I Nocturne: Flame Blossoming Like Balsam Petals

[Wings of Endymion]

“Jump!”

Desperate for an alternative, Kayu cast her senses about her. To her right the trail stretched towards the Kalev Highlands. Given two desolate days of trudging through treacherous snowdrifts, it would take her back to the ruined temple where Touma had betrayed her and Tsuru had saved her life. To her left it led downwards and southwards to lands less wild if no less hostile, but these lay a week distant. Above her, blotting out the wan sky like billowing cloud, an avalanche of churning white cascaded downwards. In moments it would consume the trail for leagues in both directions, and Kayu along with it.

Her only means of escape lay behind her. A precipice, concealing a sheer drop to the blanket of fine mist far below, and the deathbed of jagged scree that doubtless lay beyond.

“Jump!” Auntie Tsuru barked again. The ancient crone proceeded to heed the command, laden wicker backpack and all.

Kayu’s heart pounded in her chest. Her breath steamed before her wide eyes. Her mind froze, as white as the sheets of ice encasing the rock crags. The thunder from above reached her ears, heralding her imminent doom. To hesitate was to die.

She turned, and she jumped.

Her legs left solid ground. Her stomach leapt into her mouth. Acrid bile rose to the back of her throat. Panic gripped at her heart like a vice of cold iron. She had one instant to exult in the pure, unfiltered fear pumping through her veins. Then gravity took hold.

She fell.

Frigid air tore at her face and her hair, ripping the scream from the depths of her lungs. Her robes swelled in her wake like the sails of an Alerian airship, her fingers taut in a death grip upon her staff. She couldn’t even hear her own thoughts, so loud did the wind howl in her ears.

In the span of a heartbeat she plummeted into the sea of mist, leaving the avalanche far behind her. Instead of burial by tonnes of crushing snow, she had chosen to dash herself against an unseen mountainside that might impact her at any moment. Fear flushed anew throughout her limbs, not as sharp as before but pounding and paralytic. Her lips tried to work themselves into the semblance of an incantation - any incantation - but nothing she knew would help her now.

She braced for the worst.

Something warm and immaterial arrested her fall. Never once disturbing the curtains of obfuscating cloud, it coiled around her like the living incarnation of a spring zephyr. She felt her downwards momentum slow, then stall. Her stomach returned to its usual location somewhere in her belly, and at last she could savour the sweet adrenaline racing through her blood. The keen winter chill, honed to the finest of edges by the altitude at which they travelled, seeped from her travel-weary bones. Almost as if the cloud itself had taken pity on her plight, and had welcomed her into its warm and muffled bosom. Almost as if...

“Is now a good time for a first lesson then?” Tsuru’s harsh cackle echoed from all around her, distorted by the fog and by the numbness still receding from her ears. Kayu fought to regain control over her concentration. If only the capricious goodwill of her new mistress lay between her beating heart and the cold rock below, then she had better pay close heed. “Spirits are?”

She breathed.

“Spirits are the imprints of a mortal’s soul on the Anti-Firmament,” she recited from rote. As she spoke, she cast her gaze about her, once again seeking purchase on her surroundings. The clouds, so calming only moments ago, now pressed in upon her clammy and claustrophobic. “The greater the mortal’s deeds in the Firmament, the stronger the imprint their soul leaves behind when it passes beneath Yama’s gaze through the Gate of Death.”

Inhaling of the cloying humidity, she reached tentatively upwards in the same desperate instinct that helped drowning swimmers kick for the surface. To her surprise the warm wind about her person responded to the touch of her mind. Gentle at first, then picking up speed, it carried her through the veil of blinding grey. With a small cry and an upraised sleeve, she shielded her face against the needle-sharp droplets of cold water.

“And you are?”

Now Tsuru’s voice came from behind her and to her left, as though it kept pace with her fear-fuelled flight. Slow down, slow down, she tried to will herself, but the swelling panic refused to relinquish its grip upon her throat. The world rushed past at breakneck speed, almost leaving her body behind in its rush to carry her to freedom. The clouds solidified behind the dirty cotton across her face, fighting to stop her from passing.

And then she burst free of their clutches, and the wan sun once more beat down upon her ragged shoulders. The winds that carried her came to a halt as abrupt as her emergence. Her head whipped forward with arrested momentum, rattling her mind within the confines of her skull.

“I am a spiritweaver,” she gasped, once again clinging to the words of truth. Perhaps they could somehow anchor her to reality as the ground so far below could not. “I draw upon power incarnate, the chi of myself and those who ally with me.”

From the corner of her eye, where the mists unravelled and dissipated far below, Kayu caught sight of patches of brown and green. How much altitude had they lost from where they had jumped from the trail? How far south had they travelled already?

The beat of a hundred war drums sounded in her head. In search of answers, facts, anything that her mind could latch upon to steady itself, she turned back towards the Highlands from where she had come. But before she could do more than gape at the roiling banks of cloud that obscured her sight in every direction, a shadow fell over her from behind.

“Straight from the scrolls?” Tsuru laughed, her face - shrivelled like a dried plum pickle - leaning in from above and breathing stale fish into Kayu’s. “The words of your teachers?”

A flick of her bony wrist, and the winds supporting Kayu’s weight gave way. Mouth agape in a breathless soundless scream, at least this time the young spiritweaver remembered to project a shaped barrier in front of her face to deflect the water droplets. It would do her little good when she hit the ground, but then the warm embrace caught her once more to speed her on her way.

Now and again she caught wind of Tsuru’s hearty cackles from behind. She swore on all kami large and small that one day she would repay the favour. One day, perhaps, when she didn’t cling to the guiding winds with all her incarnate might.

Closer and closer they edged to the ground, and further and further south. At length they broke free of the malevolent shadow of the Kalev Highlands and the cloying clammy clouds. A barren tundra of wintry white spread out beneath them, broken only by the occasional copse of evergreen or cluster of jagged grey. She could no longer make out the trail amid the undulating drifts, though now and again a glistening ribbon of water wound its way from foothill to plains. Long plumes of chimney smoke, bowing before the winter sky, soon made their destination clear.

True to her thoughts, the winds brought them to a poised halt above a roof of dirty thatch. The longest of a cluster of such buildings, it nestled alongside its brethren at the base of a rocky knoll. Upon the crest of the hill, dominating the village below, stood a mausoleum of seamless marble construction. Quite unlike the granite churches of the Sway, or the temple of ancient sandstone buried in the Highlands, or even the wooden pagodas of her homeland, it reminded her of the Ivory Spire at Tor Elythis where Archmage Ecthelion plotted Raiaera’s rebirth.

Who had built such a magnificent memorial, here in the middle of nowhere? For whom had they bequeathed such honour, such magnificence? The entire knoll seemed to glimmer in her eyes with suppressed incarnate energy, as though all the spirits from leagues distant gathered here to pay their respects. It hurt her just to gaze upon it, and not only from the pure white snow that reflected what wan wintry light filtered through the overcast heavens above.

But before Kayu could give voice to her questions, before she could even catch her breath to calm her thundering heart, Tsuru leant in close once more.

“You call yourself a spiritweaver,” the crone whispered, her voice like dry rice husks rubbing against the grindstone. The adrenaline fled from Kayu’s veins, and in its place raced cold chill. “And yet you can call upon not one ally to champion your cause?”

Tsuru’s barb bit deeper than the boreal winds that savaged these distant fringes of civilisation, these wild wastes where Salvar met Berevar.

She flicked her wrist again, and sent Kayu crashing through the roof into the inn below.

[Wings of Endymion]

“Ow...”

