When Serpents Smile

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Please allow me emphasise to begin with that this thread need not be considered Althanas canon. This is merely my personal attempt to reconcile the events of the 2015 Adventurer’s Crown with the lore of the Thaynes and the Forgotten Ones, the tales of N’Thayn’sal and the Cataclysm, and the fact that while history is always written by the victors the ‘truth’ can only be examined from the eyes of all the combatants.

With acknowledgement and gratitude to Sighter Tnailog and Caden Law.


Deep in the south-eastern wilds of Raiaera, the rivers Escaldor and Elleduin drain into the Stormy Sea. Salty drizzle forever hammers upon these treacherous marshlands of the Alye Duina, long since forsaken by deity and mortal alike. Even at the height of the Corpse War the Necromancer’s Death Lords feared the evil that abode here, far greater an evil than any amongst their number, biding its time in shrouds of crimson mist.

Little do they know, now that the righteous might of the high elves has scattered them to the four winds like the ashes of their erstwhile master. They were right to fear.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

King to King Seven.

Wiping slick moisture from his forehead, Touma Kamikaji stepped from the mirror-like sheen of his portal. Muggy breaths clung to the inside of his mouth in a film of rancid air, filling his lungs with the stench of rotting earth and fetid flora. Multi-legged insects scuttled at the edge of his hearing. Some fled from the approach of an unknown intruder. Others bared their fangs at the approach of potential prey.

Ancient bloodoaks bowed before his approach, weighted with tendrils of fog as thick as the cloud at the base of a thunderstorm. The skies overhead parted to reveal the palest of suns, darkening with every passing moment as some astral abomination devoured it whole. Touma halted his progress long enough to bask heavy-eyed in its dying light. But his companions displayed no such inclination, stalking past him from the tear he had torn in the fabric of reality.

The first, outsized and muscular, made the ground shudder with every thunderous step. His Knight, the Deathseeker, Ginuvo.

The second, silent and confident, slipped through the muddy leaves like a black-winged ghost. His Dragon, the Rook, Leon Hredgarsson.

The third, sheathed in tattered bandages, floated past on a palanquin of gilded mahogany. His Minister of the Left, the Runt, Hiroyuki Doson.

The fourth, straight-backed and stern, stopped behind his master and waited for him to move again. His General of the Left, the Valet, Phillipe Renar.

Satisfied, Touma followed in their footsteps. Picking his path across through the quagmire, he took care to let neither the blood-tinged mud stain the hems of his cotton robes nor the growing shadows to grasp at his straw sandals. His left hand rested on the scabbard of the blade at his waist. His right scratched lazily at the exposed whiskers of hair on his chest, then swatted away an inquisitive gnat.

Before him loomed a stepped pyramid, a monstrosity of mud bricks that belonged in pre-Sundering Dheathain rather than in modern-day Raiaera. A succession of tall terraces rose into the wilting light, crowned at the head of a monumental staircase by a gated temple. Its construction reflected Pode’s travels and her fascination with the wider world beyond the Occident. But it also displayed her sheer foresight for all who could read the signs. The corners of the ziggurat oriented in perfection with the points of the compass, and the ongoing solar eclipse aligned in turn with the staircase and the gated temple at its top. This was not just any final bastion. This was a location in time and space: chosen by a specific person, and for a specific purpose.

This was the location that Pode had chosen as her tomb.

Touma’s lips drew taut. He reached the base of the stairs, flanked by his Fraternity, and raised his gaze once more towards the fading sun.

Check.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Her guardians, ancient grotesques crafted from enchanted basalt, awaited him at the apex of the monumental staircase. Together they straddled his approach to Pode’s sanctum arcanum, blotting out the dying sun beneath the arch of the mud-brick gate. One had the head of an aged ram and the body of a silver tiger, its varicose bat wings spread wide and its tail a writhing banded snake. The corners of its leathery lips smouldered with remnant fire, the tip of its forked second tongue sizzling with corrosive acid. Its compatriot wore the face of a silverback and the torso of a snowy leopard, with the wings of an eagle ready to stoop and the tail of a scorpion poised for the kill. Lightning crackled upon claws of polished stone, and its stinger dripped with pungent venom.

Their eyes, polished garnets as red as the bloodoaks they towered over, turned on the invaders as one.

“Who are you, that…” the ram-headed senior of the chimerosphynxes boomed, its voice rolling like thunder across the cowering treetops. It never finished its haughty challenge.

To Touma’s right Ginuvo leapt forth, a force of nature restrained only by the supposed bounds of human flesh. His fist impacted on the ram’s left cheek, rocking both of its jewelled eyes upwards into their sockets. Skin and tendon, skull and brain matter alike shattered before the momentum of the ebon Deathseeker’s charge. He landed on his feet in the dust beyond, basking in the visceral rain of ash and pumicite that splattered the sun-baked mud.

To Touma’s left Hiroyuki hovered, his advance as gradual and as inexorable as the entropic death dancing with every deliberate flick of his fingertips. A dozen beads of glistening quicksilver strangled the ape’s battle-cry in its throat of living stone. Their orbit pinned the ancient guardian in place, every heartbeat drawing tighter the radius of their arcing trajectory. Millimetre by agonising millimetre they throttled the flesh of the leonine neck. And then bones shattered with cracks of thunder, leaving only the mercurial orbs to float back to the Runt’s side in lazy obedience.

Touma himself did not break stride as the pair of corpses crumbled to fine ash, rising pale clouds flanking his advance. Crimson miasma rippled in time with their demise and grasped in vain at his feet. The dying sun overhead flared in powerless sympathy, mourning the destruction of the relics from a long-lost aeon.

The Serpent Tamer’s grim glower never once wavered.

You’ve lost board position.

His left hand never left his katana’s scabbard. His right remained hidden in the folds of his robes.

You’ve lost the last of your pieces.

His eyes, as brittle as a basilisk’s battle-glare, pierced the fog that crowned Pode’s ziggurat. Somewhere, in that sanctified templum of mud brick, the Crimson Witch held reign.

How much longer do you intend to draw out this charade?

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Shadows pooled at his feet, rippling like disturbances in the mirror-like surface of a calm lake. From them emerged the lean, pale form of an elf of indeterminate heritage, clad in robes as black as the darkness that consumed the sun. His Qilin, the Shadowmancer, Angelus Eltharion.

A silver thunderbolt fell from the sky, cratering the uneven bricks at his feet in feathery impact. The dissipating dust revealed a dar’el valkyrie clad in mythril scale, her hair a waterfall of cascading argent, her wings cursed like the night. His General of the Right, the Archon, Silmeria.

“And?”

His greeting passed his lips in a flat monotone, his tone the very definition of control. The lack of emphasis and exclamation rang bells of wary alarm in his companions. Despite the sweltering heat, the air temperature in his vicinity hovered within a degree or two of absolute zero. Some of his Fraternity had followed him for two decades, and never had they seen him display such incandescent fury.

“The High Bard Council initiated this cleansing in full expectation that they could destroy Pode once and for all. They enticed mercenary adventurers to their cause to shoulder their dirty work, and now they profit from the sacrifice of the lesser races. They feast on the fruit of our labour from the safety of their ivory spires.” The marble-like set of Angelus’s refined features spoke volumes of his distaste, hatred he usually reserved for his arcane rival Hiroyuki. “One might say they learnt well the lessons of the Corpse War.”

“The Crimson Witch herself?”

Angelus only had to nod to confirm Touma’s suspicions. The Forgotten One had spread the fragments of her diminished strength over five remaining physical vessels, inviting death at the blades of those who defiled the Lindequalme. Some would seek to confront her, some to destroy her, some to enslave her. But did they know of the last of her free will, the residual spirit that defied fate and fled to this isolated corner of the Red Forest to coordinate her one last stand? Did they even care? It was, after all, but a shadow of her former glory. Touma himself would earn from this particular skirmish neither fame nor the satisfaction of breaking her hold on the elven homeland. Here, today, he would earn but bitter defeat.

His aura flared even colder. Eyes narrowed as he turned his attention to Silmeria. The dar’el flinched not, her face equally devoid of expression and emotion.

“My master, the human girl returned to the edge of the forest. I have fulfilled your obligation to the dark elf criminal.”

Silence rushed to fill the void as her lyrical tones trailed off, unsure of what else he asked of her. But Touma’s considerations had already returned to the more important task at hand. He had much to do, and not nearly enough time in which to do it. All those years of preparation, of laying foundations and shaping destinies, and now he had no time. He had never known life to be fair, but this particular realisation struck him as particularly cruel.

