This chapter actually takes place during the events of the last one, and there will be skipped a bit in the time in it, so beware and enjoy!

To the edge of night

Edmure POV
Edmure was a human in his mid-twenties that had served in the Alliance forces for almost a decade now. He had a taunt rugged face with wide shoulders and only four fingers on his left hand, and if you asked any of his comrades whether they thought that he was handsome, they would laugh and tell you that his was a face that only a mother could love.

He was the bastard son of a barmaid and some random soldier that had visited her inn, whom neither of them had ever seen since. Growing up had not exactly been easy for Edmure, as everyone in the village had looked down upon him and his mother, but life had taught him that in order to survive, you needed to be tough.

On the seventeenth year of his life, he had worked as a waiter at the same inn as his mother, as he had done so for much of his life, but during a stormful night that fall, a group of three travelling merchants had sought shelter in their particular inn.

This had not been a new or uncommon occurrence, but these merchants had gotten far too drunk for their own good and had started insulting him and his mother with foul names, lewd comments and comparisons between Edmure's father and certain animals.

Insulting him had been fine, he had after all grown up with it, but when they had started to accuse his mother of siring him with an ox, he had snapped and attacked the one that had said it.

Edmure had always been strongly built and good in a fight, as he had been forced to be in order to survive his childhood, so despite it being three on one, he had fared quite well. In the end, things had gotten out of hand and he had accidentally ended up killing two of the merchants.

The law that had been in place in the Alliance since its creation was very clear on what happened to murderers; if you were judged guilty of murder without reasonable cause to lessen your sentence, you would be sentenced to death.

And that would have been it for Edmure, if not for a side clause that dictated that all murderers sentenced to death were to be given the choice of either going through with the verdict or spending the next 80 years serving in the armed forces.

It was rumoured that it had been the lord commander that had pushed the clause through, as he had supposedly argued that their talents for killing could be put to better use serving the Alliance than their cold dead corpses could.

Choosing to serve was not equal to getting off easy, as even though they were still being paid, convicts were banned from acquiring any lands or families during the duration of their service, and Edmure had heard that those that actually made it to the end of their sentence, which were only dökkálfar as humans rarely lived that long naturally, often did not know how to be anything but soldiers, so even the few that tried to leave the armed services afterwards, always came back sooner or later when they realized that they could no longer fit into the civilian life that they had dreamt of.

As Edmure's old training instructor had once said, "the Alliance claims your life as punishment either way. The only difference is whether they milk you dry first".

Running from your sentence was not exactly an option either, as the lord commander had personally made sure that if someone ran from their sentence, then a wanted poster with that person's picture, name and description on it would be present in every town, village and city across the Alliance not even a week after, which basically made sure that you could never show your face in public again.

And when they caught you, there would be no second chances, same as if you murdered one of your comrades. When it came to deserters, the lord commander lost any understanding of the meaning of overkill. Personally, Edmure believed that he did it more to set an example that resistance was futile than because he believed that one deserter was worth so much effort.

"What has you in such a foul mood? Feeling sick?", Blödh, one of the dökkálfar in his Decan, and his best friend, asked.

"Sick? Pfft, after half a year of training in these things, I doubt that anyone will get seasick", Edmure replied with a grin.

These 'things' were actually airtight fully submersible water-going constructions made from wood, steel and with a layer of tar on the outside. This model was called a 'Trident', but if you asked any army soldier, or the crew of the topside navy for that matter, then this entire species of new sea-vessels should be called coffins.

Edmure could not fault them for believing the Tridents to be akin to coffins, as from an outside perspective, it surely must have seemed ludicrous for anyone to ever think of making an airtight container that could hold 100 men in a not exactly spacious environment, give it a small crystal-driven screw and some fish-like fins to steer it, then sink it with everyone on board by flooding some outer compartments with water and then let it sail underwater for a very carefully estimated time until they had to go up for air again.

To anyone that had actually worked with the Tridents before, they seemed like an act of brilliance for getting an army safely behind enemy sea-blockades and defences without anyone ever noticing until it was too late.

