June 21st, 2268

Psychic Imprint Post: All Skein Gates – Arthos
Origin: Superior Mind Meld
Sender: High Chronologer Esxen’Tenadall II of the Thalan

I am High Chronologer Esxen’Tenadall II of the Thalan. My order has walked unseen through the halls of kings, warlords, and gods since before your nations had names. We do not intervene. We do not judge. We only watch, and we remember.

What I am about to share with you is a memory. My memory. Imprinted directly through this Skein Gate so that you may witness it as I did, standing in the shadows of Atol-Gyryn, deep within the war room of the Firstborn Styphon himself. I begin my recall as his Baleanith enters the room. They are unaware of my presence.

I will not tell you what to do with what you are about to see. That has never been my purpose, and in sending this message I have already broken the oldest oath of my order. I will accept whatever consequences follow.

I ask only one thing. Do not squander what I have given you.

The Memory of Esxen’Tenadall II, June 21st, 2268

June 23rd, 2268 - Early Afternoon

The first thing the people noticed was that the birds stopped singing.

One by one, like candles pinched out across the hillsides of central Tiefanue, until the only sound left was the wind and the gentle swaying of the treetops.

The peasantry of the area, although few in number these days, will tell their grandchildren they felt it first. They felt it in the dark part of their spirits where they bury dark thoughts. A cold wind, that had no business being there at noon in the turning of the season, descended across the lands. The kind of cold that finds the back of your neck and sits there. Several of the farmers working the fields reported that their shadows vanished. The sun was there, they could feel it, but their shadows were simply gone.

Those who looked up first saw nothing wrong with the sky itself, but moments later they saw what was wrong with the sun.

In the Common tongue there is no word adequate to describe what this looked like, so I will borrow from those who tried. An Ajaunti trader wrote in her journal that it looked like the sun had suffered a wound. A child in the village of Crestwick told her mother that something was eating it. An old Tiefanese soldier, who had fought in the last war with the Black Wyrm, said nothing at all and just wept. He put down his tools, walked into his farmhouse and did not come out until they found his hanging body.

Styphon, the Black Wyrm rose from the peak of Mount Dracos. He rose into the sky as the tide does, without announcement and without urgency. Those close to the mountain said later that the sky itself simply ran out of room for everything else. The blue retreated and clouds moved away from him the way a water moves away from a stone just dropped into a pond.

He climbed higher into the sky. Each rhythmic beat of his wings sent reverberations of dragon-fear to those unlucky few directly under him, and they fled like ants. He climbed until the sun was behind him, facing the direction of Castle Lightguard.

Upon his arrival, he opened his massive wings and hovered, blocking most of the sun with his terrorizing form.

His Shadow came down across central Tiefanue like a burial shroud. Farms, villages, roads and rivers, swallowed up in an instant. A cone of darkness so precise that those standing at its edge could reach in with one hand and feel the sunlight, while the other felt cold dread. Inside the shadow light was still there, it was not total blackness, but it was muted, perverted and muffled.

Styphon held this position long enough that every living thing beneath him understood that what was happening was not an accident.

Then, as he folded his wings back and fell back to the mountain, his shadow stayed as if pinned to the land without him. From the gates of Atol-Gyryn, southwest across the heartland of Tiefanue, all the way to the walls of Castle Lightguard. The sun shone outside the shadow but it did not shine within.

Styphon’s Sovereign Sanctum

(The area of central Tiefanue, for 7 days, is under the effect of Sovereign Sanctum:

This ritual blankets a specific area within the Firstborn’s territory with the protective shadow of the Firstborn’s massive wings and/or body. This protection manifests as an ephemeral shade over the sky in the area, resembling the vague colour of the Firstborn in question. Targets with a Mark of the Firstborn of the Dragon have those Marks refresh if removed after 10 minutes, and take half damage from Dark/Light damage and Dark/Light spells. Additionally, this protects all those inside from any extreme natural environmental factor. Cold, heat, wind and even sunlight are treated as if they were not present. This has no effect on spells, abilities or unnatural environmental factors such as summoned Elementals, ritual-influenced weather or the like).

June 23rd, 2268 - Late Afternoon

Post Request: All Skein Gates – Thornfeld Waypost, Maud’madir
Sender: Brek Ashmantle, The Arthos Courier

THE ARTHOS COURIER — FIELD DISPATCH
Correspondent: Brek Ashmantle, Senior Field Reporter
Assignment: Northern Tiefanue — Independent
Filed: Day 2 of the March, Thornfeld Waypost

ARMY OF THE BLACK WYRM DEPARTS ATOL-GYRYN : COLUMN ESTIMATED IN THE TENS OF THOUSANDS

For those who don’t know me, my name is Brek Ashmantle. Mountain Dwarf. Born and raised in Kesselvorn, a mining settlement in the foothills east of Mount Dracos, where my father cut stone for forty years and my mother kept the only forge worth mentioning within twenty miles of the mountain. I left at thirty-one to file dispatches for the Arthos Courier. My kin thought it was a spectacular waste of a perfectly good pair of hands. I covered the tail end of the Brood War from the eastern front. I was in Whiteraven when the Hell King took Lightguard. Nineteen years of conflict zones.

I’m telling you who I am because what follows is going to sound like the work of a man who has lost his reason. I want you to know my record before you make that call.

It started with the forges.

Those of us who grew up in the shadow of Mount Dracos learn the mountain’s rhythms early. A Dwarf knows smoke before he can read. Knows the difference between foundry smoke, cookfire smoke, and vent smoke. Three weeks ago the forge smoke changed. Darker. More of it. Running through the night without pause. I saw that once before, in 2242, when Styphon last marched on Tiefanue. My father pointed to that same smoke and said nothing. He didn’t have to. I packed my kit that evening and sent word to the Courier.

I was on the northeastern ridge when they came out.

DAY ONE

You all saw what went on in the sky. I don’t.. I don’t have the words but you saw it. I FELT IT.

Vanguard departed Atol-Gyryn’s gates at noon, under the full midday sun. Skeletal cavalry. Tight formation. No torches, no lanterns. They have no need of either, and they know it, and there is something in that fact alone that gets under your skin. Behind them, infantry. Rank upon rank of the dead in varying states of preservation. Some are centuries old by their condition. Others are recent enough that I’ll not describe them in detail. Readers who lived through the Hell King’s war will take my meaning. Styphon has been collecting, and the Hell King’s campaign gave him a fine harvest to work with.

I know how to estimate column size. I’ll not give you a number I can’t stand behind, and I’ve no patience for journalists who invent figures to fill column space. What I can tell you is this. I watched from that ridge until the sun was well overhead. The column was still coming. Still cresting the ridgeline with no visible end. I watched for two hours after that. It did not end. They kept to the shadow that blanketed the lands and the sun did not burn them.

When night fell, the column did not stop. It did not slow. There were no fires lit, no tents erected, no orders called out that I could hear. The dead simply kept walking in the dark. I watched them until I could no longer see them and then I listened to them for another hour after that. The sound of bone on stone, tens of thousands of footfalls, carries a long way on a quiet night.

That is the single most important fact in this dispatch and I won’t bury it.

THIS ARMY DOES NOT SLEEP, EAT, OR REST.

No supply wagons. No field surgeons. No cookfires. A conventional force of this size needs a supply chain fifty miles long and rest rotations every six to eight hours. A Dwarven army half this size would need twice the provisions and considerably more grumbling. This army needs nothing but the will of the Firstborn commanding it. It will be moving right now, as you read this.

DAY TWO

I moved ahead of the column before dawn and took position near Fortress Demadread. Long-established Styphon garrison in central Tiefanue. I’ve walked past its walls a hundred times without giving it much thought. Same as you stop noticing a bad tooth that hasn’t hurt you yet.

The gates opened before the column arrived. Every soldier within filed out and joined the march without ceremony, without pause. The gates closed behind them. It wasn’t a resupply stop. There was nothing to resupply. It was a tributary joining a river, and the river is now larger.

By midday the column reached the Greyfen River. No scouts sent ahead. No engineers. No pause to find a ford. The vanguard walked directly into the water and kept walking along the riverbed until they came out the other side, in formation, without breaking stride. Those too deteriorated to manage the current were steadied by the soldiers beside them. The crossing took less time than a living army would spend finding the river on a map. Terrain means nothing to them. Roads mean nothing. There are no obstacles. No marsh, no ravine, no dense wood that gives this army pause. It goes where it is pointed and the land moves around it, not the other way around.

Late in the afternoon the column passed a farmstead near Millhaven Crossing that sat directly in its path. The family was in their doorway. I had my glass on them. The dead adjusted course slightly, walked around the building, and rejoined formation on the other side without breaking stride.

What gave me pause was one of them. A Greater Undead by its bearing, taller than the rest, peeled away from the column as it passed the farmstead. It produced a lantern of some kind, black framed, with a light inside it I can only describe as wrong. Not fire. Not arcane that I recognised. It held the lantern up toward the family in the doorway and stood there for a moment, still as stone. The family pressed themselves back against their door. I don’t blame them.

I don’t know what it was doing. I’m a journalist, not a mage. But it looked for all the world like it was checking them for something. Reading them, maybe, or sensing them for something.

Whatever it was looking for, it didn’t find it. It lowered the lantern, turned, and rejoined the column without a word. The family was still standing in their doorway when the last of the dead passed. Still alive. Still untouched.

Three drakes have maintained a wide circling pattern above the column since it departed. No offensive action. Pattern and altitude suggest forward reconnaissance. Something at the top of this command structure is being very deliberate about where this army steps and what it passes.

I am filing this from the Thornfeld Waypost and moving south immediately after.

ASSESSMENT

In 2265 I watched the Hell King’s army tear through Tiefanue like fire through dry timber. That army burned everything. It howled. It hated. It felt like the end of things.

