The interloping caller was studiously examining her porch shrubs when Cheis opened the door. It took a great deal to surprise her; among other experiences, Cheis had been swallowed by a giant snake, done battle against huge bugs that nested in people's spines, and survived falling off a thousand-foot cliff. But the sight of a tall, slightly overweight man with spectacles, a meticulously groomed beard, and a large gold-handled cane was more than sufficient to knock her off-balance completely.

"Pels? What are you doing here?" She felt her hands clutching at the neckline of her robe in horror. She wasn't dressed properly, this robe had food stains on it, and oh gods, her hair. She blushed furiously and tucked one unruly strand behind an ear, accomplishing nothing as it sprung resolutely back out again.

"Cheis," he rumbled. Ugh, his voice still sounded so good. "I'm sorry for the intrusion, but there's an urgent matter. May I come in?" Without waiting for a response, he raised one foot and began to take a step through the doorway.

"NO!" Cheis screamed instantly, shoving him back furiously in desperation. He toppled over, losing his balance, and fell backwards onto the cobbled walkway, looking up at her in shock which rapidly became indignation.

"I say," he puffed, his moustache billowing outwards in sharp umbrage, "what sort of welcome do you call this?"

Cheis rubbed her temples and tried her best to breathe. "Shut up. Gods. You idiot, you..." Vivid images of what had just been narrowly avoided -- the house reducing his atoms and soul to energy to power her fucking toilet -- kept playing through her brain. Linduin, curious and still a bit put out at this most recent of interruptions, peeked around Cheis's shoulder to see what was going on. Her visitor, glimpsing a strapping young man inside, naturally misunderstood completely.

"Well," he growled, "I see you've quite moved on already." Slowly and painfully, he managed to lever himself to his feet, the effort being made more difficult by one of his legs being a metal prosthesis of steel tubing and silver filigree. Cheis squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to look at it -- seeing her own handiwork, a deeply regrettable attempt at a combination apology and make-up gift, was somehow making this situation even more distressing.

"Uh, so," said Linduin, after a deeply awkward five seconds or so of silence, "who's this guy, exactly?"

Cheis sighed. "Linduin, this is Pellamin Pearsson. My... ex-boyfriend. Pels, this is Linduin... something-or-other. My apprentice."

"I see," said Pellamin, obviously not believing a word of it. "Apprentice. Is that what they're calling it these days?"

Linduin bristled. "Hey, gramps, what's the big idea?" Being a country bumpkin who had never so much as held hands with a girl, the social context of Pellamin's insinuation sailed over his head like a balloon and missed him entirely.

"Linduin, shut up. Pels, my apprentice makes a good point -- what is the big idea, exactly? I thought you were shacked up with what's-her-name." Cheis was trying and failing to keep her composure. She hated how he made her feel like a snot-nosed little peasant girl.

Pellamin glowered at Linduin, then returned his gaze to Cheis. "The large concept, dear Cheis, is that I have been sent as an emissary to you from the Celi'sa Shipping Company. Given our... mutual history... they felt that I stood the best chance of living long enough to plead their case. I can see that I'm not welcome here socially, so I'll dispense with the pleasantries. There's been an outbreak of Shul contagion in Ciel -- hideous monsters, thousands dead, et cetera. Your area of expertise, in other words."

Cheis, who thought that this day couldn't get any worse, felt her blood freeze in horror. The artifact in Morhelm had very nearly killed her, and that had been a small-scale sort of thing, one little hamlet. If whatever had attacked Ciel-Upon-The-Sea had metagenerated... she choked, aghast. "How bad is it?"

"It's been largely contained," returned Pellamin, dusting himself off, "I don't know the specifics, but they're worried about more outbreaks. And some of the exoforms took over bystanders and are doing that whole transforming-into-monsters thing you seem to enjoy rooting out." He straightened his tie, fussed with his hair a bit, and smoothed his coattails. "I've been sent with a carriage to take us to Vortsmir, and from there we'll sail to Ciel-Upon-The-Sea. Will you come? Or shall I convey your... indisposition?"

Cheis scowled. "Don't be a pig, Pels. I'll pack. You will wait outside in the garden like the... big... gnome that you are." Irritated at her abject failure to come up with a good garden-themed put-down, she stormed back inside and slammed the door.

Linduin trailed after her, looking more than a little like a nervous puppy. "So... we're going on a trip?"

Cheis glowered at him. "I'm going on a trip. You are going to stay here and clean my cottage until I return." She grabbed a small suitcase and began stuffing clothing into it -- spare robes, actual shoes, scarves. She kept putting a dress in, taking it back out, and putting it in again. "If I take you near another containment breach like the one that killed your friend, you might be the one crapping out your own bones this time."

"Technically, you killed him," Linduin pointed out. "And he wasn't my friend. He was an evil nutcase who stabbed people professionally."

"Potato, po-tah-to." Cheis started trying to force the suitcase closed, frowned, pulled out the dress for the fifth time, and threw it into a corner furiously. "You're staying here."

"Fine by me," said Linduin, hurt. "I'll just stay here, newly inducted in the ways of magic with absolutely no practical experience or expert guidance, and read all your books and experiment recklessly. I'm sure the outcome will be totally fine."

"Fuck!" Cheis screamed up at the ceiling. Linduin stood there, arms crossed and frowning, as Cheis clenched and unclenched her fists and marshaled every ounce of self-control she could manage against the temptation to tell the house to eat him. After a very painful thirty seconds of silence, she managed to speak in a low, quiet voice. "You have one minute to pack."

