Suggested Listening

Click-Hiss-Click listened to the chorus, the shared language of the goblins. Shapes formed in her mind, a map of the sights her southern forces saw of the tallskin caravan. Soon, she saw a full map, one which she could travel in three dimensions through with her imagination, as if she were there in person and able to fly.

She gazed upon the tallskins, some clad in the metals they stole from the earth, just as they had stole that earth from her kind. She saw a scalethief with them. Perhaps none epitomized the nature of the Usurpers as the hideous mammals which pretended to be as reptiles, stolen scales made from the stolen metals of the stolen earth.

Her own mother once told her no other species possessed their situational awareness, nor the mental capacity to understand the experience. This was proof enough of their superiority over the Usurpers who lacked such minor mental talents.

The traitorous voice in the back of her head asked the question she had never dared voice, never admitted to herself: If they are so inferior, why do they possess grand cities while the goblins hide in caves?

She squashed that traitorous, heretical, thought with the practice of long decades, and converted it to further rage. For the answer was simple: the mammals stole their accomplishments from the goblins and other reptilians. All which the mammals possessed was stolen from the rightful masters of this world, or stolen from the world itself. Their weapons, their armors, their magics, all tools stolen from nature for they were too weak to fight on their own. Liars, thieves, traitors, Usurpers.

She called ahead, sent the message along the chain of goblins which monitored the forest for foes, alerted her children to the opportunity for war. Dozens would die, such was always the cost of their conflicts, and in the coming weeks she and her daughters would breed constantly to replenish the lost. She placed her hand on her own gravid stomach. Her first clutch would be born in a matter of hours.

Shouts of alarm and fear echoed back from the scouts circling around to harass the caravan into rushing unprepared into their hobgoblin ambush.Those that are not living follow behind. She fell into the mapping message of her children and grandchildren, witnessed the unnatural walk of dead tallskins. Then she recognized the source of the abominations, a tallskin of midnight hair and moonlight skin which rode atop a horse made of nothing but bone and black mist.

"It is the Tainted One! It returns with more Evil than before! We can destroy it! Give us our orders, Mother!" Her children shouted through their ultrasonic language, their wills joined. They thought and felt as one."

Almost all of them did, anyhow. "Back away!" She sent out her orders, as bile choked in her throat for her betrayal of her offspring and their holy crusade.

"But, Mother! The abominations are worse even than mammals." The voice of Hiss-Spit-Click, the most dutiful of her daughters. "And mammals that ally with abomination are the most profane of all things!"

Click-Hiss-Click trembled, for she knew her daughter was correct. Mammals, Usurpers though they are, were designed to exist within the world. Abominations were a blight born of mad gods, a pollution born in the diseased flesh of their wounded world. They should not be, should never have been. "No, do not act with haste."

"No! This is the one that slew so many of our brave brothers, that turned us against our own, that murdered our sisters! Look, the Tainted One still keeps two of our sisters trapped in unholy slavery!" The songs rendered echoes of two of her grandchildren, their bodies desecrated by undeath and forced to carry tallskin weapons, no doubt to battle against their own still-living family.

Her horde cried out to her, for her blessings to fall upon the abominations, to sacrifice themselves in the Most Holy Duty of destroying the tallskins and their abomination slaves. She could not give the order, however. "The Black Spirit was untouchable. It will spread its taint as it did before!" Their greatest shamans were not enough to cleanse the land last time, and it looked to be stronger now than before.

"Then we must fight all the harder to atone for our failure! Slay the Tainted One! Destroy the necromancer before it grows too strong for us to stop!"

"They march upon the scalethieves' land. Let them destroy one another." Her body shook with rage and disappointment as she lied to her family, her gods, her duty, and herself. She knew the scalethieves would not turn upon the Tainted One, for they supported its evil.

To atone for her failings, Click-Hiss-Click hugged herself, dug her own claws into the meat of her shoulders, and flensed herself. As fast as her flesh stitched itself back together, she dragged her claws through it yet again. She wailed in the forests, screeching as she both hugged and mutilated herself in the name of futile rage.

Suggested Listening

Once in dwarven lands, Elruin's skeletons moved around and ahead of the caravan in the night, to dissuade the goblins. She would never know how effective her ploy had been, as the dead took position to protect the living child as if planets orbiting a star.

Calenda took a stance, facing the Elruin. "So, up for a little more training?" It was to Elruin's benefit as well as her own to teach the girl how to defend herself in direct combat.

