After Randidly had left, Vualla raised her hand that wasn’t currently slid into a gauntlet and pressed her pointer finger to her lips. After removing her finger, her tongue flicked out and tasted the scent of Randidly that still hung there. Then she spoke lightly into the air, the words being buoyed away by wind right as they were shaped by her tongue. “That… that might have been my first kiss. Took me a bit by surprise.”

Then her mouth twisted into a crooked grin. “Don’t be a sore loser. Let me have my fun for a while longer.”

****

Abiodun had his hands behind his back as he glanced to his right. Randidly, pushing right up against the time limit, was hurrying back toward their position across the rather placid space between the camps. Then Abiodun’s gaze slid forward. In front of him stood Lady Iellaya, who looked calmly over the battlefield. For now, a strange peace had come to the left flank. The Nether forces were concentrating most of their strength on the far flank, leaving their side more or less uncontested for now.

“They will have reserve forces that would respond to a move. This is clearly a plot by Lord Miln to use you to bring them out,” Abiodun said aloud, even though he knew full well that Lady Iellaya didn’t need him to remind her of such a basic tactic.

“Does it matter?” Lady Iellaya’s feathers flexed outward on her arms and shoulders. “Even now, I don’t think I’ve reached the true pinnacle of the potential my new image possesses... Beating back the personal forces of the Nether King… that is truly a feat worthy of merit.”

“Lord Miln will try and steal the strike against the Nether King itself. You will be used to create the opening he needs.” Abiodun stated.

Lady Iellaya glanced back at him. “Lord Miln is currently being swarmed by about half of the Nether army. If his one thousand elite soldiers have enough strength to open up an opportunity to strike at the Nether King in this scenario, I suppose he certainly deserves all the accolades they can pin to the front of his shirt. Besides, does Lord Miln possess the power to wound a Nether King…?”

That brought a moment of silence between them as the two studied the strange circle of Nether being erected in the Great Rift above them. Even though they each had grown immensely from the work of Randidly Ghosthound, the reverberations that were coming off of that working were… disturbing. The sheer size gave them pause.

After all, neither knew much about Nether Kings. Just that they should be avoided at all costs.

“...there is Cail Tweocs,” Lady Iellaya remarked. “I suspect they have some sort of measures prepared. I highly doubt that their fixation on the Nether Prince was simply due to Lord Miln’s greed.”

“...there is also the matter of the Xyrt Brigade representative,” Abdiodun’s frown deepened as he considered the treachery of Lord Miln. “You were entirely correct; they responded immediately, even through unofficial channels, when they received word that a Nether King was present here. No official report on this incident was ever filed. They will be visiting in a strictly unofficial capacity, but an agent is heading our way currently. Because this agent is currently off duty, someone will need to be sent to the military checkpoint to vouch for them.”

Then Abiodun bowed lightly. Randidly was moving closer and likely would be within earshot soon. He intended to finish all of the sensitive business before the boy arrived. “I’ll send someone to handle it.”

“No need,” Lady Iellaya shook her head. “Go yourself.”

“I…” Abiodun’s face went blank. His mind mirrored his face. “The battle-”

“Your performance earlier weakened you, don’t try to hide it.” Lady Iellaya continued. “Your presence here would be a liability more than an asset. This is the most efficient use of your time.”

Abiodun pressed his mouth tightly shut. He didn’t allow the words, ‘and this foolish boy will be an asset?’ to pass his lips. After all, the understanding between him and his queen was almost perfect. There was no way that she wouldn’t understand his thought process.

Yet Lady Iellaya said nothing further on the subject. Her gaze remained forward, fixed on the slowly forming Nether Ritual in the sky above them. The sounds of the fighting on the right flank was a distant distraction, barely registering. Even now, Randidly Ghosthound was hurrying closer to report for orders.

What role can he even serve here? Abiodun’s brow furrowed as he looked at Lady Iellaya’s back. I was the one who was always by your side. Everything that I’ve done… it’s been for you.

Why is our connection so numbed…? Why did things need to change…?

Yet Abiodun quickly disciplined himself. He was complaining pointlessly. They had accomplished their goals; they had grown strong and now had the opportunity to earn true merit. And it was definitely accurate that Abiodun had weakened himself today, buying time for Lady Iellaya to make her transcendent descent onto the battlefield. Which meant that his usefulness here was decreased.

The matter of the Xyrt Brigade representative was extremely important.

Could it truly be that Randidly Ghosthound was a more suitable companion now, however…?

Yet Abiodun admitted to himself that the mission to bring the Xyrt Brigade representative to the frontlines was a task best left in his hands. The testimony of a Xyrt Brigade member was just the knife they needed to dethrone Lord Miln. The failure to report the appearance of a Nether King was an immense oversight.

Yet Lord Miln remained confident despite this obvious weakness. To be surrounded by two foes, Lord Miln and the Nether King, who both were so confident gave Abiodun pause. Something was at play here that they didn’t understand. Which was why Abiodun dearly didn’t want to leave Lady Iellaya alone.

Before Abiodun’s thoughts could continue further along that track, Randidly arrived on the upper level of the fort that served as their surveyor’s vantage. He nodded to them both and straightened his posture, but otherwise showed no respect to Lady Iellaya, today of all days. Instead, he spoke in a tired voice. “What’s the plan?”

Lady Iellaya glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Abiodun?”

