Anodynia

[Wings of Endymion]

As an Oracle to the many faces of the pantheon of Thaynes, those who bestowed upon me my powers also saw fit to grant me life spanning far beyond the mortal norm. Though my soul is still cocooned within fragile flesh and brittle bone like any other worldly being, I am governed by a different set of rules dictating what is possible and what is not. No longer am I bound by the whims of time, and squabbles that once seemed of such great importance are now but mere petty trifles in the wind. I have seen so much over long years with these weary eyes of mine, some of it good, much of it bad, most of it meaningless in the greater skein of life.

Many of the senior Oracles who call themselves my peers, and many of those who came before me, are and were content to simply withdraw from mortal society. But now more than ever I find myself unable to follow their example. A life of a recluse, of sitting sedentary in a single location, of simply contemplating the ever-shifting skies and awaiting the hardy pilgrims who seek my knowledge… this is not for me. The world is too vast and too unfathomable, its people and places too varied and too interesting, to simply sit back and twiddle my thumbs while an eternal sleep creeps up on me unannounced.

My daughters call me childish and immature, and plead with me to stop dragging them around to the far fringes of the world to satisfy my adventurous curiosity. But even they cannot deny that occasionally, every once in a while, my journeys bear fruit.

Like that young man in Scara Brae…

Like that girl in Salvar…


***

She woke to the sound of her heart thundering in her chest, its rapid beat a war drum sounding legions of warriors to battle inside of her. Her breathing echoed rapid and shallow in the thin air of her tower chambers in Rostarinne, Castle in the Clouds. Despite the chill of the early winter night, her slender body bathed in hot sweat; the bed linen clung clammily to her pale skin.

Restlessly, wearily, she shifted position, turning over onto her opposite side and curling up like a kitten amongst the soft down. But the peaceful embrace of sleep would not return as easily as she had left it, and her mind lingered upon the dream that had awoken her.

Why had she dreamed of him so suddenly?

Engraved upon her soul like a red-hot brand, she could still distinctly remember the touch of the wintry breeze as it caressed her cheek, the chatter of the merchants they had passed on the road, the tantalising smells of the fresh fruit and the rice dumplings, the soft self-effacing smile on his face that had always irritated her so. The memories revived so freshly that they might as well have actually happened in the not-so-distant past. She swallowed out of impulse, and could even taste the fine Nipponese tea upon her tongue.

Why Yann? Why now?

The activity in her head reluctantly forced her eyes open, and they took long languid moments to adjust to the deep of night. The clouds outside her window drifted past in tranquil travel, depositing light flurries of large fluffy snowflakes upon the castle courtyard. Barren branches already bore a finger-thick burden of soft white, and the wind had coated the north face of the walls in a similar load. She felt for the groundskeepers who would have to deal with clearing the garden paths on the morrow, but from the safety and warmth of her room, the picturesque magic gradually pacified her riotous heartbeat. Her breathing slowed, calmed, and finally she could take deep enough breaths to rid the heavy miasma from the depths of her lungs.

Only then could she begin to see the dream in an objective light.

If she strained her neck just so, she could see the crude metal locket hanging from the jewellery stand on the table: silvery metal shaped as a pair of outstretched wings enveloping a sceptre, a small blue stone glowing gently slightly off-centre. She treasured it as her only possession that remained from her old Academy days, before the akki ambush had thrown her life into disturbed disarray, before the Night of Nefarious Flame had taken away almost everything that remained. Did she imagine that it glinted subtly in the wan cloudlight?

She remembered Elenwe and Nimloth discussing the latest rumour of the Last Crusader over the previous evening’s meal. That must have been what had reminded her of Yann. The rumour spoke of a young foreign human in the depths of the Lindequalme, studying Xem’zund’s forbidden lore in an attempt to create a countermeasure that would prevent the dead from rising ever again. Kayu knew better than to think that Yann would ever study forbidden necromantic lore, no matter how noble the goal. That would be Touma’s doing, more likely than not; her other old friend had never shied away from the darker paths inherent in their profession.

Her gaze glistened in the darkness as she regarded the silver wings. If she had thought of Yann before going to bed, she realised the possibility that her locket and his had acted as a conduit between their minds, allowing magic to bridge the distance between them as a shared dream. Her hypothesis also accounted for how abruptly it had ended; as soon as she had wished herself away, the dream had crumbled. The idea had plausibility, although it could not begin to account for exactly how the artefact had gained its enchanted properties, and why it had remained quiescent for thirteen years before activating, and even if Yann had truly kept his own matching piece.

She sighed, her mind settling back to dormancy now that it had tentatively solved the mystery. Only then did she realise the extent of her weariness, as if she had truly acted out the events of her dream. Her legs felt puffy and exhausted from spending so long seated formally, and she could still taste the tea lingering in her mouth.

A potent yawn escaped her lungs, transmitting her sleepiness into the silent night.

Idly she allowed her thoughts to wander. Where did he walk now, and what exactly did he do there? A faint smile touched her lips as she remembered how hard he had tried to seem friendly and outgoing, hiding his insecurities away behind worn facades of grins. It quickly faded as her thoughts moved on to his fatalistic determination… his stubborn sense of duty… his ridiculously overblown chivalry… his confused inexperienced blinking… his way of averting his eyes whenever he looked at her…

By the time she reached the last of her list, she had fallen once more into deep sleep.

[Wings of Endymion]

The cherry blossoms fell with all the elegance of dancing snowflakes. Petals of pink and white carpeted the barren courtyard grounds, floating upon the calm sheen of the pond like a flotilla under review. A single stone lantern stood stern sentinel over the serenity, whilst the peaceful echo of a bamboo deer chaser kept time above the tinkle of flowing water.

The morning bit coldly for mid-spring, and Kayu had wrapped a padded cotton cardigan over her shoulders to combat it. The black sateen collar contrasted beautifully with the white of the fabric and the aster violet of the semi-formal kimono she wore underneath. Each of the colours she had chosen held deep meaning: the white symbolised purity and integrity, the violet patience, duty, dignity, and nobility. The pattern of her kimono, fine snow petals that accented the colour of her lips, befitted an unmarried girl of twenty in its simplicity and discretion. She wore no makeup on skin somewhat pale from lack of sun, and her hair cascaded in straight silken strands past her slender shoulders. But she still cut an elegant figure as she sat motionless upon the reed tatami mats. Her eyes focused unwavering and determined, set firmly upon the rolling landscape depicted upon the tightly shut sliding panels before her.

At length they cracked open, her mother’s pleasingly manicured fingers visible to her gaze as they curled around the edge. The panels paused once they stood ajar a hand’s width, then slid silently the rest of the way. The older woman bowed formally to her daughter, but did not greet her verbally. Kayu followed her lead and simply bowed back.

Loud footfalls echoed in the wooden corridor. Her father strode into the room with nary a care for decorum, dressed stiffly in every-day kimono and haori and his hair neatly done up in the samurai style. His eyes buzzed like angry hornets as they darted around the room, settling briefly upon Kayu before sliding dismissively from her face. He grunted once, coarsely, then seated himself opposite from her in cross-legged imposingness as she held her bow. The sliding panels closed behind him on soundless rails, leaving father and daughter alone in the room.

For long moments he remained wordless, and she held her prostrated bow. The sleeves of her kimono formed crescent arcs to either side, her hair settling neatly in the small of her back. His gaze bore holes into the nape of her neck, scrutinising her studiously.

Long minutes passed before at last he spoke.

“How long has it been since you left for the Academy?”

His voice rasped deeply, just as she remembered it. She relented her position slightly so that she could reply, but dared not yet match his gaze.

“Eleven years, father.”

“You have made the family proud, it seems. High Maester Abiko has written personally to emphasise your talent and potential. He tells me that there is nothing more for you to learn from even the foremost spellweavers in the land, and that you have already been of great aid to His Imperial Majesty himself.”

The Nipponese ideal of womanhood was typified by the dianthus flower: pure of heart and beautiful, sensitive and wise, loyal and humble. A woman abided by tradition, acted for the benefit of the family, and followed the instructions of her father and husband without question. Kayu had been brought up beneath such ideals, and reflected upon them as she answered.

“I was merely following your instructions, father. When you allowed me to leave this home to study at the Toho Institute of Academic Learning, your words were for me to develop my talents, to continue my studies and my training.”

He grunted again, a coarse sound that caused the paper partitions to shudder all around.

“You have done us proud,” he repeated, continuing to study her intently. She waited patiently for him to move on, knowing that there had to be more, knowing that he would not have summoned her so soon after her graduation ceremony otherwise.

He rose to his feet, the rustle of fabric on tatami giving way to the squeak of floorboard as he paced to the terrace. Kayu raised her face at last, finding her father staring thoughtfully out over the garden courtyard. She knew better than to join him, but her eyes too went to the blossoms that so symbolised Nipponese culture.

“How old are you now, Kayu?”

Her gut clenched. She’d guessed that he might try to take the conversation in this direction, and she had prepared accordingly. She forced herself to be calm, to reply without allowing the emotion to enter her voice.

“I reached the age of twenty last summer, father.”

“Twenty, eh? Time sure flies…”

For a moment he looked almost vulnerable, an effect amplified by the poignant shedding of the delicate pink blossoms. Kayu steeled her heart and again forced herself to be emotionless. Sure enough, without even turning to her, he tactlessly revealed the thoughts on his mind.

“It is high time you were married. Lord Gamo is my biggest client, and his third son is roughly your age. He indicated to me last night that, although it would be marrying below his station, he would be willing to make an exception for one so talented and well brought up. You would be marrying into nobility, Kayu, and by doing so will firmly ally us with one of the most powerful houses in the land. I hope that you are honoured.”

“I am, father.” She showed her sincerity by prostrating herself once more. But the curtness of her reply, and the silence that followed, told him that she left much unsaid. He turned to her, frowning.

“Are you dissatisfied, Kayu?”

She knew that she had no reason to be. In an age where many noble girls married at twelve or fifteen, she realised that she could practically be labelled an old maid. For one such as her to be given the opportunity to marry into one of the foremost families in the courts of Nippon was a blessing beyond belief.

“I am truly honoured by your considerations, father,” she said, artfully dodging the question. The frown didn’t leave his face.

“Don’t tell me that you’ve bought into some barbarian nonsense while you were at the Academy?”

She hadn’t, and shook her head vehemently to deny the accusation. Her own heart didn’t even enter into the equation. Only commoners married for desire, or pursued each other on the basis of something as fleeting as a whim. Nipponese high society married as a matter of political expediency and gain, to further the ambitions of the clan. In essence, she existed as a pawn, to be advanced or sacrificed as her father saw fit.

Kayu did not resent being a pawn. Such was the lot of a highborn woman in Nippon; plenty of girls lived in the same situation as she. Not all of them would be treated as well, or given the same opportunities.

But she did resent having spent her entire life honing her incarnate talents, only to be packed away as a bargaining chip. Surely, the yearning voice in her heart said, surely he could find some better use for her powers, some meaningful contribution she could make to the world?

“Father,” she began, even more dignified than usual. Her mind churned as it sought a way to express her thoughts, all her carefully prepared phrases lost like melting ice upon her tongue. “I would ask what use my skills as a spellweaver would be as a wife to Lord Gamo’s third son. Would I be allowed to wield the knowledge that I earned at the Academy for the good of the nation and its people?”

Her father guffawed, derisive with scorn. “Of course not, Kayu. Your duty would be that of any other wife in the land. To look after your husband, to be loyal to his family and to ours, and to give him a healthy heir. Of course, we may call upon you from time to time in order to avail ourselves of your divinations… but most of all your presence in the Gamo household will do much to give us respectability. If Lord Gamo so desires, his son may even take over from me when I retire. With his blood and your talent, our house would then be invincible!”

The thought clearly excited him. His fists clenched, lost in the moment. But then he turned back to her, and his gaze met her sternly.

“You will be dutiful and loyal, and obey your husband and his family in every matter. I am sure that they will not think highly of any attempt to wield your powers without their permission. Under no circumstances are you to defy them. Am I clear?”

He was, and so was the choice she had to make. Duty to her family, or duty to the larger world? Her father, or her freedom?

“So the talents that you so enthusiastically encouraged me to hone… were merely a means to earn me a favourable marriage?”

“Of course,” her father replied, puzzled as to the reason why she still argued, why her voice had cooled and lost most of its respectfulness. His confusion swiftly mutated into anger. “Know your place, Kayu, or else…”

The Nipponese ideal of womanhood was typified by the dianthus flower: pure of heart and beautiful, sensitive and wise, loyal and humble. But the dianthus was a wildflower, after all, and a woman also had to be strong of soul and stout of mind, ready to defend her family and her ideals with martial force if necessary.

And Kayu did not think of herself as a doll, to be dressed up and polished and then packed away at a moment’s notice.

“Father,” she said solemnly, this time not bowing as she addressed him. “I must refuse.”

For a moment he could only stare at her, incredulous. Eyes that had only minutes before wavered between hope and pride now blazed with fury. His hair stood on end at his daughter’s callous disregard for his authority, bald pate glistening with sweat and ruddy with barely contained anger. He loomed over her, body strong and straight, fists held like massive clubs and more than willing to enact violence if necessary.

Then he stopped, transfixed by the power of her gaze.

Kayu was not so heartless as to use her incarnate arts against her own father. But she had no need to.

Lost in his daughter’s calm resolve, only in that instant did Soken Kanamai fully realise what she had become – a powerful and independent figure in her own right. So used to being given absolute respect, he had not been prepared for the fact that she worthily deserved it as much as he.

