Stairway to Heaven

[Caden Law]

...I've been dying to do this since 2007. Expect a holocaust or nine by the time I'm done. I may or may not put the kibosh on Savas Tigh's little Corone adventures for this.

Sufficed to say: Solo. Hopefully I can get it done over the course of weekends. WE. WILL. SEE.

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and burn a trail.
- Attributed to the the Wizard Greywind, best known for glassing a flat path through mountains between Salvar and Alerar.

I try not to think in quotes like that, but every now and then...

Well, I suppose it's as good a point as any to explain my current circumstances.

Until a few days ago, I was rambling around from ship to ship, doing my best to avoid an existential crisis about the fate of the world, trying not to jump the first boat to Beinost, frantically resisting the urge to look up guides to interracial courtship etiquette*, and contemplating whether or not I should be buying my daughter** some gifts from abroad. I was basically on vacation. I've never actually been on vacation, but that was it. I'm pretty sure that was it.

A few days ago, as I was asleep, my ship was attacked by pirates. At first I assumed they were Coronian. Perfectly reasonable assumption; the boat's in between Corone and Raiaera, and last I checked there weren't too many elven vessels flying the old skulls-and-bones. Well, turns out I was wrong.

Orcs came aboard the ship in the middle of the night and slit most of the crew's throats.

Hilarity did thusly ensue.

I am, at the moment, sitting inside of an orc cage on a skyship en route for the fabled realm of Kebiras, which I totally have not visited before (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?p=111977) -- truly. On the bright side, accomodations aren't too shabby compared to my last orc cage. I actually have some companions to chew the fat with, I'm getting about two meals a day, and there's a nice hole in the floor for waste. I'm assuming it goes down a pipe and falls into the ocean, where it then impacts some silly mermaid twat surfacing for her first view of the surface world. I am also fully armed, clothed, and equipped -- this is also good, also new, also convenient. I managed an artful surrender along with the remaining crew, who seem to be under the delusion that I could've taken all the orcs out in one go without destroying the boat we were on or critically damaging the skyship.

They'll forgive me at some point. Or they won't. Kind of moot now.

I get the sense that I'm about to embark on something big -- thus the quote. Bigger than Kebiras, bigger than anything. Call it a dreadful hunch. Or perhaps a prophecy, since I'm arguably entitled to make those now. And I'll just leave it vague so I can come back to it later.

Now, about the orcs? Well, as I've previously written, the orc species is...insanely diverse. There are big orcs, little orcs, civil orcs, barbaric orcs, giant orcs, mobster orcs, hunch-backed psycho orks, whorcs that are what you think they are, tribal orcs, and urbane orcs. And also erks/elks/erfs/whatevers. They come in more shapes and sizes than humanity or elves or dwarves combined. The myriad subgroups are broadly called tropes; a catch-all word that describes tribal, ethnic, physical, national, and even religious differences. Useful things, tropes. Might have to adapt the word for broader use when I get back to Althanas proper.

The orcs that've abducted me are a different variety from the ones I dealt with last time. They're roughly man-sized, with similar levels of physical aptitude, cunning, and intelligence. I dare say they're basically humans with a palette swap. The males are uniformly bald, except for a handful that have big, serviceable patches of hair on either their scalps or where a beard should be; it doesn't grow long, but it does grow thick. Their faces...aren't human, but I've seen way worse. They have inhumanly strong noses juxtaposed on otherwise flat faces. They grow small tusks compared to their nastier cousins, but most like to decorate the things. They all wear uniform colors even if not uniform styles, presumably to match the ship (which I'll get to momentarily). They all carry either large, heavy knives or cutlasses. The women look much more human, with strong noses and short little tusks, but otherwise human features. Most of them are built like brick shithouses. The ones who aren't are...worth a second look. And a third. And a fourth. And a few hopeless lewd propositions here and there. They basically grow the same hair as a human woman would. Both genders are varying shades of green or brown with pointed ears.

And having seen some of them nude, I'm amused to say that Humanity Is Superior, thankyouverymuch. At least the men are. Pardon my smug sense of self-satisfaction.

Pardon it.

Odds are I've gone insane at this point, considering how I'm talking to this bloody journal...

Aside from that, their ship is...worryingly advanced. I've previously made note of orcish industrial potential, but this thing seems better than the ones I saw last time around. I didn't get a comprehensive look, mind you, but it both looks sleeker and feels faster. I can detect some powerful magicks -- very systematic enchantments and such -- helping to hold this brick together and keep it aloft. It looked like some kind of freakish naval cutter on spatsy. The engines were external, with shielded turbines and flaming exhausts. The cannons mostly aimed forward but I saw platforms for gunners all along the sides and several more guns that could point straight down if need-be. More worrisome is the fact that the orcs have better guns than bloody Alerar.

Don't get me wrong. I do not trust Alerians with firearms, but I trust orcs even less. I didn't actually get to see them in action, but I know a lethal weapon when I see it.

Hopefully my little jaunt through the Other Half of the World does not boil down to "Cripple Kebiran industry and destroy a continent." Because that's pretty much the immediate way to top what happened in Scara Brae (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising). Striking mess that was...

* I'm seriously considering a relationship with Neesal Danfras, an elven Wizard currently running the show in Beinost.
** Incidentally, I adopted her daughter, Iera. I am oddly fond of that little waste factory/sobbing trainwreck of a wretch. She has teddy Wizard privileges."This is all your fault," spat Pontius Grakken, former quartermaster of the Starry-Eyed Maiden and one of just eight survivors out of a crew of thirty-seven. He was a bitter little man with little to do but fix on Caden and blame him for everything. "You coulda done something."

"And gotten us all killed," Caden noted. "I'd rather wait a little while. Try not to worry so much."

"Strike you dead," Pontius snapped. "Bloody Wizard."

Caden rolled his eyes and closed his book. He stuffed it back up into his Hat and leaned back on his cell. At this point, the bars felt like windows and the world's troubles were miles and miles below. Nothing to do now but wait for the inevitable chaos, madness, bowel-quaking terror, so on and so forth. As a veteran of such affairs, the Wizard Blueraven adopted a nonchalant attitude about the whole thing. The terror would come, yes. And he would likely murder a lot of people, almost guaranteed. Somewhere along the line, he'd suffer from that existential crisis he'd been putting off. One way or another, the world would be saved.

All that remained now was to sit and wait.

"Wonder what the slave market's like this time of year..."

[Caden Law]

It was just before dawn when the ship finally burned its way into port, coasting along the last few miles on low power. Caden made it a point to rest and recover his strength the night before, and he met the day with wide open eyes and goggles on his face. His glasses were securely tucked away in his Hat. He didn't bother drawing his sword or preparing anything flashy in advance; that would've been too obvious. Caden waited, quietly and patiently, counting down the seconds until the orc skyship had smacked into place on the docks. Pontius was still griping, and so were the others. They all had a vague idea of what was going to happen to them, if they were lucky.

Eventually, someone came to get them all. Several someones, in fact. Two big, burly orcs who were brown and green, respectively, wielding rigid leather pouches stuffed full of what sounded like marbles; Kebiran slapjacks, basically. Wielded properly, such weapons would bruise, injure, and incapacitate without outright killing the victim. The orcs looked like they knew how to wield them. They got to the end of the row of cages, then the green one started opening them up and dragging sailors out by the scruff of the neck, shackling them all in a row. Caden waited for three sailors to meet this terrible (temporary) fate before speaking up.

"Is this the Bay of Long Teeth?" he asked in more or less perfect Kebiran. It was a more guttural language than he was used to, but the tropes were so disimilar to each other that they had to be able to understand it across a wide range of local and national dialects, accents, and speech impediments.

The two orcs looked at each other with some surprise, then the brown one barked out, "Yeah, what of it, Outlander?"

"Just checking," Caden reassured them with an entirely discomforting smile.

The orcs looked at each other, then edged close to Caden's cell. One of them drew a long knife and nodded to the other. His survival up to this point had basically been a fluke. Orcs live violent lives, almost regardless of the differences between tropes. To see a man of Caden's build with so many scars and oddities, carrying at least one weapon and seeming utterly calm as he was when he surrendered; for them, to see such a man is to know that he is dangerous. They were not going to give him much of a chance to fight back if they could help it.

"Although," he said, and the green one with the knife jumped back. The brown one was less twitchy. "I should point something out for you. My name's not Outlander. I actually go by a lot of names, but here...

"Here they call me Berk."

Cue the slow, unsettling realization that Caden had hoped for. The orks had called Caden Berk almost obsessively (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?13962-Between-the-Numbers&p=111999&viewfull=1#post111999), to the point that he had always assumed it might be a title or just a catch-all phrase. In his first jaunt through the Bay of Long Teeth, they had basically been the only ones to call him that as well. It was like a verbal tic unique to them. And the orks were the single most violent trope he had encountered on that trip. Caden had been called Berk, he was a scar-covered man with a weapon and all kinds of unsettling details about him, and this cage...

This cage wasn't dehlar.

Caden shot a blast of raw force through its bars and slammed both orcs to the farthest wall. The cell door's hinges, already rusted and ill-maintained, snapped away like nothing. He stepped out into the hold and took his sweet time stretching out some kinks as the two orcs got back to their feet. The green one charged him, roaring in a way that no human vocal chords could properly match.

Caden broke his leg at the shin with one good thrust of his staff. He stepped out of the way to let the orc fall, then swiped the knife from his hands and buried it to the hilt in the side of his neck. Spinal cord severed. Blade tip jutted out from green skin, accompanied by gushing red blood. Scream terminated in a shocked gag. Not much pain. Not much dignity. Caden never took his eyes off the brown one for any of this.

He cleared his throat and finally Said, "Go get your captain. I'm renegotiating the terms of your surrender."

"You're insane," the orc told him.

"I'm a Wizard," Blueraven answered. "Not much of a difference."

[Caden Law]

To the best of Caden's reckoning, the captain was an albino orc by the name of Gargamet. He was easily the cleanest of the crew, wearing bright blues in contrast to everybody else's reds. His hat, which was actually quite nice, was a tricorn number with actual bones sewn onto it in a stylishly lopsided cross. He wore a white neckerchief, like a boss, and carried a cutlass the size of a falchion, also like a boss. He was also armed with a repeating handcannon that could've passed itself off as a ten-shot revolver if it wasn't the size of a small shotgun, both of which were...uncommon, even in Alerar. Caden really only knew of them because he'd passed through that dismal land a few years before the Corpse War, and even when he'd left it seemed like firearms were only just becoming a less-than-rare commodity.

Gargamet was only one of thirty or so orcs with a gun, and Caden was willing to bet there were more firearms onboard than what he was seeing. That was just the number of orcs who could cluster at the door without getting in each other's line of fire.

"So," Gargamet rumbled as he took a seat at the bottom of the staircase that lead into the slave hold. "You wanted to renegotiate the terms of your surrender."

"Yours, actually," Blueraven replied, his Voice echoing blue on the brain. He kept a leery eye on the firing squad. He trusted his precautions to save the day, but no Wizard is perfect...

"Something tells me that's not how this is going to play out," said Gargamet, scratching at his nose as he spoke. He snorted afterwards, but did not spit it out the way his crewmen would have. He was, for all the savagery attributed to orcs and pirates alike, a gentleman of some kind. Well spoken, well dressed, very calm, at least as calculating. Barbarism was probably a minimal tactic for him, Caden reasoned, and not because he was nice. No, men like Gargamet keep violence to a minimum so that each application has that much more impact. Get punched in the back of the head all the time and you grow numb to it. Get punched in the back of the head just once or twice in a week, you'll be looking out for it all day.

"Then how is it going to play out, Gargamet?" Blueraven warily asked. "With your crew dead, your ship in flames, and your broken body lying in a Long Teeth gutter?"

Gargamet did not emote in any way, shape, or form. He looked the Wizard square in the eye and said, "You can leave if you want. We'll take the rest of the crew and that'll be that."

Pontius and company screamed bloody murder. Caden gave every appearance of seriously thinking about it.

"Make a fight of it and I can guarantee none of you will leave here alive," Gargamet added. "Though some of you might be chewed upon and partially digested on your way off the ship. My crew's not uncivilized, but I swear you people taste like bacon."

"What do you plan on doing with my crew?" Blueraven asked.

"Probably sold as novelty items on the auction block. General Larkatz has been looking for...knowledgeable types about the Outlands for few years now. Build-up for the day when we finally come calling for all that tribute you folk should be paying us," Gargamet explained with neither obvious pride nor sadistic enjoyment. To him, these were just facts.

"Who is General Larkatz?" Blueraven asked.

"Get off the boat and find out," Gargamet told him. "Now make up your mind, Berk. I haven't got all day."

Caden gave every appearance of really thinking about it.

And then he Said, "There won't be any apocalypse."

[Caden Law]

An epoch ago, a Dark Wizard named Tön're wrote that you should never, ever give a Wizard time to prepare.

Gargamet didn't get the memo.

Blueraven shot a blast of fire up the stairs and killed five or six of the firing squad right off the bat, forcing the others to flee from the doorway unless they wanted to get burned alive right along with them. Shots were fired and every single one missed. Gargamet himself avoided the blast, drew his cutlass-falchion in the same fluid motion, then came at Caden with a dispassionate grimace. He struck with a tight swing and the Wizard blocked it with his staff, but only just. Steel sparked on prevalida, Caden lunged forward and slammed his elbow into the orc's jaw, then drove the bottom end of his staff up into Gargamet's groin. The orc grunted but did not relent. He tried to backstep and bring his sword to bear again. Caden brought just one finger to bear over his shoulder and killed him with a lance of solid ice through the nose, into the skull, and out the back of the head. Bone chips and gore flew everywhere.

Gargamet dropped to the ground in an undignified heap. Caden cracked his neck from left to right a few times, then picked up the sword and gave it a few practice swings. It was heavy, but functional. He sheathed it back on Gargamet's belt, then greyhawked it and slung it over it shoulder.

"The hell didn't ya do that sooner?" Pontius snapped from somewhere behind him as Caden stooped down and picked up the tricorn. "Could'a saved us a week or more o' bein' trapped in those damnable cages!"

"Any of you guys know how to fly a skyship?" Caden asked. He was met with a round of blank looks. "Then I suggest you learn. I'll deal with the crew, but you're on your own after that. If you make it back to the West, head for Beinost in Raiaera."

He tossed the tricorn over to Pontius, took up his staff and got moving without another word. A few small explosions later, the crew followed him.

It was a dreary morning in the Bay of Long Teeth. The Wizard Blueraven had returned.

[Caden Law]

It is six sharp in the Bay of Long Teeth and I am all alone. It's raining right now. The engines of the Western Vulture are burning orange and trailing steam and leftover magic as the ship rises high and unsteady, guided by a crew who have no idea what they're doing, aimed at a destination thousands of miles away. Most likely, they'll never actually reach the city of Beinost, but they're still going to try. Their only alternatives would be suicide or misery, in one form or another, be it slow and hesitant or fast and willful. I can't say I'll miss any of them, but I do wish them luck -- if only because Althanas needs to know, to be warned, of the giant lurking on its Eastern fringe. "There won't be any apocalypse," I told them, "Because I'm going to kill it in its crib."

That assumes I know which apocalypse I'm looking at.

Right now, I'm sitting on a bench under an overhang near portside Long Teeth, watching the streets hustle by as the tropes of orcs blend and clash. I've seen nine bloody brawls and a rape in the past half-hour. It's a cosmopolitan place, this city, but it's also dystopic and warlike in the extreme. I have to wonder how the hells these people ever managed to even rise up enough to have cities, let alone keep them from burning down every five minutes. For all the hells on these streets though, the Bay of Long Teeth is as cosmopolitan a place as any I've ever seen. Orcs are dominant, but I've seen humans here and there. A few like Era, (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?13962-Between-the-Numbers) who descend from orcs, humans, and elves by the look of things. I've even spotted some wyrmfolk too. The one thing we all have in common is that we are armed, all of us looking over our shoulders, all of us walking like we'll kill whoever so much as blinks at us wrong.The page ends here, followed by a few drops of blood.
I just killed someone who thought they could sneak up on me. In the past two hours, I've acquired a second sword and a brand new knife, both through greyhawking. The sword's so big I can barely use it with one hand and the knife is an ugly number that'll probably serve me much better. The rule of the street seems to be Look Dangerous And You'll Be Okay.

I have little optimism about the dining options here. Currency seems to be based on plain old gold pieces though, so at least there's that. I managed to greyhawk my would-be murderer's purse too, feeble thing that it is.

The skies are choked with air traffic here. Most of it is low. I've seen several near-collisions between ships and buildings, and I don't even know how some of the buildings here got to be so tall. They look ramshackle at best. I've spotted a handful of authority figures that my old notes list as Borcs -- big orcs. The borcs are all huge and most of them sport some kind of symbol on their left cheek; usually a chalk-white skull or hand. I'm assuming the Bay is divided between the two groups the skull and hand represent, but I could be wrong. I've seen a handful of chalk-white bones, weapons, and teeth too. Only one red symbol though, and it was on the opposite cheek. The borc in question was walking with his head down in shame but noone had the gall to attack him.

Aside from that, the ork presence seems to have dropped significantly from my last visit. The whorcs are...slightly more prevalent, I guess you could say. As are Era's people, both in the capacities you might expect.

I also saw another thing that worries me: A cart that moved without a horse. It had big thick wheels that looked like rubber, clearly patterned for grip, but everything else seemed to be made out of metal. When I asked, a man on the street told me it was called a bunch of words that translate as automatically mobile -- or automobile -- and that the locals called it a car, which has no translation I'm aware of. It took up most of the street and turned more sharply than a horse-drawn carriage might. Knowing the orcs, I'd bet somebody else's left testicle that there's a weaponized version out there somewhere.

Guns, skyships, cars.

Kebiras would be a nightmare if someone ever managed to unite the disparate tropes and city-states of the orcs. I'm told that is not the case, but this General Larkatz could pull it off. He's a warlord from the south-eastern border of orc country, originally just a tribal thug. He managed to convince several other tribes to back him, then took over five villages and a full-blown city-state before crushing one of the nearby human kingdoms that opposed him. He goes by several epithets, including Larkatz the Conqueror, Larkatz the Great, and Larkatz the Butcher. To be called a butcher as an insult in Long Teeth requires you to be on a whole new level of monstrosity. Again, worrying. I'm going to try and set up a meeting with him at some point soon, preferably en route to tear down whatever military-industrial complexes I can. The orcs are getting too prolific and too damn good at manufacturing and research. I don't think even the elves in Alerar could keep up with them if they really put their back into it.Caden shut the grimoire and stuffed it up into his Hat. He looked around, through the hustle and bustle of Long Teeth at morning. A fight broke out across the street. It was short, violent, and one-sided. Closer in, he spotted a short green boy swiping the purse right off an older, more powerful orc's belt. The youngster made his escape before Caden could even voice his approval.

Welcome to Kebiras, he later wrote. Abandon civility, ye who enter here.

[Caden Law]

"...and in this state of Nature, unblessed by Her Majesty, it is the lot of man to live a life that is hard, nasty, brutish, and short." - Reverend Jeremiah Evernorth, the father and patron saint of my old hometown, espousing the right mix of dogma and terror to guarantee loyalty from the half-frozen masses.

I vaguely remember hearing my old reverend, Caden Wellman*, giving a sermon that climaxed with that quote. Now there was a man who knew how to scare the piss out of the faithless, let me tell you...not that it made me believe, of course. I never believed.** I was right not to believe. But damn if they didn't have it right about the life of man in a state of nature being hard, nasty, brutish, and short, unblessed or not. I'm on my first morning here in the Bay of Long Teeth and I've already witnessed about thirteen murders in the street, and another two or three in-doors. And that's just murders, nevermind everything else. For now I've opted to take shelter at night, outside, in alleys and nooks and crannies and maybe even on rooftops. I trust the innkeepers even less than I trust the roving bands of street gangs that seem to have free reign here.

Except when they don't.

From what I've gathered -- in conversations with humans, some of the more sane orcs, and the wyrmfolk -- Long Teeth is an effective microcosm of Kebiras as a whole. In that regard, it turns out that the orcs are loosely united under one leadership already; a high council of sorts, cobbled together from anyone cunning and vicious and powerful enough to join its ranks. The thing that unites them is an outside threat, and a nasty one by the appearance of things. I've yet to get anyone to actually, consistently identify the threat in question. The best I can do is nail it down to some common themes.
It comes from a place roughly identified as the Underground. Actual terminology varies. I've heard Downbelow, the Underdark, the Earthen Realm, and Subkebiras too. The Underground is what the orcs (mostly) call it, so I'll stick with that.
It is more than any one particular nasty. Most stories emphasise packs between three and eight strong.
They always strike from dark places, but they have no particular aversion to light.
They are not human. They are partially humanoid. Teeth? No idea.
Their most common names are Arachs (orcs), Wilderfolk (humans), Shadowcallers (wyrmfolk) and Huskers (common epithet).
That last name? Apparently the most common modus operendi for them is to carve off someone's skin. I'm gonna sleep so well tonight!

The council has no true leader. It's kept in check by the fact that membership is fluid and anyone who starts gathering too much power automatically earns the enmity of the others. For all the tropes of the orcs, only a half-dozen or so are actually represented there. And the only thing they can all agree on -- without fail -- is the fact that Long Teeth must survive.

Extrapolate all of that to a continental level. All they need to unite them is survival and the presence of a genuine external threat. If they ever learn about Alerar, with its high technology and magic, Althanas is screwed. There is no other way to say it. I have my doubts that even the Forgotten would be able to hold back to the kind of tide the orcs seem able to bring to bear. Long Teeth alone could probably subjugate most of Corone or all of Scara Brae as I last saw them.

I think I should've been having nightmares about Kebiras, not most of the other things that've kept me awake at night since I got back from N'Thayn'sal.

* Reverend Caden Wellman is the man I was named for. He handled my...he oversaw my Consecration as a little boy. For the benefit of anyone who ever reads this without insight into Salvic Wizardry and its relation to the Church at the time of my childhood: Genital mutilation. I am still functional. It doesn't even look bad. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.*** I don't remember if he was alive when I last visited Evernorth. Hopefully not. I'd hate to miss up a chance to kill him for what he did to me and others.
** There are times, of course, where I did believe. And then I learned better.
*** Nix that. Considering all the candidates for my Worst Enemy, yes, I would wish it on them. All of them. Twice.
Caden closed the grimoire and looked around. He was alone by the look of things, but Long Teeth was a place that engendered paranoia just by looking at it. The skies were always overcast and gold in both mornings and afternoons, with drearier mid-days and starless nights. Caden had only been here for a day, but he knew the weather well enough. Ask a few questions and the locals just couldn't shut up about it. It was a risk though. He already stood out like a sore thumb by default as a pale-skinned human in utterly alien clothes. Most of the humans in Long Teeth -- and in Kebiras as a whole -- ranged from soil black to light brown, with short hair and dark eyes. The fashions emphasised green and red colors over everything else. Swords looked nothing like Caden's Raiaeran conscript blade.

On the one hand, being exotic was a novel experience that Caden hadn't experienced before. Even in Fallien and Dheath, human Wizards weren't all that unusual. Here? He didn't know if people even knew what a Wizard was, but odds were against it.

On the other, being exotic is a good way to get a knife in the back.


Pretty sure I'm being watched and/or followed. No idea by who or what. Will kill or maim them later.

I should add that I've heard an interesting bit of news: Not only is Larkatz coming here, but he intends to meet with the council. He's going to try and put them under his banner through diplomacy first. Common sense dictates that he'll probably kill them all or they'll kill him first, depending on how the little meeting goes. I have my work cut out for me but there doesn't seem to be a right choice to make here.

If I kill just Larkatz, his nascent empire collapses.

If I wipe them all out, or even just take out most of the council, odds are good that a unitary figure will come up to fill the power vacuum. Nothing quite like an absence of existing authority to make a new one.

Alternatively...
Caden looked up at the sky. He blinked a few times, then put his hand on the ground and reached out with his extra senses.

Just a few feet down, bedrock. It was full of metaphysical holes, a roiling mass of energy that resembled nothing so much as a nine-dimensional hurricane clashing with itself all over the place. This was not the work of a mage. This was the work of civilization's very own gravity, no matter how barbaric it might've been. This was power. More power than Caden had drawn upon when he scourged Tembrethnil, and also much, much worse. It was unwilling power, out of synch with a human's will and intentions. It was self-preservation. Caden automatically checked off a dozen and one plans for bringing about localized cataclysm.

There was still one left.

It is a well-known fact that Wizards have the scariest smiles.

[Caden Law]

The Council of Long Teeth gathered in a huge room with domed walls and an elevated opening in the middle of the ceiling, similar to the covers on a swell-made smokestack. The room's walls were completely covered with the vandalism of knives, of names and creeds that had been stabbed, hacked, dragged, slashed, and mangled into the woodwork over the course of decades. There were four doors in and out, and a shallow pit sank into the room's center, its bottom lined with grates for drainage's sake. Around the pit, a long table interrupted only twice, so that two orcs could get in and out at the same time. Thrones lined the table in various states of both novelty and disrepair, each one marked according to its (currently) permanent owner.

The Council numbered just thirteen and it was not a democracy. The orcs sitting at that table had come to power because they had cut throats and severed heads and flayed husks from the bones of their enemies to do it. Some, like Warlord Helldrake, came from outside the Bay to impose their own savage wills on it. Helldrake was a good example of this lot because he was an archetype of them: a tall green orc with no shortage of brown scars that formed a huge pattern of mismatched tiger's stripes all over his body. He wore a chainmail shirt under a metal chestplate, along with other bits of armor scattered all over. His eyes glowed. His mark of office was a battle-axe bigger than he was, literally standing beside him without the need to lean against anything.

Directly across from him was Papa Viscero, a much more urbane sort with dark green skin and one eye whose colors changed like a swirling rainbow. He wore leathers like a working orc, up to and including a long leather coat and a wide-brimmed hat. His weapon was a much more distinguished rapier carved out of a dragon's tooth, laid on the table in front of him as an implicit threat to anyone who came within striking distance. Nevermind the revolver he carried in his coat.

Not far from Viscero sat Long Teeth's preeminent mage, whose skin was actually blue with a few choice red symbols here and there. He had no real access to the traditions of the West, but Elder Ghastfire could've easily passed for a Warlock, a Witch, or a Necromancer in his own foul rites. He wore an orange and black robe, open at one shoulder, and carried with him a staff that was actually an enslaved demon. Most of its length was a rigid tail, while the 'head' sported two short horns arching forward above a small mouth filled with far too much teeth. Its arms and legs were broken, bent harshly around its body as part of a symbolic restraint. Ghastfire also wore a necklace of glass beads, each of which sported at least one screaming face composed of mist rushing around beneath the transparent surface.

Across from Ghastfire, there was the solitary ork of the council, Captain Graghok, who wore all kinds of gaudy bright colors and who was armed right to the teeth and back again. He was the owner of the world's first, and possibly only, five-barreled rifle, among other things. Then there was Street Lord Choman, who ran much of Long Teeth's auction industry and who had a hand on roughly half of the city's prostitution industry. Warlord Eye-Berk, an old rival of Helldrake come to fight him in the city, next to Chief Zhyelson of the Dead Stars, a barbarian tribe-turned-apocalyptic cult-turned-hyperviolent street gang.

All these and more made up the Council of Long Teeth. They were formidable. They were dangerous. And they were all watching the exact same door as Warlord Larkatz the Butcher came striding through it. Their eyes were wary and rightfully so. For an orc to call you a butcher and mean it as an insult requires a special kind of barbarism, the sort that cannot be adequately captured in most human languages. Larkatz had earned it the hard way. So hard that it made orcs sympathize with the human kingdom of Achu Kintan, which no longer existed as anything more than a hushed whisper. And he certainly looked capable of that kind of savagery. He was of a rarer trope than most orcs, even among the Council's darwinistically cutthroat membership. He was an uruk, which was, in effect, an überorc.

He was seven feet tall, or more. Muscular in ways that humans and elves simply weren't; packed tight and stretched taut and somehow flexible in spite of all that. His jaw was sturdy and his tusks were small, while his eyes sported slit pupils and glowed green without any iris. He wore a long black leather vest and matching pants with metal-plated boots and an upper chestplate. Around his waist, under the coat, there was a heavy sash woven from silk around chainmail and impact plating. He had on a pair of vambraces with claw-like blades extending over the back of each hand, and he carried an enormous pair of axes across his back.

It'd take a mage to see the wards tattooed into his skin, every single one colored to fade into the background flesh surrounding them. It'd take a good mage to spot similar wards in all his clothes. It'd take a master with a microscope to find the destructive runes all over his weapons. Larkatz carried no gun because he didn't need it, and everyone with two braincells to rub together knew as much.

He was accompanied by just one attendant: a grubby little goblinoid, barely five foot six or seven, whose name nobody could remember. Most of them just called him Berk and he didn't seem to mind, and even if he did mind none of them would care. He dressed in second-hand reds and beiges, carried a rifle almost as big as he was, a much smaller carbine, and a plain revolver. Every single one of them was loaded with magekiller ammunition. Where Larkatz entered the room like he owned it and paid no mind to the rest, Berk entered the room like he didn't belong there and immediately set his sights on Ghastfire.

The old mage returned the favor with a sadist's grin.

What would have followed was politics. Deals being cut, threats being swapped, that kind of thing.

It can safely be said that would have happened is not what actually happened.

[Caden Law]

It began with a rumbling on high, not unlike a particularly close thunder strike.

Then there was a flash so bright that it could be seen through eyelids, limbs, clothes, even solid walls; a flash that somehow failed to blind anyone at all.

The whole Bay of Long Teeth shook and shuddered, and a Sorcerer spat all manner of obscenities across fifty different languages as he realized that he'd made a handful of errors in trying to set up his spell. Because the spell in question was an act of thaumaturgy on a truly grand scale. The Sorcerer in question had affected geography before, but he'd miscalculated. He'd gotten arrogant. He had forgotten that all those disasters and cataclysms had been accidents.

Turns out that when Blueraven intentionally tried to nuke something, he wasn't all that good at it.

It was the world's biggest, most completely useless flashbang grenade, engineered over the course of hours through long-distance geomancy from a hilltop far outside the city. There were runes as big as houses hidden under the surface dirt, exploding into view as the spell triggered, sapping the leyline nexus beneath Long Teeth in the process. Net effects included a few thousand orcs jumping out of their shoes and hacking into the nearest target. Plenty of guns were fired. The Council, in fact, turned on itself as a pure reflex action. Ghastfire struck first, fastest, hardest -- he blew Zhyelson right out of his seat and flash-fried his shadow into the wall of an adjacent building. There was nothing else left of the big barbarian chieftain. Papa Viscero slit Warlord Helldrake's throat so deeply that his head hung on by stray threads as his body staggered and flailed, reaching for an axe it was no longer remotely equipped to wield.

Larkatz and Berk got in on the act too. They all did. Larkatz tore open Street Lord Choman's chest cavity while Berk shot down Warlock Eye-Berk, who had already returned spells against Ghastfire. The two mages both went down, but Ghastfire was faking it and Eye-Berk most assuredly wasn't. Wards flashed for both, but the Warlock's had never taken into account magekiller bullets. He stumbled towards the door in a frenzied attempt to escape and Berk shot him over and over and over again until he stopped, dropped, and didn't move again.

Then Berk ran up and shot him again in the back of the head, just to be thorough.

Take what happened in the Council and extrapolate it all over Long Teeth. The results were incredibly messy. Fires swept through the streets in minutes. Shots rang out everywhere. Someone, somewhere, somehow managed to roar WAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!! to its entirety, followed by an explosion. And that was just the ground game. Up in the air, things were even more destructive. Several ships collided, plenty of others opened fire in every direction they could. But Blueraven was watching, and that wasn't all that happened.

Lightning struck Long Teeth. It passed through two ships to do it, clawing from the cloudy void all the way to the ground and back again. Several times. Caden watched it happen. He felt hairs stand on the back of his neck. Because real lightning doesn't produce spiral sprays of feathers or dust, and he certainly hadn't meant for that to happen. He checked the layout of his spells, his great act of geomancy, and was able to confirm that nothing he cast would've produced such lightning.

Blueraven cringed a little bit and sputtered his last, "Fuck," as the whole mess wrapped up. He had done catastrophic damage to Long Teeth, yes, but nothing terminal. Nothing the Bay could not recover from. And he had no way of knowing whether or not he had achieved the goal of killing Larkatz or any other potentially unitary figures.

He flopped back from his knees to his backside, put his face in his hands and took a deep, deep breath.

"Excuse me," spoke a familiar voice in oddly accented Raiaeran. Caden drew his hands from his face and tried not to look up.

"This was His doing, wasn't it," he said rather than asked. "I stumbled onto something bigger than I realized, didn't I."

"You really don't have any idea," the voice told him. Caden registered footsteps coming up beside him, and a desert wind that was right at home on a continent like Kebiras. It would be, Caden bitterly noted to himself, it would be. "He has the best interests at heart."

"Notice the lack of specificity regarding whose interests are best," Caden replied. He finally looked up, to the side. Grinned nastily. Tried to really put his heart in it. Couldn't do it. The worst he could do was huff, causing a spray of sparks and feathers to manifest from his nose. Breathing magic. "What's the deal?"

The Drifter smiled more cryptically than any mere mortal mage ever could or would. Caden had only encountered him once before (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20221-Ain-t-No-Rest-For-The-Wizard&p=158287&viewfull=1#post158287) but he practically stank of the Sage God of Deserts and Libraries, the Elder Thayne Khal'jaren. He was a tall man, with maybe an inch on Caden himself, built lean and sporting the coldest blue eyes the Wizard had ever seen. He looked to be in his early thirties, aged like a soldier, and he dressed in what looked like a military parade uniform from a time and place unknown to this world. The whole outfit was red and gold, with pants tucked into sturdy black boots near the knee, a waist-hung cape that opened in the front, and a high, stiff collar with gold trim. There were no insignias of rank, no badges, no armor. Over this, he wore a desert yellow cloak with the hood blown back, revealing dark gray hair that blackened near the ends; old dye that had never been replaced. He carried a sword that looked like an Akashiman katana, securely bolted to the left side of his belt on a swivel mount.