This is quieter. That is worse.

The Army of the Black Wyrm doesn’t burn what it passes because it hasn’t been told to. It is pointed at one thing and it will reach that thing, because nothing short of a miracle is going to stand in that road and hold.

I grew up in the shadow of that mountain. I know those forges.

Castle Lightguard is southwest.

Do the math.

— Brek Ashmantle, Senior Field Correspondent
The Arthos Courier
Filed via Messengers’ Guild relay, Thornfeld Waypost
Readers receiving this dispatch more than 48 hours after filing should assume the waypost is behind the column

June 23rd, 2268 - Night

Standard Post: All Skein Gates – Castle Lightguard, Tiefanue
Sender: Steward Avandra Ironarm

People of Tiefanue.

You’ve seen the dispatch by now. If you haven’t, find it. Read it. Everything in it is accurate. My scouts have confirmed it and more.

A vile shadow has fallen over Tiefanue and the Army of the Black Wyrm is marching southwest. It is marching on Castle Lightguard. I need you to understand something before I tell you what comes next, so I’m going to say it plainly.

Styphon does not want your home. He does not want your grain, your animals, your gold, or your life. Every report I have says his army is passing through settlements without engaging them. That will stay true for exactly as long as nobody is stupid enough to stand in their way. The moment you do, you die. And then you get back up, and you march with them.

We have reason to believe his army is actively sensing for the Divine. This is not limited to the Gods of Light. Blessed items, consecrated ground, holy relics, anything touched by any God, Light or Dark, is a potential risk. If you are carrying something blessed, leave it. If your home sits on consecrated ground or houses a shrine of any faith, get out faster than everyone else. We do not yet know what happens when they find what they are looking for, and I have no intention of letting any of you be the ones who find out. Strip your walls, pack nothing holy or unholy, and go.

I didn’t want this crown but I have a duty to wear it. I am ordering, as your Steward of the Crown, the immediate evacuation of the following settlements. Get out. Take your people, your animals, and whatever you can carry. Move east or west, away from the column’s path. Do not move south and do not wait for official word beyond this one. This is the word.

Evacuate immediately:
Cities: Harrowmere, Dunford, Ashenveil
Towns and Villages: Millhaven Crossing, Thornfeld, Crestwick, Oldgate, Dunbury, Valemoor

I know what some of you are thinking. That this is cowardice. That a Steward of the Crown should stand her ground and meet this threat head on. I promise you, the day you try to make that argument to my face, you will feel the heft of my hammer before you finish the sentence.

This is not cowardice. This is arithmetic. We cannot stop this army and anyone who tells you otherwise is going to get you killed and then get you conscripted.

Shortly before Styphon began to march, the Trinador reached out to me. They warned me this could happen. They told me they had a plan and that if I trusted them, Tiefanue would not be abandoned. I am not a woman who trusts easily or quickly, and I made that very clear to them. But I have watched them work in this nation for two years and I made a decision. I am standing by it.

We will not be abandoned.

I want to be clear about something else, because I know the question is already being asked.

I am not doing this for the Church of Light. I don’t have a lot of faith, and what little I had took a beating the same as everyone else’s these past decade. The old Church of Light built something rotten in this nation and we are still cleaning up after it. I haven’t forgotten that and I won’t pretend otherwise.

But I am not talking about the Church of Light. I am talking about the Trinador.

Those of you who were in Coppergate after the war, you saw them. Not giving speeches. Not asking for anything. Lifting stone. Digging graves in the mud. Handing out food when there wasn’t enough and somehow finding more anyway. I watched a being that was once an Angel of Roland argue with a supply master for two hours over a missing cart of seed grain like it was the most important thing in the world to him. Maybe it was. To the family that cart was going to feed, it certainly was.

I don’t trust easily. Ask anyone who knows me. I don’t trust institutions, I don’t trust titles, and I have very little patience for anyone who tells me to have faith and offers nothing else. The Trinador have not asked me to have faith. The only two organizations I trust in all of Arthos are the Blood Red Rose… and them. They’ve shown up every single day and done the work. That’s the only currency I’ve ever respected.

They have told us to stand clear and trust that the Light will answer when it is called. I don’t know if that’s true. I genuinely don’t. But I know what they have done with their own hands in this nation, and that is enough for me to give them the chance to do what they say they can do.

This is not permanent. Styphon wants one thing and it is not Tiefanue. He wants Castle Lightguard, he wants my crown, and the Church. When this is over, you go home.

The remaining Trinador that are not up there chit chatting with the Gods, and the Blood Red Rose have both been dispatched through the Skein Gates, and are already on the roads to assist with evacuation. They will find you. Start moving now and they will reach you before nightfall. If you wait, I cannot promise that.

The Hammered Host is in position. Tiefanue has endured the Black Wyrm before and we will endure him again.

Move now. Move fast. Move together.

LET HIM PASS.

Steward Avandra Ironarm
Castle Lightguard, Tiefanue

June 25th, 2268

Skein Dominion Preface:
What follows is a second psychic imprint received from High Chronologer Esxen’Tenadall II of the Thalan. It was not voluntarily submitted. Actions will be taken.

The gates of Castle Lightguard were alive with the sound of work.

Soldiers of the Hammered Host moved in tight, purposeful lines along the walls and road, hauling timber, driving stakes, and filling sandbags. The air smelled of fresh cut wood and turned earth, despite the Shadow of Styphon that continued to try and stifle the light in the area. Trenches were being dug across the main approach, two feet deep and growing, with sharpened stakes already being cut and bundled nearby. I watched from the shadow of the gatehouse wall, still as stone, as I have watched a thousand moments of history being made by people who did not know they were making it.

She stood at the top of the gate road with her Kaltraxis Dragon Knight, Oskeladd, beside her. What an odd parring, all things considered. I have recorded many leaders in my centuries of service to the Thalan. I have watched kings prepare for battle with ceremony and gravity, surrounded by banners and prayers and the weight of their own mythology. Avandra Ironarm watched her soldiers dig trenches with the focused attention of someone checking whether a joint had been properly set. Her 2-handed hammer rested against her shoulder. Her hands caked in dirt from her own ditch digging shift that had just ended. The crown of Tiefanue sat on her head the way a stone sits on a table. It was there, slightly off center. It did not fit well.

“Deeper on the eastern trench,” she said. “I want it to take a horse three strides to get around it, not one. Not that I’ve seen many horses. Pull those barricades forward another twenty feet. I want anything coming down that road to have to slow down twice before it reaches the gate.”

Oskeladd passed the order along and let it settle before he spoke.

“My Steward—”

She turned and looked at him with an expression I have seen on senior Thalan instructors who have corrected the same mistake for the fortieth time that morning.

“Avandra.”

He paused. “Avandra.” He said it like a man putting on a boot that doesn’t quite fit. “I don’t want to tell you your business.”

“Then don’t.”

“The wagons.”

They both looked down the road where a line of covered wagons were being muscled into position across the main approach. Twelve of them, canvas covered, sitting heavy on their axles. I could see in the set of Oskeladd’s shoulders that he was doing the arithmetic, measuring twelve wagons against tens of thousands of Undead and finding the sum deeply unsatisfying.

“The Mayor of Teris gifted them,” she said. “Along with enough candy and Hobling weed to smoke Styphon out.” There was a laugh in her voice that didn’t quite make it to her face. I have been doing this long enough to know when someone is carrying something they cannot put down.

Oskeladd looked at her for a moment. Decided not to pull that thread and instead pinched his nose. “The Hobling weed is all I can smell. Well they certainly won’t hurt. The wagons stay.”

“The wagons stay.”

Avandra turned and stared coldly at Oskeladd, “Any word from our allies? Aside from the wagons of weed?”

Oskeladd’s expression answered before he did. “No. Without the Accord signed, they have no formal obligation to aid us.”

Avandra stared at the road for a moment. Then she rolled her eyes. “Politics is bullshit.”

“It is.”

He nodded slowly. Then, carefully, “When the battlements are finished, where do you want the Host assembled.”

“On the other side of the North gate.”

I could see it move through him before he spoke. The resistance of it. Something tightening behind his eyes, a dwarf bracing against an order he already knew was coming and had already decided he would not accept quietly.

“We’re not leaving you here.”

“You are.”

“Avandra.”

She said nothing. Which was worse.

He planted his feet. “We are not leaving you alone at these gates.”

She exhaled slowly and looked out at the road. At the soldiers painting the gates in the shadow of the Final Bastion floating vast and still above the castle. At the Skein Gate standing just off the main road outside the walls. At the trenches and the barricades and all the honest work she understood and none of the rest of it.

“My hammer was a gift from heaven, apparently passed down to the first King of Tiefanue by goddamn Roland himself,” she said quietly. “This is one of the most holy relics in the Church. Why do I have this? And this.” She touched the crown with two fingers, briefly, the way you touch something that doesn’t quite fit. “This belonged to the line of Tiefanue. It’s not enchanted now, but it was…heavily. Styphon wants both of them destroyed as much as he wants that.” She looked up and pointed at the Bastion. “The Trinador told me. I believe them. I trust they will come back and I trust this ends the right way. If they are wrong, then I die. Then the church dies, this castle dies and Styphon goes back to sleep. But goodness won’t die. Somebody else will rise up, they will build the next church, us common folk will flock to it before building a small wall around it. Next a maybe a gate and a tower and before long there will be Church of Light and a new castle and Styphon will wake up again. And we’ll just keep doing this over and over. I’ve accepted that, if that’s how the dice rolls.” Avandra paused and looked at the massive hammer in her hands. “I miss my blacksmith hammer.” She paused again before speaking firmly,”The Trinador also told me to do everything in my power to save lives while they do what they have to do.”

She looked at him.

“That includes yours.”

