The Star Bastion, The Spine of God - Khirn

GÍLA SENGHU

Blood. Blood washed across her body, and a blood-tinged sun rose to greet her crusted, heavy eyes as she awoke on her back—the shimmering sparkle of its red light threatening to blind her for daring to gaze upon its horrific, violent eminence. Soft grunts of discomfort leaked from her lips like the drool from the corner of her mouth, her torso and arms twisting as she shifted on the moist ground to right herself and find her bearings.

“What happened?” she asked nothing. The air responded with a chilled howl in the distance that became burning hot in her presence—flicks of embers cutting against her cheeks.

Though no longer boiled by the sun, her vision was still dull and oozed by sleep. Haze kept her from seeing what surrounded her; the details were muddied and undefined. She clawed at the ground, her fingers digging into something wet—chunky—that allowed her legs to twist with the rest of her body and shimmy up to her knees. Prostrating before a dead God, Gíla blinked several times to clear her vision. Her lids stuck together for half-seconds each time, the crust and slime of her previous unconsciousness rendering them almost incapable of re-opening.

“Hello?” she croaked in a hoarse voice—one as brittle as dry stalks of wheat. “Is anyone there?”

No one but the wind answered her.

Gíla found support in the wet, chunky thing beneath her and pushed herself onto her knees, now sitting on her haunches. Her vision was still dulled, still grotesque. With her wrists, she wiped away the crust and slime, an act that took far more effort than should have been necessary. When vision was clear again, she realized it was not crust and slime but pieces of what used to be human beings. Little, small parts that had exploded from a fully formed human and coated her face.

Vomit swelled in her stomach, and she forced it down. A loud gulp and a shiver of disgust. Twice repeated as she looked around her vicinity and saw the ruin left in the wake of the past forty years. Blood lakes and gore mountains, bone fields and organ trails, and endless rows of insanity. Insanity spread among the survivors, hacked to shreds and barely clinging to a life no longer worth living. What pointless chaos. What pointless violence. How all of this could have been avoided.

This Siege of the Star Bastion. The only battle of this war that had lasted longer than months.

Gíla stood on shaking legs and bent over as the vomit erupted from her mouth. The stench hit her like the shield of a Dekunian brute. Her back was straightened in a vain attempt to retain her confidence in the face of the dying and the dead. She had once been fantastic at counting the numbers of the deceased and the living. But ever since the Great Blade and the Belanorians arrived in that first year, changed in their practices and zeal, and ever since the things from Veoris descended upon the lands, and ever since Tahrir broke their peace with the world, no numerical value could be given to the deceased and the living. It would be impossible. It could only be boiled down to a lot.

And in a portion of that ‘lot,’ she now stood alone in the western-most viscera meadows at the base of the Spine of God.

No, not alone.

“Lady Senghu!” a shrill voice cried out.

Gíla turned in the muck of fluids beneath her and crushed her feet through ribcages and skulls as she made her way to the source. Some fifty yards away, a stretch of land that was made a mile by the chaos, she came upon a hill of bodies with one hanging halfway out. His armor was dented inwards, and blood poured from the incisions on his chest. She would have thought him dead if not for his weakly flailing arms and panicked, weathered face. How that face had once been youthful and full of plans and life. Now, it was grayed and middle-aged.

“Lady Senghu, please help me!” he cried out again.

“I’m coming, Markos, just hold on,” she said as she began to climb the hill. Corpses squelched with each step, and her feet were caked in their remains as she stood just slightly over the Ravenous Markos Perulis. She dug into the bodies around the veteran warrior and wrenched them off in clumps. “I’ll get you out of there, and we’ll get you back to the Guch’di,” she lied. The more she dug, the more she realized that Marcos had only been kept alive by the Runearch’s power on this land.

The undead had gotten to him before she had.

“What’s wrong?” he quivered. “What’s...oh God, I’m... don’t tell me that...”

She dug more and couldn’t find his lower body. He slid down the hill once freed, screaming as his mind snapped at the realization. She raced after him, kneeling to take his head into her hands, stroking the man’s hair to calm him down. His eyes were wide with madness, and his throat was torn on the inside as his scream became eternal. Gíla crushed his head to quiet him just as eternally. It was the best she could do for him. He at least wouldn’t be aware anymore as his body went on, writhing in its fear.

