General Maraxus: Hello readers and welcome to the much anticipated sequel to Minion Mistress. Of course I claim none of the credit as the magnificent Sunjinjo was the guiding hand behind this story. Now, let us review what has transpired since last we met our beautiful Minion Mistress ,Jinx.

Prologue – A New Cycle

Blue eyes shut tightly, and then widened.

And the forest was startled by the first shrill cries of a newborn, white-haired baby.

Amidst the blue shadows of Evernight, queen Fay of the elves stared at her newborn child.

"No," she whispered. "Mother Goddess, I can't let this happen."

And as the cries of the child changed tone, she went to work. The shadows deepened.

Once upon a time, there was... an ending.

And the Minions were fleas on the best dog they could wish for, maggots with the tastiest carcass, pimples on the most outspoken face. For years and years they took everything they wanted, pushed their borders back to all compass directions, enclosed the realms of men further and further. The age of the Minion Mistress was a golden age for the Netherworld, and Jinx's kind enjoyed it to the fullest. The peoples of Nordberg and Ruboria pledged their alliance to the Netherworld, the Wasteland shrunk as legions of blue Minions forced the ooze back ever further, Spree and Angelis were repopulated once again and started offering large parts of their harvest to the dark ruler. The subterranean network of caves and tunnels almost burst, the Minion population was growing so fast.

Multiple times it came to a clash with the Glorious Empire and its new Emperor, former Overlord Sayron, but though large battles took place at the borders of the Empire and the Netherworld, the losing side always gave in gracefully – and both sides lost about an equal amount of times. It came to a stable equilibrium at the borders.

And far away across the sea Everlight, once the sacred island of the elves, but now taken over by the Netherworld completely, bloomed with dark glory. Giant bats wheeled freely through the skies, all accustomed to Minions and their Mistress, and the giant spiders dared to venture further and further from their temple lake.

It seemed to have come to a calm, stable age, for the first time since very long. But in this world not much was ever what it seemed, and as long as there would be Overlords, something would go wrong in the end.

Horribly wrong.

It was Jinx' own fault, ultimately. From Ruboria, which she'd conquered early on, she kept on advancing northward; deeper and deeper into the Golden Mountain range, which had been the unchallenged domain of the dwarves, in their hidden halls and fortresses, for centuries on end. Perhaps she thought the dwarves had been defeated when Lord Vessperion had slain their king, Goldo Golderson. Perhaps she thought they were no match for her. And perhaps they weren't, at least in the beginning.

For a few weeks she ventured around the heart of the mountain range undisturbed. Then the dwarves started hitting back.

They seemed to have built up their old technology once again; rebuilt and improved. As the Overlady and her Minions were driven out of the mountains it was by a wall of metal, advancing mercilessly – unstoppable now the dwarves had finally been provoked. It rained fire and bombs, and the mountains were stained dark with Minion blood. And it did not stop at the end of the mountain range. The dwarves now knew they were strong, and after all that time of hiding and silent progress they finally burst out of their stronghold, just like the Minions had emerged from theirs years earlier. Careful scouting missions in the mountains told the Overlady the dwarves had built up a new city during her reign, a mighty stronghold in the western outlyers, close to the sea, where volcanic activity wasn't rare; the new threat came from Stodir, a heaving, pounding, giant mountain keep crowned by a monstrous, fiery crater.

Much faster than anyone had ever foreseen they took back the outlyers of the Golden Mountain range, and from there they rolled over Ruboria and the Heartland. The people who'd returned to the former Wasteland were forced to pledge loyalty to the new dwarven king, Thorlond Datan Dur – or Iron Fist, as he was soon called across the realms. The Mellow Hills were added to the new power, then the barely rebuilt Angelis.

The Overlady fought back, and a little later the Emperor followed her example, but the iron fist only tightened its grip. Dwarven balloons and steam ships crossed the northern mountains and western ocean, and in the turbulent years that followed the dwarves carved out outposts in Nordberg and Everlight with fire and metal. Slowly but surely the influences of Sayron and Jinx shrunk, until they possessed little more than their own domains – the Empire and the Netherworld.