Her forearm, slender and pale with chill, soon broke free of the pile of splinters, broken boards, and dirty thatch. Coughing and wheezing to feed her strained lungs with fresh oxygen, her struggles only stirred up a further cloud of grimy dust. Flecks of ashen snow spilled upon her tongue, the last step on their long journey through the open roof from the grey-bellied clouds beyond. She’d long forgotten the stench of human civilisation. Here it stank, putrid and rank compared even to the crowded cities of her far-eastern homeland. Already she regretted her decision to return.

Still on her back, she probed her body for injuries or worse. Somehow her legs had survived the fall intact, as had the staff in her right hand. Her pride had taken more of a beating, but she supposed that she could survive that. Aside from a nasty scrape on her ankle where a splinter had left its mark, she had nothing to complain about. As for the big bruise that would make sitting down a pain for the next week or so...

A quick murmur of power stemmed the blood from her wound. Then, letting loose another unladylike groan, she found her feet with ginger movements. Drenched from head to toe by her journey through cloud and mist, the breeze that stirred her layered robes tickled a sneeze from her lungs. A second cloud of dust danced to the cackle of a fitful fire, dissipating in the chill before settling on the rushes at her feet. A congealed bowl of blood stew sat abandoned on the table next to the hearth, the aroma of greasy beef upsetting the delicate balance of her stomach. Bloodshot eyes stared from a grimy looking glass mounted on the wall. Only after a moment’s consideration did she realise they belonged to her.

And only then did she notice the prior occupants of the room, gaping at her turned back in bewildered amusement.

One of them, the elf in the middle, she recognised with a start. She whirled on her heels, her staff lowering into a guard stance. Long hair darker than a wraith’s shadow, narrowed eyes of tarnished amethyst, features sculpted from marble except for their icy sneer. Not for all the kami in Nippon could she mistake him for anybody else.

“Angelus?”

The elf exchanged knowing glances with the naked women nestled in the crook of each arm. One had shoulder-length hair the colour of dirty straw. The other’s reached to her waist and smouldered like burning amber in the firelight. Both had eyes of pallid teal and the stocky heavyset build of the Salvic peasantry. Both wore enough paint over their faces to mask the long years they had worked this harsh, unforgiving land. Angelus, arms wrapped around them as though they belonged to him, seemed not to mind.

Kayu shook her head to clear away the cobwebs, her brow furrowing as it tried to make sense of the situation. Why would the foremost of the infamous Coven of Six, the necromantic retinue of the Death Lord Maeril Thyrrian, lie in a bed in a Skavian inn of no importance whatsoever, cavorting with tavern ladies as though he had not a care in the world? Could she have mistaken him for somebody else after all...?

“I am so pleased that you could join us tonight, Kayu Kanamai,” he nodded, dispelling that fanciful illusion like a sacseed on the wind. His trophies tittered and giggled in nervous sycophancy, emboldened by their client’s demeanour. Kayu supposed she could thank them at least that the blankets still covered their waists. “Although you might have seen fit to inform me in advance of your arrival? I could have dressed in something extravagant, to match your dramatic entrance...”

Her staff scythed the air with a deafening snap.

“Dispense with the mockery and the insincere pleasantries, Angelus Eltharion, if you please.”

During the Corpse War, they had sat at opposite ends of Maeril’s council. But the wedge between her and the Death Lord’s other advisors - Angelus, Ar’zhanekkar, Uysarji the Executioner - had never allowed her to act as anything more than a moderating influence. Their conflict had arisen due to her influence over the powerful daemon prince Natosatael, but few knew that in fact she had travelled at the time as its prisoner and hostage. Angelus had known, and had fought harder than most to keep an eye on her on his master’s behalf.

“Are you here on his command, or...” Again she shook her head, feeling the cold whip her cheeks. Angelus would never give her a straight answer to a direct question like that. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“It rarely does,” he agreed with an amiable smirk, although she thought she sensed the disappointment that occluded his high brow. A twist of his wrist slipped a handful of gold coins from the shadows between his fingers. He jingled them in musical counterpoint to his words, dropping them in the waiting palms of his ladies. “Run along now, my dears, and enjoy your night off. I find myself thirsting instead for the company of an old friend.”

His amethyst gaze lingered on their ample bosoms as they beat a retreat, their gay laughter tinged with relief. Kayu’s cheeks coloured as she too edged towards the open door. But before she could reach it, Angelus flexed his arcane muscles with a tendril of shadowy power, and slammed it shut in her face.

“I want nothing to do with you,” she snarled, fighting to keep her voice level and under control. She didn’t want to provoke him, either.

Angelus laughed, a discordant, almost garrulous sound. “Is that how you would treat your old friend?”

Composing his features in an expression that might have translated as vaguely hurt, he rose from his bed in full naked glory. Kayu hardened her stance, her staff tracking his movements, the heat in her face contrasting with the chill in her fingertips. Her breaths came shallow and fast as the adrenaline drained from her body. Along with exhaustion came realisation. Her hair lay limp on her brow, crying dew down the contours of her face. Her sodden clothes hampered her every movement. Unprepared and off balance, she could not fight Angelus now and hope for victory. Shivering, she fought to bottle the chill - unrelated to the Salvic cold - that raced down the nape of her neck.

“Is that how you greet one who always took your side, even when you cavorted with daemons and death knights?” Angelus continued to speak as though he did not notice her discomfort, although she knew he calculated every word to hurt her the most. “Do you treat all your friends and allies with such disdain?”

Unbidden thoughts of Touma raced through Kayu’s mind, as dark as the shadows that fell from the eaves to clothe Angelus in black robes. From the corner of her eye she caught an unnatural glimmer in the mirror, but it disappeared almost as soon as she thought she saw it. Her expression stormed over.

“Only when they save me, then use me, betray me, discard me.” Still fighting to control her anger, she inched back towards the hole in the roof that she had created upon entering. Given the angle of the roof, she might be able to climb out of it of her own accord. “Only when I don’t know what they’re plotting, but when I do know that...”

Of course, Tsuru chose that particular moment to jump down from the roof and cut her off mid-sentence.

“Don’t mind her, eh?” Hopping from foot to foot in spry caper, she then leaned forward to balance the heavy load on her back. The serrated rasp of her tongue dripped honey and venom in the same voice. “She only just realised she’s spent her life running away from old friends like you. The last one went to a lot of trouble to betray her in the middle of nowhere. She’s yet to get over it, eh?”

“Don’t bring him into this,” Kayu snapped, smouldering. Angelus smirked again beneath his breath, murmuring something about promoting pawns. But she paid attention neither to his sarcasm nor to the innocent expression that Tsuru wore. “Now, I would very much like to...”

A crescent axe head sundered the heavy oaken door, sending splinters of cold-hardened wood flying towards the opposite wall. Through the hole peered eyes that burnt with icy flame. They settled upon Kayu as a reminder of a promise of eternal vengeance, then withdrew.

And the cold iron bardiche struck again.

[Wings of Endymion]

Sped onward by the keen reflexes of his people, Angelus’s magic spiralled forth to bolster the battered wood and broken hinges. The third blow of the bardiche, instead of biting deep, rebounded from the coalescent shadow with only a dull thud.

But Kayu froze, in recognition of those cold dead eyes. When she had last met them, the ancient weapon they wielded had given her the choice of either the hangman’s noose or the torture rack. What cause had Kratos, Maeril Thyrrian’s wight-captain and executioner, to travel this far north? What urgent errand brought him so far from Trenyce where his master held court? And why did he assault Angelus, almost as if...

Her head snapped towards the elf, in time to witness him sliding an ornate casket from a nearby drawer into the depths of his shadowy robes. She caught only the briefest glimpse of gilded skulls and ornate blood-tear motifs.

