Caden's face. It missed. Caden backpedaled, nearing the end of the pier as he went. Grannai charged after him, pouring on the offense. He wasn't Death Lord-grade, but he knew what he was doing. Keep up the pressure, don't let the Wizard have a chance to get his wits about him for spellcasting. There are plenty of reasons why a plain mob can take out a spellcaster: Pitchforks and torches are bloody well effective if you bring enough of them. Grannai was able to replicate that effect through sheer speed and unpredictability.

Up to the moment that Caden jumped forward and willingly took a hit square to the chest. Grannai's left cutlass stopped twirling, bounced off the breastplate so hard that it left the pirate's hand, and Grannai jumped back in surprise. Caden took a blind thrust for the man's leg and missed, barely dodging the counter with his arm intact. It didn't matter. Caden drew back with his free hand and the wand was already flipping up into his grasp. The Wizard stepped away, Grannai surged back up to his feet-

Blueraven hit him almost point blank with a blast of raw heat and force, followed by a frigid aftershock. It blew Grannai's shirt open and left a burnt patch of ice on his chest and shoulder. The pirate staggered in surprise and pain. Caden lunged in and took Grannai's right arm off in an instant, and the pirate collapsed, screaming. But he wasn't bleeding. The stump didn't even leak. A second or two later, as Caden finished realizing what was going on, Grannai rolled right off the pier and into the water. Caden rushed to see what happened to him, but the only sight that greeted the Wizard was that of bubbles churning up to the surface.

"Huh," he sounded to himself. Waited. Stabbed his sword hilt deep through the pier, just to be safe. Drew it back up, no blood. He then inspected the arm. Which was still twitching slightly. It bore a mark like a very stylized K.

[Caden Law]

When he arrived back at the theater, Caden was greeted with raised riflestaves and a drawn sword, and a pitchfork wielded by an apprentice who'd apparently lost his staff and not had proper time to craft a replacement. Caden replied by slapping Gannai's severed arm right onto the prongs. The apprentice, an Elven girl who barely looked seventeen, shrieked in surprise and put a lightning burst through the theater ceiling. Caden blithely swiped her pitchfork with one hand and carried it like a travel staff, down the stairs and into the basement. There, he met Vara and company again. Most of the senior Rangers were there, if any could truly be considered senior at this point.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything." He brandished the pitchfork, and the arm with it. "Want a bite?"

"How was she?" Shaul asked, almost unphased. It was like a numb kind of acceptance had replaced his murderous rage from before. The fact that he could stand now, albeit stiffly, probably helped. At this point, the Ranger looked like he needed a good lay worse than Caden did. "Blueraven?"

"Huh?" Caden asked, shaking his head.

"How was the whore?" Shaul asked, blunter this time. Several Wanderers looked at him in thinly veiled disgust.

Caden just thought about it for a few seconds, then shrugged. "Disillusioning," he said, trying not to think about the Why? of that Elf's actions. "Incidentally, you lot have some explaining to do." He twisted the pitchfork, flipping the arm at its end to show the stylized K to them. "Starting with this."

Shaul looked at Vara looked at one of the other Rangers -- the Drow who'd let Caden in, judging by the armor and robes, now sans mask and much more beautiful for it. Even with the scar gnarling from the ivory hairline of her forehead to the left collarbone, skipping a spot or two for an eye and the nape of the neck. She also shrugged, tried to pass the obligation to someone else, and failed miserably. Then she answered, "That's the Mark of the Dead Baron. It's what allows outsiders to come and go as they please, safe and secure in the knowledge that they won't be accosted by Kaverre's forces during their stay. It's also a status symbol, entitling them to...anything they want. Because they're safety. Fickle, well-supplied safety that can snap away at a whim, but still better than the alternatives."

Caden didn't ask what the alternatives were. Instead, he asked, "And why are these people allowed to operate when you're here?"

"Take a look at our forces, Wizard," another Ranger cut in. This was a male Drow, older and harder looking than Shaul. He actually managed to look grimmer without the mask than he did with it. "Until tonight, we had no Seers left. There are five fully realized Rangers and a bunch of apprentices whose masters were killed in the months we've been here. Our healers are all gone. The ship we used to infiltrate Kaverre's necrotic blockade is at the bottom of the bay, and any time we so much as try to harry or suppress the black marketeers, the Baron launches an attack that leaves dozens of dead that walk. This is an utter no-win situation and we cannot even escape from it."

"Wonderful mindset you have there," Caden replied, dropping the pitchfork for emphasis. Its owner rushed over to pick it up, finally.

"What do you know?" the Ranger sneered. "You're not an Elf. You're practically no different from one of Kaverre's auxilliaries. You could probably buy your way out of here on any ship you wanted and never lose a single night's sleep over it, and he'd let you, and-"

"What's your name, Ranger." Not a question. It was an order. The temperature in the theater's basement was starting to drop. Vara sighed and looked away. Shaul put his face in one hand.

"Hessran," said the Wanderer. "Hessran Ko'Vaun. Why?"

"Because if you keep talking like that, I'm going to kill you. It'd be impolite to bury you without a proper gravemarker."

Hessran brought his riflestaff to bear. In the same instant, he had a sword at his throat and a wand at his temple. Caden didn't budge one inch, not even to breathe. Hessran didn't even blink. "Why the sudden change of heart, Seer?" the Ranger asked through grit teeth. "Has his madness affected you too?"

"I absolutely detest this Wizard," Vara replied. "His involvement lead to the deaths of my brother and sister and the scourging of Tembrethnil. But he gets results, and the Necromancer has a bounty on him by Name. One does not carry that kind of distinction without earning it the hard way." She waited for a moment, perfectly still except for the movements of her eyes: She looked to Caden, her expression neutral and her voice terse. "I have been idle for far too long. And at least the Wizard still has the will to try and win this fight."

"As if it could be won," Hessran muttered.

Can I kill him now? Caden pointedly did not ask. He was certainly thinking it though. For all his probable expertise, Hessran was a walking blight on morale and it showed. Not even the semi-miraculous return of one of the Seers seemed to be lightening his mood.

"You haven't seen the things I have, Seer. You have been idle too long. Whatever opportunity we had to win, to even fight that Godsdamned Baron, it's long gone."

"I disagree," said Shaul, which seemed to be the final word on the matter. Hessran waited for just a few moments, as if trying to convey resentment and hopelessness through sheer body language, and then he finally lowered the staff without a single word. For their own emphases, Shaul and Vara held him at their mercy just a while longer. The point had to be made. The fragmented chain of command had to be re-established somehow: Vara was the leader, Shaul was her second, and Caden was willing to guess that Hessran was no longer third, fourth, or even really fifth. He had, symbolically at least, just been kicked down to a level with the apprentices.

"Well, now that that's out of the way," Caden said, relaxing only slightly, "I feel compelled to point out that the enemy is unaware of the good Seer's return. And it's in our best interest to act slowly to capitalize on that fact."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Vara asked as she sheathed her sword. The look of distaste on her face could've inspired beautiful, if macabre, poetry.

"Find potential magi. Train them in the basics," Caden explained. Understanding lit through her eyes without need for all the details.

"There are kinks in your plan," she said. "The paths of Seer, Faithful and Bard are not to be taken lightly, or quickly. And though I've walked both the paths of Faithful and Bard, I can only teach Seers."

Caden smiled like an anarchist vandal in a state-owned church. "At Eluriand, I had seven completely untrained Men of talent practicing basic Bladesinger spellcraft in less than an hour. In Salvar, I taught a barely schooled six year old how to combust icewater in a day."

"You're suggesting we train Elves as Wizards?" Another Ranger asked, this one a Drow female who managed to pull off that fae beauty with a haircut more butch than some men.

"Basically, yes," Caden shrugged. "At least in the same basic spellcraft Wizards start on. How they develop after that is anyone's guess."

"Isn't that minor league heresy?" Balakai snipped, and was promptly stared down by every adult Wanderer in the room. And some of the kids too. Caden grinned and scruffed her hair instead.

"It's the best kind of heresy, kiddo."

"I'm not-what-stop that."

Caden didn't.

"Wizard," Vara sighed.

"Fine, fine."

"What about the harpies?" Shaul asked. "They see everything."

"I'm a geomancer," Caden replied. "The real trick will be keeping the tunnels hidden and making sure nobody notices the trainees. We could hide the first few disappearances, chalk that up to whatever you please, but if Anebrilith has a lot of residual talent left over..."

"It probably doesn't," Hessran sighed. "The Bladesingers plucked up most potential magi early on, and took them out when they fled. Anyone with obvious talent after that was usually taken in the night, either by harpies or pirates."

"Coincidentally, we're going to have to solve the pirate problem soon," Caden replied.

"Then it would appear we have our work cut out for us," Vara said, followed by a rueful little smile. "Just like old times."

[Caden Law]

In a lonely, desolate theater in the run-down, perpetually besieged city of Anebrilith, there was a Man sprawled on the floor, partially leaned back against an overlarge goat with a saddle on its back. The Man wore a rather pointed Hat, tall and blue and wide in the brim, and in this Hat there was a book. A few of its more recent pages were stained with something that may or may not qualify as blood. Beneath the stains, most of which were fading as the book's self-sustaining magic worked itself full throttle, you'd find ink. Lots and lots of ink. Words. The story of a very nascent, quite possibly doomed spot of hope in otherwise dark and wretched times.

This is that story.

(What parts can be read beneath the stains.)

ALF Commander Blueraven's Log, Day Zero: Have decided to save the world. Technically. Will be keeping a log for both posterity's sake and because it's the only thing keeping me from throwing several co-conspirators down the nearest well and bombing it.

I have, in effect, joined the remnants of Witherwind Enclave* in order to form the Anebrilith Liberation Force (ALF). I am the only human in the ALF's ranks. I am also, technically speaking, the ranking military officer within the force. Hilarity ensued when Ranger Hessran voiced objections and declared, "I will not profane myself by taking orders from a Man." Hilarity was trial-by-combat. Not so funny at the time. Won trial by tripping him up and cracking his jaw with uppercut-pillar. No teeth knocked out, regrettably. Authority was reconciled with the Enclave in short order: I am now Second-in-Command of the Enclave. Ranger Shaul was less than thrilled, but no further objections.

* Apparently, Enclaves disband and form completely anew after major losses on any mission. Witherwind is technically the reteam of Farstrike.

First act was to establish hierarchy within the Enclave. Is as follows:

Seer Vara Yenuial (Hates me)
Self (Truly awesome)
Ranger Shaul Karna (Still limping, less homicidal)
Ranger Nolara Nagat (Short-hair, fantastic rack)
Ranger Fiera Grethel (Long-hair, nice ass)
Ranger Hessran Ko'Vaun (Prick, no missing teeth)
Ranger Apprentice Jailbait (I am too old to be thinking like that about her. Actual name is Farana or something)
The Apprentices after Jailbait are equal in rank (if nothing else)

Work begins tomorrow.

Day One: Slow day.

Sent most of the Enclave out on what passes for their "usual business," which means most spent the day sniping on the wall and a few went scavenging for food with secondary instructions to scout potential Talents. (From a distance and without being detected, of course.) This left me sharing basement with Vara all day while I tried to divine the layout of Anebrilith's sewer system and whether or not I could tunnel through it without any gaps. We did not speak much. Vara has taken my advice to remain inside and out of sight for the duration: The longer we can keep her existence a secret, the better. And if I don't leave the theater, the enemy may believe me to be dead or in hiding or imprisoned by the Wanderers. We will see.

Once divination is complete, work can begin.

Day Two: Work begun on tunnel system for future apprentices. Wanderers have spotted four potential Talents thus far. One Apprentice is MIA, presumed harpied (his leg fell on Ranger Shaul's head during the search). Commented, "Hopefully he died fighting. Preferably with his head getting annihilated in the process." Was promptly slapped by Seer Vara on behalf of Apprentice's sibling. No hard feelings.

Tunneled through a large stretch of stone, passing through the sewers without outwardly damaging them. Somewhat disturbed though: Vara and I both sensed something through the walls. Rangers instructed to place runes where and as told during their rounds. We'll have a warning system up by tomorrow, with any luck.

No fresh Talent uncovered.

Day Three: Warning system did no good. One Apprentice killed, one Undead.

I had just finished shaping the first chamber beneath the sewers when something clawed in through the ceiling and took the head of Apprentice Riven. It was a ghoul, one of half-dozen. Lead ghoul pinned me while Vara fought two. Apprentice Durandelf was bitten deeply in the arm and went ghoul by fighting's end. Apprentices Deithor and Balakai put him down before he could cause any harm.

Current ALF personnel count: 6 Command, 1 Junior, 6 Apprentices.
Fatalities: 3 (Sojakai, Riven, Durandelf).
Talents spotted: 5 (4, +1 today)

Day Four: Warning system in place. Have found underground tunnels leading into the sewers. Rangers Shaul and Hessran dispatched to seal them up using Seerstones for urgency's sake. Stones conjured to my specifications caused the tunnels to literally seal. Magic bears my thumbprint to avoid tipping our hand. Not sure how Vara did that. Warning runes in place to make sure the tunnels remain closed. Rangers Nolara and Fiera spent the day cleaning out zombies. Apprentices allowed to take potshots at the harpies. No casualties today.

Training area is almost complete. Chamber 1 will be junction. Planned entrances in several places in both the sewers and aboveground (out of harpy sight). Chamber 2 will be largest, most reinforced. Planned instruction area.

Talents spotted: 7 (2 more found near the piers; Apprentice Haldreth basically kidnapped them for their own good).
Security: Somehow not compromised. Jailbait was pleased. Nolara's got a better rack.

Day Five: Chamber 2 complete (structure). Securities in progress.

Day Six: Chambers completed. Work on auxilliary tunnels begins. Instructions begun with my very first true apprentices, Dylver and Kienelas. Dylver shows promise for Thermals but not much else, Kienelas has little talent but strong grasp of the basics. Thirdcomer, Bolabas, joined us late in the day. Have already introduced them to Concept Bypass and Runic Spellwork as a means of increasing productivity. May attempt to instruct them in basic alchemy for supply's sake.

Day Seven: Going too fast. Dylver almost got us all killed. Nothing else to report.

Day Eight: I saw the face of the enemy for the first time: Baron Kaverre himself, making a front-line inspection accompanied by what looked like a handful of necromancer auxilliaries and a bodyguard of ancient dead. Very well preserved. I spotted several signs of high status and advanced defenses throughout: He rode a demonic horse, wore Nobles' clothing over armor similar to what I saw on Ghez Hokan, was flanked by Blackstaves bearing the Necromancer's Eye and Standards, and wore several bits of jewelry that disquieted me to look at them. I instructed Ranger Cessae, TRAFKAJB* to take a shot at him from the battlements. The spell was disrupted by magicks similar to Blightcrow's Scattershot Barrier, but much more powerful and better controlled: Damage was so spread out among the ancient dead and the surrounding terrain that none of the individual spell fragments caused more than pits in dirt and rotten, leathery flesh. Nothing got through to him or his auxilliaries. I could hear his laughter more than 200 feet away.

Foppish bastard.

* The Ranger Apprentice Formerly Known As Jailbait

Addendum: Harpies attacked at the eastern tower. Some injuries, no dead on our side. One of the harpy corpses had a letter and Haldreth had common sense. He left the letter unopened and handed it to me with great care after disposing of the bodies. In short: "Welcome, Wizard Blueraven, to the end of your ragged flight from Death. May His tender mercies never leave you, as you shall never leave this place intact." It was signed with the Baron's Mark. No traps built in, but we burned the thing anyway.

Day Nine: New apprentice. I am not satisfied? happy? comfortable? with this one.

Her name is Neesal Danfras. She was doing it for her daughter, Iera.

I don't think I'll ever make that joke again.

Addendum: Iera's a half-elf. I have had to exercise authority and pull against Vara to ensure Iera's acceptance into our shelters. Father unknown. Perhaps best that way. Need to watch for Hessran; he's showing an attitude again.

Day Ten: Full class of 7; would be 8 but one of the prospective Talents is missing. Have crashcoursed the newcomers to semi-even footing with Dylver and Kienelas. Roster/specialties are as follows:

Dylver Tracen (Thermal; has already worked out the theory for a tornado of ice and fire. I must steal this)
Kienelas Tracen (Basics; still weak, but his magic is durable)
Warram Cael (Noncombatant; good grasp of runes, useful for group spellcasting, useless in a combat situation on her own)
Quel'thas Mjoln (Arcane; weak, flimsy, but spellwork quick and nimble)
Neesal Danfras (Pyromancer; natural but very low control. Indirect combatant)
Nethenor Eralas (Thermal, best with energy drain/ice; may pair him with Neesal or Kienalas)
Sigel Ventre (?????; talents are very, very hard to pin down. See below)

Acting in my capacity as both a Wizard and military commander, and in keeping with my authority as a Sorcerer*, I have assigned all seven of my students with the rank of Apprentice and the title of Mage. None of them have Hats, Staves or anything like that. Several of the Wanderers have helped us all in constructing wands and rods for them, among other things. Some of the Magi (and a few of the Apprentice Rangers) show talent for alchemy as well, though I'm not adept enough to teach them the finer points of it.

Insofar as trying to make them useful, results are mixed. Dylver and Neesal are by far the strongest of the lot, but also the hardest to predict and control. Dylver's magic is powerful, but he has little control, poor range and is rebellious by nature. Neesal has been through Hell. I don't fault her for it, but it's made a visible mark on her spellwork: The woman's a natural Pyromancer on a level that may well surpass me in terms of talent, power and control. But she's angry and nervous and loses focus easily. On top of that, she panics. I've decided to remove her from direct combat and teach her to cast fire at range**. Hopefully we can get her emotions under control.

Nethenor and Kienelas are a natural team. Nethenor's abilities to drain energy (and time, patience, sanity, will to live...) are incredible, enough to resemble elemental ice magic (which he may also be useful at, if he could find a good teacher). Kienelas has very low power, but his magicks are sturdy and he can make use of background energy very easily. Together, Nethenor drains power from a target and Kienelas uses the stored energy to work his magic at a higher level.

