Eadward sat alone in his study, where the light of his many wax candles illuminated the full scope of his collection. Hundreds of books, dozens of tomes, hundreds if not thousands of papers and scrolls. They were all various accounts of history, religion, and mythological lore told from the perspective of the multiple churches and leading classes that had ruled alongside the King of Aslofidor. Most were fictitious narratives buried under the smothering restrictions of Aslofidor Minloda, designed to either not mention the existence of God's Gift or damn it as the work of the Devil Below.

However, his fingers - crooked and aged, yet still strong - were tracing the enamoring texts of a particular tome recovered from his pilgrimage on the Divine Road. He had found it in the frozen tundras of Belanore, specifically in the hands of a pedaling merchant squatting in the ruins of an old church under the watchful eye of a worn, terrifying statue. He had sought to forget the visage of the thing, but reading the tome now had brought its image to his mind once more. It was no less than fourteen feet in height, slithered on its pedestal like a serpent and wielding a lightning-shaped spear in its right hand. Its left was clutched tight into a fist, though various missing parts from the hand gave Eadward the impression that it was once holding something there as well. Though its features were no longer identifiable, Eadward felt a particular draconic essence emanating from the cracks in its surface, most notably from the broken spots on its back that the Bishop felt were once wings. Shudderingly cold in its presence despite the tepid heat of the savanna, Eadward took the tome off the smiling merchant's hands and went about his way.

For some odd reason, he had only ever found the courage to read it rarely in the years following his return from the Divine Road. Something about the way it looked and felt in his grasp made him queasy and, on one occasion, so nauseous that he vomited his breakfast. A foolish man would have deemed this book thusly evil, perhaps even toss it away and never look back with regret. But Eadward, a wiser man - a learned man - felt that it was because its enriching, holy words could not yet be divulged outside of mere moments of reading. That whatever it spoke of could only be understood by a truly worthy and willful man.

This was now one of those moments, and Eadward was one such man. His encounter with Oudet below the cathedral and his reassurance that he was on the right, proper path filled him with such confidence that he felt now was the time to open the tome once more.

In its yellowed, crinkled pages, it told of many things in the language of Ancient Tahrir as well as another language that was seemingly translated into the former for the sake of comprehension. Eadward, thus, had to further translate this into modern-day Tahririan, which he was fortunately fluent in. Each tale was disconnected from the previous. Yet each was also so undeniably profound that Eadward felt tears well in his eyes as his heart thundered in his chest. Stories and accounts that many would consider mystical, but the Bishop recognized as spiritual. Personal encounters with God's Host during the most troubling times of the Vamourin dynasty and the remnants of the chaotic warlords that came before them. Whispers of God Almighty's healing words during bouts of corruption from the Devil Below.

For a moment, it was as if Eadward could hear the words themselves reaching through time, transcribed on the pages in the most radiant of golden lettering. But, most intriguingly was its tale of a deep cave system in the west of the Vamourin dynasty before the Aslofidorian bloodline came into power - present-day Tahrir. Back when the five kingdoms were united as one before the ruination wrought by Aslofidor Minloda. A cave system so isolated, so vast that only one expedition in history had ever returned - that expedition being the apparent, nameless authors of this text. Within this cave system, the expedition found something that altered their understanding of God's Gift even beyond what they had already learned in previous months.

Unfortunately, whatever it was that they had found was impossible for the Bishop to translate on his own. The silver lining, he concluded, was that until he had acquired this book from that merchant, that cave system could have remained lost to time forever. As Eadward closed the book on the onset of nausea, he vowed to himself that he, too, would find it and uncover what they uncovered.

The Bishop rose from his desk and lifted the heavy tome into his hands. Carefully plodding over to the shelf from which he had retrieved it, Eadward began planning the logistics of such an endeavor. It would take multiple guilds of his Lambency, no fewer than three, with additional five cohorts of volunteers from the united forces of the five kingdoms. Four hundred and eighty each for a total of two thousand four hundred men and women willing to see this most honorable goal achieved.

Eadward smiled as he imagined the glory of coming home with the knowledge from that cave system, wondering if it would be the final necessary catalyst for Khirn's evolution into a new brighter world. He swallowed hard to quell the rising shaking in his body as the pure passion of it began to overtake him. His breaths became shallow then, and confused humor rose where his heart once thundered with joy, tremors in his feet causing him to stumble and brace against the bookshelf where the tome now rested.