Twenty years of underhanded endeavour had rid him of the worst of his natural arrogance. But he had never relinquished the core of implicit superiority that fuelled his ambition. He founded his schemes on the unassailable truth that he knew better than most everybody else around him, by the inevitable processes of birth and upbringing and the natural workings of the Million Planes. Despite this, or perhaps even because of it, he usually observed with unfailing politeness the rules of courtesy with those lesser talents with whom he chose to work. On the rare occasion when he adopted a brusquer attitude, said talents had long since learned not to cross his path.

So when his next set of orders snapped through the murky night with the tautness of an anchoring hawser at storm, neither cynical Hiroyuki nor haughty Angelus defied him.

“Work the siphoning ritual.”

Neither novitiate Leon nor conscientious Phillipe questioned him.

“Keep watch, so that they may concentrate.”

Neither death-seeking Ginuvo nor enigmatic Silmeria walked with him.

“Hold this gate against all who would force it. The High Bard Council will not ignore us for long.”

“And you, my master?” Alone of his Fraternity, the black-winged dar’el feared for his safety under the effects of his uncharacteristic rage. The others might follow him for the sheer force of his will, the purity of his purpose, the sanctity of the world he sought to build against the dangers he fought against. But she cared for him in a way that they did not, and on the rare occasion when his facade of invulnerability faltered and his doubts frothed to the surface, she too allowed her concerns to show. “Do you intend to confront her without our aid?”

The Fraternity could scarce afford for him to fail. The world could scarce afford for him to fail.

“It is my duty,” he told her without flinching, and with effort she forced herself to relax. His doubts did not reveal his insecurities, but instead those of the Forgotten One he had chosen to hunt. His anger did not preclude success, but instead the absence of a straightforward path to victory. He still intended victory. He just despised Pode for making things unnecessarily difficult.

“None of you are to set foot beyond this threshold.”

He turned away, and the templum doors beckoned his tread of soft straw. Overhead the dying sun flared in a last bout of brilliance, a diamond on a ring of hazy fire.

Then it disappeared altogether.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Heavy stone slammed shut behind him, like the lid on a coffin or the roof on a mausoleum. Touma found himself surrounded by dim motes of must, facing a single straight path downwards into the bowels of the ziggurat. The air, cool and calm in comparison to the humid heat of the Alye Duina, carried just the faintest hint of cinnamon spice. Arcane braziers lit his world at every dozen paces, casting the timeworn baked mud in an eerie, ethereal azure.

Beneath each brazier sat a display cabinet wrought from the finest Fallienese glass. In twin rows of perfect array they awaited his perusal, gleaming in response to his inquisitive glances despite their obvious age. His reflection danced amongst the flaring flames and the shadows thus cast.

Behind each polished sheen lay a priceless plethora of artefacts from all over Althanas. Some were ancient beyond ken: half-written papyrus scrolls from pre-Sundering Raiaera; shards of dirt-stained pottery from the first human settlements in Corone; the tusk of a titan mammoth that had once roamed across Berevar, now believed extinct. Others hailed from more exotic climes: a tasselled spear from Cathay, still stained with wet crimson blood; a spice pot from Matarkha, only half full; the feather of a paradise dragon from Boreal Dheathain, singed by dark flame. The curator of this extensive collection had mounted and maintained each piece of history to perfection. Precious snapshots in time lay preserved for the admiration of all eternity.

Touma knew better than to appropriate any of the artefacts. He doubted not that many of the items held power far beyond anything he or his Fraternity wielded. But the elves did not speak of Pode as the Mistress of Curses for the generosity of her gifts. The enchanted cabinets served not only to protect their contents from the merciless ravages of time, but also to prevent them from affecting the mortal plane. He had to treat anything she had handled as corrupted beyond salvation.

His straw sandals slid silent and stealthy across the sandy floor, at a pace too deliberate for hurry but too swift for care. At first he thought to keep count of the braziers as he passed them by, but realised the futility of the gesture when he passed forty. The world of flickering azure stretched to an infinite horizon to both his rear and his fore, leading ever downwards towards a destination unknown. He might have possessed only the stunted nub of an arcane sense that many first-year arcanists would have looked down upon, but still the throb of the wellspring upon which the temple stood hurt his mind. Icy chill lanced through his head at irregular intervals from a pillar of infernal heat that he could feel if not physically see. Did he imagine that the path veered to his right? Given the precision with which Pode had constructed her ziggurat, Touma found it an unlikely misjudgement on her part.

The deeper he travelled into her demesne, the more intimate and personal the objects in their houses of glass grew. A dress of Istralothian silk, no less than two millennia old but still as fine as the day it had adorned its wearer. A sleek helm of mya craftsmanship, split in two by a blow from an unknown polearm. A masculine figure carved from sagun heartwood, worn smooth through repeated handling.

Then, with a suddenness that surprised even he, the corridor levelled out in front of a pair of enormous basalt doors.

The penultimate artefact arrested his eye. Touma stopped his pacing before a face carved from fine-grained cypress. White paint gleamed as bright as any porcelain, red as brilliant as any fresh-spilt blood. A noh mask from his native Nippon, used by the stage actors of his homeland to denote an expression of stylised sorrow. Briefly he wondered what it signified to the Forgotten One, and why it occupied such a place of honour.

Shaking his head, he returned his attention to the doors looming before him. Once upon a time, intricate murals had covered the stone from ceiling to floor, depicting battles and treatises from ancient ages. The passage of time had wiped them clean, leaving naught but a blank slate to meet his eye. He leaned in close to examine the polished basalt, only for his breath to ripple in the solid stone.

“Well,” said the Serpent, “that’s not unsettling at all.”

With a single thought, he smashed the doors open.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Even before the hinges had finished their creaking protest, he breathed deep of the fresher air. The cramped corridor opened up into a low wide chamber, lifting from his shoulders the weight of history and its claustrophobic tension. Motes of speckled dust continued to swirl in musty light, and the scent of sultry cinnamon wafted stronger than ever. Silence weighed heavy in his mind. The occasion weighed even heavier.

From the tales the elvish loreweavers told, he might have expected Pode to lair in a den of decadence decorated with the exotic and the luxurious from across the globe, or in a torture chamber crammed with the ghoulish and the gruesome, or in a rune-inscribed scholarium glorifying her macabre journey from hedge-witch to Forgotten One. Instead his eyes swept through a quiet parlour of reflection and contemplation. She had crafted here a place to return to from her endless travels, from which to maintain the curses for which the world knew her name.

A lone spear, planted unwavering and upright in the soft stone, marked the exact centre of the room. Its crimson tassels danced a forlorn flutter in an unfelt breeze. Her favoured azure blue braziers cast unsteady and unreliable shadows upon it from all four corners. Only a shallow alcove in the far wall broke the monotony of bronzed brick. In it lay a single bedroll, a low crystal table on a frayed reed carpet, a half-full bookshelf, a splintered mirror...

And the Crimson Witch herself.

She sat in wordless comfort, hunched over a monarchs board worn wan by the ravages of time. Her hair burnt a luscious and vivid crimson and her eyes a brilliant emerald green, both in stark contrast to her washed out world of brown and blue. She still wore the plunging gown of blood red in which she had first confronted him, but her body language no longer projected the same arrogant triumph and confidence. Slender shoulders slumped, haughty cheekbones sagged, and deep furrows wormed across her pale brow. Long weeks of conflict had taken much from her, leaving but a mere shadow of her former strength.

Opposite, across the low table, sat an emaciated man wearing the likeness of the long-deceased Godhand Stryker. Touma recognised Zundalon the Cantor, the last survivor of the ill-fated Durklan clans, once known as the Forgotten One Xem’zund. Or rather, he recognised a façade of the Dread Necromancer’s erstwhile power, silent and unresponsive beneath the effects of Pode’s final curse. For Xem’zund too had died beneath the boughs of the Lindequalme, and though the circumstances of his death meant that Pode could not revive him in full, they did not prevent her from summoning her memory of his essence for one last dialogue.

Steeling himself against their presence, Touma stepped forth into Pode’s sanctum arcanum. The pressure on his shoulders increased again, as though gravity had swollen a hundred-fold to press him back into an abyss devoid of hope and inspiration. Breaths that for a glorious moment of relief had come free and easy now clogged his throat and choked his lungs. Would that he had the choice of turning back and walking away. Instead he paced forth, silent upon straw-clad feet.

Only when he had covered half the distance to the planted spear did she deign to address him. Gesturing at the board before her with a withered hand, her voice carried as but a husky whisper.