The cherry blossoms fell with all the grace of a dying butterfly. Petals of pink and white died and rotted amidst the churned mud, drowning in the emotionless mirror of the pond like soldiers massacred in their ranks. A lonely stone lantern kept forlorn watch over the carnage, whilst the hollow echo of a bamboo deer chaser gave discordant call above the dribble of fleeing water.

Kayu gracefully rose to her feet and bowed to her father. Not the subservient bow of a daughter to her father, but as she might to an equal.

When he did not respond, she stole away in silence, leaving him standing there paralysed. She could not control the tears that flowed down her pale cheeks at the thought of what she was about to lose, but she had no regrets. None at all.

By the time her father regained his senses, she had long since left the house.

[Wings of Endymion]

Kayu woke for a second time, albeit with a serenity and calm that she had lacked the first time around. Again her dream surprised her with its lucid vivid detail, but unlike her previous, which had been completely unfamiliar, this one her mind had reconstructed almost perfectly from memory. She had yet to see her father since that day.

Sighing softly, she opened her eyes to the dawn.

Morning came swiftly to Rostarinne, even during the depths of winter. Cold frost crept up the delicate glass windows, only recently strengthened to withstand the demands of wind and weather at the higher altitude. The snow clouds that had terrorised the castle grounds during the night had fled, and the entire citadel glistened under the wan glare of a wintry sunrise.

But her chambers greeted her with artificial warmth, heated by the ancient mana generators that kept the castle afloat in the skies above Tor Elythis. The luxury eased her transition from the comfort of her bed to the freshness of her room, her toes digging into the soft carpeting at her feet. She enjoyed the sensation, one she had never experienced upon the hard reed mats that existed as the norm in Nippon. The candle mounted above her chest of drawers scented the air with light sweet damson plum, intensifying as she drew closer to its burnt-out wick in search of a fresh change of clothes.

The bureau had an exquisitely wrought mirror built into its frame, and inadvertently she found her eyes drawn to the reflection exhibited there. A generous person would have described her build as slender or athletic: too skinny and hard around the chest and waist, too firm and bony about the shoulders and hips. Dark ebony hair poured down to the small of her back, rather frazzled by her nocturnal tossing and turning. She did not consider herself a pretty woman: her brow furrowed too easily, her cheeks protruded too delicately, and her eyelids folded dark with shadow. The mirror mercilessly taunted her with her flaws as she reached for a robe, and the young woman scrunched her nose in turn, gaze brimming with intelligence and life.

Only then did she notice the extra face grinning back at her from the bottom corner.

“Touma!” she gasped, hurriedly quashing the instinct to find something hard to smash into the expensive furnishing. An honoured guest at Rostarinne she may have been, thanks to the machinations of the Elythisian Prince, High Archmage Ecthelion Seregon of the Ivory Spire, but she doubted that her hosts would take kindly to her wreaking havoc upon her room. “You have to stop doing that!”

“Just enjoying the view,” the face told her with a cheeky wink, handsome aquiline features admiring her silhouette. Hastily she grasped once more at the robe, turning away form the mirror as she slipped it on with practiced ease. She had composed herself again by the time she turned back to speak to him.

“What do you want?”

“Is that how you address somebody for the first time in five months?” Touma Kamikaji, psy-mage, asked with a wry grin.

“You’re the one who disappeared without a trace after Xem’zund’s defeat,” she countered, seating herself before the mirror and pulling out a tortoiseshell hairbrush inlaid with jade. “Or are you going to pretend that didn’t happen?”

“… you have me there.” His murky brown eyes apologised arrogantly, not deviating an inch from where they bore into hers.

“You don’t seem particularly concerned,” she pointed out, beginning to draw the brush in steady strokes through her silky hair. Something clicked in her keen mind. “The rumour that somebody’s been studying Xem’zund’s forbidden lore in the Lindequalme?”

Touma scoffed. “Haven’t been there for months.”

Kayu hadn’t expected anything less. She wouldn’t have put it past Touma to have investigated Xem’zund’s libraries, assuming that any remained, but for him to be so careless as to have rumours spread? Highly unlikely. Unless, of course, the rumours themselves originated from his own mouth…

In fact, she wouldn’t put that past him, either. Especially if he wanted to throw pursuit off his scent, or frame somebody who actually did even now study Xem’zund’s forbidden lore, or…

The bristled brush gently massaged her scalp and whispered through her hair, one smooth motion after another. She clung to its calming influence, the steady motions giving her strength. Dealing with Touma made her see shadows in the light, smell smoke without fire, until her suspicions give her headaches. But he was also undeniably her saviour, her confidante, and her closest friend. Her resigned sigh echoed wispily from the smooth stone walls.

“What do you want today?” she asked, with the air of a long-suffering wife attending to an oft-absent husband.

“Who said I want anything? Can’t I just drop in to see an old acquaintance, a beautiful girl, from time to time?” His eyes lit up with a charming twinkle as he turned on the charisma. It only made her more certain that he had something in mind.

“Too early for games, Touma.”

“I disagree,” he laughed, but now his eyes did not share in the mirth. “It is never too early for games.”

She stared at him for a moment, hairbrush forgotten in her hands. Then she set it back in its place with an overly loud clatter.

“If you’re not going to tell me, Touma, I’m going to head downstairs to break my fast. And if I see your face in any of the cutlery there…”

“Woah, woah.” She could tell that he had his hands up in appeasement, though she could not actually see them. “Do you know how much time and effort it took just to get through to here? And now you want me to follow you to the great dining hall in the company of a hundred of the most powerful elven mages in the world? Kayu, you wound me.”

She gave him her deadliest glare, hands on hips in a gesture she had picked up since leaving Nippon. He almost burst out laughing again, but stifled it when he saw how seriously her bright eyes flared.

“Fine, why did I contact you today. Firstly to check up on how you’ve been doing since you left Natosatael behind with Maeril. He hasn’t bothered you since, has he?”

“I don’t think he could, even if he wanted to,” she replied, sitting back down before the mirror now that he’d stopped teasing her. “As you just said, I’m well protected here.”

“I understand that, but don’t underestimate him, Kayu. He’s a daemon of the fifth circle, one of the most powerful beings in Haidia. My own influence over his actions ended when our contract dissolved four years ago.”

“I won’t,” she frowned, her brow furrowing in deep lines. “But for over three years after that he protected me while I studied in the netherplane. He wouldn’t…”

“He protected you because it suited his purposes to do so, Kayu. Just as it suited his purposes to contract with me, way back when. Just as it suited his purposes to join the Great Corpse War under Maeril the Souldrinker, despite it being that wretch Ar’zhanekkar who summoned him.”

“And that was before I betrayed him to warn Winyaurient?”

“Exactly,” Touma nodded. In fact it had partly been through his urging that she had finally left the daemon’s protection to alert the elven citadel to Maeril’s plan. But although she had eventually succeeded in foiling the destruction of its central stronghold, activating the millennia-old mana generators that had powered it into the sky to be renamed Rostarinne, her escape had not been without cost. Touma had enacted a terrible vengeance when he found out of the grave wounds she had sustained on the shores of the Laure Linae, and his deeds still lived fresh in his memory.

“But he wouldn’t…”

“No, he wouldn’t. You and I are too valuable to him for that. But so is Xuan, and you’ve seen what he’s done to him.”

Touma used Yann’s true name, almost callously bringing it to tongue when even the closest of his acquaintances knew him by a pseudonym. She shuddered when she remembered the face from her dreams, the young man’s haunted suicidal resolve, and thought of the experiences that had tempered it to such a fine edge. Touma noted her sudden pallor and frowned.

“Kayu?”

“Nothing,” she assured him, but he could not see her clenched fists trembling on her lap. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Have you been studying under that elven archmage? Ecthelion, I think his name was?”

“He’s been kind enough to teach me a little of what he knows,” she answered, but she did not seem happy. “On the other hand, either he doesn’t want me to learn too much, or he doesn’t know enough about hojutsu to be able to assist me.”

“The principles of all magic are the same,” Touma objected. “Whether elven or Nipponese in origin. He was quick enough to help Xuan not so long ago.”

“… yes, he did say that.”

“You haven’t spoken to him about it?”

“He doesn’t want to say anything about him, either. I get the feeling that he really doesn’t like me.”

Or you remind him too much of a touchy subject, Touma conjectured, but he kept the thought to himself. Out loud, he said, “In which case it was my fault for trusting to him and leaving you here so long. Which brings me to the real reason I came to talk to you today. I was wondering if you’d like to join me on a short expedition to the Kalev Highlands.”

She raised a thin eyebrow in appraisal. “North Salvar? Why would you want to go there, now of all times?”

At this time of year, they would be lucky if the savage northern storms had not inundated the plateau in enough snow to bury a man alive in a night, and that said nothing of the giants and beastmen that made the broken mountains their home. On top of beast and weather, the dangers included roaming bands of orcs seeking slaves and plunder, wild men who bowed to no outside authority, and bands of deserters and mercenaries driven northwards by the gradual reestablishment of order in Salvar after the end of the Civil War. Her room in Rostarinne, and her status as an honoured guest there, seemed positively queenly in comparison.

Touma smiled.

“The Tap.”

“The Tap?” In ages long past, the Eternal Tap had served as the source of power for all magic in the mortal realm. It had powered feats of wonder at a mere thought, key to an entire age of civilisation and conflict. Those who grew too close to the Tap, those who found themselves overly attuned to its power and ended up corrupted by its influence, had terrorised full generations as the Forgotten Ones. Their machinations had thrown the entire known world into war, and when at length cornered and sealed in the Antifirmament, they had fractured the Tap out of spite, forever shattering it such that none but themselves could ever make use of it again.

Surely it only existed in the present day as a myth, a legend… a fairy tale, even. Undoubtedly real, once upon a time, but irrelevant to contemporary issues. Touma, however, obviously thought otherwise.

“More specifically, a relic thereof.”

“But why now? Why…?”

Grudgingly she had to admit that he had piqued her interest. He capitalised upon it by withholding any further information.

“I can’t tell you any more like this.” He indicated his current form, the bodyless apparition that inhabited one corner of Kayu’s mirror. “If you want to know more, come prepared for travel to the back gate at sundown. Suffice it for now to say that ancient history isn’t as lost to our hands as you might think it to be. I’ll be happy to show you what I mean later.”

A chill ran down her spine.

“Sundown at the back gate?” she asked.

“It gives you the whole day for goodbyes,” he confirmed.

Kayu didn’t know whether she should be furious at his selfishness or grateful for his consideration. She compromised by stalking from the room, leaving his thoughtful face staring at her retreating back from the perfect sheen of its mirror prison.

[Wings of Endymion]

In the end she gave up on a morning meal. Instead her footsteps led her to the castle’s library, and to the wizened figure that she knew she would find there.

Ecthelion Seregon, Prince of Tor Elythis and High Archmage of the Ivory Spire, sat at a common table perusing one of the many ancient tomes that the Elythisian armies had managed to salvage from the fall of Anebrilith. His fine translucent hair flowed like molten platinum to the back of his thighs, aged features crinkling like rice paper with every expression of approval. Clad in robes of grey and cloak of white, he cut the very figure of dignity and augustness. But the war had taken its toll upon even his venerable mind, and these days he rarely left the confines of the High Archmage’s Tower in Tor Elythis and the library in Rostarinne, travelling between the two only by arcane means.

Kayu found herself alone with the ancient archmage, the morning still too early for the gaggle of scholars, researchers, and archivists who usually inhabited the airy arches and muffled carpets of the rich bibliothecal decorum. She breathed deeply of the mixture of fresh sunshine and musty old parchment, unable to suppress the feeling of a guilty child reporting a transgression to the school headmaster. Except that Ecthelion’s power far outstripped that of her Maesters of old, and she had no wish to see him angry again. The memory of how he had forced Maeril Souldrinker and his black dragon mount to retreat from the Battle of Nenaebreth with just a few words still haunted her mind.

“Miss Kanamai.” He greeted her courteously from over his shoulder as she drew near, his voice warm but fragile. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Whatever his feelings towards her, she found it difficult to dislike the elderly elf.

“I have a few questions that I would like to ask, if you have the time to answer them…”

“Of course.” Gently he closed the leather-bound grimoire, taking great care to damage neither its dusty backing nor his spindly fingers. He indicated the seat opposite. “I have the feeling that this may take a while. Please, sit.”

“I hope that I’m not a bother,” she apologised, gracefully alighting in the high-backed chair. The gilded letters of the tome on the table taunted her with their hidden knowledge. She could not read the title with her limited knowledge of the Elven script, but she did recognise the author, the famous historian and scribe Elralad Calil-Galdor. If she remembered correctly, he specialised in legends and prophecies during the War of the Tap…

“Of course you are not,” Ecthelion assured her, steepling his hands before him and gazing at her profoundly from beneath thin white eyebrows. “How may I be of assistance?”

She nodded at the book folded in front of him.

“The Tap.”

“The Tap?” A wisp of a smile touched Ecthelion’s features, mildly amused. “It has been shattered for millennia, long since the Forgotten Ones were first banished.”

“And yet some of their number still live. How do those who draw their immortality from the font of magical power of their times still survive if it does not still exist in some form?”

“It does. If you blow out a candle, the heat does not just disappear… it dissipates into the surrounding air. The water from a fallen cup is drunk by the thirsty earth.” Ecthelion's smile turned enigmatic. “The Tap may have been shattered, but the power it held did not just disappear. It simply became more difficult to access. I believe that you humans know it as the leylines that run beneath the earth, or the arcane winds that blow high up in the heavenly skies.”

