Some distance to the northwest of Erik's cultivation cave, a pair of mountain ranges stood sentinel over a valley between them. High above the vision of mere mortals, the mountains were dotted with elegant villas and magnificent palaces. Inside one of these villas...

"For a man who sees the future, you certainly are terrible at predicting our moves, Augur," a white-haired man quipped, his gaze fixed across the table at an old gray-haired man with a long flowing beard.

There were four of them all around that table, each a venerable elder of the Rising Zenith Sect that inhabited the eastern chain of mountains. They were playing a game of Marchess, a board game that originated in the region that used to be the home of the March Empire. Unlike regular chess, Marchess used a cross-shaped board with a wedge-like starting formation for the pieces, so that it could accommodate four players instead of only two.

"You know it doesn't work that way, Idris," the man called Augur complained. He'd had another name before he became the Augur, dubbed so because of his expertise in obscure oracular magic, but none of them recalled that name anymore, probably not even he himself.

Idris shrugged. "I don't see the point in focusing on an art you can never seem to do anything useful with."

"Now now," another man, younger and with fiery red hair, chided. "While it isn't useful for a game of Marchess or for anticipating most of the actions of our friends across the valley there, Augur's prophecies have nonetheless done much to help us shape our strategy down in the kingdoms."

The fourth man, a blond-haired man in his middle age, snorted. "Charlan, you're acting like we've made any progress down there in centuries."

Charlan shrugged. "We haven't lost anything either, Atris. You know those fellows in the Setting Nadir have some oracular magic of their own; sometimes the best results to hope for are the ones where it feels like nothing is different."

While none of the others at the table were skilled in augury, they nonetheless were aware of some of the rules. Most prominent of all was the caution that many prophets looking at the same piece of the future muddied the waters of prophecy.

"So are you going to move a piece or admit defeat, Augur?" Idris cut in, returning the men's attention to the game before them.

Unlike standard chess, checkmate was not necessarily the end of the game. Marchess reflected the game the sects played with the kingdoms around the valley and the ever-shifting web of superficial alliances that made it impossible for any single kingdom to claim supremacy.

You could checkmate an opponent and also control their pieces for a time, but another player could break that checkmate and return control to the original player or even place a new checkmate and take control themselves. It was all convoluted and treacherous, just like the politics of the March Kingdoms.

Augur stroked his beard and contemplated the board. The position of his king was hemmed in, with the other three sides -- red, blue, and black -- neatly cornering his white pieces. It didn't take a knack for prophecy to see that he was doomed.

"Well then, since you gentlemen are all interested in a little bit of augury," he said, "why don't I put on a little demonstration then?"

Idris sighed. "If you want to admit defeat, there are easier ways--"

"No, no," Atris cut in with a small smile. "Let's get a demonstration here. I've never been around to see this before, so I'm curious how it all works."

Idris turned to Charlan, who shrugged. "It's not like any of us were close to ending this game any time soon. It's turning into a bit of a slog; why not have something entertaining instead?"

Idris sighed. "Fine, if you all insist."

"So what would you like to look at, gentlemen?" Augur asked his audience.

There was a momentary silence as each of the three men pondered.

Charlan was the first to speak. "How about you tell us what's off limits first, Augur, so we can get a better idea of what we can ask about?"

"Well," Augur replied, "the most important rule to keep in mind is that I cannot scry the future where it involves a force equal to or greater than the one I am tied to. In this case, if something is near equal to or greater than the Rising Zenith Sect, I won't be able to obtain much of anything from looking."

"So we shouldn't go peeking in the backyard of those Setting Nadir bastards then, I guess," Atris observed with a dour frown.

"Correct," Augur agreed, "at least not directly. While I can't look straight at those fellows across the valley, though, I can look at some of the pieces they are moving and see the shape of their actions that way. Like in the kingdoms below."

"I hear that Eastmarch is lively these days. The King is currently taken, ah... ill, and the succession has been thrown into complete chaos as a result," Idris observed with a small wry smile. "While both our sect and those fellows have their fingers in the pie with our preferred candidates, would that be something you could take a look at?"

Augur nodded, "That shouldn't be too difficult. If anything, I'll fail and see nothing, and that too can tell us something in itself. A regular succession shouldn't involve the full force of any power like that of either of our sects, after all."