I have watched battles. I have watched the moments before battles. I have watched men receive death sentences with more composure than Oskeladd received that order. I could see it plainly in his face, the argument he was building, the words stacking up behind his tongue, every one of them reasonable and every one of them useless.

“I hate this crown,” she said. Simply. The way you state a fact about the weather. “I hate what it asks of me. I hate standing in front of people I care about and giving orders I don’t want to give and knowing things I can’t say out loud. I am a blacksmith, Oskeladd. That is what I am. I make things. I fix things. I am very good at both of those. This doesn’t even fit.”

He looked at her. “It doesn’t. But if you keep doing shit like this, it will.”

She looked at the crown in her hands for a moment and rolled her eyes. Then she put it back on, slightly off centre, and looked back out at the road. “I am not particularly good at this. But I’m wearing it and right now that means you leave.”

He said nothing for a long time.

She lifted the crown off her head and bonked him lightly on top of his with it. “That’s an order from your Steward.” The mockery in her voice was fond and exhausted in equal measure. She put it back on, still off centre.

“You’re insufferable.”

“Noted. North gate. When the battlements are done.”

He let out a slow breath. “There’s something else. Several of the senior members of the Church won’t leave. I’ve spoken to them. They won’t move.”

“I know.”

“We could—”

“I know.” Gently. The door closing. “It is what it is.”

He nodded. Then something shifted in him. I could see it, the resignation settling in, and beneath it something else. The thing he had been saving.

“You can’t be here when they arrive anyway,” she said. “You know that better than I do. Kaltraxis will not forgive a Dragon Knight who stood alongside the Gods of Light, or the Angels of the Gods of Light, or whatever, if it happens. That is not a line you uncross.”

I could see from the way the muscle in his jaw moved. He knew. He hated that he knew.

“There’s work to do,” he said finally, his voice carrying the particular flatness of a man who has lost an argument and is pretending he hasn’t. “Reports say Styphon’s army will be here within days.

She nodded. “Go. Oh, and as we’re painting the gates, make sure someone tends to the Skein Gate off the main road. I want it to be clear and accessible. I have paid the Skein Dominion an intolerable amount of coin. The Skein Gate will be open when the Black Wyrm arrives. I want all of Athros to witness this, whatever THIS will be.”

He nodded and went.

Avandra stood alone at the gate road. The crown heavy on her head, still slightly askew. Her hammer against her shoulder. Her eyes moved to the wagons in the middle of the road and stayed there for a moment. A small calico cat was lazily resting on the bonnet on the center most wagon. It yawned at her and stretched as if to say, “where did my sunlight go?” She sighed before looking away.

Then she looked toward the Skein Gate.

Then she looked directly at me.

“Hey.” She took a step forward, squinting. “Who is that? Are they banging the Skein Gate with their head? Is that a Grey Elf? Arrest that El—”

At this point, the psychic imprint was terminated.

June 27th, 2268

Live Transmission: All Skein Gates – Arthos
Origin: Castle Lightguard, Tiefanue
Broadcast courtesy of: The Skein Dominion

Hour Six

The road to Castle Lightguard was empty.

The field before them was ready, or as ready as it could be. The trenches were dug and the barricades placed where they would do the most damage. The Hobling-gifted wagons sat in front of the main defence line, their wheels locked. The hands that set these defences had moved north now, away from the fight, by orders they hated but followed nonetheless. As if unaware of the calamity that was about to occur here, a small calico cat had made the top of the central wagon their home. It casually cleaned its paws before curling up for a nap.

There was nothing left to do.

The Dragon Knight Oskeladd came down the road from the north gate. His pace was quick and the mark of Kaltraxis was emblazoned on his pauldron. He had on a face that looked like he had lost an argument with himself but hadn’t quite accepted it yet.

Avandra watched him come.

“Dungeons are clear,” he said. “Last of the prisoners are loaded into the armoured wagons and the citizens are in the Elderwood Forest. Things go badly, they’ll make for Castle Pembroke.” He paused, “They’ll be safe.”

She nodded. “Good.”

He stood there, unmoving, staring at her.

She reached under her shirt and unlatched a heavy chain. On its end was a key. It was solid iron, unadorned, but old. She held it like it was heavy. Much heavier than the natural weight that iron should be.

Oskeladd furrowed his brow and stared at the key in her hand. “What is that?”

“It’s the key to a cell in section 7C.” she replied.

He looked up. “Avandra. There is no section 7C.”

She took a deep breath, “Yes there is.”

He took the key slowly.

“East corridor. Third sconce from the end. Pull it toward you, not up. There’s a stair behind it with a passage at the bottom. Follow it.” She paused. “There’s a cell at the end with a man in it. You’re going to let him out. Not to Elderwood. Away from eyes.”

“Who is he?” Oskeladd asked curiously.

She stepped forward and whispered in his ear. She paused and whispered something again. “You tell him that.” she said after.

His eyes went wide.

She watched it happen. That specific stillness of a person receiving something too large to immediately hold. He stood with it for a moment. Then closed his hand around the key and nodded, once, the way soldiers do when the order isn’t what they expected but they understand it completely.

“Go,” she said. “Then go north. Don’t look back.”

He looked at her the way people look at someone when they know they won’t find the right words and are going to try anyway.

“Avandra…”

“Oskeladd.”

He stopped.

She held his eyes, and he held hers, and neither of them said anything for a moment, and everything that didn’t get said sat there between them the way it does between people who have fought beside each other long enough to run out of road.

“You’re the best soldier I’ve ever had,” she said. “And the most insufferable.” She paused, “Don’t get killed.”

He held her gaze one more moment. Then his fist went to his chest, clean and quiet, and he turned and walked back through the gates without looking back.

She watched him go. She watched until the shadow took him and she couldn’t see him anymore. Stood there a moment longer, watching the place where he’d been.

Then she picked up the pickaxe.

>>> Skein Dominion Note: Minutes pass <<<

The trench didn’t need to be deeper. She dug it deeper anyway.

Her armour hung over the nearest barricade. She worked in her undershirt, sleeves shoved up with muscle bulging. She had the kind of muscle that doesn’t come from training, it came from twenty years of working a forge and swinging a hammer. Sweat stained her collar and dripped from her forehead. There was dirt caked to her boots. The crown of Tiefanue sat on her head at its usual angle, sliding a little further with every swing, getting shoved back without her looking at it, then sliding again.

“Three more inches,” she muttered, driving the pick in. “Three more inches and maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the thing.” She swung. “Styphon comes down that road and thinks, well. Three more inches of trench. Didn’t plan for that. Back to the mountain then.”

The crown slid and she shoved it back.

“No allies. No Accord. No word from anyone who isn’t a Hobling with weed and candy.” She glanced at the wagons. The calico cat stared back at her, completely unmoved. She looked away. “Outstanding. Very inspiring.”

She swung again.

She stopped, her breathing heavy. She looked north up the empty road into the dark of the shadow.

“He should be here.” She said it quietly. Not to anyone. Just said it because it was true and it had gotten heavy sitting in her chest. “I know why he’s not. I sent him. I know.” The pick went back in. “I just don’t want to be…”

She stopped and then sighed.

“Alone.”

The Skein Gate flared.

Every feed across Arthos shuddered, the image stuttering and distorting for half a breath as something moved through the shadow at the edge of the road. Five figures first in a tight formation, with not a sound between them. Their amber eyes steady in the dim. The Taliss Pride. Felnir’s elite undead hunters entered Tiefanue and took position around the gate as if they had done this with training, many many times.

Behind them came their Queen.

Seltia Allana, Queen Matriarch of Felnir, stood at the edge of the defensive line in full armour. Still as carved stone.

They looked at each other.

Without changing her expression by a single hair, Seltia said: “You are never alone.”

Then, without missing a beat, she smiled wickedly.

“Oskeladd, eh?”

Avandra pointed the pickaxe at her. “Don’t.”

“I said nothing.”

“You said plenty.”

“I asked a question.”

“It wasn’t a…” Avandra stopped and set her jaw. “It’s not like that. He’s my second. He’s been at my side since before any of this.” She gestured at the crown then the gates then the whole catastrophe of it. “He’s the only person I can talk to without feeling like I’m performing something. That’s all.”

Seltia said nothing which was somehow worse.

A colour came into Avandra’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the digging. She hid it quickly and turned back to the trench.

“What are you doing here,” she said. “You have a kingdom to run.”

“I have people who can lead it. I have been preparing them since the fight with the King of Hell.”

“Seltia.” Avandra turned back around. “This is almost certainly death. Whatever comes down that road…”

“I know what comes down that road.”

“Then why…”

“Because Tiefanue stood with us.” She said it the way Savar’Aving say things. She said it with no decoration. Just the truth. “When the plague had taken most of what we were. When our dead walked our own lands. Tiefanue did not look away and Felnir did not forget.” Her eyes held steady. “We fought side by side against the armies of Hell. As warrior sisters. We are bound together through blood. Loyalty is not something we speak of. It is something we do.”

Avandra looked at her for a long moment.

“If we die here we do not die quietly,” Seltia continued. “The world will see two leaders who stood when they could have walked away. Two good people against something very old and very evil. That is important, perhaps even more than our survival.”

“No.” Avandra’s voice hardened. “I won’t have your death on my conscience. You have people, a future that needs you in it. I am telling you to go back. Take your guard and go. Now.”

The Queen Matriarch of Felnir looked at her.

It was a particular kind of look. Not unkind. Not insulted. The look of someone who has been a queen since before the woman in front of her drew her first breath and has never once in that time been told where to stand by someone younger.

“You wear that crown,” Seltia said quietly. “I respect what it means and I respect what you have chosen to do with it. But I have worn mine longer than you have been alive. Through plague, through war, through the walking dead, through losses I do not have words enough to count.” She paused. “You do not order me, Steward. No one does.”