Warram and Quel'thas are not especially noteworthy. Warram is decidedly noncombatant. With a better teacher, she would probably grow into an excellent healer or spy, but I'm limited to teaching her runes and alchemy. She absorbs both well enough and has no problems serving as an auxilliary to other Mages. Quel'thas is very good at improvised spellcasting and thinking on his feet. He's weaker than any of them, but he's probably the best suited for fighting. I've got him running drills with a few of the junior Rangers. He and Cessae have hit it off quite nicely.***

Sigel is impossible to pin down. He handles the basics well enough, but whatever his affinities are, I'm missing them. The closest I've come to pinning them down is Ectomancy, which straddles dangerously close to at least half a dozen forms of dark (re: Black, Aberrant, Vile, Evil, Horrible, etc) magic. His actual talents are small, but it's probably good we got him first. I've tried to get him started on basic Conjuration with Ectomancy as a base, but it's not easy going and the Rangers are weary of him.

All Magi are crosstraining and learning to cast in groups. They seem to be establishing a good dynamic overall, but I still worry. It bears mention that, when we found them, their talents were all very low. I mentioned this to Vara and she explained to me that, "They are all tonedeaf. Elven magic, even my own, is based on song and rhythm. None of your Magi have that. That is why they were never trained and were able to slip under the enemies' watch like they have."

This actually answers a few questions I've had. Like why in the nine Hells Raiaera didn't have any schools of magic explicitly based on something other than Bardic tradition. As it turns out, they're just music-biased to the point of stupidity.

* Sorcery means direct connection to the Tap, the source of all magic. If that isn't entitlement to authority in magical affairs, nothing is.
** Need to expand and/or add another chamber.
*** And by 'hit it off' I mean 'while half-naked.' Vara was most displeased. I gave Quel high-five afterwards. Nice to see the young people still have hope enough to do what young people do.*****
**** Which is screw like rabbits.

Wait.

I'm not that old!

Addendum: Saw Gannai today. He has a new arm, much browner than the rest of him. I have spoken to the Wanderers and we've agreed to try and get some kind of information from the Pirates and their ilk. Wanderers pushing for Neesal to go under cover. Have put foot down. Not happening.

Day Eleven: Sigel scares me. He's managed to use Ectomancy as a basis for Geomancy. Something about it feels wrong to me and I'm not sure what. We constructed a new chamber with the help of my class and Vara (which is going increasingly stir-crazy in her confinement). Neesal got the honors of First Spell and charred a wall until it looked like black glass. Warram made herself useful by transmuting black glass to target signs. Rangers and Magi have made use of it as a joint firing range. Morale has increased.

I'll be holding my first combat exercise tomorrow. Will try to keep from maiming or killing anyone, but restraint is difficult for mages at any level. Wizardry just means subtlety, education and skill. Not necessarily lowered lethality. Vara has agreed to step in and keep things under control if necessary.

Day Twelve: Ow.

No casualties.

Except maybe my spleen.

Day Thirteen: Second round of combat training. I was ready for them this time. They mostly performed to expectations. Dylver almost killed me. Quel'thas is surprisingly good with the sword that I did not give him. Neesal still needs to learn some restraint*.

* Human men are on her barbecue-with-hatred list: "I hope you all die! You godsforsaken apes!"

She apologized later. I forgave her. First time an Elf has hugged me without clawing at their flesh and mumbling, "Unclean! Unclean!"

...and Iera is adorable. She took her first steps today. I think I need to go kick a puppy or two, but it looks like the citizens ate them all.

Addendum: A dead ent came stomping through the docks today. It killed ten people before the Rangers and I were able to destroy it. There were a few ravagers* hiding inside. The Rangers are currently mopping up, but Hessran was severely injured by a pirate in the fighting. One building destroyed. Not a good day.

* Ravagers are a somewhat new form of zombie: Fast, mindless, criminally insane and just intelligent enough to be a longterm pain in the ass if not dealt with early on. Not quite as strong or tough as ghouls, but their speed and ability to hide better make them more dangerous.

Addendum: Magi have all opted for a day of rest. Rangers all out. Time to take a break.

Addendum: Have been asked to handle a very important matter. Wll do so with somber dedication and professional detachment.And here ends our little story.

In a lonely, desolate theater in the run-down, perpetually besieged city of Anebrilith, there was a Man sprawled on the floor, partially leaned back against an overlarge goat with a saddle on its back. The Man wore a rather pointed Hat, tall and blue and wide in the brim, and in this Hat there was a book. A few of its more recent pages were stained with something that may or may not qualify as blood. Beneath the stains, most of which were fading as the book's self-sustaining magic worked itself full throttle, you'd find ink. Lots and lots of ink. Words. The story of a very nascent, quite possibly doomed spot of hope in otherwise dark and wretched times.

And in his arms, you'd find a soundly sleeping baby. The only one of her kind in an entire city for so many reasons.

(One of which was that none of the others had their own personal teddy-Wizard.)

[Caden Law]

Day fourteen saw a meeting of the minds.

"It is well past time that the Wizard proved his worth!"

Sort of.

"While he and his tonedeaf drones cause minor tremors and put a drain on our already sparse supplies, the Rangers in Starlight are out there! Above the streets, trying to put up a fight for all they are worth!"

"And if I recall, Hessran," Caden replied, thumbing his glasses into place. "You used to think we didn't stand a chance and should stop fighting entirely."

Hessran couldn't have been any quieter if Caden had broken his jaw. Several of the Rangers shared whatever shame the Wizard had lumped on their self-appointed spokesman, but no-one else spoke out in condemnation of him either. Vara let the words hang still far longer than she needed to, just for emphasis. Then she cleared her throat and spoke up, "It is time for us to start counter-attacking. The raids have grown worse. People are getting restless again, as happens when begin to hope just enough to feel desperation and fear again. Such is the consequence of uncertainty. At least before, they knew they were going to die. Now, they don't even have that. If nothing else, the Magi may serve in an auxilliary role while the Rangers take the fight to our enemies."

Caden was about to open his mouth when, of all people, Shaul spoke up ahead of him: "I disagree." All eyes flew to the former Farstriker, who in turn remained calm and collected. "I have my doubts as to how well a barely trained squadron of hedgemagi would perform under the best of circumstances. Ours are still recovering from physical and emotional trauma alike. The Rangers would also need some kind of rest in order to be effective."

"We need to do something," Hessran persisted.

"Strike at the black market," Neesal suddenly spoke up. "And the foul men supporting it."

For a split second, it actually looked like they would all ignore her. Caden would've approved of that, from a purely rational point of view. Whatever Neesal had been through in the past years, a few days of combusting walls into black glass and trying to flash-fry her teacher weren't enough to make it go away. Her judgement wasn't especially sound where the black market was concerned, nevermind its associated cancers.

And then that moment of sanity ended when Vara said, "I agree. The Wizard and I will handle it."

Two concerns immediately voiced themselves, from Fiera and Hessran respectively: "But any strike at the pirates is immediately retaliated against in overwhelming force!" followed by "Your wounds still haven't healed yet!"

Vara brushed them both aside: "I am unwounded, Ranger Hessran. Merely idle. I tire of sitting by while those under my Sight are picked off, killed by inches under the pretense of maintaining some element of surprise that would scarcely benefit us at all. And, Ranger Fiera, you would do well to remember that this is a war. Eventually, the Baron will tire of playing with his food. When that happens, I'd rather not fight a last stand on the walls as the city falls from within as well as without. These Men...these fell monsters wearing the flesh of them, are not worthy of living on Raiaeran soil or desecrating Elven sea."

Neesal grinned with a palpable sense of excitement. Several of the Apprentices, and some of Caden's Magi, weren't too far behind her. The Wizard himself set his face in a near-neutral grimace. He and Vara met eyes.

"Unless the Wizard has an objection, of course."

Funny, really. Vara hadn't been so rough around the edges back in Tembrethnil. Even upon waking up and putting a (now mostly faded) bruise on his chin, she was still mildly pleasant throughout most of the past two weeks. It almost reminded him of Nalith Celiniel, the Bard who'd come within a few inches of setting Caden on fire back in Eluriand.

"Not especially," Caden lied. "Only that we spend another day gathering intelligence and setting up contingencies."

"Indeed," said the Seer. "Handle your Magi. I will set up a succession plan among the Rangers. We meet tonight, alone, to discuss initial plans, and again in the morning to finalize our strategy."

Caden didn't like this. He didn't like any of it.

"Works for me."

Not one bit.

[Caden Law]

Not as planned.

There was a sword at his throat. One that looked like it was made of molten glass. His back was to the wall, his head was tilted as far from the blade as he could manage. Vara stood still as a statue, leaned towards him, arms outstretched so that one held the sword and the other braced its blade. They were alone in the dark, the only light coming from a few runes etched into the chamber ceiling and flickering like feeble candles in the abyss. If not for the weapon, the armor, the risk, it would've looked like the start of something intimate. Even with all that, it still came close to looking like the start of something intimate. By necessity of existing, fewer things can possibly be more intimate than murder at point blank range.

"Not as planned at all," Caden mumbled to himself, though he dared not swallow on the lump in his throat. The edge was too close and he wasn't feeling especially risky. "Care to explain, or do I get to haunt you later?" he asked, managing to keep his voice perfectly level in spite of the fact that his heart was pounding like a military drum on parade.

"Aldinar," she said. "Eledier." The blade didn't so much as twitch. "Tembrethnil Forest." Her voice wavered though. "And now, Anebrilith teeters on the brink." Barely. "I will not allow this city to fall, to be corrupted like the forest was. I can still remember that awful crow. I still hear Mother Tembrethnil crying out in pain. You are a Marked Man, Wizard, in every sense. Shaul despises you. Hessran would have your head. Nolara and Fiera could care less either way. I want you dead for the misery and the shame you have caused me. So tell me. Please, Blueraven -- Caden Law -- tell me one thing. And then tell me every thing."

"...a common complaint among men is that human women speak in riddles," Caden replied. "I think they'll sound simple by the time I leave this Godsforsaken country."

"THE GODS HAVE NOT FORSAKEN RAIAERA!"

The blade came so close he could feel its edge on his skin, pushing at it but not splitting it. Just sitting there, being there. One good nudge and it'd end up right between vertebrae without ever having to cut bone. Caden closed his eyes and asked, "What do you want?"

"Your hands," Vara said. "Your eyes, your breath, your very soul. You have signs of the Taint all over you -- Necromancy. The same power that brought this ruin to my lands. To use that power is to become that power, no better than that blighted Baron's auxilliaries. No better than the Death Lord himself. Your crimes are without measure in this realm. What I want to know first, Wizard, is why I should let you live."

"...because you would be chopping off your nose to spite your face? I'm useful, you know. Elven magicks wouldn't take with my students, they-"

"That's a coward's answer, a moment's compromise for some intangible good. I want your answer," she said, and finally deigned to look up at him. Vara hadn't worn her helm or mask for this, and Caden could see something flickering in her eyes. He didn't want to pin a name to it. Names give power give delusions. "Why should I let you live, Caden?"

This would've been the perfect instant, that cold rational part of his Wizard's mind thought, to use his Voice. To get grand, to hit hard and fast and make the point by force. He didn't. She wasn't asking Blueraven now. Maybe she wasn't even asking Caden himself. Maybe, he thought in the span of a second, Vara was asking her own conscience to reconcile belief with reality with what needed to be done. And maybe he was giving her too much credit, or not enough at all. Whatever the case was, he answered without hesitation.

"Because I chose to live," he said. "And I'm not compromising. There won't be any apocalypses."

She didn't blink. The blade didn't budge a fraction of an inch for the longest time, and then it was gone. Caden waited until he heard the click of sheath locking to guard, and then he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. A few seconds later, his knees gave out and he slumped back against the wall as a cold sweat materialized on his face. Vara stood still for a while longer, then said, "There is a great deal you have not told me, Wizard." It was like hearing a steel door glide into place, slammed shut at the last possible second and padlocked for no good reason at all. Caden didn't know why and he didn't want to. "You will do so now."

"You could've just asked, Vara," Caden replied, finally rubbing his throat.

"You're a liar and a fraud and a charlatan with Death nipping at his fingertips," Vara said, crouching down until she was at eye level with him. "I want the truth. The real truth. And you just gave a very good start, so please do not stop now. I want to know what made you choose, what apocalypses you speak of...everything."

"We don't have time for this," Caden said.

"Then look me in the eye," she told him, clasping her hands together and conjuring up a pale teal stone between them. A white line formed there, something like both a rune and a musical note. It glowed, and glowed brighter by the second, and it wasn't long before Caden finally did as she said. The Wizard looked squarely into the Elf's eyes.

In that moment, he finally knew why they called people like Vara Seers.

[Caden Law]

Hours later, the sun was long gone and the stars were out. They could not be seen within the war-worn walls of Anebrilith, but they were there. Watching. Waiting. Wondering, in their own awful way. Planning their next moves eons in advance, and Caden finally understood that and it was such a maddening truth that it actually affected his vision. If he looked up for too long, at the tiny gaps in the smoke, he could see their paths winding like faded neon in the dark.

"That fades," Vara said, eventually.

"It doesn't for you, does it. No wonder you're so insane."

He already knew, but it still needed to be said. Everything needed to be said now. There was an awful sense of Truth nipping at the edge of his consciousness, something that felt like the understanding he'd used to murder Wizard Blightcrow. Except worse. Speaking helped to minimize it, keep it at bay. Or at least anchor him in the here and now, the world of physical realities instead of abstract lunacies.

"I don't expect a human mind to comprehend the Path I wander," Vara said, and her accent was almost Salvic. She was actually speaking Salvic. Caden didn't think she knew what she was doing, but he knew better. Her means of coping with the Truth was to bury herself in it. The Wizard in him actually admired that, while the saner parts of him wanted to make sure the Wizard did so at a nice, safe distance.

No such luck.

They stood on a street riddled with shallow holes and stains, flanked by debris and war-torn structures on either side. Fires burned close by, painting them as if in a sunset rather than the dead of a very Undead night. Harpies cried in the skies, drowning out the static whispers of solar conspiracy. Hearing them now was almost a comfort.

"For what it's worth," Vara said, fitting her mask on as they waited for the right moment. "I'm sorry I did that. I didn't think a human mind would even grasp enough of the Truth to realize it was there."

"You thought I'd see it and just assume those were nightmares," Caden answered. "Your Pantheon is pretty struck out, Seer."

"No more so than the Elders to whom you won't pay homage," Vara said. "To be honest...Caden. I can't grasp how you can choose to live without anything to worship. You wander a lonely path yourself, with neither the comfort of a road or the light of stars to guide your way."

"I have my goals," Caden told her. "That's good enough."

They stood still for a while longer, and the air between them practically sparked with tensions that could not be named. There wasn't any time to waste before, but now...Caden knew the Truth. And it was awful. What little parts of it he understood. It left him feeling tiny, truly tiny on a cosmic scale. Insignificant in a way that not even a direct meeting with the Elder Thaynes of Althanas could achieve.

Vara had used her Sight back in the chamber. She Looked into him, deep into him, and she read his soul like an open book that contained his life story. But a Seer's gaze is a two-way street, and as Vara learned the truth of Caden Law, of his journey, his goals, his struggles, his choices and so much else, Caden learned the truth of Vara Yenuial, and of the Wanderers in Starlight and the eldritch Pantheon they worshipped.

It cast everything in new lights. Billions of them.

Vara drew her sword. Caden took out his wand and rod, banging them together a few times just to feel the shocks of impact and magic racing through his hands and wrists and arms. She gestured with one hand and conjured up a set of tiny pebbles, each one teal and runed in white, and the Wizard knew it was for the same reason.

In a very strange way, he mused -- and she did too, he knew it -- they had been more intimate than if they'd made love or murdered each other or done both at the same time. In the time they learned of each other, their souls had literally rubbed up and swapped bits, pieces, miniscule sparks that added up the way a tenth of a percentage point can shape the rise and fall of a dozen stock markets.

"Caden," Vara said, as she shuffled the stones in one hand. "I...don't think I can despise you anymore. I might even admire you now."

"That's the gaze, isn't it," Caden said. "The Sight. Affecting you like it is me."

Silence should've followed, but it didn't. Her answer was simple and without hesitation: "It is. But that's not why." She stopped shuffling. Caden inhaled magic, exhaled a few ghostly feathers from his mouth. Inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled.

"I'm sorry about Raun," Caden said, remembering what the Sight had shown him of Evernorth's most powerful Warlock. He had never expected to see the sparkle-eyed monster as a caring, wayward family man, disowned by his kin even as they sought ways of restoring him to grace.

"And I'm sorry about Veshua."

Caden heard her gulp on a lump in her throat. Oddly, he didn't feel the need to now. He almost felt giddy again, like he did the night he first found out the difference between a good book and a good girl. "Hey."

"Yes?"

"Let's live long enough to have some things that are really worth being sorry about."

Vara giggled, quite manic and Wizardly for someone of her status and mindset. And then she said, in a voice that could've been his influence or her own personality -- that unintentional flirt he'd seen back in Tembrethnil, half-hidden under layers of tradition and ritual -- peeking out again, "Maybe."

[Caden Law]

They hit hard and they hit fast. For all the imbalance the Sight left between them, Caden and Vara worked together as flawlessly as if they were the same person with two bodies and a few centuries of experience at coordinating them. Caden tore the energy out of the tavern's nearest wall, effectively freezing its constituent molecules and atoms dead in their tracks. An instant later, the wall violently expanded, tearing free of the rest of the building and then collapsing as Vara hit it with her first stone. The wall never hit the ground.

That left them with more than forty armed, angry Men with swords, crossbows, and more than a few bona fide hand cannons between them. But the element of surprise remained with the Seer and the Wizard. Vara cast her remaining stones and blew the heads and torsoes off of four of them, while Caden lanced through another two with the energy taken from the wall. Heat blasted through flesh and bone so quickly and with such intensity that it left soccer ball-sized holes in the victims, and then flash-melted a hole straight through the tavern and through the hull of a ship in the docks. Above the water line.

Counterattacks followed. One of the Pirates had magic on his side, and he cast fire at both of them. Vara stepped forward, leading a very slow, methodical charge as she cleaved the spell in two and harmlessly annihilated it in the process. Caden, tall and somehow much more imposing than usual, shot a few spells of his own over her head and shoulders. A completely unintended target dropped near the back of the tavern, while the mage Pirate lunged out of the way and one of his compatriots came up with a rifle in hand.

If it was a good bullet with proper aim, Vara would've died right then and there. But it wasn't. It was something poorly made, propelled by weak powder and a dismal spark. Caden took the Pirate's arm off with one spell and Vara chopped his head off a minute later, when they finally crossed the threshold into what was by then the site of an utter massacre.

