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Firewood was precious in the desert, but the blackened ruins of Vekaura offered a plentiful supply of charred timbers to hurl on bonfires. The city had been a blasted ruin when the Sandthrashers rode through the ruins of its walls, its streets empty, its people vanished.

None of them knew for sure who had razed it, but the captives they’d taken on the Marrowmark road told lurid tales of ancient gods whose anger had burned the city to ash and glass.

Raz Bloodmane didn’t believe that, not really.

Stories in Shurima were the currency of the oasis, the payment of the campfire—living things that grew and twisted with every retelling. No tale could pass from lips to ears without each teller adding some grisly detail, some exaggeration to make it their own.

Gods do not walk the sands, only men and monsters.

The Sandthrashers were a little of both.

A reaver band of bloodthirsty warriors mounted on giant sauren lizards, they terrorized the dust roads of the Sai-Kahleek for coin, and hunted Shakkal marauders in the Valley of Song for amusement. With temperatures dropping in the south, their Preystalker, Sai-Surtha, had led the warband into the warmer north to raid the caravans in search of the newly risen capital in the heart of the great desert.

Such caravans were ripe with fat merchants and priests, the desperate, and the gullible. Those foolish enough to believe that an ancient emperor had arisen from his tomb to reclaim his lost empire rather than an earthquake had exposed a buried city.

Easy pickings.

The Sandthrashers were ambush predators, erupting from desert storms to raid in a frenzy of snapping jaws and stabbing spears. Any who fought back were hacked apart, and those that surrendered were fed to their hungry mounts.

Raz grinned as the tethered sauren snapped and growled at the edge of the firelight—giant, reptilian beasts with long, razor-toothed jaws and flanks armored in sun-baked scales. Their ridged bellies hung low to the ground, worn hard by the sand, tails thrashing the dust that lay thick in this cursed city.

Ghosts lurked everywhere in the ruins; echoes of the dying were freighted on the cold wind whistling through shattered stones, and silhouettes burned onto the walls like painted shadows.

Something had happened here, something bad.

Sai-Surtha tossed a splintered roof beam onto the main fire. Sparks flew into the night sky, coiling in firefly spirals before the reaver band’s leader. Raz was strong, but even he would have struggled to lift that beam. Yet the skull-masked vastaya hefted the heavy timber like it was a twig, its enormous weight nothing to his inhuman physique.

Raz watched the sparks flicker briefly in the darkness before fading, sensing a significance that hung just out of reach.

“Why do you look up?” asked Anukta, following his gaze.

The scaled plates of her heavy armor rasped together as she moved, and her shaven head, bare but for a crimson mohawk, glistened with sweat. Her facial tattoos gleamed like exposed bone in the firelight.

“The sparks,” he said. “They burn so bright, then fade to nothing in the blink of an eye.”

“So?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought it might be significant. Like it meant something.”

“You are a sage now? Like Ngozi?”

“No,” said Raz, “not like him. But the sparks, they live, burn, and then are gone. Like us, like life. We are the sparks.”

Anukta laughed, the ivory hoops punched through her ears shaking like drunken moons. “You are right, not like Ngozi at all. He was truly clever. You are just a loud fool.”

Anger turned Raz’s features ruddy, and Anukta’s expression showed she knew she’d gone too far. Her head dropped and she fell to one knee, arms crossed over her chest, thumbs snapping to her palms.

“Forgive me, Raz Bloodmane,” she said, knowing that as Sai-Surtha’s second-in-command, he could have her thrown into the long, tooth-filled mouths of the sauren pack.

Or worse, fed to Ma’kara, the apex mount of Sai-Surtha.

The sauren was a colossal beast, forty feet long and ridged with razored scales from its tail to its three enormous heads. Each elongated jaw was large enough to swallow a horse and teeming with hooked teeth stained rust-brown with blood.

“This is the night before a hunt,” said Raz. “On such a night, only road-meat dies. Don’t make me change that custom.”

Anukta nodded and rose, turning to where the latest captives huddled in the smashed remains of a grain store. They’d taken them on the northern dune roads from Kenethet, men and women claiming they were on a pilgrimage south to see the new emperor. Four had already been devoured by the sauren, and the five that remained were scrawny-looking things, hardly a morsel for the beasts. Well, four of them were—the fifth was an older man with a city dweller’s skin, a full set of teeth, and a girth that told Raz he’d never gone hungry.

“That one,” he said, and Anukta hauled the man to his feet. His face was pale with fear, and Raz saw none of the other captives seemed to mind him being taken.

“Please, don’t kill me,” said the man, with the boneless accent of the northern coasts. “I have money. I can get you much money. Please, gods, don’t feed me to the beasts!”

“You’re too well fed to be a pilgrim,” said Raz, poking the man’s ample belly.

“A pilgrim? No, no, I... I am...”

Anukta jabbed the tip of her spear into his back. “You’re what? Out with it, fool!”

“I am Ordan Stilava, Arch-Patriarch of the Melierax Temple of Bel’zhun,” said the man between heaving breaths. “I’ll get you anything you want. Just, please don’t kill me.”

“A priest, huh?” said Raz, leaning in close and relishing the smell of fear washing off the man in waves. “I heard priests were pious servants of the gods. People to admire. You do not look like a man to admire, Ordan Stilava.”

“Kill him,” said one of the remaining captives. “And make it slow.”

Raz shrugged. “It looks like your companions don’t much like you either.”

“He is a fat pig who took our money and said he would lead us south to Azir!” spat the woman. “He feasted while we went hungry. When we begged for food, his guards beat us. Another day and he would have left us to starve to death in the Sai.”

Raz knelt by the woman—wolf-lean with skin the color of dusk and fire in her eyes.

“And who are you?”

“I am Dalia, proud daughter of sand and sun.”

“Water and shade to you, Dalia,” said Raz. “Show me your palms.”

She held out her hands, bound at the wrist by rough ropes.

He ran his fingertips around hardened patches of skin on her palm and along the edges of her thumb.

“You’re no pilgrim either,” said Raz. “These are sword calluses.”

She pulled her hands back.

“What were you? Caravan guard, tomb-robber, mercenary?”

“All three in my time.”

Raz jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You think I should feed him to the sauren?”

“Yes. Feet first.”

Raz laughed and drew his knife, a bone-bladed gutter he’d carved from one of Khesu’s splintered teeth. His sauren wasn’t nearly as big as Ma’kara and only had one head, but its teeth were just as long and just as sharp.

“I like this one,” he said to Anukta, sawing the serrated edge of his blade through Dalia’s bindings. “Come.”

She rose to her feet as Raz turned and dragged the protesting Ordan Stilava away.

“Do as he says and you might live,” said Anukta with a lopsided grin.

The sauren saw him coming, and the rumbling in their throats intensified as they saw he brought them more meat. They strained at their chain-leashes, inward-facing spikes driving into the softer skin at their throats the harder they pulled. Khesu watched him and opened its jaws wide in expectation of feeding.

“Soon, my friend,” said Raz. “Soon.”

The wood of Vekaura burned with the blood-red glow of a desert sunset, a good omen for tomorrow’s ride. Its light illuminated the rest of the Sandthrashers, twenty-three warriors lounging on stacked debris, blocks of stone, and benches dragged from the ruins to form a makeshift arena around the fire. Clad in a mix of light fabrics, furs, and boiled sauren-scale armor, they feasted on the last of the plunder from their most recent raid: salted skallashi meat and strong liquor made from fermented Eka’Sul milk.

Armed with curved tulwars and tooth-bladed spears, they were men and women whose names were a terror to caravans snaking across the dust roads of the Sai. Years of plunder and killing in the harshest of climes had made them tough and merciless, capricious and boastful, and none more so than Sai-Surtha.

The Preystalker sat atop a throne of stacked blocks burned to glass by some unimaginable heat. Half again as tall as Raz, their war-chief was a vastaya from the east, massively built with a boulder-like leonine head and a body swollen with muscle. He wore his thick mane long, each braid woven with steel cords and talismans he claimed were magic.

Sai-Surtha’s yellow-slitted eyes narrowed as he saw Raz approaching.

“What do you bring me, Raz Bloodmane?” said the Preystalker.

“Fresh meat,” cried Raz, taking Ordan Stilava from Anukta. “A soul rich with deceit and ripe with arrogance.”

“Ma’kara’s favorite,” said Sai-Surtha, reaching out and running a clawed hand across his mount’s nearest head. The sauren grumbled and hissed, its three jaws opening wide. Raz saw scraps of rotten meat between yellowed fangs, gullets pink and glistening in the firelight. Its many eyes, like pits of tar, flashed in hunger. The beast had devoured the lion’s share of the captives already, but its appetite was never-ending.

Ma’kara was an apex predator, and all other beasts must wait until its hunger was sated.

Raz pushed Ordan Stilava into the battle circle beside the bonfire. Its edges were marked with skulls, and the sand within was red and sticky. Ordan Stilava fell hard, scrambling to his knees before Sai-Surtha with his bloodied hands clasped before him as if in prayer.

“Please, mighty lord, don’t kill me!” he wailed.

The Sandthrashers laughed and Ma’kara pulled taut, eager to rip open this fulsome sweetmeat. Sai-Surtha pulled it back with a jerk of the chain-leash, but the beast’s hunger to feast on the patriarch was undimmed.

“Make sport of him, Raz Bloodmane!” ordered Sai-Surtha. “Entertain us!”

Ordan Stilava tried to rise, but Raz kicked him in the back. Raz lifted his arms high, slowly turning in a circle with a wide grin plastered across his face.

“Brothers and sisters!” he cried. “Our desert bounty is all but spent. The time is upon us to hunt!”

Cheers echoed from the blasted walls of the city. Fists and spears punched the air, accompanied by the bellows of the sauren.

“Caravans from the east and north ply the dust roads in search of water and shade!” he yelled, strutting around the circle. “But what shall they find?”

“Death!” roared the Sandthrashers.

Raz cupped a hand to his ear and leaned forward.

“What?”

“Death!”

“Again!” demanded Raz.

“Death! Death! Death!”

Raz grinned and held up a hand for quiet. A stillness fell across Vekaura, broken only by the heavy crackle of the bonfire and the heaving sobs of Ordan Stilava.

“Yes,” he said. “Death comes to them, as it comes to us all. But before the Jackal takes us into the Sunless Lands, we will spill the blood of our enemies and take what was once theirs. This world demands strength and punishes weakness, so I offer this blood to you all!”

They roared as Raz crossed to Ordan Stilava and cut the rope at his wrists.

The man sobbed in gratitude, but the smile fell from his face when Raz pressed the serrated knife into his hands.

“What? I don’t...”

“You are free to go,” said Raz.

“Free?” said Stilava, sudden hope in his eyes. “Really?”

“Upon my oath. All you have to do is step out of the circle and I will let you go.”

Raz grinned as he saw the understanding of what was on offer dawn on Stilava. He stepped away and spread his arms wide, turning his back on the trembling captive.

Knowing he would never get another chance, Stilava ran at Raz with the dagger upraised.

At the last instant, Raz swayed aside from the blade, spinning and thundering his fist into Stilava’s face. The man went down like a hamstrung beast, the dagger flying from his grip.

“Up,” said Raz, kicking it across the sand to him.

“Please,” said Stilava, ignoring the weapon. “You said I was free.” His face was wet with tears and snot, blood pouring over his lips from his broken nose.

Raz lifted Stilava to his feet and again pressed the knife into his hands. He leaned in and whispered in his ear. “These are your last moments in this world,” he hissed. “The gods are watching—is this how you want to meet them? Weeping and soiled? Give them a show and they might look kindly upon your soul!”

Hate hardened in Stilava’s eyes, and Raz leapt back as the priest stabbed the blade for his belly.

Another thrust, high for his throat. Raz batted the strike aside with his bare hands, spinning away as Stilava slashed wildly like a maniac. The man had no skill and had clearly never handled a knife beyond slicing fine cuts of meat on his plate.

“That’s it!” laughed Raz, easily dodging the clumsy attacks. “Come on, gut me!”

Behind Stilava, Raz saw Khesu’s head come up and heard the constant rumbling in the beast’s throat rise to something else entirely. He blocked an overhand cut with his armored forearm, and sent a pumping jab into Stilava’s belly.

The man hinged at the waist, winded, but he held on to the knife this time.

Raz risked a glance over at Sai-Surtha, and saw the Preystalker on his feet, looking back toward the city gates. Raz turned and saw something move in the shadows beyond the light of the bonfire. The sheen of gold glittered in the darkness, and though the shape moved like a man, it was surely too large for anything human.

Then something was arcing through the air.

Raz followed the object as it sailed overhead and landed at the edge of the fire.

The warriors around the circle shouted in alarm and reached for their weapons as the sauren pack scented blood and yanked at their chain-leashes in a frenzy.

Raz’s mouth fell open as he recognized the warrior he’d tasked with watching the city’s western gate. Uksem Heartsplitter.

Or, rather, half of him.

Uksem lay in a rapidly expanding pool of blood as catastrophic amounts pumped from where his body had been bitten in two. Impossibly, his eyes blinked and his fingers clawed the sand, as if he hadn’t accepted he was dead.

Raz took a step toward Uksem, then cried out as pain flared in his side.

Ordan Stilava!

Distracted, Raz had made for an easy target, but it was a poor strike, ill-aimed and with no strength behind it. Instead of penetrating a vital organ, it had sliced over the skin of his hip.

Raz spun to see the man stumble backward beyond the edges of the battle circle with a wild grin on his face and Raz’s knife held out before him.

“I’m free!” said Stilava. “I got out of the circle—you have to let me go! You said!”

Raz shook his head. He didn’t have time for this foolishness. Not now.

“Khesu. Kill.”

Ordan Stilava turned around in time to see the giant sauren surge forward with its fanged jaws spread wide. They snapped shut and the Arch-Patriarch was no more. Only his footprints in the sand and the mist of blood in the air remained to mark his presence.

Raz put the man from his mind as the shadow at the edge of the city advanced into the firelight. The breath caught in his throat.

Gods do not walk the sands, only men and monsters...

How wrong he had been—how fundamentally, entirely wrong.

It walked upright like a man, but there the similarities ended.

Hunched, yet still half a head taller than Sai-Surtha, with a thick tail dragging behind it.

Clad in dust-caked armor of dull gold and rusted bronze.

Eyes of jaundiced yellow, rugose flesh of green and ochre.

Blood drooling between dagger-like teeth in red ropes.

Its mighty head was bowed, the crocodilian snout sniffing for fresh meat.

Raz knew this creature. He’d seen his likeness carved into sunken temple walls, had etched it into the blade of his own spear.

He’d heard his name spoken in hushed whispers around the oases.

The eyeless makhru, the wandering true-speakers who were said to talk with the spirits of the ancients, told cautionary tales of this god’s exploits to warn against unchecked aggression.

“The herald of Azir...” said Anukta, her head held high in awed wonder.

“Renekton...” said Dalia.

The giant snapped his head toward her at the name, sliding a huge crescent blade from his back. Such a weapon could cleave a skallashi in two.

“Where. Is. He?” demanded the god.

His voice was rasping and dry, raw from an eternity of screaming.

Despite the sheer power of the god’s presence, Dalia remained unbowed, defiant in the face of his unimaginable power.

In contrast, the sauren pressed their bellies to the sand, eyes rolled back in submission and the low rumbling in their throats stilled. Even Ma’kara lowered its three-headed body to the ground, something Raz never dreamed he’d see.

He forgot the pain in his side as he resisted the urge to drop in awe alongside them. His lip curled in contempt as he saw the Sandthrashers gathered around the battle circle were kneeling.

Submission was for the weak; respect was only ever earned in blood.

The creature stalked forward as though oblivious to the warriors’ presence. Only when Sai-Surtha descended from his throne did he deign to look up and acknowledge them.

“I am Sai-Surtha, Preystalker of the Sandthrashers,” said the vastaya, unhooking his sauren-scale shield from Ma’kara’s saddle. “How is it you dare to enter my city and kill blood of my blood?”

Renekton looked around at the ruins, blinking, as if only now seeing its devastation.

“This is your city?” he said.

“For tonight it is,” said Sai-Surtha, drawing his falcata, a blade almost the equal of the god’s weapon, and stepping into the battle circle.

“Then you must know where he is,” said Renekton, joining Sai-Surtha in the circle as though this were some pre-ordained rite. “Rulers must know all, see all! All the whispering liars. Honeyed words and falsehoods. I heard them. No one listened. No one ever listens to Renekton...”

Raz backed away, joining Anukta and Dalia beyond the reach of the circling warriors. Renekton’s words made no sense, and he had no desire to be nearer to these giants than was necessary.

“Who is it you seek?” asked Sai-Surtha, the falcata spinning in his grip.

“The betrayer!” bellowed Renekton, the corded muscles at his neck spasming. “My faithless brother! Tell me where he is or you will know agony.”

Sai-Surtha laughed, a booming sound that echoed from the toppled walls of Vekaura. The Preystalker was a being of colossal appetites, and took his pleasures wherever he found them. Raz saw him eyeing Renekton’s physique, his hunter’s eye seeking out weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

“The Jackal?” said Sai-Surtha. “Nasus?”

Renekton flinched at the name of his legendary brother, as though the sound of it caused him great pain. His grip on his crescent blade slipped and he pressed a clawed hand to his brow at some unknowable madness.

“Do not speak his name,” warned Renekton, the dry rasp of his voice low and dangerous like the threat of an approaching sandstorm. “He was here, I know it. The magical spoor of the Ascended lies across this place, but goes no farther. They made war here, my brother and he who whispered in the darkness. The desert sands called to me, and the muttering winds told me of his coming. Now tell me where he is or die!”

“And if I had that knowledge, what would you offer in return?”

“Nothing at all, but maybe I won’t rip you apart.”

Sai-Surtha shook his head and made a quarter turn, drawing his falcata back over his right shoulder and extending his shield before him.

Renekton laughed, the sound terrible and melancholy all in one.

“You think you can stand against me? I am Ascended. A god to your kind!”

“I’ve always wanted to kill a god,” said the Preystalker, brandishing a blade engraved with runic sigils and hung with fetishes cut from the dead. “And if it must be a maddened, broken one, then so be it.” He hammered the blade against the vivid crimson of his breastplate and said, “I took this sword from a tomb in the Endless Plain and prised this armor from the skeleton of the ancient warrior who bore it. He was about your size. I will kill you with the craft of your own kind.”

Renekton roared in fury and launched himself at Sai-Surtha. He lashed his crescent blade into the Preystalker’s shield, drawing splintered scales.

Sai-Surtha’s return strike knocked the fury from his attack. Renekton stumbled and the Preystalker ripped his falcata into his ribs, drawing oil-black blood. Renekton struck back, but carved only shield again.

“You deny my vengeance while you squat in this ruin of his making!” he roared.

Another blow. Renekton staggered, then spun, head lowered. Keeping his distance.