She said it with no heat. She didn’t need heat. The words were simply true and they landed clean and final the way true things do.

Avandra held her gaze. Then something in her face shifted. Not surrender but the look of someone who has hit a wall and knows there’s nothing to be done about it. “I’m sorry. I am not at my best. Thank you.”

“There is something else,” Seltia said. Her voice dropped a register. Still steady, but with a hint of something older underneath it now, something that was painful and deeper than politics. “The Baleanith that walks at the head of his army. She was Savar’Aving once. A member of my Pride, before the plague. Her name was Nishka.” Her amber eyes were very still. “She was Gandagī. Cast out and declawed. And instead of bearing it as others have, she gave herself to the Black Wyrm. She betrayed her people and betrayed Felnir.” she paused. “I want to see her face. And then I want to end her life myself.”

She said it the way you state something you have been carrying for a long time and have finally put into words.

The road was quiet.

Avandra looked at her. Then she reached down and picked up the spare shovel from the pile by the trench and held it out.

“Fine.” she said flatly. “I hope you planned on getting your hands dirty.”

Seltia Allana, Queen Matriarch of Felnir, looked at the shovel and then took it without a word.

They dug in silence, side by side, under the shadow of the Black Wyrm, while the clock ran down.

Hour Four

The road had more people on it now.

Seltia and her Taliss Pride had taken up position along the eastern barricade, working with focus. Avandra had stopped watching them after the first few minutes. They didn’t need watching because that was the point of them.

She drove the pickaxe in again and glanced at the wagons.

The cat was back. Or, at least, a cat was back. She wasn’t sure it was the same one. The one from before had been calico. This one was black as pitch, sitting in the exact same spot on the centermost wagon, watching the road north with the same unsettling patience.

She looked at it for a moment then looked away. She kept digging.

>>> Skein Dominion Note: A few moments later <<<

The Skein Gate flared.

Not the subtle stutter of someone stepping nearby. A full flare, the kind that happens when something comes through with intention. The feed across Arthos shuddered and steadied, and First Sea Lord Leora Fraley of Duvain stepped through in full naval dress, the teal and copper of the Republic sharp against the shadow. Behind her came her crew, but not an honour guard selected for the occasion. Her crew. The same faces that had sailed the Verdict’s Grace through the Hell King’s War and come out the other side. They came through the Gate one by one and fanned out with the practiced ease of people who have spent years reading a deck and knowing exactly where to stand.

Avandra looked at Leora then looked at the crew. She opened her mouth.

Leora got there first. “Before you start.”

“I wasn’t….” she replied.

“You absolutely were.” Leora’s voice was that of a ship’s commander, who had long since learned that the fastest way to break an argument was to be faster.  “Every person here volunteered. I didn’t order a single one of them. I told them where I was going and why, and I told them they didn’t have to come. They’re here.” She held Avandra’s gaze. “So am I.”

Avandra looked at the crew then looked back at Leora and she took a breath.

Then closed her mouth.

“Duvain is fractured,” Leora said. “The council has their concerns and their interests and none of those interests involve standing in front of a dragon’s army.” She said it without bitterness. Just a fact. “But the Sea Lords are not the council. The Sea Lords speak for Duvain’s waters and Duvain’s people, and the people of Duvain know what it costs when something evil goes unchecked and nobody stands up until it’s too late.” She paused. “We paid that cost in 2267. We’re not paying it again.”

Avandra nodded once and that was enough.

“There’s a spare trench on the western approach,” she said. “Doesn’t need to be any deeper but I’ve been digging it anyway.”

Leora looked at the trench then at the dirt on Avandra’s hands. “Naturally.”

She took a shovel.

>>> Skein Dominion Note: Minutes later <<<

Nobody noticed Mayor Podwick Tumblewick until he was already standing in the road.

He came from the direction of the wagons, which could have meant anything. It could have meant he’d walked out of the Elderwood Forest. It could have meant he’d come up the road quietly while everyone was watching the Skein Gate. It could have meant anything.

He stood in the road and blinked at the gates of Castle Lightguard then to the barricades, then the trenches, then finally at the assembled Queen Matriarch of Felnir, First Sea Lord of Duvain, Steward of Tiefanue, and their respective retinues.

Avandra stared at him. “Mayor Tumblewick?”

“Steward.” He straightened his jacket, which did not particularly help.

“You’re here?” she asked questionably.

“I am.”

There was a pause in which several people looked at each other.

“Mayor Tumblewick,” Seltia said carefully, from the barricade. “We did not expect you.”

“No,” Leora agreed, with what might have been admiration. “No offence sir, but Hoblings are not exactly… that is to say, your people are known for many wonderful things. The finest weed in Arthos. Exceptional cooking. A talent for merriment that the rest of us frankly envy.” She paused. “Bravery of this particular variety is not generally on that list.”

Podwick stood a little straighter. Something moved in his face… the expression of a man who is unexpectedly receiving a compliment he has not quite earned, and who is aware of that fact, and who is deciding what to do about it.

He held the look for exactly three more seconds.

Then his shoulders dropped slightly. “I fell asleep,” he said. “In one of the wagons. On the way here.” He looked at the wagon. Then back at them. “Nobody woke me up.”

There was silence.

“The wagons I sent,” he said. “That part was planned. This part…” He gestured at himself, then at the road then finally at everything. “Less so.”

More silence.

Podwick Tumblewick looked around at the assembled leaders of nations, all of whom had come here knowing full well what was coming down that road. He looked at the trench then at the pickaxe then at the black cat sitting on the centermost wagon watching him with what he could only describe as judgment.

He squared his shoulders. “I’m here now though,” he said. “So.”

Avandra held out a shovel.

He was considerably smaller than it. He took it anyway.

>>> Skein Dominion Note: A few moments later <<<

The Skein Gate did not flare for Kyros.

He was simply there. One moment the road was as it had been and the next a Wolven stood at its edge, broad and grey muzzled, wearing the marks of the Zompi Kyngos. He had not come through the Gate. Or if he had, nobody had seen it and that was probably intentional.

He looked at the road then to the defenses before finally resting his eyes on the assembled.

Then those eyes found Seltia Allana.

She had stopped digging. She was looking back at him with the steady amber gaze of a Queen Matriarch who has not survived a plague and a war and three generations of border conflicts by blinking first.

They looked at each other for a long moment and felt the pain of history. The generations of it. At all the blood and the sacred ground and all the years of cold standoffs in the forests between their peoples. It was all there. Then suddenly, it was all small. Against this road, against this shadow, against the choice they had each made to come here, it was very small.

Kyros walked forward. Stopped beside her and looked at the northern road.

“You fight Undead,” he said. It was not a compliment. It was an opening.

Seltia’s eyes did not leave the road. “We do.”

“Not well.” he said mockingly.

She looked at him then with a slow and deliberate gaze. “I beg your pardon.”

“For every Undead you put down,” Kyros said, with the absolute calm of someone stating observable fact, “I will put down five.”

The Taliss Pride had gone very still. This was the kind of moment that, in other circumstances, ended badly.

Seltia Allana regarded him for a long quiet moment before speaking. “Three.”

He looked at her and frowned.

“You will manage three at best.” She turned back to the road. “Your hips are not what they were and your joints hurt when it rains. We have better intelligence operatives than you.”

Something moved in his face. It took a moment to recognize it as the closest a Zompi Kyngos ever gets to a smile.

“We will see,” he said.

“We will,” she agreed.

They turned back to the road.

Avandra had been watching all of this from the trench. She looked at Leora. Leora looked back at her but neither of them said anything. There was nothing to say that the moment hadn’t already said.

Podwick Tumblewick dug his trench and did not complain, which to him, all things considered, the bravest thing anyone had done all day.

The clock ran down.

Hour Two

The work had settled into a rhythm.

Seltia and Kyros had stopped competing over who would kill more Undead, at least out loud, and had taken up positions on opposite sides of the road in a way that looked territorial and likely was. Leora’s crew had integrated into the defensive line like this battleline was some sort of ship deck to be managed. Podwick Tumblewick was digging with one hand and smoking his pipe with the other, pausing occasionally to try out titles under his breath. ‘Podwick the Brave’ he muttered. ‘No no… Podwick the Bold.’ He paused. ‘Podwick the Courageous?’ He seemed to be workshopping. Whether or not any of this had started as an accident was, at this point, entirely beside the point.”

Avandra drove the pickaxe in then looked at the wagons.

There were two cats on the centermost one now. Neither of them were black. Neither of them were calico. One was a deep amber, the other a grey so pale it was almost white, and they were sitting side by side watching the northern road with a casual attention.

She opened her mouth to comment but was quickly cut off before she could speak.

“There.” Leora’s voice echoed sharp and sudden, from the barricade.

Everyone looked north.

A black dot. High up and moving fast, dropping toward them out of the shadow with the speed of something very large falling very deliberately. For one terrible second nobody breathed. The drakes had been circling for days. Styphon’s army was two hours out, but the Black Wyrm himself could move that fast. Was he early? Did he come to do the job himself? Every person on that road had the same thought at the same time but none of them said it.

Then it vanished.

There was a flash of absolute darkness, there and gone, like a hole punched in the sky and immediately sewn shut.

“What…” Podwick started.

Then it reappeared. Closer now, much closer. The shape of it was wrong for a drake, much less a dragon, for it was far too flat and too angular. It hovered for a moment, strange and impossible against the shadowed sky, and then vanished again in another flash of black.

Kyros lifted his head. Inhaled slowly, the way hunters do when they’re reading something the rest of the world can’t yet see. “Shadow magic,” he said. “Whatever that is, it’s moving through the Shadow Plane.”

“Definitely not a drake,” Leora said.

