The Matron watched the boat fight against the wind as the men had abandoned the single sail and swapped to oars. It was filled almost to capacity from her count with twenty-five souls silhouetted against the greying dawn and the black water of the lake. She frowned as worry washed over her slowly. They left with twenty-three in the vanguard, which meant they either lost a soldier or they lost a prisoner, either way, there would be another loss from their quickly dwindling forces. As it was, Wallace’s company was running twelve hours late, the watch reporting movement in the predawn hours on the tumultuous lake.

Jen had been waiting since on the icy shoreline, despite the gale that blew through her clothing with icy teeth, impatient for the news on the final moments from the city. An explosion had rocked the camp before dawn, bringing many from their fitful sleep. She paced furiously back and forth in the frozen mud of the shore, watching the single-masted boat make its way through the whitecaps of Dim Lake. A half-hour later, the waterlogged, tired rowers put their oars down in relief as the bow of the boat made landfall and six soldiers ran a gangplank to it from a fisherman dock, and tied it off securely. They would save this boat. It was the only one they had left on the entire lake, and it would be next fall at the earliest before they would have any more built from the surrounding forest.

The Master Sergeant walked down the swaying gangplank slowly, seemingly oblivious to the world around him. His head was hung low, and his dark beard coated in ice and his grey eyes filled with loss and sorrow. He saluted his Matron with a half-hearted thump on his heart and then sank to his knees in the mud finally conceding to his misery.

She paled, “What is it, Wallace.”

” The explosion, the Temple.” He sobbed raggedly with puffs of steam coming out with each breath.

“The Grim,” she swayed back and forth, her heart beat furiously in her chest, “NO!”

The wail came out in a very primitive fashion as the tears of fear and sorrow streamed down her face. Jen’s carefully constructed world collapsed around her. Her husband would cease to be, to exist, in just two days. There would be no rebirth for the souls they killed in that inferno last night, every single soul was now lost to death for eternity. Everything would be in Chaos, and the enemy, the sworn Brother, had won out finally. She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder and reached up, holding the warm hand of her immortal husband. The Grim gathered her gently into his massive chest and cuddled her red hair against his broad chest, quietly shushing her, soothing her pain.

“What is all this sobbing and crying that I hear over here. Wallace, to your feet Master Sergeant. You’re a man, for Order’s sake. Act like the commander you are.” He admonished the stout Master Sergeant, who rose sullenly to his feet weary from a night of battle and then the Grim turned to his wife. “Now tell me why all this sorrow?”

“The Temple was destroyed in that clap of thunder that came from the city before dawn,” she sobbed, the words coming between deep breaths, “There is no way… no way.” She couldn’t say it. Her chest locked up in fear. She could not bring it out, to say it would make the nightmare a reality.

Isobelle had walked up behind her as she talked and now, the young, blonde Second hugged her from behind. For the first time that Jen could remember, the Arms-Master’s daughter was crying. She hugged her strong arms fiercely, letting Isobelle’s chain armor dig into her chin to let her know this was indeed the waking realm. For it all seemed like a nightmare in the sleeping realm, one sent by Chaos himself to shake the faith of Order.

“My beautiful wives, this was prophesied long ago. I knew that I was to disappear, but the prophecy does say disappear not perish. A wife, who was a reaper sacrament named Lucy, has pointed out if it meant to say dead or perish it would. It also does say I will be back and the ones who will help is here.” He reassured them. The Grims’s face was a careful mask of concern, showing not a hint of hopelessness.

“But what about what Order told you? You cannot exist in our world and you cannot return to yours.”

“Oh, I will disappear after the third day because I have no soul, but because of Bethel’s transgression, I have a son to take my place for a short while. A seed of mine that has not strived against me for the throne to the Underworld.” He turned his attention to Damon with a serious glow to his red eyes.

Damon looked puzzled at his father, but Grim turned his attention back on the group worriedly, turning his head back and forth. He looked through the gathered soldiers on the pier as they filed off the wooden deck, feet echoing through the stillness of the morning on the wooden planks below.