“So instead of everybody being able to use magic, and a select few being able to draw upon its full strength, we have only a select few able to use magic, and almost none able to draw upon its full potential?”

“Indeed.” Ecthelion gave her a wise nod.

“Would that help to explain why there are so few spellweavers in Nippon, even compared to elsewhere?”

“It might, or it might not. I am afraid that I have not had the opportunity to travel so far east in my lifetime, as long as it has been. I cannot offer any pertinent insight into a matter that I have yet to study myself.”

She made the pretence of pondering his words for a moment before speaking again.

“Would it be possible, then, that a shattered fragment of the Tap existed in a more material form?”

His eyes narrowed.

“A material form? Such as an artefact, or a spell, or…” His voice trailed off into passive thought, but she did not miss the hint of suspicion hidden amongst the thin tautness of his face. His elven features bore barely a wrinkle when expressionless, but the uneven light somehow cast them into a range of penumbra, disorienting her gaze as it tried to read deeper into his reaction. “Again, one can never deny the possibility. I would not think it likely, but neither would I deny it outright? But why would you wish to know?”

“Curiosity,” she replied with her most innocent smile. She knew it didn’t fool him, and he knew that she knew. But she now knew not to dismiss Touma’s tale out of hand; at the very least, Ecthelion had verified the existence of the Tap, and the prospect that its fragments could still affect the material realm.

“Beware of the temptations of such power, Miss Kanamai. You more than most know the consequences of power… whether granted or stolen or found… or innate.”

She froze.

“What do you mean by that, High Archmage?”

“I apologise if I offended you, Miss Kanamai.” The elf shed his harmless demeanour, and his eyes glinted at her shrewdly. “I believe that you spoke earlier of how Nippon had so few spellweavers. But you were born as one, and one so powerful that even at a young age your family feared you… yes, feared you and sought to make use of you. Only the interjection of my brethren in those distant lands saved you from such a life… and the next time your family tried to place you under their thumb, you escaped from their grasp.”

“You know a lot about me for somebody who professes to know nothing about Nippon,”

“I’m afraid I scryed on your past without your permission, Miss Kanamai. I had to, to satisfy myself that you were not a danger to us.”

“Even if I saved the citadel?”

“Precisely because you saved Rostarinne, Miss Kanamai. Precisely because you had the knowledge to be in the right place at the right time to do exactly the right thing. We do not believe in coincidences in my profession, Miss Kanamai, and when you have grown as old and as powerful as myself this truth holds even more.”

Beneath the table her knees suddenly trembled, a bead of sweat trickling down her pale cheeks. His eyes captivated her in their strength and perception, such that she could not even lift a finger as he stripped her soul bare. She swallowed, reminded of just why this ancient elf bore the title of High Archmage, and her slender throat rippled.

“And what did you find?”

“That your friend Touma likes to weave webs of deceit around the world while consorting with daemons. That you yourself lived under the protection of Natosatael the Unbound, din’ Pholoris, when you fled to Haidia with him and studied the netherworld there. That he brought you to Raiaera when summoned to the aid of Maeril Souldrinker, and that though you lived among the forces of Xem’zund, you did not participate in the atrocities against my people. That you attracted the unwanted attentions of Maeril’s lieutenants, and fled with knowledge of the plot against Winyaurient.”

Ecthelion closed his eyes, his hands still calmly steepled before him, and delivered the coup de grace.

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

So he knew everything, then. Kayu fell silent before his all-seeing insight, the deafening authority with which he spoke and the blinding truth of his accusations. She could tell that he deliberately restrained the flowery excesses of his words for her benefit, and yet even so he overawed her with centuries of awareness and understanding that she would never be able to match. The question of what she should do next hovered on the tip of her tongue, but her voice caught in her throat and would not give life to the words. After long seconds of fouling her mouth with their rotting carcasses, at length they crept back to the oblivion in her soul from whence they had come. She had to make the decision, after all. Not him.

Once again her eyes searched his calm composure for answers, hints, anything. But once again they could not pierce beyond his eldritch aura, the inscrutability he wore like a heavy cloak around him. So much more than Yann, so much more than Natosatael, his form screamed alien and enigmatic. She could not understand him. Not in the slightest.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice barely audible even in the overwhelming quiet. Their world consisted of only the two of them – no stray sound, no smell beyond ancient paper, no movement except for motes of dust dancing in innocent sunbeams.

To her surprise he rose, serenely from his seat with the deliberately measured movements of an elderly gentleman. He opened his near-colourless eyes to the world once more, but almost immediately averted them from hers. Did she catch a hint of guilt in his face as he turned away?

“I would advise you not to unnecessarily dig up forgotten history, Miss Kanamai,” he spoke softly, ignoring her question. His words echoed from the smooth stone walls, spiralling away as the light caught and played with them. But where the light shone the shadows stalked, and why did the air suddenly shiver so cold? “Especially from those times, the times of great darkness and even greater bloodshed. You have so much to lose, and so little to gain from doing so.”

She said nothing, merely followed his slow pacing towards the nearest shelf of books. Thick tomes in a variety of staggered heights awaited his perusal, leather-bound in rich red and velvety blue. He selected one, flicked idly through a few pages, then replaced it from where it had come; he repeated this process three or four times before speaking again.

“They were times when mortals wielded great power, but those they had to fight against wielded even greater. Can you imagine what would happen if you were to accidentally awaken such a beast? Xem’zund was not the only monster who dwelt in those days, merely the one whose hatred for us elves brought him back to the forefront of modern history.”

“… why are you telling me this?”

He sighed, sadly.

“Even if I simply told you not to go, you would not trust me. You are a lot less accepting of my words than Ingwe Helyanwe.”

For the second time in minutes she froze.

“Why do you bring his name…”

“For some legends are fake, but others are real… and some are created as necessary.”

“What…”

Her mind spun. Churned. Delved. Understood.

“You used him.”

Ecthelion’s guilt manifested in his wordless silence. He met her eyes calmly, his features so sculptedly elven, so harrowingly devoid of emotion.

“You, a prince of elves, used him. You and the other princes… used him.” For some reason, she almost found it funny. “He was… still is… barely a boy, you know. Innocent and naïve, idealistic and romantic…”

The archmage nodded, remembering with pain the young man who had appeared before him in Scara Brae as barely more than an inexperienced child. So different from the war torn wreck who had bid him farewell just before the assault on Xem’zund… and yet, perhaps, not so.

“We gave him power, Miss Kanamai. Power enough that he could destroy the Dread Necromancer, power that you too have the potential to possess if you walk down the path you seek. He knew full well what we asked of him, and still he consented to be used. Hope, I believe you humans call it.”

Kayu flinched. “But…”

“And then he left, before anybody could stop him. He left without a trace, knowing that the services of such heroes, such legends, are only required in times of war and strife, not in times of peace and rebuilding.”

She felt sick, to the very depths of her stomach.

“The power corrupted him,” Ecthelion continued blithely. “Not necessarily as it might corrupt others, for the form of corruption differs from mortal to mortal just as pride and wrath and any other emotion. He would not stoop so low as to use what we had given him for evil. But it preyed upon his insecurities and his loneliness until it consumed him whole.”

“Why. Are. You. Telling. Me. This.” Each word emphasised with a glare, her fists clenching and unclenching below the table, she found it difficult to describe the roiling turmoil of emotion that turbulently violated her soul.

“For two reasons, Miss Kanamai. Because you yourself should not walk down that path, no matter what the cost. And because I owe you an apology…”

“You’re asking the wrong person. I’m not going to accept your apology on his behalf.” She stood, positively slamming the chair aside from beneath her. Her robes swirled as her angry voice echoed through the empty library. “And you must mistake me for somebody else. He has nothing to do with me any more, absolutely nothing.”

His sorrowful pale eyes followed her out, as for the second time that morning she stalked from a room.

[Wings of Endymion]

She spent the rest of the day packing and saying her farewells, determined not to stay within the elven citadel’s rotten facade of civilised elegance for any longer than she had to. Yann existed as little more than a spectre from the past in her life; the last time she had seen him in person was more than thirteen years ago, not including the weirdly realistic dream of the previous night, and she admitted to herself that she had nearly forgotten about him in between. But no man, no matter how willingly, deserved to be used like a tool and then cast aside as soon as their job concluded. Her eyes saw what the elves had done to him as nothing less than despicable.

Elenwe and Nimloth genuinely seemed regretful to see her go. The spellsinging Anwamane sisters and Valkyr the dwarven engineer composed themselves more readily and told her that they would undoubtedly see her again someday. She did not see the need to visit anybody else in the fortress city.

Sundown, at the back gate…

The back gate of Rostarinne, the Castle in the Clouds, hid amongst a labyrinth of carefully cultivated arboreta and magnificent hanging gardens. Nobody stood guard, for it opened up to a long empty drop to the ocean, and could not be approached from the air unless in full view of the hawk-eyed Sentinels posted at the barbicans to either side. The spired citadel of Tor Elythis sat far below like a pearl in the deep navy blue, periodically winking out of view behind wisps of skittering cloud.

Any sane person attempting to leave Rostarinne would not have done so via the thick wooden doorway inscribed with runic warnings. But the archway, constructed of the ubiquitous smooth white stone that pervaded the entire castle, made for an ideal location to open a portal, assuming of course that one could bypass the numerous powerful wards and conjurations that protected the castle and its vicinity. Kayu sincerely hoped that Touma could find a way through them, or else that Ecthelion would be so glad to see the back of her that he would let them lapse for an instant. If Touma didn’t show by the change of the watch, she would have to find passage down to Tor Elythis via the elven portal at the main gate, walk for two leagues across the great bridge that connected the island to the mainland, and finally negotiate passage through the fortified outpost, before she regained her freedom.

Fortunately, he did not keep her waiting for long.

The last rays of the blood-red twilight had just sunk beneath the western wall when the wooden doorway rippled like a quicksilver mirror. The paranormal quake quickly subsided, leaving a glistening sheen upon the perfectly cut planks. Instinctively she looked to the bottom right of the mirror, and unsurprisingly Touma’s face stared her back, clenched in concentration as if striving against an almighty weight.

“Quickly,” it said through grit teeth, the bodiless apparition flickering in static caused by interference from the castle’s wards. “I can’t hold this for long.”

Kayu returned her eyes to the portal, unconvinced of its stability. She had travelled by arcane means many times before, but not once had a portal had rippled with such intensity and fragility. Swiftly she made up her mind, reaching for the small haversack of possessions at her feet. Moments later, it flew through the air, impacting squarely in the centre of the esoteric mirror.

A soft slurping sound echoed through the rapidly dimming garden, like a rock landing in a pool of slime. Touma’s face flinched involuntarily, as if something had passed uncomfortably close to its head. The portal wavered, faded, just about held.

“Next time you plan on nearly killing me by flinging something through, warn me first,” he told her crossly. “Quickly, before…”

She did not hesitate any longer. Tightly clenching her staff in both hands, she barrelled through the murky mirror that coated the solid oaken door. Moulded power, cool and feathery and barely tangible against her skin, swallowed her whole.

Travel by planesportal never counted amongst the most pleasant of Kayu’s experiences. It required the courage to step off the solid ledge of reality into a darkly swirling ethereal void, and the gut-wrenching stomach-churning sensation of entrusting one’s life to something as fickle as the winds of magic. The air always stank of concentrated power, a stench akin to the lightning discharge or focused sunlight, but the journey always remained strangely silent as it whistled past her ears. After falling through the myriad stars of nothingness for an instant that somehow stretched into eternity, the physical world dragged her back with an abrupt and unpleasant wrench, whirling darkness suddenly coalescing into the scenery of her destination. But only if both she and the portal-opener kept their wits about them and Lady Luck on their side. Else she might accidentally materialise in the centre of a rock, or five hundred feet in the air, or at the bottom of the ocean. Needless to say, the consequences of such a mishap could be quite severe.

Still, she supposed as she tried to reorient her dazedly swimming mind, things could always be far worse. Touma had a knack for controlling his powers that was truly uncanny, and never had he ever placed her in danger, despite how frequently she had once travelled with him by this method. Quite how he accomplished the feat was beyond even her knowledge of the incarnate, but even at a young age her companion had been an expert at maintaining a cool facade that was actually quite charismatic. Little doubt existed in her mind that such poise was borne only out of absolute confidence in his powers, and perhaps not without good reason.

“Hello, Kayu,” his resonant voice reached out to her through the bitingly sharp air, echoing as crisply and as cleanly as his boots on the untouched pristine snow beneath her knees. “It’s not all that bad. Just pretend that you were on a boat or…”

“Just tell me that I’ve safely arrived…” she mumbled weakly in reply. Slim hands clutched tightly at the supple strength of her slender staff, such that blue veins stood out vividly against the translucence of her skin. Loose strands of her silky ebony hair stood out as much a contrast to the alabaster white of her face as they were to the bleakness of the landscape. Every breath of breeze seemed to nip annoyingly at the delicate lines of her exposed forehead, and her keen black eyes nearly watered with the pain of simply keeping them open and focused. She sniffed once reflexively as the chill infiltrated her nose, almost immediately having to stifle a small sneeze.

“You have indeed arrived safely,” Touma reassured her. Then he grabbed her arm and quite literally began to yank her through the snow at full pelt, her belongings hefted casually over his shoulders. “And now we had better run, lest that wonderful fact change to something rather less comforting.”

