The smell of woodsmoke and cooking flesh penetrated the chamber where Xu Wei slept. The scent was an oddity because there hadn’t been fresh food cooked in the citadel in some time. Instead, the staff had been subsisting off of jerky and bread from the citadel’s larders, while minor high lords took the opportunity to feed on the unfortunate residents outside.

It was the strangeness of the smell that woke Xu from his slumber. He rubbed his eyes to banish the sleep from them and looked around his room. It was the same place he had spent that last six months. He couldn’t complain about the furnishings or the level of comfort. Staying in the citadel was a much better option than trying to fend for himself on the streets of Koral.

The ambassador watched as the city turned into a constant battlefield. Imperial forces were camped outside of the city and were fighting a grueling fight with the Collective defenders still inside. The fighting wasn’t going well for either side, but it had been especially challenging for the average residents of the town. They had borne the full brunt of the conflict. Imperial and Collective forces killed them over old heels of bread or for a scrap of a blanket.

It wasn’t long before the economy of the city completely shut down. Without any leadership in the city, gangs sprang up to take control of various districts. The chaos added a new dimension to the fighting since both the Imperial and Collective soldiers needed to be worried about being ambushed in the city.

All typical signs of commerce had fled in the wake of the fighting. Slavemasters couldn’t feed their slaves, so they were freed or killed out of hand before taking to their ships and fleeing to the ocean. The number of mouths to feed ballooned, and the pressure increased on the residents. Merchants that had the money took their wagons and their goods and fled the city in long caravans while the poorer residents spit at the merchant’s while they left. They did no more than spit as the gangs had taken to protecting the merchant caravans for transportation out of the city and a promise of better profits elsewhere.

Xu had wanted to leave as soon as his meeting with the Scourge monarch had concluded. However, the Emperor had ordered Xu to wait in the citadel. The ambassador had thought it was a strange command but recognized that it wasn’t his place to question Ambystos’ champion. Instead, he ate cold cuts and contemplated rushing the lines to get back to his people.

He found himself covering his distinct copper-colored hair whenever he left his room and donning his Imperial-issued armor even if he was merely taking a midnight trip to the privy. His credentials as an ambassador wouldn’t protect him if one of the Vallyr decided that he didn’t like the look of Ignati, no matter their origins. Xu felt distinctly aware of his positioning and wondered for the hundredth time why his Lord had ordered him here in the first place.

A muted scream broke through the thick stone walls of his room and disturbed the silence. Xu felt his eyes widen.

That was close.

He swung his feet around and placed them on the cold stone floor. He looked around, taking stock of his surroundings. He could feel that it was time for him to leave. He would have to ask the Emperor for permission, but if the fighting had made its way to the citadel, then there was nothing he could do anymore.

If I had been able to do anything, he lamented.

He thought about his mission as he mechanically donned his armor. The lacquered armor was a beautiful creation. It wasn’t the garishly colored equipment preferred by the rest of the Imperial forces. Instead, his lamellar defense was painted in a color that captured a stormy sea. It was perfectly suited for blending in with the shadows. It was initially designed to assist an ambassador in those efforts.

Despite common thought, ambassadors for the Empire were well-trained in all of the operations under cover of night. He had learned how to create disguises, question prisoners, deceive soothsayers, assassinate high-value targets, and more. He, like all of his kind, were raised for service from the time that they were children. He was the product of the best academies that the Empire had to offer, and not for how well he spoke or how pretty he looked. The Empire selected his kind by how competent they were at planting a knife in the back of their enemies without the target ever knowing it was them. The Empire’s perception of diplomacy was brutal and ruthless, but it had worked well for them throughout history. The professional pride of their ambassadors ensured that no faction could point a finger at the Empire or its agents.

When he had donned the last piece of armor and flipped the hood of his cloak over his head, he sighed.

Alright, let’s contact the Emperor, he grumbled. I’m getting too fucking old for this.