Two Pirates remained, along with a few bystanders who somehow managed to dodge the mayhem. Women, all Elves, and Caden didn't feel quite as sympathetic as he had for Neesal but Vara clearly wasn't as dismissive of them as she had been before. "Go back to your homes!" she shouted.

"What's left of them," Caden added.

"We surrender!" one of the Pirates screamed.

Caden blew his head off just to be safe. That left one Man, his arms to the sky and his face covered in snot and blood and tears and his pants soiled in front and back. His eyes were bloodshot and one of his hands had been mangled. "Please!"

Caden almost killed him anyway. Vara did too. The only thing that stayed their hands, weapons and spells was what he said next: "I know things! I can help you rescue him!"

[Caden Law]

It didn't take long. In hindsight, Caden wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. The Pirate's name was Roberts. He was an amiable sort, once the bleeding stopped and the lightheadedness was replaced by an adequately rational sense of terror. He apparently had nine kids on three continents by six women and only worked the lanes and the market to bring them all gold.

Vara didn't believe him. Neither did Caden. The only reason he lived that night was because of what he told them in the tavern. Omitting the stuttering, the crying, the begging for his life, and organizing it into something roughly coherent: "Captain Baral has an Elf locked away in the hold of his ship, the Tithes Irae. The Elf is a healer. His name is Fidelnor. I can lead you to the ship if you promise to let me live."

Caden promised. Vara promised. They cauterized the injuries, then frogmarched Roberts the short distance from the tavern to the docks. Tithes Irae was waiting, and it was a sleek ship if Caden had ever seen one. A former Raiaeran cutter, if Roberts' word was to be trusted, with sails covered in runes, siege bows that fired anchors, cannon with muzzles shaped like skulls, great ribs torn from dead beasts and fixed to the hull for armor and intimidation alike. The crew was minimal at this point, most of them off whoring and terrorizing in the night, and the leftovers weren't much of a hassle either. Vara insisted on leaving no survivors. Caden insisted on leaving no bodies. They compromised with a lot of ash piles and the definate risk of scuttling the ship where it was ducked. Roberts accompanied them all the way to the top deck, then insisted on going no further.

Caden put a knife at his throat and Roberts lead them further. Ostensibly so they could keep an eye on him. Lucky for Roberts, none of his shipmates were lounging around below decks and they went the rest of the way to the ship's hold without incident. There, it was dark and stuffy. Lots of boxes, lots of stale food.

"We need to start organizing the people," Caden said as he looked at a crate full of bread. "Get all of this offloaded for the city's food reserves."

"You kiddin'?" Roberts stuttered. "Stuff ain't fittin' to eat."

"Alchemy," Caden replied.

"First things first," Vara interrupted as they came to a door at the back. It was large, heavy, pitted and splintery. Vara was probably five foot two, weighed around 150 when soaking wet and wearing her full load of armor.

She kicked the door down like it didn't even have hinges holding it in place.

What awaited them was a very dark, dismal little room. Caden saw some feet, the beginnings of legs, sticking out of the shadows inside. Without a word, he raised his wand and triggered enough energy to bring light to the situation.

And immediately wished he hadn't.

[Caden Law]

It has been about twelve hours since we returned from the hold of the Tithes Irae. Given the circumstances, I feel it necessary to make a longer entry than normal, and about a day that is otherwise uncovered in my logs thus far.

Seer Vara and I launched into an assault on a dockside tavern. Whatever its original name was, its most recent name is Rutter's Hole. The barman was named Renald Rutter. He's dead now. So are approximately sixty other piles of meat who called themselves human beings and desecrated the title with every breath they stole. Vara and I did the deed. The tavern is rubble now. I wish we would have done it sooner.

Following our raid on Rutter's Hole, we were lead to a ship called Tithes Irae by a pirate named Roberts. He said they had a Wanderer imprisoned in the hold. We followed him there and, yes, they had a Wanderer in the hold. Vara, Shaul and the others have confirmed him as Fidelnor Kolwyn. She identified him as a Faithful, the Wandering equivalent of a Cleric or something like that. He was the Enclave's third best healer, who went missing about a month into their mission. A harpy snatched him, they assumed the worst...and he's been lying in the Tithes Irae's hold ever since.

I just wish it were that simple. We could use a healer right now, and a priest of any kind would be useful for rallying the citizenry to our cause and reviving their will to fight. As it stands...

I am not sure how to word this, but they broke Fidelnor. They did things to him that make murder look outright humane. I was raised out in the country, in the township of Evernorth and the wilds of Salvar and Berevar. I heard a lot of stories about what the barbarian tribes would do to women if they captured them. It was something we took so seriously that the local Church had exemptions from sin for any woman or girl who killed herself or another to spare them from what the barbarians might do.

The crew of the Tithes Irae did that and worse to Fidelnor.

They bound him in some kind of poisoned iron, forced him into women's clothes, and then they ... ... ...

I am not sure if it's even the right use of the word, but they basically raped him. Physically. And they tortured him mentally with that knowledge, the regularity, and then the unpredictabilities of it. His recounting of their methods made every single man in the chamber cringe. Normally, men joke about that kind of thing. I've seen the aftereffects now and they are not pretty. He kept screaming about the taste and how much his insides hurt, and how it felt awful just to sit down. He did not want to change his clothes, and it took Neesal (of all people) to calm him down and allow Warram to transmute his clothes into something new and clean. And there's more besides.

In hindsight, I have to give the pirates points for hitting upon a surefire way of demoralizing an enemy. Threaten the sanctity of women, you simply raise your enemy's sword for him. Threaten the men as you would the women, and things get frightening. It's just a miracle they didn't parade him through the streets in that dress. It would've broken Anebrilith's will to live from the ground up.

And when we rescued him, Roberts tried to explain that, "It's not gay if it's an Elf!"

Fidelnor had one hand free and while his faith might be broken, I fear his powers were not. Loosed from whatever binds held him, he reduced that pirate's head to a burnt, bloody stain on the ceiling on the other side of the hold. I was impressed at first, but then he started screaming, "Ftaghn human! Ftaghn human!" and tried to visit the same retribution on me. Vara managed to calm him down, but he still reacts with abject terror and disgust whenever I stand in eyeshot of him. I can't say I blame him -- I really don't -- but his use to us has gone through the basement floor and come out somewhere in Kebiras.

Vara has decided to try a stopgap 'fix' for his condition. I have detailed Caesai Maer to the best of my abilities elsewhere in this tome, but I will summarize it here. It'll give me something to do.

Caesai Maer is a Wanderer ritual translating as Zero Step. It resets the skills and certain aspects of the Wanderer's personality to an effective blank slate (with obvious exemptions for what you'd need to get through day-to-day living, and any skills you acquired outside of the Path you took). There's some greater philosophic meaning to it as well, but even after my Insight with Vara, I have no idea what it is. She told me that if you can Wander all Paths, reset yourself one last time, you should become what she termed the Überálf. Today, she also told me that if done properly, it can reset the actual personality of a Wanderer. Or overwrite it. Or something. I don't exactly remember the term she used.

Prior to wandering the Path of Faith, Fidelnor apparently took the Paths of Warrior and Forger, respectively. There's a debate going on in the Enclave over what Path he should be reset to, with the only unanimous decision being that I and my Magi should have no say in it. Vara has removed herself from the voting and Fidelnor is in no condition to make the choice himself. Hessran is leading the pack for Warrior, but he's finding staunch opposition in an apprentice of all people: Deithor. He's the oldest of the three apprentices who let me into the city. Prior to today, I thought him the weakest and certainly nothing special in the ranks of the Wanderers, but I have to say he surprised me.

You really don't expect to see a Drow of any creed arguing for a plan that would remove a powerful combatant from the mix. He justified it rather eloquently by saying, "We have two passing alchemists and a bunch of amateurs who don't know what they're doing. We also have a city to feed and shiploads of stale food. What's one sword to a thousand or more?"

I'm going to try and exercise some pull on Shaul. He seems pragmatic, siding with Hessran's pack more out of personal reasons* than anything else. We'll see.

* Shaul mentioned being around ~150 years old. Average time to walk a Path is supposed to be one century, according to Vara. Judging by the kids, you start the Path as soon as you start walking; Balakai actually said as much. Shaul could be a former Warrior.

Addendum: Persuaded Shaul. The Enclave votes tonight.

Addendum: Forger it is. This will be awkward for a simple reason: You need six people to perform the ritual of Caesai Maer, including the subject, all of whom need to be suitably versed in magic. Taking a Path means that you do not learn how to retake the Zero Step until well past the half-way mark; none of the apprentices have any idea how to do it. None of the Magi have the skill or experience to learn how to perform it or to follow instructions during it.

There are four fully realized Rangers and one Seer who do know.

Guess who that leaves.

Go on.

Gue"Blueraven?" Nolara asked, jarring the Wizard out of his writings. "Oh. Sorry. It's time."

[Caden Law]

It was awkward.

Put very politely, it was awkward.

When handled properly, when a fully realized Wanderer has reached the end of his or her chosen Path, taking the Zero Step is one of the easiest things in the world, slightly more troublesome than seeing a blue sky or drinking a glass of water off the countertop. The entire ritual is said to be a parable in play: It's a heavily veiled re-enactment of an ancient story about the Raiaeran star-god, Selana, and her quest to preserve the gift and power of Memory until such time as the Elves need it again. Selana alone, more so than Aurient and Galatirion, Earlon and Arddunwë, Cuarye and Megillion, or even the tens of trillions of other star-gods untold who served, acknowledged, or even sopposed them; Selana alone had gone the farthest in exploring the Paths. She'd gone farthest, and she came back, and every time she returned, she had to clear her mind and prepare for the next journey. The endless road.

The Starlit Path.

Selana was the first Wanderer, the one whom all others took their cues from. And though she cleared her mind of the knowledge she gained at the end of every journey, she never truly forgot it. In times of great peril, in moments of profound introspect, when the need was great for any reason, Selana could recollect those past travels and all the knowledge that came with them.

So it was for Selana, so it was for the Wanderers in Starlight who sought to emulate her. The Elf who took the Zero Step was, in effigy if nothing else, the goddess incarnate. The Elves -- and in this case, the Man -- who aided Selana assumed the roles of the other gods.

Caden had a hard time following the details beyond that. Vara and the others chanted in an eldritch tongue that was as familiar to him as archaic latin might be to someone who spoke english as a second language. The Wizard remained silent throughout, too focused to pay attention to the words or to try and copy them. As Vara told him, "You're like the very Magi you seek to train: Tonedeaf. Your human Voice cannot carry a tune, let alone the intricate workings of our rituals. But your mind is sharp and your talents are strong, and even if you can't sing, you can still learn to play an instrument."

At the time, Caden replied to her with, "Do you have any idea how phallic that sounds?"

And now, here he was. Ritually purified -- twice, due to his humanity and dabblings with Necromancy. Holding down the third of six points, symbolically bound to Vara and Nolara. What he lacked in experience and instruction, the Wizard made up for in focused intent: The Wanderers' magic 'moved' one way and he was following it quickly and instinctively enough to 'move' with it. The spell's frequencies changed and Caden was working one step ahead. Like an expert bass player in a classical orchestra, he was out of place and that much better for it.

Fidelnor stood at the center of the star, though his feet weren't actually touching the ground. It had taken a lot of effort to get his clothes off. Twice, he tried to kill Caden in the process. Twice more, he'd settled for just trying to hurt him. Once convinced of the Wizard's relative decency, he was still so leery that he wouldn't even step into the circle until Ranger Apprentice Cessae held a riflestaff at Caden's head and promised, "If he attempts to harm you, I will end him."

She said it with conviction. It was slightly scary. Even if she was jailbait.

There were candles involved in the ritual, shaped from a combination of melted wax, string, harpy fat and alchemy courtesy of Mage Warram. The walls of the chamber, normally the one where all the tunnels met from above and below, were completely covered with arcane musical notes that hurt to look at. After a while, they glowed a ghostly white to compliment the ugly green of the candles, and not long after that the lines forming the six-point star lit up all green and blue, yellow and red.

Reality twisted into knots within the lines, and the knots stretched into shapes and the shapes congealed into detail. Tentacles reaching out of places without names, clawed hands that twisted and bent and reached on joints that were pure abstraction. Remembrance, ancient and new and as personal as it was racial, and even protected by difference in powers and his supposed tonedeafness, Caden felt it caressing the edge of his senses. Like a cat's tongue on the brain, or the passage of air through your mouth. This thing -- this memory -- took his measure and found him wanting. It moved on. Simple as that.

He almost felt insulted, but the relief was greater.

The Wizard looked up from his point in the star and saw Fidelnor slowly consumed in fires that looked and behaved nothing like flame. They were more like the idea of fire as a part of cyclical change, of entropy except somehow in reverse. The Elf's injuries were healing by the second, but his scars wouldn't fade and the stains never left his skin. Some of them grew darker. Pounds of bulk and muscle added themselves to his body, as if it was remembering a time when it actually needed them. His hair darkened by a shade, and his eyes glowed the red and yellow of a blast furnace in action. Fidelnor opened his mouth to sing, but only distant screaming came out.

The ceiling shook. Caden looked to Vara was serenely gazing to Nolara seemed to be having either a religious awakening...or multiple orgasms. Or both. Shaul, Hessran and Fiera were nowhere in sight, though their shadows somehow remained, and somehow seemed to be fashioned from the absence of darkness instead of the absence of light. Caden could still hear them singing. The ceiling shook again.

Someone in the basement was screaming.

And there was an awful laughter to accompany it, like razors edging across a chalk board.

None of the others were stopping. He looked back to Cessae and she, very clearly, had no idea what to do. Caden motioned her forward with a jerky nod, and the girl knelt beside him. He guided her hands into the place of his own, one at a time and with painstaking precision and care at that. She took his place and, very slowly, the Wizard stood. In that moment, he felt the connection to Vara and Nolara break, and felt both of them looking at him with questions they could not ask.

Whispering, Caden told Cessae, "We're under attack. Don't sing. Follow their lead. Do not deviate from it for anything, not even to answer me."

He left them there without another word. There wasn't any time for explanations. Harpies had come to the theater. Judging by the sounds of muskets, spells and monsters proclaiming themselves Men, they had not come alone.

[Caden Law]

Caden arrived in the theater basement just in time to see Balakai spin to the floor with a scream and a spray of blood from her shoulder. Barehanded and moving, there was still no way Caden could miss: Her attacker was just emerging from the doorway and it was a straight shot with no obstacles whatsoever. Caden thrust his hand forward as the pirate(?) was raising his second pistol. Lightning outraced a bullet and the other man lost his arm from the elbow down -- not that it mattered much. He was dead by the time his body hit the floor.

A quick look around and there was one of the other Juniors, T'ema if Caden was remembering right, badly wounded and sheltering Iera with her own body. "Walk it off, Balakai!" the Wizard shouted, bullrushing right by both of them as he said it. A quick gesture with either hand and he was armed with a bowie on the right and his wand on the left. Into the doorway, there were two pirates trying to take cover with a harpy brazenly hunched over them. Caden dispatched the nearest pirate with a stab to the head, then took the second out by ripping the energy from his body -- freezing him solid, basically. He used the same power gained from that to cast a thermal lance at the harpy, sheering off both an arm and a wing. She didn't even seem to notice it until she went to fly and fell over. Caden ignored her.

Up on the floor and the theater had turned into a full-blown combat zone. There were four apprentice Rangers and Caden's seven Magi scattered all over the place. He saw Neesal having a breakdown under one of the benches, her robes slightly torn and bloodied and a severely burnt skeleton lying not far from her. Nethenor and Kienelas stood back to back atop a mountain of rubble, hopelessly exposed and still alive only because of how they were fighting: Nethenor tore energy out of the air, ground, even the spells coursing through both, leaving ice in his wake even where it had to pass through bodies whether fallen or standing. The power he drew went flooding into the air and Kienelas took charge of it, used it to power balls of arcane fire and battering rams of raw force. They were working faster than Caden had ever seen of them, and they weren't going to keep it up much longer.

On the other side of the theater, Dylver was doing something similar as a one-man show: One hand caused massive walls of ice to implode into existence, the other pointed and things, even just empty spots in the air, exploded as he tried to channel energies with a large wound in one leg and a cut running across his chest. One of the juniors was watching his back.

Caden didn't see Sigel or Warram. Didn't even see Charger for that matter. But he did see a lot of targets. Two-dozen or more Men, a few Wyrmfolk, two Orcs and at least one bona fide Elf, all wearing the same beige-red-dark gray outfits. They fought with experience. They fought with harpies tearing through the roof to give them air support.

"It'll do," said the Wizard. "Rally!"

Knife away, rod out. Caden aimed up and let fly with a sustained blast of Magic Missiles, bringing down two harpies in the space of five seconds, and knocking another into Dylver's killzone in the process. More ripped their way into the roof to make up for the losses. "Rangers, focus fire! Magi, cover!" Caden ordered as he lowered the rod and threw up a Gambit to one side. Buckshot sprayed by in every direction, a few pellets hitting his coat hard enough to bruise the skin below. Without looking, Caden sprayed Missiles through his own spell and popped it like a soap bubble, then laid waste to two of the attackers in the same breath. He made a bee-line for Neesal.

And that's when Quel'thas burst into view. Through a wall.

The Elf hit the ground rolling, his robes apparently discarded at some point since he was down to blood-soaked pants and a bare chest and arms that were all covered in minor lacerations. He was holding the same thin-bladed duelling saber he'd somehow acquired a few days before, its edges now plenty chipped and cracked. His attacker followed with a familiar laugh and a total lack of regard for his own safety. It was Gannai, wielding a cutlass with his original arm and a machete with the other. Equal skill for both, along with the same practical theatrics that had almost taken Caden's arm off just a week or two earlier. He was fast -- much too fast for Quel'thas to stand a chance of calling up his magic.

Caden had no such problem.

Rock spires shot up out of the floor at an angle and impaled Gannai right through his shins and knees. The pirate didn't even seem to feel it, and only paused when he realized that he couldn't keep pushing the assault. Quel'thas reacted quick and nimble, just like his magic, outflanking the pirate and taking him through one eye, one ear and the back of the head. Energy rippled out of the wound and Gannai's head split the rest of the way open like a busted melon. It was horrible to look at. Caden tried not to. There were too many other targets.

