Part 1

- ELODOR A. EVERGARD’S POV -

The sea breeze always felt strange to me, alien, even if I spent a quarter of my life near the shores. Yet I never disliked it. With every breath of that salty air, it seemed as if countless tiny, little bubbles burst in my lungs, sending forth refreshing shivers. It was a spike of energy, that first breath of morning air. That morning was no different.

The harbor was full of life, as always, even though the sun had first made its appearance just short of an hour ago. Ships were being loaded, cargo moved from warehouse to carriages, and the fishing ships that had just returned were about to set up shop as sailors of all ages and races struggled to get rid of last night’s hangover. It was a refreshing sight no matter how many times I looked at it. Nothing like the noble’s gatherings I had become accustomed to attending. This kind of sight, this chaotic and full of life sight, reminded me of my days as an adventurer, when I was young, stupid, and full of pride in my blood, wanting nothing other than prove myself. Prove all those that doubted me and shunned me wrong.

[It matters not now…] I sighed mentally as I felt what little remained of my youthful rage boil as I recalled those unlucky moments.

I looked to my right and calmed down. Beside me stood my daughter, Sora. She had decided to follow me as soon as she hear my purpose for going back to our house in the War lands. I knew her reason. I knew just how much she desired information. Information I did not have, that I couldn’t gather. Yet now, despite the saddened expression she used to carry around while at our main house, her eyes were hopeful, as if a small fire had started anew. I liked that. It was enough reason to have brought her with me.

Finally, the bells rang signaling the arrival of a new ship. I squinted my eyes and used my hands to shield me from the sun. The ship was far, too far away to distinguish one face from the other but close enough to see the flag billowing in the wind atop the mast. It was the flag that I saw hanging on the walls of the royal castle, on the barracks, and all around the capital’s streets. It was Argon’s flag. I couldn’t forget it.

[She’s here!] I thought as my heart began beating at a faster rate.

It took a while before the ship sailing under Argon’s colors dropped the anchor and made port. The wait was eating me away. I couldn’t take out of my head the letter she sent me. I just couldn’t. She had always been cryptic and of few words, not to mention her strange behavior, but it never got to this point. Never had she left the comfort of her forest, not in body at least, to start a voyage to another continent with her only notice being a two-lines letter. I had never understood that woman and I had a feeling I never would.

Finally, the bridges dropped and some harbor workers rushed to fix them to the pier with ropes. One by one, those upon the ship descended. Some were carrying boxes and crates, others were rolling barrels while others, those who looked nothing like sailors, leisurely walked off the ship as they took in the sight of a new city. I knew she was among them. That was the day she said she would come and I knew better than to mistrust her words. Not to mention how few ships sailing under Argon’s flag visited those shores. I began tapping my finger on the iron of my belt, anxiously. Then, she appeared, escorted by two high-born-looking elves and hunched as I remembered. She did not age one day yet still managed to look as old as a mountain. Unconsciously, a grin took form on my face. Our eyes met as she was about to take the last step off the bridge and a faint smile cracked her thin lips. She pointed at me with a boney finger and the two elves escorting her helped her walk her way to us. I had first planned to help her out myself but she had already taken the initiative and I knew how stubborn that woman was, thus I waited a little longer.

“Thanks, dears-” Said the woman with a voice so warm yet so old “- I will be fine. You should help the ship’s crew. A kind gesture for the trouble of bringing us all the way here”

“As you wish madame!” The two replied in unison with voices not louder than a whisper yet clear as crystal to my ears.

It was finally just us. For a moment I had forgotten about my own daughter as thoughts of my youth came running through my head like a swollen river. She didn’t seem to have aged a single day. The same exact appearance from my memories almost eighty years ago. Her long, ashen hair tied in two thin braids, one that circled her head like a crown adorned with leaves of jade and the other twirling around a long ponytail that reached down to her waist. Her tunic was the same, the only thing that changed was the color. It was a long tunic with wide sleeves that reached down to her ankles. It used to be of a brownish color but it was now purple. More regal, more…proper. It was broided with silver and jade-colored threads, creating shapes that spoke of nature. Vines entwined along her collar, shoulders and sleeves. Leaves and trees where the tunic met her legs. Feathers and simple flowers where purple seemed to reign supreme.

