Scenes from Athal

• Mirrormist (VII)

  130th of Gnielm, 336 EA

  Citadel of the Athalial League, Athal

  Shattered glass and thick black blood poured down through the room like rain on a burst of wind, and with it came the nothic.

  Flying through the air, the creature’s eye shot back open. It was callous and sleepless, white and green and shot through with thick red capillaries.

  Svaljna felt the air fall out of her lungs as that one raking eye peered into her. She scrabbled back in instinctual panic, falling off the couch to the hard stone floor but not feeling the impact.

  The nothic landed on all fours, sharpened elbows and knees all splayed out. Whatever alien bones it had in it’s neck cracked as its head snapped up, and it skittered towards her.

  “Back!” She yelled at it, kicking a foot out. She caught the creature at the shoulder, shoving it back and over. The spines growing out of it’s back scraped and broke across the floor, more brittle than they seemed. The creature howled violently, writhing as it righted itself.

  “What do you want from me!” She forced herself to turn and look at the thing, to stare it down.

  “Who are you!” The nothic ground its teeth with an awful gnash.

  It backed itself away into a cranny of the room, and as it did thoughts filtered into Svaljna’s head unbidden. “Abnormal… freak… recluse… your clan meant nothing to you, honor means nothing to you, all you care for are the things which push you away from the world!”

  Intense dread and isolation and fear washed out from it, almost physical in how powerfully it kept her back. Visions pierced through it’s projections though, visions that Svaljna had conjured in the aether. Visions of a life of rejection, visions of mistakes made in fatal proportions.

  For a moment, huddled in opposite corners, locked into states of scattered mania, Svaljna and it seemed very much the same.

  Mepka burst into the room with the crack a door slammed so hard that it rebounded back on itself. 

  “Ahtr’ul P’kossero”, the call of her word reverberated out like a spike, a bombardment of aetheric force assaulting the monster huddled in her corner.

  The creature turned in instinctual defense, breaking its gaze from Svaljna for the first time since its unwelcome arrival. Its loathing lost clarity as it focused on her, diffusing back into hate. 

  It’s green-ringed eye narrowed towards Mepka, and suddenly her flesh was awash in the same erasing energy that she had put onto it. It rotted the tissue from her bones, that eye, leaving patches of her arms and face suddenly raw and bleeding red as the skin simply ceased to contain her anymore. 

  “Fuck!” Mepka cried in pain, swiping out in a futile crack as the nothic dodged. “It’s in my head again! We can’t let it get to us! It’s fucking lying. It’s a fucking liar. I’m safe here, and so are you. I got out, the swamp isn’t coming for me, it’s a muddy fucking liar.”

  She cracked it across the skull with her second strike, sending it reeling. She kept to it, jabbing at it with her quarterstaff.

  Svaljna scrabbled up to her feet, the danger-fueled adrenaline finally pushing out the despair she felt. She could see it now, in the midst of that fray. The first the nothic looked afraid, in that moment of desperation and pain, was the most it had ever seemed human to her.

  That verity lasted only the barest scrape, and then it was back on Mepka. It knocked her to the ground, clawing viscously at her exposed stomach. She opened her mouth to cast a spell, and it ripped at the inside of her cheek sending the magic words splattering out incomprehensibly.

  Svaljna watched her new friend be attacked, and panic welled into her. She was too weak to fight it, too cowardly, too hrin. Her mind raced wildly over all that had lead up to this moment, all that she had done to lead to this pain, all that she was and all that she had been. In those thoughts, she circled herself and she circled the nothic and finally she found the aether between them.

  “Donatos!” Svaljna yelled, the name that she had come to know by the half-dead stupor of prophesy clicking back into her mind. “You are Donatos Hechejo.”

  The nothic flinched as though struck, giving Mepka just enough time to shove it back to the center of the room.

  “Enveim Psalre Cer’i Ibel-ratiij”

  The sveida arced out from Svaljna like the thrum of a rising hum, like an archer’s bow played as an instrument, like the stories of twelve hundred skjalds. It was a spell of truth, a spell of restoration, a spell to put back upon this creature some jagged fragment of humanity.

  The warbling light of the spell pierced through the nothic’s eye as mist through a mirror, stunning it to a rigid sort of limpness. The nothic, Donatos by name, blinked. It saw itself, it saw Mepka to one side breathing heavy and Svaljna to the other all blown up in floating glory.

  Being seen, as it had seen, realization flooded across it’s face drawing from madness to regret to anguish. “NAH! NO! LOOK AWAY! I AM NOT THIS!”

  It screamed, and screamed, and screamed. It flailed itself wildly, rending at it’s own flesh. It stumbled, and wobbled, and finally it leapt from the fourth-story window.

• Mirrormist (VIII)

  159th of Gnielm, 336 EA

  Citadel of the Athalial League, Athal

  Svaljna sat at the center of a peaceful sort of afternoon, for the Citadel. A warm breeze blew over dappled lawns between buildings. Guildfellows came hither and fro. Two ducks waddled at the side of a small pond, grooming through each other’s sheening coats.

  “Alright!” Mepka bounded up the grassy knoll on the balls of her feet, sporting her telltale smile. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Svaljna matched her smile in kind. “You are too kind, friend.”

  “No, no.” Mepka insisted, “Someone kind once told me that they were just speaking the truth. I’m doing the same now. I know I’ve dragged my feet on it, but it’s finally done.”

  With that, she handed Svaljna a thin folio, stamped in glittering saxe ink with the seal of the Athalial Explorer’s League. It was so light a thing to give, but still she handled it with great care.

  “I-” Svaljna caught herself, that instinct she had to self deprecate, and she put it away. “Thank you.

  “I just wanted to get it right, you know?” Mepka explained as Svaljna stared down at the parchment. “If it’s on me to vouch for your competence, you know damn well that I’m going to try to give every detail of how you saved my sorry ass.”

  “It is still very kind.” Svaljna said with a verdant sense of wonder.

  “Well, the league needs more like you. Like us. With this, plus the letter from the codger stationed back on your home plane, you’ll have enough to register as a guildfellow yourself.” Mepka pulled fingers back through her hair in feigned nonchalance. “Have you thought about what you want to do, with that whole deal?”

  “I have.” Svaljna said simply.

  After an impatient beat, Mepka nudged her. “Well, out with it then! Leave me in suspense, why don’t you. Hells, I’ve thought of what I’m going to do next.”

