Interlude - Convergence

The Western Ocean

The storm was all around them. It shrieked across the churning sea, black clouds looming like a thunderhead, wailing like the damned. Everything in the world that was loose was beginning to shake, the ship's timbers creaking as the waves crashed against the hull.

Great sails full-bellied and rigid as iron, steel plate gleaming from her massive upperworks, the galleon plunged on. Under the great segmented sails of its nine towering masts, more than a hundred and twenty paces long, it was a floating edifice, a tribute to the immense craft of its making. The galleon's blocky, gently curving hull was at least as wide as a small merchantman was long, its rippling wake enough to toss aside smaller ships like a careless child's toys.

There was ice in the storm. Rushing sleet. Rain hammered down from above, the gale thrashing the decks like the God of Wind's spite. Beyond the wan illumination shed by the fiercely-burning light orbs, there was only churning darkness and the black of lightning-torn night.

Like a statement of intent, a black and silver banner fluttered from the galleon's foremost mast: the flag of the Argland Council State. Next to it, windswept but somehow indomitable - the personal heraldry of Councilor Tsaindorcus Vaision.

As the mighty ship ploughed forward, thunder exploded overhead. Flashes of lightning strobed the sky, illuminating the figures on deck. Crewmen hurried about their tasks, crawling through the rigging, shouting over the noise of the spray.

Captain Sarthas hated storms. Hated the freezing cold that cut all the way to the bone. But most of all, he hated what this was doing to his beloved ship, the groan of warping wood wrenching at his very core. Brass scales scraping, silhouette made bulky and hunched by his storm-cloak, the dragonoid lumbered across the deck, tail thrashing as a counterbalance.

The ship lurched. His clawed hand seized the side-ropes, steadying himself as white water exploded over the deck. Everything shook.

"Madness," Sarthas rasped, spitting through a mouthful of seawater. They'd left the rest of the fleet behind days ago, the laden barges and merchant ships skirting the storm: It'd been folly, and he'd said as much. Loudly and at length.

But a colder voice, one deeper down, said: Necessity.

His frills lifted, all the same. Above, there were shouts, the desperate shadows of men and demi-humans bent to the twin tasks of keeping them afloat and on-course.

The giant knelt at the ship's bow, head lowered as if in prayer. More than three meters tall, it towered: Huge, like a noble god. Monumental, in every sense of the word. The edges and panels of its hulking plate were plain and without trim, but glowed at the joins and the smooth dull surfaces, as though lit from within by flames. It had the aspect of a knight, of immense slumbering power - Vermilion armor catching the light as if freshly polished, simply the reddest red the Captain had ever seen.

Its wings were mighty, full and huge, glossy black like a great drake's. Six meters in span, edged in steel, they furled as the knight perched to rest. Juddering clanks issued from the giant's fist, fresh stores of brass shells fed into the massive weapon it carried: Preposterously large, so that any human wielding it would appear to be a child.

It smelled wrong. It reeked of burning metal and the death of stars. Even now, Captain Sarthas gave it a wide berth, preferring the biting cold of the rain to the dubious shelter of the knight's shadow.

"Sir Azuth!"

Against the crash of thunder, the relentless hammer of the iron waves, Sarthas' voice was a meagre thing, lost in the roar. But the knight heard, all the same: Hazy green light flared within the angular eyeslits of the blocky helm, head canting in fluid acknowledgement.

"This is as far as we go! We're taking on water - Any more, and the ship's done for!"

For a moment, there was only the pluming sheets of spray, the howl of the wind as it tore at the sails. The deck trembled underfoot, hail rattling against the hull as the ship shook and jolted. The Captain found himself waiting for the sound every seafarer dreads, the terrible death-rattle of sundering wood-

A great hand, all jointed crimson steel, rose. Two fingers tipped up and to the side, a salute and a warning at once. Storm-cloak billowing, the dragonoid staggered back, clinging to the railing as the giant rose to its full height.

There was a drone of rising power, audible over the fury of the storm, building to a fever-pitch…

Steel pinions spread, with the metallic scrape of swords being unsheathed. The air distorted in a long column of shimmering diffracted light, the vermilion knight's lower limbs angling for launch.

Blue flames flared. In a single great bound, the Armor of Reinforcement soared skyward, great wings carrying it off the bow and into the racing blackness of the sky. Jagged, blinding lances of lightning flared around it, flared against it - But then it was gone, surging through the sleet-blur.

