“...to harness Hells with seeping hands

of innocent in prayer...”

Nilwn Gyndoh Dynde XX

2:2:4:7/5, III:IX

Starless and dead, the sky shrouded a stone wasteland. Larin clung to the edge of a chasm, weak gleams of molten rock flickering up its glassy cliffs. Above her, a horde of imps scuffled over scraps, the clatter of their long claws echoing for miles. She inched along the ledge, every motion as if the world pitched while she stood still. Her body was lost, and Larin suffered the Nine Hells as a shade, black flames leeching from the darkness to give her living soul a form.

Her blurred fingers raked over loose rock, and the fiends swarmed at the noise. Without flesh to sate them, their hungry jaws tore through Larin, her shrieks stoking their frenzy. Desperate, she chanted in the tongue of deep magic, but a hiss twisted from her lips in words far from the Ryunic she knew. The imps screeched, surging back to pry her from the ledge. Hands scraping sheer stone, Larin plunged into the pit’s bottomless glow.

She hit the floor hard, choking on blood and sobbing in the morning light. Safe within her study in A’lara’s southern tower, Larin rolled from her toppled chair, a fresh nosebleed mocking her plague of nightmares. Garnet smudges marred the open book on her desk, and she gulped tepid water from a glass near supper’s plate of crumbs. Smearing her nose on the tail of her shirt, Larin righted her chair and sagged into it, mopping the book with a sleeve.

Her heart quailed. Dark blood oozed around each fingernail like she’d gouged the desk in her dreams, but the wood’s flawless sheen blushed around her scattered notes. Larin cleaned her nails on her shirt and watched the blood wick away, stains lingering on her ten unharmed fingers.

With a long breath for her rattled nerves, she peeled off her shirt and dumped water on the crumpled rag. Scrubbing the last spatters from her pale skin, Larin donned a clean garment from one desk drawer and stuffed the bloody shirt into another, flipping her book closed in disgust. Perhaps Kingard might shed light where this magic library had failed her.

The hot sun dazzled her vision as she stepped outside, and she plodded through the jungle’s muggy swelter in search of the elf. For weeks, he’d refined Jorn’s new powers within the confines of the tiny city, and the chronic drills spared her the young man’s flood of contrition. Though Larin denied her memories of the Nine Hells, Jorn still bemoaned the damnation he’d caused her. If any vestige of their friendship remained, it languished unsought beneath his crushing remorse and her haunted silence.

She crossed A’lara’s paved courtyard, a central hub ringed by five towers, an inn and stable, and the massive city wall. A few people trained for the coming war, but Larin ducked inside the inn without a word. She found it empty, save for Anelle whiling away at her next fancy dinner. The landlocked ship’s cook scowled in greeting and shoved back a wayward lock of honey-brown hair, sparing a shrug as to the elf. His war was not her war, and a bitter month on foreign soil had etched resentment into her frown.

Deserting the inn, Larin circled the city wall and checked the open stable door. A tanned youth looked up from saddlebags lashed to the belly of his pegasus, her bronze mane and feathers burnished in the filtered light. “Have you seen Kingard?” Larin queried, her face bland.

“He left early with Jorn,” answered Tirrok, and the pink streaks in her long blonde hair compelled him to add, “but they never go more than a few days at a time. Why? Are you all right?”

“Fine, I’m just fine,” she urged, her fleeting hysteria veneered with a dismissive laugh. “What about you? Where are you going?”

A faint smile brightened his hawkish features, and Tirrok ceded Larin her private discord. “I depart on Tiena for the Sutek, once Kingard returns and I bid him farewell.”

“Oh,” she managed, scraping through the roar of hellfire for recollections of his past. Though a mer by blood, Tirrok hailed from a mystic desert, his land form camouflaged amongst the dark-haired Suteki. “You’re... uh, so are you going back, then?”

Wavering, he confessed, “No, I journey to the mer world. Tiena will await my return in her native sands.” His golden eyes turned grim, and Tirrok sighed, “Even the tomes of A’lara withhold the answers I seek.”