Another flash and it was closer still. Close enough now to make out the shape of it properly. It was a vessel of some kind, compact and dark, with a silhouette that belonged to no shipyard anyone on that road had ever visited. It came in jumps, each arrival preceded by a dark flash that had no natural likeness.

It came to rest above the road and the air hissed. Then it descended.

The various elite guards and crews drew their weapons and silently moved themselves in the best tactical positions to protect their lieges. Nobody else moved.

The vessel settled onto the road outside the gates with surprising delicacy for something that had just crossed half a continent. It was an airship. Less of a ship and more of skiff. It was small but beautifully constructed. It possessed a type of engineering that could only come from a civilization that had been solving mechanical problems that mortals hadn’t even thought of yet. It had no sails, and no balloons. Nothing that made obvious sense.

With a hiss of escaping air, a hatch opened and a petite Avian woman dropped out of it. She landed lightly, and looked around at the assembled with bright curious eyes.

She was young. Genuinely young, early twenties by Human measure, with the feathered hair and small talons of an Avian and the bearing of someone who had been raised to hold a room. Her clothes were another matter entirely. She was wearing what someone might wear if they had read a description of common folk clothing and then purchased all of it at once. Three layers of linen. A vest that didn’t quite match. A travelling cloak that was both too large and too new. Sturdy boots that had never seen mud before today. She looked like royalty wearing a costume of a person who was definitely not royalty, and had perhaps overdone it slightly.

She looked at the trenches, then at the barricades, then at the wagons, finally at the cats, which she regarded for just a moment longer than everything else.

Then she looked at the assembled and smiled with the energy of someone who has been sitting in a small vessel for a very long time and is extremely pleased to have arrived.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice carried a warmth to it, the consonants sitting a little further forward in the mouth than Common usually put them, the vowels rounded in a way that suggested a language that lived closer to the throat. “This is the right place, yes? Castle Lightguard? There is a large army of the dead coming, and a dragon?”

Nobody said anything.

“Good,” she said. “I was worried I had the wrong coordinates. The third skip was a little imprecise.”

“Who are you?” Seltia said. Not unkindly. Just directly, because that was how she said everything.

“Are you with us or against us?” Kyros added, which was slightly more direct.

The young woman looked between them with what appeared to be genuine amusement. “With you,” she said. “Absolutely with you. Against the dragon, very much. I feel strongly about this.” She looked at the airship. Back at them. “I came a long way.”

“Through the Shadow Plane,” Leora said slowly. She had been staring since the vessel landed. Not at the ship, at the young woman. There was something working behind her eyes. “In an Avian air skiff.”

“Yes.” The young woman seemed pleased to be understood. “The skiff is borrowed. The shadow skipping is mine. I have been practicing.”

“Borrowed,” Avandra said.

“Borrowed,” the young woman confirmed, in the tone of someone for whom this word is doing considerable work.

Leora was still staring. Her expression had shifted from calculation to something more complicated. She took a step forward then stopped. “Forgive me, I need to think for a moment.” She studied the young woman’s face, specifically at the bearing and the feathering. Finally she stopped her eyes at the clothes, which she looked at for a moment with the eyes of someone who has dealt in cargo and disguise long enough to recognize both. “The Th’rill Dynasty.”

The young woman’s expression did not change but something in her eyes did. They were attentive now. Waiting.

“I know Mizrah Atara,” Leora said carefully. “I have been there.” She stopped then started again. “I went there. Once. Some years ago. Before I joined the Duvainian navy. Before I even walked the decks of the Verdict’s Grace.” She paused. “Before even, I think, mum and dad knew.”

Avandra looked at her. “Before you were a legal naval officer?”

“That is one way to phrase it.” Leora cleared her throat. “The point is I was there as part of a crew with which I no longer associate. Briefly and uh… uninvited. For reasons that made a great deal of sense at the time.” She glanced at the open Skein Gate off the main road, which was broadcasting all of this live to every corner of Arthos. Her jaw tightened slightly. “Is that transmitting to everyone?”

“All of Arthos,” Avandra said. “Yes.”

A brief silence.

“Wonderful,” Leora said. “What I mean to say is I have a passing familiarity with Mizrah Atara from a purely academic standpoint and I recognize the Th’rill family markings because I am very cultured and well-travelled.”

The young Avian woman laughed. It was a good laugh, unguarded and genuine. “You were the one who took the Navigation Stones from the Ostentation Society’s outer observatory,” she said helpfully. “In 2261. They never found out who did it. I always wondered.”

The colour that moved through Leora Fraley’s face was impressive in its range.

“The Navigation Stones were recovered,” she said. “Eventually. By an anonymous donor. The matter is entirely resolved.” She straightened her naval coat. “The point I was making before this conversation took an unexpected turn is that I believe I know who you are. And if I am right, you should not be here. Not because we don’t want you. Because the Empress of Mizrah Atara is never supposed to leave the peaks.”

The young woman’s smile did not waver. “No,” she agreed. “She is not.”

The road was very quiet.

“Empress Diellza Th’rill,” Leora said. And then, because the situation seemed to demand it, she bowed. It was followed, a beat later, by every person on that road doing the same, with varying degrees of grace. Podwick nearly dropped his shovel.

Diellza Th’rill, Empress of the Celestial Dynasty of Mizrah Atara, looked at them all bowing and seemed genuinely delighted.

“Please don’t,” she said. “We are going to be digging trenches together. It is very strange to bow to someone and then hand them a shovel.”

Avandra straightened up and looked at her for a long moment. “Then… why are you here? The real reason.”

The Empress considered this with the seriousness it deserved.

“Because I watched through the Skein Gates, in my own way,” she said. “I watched the army march. I watched your dispatch.” She glanced at Avandra. “I watched you send away the people you love and stand here alone. I watched her come.” She nodded toward Seltia. “And him.” Toward Kyros. “And them.” At the crew. Podwick, who waved slightly. “And I thought…” She paused, searching for the right words in a language that was not her first. “In Mizrah Atara we have a saying. Purpose is the only thing worth having. Everything else is waiting.” She looked at the road. She looked at the shadow. Then at the northern horizon where something vast and terrible was still two hours away. “I could not find my purpose sitting on a throne watching other people stand up. So I borrowed a skiff.” A small shrug. “I will deal with the consequences when I go home.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Avandra picked up a shovel and held it out.

Diellza Th’rill, Empress of Mizrah Atara, took it with both hands and the expression of someone who has never held a shovel before and intends to figure it out.

The clock ran down.

Hour One

The trenches were as deep as they were going to get.

Avandra drove the pickaxe one last time and left it there. She stood up straight and looked north up the road. The shadow lay across everything, still and absolute and it was getting thicker. Somewhere beyond it, something terrible and vast was moving toward them without pause or rest.

She wiped her hands on her trousers. Then she looked at the wagons.

There were four cats on the centermost one now. None of them were any colour she could explain. She looked at them for a moment. They looked back.

She had stopped trying to make sense of it somewhere around the third one.

“I have an idea,” she called out, not quite an order, not quite anything else. At once all the ears of the resting cats perked up as if somebody had just poured food into their bowl. “If you’re willing, I’d like you to join me in the command tent.”

Seltia set her shovel down without comment. Kyros moved from his position on the road with the quiet of someone who had never fully stopped watching the tree line. Leora said something brief to her crew and followed. Podwick put his shovel down with the care of a man who had developed a relationship with it. Diellza fell in beside him, still holding hers, realized, and left it propped against the barricade.

Avandra held the tent flap open and watched them file past. A Queen Matriarch. An Alpha of the Zompi Kyngos. A First Sea Lord. A Hobling Mayor who had arrived by accident and stayed on purpose. An Empress who had stolen an airship and overdressed for it.

She let the flap fall behind them.

Hour Zero

The Army of the Black was heard before it was seen.

It wasn’t sound exactly; more like the absence of it. The birds had already been gone for days under Styphon’s shadow, but there had still been wind, the creak of timber in the barricades, and the small sounds of living things going about their business. One by one those stopped until the only sound left was a low vibration in the earth that hurt their teeth.

Podwick Tumblewick stopped muttering titles. He stood very still with his shovel and said nothing.

Then the Undead crested the ridge.

Nishka came first.

She moved across the battlefield wrongly. Inhumanly. Every step was perfect and graceful but she made no adjustments for uneven ground. It was more of a slithering across pools of shadow that nobody could see but her. Her charred coat was black finery against the shadow, her black leathered armour was draconic in design and meticulously clean. On her hip she wore a single unadorned rapier that emanated and pulsed Infliction energy. On her right cheek, she wore the mark of Styphon. Although she did not appear to be Undead it was very apparent there was nothing alive left in her.

Behind her, a Death Mage. A superior of his kind, ancient in his craft, flanked by eight greater Death Mages in tight formation. Their robes moved with a wind that wasn’t there. Between them, the Banshee Queen, floating a meter above the ground, in a blood-dripping wedding gown. She was a thing of translucent rage and memory, her choir of Banshees arrayed behind her in a formation. They made no sound, but that would not last long.

Then came the horde.

Wraiths like smoke given direction. Skeletons in ranks so precise they looked machine-made. Zombies in numbers that didn’t bear counting. And moving through them, slow and terrible, the Grave Colossi. Ten of them that could be seen from Avandra’s viewpoint. Each one a shambling mountain of bones and packed earth, roughly humanoid in shape, large enough that the ground shook with each step. Behind the horde, another hundred hordes. Give or take.

The road was not wide enough, but it didn’t matter; onward they marched.

Avandra stood at the parley line she had drawn in the dirt a small distance in front of the wagons, hammer resting on her shoulder. She had drawn it herself that morning with the heel of her boot. A line in the dirt against evil incarnate.