Outrunning the thunderclap of its own sonic boom.

Outrunning the storm.

Southbound, toward Re-Estize.

Re-Estize

The wagon rumbled over the dirty cobbles, the clatter of hooves echoing hollowly through the night. Inside, amid the boxes and the barrels, eight men waited; the closed space stank of sweat and adrenaline, of steel and rust.

No one spoke, as the wagon rambled through the streets, skirting the fires and the processions. Rossi tested the cutting edge of his saber with one of his own head-hairs; Yaffa adjusted his breastplate, scratching where it chafed. Bakker sat with his head down, arms folded over his crossbow, dark eyes hooded.

And Onfre, the one in charge of all this, worried.

He'd had a bad feeling about this for some time now. It was the old instinct, the one that had kept him alive over six years of soldiering: A sense for impending disaster.

How he knew, he couldn't say. It was in the smallest things - the way the other wagon (and the half-dozen men inside) had been cut off by a crowd of revellers, forced into a time-wasting detour. The fact that there was still no word of Ser Wolfgunblood, even though he should've been with them…

Well. It made a man worry, that was all.

Marquis Raeven didn't suffer fools, in his hand-picked cadre. Onfre would - and had - trust every man here with his life, but...He'd be expecting support from an adamantite-ranked adventurer. Without that, there was that uncertainty, gnawing away at him from within-

He looked up. There was a change in the clatter of the wheels; the wagon was slowing, grinding to an awkward halt. A horse neighed as the driver tugged on the reins, a muttered curse barely audible from up ahead.

Too early, Onfre thought. Something's-

There was an ugly tickle in his guts, as he rapped on the wooden wall with his knuckles. "What's the holdup?" he called, raising his voice to be heard.

"Street's blocked," came the muffled reply. "Cart overturned, looks like. We'll find a way round-"

"Blocked-"

And that was the moment.

The moment that vague, formless dread crystallized into certainty. The moment Onfre realized it was a trap.

He knew, right then, that he was about to die.

"Everyone out!" Onfre roared, and then he was scrambling for the doors at the far end of the wagon. "Move, now!"

"Sergeant-" Rossi was saying, his saber dangling in one hand - His mouth open, like he was about to ask Onfre what in the hells was going on. He'd got as far as "We should-" when there was a humming buzz like an entire hive of angry wasps, and something punched through the thin wooden walls of the wagon in a spray of splinters-

Bakker, acting on something instinct beyond thought, had flung himself flat. Yaffa had lurched to his feet, making to draw his dagger.

It was the last thing he ever did.

Rossi's head vanished. It was abrupt and violent, as if a single brushstroke had wiped everything above his neck away. Blood fountained from the stump, his body twitching as it toppled; Flat, sharp and rotating, the object struck Yaffa just above his ears, and opened his skull like a circular saw.

Now men were screaming. Retching, penned like cattle for the slaughter. There was a moment of blank confusion, a mindless scrabbling for escape-

And then the wagon's walls exploded.

There was a terrible, buzzing noise. Arching lines of steel criss-crossed as they flashed through the air, making that unholy, humming drone. Men flew apart; Ladion's head and shoulders atomised in a bloody vapour, ropes of gore flying in every direction at once.

So fast. So damned fast.

But Onfre had one fleeting glimpse of the devastating blurs, as they sheared through flesh and armor and bone. Just a moment to see, as they scythed past him, through the abrupt butchery they left in their wake.

Swords.

He hit the ground, so hard his helmet bashed against the cobbles, so hard the impact jolted every bone in his body. Painted with blood, Onfre clawed at the earth, a vile coppery taste in his mouth-

Behind him, the wagon lay like the carcass of an animal kill. A horse was trashing in the traces, screaming and kicking, flanks wet with blood - the other lay gutted, steaming ropes of organs spilling from the great gash in its belly. The driver, his expression one of complete surprise, had been pinned to the wooden frame by the two swords that transfixed his chest.

How-?

Onfre couldn't move. Dazed, he couldn't breathe, his lungs burning with the need for air. It was all he could do to writhe, to try and get up, knowing only that this was death-

"Come on!"

Someone grasped his hand, hauling at him. Bakker, grey-faced with shock, bleeding freely from a scalp wound. His face was gashed, blood weeping down his temples; He didn't seem to notice, teeth gritted so fiercely they nearly cracked, pulling with all his might.