Still, this would be the Tridents' first deployment to an actual battlefield, as only training exercises had been available before this mission, so everyone was a tad bit nervous about how it would go. The plan was for the five Tridents of Edmure's group to surface in the middle of the Teirm and take over the city, so that the main force could sail in unobstructed and unchallenged with the rest of the lord commander's forces.

Edmure on the other hand did not doubt that the Tridents would work according to the plan, because both the plan and the Tridents had been drawn up by the lord commander, and if there was one thing that he had learned since he had been given the honour of joining the First Sword, then that was that the lord commander always knew what he was doing.

It was not for nothing that the First Sword was viewed as the very best of the Alliance's Swords, as the First Sword was always commanded by either the lord commander or one of his vassals. In fact, the First Sword was so fiercely loyal to the lord commander that they had once mutinied and risked being declared outlaws when the Tribunal had, for the last time in recorded history, tried to forcefully give the command of the First Sword to someone that the lord commander had not agreed upon.

The incident had been before Edmure's mother had even been thought of being conceived, but he had no doubts that if something similar were to ever happen, then the same result would occur once again. In fact, if the lord commander ever asked it of them, then Edmure was pretty certain that more than three quarters of the entire armed forces would rally behind him, not to mention the massive amount of support that the general populace showed him.

If the lord commander wanted to, he could usurp the Tribunal with hardly any effort, and the fact that everyone, including the lord commander, pretty much knew that he could do so, with some even hoping for it, but that he never did it, only made people love him all that much more.

"Alright ladies, 15 minutes until we surface", Edmure's Centurinus declared loudly.

"Care to check my wards?", Blödh asked from beside Edmure.

"Sure, hold still", Edmure turned around and drew a small dagger from his belt.

He deliberately aimed the blow at Blödh's steel shoulderplate at such an angle that even if the wards were malfunctioning, the dagger would bounce off of it without risking damage to either. As Edmure struck, he felt the blade divert away and he hit nothing but empty air with it.

"Looks fine, now do mine", Edmure requested and handed Blödh his dagger with the hilt first.

As Blödh struck forward, Edmure felt his army-issued talisman draw upon his strength to divert the dagger away. Blödh handed him back the dagger and he put it back in his belt, as he began to check the rest of his equipment.

The talismans were part of the reason why mages no longer dominated the way that the Alliance waged war. They were enchanted to give the wearers of them a standard set of wards against the most common magic attacks in exchange for using the user's own energy until only so much was left in the body, though the First Sword had all received the upgraded versions that included limited protection from arrows and sharp objects as well.

As a mage friend of Edmure's had once told him, the talismans were actually not that impressive in comparison to what they were taught during battlemage training, but their genius played on the fact that their cheap metal shell and easy-to-make wards could easily be mass-produced and used on almost every Alliance soldier, thereby preventing enemy mages from finding that one mage that warded an entire group and targeting him, so that the group could be easily taken out afterwards, as everyone now had their own set of wards.

It did not mean that mages were useless in the Alliance army, far from it actually, but it largely diminished enemy mages' importance in battles.

Another change to most army structures was that in each Alliance Sword, there were a total of three archmages, which were given of the Sword's three rings of power to use in battle. The rings of power in question were rings that had been crafted specifically to store large amounts of energy in them, and which every member of the entire Sword was required to make a small carefully measured donation to once every second week. The many small donations that were constantly being made quickly grew to enormous proportions of energy in the three rings.

The lord commander always wielded one of First Sword's rings when in battle, which was actually his own signet ring, while one of the other archmages were on a different Trident from Edmure's, and the last one was with the ships that waited for the all clear signal to sail in and unload.

The amount of energy in each ring was extremely carefully monitored and the rings themselves were guarded more closely when they were not in use than the Sword's treasury was. The lord commander had even sponsored a study to develop a definition of energy, which was based on how much energy it took to heat a litre of water one degree, seemingly solely to allow the mages that were responsible for keeping track of the rings' power to write down how much energy was in each ring and how much had been donated or used in battle.

