“Will she find me?” the old woman asks.

‘Yes’

“Will she fight me?”

‘No’

“Will she be taken to see the jars?”

‘Yes’

“Will she fight me then?”

‘No’

“Will she run?”

‘Yes’

“Will she run beneath the great beam?”

‘Yes’

The woman takes a deep breath. It has been a long time since she’s done something like this. She is unsure her old bones will be up to it. “Will I succeed?” she asks and tosses the bones one last time.

The rain beats down on the road, turning the road to dirt and the dirt to mud. The man on the watchtower is bundled up in warm clothing, gloves and furs, yet he is still cold. He was not prepared for weather such as this. It rarely gets this cold in Karasar.

Beneath him a woman walks through the mud, her hood held up against the rain. She is not the invading army they are looking for, and so she is allowed to pass through the open gates.

The city is not bustling as it usually is. Everyone is inside, hiding from the rain and the unnatural cold. Occasionally a figure rushes through the rain, splattering along in the mud, desperate to reach shelter as fast as possible. The woman does not rush, she does not splatter in the mud. To her the storm is not a hindrance. To her it is a shield.

But not everyone has the luxury of shelter. Some are forced to linger in the miserable weather, and it is these men the woman wants.

A town guard wanders through the muddy streets. He is in no hurry to get anywhere since everywhere he can go will be just as miserable as this. So he trudges along, his uniform hardly adequate in the cold. He sees the woman wandering along and eyes her suspiciously.

She sees him and walks up to him. He stands and waits for her, hugging himself against the cold. Perhaps she has something to tell him, something that will give him an excuse to go inside or warm up somehow. She does not.

Instead she talks to him of trivial things, of the cold, of the mud, of the life of a town guard. He finds himself caught up in a conversation he has little control over. He can’t see much of the woman beneath her cloak but her voice has something in it. Something alluring.

She asks to see his home and he takes her there though he is not sure why. Once they are there he sits down and warms himself by the fire. Although he is sure he never lit it. She keeps talking to him and he follows along, only too happy to talk to her and forget the cold and misery outside.

Soon she is sitting beside him and then she is atop him completely. They struggle out of their wet clothes and into each other. When they are done her voice takes on a new allure. An allure he is powerless to resist. He tells her everything. Answers every question she asks and the questions are pointed and powerful. He tells her exactly what men and weapons the town has. He tells her their fear of the army led by Kulrod. He tells her what the people think, what the guards think, what the nobles think. He does not tell her what he thinks though. It seems now that she has him she doesn’t care much what he thinks.

He tells her of all of their defenses and all of their secret passwords and hidden tunnels. And he tells her of Gushkabel.

When she leaves he remains naked on the floor for far longer than he should. Somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks he should resume working. But the front of his mind is far more occupied with all the control he has just lost. With what the beautiful woman has done to him. The fire is raging in the hearth despite an absence of firewood, yet he trembles. Out of the hearth the fire stares with a terrible lidless eye.

The woman exits back into the muddy street and throws her hood back on. She leaves the guard lying content on his floor, quite confident that in all the passion and conversation he never noticed her golden eyes.

Gushkabel sits on a plush armchair in her small cottage watching the rain beat against the window outside. She is wrapped up in a fur blanket and her fire is going, but her old bones are still cold. They are sore as well, she has been up all day preparing for tonight. The most important night for a long time. The most important night since Ceros.

Around her her dreamcatchers hang. On the table across from her lies all manner of her mystical workings. A desiccated frog, partially dissected. An ancient tapestry from before the time of gods and kings, used as a tablecloth. A hundred different berries from all across the land, scattered across the table in her hurry for today. And in the center the ceramic bowl with the lidless eye carved into it, and in the bowl little bones.

She watches the clock, there is still a while to wait. She takes out a butcher’s knife, and sharpens it.

Out in the rain the woman could swear that there is a beam of sunlight, piercing down from the heavens. She looks up, searching for a gap in the clouds. She finds one and out of it peers a burning lidless eye. An eye that burns like the rising sun. Then it is gone and she keeps walking. She has been seeing that eye in her dreams lately and thinks little of it. She knows little of the ways of gods and demons.

She reaches the cottage of Gushkabel. It is a squat thing buried away down a back alley with dreamcatchers and berries hanging in the porch. She raises her fist to knock and hears an old voice from within beckon her inside.

She does not question the voice’s perfect timing. That is something she has grown to expect from mystical women.