"Someone get to Neesal!" the Wizard Shouted, turning his magicks on the largest concentration of pirates he could find. Five of them didn't get the chance to scream. A few seconds later, he felt the air boiling and freezing with gusts of wind at his back. Caden turned just in time to see Dylver's ice-fire tornado go careening into a low-flying harpy. It dragged her down and that was the end of her. Along with an entire section of the theater wall.

How many more were left?

"BURN!"

Not nearly enough.

Deithor made it to Neesal. Caden saw the boy go tumbling over her bench. Missed whatever he must've said. It must've been something serious.

Neesal turned the roof of the theater, along with every single thing flying less than a hundred feet above it, into a vaporous memory with some specks of ash attached to it. There was absolutely no finesse to whatever spell she used, if it could even be called a spell at all. Nothing but raw power, incomprehensible fury and the most dangerous kind of hatred: The kind that's been well educated and has its eyes wide open. Caden was the only person left standing after her outburst, and the theater walls collapsed outwards as if for emphasis.

"Bloody hellfire," the Wizard muttered, checking to make sure his Hat wasn't on fire. He looked around. Looked up.

Neesal had shot a hole straight through the smoke clouds above the city. And there were dark shapes lurking the night sky; more harpies, keening in fury and fear and-

And being pelted by glowing rocks.

[Caden Law]

Caden hit the streets at a full run, trailed by Haldreth and Quel'thas. The others had gone below ground to the basement, with orders to go further into the chamber network the moment the Zero Step ritual was completed. The harpies were in total disarray by that point. There was a steady stream of glowing green rocks keeping them that way, and whenever they congregated in groups larger than three, the stream was there. Caden spared a look back and saw four or five of the big winged witches get eviscerated outright -- something that happened so fast there was no time for the blood to hit the ground before the bodies were unrecognizable. It was impressive work for a rookie, and a validation that Sigel really was as scary as Caden thought he. After two weeks, he was effectively turning one branch of magic into a conduit for another and making a machine gun out of it.

But he had made a critical mistake.

"A spell of that magnitude, with that kind of staying power? He'd have to stay put and focus on it to keep it up," Caden told his companions, neither of whom understood up to that point. "That means he's a sitting duck, and he's gonna have to run out of things to shoot with soon." Which assumed he wouldn't run out of power first. And Caden had his doubts about that.

"What about everyone back at the theater?" Haldreth asked as they bolted through the streets. Seasoned as a Ranger, even if he was an apprentice, the boy was only having trouble not overtaking the Wizard outright -- even with what looked like a nasty leg injury slowing him down. Quel'thas, bloodied as could be, was only barely keeping pace with the two of them and seemed to be going more on willpower than physical stamina.

Good enough, Caden supposed. "The further underground they go, the better off they'll be," Caden answered. "Maximum fire focused at each doorway, plenty of ways out," and plenty of ways in too, he didn't say. "Dammit. Look."

The stream of rocks was starting to run narrow. The space between each light was growing wider, and the shots were actually being aimed now.

And there were people daring to look out into the night, their eyes all but screaming the question, Is this the end?

Caden didn't have time to be comforting for them. So he simply took a deep breath and Shouted, "STAY INSIDE AND OUT OF SIGHT!"

The harpies were starting to congregate in spirals above where the tracers were coming from. The shots against them were now coming one at a time, fast but still solitary. Head and wing hits, a few chest blows; fatality rates among those struck were dropping. One of the harpies lost her right wing and crashed to the ground a few dozen yards in front of the Wizard and his soldiers; Caden charged by her and felt a spray of gore across his back as Haldreth took her head off. Quel'thas bisected her at the waist in passing, just to be thorough, and it was good that he did: The corpse was still flailing minutes after the fact.

"Up ahead!" Quel'thas shouted. Silvery streamers were coming off of his free hand's fingertips as he ran. Runes and lines etched into Haldreth's staff lit up in answer, measuring no fewer than six spells at the ready and probably more besides. Not one to be outdone, Caden tore energy from the air around him and left a trail of snow and sleet in his wake. Most of it was grimed over with the polution inherent to a city under siege.

Just as Quel'thas said, Sigel's impromptu firing platform was directly ahead of them. It consisted of a great big circular pile of rubble that had once been a bell tower. Everything left was simply too big for bargain basement rate, secondhand geomancy to get airborn; rocks and stones big enough that Caden would've had trouble lifting them most days. But as they came closer, something unusual happened.

One of the stones lit up in a grid pattern, every single square marked with a rune, and then collapsed into smaller, more manageable pieces. Most of which shot skyward in quick succession, tagging a harpy here, a harpy there, missing almost as often now.

The harpies weren't afraid anymore. They spiraled overhead as one darkly winged mass. Then they came shrieking down.

Caden stopped running then, took aim with rod and wand alike, and let rip with a thermal burst -- wide-angled and thin as a razor from top to bottom, the best he could do to keep heat concentrated. Harpies crashed into the spell and caught fire, but there were too many of them for the spell to do a whole lot of good. Without being told, Haldreth and Quel'thas kept up the charge and overtook Caden in a second or less. They continued on to the old bell tower and left him behind.

It was dark, but he was standing next to a burning building, and the tips of his focusing tools were glowing like tiny stars as well. The harpies nearer the back of the spiral noticed and broke off, signalling most of the middle-spiral to join them. It was too late for the ones nearest the thermal -- even the ones who avoided Caden's spell went down to green rocks or Haldreth's staff.

Which still left more than Caden wanted to try counting.

"Huh," he said to himself. "Not one of my better plans."

"Worked well enough for me!"

Caden ducked on reflex. There was less than a tenth of a second before a sword blade occupied the space where his head had been, and the miss was so narrow that it cut a pale stretch into the N'jalian spidersilk brim of Caden's Hat. The Wizard came up sidestepping and hiding behind a blind Gravity Gambit, but his attacker was just out of range. He had the time to catch his breath though -- a Wizard never stops thinking, and Caden wasn't one to stay off balance for long. He brought wand to bear in an instant and fired through the Gambit with another thermal spell -- a Lance this time.

It missed.

Caden looked up to see his attacker sunset flipping more than twelve feet off the ground, mismatched arms spread to the side and machete contrasting cutlass as Gannai -- dead man Gannai the Pirate, who Caden had last seen getting his head cut in two by Quel'thas -- reached his crescendo and came chopping right back down. Caden dodged it with a sideways leap, tripped, hit the ground rolling came up with his wand discarded and his sword already in mid-draw. Gannai was already on top of him. Caden's sword made it half-way out the scabbard and the Pirate's knee slammed into his pommel. Caden look up and there were both the machete and cutlass coming for his head. He backstepped and tilted and both weapons raked hard across his breastplate, knocking him to the ground. Gannai rolled forward, off of the Wizard's chest and onto his feet, then spun around for another go at it. Caden sat up just a second too quick to have his head cut off. He went for a baseball bat swing of the rod and Gannai kicked it right out of his hand.

The next few seconds were some of the most terrifying of the Wizard's life. He was completely unarmed with neither rod or wand to defend himself, and his sword practically stuck in its sheath as the Pirate came for him with swing after swing after swing, thrusting and cutting and kicking and it was all so fast that even with his experience at thinking on autpilot, Caden didn't have the chance to rally a counterattack, much less a truly effective defense.

Finally came the boot that caught him in the collar and forced him back down. Gannai stood on Caden's chest, both blades held high, and that was when the Wizard got lucky enough to break his sword, scabbard and all, free of its belt mount. He rammed the pommel into the back of the Pirate's knee and shoved him back. The cutlass still nicked him from cheek to upper lip, and the machete clanged off of his armor. Caden threw the Pirate off and whipped up to his feet with the speed of fear and focus. Gannai recovered quickly.

Caden blocked both blades on his sheathed sword, drew the weapon and stabbed through Gannai's forearms. Twist. Tear. The Pirate backflipped away before Caden could finish the job. He landed with a slight stagger and the loss of both weapons, each one clattering to the ground from hands that no longer answered any command. That wasn't what stunned Caden into not finishing his attack though.

Gannai's head had been cut in two.

The top half of it was hanging in place, attached by nothing but a strip of skin. Most of the brain had fallen out and the eyes were flopping around in the sockets, as if most of the nerves anchoring them were gone and the lids simply hadn't stretched open enough for them to pop out. Caden could even see where Quel'thas' clean cut ended and a jagged tear from the stress of all those acrobatics began.

He had seen undead before. Caden had been fighting the corpse hordes of Xem'zund for close to two years now. He had seen undead.

But Gannai was still absolutely disgusting enough that it stunned him to inaction and forced him to say, "What the fuck?"

"Oh dear," said Gannai in an accent that was completely different from the one he used before. "You finally noticed."

Bones snapped. Caden jolted out of his reverie in time to see Gannai's forearms rip open completely, and brand new ones erupted from the stumps nearest his elbows. They were mismatched: Left was pale and limber, the hand and wrist of a woman of standing; right was dark and strong, not unlike a Drow worker. What made it worse was that the woman's hand held a hatchet and the man's hand held a very large, serrated knife. Gannai's lower jaw flopped around, completely unhinged with bones poking up out of the flat-top of the head as he said, "Can't have that now!"

An instant later, Caden was parrying both weapons. Gannai locked him up, blade to blade, sheath to hatchet.

"CAN WE?!"

The top of Gannai's head ripped open and a great big, hyper-muscular arm burst out of it, lead along by a short-handled war hammer covered in spikes. The arm bent back...

[Caden Law]

There wasn't any blood.

After all that, there was never a single drop of blood.

Caden watched for it closely as the world slowed down and his senses expanded to take advantage of it. That's what it felt like anyway. One instant, the third arm was poised to crush his head down into his ribcage. The next, Quel'thas was lunging by him and shoving Gannai's shoulder with an arm wrapped in ethereal silver streamers. Where Quel'thas' hand struck, the silver ground into Gannai like a hundred slender blades making the most shallow cuts they could in rapid, flawless succession. By the time the pirate lurched away, most of his shoulder hung in place by scraps of flash in the armpit and some threads in his shirt.

The hammer went wide and wild, and it knocked the Hat right off the Wizard's head with an audible pop of air and the mussing of Caden's hair. Gannai spun and the third of his arms blew off at the elbow, and then part of his neck exploded, taking a chunk of shoulder and jawbone with it.

Two more shots blew gaping craters into the chest, exposing the lungs, heart and several broken ribs. Another one ripped open the midsection, leaving spare organs to come pouring out. Another took Gannai's knee, and by then the only sound the corpse was making...

...was laughter.

Very giddy, very red laughter.

Haldreth and Quel'thas flanked Caden. The Wizard vaguely registered Sigel and Warram coming up behind him, and then Charger bleated and snorted and chuffed, and the world resumed its normal pacing.

"Oh, dear! Oh me, oh my, oh deary dear!" Gannai laughed, though there wasn't a sound actually coming from his mouth. "I think you might actually have me on this one!"

"Who the hell are you?" Caden finally spat. Laughter. "Come out of there!"

The laughter ebbed away into a sigh. "Oh, alright. Maybe...if you insist."

Out popped a hand from the hole in the throat. Haldreth shot it without a moment's hesitation. Then he blew the rest of the head right off just to be thorough. Caden didn't even think about calling him on it. A few seconds ticked by, the sigh returned. It was playfully exasperated now, followed by a much paler hand wiggling up out of the neck-stump. The fingers lead the way, gripping to the collar as if it were a ledge.

Haldreth fired again. His shot hit a barrier several feet from Gannai's body and ripped apart, pelting the surrounding street and a wall with fragmented magic.

An instant later, an entire man simply heaved right up out of the hole in Gannai's neck like an acrobat jumping a fence. There was little or no respect for the laws of physics or perspective: An entire human body came flying out of the neck without ripping, stretching or tearing anything. If Caden hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn't have believed it.

The man spun in mid-air a few times, presumably just because he could, and then he planted both feet rather firmly on the ground and straightened himself up. He was tall enough to have a forehead on Caden, easily, and his skin was chalk white with silky, wavy hair to match. He had a gentleman's mustache and thinly trimmed brows, and a handsome face that would've been fitting for a prince or noble. He wore all black -- tight black breeches, black leather leg-warmers, black shoes; a black dress jacket and a black sash tied tight at the waist. The only splash of color about him was the red-lining of his coat, the red undershirt he wore, and the ruffled red tie about his neck that tucked into his coat.

"We meet at last, Wizard Blueraven," spoke the Baron Rosven Kaverre. "Face to face, and in the flesh at any rate. Tell me, have you been enjoying your stay in my humble city of games?"

"I'm going to end you," Blueraven told him.

"No you're not," Rosven smiled right back. "Tell me, Blueraven, do you really think you could've fought your way into Anebrilith unless I wanted you to? I saw you when you started your little suicide run. You were in lousier shape than some of the natives in these parts. No, you're here because I allowed you to be here. You're raising your little army of Magi because I thought it'd be funny to watch the locals get their hope back again -- they haven't been very entertaining lately. That's why I didn't go parading that ragged little cleric around in stocks and a dress. Do you know he actually tried fighting back the first few times? Or that he started liking it towards the end there? Dreadful stuff, really."

"Well aren't you just a little Baron de Sade," Blueraven answered. He started to Speak again, but Kaverre cut him off.

"You have no idea, little Wizard. I've-" This time, Blueraven cut Kaverre off.

"Your Mark is part of a Working that allows you to control anyone wearing it. Gannai's been dead for months, maybe years. So were all the other Pirates, weren't they?"

"What tipped you off?" Kaverre grinned.

"No consistency where it counts. Only some of the Pirates bled. None of the accents held. The behaviour was too inconsistent, too targeted."

"But you only noticed it after my little show, didn't you?"

"I've been having an off couple of weeks," Blueraven answered with a nasty little smile of his own. "It won't happen again."

"I confess, then! I confess to the fine art of subtlety and deception. Incidentally, you might want...to check the food supply you plan on restoring to the locals," again with the grin. "And do tell Neesal, dearest and loosest and dryest Neesal, give her my regards, would you? And that charming little babe of hers...mm."

Haldreth, Quel'thas and Warram all visibly cringed. Sigel did not. Caden didn't even blink.

"What do you want, Baron?"

"Suffering," Rosven said. "Untold suffering and agony. I want to see the hope rise in their eyes, I want to hear the reverence of prayer in their voices, and at its crescendo -- in the moment when it peaks as high as it possibly can...I want to be there when it all breaks. Crumbles. Collapses. In short, Blueraven, I want to have fun."

"Why?"

There was a brief pause. Rosven tilted his head to one side, smiling. "Why not?"

"Because you've been torturing a city for more than a year now. Even sadists get bored. It's a hallmark of their monstrosity. So what's your real reason, Baron? Why are you doing this?"

Another pause. And then the smile faded. Rosven shrugged. "No particularly deep reason, I suppose. I just learned my lessons well and wanted to put them to the test. You know how these things go, don't you? You've used the Gift too, after all. Anyway, I really should be going. Don't want to keep you out too late, especially not with..." A harpy shrieked. "...ladies, waiting. I still wonder when Lady Rot-Ziu will realize her girls can dig..."

The Death Lord shrugged again. He gave a wave and promptly left them there by climbing -- climbing -- back into Gannai's neck.

Blueraven stayed put until well after the Baron was gone. Then, to the stunned silences of his cohorts, he walked over to his Hat and calmly, solemnly, put it right back on. He summoned his rod, his wand, and fixed both to his belt. Then he carried his sword in its sheath with one hand and motioned for them to follow with the other. They walked, did not run, all the way back to the theater without another word spoken amongst them.

[Caden Law]

There were bodies all over the theater. Caden's orders upon seeming them were uniform: "Burn them. Nothing left but ash." The apprentices, and the Magi, were exhausted but they did as they were told. Casualties looked low, injuries looked high. It would've been very, very nice to have an actual healer on hand.

Caden barged straight down into the basement to find bodies laid out all over the room. One of the apprentices, T'ema, was down and out and probably not getting up without black magic pulling her muscles taut and holding her bones rigid. She was still breathing now but Caden wrote her off as a lost cause the moment he saw her. Balakai was giving the girl amatuerish last rites as the senior Rangers finally emerged from down below. They all looked absolutely furious until they saw the Wizard, the bodies, and Balakai and T'ema.

None of them said a word until Caden prompted, "Where are Neesal and Iera?"

"In the firing chamber," Cessae said and to a chorus of disapproving looks from her senior counterparts, she added, "I saw her when we were finishing up. She looked like she had been hurt..."

"Everyone has been hurt," Caden told them. "Get out there and do something." He grabbed Vara in passing. "You, later."

"Right," she said, visibly disturbed at the Wizard's assertiveness. "Are you alright, Caden?"

"I have no idea," he admitted, then stalked down to the first chamber and continued to the second.

The lighting was good. The echo was not. He could hear Iera sobbing inconsolably from the chamber above. Upon entering, he could see Neesal hunched over her baby, the mother burying the child's face in her chest as they both cried. Neesal was much quieter. The kind of quiet you have to practice at.

"Mage Danfras," Caden spoke up, playing to whatever credibility authority gave him.

"GO AWAY!"

Which wasn't a whole lot. Neesal blindly threw a fireball at him. Caden reached out and drained the spell of energy before it could touch him, reducing superheated plasma to a big puff of lukewarm fog. He continued forward, calling her by name this time, "Neesal."

"Just...leave me alone! Leave us alone..."

No fireball this time. That was good.

"I can't do that," he told her, and finally stopped once he was just within arm's reach. The Wizard sat down, and Neesal tried to turn away. He reached out, put a hand on her shoulder, and she screamed. Cried louder. He didn't let go. She was shaking so violently it almost hurt to look at. "Neesal. I need you to tell me some things."

"I just want to be left alone!"

"Not going to happen," he said, though not unkindly. "Neesal Danfras. I need you to tell me some things. It's important. About Iera. About...about her father. Talk to me. Then I'll leave you alone. Alright?"

[Caden Law]

There is an entire page in Blueraven's Grimoire, stricken through and blocked out in painstaking detail. Every single letter has been utterly obliterated. The following entry starts the page after. Many of the words are squiggly, especially towards the end.