“When did you leave Maeril’s service?” Her words, low and urgent, hissed beneath the renewed pounding of axe-blade on reinforced wood. Similar blows resounded from the walls to either side of the door, but Angelus had preempted their change in tactics, and only dull thuds echoed through the room. The fire roared in fortified fury in the hearth, staining the chill with the stench of ash and soot.

Angelus’s amethyst eyes flashed, and his mouth opened to utter a flippant retort. But with visible effort he arrested himself mid-syllable, as if recognising that honesty could do him no further harm. He wavered, caught in thought.

Once again the ice blue eyes peered through the sundered wood, this time accompanied by a growl of susurrant anger as they flicked between the occupants of the room. Without thinking, Kayu plucked the blood stew from the table alongside her and tossed it. The poorly-fired clay bowl rebounded to the floor at her feet. But beyond the door, an armoured wight staggered backwards with an eerie shriek of surprise and discomfort.

In the brief silence that followed, raised voices from below questioned the cacophony in florid and drunken slurs. The stomp of booted feet told her that they had only moments before the tavernkeeper caught Kratos in the act, and lost his life for his curiosity.

In that brief moment of silence, Angelus came to a decision.

“Ever since Pode fell in the south,” he spat, “leaving my rotten kin to concentrate their efforts on Trenyce. I do not keep faith in losing propositions, you see.”

“What did you just hide away in the folds of your robes?” Kayu pressed, desperate for answers.

Angelus smirked, triumphant despite the circumstances. “A parting gift, one might say. A true phylactery of Maeril Thyrrian.”

Maeril’s phylactery! A vessel in which the Death Lord had bound a part of his soul! No wonder Kratos wanted it back at any means necessary! But why had Angelus stolen it and fled this far north? What use did he have for it in these untamed wilds?

He read her thoughts, and deigned to answer the question that creased her brow.

“The shrine that overlooks this village?” He tossed his head in its vague direction, his silky jet-black locks swirling among motes of soot and snow. “It venerates the life and death of one of the heroes of my people during the Great War of Magic, what you humans call the War of the Tap. Even you must have sensed the residual spiritual energy.”

His hollow stare bore into Kayu’s face for a fraction of an eternity. Caught like a doe in the hunter’s sights, she froze again, unable to read beyond the mask of his enigmatic porcelain features.

Then together they shuddered as further splinters flew through the room, a well-struck blow widening the hole in the door. Even with Angelus’s magic reinforcing the heavy oak boarding and sturdy iron hinges, if the wights had found the room to swing more than one axe they might have only moments before the undead warriors broke through.

Tiring of the game, Angelus pushed past her in a whisper of foetid shadow. Beyond the elf, Tsuru’s sagely eyes regarded her in inscrutable solemnity. Another blow, and the door quaked on its last breaths.

She couldn’t allow Kratos to return the phylactery to Maeril. Despite her differences with the elves of Raiaera, they had fought long and hard to rid their lands of the undead menace. To reinforce Maeril’s hold over Trenyce would undermine everything she had fought for in restraining the worst of the Death Lord’s excesses.

Equally, she couldn’t allow Angelus to get away with whatever he intended at the shrine on the knoll. Who knew how he would use the evil stored within the phylactery? It would be an easy matter to unleash further woe on this country, itself recovering from the grips of a disastrous civil war. She did not trust the shadowmage any more than she could defeat him in single combat.

But could she herself harness the shrine to purify the evil artefact? In principle she knew how to prepare and progress such a ritual. The strength of the incarnate energy at the shrine might allow her to overcome the defences imbued in the phylactery. She needed only time, and a plan, and the means to distract Angelus so that he did not discern what she had in store...

“I’m coming with you.”

The words left her mouth almost before she finished her line of thought. Angelus snapped around to regard her, his expression blank but his eyes calculating. Tsuru just nodded, reaching inside her sleeves to retrieve something from their depths. A moment later she tossed it in Kayu’s direction, and the young woman snagged it from the air with a deft hand. Twelve pale jade magatama gleamed at her on an ornamental moon-silver bracelet.

“A good luck charm for you,” the old woman cackled, lowering herself cross-legged to the floor. “Back in my day I did not have to rely on such petty trinkets, but what can you do? Go then, eh?”

A jerk of her wizened head indicated the splintering door.

“I can keep their attention for a few moments, then make my own escape. Do not worry about me, eh?”

Kayu hesitated, then nodded back, snapping the bracelet around the wrist of her left arm. Angelus just shrugged, long bored of the charade. Tendrils of shadow lifted him through the hole in the wall that the young woman had created, then lowered him in serene grace towards the ground below.

Kayu tossed her staff after him and followed, seeking out more conventional handholds as she too made good her escape.

[Wings of Endymion]

Few walked the muddy streets, despite the light that yet remained to the early evening hour. Smoke rose in lazy spirals from daub and wattle chimneys, painting dusky streaks upon the blushing heavens. But the doors to the homes stayed sternly shut, the windows locked and barred. Fell winds danced in fitful fancy through fallow cabbage patches, stirring the stench of unwashed bodies and human manure. On the northern horizon the Kalev Highlands reared, an impenetrable wall of rock and snow. This far into the wild, the setting sun heralded parades of night horrors that ventured forth from the foothills in search of easy prey. In such times the denizens of these lands huddled around their hearths, hiding from the darkness.

Such it was that only a handful of stray wanderers watched them descend from the hole in the inn’s roof. One, a young girl dressed in rags and streaked with grime, stared up at them with mouth agape. A shrivelled pippin fruit fell from her nerveless fingers, landing in the mud-churned snow at her feet with a suppurating plop.

Kayu bent down to retrieve her staff from the imprint it had made in the ground, and in the same motion knelt before the toddler’s bright blue eyes.

“Hello there. What’s your name?”

Angelus had already stalked away down the path, acknowledging neither spiritweaver nor child. Palpable fear swelled about him like a cresting wave. Frantic cries echoed from the nearest house, the voice of a young woman frozen in a doorway only half ajar.

“Marta! Marta!”

“Marta,” Kayu smiled, reaching out to remove a stray twig from the toddler’s curly golden tresses. “Go inside, Marta, and tell your mother to lock the door. Stay safe.”

Further fright surged through the young girl’s eyes. Like a fawn freed from a basilisk’s hypnosis, she turned and fled as fast as her little legs would take her.

Kayu exhaled her breath in a small steamy sigh, stretching her own legs to their full length and trying not to breathe of the muck that coated her weapon. Her bruised backside complained, but she could just about tolerate its insubordination. Breaking out into a fast trot, she made to catch up with the elf before he left her behind. His robes barely stirred as he made his way through the mud and the snow, and his feet left little imprint in the path behind him. All fled from his path at this overt display of unsanctioned power.

“The wretches of this backward land are truly as pathetic as they come, are they not?” he remarked to nobody in particular. Amethyst eyes tracked one of their number, a burly lumberjack thrice his size tripping in his haste to put solid wood between them.

Matching his pace, Kayu closed her eyes and attuned herself to the land around her. The kaleidoscope of colours behind her closed eyelids soon settled in swift order. As always, the sensation reminded her of the dusting of snow in those rare, imported, dwarf-crafted globes that she could only afford to gaze at as a child.

“A village this small doesn’t even have an aeromancer of its own,” she murmured in slow realisation, assembling the tale of the land as its spirits whispered to her in a torrent of puzzle pieces. “Every now and again one’s supposed to visit and shore up the storm defences, but none have come since the civil war broke out in the south. If not for the protection of the shrine and the knoll... no wonder they harbour such distrust for those who wield magic.”

Angelus snorted, as if asking again why he should care for their circumstances. Nor did he slacken his pace, and once again Kayu had to break into a trot to keep up. If he intended to discomfort her, though, he would have to try harder. She had always been a keen runner.