  “Oh?” Svaljna cocked a head.

  “I’m putting up a contract.” Mepka fiddled with her quarterstaff. “I need someone to perform some sveida for me.”

  Svaljna’s brow furrowed, her shoulders tensing. She reminded herself to relax herself, that it was okay. “For what would you want that?”

  “I just, there are things I need to know. About what is to come for me, or come back for me. It’s like we talked about, that first night. The person I was when I was trapped, they’re a part of me. Same as for you, I think. But maybe we’d both sleep easier at night knowing if we were ever or never going to be that way again.”

  Svaljna thought on this for a long and moment, reveling again at how similar she and her new friend were when it came down to it. She hadn’t met anyone like Mepka, before Mepka.

  “I understand.” She began her preparations, using her foot to carve out a circle from the dew on the grass where they stood in that very moment. “I will do this for you, no contract.”

  “Thank you,” Mepka started, surprised as Svaljna stepped into her space and began painting arcing trails of berried ink across her hands and arms. “Oh, oh! You mean like, you’ll do it now? Here?”

  “Yes, here.” Svaljna swallowed hard, keenly aware of all the many people going about their various businesses. “I am trying to be more open, with my magic. And with my self.”

  “Right then.” Mepka looked impressed.

  “I am not ashamed.” Svaljna confirmed, sounding more like she was convincing herself than her friend but even still she was able to push forwards through her own awkwardness. “Besides, better to do under light from the sky.”

  Indeed, the sun moved across the heavens as the ritual was primed. It landed at a low arc on the horizon just as the full moon appeared on the opposite firmament. At the moment when they shared the sky each of those great celestial bodies hung in frame to the aether, bathing the wall at the edge of this world in cool and fiery hues.

  “Augi’r Dy’tiisy”, Svaljna began, breathing heavily to take in the world, feeling a call to fate.

  “Psalre”, She continued, hands clasped to her companion’s forearms, feeling for who they really were.

  “Ahtr’ul”, She ended, rolling her eyes along the lines of the cosmos itself, feeling the weight and beauty of the aether.

  There was a moment at the end of whip crack, like being slung wildly between lives, and then their was prophesy. 

  Svaljna saw Mepka born, bathed in mud and and muck and moss. She saw a heart dissolve into fog, and reconstitute itself in form of flesh made to withstand iron. She saw threads, all tangled and matted into one another, cut as a hand reached through a veil. She saw the moon that was made to never change roll through many imperceptible cycles, waxing and waning and waxing over and over and over again. She saw a road, a long and drawn road, a road of the form of a circle and of a line at once. At all points along that road she saw herself, standing next to Mepka, and the figure of a third woman obscured in a warm shadow. Most of all, though, she saw through to the very shape of each of those people, the essences of their lives, and in so doing she felt herself able to accept fully the possibility that they were good.

  The magic broke, not like the snapping of a cord but rather like the opening of a bottle. Svaljna and Mepka blinked to each other, regarding the other for the lifetime they had just spent together in that spell, and they felt for all the world that there was no-one else they would rather be.

• The Path They Made (One Shot)

  167th of Gnielm, 257 RI

  Sablebeacon, Athal

  There was something no longer right about this place for Aldrich. He stood there, made still by the feeling that this world had been taken just a quarter turn off of its natural hinge.

  Taking his way through he had passed over grass still green and wind still blowing, and that was right. He had heard the distant lap of waves against the coast and seen the rummaging of a litter of wild boar, and that was right as well. He had watched wagons pass with nods, children peeking out with smiles, and still his nerve was not assuaged.

  It was not until he found the stones, those particular monoliths, that he felt the full weight of that which was amiss. There were two of them, each fifty feet at least from one end to another, more flat in one dimension than another and of a rough coalish character. They had toppled to the ground, lying heavy like the adjoining dead. They left Aldrich feeling exposed, lost in air too open.

  Tracing in a wide arc around the fallen, now, Aldrich knew how they would have been. He had trampled beneath stones such as these many a time, in his youth when his mother was prone to tugging him along her travels. In their state of rightness, these pillars would have been all stood up to lean against one another. They would have formed an arch, a span under which to walk, a slitted iris of open space directing a traveler through. Standing there, the craggy walls would have given you blinders to either peripheral such that you could see only the next set of two looming far off ahead and the land you’d need to walk to get there. They put anything off of that line out of sight, and in so doing they formed a sort of path from one to the next to the next.

  It was a quiet sort of blasphemy, to Aldrich at least, to see that way broken. He had lived on Athal for long years now, had seen the going and coming of a kingdom in favor of a league, and as a fellow of that league he had traversed more of Athal than just about anyone he knew of. 

  The twenty-seven demiplanes of the cluster of Athal were vast and varied, at times discordant and dissonant from one to the other. They had not been of the same place in the world before, that much was evident, but they were bound together now and to Aldrich’s mind there was only one thing that they all held in common and that was the idea of the path. Roads and tacks, routes and flows. They were sometimes vague, and often the best places were off of them, but every demiplane on the Athalial cluster had some way of giving you a direction in which to move. Here, that direction had been interrupted.

  Aldrich moved to set that disservice to right.

  He settled himself, on the path and out of the way of where the stones had fallen. He pulled out a scroll, a scroll of many runes, runes enshrining more words of power than any one mage could ever hope to master in a lich’s lifetime. It was a feat made possible only by collaboration, and Aldrich silently thanked those of the League who had worked so hard on his commission of such a wonder. 

  “Uid Ely’suntur Tezu’cime” He began to read in chanting tone. He felt the magic flow out from the scroll, across his mind and his hands and his tongue as a conduit. The ink began to glitter and spark, igniting off of the page to swirl past him.

  “Lisr Vowd” The spell continued, watching as the lacing energy of this magic swiped across the monumental pillars, lashing underneath and all around them. The parchment itself crumbled nearly to dust, but it was no matter any longer.

  “Wekt’iwe Styce Gwiffjald Cec’brol” Aldrich grunted, pressed by what could only have been some minuscule fraction of the exertion that the spell managed as the massive stones began to telekinetically heave up into the air. He guided them, as gently as he could, to hover together in concert.

  Clod dirt rained all around as the two monoliths were settled back into the ground, placed upright against one another with a resounding clack.

  Aldrich breathed heavily, tense for a moment longer as the last of the spell energy faded and gravity took its critical hold once more. It was not until the breeze blew again, ruffling the hood of his cloak, that Aldrich felt confident his work was not going to crush him in any immediate moment.

