March Vignette

[Jasmine]

All the usual rules apply. Use the prompt, make it interesting all that stuff. Your prompt for this month is as follows (and many thanks to Christoph for the idea):

We all die eventually. Be it in a Citadel battle or otherwise. Some of us are awesome enough to survive pretty bad odds, but eventually, someone, somewhere gets a lucky shot on you. So, how does your character die?

Do they die old, cold, and alone? In an epic battle of derring-do? A stupid accident? Murdered? Executed for crimes? Killed by an assassin's mistaking you for someone else? I don't know, but I bet it could be pretty awesome! By the way, dieing of old age can still be pretty awesome depending on the life you've lived. Just a little food for thought.

[Seether]

Reann crouched low in the underbrush, his burnished yellow eyes glinting brightly in the fading light. His breaths came fast and short and his chest fur was matted with sweat and slicked down in places where he had fallen or brushed against the trees or brush. His hand was clenched around his bone dagger in a death grip and his teeth ground against one another as he strained his enhanced senses into the world around him. He could still hear them, some distance away now but still closing fast. The hunters and their dogs. The dogs, those he feared the most of the two.

The sound of a twig snapping under a heavy weight cocked his head and ears to the right and he strained hard to pin point its source. Another snap, followed by a heavy thump gave him the information he needed and he shot to his feet, sprinting away from the sound. The hunters were good, very well trained, but even professionals made mistakes. Mistakes that cost them, especially when chasing something like himself. Mistakes however, only slowed them, never stopped them. Reann vaulted himself over a fallen log and skittered to a halt twenty paces beyond it, ducking behind the trunk of a massive tree, heaving heavy breaths as his heart tried to hammer itself free from his chest. A few seconds had passed when the air was suddenly filled with the braying calls of the hunters dogs, the fierce beasts calling back and forth to one another in a symphony of coughs, growls and yips, narrowing the search pattern of their pray. Reann cursed silently to himself and spun away from the tree, once more sprinting away from the sound of the hunters and their dogs.

This process of fleeing, hiding, listening, wheezing, feeling as though his heart, legs, arms and feet were on the verge of bursting or falling to pieces, continued for some time. The sun had long since set on the forested hills where he found himself, scrambling up the dense under brush, trying to gain altitude and a good vantage point from which he could plot his next direction. The inky black murk of night was usually a blessing for him, but not this night, this night was filled with the hunters and their dogs. This night was filled beyond bursting with terror and rapid flight. Most of all however, this night was filled with fire.

He couldn't understand his sudden and dreadful fear of fire. Truth be told, once upon a time he had loved fire. Not loved it in such a way that he was constantly trying to set things on fire, but the kind of love one feels when surrounded by solid walls and good, dependable friends. A security blanket he supposed, that was how he had loved fire. Of course, that was before his transformation. Now though, now fire was anathema; worse, it was death. Reann snarled ,his eyes catching glimpses of the tell tale flicker and dance of the distant flames, and spun away from the tree he had been crouching behind, sprinting away into the darkness.

He ran for a few minutes when the deep bray of a hunting hound pulled him up short. His eyes widened as the sound washed over him; it was coming from in front of him! How had they gotten in front of him!? Panic welled in his breast as the bray sounded again and there was a sudden crash of underbrush as something large and deeply powerful ran toward him. He spun left and sprinted away, leaping logs and dodging trees wildly. A few seconds later another bray split the darkness, this one too coming from in front of him. He cried in terror, slipping in the soft soil of the underbrush and crashed in a heap into the tangled roots of a large tree. Groaning softly Reann momentarily curled into a ball, clutching his bruised thigh, a soft whimper leaking from his tightly clenched teeth. A third bray snapped him from his momentary reprieve and he shot to his feet, distantly noting the sudden explosion of pain from his bruised leg. A fourth and fifth bray exploded into the night and he caught the distant flicker of torch light, bouncing and splitting around trees, brush and roots. Panic tightened its grip on his breast and he spun to sprint away. Pain exploded in his thigh and he only managed a few steps before collapsing once again into another tangle of roots and earth.

He cried out audibly then, clutching at his leg and shuffling himself forward through the brush. Something shifted beneath his flesh and another wave of pain exploded through his body sending him into a spasm. It took him only moments to realize that his leg had broken in that last fall. Another bray from the darkness, this one very close, off to his right. Reann closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he fought the pain in his leg, willing it to lessen.

A massive explosion of underbrush heralded the arrival of a massive hunting hound off to his right and Reann couldn’t prevent the gasp of shock as the great beasts form barreled forth from the bush. It had to have weighted at least one hundred and fifty pounds, all black fur dancing wildly on its body as it sprinted forward. Its chest was nearly as wide as his own, powerfully built and shifting with powerful grace. Its legs were more powerfully built than his ever could hope to be and as it bore down on him he noticed its mouth was filled nearly to bursting with razor sharp, pearl white teeth. Small, bright red eyes locked onto Reann’s and the great beast lifted its head and howled into the night, signaling its brethren and masters that it had found its quarry.

Reann bit back on the sudden terror that overwhelmed the panic within his breast and found himself howling back at the great beast, pushing himself to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg and squaring himself off against it. In the brief moment that followed just before the beast launched itself toward him, Reann could have sworn its lips drew back in a savage smile but then it was airborne, great black maw opened wide to deliver a killing strike to Reann’s neck.

Inky black fur met dull white sharpened bone with a meaty smack as Reann drove his dagger into the beasts neck and a shrill cry of pain filled the night air as the beast twisted savagely mid-jump to avoid the blade. It wasn’t enough to avoid, and it wasn’t enough to prevent the beast from crashing into him, driving him back into the tree as though he had sprinted straight into a wall. The air in his lungs exploded from his mouth with a great ‘Umph’ and both he and the beast bounced away from the trunk to land in a tangle heap in the earth. The beast twitched once, gurgling as it choked on its own blood from Reann’s knife wound, and he pushed it free from his body just as two more explosions of underbrush signaled the arrival of the beasts brothers. One was a mottled gray and the other a deep brown, but both were as equally built as the first and neither wasted any time in singling Reann out in the small pile. Lifting their massive heads as one the two sprinted forward, howling into the night. Reann found himself howling back, the thrill of the fight quickly surpassing and suppressing any and all fears he had. Still howling he charged the two charging dogs and . . .

. . .screamed as an arrow planted itself squarely between his shoulder blades. Someone shouted behind him but he scarcely noticed it as the unlimited energy he had just had moments before drained out of him as if a great plug had been pulled on a huge vat of water. He looked up at the two hounds through hooded eyes as they leapt and experienced a brief moment of fleeting panic before the closest of the two snapped its jaws closed around his neck, bearing him heavily to the ground. He scarcely noticed the pain, the weight, the arrow burrowing itself deeper into his back then snapping in half. Scarcely noticed the second dog grabbing a hold of his broken leg and twisting, tearing the flesh and bone apart with an unnatural ease. Blackness began to creep into his vision and his eyes began to roll back when a figure suddenly appeared over his head and the pressure, pain and writhing of the two dogs ceased. Reann gasped, noticing for the first time that the first dog had completely closed off his throat, feebly twitching as new pains began to explode over his body. The figure crouched close to his face and he distantly thought he recognized it. The face smiled and there was a blurring motion to Reann’s left. Something exploded in front of his eyes and he distantly felt the sharp jab of a dagger sinking itself into his temple. An instant later there was a sharp twist and a snap from deep within his skull and the inky black of death rolled over him like a tidal wave.

“Good riddance…”

[CaitieGirl]

Rose could have kicked herself if she hadn't already been deathly ill. The scratches and nicks on her arms, but the arrow that had caught her in the stomach, that wound had festered. And out here, amongst the rangers harrying the Empire's troops, there wasn't much anyone could do. She'd volunteered for the job, knowing her skills in archery would be invaluable to the cause. Hit and run missions required their fighters to aim true and then disappear leaving their enemies perplexed as well as injured. Her fleet feet and faultless targetry had brought down many soldiers without them ever seeing her. Such luck did not come without a price.

Too many attacks too frequently had left the enemy wary instead of frightened and they struck back. Just one arrow to the gut was all it had taken to bring her down. She was glad her teachers weren't here to see her like this. It had gone out of its way to miss anything important, she wouldn't have lasted this long otherwise, but it hadn't healed like she thought it would. A clean cut should have healed fine, but it was infected, and she had fallen into a horrible fever faster than she had thought possible.

She found herself yanked back and forth between searing reality and hazy fever-dreams of her past. Where had she gone wrong? She'd left her village to train in the face of this war, and she had learned so much. But not enough. The scar that still graced her neck was a product of what she sarcastically referred to as her initiation into Breaker Cronen's training program. But the pain that had accompanied that gash seemed a finger prick next to the agony that lapped at her mind, like molten rock making its way down a mountainside. Slow, but bringing inevitable doom.

She slipped a little further beyond its reach into a memory so vivid it could have been real. For her, in that moment, it was. She was a child again. Barefoot, clad in a cotton homemade gown that was made by loving hands with her antics in mind. Her brother Jacob was only a few steps behind her, but still she was winning. Age old trees blurred together as her feet pounded soft earth and pine needles into submission, forcing herself forward. Leaves slapped at her arms and her legs, then a stream slipped under her as she flew. Landing solidly she continued, pumping her burning legs as fast as could be until she passed the familiar patch of ferns that gave way to their favourite clearing. Skidding to a stop in the middle she turned around to watch her brother catch up only to have him run right into her. They both laughed. And then she screamed.

The scream was not human, it ripped its way up through a throat that could not take much more. It was a strangled sound, more like a hellbeast than a young girl. A piece of cloth was shoved in her mouth and pressure applied. For a wild moment she thought it was torture and thought wildly what she could tell them that would make it stop, but the familiar faces of her comrades came to be recognizable once the man touching her took the cloth away from the jagged bleeding edges of the wound. She was on a sleeping mat in a tent, deep in Condordia. The same forest she'd grown up in, the same forest where that clearing could still exist. But everything was different now.

She motioned for the man gagging her to stop and grasped his hand to drag herself upright. She swallowed and took several shaky breaths before asking, “What are you doing?” The man examining her, Lorne was his name she remembered, was not a medic. His clothing was the same green dyed make as the rest , his hands were dirty, at least on the top. He was an archer, a soldier, a rebel. He had no more knowledge of healing than she did, less in fact.

“Cleaning the wound.” The man replied bluntly, putting the blood-soaked bit of cloth back in the steaming pot of water beside him. “I'm sorry for gagging you, but we can't afford to have them find us.” Rose nodded, and examined what he was using. The cloth looked rough-spun and she realized someone was giving up their clothing for this. They must have exhausted their medical supplies. Had it been that long?

Sitting up was making her head spin, let alone all the thinking, so she lay down again. Thinking this was a sign of consent Lorne pressed the 'sanitized' cloth to her abdomen once again wrenching a hiss from between clenched teeth. But she would not scream again, she would not scream. He pressed deeper and the red spots that dotted her vision soon eclipsed all else and she fell back into blissful unconsciousness.