“Would you excuse their ignorance?” he asked, his voice as harsh as the winter wind and just as biting. Kayu shivered as it summoned the cold through her sodden robes. Sheltering in the lee of his gaunt form, she fought a losing battle to rub warmth into her extremities while continuing her run.

“I would try to understand it,” she replied. “Their culture is hostile to magic because they have not known the mage who would aid them rather than harm or oppress them -”

“- and they would rather cut your throat and burn you at the stake than give you the chance,” Angelus finished. “Or were you so successful in giving your ‘aid’, even in your homeland?”

The barb stabbed home. She had many reasons for leaving Nippon under the protection of Touma and Natosatael, but the fact that her official position as court diviner meant she could not use her powers for the good of the common folk ranked first and foremost. A well of familiar disappointment and guilt clenched at the base of her stomach. Bitter bile rose to the back of her throat, almost nostalgic in the waves of frustration it incited.

“Does that mean that I should not try?” she whispered to herself, as she had done before when confronted with the question. But Angelus’s keen hearing did not let her get away with such vague resolve.

“Now where have I heard that before, I wonder?” At the periphery of the village, where the trail split in two under the overcast skies, he rounded on her like a carnivore cornering its prey. “Enlighten me. Are you always so quick to appropriate the failings of your ‘old friends’?”

Thoughts of Touma again sprung unbidden through Kayu’s mind, thoughts of the life he must have led after the Night of Nefarious Flame. She could not even begin to imagine the guilt and sorrow he had shouldered after the sacrifice made that day. But not once had he wavered or wandered from his path. Even when he had to again wear the guise of a villain to get his way, he had not hesitated to make her hate him. He may have wounded her, and she might despise him for his manipulative ways and his lack of trust in others. But Touma was a man who could make the choice to sacrifice ten people now to save a million in the future. For that he had her respect, if not her support.

“Failing?” she asked, her words a honed spear sheathed in soft velvet. “The determination of Touma Kamikaji is not a failing, Angelus. You would do well to remember that.”

She almost missed the brief moment of confusion that flitted across Angelus’s features. The strange sense of satisfaction that replaced it, he did not bother to hide. His keen elven eyes travelled along the main trail towards the Highlands, then switched to the branching path that led up the knoll to the shrine.

Sudden screams echoed from behind them, almost lost in the howling gale. Armoured wights spilled into the streets from the inn a hundred paces distant, scanning the area as though searching for prey. One of them spotted them on the trail, and raised a keening, ululating shriek that sent the peasants running for cover - and, in the case of a few brave warriors, for weapons.

“Hm,” Angelus noted, his voice dripping dry humour. “I do believe that we should run.”

“The villagers -”

“- will be safe, unless we choose to make this place a battleground. Kratos seeks my person, and the phylactery that I carry, and is not possessed of the base cunning to take hostages. As for your old woman -”

“- we need not worry about her,” Kayu finished, remembering the battles in the temple labyrinth in which Tsuru had held her own against monsters fifty times her size. Again she sighed, this time inhaling of the sweet oxygen that would keep her alive for the next few hours. “Let us leave.”

[Wings of Endymion]

The sun glinted from the frozen waters of a distant lake, sinking low on the western horizon as they climbed. Barren and lashed by the wind, the hillside offered little protection from the elements. Angelus might float along with ease, picking an unerring path towards the shrine at the summit, but Kayu had to work hard to keep up with him. Every step disguised deep drifts of snow that threatened to swallow her whole. More than once she fell victim to the knee-deep pits of slush, and had to break free using her staff and make up the lost time. She could only be thankful that the elf held no interest in further conversation, allowing her to save her breath for exertion.

Every time she fell, the frigid shock through her lower limbs drained more of her precious strength. The armoured wights gained on her with every such stumble, for they did not suffer the discomforts of cold, exposure, and exhaustion. Thoughts of their cold iron bardiches helped her to find that all-important second wind.

Every time she fell, she traced a sigil upon her palm and pressed it to the treacherous snow. Her power, imbued in the characters, would activate at the approach of the wights and entrap them in thorny incarnate restraints. Every second she could delay them, every little shadow at which she could make them jump, increased her chances of keeping abreast of Angelus and staying out of their clutches.

Upon her arrival at the summit, the sun had retreated to a mere halo of light on the horizon. Breathless and trembling with feverish chill, she basked in the onrushing night. The leading tendrils of a heavy bank of fog rolled in from the Highlands, already obscuring the village below from sight. Every now and again, incarnate power flared at the edge of her senses as Kratos or his wights triggered her traps.

Angelus’s shadow squirmed and seethed as he looked upon the shrine, a mere ten paces ahead of her. Little bigger than the farmhouses in the village below, would she have ever paid the structure any attention if not for its seamless marble construction? Neither door nor window marred the smooth white perfection of its outer facade. Centuries of lonely vigil had neither scratched the sculpted stone nor weathered the skill that had crafted it. The ground beneath her feet, though, shivered with unbridled incarnate power. She could almost feel the host of local spirits gathered to it like moths to a lantern, ebbing and flowing upon her frozen skin.

The shadowmage caught her look, and smirked.

“It does not look like much, does it?” In a swirl of billowing robes he turned away from her, giving her the briefest glimpse of Maeril’s phylactery tucked safe against his skin. “But a place of reverence is not defined by the number of spires that reach from it to the heavens.”

“What... do you intend... to do here...?” Kayu could not keep her teeth from chattering, but neither could she leash her curiosity. Unheard whispers drifted in and out of her ears, though her entire face had gone numb with exposure.

Angelus ignored her.

“I do not suppose that your kind remembers much of the War of the Tap?” Breathing deep of the tingling chill, he allowed his mellow tenor to suffuse the hilltop. A lone early star winked down upon him from the velvet of the onrushing night. “But I can see it as if it were yesterday. The vile kindreds of Aesphestos the Mocker, orcs and goblins and ogres and trolls and wyrmkin, swarming across these plains in a tide of wrought devastation. In that time there were no petty schisms beneath the banners of the dar’el, the mya. All elves and dwarves fought together to preserve their civilisations against the machinations of the Forgotten Ones. How glorious their banners must have fluttered in the chill breeze? How beautiful their glinting spears in dawn’s first light?”

His amethyst gaze studied the seamless exterior wall as he spoke. Not a crack ran across the stone for moss or lichen to grab hold, despite its obvious age, and not a stain blemished the shimmering white. But at length he smiled to himself and pressed his bare palm against the freezing marble. Kayu caught the faintest of balsam aromas as ancient arcane magic activated. An archway appeared before them, an entrance beckoning them inwards where moments before only solid rock had stood. Chill wind rushed in, and in its wake she scented the stale weight of years of undisturbed tranquillity.

Silent as a wraith, Angelus entered the mausoleum.

Kayu followed him inside, her padded footsteps resounding too loud in her ears. Her mind still churned over Angelus’s diatribe, wondering how he expected her to respond. Given the long year they had spent at war in Raiaera...

“Have you not witnessed enough bloodshed already?”

He waved a finger at her, dismissing her show of compassion. “Xem’zund was just an afterthought, human. A relic of an ancient age, who caught scent of the future to come and exited the stage of this world with the only semblance of dignity he could muster. What has come before, and what lies ahead, is of far greater and resounding import. But then, you would know little of such matters, would you?”

She frowned, reminded of something that Touma had said in the temple on the Highlands. That is the nature of great power, Kayu. You hold on to it, study it and treasure it dearly, all in the hope that you never have to make use of it. But should the time come, and the need arise, you use it without hesitation. Tell me, Kayu, if the Night of Nefarious Flame were to repeat itself somewhere else… would you rather I had the power to prevent it, or not? What is the use of great strength if you cannot even protect those you care for? What did her ‘old friend’ prepare for? What other dire fates did he shoulder, without letting her know?