Linduin, victorious, dashed down the stairs to the cellar. A coach ride! A sea voyage! He'd be blasting dragons with lightning bolts in no time at this rate.

***

If the forces of the Black Oak had capitalized on their early advantage and made straight for the crown city, Temurin would have fallen within days. But the igg's objectives were incomprehensible to ordinary minds and unknown to all but itself; it had razed Dray's Hill in a day, then done nothing for nearly a week before making a determined march to the ruins of Morhelm and camping out there for an additional month. By the time it began to mobilize in pursuit of its next abstruse aspiration, the forces of humanity were ready for it.

The chief marshal of Dans-Inuth had been recalled, commended, blamed, threatened with dishonor, found to possess blackmail material, and quietly reassigned elsewhere. The lord commander of the district's divisions had taken personal oversight of the campaign, been duly convinced of the sheer scale and severity of the problem, and responded accordingly. Some few praetors voiced their objections and were convinced, either quietly or loudly, to shut up or face the consequences; the high praetor of Alfex had attempted to call the commander's bluff and been swiftly executed. He was then succeeded equally swiftly by his much more sensible nephew, who proclaimed loudly to all who would hear of the importance of this valiant and crucial military endeavour. Commander Quentin Matrios was unflinching, intrepid, and quick on the uptake; he wasted no time organizing his campaign, sorting his logistics, and deploying his troops to the field. When the oakspawn made for Halewind pass, he was ready for them; archery units on the high ground pummeled the demons mercilessly before discovering with woeful surprise that some of their targets could spit acid rather precisely at a distance of nearly three hundred yards. The igg, it seemed, had been taking notes.

Falling back, the forces of the district of Vanthuria maneuvered carefully and thoughtfully; they rolled boulders down on their foes to block passes, dumped boiling pitch onto climbers, and threw torches into seas of oil. Sometimes, they scored victories (such as when they annihilated an entire wing of the oakspawn army by breaking a dam at a critical moment); other times, they suffered harsh defeats (such as when the igg deployed a swarm of poisonous foot-long wasp-analogues just in time to ruin a precisely-coordinated assault). Back and forth, the two armies engaged and disengaged, each time learning more about the other. And at the front lines of every engagement, Galar Kayle was first into the fray.

He became infamous, then famous, then esteemed; he had survived more engagements with the oakspawn than any other soldier in the entire army. He declined promotion after promotion, dead-set on remaining in the thick of the fighting. He disdained armor; he fought in a simple white robe, wielding only his silver spear and an amulet engraved with the holy symbols of Santorana. Time and again, he escaped death by the slimmest of margins; oathsworn, he never faltered. Some whispered he was protected by the goddess herself; others believed he was returned from beyond the grave, and thus couldn't be slain a second time. The rumors became tales, and the tales grew ever more fanciful. He was a vengeful spirit, summoned by the king's wizards; he was a warrior from a distant land, who had learned an ancient fighting art from secret scrolls. Some soldiers followed him, but never for long; he sent them away when he could, reassigned them when they would listen, and did his best to fight with them when they would not. Too many perished.

The oakspawn's numbers were not, in fact, limitless; the igg could produce them only as quickly as biomass and energy allowed. At times, victory seemed within reach, and a few assaults cut close enough to the Black Oak itself to see its dim shadow in the distance; other times, the horde seemed to cover the whole of the earth, and many of the soldiers knew despair. But Galar never wavered; not until the battle of Saurgar Bridge.

The Temurini army had done well in the early phases of the engagement, but the igg's deployment of fanged spheres which reproduced endlessly in water had turned the great river into a boiling sea of death; less than one in six of the humans had escaped, and the survivors had been hard-pressed during their retreat. When the lines were on the tenuous verge of breaking, Galar strode out to the center of the bridge, a great onslaught of oakspawn before him like a tidal wave, and planted himself like a steel pole. The carnage was legendary.

For nearly a half-hour he fought, alone, against innumerable demons; his robe was torn by endless claws, his spear soaked in the fluids and humours of his foes. He took wound after wound, faltered and recovered, and battled on until the very last of the survivors had gotten clear. Then, grasping his spear defiantly, he fell to his knees.

As the oakspawn closed in, he clutched both hands around the spear's shaft; his amulet, soaked in his own blood, fell forward out of his tattered clothing. And as Galar Kayle gave himself over to his newfound goddess, murmuring what he expected to be his final prayer of love and purification, the amulet touched the shaft of the spear.

Most of the various symbols on the amulet were aesthetic rather than meaningful; pretty swirls and loops of engravings with no further purpose other than the pleasing of the eye. But one of them, a simple runic circle which had survived the centuries entirely by virtue of its attractive shape, was in fact capable of something more. Inert, it had no function; but when Galar chanted the prayer which contained a fragment of the Scythe's Purge of Boraficus, a weak but functional circuit was formed. The metal shaft of his silver spear, which was in no way magical or sacred, functioned as a suitable enough conductor and antenna; and the rising swell of grace and sorrow in Galar's heart, normally an emotion with no power to do more than inspire, took on a rather different modulation.

To observers, what happened next seemed to be miraculous; a blinding burst of argent light, followed by a cataclysmic eruption of pearlescent power. Every demon within a hundred yards was abruptly excised from existence, as cleanly as mist evaporating before the sun; the remaining oakspawn, confronted with a metaphysical structure as inimical to them as salt was to a slug, fled without reservation. And when the awestruck survivors reached Galar Kayle, clinging to life by the thinnest of margins, they made his protection and preservation their most ardent objective. The White Gift had not been seen in Temurin in a hundred years; but it appeared that hope had, at last, dawned.