The black soon became dotted with light. Stars. She was on her back, her callused hands entwined in the submissive blades of grass. The sounds of Underwood's many inhabitants drifted towards her. The nightly din in the Promenade, the clanging of the blacksmith finishing one last job before the forge grew cold. Since the war the need for good steel, or even mediocre steel, had grown exponentially. Sitting up Rose was greeted with the friendly sight of smoke rising above many roofs against the fading sky and glowing windows to light her way home. This, along with her family, was the reason she was fighting. Not because she liked it. Not to use her training. But to protect. She was willing to die for that. And if she went down, she'd go down fighting.

“Rose!” A familiar voice called to her from the trees. She couldn't quite place it but it pulled her like a warm hearth on a winter's night. She stood, feeling weightless in the sudden silence. The pull of the voice was all that mattered. For a moment she thought she heard the clink of metal, out of place in the meadow. She thought she felt a hand pull her back. Her brow wrinkled as she began to turn, but then the voice called her again. She drew her hands away from her shadow companion and with an easy sigh and a light heart raced away into the night, into darkness.

[Jennifer Oakley]

Jennifer and Faustus embraced, a longing yet emancipating clasp of like minded spirits and warm, tangled wool and fur. There was no time to explain, and little time to dwell on their decision, it simply had to be done. With a longing caress, she fondled his mane and he touched his wet nose to hers before they stepped back from one another and cast their gaze upwards.

"Are you ready?" she asked, her heart beating and her skin shining in the radiance of the midday sun. "There is no going back, no revoking of vows, no regrets..."

Faustus gruffly replied with a yes, and held out his arms and arched his back and neck upwards, a perfect mirror of his daughter, two souls pushed and drawn to one another atop the tallest heights of the Temple of the Nina. The grand complex rested in silence as a thousand eager druids and layman stared up in wonderment through the falling autumnal leaves and the halcyon rays of the zenith.

"Then let us part ways."

"Let us."

"Blessed be, father."

"Ashanti be praised, daughter."

With a lightning bolt and a fiery convocation, the altar shattered in two between them and they were repelled backwards. Their lifeless forms tumbled down either side of the dais, rolling down the steps in a flurry of arms, staves and ceremonial dress.

A silent breeze drifted through the tall moss laden pillars that stood scattered about the central altar, and with it travelled hushed whisperings and low chanting. The leaves of the sycamore trees and evergreen plumes wavered to and fro, and time seemed to slow and stretch about the momentum of the High Priestess's act.

As their heads fell with a crack to the ancient stone, and the last remnants of their bound lives drifted from their bodies, the chanting rose in pitch and slowly the entire complex became a welling throng of devotion. Higher and higher went the crowd's spirits, and louder and louder grew the ancient verse.

The sun crested at it's height and shone down onto the pan-optical mirror atop the altar, and in a split second, all was illuminated and golden. Separated by the towering steps, Jennifer and Faustus smiled like mannequins to the gods, their time on Althanas spent in the service of nature.

Without any indication of intent, the crowd split into two convex halves. To the right, surrounding the altar on Jennifer's half, the women of the conclave and the priestesses gathered. To the left, at the feet of Faustus the men, haggard and wise individuals and young, foolish braves clad in leaves and vines and all the intent of adventure.

"Haevos, evos, nemmos gammos!" the dual chorus rose up through the tree tops and intermingled with the dawn bird song. Slowly but surely, the crowd approached the two still figures and surrounded them with gentle, searching hands.

As the chorus grew, they plucked up the corpses, still warm and beating with the fading remnants of life and bore them aloft above their heads. As the sun reached the midday stance, they turned the bodies into parallel alignment and rocked them back and forth as if they were floating on an ocean wave.

"Our mother," proclaimed the men.

"Our father," proclaimed the women, their roles crossed and confused by the indistinguishable duality of the spirit.

The wave of bronzed skin and silk rose up the first few steps of the altar, beginning the ancient ritual of rebirth with a slow reuniting advance between family and lovers. The metaphor, as obscure as it was to all but those initiated into the Order of Nina rang out through the forest.

"Let winter be known, let summer be forgotten, let spring reside and autumn reign."

As the chorus dimmed, the two halves of the crowd found themselves reunited at the apex of the altar, as they laid to rest Jennifer and Faustus on the cracked stone. Jennifer came to rest with her head North, and the faun South, semi-curled to form a slightly elongated circle; a cyclical symbol of life.

"Let nature be the judge - let Althanas and Y'edda preside."

With shuffled feet and hushed tones, the conclave withdrew from the altar and returned to their positions amongst the columns and branches, the leaves and the sunlight.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I stared into the abyss, and the abyss stared back at me. And even without any distinguishable features, I could tell it was annoyed and disappointed to see me.

"Madison Freebird," the shapeless floating void spoke with a rather soft, gentlemanly tone that didn't seem to suit the thing's horrid appearance. "We weren't expecting you again so soon."

I spoke in even, calculated tones that allowed no hint of fear to escape my lips. "I thought I asked you last time not to refer to me by that name."

The abyss replied with a hint of sarcasm, "You'll have to excuse me. It's been so long since our last little chat that I've plum forgotten. You know how it is; when you're in a position such as mine, you meet thousands upon thousands of new people every year. Eventually you're going to let a name or two slip."

I absentmindedly reached into the pocket inside my burnt and tattered laboratory coat and pulled out the deck of cards that I kept in there. Somehow, it managed to survive the ordeal that occurred just minutes before. "I'm certain you know the drill by now," I said as I opened the thin box, pulled the cards out, and began shuffling. "I want to play a game, win my soul and a second chance at life, et cetera..."

"Yes of course," the abyss said dismissively. "This will be 'second chance' number what, now?"

"Six."

The shapeless mass shifted around in the air in front of me. I imagined that it was leaning forward, propping its head upon its hands and smirking at me. "And what was it this time, hmm? An errant trap sprung whilst searching for another ancient tome? A slight miscalculation in the formula for an anti-aging facial cream? Your liver finally rot from all that alcohol you drink?"

I narrowed my gaze ever-so-slightly. "Freak accident. One of the boilers I use for my alchemy experiments decided to blow up in my face. At least, that's what I think happened, considering the state of my clothes and all these nasty burns I have all over me."

A long silence filled the air around us, broken up periodically by the bursting cracks of the deck being shuffled. Finally, the abyss spoke. "So, what shall we play this time? Cribbage? Gin Rummy? Fallien Hold 'Em? Perhaps a round of Oh Shit? I can manifest some beer and pretzels if you wish, to make this experience a bit more authentic."

I replied sharply, in no mood for its sass. "I have experiments to get back to, so we'll make this a quick game. How about some three-card monte?"

A hearty laugh emanated from the inky blackness before me. "Three-card monte? The ultimate street corner con job? Surely, you must be kidding!"

I brushed my singed, graying bangs out of my eyes. "I would've chosen rock-paper-scissors, but with you being nearly omnipresent and all, it'd be easy for you to predict my choice. And that would be cheating. Now, can you manifest a table for me, please? I'd like to get back to the world of the living here pretty quickly."

The abyss lowered his voice slightly. "You seem pretty confident that you'll win, Madison." And from deep within the black nothingness popped out a small mahogany table. Its surface was perfect, untouched by any scratches or blemishes. The patterns carved into the curved legs had to have been Raiaeran in artistic design. I flipped through the deck, pulling out the Queen of Spades and the twin jokers and setting them on the table. Putting the deck back into its box and sliding it back into my coat pocket, I said, "Best of five?"

"Best of five," the abyss spoke back.

With a sound that was a cross between a woosh and a slosh, two decaying arms jutted out from the shapeless mass that floated on the other side of the table. One by one, they bent the cards up the middle just enough to be able to grab them. I knew that it was all part of the con; yet I did not speak up.

The abyss started speaking in a low, fast drone: "Seethequeenlookatthequeendon'tloosesightofthequeen watchthequeennotthejokers--"

"Cut that out," I curtly interrupted. "You don't need to do any vocal distractions to tip things in your favor."

"It's all about the experience, Madison." But we both knew how right I was; the two arms jutting unnaturally from the abyss slowly picked up speed, shuffling around the cards on the table until the game was moving at a breakneck pace. Surely, even the best alleyway hustler in the worst parts of Radasanth would've buckled and cried for mercy by this point in the game. Yet--

With a sudden jerk, the arms withdrew themselves from sight. "Pick a card," my adversary said with a silky-smooth confidence. I clicked my tongue and furrowed what was left of my brow, my charred skin cracking and bleeding slightly. After several seconds in deep thought, I pointed to the card on the left. A rotted arm slid out and flipped it over, revealing the Queen of Spades. After several seconds of stunned silence, the abyss simply said, rather bemusedly, "Huh."

"Game one, my friend. Next." My lips curled up in a slight smile.

If the mass had eyebrows, they would've furrowed in anger at me. "Don't get too cocky, woman."

I clicked my tongue again and wagged my finger disapprovingly, just as another arm appeared and flipped over the other two cards to reveal the jokers. Setting them back face-down, the rotten limbs began to work their magic once more. This time, they were moving at such a pace that I couldn't keep up with them. At one point, I was certain that the forces of physics would've caused several loose fingers or chunks of meat to free themselves and fly in random directions. And with a sudden jerk, they stopped, leaving the cards arranged in a perfectly straight row in front of me. I folded one arm across my stomach, propping my chin up with the other in a contemplative, but rather theatrical manner. I clicked my tongue once more. "Why do you make that noise," the abyss inquired rather sternly.

I calmly replied, "It's a bit of a nervous tic that I have. In moments of deep, contemplative thought."

The abyss did not respond.

"Middle card, please."

After hesitating for a second, an arm flipped over the card, revealing the queen yet again. I clicked my tongue once more, far quieter this time, just as it scooped up the other two cards. It revealed two jokers once more. Slamming the cards down hard on the mahogany table, the abyss kicked the game into high gear. No rotten arms, no pretense of "providing an experience"; just a nearly-omnipresent being and a mad scientist fighting for control of the latter's soul.

The cards moved in a whirlwind in front of me. There were times where they appeared as one, they were moving as such great speeds. When the chaos finally stopped, the abyss roared, "Pick your damn card!"

For good measure, I clicked my tongue one last time, as quietly as humanly possible. The roar of the abyss had shaken me down to my very soul. A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead, winding its way through the ravines of my cracked and burnt flesh. Suddenly, I was very afraid. Frankly speaking, this was the first time in decades--ever since my first brush with death thirty-seven years ago--that I had felt like this. I hesitated briefly, a pointed finger hovering in the air, before I settled once more on the rightmost card. "T-that one," I managed to squeak out.

The abyss did nothing. It popped out an arm to flip the cards as it had done twice before. However, before doing so, It clicked its own tongue. And it was a pitch-perfect rendition of my own.

And I panicked.

As I moved quickly to give another click, the arm waved over the cards, flipping them and revealing three jokers. The hand slowly retracted itself into the black void floating before me. I was speechless. I had been found out. Confirming this, the abyss spoke, once again using the soft, gentlemanly tones that it always greeted me with. "Oh, Madison. Madison, Madison, Madison. What were you thinking?"