Her old visage did not change. It did not age or wither. It did not grow tired or pale, sick or moribund. She was still the same. Her golden eyes shined with the same light they did when she used to scold me. And neither changed how glassy they looked, always glancing at something else, something far away. Even her wrinkles were all the same, at least as my memory recalled. Most likely a few new ones had appeared but not enough to alter her appearance. Even that cocky yet warm smile of hers remained the same, along with the gold tooth sticking out like a sore thumb every time she parted her lips.

“It’s a pleasure seeing you in good health, Madame Manto-” I said as I moved my hands behind my back and bowed enough so that the highest point of my head was below her line of sight “- It is a great honor to be able to personally receive the seer of the royal palace and elder of the Ruling council”

“*Sigh* I suppose it is fair-” Madame Manto replied as she tapped my forehead gently with one finger “- It is a very smart attempt but you forget, little Eli, that I know you better than you would like. I shall not be bribed by just this amount of courtesy. Is this perhaps a rouse to appear dignified in the eyes of your daughter?”

“Could you not foil my plans so easily?-” I asked chuckling just slightly as I rose to my height and looked the woman back in the eyes “- I would like to appear somewhat competent in her eyes every once in a while…and please, that name. There is no need for it anymore, is there?”

“Never!-” Said the woman firmly as she stomped her sandal on the ground “- I will never call you anything other than little Eli. You may grow taller than me, you may find a wife and start a family, you may gain status among the kingdoms of men, but in my eyes, you will never be anything else than little Eli”

“As always-” I sighed as I let my hand wash over my face and pull on the skin around my jaw in a playful fed-up show “- no matter how far you may see, you close your eyes to whatever you feel like”

The old elf smiled, or rather grinned until the corners of her mouth curled up a little. She tilted her head like a cat and pried her eyes off mine. Her focus shifted to the girl on my side. She had been silent this whole time. Was it out of curiosity for the conversation or respect for the elder? Either way, she seemed to have caught the eye of Manto who was now standing close, face-to-face with my daughter.

“You have grown a most beautiful flower, dear-” Madame Manto said with a motherly soft voice as she twirled a lock of Sora’s hair “- I know how eager and how much you torture yourself inside, but I cannot answer your questions now. There is something I must do, once I am back, I shall listen to your every question…-” Said the woman as she walked past my daughter and patted her on the head “- Now, Eli, I wish not to waste time. I am anxious and I wish to learn the answers to my questions as soon as possible…I believe you have prepared a carriage for us, yes?”

“I have-” I replied as I patted my daughter on the shoulder and gestured the vague direction of our house with a movement of the head “- But you knew that already, of course. It’s just around the corner, let me call for your guards”

“No need-” Manto said, stopping me from shouting at the two elves currently helping a bunch of sailors to carry down the ship what seemed like a piano “- It is something I do not wish to share and those two know it. Worry not, there will be no need for guards and no violence or threat will impede our path. I have seen it…Now lead the way”

Without a single wasted second, Manto led us to the carriage I had prepared and instructed the coachman to bring us to the nearest site affected by the labyrinth. A village now housing almost double its previous capacity due to the afflux of survivors and those whose homes and towns were destroyed. It was short of two days’ distance but due to Madame Manto’s health and old age, it took us three full days to complete the trip.

The morning we arrived, the very moment I woke her up and told her of our position, Madame Manto’s eyes took on a crazed look. She had ceased to be the calm and warm self I had always known and instead looked and behaved like a madman. She jumped out of the carriage and marched through the crowded streets of the village as her head darted from one side to the other, looking for something. I hurried to follow her but struggled to maintain her pace and random change of direction. For more than ten minutes I chased her shadow as she slithered between people like a slippery snake. Then, suddenly, she froze in place with her mouth agape.

We were at the edge of the village, where three roads converge into one and, a couple of hundred meters north of their meeting point, the easternmost scar left by the closure of the labyrinth polluted the surrounding green with its blight. It was an ugly thing. As if the ground was scorched by fire, the earth was as black as the night where no flowers, trees, or grass ever grew. I had already seen it, especially the monstrous scar left in the middle of the ruins of Migur, yet it still was able to instill a sense of terror.