The thudding of hooves drew her ire and attention, prompting her to rise and spin around. Feral and snarling, she lay her eyes upon a horse-mounted Theovanis Alden Rasidaios, flanked by two grey-armored knights. “Lady Senghu, are you alright?” he asked, dismounting and approaching her as she calmed.

“Yes,” she grunted. “I am fine. What are you doing here?”

“Conducting our scouting of the field post-battle once we ascertained it was safe enough to do so. We needed numbers.”

“Numbers are pointless. A lot were killed. A lot was lost. And it will never be safe.”

“Right. Well...uhm, I heard screaming and found you. I am glad to see you are okay.”

“There’s screaming all over the fields, not all of it ours. Be glad you didn’t run into the undead.”

“Then the sooner we get out of here, the better,” one of the knights uttered. “This place is a catastrophe, and the Red Demon continues to try the bridge.”

“Woman has the numbers to do so,” Alden said, motioning for Gíla to follow him.

“What of the Runearch himself?” she asked.

“Man has gone to the wind,” a knight answered.

Alden nodded. “But I wouldn’t disbelieve the idea that he will come here once it is noted that we pulled victory from his attempt at climbing the western faces.”

“A phyric victory,” Gíla muttered, flicking the residue of Marcos’ cranium off her hands. “We could have used the Tahririans machines.”

“They are busy in each of the southern banks, you know this,” Alden sighed, mounting his steed. “They cannot afford to fight in all areas of the compass.”

Gíla crossed her arms and clicked her tongue. “Neither can we, yet we are. And we are not the ones with machines. They are. I am gracious that they have broken their culture of non-violence, but they still have much they can do. Many times have they let events pass that they could have helped stop.”

Alden’s gaze drooped with sadness. “Gíla-”

The Bear Maiden flapped her hand at the man and turned to walk away. “Be silent about it, Alden. Return to Jira and give my report on the west. We won, but at a heavy cost.”

“Of course, Lady Senghu.” Alden and his knights trotted away, but not before the former parted with: “We did everything we could. It wasn’t your fault.”

Alone, Gíla trudged through the mire of carnage left behind, noting the volume of undead to living corpses. She was grateful that it appeared very few of her warriors had been cursed. Still, to see even one was a terrible thing. To see an army of them was soul-shattering.

She had likely wanted to say something along these lines as the Runearch and his blood brother of Akma Yal appeared before her in a stream of vicious colors but could only manage a battle cry that caused an avalanche somewhere on the mountain range. She swung her fist at the Runerch’s head, sucking in a sharp breath as he caught it in his hand without effort. Shifting his weight, he lobbed her as he would a sack into the ground and stepped on her chest. She gasped breathlessly.

“You know, I think this is the first time you and I have ever properly spoken one-on-one,” he said with a smile as bright as the sun itself. His voice was milk and honey, but his tone was a toxin. “Imagine that? Forty years of conflict- no, fifty-plus, if we count the rebellion. Fifty-plus years with only one previous encounter, that being you involving yourself in my first death. My only death to date.”

“And we find ourselves here,” Gíla choked, grabbing at his foot and shin to try and wrest his weight off her chest. “Funny how fate works, isn’t it?”

“Quite,” he agreed, clenching his fist and pantomiming the stamping of his spear on the ground. It appeared in that instant, and he twirled it to point the blade at her throat. “Now, after that and all that you have done to me and mine these past forty years, why shouldn’t I kill you right now and repay the debt?”

“Well...I can think of a few reasons if you would let me speak.”

His foot never moved, but the pressure on her chest lessened. “...Speak.”

Year 222. The Star Bastion, The Spine of God - Khirn

JIRA ne’JIRAL

“You are joking, right?” Jira stared at the host of metal things and then at the three she called companions. “You surely cannot be serious with this story. We...”

“It’s what we were told,” Orlantha answered. “I had them tell it to me several times again before I believed it, and it took Milligan himself to tell me several times as well. It’s the best we got right now, in any case, even if I don’t really believe all aspects of it.”

Gíla stepped forward, hands clasped nervously. “Jira, I know you had trouble believing anything in the Tower. But the Guch’di-”

“What we learned in the Tower was false,” Jira countered, stepping back from the Bear Maiden. “I try not to hold that against Milligan emotionally, but it still casts reasonable doubt on any claim he makes or is made concerning him and the future. These Guch’di cannot offer anything that would make me believe otherwise.”

“I understand, Jira-”

“Yet here we are, gearing up to have the same argument again.”