I fell to my knees and hung my head low. I did not respond. It was all over for me. And in case you need me to spell it out for you, that deck of cards was enchanted. With every click of my tongue, the cards could change their face. I had used it several times in the past to win games against some of my colleagues, just as a way to have some extra pocket change, but... This was the first time that I actually used it as a way to try and buy myself more time in the world of the living. And it was all for naught. And I had so much more that I wanted to accomplish... And it was all over. Everything I had worked so long and hard in that laboratory to achieve; all of my plans that laid in front of me... GONE. FOREVER.

"I'm disappointed in you, Madison Freebird. I expected better from you. We're both aware of the rules; you may ask me to play a game with your life as the prize. But should you get caught cheating... You automatically lose." The abyss betrayed no emotion; whether it was truly disappointed in me, or it was just masking it's glee in finally overcoming me was not for me to know.

Defeated, I began sobbing as the darkness enveloped me. "I just wanted more time to finish my work. Is... Is that so much to ask?"

An icy, soggy hand lifted up my chin. The abyss looked me square in my tear-filled eyes, saying nothing. The hand slowly pulled itself away, and a translucent white mist began streaming out of my nose and mouth. I wanted to scream, but couldn't. A sharp jolt of cold pain wracked my body, and suddenly everything

[Sheex]

The aged couple made their way slowly towards the second story of the home they had shared for over forty years now. In retrospect, having the bedroom on the second floor was probably not a very bright idea for a couple well into their sixties, but that's where it had always been; it seemed a shame to change it now.

"Ha. Time flies when your having fun," Sheex whispered as he leaned up against his wife for support. His once dark brown hair was completely gray now. His skin was lined with wrinkles, and his hands which once darted about with the quickness of a life-time fondler of women were now slow and refused to obey him. Though, looking back, he had been fondling the same girl for the past forty-seven years now. That thought made him smile; he had always assumed that being tied to one girl would have been a huge problem, but when you loved that girl more than life itself, it wasn't hard at all.

"It sure does love," Leila whispered back, giving her husband's wrinkled cheek a quick kiss. A soft sigh escaped her lips, she too was slowing down. Ten years ago she could have snuck in at least five more kisses before having to catch her breath.

A coughing fit attacked Sheex; he clung tightly to Leila for support. He had quit smoking in his late twenties, but before he had met Leila, he had been quite the hardcore smoker. He had been a pretty hardcore drinker too, and he had not managed to shake that vice (nor had he tried very hard). It seemed that time was coming to collect its dues, and there was little he could do about it.

Strangely, he wasn't afraid of death. Perhaps it was because that, as a wanderer, he had always assumed he would die alone in a ditch somewhere, like so many people who go unremembered in the history of Althanas. But he hadn't died in a ditch. Instead, he had fallen in love with this girl, had married her, and raised two children with her.

The funny thing was that neither child was his by blood. His son, Guy, was Leila's son, but neither of them knew who his father actually was. No, forget that. Who gave a damn if Guy wasn't Sheex's son by birth? The boy was his son, no ands, ifs, or buts. Guy had grown up to be such a good man too. Strong, proud, smart, and nowhere near as roguish as his father had been in his youth.

His little girl (who was nowhere near little anymore), had been the daughter of Leila's neighbor, long ago. That man had been a piece of shit. He had abused and beaten little Nami, and when Sheex had been forced to live in this town for a time, he had killed that scum of a human being. Though it may make him seem like a cold killer, Sheex had no regrets about his past actions. That little girl, tiny Nami, had called him Daddy on that night, as he had whisked her away from what she had thought was an everlasting nightmare; no point in describing what he felt like at that moment in time. Only those who have been called "Daddy" could possibly understand, the rest of us will just have to wait for that time.

Ha. Sheex laughed on the inside. Perhaps it was one great big cosmic joke that the former wanderer, who had chased every sort of woman possible back in his youth, was might have actually been born sterile, and incapable of having his own children? He had never gotten Leila pregnant, despite how often they had sex (which was extremely often). Such a thought bothered him not, for he had two wonderful children of his own, blood be damned.

"Hey, Sheex," she whispered into his ear as she sat him down on the bed, "did I ever tell you exactly when I realized that I loved you?"

"Hmmmm, I don't think you have actually," Sheex responded; damn, his eyes felt so heavy now, "but I'd love to hear it."

"It was when you lost that bet, and took me to our very first dance," Leila began. Sheex let out a laugh as he recalled that fond memory.

"I remember! I remember!" he wheezed, "That was when that bitch what's-her-name threw wine onto you!"

"It was Cecelia!" the old woman cackled, "and remember what you did? You dumped wine on yourself!"

"You wanted to match that night," Sheex blushed, "I remember that. It was important that we matched."

"That was it," Leila smiled sweetly, "right then. You dumped the wine on yourself, and asked me to dance, dripping wet with that red wine. The way you looked at me, smiled, and held out your hand; it was if as you were going to whisk me off on a wild journey, and all I had to do was say yes, and take your hand."

"I guess in a way I did," the old man smiled back, "married for forty seven years, raising two kids, opened up our own business, watched our kids get married...it's been a hell of a wild ride, my love."

Tears welled up in Leila's eyes, she wanted to respond, but had not the strength. Sheex let out another laugh, one that lacked all the vigor of youth he had once had.

"I may be old, but I'll be damned if I can't dance with my wife!" he grunted as he stood up on his weary legs. With an aged smile, he offered his hand, "might I have this dance pretty lady?"

A single tear trickled down Leila's wrinkled cheek as she gripped the man she loved tightly.

"A gentleman would have said 'milady,' but I think I prefer 'pretty lady' so much more," she answered as the two took their positions; one old couple, sharing yet another moment of pure love.

"You should," he joked with a smile, "you are so very pretty."

Together the aged pair danced, so very slowly. The fire they once ran with, the passion they once kissed with, had grown old and slow. Only one thing had not changed, and that was their love of one another. That one thing still burned with as much passion as it had ever burned. And as they danced, a wave of memories washed over the soul mates.

"Ah, remember when Nami got married? Gods, when you handed her away, I thought you were going to cry," she whispered softly.

"I did later. My little girl, all grown up. I told her this once, but little girls never grow up, ya know? To their daddies, they remain precious little things, with skinned knees, eagerly awaiting a piggy back ride," he whispered back, drinking in the fond memory.

Nami was in her fifties now. She still called him Daddy, despite it all; he loved her so.

"And when Guy returned from his adventures? Remember that?" Leila asked, Sheex was beginning to speed up his dance. She would follow him, no matter the strain.

"How could I forget? My little buddy, a grown man! Gods, he's such a good kid!" he answered, tears fell from his tired eyes.

Like the father, the son had wanted adventures. And, just like the father, the son had returned to the place he would call home.

"Oh! Oh! And remember that time we went to dance at that castle? All your bragging, all true!" she laughed as Sheex dipped her.

"Of course! Told you I made friends with a princess, didn't I? What, you thought I'd lie to you?" he laughed as he kissed his wife. Passion and fire returned to his feeble body.

'Never!" she laughed back, missing her spent passion. If only the two of them were still in their twenties; she'd have Sheex naked, and in bed with her on top, in half a second.

"How about our first day of business? I got to own my own bar!" Sheex smiled a smile that was strangely full of a bygone youth. It was getting bright outside too; Leila thought that was odd. Surely the two hadn't danced all night.

"I remember the look on your face. Happiness in a cup! Or maybe a mug?" she joked. Sheex was moving so fast now, it was like he was twenty again!

"It should be a look you're familiar with, considering how happy you've made me!" he shouted, and his voice was nothing close to old and feeble. It was filled with passion and fire.

"The day of our marriage..." Leila whispered as he brought her close.

"Do you promise to love her, now and forever, the priest said to me," Sheex whispered into Leila's ear, "I do, was my answer. I've never broken that promise Leila, not once. Kissed you then and there, or so I recall."

"Maybe. Or, as I recall it, I was the one kissing you!" she let out a giggle, more suited to a twenty-year old girl than an old lady, "we cut the priest off, didn't we? There was suppose to be a 'til death do you part' part, wasn't there?"

"Ah, I suppose there was, wasn't there? Sorry, sorry! Just like me to mess up your big day!" Sheex grinned wildly.

"Psh! The only mess you made was on the honeymoon!" Leila responded, just like a newlywed, "we trashed that room!"

"Hell yeah!" a roughish voice, long since gone, answered back, "you were friggin' wild babe!"

Every thing was so white, so bright. Leila's old eyes squinted in pain, but she dared not look away. There he was, just like he had been so long ago. Dressed in a black jacket and blue shirt, the same way he had stumbled into her life. His hair was dark brown, and his eyes (the very same shade), were so full of life! Gods, he was just like he was back then! Why was she so old? Why was she so damn far behind him?

"Ah, what a pretty picture I make!" a youthful Sheex laughed as he twirled about in the white light, unfettered by old age. He ran a hand through his beautiful brown hair, and turned his eyes off towards the distance, towards an ever distant utopia.

"Looking pretty good, eh babe?" Sheex asked as he smiled his cocky smile; she hadn't seen that look in ages! "Course, can't hold a candle to you, you sexy thing!"

What was he talking about? There he was, in his prime! Damn him! How dare he race off like that, and leave her behind! She so wanted to cast off this accursed old husk of a body, and join him!

"What are you talking about? I'm old and frail," a in-her-sixties Leila muttered. Sheex just laughed at her.

"What'cha talking about? Your as pretty now as you ever were! Your fiery red hair! Your creamy white legs! Ah, shit! I'd of married you if you were ugly, but the gods were good to me! My wife was pretty! Always was, always will be!" a in-his-twenties Sheex fired off.

"Oh? And what if I was butt-ugly? And a prune in bed? Would you have me?" Leila asked, the spark of a fire was lit in her heart.

"Hmmmm, the correct answer of course is yes. But, ya know, I think part of the reason I fell in love with you, no, the main reason I fell in love with you, was your personality. So, I guess," Sheex gave a carefree shrug, "probably not. I only love Leila, so if you weren't Leila, I wouldn't love you! Sorry, lady with the legs-so-fine-I-want-to-make-you-mine!"

"Ha! Fair's fair! I only love Sheex, and if Sheex didn't touch me inappropriately every chance he got, he wouldn't be Sheex! Not that I'm complaining mind you!" she answered back. What was happening? She hadn't felt like this in ages!

"You know it! I can't keep my hands off you!" Sheex said, his face unwrinkled, and filled with an intent that could only be described as lecherous. But he stopped himself, and turned his gaze far off into the light.

"But I can wait. A year, ten years, and hundred years, an eternity. Looks like I'm gonna have to go on ahead of you," he said with a soft sigh. Sheex smiled sadly, and placed his unwrinkled hand onto Leila's wrinkled face, "but I'll wait for you, if you like."

"No," she answered firmly, "I will not wait one day, one minute, one second! Hold out that hand wanderer!"

Sheex smiled, and offered his hand. Leila extended her own hand, now as smooth as it had ever been, and gripped him tightly.

"I love you Leila," Sheex whispered as he leaned in close; the white light wrapped itself around the lovers.