Raz saw a newfound respect in the god’s eyes.

He’d struck expecting an easy kill, but Sai-Surtha was a fighter of incredible power and skill, with weapons and armor to match Renekton’s. The Sandthrashers were no longer on their knees, but punching the air with their weapons and chanting the name of their war-leader.

Sai-Surtha lunged, driving his toothed shield into Renekton’s shoulder and face. Renekton threw him off, and leapt aside, faster than ought to have been possible for a being his size. His tail lashed out, but Sai-Surtha ducked and pressed his advantage. He broke Renekton’s guard with his shield and body-slammed him across the battle circle.

Renekton fell into the fire and rolled. Flames licked his flesh black and sparks flew into the darkness. He shook his crocodilian head and spat, blood dripping from his fangs.

“You know where he is!” Renekton bellowed. “I see his liar’s face looking out through your eyes. Tell me!”

Sai-Surtha came at him again with another lunge, carving a chunk of golden armor from Renekton’s flank. Instead of retreating, Renekton surged and hammered a series of rapid slashes down on Sai-Surtha. The Preystalker blocked the first, but the second and third tore into his furred flesh. The fighters’ blades spun and swooped, a blur of silver and bronze ringing against each other in a lethal dance.

Renekton circled left. Sai-Surtha went right. Both were bloodied and winded.

The Preystalker struck first, a low, ankle-slicing blow—Renekton parried, then spun around to deliver a stinging cut that splintered the golden plates of his opponent’s shoulder guards.

“The legends speak of you as a mighty war-god,” said Sai-Surtha between heaving gulps of air. “They tell how you took that blade from a dead king of Icathia. How you broke its haft as you broke his army.” Sai-Surtha shook his head. “How low you have fallen, how lost you have become.”

Renekton growled and charged. Sai-Surtha met his first strike with his shield, and countered his second with his falcata. A third he parried, a fourth he turned aside in a squealing slide of ancient steel that threw off jade sparks.

A tearing bite ripped into Sai-Surtha’s shoulder, and the Preystalker threw back his head with a howl of pain. A tail lash drew blood from his chest. Both fighters backed off, bleeding from their many wounds.

Renekton grinned, his teeth red with Sai-Surtha’s blood. “All that keeps you alive are stolen magics. Without them, you would be dead already.”

“And yet still I stand,” said Sai-Surtha with a mocking bow.

Renekton spun his crescent blade from hand to hand, then seized it in a double-handed grip to hack down at Sai-Surtha. The Preystalker blocked the blade with his shield, driven to his knees by the force of the blow.

He rolled past Renekton and raked his falcata across his thigh.

The god stumbled away, blood pouring down his leg.

Watching from beyond the circle, Raz willed Sai-Surtha to finish the fight, to step in and deliver the killing blow.

The fighters closed again, blades ringing like funeral bells. Sai-Surtha’s shield broke apart and Renekton’s armor hung from him in tattered strips of gold. Renekton stomped in, and the tip of his ancient blade sliced deep into Sai-Surtha’s cheek.

The leader of the Sandthrashers spat teeth and fractured Renekton’s ribs with a two-handed hammerblow.

Renekton was staggered by its ferocity, by pain one of his kind had likely not known in centuries. His stance faltered and his yellowed eyes clouded as though reliving jagged memories and visions of triumphs and deaths long since consigned to the dust of history.

“Please!” bellowed Renekton. “Brother! He is too strong! It must be done!”

The words were meaningless, but, sensing an opening, Sai-Surtha swung for Renekton’s throat. The crescent blade lifted to parry, too late and too slow. The falcata tore Renekton’s face open from jaw to temple. He grunted in pain and swung wildly with his blade.

A clumsy blow, but it split armor and lacerated Sai-Surtha’s side.

Undaunted by the injury, the vastaya struck again, hacking his blade through Renekton’s wrist, leaving it hanging by a shred of sinew.

Renekton threw his head back and roared as Sai-Surtha pulled him in tight and drove the length of his blade through his foe’s heart.

The Sandthrashers cheered, and Raz threw his arms up in triumph.

The two fighters stood for a moment as though embracing, the tip of Sai-Surtha’s falcata jutting from Renekton’s spine. Dark blood streamed from the blade, hissing as it turned the sand beneath to glass.

Renekton rested his torn cheek on Sai-Surtha’s shoulder.

“All you had to do was tell me where my brother was,” he said. “But now it is too late.”

“Too late for what?” said Sai-Surtha, ripping his blade clear and stepping away.

“For you to live,” said Renekton.

A pale emerald glow built within the god, running through his flesh in forking lines of searing light. The sand lifted from the battle circle, surrounding Renekton in spinning loops of dust as he rose to his full height.

This was not the hunched figure who’d entered Vekaura, and Raz saw the true face of the ancient god as his form swelled with long-forgotten magic, his dimensions stretching with power harnessed from the sun itself. His wounds sealed, the skin reforming without scar and pulsing with radiant vitality. The blood spilling from his torn scales turned from black to vivid red before lifting from his body in floating ruby droplets. His clawed hand, twisting on its sinewed thread, re-fused to knitting bone as the gold and bronze of his torn armor flowed like lustrous wax to renew itself and regain its luster.

Eyes that were once jaundiced yellow now burned with the light of newborn stars, clear where before they had been clouded with madness. Every warrior around the battle dropped back to their knees in willing supplication. Even Raz, who knelt to no man, felt no shame in bowing before such a being.

He felt the power that had wrought this creature pulsing in searing waves.

This was a being that demanded awe, a god-warrior of such potency that no legend could ever hope to capture his true majesty.

The falcata fell from Sai-Surtha’s grip, useless against this towering monster.

Renekton’s restored hand reached out and hoisted Sai-Surtha from the ground, lifting him like a man holding the runt of the litter by the scruff of its neck.

“Little mortal,” said Renekton, his voice echoing from the shattered walls of the city. “I am an Ascended being. I have crushed armies, torn down cities, sealed the gates and set them to flame. I laid waste to the world uncounted ages ago, and you thought to stand against me?”

With a dismissive flick of his wrist, Renekton tossed the body of Sai-Surtha toward Ma’kara. The great sauren’s heads came up and their jaws snapped shut.

Raz winced at the sound of crunching bone and ripping flesh as the three heads tore their former master to scraps.

Renekton bent to retrieve the Preystalker’s falcata, its impressive size like a toy sword in his hands.

“Who claims this blade now?”

Raz felt every eye upon him, the Sandthrashers looking to him as Sai-Surtha’s second in command. The blood felt cold and sluggish in his body, like cooled fat clogging his veins. He let out a shuddering breath, knowing that to take the falcata would be death.

He rose to his feet and stepped forward, his dreams of one day leading the Sandthrashers now ashes in his mouth.

“Sai-Surtha is dead by your hands,” he said. “The blade is yours. You are now the Preystalker of the Sandthrashers.”

“My time of leading blade-hosts is long passed,” said Renekton, and Raz thought he saw a depthless well of melancholy flicker within the fire of his eyes. “I desire no army, nor crave followers as I will seek the scent of my brother beyond these walls. You would do well to be far from these lands when I find him.”

The god-warrior threw Sai-Surtha’s falcata toward Raz. It landed, point first, in the sand, quivering slightly.

“Your leader,” said Renekton, stepping from the circle towards him. “Did he know anything of my brother or did he die for nothing?”

“I know not what he knew,” said Raz, pulling the sword from the sand and holding it out before him in offered challenge.

“What are you doing?” asked Renekton.

“If you are going to kill me, then I will give a show you won’t soon forget,” said Raz. “I will make you work to claim my soul.”

Renekton laughed and shook his mighty head.

“You are less than nothing to me,” he said. “I seek the heart of a god. I merely pass this blade to you as a sign of your ascension to, what did you call it? Preystalker, yes, that was it. You are now the Preystalker.”

Raz lowered the sword, looking from its blade to the warriors gathered around him.

He could ask for no greater sign of favor than the word of this god.

“Lord Renekton,” said a voice, and Raz turned to see Dalia slowly rising to her feet beside Anukta. “On our journey south, the man who enslaved us spoke of an order of scribes who sought a sunken library. It is said to be hidden in the cliffs beyond Zirima. I do not know if there is any truth to this, but if the tales of your learned brother are true, then perhaps he too might seek out such a place...”

Renekton sighed, his eyes taking on the faraway look of a mind lost in bitter memories.

“Knowledge was ever his passion,” he said. “Once we almost shed blood over my thirst to destroy a great library of an enemy city...”

Renekton turned and strode back the way he had come, passing once again to shadow.

As darkness swallowed the ancient being, it seemed his form diminished from its towering, lustrous god-form, returning to the hunched and forlorn wanderer lost to madness who had first entered Vekaura.

With Renekton gone, Raz turned to Dalia and Anukta.

“You want to live?” he asked Dalia, bending to retrieve his tooth-bladed knife from the blood-drenched ground where Ordan Stilava had been devoured.

“I do,” she said.

Raz handed her the weapon and nodded toward the hissing, reptilian form of Khesu.

“I made this from one of its teeth,” he said. “If it lets you ride it, you’re one of us.”

She nodded, and Raz was pleased at the lack of fear he saw.

“So what are you going to ride?” said Anukta.

Raz sheathed Sai-Surtha’s falcata in a leather loop at his back.

He locked eyes with the middle head of Ma’kara and rolled his shoulders. Ragged scraps of flesh dangled from the creature’s barbed teeth, and it watched him approach with hostile eyes.

“Right,” said Raz, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way...”

Diana did not belong on Mount Targon. A group of Solari hunters discovered her swaddled between her frost-claimed parents—strangers to this land, who had clearly traveled a long way. The hunters brought her to their temple, dedicated her, and raised her as a member of the Tribes of the Last Sun, known to many as the Rakkor.

Like all of the Solari faith, she underwent rigorous physical and religious training. However, unlike others, Diana was determined to understand why the Solari act the way they do, and the reasoning behind their beliefs. She spent her evenings digging through the libraries, devouring texts with only pale moonlight to read by. Paradoxically, this pursuit provided more questions than answers, and her teachers’ aphoristic replies did little to sate her inquisitive mind.

When Diana began to notice tomes had whole chapters torn from them, and all references to the moon seemed missing, the teachers assigned harsh punishments, intending to exhaust her into devotion. Likewise, her fellow acolytes distanced themselves from her and her questioning.

There was one shining beacon in these years of confused, frustrated isolation: Leona. The most devout of Diana’s peers, they often found themselves in impassioned debate. Though one never swayed the other in their long and frequent conversations, they developed a close friendship.

Then, one glorious night, Diana discovered a hidden alcove deep within the mountain. Moonlight spilled against its walls, revealing imagery of the sun, of soldiers armored in gold alongside silver-clad warriors, and matching imagery of the moon, atop Targon’s greatest peek. Delighted, Diana raced to share this clear message with Leona—the sun and moon were not enemies after all!

Leona did not react with joy.

She urged Diana to put this heresy from her mind entirely, warning of the punishments that may befall her if she were to voice such thoughts to others. Diana had never seen her serious friend quite so grave.

Frustration gnawed at her. She had reached the end of the Solari’s knowledge, yet not even Leona would take this new discovery into account. What were the Solari hiding? Increasingly, Diana felt certain there was only one place she could go for answers: the top of Mount Targon.

The climb tested her in every way imaginable, and time seemed to stand still as she scaled the peak. To survive, she focused her thoughts on her lone companion, and the answers that would make the Solari better, more whole.

The summit greeted her with the brightest, fullest moon she’d ever seen. After a rapturous moment, a pillar of moonlight slammed into her and she felt a presence taking hold of her, sharing glimpses of the past, and of another Rakkor faith called the Lunari. Diana realized this presence could only be one of the legendary Aspects… and she had been chosen as its host.

When the light dissipated, her mind was again her own. Diana found herself clad in armor, holding a crescent blade, and hair once dark hair now gleaming silver. She turned to find she was not alone—Leona stood at her side, similarly bedecked in shining, golden battleplate, a sunbreak-bright shield and sword in her hands.

Diana was overjoyed to share in this revelatory moment with her friend, but Leona thought only of returning to the Solari. Diana begged her not to, desperate that they face this new future together. But Leona refused, and their disagreement quickly turned into a titanic battle, erupting with moonlight and sunfire.

Fearful of losing herself to the Aspect’s power, Diana ultimately fled down the mountain. But, vindicated in her search, she felt more certain than ever that she had been right to question the Solari’s teachings. It was time to confront them, and show the error of their ways.

Pushing past their Ra’Horak guardians, Diana burst into the chambers of the high priests. They listened with mounting horror as she told of what she had learned of the Lunari… and then they denounced her as a heretic, a blasphemer, and a peddler of false gods. Rage filled Diana, amplified by the Aspect within, and she embraced it in a terrible burst of moonlight. Startled, she fled the temple, leaving a trail of death in her wake.

Now, driven by half-remembered visions and glimpses of ancient knowledge, Diana clings to the only truths she knows for certain—that the Lunari and the Solari need not be foes, and that there is a greater purpose for her than to be a Solari acolyte of Mount Targon.

And though that destiny remains unclear, Diana will seek it out, whatever the cost.

Among the Rakkor tribes that dwell upon Mount Targon, the sun is sacred, and none venerate it more than the Solari. Children are raised from birth to honor it, and even to shed blood for it, until its Aspect returns, heralding a grave threat they all must face.

Leona was one such child. She took to the Solari faith as naturally as breathing, finding solace and warmth within its rigid structure. This manifested through her rapid achievement of excellence, her peers envious of her capability, willpower, and devotion. None doubted she would one day become one of the Ra’Horak, the holy warriors of the Solari.

Though Leona flourished, she could not help but see her masters struggle with their most exasperating student, an orphan named Diana. Her curiosity was welcomed at first, but soon the teachers began to perceive Diana’s questions as challenging the Solari ways. Leona watched Diana suffer punishment and isolation—but where others saw insolence, she saw a lost soul devoted to a search for meaning.

Leona found her purpose in the Solari teachings, and resolved to share it with Diana as even the most dutiful teachers forsook her. The two would debate late into the night, with Leona hoping to persuade Diana that everything she could ever want was there in the faith, waiting for her to accept it. Though she failed to win Diana over, Leona did find a friend.

One night, Diana confided a secret to Leona. She spoke of discovering a hidden alcove in the mountain, an ancient place where the walls were etched with depictions of strange symbols and forgotten societies. When Diana mentioned climbing the summit of Mount Targon to learn more, Leona urged her to stop. Seeking to protect her from the ire of the other Solari, Leona made Diana promise to abandon this search. Reluctantly, Diana agreed.

Time passed, and the two never spoke of Diana’s discovery again. Leona believed her friend had finally come to her senses.

Her belief was shattered late one night, when she glimpsed Diana slipping out of the temple. While her first instinct was to tell the elders, Leona thought instead of protecting her friend, wresting her back from the edge. Resolved, Leona set off after Diana…

To the summit of Mount Targon.

The ascent was a trial unlike any Leona had ever endured, straining every fiber of her being to its limit, and beyond. Her training, willpower, and concern for Diana was all that drove her on. The unblinking eyes of bodies frozen into the mountain's slopes watched her climb, their own journeys forever incomplete, but not even they could deter her.

After what seemed an eternity—and much to her own amazement—Leona reached the peak.

Exhausted, she beheld an uncanny landscape, and found Diana engulfed in a coruscating column of silver light. Leona saw her friend’s silhouette writhing in agony, the air rippling with her screams. Horrified, Leona rushed to her aid, when a golden radiance slashed down from the heavens to envelop her.

The sensation was indescribable, but rather than incinerating Leona, the illumination coursed into her, suffusing her with incredible power. She clung to her consciousness, fighting the current seeking to sear away her very being.

Ultimately, her indomitable will triumphed—and with that control came understanding.

With control came understanding. Leona was forever changed, imbued by the Aspect of the Sun. Destiny had selected her, and it was her duty to protect the Solari in the times to come.

It was then that Leona saw Diana, clad in gleaming silver war-plate, a strange reflection of the golden armor she discovered herself now wearing. Diana begged Leona to join her, to seek out answers the Solari could not offer. Leona demanded they return home, and present themselves for the priests’ judgment. Neither conceded, and they finally felt the weight of the weapons in their hands.

Their combat was swift, a blistering clash between sun and moon, ending with Diana’s crescent blade at Leona’s throat. But, rather than delivering the killing blow, Diana fled. Devastated, Leona descended Targon and hurried to her elders.

When she arrived, she found slaughter. Many Solari priests and their Ra’Horak guardians were dead, seemingly slain by Diana’s hand. The survivors were awed by the presence of two Aspects now in their midst, and Leona was committed to helping them navigate this new reality—the guiding light to her people, just as the sun had always been.

She has sworn to find Diana, to preserve the dominance of the Solari... but also to help her old friend control the Moon Aspect’s power before it destroys her.

General Miesar slid an ivory cone across the map. Jarvan wondered at the simplicity of the white piece. No head, no features denoting a face. Just a simple rounded shape, neutral and plain, with no resemblance to the hundred Demacian soldiers it represented.

“If we lead our knights south now, we can attack the argoth head-on before they reach Evenmoor,” said General Ibell, a stout woman with commanding eyes.

“The argoth are fiercest in swarms,” said General Miesar as he paced the length of the tent. “They rely on overwhelming numbers to defeat direct attacks. If we cannot divide them, they will slaughter us long before we reach their queen.”

Jarvan strode to the edge of their tent, parting the fabric and gazing out across the valley. He might have enjoyed the view – morning light made the verdant landscape sparkle with dew, and the village of Evenmoor looked peaceful from a distance. But an ominous gray shape swelled on the horizon as the horde thundered in the distance.

The argoth were not enormous creatures; fighting one alone would be easy enough, but in large numbers, they were subject to the dominating will of a queen, able to move and fight as one vicious unit. This swarm was bigger than any Jarvan had seen before.

Miesar wiped sweat from his brow. “They’ll be here by this evening?”

“Sooner,” said Ibell. “We have an hour, maybe two if we’re lucky, until the argoth overwhelm Evenmoor.”

Jarvan turned back to the map. Ten ebony cones representing the argoth stood at the outer edges of Evenmoor, overshadowing the single Demacian cone. The queen was marked by a smaller figurine of red jasper, right in the heart of the ebony mass.

“Any charge would need to fight through hundreds of argoth to get near her,” said Jarvan, gesturing to the red stone. “What do you propose?”

Miesar halted his pacing. “I’m afraid you won’t like this, my lord, but we could retreat. Surrender Evenmoor. Return on the morrow with forces strong enough to cut through the horde and slay the queen.”

“Leave Evenmoor to the argoth?” asked Ibell. “That’s a death sentence for these people. They will be overrun in a matter of hours.”

Jarvan stared at the ebony and ivory until they merged in his mind’s eye. All he saw was the red queen stone.