  He closed his eyes and took tentative steps on sore legs, moving under the shadow of the now reformed the arch. When he guessed that he was just at the center of the columns, he turned around and opened his eyes. The overwhelming sea of open grassland was gone. In its place there were black stone walls, and a looming set of standing stones much alike to these far off along the horizon. There was only the path they made between them. Aldrich took the first step of the journey back, and to walk it felt right once more.

• Spirit Rejoined (One Shot)

  92 of Nemulum, 426 EA

  Citadel of the Athalial League, Athal

  A pair of runes sparked under Kohri’s etching rod, their ambic auras fizzling into an unworkable, conjoined mess.

  “You know,” Nital piped up in high tone, “You could try-”

  “No.” Kohri interrupted, forcibly separating the unruly runes with a barrier mark. “Just shut it. You always do this. Coming in at the end of my work, when it’s almost ready, and adding little bits.”

  “I just want to help,” Nital grumbled, “Thought we were friends, for hells sake.”

  Kohri chewed on the disappointment she felt from Nital for the time it took to close out the final border of the ritual’s ring. The focal point of this work was an ornate lantern, white bronze in make, with a large handling ring and a myriad of inlaid patterns. Four vertical bars undergirded four horizontal in a treacherous curve spanning its entirety. Its interior had been kept purposefully rested in preparation for the coming affair. 

  “I don’t mean anything bad by it.” She spoke with trepidation, “It’s just, if you give your input then I have to say that it’s our project when it had been my project. Please, just let me show this one on my own.”

  The edges of Nital’s disappointment softened, though the core of it all still lingered. “If that’s what you need.”

  Kohri drew a long breath in, surveying her work around the lamp. Each component was segregated into its atomized place. She exhaled.

  Hallmaster Somerle drifted into the terse laboratory after some time. He was an older man, human, like Kohri. He had white hair pulled straight back out of his face and a full white beard shaped to give a nearly right angle to the jaw. He was preemptory in the air of busyness that he carried along with the scrawling wand set upon notebook in his hands and the dead-embered ashpipe pursed between his lips. He performed his perfunctory rounds with his typical absentmindedness.

  “Hallmaster,” Kohri straightened her shoulders from the hunch of the last dozen fiddling adjustments. “What perfect timing, I was hoping to show you the culmination of my past cycle’s research.”

  “Certainly.” The hallmaster harrumphed. “Tell me, Guildsfellow…”

  “Thireth, sir.” Kohri withered under the lack of recognition.

  “Yes, of course, Thireth. Quite right. Please, Guildsfellow Thireth, illuminate me as to what we have here.”

  “Well, sir,” Kohri motioned over the ringed lantern, out from which a pale blue glow began to emanate. “I have deduced that the animating force behind this object is not its cursed components, as was presented to me on its transfer into our laboratory. Rather, this lantern contains a spirit, on which the curse acts in imprisonment and domination.”

  “I see.” The hallmaster’s brow scrunched in a way that implied either perplexity or concern, though it was difficult for Kohri to discern which. “I see you have some rite prepared. Should the cursed components of this artifact be harmless to any purposeful user, what further acts do you intend to levy on it?”

  “Well, my intent is to break the entrapment – to release the entrapped spirit.” Kohri put herself back in quick composure from her stutter, “In accordance with the League’s edicts surrounding the handing of objects containing beings of sentience, of course.”

  The hallmaster pushed spectacles up his nose, his gaze lingering long on Kohri’s preparations and the illuminated lantern at its focus.

  “I have the relevant passages pulled here, somewhere.” Kohri began to riffle through her notebook for justification, “If you need-”

  “No need, guildsfellow.” The heirophant waved away her searching motions, “I am most pleased by this benevolent intervention, and would be keen to witness its execution.”

  Relief and something close to joy flooded Kohri’s frame. “Right, right, yes, thank you Hallmaster. The settings have all been placed, give me just a moment to finish my final preparations and we can get underway.”

  The hallmaster nodded, his gaze shifting form the lantern to Kohri herself as she mixed a prepared set of reagents. Her focus flitted across the room, from the lamp to her work around it to the now-bubbling cauldron to Nital wringing her hands to the imperious hallmaster. He gave her a jolted nod to begin.

  “Coamzer Wyrce, T’izet Zrenlwegerce,” her first chants were quick, eager, as she poured the caustic substance from the cauldron to flow through the grooves she had carved along the table. Her mind raced in attempted anticipation. She felt a sharp twinge as she poured herself, more of herself than she had meant to, into the magic that fueled the ritual. The acid underneath and around the lamp flowed out at a more constant pace, and Kohri used its connecting sight to modulate her voice into a sustainable rhythm. As the final joints connected, the etchings themselves being eaten away by the acid they carried, Kohri called out a word of engagement, only once, “P’iur Veol”

  In a burst of green like lightning, tendrils leapt off the runic table to harry the lantern, only barely held at bay by the imprisoning shell’s white-blue aura. Subsumed by her control of the technics in front of her, Kohri no longer perceived Nital or the hallmaster as those onlookers instinctually stumbled a step backwards.

  The form of the spirit came into shape behind the glass, a negative space within the light it was bound to produce, swimming through the lux in agitated bursts. Kohri manipulated her spell’s energy in abrasive rend, the bands of metal that held the spirit bending taught and then snapping under her will. Like water no longer contained, the spirit could not help but flow out of the cracked vessel. Kohri angled her magic to aid its escape, lashing to the translucent form and stretching it with tugging tendrils. The spirit’s frantic thrashing against its binds grew to crescendo, its light flaring up to blinding intensity. Kohri felt a tug and a slip through her spell’s net, and all of a sudden the spirit was snapped back into the lamp.

  The metal ringlets groaned back into their hold, and, lacking a focal point to attach to, Kohri’s spell energy scattered and died. The sudden stillness of the room was punctuated by the lamplight going to still. Kohri stood to the center of the room, dumbfounded, the aftershocks of the most elaborate spell she had ever cast rendered impotent across her hands and heart.

  “Hmm,” The hallmaster muttered from behind, only half-heard. “A step in the right direction, it seems. Always something to learn from our failures, Tryo.”

  “No, I-” Kohri turned and sputtered, keeping herself from her instinct to grab onto the hallmaster’s robes. “I can do it again. There must have been some miscalculation on my part, minor, I’m sure. That should have worked. It should have, it simply should have.”