With a gesture, a black flame appeared in the palm of his hand, and he felt the exhilaration that followed his successful use of magic. There was something about wielding the power of the cosmo itself that made him thrilled to be alive. He studied the void-colored fireball in his palm for a moment.

His acute eyes took in the fact that his hand trembled slightly. It was an unwelcome sign of his advanced age. It took skill to live for as long as Xu did in his dangerous position, but soon, he would need to retire. If he weren’t sharp enough to navigate this recent challenge, then it would be time for a younger man or woman to take his place. Xu didn’t think his mind had degraded with age, but every year the Igntati felt like it took him a little longer to wake up, and he was a little slower than he used to be. He wondered what it would be like to live forever like the Emperor. He shook his head lightly to disperse the direction his thoughts had taken. They were impudent, verging upon blasphemy.

He lobbed the fireball into the fireplace in his room, and it whooshed up the chimney like a funeral pyre. Xu desperately wished that it wouldn’t become a pyre meant for him. The Emperor was known for his passion, and that meant it was unpredictable. The Emperor could find a conversation with Xu a welcome distraction, or he could see it as a crime worthy of immediate death. Xu would discover which direction the winds of fate blew after the conversation and not before.

The flames settled until they were burning merrily. As routine people in his position, Xu kneeled on the floor and placed his forehead flat on the ground. He spread his arms above him in supplication with palms flat on the ground. The only members of the Empire who didn’t have to greet the Emperor this way were his blood relatives. Xu was a ward of the Empire, and as such, he was the lowest of the low. He intimately understood that he served at the pleasure of the Emperor.

“Ambassador Xu,” the voice addressed him with a measure of surprise. “What makes you summon me so late in the evening?”

“Your Imperial Majesty, this one requests an alteration to his previous orders.”

“Oh?” The voice sounded amused. “You think you have come up with a better plan than mine?”

“No, Your Imperial Majesty!” Xu felt his heart quicken at merely the thought of doing something so blasphemous.

“This one believes the fighting has made its way to the citadel. This one humbly requests for your guidance.”

There was a pause, and Xu could feel the sweat beading on his brow. He couldn’t help but imagine the black fire sweeping over and through him. It would be a painless death, but that didn’t stop Xu from lamenting nonetheless.

“You need to leave the city of Koral, Xu.” The Emperor finally responded, and Xu tried to keep from making a sigh in relief.

“That brat, Mors, is on his way with his army. I expect that Koral will shortly fall under Collective control once more. Ah, well. I didn’t think he would allow me such an easy entrance into his domain.”

Xu had a host of questions he wished to ask the Emperor, but he knew that none of them would be answered. The Emperor would give him all of the information he needed to complete his mission; no more and no less.

“Further, I want you to make your way to Bastion with the group of fleeing refugees. One of your sisters has died in service to Ambystos, and I need an agent there to replace her.”

Xu gulped. He had not enjoyed his conversation with the Scourge monarch. The man looked at Xu like he could see every thought the ambassador had on the backside of his skull. The feeling was distinctly uncomfortable for Xu. True to his training, he had masked his discomfort with a haughty disposition. When negotiating with animals, you had to make them think you were willing to sink to their level. Xu wasn’t entirely sure that he had been successful, and when he had learned that the Empire had launched an attack on Bastion while they had been negotiating…well, the ambassador was thankful that he was left alive in the chaos that had ensued.

Now he would need to take more risks as he attempted to infiltrate a group of refugees and not get stabbed on the way to his destination. All of this flashed through his mind in a mere moment.

“Of course, Emperor. This one lives to serve.”

A rumbling chuckle issued from the flames before the Emperor continued, “I see that you do. You should get going, Mors’ army is already in the city, and I will be disappointed if you die to that whelp.”

Xu could hear the flames as they dispersed, and he shakily got to his feet. Communing with the Emperor had grown no easier in the many years that he had been in regular communication. The first time Xu had ever heard the Emperor’s voice, he had been just a boy. He had been taken in by the local chapter of the Clergy. Destiny was an indiscernible shadow, and he hadn’t known then that he would live to become an Ambassador.