A static noise filled the room. Hitting his eardrums - piercing them - without warning. His tremors worsened. His nose began to run with a stream of loosened mucus tinged with blood. His vision became blurry and dotted, his throat running dry, and his attempts to form noise strangled silent.

White light shot into the chamber like a shock of arrows and javelins. Pain wracked his body as vibrations tore through the reality he inhabited, shattering the wall of protection between his existence and the world beyond. For a flash of time, Eadward saw - or later assumed he saw - a room of brass veiled behind the white, a figure shining with bronze, grease, and blue standing at the forefront of a cascading storm.

He dropped to the floor as the tremors continued with such fervor that the shelves toppled over, nearly crushing him as he covered his eyes with his arms, shimmying back against the nearest wall for safety. A crack of thunder erupted volcanic and monstrous and Eadward screamed silently as his head thrummed with ache, the veins in his temples pounding with blood.

Silence filled the room, as did smoke and falling debris. Singed papers and empty book covers coated the room like a blanket of ash.

Eadward rose from behind the toppled bookcases, fear written on his face like the texts he so loved. What he saw in that flash of white had not yet registered in his mind and would not register until he saw it in person sometime later. Panic hitched his throat as he saw the total carnage of whatever destruction had just been wrought upon him. He breathed hard and quick, unable to mutter a single noise beyond the entrance and exit of air in his lungs. His mind raced a million miles as he slowly stumbled back to where the light had first shown, using his hands to brush away the smoke and cinders of burning books.

Something came upon him. A figure as large as a golem and as quick as an enraged bull, so quickly and ferociously that any scream that could have come from his throat was merely a soundless grimace. It was tall, tall enough for him to crane his head up twice before he reached the top, and wider than a statue with arms and legs so thick they could have served well as trees or battle hammers. Its body - the parts not hidden by the thick, murky clothing that smelled distinctly of oil - was pitch black and furry. The closer it came to him, the more he was able to see that its face was unmistakably ursine in appearance with blazing gold eyes that beamed down on him like miniature suns.

He fell backward onto his rear, hands extended in front of himself as his voice finally returned to form the words: "Please! Please don't!"

The figure - the thing - was silent for a full minute, and Eadward could see that it either had not noticed him at all or was uncaring of his instantly minuscule presence. At least until he began to move in an attempt to rise back up to his feet and run. It stepped forward and he finally began to form a scream, only to have the thing cover his mouth with a massive hand and bring the other one up to its own.

"Shhhhh!" it hushed. "Don't scream, I am a friend. Nod if you understand that."

Eadward did not nod but instead shuddered and fought to keep himself from releasing his bowels into his clothing. The thing softly tightened its grip on his face. He could feel his bones creaking against the tension. Footsteps resounded outside the room, prompting the thing to grab a nearby ruin of a bookshelf and slam it against the door, and then another - all the while holding the Bishop by his face and effectively blocking the door from opening.

It turned back to him as the door began shaking from the soldiers banging against it. "I am a friend. Do you understand me?" it asked again. "I am not going to kill you, but I will make sure you can't ruin this for me. Okay?"

Eadward could barely understand the logic behind that statement but nodded all the same and sighed a breath of relief as the thing took its hand from his now bruising face. The two stared at each other for a long while, Eadward wondering if the door would break open for his guards to slay this thing and save him. Of course, he knew that they would never be able to do that. The door was made of reinforced ironwood blessed by his greatest Luminances.

"My thanks," he grumbled, rubbing his smarting flesh as the thing backed away from him toward the remnants of his desk. "Who are you?"

"A scholar," it replied. "I am looking for something and the big man said you had it."

"I am sorry?" the Bishop asked, stepping forward. His eyes widened as the thing brushed his carefully collected and written pamphlets, scrolls, and books off his desk, tore out his drawers, and then stomped over to the still standing bookshelves. "What are you doing?" he demanded, his voice higher than he intended.

"Looking for a book," the thing responded. The smoke of its entrance had cleared enough for Eadward to clearly make out the thing in its full form. His heart raced once more as he realized just what stood before him.

"You...you're a Drayheller," he gawked, immediately forming the sign of worship with his hands and bowing his head as deeply as his old bones would allow. "One of God's greatest creations. His Archivists."

The Drayheller stopped their search. He could feel them staring at him, confused. "What the hell are you on about?" it asked.

"The Drayheller are His brightest minds in this world. The ones who understand His creation better than any other soul in existence. I've studied it. I learned it on my pilgrimage. I met many of you in Belanore."