"I love you too, Sheex," Leila answered, as she pressed her lips, red and plump like the lips of any girl in her twenties would be, into the lips of the man she loved.

The next day, Sheex and Leila were found together in bed, deceased. The town doctor was surprised at that, for though Sheex had only a little time left, Leila had at least another five years. But there was not a sign of foul play, and the only thing anyone could find was a smile playing on the dead lovers' lips.

If the almighty one, whatever you believe he may or may not be, appeared and offer you this deal, would you take it?

You will meet a person you love more than anything. You'll share a life of love and laughter. You will never want for affection. You will know, now and forever, that you have found that rare thing called true love. But, when they go, you go too. Whether it's a year or fifty years, that's all you get. That's the deal, take it or leave it.

"I can't speak for anyone else," Nami Deltin smiled at her parent's funeral, "but for Mommy and Daddy, that was exactly how it was. I love you Mommy. I love you Daddy."

This is the end of the stories of Sheex and Leila Deltin. They have no regrets.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

An ashen wind whistled and howled, scouring barren rocks from an equally desolate desert. The sky hung heavy and crimson, the funeral pyre of a dying sun, drenched in the same blood that painted the landscape red. Not a single living soul stirred in the fiery heat, and mangled piles of bones and fossilised tree carcasses lay amongst the devastation of civilisations long since crumbled to ruined dust. Dry cracks patterned the ground beneath them, running the courses of arcane leylines that had once powered the potent magics of a world facing extinction.

Deep within the bowels of said ground dwelt the last human survivor of the cataclysm. His luxuriant mop of hair had long since turned to stringy thin white, his confidently slim body long since wasted away to bare skin and bones. Murky brown eyes once drowning in schemes and stratagems now glistened dull and dead in defeat and despair. Time and again he wheezed to himself in wild whispers, wishfully wondering about times past and opportunities missed. Whenever he did so, a trickle of frothy spittle dribbled from the corner of his shrivelled mouth, spilling down his pale chin to dry upon the stinking mess of a woollen blanket that covered his frail frame.

“We should have had her that time…” the soft whimpers echoed, as the earth overhead shook in the throes of its latest quake. None survived to challenge the Dead Goddess’s dominion, and the world of Althanas gradually tore itself apart as she reforged the old in the shape of the new. “That one time… that one time…”

A shower of dry sand cascaded into his hopelessly upturned face, spilling over his feeble shoulders like a rusty avalanche. He paid it no notice. His continued mumbling, weak and shrill, served at last to stir the other occupant of his sealed tomb.

“Lord Touma, you must not stress yourself so...”

Despite long years of subterranean subsistence, Silmeria’s beauty still shone like a star in the velvet night. Her silvery hair flowed like the current of an ancient river, lustrous and vibrant; her blemishless features shimmered with youth, regal and refined. Pure white eyes gleamed gently in the glow of the lantern fungi. But her wings, feathered in raincloud grey and folded tightly against her back, had wasted away from inactivity and lack of exercise. Her slender back hunched unhappily beneath their useless weight.

“Ah, the forlorn lost hopes of yore,” the elderly man smiled sadly as he regained his wits. At times his trademark keen insight returned to him in all its wretched glory, and he saw himself as he lay upon his deathbed and laughed wryly at what he had become. All men grew old, whether they desired it or not. But none deserved to live out the flames of their existence as the last survivor of the end days, fugitive from the forces that had caused it, powerless save to watch as the world once full of life and colour perished just out of reach.

Not for the first time, Touma Kamikaji cursed his lot in life.

“Are you thinking of that day again?” Silmeria asked gently, her inhuman tones ethereal and lilting. Just like Touma lived as the last of humankind, her own peoples had not survived elsewhere either. The dar’el, the Beloved of the Thaynes, had once reigned over entire cities of sculpted marble, entire nations of fertile fields and verdant wilderness. Now all had crumbled to dust. Shadows, and dust.

‘That day’ referred to the day when every last one of their surviving hopes had shattered, when the Disciples and their Goddess had destroyed their desperate opposition once and for all. Touma had led the resistance against their ascendance for many a year, almost a decade, fighting the growing tide of dark minions spawned by the lieutenants of shadow. Entire nations burned in dark flame, one bloody corpse at a time. The number of dead rose into the millions, and the number of wounded and displaced soared to a hundred times that. And for all their struggles, for all their setbacks, they had never lost sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. Until ‘that day’.

“I still remember the sight,” he began his torrid tale with familiar words, luxuriating in the tender touch of Silmeria’s skin against his own desiccated wrinkles as he lost himself in memory. “As vivid in my mind’s eye as if I stand before them again in person. The twelve servants of Tsukuyomi gathered unto a single location, the temple of the Dead Goddess herself. Looming avatars of destruction, defiling the very air with auras of seething corruption. The remnants of the dar’el that had once inhabited the lands rotting and dissolving beneath their feet into putrid pools of slime and gore. My nose hung heavy that day with rich necromantic decay. Oh, but it stank.

“We faced them amongst the decrepit ruins, sixteen of the greatest heroes the mortal world had ever known, the Chosen of the Lesser Thayne Aska. Xuan and Kayu, leading the hundred and eight Stars of Destiny they’d gathered from all over the world… Arlanniel was there with her sisters, and Sigrun Golemforger, and the Seeker of the Song of Sun and Moon…”

“And us,” Silmeria whispered, recalling the familiar faces as she joined in the familiar reenactment. “Quentin and Phillipe and Hiroyuki, Leon and Naomi, Angelus and Gallievo, Karuta, Menelmecar, Orel Dhig, Garthtaal…”

“… our cloaks fluttered in the cold harsh wind. Steel sang from our scabbards. Spells danced on the tips of our tongues. Upon every face writ the determination to put an end to the end times, there and then and forever more. Oh, how foolishly heroic we were, once upon a time…”

Touma’s wizened features darkened. The years and the despair had taken their toll, but still he retained hints of his once-handsome face: aquiline nose cast in stark shadow, tired eyes dark and despondent.

“I remember Akiyoshi falling, jaws clamped tight around Sagara’s neck. Kongorikishi took out half of Xuan’s men and most of mine before we managed to bring it down. Druaga’s minions swarmed over Hiroyuki and Angelus, and Ashura’s beasts tore out Arlanniel’s throat and tossed her aside into the ruined mud. The blood flowed and the bodies piled, and the losses mounted one by one…” He shuddered again. “And then the Aspect of the Dead Goddess arrived on the scene, drawn by the deaths of her Disciples and the blood of Aska’s Chosen, and even the Lesser Thayne herself quailed in fear…”

“If not for Xuan…”

The old man managed another wry smile, so tautly wound that Silmeria feared that his eyes would fall from his face.

“Ah yes, Xuan. He took down Garura and then Bishamonten himself in single combat. And then he strode before Damon, and no matter how many times the Aspect cast him to his death, he rose again. And again. And again. If not for him…”

Touma’s voice trailed off into silence, as oppressive and heavy as the weight of the earth all around him.

“How many of us were left standing in the end?” Silmeria prompted at last, when Touma failed to continue with his tale. She frowned to herself in weary concern; he never had stopped mid-speech before.

“Four of us,” the psy-mage replied softly, barely a mutter. “You and I, and Xuan, and Kayu. Four, of the two hundred heroes who had stood before the Disciples that morn. I trod on Bishamonten’s crown, on the very top of the pile of mangled limbs and broken bodies he had left in his wake, to survey the battlefield. The stink of blood and rot… the taste of lightning in the back of my mouth from concentrated arcane power… the absolute silence as even the wind died in the wake of the battle…

“I remember thinking to myself that we might have done it after all. That we had defeated her lieutenants and averted the cataclysm. That the end times would not come, and that all the lives lost had not been in vain. I remember allowing myself to believe, for one glorious instant, that we had won.”

“… but we hadn’t.” Silmeria’s luscious tones echoed low and sad.

“No. Xuan… Xuan, as always, the first to see it, despite those ridiculously oversized glasses of his. Struggling to his feet as he coughed his life away in great gouts of blood, both of his arms a mangled mess, gargling a warning to us in time. Then came the rain… and the darkness… and the…”

Touma’s voice lost its strength, too far traumatised to continue. His hands shook uncontrollably, hands that had killed a thousand men without hesitation, hands that had sacrificed millions more to buy them the time they had needed to challenge their foes. Now they quivered thin and powerless, wrapped in Silmeria’s delicate touch.

“I pushed him away. I grabbed you and Kayu and ran. It was all that we could do, all that…”

“It is what he would have wanted,” Silmeria reassured gently. “With his wounds, he would not have survived for long no matter what happened. At least his sacrifice bought us the time to escape.”

“His last words,” Touma scoffed, wheezing throatily, bleary eyes barely recognising Silmeria any more. “’Promise me you’ll keep her safe’. Ha. As if… as if there was anywhere safe left for us to run. In the end she died, and we… and we…”

“No man could have done more.” Silmeria reached out to lightly stroke his wizened cheek, the sensation of her skin like satin upon sandpaper. “Nobody will blame you for…”

“Not that there’s anybody left to blame me, of course.” Bitter resentment coloured his world-weary voice, tinged his haggard gaze. Nothing she could say could absolve him of his hatred, or his guilt.

Reluctantly he allowed her to ease his wasted body backwards into a sleeping position, settling amongst the dank dirty pillows like a feather upon a pile of leaves as he struggled for breath amidst the stifling warmth. The bluish subterranean glow bathed his face in its sickly light, emphasising the crags beneath his eyes and the worry lines in his brow. Lost in the dusty shadows that whispered their desire to devour him whole, he drowned in his own rancid fearful musk as it evaporated from every sweaty pore.

“Ah, how did it all go wrong?” Dull brown eyes beseeched the cavern ceiling as he continued to ramble. “You and I and Kayu, we escaped that day, the same way we escaped from them for three whole months afterwards. But by the turn of the year she had wasted away, like all the hope and heart torn from our lives, until one evening she simply faded into the oblivion that had claimed us all.

“Ah Kayu, beautiful, sweet Kayu… how could I ever forget that day you left me, never to return. I stood heartbroken upon the ruins of civilisations, and I saw before me the last muddy scavengers picking at the bones of the once mighty, and I witnessed how they cowered and fled beneath the wrath of the Dead Goddess. And then I knew all was lost… all was lost…

“Once I had dared to dream, of ruling a world from the shadows, of making princes and paupers alike dance to my whims. And now here I lie, battered and broken. Lord of Serpents, Silvertongue… king of a bedchamber tomb hidden deep beneath the rock.”

Silmeria let a single crystalline tear flow down her flawless cheek, realising that his end at last lay nigh. “For what it’s worth, my lord, you will always be my Lord Touma.”

“Silmeria?” the old man asked with the last shreds of clarity left in his soul. For a breathless moment he held out a hand towards her, bewildered and lost, seeking the comfort of her touch. Then the shards of his sanity shattered once and for all.

“Kayu?” His eyes drooped closed, his breath rasped through his painfully clenched throat. Involuntary spasms wracked his limbs in relentless succession. “Have you come for me…?”