Being an Ambassador was one of the most honorable professions in the Empire, and their home sought to equip them with all the skills they would need to survive in cases the negotiations turned hostile. His initial training had been the skullduggeries that one would associate with a thief rather than a respected individual of society. During the day, he had learned how to pick locks, steal without being caught, and get into secure locations. In between those lessons, he learned the religious teachings of the Clergy. He could recite every prayer from memory and could quote every one of the Precepts in order. At night, he had to steal his food if he wanted to eat, and the orphan received a merciless beating from the High Lector if he returned to the Clergy in the morning without bringing them something valuable.

Later, the Imperial government assigned him to the best military academy in the country. There he was tutored in the art of war. He learned how to lead Imperial troops of every kind, geography, history, culture, and the religions of various nations in Somnium. His instructors, hardened men and women, taught him how to use every manner of weapon until he settled on the Kasama as his primary weapon.

After that, he was drilled in the use of magic until he could manipulate Spectral Fire as if he were born from the flames themselves. If one believed the Clergy—the Ignati were.

Learning the weapons wasn’t enough. The student learned how to care for his arms, armament, and horse until they were perfect. His equipment was inspected regularly for specks of rust or chipped lacquer. He had maintained his weaponry for so long that he could feel the ghost of their hilts even when he wasn’t holding them.

He later arrived at the Imperial Academy of Diplomacy following his military training. Its relatively benign name didn’t convey the amount of hardship the school brought into Xu’s life. When he entered the doors for the first time, he had been awestruck by its pure, purposeful beauty. When he had left the doors as the only survivor of his class, he had realized it was hell on earth.

He groaned as he shook out the stiffness and numbness in his legs. It never did get easier serving the Lord of Spectral Fire. Then again, that was the purpose of the Ignati and the Clergy. Power had to be circumscribed; it couldn’t be allowed to run wild in the world. Mors attacking was a perfect example. An entire city would suffer from his selfish interests. It would indeed be better for the people of this land to be folded into the Empire.

The ambassador ambled to the trunk at the foot of his bed and opened it pensively. In the background, he could hear the sounds of men and women screaming in fear and pain. He shut out their cries for now and focused on the lamellar armor resting in the trunk. The armor was a lesson in purposeful beauty like everything else the ambassadors did. It had been painted the color of woodsmoke and ash instead of the more garish colors preferred by the majority of the Imperial military.

Each warrior owned their own sets of armor and were allowed to paint them in whatever color they pleased. Many decided to use the personal colors of their clans or a color that they enjoyed, but the ambassadors were more circumspect. The armor allowed them to blend into the shadows effortlessly. The mottled pattern painted on the equipment broke up the human figure and made it difficult to discern in low light.

Once Xu had donned the familiar armor, he looked into the chest for one final piece. There was an ink-colored Ozu mask that rested at the bottom. The demonic visage crafted from hardened leather came replete with curling horns, large fangs, and exaggerated cheekbones.

Ambassadors only donned the Ozu when they needed to kill. It hid their identity and provided a form of protection for their faces. After he had donned the Ozu, he grabbed his cloak and Kasama. He placed the mask over his head, and he felt as if an aegis of protection had ascended upon him. The Ozu made him feel like he was a part of something larger than himself.

The cloak was nothing special; it was rough, gray sackcloth that would protect him from the elements and cover up his armor. It would help him blend into the civilians that he was seeking to join. He would take off the Ozu before he tried to pass himself off as a refugee. He could hide his armor easily enough under a cloak. He would look like a simple mercenary with armor that he had purchased from within the Empire. The mask would give away the game entirely.

The most critical item was his Kasama. It had accompanied him since the day he had become an ambassador, and he would rather die than allow an enemy to take it from him. His honor as a warrior would demand it. The blade itself was a little over two feet long. It was above the regulation length that most warriors requested, but Xu preferred the slight change in heft that the extra inches afforded the blade.