“Jira, if you would just listen,” Orlantha groaned.

“I did listen against my judgment. You beat me so I would listen. Milligan said the King, the Queen, the Duke, the Runearch, and all those other people in their league were grouping together for some plan with God to revive all other Gods, who would empower them through revenant symbiosis and elevate them to Godhood. A half-baked plan that none of us would have believed in any time if not for the sheer desperation we felt to escape. And I know this to be true because which among us actually cared to follow through with our investigations once we escaped?”

Silence from her companions.

“Who? Who among you, unless forced into it? You, Bear Maiden? You locked yourself away down here to study. You happened to come upon these things and that Orrery, but even then, you barely did anything to help matters and were only concerned with learning until something came up that you realized could maybe help our predicament. Orlantha went back to her post at Lord Anthiti’s side. Sodon and Prokos went about their days under my leadership, and I did nothing more than fight. Hell Below, if not for Milligan’s presence, I would have believed it was all a fever dream. And that reforging we had at the hands of that Smith God? What good was that, really? We are still in the same sinking boat, if not in worse condition, only stronger and faster now. What an advantage when facing a foe like Erik Apa, Crius, and that...that thing. Reality shapers.”

Orlantha sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’ve made your point, Jira.”

“God Above, I haven’t. Veoris is full of undead monstrosities and goes silent with every passing day, leaving only the hamlets in the mountains. Erik Apa now controls Dekun like he has always wanted to. Amphe is lost, and the Duke has either joined the King in death or the Queen in exile. God, the cinch in the plan that we were all told of, is now dead, according to the Belanorians upstairs. Crius is somewhere with that thing from Tahrir, and I lost my entire guild. Not just the Contemptors but the Harbingers as well. They’re all stuck there. And now you want to stand here and tell me an even more ludicrous story about how...how Milligan is this guardian thing, this Awakener of the kin of that horrible being that attacked us in Tahrir? And what? He failed that, too. What are we supposed to do with this? How does that help us against the Runearch?”

Gíla was nervous because she knew the words she was about to repeat were the pinnacle of lunacy. “Like we told you: if we can get him to perform his duty properly, perhaps there is one among that thing’s kin that can help us.”

Jira clapped her hands once, loud and startling. “Oh, what a fucking plan, Bear Maiden. Truly remarkable.”

“Ease up, Jira. You’re starting to sound like me,” Orlantha snickered.

Jira glared at the giantess for a moment before stepping close to the Bear Maiden and dropping her voice to a whisper. “Gíla, I know you are smarter than this, so I know this is just fear and hopelessness. You are not telling me we essentially do what Milligan said we were fighting against.”

“It is what she is saying,” Milligan grunted. He had been on his knees at the feet of Kʼared’u for the past hour now. “I think now that I had...gotten things mixed up in my head.”

“Mixed up? Oh, well, that clears things up really well, Milligan. And how convenient you now see so clearly after telling me in Veoris that things were muddied.”

“You spend epochs watching Dream after Dream go about, waiting for the inevitable, being attacked on all fronts by the most brutal of all these things, and trying to hold onto all of your faculties,” he seethed. “I’m not exactly standing on the strongest of foundations.”

“Then are you sure that this is your true role in all of this? Are you sure that this plan of theirs is actually viable?”

“I would be even more of a liar if I said yes.”

“Will these things fight for us?” she pointed at Kʼared’u and kept her eyes on the Bear Maiden. “Will they involve themselves in the fight?”

Gíla frowned. “...no. They have to remain here.”

“So we, ultimately, are no better off than we were.”

“It’s a better starting point than what we had,” Gíla said. “And right now, with the Runearch sure to come this way, that’s better than nothing.”

Jira shook her head. “It’s not a better starting point. It’s a nothing point.”

“How can you say that after seeing what you saw?”

“Because we have had so little go in our favor, why now would it change just because Milligan remembered what he is, maybe? We killed the Runemaster, and he came back as the Runearch. He did what we tried to do for years in a fraction of the time. I lost friends in Tahrir—close friends. I had dreams that I still have every night, word-for-word repetition. These things? How do we know they aren’t just relics of the Golden Lords gone mad? How do we know anything?”

“You saw the same things I did, Jira,” Milligan said. “You saw Blackstone. You saw them.”