The three rings of power system did not mean that the other mages were banned from making stores of their own, quite the opposite actually, as they were each loaned a ring to serve just that purpose, but they had to fill it themselves.

Edmure was no mage and neither was Blödh, but unlike Edmure, Blödh was a lot more sullen about it, being born into the most magically talented race in the Alliance and all, and then not actually being able to do any magic yourself.

"Two minutes until we surface", the Centurinus declared.

Edmure reached for his shield with his left hand that was missing the littlefinger, a courtesy of his first artic wargame that was held during the summer months up in The Northern Wastes, and it served as a constant reminder to him that you always had to carefully consider the climate when dressing for a guard duty.

It might have been summer further south in the province of Alalëa, but summer in The Northern Wastes simply meant that you could at least survive the cold, as they said that it was snowing eight months a year in that province, and that it had a blizzard for the remaining four.

Why the lord commander had decided to build his 'summer house', as the soldiers often called his ice fortress, in the middle of the toughest and coldest place on the planet, Edmure did not know, and nor did he know how the lord commander could stand the freezing cold without seemingly noticing it at all, but it did give a reason as to why the guards of his ice fortress were labelled as frost giants among the regular soldiers, which had then led to the lord commander being given the nickname of Lord Frost, not that anyone dared to call him that if he was around.

"Surfacing!", the Centurinus shouted as Edmure felt the Trident ascend, "first through fifth Decan, secure the harbour, sixth and seventh, link up with the eighteenth through twenty-first Decan and take control of the citadel, eight through tenth Decan, you are with me in securing the southern gates. Remember that a red x means that they are working for our side. Now, move it, move it, move it".

"Watch my back, will you?", Blödh asked as the doors unsealed to cast rays of natural sunlight and a fresh wave of air inside the Trident, along with the inhuman wails of a creature that Edmure had never heard before.

"Always, friend", Edmure replied as they began to mass out of the doorway.

Al POV
Al's actual name was Alastor, but he had always hated how it sounded, so he had only gone by Al for as long as he could remember, and in time, people had forgotten that Alastor even existed.

Al was a mercenary, clear and simple, so when the Grey Organization had recruited him several years ago to work for them, he and his band of mercenaries had said yes without much of a second thought. The organization had shown considerable coin upon the first meeting and had then promised more for their continued service, so it would have been moronic of Al to turn them down on their offer.

There had been that, and then there had been the fact that he had heard the stories of what had happened to the Cart brothers, the Leona syndicate and the others that had tried to oppose the Grey Organization more than a decade ago. Al had known perfectly well at the time of the offer that if the Grey Organization approached you with a job offer, you either accepted it or went underground, more often than not, quite literally.

For several years, Al and his band of mercenaries had done what they had been told with no questions asked, but when Al had discovered what the true purpose of the Grey Organization was, he had been quite shocked, but not so much that he would ever try to turn away from the Grey Organization, as he, unlike that moronic fence in Teirm a few months ago, had known perfectly well that joining it had been a one-way trip.

Besides, it was not like Al had ever been the most patriotic person anyway, as he and his friends would be content to serve whatever master paid them the best, or the one who had the power to kill you at a moment's notice and then make sure that everyone believed that it had never even happened in the first place.

And, if he was to be completely honest with himself, he did rather like the job that he had been assigned for today's party. The dragon riders had been a constant source of trepidation during every previous job that his band had ever pulled, so it would be fun to give them a bloody nose after all that trouble that they had caused for them over the years.

"The men are moving into position, sir", Lorgath, his second-in-command, informed him in a low voice as they walked on the highest floor of the dragon quarters, where all of the dragon riders and their dragons were lodged.

"Good, now we just have to get in position and await the signal", Al responded.

The duo climbed atop the tiled roof of the building without anyone's notice, where he could see all of his other teams spread out around the giant square hole in the middle of the building that acted as the dragons' landing and take-off spot.