He informed the Imperial blacksmith of his preferences, and the man created a blade that doubled as a work of art. He folded the steel thousands of times until the entire length held a pattern that looked like rising waves. It’s slightly curved edge gave it the appearance of a silver crescent, and it was sharp enough to bisect a single hair falling through the air.

He gave it one last look before placing it in a sheath behind his head. Typically he would wear the sheath at his waist, but he didn’t want the cloak to impede the draw of his blade while he was maintaining his disguise. With a single movement, he could throw back his hood and draw his sword. It was a practice that he had long grown comfortable with. A short blade belted around the waist until it rested in the small of his back completed his ensemble.

He glanced around the room to see if he were missing anything else. He knew he was intentionally slow. He was reluctant to put himself in danger on the streets of Koral. Even now, the smell of burning flesh was strong enough to weave its way into his nostrils. The sounds of screams and fighting had settled to a dull roar, which meant that there was more sound rather than less.

Xu sighed and made his way toward the door of his room. He unbolted the three locks that secured the door. Only one had come with the chamber; Xu had added the others. The door creaked open to an empty stone hallway, and Xu crept toward the stairs.

The main staircase stopped on every level of the citadel. This one was used for visiting dignitaries and guests, more ornamental than functional. The stronghold contained other stairwells to stymie any invader. There, the steps were sloped, the grade was steep, and defenders waited to skewer any would-be intruder.

It hadn’t stopped the Scourge, Xu thought with a measure of irony.

His journey down the staircase was uneventful. When he arrived on the main landing, he was surprised at how abandoned the citadel felt. There hadn’t been much activity within the inner sanctum of late. Still, there had been guards that maintained the illusion of security. Even those Vallyr warriors were conspicuously absent.

Mentally shrugging, Xu opened the large wooden doors that led to the outside of the citadel. Opening the doors was walking into an entirely different world. The sky was lit in purplish hues, and bolts of lightning cracked the air as they were directed into the buildings and people alike. Their violet-colored light lit up the night sky with malevolent illumination. The cracking of the sky mixed with the sounds of the tortured and the damned. Koral had never been a beautiful city; it was wrought from pitted black iron and soot-stained stone, but Mors’ decorative efforts didn’t add anything to the ambiance.

As Xu stood stunned on the front stoop, he saw dark figures rush past him on the other side of the small wall that ringed the citadel. He watched through the iron bars of the gatehouse as a whole horde of things sprinted by. They were ugly, twisted creatures that only slightly resembled the approximation of a man.

In a daze, Xu reached behind his back, drew his hood back, and drew his Kasama. The faint sound of metal scraping against the casing was enough to draw the attention of the figures darting past because one stopped at the gate. A moment later, another stopped, and then another. A small crowd of monsters were beginning to gather around the compound. They were eerily silent as they peered at Xu from behind the iron bars. Xu couldn’t see much of their features. The only thing that stood out against the surrounding darkness was their fuchsia-eyes that burned like lighthouse beams in the shadow.

Xu held his blade low and to his side as his mind raced, thinking about what he needed to do next. He considered powering his way through the creatures, but he had seen a large number of them run past. The ambassador didn’t want to risk gaining their ire and then having to make a dramatic getaway. He strolled away from the gatehouse and around the side of the citadel. He could hear the creatures following him on the other side of the thin stone wall. Their shuffling steps carried through the air, and he sighed.

Dramatic getaway, it is.

He summoned Spectral Fire to his off-hand and prepared to burn through the stone wall. Spectral Fire was greedy magic. It absorbed and destroyed all barriers mundane or magical. It was even used by the Clergy to create portals that burned through space itself in the form of swirling black portals and long-distance communication. Xu had not met a nation, yet that had a more powerful or useful weapon. As he was about to lob the fire against the wall, an unfamiliar cracking sound stopped him.