Madame Manto began rambling to herself as she began to walk once more toward that blackish scar. She moved and wobbled as if her torso and legs were two separate entities. It was creepy yet mesmerizing in a way I could not describe in other ways than ancient. As if I was spectating a primordial dance. The two hundred meters ended suddenly, so abruptly that I could barely recall having walked them all behind Madame Manto.

She stood there, at the edge of the scar and kneeled before the black dirt. She scooped up a handful of it, rubbed it between her hands, and watched it fall before her eyes. Then, her back slumped as if the tiredness of her hundreds of years crushed her all at that moment. I saw her fall as my legs moved before I could even shout her name. I was holding her back and neck as I felt her body grow heavier under its weight. Her golden pupils were gone, rotated back in her eye sockets. Panic grew and grew as I received no response from the old seer. I shook her once, twice, five times before her eyes snapped back where they belonged and the weight on my arms diminished.

“Oh thank the gods!-” I exclaimed as the woman looked me in the eye and huffed ragged breaths full of physical fatigue “- For a moment I thought you had died! What happened Manto?”

“...It’s here!” The seer replied losing that crazed look she had before but maintaining the bright hue shining in her eyes.

“It’s here?-” I repeated with an incredulous tone, shocked by the absence of sense in the words of the woman I held in such high respect “- What’s here, Madame Manto? Please talk to me!”

There was a pause. A silence that lingered over us, over than entire green expanse. There was no sound. No chirping of birds, no crickets, no wind, no rodents scurrying around…the absolute absence of sound. An absence that spoke of foreboding. I felt my throat constrict and my saliva become more viscous than it should. Madame Manto’s hands jumped to each side of my face with the speed of an expert’s sword and her eyes bore into mine with an intensity I had never seen before.

“Five locks, one key…I received a vision months ago, a week before I sent you the letter…Five locks, one key. Something other than a spirit granted it to me, something greater, something I could not recognize nor speak to. I simply received it and gathered the fragments, the crumbs, this great being shared with me…Five locks, one key. It’s important, Ali. Five locks, one key”

“I understand, Madame-” I said as I forced myself to slow my breathing and calm down my running mind “- Please, calm down and explain to me so that I may grasp it as you have”

“No!-” She shouted, strengthening her grip around my face “- Not as I have! Better, Ali, better!”

“Yes, Madame, I will understand better” I replied, deciding to muse her since the state she was in was not one dictated by sanity.

“Good…Yes, good. Five locks, one key, Ali. This is what’s important. Five locks, closed since the beginning, none can open it except one key. None can close them once opened…Two have been unlocked. The key has turned twice, three turns remain. They must not be unlocked” She spoke with a toneless voice but eyes burning with fiery fury, as if I was staring at liquid gold melting as I listened.

“What happened if all locks are opened?” I asked, prompting the seer to speak more of her prophecy.

“War. The end of our world brought forth by the very manifestation of war. They must not be unlocked. Darkness will swallow our lands, rivers will run red, ash will cover our city as our walls will crumble and black clouds will cover the sun and stars…The first lock was the meeting, then came the fall, next is the reunion, the loss and then, death”

“Then, what’s the key? How can it be stopped?” I asked, feeling anxious by the lack of information and the cryptic of her words.

“It must be stopped, yes. The key must be stopped. But I could not see. I could not see how. I could not see the key. It is volatile, everchanging, always shapeless. It is war and it is not. It exists and it does not. It walks among us, yes, undeniable. Hidden, unconscious of its own existence, of its importance…The key is the key! The center of it all, the center of the board. The eye of the newborn tornado” She answered as she shook her head continuously while bobbling her whole body forward and backward in a strange, rhythmic dance.

“What board, Madame Manto? What board are you speaking of? Speak clearly!” I shouted as I grabbed her shoulders and shook her twice. Restlessness had taken over me as the seer, acclaimed all over the kingdom and beyond for her ability to understand the machinations of fate, spoke of doom and a world-ending war. I was sweating cold.