The others stood behind her. Seltia forward and to the left already moving to intercept the oncoming Undead. Kyros to the right. Leora’s hand on her sword. Diellza very still, watching with eyes that had clearly never seen anything like this. Podwick had put down the shovel and withdrew two deadly sharp stilettos from inside his fine tweed vest. The Sea Lord regarded him for a moment, tipping her hat before returning her attention to the matter at hand.

Nishka raised a hand, and the Army of the Black stopped at the parley distance. She walked forward alone to the line.

Seltia was already there.

She had moved before anyone noticed, stepping forward while the army was still cresting the ridge, placing herself at the line and crouching down onto her knees.

Nishka stopped and looked at her with distant eyes.

“Seltia Allana,” she said. Her voice was wrong. It was present but it was hollow. It sounded like carrion beetles. Her words arrived from somewhere further away than the mouth that spoke them.

“Nishka of the Gandagī, once Pride of Allana.” Seltia said quietly then paused. Nishka said nothing and betrayed no emotion.

Seltia reached into the folds of her armour and produced a small object wrapped in old stained cloth. So small it was nearly nothing but she unwrapped it carefully, as if it was very delicate. In the folds of that cloth was a single curved claw, pale and old. She held it out towards the Baleanith.

Nishka’s eyes moved to it and twitched. The twitch was so slight it was almost unobservable. It was there and gone in a fraction of a second. Seltia smiled. This was all she wanted.  Something to stir in the memory of whatever remained beneath the marks of the Black Wyrm. The memory of what the claw meant, what it had meant to have it taken and what it had meant to be small, cast out, declawed, and told you were nothing.

The Baleanith reached for it but Seltia closed her fist around it.

“Do you remember this?” she said quietly. “This was yours. I kept it.”

The stillness in Nishka’s face held. But the pause before she spoke lasted one breath too long.

“You kept it,” she said finally.

“I kept it because I was going to build your shrine.” Seltia looked at the claw in her closed fist. “When a Savar’Aving dies, we build a shrine. It is our most sacred cultural tradition. We gather the things that belonged to them and we place them somewhere and we remember.” She looked up. “That is what we do for the living, even for the Gandagī. So they are not forgotten.”

Nishka said nothing.

Seltia looked at the claw one more time then back to Nishka. Then she crushed it between her fingers, ground it to dust, and let the wind take it.

“But not for you. You will not be remembered. Not with grief. Not with anger. Not at all. I am going to kill you,” she spat. “I may not survive today, but I am Savar’Aving and I have many lives. You are Ashuddh and you only have one. When I am done, you will be forgotten forever.”

The silence between them was absolute.

Then the army behind Nishka shifted, and the moment ended when the rest of the group had moved up to the parlay line. Seltia returned to her feet.

Nishka turned to face them all now. Her gaze moved across them without hurry. The Queen Matriarch. The Wolven Alpha. The Sea Lord. The Hobling with his pipe. The Avian Empress in her ridiculous clothes. The Steward of Tiefanue in her undershirt with a crown that didn’t fit.

“Look at what stands against us,” Nishka said. She didn’t say this to them. She spoke to the army behind her. “A handful of mortals and their shovels.”

“We’ve done more with less,” Leora said.

Nishka ignored this.

“You cannot win,” the Baleanith said. It was not a goad; it was spoken matter of factly. “You know this. You knew this when you came here.” Her eyes settled on Avandra. “Is there something you wish to say before this ends? I will give you that.”

Avandra reached into her shirt.

She produced a folded bundle of papers. Several pages, rolled and bound, slightly crumpled at the edges. She held them up.

Nishka looked at them. “Are those your terms of surrender?”

Avandra unfolded them slowly then turned them so Nishka could see. Held them close enough to her face that there was no mistaking what they were.

“A new Whiteraven Accord,” she said. “Signed. By all of them.” She didn’t look away from Nishka’s eyes. “The Alliance stands again, with or without us.”

Then she punched forward the head of her hammer.

Not at Nishka specifically, but through the papers. The hammer’s head, Roland’s gift and the most holy relic of the Church of Light, connected with the Baleanith’s head through the pages with a crack of white light that split the shadow like an earthquake splits the ground. The blast of Light magic was so great that Nishka left her feet and flew backward thirty feet, hitting the road hard enough to crack the stone beneath her.

The signed Accord fluttered down in pieces, dark with ichor, around Avandra’s boots.

For a moment nobody moved. Avandra picked up the accord and put the pages back under her shirt.

Then the Death Mages moved and the Infliction magic began to fly. Within seconds Nishka, the Word of Styphon, was rising, her shattered form knitting back together unnaturally. Her once crushed skull, half destroyed, was reformed and she stood tall.

She looked at Avandra and sighed deeply.

“Now,” she said quietly. “We end this.”

The horde came forward.

Leora’s crew met the vanguard at the first trench line, fighting with the disciplined fury of sailors who were familiar with close quarters combat more times than they care to count. The Taliss Pride moved like water, flowing around the barricades and striking from angles that the dead couldn’t anticipate, which was the only real advantage anyone had.

Podwick Tumblewick was darting in between Undead with impressive speed, carefully selecting the more corporal Undead before engulfing them in a flurry of stiletto blows. Nothing could touch him as he moved and dodged with almost inhuman alacrity.

Diellza had produced something from the airship that nobody had seen before and was using it to devastating effect from the eastern flank. Nobody asked what it was. There wasn’t time for that either.

At the center of it all, Seltia moved through the Undead horde with her killing edge fully engaged. Her claws extended and blazing with channelled magic, wild and cold and brilliant, carving through anything that came near her. Kyros was at her back, and for a few minutes it was extraordinary to witness, the two of them moving through the dead together with the terrible efficiency of hunters who had spent their entire lives killing and putting to rest the Undead.

“I never thought…” Kyros said, breathing heavily between strikes, “I never thought I’d die fighting side by side with a Savar’Aving.”

Seltia drove her claws through a Greater Wraith and watched it dissolve. “What about side by side with..!!”

She never got to finish her sentence. Nishka’s attack, a concentrated beam of sickly Infliction, caught Seltia mid-sentence and sent her off her feet. She hit the ground and began to twitch almost immediately. The changes began at the edges with her fur going grey, and her eyes losing their amber colour. Her claws began to darken as her flesh began to rot.

Kyros was already moving.

“She killed her!” he roared, the stoicism of the Zompi Kyngos breaking in every syllable, and then he was dragging her back through the press of bodies by force, bellowing for the Taliss Pride. They came quickly and formed a wall between Seltia and the horde, holding it while Kyros pulled her back toward the wagons.

She was turning faster now and the Taliss Pride looked back nervously as they fought hard to give them room.

It was the cat that moved next. It was white now.

It had been sitting on the centermost wagon, watching. It now dropped lightly to the ground, crossed the few feet to where Seltia lay, and began licking the wound. Kyros raised his fist for a moment as if he was going to shoo it away, but then thought better of it.

Then, miraculously, the grey began to fade. The amber in the Queen’s eyes came back and her claws cleared.

Seltia Allana, Queen Matriarch of Felnir, lay on the ground for a moment looking at the sky. Then she stood up.

Nobody said anything about the cat. Kyros, eyes wide, gave it a courtesy nod but that’s all there was time for. The tide of Undead was pushing them back.

Step by step, trench by trench, barricade by barricade, the weight of ten thousand dead was simply too much. They were not losing ground quickly. They were losing it stubbornly, at cost. Within moments the Taliss Pride warriors were dead and well on their way to rejoining the battle on the opposite side. Most of the Sea Lord’s crew shared a similar fate.

Avandra was the last to fall back to the wagons. She climbed to the top of the centermost one, the hammer blazing with light, and for a moment she was the thing you told stories about. The torches lit behind her, the crown on her head, and her hammer obliterating any Undead that came close.

Then, without warning, the Undead stopped. Nishka stepped forward and spoke, “My Lord Styphon. It is the final moment. We are at the gate and await you. We give you the honour of this final death of Light.”

With that proclamation the shadows deepened. The torches behind Avandra guttered without wind and the air dropped in temperature by several degrees in the span of a single breath. Fear began to well up inside of them. Unnatural and draconic in nature. Each surviving member of the alliance felt their strength drain. Every muscle in their body told them to run and to hide. There was a black speck in the sky to the northeast. It was small at first but rapidly getting larger. The shadow moved with it, the darkness over the road shifting and thickening as its source drew closer, no longer a symbol under the sun, but his direct shadow. The Undead became bolstered. Growing in size and power as their eyes flared a multitude of colours. As the figure grew closer, the fear got worse.

The Firstborn Styphon had taken the field of battle.

“This is the end,” cried Podrick.

Avandra summoned every last bit of courage she could and looked down at him from the top of the wagon. “No, my friend this is not. I trust my allies. Not a single one of you let down the Alliance today. The Trinador will not either.”

Then, as if on cue, the sky opened.

Not dramatically. The clouds simply parted, Styphon’s shadow recoiled from the area and the Lesser Undead closest to the wagons disintegrated. From that split came pure Light, and from that Light the Trinador descended.

The three Vertices came first, the leaders of the Trinador, their wings spread wide, descending in formation with focused calm. And behind them, three godly shapes materialised that belonged to no mortal world.

They were vast. The scale of them was wrong for the battlefield, wrong for the sky, and wrong for the world as it usually operated. They had shapes and they were recognizable, but they lacked substance. The shapes of Roland, of Cassandra, of Kael, the three great Gods of Light, rendered in something that was not quite luminance and not quite form. They were semi translucent and featureless. No faces, no expressions, just the shapes of them, blazing and hollow at the same time, pouring radiance down upon the battlefield. All the Undead were pushed back, while all the mortals still alive fell to their knees.

Avandra was the first to speak, rising to her feet and questioning if she intended to kneel consciously.

“It took you long enough. Are they…” she asked questioningly, looking at the translucent figures.