"Get up, Sergeant! Get up get up get up-"

Somehow, somehow, Onfre found breath for the words.

"Behind y…"

Bakker's features creased in belated realization. He was half-turning, when a thundercrack split the air; There was a sound, like an overripe fruit being split, and then a great gout of black arterial blood. That profound realization still fixed on his ugly features, his ruined corpse fell over to one side, split open down the spine.

He was still holding Onfre's hand.

Behind him, the stark figure in black plate - chased with brass, lending a regal edge to the darkness - flicked its wrist, the quicksilver length of its whip-sword drawing sparks as it slithered across the stone.

Things seemed to be happening with curious slowness, now. Somehow, somehow, Onfre was on his feet: He'd drawn his sword, the bright steel glimmering in the poor light, but he couldn't seem to remember what he was supposed to do with it. Something jabbed him from behind, so swiftly it barely hurt-

With glacier slowness, Onfre's eyes rolled downwards. Saw the needle-sharp point of the rapier blade that had pierced through him, emerging just below his sternum. Felt the acid burn in his blood, his flesh already beginning to blacken and shrivel.

Oh, he thought, with a strange kind of acceptance.

Oh.

"Thousand Kills, Malmvist," Malmvist murmured, as his blade slid free. He took a measured step back, as Onfre toppled without a sound; the sergeant's head bounced, just once, against the stone, his body twitching faintly before it went still.

In truth, it was far more than a thousand, now - But Malmvist had lost count a long time ago. It shouldn't have irked him, but it did: Precision, after all, was the mark of a professional.

A man had to have standards. After all, without them, what was he?

Never let it be for anger or hate, his mentor - the legendary Rodrigo de Garradora - had always said. Never hate those whose lives you end. Hate makes it dirty, like filthy pimps knifing each other in the gutter.

Rodrigo had been more than half-mad, but man had a point: One had to rise above the common herd, to find a place within oneself as briskly clean as ice on a mountaintop, cool and remote.

Only then could you cultivate that frame of mind, which allowed one to icily take life.

He'd been a vara, before all this. A paid duelist. There'd been profit in that, because rich, bitter men paid handsomely to see their rivals not just shamed, but dead. Even now, Malmvist took a certain pride in how he'd been many an eager young fop's last mistake. He might never been much of a fencer, but his lunge…

-He'd made an art of it.

But they'd driven him from the city, in the end. Hounded him relentlessly. And, too late, he'd found that the singular flourish of the killing thrust meant little when angry swords were approaching from all directions.

Even now, the humiliation made him burn inside. He'd thought he'd moved past it, but on a night like this - the cold air stinking of blood and fear and treachery in the dark - it was hard not to think of it.

The ambush had been pure butchery. Just like Zero had said, everything had been made ready. By the time those in the wagon had seen the overturned carts, it was already too late: Peshurian had been waiting for them, and the whip-sword he was so proud of had cut the horses in two.

Edström had done the rest. It wasn't quite clear what her new blades were made of, but they were vicious things, hungry for blood. In a single pass, they'd shredded both the wagon and the men within like a bag of shrews in a thresher, so completely that no corpse remained whole or in a single piece.

She stepped down from her rooftop perch. Descending, walking on air, diaphanous dancer's silks fluttering in the breeze. Dressed for the brothel rather than that battlefield, as Malmvist always thought; Not that he'd say it to Edström's face, of course. Handsome as she was, there was a cold, vicious cruelty to the woman - A malice just this side of madness, one that told of bitter, gnawing spite.

That, he understood.

Edström's swords, all twelve of them, orbited her like pilot fish around a shark. At Malmvist's glance, she half-turned, gaze dipping to the body at his feet.

"That's the last of them, then." Offhand, like it was nothing at all.

"Indeed. Now bring me Gazef Stronoff!" he said. Grand, like a hero from legend, with a trickster-god's ironic twist to his lips.

No one laughed: Peshurian grunted, then shook his head, quicksilver sword coiling at his waist like a tame serpent.

"He's out there, somewhere," he warned, stepping over a severed arm, armored boots clanking against the cobbles. An urumi was a treacherous weapon, dangerous to wielder and target alike; Peshurian's platemail protected him from both his own blade and the swords of others. "-Might be seeing him before this is over."