“Some would say that monarchs is an unsuitable metaphor for life. They would say that we cannot expect the chaotic conflict of existence to unfold from such rigid rules of order.”

Touma paused in his steps, considering his reply with care. Even in her weakened state, she could blot him from the face of the Firmament as she might crush a fly. He had to convince her not to throw that power away. If all failed here, two decades of scheming might come crashing down about his head.

“A wise man once told me that you can find the whole world in monarchs,” he said at length. “You cannot remain where you started. You cannot be sure of your end. You cannot know upon which move the balance will tilt, which move will be your death. You must choose your pieces well, according to the insight you have gained from the lessons of previous defeats. You must pit them against the challenges they are most likely to win. Each piece you deem worthy – stern king, haughty queen, noble knight, pious bishop – has a part to play. Your pawns progress along their files, either to be crowned at the end or to fall along the way. What else does one expect of existence? Of conflict?

“Monarchs is complex. It is savage. It is elegant. It is a dance. It is a war. It is finite. It is eternal. It is life.”

Every word resonated through the confined chamber, fraught with power, until the air itself quavered beneath his will. Every phrase lent itself to his posture, until he stood tall once more before the two Forgotten Ones. Then his voice dropped to a controlled growl, parcelling infinite anger through its measured cadence.

“I pity instead the fool who cannot see the world as his board, for he has not the forethought to handle his pieces to their potential. He cannot see the big picture, cannot know the effect that his actions might have on the world. I pity the fool who has not learnt to sit in contemplation, who has not learnt to question the first move that springs to his mind, whether there are other better ideas to put into play. I pity the fool caught up in this grand game, who not only has no idea of the rules, but also no idea that he even plays.”

Pode parried his bravado with a dainty flick of her wrist. If not threatening, the gesture at least carried a semblance of her true cruel strength.

“You are only human, after all,” she dismissed. Slender fleshless fingers played with one of the pieces on the board: the Black Queen, expressionless in regal hauteur. “Myself, I admit to having some small skill at monarchs. I know to play the move that my opponent least expects, not the one that most benefits me. I know to play with two queens while my opponent languishes with one.”

Her emerald stare turned to the shattered mirror beyond the Necromancer who sat beside her. Each jagged shard of Fallienese glass focused on a different member of Touma’s Fraternity as they worked on their appointed tasks. Shadows smothered their movements against the un-light of the eclipse. Every moment she allowed them to roam free only hastened her doom. But she lifted not a finger against them, though the surrounding forests teemed with minions awaiting her command.

“But in the end you do not even play monarchs. You face me on the same board, but instead you play shoban.”

Touma allowed himself a small half-smile.

“Only a fool would fight another on equal terms, Forgotten One. Especially if the other is as powerful as yourself.”

Now her laugh echoed around his words, low and luscious. She set the Black Queen back down on the board, surrounded by the arrayed ranks of her foes.

“My, you do have a glib tongue. Good, very good.”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

But she had no intention of letting him worm his way free of her hook. As capricious as the autumn gale her voice turned cold and sharp again.

“Some also would say that one can only measure a man in what he makes of his own abilities. That he is a fraud if he frequently calls upon the aid of divine entity or mortal ally to achieve his goals. That he cheapens his accomplishments by the fact that he has not achieved them himself.”

“Ha!”

Now it was Touma’s turn to show his mirth, his teeth yellowed and dirty in the flickering azure lighting. Thick brick walls muffled his sarcastic bark, but its sharp retort still pierced Pode’s masque. He allowed her questioning left eyebrow to rise a fraction.

“Then I spit upon their so-called measurements. Does a competent general send his most trusted lieutenant to dig his latrine pit? Does he send an unknown peon to negotiate with his enemies? Does he go to war without his spies and saboteurs stacking the odds in his favour? Does he not keep his strongest cards hidden in his sleeve, to reveal only when necessary? Who are they to decide that I am not a man, because I play said cards with greater competence?”

“You view your companions as pieces to sacrifice at will,” Pode countered. “The Juggernaut. The Mage. The Chevalier. The Pawn. All worked with you towards the same goal of cleansing this forest of my presence. The Mage and the Chevalier even survived to confront and to best the last of my physical vessels. And yet you have not thought to bring any of them this far. Your Generals, your Ministers, your Qilin and your Dragon. All are expendable to you, all are worthless in the end. What do they think of this?”

“The fact that I command their respect is not an ability of my own?” Touma countered. “The fact that I employ them to make the best use of their skills? The fact that they turn to me to make the plans that will see them triumph? You of all people should know, Pode, that victory is neither bought with piles of gold, nor battered into submission by the head of a mace. It requires thinking, and planning, and the employing the correct people at the correct time. You know as well as I do that none of this comes without cost. That lesser men and fools never consider the months of contemplation, the years of preparation, necessary to enact these plans. The ignorant worship me as a god. Those with a touch more sense grow jealous, and whisper slanderous words behind my back. But that is my skill, and it is why my people will follow me, die for me, knowing full well what I go up against. Everybody I meet is a piece to sacrifice at will. Not all re worthy of my trust. Those that are, I reward. Those that are not, I ignore.”

“And so you would hide behind your pawns, for them to do the dirty work on your behalf? You speak of victory, but all you do is incite conflict and wage war. They called Zundalon the Harbinger, and myself the Mistress of Strife. What makes you any different? Why is your cause just, and ours evil?”

For perhaps the first and last time in his life, Touma felt the full force of Pode’s glare. Her flaming hair floated on an unfelt breeze. Her withered skin glowed as if lit by an inner light. Her attention ate away at incarnate ward and mental barrier alike, until his entire soul lay bare before her entropic presence. For a heartbeat or two he knew what it must have felt to face her in her prime, when she had destroyed entire nations with mere whispers.

He did not retreat.

“What conqueror has ever attained their goal without bloodying their hands? Even the most humane must use violence to defeat their enemies. War is cruel, and violent. Any hegemon will built his victories and his defeats on the countless deaths of the innocent and the loyal. There is no difference between a tyrant and a liberator. There is no difference between you and I.” Touma’s eyes narrowed, unbowed before Pode’s relentless wrath. “Except that I stand here now, asking for your aid. And it is still in your power to grant it.”

At long last, as if waiting for those words, the Crimson Witch rose to her feet. Her every movement came slow and laboured, like night blossoms opening their petals to the bloody harvest moon. For all that, her full stature was terrible to behold. Her teeth bared in a vicious snarl, her lips blood-red and pulsating. No man could ever call the ferocious creases upon her face beautiful.

“After all,” she spoke, “we do have formalities to observe. I have spent centuries, millennia, channelling power into this curse. You would usurp it to challenge the Dark Lady by containing her Disciple. And I would be remiss if you were not worthy of its ownership. As I would have been remiss to let you into my presence should you have been unable to defeat my guardians at my gate.”

Touma’s anger crescendoed to meet hers, materially manifesting around his physical vessel as a glowering killing aura. In the unseen heavens overhead, a fiery corona flared about the dark disk of the dead sun, baleful and malevolent crimson.

“Of course.”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

With another casual wave of her wrist she materialised in the centre of the chamber, only just beyond the reach of Touma’s blade. In the blink of an eye she had shed her locks of flowing flame and her gown of slit silk. Her new form now dwarfed Touma in both power and stature, that of a warrior armoured in glittering bronze lamellar. Her new hair, as blue as the high noon sky, fell from the confines of a crimson-tasselled skirted skullcap. Her new eyes, blank white with neither pupil nor iris, pierced him from the shadowy contours of her face. She rested one hand on the haft of the planted spear, which melded to her touch like a long-lost friend. Zundalon the Cantor watched on in impassive silence as his fellow Forgotten One took the field of battle.

“You do not wish for your daemonic patron to intercede on your behalf?” she asked of her mortal foe, eyebrow arched in challenge.

“I do not need him to defeat the likes of you.”

Settling into a fighting crouch, a small part of Touma’s mind wondered if Pode recognised the weapon he wore at his waist. Though not the same magicide blade that had killed Saint Denebriel, it was nevertheless of similar forge and form. Would she fear when he drew it? Would it dent the onslaught of spear and spell-song he would soon face?

The remainder of his thoughts focused instead on an edge as keen as that of his sword. As faded as she was, today he would face and defeat a shard of a Forgotten One. He could brook no complacency. Even broken shards had jagged edges, sometimes even more than their unbroken whole.

So why did Pode wear such a sorrowful smile beneath her helm? Why did it grow upon espying his fury?