"Okay." Now that she'd had some training in school, and experienced the brutality of war for herself, Elruin understood the necessity in learning to fight to protect herself. She sang to her magic, focusing all her strength into her defensive magic.

Cali bolted forward, avoided Elruin's clumsy slash of her stiletto, then struck outward at the girl's face. She stopped at the last second, before she broke Elruin's nose. Even if she was inclined to give the girl a repeat of her own childhood, she didn't have the healing magic to make it work. "You need to learn to move," she said. "I know, your nature is in part that of an earth mage, but time mages don't have the same resilience. If you don't learn to evade attacks, you'll be picked apart by fighters like me or annihilated by a fire mage."

"Sorry, Sis, I got a better theory: kill everything that looks at you, before it has a chance to look at you," Scratch said. "They call that 'preemptive defense'. The best kind of defense."

"You remind me of my family."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"It wasn't a sincere thank you, either," Scratch said. "You ladies have fun, but not too much fun. I've gotta go next door and help the college girl study for her test again. Oh, and if you wanna encourage Elruin to get stronger, have her try casting spells on you instead of against you. I've seen what a time mage can do with the walking dead. The effects are hilariously violent. But, well, test it on the puppets first. Wouldn't want to break a doll like you."

Calenda waited until she felt certain Scratch was out of earshot before she spoke, just to avoid admitting that the ghost had a point. "So, do you think you could use your magic to augment the dead?"

"Maybe?" Elruin's purple eyes turned black. "Show me how you do it. Slowly."

"Alright, it's been some time since I got back to basics." Calenda took a slow but unnecessary breath, one of many exercises that no longer mattered for her but were ingrained in her habits. A slow draw of power was safer and more efficient than rapid burst power, but speed trumped power in combat more often than not. She started to revisit that theory, now that her body was no longer living. Maintaining maximum strength would rip living muscle to shreds, but as life conspired to remind her, she was no longer a member of the club.

For now, she went through her warm-up routine, shifting from footstep to footstep and hand position to hand position while Elruin watched her routine with rapt attention.

Elruin began to hum, and as she did, the army of dead men began to emulate Cali's motion both physical and magical. Calenda continued to move, Elruin kept the corpses moving as well. Cali heard them, felt them, and then she touched the strings that made them move. Most were born of Scratch's corruption, outside her control, but one of them was her own victim, sacrificed on the altar of the vampiric shard she had to rely upon before getting her gloves. She tugged at those strings.

Elruin changed her song, relinquished control to Calenda, who now watched herself through the dead man's eyes. "This is going to take some getting used to," Cali said through two sets of mouths. Or tried to, at any rate; the zombie's vocal chords were not as well preserved as her own. "I... think... I can... use this." Cali's voice was halting as she sorted out which body was her, and which was the enslaved corpse.

She pushed her energy into the body, used it to follow her own dance, then without fear of her own wellbeing, she began pushing the body past what had been her breaking point while alive. She felt her real body grow weaker as she burned through reserves. "How's this look, Ell?"

"It's beautiful," Elruin said. Then she sang in earnest, amplified the song within the corpse, and began to adapt her Delirium and Empowerment magic to fit the structures she witnessed. She constructed a new variant, one which did not need a mind to enrage so long as it possessed a magical structure she understood, as with the undead.

"Wait! Too much!" Calenda shuddered as the anger in the magic started to wash back into her. "I will not be controlled!" She forced the body to punch a nearby boulder with all the strength she could muster. The zombie shattered its own arm, splintering every bone from fingers to elbow in addition to numerous other broken bones in the shoulders and ribs from the velocity and power of the force. The stone itself withstood the blow with numerous cracks, but otherwise in one piece.

"Sorry!" Elruin rushed to her sister. "Are you hurt?" In the background, the zombie collapsed to the ground, its dead flesh destroyed by the overwhelming magical energy which had been pushed into it.

"I'm fine!" Cali brought her hand up to her head. "I'm fine, really, sorry for yelling. After going so long with my emotions muted, it caught me off guard. But maybe we should call it a night?"

"Okay," Elruin offered a timid smile. "Sorry."

Cali smiled back, then wrapped an arm around Elruin. "Don't be, this is going to be incredible next fight we get into. I should apologize for breaking your dolly, now off to bed with you. I think we've had enough excitement tonight."

Suggested Listening

Cali and Elruin were last to enter the city, long after the others so that they weren't seen as part of the group with the refugees. The extra secrecy probably wasn't necessary, since it would take time for the former captives to find a means to return to Engeval territory, but the more steps they could take to obscure their actions from Claron, the safer they felt.

