“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Saturday evening after sundown in the Ivy Terraces Townhouse.

Vanessa stood on the roof with her back to the slope gazing outwards over the river. The globe of smog and ash was driven by the wind and looked like a river of roiling clouds. Her mood was somber and the cloak swaddling her small body blew with the wind. The lost eye gleamed through high scattered clouds, the air was cold, snow covered the city. Iseret crouched beside her a silent shadow, a scarf wound tightly around her face.

A gigantic zeppelin hung over the merchant's quarter turning with the wind.

“Should I go back?” Iseret broke the silence first.

“I think that might be best. I don't know how long it will take but it shouldn't be longer than a bit after midnight. They have their study group tomorrow after all.”

“I will wait for you at the ‘Sturdy Mast’.”

Iseret saw the smile beneath the hood of Vanessa’s cloak and stood up flexing her stiff arms before she incanted a spell and a prayer to She-Who-is-Many-as-One. Wings of wind carried her towards the lower city only limited by her desire for a bit of secrecy.

Vanessa concentrated and the stolen blood in her veins supplied the power while her flesh turned to mist.

Inside Alea’s room, the three friends sat around the lone table while Butler One tidied up their used dishes after a pleasant dinner.

Mireille and Alea, “We have to…”

Both looked at each other and then continued as if on cue, “...talk.”

Alyssa looked uncomfortable but nodded, “I understand.”

Vanessa formed out of wisps of mist and sat down on the last chair at the table. “As long as you do.”

“Hello, Vanessa.” Mireille tried to be cheerful but fell short.

The spider on Alea’s shoulder waved her legs in the little vampire's direction. “Greetings.”

Vanessa sighed. “I fear that it falls to me to do this so- Alyssa do you know what we want to discuss tonight?”

“The crystal seed?”

“That's part of it. More important is the reason for all of this and your plans for the future. We are all here your friends and what you are doing is hurting you. I know one of your goals, a very important one which I can wholeheartedly agree to. I spoke to Asandria at length. But your promise is an extended one and you should still have a lot of time. What drives you so?”

Mireille nodded and Alea followed. All three looked at her expectantly. Asandria gave a ghostly sigh.

Alyssa blushed and looked flustered. “First I thank you for the concern. I...I don’t know what to say. Is it okay to say that I still feel very unsure of all of this?” She made an expansive gesture. “I know I have it good now and there should not be that much pressure but I still feel it. The bandits, Christina and now the students, Otto. And I have a goal that is more than a normal ambition." She took a deep breath and looked at all of them, "I have to defeat the lich queen of Ulsolm, the Heartstealer.”

“Really now?” Mireille looked astonished. “That is some ambition. Are you sure you don’t want to be Asander Brightblade the shining hero?”

Alea frowned and said, “Why? Did she do something to you?”

Alyssa shook her head. “No. I promised Asandria. I even swore a blood-oath. She saved me as I was dying and this was her price. But if I am completely honest.”

She thought a moment. “I really like feeling this power. The power to change, to destroy. I had to be so careful all the time. My father never hurt me but he could have. And the threat of it was always there. The people in town looked at me as if I was a freak- Even though they respected my mother. Then the flight from Firswending. The long road where I was powerless to save myself. Asandria, Mireille, and you Vanessa did the saving. Now I have something that feels so right, that gives me what I lack and I am ready to sacrifice something for it. Is that wrong?”

Vanessa nodded, “It isn't as if I did not understand. Even I have need of power and be it only to keep my life. But please don’t be so reckless- you barrel into this situation as if there were no choice. I know even Asandria cautioned you. She only lost her calm when she saw that damned crystal seed. It will accelerate your growth in magic exponentially but at what cost. You are no longer able to live normally. You need special artifacts to even go outside. If you touch someone as you are now without gloves you will slowly kill them. Is that what was needed at the moment?”

“No.” Alyssa’s voice was small. Cyrus cooed at her and tried to climb her lap when she grabbed and hugged him.

“So talk to us about that! If you really need some help there are many ways to accomplish things. You have the academy and the teachers, you have Alea, Mireille, me and Asandria.” She gave the last person a long penetrating gaze.