Al counted twenty other teams on the roof, good it means that everyone is here, he thought as he and Lorgath, like many of the other teams, began to loosen the tiles with a broken circle cut into them. Hidden underneath the tiles was the equipment that the Grey Organization had spent months smuggling up there during their work 'fixing' the leaking roof.

Al pulled up and loaded the crossbow with the quite large steel encased bolt that had a heavy steel cable attached to the end of it, while Lorgath secured the nets and weights. The crossbow was heavier than he was used to handling, but it had to be so when you considered its purpose. Within minutes, both of them were ready to spring into action as soon as the signal came.

"You look for the signal while I monitor the ground", Al instructed Lorgath.

"Sure, sir", Lorgath complied easily enough as he turned to the citadel, while Al looked down upon the open grounds underneath him.

There were six dragons lounging in the grounds underneath; a silver one, a sea-blue one, two yellow ones, a brown one and lastly a red one. Three riders were walking down there as well, but they did not matter. If they resisted when the time came, then the snipers would take care of them.

"Green smoke rises from the citadel", Lorgath announced the appearance of the signal.

Al quickly caught the attention of the other teams on the roof, and when he was sure that they were all looking at him, he counted down from three with his fingers. Just as he reached zero, he and the other twenty teams fired their identical crossbows all at once.

20 heavy steel bolts flew downwards and buried themselves into the marble floor of the building as the steel cables spun a net across the entire hole, before all 20 shooters let the heavily weighted ends of the cables fall down so that the net fell down upon and wrap around the surprised dragons. Next up were the actual weighted nets with enough weight at the end of them that they required two men just to throw them off the side of the roof.

Half the nets landed on the dragons and half landed on their riders, thereby disabling both. The dragons roared, fought and writhed all that they could, but they did nothing more than entangle themselves further and further. The puny attempts at burning through the steel cables were even less useful, and Al and his men all laughed as one of the dragons nearly burned its own rider in the process.

The entertainment only increased as the rest of Al's men came running in on the ground level, after having disposed of the city guards assigned to the dragon quarters, where they quickly knocked out the riders and removed their weapons and then proceeded to throw extra ropes around the writhing dragons to further tie them down.

It would have been much easier to just kill them, but the boss-lady specifically ordered that they should be taken alive, Al mused as his men on the ground managed to get ropes around the snouts of several of the dragons, before he turned to Lorgath and said, "report that the dragon quarters have been secured with no casualties on our side or among the riders, as per our orders".

Thedric POV
Thedric was walking his round atop the western wall of Teirm; the one facing out towards the harbour and the sea. It was a beautiful day with a clear sky and a fresh breeze wafting in form the sea, and even though many of his colleagues in the city guard hated the salty scent that the sea winds always brought, Thedric loved it.

He had grown up in Teirm and the one time that he had been far enough away from the coast to not be able to smell the sea, his feet had gotten wobbly and he had begun to fear to be swallowed up by the endless earth that had no waves to counter them.

The sea had always represented safety and the promise of a new day to Thedric, and if it had not been because he got seasick the moment that he set foot on a boat, he would definitely have been a member of the imperial navy instead of the city guard.

It was a thing that his fellow guards often joked about; how he was incapable of separating himself from either the sea or the land and had to have both near him to function.

Thedric reached the guardhouse on his segment of the wall and went inside to warm his fingers by the heath and fill his belly with some cheap heated wine, while he laughed and talked with the rest of his fellow guards.

As he entered, the other four guards nodded at him before one of them handed him his tankard and they soon resumed what they had been doing before he had had to walk his round.

Nothing ever happened that the city guard needed to worry themselves overly about, especially this last decade where even the bandit groups that had raided the trade routes further inland had begun to call it quits.

The most excitement that the city guard had had in a long time had come from those foreigners' state visit, and even then, the city guard was mostly reduced to lining the streets to perform crowd control, and speaking of the devil, the leader of the foreigners seemed to be the infamous Shadow himself that Thedric had heard stories about when he had been a child.