“All I saw was that it was all for nothing, and this conversation cemented it. The war we fought, the lives lost, what was it all for if not to empower those who will kill us in the end? There are no practical ways to win this war, so we stick to the impractical that is simply impossible.”

“It is not impossible if we just get Milligan-”

“He failed! If that fantasy is true, he. Has. Failed. Is that not what you just told me? Epochs and epochs of waiting for this moment, and he failed to stop it. If he needed to stop it before it happened, who is to say that whatever he ‘awakens’ will be strong enough to stop it now? Face it! We have no viable plan beyond surviving.”

“We have hope,” Gíla declared. “We have hope that Milligan can right this. And we have ourselves. We don’t even know the extent of what we can do with our reforging.”

“No, we don’t. We have a fortress in a mountain with metal things in its catacombs. This is not a plan. This is just insanity, like every other piece of the past decade. It’s just now that you have all succumbed to it, and I will not be a part of it.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Orlantha scoffed.

“I will speak to the Lords and devise something practical for our survival. You can join me in that if you wish to regain sense.”

Year 222. The Star Bastion, The Spine of God - Khirn

YVON ne’BANUUS

The Lords of the Star Bastion had come out to personally greet the Legions of Belanore as they filled the bridge and the fields surrounding the east-facing side of the Spine of God. Those Lords within that fortress were now knelt in reverence to the Prime and the Greats. Behind them, the garrison did the same, thousands swelling the expanse of the baileys to gaze upon what they had assumed was a trick of the mind—a deception at worst. Yvon ne’Banuus smirked at the sight of such respect, recalling previous years in which such treatment was rarified, for such acts had then been performed out of fear rather than gratefulness and esteem.

“How?” Lord Anthiti gawked. “How did you make it past the Runearch?”

The Great Brutalizer, Nemeto le’Paulia, answered for the Prime. “The fury of God’s Demise empowered us to find our way. That is all we can say.”

“Un fu Yěs, tisi ozǎ,” canted Count le’Matto. “We welcome you.”

“Yet wonder why you are here,” Earl Miro questioned. “Have you come to claim the Bastion for your own?”

“We’re here to help you win the war against Erik Apa and his mongrel heathens,” the Prime rasped, straightening his back at the accusation. “So demands the law of our blood.”

“Ko yěs s yoz tsǐs ǐk widzor tǎ kek tǎ ban,” Count le’Matto answered. “We hear the Tsïn and will answer in kind.”

“My...my Prime,” Count le’Micah stuttered, finally finding his voice. “It is...an honor of honors to see you. A blessing. I never thought that I would have been given such a-”

“Has your time among the Aslofi’dorians taken away your mother tongue?” the Great Wolf inquired with a chuckle. “Your contemporary seems to be just fine.”

“No!” he quickly answered, bowing his head lower. Count le’Matto followed suit. “Tïts did vo riw.”

The Great Wolf shared a look with Yvon, a satisfied grin at the nervous display. "Tsa d’ǎ utvě," she said to the Great Blade.

Yvon nodded. “Těʻu bǐdz yi.”

The Great Crusher, Renau le’Laha, stepped forward, his cobalt-steel sabatons scraping against the stone of the bailey floor. “Jod’ yěve,” he addressed the Counts. “We have no time for gestures and fattening words. Rise and speak plain so that the rest might hear and understand. As you were, my Prime.”

The Prime nodded to the Great Crusher and bid those in attendance to rise.

“Why would you abandon your home?” Earl Anthiti asked, the first to stand and compose himself. “You seem to have all of Belanore with you.”

“We do,” the Great Brutalizer answered. “Men, women, and children all. Each armed and armored for war.”

“Perhaps it would be better to discuss this inside?” the Prime suggested.

“So, you’re wrapped up in this mess, too?” Jira ne’Jiral asked Yvon as the last of the Belanorian Legions to be assigned to the interior halls of the Star Bastion’s fiftieth level took to their camps.

The Great Blade stacked crates of preservatives atop each other, motioning for those in her cadre to do the same as she spoke with the silver knight. Among them, a strangely lithe figure, dark-clad and silent as a windless night, performed the deed with as little difficulty as a serpent consuming a paralyzed bird. “Yes, I am. An unavoidable thing these days, to be caught up in the mess that is this war.”

“Can it still be called a war?”

Yvon mused, “Yes, but not one we are used to. That is how it is shaping up, in my opinion. It is akin to the conflicts of Khirn’s Golden Lords.”