Ignorant of her thoughts, Angelus continued to lecture. “After all, you spent the entire Corpse War sheltered behind Maeril Thyrrian and your pet daemon Natosatael. You hid and watched as villages burned and innocents perished in plague and in flame. Either you did not care enough to take a stand, or your fear bound you in manacles of cold sweat.”

Kayu grit her teeth and swallowed her excuses, in the knowledge that Angelus only wanted her to display such uncontrolled emotion. The entry corridor, flanked by a colonnade in the classical Raiaeran style, approached the main crypt chamber. Entering the domed room perhaps twenty paces in diameter, she choked on her breath. A circular balustrade protected the main altar, each baluster carved in the likeness of a proud elven warrior at attention, wielding bow and glaive against an invisible foe. Aligned at each compass point upon the balustrade, lesser altars each enshrined an artefact of the ancient ages: a winged goblet crafted from the clearest crystal, a sceptre-like ceremonial blade, a thick tome bound in finest vellum, and a laurel woven from white nymph-flowers frozen in time. The air, musty but not unpleasant, danced with motes of arcane starlight. Angelus’s voice continued to resound in lyrical harmony from the smooth, dustless walls.

“The hero venerated here was nothing of your sort. When the lesser Forgotten Ones declared war on Aesphestos, he was naught but a lowly scholar in the Ivory Spire. But he took up arms for the good of all mortal kinds. In battle after battle he distinguished himself, coming to the attention of the High Bard himself for his deeds of valour and intellect. As a warrior he duelled and bested war-leader after war-leader within Aesphestos’s horde. As a commander, not only did he defeat entire armies of Aesphestos’s minions in the field, he did so without the crippling losses that would have doomed us before our time. As a strategist, he masterminded our armies as we pushed to Mount Modhgar, there to confront the Mocker in one final battle.”

Kayu paced around the altar to his words, stopping only to murmur to herself in admiration of the carved balusters and the mounted artefacts. The walls, inlaid with murals of filigreed gold and polished gems, depicted the events that Angelus spoke of. She could feel the powers in the room shift and sway beneath his tongue, enraptured by his veneration of heroic deeds long forgotten.

“Over ten thousand years have passed since he fell here, before the slopes of Mount Modhgar, leading the final push to drive Aesphestos to the Tap. How the world cries out for a hero of his calibre to appear once more. And yet we are so much more concerned with our own petty squabbles... church against crown, true elf against new elf, mortal against undead.”

“I doubt that those involved in said squabbles would consider them petty, Angelus.” Completing her circuit of the room, Kayu found herself hard-pressed not to gape in absolute wonder. Her stomach fluttered as the concentrated incarnate energy took notice of her voice. “How many perished in the Corpse War? How many -”

Angelus snorted. “A tempest in a teacup, human.”

Tendrils of his shadowy power reached out for the nearest artefact, the crystal goblet. They brought it to rest between them, its luminance lost amid the swirling dendrites of inky black.

“We spend our entire existences squabbling over the immaterial, the meaningless. What we fight over may as well be a drop in an infinite ocean. A single finger pushes upon it from the outside and -”

His eyes hardened. The crystal shattered, spilling translucent fragments across the marble floor. Kayu gasped, unable to help herself.

“- all comes to an end.”

Precious heartbeats passed before she regained her breath. Never had she been more aware of her surroundings as she stepped inside the balustrade. The hems of her robes, frozen solid with ice, scraped across the cold stone floor. Sparkling motes of starlight danced away from the inky tendrils of Angelus’s magic. His eyes stabbed into hers, tracking every nuance of every movement that she made. The silence shivered with the weight of history and tension. She felt cold. So cold.

“Is that what you fight for, Angelus? Would you make yourself the shadow that threatens the world, so that your people stop fighting among themselves and unite again in common cause?” She extended a finger towards the crystal shards, only now aware that hypothermia had tinged it pale blue. “What happens then, if instead of uniting, they perish?”

He stared at her.

“Perceptive. For a human.”

Shadows stabbed through her stomach.

“But not perceptive enough.”

[Wings of Endymion]

Agony flared, like the petals of a fiery flower blossoming inside her stomach. Angelus’s tendrils of shadow had speared straight through the layer of incarnate energy she wore like armour over her person. A thrust from a master armsman could not have better skewered her.

Her defensive spells snapped into existence a breath beyond usefulness. A shimmering field of coruscant white energy trapped her within the balustrade, and blockaded Angelus without. Captured motes of starlight flared in concentrated fury; her spell reflected them at all angles, such that the altars and balusters cast no shadows within the bounds of her ritual circle. The eyes of the carved marble warriors glowed bright in defence of their sacred realm.

“Impressive.” The shadowmage arched an immaculate eyebrow. “Given such little time, and so few resources, you have done well. I could spend an hour battering at this barrier and not break it.”

A dark stain seeped through her robes, viscous fluid warm upon her skin but glacial in the depths of her abdomen. In serene grace she slumped to the floor, her back streaking a trail of red against the altar, the pain of the bruise on her back lost amid waves of agony. Her mind felt so distant, like a star far out of reach. She had to stop the bleeding, or...

She tried to concentrate her fingers.

She tried to direct them towards the wound.

“Or I can wait until you bleed to death,” Angelus noted, never once raising or quickening his voice, “and save my strength for Kratos when he arrives.”

Somehow Kayu forced power to course through her body. The effort caused her to stifle a whimper, her breaths wracking her chest in pained gasps. All her instincts warned her that she could not be in worse shape. Even if she could somehow stop the bleeding...

Not if. She had to do it. Fingers clenched at her wound in renewed purpose. She focused on the delicate task of knitting her damaged organs, flesh, and blood vessels back together again.

“I have spoken harsh words to you, human, and for that I suppose that I must apologise. Some were unjust. There is much to admire in your kind. Your drive to achieve what you can in that short existence of yours. Your resolve to live your lives to their fullest. Your ability to find fulfilment in the smallest of pleasures. Your determination to press forward at even the smallest spark of hope. I have found myself lacking in such qualities over the years, and have sought to learn from you what I can.”

Her consciousness slipped away, like water through her fingers. At least her barrier drew strength from the spirits that flooded the room, and thus would remain in place until the sigils she had covertly inscribed into the four lesser altars faded away in a few hours time. But unless she could stem her bleeding wounds and warm her frozen body, she would perish long before her eyes opened again.

“You did well to cut me off from the altar. You asked before what I intend to do with the spark of Maeril’s essence bound within this casket? Consider this, then. A physical vessel ties a soul to the firmament, while a spirit roams free through the Anti-Firmament. What of a phylactery, then? What would happen if I released the fragment of soul bound here into this rich pool of lesser spirits?”

Kayu almost let slip the last of her concentration at the thought. Not that she knew for sure what would happen. Neither did she know if Angelus truly could predict what would occur, either. But the possible consequences of a Death Lord taking root in the north of Salvar, preying on the weakened and scattered populations of the area as the power behind another undead army...

Her fingers fumbled again in the realisation that she could not let that happen. Fresh waves of pain battered her broken mind, drowning it in a sea of red. She had to hold on. She had to hold on until..

Until what? Until Kratos arrived to challenge Angelus? If Angelus won that confrontation, then she stood no chance against him in her weakened state. Even if he lost, would Kratos let her live after she had already betrayed Maeril and fled from Trenyce? And what if they decided that they should join forces against her, and an army of angry wights sundered her shield and tore her limb from limb?

A third time her fingers slipped. Her powers faltered, sputtering at the end of their tether. Soft voices reflected her myriad pains upon her soul, screaming out in the agony that she dared not voice, enticing her to the blissful void of sleep.