Or at least, that had been true before.

The Vanisher had paid them twice; First in gold and then in magic, and it was the latter that had put Malmvist's misgivings at rest. Promises, he knew, were ephemeral things...But the gifts were real enough.

Idly, Malmvist turned his arm, letting the flamelight ripple along his rapier's cinnabar blade. He'd always considered Rose Thorn to be the finest of weapons, but this was a true wonder. Nothing stopped it - The point pierced steel like paper, with a marvelous flesh-blighting poison unlike anything he'd ever known; As something of a connoisseur of such things, he could appreciate a truly lethal concoction when he saw one.

It could have all kinds of uses, Malmvist knew. It could be a tool for redemption, or maybe for finishing the job he'd started.

He could always decide when he got there.

Instead, he raised an eyebrow. "And you know this, how?" A little archly, but the thought sent a thrill of mingled anticipation and trepidation through him.

The Warrior-Captain. Now that would be a scalp worth taking.

Never mind that the man was supposedly losing his touch; Word had it that he'd struggled against a foreign knight, some lout from the Holy Kingdom. Malmvist had dueled swordsmen from Roble before, and he'd never enjoyed the experience - Invariably, they fought like they were hacking firewood, thrashing away with broadswords or axes.

Axes. In a formal duel. Something in the water, no doubt.

Peshurian reached down, and - with surprising delicacy for a man wearing gauntlets - tugged a bloodstained bracelet free from a mangled wrist. He raised the golden loop to his helmet, squinted at it, then tossed it aside with a snort of disgust.

"Brass," he said, by way of explanation.

Inwardly, Malmvist suppressed a sigh. Peshurian was a killer, pure and simple; Once, in his cups, he'd claimed that he was a knight, but the only way he could've come by his armor was by stealing it. The man had a vulture's instinct for loot - Once a pack-rat, always a pack-rat, he supposed.

Perhaps he should be grateful that Peshurian wasn't checking their teeth.

"-You're certain of this?" There was a speculative note to Edström's voice, her long ponytail swaying in time to her motions. She'd been surveying the carnage, steam rising from the wounds of the dead like incense; A little longer, and the stench of death would be unbearable.

"Zero thinks so," Peshurian said, like that settled the matter. He shrugged, plated shoulders articulating. "Succulent had the same idea, too."

Now that was interesting. Succulent was a repulsive little rat-terrier of a man, but his instincts were good. In truth, Malmvist would have preferred to have him with them - Strength in numbers, after all. With Davernoch elsewhere and Zero at the fallback point, that left just three of them to handle the night's work; Not that any more were needed, but still…

"Enough talk," Malmvist said, sheathing his rapier. "On to the next one, the-"

A crash of thunder stole his words.

Facing away from the blinding flash, Malmvist didn't see the explosion. But he felt the distant concussion of it in the tremor of the ground, the leaden weight in his gut beneath his exquisitely-tailored waistcoat.

Light seared. Far, far away, a great plume of fire belched skywards, filling the sky like a roasting surge from a dragon's maw.

"What-?"

He flinched, in spite of himself. The night flushed orange, the shadows stretching and dancing behind them. Peshurian swore; Edström was poised on her feet, with the alert posture of a hunted predator. Uncertain whether to attack, or to flee.

The wind hit, hot, as if a furnace-door had swung open.

It rained fire.

The Katze Plains

It had long been said - whispered, rather, in tales too black to tell in their entirety - that the Captain of the Charnel Ship had been a man, once. His deeds had been dark and brutal, even for a corsair of his caliber; At some point, his pirate's lust for plunder had given way to darker appetites, until only blood could whet his thirst.

When the fog came, so did the Charnel Ship - Tattered sails looming from the mist, the foul red light of hell radiating from skull-lanterns and bloodstained hull. Crewed by the damned, they had reaved and slaughtered their way along the shores of the continent, leaving only terrified survivors in their wake. They told wild tales of a grinning, blood-swollen cadaver, a deathless shade beyond the laws of the Four Gods and Man alike, driven by a ceaseless hunger for carnage.

As the legend went, it was Triad Caster Fluder Paradyne who had put an end to them, at last. Or if not him, some equally illustrious ancestor...For who else had the power?