As soon as they entered the city, Lemia found them. "In spite of my earlier objections, I did what we agreed and gave all the money we took off the bandits to the refugees. Every coin. Go ahead, Truthsay me."

"You did a good thing." Elruin gave Lemia a hug to make her feel better since she lost the vote. "We gave the money back to the people it was stolen from." Not quite accurate, but as close as they were going to get under the circumstances.

"I guess so. I just wanted to get something out of bandits trying to kill me besides the warm fuzzies, y'know?" Lemia gave Elruin a return hug. "Besides your new toys, of course."

"Oh, we got quite a bit more than that," Cali said. "Shielding sarite is expensive stuff. More importantly, with that much of it, we can use it to hide us from just about anything. Monsters won't detect us, espers will overlook us, and anything short of a minor god will be unable to find us with magic. Notice how nothing attacked us on our way back? Our lives in the wilderness are a thousand times easier, as long as we don't have too many people with us."

"How many is too many?" Lemia knew about shielding sarite, but she hadn't realized it could be used when not on a wall. "It can't work as well as it does when stationary, can it?"

"No, it's not as good as on the walls. I'd say we can hide about thirty sapient beings. Animals and other things follow different rules, but are usually less visible than people. A group our size will be invisible."

"Good to know." Lemia still have been happier to keep the money and let the refugees have the excess carts and other supplies, but the promise of fewer monster attacks was worth the risks they took in the siege. "So, did Scratch tell you I found a nearby ruin I think is full of treasure?"

"He also mentioned one that might have a weapon we can use on Claron," Cali countered.

"He has no idea, he just said it was once a home of scary magic, refused to elaborate at all. Unless he told you something he refused to tell me?" Lemia waited a moment to see if Calenda had more information to provide. "I found what must have been a front line fortress against the desert invaders. It has to be full of magic weapons, and defenses that could hold up against a full magic beast siege. If we take it, we'll have a permanent base of operations."

"If any of it still works," Cali said. "If the centaurs didn't take it with them when they abandoned the place or died. If looters didn't steal everything of value before our grandparents were born. There are too many unknowns."

"Still better odds than this 'well of void magic' that Scratch says he can't explain or predict but is certain must still be there."

A pair of silmid interrupted the conversation. This pair wore the robe uniforms that were the only clothes the girls had seen any silmid wear. "You are Esra, correct? Our council needs to speak wi' you."

Cali sighed. "Take Rin to a bath, see about shopping, I'll meet back up with you-"

"Our apologies, priestess, but we were told to bring you and your companions. It is a matter o' urgency."

Calenda considered for a moment the possibility of a trap, but if it were it was already too late. Even if they had the strength to fight their way through dozens of dwarven and silmid warriors, somehow open the gates, and escape into the wilderness, this city was protected by two beings of power equivalent to Lyra. They lived or died at the sufferance of their hosts for the time being. "If it's as essential as you say."

Suggested Listening

The trio followed the silmid guards, neither of whom admitted to any knowledge of what the meeting was about, save that the highest members of the council would be there. They were led deep into the city, toward a massive growth almost identical to the one Lyra crafted.

"It even feels the same as Lyra," Cali said as she stared up at the branches. Somewhere in those leaves, a pair of incredibly powerful dryad nested. If nothing else, they could feel safe from Claron while here in this city. Now if only they could feel safe from the city's guardians.

"It smells like Lyra, too," Elruin said.

The inside of the great tree was different, as hollow as the Lyra's creation, but there were no rooms or flooring. The many silmid in the building scaled the trunk to get to the platforms where they needed to go.

"We head downward," the guard said. Roots seemed to have shaped themselves into a long, winding, narrow leading deep into the heart of the earth.

As they went down, they found that natural light faded to nothing, yet they could still see thanks to an omnipresent blue glow that seemed to emanate from nowhere. Cali smiled at the familiar presence of edible moss dangling from the roots now above them.

"More than Lyra, this place feels a little like the shelter," Lemia said. "It serves a completely different function, but something here was built by the same architects that crafted the ruins Arila was set atop of." The centaur-demons that Scratch had spoken of, if he spoke truth. That the monstrous slavers of every child's horror story, the ones that it appeared were once real, were also the crafters of such wonders still proved difficult for Lemia to grasp.

"Communication magic," Elruin said. "The artifact sends a message. I bet it can be heard anywhere in the world."

"Such insight in one so young," an elderly voice said. "Perhaps it could reach across 'e world, but it can speak only to its sister constructs."