The Drayheller scoffed. "I am flattered, but that's not entirely true. That would be the Kolgian. Bunch of prissy hooting bastards because of it, I'll tell you what."

Eadward looked up. "The what?"

The Drayheller shook its head. "Nevermind. Hell Below, man, why are you bowing to me? Stop it and help me search for this damnable book."

He rose his head immediately and shuffled over to the Drayheller, hands still forming the sign of prayer. "What is it that you are looking for exactly?"

The Drayheller took a moment to respond. "I am looking for a book that discusses...important things."

Eadward was quiet, trying his damndest to remember if he had such a book. Ultimately, he could not and moved closer to the Drayheller, his hands still propped up in the sign of prayer. "I...I can help you look for it if need be. I am not sure if I have amongst my collection, which you've unintentionally damaged, but I can...I can take you to the city's archives."

The Drayheller shook its head. "Hopefully, that won't be necessary. The big man said that you specifically had it here in your study. It has a brown leather cover with a symbol on the front. Triangular shapes, like mountains conveniently enough. What was it called?"

The Bishop breathed raggedly as he recalled the book, but before he could speak, the Drayheller grabbed the edge of his desk and flipped it over, kneeling down to examine the books that lay scattered on the floor. The pounding on the door had increased, shouts of worry and demand now resonating through the gap on the bottom.

"I should let them know that I am alright," the Bishop told his new guest. "They won't stop until they are certain I am okay, and I would rather not see them start breaking through the ceiling or the windows."

"Fine," they said. "But don't let them in. You let them in and that's going to create problems for me and thus problems for the big man. And he doesn't want any more problems than he already has going for him."

Eadward turned his head to the side. "Who is this...big man you keep talking about?"

"My boss. Just tell your cronies to back off and let me look."

Eadward nodded, feeling an unmistakable lack of control in this situation, something he was not used to at all. Still, he moved over to the door and began speaking to the men outside. "Soldiers of the King, listen to me," he said. The pounding on the door lessened only slightly. "I am of good health and good safety. Please refrain from further attempts to break in."

"Your Excellency!" one of the men shouted. "What's going on? What happened?"

"A..." he turned to the Drayheller. "What do I say?"

They shrugged without looking back at him. "Tell them the truth if you want, I don't care. Oh, here, tell them that, uh, God Almighty sent his researcher to look for something. Okay? It's at least truthful to a degree. You folk have become mighty religious in the past few years, so...try that."

Eadward stood dumbfounded by the casual revelation the Drayheller had just given him. "What did you say?"

"Tell them that I was sent by God Almighty to you ti search for something."

"G-God-God Almighty sent you?" Eadward asked in a voice as brittle as an old rusted dagger.

The Drayheller looked back at last. "Devil take me...yes, okay. The big man is God. Happy? He needs this book before things get worse."

"The...the M-Most Holy se-sent you to me?" Eadward fell to the ground and prostrated himself before the Drayheller, his hands held up in the sign of prayer. "Oh God, Our Lord in Heaven, I praise You for sending unto me Your Servant. I expect no reward higher than this. I praise Your name and trust in me to assist Your Servant in this noblest of goals."

"Stop it!" the Drayheller roared so loudly that the walls shook in fear, and those outside the door audibly fell back onto their rears. Eadward looked up in deafened terror.

"Have I insulted you?" he asked.

The Drayheller took a breath. "No. No, I just need your malfaring help looking for this book. I don't need your prayers; God doesn't need your prayers; he needs me to find this book. Okay? Simple malfaring task. Understood?"

Eadward rose to his feet and shook himself as clear of the overwhelming emotion from the Drayheller's revelations as he could. He understood the goal perfectly and in the presence of one of His Servants, he would conduct himself properly. "I know where the book is," he said.

"You see them?" Milligan asked.

Orlantha smacked her lips and looked to her companion, her brows furrowed. "How could I not see them? They are in the middle of the road. They set up a barricade, Milligan. Please."

Milligan held up his hands and chortled. "Alright, sorry. I didn't mean to offend."

The Raven shook her head and grunted. "I know I lack whatever hyper senses you possess, but I am not blind. I can see just fine. I can see them just fine."

"Wow, someone's in a foul mood today," Milligan chortled again. "What's got you all upset?"

She glared at Milligan. "Our horses are barely able to move on a good day because of the weather. We have been besieged by bandits every day. You can't keep yourself from the tavern wenches. I think I am getting sick from the rain. I am tired of seeing abandoned villages. And I am tired of seeing the putrified corpses of children on the road. I just want to get to Veoris, get to the mountains, find the damned dagger you're looking for and go back to the village we met each other at."

