Unequalled was the dark queen's verve,
So taking up her royal sword
And yearning for true faith's reward;
Nameless vaulted o'er his foe,
Driving the blade through flesh below
And landing on the other side
As the demon fell beside,
Both motionless for a time.
The fiend rose in satanic form
As the Halfling heard once more:
A weapon in accord with death
Will cleave this monster's dying breath;
Thus endowed with Bith's great axe
He snuffed Corbenik's second life;
Though doubt within him now grew rife.
From ash the demon rose again,
Empowered by the pure heart
And soaring high with angel's wings
As Nameless brandished Fili's bow,
Firing volleys at each chance
Till the fiend could fly no more,
And beaten to its very core,
Fell to earth one final time.
Once the sprites had reawakened
The voice resounded in their minds:
You have my sincerest praises
For vanquishing the Wave's eight phases,
Each imbued with twisted souls
Collected by their maker;
Each a brutal incarnation
Embodying the psyche.
Skeith, The Terror of Death;
Composed of deepest mortal fear
His morbid whispers silence cheer;
Innis, The Mirage of Deceit;
Cloaked within a deadly guise,
One must see truth amidst his lies;
Magus, The Propagator,
In his presence species' thrive,
Ever able to survive;
Fidchell, The Prophet;
Predicating hopeless fate
To crush your will beneath its weight;
Gorre, The Machination;
Enrobed by vicious cruelty,
Immune to all but sympathy;
Macha, The Temptress;
Manifesting love and lust
To charm even the most robust;
Tarvos, The Avenger;
Envy and vengeance are the tools
With which he transforms men to fools;
And Corbenik, The Rebirth;
First compelled by all life's riches
Then drawn towards the reaper's scythe
Before ascending to the skies
On gusts of immaculate intent.
When this world was barely born
The Wave and I did battle here
For eons at same frontier,
Clashing once with utmost strength:
Our bodies spread across the land
Seeding all that now exists;
Substance did my form provide,
And he the spirit held inside.
I've waited for your coming since;
A specter sealed beneath this stone
Without a shape to call my own;
Thus I must entreat you all
To pay this last, most grievous cost:
Return to me what I have lost
That I might give my life to save
Those remaining from the Wave.
Each laid their hands upon the stone,
Vanishing as the dragon rose
In magnificent repose;
Feeding off his former tomb
Now serving as a holy womb;
The peninsula soon faded too:
Among the saddest kinds of loss,
Gone ere it could be forgotten.
In a breath the dragon flew
Back to besieged Mac Anu,
Where all the mages of the land
Had trenched their only stand
At the battered aqua gate
To stay the Wave in fervent hope
That the quest would yet succeed,
As Apeiron had once decreed.
Streaming forth in sheer delight,
The Twilight Dragon met the Wave;
Twirling 'round his adversary
Till inextricably entwined
They momently shone as one,
Like a swiftly dying sun
Whose embers flare with glory bright
Before it's taken by the night.
When the aura dissipated,
Wave and Dragon both were gone,
Though joy came not to Apeiron;
He knew this victory's true price;
The last and greatest sacrifice
Which Helba and her friends had made
At land's end so far away
For every voice that now did cheer.
Sprites have long since lost their wings
As they did their innocence,
The timeless dusk in which they lived,
And perhaps of all the saddest;
Of Helba and her servant Bith,
Of Fili and the Halfling too,
No memories remain but this: