The people of Weiss Trelliact saw monsters in the distance: three enormous, rearing serpents reaching up into the clouds. The people ran and scattered and hid in their homes, barred shutters and gates and doors. The Tyrant King saw the heads and grew terrified, and he summoned his armies and ordered them to kill the creature. So the army waited at the city gates.

The serpent heads approached the city.

The King’s army fired their bows, hoping to strike down the creature. The arrows tore up into the sky and seemed to strike true. But none stuck. They sailed through phantasmal fog and mist, and landed in the forest behind—for the heads were not flesh and bone, but darkness given form.

That darkness then had its turn.

The serpent heads struck down. They tore at the gate and devoured it with one strike, and crumbled all to rubble. So quick and primal, in their wrath, that all was reduced to nothing. The men were rent and severed, and their pieces lay scattered between the streets and the serpent’s maws. Those men that remained retreated back behind the King’s great wall.

Sylvanis reached the gates. She thought to herself that the heads should act as they please. They should strike down and devour all men, and homes, and turn walls to rubble and people to puddles. So the heads above devoured and sewed carnage. Sylvanis moved through the streets of the city, and where she walked the heads destroyed. They hated, as Sylvanis did.

Things she passed Sylvanis willed to burst—houses and wells and barns and cattle—and so they did. She lifted a hand, and such things swelled and erupted by her power. All things bent to her will. The girl looked to people running wild for their lives, and she willed them to catch fire, and they caught fire. Guards approached her, and she willed them severed into pieces, and they were severed. Things she thought that brought suffering manifest, as though all power were hers to command, and so the girl brought death.

From each corpse of every victim, a blue orb appeared. It floated to the sky in a ghostly haze, as the dance of rain done in reverse. This light gathered in the sky and hung above the city: hundreds of shimmering blue orbs.

Sylvanis willed then that all of the animals, the wolves and the stags, the bears and the beasts of the land come and lay waste to the city, and they came, and they destroyed. Sylvanis willed the serpents in the sky to consume, and the serpents consumed.

Blue mist rose from the slain, up into the sky: the souls of the fallen.

Sylvanis walked unhindered through the King’s city. Above her, the serpent heads struck down upon all things, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. Into their maws the heads took men and women and beasts, up into the sky where they were ripped between the three heads. And they consumed. With each death, another blue orb rose to the heavens.

The people of Illdar ran in terror. They stumbled over rubble and blood and death. But they could not escape, for Sylvanis did not will it.

The beasts of the forest rushed after the people. They leapt upon them and gored them, as Sylvanis willed. The snake at her side lashed out once and again, and it bit into the necks of children and held them to the ground while they bled, and there was death, as Sylvanis willed. She came to the wall, surrounding the keep, the white wall built to seal the maidens in, and to keep them to the King.

Sylvanis held up her hand.

The serpent heads stopped their rampage.

The animals stopped their rampage.

The fires dimmed, the night quieted. The enormous heads steadied, and came to rest above their master. The beasts of the forest came before her, and they stood at the gate and they paused. And for a moment the night was quiet, as Sylvanis willed it.

Sylvanis looked up. She saw through the eyes of the serpent heads, and she gazed over the wall and saw what remained of the King’s army.

Sylvanis wished them dead.

She ordered the serpent heads to lunge down upon the gate, and so they did. They struck down like thunderbolts, again and again, until the gate was demolished and dust. Then the beasts sprung forth into the army, and they mauled the soldiers with violent thrashes. Then the heads began to eat the men and soldiers, striking quickly with open jaws and razor teeth. Not one at a time, but in dozens, and in hundreds. They were brought into the sky and devoured.

And Sylvanis felt nothing.

The sky lit up with blue mist. Midnight seemed as day. Each man that died let their soul rise to the sky, and from the corpses and pieces of men the souls sprang forth.

Sylvanis walked towards the castle. Through the battered white walls she entered the palace grounds.

The maidens inside wept. They fell to their knees and begged, and prayed. But Sylvanis did not hear them, and the serpents devoured them. Soon she was upon the keep, and the Kings army was a red pool.

Then the phantom heads reared.

They fell upon the Tyrant King’s palace. They pulled up the stone and the timber roof. They revealed, in their carnage, the King’s bedchamber. And there the man stood as his castle crumbled around him.

Sylvanis saw the King and felt no pity. She willed for the maws of two serpents to strike down upon his arms and lift him from the castle as the third reduced the whole palace to nothing. It collapsed to dust and stones, to pieces, along with all inside.

Sylvanis brought the heads low. She brought the Tyrant King before her face. She gazed upon him, and her eyes held only broken thoughts. No hatred, no contempt; merely empty, idle, nothing.

The King’s eyes, however, filled with fear. He saw Sylvanis, and pleaded for forgiveness and he begged for his life. He offered wealth and jewels and freedom and all good things, if only she would cease.

But Sylvanis did not will it.

The serpent heads shot upward, and flung the Tyrant King into the sky. They released his arms and sent him soaring to the heavens. Then the King began to plummet to the earth. As he fell, the phantasmal heads lashed at him. They bit into him a thousand times, pulling pieces and chunks from his flesh. They rent and tore into him as he fell from the sky, and nothing made it to the earth save for the rain of his blood.

And the Tyrant King was defeated.

And the last blue orb rose to the heavens.

And night became as day.

Then the luminous blue descended. The souls moved true and slow; a whirling, dancing vortex falling to earth. The cloud drifted towards Sylvanis, flowing as a river, and swept itself without her thought into the crystal flask at her side. The souls filled the flask, and Sylvanis watched uncaring. The light circled all around the ruined kingdom, and the souls filled the flask. When it was full it grew magically in size, and filled still. Until finally it was full, and night was night once more.

Sylvanis looked into the crystal flask, filled with the lives of those taken. She turned her gaze skyward as the serpent heads disappeared into mist, and the animals returned to the forest. She looked over the ruined Kingdom of Illdar, all razed, all broken. was razed. Fired burned and rampaged, not a single structure stood, and not a single person lived. And Sylvanis, once filled with love, then with sorrow, then with hatred, now felt absolute, unending emptiness.

In the distance, overlooking the city as smoke and flames rose to the sky, the shadow laughed.