Something lithe and serpentine snaked between her pounding legs, the folds of her robes parting as water as it slipped through. Reflexively she met its ruby-red eyes, noting the crackle of arcane power that shimmered across its transparent form. A mana amphitere, she realised, most likely a familiar of one of the elven mages from the Ivory Spire of Tor Elythis who had traced Touma’s portal. It glared at her accusingly before winking from sight.

“Are you scared that Ecthelion will give chase?” she asked between strides, confused at the urgency as he nearly tore her shoulder from its socket.

In response, Touma dropped to the snow with a loud crunch and dragged her down on top of him. She had just enough time to gasp in indignant surprise before a swift-moving shadow swept past the back of her head, so close that she could literally smell the bestial stench of dried blood and rotten faeces.

“The High Archmage and his elves I’m not concerned about,” Touma replied in between laboured heaves for air. “I’m more worried about that monster that’s been stalking me for the past two days.”

“And you brought me into the middle…?” Her voice rose in offended huff. “Touma, what…”

Something large and heavy slammed into the snow not so far away. The impact tossed her aside, and she rolled with the momentum to bring her to her feet.

“… is that…?” she finished weakly.

“As I said, a monster,” Touma said blandly as he picked himself up, dusting off his robes. “I hope you can understand that I didn’t actually bother trying to ask its name.”

The beast addressed them in a stentorian trumpet, causing snow to tremble in fear beneath their feet. It bore resemblance to the chimeras of legend, as if some twisted mind had taken a number of animals native to the highlands and forged them together without regard for nature’s laws or order. Three heads jostled for position and dominance upon a single neck, one baring the rabid fangs of a northern wolf, the second that of a billy goat crazed with fear, and the third brutish humanoid features lost in confusion and pain. Its body rippled with tensed muscle, likely once that of one of the legendary aurochs whose herds migrated southwards into the tundra during the winter. It had two tails – one the auroch’s own, the other hissing angrily as it ended in the head of a snake – and its forelegs ended not in thick hooves that would easily split open a man’s head, but eagle-like talons that would rip his torso apart instead. A pair of leathery bat-like wings rooted to its shoulder blades explained how it had passed overhead mere moments before.

“I’ve come across some strange things as I approached this area,” Touma continued as if his life were not in mortal danger, thoroughly ignoring the riled-up monster only ten paces distant. “Two-headed geese, flocks of sheep dead for no obvious reason, packs of wolves rotting away from the inside, so on and so forth. This is the first such abnormality to take this much exception to my presence, though.”

“Gee, I wonder why?” Kayu rolled her eyes as she brought her staff to bear. “You never said anything about that when you told me about this venture…”

“You never asked,” Touma shrugged, and then they both had to roll out of the way as the chimera charged. Acidic saliva spilt to the snow beside her head as the wolf snapped at thin air, and the ogre moaned miserably in Touma’s wake.

“Watch out, Kayu!”

She turned just in time to bat away the snake’s head as it arced for her shoulder, her staff singing through the cold winter air. It hissed angrily as it reared away, readying itself for another strike. But its attached body had different ideas, and anger turned to frustration as its prey slipped from its reach.

“What should we do?” Kayu called to her companion. Surely he had more experience fighting beasts of this kind?

“Can you stop its movements?” he hollered back, somewhat preoccupied in fending off the attentions of the wolf head. The goat in the middle bleated pitifully, brandishing a pair of wickedly curved horns. This close, Kayu could see the rotten sloughed flesh where the animals had been knit together. The overwhelming stench of the beast assaulted her like a noxious cloud.

She could try. Traditional mainstream Nipponese spells, the discipline of hojutsu, could not in any sense be considered suited to combat. Dependent on intricate verbal and somatic components as well as elaborately ritualistic circles of power, she had found out very quickly after her arrival in Haidia that the magic as she knew it would not serve her in the wider world. So she had equally swiftly learnt to adapt.

Bracing her legs, she brandished her open palm to the bitingly cold wind. Pre-inscribed runes glowed in incarnate power, sending tendrils of pure light searing through the crisp air. They did little more than scorch the beast’s thick shaggy hide, but all three heads reared in pain, blinded by the sudden intensity.

Kayu seized the moment. An athletic leap born of years of pathfinding through difficult terrain nimbly brought her in close. The snakehead tail hissed and struck, but again she batted it away with her staff, letting it coil around the supple wood just out of reach of her body. Her teeth grit against revulsion, she plunged her free hand into the rotten morass of pus and flesh at the beast’s shoulder, holding her breath against the stench as the soft flesh gave way. Static electricity danced around her fingers, and she channelled it with all her might into her foe.

The monster collapsed almost instantly, three heads wailing as one as its wings and legs jerked and spasmed uncontrollably. Its keening shriek pierced the clouds overhead like a sonic spear, almost puncturing her eardrums with shrill force. The snakehead tail went limp, forked tongue drooping as it slipped from its support.

Kayu had not quite finished. Withdrawing her hand from the chimera’s body, her cold-numbed fingers traced a simple sigil in the churned snow beneath its fallen torso, deftly completing it before the beast’s confused minds could work out just what had happened. A pulse of power later and the binding magic activated, translucent incarnate restraints reaching out to tether the monster to the mushy snow. She jumped back as its wings just about found purchase to lash at her wildly, blending the ground even further into a messy quagmire of acidic saliva, rotten pus, and icy mud. But the chains that she had applied stood firm against the desperate thrashing.

“They won’t hold for much longer,” she panted with exhaustion, as Touma drew up alongside her with an approving expression on his coolly composed brow. “But hopefully long enough for us to get away…”

The question of trying to kill the beast did not even come up in their minds. They possessed neither weapon nor magic likely to pierce the chimera’s thick leathery hide, and the longer they lingered, the more chance that the beast would break free or his screams would attract further predators. Neither Kayu nor Touma felt like taking the risk.

“C’mon, then.” Touma once again took her by the arm, leading her away more gently this time. She acquiesced to his guidance with a sigh, the shadows cast by the heavy red sun in the wan sky to the west travelling before her as eager as hounds on the hunt.

“Next time you plan on nearly killing me by ambush, warn me first,” she told him, dusting the worst of the assorted gunk from her robes with her free hand as they ventured onto pristine snow that crunched happily beneath their feet. Five minutes into her latest adventure, and already she had dirtied her clothing.

What a grand welcome it had been.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

So these are the Highlands of Kalev.

He found it a simple matter to read her thoughts as she deigned a long look at her desolate surroundings, her shoulders clenched at the unforgiving cold that seeped insidiously through the layers she wore. In stark contrast to her discomfort, he felt at ease in little more than a light blue-grey hakama, semi-formal robes from his home country. Earthly inconveniences such as temperature had long since stopped troubling him.

A crisp wind whispered in their ears from time to time, nipping and biting like a small animal. The snows had yet to assault the vast plateau in force, which allowed a few scattered groves to peek barren branches from beneath the soft white blanket. Waning sunlight shone upon his companion from behind a sheet of clouds so pale they threatened to simply fade away; after she had spent so long living above the wispy travellers that journeyed the sky, no doubt it felt good for her to be able to look up at them again from below. She shivered again as the latest boreas brought tidings of snow and ice, and a small taste of human civilisation nearby.

“Remind me why we’re here, again?”

“You and I are on a date, of course,” the psy-mage quickly quipped. His body may have struggled to keep up with her inhuman levels of endurance, but his wits remained razor sharp and unwilling to miss a chance to tickle her sensibilities. “What could be more romantic than the howl of a frozen wind, the crunch of slippery ice beneath your feet, and the threat of disembowelment by monsters, savages, and bandits?”

For the most fleeting of moments, her face registered shocked incredulity. Before it could completely revert to mild distaste, however, Touma humoured her by correcting himself.

“Or rather, we’re here to investigate an ancient tower hidden in the wilderness, far from the reaches of civilisation and organised expedition. Take your pick.”

“The latter, thank you.” Kayu sighed steamily into the wind, batting away his pained expression with a dismissive hand. He made it extremely obvious when he teased her, like a puppeteer toying with a marionette, but she equally obviously had little taste for his games at the moment. Thoughtfully her gaze roamed down the boulder-strewn slope at her feet; at the bottom lay a bleak cluster of thatched roofs, nestled in the arms of the low hills as if they only wished for the rest of the world to ignore their existence and pass them by. “Although wouldn’t one usually assume that everything of interest has already been stripped from it, given that it’s been standing there so long?”

“I said it was ancient, Kayu, not that it had always been there,” Touma countered, and he allowed a hint of seriousness to creep into the smooth tones of his voice. Enough of one, at least, for his companion’s nimble mind to put two and two together.

“Xem’zund?” she asked. He confirmed her suspicions with a flicker of approval darting through his murky brown eyes. He had always appreciated her intelligence.

“Indeed. Or Denebriel. At least, their appearances into this modern age coincided with its.” The corrections came almost automatically, almost instinctively, somewhat uncharacteristically for him. He always strove to maintain a careful veil of enigmatic secrecy about the information he possessed and the sources from which he obtained it, but once in a while he allowed his guard to waver in her company. She was the Wings of Endymion, after all, and he knew her well enough to know that she had neither the means nor the will to misuse anything he might tell her. “I’m uncertain whether they had anything directly to do with it. But I am certain that it’s worth investigating.”

“… treasure hunting again?” Her eyes rolled, especially as Touma didn’t bother to refute the accusation. “Seriously, what do you expect to find there?”

“I don’t know.” His features clouded over, unfathomable. “But this was an age when Aesphestos created entire civilisations of orcs and goblins and giants and trolls, and Esthilda dreamt up daemons and the very underworld itself, both through the power of sheer thought alone. Imagine the possibilities if a relic from those times survived until this very day.”

“And what would you think to do with such power, Touma?” she asked in turn, remembering Ecthelion's words for better or for worse. After the events of the morning, she trusted him more than she did the elves, but only just. She didn’t doubt that he was her closest friend and ally, that he would rush to her aid if need be and would never harm her. But even she fathomed little regarding his ulterior motives, and time and world-weariness had given birth to the slightest of suspicions.

“Use it if necessary,” he replied without hesitation, heedless of her internal struggles.

“Touma…”

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

She blanched at his mention of that disastrous night, then recovered enough to bite her lower lip thoughtfully. “But the nature of power is also to corrupt, Touma, and to destroy those who devote their lives to seeking it. What kind of monster would this relic that you seek turn you into?”

“Ecthelion’s words,” he laughed, uncaring. “Let it try, Kayu. I do not fear what lies on my path, or where it might take me.”

When he saw her dumbfounded by his nonchalance, he fixed her with a stern glare.

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

The shock in her eyes satisfied him; clearly she had never thought of herself that way before. Her face, already as white as the snow that surrounded them, paled even further.

“Power exists to be sought by those ambitious enough to desire it, to be hoarded by those dedicated enough to dominate it, to be used by those strong enough to wield it. There is no such thing as good power, or evil power, Kayu. Only power to be used. And you can never have too many options in life.”

Somehow the words seemed familiar as they rolled off his tongue. Only then did he remember that he had spoken them to dragon-blooded Akiyoshi Sanada, the Talons of Telperion, not so long ago. A small smile played inscrutably about his lips; how the quirks of fate taunted him so.

“But… a relic of the Tap…”

“Is a relic of a bygone age, in which even the lowliest of men could create the deadliest of dangers through a mere nightmare, and defeat him through sheer force of will when he woke up. What did I just say about power just being power, about its wielder being integral to its use?”

“And Xem’zund? Denebriel?”

“The Forgotten Ones mastered the Eternal Tap, and through prolonged contact and innate cruelty were driven to plague and war,” Touma recited, as if by rote from an Academy text. His murky brown gaze matched her bright black one without flinching. “I don’t presume myself to be as powerful as they once were, much less as they became. But then again, in this day and age there’s no need to master the Tap any more. After all, even Xuan was able to help take down the Necromancer not so long ago… I daresay, if need be, you’d be able to count on him again to defeat the great evil that I might become.”

He grinned as he stressed the possible consequences of his actions, clearly not taking them seriously. Her involuntary reaction to Xuan’s name popping up yet again, a twitch in the side of her temples that pulsed irritably for a few moments before disappearing, drew his interest somewhat. Not that he blamed her for it, really, but…

The psy-mage decided that he needed to shift the focus of the conversation.

“I did say this morning that I’d be happy to show you what I meant,” he said, clapping his hands together as if he had just remembered his words from earlier. One hand reached down to his waist to loosen the finely crafted sword that hung there. He settled into a crouched stance: feet planted firmly apart in the packed snow, weight low and hips open, torso relaxed but poised.

“Touma…?”

“Attack me,” he told her, eyes narrowed to a slit as he focused on her movements. The confused expression on her delicate features, the slight sway to her slender silhouette as she adjusted posture to indicate she meant no harm, the taut tension in her ankles as she intuitively prepared for either fight or flight...

“Trust me,” he smiled. “Attack, just once.”

He knew that Kayu remembered both his martial strengths and weaknesses, and that she dared not close with him when he stood prepared. Her best choice, therefore, lay in an incarnate ranged spell.

Misgiving still clouded her brow, but at his continued urging she brought her staff to bear nonetheless. Priming it upright before her body, she drew back with her free hand as if on an imaginary string. In the wake of her slender wrist formed a translucent arrow, woven from the very breaths of the spirits themselves. At full stretch it materialised with a crisp shudder, quavering at the limit of her hold.