Ibell raised her eyebrows. “You see something?”

“A desperate plan,” Jarvan replied, “but it is all we have. We conceal our fiercest fighters within Evenmoor and lay an ambush. With such a small band they won’t anticipate our attack. Then, when the queen is within reach, we strike hard and fast. With her death, the swarm’s unity will be broken.”

“Into the center of the argoth, my lord?” Miesar said. “That, too, may be a death sentence.”

“But we give Evenmoor a chance of surviving the attack,” said Ibell.

“No plan is without risk,” Jarvan said. “I will lead only those willing to join me, and will not engage until our hope of victory is greatest. We bide our time until the eye of the maelstrom is upon us, and then strike from within. With the queen dead, it will be a simple matter to fight our way out.”

Ibell slid a single ivory cone to the village on the map, then moved the circle of ebony pieces forward until they overlapped Evenmoor entirely. The jasper queen stood at its center. With a flick of her finger, she tipped the red stone over. That done, she slid two more white cones to join the fight.

“This is our plan,” said Jarvan. “Ibell and Miesar, you and your troops will lead the second wave.”

“Aye,” said Miesar.

“And you, my lord?” Ibell asked. “Where will you be?”

“I have a queen to kill,” Jarvan replied.

Hear! Upon the Great Mountain,

The beloved of the Sun sing to Her,

A song of Love and Devotion,

Of Battle and Glory.

The golden Sun, Her Light ever shining,

Bathes our faces in warmth

And scorches our enemies,

Burning them to holy ash.

Yet even the radiant Sun must rest.

And so we are left without Her,

Cold and naked and alone,

At the mercy of those who stalk in the Dark.

We mourn for Her as She slumbers,

Knowing She never wishes to part from us,

The last wink of twilight,

Her fading farewell kiss.

Yet the night we would miss Her most dearly,

The Darkness long and bitter,

We persuade Her to stay longer

And dance with us to Her own music.

Twilight’s kiss extended,

A roaring flame that thaws through winter’s grasp,

The Sun stays awake all through the night,

Whispering Her sweet secrets until the dawn.

We battle the lull of Darkness for Her,

For the love She bears us,

And we gaze upon Her glory

As we show Her our own.

Hymn of the Dawn

My Dayblessed parents,

I pray that my letter finds you both well, and that young Aidonel and Kespina are healthy and happy. I respect your desire for more correspondence, and so I write to you today with nothing much to say, certainly nothing of great import.

The instructors have begun their lessons on the Nightless Eve. I look forward to the shift in our waking hours as I and the other shield-aged prepare to face the Darkness together. To Mother’s question, I do not yet know whether I will attend in the company of another acolyte, nor whether I wish to do so. I understand that you doubt my honesty in these matters, Mother, but truly none have yet caught my eye. I assure you that you needn’t ask further, and that I will tell you plainly should that answer change.

Oh! I performed admirably upon the Wargames field this past week. Our trainer, Initiate Priestess Nycinde, praised me highly and asked the others to observe my footwork and swordsmanship. She has said that my shield suits me, though I must learn to use it in support of my allies on the field, not simply as a means to protect myself. I take her tutelage seriously and have asked Hyterope and Sebina to continue to train with me after our schooling has finished for the day. I expect to continue to improve.

My academic pursuits are going well, though I feel I am lacking in my oration skills. I have spoken with Sunsworn Priestess Nemyah, and she says that I am well on my way, yet on this I do not agree with her. I do not mean to say that I am disrespecting my instructors! More that I wish to better my skills, and it does not appear that Sunsworn Priestess Nemyah will offer any additional support.

There is a girl in my Oratory class whose arguments are concise and well-constructed, but her views and lines of thought do not always connect to what the instructors have taught. Yet she is always prepared, and other acolytes find their arguments fall to pieces under her scrutiny. Perhaps she is someone I could approach for assistance in this matter. I know you believe me capable of becoming a leader, and I will not fail you in this.

In the Love of Her Light,
Leona

Dayblessed Diana,

Are you often busy after our Middle Rakkoric instruction? I sense that I am not doing as well in Oratory as I could be, and humbly ask that you help me grow my skills in constructing and delivering convincing arguments.

The content of your arguments notwithstanding, you are more skilled at constructing the logic behind them than anyone else in our year, and likely in our temple. You have heard some of the end-of-year debates and presentations that the older acolytes have made in years past, have you not? I believe you are better suited to train me in this than any of them.

I know your time is limited, so I would not ask that you spend much of it on me. But I would greatly appreciate it if you could look over my notes before our next rhetorical exercise, and help me grasp what it is I am not yet understanding.

And please know that I do not ask this lightly. If there is anything you are struggling with, anything that I can do to assist you where you need it, I pledge myself to it in return.

In the Light,

Leona

How I could ask someone to attend the Festival with me

—A note? Is that too childish? Not straightforward enough? Lots of notes as it is... but I love getting notes from her. She always makes time to answer, always very thoughtful and smart

—Ask her to take a walk with me? When? I have skirmishes every night this week

—Flowers? Don’t know if she likes flowers, or which flowers she likes

—A meal? Never shared a meal together, might be too public. What if the meal is gross? Bad omen?

—Offer to train her with her shield? She doesn’t use her shield much, that could work! Or maybe she doesn’t like using her shield? She doesn’t seem to like skirmishes

—Debate some scripture? Good chance to talk in person, get to see her at her best, be brilliant... try to impress her? Maybe tell her you need help with a big project for Oratory? No, she’s in the same class as you, this is stupid

—Pray together? Good excuse for privacy, but she would never say yes to that

—Ask her if she already has plans? Be casual, doesn’t have to be as more than friends, she probably doesn’t want to go alone. What if she’s already going with someone? Who would she go with

—Tell her I don’t have a companion? This is not a terrible option

—Don’t ask, just see her there and ask her to dance with you? Also not a terrible option

Why is this so hard

The river brings memories from a dead world. I wonder if I’m the only one able to find them.

Across the water, I see the vines my father tends, curling protectively around Ixtal and its people, the last of Runeterra. Leaves and branches hang in ragged loops all up and downstream, disappearing into gloom past dawn’s limited reach. Each visit, I wonder if the dark hides serpent or jaguar, or some other danger. My mother hunts those beasts, providing meat and protecting our village of Semchul. My parents expected I would follow in their footsteps. That I would grow into Aliay the gardener, or Aliay the hunter.

I chose neither, but their lessons combined to shape my path.

I shrug off my robe and wrap my windcord’s braid of translucent silk once around each hand. Twenty-three years’ study of the Axiomata have done much to imprint them into my mind—with the cord as my focus, I wield the elements they describe. My studies have gifted me control, understanding, wisdom. But without the cord I possess no more mastery than any other Ixtali.

I step into the river, bare feet squelching in the mud, until the water rises to my exposed waist. I quest out with my foot, searching for the submerged tree roots that serve to capture my quarry. When I find them, I set to work with the cord.

Raising my hands, I trace the lines of the Fifth Axiom from memory, whipping the cord like a paintbrush across canvas. In turn, the water churns as a bubble of air slowly widens around me, from the river’s surface to its bed. Passing water rushes and pushes against my crafted currents, straining against unnatural displacement, but my work holds. The riverbed reveals mud and stone and gnarled roots. Debris catches in the tangle, objects from somewhere beyond Ixtal. These ancient reminders are all that remain of the lost world.

These civilizations must have been astounding, for often their craftsmanship remains untouched by time or tide. Such is the case today, as something shining and silver catches a feeble ray of sun. My studied concentration turns to joy at the sight. I grin and plop right into the mud, cross-legged before the roots. I dig, revealing a short-handled axe crafted from a single piece of steel. It’s beautiful.

I envision a battle, millennia ago. Some brave warrior standing against the monsters that consumed Runeterra, and I’m grateful for the chance to memorialize that noble, doomed struggle. I scoot forward and bury my fingers into the mud, searching for my waterproof treasure box.

I find it and touch the latch, which requires a certain measure of axiomatic mastery to move—an old precaution in case I were discovered. It is filled with everything I felt worth saving—and hiding—over the years. When I am Yun Tal, I will bring these treasures to Ixaocan, to register with our historians and share with other scholars. Mivasim, my dear mentor and one of Ixtal’s greatest natural elementalists, often chastises me for my interest in the Nasiana, the World Beyond, so I keep my secrets for now. I place the axe beside a bronze helmet, then shut the box with a flick of my wrist.

And then my heart leaps into my throat.

My windcord is gone.

I never imagined it was possible. I resealed the latch on my own, without a thought. Only the Yun Tal are capable—are worthy—of such action. I scramble in the mud, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Panic, joy, and fear war within me. Then I notice the river remains parted. I am in control.

I turn toward the vined wall, the borders of Ixtal, and think a manic thought: myself, wrapped in a cocoon of protective currents of my making, wandering a landscape that’s empty of life but full of answers.

I’ve taken two steps forward when a blast of water kicks into the air, filling the space around me with a thunderclap of sound. My eyes dart instinctively, scanning for threats. I expect the ripple of jaws in the water or a hawk overhead, when I see a figure, imposing from the riverbank. It’s Mivasim, my mentor, her Yun Tal robes dark even in shadow, her frame unbent by age. Her eyes gleam like lightning on jade, and my bubble of shaped air shrinks. The water roars as Mivasim, without so much as a wave of her hand, accelerates the river’s flow from a burble to a rush. I had thought myself clever, that I’d had a secret place of my own. Had she always known?

Water whooshes by as the currents protecting me weaken and shrink. Soon I’ll be swept away. But I feel no anger from her. She thrusts an open palm toward me, a gesture I’ve become familiar with. I may avoid punishment with a clever enough argument.

Wind and spray batter me, but I see the pattern. She’s traced the lines of an axiomatic extrapolation into the air between us.

This is no punishment. It’s a test. A puzzle, one I’ve trained for years to solve. I imagine myself walking a circuit around Semchul’s modest athenaeum, and set to work against my mentor.

When I reach her side, my spirit is buoyed by her triumphant smile, but my body is in tatters. She opens her arms just in time to catch my collapsing form.

“It is time, my student,” she whispers as my consciousness fades. “In Ixaocan, you will defend yourself beneath the Vidalion, and we will judge whether you are worthy of becoming Yun Tal.”

A week of walking has put us deeper into Ixtal’s interior than I’ve ever been, yet the villages we stop at for rest seem more provincial than my own.

“Do they truly have so much to fear?” I ask Mivasim, after we say farewell to our gracious hosts in Peslan. “My father tends the borders themselves, and he fears nothing.”

“A hunter shies not from the jaguar’s charge,” she responds, absently raising and lowering the pack that floats beside her as we walk, “but a roar in the distance sends even the boldest smith fleeing.”

A pair of children tumble into view along the path, racing back toward the village. “I suppose it’s that they fear the unknown. The potential for change.”

I could sense my teacher struggling with something. I push at the broad, waxy leaves hanging just over either side of our heads. “Our situation is unique in history,” she sighs. “Tell me again how your father describes the value of his work.”

My family’s faces swim into view, around the first fire of my memory. Their stories spurred my life’s pursuit. I put on a storyteller’s whisper. “In the years following the Final War, there was much chaos. The world boiled and churned with monsters and death.”

I let the last word linger in the air, but Mivasim is unmoved. I press on.

“We were pushed almost to extinction, when the wisest of us—the first of the Yun—turned the Axiomata of Ixaocan into a weapon, quelling every foe and sealing our borders. And so, this is the only land to have survived those cataclysmic days.

“The world that’s left is poisoned. Beneath Ixtal’s canopies, we are protected from the doom that consumed all else.” I grin, and thump the bottom of my ribcage with a fist. “And so, truly, it is the great gardeners of Semchul who now keep Ixtal from that same dark fate!”

Mivasim’s smile creases the soft lines that I and her other students helped etch over the years. “And for those gardeners, the dreaded machines that cut into our jungles are merely an extension of that poison, yes? Miasma with metal legs.”

The path before us turns and opens, pale sunlight gleaming unfiltered and warm on my face. “I suppose, yes,” I reply, “though the Yun Tal are far more equipped to fight them.”

“Still. A practical problem, with a practical solution.”

“Indeed.”

“And you are a scholar, trained to argue from a perspective that is not yours, to understand that which may be foreign to you?”

I beam. “Yes.”

“So a villager—a trader, perhaps—who has neither the pride nor experience of a border-gardener…”

“...Would see the problem as an abstract, to which their reaction is rooted in emotion.”

“Exactly right.”

“Unless...” I draw out the word, gesturing with my hands at nothing in particular. “Unless we could describe the situation for them in a way which accounts for their various ignorances.”

Mivasim shakes her head. “The trader has energy to trade. Perhaps some for entertainment, the rest for family. All else is distraction.” A wryness creeps around her voice, signaling a return to more companionable chatter. “They do not have the benefit of decades at the feet of a wise and cunning master.”

I lack the words or wisdom to counter. “Nor the experience that might provide comfort. I understand. Thank you, Mivasim.”

We pass a moment in silence. “Ixtal is better for this distinction. I am glad you are not a hunter, my dear sumqa.”

My smile matches the sun.

Ixaocan is vast. It seems to span the sunlit horizon, the tallest arcologies polished and angular and sculpted above the trees. Each step toward the great capital of Ixtal reveals new vistas, new shapes.

And while the cardinal arcology imposes from a distance, it overwhelms in person.

Within minutes of striding through its proud northern gates, we are mobbed by color and noise. Youngsters rush this way and that, chased by caretakers, themselves hounded by peddlers, beauticians, scryers, and craftspeople. Mivasim’s black boots click against the stone road, more imposing here than when we were in the jungle. The crowd gives full deference to the rich blacks and purples of Mivasim’s Yun Tal weave. For all the differences between Ixaocan and Semchul, they share this: absolute respect for the Yun Tal.

“Miv? Miv!” A voice booms from ahead.

“Oh, pin’kan,” my teacher mutters, and in the same breath returns to the very picture of civility. Before us is a crossroads, canopied by a criss-crossing bridge where diners lounge in elegant chairs. A burly old man waves madly. Green eyes, no hair—and black Yun Tal robes. “Dearest Chiuq!” Mivasim calls out to him. “You’ve arrived ahead of schedule!”

Chiuq—whom I am careful not to address, without knowing his full name—lumbers toward us, trailed by a dozen bright-eyed aspirants wearing students’ robes like my own. “Aha, just as I always have, no? Taarqen is not half so far as the wilds of Semchul.”

He barrels in for an embrace, which she returns with practiced grace.

“Ah, Miv. Too long since we saw you last. Been training…” He trails off, searching undoubtedly for Mivasim’s stable of students. His eyes are slow to settle on me. “Been, uh, training?”

“And tending to Semchul, yes.” Mivasim takes an almost imperceptible step back, a signal Chiuq mirrors without seeming to notice. “Students have less time for study in the villages, and they soon leave for more achievable pursuits.”

“Ahh, to have been raised in the wilds. I’d have made the finest hunter!” He sweeps a broad arm out toward the gaggle of students in his wake. “But I’ve made a good enough teacher, if I say so myself.”

Mivasim eyes them as Chiuq laughs, and they, fawn-like, laugh after him. “The Vidalion will speak to that, I am certain,” she replies evenly.

A smallish aspirant with false-red hair flicks his elemental focus just as he trips on his too-large robes. A flame casts out and lights on a poor merchant's feather dusters. The merchant yelps, struggling to channel his own magic with an ornate jug of water. The flames only snap in response.

“Chiuqeslan!” Mivasim calls out sharply. A graceful curl of her hand draws the air from the flame.

The merchant approaches with hands clasped. “I am— Oh, dear. Bright Ones, a thousand pardons. Forgive the untidiness of my wares, it is… I mean—”

“Peace,” Mivasim says, as Chiuqeslan bellows “Hah!” and claps his student on the back.

“My boy here is gifted! See how quickly the flame consumed!” He ushers his students back, onward into the city. Over his shoulder, he calls back to me. “Good luck, student of Miv!”

The merchant stares, horrified, at Mivasim. “Apologies, honored merchant,” she says, pulling a pair of sweet papayas from her robes, a gift from the last village. She hands them to him, and then pulls me to her side.

“That man, that Chiuqeslan—” I begin, before Mivasim’s words cut into my own.

“—is Yun Tal, whatever else he may be. You have met only a handful in your life, sumqa.” She urges me down the crowded boulevard. “His is a cruel lesson, one you will learn shortly. Do not let him—nor Ixaocan itself—compel focus from your task.”

Chiuqeslan’s firestarting student fails. Tradition says he must depart Ixaocan in silence.

He had given his life to study. Perhaps he will become a merchant or a tailor or a storyteller. I hope he will be happy, but he will never be Yun Tal. His peers are hollow, their eyes sunken, their hearts torn. His example serves only to extinguish their spirit, though it steels my resolve.

Within days I am able to surmise which students will pass, which will fail, which will break. The understanding makes me want to weep for them.

But I think only of the trial ahead of me.

Finally, the moment comes. I step into the heart of Ixaocan, and see that the floor has been etched with thousands of curving lines. Hidden within this intricate geometry is the language of the elements. I feel myself growing lost amidst them, catching glimpses of one Axiom or another that I might recognize…

Careful.

I focus my thoughts. The Yun Tal stand above me in the gallery around the massive space, their robes every shade and quality of night. Each a perfect philosopher. Each a master of their elemental discipline.

The arcology’s central chamber appears to be split in two. Below, the arena where I will defend myself. Above, a wide ring of the heaviest stone, its load borne more by thaumaturgy than engineering. Where the chamber splits swirls a wide ring of magic. I cannot see how deep it goes, how far it pushes into the earth.

Floating high above the circle is the Vidalion, the great loom, itself haloed by a band of some golden alloy, its threads spinning ceaselessly. I will defend myself beneath its warp and weft. If successful, it will weave a set of robes to mark me as Yun Tal.

I will master the currents, today. I step into the center of the pattern.

I’m blinded by the surge of power, the sheer elemental might focused by the Axiomata into this single spot. It’s overwhelming. I am a hummingbird, skimming a stormcloud. I blink, and the chamber returns.

Mivasim stands somewhere above. I cannot meet her gaze; my mind is a taut wire. Eyes bore into me from all directions. They are Yun Tal, the most-wise.

“Aliay Qunlan.” My name echoes across the chamber, perhaps across all Ixtal. “You stand at the heart of all things. You are watched through the eyes of all people. Defend yourself.”

The Vidalion spins, setting loose tendrils of fabric. I reach out and let a midnight thread fall to my grasp.

“You’ve cut off that secant,” a voice, firm and disapproving, floats into my consciousness, and a section of thread lights up. “Now it will affect temperature, not pressure.”