I will not tell Vara or any of the Witherwind Enclave about Iera's father. He did not have a K on him at the time. That's the only detail that will be shared with the Magi, and with Haldreth, who has to be told in order to swear him to secrecy. I checked Iera thoroughly afterwards. She's clear. That's one of only a few bright spots to come out of last night as a whole.

The other is that we have an alchemist worth a damn now. Not to mention a weaponsmith, engineer, construction worker, and anything else you could list under the blanket term 'artisan.' Fidelnor is still jittery and hostile to me, but he's much, much closer to what seems to be the baseline for Wanderers now. Vara chalked up any imperfections in the Zero Step to my desertion. Cessae handled herself well. I told Vara to strike herself. Life goes on.

Except where it doesn't.

T'ema Rinlas died this morning. She was eighteen years old. We stripped the body of arms and armor, then cremated it thoroughly. Two thirds of our number are walking wounded. Quel'thas is sleeping heavily from blood loss, thankfully he wasn't poisoned or anything. Sigel and Warram are my only apprentices who made it through the night unscathed.

Warram's skills at alchemy have blended it to her magic. I think I might have been wrong about her potential combat applications. Fidelnor has taken her as his apprentice, translating Wanderer alchemy into something a tonedeaf Wizard can understand and letting her go from there. She's taken to it exceptionally well. She was the one runing and breaking stones for Sigel last night, up to and including putting runes inside of unbroken stonework. She's going to be a beast in short order and I've ordered her to study up on runes as best she can in the interim. Fidelnor is helping. Their major project right now seems to be updating the Rangers' arsenals, though he apparently mentioned something to Vara about beefing up our present fortifications.

Whatever that means.

Sigel's talents seem to be a combination of Ectomancy and Runic Bypass. His machine gun trick was completely above and beyond anything he should be capable of, but he was able to come up with a way around the limitations and used it to full effect. I may have to teach him what I know of Necromancy at this rate, just so I can have someone else on hand who can fight the undead on their own terms. Vara is not keen to the idea. Neither am I.

Of all my apprentices, Neesal was hurt the worst last night. I slept with her. In the sense of holding her until she fell asleep on her own. She's also, arguably, the furthest along in her development: Her Voice has come in, fully developed and tied directly to her magicks and emotions.

We launched a raid on the ships in the harbor today. The senior Rangers and Vara did most of the work; the rest of us were too exhausted to do anything more than work in support of them. I lost count of how many dead they re-killed, but we did a thorough job of torching the bodies. Vara and Fidelnor enlisted the aid of locals to help unload the ships, once we'd confirmed that the food onboard was mostly just stale and a little rotten. No poisons, no curses.

I will now repeat what I told Vara earlier, shorthand because I've been awake almost forty-eight hours and can't afford to be tired when people need me. Long story, short: Kaverre is a liar, except where the truth hurts more with less risk to himself.

What I saw last night, and the other day when Cessae took a shot at him, was not his real body. That's just the body he likes to use the most. He has something planned. The constant cycle of despair, the efforts taken to make sure the people are alive but weak... That's not sadism. That may be sadistic, but it's not sadism. That's a ritual in the making if I ever saw one. When I get some time to myself, I'll try and figure out what he's doing for real. Until then I can only speculate.

He said he learned his lessons well. And he also told us a few things about our own plans thus far. Most of that could be guessed if you were worried and obsessive enough. I don't think we have a traitor in our midst, but I've taken to stripsearching everyone just in case. Once I checked Vara and Fidelnor, I allowed them to check Neesal. Nobody had a K, nobody carried anymore taint than the background for this hellhole would suggest.

What I know of Kaverre's abilities is this: He has at least two modified forms of Blightcrow's Scattershot Barrier, he can puppet bodies and move at least one body and multiple constituent parts around inside of another including probable teleportation from another place, and he can maintain the puppetmaster act in semi-intricate detail for at least 300 people while simultaneously ordering his undead army around. I'm no longer sure if his auxilliaries are real people or doubles or what.

And he's a liar.

And I'm going to kill him.

I invoke Rule Three, Subsection One, the Rule of Vendetta. I am going to kill the Baron Death Lord Rosven Kaverre.What is not written is the reason behind Caden's invocation, his oath, his binding word written sideways in Old Diamonic with a touch of alchemic ink.

The Wizard Blueraven had never been so angry in his life.

[Caden Law]

The conspiracy started at dawn. Caden wasn't even awake at the time. He was only clued in a little later on when Vara with him with a few nudges and the words, "Wizard, we have need of you."

A few self-inflicted slaps to the face later, Caden sat up and asked, "What?"

"This way. Fidelnor has an idea." Which should have sent him running right there. If Caden had known what the conspiracy was going to lead to, he probably wouldn't have ever agreed to it. "Do not worry. He has vowed a Forger's Oath not to harm you."

"Comforting," Caden lied.

The actual meeting, if you could call it that, took place a few minutes later in the basement. The Magi were all sleeping. The Rangers were on morning patrol. Just the three of them and all the light that could seep through holes left in the ceiling and the orange glow of alchemic lights. The very first thing Fidelnor said, before Caden could even greet him, was a coldblooded assessment followed by an equally blunt question: "At Tembrethnil, and in Eluriand, you drew in power from the ley of the land. You've worked magicks on a scale none of the others in our number can compete with. Do you have what it takes to help us construct a grand arcanum in this city's hollowed out corpse?"

To which Caden sluggishly replied: "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Fidelnor simmered a bit, but Vara was quick to take control and explain things. It involved a lot of formulae that, for once, went right over the Wizard's pointy-topped Hat and everything under it. What he could grasp was the following: "The vast majority of Anebrilith is still basically intact -- in that all the bits and pieces from construction are still lying around. Fidelnor intends to transmute those pieces back into place -- to literally reconstruct the city as it was before the Day of Untold Agony. Then he's going to transmute it into something better suited for fighting off a siege. A fortress-city, Sein'ost En'anga." New City of Iron, she said. "But there's a problem."

"Materials. Energy," Caden concluded immediately. "You want me to tap into leylines for one. I can do that. I don't know if I'll be able to do it on the scale you need, but I can still try. What about materials?"

"We have two options," Fidelnor said. "You can move the earth from deep below, but...that might damage the leylines, correct?"

"It'd probably disrupt the flow of them, yeah," Caden admitted. "I don't know how that'd affect things in the long run."

"Then we have one other option. I already plan on converting bodies and the ships in the harbor, and even much of the dock structure, but it won't be enough." Caden grimaced. For once, he didn't have time to feel disgusted by something. What Fidelnor said next was somehow worse than what he was already proposing. "One of your students is an Ectomancer. He can conjure matter from the spirit realm. Correct?"

Caden should've hit the brakes there. He wanted to. But a Wizard adhering to things like common sense doesn't exist. "Yes. It's close to Necromancy though. I've been trying to steer him off of it, but-"

"Don't. What he has is a vital gift, and one that we can use to our advantage."

"I'm not hearing this." He was. Fidelnor and Vara both knew it.

"Vara is going to summon up a representative of the Pantheon, and through it, bring the necessary ectoplasm into place on the other side. That's where your student comes in. He'll transfer the material from the spirit world to the living world, and using the power you give me, I'll transmute it directly into the city. I've already done the calculations for Vara and myself, and you. The only question now is whether or not your student is up to the task."

Conscience nagged. Enough that Caden still said, "His name is Sigel. And what you're calling materials are the departed souls of your own ancestors."

Fidelnor didn't even blink. He looked to Vara, who stared at the floor and said, "If we do not call them to service, the enemy probably will. At least with us, the sacrifice will mean something."

"How many."

"10,000," Fidelnor said.

"11,000," Vara corrected, then added another, "590. One. The last one...passed yesterday morning, actually. She was my initial contact, providing the numbers. Time moves differently. She was able to count."

"T'ema," Caden said.

"Yes."

"You do realize that all of this is Necromancy," Caden said. "There are just more steps involved to avoid using the Tainted Power itself. It's like pushing a wagon around a hill instead of going over it."

"I know," Fidelnor said.

"I wasn't talking to you," Caden told him, looking pointedly at Vara. "What would Eledier and Aldinar say?"

Without hesitation, she looked at him and answered, "That I am doing what must be done. Are you with us, Wizard?"

[Caden Law]

The build-up took six days. What follows is the only known, written account of what happened during that time.


Day Eighteen: Have begun what we are calling the Rite of Unque Canad -- Hollow Four. Full name much, much longer; much, much, Elfier.

Vara has meditated into what she called an astral sending, apparently searching for some force from the Pantheon to sponsor the 11,592 souls we're going to obliterate for this.

Most of the Magi seconded to Rangers for the time being. Tasked with rallying/feeding/etc-ing the populace, among other things.

Warram and Sigel are the exceptions. I am currently teaching Sigel to perform sturdy conjurations using his own power as a base. Being that my own conjuring powers are completely different, hilarity is ensuent. (Along with property damage. And a tiny hole in the fabric of reality that was occupied by a compound eye staring into us from some other side of some other place. Egh.) Once I'm sure he won't call up a spectral demon or something, I'll try my hand at the leylines.

Warram is assisting Fidelnor in any way she can. He's currently working out finer calculations and mapping how the city's going to turn out. The whole process reminds me of compound runing on a grand scale. They're breaking frequently to modify Ranger staves. Hopefully it pays off.

Day Nineteen: Kaverre launched a strike on us today: Dead trees again. The Rangers took out all of them while the Magi handled their load of Ravagers and a few Harpies acting in support. I arrived in time to see Deithor blow a tree in half with one good shot.

It paid off.

Day Twenty: Have gotten my metaphorical hooks into the leyline system beneath Anebrilith. In doing so, I believe I may have just spotted part of Kaverre's long term goal: The leylines have been Visibly tarnished by the suffering of the people above them. There are several thousand reasons you could have for trying to achieve that sort of thing, but I can think of only one that would fit with my impression of the rotten Baron: Some kind of dark rite, whether of ascension or descension I don't know.

Have begun purifying and isolating lines as best I can, cutting off the bad and preserving the good. Reminds me of Akashiman pruning hobbies I've been told about.

Day Twenty-One: Long day.

Vara made contact with something and brought a piece of it back with her. It sees out from, and I can see it within her right eye. Ancient. Terrible. Cold to be in the same room with her now. Can't pronounce or spell its name; she called it the Burning Warden Tasked At Dawn. All I know is that it sounds oddly familiar.*

Armed with Bypass and what teachings I could give him, Sigel has started setting up the arrays for channeling ectoplasm into the living world. I've gone behind him at turns, making sure the arrays are stable as best I can. No idea if this will work. Checked my notes to be sure, but I can't find anything about an apocalyp

...shit. Looked again. Sometime next year, a necrotic demigod emerged from the area formerly occupied by Anebrilith. Greyspine lists its epithets as the Culling Between, the Singer of Sorrows, the Plague That Walks Like A Man, and the Prince of Dusk. Its personal name seems to be Prince Rokaves.

It does not take a genius to figure that one out. I think I know what I'm up against now.

* Because I absolutely need another terrifying thought to keep me awake at night: The stars were going out all over N'Thayn'sal. If every star is, by definition, a god of Vara's pantheon, then...

Scarier thought: What about the sun?

Day Twenty-Two: Completed my own arrays in support of Sigel's. I have also begun to work in a circle establishing the city's borders, in hopes of giving its people further protection: Anything living within the circle won't be fodder for the transmutation. Fidelnor claims he wouldn't touch them anyway. I consider myself righteously paranoid.

Vara is also starting to frighten me. Her right eye hasn't blinked since yesterday. Her manners are slightly more detached now. Have constructed an array around where she sits, just to be on the safe side.

Day Twenty-Three: Almost done. Got into a punch-up with Hessran. He still hasn't let go of his petty little thoughts from before.

Thought for the day: Wizards are subtle. Sorcerers are not.

I force-punched him more than twenty feet down the street. He wasn't too hurt, but it seems to have solved the problem. I don't even remember what we were fighting about now.

Addendum: Worked out a little deal with Fidelnor. The transmutation formulae will not need to be changed. Feel giddy. Big day tomorrow.

Day Twenty-Four: May saints forgive us for what we are about to do.The actual event took less than a minute.

The stories about it would last forever. Give or take a few myths.

[Caden Law]

At dawn on the ninth day of what would ultimately be known as the Year of Shifting Realms, the blasted, blighted, besieged city of Anebrilith ceased to exist.

The process started with a blinding flash of red lightning and a sound like great violins trilling and Gods' drums being struck in earnest reverence. Then came the thundering calls of trumpets, heralding a symphony of instruments to grand to cheapen with names. The dead sang, loud and fierce at first, in words that spanned every era and dialect of the Elven tongue, yet all with the exact same meaning: This was an end.

This was a beginning.

The city's old walls collapsed. Its old buildings fell down. Its streets, its docks, every hint of infrastructure right down to the furniture standing unburnt in the wreckage so many people were calling home; all of it turned to red sand. At the city's axes, in North, West, South and East and the points between them, green towers sprayed out of thin air as circles lit up beneath them. Green met with red and blended, and then blue came from somewhere; anywhere and nowhere would've both done just fine. Ships in the harbor vanished, bodies on the street disappeared without a trace.

New walls built themselves from the top down, their foundations pounding deep into the ground. They were thirty feet thick, sections split by guard towers, reaching more than a mile out to sea. New buildings formed from the center out, stretching towards both ground and sky as history practically rewrote itself before an audience of barely five thousand minds within, and a few hundred more without. Within seconds, the center of the new city was dominated by a massive temple that could've passed for both an opera and an auditorium in the same breath. Houses built themselves around their occupants. Smithies, shops, lanterns for the streets and then sewers beneath where they would stand, and even the cobbled roads themselves; all of them simply formed into place, as if they had always been there and always would be.

The new city was clearly divided into six districts. The seat of government dominated the center. A military district occupied the southwest, and a naval district shared space with the merchant docks. A shipyard even came into existence between the two. The market district took up the most room, but only just.

The sixth district was dominated by a building shaped like a massive domed cage, and several smaller buildings all around it. This was where the city's magical talents would come, if they ever had a chance to come here at all. Blueraven was a shrewd dealmaker.

The last things to form were the gates, and there were three of those. One for the North, one for the South, one for the West. Towers flanked all of them.

Everything spoke of Raiaera; its culture, its traditions, its architecture, even the colors that dominated every surface. There was art on display, pulled straight from the former city's memories, and statues that were probably more priceless now than the things they had replaced. Theaters here, musical venues there, guard houses that could've passed for galleries, bath houses, and more besides.

When it was all done, and the city's population were going into utter shock at the miracle taken place all around them, Caden and his charges finally stepped out onto what was already marked by a sign identifying it as Aran Street.

The very first words out of the Wizard's mouth were, "Holy crap, we're not dead."

The next words out of his mouth, which may or may not have influenced the city's proper name, were something to the effect of It's beautiful.

Thus was born Beinost, the City of Song and Sorcery. Its birth was such an event that not even the dreaded Baron could bring himself to attack it.

Not for a while, anyway.

[Caden Law]

Within an hour, shock gave way to celebration. There was food. There was water. There were homes that weren't riddled with holes and there were streets without bodies lying in them and dammit, the people of Anebrilith-turned-Beinost needed something to smile about.

So, they threw an impromptu party covering the entire population of the city. People were still just traumatized enough to keep one eye on the sky, and the Rangers remained at their posts at each of the newly Forged gates, but it was a much needed moment of joy in lives that needed more of them. But that's all it was.

A moment.

It didn't last.

The attack came right at the heart of the market district, where most of the populace had chosen to congregate. A small group of harpies, lead by one very, very big harpy clad in red and gold battle armor, descended on the revellers without a single shriek of warning. It was as if they simply materialized from nothing. Caden and company -- Shaul, Vara, Neesal and Kienelas -- went to work immediately. The moment the first scream came, they were running. By the fifth, Caden had reached deep into his own power reserves and conjured up a one-man Nimbus for transport. He passed over three city blocks in rapid succession and, as the cloud finally faded out, he drew out both sword and rod and fell into the frey with a booming Scream that simply didn't fit him.

He was exhausted. He was angry. He was, strangely enough, protective.

The first harpy died so fast that Caden couldn't remember how he killed her. The second took a Missile to the mouth at near point blank range, and a Gambit shredded the arm, chest and wing of the third. The remaining harpies finally turned their attentions to him and went on the attack. Civilians fled. They left him there as a champion.

The Wizard did not disappoint them. It would have probably been better if he did.

One harpy by sword. One by magic. Caden had killed five by the time he got to the big one -- the leader. She stood more than eight feet tall, awful and wretched the way that destroyed beauty is. She came at him with a hammer the size of a streetlamp and Caden dodged it by the skin of his teeth. Another harpy tackled him in the same instant, and then her midsection was gone with a gory spray as Shaul took his first shot from a rooftop. Neesal and Kienelas burnt another harpy right out of the air with a tandem fireball, and Vara came charging into the town square with sword in hand and right eye glowing like a tiny eldritch star.

Vara attacked the leader head on. She cleaved the hammer's head off and then sliced the shaft away in huge, cleanly cut segments. Her sword clattered off the big harpy's armor, scarring it with every impact. She was fast. The harpy was agile. She was exhausted. The harpy was fresh.

Caden had seen this fight before, back in Tembrethnil, when it came to Eledier against Ghez Hokan. He wasn't about to sit by and watch it happen again.

"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HER!"

A thrust sword echoed itself in the form of a huge ethereal blade made of faded blue light and psychodelically colored feathers; purples, reds, pinks, blues and more. It plowed right into the harpy's side, ripped her from the ground and slammed her into the steps in front of Beinost's new capitol building. The stone gave, but the armor didn't. Caden pushed. The armor didn't give. But the harpy inside of it did. He heard ribs crack, organs rupture, and he kept the pressure up anyway. Caden pushed, pushed, and kept on pushing and twisting his sword -- both the realm one and its Sorcerous echo -- until finally...

The armor gave.

And the harpy's insides came spraying out from both her mouth and the gaping wound left in her chest.

On that note, Caden stumbled forward and collapsed to his knees. Vara was right there beside him. Neesal, Shaul and Kienelas weren't far behind.

There wasn't even enough time for someone to make the faux pas of saying, Is it over? Something jumped out of the big harpy's wide open side, flipping several times and then landing head first on the bottom step before springing to its feet. Caden looked up and...

"That explains where Bolabas went," he muttered.