The crystalline tear shattered upon the hard thirsty earth. With one final shudder, the sole surviving mortal on Althanas peacefully breathed his last.

A mile overhead, the world continued to burn.

[Wings of Endymion]

The bright side of the moon gazed at her serenely from high in the night sky, maternally looking after its chosen child. White moonbeams danced across the rolling moor, the desolate and charred remains of what had not so long ago been fertile farmland. The gritty stench of ash and cinder carried far and wide from the devastation all around her, but the tranquil silence murmured calming reassurances in her ears, lulling her to sleep with every whispered breath of breeze.

From her perch upon the inner ramparts of Fort Boweridge, Kayu Kanamai allowed her keen gaze to sweep the horizon, sensing rather than seeing that something lay amiss. For seven years now the Disciples of the Dead Goddess had rampaged throughout the lands of Althanas, and the lesser spirits from which she drew her power had died in droves beneath their corrupting influence. On one hand this had driven the greater spirits to unite behind her, meaning that she could weave even more powerful spells than before. On the other, since said greater spirits existed in far fewer numbers, she could no longer read her surroundings with her incarnate senses as accurately. It annoyed her, and worried her, that any moment now their small encampment could come under attack, and nothing she could do…

There, amongst the scorched trees.

And again, in the ruins of a burnt-down farmhouse.

Shadows, moving where they should not.

“Disciples inbound!” the cry went up from the central tower, where eagle-eyed waywalker Nerdanel kept watch. “Five from the north, two from the east, lesser forms!”

In a heartbeat the star fort erupted into a hive of activity that rivalled the moon overhead in its intensity. Warriors rushed from sleep to their stations, and commanders barked their readiness into the crisp cold air. Yann found her first, frozen to her spot as her gaze tracked the swiftly incoming shadows.

“Kayu, get to the sanctum,” he said to her urgently, shaking her shoulder when she failed to respond promptly enough. “They’re after you again, and as I feared, this time they’ve come in force. We’ll do what we can, but if we fail…”

“I couldn’t sense them, Yann. I couldn’t…"

“Listen to me.” He stifled a hacking cough as he gazed into her eyes through his square-rimmed spectacles, confronting her with all of the gentle kindness that she had come to know from him. “They know that you can stop them, and they’re desperate. Even if all comes to worst, Kayu, we can still buy you the time you need if you start preparing now. It’s neither the ideal location nor the ideal timing, so the ritual might not be as effective as we hoped, but you should be able to weaken them enough for us to banish them for a while. Until then…”

The dar’el general Fortis swooped down from the night skies to greet them, his venerable wings gleaming golden in the moonlight.

“We are ready to engage,” he indicated formally with a bow to both humans. “Acerbus informs me that the presence of no less than seven Disciples indicates that they have injected most of their remaining strength into this strike.”

“Which means that, should things go our way, we can defeat them all in one go,” Yann replied grimly. “Only seven, though? Do we know which seven?”

“Nerdanel suggests that Basara and Bishamonten are missing from the assault. We have yet to…”

“What we see is merely a diversion, then,” Yann’s keen mind divined. “They’ll come for Kayu directly.”

“Not a diversion that we can afford to ignore, however,” Fortis pointed out gravely.

“Akiyoshi and I will protect Kayu. I give you everybody else to hold the walls. If they are in their lesser forms, they intend to attempt bypassing as much of us as possible before engaging us in their greater. Force them back.”

“It will be done,” the proud dar’el nodded. Both he and Yann were mindful of the impossibility of the task, but shared in the determination to see it done. “May the stars protect you.”

“May they protect us all, and may fortune favour the worthy,” Yann replied as the general took wing, gently taking the unresisting Kayu by the forearm and breaking into a run of his own. As they swept swiftly along the crenellated ramparts, the first arrows soared from the outer forts. Kayu’s black-eyed gaze tracked their flight through the shadows; if she remembered correctly, the vagabonds and mercenaries under Ywain Lazarev had command there. They would be the first to taste the Disciple’s wrath, the first to…

“We have to help them.”

“Kayu.” Yann spoke over his shoulder, not lessening his stride. She heard the strained pain in his voice, echoing the hurt in her own heart. “The best way we can do that is for you to enact the ritual. Until then…”

The engineers who had designed Fort Boweridge had done so with the utmost in military innovation in mind. The detached outer fortresses provided additional defensive positions and sally ports, the numerous killing grounds gave defence in depth, and the polygonal towers covered each other with enfilading fields of fire. No other fortress in the entire world could boast the finest of human soldiers that manned the outer defences, or the elite detachments of elves, dwarves, and celestials behind the inner walls. And yet, even Fort Boweridge had not been built to withstand the supernatural foes it faced that night… foes as swift as any gale and as fierce as any inferno, able to tear through steel plate, stone wall, and defensive formation alike without even blinking.

The clash of steel and bellowed war cries reverberated suddenly from the eastern walls, where Jehan Leitdorf and his knights held the line. Yann coughed into his free hand as he hurried along, and a trick of the flickering braziers turned his palm bright glistening red. He did not give her any time to think about it, however, as he took the steps two at a time and finally finished his sentence.

“Until then, we have to trust to them.”

Akiyoshi and the others waited for their arrival when they returned to the central sanctum, a low marble dome cocooned within deep the layered moats and protected by multiple reinforced bastions.

“How long will it take…”

“If all I need to do is weaken them?” Influenced by the grim determination that coloured the air above the fort, the fear in Kayu’s soul disappeared. Now she only focused on her anointed task. “An hour, at most. Will that be…”

“We’ll make it enough,” the dragonblood lord responded with a cheeky wink. Yann nodded his agreement, a small strained smile touching his lips as he bid her farewell. “Good luck, Kayu.”

“And you, Akiyoshi, Yann…”

With that she slipped inside the sanctum, heavy satin curtains closing behind her and cutting off the jingle of lamellar plates as the men moved into position to guard her. First making sure that she properly faced north, she folded her legs beneath her and squatted upon the carefully swept earth, moonbeams crowning the nape of her neck as she let her mind slip into serenity. The familiar scent of flowery incense calmed her thundering heart, and the heavy silence allowed her to maintain focus as she reached out to the spirits that surrounded her.

One by one they responded, manifesting into the forms she had given them upon contracting them to her will. The lordly lady Kijin appeared first, to her fore and slightly to her right, flowing raven hair gleaming in barely suppressed power. The scholar Tenkuu came next at her beckoning, this time to her front left, holy flame dancing around his slight frame as he gazed at her serenely. The others followed swiftly after that: aggressive Touda, fiery Suzaku, little Rikugou, fierce Kouchin, cunning Seiryu, calm Tenkou, lively Taiin, stern Genbu, strong Taimo, and piercing Byakko. Her Twelve Heavenly Generals, one for each of the Twelve Godly Generals who numbered as the Disciples of the Dead Goddess.

“I require your assistance,” Kayu told them, the quaver in her voice betraying her urgency. She breathed a sigh of relief when Kijin inclined her head serenely, speaking for them all.

“We are honoured to accept your wishes, mistress, as our commands.”

She closed her eyes and concentrated, filtering away all extraneous noise and distraction impinging upon her senses. Colours swirled and danced upon the dark side of her eyelids as she worked to sort them from one another, arranging them along the intricately constructed circle of power with the help of her shikigami familiars. They read her intentions implicitly and obeyed without question, multiplying her capabilities a thousand-fold.

Kami residing high in the fields of heaven,
Kami who give birth to all on earth, kami who give birth to life,
Kami eight million strong gather to me from the cities of heaven,
Kami of all gather unto me…

The nexus at the centre of the fort visibly glowed and pulsated as together they worked their influence upon the turmoiled nightscape. The power contained within did not compare to that used to reawaken the Disciples, but still she knew of no place more potent for spellweaving within a hundred leagues. Slowly she began to enact the ritual, the beacon of hope that they might face their foes on equal terms.

“… phoenixborn…”

A thousand dancing spirits, guardians of ten thousand breathing worlds,
Heed me without delay, heed the words of my heart,
From the deepest of roots and darkest of shadows,
Forge a path unto this world…

The clash of steel close at hand threatened to infiltrate her mind and disrupt her focus, so she clenched her teeth and pushed it away. Waves of power washed and whispered at her soul, and she fought with all her might to keep them under control, keeping at arms length the very real danger that they would simply swallow her whole. Arrayed in a careful circle around her, her spiritual comrades acted as pillars of support and strength, anchoring her in the firmament as her soul wove its magic.

“… you cannot hope…”

By the blood that ties me to the First Emperor himself…

The beat of powerful wings shook the sanctum, and the bestial roar of a fire-breathing monster rattled her eardrums. Still she maintained her motionless calm, mumbling a focal chant beneath her breath. The words slipped through the air like ethereal echoes, refusing to allow the commotion outside to upset the ceremony. One by one she formed the runes beneath her gaze: the child in the north beneath the outer forts where Ywain and his men fought, the egg to the east amongst the steelclad ramparts of Jehan’s shieldwall, the bird to the west beneath the rippling moat, the ox in the south where the moon shone brightest.

“… won’t… let… you…”

Living spirits, dancing spirits, spirits of the kami behold…

Time slowed. She sensed rather than saw the sanctum veil being lifted, and instantly knew that the Disciples had broken through. Fresh air rushed into her lungs, along with an oppressive silence that resonated all too heavily.

“Kayu Kanamai, you have failed. Your comrades lie dead or dying…”

No!

Desolate despair painted her soul in the darkest of colours. With the Disciple’s words came the raw realisation that great lakes of crimson blood stained the ground upon which she had inscribed her runes. The moonbeams cast across the side of her face now, reminding her that her allotted hour had long since passed. She had failed them, failed them all.

“... and nothing can stop the Dead Goddess’s coronation…”

In which case…

Her pulse quickened as adrenaline kicked in. The whispered chant became an incantation, words of power rather than focus. One by one her familiars erupted into their true forms: kirin, phoenix, dragon, shadowhawk, sphinx, unicorn, amphitere, kelpie, thundermare, tortoise, petalhind, tiger. One by one they dissipated, contributing their considerable life forces to the casting of the spell. With each loss she felt shards of her self melt irrevocably into the void, but she held on desperately to life for the precious few moments she had left. Distantly she felt other presences supporting her, the lingering ghosts of those who had fallen in her defence, unyielding in their duty till the very last.

“… with your death, all will be…”

If I use my soul as a catalyst, along with the souls of everybody who died here this night, I will be able to chain these monsters. Not forever, but long enough…

The bright side of the moon looked down upon her in pity from the river of stars above, not envying her the choice that she had made. White moonbeams danced across her upturned face, the bleak and peaceful remains of what had once been focused determination. Tinny blood clogged her nostrils as the clamour of her heartbeat echoed loud and desperate from inside her, the silence of the dead reverberating with every slow pulse.

“… complete…”

… for another generation…

Moments before the black blade parted her head from her shoulders, she let go. The oblivion claimed her, and all that she held dear existed no more.