For a second, Abiodun’s mind again went blank. Then he realized what Lady Iellaya intended and straightened. After all, he was still her right hand. This changed nothing. “Very soon, you and Lady Iellaya will move forward. This will-”

“No, Abiodun,” A frown flickered across Lady Iellaya’s features. “Your task is time-sensitive. This is the perfect opportunity to depart, while there is no threat against us. Lord Miln will think nothing of it. I can handle the explanation myself.”

*****

Heiffal was only half-listening to the story that Salazar was telling, but it did fill his stomach with a strange sense of warmth. The air was rich with its flavor. Which was for the best, because the world around them was slowly beginning to feel… extremely strange.

The more Heiffal thought about the details, the stranger this battle seemed. The dream he had last night seemed to transform into a queer beast that Heiffal wasn’t sure whether to find threatening or disturbing. Where had he and his squad been training before they came here to fight? Why hadn’t Heiffals group ever heard about this battlefront before? If they were truly so close that they could easily reinforce each other, surely they would have had some interaction?

Something didn’t make sense. Yet with the warmth of the story wrapping around him, Heiffal somehow realized… worrying about it wouldn’t change anything.

"...while I continued to use my power to hold sway over the area, the Ghosthound strode forward across our small island right to the edge. The tips of his bare toes stuck out past the limit of Aether and into the roiling Nether miasma. Yet Randidly did not flinch. Instead, he paused there a turned around to look at me. With a peal of booming laughter, the Ghosthound said, 'Salazar, it is only because you have my back that we will seize victory on this day. There is no price I wouldn’t pay for our eternal partnership..' In his green eyes was raw emotion at such an intimate level that I couldn't even handle it- I choked up. Words failed me.”

Although if he was being honest with himself, there were really two reasons that the surrounding thirty soldiers had gathered around Salazar. The first was the aura of recovery that the snake-man strangely produced during his talking, of course. It seemed to invalidate the surrounding strangeness. But the second reason... was the stories themselves.

Because Salazar was one of the direct subordinates of the Ghosthound.

All of the soldiers present were at least passingly familiar with the Ghosthound. When the fighting against the Nether Beasts was at its worst, when most of them faced the specter of their own deaths, Randidly Ghosthound had been the one to step forward. At that moment, he lifted up the bright torch of hope that had been taken up across the battlefield. Now, with Lady Iellaya basically vanquishing the Nether forces on this side of the battlefield, there were quite a few soldiers that were curious to learn more about their savior.

Who was he? Where did he come from? Why was he willing to fight so hard for us?

Well, some of us are curious... Heiffals eyes flicked across the assembled soldiers. Of his original twenty-person squad that he had been a part of, Heiffal knew of only nine that were still living. Eight of those were gathered around Salazar. There was a circle of light around him, illuminating the remnants of Heiffal’s and two other squads. Beyond that...

The weirdness of Heiffal's dream and the strange questions he couldn't escape remained heavy outside of the sound of Salazar's words. The story created a curtail that pushed back those strange truths. Yet Heiffal could see it in the one of his squad members that hadn't bothered to walk over toward Salazar as the fighting slowed down. That man's eyes were glassy and blank as he sat on a broken stone and stared at the ground. Clearly he was struggling with his own truth. All of their truth. But it seemed in his bleak expression that something else entirely was also at play.

Had he witnessed a gruesome death that affected him strongly…?

Suddenly, Heiffal frowned. He slowly raised his gaze upward. What's this weird darkness in the air...?

Salazar's story continued unabated while Heiffal pondered. "Even if the emotions were so complex I couldn't put them into words, how could I let down the genuine announcement of my captain? So I said to Randidly Ghosthound, 'Sir, the only reason why I have the confidence to remain apart from the battlefield is because you lead the invincible vanguard at the front. You will be the spear to slay the Nether King one day! Do you perhaps remember the day that we met? On that fateful eve-"

The squad member of Heiffal's who sat outside of the circle of the story abruptly stood up. Not understand the strange sense of foreboding in his heart, Heiffal also stood and hurried over to the edge of Salazar's influence.

"Estick! Where are you going?" Heiffal asked. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded high-pitched and worried.

When Estick looked up, his face was relatively blank. "What does it matter...? My life, does it have meaning in this place? Can't you tell that we are all already dead...? The very least I can do is die... in the way I remember dying..."

Heiffal felt the weirdness so much more poignantly at the edge of Salazar's influence. Something was very wrong with the world. And looking at this man, it suddenly occurred to Heiffal that he too had a strange dream last night where he experienced his own death. That terrible knowledge of the sensation of cessation, that extremely death-like sensation, it had been placed in Estick’s heart. Without any warmth, that knowledge could change you. Eat away at the edges of your sanity.

But this was more than that. Something was happening in the air. A grand darkness was swirling over them, wafting up from the Nether corpses into a maelstrom above the battlefield. Heiffal couldn't witness it if he looked up at it directly, but his instincts told him it was there. It stirred and swirled in the corners of his gaze.

Those same instincts also told him that two long arms stretched down from that darkness, picking Estick up from the ground and urging him gently forward over to the fighting.

Heiffal watched in fascination, unable to articulate any response to Estick's strange statement and the resulting certainty in his own chest. Until he noticed something that made his blood run cold: another arm had twisted down from that maelstrom of darkness. It beckoned Heiffal gently.

Shivering, Heiffal twisted around and hurried back toward Salazar and his strange story. What the hell was going on at this battlefield...?