"Wait one second," Charlan interjected. "An operation that involved securing the Seventh Prince ran into a snag recently and it's possible that Setting Nadir was behind it. There's even a possibility of Heaven's Net poking around, given what that kid is supposed to be carrying. Is it a good idea to be poking and prodding around in all that?"

Augur snorted. "Heaven's Net haven't left their hole for centuries and they have no prophetic tradition. Even if I can't manage to get a read on the situation, we'll at least know the moon witches across the valley are meddling."

"Well, I guess that settles it, doesn't it?" Charlan looked around at his fellows. "Let's see what's in store for the future King or Queen of Eastmarch, shall we?"

The men all gave assenting nods and turned their attention to Augur, who smiled. "Okay, then, it'll just be a moment while I go into the proper trance... now, gentlemen, you'll want to be paying attention to every exact word as I say it. One condition of my technique is that I will have no recall of what I see or say. Your memory of it all will be needed to make something of it."

"Of course, of course," Idris waved Augur in a signal to get on with it already.

Augur leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath, closing his eyes. "The Eastmarch succession..." he muttered as his breathing slowed. A couple of minutes passed in quiet, the hypnotic rhythm of the prophet's breathing the clearest of the sounds around the table.

"I see..." Augur half-muttered, "I see..." The prophet gently rocked in time with his breathing, his brow furrowing above his closed eyes.

"What?" Atris spoke, his voice almost a whisper. "You see what, Augur?"

"Hush," Idris barked, waving off the interruption from the overeager man.

"I see... darkness," Augur said with a sibilant hiss. "A great fog obscures all in Eastmarch's royal house, a shadow looming large over its heirs. I push through it, but it doesn't have an end to it."

The men all glanced at each other in concern. It seemed that the worst case scenario was true: the full force of the Setting Nadir Sect was invested in Eastmarch, and if they were so invested, that meant they were finally making a bold move in their thousand years of contesting one another.

"Wait." Before anybody could interject, Augur spoke again. "I see something else... a light in the darkness... a flickering flame. It's drawing me in, closer, but it doesn't seem to be illuminating anything but itself..." Augur's brow furrowed deeply.

The hush around the table was almost palpable, a force that clamped down on the men and let not so much as a loud breath escape them. Everybody was rapt, focused on what the prophet had to say about his journey through the mists of fate and fortune.

"THE FLAME!" Augur bellowed, and the trio of Elders who had edged in closer to hear him all slammed into the backs of their chairs in surprise. "IT... IT BURNS ME! IT SEARS ME! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!"

The old prophet's hands lifted to his face and covered his eyes as he issued a blood-curdling shriek, but the elders could only look at each other in horror and astonishment. None of them knew how to stop this prophecy technique once it had begun. What were they supposed to do?

"AH! THE DARK SHADOW! THE VOID OF ALL THAT WILL BE! IT SEES ME! IT WILL BREAK US ALL AND USE OUR BONES AS A NEW FOUNDATION FOR HIS PALACE! THERE IS NO HOPE! THERE IS NO ESCAPE!" Augur was raving now, his rhythmic rocking a jerky thrashing. Blood spurted out from between the prophet's fingers, spraying over the game board.

With a particularly violent jerk from his convulsions, the prophet's chair flipped, and he fell backward. The other men jumped to their feet and ran to check on Augur's state.

The old prophet's arms were now splayed to the side against the floor, exposing the man's now-empty eye sockets. Streams of blood flowed down his cheeks and stained his beard as the man sobbed in terror and horror.

"The black melody..." Augur said in a subdued voice that was almost a whisper, "a weapon of utmost malice... the slayer of saints, murderer of gods... he comes... he comes..."

Augur's head fell to the side as he passed out into blissful unconsciousness. His gentle breaths indicated that he still lived, but whether that was a mercy or not was yet to be determined. The other three Elders looked at each other in shock and horror at what was supposed to be a simple demonstration, a trifling look at the mortals that lived insect-like beneath them.

Idris stayed with the prophet while Charlan and Atris fled. Augur needed urgent attention from a healer, and the rest of the elders and the Patriarch himself would need to know about this immediately.