“Don’t blame me if you get hurt,” she told him doubtfully. Only the greatest of swordsmen could even dream of cutting down an arrow mid-flight. And that presumed the usage of standard, mundane arrows, much less an incarnate arrow woven from the ethereal and the insubstantial. If she aimed above his shoulder, she thought to herself...

She loosed, and the shaft keened as it darted through the crisp twilight. Her eyes almost lost it in the long shadows, but she picked it up again just as it entered the range of Touma’s swordplay.

Quicker than the eye could see, almost of its own accord, the blade leapt from its ebony scabbard. Touma’s cut missed by centimetres, but even that came close enough.

The arrow simply dissipated, dissolving into myriad shards of incarnate spirit dust that the wind swept away into the growing night. The sword returned smoothly to its sheath, long before the last beautiful glimmers disappeared from the distance between them.

“What exactly happened…”

Kayu hesitated, remembering. She had witnessed the effect once before, in the complex nullification spell used to harness into dormancy the massive mana generators that now kept Rostarinne afloat. Designed by the same ancient and powerful beings that had somehow built the Castle in the Clouds, it had taken her over a week simply to decipher and deactivate its mechanisms, even working alongside with some of the most powerful arcane and mechanical minds in the nation. It differed subtly but crucially both from true counterspelling, the complex and extremely difficult process of preventing a spell from being cast in the first place, and from the disenchanting of a static enchantment, which usually involved peeling it layer by layer from the object or person it was attached to. It wasn’t even ‘simple’ counterspelling, or negation, which nullified a spell by counterbalancing it with the exact same magnitude of force of the exact same magical composition. No, this was something else altogether, as if the incarnate energy woven into her arrow had simply drained away into oblivion…

Touma noted the look on her face: shock, wonder, and fear in equal measures. He remembered feeling the same way once, until he had learned to accept that some things just could not be explained by what he already knew, and that in such cases he merely had to stretch his mind to embrace the new reality. The impossible was never truly impossible, even if it flew in the face of all convention and established custom. If he prepared for even the unexpected, then nothing would ever threaten him.

“Dust with, at the very least, anti-magic properties,” he explained, rapping the wooden scabbard once with a bony knuckle. The faintest wisp of concentrated power touched his nose before dispersing at the wind’s command. “Gathered from the ashes of the Obsidian Spire in the aftermath of its destruction, and imbued in the darksteel used to forge this weapon. It seems to react to my power and how I wish it to affect reality. At the moment this is all I can do with it, but who knows, if I spend long enough trying…”

“And that’s just dust…”

“Just dust. Just the burnt out, charred remains of what Xem’zund did not deem important enough to obliterate outright along with his own death, from the lesser relics of his tower rather than his true tomb. Who knows what else he might have had secreted about, that did not survive him?”

“That’s why…”

“That’s why,” he nodded to her, savouring his victory. He may not have completely convinced her, but even she could not deny her interest. It would do for now to keep her occupied with thoughts and theories of how his particular find worked, and what effect it might have on the balance of the world. In the meantime, they needed to rush if they wanted to make their rendezvous.

“C’mon, then.” Touma beckoned tersely, commencing a regal tread through the knee-deep snow towards the village in the valley below. “After all, we can’t keep our contracts waiting.”

Kayu paused a moment before following in his wake. Her voice rose like a crane taking flight, wistfully questioning the darkening night.

“Contracts? What contracts?”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

The creaking, dilapidated sign proclaimed a single worn name: aptly enough for the dingy building it belonged to, the Choleric Den. Regular patrons, mostly peasants and bondsmen in service to the local Andvallian baron, packed the noisy establishment that passed as community tavern in the remote village. The two travellers attracted plenty of surly suspicious stares as they trudged down the muddy dirt steps into the underground chamber. While on looks alone Touma could just about pass as a native, the distinctly oriental tint to Kayu’s features and skin, and the uniquely outlandish robes they both wore, marked them out clearly as strangers to this part of the world.

And then there was the matter of the dark sword that hung carelessly at Touma’s side, quite unlike anything in standard use in the highlands. Long and slender, gently curving from the base of the hilt to the tip of the blade, the katana simultaneously gleamed in quiet malevolence and pulsated in distracting vitality. Although safely sheathed within a scabbard of lacquered matte-black ebony, still it drew in the gazes of those around it like a black hole, only releasing them when they were utterly and completely laid bare before the mind of its bearer. Kayu could not help but notice the sudden chilled silence and sullen expressions that followed in the wake of its passage, and the eyes that looked away guiltily as if searching for something – anything – else to look at.

Firelight created menace from even the most benign of objects, casting long threatening shadows throughout the windowless grotto as they slowly walked the length of the dirty earthen floor. The ceiling pressed down obesely upon their heads, stifling them in the stale air trapped between layers of thick unyielding earth. Touma’s tread as he led the way, however, remained unerringly measured and confident, his hawkishly handsome features composed with all the gentlemanly airs of a Coronian noble. He didn’t quite stop at every table to examine the faces of those present – in any case, the fetid stench of spilt beer and vomited whiskey urged him not to spend more time in the establishment than absolutely necessary – but nonetheless the occupants of the room all sat quite clearly spellbound by his power. Men twice his size backed down before the deathly calm of his murky brown gaze, and despite it being a rowdy gathering at the most exuberant hour of the evening, none even dared to approach the young woman who walked demurely behind him.

As they approached the counter in the depths of the tavern, they grew aware of a mild ruckus taking place. A bespectacled, scholarly young man desperately tried to fend off the aggressive attentions of a brutish bruiser as his companion, an elderly woman with scraggly white hair done up in a simple bun, nonchalantly sipped from a cracked earthenware mug of steaming tea. Soon, however, even that particular disturbance died down, cowed into submission by the eerie silence that now pervaded the entire length of the once bustling bar.

“You would be our contracts, I presume?” Touma’s dulcet tones intoned into the echoing hush, a single eyebrow raised at the circumstances of their meeting. “Professor Alba and assistant?”

The scholar did not answer immediately, too busy disengaging from his opponent and reorienting himself in the face of his newfound freedom. The old woman seemed lost in her own world, completely ignoring everything going on about her. A second uncomfortable silence grew in the echoes of Touma’s question, until Kayu began to wonder if she would have to jump in to suppress the growing tick in her friend’s cheek.

“Oh… oh dear,” the younger of the two patrons finally managed to stammer in reply, trying to dust off his clothes, adjust his spectacles, and re-establish possession of his belongings all at once. At least some of the latter had ended up in the hands of his retreating oppressor, but that still left a set of haversacks, a long oaken staff tipped with steel, and a large bag of jingling gold considerably lighter than before. He wore simple attire, brown cloak and white tunic gilded in azure with the insignia of the University of Radasanth; baby-faced and not unattractive, albeit tinged with naivete and a dusting of unkempt fuzz, he looked every inch a noble’s son lazily ambling through studenthood. Amber eyes peered out from beneath a carefully combed mop of dirty brown hair as he regarded Touma and Kayu. “Yes… yes, that would be us… which would make you…”

“Your bodyguards,” Touma intervened with only the slightest hint of irritation. From the long years they had spent together, Kayu just about sensed the instinctive currents of distaste coursing through his mind behind his sculpted emotionless features. Then again, she realised, the young scholar did bear an uncanny resemblance in both physique and demeanour to an old classmate from the Academy back in Nippon, one for whom Touma had never displayed any particular fondness…

Like a flicker of lightning through the storm clouds, as soon as she tentatively picked up his feelings they disappeared, leaving her wondering if they had ever existed in the first place. A job was a job, after all, and Touma could effortlessly act the part of a consummate professional when called upon to.

“I am Touma Kamikaji, and this is Kayu Kanamai.” With each name came an outstretched hand, subtly emphasising the sword at his waist. Touma rarely made a movement that he did not fully calculate as to intention and effect. “We will be responsible for escorting you to the Agate Tower and back again.”

He nodded formally to complete the introductions, and Kayu bowed in the Nipponese manner behind him. The young man blinked owlishly in return, as if surprised and somewhat taken aback by the courtesy.

“Uhh… I’m…”

“Young ones nowadays have absolutely no manners. None at all.”

Wheezy tones scythed sarcastically between them, shattering all pretence and suspicion in a single deadly masterstroke. The words themselves bore little malice or ill intent, but the deadpan manner of their delivery caused Touma to raise his other eyebrow and Kayu to blink awkwardly in confusion. The elderly woman sat diffidently beyond them taking loud slurps of her hot tea, her closed eyes and serene expression cleverly masking the fact that she missed not a single thing that occurred around her. Diminutive in stature, nothing of the shrinking violet bloomed in her personality; swathed in dark cloth from head to toe, as if hesitant to show her wrinkled skin to prying eyes, a shrewd glint in her gaze belied her willingness to scourge everyone else beneath her scathing tongue if need arose.

“Well, boy, are you not going to introduce me?”

The young man stuttered and stammered helplessly for a moment, as if caught between protestation and resignation. Into the gap strode Touma once more, as if attempting to overwrite the man’s annoying timidity.

“Professor Alba, I presume?” he asked of the old woman, offering his hand with a courteous bow.

She responded with a hearty, feisty cackle. The sound echoed loudly above the general muttering hubbub that had sprung up in the wake of Touma’s passing amongst the patrons of the establishment; whispered accusations of mistrust and xenophobia drowned instantaneously in the tidal wave of mirth. It only took a moment for the two Nipponese to work out the cause, and between the old woman’s laughter and the young man’s embarrassed blush, even Touma had the grace to look slightly taken aback.

“Hear that, boy?” the assistant historian managed at last, wheezing and gasping theatrically for air in between fits of giggles. “I’m the professor!”

“Actually, no, you’re not,” the young man corrected with just about enough authority to give the words some credence, still blushing beetroot red from head to toe and wringing his hands in suppressed frustration. “I am Professor Alba, archaeologist and historian specialising in the study of ancient ruins. This is my assistant, Tsuru. We’re truly grateful for your assistance in this matter, given the rumours we have heard of bandits that roam the countryside and monsters that reside in the tower…”

Alba stammered something more about ‘scholarly benefit’ and ‘the good of all academic research’, but neither Touma nor Kayu could make it out over a renewed fit of cackling from his assistant. Infuriated, the young professor turned to glare at the wizened woman, but Tsuru completely ignored him in favour of even noisier peals of laughter. Kayu took the opportunity to draw Touma’s ear for a short aside.

“Archaelogist and historian…?”

“Unfortunately, neither you or I are knowledgeable enough in the requisite fields to be able to…”

“Remember that chimera from earlier, Touma? Remember how neither you nor I could hope to defeat it and had to run from it with our tails curled between our legs?”

Touma nodded, a slow grin spreading across his face. He found Kayu quite attractive when all worked up about something.

“Now can you please explain to me how we’re going to explore the ruins at the same time as protecting these people? What happens if there’s another one of those beasts… or another hundred? For how long are we going to be wandering about this Agate Tower? Do we have enough food and water for them? Enough supplies?”

Her hissed whispers slowly gathered momentum, until Touma’s grin wilted beneath the barrage of questions. He raised both hands in appeasement, his expression losing its inscrutable poise. In stark contrast to his earlier composure, he even seemed somewhat flustered.

“They have food and supplies, Kayu. One could even say that they’re much better prepared for this than we are… they’re the professional explorers, after all, while we’re just the hired muscle.”

“And what about those monsters, again?” She set her dainty chin and glared at him from over her snub nose.

“You and I can handle them. As I said, we’re the hired muscle, the experts in that particular field. And if all comes to worst and we come across something that we can’t handle…”

“If you say we’re going to abandon them where they stand and make a run for it, I’m going to hit you.”

“… I can open another portal and we can all scramble back here. Kayu, you wound me. I would never do anything so horrible.”

Her glare persisted a moment longer as she leant close to emphasise her point, and Touma found himself hard pressed to suppress the humour from his face. Then she sighed.

“I suppose I’m the one who’s going to be buying you the time to open said portal?”

This time he didn’t bother to contain his grin. He bowed low, exaggerating the gesture until she rolled her eyes in defeat.

“In which case, one last question… can we please leave this place? This land is oppressive enough as it is without being trapped in a cave and attracting angry glares from every last person in the room. I assume that we’re going to head off early tomorrow, which means…”

Her last words caught Alba’s attention as he gave up trying to get Tsuru to apologise to him.

“I have paid good gold to borrow a spare house at the outskirts of the village for the night… if you would like to join us there, we would be honoured.”

Kayu met Touma’s eyes and found no objection there. The psy-mage shrugged, as if he didn’t really care either way. As long as he had a semblance of a roof over his head, he would be happy with any form of accommodation.

“It has a bath, even,” Tsuru cackled, and that sealed the deal. Kayu had no idea when she would next be able to indulge in such luxury, something that she had taken for granted when young but had learnt to treasure in her days on the road. Her only material regret about leaving Rostarinne had been her private bathroom, powered by the flying castle’s ubiquitous mana generators, which allowed her to soak up to her neck in piping hot water whenever she felt like it.

“Thank you for your courtesy,” she addressed them both, inclining her head gracefully. “We would be grateful to accept your offer. As soon as you have finished…”

She sensed rather than felt the drunken hand reaching out behind her, and without much thought gave it a hard rap with her walking staff. A pained yelp echoed above the muted murmur, which halted in terror for one frantic heartbeat before redoubling in intensity as if it could drown out their presence through sheer ignorance and volume. Kayu continued to speak throughout, as if nothing had happened.

“… I would be glad if we were off.”