I ignore the voice, willing more thread into my grip and directing it along the next line. After seconds of intense concentration, I hear myself respond. “Pressure and temperature are sisters. While I control the space, this effect is more powerful.” I lift the ghostly light the Yun Tal shone upon my not-error and return to my work. Distantly, I’m horrified at the ease with which I dismiss a critique of my betters.

Presently, I discard the feeling.

Another voice. “I count eleven tangents in your Axiomata. Accepted practice is to give each tangent a parallel. Not doing so risks an imbalance when non-sequential patterns are joined.”

I think of Mivasim. This was an invention of her own, discovered with the aid of my youthful rebelliousness.

“Accepted practice is not mastery, but rhetoric,” I reply. “This connection complements the Third Axiom, and empowers the Fifth. Together, they negate the imbalance.”

Silence is the only response I receive, but a shift of cloth to my right catches my attention. A woman, robes of smoke and jade, eyes of fired steel. A member of the Yunalai, the revered new generation. Her appreciative smirk claws at my heart.

I press on.

The existing Axiomata are complete, and holding. My initial anxiety and fear are fading echoes in my mind, as I become much more than the confines of my form. I am Ixaocan itself, and I wield more power in this moment than I could ever have guessed lay in all the world. I follow the shape of my design, seeking the next—

Thump-thump.

—and stop. A heartbeat, a stutter in time. I lift my gaze to the mystical swirling in the chamber’s outer wall. It churns, like threads in a mad tapestry.

In the abstract snarl, something calls to me.

Without thinking, I reach out for it.

I am not in the cardinal arcology. I soar across the jungle, across Ixtal.

I look down, and I see the Axiomata. Not a pattern focused upon a single arcology, nor many—they are a pattern encompassing the whole world. I ride along one of the lines ringing Ixaocan, and it leads me home to Semchul in an instant. I smile as I see its familiar arches, the nooks where I stole naps, the—

Semchul is behind me. Something is wrong.

My eyes widen, heels dig into nothingness as I crash into the net of tended vines that separate death from life. I brace for obliteration, squinting against the end. Instead I soar past lush greenery. Creatures buck and sprint across a too-open field. I skim a river as wide as Ixtal itself.

I am mad, surely. Are these the spiraling thoughts of a mind’s final moments?

Have I failed the test?

I see mountains, valleys—people. I see people. I—

I’ve stopped, somewhere cold. White. Blinding, with gale-driven snow.

Behind it, there is power. Axiomata cross here. This should not be.

A group of men and women draped in fur and bone spar with one another. No—they war. A club caves a skull. I reach out. Clouds of powder swirl, and they flee the phenomenon, flee me. One, taller than the others, stares into my eyes. I can feel him twist, searching for me. He crafts a spear from frost.

This brute is not Ixtali. How is it that he taps the Axiomata?

His magic is different. It comes from elsewhere, and does not touch me. But where his spear misses the mark, his being strikes me down. His very existence is wrong.

There is nothing beyond Ixtal. There is noth—

The scene disappears in an instant, leaving a vacuum inside of me. The thunder of blood in my veins rushes to fill it, and a keening pierces my ears as my mind makes connections faster than I can keep up.

Of course. Of course the world isn’t dead. Of course Ixtal alone didn’t stave off apocalypse with a thin, illusory veil of vines. Of course I wasn’t going to be a lone adventurer, trekking across the world in a cocoon of air. Foolish. I think of my father, of the gardeners, so proud of the work they do. So ignorant of their true purpose.

I feel my eyes throbbing within my skull. Chills race over my skin as part of me delights in a new discovery, even as the rest revolts. The Yun Tal can surely hear my heart, hammering a tremulous staccato. But they remain motionless.

A sudden childhood memory steals whatever’s left of my mind. In it, I reverently present Mivasim with the first artifact I discovered in the river. I remember her hesitation; I thought her impressed with my relentless curiosity. She accepted me as a student that day. I had such fondness for sharing my little theories, was so excited to become Yun Tal and chart the uncharted with the likes of most-wise Mivasim.

I must have seemed so stupid.

Ixaocan’s power stills my shuddering frame. The chills settle, my heartbeat slows. But anger crashes into the empty space, and even Ixaocan cannot stop it. A river flooding with betrayal and embarrassment and grief.

Something ugly captures me. I hold the might of Ixaocan in my trembling fists. I’ll crush this chamber, and trap us all like insects in amber. Enmeshed in Ixtal’s ancient center of power, that feels like it would be the easiest thing in the world.

I’m saved by decades of rhetorical and philosophical debate. Simple, practiced reflex to an emotional appeal: what is the truth behind that emotion? I must credit Mivasim for how quickly I retreat from the edge of madness, and arrive at the only possible conclusion.

This is the test.

The Yun Tal have maintained this illusion for generations. The world cannot be simply explained or described; one must see it for themselves, must be wise enough to move past reaction and reach understanding. I internalize a helpless laugh as I realize the purpose for so many gathered Yun Tal. Surely together they would find it trivial to destroy or confound anyone who reached this point and fell prey to their emotion, even wielding Ixaocan’s power as their own.

My rage cools to determination. I scan the room, meet the gaze of each of the most-wise above me. My eyes have words: I have passed your test, the rest is ritual.

I won’t be crushed by this reality. I return to the pattern, and the unfinished extrusion.

The Yun Tal are silent as I work.

It is finished. The Axiomata mark my full understanding of—and control over—air, water, and all the ways they might be combined. I think of the man, of the World Beyond. Above, the Yun Tal roam the threads of my work, searching for error. They will find none.

Something shifts in the air as they make their decision. I rise up, spinning slowly, absurdly, free of the earth’s pull. I look, again, into my mentor’s eyes. I hope to see shame, or guilt, or sorrow for her decades of lies. But there is only pride.

I laugh. I can’t help it, even as the Vidalion spins faster, as the threads I laid upon the etched floor ensnare me now like prey in a spider’s cruel web.

Pain takes me as the magic bleeds from my body. The Yun Tal chant as one. I cannot understand their words, but threads of light trail and curl around me, and shimmering rainbows spin their way down my arms and legs.

I float, trapped between the Vidalion and the nascent fabric. I feel power creep back into me, like waking a sleeping limb.

As the threads resolve into cloth, I feel it. I am Yun Tal.

Their chant crescendos as I float to the ground. Impassive faces break into joyous smiles, but I cannot feel any warmth from them.

I dream of my treasure box, of ancient things.

My foolish passion. Decades spent imagining the World Beyond, eager to share with the Yun Tal things I thought I knew. I think of young, foolish Aliay, so eager to discover. Vengeance is the wrong name for what I wish for him, but it’s close.

“You’re awake,” comes a familiar voice, somewhere outside of time. I don’t feel awake, but there is a comfortable bed, a warming brazier, a concerned mentor. I want to ask her so much, but I fear I already know all the answers.

“I’m awake, Mivasim.” My voice is smoother than I expect, free of the choke of tears or the roughness of anger.

“Miv, now,” she responds. “We are peers.”

Silence follows. So many years together, and only today is she at a loss for words.

Finally, she speaks. “I was furious with my own teacher, you know. We didn't speak for days. I… I just wanted to be sure you were comfortable, but I can leave you to your rest.”

I don’t want rest. I want action.

But outwardly, I am calm. “You prepared me well.”

“Oh? Please, tell me your thoughts.” This is a question I’ve heard in study, but which now sounds strangely free of expectation. Peers after all.

I have not had the time to practice deception the way the other Yun Tal have, but I don’t need it. I understand the great lie of which I am now a part. I can provide the basic shape of it, and Mivasim’s relief and pride will fill in the details well enough to conclude this conversation.

“The Yun Tal preserve Ixtal,” I confirm. “Every Ixtali understands the finality of their decisions, once made.”

I feel more myself as I speak. The familiarity of rhetoric is comforting.

Still, I resent the feeling. Just a little.

“A million small threads comprise each decision, learned through argument, discovery, and new perspectives. If you understand the threads, you will make the perfect decision.”

It's hard for me not to look to Mivasim for approval, to suggest I'm on the right path, so I continue staring into the brazier’s fire even as it stings my eyes. “So the Yun Tal bear the burden of decision. To the Ixtali—to myself, until recently—our land is a closed realm. We reveal to each only those threads that they are capable of processing, as we discussed on the road. And…”

I turn, finally, to seek the brief but firm nod that signals the rightness of my thinking. “The early Yun were faced with this unimaginable dilemma. How best to protect their people from the world outside. They chose to cloister us. Anyone without sufficient wisdom might have misstepped, caused Ixtal’s end. Hence the distinction, the rigor of study that produces the Yun Tal.”

It’s a defensible argument. Still, I loathe it.

I conclude. “Which must mean that the Yun Tal have argued among themselves for countless centuries, and not a single one of them has brought forth a suggestion worthy of reversing that choice.”

A peaceful status quo, awaiting the brightest mind to ensure the next step is the right one. It’s wrong, somewhere, beyond its cruel deception.

I suppose I will have all my life to put words to that wrongness. To make the status quo my enemy.

Mivasim inclines her head toward me in a gesture of respect. “It took me rather longer to draw the same conclusion after I faced the Vidalion.” She stands, and offers me her hand. I take it, and limp to a standing position. “Come. Eat. We elders must celebrate with those who can stand to look the rest of us in the eye.”

I think again of my old treasure box.

I imagine myself lifting the lid, placing my anger within it, and sealing it away.

A tired smile forms on my face. “Let’s go.”

I watch from the mezzanine as noise fills the hall. Tables full of food drift between small groups entrenched in discussion, storytelling, and dancing. A few of the other new initiates seem as angry as I, but their frustration is soothed by camaraderie and assurances that this outrage is nothing new. Nowhere in Ixtal are the elements under such firm command, and most seem quick to embrace the opulence of their new lives.

We idolize the Yun Tal. Perfect philosophers, I once called them. Seekers of truth. I collected trinkets, eager to share in the study and exploration of another world. I studied, hoping to make myself worthy of debating with the brightest minds to grace Runeterra.

Now when I look at them, they seem… frail.

“Pah, you are right to brood.” I hear the clatter of metal as braceleted wrists drape against the balustrade. “I have seen better celebrations for the birth of mules.”

The Yunalai from my test. Her presence fills the narrow space despite her small stature, and her imperious tone demands a respect I don’t know how to give.

I opt for a simple bow. “I am happier to listen from here, honored Yunalai.”

Her laughter brings forth a small snort. “It is not my family bringing me honor.” She stares a moment, and when I fail to respond she says, “I do not mind saying, it pains me that you do not know of this. Of Qiyana.”

Qiyana. She speaks her own name with acerbic reverence, and my face burns with embarrassment. “Forgive me. I live far from Ixaocan.”

“Yes, well. Now you are aware. Come. May I call you Aya?”

It seemed to not be a question. I follow her to the balcony’s open doors and step into the night. Even now Ixaocan is bright with activity and firelight.

“During my test, Aya, I saw the most resplendent thing. An almost primal thing, clawing for the skies, and of such power as I have only seen in the arcologies! It is so far from us, and many people have warred for control of it.”

“I saw something similar,” I respond, and she nods enthusiastically.

“Yes! And I could think only, ‘This should not be so!’ For such a place to exist outside of Ixtal, with no Yun Tal to be its shepherd? Aya, it was horrible.”

I find kinship in her words.

Here is an enemy of the status quo.

“The Yun Tal, we are respected for our mastery of this world. Aya, how much more there is of the world than Ixtal! We lead, but we do not act. Maybe some are wise enough to recognize they can’t bear that decision alone. Maybe others are afraid?”

I listen, and I know Qiyana is not afraid. Whatever buoys her step, whatever fuels her unshaken confidence, it is unique among the Ixtali.

“It should not be so,” I murmur. The words feel heavy, significant.

She looks at me, the light of Ixaocan reflected in her eyes. “Well then. You and I, Aya, will be the ones to change it.”

My robes feel strange for the first time since I donned them, a year past. Perhaps it’s the other Yun Tal. Perhaps it’s the chamber. This is the first time I have returned since my test.

Magic still swirls in a ring along the walls, and in its depths I see what I know now to be the Freljord, from our oldest histories. I will walk its mountain paths in person one day.

A student strides through the doors. Her confident grin reminds me of my mother, who was so proud with her Yun Tal child so many months ago.

I want to weep for her.

The collected Yun Tal share silent affirmations. Mivasim, ahead and to my left across the gallery, nods at me, pride still sparking her gaze. I return the gesture, and look over to Qiyana. Her face betrays nothing, but her presence is a comfort. I am not alone in recognizing the failings of those assembled.

Thank you, Mivasim, for your lessons. I will use them to correct our mistakes. Alongside Qiyana, I will build the perfect argument, one that honors even the frustration of your first days among the Yun Tal.

I hope, when the time comes, you are prepared to hear it.

The student strides forward. The chamber stills.

Tarnold knew the performance was doomed when all his playwright’s tricks were exhausted. His players were lost to performance jitters. Perhaps the text was to blame, or the superstitions surrounding the performance of a dead scribe’s unfinished work, but each mummer had succumbed to one form of unprofessionalism or another.

Artlo, who played a character known only as the Philosopher, wouldn’t stop dying. Each time he pantomimed his last breath in the company of that kindred pair of macabre spirits known as the Lamb and the Wolf, he prolonged his death rattles to the point of absurdity. This time, Nenni had laughed so hard her Lamb’s mask fell off her face. It landed on the ground with a loud crack.

Emile removed his Wolf’s mask. Its sharp, jagged edges were chafing his jowls to pulp. He winced in pain—Tarnold knew he was about to ask for the poultice again.

“Stop!” Tarnold said. He did not need to yell. The Mummers’ Round’s renowned acoustics ensured even the eaves-perchers, with their half-copper admission, could hear the softest sigh with clarity.

The old theater rested near the lord castellan’s hillfort and provided a nice glimpse of the dark forest. On banquet nights like tonight, nobles descended from the castellan’s manse to drunkenly take in the mummers’ theatrics. A displeased crowd of drunken nobles was worse than the humiliation of a failed play.

The actors released their poses and turned to face their chief dramatist.

Tarnold rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers and looked to the wings, where a mustachioed man, dressed in black finery, leaned against one of the story stones.

“Duarte,” Tarnold said to the well-dressed man. “Buy me as much time as you can.”

Duarte nodded in understanding. “I’ll hold the audience until I hear your sign.”

“Do not disturb us, even if Lady Erhyn herself shakes off her malaise and demands a preview. We are on the verge, Duarte. We must fall together to rise together!”

“Rise we shall, Tarnold. With the gust of life.” Duarte kissed the palm of his hand and placed it on the story stone for good luck. He disappeared from the stage and exited the theater. Silence pervaded while everyone waited on the sound of the heavy bolt sliding shut.

Once they were sealed within the Mummers’ Round’s walls, with the sun dipping closer to the evening, Tarnold unleashed his temper.

“Ask a Great City boy for water, and a Great City boy will bring you fire. There is to be one death, and one death alone, Artlo.” He turned to Nenni. “Stop laughing at Artlo’s nincompoopery, you daughter of Skaggorn. Shake off your provincial humors and exude the cold menace of death.” Finally, he pointed to Emile. “I can see your blood dribbling down your cheek. Dab your cheeks.”

“Please, let me fix some padding to the inside of this accursed wolf mask.”

“Project through the pain! Did Soates complain while writing her Kindred Fables on her deathbed? No. Be honored! One of her own heirlooms chafes your cheek.”

“This one doesn’t fit me,” Nenni said. She had picked her lamb mask up off the stage floor. “It keeps sliding off.”

“Then use straps!” Tarnold said, pulling off his own belt to throw it at Nenni’s feet.

Endless hours of rehearsals had done nothing to prepare the troupe for the performance of Soates’ final, unfinished story. Part of that, Tarnold had accepted as his own fault. As the chief dramatist of Alderburg’s greatest—and only—theater, the grim task of finishing her story fell to him.

“Lambs in the Orchard was Soates’ final gush of madness. The very last of her spark is here, in our hands... and you all choose to desecrate her memory, picking at it for your own vanity and comfort. She spent her final moments coaxing truths from the impending nevermore. Had death not stilled her hand while writing this very scene, perhaps we would all have a far greater understanding of our own brief and tragic existence!”

The actors remained silent, chastened even, until Artlo cleared his throat and spoke up.

“With respect,” the gangly Demacian started. Tarnold knew Artlo meant the opposite, and rolled his eyes to show it. “Perhaps an unfinished work is simply not meant to be finished by another.”

Tarnold sensed an attack on his integrity. They had had this argument over and again. “Are you suggesting that this production is a work of sacrilege?”

“We seem unable to replicate the emotions of a master writing against time.”

“Are you mad? We are out of time!” Tarnold pointed to the dwindling rays of sunlight piercing the wooden walls of the theater. A chilly sensation swept through him.

“Perhaps, we perform the bits we know and leave the unfinished unperformed. Is that not a better way to honor Soates? You must acknowledge, Tarnold, this,” Artlo said, pointing around himself, “does not work!”

Artlo was right. They had failed to recreate the spark found in the prolific bard’s other fables. Their ailing patron, a Soates devotee, expected the impossible—an ending to an unfinished work. In desperation, Tarnold had authorized Duarte to travel to King Jarvan II’s Great City to the west, and hunt down the bard’s original masks. They were ancient and therefore costly.

Tarnold’s head slumped, his shoulders followed, and then he was on his back, struggling to breathe. His heart raced against the quickening hour.

“We have to cancel the performance.” He rubbed his forehead, trying to eke out some last shred of luck, but finding only sweat. “Worse, we’ll be forced to offer refunds.” He gasped out. “We already spent the gold!”

“It’s probably not a good time to mention that the lamb mask is broken.”

The color drained from Tarnold’s face. “What?”

“When it fell off my face, it broke. It was an accident!” Nenni held the pieces of the mask in her hand. One of the wooden ears had snapped off. “I think I can strap it back together.”

“This is utterly majestic.” Tarnold almost laughed. “That’s what we spent the gold on. They were Soates’ original masks. They’re on loan!”

“She said it was an accident,” said Emile.

“Let me think.” Tarnold stood up to take in the theater. Its storied round had existed for centuries. The story stones were the foundation of the Mummers’ Round. The circle of towering flagstones had stood in the theater’s location long before anyone settled the Nockmirch. Over the years, wooden viewing platforms were erected to allow more a better view of the theatrics and rituals performed inside the round. Performers and singers notched the pillars with their sigils, leaving their mark upon hallowed grounds.

The theater had been home to Tarnold during many difficult times. Now, under his stewardship, it was the source of all his sorrows.

“A broken mask tells two stories,” said a voice from the middle balcony, reserved for the wealthiest nobles. Even in his loneliest moments, Tarnold dared not rest his head on those fine cushions. “Three, if you consider the tale of the maskmaker... Alas, no one wishes to hear that story.”

“We agreed for no visitors during rehearsals!” Tarnold said to his performers.

“She’s been here all night,” Nenni said. “We thought she was with you.”

