Author's Note: Since I was a terrible person and didn't update this in forever, I decided to try and make it up by cranking out another chapter quickly. Here's number six, and we're back to the main character! Someday there will be action in this story, I swear! Maybe the characters will even get to meet each other - wouldn't that be freaky?

Link to the group picture is last chapter. Mr. Ruad and Izha Lul look like they're going to gut something. Eh, they probably are. Or they would, if there was any action going on in this story.


She took a deep breath of the crisp, fresh morning air. The scent was sweet and pure, tasting of dew and smelling like growing things and early morning mist and life. All around her was the symphony of life as it woke at the behest of the rising sun: the singing of birds, the sound of the swift but smoothly flowing waters that poured out of her home to form the river Jegon, the chirps of crickets, the humming of other insect life, and the gentle rustling of the grass in the wind. It was so beautiful, so vibrant, so peaceful.

She wept.

She wept for the generations to come, who would never be able to enjoy these scenes. She wept for the generations lost. She wept that the vibrancy of colors she saw before her now contrasted so sharply with the muted, tainted scenes she had glimpsed in dreams, as though all that was beautiful there would bear a grimy film, like silver that has tarnished. She wept that the gorgeous, sparkling mist that veiled the headwaters of the Jegon terrified her, even though she had grown up playing in the cool vapors.

'I did not believe it would be this hard,' Aurantha thought, raising her visor to clean the tears from her feather-furred cheekbones. 'Yet here I stand, not even a mile from Shella, unable to take another step for my grief. I am too old. Surely I have aged a century as I slept, for I do not recall feeling so brittle when I laid myself to bed last night.'

She leaned heavily on her staff. The Yuke elder did seem more stooped than she had before, less regal. Granted, she was now dressed for her journey, rather than as the lady of some status that she was. She now wore a plain brown robe, shorter than her usual style to accommodate travel. The veil that hung from the back of her polished helmet was plain white and fell just to her neck, no longer. Her staff was relatively simple, carved in a spiral pattern with a small crystal at the tip.

She brought with her only that staff and a single bag, small enough so as not to burden her. The lady wasn't as young as she used to be, she knew, and what was the point in carrying a large, heavy pack when one was a gifted mage and a simple enchantment would suffice?

It was not only her unassuming outfit, however, but the way she carried herself. Lady Aurantha had kept her poise when reassuring her people, had remained firm and strong while warning them of the dangers she foresaw, and radiated hope as she told them she had a plan of sorts. Now that she was alone, she was just an old Yuke woman who felt that the world was rather too heavy a burden for someone who was tall and thin and brittle of bone.

'I am not the only person in the world to suffer the gift of visions,' she thought bitterly. 'Why is it that there is no one with less years and more hope to make this journey? I am tired and I have not even begun.'

Even as she thought this, she realized with a start that she was beginning to believe that she could not possibly succeed.

She would not let herself give up hope so easily, nor so soon. If there was truly no one younger and more optimistic to complete this task, she would have to make sure she finished it before she became senile and decrepit. (She did not let herself wonder if she would truly have the opportunity to grow older. If anyone would have that opportunity.)

And she did have a plan. Of sorts. It was hard to prepare for the end of the world, especially when the only information one had to go on was in the form of visions. While they told her the feelings and the senses and the knowledge, they were still dreams, and like regular dreams many times those images and scenes were without context. She saw faces screaming, people dying. Deadly mist that poured from a wound in the earth. Crystals alight with magic and promise. A red sky and a screaming star. A demon of light and shadows and thought.

What she didn't have was a timeline, except that it loomed on the horizon. She didn't have specifics. She didn't know how one image related to another – did the star leak the poison? Or was it the demon? Which came first? What role did the crystals play – did they harm the demon, or cure an illness?

She had a vast collection of puzzle pieces, as it were, but no reference picture to tell her what she was to make of them.

Her first priority was to warn those who resided with the Great Crystal, the Crystal of Memories, for they were in the gravest danger. After that...

She felt there would be little time after that to accomplish what she must. She knew of three things that must be done once the calamity happened, however it happened. These three things insured that there would be a chance that a future generation could restore the world to its proper state.

Aurantha couldn't remember why it was necessary to delegate the task to the people of the future. There was a light, and a voice...not burning bright enough. Her memories – there was laughter, like stars. Leon and Hurdy – stop, they did nothing! It was so close, they had found the path she lay for them! Never enough to defeat – something and it hurt, so painfully bright and endless, she couldn't remember it all, except that she could not.

She could not. For whatever reason, all that she could recall of her dreams was that neither she, nor anyone else at the present time, could hope to triumph over whatever evil was coming. That was why she had to...pave the way. That was her task, she knew.

There would be a horror, the demon, hiding behind a curtain of death, the power behind the throne. Faceless and infinite and dark and unstoppable, except to those who would come. She had been promised they would come, she felt. No others could hope to survive. She must therefore seal it away, so that no one could fall into its grasp. This was her first task.

It was a fate worse than death that awaited the unwary. She felt that with every fiber of her being.

There must be a key to the lock placed on the nameless, faceless evil, so that those able to face it and triumph could do so. It must be remote, so that only those who sought after it could find it. It must be guarded, so that only the strong could obtain it. It must be hidden, so that only the clever could discover it. And it must be pure, so that only the just could march to that final battle.

There would be those who would try to free such demons to feast on the world for unscrupulous reasons. She knew that because she sensed it, and because she had experienced a fair number of corrupted plots in her day. There would always be the mage who experimented with life and death, the alchemist seeking to harness powers beyond that which mortals should wield, the ones driven mad by greed and power and evil. Lunatics and cultists and criminals. Those who would seek to bring about the world's end a second time would never be able to touch the key, she would make sure of that.

There would have to be a way for the path to be marked as well, so that neither the key nor the lock would be lost to the ravages to time. Somehow the story must be told, without being common knowledge. Somehow it must survive until it reaches the ears of those meant to fulfill it, without being overheard by the wrong sorts or forgotten entirely.

Finally, she had to find out how to keep everyone alive until that day came.

She had to set the foundation if there would be any hope of rebuilding the future.

There would be no more tears. There would be no more complaints.

Aurantha, Prophetess of Shella, resumed her march south. Her guard was waiting to escort her to the mountains where the Great Crystal rested. It would not do to keep him waiting.