More than anything, the Drifter looked like a man who belonged in this world by virtue of not belonging at all. Caden tried, and failed, not to think too hard about it.

"You're assuming that there's a deal at all," the Drifter noted. "What messenger comes to negotiate a deal?"

"One so empowered by a higher authority," Caden replied.

"And do I seem empowered for that?" the Drifter asked.

"No," Caden answered. "You seem empowered to be a living plot device in the convoluted narrative of my life."

The Drifter blinked at him and admitted, "That is both the most correct and incorrect statement you've ever made. I didn't think I could be surprised anymore."

"You're a messenger that can think and you can be surprised. You look pretty human but that means nothing. You're sure as hells not an angel. So what are you?" Caden asked.

The other considered him for a long while before softly answering, "A drifter in shadows, paying penance for a life of high-minded, well-intentioned wickedness. What more do you need to know?"

Caden thoughtfully stared at him, parsing the words out in his head for a long while. Then he asked, "You're not Xem'zund, are you?"

"Zundalon the Cantor will never walk this world again," the Drifter answered with casual certainty. "What more do you need to know?"

"...what have I stepped into?" Caden asked.

The Drifter smiled before answering, "Not into, Caden Law. You've set your foot upon the first step of the stairway to heaven. What more do you need to know?"

Caden grit his teeth as he asked, "What more do I need to know?"

And here, at last, the Drifter clapped. It reminded Caden, rather dreadfully, of the way his boyhood teachers used to clap at the slow kid in the back of the room. "You need to know that it's already time to get your little band back together and place yourself in good company once more. You need to know that you've already laid the framework for such things. And you need to know that you've still got all the authority you need to save the world. You are on a mission from somebody else's god.

"And at ripple's end, you will know your enemy."

"That's cryptic bull-" Caden blinked. "-shit."

The Drifter was gone. All that remained was a slip of paper. Caden slapped himself before deigning to read it.

Go knock out some teeth.
Or don't.
Doesn't matter either way.

"GOD," Caden read, pronouncing the capital letters as only a Wizard can. He snapped his fingers and set the paper on fire.

[Leaf on the Wind]

It is fair to say that things don't always go as planned. You might even say that life just sort of goes off the rails every now and then. You wake up one day, go for a walk, then boom! You're not there anymore and nobody knows where you went or what happened to you. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising&p=185925&viewfull=1#post185925) And then, a few months and several thousand miles later, everything snaps back into place and all you can think to do is scream, run around, and fight for your life in the middle of an utterly alien warzone the likes of which is somehow infinitely less terrifying than where you've just been.

That's not exactly what happened here, but it's plenty close enough. Lightning struck the ground in the Bay of Long Teeth, and a distinctly foreign shop stood where nothing had been just a few seconds earlier. The appearance of its walls cleaved right through a few people, and one who stood at the epicenter of its arrival was ripped apart from the inside out. It was as if Time and Space were having an argument about whether or not the shop had been there before now, and a few hapless bystanders got caught in the middle. A few seconds later, the front door ripped right off the hinges, which spewed blood the same way that a freshly severed artery might. The door crashed down into hard-packed dirt and wrenched in half, wriggling and flailing as a scrubby little man in a three-piece suit kicked and screamed on top of it.

He had a thick red blade lodged in the center of his chest; a katar, scaled up to the length and shape of an arming sword. The hand holding it was clenched white-knuckle tight, wrapped in the same teal aura that covered the rest of the man the hand belonged to. He was a young twenty-something, tall and sturdy, wearing a pair of bright red pants and a gold-colored sash around his waist, as well as a pair of metal braces and matching shin guards; nothing else. He had no shortage of scars. His hair was a dirty, discolored green that went down to his shoulders, and he had a thick beard to match.

"Show me what you really are!" the man yelled, his Voice only barely formed. "I WANNA SEE YOUR REAL FACE!"

He wrenched the katar sideways, snapping an ungodly number of bones in the little man's chest cavity. The response was an utterly inhuman scream as limbs flailed about with no regard for joints. The suit finally burst apart at the seams as the man, for lack of a better word, exploded. His limbs split and multiplied, his head collapsed into a gaping maw, and bits and pieces stuck out all over the place. The shop behind them echoed that same horrible scream, then lifted off the ground and imploded in on itself at the front door. There was a rush of air and a sound like glass breaking in reverse. The teal man looked down and saw that the demon at his feet was already decaying into nothingness.

He looked around.

From one warzone to another. The combatants had changed, but the rules were the same. Kill or be killed. Live at all costs.

Get out or make someone else die trying.

Rowan Stormwind laughed as he looked up and saw the blue sky of Althanas for the first time in months.

He looked down and saw an ork rampaging at him with a meat cleaver bigger than his upper torso.

"It's good to be back," Rowan Said with a relieved sigh, just before lunging into the thick of it.

[Aeraul Smythe]

It's a fact of life that the Call to Adventure knows where you live, what you're doing, who you're close to, and what buttons to push to make you be heroic. Or villainous, but generally heroic. Anyone who's ever watched their backwater village burn only to embark upon an epic quest of revenge will cynically tell you as much, and most of them don't even need to be all that sober to do it.

The Call knew exactly where to find Aeraul Smythe, but he was thankfully removed from any backwater villages waiting to suffer a death by origin story. He was, as a matter of fact, standing atop the peak of a mountain on the border between Alerar and Salvar, clad in nothing but light mountaineer clothing; boots, a pair of pants, and an undershirt that should've all been buried under several outer layers of hide and more. He carried a sturdy journal hanging on his belt, water-proofed, and a ridiculously oversized jian on his back. He stood atop the mountain at sunset and the air boiled around him. He did not need so many layers because he had perfected the art of controlling his body temperature. It was a cloudless day, soon to be night, and the stars were already coming out. This high up, Aeraul almost felt as if he could reach out and grab hold of the moon.

So, in a moment of whimsey, he tried to do just that.

Lightning struck out of nowhere. The world was blue, then it was a desert, then everything turned gold and he was standing in the middle of a town square-turned-warzone, assaulted from all sides by the feeling of minds both alien and familiar to his own. A few months ago, it would've reduced him to a screaming wreck of a man on the spot; all that blind rage, all the shared empathy of the orcs crashing into his naked mind like a tidal wave full of razors. Atavistic remnants of his mother's heritage churned just beneath the surface, and Aeraul still screamed at the top of his lungs as he reached for his sword.

But it was a man's scream, not an orc's.

When he moved his feet, it was with the precision of a man trained from early childhood. Reflexes bowed to reason, his mind did not bend or break under the pressure, and his hands were guided not by love of battle but by love of life -- his life, not somebody else's.

Aeraul drew six feet of jian from his back and cleaved three orcs in half in one spinning motion. He stabbed an ork through the mouth, neck, and upper back, then wrenched the blade free and charged at a nearby borc. The huge orc brought a rifle to bear on him and Aeraul stabbed through it, muzzle to buttstock, splitting it in half and then embedding the blade into the borc's forearm. He brought his free hand to bear immediately, two fingers beneath the borc's lantern jaw, and then a blast of fire -- salamander red flame, igniting from a point less than a tenth of an inch from his fingertips. The borc's head was the size of a human torso.

Aeraul's fire reduced it to a hollowed slab of charcoal and burnt meat.

The borc collapsed. Aeraul looked around. He was confused, adrenaline was rushing, people were dying all around him and the city was in a blind rage. He didn't yield to it. He was a man. His skin was green, his tusks filed down to oversized molars, his eyes only just barely glowing. He was a man. Orcs mobbed and brawled, loved with violent caresses and died howling with laughter. He was a man.

And he was going to survive.

[Savas Tigh]

And another thing about the Call?

It doesn't give a rat's ass what you might (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23043-The-Wormaxe-Cometh&p=186161) have been doing (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?23081-The-Red-Inked-Ripper-of-Radasanth) when it comes pounding on your door.

In Savas Tigh's case, he was sitting in the middle of a library in Radasanth, just about to pore over an eldritch tome or six, when the Call grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and sent him careening through a blue and gold lightshow punctuated by flashes of dust devils in an endless black desert. Savas was a Wizard though, and a relatively advanced one at that. Where mere coincidence brought Rowan and where Aeraul saw only blurs, Savas got the whole picture in stark, vivid, utterly brutal detail. One moment, he was sitting at that big oak desk. The next, he was standing on charred black sand beneath a huge compound star, every one of its glows clashing black and white, the lines between them defined by arcane formulae that Savas recognized at an instinctive level. He had enough time to look back earthward as his feet began to lift from the sand. He saw a distant library of solid black stone, held together by numbers and words, by semantics writ large all over the laws of physics and logic. He saw a figure in a black cloak just standing there, mighty as a tower defined by empty blue sky at its back.

And finally came the flash of gold.

Savas found himself staring at an unopened letter where the tome had been. He had his arms laid across a great big counter -- a bar fashioned from metal plates and wood boards. Behind him, there were howls of battle and the obscenities of combat. In front of him, a severely cracked mirror. Guns were going off all over the place. Not a single bullet touched him. Savas looked around, then turned his attention back to the letter. In a numb sort of way, he opened it. Blood splattered all over his back and a severed arm tumbled past his shoulder. Savas took out the letter and unfolded it. An ork tackled a lesser orc onto the counter and bit his face off. Savas read the letter.

Live for the Tenth Empty Feast.
Have faith in your own workings.
Savas considered it all rather thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then he nodded to himself and said, very resignedly, "One of those, I see."

He stole someone else's beer, then had a severed finger as a snack. Orc tasted different from human, he noted. More like beef than pork, a bit saltier too. Savas looked himself over and took stock of the situation with a total detachment from what was actually going on. He was wearing Coronian gentlemanware under a mail-reinforced leather robe. Boots, good old salvic boots. His utility belt, stuffed to the limit with potions, chemical agents and reagents of all kinds. His axe in his robe, his daggers, some wands. Savas nodded and stood up just in time to avoid getting crushed as borcs brawled into the counter, assaulting each other with fists the size of bowling balls.

"Welp," Savas said to nobody in particular, "Time to go to ground."

Discretion is the better part of valor. As Wizardry goes, it was actually a sign of enlightenment and maturity that Savas thought best to try it.

It was a damn shame things didn't work out that way, but you can't fault the guy for trying.

[Caden Law]

"So," a Wizard said some hours later.

"So," said a fighter.

"This is all quite coincidental. I apologize."

"Eh," said the other fighter. "Could be worse."

"True," said the other Wizard. "We could be naked."

"...considering everything I've seen and done today, that really isn't very horrifying," one of the fighters commented.

"I just wish I could understand what the hell they're saying," the other said.

"You really don't wanna know," one of the Wizards answered.

"It's Hells, plural and capitalized, and it involves boiling oil," the other Wizard added.

"...hell is just a word," one of the fighters said with conviction. "You don't really understand until you've been there."

"Sounds like somebody's seen some shit since we last got together," the Wizard said.

"You have no idea."

Cue the inevitable pause, which was long and pregnant, punctuated by screams of WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!! from the street outside Fireside Company's improvised fortress. It had, until very recently, been a bar or a tavern or an inn or just a shithole where a craggedy old orc served watered-down beer and pretended to cook raw meat on a weak flame stove. The Company had reunited in a blur of blood and guts a few blocks over, then fought a running battle with Everyone And Their Mother before settling on this particular building as their shelter. Although it was less settling and more oh, hey, Aeraul just got tackled through a window, let's make sure he didn't die -- oh shit, the door's blocked -- oh shit, what do we do now?, but close enough.

Aeraul was fine, by the way. Winded but it could've been worse.

"So how've you guys been?" Savas finally asked, even as a cloud of lead pellets annihilated one of the already broken windows and punched an array of holes into a back wall. Of the Company, he was actually the best adjusted to what was going on. He had already greyhawked a gun and was currently poking at it, trying to figure out its inner mysteries. That it might be out of ammunition hadn't quite occurred to him yet, but it would sooner or later.

"Pretty good, actually," Aeraul said with a similar brevity. "Went on walkabout. Found my inner fire. Climbed some mountains, started refreshing myself on some languages from the mainland. Turns out I speak Salvic with an Alerian accent. Figure that one out."

"I got tricked into going into a mystery shop," Rowan said with a visible twitch. The rest of them had already noticed his Voice, his new scars, and the increased level of violence that seemed to have formed an aura about him, every bit as real and substantive as the teal glow that still enveloped him from head to toe. "Danny DeMon. Danny fucking DeMon."

"The DeMon didn't tip you off?" Caden asked.

"I was stupid," Rowan admitted.

"What happened?" Savas asked.

"I went to Haidia," Rowan said, holding up his big red katar o' doom. "Where I got this little gem. Then I killed my way back to reality. Then this happened."

"My ship was hijacked by orcs, then I was brought here. Broke free, spent some days rambling around, then...yeah," Caden said, tactfully omitting the whole I brought you all here thing. "Pretty sure we've been drafted by Khal'jaren."

"Would explain the desert," Savas said. "I was taking on a serial killer in Radasanth. Sit down to pore over a book or two, maybe find something to nail him with, then...poof. Gone. Kaputzky. Here I am, rocked about like a hurricane."

"...you were opposing a serial killer?" Caden asked. "I'm...I'm proud!"

"He was horning in on my territory," Savas shrugged.

"Nevermind!" Caden had to shout over the sound of a nearby building being crushed by a falling skyship. The Company was quiet for a little while, then Rowan cleared his throat.

"Any idea when the Voice cuts off?" he asked.

"Eventually. You have to relax some. I'm guessing you've been under some heavy stress to have manifested one at all, though...I did tell you about chi just being magic with a nameswap."

"It's more than that. Shut up," Rowan muttered.

"I think it's starting to quiet down some out there," Aeraul said. "I can still feel waves of violent intent all over, but...there's a sense of calm asserting itself, bit by bit."

"Now that you mention it, does sound like there are fewer guns going off," Savas agreed. "Helluva flash in the pan though."

"Any idea what triggered it?"

Caden cleared his throat and suggested, "Might be more prudent if we worked out a gameplan to get out of here in one collective piece. Along with a longer-term plan for surviving in Kebiras. How many of you speak the local common?" Savas and Aeraul both raised hands. Savas was clearly still learning, Aeraul had picked up Kebiran common somewhere during his travels. Caden nodded to them, then pointed at Rowan. "We'll work on you later."

"So what's the plan for now?" Rowan asked.

"We kill everything in front of us and murder our way out of the city's front gates," Caden said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

A lot, actually.

[Aeraul Smythe]

Say what you will of the orcs, but never call them fractious beyond hope and reason. All it takes is a big enough stick or a sharp enough knife or a loud enough gun.

Warlord Larkatz the Butcher had all three, along with the sworn loyalties of the surviving Council of Long Teeth -- some secured more readily than others. Ghastfire played the role of amplifier now, with Larkatz's personal mark carved painstakingly deep over his heart. Orcs being the highly sympathetic and empathetic creatures that they are, it was about as binding as an actual magic ritual. It obligated Ghastfire to stand at Larkatz's side atop one of the tallest buildings in Long Teeth, to conjure up a rainbow-colored halo of fire around his head, and to bow with a gun at his temple as the new Warlord of Long Teeth proclaimed himself to the masses.

"OY! THAT'S ENOUGH O' THAT NONSENSE!" Larkatz bellowed, his secondhand Voice echoing from one end of the city to the other. "FIGHTIN'S OVER, BOYS! YA GOT FIVE MINUTES TO SETTLE YER SCORES, THEN ANYONE STILL FIGHTIN' IS DEAD!"

Every syllable changed the color of the clouds. Every echo wobbled skyships off course. There was one last collision before the skies went quiet, accompanied not long after by the collapse of one of Long Teeth's biggest auction houses.

Out in the thick of it, Fireside Company butchered their way through the city streets. Positions in the group literally rotated as each man struck forward, then dodged out of the way of an attack and was subsequently replaced by one of his fellows. Aeraul lead for the breadth of five sword strokes and a blast of fire, then ducked off to the left. Rowan lunged through the space he previously occupied and took an ork's head off with an uppercut. He grabbed the head, kicked the body out of the way and smacked one of the ork's fellowed with it several times before backflipping to the left as well. Savas followed up with both barrels of a pillaged shotgun, then he ducked off to the right and left it to Caden to deal with a pair of orc mages down the street. They were good, as laymen go, but Blueraven was competing on a level they just couldn't reach. He flash-burnt once and impaled the other through the chest with ice, then counterspelled a third as she was coming out of a building. Savas followed up with a pistol shot through her head. Then both of them got out of Aeraul's way and the pattern started all over again.

The further they got from Long Teeth's square, the thinner fighting became, until they were just picking off stragglers on their way out the front gate.

"PLAYTIME'S OVER, YA RUDDY PRICKS!" Larkatz boomed, and resistance to their escape stopped so quickly that it was almost disturbing. None of the Company -- not even Aeraul -- had ever seen orcs obey an authority figure so quickly. "MY NAME IS LARKATZ AN' FROM TODAY, I'M THE WARLORD OF LONG TEETH!"

Cue a chorus of WAAAAAAAR!!!!!s from one end of the city to the other. Fireside was running now.

"THERE'LL BE TIME ENOUGH TO TALK ABOUT ALL I WANNA DO WITH THE UNDABOSSES LATER! F'NOW, ALL YOU NEED TA KNOW IS THAT I'M BANNIN' ANY MAGIC THAT AIN'T PRACTICED IN MY NAME! NOT ONE DAMN FINGOTTIN' BERK CASTS SO MUCH AS A MAGIC MISSILE WIFOUT MY PERMISSION!"

Cue the beginning, complete with the sudden sensation of a thousand eyes falling on every single one of the Company men.

"AND I AIN'T GONNA TOLERATE SO MUCH AS ONE DAMN BERK WHO AIN'T ORC CASTIN' SPELLS! THAT ENDS NOW!"

"Ah," Caden said at once. "That's gonna be a problem."

Cue the ending, complete with the sound of a few hundred guns being cocked and aimed, and the audible sharpness of at least as many blades.

"I'm not surprised," Aeraul sighed. "It's not like anything remotely beneficial happens to us when we're around you."

"Oh shut up."

You can be forgiven for thinking thunder struck in the Bay of Long Teeth. That many guns really did go off all at once.

[Leaf on the Wind]

For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to stand completely still.

Several hundred mouths hung open in shock, and Fireside Company's were counted among them. The four men stood inside of several increasingly large bubbles, ranging from thin layers of glowing red heat distortion to ice to raw arcane energies to warping gravity. Lead dust sprayed them from all sides, none of it even especially lethal in the short term. At Company's heart, the Sorcerer Blueraven stood with his hands outstretched, staff held tightly in the left, and all the leylines of his body lit up like a neon blue fireworks display. There were trickles of blood from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. When he spoke, it was with a strained Voice that wavered between the man he was and the demigod he could potentially become: "It's not like I can keep this up for long!"

Savas started to speak. Aeraul began to act.

Rowan was already gone.

Spiritual energies burst through Blueraven's barrier array, enabling a swift passage followed by just six glowing footprints that went from ground to air to wall to rooftop. Red blade blurred, trailing multicolored bloods in its wake as Rowan met savagery with savagery. Whatever had happened to him, wherever he had been, the youngest of the Company men had completely changed. Everything about him screamed violent desperation and precision overkill. He did not attack the orc gunmen in the way that a Zirnden pit fighter might. He struck them down like a brutal warrior, moving from one opponent to the next before his most recent kill could even hit the ground. Obliterating stabs had replaced solid haymakers. Sweeping legs were merely the setup to murderous throat punches. Twice, he hit orcs with headbutts to the nose, utterly regardless of the tusks that could have gouged chunks from his own face. He jumped from roof to roof, a red-clad slaughterhound trailed by teal light, and the orcs of Long Teeth could do nothing but try to shoot him down.

It cost them.

Savas drew out a vial from his belt, uttered a short incantation, shook it thrice and threw it at a mass of orcs clustered inside of a nearby building. The glass could barely be heard breaking on the floor inside. The explosion that followed tore the building apart and sent bodies and parts of bodies and flaming gore flying in every direction. Aeraul went the other way, slicing into a nearby shopfront so violently that he ripped the windows and door wide open. He thrust two fingers forward with his free hand and unleashed a small, fast, bright jet of fire. The building went up like a tinderbox and the fire spread. All the fires spread.

And Rowan did not care at all.

He lunged through fire, ripped through flesh, broke bone and sundered metal. He made a full circle around the rest of the Company and by the time Blueraven had finished recovering, Rowan had cleared the way immediately ahead of them. He looked to the others without a word, just a nod, and then got a running start.

"What the hells happened to him?" Savas asked.

"I don't think I want to know," Aeraul answered.

With Rowan leading, the rest of the Company followed suit. Against all odds to the contrary, they actually got out of the Bay of Long Teeth and disappeared into the industrial wasteland to its southeast.

[Savas Tigh]

Fun Fact about the way that city-states develop over time: Those that achieve what could charitably be called hyperviolent arcano-steampunk levels of technology and magic tend to have very, very, very big garbage dumps to show for it. Where industrialization in Alerar was largely kept in check by natural elven inclinations towards not savagely raping the environment, Kebiras had no such unity the orcs weren't even close to giving a damn. Shamanistic warrior nobles did not exist on this continent. The closest trope you'd find to such a thing were the roving nomad tribes in Salvar and Berevar, relic populations that had crossed the north pole however long ago and set up shop there. Even so, the Bay of Long Teeth was more progressive than most.

It confined its industrial waste to one large dumpsite. Which had piled high enough to resemble a tiny mountain range consisting of nothing but junk. There were enough spare parts to build a small fleet of skyships, and Savas and Caden were both of the opinion that a complete ship was probably lying in the refuse somewhere. The air was foul and there was a visible brown tint all over the place. Fireside Company adapted almost instantly with Savas juryrigging gas masks out of cloth strips and alchemic reagents. They moved single-file through the junkheap, Rowan still out front and the Wizards in the middle. Aeraul brought up the rear. For a long while, none of them even dared to speak. A backwards glance could show them the city still smoking off in the distance as day gradually turned to night and the skyships began blasting the land with searchlights. Spells went off in the night, abrupt and often 'incomplete' in the eyes of seasoned magi like Blueraven and Wormaxe. Larkatz had been serious. He was purging Long Teeth of any magic that wasn't orc-based. Even at a distance where they could no longer directly see the slaughter's side effects, the Company could still hear distant echoes of the newly minted Warlord making his decrees.

"What'd you screw up this time anyway?" Savas finally dared to ask.

"What makes you think I screwed anything up?" Caden snapped.

"You're the Wizard That Did It," Rowan sighed, his Voice still going strong. "They know about you even Down Below."

"Down below?" Caden asked.

"Haidia," Savas answered. "Down Below, y'know? Underground."

Caden went awfully quiet at that. Savas figured it was one of those moments when the senior Wizard actually realized how far his name had spread. He gave it some time before asking, "So what did you screw up?"

"I was trying to destroy Long Teeth," Caden lamely admitted. "I was out of synch with the ley energies I was trying to tap into. I'm not familiar with the leylines of Kebiras."

"Probably a good thing," Aeraul noted. "You should learn to rely on inner strength anyway."

"Since when did you become a self-help guru?" Rowan asked, though not unkindly.

"Since I realized that I'll never be able to top killing an undead godling with the broken tooth of an Elder Thayne," Aeraul answered without emotion. "It's all a matter of perspective. What happened to you in Haidia?"

"I'd rather not talk about it," Rowan Said with a shuddering look forward. He spoke no more, regardless of the others' attempts to prod some information out of him.

"We're going to need to set up camp at some point," Caden said.

"Once we get through here," Aeraul agreed. "We don't want to stop here."

"You feel it too?" Savas asked.

"That we've been watched by the locals since we got here, yes," Aeraul answered, clearly spelling it out for the benefit of Rowan and Caden. "I'm picking up on fear more than anything. We're four men walking through this place in good health and somewhat high spirits while Long Teeth falls apart behind us. I know I'd be afraid of us right now if I were in their position."

"...actually I was talking to the ambient energy of the place," Savas said.

"I was hoping I was imagining that," Caden groaned.

"Did you see the symbols?" Savas asked. "Reminds me of Sideways Diamonic, except...Sideways Kebiran, maybe? I don't know that language."

"You were right. It's Kebiran. And we're not quite surrounded by it."

"And you didn't tell us because...?" Aeraul asked.

"It's been harmless so far," Caden shrugged. "Whatever spells might've been contained, they've been degraded by pollution and weathering and whatever happened when all this stuff was junked. Nice to know our Kebiran cousins believe in product warranties."

"The hell's that?" Savas asked.

"Insurance if something fails or gets broken," Caden answered.

"...we're surrounded by discharged deathtraps?" Savas asked, stopping suddenly. Rowan and Aeraul stopped with him.

"Keyword: discharged. They're all harmless now," Caden shrugged. "Just fancy words, empty of power and meaning."

"That's reassuring," Aeraul mumbled.

"It is, actually," Savas agreed. "But it doesn't explain the tingle."

All eyes to Wormaxe.

"...what?"

"What tingle?" Caden asked.

"...you don't feel that?"

"Necromancy isn't my specialty," Caden answered.

Savas stared at him. Then he said, with perfect calm, "Someone on the other side is triggering a spell to come back from the dead. Someone powerful."

Caden stared at him for a long while. Aeraul looked to Rowan, who was still silent and distant. Savas shrugged, daring his mentor to tempt fate with the obvious words. Eventually, Blueraven closed his eyes and muttered some more obscenities under his breath.

Then he asked, "How powerful are we talking here?"

On cue, ghost fires lit through the night like tiny stars. Lightning struck the junkyard's peaks, reducing solid metal to molten slag and setting fire to tons of wood and garbage. From a direction that could neither be named nor pointed to, someone screamed in a rage that was as far beyond mortality as it was beyond sanity.

"That powerful," Savas answered.

[Caden Law]

The scream died down and a terrible silence took its place, but not for long. Chanting followed, endless repetition of a hundred words that Caden recognized as names, even if all their references were lost to him. Radabad, Kinslayer, Zomray, Seven Teeth, Corpsehauler, Orc sin Nombré, Black Nyral, Limper, Bodiless Jain, and the Orthanc. There were powers in those names. Caden, and perhaps Savas, was versed enough in the religious arcana to recognize them for what they were: epithets to folk-gods or heroic mortals who had ascended to the pantheon, if you could even call it that. He listened closely to the intonations of the names, so closely that it was a strain on arcane senses he didn't even have developed. Yet. Some, like Seven Teet and Radabad, were reverent; they matched up with how Caden thought of prayers of self-protection.

Most were old fashioned invocations. Gleeful calls. Uncertain. It was almost a guessing game.

"Go," Rowan snapped, shoving Caden and Savas forward as Aeraul took the lead. The Wizards both fumbled for a moment, then started running.

Red and orange firelights shined all over the junkyard, like inverted shadows from Hell. They pulsed along the ground, walls, junk piles, and across steaming pools of gods-know-what, all rushing by the Company en route to a single direction somewhere to their collective left, just out of sight. The scream slowly built back up with their passing, until at last someone looked up and said, "Oh crap."

"What? another asked.

"That."

As one, they all stopped and looked up. The clouds above had taken on the likeness of a colossal eye that was full of stars, outlined in faintly glowing gray. As if it had been waiting for them to look up, it began to rain. Winds picked up immediately. Lightning formed from empty sky and lanced out to points dozens of feet above the ground before exploding. The chants tapered off almost immediately, replaced by frantic shrieks as the natives -- lonely scavengers, all of them -- rushed for cover of some sort. Fireside Company wasn't much better. They all rushed from their improvised path, down a shallow incline that put them under a short overhang. Aeraul barely fit beneath it.

The wind picked up. Soon the rain wasn't even hitting the ground anymore. Lightning continued to strike, until the bolts started converging. Rain coalesced into waterspouts now, all of them twisting through the air against physical law as they snaked between the peaks of junk hills and along the ground without ever touching it. It was then that the Company realized their shelter had a front row seat: several hundred feet away, at the bottom of a shallow bowl-shaped depression in the junkyard, the lightning was forming a flickering halo. As more and more bolts struck and the thunder changed from constant cracks to a continuous, ear-splitting rumble, the halo stabilized into a more-or-less solid shape about thirty feet above the ground.

The water spouts collided above the halo and surged into the gap at its center. Water did not come pouring out from the other side.

The scream picked up yet again, so raw that no human or even orc vocal chords could have been responsible for it. Perhaps the idea of them, but not the physical things themselves.

The underside of the halo exploded down into the ground, sending a shockwave through the entire junkyard. Water broke down in gigantic bubbles before pulling back up in reverse, tearing chunks of the earth out with them. The world turned stark white for a fraction of a second, then it was all over.

Dead silence in the wastelands of Long Teeth.

The skies had already cleared.

At the epicenter of the working, there stood a clashing batch of elements and concepts, slowly resolving themselves into something that could be considered mortal. Fires burned into the shape of a long sleeveless robe until flickering out to reveal light brown leathers. Lightning flickered here and there in right angles gone fractal, only to realize itself as ink. Mud and water flowed in the likeness of a humanoid body before solidifying into a brown-skinned frame, roughly six and a half feet tall and defined by lean, tough muscle and scars that looked like frozen ripples. A thin column of wind spun at high speed, only to crash to a stop as it became an eldritch staff of power. Ghost serpents coiled about its end and materialized in a tangled ball with no head and no tail.

For several long seconds, the manifested orc stood still as if to finish putting himself together. He opened his eyes and they briefly glowed bright green. He worked his lower jaw, flexed his fingers, and went through some very basic gestures to reacquaint himself with his own body. Then he threw open his jaws and bellowed a war-cry that even the best human or elven Wizard couldn't imitate. His Voice was a dozen raw echoes slamming into each other, coming from a place so deep inside his soul -- wretched thing that it was -- that it sounded less like an actual sound and more like the frightful idea of one.

When at long last he was finished, the orc turned towards the path and locked eyes with Fireside Company's head Wizard.

"What's all this then?" the orc sneered, only now realizing that he had been surrounded. The Company did not muck about. Rowan crouched atop a nearby junk heap, katar drawn. Aeraul wasn't too far removed from striking distance. Savas had flanked the orc completely and had wands drawn.

"Precautionary measures," Blueraven replied. "What's your Name?"

The orc continued to sneer as he Said, "I could wipe you all from the face of this bloody plane."

"Don't be so sure of that, little mage," the Sorcerer replied, brandishing his staff as he spoke.

"...ah," the orc sounded. "You. I know you."

Caden pointedly did not blink.

"You're the Wizard That Did It," the orc Said before barking out a laugh. "Oh, you're so infamous ya don't even know it, do ya?"

"So I am. What's your name?" Blueraven insisted.

"In my last life, I went by the name of Eye-Berk to hide the Name of Hellhand."

"I'm assuming you changed your Name then," Blueraven said.

"Something like that," Hellhand admitted. "I'm guessing you're here to vy with whatever horrible things you think'll destroy the world next, eh?"

Blueraven said nothing.

"Boy, are you in for some rude awakenings," Hellhand told him with an awful grin. "Be seeing you. I got places to go, people to kill, plots to sew. You know how it is."

"No, no, and no," Blueraven snapped. "Sit."

Helland snapped his fingers and a ripple of power spread out from where he stood. Aeraul went for a death blow and slammed into what looked like a wave of metaphysical molasses. Savas managed to get three spells off by they all hit the same wave of power, slowed down and then petered out all together. Rowan jumped in for the kill and found out the hard way that the spell was a dome.

Caden was the most expedient on the attack: he sent a pillar of earth straight up at Hellhand's jaw.

He still hit nothing.

The orc mage was gone without a flash, disappearing as swiftly as the blink of an eye. His barrier spell faded out with him, leaving Aeraul and Rowan dodging each other's blades. Savas settled for whistling.

Caden just grimaced.

[Caden Law]

It bears mention that the following is actually written in Kebiran Common. Turned Sideways.
A word to the wise: Don't ever try to blow up a city. In hindsight, it would've been much easier to just assassinate a few people the old fashioned way, fight my way out, uncover some randomly contrived new ability that would allow me to escape by the skin of my teeth. Maybe I'd pick up a spiffy new item of power. Maybe I'd actually get laid. Odds are, I'd have my heart broken in a thousand tiny bits and pieces, the world would look a little grimmer, and hey, I'd be on my way home already. My adventures hardly ever go past the week-long mark, generally speaking.

I'll add that more people would've probably died too. More people always die when I do things the easy way. That's probably why it's so easy.

How that'd work as compared to trying to blow up a city, I don't know. Anyway. I've spent most of the past two days, give or take, rambling through the junkyard territories to the Bay of Long Teeth's southeast. We just got out of the last few heaps some hours ago and have made our way into what signs indicate to be Grinwald, the Green Bush, the Greenback, or the whatever-it-is*. Relatively few actual trees to speak of. Lots of gigantic bushes. Some thorns. Less than you might think compared to the woodlands of Raiaera. Temperature drops pretty badly at night. Humidity is less than you would expect too. Feels like the kind of place that doesn't get much snow or rainfall and both Savas and I think that there's a river or lake underground. The confluence of leylines here matches up to that sort of thing. We haven't really run into any wildlife yet. Conveniently enough, and thankfully at that, none of us seems to immediately need food** yet. We've made steady progress through the forest so far. I'd be willing to guess we'll be on the other side by tomorrow.

We have no idea where the hells we're going. And I'm worried, honestly, about us.