Jira yawned as the exhaustion of a few nights without sleep began weighing on her. “I want to say that has been mentioned in some capacity quite a few times the past decade.”

“Surely it has. Yet even as I say that, I wonder how close it is to those battles. What do you think?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jira said with a gleam of knowing in her eyes. “Long after we are dead, it might become similar.”

“Do you think this war will exceed us?”

“It surely will. We killed Erik Apa in Acocaea, and he came back stronger.”

“You don’t think we can kill him again?”

“Not us. I think our best hope is to survive.”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Why’s that?”

“This is the Star Bastion. The power this place holds is not something to balk at.” Yvon peered around the area of the fiftieth level, soaking in the murals that had been dusted and scraped free of soot, dust, and grime. The support pillars, rounded and grooved, carved with stories. All of it was built out of the mountain’s stone that became ever more red-tinged as they went deeper into its depths. “Shadda Kʼang, fortress to the Khichʼu Sesedich, now lost beyond the world's edge.” Her voice was a whisper, barely audible, yet it seemed to echo to her.

“What did you say?” Jira ne’Jiral asked all the same, her face scrunching in confusion.

Yvon smiled and returned to stacking crates. “Nothing, dear Jira. Just remembering a story.”

The gathering took place in the Great Hall, with each table now dedicated to some part of tactics and strategy. Devices built, maps splayed out, reports read, and plans discussed. The Host of Dekun would be at the gates within the month. Amphe had been taken completely, and reinforcements from Veoris and Dekun swelled the forces there to bursting. What became of the Runearch’s envoys into the west, into Tahrir, remained a mystery.

“How many does the Runearch now lead?” the Great Bow, Valé le’Auch, asked as he drew small circles over the identified weak points on the mountain range map. He and thirty others surrounded the Lords’ table in the Great Hall, with the Prime taking the centermost position. The Nunjant Chhank stood apart from him and the Greats, wary of the occasional glances of distrust and disgust. Yvon understood why immediately. Long had they been without the hardship of dealing with prejudice from the people of Khirn for being inhuman. Now, it was surging again.

The Prime answered the Great Bow, unfolding a second map of Khirn alongside the ranges’. “With the combined forces of his Veoris’ian sins, the unification of the Dekun’ian houses and cadet branches, and his conquering of all Aslofi’dor territories except the Spine, he now holds a total force of ten million warriors. This is not accounting for squires, supplementary forces, support units, and the like. If we were to include those, it would be incalculable.”

“Nothing we haven’t faced before,” the Great Wolf said. “These weak points along the range seem more clustered on the Tahririan side.”

“Likely because whoever built this place wasn’t expecting sieges from lands of peace,” the Great Destroyer, Klau le’Vate, suggested. “Or they controlled whatever lands existed west at the time.”

“We should garrison archers along those points as well as warriors from our ranks comfortable fighting on rocky terrain,” the Great Wolf began to plan. “If any cliffs are large and flat enough, we could also place defensive engines there. Catapaults, ballistae. Build them on location. That way, we only need to worry about transporting payloads and bolts for them.”

The Great Crusher hummed and pursed his lips. “Treacherous designs, liable to face avalanches and rockslides at any time.”

“Better than leaving them unprotected save for faith that whoever climbs the western side falls.”

“Truth. What of the bridge here, leading into the main entrance of the Bastion?”

“We can turn it,” the Great Blade answered. “Keep them from easy access to the fortress.”

The Prime considered the map. “Are there other entrances into the Bastion?”

“A few,” Daou Senghu replied. “But only known to my father, at least externally. They will not find them, not without the arcaeno required. Some lead out from passages inside the fortress.”

“Good. We shall have our armies stay within the interior of the fortress for the majority of the siege until the Runearch’s army is broken, even for a moment. We can use those passages to flank him, then. Trap him.”

“We are extremely outnumbered still,” the Great Blade said. “We need to tip the scales.”

The Great Brutalizer snorted after a moment’s silence. “The Codices of God say that Acominatus, among the brightest and most brutal of the Golden Lords, once fought an army of one million by himself.”

“And we Greats are Acominatus come again if the common folk are to be believed,” the Great Peril, Evra ne’Dever, laughed. “Should be an easy fight.”

“Empowered by God’s Demise, we would see them all split in two,” the Prime growled, drawing a path from Amphe to the Spine of God with his finger. “And send their souls to the Dreamers.”