His original third apprentice spun a few times. Bolabas wore nothing but a ragged pair of pants covered in old bloodstains. His skin had so many cuts that it was like looking at the aftermath of a fishnet vest made out of razor wire. Only the face remained (mostly) intact, with the eyes long since fogged by death and a great big K carved deeply into his forehead. He was holding a long, thin scimitar, its blade balanced against his empty left hand as he dropped into a fighting posture.

"I tried to cut a deal," he said, in a very detached sort of voice. "Hessran let me out that night. You should've known better."

Caden grimaced. He didn't have time to give a rebuttal.

Shaul blew Bolabas' entire torso off, vaporized his sword and sent his head and arms flying with one shot. There was literally nothing left of the places where either arm or the neck had been anchored. It happened so fast that the lower body just stood there for a few seconds, then collapsed as if someone had kicked the knees out from behind. The head slapped down on the ground and rolled a few feet.

...and then a hand reached out of the neck, got a hold on the ground and the head started skittering about like a laughing spider.

Shaul shot that too. There was a shallow, smouldering crater where his spell hit, but that was the end of it. At least until another laugh, a much more crimson laugh, started echoing from everywhere at once. It took a few seconds more before Shaul started blasting harpy corpses, accompanied by Neesal's flames. They were a bit too slow though. As Shaul turned his riflestaff to the next target, a harpy's corpse, a pair of hands shot out of the stab wound in her chest. Shaul fired.

He got the corpse, but not the limber figure that jumped up out of it. Shaul adjusted his aim in an instant, but the leaper was still one step ahead of him: It threw a severed hand at his face. Shaul obliterated the leaper.

And then the hand slapped him on the forehead and out popped the Death Lord himself, Baron Rosven Kaverre, in all his white-skinned, black-clad glory. He had a rune-covered sword in one hand, and the other wore the leaper's severed gift like a glove. As quickly and as easily as he arrived, the Baron plucked Shaul's mask right off of his face and rammed the pointed chin straight into the soft of the Elf's collar, embedding it to the mouth-slit with an ease that was disgusting just to look at. Vara screamed in an eldritch rage and went straight for the Baron's chest with her sword.

He dispatched her with a lazy swing and a smile that were both faster than lightning. Her breastplate flew off and split in two as it hit the ground some thirty or forty feet away. The Seer herself crashed down on a rooftop even further than that, then rolled and fell back to the ground in an undignified sprawl. Blood was leaking out of her mouth and her robes had actually been shredded by the impact on her armor.

It took him less than three seconds for all of this. Shaul was only just falling over by the time Rosven looked down and Caden looked up. Their eyes met. The air between them actually did boil and spark slightly.

"No," Blueraven Said, and the ground suddenly split wide beneath him. Down he went, right into the sewers, while Neesal and Kienelas went flying to his left and right above ground, each one falling as the earth itself carried them in a wild spiral away from danger.

"Oh, come on!" the Baron laughed. "I go through all that trouble to get a good face-to-face meeting and you want me to go chasing you into the sewers? These threads don't come cheap, Shitraven!"

The ground spiked up beneath him. Rosven dodged it through sheer anticipation. "Predictable!" He twirled his sword up and smacked away a fireball from Neesal. Then he grinned. "I've got a clear shot at dear ol' Sally from Rutter's Hole, you know!"

Caden had lost his objectivity. Before going home, returning to Evernorth, undergoing his trial at Icehenge, that ploy wouldn't have worked on him. Now, it made the Wizard erupt out of the ground less than twenty feet away, rod in hand, spell prepared, eyes narrow and teeth bared and grit tight.

Rosven dodged a Thermal Lance that completely torched the air beside him. He closed the distance before Caden had even landed, and the Wizard cast his rod aside as Rosven came at him sword to sword. Blades met in a flurry so quick that the contacts were letting off spark, and so hard that even the masterwork sword that had lead Caden through the Henge Sorcerous was starting to show signs of wear on its blade. The Baron was fast. His attacks were precise. But he had a single gap, on the downswings, when his footing was a little bit uncertain on the right side.

Caden parried the blade aside, risking the loss of an arm as he did it. The end of the exchange saw him poised to make a thrust, but he didn't. His left hand was braced across the flat of his sword.

Caden hit Rosven point blank with a blast of sub-zero wind that left ice crystals all over him, with enough raw force that it sent the Death Lord careening back a good ten or eleven feet. Caden finally thrust forward, channeling lightning through the blade of his sword.

Rosven dodged it.

And then he was behind Caden, spinning up from a crouch. The Wizard turned just in time to take the full impact of Rosven Kaverre's sword dead center to his chest. Magic discharged on impact, like a massive green-purple fist that sent Caden skyward and tore the front off his breastplate, cut into his coat and sent drips of blood spraying through the air all around him. He spun and flipped and lost his sword and Hat and glasses all in the same instant. Rosven held his pose a moment longer, twisting his sword and then swinging it to the ground.

The ethereal hand grabbed Caden and promptly slammed him down as well. The whole world flashed pitch black, then came back in a greenish haze complete with the taste of peppermint and the smell of pungent, bloody sweetness straight out of a freezer.

Rosven was standing next to him, and Caden finally had a chance to study the Death Lord's blade. It was about the same length as his conscript sword. Two-handed. Straight, double-edged, cross guard. The blade was wide, even near its end, where it forked to two narrower points with a sharpened space between them. There was scripture up and down the green indentation that passed as the blood groove. It was upside down from Caden's perspective, but he could still see that it was Fallien in origin.

"Well! That was fun, wasn't it, Caden?" Rosven asked, holding the blade just close enough that its prongs were framing Caden's lower jaw. One good push and Caden's bones wouldn't even get scratched when Rosven beheaded him. "I have to say though, I'm a little unimpressed. Are you sure you were able to hurt the Dread Necromancer on your lonesome?"

That was when Caden realized what Rosven was doing. They had an audience.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. Please don't. I'm just doing my...my...j-j-j-hahhhh, sorry. I can't say it with a straight face. You know what, Caden? You don't mind if I call you that, right? You know what? I like doing this kind of thing. I like seeing the looks in their eyes when they realize that I've let them have a little shred of hope for the sole purpose of taking it away. Oh, the city's nice and shiny now. But you went and changed the rules of the game by doing that.

"I'm afraid I'll have to attack for real now. Whole army at once. No survivors. Just tears, and sorrow, and the fun of working my way through an entire population.... Would you like to know something personal, Caden? Sure you would."

Rational thought had, by this point, frantically reasserted itself. Caden knew the game, knew what Rosven was getting at, knew he needed to play by the Baron's rules just long enough to-

"I've never had a baby before."

Kill the unliving Hellfire out of Rosven Kaverre so hard his grandmother would feel it.

"NO!" the Sorcerer Screamed, his Voice carrying the full weight of magic taken straight from the Tap and shaped by raw force of emotion and willpower. It hit Rosven like a tidal wave, blowing the tiles off of nearby rooftops and shattering glass all over the square.

Rosven didn't even blink.

"Hit a nerve, I see," he said with a grin.

"You only got me like this because I was tired and protecting others," Blueraven spat, almost pushing up against Rosven's blade. "You think you're big stuff? Kill me then, Ross. Go ahead. 'Cos I'll be back. You can bet your powdery white ass on it. And I'll have company next time." The sword nudged down. Blood. "I know a God who owes me a favor."

The pressure on the sword let up ever so slightly.

"Who?" Rosven asked.

"I dare not speak Her name," Caden answered, careful to capitalize the H as only a Wizard can. "But I can cut you a deal, Baron. I can cut you a nice little deal."

"...go on."

"A duel," Caden said. "Tomorrow at sunrise. Just you and me. If you win, I'll bestow my Boon upon you. And I'll swear deathly fealty to you."

"What's in it for you?"

He had to pretend that his pride was wounded. It was the easiest thing Caden had ever done in his life to tell the Death Lord, "The chance to kill you."

"Why?"

"Because you won here today. But you couldn't do it in a fair fight and we both know it. Everyone here knows it. She. Knows it."

Absolutely nothing happened for the longest time.

Finally, Rosven shrugged and grinned. "Okay. A duel at sunrise by the West Gate. I expect the whole city will be there to watch, else I'll have this place ransacked by day's end."

"I accept."

Rosven nodded, then whipped the sword away and threw it blind.

A second later, Neesal hit the ground with a scream. The sword flew back to Rosven's hand and the flat of it slammed down into Caden's skull as he tried to get up, to take revenge right then and there. The Death Lord kept him pinned, saying only, "See you in the morning."

Kienelas tried to throw ball lightning at him. Rosven smacked that away too, then lazily strutted over to the nearest corpse and climbed inside without so much as a backwards glance.

[Caden Law]

The Enclave limped back to its headquarters on Aran Street. Civilians helped them carry Shaul, Vara and Neesal. Caden really did limp, but he used his rod and sword as canes, and Kienelas brought the gear. For Shaul and Neesal, it looked worse than it was. Kienelas was uninjured. Shaul and Neesal managed to look a hell of a lot worse than they actually were. Vara, not so much.

Shaul's mask had somehow missed anything vital. Veins were pushed aside and scraped up, but not broken. His trachea was bruised and also scraped, but not pierced. The mask gave him trouble breathing, and the Ranger passed out before it could be tugged loose, but he'd probably live. More so if they could find anyone with a shred of medical knowledge.

Neesal's injuries were almost purely cosmetic with a side of magic for effect. One long cut from shoulder across collar to shoulder; she was effectively soaked in blood from the neckline down, but most of the damage came from a massive shock caused by exposure to Necromancy. Part of her life force -- the energies of her soul keeping her body animate -- had simply been ripped out. She was unconscious, but she would also survive.

Vara's injuries were worse. Physically, she was hurt bad enough. But the impact, the exhaustion, the pain all added up. Vara the Seer was gone. What remained was a , whispering, gibbering thing occupying one side of her face and poking at the skin from some point that could only be labeled, Inside.

Caden lead the way into the building, where Fidelnor took over. He wasn't a true healer anymore, but piles of constituent parts are still piles of constituent parts. It was better than nothing. The Wizard waited, patient and furious, as the other wounded were treated. "No," he said to any attempt, however half-hearted and unconcerned it was, to treat him. He said nothing else, other than giving an order for the Enclave and the Magi to assemble at once.

The headquarters on Aran was more like a town hall than anything else. There were empty racks for weapons, empty shelves for books and supplies, empty benches for Wanderers to rest their weary feet and expand their restless minds, and a stage for anyone daring to speak. Anything else, including the chambers used to conduct the Enclave's guerrilla war for the past month, was below ground.

Caden waited by the door as they all filed in. Deithor. Haldreth. Balakai. Cessae. Magwyn. Dievers. The apprentices, all of them. The Tracen brothers, Kienelas and Dylver. Warram, the first Elf Caden knew to wear glasses. Nethenor. Sigel, looking more like a scholar in his green-white robes than any of them. Those were Blueraven's Magi, as many of them as could be conscious for the meeting. Nolara. Fiera.

Everyone accounted for who could actually stand up. Shaul, Vara, Neesal; they were all being tended by Fidelnor down below. Warram only stayed long enough to give an update on their condition, then took off downstairs as quickly as she could.

"Where. Is. Hessran."

Caden didn't ask that question. He said it as an order. It was the first time he'd really pulled rank, and with Shaul and Vara out of the way, and Fidelnor in no condition to properly lead, no one was going to argue with him. Just as well.

They didn't need to.

"I came as quickly as I could," Hessran said, begrudgingly, as he rushed into the house. "What happened?"

"You fucked up," Caden told him.

"What?" Hessran snapped, more defensive than surprised.

"You let Bolabas out the night we were assembling the Magi. He was supposed to be guarded."

"He didn't have it in him for the fight," Hessran replied without shame. "He was even more of a joke than the rest of them. They've improved since then, but I thought-"

"Bolabas knew enough to tip off Baron Kaverre to our plans. He was tortured. Probably to death. And then the Baron wore him like a cheap suit to get inside Beinost and down two of our best fighters, break morale, and put one of those jokes into a near coma."

That shut him up. For the first time since Caden had met him, Hessran actually came close to looking guilty. And then he said, "I couldn't have known."

"Bullshit," the Wizard snapped.

"We were taking losses all the time!" Hessran snapped right back. "In case you didn't notice, or did Riven's severed leg not clue you in?!"

"You don't get it, do you?" Caden asked.

And then he sucker-punched Hessran right out of the building. Using the same gigantic Sorcerous hand, he grabbed the Ranger and dragged him right back inside. Everyone was watching them. Hessran was too stunned to fight back. Caden broke his arms and legs anyway. Then, still using the same hand, he forced the Drow upright in mid-air, face to face at just a few feet. A slap with his real hand. Another one. Hessran came back to with a spat wad of blood that didn't even make the Sorcerer bat one eye.

"They were able to defend themselves enough to die fighting. Bolabas couldn't. He was as helpless against the Baron as you are right now, and we've all bled for it."

"Then what do you expect me to do?!" Hessran snapped. "I'm trying to fight a war h-" He was cut off with a gagging sound as Caden grabbed his throat.

"I'm hurt. You're a traitor. You still think you're being patriotic. So now you're going to die for your country."

Recognition dawned in the Ranger's eyes.

Three minutes later, he was a withered corpse. His eyes were rolled back into his skull, his hair had the texture of straw, and blood was congealing out of every orifice. At some point, Caden let go of his Sorcerous hold and let the Drow drop, but he never let up the hold he had on Hessran's throat. Something else was different too.

Caden didn't apologize for his use of Necromancy this time.

He didn't feel one shred of guilt either.

When he stood up, the taste of peppermint was positively overwhelming and he was seeing everything in shades of green and blue. His hands were pale to the point of seasick green, clenched tight enough that they should've been drawing blood. His injuries were gone though. He was effectively fresh.

And furious.

And desperate.

"We need to talk," he Said to the lot of them.

Without Ranger Hessran, there wasn't a single dissenting voice in the Enclave. Caden never expected total agreement and obedience to feel that...wrong.

[Caden Law]

Caden made one last entry in his Grimoire.


My name is Caden Law. My Sorcerous Name is Blueraven. With some irony, I must note that I don't know if there's a difference between a Sorcerous Name, used by magi in general, and a Sorcerous Name, used by people like me.

I am a Wizard. I am a Sorcerer. I am a Man.

Today, I have crossed many moral lines in the sand. I don't know where to begin.

But I do know that I've crossed the one line that will, hopefully, haunt me if I live to see sunset tomorrow: I don't regret any of it. I only regret not doing more and not doing it better.

Tomorrow morning, I face a Death Lord in open combat for the sake of a city I helped build on dead men's screams and someone else's bad dreams. I do not expect, nor will I abide by, any rules of fair play beyond the basics of a Wizard's Duel.

One-on-one.

To the victor go the spoils.

The only problem is that I had to lie to make it happen. I don't have any Boons left from Icehenge, else I would have used them to kill him already. If I were a hoping man, I'd hope that he thinks a Boon can't be used to kill someone. I don't know either way. All I know at this point is that he bought it and the city's morale is right back to square one. All their hopes rest in the hands of someone who had to bluff just to make it happen.

I am not a praying man either. I've met Gods. I killed one. I know the Truth and it itches in the back of my brain whenever I think about it.

...but if any of you celestial bastards know how to read, I could seriously use some help on this one.

[Caden Law]

Caden slept three hours in an empty house. Nobody owned it yet, nobody had come to slam down a claim on it, and there was no central authority in the city to stop him from doing so. He let himself in, claimed a spot in the bedroom, and fidgeted for two hours before a dreamless sleep claimed him. Prior to his entry, he had spent the day getting measured by Warram and running through training routines with anyone who could be useful. During his restless hours, all he could do was run through simulations of the duel-to-be in his head.

And when he slept, he saw nothing but kept thinking, This is what Death should feel like.

After he woke up, Caden's first thought was, Emphasis on should. He spent a few seconds after that thinking in a detached, third person sort of way, and doing it in someone else's voice. He didn't know whose voice it was, just that they sounded a hell of a lot safer than he did.

When he was done stretching, he looked around the dark room and made sure it was empty.

Then he screamed.

Loud and desperate, angry and afraid; just to get it over with.

After that, Caden dressed himself in the dark, up to and including his repaired glasses. On went the coat, on went the Hat, and then came the belt, and finally sheathed sword and bowie knife on opposite hips. He stuffed the Wand of Nevermorrow up his sleeve -- there would be no time to summon it up otherwise. He fixed the Arcanist Rod to his sword scabbard, then spent a few moments just stretching, moving, running through his head the ways that he would have to dodge, counter, improvise, plan six moves ahead when he was two behind.

And when he was done with all that, Caden left his little borrowed house and found Charger lying on the sidewalk, waiting for him. It was a quick ride back to the Enclave's headquarters. The damage had no been repaired yet and most of the Wanderers and Magi were nowhere in sight -- and Caden knew why. Too many of them were on guard duty in some way. The few who weren't were instead busy going over a last second review of the lessons Caden had taught them, had copied down for them in advance. They needed to be ready if (If!) their mentor bought the farm.

Caden walked down to the basement. Vara was there, back in her circle, the air above her twisting and writhing in the shape of things the Wizard didn't want to think about. He could hear an eerie tune playing as he stepped closer to the circle, and heard it long after wandering down into the old chamber.

Fidelnor was waiting for him. The Forger was knelt down with his head bowed, as if in both meditation and prayer. He wore an apron now, something heavy and soot-stained. He'd been working at an actual fire and with a real anvil, not just toying with things through alchemy this time. Set before him was a heavy, neatly tied sheet of some kind. The Elf opened his eyes and sat bolt upright the moment Caden crossed the threshold into the chamber. He plucked the bow and untied the knot, and the sheet opened into a perfectly flat square on the ground.

"Armor," Fidelnor said. "Exactly as you commissioned. The only payment necessary is that Baron Kaverre never see the light of another dawn's rise."

"...always so poetic with the death deals," Caden sighed, but Fidelnor wasn't laughing and neither was he. The Forger stood abruptly, bowing again.

"I take leave of you now, Wizard Blueraven, unless you require aid in armoring yourself."

Caden was about to say, "I'm fine, thanks," when someone else spoke up behind him. It was Neesal Danfras, and all she had to say was a very quiet, very calm, completely reserved, "I would like to help with that."

Caden and Fidelnor exchanged glances. The Forger nodded his head and said, "I'll be going then." He made it to the door and added, "And I'll be watching."

