Year 219. Acocaea - Khirn

THE RUNEMASTER

The Runemaster grimaced as the bolts of fire blasted against his chest plate, bounding off in any which way to collide with his own men or those of the Harbingers who now assailed him from all directions. This Loukas Tamasos proved the most dangerous, though his apparent commander—a young man in gilded armor wielding twin swords—proved almost as equal a threat. Many of the Harbingers were dashed aside in moments. Erik had rent their bodies apart with a horrific strength that surged his body to life once again as it already had before in his bouts with the Great Blade, who herself was now engaged in brutal combat with the remainder of his Dekunian host.

Erik deflected a powerful upward cut from Tamasos and kicked the man’s leg from under him. His commander guarded him with dual, short-armed swings Erik blocked with his spear and a shield he had recovered from the ground.

“Keep pushing!” Loukas Tamasos shouted to his Harbingers. “Kill him now!”

Erik roared in defiance, dancing through blade and armor with impossible agility. His armor’s wards were spent, yet very few blows could land on him. The Runemaster barely registered those that did.

“You are an abomination,” Loukas Tamasos growled. He swung for the Runemaster’s head.

Erik deflected and shot his spear for the Harbinger’s face. “And you are a hypocrite, Aslofidorian. Using the ‘Devil’s magic’ for your own gain.”

Tamasos batted the spear aside, grunting as the shaft of the weapon still refused to snap or splinter. “We use God’s power for the survival of our people. For the survival of Good.”

Erik cackled, ducked twin swipes from Tamasos’ commander, and cracked his shield across the face of another Harbinger. “Good? You fight to save Good? What fairy tale is this, Aslofidorian? There is no Good to save. Only your own people!”

Tamasos and Erik traded blow after blow, briefly separating to clash with new foes. Erik focused on Tamasos’ commander in these moments, grunting and howling as the man displayed sharp accuracy for the Runemaster’s weak points.

“You Dekunians sided with the Devil,” Tamasos said as the two re-engaged once more. “The Queen you fight for has accepted powers of darkness, manipulated an aged man into the servitude of oblivion, and sent her son to die in the wilds of this vast land.”

The Runemaster sent a hard kick into Tamasos chest, splitting steel and cracking ribs. “I give no shits about the Queen, her husband, or her pissant son. I fight for myself and my people! I am Maprapeyni!”

A blade pierced the Runemaster’s back, through his left lung, and through his ribs out through the front plate of his armor. Blood flooded his mouth as he looked down at the wound. Shock dulled the pain and his wits. The blade was pulled free, and he staggered around to see the offender. A woman as silver-haired as she was silver-skinned. The woman from Lydoros. The woman who had fought far better than anyone else there. The woman who had been accompanied by the squire he had maimed and mangled.

“You,” he spat, with blood dripping from his lips.

“Sorry we’re late,” he heard the woman say. “Got caught up in divine nonsense on the way here. Judging by what we saw...you understand that all too well.”

Erik grasped at the wound and flashed his teeth in a grimace of pure fury. His eyes rose to the woman, his grip tightening on the spear. He charged her.

Year 219. River Raech - Khirn - One Day Earlier

GÍLA SENGHU

Gíla Senghu stood at the edge of the river with her mouth agape as she beheld the scope of the Runemaster’s army some miles away. Even at this distance, through trees and fields, the force was immense. She felt minuscule, even encased in her proud armor, wielding the great hammer at her hip.

“How are we to fight that?” she asked Jira ne’Jiral, who stood nearby with a whetstone scrapping across the edge of her sword.

Gíla eyed the weapon—a true mastery of Khirnian metallurgy. The smooth, narrow blade was made of composite metals finished with a light blue hue, and its edges were sharp enough that, even stationary, the air was cutting itself against them. The cross-guard, made of the same metal as the blade though with a darker hue, was small and curled and was etched with the sigil of Belanore. The grip was wrapped in blackened goat leather, showcasing a unique golden script, while the pommel, again made of the same metal, bore a bright red ruby. A gift to the Silver Knight—Gíla had learned—from Duke Audax. She could feel the innate arcaeno within it and wondered if Jira knew it bore such power.

“With wit. And patience,” Jira said, drawing Gíla’s attention back to her. “Or barbarism. You’ve read stories on the Golden Lords, have you not?”