Earl Anthiti peaked with interest. “Who? Wh-what?”

Yvon answered. “God’s Demise has left us all a bit shaken and...weary, Earl Anthiti. Many of our myths are bleeding into your tongue in our rage. Apologies.”

Earl Miro leaned forward and rested his arms on the war table. “I do not mean to pry, but I have spared my comrades this question for some time now, and I believe we non-Belanorians deserve an explanation, even if it is simple. What do you mean when you say that God is dead?”

There was no point in lying. They had all felt it. Some of them had even seen it in their dreams, driven mad by the horrors of it as He was reduced to ash in the firestorm. She herself was not present for His true death, but enough times had she caught the essence of that demise before it happened. Enough times had she seen Him die before he died. He was dead. “God is dead,” Yvon answered. “Slain. Brutalized. Massacred by something released in Tahrir. Something that brought back Erik Apa and now empowers him.”

Earl Anthiti balked. “If we fight something strong enough to kill God, which I have trouble believing out of sheer panic at the thought, then how are we supposed to win? Especially against an army of that size? You mentioned tipping the scales. Any ideas besides flanking and waiting it out?”

“The Spellblade of Kin,” the Prime answered. The word hung in the air like sickness.

“What?” Helgol Senghu gasped, stepping forward and pressing his hands on the tabletop. His eyes flashed with anger.

“The Spellblade of Kin?” Gíla muttered. “Father...what is that?”

“You didn’t know?” Jira asked.

“How do you know that name?” Helgol seethed.

“The Duke of Amphe,” Yvon answered, keeping her voice smooth to ease tensions. “He spoke it to me before he died of his wounds, inflicted upon him by the Runearch’s assassins in his attempt to escape. I came upon him in the village of Piyé and slew the Runearch’s chief scout, Adil Ere, in the skirmish. I was too late to save him, but not too late for him to tell me how he transported the Spellblade of Kin from his vaults to the Star Bastion.”

“Husband, what are they talking about?” Tearhas asked.

“Wh-when?” Earl Miro asked. “When was it sent here?”

“After the Runemaster killed the King,” the Great Wolf stated. “Over one year ago.”

“What is the Spellblade of Kin, Lord Senghu?” Earl Antithi asked, clearly more intrigued at the item itself than furious like his compatriots at the lack of disclosure. “We have all heard of the Spellblades in some form or another; it is a childhood legend, but what is that one specifically?”

“I will not discuss that monstrosity here or ever,” Helgol growled. “Never. It is within my rights to deny discussing it.”

“Husband, what are they talking about?” Tearhas asked more firmly, her hands clenching so minutely into fists.

“This is something to have discussed!” Count le’Matto roared, rising from his seat. “How dare you keep a Spellblade hidden from us!”

Helgol slammed an open palm on the table, cracking the surface. The Great Brutalizer drew his sword. Daou alone growled and took his place beside Helgol. “Your reaction is precisely why!” the patriarch of the Nunjant Chhank bellowed. “You do not deserve such a relic, and it was agreed that no such things in our possession would be used for war!”

Gíla grabbed her father’s shoulder and pulled him away from the table, spinning him to face her. “Father, what the hell did you do? A Spellblade? Do you realize what that could have done for us a year ago? What we could use that for now?”

Tearhas joined her daughter. “Helgol! What did you do?”

“You didn’t know?” Jira repeated.

“No!” both daughter and mother roared.

The silver knight was aghast, mimicking the expression of Orlantha and nearly half of the room at the revelation. Yvon merely laughed in quiet ruefullness.

“You spent too long with these people,” Helgol hissed, rolling his shoulders to throw his daughter’s hands away. “You want to fight for them too much, and what happened to you in...Acocaea...”

“So you trust me to be around you in the depths of this place, around the Guch’di, but not this? You love me enough to have me retained with the family and study all of this lore, but not something that could have protected these people who have done nothing but given to us?”

“The what?” Earl Anthiti rose from his chair, face alight with interest. “The Guch’di?”

“Given to us?” Helgol snarled. “Do you not recall what we had to do just to keep this place? We had to go to them and make a deal with them and have you fight with them and risk your life for them.”

Gíla stepped up to her father, snarling. “I would do it again. It just pains me that after all that I have done and seen for us, you still do this.”

“She has been useful beyond what we expected!” Jira attempted to calm the furious Bear Lord. “Please, calm yourself, Lord Senghu.”