“Mine too,” muttered Larin. Every book from the magic library offered her identical texts, which only changed after she read them. “And you’re just... leaving? The Colkh’rak make war on the world, and you’ll head out to sea?” Her voice ached to leave her anguish and seek peace amongst the waves.

“My world may be at sea,” he countered, stroking Tiena’s neck with browned fingers. “I come from a people I have never known, deemed by prophesy to be raised in a foreign land. Much like you,” proposed Tirrok. “I seek my true heritage and real kin.”

Larin shrugged at the painful twang in her chest. The mers stole her into slavery as an infant, rearing her as human and robbing her of the nymph family she might have loved. “Well, good luck.”

“Many thanks.” With a gentle nod for her troubles, Tirrok supposed, “A day may come when you too seek the kinship of blood.” The shock in her blue eyes belied her charade of well-being. “Remember your people dwell just outside that gate. You may find your answers lie with them, as I hope mine lie with the merfolk.”

“Yeah,” Larin mused, weary of secrets and fruitless reading. “You could be right.”

“Mother willing,” chuckled Tirrok, his grin lost on her as she drifted from the stable. The harrowed void behind her eyes shrouded his heart in an eerie chill. “May you find a path through your darkness, Larin.” But only the chirping of the glade answered him.

“...departed now for distant shore

relinquished friendless rose...”

Nilwn Gyndoh Dynde XX

2:2:4:7/5, III:IX

Thunder boomed through A’lara’s towers as Jorn cracked into being, the empress clutched in his arms. Strangled with motion sickness at the transport, Deira sank to the cobbled street and retched. Her brainwashed moans turned Jorn’s stomach, and he paced the lifeless courtyard.

Kingard hadn’t arrived. Seconds crawled into minutes, and Jorn brimmed with questions over Haisrir’s panic. While Deira eased into silence, Jorn squirmed from his imperial garb, afraid to unwarp the docile empress alone. Will she remember me? His throat knotted at the prospect.

In a surge of disgrace, Jorn tossed his headband and rubbed his brow, where a hidden rune like Kingard’s glowed red when he cast deep magic. He grasped Deira’s cold hands and helped the empress to her feet. Eyes vacant, she mumbled, “What are we doing?”

“Trying to save you,” Jorn managed, her soft voice rousing shame to his cheeks. “Please hush, so I can concentrate. Your highness.” His eyes snapped shut, and Jorn steeled his breath until a wellspring of magic stirred in him. “Come back to yourself,” he tried, the Ryunic words chiming for deep magic to fulfill them. “Cast off the meddling to your mind and be free.”

The spell failed. Without a vision of his success, Jorn’s magic refused to flow. “Be unwarped! You are free!” But his rune idled unlit, and her glassy stare mocked his unfocused peek. “Be free, dammit!”

A new crack of thunder jolted him from the empress, and Jorn scanned the streets for Kingard. Instead he spotted the other elves, Sharis and Fal’on, watching from the shady wall of the inn. Though he’d tortured the lady Sharis during his betrayal, she endured him with cold pragmatism, endorsing the nascent Light Master’s aid in their coming war. “Have you unwarped her yet?”

Jorn spun to find Kingard shaken but unharmed. “No, I... waited for you. What happened back there?”

Gloom split the elf’s face in a scowl. “Focus on Empress Deira. Did you even let her rest between transports? Or did you bring her all the way here in one go?” With a guilty shake of his head, Jorn renewed his efforts, the watchful audience fraying his nerves. “Your magic once bested me! Revive that confidence, Jorn.”

“I was turned then, and you weren’t rosen,” he reminded the elf, shifting into Ryunic and pleading, “Be unwarped now. You’re free. Come out of it!”

Worn to impatience, Kingard waved off the youth. “You must need more practice,” he surmised, kneeling before Deira to take her limp fingers.

“It’s already all I do, Kingard!”

The elf ignored him, touching Deira’s hand to his lips. “Lady Empress, your mind is free.” Jorn sensed the flux of power and grit his teeth at the elf’s bright rune.

“Sngfrr...” muttered Deira, jibberish drifting off her tongue. “Thlndangon-gone... Gone!” She gasped in the evening light and broke into a run.