The Empire was the first to fall to the Iron Fist. The dwarves stormed the marble Palace, and to this day no one knows what happened inside that day. What is known, it that Sardok, the twenty-year-old son of the Emperor and his ginger Empress, was enforced as his successor; a straw man of king Thorlond in his far-off mountain stronghold. No one ever saw the old Emperor since then.

And then came the fateful day that the balloon pilots above the northern mountains caught sight of the Black Gate. There was fighting on the endless stairs leading down, so fierce that bits of the walls blocked the path and the deeper parts were flooded with so much magma it streamed out in the Netherworld itself, but the dwarves weren't stopped. They still remembered Goldo's fate; they wouldn't allow any of Vessperion's successors to live, let alone sit on the throne.

They practically drilled themselves down through the tunnel, enlarging the passage so far they could even fit the airships through. And they reached the Netherworld itself, the first invading power to ever succeed in doing so.

There was fighting at the Barracks, there was fighting above the abyss and there was fighting in the Tower. Eventually the throne room itself rang with the clash of weaponry, the rattle of dwarven machinery and the whistle of pure magic. To no avail.

Zephyros, the giant bat who'd accompanied the Overlady for years, by now with dull patches in his coat, tried to defend his mistress with everything he had in him; hissing, spitting, biting and clawing he fell out to the dwarven invaders, and he managed to bite a few of them in half or fling them out of the Tower altogether through the gate or the hole above the throne, but none of that could prevent what happened next. A combined effort of multiple dwarven bombers flung him against the throne room wall, the magnificent carvings crumbling beneath the violence, and another impact crushed his skull beyond every hope of recovery. A high shriek was cut off, and another, full of pain and grief, resounded from the heart of the hall.

Jinx, the Minion Mistress, was flinging around so much fire she could barely see how the last shred of her domain collapsed around her. No inferno known to man could blot out the pounding of the airships just outside the Tower, however, or the death cries of her Minions. She knew all their names…

Hoarse. Simmer. Miko. Meph. Zephyros.

Gone. All gone. They died, one after the other, exploded, skewered, crushed, every last cry like a knife to her heart.

She should never have tried to take the mountains.

Thus her last desperate thought crossed her mind, just before the arrow struck its target.
The dwarves had always used crossbows, but now new weapons had emerged from their technological revolution, which could effortlessly pierce bodies and armour alike. This long shaft slid through the Minion Mistress' back- and breastplate without faltering, between her ribs, and if it hadn't struck her heart, the second and third definitely did.

Jinx fell, in the middle of the throne room, and she stayed down as the invaders marched back to the prow platform around her, where the floating rock just docked, covered in blood and with missing shards lost in the battles above the abyss. After the crushing losses of the past days, weeks, months, she didn't have a single spark of healing magic left in her body.

The Minion Mistress just barely managed to hoist her upper body up as she slowly bled to death, and drag herself to the prow platform. There she watched, powerless as the airships crossed the void to the Barracks, to the place where her Minions were born and lived, where the irreplaceable Hives were kept.

There was nothing she could do as the dwarves took her Hives. Eventually her outstretched hand hung limply over the edge, and her blood dripped off her motionless, clawed fingertips, into the void…

And from the Black Gate in the northern mountains the dwarven legions eventually streamed out, the wall of iron, the merciless Iron Fist. The airships rose into the sky once more. The Hives left the Netherworld, for the first time in more than twenty years.

A new cycle had finally begun. Evil had fallen.

But in this world not much was ever what it seemed.

Long after the last dwarves had left the mountain slope, days after any living creature had ventured close to the Black Gate, a hunched, cloaked figure clambered from the gaping hole. Yellow eyes narrowed in the first real daylight they'd seen in a long time.

Above the figure's head a slightly glowing rock dangled from a protruding stick. He looked up at it for a moment. A light – to guide him in dark times, dark places. For though he knew Evil would always find a way, he also knew it wouldn't be easy.

Very far away, in the south, he felt a shadow of a shadow...

One foot before the other. And before you knew it, all that was left was a line of clawed footprints in the snow.

Far from there a young elf with snowy white hair dreamt of other dark times and places. He had no idea of the events in the far north, but they'd reach him very soon, all by themselves.

The shadows had deepened once again.