  All the while, the hallmaster collected his set-down papers and made for the door. “Yes, certainly. This absolutely warrants further attempts. I’ve not the time to stay and attend to the preliminaries of this ritual, but I have full faith in your abilities, Guildsfellow Thyre. Here, in fact, take a boon of mine. Some spell energy, to offset your expenditure on this draft. Now, be well, young hands.”

  Despite Kohri’s attempts at polite protesting, he floated out from the room and away. She found herself alone, with her racing mind and with Nital. 

  Nital was older than Kohri, a stout gnome with peaceable features. She wore creamy gold over red over white and brown, colors that suited her complexion well.

  Kohri sighed heavily, letting her bunched shoulders come down. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you earlier. I just thought I could- I don’t know.”

  Nital hopped up on a stepstool to be at eye level with her taller companion. “I understand. Sometimes these things get the best of us.” After a moment, she added, “It was pretty impressive, Guildsfellow Thyre.”

  A chuckle cracked through Kohri’s stony demeanor, lifting her heart. The two stood, surveying the remains of the ritual together. After a moment of pause, Kohri turned, “What was it you were going to suggest?”

  “A component to work in, a rune of affinity centered on another of trust. Hok’e, maybe Qosvune. Something to soothe the spirit that’s trapped, ease the transition. It has a power locked away in there, better to work with it than against it.”

  Kohri sat with the thought for a long moment, her assumptions on the work realigning behind her eyes. She nodded with a clear resolution, and wiped over a rune on the underside of the ritual table. The space around the lantern, full of a mistake, wiped itself clean, the etched stone repairing itself to cool flat. Kohri and Nital set to work, replacing the ritual in its newly integrated pattern.

  Hours later, when the runic net had been etched and the black wax candles had been lit and the residuum fluid had been distilled, Kohri turned to Nital and asked “Ready?”

  Nital nodded back, and with steady hands poured the cauldron. Kohri chanted from beside, feeling their intents mingle as the magic sparked and ignited.

  The spirit of the lantern was bathed once again, this time in a washing green against its azure. An incanted wave wiped across the glass, clarifying it to the point that one could believe it was no longer present to hold in any flame. The spirit pulled back instinctually, recoiling against the unfamiliar air. 

  Kohri’s breath hitched, as she saw it happened again. She nudged Nital nervously between chants, prompting her to redouble her outpouring of magic, the softly curved runes she had contributed growing in spiral patterns to subsume the ritual space. “Qosvune Hok’e Qosvune Hok’e Qosvune Hok’e Qosvune Hok’e.”

  A feeling of deep peace filled the room, and gently the spirit was coaxed out from their prison. The spirit floated around and above them, so much larger than could possibly have been condensed into the mundane mantle that had held it, speckled and pale light dancing in open air.

  Kohri let herself feel the being in the hands of her ritual, some part of it touched by it and it by her, and she released. With a swirling pulse, the curse of the lantern was broken and the spirit dispersed into the great beyond.

  Kohri and Nital relaxed into the afterglow of their working, not feeling a need to speak for a moment but rather just to remain close to one another.

  “There was a beauty there.” Nital’s eyes crinkled in the soft smile of simple appreciation.

  “There was.” Kohri nodded from her reverie. “How did- How did you know? About the missing component? It never occurred to me that the spirit would fight against the ritual.”

  “Well,” Nital chose her words thoughtfully, searching through her self to find them, “the spirit was trapped in the lantern, had been trapped in the lantern for a long time it seemed. But before that, it was a person. And when people have been trapped for a long time, their binds can start to feel like protection, like something to hold onto, even if it would be better for them to be free. You know?”

  Kohri nodded, rolling over the words and the voice behind them. They echoed through her mind as she began to clear her station, pulling her belongings from the laboratory.

  “I’m off,” Nital started, making for the door, “Good night Kohri.”

  “Right, yes, goodnight.” Kohri watched them go, and then followed after. “Wait, Nital? I just wanted to say, for you to know. I’m excited for the next project of ours.”

• Kingdom of Ranavar (I)

  116th of Nemulum, 7 RI

  Castle Umbreanu, Athal

  Llywelyn Ranavar would be the first king of the new reality. That much he knew. It could be read in his eyes and in his gait, in that way he moved through the chaos after catastrophe. He was considerate, and precise. He wore stateliness like a cloak.

  To his backdrop he heard the calls of the undulating masses, their distresses and their disarray. Their anxiety over this newfound isolation, this aetherbound existence, it was palpable. They were too fresh from the incomprehensible madness of the void, and many of their leaders had died even before whatever shattered reality they now lived amongst could take hold. They were a disoriented people, most of all, and so it fell to Llywelyn’s charge to soothe them.

  He stood, waiting then in that antechamber so high in its ceilings that one worried that they might fall up into them, letting their distant murmurings wash over him.

  “Are you quite sure of this?” His dear love Miacyne fretted through whispers at his side. “It’s not too late.”

  “I am sure, darling.” He had been in love with his paramour long enough to know just how much reassurance was necessary. “All will be well, after this. We will trade peace for prosperity, with these people. As is right.”

  “As is right.” Miacyne nodded, the repetition a seeming comfort to him as it so often was with matters such as these. He clasped his hands underneath the billowing sleeves of his gown, and though it gave a look of composure those hands of his were still being wrung under cover of the cloth.

  Llywelyn kissed him then, a resolute sort of kiss, and pulled away to begin his stride forwards.

  The grand doors of his castle craned open at his approach, bathing him in the light of the noonday sun and the pouring roar of those masses he had worked so very hard to assemble on that bracingly chilled day.

  His family, high elven in blood, were in procession behind him for all to see. He held his shoulders back and glided across the causeway. In that moment Llywelyn was tailored to authority in every stitch of his clothing and every meaningful nod of his head.

  Still, as he approached the dais, raised above them, a doubt flickered in the deep recesses of his mind. Theirs were many, and his were few. They were unruly, and yet he was making it his commission to rule them.

  They assessed him at every step, these would be subjects. They scoured him for any sign of incapacity, any flinch of malignancy.

  Then, he was there. He had walked out into the very center of them, and resting on a pillowed plinth was a crown of ivory and gold and plush red velvet. He pressed his fingers into the sides of that crown, and lifted it. He felt the air suck out of the place as he did, all eyes settling on him as he raised it above his head. He let it linger there, like a halo behind him, for a moment longer than was necessary. And then, he lowered it onto his head and was crowned.