“Empress!” Kingard found his feet but let her flee, A’lara’s high wall offering no escape. “You’re safe now!”

Deira’s blood coursed, heartbeat ringing in her ears. She pumped her legs; her body ran. Freedom pared her haunted life into shards, disjointed echoes flickering up and filing away. Uncertain tears streaming down her cheeks, Deira sprinted along the curving wall, bare feet slapping the smooth cobbles. No more! But the scars of her past followed, and her mind shuffled into new order one memory at a time.

Slowing to reconstruct herself, the empress trailed fingertips over the stones. Grave realities fogged her self-discovery, and she circled the rest of the wall to meet Kingard near the stable. “Where am I?”

“The city A’lara,” he replied, kneeling at her feet. “Do you know me, Empress Deira?”

Lips drawn, she smoothed his dark hair, peering into his face. “Oh! You’re Kingard!” proclaimed the empress, trembling with recognition. “And he’s – turned!” Darting behind the elf, she thrust a finger at Jorn. “Kingard, this man–!”

“Unturned, highness,” he assured her, a hand raised in promise. “And Lorvelle’s successor. He is with us forever onward.”

“Unspeakable! Where is Lorvelle? We must–”

“At rest in Mother’s womb, my lady. Jorn is Light Master now, our greatest hope and asset for the dark days ahead.”

Her brown eyes flamed with indignation, and Jorn cleared his throat under her glower. “Dark indeed. What was that old elf thinking?”

“The mers told him–”

“Hang the mers!” growled Deira, slicing the air with a hand. “They let it all happen! Who are they to choose this boy to–?”

“It is done, Empress.” Kingard squeezed her taut shoulder, his nod of sympathy cooling her fury. “We have whom we have, and none other.” Jerking his chin, the elf dismissed Jorn to afford Deira some privacy. Hands curled into limp fists, Jorn shambled for the inn.

“What can you tell me of Haisrir?” Kingard ventured as Jorn straggled out of earshot.

Spite flared and Deira spat, “A cruel bastard of an elf!” Since his return to Sierlyn, he’d exploited her vacant body for its convenient company. “Death is too kind for that vile fiend.”

Her answer pained him, but Kingard pressed, “He is high-ranking?”

“The Dark One and his wraiths use him to supervise, and to convey orders to the guards. He flies a black dragon and shuttles the mindwarps to and from Kholl.”

Horror crept over Kingard’s skin. “There are more mindwarps?”

“The Dark One left to render a new pair. Kingard, the Colkh’rak plan to re-invade from the east! Forces in Kholl build a fleet as we speak. They’ve been logging in the Tropheks for years!”

“So they’ll launch an armada,” breathed Kingard, lifting his eyes to the dusky sky. “They’ll ride the currents and beach on the Back Rishi.”

“We must fortify the coast! And the high ground, the escarpments at the desert’s edge. We’ll rouse the army, entreat the help of the Dua Dara–”

“Not yet, highness. We cannot win a war with two fronts. First, we must retake Sierlyn.”

She choked down terror at the daunting feat. “My guard has all turned, and many others besides. I doubt even Backsheath would rise to my aid.”

“You forget, highness. I can unturn your soldiers to reinstate them.” Perturbed, Deira bit her tongue. “We don’t have the luxury of recruiting just the innocent. The Colkh’rak have no native forces, and their turned allies will revert to our side, once freed.”

“But how will you unturn them?” bemoaned the empress, her face buried in her hands. “Mustn’t you be close?”

Weighing the question, Kingard affirmed, “Close enough to see them.”

“I fear we’d never draw so near. The fortress is well guarded, and the loyal take orders from Colkh’rak officers. We’d fell the free while the turned look on.”

Her words gave him pause. “Then we’ll need to be... smuggled,” mused Kingard, a faint grin on his face.

“Smuggled?” she echoed. “By whom?”

“An old ally, name of Grishem.”

“Grishem of Lowtown?” scoffed Deira. “The thief lord? What can he do?”

“More than you think,” Kingard assured her. “And, Mother willing, more than we can alone.”