What were these fragmented images she kept seeing? Looking down at deeply tanned opal-haired short woman with eyes of jade, with a golden circle on the center of her forehead, who was smiling lovingly up at her. Rosethorne's arms, large, muscular and hairy reached out to embrace this exotic woman, and realized that in this dream, she was a man. She felt a surge of emotion; whoever's dreams or memories these were, he was deeply in love with this woman.

Memories of courting her, wooing her heart over several decades went fleeting by, almost too quickly to understand. Rosethorne realized with shock that these must be the sleeping memories of the Essence within her, before it had been taken by the Malfeans and twisted to become Abyssal. Almost as quickly, the memories began to twist, change, and mutate. In this dream, She/he was screaming to the dark, cloud-covered sky of the Underworld how he swore he'd kill her, his lost love. Such anger and rage...but why?

She forced herself out of these disturbing memory-dreams, and opened her eyes to look at the ceiling of her small, spartan room. She felt the Essence within her still stirring, and screaming softly into her mind. His voice was growing weaker and softer, slowly but surely, day by day, as she herself grew stronger and understood her own capabilities as an Abyssal. She sighed. Soon enough, in a few years, she supposed, his memories and feelings would be completely consumed, and he would finally fall silent. She couldn't wait for this day to happen, where she wouldn't have to put up with his insane ranting, and urging to slay all Solars she could find.

She heard a knock at her chamber door. "The Lord desires your company in his audience chamber. He asks that you come dressed casually." The messenger wraith pulled its head back behind the door, and slowly moved away.

She took a deep breath. Never had he asked her to dress "casually," so she assumed he was asking her to wear a dress, or something equally pointless. She decided to dress in the garments she felt most comfortable within - her armor.

She put on a clean underpadding, and put on most of the armor, leaving off the helmet and gauntlets. The only parts of her bare, pale skin exposed to the open air were her head, and her forearms. That would do nicely. She was tempted to strap on her tiger claw, but decided against it. She did, however, attach the belt with her sheathed scimitar in it, as befit a general.

She walked with her usual deceptively fast pace to her Deathlord's audience chamber. She arrived to see two figures she did not recognize there as well. She strode to the center of the chamber, as usual, and bowed on one knee. "I have come as you have requested, Lord."

Her Lord, the Mask of Winters bade her stand with a casual wave of his hand. "I wished you to meet your two new Deathknight siblings-in-arms." The two she did not recognize fully turned around to face her.

The Mask of Winters indicated the man to her left, who was dressed only in a pair of baggy breeches, with no shirt on, revealing what would be a broad and muscular body, if it weren't for his desiccated and withered left side. He had short, shock white hair, and seemed to be giggling to himself nearly incessantly. Rosethorne successfully hid her quickly growing irritation with this giggling fool. "General Rosethorne, Huntress Clad in the Raiments of Shadow, make the acquaintance of Laughing Doom of the Pure, hailing from the Caste of Dusk."

She nodded to him, and this seemed to make him giggle all the more, though he did manage a curt nod in return. She felt almost insulted that this giggling cretin hailed from the same Caste she did. She noticed with distaste that his eyes seemed riveted on her cleavage.

Before she could snap a reprimand to this laughing fool, her Lord indicated the figure to her right, a willowy woman of average height, who had several stitches on her head, rather than any hair. Her pale, violet eyes were open wide, as if constantly seeing something that terrified her. She was dressed in a moth-eaten, decayed cloak, with the hood lying on her back, unused. "Rosethorne, Huntress Clad in the Raiments of Shadow, make the acquaintance of Greta, Hurricane's Last Breath, hailing from the Caste of Daybreak."

She nodded to this woman, who seemed to look vacantly in her direction before jerkily bowing to her in return. Laughing Doom of the Pure rudely interrupted her musings of this strange pair with a tactless comment, giggling all the while. "Don't worry Rosethorne, you won't have to worry about taking care of your army much longer. I'll take care of it for you!" His giggles to himself increased, as if ecstatic of his arrogant comment.