  The crowd in that moment was deafening, and yet when he raised his hand once more they fell to silence as if by magic.

  “This day,” Llywelyn’s conviction projected out through the square, “Will be marked in history as the day our people were saved.”

  The enrapture held, no matter the fact that Llywelyn’s family were not of these people.

  “No longer will the echoes of the Evenfall dictate our misery.” He called to them in inspiration, “No longer will sibling fight sibling, nor neighbor be stranger. Let us come together, as one nation, as the Kingdom of Ranavar, to secure our place into the future of this new world.”

  He paused a moment, and the cheers that went up in the absence of his voice told him that he had their hearts.

  “I vow,” He continued, “on the honor of my noble family and on my position as king of this land old and new, to do what is right in all things, to ensure stability in this realm.”

  With that decree Llywelyn walked off, cheers still roiling at his back, to reenter the privacy of the castle.

  It was only Miacyne, then, who was there to read the slyness that shed from him.

• Kingdom of Ranavar (II)

  61st of Gnielm, 88 RI

  Kesserine, Athal

  Micai Ranavar would be an estimable warrior. That much he knew. As he walked up through the city, armored brightly and flanked on either side by a retinue of comrades, he tried not to be too distracted by the attention that it brought him.

  Still though, his mind wandered over his legs. What must he look like, to them? He was tall, broad in stature, and possessed of all the lupine grace that was natural for a young high elf. The saber at his side was Dawnmaker, a blade that had passed to him through generations of noble hands. It had been used to save the Ranavars, in the ravages of the time before, so said his father. 

  All of this contributed to a general air about Micai, the way that greatness simply radiated off of him. The gasps of passers by, the kneeling salutes, all the glory, it did thrill him. He was their prince, and he would die for them.

  Kesserine was a city of gates, six grand baileys in total, situated betwixt two impenetrable mountains which faded quickly into the aether around. It wasn’t until the fifth and final of his intended passes that Filauriel caught him.

  “You’re late.” From someone else it might have come off as judgmental, but she said it as a statement of fact.

  “I know it,” He motioned his guards to walk on ahead, leaving him a private moment with his lady paramour, “The Wraith’s Road needed my attention.”

  Filauriel pursed her lips at that.

  “Do you disagree?” Micai led them out from under the gate, through an open market in the direction of a grand amphitheater.

  “The kingdom has aspects other than it’s wartorn border.” Filauriel rehashed that argument of theirs. “King Miacyne says-”

  Micai scoffed, immediate and interrupting. “The king consort lives too much in his own head. He spends his days lost in the castle, writing all his life away in those blasted letters.”

  “He thinks those are important.” Filauriel was gentle in her reproach, “If they keep him happy, keep his mind off the horrors he’s seen, what’s the trouble?”

  “The trouble is that no soul will ever read them! He burns them all to crisp, so what was the point in the first place?” Micai passed loudly through and into the halls of the amphitheater, weaving now through small crowds scholars and merchants, patrons and soldiers, courtiers to his family all.

  When it became clear that Filauriel was not intending to respond to his outburst, he took a deep breath. “My pater isn’t the point. I’m sorry I interrupted you.”

  “Thank you for your apology.” Filauriel squeezed his arm comfortingly. “I just wish for you to think on your place in this kingdom.”

  “My place as the prince of this kingdom is as a protector. Do you not agree that the orcish uprising is a threat to our people?” Micai pressed once more.

  “Of course it is.” Filauriel headed up a set of spiraling stairs. “I’m not telling you to abandon military pursuits. I only meant for you to consider that one day you will be prince no longer. That you will be king, and that a king makes for a poor man-at-arms. There are other skills to statecraft, skills that attending events such as these will hone for you.”

  “I’ve considered that.” Micai made what final adjustments to his appearance that he intended. “Father will abdicate, we’ve discussed it on more than one occasion. He’ll hand over the throne when the time is right, and I will have many long years to absorb his wisdom as an advisor. The joy of these elvish lifespans is that I will always have more time to learn what I need.”

  Filauriel was silent at that.

  “I see what you are saying. I am here, after all, even if it is not when I was meant to be.” Micai acceded, cresting up to the corner just around which he knew he would find his responsibility. He paused there, just long enough to lean down and tenderly kiss his beloved. “I know you have my best interest at heart, and I have much love for you on that account. All will be well.”

  “I know you, and I love you too.” Filauriel whispered to him as they stepped out into the light of the amphitheater together.

  It was a crowded affair, the half-crescent sitting boxes packed with all manner of movers and shakers from Ranavar and beyond. Micai could tell that, in his tardy approach, searching eyes were pulled to him. He had been noticed, and noted.

  It mattered little to him. He was of a state that he was proud to be seen, it served only to focus him.

  Surveying the invited parties back, Micai found that the vast majority of seats were swashed by people from there in Kesserine, elves and half-elves and the like. Some portion went also to the human folk of the outlands, from the Escarpment of Verdalin all the way up and through the demiplanes which made up the strange and harsh Alkniss Isles. Mingled amongst them were orcs and goblins, defectors from the wastelands who had proven their loyalty to the monarchal cause. In one box his uncles and aunts sat, tightly clustered, grumbling to each other conspiratorially.

  His father Llywelyn had taken the foremost podium, a pillar of kingly goodwill. He paused his speech and nodded to his son and to his daughter-by-marriage, acknowledging their presence, before turning back to the matter at hand.

  In front of him, central to the entire proceeding, stood four figures. One was an human man, posh in his doublet and bracers and slouch hat, strung by bow and strength of arm. Next to him there was a wiry elf in a capelet, a jut of black hair atop his head, looking for all the world like he had never sat still in his life. On the other side there was a lass who seemed to have some orcish blood, armored in holy vestments of the Stria Intranscendent. Finally, there was a severe gnomish woman, a witch by the look of her, togged all in red with a wide-brimmed pointed hat atop her head. In all, they had the look of those that had some hunger for the world.

  “In the pursuit,” Llywelyn continued, “of a reunified cosmos, there must be those who are brave enough of heart to venture out to the aether and beyond. Those who are quick enough of hand to evade those outside the borders of the civilized worlds who would seek to hold us back. Those who are wise enough of will to balm against the trials of such endeavors. And, perhaps most importantly, those who are keen enough of mind to understand what has been seen in all those long travels to come.”

  Llywelyn paused a moment, letting the weighty remarks linger in the minds of his audience. 