“That is true.” Alea nodded. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself. It might be selfish of me to deny your wishes but if you find yourself with a decision like the last one please think about it longer and talk to us honestly. Butler One is of the same opinion.” She paused. “And Lieseleta too.”

Mireille had to grin at her deadpan delivery of that sentence then became serious again. “I second that.” She raised her hand.

Asandria lowered her head and then shrugged. ‘You will not find something similar to the seed for a long time. It does no harm to promise this. And being conscientious in using your magic is only common sense.’

Alyssa rubbed her left eye. “Very well. I promise to talk with you before another such decision and to be more careful. But I have to get my control up to standards before the Exhibition. Otherwise, there will be bigger problems, at least according to Magister Illimen.”

“You saw the Magister?” Mireille looked interested. “He always looks so dignified. It’s really impressive. Even if he runs through the rain he is still neat. My grandmother would have liked him.” She looked a bit melancholic at that.

“So we have an accord.” Vanessa looked at all of them and then at Asandria.

Everyone even the spirit nodded.

“When I have to do something like this I really feel old.” the vampire girl complained. “And now to another serious matter. Asandria told you about the side effects?”

Alyssa nodded.

“Details?”

Alyssa shook her head.

“So you don’t know that you have approximately five to ten years of life left? Your eye and arm will never be the same. You cannot separate from the seed anymore than Mireille could undo her brand. It’s final.”

Alyssa looked startled then resigned. “I had feared something like that.”

“So we have to get access to an alchemical laboratory. Anyone who has ideas about that?” Vanessa asked.

Alea raised her small hand. “We could use my grandfathers’ in Grunewald.

“That’s a bit far. We could nonetheless do it during the holidays.” Vanessa caressed her chin thinking.

Mireille looked at them. “You said we should ask the academy when we have problems. Why not come to them with that?”

“Because they would lose their mind when they realize what I am. And who would brew the potion otherwise, you?” Vanessa shook her head.

Alyssa cleared her throat and said, “We have a nice teacher Valeria Jangres she has a shop- Natural Remedies in the market ward. Perhaps she would be amenable to persuasion at least of the monetary kind.”

“Possibly.” Vanessa nodded. “So you ask this teacher of yours and please be careful with your magic. Don't let us find one day that you have gone too far. Let’s hope the good intentions hold up to reality. I still have something to do tonight so I will leave you to it but tomorrow I should have some free time in the evening. I know you have your study group but if you are not too busy simply come back to the townhouse for the evening and I will tutor you. The morning after you can go back to the academy again.”

The evening concluded on this high note and the three girls soon fell asleep.

Asandria looked at the sleeping Alyssa and smiled. ‘Everything is well on the way. When the time comes there will be no choice. The glass has been tipped and the sand will flow. You have the possibility of being a deciding factor in a game played on the corpse of an empire even if that makes it shorter your life will matter in the end.’

And she stroked over Alyssa’s brow smoothing the wrinkles brought on by a restless dream.

Windkeep Castle to the north of Rivenlorn

The seasons had turned quickly and the winter they had expected in a month or two at the earliest was upon them quick as the blink of an eye.

Snow was falling and its gentleness held the illusion of beauty but it brought hardship, frozen toes, failing harvests. It was white, white without color, without life.

The guardians patrolled the high walls and the turrets sported engines of war. Onager, ballistae, and the pride of the keep an arcane lance. A gigantic metal rod festooned with runes that held several impure manacrystals that were its ammunition.

The lord of the keep Count Georm Septimus of Windkeep inspected the granary and sighed worriedly. It would last them for a few months but it had been planned for a much shorter winter. He would have to send for relief and that always sat wrongly with him as if he were a beggar crawling on his knees to gain a scrap of bread.

He wore thick winter clothes and a cloak lined with wolf fur.

And then there was the clear note of the horn and while he hoped that it would only be a short warning the horn continued to sound and others joined into a chorus warning of an impending attack. Hastily he ran for the keep proper giving orders to his aides. “Close the gates but get as many of the townsfolk into the enclosure as we can hold the rest should hunker down in the advanced keep. Arm the engines. Alert the warmages” And as he looked up at the slowly driting snow he thought. ‘I can feel it in my bones, this will be a bad one.’