“I have. Yet, those are stories. I have yet to see something in reality match such a scale. Even Gortinda paled in comparison to this. It is—”

“—Mythic?” Jira asked. Her eyes spoke of a memory Gíla could not know at that moment.

“Yes. It is strange.”

“Maddening, I should say. A lot of the stories become maddening when matched with reality. It is why I am glad that, thus far, your tales of ancient Nujant Chhank warlords have yet to be proven real.”

“Aren’t we all glad of that?” Prokos added, appearing from the treeline that edged the river. “I, for one, am still awaiting confirmation of my questions regarding God.” He laughed after this and stood next to Jira.

“What questions,” Gíla asked.

Jira scraped the whetstone across the back edge of her blade. “Your stories of ancient pantheons have got the man questioning whether our God is actually God or just a holdover from a dead group.”

Gíla sucked her teeth. “Oh. My apologies. I was unaware you would suffer an existential crisis from the tales.”

“Well, I would be less inclined to suffer it had the entire existence of Khirn and Aqella not already been difficult to rationalize.”

“Ah, yes. The expanse of land that somehow supports...armies like that.” Gíla pointed to the Runemaster’s army for emphasis.

“Do the scholars of the Nujant Chhank say anything on this subject?” Prokos asked. “Your people possess vast libraries, so I would assume.”

“You already told us about Prut and the northern iceland,” Jira said, placing the whetstone in her hip-pouch and sheathing her blade after a quick inspection. “And of how we cannot properly chronicle humanity’s history in Khirn. But what can you recall, if anything, on why Khirn and Aqella are the way they are?”

Gíla hummed and turned her eyes toward the Runemaster’s army. Siege weapons had begun to launch at the walls of Acocaea. All in Jira ne’Jiral’s contingent force gazed toward the ensuing battle. “I find my ability to recall such information hindered at the moment,” Gíla admitted.

“It’s alright, Gíla,” Prokos said, walking up to the Bear Maiden and placing a hand on her shoulder. “With luck, we will not have to join the fight.”

Year 8540. Woodlands of Change - Veirn

GÍLA SENGHU

“But you did, didn’t you?” Pinnacle asked. “At least, Jira did.”

Gíla nodded and looked at Alden as he packed his part of the camp. It was time to move as the horns of Blackstone drew near from the mountains. The Woodlands of Change would remain untouched so long as the Bear Maiden and her students left for safer grounds. “Yes, we did. I did. Prokos. All of us.”

“What of Orlantha Xathia?” Lu’Rorca inquired from behind a bundle of clothing she frantically stuffed into her rucksack. “She had questioned you in that township.”

“Yes, she had. And she was there too. She and Jira had nearly come to blows several times in the journey had it not been for my and Prokos’ intervention. Honestly, the level of distrust that Orlantha felt toward Jira at the time felt ludicrous. How foolish I was, in the end, to not see how right she was.”

Or’Demp squawked with confusion. “What do you mean? Wasn’t Jira your friend even in the end?”

Gíla rose to attend to Thilas and Mordo, helping them pack away cooking equipment, tea bags, and coffee tins. “Of course. But that does not change the fact that I should not have trusted Jira. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted her. Orlantha said as much, and she was right. It wouldn’t be until the rebellion ended that I came to realize that. As for the events of then, well, that is something else entirely.”

“Gíla, don’t,” Alden warned. “Runemaster was enough. They don’t need to hear of this.”

“They do, Alden,” Gíla said. “They need every ounce of context. They need to know why He needed to die.”

“Alright, Gíla,” Alden said low and sad. “If the memory becomes too much for you...stop.”

Year Null. Rotting Wastes - Unknown

GÍLA SENGHU

The flash had erupted without warning. The sky had turned black and starless without warning. The blood rain began to fall without warning. The screams of Jira ne’Jiral’s contingent force echoed without warning, shrilling together so rapidly that it became nothing more than a continuous ringing in the ears. Then, it was all gone. Gíla Senghu stood alone in a great wasteland of dust, ash, sand, and smog. Terrible worm-like things with the skinless heads of horses and the limbs of canines and humans shambled and slithered through the wasteland. Gíla’s stomach churned at the sight, and vomit filled her throat when the putrid stench of the landscape she stood in finally hit her. Decay.

"Jira!" she cried out. "Prokos!"