Aeraul seems to have imploded into some kind of self-deluded nihilist inner peace since Scara Brae. Seems to be going good so far, but...still. He had truly admirable control over himself when we were in the Bay, considering what kept happening to him in the Catacombs (that whole his-mind-was-constantly-being-shut-down-and-metaphysically-raped-to-shit-by-his-surroundings thing). On the one hand, great improvement on self-control and mental endurance. On the other, what the hells do you have to throw away, toughen up, or rearrange in order to go against your own nature like that? To my understanding, all tropes of orcs have a kind of mass empathy, the source of Aeraul's own ability to read emotions. What kind of terrible will or reason does it take to control a herd instinct capable of driving an entire city insane?

Savas is bloody Savas.

Rowan is...different. He keeps mentioning a familiar sounding demon store and a trip to Haidia but he won't go into detail about it. He's also sporting some new scars and some scars seem to have moved completely from where they should have been. The one on his chest? The big gaping scar o' doom that he was using to get into the pants of tavernmaids back in Scara Brae? Completely inverted to the other shoulder and hip. His Voice hasn't faded yet either. Most Voices take about an hour to fade out after they first manifest, then a mage has to learn the ins and outs of power control to use it at will. His has been going non-stop to the point that you can hear it in his breathing when he's asleep. His aura is also starting to change the color of his hair and eyes. It wouldn't surprise me if that spreads to bodily fluids either. Power incontinence can be a messy business.

We've set up camp for the night. Aeraul is taking first shift. I'm going second but I have trouble sleeping, so I'm writing this. Savas is not going at all. Ever. (Unanimous decision.)

* It seriously is called "the whatever-it-is" on one of the signs.
** For those who somehow don't know by now, any given mage is able to at least partially metabolize magical energies as a substitute for food and water, among other things. I can do it easily, Savas is...learning. Rowan seems to have started doing it during his time in Haidia, but he's clearly disturbed by not eating or drinking anything in a month or more. Aeraul is not running on magic yet, but he'll probably learn soon enough. His non-human heritage is giving him an edge so far.

[Aeraul Smythe]

There are eight-hundred pound gorillas and there are roving herds of pink elephants.

Aeraul Smythe was very clearly one with the elephants. Even if he was greener than anything. The intensity of the Kebiran sun had actually darkened his normally bright, nearly lime green complexion to a darker shade of pine, though it was not at all even. It was still a better deal than Savas or Rowan, who were both dealing with sunburn every so often. Caden lucked out by virtue of his Hat's wide brim.

"...how are you dealing with all this?"

Now about that herd of elephants...

"What do you mean?" Aeraul asked. He had posted himself by at the makeshift entrance to the Company's equally makeshift camp -- little more than a clearing surrounded by thorny patches and unnaturally jagged rock, all given a makeshift ward or two by the Wizards. He had taken up the dire cutlass from Caden near the start of this mess, though he now rested most of his weight on it like a podium of some sort. The jian was still securely fitted to his back.

"Exactly what I said. How are you dealing with all this?" Caden asked again. "Normally you're the odd one out, an orc-"

"Demihuman," Aeraul corrected him. "Although I prefer human."

"...still."

"I don't stick out any less here than I do back home," Aeraul said. "Where you see similarities between me and the orcs of Kebiras, the orcs and I see only differences stacked on top of each other. I don't even have tusks."

"Thought you kept them filed down?" Caden asked.

"Same difference," Aeraul shrugged. "All that matters is that these are not my people. Even if I was an orc, or ork, or whatever else, they still wouldn't be my people. My mother was from tribe out in Berevar, well north of the Salvic freeholds. And even there, I don't really blend in. I'm not Malgor the half-orc. I'm Aeraul the half-man."

"...your parents named you Malgor?" Caden snorted. "Bad blood. Seriously?"

"Mother's idea of a sick joke on father," Aeraul admitted. "These things happen. Especially if the tribe is able to vote for naming rights. I as actually named after an old chieftain, Malgor the Dragonkiller-"

"Irony."

"I know. Especially taking into account the orc family name -- Kildrake."

"Double irony," Caden added with a chuckle.

"I much prefer Aeraul Smythe. I don't even answer to the other name if I can help it," Aeraul said and meant it.

"What about the empathic resonance?" Caden asked, then simplified: "The crowd's emotions."

"I came to terms with that during and after that little jaunt through the Catacombs," Aeraul said. "They will no more affect my mind than a grain of dust ten thousand miles away. You can bank on that."

[Leaf on the Wind]

It was day six by the time anyone's stomach started growling. All eyes immediately went to Savas, just as a general reflex action.

"Hey, don't look at me," he told them with both hands placatingly raised. "I had finger-food before we left."

It was night seven by the time anyone's stomach growled again. Eyes followed ears this time, homing in on Rowan. His response was a dismissive, "I don't remember the last time I ate."

"Was it in Haidia?" Caden asked.

"...I don't remember," Rowan said again, then picked up the pace. Caden and Aeraul both exchanged a silent glance, but neither ever got the chance to call him on it. In hindsight, all things considered, that was probably a good thing. Probably. More likely than not. There was about an 80% chance, give or take. And anyway, what ended up happening really could have been worse. Seriously.

It's not like Fireside Company didn't have any collective experience with being ambushed or anything.

It would help to point out that said-ambush happened well after they had gotten out of Grinwald. They had, in fact, crossed a shallow and variably polluted river before finding themselves crossing a range of hills and arriving in a great savannah of nothing but grass and increasingly common patches of dirt. The ambush could not have come from above for too many reasons to count. It could not have come from around because there was no readily available cover; no easily established kill zone to work with. Instead of all that, the ambush came from below. Except it was kind of in reverse.

The ground collapsed beneath them, meaning they went below into an ambush that was suddenly coming from all sides. Screaming men and women with short spears and knives, speed and agility to spare, moving too quickly to believe in cramped quarters. Caden was actually the first one to go down, followed by Savas. Aeraul lasted longer, but only because they mistook him for a real orc right down to incorrectly gauging his tactics and way of thinking. He took two of them down with bare-handed strikes, got off one fireball, then went down as two burly men grabbed him around each thigh, lifted him up and then stabbed him right back down. The entire exchange lasted two, maybe three, seconds.

Alone in the dark, Rowan was still standing and fighting. At one point he Screamed, "MY TURN!" and smashed a short spear in half before stabbing most of his katar-wielding arm through the wielder's chest cavity. He wielded the dying man like a shield for several seconds, his blade, arm, torso, and a leg all soaking red under the teal glow of a battle aura as he moved from target to target. Someone shouted the soon-dead man's name and tackled him clear from Rowan's arm, costing him the katar in the process.

In some ways, that just made him more dangerous. Rowan caught knives at the wielder's arm, broke bones like twigs, and not a damn one of the ambushers could actually touch him. The handful who got within striking distance fell short or missed or were parried so hard that it obliterated their weapons of choice. Shooting feet and whipping fists all hit like sledgehammers. It was over in about a minute as Rowan dove beneath the last spear, came up and draped his arm across the man's chest. Rowan hauled the man back and slammed him back-first into his knee. The impact was sickeningly audible throughout the ambush chamber. When he was done, Rowan discarded the weeping man like garbage and spat on him for good measure. He collected his katar again, then deigned to look at the rest of the Company.

Savas and Caden were staring at him with a mix of what looked like gear and awe. Aeraul was ignoring him in favor of stemming the bleeding from a pair of chest wounds.

"What?" Rowan snapped.

"...pretty sure they were supposed to capture us first," Caden mumbled.

"I don't play that game," Rowan said, and meant it.

[Savas Tigh]

"So, uh...what the hells do we do now?" Caden eventually asked.

It was right about that moment that Fireside Company finally realized how much they were winging it.

"What?" Rowan asked after a long pause.

"I'm so used to being captured in the early stages of any given journey that I really don't have much of an idea for what to do when it doesn't happen," Caden lamely admitted. "Most times when that didn't happen, I was running for my life or charging into battle."

"Somehow," Aeraul sighed. "That does not surprise me in the slightest." He slapped the Wizard on the back, perhaps a bit harder than he should have, then immediately joined Savas in greyhawking the corpses of anything valuable.

It bears mention that the humans of Althanas and Kebiras are not exactly the same. Most races of men in Althanas tend to be pale or olive skinned, with the darkest being the humans of Fallien and, perhaps, the Durklanic tribes of old who were wiped out to the last by the Elves. The men of Kebiras are considerably darker, ranging from light brown to so black they're turning blue in the right light. There are exceptions on both continental clusters, particularly a few isolated Salvic relic populations in the far north of Kebiras, but that's the gist of it. Skin aside, even an ignorant bunch like the Fireside Company knew that the natives of Kebiras were an insanely varied lot. They'd seen enough bits and pieces and whole specimens of them and their myriad cultures on display in the Bay of Long Teeth to know that much.

The group that attacked the Company tonight were of medium tone for Kebiran humans, of comparable height to Coronian men, and almost all had bodies suited to marathon endurance. They all dressed in light brown leathers with green and white straps braided around their left arms, and some still wore matching collars that hadn't been torn apart in Rowan's rampage. Several sported ritual scars on the back of each hand, and one of them had an artificial eye that was clearly magical -- it sported Sideways writing all over the iris. Between them, Caden and Savas slapped enough braincells together to guess that it was an enchantment to provide sight. Another of the men sported an arm with what looked like wooden bones, which were exposed rather horrifically, again courtesy of Rowan.

Savas wanted to eat them just to see if there was a flavor difference between Althanians and Kebirans. Caden insisted on burying them.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Aeraul asked.

"Can't I at least take a finger or two? I'm starving here..."

"We don't know their funerary customs and I'd rather not risk leaving too much evidence behind," Caden answered.

"I'm training to be a funerist," Savas interjected.

"Do you actually know anything about their culture, enough to respectfully bury the dead?" Caden asked him.

"...no, but-"

"Exactly."

Cue geomancy and a lost meal. Savas cursed under his breath. Not that he hadn't come away with some minor trinkets in the process of all this; a jade-tipped silver ring, some other jewelry, and some blood as an alchemic reagent. It could've been a worse haul. After they had buried their would-be attackers and climbed back up to the top, the Company bowed their heads in silence and continued on into the night. Stomachs growled. Life went on. None of them had a clue what they were doing or what would happen next.

Thankfully, depending on your point of view, they didn't need to know. And it was probably a good thing, subjectively, because if they had known what was going to happen down the road, they'd have all run away. At least two of them would have been decent enough to scream their lungs out in the process.

[Caden Law]

After several days of endless rambling through nowhere in particular, Fireside Company came upon its first city today! First non-orc city, anyway.

It had been completely wiped out.

There were chunks of bodies hanging from leftover walls and makeshift flagpoles. The rest of the bodies in question had usually collapsed to the ground in mangled heaps. Savas was the only one who didn't lose his appetite at the sight of it. There's not a single wall left standing that isn't covered in blood or grit. The further in we went, the worse it got. A lot of mages went down fighting here. Several areas looked as if they had been rigged at the last second for contingency measures; suicide curses that left hundred foot high glass obelisks in their wake, on-the-spot bids for self-resurrection, null zones where the laws of reality broke down for just a little while, and spells that actually cratered the air. They knew they were going to lose but they stood their ground. I can't imagine why. I don't want to know.

I saw a little girl with her body gnawed by bugs and rats and her head smashed in against the remnants of a temple wall.

The city's name, still barely legible on some of the broken signs and posts at its outskirts, was Achu Kintan. Savas is guessing that it had a population of several hundred thousand. Judging by the amount of arcane damage, this place had a disproportionately high number of magic users. Spellcraft doesn't seem to have done them any real good. And did I mention that some of the bodies sport the same kind of artificial bits and pieces as one of our would-be ambushers from a few days ago? The Sideways writing even matched. I'm reasonably sure we wiped out the last survivors of this city, a party of men probably on their way to martyr themselves in the Bay of Long Teeth. Why they stopped to set up an ambush, I don't know. Maybe they saw us first.

Beyond that, there are orc bodies all over the place too. And the wreckage of a few skyships drifting above the city. Broken guns, broken swords, broken limbs separated from broken bodies...

It's like the Corpse War all over again.
When he was done, Caden closed the grimoire and stuffed it back up into his Hat. He put his head in his hands and forced himself to think of clear blue skies and vibrant green fields without corpses in them.

"This is what Larkatz wants to do to Althanas," he said.

A few seconds later, there was a gun resting against his ear.

"Who is the Shadow Drifter and what is this Althanas you speak of?" a tall Kebiran man asked from beside him. Caden almost laughed. Almost.

[Caden Law]

What follows is a quick summary of a three day trip, made at the beginning, well before the boredom kicked in.
All things considered, it really could have been worse. We weren't even jailed, threatened with human sacrifice, tortured, or roughed up a little.

A few hours ago, we were rifling through the barren remains of a human kingdom, Achu Kintan. Now we're being given a first class ride through the desert on an unusual contraption that reminds me of an Alerian/Salvic train crossed with a Raiaeran vessel running on a crude but powerful magitech engine. Its wheels run in huge treads, its base is fairly wide, and its top speed is a little better than many of the horses I've ridden over the years*. It's got three decks, rows of siege ballista on all of them, and ten fortified turrets for casters to sit in and lob spells with relative impunity. The crew numbers about sixty-eight, counting the ten battle mages and six mage-engineers who keep the engine running. Most of them dress in sturdy, uncomfortable looking cloth and leather; the kind of stuff that can shrug off shrapnel and light knives, even if it doesn't look terribly comfortable.

A handful of them have souvenirs, I guess you could call them, taken from the orcs. Guns are spreading through the human realms of Kebiras, but not nearly fast enough. There's some kind of technical imbalance between the two races, and the presence of the demielven Treserán* is a wild card nobody seems to know how to deal with. The wyrmfolk are basically known by all, distrusted by all, but tolerated and serve as the continent's traders-in-chief. I don't know if any of the human kingdoms have skyships yet. If they don't, it's just a matter of time before the orcs grind them down.

And just think: The Alerians could be doing this right now back home!

...except probably less genocidey and maybe a little elfier instead.

We're en route to a place called Tchao Kantul. The captain, who wears a nice coat and who held me at gunpoint earlier, claims that it's one of the last real bastions of human civilization in this part of the world. I don't know his actual name. The orc mages are, apparently, big on hitting people with curses and the locals have caught on to that. He calls himself Stonecoat. The rest of the crew have similar adopted nicknames. Wormaxe and I have opted to use our Sorcerous Names; they didn't trust Aeraul or Rowan enough to have anything but their real ones. Aeraul for obvious reasons**, Rowan because his Voice still has not faded. I'm honestly a little worried about it myself. Keep burning your power that long and there's bound to be some kind of consequence to it.

On the bright side: They're feeding us.

I don't know what, but Aeraul isn't committing cannibalism so it's okay in my book.***

* Such-and-such years later, I finally learn that Era's people are called Treserán -- Treserá for one person. It translates roughly as Three Will Be, which...fits, I guess. They derive from an unheard of mix of elf, orc, and human ancestry. They're a relatively young people who have only recently formed anything close to an actual nation or civilization of their own; most are still living among the orcs or, more rarely, among the humans. Actual elves, as we know them from Raiaera and Alerar, do not exist here anymore. The Treserán are the closest people to them. I find all the ironies of this situation to be downright delicious.
** They actually mistook Aeraul for a Treserán several times, until he corrects them that he's human. This is usually followed by funny looks and the occasional (impolite) declaration of disbelief. Most have taken to identifying him as an orc or a half-man. He's taking it remarkably well, I think.
*** It comes from dragons. I'm okay with that.Not included are the lurid tales of the things Scarabrian women will do when the lights go out.

[Caden Law]

It is a rare and terrible thing to render a Wizard speechless. Most people who achieve such a distinction tend to die screaming in short order. Those who don't are better off if they give the moment the reverence it deserves. Stonecoat and the other guides to the city of Tchao Kantul knew discretion and it served them well even when their foresight was inadequate at best.

Only when the moment passed did anyone, specifically a mage the Name of Blacklung, dare to try explaining that, "They all just...appeared out of nowhere. Lightning struck and eighty strange men, some pale and some dark and some more like albino Treserán...they were just standing there. We could tell they meant no harm. It's the only reason they're alive right now."

They stood inside of a makeshift prison of high wood walls and razor wire. Most were fully dressed. All had the same wild look of blending terror and confusion and resolve; the awful will to live that Caden had seen too many times when he looked in the mirror during the Corpse War. All of them, and Caden counted just a little over seventy, were wearing at least one or two items of blue. Some even had blue silk straps tied tight around their upper arms. Others, the handful of amateur talents in the group, sported great green markings designed to inhibit spellcasting of any sort. They looked the most determined of all, and underneath all the cold fury and the howling demand for retribution, Caden felt a small hint of pride.

He was soon to be in good company again and Fireside had nothing to do with it.

"Let them go," he Said with all the authority of his power and position, shaking the very ground beneath all their feet in the process. Blacklung was the only one who remained unfazed, hard-eyed old bird that she was.

"None of them know anything of our language," she said. "The only reason they're alive is because their mages have both the gift of gab and the talent to hold their own in a pinch. Are you sure you can handle that?"

"I have before, (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?8819-MQ-Beyond-the-Bridge-of-Souls)" Caden told her.

The gates were unbarred.

Almost four years to the day after the Fall of Eluriand, Blueraven Company was together again.

[Caden Law]

It's been a while. About two months now, give or take. I haven't had much time to keep my notes up-to-date. A lot's been happening in the meantime. I don't think I've slept for most of a week but I can't be sure; little blurry spots here and there, even my ability to tell and track time breaks down after a while.

To make an egregiously long story short: I've been reforming what's left of the Blueraven Brigade, a conscript fighting force I lead during the defense of Eluriand. I'm amazed at how many of them survived the war, especially with Savas and his ilk trying to murder them all with curses aimed at me. I'm equally surprised at how well most of them are taking what's happened since then. There's a general air of resignation about them that seems as familiar as it is dishearteningly fatalistic. Most are the sole survivors of their friends, families, respective villages and so on. The Brigade is as close to a family as they've got left, and the fact that all have some stake in my Name...they're almost like my children, in some ways. Even if some are probably older than I am.

I've done my best to integrate Fireside Company into the group. I'm not spreading my Name around, especially not to Savas, but they're still jumping into things without so much as a word of complaint -- mostly. They tried to lynch Savas and he's sleeping with both eyes open and a dagger under his pillow, but I'm not complaining. He deserves it and worse and I'd kill him myself if he weren't my own student. He's still instructing them, and some of the locals, on basic alchemy as we know it in Althanas. Our Kebiran brothers are advanced, but their systems are laid out differently. Savas is learning as much as he's teaching. Aeraul has settled into the role of Brigade chaplain and...I don't know what to call it. Coordinator of harmony? He's basically trying to instruct the Brigadiers on how to cope with the things that happened during the war, and he's teaching them to move in unison, to have an awareness of each other, to basically act and fight as one. I think he's using it to reconcile something about his dual nature, but I couldn't say what.

Rowan's Voice still has not faded out. His hair and eyes are now completely teal and every so often, his breath comes out as a teal fog or smoke. Similarly colored fires form around him when he's seriously fighting. He still won't talk about what happened to him in Haidia but at this point, if it's so bad that it traumatized his soul like that, I'm not sure if I want to know. He's taken up training for the martial arts. Where Aeraul is teaching them to fight as one, Rowan is just teaching them to fight. None of the regulars have advanced far enough to develop that chi stuff, and I doubt any of them will, but they're making progress.

And I've taken up my usual role as the chief instructor of magic. The men I'm working with here lack the kinds of raw natural talent that the elves in Beinost showed me (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20221-Ain-t-No-Rest-For-The-Wizard&p=157981), but they're survivors and they've had years to hone the basics that they picked up in the hours before the Siege of Eluriand (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?8819-MQ-Beyond-the-Bridge-of-Souls&p=88175). There are just three of them, they've all completely forgotten what they picked up from the Elves and instead defaulted to something like hedge-wizardry. And they're pretty good at it. If we all get out of this alive and they've got aptitude outside of combat, I'm going to see about getting them positions at the College Arcana.

For the sake of completeness and in case I need to write any obituaries...

Mages:

Rathorn Southron: Youngest of the three, easily the most destructive and worryingly gleeful about it. His magic affinity lacks any kind of elemental alignments, good or evil. He's literally just drawn to destructive magicks at the core. Seems to be a mid-to-close range mage, handy with projectiles and smaller weapons of nearly every type, seems to be capable with longer, thinner blades as well. Most likely of the three to spend his spare time whoring with locals and training with the soldiers. Rowan picks on him. Scruffy and blond.

Simon Graves: Middle of the three, more or less a hydromancer. You can still see traces of Bladesinger teachings in his magic, if you squint hard enough. It's more in the philosophy than the application. He's the generalist, master of nothing, so on and so forth. He's all over the place on where and how he wields his power, but he seems to be the best suited for counterspelling and countermagic in general. I've tried to focus him accordingly. I don't think he's got any armed skills to speak of, but he knows how to move well enough that he may as well be a martial artist as things are. Not scruffy, still blond.

Paul Hobbes: Oldest, actually older than I am by about two years, though you'd never know just by looking at us. Probably the most dangerous of the three since his natural focuses seem to be longer range, abstract and stealth magicks, with affinities towards the properly arcane. He strikes me as the furthest along overall, and might come into his own as a Named mage soon enough. He already has, and knows how to use, his Voice. Very well suited at countermagic, like Simon, but nowhere near as quick or overwhelming about it. He's more of a technician than a brawler. Tall, dark, brooding.

First Round of Soldiers

Lt. Commander Tanner Macheus: Currently the highest ranking of the bunch after myself. Voice like a chorus of trumpets in an empty colliseum. One of the only ones who appeared in armor, according to Blacklung, though it wasn't his old conscript set. Once upon a time, he was a farmer in the rural area surrounding Eluriand. He hadn't settled down before the siege, but he was getting there. Now, he's worryingly good with any number of sharp objects and he has no qualms about greyhawking people, places, or things. Best to keep an eye on this one.

Lt. August Hawk: No joke. I didn't make that name up. Tanner's second, my third-in-command. Virtually unrecognizable in a crowd, but he's a natural with the slow forms that Aeraul has been teaching the Brigade these past few months. Does a good job of keeping the others on task. Seems to have been a solicitor in Eluriand before all Hell broke loose, but the social status swap with Tanner doesn't appear to bother him.

Lt. Liam of Hegel: From one of the villages decimated before Eluriand was put under siege. War-scarred like crazy in ways that just don't show, at least not very obviously. At least as stealthy as Simon without the benefits of magic, even managed to sneak through some of Savas' practice wards one night. Aeraul's picking up clashing emotions every time Liam even walks into a room, ranging from happy to be alive to suicidal urges to murderous cravings. We're doing our best to make sure he has no bona fide Alone Time. Putting him in charge of some of the others seems to do a good job of it.

Those are the current Big Dogs beneath the company. They're a solid Brigade, overall. It's been nice to reconnect with some of them, swap war stories and so on. Some were involved in resistances all over the region, others just tried to survive. We've all got enough in common to make it a bonding experience. The other Firesiders are having trouble adjusting, except for Savas, who's...wierdly becoming a part of the crew lately. I guess since the war's over, there's not all that much reason to go on hating him for things he was technically obligated to do (not that this stopped several further efforts to lynch or murder him; I've not encouraged or condemned either*). It's still a surprise.

Aside from all that, reports are still filtering in. The human kingdoms of Kebiras are about as unified as the old Salvic League would've been without the Crown or the Church to unite them at Knife's Edge -- which is to say that they're not united at all. Every single one has at least one different language within its borders and even the Common tongue has a lot of little variations. I've nailed it down as a derivative of an old Elven language and taught the men the basics, but it's slow going beyond that. Larkatz has been shoring up his power base and he's been meeting plenty of resistance in the process, both from men and other tropes of orcs. There's been talk of a great alliance forming against him, but that worries me more than anything: What if the alliance ends up being worse than he is?

* Toughens him up or gets rid of him; not complaining either way.It is here, exactly here, that Caden Law looked up from his journal and remembered the Drifter's words.

All he needed now were the stairway and the ripple.

[Savas Tigh]

Tchao Kantul can eat bag fulls of dead orc bits. Given the way things work on this continent, it wouldn't surprise me if the natives actually did eat dead orc bits. I want to be back in my territory. I have no idea how things have been going in Corone during my absence and I fervently hope that the tower is still intact and otherwise unmolested.

Gods be damned. I haven't even eaten anyone since I got to this damned place. I've done my best to play the part of Amiable Reformed Monster but Blueraven's clods don't make it easy. They've been trying to kill me almost daily since he got them out of that rotten cage the locals put them in. I've held back from killing any of them in turn, but it's been bloody well tempting and I've started studying some of the local magi in the process. My ability to cast spells on the fly is still sorely lacking, but I'm exploring ways around that. The Kebiran battle mages, at least in Tchao Kantul and adjacent areas, have perfected a technique of prepared spellcasting that might be useful to me. It reminds me of certain esoteric methods that my teachers only ever told me about to mock me, but here, they have it. I've been trying to study, but my Kebiran brethren have too many common enemies to go at each other the way we do in Althanas proper.

Goddamn orcs.

Aside from that, I've finally started getting in touch with the spirit of these lands and I must say...they're violent beasts. My understanding of the other side of Althanas is that the things dwelling there, ghost and otherwise, at least know enough of civilization to try and replicate it with some success. There are empires of the dead in that blighted realm, which we cannot point to or name or easily hope to comprehend. But here? All I can sense are vengeful animals on the other side. Huge frothing monsters, mad godlings locked in a forever war of all against all, so far beyond hope and reason that they barely exist as anything but delusional words uttered by the living who think they have even a shred of meaning.

I hear them calling to each other when I sleep. It's a sound like sirens at war, the drumbeats of hearts bigger than cities, the roar of rivers of blood boiling through the aether beneath the tender flesh of reality. That a thing like Warlock Hellhand could survive that with his individuality essentially intact, nevermind his actual identity and sense of self, is almost nightmarishly terrifying. Either there's a secret that the practitioners on this side of the world have learned, some way to dodge the maelstroms of horror that dominate the soulscape here, or he is the single most formidable undead I've run into since the end of the Corpse War.

And yes.

I'm counting the insane demigod and the abstract entity of pain and the demonic plague lord in all of that.

I've seen some bowel-quaking terrors in my time but the things I haven't seen in Kebiras worry me more than all of them. And the others don't understand at all. Most of them, even Blueraven, aren't even aware, though I suspect that may have something to do with our respective affinities. He only delved into the necromantic because he had to; I was born to the black calling. I'm not alone, at least. The local practitioners are not especially fond of the dead, not as I am, but they know and respect them enough to try and use them appropriately. Some of the magi operate networks of ancestral spies, unreliable given the brutal nature of the other side, but still better than waiting on living word of mouth. They call upon grandfathers and great aunts, the deadsiders, to investigate far and wide for them. And the dead comply because they are beyond fear, which poses a special problem for me.

I can't rely on my usual tricks. The spirits here won't be cowed or intimidated by the likes of me. I doubt I'd have much luck eating any of them either. Even if I could overpower them, most are probably too cunning to outwit. I've gotten the hang of absorbing ambient energy but it's...hard. Every last shred is owned by something bigger and nastier than me. The best I've gotten is drawing on actual concepts, and even that's touch and go. I'm at the brink of trying to study Rowan, if only because I'm stagnating on my attempts to create a Dark Messiah style of rotary spellcasting and it might help me channel energy more easily. At least the constant attempts to kill me are keeping me freshThe period never made it to the paper because Savas instinctively set down the journal and stood up. He stepped away from the wall he had been leaning on, went to the center of the room and waited.

He had taken up residence in a tiny wood shack while Fireside took up Tchau Kantulian offers of hospitality in order to reform Blueraven's men into a fighting unit. Blacklung and the other elders seemed to have some real hope for what they might accomplish, even if they didn't even have a mission yet. Savas' shack was unusually cold during the day and downright frigid at night, but it was his and he had established himself in it. Not quite a demesne, but certainly a safehaven of sorts.

At least until the knock on the door.

There was no lock, but the third or fourth critical injury had taught his wood-be assassins to be polite about trying to kill him on his makeshift homeground. Savas briefly considered going for his axe, or perhaps drawing a wand or a dagger. He decided against it based on the coldblooded calculus that he would be too likely to inflict fatal wounds, and that might make things messy down the road.

"Go away!" he shouted.

"It's important!" said the voice on the other side.

"Go away!" Savas shouted again.

"It's important!" said the voice, which he now recognized as one of the men. He couldn't quite place it.

"Go away!" he shouted one last time.

"Godsdammit, Beardo, this is important!" the voice insisted.

Savas took up a stance and sighed. "Fine. Open."

Boot, door, swing, screaming. Boots on floor. Savas ducked a spear thrust, grabbed the weapon by the shaft and used it to leverage himself and his attacker. Straight palm to the throat -- his throat, actually, even if it was at an awkward angle that rendered the blow less effective than it could have been, should have been, probably would have been. Savas wretched back a few paces and reflexively had his arm up in a block, knocking the weapon out of his attacker's hand. The next thing he knew, the man barreled into him with dagger in hand and poorly aimed. There was screaming. They went to the floor. Something about a brother, dammit.

Savas smashed an empty clay pot on his attacker's face. He squirmed away, grabbed a wand and got off an unaimed spell that discharged harmlessly into one of the walls as the man threw himself back into the fray. What followed was a tumbling, frenzied exchange of near-misses, exploding furniture, and ripped clothes as both men tried, very sincerely, to murder each other in anything but cold blood.

Savas knocked the dagger loose and headbutted the attacker twice in rapid succession. He got the wand up under the man's chin and let loose. Ringlets of blood shot out from around bulging eyes, from each nostril, earhole, and in squirts from between his teeth. Magic, dark green and purple, discharged up out of the top of the man's head and dislodged his chainmail coif into the air, breaking some of the links. He went limp in the span of a heartbeat and collapsed to the floor at the Wizard's side. And for a long couple of seconds, that was that.

Savas sat up, wheezing hard and checking to see if the man was dead. He wasn't. Pity that. Looked like Liam of Hegel, but Savas had trouble remembering who was who on his best days. He wiped his face off and tried to collect himself.

Later on, he would write, Screw the brink.

[Leaf on the Wind]

"Ido! Palo! Tero! Coro! Feyo! Nelo!" Rowan called as he paced from the front of the brigade to the back, walking a slow and steady circuit around the lot of them. Every word was a number, one through six. Every single number was also the name of a fully-fledged martial arts form, all of which flowed together into a single, much larger form. There were twenty-one in all, broken down in seats of six and then three. It was one of the things he had picked up in Haidia, just like the daikatar and the active chi and the changes to his body and soul and more besides. He ran the men as far as they could go, rattling off nelo after feyo after coro after tero after palo after ido, always ending with the demonic HUT! command, which stopped them both hot and cold, and sweating buckets under the blistering Kebiran sun.

"Ido!" Forward punches and blocks, a kick.

"Palo!" Another kick, sidelong punches and blocks, a spinkick.

"Tero!" All blocks in different directions.

"Coro!" Kicks. Nothing but kicks.

"Feyo!" Two-handed attacks and defenses.

"Nelo!" Elbows, palms, backhands, blocks.

"HUT!" Stop and hold. Sometimes for minutes, the only movements coming from breathing and blinking. Most of them were so disciplined now, so in tune with the forms, that they didn't even swallow until he followed with, "Shan," the Haidian word for rest.

Rarely, he stood before them and went through the first six forms himself. It was mostly to show them what he wanted them to do, and to remind them what he was capable of, and how far they still had to go. None of them could channel the energies that the forms were actually intended to rely upon. Without chi, they were still dangerous movements, but with chi? They were an equalizer. A bloody, brutal, merciless equalizer, one that needed clarity and temprance to perform -- the very things that made it so hard for actual demons to master, yet made them so lethal when they did. It was easier for Rowan. Even now, it was easier.

After the tenth run through the forms, he released them all to Aeraul's mercies and walked away, to one of the public bathhouses that dominated Tchao Kintul. The people there had differing concepts of modesty from those in most Althanian cultures. They also didn't have the abundance of water, even magically generated water, that allowed for Althanians to bathe individually. The waters in the bathhouses were purified routinely, every hour on the hour, by local magi. They were in use at every other hour of the day. Rowan bathed without even noticing the other men and women in the building, dressed himself and blasted the sweatstains out of his clothing with chi. He took to the streets again as the sun began to set, making his way back to the training grounds that the Tchao had set aside for the Brigade.

He was stopped at the gate by a Wizard. Not the blue one, but the black one, clad in pants and a long-sleeved shirt, barefoot and barehand, cracking his knuckles and neck, going through stretching routines not at all unlike the ones favored by the Ai'bron monks. Rowan humored him enough to wait until he was done, then asked, "What do you want, Savas?"

"Training," the Wizard told him. Rowan was aware of Wormaxe's inability to channel on the fly like Caden did, and of the constant attacks on him by the Blueraven Brigadiers. He wasn't exactly sympathetic on either count.

But it was a chance to beat up a Wizard.

"Okay," he said. "Training begins now. Full contact spar. Show me what you're made of and we'll go from there."

Savas didn't even blink. He took up a stance and Rowan read it like an open book; all experience and mimickry, no actual training beyond the minimal crosstraining they'd done before going into the Catacombs. But there was power there. A dark energy, weak and flickering, but still there. Where there was power, there was potential. Rowan smiled savagely and Savas still didn't waver.

He held nothing back.

The Wizard still went three and a half minutes before he went down with a hole clear through the back of his shirt and a series of leaf-shaped scorchmarks on the front. The actual man himself recovered in due time, hacking up phlegm and blood, but he still recovered. And when he sat up, Rowan towered over him with his arms crossed and his eyes glowing.

"Again," he said.

Savas did not disappoint him.

[Aeraul Smythe]

Rowan taught them the hunger of speed and the discipline of ends. Aeraul taught them the discipline of speed and the hunger of ends.