“The board! The chessboard of the game we call life!-” She shouted as she shot her hands to the sky only to drop them back on my cheeks a second after “- The threads of fate are spinning, Ali, the cogs of this world and moving as we speak. The pawns are taking their rightful place atop the board…They are coming, Ali, all of them! The crownless king is moving. The cold, winterly snow is growing restless. The knives are being sharpened. The wolf is hunting. The discarded prince practices his patience. The ancient fire is searching for a new kindle. The puppet is polishing the threads that bind it. The ancient tramp is wandering once more. The bird caged itself willingly. The moon cries in blood. The slave found a new master…”

“Madame Manto!-” I shouted as her eyes shot back in her head once more and convulsions began shaking her body vigorously “- Madame Manto, calm yourself! I cannot follow you if you do not explain properly! I cannot understand you if you speak in riddles!-” I shouted again before the convulsions stopped and her eyes rolled back in sight “- Who are these people? What’s their role? Are they connected to the key?”

“They all are…-” She said in a tired voice, almost a whisper as her eyes began to slowly shut “I do not know their names or faces. I do not know their roles or allegiances. I saw flashes, fragments of what’s to be…Their center is the dark swirl that binds them all. The eye of the storm born of the opening of the fifth lock…I know…nothing more” Madame Manto whispered before closing her eyes shut and falling on my chest.

For a second, my heart stopped. The only thing that allow it to continue beating was the sound of Madame Manto’s slow breathing. She had fainted. A rare sight for the accomplished seer but not unexpected after seeing her recent behavior. She had not died, she was weak, yes, but alive nonetheless.

“...What the fuck just happened?” I asked myself as the absurdity of the situation started to make its weight felt on my conscience.

Part 2

- RAPHAEL BLUESCALE’S POV -

There was red everywhere. An endless expanse of red extended in front of my eyes. As far as the eye could see, where the ground met the sky and formed the horizon, everything was red. The sky, instead, was black, starless, moonless. An endless expanse of black, close and distant at the same time. Unable to determine with clarity its distance, it felt like the black sky threatened to fall and crush me.

My heart was beating fast. I was alone.

I looked around, searching for something that would break the endlessness. A point to refer to. Something besides the unending expense of red below my feet. Yet, no matter where I turned my head, all I saw was red and black. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Feeling the need to do something, I decided to walk. I took a step and the ground below me collapsed. Or at least it felt like. My heart was now beating in the very middle of my throat. I could feel the veins bulging right below my skin. Yet I was still standing, my right foot in front of the left. I was dumbfounded. It made no sense that I would fall while still standing.

Feeling the need to find out the reason for that strange falling feeling, I took another step and, unsurprisingly, the same thing happened again. If that was going to happen with each step I took, I had better become accustomed to it. Thus, I began walking, keeping my focus firmly tight around my senses. Soon, after fifty or so steps, the feeling diminished until I could barely feel the shift in weight as I moved my feet.

Now confident in my stride, I began pacing around the place, aimlessly. With nothing to do and absolutely no understanding of that place, all I could do was keep moving. Keeping my body moving also helped to shake off the feeling of being watched. It felt as if the incessant hammering of my heart against my ribs slowed down, just slightly as I kept my legs moving. Though it did not last long. Soon, my stride was slowed. The ground beneath my feet had become less solid. I tried to give it as little thought as possible, thinking of it as nothing more than a momentary change or another attempt of that strange place to throw me off my feet. But I soon had to change my mind. I was sinking in the ground.

My feet and ankles had completely sunk into that viscous red liquid. It was starting to become hard to move and my legs were becoming heavier with each step. It was then that I noticed some bubbles surfacing on the red ground. Small and unevenly paced, those bubbles would surface and explode once out of the red liquid, as if a small beast was slowly suffocating. It creeped me out, yet the curiosity was too much. Why were there bubbles? Why was the ground viscous? What is this place? All those questions clouded my mind until I could no longer bear their weight so I decided I wanted answers. The bubbles were the most recent event and the closest to me so I bent down in an attempt to find the source of those bubbles. It was a mistake.

Arms sprung up from the red ground-now-liquid and attempted to claw at my face. Failing in that task, the ten or so arms laughed for my legs, clawing at my shins and thighs. Blood began trailing copiously down my legs, mixing with the red, clawed arms and the viscous ground. It was then that I figured out the reason it was red and viscous, it was blood. The whole place was nothing but an endless lake of blood.