Gíla took steps toward what felt like the north. A tremendous howling wind chilled her as she did so. Her feet squished with the movement. She looked down at the sand, dust, and ash beneath her feet. It was rotting. The ground beneath her feet was rotting. The vomit in her throat erupted from her mouth and nose, and she fell to her knees. One of the worm-like things rushed over to her, sniffing at her with its fleshless nose. It consumed her sick from the rotting ground before vanishing into the distance again.

“You were drugged,” Gíla told herself as she stood upright. “You were drugged, or you are suffering an ocular migraine, and this is all imagined in your eyes. You are actually blind, and your brain is just forming images from stories you have read. That is what this is.”

She continued forward and marched alone for hours. If hours indeed passed, she could not tell. The sun in the smog-laden sky never moved. She saw limbed snakes protrude from the rotting sand and coil around the worm-like things. They were devoured whole, screaming in human voices. Gíla told herself it was an imaginary vision. Something conjured up by a shattered mind and a barely remembered or wrongfully remembered story. She moved on and on.

Gíla soon came upon the corpses of some men and women from Jira’s contingent. They had killed each other; swords stabbed through their hearts and throats. “What happened?” she asked one of the corpses.

“We saw him,” one of the corpses responded.

Gíla fell to her backside at the sound and sight, screaming and shuddering. Only when her ears stopped ringing and when her heart stopped thumping did she realize that it wasn’t a corpse at all. Barely living but alive, the man Sodon Sana lay in the muck of death. Gíla crawled to him and checked his wounds. He was armorless. A dagger to the chest rather than a sword, close to his heart but cutting nothing vital, at least not openly. With immediate care, he could live. But what care could be provided here?

“What happened?” she asked him again, rummaging through the corpses’ packs and pouches for anything that could help.

“We saw him,” Sodon Sana said once more. “We saw God.”

“What?” she asked, finding what appeared to be emergency supplies in the form of gauze, needles, thread, mending powder, and a vial of alcohol. “What the hell are you on about?”

Sodon swallowed hard as Gíla thought about removing the blade, shook her head, and instead applied the powder and slowly began wrapping the gauze around him, lifting him from the ground to complete the process. “We were walking through this place for weeks...found villages. Found people. Burned people walking around like they were alive. They were moaning to us. We tried to help them. Dardan was the first to die. They swallowed him in pieces. We ran and found an obelisk and a moving city. It looked like we were in Tahrir all of a sudden. A golden giant was operating it, and he smote Phonoes and Hekos. Turned them into burned people. They killed Aknon. We killed them and ran when the golden giant came for us. He turned Xan and Thios into...the ground. Turned them into the ground. We found ourselves here after. Evedon and Ado turned on the rest of us. Just snapped. I barely survived.”

Gíla stared at the man as she finished applying the gauze. Her eyes were wide, and her expression was one of the purest shock. “Okay,” she said after minutes of silence. “Okay. Then let us get up and find Jira. We’re going to get out of here, alright?”

“Alright,” he murmured.

Effortlessly, Gíla cradled Sodon in her arms and marched into the smog.

“Are we going to die, Gíla?” Sodon asked. “I’m not ready to die, to be honest.”

“We’re not going to die,” she said with a forced smile. “We’re going to figure out what’s going on, and we’re going to get out of here. Okay?”

“Okay...I trust you.”

“Good. Did you see Jira at all on your journey? Or Prokos? Or even Orlantha Xathia?"

“No.”

“I did,” a voice rumbled from the shrouding smog around them. “They’re a bit up the ways in the big man’s tower. You can’t miss it.”

Gíla spun around in search of the voice. “Who’s there?” she called out. “Show yourself!”

The voice chuckled. “Ah, why would I do that? Have you seen yourself, big lady? You’re a bear. Standing on two feet. You’re a scary one, to be sure.”

“Of all things in this wasteland, I highly doubt I am the scary one here.”

“Oho, you’re right about that. Definitely right. The big man’s Heaven sure does have a lot of fucked up stuff here. Sooner than later, that big ol’ winged monster is gonna find you out here. It likes to munch and crunch on outsiders like yourself. The big man likes to make sure the only ones who live are the ones inside his tower.” His voice had a distinct drawl, not unlike that of the Iron Halflings in Aqella.

“Can you guide us? Since you’re already being so forthcoming with this information?”

The voice was silent for a moment before responding. “Why should I? What do I get out of this?”

Gíla began to panic and shift her stance. Sodon was starting to weigh on her. “I have nothing at the moment to offer you aside from what I am wearing. Help us escape, and I can promise you a lot more. Knowledge. Coin if that’s what you want.”

