…and he found nothing.

A coldness began to grow within him. He thought he could hear something in the distance.

“Come forth!” he cried to the egg. “Being that dwells within! I call on you as your new master! I do not fear you, That Which Hungers! Serve me as you served Gergorix!”

He sought to bring to life the magics that would lure the mighty entity within. His breath caught. Something was wrong. Something was missing!

“What are we doing?” the small woman cried.

“We should attack!” a woman’s deep voice came from the visored warrior.

The southlander’s crimson eyes narrowed. He held up a hand. “Waaaaait.”

“Obey! Arise!” Lukotor cried, seeking dormant spells. “Work! Work, demons damn you, wooooork!”

No spells answered him. No entity answered him. He could not even feel the remnants of any magics upon the prized object. Certainly none great enough to bind an entity that could reave valleys in the earth! How could this be?! You could-

He froze.

In that heartbeat, a memory returned, long buried by the decades.

A crackling fire that brought a sinister light to an old witch’s eyes.

A mighty old woman whom he called master.

An old woman who greatly resembled the statue of the crone he’d passed outside of the ruin. “Or at least, my young Lukotor,” her voice had quaked with meaning. “That is how the legend goes.”

He trembled as his mind considered a terrible possibility.

“What can we learn from this?” she had asked in that sly way of hers.

In his fiery youth, enchanted by the tale and drunk with the power of his mentor’s arcane ways, he’d determined that ‘one must be bold to seek what they wish’. To be as Gergorix had been in the legend, when he’d bound That Which Hungers.

But had his old master told that tale to teach him something so utterly simple? And why? Why bring it up at all? And if the point of it was to be bold and go claim unlimited power then…then…

“…why didn’t she claim it for herself?” he murmured, the strength draining from his body.

He’d thought she had been too afraid…but why would she encourage him to seek it? From a motherly kindness toward him? He scoffed at the thought. The old woman had been fair, but terrible.

His mind raced.

If Gergorix’s egg had been so mighty then where was the evidence of the wonders it had wrought? The shattered mountains? The changed rivers? Why had the Wizard-King’s lands fallen to ruin? Why had none of his apprentices claimed it for himself? Why was the capital of his empire a small city that any rude warlord could build with enough slaves?

“I don’t care how long it will take me! I will claim the Egg of Gergorix, and with its power I shall do wonders!” he’d cried as a young man

A strange smile had taken his master’s lips. “Perhaps, Perhaps you will.”

An ironic smile. One that did not acknowledge the truth of his words…

…or her own.

He fell to his knees, choking back a sob.

His decades rose before him like an army of ghosts. Treasures bartered. Friends betrayed. Loves lost. Homes abandoned.

And for what?

The three demons he’d nurtured. The fellowship he’d found in a young tribal king. The respect in that king’s twin boys. The army that believed in him. All gone now.

And for what?

The crumbled pieces of one object of power lay around him. The shattered bits of his other lay in the tomb. His eyes caught his hands. They were gnarled. Wrinkled. Skin thinned and blue veined. His hair had long gone grey. His back ached. His joints burned. The strength of youth had long fled his limbs.

His body shuddered with another choking sob.

And for what?

For a legend that sounded too grand to be real?

For a false promise?

For…for…

“Yeeeessssss,” the red-eyed southlander slowly sheathed his sword. “We are all fools today, are we not, Lukotor the Wise?”

The old man sobbed. ‘The Wise’? Him? What sort of sickening joke was that?

“What’s happening? Why aren’t we dead? Why’s that crow-faced, piss-smelling bastard crying?” the little rat-faced woman demanded of her companion, but the southland man could not answer, for a low mirth contorted him.

It was the knight that realized it next. “Amitiyah’s Tears!” she cried. “The legend was false! That stone has no more power than those at our feet!” An armoured foot kicked the gravel.

“What?!” the little woman whirled on Lukotor. “You mean we went through all this…” she shuddered. “…all this…” she pointed accusingly at the egg of Gergorix. “…for a shiny rock?!”

The southlander’s laugh burst forth at this: a deep, and rich mirth rising from earth to canopy. It echoed through the giant trees and Lukotor heard within it what he thought he’d merely imagined earlier.

His old master’s wet cackle, the same that echoed after him the night he’d left to seek the egg. Only now did he realize whom she’d been laughing at.

“Do not laugh at me!” he sobbed toward the southlander, who laughed harder.

“You! You did this!” the small thief came forward, brandishing her dagger. “Do you know how much trouble we’ve been through? For a shiny rock?”

“Spare me your whinging!” Lukotor snapped. In his disgust at the egg, his sacrifices and the three witnessing the great culminating joke of his life, he flung the stone at her.