  “It is in this pursuit, and under the charge of my kingship over this fair country which I have vowed to protect, that I have gathered you all here today.” Llywelyn motioned then to the four gathered in front of him. “Please, kneel.”

  The assembled adventurers took their knee, one by one. Fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard.

  “You will arise, and in so rising you will be granted the commission of a new league of explorers. It will be your purpose to survey and secure the length and breadth of all places, domestic and foreign. You will have the sanction of the crown to walk freely in all lands and to conduct yourself as you see fit. You will do so with a sense for justice in fair principle, just as in turn the crown has authority over the direction of you all as its subjects. You will be a hand, to reach through the veil that our reality has fallen under. I, King Llywlyn Ranavar, declare it so.”

  The first members of the Athalial Explorer’s League rose then in official commission, the crowd cheered, and all of its significance slipped past Micai as though it would not come to be some great diminishment of his place in the world. He would not see it so, for he would be dead on the battlefield well before these seeds would come to fruit. In that way, at least, his glory was preserved.

• Kingdom of Ranavar (III)

  49th of Gnielm, 157 RI

  High Arborway, Athal

  Filauriel would be off the throne, soon. That much she knew. In the interim, she paced atop the long whitestone rampart which demarcated the near edge of the kingdom which she had been thrust into rulership over. It formed a road, of sorts, a wide and open boulevard for the marching of troops. They were high above the ground there, high enough that they didn’t really even need to see the swamp below. Instead, the midpoint of the wall was clutched all around by the canopy; vermillion trees roiling like clouds all out from stark white trunks.

  At her side was Imryll, keeping pace with her, ever the dutiful child. 

  “They will come,” Filauriel thumbed the ornate fabric of her robes in attempt to keep her hands from betraying apprehension, “The heraldic horns will come, and they will be the last.”

  “There have been times when they have not, in the past.” Imryll replied solemnly. “Father lost his life here, on this demiplane. The victory calls did not come on that day.”

  Hearing it said aloud weakened Filauriel’s resolve. It still stabbed at her, the degree to which the scarlet leaves had matched the color of Micai’s blood when his body had been hoisted up the wall. It had been a great battle, in his long war against the orcish horde. She was glad that the last of it’s engagements was occurring far past the aether. She would not wish for it to end here, where he had.

  “Your father was a good man.” Filauriel felt the wind blow past in strained measure. “His death was a tragedy. Fate had a cruel way with him, I suppose.”

  Imryll was quiet a moment, clearly contemplative. “The Stria teaches that the fate we are dealt is often the fate we follow. That fate and the world and the self are not so separate as we might think, and that all things that come to be will come to end as well.”

  Sermons of a foreign faith brought Filauriel little comfort, but still she summoned a forbearing smile. Imryll was young, by elven standards, but it was well known that they held all the temperament of a prudent leader. “You are wise beyond your years, child of mine. No matter when the time is right, you-”

  BAROOOOOOOooooooooo Baroooo Barooooooooooo

  Just then, a great low and tempestuous blare cut her power of articulation flat. The sound of a horn’s blare, echoing from far off and down below the wall near the edge of the aether.

  And just like that, the wait was over. The battle was won, the war ended. Peace had been achieved, at last, and the weight that Filauriel had carried since she had been forced from queen consort to queen regent could finally lift.

  She hugged Imryll, hugged them tightly. When she released she found that she had begun to shed tears, sparking as they splashed against the spotless marble walkway.

  “I am glad, too, mother.” Imryll continued to squeeze her hand comfortingly. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes.” She felt it to be true. “Yes I am quite well. I was only going to say that, now that the time is right, you’re going to make a great monarch. I know that you will follow a kinder fate now than those who wore the crown before you.”

  Imryll nodded, gazing out over the ramparts. After a moment he asked, “Why did father start this war? Really?”

  “Oh.” Filauriel took a solemn look, feeling this last responsibility to the truth coming over her. “I don’t think he knew what to do with himself, when it came to be his time. That was the pain of it, time.”

  Imryll listened intently, absorbing as much as they could as Filauriel continued. “Llywelyn, your grandfather. You never met him, but he was truly a king. Such a force to him. To look at him, he seemed as though he would rule for a millennia. His death was unexpected, your father was not prepared for it. He had meant to spend many years with your grandfather to advise him. But, that was not the way things were to be. He knew only war, by that point, and so that is all the throne brought out of him.”

  “I see.” Imryll intoned simply, truly. “I see. That’s why you’ve insisted on holding the throne in my stead, for so long as you have. That I might not have my beginnings marked by that legacy of bloodshed.”

  Breath released from Filauriel’s chest. Imryll had understood. They were ready, beyond any doubt.

  Having spilled out, in that too-perfect sunlight, Filauriel felt herself overcome by a sudden fatigue. “Yes. Yes, exactly. And I bore it gladly, knowing that that is why your rule will be the best of the name of Ranavar.”

• Kingdom of Ranavar (IV)

  163rd of Nemulum, 214 RI

  Castle Umbreanu, Athal

  Imryll would be the one to keep the flow of life in the Kingdom of Ranavar at peace. That much, they knew. Their way about it was not straightforward. Divinely granted responsibility was not meant to be. But, even still, it was made most arduous in court. The raised voices, the dissenting opinions, the lack of respect for anything but the indulgent self. It was grueling, to maintain the balance that was necessary of them through that tangled antagonism.

  Despite this, it was their prerogative to do as they saw fit. It had been made that way by order of their birth, certainly, but to their core they were sure that it was the path of harmony that the three most holy deities of the Stria Intranscendent had empowered them to follow. They would not shirk that investiture.

  So, they sat back and listened as Resyra addressed the council of advisors. Their half-sister carried herself proudly, decked in the practical fineries that had come to fashion in association with the Athalial Explorer’s League, filling the space despite her smaller stature. “I’ve not come here to argue, niece.”

  “Then you would do well to watch your tone.” Jilwalyn growled back in response. She was a thickheaded young woman, broad and stocky by her half-human lineage, the daughter of a distant cousin. During her time at court, Imryll had found her to be blunt with her tongue and quick to anger. “That you have failed to comply with the monarch’s decree in any sort of timely manner is an embarrassment to your organization.”

  “Well, that is some part of the reason for which it was I that was sent, to treat on the League’s behalf.” Resyra explained in measured pace. 

  Imryll, ever observant, gleaned that there was some weight veiled behind the words.