The voice laughed. “Knowledge. Knowledge. You’re the first one in a long while to offer that, big lady. Everyone always goes to the coin or the items or the threats. I’m good with knowledge. I could learn a thing or two. Hell’s ringing bells, I need to learn a thing or two. Yeah.”

“I will teach you whatever you wish to know, sir. Please...help us.”

Slowly, a figure began to take shape in what Gíla assumed was the north. A man wearing a pristine green and black coat, no shirt, green and black pants, and a green and black tophat appeared before her. His hair was long and radiantly golden, as was his beard, tied with beads and gems. His skin was slightly tanned and taut over his bones and muscles, which coiled across his exposed chest and stomach like cords and wires. He was as human as he needed to be until the inhumanity of his being set in and froze those looking at him. Gíla was frozen. “Right then. Follow ol’ Milligan. I’ll getcha where you need to be.”

Gíla chased after him. He was fast, his walking speed swifter than her running speed. Each step brought them seemingly closer to nothing. No tower came into view. Sodon grew heavier in her arms. As time passed, the ground grew more rotted, and Gíla felt her feet sinking into it. The smell was unbearable. “How much longer?” she called out to this Milligan. A howl from something in the air blasted the smog clear. Gíla looked up at the sky and saw a great winged thing in the furthest distance. It was rushing toward them, draconic and terrible.

“Just a bit, big lady. Don’t worry about the muncher-cruncher there. He won’t reach us.”

“I hope not! I would like to live.”

Milligan turned his direction, causing Gíla to skid to a stop and scramble to follow him. “Live to write this down, eh? Tell it to some people later on?”

“If possible, yes.”

Milligan hooted and pointed to the nearing winged thing. “Good! Could use someone to tell the masses about my story.”

Gíla hoisted her arms up, cradling Sodon as best she could without risking pressing the dagger deeper into his chest or, worse, dislodging it. “Your story?”

He spun around and ran backward at the same pace. His face was alight with adrenaline. His eyes were burning gold like suns. “Of course. My story. The Tale of Milligan and how he killed Aedol! Or, well, God as you know him.”

Gíla was aghast and nearly dropped Sodon in surprise. “Killed God? You’re going to kill God?”

Milligan nodded. “Might as well! Have you seen the state of this place? Used to be so much better. A lot better. Lots of beautiful women. Lots of beautiful men. Oh! The things they could do for you. They things you could do for them. This was paradise until the big man got messed up in the head.”

“What are you talking about!?” Gíla roared, overwhelmed by the insanity.

“Lots of things I need to teach you, just as you have lots of things to teach me. It’ll be fun! Like...like an exchange program. There’s this place south of Khirn that does things like that. I forgot the name. Oh well. You’ll learn in time! Oh, there’s the tower!”

Gíla blinked the tension in her neck and face away to set her gaze on the appearance of a looming tower of brass. It was infinite in its height and almost as wide as the walls of Amphe. “This is the tower?” she asked against another howl of the winged thing.

Milligan clapped his hands and jumped to sit on the wall next to the doors like a spider. “Yup! Right in there. Look for Orlantha Xathia first. She’ll help you out. Got to know her over the few months she was here.”

“Months?” Gíla nearly screamed. “I’ve only been here for hours.”

Milligan snorted. “Oh, yeah. Time works not the same here. It’s every year concurrently, all the time, never the same time. It hurts the brain. Get inside, find Orlantha, and get that man of yours healed up, yeah?”

Gíla, sweating for the first time in her species’ history, ran inside the tower as the winged thing was merely paces away. The doors closed as Milligan lunged from the wall and sent his fist into its face.

“I hated all of that,” Sodon muttered in the darkness. “I despised all of that.”

“I did too, Sodon,” Gíla agreed. “Let’s find Orlantha... let’s find her and get...get the fuck out of here.”

Through a dim passage of metal and gears, much like those of an Orc city, Gíla carried Sodon in search of Orlantha Xathia. She passed many a grotesque display of machinery, organic remnants, and ancient lore she could spare no time to study. Scripture of alien languages, murals of dead history, and paintings dedicated to ancient pantheons decorated every tunnel, hallway, and staircase she took and climbed. No amount of walking, however, brought her or Sodon closer to finding Orlantha. Before long, she stopped at a landing after climbing the hundredth staircase and called out for the woman. No reply came to her. Behind her was a window that peered out into the wasteland. The winged thing was nowhere to be seen, but hundreds of the limbed snakes and worm-like things wandered unthinkingly and devoured each out.