He only had moments to figure out what the sound was before the wall in front of him exploded into a shower of stone fragments. The destruction was so complete that the slivers of rock became sharp projectiles that scratched his armor and tore at his cloak. The sheer force of the detonation threw Xu off his feet.

Luckily, Xu didn’t drop his sword, and he looked up in open-mouthed horror as a massive creature stood where the wall used to be. The misshapen humanoid monster was three or four feet taller than Xu and three times his width. It had a massive upper body and disproportionate legs that towered over Xu like a mountain of corruption. It had flesh resembling that of a corpse. It’s gray, waxen skin was mottled in purple, yellow, and green bruises that created a patchwork of color. The creature’s structure looked like a god had begun forming it and then summarily grew bored with its creation. The muscles twisted into unnatural locations around bones that were either too small or too large. Glowing purple pustules that trailed down its back and arms originated from the bulbous head that crowned the abomination. The final thing Xu observed before he leapt to his feet were the claws that extended from the monster’s arms like those of a bear. They were stained with blood of different shades and had seen recent use.

Xu didn’t wait for the creature to do anything else. The ambassador realized that he wouldn’t get a chance to attack the beast if he didn’t try now. He sprinted at the brute and lobbed a ball of black fire at its head. When the flame made contact, the creature roared in pain and anger and began reaching for its face with sword-sized claws. Xu sprinted past the beast and switched his sword to his off-hand so that he could slice into the knee of one of the misshapen legs. His sword sliced through the joint like it was made of rotten fruit, and the brute immediately listed towards the side. It roared and tried to swipe at Xu, but the man danced around the strikes like he were auditioning for a play rather than engaging in a life or death battle.

Xu didn’t waste time trying to kill the creature; it was enough that he had disabled it, so he continued through the entrance and had to halt outside the exit the monster had created immediately. Just on the other side was a horde of twisted shapes that resembled men. They were the same twisted figures that he had seen outside the gate, and their malicious gazes fastened onto him. Their mouths hung slightly agape and viscous yellow drool issued from their mouths.

Xu didn’t like their look, and he immediately threw Spectral Fire at the crowd. Once it left his hand, one projectile turned into three, and then into nine, and then into eighty-one as they impacted the bodies of the corrupted. Each fireball detonated in a small explosion that threw the monsters back.

The ambassador didn’t try to engage with the rest of them, sheathed his sword, and sprinted toward the southern gate. Some people thought it was a good idea to run with their sword. Most of those individuals were dead, having skewered themselves on their blade when they tripped over a small obstruction. Xu summoned fire to both of his hands and prepared to defend himself that way until he exited the city.

A sound like an earthquake split the air behind him, and he looked over his shoulder while he ran. What he saw made his bowels clench in fear.

A massive monstrosity towered over the city, and Xu now realized why his Emperor wanted him to make haste to Bastion. The abomination looked like a desert scorpion crafted from the bodies of the slain. It had large pincers made from the twisted bones and flesh of thousands of bodies. Xu slowed to watch the creature. He felt physically ill as he watched it snatch people up with its claws and then assimilate them into its form. Every person that the beast killed became more of its flesh and Xu observed it steadily growing more extensive as it consumed anything within its reach. All around it, more creatures like the ones Xu had already faced were capturing people and feeding it to the gigantic beast.

Xu knew it was time to leave. He couldn’t waste any more time in Koral. The ambassador needed to get to the refugees. Turning once more, he ran the considerable distance to the southern gate. Thankfully, Mors had started his invasion from the west, and so the route was relatively clear. He had to incinerate a few obstructions, but they didn’t slow him.

Once he exited the city, he took off his mask and stowed it in a hidden pocket of his cloak. He threw the hood over his eyes and swiftly traveled down the road. The end of the path would lead to Bastion, and Xu knew that he would find refugees along the way that would shelter him from further scrutiny. Even with his Ignati features and armament, in these times, a sharp sword was a welcome addition to any party.