And out of the snow and ice trudged the undead, skeletons, fleshfiends, ghouls, undead giants. And behind them came wight mages and spectral undead like banshees forming out of the drifting snow as if born from the cold of winter itself.

The attack had begun. Undead needed no sleep, no food, no shelter. They had crossed the mountains in ways that were impossible for a living army and thus bypassed every warning post they had set up. Windkeep nevertheless was under a war footing, the men were veterans, the walls blessed and spelled. Onagers threw globes of blessed water. Scorpions shot projectiles laden with curses and flame.

Ulrich Rickard was a soldier. He had been assigned to Windkeep some three years prior coming from Saintscrossing via the long mountain road.

It was a late summer's eve when he had first spied the keep overlooking the town. The high walls, the men streaming into the great gatehouse. An eagle drew lazy circles overhead where clouds swathed the mountain peaks and their eternal snow. Beneath all of that stretched the glory of the endless forest in all the different shades of green. It was then that he fell in love with a place, as he never had before when a tavern maid took his fancy. And he had certainly not felt this way when he had enlisted to escape the engagement his parents had negotiated for an additional piece of farmland.

He had stood on these walls that were nearly seamlessly growing out of the granite outcropping with the stone bridge crossing the deep chasm and he felt that Windkeep was inviolable.

He saw the endless rows of the dead walking from the white wall of snow. He saw the ghosts drift upwards to his post and his breath caught in his throat and the fear he never knew before gripped his heart. Dark mages chanted spells and darkness shrouded the advancing force, shields of ice rose into the air and deflected the defender's fire. Arrows simply sunk into frozen flesh or were diverted by magically reinforced bone. The walls were insurmountable but only for a living force. Like spiders, the skeletons gripped the stone and climbed. The ghosts drifted higher and undead giants bellowed as they threw boulders at the fortress gates.

He lifted his shield and a bolt of dark magic engulfed his arm leeching warmth and life before an incantation from a priestess near him showered him in borrowed warmth.

Glyphs and runes set into the walls glowed with bluish light as smoke rose from the heat of their magic, undead burst into flames, and slowly disintegrated into dust driven along with the snow.

He hacked at the skeletal warrior missing a chin clothed in ancient rotten armor, more rust than metal, and armed with a blade that drank the light. With an effort he shoved with his round shield and the creature was swallowed by the swirling snow as two others took its place. His brown hairs were drenched with sweat and big drops froze on his fur-lined cloak.

The wind carried bitter cold from the mountains and specters assailed the defenders gliding silently into their midst. A low rumbling shook the fortress gates as great boulders smashed into reinforced wood.

The specter of an elven child grasped his cheeks and leaned in to steal his life. Desperately he hacked into the transparent form and found no purchase. With a prayer to Ielenia, the priestess banished the ghost wreathing the spirit in white flame as it screamed without a voice.

The snow and the clouds broke for a moment and he saw the town crawling with the dead. The last defenders were withdrawing to the forward keep and flames burst from balls of fire. A distant thunder of explosions.

He turned and fought.

The priestess set her lips into a thin line and spoke another prayer raising her symbol aloft. He remembered her name as Christina.

Saintscrossing Military Encampment.

The captain leaned over the table and read the letters he had received.

“To Captain Chester Tannmen Mor, Saintscrossing.

Heavy snowfall cut short the harvest season, granary reserves are low. We need more food and provisions for the coming winter. Please make sure to send additional guards the mountain road has been under attack of late. Attached you will find my steward's estimates of our requirements.

I hate to ask but the need is great.

Count Georm Septimus of Windkeep”

...and another...

“To Captain Chester Tannmen Mor, Saintscrossing.

We are under heavy attack. In our best estimate, a legion of undead supported by cadres of dark mages has begun to attack Windkeep. The town has fallen. Many civilian casualties.

We need reinforcements urgently.

We expect to last for another fortnight as it were, perhaps longer.

Count Georm Septimus of Windkeep.

P.S. Chester old friend this is the worst attack that I have witnessed in all my years here. Please be prepared for the worst.”

And as the officers deliberated a steward took the attached list of the dead and checked it against a board in his hand.

…Istvan Mendev.........Thomas Loren.........Danislav Tengen...

...Ulrich Rickard