“But at least you may begin to understand now what your ‘old friends’ have endured over the years to shield and protect you. What Touma Kamikaji went through to spirit you away from Nippon and into Natosatael’s protection, and how he must have felt to push you away again. What thoughts went through that young nameless warrior-scholar’s mind when I beat him down on the fields of Nenaebreth, again and again and again...”

His words slipped like breaths of wind through her ears. Her limbs trembled, weakened spasms gasping for precious oxygen. Her head spun, tunnel vision compounded by the overwhelming stink of coppery life spilling through her fingers. The chill spread into her shoulders and lower torso. She could not control the pounding of her heart as it fought to compensate for the blood she’d spilt in the only way it knew how.

“Too bad, then, that you may only have a few minutes more to savour it.”

Angelus turned away towards the entrance, weaving with graceful arm motions a net of power across the archway. Far beyond him, stars glittered in the growing night.

Her hand slipped from the slick crimson of her wounds. The power that sheathed them dissipated into the chill.

Only the abyss awaited.

[Wings of Endymion]

Her eyes fluttered open. The blurred world beyond made little sense to her tortured mind. She had not moved from where she lay on the cold floor of the mausoleum, a thousand crystal shards scattered about her like a carpet of diamonds. Tendrils of mist, creeping in through the open doorway, danced around her body in a multitude of shifting shapes: humanoid, angelic, draconic, daemonic. Her limbs felt limp and leaden alongside her.

Angelus paced back and forth in the archway, his movements slow and deliberate. The touch of a chill wind ruffled her sweat-frozen hair. But she could hear neither the rustle of his robes nor the whisper in her ears. She could not even smell her blood, though she last remembered her nose clogged with its metallic stink.

Panic gripped her throat. Her breaths came sharp and fast, struggling to fill her lungs with air. Then a pleasant tenor projected directly into her mind, and she would have jumped out of her skin had she the strength left to do so.

“Greetings. How long has it been since a mortal has sought my counsel... decades? centuries? Regardless, I bid you welcome to my humble abode.”

Who...? She struggled even to form the coherent thought. Before it could pass her lips, the voice spoke again with the distinct impression of a smile.

“I am he who calls this place home. The world once knew me as Inglor Turamarth, the first Glorfindel. That was many, many millennia ago.”

She tried to focus on the one sign of life in the mausoleum: Angelus, prowling in mesmerising slow motion outside her defensive spell. Roiling mists coalesced about his body as she watched. Blurry in outline, they contrasted his movements as though out of phase with reality. Where Angelus slipped through the shadows like silk, like black velvet, the new figure stood tall and proud like a ruby set in gold. The more she fed it her attention, the more it gathered its form. Long golden locks framed features wizened and worn for those of an elf. She recognised traces of Ecthelion but more valiant, of Maeril but less cruel. Wise, and proud, and unbent. She had seen this figure before, in the murals that decorated the walls around her.

A lone tear spilled from her eye, splashing the pooled blood in her lap. The spirits in the mist recoiled from her pain, regrouping beyond her reach to glare at her in reproach. She had to fight to draw breath, to give voice to the words that slipped from her rigid lips.

“That’s... not...”

The golden figure frowned, although not unkind in his demeanour.

“Never succumb to that thought, my child,” it told her. “You have not lived long enough to believe that something is impossible or unattainable. Compared to battling the devastation wrought by Aesphestos and his armies, it was a simple matter to maintain the integrity of my soul in the face of the ravages of time.”

“Then... you are...”

“I am indeed the one that your elf companion spoke of. It would seem that the tales have grown with passing ages, but I am honoured that any remember me at all.”

“Are you here... to...”

The spirit laughed, a deliciously joyous and rich sound. “No, child. I am only here to speak with you.”

A second tear spilled from her cheeks, but her expression relaxed enough to show that she, too, laughed. She felt no pain. Only cold. The misty tendrils curled in once more at the edge of her vision.

“I am not sure... I deserve...”

“Nonsense. For a mere mortal you have worked hard to nurture your talent in your limited years. If you had not done so, you would neither have made it here nor would we now be having this conversation.”

“But...” Kayu drew as deep a breath as she dared. Watery blood frothed and bubbled in the corner of her lips. “In Naniwa I fled while my school burnt... my friends murdered by daemons. In Kyo I did nothing but throw a tantrum when I could not get things my way. And in Nenaebreth... I stood and watched as an old friend almost died... trying to save me from myself.”

A third tear spilled, then a fourth.

“ I... am not worthy...”

A mighty sob split her chest in two. Blood trickled from the hole in her stomach.

The spirit nodded, in slow understanding.

“You fear that despite your talent, you have never tested it against the might of the world. You have never crawled through the dirt and the snow on your hands and knees. You have never faced death in the eye and fought to your last breath. You worry that you have always had somebody to protect you, to shield you, to stand by your side. And now, on your own, you fear that you will just disappear. You fear that despite your sacrifices you will perish here, having achieved nothing of consequence.”

Kayu’s features contorted, a rictus of pain and anguish.

“And yet, here I am.”

It reached out towards her, its golden warmth touching her soul, driving the chill from her heart, her bones, her limbs. She’d almost forgotten how it felt not to have to clench her jaw against the cold.

“The path you choose to walk is a difficult one, child. It is one thing to live your life in the village of your birth, content to breathe the air of each new dawn and to take solace in friends and family. It is another altogether to venture the world in response to wrongs that need righted, in answer to the cries of the plighted and the wails of the innocent victims. And yet that is the path I chose myself, after long days of deliberation, and I had already reached a hundred years of age when I made up my mind.”

“It is... one that I... must walk.”

The hazy figure gazed down upon her from afar, amber irises piercing her soul. Still projected upon Angelus’s pacing form, she nonetheless felt its undeniable presence alongside her. Something sad undermined his voice.

“When one reaches my age, child, one learns that there is no such thing as must. There are only choices, and their consequences.”

Something in the distance, beyond the walls of the mausoleum, beyond even the wild expanse of Skavia, arrested the spirit’s attention. For a heartbeat it even looked pensive, as if pondering a question with an unknown answer. Then it spoke again, and its voice sank with long ages of sorrow.

“I am sorry.”

Kayu’s eyes misted over. Now she could see the familiar faces that cavorted in the mist all around her. A sinuous serpent bore Touma’s face on all nine of its heads, coiling about her upper arm and staring at her in disdain. An angry dragon wore Akiyoshi’s snarling war-mask as it hissed misty flame at the wound in her abdomen. Parental warmth cradled her from behind, radiating disapproval and worry in equal measure. The sorrowful faces of those she had left behind in her household in Kyo gathered about her feet. The soft feathers of a bird of prey crooned its ethereal body to pieces as it nuzzled at the crook of her neck.

Tsuru’s wizened visage clambered up onto her chest, tapping at her face with its walking stick as if calling her to attention.

You call yourself a spiritweaver, it whispered in her head, its voice like dry rice husks rubbing against the grindstone. And yet you can call upon not one ally to champion your cause?

One last burst of strength surged through her soul. Her fingers rose from the floor to grasp at the spirit’s robes, ethereal and swirling and far out of reach.

“Please...”

Wringing out every last shred of pride and hope that she had left to her, she begged.

“Can... can you help me?”

The spirit sighed. “I have dispensed freely of my advice, child, as I have done to all who have ventured here. But I am a spirit, and am bound to this location. What else would you have me do?”

“I wish to save... an old friend. He walks on the brink... a dangerous path, and I must bring him back. Another, bound by heritage, hosts a dragon within his body. One day it will consume him. And yet another... who came all the way across the seas when he heard I was in danger. I wish to save them both, them all. The young girl in the village below, the slaves, the soldiers... I cannot just sit and watch the world burn.”