She sits down across from Gushkabel who is knitting, the knife hidden away.

“How can I help you, young woman?” Gushkabel asks politely, her needles clacking away hopelessly. Luckily the woman does not know how to knit either, else she might be suspicious.

“I have come about Kulrod.”

Gushkabel looks at the woman suspiciously. “What do you want with Kulrod?”

The woman shrugs. “I want to stop him from conquering the city.”

The old woman smiles. “And how do you suppose you are going to do that? Kulrod is a sorcerer.”

“Yes,” the woman replies. “It seems he’d be just about unstoppable by most ordinary people.”

“And you are not an ordinary person?” Gushkabel asks, slowly putting down her knitting needles and feeble attempt at a scarf.

The woman throws back her hood and reveals her golden eyes. “Do not be alarmed,” she says quickly. “I only wish to help.”

Gushkabel’s eyes narrow. “Oh I’m sure.”

“I know you have had bad experiences with sorcerers in this city and I know our kind are not to be trusted but I only wish to help you. I am your only hope.”

Gushkabel appears angry at that. “Oh are you now?”

“I was told you are the wisest woman in this city. That you know all the magics and ways of the world. Do not pretend you don’t know how hard it is to kill a sorcerer. Do not pretend you don’t know what they can do.”

“Oh I know all about what they can do. Poisons, vermin, foul blood magics, storms.” She gestures vaguely at the storm outside. “I suppose this was your doing.”

The sorceress shrugs. “I needed some reason to hide my face. It’s not easy having these eyes.”

“Oh isn’t it?”

A look of annoyance crosses the sorceress’s perfect face. “I suppose you think all my kind are some sort of horrible abomination.”

Gushkabel shrugs. “Am I wrong?”

“I only wish to help people.”

“You do not help people. You are a sorceress, you are made to hurt people.”

The sorceress grows angry at this. “I am not made for anything. What would you know of being a sorceress?”

“Oh heaven forbid I pretend to know all the magics and ways of the world,” Gushkabel exclaims, rolling her eyes. “How many men have you raped in your noble quest to help people?”

Anger drains from the sorceress’s face and she looks concerned. “You do not know what you are-”

“How about you stop pretending you understand what I do and don’t know!” Gushkabel says loudly. “You have raped people! Admit it! If you are really as noble as you say you are you likely justified it to yourself with some pathetic excuses about the greater good! You have no idea what you even mean by that!” She shakes her head and looks away, muttering something under her breath.

“It is not my fault my magic works that way! It is not-”

“Not your fault? No of course it isn’t? How could it be your fault you just happen to bewitch people into sleeping with you and losing their free will. All a big misunderstanding really.”

“Doing that has enabled me to help countless communities. To save people!”

“Do you ever check up on the men you rape after you’re done with them? Do you ever go back and see what you’ve left behind? Have you ever tried to help a victim like that?”

“...Well no I don’t...”

“I help people like that. I help the scared and lonely and broken people who’re left behind after someone else has their way. And I don’t need terrible magical powers to do so!”

“I understand it’s horrible! I wish I didn’t have to do it! But I’ve saved so many people! For those people you’ve helped it was never justified! But for me it-!”

A look of disgust crosses Gushkabel’s face. “It is never justified. Even for you. You are not special.”

The sorceress sits back and fumes, staring into the old woman’s eyes. Gushkabel stares right back. It is a strange feeling, someone looking into her eyes who is not afraid or under her control. She thinks for a while. Never before has she been challenged like this. Most people do not challenge sorceresses.

“I am special,” she says eventually. “You are human, mortal, flesh and blood. You do not have the same gifts I do.”

Gushkabel nods sadly. Her disgust fading and turning into something much sadder and more resigned. “Come with me,” she says, standing up slowly. Her old bones protesting.

The sorceress stands up and there is the eye. Rising slowly over the horizon of an endless desert, the sunrise with a long black pupil. It sears into her. Then it is gone and she is following the old woman through the cottage. Her hands tremble but she ignores them. Never before has she seen the eye like that. But she is determined not to show weakness now, not to Gushkabel.

The old woman opens a door in the hallway and lights a lantern. She enters the dark room beyond and the sorceress follows. The room is old and damp and slimy, the lantern doing little to illuminate the shelves that line the walls. She does not look at the shelves though. She looks at the great scroll hanging over some of the shelves. It reads: At the Great Rock, the Last Stone. Standing in the Circle Alone. There’ll be a Battle, betwixt Night and Day. A Game for Ancient Gods to Play. Thirteen Will be Champions of Night. Inside the Circle, cloaked in Blight. Seven will be-

Gushkable tears down the scroll before the sorceress can finish making it out in the flickering light. “Do not mind that,” she smiles. “Just an old project of mine.”