[Caden Law]

Caden Law was a man defined by travel and education. Despite this, he had never once heard of any tradition involving Elven shieldmaidens or armorers; but Neesal handled herself and what she was doing with a sense of ritual and precision that made him think one had to exist somewhere. How she would've known it, he didn't want to know.

She started with his shin guards. They were plain steel, lightweight and designed for movement at least as much as protection. The same was true of the knee protectors and the plates strapped to his front and outer thighs. Next came his chestplate, which was a little snug after the repairs that Fidelnor had made to it. Pauldrons, light in every way that mattered, and then elbow pads and vambraces. When it was all said and done, Neesal took Caden's hands and examined them without a word. She did this for so long it actually made him uncomfortable, more so than when she had been strapping things down near his groin.

"You would rather leave your hands unprotected?" she asked, quiet as a whisper. "And your head and neck too?"

"I need to keep my fingers flexible," Caden answered, looking away from her as he said it. "And if he gets my head or neck, it's a pretty moot point."

"Then don't let him do either," she said, simple as that.

The next thing Caden knew, Neesal had grabbed him near both ears. The placement of her fingers and hands was unusually precise, as if meant to work around pointed ears instead of around ones. She pulled him down and pointedly did not kiss him. Neesal's forehead bumped against his own and that was it. She held him there like that, and Caden didn't try to stop her. She closed her eyes, and eventually, he closed his.

"I don't hate you," she said. It was what it was, and Caden took it as such.

And, in an odd way, felt compelled to return it in kind: "I don't hate you either."

She let go. Neither of them parted for a while, but he eventually straightened up. It was 5:54. Caden knew that the sun would start to come up soon. There was work to be done. The Wizard turned to leave.

"Caden."

He stopped.

"Win."

The Wizard kept moving.

[Caden Law]

Shaul was waiting for him at the gate. His voice was somewhat scratchy, but he still greeted Caden with a pompous sounding, "Wizard." There was something wrapped in silk under one of his arms.

"Ranger," Caden greeted with the same sense of formality and even mocked a salute to him with one hand. The other had Charger's reins. The house on Aran Street wasn't far enough to justify riding. It was 5:58 now, and the sun's first glimmers of light were piercing a clear Raiaeran sky for the first time in months. There weren't even any harpies patrolling the airspace above the city.

There was an awkward silence between the two, lingering for almost a minute before Shaul said, "I thought you should have this. For the duel," and then unwrapped the silk to reveal...

Vara's sword.

"I can't," Caden said.

"Just touch it," Shaul told him, and Caden did.

There was a flash of red lightning from the ground beneath his hand, and a sound like deep things singing and humming in chorus. Fae lights danced in spirals about the Wizard, the ram, the Ranger and the sword -- which wasn't actually a sword anymore. It was a staff now, measuring six feet in length. Anvil black and covered with runic and symbolic indentations that filled with the gel-like stone that had once made up the Seer's blade. Caden stared at it, then looked over to Shaul in question.

"The Seers are all armed with what we call Kol'shekai, or Shards of Resonance," he said, explaining the ancient guttural Raiaeran as he did. "Somewhere between ectomancy, conjuration and divinity. We discovered it when we took these lands from the Durklan tribesmen, refined it to suit our needs, and the Wandering sages have used it ever since. It is the choice material for all fully realized Seers, Faithful, and Bards. In order for it to respond to a wielder, he must first merit approval from the Gods themselves. Vara would have wanted you to have this. I'm sure of it."

Caden stared at the weapon in his hand, genuinely speechless. He lifted it and the staff felt weightless. He tapped it to the ground and felt a little surge of energy runing through his arm each time. He looked at Shaul and still couldn't find words to say, and that was fine.

"I will not be watching your duel," the Ranger told him. "I know everyone else will."

"Where will you be?" Caden asked.

"...watching something else," Shaul said, then bowed, then left without a word. Caden stared after him for a few seconds, and then felt the clock strike 6:00.

It was time.

[Caden Law]

Baron Kaverre was waiting for him.

The Death Lord rode upon a crimson horse on the other side of a clear no-man's land in front of Beinost's West Gate. The horse had horns. Big ones coming out of its head, smaller tusks coming out around its mouth, and bony crests like armor on the collar and shoulders. Its head and tail, hooves and eyes were all on fire. The thing was demonic to a fault, and its rider was just enough of a monster to deserve its service.

Kaverre wore armor now. Cavalier's plate in red and gold, worn underneath his greatcoat and over his tighter clothing. He had a heavy, clawed gauntlet on one hand and his sword was sheathed to be drawn by the other. He was a lefty, Caden realized, filing the information away for whatever qualified as Later. And in his bare hand, the Death Lord had a lance. Not something cumbersome and overlong like a jouster's lance, but a short, nimble, functional weapon of war inscribed with green runes and inlaid with an Akashiman dragon around its six foot tip.

Caden held the rains that much tighter at the sight of the Baron. He couched the staff under one arm and took a deep breath, trying to find some center of calm.

"You're late!" Rosven chided, his Voice carrying across what had to be three or four hundred feet without even yelling.

"No excuses," Blueraven actually shrugged, running through plans of attack even as he Spoke.

"I think I'll raze your precious little city for that one," Rosven laughed.

And in that moment, the Sorcerer found not only his calm, but his resolve. All the fear, all the anger, all the hatred he felt up to that singular instant; everything flatlined and only a sense of absolute focus remained.

"No," said the Sorceror Caden Law, the Wizard Blueraven. "You won't."

[Caden Law]

They both charged. Kaverre shouted something in a black tongue and the dragon on his lance lit up, putrid green, its head forming in fiery lines at the tip of the lance. Three hundred feet between them and the dragon shot forward like some kind of missile. Two hundred feet and Caden focused his mind, opened his senses, and laid a bare hand on the back of Charger's head. The other arm -- the right arm -- held his newly acquired staff of power.

Sorcery kicked in.

Charger plowed head-on into the ghost dragon's jaws and kept going, straight through its body. In front of the ram were a pair of huge ethereal horns, a conjured echo of the beast itself, and the magic animating the dragon was nothing in comparison to that. Caden rode the rest of the way to Kaverre like this. Charger lowered his head with a huff, Caden let go and took a swing with his staff and-

Magic discharged where staff met lance. Necromantic energies ripped away, drawn by Sorcerous force of will, and the combination blasted a flaming crater into the ground just North of where the combatants met. Charger slammed horns-first into the demon steed's chest, and whether it was a similar force of will or an act of some goat-loving god, the demons' bone-armor cracked and imploded. It lurched forward, its entire momentum stopping and reversing in one brutal instant as the riders both went careening from their mounts. They met at half way. Caden was faster, Kaverre was heavier. The Wizard had forethought on his side.

Kaverre hit the ground first and Caden drove him in with an elbow to the sternum. The dirt caved in around them as Charger ran another fifty or sixty feet away and collapsed, carrying the demonic horse the entire time. It fell and died where it landed, turning the ground pitch black as its body vanished.

Rosven struck with his clawed gauntlet, and the sharpened tips raked sparks off of Caden's plate-clad chest. The impact alone was enough to send the Wizard spinning all the way to the crater wall. He made impact and the ground gave way as if to cushion him, reshaped itself to roll him back up to his feet outside, and immediately started closing in on the Baron all at once. Rosven dodged it with a huge jump, aimed his lance down and tried the dragon trick again.

Caden had already planted his staff in the ground and aimed it. All that was left was the trigger thought, unleashed with nither word nor gesture. Lightning erupted from the staff's tip, an absolute rainbow of arcane energies shaped to a razor-fine point. It arced a million times in a million ways in the fraction of a second it took to hit Kaverre's lance; all that power converging was enough to annihilate the thing outright. The Baron's coat erupted in flames and he spun free of it as he came back to the ground.

Then he was gone, and Caden was already twisting the staff in the same instant. Kaverre reappeared behind him with the same spinning attack he'd used back in Beinost, but the Wizard was ready for him -- the ground wrenched beneath Kaverre's feet and he spun without ever actually changing direction. He swung without making contact with his target. Skill and experience guided the Death Lord into a quick hop to try and mitigate Caden's Geomancy, but the Wizard ducked under him and shifted the ground again -- he only had to worry about himself this time, and it showed. Point blank became twenty feet widened all the way to fifty before Kaverre even landed.

The Baron grinned and charged him. Caden had just enough time to raise up a wall of stone between the two. It did absolutely nothing to slow Kaverre down. His sword came plowing through six feet of solid rock like it wasn't even there. Caden barely dodged a repeat of what happened the day before, twisted by to allow the Baron past him, then planted the staff at Kaverre's feet as he was coming back for another strike.

The air around the Baron simply turned to ice. It happened in an instant. The opposite end of Caden's staff unleashed a torrent of arcane fire and burning ethereal feathers more than a hundred feet long; all the potential energy he'd sucked out of the space around the Death Lord. The ice was already cracking. There wasn't going to be time to run. Caden had not been trained to use a staff. Not like this.

He drew his sword and decided to try anyway.

Rosven broke free and the entire block of ice shattered to the ground. The Baron adjusted his strike instantly, changing from downwards to horizontal. Caden parried it with his sword while holding the staff in reserve. Rosven clawed at him and Caden dodged that too, and the backhand and the sword-swing that followed. He gave ground so quickly it was hard to tell where the seconds and the steps and the stray breaths were going, and then the game changed. Rosven's foot sank as the Baron went for another down swing. Caden twisted out of the way and leveraged the staff down on the center of Kaverre's back.

Sorcery echoed at impact. It was like watching a log made out of semitransparent light and ghostly feathers slam into someone at a hundred miles per hour. The impact drove Rosven face-first into the ground, and Caden drew the staff away, transferring energy from one strike to the next in a flawless recycling of the spell.

Down came the sword, its echo ringing like the cries of a thousand ravens.

Kaverre split open from front to back, and as the real sword passed hilt deep into his body, so did its Sorcerous echo. Power erupted out of the Baron's mouth and eyes; bloody green flames that simmered to a faint glow after they hit the ground. Rosven Screamed so hard it hurt to hear, and then...

...the Baron was gone.

Only an empty white corpse remained, its flesh already decaying and its hair turning wiry and fine. The armor turned brittle and collapsed, as if rusted to nothing. The clothes aged away and the clawed gauntlet clutched at the air until it too rusted over and fell apart. Only the sword remained, and then it vanished in a pulse of ugly green light.

Caden stood up. He was breathing hard now. Two Sorcerous spells out of three, and one of them had been stretched out and recycled. Even with the staff as a focus and a battery, he was winded. Sore in a few places. Bleeding just a little from some scrapes and a cut on his jawline. The Wizard drew his sword back out and shook it off for good measure, then turned and leaned on his staff to face the undead army.

They were all still standing with perfect discipline.

Just like he knew they would.

"It's not over yet," Caden wheezed to himself. "I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE, ROSVEN!" he called, drawing power into the staff as he Spoke. "This duel isn't over yet!"

[Caden Law]

"Actually..."

On a cue that truly wasn't spoken or heard, more than two thousand milky white sets of eyes homed in on the Wizard. A thousand more empty sockets would have focused on him as well, if there was anything rolling around inside of them. Countless blind senses, the product of undeath and damnation, followed suit. Thousands of bodies moved as one, all of them shifting through stances that looked vaguely Akashiman in nature. Wide-legged, wide-armed; narrow legged, side to the enemy; arms forward, grabbing; mouths opened...

"It kind of is."

Bodies started dropping in an instant. The stances had been roughly equivalent to somatic hand gestures; a release of the dark, miserable energies keeping the corpse army animate. Trees toppled and houses collapsed as ectoplasmic mortar evaporated and was claimed anew somewhere else. Only a dozen and one men in brown robes and black mantled hoods remained, their faces completely obscured by shadow that had nothing to do with an absence of light. They stood in a rough geometric circle, every single one with hands clasped in a different ways, but for the man standing at the very center of it all.

He raised an arm.

The vile sword shot out of his sleeve, tumbled end over end several times and landed squarely in his other hand. Power was building there, lots of it. So much that it was like a great eldritch tornado of twilight purple and diseased green was twisting around just above the circles' heads, its vortex converging on a point just between the sword's pronged end.

"I say now the Sacred Syllable--"

Caden planted his staff and reached out with everything he had left. Sorcery and Geomancy converged as he started shaping runes into the earth more than a hundred feet beneath where he stood. Lightning raced from the dirt to his coat tails, to the underside of each arm, to the brim of his hat and the bottom of his jaw.

"--In blasphemy and denegration--"

The earth quaked beneath the Wizard's feet and all around him. Power gathered into a tiny solar flare churning at the tip of his staff, lashing at the air around it and leaving tiny balls of ice and snow in its wake. He Spoke no words of power; there was no time to do so.

Rosven desecrated the Syllable.

The vortex collapsed completely into the tip of Baron's sword. The Death Lord rushed forward from the circle and lashed out with one mighty swing that may as well have drug the whole sky after it. Raw necromantic power arced from the blade like a bona fide tidal wave, all green and purple and pitch black at its edges and core alike.

Blueraven replied by bringing up a wall of stone twenty feet thick and three times as high. It was sharply angled, covered in runes and spikes and ice. When Rosven's spell struck it, the wall immediately turned black and began to collapse -- only for more dirt to surge up and replace what was lost. The runes caught fire just a second into the onslaught, and the ice was all melted away in the same breath. Spikes that served as momentum breaks, power-sinks; all of them broke away. The whole world felt like it was shaking in front of the wall, but behind it was just a man in a funny hat, leaning against a staff as crows made out of lightning jumped from his back and his arms. They took flight, faded within a foot of their starting point, and were replaced with such speed that it was hard to tell where one ended and another began.

The Wizard held to his staff as if praying empty-handed. And he screamed. He screamed, and he screamed, and then he just Screamed outright.

The wall collapsed.

[Caden Law]

The smoke cleared and Beinost still stood, even with its entire population ducked down in terrified prayer. It took them all a few seconds just to realize they weren't craving flesh or hearing voices in their heads. Up they went, almost as one person spread across many bodies. They looked to the battle.

And what they saw was a haggard Wizard collapsed to his knees, leaned against a staff of power that was positively smoking while the rest of his body actually steamed. The land in front of him was scorched pitch black in a great arrow, pointing squarely to where the Death Lord staggered upright from one foot to the other, barely hanging on to a sword that no longer glimmered with any power whatsoever. All of the auxilliaries had fallen down, though at least half were making decent time in scraping themselves back up.

"...I don't know whether to be pleased or pissed," Rosven half-giggled, half-sneered. He was on the verge of leaning against his sword just to stand up. "I don't know of anyone ever surviving the Esoteric Desecrator's Ohm. I hope you're feeling proud of yourself. Because now you're going to die."

Caden dropped the staff and doubled over to his hands and knees, clutching at the ground. He reached down deep, willing the Wand of Nevermorrow to slip from its resting place. It thumped against both the butt of his palm and the ground. Close enough to grasp at the power reserved there without being obvious about it.

"I have two spells left in me," he admitted, turning his arm just a bit. There was only going to be one shot at this. He had to make it count.

And he had to pay very, very close attention. More so to the effects of what he was about to do than to the fact that the necromancers were all gearing up for a salvo of one-shot spells; things that would kill him so dead he'd be walking for years before his enthralled mind could even grasp the concept.

"Pity you won't get to use it," Rosven grinned.

Caden drew the wand up and fired off a single Magic Missile. The attack took less than a second.

It hit the tattered remnants of the Death Lord's Scattershot Barrier and tore apart in a hundred directions at once. Sparks pelted into the ground and burnt it, several of the necromancers reacted to being sprayed with what amounted to a weak firecracker, and Rosven himself didn't even blink. None of their reactions mattered though.

"Found you," Said the Wizard, Caden Law, and in that moments he grabbed the Arcanist Rod and focused.

The necromancers launched their salvo and Caden shot forward right under it. The tip of his pointed Hat wove between pitch black balls of entropy and chaos, and the ground beneath him quivered and shook and stretched, moving more like a terrestrially-bound magic carpet than anything else. The Wizard sped right between two necromancers, passed within six inches of a helpless Baron, and drew his knife at the last. He lunged up to his feet as the ground stopped moving and sank that bowie to the hilt in the chest of the one, true Death Lord -- Rosven Kaverre.

Down they went.

Down all of them went, with a crack of thunder and lightning as Caden dragged groundward the only 'living' soul in the horde at Beinost. What followed wasn't so much a duellist's victory as it was coldblooded murder with total justification going for it. Caden stabbed Rosven twice in the collar, severing veins and muscles in the neck and shoulders as he went. Twice more in the left forearm as Rosven limped it up to try and defend himself. The Wizard ripped the Death Lord's hood and cowl away and sank the blade right into his throat, severing the spine and the trachea both. More stabbings, all the way down into the chest and stomach. There was blood this time. There was a whole lot of blood. About what you'd expect of a short man of obvious Fallien descent.

Caden kept stabbing him. He didn't bother counting. He just kept stabbing until Rosven stopped moving, and then he stabbed some more just to be thorough about it. By the time the Wizard was done, the Death Lord's chest and throat looked like badly butchered hamburger meat with bone fragments sticking out at every angle. The ground was saturated with blood and there were bits of organs all over the place. A few severed fingers were lying some feet away, and Caden didn't even remember cutting the damn things off.

He finished with one last stab, right between the eyes. And then he twisted the blade twice in different directions and dragged it out the hard way. He stood up and kicked the Baron's head a few times, until it finally just ripped off and hung by a few tattered threads of meat.

And then he took one last look around. There wasn't a single ghoul left standing.

Caden Law had broken the Siege of Anebrilith-Beinost.

[Caden Law]

Caden Law didn't sleep lightly so much as he passed out from strain and exhaustion.

But at least this time, he was following the White Lady's advice: ...carry a big stick.

"Little skittering bastards!" he spat, smacking away things that could not be named in any meaningful way. There were hundreds of them, easily, and probably more beyond what he could see. He smote the ones stricken, and their bodies toppled the rest like flimsy bowling pins. As haggard in spirit as he was, the Wizard positively dripped bloody blue from both hands. His eyes were darker, his skin faded, and the only things truly preserving the identity and will of the Wizard were his clothes -- his Hat and his coat, respectively. He wore no armor in his dreams, carried no sword or knife, because Caden was Blueraven and Blueraven was Caden and the only reason they'd ever taken up a sword was survival.