For Rowan's instructions, the men moved with no real unison; they just went at top speed and tried to get faster every single time. For Aeraul's, they knew to take their time and breathe. He taught them to go through forms from his own martial background with much more deliberation and precision. While armed and close to one another. All of them used roughly similar swords, the personal keepsakes from their conscript days or the relics they kept from the war, and some had also been outfitted with Tchao replicas. They all moved just that little bit differently due to the nature of any given blade, but they still had unity of pace and form; unity of the important things.

Aeraul always got them when the Brigadiers were exhausted and demoralized. He always kept them until they were, more or less, able to smile and laugh again. He knew which ones to seek out and which ones to leave be. Men lack the empathic resonance of orcs, but they were still thinking, feeling beings, and he was still on the same wavelength as them. Three were going through severe withdrawl symptoms. Fifteen were suffering nightmares and worse. Plenty of them were missing their families, questioning their beliefs, questioning themselves. Aeraul redeemed them all to the best of his ability. He became the communal big brother, even to men older than himself. He affirmed them, gave them reasons to keep moving, encouraged them to make the most of things. Several Brigadiers went local at his behest, and the women, in turn, weren't long on becoming parts of the Brigade's support structure.

It wasn't the same thrill as bringing down a mad demigod, but it was no less poignant. It was the chance to reform others as Aeraul himself had once been reformed, back when he was a boy struggling with the hormone-induced insanities of half-orc puberty, a time when most male orcs are making their first frenzy kills and most male humans are on an emotional rollercoaster between despair and rage and lust. Monks had taught him peace and he was trying to pass the lesson to others.

Some took his advice readily. Others, like Liam of Hegel, needed a bigger nudge.

"Why did you try to kill Savas again?" Aeraul asked him after a small meal, a hold-over between training and actual meal time.

"He murdered my brother," Liam answered. "And I'm supposed to trust my life to that guy?"

"Only to an extent," Aeraul told him before a long back-and-forth argument -- civil and peaceful -- over the nature of whether or not Savas was truly responsible for his actions during the Corpse War. The general conclusion was that he was still scum, but he was only responsible for what he'd done before and afterwards. Liam was still going to try and kill him, but he was no longer blatant about wanting revenge. It was a start.

When he was done with the men, Aeraul went into town and visited a tavern for dinner. The people no longer stared at him but he still felt their fear, their apprehension at the sight of anything green-skinned and relatively less human than they were. Aeraul bore it without pride or prejudice. They had their reasons and he forgave them for it. When he was done, he went back to the camp and began to run through his nightly routine of meditation. The Wizard interrupted him; the blue one, not the black.

"I'm thinking we need to leave soon," Caden said without bothering to say hello.

"Why?" Aeraul asked, cracking open one eye and looking up at the Wizard from where he sat.

"Because Larkatz is on the move and we're as prepared now as we'll ever be. The Drifter said something about ripple's end and an enemy as yet unknown. I'd rather not sit here and count down to an apocalypse in the meantime," Caden said.

"...but where will we go?" Aeraul asked.

"And there's the ninety thousand gold piece question," Caden said as he reached into his coat and took out a map. It was a Kebiran piece, folding from both sides like a grand parchment. "I was hoping you'd be able to help me with that."

"There's something you're not telling me," Aeraul noted.

"...right. Savas has already been over it. Rowan doesn't care enough," Caden answered. Aeraul nodded. Caden unfolded the map, then held it wipe as he waited. Eventually, Aeraul put a fingertip on a place meticulously subtitled The Seven Steps of Heaven. Caden grinned like a maniac for just a few seconds before saying, "Savas and I both picked that on our list of places to go from here."

"...why does statement that fill me with dread?" Aeraul asked after a long while.

[Caden Law]

"Probably because it should," Caden told him without missing a beat. "I picked it blindfolded. Savas picked it with the map facing down on a table. I'm basically a cosmic plaything and he's drawn to death and suffering like moths to an open flame. And you? You're an empath. It could be for any number of reasons, but you still chose the same place without being given a hint of information aside from we need to go. I'd like to think you have enough of a difficult time reading me that I didn't influence your decision."

"I have trouble reading you, yes," Aeraul admitted, then said with the tact and compassion of a baseball bat, "But that's generally because you're the walking wounded wrapping yourself in your pain the way a soldier wears armor. You're hurting so much, so frequently, that there's nothing specific about any of it. It's an indistinct haze of psychic agony. You need help on a level I can't give, Blueraven. I don't think even the Gods could help you at this point."

Caden stared at him.

"I'm assuming you wanted an honest assessment," Aeraul shrugged. "Which probably goes to show how hard it is to read you."

"I've seen some shit," Caden said. He thought about trying to explain it further, but couldn't. For a man who kept a diary, he wasn't especially gifted when it came to expressing his feelings. He was, in fact, still trying to get the hang of having a personal self beyond the mission at hand: "There won't be any apocalypse. That's what's important, Aeraul. We're leaving in the morning unless you think the men need to stay here a little longer."

"Two days to prepare," Aeraul answered. "They'll follow you into Hell and back but you need to give them time to settle their affairs here. Some of them literally. You might also want to talk to the Tchao magi. I doubt they'd take kindly to all of us just vanishing at dawn after all the hospitality we've been shown."

Caden nodded. He looked at the map again, then to the horizon. There were smoke clouds in the direction of the Bay of Long Teeth. It was probably hundreds of miles away, but he could still see smoke.

Larkatz was moving, alright. It was only a matter of time before Tchao Kantul followed Achu Kintan, or worse.

"Perhaps it'd be better if I recommended an exodus for these people," he said.

"I doubt they'd agree. Even if they did, we'd probably go in different directions."

"And I'm okay with that," Caden said, and tried like Hell to mean it. "At least that'd be less chance of the bad guys coming after us."

Aeraul didn't look at him so much as he looked through him. Caden flinched. "I didn't say I liked it," he added as an afterthought.

"And I didn't say you did," Aeraul noted. "What I said is that you wear your pain like armor. And it sounds like your conscience agrees with me."

It's a rare thing for a Wizard to be dumbfounded into speechlessness, and it's even rarer for a Sorcerer. Most people who accomplish such a feat do so at their own peril, and very few ever have the opportunity to relish in their private victories. Aeraul wasn't among that number, not because Caden would harm him but because he just wasn't the type to look at that as a win.

Eventually, when he was alone and most of the arrangements were out of the way, Caden sat down and mulled over what the half-man said to him. In the end, all he could think was, Crap. I am a good guy.

For once, he didn't even bother to think about kicking a puppy to balance it out.

[Caden Law]

We left Tchao Kantul a ghost town in our wake. There are about a hundred of us now, counting some of the Tchao women and a couple men who wanted to come with us for their own reasons. One of them, Stonecoat, is probably one of the fiercest battlemages the Tchao have produced in a generation -- at least according to his cohorts. We've adopted the newbies into Fireside Company since I'm not spreading my Name around any further than it already is. Looking after my men has given me a certain level of insight into what it must be like to be a father. A real father.

I wonder how Iera is doing?

The Tchao, at least, made a point of outfitting us well on our way out. Stonecoat's influence, perhaps, or possibly Blacklung's. We've got one of their older, weaker landships. It's basically held together by willpower and happy thoughts, but it's ours and we're making better time on it than we would by horseback or on foot. The desert is already giving way to plain old badlands. Savas is still trying to commune with local entities but he's not having much luck. Stonecoat knows enough to gather a limited amount of spiritual intelligence for us, but that's not saying much either. Larkatz is indeed on the move. He seems to be striking at other orcs right now, still trying to solidify his rule and build up his forces. The gist of what we're getting is that he's powerful enough to defeat any of the others, but not if they start working together. And most of them are forming into coalitions around him, trying to contain his empire before he can overrun them.

I don't know for sure but it's a comforting thought that we might yet have some kind of head start on all this.

Unfortunately, I don't think the landship is going to last a whole lot longer. It's on its last wheels as is and it's a wonder we've gotten this far. If we're lucky, it'll hold together until we get to the mountains. If not, at least we've outpaced the movements and gotten clear of the territory occupied by Larkatz's armies. It's a start.

I'm also pretty sure we're being stalked. Although I've yet to run across Huskers, it wouldn't surprise me if they were waiting in the wings for their chance to make my life miserable.

Speaking of which, it's midnight and the ship just started rocking.Caden closed the grimoire and stuck it in his Hat. He grabbed his staff and made a break for the topmost deck of the ship, expecting the worst.

He was not disappointed.

[Caden Law]

Caden emerged topside with sword in one hand and staff brandished in the other, clad in full Wizardly glory, minus the conscript plate stowed under his bed. The ship creaked to a halt so suddenly that, upon his arrival, most of the people on deck faltered and fell over in surprise.

"Don't panic!" he called out pre-emptively. Swords had already been drawn. Rowan was dangling off one of the ship's masts with katar alight in his hand, the red blade wrapped in teal fire shedding crumbling, burning leaves into the whispering night air. Aeraul was somewhere below decks still, but Caden could sense his power building as well. Savas, at least, was right where Caden wanted him to be: in plain sight, axe and plynt dagger in hand, looking significantly more paranoid than the rest of them because he was probably more aware of whatever danger they were in.

"Could we just be stuck on something?" one of the men asked after a while. He was a fairly average looking fellow, not the sort who looks readily expendable in the context of most stories. He wasn't too big, wasn't too shrimpy, wasn't anything special at all. Caden kept an eye on him on general principle.

He had two shadows.

And then three.

Four.

Caden stopped counting at ten. He looked up into the man's eyes and calmly asked, "Do you have anyone back home?"

Realization dawned in an instant, followed by a crash course through every step of the grieving process. It was something Caden had often seen in mirrors. Watching it happen to someone else was a brand new way of being unsettled. The man said only, "My name is Jai of August. Break my sword when I'm gone."

"I'm sorry," Caden told him. "I'm so sorry."

There was nothing he could do for Jai, except make it quicker than it would have been otherwise. He didn't have to. Without even looking down, Jai whipped up his sword and plunged it into his own stomach, through a gap between his breastplate and his belt buckle. The blade sank in deep. He started to fall but his body never made it to the deck.

Up came the many angled hands of shadow, blending and breaking away from one another so quickly and so wildly that no one limb could be defined from the mass of them. They engulfed Jai in the pale moonlight of the Kebiran Badlands. They reached up into the holes in his skin, found purchase, and ripped him wide open. It took less than a second. Caden triggered a light spell but all it did was give definition to the shadows, rather than actually driving them off. What was left of the man was nothing more than a fleshless pile of meat in freefall to its knees, unable to scream with its vocal chords and tongue torn out. Its eyes were left staring madly into the night as another wave of shadow hands came slithering up over it -- over Jai of August.

A few bloody bones hit the deck. Everything else was gone.

"...now's a decent time to panic," Caden mumbled to himself.

[Savas Tigh]

"Wilderfolk!" Stonecoat's Voice bellowed out into the night, carrying right through the ship from top to bottom. "Light up the entire ship! Leave no room for man to stand in a shadow!"

"I tried that already!" Caden snapped to himself.

"You didn't try hard enough," Savas told him. He was already half-way through etching runes into the deckboard around him. "Shadow magic used to be my specialty, back in the day, but this is on a completely different level! You want to counter it with light, you go overkill. Otherwise, you fight it on its own terms."

"And how do you propose that?!" Caden snapped.

"I don't!" Wormaxe snapped right back. "Use light. It's easier."

"All hands topside!" the Sorcerer ordered, his Voice rattling the whole damn boat and the ground upon which it stood. As he was making ready with an improvised light spell, conjuring up arcane forces that every Salvic Wizard knew how to work by heart, Savas sank to the floor and immediately began chanting things under his breath. He couldn't evoke at the speed of battle and he had not relied on shadow magicks in years, but talent is talent and in magic, it does not readily fade. He had been self-taught in a lot of ways, when it came to shadow. Xem'zund's forces only wanted him to bolster necromancy and curses. Deadeye had tried to teach him pyromancy over the things he was actually good with. Once upon a time, after all, he would have been a Witchhunter tasked with burning unsanctioned magi out of this world.

Here and now he was just a superlatively terrified ex-ritualist struggling to throw together a basic counterspell against shadow magicks that were stronger than anything he had ever even dreamt of. He looked up in time to see more shadows creeping and coalescing around the feet of a nearby soldier who hadn't noticed it yet. Savas said nothing, observing with mixed interest as the man ran to and fro, trying to find something to hit or some way to escape the things at his feet.

And all at once, the same limbs lashed their way up his body and went for the nearest set of orifices in his face. He started to scream and then went dreadfully silent as an entire array of arms blacked out the space around his mouth and nose and ears. Darkness filled up his eyes and squeezed blood out of the corners like crimson tears. He tried very hard to scream, but the shadows didn't let him. There was a very uncomfortable sounding pop as his skin ripped off of muscle and bone from head to toe, taking his clothes and armor with it. Teeth flew everywhere and the man spun to the ground in a writhing, twitching, kicking mess of gore that made Savas feel strangely hungry.

And then long black fingers coiled around his head and neck, muffling even the sound of his rasping screams. Similar shadows enveloped the rest of him and then he was gone as neatly as if he'd sunken through cracks in the deckboards.

That was the lovely note upon which Savas triggered his counterspell. He did not have high hopes of it actually accomplishing anything. He just wanted to stay alive.

[Aeraul Smythe]

Countermagic is tricky business. Most of the time it boils down to the simple nullification of any given spell, but it can range from simple feedback loops to labyrinthine curse reversals. As with every other form of magic, it always comes down to a combination of power, knowledge, creativity, and force of will. Savas triggered his counterspell with raw power and force of will, less so with knowledge or creativity, and the results were suitably unpredictable because of it; brute strength and desperation against barbaric intellect and alien ways of thinking.

Every single shadow on the boat that night wavered and those that weren't native to any given person or object broke. Below decks, down where men were supposed to be sleeping at this hour, Aeraul watched as a shadow on the ceiling tore loose of the wood and collapsed to the floor, fully realized as a tall, slender thing that looked like a monstrous drow. It landed on all fours and sprang upright with such a quickness that its head only barely missed the ceiling by virtue of its knees bending. The arms were freakishly long, the body lurched forward, and there was stark white hair falling like curtains of silk around its head. It wore tightly polished leathers of red, violet, and black, with gemstones blinking like eyes on its wristbands. The thing looked back and Aeraul, for all of a split second, saw that it had no eyes.

The second ended when Aeraul smashed shoulder-first into the Husker and tackled it clear across the deck into a wall, upending two beds and leaping off a third in the process. Wood cracked and broke around the impact, but the Husker's bones didn't. Aeraul punched it twice in a row at point blank range, chi discharging as candle flame and billowing smoke at each impact. The creature shrieked in a sound that was only barely humanoid anymore, not unlike the monstrous arachnotaurs he had encountered back in the Catacombs -- the Horrors whose memory still kept him awake some nights. The half-man didn't waste his time with battlecries or obscenities. He closed off his mind to every fear but his own, and the focus was the only thing that saw him through the next exchange.

The Husker was lanky but it was huge and fast and strong. It pushed free of the wall and whipped around, nothing more than a blur of leather and black skin. Aeraul ducked and felt the air whistling over his head, heard the crush of a clawed fist smashing the wall beside him, then lunged back in for another go at it. The Husker had him on strength and reach, but Aeraul was a grappler by nature. He embraced his fear of death the way he embraced the Husker; both arms around its torso, and then exhaling fire onto its chest as he suplexed the thing up and over, back down into the floor, its head leading the way down through the first few boards. Aeraul bridged it for just a moment, then released and grabbed the broken leg of a nearby bed.

He stabbed the Husker in its abdomen and only then backpedaled away from it as something huge pounded its way up the side of the ship -- and then another followed suit from the opposite direction. There were shrieks everywhere. Battlecries. The Husker was kicking and trying to prise itself loose. Aeraul looked back to the hold door and saw an enormous clawed hand slowly wrapping around part of the frame. Blueraven's Voice boomed through the vessel and something exploded above decks. Then Wormaxe's, causing the shadows to waver and break all over again. A third Husker, this one smaller than the first, fell out of the cracks in the ceiling. The first one tore itself free.

"Damn," Aeraul muttered. There was no way he could win this unarmed, and bed posts weren't going to cut it against things like this.

As the first Husker staggered about in a daze and the third struggled up to its feet, Aeraul gathered up his chi and got a running start towards the hold. He upended beds on the third Husker in passing, setting one on fire in the process, then caught the second with an enormous boot to the face as it peered around the corner. The blow was enough to embed its head backwards into the wall of the stairwell, right to the chin and the top of the neck. Limbs flailed wildly in the cramped confines of the stairwell as Aeraul dove down into the hold, chased the whole way by shadows that were neither real nor natural. Another counterspell went off and all of them broke to reveal a fourth Husker collapsing onto a pile of supply crates in the hold.

...where there was a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, and an eighth waiting as well.

"Damn," Aeraul growled, diving in anyway. They stood between him and the great-jian he had acquired in Scara Brae, the hollow bitter steel that was his compensation prize for having and losing the broken tooth of a forever dying god. He struck one with his best two-palmed attack, causing flames to erupt from both the front and back of its chest. Then he whipped by another, grabbed it at the ankle and dragged it up into the path of one of its fellowed, bracing against the first Husker as it absorbed the second's attack. Skin as hard as tough as a gator's hide ripped wide open with a spray of purple gore and a mangled intestine shredding its way out around an inhumanly long, thin arm. Aeraul channeled power into his elbow and hand, striking the back of the first Husker with both and willing the chi through it into the second attacker. It was weakened in passing, but it still set fire to the leathers the thing wore.

He jumped low and hit the ground rolling as one of the creatures started to chant in an alien pattern of growls, hisses, and gibbering psuedowords. Power built up around it, shadowy and sharp, like blades fit for war and slaughter and all the horrors the human mind can comprehend. Aeraul grabbed his jian from its resting place on the farthest wall, then brought it to bear without thinking. One of the Huskers was already on him. He bashed it to the floor as if with a club, and then the spell came for him like an erupting geyser of razors.

[Leaf on the Wind]

By this point, it would be fair to say that Hell had broken loose.

"GET DOWN!" was the closest thing Rowan gave to a warning as he dove down from one of the masts, rolled along the deck between three ducking soldiers, and caught a Husker square in the face as it ducked. The head snapped back, leaves and fire shooting out in a puff from its scalp. It shrieked raw hatred and fury and Rowan came up to meet it with his katar in hand.

As tough as the Wilderfolk were, they were not immune to being stabbed in the head from jaw to scalp.

Most things aren't.

Rowan tore the blade loose, bisecting most of the thing's head and then kicking it overboard. He turned and shouted, "THEY UNDERSTAND RAIAERAN!" He changed languages and added, "TRY TO USE COMMON INSTEAD!"

Even as he was speaking, one of the Huskers rode by, stabbing at Liuetenant Tanner from atop a grotesque insectoid thing bristling with coarse hairs as thick as blades of grass. Its mandibles were covered in blood and splinters. Tanner, ever clad in battle armor, sported several small cuts and a number of fresh bruises, with a sword in each hand and a look of bleak professionalism on his face. He was a sharp contrast to the gleeful Rathorn, who hit the Husker from behind with an indistinct blast of destructive energy that flayed its back open to the bone. The shriek of pain almost hurt Rowan's ears. The Husker leaned forward and its mount charged at Tanner, who dove out of the way and wrenched one of his blades into a joint on its hind left leg. Mount and rider both fell, flailing and shrieking, before August Hawk cleaved their heads off.

Further away, near the ship's helm, Stonecoat and Blueraven stood back to back, taking alternating shots at Wilderfolk, one attacking and turning away so that the other could take his place. Magic missiles, magic bullets; they ripped fist-sized holes in the spider-drow of Kebiras with equal levels of bloodshed and violence. The other rider was making a circuit along the ship's side, from starboard to fore, fore to port to aft, aft to starboard, always lunging up here and there to make attacks of opportunity on whatever it could hit. It was armed with a spear that looked as if it had been shaped out of raw bone. And it seemed to be paying exclusive attention to what was on the deck.

"This will be fun," Rowan said to himself with a murderous grin. He took a running start and swung over the side of the ship. His feet hit the wood and found purchase in sheer defiance of gravity, courtesy of traction from chi. He hefted his katar at one side like a lancer readying for the joust, then ran in the opposite direction from the rider.

They met at the ship's front.

Demonic red steel met bristled black chitin and kept going. Rowan waited until he was hilt-deep into the mount to actually thrust his arm forward, severing the creature's head completely and stabbing up into the rider's chest cavity through his stomach. It wasn't a perfect hit, but the imperfections weren't in the damage; the Husker and its bug-horse were both dead before they knew what hit them. Rowan didn't even have to unleash a chi burst to guarantee it. The imperfection was in everything else: Momentum carried and the Husker's mount tumbled forward, suddenly giving in to gravity and inertia as it barreled into Rowan and raked him from head to toe with body hair as coarse as sandpaper and as sturdy as a bullwhip's base. About a ton of chitin and gore smacked into him and took him clear off the side of the landship, all the way to the ground a few dozen feet below, where it piled on until the exoskeleton's structural integrity gave out.

Bug went squish with Rowan underneath.

It wasn't pretty. And it really, really wasn't fun.

[Caden Law]

"I have no idea what your men are saying anymore," Stonecoat admitted. For all the effort that had gone into teaching the Blueravens Kebiran common, they had still spread Raiaeran among the Tchao. But they had never tried to teach them the true common tongue of humanity in Althanas, the nameless tongue spoken from Corone to Scara Brae and almost everywhere else in some capacity.

"It's probably better that way," Blueraven tried to reassure him, even as he cast a bolt of lightning into an errant Husker. It was one of the ones who looked like some kind of aberrant mage, wearing a long leather vest and bands of gems about its arms. The creature screeched and fell back several paces, even as shadows were curling into blades all over its arm -- at least until Savas' next wave of counterspells tore the magic apart in a harmless dispursal of energies. "There are entirely too many of these things for a random ambush!"

"You've clearly never encountered a raiding party from the Underdark," Stonecoat told him. He put a magic bullet through the head of the offending Wilderfolk mage, and the ensuing fireball annihilated the Husker rushing in behind it. "This is a fairly small effort compared to what we usually hear of. And we only ever hear because some poor fool is allowed to escape."

"I take it that's where saying someone had Husker's Luck came from," Blueraven mused. "The once-in-a-lifetime luck that comes with a once-a-night price."

"Once-a-nightmare, yes."

Another wave of countermagic blew through the ship, this one considerably stronger and better assembled than anything Savas was putting out. Husker magicks weren't flickering back to life in between counterspells anymore -- they were just gone. Caden felt this new counterspell pulling at the edges of his own power by sheer weight, if not by intent, and it was the easiest thing in the world to trace it back to its source -- nothing more than line of sight guided by instinct. Near the bow. Crouched down, guarded by two Brigadiers in half-armor with shields and swords. Simon Graves, continually pumping energy into a circle of power carved deep into the deck and bound together with slivers of wood, metal, and a coil of rope. He was breathing hard and looking proud, grinning like an absolute maniac as he Called out to Savas, "All clear!"

"MOVE, YOU IDIOT!" Blueraven Screamed, his Voice rolling like thunder over the racket of battle and death. It hit something deep in the sub-human base of Graves' brain, propelling him up to his feet and causing him to grab his fellows by the collar as he dove away from the circle.

A pillar of dark fire blasted straight up through the ship after him, tightly focused within the confines of a brightly burning spider's web. The web constricted into a whip thin line more than a hundred feet long, then snapped back down through the ship's hull like a razor. Several men only barely avoided being cleaved in half by its passing, Savas among them. All at once, the ship began to collapse, even as a new Voice joined the cacophony of battle. It was louder and better defined than those of the lesser magi, rippling across the brain in colors that had no name, no identifying concept in any human language. The closest Caden could get was thinking of a purple-yellow haze spelling out letters that formed into vile intentions.

"I do not like the sound of that," he mumbled as he and Stonecoat held on to the helm, each one trying not to lose his footing while more and more Huskers appeared. Stonecoat hadn't been kidding about the size of those raiding parties...

[Savas Tigh]

The ship was wrecked. It wasn't going to go any further unless bits and pieces of it collapsed outward in that particular direction. Fully one third had been cut right off, and another quarter had been crushed on top of that in the ensuing collapse. Now the whole damn wreck was tilting off to one side, just waiting for some miserable fool to give it the nudge it needed to completely topple. There were men and women screaming, sliding, and fighting for their lives on the top deck even as Graves and Savas worked their way over to each other.

"What in every Hell did you do?" Savas barked.

"I shut down the shadows," Graves proudly answered. That ego was going to get him killed. Savas just knew it, if only because he was the likely murderer. Graves looked around and set his eyes on a particularly large Husker swinging itself up onto the top deck. "See what I'm seeing?" he asked.

"Ahead of you," Savas said as he drew a bone wand and took aim. "We go on three."

"Three," Graves replied, hurling a pre-emptivel dispell as he spoke. The countermagic splashed into the Husker like ectoplasmic water, washing away spells that hadn't even been cast yet and stunning the beastial drow in the process. Savas followed up with a spray of Necromantic Missiles. Individually they meant nothing; there were men on the boat who could hit harder with their bare hands, and Savas knew that none of them would leave so much as a bruise on their best day. Together, however, they were a swarm of physical blows, stunning assaults on the senses, and energy drains on whatever hollowed out shell counted as the Husker's soul. And sooner or later, one of the firecracker-sized sparks managed to find purchase on the beast's hair and leather, setting fire to it in less time than it takes to blink.

Someone, somewhere, hit the thing side-on with a blast of indistinctively destructive power, hurling it overboard as viciously as if it'd been struck by a battering ram. The Husker shrieked all the way down. Savas looked at Graves, then instinctively grabbed him and ducked down.

A great limb of some kind swept through the space their heads had previously occupied. The body it belonged to flew up into view, another bug-horse mounted rider, this one with a deformed arm that resembled nothing so much as a giant crab claw covered in ornate violet writings. Unlike its fellows, this Husker wore chitinous armor on its lower legs and forearm, and a chestpiece that looked like an unnaturally shaped mass of shell. It rode to the center of the deck, taking one of the Brigadiers from the side and crushing him first to a screaming death, then a choking one as his armor and ribs collapsed and pierced his lungs. The man went down hacking feebly and defiantly to the end, and then the Husker cast his body aside like so much refuse.

Blueraven lanced through the bug-horse's body with ice, turning it inside out between the rider's legs. It exploded out behind the rider, little more than broken bits of chitinous shell and purple gore splattering all over the deck at high speed. The Husker itself was completely unfazed, collapsing to its knees and brandishing its claw-arm defensively. Blueraven hit with another spell and did little more than damage the deck around where it knelt. He followed with another spell, this one a blast of raw fire, but that had little effect as well, and then he was ducking and dodging and fighting for his life against a Husker that had bypassed Stonecoat in the midst of a reload. Savas exchanged glances with Graves.

Silver flashed along the floorboards before either of them could act.

Silver and then fire and then a blast of smoke as the deck exploded up into the night, throwing the Husker clear in the process. Aeraul Smythe trailed blood and gore as he followed it up into the air, and relatively little of that mess was his own. Steel great-jian in hand and an implaccable calm in his eyes, he caught the Husker as gravity began to drag it back down, bashing the thing earthward with a single great swipe of his sword. Bits of armor flew from its crab arm and the next thing, it was bouncing hard off a suddenly cracked, tilted mast. Aeraul flipped twice with the momentum of the blow, then landed hard in a crouch that was perfectly set up to deliver his next attack.

Standing thrust, arm at full extension, jian clutched near the pommel.

The Husker smashed the blade aside and Aeraul followed up with a small comet-like blast of flame from his other hand's fingertips. He caught the Husker in its mouth, but this accomplished nothing. It lunged at him with a back-claw and he ducked, then came back with an uppercut that dislodged it from the floor and left him positioned to take up his weapon with both hands. The pommel became a piledriving hammer as he dragged the great-jian back down and caved in the Husker's collar, driving it down to the deck as it gagged purple blood all over his hands. What followed was a summary decapitation with more dignity than the thing ever deserved.

From a nice, presumably safe distance, Savas wanted to cheer. He knew better. They were still being overrun. And...

"Keep moving!"

Savas and Graves made it four feet from where they'd been standing when the deck behind them erupted into another web-bound collumn of dark fire. It raged against its confines for long, long seconds, and the two of them staggered and ran as best they could updeck. And then the pillar squeezed itself into a glowing whip and came lashing down all over again.

[Aeraul Smythe]

About a minute later, Aeraul screamed and bashed and shoved his way out from underneath a small mountain of rubble, knocking over an already wobbling mast in the opposite direction from where it had been leaning. Several tons of wood hit badlands dirt and splintered all over the place. The half-man staggered out from the wreckage and held himself up with nothing but his sword as a prop. To put it charitably, he was a bloody, tattered wreck of a man, so soaked in red and so thoroughly bruised that the green of his skin was barely visible. His clothes were little more than rags at this point. His eyes were glowing a cold, murderously calm and insanely focused blue, the likes of which they hadn't done in quite some time.

"Shit," was all he said, the words echoing smoke and fire from his mouth as Aeraul fought just to stay standing. Even now, the battle had not come to an end. Blueraven's brigadiers were not the terrified conscripts they had been at Eluriand. They were survivors. And even though Aeraul had spent the past months teaching them, he had never gotten a chance to see them in action.

Once they'd gotten over they initial shock of battle, they had outperformed him so completely that, where Aeraul was on his last leg, most of the men weren't even bruised. A few had actually managed to save some of the add-ons, the men and mostly women who had accompanied them from Tchao Kantul. At this point, they weren't even fighting in the manner of a human military unit; they had a synergy that borderlined on orcish, and not one of them actually stood alone in the face of the Wilderfolk onslaught. Aeraul watched two of them outflank three Huskers and drag them down through weight of tactics where numbers and strength were lacking. He saw five others bring down one of the bug-horse riders through shielded attacks and mid-combat ambush techniques that Blueraven must've taught them, assuming they didn't come up with it on their own. They were all jumping back and forth from the Common of Scara Brae and Corone to some kind of soldier's cant blended from fragments of Salvic, Tchao, Raiaeran, and Akashiman. There was a common purpose behind their every movement, a unity of intent that was almost intoxicating.

Aeraul reached out to it and drew strength from it. With the triumph of seeing the Brigade -- his Brigade -- acting as a single cohesive force, he was able to exert calm over the very battle rage that had gotten him out from under a wrecked landship. The glow faded from his eyes, moment by moment, huff of flame by puff of smoke, growl to spoken syllable.

"Right then," he rasped as he stood straight on shaking wegs that complied more through force of will than muscle. Chi focused, he tore the sword out of the ground and whipped it around a few times just to show it who was boss.

The largest pile of debris went to Hell in a finely woven wicker handbasket; splinters and fire and broken bits of metal all over the place. Where it had once stood, there was now only a solitary and abundantly gendered Husker, one that at least looked female compared to the androgyny of the rest. She was at least eight feet tall, more or less humanoid and well endowed within the confines of a tight leathery dress. Were it not for the jagged teeth and the empty pits where there should have been eye sockets, she would have been as alluring as she was intimidating. Even lacking such things, there was a grotesque attractiveness to her, reinforced by every impossibly dainty sway of her hips as she stalked through the battlefield, brandishing a whip of glowing violet webbing at least as long as she was tall.

Aeraul didn't even wait for logic to kick in and inform him that this was probably the leader of the raid. He charged her from the side at full speed, willing his limbs to move where injury and blood loss should have disabled him. Smoke billowed from open wounds, and fire burst from tiny cuts. It was a dissonant show of intensity for a man who made no sound whatsoever as he made the first strike.

She blocked it on her whip, holding it taught between both hands. The steel blade actually bounced off on impact, and Aeraul spun with it to deliver an elbow that swept him into one great backhanded cut -- all of which was futile as the Husker blocked the first part of his strike and simply dodged the rest. She lashed him across the chest so quickly that he didn't even have time to register pain until the blood was splashing up onto his chin, up his nose, along the undercurve of his eyebrows, and then the second blow came down on the crux of his shoulder and neck.

Focus gave way to pain. Aeraul screamed as something snapped and something else dislocated and his left arm simply stopped moving all together. The whip swung down onto his back, as if that wasn't enough, and sent a shock through every nerve in his body. His legs gave at the knee, his body crumpled to the ground, and the sword left his grasp. It was all he could do to keep from blacking out in pain. She had a knife in her other hand, slender and curved forward, a pairing knife for humanoid flesh. Aeraul stared into his reflection in the blade as she readied her whip for the killing blow.

Teal blotted out the world.

"Not happening!"

Fire and ghost-leaves spiraled through the air as Rowan delivered a lunging kick from somewhere beyond Aeraul's field of vision. It was a direct hit that blasted holes in the Husker's dress, forcing blood out of her body without a single open wound. He followed almost immediately with a downward slash of his dire katar, wreathed in so much chi that it detonated everything within six feet of the impact zone. There was a brightly glowing cloud of smoke balled up around the blast for all of a fraction of a second, and then it was all blown away to reveal the Husker still standing strong, having caught Rowan's strike at the wrist with the pommel of her whip. Her knfie was drawn back, ready to strike. Aeraul had a perfect vantage.

There was a lot of blood.

Rowan spun down to the ground and rolled away to his feet, his pants rapidly turning a deep, unhealthy shade of red that briefly glowed teal every few seconds. He exhaled fire that puffed into crumbling leaves, brandished his katar and held a hand to his stomach to keep his small intestines from spilling out. The only thing that kept him standing was chi. Aeraul tried desperately to stand, all the while screaming, "Get out of here!"

"Not happening," Rowan answered just once. "I've had worse anyway."

Broken toothed grin was the Husker's response.

Up went the whip.

Flash of purple, silent screaming.

Down came the Husker's arm.