“I’m going to die here,” Sodon grunted. “I’m going to die in this hellish place.”

“If you die, so am I,” Gíla said with grim mirth. “Might as well, right?”

“You’ll live once I’m not holding you back,” Sodon said. “Your armor is very cold.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have time to remove it. And don’t say that. We’ll figure this out. We just...we just need to figure this out.”

Sodon wheezed. “What’s to figure out? This is God’s place. This is His Heaven. That’s what that man said. I bet you he was an Angel. A guardian.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Devil can’t be in Heaven. And he knew everything about this place. An Angel.”

Gíla shook her head and began to climb the next stairs. “I don’t think that Milligan person was an Angel, Sodon. I think he was a traveler. Just stronger than you or I. More versed in this place. Definitely not human. That’s for sure.”

“Whatever he was, he said he was going to kill God.”

“He did say that.”

“Why would he do that?”

Gíla breathed heavily and stopped. “You are dying in my arms from a dagger stabbed into your chest after your comrades went insane from seeing what lies outside this tower. God’s Heaven, right? I’m not a believer in God, and even I want to kill him after seeing all of that. And you suffered worse than me.”

Sodon’s wheezing increased. “Prokos...Prokos said to me once what you told him. About the other gods that used to live in the world. Other pantheons. He was scared that our God is just a survivor. A holdover. What if he’s right?”

Gíla laughed mirthlessly. “If he is, then we have bigger issues than a rebellion, don’t we? Much bigger.”

“I suppose so,” he giggled. He was pale and ice-cold through her gauntlets. A thin yellow liquid was running down the corners of his mouth. “I can’t think of an issue bigger than our God being nothing more than someone else’s God. Survived beyond his betters. Would explain some things, no? I always believed in God. Papa raised me like a good Aslofidorian. Mama too. We went to church and said the praises. But I always wondered why He was—”

Sodon died in Gíla’s arms without warning.

“Sodon?” Gíla softly shook her arms. The man didn’t respond. “Sodon, wake up. This isn’t funny, Sodon. I didn’t run all this way just for you to die like this. I didn’t carry you up one hundred stairs for you to die like this!”

Gíla let the tears run free. Why? She asked herself this many times as she climbed more stairs and walked through more halls carrying his body. Why did he have to die? Why did any of them have to die? Was it fair? Was this God’s plan? She repeatedly asked these questions until her legs finally gave out. She fell onto her face, dropping Sodon’s body onto the ground.

“Why?” she asked audibly. Her armor creaked with movement.

The floor was slick and covered in oil. Footsteps slapping in that oil alerted her, but the weakness in her body and the heaviness of her armor kept her from reacting.

“Gíla?” she heard a distinctly accentless voice ask. “Is that you?”

Gíla craned her head as much as she could. Orlantha Xathia stood over her, her armor and features impeccable. She appeared in better health than she had back at the River Raech. “Oh...now you show up.”

Orlantha knelt and placed her hand on Gíla’s head. “You were outside the tower. I can see the flecks of ash in your fur. Did you meet Milligan?”

“I did. He told me to find you. Said you could save Sodon.”

Orlantha turned to face the dead man and sighed. “I can. We have to take him to the Heartforge, though.”

“The what?”

“Ah. How long have you been here?”

“Hours only. Milligan said you were here for months.”

“Yes. I have been. Fighting, exploring, looking for anyone else. Trying to escape. The most I saw was Prokos at a distance. He’s well enough. That was last week.”

“Well, I am glad that Prokos is alright.”

“Can you stand?”

Gíla attempted and failed. “Not really.”

Orlantha curled her lips in disappointment. “Hm. That’s a problem. Eventually, the creatures of this place are going to catch your scent if they haven’t already. They’ll track you down. Eat you alive.”

“Like the burned people in the villages outside?”

“Yes. Like them. You need to get up, Gíla. I have a feeling I won’t survive this without you.”

Gíla snorted. “That does very little to spur me on to get up. You’ve been very problematic.”

Orlantha smacked her lips. “Are you going to hold my actions on the march against me? Now?”

Gíla thought about it. “I suppose not. I will once we’re free and the battle is over.”

“Good. Now, get up. We have quite a trek ahead of us.”