Six months passed before Lydos decided to leave Agreolfor. He was in no hurry. The Worldrenders weren’t concerned with when he completed his task; for them, months were like minutes.

So he had spent most of his time preparing for the journey. Their information on the humans was largely outdated, but it helped him to know what to expect. He drafted plans, consulted Father, and then drafted contingencies to those plans.

Truweld, land of the humans, lay on the southeastern tip of the main continent, Axlythr. From the northern mountains, it could take up to two weeks. He packed a hemp sack with an extra pair of robes and rations of dried jerky and bread. At the last minute, he decided to include the flail he had taken from the human woman. It would serve as a good torch.

The day before, he had informed Haxylcl, the Worldrender traveling with him, to meet him at the lowest entrance of the mountains in the early morning. His last stop would be to say goodbye to his father.

“Father,” he called at the entrance of his room. “It’s Lydos. I’m leaving now.”

He waited for a few moments just in case. Before, when he had left Agreolfor to travel to other plantations, he would always stop at his father’s room to announce his departure. Father never replied.

He walked away, unsure of the feeling welling in his chest.

“Lydos.” The torches behind him cast a large shadow on the cavern wall.

With a start, he turned back and Father was standing before him in dark green robes. Before he could greet him, Father held something out to him. He took it. It was a small volume of poems by the Ai’zaar poet, E’llozai.

“Fire on the fields, friars in the sheets,” Father said, and it took Lydos a moment to realize that he was reciting a poem from the book. He couldn’t remember the title, but he knew the next lines well.

“Father, I have come to the lands beyond the ocean,” Lydos recited. “They are rotten with gangrene, born of trauma.”

Father said nothing, the horns in his face a pale yellow in the dim torchlight. Then, he turned back and disappeared into his room.

Lydos realized he was holding his breath and he let out a deep exhale. He turned the book over in his hand and looked through the pages. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Just underlined passages and tidy scrawls.

For some reason, that made him both happy and disappointed.

“I apologize if I made you wait for too long,” he said in Xyk to the Worldrender standing by the entrance.

“It is a small matter,” Haxylcl replied in monotone. Its curved jaws were long and beak-like, but when it spoke, it exposed two rows of fangs and a long serpentine tongue.

Haxylcl was the youngest Worldrender he knew, but it was still much larger than him. At eight-foot-tall, the Worldrender resembled a large grotesque lizard. Its skeletal frame protruded from its dark blue scales, almost like its flesh was too tight for its bones, and purple veins along its body shone like constellations on a night sky.

Its large wings resembled gnarled claws, six on each wing and webbing binding them together. Its tail stretched from behind it, like a spinal cord that wouldn’t stop growing, and the bones underneath the flesh stuck out at odd angles, forming uneven spikes.

Worldrenders were ghastly creatures. Ghastly but ethereally beautiful at the same time. Their eyes were large gemstones, comprised of small hexagonal crystals that reflected nothing.

He stared at Haxylcl thoughtfully. Oddly enough, there was a large hemp sack tied around the middle of its torso that sagged from the weight of what it held. He could make out a faint rectangular outline but nothing else.

His gaze shifted to its wings. The journey would be much shorter if Haxylcl let him ride on its back. There was no doubt that it was much faster than him and Worldrenders required less time to rest and sleep. But he knew he couldn’t ask such a thing.

He didn’t know how old the Worldrender was, but they had trained alongside each other for a time when he was younger. He had no doubt of how Haxylcl felt of him.

“Shall we go?” he asked, pointing his halberd upward.

Haxylcl grunted, its wings spreading open. Its crystalline eyes flashed white and with a powerful beat of his wings, it launched itself into the snowy sky. It had leaped with such ferocity that Lydos had to shield his face from the sudden clumps of snow flying toward him.

He gritted his teeth. Thankfully, he had worn a large sheepskin cloak that protected his robes from getting wet. He looked up and the Worldrender was already out of sight.

It would be impossible for him to catch up. But he had to show that he wouldn’t be intimidated. He had his own methods.

He brandished his halberd at the sky with his right hand. The weapon was made by the finest Nulerian smiths and it had numerous blessings placed upon it. It was light, durable, and the self-sharpening blade was as keen as the Nulerian claws that forged them.

The most important modification, though, was the length of the front blade. It was long and slightly curved.

“Worldrenders have no need for weapons. It is beneath them,” Father had once said. “But weapons – those are how we can rend the gap between us and them.”

His eyes glowed white and the world began to unravel. Worldrending was less of a tool and more of a perspective of the world, a way to see and understand things. He felt the familiar numbing chill and tranquility that accompanied his powers.

Reality was unblemished, as clear and still as the surface of a lake. Worldrenders were a kind of cruelty inflicted on these undisturbed waters, distorting and rippling them with a simple touch. Worldrending was like the ancient creatures themselves: ghastly but ethereal.

He took a deep breath and then broke into a running start. With the long blade of his halberd, he snagged a strip hanging above him that would normally be out of his reach, and he pulled it down.

The world rushed below him and he was propelled high into the sky. Looking down, he saw a frozen wasteland of silver trees to his north and stark-white snowcaps behind him.

How many winters would it take him to conquer the humans? What if he couldn’t get them to surrender? Would his father miss him?

Flecks of snow pelted him and he grabbed the empty air and draped it around him. He always knew what was expected of him, but before it had been an abstract concept that he continuously pushed away from his mind. It was only now that he was leaving that it all sank in. He finally understood the vastness of his task.

The only way he could return to Agreolfor was if his entire race submitted to him.

He surrendered himself to the snow and terror, the cold and dark, and pulled the world behind him.