“Lord Senghu, quiet your fury,” Yvon warned, subtly raising her hand to stop her fellow Greats from readying their weapons. Even outnumbered, she knew the furious Nunjant Chhank had the potential to kill them all. And that was just him. His family would make this a needless slaughter. “My kin are not as tempered as I am. We can discuss this in a reasonable manner.”

“No. Now you invade again, filling our halls with your rank stench and seeking to claim more and more for their pointless violence! This endless cycle that never sees any change, any growth, any development. Only loss and decay and destruction. We have so little already, our homes burned again and again in the cycles with the Dragons. We face insurrection at home from warlords who want to chase the legend of Prut. The Elves scourge our coasts, pollute our oceans, and burn our libraries. The Orc’kin are besieged by the gnomes and the halflings in their bloodlust. We have a chance to grow here in this place and find that change that is denied in these conflicts, and I will not have these...these...zuchichim stop that.”

“Helgol, you fool!” Tearhas roared with tears in her eyes. “What is the matter with you? We can use that to stop this Runearch from sieging our home here. We can use it to protect our family.”

“They will just use it afterward to conquer the world!” Helgol screamed, attempting to push past his daughter. “We have both seen it attempted repeatedly with their kind left behind in Aqella! They are no good there, and they are no good here. They are a barbaric race and will never change.”

Gíla’s eyes bled molten sunlight as she gripped her father’s throat and lifted him into the air with a single hand. All present at the table backed away in shock, save for the Prime, who remained stoic and silent. “You damned idiot!” she roared, holding the patriarch in her grasp so stiffly that he couldn’t even thrash in panic. “After all that I have done and suffered, you still will not change for them or me for one instant.”

“Gíla! Stop!”

“Lady Senghu!”

“Bear Maiden!”

“Daughter, please stop!”

“Took her long enough.”

“Bela’norians! Take position, prepare to advance on my mark!”

Yvon looked at Jira, her contrite laughter now molding into proper worry. “Stop her, or we all die.”

Gíla threw her father onto the ground and shoved Daou away with her other hand. The flames in the Great Hall intensified and seemed drawn toward her. “This is no longer the time for your inane paranoia!”

“They will use it against us, Gíla,” Helgol choked out.

“If they use it against us, so be it. I care little about that. We are damned either way.”

“I can’t do it. It goes against-”

“I don’t care what it goes against. Release the fucking Spellblade and get. Over. Yourself. Now!”

It was the Prime who wrenched the Bear Maiden away from her father. From his lips, the tongue of the Nunjant Chhank came forth. “Vrut uvniv, hiwmu,” he commanded, throwing her aside with far too much ease. "Yu vanku fa achu u va irnu wit skum u vi vu favniti."

Tearhas was bewildered. Daou was disoriented. Gíla was perplexed, rising to her feet and kept at bay by Jira ne’Jiral, who rushed to her side and spoke in hushed tones to calm her fits. Helgol, once he regained his breath and ability to stand, was disturbed. “You speak our tongue?”

“Taught to me by the Great Blade,” he answered, casting a glance to Yvon ne’Banuus. “The wanderer of our people, one of a few who has visited your lands. I myself visited upon a time, though only to seek out something of particular interest in the Desiccation of the Elves. I was a younger man then. Now...might I suggest we talk about this matter in a more polite, diplomatic sense.”

Helgol looked to Yvon, eyes furrowed. “You have visited our lands? Learned our language from them?”

“I never made it as far as Asne Unarith. Gale Thalo is where I landed and where I learned that the Devil’s magics are useful when cast in godly light.”

“Gale Thalo is the home to Takvu Waz,” Daou said. “Father, if she has truly seen the Sinkup Tya, that means she speaks truthfully.”

“And with more authority on the matter than you,” Gíla rumbled as Jira whispered calming words. "You never met Takvu Waz. None of us have.”

“Or she is-”

Tearhas grabbed his face and held him firm. “Helgol! Please. Enough. The Runearch is coming here, and if we do not help these humans with everything we have at our disposal, we will lose everything, and it will all be for nothing. Worry about the future after we have saved the present. We have nothing else to hope for. You speak of pointless violence. Don’t cause it by refusing to assist them in stopping it for themselves.”

Silence filled the Great Hall for ten minutes. No one spoke for ten minutes until Helgol Senghu finally uttered: “Come with me.”