“Shame,” she murmured, as though she meant it. “He would have enjoyed this farce, almost as much as you will.”

Like water flowing against the will of gravity, she pulled her spear from its sheath of stone. It responded in joyous release, an elemental spirit of air and lightning that sang as she spun it through the confined air. Despite the low ceiling and tremulous light, not a single scratch marred the bricks above her head when eventually she brought it to rest in a martial salute. The line of her jaw firmed, approving that her body had not forgotten the long weeks and months of training in this lonely sanctum. The colourless fire of her eyes regarded her opponent, calm and steady.

“Tell me one thing then, Serpent Tamer, before we begin. Why are you so angry?”

He spat a swift reply, already in motion. “Because you intend to die.”

Her first thrust would have skewered his throat, but he stopped the tip of her polearm dead between middle and index finger of his right hand. Azure flame wreathed from tassel to blade and would have incinerated him in a heartbeat, but he extinguished it with nothing but a breath.

Bricks of beige trembled at his feet, hands of mud reaching out to entrap him where he stood. But her spell slid from his defences like a raindrop across a pane of stained glass. Never once did the infuriating half-smile leave his lips. Belatedly Pode linked the ineffectiveness of her magic with the activity of his Fraternity on the surface. Touma had cut her off from the world, and would throttle her as she choked upon her own weakness.

“You intend to die.”

The swordsman’s snarled anger contrasted the silky whisper of his darksteel katana leaving its lacquered ebony scabbard. A thunderclap of black lightning resounded through the tight-packed air, blinding and deafening. Both combatants staggered backwards as one, reeling for time and space to clear their minds.

Pode recovered first, by a matter of precious seconds. Spear at half-haft, left hand low at her side as crimson tassels streamed behind her, she closed the distance between them in the blink of an amber eye. Almost too fast, in fact, to notice that Touma had re-sheathed his blade and wielded in its place a slender gold-tipped kiseru. By no means should it have withstood the crack of the shaft as she swung her weapon from her hips, or its sinuous whiplash as she brought it over her head and thundering upon the mud floor, or up again to trace a thin line of red across his cheeks. But once, twice, and thrice the Nipponese parried her spear with the flimsy implement, just enough to avoid a critical wound. Not once did he step away from her onslaught, and not even the tsunami of ancient dust accompanying her final blow caused him to flinch.

“Tell me one thing, Forgotten One,” he asked without blinking. “Why do you intend to die?”

For the third time she answered him not. Instead, she stabbed her spear into the stone at her feet. Carved runes glowed in intricate fury as she funnelled her immense willpower through the slender shaft. Her sanctum quivered at her command. Seismic undulations knocked Touma from his feet before he could recover balance. Pode somersaulted clear as he clung to the ever-shifting floor, hemmed between four sigil-inscribed pillars of melded mud.

It was the opening he had been waiting for.

The world swam as he summoned forth his own will, so puny and insignificant in contrast to even Pode’s diminished powers. He exhaled his fears, his worries, his trepidations. He focused instead on the solidity of the sword at his side and the holiness of his purpose, and forced himself to relinquish his death grip on reality.

He inhaled again, and now he stood behind Pode, poised to strike where her acrobatics would land her. He had but one chance for the kill. He had to make it count.

Darksteel flashed.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

In comparison to mighty Aesphestos, saintly Denebriel, and cunning Xem’zund, the common folk spoke little of the prowess of the Crimson Witch. They realised neither how her potent curses demanded utmost competency as a spellcaster, nor the sheer mental discipline - honed by stylistic grace obtained through decades and centuries of martial form - required to maintain them over long millennia. In this, though, she suffered much the same weakness as her hated enemies, the high elves of Raiaera. She had spent many years reliving the same movements, until their perfection was such that her form never degenerated.

Perfection, as Touma well knew, was predictable.

Pode’s arcane wards disintegrated beneath his mana-hungry katana. He ignored the pop in his ears, and the stench of smouldering ozone. He focused instead on the satisfying sensation that travelled through his wrist as the blade bit home, then up his arm as darksteel carved through muscle and bone alike. The momentary shock writ clear in her features would remain with him for all eternity.

As would the crimson anger that followed. Billowing blood-stained mist obscured her from view.

“It did not end Denebriel, Serpent Tamer,” she hissed from beyond the veil. “What makes you think such as blade would end me?”

He rolled clear, and only by the skin of his neck as gouts of red flame incinerated the space in which he had stood. Pulses of scarlet lightning traced his path as he attempted to evade her wrath, only for shackles of throbbing arcane energy to penetrate his defences at last and to bind him where he lay prone on the unforgiving stone.

When I struck her, he realised in a moment of blinding clarity, breath knocked from his lungs and blood pounding through his eyes. The blade ate her magic, but still she tagged me...?

Azure flame coruscated across his brow.

No.

Clouds of ash and cinder swirled through the confined chamber, unsettled by their first taste of earnest conflict in long eons of existence. Like settling snow they parted, unveiling Touma as he rose to brandish a shaft of dark energy longer than he was tall. Its immaterial tip pointed in unerring intent at Pode’s breast.

The Forgotten One chuckled.

“An illusion, Touma Kamikaji? Do you forget who you fight?”

A thousand spectral hands manifested behind her back, writhing masses of dendritic tendrils reaching out for Touma’s person. Through their midst she lunged, her spear plucking chords upon the fabric of the Firmament as it tore Touma’s visions asunder. His shaft of black energy shattered like so much glass before the mallet.

And then she stumbled to a halt, crimson lifeblood pouring from her throat and spilling down her suit of bronze. Her eyes travelled to the mirror shard dancing in the fingers of her opponent’s left hand, and they widened in a second bout of surprise.

“The value of an illusion lies in its tiniest grain of truth,” the Serpent Tamer countered, chest labouring with effort as he broke away. “You, of all the mighty on Althanas, should know that.”

Her sad smile returned in fleeting grace, heedless of how her wound danced in the light of the flowing azure braziers. Her spear continued to sing its keening dirge as she made it dance from side to side, forwards and backwards, always in fluid and fluent motion. The runes on its shaft glowed once more to the touch of her mind, and the spinning tassel formed a distracting blur of crimson as she closed the distance.

Unperturbed, Touma stalked forth to meet her once more. Wayward tendrils of her magic shed from his path, like grass from a gliding snake.

“The final form. Fire Flower.”

“Meikyoushisui. Ichi-no-tachi.”

Her spear found his heart and the thick wall beyond, eating it with crimson flame. His blade clove through her neck in a flash of black lightning.

One after another they fell to the floor.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Stale air stirred amidst the alcove in the far brick wall. Motes of dust, scented with faint cinnamon, coalesced beneath the flickering azure light. At length they settled into the form of Pode, the Crimson Witch, though not as any had seen her before. Her vivid crimson hair lay limp and bleached of colour, and her luscious curves sagged with age. Skin that had once glowed with power now hung from her bony frame, as wrinkled and translucent as ancient parchment.

Her warrior form, still slumped against the far wall, withered into dust beneath her treacherous emerald gaze. Bronze armour clattered to the mud bricks, dissipating into thin air as their constituent magic unravelled.

Then the body of her opponent disappeared too, fading from the Firmament like just another mirage.

“Satisfied?” she asked, weak and whispery.

Her companion, wearing the likeness of Zundalon the Cantor in turn wearing the likeness of Godhand Stryker, reached across the monarchs board to checkmate her Queen. Pode stared in sorrow at what little remained on the sixty-four squares of chequered white and black. Then she returned her gaze to the basilisk eyes that faced her. How furious they smouldered, she marvelled, how mortal and ephemeral in their display of emotion. And, for that reason, how unpredictable and powerful.

The last remaining illusion came crashing down about their heads. Touma Kamikaji’s irises burnt like amber balefire from the void where Xem’zund’s blank features had lingered.

“Are you still intent on letting those elven fools wipe the last of your presence from the Firmament? Or perhaps you thought that none of their pawns would see through your gambits and theirs? That none would divine your true intent... to prepare the worthy for what is to come?”

Pode’s left eyebrow invited him to continue. Heedless of her courtesy he ploughed on.

“You forced the Mongrel to confront her true nature. The Homunculus fought her fate, and the Poet her heritage. The Emperor faced the dreams of what he wanted for himself and those around him. The Briarheart embraced her madness and fell further into the shadow. One by one you parcelled out your gifts to those who will need them in the future.

“Now only you remain, the last fragmented soul-shadow of your true self. And you expect me to believe that you did not deliberately allow my Fraternity to entrap you with a null magic field? When subtlety personified, the Mistress of Curses herself, regresses to using brute force to achieve her aims, what does she wish for?