“What is it, husband?” Jen asked her distracted husband, feeling the worry that was building inside him.

“Where’s the disciple, the blonde one?” Grim looked back and forth over the landing party, “Without him, I cannot return. Without him, I will perish forever.”

Jen turned to Wallace with wide eyes, realizing her nephew was missing from the group. She had missed it up to this point because of the shocking news of the destruction of the Temple. “Yes Wallace, were is Faldo?”

“I am sorry Matron,” The Master Sergeant said with a heavy sigh, “ We fought with the leader of the Resistance and he was lost in a burning building. Faldo is dead.”

Rascus walked over the smoking ruins of what once had been the Great City of the Lake. This had been home for his son and wife over the years, but for Rascus, no wheres was home. His brother also ended up settling here after several assassination attempts by their younger half-brother and now Duke of Valor, Gregory. Dravor had taste more in line with that of a merchant or lord, but Rascus preferred the life of travel and adventure. He lived by his wits and sword, if it suited him, then everything else be damned. Eventually, it did catch up to him, Rascus had killed a necromancer who had threatened to expose his son. Now he was in an eternity of servitude for that error.

Here and there a building still had part of its roof, with charred remains still glowing red with fingers of smoke reaching up to but for the most part. Tharpe had been razed to the ground by her own Guard. There were soot-covered blackened husks of bodies that lay everywhere, with souls that begged to be reaped. There would be no reaping here, not for a few months at the minimum. Each soul had to be gathered by the reapers individually, and that process would take time. That time would be extended as someone had done what every reaper in service would gladly have done long ago, destroy a Temple.

The Temple, just as the night sky had started to lighten and the sickle moon set, had imploded on itself. With the concussion it made, Rascus had expected to find a vast crater occupying the spot where it stood and the granite blocks flung in all directions. Instead, the Temple had been drawn in on itself to one place, the Portal to the Underworld was buried deep beneath a pile of neatly stacked cobblestone, as if a rock giant from the Western Divide, had decided to play blocks in the middle of Tharpe.

Rascus had been sent with other reapers, to walk across the lake on a mission of great import. The man that Grim had needed rescued was missing, and he required any reapers in the area to be in that city looking for him. Rascus rather liked the easy-going Faldo and was eager to search him out. The blonde-haired bravado had befriended Damon before Rascus had been marked for death by the Grim himself. The big man would go anywhere and do anything for Damon, for that, Rascus was more than willing to search the young man out. Faldo had disappeared into the floor of the Inn of the Second Home, trying to kill the leader of the Resistance. If he was dead, so was all the hope for Order in the universe. The war accidentally sparked on the night that second man was created, would be lost before it indeed began.

“But thankfully so will my servitude be over,” muttered Rascus moodily.

Rascus came down the debris strode street to what was left of the Inn, and he shook his skeletal head, if anyone was in that building, it would be someone he could communicate to but nothing alive. The Inn was burned to the fieldstone that made up the bottom floor walls. Dark, blackened beams stuck up vertically, ribs in some dead, decayed beast that lay awaiting vultures to pick it clean. He found a spot in the wall and launched his skeletal frame over it with ease and landing hip-deep in black ash sending an ominous dark cloud into the air around the reaper. He chuckled in spite of himself, if only he could make an entrance like this all the time. Off to the side, he saw five skeletons and their cursing souls were all curiously naked. The soul kept its appearance that it had at the time of death but not the manner of death. It seems these were caught in an inopportune time. He was sure they would be in a wonderful mode to talk to him, but maybe he could coerce some answers.

These had to be the men that Wallace had talked about during his debriefing at camp. If Faldo had survived, they should have seen him since the harrowing escape of Damon. Rascus chuckled, Oh by The Grim! What a fight he had missed he thought as he looked at the souls, each trying to find some dignity in their current state of dress. Amused, Rascus walked up and nudged the first charred skeleton with his foot to get its attention. The man’s soul looked up at him, with anger in its translucent eyes.