He did not know whether the person that was visiting truly was the Shadow, as he neither had the ethereal giant snow-white hell wolves of Angvard at his side nor the scythe that Thedric's granny had always told him about. In fact, if it had not been for those eerie eyes of his and the strange purple-grey-skinned creatures that he brought with him, which to Thedric looked like something that had drowned at sea and then been risen against their will, then Thedric would have dismissed the rumours as just that.

"Brrr, these foreigners have no business here, I tell ya", Gendric, the oldest of the guards and Thedric's father, said, "foreigners have only ever brought bad news with them. Better to mind your own business and let others mind theirs, I say".

"Aye, why can they not just stay where they belong and leave ours to us?", Thedric agreed with his father. It was best to agree with whatever his father said, or else he might become mad, and that was not something that Thedric wanted.

"But according to Heslant the Monk, all humans in Alagaësia came here from across the sea", Ludric, Thedric's younger and more bookish brother argued.

"Brrr, humans have always lived in Alagaësia", Gendric sneered, "my father, his father and his father before him have all lived in Teirm for as long as anyone can remember, so do not start questioning me about where we come from and say that we hail from some mystical land across the sea. Ya got that, boy?"

"Yes, father", Ludric submitted, though Thedric knew that his views had not changed. They never did, and that was why his father and his brother were always fighting with one another.

"Brrr, I do not believe ya, you little bookworm. Always having to stick your nose in those books when the true answers lie right in front of ya, and not in some godforsaken books. Why I relented when your mother asked me to get ya a teacher to help you read, I will never know", Gendric grunted.

"I am walking another round", Thedric announced as he rose from his chair and set his tankard aside.

"But you just walked one", Heff, one of the two new recruits that had only just joined last week, said.

"I could use the sea breeze to clear my addled mind", Thedric lied. In truth, he just wanted to be out of there before his father and brother really began to go at each other.

"Mind if I walk with you", Heff asked, obviously sensing the danger of being in the room for much longer.

"Sure, suit yourself", Thedric replied and sent an apologetic look towards the other new recruit that had no excuse to get out of here.

The two of them left the guardhouse just as his brother and father really began to go at each other, and after walking for a little while on the wall, they stopped to look out across the sea. There was nothing to see out there, not that Thedric expected there to be, as no one could even remember when the last pirate attack on Teirm had been.

The roar of a dragon split the air, before another and then another joined it.

Thedric frantically turned around to see what was going on in the dragon quarters, not that you could actually see that much from where he stood, but as he turned around, he also spotted green smoke rising from the citadel.

"What in the world is going on?", Thedric wondered, when the sound of screaming people made him turn back towards the docks, where he could only watch as the guards down there were suddenly ambushed and slaughtered by armed men that seemed to appear as if out of nowhere.

"Something strange is going on", Thedric muttered without being able to take his eyes off of the grizzly scene that was befalling before him.

He only just managed to say the last bit before he spotted more men carrying planks out to empty spots in the harbour. That is, they were empty until five giant black vessels suddenly burst forth from underwater, like a bobble rising up to the surface, and as the planks were being laid out to them, doors seemed to open up in the strange constructions, from which masses of soldiers, humans and those strange foreigners alike, started to pour out from.

"They are invading the city", Thedric only now realized with dread, "we have to get back and ring the warning bells, so that- ugh", was the last thing that he said before his mouth was muffled by a hand, Heff's hand, and the cold sharp blade of a dagger pierced him from behind.

There was nothing Thedric could do as he felt his life-force rapidly vanish from him, but just as he was about to close his eyes, he heard Heff talk, as if to someone else, "did you get the other two?"

"Yeah, they were so busy arguing that they never even saw the blade until it was too late", the other new recruit's voice said laughingly.

Thedric writhed as he realized what they meant, but only managed to dig the dagger further into his flesh.

"Hmm, seems like this one is reluctant to die quietly", Heff murmured in a cold calculated voice as Thedric felt the blade leave his body, before he then felt it cut open his throat from ear to ear instead.

Thedric died immediately after that.

And so we have the first confirmed named deaths of the war. Trust me, it will not be the last...