  “I mean, really,” Jilwalyn continued as though Resyra hadn’t said anything at all, “What about this could you people be mucking up to this degree? The order was to disband your waystations in territories that have been made civilized. All your people need to do is pack it up, and they can’t even do that right! If these places have already been explored, then whose moronic idea was it to send more explorers there?”

  “Well, that is the way of it.” Resyra turned, and though she was responding to Jilwalyn she was facing the throne directly as she said it. “There has been no failure. The Athalial League will not be complying with the wishes of the crown, in this instance.”

  The audience chamber broke into chaos.

  Imryll processed what had been revealed, just watching the ripples spread out. Jilwalyn was yelling, unheard, turning back and forth between Resyra and the crowd which had formed to hold her back. Resyra stood flanked by allies of the League. Imryll wished that Filauriel was still present, but their mother had left early in the day to attend to matters of her own.

  In the midst of that crowd, their eye caught Halavor. He had a lithe beauty to him, feline, draped in long robes of the stria. He and Imryll had not been courting for long, but their shared devotion to the faith had brought them onto each other’s paths. All Halavor did was look back at their monarch, his hand reaching meaningfully to his holy symbol.

  “Order.” Imryll spoke, not loudly or forcefully, but with a keen direction as they reached for their own holy symbol.

  The courtiers continued their squabbles, and so Imryll stood and raised their amulet ahead of them.

  “I called for order in this place!” Imryll’s hand holding the divine implement glowed in sacred light, and their voice reverberated out in thaumaturgy. There were none that did not hear. All through the court, like a wave, voices fell silent and attention was compelled to the throne. It was magic, the channeling of divinity, wielded in conjunction with the authority that the crown conferred.

  They did not falter until all were silent. “Sister. Speak, and know that you and those you represent are heard.”

  “You have my thanks, sibling.” Resyra shuddered off the magic that was holding her. “The provosts of the Athalial Explorer’s League have conferred, and determined that they will retain their land holdings on all the worlds of Athal despite the Kingdom’s request that they be ceded.”

  Jilwalyn gritted her teeth, surrounded by a furious contingent of nobles, but she could not break from the compulsion to keep the peace.

  “By what right have you come to this decision?” Imryll took a step closer, down from the throne.

  “By the League’s founding commission, your highness.” Resyra cleared her throat, “Our organization was granted the wherewithal to walk freely in all lands, and to conduct ourselves as we see fit. Those were the words of our grandfather, that great man who lead our kingdom out of the ruin of the Evenfall. We would hold to them.”

  “I have read the speech, same as you.” Imryll was quick to their response. “King Llywelyn also declared that the crown would have authority over the direction of the Explorer’s League, as its subjects.”

  “This is true.” Resyra seemed almost apologetic, “We have come to find that component of subjection misaligned with the remittance that the League has provided to the nation of Ranavar.”

  “This is treason!” Jilwalyn finally managed to gasp out.

  Resyra did not look away from their sibling, and all eyes followed theirs. “That charge is for the monarch to assert.”

  A long moment passed between them in silence.

  “Are you sure this is the course of action you wish to take, sister? Is there no means to persuade you and yours short of violence?” Imryll’s question carried with it a sense of finality. It would not be asked again.

  “I am.” Resyra held resolute, in spite of the implications on both sides. “War between the League and the Kingdom would be the only means of compelling our side to capitulation.”

  The world pulled taught, out of shape from the way that Imryll knew it should be. They sighed, feeling the burden of their station more than they ever had before.

  “In that case,” Imryll released, “the Kingdom of Ranavar rescinds its command that the Athalial Explorer’s League disband their waystations. By my right as monarch I declare it so.”

  Like a floodgate burst, the present company erupted into tense discussion once more. 

  Resyra showed the relief of a worry that they had hidden well. They approached the throne, to speak privately. “The League thanks you for your wise decision, your highness.”

  “You’ve given me little choice, sister.” Imryll exhibited a level of anger that was rare for them. “To threaten war, in this place that I have made holy? I will not have it.”

  “It was you who threatened war.” Resyra recounted. “Your father would have been proud.”

  Imryll bottled up what shame they felt over that. “You should leave. And I don’t think I need to decree that you should not return.”

  “It’ll be no matter.” Resyra held in their hurt. “The League intends to vacate it’s guildhalls in Kesserine. We will raise a citadel in some corner of the nation that we have won for you, and I will ensure that that place is remote enough that you and I will have no cause to see one another.”

  She left then, and Imryll kept to the court. They held, and they maintained, and they kept, but in the end holding was not action enough to hold on to their precious peace.

• Kingdom of Ranavar (V)

  198th of Gnielm, 98 EA

  Castle Umbreanu, Athal 

  Imelda would be better off walking out into the aether than she would be standing for the indignities of the paysan. That much, she knew. More than anything, it burned her that she had been kept out of the inner circle. As though the loss of two-thirds of the kingdom was some paltry affair, or else something she could not be trusted to handle. 

  She had known for some time that there was something afoot, the way that council chambers had suddenly become blocked to her, but she wrote it off as punishment on the part of her parents for her last outburst in court. That had been a particularly delectable bit of drama, accusing that duke of adultery, but it hardly warranted this.

  So she stormed across the scepteresque towers of her family’s ancestral castle, the castle she would one day inherit, and she burst into the bureau of the monarch in all fits of rage.

  “Don’t!” She shouted to fill the space, even before she could really tell what point the dealings had progressed to.

  The scene she walked into was a tired one, one that Imryll had been playing out in small part for much of their long reign. Emissaries from the Athalial Explorer’s League flanked them, three in total. They were in negotiation, had been for many hours, and it was clear from posture alone that they knew they held the upper hand. They were as vultures, or else wolves prepared to lap out the marrow of a bone.

  “Daughter,” Imryll had a resigned tiredness to them, “You know not of what goes on here.”

  “Hells below knows I do!” Imelda cursed just to see her parent wince.

  The three representatives looked to each other with a faint amusement.

  Imryll turned to them, and with an infuriating politeness asked, “Would you excuse me a moment with my daughter. Please, avail yourselves of some vittles, I’ll have a meal brought up.”

  The League members nodded, smirked, stood, and exited. Imryll and Imelda were left alone.

  “How could you?” Imelda laced as much accusation as she could into the question.

  “How could I what?” Imryll sighed, setting the crown from their head onto the desk. “I still don’t know what it is you think I’m doing?” 