“A quick death.”

Touma spat the last phrase at the shrivelled remnant of the Forgotten One. His disdain and his disgust splattered her wrinkled brow. With so much power beneath her command, so much unfulfilled potential, how could she choose now to abandon the world to its fate?

Rare emotion crescendoed through his gaunt cheeks. The five he had named could each crush him in a duel, but none had the foresight and the vision to combat the grandest of threats. He did, as did Pode. So why would she throw it all away?

She met his scrutiny with sorrow and resignation, and told him.

“You are so young, Touma Kamikaji, and so full of righteous fury. And I have manipulated you, which has made you angry.” Her voice sighed, a breath of wind through bare bloodoak branches. “Yes, I wish to die. My soul does not wish to linger any longer in the Firmament. I have grown tired of the machinations of the Thaynes above, and of the petty malingering of the mortals below. I am ready to leave it all behind, and yes, all the power I still own along with it.

“But before you judge me, Serpent Tamer, consider this. Who whom live today have I harmed in any way, bar when they intruded upon my privacy and threatened my person? No elf alive today knows the Red Forest as the Belegwain i Beleg it once was. It is a diverse ecosystem that has existed and proliferated for centuries now. Elsewhere we might consider such change natural, even when enacted by the hands of man and elf, orc and dwarf. But the council of High Bards wish to ‘cleanse’ the Lindequalme, and by extension me, because it and I offend their sense of the aesthetic. And we must consider this ‘right’ and ‘fair’?”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

He flinched at her indictment, but her words surprised him not. The case of Ingwe Helyanwe had imprinted upon him the hypocrisy of the high elves and their high-handed treatment of those they deemed lesser. He even had to admire how they had faked the legend of the Tella’Karythar, the Last Crusader, to defeat Xem’zund’s armies on the banks of the Escaldor.

“Of course not,” he said, his scowl deepening. “But do not expect me to believe that you care what the world considers ‘right’ and ‘fair’. You have always acted as you felt you must: to combat the Elder Gods, the Star Pantheon, the Ancients, the Thayne; to banish the most powerful of your number when he went mad; to protect yourself against the jealousy and wrath of the broken world left behind after the Age of Strife. You did none of this for others to love you. Even in your final moments you have never sought the approval or the empathy of those you empowered. The Mongrel, the Homunculus, the Poet, the Emperor, the Briarheart. Each of them murdered you in their blind hate, never once considering that you acted all along to give them what they most desired.”

Touma paused, then exhaled long and loud. Reaching into the folds of his robe he brought out the slender bamboo kiseru. When he spoke again, he measured his words with care even as he chewed on its golden nib.

“But for what it is worth, I have always appreciated the Lindequalme. It is beauty. Not the cultured sculpted beauty of the elves, but the tenacious and dangerous beauty of life itself at its most raw. You said that it offended their sense of the aesthetic... I say that they do not appreciate the reminder of how they can never attain the perfection that they so strive for.”

A soft, wry smile wrinkled Pode’s lips and softened her expression. She too exhaled and relaxed. Her gaze roamed the azure-lit sanctum, resting on the forlorn crimson tassels of the spear embedded in the far wall. Then she returned it to her companion, and found his amber eyes the only tangible sign of life in sight.

Something struck her then: nostalgia, perhaps, or the bittersweet regret of her choice of mortality.

“Will you indulge an old witch’s whim?” she asked him, her voice faltering in a poignant tremolo. “A trip into the past, perhaps, to tell you of the Forgotten?”

In response, the human reached out across the table and the carved monarchs pieces scattered between them. Of Pode’s black pieces only the Queen remained on the board, checkmated by his own. The others lay to one side in defeat: King, Mage, Chevalier, Juggernaut. His scrawny fingers, battered by the duel of earlier, danced as he began to recite what he knew.

“In ages past, only a handful of magi could access the power of the Tap without the direct favour of the Thayne. They were Stronger, Greater, more Powerful than the other spellcasters of the world. Those that remain are now Forgotten.”

“It took the agreement of all the Thayne to give the Wizard Blueraven access to what remained of the Tap, when he prosecuted Denebriel and Zund,” Pode nodded. “But such was not always the case.”

Wizened and withered, her hand reached out to her King. The figurine depicted a man of powerful build, broad of shoulder and strong of feature, clad in clothes of nobility won through bloody violence and court intrigue. Across his back draped a black cape, decorated in stark white eight-pointed stars.

“Aesphestos the Starkiller, the first of us all, the worst of us all,” she identified. “Megalomaniac tyrant of a civilisation spanning from Istraloth to Cathay. For all our influence, all our empires, the rest of us were little more than lesser dukes waging civil war in the god-king’s shadow. He paved the path to greatness without consent of the Thayne, though Hromagh approved of his display of strength and was later his patron. One after another we walked in his steps, joining him in his ascension, but always he strode ahead of us.”

Her attention next alighted upon the Juggernaut, a nondescript hooded figure with only its eyes visible from beneath its cowl. Hourglass pupils glittered with tangible determination, as though their mere gaze could remove all obstacles from their path. Then her hand swept over Mage and Queen, both of which Touma could recognise as remarkably accurate caricatures of Xem’zund and Pode herself.

“Nyvengaal attained demigod-hood next, then myself, then Xem’zund. The world of that age was one of great anarchy and chaos, thousands of mage warlords vying and tussling for power. We were the three that emerged from the roiling masses, friends and rivals, always spurring each other on to further heights. Nyvengaal rubbed off on us both, but Zund and I were particularly close. I mentored him, nurtured him, helped him into Khal’jaren’s sights, helped him to avoid Yedda’s...”

Her smile strained taut as she touched the Chevalier. Tall, elegant, sensual, a mere glance at the figurine demanded a bent knee and bowed head. Its polished skin glittered deep blue in the sanctum light. Its hair shone like silver, its eyes dazzled gold at the iris, and a chandelier of cleansing flame clad its silken white robes.

“Denebriel, Aesphestos’s daughter and wife, and the youngest and most ambitious of us all. She drove a wedge between Zund and I, upon her emergence to power. Zund had long fancied her mother, you see, and pried Cydonia away from Aesphestos by killing her and reviving her against her will. Denebriel never forgave him for that. I supported Zund out of friendship and indeed jealousy, thinking that I might beat Denebriel with weight of numbers. Instead she went back in time and aborted all my men before they were born, making it very clear that the only reason she didn’t do the same to us was because we had already left our mark on history. She didn’t kill us, in essence, because she didn’t want to spend the next thousand years tidying up after our deaths. She was a nightmare to argue with, let alone fight. We learned not to get on her bad side after a while, and found other gods to bicker with, but before long things were never the same again.”

“The Wars of the Tap?” Touma asked.

“The Wars of the Tap.”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

She eyed him in critical regard, the emerald brilliance of her stare now watery and tempered with impending death.

“I will not insult your intelligence, Serpent Tamer, by feeding you the words that so many consider gospel. Even the name we give it these days, the Wars of the Tap, so blithely understates the number and scale and ferocity of the conflict. We fought each other, and we fought those usurpers who plotted to overthrow us, and we fought those gods who looked down upon us. And the world burned. How it burned.” Roiling cloud shrouded her mien, as dark as her memories of those times. “Until in one of these conflicts Aesphestos pushed Denebriel too far, too many times. She rebelled. We all did. Aesphestos had grown too powerful, and too overbearing, and too arrogant, and far beyond any hope of salvation. So we aided the elves and the mya in killing him, and we sundered every known law of magic in the process.”

“The Leaguer of Caradin,” Touma prompted, focused on memorising as much of what she said - and how she said it - as possible. He would grasp the import of her words later. For now, he only had to listen.

“Indeed. There and then it ended, though we laid our plans and began our preparations many decades earlier. Denebriel travelled in time to murder Aesphestos a dozen times over, proving that through sheer persistence and dedication she could indeed negate the existence of even one as powerful as her father. She herself became a walking paradox in the process, though, and she lost her mind for it. In the meantime Nyvengaal, Zund, and I taught the High Bard Golan what he needed to defeat the Starkiller once and for all, and destroyed his soul essence afterwards. In doing so we sundered the Tap, to the point where the Thayne got off their lazy arses in turn to unite against us. And that was when Zund and I turned on each other for the last time.”

Her fingers returned to the Mage, almost apologetic in their touch.

