PROLOGUE - MIDNIGHT

Ramezeth Crosse sat wrapped in a cloak beside a campfire. The ground that once held his garden had healed and grown wild. When he'd left it last, it was nothing better than a charred, useless chunk of land, and all that he had worked to cultivate for the years leading up to the raid on the Sanctuary had been destroyed. He couldn't remember where he'd set Baern's grave, for all the foliage.

The cabin was still a blackened husk. Structures never became green again, and that was a pity. Kairos had said that he built the thing all on his own, not that anything Kairos said could be taken as complete truth. No matter how it had gotten there, his home was still a beautiful thing before it had fallen to orc torches.

Arranul had wanted to come with him, but he'd stopped her, telling her that she had work, and it was something he rather preferred to do alone. She'd been offended, but he couldn't fathom why. Then again, he himself hadn't understood at the time why he would deny her, of all people, the right to attend. He couldn't really put his reasoning into words now, either. It just felt… right, being alone for this.

This place was sacred to him, this little clearing, this Sanctuary. Nobody else, not even Kairos who had built it, could understand that bond, and it seemed to him to be sacrilege for anyone to come here while he paid his respects.

Sacrilege. Such an odd choice of words for a holy knight who had turned from his church to champion a more secular cause. He was not against the idea of serving the gods, in fact he had a small shrine to the Tribunal in his home in Felwithe. Really, he'd not changed his habits concerning religion since falling out of love with the Church of Neriak, it was just more clear to him where his priorities lie now than it had been.

All his life, he'd believed that he served the dark Prince of Hatred, but Arranul had given him her theory that in reality, it was Neriak that he was so zealous over, and it was Innoruuk that gave him the power to do the city's will. The government itself, something of a theocracy, believed that its purpose was to see to it Innoruuk's will be done through Ramezeth.

Innoruuk, Arranul had figured, was pleased to see carnage wrought no matter what the shadow knight's goals were, and continued to give a less than adamantly faithful man the powers of a true servant. And Innoruuk didn't care about anything else but wanton destruction and misery. He didn't care about his children, the Tier'Dal, he didn't care about Ramezeth.

So, Ramezeth rejected Innoruuk, thinking that there were plenty of gods to choose from that actually had a place in their hearts for their followers. He'd settled on the gods of justice, but even then he found that some things were more important to him than the pleasure of the lords of the Planes of Power.

He needed something to set his eyes on, something that would stand before him and tell him that his loyalty was appreciated. He needed another Neriak. And there was one thing in his life that still held some great value.

Arranul.

He was the champion and willing servant of Arranul.

And, as the powerful weapon at his side could attest to, the gods were just fine with that.

"In you," Arranul told him once, "I see the spirit of a true knight, no matter what belief structure you follow, and I respected you even when we were enemies. Your fierce loyalty to whatever causes you choose to follow," ---she never once alluded to the fact that his blade and soul were hers, not for any reason he could understand--- "and the way you go about doing it mark you as such. I think that sword sees it in you."

He stirred the embers of his fire around for a bit, and craned his neck upwards to face the moon. It was full, and it illuminated the clearing with a good, strong silver light. The last time all of those he considered friends had been together was in this place. Now they were scattered, twice now they'd been scattered.

So many had died, so many had simply faded into the background. The boy was old and ailing, a letter said. The twins had been silent for so long. That painting, he was sure, was the last time he'd see those three ever again. They'd enjoyed only two adventures as a group, that was so, but those had been so great in scale that they'd all been bonded to each other, the five of them, and the boy had gotten his wish.

Fat lot of good that had done. Lucan D'Lere had recently been pronounced supreme ruler of Freeport. So what if he didn't have the sword, Soulfire? When the boy died, he'd take it, or if the gods were truly benevolent, one of them would keep it from the Overlord. Certainly, the tyrant could hunt down a bunch of adventurers and slay them for it, but if he were to fight, say, Rallos Zek, that would put a bit of a dampening on his plans.

Ramezeth chuckled a bit at the thought. He looked at the steel gauntlet that made up his left hand, nothing more than a placeholder so that he had something to hold his shield on with. D'Lere had taken off that particular appendage, and Ramezeth harbored nothing but ill will towards the lich-thing. Not that warriors could be liches, but how else could D'Lere be described?

Of course, Ramezeth would have lost more than his hand in that fight if it weren't for Arranul. She was always there to pull him out of a bad situation, it seemed. Nobody who knew their history ever questioned his unwavering loyalty. She'd saved him from that mess with Anton D'Vinn, for starters, when the long-dead ambassador put a knife between his ribs. It was with that particular rescue in mind when she'd asked him to come with her west to inspect reports of an alarming number of undead in the dwarven lands.

Not that he'd anywhere else to go, with these ruins that he now sat amongst being his only belongings. In fact, he bet that the piece of rusted steel he had just spotted a few feet away was one the shattered remnants of his bastardsword, which had broken in the attack.

Shame, he had crafted the blade himself. The hilt had been a beautiful design, a black one with green veins running through it, and an emerald. The blade itself had been nearly perfect. Gods, he missed that sword.

Its replacement hummed at his side briefly, violently. The new blade had a measure of sentience, and it was jealous. He patted its scabbard reassuringly, a small grin playing on his face. However, the broken sword had played a part in the beginning of his journey into his lady's service, and he probably would never had come to her if it had not broken. Perhaps the loss of it had been fate.

He poked at the fire absently again, and soon found himself in the Sanctuary as it had been all those years ago.