The Final Authority, once known as the Lady Vesper, casually lowered herself so she was eye to eye with Avandra, uncaring that her back was to the Undead. “They are here… but not here. We have finished advocating on your behalf. It went well, however, the Celestial Realms were under siege from the demonic forces of Hell, and as such they could not be here fully. What is here now is the most they could give, without further risking their Heavens and the spirits that reside there.”

Then Cassandra spoke.

Her voice did not come from the shape of her. It came from everywhere the light touched and life grew. It came from every blade of grass and every tree grown. It was not loud. It was warm and it removed the dragon fear that rooted itself in the hearts of our heroes.

“I see you.”

She did not say this to Nishka who, surprisingly, seemed unfazed by the Gods and was moving towards them again. She did not say this to Styphon who had slowed his approach almost cautiously. She said it to every living mortal.

“I see a Queen Matriarch who came here for loyalty and justice. I see a sailor who told her crew they did not have to come yet every one of them did by love and fidelity. I see a courageous young woman who stole a ship and stood beside strangers on nothing more than the principle of it. I see a Hobling who fell asleep in a wagon and woke up to become the bravest there ever was. I see a Wolven who despises the Undead as much as I pity them. I thank you for putting so many spirits to rest.”

“Finally, I see a blacksmith,” Cassandra said. “Wearing an ill fitted crown. Standing on a wagon. Holding the hammer of Kings and Queens who has yet to decide whether it is hers or not. I see you all.”

Then Cassandra breathed a single word. “Life.”

It was barely a sound. It was softer than a candle catching and more gentle than the first light before dawn.

The air changed. It didn’t flash or crack or announce itself. It was just filled with love, warmth and absolute caring. Every mortal wound on our heroes closed and gently knitted itself closed.

The Taliss Pride rose. One by one, then all at once, claws and armour and amber eyes, taking their places in front of Seltia without a word spoken between them.

Leora’s crew came up off the ground in unison. They picked up their weapons, astonished, then fell back into position around their Sea Lord. Cassandra turned then, and what she said next she said to all of them. To the battlefield and to the Skein Gate that had been broadcasting this to every corner of Arthos since the gates opened.

“The Pantheon of Light recognizes how it has failed you.” She said it without softening it and without the particular careful language of institutions protecting themselves. “The Trinador were formed because we could not be what you needed us to be. They stood in the gap and they advocated for you, as they were asked to do. That advocacy reached us.” She paused. “We heard you. Changes will come. Within the Church. Within ourselves.”

She did not look at Kael’s shape when she said the next part but everyone on that road did.

“Lord Kael recognizes that his failures were greater than most.”

The shape of the Justicar did not flinch at this nor did he argue. The burning impressions of fire where eyes should have been simply held, steady and burning. Whatever had passed between the Gods of Light before they sent their attention to this place had clearly already been settled. Kael had not been brought here against his will. He had come to answer for something, and answering for it was precisely what he intended to do.

Cassandra continued.

“Justice does not only cut outward. Lord Kael understands this better than any of us. And so, in an act of penance and in a demonstration that justice must prevail even when it is uncomfortable, especially when it is uncomfortable…” She paused. “Lord Kael has chosen to gift his Orb of Power to the Trinador. Grehl, the Orb of the Divine, is in your hands now. Use it wisely to bring order, justice and mercy to all mortal life. We will fill it with our divine power. Enough to remove the threat before you.”

The lead Vertex of the Trinador stepped forward. Vesper reached into her robes and withdrew Grehl, holding it carefully in her hands.

It pulsed green in the shadow. Steady and alive. Nishka spoke now and, to the astonishment of everybody, cut Cassandra off before she could speak again, “That was quite the grandstand, but I can feel you weakening by the moment. I’m quite certain you can destroy me with the orb before the power fades, but do you honestly think my Lord Styphon stupid enough to fly down before you and let you obliterate him with your ‘beam of radiance’ or whatever other insipid name you wish to assign this farce.”

Avandra smiled then and motioned to the wagon at her feet., “I don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s already here.”

She pointed then at Styphon flying in the distance. “I just needed him to be in line of sight.”

And with that statement Avandra reached down with her boot and kicked something on the top of the wagon. A mechanism. A simple one. The kind a blacksmith would design.

The walls of the centermost wagon fell outward in four directions, the canvas canopy collapsing with them, and a cascade of Hobling weed spilled across the road in a fragrant green wave, rolling out from the base of the wagon and catching in the torchlight. Podwick Tumblewick looked at it with the expression of a man watching his legacy unfold. In the history of all Hoblings there was never a Hobling who looked more proud of himself.

Then the smell hit.

Without the Hobling weed to cover it, the stench rose immediately. Old, wrong and ancient in its decay. Several of Leora’s crew took an involuntary step back. Kyros’ ears flattened. Even Seltia, who had faced plagues and Undead and the walking dead of her own people, turned her head slightly.

In the center of the wagon, packed in darkness, dried Hobling weed, and with deliberate concealment, sat the rotting eye of Styphon.

It was huge, boulder-sized, and carried with it the wounds the Hell King had delivered when he plucked it from Styphon’s head. Those had not healed but instead festered. It had been kept in darkness for a very long time and when the walls came down and the light of the torches, the glow of the Gods, and the pulse of Grehl all fell on it at once, the iris flared. It was still alive and connected on some spiritual level to the Firstborn. The pupil contracted violently, slamming shut against the sudden light the way any eye would, then dilating, and then contracting again, over and over.

Then it began to look around.

It could not turn for it had no socket, no muscle, and no skull to swivel in. But the lens shifted. Then the focus changed. Near, then far, then near again. The eye of the Firstborn Styphon began taking in the battlefield, the torches, the dead, and the Gods. Finally it stared at people and it widened.

It was afraid.

There was no other word for what the lens was doing. The rapid unfocusing, the iris expanding and contracting without rhythm, the way it kept returning to the shapes of Roland, and Cassandra, and Kael above the road and then pulling away again. Unable to hold them in focus. Unable to look away entirely.

Roland spoke then.

His voice was loud. Too loud for the battlefield and too loud for the night. It did not echo, but it simply was, everywhere at once, filling the shadow and the light and the space between them with the absolute weight of order and law.

“Styphon. Firstborn of the Black Scales. You are called to answer.”

The speck in the sky had stopped growing. Holding its distance. Watching.

“You stand accused before the mortal world you have preyed upon since before their nations had names. Of war without provocation. Of the raising of the dead against the living. Of the corruption of the willing and the unwilling alike. You choose to make your war on mortals and meddle in their affairs so it is only fitting they will be your judges.”

He paused.

“I will have a verdict.”

He looked down at the mortals gathered by the wagons. At all of them.

Avandra said it first. “Guilty.”

Seltia and her Taliss Pride. “Guilty.”

Kyros. “Guilty.”

Leora. Her crew behind her, a dozen voices at once. “Guilty.”

Diellza, quietly, in a voice that carried further than it should. “Guilty.”

Podwick Tumblewick straightened up to his full height, which was not considerable, and said it like he meant it. “Guilty.”

Roland spoke again. “So be it. Styphon. The Black Wyrm. Firstborn. You have been weighed. You have been measured. You have been found wanting. As you live in shadow, your sentence is to be exposed to the Light. Lord Kael, you may dispense justice.”

Kael’s voice was not loud the way Roland’s was. It did not fill the battlefield or press against the ears. Kael’s voice pressed against something else, deep within the mortal spirit. His voice touched the part of every person present that kept a private accounting of the things they had done and not answered for. Every debt unpaid. Every line crossed and never returned to and every injustice they had done, no matter how small or trivial. It did not accuse but it simply made those things present. And it made them want to atone for it.

“Ealdor-Banum. Witness me. For I am the Sun, and I bring the radiance of dawn!” Vesper raised Grehl above her head with both hands. The green orb pulsed once, deeply.

Kael outstretched his arms.

What came from him was not a beam or a bolt. It was simply sunlight, pouring outward from the shape of him, from whatever remained of his presence across an impossible distance, channeled into the orb in Vesper’s hands. The green of it shifted, taking on gold at its edges.

Cassandra outstretched her arms. Warm light, the colour of healed things and new life, poured into Grehl alongside Kael’s own.

Roland outstretched his arms. His was different. Steady, white, and absolute, the light of law and order made visible, adding itself to the rest without ceremony.

The two remaining Trinador Vertices stepped forward on either side of The Final Authority and raised their hands. Their light joined the others, thinner but still present. Then Castle Lightguard answered.

Every window on the northern face of Castle Lightguard flared to life. Every tower and across every parapet. Through every window, arrow slit, and broken battlement that still held a torch. The Church of Light faithful who had refused to leave, the Clerics, Paladins, and Paragons who had looked at Avandra’s evacuation order and quietly set it aside; for they had faith and they had been given orders from a much higher power. Every one of them, in unison, raised their hands, their holy symbols, and their voices, and their light came to the Orb of the Divine.

Cassandra spoke softly, “Styphon, you WILL see the light.”

Grehl blazed and the beam came down.

It struck the eye and a light flashed so brightly, that mortal and Trinador eyes were momentarily forced to look away.

For one suspended moment, nothing happened. The eye simply received it, the iris slamming shut against the intensity, the lens shaking, the whole ancient terrible thing shuddering in the wagon.

Then Styphon roared.

It reached them from a mile away. It was not a roar of rage or frustration. Nor was it releasing a Breath Weapon or summoning the Undead. It was just pain, vast, feral and real.

Then, without warning, a beam of light punched out of the distant speck in the sky.

Whatever the orb was doing to the eye on the wagon was happening simultaneously to the eye still in Styphon’s skull, a mile above the road. It was the same beam that had struck the wagon, exiting through the other side, pouring out of the Black Wyrm into the shadow he had laid across Tiefanue.