“Aesphestos wounded Zund, you see, during the retreat from Ael-en-Gilith, enough for him to retreat to Dheathain to prepare a dozen new bodies. He entrusted me in the meantime with protecting Cydonia. I brought her here, for her protection. But I failed her, and him.”

She exhaled, and Touma caught a whiff of ancient, over-ripe cinnamon. It took all his self-control not to recoil in disgust.

“Aesphestos arrived here late one night in early winter. He blew my defences wide open, and murdered her in the heart of my power. Did I tell you that I raised this sanctum, thousands of years ago, to commemorate my ascension as a Forgotten One? Aesphestos knew, and thus he knew that in his moment of triumph he desecrated all I stood for. He cracked open Cydonia’s ribs, spread her lungs out on her chest, and stuffed her still-beating heart in her mouth. It devastated Zund. When he finished taking his revenge on Aesphestos, he aimed the black hole of his grief in the only way he knew. He put a knife in my back.”

Her eyes saw through him now, fixated upon a place in time that would never return to her grasp.

“Even wounded, I tried to ease his pain. I cast my last curse, in his name and Cydonia’s.”

“The Arda Vazra,” Touma said on her behalf. “The Red Requiem.”

“I only wished to give him the time and space to mourn. I only wished to give him the time and space to heal. But in his grief, caught between his love and his hatred, he could only imagine that I meant to hurt him further. And that warped my curse. It spiralled out of control, affecting reality itself and the minds of those who inhabited it, staining the lands with the colour of his bleeding heart.

“In the end he rediscovered his love of music and of art. It settled his mind, helped him to establish balance once more. It could fight the hatred that ate at his soul, you see, and thus could drive back my twisted curse that afflicted him so. Hence the elves also claimed it as their own, and at great cost they drove back the curse to the borders of their Great Forest. Forever more they would despise me as defiler of their lands. But even now I laugh at the irony of it all, for Zund had ever despised the elves for the genocide of his people, and I had always favoured them for their talent. In the end they too baulked at the sacrifice that reclaiming the entire Belegwain i Beleg would entail. Instead they resolved to abandon their ancient heartland until such time that they could reclaim it with ease. Until now.”

“I only wished to give him the time and space to mourn. I only wished to give him the time and space to heal. But in his grief, caught between his love and his hatred, he could only imagine that I meant to hurt him further. And that warped my curse. It spiralled out of control, affecting reality itself and the minds of those who inhabited it, staining the lands with the colour of his bleeding heart.

“That which is dead can eternal lie, for with merciful aeons, even Death can die,” Touma intoned. A low laugh rasped forth from Pode’s throat, nothing like the luscious lilt she had uttered earlier.

“Zund was ever the poet. It pleased me that he remembered himself so, on his deathbed. Myself, I wandered too far for such artful pursuits. I collected the works of others instead, to remind me of the paths I had walked, of the peoples I had visited.”

Her irises focused on his, one last time.

“Perhaps you will collect this token from me, then, as a token of appreciation for hearing out my sorrowful tale.”

With one shrivelled hand she held out her last piece, the Black Queen, its flowing red hair and piercing emerald eyes the likeness of herself in her prime.

“Or would you rather ask a question of this ancient relic?”

[Whispers of Abyssion]

“I would ask four.”

She blinked, as if surprised, then gestured for him to continue. The cloud in her brow warned him not to push her patience. But he had to know.

“First. You mention five of the Forgotten.” Without looking, Touma’s finger travelled to the monarchs pieces arrayed on the table before him. He pointed to each in turn, knocking them over as he named them. “Aesphestos. Denebriel. Xem’zund. Pode. Nyvengaal. Four lie dead, or in your case dying, banished for all eternity. What of the fifth?”

“Nyvengaal?” Pode’s brow crinkled in a delicate frown, but she said no more.

“The oldest of Alerian and Haidian archives speak of a hooded mage inclined to necromancy. I believe that was likely an aspect of Xem’zund’s powers that the dark elves and the daemons grafted to him when he attacked them during the Wars of the Tap.” Touma paused. “Is the reason for your lack of knowledge, for this lack of historical record, related to why you are now called the Forgotten Ones?”

She shook her head, wisps of translucent hair dancing across her forehead, and again did not answer. Touma held her unyielding glare a moment longer than necessary before continuing.

“Very well. Second.” Again his finger travelled across each piece in turn. “Hromagh. V’dralla. Khal’jaren. Jomil. Y’edda.”

His tone turned questioning.

“Draconus?”

Again Pode only shook her head, refusing any further answer. Perhaps she truly did not know, or perhaps she laboured under a geas compelling her not to speak of the matter. More likely she refused to feed him further answers without recompense. Touma had assumed that Pode, Mistress of Curses, had laid the curse of the Forgotten. Now, he could not be sure at all.

“Third. The favour of the deities was once necessary to access the Tap, and even now proves the easiest path to access its remains. The feats of Wizard Blueraven prove this, as do the legends of High Bard Golan at the Leaguer of Caradin. I would ask, then, what your aid to Golan entailed that you both gave him the power necessary to defeat Aesphestos and also sundered the Tap beyond repair. Did you simply turn him from the Star Pantheon to the Thayne? Or did you corrupt him altogether by some other means?”

He’d struck a nerve. Her countenance flared dark and angry, even as her features continued to age and wither before his eyes.

“Even of the learned so few see beyond us, the Forgotten Ones, as the great threat to Althanas,” she snarled. “Their fear drives them to their wretched gods, the Thayne and the Stars and the Ancients, with prayers for strength and for guidance. But of all deities power-blind and capricious, none are as power-blind and capricious as the great Thayne themselves. For millennia they have held the reins of the world, and the arrogance they have thus accrued far exceeds the aspirations of Aesphestos.

“Had we guided Golan to them they would have ensnared him as a plaything in their little games. They would have left Aesphestos to fester like a weeping sore upon their toy world. So we provided him instead with an enemy to unite them against. Zund, Nyvengaal, Denebriel, and I presented ourselves as the enemy of both Star and Thayne in the great struggle. We spurred those thrice-damned deities to grant him power, and thus made him our pawn. How Draconus bellowed when he learnt the truth! Aye the truth, and how we used Golan to sunder the Tap and to protect ourselves against their wrath.

“Perhaps you might argue that we deserved the backlash we thus incurred, and you would not be wrong. To the mortal cowering in his home we were the great villains of the age, and the Thayne their saviours. In truth, though, how different are we? Only in that they were overt in their victory, and we were not. You might remember that lesson, Serpent Tamer.”

“I might,” Touma agreed.

“Looking back upon those times, if anything the games of the Thayne were of greater consequence than ours. They sacrificed the last of their true rivals, the Star Pantheon, to buy time during the War of the Tap. One after another we slaughtered them, until only a handful still remain today. But, for you, it might be a good thing we did so. How do Xem’zund’s arts compare to those of Selana and her precious Wanderers in Starlight? They too would feed upon the departed souls of their own kind to fuel their magicks on the Firmament. They too would possess their comrades in battle only to leave them as empty husks of ash and singed cloth. And when they did not have enough of their own blood to offer as sacrifice...”

“You considered it important enough to deal with them, even if it meant playing along to the tune of the Thayne?”

“Perhaps,” Pode laughed without mirth. “When Denebriel went mad she tried to recreate the lost Stars as the Ethereal Sway, and walked the same paths of soul possession and sacrifice that they did. She ate all her abominations in her desperation to live, but her choir of discord filled her stomach only long enough for Rayse Valentino and Teric Barton to cut her down. It was, after all, but a lesser copy of the Truth. Remember that too, Serpent Tamer.”

She paused, regarding him with intent.

“Yet I digress. Your fourth question?”

“N’Thayn’sal, the Time of Ending, the Days of Torrent.”

“Ah. Of course. You did make sure to remind me what you fought against, when we met before in my Lindequalme.” The Red Witch sat back, as if Touma had finally approached the heart of the matter. Again her eyes turned cryptic and sad. “I can tell you only this. N’Thayn’sal is and is not the Cataclysm you seek to prevent. It is a chain of apocalypses, one after another, brought about by the Fallen to destroy the world as we know it. It is a series of dark portents, of quests doomed to end in vain, strewn in the path of a blighted raven fluttering broken-winged across the lands. It is a world where Raiaera falls to the bloody-eyed banner. Where Salvar tears itself apart in fanaticism and in madness. Where tides of darkness swallow Cathay whole, and thousands of war-boots trample the jungles of Dheathain, and Corone drowns beneath the waves of its strife. It is a world where gods die like leaves in the arctic wind. Where stars extinguish like candle-flames in a tsunami. Where the Disciples stalk the land, titans of wrath and destruction sowing seeds of destruction in their wake. Where the bones of Althanas’s greatest heroes moulder in rotten heaps, long since forgotten.