[Aegis of Espiridion]

The dying leaf spiralled through the wind as it fell, tracing an erratic dance through the crisp noontime sun. Autumn had come early this year, the third since the last of the Disciples had awakened and begun to wreak havoc on the fabric of Althanas. Aurora had spoken to him of the miracle that the seasons still followed their proper order, and though Ywain Lazarev could not begin to imagine the disruption that such a change would cause, he could well believe that the Twelve Godly Generals had the power to corrupt the laws of nature thusly.

“It’s time,” he told his companions, and they reacted as one by unsheathing their weapons. Akiyoshi wielded the slender curve of a nodachi as tall as he; Jehan bore a straight-edged longsword almost its equal in size. The one the elves called Ingwe carried a uniquely three-sectioned staff, of which both outer rods could be unsheathed to reveal gleaming Nipponese daggers. Though not nearly as powerful as either of the two-handed swords, Ywain considered it to be the most versatile due to the way the scholarly warrior-mage could masterfully handle it in any conformation from spear to dual swords. He himself had his trusty claymore and the crossbow strapped to his right forearm, weapons that though not as exotic or as eye-catching as the others, had seen him through plenty of scrapes throughout his lifetime.

“Let’s go.” Ingwe spoke hoarsely after his latest bout of phlegmy coughing, a bout that exhausted Ywain just by having to listen to it. The mercenary rogue frowned in concern; Ingwe’s physical condition had deteriorated markedly from when they had set out from Radasanth a week prior, not helped by the hard journey through corrupted terrain and the necessity of going out of their way to avoid skirmishes with the roaming bands of cultists that terrorised the remnant populace.

“Are you sure you’re…”

The scholar glared at him, displaying uncharacteristic hostility from above his drooping spectacles. You could kill me, and I’d still accompany this mission, the dark brown eyes seemed to declare. To be honest, Ywain didn’t blame him. He felt the exact same way, shared the exact same determination.

Ten days prior, minions of the Disciple Kujakumyouou had abducted Aurora and Kayu from their camp and spirited them deep into the corrupted remains of what had once been Concordia. It had taken the best seers both elven and human three long days to pinpoint their location amongst the gnarled corruption and fossilised carcasses. It had taken Ingwe another two short hours to devise a desperately suicidal rescue plan, the only one that had even the remotest chance of success, and to set it in motion.

Such was the how and why behind Ywain’s perch at the tip of a sandy ridge overlooking the ancient town of Underwood, the woodsman’s stronghold a shadow of its former glory nestled amongst dying forest and spoiled lands. Putrid mud sucked at the rogue’s leather boots, and his jerkin glistened beneath a steady drizzle that contradicted the sun settling unhappily on the southern horizon. The stench of wet rot rose from the piles of red-gold leaves that coated the forest floor, unbearably putrid. Aside from the tinkle of Akiyoshi’s lacquered lamellar and the clank of Jehan’s steel plate, the silence stifled their ears. Not a single songbird, not even the wing beats of an inquisitive insect, greeted the intruders stealthily approaching the occupied settlement.

Their steps echoed eerily in the silence, tendrils of thick foggy miasma clutching at their ankles and darting away from their unsheathed weapons. The bare branches overhead whispered to them in muted horror, swaying and sighing in sorrowful song. The rickety bridges that criss-crossed between the structures cradled in the boughs creaked in haunting unison, though not a living soul walked their poorly-kept planks.

One house at a time they crept towards the centre of the settlement, knowing full well that they walked into the jaws of a trap. Ingwe had told them that he could sense both Kayu’s and Aurora’s spiritual energies there, leeching like blazing beacons into the corrupted land. The enemy wanted them to know exactly where they held the two women. With the limited resources available to the resistance, however, they had no choice but to spring the trap and fight through it. Abandoning the women to their fate was never an option; the fledgling resistance had desperate need of the twin hopes and did not stand an ice cube’s chance in Haidia without them.
To be fair, though, Ywain had always felt more comfortable doing rather than thinking, and for that very reason he had no qualms in following Ingwe into the very depths of hell upon Althanas for the sake of the women they loved. Doubtless Akiyoshi and Jehan felt exactly the same way.

At first glance, the town square stood as empty and deserted as the rest of Underwood. Ingwe quickly realised otherwise, however, and his curt gesture brought the other three to an abrupt halt. Only then did they notice the shadowy figure beneath the columned eaves of the redstone assembly hall opposite.

It wore robes of scarlet red that swathed all traces of its bodily form from view. Tiny head shrivelled and hairless perched on top of a bony neck, wrinkled skin splotchy with growths and of a pallid ashen grey complexion. Mutilated features far surpassed all human recognition: a thin slit where jagged strokes had sliced off its nose, great scars where it had gouged out its eyes and then sewn their lids shut with thick rotgut, and a raw mess where it had peeled back bloody lips and gums until the very roots of its sharply filed teeth could be seen. It spread its arms wide in welcome until its robes floated like wings in the corona of hazy sunlight, framed by long spindly fingers and dirty unkempt nails that curled and fell almost to the muddy ground. No doubt that this particular abomination was the cultist leader, the one they called the Herald.

“Chosen of the Lesser Thayne,” it hissed, baring every last rotten tooth in a sardonic grin as it bluntly emphasised Aska’s lack of strength in comparison to the Dark Goddess. “My master bids…”

A stubby quarrel pummelled through its thin bony throat, followed closely by a pair of fist-sized fireballs that punched it from its perch and sent its immolated form to the muddy ground. Its body landed with a steaming squelch and lay unmoving, still burning.

“Dibs on the right flank,” Akiyoshi laughed, as the death of the cultist head signalled a veritable flood of similarly-mutilated monsters to pour down the streets from all directions.

“The left’s all mine, then,” Jehan replied grimly as he let the tip of his heavy sword fall to the mud. “Which means you two get the honour of acting white knight.”

“And face the Disciple head-on?” Ywain pointed out in droll derision, but inwardly he thanked them for their willingness to shoulder the dirty work. The four men exchanged final glances of brotherly camaraderie. Then, with nary a second thought, they each turned towards their chosen doom.

Ingwe broke into a run as he crossed the courtyard, and Ywain remained right on the scholar’s heels. The ground crunched and crackled beneath the rogue’s feet like coarse-grained sand, a stark contrast to the squelching mud that had accompanied them thus far, and he made the mistake of looking down to see why. Horrible palpitations gripped his heart as he realised that he ran on a carpet of finely crushed bone: the remains of those prior inhabitants of Underwood that the Disciple and his Herald had not deemed worthy of indoctrination. Women and children, the old and the young, all that did not have their place in the Dead Goddess’s self-proclaimed utopia.

The shivers only stopped when they finally reached the assembly hall and passed by the Herald’s charred corpse, its mangled face still forced into a macabre grin. The acrid fumes of burnt flesh assaulted their senses, but they had more important things to focus on than quelling the flutter in their stomach. Ingwe looked back once at their two comrades, swamped in cultists and desperately trying to hold the line. Ywain didn’t bother, instead choosing to concentrate on the task at hand. Together they pushed open the heavy oaken doors; together they entered the hall, weapons brandished against the shadows.

The gates slammed shut behind them on an unfelt wind, and absolute silence reigned more thoroughly than even the overwhelming darkness could account for. But the two men could easily discern the immensity of the interior, as if the redstone walls cocooned an entire alternate arcane dimension that interacted with the Firmament only as its creator wished it to. It hinted at the scale of the enemy they faced, a foe so far beyond them that they could barely hope to tickle its toes.

The muffled echoes of their footsteps reverberated from all directions at once, but the bright glow at the centre of the darkness reeled them in like wary fish approaching the dangled bait. Ywain could feel his companion marshalling energy to his command in preparation for the inevitable confrontation, and his own grip tightened about the hilt of his ornate claymore. Together they crept through the pooled shadow, until at last their faces basked in the sickly light of the Disciple’s demented torture chamber. Finally they could see the two women held captive within, slumping devoid of life upon upright racks as slimy restraints leeched away the last vestiges of their spiritual essence and replaced it with corruption and taint formed from the Disciple’s influence.

Ingwe’s eyes flared in unprecedented rage, and with a single mighty arcane blow he cut through barrier, shackle, and dimensional shadow alike. With an ear-splitting pop the four mortals rematerialised in the Firmament, back amongst the deserted decrepit redstone just outside Underwood’s assembly hall. Two of them collapsed where they stood, utterly drained of life; the remaining two rushed over as quickly as they could, relaxing only when they realised that the women still breathed, if only barely. Ywain even dared, for the briefest of moments, to think about how they might make their escape.

But the collapse of the pocket dimension signalled the arrival of another player on the scene: the Disciple Kujakumyouou. It appeared in the skies like an angel of death, simply popping into existence to blot out half the horizon. Almost immediately the heavens began to rain death, in the form of slivers of sharp dehlar that would puncture through flesh with the ease of a needle through cloth.

Ingwe wasted little time in his reply. Blazing fireballs of white flame erupted into existence all about him, filling the dimness with their intensity. For every dehlar blade that rained down upon them like torrential death, a blazing fireball rose from the ground to incinerate it mid-air, peeling even the notoriously magic-resistant metal atom from atom until only charred ash fell upon the muddy ground.

For almost half a minute the scholar matched the Disciple, warding off the demigod’s greater power and skill with every last arcane trick in his repertoire. The God of Dawn settled slowly in the eastern skies like a bloated poisonous peacock, almost idly spreading its eye-spotted tail plumage to consume the light of the sun. Wisps of poisonous gas drifted like steamy clouds from its beaks, odourless hallucinogenic breath that allowed it to hypnotise and manipulate the very desires of its prey. In moments when the rainbow quills finished deploying, it would dominate the battlefield with but its whims, and by then…

We have to get out of here, Ywain realised, helpless in the face of the overwhelming danger. Rarely if ever had his claymore seemed so insignificant before a foe. We have to run…

“Take them and get clear,” Ingwe ordered from in between breathless rapid-fire incantations, the air shimmering with his every word, his voice eerily calm despite the ongoing fight for survival. Ywain knew better than to question the man. Only through his thoughtful advice had the resistance survived for even half as long as they actually had, and the rogue trusted the scholar with his life and more. Acutely aware that he could do little but obey, he gathered Aurora into his arms, balancing her carefully on a shoulder before reaching for Kayu to do the same.

An ear-piercing mind-puncturing call caused the very Firmament to quake beneath its power. The Disciple’s scream, Ywain realised. Not in pain, as a small part of his mind hoped for the most fleeting of heartbeats, but in command.

Kayu jerked upright, falling just out of reach of his scrambling fingers. Heedless of the deadly dehlar rain she tottered forth, away from Ingwe’s defensive umbrella. From the corner of his eyes the scholar saw her stumble; with a frantic curse and a bursting flare of fiery energy, he reacted. Ywain could do nothing but watch as the scene unfolded before him.

The Nipponese girl drew her blade in trembling fingers as the Disciple’s gaze settled on her hopeless face. Ingwe lunged to protect her from the fresh salvo of blades aimed in her direction. In a flash, a thousand razor-sharp bladed feathers pierced the scholar’s back, shredding his defensive wards like knives through rice paper. But it took the dagger through his heart to finally drive his soul from its mortal vessel. Fresh blood dripped, spilt, poured over Kayu’s slender hands, down his white tunic upon the crushed bone that carpeted the muddy floor.