"You know, you were a lot more professional when we first met."

"And I am now very close to regretting joining you just because of your damned father."

Milligan glared back, though he never dropped his fanged smile. "It's not my fault that my father-"

"Your father is the reason any of this even happened. I lost everything in my life because of him."

Milligan looked back towards the barricade in the near distance. "Then why are you helping me save him?"

The Raven grumbled, grabbing the hilt of her saber and pulling it free from its scabbard. "If he dies, everything gets worse. That is what you said. And if it does not get better, then I have a good reason to kill him anyways."

Milligan's glare morphed into a genuinely amused expression. "Do you think I'd let you kill him after we save him?"

"You cannot seem to kill me yourself. At least, that is what you say. Besides, I think that if the situation does not get better like you said it would or gets worse regardless, the Devil himself would not be able to stop me from killing that bastard. And if you tried to stop me, I would just kill you too. It is a win-win, and if I died after all, then I would not have to worry about it anyway. I won nothing, I lost nothing."

"You really think you could kill me too? You didn't think so in the forest."

"It was dank, rotting, and filled with mud and impeding canopies, and Caerux had knocked me down with his flailing."

Milligan threw a hand up and huffed, pulling the reins to draw the horses to a stop. "You know what? Fine. Do you think you're strong enough? Deal with those men by yourself. All of them. Every single one. Let's see how you do by yourself without me helping out."

The Raven scoffed. "Are you serious?"

"I am. Go on. Show me how much I should worry if my predictions aren't true."

She bared her teeth and jumped out of the cart, momentarily walking backward to stare at Milligan's smug face. Turning around, she began to analyze the group ahead. In the light of the dying sun, she counted at least ten people in poor armor wielding maces, shields, swords, and spears, all of them hiding behind a shabby barricade of spiked wood and wood slabs. The land around them was a mire of writhing vines, craggy spires that were once trees, and marshes of muck that could sink a destrier in seconds. In a pinch, she could lead some of them over to it and trap them to drown in the black sludge, but would Milligan consider that as lesser than her simply killing them all with a weapon? She twirled her saber in a flourish some twenty feet from the maximum range of a spear throw and stopped just at the edge of it, stifling a cough that rose in her lungs.

"Halt! State your name and business walking the King's roads," the burliest of the men called out. "Refuse, and you will be detained and searched."

The Raven curled her lips into a snarl of disgust. "I am afraid I will have to deny your request, though I will demand that you state your business for barricading it," she countered. Her grip on the saber's handle tightened.

The burly man snorted and stepped out from behind his barricade. He wielded a large two-handed spiked maul and had donned the most protective of the armor available to him and his men. From the distance she stood from them, she made out a distinctive patchwork of various pieces of leather, each layer bonded by studded strips, with a protective slab of iron along his belly. These are no more than bandits. Highway robbers. Organized to take out the unsuspecting.

His voice was a bloodhound's growl. "We are soldiers of the King, protecting the healthiest and greatest of his lands from the faithless and the accursed."

"And how long have you been ordered to do that?" Orlantha asked, performing another flourish with her blade.

"Until the church finds it appropriate to bring on the new world."

This nonsense again. "Bring on the new world." She began to pace the edge of the range. "I have heard the same spiel several times before, my good man," Orlantha said. Her voice, unlike the one she used in the presence of Milligan, had taken on its apathetic qualities - an apathy so profound it could be considered the greatest of disdain. "I have little patience to hear it again."

The man snorted again. "Then you should know we have little patience to be denied our duties and demands. You would do well to understand our position."

"I also have little patience to be held up any longer on this journey of mine by more bandits. Please move your barricade aside and let us pass."

The burly man looked to his cohorts, who shared in a rumbling belly laugh. "You mistake us, miss. We're not bandits. We're soldiers of the King, and-"

The Raven stepped beyond the edge of spear range, her star-bright eyes gleaming in the dying orange glow of the sun. The burly man took an instinctive step back, sharing a glance with one of his two spearmen. She cracked her neck as tension grew in her body. "No, you are not. I knew real soldiers," she said. "True, proper soldiers who believed in their ideals and the cause they fought for. You are nothing more than a band of miscreants hiding behind deceit, and you deserve to die for it. But, I am feeling ill and will give you one chance more to move aside and let me and my companion pass."

Another shared laugh, this one guttural. "You have quite the bravery, woman," the burly man said. "I'll give you one last chance. Don't make us use force."