Tsuru stared at Kayu, as if asking if she dared to make a request of her. Flinty grey eyes bore deep into the younger woman’s soul, and for a moment Kayu felt as though the assistant searched for something other than submission or challenge. She tried to move, instinctively seeking to defend herself against the probing gaze, only to find that her entire body had frozen solid. She couldn’t even bat an eyelid to break the mesmerising contact. Touma watched the exchange impassively, noting every nuance.

Then the ancient crone gulped down the remainder of her tea in a single swallow.

“Bah, very well,” she murmured, more to herself than to any of her companions. Wearily she dropped to the floor from the high stool, landing with amazing grace for such an old lady. “Young ones nowadays…”

Still muttering grumpily to herself she led the way from the counter back towards the stairs, and much like none had dared to challenge Touma earlier, no patron dared even look up as she passed. Meekly the rest of them followed, Alba bringing up the rear with all of his assorted bags and tools. The last thing that Touma heard before he stepped back out into the moonlight was the young professor’s anguished yelp as a mug full of unidentifiable slosh caught him square in the small of the back, the patrons of the establishment only so happy to see them leave.

He heard Kayu sigh, and once again easily read the thoughts that ran through her mind.

This road is going to be long and tedious…

[Wings of Endymion]

Winter wastelands rarely made for pleasant travel, especially those as bleak and as harsh as Kalev. Aside from the frequent blizzards that forced them to seek the safety and shelter of what meagre rocky debris they could find, danger lurked with every step in the form of hidden ice and thunderous avalanches. Furthermore, numerous great beasts hardy enough to call the hazardous wilderness home felt nothing of attempting to feed upon them for dinner. For four days they struggled through their inhospitable surroundings, always pressing onwards, no matter the risk.

Kayu learnt a lot about her new companions during those four days of travel, despite the wind and snow often making it quite impossible to hold a spoken conversation. Nigh hopeless in all matters physical, Professor Alba spent most of his time lagging in their wake, to the point where she had to be actively concerned that he did not get separated from them. On the other hand, his demeanour remained polite and considerate almost to a fault, reminding her even more strongly of Yann… and also somewhat explaining why Touma avoided interacting with him like the plague. The Coronian professor demonstrated stereotypically scholarly interest in almost anything he stumbled across, often musing on the origins of the rocky debris that they sheltered under, or trying to explain between gasped breaths why as an archaeologist he had such interest in the occasional stone path they stumbled across through the deep snow. She listened to him politely, but rarely paid him any true attention.

In stark contrast to the frail Alba, his assistant Tsuru – or Auntie Tsuru as she preferred – almost implausibly burned with life and spirit, nearly putting Kayu to shame despite boasting at least four times her years. The old woman wielded energy and attitude like a playfully mischievous imp, such as when she ate all the dried fruit from their rations because she ‘fancied a sweet’, or when she nearly became stranded after finding through sheer unadulterated luck the only safe passage across a rocky ravine. In particular, she developed an unnatural attachment to Kayu, always pestering the girl with questions and requests and demands for answers; the Nipponese spellweaver endured her attentions on her own, with Touma seemingly quite happy to leave the two women to themselves.

As their journey continued, in fact, the psy-mage grew further and further aloof from the rest of the group. To Kayu, it seemed as if he harboured growing suspicions towards his companions, preying hungrily upon his mind and his concentration. But he made no overt sign of any distrust, remaining as inscrutably remote as ever.

On the evening of the fourth day, a flight of azure drakes soared overhead, blanketing the crimson twilight with their filmy wings. The majestic procession bought them some respite against the dangers of the land, for no other predator dared attract the attention of the lesser dragons when they journeyed in such numbers. The drakes themselves seemed content to ignore the specks of movement on the white carpet beneath them in favour of maintaining their distant magnificence. Tsuru speculated somewhat pensively that they migrated southwards in search of safe nesting grounds, pointing out individual family groups and the formations of females following their mate, and voiced a fear that some unfortunate Andvallian town would be waking up to a distinctly unpleasant surprise. Touma cut her short, however, by curtly stating that it was none of their concern, and that they should concentrate on edging slowly closer to their goal: the spire in the distance that had crept into view over the course of the previous day. When the last of the straggling drakes finally disappeared over the horizon, Kayu’s gaze lingered longingly at the moon-touched clouds they left in their wake, envying them their graceful freedom and resilient companionship.

When the fifth day dawned, they struggled through soft knee-deep drifts that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. Rays of clear sunlight pierced the thick cloud cover after a cold night of heavy flurries, clearly elucidating each of their individual paths through the fresh snow. Touma set a steady pace at the lead of the group, his light tread carrying him above the treacherous ground as if no more than hard-packed dirt. Kayu would have followed in his footsteps, but instead half-waded, half-trudged through the clinging wetness courtesy of the bundle of swaddled cloth and wrinkled skin hitching a hike upon her back. Tsuru had put up such a fuss at having to travel through the snow, admittedly piled high enough to bury her completely in its depths, that Touma had at length ‘insisted’ that Kayu offer her back as a medium of transportation.

And I suppose he has good reason why he doesn’t offer his own… Kayu grumbled to herself, shifting the weight on her shoulders so as to simultaneously ease the strain and maintain her balance. Still she somehow made far better progress than the young Professor Alba, who floundered about in the distance muttering something incomprehensible regarding the practical uses, or lack thereof, of snow.

On the other hand, at least he avoided Tsuru’s prying questions… which, coincidentally, might have also explained why Touma preferred to walk alone.

“So, tell me…” the old woman rasped into Kayu’s ears in a stage whisper, “… are you two lovers?”

“… what!?” Kayu almost stumbled headfirst into the next drift, her involuntary squawk of surprise accompanied by sharp bony fingers clawing into her back for desperate balance. She counted her blessings that Touma hadn’t heard, and thus couldn’t see the look of absolute incredulity she wore on her face.

“Lovers!” Tsuru repeated once her ride had settled again, a deep frown creasing her face. “You know, a couple… a brace… what is the word that young people use to refer to such a thing nowadays…”

By this time, the delicately pretty pink flush had burnt its way across Kayu’s face.

“No!” she finally managed to respond, releasing her tongue from the paralytic lassitude of shock. “No, Auntie Tsuru…we’re not lovers.”

Safe to say, she did not appreciate such blunt questions. Growing up in a relatively affluent Nipponese family, she favoured a conversation style that placed emphasis on subtlety and obliqueness, the use of indirect allusions to arrive at a mutually beneficial conclusion. The art had served her well in Haidia, and to a lesser extent in Raiaera, where meaning and intent lay buried beneath multiple layers of riddle and deceit. Tsuru’s directness unsettled her… although, somehow, it felt vaguely refreshing as well.

“Hmm…” the old woman pondered out loud as such thoughts flitted through Kayu’s mind. The frown upon her face creased further, until her features simply dissolved into an indecipherable mass of wrinkles. “When a young woman follows a young man with such devotion, it’s usually because they’re lovers but… if you say so…”

“We’re not lovers, Auntie Tsuru!” Kayu repeated, this time more forcefully, again almost chucking Tsuru from her back into the snow. Feeling the assistant’s keen gaze upon the back of her neck, she felt obliged to explain a little further, if only to nip the chain of questions in the bud. “He saved me once, from a fate that I did not wish to embrace. He was kind enough to offer help again when I needed him, and I took him up on his kindness.”

“Hmmm…?”

The old crone’s weight shifted again. Kayu felt the keen gaze pierce the side of her head this time, as Tsuru peered into her face to ascertain the truth. She averted her eyes, embarrassed, and earned herself a knowing chuckle in the process.

“I see,” the assistant replied ambiguously. The younger woman breathed a quiet sigh of relief when it seemed like her elder would leave things at that, but it was not to be, as Tsuru immediately picked up on a different tangent.

“What are your real reasons for following him, then?”

Part of the young woman’s mind realised that she fell further into Tsuru’s grasp by even contemplating the question, but somehow, she could not resist the pressure of the words in her ears. Her eyes went to the white symbol that adorned the grey cotton upon Touma’s back ahead of her, the Nipponese character for ‘way’. The word had connotations both physical – as in a road or a journey – and metaphysical – as in a moral path or truth.

The one character alone neatly summarised exactly what he provided for her. From the moment that he had offered a solution to the predicament of her familial ties, spiriting her away from the Academy in Nippon to the underworld libraries of Haidia, he had granted her a new path to walk, completely free of any of the chains that had once bound her. For the first time in her life, she had the opportunity to act by her self for her self, unimpeded by the constraints of her background. Even now he gave her purpose, to hone her talents beyond that what the Nipponese could ever offer, and he gave her also the opportunities to make use of them.

Once before she had questioned her devotion to that path, realising the unfairness of her relying on Touma alone to guide her through life. Was it correct for her to follow him blindly and without question? Should she not learn to stand on her own two feet? Would she be able to survive if she plunged into a storm on her lonesome, especially as she could instinctively sense the dark clouds gathering upon the southern horizon?

So she left for war-torn Raiaera with Natosatael, not knowing the full extent of what the daemon had done and what exactly he could yet do. There she had confronted a great many truths: how small she stood in the face of the great darkness, how weakly her powers waned beneath the gaze of the truly potent, how icily the fear gripped her veins when the threat of true evil set upon her. By the end of the Corpse War she had abandoned much of what she thought she knew and relearnt the rest, and found herself in the care of the elves of Rostarinne and Tor Elythis. For a brief interlude they had provided succour, and healing, and peace.

But even they could not offer what she sought so dearly. And when Ecthelion revealed to her the extent to which they went to win the war, she lost faith in them as well.

And now she journeyed again with Touma, as if…

As if…

She pondered Tsuru’s question in that eternal instant of silence, wondering if she truly had nowhere else to go but to rely on him. She only returned to reality when she realised that the old woman’s face craned into her own, peering with mischievous glee into the conflicted emotions writ there like an open book.

“So… that’s how it is, is it?” Tsuru cackled. Kayu found herself fighting the irrational urge to dump her in the snow and leave her there to freeze. Common sense reasserted itself in time, and the Nipponese spellweaver satisfied herself with only the mental image, just about keeping her breathing under control as well. “I see, I…”

Her words trailed off as Touma came to an abrupt halt before them, fist held above his shoulder. Swiftly Kayu allowed Tsuru to slide from her shoulders, regripping her staff in a defensive stance as Professor Alba rejoined them from the rear with a surprisingly agile scuttle. The prearranged gesture signified danger close, and Kayu could almost feel the crisp air shimmer as their combined senses probed their surroundings for a threat.

At length Touma relaxed his stiff bearing, and the remainder of the company followed suit in respite. Tsuru and Alba breathed audible sighs to ease the heart-pounding tension, exchanging mutual glances of relief. Kayu’s eyes, on the other hand, followed her friend’s gaze to the cause of his concern…stark claw prints in the crisp snow that spoke volumes of unwanted activity in the area. Each print had twice the length of her height, and reached deeper into the ground than her staff would even if she buried it upright. She had never seen such perilous tracks before, gnarled talons digging into the toes of beefy paws, bipedal judging by their spacing but certainly not anything vaguely human.

“Fresh,” the psy-mage remarked, sweeping the distant snow-blanketed horizon with hawk-like eyes. At length they returned to the spire that dominated the skyline, now reaching a hand’s height into the clouds on the horizon. “Enough that they stand out, but not enough that I can still sense their owner.”

“Risk of encounter?” Kayu asked tersely, a shiver of fear running down her spine. They most certainly did not want to encounter the beast that had made this trail, whatever it might be. Even the chimera that they had battled upon first arriving in the highlands could not even come close to making such a mark upon the land. One of the fabled Berevaran titans, perhaps… but what kind of titan had clawed feet?

“Low enough,” Touma hazarded. The four travellers existed as mere specks lost amongst the open expanse, small and insignificant in the carpet of bright white. Judging by the sheer size of the tracks, they would see and hear their creator long before it saw them. “Still, no harm in staying alert.”

The young man paused thoughtfully, hand on the hilt of the katana at his waist, before continuing in a louder voice, “Looks like the rumours of hideous man-eating monsters in this area were correct enough, at least. Better move on quickly before they get our smell.”

Kayu sighed to herself in resignation. She did not miss the flicker of sly triumph across his features as his words had the desired effect upon the hapless Professor Alba, who fumbled helplessly for his voice for a moment before fearfully nodding wide-eyed acquiescence. When the small company finally started moving again, the young archaeologist notably made great floundering efforts to keep pace with Touma’s coat-tails.

As they gingerly wound their way through the trail, careful not to fall from the narrow ledges into the depths of the claw prints, Kayu stopped once more to study the tracks. The icy wind picked at her face and hair as she knelt down low, peering thoughtfully at their ridged base. But no further insight presented itself to her mind, and only vague premonitions of disquiet and dread echoed from her soul. The foreboding only intensified once she shifted her attention to the Agate Tower on the horizon, its incongruent height a disturbing anomaly amongst the snowbound highlands.

At length she gave up and turned to rejoin the others. The only good thing about the whole affair, she finally sighed, was that the persistent Tsuru seemed to have forgotten all about her line of questioning.

[Wings of Endymion]

“Wasn’t this tower supposed to be a hundred times the height of a man, adorned with the glittering glyphs of the titans who wrought it from the mountains itself?”

“Young whippersnapper! Wasn’t it you who promised that it would be quite literally overflowing with precious treasure and artefacts of the ancient gods?”

Suffice it to say, Kayu thought to herself from behind the safe bulwark of Touma’s shoulders as the two scholars continued to slog it out verbally, that the Agate Tower is nothing like Professor Alba and Auntie Tsuru made it out to be in their campfire tales.