“You down there I say,” Rascus asked in a casual raspy tone, “Did you happen to see a big, blonde-haired guy before you were killed last night? I hear he is quite fantastic with a sword. He was in the company of a little man with a throwing knife and a Giant. Does that ring a bell?”

“Go suck yourself reaper!” The soul seethed, in a tortured voice. The man’s soul writhed, but it was still attached to the remains, so the best it could accomplish was to blur itself somewhat.

Rascus threw back his head in a laugh that sounded like a cold winters wind through trees, “I’ll take that as I am in the right place.” He went to walk off and leave the skeleton-soul combination, and the soul cried out. Rascus, for the first time in fifteen years, was feeling pleasure from an action. Today was going to be a good day.

“Stop you can’t just leave me here. Take me.” The angry, nude man whimpered, his tone going from a harsh crack to a frightened plea as the reaper turned his back.

“Nope, no can do. I am on a very strict mission from the Grim and you did tell me, how did you say, to suck off. Or something to that nature.--” Rascus dismissed it with a casual wave of a bone hand, “--No, I do believe I will just leave you to be gnawed on by some wildlife for a few months till they happen to get the Temple back up. Have a good day.” Rascus hummed a bawdy tavern song as he walked off. With the damnable portal down, when he got far enough away from the Grim, he could tell the souls what he felt. Damn it felt good, now if he could just do something about the demon’s cursed loyalty feeling to Order.

He came by a female soul laying some distance from the men within the Temple. He slowly knelt to one knee beside her. He cocked his head in amusement as he looked down at the face of his own family.

“Well, my Lady Thewar. Your Father is taking a rest in the Underworld as we speak.” He said reaching down to move a piece of timber off the skeleton slowly. It wasn’t exactly hurting the soul, but he knew from experience in the Underworld, they longed to feel comfortable. He cared for this one; she was his niece on his brother’s side. Though she did not know it, he and his brother were both bastard sons of the Duke of Valor. Dravor. The Lady’s father had pursued commerce and wished the tie between his outlaw brother be kept a secret, despite his deep affections.

“So, he has not had his rebirth,” Thewar sighed in resignation, “Maybe I will see him then, again.”

“I carried his soul myself and stood with him during Judgement my Lady,” Rascus said with unusual gentleness in his voice, “His soul is old indeed, dating to first-man. He will be there for some time it seems. Now do me a kindness, I do believe you are associated with one who was here last night. Faldo, son of Victor. We must know if he survived or if he perished.”

The lady looked up at the reaper from her skeleton on the ashen gray stone, and shook her head slowly, “No one has come out of these ruins of my father’s Inn that I have seen reaper but what should I know.” She whimpered, ” With that smoldering timber you pulled off of me obstructing my view, I barely knew the sun had risen. But I saw him go into the flames. He fell through the floors and into the jakes. Even if the inferno that took the city did not get him, then falling from three stories surely would have.”

“Thank you,” Rascus said, “I would reap you now, but someone has done something horrific to the Tem—“

“Sedrick,” she said shortly.

“Do what?” stuttered the reaper confused.

“Sedrick said he was given a spell and the layout for the Temple. He sensed the Grim had arrived and received instruction from the Council of Sorcerers. They have been calling the shots for six months.” She explained, making a cold feeling run through Rascus’s bare spine, “He said he had a plan to rid us of the Grim once and for all.”

“Thank you again. We are indebted to you it seems. I will tell a Necromancer where you are to tend to your remains with respect until I can escort you personally to your father when the Portal is restored, my Lady.” He said gently patting her bony hand.

“Thank you reaper.”

“Call me Rascus.” He told her standing up to move across the cluttered space to a massive hole in the floor. The jakes from the upper stories would have all tumbled into here, a deep stone-lined pit with a steel ladder in it, to allow for periodic cleaning. If Faldo did survive the fall, Rascus thought as he walked around the hole and looked at the top of the ladder smiling inwardly. They were in for a very aromatic surprise.