"WHO'S LAUGHING NOW, YOU PANTHIESTIC LITTLE FUCKS?!"

Caden sent the last one flying with a golfer's swing. It didn't stop until it was a twinkle between stars. He had the sense that something out there ate it to make that happen. Caden slammed the staff to the ground a few seconds later, and the astral plane shuddered under the force of a terrible mortal will.

The realm shifted a little. It turned and moved to the right beneath Caden's feet, though the Wizard himself didn't budge one dreamt-of inch in the process. A temple stood before him now. Grand and eldritch in all the unspeakable ways; a spire of bone stretching into the forevernight sky, its entrance atop a flight of stairs that seemed to go on forever.

And at the base of them knelt Vara, clad in a skirt and a sari, with loose sleeves strapped to her forearms and an emerald collar about her neck. There was a matching belt on her waist, and thin chains of ethereal metal binding the two.

Several steps above was a figure that reminded Caden of an Elf. If the Elf was nine feet tall, lanky, and wore a bull-horned helmet. And also if the Elf in question was on fire and the flames were burning green like the tiny stars simmering where its eyes should've been; none of which cast any light. The thing's flesh was black like the idea of a Drow. Its face was absolutely unseen, if it had one at all. It carried a fluted saber in one hand, huge and curved from a hilt of solid bone and diamond. It wore leathers that, Caden knew, were still somewhat alive. Technically.

"The Burning Warden Tasked At Dawn," Caden muttered, started forward, and stopped just as quickly.

Further above that one, easing down step by step, was a man. Or maybe a woman. Or maybe both at once and neither at all or something else completely. It certainly had the figure of a woman, but there were too many arms. Eight in all, in rows of three, with two sprouting from each shoulder. The two extras were holding aloft a massive halo of stardust, a nascent sun writhing at its core. The two lowest were in a constant runthrough of somatic gesture. The four middle ones each clutched fluted warhammers that looked almost like drumsticks. She also had a look somewhat like an Elf, but only in the figure, the face, and the ears. Her skin was blue and her eyes were threefold fires.

"...and that would be He Who Dances In His Name," Caden decided. That the gender was off didn't seem particularly important.

The Dancer lowered itself down to a step above the Warden, then gave the lesser captain a look that somehow translated as a ninety hour discourse on rank and entitlement. The Warden brushed it off with a shrug that equalled an even longer list of technicalities and loopholes. Vara was tainted, of course. And the Warden had been promised a vessel in her.

But the Dancer saw her first.

But the Warden was promised that vessel; the Dancer was merely taking place by right of divinity.

"Vara?" Caden whispered, stepping up beside her. "Vara, we have to run now."

"No," she told him in a somber voice, eyes downcast. "I am sworn. This is the end of my Path, Blueraven."

"You can't die here," he told her.

"Prove it," Vara told him. Caden stared at her. "You can't." She never looked at him for a second. Just as well.

He woke up right as the Dancer struck at the Warden. Dreams broke to reality so hard it actually hurt a little bit, and the first thing Caden saw was Vara, lying in bed, bandaged and still quite broken in her little circle of containment, while the air above her writhed and tangled and started to smoulder. Caden had been unconscious for almost two days. He knew it in an instant from the internal clock sense that marked him as a time traveller. Bleary eyed as all this made him, and with the bad eyesight he had by birth, everything about the bed and what was happening above it remained crystal clear.

Caden started to get up. To run for the circle. To try and prove it to her -- and that's when it hit him: Shaul was watching her. Had been watching her since the day she was put down. Hadn't left her side for more than a few minutes, except to give Caden his staff. Shaul Karna had been with her since before Tembrethnil, and he had stayed with her even when the fate of an entire city hung in the balance.

"You stupid shit," Caden laughed.

Shaul looked at him somberly. "This is not the time or place for your antics, Blueraven."

"Oh, yes, yes, yes it is," Caden chortled, staggered up to his feet and grabbed the Elf by the shoulders. "Get up. Get up, damn you, this is important. That a boy. Elf. Wanderer. Whatever you are. Right this way, yes. Don't worry, the exploding eldritch massacre won't hurt you. Probably. Now, like this, that's right."

Caden stepped out of the circle and did an about face. "You know what to do."

"What?"

"You. Know. What. To. Do," Caden told him, smiling. "You've always known. I think, maybe, she has too. That's why she's hesitating, Shaul. She knows. But she doesn't know. Vara's at the end of her Path as Seer. She needs a tether to this world, before the Dancer and the Warden settle their differences over who gets to possess her shell for as long as it can last. She needs the one thing Gods can't give her. And as much as I'd bed her in a heartbeat, I can't give it to her either. You can.

"She can't die here, Shaul. Not like this. It's up to you to prove it."

"I don't-what. I don't know what to do, Caden, I-"

"Stop being such a Man about it. You're an Elf. Remember?"

And just like that, something snapped so hard in the back of Shaul Karna's head that Caden almost heard it. He turned to the Seer on her bed, and he bent down. Whispered just three little words and a name. And then he kissed her square on the lips. Short, simple, and sweet.

It was the easiest thing in the world, Caden found, to watch the abominable presences vanish from above that bed. To know that Vara's eyes were fluttering open, and a smile was edging its way onto her face, and she was saying the words, "What took you so long?"

He left the room after that, quietly shutting it behind him.

[Caden Law]

I remember an old quote that Greyspine told me, way back in the day. He attributed it to a Warlock, of all people, by the Name of Deadcider. To give you a little background, Deadcider was a Scarabrian menace come to Salvar via the skylanes, back in the days when that was something you could only do with dragons or demons or something. It took a single Wizard to bring him down, aided of course by the Saint's witch-hunters. The quote is supposedly Deadcider's parting quip, spoken as the lead hunter, Ethereal Jeremiah Evernorth, put a spear through his stomach.

"There ain't no rest for the Wizard, eh?"

Still don't know why he said that. Greyspine didn't either. All we could ever agree on is that it's true.

I was out for almost two days after beating Baron Rosven Kaverre. I had just enough time to reap some free food and dance a little bit with the local ladies (I am apparently something of a Big Deal here now. Imagine that.), and then comes a messenger from Gods know where. Someone in red clothes and a desert yellow cloak calling himself the Drifter. He handed me a rolled up parchment, bowed his head and left without anyone ever seeing him come into or exit the city.

But I knew him. I knew the smell of him, the feel of him. Everything, really. One of the Sage's minions, I have no doubt.

Judging by what I've read of the parchment so far, it looks like a transportation spell of some kind. The big league variety you can only use once. Not my forte, but I've a lot of helpers and...well...

I have a feeling about this.

I need to go. I need to be a part of this. I was there at the Day of Untold Agony, and I want to be there when retribution dawns on the Necromancer's head. I've put most of the Magi to work helping me decipher and transcribe the spell, if only so that it can serve as the first Forbidden Text at Beinost's College Arcana.

...oh. Right.

I forgot to mention that.

As part of helping to save the city, rebuild the city, then save it again, I managed to work in a little bargain with Fidelnor. There's an entire district dedicated to magical studies. And the vast majority of that district is taken up by what will be a school of Wizardry proper. Nothing musical, nothing at all bardic or divine. Straight-up, Hats on, wands out Wizardry. My Magi have all agreed to a few years spent walking the world, building their skills and knowledge base. We're going to reconvene at the end of that period, and then...

I don't know.

Archwizard Blueraven? Headmaster Law? Headmaster Blueraven?

I'll have plenty of time to figure it out later, I guess. If I have a later.

Addendum: And if you're curious: Death Lord Kaverre was, ultimately, a body-hop specialist. He relied on proxies and puppets to stay hidden among the ranks of his apparent 'auxilliaries,' allowing him to use the Baron body as his main distraction. I figured it out when I saw the runes on his sword: Fallien is a distinct language, not one common to any of the Death Lords I've dealt with. You'd need specific knowledge of how to write it to apply the stuff in magic, the sort of thing a native speaker would do. In Cessae's test shot, I noticed how thinly spread the barrier caused any attack to become -- to the point that it was just overkill. In battle, I saw that the barrier left one necromancer untouched while spreading the damage out so much that you'd have to really pay attention to catch it.

Kaverre used all those body-proxies not just as a means of inflicting misery and hopelessness, and not just because he was smart. He used them because he was too much of a coward to let himself be hurt.

To tell you the truth, I was guessing like crazy when I took him out. I got lucky.

Addendum: The spell is set. All that remains is to set my affairs in order here. If I never write another page, then I want whoever reads this to know one thing.

I did not die a virgin.Admittedly, Caden had been Without for at least five years at this point.

But history does not need to know the details.

[Caden Law]

It took most of the Magi to cast the spell. Vara assisted them as her last act on the Path of the Seer. "I'm thinking...it's time I take a Zero Step of my own," she told him as she and Shaul cuddled over breakfast. It was diabetically delightful. "I think that maybe...I should let me Faith do the talking for a while. Tempered, of course, by love..."

They'd kissed then, the Ranger and the Seer. Caden checked his teeth for cavities the moment they left the room.

He had time enough to take one last look around the town, to wave good-bye to a few of the locals he'd gotten to know. To impart some choice wisdom and/or moral corruption on the youngsters. Both the remaining Drow Rangers, Fiera and Nolara, pecked him on the cheek and slapped him on the rear (which would've felt better if not for chainmail gauntlets). Suggestive comments were offered and brushed aside just as quickly; Caden didn't expect to get anything more out of Drow women than he did out of Elves.

He only regretted this decision for a minute or two. Really.

At the end of it all though, something unexpected happened. He was ascending the stairs to the College Arcana's inner sanctum, where the teleportation was going to take place, when Neesal practically intercepted him out of nowhere. Iera was with her, couched on momma's lap.

Caden didn't remember a lot of what was said. And he'd never write it down. Just that they stood and walked outside the college for a good twenty minutes before arriving back where they started. And then she'd said some things, and he'd said some things, and somehow the little girl had the name Iera Law.

At the last moment, right as he was about to continue up the stairs, Neesal got ahead of him. Cut him off and turned around. And with a smile, she did a very human thing by grabbing him around the ear, clumsy and not at all ritualized. She ran a thumb across his ear lobe.

Then she placed her lips to his.

Five years on, Caden Law finally got a kiss.

If he still kept a score card relating to Elven women, it would've been updated to 1-Irrelevant right then and there. They said some more things after that, a lot of maybes and what ifs. They hugged and embraced again, and then he continued on and she followed. Not as an apprentice, or even as a woman, but as a fellow Mage.

Neesal was there that day, helping carry out the spell. Ranger Cessae watched after little Iera Law during the process. Caden brandished his staff, checked his armor one last time, saluted everyone and said simply...

"No rest for the Wizard, folks. I'll see you on the other side."

He stepped through the portal and was gone.

[Caden Law]

Spoils: ...and iiiiiit's a doozy.

Staff of Power: Caden has acquired a bona fide Staff of Power as a result of his time spent in Anebrilith-Beinost. It consists of an obscure material called a Shard of Resonance, causing it to shape itself in accord with the soul of the wielder. Each shaping is a one-time happening that requires some kind of divine approval. The Shard resonated with Caden into the form of a proper Staff of Power, with a construction perfectly resembling Prevalida both inside and out. Caps are screwed on at each end, allowing for future modifications. It's black with runic and symbolic indentations all over, each one filled in with an orange 'gel' like material that glows blue during spellcasting.

Incidentally, all money that would have been given to me for this quest, along with all money from my Exemplary Contributor prize, as well as the actual prize itself, are factored into me getting this thing. The relavent thread can be found here (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?p=156323).

Armor: In addition to his chestplate, Caden now has a set of cavalry armor for his arms and legs. There are plenty of gaps, but every little bit helps. All of this new armor is patterned after, and strongly resembles, Caden's original Conscript Breastplate. It's all Steel, Above Average quality.*

It started at Excellent, but battle damage took a toll.

Alchemy: As a consequence of all his time spent restoring food and his role in transmuting an entire city, Caden has risen to Above Average in his Alchemy education. He still can't transmute metals or large objects on his own, and he cannot use it in combat under any circumstance. This talent remains most useful for mending thread, fixing glasses, and dealing with food.

Knowledge: Caden's knowledge of Necromancy has gone up to Expert level, with specific attention to counter necromancy. Most of this knowledge is beyond his practical skills as a spellcaster, and instead applies to knowledge of the mechanics and theory behind how necromancy works.

Magic: Caden has advanced to Expert at Geomancy, Arcane Magic, and Thermal Magic. He's become Above Average with Gravity and Average with Necromancy.

Spellwork: Caden has obtained the basic concepts for a Thermal Tornado, Thermal and Necromantic barrier spellwork. His Thermal knowledge now includes the know-how to lob both Fireballs and Frostbolts.

And for the actual continent of Raiaera...

Raiaera: Beinost: The City of Anebrilith has been torn down and rebuilt as Beinost, the Beautiful City. Damage from the sieges has been almost completely erased within city limits, while the land that surrounds it is still in need of purification and rebuilding. The city is only sparsely populated at this point, around ~5,000 people, almost all of them Elves or Half-Elves, but there's plenty of room and the locals are a hard bunch who've been through Hell twice and come back for more. It is noteworthy for being the only major city in Raiaera with no prejudice towards Alerians or Dark Elves/Drow in general, due in no small part to the role some of them played in its final liberation. Despite its beauty and tremendous potential, the city was built using the souls of the dead as a material component. While they were almost universally volunteers, the place may well be haunted and could turn into a hotbed for the dark arts if mismanaged. Like Anebrilith, Beinost is a port city.

Beinost: The College Arcana: Built and then left empty in the heart of Beinost's Magic District. The College Arcana is a work-in-progress, with all but one of its future core staff travelling the world in search of knowledge arcana, artifacts, and all the other stuff that makes such a place viable. Its specialty will, eventually, be a Salvic-inspired, Raiaeran-modified form of general Wizardry, with little or no actual bardic or divine influences. Pointy Hats and Robes will, apparently, be the standard uniform for actual Wizards. Its only current residents are Neesal Danfras, a pyromancer Mage, and her baby daughter, Iera Law. Neesal remains to keep the place in shape and prevent squatters or prospective thieves from swiping anything on College grounds. Currently, the College hosts only copies of magical knowledge found in Blueraven's Grimoire at the time of the Second Siege of Anebrilith, and a copy of the teleportation spell used to reach Xem'zund's tomb.

As an aside: While the College Arcana does figure into my Extremely Long Term plans, I leave it up to the Raiaeran Continent Writer as to whether or not anything is done with it. Boot Neesal and Iera out as you will, open the school up if you want.

[Duffy]

Ain’t any Rest for the Wizard? Try Being A Judge!

Pacing – 6 – languorous, more so due to the thread’s length than any part or parcel of your writing. The quick and snappy nature of your dialogue and excellent wit played a part in detracting here – it’s still very solid, just lacking in spite of other scores.

Setting – 8

Continuity – 7 the journal entries were particularly impressive, how you managed to enter them and not lose continuity or place in your tale I don’t know, but you better share soon!

Total Score (23/30)

-

Action – 7 – strong effort, but the simple direction and the repetitive nature of your spell descriptions didn’t lend to a truly exceptional (although still high) score.

Dialogue – 10 – I don’t need to say anything – it’s truly a joy to read, it’s that good.

Persona – 10 – I’m not going to even go near this, you know your character better than you know yourself.

Total Score (27/30)

-

Technique – 8 – it’s good to see somebody can use coloured text wisely, and your dialogue, rhetoric and wit is superbly utilised to tighten everything together.

Mechanics – 8

Clarity – 6 – whilst everything read well, there’s one or two bits I did lose focus, the action was thick and fast, as was the introduction, but it held together competently enough. My only small piece of advice is too stuck to the 15-25 posters; you work best in a smaller framework, where your otherwise quicksilver tongue works wonders.

Total Score (24/30)

-

Wild Card – 8 – exceptional form as ever, although still by far your weakest thread of the two I’ve judged, you’re miles ahead of the rest of us – keep this up and I might give you a cookie!

Total Score = 82/100

Caden Law receives 11,500 Xp points, gold deducted towards the Staff.

Caden advances TWO levels!




Spoils: The location spoils have been approved by Flames, so discuss their merits with him if you require any further information or discussion, they are beyond my comprehension to deal with.

Staff of Power: Same with this, you will need to discuss with Task the cost and deductions as per the linked thread; it is simply too powerful to be considered as a thread spoil, even though it is an exemplary writing effort.

Thread Spoils Awarded:

Armor: In addition to his chestplate, Caden now has a set of cavalry armor for his arms and legs. There are plenty of gaps, but every little bit helps. All of this new armor is patterned after, and strongly resembles, Caden's original Conscript Breastplate. It's all Steel, Above Average quality, although it possesses a curious but benign curse, which makes the wearer smell strongly of manure and bray wildly every time he or she says horse, stallion or steed, or similar word - only when actually riding such a thing. Such a curse won't be detected until it is activated, and can be removed, should someone versed in such things be found.

Knowledge: Caden's knowledge of Necromancy has gone up to Expert level, with specific attention to counter necromancy. Most of this knowledge is beyond his practical skills as a spellcaster, and instead applies to knowledge of the mechanics and theory behind how necromancy works.


Magic: Caden has advanced to Expert at Geomancy, Arcane Magic, and Thermal Magic. He's become Above Average with Gravity and Average with Necromancy.

I simply cannot approve this many updates, if you were to level up and apply these improvements alone, you'd have your quota for upgrades right here. I kindly ask you to select two schools from this selection to increase, and you will have to have them approved via the ROG upon your next level up.

Spellwork: The spell and 'concept' are added to your grimoire or personal effects, further exploration (and of course, approval from the ROG) will be required before such an endeavor falls within the easy reach of a wizard, even one as powerful as Caden.

Story Spoil: (As per the 60+ bonus Duffy Rule) Infamy Untold - such were Caden's deeds in the city, that his name is spreading over the continent. Whilst this brings praise, charity, women and scotch, it also brings bounty hunters, rival wizards and vagabonds. He now has below average diplomacy as an automatic trait when talking or dealing with Raiaeran officials, citizens or common whores.

[Taskmienster]

Error in calculation :: Exp gains should be 11,215 which puts Caden at 43,562 and advances one level to 7!

Exp and GP added.