An underwhelmingly ugly structure, it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the golden Imperial pagodas of her native land or the ominous elegance of the Haidian minarets that she had once called home. The tower proper stood barely three stories tall, its rounded walls almost as wide as they were high, a squat stone construction that failed to stand out even upon the otherwise featureless snowplain. The tall spire that they had seen from distance turned out to be a thin slab of metal inscribed with intricate runes almost painful to look at, extending upwards from the base structure like a gigantic folded fan. A distinctive smell, of cold damp earth after a heavy spring downpour, hung heavily about the vicinity, terribly out of place when one considered that they waded through bottomless snow.

Only the kami knew what quarry had supplied the slabs of drab grey slate used to construct the tower, for the inhospitable hell for leagues around them spent the year buried in deep drifts. On a tentative closer inspection, Kayu noted that they fit together perfectly, almost as if somebody had sculpted the tower from the very rock itself. She could make out no trace whatsoever of any mortar, much less cracks between the individual stones; the young woman realised with a sudden start that she hadn’t seen such masterful masonry even in the grand halls of Haidia or the majestic citadels of Tor Elythis.

Perhaps, just perhaps, there is something to this place after all… she mused, still suspicious.

Warily they approached the building, spending more time looking over their shoulders in fear of ambush than actually moving. Surprisingly perhaps, only their shadows showed signs of life upon the desolate landscape, their cautious movements accompanying them towards the tower proper.

At length they stood by the single plain archway cracking the solid edifice of the tower base, its interior swathed in darkness only a few steps from where they peered inwards. Half inviting them inside, half forbidding them to trespass any further, the very flames of their destinies wavered before its impassive gaze. The cold wind that had spent the entire morning biting at the nape of her neck now howled in lonely platitude as it loitered about her feet.

“I should never have accepted you as my assistant upon this mission. You’ve been far more hindrance than help… antagonising the locals… munching through our rations… annoying our guards…”

“Traipsing troglodytes, look who’s talking! Without me, boy, you’d still be stuck in Radasanth, slavering and slobbering and trying to ingratiate yourself with your senior professors! Who else do you think would have replied to your poorly scribbled plea for help, if not me?”

“No snow,” Touma indicated below his breath, visibly fighting to ignore the squabble in the background. Kayu confirmed his words with a quick surprised glance; despite the deep drifts that lay all around them, courtesy of years of accumulated snowfall such as that which had dogged their journey, not a single flake adorned the slate structure. Disgustedly, she wondered why she hadn’t noticed such an important detail earlier; belatedly, she urged her mind against the numbing cold, attempting to analyse what could have caused such a phenomenon. It came up blank, but the grip of the moment had loosened somewhat, and she began to see things that she had otherwise missed.

“No obvious sign of monster inhabitation, either,” she remarked slowly, also keeping her voice low enough so not to interrupt the ongoing argument between Tsuru and Alba, and thus avoid any unnecessary panic that her words might spark if misinterpreted. “It’s almost… too quiet.”

“Ambush?” Touma asked, a knowing smile playing about the base of his lips as he finished the chain of thoughts for her. “Possibly. Best to stay alert… I get the faint feeling that soon we’ll be wishing it was so simple.”

Without giving her the time to digest the meaning of his words, he strode purposefully towards the entrance. She gaped futilely in his wake. Going by the unwritten rules of their contract, wouldn’t it have made sense to ask the specialists Professor Alba and Auntie Tsuru what they wanted to do next, rather than to make up their minds for them? What did he gain by forcing their decision… and why did they so blindly follow him towards the gaping mouth of the tower, still bickering like little children about the supposed reliability of their respective academic sources? What did they know between them – Auntie Tsuru as she violently shook stray flakes of snow from her short grey hair, Professor Alba as he brandished his heavy oaken staff to ward her off – that drew them in where they did not have to go? Or was she simply thinking too hard, and was Touma being his usual unfathomable self?

“I’m warning you, you impudent whelp… one more disrespectable word from your baby mouth, and I’ll be sure to tell that last big thug you played with where you keep the rest of your money!”

“Don’t you dare bring him into this, you… you old… hag!”

In the end, she supposed, the action was just like Touma: bold, decisive, so infuriatingly confident. What she would have given to share in some of that self-assurance, whatever knowledge it was that made him so certain of his choice to lead them further into the clutches of whatever fate awaited them within.

In the end, she supposed, all she could do was follow him and their two companions, into the depths of the Agate Tower. Sighing softly in a steamy release of hot air, Kayu unslung her staff from her back once more and entered warily at the rear of the column.

Featureless grey slate pressed in upon her as the yawning entrance led into a single long passageway. Thin shafts channelled wan light from the outside world, illuminating the corridor like clockwork at every ten paces, but the token effort towards convenience did little to alleviate the pooled gloom at their feet. The walls hemmed them claustrophobically from either side, and although she knew there existed a ceiling overhead from the way that the squabble between Tsuru and Alba reverberated and echoed about her, even her keen gaze could not locate it through the darkness. The distinctive smell of damp earth hung strongly within the tower, with undertones of rot and mold that lingered pervasively in the back of her nose and conjured thoughts of dark horrors and blinded nightmares.

“Mummy’s brat!”

“Old hag! Crone!”

The argument between the academics had degenerated into a simple name-calling contest by the time they marked five minutes within the tower. Kayu had to wonder just how much longer Touma’s patience would last before the tic in his cheek became permanently engraved upon his features. She considered herself quite adept at judging his enigmatic moods, at least more so than anybody else she knew, and realised that very soon it would be necessary to intervene with a pacifying word. Maybe she could somehow direct their attention to their surroundings…

“I don’t like this,” she murmured, her hands clenched so tightly about her staff that her knuckles glowed white. “It’s too quiet.”

Touma ignored her low whisper of concern, continuing to stride through the dimly lit passageway towards whatever destination it led to. To the untrained eye, little trepidation marred his arrogant and confident demeanour, but Kayu noted with growing apprehension that his hands loitered on his sword now, ready to react at a moment’s notice. The ongoing racket between Tsuru and Alba filled the looming silence as he paced steadily ever onwards, and now it was Kayu who found herself growing exasperated at their childish bickering.

“Manipulative doomsayer!”

“Treacherous turncoat!”

They’re supposed to be academics, right? Why don’t they express any interest in the tower, then…?

Something wasn’t right, she knew for certain, as the bottom of her heart plumbed new depths. Something was going to go horribly wrong… and soon.

Just as her hyperactive mind began to question how long the passageway could possibly last given the dimensions of the tower, it opened up abruptly into a large chamber with no other apparent entrances or exits in sight. This too, was illuminated via narrow slits in the ceiling, which provided just enough light to identify the four walls of the room, the thick layer of cold dust that blanketed the floor, and the vague outline of an altar of sorts at the far…

Before she could finish the line of thought, something slammed shut behind her. She looked back over her shoulder, to find that the corridor from which they had entered had closed off behind them with a thick wall of solid stone. But she knew with certainty that they had not walked past any grooves or hinges in the narrow passages, and her frantic mind could not fathom how the wall had simply appeared to cut them off.

In a heartbeat, however, it became the least of her worries.

“Kayu!”

A sudden growl attracted her attention, followed by the rumble of stone as the chamber shifted shape, nearly tossing her about like a rag doll. Not one but three archways opened up in the walls as annoyingly unremarkable slate blocks receded into the floor.

From the first, to her right, stalked the chimera from nearly a week prior. Its wolf-head sniffed the air and then growled in recognition of their scents. The goat bleated and the ogre moaned, and the bat-wings spread wide before all three heads seemed to realise that the ceiling lay too low for them to fly. The chimera crouched instead, ready to pounce.

From the second, directly opposite, slithered an insectoid horror, a fusion of a monstrous centipede with the horns of a stag beetle, the arms of a mantis, and the sting of a hornet. Layered chitin as sturdy as any armour clattered resoundingly as eighteen beady eyes focused upon its prey, and the insect’s sinuous body coiled in preparation to strike.

From the third, to her right, trotted what looked to be a centaur of sorts. The same insane mind that had created the chimeric monstrosities previous had also seen fit to plant an orc’s head and torso upon the body of a warhorse still wearing bloodstained barding, and then attempted to attach a scorpion’s tail to the mess. The resulting beast bellowed a belligerent battlecry as it reared back on its hind legs, brandishing a pair of brutal battleaxes and flailing wildly with its barbed tail.

“… Touma!”

“There’s no way that we can take on all three at once,” the psy-mage replied, irritatingly unperturbed as he blithely stated the obvious. His murky brown eyes flicked from one beast to the next, swiftly scrutinising them for weaknesses or openings. “The centaur. Cover me. You two, be ready to move.”

Kayu did as instructed, knowing that she had no time to hesitate. She whipped her staff before her and drew back on it, weaving a half-dozen arrows in the wake of her hand. They formed almost instantaneously, powerful and stout, and only then did she realise just how thickly the mana flowed beneath her control and the spirits responded to her call. A nexus, perhaps…?

The chimera pounced, and the insect struck. She greeted their assault with a barrage of incarnate arrows, all of which failed miserably to penetrate the leathery hide and steely chitin. Cursing silently to herself, she leapt out of the way as the two collided with other and then the wall behind her in their haste to get at their prey. Wolf fangs snapped and slobbered, mantis claws waved and scrabbled for purchase, and somehow through the roiling mass of limbs and dust she emerged unscathed, firing another set of arrows over her head for good measure.

“Touma, I can’t hold them for long!”

The psy-mage in question currently stalked slowly towards the centaur, his movements measured and deliberate, his feet barely leaving the ground as he advanced. Whether disoriented by the calm aura he wore around his body or through sheer eye power alone, the centaur hesitated to strike, although both battleaxes rose in challenge as piggish orc eyes regarded their foe. One step closer, then another…

The centaur reared, bellowed, started to charge. But the psy-mage simply did not exist there any more.

The black sword leapt from its scabbard, carving a half-moon crescent through the dim light. The first stroke clove through both hindlegs without resistance, and the centaur’s roar of anger disintegrated mid-note into a scream of pain. The second parried the frenzied thrashing of its scorpion tail, just long enough for the psy-mage to kick backwards, away from the crippled beast. Clouds of dust rose sleepily from the bed of stone upon which they had slept for long centuries, stirred by the centaur’s anguished throes as it tried to regain its footing with only two legs. Its orcish mind simply did not comprehend that its new body needed all four to function, but the renowned stubbornness and pain resistance of the greenskin race kept it fighting for balance.

“Through the archway!” Touma called, flicking the blood from his blade before resheathing it with tranquil poise, ignoring the barbed tail reaching for him in vain. His voice echoed commandingly above the squalls of pain, the frustrated screeches and yelps, the laboured gasps for breath that echoed through the stone chamber.

“Quickly, you two.”

Again Kayu did not hesitate, grabbing Auntie Tsuru beneath an arm and ushering before her the undignified rush of Professor Alba. Together they made a mad dash towards the entrance from which the centaur had emerged into the chamber. They had to get there before the chimera and the insect disentangled themselves and realised that their prey fled from their clutches, else…

She needn’t have worried. Both monstrosities acted purely on instinct, and in this case hunger got the better of their predatory impulses. By the time she dove through the entrance, following Touma and Alba through, the screams of pain behind them had mutated into shrieks of agony as the chimera and the insect quite literally began to feast on the centaur’s still-living flesh. The terrible cacophony of tearing meat and crunching bones echoed appallingly through their ears.

Pale-faced, she looked to the others. As one, and without the need for words, they began to move swiftly and silently through the tunnels, determined to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the chamber of horrors before their pursuers finished their grisly meal.

[Wings of Endymion]

The second passageway shared much in common with the first: oppressive grey slate walls hemming them in from both sides, the coating of cold dust on the hollowly echoing floor, the slits of light from above illuminating motes of floating dust stirred up by their passing. They sped through the dim shadows until their lungs and legs gave way, and then they kept on running, each of them imagining the nightmares that would pass into reality if the chimeric horrors caught up with them again.

Kayu had just found her second wind and settled into a runner’s rhythm when Professor Alba collapsed, slumping to the floor and disappearing amidst a veritable fog of frigid filth.

“Can’t… run… must… rest…” he gasped from between gigantic heaves of his frail chest, face blood red and eyes unfocused with his exertions.

She looked to Touma, and he shrugged again noncommittally. But even he breathed heavier than she would have liked, and she abruptly realised that none of them, bar herself, could realistically run for much longer. A tug at her sleeve further emphasised the point.

“Put me down…”

Only then did she remember that she had been carrying Auntie Tsuru like a bushel of rice beneath her arms all this time. The venerable old lady looked quite sick from the rough handling.

“Oh, I’m so…”

"Don’t be, child,” Tsuru replied, browbeaten into uncharacteristic submission by her ride. Her eyes spun dizzily as she tried to reorient herself in the semi-darkness. “This old body of mine wouldn’t have…”

She fell to the floor next to Alba, and the pair of them languished in their combined misery. Somewhat ashamed of herself, Kayu offered them her water bottle, from which they proceeded to take great gasping gulps of the precious liquid. While the two scholars drank their fill, the young woman spared a wary glance back down the direction they had come, expecting to hear the sounds of pursuit any second now. Thankfully, the tunnels remained quiet and motionless.

“So.” At least Touma had regained his breathing now. She had plenty of questions for him. Unfortunately for her, Professor Alba butted in first.

“What were…” Heave. Puff. “… those things?”

“I thought you were supposed to be the experts in that particular…” Kayu began, only for him to cut her off agitatedly.