The sorceress is left looking at the shelves now. Shelves filled with jars that flicker in the light of the lantern. Inside the jars is liquid, something clear and still. All the jars have the liquid but some have more. Some have eyeballs, some have fingers, some have just bones, the flesh decayed off them. In each of these the liquid is not still, it bubbles and boils around the body parts. Searing them, burning them, and filling the room with a horrible smell.

“What...?” the sorceress asks, peering closely at something that might once have been a brain.

“Have you heard of Ceros the Sorcerer King?” Gushkabel asks sadly, gazing around at the shelves and shelves of jars.

The sorceress thinks for a moment, not about whether she knows Ceros, but about just what might be in the jars. “Yes,” she says eventually, horror slowly dawning on her face.

“You say you are not flesh and blood, you are not human, you are correct. But you say you are not mortal...” Gushkabel picks up a jar containing an eyeball and looks down at it. “Ceros thought that too.”

The sorceress runs. She does not know what Gushkabel is. She does not know how she could have overcome a sorcerer king. But she does not care. She is afraid and that is not something she is used to. The lidless eye stares at her out of the sunrise.

She dashes from the room, Gushkabel makes no attempt to follow her. She sprints through the hallway back toward the first room. She is about to pass under the great beam when Gushkabel pulls a string down in the basement. It dislodges a wedge in the ceiling, a wedge beneath a great chest balanced on the great beam of the cottage roof.

The chest falls onto the sorceress and it is so heavy even her great magical strength folds before it. It took Gushkabel and ten strong men with levers all day to set that chest up. She will not move it any time soon.

Gushkabel enters the hallway and edges around the chest.

“Why? Why would you...? I wanted to help!”

“You are a sorceress,” Gushkabel says fetching the butcher’s knife and slipping on heavy gloves. “You are no help to anyone.”

“But without me Kulrod will kill you all!” The sorceress struggles desperately but she is trapped. Gushkabel swings down the knife, she knows nothing of knitting, but the knife she can use.

“He will face a foe far more powerful than you. Do not worry.”

The sorceress tries to tell her that Alphon already failed to stop him at Arnock Bridge. But before she can her head is severed from her body. Without it her vocal chords struggle uselessly. A sorcerer can heal from any wound but not quickly, and Gushkabel works quickly. She dismembers the sorceress and puts all the pieces of her body into the acid filled jars to burn away. It takes all night to sever tendons and rend flesh, all the while being ever so careful not to get the acidic blood on herself. The sorceress is alive through all of it of course, but she stops feeling pain soon after her brain begins dissolving in acid.

Eventually the sun rises and Gushkabel collapses in her chair after a hard night’s work. It will take forever to clean the bloodstains out from the floor. She doesn’t mind, she has little else to do besides changing the acid in the jars every few weeks. She slips off her gloves and looks out into the growing dawn. She looks at the bowl with the little bones in it and thinks. She had always been going to dismember the sorceress and lock her in the basement, the bones had confirmed it. But she couldn’t help but wonder if, after a bit of teaching and instruction, she couldn’t have been helpful after all.

Far away Kulrod’s army marches closer.

The Prophecy of Hahkenata - Transcribed by Gushkabel

At the the Great Rock, the Last Stone

Standing in the Circle Alone

There’ll be a battle, betwixt Night and Day

A Game for Ancient Gods to Play

Thirteen will be Champions of Night

Inside the Circle, cloaked in Blight

Seven will be Champions of Day

Outside the Circle they’ll Array

Night:

Two will be Demons, reclaiming what they Gave

Six will be Monsters of Woods and Caves

Four will be Sorcerers, Immortal and Heartless

One an Elemental, Fallen into Darkness

Day:

Mere mortal men, the Knight, the Queen, the Tailor

Dancer, Merchant, Scout, and Sailor

They will Fight but they’ll be Slain

And Night will Stake it’s Bloody Claim

Out of Night the Sun Warrior Comes

Emblazoned on his Chest the Sun

Behind Him Light will Fill the Sky

The Final Battle is truly Nigh

The Champions of Night will Face the Wrath of Day

As He Casts Down all Standing in His Way