Had she? It was possible. Tarnold had battled insomnia for weeks. His attention snapped to the woman in the golden seats, which were reserved for the Lady Erhyn herself. Two summers ago, King Jarvan II’s little heir had sat upon those velvet cushions to enjoy Tarnold’s rendition of The King of All Fishes. The boy had clapped loudest as the final curtain fell.

“Who are you?” Tarnold said. “Step into the light.”

The woman came forward, but the light illuminated little of her mystery. Her eyes were distant stars shining through mist. She wore a ghostly half-mask with a curious twirl of a twig sprouting off the top. Upon that sprig was a single dark leaf. Her elegant gait sang of nobility, and Tarnold finally recognized the crest on her gown.

It was their patron, recovered from her malaise.

“My lady Erhyn, I did not recognize you! Please forgive me.” Tarnold offered a respectable bow. “Tell me, what mask is this that graces your face? It is familiar yet beyond memory.”

“It is made of eldlock.” She spoke in a calm voice. Her words were clear, even as she whispered. “The stories tell that any wood removed from an eldlock will continue to blossom and flower in season with its mothertree, as long as it still stands. No distance may sever their bond.”

“It is exquisite, my lady.”

“I have interrupted,” Lady Erhyn said, gesturing to the actors. “Perhaps I could suggest a change.”

“Why, of course!” Tarnold fidgeted with his hands. He looked to the wings, and to the stage. The mummers were keeping their mouths shut, for once. “Advice from our favorite patron is always welcome.”

“All actors were masked in Soates’ day—perhaps all must don masks to channel the strange spirits she saw at death’s door, as she scribbled furiously into the night’s embrace.”

“I like that!” Artlo said. “Where is the casket of masks? There were others in that trunk,” he called as he vanished behind the stage.

“Now, wait, let’s talk this—”

Tarnold was silenced by the sight of the gaunt lady with the eldlock mask clasping her hands together. There was something off about their benefactor.

Before Tarnold could put his finger on it, Artlo returned onstage, dragging a trunk that was as long as he was tall. The name Q. W. Soates was engraved on its long side. Suddenly, it struck Tarnold how much the old trunk resembled a coffin.

Artlo lifted open the heavy trunk’s lid. “Smells like dead poets,” he said.

The man really has no taste, Tarnold thought.

A heavy creak of rusted hinges reverberated through the round like the howl of a starving dog. The other two actors craned their necks to peer inside.

“Before you choose,” the woman in the eldlock mask said. “Please heed these next words wisely. The hour is late, the show waits to play, and tonight can be truly memorable if all choose the mask that is right for them, for the spirits we become...”

“...Inhabit us,” Emile completed.

“The mummers’ tenet,” Nenni said.

“Whatever flavor of madness this is,” Artlo said, a grin spreading on his face, “I want to be a part of it. Come, Tarnold. Even you must agree that at this late stage, we must perform with the gust of life.”

“Intrepid,” the lady said.

Tarnold heard the hint of a strange smile on her face. He couldn’t remember... had the nobles’ balcony not been empty when Duarte left? The whole theater was empty... Lady Erhyn struck him as different now, too. She seemed gaunt and haunted. Perhaps the noble lady Erhyn hadn’t entirely shaken off her affliction. The evening chill was settling in.

“My lady, I am most pleased at your recovery. Perhaps I can fetch you a cloak?”

“Now, this is the mask to honor a forgotten poet,” Artlo said.

Lady Erhyn waved off Tarnold’s offer, turning to Artlo. “An ominous choice. The Vulture picks at what remains, and when nothing is left... it flies on to perches far removed from here and waits for the next meal.”

“Pecking at Soates’ legacy sounds like a feast.” Artlo turned around and showed off his guise: a bone-white mask with a long, hooked beak. The gangly man resembled a carrion bird.

The gaunt lady approached the stage. She seemed so ancient, yet hale and graceful in her moves. Her skin did not look like flesh. It reminded Tarnold of plaster, after it had been set and smoothed. Her hair was the very night itself, radiating outward in a wavering embrace. He felt as if the breath were stabbed out of his lungs. How could he have ever mistaken the two?

“You’re not Lady Erhyn.”

The actors were oblivious to Tarnold’s epiphany. A chilling swoon descended upon his heart. Its beating pulsed loudly in his ears, nearly drowning out the actors’ words.

“Switch masks with me,” Nenni said to Emile. “Your soft skin can’t wear such a handsome mask. My skin’s weathered worse, I’ll reckon.”

“If you want to wear that agonizing thing...” Emile offered the wolf mask to his stage partner. “I mourn for your lovely cheekbones.”

The two slipped on their swapped masks.

The walls whispered as a gust of wind swept over the Mummers’ Round. Shutters clacked shut. Tarnold heard voices in that swift and swirling breeze.

“Heartbeats, Lamb. Here,” a deep voice growled.

Tarnold looked for the source, but could only see his mummers. They seemed to have forgotten all about him. Then, in his left ear, sang another voice.

“Bits of light,

Dancing in the dark,

Playing on, playing on, playing on...”

The words flew through Tarnold with a jolt. On the stage, he saw Nenni and Emile, hand in hand, wearing each other’s masks. Then he saw the otherwordly words were coming from the actors’ mouths.

“Yes,” Emile said, shifting his voice up to a lilting and haunted falsetto. “I see my darlingest Wolf now.”

“Ahhh.” Nenni let out a relieved growl, her voice guttural and deep. “That feels better, little Lamb.” The actor dropped down on all fours, and stretched lower than a human should be able to. “Is it time to play chase?”

“When the veil lifts,

You shall claw and bite,

My arrow swift, and on to the next act we go.”

Tarnold crossed the round, keeping his eyes fixed on the gaunt lady. “What trickery is this? Please, leave us be!”

The woman turned to Tarnold. “I am not your patron,” she said.

Tarnold looked to his masked actors. “All of you, clear the stage. Go home. The performance is over.” He raised his voice, shouting toward the barred entrance. “Duarte!”

“Tarnold...” The woman who was not Lady Erhyn turned and looked at him with the enormity of her vast, glimmering eyes. Even behind the eldlock mask, they shone with a light born of darkness. Their eerie sheen pulled Tarnold’s attention out of his body. Whoever this was, he knew her and did not; feared her and sought her. Running from her felt foolish, and reasonable. Without deciding to, he walked toward the stage.

“Take the masks off,” he said. “Now. This is madness... This play is cursed! Don’t you see? What if, in the conjuring, Soates did not happen to die while writing the play, the act of writing Lambs in the Orchard was itself what killed her... The narrative itself is a curse!”

It was not the gaunt lady, Nenni’s wolf nor Emile’s lamb that replied. Artlo, or whatever spoke through Artlo, answered in a screeching voice. He spread his arms high and stood upon one leg, like a carrion bird.

“The author waits for my beak,” he said. The corners of his lips cracked and split open. “Soates is truly dead... as none remember her now as she once was.” Tears ran down Artlo’s stretched cheeks. The voice stilled Tarnold’s heart and stopped him in his stride. “Soates flies in my wake, soon lost and forgotten. Words on a page. A name on the wind. Shreds... nothing more.”

“Shreds of Soates is still Soates,” said the gaunt lady.

“He ceased the performance...” Whatever spoke through poor Artlo didn’t care how much pain it caused the man’s body. The actor’s arm violently wrenched forward and stretched, its bony hand pointing an accusatory finger at Tarnold. “And he wears no mask...”

“You are so close to Soates,” the woman said to the dramatist. “Choose a mask, and see her final scene come alive.”

He thought about running from the Mummers’ Round. He pictured himself fleeing up to the lord castellan’s fort on the hill, or into town. What would he find in Lady Erhyn’s house? He looked to the gaunt woman. The sun had almost set. The evening cacophony of insects and night birds chirped out their greetings to the coming night. How many nights had he dreamt of Soates’ final moments, of the final scene...

“Everyone must wear a mask,” the woman said.

Mouth agape, Tarnold nodded in agreement with the woman in the eldlock mask, that dark leaf dancing in an unfelt breeze.

“If I must choose a mask, then I confess, I know the one I would select is not in that trunk, nor is it on the stage.” He felt life return to his limbs. His bones were stiff and unwieldy... but that was a temporary condition.

The gaunt woman smiled. “You wish to wear my mask? That is a most excellent decision, dear Tarnold, a man of creativity and curiosity. Come and remove it from my face.”

“I shall take your mask, and become you. May the spirits we become...”

“...Inhabit us deeply and truly,” she finished.

When Tarnold did, and placed the living eldlock mask on his face, he saw, finally, the true ending of Soates’ play. It was flawless and terrible, life-giving and breathtaking.

“Places, my friends and fellows,” he said. “Our tale waits for no one. Let us fall together to rise as one, and sing our harmonies with the gust of life.”

“One last gust,” replied Lamb, Wolf, and Vulture.

And together, they played.

Duarte had kept the news about Lady Erhyn hidden from Tarnold all day, even though the truth of her passing threatened to burst forth from his lips. Her malaise carried her off in kindred company before dawn, or so the new lady of House Erhyn had said. The news could break the morale of the entire troupe. Tarnold, he knew, would take it exceptionally hard.

But just as sorrow weighed down Duarte’s heart, there was a brightness, an exciting turn of good fortune beyond the tragedy. Lady Erhyn, on her deathbed, bade her estate to fund the Mummers’ Round, and Tarnold specifically, in perpetuity.

However, as the hour drew later, the inebriated nobles grew weary of the wait. Belligerent and insulted nobility often led to lashings, mockings, and worse: sanctions against future endeavors.

As Duarte was about to address the amassed watchers, daubed with ashes and charcoal in mourning of Lady Erhyn, he heard Tarnold’s signal to open the doors.

He rushed to the gate and removed the heavy deadbolt. The audience rushed in and stopped short as they found the actors posed upon a stage covered in wilted black-stemmed roses. Their buzzing anticipation was hushed by the macabre tableau. They quickly and quietly found their seats. Lady Erhyn’s seat of honor was the only empty spot in the house.

The actors held their strenuous positions while the noble audience waited for Soates’ long-lost and unfinished masterpiece to finally begin.

Duarte saw no sign of Tarnold. It was unusual for the dramatist to desert his cast on opening night—normally he would greet the audience before watching from the wings with a bottle of wine.

He turned to inspect the opening stance. Nenni and Emile were locked in a mortal embrace. Nenni, wearing the wolf mask, held an arrow that seemed to stick directly into Emile’s side. Emile’s hands were wrapped around Nenni’s throat.

Artlo, who was supposed to be playing a philosopher, now inexplicably wore a mask that resembled a dirge crow. He perched atop a prop tree, suspended over the other pair, his arms outstretched like great wings. Dead flowers hung from his arms like feathers.

They weren’t even breathing...

The audience stayed silent, eagerly awaiting action, but Duarte realized something was amiss. Backstage, Duarte checked the dramatist’s favorite perch. There was no bottle of wine, and no Tarnold, either.

Instead there was the last surviving copy of Lambs in the Orchard.

He thumbed to the last page. The story remained unfinished, but there was a new line written in Tarnold’s steady hand.

The end is not for those who wear no masks. She showed me, and it was beautiful.

I have too many questions I want to ask her. I sneak a side-glance as we walk. She’s looking straight ahead. I watch her gaze sweep back and forth across the far perimeter of the park, her red hair catching the last scraps of the afternoon light with each step. Does she see something? Is this the way she normally patrols? Is she bored? Why is she here? I can’t believe she wanted to come. Why did she come? I quicken my pace to keep up.

“Fortun—Sarah,” I say, remembering.

She doesn’t look away from the path ahead, so I keep going.

“Ez really does have detention, Lux,” she says.

“Oh,” I stammer. “It’s cool.” I can feel the pink in my cheeks. I tug on the tips of my gloves. She turns to look at me, a smug grin softening her face.

“He wanted to be here,” she says. “Soraka too, but Pantheon’s was short staffed. And tonight is Syndra’s astronomy class at the university—”

“—And Ahri?” I blurt out too quickly.

Sarah’s smile tightens. “She’s been busy.”

“No worries,” I say, looking for a way to change the subject. In the middle of the park, Janna pushes Poppy and a free-loading Jinx on a squeaky merry-go-round. Lulu sways idly in a close-by swing set, its metal chains clang softly, like lonely windchimes. There’s no one else in the park besides us. “It’s pretty quiet.”

“Like you said, it’s probably nothing,” she says casually.

I take the folded slip of paper out of my pocket. The frayed edge where I tore it out of Lulu’s notebook flutters in the breeze. The shapes of the playground equipment and power lines surrounding Valoran City’s metro park were clear enough, but it was the dozens of circles in the sky that worried me. Poppy said that it was too warm in physics class, and Lulu was just doodling to stay awake.

“Look!” Lulu shouts from the swing, snapping me out of my thoughts. She is at the top of the swing’s arc, gesturing excitedly at the horizon. A bright spot has risen just over the silhouette of the skyline. “Twilight star! I saw it first.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. It’s just a star. Stars can’t hurt us.

“The twilight star is not a real star,” Poppy groans. “Technically it’s a planet.”

“Janna said everything has starlight in it,” Lulu argues back.

Janna nods her head in agreement.

“What are you gonna wish for, Loops?” Jinx juggles Shiro and Kuro absently as the merry-go-round spins. Lulu pumps her legs on the swing, pushing it higher.

“More stars!” she shouts. “I want to see more stars.”

“But it’s not dark yet,” Jinx says. “The other stars aren’t out yet.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Lulu pumps her legs harder. “The other stars are always there no matter what. Even if you can’t see them.”

“Rocket-breath is right,” Poppy says, hiding her reluctant agreement with Jinx by examining a non-existent scuff on her hammer. “It needs to get really dark before you can see the stars in the city. It’s not like at the camp.”

I cup my hands together and shout back to them, “You’re all right.” Jinx opens her mouth to argue, but shrugs and takes the win.

I turn back to Sarah.

“Are they always like this?” she asks. I’m sure she’s thinking about us compared to her own team. How this kind of talk would never happen if it was only them. They would just get right down to business. Search the park and be done. I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or annoyed or both.

“You mean are they always this argumentative?” I offer. “No, I mean, well, yes… sometimes—”

“This innocent,” she says, quietly.

“Well, you have Ahri to lead you. Of course you always know what you’re doing. Us, well… All they’ve had is me.”

“Innocent isn’t always a bad thing.” She has that faraway look on her face again, like she’s trying to remember a dream she had a long time ago. She nods her head slowly as if agreeing on the memory. “Yes, that’s who you remind me of.”

“Me? Remind you of Ahri?!” I ask, trying desperately to not sound desperate. Does she really think I’m like Ahri? Which part? Maybe a younger Ahri? I mean, she should know, she’s Ahri’s lieutenant. Did Ahri have multiple lieutenants on her old team? Maybe if our teams join, I can be another one, like Sarah?

“No.” Sarah lets out a sharp laugh. I don’t know if she can read minds, but my hope deflates like an untied balloon.

“Someone else. You remind me of someone else,” she says, softening. “Someone I lost a long time ago. She had pink hair too.” She looks me over again, and I try not to squirm under the scrutiny. “Come to think of it, you’re also too loyal for your own good… and such a dreamer. You’re kinda a mix of all of them,” she says.

Them? The team you lost? Is this a bad thing? Who were they? I add ten more questions I want to ask her to the list running constantly in my head.

How did it happen?

“Lux! Sarah! Look.” Lulu yells happily, interrupting my thoughts before I can get any further. “My wish!”

We look back at the distant playground. I run through a quick check. Lulu. Jinx. Poppy. Janna. Still safe and sound. The twilight has softened all of them, making them seem younger than they really are. The street lamps in the park click on in an unsettling coincidence. Hovering above the team are a swarm of twinkling lights. The team looks like they’re caught in a magical dream.

“Loops, It’s like Short Stop said, it’s not dark enough…” The creaking of the merry-go-round slows to a stop as Janna, Poppy, and Jinx look up as well. It’s getting darker fast. Too fast. I can barely see the trees around the edge of the park. Sarah and I start walking back toward the playground more quickly.

“Those aren’t stars,” Sarah says. I squint to get a better look. The points of light waver, almost glistening. As we get closer I can see what Sarah means. Dozens of thin translucent spheres reflect the light from the street lamps. Bubbles? They were… bubbles? I stuff Lulu’s drawing into the cuff of my glove.

“I don’t think the twilight star heard you right, Lulu,” Poppy says. “Those are bubbles.”

They aren’t just bubbles. One of them floats down toward Poppy, almost as if it was following the sound of her voice. Poppy steps back, letting it drift toward the metal railing of the merry-go-round.

The hushed silence is interrupted by a snort-laugh from Jinx. “C’mon. They’re harmless—”

A trail of bubbles begins to close in on her. I reach for my wand as I start running. “Jinx!”

I throw the staff out ahead of me. It and a prismatic rainbow of starlight just graze the top of Jinx’s pigtails before returning to my hand. A sphere of multicolored light covers Jinx and Poppy. A few bubbles bounce off the barrier and pop against the swing set leaving behind a swirl of dark mist, fluttering black shapes—bugs perhaps, or moths?—and a long, high-pitched laugh, like the delighted cackle of a child.

“That can’t be good, right?” Jinx whisper-yells. “Let’s pop these bad boys!”

“My thoughts exactly.” A double shot of Sarah’s twin pistols fire before she can finish her sentence. A wave of bubbles pop in a shower of black haze and twisted butterflies.

“What’s inside doesn’t look that great either,” Poppy says.

The high-pitched laugh stops short and is quickly replaced by an annoyed groan. The noise echoes around us, setting my teeth on edge. In the center of the pack of toxic bubbles that Janna gathered, a thin circle takes shape. The circle opens into a portal, letting long tendrils snake out from some dark dimension. One unsettling squid eye opens, followed by a second. The gelatinous blob unfolds into some cross between an evil octopus and demonic jellyfish.

“Take it down,” Sarah yells. Shiro and Kuro fire eagerly. Poppy twists around, pulling her hammer back for a long, arcing hit. She growls through the effort as the hammer swings around. In a resounding smack, it connects with the bubble mass, knocking the now angry and disoriented jellyfish out of the center. The malcontent blob drifts for a moment, but collects itself and the scattered bubble pack. They move purposefully toward Sarah.

“Sarah, get down,” I yell. I can feel the heavy power of pure starlight channel through my staff, vibrating the bones in my fingers and arm. The creature darts around, hiding behind bubbles. I fire in a beam of white-hot light. The little jellyfish slips between the bubbles and I miss. I try to get closer, but it feels like time is standing still.

“Loops, no!” Jinx yells.

It’s too late. From out of nowhere, a tiny Lulu pushes Sarah out of the way. Sarah lands hard, but rolls onto her back, both barrels blasting above her.