She felt the rise and fall of her chest. She felt the last vestiges of life in the depths of her soul. She felt the assembled spirits hearkening to her words, weighing them, judging them.

“Can you help me?” she asked. “Or in your eyes... is it all but a tempest in a teacup...?”

[Wings of Endymion]

Silence swirled at her feet, at her hands. Lifeblood drained from the deathlike pallor of her face, pooled at her abdomen. Wisps of mist caressed her face in comfort and consolation. She sank further into their embrace, encouraged by the wordless whispers in her ears. The flaring starlight hurt her eyes. She fought to keep them open.

Once again the spirit sighed.

“The elder one you know as Angelus made his point well. But he chooses to forget that the physical manifestation of an ideal is never the entirety of its being.” An ethereal hand gestured to the altar upon which the artefact had lain. A vague outline of the goblet still glowed there, caught in the starlit rift between reality and reverie. “And he chooses to forget that, if we but try, we may yet restore some broken things to their former glory. Now I ask of you. Why does he choose this?”

“Because... he has forgotten to hope.”

“Because he dares not hope that there may be light in any but the darkest of paths.” The lines of the spirit’s face, stark in the starlight, softened at long last. It reached down towards her, offering a slender pale hand. “I would aid you in your cause, spiritweaver, if you would become this hope.”

Confusion creased her brow, followed by a bright ray of salvation, followed by a sinking sensation in the pits of her bloodied stomach.

“If I hold true, would even I be capable of that?”

The spirit held her eyes in steady appraisal. “It will be no easy task. You will do more than crawl through the dirt and snow on your hands and knees. You will face death on many occasions, fight to your last breath on many others. You will learn that you cannot save all who ask for your aid. This will not be the last time that your blood spills. Can you still promise to keep moving forward?”

She exhaled, scattering motes of starlight from her face, understanding.

“I promise,” she whispered. Then, after a brief pause, she continued in embarrassment. “But I do not know how.”

The spirit smiled.

“Then this will be my second act of assistance.” Once again the warmth enveloped her, cocooned her. “Close your eyes. Focus on me. This is not a sacrifice. You need only to give me form in the physical realm. You need only to craft in your mind a corporeal vessel in which I may manifest in your time of need. The more attuned to the vessel I am, the better I will be able to aid you.”

“Like a phylactery?” She could not help but ask.

“Like a phylactery, in that my soul will reside in a physical form. Unlike a phylactery, in that you will be giving me wings whenever you call on me, not hiding me away in a vessel for protection.”

Her mind struggled to comprehend the concept. His spirit had little patience for her lack of understanding. The resulting conflict manifested as a hurricane of swirling air in the breathless mausoleum. An intense aroma of cloying balsam threatened to force its way into her throat, invading her thoughts as if to take them over whole. A thin trickle of red spilled from her nose.

Angelus’s attention snapped to her prone form. But the incarnate phenomenon, so alien to his arcane disciplines, confused even him. Cocking his head, he stood his ground and studied his best response.

“You are waiting for me to teach you how. This is not something to learn. This is something that you must feel, and find out on your own. Work with me. Give me form, spiritweaver. Give me strength.”

She had to bestow a physical form on Inglor’s spirit, that much she could understand. She had to do so before she lost what concentration remained to her, and before Angelus figured out what was going on and moved to stop her. She could think of only one way to succeed. To map it to something, or somebody, that she already knew.

But his spirit fought hers, repelling the touch of her mind like the opposite pole of a magnet. She thought of Touma and it rebelled, a child recoiling from a morass of abyssal filth. She thought of Tsuru and it skirted around her, respectful but irreconcilable. She thought of Akiyoshi and it shied away, unwilling to accept the leashed violence at his core.

Then she thought of Yann, his bespectacled naivete and his sheepish smile. She remembered him as she had seen him last, beaten and battered on the fields of Nenaebreth. Her mind lingered on him longer than it should have. It drew parallels between his journey - asked by Ecthelion to become the beacon of hope for the Raiaeran resistance during the Corpse War - and what Inglor asked of her now.

It had not ended well for him. The elves had abandoned him even as Xem’zund’s corpse cooled in the depths of the Lindequalme. Would the same happen to her as well?

But then she found herself face to face with Inglor himself, his wizened elfin features imprinting in her mind like searing flame. The world slipped into place as he reached in, embracing that part of her soul, sharing in the sadness, the guilt, the worry that she so well disguised.

The mausoleum disappeared, replaced by the market in Naniwa where she and Yann had last talked in person. She saw him walking from the teahouse, his shoulders held tight but high, still trying to smile for her sake. She saw him turn back to her for one last wave, all as she remembered from her past.

But then he whispered, his youthful voice underscored with Inglor’s power.

If I hold you tight, you crumble to pieces and slip through my fingers. If I rest you on the palm of my hand, the wind carries you away without a trace.

One final tear streaked down her face.

Come with me, she whispered back.

I shall.

Back in the mausoleum, a second ritual circle snapped into place inside the confines of her first. Starlight bloomed and flared, then coalesced into fiery wings. Her barrier imploded, its mission fulfilled. The three remaining artefacts exploded into sanctified flame, as did the shards of crystal at her feet, their spiritual essences combining with Inglor’s.

Sound returned to her world with an ear-wrenching pop. So did the visceral stench of the blood in her lap, but to her relieved surprise, at least she had succeeded in stemming its flow. Perhaps she had done something right of her own accord, after all.

The light faded from her eyes, and revealed a figure armoured in fiery gold.

“My name is Suzaku,” the spirit of Inglor Turamarth intoned in the voice of Yann the Nameless, banishing all shadow with but four words. “I am phoenix, wind of hope, the purifying flame. I am your shield against the darkness, your sword against the night.”

It held out its right hand, and the sceptre-like blade manifested in its grip, point held towards Angelus in an unspoken, unerring threat.

“My lady Kayu, I am yours to command.”

[Wings of Endymion]

The flame of his spirit flowed over her, around her, into her. Her robes, soaked from flying through cloud and falling through snow, dried out between heartbeats. The chill that had crept into her bones faded away; the cold boulder in the pit of her stomach shrivelled and melted. The wounds in her broken abdomen knitted whole, completing the healing process that she had started but had left incomplete. On the logical level, she had no idea how her broken body could withstand such a miracle. On the emotional, never before had she so exulted in blessed anodynia.

She had forgotten about the charm that Tsuru had given her, that she now wore on her wrist. Only later would she realise that one of the twelve jade magatama now glowed with inner fire.

But even Inglor, now Suzaku, could do little for the beads of tense sweat on the nape of her neck, or the streaks that her tears had left upon her pale cheeks. Instead he stepped in front of her protectively, the tip of his blade never wavering from the smile that played around Angelus’s lips.

One floating pace at a time, the shadowmage retreated into the entryway. Here, his shadows could still protect him against Suzaku’s fiery light. Defensive wards coalesced before him, woven strands of night held ready to strike at the first sign of aggression.

“Angelus.”

How she mustered the strength for her voice to carry to his ears, she would never know. But he halted his withdrawal, and cocked his head at her as if to listen to what she had to say. She focused on the twin amethysts hidden within his veil of shadows, fighting the urge to clench the newly healed muscles in her gut.

“Kratos. I know you are there. I would talk to you as well.”

The smile on Angelus’s lips wavered, then widened. He beckoned with a gesture of shadow, relaxing his grip on the darkness that shrouded the entryway. The wight-lord appeared from within the whirls of inky black, ice-blue eyes focused upon Kayu in undying hatred.

“For how long have you known?” the elf asked, his smooth tones higher and harsher than she remembered them. Only then did she realise just how pleasant Inglor’s voice had sounded to her ears.