  “You’re going to give the kingdom away!” Imelda launched so quickly into her tirade that she found she was in need of breath, but she kept at it without, “I know the whole of it, I know that they’ve come to steal it from us. What, they think that they’re fit to rule? Just because they can open a portal or two? What a load of poppycock. They’re here to take everything that is our family’s by right, and make it theirs. Has it already happened? Have you already made the decree, or signed the paper, or whatever it is that’s going to happen? Have- have-”

  She began to panic, to feel her anger slipping past itself in her mind. And then, her vision was forced to tunnel and all she could perceive was a singular, simple line. 

  When she came to, she was faced with Imryll’s holy symbol. She felt herself calmed, though in the deep recesses of her mind she was unsettled for having been compelled into such a state. She tried to speak, but her tongue felt all gummy.

  “Breathe, daughter.” Imryll put a hand on her shoulder. “Nothing has happened yet, but things are more complicated than you are making them out to be. Are you ready to hear?”

  Imelda’s rage had simmered down to the stewing sort of sulk that had become her neutral state of being. “Yes. I will listen.”

  “Good. That is a prudent quality in a queen-to-be.” Imryll smoothed back his hair. “The League is not here to take any land, but the state of affairs in planes beyond Kesserine is not well. Incidences of resistance to the authority of the crown are growing in number, in frequency, and in severity. There have been growing sentiments towards republicanism amongst the populace, and each day that goes on under our rule there brings them closer to flat out revolt.”

  “Any you refuse to act on this treason directly?” Imelda spat, “You’d put us in debt to the Athalial League rather than trusting our vassals?”

  Imryll began to look agitated themself. “In what manner should I direct these allies of ours, in your view? March them down the streets of their own towns, have them slaughter their neighbors?”

  Imelda did not back down. “It would be their honorbound duty, if it were ordered of them by their monarch.”

  “You’d bring the people to war against themselves?” Imryll blanched.

  “When I become queen, if the integrity of the kingdom was at stake, then yes, I would do what was necessary to ensure the kingdom stayed together.” Imelda straightened herself up. “Our land is our power, there is no means by which we could afford to lose any of it.”

  “If that is the case, daughter,” Imryll took the tone of one who had become hallow, “Then I will sit the throne until my dying day, that you might be kept from that power for as long as possible. I only hope that in the intervening years you will come to see the way of peace.”

  It was true that the kingdom was not lost on that day, nor was it lost all at once, but it was lost. Plane-wide parcels of land were ceded to the Athalial League who, with little interest in practical governance, left the people’s fates to themselves. 

  Imryll kept their promise, holding their role as monarch for as many breaths as they could take. By the time that Imelda ascended and was crowned, her heart had been poisoned by the spite of many long years under the belief that a certain future had been taken away from her.

• Kingdom of Ranavar (VI)

  154th of Gnielm, 174 CE

  Sunfathom Gate, Athal

  Grigor would never be king. That much, he knew. He was young, too young to be feeling the weight of the world as he did. He figured that it would only be more so if he were to sit the throne, and so despite its grand allure he was glad that he had older siblings to take that place.

  “What you’re doing is atrocious!” Sophia spat across the deck of the sailing ship. She was never afraid to speak her mind, not even to their mother. Radu, her twin, kept his quiet but stepped up next to her in show of support.

  “These are measures of austerity.” Imelda sat up from her chaise longue. “These taxes, they are for the good of the realm! And I won’t hear any other word about it, not from any insolent uppity daughters of mine, so mark me.”

  “The good of the realm?” Radu inserted himself into the argument. “You call the people of Kesserine starving while we yacht around the planes the good of the realm?”

  “You put a shadow on the house of Ranavar.” Sophia quipped in quickly, her poise never faltering as her focus was wedged intently on her mother. “You make me ashamed to share that name.”

  The whole of the ship passed quickly into shadow as it pierced through the aetherline. All around, wards sparked to life to create a shell against that magical fog.

  To Grigor’s young mind, there was no more terrifying thought than that fog bearing down on them all. It was the ocean, sunken down all around them, held at bay by forces he did not understand. He ran to his mother, tugging at her skirts as she got up.

  “Not now, boy.” She batted him away, sending him cowering towards the railing of the deck.

  “Don’t talk to him like that.” Radu defended his brother, drawing focus back on himself and his sister. “You’ve got no right.”

  “I’ve got whatever right I’d care for,” The argument continued, “I am the queen, you miserable wretch. I have known the world a fair century over you. You may think you have seen, think yourselves grown now, think you know the way of the world, the way of some perverse justice, but you’re nothing more than a short sighted softhearted little brat, just as you were when you were a babe.”

  Covering his ears, Grigor’s heart quailed as he found himself unable to stop from looking out over the siding. There in the depths of the aether the fog shifted at the approach of a behemoth, a dreadnought. Its shape was obscured, as was all else in the dark of that haze, but clear as anything Grigor knew it was there.

  “Mama!” He cried, feeling a fear more potent than any he had ever experienced.

  “I said not now!” She dismissed him with barely a look.

  Grigor stood up off his haunches and ran, ran as fast as he could. He looked back over his shoulder, and just as he did he saw the opening of a single, massive eye. It was gray on gray on the backdrop of the aether, barely recognizable, but again it was undeniably present. It was seeing. It was seeking.

  As it opened there was a sudden sucking sensation, as all the wards across the deck of the ship simultaneously failed.

  The aether leapt in, reaching with tendrils of deep madness to batter the royal family Ranavar. There were screams, and the groaning of the ship as licks of wood and metal disintegrated.

  Grigor’s vision was clouded, as was all else, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he needed to be shielded from whatever that eye saw. He stumbled through the rapidly condensing landscape, feeling less and less sure with every step of what was left and what was right and what was him and what was the world, until suddenly he could see the outline of his mother.

  That view anchored him to hope, some shred of hope. He ran to her, ran an impossible distance. He felt his legs give out, and then cease to be, and so he crawled, and the crawling was just enough to bring him into sight of another. He felt Sophia’s hands on his back, hoisting him up. She was clung onto Radu, and together they hugged their younger brother to them with all of their might.

  In the distance, no closer than she was before, Imelda was sucked out into the fog. She ceased to be in that moment. Her acrid touch would never be felt again.

  The behemoth was gone. Maybe it had never been there in the first place. In that silvery indetermination, Grigor was sure of his siblings, and nothing else.