One bubble escapes the pack above. It floats down, straining to get closer. It breaks against Lulu’s cheek in a wet pop. The darkness seeps out, expanding, and in the space of two heartbeats, Lulu is enveloped by an inky cloud. Her eyes close as she crumples to the ground in a small heap. I dive for Lulu, scooping her up in my arms. More bubbles pop above me as Sarah and Jinx finish off the last of them. A portal opens above the dark jellyfish. The maniacal laughter gets louder and the little beast floats toward the opening, almost as if was buoyed by the sound. As it crosses the portal’s threshold, it disappears, taking the remains of the dark magic with it.

I bring my ear down to Lulu’s face. She’s breathing, slow and even… is she asleep?

“Lulu!” I shake her by the shoulders. Lulu lets out a soft moan and her eyes flutter for a second. I bring my wand up, the brightness is near blinding. Lulu’s closed eyes flinch. “Lulu, by Starlight, wake up!”

“Lost. They were lost.” Lulu’s voice is barely a whisper. Her eyes close tighter against the light, and her lip quivers. It’s as if she’s stuck in a nightmare. “Dark now,” she says.

Lulu sits bolt upright, her blue eyes wide open now. She looks past all of us, like we’re not there, like she’s seeing through us to somewhere else. Like she’s somewhere else.

“She’s on her way,” Lulu says.

“She? Who, Lulu? Who’s on their way?” This is big. One blaring thought shuts out all the others in my brain. Could it be her? Is Ahri on her way? I bite my lip. I look around at Janna, Poppy, Jinx, and finally Sarah.

“Ahri!” I say. “Ahri will know.”

“No,” Sarah says.

“Of course she will.” I push off her muted reply, trying to keep a smile of optimism for the others. “Can you call her, Sarah?”

“I can’t.” Sarah won’t look at me.

“Wait, why?”

“We’re not talking right now,” she says quietly.

“Sarah, I think this is more important than—”

“—The slumber party.” Sarah interrupts looking me straight in the eye. “That night. She was supposed to come. At the last minute, she said there was something she had to take care of. Something she wouldn’t let me help with. I thought she was just being…”

“Ahri,” I finish as she nods her head in confirmation. “You haven’t seen her since?”

Sarah shakes her head no, tightening her grip on the pair of pistols in her lap. Just before Sarah looks away, I see it—a flicker of panic. I can feel my heart thump harder in my chest.

A hundred more questions flood my brain. My stomach tightens.

What could make Sarah panic like this? Where did Ahri go? What’s coming?

Are we strong enough to face it?

Am I strong enough?

I want to ask her, but I can’t.

Sigvar Half-Quiver knelt on one knee, head bowed, while the wind beyond the gates howled like the ice-wraiths of legend.

He was the Cleaver of Peaks, the Bloody Sword of Winterspike. He had taken the head of the warchief of the Chosen Children, Helmgar Cragheart, and had held the Valley of Spines alone, fighting the Mourncrow tribe to a standstill until reinforcements from the citadel arrived.

What’s more, Sigvar was Iceborn.

And yet—for all his deeds, all the honors he had earned under the Eye of Lissandra—as he knelt in the open gateway of the Frostguard Citadel, with the wind lashing and the unearthly banshee’s wail of the Howling Abyss whipping around him, he felt a flutter of trepidation at the task ahead.

He did not wear his heavy, dark armor, for its weight would have been impractical for what was to come, but he felt comfort in having his shield on his back and his sword at his hip. Expectation hung upon him. He prayed he would not be found wanting.

“You delve now into the darkness below, brothers and sister of the Lodge,” said Ralakka Split-Tongue, Frost-Father of the Keepers, “but you will not be alone. We, the Children of the Frozen Shadow, are never alone, not in the darkest winters of the frozen expanse, nor in the deepest chasms of the hidden ways. The Eye of Lissandra watches over us, now and always.”

“From ice we are born, and to ice we will return,” intoned Sigvar, his words echoing those of the other two lodge members kneeling beside him.

To his left was Olar Stonefist—a legend among the Frostguard who had fought in their ranks for half a lifetime before Sigvar had even been born. Wolf-lean, grey-bearded, and iron-eyed, his skin was like hardened leather, riven with deep crevasses and valleys. Ice-bear furs draped his shoulders, but his arms were bare, and covered in faded war-tattoos and a dozen iron rings, each won in ritual combat. His massive great-hammer, Thunderchild, was strapped across his back. That weapon, its head encased in True Ice, was as storied as Olar himself.

To Sigvar’s right knelt Halla Ice-in-her-Soul. While he idolized Olar, Sigvar was over-awed by Halla. Utterly fearless, and her faith unshakeable, she was as unforgiving and deadly as winter. Her twin short-hafted axes—Bloodfang and Bloodclaw—hung at her waist, though it was strange to see her not garbed in her dark mail and horned helm. She, like Sigvar and Olar, had eschewed her armor for their journey. The sides of her head were shaved, while the rest of her pale hair was tied into a single intricate braid down the center of her head, like a crest. Her left eye was white, blinded by a blow that had left a trio of savage scars cut across her face.

He’d heard Olar tell the tale of those scars, earned when Halla had fought a hunting pack of Ursine. She’d killed three before the others slunk off, so it was said, and Sigvar believed it. Had she not been embraced into the Frostguard as a child, Halla would undoubtedly have been a powerful warmother in one of the tribes beyond the citadel.

The Frost Priest stepped in close, moving first to Olar. “The Eye is upon you,” he incanted.

Sigvar barely heard Olar’s growled reply, his heart was thumping so hard. Then the Frost Priest was in front of him, and his stomach lurched, as it had before his first battle.

“Look up, Frostguard,” the priest said, quietly, and Sigvar obeyed, tilting his chin back to look upon the old man’s face. It was skeletally gaunt, with sunken cheeks and shadow-rimmed eyes. There was no kindness there, but Sigvar expected none. Theirs was a harsh and unrelenting faith. A shard of sacred Dark Ice hung around Split-Tongue’s neck; another topped his knotted staff. Slivers of holy reverence, used for healing and worship. The Frost Priest dipped a finger into a shallow basin filled with kraken ink, black and stinking, and drew an eye upon Sigvar’s forehead.

“The Eye is upon you,” he said.

“And it does not blink,” intoned Sigvar in reply, lowering his head once more. His forehead burned as the ink seared his skin, but he endured it with the stoicism of the Iceborn. Pain was blessing.

The priest moved to Halla, completing the ritual, and the three chosen Iceborn stood.

Olar was the tallest of them, wiry and corded with lean muscle, while Sigvar was by far the heaviest. Halla stood half-a-head shorter than Sigvar, yet the power and authority she radiated made her seem larger.

The three Frostguard stooped to collect their packs, icepicks, and coils of rope, which they threw over their shoulders and hooked onto their belts.

Sigvar glanced back at the ranks of Frostguard standing in silent witness to their departure. Ralakka Split-tongue, turned away, his part in their expedition done. A cluster of other Frost Priests followed behind him, like crows shadowing a war-party. The darkness of the citadel quickly swallowed them.

“Time to go,” said Halla Ice-in-her-Soul. “The darkness calls.”

With a nod, Sigvar joined Halla and Olar, turning away from the gathered Frostguard and walking through the giant gates of the citadel, out onto the bridge beyond, spanning the Howling Abyss.

The ethereal wails borne upon the wind intensified, and shards of ice slashed at them, but none of them flinched from it. They welcomed it. The ice was their ally. The ice was their truth.

Behind the three Frostguard, the great gates of the citadel slammed shut with a resounding boom that was soon lost in the gale.

Sigvar took a deep breath.

It was time to descend into the Abyss.

The journey was made every year, on the vernal equinox, when day and night were of equal length. Three among the Frostguard were chosen. All came from the Keepers Lodge, the inner circle of the faith who guarded the deeping ways.

It was a great honor to be singled out for this most sacred of duties, and Sigvar’s chest had swelled with pride when the deep-horns had sounded and his name been called. At nineteen winters, he was one of the youngest Frostguard ever to have been chosen. How many times had he gazed upon the roll of honor, thousands upon thousands of names, chiselled into the walls of the lodge? One of his first memories after coming to the citadel was of reverently tracing the outline of those names, and dreaming of their great deeds. More than half had a simple rune engraved after their name, the rune of death, indicating those who had perished while performing this sacred duty. It was a dangerous thing, to delve too deep, even for one of the Iceborn bloodline.

Kneeling before the Dark Ice statues of the Three—revered Avarosa, Serylda, and Lissandra—he had long beseeched them to find him worthy, to one day let his name join those esteemed others. Now it seemed his prayers had been answered. He had trained his whole life for this honor. He would do the Keepers Lodge proud.

They walked along the bridge, beneath the gaze of the giant, silent guardian statues that marked the way. The relentless winds battered them, screaming around them in whirling eddies.

It had many names, this bridge: the Proving Grounds, and the Murder Bridge among them. Others knew it simply as Citadel Bridge, or the Howling Arch. If it had a name during the time of the Three, it was now lost. Among the Frostguard, it was often referred to as the Bridge of Sorrows. Thousands of Iceborn had perished here, after all.

It was truly ancient, said to have been crafted by the old gods. The time of those deities was long past, of course. Some of the heathen tribes still worshipped them, but in time they would be brought around to the true faith—voluntarily, or by the sword. Regardless of whether they accepted it or not, the ice would claim them.

Parts of the stonework had crumbled, falling into the darkness. Time had no respect for ancient beauty, the frost priests taught. Everything was fleeting, on a large enough timescale. Even the greatest mountain would be leveled by wind and ice given enough years. Only faith was eternal.

A deep sense of reverence hung over Sigvar as he walked with Stonefist and Ice-in-her-Soul across the expanse. The greatest battle ever to have been fought had taken place here, thousands of years past. Here, the Iceborn had fought the Watchers, in a battle that would determine the fate of the world.

And here they were victorious, though only at great cost, and the Watchers had been hurled into darkness.

Sigvar walked in silence, lost in his thoughts of that earlier, greater age. Neither of the other two Iceborn spoke as they made their way across, though whether that was due to the relentless roaring of the wind, or if they too were lost in ancient legend, Sigvar knew not.

They reached the other side of the Bridge of Sorrows, where Lissandra had led the Iceborn in that ancient, titanic battle, and there Halla Ice-in-her-Soul called the halt with a raised hand.

“We go down here,” she said, shouting to be heard over the gale, pointing towards a section of the bridge near the chasm wall that had long ago fallen.

Sigvar and Olar both nodded in deference. Olar might have been older and more experienced, his name carved nine times upon the wall of the lodge to Halla’s three, but old habits died hard. The blood of the Three was stronger in the women of the Freljord’s tribes.

“I lead the way,” shouted Halla. “Stonefist is the anchor, in the center. Half-Quiver at the back.”

They unravelled two lengths of rope, hooking them onto each other’s belts—Halla’s to Olar’s, Olar’s to Sigvar’s. They tightened the straps on the iron toe-spikes affixed to their boots, and unhooked icepicks, securing them to their wrists with loops of leather.

Halla whipped her picks around in a few arcing, tight circles, loosening her muscles. Then she jumped off the bridge, landing ten feet below on an outcropping of ice jutting from the chasm wall. Sigvar and Olar waited for her to secure herself, digging her picks into the ice, before they jumped down join her.

“We are the will of the goddess, She Who Walks Among Us,” said Halla. “Do her proud, sons of winter.”

Then she went over the edge, putting her picks deep and scrambling over the precipice. She kicked her toe-spikes in, and began the descent.

Olar grinned at Sigvar, his eyes glinting with savage glee. “You will not be the same Iceborn when we return. The Howling Abyss changes you... if you return.” He gave a wink, then he too went over the edge, disappearing from sight, leaving Sigvar alone.

No, not alone, he reminded himself. The Eye was upon him. He felt it burning still into the skin of his forehead. Lissandra was with him, now and always.

He waited a moment longer, then began the long climb into the fathomless depths.

They moved fast, Halla Ice-in-her-Soul setting a punishing pace, though they did not take any undue risk. They climbed one at a time, first Halla, then Olar, then Sigvar, moving almost to the lengths of their ropes with each descent. In this way, they were able to keep a steady anchor in case of a fall, and the intermittent rest allowed them to keep progressing downward steadily, without need for a longer pause.

The Bridge of Sorrows was not the only one of its kind to cross the expanse. Dozens of others spanned the walls of the crevasse, though only a few were visible at any one time, the distance, fog, and darkness closing in like a shroud. All but the uppermost bridge had long been abandoned and remained unused, the myriad tunnels and gateways leading onto them having being sealed by avalanche or by the Frostguard themselves, to limit the number of entrances into the citadel.

The closest bridges were several hundred feet apart, yet the deeper they went, the more spaced out they became. Some had been destroyed completely, only the skeletal abutments protruding from the ice walls indicating where they had once been.

It was dark, but not the complete, all-consuming darkness of mid-winter; it was more akin to the faded half-light of the gloaming hours. The ice itself seemed to radiate a dull, ethereal glow, which reflected upon the thickening fog, such that the three did not need carry torch or brand.

The shrieking gale still whipped through the ravine, tugging at them like spectral hands, trying to prise them from their tenuous hold on the ice.

It was impossible to judge the passing of time. The hours blurred together into one single, uninterrupted span. Climb, wait, climb, wait. On the climbs, Sigvar found a good rhythm, losing himself in the repetitive motion of hacking the icepicks in deep, kicking in the toe-spikes, and hauling the picks back out. While waiting for Halla and Olar to descend below him, he mouthed the Litanies of Truth, keeping himself focused.

Resist not cold’s embrace, for within it lies truth. Be as one with the ice, and understanding shall follow.

Down and down and down they climbed, moving steadily. Hours might have passed, or a day. Unable to see the sky, Sigvar had no way to know.

Endure, without complaint. The ice begs not for mercy, nor offers it. Neither shall we.

No lesser being would have been able to match their pace. They were Iceborn, the children of the gods, and they were not as other mortals. Able to march for days on end without sleep and still fight any foe to a standstill, they stoically endured that which would have killed any Hearthbound.

Even so, Sigvar’s forearms were aching, and he was covered in a sheen of sweat beneath his skins and furs. And when the ice gave way beneath him, he was too slow to react. He struck out with one of his icepicks, but it did not bite deeply, and merely tore a chunk from the wall.

Then he was falling.

Fear not pain, nor seek to avoid its blessing. Without it, there can be no life.

Turning in the air, he made another attempt to arrest his fall, slamming a pick into the ice, but it tore from his grasp, and he would have lost it had it not been tethered to his wrist.

And when death comes, flinch not from its approach.

He dropped forty feet, hurtling past Olar. The older man’s flinty eyes were wide.

From ice we are born, and to ice we return.

“Brace!” the old Frostguard warrior bellowed, tightening his grip and bending his legs in anticipation.

He saw Halla look up and mouth a curse as she realized he was falling straight towards her. She moved quickly and assuredly, hacking her picks swiftly into the ice and shifting herself sideways so he didn’t smash her from the cliffside.

The rope caught his fall then, arresting it with bone-jarring abruptness. He slammed into the ice wall, the impact driving the air from his lungs.

Olar roared as he took Sigvar’s weight. Stonefist held, however, clinging to the ice, his arms as taut as iron.

Sigvar recovered quickly, slamming his picks home, and kicking his toe-spikes in deep. He glanced over at Halla Ice-in-her-Soul, who stared at him, her own piercing eyes—one blue, one white—as unblinking as the one painted on her forehead.

She stared in silent judgement.

“We’ll take a rest at the Bridge of Shadow,” she said, finally, and continued climbing down into the twilight gloom. Sigvar cursed himself, his cheeks burning despite the cold.

When Olar climbed down past him, he gave another of his wide, toothy grins.

“You’re a heavy bastard, Half-Quiver,” he said. “Damn well nearly took us both down with you.”

“The ice gave way,” said Sigvar, weakly. “I’ll do better.”

“See that you do. Might just cut your rope next time.”

Sigvar looked at the old warrior, quizzically. On three of his previous expeditions down into the Abyss, Olar had been the only one to return alive. Was this why?

At the Bridge of Shadow, they dropped their packs, uncoupled their ropes, and unhooked their icepicks. The bridge was so named because, even in midsummer, when the sun never dipped below the horizon, it was never truly in the light.

Olar slumped to the flagstones with an exaggerated groan, propping his back against the low balustrade at the edge of the bridge. Halla stepped away from the other two, unhooking a tiny black effigy of Lissandra from around her neck and placing it upon the ground. She knelt before it, breathing a devotion. Sigvar stood stock-still, wondering if he too should take this time to pray, but Olar waved him over, urging him to sit.

The older man—exactly how old, he didn’t know, but Olar was certainly well past sixty—produced a small leather flask. Unstoppering it, he took as swig, gave a satisfied sigh, and handed it to Sigvar. The younger warrior took it with a nod of thanks, and knocked back a measure.

“Tears of the gods,” said Olar. “Nothing like it this side of the Ridgeback Mountains.”

The liquid burned hot in his throat, making his eyes water. Those tears turned instantly to ice on his cheeks. He nodded in appreciation, and handed it back to Olar, who took another swig before secreting it back within his furs.

A waterskin would have frozen as soon as they stepped beyond the gates of the citadel. They would endure without, but the strong spirit was welcome moisture on Sigvar’s throat.

Olar’s heavily tattooed arms were still bare, and Sigvar shook his head as he pulled his furs tighter around him.

“Aren’t you freezing, old man?” he said.

“It’s going to get a lot colder than this, boy,” said Olar, giving him an evil grin. “This is like a summer breeze, compared to what’s yet to come.”

Sigvar didn’t know if he was joking. He pulled his pack over to his side, and brought out a small strip of salted meat, wrapped in waxed leather. He snapped off a frozen section and handed it to Olar, before breaking off a piece for himself. He worked it around his mouth, thawing it enough to chew. It was tough and sinewy, but in that moment it seemed an extravagant luxury.

Slumped with his back against the low wall alongside Olar, Sigvar was out of the worst of the howling wind, which itself was blessing. It screamed over them, wailing horribly, sending flurries of ice and snow swirling across the bridge. Some said the sound of the wind was the screams of the thousands of Iceborn killed in that final titanic battle in the age of heroes, long ago, their souls trapped here forever in this chasm.

“It’s a fearful sound, isn’t it, lad?” said Olar. “Gets inside your head after a time.”

“Is it the same all the way down?”

Olar shook his head. “Would that it was. No, down towards the bottom it’s as silent as the grave.”

“That’s got to be better than this…”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the silence is worse. It’s heavy, that silence. Weighs upon you like full-length chainmail. No, I’d take this any day.”

Halla finished her devotions and joined them, sitting alongside Olar. She took a long swig from Olar’s flask, then wiped her mouth with the back of her gloved hand.

“How is it you always have the best stuff, Stonefist?” she said, making Olar snort.

“Must be my charming personality,” he replied.