She slowly turned her head toward him, a lock of her long ebon hair falling across her right eye. She spoke in her usual even-cadenced monotone, betraying none of the annoyance she felt at this upstart. "You are incapable of managing your own words, let alone an army."

He giggled a bit more loudly, and called out to the Mask of Winters, his new Deathlord. "Lord, I shall prove my greatness to you by deposing this maiden who plays at the art of war! Go back to primping and preening to catch men stupid enough to fall into your clutches!" He began walking toward her.

She didn't even bother moving. "I'm giving you one chance to step back. As your Lord and I both know, finding a proper host for an Abyssal Essence is an arduous task, and one I doubt he'd want to undertake again so soon."

He grimaced in rage, giggling as he did so. He pulled a long, rusty dagger from behind, and lunged at her. She simply tripped him, relieving him of the dagger as he fell, and slammed the dagger into his shoulder, twisting it deeply into the floor of the audience chamber. He squealed and giggled with agony. She turned to her Lord, who was watching with amusement. "Lord, what would you have me do with him?"

He motioned for her to let him up. She complied, but didn't pull out the dagger twisted into his shoulder. He stood up, favoring his wounded left shoulder, and groaned as he pulled the dagger out of his shoulder, giggling again only after he did so, though Rosethorne observed with private amusement that his giggling now sounded like the sobs of a small child.

She turned her attention to Hurricane's Last Breath, who was whispering in an unknown tongue to nobody in particular, it seemed. She kept it up, as if maintaining her side of the conversation. Rosethorne hoped she was speaking to a spirit.

The sounds of movement to her left made her focus her senses there, without turning her head to indicate she had heard. Evidently the giggling fool hadn't had enough, since it sounded as if he was about to run at her once more.

She spoke to him without bothering to look in the whelp's direction. "The first limb that comes within three feet of me will be removed."

As it happened, the first limb of his that came within three feet of her was his right leg. With well-practiced economy of motion, she drew her scimitar and chopped off his leg at the upper thigh in the same motion, causing him to sprawl to the floor, moaning in pain between chuckles.

She looked at the wraith, who was always in attendance by the door. "Go fetch the chirurgeon, but don't rush."

The wraith bowed to her, and looked at her Lord, who nodded his permission. The wraith moved silently from the room.

She bowed to her Lord, and saluted him as usual, by slicing open her right wrist. "My Lord, I thank you for the privilege of meeting my new comrades in arms."

She straightened, and prepared to go, but the Mask of Winters halted her with a look. She patiently stood waiting, with the immobility of a statue.

Soon enough, the chirurgeon and her assistant came, and dragged away the alternately giggling and moaning Laughing Doom of the Pure and his now-separate leg, who was followed closely by Hurricane's Last Breath.

Silence once again reigned in the grandly macabre audience chamber of the Mask of Winters. He spoke to his general at last, now that they were alone. "You dealt with him swiftly and mercilessly, as befits a general of my armies. Thanks to him now being an Abyssal, his leg will heal with no limp, though he would certainly not be as lucky if he had been a petty mortal."

Rosethorne continued staying still, unsure of this was a complement or a reprimand.

He continued again after a pause. "You have done what I would have done, were I so weak as to be an Abyssal, and serving a greater being as General of his armies. I want you and your regiment to train tirelessly, as I will need both more experienced in war in a short time. Learn your gifts well, for you will need them."

He paused again, as if considering. "In fact, there's something in my armory that would serve you well, but you must first prove your capability to me, both as strategist and as a true exemplar of the Dusk Caste. An old, weak-minded wraith named Bjorn Stangald has somehow gotten his weak, useless hands on an artifact of the First Age. You must find him, and bring this artifact to me. It matters not to me if he's still in existence, or claimed by Oblivion, but you must bring me this artifact."

She continued staying still, as if carved from marble, waiting for his word. At this, he seemed pleased.