"HIT THE BITCH WITH EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT!" Wormaxe positively Roared as he dove clear of the gasping Wilderfolk, his axe trailing purple.

"NANTEN!"

Countermagic blew the Husker's back-up defenses wide open before she could even flail her way into triggering them. She was stunned for a moment before jumping away -- fast. But not nearly fast enough; Liam of Hegel's spear lodged into her leg at the knee, and the man himself seemed anchored by sheer stubborn willpower as he dragged her back down to the ground and twisted the blade. The Husker finally shrieked its own pained cry, only to stop short as a blast of undefined red energy tore her head clear from her neck and obliterated her remaining shoulder down to the bone. The corpse spun out en route to the dirt and didn't move again.

[Caden Law]

Blueraven Brigade has passed its judgment upon the Wilderfolk of Kebiras, and we find them wanting.

That makes them no less pants shittingly terrifying. And the fact that so many of my boys and the others survived is utterly incredible in the most literal sense; I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. And I still don't quite believe it even then. We started the night eighty-one strong, not counting the others. There are seventy-two Blueravens left, me included. Less than ten casualties from an ambush by horrors beyond anything they could be expected to fight.

My gods I'm proud right now.

Of course Fireside Company's additional strength was at about twenty-three, and now we're at around thirteen, not counting the original Firesiders. I have no idea what happened to Hobbes, but I'm reasonably sure that he died screaming somewhen around the ship's destruction. The other two and all three of the Lieutenants made it through more or less intact. Once the Husker Queen? was killed, the rest of them just...stopped and ran. Disappeared into dirt and bushes and hillsides and all that. Stonecoat says that we're unlikely to be attacked again. Our weapons wreak of too much blood to make us a tempting target, making the rest of the journey safe-ish from the Wilderfolk. If that is a small raiding party, I can see why the rest of Kebiran civilization developed in response to them. Those things're striking vicious.

...Savas is having a field day with what's left of them. And, disconcertingly enough, nobody has a problem with it. He's eaten chunks off of one and piled the rest into one of his abomination mounds. He says he's going to try and enslave the spirits or eat them. I don't know. I don't care. I'm giving that whole thing a nice wide berth and so are my men. Stonecoat's standing watch over the ceremony and that's good enough for me. Aside from that, my apprentice has also taken a souvenir from the Queen: her whip, prised right from her cold, dead hand. He said something about needing to attune to it to make it actually worth while, but I'm not getting involved with that either.

Aeraul and Rowan were hurt badly. They're only alive because they can metabolize? chi similarly to how a Wizard or other mage can use magic in lieu of blood or food. One of the Tchao ladies, calls herself Iris, was able to stabilize them both and begin the healing process. She's got her work cut out treating the wounded tonight. Once Savas finishes his ritual, we're leaving the wreck of the ship and continuing on foot until morning. Then I'll geomance us a shelter, suitably camouflaged from the surface, suitably reinforced from below. We'll rest for the day, regain our strength, take stock of what we've lost...and then we'll go from there.

I really hope this doesn't come down to us becoming starving brigands on the ass-end of nowhere's frontier. We'll see.Caden finished writing and closed his eyes. He tried not to listen to the sound of a chilling Voice, chanting and echoing not too far from where he sat. He paid no mind to the flashes of dead lightning and the waves of mute pressure that served as its thunder. Awful things had already happened tonight, but the worst was yet to come.

His only comfort was that it would be inflicted on someone else.

[Savas Tigh]

Savas had to work fast, while the newly dead were still disoriented and their bigger, older, just plain nastier counterparts on the other side were still distracted with whatever unmentionably horrific things they used to busy themselves. He had some help early on, piling bodies together with the aid of a few more bitterly open-minded Brigadiers, but the rest was on him.

He stood alone in the mortal eye of an undead storm waiting to happen.

To his senses, the late night air was positively electric. His extra senses kicked into overdrive early in the process and never quite eased out of it. He could see, at the edge of his vision, the lines demarcating this world and the next three. He could feel the flails of the shocked dead as they struggled to comprehend the new, terrifying reality that confronted them; phantom limbs brushing across his skin, making the hairs on his arms and leg stand on end. He could taste mint and blood and honey, yet his nose was overwhelmed by the scent of garlic and onions to the point that there were tears in his eyes. Time began to lose meaning. Orientation in space faded out as the barriers between worlds began to weaken, a tantalizing hint of the huge things that were moving around the other side, the immaterial planes of the Antifirmament and the Nether World, and the others that had no name because mere humanity lacked the ability to conceptualize them.

Savas slipped into his calling as a necromancer the way predatory fish take to water, keenly aware that there were bigger things than he, and not caring one damn bit if they starved on his leftovers.

Bones and sticks and metal bits; he etched circles and spells and wards into the dirt, burned chunks of the ship in effigy, shouted to the Heavens above and the Hells below in a language of eldritch origin. He carved out a bubble around the dead Wilderfolk, all of them, and then turned it into a net without holes, closing the circle with a spiral pattern that had him running at full speed like a damned madman, his eyes slowly taking on a hollow green glow at the iris, and a lesser purple one at the pupil, while the whites in turn faded to black. He left most of his clothes behind at some point, pursuing his foul errand in nothing but pants and bloodstained bandages. He was laughing now. He was laughing then too, and he would be soon still. Time broke.

The Wilderfolk dead stood over their bodies in alien dismay, their minds unlike anything that could be construed as human and their emotions completely undescribable in any such language. Savas bound them into a tight bunch, and the Husker queen naturally stood tallest as she tried to hammer free of his influence. He closed the spiral into a circle around them, then carved out new spells into the ground, and scratched some into his own skin, and traced more still on the air itself. Lights glowed everywhere, yet not a single one provided true illumination under the glare of moon and stars and blazing wreckage.

He reached into the circle and they fought him hard, harder than any newborn ghostling of Raiaera or Corone or Scara Brae ever had. Harder even than the first kills he had made in the snowy wastes and icy streets of his native Salvar, when he hadn't yet borne a clue about what he was doing. The first left the circle in mutely screaming pieces and Savas knew its Name as he held it, threw it into one of his spells and willed it to his purposes. It left him bleeding and in pain but here, now, in this hellish act in a strange land where he did and did not belong, the pain was nothing. His first act then was to rend that spirit down; to bite into it with his aura alone, ripping chunks off in front of its swiftly cowed fellows. He left its remnants tattered and violated and mewling pathetically, a limbless horror that was nothing but savaged torso, twisted neck, and mangled mouth.

The rest of them fought harder but with more futility. Savas knew the basics of what he was doing after his first, and he learned quickly. He ripped apart his second so quickly that he almost found it demoralizing. Each bite became as physical as it was spiritual, and ectoplasm bled into the air around his mouth as he ate his fill. When he was done, fragments of the second were grafted onto the first, giving it a partially completed head that was missing three quarters of its brain, one limb, and the beginnings of a leg. He stuck the other, more unappetizing bits, into another spell. And then he repeated the process, tearing apart his third, his fourth, and then more afterwards. Every atrocity brought renewed strength and vigor, healing away the injuries that Wormaxe suffered in the process, restoring him to greater and greater health until finally, when he came to the Husker queen, he was at his zenith. Savas reached into the circle.

She was waiting for him.

What followed was a battle of wills and minds. As alien as she was to him, Savas was at least as incomprehensible to her. She was a predator. She had never thought of humanity, or anything else, as anything but prey; something inferior to be cultivated and devoured as needed. And in a manner that can scarcely be described, Savas broke her of that way of thinking. He broke her so completely that she began to literally fall apart in his grasp, until he had to clamor into the circle himself and rip apart the rest of her in search of whatever vital fragment he was seeking. Bits and pieces of the queen flew into the void of night and were lost between worlds, little more than the whisper of memories lost to the howl of the wind. He found what he was looking for, eventually, as he tore out the still throbbing essence of her identity and devoured it.

This, he would later write, would enable him to begin attunement with a weapon that had never been intended for human use.

It also gave him an In, a loophole, to be used for the command of his spiritual chimeras, the slaves he had cobbled together from what remained of the Wilderfolks' souls.

The ritual drew to a close as greater presences began to approach. Savas looked to his slaves, all misshapen freaks that would grow and be defined by their roles over time, and gave them the order to flee and preserve themselves, but to return to him when called. The spells containing each broke and their disappearances were immediate, so quick that they might as well have vanished in the moments before they were given permission to do so. Time and space reasserted themselves as Savas pulled himself away from the immaterial worlds beyond his living flesh, closing down his extra senses one by one and reasserting barriers formed from instincts and experiences and his own awful will to live. No sooner was he done than the whole ritual setup imploded in on itself, lines in the dirt all collapsing and tracing in on themselves until they'd been erased completely. Ghost lights burned out of thin air and were gone. He looked around at the Huskers' corpses and, whatever remained, quickly began to fester and decay without being touched by an insect of any sort. Within minutes, most had been reduced to dirty clothes and a few tattered remnants of bones and teeth.

Savas stood alone as the wreckage of the landship burned out around him. But he was not truly alone at all. Something on the other side had noticed him, maybe some things. He could feel them prodding at his shadow, trying to look through the impenetrable barriers of his skin and his life and his true name, his secret name, more powerful than his Sorcerous one, and so ineffable that only a Thayne might ever correctly pronounce it. He looked around and had the notion that the thing, whatever it was, had grown bored and was already beginning to move on. Telltale bits and pieces left over from his work suddenly flickered out as they were consumed on the other side.

Only when it was gone, leaving footprints in the aether so vast that Savas could scarcely see them, was he truly alone.

Only then did he allow himself to rest and to stretch, to scrape his tongue along his teeth and crack his joints and laugh with the vigor of being alive. It would fade in time. The essence of mortal life, no matter how demonic or monstrous, has nothing to compare to some of the things that a necromancer eats for power. But it is enough. And it was enough, then, and now, and soon, for Savas to be content.

He collected his clothes, his equipment, his newly acquired whip and his trusty axe. Then he rejoined the rest of the Brigade and didn't stop smiling until well into the next day. And, if you'd asked any of the men and women there, the most unsettling thing about that smile was how it wasn't unsettling at all, even though they all knew exactly what motivated it.

[Aeraul Smythe]

It took two days of steady marching before the Brigade finally saw another sign of civilization.

It was civilization gone to ruin, but it was still a sign.

"Orcs' doing," Stonecoat declared once they'd gotten close enough to actually make out the various ruins and wreckage. It was a profound moment for Aeraul, not least because none of the Kebirans or Raiaerans or anyone else so much as blinked in his direction when Stonecoat made that assessment. He was, at long last, accepted as nothing more or less than a man. And all it took was the complete annihilation of a city near the base of a mountain.

They spent the better part of a day and a night sifting through the leftovers of a city once known as Wyne Lau. It was a local trade hub for the mountainous villages, now little more than a town of ghosts and the bodies they'd abandoned. Blueraven dug out his first mass grave since the days of the Corpse War. Savas took part in more burial ceremonies than any of them ever expected, honing his funerary talents thousands of miles from where he intended to actually make use of them. Rowan abstained from all of it, leading guard shifts in the meantime. Aeraul simply helped where he could. There wasn't much left in the city that was useful; barely any food, maybe three whole weapons from end to end, and no materials of note. The orcs, if Stonecoat was right in blaming them, had thoroughly scorched the earth and salted the ground afterwards. And judging by the city's collective dead body, they hadn't faced much opposition in the process.

It was close to dawn the next day when Aeraul finally felt something pulling at the edge of his senses. He recognized immediately that it was a secondhand experience coming from someone else, and he followed the feeling right to where the Wizard Blueraven stood with his eyes on the mountaintop.

"Did you feel that?" Blueraven asked before Aeraul could say anything. He had a hand on his sword, and he was leaning heavily against his staff as if exhausted.

"Feel what?" he asked.

"...foreshocks," Blueraven concluded. "Someone's going to try something. Something big."

"You can sense that?" Aeraul asked.

"That's how big it is," Blueraven Said.

Aeraul was about to say something when one of the men ran up and interrupted them with a pristinely kept envelope the likes of which was not native to Althanas. Aeraul and Caden traded curious looks before carefully opening it to reveal a simple letter, unsigned but instantly recognizable.


Blue beat Red in the Frozen Circle. There is no more time for subtlety or double-talk. Go around the mountain and take the Stairway to Heaven. Don't waste time with expository fairytales. Stonecoat is wrong. Just. Move.
"...your Drifter friend?" Aeraul asked, though he already knew the answer.

"Undoubtedly," Caden answered, crunching the letter even as it burst into flames between his fingers. "Go get the men. Rowan and I are going on ahead."

"But-"

"He'll catch up," Caden said, just before the Mark on his face lit up, followed in turn by a whole network of lines and sigils all over his body. "GO!"

[Leaf on the Wind]

"Didn't we do things the other way around last time? (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising/page7)" Rowan breathlessly asked as he caught up to the Sorcerer, who was geomancing a road right around the base of the mountain at close to fifty miles per hour. The only thing keeping him anywhere near the errant mage was the fact that he had chi carrying him along the way, sliding from one stride to the next with better than thirty or forty feet between them

"Don't screw around," Blueraven ordered without so much as a backwards glance. He was surfing along at the head of the road, his staff held at full extension in front of him, fresh stone paving itself smooth as he passed over it. "Whatever's about to happen is going to be big. I'm starting to lose track of Time."

Rowan stared at the Sorcerer's back and asked, "How is that a big deal?"

"I'm a time traveler, Rowan. I feel Time differently than you, I understand how it actually works. It's not a linear thing. It's a liquid. Every one of us exists separate of one another, all our Times overlapping and merging and sometimes altering one another beyond recognition. That's the real reason why things are so inconsistent even though general ideas still exist about the world. I can feel the passage of seconds like you feel someone plucking a hair. I'm always aware of it. I can measure it perfectly. I know exactly when one day ends and another begins. And up until now, I've thought myself impervious to any attempts to change it."

"Still not following you," Rowan admitted. "I get that it's a big deal but-"

"Liquid ripples, Rowan. It can be stirred. It can drain away and it can splash right out of the pond. It can be destroyed."

There was a long pause. Rowan almost fell between strides. Only after he'd recovered did he finally ask, "How can you sleep?"

Blueraven never answered him -- never had the chance. The sun was high and a shadow swept across the land. Then another. And another. And two more after that. Blueraven grit his teeth and hissed ghost-feathers. Rowan looked up in mid-stride to see no fewer than five orc skyships descending towards the mountain range, each one bristling with guns and needless blades. The lead ship had the likeness of a tiger's head with an enormous cannon extending from its jaws, framed by colossal saber teeth. Rowan looked back to the Wizard as he touched down from one stride to the next.

"Did you know this was going to happen?" he asked.

"...I had a hunch," Blueraven admitted. "I told you: My ability to keep track of Time is breaking down. I think they'll notice the road. They won't notice you."

"Or the Brigade."

"I hope. It's on Wormaxe and Aeraul to get them through the mountain."

Rowan nodded and began to gain altitude. "Stay alive, Wizard."

"Tear them apart. I'll join you if I can."

Rowan broke hard and went straight up, leaping from aerial foothold to aerial foothold, chi alone providing traction as he started his ascent up an unseen stairway to Heaven. Far above, there was a sound like a great drum being struck, and a flash of red fire, and a halo of pitch black smoke. Barely a second later, a whole section of the road below ceased to exist.

Game time.

[Caden Law]

Pressure shoved at Caden's back and the heat of flames licked at his ears, all out of synch with when the explosion actually happened behind him, which itself was out of synch with when the bed-sized cannon shell slammed into the road, which actually ended up happening after the road itself wasn't there anymore. The crater, at least, formed when it was supposed to.

The Sorcerer laughed the way that only a nervous wreck can. It was with an effort of will, most of it unconscious, that he remained causally intact even as the world all around him shuddered and broke. A crater formed several hundred feet ahead of him; Caden swerved and dodged an explosion before the shell hit ground. He looked up in time to see a great white halo flickering in the sky, along with the silhouettes of an entire air fleet -- an air battle, actually, complete with shapes jumping from ship to ship and tow lines and smoke -- and then it was all gone. Just Larkatz's vanguard bearing down on him as if guided by divine providence. And maybe they were. Caden knew relatively little about the orc pantheons, but it would hardly have come as a surprise if they were just the Thaynes and their ilk by another name, or if they were every bit as nosy as their Althanian counterparts.

He saw a great emerald fireball arc through the sky and disappear. He heard the tail-end of a scream that never actually began anywhere. He looked up in time to see an airship slam into the nearest mountain top, followed by the barest outline of a great beam of power, and then nothing; the mountain was unscathed and the ship was nowhere in sight. Caden crested around the base of one mountain and went careening down into a valley when at last, he saw them.

An untrained eye would have attributed something mythical to them: twin rows of staggeringly ancient lanterns, ruined beyond easy recognition by the passage of ages. They were enormous things intended to be seen from a distance, and there were yet more lanterns running all around the mountain where they stood. An untrained eye would have thought them mythical in the sense of being signals to the gods, or perhaps precisely laid tributes to ancestors beyond naming. Caden was willing to bet blood money that Stonecoat would have thought as much.

But Caden was more than a mere Wizard or Sorcerer.

He was a sailor.

And he had flown.

Two and two leapt all the way to eight as Blueraven sloped his road and launched himself into the air. The ground behind him detonated as the foreshocks passed and causality began to reassert itself properly. He had a few seconds tumbling along, shoved farther and harder than he would have been by virtue of a shockwave, and then magic coalesced into a cloud around his feet. Surfing low sky, Blueraven went hard to the next mountain, and then the next after that. The deeper into the range, the more populous each row became, until finally Caden passed by ancient structures; towers that had long since collapsed into disrepair. He could feel the weight of the unquiet dead clear through the thin walls of life and the unknowable beyond, even without natural aptitude for it.

Every mountain he passed was shorter than the next, until at last Caden came to a perfectly circular valley where an ancient city once stood. Buildings still rose high and proud, long abandoned things that they were. Skeletons littered the streets, stripped of meat and cloth by the elements, bleached white by the sun, preserved by the apathy of nature; as verdant as the outermost mountains had been, the core of the range went from frosty to desert-like in no time flat. Caden looked over his shoulder to see the five ships looming over some of the distant peaks. He looked ahead to see another seven coming fast. And there was another coming from the West, huge and alone compared to the fleets. Whatever was about to happen would not do so without an incredible backdrop going for it.

Without a warning, the world went black. The last thing Caden remembered was the anticipation of an ugly landing.

[Caden Law]

He awoke to the sound of cannons blazing and high-end magicks cooking off far, far above. Caden didn't even waste time assessing his surroundings; he had crashed into the top floor of an ancient tower of some kind, slammed into someone's study table and somehow ended up on a broken chair with wheels attached. That was good enough for him. He summoned his staff out of a nearby wall, got a running start to the nearest window and almost fell to his death when he absently noticed how all the skeletons here were posed in exactly the same way, unmolested by animals or elements alike. And yet still perfectly stripped and bleached despite the lack of sunlight.

The weight of the dead felt scarier. Caden shook his head and got a running start again-

Stopped cold and dove to one side as the Dark Wizard Wormaxe swooped in and smashed ten thousand year old glass for one of the most pointlessly dramatic entrances Caden had seen in years. His protege went so far as to roll along the ground several times in a manner reminiscent of Rowan or Aeraul before coming up on one knee. His right arm was extended outward, his fingers clutched tight around an eerie length of emerald scales and etched bone.

Did I not say that you would find him here? Asked the disembodied Voice of Kholia Horren, the dead Wizard Blightcrow, which should've been thousands of miles away in a basement somewhere. Just like what Caden now recognized as the severed wing of a guardian dragon (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising/page8) from the antechamber of Sijil Kar's tomb, apparently retooled into some kind of staff-weapon. It looked like a full-length dragon's wing sprouting from a Coronian sword handle.

"That you did," Savas answered noncomittally as the wing folded in on itself and then compressed to the size and general shape of a particularly sturdy seeming wand. In light of that, it took Caden a few seconds to notice that the disembodied Voice was coming from a jawbone strung around Savas' neck like a pendant.

"Where did you get such marvelous toys?" he asked.

"Graveyards," Savas answered as he fitted the wand into the quiver he carried on his belt. It was an easy means of concealing enough wands to decimate a small village. "Among other things. Don't ask how I carry or work with all of them. Trade secret." Cue the unquestionably insane, blocky-toothed grin. It was not the first time Caden had seen his erstwhile apprentice pull off something impressive. Hopefully, it wouldn't be the last. He actually felt, for all of five seconds, a surge of pride in the man. This was what he was really capable of, corpsediddling be damned. "What happened?" he asked.

"I don't know. I think someone sucker-punched me. Where are the others?" Caden asked.

Immediately, something blue up in the skies above. Bits and pieces of wood and metal rained down outside the temple window, accompanied by bits and pieces of humanoid bodies that were burnt beyond further recognition. Someone detonated a high level spell out there, rattling the whole city to its foundations. The answer was an inhumanly mad laugh.

"EYE-BERK HELLHAND WILL NOT FALL TO SUCH PETTY MAGICKS!" Roared a dreadfully familiar Voice.

"THEN HELLHAND'S A-GETTIN' CHOPPED OFF AT THAH WRIST!" another thundering Voice answered, perhaps even louder than the first.

This was, in turn, followed by the roar of a Voice that was neither human nor orc. It blasted through Blueraven's eardrums and hit a purple note somewhere deep in his soul, accompanied by a disquieting feeling of familiarity that he couldn't place even though he desperately wanted to. His knees almost buckled under the sheer weight of the power, the rage, the awful duumvirate of purpose and entitlement. His stomach twisted and he wanted to throw up, but for all the familiarity of that Voice, he couldn't name it for anything. Wormaxe grit his teeth under the onslaught of that dread power, but he was just barely able to stay standing.

"I don't know who that is, but I wish he'd shut the frak up," Wormaxe Said, relying on his own Voice just to be heard above that sorcerous battlecry.

"Can't place it, but I have a sick feeling that I'll know it when I see it. I could throttle the Drifter right now. What in the Ninth Hell's going on out there?"

"A battle of two or three fleets, a rogue ship, an army or two, and worse," Wormaxe explained. "I don't know where Rowan is. I'm assuming he took out one of the orc ships but whatever he's doing now, if he's even alive...can't say one way or another. Situation's gone pear-of-anguish shaped. First it was Larkatz, then the mystery fleet, then fricking dragons showed up, then another orc fleet came out of nowhere. And in the middle of it all's been Hellhand's ship, which pretty much beats up everything that goes near it. I think one of them summoned demons or something, and I think Hellhand's the one behind the flying skeletons."

"Great," Caden rasped to himself as the battlecry finally died down. "What happened to the Brigade?"

"We need to summon them in," Savas answered. "There wasn't any way to get so many men through the mountains on foot. It's not like we can even take part in the fighting."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Ugh. Unsophisticated sounding drivel.

"Guessing that's our eleventh hour savior. Nice to know Larkatz still hasn't consolidated his grip on the orcs," Caden admitted. "Alright. You're the summoner here, not me. What do we need to do?"

"...probably refrain from summoning at all," Savas told him. "I basically yank things through the antifirmament. I don't think a living person would do well with that under ideal circumstances. As nasty as things out there are right now, they're just an echo of what's going on in Dead Man's Land."

Caden stared at him, but Savas said nothing to explain. Their options were limited. His sense of Time had gone out at some point during his unconsciousness, and all Caden had left in its place was a feeling of impending doom. Whatever caused the ripple was getting closer.

"Stonecoat-" Cue another godsawful Roar. "Stonecoat said something about this place being home to a forsaken race of antiquity. A fair folk that sailed the clouds and ruled the land from far above, until at last they ripped open a hole in the sky and ascended to make war on Heaven."

Click.

"Fucking Hellfire."

Click, clickedy, click-click.

"FUCKING HELLFIRE!"

"What?" Savas mutely asked, the actual sound of the question lost beneath the roar.

"Fair folk my godsforsaken ass, Drifter! STOP SCREWING WITH ME!"

The city rattled under the force of another sky high detonation. Larkatz's Voice echoed like thunder, audible even over the roar and the blast. Blueraven's Voice muted all of them.

"What the hells?" Wormaxe asked.

Blueraven turned to the nearest window and got a running start. He didn't even waste a breath explaining.

He just.

Kept.

Moving.

All the way down.

[Caden Law]

Elves came to the shores of Raiaera (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?321-Timeline-of-Althanas) from unseen lands, first setting foot where Anebrilith used to be; where Beinost is today.

Kebiras has no elves (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?13962-Between-the-Numbers) now, only the Treserán, who could almost be mistaken for savage green elves in their own right.

And these same Treserán speak an archaic form of Raiaeran. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?13962-Between-the-Numbers&p=112038&viewfull=1#post112038)

Elves ultimately derive from the Sidhe and the Eldarin, (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20799-The-Red-Requiem-in-Cresting-Summer&p=164961&viewfull=1#post164961) a collection of inhumanly beautiful, utterly alien proto-elves isolated to the Red Forest of Lindequalmë, not too far from where Anebrilith once stood.

The Elves worship a pantheon of alien gods, (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20799-The-Red-Requiem-in-Cresting-Summer&p=166707&viewfull=1#post166707) no matter how they may dress it up or down to soften the sheer otherness of their deities.

Someone lied in the Book of Thayne Lore, (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising&p=185616&viewfull=1#post185616) and it's almost impossible to know just how much.

Time in Althanas can be, has been, and will continue to be rewritten -- because it's never truly been written at all. It is a liquid. It ripples. It has tides, bubbles, and currents.

And it can splash.

Things can be dropped in and plucked out.

There was a War in Heaven and the Elves and their Star-Gods lost.

They were cast out in kind, the Eldarin and the Treserán, their gods warped and chained, and all of History broken in their wake as two shattered peoples grew apart and became lesser versions of the eldritch divinities they could have been.

To the victorious Thaynes go the spoils.

But the relics, Caden knew in his gut, the relics were still there. Waiting. Because someone made sure to drop them into place, someone who knew that the losers still had a purpose to serve in the grand scheme of things. And it was just like the Sage God of the Desert to put his pieces exactly where they would find one another, whether they were cooperating or not.

He hit the ground like a bomb going off. Magic ripped apart a dozen layers of sediment and stone and artificial construction, until he had dropped all the way down into a dark chamber resembling nothing so much as the rifled interior of a great cannon, where every groove was lined with scriptures of truly ancient proto-language; words so old that Caden only viscerally understood them at best. He began to work magic again and slowed his descent until at last, down in the dark beneath a city of the dead, he saw exactly what he knew was waiting for him.

Big Salvic boots clunked down on hard, eldritch wood.

It wasn't a stairway to Heaven, but it'd do just fine.

[Leaf on the Wind]

Cannonfire shattered a cloud of smoke and lead shot the size of fists raked across a hull of harshly enchanted wood and metal, gouging out huge holes and mangling orcs within sprays of fire and shrapnel. Rowan ran just a few steps ahead of the onslaught, his katar dragging through the air alongside him. He reached the end of the ship's side and jumped clear, surrendering to the twin forces of gravity and inertia so as to better conserve chi. It hadn't been nearly long enough since the last time he did something like this.

The ship behind him stayed aloft, flaming, with a trio of dragons malevolent rising up on its other side and blasting orcs clear off the deck with thin blasts of superheated air. Bodies caught fire as they passed the edge of the deck. It was a long way down.

Rowan slammed down on top of another airship, this one a more balloon-like vessel that reminded him of the airships Aeraul spoke of, the ones in Alerar. It was more heavily armed and armored than any elven contraption could ever hope to be, but there were still plenty of similarities -- up to and including point defenses on top of the ship. Rowan dodged them only by virtue of being a pale target wreathed in teal light on the bright blue background of the open skies, an already obscure candle flickering under the glow of magic more intense than he even cared to think about. Even upon landing, the orcs didn't pay him any attention; they were huge things conforming to the ork trope, similar to the ones he'd seen and heard of back in Long Teeth. They were lost in the sound of their guns going off, laughing insanely as they tried to shoot down the flights of dragons that elegantly wove between their shots.

The whole boat rattled as Rowan came to his feet, a stray spell from the titanic confrontations playing out all over the airborne battlefield. An undefined mass of Hellhand's necromantic constructs was swarming all over one of the demons summoned by the dragonriders, tearing out huge chunks of its flesh even as it cut a bloody swath through their ranks en route to the very ship Rowan had just fled. When the whole ball of violence hit, they smashed right through the already broken, burning hull and proceeded to tear the ship and crew apart from inside, all while trying to obliterate each other. Rowan didn't have time enough to watch the whole show play out. He had work to do.

He ran up and stabbed one of the gunners in the back, severing his spine and taking out three or four major organs in the process. The katar had a big, nasty blade. The ork didn't seem especially surprised -- he barely even noticed until Rowan yanked the blade out and kicked him over the side. He battlecried all the way out of earshot. Rowan moved to his next target and took the head off another ork with one hooking sweep of his katar, then got to a third and settled for kicking him off the ship outright.

No sooner had he opened up a gap in the ship's defenses than it was being exploited by a dragonrider. The beast swooped in like some kind of chimeric falcon, clawed hind-limbs dragging foot-deep scars into the metal armor as it broke to a stop. It was shaped like a cross between a brightly feathered bat and a horse with a crocodile's head and a long, thin tail ending in peacock feathers. It was also armored as much as the rider could get away with. Rowan didn't get a good look at him, but he wore all black leathers and lightly made armor, complete with a hood and a strangely shaped mask and goggles to protect his eyes. He was carrying what looked like a cross between a rifle and a staff weapon with a blade slung under the tip. Without even taking the time to aim his shots properly, he started picking off orks while the dragon braced itself and took a breath deep enough to visibly inflate its chest cavity.

Rowan, being Rowan, considered this the perfect time to run up and stab the dragon through a gap in its armor.

The explosion that followed completely stripped him of his battle aura and knocked him right off the balloon's edge. The boat itself shuddered and the balloon folded in half at the middle, tearing off huge strips of metal and spewing bolts out like rapid-firing gunshots. Gravity kicked in. The boat dropped. Aeraul spread his limbs out to maximize air resistance and the ship barely fell past him a full minute later. It took that long for him to recover enough that he could reach out with his chi and slow himself to a relative stop high above the earth.

The ship crashed somewhere in the mountains, exploding with a visible shockwave. Rowan stood up in the sky and cracked his neck a few times. He was bleeding all over. There was a major burn on his sword arm. Chi rose from his feet to his knees, knees to hips, and hips to shoulders, out from there. He got a running start and went back to the battle with an eye on Hellhand's ship.

[Leaf on the Wind]

Rowan wasn't the only one. It looked like everything was converging on Hellhand's battleship. And not without reason.

In a sky full of steampunk malevolence, demonic entities run amok, dragons spewing fire and the magical assassins riding their backs, where spells were going off like bombs in every direction at once, Hellhand's battleship was still the biggest, nastiest, meanest looking thing flying. It was a rickety boat made of dragon bones and rotten liviol, held aloft less by magic than by its own disdain for laws of nature -- it might as well have been an unliving being in its own right. Its sails were nothing less than leathered quilts sewn from the flesh of hundreds, and its crew was a ragged mixture of skeletons and fresh undead still screaming and crying as they followed unspoken orders from their hellish captain.

Here and now, the Warlock stood close to his ship's helm as if brazenly demanding that his enemies take shots at him. More than a few took him up on the offer, but none of their attacks made it to within five feet. Hellhand's wards were too powerful, too thorough, and not even magekiller rounds were getting through this time. He bellowed his own war cry every so often and only Larkatz and one other dared to respond.

By the time Rowan had come within a minute's jog of the battleship's keel, it was overshadowed by the sleek shape of Larkatz's personal flagship. More than twenty cannon rained down on Hellhand's position with steel shots on the order of a hundred pounds each, and covered in antimagic scripts. Most glanced off of the battleship's defenses as Hellhand brandished his staff and readied his counterattack. Five of them made it through and tore into the topmost decks, plowing down into more than three dozen underdecks that had been crammed into place by the laws and whims of magic rather than physics; it was no surprise that Hellhand's battleship would be bigger inside than out.

Larkatz's ship coasted hard around to Hellhand's side, sweeping underneath and looping back for another go. Rowan reached Hellhand's keel as the second volley came in, yet even over the racket of steel rending through rotwood and bone, he could hear Larkatz's Voice.

"I'MA COMIN' FOR YA, EYE-BERK! I'MA TEAR YA GODSDAMNED HEART OUT AN' EAT IT!"

A cannonball tore out through the bottom of the ship, taking several skeletons with it. In pieces. Rowan glanced himself over to make sure he hadn't been hit, then scrambled inside. He wasted no time with fighting his way through each deck, all of which ranged from seven to eighteen feet tall. Larkatz had already cleared a path for him.

Rowan came topside at the very moment that Larkatz's Voice rang out again -- "C'MON, BERK! WE GOT A 'LOCK TO BREAK!"

The uruk slammed down from his own ship surrounded by a halo of crumbling magicks, accompanied by a near-man-sized goblin with a great big rifle and more secondary guns than Rowan cared to think about. Several other orks and borcs followed suit, but none of them were anywhere near as intimidating as Larkatz the Butcher. He was nothing less than an engine of destruction, charging across the deck at breakneck speeds while Hellhand started triggering his contingencies. Skeletons rose from the ship's insides, spirits burst through the wood, fresh undead blocked the Butcher's path -- and not one of them so much as slowed him down. He was covered from head to toe in runes both defensive and destructive and there wasn't a damn thing they could do to stop him. Those servants of Hellhand that had a physical form were simply swatted aside, if he even paid attention to them at all.

Axes in hand, Larkatz bullrushed up the stairs towards the pilot's station. Hellhand met him at the top with a blast of raw magical power that actually glassed the air around it, but the uruk barely slowed at all. He sliced through the spell ten times in rapid succession, then brought both axes to bear on the Warlock. He was like a berserker who had gone so far past the oceans of rage that he had charted a new continent of incomprehensibly tranquil fury on the other side. It was all Hellhand could do, even with powers augmented by his time on the other side, to block those murderous axes with his staff. The deck shattered around his feet, splintering up but holding in spite of itself.