“It is a world almost as dangerous as the nightmare that you know may come.”

She sighed as his brow furrowed, as her words failed to convey the meaning that she sought.

“Unfortunately I no longer have a fraction of the power of all the Thayne combined, and cannot do for you what they did for the Wizard Blueraven. But perhaps, now that we are alone… yes. Perhaps I can provide a second perspective on what the daemon Natosatael showed you.”

Her palm opened in his face.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Breathe!

He lay on his back, paralysed beneath the dripping blood moon. All around him the chaos raged, the last desperate stand of mortal life against its uncaring, unfeeling aggressor.

Breathe, damn the Thayne!

He couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t feel his arms. But he could feel the wet cold spreading from his pulverised torso, as though some wayward titan had used him as a punching bag. How could he have been so stupid? Cornered and pummelled like some common beast? It made no sense. None at...

Breathe! It is not, can not be, your time to pass!

His eyes focused. Over him loomed a figure armoured in liquid silver, her torn wings as black as the starless night, her features flawless even in battered bloodied bruising. Silmeria’s tears glistened and spilled as he returned to the world of the living.

Praise...

A passing abomination split open her skull, splattering him with blood and brain and other unmentionable gore. His head pounded in empathetic pain. How it pounded.

This is not the world of N’Thaynsal.

“No,” he told the voice, the voice of himself from ages past.

This is not the world where everything that could have gone wrong, has. Not the world of Aesphestos reincarnated and enthroned upon the Citadel, not the world where Aurient forsakes the elven peoples in the Kilya Gorge. Not the world where a thousand other apocalypses wreak vengeance upon the fabric of reality.

“No,” Touma Kamikaji replied. “No, but still the Cataclysm occurs.”

He looked to the heavens, where black miasma ate away at the last of the stars from the eastern horizon. The word ‘extinguished’ did not convey the sudden violence of their death. One minute they lived. The next they died, wrenched from the heavens and flung into the fathomless void. The moon burnt in crimson fire that barely illuminated a second round object in the sky, stone-cold and frozen in time.

Is that...?

“The sun,” he told himself, gripping his sword with the last of his strength. He dared not look down at his own body, at the lifeblood that seeped from his stomach to the barren dirt below. He would die here tonight, of that he was sure. The only thing left to decide was how.

Staggering forth, he hurled himself once more at his shapeless foes. They danced in the hazy heat of a sky-high wall of flame behind him, laughing at one man’s attempt at a final stand for the one he loved. Forms of shadow and ash slipped from his grasp, and even when he landed a solid blow it only delayed their advance for a heartbeat or two. They killed as they fought – without emotion, without mercy. Their touch eroded the bodies of their foes, a necrotic rot that ate hungrily at steel and flesh alike.

The Fraternity?

Touma glanced to his right, at the pile of half-formed corpses dissolving into churned mud. A dark black eye accused him without words, and a muscular arm still gripped a jewelled battle-axe in defiant defeat. Half a broken black wing crowned the knoll upon which their foes had overwhelmed them.

The Chosen?

This time Touma looked left, downhill where the sheer magnitude of the defeat soon became clear. He spotted stray crimson scales from Akiyoshi’s armoured hide, tarnished beneath the flaming moon. The gilded shield of Glorfindel the Golden lay alongside the battered breastplate of Grandmaster Jehan Leitdorf. Nanashi’s flames flickered behind him one last time, before they too quenched with a terrible finality. A hundred shades and more swarmed the wandering scholar, blotting him from existence. The world plunged into darkness.

That just left two alive on Althanas, aside from he.

Aurora held her ground to the last. They showed her no quarter.

Then they cornered and butchered Kayu before his eyes, and he could do nothing but watch.

Really. What in the name of all that I’ve fought for am I doing?

“After all, how often is it that one gets to know the circumstances of one’s death?” Touma Kamikaji asked as the shadows rushed to claim him.

How many times do you remember? the voice of his distant past answered.

Then he thrust his sword into his own throat.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

He had experienced such illusions before, his first at the tender age of eight. He had long since learned not to flinch at the nightmare of his own death. But his stoic demeanour belied the pale fear as the blood drained from his face, the sweat on his palms as they fought not to ball into tight fists.

Even if he did not set a foot wrong in preventing N’Thaynsal, the Cataclysm might still snuff out a billion lives in a heartbeat.

So what could he do?

Would he still watch the world burn?

“And now I must ask you this in turn, Touma Kamikaji. One apocalypse or a thousand. Which would you choose? Which will you bring?”

His attention returned to the shards of Pode’s mirror, to his Fraternity as they fought to protect him against the Raiaeran incursion. For now Silmeria and Ginuvo had the advantage of the higher ground, but the Dirgedancers would soon find a way around that. If they disrupted Angelus and Hiroyuki, he would no longer have a means of severing Pode’s remnant power from her spiritual avatar. She would obliterate him in a heartbeat, and choose to die at the hands of the elves instead.

So would he retreat, now before the tides turned?

Would he abandon the fate of the world for the sake of the elves and their petty vengeance upon Pode?

And yet still they fight.

He watched as Ginuvo lobbed rubble from the fallen chimerosphynxes at the wall of shields advancing up the stairs of Pode’s ziggurat. He watched as Silmeria winged low across the surrounding marshland, occupying the elven archers in a deadly dance of shaft and spell. He watched as Angelus and Hiroyuki continued to channel their efforts into maintaining the null field, as Phillipe stood his ground at the templum doors with one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier, as Leon reclined against the gateway arch and strung his bow in preparation for battle.

Why did they follow him? Why did Silmeria care? Why was Phillipe so loyal? Why had Leon chosen him over the flames of Ninedrakes? Why did Ginuvo seek death in his name? Why did Angelus and Hiroyuki set aside their mutual hatred to cooperate for his sake?

He watched them fight their respective wars, searing their efforts into his mind like a brand upon the flesh of a slave. He knew the answer was simple, one that he had given Pode only moments before. He led them, and they followed. The question was not whether he would fight. The question was how.

He turned back to Pode, alone and aged and holed up against the world. He thought of what she had lost, in particular after the Sundering of the Tap and her rift with Xem’zund. He thought of how some of his contemporaries, even now, wandered in self-imposed exile and failed to fight the approaching darkness.

His hands gripped the hilt of his blade.

“As the Wizard Blueraven once said, I will not compromise. I will allow no apocalypse, no N’Thaynsal, no Cataclysm, to take from me the world that is rightfully mine.”

Pode laughed from toothless gums. Her voice whispered through her sanctum, a breath of wind stirring the long-forgotten dust.

“Do be careful, Touma, when you declare your intent so. Words have power, and such power reaches the ears of those who would seek to twist it to their own means, those not so different from yourself. In uttering those words the Wizard Blueraven himself was forever bound to the will of the Thayne. You know that your patron is one of few that might still challenge them, and this gives you confidence. But remember that the Angel of the North plays this game too, and the Elder under Stone, and those of the Star Pantheon who still cling to existence.

“The world is set to fall again into chaos. It awaits a new breed of conquerors, a new generation of Forgotten Ones. Will you be one of their number, Touma Kamikaji?”

Her bony fingers shook as she held out the Black Queen.

“Will you defy the will of the gods?”

Touma took it from her without hesitation.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

The elven onslaught forced the eclipse overhead into retreat, exposing wan sunlight to the world once more. In the mirrors his Fraternity had broken the first Raiaeran charge. But Silmeria sported charred grazes from arrows that had speared past too close for comfort, and Ginuvo had run out of ancient debris to hurl at his attackers. Touma knew that he could delay no longer.

“I studied your exploits, Pode, and those of your compatriots, in great depth. I sought to learn from your mistakes, swearing never to fall into the same traps. I thank you for your instruction, even at this time of dire need.”

He inclined his upper body, just so, as he addressed the Forgotten One for the last time. With deliberate, ominous grace he rose to his feet, towering over the shrunken witch. She made no move to oppose him.

“Aesphestos the Starkiller died in the pyre of his pride. Saint Denebriel perished in the throes of her madness. Xem’zund, Dread Necromancer, battered himself against his cage of love and hate until naught but a wispy shadow.”

A wisp of humour creased Pode’s lips. “And I?”