"By earth, water and flame I curse you," he had spoken, as the Charnel Ship sailed away, leaving naught by blood and slaughter in their wake. "To everlasting pain I curse you. Naught but agony awaits you, beneath the waves or in the cold embrace of soil. Though you sail for a thousand years, may you never know rest."

And so had begun the voyage that would not end. Days had become weeks, weeks had become months, yet no land was ever sighted. As the last dregs of food and water had vanished, the crew of the Charnel Ship found - inevitably - that the only sustenance that remained was each other.

But the Captain of the Charnel Ship, gaunt frame draped in his own sparse flesh, had been a caster, too. Through fell and terrible magics, he imbued the ship with a spell of its own, that let it sail through the skies as easily as it sliced through the waves.

And at last, they discovered the totality of their damnation: For even in the skies, the curse had held. Left to sail eternally, they had become shades, then the shades of shades, forever denied rest.

Unusually for most legends, the tale of the Charnel Ship held more than a grain of truth - Except for one important detail. For it was not Fluder Paradyne who laid the curse, but one of the paragons of the Thirteen Heroes, a man known as the Holy Magician.

Those who still remembered were a rare breed, indeed.

The Platinum Dragon Lord.

The legendary vampire lord, Landfall.

And Rigrit Bers Caurau, also known as the Death User and the Controller of the Dead.

When the Charnel Ship emerged from the heavy grey clouds of the winter sky - Unhallowed hull limned with red, trailing tatters of fog like a shroud - the sentries of the Imperial Army were the first to see it. Alarms were sounded, archers rushing to man the walls of the fort, the great ballista hastily cranked into alignment.

But then the crimson hell-glow receded into the distance, vanishing into the perpetual fog. Amid the prayers of thanksgiving and general relief, few paused to wonder where the Charnel Ship might have been bound for, or whose hand gripped the tiller.

The Hollow House

Dream.

Or is it a memory?

Wandering through the halls of the palace, surrounded by the dead. Each and every of their faces uniformly pale and decomposed, like an endless orchard of shriveled fruit rotting in the sun - Blank of everything except mindless, feral hunger.

The smell of them. The stench of them, rigid arms and curled fingers like tree limbs. A thick forest of blood fruit, all soft broken moans and shuffling feet.

And their eyes. A thousand pairs of lifeless gunmetal-gray eyes, staring eternally into the distance. Seeking, searching, craving.

Somehow, she knows every one of them. Servants, subjects, friends, family - All emaciated wraiths, now, with the curled-lip, exposed-incisor look of insatiable hunger.

Alone with the monsters.

Through the golden filigree that gilds the windows, she can see the silhouettes of the dead, tearing into what remains. Clusters of shambling flesh-eaters, hunched over their quarries. Apelike, gorging on hunks of flesh, still warm and steaming in the freezing air.

More of them, crowding in. Shoving each other aside, with stiff-armed clumsiness. Grunting for morsels, pawing at the flensed remains of the fallen. She sees the blood pooling, black and sticky as tar, and remembered revulsion shivers through her.

The revulsion, and the thirst.

Mother's voice echoes through the distant vaults and chambers. She's singing a lullaby, except that she's trying not to cry at the same time.

Hearing her aches.

Dark.

And she woke.

Light. Not blurred, this time. A grey, concave ceiling, carved gargoyles way up in the distance, looking down at her.

Her limbs quivered. When she reached up, her slim fingers found only her own face, bare and free of the mask. Twin smears of blood, where tears should be.

A scrape, from close by. A knife, whittling away at wood. Scrape, scrape, patient and without haste. Something about that-

Something about that felt familiar.

"Rigrit?" The word felt strange in her mouth.

"-There's my girl." The old necromancer's voice was unmistakable - She may have been a crone, but when she grinned, she sounded like a much younger woman. "Welcome back, Princess. Did you sleep well?"

Evileye fought down a groan. Everything hurt; Her skull, her bones, her teeth. The dream had receded, but the cold of it lingered. Shapes still fizzled in her field of vision, ghosts of what was and what had been.

She swallowed, thickly. An unpleasant sensation roiled within her; It took her a moment to realize it was nausea, as she heaved one hand up to grip her head.

It didn't help.

"You-" she began, pushing herself up onto one elbow. "You got...my message-?"

"All that, and more." Her travel-stained cloak draped over her sparse frame, Rigrit sat - crossed-legged and casual - on the stony floor. Though her breath steamed in the air, the cold troubled her not at all.