Rowan was so transfixed upon the sight of the duel that he almost lost his head. Kneejerk reflexes saved him from one of Larkatz's orks, and swift work with the katar kept him alive after that. It was all a green blur for too many long, miserable seconds; green and red and bleached white and teal. Rowan Screamed and couldn't even hear the sound of his own Voice. He heard gunshots at the end of the battle and saw the goblin put one right through all of Hellhand's defenses, between his legs without actually hitting him. It didn't have to hit him. It just had to puncture enough of the wards to put the Warlock off balance. Hellhand roared so loud and with such force that it blew Larkatz down the stairs and annihilated the helmsman beside him. The Warlock leapt after him, his staff shining like hellfire, casting shadow rather than light. Larkatz rolled clear and Hellhand smote the deck before him, blasting a hole clear through his own ship.

The two orcs had just enough time to look each other in the eye. They started to attack.

And then a great mirror-feathered dragon billowed up alongside the ship. Its rider wore all red and gold. His hands were held high overhead, clutching what looked like a newborn star of blood and fire.

"Fuck," Rowan managed to blurt out.

[Savas Tigh]

To normal people, apophenia -- the tendency to see patterns where there might not be any -- is somewhere between a justification for superstitious belief and a serious hindrance in day-to-day life. For a Wizard, apophenia is a survival skill. It can be the difference between spotting a hidden curse and getting your soul blasted out of your body and ripped apart.

For Savas Tigh, here and now at the heart of the Seven Steps of Heaven, it was cause for what could charitably be called concern.

More like pants-shitting terror, really, but concern is a much nicer word.

As the latest spell of mass destruction went off and cast the world in an unholy mix of reds and blacks and yellows and oranges, Savas saw patterns forming in the battlefield. He saw the rudimentary formation of a grand arcanum, the likes of which he hadn't witnessed in anything but stories. Its points were explosions that never seemed to end, thin trails of heat and cold that only barely stood out at any distance, and the shaped distortions within them that looked oddly like Sideways writing. It was precise work writ macrocosmically large on a microcosmic scale, and Savas had a grim feeling that he was the first to notice it. And he was much too far away, too far below it all, to even try doing something about it.

The sky was immediately clear, but what few clouds remained had formed a broken circle around the sky battle. And at the center of it all, there was Hellhand's battleship, covered in collapsing magicks, demons, dragonfire and worse. The red glow faded and Savas could finally see that most of the ship's midsection had been blown off on the starboard side, annihilated clear out of creation with one huge hit. And now a great mirrored dragon had landed in the vessel's gaping wound, spewing a tight stream of rainbow-colored fire like a napalm sandblaster.

Another huge spell went off and the dragon and its rider both survived, though they'd been blown away from the ship. And there were sparks all over Hellhand's vessel, and the dragon was coming around for another go and-

There.

Savas squinted to see, but he could just barely make it out.

A small ship, thousands of feet above the battle. Something was glowing upon its bow.

Savas felt his blood run cold as the glow started to descend at the speed of a freshly cast spell, aimed for a point that he recognized as the exact center of the arcanum.

Just before it could hit, there was an enormous flash of golden lit from below; the magical afterburn of an ancient engine turning for the first time in countless eons.

Glow hit flash.

With a ripple, the sky tore wide open.

[Caden Law]

Space warped and, like the thin film stretched taut around a soap bubble, Time burst. All laws of causality and physics went screaming out of a window that doesn't exist in a direction that can be neither named nor pointed to. Viewed from afar, from a nice safe distance, it looked like nothing less than a snowman made out of overlapping hydrogen explosions that forced the atmosphere above the Seven Steps higher and higher until it formed a more conventional bubble out into space. And then, still a nice safe distance from where Time was gone and Space had broken, the bubble stretched.

It reached. The stars were not all right, but the only one that mattered was exactly where it needed to be, when it needed to be there. A tunnel formed through the void between Althanas and its sole remaining moon, and the atmosphere of the world below seemed to stretch and replicate itself to extremes not seen in eons...

...but that's for later.

Assuming that there can be a later.

There is no now, there was no future, there will be no past. This is the sort of thing that motivated the closure of the Tap. Magic is, at its most fundamental conception, a distortion of Space and a defiance of the laws of physics built up around it. It's willpower affecting physical reality. And Time as we know it -- as Caden Law knows it -- is all bound up by Space. Time is defined by physical entropy; the forever countdown to something so far in the future that balding little monkeys like the Wizard will never even know what it is. Break Space, as happens when you or someone else conducts a truly epic Working, and you break Time by default. It's a lot like detonating a grenade underwater. Time is displaced. Some of it is destroyed outright.

What remains is a tangled chaotic mess, endless ripples cascading off of and into each other.

And were it not for the layered games and infinite machinations of the Sage God, it would've stayed that way. The explosion that never happened would've always happened, it would've been there and not been there forever and never at the same time; a paradox of logic and existence threatening the very fabric of the world. But that's not how this is going to work. And there's one tiny, battle-scarred reason for it. It's an amalgamation of concepts and words with too many Names, spread thin but rapidly dragging itself back together with an awful, incomprehensible force of will. It is a man, because a man is nothing more than an assortment of concepts bundled up in an identity sheltered by meat and, if he's lucky, a few layers of cloth on top of that.

This one is a Wizard. He is a Sorcerer. Most importantly, he is a time traveler. And he is at the heart of all of this. He is more than a character; he is a story, and he will write himself back into existence. He is doing so right now, in fact.

A boy stands in the wilderness of Berevar, and then speaks as a man slamming shut a mausoleum in the fields of Raiaera. He turns and drives a sword into the darkness of the Catacombs, snaps his fingers and puts a bomb in the face of a void that used to be a woman who no longer exists. Twenty years from now he stabs a dragon-man in the neck and fifteen minutes ago his boots landed on an eldritch wooden deck. He lay in a bed as the lost love of his life told him of her marriage and her daughter, he stood in a darkened cave as a woman he didn't know broke his heart with the story of all his worst jokes.

He's shouting to an assembly of farmers and brigands, the dead and the living and all the unforgotten. He's staring into the eyes of a man full of freshly devoured evil, throwing one of his friends out of a fighting ring, and having his pains laid bare by a half-man. He's running for his life down dark tunnels and striding through great doors like he owns them.

Concepts bundling together and branching out. People popping back into existence to fill the gaps where they used to be, defining themselves and defining others in the process; the greatest Hat trick any mage can pull, and hardly anybody will ever know. Between the numbers of physics and time, in the intricacies of asymmetry between here and now, far beyond any mere bridge of souls and the slings and arrows surrounding them, Caden Law willed himself back into existence, into his own likeness, and then imposed reality onto the world around him. Time bubbled out around him. The snowman began to spread wide and thin, crushed between time within itself and time outside.

In the end, it became nothing more than a ripple.

Causality reasserted itself and Caden collapsed to his hands and knees on the deck. A few seconds later, Savas Tigh was standing next to him. Blueraven Brigade literally appeared all over the ship, bringing their significant others and their Kebiran comrades with them. Aeraul collapsed against the nearest mast, biting down on a scream so hard that his jaw looked discolored. Rowan popped into existence not too far from the helm. The rest of the world followed suit.

Something wavered through him and the Wizard almost threw up at the sensation, prickling along the edges of his extra perceptions. He looked up, now that there was an Up to look at, and saw the dragons popping into existence one after another until the sky was repopulated with beasts and their riders, and demons too. There was a great Screaming from between the walls of disparate realities, and the flaming hulk of Hellhand's ghostship arced high in what was now the emerald sky, barrel rolling twice before it came back down and annihilated the tip of a mountain near the range's edge. Even then, a skeletal thing leapt clear of it and began to ascend at breakneck speeds.

Larkatz's fleet was gone.

If it had ever existed in the first place.

Caden's eyes homed in on one of the dragons, distant and indistinct save for its rider. He wore red to all the others' black. And, Caden knew without being able to see, he carried a sword from another Time and Place.

"Well," he rasped. "That makes things more interesting."

"What the fuck just happened?!" Aeraul finally blurted out. It had the net effect of stunning everyone else to thoughtless silence before they could even start panicking.

"I may or may not be looking at the enemy the Drifter told me about," Caden answered as he stood.

"Not likely," Savas said. "I saw someone high above the battle. And, in case you haven't noticed..."

He pointed up.

There was a hole in the sky.

"If that doesn't look like a stairway to Heaven, nothing does," Savas declared, and instinctively Caden knew...

"...someone's already ahead of us."

[Caden Law]

It was a tunnel through space, one that gradually turned the blue and white of a cloudy summer sky the further into it one moved. And the eldritch vessel moved quickly.

It was like an elven sea vessel without sails, its masts instead connecting to an intricate ring-shaped array that encircled the ship from top to bottom, connecting again at several other parts of the hull. The air around the keel burned bright, and so did the ring itself, with an ever shifting mass of colors; green, yellow, light reds, and abnatural blues. It was long and sleek, colored brown, green, and gold, and it was like the whole damn boat had simply grown into shape without any work ever actually being put into an assembly process. Even the metallic parts and the bits that seemed to be glass or crystal had the look of natural phenomena.

Its bow tapered to what looked like an incredibly elegant silver blade or lance-end, shining in the strange glow of outer space that wasn't.

Blueraven and company had adjusted to the whole change of scenery with remarkable swiftness. A sense of apocalyptic urgency will do that. The ship moved with an incredible quickness, leaving behind faint halos of fire every so often. Dragons trailed behind it, some of the riders shooting off spells and some of the mounts spewing hyper-focused blasts of heat; all of it hit a barrier spell covering the ship's rear, causing nothing but pretty lights for the crew's entertainment. The only things able to keep pace with it were Hellhand's skeletal ride and a horde of demons, all of them fluttering in and out of the tunnel at will. They suffocated for long, painful seeming moments on the outside, then dove back in with gasping shrieks and reckless abandon. Most hit the ship's wards and bounced off. A few pressed on and were incinerated. One or two actually made it through, reaching the vessel in such a sad state that the Brigade tore them apart like it was a training exercise intended to boost morale.

"This is entirely too convenient," Savas eventually pointed out from beside the helm, which looked nothing like any that they had ever seen. It included a chair and a small, flexible wheel that could be pushed or pulled for vertical orientation's sake. It was also surrounded by circular wards in a language that looked vaguely Diamonic in origin.

"Never look a gift mantis in the mouth," Caden advised him from experience. He had taken over the role of pilot. It was almost as if the ship had been made for him, or perhaps just someone like him. Just holding the steering wheel was enough to make his Mark light up from head to toe. "You really don't want to see what goes on between its mandibles."

"...not what I meant. This thing doesn't even have a name."

"Sure it does," Caden said. "Hey, Aeraul! What's this ship's name?"

"The Wild Aeon!" Aeraul shouted from where he and a half-dozen others were impaling a demon through its midsection. It was a huge beast, barely intact after its surge through the wards. Its blood burnt away as soon as it left the body.

"...how the hells did you know that would happen?" Savas mumbled.

"I guessed."

"That makes about as much sense as anything else, I suppose."

[Savas Tigh]

"I'm not seeing things, am I?" Savas asked after a while. He had resigned to letting the rest of the Brigade take care of point defense. He would've felt superfluous if he wasn't busy losing his grasp on what little already questionable sanity he had left.

"You're not seeing things," Caden told him.

The tunnel of atmosphere -- the Stairway to Heaven -- was a spiral. Sort of. It went all the way out into space -- deep, empty, utterly barren space where not even rocks dwell en route to burning up in something's atmosphere. And then it arced back, forming several huge loops until it completely encircled the north pole of the moon, arcing down several thousands of miles towards the equator on the far side from Althanas. That was not the part that nipped at the edges of Savas Tigh's twisted mind.

It was what he saw on the moon itself that hurt him.

It was what lay on the other side of the most benign object in all the night skies.

It was a body. A not-quite-humanoid body, laying in the surface of the moon like a man partially submerged in a bathtub. Knees stuck out, spread wide and arching high, but nowhere near as high as the body's arms. They plunged out into the void like impossible vast towers, which split into great platforms and that hosts more towers still, and everything was crooked where joints -- unevenly proportioned joints -- stood, locked into place with the chains of ages and some unknown but terribly knowable purpose to shape them. The body's face was undetailed, save for its gaping toothless mouth, which looked like nothing so much as an irregularly shaped crater near the south pole.

He spanned the dark side of the moon.

And someone had chained him there, binding his misshapen wrists in manacles so vast that all the iron on the surface of Althanas couldn't have made them.

He was not alone.

The closer they got, the more bodies they saw. None of them anywhere near as huge as the first, the ultimate, but all of them colossal in their own right. They were as big as cities, and some still burned in their own eternal funeral pyres, producing no smoke or light or shadow save what was necessary to see them at a distance. And there were actual cities on the moon too. Dozens of them, bigger than anything that any of the Brigadiers had ever seen. They were like clusters of blue pyramids covered in towers and lights, many of them broken and none of them flaming. Things whipped through the space between them, small specks when viewed from high orbit, but probably vast constructs if viewed up close.

"You know," Caden mumbled as they began to descend. "The real frightening part is that there's something bigger in there. And something even more monstrous hiding just out of Time. We're passing through it right now. It feels...familiar."

"...I'm afraid," Savas admitted to himself. Because he could sense something hiding out on the other side of reality. Something so big that it made the monstrous spirits of Kebiras look like ants. Something so big that the material universe would probably collapse around it if it were ever brought back. And it had been here once before. Long, long ago.

Savas looked out at the sun, flashing so brightly through the arcane atmosphere around the Wild Aeon.

"It's watching you," Caden told him.

"I don't think-I-"

"It's alive, you know," Caden said with almost morbid neutrality in his voice. There were still demons pounding at the ship's wards, still dragons and a skeletal monster chasing after them, still whatever lay in wait, and yet Savas' master was completely calm. "There was a War in Heaven, Savas. And the Sun was one of the losers."

Savas looked around, at the stars just barely standing out along the daylit tunnel walls, and the strangely spreading atmosphere that preceded them.

The sky was full of stars, Savas was realizing for the very first time.

And the stars were all gods.

And they hated him so much.

They hated everyone so, so much.

"Can you...feel it?" he asked, still mumbling as the full weight of epiphany trembled in his knees. "This far out, I...I can't...I..."

"It's like the weight of the world's off your shoulders, huh?" Caden asked.

Savas looked back at Althanas, by now nothing more than a speck of blue and green and brown barely visible over the north pole.

It was alive too.

"I think I'm gonna vomit," he said.

"Do it overboard. And then get ready. I don't think this is gonna be as easy as it looks."

"Easy?!"

[Aeraul Smythe]

Imagine a pressure.

One that's with you every single hour of every single day, from the very instant of your earliest memory to the last breath passing between your lips. It's a pressure so utterly omnipresent that it becomes as intangible to you as the very air around you, as easily missed as the clothes on your skin or the hair on your head. It's a pressure that both is and isn't a part of you. Sooner or later, even if you notice it in your quiet hours, when you're bored or suffering easy distraction, you just stop paying attention all together.

Now imagine how insanely disorienting and liberating and maddening the epiphany is when that pressure just stops.

Aeraul had been close to speechless for the better part of several hours; the length and breadth of the time it took to go from Kebiras to the moon. His only words had been reflexive answers to questions whose sources he wasn't even paying attention to. His body moved from nothing but the synergy of the Brigade, every single sweep and thrust of his sword guided by his allies at some level or another. He could sense more than just emotions now; he sensed intentions, read thoughts without words, understood it all so deeply that it was impossible to describe with any language of mortal kind. And he wasn't just connecting to his Brigadiers.

Aeraul connected to demons and the undead, and touched the hearts and minds and empty pits where there should have been souls. He could feel the maddened battle-lust of Kebiran dragons, and the hurricane of emotions belonging to their riders. He could even feel, at a distance, the alien thoughts and emotions of Hellhand, whose actual name rested on the tip of his tongue like a forgotten word from his childhood.

A demon passed through the wards. It was on fire, less than an inch beyond its skin. It was twelve feet tall, half as wide at the shoulders, and so inhumanly muscular that it was grotesque to look at. It carried an enormous sword of boiling red steel and wore similarly boiling armor on its legs and torso, exposing its upper body like some kind of suicidally brazen challenge. Which it was. Aeraul knew it was. Just like he knew one of his men, Liam of Hegel, was mad enough to try and accept that challenge head on. Aeraul seamlessly circled around and sliced the demon across its back with his cutlass. His jian thrust up into the wound and twisted. It was all a distraction clearing the way for Liam to stab the demon up through its chin and into its brain, but there was no rage or defeat; only a placid sense of calm, hateful respect tucked away under layers and layers of obfuscation.

The demon lies, and now Aeraul knew it so intimately that he was almost ashamed. What looked like naked rage was actually calculated performance; it knew it couldn't win, it just wanted to instill fear. The demon went for a deathblow and he cut its arms clean at the elbows, jian to one and cutlass to the other. They were so light now. Everything was so light.

Caden knew why, indirectly, and because he knew Aeraul knew. The world lived. It breathed. And it hated. It seethed with raw, barely tamed hatred. It didn't host life willingly. The Thaynes forced life upon the miserable, stormy rock of Althanas, just because they could. It was an example to the countless worlds beyond, and its parent star had to watch as life ate away at one of its precious children. It all made sense now. It was beautiful. Twisted and nightmarish and beautiful and he never wanted to go back because already, even now, the graveyard moon was preferable to the cancer-riddled planet below it. The moon wanted life, it seemed. It wanted life more than anything else. That's why it had none.

Truly, Aeraul knew, the gods were cruel. Life was a punishment as much as it was a prison. Revulsion to necromancy was literally built into the system. Revulsion to a lot of things were built in, in fact. So much had been engineered in for the sake of misery and...

Misery.

As Aeraul thoughtlessly butchered the demon's face off, noting Liam's withdrawal, he glanced over to Rowan and knew, at a gut level, exactly what had happened to him. Even feeling it secondhand was painful. To understand it was worse than that, because his empathy was now so free that he could gleam feelings from the people in someone else's memories. He felt the love of Liam's family just as keenly as he felt the sadistic hatred and abhorrent joy of Rowan's masters. His stomach twisted.

Another demon broke through.

Something worse was waiting.

Aeraul looked to Caden and mused at the truth of him, but he forgot every single thing he was going to say at the moment he was going to say it. This didn't anger him. He was at peace now, the half-man, half-orc. He was at peace and it was beautiful. He didn't have to worry about surpassing his victory in Scara Brae. He didn't have to worry about anything, really, because Aeraul could feel through space and as his senses decompressed in Space, they began to unhinge in Time.

But all that would be over soon.

[Leaf on the Wind]

Hellhand's mount tore open the chest cavity of an offending dragon, spilling assorted viscera into the sky-tunnel and dragging the beast along for several long seconds before internal connections gave way to the forces of air resistance and the mount's own violent head movements. The rider dismounted and leapt for his life, catching hold of the mount's bony wing. He held fast for a while, clearly screaming for help in an inhuman tongue, and then a great hand of abnatural fire ignited all around him, squeezing tight. Bloody red vapor and flash-dried ash spewed out from between the fingers and the rider fell away in bits and pieces. A moment later, siege magicks slammed into the mount and blew off chunks of bone.

The beast was nothing if not purposefully engineered. It could've been put together from an assembly of dragon parts, but it was more like an amalgam of nightmares pulled out of the other side with Hellhand himself during his ruinous return from the Antifirmament. It had three heads, all of them draconic and forward-horned. It had six massive wings, five tails of varying lengths, and no shortage of reaching claws and jagged protrusions. Hellhand himself rode in the creature's fortified ribcage, standing tall with arms crossed and staff hovering beside him. For all the havoc he wrought, for all the carnage of battle, he seemed completely unfazed and inattentive.

The dragonriders were fewer in number, relying on summoned demons and wore to try and make up for their losses. Their leader had placed himself squarely between Hellhand and the Wild Aeon, alternating between attacks on both. His were the only direct spells that seemed to have any effect on either, and the others may as well have been running interference for him.

Rowan was cognizant of all this, but the best he could do was report it to the Wizards who already seemed to know everything. Wormaxe looked numb with shock. Blueraven had his usual resolute wits about him. It would've been comforting if there weren't demons breaking through the Wild Aeon's wards in ever increasing numbers. And the skies were expanding. The deeper into the moon's atmosphere the ship descended, the easier it was to breathe. It didn't take long before the air grew humid and cold either, as magic of one sort gave way to another. And it didn't take long for the skies to get crowded as the Aeon leveled out in pursuit of some ship that Blueraven and Wormaxe both claimed to see.

Blue ships. They looked vaguely similar to the Aeon, but only in the sense of having similar ring-engines and keel layouts. Most were bulkier by far, without any obvious armaments. None of them even twitched in response to the battle clattering onto their collective doorstep. Down in the streets, horseless carriages blazed through streets without wheels, lit by lamps without flames, and eldritch things wandered the pale light of the urban forevernight, stalking the shadows of mountain-sized pyramids. It was a vivid picture of living decay, one that would've made Rowan think of the flaming red cities of Haidia if only by sheer contrast -- if he had time to actually stop and study any of it.

By the time the Wild Aeon had gotten close enough to pass between pyramids, the dragons had caught up. One lunged it, plowing straight through the wards on pure brute force, feathers boiling off of its toughened hide as it snapped down on the men of Blueraven Brigade. Rowan dodged a bite that took off another man's arm and part of his upper torso. Chi swirled around him in a tangle of metaphysical flame and ghost leaves as he jumped up and took the rider with one strong hooking punch, katar leading the way right through his chest and shoulder. Rowan sprang off from the wing joint and dove back to the deck with a teal scream, trailed by a mangled dead body as Brigadiers bore the dragon to the deck and pierced its vitals from every direction.

Another dragon followed suit.

"Find something to hold onto!" Blueraven warned, his Voice carrying over the racket of men screaming and dying to a blast of concentrated, superheated air bordering on magic in its intensity. Rowan dodged by the skin of his teeth. A spell shot by him, plowed into the dragon's mouth as the heat blast ended, blew out a chunk of its neck but didn't kill it.

Wild Aeon dove hard, trailed by demons and dragons. Hellhand's mount was already down below. Spinning wildly, the ship wove between two smaller towers and dragons slammed through eldritch stone and glass and metal. Several more men were lost in maneuvers, and others held on only because someone else grabbed them at the right moment.

Rowan wasn't one of them. He lost footing and concentration in the same moment. He was out of anyone's reach. He tumbled free of the Wild Aeon, passing through its wards and rocketing free, accelerated along through magic and gravity. He Screamed as he went plowing through the remnants of an already broken window, hit the floor, bounced up and tore through several flimsy walls and an eerie assortment of furniture; chairs on wheels, desks built into those same flimsy walls, strange blocks of metal and glass covered in eldritch runes and freakish lights. He hit broken metal doors and tumbled into a small room suspended by ancient, already damaged cables.

The cables snapped.

It was a long, long way down.

[Leaf on the Wind]

It took him a while to drag himself out a mass of debris that used to be a small room, now little more than wreckage far underground at the bottom of a vertical tunnel. He was bleeding all over, picking bits and pieces of metal and wood from his skin as he limped out into the street. The denizens of this strange city looked...

Generic.

They could've been anything. They were so generic that Rowan found himself forgetting what they looked and sounded like as soon as he looked away from them. All wore the same kinds of androgynous clothing, same patterns, same everything. All of their faces were bland beyond recognition. All their voices sounded the same. They were drones. They were barely even aware that Rowan was there in the city beside them.

"This is Limbo," one or another answered when he grabbed and shook them for answers. "This is Limbo. Where nobody knows your name. Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"Godsdammit," Rowan wheezed as he staggered down what he now recognized as walkways. "Never thought I'd actually be angry to get this kinda treatment."

He made it through several more introductions and questions, then found a street corner and leaned against it with his eyes wide open. He was afraid of what he'd see when he blinked. It wasn't Haidia. It wasn't anything like Haidia. But he couldn't think of anything else. Haidia had been his home for...it felt like years. And everyone in Haidia had known him, even when they didn't. That was at the low end of the things that had ruined him there.

The man called Rowan Stormwind disappeared from the city of Scara Brae (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising&p=185925&viewfull=1#post185925) not long after the Day of the Black Silk Son. He stepped into a shop and the door closed behind him and when he opened his eyes, he was lost in a Hell unlike anything myth will tell you. Haidia is just a word to most people; it's a name without meaning, because most are only educated of its existence through barely truthful stories told by people who weren't there to see what they were talking about. At best. Rowan had been there. He had been consigned to Haidia by his own foolishness and the things done to him and by him and around him were unspeakable.

They started with his body, rearranging his scars and turning him inside out and playing with him until he couldn't stand it. Then they twisted his soul into knots, tied tight and then severed with a swiftness worthy of Gordian myth. They molded him until he was unrecognizable to himself. They set him loose on people from times and places he didn't know. They bred him. They mangled him. They butchered him. They ate pieces off of him and then they threw him into an arena for their own sick amusement. And then, somewhere along the way, someone decided to take him back to his base.

They got a lot of details wrong. That's why Rowan's scars weren't right. But he was close enough for his soul to take care of the rest, shaping him back into himself or something like it. From a blob of meat to a man in hours and hours, and he could remember every last drop of blood and every last lump of gore that squeezed out in the process. That was why he had changed so much. His body was nothing but a reflection of willpower and spirit, so reliant on the designs of his broken down soul that he couldn't turn his powers off even when he tried. They were the main thing holding him together.

"You okay?" Caden asked from beside him.

"Hells no," Rowan Laughed. "How long was I out? Where's the ship?"

The Wizard helped him up from the ground, bracing him as they looked after the smoke trail. "I have no idea," he answered.

Rowan tightened his grip on the katar. He still hadn't let go. "Can't see too well right now. What happened to your coat?"

"Had to ditch it when I got off the ship," Caden answered as they started down the walkway, Limbo's denizens treading facelessly around them. "Needed to lay low. Don't look up but we've got company."

Something exploded. Rowan looked up anyway.

The orc skyfleet was up there. "Where the hells..."

"I dropped them back in," Caden said. "Got desperate. Needed to buy some time so I could get my bearings."

"You can do that?" Rowan Mumbled. He started to laugh.

He felt a pinch in his neck, then his blood began to run cold. Literally.

"...oh Gods dammit," Rowan rasped as the world faded to black.

It took ten seconds for his legs to hit the ground. Just a few more for the rest of him to flop down, lifeless as a puppet with its strings cut. The people of Limbo never even noticed.

[Aeraul Smythe]

There was fire and fury and, at the heart of it all on a deck of eldritch wood beyond age, there was a sense of absolute calm and awareness.

Aeraul slit the head off an orc boarder with the speed and grace of a nimble dancer half his size. He could sense hundreds more just like the decapitated corpse, waiting in the wings and warring in the skies of a corpseyard moon. He could sense the emotions of the Brigadiers as they fought for their lives and lost the battle, man by desperate man. Liam of Hegel thought of his family as a hooked blade tore out his intestines and sent him flying overboard. Rathorn Southron laughed and laughed and laughed until his lungs flooded with blood; he was surrounded by bodies and pieces of bodies near the bow of the ship. He was in shock and it was either laugh or cry as the world started to fade out.

Rowan was gone.

Aeraul took his cutlass through a dismounted dragonrider's midsection, then batted the torso away with his jian. The deck was as sticky as it was slick. Simon Graves was cold and afraid and his left hand kept twitching even though the arm was gone and he wasn't far from the ground now. Tanner Macheus remembered his hometown as he ducked and wove between lashing blades and whistling shots that blew quick-sealing holes in the wood at his feet. He put a sturdy dagger -- a mail piercer -- straight through one orc's jaw and leveraged him into another's line of fire. He was numb beyond reckoning, a great dam of calm holding back unbelievable terror as he began, desperately, to want to live.

Rowan was gone.

Aeraul made his way up a short flight of stairs onto the pilot's deck, just as an uruk slammed down in back of it. He wore nothing but boots, pants, wode, and bloodstains. He carried hooked swords as long as a man's leg and twice as wide, scything back viciously and glinting in the distant, suddenly alien sunlight. He was without fear, only purpose drove his feet. Aeraul fenced him with the jian, the uruk -- Gazingo -- sidestepped and tried to take his arm off with both blades. Aeraul dropped the sword and recoiled, swept the cutlass over Gazingo's attack and vicariously experienced a beheading as his blood ran cold. Blueraven was standing behind him, struggling desperately to keep control over the ship. Savas was doing what he could to take potshots at everyone and everything from a position of safety.

Caden was preparing for something. Something big.

Rowan was gone.

Aeraul stood still on the ship and said simply, "My brother just died."

No one heard him.

His blood was running cold and Aeraul was so calm he couldn't even feel the chill creeping into his veins. There was so much going on now that it was hard to focus on any one thing. The man who could read the hearts and souls of a thousand others could no more grasp his own emotions than he could grasp the air between his fingertips.

[Caden Law]

Hellhand's bone-dragon slammed into Larkatz's flagship, dragging it down in a tumbling, flaming tangle of limbs and magicks and engines and worse. The Wild Aeon steered towards them and a lot of things happened in a very short amount of time.

A dragon swooped up in front of the ship, entirely too close to avoid it. The bow mast stabbed it right through the chest cavity and intertia drove it the rest of the way to the icepick-like battering ram's base. It spewed superheated air for several seconds, head banging around, limbs lashing at random. The air lost concentration over moments, until it finally became nothing more than the dying rasp of an enormous bio-magical combustion engine. As this happened, the red rider dismounted and drew his sword, a slightly curving blade colored like a metallic rainbow, most of it purple and yellow. Rathorn cast his dying spell at the beast and annihilated it. The sword came up and voided out the spell in turn, even as the dragonrider started stalking through the battle.

"Wormaxe!" Blueraven called at the sight of one of his men being cut down by that wicked blade. "Take over for me!"

Wormaxe looked at him questioningly. All Blueraven bothered to say was, "This foe is beyond any of you."

Staff already in hand, Caden drew his sword and didn't even bother for a running start. He was on a moving ship. And he knew how to work gravity, just a little bit.

He hopped, tucked his legs in and came clear of the pilot deck in the blink of an eye, then came back down behind the red rider. He didn't even bother with a greeting or a spell; just a swift sword strike that went too wide to be of any good. The rider struck back and blade met staff.

Caden's resonant shard briefly cracked at the impact, which echoed like a scream below thunder. Power shot up through his arm and discharged in a spray of ghost-feathers from his shoulder. Caden cringed, shifted his foot and flash-froze the blood at the rider's feet. Metal plowed into ice and wood below, followed by a rabid snapping of gloved fingers. Caden reflexively dodged away but it was a feint, opening him up for a weaker, less defined spell that was all green and malice. It hit him the face and shattered all over wards the Sorcerer barely remembered preparing, then it was all he could do to parry the follow-up thrust. The rider spun around under they stood back to back, trying blindly to turn and stab each other.

For a moment, they broke away and faced each other.

The rider's mask exploded into a spray of ice and fog. Caden flash-boiled it on reflex, dispersing the haze as quickly as it had formed.

What remained was a familiar draconic face, its muzzle curled into an inhumanly fanged smile that never once twitched as an internal mouth gave sophisticated voice to what the wyrm had to say.

"Fancy meeting you here," Spoke Anton Icetongue, the former Warlock Banebram, who had somehow managed to dodge death all together even when it was completely impossible for him to do so.

"I don't have time to play with you," Blueraven answered, just before triggering spells with both staff and sword. Lightning lanced from both and Anton dispassionately caught it on his sword. It was enchanted dehlar; one of the twenty-one Magicide Blades of N'Thayn'sal, the dark and dreary world of a Could Be Tomorrow, left behind when Caden lead a Wizarding raid through Evernorth and effectively burned the place down. Even as the Sorcerer's spells broke, Anton pointed and snapped his fingers. Caden ducked away and Anton laughed. It was a bluff.

Anton was the only enemy who had fought him often enough to have that kind of familiarity. Even now.

Bluff, bluff, not bluffing -- an enormous ball of green fire, which Caden only barely broke using his staff as an arcane bulwark. Anton was right behind it, swinging his sword up at the Sorcerer's face without the slightest hint of fear or hesitation. Caden countered again with his own sword, jammed the staff down between Anton's legs and tripped him up all as he was stepping to one side. The Warlock hit the floor and rolled away, vomiting up raw fire and black ice as he went. Magic missiles shredded through the spell and decimated the deck around where Anton lay, but all they could do to the Warlock was flicker out against his wards. Anton was already up by the time Caden made ready to attack again; staff and steel met magicide and pale blue feathers rippled out from Caden's elbow, power collapsing in on itself as he met old Banebram head to head.

"This isn't a game, Wizard," Anton told him, powering the younger mage down through sheer force of will. The air literally cracked around them as he put a hand on the back of the blade and began to sunder the shard right in Caden's hand.

"Didn't you hear?" Blueraven asked with a feral grin that glowed blue between the teeth. His Mark shined, lighting up a maddening network of power underneath his skin. "I made it to the big leagues."

The weight of his Voice actually broke all of Anton's momentum cold, and the power behind it slammed into the Warlock at more levels than the five basic senses could track. Anton staggered at the very Sound of it, a ripple of blue running through his skin. Caden straightened and stomped forward, unleashing raw gray-blue force from his knee and lower leg. It plowed into Anton's legs and drove him back, popping one of his wards like a grape as he went. The Warlock slashed Caden's spell to ribbons before it could truly harm him, but it did the trick.

"Siege Arcana!"

The Wild Aeon rocked. A shockwave briefly blew out its engines, sending shards of molten black glass and freezing ice in every direction, even as a black hole writhed and gasped right there on its deck. Caden had never actually used the spell so close to the target before.