“I’m quite certain that is not it.” Her expression was deadpan, making Olar snort once more.

Sigvar leant over, gingerly offering her some meat, still hot with shame at having fallen. She looked at it for half a moment, making Sigvar think she was going to reject the offer, but finally she took it, and nodded her thanks.

“How did you earn your name, Half-Quiver?” she asked as she chewed.

“There was a raid. I was a tenderfoot, accompanying a caravan escort, bringing provisions back to the citadel. We were attacked out on the frozen expanse. A blizzard had hidden their approach. Tusk-Crow tribe.”

Halla grunted. “Dangerous warriors. Head-takers.”

Sigvar nodded. “I took some arrows in the skirmish. Kept fighting, though. Stonefist honored me with my name once the last of the Tusk-Crows had fled, leaving their dead and dying to the ice.”

“You’ll never make a saga-teller, boy,” said Olar. “Too modest by half. No sense for the dramatic.”

“Not like you, old one,” said Halla. “I swear your stories get more far-fetched with every telling.”

“Have I told you my bear story, lad?” Olar asked, giving Sigvar a wink.

“No,” said Halla, levelling a finger at the old Frostguard. “I will not hear that again.”

“Another time, then,” said Olar, with a resigned shrug. “Anyway, the Tusk-Crows stuck the boy with no less than a dozen arrows. You were only, what, fourteen winters? He was a big lad, though, even then. Not quite the giant slab he is now, but still big. Had four arrows in his shield, two in one leg, one clean through his forearm. Two in his chest, one in his shoulder, more in his back. But he kept on fighting, bellowing like a stuck elnük. Took down three Tusk-Crows before another arrow hit him, making him drop his sword. Still didn’t slow him. He pulls one of the arrows out of him, and kills another two Tusk-Crows with it! One of the funniest damn things I ever saw! True Iceborn. Would have done Serylda herself proud.”

“Fearless Mother,” said Halla instantly, grasping the pale talisman of Serylda, hanging around her neck alongside those of Avarosa and Lissandra.

“Fearless Mother,” Sigvar murmured. His face was burning, and he looked down, uncomfortable with Olar’s praise.

“You have a strange sense of what is funny, Stonefist,” said Halla, pushing herself back to her feet. “Come. It is time to move on.”

“I’m sorry I fell,” Sigvar said, as he regained his feet and made ready for the next stage of the climb. “On my oath, I will not let either of you down again.”

“If you fall, it is the will of Three,” said Halla. “And if you fall and take us down with you, then such is to be our fate also. Your oath matters nothing.”

She walked past him, looking for the best place to recommence their descent. Olar grinned and slapped a heavy hand on Sigvar’s shoulder.

“It’s fine, lad,” he said. “Happens to the best of us. If that’s the worst we go through, we’ll all be on our knees thanking the Three.”

Down into the deep they continued, chased, as always, by the howls in the biting wind.

It appeared like a wraith out of the fog. One moment there was nothing below them, then it was there.

The Bridge of the Lost.

From a distance, it looked almost as though it had been overrun by some kind of voracious black weed, or thornbush. The notion was absurd, of course, for no life could flourish at this depth, such was the cold that almost seemed to radiate up from below.

No, this growth was nothing as mundane as plant life. It was the very antithesis of life. A knot of unease had settled in Sigvar’s gut, and he swallowed, feeling his gorge rising. He had heard the legends and the fireside stories from lodge members who had made this descent, but even so, it was unnerving.

He dropped the final ten feet, landing in a low crouch. His muscles burned with exertion, and his hands were twisted like claws from gripping his picks. Nevertheless, for all his exhaustion, he stared around him, barely daring to breathe, eyes wide.

“Touch nothing,” Halla warned him.

“If I do touch something, that is the will of the Three, is it not?” said Olar. Sigvar didn’t have it in him to smile at the old warrior’s jibe.

Halla turned away, shaking her head. “Catch your breath. This is the last bridge. There’s no more stopping before we reach the bottom—and the next stretch is the longest. May the Three watch over us.”

Having dropped his excess load, Sigvar walked into the center of the bridge, gazing around him in horrified wonder. The wind was not as fierce here, hissing through the strange, stony formations that grew like a twisting lattice around the structure of the bridge.

He found it hard to fathom what he saw, though just gazing upon it made him feel sick.

Giant arcs of what looked like volcanic rock encased the bridge, as if bursts of lava had leapt along and around the length of the bridge before hardening suddenly, in mid-air.

He knew the history of this bridge, of course. That which was trapped below had tried to escape its imprisonment long ago, long after the time of the Three.

Here, Frostguard had fought that darkness, and here they had died. And with each death, the power of What-Dwells-Below grew. It consumed the bodies of the fallen, absorbing and repurposing them to fuel more explosive growth. Such was its nature. It might lie dormant for thousands of years, inert and seemingly lifeless, only for a single drop of blood to rouse it in sudden, shocking violence.

What Sigvar was looking at, those strange, nausea-inducing looping arcs and conglomerations of misshapen detritus were the growth paths of What-Dwells-Below, as it had leapt from Frostguard to Frostguard, claiming them.

And from the matter it consumed, things had been born.

There was an uncomfortable, maddening pressure on Sigvar’s mind here, a pressure that seemed to be coming from below. He pressed his knuckles into his temples, trying to relieve it.

From nowhere, a memory long forgotten came back him in a rush, like a swarm of bats bursting from a cave. He remembered his childhood, before he had been taken by the Frostguard. He remembered the ice-arks of his tribe; sleek, three-masted ships that raced across the frozen wastes upon sharpened keel blades. He remembered the night their ships had slid to a halt at the Great Pinnacle. Black-helmed warriors of the Frostguard awaited them there. Sigvar and six other children under the age of ten winters were chosen from among the tribe. It was a great honor. And there, under the midnight sun, he watched his tribe sail away. It was the last time he saw his family.

He was taken to the citadel, where he underwent the Trials, and was subjected to the grueling, brutal Testing. One-by-one, the other children of his original tribe dwindled, until he was the only one that remained.

By then, he had all but forgotten his tribe. He had a new family. A new faith.

He was Frostguard.

A hand on his shoulder brought him, shuddering, back to the present. He was sitting with his back against the splintered stone statue of an ancient guardian. He had no memory of sitting down. Olar was stooped over him.

“Don’t sleep,” said the old warrior. “Bad dreams, down here. Bad memories.”

Sigvar climbed to his feet. He hadn’t thought about his old tribe for years. The lingering fragments of the dream slipped away, leaving Sigvar with a deep sense of unease.

“It is time,” said Halla.

And so they began their final descent. There was nothing below them now but madness and cold and darkness and dread.

What-Dwells-Below waited, just as it had for millennia.

The ice darkened the further down they went. Black veins spread through it, clawing upwards. A vague, crackling sound surrounded them, seeming to scratch at the back of Sigvar’s eyes. He could see no movement, but he imagined it came from those unnerving threads in the ice, seeking to escape this accursed pit and reach for the surface…

Sigvar tried to push the sound from his head, invoking the Litanies under his breath, and focusing on each kick of his toe-spikes, each strike of his picks.

The ice was less even here, with jutting sections and savage, undercut overhangs to traverse. At times, the three Frostguard were forced to continue using only their picks, legs dangling precariously above the endless depths as they worked their way ever downward. Twice their progress was blocked, with no conceivable way down, and they were forced to backtrack until Halla determined a new route.

Icy fog closed in tightly around them, heavy and oppressive, such that Sigvar could no longer see his companions below. The fog muffled all sound bar that incessant, maddening scratching.

At the last, a floor of solid ice emerged, surprising Sigvar with its abrupt appearance through the fog. Halla and Olar waited for him, having already unburdened themselves of their packs, ropes and picks. The silence here was overbearing. Even the crackling in the ice seemed to have stopped.

“We’re at the base?” whispered Sigvar, his breath fogging the air as he shrugged off his gear.

“This is as far as we go,” said Olar, in a low voice. “But it delves deeper still.”

The older Frostguard ushered him forward, pointing. They stood close to a precipice, and Sigvar saw the chasm dropped away below them, ever deeper.

“How far?” he whispered.

“No one knows. To the center of the world, and beyond. Perhaps to the realm of What-Dwells-Below.”

Sigvar tapped one toe-spike onto the ice underfoot. “We could very easily have missed this. We come down thirty feet that way, and we would be climbing down forever.”

“Ice-in-her-Soul would not have steered us wrong,” said Olar, putting a hand on Sigvar’s back, guiding him to Halla.

Sigvar knelt, placing one gloved hand near the ice. The cold was intense, causing him pain even through his thick layers. More than just cold, though, the ice radiated power.

“This is all… True Ice?” he whispered, his eyes alight with reverence and awe.

“It is,” said Halla. “Only the chosen few have seen it. The Eye is truly upon you, Half-Quiver. Upon all of us. We are blessed.”

True Ice was part of the Frostguard faith, revered as a holy gift from the Three. Infused with ancient, elemental power, it was harder than iron, and would never melt, even in the hottest forge. To carry a weapon that bore even a portion of True Ice—like the warhammer Thunderchild borne by Olar, and Halla’s twin axes, Bloodfang and Bloodclaw—was an honor of deeply religious significance. The skill to craft such weapons was long lost; those remaining were sacred relics carried by Iceborn heroes of long ago. Sigvar prayed he would one day be found worthy to bear such a venerable relic, but for now, his trusty hand-and-a-half sword, forged in a land far beyond the frozen wastes, would do. It was a fine weapon, by any measure, and had never let him down.

“We are close, the Three be praised,” Halla said. “We move.”

They loped along the ravine, running as a pack, with Halla leading the way.

The temperature here was unlike anything Sigvar had ever experienced, though he had lived his whole life in the barren, frozen wastes. Despite his layers of skins and furs, it chilled him to the bone, and every breath was painful. His exposed face was quickly encased in a thin layer of ice, which cracked every time Sigvar blinked. Olar’s beard was frozen, such that it could have snapped were it struck. Frost crackled up their boots as the ice underfoot tried to claim them, making every step an effort.

Only an Iceborn could survive this. Even so, Sigvar wasn’t sure how long he would last down here. An hour? Perhaps two? Certainly no longer than that.

Halla kept them moving. To stop was to die.

They came, finally, to a section where the chasm narrowed, so that they could only proceed one by one through the gap.

Halla went first, and Olar indicated that Sigvar should go next.

“Do not let your gaze linger on it,” warned Olar. “It is not a good thing to look upon.”

“What do you mean?” said Sigvar.

Olar merely shook his head, and would say no more. Sigvar pushed himself into the crevice, wondering what it was the old warrior meant.

The gap was narrow, and he was considerably larger than Halla. The True Ice seared him as he squeezed through, pressing in on all sides. He was so cold that he was sure one hammer blow would shatter his bones, but he continued on, edging forward, inch by inch, until he was through.

A large, bowl-like cavern awaited him on the other side. The ice underfoot here was clearer, shifting from opaque towards transparent. In the middle of the cavern, it was perfectly smooth, like a black mirror. The floor at the center was a broad expanse, surrounded by massive, jutting shards of True Ice. They looked like pillars, arranged in a rough circle around the open middle, giving the cavern the feel of some sacred circle of lost gods. There were nine of those icy pillars, and it took Sigvar a moment to realize the significance of that number.

“The Hall of the Nine,” he said, in reverence.

He had learned of the Nine, of course. They were akin to great shackles, holding What-Dwells-Below down, and were said to have been created by magic long lost. Some said that it was the yetis who created the Nine, but Sigvar had long grown out of such childish tales.

Even so, he knew they had arrived at their destination.

“We stay to the edges, outside the circle,” said Halla, once Olar had slipped through the narrow defile to join them. “Go nowhere near the center of the ice, and do not look down.”

Sigvar knew she was speaking for his benefit, and he nodded.

“Each of the Nine must be checked. I will start here, and go that way,” said Halla, indicating the closest pillar, and motioning past it, around to the right. “Stonefist, you start there, and go that way. Take the boy with you.”

At any other time, Sigvar would have bristled to have been called boy and have someone tasked to watch over him. He’d faced charging troll berserkers in deepest winter and felt nothing but savage joy—but right now, he was grateful to remain at Olar’s side. A palpable tension hung in the air, like the threat felt in the moments between a lightning flash, and the thunder’s crash.

They walked towards the nearest pillars, Sigvar making a conscious effort to keep his gaze high. Once, perhaps, this had been an enclosed cave, but the roof had long ago collapsed. Sigvar had the impression that the collapse had been caused by something vast having been hurled down from above.

He dared not look down, but even so, he could see the dark shadow beneath the ice at the periphery of his vision. It tugged at him, as if straining for his attention...

“Don’t look,” Olar hissed, perhaps feeling that pressure himself.

Halla reached the first ice shard, and began a slow circle around it, peering intently. Olar and Sigvar approached the second.

“What do we look for?” said Sigvar, in a low voice, struggling to keep his gaze from wandering towards the center of the ice.

“Anything that has changed,” replied Olar.

Up close, Sigvar could see threads of frozen darkness trapped within the True Ice. “How do we know if anything has changed?” he murmured.

Olar didn’t answer at first, eyes narrowed as he surveyed the sharply angled sides of the towering ice shard. Finally, he gave a grunt, and pointed. “Runes were carved in this ice, long ago, when What-Dwells-Below was first banished. See here?”

Sigvar stepped in closer and saw a small series of lines carved into the surface, forming runic script. “What does it mean?” he asked.

“It means the ice has not melted. Come, let’s check the next one.”

They set out, hugging the left wall of the cave, continuing to skirt the open expanse in the center.

Sigvar would never be able to clearly articulate what happened next. He remembered following Olar, staying close as they moved toward the next pillar. He remembered a heavy pressure building in his skull, and the sensation of movement in the corners of his eyes. The silence weighed upon him, oppressive and heavy, and everything seemed to become unclear, as if he were surrounded in a sudden fog, muffling every sense.

Then he was standing out in the center of the ice, gazing downward.

An immense eye stared back at him, unblinking.

Sigvar’s soul recoiled, screaming inwardly, yet he was unable to look away, completely in thrall to that giant, staring, lidless eye.

Perhaps twenty feet of solid ice separated him from this shadowy behemoth, but it was not nearly enough. It was impossible to see clearly, but Sigvar was left with an impression of the shadowy, coiling, tentacled limbs that surrounded that great eye. It would have dwarfed even the largest of the titanic leviathans that swam the fathomless depths beneath the ice floes. A creature of such size should not be.

And it was not dead. There was life and a vast, unknowable intelligence in that stare.

It saw him. Its gaze bored into him, through him, and he felt his sanity begin to unravel like a spool of yarn hurled into the night. Sigvar’s stomach was an ever-tightening knot, dark shadows coiling at the edge of his vision, squirming and serpentine, threatening to—

A hand grabbed him by the scruff of his collar, hauling him backward. He stumbled, boots flailing and slipping as he was dragged out of the circle, and dumped unceremoniously on the ice beyond. He scrambled to his feet, shadows and coiling shapes still swimming in his mind.

Dimly, Sigvar registered Olar standing before him, gripping his furs in one tight fist. Halla was on her knees nearby, praying frantically.

The writhing shadows still moved at the corner of his eyes, and his head felt heavy, filled with a stifling fog. Unwittingly, his gaze started to turn back towards the center of the ice, back, back toward—

Olar’s heavy fist struck him across his jaw, snapping his head back sharply. “Don’t. Look. At. It.”

Sigvar blinked, his head a little clearer, and he nodded.

“Halla, he’s not strong enough,” said Olar, fist poised. All the humor in his eyes was gone now, replaced with an intense, ruthless chill. “He should go back.”

“No!” said Sigvar. “I… I’m fine.”

“He should go back,” Olar repeated, looking to Halla. She finished her hurried entreaties, and pushed herself to her feet, studying Sigvar with narrowed eyes.

“I’m fine. I can do this,” he assured them both.

“If he falters again, kill him,” said Halla. “Go. Check the pillars.”

She made her way to the next one, crunching over the ice.

“Don’t make me do it,” Olar growled at Sigvar. “I don’t want to have to haul your body back out.”

No corpse could be left down here, for fear that it could be used to spark the growth of What-Dwelled-Below. It would be an incredibly difficult climb back out anyway; Sigvar couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to have to haul a body out as well.

And Olar had to bear out two bodies on his last couple of climbs, he reminded himself. His reverence for the old warrior was redoubled.

“I will not look,” vowed Sigvar, keeping his eyes locked on him. “Let’s go.”

Olar grunted, and gestured for Sigvar to take the lead.

They located the rune on the next pillar almost instantly. “Here,” said Olar, pointing it out.

The edges of that marking were so sharp, it could have been carved only an hour earlier, not thousands of years ago. That was good. It meant the ice had not melted in all that time.

“This one’s yours,” said Olar, as they approached the next mighty pillar, jutting up at an acute angle from the floor. “I’ll check the next. Don’t let me down, boy.”

Sigvar nodded as the warrior left him to survey the shard alone. It was almost completely black, and as he looked upon it, the shadows at the edge of his vision seemed to return, making it seem as though things were moving within the ice.

He shook his head, walking around the pillar, eyes tracking up and down—searching for a rune, but finding none. Every angled surface was completely smooth. Frowning, he made second pass, moving more slowly this time.

Still he found nothing.

Glancing toward the others, he saw Halla and Olar had almost linked up, having checked all but the last two pillars.

“Come on,” he said to himself, blinking hard. “Focus.”

He made a third turn around the circumference. Still nothing.

Halla and Olar were making their way towards him now, their expressions grim. When he looked at the pillar again, he would have sworn he saw a bead of water sliding down its side… but that was surely impossible. Narrowing his eyes, he leaned in.

Up close, he could see the ice was slick with moisture. The edges of the shard were less defined than they were on the other pillars, blunted and rounded smooth. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed that sooner. Still, he felt no sense of alarm, even when he saw the flicker of movement within the Dark Ice. An unnatural sense of calm infused his being.

Dimly, he heard a shout from behind him, but it barely registered. The sound was muffled, as if it were coming from a long way away. He gave it no mind. All that mattered was the blackness in the ice before him. It was calling to him, whispering to him, urging him closer. The shadows were no longer just at the periphery of his vision; now they were all he saw. He reached out toward—

A hand grabbed his own. Halla’s hand. He was hurled backwards, hitting the ice almost ten feet away.

In horror, he recognized the darkness thrashing within the ice pillar, struggling to be free. It stabbed from within, straining to breach its prison. He realized it had been reaching for him.

Halla’s eyes were closed, one hand outstretched over the weak point in the ice where the darkness attacked. In her other hand, she clutched her talisman of Lissandra. She barked a catechism of the faith, and her outstretched hand began to glow with cold light. New ice crystals began to form upon the pillar’s face.

It was not going to be enough. What Halla was praying into existence was not True Ice. No one had the ability to create that anymore.