Crowsfeet framed gimlet eyes, as she worked the blade of her dagger against a half-carved block of white ash. The suggestion of hands, of limbs, of wings, were just beginning to emerge from the wood; She eyed it critically, her head canting to one side, birdlike, before she made it vanish into the folds of her cloak.

"I'll admit, I could hardly countenance it - Not at first. But, well, we have a history...And it's not like you to cry wolf, Princess."

Memory stirred.

A moment in time.

The campfire, warm, cheery. Seated close to it, and feeling nothing at all.

He's there, of course. Young, handsome features glowing with animation, his voice soft, expressive, as ever.

"-'cry wolf'?"

Rigrit's there, too. She wears her raven-black hair short, like a man, but it accentuates rather than conceals the softness of her features, the way she hangs on each word.

Somewhere, silver gleams. No, not quite silver - Platinum.

"It's an idiom, you know?" He sees her incomprehension, and carries on. "Like...a fable. A story for children, you could say."

"Ah. Like a lie, you mean?" Absently, innocently, she brushes a stray strand of hair over the curve of one ear. Lissome legs, sheathed in riding leathers, cross with a smooth scrape.

He smiles. "You maneuvered me into saying it."

"I didn't say that; you did."

They pretend this is funny, and share a laugh.

"Well," he says, warming to this tale. "The way it goes is: Once, there was a shepherd-boy. He's bored, you see? So he lies that there's a wolf, threatening his flock. It works the first time, then the second time...But then-"

"The wolf arrives?" Rigrit's humoring him, but from her face you'll never know it. She's giving him her full attention, and he's smiling at her - Not the smile he has for the others, that never-say-die smile. Something warmer, more intimate; It makes Evileye feel like she's intruding.

His face lights up. "Right, exactly. The wolf arrives. So he calls for help, but the people - They don't believe him. Because he's lied to them so often, they don't believe the truth when it comes from him. They can't."

"That's no way to live," Rigrit says, softly. Her lips curve in a slight smile of her own as their gazes meet, and that makes something catch in Evileye's throat.

There's something about him. He's different from the other one - the dark one, with his swords and black moods. He may be the weakest of them all, but he never gives up, never lets himself be beaten; To him, that unflagging optimism is the most natural thing in the world.

He looks up, pensive now. "We'll be there soon," he says, looking up at the night sky. "I never thought I'd say this, but...I'm glad."

Rigrit lifts a slim eyebrow. "Glad? To be traveling headlong into disaster?"

He snorts. "Not that, no. That part...I'm not looking forward to that, no. It's just-"

A slow breath.

"-Where I come from, you can't see the stars. And...I had no one to see them with. I - I'm grateful, I guess. For this journey. For everything."

The warm, intimate silence lingers. Underfoot, for the span of a moment, the flickering shadows merge and become one.

She watches them, wishing she could be easy with him like that.

"Oh? A smile? I didn't think you'd be that happy to see me." The old woman chuckled, a brief rasp of a cackle. Now she sounded like the crone she was. "I must be going soft in my old age: I was sure you'd hold a grudge-"

"What happened?" Evileye said. More sharply than she'd intended - It hadn't been a gentle awakening. Her red cloak twitched and fluttered around her, as if agitated.

Rigrit's expression sobered. "Ah. Now that's the question, isn't it?" She made a show of looking around, her fingers drumming lightly on her thigh. "I was hoping you could tell me. It took some work getting you free, believe me."

With a magician's flourish, she made an iron-capped rod appear in her hand. It was an intricate thing, carved from a single length of smoky yellow jade; Even at rest, it hummed with potential, like the air before a storm.

Evileye knew what it was. She knew what it meant.

"You mean...He's taking an interest?" Her voice went low, hushed.

Rigrit shrugged. "Who can say? Strange things have been afoot, of late. Almost as if-" Her brow furrowed. She shook her head, grey braid swaying, her lips creasing in a frown.

"Well. We'll see, I suppose." Her level gaze settled on Evileye. "Let's just say...It's a good thing I got your message when I did." She gestured, idly, with the rod. "A vicious thing, that spell. Eighth-tier, at least, made to last. But it's the second one that matters, you see? A sliver of one's worst nightmare, over and over again."

Her smile became a little crooked. "If I hadn't shown up, you'd still be there."