The small woman dropped her dagger and snatched the egg from the air. Turning it over, her eyes came alive and her anger melted away instantly. “You know what? Never mind, I like shiny rocks like this,” she said cheerily, waving the jewel encrusted egg. “I’ll take it as compensation for our trouble!”

“Compensation?! Trouble?!” he shrieked. “You…thieves strode up from demons know where and ruined my life! I’d still have my allies, magic and comrades if not for you!” His body shook and he tore at his hair. “To you, this was but a lark! Just another doomed caper for scum, but I…I…my whole life was spent on nothing!”

“This is not nothing,” the small woman grinned and caressed the egg protectively. “I could eat meat and drink wine for years with what someone would pay for this!”

“Meat?! Wine?!” he shrieked incredulously. “That thing was supposed to hold ultimate power, not be barter for vittles!”

“This is unseemly,” the knight raised her visor. “Contain yourself, sirrah.”

“And yoooou!” he pointed at her. “Why are you even here?!”

She pointed her bearing sword at the ogress chieftain’s corpse. “To battle her. A glory you robbed me of in a most cowardly manner.”

“I don’t caaaare!” Lukotor ripped more hair from his scalp and sobbed in the dirt.

“Are we going to kill him now?” the small woman asked.

The old man’s head shot up in alarm. They would take his life too?

Kyembe shook his head, still chuckling. “I think not Wurhi. Look at him. He is broken. He will suffer more by letting him live.”

A wild hope sprung up in Lukotor. Perhaps he was not done yet. He could gather new magics and new peoples to sacrifice. Find a way to extend his spent life. He could take his newfound power and destroy these thieves who had dared to cross-

“Really?” Wurhi asked.

The Sengezian’s laughter stopped. “No.”

He raised his ring, which flared white.

“No, wai-” Lukotor the Wise cried.

Vroooosh!

His world turned impossibly bright. A great flash of heat. Agony beyond imagining.

Then nothing.

Wurhi blinked at the cloud of white ash settling on the gravel. “…you could have waited until I’d pulled the jewels from his hair first.”

Kyembe gave a shrug. “He offended me.”

She looked at the ash for a moment. “Ah, whatever. They’d be greasy anyway. Just glad he threw this before you blasted him.”

The Egg of Gergorix, a jewel of staggering value, glittered in her hand.

“A Wizard-King’s legacy.” His full lips curled into a smile. “And look there.” He pointed toward the mouth of Gergorix’s barrow. “I think I see more glittering in the tomb.”

“Yes! Yes! Best forest we’ve been to!” She scurried for the barrow as though it were a market and she had a pouch full of gold. She paused once to spit on the ashes of Lukotor, then happily entered the tomb, illuminated by Avernix’s burning warriors.

Her cries of excitement boomed from within.

“A profitable venture for you both, all considered.” St. Cristabel Esclanore looked on.

Kyembe laughed a deep, rich laugh. “Lose ultimate power, gain a king’s wealth. It happens. What of your quest, though?” He looked down to the ogress chieftain and her honour guard, then up to the barrows behind the cooling corpses. Other ogres half-hid there, gaping at their slain chieftain. “Will you hunt them instead?”

The knight glowered at the giants, but did not move to attack. “I shall not. A glorious battle would please Amitiyah…but this would hold little glory. They have lost their leader and champions. Let them turn to home and hearth.”

“Very fair. And where will you go now that you have no ogress to battle?”

She looked to the west. “Portage to the river and resume my journey to Laexondael, methinks.”

His face grew artfully surprised. “We make for Laexondael! Do you still want company?”

She gave him a pleased look. “Journey with friends or alone? I think I shall pick the former.”

“You think we can fit in your boat?”

The saint chuckled. “There is room enough for two skinny vagabonds.”

He raised a thin eyebrow. “And what of two vagabonds and a king’s ransom?”

She pursed her full lips in thought and her large eyes twinkled. “That will be more difficult. Perhaps a piece of treasure would be suitable toll.”

He shrugged easily. “I can live with that, but you will have to convince Wurhi to part with something.”

The Zabyallan’s half-mad, triumphant laughter echoed from within the barrow.

St. Cristabel turned grave. “I think that is beyond me.”

The Overlord of Garumna pushed against the brush, his teeth gritted as brambles scraped his flesh.

His spirit was near utterly spent. He had witnessed Lukotor's end - the thieves having stolen that vengeance from him - but he could exact a price of blood from them.

All that was needed was for him to reach his army outside the Forest of Giants.

A terrible wrath drove him forth.