And yet, for all the bloody agony he doubtless endured in his final moments, he bid her silent farewell with a soft and gentle smile.

At that one last gesture, something seemed to snap in Kayu’s mind. She slumped to the soil, sobbing, still supporting Ingwe’s lifeless form. Moments later her slender form drowned beneath a fresh hail of dehlar slivers, until a glimmering mound of metal spines swallowed the two Nipponese adventurers whole.

In that moment, Ywain understood. The bones in the courtyard hadn’t merely been those who the Disciple had deemed useless. Rather, their deaths signified the final ingredient in the process of torture, the last straw that drove a sane man over the edge and mutated him into a self-mutilating cultist. Ingwe had realised that, and with his dying breath had freed Kayu from indoctrination.

“Well, I’ll be…”

A thousand iridescent eyes fixed upon his puny back, freezing the blood in his veins beneath the sheer evil of their unblinking gaze. The air quavered once more as the Disciple spoke, words that no mortal could hope to ever comprehend. Ywain willed his body to move into cover, willed his legs to get clear of the muddy ground before it…

Aurora’s rapier pierced his chest from behind, and the world slipped from his grasp in slowly ebbing agony. Ywain Lazarev died before his body could join the crushed bones upon the ground.

[Glories of Myrmidion]

Dawn’s light glinted from a sea of polished steel, as three hundred heavy horse thundered over the grassy Olbinan plains. Swifter than the scuttling clouds overhead they rode, their proud pennants a golden eagle emblazoned on a field of the darkest night, their feathered cloaks streaming out behind them in the steady driving wind. The saccharine scent of an early spring dew wafted from all about them, nearly lost amongst the flanks of sweaty horses and the curses of tired men.

Jehan Leitdorf rode at the fore of the column, spearheading the Order of the Golden Eagle in their forced march. As First Knight, his sworn duty lay in leading the Brethren of the Sword – the ten greatest champions of the Order – against any who threatened the peace of Olbina. His father, High Templar Gunther, had overall command of the knights from somewhere in the vanguard close behind him; his younger half-brother Hectorus, and distant cousins Eliot and Elaine, rode with the rest of the men in the middle of the ranks. Those who followed him upon the beat of drumming hooves were his family, his brothers and sisters in arms, the uncles and aunts who had raised him and the comrades who had shared his trials and travails. The responsibility of leading them into battle rested heavily upon his broad muscular shoulders, a burden he had borne with pride and dignity for years.

He spared a glance towards the pair of sleek Hibernian cloudskimmers overhead, their mana engines flaring whitish-blue as they fought to make headway into the gale. The bespectacled, nameless scholar and his spellweaving companion had earned his trust long ago, ever since the Wyrmkin Wars and the consecutive tides of darkness that had overwhelmed the dar’el to the north some three to four years ago. But the Olbinan Grand Council did not share in his thoughts unreservedly, which explained why only one Order out of thirteen rode against the imminent threat.

The wings of the lead cloudskimmer wavered as he watched, dancing on the unruly thermals. Without warning it dove, plummeting perilously close to the windswept grasses, only pulling up when it and its rider flew at a dangerously low height alongside the lead knights. His ears drowned in the whistle of the wind as it passed over the sleek form, and the high-pitched screech of the mana engine as it sputtered and sparked at low altitude.

Brown bespectacled eyes met visored green. The young scholar rattled off a series of quick hand gestures before regaining height, wooden frame straining once more as he pushed his craft to its limits.

Jehan grit his teeth, taking a deep breath of the warm wet air. And so it begins. Time again the bugles sound and battle calls.

“Fingertip wedges!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, his powerful voice carrying to the far end of the column. “For Olbina! For glory!”

Spurs to horseflesh, and Aeton responded like a bolt of black lightning. He felt the vanguard close ranks behind him as they crested the rolling ridge, four arrowheads of fifty lances each – two to his left, two to his right – following closely in their wake. A hundred lightly armed neophytes in skirmish formation completed their numbers, tarrying at a significant distance so as to finish off any stragglers. The trumpets sounded clarion and clear as daybreak bathed them in its baptising radiance.

Their foe awaited them in staggered procession at the base of the valley where the remnant darkness dwelt most powerfully: fifty fire elementals flickering without solid form. Jehan fancied he could see faces in their shifting bodies of pure flame, agonised souls of the countless lives lost in the creation of the Disciple. He could do nothing for them now, merely to trust his skill with the spear to strike home where it mattered most, and to wager that the heat-resistant wards bestowed upon them by the Grand Council’s mages would hold true.

Blades of grass sped beneath their hooves as the battle-crazed destriers strove at the reins. Lances lowered, pennants wrapping like vines about their shafts as the knights sighted their targets. The rush of adrenaline cocooned everything in a time-slowed silence, each and every rolling stride carrying them closer and closer to their foe…

His lance struck home. The impact did not carry up his arm as much as he had grown accustomed to; the elemental now flailing desperately at the end of his spear was built of insubstantial flame around a crystalline arcane core, both weighing nearly nothing in comparison to a charger at full gallop. As he watched, the shards tore asunder and the elemental dissipated like a puff of steam before a breath of wind. Time sped up once more as Aeton’s hooves carried him away from the impact.

One after another in swift procession, the cavalry wedges tore through the unprepared elementals. By the time the neophytes put the stragglers to the sword, nought remained of the foe but a single flicker…

A single flicker which, in the one breathless instant as Jehan led his wedge about, erupted into a monstrous conflagration taller than ten men. The flames flared as they coalesced into vaguely humanoid body parts – two heads fused in furious visage, seven arms brandishing whips of fiery tongues, three legs like those of a ram. A wave of intense heat washed through his visor, until it felt like his eyes melted beneath the demigod’s gaze.

The last Disciple, the God of Flame. Agunira.

Focused flame lanced like a beam of light from the monster’s mouths, carving through the last of the five cavalry formations like a tempered blade through flesh. Steel armour melted like ice, and blood and flesh vapourised into so much wafting gas. Within heartbeats, fifty knights simply ceased to exist.

Jehan did not hesitate, not even for an instant. Neither did the Brethren who rode with him, nor fully half of the knights who kept their wits about them and spurred their steeds to ride alongside.

“Single file!”

Now he rode at the head of a snaking line of horse and steel, his lance the tip of a sinuous sword aimed at the Disciple’s heart. Once again the ground quaked beneath their charge, and though the Disciple cut them down in their ones and twos with criss-crossing flame and whiplashing fire, the will of the Order did not waver. One after another they thundered home, Jehan’s lance only the first to take a chunk out of the crystalline core that powered the Dead Goddess’s minion.

But too many went askance, or were driven astray by the intense flames. By the time Jehan wheeled again to face his foe, fully thirty more knights had given their lives in vain. If anything, the Disciple’s flames seemed to have gained in strength, feeding off the sacrifice of the brave warriors.

The broad-winged silhouette of the scholar’s cloudskimmer soared past his head, held steady amongst the chaotic turbulence through the sheer will of its rider. Four bright pillars of white heat burst into existence around the Disciple as the last of the neophytes rode past, concentrated liquid flame reaching like swirling tornadoes into the crimson-tinged skies. Within moments the wind had changed, into a chaotic gale that suctioned all oxygen from the giant elemental’s vicinity. Agunira’s form sputtered, like candlelight upon its wick.

He’s fighting fire with fire, Jehan realised as Aeton reared, terrified by the mounting intensity of the heat waves that began to eat away at the tufts of heath upon the grassy plains. The cloudskimmer pulled upwards, into a climb nearly vertical, gaining altitude until it hung like a hunting hawk above the Disciple’s head.

The knight’s eagle-like gaze caught the faint speck as it separated from the craft. The nameless scholar, swords held tight against his chest, plummeting down upon Agunira from the heavens like a blade forged from the air itself. Jehan felt his eardrums pop as the man made contact with the Disciple’s crystalline arcane core, heedless of the flames that protected it. His steel-encased skin shivered as Agunira cried out in pain, in agony…

Only then did he realise that the hairs on his body stood on end, his armour crackled with static energy, and not just because of the eldritch power that permeated the air. The scholar, still cutting through the Disciple’s flames as he continued to fall, screamed a warning. Too late.

Agunira exploded. A thousand hazy thunderbolts lashed out in all directions as the Disciple abandoned its fiery form for something more mobile. Upon the featureless plains, the armoured knights stood out like vulnerable targets, lightning rods in the thunderstorm.

Aeton died in an instant, an agonised screech still forming on foaming lips as flesh incinerated beneath his barding. The destrier’s rider somehow survived, thrown from his saddle by a series of hefty impacts upon his helm and breastplate, crashing in an undignified heap upon the grassy turf. All around him, man and mount lost their lives in the most horrible manner imaginable, burnt to ash and cinder within the armour supposed to protect them. The twin stenches of ozone and death hung accusingly in the depths of his nostrils.

Helplessly he lay spread-eagled upon the earthy soil as the very air imploded with concentrated arcane power. Pinned down by the weight of his armour, vision blurry and fading from behind his constricting visor, he could do little as the blue skies turned black and ugly. Green eyes tracked the second cloudskimmer as it tumbled from the heavens, trailing smoke from a broken wing. He watched it stagger, somehow righting itself; watched it make a painful turn as it sought to limp back to Olbina and safety.

“Jehan.” The bespectacled scholar looked a lot worse for the wear as he stumbled from the crackling wreath of smoke, wincing at the screams of dying horses and coughing bloody phlegm from his lungs. How he had survived the fall, the knight had no idea. But judging from the scenes of devastation all around him, only he and the nameless Nipponese remained in any condition to fight. In a single devastating blow, the mighty Order of the Golden Eagle had been cut down to helplessly fleeing stragglers and the groans of the dying and the wounded.

A small voice in the back of his head wondered which one of the scorched suits of armour encased his father; which one was his younger half-brother, which ones were his bright cousins. Fully half of the men that lay dead on the battlefield he knew by name; the rest, he could recite their life stories in detail both glorious and inglorious. His family, his friends, his entire life… in shambled ruins all around him. Dead… meaningless and dead…

No. Not while at least one of us draws breath.

The First Knight grasped gratefully at the limp hand extended in his direction, nearly pulling the slim scholar down upon him as he leveraged himself to his feet. As one they turned to face the sparking ball of lightning, as it reassembled itself from individual bolts surging across the armour and blades of downed men in every direction.

“I can… pin it down… for a brief…”

“That will be enough,” the First Knight whispered in reply, sparing the scholar from talking through further coughs as he unsheathed his longsword from its scabbard. As long as he pierced the arcane core of the elemental, it mattered not how insubstantial its form… as long as…

One last blow.

“For Olbina. For glory.”

“May fortune favour the worthy.”

The two men charged as one. The nameless scholar led the way, twin daggers sparkling and spectacles glinting as the sun rose higher over the horizon. Arcane forces rushed to obey his unspoken commands: fresh winds sprung up to hem the Disciple in, and a circle of power beneath its three cloven feet held it in position. Agunira responded instinctively, lashing out like a newborn child, billowing tendrils of flame reaching out towards the spellweaver who dared to challenge it so.