A moment's fire. The roar of the dragon-that-was, a shadow against the sun. Then eternity, in the carrion halls. That thought sent a shudder through her, a slow chill that worked its way up her spine.

"Tia? Tina?"

"They're fine. Eager to get going, in fact: They know the score."

Evileye let out a breath she didn't remember holding. A breath she had no need for, not really.

"Good," she murmured, the tightness in her chest unclenching. "-Good."

Something. She was forgetting someone.

"And...Wolfgunblood?"

This time, Rigrit didn't smile. "See for yourself," she said, a remote edge to her voice - Her expression going distant, unsmiling. Only for a moment, so quickly Evileye could almost have imagined it...But it was there.

"-Here. You'll be needing this."

She caught her mask as it tumbled through the air, the ivory curve gleaming in her hand as if made for it. It locked in place, the way it always did; Smooth, without flaw, revealing none of what lay beneath.

Evileye had known Rigrit for the longest time. Longer than the span of a mortal's lifetime.

The old woman had her secrets, of course. Everyone did.

But she'd never thought that Rigrit would lie to her face.

Cleansed of life, the hollow house had fallen silent. The pitiful dead, in their dozens, had been laid to rest once more, amid the butcher's crop sown in the Laira fields. Those who had thought to command them had joined them, instead; Rolth, Larn, Falk and all the rest, as utterly unknown in death as they had been in their mostly-unconsidered lives.

In the great courtyard below, Rigrit made ready the spell - an old Southern ritual - that would send them, one and all, to whatever lay beyond life. Corposant light flickered above the ruined corpses, laid out in no particular order; Motes of firefly radiance, borne on the breeze.

Snatches of plainsong, mournful and ethereal.

Tia and Tina busied themselves with stripping the place. Neither spoke of what they had seen in their dreams, but they set to work with a will. A careful search uncovered a scattering of ledgers, the pages filled with neatly-printed script: Cargo manifests, detailing the transport of raw material, to be processed and set to work.

What kind of raw material, however, didn't bear thinking about.

Of Wolfgunblood, there was no sign.

Further in, the rot that had seized the manor became more evident by the moment. The blue-grey stone looked wet, as if sheened with slime - the windows cracked and lightless in rusting frames.

It had been night when they'd been plunged into stasis, and it was night again, now. The world outside had changed, but this place stayed the same - Patiently decaying, like a grand dowager's slow and final descent into the senility of old age.

Most of the rooms were dark. Lamplight shone, faintly, from beneath a door of carved teakwood.

"Wolfgunblood?"

There was no answer.

The door wasn't locked. It swung inwards, soundlessly, at the lightest push. The chamber beyond was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the windows shrouded by red velvet drapes. Heavy mahogany furniture, the varnish worn away by the passage of years, loomed like reminders of better times.

Even at the threshold, Evileye could feel the stifling heat, rolling forth like a wave. Logs crackled and spat in the fireplace, the flames banked high - the ruddy glow winked at her from the far end of the suite, the light-orbs left dim.

Wolfgunblood was slumped in an overstuffed chair, his white hair plastered to his scalp and neck. All she could really see of him was the faint crimson gleam of the Lunatic Orb, a hard red light that glowed and pulsed in his empty socket.

"-What are you doing?"

Evileye had expected to feel annoyance, the sharp spikes of inexplicable dislike that sometimes jagged through her when she looked upon him. But instead-

There was something about him, now. Something wounded and raw, a crack in the facade of easy, effortless confidence.

He stirred. Looked up at her, slowly focusing. It seemed to take him a long time to recognize her.

"Oh," he said, without curiosity. "-It's you."

In one hand, Wolfgunblood held a cut-glass bottle of cognac by the neck, the amber brandy sloshing as he took a big pull. Half of the contents were already gone; He swilled it around in his mouth, grimaced, then swallowed it neat.

"What are you doing?" Evileye asked again, wary now. Wolfgunblood looked wan, oddly forlorn, as if he'd suffered some profound shock. "I didn't know you were…"

"-I was cold," he said, his voice so quiet she had to strain to hear. His words came out slurred, hard to hear over the crackle and spit of the fireplace. Wolfgunblood took another swig, then turned his head and spat it into the flames; She stepped back as the fire roared up, the already-sweltering heat turned up a notch.

"You were cold?"