I began kicking and thrashing my legs around whilst my panicked heart hammered on my ribs as if it wanted to break them. I could feel every drop of blood falling from my legs and the pain each and every claw inflicted as they pierced my skin and flesh. The number of arms increased as more and more clawed and my legs while otters sprouted from every corner of my vision.

The bubbles increased in size and frequency, bursting with droplets of hot blood. It spewed all around, burning my skin and creating new hands wherever the drops landed. Soon, the whole place was covered in hands…and not only them. Faces began popping up from below the lake. Inhuman grimaces barely resembling what I thought were faces. They screamed with mouths agape and blood flowing out in rivers. It was subtle, at first, the change in their visage. From monstrous, the faces began taking a more human-like appearance until I could clearly see the eyes, nose, mouth, scars, beards, and all details that followed.

It was with pure horror, followed by screams, that I recognized the owners of those faces. The first was a face with a long, open wound on the forehead. The face belonged to a bandit I killed three days prior and I was the source of that wound. He stared at me with blank eyes, the eyes of a dead man, as he approached me. His face was being dragged by the lake below, forming a neck and a hint of shoulders as more and more blood flowed in reverse. Soon, more faces followed. The lord of Blackwall, a group of bandits, a thief, one of the adventurers who chased me through the slums…They all came for me, biting on my flesh, tearing it from my bones, and dragging me slowly below the lake.

I rose to my feet, or rather jumped, and picked up the already unsheathed sword by my side. I pointed it at the air, left and right. Then turned around, darting my eyes from one side to the other as I pointed my sword at an enemy only I saw.

[I am awake-] I thought as I felt the weight of the sword pressing on my hands [- It was all a dream…a nightmare]

Slick with sweat and trembling furiously, my hands let go of the sword and only then did I notice that my entire body was covered in a layer of cold sweat. Even my bedroll was drenched in it. My legs were weak and my knees barely able to withstand my weight. I darted my eyes around, seeking my two sleeping companions. I sighed in relief as I fell to my knees when I noticed both of them deep in slumber under their bedrolls.

I could not stay slick and dirty for the whole night and I sure wasn’t going back to sleep. Not that I could even if I truly wished for it, so I instead decided to wash myself near the river close to our camp. We were close to the foot of a mountain, close to where it meets a deep valley, half of it occupied by a colossal lake. A thin forest thrived there, where we made camp. Trees with brown bark and green leaves met those with white bark and red leaves creating a canvas of a colorful storm. The river was a couple of minutes away by foot, not very wide, and swallow, with just enough water for me to easily scoop it up and dump it on myself.

I stripped off my clothes now reeking of sweat and formed a half-circle with rocks by the edge of the river. I dumped my clothes there so that they may be washed with the current. Glancing back to the camp, some sort of remorse tugged on my chest. I was supposed to keep guard, yet here I was. The clear water, lit by the few rays of moonlight that filtered through the leaves, reflected my face as I kneeled before the river. I couldn’t help but flinch at the state I was in.

My face was caked with sweat, giving it a putrid shine to it. My eyes were red and all puffed with clear signs of tears and heavy dark circles that scarred the tissue below them. I was tired. All could see it. The sleepless nights, stubbornly keeping watch over my two companions had taken their toll. But that was just an excuse. One that I told myself more than once in order to feign ignorance of my own problems. It was the nightmares that kept me awake, their fear that compelled me to keep my eyes open and my mind focused. The bloody lake was a new one but many more came before it, all showing me the same sights. The scores of men I killed.

I dumped my head underwater. The cold liquid caressed my cheeks, letting that cold embrace spread through my body and slow my heartbeat. I could feel it seep through my tissues, the cold. I held my head down, basking in that soundless calm until my lungs began asking for air. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. More cold, more freshness, more calm. I dragged my tired body into the stream and lay there like a bed, letting my body sink until only my toes and face stuck out.

Finally, with my body fully immersed and massaged by the slow currents, my beating slowed enough to be considered normal. I closed my eyes and confided only on my feet stuck to the ground to keep me from sliding along with the river. For several minutes I did nothing, only breathed, as I watched the snippets of the night sky through the curtain of trees until I could stand no more the sensation of being watched from behind.

“I’m in no mood for jokes nor plays-” I said as stood up from my supine position and sat cross-legged in the middle of the stream “- Come out and be done with it!”