Now that they had reached the bottom, they could see the vast room, and the numerous silmid and dwarves which had been awaiting their arrival. "Honored Elders," Calenda clasped her hands together and bowed, an act which her companions imitated. "To what do we owe such honor?"

"Oh, don't encourage 'em," one of the elder dwarves said. "You're loyal to a 'oreign crown, no 'alse platitudes, i' you please. Now let's get on wi' 'is war meeting."

"War meeting?" Calenda blinked. "You're getting involved?"

"Not as such." A silmid of solid white said. As she spoke, she moved her hands over the shapes of the artifact. "We merely pro'ide the means."

Suggested Listening

Magic burst from the stone device, warped around it, then the light shifted until they stood in an ancient but well maintained stone building. Several examples of centaur art stood, carved into the walls, with a man and woman in finery standing in the middle of the room.

Calenda dropped to her knee, head down. "My liege!"

Lemia dropped a moment later, followed by a confused Elruin a moment after. She had never bowed like this before.

"Rise," the woman- the queen- said. "We owe you too great a debt."

"As you command." Lemia rose to her feet, followed again by the other two. "To what do we owe the honor?"

"I'm afraid there is little honor to offer." The queen put her hand on the elbow of the man next to her. "I admit, I was skeptical at first when your accusations against my step son were brought to our attention. Recent events leave no doubt that either he or a convincing impostor has conquered Arila, and much of the northwestern edge of the empire. Thanks to your early warning, the eastern half the empire remains free for now."

"We did as any loyal member of the empire would do."

"So many would claim, but when time comes to do, far fewer rise up to do so. We are in your debt, Priestess Esra." The queen smirked, for she knew that 'Esra' was a false name, or rather was the name of a priestess of olden times stripped of her title and executed by a corrupt and jealous high priest who lusted after her. No member of the church took the title, save as an obscure warning to those rare few who knew the tale, as any competent religious advisor to the crown would. "And we must put ourselves further in your debt."

"What do you require of me, My Queen?" In spite of her death, and the theoretical ending of her oath, Calenda was still devoted to her service. She could not, however, drag her companions into the situation with her. "Though I am afraid there is little I can accomplish."

The queen once again looked at her husband, before she spoke. "As of this moment, you are the only apparently loyal free agent we possess. You see, this pretender claiming to be Lord Claron has incredible power. He, or his agents, seem to know whenever we try to act. By means unknowable, he appears before any force we send out, and destroys them with his inhuman power."

"You fear spies?"

"We find it unlikely," the queen said. "Or, if he has spies, they are the least of his abilities. It is not just that he can attack any of our forces. Somehow, he has routed all of them, sometimes on opposite sides of the empire, within minutes of one another. Such power, perhaps he is the 'Chosen of Enge', as he so claims?"

"I refuse to accept it. Whatever his power, it does not come from our god." Cali's nails dug into her palms hard enough that they would have drawn blood, were she still able to bleed. "If he was truly Chosen, he would not need to conquer. Every High Priest of the empire would have known and proclaimed his station."

"Well spoken, and the same conclusion our advisors reached," the queen said. "His claims aside, there is no deception in his power. He can find any of my agents, even the ones that none but I know of, yet in spite of all his efforts, he has been unable to locate the young child standing next to you."

Cali took her eyes off the floor for just a moment. "I'm sorry, my queen?"

"My agents may have been caught quickly, but some were loyal enough to send what information they could," she said. "We know he seeks a child necromancer of pale skin and black hair, one which was defended in Arila by the dryad known as Lyra. The reports say your name is Elruin?"

"Go ahead, Rin, there's no point in hiding it now," Calenda said. Whatever else was afoot here, the girl's cover was blown. It would be miracle enough to hide her own status as deceased.

"I'm Elruin," the girl kept her head down. She had never been taught how to address a queen, before. "My liege?"

"Do you know what this pretender to the throne wants from you? Or why Lyra defended you? Might it be her influence that protects you from being found by his magic?"

"Lyra lived with my big sister Cali... Calenda, and Rena, who looked after her. They're both dead now." Elruin had enough tact to leave out that this didn't stop one of them from being in this conversation with them. Her sadness that Rena died was genuine, however. "Lord Claron said he was going to sacrifice me to Enge. I don't know why, but I don't think Enge wants me to be sacrificed or he'd have told the priests."

"Knowing his goals, even if we don't know the reasons behind them, is still useful," the queen said. "Which brings us back to your goals. You are now the only people who can act with impunity outside of the walls. Do you have any plans for stopping the pretender?"

"We... may have one or two," Calenda admitted.