“Your sins are lethargy and sloth, Pode. You have power, but you lack purpose. Perhaps it was Xem’zund’s blade in your back that brought this upon you, I do not know. It may have been Aesphestos’s death, or Denebriel’s descent into insanity. Likely it was something before that still: forever you have wandered, and observed, and mentored, and collected. But never have you left your mark upon the land, save the one time that, in your own words, it went horribly wrong. And yet, given that I stand before you now, horribly right.”

Darksteel whispered upon lacquered ebony as it emerged into azure flame. If he so wanted, Touma could have taken Pode’s head from her shoulders in a single blinding stroke. But the ceremony of the moment denied him such discourteous behaviour, and he knew that she appreciated the ritual as well.

“Earlier in the Lindequalme, when you tried to disillusion me, you accused me of guilt. Guilt that I had failed to save everybody that had crossed my path, guilt that thousands had died in my wake. I level that same accusation at you, Pode. At first you cursed the Red Forest to save Xem’zund, but when that failed you continued to curse it, all the better to keep your distance from the world. And only now, now that your friends have perished and your enemies have emerged victorious, only now do you lay down that burden.”

She smiled at the accusation, a soft and sad smile. Her last words emerged as a croak from parched, shrivelled throat.

“Did you know, Touma Kamikaji, that I cursed the Flames of Hyperion when he wandered northwards through my land? I cursed him never to know when to give up. You, of all people, would know how cruel that was.”

Indeed Touma did, given Nanashi’s blind determination to walk the path of selfless sacrifice. Not that Pode’s curse would have done anything but enhance a curse that already existed. Red Witch or not, the younger man would still have found himself in the mid-winter wastes of Berevar, doomed to die a thousand deaths of exposure and cold.

“Now I curse you, the Whispers of Abyssion, always to know, and not always to be able to do anything with that knowledge. Perhaps, thus, you can walk your path without fear. After all it is my curse to blame for your failures, not your own mortal limitations.”

Touma bowed again, and for once it was a sincere and grateful bow. Pode, the last of the known Forgotten, deserved nothing less than his full respect.

“We will Remember those who were Forgotten,” he said.

Then he struck her head from her body.

Crimson mists sighed as her headless torso slumped to the floor. It lingered there for only a moment longer before the tethers binding it to the Firmament began to fade. The last remnants of her spiritual energy dissipated into nothing.

The last he saw of her features was a peaceful smile.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Don’t preach to me of ‘debt’ and ‘sacrifice’, daemon.

Have you ever seen your life poised on the edge of a precipice, peering into the depths of an infinite abyss?

I have.

Have you ever dashed your hopes and dreams against the unyielding rock of reality, and tried to piece them back together again as they swim through your open fingers?

I have.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, tears pouring down your face as you scream her name?

I have.

I spit on your ‘promises’. I spit on your ‘deals’. I spit on all of your ‘traditions’.

This is my path to walk.

My world to save.

Do you have it in you to follow me?


Touma Kamikaji, aged 13
The Night of Nefarious Flame
Inscribed in blood on the Academy gates


***

“It is done?” the daemon asked from nowhere. Coruscant light gleamed in the congealed plaque of its rows of serrated fangs. The many leathery folds of its ancient face bathed in the crimson of the dying mana vortex. Four serpent-like eyes watched as Pode’s gift stabilised the extraplanar prison containing the Disciple of the Dark Goddess. It inhaled a lungful of cinnamon and smiled to itself, strangely pleased.

“It is done,” Touma Kamikaji replied from atop the ruined central spire of the Temple of Sublime Tranquillity. Somewhere in the heavens above the Young Star Selana snarled, that he would defile her sanctum so not once, but for the second time. He fingered the mask liberated from the depths of Pode's templum, now tethered at his waist to his belt, and laughed inside at her powerless fury.

The last of the liquid crimson drained from the Black Queen as he spoke, once more rendering it a lifeless piece of crafted glass. Its hair no longer gleamed a vibrant red, nor its eyes the same emerald that had pierced his soul at this very spot. A pair of cracks worked across its smooth features, jagged edges of destruction that soon sundered the piece into a myriad obsidian shards. Even these dissipated as fine ash into the steady westerly, blowing into the mourning dawn from Twilit Peaks to Roiling Sea.

“And so fades the last of Pode, the Mistress of Curses, the Crimson Witch.” Natosatael din’Pholoris might have sighed, if not entranced by the shimmering spiral that anchored the Disciple’s prison to the Lindequalme. “She was right, you know. I would have enjoyed witnessing her demise.”

“Of course,” Touma nodded. “And then you would have eviscerated me for demanding your presence at such a trivial matter. Pode was already dead. The High Bards and their peons saw to that. I merely dealt with the last of her lingering regret and guilt.”

“And granted her a measure of redemption.” Natosatael bared its fangs. “You are right. I would have killed you on the spot if you had invited me there.”

Despite the chill racing down his spine, Touma’s eyes never wavered beneath Natosatael’s sibilant threat. Observing for a moment longer to ensure that the vortex remained stable, he turned to face his master and slave in practiced, hawkish nonchalance.

“You had more important things to attend to.” He paused, then asked, “How long?”

“Five years,” the daemon guessed without hesitation. It scratched one of its flabby chins in a contemplative mannerism acquired from centuries of deceiving the lesser mortal races. Muscular, hooved legs folded beneath its bronzed torso as it floated a hundred metres from the ground. “Three if the Council makes good on their pledge to continue the cleansing.”

Already the bloodoaks at the base of the vortex withered, faded and forlorn, sapped of the crimson colouration that gave them their name. Within weeks the leeching would spread to the elf camps to the north; within months, it would consume the whole Lindequalme. In three years, then, the bards would have restored their precious Belegwain i Beleg. And apocalyptic devastation would once again roam the heart of their nation.

“Do you not fear that they might release the Benevolent before that time?” As ever, Natosatael read Touma’s thoughts with the ease with which he might have skinned a child. The mortal shook his shaggy mop of dirty brown hair, letting unwashed unkempt locks stream in the wind.

“Blinded they may be by their own vanity and glory,” he said, “but stupid they are not. The Star Pantheon will not allow them. Too much lies at stake.”

A violent thunderclap echoed through the cloudless skies, as if furious that a mere mortal - and a lowly edan at that - would presume to impose upon the gods. Neither Touma nor Natosatael paid it any head. The elven deities had little choice in the matter if they wished to protect their people. The fading relics of a dying race concerned them not.

“In which case,” the daemon purred, “you have saved Raiaera, for now.”

It did not mention the dire straits in which the nation still found itself: civil war and schism, remnant undead hordes, corrupting plagues. Neither did it mention the sacrifice of the world’s foremost arcane practitioner to buy them those three paltry years. If Raiaera did not overcome the many obstacles upon its path to stability and strength, then little would save Althanas. No doubt Touma would manoeuvre the Fraternity into aiding the elves, for a united and glorious Raiaera would form the best bulwark against the dark times to come.

In the meantime, though, the world needed the Serpent Tamer elsewhere.

“Where next?”

Touma Kamikaji turned into the breeze, lowering his left hand to the scabbard at his hip and Pode’s mask of sorrow that dangled there. Light linen robs flapped about his sandaled feet as he indicated the mountains in the distance.

“Alerar.”

All about him the crimson curse continued to drain from the Lindequalme, spilling to the parched earth like arboreal tears. But his lip only curled, halfway up his gaunt right cheek in curious triumph.

For when bloodoaks weep, serpents smile.

[Whispers of Abyssion]

Five years ago, I had the honour of taking charge of the final chapter of the Raiaeran Featured Quest, the Corpse War. I brought an end to the Spring of Retribution Dawning (http://www.althanas.com/world/forumdisplay.php?261-Retribution-Dawning) with a climactic battle against the Forgotten One Xem’zund, which gave rise to the legendary Dawnbringers (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20244-MQ-Dawnbringers). In doing so, however, I somewhat fumbled the Dread Necromancer’s characterisation. It took Caden Law, in his JC-awarded story The Red Requiem in Cresting Summer (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20799-The-Red-Requiem-in-Cresting-Summer), to do him justice. I’ve felt somewhat guilty ever since.

This is one step towards assuaging that guilt.

We will Remember those who were Forgotten.

[Philomel]

Title of Thread: When Serpents Smile (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?29286-When-Serpents-Smile)
Judgement Type: Workshop Thread
Participant: Whispers of Abyssion

Rewards (based on 17 posts as the last was OOC):

Whispers of Abyssion (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?15607-Whispers-of-Abyssion)receives:
2065 EXP
221 GP

[Hysteria]

GP and EXP added!