“That you were in league with one another?” she replied, slender chest heaving with the exertion. “Or that you’re both here on Touma’s command?”

Angelus bowed, not needing words to acknowledge the truth of her deduction. Something glimmered in the gold of Suzaku’s armour, an evanescent blemish gone as soon as she noticed it.

“You’ve never been particularly circumspect about your allegiance, Angelus, to those who listen to your words and look for the meaning behind them.” In truth, his arrogance had cost him his secret months ago, not long after the Battle of Nenaebreth. She had hoarded it in the back of her mind for this precise opportunity. Now, if she could only stop her voice from revealing the fluttering tremors of her heart... “Your appearance here was all too convenient, given what happened between Touma and I not so far away and only a few days ago.”

She paused, breathing of the night chill and drawing strength from how it stimulated her lungs. The motes of starlight in the mausoleum had dimmed, she noticed, but she did not lack for light. Suzaku’s armour burned as bright as any sun to light up the world of marble around her, twenty paces in diameter.

“I suppose then that this is Touma’s parting gift to Maeril?” She inclined her chin to take in the whole charade. “To take one of his phylacteries to a safe location, away from Trenyce, so that he might survive the last of the Raiaeran purges? So that he still may play a part in the battles to come?”

Angelus’s amused mask revealed nothing. But Kratos’s angry growl confirmed all that Kayu knew.

“And you, Kratos, although you would rather tear both Angelus and me limb from limb, you are here because this is the only way to save Maeril from the vengeance of his people. The pair of you are not enemies, but allies of convenience, although the hatred between you is real enough to have fooled me. I don’t suppose that Angelus told you about how he intended for us to meet here?”

Another angry growl resounded from the smooth stone. The wight-lord advanced into the light, bardiche brandished high. Suzaku almost moved to counter Kratos’s threat, but held short at Kayu’s raised hand. She bit her lip with as much strength as she could muster, keeping hold of the thin thread of concentration that would see them all out of here in one piece.

“Would you risk the success of your mission right here, right now, Kratos? Go. Your weapons and armour are clean, you have harmed none in your pursuit of me. I would see the courtesy returned, and my debt to Maeril - who may have held me hostage but at least treated me with respect - repaid.”

She had no reason to harm any of them now, Maeril included. In fact, if it were in any way possible, she would save them all as well.

“And I, human?” Angelus did not bother to disguise the wry humour that tinged his words.

“Go, too.” She waved him away with a flick of her bloody wrist, exhausted. Yes, he had wounded her to force her hand. She would not forget that. But for now, it made diplomatic sense to leverage her tact and to allow him to leave. “Thank you, to both you and to Touma, for leading me here.”

Kayu paused, her head throbbing in bottled frustration and anger. Before it could dissipate, she channelled it through her voice in one last outpouring of emotion.

“Tell him for me. One day, I will save him from himself.”

A brief moment of stunned silence. Then a sharp bark of sheer glee erupted from the elf’s throat, rebounding from the domed roof to stab through her ears. It surprised even Kratos, who turned to glare at Angelus in disgust.

“I daresay he already knows, human,” he laughed, stifling the worst of his emotion as only an elf could. He cocked his head again, then continued. “In fact, if he were here now, I do believe that he might tell you this. You are thirteen years too late.”

He ended his last sentence on a graceful bow, dark hair spilling over his shoulders and pooling in the shadows at his feet.

“And I do feel obligated to warn you, that not all our number are so easy to reason with. But this day is yours. Rest well, human.”

He turned to leave. Kratos wavered a moment longer, then with a parting growl, followed. The pull of Maeril’s phylactery outweighed any notion of vengeance that flitted through his undead soul. She exhaled in relief. She had guessed right.

“Until next time.”

A wave of his arm sealed the door to the crypt half-shut behind him, one final gesture of courtesy that might yet save her life from the insipid cold. Kayu could just about picture the starlight that glittered upon the outside world, from beyond a wreath of light mist.

Then she slumped back in exhaustion, the altar once again supporting her back and neck. Its warmth had faded, and guilt touched her heart at how she had plundered this monument to ancient times. The fact that Inglor had offered her his aid of his own accord only assuaged the torture in part.

The spirit himself hesitated for a moment or two, his manner so reminiscent now of the Yann she had once known back in Nippon. Then he settled down as well, maintaining a respectful distance, radiating warmth and reassurance as he began his long vigil. The mists swirled at her fingertips and feet, dancing in joyous caper as if celebrating the victory that she had just won.

At long last, she allowed herself to fall asleep.

[Wings of Endymion]

How many hours went by in blissful slumber? How many days passed as she wafted in and out of consciousness?

Her strength returned to her in fits and starts. Her memories retained scattered fragments of consciousness: Suzaku trickling melted snow upon her parched lips, keeping her warm with the strength of his spirit. The next morning she woke up famished, wolfed down half of the rations from her travel haversack, then fell back to sleep again just as promptly.

When she woke for the second time, battling through the disoriented confusion of emerging from a deep but necessary slumber, the emptiness of the mausoleum struck her like a fist in the gut. The mists had receded from the knoll, along with the spiritual strength that had sustained them. The altars lay devoid of their artefacts. The baluster guardians maintained their stern vigil, and the murals still spoke of ancient history. But without the air of veneration that had so affected Angelus and her on their entry, only the weight of their long years of solitude remained.

A breath of warm wind whispered in her ears.

“Because I am with you, now.”

It did not take her long to gather up her few belongings and begin the trek down to the village. Already the snows had started to creep upon its outskirts. With the protection of the knoll exhausted, how long did these people have before winter claimed them all? She would have to do something about that before she left.

She arrived back in civilisation along with the dawn, the wan sun sharp against her back. Her exertions had exhausted her limited strength. The scars in her side gripped her stomach in belaboured pain, and taut frozen muscles complained at how she bullied them to the point of cramp. If anything, the churned mud made for a more difficult walk than the icy earth of the trail. Her staff stabbed for purchase in the slippery snow, saving her more than once from losing her footing.

Then she saw young golden-haired Marta, peering out in cautious curiosity from behind the corner of her home. Only then did a smile crease Kayu’s features, newfound strength flowing through her veins. She would not fall here. She would not fall here.

Whether put off by the manner of her reappearance or the large rust-red stain on the front of her robes, nobody dared to approach her as she walked to the inn. The villagers had yet to fix the hole in its roof, and the wights had left a trail of broken doors and shattered floorboards in their haste to pursue Angelus and her. Following it in reverse, ignoring the stunned glare from the tavernkeeper as he fought to tidy up his home, she soon found the elf’s old room.

Tsuru awaited her there, cross-legged and eyes closed, as if she had not moved a single muscle since parting ways. Snow had fallen through the broken roof and piled around her in shimmering drifts. Wan sunlight reflected from the mirror on the wall, catching the floating motes of dust as they danced in the ashes of a long-dead hearth. The spilled stew left a rotten tang to the air, matched only by the stench of the dirty straw bedding.

“Did you learn anything then, mm?” the old crone asked. The single glowing magatama at her pupil’s wrist winked at her knowingly.

Kayu tottered over to the bed and fell in, fast asleep even before her face hit the pillow.


Spoils request:

- A charm consisting of twelve jade magatama, worn as a bracelet. Each magatama may house an allied spirit who may be summoned to aid Kayu’s cause.
- The essence of Inglor Turamarth, now known as Suzaku (abilities dependent on Kayu’s own skill, to be determined at next character update).

[Shinsou Vaan Osiris]

Congratulations!

Wings of Endymion receives 1360 EXP and 120 GP!

The thread will now be submitted to the workshop!

[Rayleigh]

All EXP and GP have been added, and the required AP was removed!