A spiderweb of cracks appeared upon the surface, as the darkness within redoubled its attack. With her eyes closed, Halla didn’t see it, and Sigvar was too far away, even as he lurched to his feet and drew his sword.

Olar was suddenly at Halla’s shoulder, Thunderchild clasped in both hands. Just as the darkness breached the pillar’s surface, spearing towards Halla with the speed of a lightning strike, Olar shouldered her aside.

His warhammer smashed the tendril of darkness asunder with a deafening crack. It was not the only one, however—three more spat from the rupture.

“Stonefist!” bellowed Sigvar. He leapt forward, but was too slow. They all were.

Olar staggered back, swatting one of the tendrils aside with a sweep of Thunderchild, but was unable to stop the other two. They thrust into his flesh with relish, one piercing the meat of his left shoulder, the other the side of his neck, biting deep.

Olar Stonefist’s muscles rippled as the unearthly tentacles writhed into him. His veins turned black, starkly visible though his pale skin, and he dropped to his knees. Sigvar made to grab him, but Halla pulled him back.

“No!” she shouted. “It will claim you too.”

With his last strength, Olar tossed Thunderchild towards them, spinning it across the ice. “Go!” he gasped. “Get... word... to the citadel!”

“Take the hammer!” Halla yelled at Sigvar.

“We can’t leave him—”

“It is too late. He is already gone.”

Sigvar watched in impotent horror as Olar was consumed. The Frostguard warrior was shuddering, and most of his skin was now horrible shades of black and purple, like a bruise. More than a dozen tendrils pierced him, connecting him to the darkness within the ice.

“Take the hammer, Half-Quiver!” repeated Halla.

Sigvar sheathed his blade and picked up Thunderchild, bracing for the pain. It made him gasp, the intensity of its cold flowing swiftly up his arms to his heart, almost making it stop, but he did not fight it. He embraced it, becoming one with it.

A creeping shape, ridged and segmented like an insect, began to spread across Olar’s flesh. It hardened, like cooling volcanic rock. A sickening purple light began to pulse within him, like a second heartbeat, radiating out through his flesh.

In horrified disgust, Sigvar realized something was growing within Olar.

With an anguished cry, Halla hurled Bloodclaw, sending the axe spinning end-over-end through the air. It struck Olar square between his eyes, killing him instantly. It was a merciful act, yet it saddened Sigvar to see a legend of the Frostguard meet such an ignoble end.

Ice instantly formed upon Olar’s corpse, extending down from where Bloodclaw was embedded. Crackling hoarfrost soon encased his head, chest and arms. The power of the True Ice seemed to stall the consumption, the tendrils becoming slow and sluggish, the purple light within him dying.

“Has it stopped?” hissed Sigvar.

“For now, perhaps.”

“Your axe?”

“We leave it,” said Halla, speaking swiftly. “With the blessing of the Three, it will hold What-Dwells-Below in check, but there is no knowing how long. We have to go. Now.”

Sigvar didn’t argue. He began to pick his way around the edge of the circle, but Halla stopped him.

“Too slow,” she barked. “Across the middle. Go!”

Sigvar froze, unwilling to step onto the open ice, but as Halla sprinted out before him, he took a reluctant first step. Forcing his gaze to remain raised, he followed her, gingerly at first, then moving faster. At any moment he expected to feel movement below him as the immense, horrific creature trapped in the ice awoke from its endless slumber.

He could feel its malign force working on him, straining at his consciousness, like clutching tendrils. It was watching him—that giant, lidless, unblinking eye boring into him from below. The urge to look down was overpowering. Sigvar tightened his grip on Thunderchild, gritting his teeth against the pain of its cold.

He kept his gaze locked onto Halla as he breathed the Litanies. “Turn not from pain, for pain is life, and its absence means death. Savor its caress. Welcome it.” Even when he stumbled, he resisted looking down. Every step was an effort, like he was running through a snow drift. He could feel the eye boring into him, whispering to him, calling to him. He croaked the blessings louder to drown it out.

Then he was across, and he gasped for air as the pressure upon him lessened. Halla was there, urging him on. She shoved him ahead, towards the narrow defile marking their exit.

Just before he slipped through, Sigvar glanced back.

Did he see that purple light within the frozen corpse of Olar? He had no time to check, as Halla pushed him urgently through. “Go, go,” she said.

There was no time for a careful, steady passage. Sigvar pressed forward, grinding against the ice, uncaring of the pain. On the other side, the two of them sprinted through the ravine, racing back to where they had descended the ice wall.

“We have… to alert… the citadel!” Halla huffed as she ran. “The Nine… has been breached. The chains… that hold back… What-Dwells-Below… have been weakened. All the other sites… must be checked! The ice must be… reformed!”

They reached their discarded climbing gear, breathing heavily.

“Shouldn’t we stay to fight it?” Sigvar gasped.

“The Watcher will only awaken… once all of the pillars are breached,” said Halla. “Bloodclaw should hold back any lesser creature.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we kill it,” said Halla. “But word must reach the citadel. At least one of us has to make it back. Leave anything you don’t need.”

With some reluctance, Sigvar swung his shield off his shoulders and propped it against the ice wall. His scabbarded sword joined it, and Halla helped him strap Thunderchild across his back. They roped themselves together, secured their icepicks, and began the long climb back to the top.

And all the while, he felt the great eye in the ice below, staring upward.

The shell that had been Olar Stonefist cracked open with a wet tear, and a pale thing spilled forth in a tumble of hissing ichor and segmented limbs.

It righted itself unsteadily, clawing at the ice with talons the length of daggers. A slashing tail unfurled behind it, and it lifted its head, all bony tusks and jutting spines, revealing a burning, purple-tinged light at its heart. Sections of its spongy, flexible exoskeleton closed protectively around that heart and began to harden.

It was a sickly white colour, devoid of hue, but its hide quickly darkened, as if in reaction to the air. The creature’s eyes tore open to look upon the icy world into which it had been born—twelve pinpricks of hot, purple light, gathered in three clusters.

It lifted its head high, and a keening birth-scream ripped from its throat.

Halla and Sigvar were halfway to the Bridge of the Lost when the inhuman cry reached them. It echoed through the fog all around them. It was impossible to tell the direction it came from, or how close it was.

“Climb faster,” was all Halla said, and the pair increased their pace, eschewing safety for speed. Their picks hacked into the ice in a wild flurry, and they drove themselves upward with powerful kicks, toe-spikes biting deep. Sigvar kept glancing down, expecting some nameless horror to emerge from the depths at any moment…

And then, just as the ghost of the Bridge of the Lost appeared through the fog above, it did.

“Ice-in-her-Soul,” he hissed, and Halla looked down past him.

“Move!” she shouted, eyes narrowing.

They climbed frantically. If that… thing made it to them before they reached the bridge, they’d be helpless. Sigvar glanced back once more, to see the creature racing up on them. It ascended with vile, sinuous movement, multiple bladed limbs stabbing into the ice with frenzied speed. Glowing eye clusters blazed, and it screeched, the sound like steel grinding on steel, mandibles clacking.

Halla made it to the bridge first. Turning, she reached down to Sigvar with her iron grip, and hauled him over the edge. By the time he regained his feet, she had untied her ropes, and had Bloodfang at the ready. In her other hand, Halla held one of her icepicks. It was a poor substitute for Bloodclaw, but would have to suffice.

Sigvar dropped his picks and made to unsling Thunderchild from his back, but Halla stopped him. “No,” she said. “Keep climbing.”

“I will stand with—” he began, but she cut him off with a glare.

“You will climb, Half-Quiver,” she said, pointing at him with Bloodfang. “No discussion.”

“But—”

“No discussion!” she snapped. “Climb. Get word to the citadel.”

“But I should be the one who—”

“Go!” she roared, with such fury that Sigvar took a step back. “Go, Half-Quiver,” she said, quieter. “If the Three will it, I will join you shortly.”

With great reluctance, he scooped up his picks, and began climbing, as Halla dropped to her knees in prayer, eyes closed.

He was some thirty feet up the wall when the creature scuttled over the edge of the bridge. It looked up, its eyes locking onto Sigvar, and started to move in pursuit.

“Here, you ugly beast!” Halla called out, rising to face it. “Come to me and let me smite you down, by the will of the Three!”

Sigvar looked on, powerless. The creature below swung its attention from him to Halla, and leapt toward her with seemingly impossible speed.

She rolled under its scything strike, talons sweeping through the air just inches above her. She hacked Bloodfang deep into its side as she came up, sending forth a burst of steaming entrails and eliciting a horrible screech. Then she followed up with a strike from her icepick, but it bounced harmlessly off the beast’s toughened exterior.

She danced away, spinning out of range as the monster lashed out at her again.

Halla struck twice more, hacking off one of the vile creature’s limbs and scoring a deep wound across the side of its head, but it was unnaturally fast. As Halla’s axe came back for another blow, it darted forward and stabbed one bladed limb through her forearm, making her drop Bloodfang with a hiss of pain.

She hacked desperately at the creature’s face with her icepick, but managed little other than putting out a few of its eyes. Her arm was still impaled. She couldn’t get away.

With a roar, Sigvar ripped his picks from the ice, and pushed himself off. Thirty feet he fell before landing, knees bent and hands outspread for balance, right beside Halla. The frozen flagstones cracked under the impact, and he rolled hard, the wind driven from his lungs.

He already had Thunderchild in his hands as the creature turned its attention toward him. It tried to tug its clawed limb from Halla, but she clutched onto it, keeping it trapped, even as it struggled.

“Strike, Half-Quiver!”

Its maw opened impossibly wide, exposing rows of serrated fangs and tusks, and screamed in defiance as Sigvar brought Thunderchild around in a lethal blow.

The immense hammer took the creature squarely in its head, half-pulping it and sending it flying, with a burst of cold and crack like thunder. The hateful beast struck the balustrade of the bridge and tried to scramble to its feet, but staggered drunkenly, the purple light at its heart faltering.

Bellowing, Sigvar charged the monster as it tried to recover. It hissed but could do nothing to avoid his next attack. This time Thunderchild smashed it squarely in the chest, crushing its exoskeleton and sundering the protective cage around its glowing heart. As the beast sailed over the edge of the bridge, flailing wildly, that heart darkened and died.

Then it was swallowed by the fog, and was gone.

“That was… rash…” said Halla. She was slumped on the ground, her wounded arm hanging loose at her side. Her skin was pale—paler than usual—and her eyes were sunken and dark.

“Or perhaps it was the will of the Three,” Sigvar replied, moving to her side and dropping to his knees.

“Perhaps,” she conceded, smiling weakly.

Using a knife, Sigvar cut away the bloodied sleeve over Halla’s injured arm. The flesh around the wound was dark and steaming. Blackness was already spreading into her veins. Both of them knew what could happen, if that darkness were to spread any further.

“Use Bloodfang,” said Halla. There was no hint of fear in her voice. “Aim true,” she added, tapping the center of her chest.

Sigvar took up Bloodfang, gauging its weight. Ice radiated from its haft over his hands, but he barely registered.

“It has not yet spread beyond your arm,” he said. “It may not…”

Halla stared up at him, eyes clear and devoid of fear. Then she nodded.

“Do it,” she said.

For three days, Sigvar climbed.

And for three days, he felt the malignant eye in the deep watching him.

He felt the ravenous hunger in that gaze, gnawing at him, eating away at his resolve, but he continued on.

Endure, without complaint. The ice begs not for mercy, nor offers it. Neither shall we.

While the hunger of that ancient being was palpable, Sigvar realized there was no real emotion in it. It did not feel anger, or hatred, or resentment at its fate. It was dispassionate, uncaring, unknowable… and patient. In a sense, that made it even more horrific.

Nor was it alone. Sigvar had no idea how many other Watchers were trapped down at the bottom of the Howling Abyss, but as he climbed, he felt other gazes turning toward him, following his progress.

Finally, he pulled himself onto the Bridge of Sorrows. Only now, as he climbed from the great chasm, did he finally move beyond their gaze.

Halla Ice-in-her-Soul was roped to his back. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing shallow, but she lived. Her left arm was gone below the shoulder, but there was no blood on her sleeve―the True Ice core of Bloodfang had effectively sealed the wound. Bearing her had been exhausting, making the difficult climb that much harder, but such was his duty, and he had done it without complaint.

Pausing only a few seconds to catch his breath, Sigvar stomped heavily across the bridge, towards the citadel. It felt like he had been gone for years.

The way was obscured with a billowing icestorm, so that he couldn’t see more than a dozen yards. As the walls loomed out of the storm before him, he saw a shadowy figure awaiting him.

Ralakka Split-Tongue, Frost-Father of the Keepers, leaned heavily upon his staff of office. Sigvar eyed the black tip of that staff as he stomped to a halt before the gate, and took in the shard of ice hanging around the priest’s neck.

He looked upon the two of them with unease. He knew where they came from, now.

“Few among your brethren have glimpsed the darkness below, as we have,” said the old priest. “Your understanding of the faith has deepened, but there is still much to learn.”

Sigvar nodded, accepting this. Split-Tongue’s gaze then settled on Halla, strapped unconscious upon Sigvar’s back, before shifting behind him, searching.

“Stonefist?” he asked, to which Sigvar simply shook his head. He was too exhausted to say more. “From ice we are born, and to ice we return,” said the Frost Priest, touching the center of his forehead in reverence.

“It’s melting,” Sigvar managed. “One of the Nine. Something emerged.”

“The Watchers stir…” breathed the priest, eyes widening—perhaps in awe, perhaps in fear.

Sigvar merely nodded, his breathing ragged. His prodigious strength was close to failing him.

“Our revered mistress, the Lady of Ice and Darkness, must be informed,” said the priest. The immense gates of the citadel ground open, the shadows within beckoning. “Come, Iceborn. We must prepare for what is to come.”

The raiders attacked before dawn; fifty wolf-lean men in iron hauberks mantled with strange furs and bearing ash-dulled axes. Their steps were swift as they entered the settlement at the foot of the mountain. These were men who had fought as brothers for years, who lived in the heartbeat between life and death. A warrior in battered scale armor and bearing a heavy-bladed greatsword over his shoulder led them. Beneath his dragon-helm, his face was bearded and raw, burned by a lifetime of war-making under a harsher sun than this.

The previous settlements had been easily overcome; little challenge for men weaned on battle. The spoils were few and far between, but in this strange land, a man took what he could get.

This one would be no different.

Sudden light flared ahead, sunlight gleaming brightly.

Impossible. Dawn was an hour or more away.

The leader raised a callused hand as he saw a lone figure standing athwart the settlement’s street. He grinned as he saw it was a woman. Finally, something worth plundering. Light enflamed her, and the grin fell from his face as he stepped closer and saw she was clad in ornate warplate. Auburn hair spilled from a golden circlet and sunlight glinted from her heavy shield and long-bladed sword.

More warriors emerged from the street, taking their place to either side of the woman, each gold-armored and bearing a long spear.

“These lands are under my protection,” she said.

Leona lifted her sword as the twelve warriors of the Ra-Horak formed a wedge with her at their center. Six to either side, they swung their shields and hammered them down as one. Leona made a quarter turn and locked her own shield into place at the apex. Her sword slid into the thrust groove beneath the shield’s bladed halo.

She flexed her fingers on the leather-wound grip of her sword, feeling the surge-tide of power within her. A coiled fire that ached to be released. Leona held it within her, letting it ease into her flesh. Embers flecked her eyes and her heart pounded in her chest. The being she had joined with atop the mountain longed to burn these men with its cleansing fire.

Dragon-helm is the key. Kill him and the rest will falter.

Part of Leona wanted to give the power in her free reign; wanted to scorch these men to smoldering bone and ash. Their attacks had killed scores of people who called the lands around Mount Targon home. They had defiled the sacred places of the Solari, toppling sacred sun stones and polluting the mountain springs with their excretions.

Dragon-helm laughed and swung his greatsword from his shoulders as his men moved away from him. To fight with such a huge weapon and keep it in constant motion needed space. He yelled something in a guttural tongue that sounded more like animal barks than anything human, and his warriors gave an answering roar.

Leona let out a hot breath as the raiders charged, their braided beards flecked with frothed spittle as they pounded toward the Ra-Horak. Leona let the fire into her blood, feeling the ancient creature merge its essence with hers more completely, becoming one with her senses and gifting her with perceptions not of this world.

Time slowed for Leona. She saw the pulsing glow of each enemy’s heart and heard the thunderous drum-beat of their blood. To her, their bodies were hazed with the red fires of battle-lust. Dragon-helm leapt forward, his sword hammering Leona’s shield like a stone titan’s fist. The impact was ferocious, buckling the metal and driving her back a full yard. The Ra-Horak stepped back with her, keeping the shieldwall unbroken. Leona’s shield blazed with light and Dragon-helm’s mantle of fur smoldered in its furnace heat. His eyes widened in surprise as he hauled his enormous sword back for another strike.

“Brace and thrust!” she yelled as the rest of the raiders hit their line. Golden spears thrust at the instant of impact and the first rank of attackers fell with their bellies pierced by mountain-forged steel. They were trampled underfoot as the warriors behind them pressed the attack.

The shieldwall buckled, but held. Axes smashed down, sinews swelled and throats grunted with the effort of attack. Leona thrust her sword through the neck of a raider with a scar bisecting his face from crown to jaw. He screamed and fell back, his throat filling with blood. Her shield slammed into the face of the man next to him, caving in his skull.

The Ra-Horak’s line bent back as Dragon-helm’s sword slammed down again, this time splintering the shield of the warrior next to her. The man dropped, cloven from neck to pelvis.

Leona didn’t give Dragon-helm the chance for a third strike.

She thrust her golden sword toward him and a searing echo of its image blazed from the rune-cut blade. White-hot fire engulfed Dragon-helm, his furs and hair instantly igniting and his armor fusing to his flesh like a brand. He shrieked in hideous pain, and Leona felt the cosmic power inside her revel in the man’s agony. He staggered backward, somehow still alive and screaming as her fire melted the flesh from his bones. His men faltered in their assault as he fell to his knees as a blazing pyre.

“Into them!” shouted Leona, and the Ra-Horak surged forward. Powerful arms stabbed spear blades with brutal efficiency. Thrust, twist, withdraw. Over and over again like the relentless arms of a threshing machine. The raiders turned and fled from the Ra-Horak’s blood-wetted blades, horrified at their war-leader’s doom. Now they sought only to escape.

How and why these raiders had come to Targon was a mystery, for they had clearly not come to bear witness on the mountain nor make an ascent. They were warriors, not pilgrims, and left alive they would only regroup to kill again.

Leona could not allow that and thrust her sword into the earth. She reached deep inside herself, drawing on the awesome power from beyond the mountain. The sun emerged from behind its highest peaks as Leona thrust her hand to the light.

She dropped to one knee and slammed her fist on the ground.

And sunfire rained from the sky.