“You’re our… bodyguards!” Gasp. “You’re supposed… to…”

“Suffice it to say that none of us seem to have any idea,” Touma interjected wryly, still maintaining that annoyingly cool demeanour. “Our best bet, unsurprisingly, is to stay away from them and hope we don’t attract their attention again.”

“Is that… going… to work?” It would take more than that to convince Alba, but none of them offered any further words on the subject. Kayu spoke next.

“Touma, you do sense…”

“Yes.” Again Touma had arrived at the conclusion before she had. “This place is a nexus.”

“A nexus?” From the expression on his face, Alba had no idea what the word meant. Kayu found it somewhat surprising, although magical lore might have feasibly been a step too far removed from his archaeological background…

“A point where the flow of magic is particularly strong,” Touma explained. “The leylines of the earth and the winds of the sky ebb and surge just like any current. At some points on Althanas they converge… mountain peaks and beaches tend to be good places for that. At other locations they diverge, and in extreme cases weaker wizards won’t be able to work magic at all there. This tower seems to have been built on one of the former, and on a particularly powerful example too. Whoever chose this location did not do so by accident.”

“This entire area did use to be a mountain,” Tsuru reminded them sullenly, still sore. Kayu went over to the old woman and began to gently rub her back in an effort to ease the strain. “Mount Modhgar, as it used to be known, until it was shattered during the War of the Tap.”

“The entirety of the Highlands?” Kayu asked her, and Tsuru turned to regard her in some surprise.

“Indeed,” the old woman responded, managing a wheezing cackle. “You need to study more, girl, if you didn’t know that one!”

Kayu looked to Touma, but apparently he didn’t consider the information to be particularly noteworthy news. Again she wondered just how much he actually already knew, and how much of that he concealed from her. The thought unnerved her, setting her teeth on edge once more.

“The question thus remains,” Professor Alba spoke at length. “What do we do now? The entrance to this tower is blocked, and there’s two vicious monsters on our tail…”

Tsuru cackled again. “We could always leave you here. Save us the trouble of looking after your sorry behind.”

Alba snapped to face her, amber eyes flaring from behind his spectacles. “Says the person who was carried all the way here and is still out of breath!”

“Oh shaddup, you pansy noble’s child.”

“Old hag!”

Kayu sighed as she stood up, certain that Tsuru did not require her aid any more. The childishly bickering voices of the two scholars began to echo throughout the halls, until they recognised the folly of their actions and simultaneously shut up before they could attract the predators on their tail. She used the opportune silence to approach Touma again.

“Don’t you think we should get out of here?” she asked in an undertone, softly so as not to disturb his deep thoughts. He ignored her for a moment before his eyes flickered back to reality, and she caught a glimpse of him secreting away something dark and unhappy before he returned his attention to her. “While we still can?”

Touma looked at her for a moment before bursting into low laughter, mild gentle mirth.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, then,” she inferred, slightly peeved. He laid a hand upon her shoulder in an attempt to mollify her, but she shrugged it off callously and glared him in the eyes. “I hope you do realise that if we all proceed to die down here, I can safely pin it all as your fault?”

He sobered up swiftly, slightly shaken by the anger smouldering in the depths of her stare.

“We’ve come this far, Kayu,” he told her, placatingly warding away the fierce distaste in her eyes with upraised hands. “Wouldn’t it be a waste if we didn’t at least try to find out what those beasts were guarding? What if something diabolical is about to happen, and we’re the only ones close enough to do something about it?”

“Is it? Is something ‘diabolical’ about to happen? Is that the real reason we’re here?”

Touma met her glare, and slowly his conciliatory facade faded. Involuntarily she took a step back at what he left behind: cold calculating cunning and sincere concern.

“I don’t know,” he said, all traces of joviality gone from his voice. “But I’m not leaving here until I find out.”

Still she had the feeling that he hid something from her, that he did not tell the whole truth. But only then did she realise that without his ability to open a portal to safety, they effectively had to follow him wherever he went, at the risk of being abandoned in the depths of the tower with no escape. Hostages, or pawns, or…

Without giving her any further chance to ponder, he turned on his heels and started off down the tunnel. Groaning, Professor Alba rose to his feet and followed, with Auntie Tsuru – not willing to lose ground to the ‘young brat’ – swiftly doing the same. Kayu brought up the rear of their procession once more, her face clouded in deep thought.

For how long they walked through the dank claustrophobia, she did not know. Not time enough for Alba and Tsuru to stop their protracted bickering, which echoed incessantly through the darkness, but certainly time enough for her doubts and uncertainties to take hold and fester. The deeper into the complex they journeyed, the less light that filtered through from above, and the less she liked the idea of going any further. But Touma’s tread remained constant and unerring, such that she had to stay nimble herself to keep up. Only one fact consoled her troubled mind: neither the chimera nor the insect still pursued them.

“You fawning fouling fool!”

“Mangled decayed she-wolf!”

At long last the passageway opened up once more, a sudden burst of space and air after the tyrannical confines of the tunnel. Yet another chamber of featureless grey stone awaited their arrival, not so dissimilar from the first. And yet another altar stood in the centre of the room, prominent against the slate wall and floor, closely resembling the one that they never had a chance to examine.

“We should approach carefully…” Kayu began, her eyes desperately seeking signs of another wall appearing behind them to cut them off, or three more doors opening in the wall opposite to reveal another trio of monsters waiting in ambush. One of their party, however, had forgotten all about the lurking dangers.

“Eureka!” Professor Alba exclaimed, elated. Completely abandoning the ongoing argument with his assistant, he pushed past Touma and made a mad dash across the muffled stone, stirring up centuries of undisturbed ash and grime in his wake. Heedless of the sacrilegious blasphemy and the possible folly of his actions, he came to a halt on his knees at the base of the altar, hurriedly utilising a sleeve to mop away the coated filth from a plaque embedded into the slate. Swirling motes of smoke created an ethereal halo about his head, settling like snow about the academic robes that cascaded to the ground, but it was the glint of gold upon the plaque he held that caught their assembled eyes and their collective breaths in a single masterful stroke.

“One of twelve… shaper of flesh and deity of war… I have absolutely no idea what this inscription means, but this is the find of the century!”

“Pay attention to the words, boy. Somebody obviously thought them important enough to be carved into solid gold.”

Tsuru, forgetting also about their disagreements, rushed forth herself in order to take a better look. The sudden encroachment startled Alba, who grasped at the plaque protectively.

“Hey, wait a minute. As the ranking archaeologist…”

“I wouldn’t…” Kayu attempted to interrupt in warning, but her words went unheard over Alba’s distress.

“… I have the authority here, and you have to wait until I’m done…”

Alba pulled once too hard, and a single faint click echoed throughout the chamber.

“… uhh…”

“Uh-oh.”

The first sign of trouble was the distant rumble of something massive approaching their position.

The second echoed a lot closer, as the room began to shift shape, tearing their party in two.

The third inundated them in thick muddy sludge, hurling them apart until the darkness meant they could see each other no more.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

“… ugh…”

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

“Ahhh!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Wait, wait! Don’t leave me…!”

“Quentin, you can drop the act.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Our side?”

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

“And the Black Dragon? Sagara?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Blightwater?”

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

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

“What happened in Raiaera, Touma?”

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

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

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

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

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

“… were you able to…?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So in the end…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The psy-mage shook his head.

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

All presence but one.

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

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

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

[Whispers of Abyssion]

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

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

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

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

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

Human faces.

Captured in terror and pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The footprints we saw earlier…”

Touma’s reply was simple, succinct.

“Of course.”

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

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

“You didn’t…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Undoubtedly so.”

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

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

Quentin screamed.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

”What exactly are you doing?”

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

“Reading.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The imprisoned nobleman pursed his lips thinly.

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

“Oh?”

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

“I can.”

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

“Offer?”

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

The intruder’s smile turned enigmatic.

“What do you know of the eldarin?”

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

“And the dar’el?”

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

“Have you heard of the Chosen, then?”

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

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

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

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

“Whenever you wish, Scrolls of Anarion.”

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

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


***

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

“Hold steady.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Foolish?”

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

“You don’t mean that.”

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

“No, it doesn’t.”

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

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

“Human…”

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

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

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

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

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

[Wings of Endymion]

Rewinding a few hours…

“Girl, why do you always run!”

“Not now, Auntie Tsuru!”

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

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

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

“… I…”

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

“… I came to Raiaera…”

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

“I warned Rostarinne…”

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

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

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

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

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

“Do… do you miss them much?”

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

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

“Right! The opening to your right!”

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

“Right, I said!”

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

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

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

“I’m trying…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Breathe in…”

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

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

“Breathe out…”

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

“Let loose.”

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

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

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

[Wings of Endymion]

The ground beneath her feet erupted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The centipede’s movements slowed. Stuttered. Stopped.

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

Half an antenna.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let it go.”

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

Her next command.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s up to me, then.

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

“What must I…?”

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

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

“Please teach me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sudden movement from all around.

They were not alone.

[Wings of Endymion]

They died easily enough.

I’m sorry.

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

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

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

No time.

I’m sorry.

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

I’m sorry.

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

I’m sorry.

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

I’m sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m sorry.

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

I’m… so… so sorry.

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

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

Immediately she regretted the decision.

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

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

No.

“Auntie Tsuru… that… what’s…”

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

“Took you long enough, didn’t it?”

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

“Auntie Tsuru, no!”

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

They died easily enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m sorry.

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

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

[Wings of Endymion]

Her head swam.

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

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

Her vision floundered.

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

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

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

Her heart drowned.

Had his eyes always been so cold?

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

Everything happened at once.

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

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

“Shu-no-in… Tenshukaku!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her senses caught up with her.

The morbid stench of splattered blood and shattered bone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once again, something snapped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behind you!

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

Its limbs can act separately from its body…?

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

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

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

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

Kayu paused.

Did she really want to pay that price?

Is that really the path…?

Sudden chill gripped her heart.

No.

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

Enough…

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

No more.

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

“Not like this!”

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

“It’s never easy, is it?”

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

[Whispers of Abyssion]

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

“Unfurling the Win…?”

“Indeed.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Found it?”

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

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

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

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

“Would you join me, perhaps?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were not alone.

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

“Your guardians are dead, Keeper.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wasted no time.

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

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

And still Touma was not done.

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

“For your sins. Perish.”

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

Tsuru’s sarcastic tones shredded the silent aftermath.

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

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

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

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

“The Oracle requires me to answer a question?”

“Ha.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And why would that be?”

The Nipponese sighed; again uncharacteristically gentle, uncharacteristically honest.

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

“And you want me to…”

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

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

[Wings of Endymion]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know your place, Kayu, or else…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What was that duty?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No.

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

No!

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

She had failed.

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

“Please…"

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

“... can you teach me?”

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

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

“Depends what you want to learn, child.”

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

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

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

“It’s a start.”

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

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

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

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

“You know nothing, child.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Something even better, my dear.”

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

“Until we meet again.”

[Wings of Endymion]

A whispered worry.

“Please tell me she’s safe.”

A cackled response.

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

An ancient sigh, echoing loudly through the hollow dreamscape.

“Still, I wish…”

The sharp rustle of swaddled robes in the shadowy darkness.

“You had the boy. The girl is mine.”

Translucent hands raised in appeasement.

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

A disdainful snort.

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

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

“That the world should come to this.”

Furrowed brow, pained grimace.

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

Pallid eyes nodded reluctant agreement.

“But that they should have to shoulder…”

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

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

A sad smile.

“He will pull through. As long as…”

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

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

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

“You will help her?”

A scoffing nod.

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

Relief and release.

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

One last cryptic farewell.

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

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

[Revenant]

Full rubric, full commentary requested.

Plot: (24)

Storytelling (9) – You did an extremely good job of telling a standalone story that was also part of a much larger story. The references to other threads and events going on in Althanas that you made was what really put you over the top here.

Setting (8) – You maintained a strong sense of scene through all of the locations in this story, drawing me in through repeated use of multiple sensory inputs. I never felt like you had lost focus of where your characters were within the story.

Pacing (7) – While you mostly maintained a steady flow through this thread, your jump cut back in time disrupted the flow somewhat.

Character: (22)

Communication (8) – Your characters really came through in their words. There was only one point where I felt like this was somewhat out of place. This was in the third post where Touma’s thoughts came through when the thread, up to that point, had been solely focused on Kayu. With Touma having just popped into the thread, it was somewhat unexpected.

Action (8) – Near the end, in the conflict with the titan, the action became a little muddled. Otherwise, this was a clean-cut thread.

Persona (6) – Really, Tsuru’s presence in the thread became increasingly confusing near the end. By the end I knew what I needed to, but her motives and actions were almost a little too obfuscated and when the reveal came, the nature of events going on in the thread at the time seemed to push Tsuru to the background, which left me wondering exactly what her deal was.

Prose: (20)

Mechanics (6) – There were numerous spelling errors that jumped out at me while reading the thread. Otherwise, I found this to be a smooth flowing read.

Clarity (6) – The end of your thread was somewhat confusing. While there wasn’t anything wrong with the nature of Quentin’s reveal, Tsuru as the Oracle left me having to go back and reread to fully understand what was going on with her character.

Technique (8) – There were many points in this thread that were interconnected and foreshadowed ominous events, making this a pleasant read. It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but I chalk that up to the way which you laid things out.

Wildcard: (7)

Total: 73

Wings of Endymion receives 5338 exp and 570 gp.
Whispers of Abyssion receives 1606 exp and 235 gp.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.