The eye in the wagon exploded. Bloody gore and white milky fluids showered across the battlefield and all across the heroes. A few seconds later, distant but unmistakable, a wet concussive pop echoed from the sky. Then chunks of the Black Wyrm’s upper skull began to fall, tumbling end over end out of the clouds, and Styphon followed them down.

His fall was not a controlled descent and Styphon was not choosing to land. He plummeted from the sky, the vast shape of him dropping and disappearing behind the northern ridge with a sound that reached the battlefield several seconds after; a concussion that knocked Podwick Tumblewick off his feet and rattled every loose stone in every barricade they had spent days building.

The shadow before the sun, Styphon’s Sovereign Sanctum, dissolved into stringy black wisps then burned away. The Undead horde, all 10,000 of them, instantly turned to ash as sunlight filled the battlefield.

And in the middle of it, standing exactly where she had been standing, untouched, undiminished, the last thing left on the road between the wagons and the horizon, stood Nishka.

Avandra turned to Cassandra, “Is he…?”

Cassandra replied softly, “He is not dead. He is wounded, blind, and it will take a great deal of time for him to heal, but he lives. He will not be your problem for some time, and when that time comes, I hope he will think twice before attempting this show of force again.”

She turned to the Baleanith now, her voice more stern, like a mother scolding a misbehaving child. “Return to your master and let him know that today I granted him mercy. That should infuriate him to no end.”

Seltia moved.

She was across the road before anyone could react, claws extended, every line of her body pointed at Nishka like a drawn bowstring. Whatever composure the Queen Matriarch of Felnir had maintained through the entire length of this day evaporated in an instant.

Roland’s hand came up.

Not dramatically. Not with light or thunder. Just a hand, raised, the gesture of someone who has the authority to stop things and uses it sparingly.

Seltia stopped although every muscle in her body said she didn’t want to.

“Not today.” Roland’s voice, still that overwhelming undeniable weight, but quieter now. Almost gentle. “Her judgement will come. I give you that promise. But not today.”

She retracted her claws. Slowly. She seemed none too pleased with the God’s decision and her eyes did not leave Nishka.

Nishka hissed, “Another time, Pride Sister.” Those last two words said mockingly and with venom. She turned and walked north, moving through the ash of the army she had led here, no longer gliding on shadow her footsteps the only sound on the battlefield.

Cassandra spoke then, and her voice was warm again, “The Trinador have returned with the results of the Luminous Convocation. Your voices were heard. Every concern, every question, every hope that was brought before them has been received by our Pantheon of Light.” She paused. “It will take time to translate what was decided into something the mortal mind can hear. The Trinador will bring it to you when it is ready. But know this. You stand at the beginning of a new dawn for the Church of Light. Not the church that failed you. Something better. Something that was built on what you showed us today.” She paused. “What you showed the world today will not be forgotten.”

The Gods of Light gathered themselves closer.

Then Cassandra said, quietly, “We must go. The war does not pause for us. But thank you. We will always be here for you.”

The shapes of them began to fade. They did not leave dramatically, they simply became less present, the radiance of them pulling back.

Then the battlefield in front of Castle Lightguard was just a field again.

Avandra climbed down from the wagon. Her boots hit the ash and it rose around her feet in a small cloud. She looked at the gate of Castle Lightguard, still standing, the Skein Gate off the main road still open and broadcasting to every corner of Arthos.

Leora looked to Avandra and asked, “Did you know?”

Avandra smiled, “Not all of it. I knew the Hoblings had found the eye and the Trinador asked us to bring it. But other than that… I just had to trust my allies. Now inside. All of us. The Trinador have things to tell us.”

As they began to move towards the castle gates, Avandra was interrupted by the Scale of Judgement. “Steward, you should be aware, members of my order returned and positioned themselves guarding the citizens in Elderwood Forest.” The Trinador almost seemed nervous. Avandra, sensing something odd was at play, questioned, “That’s good… and?”

The Scale of Judgement cleared his throat. “I am told that Oskeladd was discovered having left the encampment and making his way back here. We understand that this would have been bad, given his liege’s disposition to the church. The decision was made to detain him. We hope we did not overstep. He is very displeased with us.”

Avandra raised an eyebrow and then smirked. “I see. I bet he is. You can release him now.”

The Trinador Vertex nodded, “It has already been done. He is returning to Castle Lightguard now.”

Then they went. The Taliss Pride. Leora’s crew. Kyros, who paused at the threshold and looked north one more time before following. Diellza, still carrying the shovel she had forgotten to put down. Podwick Tumblewick, who stopped to look at the spilled Hobling weed across the road with an expression of genuine mourning before going in.

The gates of Castle Lightguard closed behind them.

Epilogue

The battlefield was empty.

The ash had settled. The wagons sat where they had always sat, the centermost one open now, its walls flat on the ground, the last of the Hobling herb scattered across the road. The gates of Castle Lightguard were closed. The Skein Gate off the main road stood open, broadcasting to an empty battlefield.

It was all very quiet until a cat walked out from between the barricades.

It was small and orange, unhurried, picking its way through the ash. It paused at the edge of the spilled Hobling herb. Sniffed it. Sneezed once, with great dignity. Then continued toward the wagons.

It disappeared behind the centermost one.

But a moment passed.

Then a Savar walked out the other side.

He was strikingly handsome, with the feathered markings of a Savar’Aving and yellow eyes that caught the sunlight. His clothes were impeccable and completely wrong for a battlefield. He wore them anyway with the ease of someone for whom being overdressed is simply a normal Tuesday. On his wrists, just visible at his cuffs, something burned but he didn’t seem to pay it much mind.

He walked toward the Skein Gate with his hands clasped behind his back, head tilted slightly, studying it the way you study something you have seen a thousand times and still find interesting.

He reached out and tapped it with one finger. Bonk.

Then again. Bonk Bonk.

He pressed his palm flat against it and tilted his head the other way, much like a cat because, well, he was.

“It never ceases to amaze me,” he said to himself, pleasantly, “what mortal minds can create when properly motivated.”

He stepped back. Looked into it, and smiled, the particular smile of someone who has just remembered something delightful.

“Oh.” He spread his hands slightly, as if taking in the whole of the road, the empty area, the settling ash, the open gate. “Isn’t this fortuitous.”

He began to pace, slowly, the way a cat paces when they are thinking.

“All these pieces. Coming together so perfectly.” he paused, mock-thoughtful. “Who would have thought out of all the things that occurred this evening, almost all of them happen to be perfect for my plan.” He shook his head with great wonder at the randomness of it all. “Remarkable really. The chaos of mortal lives produces something this… precise.”

He stopped pacing.

“I wonder,” he said, almost to himself, “who it was that told the Hoblings where a very particular eye could be found after the Hell King’s little tantrum. I wonder who whispered to Roland that a sentence of light and blindness would be rather fitting for a creature that has made its home in shadow for centuries. I wonder who sat on a wagon full of aromatic weed for a week making sure nobody opened it too early, ferociously defending it from a multitude of rats and vermin and losing precisely two whiskers in the process.”

He looked at his wrists. At the burns there. Smiled again, different this time.

“We will never know. These things have a way of happening.”

He turned to face the Skein Gate directly.

“Citizens of Arthos. Some of you may have already picked up on this but if you’re dim then it is I, Ryiak. The Cat Lord. And I have something to tell you.”

His voice shifted. Still warm. Still smooth. But with something underneath it now, something genuine.

“Excuse my monologuing  here, but my brother Vesmir is in trouble. Some time ago my brother-in-Light found himself in a bit of pickle. He struck a deal with the Firstborn Essyllt and had ten mortal years to free the spirit of Suulazultsur, a Firstborn Green Dragon, or he would die. She died a terrible death at the hands of… you know, I’m positive there is a book of lore you can search to find out that story. What’s important is that our good friend Styphon took her spirit before it could go wherever Dragon spirits go, and imprisoned her in his Orb of Power, Thade. Why? Who knows. Styphon isn’t the sharpest claw on the hand but here we are. Lord Vesmir’s ten years are nearly up, and if I don’t aid my brother he will certainly die at the talons of Essyllt. Truly sad.”

He paused there and looked legitimately morose before remembering something and picking up the pace again. “Also, more importantly, if we’re being honest, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! For centuries, the Black Wyrm Styphon has hoarded a mountain of treasures within his dark fortress. His walls are warded by deathly magic, his halls stalked by the Undead, and his ego demands absolute tyranny. But what is a Dragon’s greed if not an invitation for a grand, daring escapade? I do not summon you to start a bloody war of attrition. You’re not coming to murder the King of Hell or take down a giant Brood Matriarch. Wars are for the dull-witted and the desperate. I am calling upon the audacious, the nimble, and the cunning! Vesmir be damned, I want to pull a heist! The greatest heist ever concocted! We are going to slip past his razor sharp defences, navigate his labyrinthine traps, and walk away with the greatest haul this realm has ever witnessed. I am to steal Thade, Styphon’s Orb of Power right from under his nose. That is assuming it wasn’t blasted off. But I need your help.

Now, before you come at me. I have it on good authority that the firstborn Akah’teal believes she has the means to return the Green to life. I question the authenticity of this, but it’s irrelevant. In exchange for your help, I will, regardless of the circumstance, release her spirit from the Orb of Necromancy. Where it goes from there is no concern of mine, but you have my word, on all my treasure, that it will happen. Whether you bring her back to life or put her to rest, it makes no difference to me. I am here for the thrill of the game! The rush of the heist!

Styphon is blind, his forces are decimated, and all that treasure is barely guarded. Join me, friends, in one month’s time. Watch the Skein Gate for I will call again.”

With a flourishing bow the Cat Lord turned and left. As he walked away the Skein Gate broadcast an empty road for a few seconds.

Then it closed.