Orlantha sighed in exasperation, then smirked ever so lightly in anticipation.

The space where she had been standing burst into a cloud of dust from the cobblestone surface. The burly man cried out and the spears of the two wielding them were thrown. Orlantha voided the first with such ease as to have been an incorporeal wraith to its blade. The second was less successfully dodged but dodged all the same - its blade carving through the layers of her coat and through two inches of her right arm. She buried a grimace and continued running, reaching such a speed that when the burly man swung his maul for her head, he missed entirely as the red-haired woman leaped over him and onto the opposite side of the barricade.

Granting herself a second of self-praise for the nearly impossible feat - accomplished only through sheer adrenalized indignation at the absolute state of the world - the Raven performed a quick lunge for the first of the spearmen who had produced a shortsword. The blade of her saber cut through his face just underneath his nose, a glut of blood rushing down its fuller. Orlantha spun around to slash it across the exposed throat of the second spearman, cutting through his jugular and trachea, leaving him tumbling to the ground as blood fountained from his neck. The next of the "soldiers" rushed her, swinging for her face with his arming sword. Orlantha parried and stuck the blade into his eye as he completed his downward trajectory. He yelped like a kicked dog and reached up to grasp at his face, only to die seconds later. The Raven found that the attack had consequently lodged her weapon in his skull. Quickly retrieving the dead man's arming sword, Orlantha rushed the next two, slicing open one from the armpit through his ribs, leaving him gasping as his lung was left with a gash. A ripost and upcut follow-through nearly decapitated the second, his head flung back and held to his torso by his spine alone. Five down. Five to go.

"Harold!" the burly man cried as the nearly decapitated man fell onto his back.

He lunged for her, swinging his maul with such ferocity that the very air was capable of pushing the Raven away. She nearly impaled herself on the blade of the man behind her, who stabbed at her with a primal screech. Pivoting saved her from this fate, though another man armed with a mace cracked her along the back, dropping to her to hard ground. She scrambled against the pain, stifled a series of growing coughs as the exertion of the bout roused whatever growing sickness had laid to roost inside her chest, and barely voided a series of swings from the three men. A parry of a fourth saw his throat cut open. A fifth charged her with his body, tackling her down as she escaped more attacks from the other three. Instinctively jabbing her fingers into his eyes, Orlantha pushed the screaming man off and rolled away just as the maul came down for her head.

"You're doing great!" Milligan suddenly called from the other side of the barricade.

The Raven snarled. The man with the mace was the first to try her again, swinging hard but finding his arm snatched in her hands and snapped broken. Grabbing the falling weapon mid-air, Orlantha swung up and crushed the man's jaw. She ducked a wild swing from the leader, who had become so enraged and blind with his attacks that he smashed the face of the man to his right. Orlantha pivoted, cracking her new weapon against the temple of the last "soldier" before finally standing off against the leader.

"I'll give you one last chance to surrender," she offered, allowing her voice to take on a tone of mockery.

The leader bellowed and charged her with a series of vicious swings. She voided each one, her breathing controlled and deep, leading him as she worked her way back to the dead man who held her saber in his skull. She rolled under another attack, rising up to her knee to smash the mace against the side of his knee, bending it inward. He cried out and crumbled, granting her enough time to pull her weapon free from the skull before leaping at him and skewering it through the first few inches of the burly man's nasal cavity. He choked and gurgled, his hands reaching up in some attempt to plea for his life.

This miscreant. This criminal. This beast. Does he dare plead for his life? A crackle sparked her brain - a jolt of electric judgment - as she looked at him. Orlantha's face darkened. The green of her eyes shone through the blackness like the bear-maiden's suns, so bright and full of hatred that the very aura of them was capable of serving as spotlights. She sliced the blade up, carving the man's face open from nose to eye socket. She sliced the blade down, leaving a deep gash from forehead to jaw that spilled blood so ruinous in her vision that it appeared like sludge. Another slice, and another, and another until the man was left twitching and unrecognizable.

Orlantha dropped her saber and breathed hard. She turned around in time to see Milligan pull the head off the man whose eyes she had blinded. He shared a look with her, savage and proud. Only then did she allow herself to breathe heavily and feel the effects of the coughs she had stifled. Milligan, having tossed away the head, approached her and placed a hand on her shoulder, steadying the red-haired woman as she began to sway from the growing pain in her lungs.

"Alright," he said with a grin. "I'll be warier of you. You ready to keep moving?"