After five minutes of waiting, and feeling uncomfortably as if he were studying her: indeed, staring through her, he finally gave the order.

"Go now."

She saluted him once more, her blood spilling onto the marble floor, saying, "I hear and obey, Lord." With that, she spun on her heel, and marched from the room.

She went back to her room first, to put on the remainder of her armor, and weapons. She then marched to her Lieutenant's room, and told him to gather the regiment once more, which he had done promptly; they were nearly finished gathering in formation by the time she had met them on the parade ground.

Though she privately had no idea where this wraith, Bjord Stangald was hiding, she knew how to find him. "March!" she ordered, and her regiment followed her off her Lord's parade grounds.

The Mask of Winters reflected upon his general for a moment. She showed no hesitation at putting that younger Abyssal in his place, but she still did so seemingly without emotion: hurting him in the way that was most likely to discourage further dissent from him. When he did so anyway, she still didn't kill him, which either showed wisdom or cowardice on her part, though the evidence mostly pointed towards wisdom; she was correct in saying that a good vessel for an Abyssal Essence was difficult to find, especially since Abyssal Essences were so rare, and highly prized by all Deathlords, most certainly including himself.

He felt an insistent tugging at the back of his mind. He knew what this meant. He pushed aside his throne, revealing a twisting, desiccated stairwell into the Labyrinth of the Malfeans. His patron, One Cloaked in Dust, wished to see him.

He moved smoothly through the mind-numbing twists and turns of the Labyrinth. Even so, it took him the better part of an hour to reach the mausoleum where One Cloaked in Dust slept the fitful sleep of the dead gods.

Immediately upon entering, he felt the forceful, painfully grating speech of his Malfean patron in the back of his mind. As always, its voice seemed to vary between screaming at a volume far stronger than a human voice, and a soft, menacing whisper that seemed to entice the listener into throwing one's self into the Abyss. "...sHE hAs NoT boNdED wITh hER eSSenCe, HEr ESSencE. SHe hEArs itS REMorSe, ITs reMORse."

He spoke to the sarcophagus that his patron slept the slumber of the Primordial dead gods within. "Great and powerful One, what does this mean for my plans?"

"...wATCH hEr, WAtcH heR."

He stood for a second, digesting the One's words. He finally bowed to the Malfean's sarcophagus. "I will watch her as diligently as I have in the past, and I will not stop."

"...sHE wiLL bE boON Or BAnE, oR bANe."

"Understood, great and All-Seeing one."

"...lEAvE mE To My drEaMS, mY DREamS."

The Mask of Winters bowed, and left the desiccated god's chamber. His patron did not need to know about his plans for Thorns; nobody needed to know that but him, his massed forces, and the unsuspecting denizens of Thorns, when it was too late for them to matter. As he moved through the constantly changing and moving Labyrinth, and found his staircase back to his audience chamber, he thought more about what One Cloaked in Dust had said amidst its paranoid ramblings. It obviously knew something through its perversion of Rosethorne's Abyssal Essence that he himself did not know. What did it mean by its reference to Rosethorne's Essence's "remorse?" This implied that his patron knew something about his general that he did not, and this annoyed him greatly. He would attempt to find an artifact or wraith capable of seeing past someone's mind and into one's soul, though he would have to bind such a thing carefully; something like this should not give attention where it would be unwise to do so.

Interesting developments, to be sure. His general had already left to find the hapless wraith that managed to find an artifact of the First Age. From his scrying, it appeared to be a simple looking glass, but seemed to seethe with power. This made him crave such a thing, as intact First Age artifacts were incredibly rare.

He had an expression on his face that on any other being would be considered a smile, beneath his ever-present Mask. If his general returned with the artifact within a month, he would reward her greatly. If she took less than two months, he would torture her with great pleasure, before teaching her a few gifts to help her realize his conquest of Thorns. If she took longer than that...well, he had a rather ambitious, if one-legged replacement for her.