“Sorry, sorry-” Said Ballarak as he scratched his neck and walked out from behind a thick white-barked tree “- Thought I’d try be respectful but I guess there’s no escaping from those senses of yer”

“Kinda hard to miss when you stomp your feet like a clumsy, drunken town’s guard” I retorted as I watched the man dig through the thick pouch on his waist and drag out a strangely-shaped bottle full of reddish-orange liquid.

“Ouch!-” He replied, stifling a laugh before unscrewing the wooden cork with his teeth and chugging down two loud gulps of the liquid “- Well, never was me specialty to be all stealthy like…Want some?” He finished as he grinned at his own joke and offered me the bottle.

“No thanks, I…I’d rather not drink” I said, regretfully recalling the scents of the bars and taverns in Blackwall.

“Suit yerself-” He hummed as he sat, cross-legged just like me on top of a slightly bigger rock where a handful of trees met the stream “- More for me anyway”

I recalled that bottle as I watched it reflect the moonlight onto the dwarf’s beard. He bought it, along with two more of the same kind, from a wandering merchant five or so days prior and had been drinking it by his lonesome every night near the fire. I sighed as I felt my throat constrict when the strong scent of alcohol reached my nostrils.

“What are you here for?” I asked in a mildly rude and exasperated tone.

“...We’ve all got ghosts under our beds” Ballarak replied with ample pause between my question and his reply.

“Are you here to offer me your sympathies, a pat on the back maybe? Go fuck yourself Ballarak, I had nightmares, no need to try and be a saint!” I spouted as I almost growled at the dwarf.

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing-” He said as he took another big gulp of alcohol “- Having’ em once happens, twice is bad luck, thrice is an awful period, but every time ye close yer eyes? That’s called having issues”

“What the hell are you talking abou-”

“We’ve been on the road for a month and ye’ve slept ‘round thirteen times, ten of which were interrupted by nightmares. Ye barely slept half the time, skipping on it days on end and the few times ye did, ghosts came to visit…Ye speak in yer dreams, Sir Raphael” The dwarf replied as he finally, for the first time, looked me in the eye.

“Chose your next words carefully, Ballarak” I threatened the dwarf as I stood up in my birth suit and glared at him.

“Or what? Yer gonna kill me like ye killed those bandits? Pointless, that’s what it is. I’d be just another voice shouting for revenge in that head of yers!” The dwarf replied shouting as he stood up on top of the rock and met my gaze at level.

“I just might” I said as I stepped closer to him, enough for my hand to reach him, just in case.

“*Sigh* Yer missing the point-” Replied Ballarak and he facepalmed and slumped back down on the rock “- Yer on edge, I get it. Always moving, always fighting, always killing, and with little sleep, yer nerves be ready to jump outta yer skin if given the chance. All I’m saying here is, ye need to find an outlet. When I first saw ye kill, I thought ye were a cold-blooded killer, a man born and taught for the sole purpose of murder but the more I listened to yer nightmares the more I figured ye are just as human as everybody else. Heaves, you weep and mourn for yer victims in yer sleep!”

“Get to the point” I growled.

“Point is, it’s eating ye away and ye know it. I get ye have a sister to care for and protect but ye still gotta think a bit for yerself, no? Take a break every once in a while, sleep in a bed without the need to keep yer guard up high all the time. Breathe a little” The dwarf said as he made a big show of his exasperation through the gestures of his hands.

“You are right-” I replied stepping back from the dwarf to pick up my clothes and dry them quickly of what little water I could “- I have a sister to protect and she can only rely on me. She is weak, unable to fight, and unable to fend for herself. Without me, she would be dead already. That means I cannot show weakness, as you say. I must be strong, to be seen as strong so that she can comfortably rely on me. I do not have the leisure to simply cry and weep as more and more scores of wannabe killers come our way…and I do not take breaks. We don’t have time for that”

“You don’t have time or YOU don’t have time?” Ballarak said as he glared at me and grinned knowingly.

“Tomorrow we leave at sunrise-” I said, knocking heavily my waist on his shoulder thus making the dwarf lose his balance and almost fall from the rock “- We’re only two days away from Drughmin. You better be fucking sober in the morning” I growled as I stomped away from the drinking dwarf.