Anton deserved nothing less.

The fact that it didn't work was proof enough of that.

The Warlock rode out of Siege Arcana atop a dying, screeching demonic thing that had taken most of the damage, protecting himself from the rest with enchanted dehlar. He bared sharp teeth in a monstrous grin, even as his laugh bellowed over the din of battle. The Wild Aeon rattled off course and tore free of the spell, smashing into a pyramid as it passed. Glass broke everywhere as the demon crashed topside and Anton rushed off, shielding himself with magic even as he tried to slit open Blueraven's stomach.

Caden dodged away, his sword sweeping through the air just above Anton's. They parried back and forth several times without even touching blades, even as jagged broken glass and other, harder debris rained down around them, clattering off walls of ice and power. The whole world could have fallen apart around them and they wouldn't have noticed, they were so enraptured in combat. And they were equal now. For the first time, Blueraven fought the Warlock on even footing and held his own, relying on nothing but skill to carry the day where trickery and luck would have gotten him through before. Whether that was because he had come so far as both a fighter and mage or it was because Anton had lost so much power in past encounters -- or both -- he couldn't say.

"Hellfire and a half!"

Pity it wouldn't last.

[Savas Tigh]

"We're going down!" Wormaxe announced with absolutely no shame whatsoever. He had no idea what he was doing. Blueraven didn't even know what he was doing, really, but he had more of a clue and more power to throw around than Wormaxe did. Piloting a ship of such craftsmanship requires hours and days and maybe even months or years of practice and attunement -- for the people it was designed for. For poorly educated, all too human Savas Tigh, who couldn't even evoke on his own, it was a lose-lose situation on every possible front. He was doing his best just keeping the damn thing in a straight line.

And then Blueraven screwed it all up and now the ship was going down hard and Hellhand's bone dragon was coming up alongside it and grabbing on and Savas just gave the Hells up right then and there. As his master fought the wyrm Warlock, Savas stepped back from the helm and got a running start towards the aft of the ship. He was about to jump and the plan was to wing it to the ground; not too bad for someone with a dragon wing wand. It didn't work out that way.

Hellhand's beast grabbed on in several places all at once, wrenching the ancient proto-elven skyship groundward and then piledriving it the rest of the way down. Savas lost track of everyone and he didn't care anyway.

Except for Aeraul, who somehow knew when and where to be to grab him by the ankle and hang on as Savas deployed the wing wand. He screamed at the grip, bit down on it, then went groundward at a respectable speed. The ship preceded them by about two minutes. Its 'landing' was marked by a small mushroom cloud and a shockwave of power and wreckage from both the boat and the city. Streets rippled around the point of impact, windows blew out for a city block in every direction. If anyone was still onboard by that point, they'd be a lumpy red paste now. If they were lucky.

"Look!" Aeraul called, pointing.

Blueraven and the Warlock were still fighting, having traded the ship for the open sky. The Sorcerer rode hard on a nimbus of gray-blue energies, the Warlock stood on the back of something vaguely draconic and overtly demonic. They were throwing siege magicks at each other with little or no regard for the surrounding area, and they were really making a mess of things in the process. Far, far above them, a handful of surviving skyships were being ravaged by demons and a small number of surviving dragonriders. The battles were all breaking down towards their conclusions; no matter who won, they wouldn't be in pretty shape.

"I don't think anyone's ever going to believe this," Savas mumbled to himself. Aeraul nodded mute agreement without hearing or seeing the words.

It took them a while to get low enough for the big man to let go and drop to the ground. Savas touched down close by. They were both immediately surrounded by an oblivious legion of nobodies in weird clothes, moving through their day-to-day routines without even noticing what was happening around them. The closest they came were strangely voiced questions lacking tone or significance. Aeraul was visibly repulsed at the sight of them.

"Aberrations," he explained when Savas asked, saying nothing else.

It was then that, for the first time in a very, very long time, Savas showed a little empathy of his own. "You okay, Aeraul? You've been out of it since we got here."

"I'm going to be fine with everything in a few minutes," Aeraul told him without preamble. "Don't hesitate, and listen close. Whatever I feel like saying is going to be important."

"What?" Savas asked. The big green man stalked right by him without answering. Savas looked back to the nightmare green funeral pyre of the Wild Aeon, then drew his wand and followed suit. "What are you on about?"

"Peace and I are at the same point of unfolding and I need to go this way because I'm feeling things that I haven't felt yet and I'm unhinged and you shouldn't try to do what I think you're going to but thanks anyway," Aeraul rambled. "Feathers. It's all feathers, fluttering down from something big. Too big for us. Too big for itself. I can...feel it."

"You're striking crazy. And coming from me that's saying something."

"I'm so calm...so calm..."

Aeraul sniffled.

Savas stared at him and said nothing.

"I think this is...yes. This is where I feel it all at once...yes. Yes."

The big man collapsed to his knees and started to cry.

He sounded more relieved than anything else.

"I...everything else is gone now. I'm alone in my head. I don't have to hold back the storm anymore. Oh Gods..."

"You're seriously freaking me out," Savas told him.

He watched Aeraul for a full minute before awkwardly looking around and trying to assess their surroundings. The streets were basically empty. Tons of dead nobodies littered the sidewalks. There was a crashed skyship sticking out of a building overhead, slowly burning. A dragon had been crushed all over one of the pyramids nearby and there wasn't an intact window anywhere in sight. The lamps still burned but they were dimming away, light by flickering light.

Savas felt a prickling sensation along the back of his neck. He looked out again and sniffed the air. The scent of death was so overwhelming that he'd finally gotten the hang of smelling life by default; it was the only distinct thing standing out against the white noise plaguing his other senses.

Soon the lamps would all burn out and the street would be lit only by the fading glow of stars.

Aeraul stopped crying suddenly. Savas looked at the lamps again.

"We've got company," he reported.

"I know," Aeraul sighed as he started to stand up.

[Aeraul Smythe]

"I know you're there!" Aeraul called. "And I can tell you right now that it's not going to work!"

Savas ducked away on preemptive reflex. Aeraul jumped back as spires of stone shot out of the ground and collapsed into each other. He didn't assume a stance, didn't look to retaliate. He just wanted a few more seconds. He could feel his own emotions now and he wanted nothing more than to go on feeling them. But he alo knew that he wasn't going to, because he had already resigned himself to it a few seconds in the future.

So he resigned himself to it with a sigh, then cracked his fingers and dodged another attempted killing spell -- spires again, their collapse as intricate as origami and as jagged as a razor's teeth. "So be it," he said, gathering up chi as he walled himself off again -- just like he knew he would. But it was a real calm now. A quiet, peaceful calm, not like the traumatized omniscience of before. He was without any weapon but himself, and he already felt that would not be enough. He also, already, felt that wasn't important. Effort was all that mattered now.

He reached deep.

Chi simmered in his stomach, smoke lightly puffing from his nostrils as his eyes began to burn blue at the iris. Veins stood out more as he assumed a stance, bulging blue and red on green skin. Tattered clothes began to ripple from chi that manifested as smoke and the sound of embers crackling came from all around him. Now was a good time.

"You murdered my brother. I will never forgive you," he said simply, tapping into a rage that was clear on the other side of incomprehensibility. It was easy to understand, easy to control, easy to draw power from.

Now was a very, very good time.

"Let's go."

Siege magic came thundering at him from one direction. Aeraul took off in the other, leaping his way onto the side of a building and slagging broken glass so quickly that it didn't have time to cut his fingers. The air around him burned as he swung from window to window, sliding in a gravity defying crouch that put him exactly where he needed to be.

He came down with an elbow that cratered solid granite for ten feet in either direction. Blue fire spread all around him as he sprang back up, hurling a wave of chi into the dark of what he knew to be a barn for those automated carriages; a garage. Glass and metal broke and warped inside -- he saw, but didn't need to see, the shape of a man ducking down underneath the wave. A sharpened battering ram of ice came for his chest and Aeraul shattered it with contemptuous ease. He was in his element here. He fought with a certainty rivaling his execution of Sijil Kar, the Black Silk Son of Draconus and N'Jal.

Lunge forward, striking into the darkness with an open palm that generated a halo of blue fire. Fear to one side, honest but checked. Aeraul struck with a kick and knew he would hit the mark. He did. One of the carriages rocked and broke, flash-freezing on impact. Aeraul leapt to one side and an enormous blast of fire -- really superheated air -- incinerated the space where he had been standing. He charged in, striking three times in rapid succession and holding nothing back, even though he knew it wasn't going to work. Blood flew into the air and burned before it could rain back down. He knew something was about to happen because he had already felt his own lack of surprise about it.

Bright violet and red light flashed on his chest and it was like getting hit by the Magic Missile's bigger, meaner, angrier cousin. Aeraul tumbled back several dozen feet and went skidding back out into the street. Several lesser missiles slammed into him. He felt the chi of the area subtly rearranging. The ground twisted out of place beneath his feet and he went skidding around in an ever widening spiral that planted him shoulder-first into a darkened lamp post.

It hurt, but the pain would be temporary. Aeraul pushed himself free just in time to avoid a combination of pillars of ice and stone, raining down and rising up all at once. The lamp was obliterated. It was all he could do to stand and counterattack, bringing both hands to bear with a passionless scream -- kiai, burning bright blue in the forevernight of the graveyard moon.

Fingers snapped in the dark. Aeraul saw just a bare glimpse of an all too familiar face.

He missed and it didn't matter and the whole godsdamned city block blew sky high as runes triggered, shaped into the air itself using precisely placed temperature variations. They were all Sideways.

[Savas Tigh]

A Wizard can be many things, but too proud to run and hide isn't one of them. Many of the longest-lived magi of any tradition are the ones who know when to fold 'em and call it quits. He who lives to fight another day has a funny habit of laughing last, if only because the other guy winds up dead later on. And when your life could potentially be measured in centuries or longer, what's the point of fretting over a minor setback here or there?

Savas rationalized his cowardice like a champ. He felt no shame and that was fine. He didn't even watch the battle play out, just ran and ran until his legs were burning. Then he ran another fifteen feet and jumped.

It was the jump that saved his life. The city block's explosion wasn't natural and didn't conform to such petty notions as spreading out. It was concentrated into the shape of an enormous, unevenly shaped pillar. It would've been a lot bigger if it wasn't contained so efficiently. It didn't last long, nor did it generate so much as a puff of smoke, even though almost everything within began to smoulder and fume after it was over.

Savas waited a while longer before he even bothered to look back. He hid himself among the bodies in the meantime. It was safer that way.

The very first thing he saw was Aeraul still standing there, wreathed in fading blue flames, covered in hideous burns and bloody wounds, his clothing shredded down to indecent rags and scraps. One of his eyes lacked a discernible pupil and the other was beginning to fade away. He held still a few seconds longer and then heaved smoke -- bloody red smoke. He collapsed again, twisted and fell hard onto his back. He was still breathing.

Savas waited until he was reasonably sure that the coast was clear. He waited some more, until a Siege Arcana went off in the distance. He could hear Hellhand's Voice bellowing again. It wasn't the only one. He stood and slowly crept over to where Aeraul lay. His face was burned, but he was still trying to make lip movements. His breath and voice came as a faint hiss. Savas knelt down beside him, careful to keep his wand out, then leaned down to check his heart beat.

"I can try to heal you," he said, "but it wouldn't...you wouldn't be you, bud."

Rasping hisses.

"You'd be one of my minions. Just like the spies waiting in Kebiras and the housecarl in Corone. Like Blightcrow and-"

He remembered Aeraul telling him about this. And he stopped and leaned in to hear what the dying man had to say.

In all his life and all his career as a practitioner of the darkest art, the Wizard Wormaxe never heard what Aeraul had to say to him.

For the first time since his childhood, he knew shame.

[Caden Law]

Hellhand joined the fray and the battle sounded something like a million-strong chorus of sledgehammers and a twenty-one gun salute by nuclear artillery in the middle of a hurricane. For all the power afforded by Sorcery, Caden was doing his best just to keep up, and Anton wasn't having much trouble at all.

A squadron of mighty demons ripped through an army of skeletons and ghosts as Sorcerer and Warlock brought powers to bear on Warlocked Necromancer, who seemed only slightly upset at the prospect of fighting both of them. His dragon was finally gone, his wards were failing left and right, but he was replacing them as quickly as they failed and still finding time to launch counterattacks that Blueraven was simply unable to block, though Anton had considerably less trouble. Without so much of his power bound up in maintaining the dragon and its defenses, Hellhand was actually more formidable. And while Anton could get in close enough to nick him here and there, neither mage had anything close to Larkatz the Butcher's skill or ferocity. They were squishy weaklings trying to win a boxing match with a wrecking ball.

The best they could manage was an intricate dance that saw attacks of opportunity curbed; an unspoken alliance of convenience, delaying the inevitable for just a little bit longer. Hellhand was still overpowering them.

Something had to give.

And it did.

"DAMMIT!" Anton Roared as his magicide blade snapped in half, dehlar and enchantments all giving out under an arcane onslaught. He ducked and rolled and immediately changed targets as the air behind him exploded. "I WON'T LET Y-"

It was an alliance of convenience that Caden had been more than ready to break.

Solid steel wrapped in gray-blue light plowed through Anton's remaining defenses like they weren't even there. Caden's sword found the Warlock's heart and kept going. He nailed Anton to an upended slab of stone more than a hundred feet from where the wyrm started. Anton managed to gag something like a curse and tried to cast one more spell before disappearing in a flash of green fire and a puff of violet smoke. The sword remained, soaked in blood and gleaming in the light of battle.

Demons vanished immediately.

Blueraven stood still, regarding both the other Warlock and the horde of skeletons arrayed against him.

"Huh," he sounded in a normal voice. "Probably not the best move."

"Now there's an understatement," Hellhand chortled. He was grinning from ear to ear, far wider than even an orcish maw should have allowed. Not even the orks grinned like that. "And now, little mage, I am going to do the world a favor and be rid of you."

"I'm pretty sure it's the other way around."

"Is it, now? You don't know anything at all, do you?" Hellhand chortled.

Caden impaled him straight up through one leg and out the shoulder.

It took less time than blinking.

Hellhand actually froze for a moment, then grit his teeth and Screamed so loud that one of them shattered clear from his mouth. He stomped with his free leg, flailed his free arm, and dropped his staff in agony.

"Stone Maiden's Tree of Woe," the Wizard declared as spines tore out of Hellhand's body at every angle. The Warlock vomited blood before several organs shredded their way up out the top of his skull and elsewhere. It was a bloody, ugly mess. "You let your guard down. Never do that against a Wizard. Not even for a second."

"And you actually think this is going to be the end of me?" Hellhand's Voice asked, suddenly disembodied from the rest of him. "You've made a grave error in judgement today, Blueraven. It's going to cost you dearly."

"Like I haven't heard that one before," Caden muttered, just before triggering a proper Mausoleum around the Warlock. There's no such thing as being too thorough. When he was done, he sealed the tomb, much as he had once done to Blightcrow back in Raiaera.

He promptly collapsed against his staff and tried not to vomit. The Sorcerous Mark burned so hot it was steaming and the rest of its outgrowths had already faded away. His vision was starting to blur, even with the help of his goggles. He was having trouble breathing. And perhaps the worst thing of all was the fact that it wasn't over yet.

Larkatz Roared even louder than Hellhand. His Voice was an assault on the soul and Caden had to tap back into the reservoir of Sorcery just to hold out against it. He turned in time to see the burly warlord charging at him, accompanied as ever by his faithful gun-toting goblin-servant, Berk. He had an axe in hand. Caden didn't have time to summon up his sword from the stone. It was lodged too deep.

He closed his eyes and called his wand from its holster on his belt. He pushed off from the staff and concentrated, focusing power and emotion into a recursive bundle, then shoving it down the sore interior of his arm. Sorcery lit the veins bright enough to show through his coat, until finally power was sparking all around the wand.

Larkatz jumped at him, axe held high, covered in so much antimagic that even Hellhand's best hadn't done much to slow him down.

The Sorcerer Blueraven took three limping steps forward and bisected him with one swing.

The Butcher rained down in two shocked halves, still swinging his axe even as wards and antimagic runes gave out all over him. It didn't take long for the warlord to simply combust from it all. The fires consumed him before he could even finish bleeding out.

"Sic semper whatever the Hells," Caden rasped as the arcane blade popped out of existence, diffusing into a sprinkle of feathers and sparks. "Always wanted to do that."

He spat out a little blood. His knuckles hurt and he couldn't let go of the wand. It suddenly made sense why the thing was shaped like a sword hilt -- because that's what it was. Or perhaps the man it was originally meant for, Greyspine, would have created hammers with it. Caden didn't know and he didn't particularly care.

Berk smashed him across the face with the butt of a rifle. Caden fell to the ground, dizzy and bleeding.

"You fuckin' idiot! Do you have any idear how many years I tweaked 'at big fucker's mind ter get 'im where I wanted?" Berk spat.

"Ah," Caden finally sounded. "Your name's Berk, isn't it?"

The goblin positively glowed. Literally.

"Nice work with the antimagic," Caden said as he tried to sit up, only to eat a boot to the head for his efforts. His Hat sat lopsided and his body was aching all over.

"Thanka, Man-Berk," the goblin said. "Been workin' at 'is fer years. Spreadin' my Name all ova da continent, bindin' folks ter me will wit' nuttin' but."

"Shaping culture and language so that your Name becomes synonymous with magical power," Caden said from the relative safety of the ground. "You must be pretty godsdamn old to pull that one off."

"882 years," Berk said. "Funny thing 'bout orcs is, they don't got much of a memory for folk like me. Just how I like it. I'm a mindmage, buddy. No good fer alla that fancy fighty shit, but I got what it takes ter get the job done. Any last words?"

There was a gun in his face now. Caden stared up into the barrel and considered his options. He was tired.

"You really should duck," he gambled.

"Nice t-"

Blood splattered all over the Wizard's face as an enormous lance of ice stabbed through Berk's chest, obliterating his heart and flash-freezing his skeleton into a bulging, brittle mess that ripped muscle and skin alike. Even if he had countermeasures prepared in case of an attempt on his life, sheer pain kept him from triggering them. It all happened so fast he couldn't even squeeze on the trigger. Caden calmly nudged the gun clear of himself, then scooted out from under the goblin's tottering frame.

He kicked out one of Berk's knees on general principle. The goblin shrieked all the way to the ground, where he practically appeared to deflate into a pile of living, breathing, weeping meat for however long it took to bleed out and die from heart loss.

Not long at all, really.

Caden watched Kebiras' greatest unsung mastermind die, cold and alone and so very far from home. No one would ever even know Berk existed.

He twitched at the lips, closed his eyes, and found himself remembering the Drifter's words.

Caden looked to iceward.

And at ripple's end, he knew his enemy.

[Caden Law]

The Wizard Blueraven snarled his way into a smile as he spoke, voice beginning as little more than a hushed whisper and ending as a defiant shout. All around came the rising sound of birds cawing and great engines starting to turn.

"Where I come from, the people worship a deathless Saint and her angels. But Saints aren't gods. They have to be appointed by something more than themselves. There was an unspoken assumption, all through Evernorth and Salvar, that Denebriel was given power by the Thaynes only to surpass them. That's wrong. None of them are gods. But there is a God," he explained, raising his wand. "And He hates us all. There was a War in Heaven and they couldn't kill Him. The best they could do was throw Him down for a cancerous aeon bathed in screaming starlight. But now He's clawing his way up out of the darkness, a million strings of inevitabilities, all bundling up into one sacred Name.

"N'THAYN'SAL!"

Caden Law laughed in despair and anger and hatred. He was a tall fellow by the standards of his village, just over six feet, and limber. Built for agility and endurance. He was pale to the point of being pasty, battle-scarred all over and wearing a blue jacket with matching mantle, easily recognized as the remnants of his old Hat and coat. His hair was shorter and even more disheveled. He wore clear glasses, the lenses untinted. His boots were heavy and black, pants brown and rough, shirt white and buttoned and stained with blood that looked worryingly teal. His only visible weapon was a bowie knife holstered on one thigh.

Caden was no stranger to killing himself (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?19768-The-Henge-Sorcerous), but this felt different. The Caden Laws of the Icehenge were plucked out of alternate realities, elseworlds where something had gone differently here or there. They had never really registered to his arcane senses as anything other than proper individuals. They were him but they weren't. No matter what, there was a clear deviation; a defining moment where he could have been them and chose otherwise.

This was something else.

Caden struggled up to his feet and spat out blood. His mind was racing as he watched himself laugh, keenly aware that his own guard wasn't going to be down this time, and equally unsure about why.

"What the hell are you?" he finally asked. "What's your story?"

"There's a hole in the place where my heart used to be," the other Blueraven answered as he looked back down, grinning brokenly. His eyes glowed in the dark. He exhaled blue feathers and ghost dust. His scars were different. He had lots of them, but they weren't like Caden's. "I never thought I would get to actually meet you, but the universe is nothing if not sadistic. All the better for what He has planned."

"...what happened to you?" Caden asked. The longer he could stall, the more time he had to regain even a shred of his power. If he was going to win, it'd be on the first blow.

"You could say I was hurt in a fall," the other version of him answered. "A twenty year fall (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?12597-The-Cosmic-Detour&p=109651&viewfull=1#post109651) that broke me apart (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?12219-Cosmic-Bump-in-the-Road&highlight=). And I've been putting myself (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?13962-Between-the-Numbers&p=111977&viewfull=1#post111977) back together ever since."

Caden grimaced, understanding settling on him like the weight of worlds. The teleportation incident that put him in N'Thayn'sal had also torn him apart at a quantum level. He had, for a while, existed in multiple places at once. He could still remember it. But he had always assumed that he had absorbed the other parts back into himself. It took him a while and it had physically warped him a little, adding to his height and weight, but he had still done it. He thought wrong. That was why this other version of him felt so different -- he wasn't another Caden. He was Caden.

"The enemy at ripple's end is myself," he muttered, brandishing his staff. "Big surprise!"

"That won't work on me," Blueraven warned. "I've already won."

Caden said nothing to him.

Siege Arcana rippled through the night of the moon.

The battle was joined.

[Caden Law]

The spell didn't fizzle out so much as it cracked apart and disassembled itself in a spray of glowing two-dimensional sentences, ceasing to exist down to an abstract, conceptual level. Only a small shower of harmless sparks and broken glass shards made it far enough to rain down at the Wizard Blueraven's feet. He thrust his hands out to either side and had a wand drawn in each of them; fourteen inches a piece, black rywan and cored with liviol, Caden knew at a glance. They weren't the wands he'd lost in his time in Raiaera, but they were certainly close to what he wanted to use as their replacements.

Blueraven brought both to bear. Caden ducked twin flashes of lightning and dragged his own wand along the ground, sending a small tidal wave of rock at his lesser self. The Wizard stopped the spell cold and nullified it, then lashed out with a whip made out of magic missiles.

Five of them hit and Caden grit his teeth on a scream. He staggered and the Wizard caught him in the chest with an arcane blast, knocking him over and blowing out one of the defenses that had been meant for Anton. Caden hit the dirt rolling and immediately forced his will into the ground and the air, negating two spells in rapid succession, then smashing flat a third on the tip of his other self's left wand. Blueraven glanced another missile between his shoulder and neck. Caden struck back with a blast of raw, Sorcerous force, one that looked like his own grimacing face.

Blueraven saw it coming, turned and was gone.

He reappeared behind Caden, one wand at the back of the Sorcerer's head and the other pointing straight up.

Bang.

The Hat went tumbling from Caden's head. It was the nearest miss in years and it was all he could do to send an avalanche across the ground behind him. Blueraven jumped off the crest of a granite wave and threw one of his wands like a knife.

The knife happened to become a bolt of pale blue light, missing Caden by scarce inches as it embedded itself into the ground beside him. Blueraven touched back down and came racing in, his wand flicking and swishing about in preemptive gestures that negated any spell Caden could even think to bring down on him.

Point blank and there was the scalpel he had left buried in a dead man's eye (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?18090-The-Wizard-That-Did-It&p=137632&viewfull=1#post137632), slicing neatly through the air in a silver streak, its tiny razor-sharp blade braced against Blueraven's finger. Just like Caden's used to be whenever he had to use it. Blueraven had never given up the art though and it showed -- the silver treak was ice forming in an arc behind the blade's path, ice that promptly spiked out and exploded. Caden's coat stopped two spikes but a third gashed him across the chin and all of them hit like a ton of bricks. He brought wand to bear and ate a boot to the throat -- Blueraven had spent more time in hand to hand, apparently. It was a backwards roundhouse kick, something Caden had never even tried. He stumbled back further, gagging and his vision blurred as he fired off an indistinct spell.

It missed at nearly point blank. The next thing he knew, his goggles were gone and there was blood gushing down from between his eyes and across one cheek.

Blueraven brought the scalpel up once more and had ice completely enveloping both it and his finger, such that the weapon looked like a rapier's blade turned to crystal.

Caden shattered it with one good swing of his staff, blowing the Wizard back in the process. He didn't waste time trying to talk, to mock, or to strategize. Any win here would be fast and furious. More magic. More. He still had enough left to win. And at this distance-

It didn't matter.

Ice and fire spread from his back in great shining wings that sprouted just a few inches shy of his shoulderblades.

Caden looked down and saw the bowie knife lodged in his stomach, the wand discarded on the ground nearby, and the scalpel twirling daintily between Blueraven's fingers. The paths of power beneath his skin -- his channel to the Eternal Tap, his Sorcerous Mark -- felt strange. He tried to speak but nothing happened. His vocal cords were frozen.

"Have you ever wondered what that gold light really was?" Blueraven asked him suddenly. "It was my other selves, dissolving back into me. Some of them just went back into you."

Blueraven looked him in the eye and asked, "Did you ever find the secret pages in the Grimoire? Greyspine lied. He was never warning you. He was clearing a path. Why try to fight the inevitable when you can send back the perfect sleeper agent to do the work for you?" he chortled, hopelessly. "I tried to hold back the storm too, you know. I've been all over Kebiras, all through Dheath and elsewhere. I heard about you, now and then. I did my best but I can't do it anymore. And I don't want to. Because in the end there is no choice. One apocalypse or a thousand -- why pick?"

Caden struggled. He could feel ice breaking in his veins with every gesture as he tried, desperately, to bring a weapon to bear. Even his power felt cold though, too distant to use. And his Mark had turned gold all over.

"There is no Reaper Queen to fear, corpse army of Xem'zund. There is only the Sorcerer-King on my throne in Murdered Raiaera," Blueraven said. "Now die, you other, lesser me. Die and give me the power I need to end this world."

"No," the Sorcerer answered, his Voice breaking ice and dousing flame. He jammed a wand into Blueraven's face and glared into his eyes.

There was a hot prickling feeling racing across his neck, followed by a jagged cold running up and down his spine.

Caden tried to find the Words to do something, but they would not come.

Blueraven stood still, staring into his eyes as the world suddenly felt heavy, so very, very heavy...

[Caden Law]

Caden felt his body give out. His soul wasn't going to last much longer afterwards. He had spent too much power, and he knew well the risks that entailed (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?19768-The-Henge-Sorcerous&p=155133&viewfull=1#post155133). Blood didn't boil so much as it froze its way up through his throat. His nerves shut down and his joints felt empty, useless. The only thing holding him up after a while was the tomb of ice slowly growing in and around him. Veins were bursting. He could see but he knew his eyes were already useless. He could hear but the eardrums had burst. He could smell but the only scents on the air were blood and fire and a pungent, overwhelming mint.

Blueraven was hitting him with multiple spells at once. Taking his sweet time because there was no other way to do in a Sorcerer unless you were one. Caden knew as much (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?19768-The-Henge-Sorcerous&p=154919&viewfull=1#post154919) from bitterly earned experience (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?19768-The-Henge-Sorcerous&p=154959&viewfull=1#post154959). He could still remember wondering how it felt every (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?18090-The-Wizard-That-Did-It&p=137632&viewfull=1#post137632) single (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?19768-The-Henge-Sorcerous&p=154959&viewfull=1#post154959) time (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?19865-Mortal-Intervention&p=157080&viewfull=1#post157080) he had ever ripped the life or the energy out of something. Or someone. Now he knew.

"It won't be so bad after it's over," Blueraven finally assured him as he lowered the scalpel and looked Caden in the eye -- or perhaps in the soul, at this point. "You'll live on, after a fashion. In me, just like the rest of my shadows and aspects. Can you feel it yet?"

"No," the Sorcerer rumbled, his Voice operating independent of a mouth that had frozen shut from the inside out. He could no longer breathe. He didn't need to. He was cold. He was so far beyond cold that the word didn't even have a meaning for him anymore. He was not going quietly. Or at least not willingly.

There was nothing he could do but delay.

But every second delayed was another second lived.

There was still so much he wanted to do. So many things he had planned. So many people he wanted to see, even if it was just one more time. Veshua, maybe. Cadence, just to see what she was like, to wonder what it would've been like if he had been her father instead. His friends from Scara Brae to Salvar to Raiaera -- yes, they were friends, and he had never acknowledged it even to himself, because a Wizard is alone. But he was a Sorcerer too. And he had wanted to go back to Raiaera, back to Beinost and the College Arcana. In his dreams, he never wrote it down, but in his dreams he saw himself growing old and happy as the College's first Archwizard. He saw himself raising a daughter that wasn't his, and maybe a plethora of children who were, and they'd all have futures because Daddy paid for it in blood, sweat, tears, and triumphs. He saw himself holding hands with Neesal. He saw himself cracking jokes with old colleagues. He saw himself dying peacefully in his sleep after several centuries of making the world a place worth living in.

He didn't see himself dying like this.

But this was how it was going to happen.

Murder-by-temporal suicide, just before the end of the world.

Caden could no longer feel anything physical. He couldn't move so much as a single muscle and the last tethers binding his body and soul were stretching taut to the point of breaking. He closed his mind's eye to happy thoughts.

And with neither a mouth nor a throat nor anything else, the Sorcerer Spoke his last act of defiance.

"I'm not making it easy for you."

[Caden Law]

The Sorcerer Blueraven died with neither a bang nor a whimper. He just expired. Cold and alone under the eyes of his Wizarding Namesake.

The other Caden -- the only one left now -- regarded his reflections, the one in the ice and the one beneath it. He couldn't stop from grinning but it was a hopeless, broken grin. He had seen the future and it was grim. Dark. Hellish. But he would be fine, he knew that much. Everything was going exactly as the secret pages claimed. He liked to think of them as Greyspine's intellectual marrow; the source of all his lies and manipulations, the guiding core of it all.

There was a slow building flare of gold light within the ice. Caden watched it travel up and down his other self's corpse, starting at the feet and ending at the crown of the head. It doubled. It tripled. And then it all collapsed into the dead man's stomach and consumed him in a flashing pillar outside of Space but so, so close to Time.

The Wizard shuddered as he felt himself inheriting what was already his: power, prestige, authority. All the responsibility he couldn't care less for, all the power he wanted, not a shred of accountability; not even to the tattered remnants of his own blighted conscience. Magic surged underneath his skin, lighting up the paths of power between his body and soul. He began to laugh again, and then he Laughed. It was a sound both gritty and electric, reverberating within itself and carrying an actual, physical weight that jarred loose dust and loose dirt, clearing the air as it rung out into the night. Here and now, he was king of the graveyard, the tyrant out of Time, out of place. He was the Sorcerer Blueraven of N'Thayn'sal, slowly but inevitably shrouding himself in all his terrible glory. Screams echoed under the thundering chorus of his Voice.

And yet the changes were physical, and not just in the appearance of a Mark on his face or the network branded under his skin. He grew, up and out, acquiring muscle and scars, scaling until he matched the height of his fallen self. Power sparked about him, ravens made out of feathering lightning and congealed sound. His Laugh built its way to a truly primal Scream, that of a Sorcerer born anew. The ice before him cracked and broke, leaving behind nothing at all. Even his other self's Hat was gone, as neatly as if it had never been there at all. Resonant shard staff, the Wand of Nevermorrow; all of it was gone. All that remained was the Sorcerer, grinning fierce and mad at a night full of hateful stars.

When he was done with the theatrics, Caden hunched forward on his hands and knees. He glared at the ground around his feet and reached out with his extra senses. Lines began to etch themselves into the dirt, carving brightly into the air itself. It began to snow as he blended powersets into one another, something that was like inhaling and exhaling all at once -- simple in theory, virtually impossible in practice, and yet he made it seem simple.

"Now falls the curtain and mine is the hand to bring it down. Now I put out the stars and the eyes of the Gods on high. Now I finally understand the conversation (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?12597-The-Cosmic-Detour&p=105900&viewfull=1#post105900) I had with Greyspine. And now I do my awful work."

Power lit up along a hundred lines and a thousand spirals. It was the basis for a resurrection spell, the pebble to start the avalanche that would, eventually, awaken the elder thing at the heart of the moon. There would be another battle to precede the next War in Heaven, the murder of the Thaynes, as the one god's servants raged against one another in an orgy of violence like none the world had seen in eons. This would awaken the moon's prisoner, who would awaken others, and then others still. Soon enough, the stars would go out. And then the Thaynes would turn on one another. N'jal was going to eat V'dralla (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?12597-The-Cosmic-Detour&p=106128&viewfull=1#post106128), and it'd all be downhill from there as civil war compounded heavenly war. Thus would N'Thayn'sal come to pass, a supersentient chain of events imposing itself onto every level of existence, the God Untouchable and Unseen.

The God Unstoppable.

"LET THE END COME!

"LET IT ALL GO WRONG!

"I YIELD TO THE THOUSANDFOLD APOCALYPSE OF N'THAYN'SAL!"

He triggered the spell.

[Savas Tigh]

Light flashed and absolutely nothing happened.

Resurrection hit a wall and rebounded into itself, canceling out of existence with little more than a puff of smoke here or there, at worst.