"I came back here, and I needed to be warm." He shuddered. "Have you been that cold before? Ever?"

Something had happened to him, she could tell - Whatever he'd been through, it'd affected him, and badly. Wolfgunblood seemed so dreadfully bowed and hunched, his hand trembling slightly, as if palsied; There was a rusty smear on his cheek, a smudge of forgotten blood.

"Yes," Evileye said. Quiet, now.

He blinked. Stared at her for a moment, as if he hadn't been expecting an answer.

"Well," Wolfgunblood said, at last. "-What the fuck do I know?"

He snorted, gestured with the bottle in hand. Alcohol slopped, the strength of his grip sending tiny flaws spider-webbing through the leaded glass.

"Fucking Samuel," he murmured, a savage edge to his words. Just at the very edge of audibility. "He'd better have the fucking Interfector-"

The novice Grandmaster, from Lakyus' message. Wavering, uncertain.

So he'd made promises, too.

She moved closer. Now, Evileye could see the stacks of books piled by the chair. Pages had been torn from the top few, ripped from the spine in ragged fistfuls. Most of them now burned in the fireplace, the flames licking greedily at the aged parchment. Etchings flared, burning brightly, then folded themselves into black cinders.

Gone.

Once, a long time ago, books had been her treasure. Tales about mighty kingdoms of elves and men, and epic battles between the dark and the light, and mysterious wanderers who journeyed to lost places and fought evil beasts, rescued maidens, and gained fabulous treasures.

When her mother was busy with affairs of court - and it had been often, as much as the Queen had wished it was otherwise - she'd get one of the maids to read to her.

Behind the mask, she felt her lip curl.

Are you done feeling sorry for yourself? she nearly asked, but that would have been fatal. Wolfgunblood was nowhere as drunk as he looked.

Just drunk enough to act first, and justify it to himself later.

Instead, she said - "What did you see?"

The corner of his eye twitched. Wolfgunblood shook his head, lifting the bottle, but then thought better of it, his hand falling back to his side.

Evileye waited. Patiently, like she had all the time in the world.

"I…" Wolfgunblood began, his gaze going distant. He swallowed, hard; All around, the silence pressed in, broken only by the faint crackle of the flame.

"-I saw my family," he said, and the emotion in his voice was deep and true and profound. An unfamiliar emotion coursed through Evileye - Her heart hadn't beat for centuries, but the fathomless depths of grief on Wolfgunblood's features stirred an instinctive response.

Once, there was a princess of a fallen kingdom, and a land that was no more...

She stepped forward. About to go to him, about to put her hand on his shoulder-

But then Wolfgunblood's eyes moved towards her, cold and narrow.

"I hated them, you know."

She stopped.

"Why can't you be like your sister, Chiba?" There was a cracked, jeering note to Wolfgunblood's voice, now. He gestured, mimicking the high, whining note of an older woman.

"-You don't get to make the rules, Chiba. No-one respects you when you do those things, Chiba." For one moment, his mouth worked, his gaze fixed on something only he could see. And then, his lips pressed together, in a thin line.

More softly, now: "You don't even know what you want from life, Chiba. You're just going to waste it all."

His expression tightened. Wolfgunblood flicked his wrist, and - like a card sleight - his short blade was in his hand. The oriachulum edge, indescribably precious, gleamed in the flickering firelight.

"-Well. Look at me now," he said, and there was a brittle triumph to his words. A savage self-satisfaction, like a bitter victory clawed from the jaws of defeat.

There was a very long silence. Evileye folded her slender arms over her chest; the warmth, it seemed, had fled. Left the world colder than ever.

"We know who did this," she said - carefully neutral, affording no judgement - and Wolfgunblood's head snapped up and to the side. A black and feral hunger flashed across those carved-marble features, lips pulling back from perfect white teeth.

"Where?"

And, all of a sudden, his momentary weakness was gone. Abruptly, without any hint of anticipatory breath, Wolfgunblood was as she'd always known him to be: So ferociously present, so focused, that he seemed to burn from within.

Evileye drew a slow breath, though it made no difference at all.

"Re-Estize," she said. "-They call him 'The Vanisher'."

Wolfgunblood smiled, both eyes crimson in the firelight. His long coat swirled in his wake, a whirl of darkness enfolding him like his own personal storm.

"Then what are we waiting for?" he said.

"-Let's go fuck him up."

Next: Asura