Flame met flame as the scholar defended himself with a shield of pure white. A second arcane circle activated in the palm of his hand, and for an instant – one precious instant – the path opened for Jehan.

Once again, the knight did not hesitate. Longsword flashed, catching the dawn as it sundered the Disciple’s crystalline core. The first blow cracked it; the second blow splintered it. The third clove great shards from the elemental’s soul.

That was as close as he got to defeating the monster. The Disciple lashed out again, this time flooding Jehan with enough electric energy to drive all feeling from the knight’s limbs, all air from the man’s lungs. Slowly but inevitably he fell, the stench of charred flesh and burnt insides permeating his armour, his legendary blade shattered into a thousand steel splinters as it slipped from his nerveless fingers. He saw rather than heard the nameless scholar calling his name, only for the Disciple to revert to lightning form and punch straight through the poor man, sword, cloth, and arcane shielding alike.

Briefly he caught a glimpse of reflected sun through the gaping hole in the scholar’s chest.

Then the man collapsed as well, accompanied not even by the slightest of sounds. His absence left in its wake dark clouds threatening the thin sliver of clear blue sky on the horizon, and the strangely peaceful realisation that the battle – the one-sided massacre – had ended.

The soft grass waved gently at his face, rustled by the warm spring breeze, as if trying to urge him to his feet. But the turf upon which he now law seemed so comfortable, so homely… despite the violence and the destruction and the sheer horror of what had just transpired, he felt almost tranquil as his life slowly seeped from the gaps in his armour into the ground.

He had gone down fighting, as he had known he would one day. Sword in hand alongside his brothers and sisters, defending his homeland against an insurmountable foe. What greater honour, what greater glory, could he desire?

Only one last regret caused the faintest of frowns to crease his broad brow. He turned back to the fallen scholar.

“I never did learn your name,” he breathed, the words fading from the tip of his tongue. “In the end… the only one…”

Jehan Leitdorf silently breathed his last on the plains of his motherland, one of nearly three hundred who died the day the last Disciple rose.

[Flames of Hyperion]

The world was white. No sky, no ground, no horizon. No features to settle one’s eyes upon, no markings to act as reference. Just pure, blemishless, uncorrupted white.

Somewhere in the midst of it all sat a man. It didn’t help that he dressed in cloak and robes of ivory cotton wrapped tightly around his slender form, or that his gaunt features faded to ghostly translucent pallour beneath his hood. Insignificant, irrelevant, only the thick black frames of his glasses stood out as a clear indicator of his existence.

Somewhere opposite him sat a woman. She too dressed in robes of white, but unlike her counterpart her very presence gave off a glow so golden as to illuminate the entirety of the blank slate that surrounded her. Majestic wings of soft feathery white folded against her back, pinions the length of a grown man’s forearm drooping past her knees.

“We have given you a glimpse into the future, a view of the skeins of fate.” The voice seemed to echo from everywhere at once: gentle and comforting, strident and stentorian. The woman had not even opened her mouth. “We would know your thoughts.”

“Four of infinity?” he argued. “No doubt what you wished to show me, of course.”

“A weighted distribution, we agree.”

“Desperate times, desperate measures.” One bushy eyebrow rose tiredly, certain that the woman could read his mind anyways, and that anything he said would only be used to judge him against his thoughts. The small smile playing about her lips confirmed his suspicions. “Why me?”

“We ask, why not?”

The man shrugged in weary resignation, indicating his battered and powerless frame. He hid his scars and bruises beneath the clothes he wore, but the lenses balanced precariously upon his nose did little to hide the haunted shadows beneath his eyes, or the darkness that dwelt within.

“Somebody has to do something, and I suppose that everybody has their part to play. I just can’t help but think that there are heroes out there far better qualified for the job than myself. Someone who isn’t as likely to botch it.”

“We note your lack of confidence as your defining quality,” the dar’el ‘spoke’ again, folding her hands in her lap. “Second only to your determination to do what is right, and to protect the one you hold dear.”

“So I’m least likely to abuse any power that I might acquire along the way?”

“We do realise that you have little aspiration for yourself beyond protecting others.”

The young man actually laughed, rueful and sorrowful as it sounded. “I’m expendable… no, not only that. I’m willing to be expended.”

The demi-Thayne’s silence told him all he needed to know.

“I suppose that’s fair enough…” he sighed in the end. Little had marked the passage of time save for the barely existent rise and fall of his chest; even the air settled still and lifeless against his bare cheeks. The four visions played through his mind again and again, one after another, until the details of their deaths branded like scars upon his brain.

“We never did save her, then, did we…”

He paused, a soft cough escaping his lungs.

“Or at least, we were unable to save her in those futures.”

“We ask, would you do so differently given a second chance?”

“Who knows?” he replied without hesitation, his shy sheepish smile creeping slowly across his features. “I would trust myself to at least try to make the best possible decisions at the appropriate times, even if I were not able to follow them through. It is difficult to say that I would do anything differently.”

He transferred his brown-eyed gaze to his hands, noting the frostbite starting to nibble on his digits. It seemed that the depths of the Berevaran winter had begun to take their toll on his body. He had come this far in spite of inadequate protection against the subzero wind, hunger and thirst, festering wounds, lack of sleep, and solitude, but now at long last his spiritual reserves ran low. Once he exhausted their final dregs, and the subconscious wards that maintained his body temperature above death-inducing gave way…

“But one man’s actions might have a ripple effect on those of others. Changing the past in such a way may be difficult, especially if everybody else’s response is set in stone. But the future… the future is a blank slate, fluid and slippery. I doubt that even you could safely say that what you’ve shown me will come to pass.”

“Indeed we cannot.”

“In which case, I can only do what we humans do best.”

“We see that you will not give up.”

“I will never give up,” he promised, through the wracking throes of another set of coughs. “That, too, held true in the visions that you showed me.”

“Indeed it did.” The Celestial smiled from otherwise unmoving lips. “We wish you fortune.”

Well done, the man told himself as he watched the robed lady and her ethereal beauty fade away into the white. In moments he sat alone once more. You just signed up for solitary suicide on the basis of your stupidity and stubbornness.

Interestingly, no matter how he interrogated his soul, he found that he had absolutely no regrets. In the end, it was the best way… the only way… to try to save what he fought for.

The light of her presence dissipated and died, and gradually he grew aware of the seeping cold hidden in the dark shadows that now cocooned him on all sides. Then the comfortable silence shattered like an illusion, replaced by an incessant background howl that almost immediately threatened to drive him insane. The whiteness of his world turned into reality: a tomb of thickly packed snow, blown onto and around his seated form by a wind so powerful he could not even stand against it. His thoughts came to him slowly, as if wading through a quicksand quagmire, not particularly complimentary even when they finally did arrive.

You were hallucinating again. You have to stop…

Deep inside, on the basis of primal instincts he hadn’t realised he possessed, he also knew that he had to keep moving. The cocooning snow kept him relatively warm and safe for now, but by nightfall – if such a concept existed in this winter wasteland – it would bury him so deep that he would not emerge again until summer. By then, it would be too late.

Despite the excruciating pain and fatigue carved upon his features, he rose to his knees. Miniature mountains of snow cascaded like avalanches from his shoulders as he squared up once more to the journey ahead. One agonising step at a time he began to crawl, nearly buried up to his shoulders in the frost, fighting to keep the feeling in his extremities. Almost immediately his lungs tried to escape from his body once more, and only because he ran out of the strength to continue did they finally calm down.

He was so cold. What parts of his body he could still feel slowly succumbed to the infectious numbness, the insidious chill dulling the flow of life within his veins. The thick flurries rendered him blind and the ceaseless wind robbed him of his hearing, and his hands almost visibly blackened with the frost. The flames of his soul flickered, nearly dead, and only sheer force of will kept them in place for now.

He was so hungry. His stomach gnawed away at his insides like a ravenous beast, slowly but surely eating away at the rest of his vital organs. Urges that had settled into the background hubbub now returned to the fore in frenzied need, and he found it more and more difficult to ignore the frequent dizzy spells and the overall weakness of his body. And the cough… the incessant hacking cough that accompanied any form of physical effort… the bloody phlegm that clogged the pits of his lungs…

He was in so much pain. The world spun crazily with every move he made, agony the only sensation that penetrated the numbness. The corrupted scar on his chest pulsated with each haggard breath, to the point where he almost found it preferable not to breathe at all. The stench of rotten decay only worsened the burning throbbing barely contained within the confines of his head.

He was so tired. For how long had he wandered the frozen far reaches, pressing on towards his distant goal? For how long had he wandered the eternal darkness, fighting the winds and enduring the storms? For how long had he forgone food and drink, heat and sleep, all those basic necessities that he took for granted even in a war zone?

He was so alone. Here more than ever his existence meant absolutely nothing, his presence fading to absolute insignificance. Here more than ever his powers paled in comparison to those brought to bear against him, and the knowledge that he had accumulated over years of painstaking effort perished to naught. Here more than ever, the home he’d given up seemed so far away.

He had consciously chosen the perilous land route north and east, since it decreased the chances of collateral damage and of involving any more innocent lives in battles aimed to ensnare him. He had thought himself somewhat accustomed to the dangers that such a solitary journey entailed, thought it an acceptable risk given the consequences. And now, in the end, he supposed that the gamble had failed; what little luck he could count on had deserted him.

But still he found his fate to be an acceptable one in comparison with the alternative. Better he die alone and without causing trouble to others, than in the midst of devastation and death that would not have occurred had he not been present.

And always like a stowaway in the back of his mind lingered the question: what price would he be asked to pay this time? Benign, or malignant? Deadly, or harmless? Critical, or dispensable? The only saving grace, perhaps, was that it would undoubtedly manifest as something he could bear alone…

I suppose that I am unworthy of fortune, then.

He doubled up in sudden agony, curling foetal upon the frigid snow plains. The excretions of his latest bout of coughing blossomed like crimson flowers upon the blemishless white, visible even in the infinite darkness. His eyes strained to focus, and said flowers wavered in and out of his sight until they dominated his blurry field of vision. Slowly they then melted away beneath his fevered panting, as once again he tried to muster the strength to soldier on.

Still, I will never give up…

Even if his next step took him an hour, or a day, or…

Never… give…

Even if his next breath came in minutes, or in years, or…

Kayu…

The last of the fires within him died, and in their wake came only darkness.

[Jasmine]

That's it for March! Thanks for participating, winners will be announced by midnight Alaska time Saturday night.

[Jasmine]

The results are in! Please keep in mind that the amount of EXP received is based on your level and how much EXP you need to get to the next level. Now hop over to the April Vignette (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?24245-April-Vignette)!

1st place – Sheex gets 400EXP and 200GP
2nd place – BlackandBlueEyes gets 400EXP and 175GP

Seether gets 100EXP
CaitieGirl gets 100EXP
Jennifer Oakley gets 150EXP
Whispers of Abyssion gets 100EXP
Wings of Endymion gets 350EXP
Aegis of Espiridion gets 100EXP
Glories of Myrmidion gets 100EXP
Flames of Hyperion gets 450EXP

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.