"I beg to differ," Spoke the Dark Wizard Wormaxe, kneeling down in the dark several hundred feet from where the Sorcerer stood. He wasn't much of a savior. He was a scruffy, dirty, blood-stained bearded maniac clad in the tattered remnants of a long coat and a soldier's uniform, all of it black and worn through battle damage and worse. He held a wand in one hand, a carved bone from a man's forearm, and his other hand rested on the ground. At his fingertips and spreading for what looked like a quarter of a mile in either direction was a circle. It glowed silver and cold, lined with green and purple, and every single letter was a sideways rune etched into the ground and the air by concentrated shadow and tiny particles of smoke and ash. It spoke volumes where the man himself might have seemed unimpressive and perhaps even monstrous in his own right. And he was.

But he was also the last thing standing between the worlds of Althanas and N'Thayn'sal, the one man who could hope to stall Armageddon for just one more day.

Here and now, in this darkest of all places, at this darkest of all hours, the only hero left was a villain.

Caden glared at him with such ferocity that it boiled bloodtains from Savas' clothes, but the Wizard merely grinned. "The world is mine to conquer. I'm not about to let you destroy it without a fight."

"What did you do?"

Savas grinned fiercely. "I shut down your Wizardry, old boy. I used smoke and shadow to do it. Those were always my first affinities, you know. Or do you? Judging by your power shift, you gained something from my mentor's passaging, didn't you? But it wasn't everything. Just the tangible stuff. Not the power or the tactical knowledge. Blueraven knows my power as well as I do, but you don't."

"I could be lying," the Sorcerer answered.

"Ohhhh, I doubt that. I'd be paste on the ground if you knew me well enough."

"...then what's your gameplan, Wormaxe? Just going to stand there and talk me to death?"

The Dark Wizard just grinned, disquietingly, with great big blocky teeth and hungry eyes.

Blueraven sneered so hard there were neon shadows in the crevices of his face. "Your counterspell had to be strong enough to shut down your own magic the moment you set foot in it. I can still draw on Sorcery to power mine. You're a powerless half-wit failure of a mage standing alone in the presence of a Sorcerer. You can't win."

"Probably," Wormaxe admitted. "But there's something I should tell you first. Just to take the wind out of your sails."

Blueraven held out one hand and summoned a wand into it. Power crackled between his fingers, along the weapon's length, in the air all around him. Birds crowed in directions that could be neither named nor pointed to. Wormaxe stood, hunched forward. He left behind the bone wand and, with his other hand, drew the dragon's wing from his belt. His grin slowly receded, and something else happened too.

"I'm not alone at all."

His eyes were glowing blue.

[Savas Tigh]

Leaves crackled, powers mixed, fires burned, and the Dark Wizard Wormaxe burst forward veiled in an aura that began teal, blazed blue, and settled back to green. Dragon's wing swung forward and snapped open, the space between strides quintupled in less than the blink of an eye. Ground behind him simultaneously exploded and flash-froze, such that the fires themselves simply stopped cold. For a while, the Wizard continued to trail leaves, and then it was all fire, first blue and then green edged in black. This was as much a reconciliation as it was a last stand. This was shame compounded by secondhand nobility and a conscience that had, frankly speaking, never been there before.

This was what had to be done.

And in a small, dark, ill attended part of himself, Wormaxe knew that his mentor would have been proud of him right now. Just for that, if nothing else.

He had eaten souls and bodies, but he had never consumed friends. Savas had never even had friends. Aeraul was the first. Dying of battle wounds and with a clarity that the man had never known in his life, he willingly gave up the ghost. Savas took a bite out of his throat and inhaled his soul like smoke. It gave him the abilities he needed, combined with his own skill as a Necromancer, to reach out and find what was left of Rowan. He had to pull his other friend from a place that was beyond all comprehension, and even then he was only able to bring back the gist of him. Pieces were missing, torn off by whatever godsawful thing lay on the other side, so vast and monstrous that its presence still weighed on Wormaxe's senses even here and now.

He had already metabolized both of them. They were gone now, nothing left, and it had been a crash course in power retention to keep them from going to waste, the way he had spent (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising/page6) all of Undulent Sin's power (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising&p=185894&viewfull=1#post185894) in the battle against Sijil Kar. It was a sacrifice. Savas wasn't sure how he felt about it.

There would be time to grieve later.

Savas was going to make damned sure of it.

"I murdered the skyrider at Icehenge and warred with a wild godling! Do you think this is going to work?" Blueraven called, sounding more insulting than angry. Savas hit the brakes in mid-air, forcing chi -- magic, whatever you'd like to call it -- into his feet and bringing traction where there wasn't even ground. Out came a wand, its spell readied from the get-go, its aim true.

Darkened missiles cracked and shattered all over Blueraven's wards, skulls breaking on metaphysical rocks.

It was nothing, but it kept Blueraven busy as Wormaxe tried to flank him. Every spell blocked, blasted apart, or countered was another spell Blueraven wasn't throwing at him. The Sorcerer didn't stay still, but his mobility was the movement of the ground around him. He wasn't going to dare risk flight. Savas had air superiority. He had speed. He had two big boots planted squarely in Blueraven's face, plowing through specialized wards like they weren't even there. Dragged along by the wing, it was like a swinging dropkick from on high, knocking the Sorcerer clear from a mound of moving dirt and sending him crashing moonward with a grunt and a curse. Savas touched down a few seconds later and whipped around, dragging the wing with him and sending a wave of shadow and fire where Blueraven landed.

Sorcery burst up through the attack and came back down in the likeness of a crow's beak, gouging out a dozen square feet of solid rock and dirt. The shockwave almost knocked Savas over. He fired off several more missiles without even bothering to look; the wand blew out of his hand from a lightning bolt, shattering so thoroughly that only grains of dust remained. Savas jumped clear on reflex and drew another, the ground exploding behind him. He fired off a few shots and only too late realized Blueraven wasn't there anymore.

The Sorcerer was coming down on him from above.

Inside of a Siege Arcana.

[Savas Tigh]

A great obsidian raven sprouted from the ruins of a nameless street on the dark side of the moon. Blue lines cracked all over it and the bird shattered, blasting out pieces of buildings all around it.

The Sorcerer stood at the very epicenter of a crater more than twenty feet deep and twice as wide, surrounded on all sides by flash frozen glass that had, initially, been molten. He was stone silent, save for the slight labor of his breathing, his hands clenched tight on a pair of wands as he looked around. There was absolutely nothing left around him. Not a godsdamn thing within striking distance, magical or otherwise. He was alone.

And then he wasn't because Savas Tigh was coming up out of his shadow at breakneck speeds, an axe in one hand and the folded wing in the other. Only the reflexes of paranoia kept Caden from being beheaded -- he lunged forward and turned fast enough for the axe's very tip to take the glasses right off of his face. Up came the wands, and then one of them snapped like a twig as the wing unfolded, driving the Sorcerer groundward and pinning him there. Savas didn't laugh. Here and now, he didn't laugh one bit. The axe came down.

Blueraven Screamed and a huge ghostly rendition of his face plowed into the Wizard like a battering ram, disarming him of wing and axe alike. He went tumbling end over end several dozen feet, kicked his way back down to the ground and charged right back in as Blueraven threw himself up to his feet. Out came the bowie, swinging. Savas ducked underneath, then leapt back away from a scalpel to the eyes, then reversed course in mid-air and drove a darkly glowing fist clear into Blueraven's unprotected side. Power burst out of the Sorcerer's torso in the likeness of worms and feathers, contrasting colors that lit the night around them. Savas swept forward and grappled the Sorcerer from that same side, heaving him up and bringing him right back down like he was weightless.

He took a knife deep to the shoulder for his efforts. The ground cushioned Blueraven's landing like a pillow. Dust swept out and that was that. There was a burning feeling as Caden pumped energy into the stab wound, trying to ignite it outright, but Savas willed his own energy into the same area, forcing a fever-pitched stalemate.

Right hook and there went blood and teeth.

Left punch and the hand let go of the knife.

Just before the killing blow, an enormous blue hand punched Savas skyward, then kept punching him, higher and higher until he had adjusted enough to start springing off of it at every impact. There were shockwaves of power each time, and the higher Savas went, the darker the world became and the thinner the air. Eventually, it was just him and a spell being cast by someone who couldn't even see what they were doing anymore.

In came the punch.

Savas grabbed it with his feet, teal leaves spreading around the place where boot met knuckle. He pivoted downward and Screamed, loud, defiant, and fierce. And then he got a running start.

The world turned light again. The air thickened. Savas felt himself gaining speed as gravity met magic met intent met willpower. The further down he went, the faster he was going. Soon he could see Caden again, standing still and dazed, swinging at something that wasn't there anymore, unable to see the man in black against the backdrop of a night sky. Soon he did see, the shockwaves of green and violet fire lighting off from every footfall on the air. But he couldn't move from where he was standing.

His shadow was too heavy.

Never give a Wizard time to prepare.

Never back him into a corner with neither powers nor hope.

And never expect him to go down without a fight.

[Savas Tigh]

It looked like an axe blade falling from the sky when Savas finally made his strike. Blueraven met it with a ghostly blade easily twice the size of Wormaxe's attack, and it didn't do a damn thing to stop him. Dark green and black slashed through blue like a knife through butter.

But it did give Caden the chance to step aside, and that was the only reason Savas didn't bifurcate him then and there. The handchop sliced out a six foot deep trench into the ground, roughly the width of the Wizard's hand. Caden broke free and brought Sorcery to bear at point blank. Here and now it was all speed and preparedness.

Savas was prepared, but Aeraul and Rowan had been faster.

He came up with a palm thrust from his other hand, driving it straight into Blueraven's chest. First came a wave of rotten chi and raw emotion, blasting a halo of blue feathers out of the Sorcerer's upper back. Then came the detonation of a palm full of bone dice, into which Savas had long ago carved Beekiller's Muteblind Howler. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21566-The-Catacombs-of-Scara-Brae-Dead-Sun-Rising&p=173215&viewfull=1#post173215) No fewer than seven huge violet skulls burst out of his hand and passed through Blueraven, tearing out huge swaths of power as they struck. The Sorcerer didn't stagger or fall so much as he flew back, skidding so hard that his boots gouged shallow ditches into the ground behind him, until at last he struck a tall piece of debris and annihilated it. Magic rung out in every direction, wild and pained and utterly senseless.

Savas lurched forward and got a running start-

Then fell flat as the ground shifted underneath his feet.

"I WAS READY FOR YOU THIS TIME!" Blueraven Screamed, his Voice still weighing on Savas' soul like a ton of bricks. The Wizard silently rolled, but the ground was against him. It took an effort of will and power just to force himself up off of the dirt, springing clear enough to get his footing, and Blueraven was tweaking the ground almost from the moment he landed again.

"I CAN SENSE YOU THROUGH THE GROUND, YOU PATHETIC WORM!"

"You're not Blueraven at all," Wormaxe answered immediately, kicking one foot up and finding purchase on the air itself.

And just like that, the Sorcerer was reduced to a blind and deaf idiot. He responded with overkill, moving every last grain of dirt inside the null-Wizardry field, trying to compensate for the sensory gap. The ground rose and fell at random, stabbing up into the air. Savas just stepped up higher and drew another weapon.

It was the Husker's spidersilk whip.

"He never would've told me how to beat him."

Wormaxe struck the killing blow.

[Savas Tigh]

...except that Blueraven caught it effortlessly, showing no discomfort at the skin of his palm busting and blood gushing out between his fingers. Savas had a fraction of a second to be surprised, and then he was shocked.

Literally.

Sorcerous lightning traveled the length of the whip and blew Savas away, dislodging the weapon from his grip and setting it ablaze in the process. The Wizard didn't even scream as he went tumbling moonward, hit the lip of the Siege Arcana crater and rolled right into it.

"I told you I could be lying."

Blueraven slammed the crater shut with a one-handed gesture, then collapsed to his knees in exhaustion.

That was what his other self had done to cripple him.

He had taken away Blueraven's instinctive knowledge of the limits (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?19768-The-Henge-Sorcerous&p=155133&viewfull=1#post155133).

"Damn," Blueraven rasped, spitting blood and feathers and sparks. His vision was blurred. Wormaxe couldn't have known about the other Caden's post-mortem gambit. There was no way. Doubt gnawed at him.

And then a pair of hands came up out of his shadow and locked tight on his throat.

"THERE WON'T BE AN APOCALYPSE!" the Dark Wizard Wormaxe declared, hurtling up out of the shadow and into the light, wreathed in emerald fires and the faces of a hundred laughing dead.

Blueraven gagged and reflexively shot off spells in every direction. Some of them hit. One blew the knife clear out of Wormaxe's shoulder, spraying blood and anguish, but it was a good pain. For the first time in his life, he was fighting the good fight. He did it in the worst way, for the worst reasons, but it was still the good fight. He stood between the worlds, Althanas and N'Thayn'sal, between the rogue god and a hundred million unsuspecting souls, and he held the line. He was a messiah, here in this moment. An unsung messiah whose feats would never be known, a dark messiah anointed in blood and fire, but a messiah all the same. He was a Wizard and this was what he lived for.

The Sorcerer was on his last leg, power-wise. It didn't take long for him to try blasting Savas' face off, but even that was too weak to do more than bloody him. When powers failed, fists and feet followed. Caden knew how to hurt people but Savas had spent a lifetime learning how to be hurt. Punches to the face rolled off, blows to the ribs slipped shy of the mark, and knees bent ahead of kicks that suddenly did nothing. Maybe if Caden had started attacking sooner, physically, it would've been a different story. He was bigger and stronger and just plain better.

Savas never let go.

Not for one bloody second.

He strangled Blueraven down to his knees, onto his back, and then he kept strangling until the Mark burned out and the eyes rolled back and veins burst within them. He kept strangling until every last movement stopped. And then he kept at it a while longer. He didn't know how long. He didn't care.

He had to pry his fingers off one by one, unlocking white-knuckled joints as he went. He sat still for a moment, regarding the corpse beneath him, pale and lifeless as so many others. A better man would have said nothing. A truly good one might have felt remorse.

Savas spat and muttered, "Let that be your epitaph."

[Savas Tigh]

It took him the better part of half an hour before Savas staggered out of the null-Wizardry field and collapsed against a badly deformed lamp post, its light still flickering. He clasped a hand to his mouth and forced the bile down his throat, eyes squeezed tight and mind rigidly focused as he boxed the pain up and put it away for now. His shoulder had stopped bleeding. It was fifty-fifty as to whether that was a good sign or a bad one, but there was still enough left of Rowan to keep him going. Aeraul too for that matter. The essence of either man had faded out, taking memory and identity with it. What remained now were the things that Savas could hang onto, and he desperately clung to them with all his might.

Their ability to generate and channel magic -- chi, as they called it. It helped that they both seemed to have an affinity for fire, give or take. More so Aeraul. The half-man's empathy had also lingered, in a diffused kind of way. Savas could feel it amongst his sixth senses, just lurking there like a little gift box waiting to be unwrapped. He could barely feel minds around him as the anonymous legion -- the anonymi? -- began to trundle through the streets again, literally mending the world around them through sheer force of apathetic routine. Savas watched their progress, the way glass seemed to fall up and back into place, and cracks sealed, and craters filled themselves in; he watched and understood them. They were jailers. They were jailed. They were leftovers from the war Caden had mentioned, shaped by something out of Time and Place for a purpose that was all too easy to understand. Savas slumped down against the lamp post and watched them.

Within an hour, maybe two, the city didn't show so much as a mark from the battles that had so utterly devastated it.

Some of the anonymi changed appearance as time went by. Most continued to wander along their unknowable paths and meaningless errands, but a handful became bigger or smaller, their clothing styles changed just a tiny bit. Outside influence on the collective. One of them even dressed in a manner that Savas found disconcertingly familiar.

He could feel the faintest echo of their screaming. It was a sound that pointedly did not go on forever, and it was so much worse for that.

And even that was preferable to what was waiting on the other side. Savas remembered what was left of Rowan when he finally called him back. He and Aeraul had gotten lucky to find the black bliss of nonexistence. The alternative, even when Savas could not directly bear witness to it, made Hell sound downright inviting. And he had a much clearer idea of Hell than most people.

"And now the question must be asked: What will become of you?"

Savas looked up, hesitantly, to see a tall man wearing some kind of exotic military uniform. It made him think of what the Alerians might come up with in a few decades, if they ever cultivated any taste. Except that it was red. Deep, deep red, and Savas could see the stains of a more familiar, more human red faded into it. An untrained eye would've missed them. He seemed to have a high rank, if the decorations were any indicator. Over this, a desert tan cloak with a hood, huge and sturdy like canvas and leather. He wore a sword on his left hip, attached to his belt with a swivel mount. It looked like a katana with an odd handle, and the scabbard bore a faded zed, beta, gimel. Savas stared at it and thought of lions and tigers. He looked up at the man's face and thought only of monstrous things and the worst intentions for the most ambiguous of reasons.

"You're the Drifter, aren't you," he said, rather than asked. "You're the one who started this mess."

"Arguable," the Drifter admitted with a shrug. "Depending on when and how you define the start and the mess. And possibly the one as well. But I am the Drifter, yes."

"...what the hell are you?" Savas mumbled. He couldn't feel the Drifter's presence at all, empathically, but he could sense him every other way and then some. It was like the fellow was a fact of existence.

"Something not worth explaining," the Drifter answered. "And it's all beside the important question of what is to be done with you, Wormaxe."

"Nothing," Savas answered as he started to stand. The Drifter shrugged again.

"You're due a boon from the Sage God for saving existence. If you so choose it, you could become a Sorcerer. Right here, right now."

Savas stared at him.

He stared a long, long while.

And then he said, "But I'd have to be a slave, wouldn't I. Like Xem'zund was."

"It's not slavery per se-"

"I'll pass."

Silence.

"For now," Savas added.

"It's an offer never made twice," the Drifter informed him. "If you say no now, you won't get the opportunity again. You're at the crossroads for a great many major events, Savas, and you're dangerous at that. If the Thaynes cannot control you, they will not allow you to have such power. Serendipity alone will keep you from ever coming within a mile of Icehenge."

Savas grimaced, but said nothing.

"Are you sure? Do you know what you're turning down?"

"...no," he admitted. "But I want something else right now anyway."

The Drifter's eyebrow quirked up, dark blue eyes focusing intently. Savas told him his desired boon, and the man smiled.

"Somehow," he said. "I don't think your master would be surprised."

"Strike your mother," Savas answered. "Whatever happened to him, anyway?"

[Caden Law]

On the edge between Time and Death, there is a place that looks like nothing so much as what the mind wills it; a place shaped by imagination, because logic alone cannot give it form. For the moment -- what a petty idea that is -- it is a dark, lifeless place, cold by virtue of its emptiness. The ground is cobbled and blue, like the scales on some exotic reptile. There is water, or perhaps just the idea of water trying to stand in for something else, off to one side; literal liquid time congealed beneath the void between abstracts. The liquid ripples. It is rippling right now, it will ripple, and it has already rippled -- all at once. Outside of the liquid, sequential progression of cause and effect means nothing.

Or at least that was the case until a pale, scarred, veiny hand clawed up onto the cobblestones. Time seeped up into the void as a thin, barely existent vapor, clinging to the hand and to the man it heralded.

Caden Law dragged himself up out of Time into the vast dark above and beyond all things. He brought with him the ideas that set the edge into its current state, the effect happening before the cause; it was what it was because he made it that way, and he had always made it that way, before he even got there. He breathed without oxygen, without even the idea of it, his body simply going through the motions -- and his mind going through the motions of having a body, for that matter. He was nothing here, nothing but what he shaped himself to be.

It is a disconcerting thing to be your own raison d'etre, and to have all your component parts held together by nothing but your own existential inertia. To exist because you exist, even after dying.

Welcome, the Sage God greeted him, managing to appear out of nothing even though he had always been there and always would be. He appeared in a million-million forms, all at once, resolving into the likeness of a humanoid draped in a heavy black cloak lined with parchment and covered in the dust of a long forgotten desert library.

Am I dead? Caden asked, his Voice working without the need of anything in his body at this point.

That depends heavily on how you define yourself and upon how you define death, Khal'jaren told him. You are certainly more alive than the vast majority of stakeholders in your Name, if that's any consolation. More alive than many of the people you know as well. But also much more dead than some.

Give me a straight answer, you fucking prick.

There was a War in Heaven and we won, Caden, you and I and all the other gods who now fancy themselves as mere people. The Thaynes and our kin amongst other, lesser pantheons, are merely the ones burdened with the power and responsibility to oversee the rest. We stood up so that you all could stand down, wrap yourselves in meat and pettiness, close yourselves off to the vastness of existence. Think of it as an extended vacation from the responsibilities of what you really are. Surely you remember yourself from the War now, don't you? You, who cast down so many foes and left their memories burning and their souls deformed in the night sky. Don't you? Because I remember you. I remember you very clearly, Blueraven.

The likeness of a man -- of a merely mortal Wizard with a leg up on the competition -- wavered for a time that was shorter than a moment and longer than a billion years. In its place, something undescribable beyond the color blue, the presence of feathers, and the vaguest likeness of a crow. Humanity forced itself upon the wavering image, reasserted itself in vicious fashion.

Don't ask. You already know.

Are you saying that I'm like you?

Khal'jaren nodded. All 'mortal' life is, from the tiniest fly to the most terrible dictator, to the most forgettable peasant. We won the War in Heaven. And we saw that the soldiers of our enemies, the things you now know as Elves, enjoyed the punishment we had accorded them. So a great many of us rethought the matter and decided to join in. Fancy what happened next.

...but what about the ancient peoples the Elves destroyed? The Durklan and others?

In case you haven't noticed, Time is liquid. It is very easy to move, to distort, to shift and stir and swirl around. It was much easier before the things that made us close the Tap. And what a funny name that is, isn't it? The Tap. I like to think that it's a leftover memory, an Akashic thought of some kind.

Caden stood up. Khal'jaren towered over him.

...I'm not the only one, am I?

You're not. The incident that splintered your quantum shadow is still ongoing. What you encountered on the moon was just one of several such Blueravens, all working in their own way to bring about the end. It's a revolt by the world itself, actually. Althanas was never especially happy with what we did to it. It wants to be rid of you all and it's done the best it can to facilitate the process. It's even trying to appropriate and redefine the true, secret name of one of its greatest heroes to help make it happen.

Caden felt a primordial chill run through the core of him. He knew what was about to come next. He knew it before the Sage God ever began to speak.

N'Thayn'sal, more popularly known as the Wizard Blueraven, Caden Law.

[Savas Tigh]

There was one living man left on the graveyard moon of Althanas, sitting idle on a bench in a city populated by damned, mindless, silently screaming jailers of unfathomable eldritch horror. His eyes were closed as he reached out with his other senses, snuck a little bit of himself through the hair-thin crack separating Life and Death; the Firmament and the Antifirmament.

Little more than a tenth-ghost, this wavy little wisp of a Wizard's soul flickered and ran underneath the shadow of something that was literally impossible for him to comprehend. To do so would have killed him and obliterated much of the core of who and what he was in the process. To even attempt would have hurt, the severity of injury dependent upon the amount of effort involved. He whispered the name of an agent and found help where it was to be expected. What followed was a lengthy journey through the space between worlds, to a door that no living man should know about. Savas made the agent open the door. It was a construct. It existed for things like this.

The agent ceased to exist in a violent flash but the door was open. Just a tiny bit. Enough that Savas could repeat himself, slipping a sliver of his essence to the other side.

And once past the Antifirmament, he was little more than the idea of a shadow flickering the corners of the Containment. He moved with a swiftness.

He found them all exactly when he needed to.

Blueraven Brigade and Fireside Company, almost every last one of them. All standing, baffled and intact and in better health than they had ever known, at the base of a vast stairway to a shining place. Rowan and Aeraul, laughing together despite all odds and events to the contrary. They were each missing a few odds and ends, here and there, but they were okay.

They were okay.

The sliver nodded, pulled back. The wisp retracted. Savas drew himself out of the Antifirmament and opened his eyes.

The Drifter stood before him without a word.

"Time for me to get off this rock," the Wizard said.

[Savas Tigh]

The Drifter never offered him any help; not advice, not cryptic hints, not even witty banter or insults.

He just stood there against the backdrop of the screaming mutes, a pale, towering presence in a vast tan cloak and a strange red uniform. Savas watched him out of the corner of his eye as he worked. That was how he noticed the small scar on the Drifter's forehead, dead center above and between the eyebrows. It was circular. Faint enough that Savas didn't notice it at all for a long while. It struck him as the kind of scar a man might get if he could survive getting shot in the head at close range by something better than what the Alerians and Kebirans had access to.

When he was done, Savas had converted an entire fountain-courtyard to his purposes. It took him a while. He wasn't a geomancer, most of his equipment had been broken over the course of this merry adventure, and there's only so much blood in your average faceless idiot. He was still getting the hang of fire again too. Shadow and darkness; easy to get back in touch with that when you're a necromancer by trade. Fire produces light and warmth and hope. It was only because enough of Aeraul had stayed behind to reawaken his knack that Savas could do anything with it at all.

He set the blood on fire, then twisted shadows into solid letters burnt into the ground, the walls, everything. He completely painted and burned and shadow-wrote several thousand square feet without ever stopping to do more than kill someone and bleed them for paint's sake. The end result looked like a vast rambling narrative writ large on walls and floors, physically patterned into a spiral from word one to the interlocking circles and polyhedrons at the center.

Savas stood there at the center, carrying what was left and brandishing a knife as he waited. Eyes closed.

He was evolving now. The journey had changed him. The people had changed him.

Not as they would have wanted, but Savas never did care too much about what others wanted of him.

He reached out with nascent senses, hybrid senses, probing into the empty darkness of space, feeling things without words to describe them to the uninitiated. In a way, the whole thing made him regret not taking a bite out of Blueraven's corpse and tearing into his soul. Caden's ability to sense Time would have been profoundly useful right about now. There were a lot of things he had to keep track of without it. His agents on the other side, the few who remained. He had to keep up with the voice pestering him from the jawbone around his neck. He had to keep track of planetary alignments and the literal tides of nothing and darkness. He had to keep track of his own shadow.

The hole in the sky swirled shut during one of the earlier battles. The Stairway to Earth was closed.

Wormaxe was going to cheat by crashing through a window.

He opened his eyes to see the Drifter's grin.

He slit his left hand along the lifeline.

And then he slammed it into the circle and shouted a blandishment to somebody else's god.

[Savas Tigh]

The sickest joke never told is that light is subordinate to darkness. In speed, in power, in reality. No matter how fast the light races to fill a gap, it will always find darkness right there, waiting for it with open arms.

This is, of course, because darkness created light.

In the beginning was the Name. The true, ineffable name of the universe proper.

And then someone went and effed it.
The farthest confirmed unassisted teleportation spell in recorded history took place not long after the Wars of the Tap, when the last of the active Forgotten Ones -- whose name has, unironically, been lost to history -- was trying to survive the efforts of a transnational army of elves and men and dwarves and more. The Forgotten One evoked himself right out of absolutely certain death, dodging a spell that erased several nearby mountains from the face of the world. He reappeared several hundred miles away with a simple enchanted plynth dagger waiting in the space where his heart would be.

The magic, the blood, the twisted life all went out of him and he had just enough time to laugh and ask, "Et tú, mi amatrix?"

Legend has it, among those few people who actually know the legend, that the woman smiled with tears as she wrenched the dagger out. It caught fire and the flames consumed her alive and screaming in front of the bard who recorded the story. This is, in fact, the basis for a great many romantic tragedies from Raiaera to Corone, even though the source material has been buried by time. It's also a neat little bit of trivia.

And it's also a record that just got blown to Hell in a handbasket by the Dark Wizard Wormaxe, who disappeared from the moon to find himself falling up out of the shadows in the dimly lit hold of a ship. Falling so hard, in fact, that he wound up smacking up into the ceiling before reasserting himself, which involved falling right back down to the floor with a series of utterly un-hushed obscenities.

He lay there for a few seconds, listening close. Savas could hear the racket of an engine, by now familiar whether he wanted it to be or not. He stood, orienting himself and reaching out with his extra senses. It was muffled but there were still eight people -- all men -- on the ship. And they were all distracted, but one had heard all the crashing around, maybe even felt it through the soles of his feet. He was coming now and Savas would be waiting for him just out of sight. He stepped over to a stack of crates and held his dagger overhand.

A few minutes later, Pontius Grakken staggered down into the hold with a lantern and a pilfered gun.

Savas stabbed him in the back so hard the dagger broke.

[Savas Tigh]

A few days later, Savas pulled a grimoire out of the place where his journal should have been.

Just like that.

He was stunned for a few minutes, then checked to see if his old notes were still there. They were, and he knew exactly where to find them, and that was that. He didn't make a big deal of it. He just sat there near the prow of the Western Vulture, quietly inking away in the sunny skies that lurked above a sea of clouds.


I think I understand what Aeraul was babbling about, why he felt the way he did. Being back in Althanas proper, sort of, it's like I can feel a pressure so vast that I shouldn't even notice it. It's the difference between standing on water and being at the bottom of the ocean -- either you die horrifically or you just stop feeling it.

He and Rowan are still with me after a fashion. And some of my old powers, the ones I had before I sold my Name to Xem'zund, they're finally filling back in too. I still can't evoke properly, but I've tested myself out a little and I can basically copy what the two of them were capable of. I think if I develop my forms enough, I'll be able to refine my own combat thaumaturgy, similar in effect to evocation, but different in theory. It's a start. And I might be able to evoke a little bit after all. I don't know how I was jumping through shadows when I fought Blueraven but damn if it didn't feel natural. And the call to fire, I've got that three times now -- Aeraul and Rowan were both pyrokinetics, in their ways.

It's something to think about.

It's a lot to think about.

Thankfully, I've got a not-quite-skeleton crew to run this damn ship while I mull it all over. Think I'm going to port myself back down into Corone when the ship passes over it, then have the crew take it to that Beinost place. It's funny? but I'm sensing space differently than usual. It almost feels like what Blueraven had in his notes about his global positioning sense, the one he burnt out in Salvar.

I'll figure it out. For now I'm going to meditate. And stare at this piece of paper. I wonder if this thing is infinite.

Does it have a last page?

Oh dear.
And that's as good a step as any to jump off.

[Caden Law]

And that's a wrap.

Spoils/etc now for memory's sake and/or For The Public.

Caden Law: Nothing.

Aeraul Smythe and Rowan McCloud: Dead. Both. I'd like it if their combined experience was cannibalized over to Savas Tigh. Especially anything they would've gotten from this thread.

Savas Tigh: +Nascent chi manipulation, vaguely reminiscent of Aeraul and Rowan's powers, +Nascent spatial positioning sense, +Deformed empathic abilities, +Grimoire, +EXP from the Aeraul/Rowan accounts, +Resurgent magical powers over fire and shadow, +Telecom Jawbone. Details hammered out on the next character update and beyond.

Kebiras: The burgeoning Empire of Larkatz (re: Berk) has collapsed completely. There is a surge of hostile wyrmfolk activity from the North, human chaos in the South, and the orcs have already turned on each other as a whole. The Huskers are as they ever have been -- a shadowy threat under the horizon. The Treseran are anybody's guess, since they mostly blend in with the orcs and have no culture of their own. Without a unifying force of some kind, the region poses no short-term threat to Althanas proper. Probably. It's not like dying stopped Hellhand before...

Beinost: Barring an Act of Judge, the College Arcana will soon be acquiring its very own Kebiran skyship. Once they clean the decaying corpse crew off its decks. It'll likely be tethered to one of the city's numerous mage towers. While punch ugly to look at, the thing is considerably more advanced -- both magically and technologically -- than its counterparts in Alerar. It sports two magitech jet engines, an enchanted hull of Kebiran liviol, and assorted trinkets that include (but aren't limited to) superior Kebiran firearms technology (re: repeating rifles, revolvers, shotguns and the like, many of them at least crudely enchanted, with a stock of bullets and ammo to match). How this will affect the regional power balance is out of my hands.

The Moon: ...is waiting for some stupid bastard to go pay a visit to Limbo, the Faceless City that never stops screaming. :)

[Duffy]

Stairway to Heaven Judgement - Condensed
Featuring the Wizard that Did It and the Menagerie

It is, as ever, an immense pleasure to be given the opportunity to judge your work, Caden. I cannot stress just how wonderful it is to be there, with your characters, along for the bumpy, witty, enthralling ride. If I were to say one thing, it's that despite your story lost clarity and technical polish in the midst of it's sheer immensity, not once did your ability to display realistic interaction and brotherhood between your PC's slip. A truly commendable effort.

Plot Construction ~ 21/30
Story ~ 9/10 -
Strategy ~ 8/10 -
Setting ~ 7/10 -

Characterisation ~ 26/30
Continuity ~ 7/10 -
Interaction ~ 9/10 -
Character ~ 10/10 -

Writing Style ~ 21/30
Creativity ~ 8/10 -
Mechanics ~ 7/10 -
Clarity ~ 6/10 -

Wildcard: 10/10

Total ~ 81/100


Spoils:

Caden Law




4925xp
518


Savas Tigh




2138xp
356


Aerual




891xp
162


Rowan




891xp
162



You requested the experience from the two deceased characters to be transferred. Due to the ROG and ressurection rules, I cannot grant you the full amount from Aeraul Smythe and Leaf on the Wind. However, I have granted you the experience both those characters would have earned, had they survived the encounter. This gives Savas a grand total of 3,920 experience, and an appropriate boost in gold.

I cannot grant you any abilities requested for Savas Tigh without the appropriate conditions, and details, so you will have to link this thread to the ROG when you post your next profile.

+ Grimoire Granted
+ Telecom Jawbone Granted

Your canon altering requests have been put to the region writers, for likely inclusion into the relevant parts of the Almanac. Look out for Beinost's new artefact of wonder soon :D.

CLOSED, PENDING JUDGE'S CHOICE DECISION

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.